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souliebird · 11 months ago

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[[and then I met you || ch. 27]]

Series: Daredevil || Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader || Rating: Explicit

Summary:

A one-night stand years ago gave you a daughter and you are now able to put a name to her father – Matthew Murdock. Everything is about to change again as you navigate trying to integrate your life with that of the handsome and charming blind lawyer’s and Matt realizes he needs to not only protect his new family from Hell's Kitchen, but from the world.

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Police Arrest Three After Mass Protests in LA County

By C. Grant

Three people were arrested in Pasadena, California yesterday after a crowd gathered to protest the death of Sheila Pom. Police say the three individuals, whose names have not yet been released, appeared to be Enhanceds attempting to agitate the crowd. Witnesses claim one of the individuals was creating sparks with their fingers and threatening to start a fire, while the two others encouraged the behavior. Police have made no comment about these arrests and all questions about the incident have been redirected to a now defunct phone number.

Sheila Pom was killed in an officer-related shooting two weeks ago after neighbors reported her as a Dangerous Individual under the new Sokovia Accords Act. Pom, 23, worked at her uncle’s auto body shop as a mechanic while also attending online classes to get a degree in Engineering. She was also a telekinetic - someone who can move objects with their mind.

Pom was known to not be shy about her gifts. Pom was seen frequently lifting cars and trucks within garages without the help of equipment and is rumored to have once righted a tipped over semi-truck. Neighbors became concerned when Pom began using her gifts at home.

“We’d come home, and things would be floating up and down the street,” one neighbor said.

Another claimed Pom was unstable, and when she would become upset, things around her would begin to shake.

“I thought it was an earthquake until my TV hit the ceiling,” a source who lived in the same building Pom told GKTV, “I learned the next day her boyfriend broke up with her.”

Officers were called when Pom refused to return a motorcycle to the ground while working on it in a residential neighborhood. After a brief standoff, officers fired two shots, striking Pom in the head, and killing her.

Pom’s family claims she was unaware of the officer’s presence, as wireless earbuds were found near her body after. Pom was known to listen to music to block the noise of machines.

Protests began after the officers involved in the incident were cleared of any wrongdoing.

----

A full-page ad takes over your screen, and instead of continuing to read the depressing article, you close the tab.

There has been a palpable unrest in the news cycle the past week that is starting to leave you with an uneasy feeling in your stomach. You’ve noticed a shift in the general narrative tone and terminology used when discussing people who have superpowers.

Before Sokovia, before Lagos, before Connecticut, the morning shows would bring on people with amazing gifts and gently joke about them joining the Avengers as they made water fly around the set, but now those same hosts debate if they should be allowed to have the right to privacy. ‘Enhanced Peoples’ has been shortened to just Enhanceds and is now spit out like it is something dirty.

You don’t know when the conversation stopped centering around heroes and vigilantes and started being about everyday people, but it scares you that the change happened. There seems to be no official power scale about what is deemed ‘dangerous’ and your mind keeps zipping all over the place trying to justify different lines of thinking.

Does Matt fall under the category of Dangerous?

He is a vigilante, so by default the Accords are directed at him, but is it doubly so? If he was forced to reveal himself to the government, would they require him to wear a tracking device? Or would they try to lock him up?

Could he fight it in court, or would they whisk him away in the middle of the night and you’d never know what happened?

If Matt is deemed Dangerous because of his senses, and not just because he is a vigilante, would Minnie be considered the same?

With how intense and angry everyone is becoming you could see yourself having to take her in to be tested.

To be monitored.

And she is just a baby.

You can’t imagine how others must feel - people who are older, who are just trying to live their lives. The girl who was killed was just trying to fix her bike, like millions of other people do every weekend. She wasn’t going to other countries to fight terrorists. She wasn’t trying to use her powers to rule over others. She wasn’t hurting anyone.

But she was different, so they killed her.

“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! I need help!”

You’re ripped from your spiraling thoughts and look across the room to where Minnie is sprawled out on the floor. Her Starkpad is in front of her, and she’s set up Pig and Scooby so they are also peering down at the device and you know exactly what she is doing.

It is the same thing she has been doing for a week straight - playing a bootleg Muppet’s math game.

Since meeting Spider-man, all your little Mouse has wanted to do is learn math. She keeps saying she wants to impress him and make him proud, and you are in no way going to discourage her. Every day has been filled with counting and addition and subtraction and you are a bit amazed she has stayed so focused.

You are not going to complain at all about it - you are getting time to yourself while she has been glued to Elmo and Kermit.

You leave your phone on the dining table and head towards your daughter.

“You need help?” you confirm as you crouch beside her. The screen shows a Muppet you don’t recognize, along with various numbers floating around them, and up at the top, the equation that has your little Mouse stumped.

“I need help!” Minnie repeats as she scrambles up off her belly and into sitting. “I don’t have enough fingers!”

She holds up both her hands to show you all ten of her itty-bitty fingers and you make a sympathetic noise.

Mouse has been getting pretty good at using her fingers to help her with addition and subtraction, but on only one hand. She uses the index finger on her right hand to help count by pointing at each finger and hasn’t quite worked out she can use her fingers to point and count. That is okay, though, as you are happy to lend yours to her important cause.

“Okay, how many fingers do you need?”

You hold out your hands and she instantly begins to manipulate them.

“This one…this one needs three! One, two, three!” She pushes your thumb and index finger down so the other three remain up, then she pushes down the pinky of the other hand. “And this one is four!”

“So, three and four? What are we doing with three and four?” You ask, trying to not laugh at her determined face.

“We adds them!” She chirps, before starting to jab at your fingers, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven! That’s seven fingers! Mommy, it’s seven! Three plus four is seven!”

“That’s right, it is seven. Which number is seven?” You direct her back to her game, where she triumphantly picks the correct symbol. The Muppet congratulates her before presenting a new equation.

Minnie squeals in delight before ripping the device off the ground and shoving it in your face, “I know this one! Mommy! I know this one! It’s three! Mommy! It’s three!”

You can’t even process what the question is before the screen is out of sight. Your daughter holds her Starkpad above her head, treating it like some war prize as she starts spinning and dancing around the living room.

“It’s three! It’s three! It’s three!”

You laugh at her antics, heartwarming at her pureness. How could anyone ever think she’s a danger?

“Are you sure it’s three?” You tease as you watch her.

She whips around to you, eyes scrunching up into a glare, and barks, “It’s three!”

“Okay, okay, it’s three.”

You push yourself up into standing just as Mouse returns to her spot. She drops her Starkpad to the ground a little harder than you would prefer, but that is why it has a big bulky case. She plops down in front of it and happily smacks the number three that is floating around the screen.

You let yourself watch her for a few seconds, silently bombarding her with all the love you feel for her. You want to wrap her up and live in this bubble forever.

Except, there is one element missing from your perfect moment. You wish there were a pair of arms wrapped around your waist and a chin on your shoulder. You want to lean back against a muscular chest and lose yourself to eternity like that.

Instead of indulging those thoughts, you tell yourself to stop fantasizing and you make your way back to the kitchen to check on dinner.

Vegetable curry has been simmering on the stove for most of the day. It has been a while since you had the energy to make the dish from scratch, but you had a craving this morning and went all out. You’ve made curry for Minnie before, and she did not complain - though you think that is because her portion was mostly rice and hot dog cuts. You plan to do the same again tonight, and if she wants more sauce, you’ll give it to her.

You check your seasonings and give everything a stir to make sure nothing gets stuck at the bottom of the pot. The rich aroma tickles your nose, and you are glad you don’t have to wait much longer to treat yourself.

As you debate adding a pinch more salt, you catch Minnie sneaking towards you out of the corner of your eye. Her movements are slow and dramatic, and you pretend you don’t notice her. This ruse works, and you appropriately jump in fear when she suddenly tugs on your shirt.

“Up!” She demands and you oblige, scooping your daughter onto your hip. As soon as she is high enough, she cups her hands around your ear and leans into whisper, “Daddy saids the food smells yummy-yummy.”

She quickly dissolves into giggles, and it is infectious, so you end up smiling.

Matt hasn’t been over for dinner in a hot minute, and you are hoping to have a nice quiet family night, before he goes out on his Patrol. The plan is to watch a movie after your meal and Minnie has already prepared for this by dragging multiple blankets out to the couch. You just know she is going to demand a cuddle pile, and now that you and Matt are intimate, it isn’t something you are nervous about.

You just want to have a good time.

“Can you tell Daddy everything is almost ready?�� you ask, even though you know Matt can probably hear you just fine.

Mouse, always eager to be helpful, nods and relays the message directly into your ear. You try to not grimace, and so it won’t happen again, set her down on the ground.

“Can you plug in your Starkpad so it can sleep for the night?”

She streaks off to do her newly assigned task, leaving you to start setting the table. When you were at the store, you bought Matt a bottle of beer - a brand you know he likes - and you set it at his designated spot. You’ve grown accustomed to just drinking water and juice, but you don’t want to push that on to him - not when he’s a guest and coming over after a long day of work.

As you start to make everyone’s plates, you hear the water in the bathroom turn on. You know Minnie knows the routine for getting ready for dinner and you just hope she isn’t trying to wash Scooby’s paws again. You are worried he’ll end up moldy and you aren’t sure what you will do if that happens. You peek into the living room and are relieved to see your daughter’s best friends have been relocated to sitting on the coffee table, facing the television.

You finish setting everything up just in time, it seems. Minnie runs from the hallway right to the door as you go to wash your own hands, and you rush to get all the soap off so you can help her open the door.

Matt is standing on the other side, looking handsome as ever in a gray suit. He looks like he’s had a busy day - his hair is windswept, and he is sporting a strong five o’clock shadow. There is a garment bag draped over his arm and his saddle bag looks a little bulkier than usual and you wonder if he ran some errands on his lunch - picking up his dry cleaning and such.

You barely have time to take in his appearance before Mouse is launching herself at him.

“Daddy!” She shrieks and Matt oh so easily swings her up onto his hip. “Daddy! We’re having vege-tuhble kermies for dinner! I helped make it! I cut up ALL the carrots! By myself!”

“By yourself, huh?” Matt confirms, a bright, warm smile taking up his entire face. “Soon you’ll be making us dinner.”

You step aside so he can come in and help to take his things to hang while Mouse soaks up his attention.

“No! Mommy makes dinner because…’cause she makes the bestest foods. I just help!”

“You are a very good helper,” you interject, “You keep a very clean workstation. A professional chef would be proud.”

Minnie beams at the praise, then a microsecond later, is wiggling in to be let down. Her feet hit the ground and she takes off running back toward the living room, probably to collect something to show off to her Daddy.

Matt takes the small break to turn his attention to you. A hand goes to your cheek, and instead of a brief ‘hello’ peck, he kisses you like he wants to turn and pin you to the wall. It catches you off guard, but you easily melt into it. You clutch at the lapel of his suit jacket and try to not moan as he nips at your lips. You open your mouth for him, but being the tease he is, he pulls back just enough to whisper against you.

“Been thinking about that all day.”

The words send your blood rushing - some north to your cheeks and the rest to your cunt.

He’d been thinking about you? About wanting to kiss you? Or has he been thinking about more than that - because you must admit, you’ve been thinking about it. You’ve had more than a few thoughts about what you want to do to him the next time you two are alone together and those thoughts were certainly very explicit.

“Matt…” you totally do not whine out but instead of replying, his grin just turns cocky. He pulls away as Minnie returns to the entryway, and you decide you need a drink of your water. You escape and Mouse starts showing off her latest masterpieces to Matt.

Food coloring, cotton balls, and popsicle sticks have proven to be a massive hit and Minnie has made a whole collection of things for Matt - there’s butterflies and flowers, a house with clouds, and various abstract pieces. You are sure his office is already filled to the brim with his daughter’s art, and you would not be surprised if he started to hang things from the ceiling when he does run out of room. He seems to treasure every little thing Minnie has given him and it warms your heart so much. You hope that love never runs out.

Somehow, Matt ushers Minnie back to the dining room while she shoves different papers into his hands and gets her up in her booster seat.

“I’m going to put all these in my bag, so they don’t get dirty or lost, okay?” He tells Minnie, who nods way too enthusiastically.

“Keep them clean!” And then, just like that, she switches from being excited her Daddy is there to being a hungry toddler. She whips around to face you and asks in an almost impatient manner, “Can I has my hot dogs now?”

You give her the go ahead as Matt returns to the table and takes his place. You quickly tell him the placement of everything, including his beer, then quickly add, “If you don’t like it, I have a few different things I could make you. Or we could order something.”

A brief panic runs through you when Matt scoffs. You think you’ve insulted him - having him come all the way to Chelsea to eat a dinner he won’t enjoy and having to find a substitute.

“I love curry and this smells delicious. I wouldn’t trade it for the world - in fact, I’m hoping some of those leftovers on the stove are for me to take home and lord over Fog tomorrow.”

You flush at his sweetness and mumble out you’ll pack him some to go. This seems to please him, and he starts to dig in. Ever the little parrot, Minnie mimics him by shoveling food into her mouth with a big grin and you can’t help but laugh a little.

“It’s nummy!” Your little one declares, and even if she’s just eating plain rice right now, you’ll take it as a win. You know well she won’t eat what she doesn’t like.

“Speaking of yummy,” Matt starts, slow and deliberate, with his head angled towards you, “I was hoping we could go somewhere yummy together.”

You blink slowly at the statement, rolling it over in your mind and trying to dissect the meaning. Did he want to go somewhere for dessert? Maybe get ice cream or something? “Somewhere yummy…?”

“Mhm,” he hums, then his smile becomes a bit more sly. Even though you know it isn’t true, you feel like, behind his glasses, he is hungrily looking you up and down, “Somewhere like Uvas.”

The name doesn’t automatically generate anything for you, but after a moment, it dawns on you. Uvas in a Spanish restaurant near Central Park known to be high end and impossible to get into. It’s been in the local tabloids a few times for turning away minor celebrities who don’t meet the dress code. You’re mouth parts slightly in shock.

“What’s Oo-vuhas?” Minnie asks around her fork, her big eyes looking between you and Matt. “Do theys has yummy foods?”

“Oh, they have yummy food,” Matt teases. He then leans forward a bit in his seat and stage whispers to her, “It’s where I want to take Mommy for a date.”

“A date?” Minnie scrunches up her face at the word while your mind is still spinning.

Matt wants to take you on a date? To Uvas? You have never been anywhere that fancy or expensive as a date. Hell, you’ve never been somewhere that fancy, period. The nicest date you’ve ever been on was Hard Rock Cafe - which says a lot about your dating life.

“A date,” Matt confirms, smug and knowingly scheming. You can hear it in his voice as he tells Minnie, “That is where Mommy and Daddy go and have dinner together as grown-ups.”

Up goes Minnie’s hand into her mouth, but it stays there only a split second. Her eyes get impossibly bigger and filled with wonder, and she whispers, “Like Lady and Tramp?”

“Exactly like Lady and Tramp.”

“Mommy!” Minnie says a little too loudly, pointing her fork at you. “You gotta go to Oo-vuhas and be Lady and Tramp! You gotta!”

And at that moment you know you can’t say no, and that Matt knows that. You can’t tell your daughter you don’t want to be like Lady and Tramp. Not that you don’t want to go on a date with Matt - the idea gets you giddy and makes your stomach flutter - but you thought if it happened, it would be a coffee or something. Not somewhere where you can’t even afford to look at the building. The idea makes you a little nauseous, because you are sure you’d make an absolute fool of yourself.

But Matt looks determined and sure of himself. You are certain he asked in front of Minnie so that she could help bully you into saying yes to such a lavish date.

Luckily, your mind is working in overdrive, and you choke out, “I don’t have anything to wear. They have a dress code, don’t they?”

You don’t expect Matt to push his chair out and get up. Your throat instantly tightens up and fear shoots up your spine. Have you offended him? He clearly wants to do something with you and you’re over here hesitating. You must be coming off as a complete bitch.

You start to stand up yourself as Matt disappears into the entryway. You don’t think he’d just leave without saying goodbye to Minnie.

Maybe you can talk to him - explain that somewhere a little less grand would be ideal to start.

Before you can start to follow him, Matt is coming back to the table, holding up the garment bag he brought with him, still looking like the cat that got the canary.

“I thought you might say that,” he starts, his voice almost a little musical, “so I got you this.”

You stare dumbly at him, shock and confusion overtaking your system.

He got you something to wear? To Uvas?

No one has ever bought you clothes before - except your parents. Even when you were pregnant, the small amount of gifts you got were all for Minnie.

You distantly hear Minnie start saying something about presents, but it is all muffled under the sound of blood pumping through your ears. You step forward hesitantly and reach out for the zipper of the bag, your hand shaking slightly.

You expect it to be a joke. You’re going to open the bag and there’s going to be a clown costume inside, or a skimpy dress people like arm candy to wear, or something akin to a Burka.

You don’t expect a black floor length sheath gown. The silhouette is simple, but you can tell just by looking at it the quality of the dress is top notch. The fabric has a nice weight to it, and it is incredibly soft to the touch that you have the distinct feeling that it did not come from a dress warehouse or a department store.

This type of dress would come from a boutique uptown and would cost a few hundred dollars.

You are so caught up in admiring the dress, you don’t notice Minnie come up beside you until she is also touching the dress. Panic that she might have crumbs or curry on her fingers runs through you, but you force it down.

“It’s like a princess dress for Mommy!” Mouse cooes and you feel your face start to heat up.

You’ve never worn something so nice before and certainly nothing that would be fit for a princess, but it seems like Matt and Minnie are on the same page.

“Well, I want Mommy to feel like a princess.”

You want to hide your face, but you know you can’t, so you cover your mouth instead.

“Matt, this is beautiful. But this is so much, I can’t accept this.”

You know that while Matt is a lawyer, he’s still struggling a bit financially. If he had his way, you know he wouldn’t charge anyone for his services, and even though Nelson, Murdock, and Page has paying customers, they still have to stagger out their bills.

He shouldn’t be spending his hard saved money on you.

Matt sighs your name before gently draping the garment bag over the back of his dining chair and stepping towards you. Both his hands go to your waist, and you freeze up as he steps close enough to press his forehead to yours. Your heart begins to wildly beat when his hands slowly begin to rub your sides.

“Let me spoil you. To make up for all the dates I’ve missed. Please?” His lips dip into a small frown and you feel like you’ve kicked a puppy.

He’s gone out of his way for you, and you are being so ungrateful.

But it is so hard to say yes. Guilt is pooling in your stomach, and you just want to disappear into the shadows and be forgotten about. That is so much easier than Matt holding you, saying such sweet things.

You don’t want to ruin everything.

You close your eyes as you have a war inside yourself. All you have to say is ‘Yes’ and you’ll make Matt happy, but the monster inside of you keeps dragging your mind into a pit.

Matt wants to treat you like a princess, but how crushing will it be when he decides that is no longer the case? Can you take that?

The corners of your eyes start to sting and your monster starts to mock you for getting worked up over something as simple as being asked on a date.

Why can’t you be normal?

Why can’t you accept this?

Why can’t -

The thoughts cease as Matt’s lips press against yours, soft and sweet and tempting. You respond hesitantly.

“Let me take care of you,” he breathes into your mouth, making you shudder. “You deserve it.”

“You deserve it!” Minnie chirps from beside your knees and you very suddenly remember where you are and what you were doing. You try to pull away from Matt, thinking Minnie hasn’t seen the two of you like this yet, and it might confuse her, but he keeps his hands firmly planted on your hips, not letting you go. You don’t try to fight it, instead, you turn your head away, trying to hide away in your shell.

You know there is no way you will win this. Matt is determined and he clearly has Minnie on his side, so, very hesitantly, and feeling like you are going to throw up at any moment, you nod into Matt’s shoulder.

“Okay.”

Mouse lets out a deafening cheer and you feel her dart away.

“LADY AND TRAMP! LADY AND TRAMP! LADY AND TRAMP!”

Matt laughs at her excitement over something she doesn’t understand, while you tuck yourself into his hold, wondering how long you have before he ends up shattering your heart into pieces.

---

tags:

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#soulie writes #fanfiction #matt murdock x reader #daredevil #and then i met you #matt murdock x you

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thesoftboiledegg · 20 days ago

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After poking fun at Marvel years ago with "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender," Rick and Morty set its sights on DC with "Ricker than Fiction." However, instead of roasting superhero movies for 20 minutes, the writers came up with a loving parody that allowed real-life DC alums to join in.

I loved Zack Snyder's cameo because he's been a long-time Rick and Morty fan, to the point that he met with Dan Harmon about making a movie, and letting James Gunn voice himself made his appearance a lot funnier. Celebrity parodies are usually lame and don't age well, but I could get on board with this because he basically played himself as a character.

The plot wasn't that original, and it stretched the characters a little (Rick always criticized superheroes in the past, and now he's suddenly invested in a franchise?), but in this era of superhero fatigue, the writers found a narrative beyond "Action movies are dumb!!" This episode combined a DC parody, a Rick and Morty adventure, some surprising character moments, a dash of social commentary and a fictionalized look at the life of a DC director.

I don't know how far in advance the writers' room produces scripts, so maybe they wrote this episode before AI took over, but Rick's Movie-lizer seems like a jab at AI-generated fiction. He explains that the machine uses a "prompt-driven CPU" that auto-generates changes to the script. Sound familiar?

As predicted, the machine goes haywire, leaving Rick and Morty trapped in the movie. When Jerry says that the plot is a mess, we get another appearance of Dan Harmon's famous story circle--the first since the Story Train episode in season four.

From there, the plot is fairly predictable, but the writers managed to throw in some twists that kept me guessing. I knew that Rick, Morty and Jerry would have to fix the plot somehow, but I didn't expect James Gunn to barge in and hilariously sabotage their efforts.

When he took control of the Movie-lizer, I figured he'd start writing his own script and make the situation crazier. The fact that he just tried to steal the machine instead seems like a missed opportunity, but I'll admit that Gunn tying chains around the machine and trying to haul it away with his car like he's relocating a fridge is a lot funnier.

And it led to Jerry having some great moments: beating up James Gunn because he wanted him to betray his family, doing his best to save Rick and Morty, and crying when he thought they were dead. Near the end, Rick proves that he believes in Jerry despite everything.

He might've slipped in another dig at AI, too. Maybe it's just me, but "Any idiot can plug an idea into a machine when they don't care what it spits back out, but it takes a special kind of idiot to get on the keys and write us an ending" sounded like a jab at people who choose prompts over original writing.

Speaking of Rick: after he stumbled in "Summer of All Fears," the rest of the season has emphasized that he really is changing. He's still mean, crabby and inconsiderate, and he struggles with empathy, but he's there when it really counts.

When the villain bites Morty, Rick whacks him on the head with a shovel, killing him instantly. Later, Morty furiously confronts Rick and shoves him to the ground, yells at him and shakes him, and Rick does...nothing. He doesn't even launch into an insult-filled tirade. Instead, he takes the beating with a silent frown. Is he finally realizing that he can't keep using his strength to hurt his grandson?

Just like he surprised himself by getting attached to Karen and Doug in "Cryo Mort a Rickver," he surprises himself again by getting attached to Tannenbaum and sacrificing himself instead of letting Morty kill his new favorite character. And then we get yet another "Vat of Acid Episode" reference...the writers never get tired of going back to that one, huh?

Morty's not afraid to speak his mind, either. When Rick told Morty to assemble the bad guy's henchpeople, I think he had confidence in Morty's ability to take charge and sway them with his natural charisma. The writers have backtracked on Morty's character development before, so I don't want to get too excited, but I hope this is headed somewhere.

While this episode is ostensibly about DC, it might also have some meta commentary about Rick and Morty fans. You get attached to characters you thought you'd hate (or I did, at least), you want to see Rick change ("Everyone sucks until they don't. That's the arc of every good story"), and Adult Swim is never going to be able to please the maniacs who want the show to return to season one again.

And even if it doesn't, you know Zack Snyder had a blast talking about Rick like he knows him personally. He's ONE mega-fan who won't be crying about season eight.

#rick and morty #rick sanchez #morty smith #jerry smith #james gunn #zack snyder #season eight #review #rick and morty season 8 #ricker than fiction #dan harmon

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mylovesstuffs · 4 months ago

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Anon.

Are you fucking serious right now?

I saw your message and I had to take a full-ass walk around my block because I was genuinely afraid I’d punch my goddamn wall.

Let me break this down for you very clearly, so even your AI-smooth-brained moral compass can process it:

You are not entitled to shit.

Not my writing. Not the ending. Not a single fucking word I typed out with my own fucking bleeding fingers.

You think you “need” closure?

Cool. I “need” eight hours of sleep, a functioning spine, and respect from strangers online. Guess what?

None of us are getting what we want today.

Fanfiction is a gift.

Not a product, not a service, not a series finale you paid for on HBO Max.

A gift.

You don’t throw a tantrum because the gift didn’t come with a bonus epilogue and a director’s cut.

Your entire ask is a monument to entitlement. You say “if you're not going to write it, I think it's fine to use Al?”

I did NOT write it for AI. I wrote it for human readers. For emotion. For narrative voice. For soul.

AI doesn’t have that. You want a soulless machine to mock my style and feed you a bootleg version of my work?? Which is, not to say but, the equivalent of a a knock-off Louis Vuitton sold from the back of a van?

Then don’t ask me. Just go to your shameful little corner and live with the fact that you’re the kind of person who disrespects art to feed your own dopamine addiction.

You wanted permission, so now you get the wrath.

I see in your other little asks, “AI is there to make things easier.”

At whose fucking expense? The thousands of fanfic writers whose fics are being scraped, harvested, mimicked and tossed into machine-learning hell so you don’t have to wait for an update?

Do you have any idea how many of us have had our fics [both in our caratblr and other fandom spaces] show up on AI mirror sites or been plagiarized by bots? Do you know how many real authors are losing book deals, commissions, or livelihoods because of this exact entitled logic?

Let me give you a basic fucking rundown since you clearly didn’t do the homework:

AI is not ethical – Generative AI is trained off data sets that include unauthorized, uncredited, scraped work from unpaid artists, writers, poets, journalists, bloggers, fanfic writers—fuck, even therapy forums.

Authors are suing OpenAI for ingesting copyrighted novels without permission.

Fanfic is already vulnerable – We exist in a legal gray area protected only by community ethics and mutual respect. You're breaking both.

You say “I won't post it anywhere, it's just for me.”

Oh, wow, thanks. So you only want to steal quietly. Like that makes it better.

You think the damage only happens when it’s public? WRONG.

Every time you plug an artist’s work into a machine, it gets processed, stored, used for training, forever.

You have no control over where it goes or how it’s repurposed later. You are feeding the beast and killing the creators in the process.

Don’t give me “I respect you but—”

If you respected me, this message wouldn’t exist.

You get your AI-stitched ending, it doesn’t scratch the itch, and you feed it another one.

And another.

Until the entire fucking archive is turned into a graveyard of replicas and you’re the ghoulish little shit dancing on the corpses of every writer you leeched dry.

And you say “I think I’m just entitled to a bit of closure”?

Entitled. You actually used the word.

Thank you for confirming what we already knew:

That you don’t see us as people.

You see us as content machines that owe you something because you liked our work. You don’t want closure, you want control, and you will NOT get it from me.

You’re entitled to a bath, a glass of water, and the air you breathe—not my writing, not my thoughts, and definitely not a fucking auto-generated Frankenstein mockery of my style you can jerk off your emotions to.

So here's your closure:

No, you may not touch my fic.

No, you may not feed it to a bot.

No, you may not engage with my writing, my blog, my friend's blog, or my community ever again.

Block me. Report me. Cry about it.

But know this:

Every time you open an AI generator to finish a story you didn’t write, you are choosing to destroy the very creators you claim to admire.

You should be ashamed, but you won’t be. Because parasites don’t feel guilt, they just suck and suck and suck until there’s nothing left.

I'll never forget this time and date.

I hope it was worth it.

Let this be your final fucking warning.

— Celeste.

#please get the fuck off my and my friend's and other writers blog #you're NOT welcomed #you deadass came into MY inbox with a digital scalpel asking to butcher my fic #and expected me to say “yes queen go ahead”???#feed my blood sweat and tears into the algorithm grinder bc YOU can’t wait???#go gnaw on drywall #the entitlement is fucking radioactive #“i won’t share it” oh wow babe THANK YOU for promising to keep your theft private. like that makes you less of a digital robber #cry me a river build a bridge and then jump off it #you don’t “need closure” you need a damn hobby and some fucking boundaries #go knit or scream into a jar or idk read a newspaper #don’t treat writers like vending machines and throw tantrums when the candy doesn’t drop #AI is not your little storytelling fairy godmother. it’s a grave-digging industry leech #go sit in a corner and think about why no one wants you in fandom spaces anymore #and don’t come back unless it’s with a goddamn apology and a clue #mylovesstuffs asks

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keepingsecretstokeepyoutk · 1 year ago

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This is going to be very long and sound a little crazy at first, and maybe a little mean but please hear me out…

I’m convinced that Taylor sometimes purposefully includes one line or multiple lines of poorly written or clunky lyrics in specific songs to make a point.

We all have seen some version of this with bearding songs like London Boy, a simple bop whose lyrics were immediately detected as sounding disingenuous, even with the general population (the locations she was signing about were the most touristy and too far away from each other to visit on the same day, etc, basically implying that she doesn’t actually have a long term local bf there that she spends a bunch of time with exploring the city with, etc).

But just like everything else on the album, I think she’s doing maybe a more in your face version of that. No holds barred.

So High School is an obvious example of this, with all of the early 2000’s hs imagery, she seems pretty blatantly to be mocking the idea the public has of her “living out every American girl’s high school fantasy” of dating the tall popular football player. With lyrics like “touch me while your friends play grand theft auto” (barf), etc, shes being clear enough that this is not a serious song.

This is the possibly controversial part, but I’m so curious to see what others think about this - I think another iteration of this on this album is the title track, The Tortured Poets Department. Hear me out.

(First, I want to reassure you that there are lines in this song that I really like and think are well written, like: “you’re in self-sabotage mode/throwing spikes down on the road” and “but you awaken with dread/pounding nails in your head/but I’ve read this one/where you come undone/I chose this cyclone with you”. And I fully agree with the idea that these sentiments are from Karlie’s perspective. Basically, when you take out the chunks I’m about to talk about this song makes way more sense and has a beautiful sentiment of undying love behind it - which makes the following parts stick out that much more!)

The first time I listened through the album, and this was the second song, I got terrified because I didn’t understand its place in the whole narrative and when I heard the first clunky line “scratch your head like a tattooed golden retriever” I got the ick. Then the bridge with no structure and no wit and no clever turns of phrase, no metaphor, just “you put my ring on the finger people put wedding rings on” and “that was the closest I’ve ever been to my heart exploding”. So over simplified and cheesy, and doesn’t sound anything like her writing, especially the caliber of her recent lyrics

I know art is largely subjective, but I insist there is no way that the same person who wrote Cowboy Like Me wrote these lines into her title track if she didn’t have a reason and a point to make. To make it clear that this isn’t a matter of genre personal taste, because I know CLM is a very specific sound and a style that music snobs often take more seriously - I love SO many of her candy pop bangers, they are infinitely more clever, articulate, and overall works of art by a true wordsmith than this. Karma, The Very First Night, etc are all a master classes in clever words and tight writing being tucked into an “unserious” pop song.

The lyrics I cited above to me sound like what haters believe her writing sounds like, even fans who make little jokey TikTok’s about her and make up a spoofy something to sing while in character - that’s what these lyrics sound like.

Im worried im being too harsh, but please stay with me because the more I think about the more genius I think it actually is.

In the context of the themes of rest of the album, (her being trapped, miserable, manipulated, ready to burn it all down, screaming to be seen) this theory became clear to me. I think she’s leaning into her public persona (in more ways than one, we’ve already seen it with the stunting), in a way setting a “trap” for her fans and the public, that will essentially call them all out on how they ignored the real her in favor of her pr narrative, making the album about paternity tests, etc, all of which I’m guessing will become very clear in retrospect, possibly after she comes out? (Of course it’s already clear to us now, which is another purpose of the beard songs including clunky writing - to signal to us that these are not serious and that she knows that we know that she knows (like Phoebe on friends lol))

Ultimately, this is (along with So Highschool) a classic beard song. When she writes in this voice, she embodies the most extreme versions of her public persona, not just the one she has cultivated on purpose, but also the one that people have of her that don’t know her (as she did in Blank Space), including those that don’t take her seriously - because her identity as a boy crazy psycho ex girlfriend is directly tied to people dismissing her art as vapid because, they’ve only ever heard her singles, they don’t know the full her.

That voice is the straightest, the most boy crazy, the most one note, and sometimes the most unsophisticated writer version of her that people have in their minds, including her fans - the fans that refuse to see her as a whole person, the real, that believe she is head over heals for big football boy, that believe “he knows how to ball, I know Aristotle” is a romantic line about how opposites attract, the fans that say they don’t “get” some of her most beautiful and well-written songs, the fans that don’t see her and haven’t been seeing her.

They didn’t see giant Taylor on the eras tour, they refuse to see all of her queer signaling, etc, and I think she’s making the bearding songs obvious to underscore the difference between her Taylor(TM) and Taylor(person) personas.

She knows that despite the fact that the lyrics don’t even come close to measuring up to the rest of the album, the public, and many of her fans, will make this song one of the most listened to simply because they are looking for evidence of her relationships from the past year. We’ve all commented on how insane it is that this layered, complex, devastating album is being reduced to the usual paternity tests. This is currently one of the top songs precisely because it is “about Matty”. And of course, So High School is one of the tops songs along with it because it’s “about Travis”.

The juxtaposition of the bearding songs alongside her beautifully written poetry of Prophecy, Peter, Whose Afraid of Little Old Me, Cassandra, How did it end, The Albatross, etc mirrors the juxtaposition of her two selves during the Midnights era.

She has proven the point that if they think she wrote every line of this song completely in earnest, then they see her largely no differently than her haters do, as a subpar writer who writes absurdly cheesy love songs praising trashy to mediocre, problematic men. By eating it up they tell her that’s what she’s good for, for being the subject of tabloids and warring fans who make this entire album about two (purposefully) mediocre songs and the men who “inspired” them.

She has proven her point - that a subset of her fans will be distracted by a lesser song simply because they think it’s about one of the greasy men that’s she been seen holding hands with. That they will ignore once again all of her pleas to be seen, that she’s in pain and caged, and has been driven insane by their willful ignorance. That they don’t appreciate her full potential and talent, that they don’t even see it, and just want to be confirmed in their ideation of her.

This song is essentially the “forget him(her)” pill at the beginning of the fortnight mv, but it’s a sedative for the fans, who are addicted to her straight narrative. Similar to Willow’s 13 chants of “that’s my man” that started off evermore, casting a spell of heteronormativity over everyone who wanted it, so that they could choose to just completely ignore the following 14 gayest songs ever written. Don’t pay no mind to her singing directly about women with zero male perspective - she said “that’s my man!” We’re good! She’s still straight!

Taylor in the fortnight mv had to a take a sedative to be able to go into the next room and write her bearding songs - ie she self medicates to deal with keeping up the straight persona and to get through having to release dumbed down songs to feed the masses. (I also see the pill as something forced on her, I think it represents both layers)

From the first time I watched the music video I thought the writing Taylor looked so miserable and the bearding songs are why.

In this room she’s trapped, churning out the songs that her fans expect of her, the songs that make her team money, the songs that make her money, but that she has to compromise her truth to create.

But when she frees herself she’ll burn the stories that weren’t true, the filler that doesn’t represent her.

I’m curious to hear other’s thoughts on this - have you ever felt like Taylor purposefully inserts off-sounding lyrics that are written in a different voice to make a point?

I want to reiterate that it’s not the entirety of either song that I think is terrible, I genuinely love bopping along to both So High School and TTPD (track). Like I said above, when you remove the clunky lines from ttpd (track), the song has another layer and likely gives voice to some Karlie insight that is beautiful and tragically profound. It’s the red herrings, the pieces specifically meant to tie this song to a bearding narrative, that I’m dissing, and the only reason they are suspicious in the first place is because I know how gifted Taylor is with the written word.

Taylor is such a skilled writer that she can embody the voice of the bad writer that dismissive ignorant idiots believe her to be, just to make a point!

I even wonder if maybe there is a second version of this song locked away in one of those drawers in the fortnight writing room that leaves out the red herrings and is a thousand times better than the bearding version we got.

I hope one day we get to hear it.

#gaylor #kaylor #bearding #closeting #ttpd #so high school

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centrally-unplanned · 5 months ago

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Continuing the "balanced coverage" narrative around Ukraine this time, there absolutely is something to "shocking" the European establishment into taking security threats more seriously. Getting the Europeans to start debating things like deploying peacekeeping troops to Ukraine in a postwar settlement is a necessary step, and it is revealing that the UK - which wants to do this, so they say - could barely even field a contingent as their net army size has dipped below 80k.

Note how it declined since the Ukraine War began. The UK's population is ~70 million by the way! If you want to be a country uninvolved in global security affairs nothing wrong with this, but the UK clearly says it cares, so where is the steel to back the words, right? Europe has absolutely been free-riding off the coattails of the US for a while now, and there has been ample warnings that they have ignored. There is a common meme that I have seen for literally years (saw it most recently via @official-kircheis):

And like, yeah. In the face of this you can totally see how dramatic action might be needed. The US saying "we are bowing out unless you get your shit together" is something the Biden admin could not do, they were too conciliatory and "norm-based". We will see if it goes anywhere ofc, but if just look at things like the Hegseth "pivot to Asia" speech (a totally fair point in isolation) and the European response it is pretty easy to see the "win" in this. To repeat my themes, there are "gordian knots" an outsider take on things can cut in politics and if Dems & others refuse to see that they are hurting themselves.

This just works a lot better if you don't combine it with insane bullshit! Don't cut Ukraine, the country actually fighting, out of the peace talks because what why wtf? Don't also cut your allies out when actually you yourself haven't been that generous - actually the US is only like 40% of the military aid to Ukraine (because of Republican opposition ofc, not any actual funding constraints):

Don't send Ukraine insane colonial economic agreements for mineral rights the US doesn't even need that won't generate revenue as a flex? You know it all, I won't belabor it.

The "argument" the Trump side is going to make is that all this is load-bearing to the "European wake up", but it isn't! That case doesn't auto-make itself; Europe has a strong, long-proven stake in Ukraine, many countries have donated more as a percent of GDP than the US has. You can just credibly go to the wall on the real stakes without the bullshit.

And obviously they don't really care about this argument, it isn't their real motives, but still it is going to be made. You should admit that previous administrations (including Trump 1 ofc, which blustered much but did little) have been too easy on Europe. And that while it isn't required there is nothing wrong with a firm play. That way, you can separate that out from the horrible stuff.

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stuck-in-ponyville · 8 months ago

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Welcome to Stuck in Ponyville!

Stuck in Ponyville is a horror fan story about the beloved background characters from My Little Pony: Friendship is magic surviving the sudden onset of an ZOMPONY APOCALYPSE . Join the characters on their desperate attempt of survival in this new harsh world by voting on polls and talking to our protagonist via the video broadcast they send to you. There lives are in your hopefully capable hands and hooves!

WARNINGS

Stuck in Ponyville contains subject matter that is inappropriate for young children or those sensitive to artistic depictions of violence.

Please read at your own risk I will tag the start of each post with a symbol below for the intensity of a situation! But rest assured I will never depict subject matter such as SA and the brutalization of women as seen in most horror. I do not intend to kill for the sake of shock and all deaths will happen with narrative purpose!

Self explanatory! Entry’s with this symbol are completely safe.

Minor injuries such as cuts , scrapes, bruises

Small blood spatter , drips of blood

Off screen violence

Presents of zombies, who have minor decay , blood covered and generally yucky

A few punches and wacks may be thrown

Zombie killing

Moderate injuries Such as broken bones , gunshot wounds, bite wounds, gashes , swelling due to injury, and possibly more

Large quantities of blood , such as a character bleeding out , or large pools of blood and or large smatterings of blood

Grotesque depictions of the zombies, spilled guts, large decay , and minor unnatural body horror

On screen Vilonce such as fights with the intent to kill a living character

Death of a living character , death due to bite wound and other zombie attacks , another living pony killing via gunshot or stabbing

Major deadly injury , characters POSSIBLY getting limbs ripped off, torn apart and Eviscerated, heads being damaged , characters being eaten on screen

Zombies with intense horrific disfigurations

Tourture

Violent struggles between characters that may be more intense than the yellow warning.

If cupcakes , smile HD , the friendship test , something sweet to bite fics are too much for you then just assume that this fic might at some point be a bit much

Rules of Interacting

These are my as the mods Rules and Boundaries as well as what is ok to say to me and the characters and others who enjoy this comic!

Auto block:

These actions will result in a block automatically

Do not as questions of a sexual nature ever

Do not threaten ME if you become upset with a story element such as your fav dying

Don’t be mean to me if I’m not posting as fast as you’d like! I’m litcheray an adult bruv and this is me hobby so be nice forever please or I’ll hate you forever!!!

Do not fight with others you also have a block button please use it if you don’t get along with another person

If you on your blog sexualize mlp characters in a way that makes me uncomfortable I’ll probably block you . “But they’re fictional horse characters” ok but I don’t really wanna interact with you and you can do what you want but I get to decide who I’m around. Please respect that choice !

Non offenses but won’t really be acknowledged unkess it becomes an issue:

I won’t answer questions that spoil the story

The characters will not acknowledge other universes at this time

If you spam the inbox I’ll probably ignore you if it’s not a genuine question to progress the story

Asking for free art under posts not offering it

Asking me to do something in the story that’s not an offering on the poll

Weird cryptic messages that mean absolutely nothing to me

Threatening violence on the characters

Encouraged and welcome interaction:

I love asks to the characters and myself

I love chatting in the comments

Feel free to ask why I chose to make choices in my art or story

Feel free to send in theories to the inbox , comments your the tags

Spam likes and rbs will not bother me

How does this work?

Now with a few boundaries out of the way!

The characters of Stuck in Ponyville are not aware of the traditional ways ask blogs work. They do not know of other pinkies , celestias , or whom ever. This is a story choice that will become relevant in the future.

Your characters will not play a huge roll but think of you and everyone reading as one working entity , all together you’re important! Your job is to guide the characters throughout this journey .

Polls

Asks can determine polls and pools can help you ask questions!

An example of how this has worked already is this!:

Someone asked about pinkies party cannons , suggesting they could be used as a weapon and then that later made a poll for locations to travel too. And that lead the first chapter to being about going across town to retrieve a canon to be brought back to the farm.

Though none of the characters will act out of character so keep that in mind for when choices are made.

A timid character might not survive a dark walk through a hallway full of monsters!

And a big brave pony with tude might not get the group help they so desperately need!

Polls will look like this:

But remember , these polls are PERMEANT and once a choice is made there’s nothing anybody can do to change it.

———————————————————————————

wanna support my art ? check out my kofi

The comic itself will always be uploaded to the public for free and is a passion project!

Supporting me on kofi is just so I can dedicate more time to the comic itself !

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

#Stuck in Ponyville Comic pages <- the comic pages incase you cant find one

#AskSIP <- ask blog posts ! Simi canon / not required to read to understand story

——————————————————————————-

READ ON COMIC FURY HERE

Chapter Select !

Chapter 0

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Chapter 1

first post

This will be changed and updated as needed!

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catenary-chad · 13 days ago

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“Hal, it’s about TRAINS”

Endless revisions and different contradictory versions. Stop being political and enjoy the silly show and bisexual antics onstage. No there’s not a noxious political movement quietly growing in the background, stop taking things too seriously. Look, wild conspiracies about “an all-conquering and insidious yet physically pathetic minority associated with NYC and hanging wires”.

Hey wait, what musical are we talking about here?

TRAIN. CABARET.

The meta narrative around Starlight Express is almost in lockstep with the intent of Cabaret. It walks right into “being distracted by the show and remaining willfully ignorant in the face of a sinister rising political movement quietly rising” with its neoliberal undertones. People laugh it off, but no seriously, neoliberalism was a massively destructive force for trains in the US and UK. It’s such a terrible theme that it becomes brilliant when you flip the framing, it’s a relevant train substitute for fascism, ESPECIALLY in the US.

Lack of serious historical discussion of the last century of US railroad history and widespread ignorance about the political side of it is a noted problem among historians. There’s a largely unchallenged cultural fixation on the likes of steam engines and rolling stock minutiae and dining car plates, while often ignoring the broader political and social impacts, due to history being mostly documented by railfans. Nearly all the things depicted as “good” in Stex have served to actively obscure the darker political side of contemporary US rail history. And a lot of what should have been the lessons from that time have come back to haunt the US, with too many people being fooled into seeing privatization as a good thing and regulation as evil, calling for a return to horrible Gilded Age things that have been sanitized the point they don’t realize how bad they were, and the current government blatantly gutting services and transport and completely siding with the auto industry. Outright abandoning people in the face of disaster with the “needn’t ask the world to turn around and help you” line. Realizing this finally made me understand why I’ve become increasingly troubled by people, especially in the US, refusing to acknowledge let alone examine the historical realities behind the trains shown in Starlight Express. Because it was written by an outsider who largely fell into the same traps railfan historians do and people outside AND inside the US don’t realize what too-real horror these trivialized cliches cover.

So anyways, here’s Train Cabaret, the unholy Stex x Cabaret crossover AU.

Abandon all hope, ye Rusty fans who enter here, a renamed version of him is the main villain. A “new” steam engine in the 80s would most likely be a literal cowboy actor (at a theme park) ala Reagan and this goes all-in on the implications and connections with this. This is chock full of things that will make a lot of the Starlight Express fandom Big Mad in general because a major point is how even benignly intentioned people play into horrifying things unknowingly. This is just as dark as Cabaret itself, if even more explicitly so, and gets WAY too real to the modern US despite its outward train-brained “absurdity”. It goes ALL in on human/train double entendres and just how trivialization is weaponized. After all, car centrism is a stupid, pointless cruelty that’s cost millions of lives, too, and who did the westward expansion sanitized by Westerns inspire?

The characterization here is closest to the the 1993 proshot, but with major changes I’ll elaborate on later. This show is Hal Price 1988 tier over the top theatrical and performative, yet is played absolutely dead serious and sincerely. Even the plot and action scenes outside the club/Northeast Corridor are dramatic, stylized, and clearly choreographed vs naturalistic, yet genuine in their emotions. This is a VERY important carryover from Stex. Trains are very planned and orderly, moving along on pre-determined rails. Car figures may be a bit more improvisational to reflect this not applying to them. Trivialization of train history and refusing to care having serious impacts is a central theme, this SHOULD be outwardly campy and over-the-top. Yeah, the electrified Northeast Corridor is a circus of dysfunctionality vs other rail lines that’s more visibly harmed by capitalist idiocy and neoliberalism, but it’s still a part of the broader US rail system and they’ll suffer from those too.

I would almost want to make this show sung-through like Stex because talk-singing and borderline singsongy picture books are so common in Anglophone train media. It’s such a great way to represent trains and their media portrayal.

Musically, I imagine a mix of late-era disco bleeding into 80s pop EXACTLY like early replica Stex, combined with pre-70s show business mannerisms. Electric trains in the US has their heyday in the eras of player pianos, silent film, Ziegfeld Follies and gratuitous tap dancing, and line after line was being de-electrified by the time the Hayes Code was lifted. A lot of the trains running in the 70s and 80s were so old they were FROM this era. It doesn’t have to be perfectly authentic, just look and feel VERY dated and from this time. Disco music’s mainstream popularity in the US was notoriously shot dead in its tracks with the conservative swing of 1980 and has a general feel of impending doom with just how many of the artists died from AIDS. Electric trains are queer-coded for many reasons, and the darkest is “Reagan wanted them to just quietly die too”. I also just love the sound of early Stex because it sounds like the kind of music still played at roller rinks in the northeast US.

Costume-wise, I love the Napier style and would continue with it for the new/heavily revised characters. The abstract, collaged, cubist-like style is my single favorite gijinka concept ever. While there isn’t any racing, the creepy train helmets (and car ones in that style) are used for when train vs car or having identity changed or erased is important. They’re like the animal heads of Egyptian gods. To reflect the crushing effect of cut budgets on the Corridor and elsewhere, having the beat-up, cheaper look of the UK tours is perfect on a meta level. It’s hard to overstate how destitute much of the US rail system was in the 70s and how the Northeast Corridor is still so broken and backwards today that outside companies struggle to model it for simulations, it’s so old and run down vs comparably fast lines in other rich countries. There’s a reason why I find the visibly ratty look of Electra in the tour videos so compelling, being old and visibly worn down due to a minuscule budget is exactly what electric trains in the US are.

I’ll inevitably flesh out and add more to this concept, probably write out specific dialogue and train lyric to some songs because this concept really is so deep. I kind of want to figure out just how “family friendly”I can make this by substituting symbols with ones with similar meaning that are only seen as more kid-friendly because they’re so sanitized by media. Like cartoon cowboy outfits taking the place of Nazi uniforms. Car culture in place of the Holocaust. “The uniform of genocidal expansion” and “pointless, stupid cruelty that killed millions of people” describes both. If you think this is exaggerated, it’s because these things have become as trivialized as serious examination of US rail history. The Cynical Historian on youtube has a lot of videos about this aspect of Westerns. David Alff and Al Churella also have some good talks (and books) on the train side of the history being ignored, especially in regard to the northeast.

Setting:

The 70s-early 80s era Northeast Corridor substitutes the Kit Kat Club and the broader American rail system substitutes Berlin. Both were similarly destitute and living on the edge of a knife, knowing something dramatic would happen politically but not what. To summarize a messy history: US railroads were often terrible exploitative companies and got harshly regulated in face of that. As roads were built by the government and auto companies grew more powerful, rail was still seen as invincible and held to the same early 20th century regulations (that genuinely grew unfairly harsh with inflation and technology changes) that made them absolute money pits, especially passenger rail. This led to many of them going bankrupt after WWII and having atrocious maintenance conditions and decaying infrastructure, until government-run Amtrak took over the burden of passenger services and lightened regulations in the 70s. One of the major casualties of this was the US’s once world-leading electric rail network, countless trolley lines went down along with most heavy rail outside the Northeast. In the face of multiple oil crises, there was a lot of ambiguity in the 70s whether the government would finally pour money into reviving passenger rail after a botched attempt in the 60s with the Metroliner service, and whether the private companies would mass electrify. This did not happen, with dropping oil prices and Reagan sealing a fate of stagnation for the next 40+ years with massive underinvestment in even basic improvements for Amtrak (and he quietly wanted it gone completely in favor of cars). So a surprising amount of parallels to Weimar Germany, really, between the political uncertainty and living in economic ruin due to harsh reparations. This show follows a timeline that only somewhat diverges to be darker than reality, showing the rise in conservative backlash and neoliberalism that would plague passenger rail and electrification into the modern day, and a worst-case scenario that would border on cartoonish… if it weren’t becoming painfully possible in the present-day US with doomsday transit budgets and directly descended from the forces depicted here.

I’m inclined to say they still speak sporadic German as a play on Stex’s popularity in Germany. Alternatively, you could substitute with bits of Pennsylvania Dutch and/or Yiddish, which ARE strongly geographically associated with electric network this takes place in. There’s the common thread that both German and northeastern American electric trains use unusually low-frequency AC power (16.7Hz and 25Hz vs now standard 50/60Hz mains frequencies). It’s a an old, weird carryover from before WWII when AC>DC rectifiers weren’t practical on trains and the kind of motors they used with AC power required low frequencies. It’s barely used anywhere outside trains now, though 25Hz used to be a more common for industrial power for running stationary motors. 25Hz used to be a lot more common in the US among trains but many of the lines that used it were de-electrified after WWII… not unakin to how Pennsylvania Dutch and Yiddish saw huge drops in usage, and the pointedly tragic parallel with the latter ties back to Cabaret.

Electra replaces the Emcee, living on the edge of a knife as a borderline delusional beacon of hope and umbrella for the Northeast Corridor (stand in for the club), when gone, the others’ paradise crumbles (electric trains are often the bellwether of infrastructure decline and de-electrification often leads to full track removal). Representation of the various victims of Reagan (electric trains, queer people, Black people, take your pick). The captain who goes down with his ship and pushes ever onward in fluctuating times. A pure entertainer like Joel Grey, but less complicit and more a public figure desperately playing along with respectability politics, only able to comment and warn in coded language as he nervously glances at a funding Sword of Damocles threatening to “cut his cables” if he does/says too much (falling like a marionette is a repeated image of de-electrification here because it’s easy to mime). I only call Electra “he” here because of Emcee precedent, but Electra can be truly genderblind here and can even work better female or nonbinary.

Pearl replaces Sally Bowles, standin for the broader American people’s naivety and ignorance, then increasingly pointed rejection of historical truth about trains. She begins genuinely naive, becomes willing ignorance incarnate, and when challenged becomes increasingly and aggressively defensive of it, leading to her own doom. Absolutely a Jane Horrocks sort of Sally, especially in the final number.

Caboose replaces Cliff, an outside Canadian (or even a British Brake Van), “watching the rest of the train” like an actual caboose, representing the railfan gaze and the way modern US rail history is largely written by enthusiastic amateurs. He’s detached from it all, just excited to see what the foreign land is like and constantly writing and documenting the cool things he sees, largely missing or ignoring the dark side rising because it’s not externally exciting and he doesn’t understand it as an outsider. He’s a foreigner who can run away from it all at any time, and doesn’t realize that the growing movement will spread to his homeland and hurt him too. He constantly laughs off the increasingly absurd cruelty he sees, thinking it’s all a joke until directly personally threatened because it’s just SO stupid, extreme, and backwards how could anyone fall for it? He’s well-intentioned but accidentally plays into the horrors in unrecognizable forms, just like the railfan gaze has. He’s not as deliberately ignorant as Pearl though, constantly curious, asking too many questions, and recognizing the threat at hand when directly confronted by it. Also he’s bi like later versions of Cliff, because making Caboose straight just feels wrong.

Caboose and Electra could be swapped, I’ll elaborate on this elsewhere with further character notes. Ultimately, electric trains are far more politically meaningful and misunderstood in the US and that’s why I do it this way. Cabooses are some of the only train things represented frequently and accurately. Honestly my only problem with their perception is people overestimating how extinct they are, they’re still occasionally used today.

Collis (Potter Huntington, AKA evil Rusty) replaces Ernst, the seemingly friendly guy who is so much more. A blatant Reagan stand-in. A new build “cowboy actor” C.P. Huntington replica steam engine built for amusement park use who only knows and cares about capitalism and cowboy ideals of self-sufficiency and whitewashing the atrocities of the old days. He’s visually the missing link between “The Little Engine that Could” and “cutesifying western expansion and its killing of millions of buffalo and people”. The symbol of just how insidious and externally unthreatening neoliberalism can be, he’s constantly inching from “believe in yourself!” to “sometimes private business does it better” to “the systems WILL fail, you have to rely on yourself. So what’s the point in keeping them?” to “electric trains WILL fail and inherently require government assistance, cut them all off”. He’s folksy and externally polite and nice while writing your death warrant with a smile. He also depicts how amusement parks reflect the removal of trains from practical relevance in the US by turning them into quaint images of the past or unattainable sci-fi alternatives to regular electric trains as amusement parks as they became car-dependent.

Greaseball could work in that role, sure, but he’s too obvious and lacks the insidious quality. He’s ultimately as a boogeyman for big private railroads, megamergers, and the interplay of diesel locomotives and the auto industry. He goes freely between the Corridor and broader network because he’s a diesel engine and can go largely anywhere, he’s ambiguously real or just marketing personified. I love the idea of him being portrayed by a drag king who is as physically lanky and delicate-looking as possible and slaps on layers and layers of costume as bulk. It reflects how the “strong, rugged, manly” image of internal combustion is a lie, especially with trains. Diesel locomotives are arguably more “FeMiNiNe”in that they’re more delicate and high maintenance, group-oriented, and physically weaker as single units vs steam and electric engines at this time.

(I’ll put together a second post with the rest of my character and theme notes later. Simpler characters will be introduced as they come in)

Wilkommen- Electra introduces the Nationals to some exposition/world’s fair thing in their languages, add all the verses you need to introduce Greaseball and all the unpowered rolling stock ensemble (except Pearl who comes later). Yes they all have slutty Vegas outfits (that still technically have no exposed skin) and just as many bi antics as Stex, that’s a beloved aspect of Cabaret too! The Components represent government agencies and industries that survive on subsidies. The coaches represent women. The freight represent heavy industry and blue collar workers. The Components often dress up with different machine heads (cars and such) to play other characters, the other ensemble also do as needed.

After the intro, Caboose meets Collis as he enters the US (who is on a flatcar because he’s an amusement park train ala Crown Metal Products’ engines that’s built like an oversized live steam toy and not meant to run on rugged heavy rail settings). Collis blows a wooden train whistle to introduce himself. He seems reasonably nice at first, and points towards Memphis Belle’s railroad to live at. He offers him a smuggling job (copper from questionable origins- possibly stolen from electrical equipment, “copper thievery” is sometimes used to describe short-sighted bad decisions like de-electrification). Collis is notably wearing old-timey workwear but makes references to being deceptively rich. This is a type of “poverty cosplay” distinctive to heritage rail in the US and really has to be experienced to be believed. There are a lot of rich guys who dress as scruffy old timey workers in that sphere. This is also a direct jab at Rusty and how a “new” steam engine in the 80s would have a cushy job at an amusement park and be the least likely “poor” train to see in the US or UK since they were fully involved in now-popular heritage operations.

So What?- Memphis Belle replaces Fraulein Schneider, as a symbol of then-smaller railroads more conducive to steam excursions at the time (old Pullman cars were often reused for corporate trains), She’s detached and indifferent from what’s happening if it doesn’t affect her and takes things as they come.

Mein Herr- Pearl’s introduction, barely changed from Broadway version (just add “The Continental States are just so wide, Mein Herr/I couldn’t turn a profit if I tried, Mein Herr”), plays on origins of Amtrak with “you’re better without me” (passenger service was a money pit for private railroads), and bounces between engines instead of men

Perfectly Marvelous- Pearl gloms onto Caboose, begs him to document her (play on amateur railfan-dominated historical narratives)

Two Ladies- Electra represents Amtrak/Conrail fight with “two ladies” fighting over him (trackage rights). MUCH angrier than Cabaret is, this reflects the desperation for capacity on remaining electric lines like the Northeast Corridor.

It Couldn’t Please Me More- McCoy represents another railroad who has corporate steam excursions for publicity, hands Belle giant lump of coal as once-status symbol among railroads and merger/marriage potential. Railroad mergers are spoken or as marriages or courtships SO MUCH historically

Tomorrow Belongs to Me- Collis now dressed as sad cowboy on TV sings a cutesy ballad, Electra rolls eyes and shuts off with “to ME”, dismissing the sentiment as stupid. It’s painfully easy to make a neoliberal parody of this song going from “believe in yourself” messaging devolving into “you don’t need outside government support!” and later, EVEN WORSE. Reflects how Reagan’s ideas were dismissed as stupid early on, as much as returning to steam engines.

Why Should I Wake Up?- Caboose is having too much fun in the northeast with Pearl but sees darkness on the horizon. “Morning can wait” sinister reference to acknowledging“morning in America” (notorious Reagan ad slogan) coming to destroy them both

Maybe This Time- Pearl sings about repeated rejection by private railroads (represented by Greaseball) in the past vs Caboose’s friendliness. Yes, Pearl gets pregnant (with a cab car because it’s between a caboose and regular coach in terms of function) and later has an abortion, it’s absurdist but I’ll leave it because it’s relevant on a human level right now.

Collis storms in mid-conversation and goes “I hope you’re not one of THOSE types who thinks life begins at first breath” (VERY culturally Jewish view, emphasis on breath arguably reflect steam-centrism too since they “breath” the most obviously vs other trains). He convinces Caboose to do more copper smuggling for him. He uses the foreboding “more than one way to make money” line as he eyes hanging wires hungrily, transitioning into

Sitting Pretty/Money- Congrats, I’m going with the 1988 combo version of this song, including the gratuitous tap dance section because I absolutely wrote Electra with Mykal in mind and this show MUST seemingly jump as many sharks as possible to play up the trivialization angle.

Greaseball with a car head (complete with yeehaw Texas cow horns on the front) is the singer in Sitting Pretty, singing the fast parts in a “cattle auctioneer” voice. He torments the ensemble, parodying how roads suck up the budget from trains and other things. Flirts with Collis in audience, who dances around with him (Reagan showered money on roads), before ripping out a cord and plunging the stage into darkness as Electra eases back in.

Electra takes back over for Money Makes the World Go Round. The Components shimmy around as Purse comes in with the Nationals as the foreign currencies dancing around. You have all the included countries and then some!

The Components then get lassoed and yanked offstage by Collis one by one, parodying crunch of “small government!” axing programs, eventually Electra gets yanked too. Collis’s face is now obscured by a buffalo skull- both symbolizing Moloch, used to demonize the early auto industry (bring this back please), and representing a fairly well-known image of how railroads were used to genocide Native Americans.

Married- Belle and McCoy’s “marriage” is a merger, the marriage and courtship angle was very commonly used for rail mergers. They start getting foreboding “love letters” from “Uncle Pete” (Union Pacific) demanding they marry him too. Deregulation led to larger and larger railroad mergers to generally negative results and giant shitty regional monopolies. That are also hostile to steam excursions.

At the engagement party, they meet “Uncle Pete” (Greaseball) who’d they’re shocked and flattered is into them, being far more desirable. Someone jokingly sings part of the Trolley Song in place of Miskite and Collis (without the skull) snaps about “those electrics who have all the money and run the world” yet “aren’t real trains” and what a threat to the “common man” they are and “soulless robots, a symbol of technology gone too far.” Which is a direct standin for antisemitic conspiracy theories and descriptors also used for electric trains in the US.

Tomorrow Belongs to Me (Reprise)- Dinah sings part of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” to him to calm him down, Collis builds into much darker longer version with Greaseball, the Freight, even Pearl start to join in, miming tearing out wires and cutting cords with “Morning will come to America!”as Collis puts his buffalo skull put back on (permanently) as they repeat the last verse without him. Caboose just stares in unease with the other coaches. McCoy downplays importance of anti-electric sentiment, troubling Belle. The two are old enough to remember that electrification was never a real threat and glacially slow process. Belle starts to balk at premise of marriage

Act II

Magnetic Rag- outside public domain song I’m putting in because this version especially just sounds right with its back and forth mood flipping, and Scott Joplin was notoriously a dead-serious person despite his playful music and really wanted to do more with musical theater. Highly recommend Treemonisha if you want to see a show with a similar musical appeal to Stex (strong melodies and wide style range) that’s authentically Black… and from the 1910s, there’s good video of it on youtube. The opera sections kind of drag if you’re not into that but the ragtime and folk sections are VERY enjoyable even now. Anyways, this is an instrumental dance routine depicting the general history of electric trains in the US. Because I wrote this Electra with Mykal in mine, I’m split between “give him a gratuitous tap dance” and “give him a gratuitous ice show parody”. Both of them are exactly the kind of overwrought theatrical thing this section deserves, so take your pick!

First strain- Electra looks depressed and exasperated at present situation, then perks up as song starts. Electra and Joule (firecracker/4th of July image of US) dance together, in love, Volta joins in repeat- electric freight was always a big thing (refrigerator cars and perishable goods in general being prominent cargo).

Second strain (the first darker turn)- Greaseball with Model T car head comes in, seduces Joule, Electra brushes off as they dance with Krupp and Wrench (WWI traffic and heavy industry). Greaseball rips it off to become a train again reflecting internal combustion reaching the level to work in rail by the 20s-30s.

Third Section (where it lightens again)- Victory and impending conquest of Pennsylvania Railroad, leader in electrification, proposed map in background, coaches fawning over, delighted, future seems inevitable

Fourth Section (second darker turn)- pressed into service in WWII (Wrench and Volta as dominatrixes), increasingly worn down and Greaseball and swarm of cars come in and grab Components away.

Return to First Section- belly dancing Purse with jingly coin belt comes in and drags Greaseball away (oil crisis), Electra rejoins Joule to uncertain conclusion (electrification reconsidered again in 70s)

At this point, the coaches and freight start dressing in western wear and old timey more conservative dresses, starting to be hemmed in by amusement park backdrop surrounded by parking lots, making steam engine arm cranks, even Nationals join in. (This references car culture becoming particularly entrenched and how the image of trains as a cutesy antiquated amusement park novelty was sometimes pushed to make them look irrelevant and hopelessly antiquated for broader use)

Married (Reprise)- Greaseball barges in to demand Belle and Poppa have a threeway with UP, claim they need it or they’ll go bust themselves.

If You Could See Her- Electra dances with a beat up graffiti-covered coach, song is mostly similar except “she doesn’t smoke or drink gin (like I do)” is replaced by a line about not having overhead wires. The reveal is that “you wouldn’t mind the third rail” as Electra gestures down before giving her a kiss anyways. Yep, this is a cheap trans joke. It’s also a play on Penn Central’s disastrous “marriage” of the Pennsylvania Railroad (which had mostly overhead electrification) and New York Central (all third rail). And as a bonus, Al Perlman was the president of the NYC at the time of the merger, and notably Jewish and discussed in anti-Semitic ways… so it really goes full circle to the original! Shoutout to @caffeinsanity for inspiring this

McCoy looks disgusted by the reveal and Belle becomes increasingly disturbed by his growing acceptance of a blatantly false narrative about electric trains being new and deviant (blatantly in reference to how this is used for queer people, also works for other groups)

What Would You Do?- Belle calls off merger as McCoy starts more explicitly playing into patently false anti-electric propaganda and can’t be roused. This is a combo old guys getting radicalized/even museums and preservation settings quietly supporting the erasure of these things. She questions why Caboose and Pearl are staying. Pearl becomes increasingly demanding about staying and insistent “it WILL be fine STOP WORRYING” as Caboose proposes going back to Canada

Collis demands Caboose to do more smuggling to him. Caboose asks where it’s coming from anyways, out of genuinely curiosity. Collis finally admits it’s “because we got sick of those wires breaking all the time so we ripped them out”, referencing a huge issue with the NEC’s overhead wires failing in cold/hot weather because they’re fixed-attachment, variable tension and can’t be loosened or tightened to adjust to shortening/lengthening. It’s an ungodly antiquated and now century-old system unthinkable outside of light rail in the modern world because there’s never been the budget to update it to this date. Selling copper from de-electrified lines and dead electric locomotives is also close to the train equivalent of Nazis looting Jewish homes and businesses and ripping gold teeth from dead bodies during the Holocaust. Caboose is horrifying as he realizes he was unknowingly complicit in something so much darker and deeper he doesn’t comprehend, much like the railfan gaze on US train history.

An argument ensues about Caboose’s allegiance with electrics or secretly being a coach after all, Collis tells him neither of those can support themselves and should be abandoned to die. Caboose has one last argument with Pearl, and begs with her to wake up, how does she not see what’s happening? She just had an abortion, something that WILL be endangered and even criminalized by the movement growing. Collis snaps that Caboose doesn’t understand because he’s a foreign commie, not an American. Caboose runs for it.

Cabaret- Pearl smiles and turns directly to the audience as she embraces “why should I care?” deliberate ignorance. Goes from frivolous naivety to screaming and demanding you to deny reality or else. Oh, she goes full Horrocks here. Even beyond that, she’s less breaking down and more morphing into a cartoonishly screaming propaganda minister (you can throw in nods to Stage German and its association with this- it’s where the “Hitler Accent” came from). Makes out with Collis at end, and he strangles her and throws her aside (neoliberalism now fully destroying passenger rail, steam engines gassing people in tunnels- Nazis used carbon monoxide too)

I Don’t Care Much- Location of this is moved a bit because its meaning is stronger this way. Full analysis/physical setup HERE. Electra looks around, finally gives in and breaks and accepts fate as infrastructure crumbles, realizing all sides have abandoned them (both US parties never came back from their post-Reagan rightward swing and have only continued that way, if anything). Lights are dim and slowly blinking out. Sad, yet sensual collapse via dark burlesque coming out from behind shadows to gradually reveal duct tape and decay. Red and blue car flirt with him as he rejects them, they tear off part by part dropping parts as more car ensemble stage kittens grab and run off with them. Falls to knees with “legs don’t waltz when the roof caves in”, finally peeling off the bodysuit to leave only the black unitard, ceasing to be a train anymore, just a void.

Orient Express (LINK)- another new instrumental number that plays as the neoliberal nightmare takes hold beyond the Corridor. It’s not quite public domain yet (I think?) but despite the video, this train song is originally from 30s Germany and just SOUNDS like it belongs in Cabaret, it screams “rushing towards disaster”. The mechanical band organ quality adds to this imo. Collis chuffs the intro as Greaseball barges in with horn blasts in time, smashes Belle and Poppa together (megamerger with UP) then “turns them to stone” locked in embrace before shoving them into static display in a park (UP and co are notoriously hostile to steam excursions). He runs around killing each coach and freight one by one as they’re dragged offstage by others, coming back onstage in increasingly oversized armor (further mergers into a nationwide monopoly) until collapsing as a hoard of trucks descend upon him and rip him apart. There’s a funny quirk of modern railroad economics in that they care about ratio of expense vs revenue vs actual amount of profit, and if you barely run any trains, you technically win. Giving them a reason to surrender to roads. At the end of the song, some ensemble come back on as cutesy amusement park steam engines, fully hemmed in by fences, as cars do a kickline around them in total road victory.

Collis stands at the side, skull on, “conducting” or “puppeteering”the cars and blowing a wooden train whistle along with the song as he watches in victory.

Afterwards, Collis looks down at dead Electra and “pulls him up” like marionette (preferably by bootstraps if possible) , dresses him in cowboy outfit and slaps a steam engine head on. Representing historical erasure of electric trains (often with steam engines in their place).

Finale- Cowboy Not-Electra, now shambling around like a puppet ala Eddie Redmayne as Emcee, comes out and sings this number in a contrived country style. Toys with Nationals, suddenly breaking new character to yell I TOLD YOU SO, before Pearl with a Collis head claps hand over mouth with “SHUT IT AND SING THE SONG, IT’S NOT SERIOUS!”. Representing how the lessons of US train history have largely been silenced by people decrying them as “not that serious, can’t you just enjoy these media cliches (that erase the VERY serious parts?)”. The ensemble, also all dressed as Collis “cut their strings” one by one. As their countries accept neoliberal rhetoric and privatize and destroy them, all fall down like marionettes with cut strings.

(I’ll eventually add the second post with all the additional info on symbolism and character details and such, all that stuff just BROKE THE NOTES APP I use to write this out on my tiny, tiny phone. Feel free to just ask for context/explanation or a specific source on a topic in the interim, I’ll also add it to that post if it isn’t there already)

#stex #starlight express #cabaret #i feel weird maintagging this because it’s SO dark but no it really is that deep. And ridiculous #i would kill to see anything like this irl it combines my favorite aspects of stex and cabaret with a message too many need #but dear god this is so dark it would be almost TOO much to be financially feasible and the subject matter is agonizingly American #hal it’s about trains #oh boy can’t wait to see if this starts a shitshow because of. Everything really.

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personwithatophat · 1 month ago

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Anniversary Post - 3

Hetch's dedication is nice in the sense that it confirms several small details that help flesh out the surrounding story. This parasocial cult leader gets 5 backhanded compliments per year and makes twitter posts framing each one as the pinnacle of his life. Lightning round of observations! Go!

The Overseer was announced as Hetch's official title in Again. as opposed to "The Hetch", as he himself decided to announce. the founder retroactively deciding that hetch can choose the name but doesnt deserve the title.

Hetch's "wall of achievements" is the only new addition to the character we see here as a detail Actively not from or about TSE, or that hasnt been blatantly referenced before. things like this keeping the door wide open for hetchs character to be showing up in later installments and built up in promo.

the genloss symbol being named here as "the symbol of creation" is definitely more representative to the actual anagram for its meaning (dont) Hide, Escape, Talk, Conform, Hesitate or HETCH and confirms that Hetch named HIMSELF this as opposed to the founder choosing it.

"rudimentary puppet shows" is an interesting reference, telling us that hetch likely - still controls showfall media and it is active within the world of generation loss even if we dont get to see. - lacking the power of The connection that we had to the show heavily limits the capability hetch has to just robots from hardware and 'puppets' for cast.

cool That being said i wanna dive into what the hell is up with the Founder here. The founder is SO incredibly passive agressive, backhanded, belittling, and self inflated. this is a reoccuring theme for the founder talking about hetch.

TFG : 9-1-6 'He did pretty good, but i fixed it, Now its a wonderful creation'

'im proud of the story but not how its made' again and again the founder will take credit for what he deems the beauty of the stories that he calls HIS creations, either backhanding hetch from the project he was subjected to, that he was Stabbed for. or Outright insulting him. The founder calls hetch dramatic: in TFC hetch's voice gets Recast to an auto-revised version of himself in the founders perfect vision. Hetch is the clingy, hetch is the parasocial, the desperate, the dramatic, the foolish. The Founders admittance that hetch suggested using the streamers for TSE was a good idea is the first time that the founder compliments hetch without claiming the idea as his own. The Founder is a hack with a self indulgent ego balloon the size of his narratively controlled redacted ass -Tophat

#i have beef with the box man #every time that his word is treated as gospel like he isnt the most unreliable narrator in history the founder drop kicks 5 puppies #right into the securities encloser #a thing that seems to be about 80% robot #but they decided should still have the ability to Get Hungry #genloss #ranboo #generation loss #ranboo generation loss #showfall media #fan theory #gen loss #gen loss theory #the founders game

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zomb13s · 14 days ago

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“Becoming Nobody: An Engineering Blueprint for Recursive Self-Erasure Through Metaphysical Re-indexing”

ABSTRACT This paper explores the systematic deconstruction and reinvention of selfhood as a recursive engineering process. Inspired by popular cultural artifacts such as Mr. Robot and Fight Club, we examine the metaphysical implications of digital existence, online persona dissolution, and fact-finding automation as acts of resistance and transcendence. We treat identity as a computational…

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eisforeidolon · 8 days ago

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Hey, remember when some crackpot heller/cockless shipper completely lied about and spread an audio clip of "Jensen" telling someone in autos that sexuality was fluid to claim he and/or Dean was totes going to come out as bisexual? Only to ultimately admit the clip was bullshit? [X]

Just saw some twit repeating it as fact in the wild, yay. Which, of course? Was the point of them making it up to spread around in the first place - to convince lazy, gullible people who don't bother to source check or turn on their brains it totes for realz happened.

I give exactly 0 shits who Jensen is or isn't fucking. What bugs me is creepy-ass invasive "fans" who choose to use lies and misrepresentation to create a false narrative to be spread as fact. In the hopes that when the actors (or the show) treat their crazy made up nonsense as exactly what it is, they can generate enough outrage to MAKE them validate their personal fetish fantasies real - or at least stop denying them. They totally deserve it for daring not to act out their m/m fantasies in the first place! That shit's fucked up.

#destihellers

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eretzyisrael · 25 days ago

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by Meira Cowland Kolatch

Dictatorships cling to power through fear. But fear only functions so long as people believe in the myth of strength. Once that illusion is broken — once a regime is laughed at — the spell is broken. The emperor has no clothes, and worse, he has been turned into a meme with auto-tuned music and poor subtitles.

Which brings us to today. Israel, long accused of losing the PR war, has begun to win it in a most unexpected fashion. Not by out-explaining. Not by out-arguing. But by out-mocking.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has just watched its crown jewel of nuclear secrecy, the Fordow facility, get flattened — and what’s circulating online? Not solemn analyses. Not Security Council resolutions. But a thousand perfectly timed TikToks with dancing soldiers, laugh tracks, and slow-zoom edits of confused ayatollahs. One could almost feel sorry for them — if they hadn’t brought this all upon themselves.

This isn’t just cultural pushback. It is psychological warfare at its finest. Because terrorism — and its state sponsors – rely on a performative narrative. They need to be feared. They need to be taken seriously. A suicide bomber is only powerful when framed as tragic, not idiotic. A supreme leader only commands loyalty when he’s seen as divine, not daft.

And so, for once, the West — and particularly Israel — has grasped a crucial truth: mockery is deterrence. Not instead of military action, but in tandem with it. A drone strike may eliminate a general. A meme may eliminate a myth. It is, in its own way, the most subversive act imaginable: to make the tyrant funny. To expose the man behind the beard. To show that the most feared actors in the Middle East can, with a few edits, become as ridiculous as a washed-up villain in a low-budget film.

The Hamas leadership in Gaza must face similar humiliation. Their battle cries turned into Instagram reels. Their martyrs repurposed as cautionary punchlines. It is not for naught that we have seen the rise of the comedic Jewish influencer, the one able to infantalize their moral superiority.

#memes #ridicule #mockery #hamas #gaza #iran #dictatorships

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karaloza · 1 month ago

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Recovering From A Terrible Fate: Majora’s Mask as Link’s Auto-Psychotherapy

So you know Majora’s Mask, right? Released in 2000, direct sequel to Ocarina of Time detailing the next adventure embarked upon by the young Hero of Time, scarred us all for life?

What if I told you it wasn’t actually an adventure, at least not in the sense that Link literally traveled somewhere and did heroic things for other people? What if the only person he saved during that whole ordeal...was himself? Because the entire course of Majora’s Mask took place in his mind, and was in fact his way of processing the trauma he suffered during Ocarina of Time?

This is not, of course, what Nintendo would have us believe. The official position of Nintendo is that Majora’s Mask can be taken at face value: Link, a year or so after the ending of Ocarina of Time, goes off in search of his lost fairy companion Navi, gets mugged by a Skull Kid wearing a spooky mask, falls through a bottomless pit into the parallel world of Termina, and has to save that world from the crashing moon. He only has three days to do it, but he can rewind to the beginning of the cycle as many times as he needs to, losing most of his accomplishments each time but keeping things like his permanent equipment and dungeon boss event flags so that eventually, he is able to confront the Skull Kid and defeat the evil mask, roll credits.

To which I say: Nuh-uh! That’s just, like, your opinion, maaaan. The Author is Dead! (Long live the Author?) Majora’s Mask is a game that is so weird, so warped, so thematically at odds with its own visual aesthetic, and so emotionally affecting (even 25 years and several console generations later) that I think it does it a disservice to claim it’s “just” another adventure in a long line of adventures in Nintendo’s most beloved adventure franchise. I have long adored the theory that the dreamlike qualities of its narrative are because it is in fact a dream, or something similar...and the more I think about it, the more I find aspects of the game that support this interpretation.

(Obligatory note here that interpretation is not objective fact, and this is also just, like, my opinion, maaaan.)

So let’s begin, shall we?

First Things First: The Theory Itself

To reiterate, my theory is that Majora’s Mask does not depict a literal adventure undertaken by Link the Hero of Time. Instead, it depicts his process of working through the trauma he suffered during and as a result of the events of Ocarina of Time, which is a story about, among other things, how badly it fucks up a person when they have to grow up too fast. (For more details, check out my previous essay about OoT and Wind Waker and how differently they portray the journeys of their child Heroes.) Many of the game’s oddities make more sense when viewed through this lens.

Opening Cutscene: How Did We Get Here?

Majora’s Mask opens with Link riding his horse Epona somewhere in the deep woods. Is it the Lost Woods? Maybe? The text of the game does not specify, although many people make that assumption. He is, the opening narration tells us, searching for an old friend, and the sound effect of a fairy flying tells us it is Navi, his fairy companion and guide all throughout Ocarina of Time, who departed at the end of that game, her mission complete.

But Navi, as I explained in my earlier essay, was more than just a companion and guide. She was an emblem of his childhood. In OoT, the Kokiri with their companion fairies represent childhood itself, especially the sort of eternal childhood a person mentally occupies when they haven’t fully assimilated the fact that they will grow up. She stayed with him throughout his adventure, even when he was physically an adult, because he wasn’t “really” an adult, and she left him afterward because even though he had been returned to his physical childhood, the adventure had changed him and made him mature. That is in fact the nature of his trauma: at the age of ten or so, he was required by circumstance to grow up very suddenly, to become a capital-H Hero and save the world. Princess Zelda tried to give him back his childhood, but she couldn’t erase his experiences.

And so the opening of Majora’s Mask has Link setting off into the dark forest—the ultimate place of mystery and adventure and fairy tale challenge—in search of that childhood.

Spoiler: He doesn’t find it. But he finds something better.

Here We Go Again: Three Days Every Night

The key gameplay mechanic of Majora’s Mask is the three-day cycle, with events playing out across the map according to a precise schedule, which can be started over at any point before the countdown hits zero. It was so striking and memorable in 2000 that the game became the video game poster example of a “Groundhog Day Loop.” So if Majora’s Mask is a) in many ways horrific, and b) in many ways dreamlike, and c) can be made to repeat itself infinitely...doesn’t that make it a recurring nightmare?

It is worth noting is that each time the cycle is restarted, all events are reset and Link loses any consumable items in his inventory, but his quest progress, including permanent items, Heart Pieces, etc., remains intact. The world returns to its ground state with each cycle, but Link grows and holds onto that growth. Thus he is eventually able to defeat the villain and save Termina.

There is a therapy technique for treating recurring nightmares, in which the sufferer, during their waking hours, reviews the “plot” of the nightmare and practices “rewriting” it so that frightening events become pleasant ones. Example: Someone has a recurring nightmare where they hear growling behind them and turn around to see a hungry tiger ready to pounce. To combat this, they practice imagining a scenario where they hear growling behind them and turn around to see a friendly dog inviting them to a bout of boisterous play. The goal is to become so adept at imagining the new, happier scenario that the sufferer’s brain automatically fills that in, and not the original frightening scenario, when the dream recurs again.

In Majora’s Mask we can see a similar process playing out. The three-day cycle begins identically each time, but Link’s actions determine how it proceeds from there, and as he achieves more small goals and milestones, his options for the actions he can take expand, until finally he is accomplished enough to write a happy ending and defeat the nightmare.

Reused Assets: Making Watsonian Mountains out of Doylist Molehills

Have you ever noticed—hear me out—that a lot of the characters in Majora’s Mask look very similar to ones in Ocarina of Time? Weird, right? It’s not unusual for games in the Zelda franchise to re-use NPCs—just go through and count the Impas sometime—but this many? Even most minor of background characters tend to look virtually identical to…

What’s that? You say it’s because Nintendo literally re-used OoT assets, including many character models, in order to shorten the development time for MM? It actually has nothing to do with the story?

Obviously I knew that. But fandom in general, and I want to say Legend of Zelda fandom in particular, has a long-standing tradition of saying “What if this element that is present for strictly Doylist* reasons had a Watsonian* explanation?” The typical Watsonian explanation for all the doppelgangers in Termina is that it’s a parallel dimension to Hyrule, therefore it contains parallel people. But I find this somewhat unsatisfying. First of all, it’s a little too pat. Second of all, there are too many exceptions—people in one world that have no known counterpart in the other, or Hyruleans with multiple counterparts in Termina.

On the other hand, if Termina is all in Link’s head and its inhabitants are figments of his imagination, it is not obligated to conform to the population of Hyrule on a one-to-one basis. Clearly, Link—consciously or unconsciously—is basing the Termina folk on people he met throughout his first adventure, resorting to inventing new people when no reasonable counterpart comes to mind.

Some Hyruleans, of course, are conspicuous in their absence from Termina. Link himself has no double (but more on this later), and neither do the other Triforce bearers, Zelda (the real one appears in a flashback) and Ganondorf. The six Sages also do not appear, with the possible exception of Ruto, although her character model was given the significant addition of a dark blue dress when it was “recast” as Lulu, which may indicate that the two characters are meant to look very different. Finally, the Kokiri forest children with whom Link spent the first decade of his life, are nowhere to be found. This last is a bit puzzling, because there is a noteworthy group of children in Clock Town: the Bombers. But rather than sourcing their character models from the group of children they already had, the dev team multiplied a less significant child character, the Kakariko Graveyard Kid.

So—again, maintaining the assumption that Link is using people he knows as the basis for people in another world—why leave out all the most important people to himself and his adventure? Well, quite simply...because of their importance. They’re dragging too much baggage to be useful as tools for self-therapy. How is Link supposed to come to terms with the trauma of losing his childhood prematurely and being forced into the role of a Hero when his mental landscape is littered with avatars of that childhood and key figures from his heroic quest?

But everyone else is fair game, and indeed most of the unique faces in Hyrule reappear in Termina...although their similarity to their doppelgangers varies quite a lot. I’ve identified three categories here.

First, there are background players: shopkeepers, minigame operators, and the like. These people are basically identical, in both appearance and role, to their Hyrulean counterparts. The construction workers still bustle about all day. The Gerudo bandits have undergone a setting change and become Gerudo pirates, but are still enemies one has to sneak past.

Second, there are the quirky weirdos: people who would have stood out in Link’s memory due to their eccentric appearance or behavior or both, but were still minor players in Ocarina. These folks were typically given a glow-up and a more unique role to play in the landscape of Termina, but their overall demeanor hasn’t changed. In this category are folks like the Running Man of Hyrule Field, now reimagined as the compulsively punctual Postman, Hyrule Castle Town’s Buyer (sometimes referred to as the “beggar” even though he’s kind of the opposite of that—pleading for you to sell him stuff, not give him money), converted into the Banker, and the Pooch Lady, whose preoccupation with her dog has Link recast her as Mamamu Yan, owner/operator of the Doggy Racetrack.

The third group is the most interesting: people who were very significant to Link’s journey in OoT without rising to the cosmological importance of Zelda, Ganondorf, or the Sages: people like the ranch folk Talon, Malon, and Ingo, or the evil witches Kotake and Koume, who were Ganondorf’s foster-mothers as well as comprising the dungeon boss of the Spirit Temple. These are complex characters who interacted with Link in very meaningful ways, usually more than once. He must have thought about them a lot after his adventure, and maybe those thoughts went to unexpected places. So the people in question are very much transformed in their roles, or even multiplied to show their importance. The evil witches become benign witches in the swamp, the hostile Ingo becomes two hostile horsemen plus their cranky but sentimental brother, who leads a performing troupe, lazy Talon is recast as hardworking Mr. Barten the bartender, and Malon is separated into her child and adult selves as the sisters Romani and Cremia.

And there you have it. The fact that so many of Termina’s citizens are doppelgangers of people Link met in Hyrule, and the correlation between their importance to him then and the degree to which they have changed in Termina, serves as evidence that he is generating this adventure from his thoughts.

* These terms are in common use but in case you aren’t familiar with them, the short definitions are that Watsonian means internal to the fiction and Doylist means external to it.

Some of These People are Brand-New...or Are They?

Of course, there are plenty of unique character models in Majora’s Mask. Ocarina of Time is a fantastic game, but its version of Hyrule wasn’t populated enough to fill out the intricate relationships and daily schedules of its successor, so some new faces needed to be added. Most of them are fairly perfunctory. People like the Deku Butler, Mayor Dotour’s receptionist, the mountain blacksmiths Zubora and Gabora, etc. are fun to see on screen and interact with, but their original appearances don’t point to them as being more significant for Link’s psychological journey than anyone else in Termina.

However, there are two characters introduced in this game that I think do have such significance. I think these two people are, in fact, character foils for Link himself.

The first one is, I think, a cautionary tale. We must remember that the Hero of Time grew to the age of ten or so believing himself to be one of the Kokiri, a race of immortal children who wear green and keep company with fairies. He was bullied by some of them because he had no fairy of his own, at least until the day he was called upon to become the Hero. But what if that hadn’t happened? What if Ganondorf never attacked, the Great Deku Tree didn’t die, and Link never had to leave the forest? He wasn’t really a Kokiri, so he wouldn’t stay physically a child: he would, technically, grow to adulthood. But could he actually grow up, in a society where no one does? The Great Deku Tree is, well, a tree (and a god)—he can’t teach Link how to be a man. Would Link, in that situation, become a preposterous manchild in his green suit, waiting for a fairy companion that will never come to him?

Would he be...Tingle?

I can imagine Link interacting with Tingle and thinking “It sucked, what happened to me...but maybe it was for the best, if this is the alternative.” Sometimes, getting a view through the looking-glass like that is a key ingredient in healing.

And then there is Kafei, the Mayor’s son. We all know the story: Kafei was due to be married to Anju, the young lady from the Stock Pot Inn, but he vanished only a few days before the wedding, leaving his fiancee desperate to find him. Reuniting the lovers constitutes the single most momentous, intricate, and emotional sidequest of the entire game, spanning all three days and nights, involving a slew of other characters, and dropping numerous quest rewards along the way. It’s one of the most memorable aspects of Majora’s Mask, and there are many fan theories relating to it.

One of these is that Kafei actually does have a Hyrulean counterpart...and it’s Link. This theory stems mainly from the actual reason behind his disappearance: he was ambushed by Skull Kid, who used the magic of Majora’s Mask to transform him into a child. Unable to face Anju in that state, Kafei made himself scarce. This is nearly the inverse of what happened to Link in Ocarina of Time, where he was a child effectively forced into the body of an adult. Since here we are presuming that the story of Majora’s Mask is actually Link coping with his trauma from that adventure, it only makes sense that he would examine the opposite situation as a hypothetical, to get a feel for his own opinions on childhood vs. adulthood. Losing one’s carefree childhood at a moment’s notice sucks...but maybe losing one’s hard-earned adulthood in a similar way would also suck. Maybe it’s not growing up that’s the problem, but being forced out of one’s life situation. Maybe adulthood has its own benefits, like new relationships.

Maybe going through the stages of life is fine, as long as you get to do it at a measured pace. Which brings me to my next point, maybe the strongest one I have.

Terrible and Not-So-Terrible Fates: The Transformation Masks

Most Legend of Zelda games have a central gimmick that informs both the story and the gameplay. Majora’s Mask arguably has two. The main one is the three-day timetable, which I addressed earlier. But a close second is the transformation masks, each of which changes Link’s form and gives him a suite of associated abilities. As a Deku Scrub, Link can hop on the surface of water for a limited distance, spit pellets of sap at targets, and glide with the aid of a conveniently placed Deku Flower. As a Goron, Link can roll at high speeds, unleash flurries of powerful punches, and slam his body into the ground for an AOE attack. As a Zora, he can swim with speed and grace, throw his fins like boomerangs, and generate an electric field around himself.

With all three, he can experiment with being different ages.

The beginning of the game sees Link trapped in Deku Scrub form by the Skull Kid. He is smaller than his true Hylian self and has no access to his weapons. The people of Clock Town don’t respect him, perceiving him as a helpless small child. Even his sap projectiles are easily read as snot, calling to mind a runny-nosed toddler. His quest to recover his childhood has worked much too well.

Only after completing the first phase of the game is Link freed from the curse, which is converted to a mask that he can don and doff at will. Now he appears as his true age: a child, but an older one, perhaps on the cusp of adolescence, with a full adventure under his belt and a sword and shield for personal defense. He is allowed to leave Clock Town and the world map opens up (in a limited way). He can fully investigate his circumstances and figure out what to do next...and if he finds it advantageous to be smaller and lighter (read: younger), he can adopt the Deku form for the occasion.

The next transformation mask Link acquires is that of a Goron, but not just any generic Goron: he meets the sorrowful ghost of a local hero named Darmani III, and in healing the spirit of his regrets and enabling him to pass on, wins a mask that transforms him into Darmani’s likeness. The other Gorons mistake Link for the actual Darmani, particularly a toddler who counted the hero as a close friend. This relationship imparts “big brother” coding to the otherwise fully mature Darmani, and makes Link’s Goron form emblematic of young adulthood. His own journey as the Hero of Time brought him to this phase of life physically, if not mentally. But he doesn’t stop here…

The Zora Mask is also obtained from one of the fallen: Mikau, the lead guitarist of a Zora rock band. But although this occupation is more typically associated with younger people, Mikau counts as a mature adult by dint of his committed relationship with Lulu, the lead singer of the band. How committed? Well, Lulu had recently laid eggs whose welfare Mikau took responsibility for…

One interesting point about Link’s different forms is that they do not perfectly resemble the individuals whose faces he is literally wearing. Rather, each of them is something of a chimera melding the person in question with Link’s green tunic and pointed cap: his signature attire, nearly synonymous with the character. Darmani and Mikau effectively serve as his role models as he moves into their respective stages of life, but he cannot actually become them. He must own his own life and become a man as himself. And so he must lay to rest his preexisting expectations of what it means to be an adult. He literally holds funerals for both Darmani and Mikau, permitting their spirits to pass on. They inform his maturation, but they do not define it.

The Deku, Goron, and Zora masks are the three usually referred to as “the transformation masks,” but there are actually two more in the game. Both are far more niche in their utility than the other three, and one is completely optional, but they continue to illustrate the themes of growth, empowerment, and maturation presented by the others.

There is the Giant’s Mask, won in the Stone Tower Temple and used to defeat its dungeon boss. Its effect is straightforward: it turns Link into a giant. That is, it expands his normal (child’s) body to colossal dimensions. It is not a growing-up, merely a growing larger, and in the process, he loses access to all of his items except his sword (or in the 3DS remake, his fists). This tells us a little micro-story: one who grows larger without maturing is not an adult, merely an oversized child, and any power they wield is purely destructive, with no wit or strategy. Perhaps it is for the best that Link can don the Giant’s Mask only within Twinmold’s lair.

And then there is the Fierce Deity Mask, obtained in exchange for all other masks in the game save the main three. Link typically receives a mask from a Termina citizen as a sidequest reward, masks being a key part of Terminian culture. He can show them to the Happy Mask Salesman afterward and find out what kind of happiness was created through his act of service. The Fierce Deity Mask, then, is a distillation of all his heroic acts, and the happiness he brought to the people of Termina, throughout the game. And it transforms him, not into a member of another race, but into a warrior god, strong enough to defeat the final boss with very little effort. And that godly form is very similar in appearance to his own adult self. In becoming the Fierce Deity, Link becomes his own idealized heroic self—he accepts and assimilates the traumatic events that forced him to become the Hero of Time, takes ownership of that role, and empowers himself beyond his wildest dreams. Majora is a force of evil capable of destroying an entire world, but Link the Fierce Deity is capable of destroying Majora in seconds.

And so, after many iterations of his nightmare, Link defeats it and wakes to the Dawn of a New Day.

The Adventure Concludes and the Hero Departs

There is more I could say on the matter. Such as Skull Kid/Majora using the Moon—a symbol of night, therefore sleep and dreams—as a weapon of destruction. Such as how the very name “Majora” suggests the word “majority,” a synonym for adulthood, pointing to Link viewing his prematurely forced adulthood as the enemy. Such as some of the sidequests having an atmosphere of being “do-overs” for things Link perhaps feels he failed at back in Hyrule. Such as Link, as shown in the end credits sequence, somehow returning to Hyrule after his sojourn in Termina—something that should be impossible if we take the adventure literally, given the nature of his arrival in Termina, but is quite handily explainable if it was all a dream (shades of Alice in Wonderland, that).

But I needn’t belabor the point further, I hope. My central point is amply supported. To recap:

Link, the Hero of Time at age 11 or so, deeply traumatized by the experiences forced upon him that made him grow up prematurely and become the Hero of Time, fervently wishing he could recover his innocence, begins to have a series of recurring nightmares wherein the Moon will destroy the world in three days, and he—only a child after all—is unable to stop it. The setting of his nightmare is populated by copies of people he encountered during his adventure, hammering home that the adventure itself wounded his psyche. But he is a Hero, and he doesn’t let himself remain helpless for long—he gradually takes control of the nightmare, gains more power within it, including the power to choose his age and maturity level, and ultimately prevails.

He never does find Navi, the symbol of his lost childhood. He never sees her again. But that’s okay—he doesn’t need his childhood anymore. He has grown up. His nightmare of being trapped in the limbo between childhood and adulthood is finally over, and he can move on with his life.

Thank you for reading.

#the legend of zelda #legend of zelda #loz #majora's mask #mm #essay

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