#I'm like... y'know who also think this? Incels

[canichangemyblogname]

FUCKING. Say PERIOD. Say MENSTRUAL. Are y'all afraid of a 'lil blood? Are y'all afraid of a couple words? WHY are y'all helping them stigmatize this process by using euphemisms? FUCKING SAY MENSTRUATION.

The moment a movement leans on epicenity (look it up) to help destigmatize a process that-- like-- most women go through, some of y'all pull out the queerphobia. We have supposed "feminists" crying about "erasing women" because companies stopped using euphemisms for their tampons, cups, pads, etc...

Tell me how "period product" or "menstrual pad" erases women who menstruate? Quickly.

I'm tired of the faux, reactionary outrage. How about y'all just start admitting you're anti-feminist?

[pynkhues]

Why are people so mean about Sam? Even if they hate Lestat, Sam is NOT Lestat. He is an actor. Lestat is a fictional character.

Oh gosh, anon! I mean - - yeah. Mmmm, look, I had a surprise friend over this evening, and have had a few wines, so yeah, let's talk about this.

I think there are a few factors at play overall, but having been here for a while now, honesetly, I think it's a combination of virtue signaling, and a portion of fans feeling like he's simply fair game in a way the rest of the cast isn't.

I don't know, this might end up being a controversial post, but I think it's pretty impossible to deny that a large portion of the animosity in this fandom is directed towards him, and I do think a significant part of that comes down to the fact that this is a fandom who - and I hate this term - considers itself 'woke'. People are very, very conscious about how they're perceived in this sort of landscape, and I do think it effectively leads to that horseshoe theory, where people are posturing to the point of radicalising themselves around things they don't necessarily believe.

In a lot of ways Sam, as the white lead of the show opposite Jacob, Assad and Delainey, becomes symbolic, and the fact that he's got wealth behind him, and - it sounds silly to say, but I think it's true - pretty privilege in being very conventionally handsome, I think eats people up. I think they feel he's symbolic of rich white men in the media landscape and - fascinatingly - I think they still want to fuck him. I think that manifests in a whole bunch of ways (it's obviously very prevalent in the fic that gets posted in this fandom), but particularly in this sort of vitriolic stalking which honestly feels a bit female-incel-y to me.

I think the rest of the cast are targeted in different ways - I answered an ask just last week about how Jacob's opinion is often written off by portions of the fandom because he's British and light skinned, and I've certainly witnessed a lot of colourism in this fandom in every direction. I also personally feel the feminisation of Louis (and Jacob) sometimes (not always! But sometimes) has an element of fetishising his emasculation and subjugation that I personally find actually pretty racist and disturbing, and I think Assad and Armand both are divorced from their South Asian heritage more than Assad should be as an actor, and the show's Armand as a character, and that I've seen (and been sent!) some pretty gross comparisons betwen Delainey and Bailey.

I don't know. I'm not trying to judge or condemn anyone, I just observe and think lot, I guess, and I do think this fandom is made up of a lot of people who grew up on the internet who are arriving with Discourse as opposed to compassion borne from real life experiences. That includes twitter threads over human conversations, porn over sex, and ephemeral 'mutuals' over real friends. I'm not judging that, I hope people know at this point that I never would - it's been a really hard five years - but I do think this sort of aggregation online has resulted in these sorts of subculture pockets of people who live with an idea of what is 'good' and what is 'bad'. And yeah, a part of that means finding Sam hot as a white man from a wealthy background in a show with many POC becomes an issue! BUT, if they can virtue signal over not being interested in Sam, they can fantasise about Lestat, y'know? They can tell everyone Sam's 'bad' as they write their fics about Lestat fucking Louis (or a self-insert, or Louis, as a self-insert) five ways from Sunday, because Lestat's not real, and Sam is, so they remain Moral in the overall Discourse that exists only in the subcultures online.

Oof. Okay, sorry, that's a little harsh, even to me having just written it, haha. Mm, like I said, I think there are a few things at play, but I do think that there is a degree of projection that's pretty impossible to deny, just as I feel Sam is a vehicle for the frustrations people have with the show. I think maybe people are reluctant to explicitly criticise Jacob, Assad and Delainey (again, I stress explicitly, because I think people do it plenty in other ways), and Sam does kind of feel a bit like fair game in that sense. I think he becomes an outlet for people's frustrations with the show in a way the other actors don't, and I think that's tied both to his whiteness and the fact that he's about to be the lead.

I think a lot of that is subconscious though, or at least I hope it is, and built perhaps on anxiety over where the show's going to go over all, especially from people who refuse to see Lestat as the inevitable protagonist.

[dbmars]

DB Reads Hannibal Rising: Philip Larkin Part II

I have some background in poetry -- I have a BA in English and an MA in similar coursework -- and like any good goth kid, I wrote a lot of angsty poetry in high school. In undergrad, I took a class on Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, poets who inhabited similar spaces as wives and mothers in the 1950s and '60s. They both died by suicide, of course, which perpetuates the whole "tortured artist" romanticized image of causing one's own death. 18-year-old me was drawn to that, of course, and depending on how the class was handled, it could have been an irresponsible syllabus to offer young people. But my professor, Tom, was just... wonderful. In a time (2003) when we didn't have a lot of the language we use today to discuss mental health, he did an excellent job handling the topic and giving a middle-aged perspective that brought wisdom instead of perpetuating the narrative built around these poets and their deaths.

Tom taught me so much about poetry and made me feel comfortable speaking up in a class full of strangers. He gave me great feedback on my papers and let me be my weird little self. I took his class on James Agee and he let me do a puppet show version of "Night of the Hunter" for one of the assignments though I honestly cannot remember why I felt I needed to do that. I didn't come here to write about him, but I'm realizing right now, mid-post, that he's a perfect case study for human beings being paradoxically brilliant and kind and inspiring while also being cancel-worthy and gross.

Tom was in his 40s when I had him as a professor in undergrad (2002-2006). Generously, he could have been late 30s and just losing his hair early. He wasn't shy about sharing personal details, and told us he'd been married and divorced already and had kids that I want to say were late high school age, like he got married pretty young. I took Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton with him, along with the James Agee class and a bunch of other ones -- whatever he was teaching, I was there for it in both undergrad and my MA courses. He had a profound impact on my learning and pretty much taught me how to write literary analysis and pull in philosophical or thinking frameworks and apply them in other arenas, swapping them out like lenses in a microscope. Incredible teacher.

But then, one day on Facebook, probably around 2005-ish, I got a friend request from a girl I went to high school with. She was one year older than me and played in the orchestra -- viola to my violin. And in one of her pictures, there was Tom! They were together together... WITH A BABY!

Consenting adults, yes. And you know I'll defend an age gap fic. But it hits different when it's someone you know in real life. And yes, he'd been her professor, too. And it made me start to wonder about all the encouragement and positive attention he paid me, y'know?

So, DB, how the fuck do you plan to bring this back to Philip Larkin and, eventually (we pray) Hannibal Rising?

Like this -- Philip Larkin wrote some of the best poetry I've ever read. He was also kinda gross. Case in point:

I read all the peritext of his collected poems (of course I did) which didn't give me much for context of his life, but I was fine going in cold. I read The North Ship without googling him, but then I reached a poem that made me wonder if he was gay. So of course I had to check. He was never married, but there was no mention in the few sources I checked about having relationships with men. He had relationships with women that seemed tumultuous and involved affairs etc. No judgment but as I kept reading his poems, I'd catch an odd bit here and there that was hitting me like... "Dude, I don't think this guy likes women. I think he's angry that he's attracted to them and can't control it, and he feels entitled to their attention." Basically, here and there these poems would pop up that screamed INCEL. I haven't done a ton of research to see if there are others who find some of his work misogynistic but that's my take. It kinda sucks because I'd be reading along and vibing so much and then BOOM I'd find lines or whole poems that just gave me the grossest feeling. Oh, and his dad was a Nazi supporter and he adopted some of his father's views later in life from what I understand, despite being an avid jazz fan and writing about and interacting with that community (jazz being invented by Black American musicians).

Examples of misogyny: In "Born Yesterday," Larkin wishes that his friend's new baby girl be ordinary. She'll be happier if she's not ugly nor beautiful nor exceptional. I think this concept pisses me off because it's partially true and it shouldn't be. I know for a fact that when I was a hundred pounds lighter people treated me better. I also had a strikingly beautiful friend in junior high who was preyed upon constantly from age 11 on. But I draw the line at wishing a baby girl to be free of talent and live an unexceptional life. Miss me with that shit. Do not deny her potential for female excellence.

In "The Life With a Hole In It" Larkin describes women chastising him for complaining about his life. "But you've always done what you want / You've always got your own way." Larkin tries to shut that down by describing his midlife crisis and suffering the grind of modern living. Considering when this was written, of course, women think he gets to do whatever he wants. Women were (and are) stuck in limited roles that involve physical and emotional UNPAID labor. To them, yeah, he does get to do whatever he wants. And he probably did. To the man I know who mopes around on the couch because his life didn't turn out the way he thought it would, lamenting his wild, lost youth and feeling trapped by the grind, boo-fucking-hoo. While you're feeling sorry for yourself, your wife is in the other room taking care of the kids, so cry me a river. Yeah... sorry, this is a bit personal.

"Deception" is just egregious. SA warning on that one. Empathizing with a rapist and daring to speak for a victim.

"Wild Oats" is the most incel "why don't women want nice guys" poem of the bunch.

The piece I think really captures the sickening lens through which some men view women is "Sunny Prestatyn," which describes a billboard for a seaside town in Wales with a beautiful woman in a suggestive dress kneeling on the sand by the water. Larkin describes how her image is defaced, a hole stabbed through her mouth, mustache drawn on, covered in graffiti, a cock and balls drawn between her thighs. He says, "She was too good for this world." Here's my read. This was the perfect woman, what men say they want, used to advertise for something, her body a decorative exemplar of misogyny. Flawless and beautiful and fun. And that wasn't enough. They had to degrade and destroy her, too. I feel like this is the experience of being a woman. You can spend all day, every day, making yourself look perfect, to be the ideal, to please those with the power, and it's a scam. Even if you achieve perfection, you still don't "win." You don't win respect or power. You don't get a seat at the table. You become a joke. You are defaced.

Maybe I'm missing some kind of irony here, but I really hate this poem.

...........

So... how do all of my insane ramblings fit together? I swear, I'm bringing it back around to the story of Tom. I do find it shocking and scandalous that my poetry teacher got my high school classmate pregnant, but it doesn't undo the good he did me. Never once did I get a vibe from him like he was being flirty. He was never inappropriate. He was a kind man and a good teacher. He also slept with a student and had a love child. Both of these things exist at the same time in my mind, and I'm okay with that. Maybe that means we should consider public figures the same way in our minds. I can be a Philip Larkin fan and also acknowledge that he was kind of a sonofabitch too. Guarantee there are people out there that I encounter on the daily that are like, "Yeah, I do love DB, but sometimes she's just way too much/intense/annoying/adhd." Because we are shades-of-gray real people. Even celebrities, even poets.

......

Philip Larkin died on December 2nd, 1985, the same day I turned two years old. He was an incredible poet.

His poems are, much like the axe piece, bleak. There's a lot of bitterness there, but also this clear and uncompromising lens that calls out the world's bullshit without flinching. I appreciate that, and I like it especially in The North Ship, because young people (including myself) often go through a "jaded" phase where they leave childhood and start to realize what a fucked up place the world is. While as a middle-aged lady, I do think it's funny when young folks write or behave like they're the first ones to figure this out, I also know that it's a powerful era of one's life, this disenchantment. And just because a young person feels something strongly does not give us the right to gaslight them. Remember that first breakup in 8th grade? It hurt so much because it was the first time it'd happened. As you age, you develop some comparable experiences and scar tissue. We can't tell kids to "get over it, nobody will remember who you dated in 8th grade." It hurts because it's the first time! They have nothing to compare it to. Gaslighting them just ensures they're never going to confide in you again.

But Philip never really leaves that jaded-youth-Catcher-in-the-Rye-everyone's-a-phony phase. The back of the book of Larkin's collected poems has a quote from Donald Hall of The New Criterion. It reads, "Larkin is resolute, forthright, witty, and gloomy. This is the man who famously said that deprivation was for him what daffodils were for Wordsworth. Yet surely the results of this life, in the shape of his poems, are gifts, not despirations."

They are gifts. Here are some of my favorites. I put the pictures in a folder on my computer called "He Gets It."

There is beauty in the gloom -- if you're a fannibal, you're well aware. And maybe I'm just a Midwestern mom who has survived many things through relentless optimism and Iowa Niceness, but all this wallowing Philip does in what he should have had or should have done, his status as a lonely outsider looking in, of calling the phonies on their shit, gets tiresome after 200 pages. This is his life's work, and the vibe throughout is just so... bitter and lonely. And while it was understandable at age 20, when you spin that thread from 1943-1974 it's like... dude.

But! At the very back of the book, after the four official collections, I found a section of unpublished or random poems that never made it into a curated grouping. To me, it says that in the end, Larkin understood what life was really about, a ray of empathy melting the snow of his bitterness.

The axe poem works so perfectly for kicking off Hannibal Rising (as I explained in a previous post), but I'm curious how much of Larkin's vibe will be evident in Harris' work, which, I'm also aware, is notoriously problematic as well. See kids, this is why you read the peritext. This is why we deep dive! Now I can read the rest of Hannibal Rising through the lens of "the guy who wrote this was a Philly Larkin fan -- does he see the world the same way, or was he just looking for a poem with an axe in it?"

How Would Hannigram Read Philip Larkin?

I think objectively, Hannibal would admit that the man has a way with words. I also think he would psychoanalyze Philip, and note that he feels entitled to the attentions of women and is bitter and angry about being rebuffed or not finding the relationships he sees everyone else having and thinks he wants or is due. Hannibal might note that Larkin's outsider status as a poet and thinker in the oppressive atmosphere of the midcentury also added to his jaded views. He would note that the man has a uniquely skillful way of expressing these experiences with words that trap the reader like barren winter branches. But Hannibal prefers to think of life as more multi-faceted; he doesn't fear death, and is free to enjoy all the art and beauty and horror the world has to offer.

Will would absolutely vibe with Larkin in many ways. I hate to think of my boy feeling angry towards women for not getting the attention he felt he was owed, for being cast into a "nice guy friend zone" or something, but when he was younger, that might've been the case. Will is an outsider, hovering on the fringes, his empathy making it uncomfortable to be too entrenched in society. Knowing everyone's intentions through the empathy pulse and understanding how selfish most people are makes him withdraw and, like Larkin, bitterly wonder what other people have that allows them to be seemingly happy. What's wrong with me that I can't have what they have?

Or, Will's able to read the normies like a library book and realize how phony and futile a normal life really is. A cookie-cutter existence to both disdain and long for. There's a sorrow in realizing you're not destined for a wife, 2.5 kids, and a picket fence. But from those ashes could rise something new in a phoenix-like blaze -- freedom. Knowing that you can pursue what really makes you happy and fulfilled without feeling like you're missing out on something that isn't all that great to begin with, or that you're not suited for. Accepting that one is "not normal" is a kind of grief, and has to be dealt with in stages. It's not something you get over, but as time goes on, it takes up less space.

Here are the most Hannigram Philip Larkin poems:

Who wants a spoiler for Melopmene's Sword?

The North Ship was published in 1945. Which means Will Graham, living in Paris in 1954, could have a copy on his bookshelf in the bedroom he shares with Hannibal.

If you made it to the end, I love you! I know this was LONG and rambly.

Love, DB

[yanderesimp2000]

Yan Adam x Fem reader Chap 3/5 someone else DARES TO FLIRT ON YOU !MINORS STAY AWAY

CHAP 1 https://www.tumblr.com/yanderesimp2000/745338401920860160/extreme-yandere-adam-x-fem-reader-chap-15-start?source=share

CHAP 2 https://www.tumblr.com/yanderesimp2000/745426251094818816/extreme-yandere-adam-x-fem-listener-chap-25?source=share

Tags, Cuddles, kisses,protective, 9 feet size diff , wing snuggles, daiquiri?!, RIBS?!!,horny listener

TWS, Manipulation, Violence (not on you), someone trys to SA you (NOT ADAM), Alcohol, Yanderery, Adam being a incel and misogynist, blow job, and brainwashed reader

btw this takes place in a universe where Adam won the Battle of Hazbin hotel and killed all the main hazbin hotel cast also PLEASE GIVE ME REQUESTS

my english might be bad I'm from Armenia

BTW RUSSIAN AND ARMENIAN TRANSLATIONS COMING SOON

it been about 3 days since your little "illness" stopped affecting you Adams gonna back to work making your lonely he's only here at night so he cant give you the attention you desperately crave "like a little fly to soda" Adam described your attention craving

His mansion he keeps you locked up in is cool to live in it had 5 floors and everything you could want like,pools a huge kitchen and dinner room, multiple living rooms a indoor theater but it's never engough your just counting down the days Adam dosnet have to do first man stuff for 7 whole days strait and you will get all the attention and love you want

as you sat on your bed watching Tv some reality TV show you here someone unlock the front door "what upppp Baby" It was Adam you rushed over to the door and he gave you a hug "ughhhhhhh today was soooo boring sera was being a bitch again something about You cant banish random people to hell because you dislike them like bitch? im fucking Adam I can do whatever I want I'm god first creation and his favorite so you can go eat shit" the way Adam described sera just made you hate her all you could think was is "how could she disrespect him does she know who he is you should be lucky to be in his presence" but you just said "yeah I know seras a bitch I know I know" Adam was happy to hear that at said "well atleast someone understands even lute is on Sera side"

adam groaned before Slumping down and laying down on the couch before saying " hey babe do we still have so raw ribs in the fridge" he said You then said "I'll check" before opening the fridge to see the rack of ribs he brought home one day you then said "yeah do you want me to make them" you said in your soft caring voice adam LED mask lit up and he said " YES YES YES FUCKIN MAKE THEM" Like a ecstatic puppy when you bring out his food

you then start to cook them Adam always thought that It was your job as a women to do the house work and cook and clean for him and you agreed since for some strange reason you could not remember what you life was like before he Married you so you just blindly agreed to everything he said once you were done seasoning the ribs you put them on the slow cooker for 2 hours before laying down on the couch with him like you always do

he started to snuggle you before telling you the same story's he always tell you "did I tell you about that one time this bitch girl that was Lucifer daughter came over and took me to court over the extermination it was sooooooo annoying then we killed them all and it was fuckin great" he said proud of himself "yes babe youve told me" you said Slightly annoyed

Adam then said "ugh this couch is too small were gonna go to the bed" he then picked you up with one hand like he always does and just carried you over the the bed and placed you on it before also laying down on the bed " your my little teddy bear y'know that small helpless... weak you have to rely on me for shelter safety and protection and that's Just the way I like it" he softly and gently cooed "and the world is dangerous their would be sooo many creeps that would try to take advantage of you and take you away from me so you should never try to leave its too dangerous" he said gently but very firm and something about it your mind just agreed with him " he was right you should stay with him" was all your little brain could think as you nuzzled into him

when you nuzzled into him he was surprised but loved it "ohh someones a little love bug today" he teased before starting to kiss you on your forehead his wings starting to wrap around you two creating a soft little fort as you two were snuggling you noticed some knots and dirt on Adams wings which just bothered you so much you started to clean and prune them this surprised Adam but he just giggled a little "sorry my wings are a little dirty but its always nice to know someone can take care of them for me" you walked out of the bed and grabbed the brush to brush his wings like the good little wife you were he giggled and cooed over this you just dropped everything to clean his wings as you were doing that he felt your wings " if only I could take care of myself like you do I'm a fucking mess" a complained "your wings are so sleek and soft they always look like its your first day in heaven and mine are dirty and rugged" he groaned "but hey I have you and your such a good wife you just clean them for me" he laughed

when you were done cleaning his wings he praised you like you were a toddler "wow I look so pretty, what ever would I do without you, Their so sleek and shiny just like yours,how could you do all of this so quickly" this coddling was interrupted by the buzzing of the oven that had the ribs in them " fuck yeah' he yelled before jumping out of bed and running towards the kitchen as you followed behind him to take them out when you took them out Adam just grabbed one of the burning hot ribs and shoved them in his mouth you looked at him shocked but he said " fucking delicious thanks babe" you heard the ribs FUCKING SIZZLE WHEN HE PICKED THEM UP

Besides that concerning discovery the dinner was pretty good he talked to you and seemed to enjoy the ribs a lot making your heart happy he then groaned "welp that was nice time for bed" you weren't tired and said "w-wait" but I was to late he picked you up and walked to the bed and threw you guys down on it " I said it was time for bed" Adam growled ignoring your protests as he feels asleep you were forced to sit their smushed in-between his arm and his chest For another 3 hours before you finally fell asleep against him

3 days later

it was finally the day were Adam got 7 whole days off no doing angel stuff he promised you guys would go do something and now you were he was dressing you up looking thur dresses while he was in his classic robe attire you guys were going to his favorite club for a date and you were so excited 1 because it was your first time out of his mansion in 2 months and 2 he was actually taking you on a date

adam then showed you a nice baby blue dress that fir very tightly on you he then said "yes yes that's the one so everyone will know how fucking smoking hot you are and THEY CANT HAVE YOU because your alllllllllllllllllll mine" the dress was very tight but you said it was okay because he said it looked cute on you so it had to

He then said "okay were both ready so lets go" you two walked out the door and heaven was just a pretty as it always was the huge building all the gold and marble and just everything as you two walking you heard people mumbling "how did Adam pull that girl" "must of bribed her or something" "wow shes hot shit" but you didn't humor them ignoring them and just focusing on Adam as you two walked to the club which he always talked about so you knew it was gonna be a lovely experience

as you two rounded the corner he said "prepare to be blown out of your fucking mind" then you saw it big flashy signs and a bouncer that said "come in sir" when he saw you and adam" when you two walked in you were seated in one of the best seats in the club were he ordered himself a large daiquiri and you a small red wine you guys drank and talked and listened to music as he blabbered his head off about story's that he told you a billion times but you didn't mind at all and you were with him it was all fine

Adam started to get a little drunk and started to get even more touchy and affectionate then he already was "nice t-t-tits bitch" he said words slurred "T-thank you" you said felling flattered but a little insulted at being called a bitch " can I have my rib back" Adam said before erupting in laughter "its okay even though you came from my r-rib your m-much fuckin hotter then in" he teased again before saying "when we get home I'm gonna fuck ya hard yeahhh gonna knock ya up give ya babys make ya all round gonna baby trap ya then you could Neva leave me" he said words slurred you were slightly annoyed by this and said "Adam having babys would be wonderful but I would never leave you, you know that right?" you said trying to reassure him "yeah yeah I fucking know I was just fucking around bitch" Adam said laughing a little before saying " I gotta fuckin piss I'll be right back" before standing up and leaving

you sat their fiddling with you thumbs waiting for adam to return when an angel came up to you he was unattractive in your standards so you didn't bat an eye that was until he said "hey baby you could do sooooo much better then him you know that" you tried to ignore him but he persisted "he treats you like trash right yeahhh I bet he does I would treat you like the queen you are" you get angry and said "fuck off I'm not going out with you or leaving him" the angel looks offended but then says well then I'll just give it a little sample then before punching you to the ground holding you down before trying to touch you private area he didn't even seem to notice Adam walking over to the stall

2 seconds later he was ripped of you and adam had never looked so angry before "YOU DARE TOUCH MY WIFE IN MY CLUB EVEN AFTER SHE SAID NO" he said in-between punches "Scum like you have no place in heaven" he said before snapping his fingers opening a portal to hell "wait no no no no no no please I'm sorry please nooooooooooo" he said before being sucked in before the portal closed Adam was panting looking like a rapid animal everyone in the club was looking at him " lets go babe" he said before grabbing your hand and flying out of the club back home

When you got home Adam said "fucking scum trying to hit on you I'm sorry you had to see that but he deserved it" he said still fuming "it's okay Adam" you said gently trying to calm him down but God he was so hot when he was angry it just brought out his dominate side which you found so hot he then walked over to the couch and sat down to watch his favorite show

this was your chance you thought he always was the one to ask to fornicate so it was your turn but you were to nervous to directly ask him from Adams perspective he was just sitting on the couch watching his favorite TV show when all of a sudden he felt something you... you were sitting on the floor in-between his legs rubbing your face against his soft bulge looking up at his longingly he was surprised and that well you were asking to fuck he giggled and said "that's one way to ask if you can suck my dick" before taking his underwear revealing his 35 cm dick complete erect he then teased "hope ya don't choke" before grabbed you by the hair and putting your mouth against his dick you gladly opened it and started to suck on it purring and playing with the soft tip arousing Adam even more 'good good girl" he said "I hope ya dont chock on it although that would be cute" he said in a low purr you were to preoccupied to listen and you just kept sucking him off rubbing your tongue against the veins bulging through and the gentle tip tickling him he then said "going all the way in" then shoving his whole dick down your throat you were surprised you did not gag maybe heaven does not have a gag reflex you thought while sucking it "that's it baby this is your dessert after all those drinks" he said as the bead of precum went down your throat it was so nice to have all his love and affection and to pleasure him it was just an addicting feeling Adam then blurted out " are you ready for you dessert " before pulling his dick partially out before cumming all onto your tongue letting you taste it "don't you dare spit it out" Adam said firmly as more ropes of cum went into your mouth. by the end your mouth was filled with his sticky salty cum you started to gulp it down as he cleaned himself up he laughed and said "Ya like your dessert because your gonna eat that EVERY DAY" before saying "its getting late lets go to bed

BONUS BC I LOVE YOU

as he was sleeping your played with his bulge it was soft and warm kinda like a pillow he was enjoying it as he blurted out "ugh yess" once and awhile it was just the perfect pillow you finally rested on his bulge using it like a pillow and fell asleep

[kaija-rayne-author]

Why was Isseya 'done dirty' in DAV?

Obligatory 'I'm not an asshole' disclaimer. Feel free to jump to the cut if you've read it.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It's fantastic. I'm also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I was on media blackout while I played DAV. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Though, every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking 'have you bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?' My guess is nope.

Note. None of my writing on DA, but especially DAV, is edited. This is just my off the cuff writing. I don't have the time, energy, or heart to edit them properly.

Spoilers for Last Flight and the Gloom Stalker storyline.

CW on ableist language. I had to use it to be clear.

CW on strong language.

CW on tired writing tropes that hurt people.

This one is a little more personal. I've already been told to go touch grass because I have a problem with that game sequence. And dared to try to politely explain why a lot of people feel Isseya was done dirty in it. (By other mentally ill people because, y'know, back biting and infighting is exactly what we need to do to each other.) And someone defending that sequence hit me harder than I really thought it did. That's often the way with trauma.

I'm mentally ill. Not a surprise to many, I'm sure. I'm extremely mentally ill. (By which I mean I have several, and will be on life-long medication for them.) I'm an advocate for several things I live with, and mental illness is one of them.

But I'm doing my best to not slide into a pit of absolute depression, right now.

Just saw someone passionately defending the Gloom Stalker storyline.

It made me as physically nauseated as the actual storyline itself.

Look. You can like/love problematic material. Just understand it's problematic and maybe not defend it?

It's fine to just like trashy material, or poorly written, or whatever. But that doesn't mean you defend it!

You can even recommend it. (I usually choose not to, but it's a personal choice thing.) If you recommend it, just add the addendum that it's problematic and how! It’s truly simple.

Enjoyment is subjective. And what that means is that it's fine to like stuff. Even if it's not good, or it's problematic.

But I personally think it's kinda our responsibility as decent human beings to do our best not to harm people as well.

And defending the Isseya/Gloom stalker storyline in DAV is absolutely problematic and harmful. Even if you don't know why.

Other people might have different reasons for saying Isseya was done dirty in that sequence. But mine are for both story and ableism reasons.

I'll explain, in case you're not in the mood to read my play-by-play (long) review series about DAV.

Isseya is a Grey Warden character from the book Last Flight by Liane Merciel, released by TOR/Dark Horse books and set in the Dragon Age Franchise.

She's the sister of the Grey Warden, Garahel, who partnered with Crookytail. There's a statue of Crookytail in DAV. It was one of the very few emotional moments for me in that game (other than utter horror and rage at the shittiness). I teared up at seeing that statue. At least they honoured Crookytail.

Isseya is an elven mage who, over the course of the book, delves further into blood magic than she should. The wardens are losing the fight. Once she learned she could do it, and once the First Warden learned she could, she was ordered to blight all the living griffins. Griffins were/are semi-resistant to blight. This went so against the griffins instinct against darkspawn/blight that it utterly destroyed them. Isseya was heart broken, horrified, and very against it. But she, like other Grey Wardens, could see they were losing. She followed orders. Neglecting to blight a few of them. Hers, Crookytail. Maybe a few others, it's been a few since I read Last Flight. I've read it twice.

Garahel and Crookytail take down the arch demon of the fourth blight, Andoral. Sacrificing their lives to do it.

Isseya, grief stricken at several events in the book (death of close brother, death of Crookytail, being forced to blight the griffins, the blood magic hastening her own fall into blight and hurrying her calling along) goes to extreme lengths to save the last griffins. Hoping that, at some future point in time, Wardens will be worthy of griffins again. Because they'd proven themselves completely unworthy of them in the book by utterly destroying their species.

Isseya saves Crookytail's last fathered clutch of eggs. (By Garahel's lover's griffin, Revas, if I recall correctly?) Those are the griffins in DAV. Assan is Crookytail's and Revas' son. (Really hope I'm not mixing up Garahel's lover's name with the griffin's name. I'm terrible with names to start with and it must have been 2 years since I read Last Flight. Hells, Revas mighta been Isseya's griffin. I didn't enjoy Last Flight that much. And I'm too fucking tired to look it up.)

Because of their shame in destroying the entire griffin species (because they intentionally don't know that Isseya saved that last clutch of eggs) the Wardens created the pile of unhonoured, unremembered bones that we see in DAV in the Cauldron.

It's not my favourite of the books, but it is beautifully written, tragic, but with a gleaming golden line of hope running through it. (It’s also why I would never choose to allow Wardens to have griffins again. Ever. They don't deserve them and they've already proven it to the almost extinction of their species.)

They didn't even have the decency to honour the griffins they destroyed who fell defeating the fourth blight. Which was actually all of them except those thirteen? eggs that Isseya saved. It's utterly disgusting. I believe the Cauldron is meant to be. If I recall correctly, that arch-demon skeleton is the same one Garahel and Crookytail died to defeat.

That's where whoever wrote that ableist travesty of a storyline went wrong. Up until then, the story made some sort of sense.

I can actually see Isseya stealing the griffins. If, out of fear, she'd watched the Wardens who found them, and finds that, no, maybe they don't deserve them, yeah, I could see her stealing them. She'd already done so much to save them, you see.

Story wise, it's just shitty writing to have her stab a blade into the bones of a 400 year old arch-demon skeleton and get liquid blood.

It's shitty writing to use such a harmful fucking trope, too.

She then, because 'she went mad from grief and guilt' because she's 'crazy' intends to blight the griffins she fought so hard to save?

Excuse me, now? Does that make any kind of sense to anyone?

Oh, but it's because she's mad! Crazy!

Y'all do know that both mad and crazy mean mentally ill, right? That they're innately ableist words that have been weaponized against mentally ill people for centuries, right?

If you didn't, you do now, please do better.

So let's break that down.

1. There is no Lore that indicates that the blight makes someone crazy/mad. Nor automatically into rage monsters. A being can become blighted in two ways. One is the regrettably written Broodmothers that BioWare has been trying to get away from forever. A being can also become a darkspawn by being blighted. Usually it kills, but in a small percentage of intellectual beings, it turns them into darkspawn, instead. But BioWare replaced the whole Broodmother concept with the 'anyone can be blighted into turning into a darkspawn.' Meaning it is Canon. That's what Wardens willingly do to themselves. They turn themselves into darkspawn. It just takes a while to set in.

Blight, in the Lore, basically makes the blighted hear 'the song' and only the song. That's what The Calling is. A Warden hearing the song and becoming a darkspawn. That's how it's always been depicted. Anyone 'losing their mind' (and please, just stop and think about how ableist that concept is, too? For a second? Please?) to the blight is just overwhelmed by the song requiring them to dig for arch-demons. (Unless there's an ascended arch-demon, but I'll get to that.) This is clearly laid out in the Lore and even, IIRC the book Last Flight itself. There are a few darkspawn who can resist what must be the worst case of tinnitus ever. There's The Architect, blighted, completely sane, not a rage ridden beast, and also diametrically opposed to anything the unblighted want. There've been stories of Hurlocks (blighted humans) working on behalf of the unblighted. The blight doesn't drive people mad/crazy in the Lore. At all. That excuse doesn't hold water.

Darkspawn don't turn into raging, bloodthirsty monsters until an arch-demon rises. Again, this is well established in the Lore. It's something about the arch-demon that makes them like chad-bros with bad attitudes, testosterone poisoning, and probably steroid abuse on top of it. Without an arch-demon (who we now know is bound to an incredibly pissed off Evanuris) they basically dig. Dig, and dig some more. Sometimes they raid for supplies. That's how it is in the Lore. And yes, I can actually prove it. Am I going to? With specific links and references (which i really could do) no. Not unless someone wants to pay me. I just don't care enough. I have, unfortunately, marinated myself in the Lore for years. It's been a long standing autistic special interest. I honestly wish, after playing DAV, that I could forget it all. Alas, it's not likely.

2. The basic premise of Isseya being 'mad/crazy from 400 years of 'guilt and grief' is ableist from the start. Saying that grief and guilt can drive people to mental illness isn't problematic, because it can. But saying that she's driven to violence and horrific actions because of it is just harmful. Saying that the blight automatically drives someone mad with rage/anger is also ableist. There isn't anything wrong with rage or anger. It can drive us to do awful things, but also good things like political advocacy. And in one of the supplementary pieces, it's established that darkspawn don't usually feel anything. They just... dig. They dig even while they're starving to death. Rage and anger? Yeah, those are emotions. And they also don't make you insane. Oh, but there are ascended arch-demons in DAV, therefore it must be fine to say Isseya is mad because the arch-demons being free alter the darkspawn into raging, bloodthirsty beasts. Right?

Except that's not what was clearly said to be the reason Isseya is supposedly mad/crazy. That was grief and guilt. Ableism is fun, no? /s

I'm not even sure if Elgar'nan's and Ghilan'nain's dragons really count as arch-demons despite the game calling them that. The rage of an arch-demon was likely that of the Evanuris it was bound to. Ghilly and Eggy are free, and upset, yes, but not rage stricken anymore. I'd think the 'arch-demons' in DAV to be just blighted dragons. But we all know how poorly they actually adherred to the Lore, anyway.

3. There isn't any mental illness I'm aware of that could make someone who sacrificed so much trying to save the last griffins because of her part in destroying them, want to then destroy them. It's like saying that mental illness can make people completely ignore sacred, bone deep beliefs enough to do the exact opposite of what they've committed to doing with everything in them. It's problematic, harmful, and ableist as fuck.

It's always the crazy/mad (mentally ill) villain. Always. I'm so nauseatingly sick of it. It's a tired, harmful trope that gets mentally ill people killed every single day.

Violence isn't a part of most mental illnesses, you know. It just isn't. The most mentally ill people usually want is basic respect and dignity, no problems refilling our meds, maybe tea, fluffy socks, and a good bit of entertainment to distract us.

The 'mad/crazy villain' trope robs us of basic dignity and respect. I'm so very, very tired of it. Whoever wrote and Whoever approved that sequence in DAV should absolutely be ashamed of themselves for it. It hurt and nauseated me to play it. It probably hurt and nauseated a lot of mentally ill gamers. And we're not a small percentage of gamers, in general.

And yes, it absolutely did Isseya dirty. In the shitty writing, (blood from bones, really? Really really? Marrow would be dried to dust or a rocky texture, and it's not impossible to stab through bone, but it's certainly unrealistic). The usage of a tired, harmful, ableist trope, too. In the claim that she'd been driven so mad she'd turned eeeeevvvvviiiillll by...checks notes... grief and guilt. Okay then. Yeah. That's perfectly fine. (That was the ripest of sarcasm. It is not fine. It gets people killed.) And it completely obliterated a beautiful, tragic story with a gleaming thread of hope into... that. Having to kill the person responsible for saving the griffins and sacrificing so much to do it... it's grotesque as well as harmful and ableist.

Can someone please explain to me, using small words, how that's not doing Isseya dirty?

Do you know that mentally ill people are responsible for 3% of violent crime? The rest is on all you neurotypicals. The whole 97%.

Yet it's always, because of ham handed, harmful narratives like the Gloom Stalker sequence in DAV, the mentally ill who are first blamed for anything violent. If they don't say it's autistic people. Because that's the other group that is always blamed, again, because of harmful narratives in fiction and misunderstanding by people who don't bother to learn better. Autistic people are almost hard wired to avoid hurting others. We're generally your classic white knight, tilting at windmills type. Everyone can be driven to violence. Humans are an innately violent species. So, while yes, we can be driven to it, it takes so much more to do it than it would for a neurotypical that it's ridiculous to automatically accuse either mentally ill or autistic people of violence.

Lucky me, I'm both.

Do you have any idea how much it hurts to be part of such an abused minority? Two of them? Do you have any clue how much narratives like that one are overused? What ham-handed, harmful, ableist claptrap they are?

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find media to enjoy that doesn't hurt when you happen to be mentally ill?

If you do know, I'm so, so sorry. I get it. And I deeply wish none of us had to.

So that's why Isseya was 'done dirty'. Other people's why might be different, but I bet a lot of people's are similar to mine.

My work of words is my only income. I'm recovering from a pulmonary embolism and my husband is recovering from a broken back. Money is so tight it squeaks. If my writing does anything for you, please consider a tip or buying my books. You might actually like them.

And I will never, ever, use 'mentaI illness turned me eeeevvvviiiilll' in my work.

I'm better than that. Oh, what... I'm supposed to not make a moral judgement about work that hurts people and gets them killed? Fuck that.

Did that offend your precious feelings? Go touch some grass.

[theliterarywolf]

>"The men that are complaining about her face are by and large anime obsessed, porn addicted, hentai consuming freaks

>They've spent so much of their waking hours watching/consuming that shit to the point its effected how the view women and/or women drawn a bit more realistically

>They're pathetic in every sense of the word and their opinion should never be considered"

Y'know I don't care about Hades 2 because I haven't gotten around to playing Hades 1 yet (someday, I swear). I've heard the discourse but I don't even know what Aphrodite looks like in 2, and I can't be arsed to look.

I don't really have a horse in this race.

But considering the past decade has been a non-stop cavalcade of "If you dare to actually like pretty women you're an incel gooner misogynist and probably a pedophile" being pushed by insufferable, condescending cunts? And even just these past few weeks has been "Lmao @ All the manbabies crying over Stellar Blade censoring two inches of cleavage" when in reality it was far, far more than that for a game that straight up advertised itself as being uncensored? Fuck you just on principle, Anon! Go fuck yourself and take your stank-ass unwashed radfem coochie elsewhere and stay the fuck away from Lit! Don't infect her with your germs, you'll make her stupid! If I could I'd go Kendrick Lamar "Not Like Us" on your sorry ass because I just KNOW you got some fucking skeletons in YOUR closet! Everyone who vomits up this bullshit always does! I'm cool with you, Lit. Like I said I don't really care about Hades discourse and don't really have anything to add beyond "You'd think they'd argue that Hepheastus isn't ugly enough."

Whoa, hey, hey, hey! I'd like to think that people don't think of me as the type to be brainwashed by one or two anons, my God..!

Also, I didn't know that that was the reason that people had turned on Stellar Blade. Yeah, that's pretty fucking shitty. But, I have to ask... Did anyone who was looking forward to the game not think that that would happen? Sony has been on an anti-sex schtick for the past 8 years, of course they were going to censor Stellar Blade!

To give perspective on the issue, here are the two versions of Aphrodite from Hades.

Hades (I)

Hades II

If anything, the only difference between these two is that Aphrodite's first appearance is more of a 'naughty college girl just out of high school' and her second appearance is 'I've finally found the dick of my dreams, so I'm ready to settle down and be a MILF mommy~!'

Which makes sense if you go under the train of thought of her face makeup and spear in II being an homage to Ares...

But, yeah, there's nothing about either depiction of this character that screams 'man-face' like the piss-baby engagement-chasers on Twitter have been screeching about.

'Weh, high cheekbones, tho...' Bitch, so you're telling me every other Hollywood actress before 2020 has secretly been a man? Starting to sound like one of my coworkers back when I worked in the 'healthy-living industry' who swore up, down, and sideways that Michelle Obama was actually a man.

[hieronymus-botch]

Recently watched the episode of Buffy where Jonathan becomes a mary sue and I unironically think it reflects really well on him as a character. Most people's hyper-idealized fantasy worlds would involve some amount of unethical actions or spiteful revenge against people who wronged them, but his just... doesn't. And like, the obvious thing to do with an episode premise like this and characters like these would be to have Buffy either immediately leave Riley for him or already be dating him in this reality, but instead he gives them heartfelt relationship advice that actually gets them out of a rough patch! And also he, y'know, willingly sacrificed his perfect world to save the Scooby Gang. I'm told in season 6 he becomes some sort of incel terrorist, and idk maybe it makes sense in context but to me that seems wildly out of character for the Jonathan we've seen so far.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Valid Critique

For all I am still hugely excited about having Silent Hill 2 (and frustrated beyond all reason at some of the bullshit going on around it, which I will go into momentarily), I'm a little less mopey and a little more accepting, if grudgingly, of my various limits. I pushed too hard the last few weeks and I need an actual rest, so today was largely about putting together some homemade instant hot chocolate mix (because 'tis the season for the warm drinks to come out) and playing Wildermyth.

Part of those limits is the bloody flu vaccine. My left arm still hurts, mostly around the injection site, and while I'm feeling a bit better after way more sleep than I suppose most people tend to need, I'm still a little wrecked. I mean, don't get me wrong - if the vaccine hits me this hard, it's just as well to get it because a bad case of flu would probably be a nightmare. Just ... you know. Same old "everything bad is intensified and I hate it" complaint. So after measuring and sifting and cleaning various powders off my countertops, a game with relatively simple gameplay and still a reasonable amount of story was pretty much just the thing.

As to Silent Hill 2, obviously I still want to keep playing it, and I will, once I feel a little better. I don't know how long that'll take, but it will still be there. I think part of my grumpiness about it is wanting to in some way stick it to some of the aforementioned bullshit surrounding it. The neckbeards are one thing - even if "vandalising the entire Wikipedia page with false review scores and incel rants" just makes me roll my eyes so hard they're in danger of falling out of my head. Like, they're pretty clearly taking a leaf out of the current Republican Party handbook - if the facts don't match up with their beliefs? Lie your ass off. They're just getting louder and angrier lately because of how obvious it is becoming that they are no longer the majority, and honestly never were. While corporations are never going to be anybody's friends, they do at least acknowledge that half of the people doing the bitching about how "woke" gaming has become either had no intention of buying the game in the first place or will buy it regardless of how "woke" it is, and thus actually being inclusive will get them more money in the long run. The neckbeards tried a certain amount of lying with statistics in the form of, "Look at this huge percentage of people who don't really care about that DEI shit!" but the wording they're using makes it pretty clear that that huge percentage of people may not be desperate for it, but certainly aren't against it either - not the way the neckbeard assholes are. Most of us can put up with a game that doesn't go out of its way to be inclusive because we've been doing so for decades - we're used to the eye candy and the carbon-copy YAGWD protagonist, anyway. The thing is, most of us also understand that it's not "shoehorning in minorities where they don't belong" because ... y'know, people who aren't Yet Another Grizzled White Dude do actually exist, and seeing them shouldn't be the end of the fucking world.

Then there's the Guardian review. Now, I mostly trust the Guardian on reviews ... but I admit that a lot of those are for lesser-known indie titles. Whoever wrote the review for the Silent Hill 2 remake seemed to have been going out of his way to look at nothing more but the surface level of the game. Honestly, it's not that the reviewer didn't like the game that bothered me; it's that the review itself was apparently just an excuse to shit on a game from a great height and get paid for it. My old Theatre Studies teacher would have looked over his review and not only given it a failing grade, but read it out to the entire class as an example of what not to do. It was fairly clear that as someone who had heard all the hype but was "too young to play it at the time", that he had very different expectations of what "an excellent video game" looks like. If he'd talked at all about his expectations instead of "I don't care about Angela; I've got enough to do looking for my two-dimensional maybe-dead wife and for some reason doing busywork like gluing together records", or if he'd explained why he felt those elements didn't work, I'd respect it, even if I didn't agree. But for fuck's sake, if you're going to critique something, critique it; don't just lob a few insults at it and call it a day. Especially not when you're getting paid for it. You want to just insult a game you didn't like? That's your right, but go do it on Steam or Metacritic like everyone else.

I mean, is it wrong that the main reason I get upset about this type of behaviour isn't out of protectiveness of a game / book / franchise / even person I admire and more out of wanting a better debate partner than this? Like, I will hear you out all day if you give me some kind of explanation; I will be grateful for the new perspective, even if I don't agree, and then we can at least have a discussion about how our respective viewpoints affect our enjoyment of the ... whatever it is we're discussing. But just insulting it leaves no room for discussion--

Whiiiiiiiich is why they do it. It's harder to challenge a definitive but subjective-as-fuck statement. They don't want a debate; they want to be right. Well, fine. I like being right too. But things you like aren't things to be 'right' or 'wrong' about, and if I'm going to feel obliged to justify my enjoyment of something, I want a decent debate with a rational human being, not a kid on the playground using offensive language as an everything-proof shield against an opinion that wouldn't even really hurt them if they were as firm in their opinion as they make themselves out to be but which they can't even listen to for some reason.

Gods, some people's egos are weird.

[monarch-boo]

Wheee rant time I'll write a calmer more condensed version of this later since its gonna be real important to get in people's heads before / by the time DRDR is out, but this keeps making me upset to think about so I'm gonna be a little bitchy first.

Anyway jesus fucking christ Paul is NOT a fucking incel it's so STUPID that people somehow interpret that.

I fucking hate how the interpretation came about to because its LITERALLY just

"hurr dhburr metalhead stereotype nerd stereotype and the people he snapped at happen to be women (and also Frank but let's just totally ignore that he thinks Frank is there to bully him too ehhh WHATEVER)"

That's literally it. Like what else is there for that assumption to work? And like I emphasized, it completely ignores Frank's role in the whole situation.

I don't even get why it happens either! Lots of the other bosses throughout the game have basically everybody fully understanding the stories and nuances of who they are and why they behave how they do, I've even seen some people do analysis videos and posts, like ___ Explained shit.

Why not Paul? Do I have to make one? I almost wanna make one, I'll fucking pore through everything of him in the game, hold people's hands through the opening cutscene and play all the voice clips that demonstrate further what's actually happening and read out like a whole fucking essay with fucking Speakonia because I don't wanna record my actual voice, maybe I WILL fucking do it one day but I'll at least wait until DRDR incase there's new lines (there is the random dialogue drops survivors can give during escorts, we saw in that one Natalie screenshot- I wonder if there's anything besides prestige point hints and if so if there's anything interesting Paul will say).

Like I'm genuinely fucking scared of how many brand new players coming in for DRDR are gonna get him wrong because of some surface level kneejerk reaction shit nobody will actually think and listen to the things he says or bother to do any real character analysis. I might actually stick to No Commentary playthroughs for a while if I wanna watch other people play because the commentated ones make me nervous now.

PAUL IS NOT A FUCKING INCEL HE IS A BULLYING VICTIM TAKING RETALIATION TOO FAR (or at least he would have if Frank hadn't intervened), IT'S ALSO HEAVILY IMPLIED HE IS JUST COMPLETELY DELUSIONAL IN THE MOMENT, DEBBIE AND MINDY ARENT GETTING TARGETED FOR BEING WOMEN THEY ARE COMPLETELY RANDOM WRONG-PLACE-WRONG-TIME BYSTANDERS OF SOME SORT OF PSYCHOTIC BREAK. THAT'S WHY THEYRE SO CONFUSED WHAT THEY DID, WHY HE ACTS AS IF FRANK IS IN ON IT, AND WHY HE IS SO CONFUSED AND REGRETFUL OF WHAT HAPPENED WHEN HE SNAPS OUT OF IT. LIKE ACTUALLY WATCH THE CUTSCENES AND DIALOGUE AND ENGAGE WITH IT ALL FOR MORE THAN TWO SECONDS.

Please Capcom I am on my knees begging DRDR to make this somehow even more obvious and harder to misinterpret by adding new ingame boss/escort lines or making the existing ones more frequent because almost nobody hears the other lines that convey his character more because the game barely ever fucking plays them.

His existing OG DR1 voice lines have some absolute gold in them characterization wise but OG DR1 largely shunts them in favor of HERE'S A PRESENT FOR YA, YOU GO BOOM NOW times infinity. The fact that they often go so unheard that they don't quell the surface level conclusions sucks so much, make the other ones play more in DRDR and maybe even record some whole new ones that are even more obvious.

I mean, jeez, to people who actually pay attention and think for more than a second just that opening cutscene gives you all the info you really need to interpret him and his whole deal correctly, but APPARENTLY that isn't enough for like 80-90% of the playerbase so I hope DRDR has something, anything, to drive the point home even further, y'know?

I'm so tired. I hate how one of my biggest comfort characters is also like one of the most misunderstood and incorrectly-interpreted characters of the whole fucking franchise.

[5eraphim]

(Feel free to ignore this if you don't want to share, but I'm so curious!) What the HELL was that phantom of the opera fic about that made someone write an entire essay about 😭😭?

(while i'm alright mentioning that one time someone linked me a google drive multi-page document that was critical of a 5k word phantom of the opera x reader insert i wrote when i was 16, (i think i delete the original post for some reason? but i still have the SRB vers. with an extra note) bc like i said, i didn't read the doc bc even as a dumbass teenager, i knew if i tried to be fair and read the doc i'd just upset myself, and realistically learn nothing (and this whole event is extremally funny 7 years later) i would also like to reiterate, people who were in creative spaces online around the early-mid/late-mid 2010s know how freakishly normal it was to see grown ass adults compiling random ocs and fanarts and making lengthy videos railing on them for the sake of "constructive criticism" (i watch those videos too, i'm not saying i didn't participate/or that i'm above this or whatever) but it was really just so needlessly meanspirited, and made fandom-spaces, like y'know, hobby spaces so lame.)

ANYWAYS- i don't remember what exactly i wrote (bc thank GOD everything i wrote before this account has basically been lost to the sands of time, and i'd rather run into a burning building than try to find my old stuff and be face-to-face with whatever the hell i was writing back then)

but from what i remember the plot was basically phantom watching reader sleep and just having a big dramatic monologue about it. and also i'm pretty sure thought about cutting her head off in her sleep? like i remember vaguely writing a tangent while he was wondering how hard it would be to cut through the cervical vertebra that was like, "if you gave me the chance to pluck the bones from your neck, i'd cherish holding them with my bare hands. i wish i could cradle every little piece of you like that"

that's honestly the one part i really remember, it was like that and a lot of "i'm such a monster, how could she stomach sharing a bed" and other such emo, incel-y ramblings. i think i just wanted to write something about sharing a bed with a girl and wanting to rub my grubby undeserving hands through her hair and kiss her neck and shoulders. (and the fact it took me over a year later to realize i was bi, makes this so much funnier to me)

it was that sentiment but with much edgier, very chuck palahniuk-pilled prose.

(i'm not saying i didn't DESERVE an essay-length take down of what i wrote, i'm saying im just glad i didn't read it)

[ex-angels-anonymous]

For Azazel, if I can ask him something

Because I wanna know how he/you got into piercings and when you decided to do it as a job

Would be cool to know

Oh, yeah of course... This one takes me way back...

Okay, so, picture this, right: Me, my buddies, we're all down on Earth, pre-Raphael and Michael beating the shit out of us. In heaven I used to make some of the gemstone decorations and metalwork, like, someone needs a kickass crystal chandelier for their huge, pretentious hallway that leads to their huge, pretentious throne room? I got you. I mean not like I really had a choice, but, it wasn't something I hated doing, I liked it.

At the time I did it out of reverence. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but, at the time I really did love God, and creating beautiful objects to glorify Him was something I was good at, and it earned me some points with the guy...

So, I'm on Earth as a Watcher, and I meet these funny little people called humans. And so does everyone else, and we're standing around like, "We can't NOT fuck these guys, yeah?" We even had a whole meeting about it. Multiple. At the time I had my eye on this gorgeous human woman...

And DAMN did I want to glorify her.

So when I asked if there was anything she wanted, anything she thought would be a sick supernatural boon, (because my friends were all doing it and Baraqiel had already taught his human about how not to die from a lightning strike and Samyaza had taught his some fairly advanced agriculture techniques,) and she was like, "Can you make my hair purple and deck me out in jewels?" I was like, "Say less."

And that's where hair dye comes from, which I know you didn't ask about, yeah, but, I'm getting to the good part.

So, I work for days on these gorgeous pieces alongside her; bracelets, necklaces, bells and gemstones that go on the edges of clothing, I made some of this really gorgeous eye shadow with flecks of gold, paint that goes on lips... And at the end of it, I'm looking at her, she looks so excited, and goes to show all her friends... I'm so in love with this beautiful person...

And then I think... Hmm... She seemed to really like that. What if there were MORE places she could wear jewelry?

So I ran the idea by her, and she was down with it, and I forged some needles and we got started with some earlobe piercings. That caught on real quick. It got so popular humans started doing it to each other. And after the earlobe thing, we went back and did some cartilage, then the septum... It was her idea, the eyebrow....

It all got pretty popular, as I'm sure you're now aware.

Y'know how the fucking INCELS in heaven spun it when I went on trial?! "AZAZEL!!! YOU ARE TEACHING WOMEN HOW TO LIE AND DECIEVE WITH THEIR ORNAMENTS!! IT IS LEADING TO THE DEGENERATION OF SOCIETY, GODLESSNESS, FORNICATION!!!!" My defense at first was "Well, technically, it's not just women who wear them! See! Look! Men like it too!" And God DAMN was that the wrong thing to say...

It's wild because, I also taught my wife and a good deal of other humans how to make other things from metal. Like knives and armour... And yet, when I got put on trial, that shit ALL sat on the backburner for a good while while I got to listen to Raphael's incel rant about how teaching the humans about makeup was "sexually immoral" and "corrupting" and how because I did that, /I/ was to blame more than ANY of the other Watchers for humanity being "evil."

-Azazel

In 1 Enoch, Azazel is credited with teaching humans how to make jewelry, and body modifications like hair dye and makeup, among other things like swords, armor, and witchcraft. There is also a kinda pathetic incel rant which reads like something off a 4chan MGTOW board against Azazel and his humans which I highly suggest you look up / read. It's pretty misogynistic.

-Author

[saraa-lancee]

ngl it's funny that you're willing to demonise all autistic people just to make sure a label is only applied to hyperspecific situations. being autistic is not an excuse to be weird towards women or cross boundaries - can it help explain it? yes. but autistic incels exist and implying they don't and normalising that sort of behaviour as an autistic trait 1) is ableist, and implies that autistic people have no control over their own behaviour, and 2) invalidates victims and survivors of sexual violence at the hands of men who happen to be autistic. its also dangerous.

just saying. mentality like that meant that, as an autistic teenager, I allowed close friends to take advantage of me because the line was blurred and it was much easier to rationalise and excuse. and it's scary to me to see that culture normalised because it stems from the patriarchal definition and understanding of autism. autistic people know right from wrong and do not hurt people by default.

I'm not attacking you, but rather hoping to just offer an alternative perspective. I hope you are having a nice day.

Lmao hello Anon.

I'm going to provide an "alternate" for you-- I didn't demonize autistic people. I am an autistic person who has struggled with understanding boundaries in the past. I am defending autistic people by pointing out that Weird and Incel are Aboslutely Not The Same, which, if you y'know, read, is the entire point of the whole fucking post! But please, tell me you enjoy conflating Wierd Characters with violent rapists. I'm here all day-- I can't wait to read this.

I also, literally in that post, pretty much said exactly what you said. No where did I say all autistic people intentionally hurt people. In fact, I believe I even stated that when Autistic people *do cross* boundaries, it's not always intentionally. But let's also not pretend that autistic people never hurt others. I'm sorry that happened to you anon, I really am. Lots of autistic people also have stories like that, and it's disgusting people are so ready to take advantage of us. I'm also sorry that you think I don't know this perspective already as an autistic Afab person-- nice assumption about me and my life. But I think you're the one who might need the new perspective here if you don't seem to realize that yeah, autistic people absolutely can be the perpetrators in a blurred line situation. Unfortunately, lots and lots of people also have stories were the were hurt *by* an autistic person. "Hurt" as in physically or psychologically (not just sexually), because as a 5 foot nothing woman having a tall man (autistic or not) forcefully grab you in public or start screaming at you can be fucking terrifying.

Autistic people aren't just victims, anon. Acting like we can only be victims is kinda like... infantilizing or something. Sorry, but in an uncertain consent situation, an autistic person can also Assault someone because they didn't understand enthusiastic consent (ie, don't understand the nuances of YES! Vs Well, okay... or how consent can become questionable in situations where substances are involved). This all assumes innocence as well-- believe it or not, some autistic people are like, bad people (they also still deserve to be viewed like full adults but also viewed fairly rather than ostracizated unfairly).

My bad, im just rambling. Once again, reading comprehension. You're just intentionally ignoring my origional point, which is that you absolutely cannot just call a character who you deem weird an Incel. Which is the entire fucking point of the post but once again, fantastic selective reading Choice. When I said we shouldn't view Weird Character as a violent proponent of Rape and violence against women, I was 100% definitely demonizing Autistic people. (I remember literally saying "this doesn't apply just to autistic people" with the specific stipulation that he is autistic coded to me, but being autistic isn't the only factor here, proving that you literally chose not to read/to assign language I didn't use and a viewpoint I don't have to me. As an autistic person, this is black and white, and that's *not what I fucking said*. Try again anon).

Again. The entire point was defending "weirdos". Since, y'know. Most Weirdos (affectionately, as a weirdo myself) are demonized (being labeled as an Incel is definitely a demonization, btw. Which again. Was the POINT OF THE FUCKIN POST).

Idk why I'm writing this, you people will read whatever you want from it and not what I'm actually saying, so whatever. Autistic people are unfairly victimized by society-- including this whole Incel business. You were victimized, and I am sincerely sorry for that. But if we view autistic people as, y'know, dynamic people, we have to accept it goes both ways and come to the understanding that all this isn't even about all that. It's about refusing to assign extreme malcontent to someone based on Wierd.

Anyway, long live the weirdos demonized in popular culture. Long live everyone who's been shunned and judged for "acting wierd" and long live everyone who's exclusion erased their chance for a "normal" "adjusted" life.

Have a good day, *anon*.

[warpweight]

my soul was weak. forgive me

​i PERSONALLY cannot see erik going incelmode because 1. would not join a "community" and 2. until christine he seems to kind of adamantly be like Women DNI? Humans In General DNI? he's not an incel or MGTOW or redpilled or blackpilled he's like... an obscure forum poweruser. he's accumulating clout and bans alike. mods hate him. mods love him. he's pitting the mods against each other for sport.

like if we're talking internet as a tool for his Behaviors then sure yeah he's stalking but he's stalking like. one woman. not that that's like GOOD lmao but it's an isolated case? kind of a freak one-off? not a pattern, unless it's like enrichment stalking as in like hunting for SPORT. but that doesn't count because it's objectively funny and also based to hunt and scare and kill any given member of the koch family

i don't think he can be like qanon radicalized because the most likely position for him anywhere there is Guy Who Started It As A Bit, and i think the tradeoff of power vs cringe there is not worth it for him? i know often in fic there's this sense of him grasping at power as a means of control when he has had very little control previously in his life—which i think totally makes sense and is often really good—but i'm not sure that in the modern day it translates directly to like incel manifesto behaviors. if he's on 4chan he's on /mu/ telling people to kill themselves, you know?

like there IS the section of any right-wing movement that leans on irony versus the sector of true believers, but that irony regiment still requires immersion and enmeshment WITH those true believers no matter how hard you smirk at it. and the kind of power and control offered even at the top of a movement like that is... i dunno man, unless it's along the lines of like quiet2885's shadow government where he's like "i hate these christofascist freaks but i got to destroy america which was fun," then i don't think the minor clout is worth it for him?

also we have to factor in the like annoying pedantic little bitch behaviors here. i feel like his distaste for others skews more r/atheism than like. gamergate y'know?, and there's definitely common lineage between those two realms but there's also so many other insanities the internet can exacerbate in one's brain beyond "am ugly. incel now." he's infinitely more travis view than whatever your pick of right-wing goon.

idk i just tend to leap past even considering all that other stuff and assume he was simply number one in line on silkroad to drone himself some tabs. "buying lsd in the mail is straightforward and fun" - erik phantomoftheopera. he's downloading military documents and tunisian landfill .ogg files.

also obviously even intelligent people can become radicalized towards the right and fall victim to incelbrain or qbrain. many such cases! terminal engineerbrain and such! but idk i really really just... like... i dunno man i think if he found himself amongst people talking about pizzagate or like the way the western world has fallen due to the sluttery of modern women he would be like oh wrong website. excuse me. i was looking for david byrne dakimakura covers to purchase online. forgive me. SORRY THIS IS STRAIGHT UP NOT MAKING SENSE i think it's just that part of him also seems to encompass 1. media consumption i.e. music literature art etc and also 2. strongly-held and expansive taste? and 3. a ton of wild life experience in various situations? and it's not IMPOSSIBLE to find that in like, evangelical circles or turbogamer circles or whatever you wanna say but. yeah man i dunno. spaces where art is condemned as an elite and fruity frivolity... yeah.

(additionally the way in which the right-wing has been forced to absorb and welcome into its more mainstream channels the crystals-and-reiki crowd is like. LMAO i think if you tried to pitch essential oils or medbeds or alien healing experiences to him he'd be like Great. I'm going to spend another five consecutive years not leaving the house. Goodbye)

i dunno!!! trying also to articulate something here about like, inclinations towards hatred and fear and disdain for others versus desperately earnestly longing to be accepted and loved and wanted? the way he's kind of forced into permanent otherness and gradually pushed by others and his own behaviors into perceiving himself as fundamentally Not A Normal Man and Not A Normal Human and there's so much to online rightward radicalization that hinges HARD on manhood and masculinity and the need to embody and present to the world a Correctly Male & Normal Self. he's kinda counted out from that realm from like the moment he can perceive himself maybe? man i'm talking about nothing here. erik is a land of contrasts

in conclusion i just think like, yes the inclination towards radicalization IS a legit thing to sense in erik, but. i don't think you have to interpret that as right-wing radicalization inherently? i don't know that you can plot his views and beliefs on any kinda chart that neatly he's an esoteric bastard. i think it's also just funniest when he's using his assassination strats or engineering skills to like explode supreme court justices with his mind? john roberts you fake bitch you're gonna get the catgut. Christine I love you BUT I have to go shoot the entire C-suite of ExxonMobil in their sweet little individual heads! I will see you later!!!!

P.S. here is a way internet makes him better yet also worse psychologically: internet provides proof easily that people WILL fuck anything but it's not really a positive to feel like "oh i'm anything huh." like "o cool either someone fucking me is an inspirational The Dodo-coded video OR it's like. posted next to gore. that's fine. okay"

i can't possibly actually post a rambling dissertation about Erik & The Internet but in short: he's been training his whole life to post man. he's a power user. when he shows up at the function in leroux and everyone assumes someone else invited him: that's a form of posting. he's publishing his napalm instructables with lush photo guidance and then breaking into ted cruz's house again to release several different poison gases in the night. i dunno!

[kaija-rayne-author]

Veilguard article thoughts.

Obligatory 'I'm not an asshole' disclaimer. Feel free to jump to the cut if you've read it.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It's fantastic. I'm also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I'm was media blackout while I played this. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Note. None of my writing on DA, but especially DAV, is edited. This is just my off the cuff writing. I don't have the time, energy, or heart to edit them properly.

Though., every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking 'have you bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?' My guess is nope.

FWIW? I'm not one of the people who complained about DA2 and DAI. There's a pretty brown-nosing article running around that I'm not going to dignify with a repost.

It's another of those 'if you didn't like DAV it's your fault' nonsense pieces I suspect BioWare of paying for.

I only started playing DA around 3 years ago. And I've never been in Fandom spaces for pretty much anything.

So what's their bullshit paid and/or copium reason for why I hated DAV?

Wasn’t in Fandom spaces. Didn't play the games or say a negative thing about them when they came out. Only bought them near release. Loved The Keep. (I had my first kid not long after DAO came out. I didn't game except for ones I could drop really fast if a kid needed me for like, 10 years.)

I'm an editor and writer by trade. A good one, I'm extremely media literate. I have actual degrees in some of the media critique stuff. (English, Creative Writing, English Literature) and I have two braincells to rub together.) Some days, it's only two, but you win some, lose some.

Whoever spewed that article really loves binaries. It's not an either/or, love/hate, you're smart if you agree with me/dumb if you don't, you're with me or against me situation. Two things can be true. Even more!

I can be completely unhappy with the crappy writing in DAV and still appreciate the good things I did like about it.

I can be truly happy for people who enjoyed it, even if I hated it. I actually wanted to love it, y'know?

I can want a morally grey game with choices that actually do matter (no choice actually matters in DAV), and be against those awful things depicted in said morally grey game in real life because it's bloody fiction.

I can want a struggle for the elves freedom, without supporting enslavement IRL. Because completely brushing the morally grey and politically sticky issues previously set out in the games under the carpet leaves a very unsatisfying ending.

And yes, DAV is sanitized. It's disney-fied FFS! The devs were so afraid of complaints that they went way too far into mediocrity for my taste. And whoops, here the game is getting complaints anyway, because they were essentially cowards, instead.

When it comes to crafting entertainment, you have to keep the parable of the old man, the son, and the donkey in mind. You can't please everyone no matter what you do.

Gasp! I can even want the veil to come down, because in the Lore, (you know, the Lore they either retconned into illogical insensibility, or completely ignored? In favour of bum rushing us through a story that made no damned sense and was just badly written?) Anyway, in the ignored Lore, it's clear the veil is strangling both magic and life out of THEDAS. And that doesn't make me an awful person. 1. Because the Lore is clear. 2. Because saving the actual world (even in a game) is a good thing. 3. Because it's fiction.

It's so hilariously ironic that someone complaining about the lack of media literacy about DAV critiquers while writing that article exposed their own so ridiculously. 🤣

I legitimately don't care if you liked it or hated it. I did a review series under media blackout for DAV. I've never complained about much in the DA universe until DAV tbh. I don't fit any of those either/or binary choices in that article. So explain why I hated DAV.

Something I do care about? I do care if you're being an asshole or a decent person to other fans. Stop being dickshits to each other over a video game. I love gaming and it's an important part of my life. None of us are in kindergarten. Act like adults FFS (unless you're not actually an adult.)

Kindness is usually the right choice. No one truly understands what another person is going through. A kind word or a not-posted comment can make a world of difference.

[bonefall]

Question: I noticed if you had a choice you'd have given Thornclaw Ashfur's evil arc (except without the incel motivation.) And made Ashfur not evil. May I ask why? Is it from the characterization Ashfur had in TPB?

Reason 1: I think Thornclaw's underlooked as an AU villain

The DELICIOUS irony of the very first warrior Firestar names becoming his family's worst enemy... The contrast between the xenophobic and prickly Thornclaw and his kindly brother Brackenfur, both of them well-known as reliable and responsible warriors. Being stolen by ShadowClan at such a young age and having his father killed in a violent attack, and yet still, concluding that that's the right path.

It's about how Thornclaw could become so committed to the "well being" of ThunderClan that he'll kill and murder for it. The seriousness in his eyes as he hunts you down, the honor of a true warrior without need for underhanded tactics. Nothing about him is a joke, this isn't funny.

The Fire Scene, with Villain Thornclaw, isn't about 'getting back at Squirrelflight.' It's nothing personal; but she has to die along with her whole family so he can get away with it.

It's something I'm so fond of that I do have some Villain Thornclaw in my AU, if you look closely. He's working with Breezepelt and Whiskernose to kill Firestar. He might have known about the plot to get Brackenfur killed and said nothing.

Spiderleg takes his roles post-OotS because he will be dying in the Great Battle.

Reason 2: Shallow childhood fondness of pre-Po3 Ashfur

An AU is an AU, after all. Sometimes I just like to feed the miffed 10-year-old inside of me whose favorite TPB apprentice was Ashpaw, lmao.

Because MAN when I was a kid, I loved Squilf, and haaaated the Fire Scene with villain Ashfur. I remember it happening and being like, "ASHPAW WOULD NEVER. Ashpaw was Cloudpaw's best friend and always helping him cover up secrets :((( he wouldn't DO THIS who is this man... lionblaze was his apprentice.... this is so fake....."

I never had an Ashfur Stan phase, I was just mad that he turned into that lmao.

I love Ashfur now though btw, I am actually very fond of WC's incel villain and I'm really glad they committed to the idea of StarClan making a mistake. I think it's worth what Little Baby Bones lost... that said, sometimes you can just do stuff because it's fun and sparks joy, y'know?

It's why I call that AU "Sweet Nothings," I don't put a lot of thought into the thematic and metatextual implications of it like I do for the Bonefall Rewrite. It's self-indulgent fun.

So instead of being an incel, he's just a petty drama queen who's upset he got rejected and whines about it, not a murderous monster. He's ride-or-die when it comes down to it, and likes to gossip with Ferncloud and Cloudtail. A characterization a lot closer to TPB Ashpaw instead of Po3 Ashfur.

Also he's in a polycule with Hawkfrost/star and Reedwhisker because I like the drama of Hawkash but also have a big soft spot for Hawkreed.

[dhaaruni]

But girl, if Alicent's fans hate and sex-shame Rhaenyra for having sex outside marriage and bastards.... they logically hate Cersei. Y'know, the woman who fucked her brother on her wedding day, never stopped cheating on her husband, and routinely flaunts the dictates of the Faith. The woman who resists in a very unique way, by refusing to let her rapist and abuser impregnate her and by ultimately murdering him. Not very dutiful. Didn't you spent a DECADE shipping Jaime/Cersei and defending Cersei against incels and dudebros ? Writing essays about her bad victimhood, her male-coded ambition and refusal to rule guiding men’s choices with a gentle smile and playing on their expectations of her feminine weakness/softness ?? Now, you have Alicent's openly lying and saying Tywin treated Cersei the same way Viserys treated Rhaenyra. At least, since HOTD aired, watching Cersei, an unrepentant adulteress, blowing up a church and annihilating religious fanatics is even more satisfying.

Idk how to tell you this but I can like and appreciate two female characters despite their being totally different people. I'm not every Alicent fan, and I have less than zero anger at Rhaenyra for having sex outside of marriage or lying about her children's father because I'm ... normal lol. I think Alicent and Rhaenyra are two sides of the same coin, complementary, and both resent each other because they see the other having what they lack. It's also why they're #TrueLove.

Also, I never said that Tywin treated Cersei the same way Viserys treated Rhaenyra, like I've really said very little about House of the Dragon and actively avoided discoursing in fandom so I have no idea where you got that I think that.