#though I am also allowed to state my opinions and how I think a lot of y’all just want to blame one character for the actions of another

[scuorge101]

Y’all can like Eurylochus without dragging Polites down by the way, in case y’all need a reminder.

I genuinely don’t understand why a lot of y’all are dead set on dragging Polites through the mud just to try and make Eurylochus look like a better character. Just say that you like Eurylochus’ character better and that you wish he was appreciated more by the fandom as a whole.

[violetasteracademic]

I mean, I love Lucien so much but it’s obvious that he’s not that excited about the mating bond. It feels like it was something that was imposed on him, not something that makes him happy (as it was the case for Rhys and Cassian). He even used the world “shackled”. What can be worse than that? After a while, he didn’t even care about living someplace else and not seeing her often. He knows they’re a bad match and it’s possibly questioning the Cauldron.

I love both of them and they deserve better. Sometimes I wonder if the people that believe that Elain has to be with Lucien because he’s her mate, also believe that women should stay in unhappy, miserable marriages because they see divorce as a “sin”

Hello lovely anon!

Looooong post ahead, we are gonna get into it! I agree with you completely on this. I am a pro L/cien Elriel, and always have been. My first Tumblr post was a dissertation about Vassien for goodness sake, and my excitement for their story is genuinely second to Elriel! The secret Spell-Cleaver's son and the cursed queen, the bird of flame and lord of fire, there is so much I love about them. I did an entire breakdown on the possibilities of Vassien's story using Sarah's usual book structures and all of the information we have on them, because there is so much driving them plot wise and thematically it's actually crazy.

I think that sometimes it can be really easy to miss theme while reading these books, but it is something SJM puts a lot of work into and threads throughout her stories.

I spend a LOT of time talking about my girl Elain, and even though I love the boys they are just kinda there for me as cute little accessories for our ladies. So I appreciate this opportunity to talk more about who is right for whom from the mens perspective based on the themes woven throughout the books with a focus on L/ucien and Azriel, and whether or not Elain fits into those themes. In my opinion, these are the strongest indicators of what ultimately is being subliminally pushed by authors on the road to happiness for our characters.

I'm gonna nerd out about writing for a sec, but good writing has clean character arcs. Good romance shows the blind spots or flaws of the lead characters, and how their romantic interest will balance or push the character to growth. If there are multiple love interests, one of the love interests will undoubtedly leave the main character stagnant, or perhaps fulfill some external ideals rather than following their own heart.

Here are some examples of themes when it comes to Elain and Azriel, and I'm pushing myself to focus on Azriel here and not my girlie 🌸

Here we are being introduced to the areas where Azriel has blind spots to his own personal happiness. It is nearly impossible to get Azriel to take any time for himself that doesn't't involve work or training. He rips himself to shreds for mistakes, his perfectionism bordering on sadistic.

The time he spends with Elain is a direct foil to Azriel's inability to do anything other than work or train without being pushed to the extreme by his loved ones. He chooses to sit with Elain in the garden. He chooses to stay up until three am listening to her design plans. He chooses to rest in the sunlight with her. This is a direct tie of the author stating what this character needs, and then blatantly showing who is giving it to him.

G/wyn also trains hard and is competitive and perfectionistic. It makes total sense to me that people think this is cute, however, theme wise, it is a representation of a stagnant arc. The idea that training is a foundational element to an Az and G's potential relationship actually directly parallels Azriel's greatest obstacle to happiness- which is that he cannot allow himself to rest and *not* train.

Feyre and Rhys had to teach each other to share burdens, though it was extremely difficult. Cassian had to teach Nesta how to forgive herself and believe she was worthy of love. What Azriel needs is someone to help him believe he is worthy of rest and mistakes. These themes are tied to Elain.

There is also the issue of his hands and physical touch, and his feelings of worthiness.

Again, we discover that even if Morrigan, the woman he has supposedly been madly in love with for 500 years, stripped naked in front of Azriel, he still wouldn't touch her. We've also seen Morrigan cringe away from his hands. Meanwhile, Elain called his scarred hands beautiful. Elain initiated every act of touch in the bonus chapter. Elain moved so that his hand was covering her neck, and she wanted it.

Azriel fought against his feelings of disgust over his hands. He experienced intrusive thoughts about how he shouldn't be touching her with the things he has done. And yet, his feelings for her, and the feeling of touching her, was powerful enough to override the loop of self hate that tells him he is unworthy of being wanted.

So if Azriel's two themes that need to be challenged in his romantic relationship is lack of rest and lack of touch, Elain has already been pushing growth in those areas over multiple books. With G/wyn, whom he has not touched because of the strict line of professionalism with the priestesses and the only time they spent together training (which is also the thing Azriel uses to distract himself and push himself to the brink of exhaustion) thematically, for Azriel's specific needs in romantic growth, we are stagnant.

Moving on to L/cien, because there is a lot here for him as well and I believe we are being shown how Elain is also thematically the opposite of what L/cien needs.

Unlike Azriel, L/cien has experienced true, authentic, deep, consensual love. And the first thing he does when he meets Elain is compare her to the woman he loves, and frankly, he's not really understanding how someone like Elain could be his mate because she is so different from Jesminda.

L/cien is attracted to wildness, mischief and laughter. Someone who loved him not because of his status or stature, but choosing him for who he was. This is never going to be possible with Elain. L/cien's status as a High Lord's son plays a huge role in Rhys not wanting Azriel to interfere with their relationship. At this point, even if Azriel never pursues Elain again, that is the reason why. The Blood Duel, and L/ucien's status as a High Lord's son. If L/ucien were not these things, Rhys never would have interrupted their kiss. So even if Elain *chooses* L/cien in the end, it will never have been without question. It will never be untangled with this status as a High Lord's son, and it will never be because they weren't mates first before falling in love. In Lucien's monologue about Jesminda, we learn that the mating bond is not the ideal way for L/cien to fall in love either. With all his trauma and abuse and lack of choice in his own life, he both wants and deserves to be loved without question. This will absolutely never be true with Elain, no matter how their story develops.

Lucien desires to be chosen away from High Fae culture and societal expectations. We also see how he is drawn to things wild and free, who says to hell with all of it. I'm choosing who I love and how I show up in this world.

And then we meet the human queen Vassa.

A foul mouthed, foul tempered queen who Lucien warns Feyre of right away that she will corner her to ask for help breaking her curse (which she absolutely does 🤣)

In the same book where Lucien can't help but compare Elain to the fiery love of his life, and feel Elain was thrown at him, he winds up on an adventure with a literal firebird queen with the attitude and energy to match. Perhaps someone who could taunt and tease Lucien within an inch of his life?

Thematically, Lucien has also struggled with the concept of home. He has bounced from court to court, facing different forms of abuse and control. He has never been truly free or comfortable anywhere he has lived. And he doesn't feel truly free or comfortable in Velaris. In fact, he can't stand it.

This is similar to what happened with Jesminda and the Autumn court. Her people no longer welcome Lucien because they believe he is responsible for what happened to her. Lucien doesn't want to return to Tamlin, but Spring was his home, and now he can't return there either because those outside of the high lords manor hate him for believing him being complicit.

Lucien and Vassa are also tied thematically through themes of manipulation and two faced people selling them out.

Which again, brings us full circle to L/ucien's theme of passivity. He believes he did not protect Jesminda. That her death was a betrayal of trust. This is a deep wound that needs healing.

Meanwhile, when it comes to Elain, he has maintained a passive stance. He is always telling others to get her back, or take her here, or do this. But if something were to happen to her, he never would have been the one to step in and stop it. He is repeating his passive behavior with Elain, beyond simply staying away from her. The theme is rooted much more deeply than that. It is tied to his past traumas and failures.

Meanwhile, when it comes to Vassa, he stares out to sea and sets a target on Koschei.

Elain is not going to be the one to shake L/ucien out of passivity and into action. Vassa is. And my understanding is that even E/ucien's believe this is true, they just assume Elain will be required for some reason. But what the E/ucien version of saving Vassa lacks is thematic resolution. Character arc and growth. L/cien's love interest being the foil to his passivity. Forcing Elain into the saving Vassa storyline makes it less of an emotional growth arc for all characters involved.

So no, I don't think Elain is right for L/cien, and I don't think L/cien thinks she is either. He is going to have to step up and fight for his woman. He has to face ghosts haunting him, and the fact that he didn't protect the woman he loves in the past. He is showing no protective, proactive behavior towards Elain. He *is* showing protective, proactive behavior with Vassa.

Azriel is not showing the ability to find peace and rest and breaks from work and training with G/wyn. He *is* showing the ability to find peace and rest and breaks from training with Elain. He is not showing an ability to let his hands touch someone's skin and work through the traumatic feelings that can bring up with G/wyn. He *is* experiencing that with Elain.

Obviously Elain's choice is theme, and we all know where that is headed. But it IS worthwhile to (occasionally 😝) pay attention to the men and their deeper traumas, threads and themes, and look at where the work of storytelling is already healing those things as opposed to putting the emotional labor on the women of the story to magically fix their men in their future books.

Phew, this wound up being a lot longer than I intended for it to be! I also agree that there are a lot of women projecting an incredible amount of internalized misogyny and frankly the least woman first takes I have ever seen in this fandom. It's disheartening and bizarre, especially when there is so much fantasy written by men where women solely exist to get r/aped or fill the needs of men. We should be celebrating stories written by women and for women, and appreciate authors who push against the societal norms of the roles women play in fantasy books and in real life.

[dipperdesperado]

Radicalism 100: Get Started from 0 or, How the Hell Do I Get into Organizing as a Newbie?

I spend a lot of time talking about social change stuff. I feel like a lot of it might not be accessible unless you’re already one who sees yourself as a changemaker. Let’s change that. Let’s talk about how to prefigure the world you want to see, even if you don’t have any experience.

Before I do that though, I want to do some quick framing. I am coming from the place of someone who has some relatively specific foundational values that I prioritize and act from. I believe in horizontalism, mutual aid, solidarity, autonomy, joy, love, and transformative justice. I don’t brandish human nature as a weapon against better futures. If you have a view of people and or society that is purely of negation, then we probably won’t see eye-to-eye. If you think that domination and bootlicking is also necessary, then we definitely won’t see eye-to-eye. Hopefully, you’re curious or open to working towards egalitarian goals through egalitarian means. If you are, this might be useful to you.

How Social Change Happens

There is a lot of talk about social change and a lot of different opinions on how that change occurs. A useful framework to work from is one that imma remix from Joanna Macy.

Harm Reduction and Stalling → This is where giving, charity, and advocacy work live. Think of the survival programs that the Black Panthers did. These are good things, and they provide immediate benefits to folks. However, it’s not radical, as far as the meaning of the word goes. So, it’s great (and necessary!) to organize a mutual aid group that does food distro. What that doesn’t do is address why your group has to do that in the first place. This is something that ideally allows you to survive as you prepare to make bigger changes.

Systems change and Social Revolution → This is where the good shit happens. It is understanding the terrain you fight upon, what you’re fighting against, and finding the weak points to create and widen spaces of autonomy and liberation. This is where we decide how we act within the systems, how we change those systems through collective action, and how we build counter-systems to delegitimize the oppressive ones.

Rebuilding Mental Models → To create a new world, we have to become different people. I don’t mean that in an inactive way—through the practice of harm reduction and fighting the system, we realize our own power and become more capable of creating the world that we want. As we reconnect with reality, and illegitimate the current hegemony, we become more able to see the path ahead. The great and terrible thing is that we have to walk that path.

These are the three buckets that encompass our work ahead. Maybe a better way to think of them would not be as distinct buckets, but as spaces or zones of activity with permeable edges, where specific actions are occupying multiple buckets at a time, and where we travel from zone to zone, bringing information from previous legs of the journey. Stated differently, doing harm reduction might lead you to changing your mental models which might lead you to working towards systems change which might change your mental models which might improve your harm reduction efforts and so on and so on.

With that (admittedly open-ended) theory of change established, let’s get into some practical things you can do to get started. Again, this is built for if you’re not sure of where to begin. This will, hopefully, allow you to get started from 0 (which in my mind is you saying something to the effect of “damn, I know the world is cooked. What the hell do I do?”). Maybe you’ve heard people answer that inquiry with “Organize!”, which isn’t very useful. So let’s talk about that: how to start organizing and be successful when you don’t have the background or confidence yet.

Step 0: Read!

I am a big proponent of praxis (practice informed by theory) over theory or practice alone. Just reading doesn’t change the world, and just doing stuff may lead to some happy accidents. If you have to pick one, do stuff, I guess? But, we don’t have to do that. We can read, do stuff, review the successes and failures, and repeat. In order to not trap you in one mode or another, I’ve recommended a couple of things that should give you a good foundation for more readings and more actions.

Why We Should Democratize Everything

Radical Municipalism | The Anarchist Library

Modules - Economics for Emancipation (economics4emancipation.net)

Once you read these, you’ll be able to know that the world can look different than it does right now, and that there are tangible things that you can do to make that happen.

Step 1: Figure out Your Interest(s)

The next move is to understand what you’re interested in. It can be easy to feel like you have to participate in a certain kind of fight… but the reality is that if you pick an area that you already have an affinity for, you’ll be able to engage with it more sustainably. And hopefully, if you get some wins, you’ll be able to engage and support other important sites of struggle. For me, broadly speaking, my goal is to create solarpunk autonomous zones IRL, in the heart of the empire (the so-called United States). For my interests, the main areas of affinity + need within the solarpunk umbrella are:

Building Intentional Communities (like communes and ecovillages and shit)

Radical Urbanism (Tactical Urbanist projects, Tenants organizing, occupations)

Creative Care and Joy (Mutual aid, herbalism, medicine, etc)

Community Resiliency Training (CERT, Self-defense, Wildtending, Urban Foraging)

If that seems broad, blame it on the ADHD. I put time into each of these areas to try and build towards my solarpunk goals at the local level. You don’t have to be as eclectic as I am, but think about the things that get you excited, and go after those things.

Step 2: Get a Lay of the Land (find folks and people who are doing the cool stuff)

Once you’ve searched your soul and excavated some insight, you can begin your fun. Try and find people in your area who are into the stuff you’re into. If you like the idea of mutual aid, find a local food not bombs chapter (and encourage them to work towards system change!). If you like environmental stuff, look for groups that you feel like embodying the values you're developing. Some good ways to do this are:

Finding social medias. I like to find the most popular version for the thing I’m trying to do and excavate other groups from that. For example, I do some organizing work with an Indigenous education group here, and since it’s a tight-knit organizing community, I can use their IG to find other orgs. This also works well for in-person stuff.

Pull up to events. Try to show up to marches, protests (if you’re ready), and popular education events and look for folks representing the ideas you’re interested in. Folks tend to have flags, pins, and outfits at those sorts of things that let you know where they stand. I’d specifically look for Libertarian Socialist groups, Anarchist groups, and communalist groups. I’d also look into solidarity networks.

Step 3: Start working with folks!

Once you find some folks, start working with them if you like the vibe! You’d be surprised at how much you can learn. I moved about a year ago, and I learned so much by diving into the organizing community. Imma be moving again, and now I can carry those learnings forward into my new communities. Ideally, you’re getting involved in actions, doing study groups, and growing your confidence.

Step 4: Do an analysis of your place!

As you get more comfortable and you start to understand where you’re at, you can start working more intentionally toward system change. This is something that folks don’t do nearly enough, but if you can pull it off well, it’ll be well worth the time. The goal is to understand the challenges and opportunities present in your place. This is very much a whole area to explore, but you can start by looking into Asset-based community development and Community-based participatory research to create a guide of sorts for your community to follow. This is an area that I’m currently working on, and it helps contextualize your actions.

Step 5: Dive deep!

At this point, you might be ready for bigger actions or more capacity building. You might even be ready to steward a campaign. Just know, this is work that doesn’t really have an end; we can always strive for more. If you take nothing else away, know these two things:

Everyone has the capability to steward in a new future.

Surround yourself with genuine community to keep you going.

If you can approach this work with confidence and community, you’ll be able to weather any storm.

[jazeswhbhaven]

From what I've been seeing it feels like PB is focusing on quantity over quality. Things like Obey Me, TWST, and Nu-Carnival has a sizeable group of characters, but they're not too huge so it allows them to flesh each one out to a certain extent, but then they can introduce a diverse set of cards on each of them so you're not starving too much.

WHB has not only has 6 Kings and one more on the way, but they also keep introducing more nobles and angels. In a way it's not bad, but this is why I seriously feel it is a case of quantity and not enough quality. From what I've seen in this community, characters that have been in the game since Day 1 are being super neglected. Then we a have every new L card released being paywalled, nightmare passes that also have the top rewards paywalled, are more frequent, even this time around the S+ card requires more gold keys and it doesn't have anything remotely special about it whereas the last S+ did which was extremely exclusive only. Honestly it's...really sad. Now you don't NEED these cards and I'm not asking for freebies, but in the end they are asking for your life savings for even just the decent stuff, and then you still have to deal with the gacha to do that.

I personally need a decent amount of characterization to really appreciate a character so I do appreciate the world building but no character has stuck with me yet. So everytime a new one is released I go: "Okay but what about like...the existing ones?" Our last one was Leraye, which I'm sorry, it's just a reskinned of his OG card and I found that really scummy which was probably why he was locked through achievements which...was the saving grace still it was the only time it happened. The story was nice though.

I don't want to come off as ungrateful and I probably am, but I just don't understand PB's decisions on what they're doing anymore. We can't use the "they're a small company" card, I'm sure they're not the only small company, but I don't have any sources, but so far this is the first time I seen company really just throw their community into a blender like this...then again I only played like 3 other gachas which isn't a lot.

💭

hey there 💭 anon!

This observation came right in time with how I'd like to pretty much introduce the game to new players that are flocking in.

PB's decisions as of late to change how we get currencies, paid banners, and the progression of the main story and character building has been a damn journey.

I don't think you're ungrateful, I wouldn't call anyone that honestly because as the consumer YOU are the the one, p2p or f2p, in the end that has be entertained by this nsfw game. The only one in existence that is catered to both women and men audiences. With that in mind, you'd expect to see something worth buying/taking up nearly 8gb of space on your phone for.

When the game was first teased, me and my friend were talking about it and she was overwhelmed by the amount of characters they kept showing, I met her through the Obey Me fandom, so that was our bread and butter for the majority of conversations. When I moved on to WHB, she didn't come with, she stayed for like maybe a week or two and dropped it. I forget mostly why which I could ask her again on her opinion.

But I'll let you in on something I saw the other day, the community over in LaDS has been having some issues with their banners/other gacha related things as well stating that this recent banner is driving players away. I don't play LaDS but PB isn't the only company it seems starting to switch things up when it comes to decisions.

The S+ cards confuse me because what they introduced was hey here's beach Rara (Raphael) and he has an adore mode, a story with mild spice, and you chats/more lore about this bitey boi. I had so much fun reading through that. Amy and Sitri's all we get are the likability things and well from the previous expectation? That made me shake my head. (also for the extra gold keys thing, apparently it's only that high if you want to get it early, the card is going into the banner immediately after the event so in theory we all literally could have waited to pull them so we wouldn't have to spend that amount of gold keys)

As far as content goes, I think ultimately there's too many characters to work with. If anyone on the staff has a brain like me, it would be very easy to neglect characters here and there. I also do not like that Gehenna has yet ANOTHER noble (sorry Amy) but other countries are lackin'.

Also unrelated...WHERE IS GEHENNA'S GROUP PHOTO U G H.

Niflheim needs one too.

All in all I hear you. Chapter 6 and Mammons/Amy's events though have me believing that the best has yet to come, these banners though....we will see... Maybe things will pop off when Asmodeus debuts..

[naminethewriter]

Thank You for Finding Me

Chapter Three: Talking It Out

Masterpost | First | Previous | Next | Ao3

@intrulogicalweek

Story Summary: Logan didn’t date or really had any friends but when this strange guy asks him out while complimenting his posterior, he can’t help but be intrigued.

Content Warnings: Rage room, Discussions of Unhappy Childhood

~~*~~

For around twenty minutes, Logan just let himself feel and destroy. Every time he felt dismissed by his parents bubbled up again and he first threw more plates before Remus put the metal bat in his hand again and pointed him to the tv.

It was a very old model that resembled the one his parents had during his childhood. He hadn’t been allowed to watch any program that his parents hadn’t approved of. They all watched the news together. It wasn’t the worst, but it did bring up a new flood of unpleasant memories. The isolation he felt at school when all his classmates talked about their favorite shows or games he wasn’t allowed to own.

The bat had shattered the screen on the first hit.

Eventually Remus handed him the sledgehammer. It had made it all the more satisfying.

Despite Logan’s new state fueled by the desire to destroy, he was always aware of where Remus was in the room and ensured he wasn’t caught up in his anger even slightly. Though Remus kept himself out of the way just fine, cheering Logan on as he himself kicked the chairs into splinters.

Logan let the sledgehammer fall to the ground when he was done. His arms ached and he was out of breath, but he hadn’t felt so light in a long, long time. He stumbled back to the door and leaned against it. He would have sat down if the ground wasn’t covered with glass and plastic shards and wooden splinters.

“You good?” Remus asked, breaking a chair leg over his thigh.

“Yes. I think my arms will be sore tomorrow, but I feel great. I think I am done for today, however.”

“Yeah, that tracks. You just experienced a lot at once. How about we grab a drink and talk about it? Letting anger out like this is great, but I feel like I just made you realize a lot of trauma and you can’t really process that without talking about it. Though I’m also okay if you have someone else in mind you’d rather do that with. Just wanted to offer.”

Logan was pretty sure that was the first time he saw Remus flustered. His cheeks were a bit red, and he scratched at his mustache.

“No, a drink with you sounds lovely. I would like to learn more about you, too.”

“Good! Great! Let’s go.”

Logan chuckled lightly, the expression on Remus’ face was precious in his opinion. It seemed like sincerity disarmed him rather quickly.

They returned to the dressing room and put all the equipment back where they took it from. On their way out, Amanda smiled.

“Had fun?”

“Fuck yeah! You should’ve seen him take apart that tv, it was so hot.”

Amanda rolled her eyes fondly and clicked a few things on her computer.

“There’s your total. Thank you for your patronage.”

Remus tapped his card against the reader and winked at her.

“See ya soon!”

“I don’t doubt it!” she called after them as Remus once again held open the door for Logan.

“How regularly do you come here?”

“Couple times a month, usually. Got a membership, so I get a nice discount.”

“And how are they supplied with the items?”

“Well, some are donations from customers, some are from deals they have with other stores like this one.” Remus pointed to the electronics store that Logan noticed on their way in. “They basically accept old electronics and take them apart to see what they can still use and give the rest downstairs. The tv you went ham on probably had some hardware taken out of it prior. And then there’s junkyards that are willing to give them things too.”

“Very interesting. On to another matter, however, what kind of drinks were you imagining? I am driving, so I cannot drink alcohol.” Logan usually came to work by bike, but he hadn’t known for how long Remus’ planned activities would last, so he figured taking the car was the safer option.

“That’s cool. I’m not really into spontaneous drinking either. I was more thinking coffee or sodas or something.”

“I would like a coffee,” Logan agreed. “And I would like to pay for it.”

“Sounds good.”

They walked in comfortable silence to a nearby coffee shop and both selected their drinks. Remus asked if they wanted to sit down but Logan found he now had a lot of nervous energy he wanted to walk off. So instead, they made their way to the nearby park.

“How would you like to talk about it?” Remus eventually asked. “Should I ask questions? Do you wanna talk and I just let you ramble?” He waved his hand around in an ‘et cetera’ motion and Logan smiled, grateful for his thoughtfulness.

“I would like to hear about your thoughts, actually. What were you thinking about when you hit that shelf for example?”

“Well, mostly work stuff. I’m a teacher and some of my colleagues are annoying. Nothing major but it’s been frustrating recently.”

“I am surprised. You don’t strike me as someone who’d want to be a teacher.”

Remus chuckled.

“You’re not the only one. But it’s been on my mind since my school days actually. It’s probably easy to imagine that I had my struggles. I was hella smart, but I had an ‘attitude problem’ according to most of my teachers. Made it hard to enjoy learning when they criticized me for every small thing. Felt like no one was on my side for the most part. So, I decided I wanted to become a teacher and be on the side of kids like me who didn’t fit in easily. And I think that’s working out rather well.”

“That’s wonderful, Remus.”

“Thank you! When I told my parents about it, I think I changed their view of me quite a bit.”

“How so?”

“Well, they always favored Roman over me. Not sure if they were all that aware of it but I sure felt it. They didn’t like the way I dressed all that much or that I started dyeing my hair. They didn’t interfere or anything, but they’d make comments. And they believed the teachers when they accused me of starting fights and talking back for no reason. When I enrolled in college for my teaching degree was the point where they realized that I was serious about the whole thing, I think. They’ve been a lot kinder to me since.”

“What about your brother?” Logan asked. He was very curious how similar the brothers were to each other.

“We didn’t share a lot of classes in high school, so he couldn’t really say one way or the other. He was there for me when it mattered but he also had a lot of friends and after-school activities, so he was out a lot. We went to the same college though. It was a lot of fun. He lives a few hours away now and I kinda miss him. Not that I would ever tell him that.”

“I see…”

“You good?” Remus asked quietly. They passed an empty bench and Remus gestured at it as if to ask if they wanted to sit down. Logan nodded and let himself sink onto the wood. The sun danced through the leaves of a nearby tree, and he took a deep breath.

“Yes. I was just wondering what it would have been like if I had a sibling. My parents told me when I asked if I would get one, that they only needed me to inherit their assets. Another child would just complicate things.”

“That sounds harsh.” Remus had sprawled out on the bench, his arms slung over the backrest and his back melted against the wood. In contrast, Logan maintained his upright posture, just how his mother had taught him.

“Maybe. I already knew that I was born for a purpose, so I wasn’t all that surprised. When my grandfather heard about it though, he was furious.”

“He sounds like he was a cool guy.”

“He was more open than my parents, but he still wasn’t that different. He had raised my father after all. Until he retired, I rarely met him. It was afterwards when he had time that he started to care. He agreed with my parents that knowledge was the most important thing and made sure that I had the best education I could have but he also said that all that knowledge was worthless if it wasn’t used to lead the life I wanted to live. That’s why he got my parents to let him take care of me. He wanted me to make my own choices, that’s all. If I wanted to read a novel instead of a philosophy book, then that was fine by him. But emotional expression wasn’t something he excelled at either. None of them had much appreciation for the arts either.”

“Ouch. Artistic expression was a big thing in my family. Ro does theater and writing. I do more drawing and sculpting. Mom’s a dancer and dad can play so many instruments, it’s crazy. But yeah, no wonder you had so much repressed anger. That sounds like one bleak childhood.”

“It wasn’t all bad. Like I said, I enjoyed playing the piano. And sometimes my mother would do a jigsaw puzzle with me. It wasn’t much but she’d smile at me when we’d finish one. Father and I read together. They got me a DS and the Professor Layton games when I explained to them that it included a lot of puzzles. They praised and rewarded me when I got good grades. Grandfather even got my father to agree to foregoing his inheritance so that I could have it all. I can be a librarian and not worry about expenses. I know they cared for me in some ways.”

Silence hung between them for a moment and Logan watched the steam rise from his coffee cup. He took a sip, and it tasted just right.

“I’m glad you can do what you want now. But you went through a lot to get here and I’m proud of you for making it. You’ve worked hard.”

The sincerity in Remus’ words brought tears to Logan’s eyes.

“Thank you. I’m proud of you, too. You looked at your hardships and decided to make sure the same thing wouldn’t happen to other children. That’s wonderful.”

“Thanks, Lolo. That means a lot.”

They smiled at each other and the world seemed just a little bit brighter.

[linkspooky]

Gojo’s students, and in general Utahime’s students too, despite being Gen Z, they don’t have the mind set of one.

Then again, I am biased since I am an United States American who’s also within Generation Z, so I have a very westernized opinion on this. Gen Z in Japan can may well act very differently from the Gen Z in the USA. I don’t doubt that.

However, one thing I do want to point out is that the jjk younger generation didn’t seem to learn that the system they are in is terrible despite seeing or experiencing how horrible it is.

It could be a cultural thing, since my whole life the system that I lived in have failed me in every stage of my life. So I grew jaded and is critical of the system I’m in. I could see how they never have a change to learn nor see the flaws in the system due to how individualistic Gojo’s students are.

I suppose that’s a benefit with Utahime’s students, most of them are aware how terrible the system is, but all are too weak to do anything about it individuality.

Just some food for thought that I’ve been chewing on.

Okay, no comment on that Gen Z bit, but you're right there is an entire arc in the story dedicated to showing the Kyoto Kids and how they suffer from the injustices in their society. As they have suffered more directly from it, each of the Kyoto Kids is more than well-aware of the flaws in their society.

Each of the Kyoto kids is paired off with a Tokyo Kid and compared to them.

Panda and Mechmaru face off, and Mechamaru's point of jealousy is that he's not allowed to even walk around outside because he's debilitatingly ill due to his heavenly restriction and meanwhile Panda and every other sorcerer can walk in the sunlight free.

If you think about it Mechamaru is one of the children getting exploited, he's literally constantly in bodily pain, and he's still expected to perform as a sorcerer. Whereas, Panda's response is basicaly this: cool motivation bro.

In general, the Tokyo Kids all reply with very self-righteous statements that are technically right, but not too empathic to the person suffering right in front of them.

"Just because someone's been through a lot, doesn't mean they're right" is in fact a true statement, because the Kyoto Kids are lashing out with their emotions, and while their pain is valid emotions aren't objective fact they're just emotions.

However, the caveat of that statement is that suffering can also get you perspective though. People who aren't discrimminated against often don't understand the lives of people who are discrimminated against, because it's not a daily reality for them. It's just logical to not know about something that is not happening to you and you don't have to live with. So, suffering doesn't mean you're right, but it does give you perspective which the Tokyo Kids are sorely lacking.

So yes, Panda's not really obligated to care about Mechamaru's issue or life, but at the same time Gojo is trying to raise students with the purpose of having them correct the injustices of Jujutsu Society... but he's failed in that regard because when confronted with any of that injustice none of them really care.

When Momo tries to inform Nobara about the horrific abuse in the Zen'in Clan that Mai endures, something she's still not free of because unlike Maki she didn't get to leave Nobara's response is once again "I don't care." You have this same stock response that's technically right.

You don't have to pity the unfortunate, you don't owe them anything yes, but Gojo's trying to raise sorcerers that are going to correct Jujutsu Society so that less victims are made, but none of them listen to the victims around them and none of them even seem to grasp there's a problem... unless their name is Maki. Even then her solution to the problem isn't reform it's just destruction.

Kamo brings up clan politics and the pressures he faces as heir to the Kamo, and Megumi straight up says that not only does he not care about the Zen'in, or the Kamo or clan politics at all because it doesn't affect him personally, but he also doesn't care about whether or not he's right or wrong.

Megumi's not obligated to sympathize with Kamo, or even talk to him as they're practically strangers but at the same time how else are they supposed to fix the Jujutsu World if they don't listen to victims and aren't aware of the problems in it?

Which is a big problem in the Jujutsu World itself, because being a sorcerer is such a tough job, most sorcerers just work with their heads down not noticing what's going on around them. The kinds of sorcerers that rise to the top are exactly these people, ones that are either selfish enough to use others to further their advancements, ones who fit the molds of sorcerers a little too well and therefore aren't disadvantaged like a lot of the Kyoto kids, etc. etc.

This is pretty well demonstrated in Shibuya, someone like Nanami who is protective of children and tries to be a responsible adult around them dies because he stayed and fought, while someome like Mei Mei who actively abuses her brother and gets away with it still lives because she ran away.

Because Sorcerer society is such an individualistic society that rewards having your head down and being a cog, and punishes people who go against it by hammering down the nail that sticks out.

In order to overcome that you'd have to learn to think about other people than yourself, and look around you to see what's happening, but that requires thinking for themselves.

Which is Gojo's biggest flaw as a mentor, he's a cog that fits the machine of society so well, he still thinks with the values of sorcerer society. The solution to every problem is just get stronger. Which is why he's raised a bunch of strong sorcerers who fit perfectly into the machine just like he did, but he's failed to raise his children into free thinking adults.

[femboty2k]

WOAGH I got tagged by @elliegoose to do a thingy!

now the tag game was to introduce yourself with:

one tv show

one movie

one album

one video game

I, however, liked that they did two and I am ALSO cute and get to do whatever I want so im gonna do two, too.

TV shows: The Venture Bros. and Hilda

talk about opposite ends of the spectrum, eh? Now Venture Bros. will always come with an asterisk, that being that it's an Adult Swim show that was created in the early 2000s by two white guys. Its comedy, especially in earlier seasons, can be unsavory. I'm a big believer in things being imperfect though. Not every show can live up to every standard, and sometimes you just need to roll your eyes at jokes that were made 10-20 years ago. If you can get past that what you get is an excellent and genuinely fun world full of Spyfi and Superhero parodies with a good story to boot.

Hilda, on the other hand, is a show for younger audiences based on a kids book series that largely has to do with various pieces of Scandinavian folklore. I've watched Hilda all the way through twice, once on my own as it was coming out and then once with my wife, and its just so so so lovely. The colour tones of red blue yellow and white, the delightful music, the adorable cast of characters and creatures, its such a good time. One of the best cozy up and just vibe it out shows imo. In my top 5 for sure.

Movies: Everything, Everywhere, All at once and Wolf Children.

What hasn't been said about EEAAO? It won awards that it damn well deserved, its got a perfect cast, it makes me cry every time I watch it. A compelling story about family and change, and the monumental difficulties that can come with them, as well as how different people survive hardships in their life, all wrapped up in the most batshit thing you've ever seen. Clair De Lune, THE SONG I GOT MY NAME FROM, is the main theme and it makes me tear up every time. In every universe, I would love to do laundry and taxes with you, and watch this movie.

Wolf Children isn't far off from that vein. I consider it to be Studio Chizu's magnum opus and I don't say that lightly. From the presentation and voice cast to the music and gorgeous art used in the movie, not even to MENTION how good the story about family, change, growing up, and letting go is, if you don't cry in the first 30 mins you should evaluate your emotional status. This movie means so much to me, its such a gorgeous story, and more people should know about it. Studio Chizu doesn't have a single miss in my opinion, just lesser and greater movies. Wolf Children is hands down the greatest.

Albums: Get Lonely by The Mountain Goats and No Dogs Allowed by Sidney Gish

What??? Clair's top two isn't DnB or something techno related???? Nah dog, I get sad a lot and have a thing for poetry. Get lonely was an album I listened to in some of the worst years of my adult life. I was 20 living with my family who made me miserable in a state that was (and still is) trying to get rid of people like me, and I had very little things that were mine. Walking around downtown Bartow, Florida, in the two weeks of winter that hell state gets while listening to John Darniel sing about soft agonies while watching my breath dissipate into the air? That was mine, and it always will be. TMG in general is I think my favourite band. The poetry on display in every one of their songs is just, too beautiful for my dumb ass to put in any meaningful way.

No Dogs Allowed was an album I listened to while working a midnight shift job I hated while also living with my family. Its an upbeat, quirky, kind of melancholy romp with songs that bring me back to driving from Bartow to Lakeland hoping I could stop myself from either killing myself or fucking up my friendships, whichever came first. Spoiler alert, I'm still alive. It also reminds me of the last big thing I ever did with my sibling before I left Florida for good, which was go to the Tampa Bay Aquarium with them. Several songs from the album were on the playlist I made for us, and hearing them always makes me want to shoot them a message to see if they're doing okay.

Video Games: Night in the woods and Final Fantasy XIV Online

Night in the woods is very, very near and dear to my heart. I honestly don't know what to say. If you've played it you know how good it is. How well written the story of Mae and her mental health crisis is. How it goes over things like poverty and trying to get by/make a better life. Family struggles that they don't talk to you about, small hometown decay that seeps into your every memory until the place you grew up in looks like a collection of distorted rotting shapes. I play it once a year in the fall, and each time I do its like seeing an old friend again. At the end of everything, hold onto everything.

Final Fantasy XIV Online is a game you can play with your friends. I could go on and on and on about how I have 1300 hours in this game and how I met some good friends on it, and how important it is to me as a piece of writing and a community and an experience. But we'd be here all day. FFXIV was there for me in some very tough times. I met new people, I grew distant from others, I have regrets and joys that I still carry with me. If you can get into it with the right people, the game really is something special. Its something to be shared, its a bustling community with all the edges that come with that, its a world where you can be a 7ft. tall elf with green eyes and white hair, and its a part of me.

As for who I wanna tag: @problematicmilf , @ninefoldrin , @baphomets-hairy-bonkhonagahoogs , @mobileleprechaun , and anyone who sees this and wants to do it too. This was fun! Hope I don't seem too lame lol.

[flexbringer]

hey. care to explain how trans women making forcefem jokes made trump win.

yess, thanks for asking. I said "people taking this at face value is the reason trump won", not "trans people making jokes are at fault" i might respond on the original post due to popular demand. its a sensitive and complex topic and I definitely dont intend to offend or be the expert, but to state what ive experienced as someone who likes to mediate. Of course this isnt the only factor of the election but a big one when it comes to the anti-queer backlash we have been wittnessing recently.

The joke you're referring to - i didnt know when I made the comment - was satire of a bad alt-right take, which kind of proves my point.

The gist of it though: I assumed it was a tongue-in-cheek joke, but a lot of people (who aren't familiar with the queer-feminist bubble) don't, and think this is an actual serious stance and it is a point of contention for them, because these are the only types of things that leak from that bubble into theirs, not actual issues. I've heard from a lot of uninvolved people that they think this is what trans activism is actually about and then refuse to look into the topic further because of it.

Phrasings like in this joke literally have been weaponized (thank alex jones et al.) and allow people to believe that according to queerfeminism, "men" are solely defined as irredeemable, patriarchal people who adhere to toxic masculinity, and that men/males who don't display that behaviour aren't actual men anymore but eggs or non-men or whatever (just as the alt-right would). The unclear distinction between gender roles, gender and sex and it's interchangeable use aren't helping at all. Im still not sure how many queer activists on this website actually believe this as well.

Remember, this is the piss on the poor website. How did the saying go about satire being indistinguishable from real opinions these days? Also how easy is it to take an online post out of context?

Never thought I'd be the peetah/nancy under a joke that satirized a bad take, but here I am, since you asked.

In the end my vision and intention is to bring people to be better allies to each other and I am open to criticism, because who am I? Just another person on the internet. The time for community building and making as many friends as possible is now.

Stay strong, stay safe!

[pynkhues]

I feel like this show is too smart for most of it's audience. The fact that people take Claudia's remark meant to hurt and manipulate Louis as a fact of his personality when the show has been playing out Louis's struggle with his internalised homophobia, misogyny and toxic masculinity all this time. I swear to God, I stumble upon gender essebtialist, homophobic posts in this fandom every day, especially when it comes to Louis's relationships. The reductive discussions about who is top/bottom or dom/sub in his sexual relationships are truly disgusting to me. Because they are clearly "who is the man, who is the woman" discussions cloaked into sex talk. Sorry for the rant, I am triggered today too. I actually want opinion from you about the reasons for Loumand's dom/sub dynamic, everyone always talks about how it's because of Armand's trauma but I actually think it happened because of Louis's internalised homophobia, misogyny and toxic masculinity combined with trauma. I think he's not a person that actually needs or wants to be dom permanently. I think he convinced himself that this is who he is because it allows him to tell himself he's a real man even if he's gay. I'm rambling too much, I'm sorry!🙈

Ah, anon! Please don't apologise, and I'm sorry it's taken me a couple of days to reply after my own annoyed rambling, haha. It's just been a busy week, and it's often quicker and easier to send a reply to asks that, well, ask a bit less (and please, that's not a criticism, I love longer, more provocative asks, and I have a lot more in my inbox I want to get to!).

I don't know if I think the show is too smart for people. I think everyone and anyone can and does have the capacity to engage in a show like this - it's not that clever or pretentious - but I do think the current state of fandom and social media means that a concept gets floated and people get swept up in it.

We're living in an increaingly disconnected society and people seek community through things like fandom and so it becomes natural to lean in, to not question, to consume media as a part of something as opposed to as an individual. I think it's too easy to become a BNF in that sense (I know, I've been one previously, and while I love having chill convos with you guys and writing fic, I don't want to be like - - a known entity in this fandom, haha), especially if you know how to write an argument, and that the result of that is a blog / user becomes a meeting point for fans who are just hungry for engagement and the more-more-more pipeline that's a byproduct of the era we live in.

It's the same across the board, right? Whether you're arguing Louis' 'woman-coded' on tumblr, or being dogmatic about an interpretation of - - I don't know, a TSwift song, i think it all comes from the same place, and I don't think intelligence plays as much of a role as perhaps social skills and personal investment in the actual source material. Is it the art that matters to you, or the community/fandom? Because that's going to motivate your engagement in very different ways.

In regards to your actual question though:

I talked about it a bit in this post, but I think Louis stepping into that role with Armand was hugely about his own issues of identity at that point in the story. Claudia asking him who he was without her or Lestat was basically the set-up for Louis' arc across the season, and Louis tried and failed to do something on his own which left him searching for something familiar - "running things".

I think the d/s dynamic with Armand though worked two-fold - it positioned Louis closer to power, made him feel he had a purpose in guiding Armand through the theatre drama, but I also think it probably helped him to regain a sense of romantic control. We tend to focus a lot on Lestat's abuse of Louis as being what wrenched Louis' grip on himself away, but the reality is that was just a part of that. The point is that Louis and Lestat never feel clear-headed when they're around each other, they're never rational, even when they're at their most loving, which Louis knows because he's hearing and feeling it through Dreamstat.

That dynamic in the relationship with Armand is, to me, about a lot of things, but a huge part of that is just about Louis feeling like he's in control of both the romantic dynamic and, I'd argue, himself again. And I agree, I don't think Louis wants to be a dom permanently by any stretch of the imagination, but I think he understood Armand, at least that part of him, and saw a way they could be symbiotic. Which they were for a chapter! They just lasted probably 70 years longer than they should have, haha.

[the-ampersand]

About sandbox campaigns

Let me tell you a story.

Last year I went to a big sci-fi/fantasy con in my country. I had been planning to go for years because there is a big emphasis in talks with authors and there were many relating to ttrpg topics. There was one about sandbox campaigns! I was excited!

But sadly, I left many of the talks very disappointed. The one that hurt me the most was, precisely, the one about sandboxes. In it, a national expert in the ttrpg industry explained how there are two (2) kinds of sandbox campaigns, either open world or "social". Maybe three if you also count urban campaigns as sandboxes.

"Ok," I thought "I completely disagree, but let's see where this goes".

Then, the speaker proceeded to explain her prep process. In a social campaign she firts creates the factions. She likes Legend of the Five Rings a lot, so she usually uses the five usual clans of the settings.

"Alright. That's reasonable".

Then, she proceeds to populate their factions with about seven to ten NPCs per faction.

I left at that very instant absolutely astounded.

In my personal opinion, sandbox campaigns don't need to be an exercise of immense prep from the GM. They can be and if it works for some people I am glad for them and I hope they have fun with that prep. But I don't think that's a really reasonable way to manage this kind of campaign for the majority of GMs and even less so for the majority of tables. (And giving a talk about it without properly disclaiming it can set up an impossible standard that might discourage many novice GMs that would consider sandbox campaigns as too labor intensive).

I believe sandbox campaigns should play with the interest of the players. As a GM one should set up an interesting backdrop to explore and interact with, with a varying degree of prep according to one's own interests. And then the players are the ones that will guide the prep needed for the next session by stating their intentions. I have seen several people here clamouring for the many benefits of asking one's players "So what's your plan for the next session, then?". And I think those benefits double when playing a sandbox campaign!

It allows for a true feeling of discovery, not only for the players, but for the GM as well! The GM doesn't need to know everything from the beginning, they can discover it in a fractal way, following the interests of the table (which includes the GM themselves, let's not forget that).

Let me give you an example.

I am currently starting a sandbox campaign based on Skerples' Magical Industrial Revolution. I am mashing it into my DIE campaign, but that's not important. This setting revolves around technology and the grave danger it poses when left unatended to the whims of idealistic inventors and shrewd investors looking to make a fortune. I did as much prep as I wanted:

Being a urban setting, I made small sheets for different neighborhoods and points of interest of the city. I also got the help of my players to do this with a small session of i'm sorry did you say street magic by Caro Asercion.

I set up small scenes to present to the players the different pre-apocalyptic inventions that will destroy the city if left unchecked. (And I added a ninth invention for DIE reasons even though that breaks the number 8 theme in the module)

And that's that! We are already three sessions in and we had an impromptu heist into the university, spent a day selling turnips in the market and met a guy who knows he is inside a narrative (DIE stuff). Next time we are going to attend to a flying machines engineering duel because that's what one of the players asked!

Admittedly, a lot of the prep in this campaign is already done by Skerples, shared with me through the module. But I could have gone with a vibe, a list of cool places to visit, a list of things loosely going on on the setting and a list of names to invoke when a new NPC appears. And you could probably do without any of those things!

What you need to set up a sandbox campaign is not a huge load of prep. Is just enough to present an engaging premise and to answer confidently enough to whatever shenanigans your players throw themselves into.

I have yet to write a single faction sheet. Or a NPC background. I possibly will. But that will be whenever I consider it fun enough.

[outofangband]

Rambling thoughts about the public nature of Aerin’s ordeal in The Children of Húrin versus the private, hidden nature of her ordeal in BoLT and then I started rambling about other things

cw: abuse, forced marriage, etc

Also it’s six am and I got up an hour ago for work so this might not be entirely coherent

in the Narn Aerin’s suffering is public and there’s another element of anguish and shame there.

She is taken as the wife of the incomer who has declared himself lord of Dor-Lómin (though fittingly, poignantly, Brodda himself is the only to declare that there is no lady of Dor-lómin…)

Everyone knows who Brodda is and why he’s chosen Aerin and her position as his wife might be understood to be unwilling by her people and even by his but it’s still understood. then at the same time there are those who call her lucky…that line that she was taken as a wife and not a slave (though let’s be honest…Brodda’s distinction between the two is dubious at BEST, I actually have another post I’m working on about marriage in Tolkien and how his views of it are different…and similar to both other male characters and historical beliefs). Honestly, by “a wife and not a slave” I read that the primary difference is that Aerin is required more to act as though there is a meaningful difference, not that there is one

It’s not like the others are allowed to express their opinions or discontent but Aerin especially must sit beside Brodda, must act and appear how he wants.

And then as I talked about here there is the inherent trauma of how intimately she must know him, even just in ways to keep herself safe.

Aerin has slightly more mobility and maybe if Brodda is possessive enough or his men think he is then she might be spared the worst of abuse from others though frankly I don’t think he cares all that much and if anything happened, he’d punish Aerin, not whoever hurt her.

From what we get from Sador, her leadership among her people and her using this to feed and shelter some of them is largely unknown to Brodda whether because he doesn’t notice or he doesn’t care. It’s not necessarily something she’s been allowed.

And any ‘privileges’ she has aren’t meaningful. We know she was beaten for giving food to Morwen and that she might be hurt if she was caught talking to travelers. She doesn’t have any real freedom and even if she’s not subjected to manual labor like some of the slaves she’s not living comfortably. (This does not even get into the elements of sexual violence of course, I have another post about those elements here so I won’t go into that now. I think “took by force to be his wife” functions as a euphemism for rape and describes that Aerin is being forced to act in a social and personal role, defined by Brodda and re-enforced by everyone else. Does that make sense?)

We don’t see much of her actual interactions with Brodda but I’m always struck by his anger at Túrin for continuing to push Aerin to speak about Morwen. (Obviously) this is not because Aerin is uncomfortable and afraid, she is uncomfortable and afraid because of him, but because his perception of his ownership of her is so absolute that Túrin “gainsaying” Aerin when she repeats the narrative she thinks Brodda wants is viewed as an insult to him. He’s obviously angry about any of this being brought up, it’s very clear that he views Aerin’s aiding Morwen as another insult, another act of undermining his ownership of her (as I rambled a lot about on this post) and him and Aerin know as well as Túrin that she’s lying…there is no doubt in my mind that she would have been hurt very badly for this afterwards. But also her lie is of the narrative he wants and Túrin challenging it challenges him. Even as her terror is so palpable she is almost invisible in some ways to at least some of those at the table

(It’s also worth noting that Brodda wrongly states that Morwen was his thrall. He’s still very clearly angry that he never had the chance to enact violence against her but that’s for later…trust me I have a post on this too)

Also, was making a darker post about Aerin but while I was writing it I was just thinking about the ways Sador describes her. The almost reverence he has. I think there was some resentment and victim blaming from some of the other captives* I think for the most part people felt compassion for her and even respected her especially when she was able to do more to help the others. That’s what Sador seems to imply. And that’s so important to me!!! Aerin is genuinely loved by her people and they do not blame her for what Brodda does, to her or to them. They don’t seem to expect her to try and temper him. Sador describes Brodda as her husband ‘by need’ but other than that it’s understood that she’s a captive like they are. It sort of goes into my thoughts about Aerin’s kindness as defiance in the face of both personal and cultural violence

Also to be clear, Aerin deserves compassion and respect regardless of her ability to help her people. None of the victim blaming or just generally unfair sentiments she endured is fair. I talked about Aerin’s trying to help her people even at her own cost and their respect for her for this because I think it’s such a compelling and painful aspect of her character and story and I do think that it changed or at least influenced how she was viewed by her people, whether or not that’s fair. but yeah I love and respect Aerin so much I just wanted to be clear that even if there was nothing she could do for them she would still deserve to be viewed with compassion. I think I’ve primarily talked about the conflicts and blame she faced in my post about her extended family and in part of great was the company. It makes me very sad and I find the dynamics of environments of coercive control, whether occupied Hithlum or Angband, interesting to explore

Anyways I will make a follow up post about BoLT and this soon because the similarities and differences are fascinating.

[oftlunarialmoon]

No Expiration Date on Fun!

originally posted to www.onlyfunthings.org on February 22, 2017

Ciao lovelies! Today I have an opinion piece for you about societal expectations, breaking the norm, and having fun!

This post was inspired by many anonymous comments criticizing my hobbies. Their main argument is that I am too old to enjoy things like dolls and Monster High.  So I’m here to explain my opinion on this matter! And, acknowledging that I am putting my opinion on the internet, I know that somehow, some anonymous person will find fault with it. So forewarning, I’m not answering any “trolling” comments, meaning if your only commentary is “lol ur lame for liking dolls” you’ll be respectfully ignored. Let’s get into it!

Part 1- Acknowledging Societal Influences

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the depth of influence that society has on the individual. To understand this, we must understand the different levels of society. Every country is a society, states inside that country are also societies within the main society, then counties and cities, etc, etc.. Where someone comes from will influence what societal norms they were affected by.

A common societal expectation in American society (and the one we’re focusing on in this piece) is the idea of what it means to be an adult, and that adults can’t enjoy “childish” things.

In the earlier days of American society, there were very rigid expectations and ideas on what it meant to be a bonafide adult. But around the 1960’s-1970’s, this rigid construct became a lot more flexible, and as time moved forward, different lifestyles became legitimized for the “American Adult.” Fun became not only allowed, but encouraged, and not just the boring kinds of fun either. The ideas for what was a legitimate recreational pursuit for the American Adult were wildly diverse and interesting.

But even though we have come so far in terms of these ideas, society has still maintained a talon grip on certain biases and ideals for “true adults.” The main  ideal that is still foolishly upheld by society that I want to open dialogue about today is this old-world notion that things marketed towards children can’t be enjoyed by adults.

Part 2- On a Personal Level

To bring things back to the point of the piece, let’s make it personal. I enjoy many “childish” hobbies. I unironically like Monster High, the show, movies, and merchandise. The message behind it is really great; celebrating diversity and being yourself, and being proud of your heritage. 

They even have an episode teaching viewers not to be patronizing towards people with disabilities.

Something like Monster High, with such a good message and great lessons, shouldn’t be limited to children! I think some adults need these lessons too.

Part 3- A Return to Generalization

To continue, let’s return to a general sense. There are many “Children-oriented” things that can be enjoyed by adults. One of these is the hobby of collecting dolls!

Despite how common it is for adults to collect dolls, there is still a social stigma attached to it. Many different media portray adult doll collectors as creepy, mentally unstable, possibly violent or predatory people. Just look at Criminal Minds, where they had an episode where a woman accidentally kills other women trying to make herself new dolls. (Not that I’m saying I dislike Criminal Minds, but they do perpetuate some mental illness and societal stereotypes.)

In reality, adult doll collectors are usually quite normal. Some may collect dolls for photography purposes, some are parents who collect dolls with their children, some repaint the doll’s faces to create beautiful works of art, some may just enjoy dolls.

Similarly, video game use by adults used to be heavily stigmatized, adults who played video games were seen as nerds, shut-ins, or losers: Now, there are many jobs in the video game industry, and a legitimate possibility of success via playing video games on platforms like YouTube or Twitch.

Thinking of changing standards brings me to…

Part 4- Breaking The Norms

To think about breaking a societal norm/expectation scares most people, and for good reasons. Society is very protective of its norms, and has developed methods to protect them, much like a mama bear with her cubs.

But we shouldn’t fear backlash from expressing ourselves! Society is crafted, controlled, and run by those within the society, meaning that WE, you reading this, your friends, your family, me: We have the power to change society, and we should.

What do you all think? Do you agree that adults shouldn’t be stigmatized for liking “childish” things? Do you think hobbies shouldn’t be labelled based on age? Let me know in the comments! I love hearing your opinions, or even if you have other ideas, links, articles, etc!

Thank you for reading!

 I have found that I really enjoy writing opinion pieces. Do you all enjoy reading them? Let me know!

[dozysloth]

SO. I am caught up on the recent expansion updates stating from Kessan’s Landing. Before I start, here’s some information I thought might be relevant since I’m not doing a character introduction. The events of KOTFE/KOTET (carbonite and the birth of the Alliance) allowed my Commander to distance himself from the Empire and atone through Alliance operations. (Atonement, not redemption. But that’s a post for another time).

Basically, the Alliance wants to remain independent and maintain peace between a galaxy at war. It’s been challenging (and fun) navigating the options and storylines in game to fit that goal. It’s especially tricky when you’re a saboteur within the Empire, it wants to absorb your Alliance, and is also at war with your allies.

With that in mind, onto the story updates:

- Kessan’s Landing was interesting. The highlight for me was Darth Krovos. She is headstrong and brutal, the opposite of my character, and yet somehow they make an excellent and efficient team. Their banter was amusing and there was some opportunity for more sabotage.

- Voss was disappointing. I adore the planet and it’s lore, plus the new area is gorgeous. I’m not sure if it was my dialogue choices but it felt like there was some build up for a big reveal. Unfortunately, the end cutscene was vague and underwhelming.

- Ruunuk was my favourite part. Even though these storylines are less force-involved, my character didn’t feel out of place. I adore Jekiah and Rass. I hope they get more development and maybe become permanent companions. I had no opinions on Heta Kol until this storyline. From the interactions with my character and the fight scene, she’s a lot more compelling.

- As far as the storyline with Sa’har, I’m enjoying it. I think she’s an endearing character and my character has a knack for taking people under his wing. It was nice to finally have some one-on-one discussions with her since they got off on a rough start. (He looks like a scary, dark-side-corrupted Zabrak so understandable Sa’har). Not sure what to make of the holocron machine thing I just hope it’s not another super-weapon.

I do wish there was more time to focus on individual meaningful interactions because certain areas of these updates felt kind of underdeveloped.

What really struck me was the following:

Shae frees Malgus. We’re left to deal with a bunch of angry Sith emails and a zoom call with Emperor Vowrawn. Which did NOT go well, by the way. It was exhilarating because I feel like the Commander is consistently let off the hook. But as Rivix puts it, “….you must be prepared for the unnavigable ramifications of these actions.” Since Onslaught, I’ve been wondering how the saboteur route was going to play out and I think we’re finally headed somewhere. I don’t know where that somewhere is but I am seated.

[dearweirdme]

I feel strongly that jikookers must be really young or adults who are really lacking in the common sense and observational department because there's no way there's no way 😭

Imagine fighting tooth and nails and even going as far as visiting cc's anonymously of ppl who don't think the same as you to try to convince them ( more like convince yourself ) that two dudes in the kpop industry who have content after content of very common and usual fanservice, I mean almost kisses with cameras on every angel and on their faces, lots of narratives that come straight out of a company, they even be expecting eagerly their annual compilation of fanservice, the memories ( any rational adult with any idea of how the world works knows that that isn't the way a closeted gay couple would be treated when there's millions of investment in a group), also the body language (jikookers really can't read the most basic body language or they are pretending), the honest clear attraction between two other members etc, are in a relationship

They also be acting like reality is dependant on what ppl's opinion a private relationship is.....it doesn't matter what any of us think, who you try to convince or how much you try to convince yourself, reality won't change, facts won't change, our opinions don't have any influence in these people's feelings and lives, I need ppl to stop thinking with their desires and wishes and really start using their brains.....and I'm not saying this for the need to win any ship war, but bc i see how these delusions serve to harm real queer people and make their lives harder ( kpop and in this case their company has everything to do with this)

Hi @def-sowl!

Yes, absolutely! Going to rant a bit on your ask here.

What I have learned from the Jkkrs visiting my blog and from what I encounter when I look through tags... Jkkrs have a very strong focus on the 'romantic' parts of life. They allow for very little aside that. Everything Jk and Jimin do has a double meaning or they do it with the other in mind. You could so clearly see that when Jk released Seven... his clothes, his pictures, his jewelry, his lives... everything was connected to Jimin. That is not how real lives work. Jkkrs rarely think about reasons for Jk and Jimin's behavior outside the realm of romance. Jimin was unsure about his appearance so he sent Jk a selfie to show why... Jkkrs make it a naked selfie. JImin went to NY... Jkk date. Jimin doesn't talk about Jk on his lives... Jimin isn't ready/holds the ropes/whatever it was. The way they see Jk and Jimin is entirely built around the idea of them together. You can even see huge discrepansies in that, because at the moment they dont know whether to stick with the "Jkk is bold" or the "Jkk is laying low".

When thinking about the members, there's so much to take into account. They do not live normal lives for instance. I had this Jkk go on about Tae not knowing Jk's hotelroom number and how that meant they couldn't possibly be boyfriends. They do not take into account that those guys go from hotelroom to hotelroom at times, with only time to sleep at some days. It's nothing like schoolcamp or going on holiday. We as fans, cannot compare their situation to ours in the practical way. They have jobs that none of us experience, they have more money than us, they always have to be aware of 'image', they are 'being lived' at times... it's just.. we cannot relate. That doesn't mean we cannot incorporate those things when we think about how their lives might be though, and I feel Jkkrs absolutely lack in that regard.

That anon came back and showed me many tiktoks and tweets about how I am wrong and how Jkk is real (though stating they do not mean to try and convince me, they just like pointing out that I am wrong). But those vids, where all either fanservice or plain friendship. And you are right, they do not understand the subtlety of reading bodylanguage at all.

and I'm not saying this for the need to win any ship war, but bc i see how these delusions serve to harm real queer people and make their lives harder ( kpop and in this case their company has everything to do with this)

That is a very strong point you made, and yes I agree.

[anneapocalypse]

4, 8, and 16! 🔥🔥

For the 🔥choose violence 🔥 ask game!

Disclaimer: provocative name aside, I am not actually trying to be mean here, these are just my opinions offered for Entertainment Purposes™️, and I’m not mad at anyone who has a different opinion.

4. what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

I'm lucky if I remember why I blocked anyone. I just have to assume past!Anne had a reason. 😂

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

Okay, so this one's about Merrill, but before I say it I have to qualify that I am not on the Merrill hate train. I love Merrill, I think she's a great character, and I don't think she's wrong for wanting to restore her people's history. I do think that what she's doing is dangerous enough that it's in conflict with the duties of a Keeper to protect her people--but the thing is Merrill knows that, and that's why she agrees to leave the clan. She believes this is too important, more important than becoming a Keeper, which she also says she would have been terrible at. I do think Merrill is not being totally honest with herself about the danger at first; in Act I, she's very quick to insist that it's fine and she's got everything under control. But I think her years in Kirkwall make her more mindful--she sees a lot of demons, a lot of blood magic, she sees how Anders struggles with Justice, and she almost falls to another Pride demon herself if she goes into the Fade with Hawke. (Personally, I also think this might have something to do with her proximity to Audacity on the mountain, and then having more distance from it in Kirkwall, because I do think the Pride demon was influencing both her and Marethari. In the short story "Merrill" it's very clear that it called out to both of them, rather than Merrill seeking it out on her own.)

By Act III, she's undeniably aware of the danger because she asks Hawke to come along for that very reason. What Merrill is doing is undeniably dangerous, but dangerous does not necessarily mean evil or wrong. In the end, though I think there's undoubtedly some level of pride in her motives still, I do think Merrill is fully aware of the risks, and believes that the possible gain is worth it, and takes every precaution she can.

Furthermore, I think that Marethari fails in her duty to her people when she goes to the demon and allows it to possess her. Her responsibility is to protect the clan. When Merrill leaves, Marethari needs to accept her choice and let her go. She needs to move the clan on, out of reach of whatever danger she believes Merrill poses. If they need to contact another clan, raise new halla, she has years to do that. Instead, she keeps them on Sundermount for the better part of a decade because she (and her own pride) simply can't let it go, and in the end she leaves her clan leaderless and possibly dead because she (and, I think, Audacity) convinces herself that only she is capable of protecting Merrill. But Merrill isn't her responsibility anymore. Her clan is. And she abandons them.

So the one thing that kind of sticks in my craw is the idea that Merrill must be an unparalleled genius because she successfully reverse-engineered an eluvian from a shard. Because the thing is she didn't do that! That's the thing she didn't do! She never successfully got the mirror working in canon. Maybe in the next game, for some world states, we'll find out that she did finish it, or maybe we'll never hear about it again; as of the information we have right now, she never made it work.

And I know this one is contentious, because there's a big interpretive gap as far as how close Merrill was to making the eluvian work. And I'm not trying to step on anyone's headcanons here; there's room for speculation and when it comes to headcanon or fanworks there's truly nothing wrong with going the route that she was really, really close, and maybe succeeded down the road.

But as far as canon, we simply do not know. We do not know how close she was. We do not know whether she had built it correctly and simply needed the power to activate it, or whether there was some fundamental flaw in her theory she hadn't figured out, or whether it was wrong from the ground up. We do not know whether Audacity truly knew what she needed or would have given it to her had Marethari not interfered. We don't even know whether it's possible to build an eluvian in a post-Veil world, for that matter! We don't know, and we probably never will.

In fact, it's unclear to me whether Merrill actually knows the full extent of what eluvians are supposed to do. She says in her Act II quest "Mirror Image" that she knows that they were used for communication over distances (which was the extent of ancient Tevinter's understanding of them, and what Duncan remarks in Origins), but she doesn't know exactly how they work. I don't remember her ever saying that it's supposed to be a physical portal you can travel through. There's a moment where Hawke asks what's wrong with it and Merrill exclaims, frustrated, "Well... look at it! Do you think it's just supposed to sit there not doing anything?" I'm not convinced she actually knows what it's supposed to do, only that it's important to her people's history. I'm not blaming her for her lack of knowledge here--I think as fans we've gotten so used to hearing about eluvians that it's easy to forget their existence isn't common knowledge in-universe even among the Dalish. Ariane's clan was safeguarding an exceptionally rare text about eluvians and even she didn't know what they were (in part because most modern elves canonically are not fluent in ancient Elvish, something else I think people kind of forget).

Again, I don't think Merrill is wrong for wanting to discover and restore her people's history. If anything, the gaps in their knowledge only make that more important. I'm also not saying any of this because I'm trying to refute the idea that Merrill is smart. I think she's very clever and resourceful and I think this shows in a great deal of her dialogue with other characters.

I just don't think we can know, based on canon, that her theories were 100% correct and she is now the foremost expert on eluvians. Again, I have zero issue with this as headcanon--I really am not coming for anyone who holds it as such! My only disagreement is when it's put forth as Fact, and like anyone who takes a different view of canon is wrong and is trying to tear down Merrill.

Because like all my faves in this series, it is possible for a character to be good and compelling and interesting and even right about a lot of things without being right about everything all the time.

16. you can’t understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Okay we'll take this one for whatever values of "so many people," because at this point I don't really see this one come up all that much, but as a huge Sera fan, I do not understand the appeal of the "Sera is Andruil/has a fragment of Andruil" fan theory, and I don't think I ever will.

For one thing, by the end of Trespasser we know that Solas and Mythal are walking around in the waking world still because they are exceptions. The rest of the Evanuris are not hiding among mortals. We know where the others are! They're in the Fade! Solas trapped them there! That was a pretty significant thing that happened!

For another, Solas and Andruil were not friends. If Sera was or was carrying a piece of Andruil, and Solas recognized her, I think he would have reacted strongly. Maybe he wouldn't be capable of killing her on the spot in his current state, but also I sort of doubt he would be walking around gently prodding her to remember who she is.

The theory also seems to be partially based on the misapprehension that Sera's archery skills are somehow magical, which I've already talked about.

But also, and more importantly to me personally, I feel like it just ruins Sera's character. Sera's story is that of a young adult with a lot of unrecovered childhood trauma, and deep issues with identity, rejection, and abandonment, still trying to find a place where she belongs and discover what she believes about the world. What does her unwittingly carrying around a piece of an elven god add to that? What does it add to her painful memories of Lady Emmald, to her sense of alienation from other city elves? It undermines the perspective she brings to the Inquisition as a commoner, a Nobody who is proud of being nobody. It completely ruins her relationship with Solas, turning them from a fascinating set of foils (the ancient elf who broke the world vs. the modern elf who is in so many ways the product of the world he created) into just two ancients arguing with each other. If anything, it feels like papering over everything that makes her complicated and interesting in an attempt to "fix" her: Look, she is Elfy after all! She's the Elfiest!

Sera doesn't need to be secretly an ancient goddess to be a compelling character.

[sophieinwonderland]

Saying "you're white so therefore you can't have an opinion on transrace (only real POC can)" is disturbingly similar to "you like men so you can't have an opinion on bi lesbians (only real lesbians can)". Like sure, if you claim that only "real" people of color are allowed to have an opinion and define "real" people of color as inherently excluding transrace, then you've created a circular argument of "white transrace people can't defend transrace identities because they're white and therefore can't be transrace and are therefore white and therefore can't defend transrace".

And then they just ignore every POC who disagrees with them, which sure sounds racist to me! (Especially when in every transx community I've been in, the majority of transrace people have been bodily POC)

Never mind too that these are just word for word terf arguments. "Men white people invading women's people of color's spaces because of misogyny racism because sex race is biological and only real women people of color can decide what a woman POC is" and then they're like "It's different!" and you're like "how" and they're like "because it's racist!!" and you're like "okay how" and they're like "because it just is! it's different because I say so as a person of color!!" and then they proceed to ignore people of color saying it's okay.

I also don't think marginalization allows you any significant say whatsoever on different related marginalized identities. Just like transfems are not the authorities on transmasc experiences and disordered/traumagenic systems are not the authorities on nondisordered/endogenic plurality, being cisID for a given marginalized identity doesn't actually give you the right to speak on that transID.)

If it did, cis women would be authorities on all trans experiences and singlets would be authorities on all tulpa/created system experiences (not an exact equivalent, but close, and some tulpa/created systems do consider themselves transplural, which I think is valid).

It's just a clusterfuck all the way down. Also as a disabled person, I strongly suspect that transabled identities in particular could be observed neurologically just like BIID can. I'm leery of doing that for nonmedical identities because of biological essentialism (though I recognize the potential scientific merit in it regardless). Not only that, but I wanna say: why is it ableist to want to be an identity that's not inherently a bad thing?

Why is it ableist to want to have a disability, even one that includes suffering as part of the experience, when it's not bad to BE disabled when you DON'T consent to it? Is being disabled only acceptable to these people because disabled people don't have the option of being abled? Is being abled a better, more desirable state? If disability pride only allowed because you can't help not being abled? Because THAT sounds horribly ableist.

For that matter, this applies to all transx identities!

I have quite literally dozens of disabilities ranging from physical to neurological, just counting overarching diagnoses alone. Counting individual things I struggle with or can't do, it would be hundreds. I WANT to have the disabilities I already have. I'd want most of them if I DIDN'T have them because they are central to who I am and the causal relationship there goes both ways.

I'm literally totally fine with people wanting my disabilities, too. Wanna be autistic? Oh cool, autism can be difficult but it's dear to me in a lot of ways too. Wanna experience psychosis? Hell yeah, I love being psychotic and honestly the only part I struggle much with is the negative symptoms that come with schizophrenia specifically (plus you can literally induce psychosis with drugs, and not always the scarybad kind either). Want to have a histamine disorder? I'll offer mine to you like I keep offering my boobs to my transfem partner, I don't like experiencing it but more power to ya. Want chronic pain? Considering I wouldn't actually get rid of mine because I literally like experiencing pain, I'm right there with you. Want IBS? I mean I don't get it, but sure!

(And yeah "want" vs "feels like they innately have but the body doesn't match" is an imperfect distinction, I'm using want as in "wants the body to align with internal identity" in the same way that trans people sometimes "want" to transition".)

Idk, I've just never seen an argument against transx identities that wasn't recycled terf rhetoric that "is different because it is and I say so!" or actively bigoted itself. The more arguments I heard against transID stuff, the more I was convinced people are just bigoted against a minority group they don't understand because they think their own discomfort is a good indicator of morality.

And ngl! The first time I was referred to as cisx for some of my marginalized identities, I had a visceral emotional reaction! I thought people were essentially saying I had privilege over and oppressed transx people of that identity, because that's how it works with gender.

But... it's not even always that simple with gender (example: white middle class trans woman vs black working class cis man) and also... that's an assumption *I* made and is utterly untrue. It's closer to how trans men can't oppress and don't have privilege over trans women: cis men oppress cis women, but all trans people are marginalized.

Once I worked through that, I was able to see that transx people were some of the most supportive, inclusive, safe people I'd ever met. I literally feel safer in transx spaces about my cisx marginalized identities than I do in many cisx spaces for those identities. I feel safer as a queer plural disabled person in transx spaces than I do in queer, plural, and disabled spaces! In part because they do not allow any form of bigotry (unlike say, ableist queer spaces or pluralmisic disabled spaces) but mostly just because... they're unconditionally accepting of identity and only judge people based on whether or not their actions are bigoted.

I wish we had more spaces that recognized that any innate and honest identity (so not like "haha attack helicopter gender" as a joke that someone doesn't actually ID as) is good faith and is not harmful, because identities are thought-based and thoughtcrimes aren't real. Idk.

Thank you for adding your experiences.

My own views on transIDs are complicated and I don't agree with everything here, but I am glad you found a community you feel safe in. I do agree that a lot of the anti-transX talking points sound exactly like TERF talking points, and in the case of anti-trace arguments, often the way they try to claim it's different is appealing to racial realism.

And like you, I strongly suspect that mental transability is something that could be observable in the brain like BIID.

There are a couple thing you mention that I really want to talk about as they've bothered me for a while with this whole debate.

Saying "you're white so therefore you can't have an opinion on transrace (only real POC can)" is disturbingly similar to "you like men so you can't have an opinion on bi lesbians (only real lesbians can)"

It's not even just not having an opinion. It's about having the wrong opinion. I've personally gotten a ton of hate for saying I'm largely neutral on the subject. I don't identify by transIDs, but have talked to people in the community and believe they're good faith identities.

In contrast, people wouldn't say "you can't have an opinion" if your opinion agrees with them.

And then they just ignore every POC who disagrees with them, which sure sounds racist to me! (Especially when in every transx community I've been in, the majority of transrace people have been bodily POC)

And this is a HUGE issue I have with the anti-transX side.

There's a narrative being spread that Trace individuals are largely white people "pretending" to be PoC.

What I'm largely observing from the TransX community is the opposite. Many of the people who sent asks to me were POC-bodied. There was also a poll of the Trace community showing that a lot of them felt that their identities were a result of racial trauma, or didn't know if it was related to racial trauma (still suggesting they had a history of it.)

To me, the anti-trace rhetoric comes across as lateral aggression being disguised as anti-racism.

You have a group of mostly PoC who are branding another group of mostly PoC-bodied individuals as racists for wanting the right to choose their own identities instead of being defined by their ancestry or skin color.

What's worse though is that they're actively set on bringing white people into the Trace conflict. It's incredibly common to see white people with transX identities in their DNIs, all in the name of being anti-racist... or at least appearing anti-racist in their social circles.

My assessment... as someone who I'll admit is an outside observer to both communities... is that the anti-trace side has been leveraging the concept of white guilt to get white people to join their side in ostracizing and abusing a group made up mostly of PoC-bodied individuals.

Which just seems... super messed up to me...