#( I don't want this to seem like Cassie has no flaws because she does )

[sharp-teeth-and-archived]

Likeable person & dislikeable person test

* Cassie Roosevelt

[sheshirkat]

Euphoria, unpopular opinion and long rant :

Euphoria is accurate, it's just not a show for teenagers but for people who need to come to terms with their messed up teenagehood, or for adults in general to understand it. It is romanticised but it is in fact the way we tend to see things when we're in this cycle, this situation...we think it's so pretty and we're so cool but then we realise it's ugly as fuck. Maybe sometimes the show doesn't romanticise it, but the viewers do. Maybe some shows aren't meant for everyone. I'd love to see a show like euphoria where the last episode the aesthetic veil falls down and you see just all the disgust and despair the aesthetic covered up, as the characters starts to get it.

(Thought I lowkey defend euphoria in this (mostly I don't defend it's just expressing thoughts and opinions) I still think Sam Levinson has troubles with sexualising teenagers (all of Hollywood really) and stealing other artists' style and art)

Euphoria seems unrealistic until you grasp the concept of toxicity in your own teenage self and feel the unreadable depth of your own loneliness and guilt scratching at your back. No really, euphoria (and skins) is about fucked up kids doing fucked up shit cause they have no idea what the fuck they're doing and they're egoist and wrong and bad people but YOU'RE DOOMED TO BE FUCKING BAD WHEN NO ONE TEACHES YOU HOW TO BE GOOD AND ALL THERE IS IS HURT. Everyone hates Cassie but she's just an accurate representation of a girl trying to extermine herself just to fit in to please a boy she likes cause no man ever took care of her and her mother does the best she can but it's not enough cause she suffers too and she just feels abandonned. Attention seeking is often a call for help. Y'all just hate Cassie cause she doesn't fit into your "nice quiet sad girl" fantasy.

Same for most characters actually. Yeah they "act older than they should", especially with sexuality. But this show is about the shit we do as teenagers when we're trying to be independant and we've internalised trauma and patriarchy and so many shit comes out at this time of our lives.

Idk how to express that euphoria characters are flawed and each of them is deeply wrong in so many ways and it is precisely the point, at least in my opinion. For me, it is not a show for teenagers. It is a show for adults to understand what happened to them, or to teenagers in general, and to warn or to help come to terms with what you've been through and the shitty person you used to be in high school, the shit that happens to you, the shit you've done to others, but also to yourself...Not saying everything is forgivable, Nate's a downright abusive prick, but it's also an interesting character because it questions where morals come from : he has no other model growing up than his father. To change you have to have a shock, especially when you come from a wrong place. And school don't teach you morals, ethics, how to treat people right. You may think it's logic, and so do I, but because it has always been for us. But see further, see reality TV, history, the government, toxic masculinity, forcing kids to kiss their grandparents to "be polite"...violence has mechanism, and these mechanisms are intertwined with the way we grow up. Not saying to not blame grown ass men (and women sometimes) doing awful shit, we all got our responsabilities and abuse is not justified in any way. But the intrications of violence, to me, are something to be questioned and thought about if we want to make the world a better place, cause obviously prison and laws don't do shit about this part of society. Nate's a reflection of toxic masculinity.

Would have more stuff to say but gotta sleep, rant over and good night!

[mermaidsirennikita]

ARC Review: The Summer Girl by Elle Kennedy

3/5. 7/18/23.

For when you're vibing with... small town college romance, truly beachy reads, and very classic New Adult ish.

Cassie is in Avalon Bay for the first time in years, with her grandmother selling the family hotel. On the lookout of a summer fling, she quickly settles on golden boy (and perhaps local fuckboy) Tate Bartlett. But Tate doesn't view Cassie as fling material--their connection is deeper than that. He'll offer friendship... until he can't resist the pull between them.

I wanted to try Elle Kennedy, and I did here. While I can't say I disliked this book, I also feel that it veered too closely towards YA versus New Adult for me, and there just wasn't enough to set it apart and keep my interest. I can definitely see the audience here, I'm just not a part of it.

Quick Takes:

--So here's the thing for me. Tate is meant to be kind of a town bicycle type guy. He sleeps with a lot of women, he's good natured about it, and he's nice for a quick lay. But he also drinks his respect women juice--which I'm fine with! A guy being promiscuous and upfront about it does not equal a guy not respecting women.

Buuuuut, I think he drank a bit too much for me to buy him as a character. I needed more flaws. The thing is that he's not just a fun, slutty guy. He's a YOUNG fun, slutty guy. He just seemed way too mature about everything, and far too evolved. I'm not saying I needed him to be an asshole, but it felt like this book was striving for a level of realism that was undermined by his general perfection. Also, perfection is boring (to me). Tate felt written for readers who don't want to worry about liking problematic men, while also wanting to read about men who get around. And while you can get around as a man without being problematic... I think it takes some growing before you really know how to live that life without hurting feelings (and even then, it's always a risk). I just didn't buy that this young guy would be there.

--The writing style and Cassie's POV in general definitely read younger than college senior for me. This book has an issue that you do often come across in New Adult--the explicit sex of a book about adults and a less mature quality than you expect more from YA. While I would never say that most college students (having been one) are in the mental place adults who've been out and truly independent in the world are in, there's also a big gap between the mentality of a typical college senior versus a high school junior or senior. Years of big life experiences, you know? I didn't see that gap here.

That younger quality takes away from the romance for me. I read romance because, even if something is more on the Happy For Now side, I want to read about a love story I can see potentially lasting forever. There's a reason why I don't read YA romance--at my age now, it's hard for me to buy any high schooler finding their forever love, though obviously it isn't impossible. While it's theoretically pretty plausible for someone to meet their forever partner as a senior in college, it's less easy for me to believe it when the characters read younger.

--This is an easy read. If you want to just sort of vibe for a bit on the beach and you're down for a college romance, then you will probably enjoy it. It's not hard to follow, the pacing is good (though it would have benefited from a parring down of side characters, in favor of a tighter focus on the romance). There's nothing super unlikable about it, if that makes sense. You do get a bit of NLOG syndrome when Tate sees Cassie as like... too Real and Serious to have a fling with. But it's not intense.

For me, I just think that in general I want MORE intensity with romance novels. Not just in terms of heat, but in terms of story and passion.

The Sex Stuff:

One thing I did like here is that these two worked up to penetrative sex, and while it was treated with care (because Cassie is a virgin, of course) it was not treated as the only thing that *mattered*. It's well done, it's very tender "her first time". Honestly, I think that a lot of the book, including this scene, would work better as a somewhat cliche summer movie for me.

I see a lot of reviews indicating that this book is "super spicy", and my issues with spice levels~ aside... It's not. If you've read a lot of romance, especially a lot of self-published romance, especially a lot of like... erotic romance/mafia romance/paranormal romance, so on, this will not shock you. If it is shocking to a lot of people, I tend to wonder if marketing of this one is confusing? I knew Elle Kennedy didn't fuck around going in, but there seems to be a lot of "I thought this was YA" in the reviews.

A lot of what didn't work for me here, I think, was a mismatch in reader and book, so I can't complain too much. But I do think this is an example of some confusion regarding the YA/New Adult/Romance intersection here, both in terms of execution and marketing.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Griffin for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[rockofeye]

I saw somewhere talk that Puff Daddy aka P Diddy has a tattoo of Erzulie Danto on his back. Another person says that’s a mistake, and it’s actually Erzulie Mapyang.

I don’t know enough about Vodou to tell which it is, if any. I was wondering if you could tell me your thoughts on it.

This is just speculation on my part. But I was thinking that maybe Puff started serving a lwa. And that lwa is eating him because of all the bad things he’s been up to the past few decades. Like maybe the retribution he’s dealing with now is from angering a lwa. Since he seemed to have gotten the tattoo pretty recently, and then all of a sudden his life started falling apart. Before this, it seemed like the feds just looked the other way. Just wondering what you think may be going on with that situation.

He's had that tattoo for awhile, at least five or six years. Maybe it's a thing, maybe not; he wouldn't be the first celebrity to ask something of the lwa or be invested in relationships with them, and he wouldn't be the first to get a tattoo in the hopes people would think he is invested. He is a sociopath, and so appearances are just as important--if not more so--than actual substance.

This isn't a lwa eating him up; this is the consequences of decades of bad behavior finally catching up to him. In another lifetime, I worked in the music industry (way back when), and none of what is coming out in public view was ever really a secret nor is it isolated. I was pretty low level overall, and the shit I saw in my little corner of the world was deeply unsettling. I can't imagine what I would have seen had I had the capital to move higher.

He isn't the first person to do this kind of stuff and he won't be the last. This is how people with massive amounts of money and inherently flawed personalities move; they take advantage of what they want when they want without ever thinking there could be consequences, because money makes consequences evaporate...until it doesn't.

Federal agencies never really look the other way. They just don't care until a particular bar has been met; either it is so vile, so visible, or so poorly handled that it can't be ignored, and then they go in. The stuff he is charged with (RICO/racketeering, human trafficking, etc) dates all the way to 2008, and those kind of charges take a long time to build to. The federal government does not file a RICO case unless the conviction is certain; , it is really the only time you can say that someone is honestly guilty without seeing anything further...the burden of proof to bring those charges is incredibly high, and the federal government does not lose. This case was built long-term, and their witness and co-conspirator lists are very likely LONG. They haven't even gotten around to charging other people, because it's likely folks are going to agree to testify to avoid charges. This isn't new or sudden, it's been happening. The publicity is new.

The lwa (or any other spirit community) don't need to lift a finger in any of this because why would they waste their effort? All they have to do is nothing, and just sit and watch the downfall. The lwa don't need to be angry, because--if they did deal with him--they already knew who he was before he got to them and knew he would hang himself when the time was right. They operate very differently than people do, so they're not going to react or process how we react or process, or approach situations how we would approach them. They are not infallible or all-knowing, but they see way further and way farther than we do and know way more about the potential outcomes. If he was involved, they knew before he even got close to the present moment who he was and what he stands for.

If anyone is getting good spiritual guidance in this whole mess, it's Cassie. Her moves were brilliant. She got him to shut the fuck up about her almost overnight, then got an admission, and publicly positioned herself in opposition to everything before it all came out....and it all happened really publicly, so everyone sees her in a positive light. My guess is that folks knew this was coming for awhile because questions started being asked. In a RICO case, the feds look very, very closely into everyone around their target, including significant others etc. I bet Cassie got wind of it and decided she wanted none of this heat. She was around him a long time and saw a lot of shit (in addition to what he did to her), and she made her move before anything else could drop. Even victims can be charged as accessories.

Retribution in Vodou is really the act of people, not lwa. The lwa don't need to expend the effort to lash out to get their messages across. Instead, they do what is infinitely more frightening and potentially life-destroying, and that is just sitting down and staying still. They stop contributing anything that they have done that has benefitted you; all protections, stability, luck, financial success, etc. You have a life where you have been stripped of what they blessed you with because of your actions/inactions and missteps, not because of their decisions. They will have told you and warned you and showed you the path(s) that you needed to take to change the outcomes that were coming for you and told you what the consequences would be if you didn't...and you didn't listen or didn't do it or thought you could act in a way they wouldn't see.

And so there you are, all alone with the dawning realization that You Fucked Up. Sometimes that's fixable, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes you can crawl back to them and they'll show mercy, but sometimes that mercy is it's own consequence: maybe you're going to prison for 20 years instead of the rest of your life. Maybe you're going to live, but you'll never hold a regular job again. Maybe they'll let you come back, but every ceremony you go to you are publicly reminded that you don't like to listen. Or maybe it's not fixable, and you're just going to bob along for the rest of your life knowing you blew your own opportunity.

Basically, the lwa don't have to do a thing to punish their people because by the time we get to where we are experiencing the punishment, it's really just the consequences of our repeated actions against our own best interests. When they get to where they just shrug their shoulders about you, you're way down the road of your own demise.

So...if he was dealing with the lwa, they shrugged their shoulders about him a long, long time ago. They don't need to actively participate in his downfall because he assured his own outcomes by the sum of his own actions. He's honestly done a way more thorough and complete job of assuring his own destruction than the lwa ever could, and now he gets to Diddy bop all the way to the SHU. Maybe he and R Kelly can get adjoining cells and write sad songs together!

[incoherentbabblings]

You don't like Young Justice? What flaws in the series prevented you from liking it?

I always feel like such a grumpy old fart for these sorts of questions so please don't worry about enjoying YJ. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just not my cup of tea really! ☕

HAVING SAID THAT, it's very much a story over characters sort of show which is fine if you find the story interesting but I just never really have. There's really nothing wrong with it specifically... Aside from I think it's developed real pacing issues as the seasons have gone on but... Personally I feel like they don't focus enough on character over plot and the characters they do focus on are the wrong ones. The Season 1 team I don't much care for aside from Dick, and even then YJ did the criminal thing in later seasons of making Dick boring. Also how dare you have Roy Harper and make him humourless and drab. Also how dare you not have Linda Park. Where's Linda? You can't have Wally without Linda how dare you try otherwise where is Linda! Where is she!!!

That's really my problem with YJ. I find it dreadfully boring.

Like okay, to use Tim as an example. The show should absolutely for all intents and purposes have Tim as one of the main characters. But he's barely in it. Why is he Robin? We don't know. What's his relationship like to Bruce? To Bart? To Dick? We don't really know aside from one scene per season of dialogue. Why did he date Cassie? What did he like about her? Why did he agree to go along with Bruce's Outsiders group? Why does he choose Bruce's team over Cassie? Why be with Steph - it seems - at the very end of it all? Why am I the audience member being asked to fill in the gaps? There's so many just for this one character I can't do it for the three dozen others who have popped up as time has gone by. And I love Tim. So I'm more willing than some to do that plugging! (Snort)

Because the plot and the cast is so bloated, we just do not spend time with these characters in any meaningful way. I genuinely think you could swap and change what cast members appear in what episode and nothing would change.

So that's my issue really. I don't find the plot interesting enough for me to want to fill the gaps in character motivations, and I don't find what characters we are given distinct and unique enough to warrant my attention. The acting is good, the animation is good, the scope and attention to detail is impressive. The characters are dull and the plot is painfully slow. So yeah. I never got into it really.

[thattimdrakeguy]

I used to like Stephanie Brown very much but honestly lately her fandom ruined the character for me. They want EVERYTHING to be about her, even when we are talking about a mlm ship they are like "pls don't erase Steph" and I am like??? And literally saying character flaws are not hating on a character, or most people just hating on her because seriously she is so different in comics and fandom, they need to chill the fuck out and not say everyone is misogynistic just because they don't like her

+ and everytime someone says "Cissie and Steph are best friends" just because the new cover of YJ... y'all forgetting Bart and Cassie were Cissie's best friends!!! Sorry I just hate when people force her into everything and then blame timkon fans for being misogynistic just because people don't want her to be on the team because she has no good relationships with the team, that's not misogyny everyone!!! I hate this fandom sometimes

I just want to ask why TimSteph stans are hating on Tim but still shipping him with their fav character? Literally every single TimSteph stan on their tag are posting anti Tim Drake posts, and talking shit about him, but when someone says something bad about Stephanie they are getting mad and acting like everyone is hating women because of other ships??? Can someone pls explain this to me I really want to know the reason

That’s the part of the fandom that I see sometimes and really brings my mood down a lot of the time, because they’re so caught up in their own world sometimes that it drives me nuts.

Before I disliked Damian because his writing is just freaking awful, I began to not like him just from the connotation of his fandom being so obsessed trying to make him something he’s not based off of just a few moments that aren’t even in-character.

With the toxic part of Steph’s fanbase they’re just so obsessed with trying to make her seem like more of this astonishing character. Not to even say she’s a bad character. I still think she’s a good character, but it’s just the limit the obsessive part of her fandom goes to, just to convince people she’s so great. Sometimes they just exaggerate stuff or just lie so much because they seem to be under the belief that if she’s not incredible as a person that she’s unlikable, but then, why do they like her.

I think that part of her fandom comes from people projecting on her so much that they begin to become defensive of everything she does to the point it feels obsessive.

“OH SHE HAS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE BECAUSE *says a very simple thing that they say in way too many words that give the complete wrong connotation of the actual events to make Stephanie seem more impressive*”

“SHE HAS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH DAMIAN THAT NEEDS TO BE ADMIRED MORE BECAUSE completely ignores how Damian was a total pervert and a body shamer to ridicule her. Which isn’t a relationship to admire at all. Along with people constantly taking out of context some of the things she did with him, and how it was another case of a writer ignoring Damian’s problem to woobify him. Which makes the issue poorly written. But we must exaggerate it to make Steph seem like a saint apparently.”

This type of fandom stuff bugs me no matter the character.

I remember not that long ago I kept seeing posts that were exaggerating Tim so much, and it bugged the ever-living crap out of me.

Because sorry, but, I don’t care what Red Robin says. Tim could not beat up all those assassins.

I don’t even honestly believe Tim’s a master tactitian. He’s just smart and clever, he isn’t this war general figure.

I don’t care that a comic says that Tim could trick Bruce with a fake Uncle.

Given the way he was built up as a character, that stuff just doesn’t work. That wasn’t anything that was actually developed for his character. It was something they tacked on in what I assume was attempts to make Tim “cool”, because DC doesn’t like relatable characters.

Which is a bit rich because Sideways, a character written by Didio himself, just feels like a knock-off Ultimate Spider-Man with the tone and character-style.

So I don’t want to give the impression that I think everyone in the Stephanie Brown fandom is an obsessive loon, or toxic as could be, because I don’t believe that to be the case. The toxic part of her fandom is just something that has arisen. Something that happens in all fandoms at one point or another. Now is just Stephanie’s go at it I guess. Even if it seems to be from just a few over vocal people, that people gave too much attention because I guess they liked having their fav be overly praised.

The people that say you’re misogynistic if you don’t ship TimSteph are just stupid honestly. At least about that.

If you ship TimKon, it makes no sense to include Steph in posts about it. Unless it’s like, just mentioning how Tim used to date her. Which I don’t feel is a big enough reason to act like people are misogynistic, because, even if say I shipped Tim with another girl. Id be awkward to talk about Steph. We don’t need to shove Steph into everything.

I don’t say the word stupid like I think they’re stupid at everything.

I call myself stupid when it comes to a lot of stuff for an example, but the argument that you’re misogynistic if you think of Tim as gay is stupid, because there’s enough of Tim for so long were it’s easy to interrupt him as gay, and it’s not misogynistic.

You don’t hate women if you’re gay, or anything like that.

That’s homophobic.

If you still think Tim is straight, congrats, I’m not upset. I’m not upset people ship TimSteph. One of my best friends ships TimSteph and she’s writing a wonderful fic.

I’m not even against TimSteph at all.

Just that stupid part of that fandom.

Like Stephanie Brown has flaws right? She flirted with Tim when she knew he had a girlfriend, even kissing him. Reckless as could be. Took things the wrong way. Made Tim straight up uncomfortable with her flirting sometimes. Had a problem with listening even when it was beneficial to her safety. She also had a trust problem when her and Tim’s relationship got into it.

Some of you are probably thinking “Well Tim has flaws too. She had her reasons.”

And you know what?

I agree.

Because that’s how freaking characters work.

Tim’s sheltered childhood made him insensitive to certain situations. He was immature to the point of detriment to his relationship with Ariana in some situations. Too naive to understand some things. Even too bossy because he’s a cruddy leader and didn’t know how to communicate enough for that job.

He’s not a perfect human.

Characters can have flaws, and it’s okay, because that’s how we get interesting stories and dynamics between stuff. Just because Tim has flaws, doesn’t mean he’s not a good person. He’s kind, caring, heroic, despite his immaturity. Just because Tim couldn’t handle the topic of cheating and became immature doesn’t mean he didn’t step up to the plate and try to help Ariana when she was close to being sexually assaulted and she was a bit mentally unstable (that might be strong wordage, but I use those words for myself when a situation hits. So it’s not me talking down about her situation) for a bit.

When you were raised in a mad house, it’s understandable she’d grow up to be reckless. She grew up so independent at a young age, because her parents certainly weren’t taking care of her. It’s also understandable that she has trust issues, because if you’re dating someone with a second life, you would worry that they’re cheating on you.

This is just how characters work

So these posts that wanna pretend she doesn’t have flaws, bugs me, because they want to deny her character sometimes.

Then acting like she’d just be best friends with everyone is freaking delusional. It’s the kind of stuff where it’s done in the vein of “peppy fangirl”, but it just becomes a bit obsessive. I think that’s stuff were my theory on some of those types of fans projecting on her for their own good come in.

I can get, being like “I wonder if these characters would get along”, but getting so hyper and exaggatory is just wack.

I think Tim and Jon would get along and could be good friends now that Jon’s older, but if they were in a comic together I’m not gonna get myself worked up and pretend things are were they clearly aren’t.

Even in the case of Cissie and Steph, I actually feel like they would be pretty good friends together. I can easily see that. But just cuz they’re on a cover together doesn’t mean they’re best friends

And if somehow Steph brought Cissie out to be Arrowette, that’d just be stupid. I don’t know how Steph would even know who Cissie is, because I don’t know if she even knows Arrowettes name is Cissie, let alone in this timeline. Plus Cissie last seen wasn’t a hero. So that’d just be some super cheap and forced writing.

But given the write circumstances, that actually work and make sense, I wouldn’t be against that. If they became friends, I’d be totally cool with it.

It’s that weird obsessive “THEY’RE BEST FRIENDS OH MY GOSH” that’s just a bit unnerving. Like settle down.

Write some fan fics, I really don’t care, but it gives me the vibes of those boyband fandoms that wanna act like their fav is dating some hot chick cuz he looked at her.

It’s less worse than that, cuz those are real people, but it’s that obsessive vibe that I get from it.

I don’t like it.

As for TimSteph shippers that hate Tim. I think it’s because it’s for a similar reason some people make all those posts overexaggerating or lying about so much stuff about Steph.

It’s to get her attention.

They know that Steph’s almost always only gonna show up because writers attach her with Tim almost exclusively, and that may be the only way she’ll show up. So I think they’re doing that, to get some kind of attention so Steph will show up at least with Tim, cuz something is better than nothing.

Although personally, I root for Steph finally hanging out with other characters, because seeing her relegated to just “Tim’s girlfriend” is very annoying, cuz even in the 90s she was more than that. She wasn’t created just to date Tim. She was created to be her own dang character.