#this discourse is so wretched

[gamblegun]

Considering deleting this blog again lol

[solstheimtxt]

Theres pisscourse on tiktok bc a bunch of uppity white mommy bloggers took her comment abt her friends (which she specified), being miserable abt childcare and how lonely it can be, and took it as if she said she hates moms/kids and theres so much of it on my fucking fyp omgggg

Like, if you understand that being a parent is hard, potentially lonely, not for everyone, you are a genius compared to these mommy bloggers i s2g being reticent to having kids and talking abt the downsides of having kids (ESPECIALLLY in a red state and especially under 25), isnt fucking misogny omgggggg

[mekatrio]

I HATE ACE ATTORNEY THREEEEEE

[visenyaism]

Aegon Unworthy Administration Dashboard Simulator

⚔️ whiteswordtowerrr

the gold cloaks found my aegmon rpf guys it might be a while before my next update

💫 maidens-grace Follow

RIP OP this is why RPF is not only problematic (sinful against the Maiden AND the Smith) but will also literally deservedly get your skull put on a spike

⚔️ whiteswordtowerrr

I lived bitch. king aegon made me read it out loud to his brother because he thought it was funny but then he let me go. new chapter dropping in 20 minutes

#the dragonknight got all purple and furious but he did just have to stand there and take it. Just like in this next chapt- #the king did hook up with my sister afterwards though. what can you do

🍒lanadelreyene Follow

listennnnn im not saying he’s perfect im just saying liberating women from religious oppression and literal imprisonment in the maidenvault and letting his girl cousin do the economy and elevating women of all social standings to positions of prominence isnt NOTHING.

🫀tree-hearted

“king aegon is a feminist” “criston cole had hoes” you people will say anything on this website.

🛡️knighttime Follow

just saw that Daemon Waters kid like the king’s four year old bastard do a perfect standing backflip in the training yard. Kind of compelling. Kind of kingly. I don’t know…

#can prince daeron do a flip?????

🐉 rhaenyra-did-nothing-wrong Follow

It’s SO disgusting how the king would hire a H*ghtower hand only 50 years after that wretched family MURDERED HIS GRANDMOTHER AFTER USURPING HER THRONE. #UNWORTHYGATE

🪙 laenycashmoney150

Me and that nasty old man. To be honest

🌈 crystalcrowned Follow

I block everyone who is horny on main about the king on principle because fornication is a sin but op is talking about ALYN OAKENFIST?????? Girl.

🙌 fleabottomtop

Sneaking in through the secret tunnels in the red keep to smuggle queen naerys a vibrator and a blunt this shit is getting out of hand

💐 summersepta Follow

she would not like that. try again.

🙌 fleabottomtop

sneaking in through the secret tunnels in the the red keep to smuggle queen naerys a prayer book and a cigarette

🦇whentch

🐲 rogue-princess Follow

if i speak....🙈🤐

🐦‍⬛ raventreeballer-deactivated89169

FYI @ brackennation literally seduced the king to use her influence to ban pro-Blackwood posts on here. block and report this treacherous whore ASAP

🐎 brackennation-deactivated47170

I know it’s you missy. KYS jealous cunt

🎻bardalicious Follow

king aegon’s collection of teenage mistresses posting through it on the dash again

🔥 fireandwaters Follow

Sooooo sick of seeing delusional reachers reclaiming dragons**d as if that’s not a literal crownlands-specific slur used against the Valyrian-Westerosi community in King’s Landing and Dragonstone. I don’t care how many ae’s your grandma has in her name you are a HIGHTOWER you are a TARLY you are a REDWYNE you are seven forgive me for even saying this a BEESBURY. Categorically NOT a seed. It’s basically valyrian racefaking at this point

⛓️‍ gaymanpalehair Follow

Say it louder for the Great Bastards in the back!!!!!! theyre literally noble

🔥fireandwaters Follow

No I can say it?? I’m from KL I’m in the community why would it matter if I’m acknowledged

🌼 ever-sweet Follow

Seven hells my great-grandsire literally rode caraxes and I can’t acknowledge my own heritage? Dragonseed literally applies to ANY👏ONE👏of👏TAR👏GARYEN👏DES👏CENT.

🪵 kingswoody

At the rate the king is going everyone in the realm will be able to reclaim dragonseed in 20 years come on now

🐦‍⬛raventreeballer Follow

are we not going to acknowledge the toxic power imbalance of the king having had TWO Bracken mistresses and ONE Blackwood mistress????

🐚besterling Follow

THAT’S the toxic power imbalance you want to talk about??? That one??? Nothing else???

🔮hightowered Follow

okay I thought the valyrian racefaking discourse on here was dumb as shit but tell me WHY i just saw my bastard cousin serena change her name to “serenei” on all her socials and then start telling people she was from lys and can’t speak common.

#Good thing we’re dragonseeds otherwise this would be insane

🐟rainbowtrout Follow

non-riverlanders in 20 years when the Bracken-Blackwood beef becomes everybody’s problem because it’s a Targaryen civil war

🍎 fossoshethey

Quick where's that one meme about the valyrian god of prophecy playing dodgelance with random tumblr users

🎭mummersfarce Follow okay I’ll bite. did king aegon the unworthy fourth of his name do something problematic.

✨ fleabottombottom Follow

well as a dragonseed of dance-era descent i gotta say i am not appreciating how hard it is to buy purple shampoo in flea bottom recently what with the rate at which blonde bitches are being created in this kingdom fucking skyrocketing

🎭mummersfarce Follow

fucked up. blocking him now ✊

[maelor321]

The toxicity of this server is key to my 180° on Rhea and Edelgard and me starting to like Dimitri, and I already started to love Dimitri due to watching a Blue Lions let's play.

And it's sad because I was so happy to find a Edelgard server at the time I only knew CF.

But eh, at least it stopped me from becoming a Stan.

Y'know, I feel really bad for the people who are still in that server and have to put up with all the hateful rhetoric that mod is spewing out because they can't speak up about it in fear of getting banned.

Yeah, and just to serve as a general reminder that it is not everyone in that server are like this; it's mostly Shandale, a couple other mods, and a few other members, with the other mods who haven't engaged with this behavior directly mostly being responsible for never doing anything to actually rectify this issue like removing Shandale's mod status or removing them from the server for repeatedly saying shit like this (or doing anything similar to the other mods who have explicitly backed up their rhetoric). There's actually a good few people who will stand against the rhetoric thrown around, which is absolutely something to commend them for knowing that they could easily be banned (since, you know, the person that's saying this shit is someone who has banning privileges and is known to ban people for pretty innocuous shit).

It honestly must suck to be an average Edelgard fan in that server knowing that at pretty much any time there's a pretty damn good chance that one of the members - or mods! - will spout off blatantly racist shit and there's just. Nothing that will be done about it, ever, just cuz that person is friends with a mod or are a mod themselves. And in one of THE biggest spaces for Edelgard fans, at that! I hope they can eventually find a better place to love their fave in, since this one's such an unsalvageable garbage heap

[strangestcase]

tomblr discourse in the monster high universe must be something else.

0 notes

💝​ lalalala Follow

What would I do without cherry smoothies... probably die again 💔​

🟥​ b3lfrypr3pz-deactivated09182022

Of freaking course the frilly daywalker is a vegan 😒​ bet you do witchcraft too you dirty hippie

💝​ lalalala Follow

🝢🜊🝣🝗🜚🝰

🟥​ b3lfrypr3pz-deactivated09182022

WTF is that lol

🟥​ b3lfrypr3pz-deactivated09182022

i t burns. wh at did you do to me .

💝​ lalalala Follow

^-^

17k notes

🧠​ msdeadfast Follow

Ok but Dead Fast: Night of the Living (2002) has no business being considered the worst Dead Fast movie when the MCU (Murder Cinematic Universe) not only retconned his origin story to make him a virus zombie rather than a curse zombie (which throws off his entire arc about being something more than his deeds!) AND made him be allied with B.L.I.G.H.T. of all organizations because Like say what you will about NOTL and the forced heterosexual romantic plot but at least 1) it gets what makes Dead Fast a hero and 2) GIVES HIS LOVE INTEREST A PERSONALITY AND SOMETHING TO DO

🕷️ 8legscomix Follow

Literally

Also they made the villain Dr. Igorable's motivations so laughable like..... so his wife got turned into a zombie and he wants to cure her? Ok? Did she ask for it? She doesn't even have any groaning lines. Im not even a zombie but that was offensive as hell. Like in the original comics he wants to straight up undo all forms of zombism forever

🧠​ msdeadfast Follow

NO FR LIKE....... so suddenly the eugenics obsessed human is tragic because being a zombie must be such a tragedy you guyyyysssss -_- and wanting to get rid of an entire monster type is ok. I swear that movie has turned monster attitudes towards zombies back into the 80s

⚠️ mentalhealth-hazard Follow

I am not sure if I'm overstepping here but, furthermore, the addition of Pendulum to the movie was unnecesary. Stereotyping shapeshifters as untrustworthy and traitorous is something of a past era. Either leave the character behind, or change it entirely.

🧠​ msdeadfast Follow

Jackson I love you and I love your takes. but you type like a Victorian in his deathbed ;-;

⚠️ mentalhealth-hazard Follow

The MCU is so dreadful, it's irrevocably turned me into one.

#It has also substracted years off my lives.

23 notes

🌊​ lacriatura Follow

🦈​🦐​🐠🪸​​🐡​🐟​

^ aquarium!

#lagoona's originals #ocean #sealife #ah-! so refreshing <- aesth tag

26k notes

🔥 666firepit666 Follow

Not to vague anyone but some of you have to shut the freak up about the ocean. You don't see me making little dioramas of the Malebolge because I'm not a little cringelet like you lmao

1 note

🌊​ lacriatura Follow

If you don't freaking love the ocean don't follow the ocean tag. Yes that goes for @666firepit666, square up and fight me if you're so brave Heath!!!!

#lagoona's originals #personal #more skulls for my skull collection!!!

10 notes

🌙​ wolf-in-chic-clothing Follow

Day 1 no toxic doomed yuri

🌙​ wolf-in-chic-clothing Follow

WRONG SIDEBLOG

#stop reblogging this

80k notes

🔩​ stitchez Follow

Got a new arm! Can't wait to try it out!

🐯 ninelives Follow

try it out how 🤨​

🔩​ stitchez Follow

Building a wretched creature out of corpses, of course!

🔩​ stitchez Follow

OH that was a double entendre! You should be ashamed of yourself!

🔩​ stitchez Follow

I would never use my arms for violent purposes!

54 notes

🔥 666firepit666 Follow

Lagoona dragged me into the pool and now my hair is out 😡​

🌙​ wolf-in-chic-clothing Follow

Skull issue.

🧠​ msdeadfast Follow

skull issue

👻​ ghostlygossip01 Follow

Skull issue. Take the L

💝​ lalalala Follow

Skull issue ^-^

🐯 ninelives Follow

skull issue lmao

🔩​ stitchez Follow

Skull issue! I dont know what that means but I'm sure it relates to your experience!

🎸​ innerdemon Follow

SKULL ISSUEEEEEEEEE !!!!!!!

🔥 666firepit666 Follow

Your own cousin 🥲​

🎸​ innerdemon Follow

I AM NOT RELATED TO ANY BALD PEOPLE

105 notes

💎​ scarab-g1rl Follow

Alright, who stole my sinister amulet?

[utilitycaster]

But wouldn't you say that at least the fandom experience during c3 was a lot nicer than during c2? I mean, the characters all got along immediately so no room for unnecessary drama and no ship wars, I heard it was really toxic during c2 so I'm glad that c3 had none of it.

Anon, the polite answer to this that assumes you are very new to this fandom and blog and also, if I'm being honest, reality, is "No." Drama in a fandom is largely decoupled from whether the characters actually get along on screen (much like "I wish these characters would talk" is often decoupled from them actually talking and much more about whether they're talking about the thing OP wants them to talk about). More importantly, Campaign 3 had something far stupider and more unkind and insidious than ship wars, which is people harassing you for saying a ship simply wasn't very interesting. I would also say that one of the loudest voices in the area of fans who defend Campaign 3 claiming it's more toxic is specifically speaking about their very individual Twitter experience which I do not think is indicative of the larger fandom. I do think that C2 had more fans harassing the cast on Twitter, which on the one hand is far worse behavior; but it also kind of meant that the fandom on Tumblr, while not without ship warring, was somewhat quieter. I will also acknowledge that my own personal experience is heavily colored by the fact that I was new to the fandom in C2 and so did not have a significant following until late in the game, but Campaign 3 was rife with people who, as best as I can tell, serially show up to fandoms and attack whoever they perceive as popular, sometimes genuinely popular people and sometimes it's just someone who can eloquently string together meta they disagree with, and then when you hit back go "I'm just a little guy just a little birthday boy you're so MEAN." On Tumblr, at least, toxic C2 fans were easy to stop and frankly only turned post-hiatus and many of them prided themselves on not posting hate in the main tag (and quit the fandom altogether); toxic C3 fans have the tenacity and intellect of the average cockroach.

The real answer is: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA what PRIMORDIAL ROCK have you been under. Even if you believe everything the serial liar I suspect you are listening to said about C2 drama how did you miss ALL of C3 drama, especially on like, my blog specifically, as an initially unwilling participant who eventually, as discussed below, decided that if these wretched stochastic parrot morons wouldn't leave me alone I may as well pull out the metaphorical shotgun and make starting shit with me as unpleasant an experience as possible.

Look, I'm not going to pull up my posts in which I've called people by name since I don't think you will care and/or will consider those unnecessary drama, despite the genuine erosion I believe they have committed towards the quality of discourse through their bigotry, and lack of intellectual rigor, empathy, or ability to criticize things through any lens other than false accusations of the Leftist Epithet Du Jour (eg: calling Delilah Briarwood a colonizer, which is simply untrue). But also, starting from barely 6 months into Campaign 3 and continuing through the end, ie, this is three years now.

I personally got hate for saying "It is valid for Imogen to be mad at Laudna for breaking the gnarlrock, and moreover, I feel like Laudna is given more leeway for her behavior than almost any other past character" to the point that someone joined Tumblr only to block me and then stalk me and post about me in the discourse tag.

That eventually came to a head when they called me out by name for replying to a response on a post I had originally made in which I said "Imogen's powers aren't a good metaphor for queerness in that her lack of control actually causes real problems for other people," a statement that a lot of Imogen and Laudna shippers and fans are still to this day throwing fits about despite it being over two years ago.

Multiple people, including people who had lost friends or relatives young and at least one cancer survivor, were sent outright death threats for saying nothing harsher "I think the story is interesting if Laudna remains dead." Now, I was only a lurker when Molly died, and I know people quit or were mad and harassed the cast on Twitter, but the worst I saw on Tumblr were people either quitting, or being weird and annoying about prioritizing Molly over the captured party members and later being kind of dismissive of Caduceus as "temporary".

I was repeatedly harassed to the point of at least two individuals making multiple alternate accounts to reblog my posts or send hate to me and just random people who had interacted with said posts for saying "I don't think Imogen and Laudna is a very good ship"; while we're at it, ship wars are something I dislike but expect in fandom, but I cannot stress how fucking wretched a subset of Im/odna shippers were to the point that to this day they look at people who created genuine content and meta for a competing ship that was always tiny in comparison and have decided it was done purely out of bitterness.

In general, there was just an utter incapacity among many C3 fans to accept "I don't care for your blorbo/ship/campaign" as a post on one's own blog. I was talking with some like-minded friends yesterday and to this day, over a month and a half after the campaign ended, actually a decent amount of people who liked Campaign 3 have almost identical criticisms (pacing, not following on a number of character centric-threads, lack of inter-character interactions, a resolution that is intriguing but was poorly set up, cutaways to other parties at inopportune times, and generally the campaign feeling like they put out all the ingredients on the table and said "here's a finished cake.") but it's fine if they say it, because they preface it with "I loved Campaign 3 and Bells Hells, but." In the end a lot of C3 fans will just attack if you don't think Bells Hells are great and the best. Again I am not naming names but there are even multiple people who openly prefer Campaign 2 by a margin but avoid this criticism simply by being like "Campaign 3 is also really really good, although [same list of criticisms I have]"; see lack of intellectual rigor and analysis. I think it's actually a very simple split: C2 is my favorite because the campaign allowed the characters so much leeway to interact and change and grow that they became my blorbos, whereas I would have liked to have liked BH more but the campaign was ill-suited for them and they didn't really talk.

At least Campaign 2 people wanted their stuff to be canon, and threw fits because it wasn't. Campaign 3 people are like BUT THE 20 HOUR SUPERCUT?????? and cannot accept that they have a canon ship that some people find dull or a blorbo some people think isn't a great person. If someone is mad about not getting something in the story, that's fandom as usual, it's irritating but it's life. Many campaign 3 fans cannot tolerate a whisper of dissent with their opinions without shitting themselves and making it everyone's problem. I know multiple people whom I followed during Campaign 2 for their meta who straight up stopped writing it because if you said anything even mildly critical of Campaign 3 you'd get hate. Campaign 2 harassment on Tumblr was something that largely ended shortly after story beats that proved one person right; Campaign 3 harassment was unending unless you either bow to the people sending it and say "I'm sorry for saying anything other than that your blorbo and ship is perfect," stop posting, or, and I'm really the only person who took this route, make it clear that you can and will hit back ten times harder.

So no: I found the Campaign 3 fandom on Tumblr specifically uniquely toxic because it fell outside of normal fandom toxicity. I think Campaign 2 toxic fans were deeply shitty, but they largely left and I think their unpleasantness is mostly confined to a fandom space and did not degrade the conversation; I think at least some Campaign 3 toxic fans are both genuinely stupid and genuinely bad people who are a negative influence on the fandom at large and I hope we recover during a hypothetical C4; I am cautiously optimistic if only because I think on the basis of mutual blocking they have largely self-selected out and will exist in their own weird echo chamber.

I will also note at this point my criticism of Campaign 3 is almost entirely untagged both as discourse and main and almost entirely either reblogs, or in response to asks such as this one. To be transparent, while I'm sure some critiques will arise as I work through my C2 rewatch I plan on keeping them again, untagged such that only followers, people who follow people who reblog such critiques (not many, I usually get mostly likes on those), and people looking at my blog specifically. I think it will taper off, particularly since a lot of C3 fans had little interest in anything else CR has done.

And finally: again speaking only for myself I'd rather have a brilliant campaign with a toxic fandom, where I can minimally participate in the fandom by reblogging posts I like and enjoy myself with a great show and a handful of likeminded fans in a discord (indeed this is kind of what I do for Veilguard), than a mediocre campaign with a delightful fandom. As demonstrated "it's eh but the people are nice" is not, for me, a defense of Campaign 3 but further condemnation of its quality, and then the people weren't even nice and were in fact in my estimation far worse than those from Campaign 2.

Anyway: I just want to put this out there but I am vanishingly unlikely to be swayed on anything by an anonymous ask. If you want to actually have a chance you better be saying what you say with your whole chest. But also, this is just. Extremely wrong, and you have a very incorrect read on what I personally value in addition to having a poor understanding of the CR fandom history on Tumblr but another problem about the C3 fandom? I got a lot of asks like this one where I cannot tell if the person is just naive to the point of not even realizing how little they know, or if they're trying to be manipulative but are exceedingly bad at it.

[swordsandarms]

My own favourite thing about these kind of "get back at/gotchas" @ Lyanna and the whole "what good girls do Vs what bad girls do" analogies (often used to distance Arya from Lyanna in particular so that Arya would be "acceptable"/a "good gilrl" that deserves support as she is) is that not only it requires making up this scenario in which "the good girl only does things right (OR ELSE)" but also one in which "good girls only ~act out~ if there's some evil cartoonish threat triple approved else she'd be bad".

So, as @pixiecactus pointed out it can't be "loving parents" Ned and Catelyn who are not like that TM. IF good girl Arya would have some evil parents (only evil parents do that) that force her into marriage then she would be entitled to "save herself" as long as she is unproblematic and non disruptive about it, of course. Good smart girls don't make a fuss. So good girl Arya would be nice and quiet and nothing would happen in the background. She would disappear from a highly political landscape and it would cause no consequences. All because she did it while being the rightest about it and in the very realistic rightest ways.

Lyanna disappearing with a high profile man instead of alone or someone lesser is being dumb. Because it is very realistic for a past puberty girl to "just cut her hair" and go merry. Danny Flint's history is not horrific. Because it is very realistic to lay low and sleep with a lower status man and they would just let you be. Lysa didn't have her "disgrace" hushed because she was too much of a political valuable chip for that to ruin things for her family. Her father was painted as a comically evil cruel father and not weeping guiltily about it as he ruined her mental and physical health forever "for her own good" and the interest of their noble family.

While I believe her story with Rhaegar hints at regard for him as well by the author and narrative building up (especially as it obviously doesn't make sense that having no respect and regard for Robert means making a different choice at the least in that aspect), surely Lyanna is some dumbass for not turning to the above very lucrative in practice straight up fantasies of escape and instead goes away with one of the only men powerful enough that her likewise very powerful family me and fiance couldn't shush it and put her back in her place "for her own good because they care" (and they did, just as Hoster did), and general protection from what can befall one who's grown boobs, has womanly hips and lost the baby fat from their face in a society of Westeros depicted as ready to be violent at any opportunity shown to such if found vulnerable enough.

Going back to Ned and Catelyn and how complex these relationships are, and how it's obviously not so clean cut, and only evil parents hurt you and make bad choices for your wellbeing, happiness etc etc-

It's insane that we've forgotten Catelyn LOVES her daughters immensely and did crazy things that contributed to her and her son's/House's fall AND furthered Sansa's match with Joffrey in spite of Ned's already pointed out (not disapproved by her!) reservations about Joffrey because "a Stark Queen" in KL is more important. AND made a match to be both unhappy and non-beneficial for Arya with a Frey because when it came down to it, she was a chip to be played for House Stark and so be it.

And NED and his unreliable contradictable narration, particularly about Lyanna, and hence how he relates to the daughter that resembles her-

1. You see Arya, it's not good being wild. That's what killed Lyanna. Because she was wild and left from her family IN SECRET as opposed to I guess talking-

2. Oh wait! Flashback to Lyanna reaching out to Ned and having her concerns shut down.

3. But no, yeah, all was good, you see Robert loved her soooo much.

4. Oh wait! Ned tells Robert he didn't even know her. That she would talk back to him when necessary.

5. Oh no! Robert savagely hits woman who talks back at him. Ned: looks away.

6. A sword, Arya? I remember Lyanna would have liked one. OUR father wouldn't let HER. For reasons. Just not right. For a girl. Unclear what damage it can do. Just not how it's done.

7. Ok, have it I guess. Strangely the world doesn't come down crashing about it. Hm. Just told people a small lie about it. Hired a reliable skilled tutor. But obviously it had to be hidden. Because it's bad. For reasons. Whatever.

8. Oh, but yes, have it while it lasts. You will grow up, and then all we allow you to do is give a man sons. Maybe even daughters, but that's irrelevant. We are talking about consequential children who will grow up to do grand things in life. But I genuinely love you so much and I WOULD die for you and your sister of course, that doesn't change, my DAUGHTER :).

ETC ETC ETC

And Arya LOVES THEM. She hates not living up to their expectations. And they ARE hurting her. (Would have continued to do so. With love!). THEY LOVE HER AND SHE LOVES THEM AND WOULD KILL AND DIE FOR HER AS THEIR LITTLE GIRL AND INDIRECTLY KILL HER (FOR REAL OR INSIDE) AS LADY AND LORD STARK IF THEY HAD TO AND IT'S AWFUL.

(And that's why to understand Lyanna, we are shown Arya and are told to look deeper at HER and it will tell as how.)

If it had been Arya instead of Lyanna

If arya finds herself trapped in a forced marriage arranged by an ambitious father (let's pretend it's not Ned), there are only two possibilities. she will either flee to essos or beyond the wall and she will definitely cut her hair. My girl won't run away with a crazy, married prince. Like why would she run away with him because they fell in love? This is dirty for arya.

[flea-palace]

ok this may get me booed offstage but. i think the whole "christine looks like madeleine" in susan kay is more than just a basic oedipal complex, i think it's representative of erik's compulsive need to fix things/cultivate beauty and, despite all his efforts and tricks and hypnotism and attempts at creating an alternate universe for his mother where she could be happy, he knew it was never real and so he never really "fixed" her. and then along comes christine, looking like madeline two point zero, and of COURSE his wretched pattern recognition ovsessive compulsive perfectionist brain said "aha! a second chance to Fix Her!" and i think that's why such a core aspect of kaystine is her brokenness (cracked vase comparison, etc) and erik's attempts to do what he couldn't succeed at the first time. but lo and behold he is not only NOT fixing her (and satisfying that unsatiated urge to make things right and proper and just so), but he is actively making her worse, fueling the pattern of how he destroys anything that makes the mistake of getting too close to him. anyway that's my take feel free to publicly execute me for dredging up the old motherwound discourse in this fuckass novel

[communistkenobi]

thank you so much for the transmisogyny reading post! im definitely gonna be reading into those. in a similar vein, do you have a recommended reading list for decolonization/anti-imperialism?

Do you mean molsno's post? def cannot take credit for that but yes I have a couple!

high-level recommendation is discourse on colonialism by aime cesaire (this link goes to a pdf that is a collection of essays, you can skip to cesaire's essay). probably one of the most formative essays for me personally in terms of how i think about colonialism

decolonization is not a metaphor by Tuck & Yang is a famous article in decolonial scholarship and will likely come up pretty frequently if you're reading academic work. if you read that article, i recommend following it up with Slavery is a Metaphor by Garba & Sorentino - its a Black critical commentary by two marxist scholars i believe on Tuck & Yang's work, working through the anti-Black thinking that is present in the work, particularly the deeply problematic conceptual attention given by Tuck & Yang to slavery when historicising and analyzing settler colonialism in North America. These are both academic articles and they're both jargon-laden so your mileage will vary

I originally included decolonizing transgender 101 by b binaohan on here before realizing that it's already in the linked post above lol. in that post is a link to the full book that i'll repost here (usually you can only find the introduction online) so definitely make use of that. anyway great work, very accessible and insightful, makes direct linkages between white supremacy, settler colonialism, and transmisogyny in a way i found extremely helpful

i read beyond white privilege: geographies of white supremacy and settler colonialism during my master's about four years ago (jesus christ the passage of time!!!) and found it very insightful - the authors talk about white supremacy as a process rather than a historical event, as well as talk about some of the conceptual limitations of the popular focus on white privilege (as opposed to white supremacy) that i found very helpful for me personally. its another academic article

I've been recently introduced to Anibal Quijano's work, particularly the Coloniality of Power. this is an extremely theoretical work that focuses on the construction and universalization of race, the 'invention of Europe,' modernity as a colonial construction, and a bunch of other pretty dense topics. thats not to scare you off, but its probably the most theory heavy article i've linked here

this list skews towards academic work because that's what im most familiar with (all the links i provided are open-access links so you should not need institutional access to read them). For books, you can read Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon or Orientalism by Edward Said, they're both pretty foundational decolonial texts and are also pretty formative for me. Fanon's work is on decolonial struggle and the pathologization of colonized people, Said's work is on the construction of "the East" to justify and reproduce Western hegemony.

Hope this was helpful! I'm by no means an expert and this is only scratching the surface of scholarship on the subject. I'm still in the process of reading, but hopefully this is a good starting point for you!

[faint-petrichor]

for any who have been following, I have considered and accepted the criticisms made in my posts about crimew's essay.

my posts had two flaws: one being a use of charged language (sucking and fucking, primarily) which generated some misunderstandings on the nature of the point being made, often towards a more moral or ascetic argument, neither of which were my intention. the second follows similarly, the use of the word decadence, which in addition to the above issues carries a history of use in reactionary contexts that I was not aware of and have now noted.

that said, this past day has been a deeply wretched experience, watching my timeline fill with posts vaguing me, ridiculing me or putting words in my mouth. nobody criticized me directly, so I had to go on a paranoid dive through as many blogs as I could will myself to in order to learn what people were saying about my post and what the nature of my error was. this was all very distressing.

on one hand I do not particularly blame anyone, as you were simply responding to what you saw from your own frame of understanding. and if making a flawed post serves to provide a basis for further productive discourse and public education, then maybe that's not so bad.

on the other hand, it was a humiliating and helpless experience. nobody discussed anything with me directly and so many went straight to judgement and shaming. I have a small following without a lot of reach and not a lot of people know me-this simultaneously made it easier to be dogpiled on and harder to course correct, which I could have done immediately if anyone talked to me or addressed me directly.

but, whatever, right? that's just how social media can be? indeed. and now that I've had a (even relatively small) taste of it I've had to carefully consider if this is worth my time, for all the duress it has caused me. I have a history of being socially murdered to a point I was nearly homeless, in addition to the myriad experiences of being talked to behind my back. yesterday had echoes of those experiences in a way that I simply am incapable of coping with.

I needed tumblr as an outlet to make friends with comrades and have productive discussions, but even more I need my mental health and energy, which needs to be directed towards the more imminent issues in my life. I had hoped to participate in some level of reform to the environment of social media, at least within this little bubble, to be more straightforwardly constructive. I see now that I am not cut out for that job, and that it is likely not even possible at all due to the structure of the site. anyhow, I am going to take some time away from tumblr and focus on other aspects of my life.

[bogkeep]

sighs. haiz VS therapy speak discourse, round 289893248920 or whatever. it has been weighing on my mind

online blogger i respect posted about how we should gatekeep the term "sensory issues" because people use it about mild discomfort and not "sensation so awful you're going to rip your skin off and commit violence" and i....... disagree............................. like i really do understand the frustration when you experience something Really Intensely and people use the term for a much milder instance of it, but as with all things there's like, a Spectrum, Isn't There. it would be like saying you only have PTSD if you experience panic attacks and vivid flashbacks, or that you only struggle with headaches only if it's cluster headaches. and i for one definitely spent several years thinking i can't POSSIBLY have ptsd from The Big Trauma I Am Still Routinely Experiencing Triggers For because i like, don't have panic attacks, and i'm doing so much better now :) (maybe if i had realized it was ptsd all along i would've gotten a bETTER THERAPIST TO HELP ME DEAL WITH IT)

it took me so so so long to understand that most other people don't find wearing clothes inherently uncomfortable and exhausting. i genuinely thought everyone was just a lot better at dealing with Discomfort than me and i'm just a wretched weakling!!!!!

WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO CALL THE ISSUES I HAVE WITH SENSORY EXPERIENCES THAT EXHAUST ME EVERY DAY TO THE POINT I FIND IT DISABLING. it is Issues. with Sensory Experiences. it's not even a clinical term like Sensory Processing Disorder (though i'd argue that's what i struggle with. some wires are definitely crossed in there. but i can manage!!!)

like yes i get it, it sucks when people water down a word so that others don't take *you* seriously when you talk about it, it sucks when people are annoying, it sucks when people use the language of mental illness and neurodivergence to excuse bigoted behaviour and shy away from self-examination, but i would much much rather people have access to Words and Terms and be annoying about it with the possibility of actually learning something about themselves and their needs, than removing language (and more widespread acceptance of mental health difficulties) altogether. and how DO you know people are only using it to mean "mild discomfort", anyway!! you're not in their body!!

[supremeuppityone]

This was written for Klaroline Fanfic Week @klarolinefanficweek; Week 5 [April 27-April 30, 2025] – Horror. Canonish Klaroline historical AU. In 1492, Caroline left Bulgaria with nothing, but managed to catch the eye of the powerful and enigmatic Lord Niklaus. Being under his attentive care was a blessing. But was it also a curse?

Noble Sacrifice

Warning: Angst

“By the pricking of my thumbs,  Something wicked this way comes.” ― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

            Rich tapestries threaded with gold. Sumptuous brocade gowns. Ruby ring. Emerald necklace. Roast boar and venison. French wine. It was nothing like the mother country. As Caroline impatiently waited for the fumbling handmaid to finish lacing the sides of her evening dress, she tried to calm the fluttering of her heart, for she felt certain this night Lord Niklaus would ask for her hand.  

            Two years ago, she arrived on the shores of this dreary country with its crowded, foul-smelling city with little more than a pair of ragged dresses and an ache in her breast that she suspected would never mend. How she missed her daughter. 

            It was of no import, she told herself, impatiently waving away the glassy-eyed handmaid. The servants under Lord Niklaus were odd, almost as though they’d been struck silent, and there was a lethargy to their movements. Quite peculiar.

            Gathering her skirts in a soft rustle of brocade and silk, she ventured down the arched stone hallway toward the great room where she was to meet Lord Niklaus and Lord Elijah for the feast. The brothers had been generous in their patronage once they’d learned of her plight. It was a dangerous gamble she’d undertaken, but honesty didn’t keep one’s belly full. So, she played the role of the helpless orphan, merely looking for a kind word and warm meal. Of course neither was true. She wasn’t an orphan and she was far from helpless.

            The brothers Mikaelson were playing a role as well, she was certain of it. They behaved as noblemen of proper means, but whispers had reached her ears that their power was not that of the landed gentry. It was other. At the moment, Caroline couldn’t fathom what dark deeds the Mikaelsons were a part of, but she was certain it was bigger than the petty squabbles of this village’s council elders. 

            Perhaps they were sowing discord to challenge Henry VII’s reign? If they were supporters of that pretender to the throne, the Duke of York, then they had enormous influence and even larger ambitions. And would lose their heads if they dared to join a rebellion. But she would do as she always had done — listen and watch for the unmistakable signs of change. And then flee if those changes did not suit her needs.

            Caroline kept her steps light as she quietly made her way along the hallway, the flickering iron sconces casting disquieting shadows that gave her pause until she scolded herself for giving credence to peasant ignorance. No. She must guard her position fiercely. Once wed to Lord Niklaus, she would set about producing an heir that would further secure her station. That wretched ache in her breast returned at the thought of a child. Her daughter had been wrenched from her arms and she’d no recourse no matter how she bargained and threatened the village midwife who’d taken the sweet babe at her stonyhearted parents’ behest. There was no balm to soothe what she’d lost. The only path was forward. 

            Booming laughter startled her and curiosity beckoned her forward. It seemed the brothers Mikaelson had retired to their private solar for a bit of drunken revelry before the feast. She glanced down at the lovely ruby ring with the intricate braided gold band and smiled. It had been the first gift from Lord Niklaus and she’d been overwhelmed by his generosity. He was a charming sort, and his countenance could’ve been framed by angels. Not to mention how he sparked lively discourse at every opportunity. He would be a worthy companion. Then why did this knot persist in her belly?

            Caroline stayed her hand from knocking, instead slipping behind the barrels of mead. It wasn’t a natural reaction to her future betrothed. But it might keep her alive. The heavy oak door with ornamental wolf carvings had been left ajar, and she couldn’t help but notice how the roaring fire cast a merry glow about Lord Niklaus. He mayhap be a devil, but he was a handsome one at that. 

            Lord Elijah would be handsome as well if it weren’t for that dour face he cast at his brother. Smoothing the crimson lacing of his garish velvet doublet, he pompously drawled, “And you’re certain of the girl’s continued ignorance, Niklaus?”

            Caroline narrowed her gaze at Lord Elijah’s obvious disdain for her. While he’d been nothing but gentlemanly in her presence, there was a coldness to him that spoke of more than just aristocratic scorn for commoners. He frightened her. But she’d always met his gaze steadily with a hint of challenge in her quirked brow. It always seemed to vex Lord Elijah. 

            But Lord Niklaus always favored her with a knowing smirk that made her blush. It gladdened her heart that Lord Niklaus was such a grand match. And yet...there was something troublesome about the man. It toyed with the murky edges of her mind, just beyond her reach. Lord Niklaus turned from the fire and regarded his brother with mocking laugh. “Your worries are quite bothersome. Of course Caroline is a lovely firebrand, but blissfully unaware of her status as a doppelganger.”

            Doppelganger? She was no doppelganger. Her people spoke of the samodiva, a spirit double, but that was nothing more than a peasant’s flight of fancy.

            “Come tomorrow’s full moon, she’ll be sacrificed to break my curse and I’ll be able to embrace my werewolf side once again.”

            Her chest drew tight beneath her bodice. What words now burned in her ears! The Lords Mikaelson meant to do her great harm! Perhaps her people’s foolish folklore carried the slimmest grain of truth; after all, the samodiva were considered death omens, she spitefully thought. Clearly, the Lords Mikaelson were addled in some manner that made them believe in nightmarish creatures. And that made them especially dangerous.  

            She stared at Lord Niklaus, still so vexingly handsome despite this dark revelation. His linen tunic bore the usual crimson stains — he was quite careless with his wine. Despite his drunken state, Lord Niklaus’ hand didn’t waiver as he poured from a dusty jug, filling the wrought silver goblets. “’Tis a pity to sacrifice such a charming creature,” he lamented with a sigh. “But I’ll kiss her soundly and thank Caroline for her noble sacrifice all the same,” he chuckled with a careless wave of his hand. 

            Tipping his brother a teasing wink, Lord Niklaus added, “I’d wager Caroline is quite the lusty wench. Shaking the sheets with that first doppelganger, Tatia, was such a mundane affair — as you well know.”

            Before Caroline could properly embrace her ire at Lord Niklaus speaking of her as though she was a common whore, Lord Elijah lunged at his brother, his stern features transforming into a monstrous visage of dark eyes and long fangs. And Lord Niklaus did the same.

            Phantom cold fingers gripped her heart as she hid behind the mead barrels. She watched the unnatural creatures grapple and claw at each other with cruel indifference that made her shudder and want to cry out in fearful wails. The brothers Mikaelson were monsters. Vampir. Vampires were real. Werewolves too, if Lord Niklaus’ cruel ravings were to be believed. The peasants of her mother country knew of these dark creatures. 

            And now so did she.

[thesiltverses]

Sunak: National Service!

Me: Is that a silt verses reference?

The underlying philosophy of the Tories' proposal for national service (both a gift of duty and civic responsibility which young people should feel grateful for, and very explicitly a gleeful punishment to toughen them up, put a stop to all their uppity snowflakery, transform them into strong-chinned stiff-upper-lipped avatars of the Greatest Generation, etc) is indeed weirdly sacrifice-coded.

Some Daily Telegraph wanker actually put out a column last week arguing that National Service was a chance for 18-year-olds to repay the nation for the UK's furlough scheme during the first days of COVID lockdown, which of course took place between 2020 and 2021 when no present-day 18-year-old would have been in employment.

Now, on one hand, this is really absurdly stupid, an example of someone so apparently cloistered and career-safe in the world of networked journalism that he doesn't understand how furlough or linear time works.

But on the other hand I think it's a clear example of how heavily the UK's public discourse and self-image has become shaped by a superstructure which is deliberately timeless and eternal in its reactionaryism, muddying up the past 40 years of history in order to become furious about the same liberal outrages over and over again.

It's not about any specific cohort of 18-year-olds, it's about the decades-spanning platonic ideal of the nation's scapegoat; an uppity leftist wretch who's always got some damn thing to say, a lazy scoundrel who will always deserve a damn good kicking, who can always be sacrificed over and over again on the altar of statehood.

[shay-the-reader]

📖: babel x r.f. kuang (2022)

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

genres: historical fantasy

review in one sentence: i won’t be accepting any critiques of this book -thnx, management

“’I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live… I want to live,’ she repeated, ‘and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future. I don’t think death is a reprieve. I think it’s — it’s just the end. It forecloses everything — a future where I might be happy, and free.’”

🏛️🕯️🗣️📜

i never fully understood the desire to rate a book 6 stars until this moment. here are some reasons why i LOVED this book…

🕯️ history & portrayal of colonialism • this must be the year of historical fiction for me! my knowledge of the british empire is very minimal but those footnotes gave me so much context. post-read, i really want to find out which parts were truly fiction and which were historically accurate. there were a few characters i had to look up to see if they were real.. there are some really terrible people in history. even though i didn’t know much about the british empire, the characteristics of colonialism were fairly easy to spot based on what i know about it as a whole. i truly love a story that can teach me history and simultaneously keep me invested in the story!

🕯️ character evolution of robin • i was so nervous about the length of this book but it was absolutely necessary to show robin evolve as a person, especially since he was raised and trained to be a tool of british colonialism. it was cathartic to seeing him slowly unlearn the logics that he was taught to believe about himself, his heritage and the english. from beginning to end, robin is a character whose story i may never forget.

🕯️ academic setting • before 💩 really hit the fan, the portrayal of robin and his cohort as students was spot on. it didn’t surprise me to find out that r.f. kuang has both a masters and a phd bc at certain moments, i felt like i was back in grad school while reading this. the cyclical nature of the academic school year. the naiveté of being a first year. the transformation into a shell of a human by second year. the temporary reprieve of the summer months. it all felt too close to home.

🕯️ language & etymology • growing up, i swore i would be a polyglot and this fueled part of those delusions. it’s interesting having read this book right around a lot of tiktok users flocking to xhs/red note and learning mandarin. don’t be surprised if you see me with a mandarin language notebook

⏳🖋️✨🕰️

if you like this, you might also enjoy…

📖 discourse on colonialism (1950)

📖 the wretched of the earth x frantz fanon (1961)

📖 freedom dreams: the black radical imagination x robin d.g. kelley (2002)

📖 third world studies x gary y. okihiro (2016)

📖 decolonization and afro-feminism x sylvia tamale (2020)

[mariacallous]

Think of a famous storm—maybe Hurricane Katrina, gathering force over the warming Atlantic surface and pinwheeling toward the mouth of the Mississippi River to flood the great city of New Orleans. You may remember that Katrina killed more than 1,300 people. You may remember other, less deadly storms, such as Sandy, which killed dozens of people in New York City, and at least 147 overall. Now think of a famous heat wave. It’s more difficult to do. And yet, heat waves can be fatal too. In 2023, scorching weather lingered for more than a month in Phoenix, Arizona, pushing temperatures to 119 degrees and killing an estimated 400 people in the county. Two years later, it’s all but forgotten. A major storm is history. A major heat wave is the weather.

This week’s heat wave is menacing much of the entire country: Almost three-quarters of America’s population—245 million people—have been subjected to temperatures of at least 90 degrees, and more than 30 million people are experiencing triple digits, according to one estimate. Yet few of us will remember this shared misery, unless we ourselves happen to be hospitalized because of it, or lose someone to heat stroke. Instead, these few days will blur together with all the other stretches of “unseasonably warm weather” and “record-setting temperatures” that now define summer in America. They will constitute just one more undifferentiated and unremembered moment from our extended slide into planetary catastrophe.

Heat waves have always been anonymous disasters. They lack the flashy action of earthquakes, volcanoes, or plagues, and they don’t show up much in ancient histories and myths. No single heat wave from human history has been assigned the narrative resonance of the Vesuvius eruption, or the mythic power of the storms that imperiled Odysseus. When heat waves do appear in stories, they tend to come in aggregate, after a series of them, occurring over months or years, have intensified droughts and famines. Our main cultural record of these collected runs of extreme heat consists of ruins left behind by civilizations that vanished after too many rainless years and failed harvests.

What if heat waves could be called by name, like Katrina and Sandy? Maybe that would give them greater purchase on our cultural memory. Several organizations have recently argued that we ought to label heat waves as we do tropical storms. (This week’s, if it were the first in some new system, might be called “Heat Wave Aaron.”) Supposedly, this would make heat loom larger in public discourse: More people would become aware of it and stay indoors. In 2022, a team working with the mayor’s office in Seville, Spain, piloted this idea. They assigned a local heat wave that had reached 110 degrees the name Zoe. According to a paper the team published last year, the 6 percent of surveyed residents who could recall the name without prompting also said they’d engaged in more heat-safety behaviors.

No one knows whether that effect would have lasted through other heat waves, once the novelty of naming wore off for the Sevillians. Either way, the idea may be tricky to implement. In the Atlantic Ocean, fewer than 20 tropical storms, on average, are named each year. But the United States alone is subject to hundreds of annual heat waves, and they vary immensely in scale. Some are city-size, and others—like this week’s—drape themselves across the country like a thick and invisible down blanket. And unlike tropical storms, which are categorized according to wind speed, heat waves kick in at different temperatures in different places. (Seattle’s heat wave might be Santa Fe’s average summer day.) So which of these deserve a name tag, and which ones don’t? Even if the naming idea catches on, these details will need working out.

Alas, heat waves will likely remain anonymous for most of us for a good while longer, if not forever. But perhaps we should not be so ashamed of this. Our inability to record these sweltering spells in a more conspicuous way is shared by the natural world, which rarely shows the marks of an episode of hot weather in any lasting way. A storm or an earthquake can reconfigure a landscape in a single moment of violence, leaving behind scars that can still be seen with the naked eye millennia later. In nature, as in culture, heat waves tend to show themselves after they have piled up into a larger warming trend. Only then are they visible in tree rings and ice cores, in coastlines that move inland, and in the mass extinctions that glare out from the fossil record—a thought to console yourself with as you wait for this week’s heat to break.