#and equally bizarre and untrue

[lazzarella]

I really shouldn’t respond to the knucklehead on reddit who thinks all Thai bl actors suck but oh boy do I want to…

[jesswritesthat]

Kirishima Eijirō: Intervention

Fandom: BNHA // MHA — [ Masterlist ]

Summary: ~0.8k, humour

• Yourself and Kirishima have spent the night in each others dorm rooms before, but this time your classmates decide to question you both about it.

Warnings: Suggestive, insinuations.

>>>>——————————>

It was bizarre, the atmosphere almost claustrophobic when you walked into the common area with Kirishima by your side. The pair of you abruptly quit laughing when met with utter silence and an intensity that suggested the rest of Class 3-A had been awaiting your timely arrival.

"Told you they'd be together, at least we know it wasn't a hit and run situation." Sero stated with a knowing smirk, though Izuku and a few of the girls sent him embarrassed looks.

"What are you are all doing here?"

"Staging a pre-intervention. For you and Kirishima." Iida sternly informed, a hand cementing the situation.

"Alright, we're open to listen. Have we done something wrong?" Eijirō respectfully added, though slightly apprehensive.

"We heard the two of you last night."

Immediately you furrowed your brows at them, and then exchanged a questionable look with Kirishima - instantly the scenario came to mind and sorry wouldn't nearly be enough. Still you held your hands up in defence and immediately began spewing your panicked apologies.

"We're so sorry! We didn't mean it to be that loud but—"

"Could you refrain from having sex in the dorms...?" Momo hid her face as Shōto calmly spoke, scarlet completely enveloping her as well as few of your friends. However it wasn’t nearly as prominent as the overwhelming awkwardness.

There was a heavy silence full of comprehension that cut your defence short, yourself and Kirishima critically trying to piece together the story (which you definitely hadn’t written).

"Having..." Eijirō started, with you finishing the thought train enraptured by equal puzzlement.

"...Sex?"

"Yes! Don't act all innocent - I heard you through my ceiling! (L/n) you screamed, and then there was the banging..." Denki pointed at you accusingly with flustered sparks flying from him, his argument convincing judging by his circumstances even if untrue.

"We were watching a horror film! The speakers were maxed so when the jump scare came I freaked out." You adamantly justified, desperately fighting the rising heat of your skin due to the insinuations.

"Sero tell them what you caught when passing by after leaving Shojis' room!" Denki rectified, nudging the tape hero’s’ shoulder encouragingly and with a hesitant sigh, Hanta reluctantly gave his testimony.

"I heard (Y/n) say 'Ah Eijirō not so hard! Be gentle with your grip.' and then a few moments later Kirishima goes '(Y/n), this is tight, you sure I’m okay to keep going?' - that's enough for me."

Again the awkwardness only seemed to increase with every piece of incriminating evidence they convicted you with. Shadows looming over the pair of you, the crushing embarrassment and spicy thoughts racing through both of your minds enough to melt you to the floor. Instead, you briskly pulled up your sleeve - white bandages (decorated a funky sharpie scribble of Red Riot) encircled your wrist.

"I did not sleep with Eijirō!"

"And I'd treat (Y/n) with far more class than that if we did, it's the manly thing to do!"

"After the scare I fell off of his bed hence the banging, Eijirō went into hero mode and tried to pull me up - hard." You sent him a pointed glare, as if scolding him again to which he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck, then you continued. "I landed weird on my wrist, so we bandaged it, I wanted him to wrap it tight enough in case it was more than a sprain but it seems alright this morning."

With that you twisted your wrist, checking it again meanwhile your classmates processed the illuminating explanation with mutterings of understanding amongst themselves until Kirishima encouraged a unanimous agreement.

"That covers everything, but if watching a horror film leads to this, then we'll watch down here."

"Nah no need for that, it all makes sense now. Sorry for jumping to conclusions, just because you're dating doesn't mean you're doing the dirty so—“

"Kaminari, (Y/n) and I..." The redhead looked to you reassuringly, and before continuing he slung an arm around your shoulder which you naturally reciprocated. "We aren't dating man.”

“…”

"THIS IS EVEN WORSE THAN THE SEX SCANDAL!" Mina stood from her seat with an outraged tone, one that would’ve startled the others if they weren't in agreement with her.

"This whole time... (L/n) was available... could've made a move without feeling guilty..." Mineta quietly muttered, rocking back and forth in the corner.

"I'm sorry, how are you not dating?! How are they not dating?!" Uraraka shook Izukus’ shoulders aggressively whilst questioning such blasphemy.

"Just... wait but... you just... You guys are gonna be the reason I turn to smoking." Sero painfully pinched the bridge of his nose, whilst some were done with this idiocy before it even started (Shinsō, Bakugō, Tokoyami…).

"Eijirō... would you go on a date with me to spare their sanity? Is that reasonable? Is that manly of us?" Your voice shook with false concern, but it was the joking lilt to it that spread a shark tooth grin across the lips of Kirishima.

"Yeah, let's discuss it over lunch."

With that, and effortless laughter that seemed to mock your fellow classmates, you left the dormitory - not before asking if anyone wanted something picking up of course.

Yet watching the two of you leave like that, smiling so brightly with each other, had Class 3-A wondering if the two of you secretly were dating? And if you weren’t, did you truly not see the love you shared?

Honestly they almost wished they were right about last night.

<——————————<<<<

[ Masterlist ]

[queenaryastark]

I know that the antis who desperately want Arya to be ugly don't care about canon but .... here's some canon ... again:

"You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her [Lyanna]."

"Lyanna was beautiful," -- Arya II, AGOT

--

"Or would you sooner be a courtesan, and have songs sung of your beauty?" -- Arya II, AFFC

--

"I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns."

"Nice, though. A nice oak tree." -- Arya IV, ASOS

--

"I'm sorry I tore the acorn dress too. It was pretty."

"Yes, child. And so are you. Be brave." -- Arya IV, ASOS

--

An old man sat down beside her. "Well, aren't you a pretty little peach?" -- Arya V, ASOS

--

Arya spotted a yellow tent with six acrons on its panels, three over two over one. Lord Smallwood, she knew, remembering Acorn Hall so far away, and the lady who'd said she was pretty. -- Arya X, ASOS

--

She had never cared if she was pretty, even when she was stupid Arya Stark. Only her father had ever called her that. Him, and Jon Snow, sometimes. -- The Blind Girl, ADWD

--

“The city watch is looking for a certain ugly girl, known to frequent the Purple Harbor, so best you have a new face as well." He cupped her chin, turned her head this way and that, nodded. "A pretty one this time, I think. As pretty as your own.” -- The Ugly Little Girl, ADWD

--

The handrail was splintery, the steps steep, and there were five flights, but that was why she'd gotten the room so cheap. That, and Mercy's smile. She might be bald and skinny, but Mercy had a pretty smile, and a certain grace. -- Mercy, TWOW

GRRM describing Arya as pretty and beautiful isn't fanon or discourse or drama. It's the author himself describing the character he created. Basically, saying Arya isn't pretty/beautiful is on the level of saying that Catelyn doesn't have red hair or that Cersei doesn't have golden hair or that 1+1 doesn't equal 2. It's simply untrue. This repeated drama is bizarre since it's not even possible to create a valid argument against what's written in the books.

[alltheotherblogs]

I was asked what my favorite fictional world was...

And it's really not so cut and dry. It's actually hard to truly say. I like a world where virtually anything is possible, but with strict rules. That's kind of why I like JoJo's bizarre Adventure. The strict rules which everything has to abide by while also sharing the absurdity and possibility which the world has, it's always captivated me. My favorite part of JJBA is Part 7, because it shows another way to get a stand besides the alien disease on a meteor... It shows a religious miraculous origin. Religion. It's beyond interesting to incorporate Jesus into a world which isn't the bible, and do it in such a way. The mere idea of the parts of Jesus's body granting power, it's just interesting. Cause at that point you have to think... "Is all of JJBA part of God's plan?" hehehe. I think it's just awesome. But, I really really like religion. I find religious stories, myth, legend, all that stuff VERY fun and interesting. I'm no Christian but I really really like the stories of the bible.

But, Jojo isn't my favorite fictional world. Just one of many that I really like. That kind of segways me into worlds that I REALLY like... Mythos, legend, and religion. Yeah, seriously. All over the world, amazing stories are going under appreciated because people are gatekeeping these tales behind the veil of belief. But, they are on the internet, free for you to read at any time. And I really recommend it! You should go and explore some ideas in other religions that you may be interested in. I'm always learning more from religion. Those guys still knew how to tell a good story back then. How else would so many people be attracted to YOUR particular belief? Through ideology? Well yeah... But, also, I've heard that plenty of people have switched to Christianity AFTER they read the bible. I'm not kidding! Regardless, I think a lot of legend and myth sort of promotes this idea that you live in a world where anything is possible. And, really that is my favorite fictional world. A world where anything is possible.

(Gif unrelated I just really like Pingu)

I play D&D, and other TTRPG's. But, D&D is my favorite, I like almost all the editions. But, 5th is my preferred edition. I'm not the first to say this and I won't be the last, but 5th edition is just SO VERSATILE! 5th edition is at it's best when there is homebrew involved. Yeah, all the books are nice... But, I don't want to always tell THEIR story. I want to tell my story, I want to tell my player's stories. And, usually that means homebrew. With the world of D&D, and the rules of the game, it sort of comes together in this perfect merging of possibility with guidelines. You CAN do anything in D&D, but it will ALWAYS have an equal and opposite reaction. D&D is like utter magic fantasy which still somehow abides by real world laws, and it's great. The fact that I can pick up a tree, drop it on something, and it does a realistic amount of damage to that creature... It kind of makes D&D the perfect fantasy...

And just like that, it all comes together... The egg of the king. The birth of a new Godhand...

BERSERK. Those who truly appreciate art, appreciate berserk. and real fans of the series will often call it "The Fiction Bible." Because, it's a perfect example of the BEST STORY ON PLANET EARTH. Honestly, I thought I wanted more people to find and read Berserk, but as soon as I realized what that meant... I realized how wrong I was. A lot of poor unintelligent trash have come into contact with our beautiful tale of struggle. In general, I don't mind if you just don't like Berserk for a valid reason like "Oh, I just don't like the themes, dark fantasy isn't my thing, I don't like stories with such and such or violent stuff isn't really my jam... So on." But, the second you say something actually dumb and untrue like "It's bad because [Strawman argument or other logical fallacy]" Yeah, you and I can't live within 10 miles of each other anymore. If I see you, it's on sight. I'm serious too, I take Berserk very seriously. It saved my life, after all...

I grew up as Guts did, read as chapters came out, joked along with the english speaking community as more chapters came out and got translated. But, most importantly, I was struggling too. I'm sure we've all had hardships in life... But not all of you are as bad off as I am. I'm not going to go into it any deeper, but to say the least, you'll never have any idea what I've been through. Not many will.

Because of this probably unhealthy attachment, I can't respect anyone who has stupid wrong opinions about this masterwork piece of art.

I hate to break it to some of you, but narcissism is a plague on todays society. This results in a lot of people thinking that they are magically right about things! When in reality they are just too low IQ to realize they are wrong. In this instance, a lot of low IQ people are wrong about Berserk. It takes someone very smart to actually appreciate EVERYTHING about this work of art, after all. But, that's enough about Berserk. It's a pure work of art with no flaws, and anyone who personally disagrees with it I'm cool with. But anyone who pretends it is anything but perfection... I'm after you. Don't bother running. (SPOILERS FOR BERSERK BEYOND THIS POINT! If you haven't read it, GO READ IT ALL NOW. IT'S ONLINE FOR FREE.)

In the world of Berserk they so clearly present this idea of multiple universes, and how they can all overlap and have varying circumstances which makes certain things more likely than others... But the main thing is Belief. Belief in something can give it so much power that it becomes true. God, in and of itself, is just a Common Consciousness... It is the culmination of everything. And, as more sentient life is brought into the world, the more powerful God gets. This idea of overlapping realities to create the ultimate reality isn't actually a Berserk original, it's actually quantum physics. But, that's not what this post is about. Regardless, this idea of multiple universes is a STAPLE as to what makes a Fantasy world perfect for me. It ultimately means anything and everything is possible within the set rules... Which is why Berserk is almost my favorite fantasy world. As soon as Femto manages to trick skullknight into actually bridging the gap between the sort of "Fey" or "Mythical" world and the material world, it turns this world into this magical and incredible place where many things once thought myth or legend are now possible at the hands of perfectly normal mortal people. In fact, I actually believe that Guts' exposure to one of the deepest planes of the dimensional layers during the eclipse is what gave him his unrealistic and absurd strength. The world of Berserk is very difficult to explain to say the least. But, the basics are; It has a lot of layers, which the deepest is God himself. The deeper into these layers of reality you go, the more magical and fantastical things get, because you are coming into contact with base elements of our reality. Vague concepts like Elements, Energy, an Afterlife, what sentience actually means, so on. In Berserk, people can actually meet the conditions to slip into a deeper plane of existence, this is where Legends, religion, and myth sort of came from. I like the way this is handled, more than any other world.

It's kind of like this simulated Fractal. Layer after layer after layer, except, eventually, you get small enough that more layers can no longer exist. That's why my favorite fictional universes are the ones I make myself. Sure, I like a lot of worlds... I really like Soul Eater! The simplicity of the setting combined with the complexity and idea of there simply being a magic system intrigues me. I like Fullmetal Alchemist! Alchemy only exists because of this profound concept and extra-dimensional being... HOW?! WHAT?! What does that mean?! That means, that by the end of FMA, the limits of power are nearly infinite in this world. I'm constantly left wondering what other Gods could be born in a world like FMA. Hunter X Hunter has one of the best power systems in all of manga, with some minor rules which I disagree with... Hmm... I'm noticing a theme. Most of my favorite fiction is in Manga. Yikes... Yeah, well it's true. The West just isn't as good at writing stories as the East. I'm sorry guys... :( It's not even necessarily the case that "The west sucks at storytelling boohoo" it's just that, a wide majority of english speaking society happens to be idiots. I don't know why! Good well made stuff doesn't get popular here! It has lead to other places having a monopoly on GOOD STORY TELLING! It's absurd to be honest, and it's the reason Hollywood is crashing. Regardless, whenever I made a world, that world becomes my favorite. And I know, it's self centered, but if I had to pick any other world, it'd be Berserk! Why? Because it's cool idfk.

[vacant2007]

But i don’t see the difference. i’m born Asian but this feels incorrect i feel i identify as black more and this feels correct to me but why is this not considered socially acceptable to be trans racial but it’s acceptable to choose which gender you wanna be?

Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you actually want to know the answer to this question. It's because that isn't a 1:1 comparison. They are two entirely different things. With gender as opposed to biological sex, it's a social construct. Beyond the basic biological purpose of any features a person might have been born with, nearly everything about gender was invented as social customs, varies from society to society, and in many cases upholds a patriarchal societal system that attempts to explain willful systemic oppression with invented biological factors.

You are correct that race is unchangeable. I'm also giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are NOT just a white person playing devil's advocate here and using the phrase "I'm asian" as a hypothetical in this incredibly disrespectful scenario you're describing, because if you were, that would be...pretty bad. People are born as their race, they continue to be that race throughout their entire lives. Because, again, it's an entirely separate thing from either gender or biological sex. It's bizarre to argue like they are the same on every front, and just proves that you fully do not understand at least one of these concepts, maybe both. Not only is race biology, it's heritage, historic location, traditions, shared history. And while it's not untrue that there are shared experiences among people with the same sex or gender (obviously), it is also entirely possible to meaningfully change the biological presentation and function of your body in a way that isn't meaningfully possible with one's race + ignores the other factors of race that are equally important. Not only this, but because there people of all genders in all cultures worldwide, what their dress/customs/social roles/etc are do not stay 100% consistent across these cultures, because roles (and rules) invented for gender over time are a construct of human culture. Therefore, it does not reject any innate biological truth for any given person to challenge them, even if they do it in a way you don't personally like. Once again, it's an entirely different concept from race altogether.

[benbamboozled]

For the rant ask: 42, 47, and 50. Let's start hitting some wasp nests.

Okay we’re getting into this.

42—What's a fandom trope you hate?

Okay, so, generally, I try not to hate fandom stuff. Especially in comics fandom, because like…half the stuff that is hateable is somehow canon so I feel bad for hating fan-stuff when I could be hating canon.

THAT BEING SAID—

Very Good Bat Dad Bruce Wayne.

Okay and…look.

I don’t hate it in the sense of like, I think nobody should make fanworks with Good Bat Dad Bruce Wayne, or nobody should talk about Bruce Wayne being a good dad, or people shouldn’t have headcanons about it, or anything like that. (Hell, I love WFA, so…yeah.)

HOWEVERRRRR…I can’t lie, my brain does rankle a little when I see people soft headcanons and I’m like “BUT WE KNOW WHAT HE WOULD DO THERE! BECAUSE HE DID NOT DO THAT! HE DID LIKE THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU’RE SAYING!! AHHHHH!!!”

Which is obviously stupid because 1) people are allowed to like non-canon things, and 2) getting angry over a fan’s characterization being inconsistent in a comic-based canon is like…hoo, that’s like so low on the priority list of Things To Be Annoyed By.

But my brain still has that little feeling of “go on a rant. Post pics of Bruce manipulating and beating up his kids. *Palpatine voice* DEWIT.”

(Also Drunk!Brucie because Bruce Wayne doesn’t drink.)

47—What's the worst blatantly untrue fanon take you thought was canon?

Hmmmm…idk I’ve thought any fanon “takes” were canon? And “blatantly untrue” is kind of tricky in comics when like…5-12 different truths are equally true and untrue in the same moment.

But I did think Replacement was real! It still blows my mind that it isn’t. IT IS NOWHERE!!! NOWHERE!!! (I could’ve sworn I saw it used ONCE in BftC but then I very confidently tried to find it and couldn’t and I assume that I dreamed it in a fit of Replacement Madness.)

50—What's something that bled into comics from a tv show or movie that you hate?

(Can I tell you how tempted I am to say Harley Quinn? It’s not even true, I’m down with that clown, but the temptation is overwhelming.)

Hmmm…I can’t think of anything, so I’m going to reverse the question and list a thing in Batcomics that *haven’t* bled over that I’m annoyed are still absent and a thing in the DCU that I’m annoyed is still absent in film.

First, STOP TRYING TO MAKE BATMAN REAL! The Batverse is weird as fuck! The Riddle man wears green and loves question marks!!! Yeah OF COURSE it’s not “realistic” THE WHOLE PREMISE IS ABOUT A BILLIONAIRE DUDE DRESSING LIKE A BAT AND PUNCHING CRIMINALS!!!! Like, ?????

GIMME COMICS WEIRDNESS! GIVE ME REOCCURRING VILLAINS!!! (Literally the most comics-accurate thing in the Nolanverse was that Jonathan Crane just kept popping up randomly to be an irritant.)

Okay and the second thing that is big in the DCU but totally absent in film—

WHERE THE FUCK IS A NIGHTWING MOVIE????

LIKE???

It’s so fucking BIZARRE to me that Dick Grayson is considered like…a cornerstone of the entire DCU AND NON-COMIC PEOPLE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO HE IS!!!

YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE SUCH A DISCONNECT BETWEEN THE GREATER PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND YOUR PRODUCT!!! AND THEN BE LIKE “OH WHY AREN’T WE MAKING MONEY???” BECAUSE YOU ONLY HIGHLIGHT LIKE TWO FUCKING CHARACTERS AND YOU’VE MADE COMICS COMPLETELY OPAQUE TO NON-COMICS PEOPLE!!!

IT’S LIKE THE FUCKING ISLAND IN PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN THAT YOU CAN ONLY GET TO IF YOU KNOW HOW TO GET THERE I STG!!!

Okay rant over.

[grelleswife]

Recently I've seen some new users on tumblr getting overly aggressive in kuro fandom, and kind of lashing out at others enjoying other characters outside of Grelle :( Like I hope this doesn't come off as whining or making up shit I'm seriously anxious about interacting with people cause it's gotten so pushy lately... Just wanted to send this to you, just like a warning that people are being like that, Idk I hope people calm down, thats all?? you have such good vibes on your blog though :)<3

Hi, anon! We fangrelles certainly are a passionate bunch (and, in my completely unbiased opinion, Miss Sutcliff is Kuro’s shining star 💞), but I don’t recall seeing anything too egregious lately? 🤔

That being said, I can understand your frustration. There’s a bizarre prevailing attitude in some circles of the fandom that all of Kuro aside from a couple of characters is irredeemable trash, which, to my mind, not only lacks nuance but is patently untrue. Although compelling characters (or merely ones with squandered potential) are a big draw for me, I also need to enjoy the story itself to become invested in a series, which is why I’m left baffled by folks who aggressively reject the work aside from one tiny piece. But, that’s just my opinion! Other people are free to engage with media however they please as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, and we don’t have the right to gatekeep their fandom experience.

Based on my own observations, I haven’t necessarily endured much overt “lashing out” barring a handful of nasty anons here and there over the years. Instead, the issue tends to manifest as subtler forms of peer pressure that exist as this undercurrent within the fandom, like the pushback against fluffy, wholesome content (because the manga is DARK and EDGY and how DARE we write about Dadbastian or Kuro characters in loving, healthy relationships?! 😡). Or folks who deny that a gentler fanon version of Sebastian’s character is worthy of exploration and act as though hating him and insulting him in every breath somehow means they are consuming Kuro in the “correct,” morally superior way, even though their faves are equally problematic (I love dragging my trash demon, too, don’t get me wrong. But as someone who also genuinely likes the demonic characters, that atmosphere grows discomfiting at times).

Here’s the thing, though—we can’t control other people’s attitudes or what they post. We can, however, curate our own journey through Kuro-hell. At the end of the day, it’s best to focus on making and reblogging content you enjoy, engaging with trusted mutuals, and biting your tongue and taking your business elsewhere upon running into blogs you don’t vibe with. Despite our differing opinions, members of the reasonable side of the fandom have learned to coexist with each other in relative harmony. My hope is that we can keep it that way.

And I’m glad to hear that my blog has been a nice place to visit! 🥰💖

[lyknest]

I'd like to chime in with my opinion on the Pat/Pa sibling dynamics.

I'm an older sibling (we're both girls, though) and I can confirm that "bossing the younger sibling around" is a thing that happens. In my case, I definitely did it when we were kids and when I was in high school, for example. I mean, it wasn't to the extent where I'd tell her to do my chores all the time, but still. So I didn't see Pat's behaviour as strange or entitled at all.

On the other hand, Pat did make me roll my eyes a few times because we can't ignore the fact that he's a guy that wants to delegate what should be his housework onto a girl, which is not uncommon when it comes to men (anywhere, not just in Thailand/Asia). Also, with the way Pat's family is quite patriarchal (his dad really has a lot of those "toxic masculinity" traits, lbr), it stands to reason that Pat would pick some of that behaviour up (because that's just what kids do and as they grow into adults, it stays with them and they have to unlearn it). However, to say he's treating Pa "like a slave" and imply that their relationship is somehow unhealthy is way too harsh/not true.

Sure, he tells Pa to do his laundry but when she's upset with him (for not keeping his promise about Pran) and tells him "do your own laundry" he doesn't object and go pester her to do it. He just sighs and lets it go. He's not forcing her to do anything she doesn't want to. When she moves in with him, he lets her take the bed and a bigger share of the bedroom. But what really showed me that he respects her as a woman (and didn't pick up his dad's mysogyny) was when Wai asked him for permission to date her and his response was "I'll let her decide." I'm bringing this up because SO many times in media we have this portrayal of guys asking the girl's father or older brother for permission to date/marry them and having to get their blessing first. Again, this isn't just an Asian thing, it happens in American/European shows and movies to this day (actually, just today my parents were watching an American movie and I happened to catch a scene where a guy was having dinner with the "in-laws" and asked the father's permission to marry his daughter and it was treated as totally normal, which infuriated me). So the fact that Pat went against that notion and was instead like "it's HER decision" (as it should be, because no man should speak on behalf of a woman's decision on who to date) made me love him even more than I already did by that point.

Anyways, I've rambled on for too long already. 😅 Like you said, Pat has flaws (as does every character) but to say he was horrible to Pa is just untrue.

hi anon! thank you for sharing this!!!!

first of all, never apologise for rambling i appreciate it! all that you said 💯

"On the other hand, Pat did make me roll my eyes a few times because we can't ignore the fact that he's a guy that wants to delegate what should be his housework onto a girl, which is not uncommon when it comes to men (anywhere, not just in Thailand/Asia)." - this, yeahh. not only is it very common, but this behaviour is often encouraged. like some of the reasons I've heard in defence of men avoiding their part of the work and putting it on the women in their families are bizarre. and women are expected to pick up that slack.

and while that discussion is very important, like you said, it's not completely applicable to pat & pa because they do share a relationship where both of them have equal footing, as you already mentioned!

also talking about "I'll leave it to her decision" honestly just blew my mind away because the "approval of older brother trope" is SO PREVALENCE and SO TOXIC i literally have never seen a piece of media where the older brother actually leaves it up to their sister's decision, let alone say it 🤦

i can't really comment on it everywhere else, but in India, this trope is glorified to an extent that it gets violent. not to ignore the fact that it's very real. elder brothers feel entitled to make decisions for their younger sister's lives.

instead of being approachable and a confidant for their younger sister, they try and act like a parent, and yet another person young girls have to hide their lives from.

but pat & pa are definitely not that. not only pa trusts pat to no extent (he was literally the first person in the family she came out to) but also they have that trust and affection for each other that goes beyond just "older brother protecting younger sister"

pat & pa share the burden that their toxic family puts on them and do try to protect each other from it and i think that's beautiful

[pumpkinpaix]

Hi, pumpkinpaix....don't know if you remember, but I've asked before of your top 5 fav mxtx characters, and you've answered them. If you don't mind me asking, can I ask you, why you like those characters? Sorry, if I ask you similar question again......

hey, no problem!! :D I like talking about my favorite fictional people haha. since 15 characters is a bit much, I’m gonna just take a sample of the top four out of the 15. :)

1. Lan Xichen

I think most everyone following me at this point knows that I am always on my lxc defense thesis bullshit, but: look. i’m defensive of him! I love him! and I think that he occupies a really tragic and important place in the narrative. I remember I said before somewhere that I think there are three characters that are portrayed to be paragons of virtue/goodness within mdzs and all three were met with tragedy: jiang yanli, xiao xingchen, and lan xichen, but that the tragedy isn’t meant to show that kindness only meets with tragedy, or that kindness is always naive, or that kindness is stupid--I think it’s meant to show that kindness is not always rewarded because life is not a fair game. however! that doesn’t mean that kindness is useless! again, just--kindness is not always rewarded, but its absence devastates. that’s something we see again and again: if only people had been kinder to jin guangyao or xue yang or whatever etc etc. perhaps things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did. I think that’s a something the narrative says pretty explicitly. what could these people have been if they had been afforded a fair shot? what could these people have been if others had acted more like jiang yanli, or xiao xingchen, or lan xichen?

anyways, I also find that lan xichen is often held to incredibly bizarre standards that don’t plague jiang yanli or xiao xingchen, and it feels telling in some way about how we (speaking from an american?? perspective i think) think about and treat the concept of compassion. that being compassionate is stupid and foolish and idealistic and exasperating. that being jaded and bitter is somehow a mark of intelligence and worldliness. I care very much that lan xichen isn’t that -- that he’s an incredible cultivator, warrior, sect heir, that he’s respected by everyone! but that even in all of that, he chooses to continue acting kindly.

this isn’t well-worded, but like. you get the idea. also: he is Big Relate, what with his intense eldest daughter syndrome, conflict resolution strategies, and the way he struggles with and makes his moral decisions. in his position, I would have made pretty much all the same choices in mdzs as he did for very difficult and upsetting reasons. i just. lov him ok.

2. Xie Lian

tbh, just take a look at this post aslkdjf. my love for xie lian is adjacent to my love for lxc, with the added bonus of: xie lian is capable of immense, terrible cruelty as well. if lan xichen is about the need for kindness in the face of an imperfect world, then I think xie lian is about the sheer cost of it. what does it take to be kind when you want to be cruel? when you have every reason to be cruel? when you have the means to do great harm? ugh. 

3. Yin Yu

god, how do I start with yin yu? yin yu really exemplifies, to me, how intensely complicated your feelings towards something or someone can be. I think that his deep hatred for quan yizhen is just as real as his very deep love for him, and that the existence of both at the same time is a constant torment. for me, someone who struggles A Lot with holding complicated feelings towards people (my brain DESPERATELY wants to put things in a “good” or “bad” box and when something is complicated it tends to self-destruct), i really loved seeing that kind of... intense conflict? in a character. because there’s no part that ever says he’s ACTUALLY just resentful or he’s ACTUALLY just loving. no part of his emotional turmoil is a untrue, but so what? so i resent him, so what? why should I choose to act on that emotion rather than another? idk. it’s a choice. and yin yu makes it. ugh. god i love him.

4. Gongyi Xiao

he is Simply Best Boy. [spoilers for SV] I think what I really like about gongyi xiao is that he’s.... like, quite simple in his motivations? he's just like. a Good Guy. he’s talented! in any other situation, he would be the protagonist of his own story. he’s not bitter about losing, he’s diligent, hardworking, kind. he’s disappointed if he fucks up, but he also tries his best. idk he’s just like! he’s just sweet. I like that a lot. and i also, in a weird way, really like his death. it’s so inconsequential. why was he killed? because he was there. because it was convenient. a boy talented enough to be a protagonist in his own right, but his story ends offscreen, without drama, without fanfare, and for so little reason. that’s a different kind of tragedy. you know that bit in the adventure zone?? not all exits are equal? sometimes, it just happens. idk. it really got to me, to learn that gongyi xiao died for no reason, alone, unaware, unexpectedly, and then to never hear of him again. gah.

[comrade-meow]

‘Sex work’ advocates and the Nazi propaganda playbook

Last month Nordic Model Now! was asked to participate in a University of Exeter student debate on the proposition that “This house believes that sex work is real work.” As a group, we are ambivalent about taking part in such debates. On the one hand, they are seldom a conducive forum for understanding nuanced and complex issues – but on the other hand, if we don’t participate there is a risk that the audience won’t hear the feminist analysis of prostitution. No one else in the group was able to take part that night, so reluctantly I agreed.

From the comments on social media during the debate, it appears that most of the students were won over by the arguments of the two proponents of the proposition – even though it was clear to me that they both had powerful vested interests in a booming sex industry, that much of what they said was palpably false and much of their argument relied on ad hominem attacks on myself and the other speaker against the proposition.

I was awake much of that night wondering why the students at one of the top universities in the UK appeared to be so unable to see beyond the self-satisfied veneer of the two speakers for the proposition. By the morning I’d resolved to analyse the arguments for the proposition and place them in context, with the aim of providing some help to those coming to similar debates in the future. This article is the result.

The Nazi Manual of Propaganda

Yale professor and expert in the history of fascism, Timothy Snyder, talks of the 1924 Nazi manual of propaganda that advised finding simple slogans and repeating them over and over and framing opposition as disloyalty or worse. Many people, he says, have taken up these tactics in recent years, leading not only to an erosion of the understanding that politics should be about reasoned debate leading towards constructive and informed policy, but also to politics being viewed as a battleground between ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’.

You would need to be blind to not recognise that these tactics have become increasingly common in the UK and US in recent years, and how they have been used to manipulate the public into support for policies that are not in their best interests and that might have catastrophic consequences. Depending on the arena, dissent is framed as hatred, ‘anti-science,’ or not ‘evidence-based,’ and this acts as a powerful silencing force that shuts down critical thinking and coerces acceptance of what is often little more than hot air.

These tactics obscure who are the real beneficiaries of the propaganda – usually people who gain power or who benefit in financial or other ways from whatever is being promoted. Bizarrely, we can observe these practices on both the right and left of the political spectrum.

These tactics were on display in the University of Exeter Debating Society debate. It was by no means the first or only such debate I have taken part in or observed, and nor was it the first time that I saw those promoting the idea that ‘sex work is real work’ consciously or unconsciously using tactics from the Nazi propaganda playbook.

You don’t have to take my word for it. You can read the transcript of the debate and I’ll illustrate my claims through an analysis of the key arguments used by the two speakers for the proposition.

Jerry Barnett

The first speaker for the proposition was Jerry Barnett, who’s the author of the book, Porn Panic. He regularly writes on sex and the ‘economics of sex,’ and runs a YouTube channel called ‘Sex and Censorship.’ In other words, the sex industry indirectly provides his daily bread and butter.

After introducing himself, he defined work as: “A voluntary exchange of time or labour for money or some other payment.” He didn’t mention that this definition deviates significantly from the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition, which is based on mental or physical activity, and he didn’t explain how you can exchange time for money.

One of the key arguments against prostitution being considered normal work is that although it involves some mental and physical activity (pretending the punter’s a great guy, cleaning up afterwards, etc.) the core feature of prostitution is that he uses her body – he gropes and penetrates her. This is not about her being actively engaged in mental or physical activity but someone doing something to her.

What other work involves someone doing something to you while you lie back and endure it? The only thing that I can think of is participating in medical trials – but that’s not considered work – even though you might be paid for taking part.

So, he sneakily expanded the definition to make it easier to argue that a man penetrating your orifices is a normal form of work – although of course he didn’t mention penetration because, like most sex trade lobbyists, he buries such fundamental realities in euphemism and obfuscation.

Interestingly, he did admit that it is invariably men who are the customers (or punters as we call them) and nine or more times out of ten it is women who are being penetrated – or earning an income from ‘sex work’ as he euphemistically described it.

His arguments hinged around two key contentions: First, that ‘sex work’ is well-paid, enjoyable work that has short hours and is particularly suitable for anyone who needs flexibility. I will leave aside the questionable ethics of promoting such a skewed reality to an audience of impressionable young women and men.

Second, that opposition to ‘sex work’ is based on false statistics, the conflation of trafficking and consensual ‘sex work,’ and moralistic values from people who are anti-sex and who attack women’s rights, and refuse to “listen to sex workers who say it’s empowering.”

Most of the time, he expounded on one or other of these claims, all presented with utter conviction, while implicitly framing anyone who disagreed with him as the enemy – the enemy of women’s rights, of rational debate, of men, of more or less everything that he considers good in life.

He dismissed my arguments as “anecdotes” even though most of his were based on wishful thinking rather than hard evidence – while at the same time claiming they were “evidence-based.”

For example, I mentioned that the murder rate of women involved in prostitution is the highest of any group, including in the UK, and that where prostitution is legalised, the murder rate of women in prostitution usually remains high.

His immediate response?

“Anna is good with anecdotes but when she tries to use statistics, they don’t seem to add up at all. I think the last time I looked, the professions with the highest [murder rate] were police and fast-food delivery people who are overwhelmingly men. But yeah, the anecdotes stack up, the statistics don’t.”

I didn’t manage to respond to this until much later in the debate, when I quoted a senior police officer who, when giving evidence at a Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry in early 2016, said:

“We have had 153 murders of prostitutes since 1990, which is probably the highest group of murders in any one category, so that gives the police cause for concern.”

I didn’t have the stats for police murders at my fingertips but I looked them up later and found data that suggested there had been about 28 murders of police officers in the UK during the same period (1990-2015). So, there were more than five times as many murders of women involved in prostitution as police officers. I couldn’t find any data on fast food delivery drivers other than a few isolated press reports.

So much for his grasp on statistics. But the damage had been done.

Charlotte Rose, the other speaker for the proposition, compounded the damage by asserting more than once that there had been no murders recorded of women involved in prostitution in New Zealand, where the sex industry is fully decriminalised.

But again, this is untrue. The German women who run the Sex Industry Kills project have documented 10 murders of prostituted women in New Zealand since the sex trade was decriminalised in 2003 along with a number of attempted murders. That is a significant number given New Zealand’s small population (currently less than 5 million).

One of my key arguments was that the sex industry normalises and eroticises male dominance and one-sided sex, and feeds men’s entitlement and reduces their empathy – which are the very attitudes that underpin the current epidemic of rape, child sexual abuse, and other forms of male violence against women and children.

Jerry’s response? That there was not an epidemic of male violence against women. He based this assertion on another made-up definition centred on “a steep sustained increase” – unlike the Oxford Dictionary, which centres the definition merely on a disease being widespread.

He said that not only was there not an epidemic of male violence but that the prevalence of such violence has been on a steep decline for 50 years.

But this is not true. Research has shown that male violence against women has risen significantly in the UK since 2010 and that new forms of gender-based abuse are increasingly prevalent. Even the UN describes male violence against women as a pandemic – which is an epidemic that has spread to cover multiple countries.

I mentioned that the judge in a judicial review about Sheffield Council’s relicensing of Spearmint Rhino (a lap dancing club) had castigated the council for rejecting a large number of objections from women and community members who said that the club had made the streets less safe on the basis that these objections were nothing more than “moral values.” The judge was clear that the objections were not about morality but were issues of equality.

Jerry responded as follows:

“There was briefly the anecdote about Spearmint Rhino and that women didn’t feel safe in the area. The fact is I’ve been involved, I’ve got stripper friends who’ve been involved in these campaigns to keep the venues open and these claims are false. They come up over and over again – that the presence of a strip club in an area makes women less safe. This has been de-proved, debunked, using evidence over and over and over again. So, the idea that women don’t feel safe in the area is a different thing.

Unfortunately, if women don’t feel safe, that’s sad but then they should acquaint themselves with the facts that actually the presence of a strip club in an area does not lead to an increase in sexual violence. And yet these kinds of things are continuously claimed to make it look like this is a woman’s rights movement rather than a morality movement, which it is.”

As for his claim that the increased violence in the vicinity of lap dancing clubs and similar has been “debunked” many times, well I couldn’t find any clear evidence that supported that. Rather I found much to the contrary. The Women and Equalities Select Parliamentary Committee in its report on its inquiry into Sexual Harassment of Women and Girls in Public Places, accepted the considerable evidence that sexual entertainment venues, such as lap dancing clubs, “promote the idea that sexual objectification of women and sexual harassment commonly in those environments is lawful and acceptable.”

But that is not good enough for Jerry. He sticks to what he knows is effective, and repeats sound bites that are simply not true while dismissing solid evidence and presenting any opposition as irrational and the work of moralistic enemies.

As to a man telling women they are being irrational to fear male violence, what can I say? I am not sure anything I would like to say is publishable.

Charlotte Rose

The second speaker for the proposition was Charlotte Rose, who was wearing a t-shirt advertising Fan Baits, a new commercial sex industry advertising platform. She introduced herself as, “a former multi-award-winning escort, current radio presenter and advocate for decriminalisation of sex work.”

She went on to say:

“I just want to discuss something that may affect your moral judgement. How do you all feel when I mention people who work in abortion clinics, abattoirs, factory farmers, nuclear power station workers? To name just a few. For me I do not like it. But just because we do not like what these people do, it doesn’t give us the right to state that their work is not legitimate.”

Since when have people campaigned against factory farming or nuclear power because they didn’t approve of the people who work in those industries? Eccentrics aside, the arguments are always around the impact of those industries on the environment, human and animal health and welfare, and other wider issues – and any personal disapproval is reserved for those who, knowing the damage caused, profit from those industries.

The inclusion of abortion clinics in this list is a sneaky attempt to associate our opposition to the commercial sex industry with extreme anti-woman protestors against abortion. This is a classic example of suggesting guilt by association. For an audience of students whose average age is likely to coincide with the peak age for abortions, this is particularly reprehensible.

Charlotte then said that “until you’ve worked as a sex worker, you’ve got no right whatsoever to dictate anything against [sex work].” This is an argument that we hear repeated over and over in true propaganda playbook style, making people lose their critical faculties and the ability to say, hang on a minute, I’m entitled to have an opinion on factory farming and nuclear power and other industries that have a wide impact, why on earth can’t I have an opinion on the sex industry?

And the truth is, of course you can have such an opinion, and indeed as a concerned citizen, you should – but they don’t want you to. Because once you really look at the sex industry, it’s hard to ignore the rampant abuses and negative impacts on us all, particularly young people.

Like Jerry, Charlotte expounded on how “consensual sex work” has nothing to do with sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking. But of course, it does. There is no separate market for trafficked women – they are on the same street corners and in the same brothels and so-called massage parlours as women who may have made some kind of choice to be there. From the outside you can’t tell what led a woman to that place – nor what is holding her there.

As we have written elsewhere, most pimping meets the international definition of human trafficking and most women involved in prostitution have one or more third party (i.e. pimp) feeding off their prostitution. And the evidence of the violence inherent in prostitution is overwhelming.

Charlotte may not be a male chauvinist pig as all the evidence suggests that Jerry is, but she was equally happy to misrepresent our arguments and frame us as hateful and dangerous. She claimed several times that we want to “delegitimise” her work. (What work? Didn’t she say she was a former sex worker?)

In an attempt to convince everyone that her work really is real work, she went into a long explanation of what it entails: dealing with emails (80 a day), text messages (120/day), phone calls (50), notifications, advertising, website SEO, updating her photos, social media and special offers, booking hotels, etc.

She then asked whether that sounded like work – which of course it does. But that was missing the whole point of the debate because she didn’t mention the core aspects of prostitution – sexual intimacy with a stranger who pays you to have his every whim and fetish met with a smile.

She claimed that “delegitimising sex work” damages her credibility and means men won’t see it as legitimate work and means she “can’t get a mortgage by writing down that I’m a sex worker.” But later when she was asked why she was against legalisation of the sex trade (she favours full decriminalisation), she said:

“Legalisation is what happens in Amsterdam, but women, or sex workers […] have to pay for a licence. So, first of all, they’ve got to give a large amount of money to be able to get a licence to give them the ability to work and be in a legitimate premise.

Number one, they cost a lot of money. Number two, their details are known so there’s no anonymity. If someone wants their business not to be known to the government, then unfortunately they won’t be able to work. So, these two massive factors are why we don’t want it to be legalised.”

But hang on a minute… Isn’t she arguing for ‘sex work’ to be considered ‘real work’?

And isn’t one of the things that distinguishes ‘real’ – or legitimate – work from scams, drug dealing and other illegal activity, that when you earn money from ‘real work,’ you fill out a tax return and inform the government about where your income comes from.

So actually it sounds like she doesn’t want it to be regular ‘real work’ after all.

She made other arguments that were equally dodgy. She claimed several times that by expressing our views, we are causing actual harm to sex workers:

“One of my morals is not to cause harm to other people. I would never use my morals to cause harm to anybody. Your moralistic view is causing harm to sex workers.”

She is talking about an industry in which women involved in it have an extremely high murder rate – almost invariably by male punters and pimps – and yet she suggests that the problem is naming and describing this reality.

I explained that our position is that nothing can make prostitution safe and so we need to reduce the amount that happens. Anything that normalizes it means it will increase – it will increase men’s demand for it and more women will be sucked in and be hurt. As her position is that prostitution should be legitimised and become a normal job, you could therefore argue that her position will cause harm – like she claims about us. However, we prefer to argue on the facts and actual evidence.

Conclusion

Judging by the comments on social media, the young audience were swept along by Charlotte’s glamorous and suave act – in the face of which our attempts to focus the debate on the depressing realities of prostitution appeared about as alluring as a school assembly address by Miss Trunchbull on a bad day.

But reality is what we must deal with. Basing public policy on wishful thinking and propaganda invented by those with powerful vested interests is a recipe for disaster. You only need to consider Brexit to understand that.

The Brexit debate was dominated by sound bites and hot air underwritten by hedge fundies and other capitalists salivating at the prospect of looser and weaker regulation of business and commerce. But large sections of the British population were swept along by the propaganda and were blind to the likely dangers. It is only now, four years later, as the actual reality of Brexit is becoming impossible to ignore that opinion polls are showing the majority turning against it and realising it is almost certainly a terrible mistake.

You can’t help wondering in this context why schools and universities are not educating students about the dangers of propaganda and how to recognise and resist it. All of us, but especially young people, need to understand how to identify vested interests, easy answers and soundbites that oversimplify complex subjects, attacks on opponents and unevidenced assertions that they are motivated by hate or worse, and to see these as red flags.

Much of life is complex and messy and inequality and abuse of power is rife. There are no easy answers. Real solutions require hard work and challenging powerful vested interests – not following them like sheep.

[hellsbellschime]

Hi, love your meta’s. I read earlier that you haven’t done a meta comparing Klaus and Damon, but do you think you could do one? Just explaining why they are different and which one is in your opinion better (as far as complexity, characterization, development, and whatever else you could think of goes) and just which one you prefer.

It’s actually kind of bizarre to realize that I haven’t done a meta about this before, since TVD positioned both Klaus and Damon in the obvious position of the “crazy, impulsive vampire, in love with his brother’s girl”. And I think on the surface that Damon and Klaus were meant to be pretty similar, but I think that below the surface, either by accident or by design, they have some pretty stark differences that at least explain to me why I like Klaus so much and don’t like Damon very much at all. 

In terms of the TVD world they’re both fairly developed and complex characters, and I think the most obvious similarity between them is that they’re the type of people to act now and think later. They’re also both the type who pretend to be absolutely fine with being the bad guy, but their behavior over time would indicate otherwise. But, at least in my mind, that is where the meaningful similarities between Damon and Klaus end. 

Now that I’ve actually rewatched some TVD for the first time in literal years (and since I could do that with some of the lingering meta requests I have in my inbox in mind) I think what struck me about Damon’s behavior in contrast to Klaus’ is that while they both act out on their emotions without really thinking it through, Damon almost always tries to fix things afterwards whereas Klaus really does not. 

It’s hard to say whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I mean theoretically it should be good that Damon at least tries to rectify the awful things that he’s done, but on the flip side of that, it feels like Damon often times excuses his own bad behavior because, in his own mind, he’ll just find a way to fix it later. And while he never actually fixes anything, he does find a way to reconnect with the people that he cares about, which is really the only thing that matters to him anyway. 

But where I think Damon’s character development loses out when it comes to this pattern is in the fact that he can continually go through these bouts of absolutely insane, awful behavior, and then “fix it” without ever experiencing any self-reflection or introspection. Damon has found a system that works for him, which allows him to be the “bad guy” without actually having to believe that he’s the bad guy, and without actually forcing him to think about anything that he’s done in any meaningful or self-critical way. 

And in a sense, that lack of self-criticism is something that is reflected in Damon’s relationships with other people. He almost always tries to hide or mitigate his behavior in the eyes of the people who matter to him, and while he wants them to love him, he’s also willing to lie in order to get them to care. Meaning, he is satisfied with people loving the false image of himself that he presents to them, and if the option is between being loved for being someone he’s not and not being loved for who he is, he’ll choose the former.

                                                 ---------------------

In contrast to that, it seems like when Klaus screws up he almost never actually tries to “fix it”. He is also someone who (rightly) perceives himself to be the bad guy, even though, like Damon, a huge proportion of the bad things he does are done on impulse more than they’re done out of malice. He has a lot of complex feelings about being an objectively bad person, but again just as Damon does, he also uses his “bad guy” image as a shield. He psychologically allows himself to do many things he probably wouldn’t normally because he puts himself in the villain box. 

So, while Damon messes up and then tries to make up for it later, Klaus almost never does that. He does manage to reconcile with the people who love him more often than not, but he’s very rarely apologetic and he very rarely tries to sincerely justify what he’s done to them either. Ironically, while Damon sort of pushes the situation on to the people around him and asks them to be the ones to think it through and deal with it, Klaus seems to cope with things and think them through almost entirely by himself. 

Klaus is a completely self-loathing person, despite the fact that he pretends to be the opposite, and it seems safe to assume that that’s because he does horrible things on instinct or impulse but he really processes them internally afterwards. So of course, how could any remotely intelligent person see themselves as anything other than monstrous after doing the things that Klaus has done? 

That is a huge way in which Klaus differs from Damon, and that difference expresses itself in one of the starkest ways, comparatively speaking. Damon doesn’t self-reflect, so he is satisfied with “fixing his mistakes” in an incredibly superficial way. If Elena and Stefan still care about him and engage with him after he does something terrible, then in his mind it’s no longer an issue, and it’s not something that he thinks about in relation to himself anymore. 

But Klaus is not that way. He often times doesn’t try to fix it because he understands that there is no way to fix it, at least not sincerely. Klaus knows he doesn’t deserve forgiveness for the things that he’s done, so for the most part he doesn’t even ask for it. Unlike Damon, Klaus would rather be hated for who he really is than loved for someone that he’s not. I think that choice is something that is partially driven by insecurity and fear, but I also think that it’s just a result of Klaus spending a lot of time and energy analyzing himself and his own behavior, and how other people should and do relate to that. 

Klaus desires love more than nearly anything else, however he has a very hard time believing that anyone would ever love him. But because this is something that is simultaneously an all-consuming desire and something that he really never gets, he’s desperate for whatever love he gets to be “real”. He wants to be seen for who he really is, even if that reality is terrible, and he’d rather be loathed for being himself than be loved for being someone else. 

                                                ---------------------

And although Damon and Klaus had a lot of interactions throughout the show, I think most people rightfully point out the “what is it you say to her” as their most meaningful interaction. And of course, I agree with that assessment, and I think that the difference between the two in this scenario really speaks to their differences as characters. 

The idea of Klaus asking Damon for interpersonal relationship advice and Damon offering it is actually one of the funniest moments in the series, because you could not find two assholes who are worse at creating, maintaining, or developing relationships with other people. It’s actually priceless that Klaus even asked, because anyone with a lick of common sense would realize that it’s a horrible idea. 

However, Klaus does have common sense, so the fact that he actually did ask speaks to his ability to self-reflect even more, in my mind. Damon is the last person anyone should seek out for relationship advice, but I think what Klaus picked up on here is the fact that he and Damon both do equally terrible impulsive things, and Damon does manage to maintain relationships with other people in spite of it. So he’s not asking because Damon can give good advice, he’s asking because Damon can potentially give advice that is relevant to him. 

Damon’s assessment of the situation and difference between them is unsurprisingly incorrect. Damon’s excuse is that he does what he does with purpose, whereas Klaus just does them to be a dick. That is untrue of their behavior on both ends, because Klaus does do a lot of things with a specific purpose behind them and Damon does tons of stuff just to be a dick. However, that is a perfect example of how Damon rationalizes his own behavior and only looks at it in an incredibly superficial way. 

Damon telling himself that he only does these things because he needs to allows him to do whatever he wants for whatever reason he deems necessary while still telling himself that the real him is better than that. The bad guy mantle is just a hat he puts on when it’s needed and it’s something he can take off when he wants. Klaus on the other hand might rationalize things in that way to the people around him, but he doesn’t make those rationalizations to himself. 

To me what is most interesting in this interaction is that Klaus asks for Damon’s advice but he doesn’t take it. Klaus actually asking for anyone’s advice, ever, is enormous, so it’s clear that he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t actually wanted to rectify things with Caroline somehow. Klaus showing any form of vulnerability is rare, so why would he show that vulnerable side to Damon of all people? Well, because it actually meant something. 

So the fact that Klaus doesn’t take Damon’s advice is very telling. He doesn’t take it because he doesn’t choose to rationalize what he’s done, to himself or to Caroline. Klaus is extremely adept at manipulating and tricking people, so the fact that he refuses to do it in some instances goes to show how little that ability means to him in a true emotional level. If he wanted to fool everyone into believing that he was someone he wasn’t, he could very easily do that. So the fact that he chooses not to, and that he would rather have Caroline (or Rebekah, or Elijah, or Stefan) hate him for the real him than love him for the fake him is huge. And for me, that is the biggest difference between Klaus and Damon.

[emma-what-son]

Various news outlets have now picked up the "retirement due to settling down" story. If she did do this as some bizarre throw off to the media from her actual life then she's really gonna regret it. The amount of traffic this discussion has generated is crazy: whether it is those stans who are still standing by her breakup with Leo or the press and public who believe this theory bcs it came right after that equally ridiculous engagement ring theory. And what's more is there's even some articles about " Emma's rumoured husband-to-be" which is cringey, knowing that they're obviously not even together at this point. I wonder how she's going to feel about it when she finally decides to clear up this rumour at her convenience but by then tongues have been set wagging because (a) announcing by the press that someone is planning to settle down is big, and (b) there's mention of her agent and publicist in the story. So it's gonna look like a big fiasco and journos will run with stories like "shocking breakup after talk of marriage" and social media will run with it again, which she won't like. I can see that she wrongly predicted where this news planting could take her, but the reaction (whether it is backlash or pity or shock or whatever) from people who follow her will be huge. If I were her, I'd never bring this on myself. There was no need to go with the sacrificing career for a man angle. Smh..

I’m surprised that she went with that as well. Stepping away from acting because of a guy. She could’ve just told something that was closer to the truth. That she was tired of acting or wanted to focus on other stuff.

When she comes back, she could easily brush off the engagement rumors since she can claim that those were untrue. But I can see her not saying anything about this. Because that is the beauty of this entire situation: none of the info is coming directly from her. It’s through news outlets and she can let them do the talking for her. She doesn’t have to say anything. She harps on about keeping her relationships private, so she could get away with it. She will just start working on her next project and sooner or later we’ll get another DM article that says that the rumors of her engagement were untrue and that they’ve broken up since she’s seeing someone else now.

She might talk about her quitting acting, maybe say that she will wait for the right script even though she herself knows she won’t ever act again, but I can see her just not saying anything about that and just working on her new projects.

[committoreality]

You don't think white privilege is real?

Thank you so much for asking this, I appreciate the inquiry!

Before I get into some points, I think it is a reasonable and valuable project to identify and be aware of the reality that some people have had it harder than you. It is valuable to be aware of one’s own benefits, and understand the ways meritocracy is flawed and imperfect. I know that this is useful. At the end of the day, it cultivates empathy. It cultivates awareness and openness. It can be humbling to learn about the plight of others. However, I think this project is weak in that it puts the collective before the individual. It wrongly homogenizes experiences and pretends that race is the main determinant of one’s life and advantages. It’s not. 

Secondly, we can’t change what we were born into, but we can choose what we do with it. We can choose to be educated, to be empathetic, to strive to equality and to make progress. To stand up to what we sincerely believe. To act with dignity and integrity. 

But what I’m seeing a lot more of, is not people who are educating themselves, and not people who are developing awareness and empathy. 

What I’m seeing is these flawed philosophical concepts being used to flip a hierarchy and to seize power. I see a lot more people apologizing and acting out of guilt, fear and shame rather than sincerely being educated on all sides of an issue. I see our inherent inclination towards empathy and love being exploited by people who feel so oppressed they now want to oppress others. 

This bizarre act of kneeing, of bowing, or showing submission because of one’s privilege seems oddly fetishistic. I’m sure some of us are familiar with these videos circulating where someone demands a white person bows. Kiss their shoes. This is a really weird cultural moment where shame is being fetishized and dignity is stigmatized. 

Bowing and kneeling and submitting TO SOMEONE, is very different from showing alliance and kneeling WITH someone. Alliance and support has morphed into this strange submission that seems so sexual and motivated by guilt.

Coopting society’s long project towards creating a society that is premised around equality is not the same as reversing an old hierarchy and turning the historically and symbolically oppressed into tyrants. The project of equality belongs to all of us, and to let it be coopted by power hungry groups is backwards. I’m not supporting that. 

Privilege is less about developing empathy for the plights and circumstances one was fortunate not to face. Privilege has become this sort of guilt machine, where people aren’t supposed to act with dignity and strive towards equality everyday in their actions and position- privilege is this guilt treadmill where we’re perpetually signalling how sorry we are for the circumstances of our birth, and showing this fetishistic submission. This isn’t alliance. Bowing, kneeing, and apologizing to someone with whom you’ve done no wrong isn’t position yourself as an equal, and fighting a problem as equals- it is submitting to symbolic oppression by the symbolically oppressed. 

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that every human isn’t a moral equal. Submission is not alliance. Privilege acknowledgement turned guilt parade and atonement isn’t alliance. It’s not fighting racism. 

So in sum- before I get into my academic arguments, privileges exist. Race is not the main or only axis of differentiation that dictates one’s level of privilege vs. oppression. Lets be clear about that. But more importantly, this concept of white privilege has been weaponized, coopted, and morphed into a guilt generator rather than a tool of empathy. 

1. Race is not the main or only axis of privilege/disadvantage. This is an empirical question. Other factors are more/equally important in shaping one’s privilege. What one THINKS is the main determinant of privilege is not the same as what is EMPIRICALLY TRUE. 

2. More important factors that shape one’s outcomes can concentrate around race. For example, in the States, the rate of black poverty is 22%, and 9% for whites. Poverty is a major factor in shaping privilege and outcomes. So is growing up in a two parent home. Family structure also concentrates around race in the States. Family structure is a major factor that shapes privilege. 

3. White privilege is inherently tied to the flawed concept of implicit bias. Implicit bias is a bs concept, with weak measurements, and doesn’t measure what it is intended to measure. Secondly, the fiction that one’s prejudices are determined by one’s race and not one’s life experiences and environment is problematic. Not all white people have negative biases towards minorities. Importantly- bias is not determined or negated based on one’s skin colour. So to assume that we ALL HAVE THE SAEM BIASES, TO THE SAME EXTENT- MEANING THAT WE ALL GIVE PREFERENCE TO WHITES, is false. So to assume all whites are advantaged solely due to their skin colour means we’re either dealing with white supremacists, or that everyone in positions of power favour whites. Again, this is an EMPIRICAL QUESTION.

4. Beware “concept creep”. This is when a concept emerges intended to capture a specific phenomenon, and over time it extend to capture new, less intense, and less severe phenomena. This has happened with white privilege. This concept now means all kinds of things that extent beyond the original definition. These concepts can be trojan horses. 

5. My main issue is that this concept emerged as a sensitizing concept. To show some casual advantages that whites have. It emerged from Barbara Applebaum’s paper, where she noted that hair salons know how to cut her hair, but maybe not tight curly hair. This concept has since been extended to other situations- where the notion that whites have some sort of major advantage that protects them from consequences is demonstrably false. 

These signs from the protest that say “I have white privilege so I don’t have to worry about police violence”, is demonstrably untrue. in 2019, 9 unarmed blacks were killed by police, and 19 unarmed white were killed by police. If people want to think police brutality doesn’t happen to white because of some sort of fake privilege, then just be aware this is a commitment to a fiction. Look up Daniel Shaver and Tony Timpa. White men brutally killed by police. 

This concept has been extended to situations where no privilege exists. This is my issue. The false extension and application of this concept, to situations where it is not relevant. It informs other fictions that I take issue with. 

[aretherenonames]

LET ADRIEN BE CAT NOIR

I am frustrated by the fact that most people who ship Ladrien, MariChat, LadyNoir, and Adrienette seem to ship them in this love square because people freaking forget that these are the same people. Marinette is Ladybug and vice-versa; same goes for Chat and Adrien. This frustrates me because it’s as if people forget that Marinette is a hero even when she’s not wearing the suit, and Adrien is a hero even when he’s not cracking awful puns. People forget that these people are one and the same, and that Mari and Adrien don’t just randomly transform into actual different human beings  when they don their suits. Ladybug is still Marinette, and Cat Noir is still Adrien.

One of the main reasons why I need people to remember that they are the same person is because I need them to be whole. If we ship them with the love square, we neglect aspects of their personality that make them who they are. For example: if we ship the narrative of MariChat, we may neglect Chat’s more “Adrien” traits: gentleness, politeness, and having “intellectual” abilities like speaking foreign languages (Chinese), playing the piano, and fencing. Instead, we focus on the more “playful” parts of him: puns, cockiness, jokes, etcetera. If we run with a narrative where we ship MariChat (without a reveal), and the ship sails, then there would surely have been a choice within Marinette/Ladybug wherein she decides “I will commit to Cat Noir now, and I will stop liking Adrien.”  Essentially, she is choosing Chat over Adrien (even though they're the same person, but she doesn’t know that). Her moving on from Adrien would mean her rejecting the side of Chat that is Adrien. This shouldn’t happen because if she loves him then she can’t just pick and choose which aspects of him she likes better. It just fucks up my mind to think about what that would mean for them when they show up to each other as Ladybug and Adrien  and they don’t love each other because they’ve decided to commit to somebody else (even if that somebody else is just them but in different clothes.) And if they do end up in a relationship but they also have feelings for their other identity wouldn’t that love be untrue, in a way? I mean, sure, they’re the same person, but they don’t know that the person they still have feelings for and the person they’re in a relationship with are one and the same. They’ve basically decided to commit to a relationship despite having feelings for other people (which, again, is just them but they don’t know that). Imagine what the implications of that would be if they weren’t one and the same. What if Adrien really wasn’t Cat Noir? Wouldn’t there be trouble brewing because of the fact that they’re in a relationship but they love someone else?

Also, we have to think of Ladybug and Marinette as one and Cat Noir and Adrien as one because that is how we get the full spectrum of their personality. If we ship them in Ladrien, MariChat, LadyNoir, and Adrinette, we’re ignoring the other aspects of their personality that make them, them. My whole point is that we shouldn’t ship Ladrien, MariChat, LadyNoir, and Adrinette exclusively; instead, we should ship them as them. Them as the whole persons that they are. We should ship the Marinette who is Ladybug with the Adrien who is Cat Noir.

Idk I’m not getting my point across clearly, but I hope someone understands.

Anyway. In order to let our 2 main characters fall in love with one another while also letting them see their whole individual personalities, we need them to reveal their identities to each other *before* committing to a serious relationship.  In order to do this, we need them to be friends first and foremost. We need them to have an established friendship before they reveal their secret identities. Then, and only then, can they start to fall in love.

(Also, sidenote, this is also part of the reason why I think Marinette should dial down on her crush on Adrien. That way, they have more time to develop their relationship with each other as friends and discover one another and build a good relationship without the strings of a romantic relationship. Chat’s crush on LB isn’t as bad because he still recognizes her faults as a person and he helps her. In short words, they’re a team, and they’re equals. Marinette’s crush, on the other hand, is like hero worship. But I digress. )

Additionally, we should also let them see the full spectrum of each other’s personalities, whether they are in hero-mode or just average-person mode. This isn’t that big of a problem when it comes to Marinette (and I’ll call her Marinette because she is, first and foremost, Marinette. She is Marinette before she is Ladybug. Her being a hero shouldn’t  define her whole being or eclipse who she really is. She is Ladybug, yes, and being Ladybug is a huge part of her; but she is Marinette first: strong-willed, creative, a good leader, a person with a big heart, and so much more. She is a hero in her own way even when she's not being Ladybug, and remembering that it important.) because her personality as Marinette already mixes well with her Ladybug persona (she has the same. Adrien, on the other hand, is different.

See, I think that one of the reasons why people continue to ship Ladrien, MariChat, LadyNoir, and Adrinette as if they were different people is because they can’t think of his secret identity and hero personality as one and the same. Hero-version acts differently from normal-version. This isn’t that big of a problem with Mari, as I said, because Marinette is still essentially herself even when she’s being Ladybug. Some of her characteristics are more prominent, it’s true, (e.g we see a lot more of her serious side because when she’s Mari we mostly see her a. stuttering over Adrien b. falling all over herself and being clumsy or c. being mad at either Chloe or Lila) but she is still herself. We have already seen Marinette exhibit some of her more “Ladybug” traits even when she’s not saving Paris.

But when it comes to Adrien, we don’t often see him acting like his Cat Noir self. For whatever reason (though I presume it is because he, as a model and as the son of a movie star and a famous fashion designer, has a reputation to uphold, and also because he might be cautious about what he can say or do because he has been sheltered his whole life and he doesn’t want to ruin his experiences in the “outside world” by doing something wrong) Adrien has rarely ever shown his pun-loving wild side show when he is in public as Adrien. Adrien is a lot more mature, careful, and polite than Cat Noir because his personality and his social standing won’t allow him to show that side of him. This might be the reason why his Cat Noir persona is so vastly different from his Adrien persona (hence why Mari immediately dismissed the idea of Cat Noir being Adrien in Lady Wifi). Because of this, not only do the characters in the show dismiss the idea of Adrien being Cat Noir; we, the audience, have a hard time reconciling these two personalities as well, even though we know on a surface level that Adrien and Cat Noir are one and the same. Sure, there are moments where Adrien acts like Cat Noir (e.g at the end of Evillustrator where Adrien asks Marinette what it was like hanging out with Cat Noir) or moments when Cat Noir acts more mature and less playful (e.g in Antibug where Cat Noir gives Ladybug advice and questions her wrong actions) but the majority of the time we see a playful Cat Noir and a calm and collected Adrien, with the two rarely ever mixing.

This, I think, is one of the main reasons why we continue to ship Ladrien, MariChat, LadyNoir, and Adrinette. Because Adrien-Adrien is so different from Cat Noir-Adrien, we have created different ships that will let us choose which side of him to ship with Marinette. Shipping Marinette with the gentle, polite, intelligent, and refined Adrien is way different from shipping Mari with the playful, joking, pun-loving Cat Noir. The different sides are so different that they’re almost the opposites of the other.

If we used Marinette as a basis (Mari and Adrien vs. LB and Adrien (Adrien being the constant) or Mari and CN vs. LB and CN (Cat Noir being the constant)) there wouldn’t be that big of a difference. Sure, different aspects of her personality will become more prominent, but we would still ultimately view her as one person. Ladybug is Marinette just as Marinette is Ladybug. It doesn’t go the same way with Adrien.

My point can be seen more easily if we used a reveal scenario: if it were revealed that Marinette has been Ladybug all along, people would be shocked, but they would connect the dots pretty easily. Marinette is creative, kind, has a good heart, and has a rich imagination which allows her to come up with solutions even with the most bizarre things. She has a strong sense of justice, and speaks up when there is something wrong. It makes sense. Why wouldn’t she be Ladybug?

If it were discovered that Adrien was Cat Noir, people would not only be shocked, they would also be confused and disbelieving. Adrien? The calm, collected, fragile, gentle, sensitive Adrien? The refined and polite Adrien? He’s Cat Noir? Isn’t he super courteous in real life? Isn’t a bit unrefined to make jokes, like those puns, especially coming from a guy who is super classy? It jUsT dOeSn’T mAkE seNsE!

So, to solve all this, I come upon my final point, the reason for this whole spiel: let Adrien act more like Cat Noir.

He doesn’t have to do it all the time. Just show us a few scenes of him exchanging puns with Nino.Let us see him act playful and cocky. Just show us more of Adrien letting his playful side out.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

A Look Back on the Twilight Saga

I have never felt older than I have this year, in which the film adaptation of the first book in the Twilight Saga turns ten. Ten years ago, that movie came out, three years after the book. And what a book and movie they were! They inspired so much rabid devotion and equally rabid pushback, with people gushing over the beautiful romance in equal amounts as people saying how the books were offensively awful and filled with misogyny and romanticization of abusive relationships. Golly, I sure am glad discussion of fiction has improved since then and we don’t have dumb arguments like that anymore!

All joking aside, it is pretty interesting to look back on the series. With the passage of time, and the release of so much young adult fiction in cinemas between then and now, I have to say that looking back… Twilight is a pretty good film and, for the most part, a pretty good series.

Now, such a bold statement could never have been made in that period during the heyday of the series, where the popularity of the series was slowly souring and people began openly rejecting the series as trash. But I feel that rejection was just part of an obnoxious cycle I’ve seen a lot in recent years, where anything remotely popular with audiences (such as Frozen) becomes hated at the peak of its popularity, seemingly because of the sole fact that it is popular and not really due to anything having to do with the actual overall quality.

See, here’s the thing: despite the series having a reputation for being poorly written tripe, it really is a lot better than anyone gives it credit for. Now, I’m not going to say the writing is on par with other young adult fantasy series of the time, like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, because that is just patently untrue. What the Twilight Saga was, and what it always seemed to aim for, was the level of quality of a tacky airport romance novel you pick up while waiting for your flight to kill time. It’s nothing but wish-fulfillment fantasy in which an unhappy young woman becomes the reason for living for several unfathomably hot supernatural men, a sentiment that quite frankly resonates with the modern atmosphere towards supernatural romance and the prominence of self-proclaimed “Monsterfuckers.” Bella’s situation is pretty much a dream come true, is it not? Among tacky supernatural romance novels, Twilight and its sequels are easily the queens of the genre.

Here’s the thing that really sets the Twilight Saga apart, though: there is actually a serious amount of thought and care put into nearly all aspects of the romance’s universe save for the actual romance. Every single member of the Cullen family has a fascinating backstory: Carlisle was a vampire hunter turned vampire who proceeded to venture across the world in the ensuing hundreds of years building up a family and practicing a different way of living; Alice was committed to an asylum and has a past shrouded in mystery; Jasper was a soldier in the Confederate army who was turned into a vampire and tasked with raising a vampire army; Rosalie’s backstory is Kill Bill, BUT WITH VAMPIRES!; and Emmet, while easily the least impressive of them all, still died apparently fighting a bear, and considering how he is one can only imagine what on earth he was doing. Esme is the only Cullen without a deeply fascinating backstory, but even what little we do get is a bit tragic: she lost her child and so committed suicide, or attempted it anyway. There’s absolutely no need for all of these rich, complex backstories for characters in a throwaway romance novel, and yet here they are. And that’s not all.

The rest of the world and overall vampire society is presented in a very interesting way. The Volturi in particular are a fascinating idea, a secret cabal of vampires who rule over all other vampires with an iron fist, but one that is, while a bit tyrannical and unforgiving, seemingly necessary to preserve the existence of vampire society. Hell, their rules don’t really seem TOO harsh, and they only really spring to action when there are vampires fragrantly and blatantly exposing themselves to human society. They wish to keep the vampire world hidden in the shadows, where they can feed in peace away from prying eyes. Their position is understandable in a lot of ways. They also have a very interesting history to them, having apparently wrestled power over vampirekind away from a sect of Romanian vampires. Now, I did say they are a fascinating IDEA; in execution, they always tended to be a bit… useless. Their appearances in New Moon and Breaking Dawn are ultimately wastes of time, as they are never really opposed in any sort of meaningful way and get away in the end with the status quo wholly unchanged. No impact is ever made on vampirekind when they’re involved, which almost makes me wish that they were kept in the shadows and used far more sparingly. Their influence over events in Eclipse, where they only send out their powerful agents, showcases that Stephanie Meyers could use them very effectively when she wanted to.

The werewolves are a bit less effective. While they do have an intriguing backstory, there is something a bit… problematic about shoehorning a bunch of fictional elements onto the real Quileute tribe. On the other hand though, a positive and heroic portrayal of Native Americans in fiction is never a bad thing, and Jacob Black is easily one of the more sympathetic characters until halfway through Breaking Dawn. It’s a very tricky, mixed bag. I kind of wish that the issue with the handling of Native American folklore was the biggest controversy with the series, but there’s actually one far worse and even stupider.

The Twilight Saga has come under fire for being a negative influence on young women, for romanticizing abusive relationships and stalking, and for being some sort of massive insult to feminism. Now, these arguments aren’t wholly without merit, but the issue is that they are being filtered through human understanding and imposed on fictional creatures in a fictional universe. If a real-life human acted as clingy, impulsive, over-protective, and obsessed as Edward is towards Bella, yes, it would be absolutely terrifying. Here’s where I let you in on a little secret, though: Edward Cullen is, in fact, not a human. He is part of a race of ageless semi-undead beings who live off of blood and glitter in the sunlight. He immediately sees his soulmate in Bella and goes out of his way to ensure they end up together, acting on the instincts granted to members of his kind. Trying to fit all of his actions into a human narrative is as fruitless as if an ant tried to explain humanity to his colleagues filtered through his ant experiences. The fact is, Edward operates on a far different moral code than humans. This is not uncommon for vampires in any fiction; Marceline of Adventure Time fame is a vampire who is certainly not above doing some rather sketchy stuff, for example. While Edward’s actions can come off as bizarre and creepy to humans, for a vampire, Edward is actually downright romantic and even benevolent. One also needs to take into account that Edward is a kissless virgin who has spent a hundred years doing nothing but reading romance novels and listening to classical music, which would go a long way to explain his awkward and sometimes offputting ways of trying to replicate human courtship rituals with Bella.

The criticisms leveled at Bella are rather unfair as well; while she often finds herself a damsel in distress, it rarely is something she doesn’t want. When Bella is in danger, it’s because she wanted to be there and put herself there. Yes, she does get into trouble, but that’s mostly due to her being a stupid horny teenage girl with zero impulse control. Recall New Moon, where she constantly did dangerous stunts so she could have hallucinations of Edward chastise her. Bella is, quite frankly, an adrenaline junkie, and I feel she’d rather resent being called a damsel. Even the times when she is in danger, it is no real fault of her own, but rather the fact she is a normal human out of her depth in a supernatural world. Bella is not Blade, she is not Van Helsing, she is not Alucard; she is Bella Swan, normal teenage girl, and she tends to be as effective as your average teenage girl in situations where superpowered monsters are hunting her. Imagine if we applied these sorts of criticisms to other characters in fiction… “John Conner in Terminator 2 is such a worthless damsel in distress character, why does he not just fight off the T-1000?” or how about “Why do the kids in The Goonies not take the Fratellis head-on? Why do they constantly flee from them when they cross paths? And Chunk, getting captured by them, what a pathetic damsel moment.” People not being successful in areas where they are out of their element is not some horribly evil thing. I also resent the idea the series is some horrible, anti-feminist work, particularly because the entire series revolves around Bella’s choice, and when she is not given agency she goes out of her way to take that agency. For all the flaws of Breaking Dawn, and there are many, I will give it this: presenting Bella as being in the right for wanting her choices respected is a good thing. With that in mind, I think the entire series is a lot more feminist than many are willing to admit.

And look, I’m not saying this book is a flawless masterpiece or anything like that. I have mentioned this is definitely a book more impressive for the world it creates than for the actual romance it centers around. But I do feel that, generally speaking, the books never descended to the point many who criticized the books say they did. I say “for the most part” because I cannot even muster up enough good will to say a single good thing about Breaking Dawn. But generally, the writing quality is decent. Even some of the twists on vampire lore are interesting and refreshing.

For instance… the sparkling. This is one of the most infamous additions to the lore of vampires in Meyers stories. When in the sunlight, rather than bursting into flames as vampires tend to do in fiction, their skin sparkles and glitters as if it was encrusted with diamonds. It does sound silly, and it really is, especially when they show it off in the movies… and yet, it is actually far more accurate than just about every depiction of vampires in nearly 100 years. You see, the idea vampires are killed by sunlight is actually a relatively new addition to vampire lore, being created for the famous silent masterpiece Nosferatu because they couldn’t come up with any other way to kill the vampire. In the original novel of Dracula, for instance, the titular count strut about during the day with no ill effect. So, by accident or perhaps by some better understanding of the creatures than most writers, Meyers was more accurate than nearly all contemporary portrayals of the characters. Also interesting – but not nearly so to the point I feel the need to dedicate a whole new paragraph to it – the idea of vampires having a sort of “love at first sight” thing that allows them to discern their soulmate was copied by Hotel Transylvania, so I feel like that addition to vampire lore has its merit as well.

The film adaptations tend to not truly fix the flaws with the storytelling, but instead to paint over them with some truly inspired silliness. The utter apathy Robert Pattinson exudes for his role as Edward Cullen is palpable in how he acts, and it tends to make Edward’s creepier actions actually less threatening than the were in the books – and I’d argue there he wasn’t particularly threathening, despite his angsting. Taylor Lautner’s oft-shirtless portrayal of Jacob Black seems a lot more genuinely, but equally cheesy; his and Pattinson’s onscreen chemistry really gives them the feel of two romantic rivals, which makes it easy to see exactly why there was such a devoted following rooting for one or the other back in the day. Then we get to Bella.

As usual, Bella is a horribly misunderstood character here. It’s easy to blame the books for how one-note Bella appears in the movies – as a romance protagonist, Bella has enough personality for you to care while still being enough of a blank slate that you can put yourself in her position so that you can fantasize about the outcomes – but I almost feel like her portrayal was a deliberate choice. Kristen Stewart is actually a very good actor when in the right role, and I feel like even in the past I’ve been too hard on her portrayal of Bella. I think I might go so far as to say her version of Bella is better than the book, because Stewart actually does inject some vapid, awkward teenage girlishness to the role. That’s something wonderful, especially about the films – the teenagers, more than a lot of other series, tend to feel like real people. They say the dumbest stuff imaginable, but really, is that not what being a teenager is? Everyone was a stupid, vapid idiot as a teenager, it’s just how teens are. So all t hat combined with everything else that has been said, does any part of Bella’s characterization truly feel THAT abnormal for an otherwise normal, brooding teen thrust headfirst into the world of the supernatural? I personally don’t think so; Bella is actually one of the most real characters of the series, an anchor to humanity in a sea of supernatural strangeness, a character that is absolutely perfect in her dull, flawed, overly-romantic personality. She may not be the strongest, or most interesting, or even the most pleasant character in all of fiction… but she has an air of realness to her few other characters can hope to achieve. Perhaps this is why a lot of people rejected and mocked her; it’s so much easier to dismiss and belittle something than accept that it is something real, warts and all. No one wanted to accept the less pleasant parts of Bella, and so she was rejected by all except the fans of the book; meanwhile, seemingly disinterested goth girls would be fought over by two equally strange men for her affection, all while she talks in a sort of half-awake near-monotone.

I was in that situation myself. It’s all real teenage bullshit.

I feel like this more than anything explains why the Twilight Saga ended up being violently rejected by so many people: too many people saw through the supernatural elements and into the real life teenage angst and did not like what they saw, as it reflected their own experiences. It’s so bizarre to say, but Stephanie Meyers may have been too real for her own good, and her portrayal of angst-ridden teen love triangles may have been just too close to home for a lot of people. I’m sure a lot of older people had negative experiences in high school as I did, so anything that reminds them of those stupid, painful years is not going to seem pleasant. With other stories that feature realistic elements with supernatural settings, such as Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and so on, they never really faced this kind of scrutiny and rejection as while they also are grounded with realistic portrayals of their teenagers, they also take place in overtly supernatural settings; there is no place where an experience could be like that of Hogwarts or Camp Half-Blood. But there’s probably of plenty of places like the dismal, dreary town of Forks, Washington, a perpetually cloudy town out in the sticks where nothing ever seems to happen. Reading about teen angst in such an agonizingly depressing setting will not go over well with anyone who has had negative experiences in regards to the elements portrayed, supernatural dressing or no.

Looking back at the Twilight Saga, after years of imitators of varying quality and numerous attempts by mediocre young adult franchises to capture this saga’s lightning in a bottle, the stories sans Breaking Dawn seem to have aged quite well, and hold up a lot better. Removed from the rabid fandom, overwhelming hype, ad constant mockery, the series stands as a solid and kind of cheesy young adult romance series, one with superb worldbuilding that I have yet to see any young adult series after it match and an absolutely fantastic ensemble cast that is just rife with fanfiction potential. I find that even the lead trio, be it in the films and in the movie, have a lot more layer and depth to them than initially thought, with Bella in particular a character I feel deserves some serious reevaluation. And while I’d never call the series a masterpiece to rival Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, or Lord of the Rings, I do think that the series is good enough to unironically be enjoyed. While there is of course plenty to snark at here – it’s a story featuring a rather honest depiction of teenagers, after all, and teenagers are idiots – I think there is a lot more to like than the insane hatedom of the book ever gave it credit for.

And even if you can’t bring yourself to admit the series is genuinely good (albeit cheesy), there’s no denying that it had a pretty good impact on popular culture. Aside from being the basis for Vampire Sucks, which has the honor of being the only genuinely good Seltzer and Friedberg film, it put supernatural romance stories back into the mainstream again. The biggest example of a supernatural romance film that I can see got a lot of mainstream recognition was 1990’s Ghost, which is held up as a romantic classic; while there were plenty of supernatural romance films between then and Twilight, none of them seem to be recalled fondly or even at all, and none of them can even come close to saying they had the sort of cultural impact Ghost did. Twilight, though… it had a huge impact. Without Twilight, we probably wouldn’t have gotten Warm Bodies, we probably wouldn’t have gotten Horns, and honestly? We probably wouldn’t have gotten The Shape of Water, or more realistically, the movie would not nearly be as accepted. Twilight for better or worse conditioned us to see the humanity in supernatural entities and find attraction in them (not exactly a new idea as far as vampires go, I know, but it definitely put it in the minds of young adults). I can easily see the genesis of the modern crowd of people lusting after the Asset, Pennywise, Godzilla, and Venom being the Twilight Saga; it was a gateway drug that put in the minds of youths “Hey, monsters can be really sexy. Like, REALLY sexy.”

The Twilight Saga is truly a fascinating work, for better and for worse. There is a lot in it that I really admire, and there’s plenty in it that I resent, but even at its worst I can never say that the series was boring. For all the flack I give Breaking Dawn, it is still far more readable than any of the garbage Cormac McCarthy has ever shat out, and nothing in the series was as overtly misogynistic as some of the dialogue in Ready Player One. As cheesy as the film series got, the first was a surprisingly effective indie supernatural romance and the third was a gloriously Gothic cheesy delight, with the second being the awkward but still enjoyable middle film and Breaking Dawn: Part 1 being the only genuinely awful film in the series; nothing positive could be said for the slew of imitators that crawled in this film’s wake, such as Beastly, Red Riding Hood, and even some of the would-be successors to this franchise such as the cinematic adaptations of Percy Jackson, Divergent, and The Hunger Games among others, which despite them being based off of books of far greater critical acclaim had absolutely no respect for their source material the way the Twilight Saga films did. As silly as some of the acting in the movies was – and it got very silly, considering the lead three all seemed to actively despise their roles – none of their acting was as painfully bad to sit through as Jennifer Lawrence’s attempts at acting in the first Hunger Games film, or the entire cast of the Percy Jackson movies. I would never say that Twilight is the absolute pinnacle of young adult literature, but I think a lot of us had our judgment clouded back in the day, and with the benefit of hindsight I think it’s safe to say the franchise was a lot of fun; I’d even go as far to say that it is an underrated work of genius in many aspects.

Removed from the climate that created it and put into a world it helped shape, I think the tale of Bella Swan and her romance of the angsty immortal Edward Cullen resonates quite a bit better. So thank you to Stephanie Meyers and everyone involved with the film series, because without your work, the world we live in would probably be a much less interesting place, with far fewer people horny for monsters. I really don’t think I would want to live in that world.

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8 Men Myths We Should Let Go Of

Even though we've all been guilty of talking about myths about men at one point or another, it's time to acknowledge all the widespread myths about men that need to be dispelled. Stop generalizing about men based on ridiculous myths. We all know how frustrating it can be because women have had to deal with that for millennia. Which male stereotype amuses or offends you the most?

1. Men Are Simple

8 Men Myths We Should Let Go Of According to this misconception, males have simple, uncomplicated emotions and don't care or think much about anything. They also do a bad job of comprehending women. Fortunately, except from a few rotten apples, this myth is untrue. In actuality, humans are just people and both genders are equally complex. If you're in a relationship with a man, you need to dispel this myth.

2. They Don’t Get Cold

This notion is widespread despite how bizarre it seems. Maybe it's because he lends you his jacket so frequently. But have you ever considered that perhaps he's acting chivalrously by masking his discomfort from the chill? Men have just been socialized to keep us warm and suck it up if they get cold, not because they have greater body temperatures or are in any way superhuman.

3. Boys Don’t Cry

8 Men Myths We Should Let Go Of Sadly, the boys and men in our society have been taught to be an iron wall with no displays of emotions, but in the real world, people feel things, and sometimes they express them whether they mean to or not. Interestingly, women aren’t the ones at fault for this myth. Instead, men need to let this myth go and realize that there’s a difference between being a self-pitying crybaby and having a healthy cry once in a whole as a grown human being.

4. They Never Ask For Directions

This outdated stereotype is completely untrue today. A man will never acknowledge that he is geographically challenged based on this urban legend. The next time you want to make gender assumptions, pay close attention to anyone who might be acting in this way. You'll notice that it's not just a masculine thing. Refusing to recognize that you need help is a fundamental character weakness, and there are women who are guilty of it as well.

5. They Only Care About Sex

8 Men Myths We Should Let Go Of There are women who engage in promiscuity. Women prioritize sex just as much as men do, demonstrating that gender has nothing to do with how much you think about sex. Additionally, not every guy is a horndog looking to run after sex with a woman. Many men aren't frightened to get married and commit to someone. They merely want to find someone to spend their golden years with, like many other women out there.

6. Men Are Scared Of Beautiful Women

It's true that people are quick to judge a gorgeous lady, but it's not like guys are the only ones who do this. If you're going to keep spreading this lie, you might as well declare that all lovely girls are jerks and all gorgeous gentlemen are high maintenance. We're all culpable of doing this occasionally. Don't judge a book by its cover, as they say!

7. Men Hate Talking And Listening

8 Men Myths We Should Let Go Of No one's gender automatically indicates that they are ineffective communicators. The corresponding stereotype about women is that they are all drama queens. Men tend to talk a lot, but many of them also make good listeners. Additionally, a lot of guys chat, just not in the style that women want.

8. A Man’s Value Is Determined By His Job And How Much He Earns

No one's gender automatically indicates that they are ineffective communicators. The corresponding stereotype about women is that they are all drama queens. Men tend to talk a lot, but many of them also make good listeners. Additionally, a lot of guys chat, just not in the style that women want.     Read the full article