#and then you look at it through the lens of their abuse and omg I fear I cannot breathe thinking abt it ughhhh

[parttimetomfooler]

The 'she never would've let you leave if she didn't have a spare' trope genuinely haunts me. It keeps me up at night. I truly wonder deeply and profoundly abt it every single day. i haven't even read Choices yet the label of spare haunts every single interpretation I will ever have of regulus arcturus black. he can never not have a brother, even when he doesn't. even when he responds "barty and evan are fine, thanks for asking.' even when he feels like his brother will never forgive him for the sacrifices he has had to make. every word he speaks, every thing he does every breath he takes is all through the lens of being the safety blanket for a loose cannon of a sibling and it haunts me.

[0alix0]

Overusage of Lore

a lot of people tend to say that bioware put little to no lore into Veilguard, and i might be on a minority on this to me it's way too much and way too shallow

The entire game feels like writers just scream at you "Look at all the magical thing we have!! So we have Titans! And Evanuris! And Illuminati Those Across the See! And-- are you listening? You better listen cuz there are more! We have Shadow Dragons! We have Griffons! We--"

OMG calm down it's not a fucking Warcraft

the best thing in DA was the way it beautifully showed real life issues through the lens of medieval fantasy world.

The dalish weren't so fascinating because they had an entire language made for them and pretty tattoos. They were fascinating because they were enslaved, fought for freedom, then got their land taken away YET STILL continued to fight for survival, for their cultural identity, their children and their children's children, for freedom. Literally combination of native american's and jewish history. Because despite having one goal they all had different approach and opinion about other of their kin: city elves (those disconnected from their culture) and half-elves ("can they be considered elves?" "should they be allowed to be a part of dalish?").

The city elf origin wasn't so memorable because every npc had a backstory with a length of bible. It was memorable because it was the most obvious analogy on racial oppression, segregation, colonialism and fetishism in the entire franchise. Because it had the guts to actually show in details the horrors of these things.

Broodmothers weren't so horrifying because it's a female mixture of jubba hutt and a fucking pudge from dota with a detailed explanation their anatomy. They were horrifying because they were paralleling a very real misogyny, mistreatment, the way how women in some countries are seen as nothing but a walking uteruses, where the only thing they're good for is to give birth

AND bioware doubled it while doing the same thing with Orzammar, cast system & Rica!

The Circles weren't so interesting because we've got dozens of pages in WoT explaining their hierarchy/fraternities. No, they were interesting because it was literally a bunch of medieval GULAGs with a function of a mental hospital, it showed what mistreatments happen there, the abuse, child abduction and enforcement of religion.... And from the side of templars it was a discussion about professional deformation, addictions and the way high ranking people abuse those to control their underlings.

..... And you know, if we were back in origins, griffons, for example, would've probably been used as a parallel on irl eco terrorism. it might've been about how Wardens despite their good nature unintentionally bonded the general association of the entire animal species to their order and abused this connection to the point when the species was beyond preservation!

and btw, then that decision in davrin's quest would actually had any meaning, instead of throwing wardens into mud (again) and turning isseya into a villain for no fkn reason.

lore is only good as long as it's used for purpose, when it has things to discuss, not just exist

i don't fucking care about titans/evanuris/and other shit because they're just a 30 pages long article in codex and WoT trying to explain magic and write DA timeline almost to a fucking mesozoic era. it's BORING. Get me emotionally invested, then i'll care

[theflagscene]

“I only accept apologies in fries” Okay, well, Fadel runs a burger joint, he can do that. You know Style totally wore that shirt on purpose,

Some auntie! Oh she’s such a romantic, I like her. I’ve said it before, I think it’s cute that she allowed Style to hang out at her stall just in an attempt to get him his man!

He’s gonna do the absolute opposite of that dude! Get out of your face? Nah, he’s gonna get you to commit various health code violations in that kitchen.

Ah! They was one hell of a grab! I wonder if Dunk aggressively grabbing Joong’s dick is what made them remember August 22nd lol! Because from what I know about them—I haven’t watched any of their other series, just seen clips and stuff—they don’t seem to be very high heat. So physically grabbing ahold of one another’s junk instead of just alluding to it, I kinda get the feeling that it’s a new thing for them.

Keeping the gloves on, kinky! Hey! You cut open a perfectly good shirt and wouldn’t even give him a lil kiss, so mean Fadel.

Omg those are terrible fake tattoos, having them in 4K close ups is not a good thing.

Poor Bison, he looks so torn. He wants to not believe Fadel is right about Kant, but he also hasn’t really known his brother to be wrong. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Oh! Right out with it! Respect Bison! Just flat out asking him: did you give me something?

Ha! Thats twice Kant’s been threatened with his own tools.

Also those gloves are way too shiny, Jojo knows what he’s doing. I’d bet money I don’t even have, that at least one fisting fic will be written because of those gloves.

Wait wait, why does both Style and Kant have tiny frowning faces stitched into the left side of the collars of their shirts!?

Oh no! Bison is realizing that Babe’s being hurt! Why do I feel like there’s going to be a bully killed in the future? I feel like Bison won’t care about killing a teenager if he needs to, neither will Fadel. Because I definitely don’t see Kant being the one hurting him… or their parents aren’t dead, Kant and Babe’s parents are alive and well but abusive pieces of shit. Uhhhhh, no, my heart!!

Oh god, please don’t be a teacher that’s abusing him! Oh man, why are all the terrible things running through my head!? Jojo I blame you!—Actually I really like that Jojo doesn’t shy away from the heavier stuff in his series, so many writers and directors paint over the darker stuff with a soft lens to try and make it easier for the audience to digest. But not Jojo, he just throws shit at you and expects you to react. I respect that so much.

[kaiserposting]

ngl still being a kaiser fan after 261 is lame

Omg this ask got me so tight when I got to it I had to hop on mylaptop to type my essay

Ok this is a little Personal and some of yall aren gonna fuck with me after this but it's ok . Kaiser is a character I identify with because he's a good portrayal of someone with NPD so WE WILL GET INTO IT!

So like that being said. What do you mean 'Still liking Kaiser after the leaks is lame' like genuinely what do you mean. I just woke up but are you guys like SURPRISED by this. I liked him when he was introduced and this is what he was acting like. There have been A HUNDRED more chapters of him acting the same way past introduction. And now he's still acting like it. I understand if you just hate him right off the bat that makes sense but this doesn't really. Even if you're one of those people who just liked him for the backstory reveal because you have a I Can Treat You Better hero complex re:abuse victims that behavior WAS shown EVEN IN 260. "I hit the ball but it doesn't hit back" - the author has a very specific way of writing and this was VERY much intentional

Also like I understand there might be an initial shock when reading such words. Like it's Unpleasant it's Ugly. But also it boils down to a State of mind which personally I've observed as common among victims of severe trauma. "These people are born 'humans'. Different from me, they were born 'wanted humans'." = I hate people who weren't hurt the same way I was because I am jealous and bitter, I'm so jealous and bitter it feels good to me to make others feel like shit. And I'm not trying to get on some Hurt People Hurt People bullshit because that shit is annoying and apologia but what I'm trying to say is that sometimes Trauma makes you unpleasant and ugly and erratic and I appreciate that Kaneshiro actually wrote it out. Also like that feeling by itself isn't inherently evil. I think it's a very natural response! In this case Kaiser goes too far not by experiencing this emotion but by acting on it.

So now with THAT out of the way too, I think we need to sit down and think more into the Ness situation. So first he says, "I can't accept kindness because all I know is malice. If anything I think malice makes life easier." Then he goes to say he is specifically looking for someone to make a "dog to his malice" and reads a psychology book to achieve that. Like first of all I'm sorry but that is so comically evil it's hilarious to me. He read a textbook to be a more efficient male manipulator. But anyway the way I understand that isn't a deep underlying evil within him but a need for control. I think he believes everyone will hurt and disorient him unless he feels like he's Controlling them. From an abusive household the only relationship dynamic he knows is person of authority - inferior party. His only friend is Ness and the only person he feels safe around being Ness is because of he tells himself Ness is his "dog" and therefore won't ever raise a hand to him. And that's because he thinks anyone who isn't his dog/under his control will do exactly that.

And so... If we go from there, from the parallel we understand Kaiser didn't see his meeting with Ness the same way Ness sees it. However, that doesn't mean Kaiser's view is the objective truth. I think they're both UNRELIABLE and EMOTIONALLY UNSTABLE. So what that means is that Ness sees his time together with Kaiser through a more glorified lens, while Kaiser denies himself thinking of Ness as a companion because that puts him in a vulnerable spot, so to maintain his feeling of being in control he exerts distance and tells himself Heh we aren't actually friends because he doesn't even know that one time I giggled at him in the showers I was actually just manipulating him all along because I am sooo evil and untouchable 😏. Like do we actually take this perception at face value here because to me it just seems like a Scared and Cowardly person trying to act out his idea of a strong person because the ONLY other time he's been in any meaningful proximity to someone he got beat up and degraded.

With that I also think Kaiser is very much narcissist posturing. He'slying to himself to make himself seem invulnerable and self-aggrandizing himself through his malice (I think pretending we are 100% evil and irredeemable makes a lot of us feel safe because it seems inhuman and people are easily hurt so you don't Ever want to be a multidimensional person with layered personality traits). Because like if you think about it without the emotional reaction of "I hope Ness kills you you stupid whore" that we all have... He actually isn't doing anything that big. Like in his head he's like Heh I'm soooo Patrick Bateman I have all the control 😏 but all he did was like find a guy to play football with.

Like he's trying to say to himself that he's all that. Sure he does insult Ness and that's not good! But he didn't pull off some Complicated deeply horrific scheme. I do not believe Kaiser has an objective view of himself. It really takes away the power from all of that when you realize what he's doing is just Very Pathetic and Paranoid and Intimacy Averse. "I can't have normal friends let me get this guy in on my master servant roleplay and I'll act like he's not enjoying it too because it'll make me feel more powerful" Men will do anything but go to counseling

Addendum: This is also not Kaiser. Now I don't know what kind of person Kaiser is but considering I read it as him suffering from NPD/a disordered personality that means he doesn't have a "real" identity most of the time, this is a shell we're seeing. He just has a mask maybe there's something underneath maybe there isn't and he's empty inside, but the point is he is the kind of character who has a specific way they want to portray themselves and will lie to both themselves and the audience to achieve it. Yes I believe that includes the I'm a male manipulator evilest person alive 😏 shtick too (I think the actual truth is probably somewhere in the middle of his and Ness's view. Most likely they're both incorrect).

Notice how Barou and Rin overcame things? That is because they have a real ego. Kaiser doesn't have a "real ego"/sense of self right now, all he has is his selfish act. I believe that is intentional because I think the Blue Lock mangaka shows a good grasp and understanding of psychology. The development is pointing towards him actually getting one during this match we'll see. Hey he might even change and grow as a person if that happens but I wouldn't get too overly optimistic!

Also we need to understand that we only see these people playing football we don't know what the fuck he's like outside of that. I currently don't have any reason to believe he's anything beyond rude and insufferable when like talking to people who aren't his football rivals and in Blue Lock on principle I believe everyone is at least 30% a better more bearable person off the field.

And to finish off my demented rant some of yall are fucking HYPOCRITICAL. So when Isagi takes joy in ruining people's dreams it's fine but when Kaiser does it he needs to kill himself? Let's be very serious.

TL;DR Kaiser's behavior makes total sense, his 261 characterization falls in line with everything we've seen of him before so there's no need for shock, and he looked good being dysfunctional and messed up too

[request-remand]

Does….does this person realize it’s fiction? Therefor it’s fantasy? It’s pretend? You should not be structuring your real life role play/ bdsm / sex life based on fanfiction of a lawyer and a cop doing it sloppy style? Maybe their concerns are valid in some aspect, I honestly don’t know or care, but to hold you responsible for upholding some kind of warped idea of their own moral ground on the literal porn website where people frequently write dark exploratory fiction is actually so wild. Like, what a weird take? They said they’d been concerned about the dynamic between characters for a while so like….they knew what bothered them about it and then chose to keep returning to and reading it? People are allowed to cope in different ways, even ways they don’t personally approve of or sign off on, especially when the people in question are literally pretend. That whole comment was so self righteous and condescending and came from such a bad faith place of purity in porn/fiction that they tried to disguise as concern where “the rEaDeRs lOoK up tO yoU and WrItInG PoRn I dOn’T ApPrOvE of Is AcTuaLly So DangEROus anD ToXic” girl it’s PRETEND!!!! We are playing Barbie!!! Filter out what you don’t want to read and click out of the story!!! You don’t get to police people on the internet under the guise of “safety and morality” just because you personally didn’t like the way someone wrote something that had nothing to do with you. I think your fic is great and (spoiler alert!!!) I don’t plan to replicate the practices in my life nor do I find the presentation of these specific kinks “AbUSiVe” in any way, ESPECIALLY because such a huge and important dynamic of the series has been consent and using kink as a form of healing and processing emotions which people are alllwed to do both in fiction and reality? Especially when the consent is so explicit and the characters check in on each others comfort several times throughout? The internet is so bizarre I swear another author just got flamed because they let Sonny get pegged and a reader cried over it despite that the entire premise was in the story summary and the tags, the same way your stuff has also been CLEARLY LABELED. If it wasn’t labeled maybe they’d have a valid point or criticism but every single one of their arguments falls apart if you read your work with any kind of reading comprehension because all the shit they whines about is very clearly addressed WITHIN the series. Like. Part of reading is to READ. Jfc I’m sorry to rant but that blew my entire mind. The ENTITLEMENT! The ARROGANCE! “Umm excuse me I don’t like this kink so you must actually not know that what you are doing by writing something I don’t like is harmful and I’m worried about you” don’t turn it around on the author that you can’t utilize the filters like a reasonable person omg. The series is GREAT AND SO WELL THOUGHT OUT AND the journey Sonny and Barba go on to get to a place of love, trust, and understanding is crafted with so much care and tenderness and it’s such a good, important series. I love this work and it’s genuinely helped me look at my trauma through another lens and process it in a new way that’s been really helpful just reading about how Sonny and Rafael approach their own baggage. Please don’t let one person get you down, I loved your response but I wanted you to know that you are 100% right to defend your work AND you had the sources to back up your argument! I hope this message is encouraging and that the other anon reevaluated their own relationship with how they consume literature/media because the call is coming from inside the house in their case, I’m afraid 😬 anyways, all of my love and I am your biggest fan. Please keep writing! 😘

i love my readers yall are so unhinged i really get one hate comment and y'all are ready to throw hands kasjdfhsjdkh thank you so much though for real

might change my bio to "writing fanfiction of a lawyer and a cop doing it sloppy style" bc that sent me to outer space

[hxhhasmysoul]

Opinion on Maki?

I like Maki as a character, I’m not sure I’d be close friends with her as a person but I think she could be an okay person to know. 

I like how Maki’s story isn’t really that closely related to the main story of JJK i.e. Kenjaku’s plan. She gets to have her own stuff, her life doesn’t exclusively revolve around Kenjaku, Sukuna, etc. At the same time her story is very strongly tied to the themes of JJK. It’s a story about an oppressive, abusive system and about how it can’t be reformed, just destroyed, and how it won’t be satisfying for those who would do that because of what it will cost them. It’s a story about a woman in a patriarchal system. About dehumanisation, being valued through the lens of strength, gender and assimilation into the status quo. About family. About loss and loneliness. About how much it costs to be true to yourself. How much strength is a false idol and power ups don’t mean shit, they are not worth it. About how sometimes it’s impossible to reconcile opposing desires/goals. 

But this is probably not what you’re asking for in terms of detailed answer XD

But for the longest time this was all I could come up with because I didn’t know how to frame a more complex answer. XD

I don't know if you wanted salt either but well, this is what I came up with. Sorry it took me months...

I think Maki is one of the characters that the fandom mistreats a lot. And various parts of the fandom mistreat her in various ways. 

_________________________

“OMG Maki’s the worst for what she did to Mai” aka the victim blaming crowd

So to this group Maki not staying with the Zen’in for Mai’s sake is the worst crime. Often worse than what the Zen’in actually did to Mai, because hadn’t Maki left… 

I will be honest, I’m biassed against these people because Mai really reminds me of my abuser and the way these people excuse Mai’s behaviour rubs me the wrong way. Especially with how many of them openly say that they identify with Mai, or hint at that. To me it often feels that by excusing Mai’s rancid behaviour they try to excuse their own, and like whatever trauma you go through, it’s not okay to harm strangers and then excuse it with the said trauma. It may explain the behaviour but never justifies it, it’s still shitty behaviour and I actually like that JJK’s stance on that is consistently critical. 

The situation into which Maki and Mai were born was abusive and traumatising to both of them. Women in the Zen’in clan are less than men, their worth is measured by their looks and willingness to be meek and subservient. Also non sorcerers are treated as less than. 

Which actually made Maki’s start in that family harder and Mai’s. She had her Heavenly Restriction and a blunt personality, didn’t want to become a servant. Mai’s cursed technique and personality, on the other hand, made her seem slightly more palatable to the Zen’in. 

And this difference between them informed how they tried to cope with the abuse. 

Mai chose to try and make herself smaller and participate in the system, make herself as invisible as possible so that the oppressive system would not pay attention to her. The joke was on her because that strategy doesn’t offer much protection. Even if Maki had stayed, sooner or later the family would’ve remembered about them. If Naoya had forced himself on Mai there’s not guarantee that Maki could’ve protected her, if he groomed her, which I actually find more likely, then he would’ve forced a wedge between them first, isolated Mai maybe by showing her favour. Like Maki’s presence there would not have made Mai safer and would not have guaranteed that the Zen’in wouldn’t have turned them against each other.

Maki chose to try to defeat the system by playing by its rules. She wanted to become the head of the family, to become someone so strong and respected in the jujutsu society that she could take over the family. The joke was on her because the clan rules or the jujutsu society rules were never meant to work for her, they were meant to uphold the status quo. 

In their circumstances there was no right choice for either of them to make. It was the Zen’in’s choice to target Mai after Maki left. It was the Zen’in’s fault Maki wanted to leave in the first place. 

The Zen’in acted like textbook abusers who try to put the blame for their behaviour on the victims, want to make the victims feel responsible for what happens to other victims. And the fact how much the fandom is okay with that framing is sickening. Older children that get old enough to leave an abusive household often are blamed like this and often feel guilt that they wanted to protect themselves, as if they owe others their suffering. 

Maki wanted to come back, to make the Zeni’n clan more livable for herself and Mai. Her thinking was very naive, but so was Mai’s. They were both abused kids who had nowhere to turn for help. They both tried to survive in the way that felt the most reasonable to them. They both failed at what they tried.

_________________________

The even more far gone “Maki exploited Mai” aka the victim blamers meet performative feminism crowd

Some fans go further, claiming that Mai was exploited for Maki’s power up. 

After their father brutalises the twins and leaves them to be mauled by the curses, Maki is ready to die with Mai. It’s very clear Maki missed Mai, that she loved her dearly despite their differences. Maki feels defeated and done. She and Mai are finally close again, finally talking again. And Maki is ready to die there with her. She finds closure in their reunion, however brief and tragic it is. She does not want Mai’s gift, she doesn’t not want Mai to leave her, she doesn’t want to live without Mai.

I could even call that moment Mai’s little revenge. But like endearingly, without any malice. I don’t judge Mai for what she does then, like I don’t judge Maki for what she did. The roles here are reversed. 

When Maki left the clan, she made that decision despite knowing Mai would not like it and that she was leaving Mai behind. As I said, she was justified to do that because she didn’t owe suffering to Mai. 

In their death scene, in the curse pit, Mai makes the decision to leave Maki behind even though Maki asks her not to. Maki doesn’t want to stay in the world without Mai, she calls Mai her heart. Maki’s subsequent revenge on the Zen’in is performed without any sense of achievement. It’s clear she feels nothing at that point. 

Saying that Mai got exploited for Maki’s power up does not only willfully ignore how Maki behaved in that situation and how she reacted. It also disrespects Mai.

Abuse strips people of true agency and reclaiming even a sliver of that agency always comes at a cost. Maki’s was separation from her beloved sister. Mai also showed some agency then, it may feel awful to call it that, but she did make a choice to stay because it aligned more with her personality and desires. The alternatives both of them were presented with were awful, and neither made a true free choice, but they both showed some agency. Because abuse usually offers people such shitty choices, so their acts of agency are marred with regret and doubt and maybe even resentment.

In their death scene Mai shows her agency again, this time it is her who makes a choice for both of them because she’s the one with the power in that situation. Maki wouldn’t have been able to heal Mai and leave her with a weapon or with her strength. She also wouldn’t want to because she knows that Mai doesn’t not want to fight. Maki never pressures Mai to leave the Zen’in with her because she knows Mai doesn’t want the sorcerer's life. 

Mai still chose between two shitty options: die alone and leave Maki or die together. But she chose the one which aligned the most with her own desires and the one that she surely thought was the most aligned with Maki’s. 

When Maki left the Zen’in clan, Mai felt abandoned by her. I wish she understood that it was the Zen’in who took Maki away from her because they made it impossible for Maki to stay there, maybe then Mai’s fans wouldn’t be so confused. Maki actually realises who took Mai away from her. 

The nastiest part of the exploitation take is when its proponents pull gender into it. Try to align Mai with femininity and Maki with masculinity. I’ve written about how messed up it is to call Maki masculine. And this is done very deliberately to make hating on Maki “excusable”. 

When this sort of terfy “feminism” is used, it comes with the belief that masculinity is by default bad and anyone aligned with it becomes by default the exploiter, the abuser, the powerful one in the situation. And hating men has become normalised in terf infested online “lefty” discourse. 

So if they first align Maki with masculinity and Mai with femininity, then they can sound justified in talking about Mai being exploited, Mai being the sole victim of that situation. And Maki is the evil one.

They can willfully misinterpret the Zen’in massacre as some male power fantasy that Maki has enacted and ignore Maki’s words or state of mind. Maki is not “feminine” enough in her grief, she’s not hysterical and crying. Maybe if she was like Megumi or Yuuji, those unmanly crying weaklings, then it would’ve shown that she really cared.  

_________________________

The “Maki is just Touji 2.0” aka the what the heck is story analysis and reading comprehension crowd

I don’t even want to devote too much time to these people. Because their point boils down to: Maki has the same powers as Touji so she’s exactly the same character as him, or like a replacement for him. And my main reaction to this is honestly just sighing and rolling my eyes.

Because seriously, both characters have more to them than just their powers.

 They have different personalities. 

The Zen’in clan had a different attitude to them, despite the clan rejecting them both. 

The way they relate to other characters is completely different.

Their character arcs are different.

Their role in the story is completely different. 

The way they play into the themes of the story is different. 

Their Heavenly Restriction and blood relation are the only two similarities. And the fact that the Zen’in shitstains only see Maki through the lens of her gender or her strength. Maki had failed as a woman, completely when she became disfigured, Naoya was very clear about that. So she was measured by them only by her strength. And the only way they could find a point of reference for that strength was by equating her to the one they had all rejected and feared: Touji.

Oh, okay, I forgot Maki now has the same hairstyle as Touji, my bad, they are the same character.

I think that there are two major drivers for people to hold the opinion that Maki is just Touji 2.0. 

There are the “archetypes, tropes and parallels” people. People who when they interact with new stories try to find similarities to other stories and when they catch a glimpse, a faint scent, of a trope or archetype they will latch onto it and then zero in on everything that will  confirm that yes, this is it, it is done exactly the same way as in other stories. And they will willfully ignore any creative deviations in how the story uses the trope or archetype. 

Or if the cognitive dissonance becomes too much they will get upset at the story and the author, which is extremely common among the JJK casual watchers/readers turned haters when the story turns out not to be what they assumed it would be. 

And the same for inside the story parallels. For them a parallel between X and Y often means that X and Y are the exact same thing. Like they will aggressively try to prove that Yuuji, Nobara and Megumi are a repeat of Gojou, Getou and Shoko due to I guess, the gender ratio matching, even if doing that means ignoring everything about these characters. And they will also do it when it comes to Maki and Touji. 

The other group are the fandom rancid homophobes who are often, but not exclusively, Gojou or Getou or SatoSugu fans. Their main point is that they decided that Gege is a man (which may be true, but Gege doesn’t officially gender themself) and that Gege wants to fuck some of the characters they’d created. 

There are 2 characters that are most often mentioned as the objects of Gege’s supposed carnal desires: Touji and Sukuna… 

Okay, I will be blunter because it’s not only homophobia but also like with an extra layer of bottom prejudice. Gege is accused of “dick riding” the characters, and that’s not an accident. As isn’t the fact that disrespecting Kenjaku, when it takes a sexualised form, is always about them taking it from behind from Jin. Because these people - and I can’t stress this enough, a lot of these people ship M/M ships - these people will still love to treat homosexuality as degrading, especially being a bottom. 

These people will just say that Gege can’t live without Touji so Maki is in the story solely so Touji can be mentioned. They will also often frame it in performative feminism, because how dare Gege mention Touji sometimes when Maki is concerned, that means that Gege doesn’t care about Maki at all and is just thinking about Touji. When it’s most likely the fans just see Maki as Touji because they don’t really care about either character and they don’t know what they are about.

_________________________

The “Gege killed Maki on International Women’s Day” aka the no object permanence meets performative feminism crowd

So these are the “champions of feminism” in the fandom. Those who will scream that “Gege hates women”. And the moment Maki gets hurt and isn’t instantly shown to be alive, those people will instantly assume Maki was killed. And scream that “Gege hates women”.

It doesn’t matter that it makes no sense considering what Maki’s been through in the story thus far. It doesn’t matter that it reeks of terfism and misogyny to assume that even small damage a female character takes means that she is incapacitated/dead, when it’s not assumed of male characters in the same story who are taking much more serious damage. 

What matters is performing feminism on social media and feeling justified in posting vitriol targeted at Gege.

_________________________

_________________________

tl;dr

In the way the fandom treats her, Maki suffers from not being a sexyman but sharing her powers with one. She also suffers from not doing the victim of abuse and dehumanisation right.

[c0rrupted-mov]

hi gretaaaaa ^_^ what r ur chiaki hcs if i may ask...... i would love to hear em :3

HAII hello!!!! ^^ so nice to get this ask from u omg I have so many… lets start. idk if i should hide this under the cut or not

• first of all: bisexual and demisexual. pretty self explanatory and also quite a projection lol • I have this au(??) where she survives the dr3 execution and its pretty much canon for me so. yeah when I talk ab her she is alive and well. TO ME!!!! and about that: she has a lot of scars on her body because of her dr3 execution and has worsened eyesight in her right eye because of the injury it suffered • a very basic one but she is chubby • has severe depression (even before the tragedy) and ptsd. I think lot of her behaviors make more sense if you put depression in mind. also autistic • her depression is also kinda the reason why she sleeps all the time. uses sleep to cope • a lot headcanons about her upbringing I kind of borrowed from sorren. hi sorren. some of them are that she’s chihros’s sister and that she had an abusive mother • this is kinda canon I just feel like it’s not explored enough in canon and fanon. views everything through the lens of a video games. hungry? time to start The cooking mini game (she’s quite bad at it). sleepy? she’ll close her eyes until the sleep bar is full. need to socialize? remember all previous experiences and books she has read about communicating w people and try to choose the best dialogue options so that their relationship bar stays full. after bonding and becoming closer w someone she gets the “new relationship level” achievement. etc etc I think its very funny • about socialization. I kind of borrowed it from a fanfic but also it’s a bit of projection. as a child she read books about the "right way" to interact with people. it wasn’t super useful but she still sometimes references it in her mind. • has insane amount of gaming related shirts. • really loves puzzle games. although has grown to dislike tetris post game for obvious reasons. this is probably the only game she doesn’t like atp • despite being very sleepy and easily tired she has some tendencies to overwork herself • also a quite obvious one but she has a lot of troubles with self care • has sooo much minecraft merch and minecraft related things… the type of person to diy her windows to look like minecraft ones

im pretty sure i have many more but this is all i can remember rn

[wrenbee]

I was just on a walk listening to Regina Spektor and "Samson" came on and I was immediately reminded of this post you made (that I couldn’t read at the time because spoilers lol) BUT OMG I have to send you this because while the song itself is SO sad and pulls on your heartstrings for the singer, and is a song about lovers and Solas and Mythal being lovers is like...idk contentious? I still couldn't help but look at it through the lens of Mythal and Solas and that comparison to Samson and Delilah.

Like in Mythal's sense of possessiveness over Solas:

“You are my sweetest downfall/ I loved you first.”

And even after all the pain Solas still clings to their relationship however abusive and manipulative it was:

“I cut his hair myself one night…/ and he told me that I’d done all right...

And then “we couldn’t bring the columns down/ we couldn’t destroy a single one”

In the real story, Samson does get his power back and brings the temple down and I just immediately want to compare that to the fact that Solas does bring down the Evanuris…but Mythal is gone, and Solas doesn't save his people in the way he wanted to.

“Samson went back to bed, not much hair left on his head.../And the history books forgot about us, the bible didn’t mention us.”

The real story IS in the bible though so that line hits harder with Solas and Mythal in mind. And I just think of Solas waking up after thousands of years without his hair and so much has been lost to time. For thousands of years, they were just ruins where wolf statues were next to hers. And then there is that fragment of Mythal in the crossroads and she becomes much like the place where she stays: cold and bleak and bitter...

ANYWAY, there are better connections that can be made with this I'm sure, but sharing anyway in case my messy thoughts resonate with you at all lol

Veilguard spoilers ahead!

After seeing images of Solas when he was young, with his full head of hair, I wonder if there will be Samson parallels. Samson was blessed by God with enormous power. When the Angel of the Lord came to Samson's mother to tell her that she was pregnant, he gave her specific rules, as Samson would be born a Nazirite, aka: a person with a special loyalty and connection to God. Most importantly, she was never to cut his hair. He was going to be the one to deliver the Israelites from the hand of the Philistines.

Samson had supernatural strength and power, though he was a man. There are stories of Samson vanquishing a lion, and one where he brandished the jaw bone of a donkey, which he used to slay 1,000 men. Samson was famously betrayed by the prostitute Delilah. He had a playful nature, and his interactions with Delilah communicate a "tricky" and arrogant sensibility. But one night, she seduced him into revealing his power source to her: his hair. Having been compromised by the Philistines, she had her servants remove it as he slept.

While he was nearly sacrificed to Dagon, Samson's hair began to miraculously grow again, as he was so eternally blessed, and he died bringing down the temple upon both himself and his captors. Samson was a judge for the Israelites, one of the last ones in the Book of Judges, and this basically means that he was a major military leader in a time of war and crisis. While we don't know exactly what Solas did yet, back in the days of Elvhenan, there is the suggestion that he was essentially brought into "being" by Mythal, because she needed him to lead. These Samson examples do remind me of Solas, especially because Mythal was the Goddess of Justice, and because Solas, in creating the Veil, did seem to do so as an act of "judgment." Fen'Harel was also the spiritual and military leader of a rebellion.

The story of Samson and the lion is especially interesting. It chronicles the time he slayed a lion with his bare hands in a vineyard, a testament to enormous, supernatural strength. When he came back upon the lion at a later time, it had been colonized by bees, who were making honey. This informed a bizarre riddle, which he coined on his wedding day: "Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet." Bees do play a role in Inquisition. There is something about bees and Sera, and her strange connection to Solas and the Veil. People used to wonder if Sera had some sort of ancient power inside her, without her knowledge, particularly that of Andruil, the huntress. While I have no theories about that, it's clear that she does have some sort of connection to Solas, even if it's just thematic, to show that all elves are sort of gifted in this way, and all elves are connected to Solas.

In Inquisition, Sera has a War Table mission that revolves around getting special "grenades" which are essentially jars of bees. The mission comes with a little poem:

Know what ruins a party? Bees. I know a man who teaches how to jar them safe but angry. Stingy, no good for honey, but great for throwing! He’s somewhere south.

The "bee" thing is totally random. There's no obvious connotations related to Sera that would suggest a connection to bees. So where did they get that? Of course it could just be for silliness, as Sera is a silly character, but it could also be meaningful. It could be both.

Anyway, the comparison is not perfect, but it's interesting. I don't necessarily think there is a definitive reason Solas lost his hair, and it may just be a thing where they handwave it somehow, but the question is there, and they definitely could use it to characterize his journey. When he lost his hair, was that a part of how he lost his power? Like was he betrayed in some way? Or did he have to make a bargain? Did he lose his hair as he slept in Uthenara? If he did, then why aren't Abelas and the other Sentinels at the Well of Sorrows also bald? Maybe this is just me overanalyzing lol but I find it interesting

[lov4soobs]

“ ready to love ” 018. bottled up feelings

written part below!

written part!!

warnings: panic attack, cursing, verbal abusive and death mentioned.

a/n: i just realized how deep and dark this story got omg i’m so sorry😭😭

‘This is your fault. How could you do this to your own mother? Your father would be so disappointed in you.’

‘This is your fault. How could you do this to your own mother? Your father would be so disappointed in you.’

‘This is your fault. How could you do this to your own mother? Your father would be so disappointed in you.’

‘You’re pathetic, can’t get a job, can’t keep a boyfriend. I sacrificed so much for you and Riki, you should be grateful’

You knew your mother was only trying to bring you down and guilt trip you to make her feel better about herself but at the mention of your late father you felt your heart drop then. You thought for a moment, just a moment, maybe she was right, you were disappointing as a daughter and a person. You were aware how wrong she was but insecurities always got the best of you.

Blood pounded in your ears loudly, heart thudding in your chest you thought it break out. Hands shaking and feet tingling you knew you had to get away. Shutting yourself in the bathroom, your vision became disfigured, as if you were looking through a fish-eye lens. You hated this feeling so much, it was terrifying even if you knew what was happening. Air was hard to get ahold of as you gasped, everything feeling numb to you as you fell to the floor but luckily didn’t hit anything on the way down. Trying to calm down never worked well for you, in the past you had Jay there to soothe you through it or your dad when you were little, so codependent, you hated that. You eventually laid close to the ground, trying to count your fingers slowly but thoughts rushed through your head so fast that it made everything worse, you didn’t seem to be able to calm down anytime soon.

The sound of Mario Kart being played in the living room loudly by Riki to distract him from the future to come, your loud thud was overlooked by the boy. Your fist clenched, trying to bring some kind of feeling to them, you cried harder as your chest grew tighter. You managed to pull your phone out to try and call Sunoo to come help you up or something. “Hello?” someone picked up.

“J-Jay?” Your words were slurred and stumbled out of your mouth quickly. How you managed to call Jay was unknown to you, maybe it was faith or maybe it wad the fact that your vision was ultimately blurred. “Yn, are you okay? Why are you calling me? I don’t mind at all, I just didn’t-”

“Jay, I can’t fucking breathe.” You pushed out, feeling frustration bubble up. Before you knew it, you heard a beep beep after that. He hung up on you.

This made everything worse, you felt it all falling apart. He hung up on you in the middle of panic attack and you’re frustration only grew making much harder to breathe. Your heart bests going way faster than they should normally, it felt like you were beingchoked. Your chest hurt so much and your stomach was churning, how could you hang up on you now of all times. More tears fell out as you fell closer to floor, now laying down completely covered in sweat.

It wasn’t long until the door flew open and was slammed shut, scaring you, “Yn!.” God his voice was so comforting to you. Following him was Riki who immediately panicked seeing you like this for the first time and not knowing what to do at all as you never told him about your panic attacks, knowing he didn’t handle emotions and comforting well. Tears filled his eyes as he watched Jay sit with you in between his legs, whispering softly to you as he stroked your hair. Riki’s hands shook, “I-I don’t know what to do..” Jay looked up at the shaken boy, “It’s okay, Niki. She’s okay, she wouldn’t want you to worry.”

How could he not worry right now? He feels like a bad brother for nothing being able to be there for you or help you when you’re like this. You wanted to comfort Riki but you felt yourself detaching from the situation and could only sit silently in Jay’s lap, not even processing anything as you held onto his hoodie sleeve tightly.

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[rivetgoth]

It feels weird to admit out loud but tbh I feel like I’ve completely outgrown “fandom” as a concept. I remember being an awkward lonely teenager who was super isolated from everyone else and fandoms were everythinggggg to me. I don’t hold any regret for that or view it as “cringe” or something, I made all of my online friends that way and some of those friends are people I’m still in contact with today and who were there for me during some of the darkest moments of my entire life, plus a huge portion of the practice I got writing and actually receiving feedback was fanfiction, it was definitely what made me become a confident enough writer to actually start sharing my works with people. I got into “kinning” and all that and just was super into fandoms, shipping, etc.

But nowadays I just feel so removed from it. Most importantly I feel like I reached a point where I felt like a lot of fanfiction culture was honestly holding me back as a writer. It became more dependent on writing a certain way or certain content to generate views and the more I started writing for myself rather than emphasizing popular ships or tropes the less attention my work got and I felt a lot of distaste for all the memes I’d see about how to get more views, about never finishing projects, never editing your work before posting, etc, when I was really pushing myself to try to turn out quality content. I switched over to entirely original fiction when I started realizing that the stories I wanted to tell could be told through my own characters and I could put the effort into actually crafting something of my own for myself that was original from the ground up and that felt way more exciting. Shipping for me was extremelyyyy a byproduct of being very lonely IRL. Both romantically and otherwise. It was like, a way for me to project my “ideal relationship” and envision a world where I basically was making up what I wanted a relationship to look like via the characters I was using as a stand-in for myself. Once I was actually forming complex deep human relationships in real life I actually realized I had a lot of toxic traits and unhealthy attachment of my own I had to work through and it changed my outlook a LOT on “shipping” and how I was going about it and just what a healthy relationship really looks like irl… And I also realized that a lot of the time the characters I was projecting onto were because I was insecure and didn’t really know myself (or even WANT to know myself), so I was putting more stock into comparing myself to these characters I liked and sort of viewing myself through that lens instead of confronting myself…

I still looooove many characters to death don’t get me wrong, and I totally have characters where I either 1. Super duper relate to them or 2. Think they are hot as fuck or 3. Think it’d be hot if they fucked another character. But it’s just not a world I engage with or have any interest in engaging with. I don’t think I’ve actually sat down and read a fanfiction in, like… god, almost a decade now probably. And is it way too mean to say I honestly just find the landscape of modern fandom extremely uninteresting and a bit juvenile? I’m not a huge fan of how much of what I see nowadays is about projecting onto characters rather than trying to come up with interesting new stories or concepts for them pertaining to the character themself. Like, you go through the tags and it’s just like… “omg this character is a he/they MCR fan with autism” and then you go to OP’s bio and they are a he/they MCR fan with autism 😭 & it’s like… just very deeply uninteresting to me to engage with media that way. I see people get called out for headcanoning a villainous character committing a heinous non-canon act as if it’s morally “wrong” and I think it’s because people are more interested in like, projecting onto characters than viewing them as unique entities, so saying “this villain is an abuser” is basically saying “YOU, fan of this character, are an abuser.” It’s weird and not very fun to me. Fanmixes are all music OP already knows and likes, nobody is making anything that feels particularly high effort (fan games, animations, etc) and those SAME DAMN “no line editing we upload at 3 am like men” posts that encourage lazy ass writing are STILL going around!! I just think so much of it feels low effort and I’m at a point in my life where I really desire effort, in my own work and in others’ work.

There’s just a lot of aspects of it I feel so removed from nowadays. I love weird sex and unbridled sexuality and fandom feels so sexless even though people talk all the time about being horny for XYZ characters and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Like even back in 2012 fandom “zomg my ovaries” type stuff felt more sexually charged. I think, and this is quite judgmental I know, it’s because a lot of the people who are immensely into fandom As A Lifestyle kind of substitute real life for these fantasy daydream versions and it’s in part because they are a bit emotionally immature and insecure IRL… and I say that because I was there at some point. Like, they aren’t actually confident enough in themselves to just own unrestrained sexual attraction so instead it’s all kinda milquetoast. Back when I was in fandoms all the time I hated myself too much to ever even make self-inserts. I was like, disgusted with the idea of picturing myself in situations. Once I was freed of that I felt way less interested in “shipping” unless there is REALLY GOOD sexual tension because ultimately if I think a character is hot I’m just like. Damn I wish I could fuck them & that’s really it. Then I just like jerk off and move on but even then I find it more titillating to jerk off to real people than someone fictional 😭 Plus I think a lot of fandom ppl have an issue that I’ve talked about before, which is making interest-based friends that they never attempt to develop a deeper connection to beyond their interests, so the moment one of you stops being as obsessed with something the friendship ends. And I’m just not really interested in that kinda dynamic, especially with total strangers online.

Uh idk. Sorry to be a normie but I think at this point I’m just so much more interested in real people first ov all, because I go out like multiple times a week and am surrounded by so many strange interesting characters and I’m just so much more interested in THEM, and the chance to actually get close to them, than any characters that don’t exist. With cool people in real life you can actually work to be closer to them and get to know them! And when it comes to characters that don’t exist, I’m way more interested in crafting my OWN and developing my own worlds and stories for myself. And I’m just interested in the story of my own life and improving myself and making myself cooler and more interesting rather than getting caught up putting that time and energy into someone else’s creation. I also think I just don’t really vibe with fandom culture around the types of things that get popular, from art styles to character interpretations to the way cliques manifest in places like Discord or whatever. And I haaaaaate the fact that it feels like every fandom in the world just has the most inane pointless drama, people like coming for each other over what characters they like or what headcanons they have, terms like proship or antiship meaning literally nothing of value because they change definition every single time I see someone new use them, really weird fetishism that continues to go unchecked of nonwhite people and LGBT people and the like… it’s just like. Not fun to me.

But like. Idk. I don’t mean to sound like a judgmental ass and make sweeping statements about every single fandom person and every single fandom or try to just sound way more morally or intellectually superior or something. But it’s kinda interesting I guess to realize how far from that culture I am at this point in my life. I just can’t imagine spending really any time or energy focusing on fictional characters invented by other people and projecting onto them rather than just confronting myself and my life directly and making things that are original manifestations of my soul and my desires and my own rich inner world. Huh.

[anyroads]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hey Jumblr/Shtetlcore, the Adamah Fellowship is apparently still accepting apps for this fall! It’s a three-month Jewish food and farming program based out of the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Connecticut, centered around learning and practicing at the intersection of farming and Judaism, while living in Jewish community.

I did the fellowship in 2009 and even now I’m still so excited for people to go do it I start flailing and talking too loud. I miss it. I miss everyone I met there (we still keep in touch and some of them were at my wedding even though I moved overseas a few years later. It’s cheesy summer camp bff level shit but grown up and honestly whatever, I love those folks SO MUCH). I miss the goats. I miss the food omggggg the food is so good and it’s literally stuff you’ve grown and pulled out of the ground yourself???

I learned about farming, food preservation (jam! pickles! CHEESE!!!), and working with goats and chickens but also did all of it through the lens of Jewish agricultural tradition which wasn’t even a thing I knew about before I heard of Adamah. And now I have all these friends who are cheesemongers and run farms and whatnot. And man, figuring out how to build community with a group of people I’d never met before was an Experience. I grew so much as a person in such a short time. I also took a truckload of photos so I’m posting those because if I keep typing it’s gonna sound more and more cheesy and like I’m selling something and really I just feel like everyone should experience Adamah, I loved it so much, I can’t

(I’m also really excited about this because Adamah is generally a wonderfully queer friendly space but the guy who founded and has been running Hazon, the parent organization that Adamah and Freedman fall under is, to say it as kindly as I can, a problematic abusive garbage human who wouldn’t have held on this long if his one actual skill wasn’t fundraising, and he’s leeeeeeeaving I’m so excited he is leeeeeeaving possibly because a bunch of Adamah alumni banded together and wrote a letter to the board about him and there was a lot of backdoor pressure on them because WE MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN but anyway I digress, my point is, there is new management and the new CEO is a genuinely wonderful human being who’s spent his life doing actual Jewish environmental work and not just pandering to boomers with big wallets. Anyway, Jewish intracommunal politics rant over, my point is, Adamah is intended to be a safe space and it’s just gotten a little safer.)

there’s a lake I miss it I miss it I want to go back why am I old and in England

I miss milking goats even though I did way too much way too fast and it gave me carpal tunnel I don’t even care it was worth it I miss these ladies and their stupid sass

Turned that milk into cheeeeeeeeese delicious cheeeeeeese omg never in my life will I get to drown in chevre so freely again

how are these babies even legal look at them

a few years later I did a masters in fine art and showed photos from Adamah at a tutorial session and people were like, this can’t be a farmer they’re dressed too nicely and my head nearly exploded, like, are you expecting overalls and flannel and a straw hat? are you expecting farmers to “look poor?” Apparently Carhartts and weatherproof jackets are too fancy now, someone was literally like, “that guy must be a model” I WAS SCREAMING. Anyway this was a day we harvested sweet potatoes and they all had gnarly shapes and I miss being in a field with people talking about Benjamin and Adorno and singing dumb pop songs and swapping menstrual cup tips and doing a mikvah in a lake every week because fuck it why not.

This was one of the batches of kimchi we made. I love this photo so much, it just has that vibe of what it was like to be in the pickling kitchen with a bunch of people and work and goof around and just like... make something together? THE VIBES

Sukkot up there gave me life. Look at this Jewish shit. Look at this fucking postcard photo I took. I should sell this on Etsy.

I mean... living inside a shtetlcore aesthetic? I’m so glad I took photos. I’m making me so nostalgic and sad now ignore me.

This is a thing that exists and it is AWESOME

Oh and we went hiking! Like, a bunch. This is at the top of a hill that’s like, a half hour hike. We’d go up here a lot. One time a bunch of us hiked up here in the middle of the night to howl at the full moon because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . I should’ve taken my camera, maybe it was Shabbat or something? Or maybe I just didn’t have my 35mm lens yet so my f-stop wasn’t low enough but anyway, this valley lit by moonlight is unreal. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Anyway, if this is your jam (JAM, GET IT?), they’re still accepting applications for this fall's cohort, (August 19th- November 21st,).

                                                link--> adamah.org <--

Feel free to DM me if you have questions. #enabler

[trashlie]

!!! omg yes yes i’d love for you to write more about that!!!! and! the first post from you i saw about kousuke and how he subverts the trope of the ml??? it was SO GOOD!! and you got another ask that mentioned how people saw yeonggi as the happy go lucky character! it reminded me of this ask which is very long i sent to @somebody-909 😭 i was just gushingggg about secondary male leads bc i for some reason always end up rooting for them and how yeonggi has the vibes even though he’s a main character 😩 and also we talked about other characters like kyo but i forgot that tohru also had dealt with abuse from her own family so in the end it’s like. it’s a story about two survivors finding happiness etc etc 😔🥺 idk idk all of you guys who make analysis are so cool

I hope you don't mind me answering these two asks separately, because I just know if I didn't I would miss too many things, haha!

I'm not sure if I could write a very good analysis of Yeonggi subverting the secondlead trope, but I sure could try! I feel like it's a little more biased because I DO ship Stalkyoo, but I think I can try to work with it! I also remember seeing that ask (I was going through their blog the other day) and I really enjoyed it! Like you, I tend to favor secondary leads, which I think is also because I have a tendency to love the act of yearning and pining lmao and man second leads sure do pine a lot, right? Also because second leads often (though mercifully not always) have a tendency to hesitate and miss their timing or just plain don't act on their feelings, and it creates a big sense of what could have been, and I think when you are someone who favors underdogs, you really fall into that "what could have been" thing, right?

(I think there's also a conversation to be had about first vs second leads and traits of masculinity, but I am admittedly not well-versed enough to do this, but some general food for thought is: often in the case where I favored a first to a second lead, it's because the first lead evoked a lot of traits of masculinity that I don't care for? Jealousy, possessiveness, being cold and not showing their emotions esp compared to a second lead who was often portrayed as gentle with his heart on his sleeve, kind. In a lot of these cases, the second lead is often not favored by the majority of the audience because "he just feels like a friend" aka he lacks the masculine traits people think a man should have~ or blah blah blah. I wonder if this is still a prevalent thing these days? I tend to avoid love triangles so I'm not sure, but, it's something I would like to throw in if I talk about Nol subervting the second lead trope aaahhhhh now I'm just on a whole other tangent lmao)

Here's an embarrassing admission: in the past, when I was young, back in like, 2007 in my first year of college and I started reading Fruits Basket and I watched the original anime lmaooooo I actually really favored Yukki, because I'm a gross sucker for gentle prince types lmaoooo but as I've gotten older, being able to understand what made Kyo and Tohru work so well was really satisfying!

I've become really enamored with the idea of Nol and Shinae as mirrors to each other, able to help each other identify and work on the parts of them where they are weaker or struggle, and the idea of these two people coming from uneasy lives and finding comfort in the sanctuary they create together? WHOLESOME. I live for that shit. (I don't ever want it to read though like I want Shinae to "fix" Nol or anything like that - he has a lot of work to put himself, just like she has for herself, but I like the idea that as they become people who heal themselves, they help each other heal, too, in the ways that they reflect each other, if that makes sense?) Survivors creating their own sense of home, out of the mess that they've endured is.... AAHHHHHH satisfying! There's something so strong about survival, let alone finding comfort in the wreckage of all that tried to destroy you, isn't it? Shinae has been dealt a bad hand in life, lacked opportunities others had, was judged mercilessly without anyone getting to know her; the idea of her becoming a person who can face the world without feeling like she's ill-fit, without feeling like she's out of place, because she's finally learned her value? Hhhhhh I love it! And likewise, Nol being able to face his awful family knowing that he is more than they ever saw in him, that he was never the villain he was made to believe? PLS my heart!!!!!!!!

(You know, my first time I read ILY, before I realized it was deeper than the surface and than I gave it credit for, I was also convinced Nol was a second lead interest, simply based on the fact that so often characters like Kousuke are coded the first lead and that characters like Nol are there to make us sad lmao. I think that's what made writing the Kousuke analysis so easy for me! At one point I decided to a read where I did not view anything through a romantic lens - not even things like the hospital balcony scene or the wac hand holding - to try to judge just what else could be going on under the surface, that's when I started to realize that a lot of scenes are kind of kind of a couple things superimposed over each other. Kousuke and Nol look like they're competing for Shinae's favor when they each remove their jackets, but what does it REALLY mean. Ironically enough, reading without a romantic lens made me favor Nol and Stalkyoo EVEN MORE lmao because I was finally able to pay attention to the nuanced depth and character development, and the way their relationship progressed as she came to trust him and their friendship solidified really made the framework feel obvious. But the point is: like you I tend to favor second leads and I was already favoring Nol on the principle that he's so sad and I just wanted to see it all turn around for him for once lmaooooo)

[monstermoviedean]

omg hiiiiii arden (sending this as a real ask instead of a message in case other people might find it interesting) did u notice a pattern during ur rewatch of season 3 in regards to specific writers and the misogyny of that season ??? (like how anti blackness often comes from sera gamble etc) or was it kinda the same all across the board ??? my friend who is watching for the first time just got to season 3 and if there IS a pattern i figure it would be a fun fact to share w her while we are discussing :)))) p.s. ily and i love all ur rewatch posts they’re always so interesting to read 💕💕💕 hope your day gets better MWAH

first off i am publishing this because i want everyone to know you are an exceptionally lovely and kind human and this is just one of many examples of you being just outstanding. ily thank you i'm crying a little 💖💖💖

short answer: no, i haven't noticed a specific pattern, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist! (much longer answer below, which was written during several work breaks and is probably incoherent. mostly about ruby and bela and how s3 goes out of its way to be shitty to them for being women. cw for brief mention of abuse)

long answer: i will fully admit that part of the reason i bully gamble so much is because of confirmation bias. i mean i also think she deserves it but i am actively watching her episodes through the lens of "what shit is she gonna pull this time." and then i feel vindicated when she pulls shit. i only say this because i think it informs my answer to your question, because i don't specifically watch spn and look for the misogyny. not because it's not important (it is!!!) or present (omnipresent!!!) but because i think a lot of what there is to say has already been said by others better than i can, and also out of self-preservation. the misogyny in spn is an endless shit mine and sometimes i feel like diving into it and sometimes i just can't.

all that being said! reflecting on s3 in the wake of this question is really really interesting. i think in terms of spn's standard misogyny, season 3 is pretty average. you can expect to see "pretty" young white women get brutally murdered and have little agency or substance, in the same way that all of that happened in. well. all the other seasons. i'm going to call that baseline misogyny. the baseline misogyny in s3 is pretty consistent within the season (between writers) and within the show (between s3 and other seasons). s3 is cool/weird because they only had a handful of writers, and i think they all make some contributions to baseline misogyny (kripke and gamble at the high end, edlund and humphris at the low end).

what's weird/interesting about s3 is it doesn't have just baseline misogyny, it also has special misogyny, reserved for special female characters. because s3 is the season where they started yelling LOOK we have GIRLS on the show about BOYS aren't we amazing??? and then they immediately invent a new type of misogyny for them. s3 has two (maybe 2.5?) special female characters who get special misogyny: ruby and bela, and possibly lilith.

special misogyny is when they go above and beyond to criticize and/or punish a female character for something that a male character would do and no one would bat an eye at. special misogyny is when women get condemned for very normal stuff. i think lilith being portrayed as extra special evil when she's just doing normal demon things counts as special misogyny, but since she's only in like 1.5 episodes i'm iffy on counting her.

the baseline misogyny for ruby and bela is that they both are called bitch way more than is necessary, both have their motives questioned above and beyond men, and both die bloody. standard spn fare, standard baseline misogyny.

ruby's special misogyny is that she's One Of The Boys But A Girl, and that makes her incontrovertibly evil and different and bad. obvs we know s4 ruby is evil but s3 ruby is actually shockingly helpful and doesn't do much to earn criticism apart from existing. ruby pitching the boys shit is treated as more irritating/less forgivable than when, say, bobby does it. she's sarcastic in a way that we are supposed to read as bitchy, because she's a woman. in jus in bello she's also portrayed as weak for being afraid of lilith, when fucking everyone is afraid of lilith. she's also an accessory to dean's death scene.

all of this would be pretty standard, except that ruby is super powerful and super helpful. she gives them the knife, makes them colt bullets, saves their lives repeatedly. it's very clear that she could kill them at any point if she wanted to. and yet! she still gets killed just like any other rando in bitch-on-bitch violence. we're not supposed to trust her because she's a demon but i feel very very strongly that if she was a male demon she'd be portrayed as more sympathetic.

the other thing with ruby is that there is this half a second at the end of malleus maleficarum where her humanity shines through and she and dean start to bond. she tells him she used to be human and that hell makes you forget and that's! fucking incredible!!!!!!! thank you bedlund! and then they never bring up her humanity again. and dean goes back to calling her a bitch. again i think if she were a man she would get more than that one split-second chance at a redemption arc.

bela's special misogyny is that she is Evil and not even for a "good" reason. i fucking love bela and i need to say that at the outset. i LOVE that she outsmarts them and makes them fail and shoots sam (sorry sam no offense). LOVE IT. but all of her actions after her first two episodes are framed as Morally Wrong. she's not just a thief she's a great thief and a proud thief and that is presented as bad and evil. how could a person do such a thing how can she live with herself etc etc. meanwhile dean and sam have an astronomical body count but that's fine because they're heroes!

i think ruby is fairly consistent through s3, but bela shifts dramatically. bela is introduced as a great thief having a great time and being great at everything. it's a little shallow but it's fun and it's different! and she really shines in red sky at morning where she has the impala towed, masterminds a brilliant scheme, and objectifies dean.

(tangent: red sky at morning is the only episode written by a one-off writer in season 3 and is also the ONLY episode to be written by a black writer. his name is laurence andries and i'm immensely grateful to him. and i wonder if he would have gotten more episodes if he'd 1) made bela a bitch or 2) been white. ANYWAY.)

and after those two episodes of bela being a fucking badass who beats the winchesters, the show just completely destroys her. in her last episode she's pathetic and desperate and alone and begging for help and crying. very damsel in distress, which is pretty fucking insulting. and we learn literally moments before she dies that she's a damsel in distress because she's about to go to hell for murdering her abusive parents, which had never been hinted at before in the show. they drop that bomb as an excuse to kill her and then they do kill her, and the tone is of satisfaction. dean hangs up on her as she cries as the hellhounds claw at her door. we're supposed to believe she's getting what she deserves.

it's the same with ruby! when ruby dies we're supposed to think "well she shouldn't have been a demon" when she said herself she used to be human and all her actions appeared to the audience to be helpful to the heroes. on a show where the tagline could be "since when do we get what we deserve?" these two are killed for no reason and we're supposed to think "yeah they deserved that. fuck them."

i think ruby is pretty consistent across her episodes, and kripke is probably responsible for the laying of her foundation. but bela...bela's first two episodes are written by edlund and andries and they're standard misogyny at worst. she takes such a turn in her last four episodes and you know who wrote or co-wrote all of them? you know who wrote in the weird inexplicable pointless scene where sam has a sex dream about her? you know who made her an abuse survivor and had the heroes mock her for that? and then killed her? yeah. yeah you do.

genuinely, truthfully, i didn't even realize that the bela turn can be attributed to one person until i'd written almost this entire post. i went to check bela's episode list to see if i was forgetting any Misogyny Moments and well. when you look at the episode list.

in conclusion.

(also i have no idea at this point if i answered your question so please let me know if i can be more clear/helpful! this was really fun for me to think about and i appreciate the prompt MWAH!)

[holycalf]

(Okay first off your blog theme is so pretty) I know nothing about Utena but I see your posts about it all the time and now I’m genuinely intrigued but I still don’t understand anything about what it is... feel free to ramble? :)

omg !!!! lets go utena ask!

idk if this has been the same anon the entire time or multiple but either way tysm u are so so so sweet and i hope u know i love u bunches

so utena is a pseudo-magical girl anime from the late 90s and its super cool bc its whole purpose is to dismantly gender role ideas/heteronormativity and does so through the lens of a 14 year old girl, utena, who upon being “saved by a prince” as a child, has a dream of becoming a prince and saving girls herself (while searching for the one who saved her years priorr.) in doing so, she gets caught up in what they call a “dueling cycle” in which she has to swordfight other students for the possession of another student with the mysterious title of “The Rose Bride.” while utena, or most of the other duelists for that matter, dont really care about owning another person bc they are literally in high school, it is said that whoever wins these duels, and “keeps” the rose bride will be able to grant the world “revolution”- which is left a bit vague in terms of what it really is, but it is implied that a sort of unlimited power is given to whoever owns it.

so, that on its own i would find compelling but the characters are also SO ridiculously fleshed out, you get to meet all of the duelists and grow to understand all of them (not like, but understand). its also just loaded with symbolism, ive always described it as watching it like you’re reading it, you need to follow patterns, trends, word choices, pick up on references/allusions.. its a TRIP and oftentimes needs a rewatch before you really grasp the whole thing. hoenstly you could watch it a million times and still miss out on some of the nuances within it, it really is such an impressive work.

HOWEVER, an important theme in it is breaking cycles of abuse, and because of that there is some really triggering content to look into before u ever choose to watch it, if u ever get interested! i personally think it handles the subject matter really well, but different people have different thresholds and that should definitely be kept in mind

(ps. both the sub and dub are available on youtube for free!)

[ad1thi]

author interview tag

tagged by: @ambivalentmarvel

name: adi

fandoms: currently, hawaii 5 o and technically mcu. occasionally teen wolf and criminal minds, historically, harry potter, percy jackson, the shadowhunters and the vampire diaries

where you post: both on tumblr and on ao3

most popular one-shot: according to ao3 statistics, the dumbest genius alive, however i do know a couple of my tumblr one shots have taken off so i could be wrong

most popular multi-chapter fic: finished would be just friends(?), and overall is 1000 lives (for you)

favorite story you’ve written so far: i can’t really call it my ‘favourite’ because that changes depending on my mood, but of my published fics, im quite proud of my more recent mcdanno fics - like the morning after and in sickness and in health

fic you were nervous to post: definitely just friends (?) because it was a fic i had previously abandoned and was reposting, and i wasn’t sure i could live up to the climax the fic built up too

how you choose your titles: for hawaii 5 o fics, i do cheat slightly and just translate words or phrases into hawaiian (through google translate) because the episode names follow a similar pattern. i don’t have any other discernible method though. i just mull it over and pick whatever jumps at me first in my head

do you outline: no generally, but i do have a WIP that i have outlined. for 1000 lives, i have a general structure of plot points that i know i want to cover, but i’m probably going to outline for the sequel (if i ever get around to finishing this and then finding time for a sequel) just so that it’s easier on me instead of figuring it out where i go and potentially losing steam or plot midway through

complete: most of my stuff on ao3 is complete, as mainly my one shots go there. outside of one shots, both my greek gods AU and just friends (?) are complete.

in progress: 1000 lives (for you), and a bunch of loosely tied together AUs all over tumblr that are universes i like to dip in and out of rather than actual stories that i want to flesh out. my AU-gust is also, technically speaking, in progress. i also have a hawaii 5 o old guard AU  which is more of me just repurposing my favourite episodes and looking at them for the lens of the characters being immortal warriors. ostensibly, the things i left behind (they never left me) is also in progress, but only time will tell if i convert that into an actual story 

coming soon/not yet started: there’s a couple of stuff so I’m going to list it out: 

there’s my aaja nachle fic, which im quite excited about. it involves single dad tony, dancer tony, desi tony, enemies to lovers stevetony, and a lot of side ships and characters that i should (hopefully) be able to flesh out into a universe that pays homage to the film it’s based on. unfortunately, the first chapter is all tytony and finishing that so i can move onto stevetony and single dad tony is proving to be quite a challenge

i have a buckytony mob esque amnesia AU that ive sketched out based on a dream i had, thought im not sure it’ll ever see fruition. 

Broken, not Bruised is about 1.7k of a fic that i had momentary inspiration about, involving Bucky saving fem!Tony from an abusive relationship and the hurt/comfort, pining and eventual relationship that comes with that. 

Just Between Us is a stevetony Can You Keep a Secret? AU, which I was quite excited about in July but have lost steam for because i had an bad experience with someone who was beta’ing the fic and it left me feeling not so great about it

Secret Love Song is this very complicated secret relationship buckytony but married stevetony mess that i want to delve back into because i was enjoying the world-building that i was doing for fem desi Tony but haven’t found the inspiration yet

i also have a mcdanno hanahaki AU where hanahaki disease is linked to when you might lose the object of your affections, either because they are moving onto someone else or because they’re injured/dying. that’s quite fun and sits at around 2k currently? but ive never done a hanahaki AU before so it’s slow going

i also have a Steve sacrifices himself for Danny and they finally get their shit together one shot that i’m still putting together called The Things We Do For Love, but i haven’t gotten to the self sacrificial part of the fic yet

do you accept prompts: no i don’t. i do accept commissions, but i do not accept prompts. not unless i have specifically asked or reblogged a prompt list

upcoming story you are most excited to write: probably the aaja nachle AU just because it really is like a complete story with storylines and arcs and characters that need to be developed outside of Steve and Tony and tackling something of that magnitude will be a huge test of my skills, because im very much a one shot person

tagging: @angxlsgrxce, @lovelyirony, @starklysteve, @nethandrake, @omg-just-peachy, @tinytonysnark and anybody else who wants to do this!!

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

From the drafts...

This one was late night rambling about the movie The Brood.

 Dunno why I didn’t just post it at the time, but here it is now.  Maybe I knew it wasn’t worth it, but I just  can’t stand deleting anything I spend twenty minutes writing...

It’s weird how easy it is to get distracted. Rewatching The Brood for the first time in ages my brain got distracted by the dumbest things. It was like...

Ah, funny how I merged Oliver Reed and the hero together in my memory. The dude playing the hero’s vaguely familiar...but also strangely forgettable.

Okay a dad with a good job that has a daughter with phyisical proof of abuse experienced while visiting a mother being kept in isolation while under psychiatric care and he CAN’T get custody or at least keep his daughter from unsupervised visits? Well, the legal system can fail even in obvious cases.

Um, why did he take photos of his daughter’s bruises in front of a window? Never mind a toppless little girl on display in a window, which I mean shouldn’t be that big a deal at that age, but photography wise that is a bad places. The light coming through the window would be fine...if the light were on her back and not just in his camera lens! 

I dunno why but I’m reading something other than a professional relationship between Reed and his right hand man.

Oh look! Never mind the murder, that stove in the grandma’s kitchen looks just like my grandparents.

Brr, it looks cold. And I’m cold in a cold house. Maybe I should go get some ice cream to complete the sense of freezing.

**pauses movie**

Yum, cherry ice cream. And I thought I was nuts when I bought ice cream in winter, well, because it was nuts. Now to put on the warm coat...

**restarts movie**

Hmmm, I wonder if they are gonna always keep that lunchbox turned away from us. Eh, Happy Days. 

A teacher going back to the home of one of her students to talk to him after the girl is asleep? So how many teachers go home at night with a dude they don’t really know to talk alone with them? Risky.

Of course, they live  in a world where the ex-husband can go spend the night in the house of a murder victim before they even have the funeral. 

You know, I just rewatched Don’t Look Now the other day, so now here I am watching another homicidal “little girl” in red wih grotesquely not at all little girl face. Small 1970s horror subgenre?

OMG, the sure took the results of that autopsy calmly! The child/dwarf defies anything seen before by medical science. Ho-hum.   

Well, that’s a whole classroom of traumatized tykes! And come on dude, say SOMETHING to those children. And wait, why did the kid not run the the principal’s office  (or whatever they have) rather than out into the courtyard for help? And was that the ONLY teacher in the building or do they have the most incredible soundproofing in Canadian schools that no one came to see what the  screaming was about??

Actually I totally believe that pickup driver wouldn’t bat an eye to see three little girls walking along right in the road while it snows. Not suspicious at all considering news reports of dwarf killers abducting a little girl.

How far did they walk? Actually, how fast do the rage babies move to get from the cabin to the murder locations during their mama’s meltdowns.

Wait, she just bit through the rage baby’s birth sack with her teeth but there isn’t a hint of blood or goo on her teeth or lips? Guess they were hoping to make the licking bit shocking or something. Man, she makes more if a mess of it more than any animal mama I’ve ever seen do that!

Okay, why does this father never talk to his daughter? Talk to her you moron! What kind of dad doesn’t use affectionate words or offer reassurance when the kid has been through nightmare level traumas?

Yeah, yeah, I get it’s about an ugly divorce with a kid trapped between...but I dunno, the effects of abuse and trauma is also at the heart of it. I mean the rage  babies are spawned original from the woman’s childhood abuse. It wasn’t the parents divorcing or fighting or even their alcoholism, it was a mom shoving her kid down the stairs and the father not protecting her from the abusiveness. And now the little girl is a traumatized mess with a father offering no comfort and...

Oh, it’s over.