#writer incompetence

[eisforeidolon]

Tbh hellers and mooch side of the fandom destroy the fandom enjoyment, and they specifically destroyed castiel's character for me. Castiel was actually a nice character in the previous seasons and while in the later seasons he's become extremely annoying and unnecessary as a character, I still thought his role and relationship with Jack's character was great. His speech to dean reduced his character when you think of it from a romantic angle. Not only it makes no sense, but it is also unnecessary and has no bearing on the plot and story. Castiel's real ending and arc naturally would be about being a father to Jack, leading him to his path, and following him and teaching him how to be God, fixing Heaven as the father and son together. Because one of the struggles Castiel always showed was about him feeling guilty that he killed all those angels during the godstiel arc and made them fall bc of metatron's manipulation, so seeing him fix Heaven and help the angels and finally bringing a new order and peace to Heaven through helping Jack is actually a better fit for his character arc. Also his speech should have been directed to Jack, not to Dean tbh. Because all the parallels have been there, Dean's speech to Sam and leading his brother to have a new normal life shows their brotherly bond but also Dean has always been a 'father figure' to Sam so it makes sense perfectly in the narrative. Castiel giving a similar speech to Jack would have been more reasonable in terms of the narrative and for both Castiel and Jack's arcs.

Anyway I am sorry that I am rambling in here but it is just annoying how some fans (and mooch himself) can ruin so many things within the show and reduce the enjoyment level and characters' arcs just for a fanservice ship that was never meant to be there and was never actually written in the narrative in the first place.

Yeah, while I too was completely over the version of Castiel we were left with by the end of the show - especially the narrative insistently TELLING us that he was the Winchesters' bestie while SHOWING him repeatedly undermining them, betraying them, and generally getting in their way?

They really did have something going with him and Jack that made a decent amount of sense. Castiel was always going to be on the outside with the Winchesters. Because he wasn't mortal like they were and hadn't been through all they had together in the same way to the same degree, and because of their crazy mixed up codependent relationship that just didn't have room for anyone else to truly be on the inside. Jack was different, though. He was another outsider who could be more on Castiel's level in a number of ways, and a protégé who genuinely needed him and could give him purpose in others. In a way that being "the Winchesters' protector" wasn't working out for him - because they didn't need him to try and be the hero and the narrative beat us over the head with him needing to be needed in a way he just wasn't by them. It's what the show actually did with Castiel's ultimate ending anyway, having him help Jack rebuild heaven. So yeah, Castiel's final speech would have made so much more sense if it had been to - or even just about - Jack.

Instead, Misha and Berens chose to pander to a bunch of shippers who were never going to be happy with anything short of Dean and Castiel nonsensically hooking up for a HEA out of nowhere. Knowing it would get said shippers' hopes up when Castiel wouldn't be back. Under the conditions that Dean didn't reciprocate and Castiel's words were ambiguous enough to be equally interpretable as intense familial love. With zero apparent awareness of how much more dubious and stalker-y A LOT of Castiel's interactions with the Winchesters come across if you interpret his words as romantic. In short, they didn't care about what Castiel's story actually was, just fanservice - and fanservice that was doomed to fail at that.

[eisforeidolon]

Right, their idea for a "better" Supernatural expects the late seasons' writers who struggled to put together a coherent and compelling narrative when they had J2's chemistry and investment in Sam and Dean to lean on for a story about the brothers? To succeed with nothing but their own "skills" and Misha's "acting" to pull together a much more complicated base story juggling a lot more characters who they already struggled heavily to differentiate from one another. Sounds like a recipe for success! 🙄

But the thing I dislike most about this is the oblivious self-centeredness. This specific show was not about what *I* wanted, therefore what it was about was a "waist" of time! Everything should be catered to me me meeee otherwise it's worthless!

No. Those fifteen years allowed for an extensive and varied in-depth exploration of the main characters and the main relationship of the show. Could it have been better at times? Sure! But it was not remotely a "waist" of time for those of us who tuned in for the kind of story it actually was. That IS a very big part of why it got to keep going for fifteen years when most shows don't.

I don't turn on fucking Lifetime Movie Network and complain a movie about stalking would be so much better if it was a happy romance with puppies. I don't tune into the Food Network and lament there's too much focus on food, who even cares about that? I don't watch an action movie marketed as being full of gunfire and explosions and insist it's a lost opportunity to make a think piece on politics. I don't tune into a biopic and insist the main character's brother should be the star because I think the focus character is boring. I understand I am not the solo center of the universe and some things just *gasp* aren't tailored to me!

If you "waisted" time on Supernatural, whining the whole time because it wasn't fundamentally interested in being something else entirely? When it has an audience full of people invested in exactly what it was? That is 100% a you being stupid and entitled problem.

They had 15 years that no show this generation will ever have. And they just waisted it on brother bonding 😔.

[cowboylikesel]

boyfriend dumped him, baking addiction, best friend is moving to texas, sister gets kidnapped by a serial killer, might be dating said serial killer, still can’t say that he’s bisexual, not allowed to have any other aspirations besides his love life….oh it’s bad for him

[emynarnen]

"MY QUEEN."

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON S1 Finale // S2 Finale

[waterlinkedgirl]

Musical Touken Ranbu: Michinooku ~ Hitotsu Hachisu (Michinooku ~ A Single Lotus)

Here we go! Only a few days after the archive release and toumyu's ninth anniversary (congratulations!)

Michioku, or Michihasu, is a myu I have many conflicting feelings about, both positive and negative. However, I do believe that with the right amount of care in the next Mika-related story myu, the negative can still be cleared. Plus, I'm glad about a lot of things being re-established. The writer does need to step up her game a little on the plot-writing side of things, as well as the understanding-and-respecting-past-myu side of things, but as long as she does, this can still be given a proper place within what was already established.

Keep in mind that these are only the subtitle files, timed and tled to the DMM senshuuraku and the bluray respectively. The archive version will have a talk at the start, so the starting times of the subs will have to be delayed accordingly.

You can find the subtitles and my TL notes document here!

[eisforeidolon]

Seriously, the toothpaste thing still pisses me off. Every tube of toothpaste I've ever used has had instructions printed on it. Awkwardly reading the tube to someone, I could see. Eating it? It didn't so much underline him being newly human as just make him look like a drooling idiot.

It was an overarching problem in the latter seasons - actually, two problems. The writers were so desperate to add quote unquote funny moments that they would sometimes completely undermine the characters like this to do it. But on top of that, they consistently used Castiel specifically as a whiny clueless dumbass who couldn't even fight to further their plots (such as they were). To the point he felt like an entirely different character in a pathetic derailment kind of way. At that point, a lot of us would have rather he be gone since the writing for him was just that bad - but too many supposed fans of Castiel actually preferred him that way, because it was so much closer to the bumbling pathetic sadface woobie they wrote in their schmoopy D/C fanfic.

October 9, 2015

Aside from the 'confession' scene, I think Cass' worse scene is him eating toothpaste and talking about peeing.

[mikeellee]

So MHA´s ending makes sense even if is not a good ending

So, I saw a youtuber (Brazilian one) and his ideas are more or less what I´m saying. The ending makes sense: The whole individuality became collective ("I can be the biggest hero" "We can be the biggest hero") and I get the feeling Hori WAS trying to put in the story, I do. The execution is poor bc the author forget about his own MC.

The one constant of the manga is how Izu is always suffering...always.

And we do have a right to see an issue with that, hell, narratively, what´s the point of Midoriya thinking he is useless from chap 1 till the end?

But it makes me wonder now...Is the Izuku a reflection of the Japanese boy out of the Japanese patterns of normalcy? I know someone will scream "LoV" but LoV is something different... The bullying there is ...horrible, and not always the victim get any justice, the word is enduring.

A kid like Izuku WAS set to fail in his mission ALONE.

Yes, we can make fics where he is OP. Or he has friends(good friends, mind you bc no matter what anyone says...A1 are fake friends in canon) or money...won´t change how in canon, Izuku was doomed to fail alone.

Is that intentional on Hori´s part or he just hates Izu? We don´t know...his writing shows he doesn´t like Izu and prefers BK (smth Brazilian critics can pick up, but maybe is just Hori being incompetent)

It´s a cyclical ending, in a way, bc Izu starts the journey not being able to be a hero bc he has no quirk...until he meets AM (a lucky chance) and ends with him being a hero again bc AM (plus his damn abuser and A1, supposedly...some translations don´t say if they helped, some say they did but BK and AM helped the most) with a suit keep in secret from Izu was in the make for 8 years.

Why this has to be a secret?

Why everyone was so damn busy to talk to him? Are all of them working extra time to get him a suit?

What if Izu didn´t want a suit?

What do Izu think of AM suit?

Is Izu a well-liked teacher?

What do Izu teach to the kids?

Why we couldn´t see Izu happy in his job?

Why does he feel alone?

I know Hori wanted to end this manga ASAP, not blaming him as making a manga IS hell, but he could have ended this with a happy Izu (one that looks an adult, same for A1 and I don´t like them)

The manga does make sense, I swear but it´s smth linked to the first chapter...Izu is not treated well, he feels useless without a quirk (no quirkless discrimination ever happened, only Izu abuse) and only gets to be a hero bc AM (a lucky chance one in a million) happened to him. He didn´t earn anything.

And all his efforts aren´t recognized. Like, he cleaned a beach for 10 months.....NO ONE SAYS A WORD.

OFC the ending would be like that. If Izu gets nothing for his deeds on chap 1, why the ending would be rewarding for him or for us?

[bestworstcase]

Something I can't help but think of is the Great War in RWBY. How Ozpin in one of his past selves had to basically wipe out entire armies of soldiers and people with a single attack from what was likely the Sword of Destruction.

I have to wonder just how many generations of men and women were wiped out. How many settlements of people basically lost their breadwinners or no longer had anyone to protect them from Grimm.

How many years of battle experience and wisdom about the follies of war, just annihilated in an instant. How many lessons that could have been taught to a new generation made lost forever, ensuring that many of the newer generations could not learn from the past except only through a distorted, flawed lens.

I wonder if this loss might have contributed to Atlas' lackluster military capabilities, because anyone from Mantle who could have held the jackasses at the top to account with hardened experience and wisdom JUST. WEREN'T. THERE.

anon i am grabbing u gently by the shoulders

you have fallen for ozma’s propaganda that he is the Main Character of history. and also activated one of my many trap cards (sorry)

the institution of huntsmen is – overtly, albeit not couched in exactly these terms – predicated on the Great Man, the idea that the course of human history is predominately a product of the decisive choices and actions of Heroes, of individuals whose superior intellect and fortitude and so forth elevated them above the common people. this is the fundamental idea undergirding ozpin’s whole thing – his guardians, the maidens, silver-eyed warriors, his “smaller, more honest soul,” the greatness he promises oscar, the way he describes ruby as possessing “something unquantifiable: a spark, that can inspire others even in the darkest of times” – these are his Great Men. the practical short term purpose of the huntsmen academies is to mold children into warriors in order to guard his fortresses, but in the longer term the point of them is to create Great Men.

narratively, this is an idea that rwby does not agree with; the thematic critique leveled against this view of history begins with the inherent contradiction between ozpin’s soaring rhetoric – the stated ideal of everyone standing together as one – and his actual behavior, which (as salem points out, correctly, in her v3 soliloquy) betrays the hollowness and lack of conviction in his professed “faith” in humanity. to believe in Great Men is fundamentally cynical; it is anti-humanistic; it is self-defeating.

we don’t really have time to outline everything in the CFVY novels that leads me to believe that this narrative critique is building inexorably toward bringing the common people into sharp focus as the true engine of history in vacuo – suffice it to say that there are passages in both books which elevate and emphasize the importance of ordinary people working together to achieve greater things than huntsmen can – but the atlas arc already offers a tangible shift in this direction with civilian politics dawning as a central narrative concern in contrast to the insularity of the beacon and mistral arcs.

the point being that the story structure itself is dismantling ozpin’s view of history; civilians are distant, abstracted set dressing within the hermetically sealed artificial reality of beacon academy, and irrelevant in mistral until the instant the lost fable shatters ozpin’s grip on the narrative and then – bam. brunswick farm is a horror-tragedy about subsistence farmers. the kids stay with the cotta-arcs in argus, and it is this connection with ordinary people that gets the kids to atlas, where class tensions between mantle and atlas and a contested council election dominate the plot and ozpin’s Great Man crumbles because he’s still hermetically sealed inside that artificial reality where the common people don’t really matter or exist in any meaningful way.

you see?

(and of course, professor oobleck, the exception who proves the rule: there is no one still living in the hollowed out ruins of mountain glenn, but that mini-arc is the one time in the beacon arc where the existence of ordinary people feels real and tangible and important, and it is because the history teacher says when i look at these ruins i see lives that were lost. i see a failure that must never be repeated. i see lives, past and future, and this is why i am a teacher, because history is more important than heroism.)

ok. so

the great war.

in qrow’s account of the great war, ozma – the king of vale – is the Great Man. the story of this sprawling, worldwide conflict is that the king of vale tried and failed to avert it, and for ten years the war raged on without an end in sight, until at last the king of vale took to the field of battle himself and single-handedly ended it by the sword; everyone bowed to him in surrender, but he lifted up the world by the hand and established a new world order.

no one else – not a single other participant in this conflict aside from the king of vale and (qrow hints ominously, and completely without evidence) salem – has a drop of agency or even a meaningful presence in the great war as qrow, received from ozpin, would tell it. and i do not think that is supposed to be taken at face value whatsoever; none of the other WOR spots are objective. these are character studies as much as they are worldbuilding shorts.

rwby is a narrative that has rejected this kind of simplicity over and over and over again. the great war was more complicated than that. some big chickens will be coming home to roost in the vacuo arc.

so with all that being said.

the historical exemplar that rwby’s great war seems to be modeled after is the first world war. (in brief: fought 80-90 years ago; the conflict was preceded by decades of increasing tensions driven by imperialist expansion and economic competition between rapidly-industrializing great powers; the war itself famously exploded from a single gunshot – although rwby eschews the political assassination angle perhaps because there were only three extant states in the world; the ending of the war resulted in massive redistribution of imperial territories and the formation of multiple new states. i know the usamerican tendency is to forget WWI happened and that ozma ‘nuking’ the battlefield with the sword to decisively end the war is likely to evoke the atomic bomb in the mind of the average viewer, but here i will remind everyone that the united states massacred nearly a quarter of a million civilians and that figure does not include deaths from cancer or long-term radiation exposure. because we dropped those bombs on cities. in contrast WWI was decided on the battlefield with the hundred days offensive.)

the real great war lasted from the summer of 1914 to the autumn of 1918. four years, three months. do you know how many people died?

an estimated 9 to 11 million military deaths, and 23 million more wounded. 7-8 million of those deaths were combat-related. upwards of 6 million civilians died. one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and aside from WWII (in which as many as two thirds of fatalities were civilians and genocide and war-related famine killed millions and millions of people, so many of these deaths were not combat-related), the only two conflicts in history that killed more people than WWI lasted 14 years, and 47. again, WWI lasted just four years.

ok. the reason WWI was so deadly, and the reason almost all of those military fatalities were combat-related is because of when and how this conflict was fought. in 1914 when the war began, the world was just coming out of the second industrial revolution. that was a period when railroads really began to proliferate, mass-manufacture of steel became possible, rise of production lines, automobiles, the telegraph, that kind of thing.

cannons, and things, had existed for a relatively long time at this point, but the second industrial revolution heralded the dawn of modern artillery weapons, and warfare, cultural conceptions of how wars are fought, had not caught up yet to the sheer scale of destruction that were now possible because of this new technology. which meant that WWI was the last conflict where war meant lining up troops on the battlefield and smashing the armies together, except everyone had things like rapid-firing heavy artillery, and explosive shells, and machine guns, and barbed wire, and chlorine gas.

this is what led to horrible, bloody stalemate of trench warfare and the unprecedented scale of casualties and the idea of “no man’s land” – it’s why the cultural image of what a battlefield looks like in the popular conscious for decades and decades after this war has been and often still is just a barren, muddy, completely obliterated wasteland strewn with debris. WWI was the transition between pre-industrial and modern warfare where industrialization had led to the development of military technology that rendered the old way of doing war obsolete. suicidal.

in the WOR spot, those are exactly the the conditions surrounding the great war except more lopsided because one side has a massive technological advantage. vacuo wasn’t even a state, it had no formal government of its own and it was under mistrali occupation when the vacuans rebelled. not an industrialized nation. vale was had probably industrialized to some degree (the artwork in the WOR spot doesn’t reflect this, but “no one knows who shot first” and vale/vacuan forces were reliant on dust munitions – everyone had guns) but mantle was significantly ahead of the curve.

so.

you have ten years of trench warfare – more than double the length of our own great war. you have the grimm, who are drawn to all negative feelings but especially to violence. you have huge swaths of territory that are just annihilated and never reclaimed. qrow mentions food rationing, so there were probably widespread famines caused by the loss and destruction of farmland. and this was happening all over the world, on every continent, including the unnamed continent that is now literally uninhabited – it wasn’t always, there used to be settlements there, they’re shown in i think WOR: vale – for a decade. right

ozma brought the sword of destruction onto the battlefield to break what was either a brutal stalemate or a slow grind of brutal attrition depending how lopsided the technological advantage was – after ten years of what had to be every military commander and every leader trying everything they could think of to force a surrender because nobody wants this – in the single bloodiest battle of the war, which, yes, means he personally killed an unfathomable number of people because trench warfare is a uniquely deadly form of warfare –

but the vast, vast vast majority of people who died in the great war were not killed in that one battle. remnant’s population is a lot smaller than ours – millions, not billions – so it’s unlikely that millions of people died. but proportionally this war probably killed hundreds of thousands of people and i would not be surprised if at some point a character drops a figure like “almost a million” or even “over a million” – like just. in raw terms, thinking about this as remnant’s great war – the historical exemplar is really not. subtle – that lasted for a decade, this is a conflict that wiped out a significant percentage of the global population.

all that said,

the military tacticians and strategists largely would have survived and military historians would have been all over this conflict. lessons learned. the infantry poured into the trenches were not gaining any battle experience other than “this is actual, literal hell” while they endured hours of artillery barrage. the only wisdom that can be imparted by trench warfare is that it must be avoided at any cost because the only way to win is for the other side to run out of men or ammunition or popular resolve first. pure attrition. that’s the only takeaway. never let this happen again.

i think this is why the atlas military immediately pivoted to, like, robotic soldiers and armored mechs and the warships. that is “we cannot do trench warfare again. we cannot do trench warfare again.”

(in combination with radically changing the way you deploy troops, tanks and aircraft is indeed how you never do trench warfare again – there were tanks and light aircraft during WWI but none of them were good enough to break the stalemate.)

the problem, largely, for the atlas military – in terms of tactical innovation – is that in the eighty years since the great war, there’s only been one large-scale conflict and the faunus revolution was an insurgency, which – had to have been a protracted war waged by some phenomenally tactically ingenious faunus because the insurgents won – and that is a completely different kind of ballgame.

strategic doctrine and military tactics are developed and tested through practice. we did not jump from WWI straight to modern warfare, there have been many many regional wars and smaller conflicts between then and now. after a war, win or lose, you can theorize all you want but until there’s another war that puts your new technology or new tactics to the test, there’s not really a way to know if you’ve learned the right lessons and corrected successfully from whatever errors you made in the previous war.

in a world like remnant, where there are only five states in the entire world and there is so much pressure against open warfare, military innovation is going to be really slow. glacial even. stagnant. the horrifying scale of the great war is not something anyone wanted to ever repeat, and you can see that in the development of atlas’ military technology since then. but, as we can see when salem begins her assault on atlas:

the doctrine has not changed significantly. we have unmanned robotic light infantry arrayed in formation support the atlesian equivalent of tanks, with heavy artillery mounted on the warships in formation above. and, in the back, trenches for the human shock infantry and huntsmen. this is still very much warfare in the pre-industrial mode.

the calculation that the atlas military made here is quite clear – pursue aerial superiority to control the skies so you can eliminate ground-based enemy artillery, mass-manufacture lightweight disposable robotic infantry to feed into the meat grinder, deploy soldiers in heavily-armored mechs supported by those disposable infantry bots into the no man’s land to lead the advance and clear a path for the human rear infantry (<- those mechs would be excellent for cutting rapidly through barbed wire, a major advantage over tanks in another WWI-style conflict).

this is a military that reacted to trench warfare by investing in armored ground vehicles and heavy aircraft (✅ tanks and bombers), and by substituting disposable drones for human shock infantry instead of the shift toward evasive maneuvering and detection avoidance that undergirds modern warfare. which is not unreasonable! if in 1918 it had seemed remotely possible to anyone to replace human troops with little war machines, people would have tried! and in a world where a) the technology to do that proves viable and b) the great war is followed by an 80-year period in which the only major conflict is an insurgency, it’s inevitable that the doctrine stagnates there because it’s untested.

no matter how many drills and VR scenarios and war games you do, you can’t know how this new approach works in a real war until you fight another war. the iterative process of improvement is stalled.

and the terrifying thing about salem is she knows what the fuck she’s doing. it is clear that one of the lessons ozpin took away from the great war is that the general public cannot be entrusted to know that war is on the horizon – he’s furious with ironwood for bringing warships to vale because (aside from risking a bona fide diplomatic incident that could inflame tensions between vale and atlas should the vale council take issue with the uninvited presence of a foreign state’s air force in their kingdom!) he’s concerned that it will make people tense.

you know, like how people were tense when mistral occupied eastern vale and ozma tried to avert war by appeasement, and then there was a deadly riot that exploded into a decade of trench warfare. like how things were probably pretty goddamned tense before the faunus revolution broke out in response to humans being – as oobleck very delicately put it – “quite, quite adamant about centralizing the faunus population in menagerie.”

(that’s code for, at best, systematic persecution intended to make living outside menagerie so untenable that faunus would leave en masse; mass deportations and genocide at worst. in case that isn’t clear.)

i doubt ozma was remotely as obsessed with absolute secrecy such that the common people don’t even know there’s anything unusual happening prior to the great war and the faunus revolution. ozpin is a trauma reaction to those conflicts, deeply and profoundly shaped by them and terrified to the point of irrationality of allowing the “energy” that preceded the outbreak of those wars to happen again.

salem hits beacon with three separate and extremely public terroristic attacks all on the same night – she planned for four, but one fired early – all of which were broadcast internationally, live. she spent eighty years observing how oz reacted to the great war and then struck at him in a manner he would never be able to conceal, and (if he’d survived) would have gotten him stripped of power and cast out of his fortress in disgrace. i think her calculation here is that ozpin would either be dead for at least a few years or self-immolate out of panic.

haven, of course, she had lionheart in her pocket and planned a covert operation. low risk, quick and quiet.

but then, when her plans shuffled and brought her to atlas – a military power that has spent eighty years preparing for war between industrialized states, trying to claw its way ahead of the curve so it won’t be trapped in a trench stalemate again – salem made an inexhaustible force of grimm and delivered a an old-school siege, because a post-industrial military that has focused for eight decades on the problem of avoiding trench stalemate is not prepared to handle an enemy force that is effectively immune to artillery fire.

i think the atlas military would have done a lot better in a round two of the great war. but that’s not the war it got. it got a premodern siege by the eldritch roman legion with instant and infinite respawns so artillery barrages just don’t matter. it’s not about overpowering the enemy! it’s about taking away what power they have!

(this, plus the atlesian military’s development of devices that provoke massive grimm swarms as per arrowfell, makes it emphatically clear that the atlas military does not exist for the purpose of grimm extirpation. it’s an institution that has been built from the ground up for open warfare with other states.)

[fictionadventurer]

The more I learn about Civil War politics, the more I'm convinced that Lincoln's most impressive and useful leadership trait was that he never let his pride get in the way of doing his job.

Other people in Lincoln's position would have come to Washington with something to prove. They'd have resented the insults and tried to disprove them. They'd have tried to seize power and credit, rejected help, spent a lot of time trying to reach a certain level of respect.

Lincoln's response to, "You're just a backwoods lawyer with no executive experience who makes too many dumb jokes," was pretty much always, "Yeah. And?" He had no interest in petty personal power plays. He had a country to run. There was a war on. It didn't matter what people thought of him so long as the job got done.

He was aware of his personal shortcomings and was always willing to accept advice and help from people who had more knowledge and experience in certain areas. He presided over a chaotic Cabinet full of abrasive personalities who thought they were better and smarter than him, but he kept working with them because they could get the job done. For example: Stanton was absolutely horrible to him when they were both working as lawyers. Just incredibly mean on a personal level. But when Lincoln needed someone to replace Cameron, he swallowed his pride and appointed Stanton as Secretary of War, where Stanton proceeded to be mean to everyone in the world, but he whipped that department into shape and kept it running efficiently through a very chaotic war. Pretty much no one except Lincoln would have been able to put up with that. He could put up with people who were personally difficult if they could do the job he needed them to do--which he was only able to do because his own ego didn't get in the way.

Lincoln's example is a prime demonstration of how humility isn't underrating yourself--it's being so secure in your own abilities and identity that you don't need to attack anyone or defend yourself to prove your worth. He knew his shortcomings, but he also knew his strengths. He was willing to give other people credit for successes and take blame upon himself for failures if it kept things running smoothly. He was secure enough in his own power that he could deal generously--but firmly--with people who tried to undermine him. In a city full of huge egos, in a profession that rewards puffed-up pride, that levelheaded humility is an extremely rare trait--which is what made it so impressive and effective.

[tomthefanboy]

[eisforeidolon]

You know, that's one of the reason why people shipping Dean/Cas never made sense to me. Like, the show TELLS me that these two/three are totally friends/besties/brothers, what have you, and what it SHOWS me is the exact opposite. I mean, even the brothers were always ready to drop Cas at their earliest convenience whenever he stopped being useful and I remember this made me raise my eyebrows back in S7. Like, ok, cool, can we stop the lip service now and focus on more important things?

Yeah, I've said this before, but I didn't really look that close at Castiel's "friendship" to the Winchesters until I kept running across D/C shippers insisting it was sooo obvious Dean and Castiel were in love. So I rewatched looking for that - and came away with the realization they didn't even have as good of a friendship as I'd originally thought.

Because, yeah, if you look at the details of what they actually show them doing and saying to each other instead of just listening to the show tell you they're close ... oof. The only sense in which I can buy Castiel as their best friend is when all the other options (who aren't evil) are dead. Which says nothing about the actual quality of that relationship.

[dustbunnylair]

Shubble/Shelby's Situation: People Defending The Abuser and Shaming The Victim (!TW: Mentions of abuse/abusive relationship!)

7 months ago, on February 21st, 2024, a Twitch streamer with around 468K followers spoke out about being abused by another Twitch streamer and artist, who is now her ex on a stream titled, “Talking About Something More Serious”. The Twitch streamer who spoke out goes by Shubble or Shelby, she described the at the time unnamed Twitch streamer as (mainly) British, popular, and also in the music industry, fans quickly connected the dots to the popular Twitch streamer and lead singer in the band, Lovejoy, Wilbur Soot. 

I won’t go into full detail about what Shubble said, as I would prefer for people to listen to her say it, rather than someone else. But, the main things were that Wilbur did not follow a safe word that they set in place, and would bite her to the point of her screaming out in pain. He was also slobbish and dirty in his living situation. Unfortunately, Shubble has not provided any proof of bruises, markings, etc. but that doesn’t mean she’s lying, not every abuse victim documents their injuries, and honestly in my opinion, maybe she’s uncomfortable with sharing those injuries, those injuries are really none of our business to see.

A few days later, Wilbur Soot, made a response, which if you would like to read it you can find it here, I’ll sum it up to what I had processed within the response:

First off, he says it’s a response rather than an apology. Second, he didn’t even mention Shubble’s name, he only referred to her as “ex-girlfriend” or “this person” he never said her name. I want that to be emphasized because that’s quite common in abusers, they literally will not say their victim’s name(s) as a form of dissociation or just not taking accountability.

Many people including famous people such as Ranboo, Tommyinnit, Sneegsnag, Lil Tay, Billzo, Aimsey, Dream even, to fully call out Wilbur, as they should. Let’s also emphasize how absolutely batshit insane it is that Lil Tay and Billzo said shit about him, Lil Tay does not know this man and Billzo is literally never active on social media, no hate to them though obviously, shoutout to them for calling him out. Dream responding to Wilbur is so diabolical, you know an apology/response sucked ass when DREAM of all people responds to you and REWRITES the response. 

I have found many people on social media, more specifically TikTok and Pinterest, borderline defending Wilbur Soot. From getting mad at Shubble for telling her viewers to stream her stream instead of Wilbur's newest song, which yeah is a bit immature coming from a 30 y/o woman, but remember this is literally her abuser and she’s probably just joking around and coping. Not to mention the person who “called out” Shubble for not being able to “move on” can’t move on from Shubble nor Wilbur themselves.

Hypocrite alert…Honestly, Wilbur defenders are either stuck in 2019-2021 or are just insanely parasocial. Wilbur does not know you, you do not know him, he is a content creator and singer. I *was* a Wilbur fan before “Your New Boyfriend” came out, and look, I’ve moved on from him, 5 years of my life went to waste but at least I’m not supporting an abuser. It’s so funny seeing Wilbur dick riders getting mad at people for calling him niblur soot or saying he has rabies and needs a muzzle. 

It’s always “always believe the victim” until the abuser is someone you like or is conventionally attractive. I’ve seen multiple people ask why Shubble hasn’t sued Wilbur but has sued a car company. It’s so obvious that these people do not know shit about abusive relationships. Almost like if you were to take it to court and sue him, it wouldn’t change anything for Shubble other than some money or some shit, it doesn’t change the fact that she has trauma from the abuse, and it certainly isn’t gonna make him take accountability. Plus abuse in women or literally any gender, is invalidated most of the time.

People say that Wilbur is getting therapy just from his word. But me and other people are clearly seeing he isn’t showing change whatsoever, in fact, he literally looks like he’s on drugs, like coke. I remember someone made a TikTok talking about how skinny Wilbur looks and saying he’s probably starving himself. He’s 6’5 and has always been fucking lanky, and starving yourself isn’t the only thing that makes you lose weight, it’s also drugs!

I’m honestly just so sick and tired of seeing people say “Shubble admitted to lying” and then when you ask for proof of that they don’t respond, because she’s never admitted to that. Even other creators, not just Shubble, have come out and said Wilbur’s abusive behavior, like Tommyinnit. I mean, James Marriott hasn’t spoken out about this, and he doesn’t have to, that’s not something that’s required from him, but in one of James Marriott’s videos from 3 years ago, he and Wilbur did like this drunk video and it was called “If We Laugh, The Video Ends…(ft. Wilbur Soot)”, but throughout the video Wilbur just sometimes gets violent, and it doesn’t seem like a bit because most of the time James reacts genuinely concerned.

And before anyone uses the “Oh but he was drunk” excuse, I don’t want to hear it, the more drunk you are, the more of the real you comes out, he was drunk as fuck and his real self was coming out. 

Yeah, honestly that’s all I have to say about this topic for right now. Don’t go harass Wilbur or any Wilbur supporters, just try to educate them or block them, both are valid. If I have more to add I’ll make a follow-up post. But yeah, always believe the victim, don’t defend abusers. Keep yourself safe.

[valinoar]

the praise rhaenyra gets for being a “feminist queen” or someone who “cares about women unlike *insert character they don’t like*” is so unbelievably ridiculous it makes me laugh. so many team black stans love to paint alicent as a misogynistic demon who hates her daughter and will then use rhaenyra as the antithesis of this as if that woman didn’t deliberately undermine baela and rhaena’s own very much legitimate claims to driftmark to further her own agenda. she passes them off as contenders all for the sake of her sweet illegitimate son, whom she knows genuinely has no claim, and thinks all is well after proposing a lousy betrothal (which she makes BEFORE consulting either girls).

[smallest-turtle]

Mors, taking Cor into his own personal guard after it's become clear that Regis is serious about him being in his retinue: This is beneficial. The boy will get proper, hands-on training on what being in the King's inner circle truly means and what is expected of him. This will make up for his common origins and keep a lack of experience from being another headache for my heir when I die. I am making things easier for everyone.

Regis: WHY ARE YOU STEALING MY FRIEND

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

BRO THEY LITERALLY DID IT AGAIN

I was talking this morning about how the og Titans were so off balance that they had to keep removing Donna and Wally from the narrative just to make it work because those two were WAY too overpowered for the typical Titan mission.

And do you wanna know what they did in today's Nightwing? Huh? Do ya? They, you guessed it, removed Wally and Donna from the narrative. But that's not all folks! Nope! Starfire got removed as well!

Honestly, I'm surprised Raven managed to still be in this thing. Cause it'd go Wally, Raven, Kori, Donna in terms of firepower.

Man... They weren't even clever about it. Wally was gone the entire issue with no explanation. He checked the perimeter of a jail once. That was it.

Donna and Kori got relegated to babysitting duty while the other Titans (sans Wally for no explainable reason) did the actual plot and went on a Heist in Hell.

This is concerning because this man is writing the new Titans series. The og series suffered because Donna and Wally were on a different level and the writers didn't know how to compensate for that so they kept knocking them out at the start of every issue. And now the same thing is happening.

Taylor doesn't know how to power balance. The best Justice League runs deal with assorted power levels by having different roles for the heroes to play. Ollie isn't on the front lines fighting General Zod with Clark and Diana. Hal doesn't tag along on stealth missions with Dinah and Bruce. Different heroes have different power levels and different abilities. Narratively, you have to juggle that.

And it's hard! I get that. It isn't easy. But I'm going to be honest, if a writer can't power balance then I don't want them writing the Titans series.

Because having half the cast drop out of the plot for no reason other than 'they would solve the plot too fast' is not good writing.

And I'm sorry. I'm going to say it. It's because Taylor is power scaling everything back for Nightwing. It doesn't take the entire goddamn Titans team to take out Blockbuster or to take out a single shape shifter. For some reason Taylor has this fascination with Grayson being the best and smartest Titan who can be the only one who solves issues, so every bad guy is difficult but doable for Nightwing to defeat.

It's incredibly annoying and it makes Nightwing seem super unlikable which is... I'm flabbergasted at that because it's Nightwing. How the hell do you make him unlikable?? But this is it. I've found it. This is the limit . Mary Sue Nightwing has no place in my heart.

[mikeellee]

So in regards the leaks and how the general fandom is acting towards Shig and Izu seeing each other memories.

Like, let's dissect here. One thing is bothering me in lieu how the MHA treats redemption arcs is how the victims have no saying in the redemption of the villain(and BK let's not forget what he really is) the fandom wants to babiefied the villains without facing the real consequences.

Won't talk about PoS here. Let's talk about Shiggy.

Fandom says he is groomed by afo and so...he needs to be saved. I talked to @doodlegirl1998 about this. She proposed the idea of afo suggesting things to Shig which...yeah makes sense.

Brainwash trope: it's a trope where a character acts differently from the norm thanks to external reasons. For the trope to work we need to see how the character is before the brainwash.

What we know about Shig before being Shig.

*He is Tenko.

* He has a fluffy corgi

* His family died .

Shig fandom insists Tenko was this paragon of goodness. We are told that btw never showed. "Tenko helped those two faceless and shapeless kids. He is an angel" and the fandom nods.

What we really see of Tenko is how he was abused bc Hori really couldn't make his backstory a clichê. The SHIMURAS are dead and......no one really care. What they bring to the story?

We don't know how Tenko was, really

Then afo took him in.

He didn't groomed Shig. A groomer (if we go by a non sexual way) would be all the steps of the person's life to mold....afo didn't do that. He see him give a really cruel name to Shig, see the Dr give the hands (I so think they laugh at this) and leave him alone with Kuro.

Not grooming.

But afo could have suggested Shig to use his quirk without care.

Which comes to my point .....Shig chose to continue on this path. Shig chose to attack us, to kill those heroes. It's was on him. Afo doesn't have a hold on him...Shig did himself.

And my point is, Shig can't ever get a redemption action if we don't account the victims.

How the victims and their families would feel about a Shig wanting to redeem himself?

Ok imagine that. Everyone forgive Shig...maybe they all see Baby Tenko and are. Heartbroken by his cuteness ...they forgive him as easily as some Shig simps wanted .....what this means to Shig then?

What he would do with this forgiveness? Would he try to change? Would he care? What the story would be if everyone forgive Baby Tenko?

Also.....

I'm profoundly annoyed how Izu has to see the SHIMURAS being murder, how the fans will see this as "oh no. Poor Shig" (don't get me wrong ...it is horrifying as it is....silly. the entire family is dead. It's lazy) and no one will give a shit about Izu's past, just to not break a pattern. We will see the horrific scene of SHIMURAS being killed...a scene Izu will see as well....and doubt we are going to see Izu's past....and if we do see....

Fandom:😒why we are wasting time on this

Or

Fandom:😁proof Izu will save Shig. Go save Shig.