#HOW does it only get WORSE

[turtleblogatlast]

I think a lot about Leo’s tendency to push his way into the spotlight despite clearly being a natural in the shadows. Hell, you could argue that his worst moments are when he’s forcing himself onstage, and his best are when he does things no one notices until it’s already been done.

[knockknockitsnickels]

I think this is one of my favorite lines from the Wraith route because of (imo) how much the meaning changes depending on if you got there via Spectre or Nightmare. For Spectre, it honestly strikes me as a genuine question. Why are you doing this to her? If you're on the Spectre route, you presumably already know the Narrator can't really be trusted, since you had to reject his reward to get here. What are you hoping to gain from continuing to hurt her? For Nightmare, it honestly just makes me sad. As the Shifting Mound describes her, "She desires only companionship, but the only thing she knows is how to hurt." This line feels like a plea from someone who genuinely doesn't understand why you keep rejecting her. She wants to be with you, but she just can't understand how to do that in a way which doesn't hurt you.

[bonefall]

.. opinions on wind runner? i feel like im one of the only ones that genuinely hates her sometimes

If you feel like the only one who genuinely hates her, I think you need to look around more. Wind Runner is a very widely disliked character, because she's often used within the story as a small antagonist who "threatens" the authority of Tall Shadow. Gray Wing dislikes her. Thunder is openly cat-racist to her. She spends several books trying to break through the moor cats' xenophobia to join a group that came to HER LAND.

Then, when Moth Flight is old enough to be a relevant character in Forest Divided, Wind Runner is turned into Yet Another mean mom the very moment Moth displays ADHD. She's contrasted to her mate Gorse Fur, who is a Soft And Good Dad, and ultimately MASSIVELY punished with the harrowing events of Moth Flight's Vision (even though, for most of that book, she's completely right.)

Ask yourself why they're especially harsh on WIND RUNNER for being mean to her child, in the arc with Tom the Fucking Wifebeater and his redemption death, plus Thunder being forced to stop being mad at his abuser Clear Sky, please.

To me, Wind Runner is an intense, ambitious woman who's demonized for it in a way that men just aren't. She's subject to several misogynistic trends within WC, plus a huge helping of xenophobia that goes absolutely unexamined. If DOTC cared at all about women, it would have treated her with the nuance she deserves.

Wind Runner is treated with nearly endless suspicion by Gray Wing through books 1 - 3, while he's bending over backwards to suck Clear Sky's toes.

Her wanting to join the group that came TO HER HOME and being a bit pushy about it earns a stronger reaction from Gray Wing than Clear Sky murdering people.

She's pressured into changing her name "to fit in," and it's still not enough. She wanted to join the group so bad she changed her name, at the request of the Mountain Cats, for a chance of being better accepted

This came after she'd already saved Jagged Peak's life when a burrow collapsed on him. She's plenty trustworthy.

She keeps doing shit to try and prove herself to this group of assholes. Remember Bumble being dragged back to her domestic abuser? Gray Wing interprets this as a power struggle, when WIND RUNNER WAS NOT EVEN PART OF THE GROUP AT THE TIME.

From Wind Runner's POV, she did something that the Moor cats wanted done. It was fucking evil. It was committing violence against another member of the out-group the cats see her as.

But who actually has the power here? Tall Shadow does.

Gray Wing said it himself that she could have come up with some excuse for Bumble to stay, and she didn't. In fact, any cat could have spoken up. No one did.

and still. STILL. Wind Runner gets nothing. Her reward is Gray Wing surmising that actually, her doing their sick dirtywork was a political move.

It's more consistent as a motivation with how Wind Runner wants to join their group. The thing she's been doing.

She only actually gets to join the group after Thunder starts publicly hurling slurs at her for suggesting they need to be ready for Clear Sky to attack them. "What do you know about peace? Last time I was here you were NOTHING BUT A ROGUE WITH A ROGUE'S NAME"

Gray Wing even starts purring when she gives birth, because her ambition goes away briefly and she "stops bossing everyone around." this is treated like a sweet thing. god forbid women retain their personalities when they have kids

She loses her first premature child to a seizure and Gray Wing starts proselytizing his religion to her. "Maybe it's a good thing your weakest child died because Jesus has them now" I want to beat him with a hammer

When her second child gets sick, Clear Sky has a bright idea that involves killing it. I refer to this as his "reverse leper colony" suggestion. He only develops a sense of humanity towards the sick when his brother's pregnant wife is in danger. Wind Runner and her kitten barely seem to clock as people to him.

It's only after her SECOND baby succumbs to a horrible, painful death that she decides the moor cats are assholes, and she goes to start her own group. It's LONG overdue. I was extremely excited to see it.

Now. Listen.

I've been treated just like Moth Flight before. I've practically heard the scolding in Book 6 Chapter 3 verbatim. I'm not downplaying anything about Wind Runner being harsh to her; being yelled at like that never fixed the problem.

What I'm saying is that this is the SAME arc that summons the hollowed-out ghost of Storm to coo that Clear Sky "never drove anyone away" with his abusive behavior and gives Tom the Wifebeater a heroic redemption death.

So why is the scolding from Wind Runner treated as unambiguously harsh? What's the difference between her and them?

Why is it that outside of this little bubble of the community, you can get buried in a flood of people crying about how "Clear Sky made Summisteaks Butt he thought it was the right thing :((( He feels bad about shoving Thunder's face in a weeping, pus-filled wound and trying to kill him :((((" but Wind Runner is mean about Moth Flight not catching a rabbit and she should be skinned alive

Why is WIND RUNNER held responsible for the death of Clear Sky's child in Moth Flight's Vision, WHEN IT WAS COMPLETELY HIS OWN FAULT??

So, why should I hate her? Because she's mean to the idiot protagonists? Because she's Yet Another Bad Mom whose actions ARE treated as Bad in the story, in the arc famous for openly weeping whenever someone's mad at their abusive dad?? When she has this whole horrific, unexamined story about how incredibly bigoted The Settlers are towards her and the extremes she goes to in order to please them?

I'm glad she's mean, actually. She should have been even meaner. I think she should have a gun

[sunnist4rs]

I hate men because today after years of my brother mocking me whenever I talk about something I’m well informed on by saying I did no research I finally told him how much it upsets me. So straight after he brought up my male assault statistics and called them fake before leaving.

[nonsenseafterdark]

Ideas and stuff

Simon Riley visits the States to train some men and talk to anyone who’s interested in having a career in special forces. At most, he’s staying there for only a couple months, but he finds out the state he’s staying in happens to be where his former teammate, Gary Sanderson, lives, who was medically discharged due to career ending injuries. He and Simon kept in touch though, and he always said if Simon was ever around, he should pay him a visit.

[mirrorhouse]

putting this all under a readmore and not tagging i just wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere .. talking about marius and his fans & tw for mentioning csa / sa

personally. i understand that the marius/armand relationship has been a popular part of the book series for decades and it's fictional and yes i get it. but. i dont understand those fans who encounter people who find it purely horrifying or upsetting and then get mad at them for it. just because of how it's framed in the books as a beautiful gothic love story (filtered through both the author's intention & the skewed perspectives of the two characters involved in it) doesn't mean EVERYONE has to romanticise it and it's only babies or idiots or show only fans who "can't handle gothic fiction".

and then the people who try to convince everyone marius is armand's saviour who only ever treated him with love and kindness really confuse me. like, is it a wholesome relationship built on mutual love? or is it abusive and awful AND loving and caring at the same time? aren't the people who deny marius did anything wrong to armand really the ones who can't stomach enjoying gothic romances and have to twist it into something else?

it's a story of a fully grown man, a millenia old vampire, rescuing a teenager from sex slavery by purchasing him for himself, renaming him, showering him with affection, sexually abusing him, genuinely loving him, treating him like a child and an adult and student and son and lover all at the same time, making his entire world revolve around his master, punishing him emotionally and eventually physically whenever he gets too clingy or aggressive. and it's all done, not under just the 'guise' of love, but from a place of genuine love, and that's how both characters see it. it's entirely damaging and fucked up and the aftereffects of it on armand's mind and sense of self are present for centuries, compounded by everything else he went through. he still draws both comfort and pain from thinking about his past now and even tries to partially recreate the dynamic with someone else both in the book (with daniel, armand taking the role of the master; and keeping young 'mortal slaves' for a time) and in the show (with louis, armand taking the role of the slave)

it is a super fucked up relationship & i'm not one of those people who thinks you shouldn't be allowed to enjoy those in fiction. there's a lot of them that appeal to me obviously, and of course everyone has their own boundaries when it comes to that too. AND i know it's not all marius fans or even all marius/armand fans. i literally don't care what people like in fiction and i think we should all just mind our own business honestly

but it's the people who act like they're the only ones who get that it's just a tragic beautiful romance, that nobody else can read apparently, that 'marius haters' are just looking for things to be mad at that make me go ???????

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

"Jason was the happy robin" this, "jason was the angry robin" that. Let's all be fully honest here Jason was the lonely robin

[killerpancakeburger]

Been srlsy into the idea of writing more, explicitely fat Reader. Not sure how to tags it thought.

[toddtakefive]

thinking about todd and his resolve toward… not quite isolation, but being alone in a room full of people again. he goes along to the study room to sit on his own and do his homework, he sits at the poets table and follows along with what’s being said while keeping quiet, he goes to the meetings at all but doesn’t necessarily contribute (in fact, if you watch him when cameron is telling the story ‘from camp in sixth grade’, you can see that he recognizes it before any of the other poets but doesn’t voice it until they all have). he’s not alone, necessarily, if you want to get technical about it, he’s just lonely, and he’s generally okay with that. he doesn’t have friends and that’s fine, he doesn’t participate in class and that’s fine, he doesn’t have a relationship with his family and that’s fine—he could live without any real connection and he’d have been, more or less, fine.

the thing about when he says “i can take care of myself just fine!” is that he isn’t really wrong, you can infer that he’s been doing it his entire life anyway, it’s that ‘taking care of yourself’ isn’t the same thing as really living or being happy. todd’s an introvert, certainly, and even as he gets closer to the group he defaults to sitting quietly in the background, but he’s also denying himself community out of fear not introversion. todd isn’t friendless because he’s an introvert, although that definitely plays a part, he’s friendless because he pushes anyone that might want his company away. if anyone has every wanted for his attention in the first place. (neil’s unwavering interest in him is unique (even when it comes to the rest of the poets, who are fine with todd coming along and joining the group, but aren’t really hellbent on him being there in the beginning) and his refusal to accept it is a direct result of being so lonely growing up.)

there’s obviously something to be said about the implications of his parents neglect, and the more than likely fact that he grew up friendless, and how those both play a part in in him being so skilled at dodging social interaction/being so avoidant of it, but by the time we see him in the movie he’s all but accepted his fate as being alone his entire life. he’s already accepted being the family disappointment, and he’s already accepted he’ll never amount to anything, and he obviously doesn’t like it, but he’d have managed living with that knowledge without the confirmation that it was all wrong. would he have been miserable? almost certainly. but he’d have managed. he’d done it for that long already, anyhow.

[starfall-isle]

I’m just a ten cent copy

Of people far more advanced than me

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

welp since some of those shitty leaks turned out to be true, those rook's rest leaks are going to end up being true and from the very bottom of my heart i wish c*ndal a very never get work adapting anything again i hope by the end of this your reputation is worse than benioff's and weiss's because it's all you deserve.

[yuridovewing]

i understand the frustration with “i made this gay pairing cis x trans so they can still have biological babies” with no thought to other methods and how ppl assume thats the case when it comes to mothpool aus where mothwing is also the mother of the three, but also…. idk i kinda dont give a shit if someone wants to do that and i dont really think its inherently transphobic as long as its handled with care and respect.

what really concerns me about this debate is how some people are adamant that you cannot portray trans people having biological children in media or youre being disrespectful. and im gonna say as a nonbinary person who doesnt want children for themself- thats kinda fucking weird? like i understand that for some people, theyre trans themselves and theyre speaking from a place of dysphoria, and i absolutely get that, which is why i think the topic should be handled with nuance and diversity in trans characters, but like…. guys. pregnant trans men exist irl. trans women get people pregnant irl. trans ppl’s ability and right to parent and have biological children are being debated irl. we get denied the opportunity to adopt as well.

in a climate like this, are we SURE we want the stance on rewrites and headcanons in the silly cat books to be “if you portray trans characters having children, especially with a gay couple, youre a transphobic freak no matter what!” does it really matter? especially if its being done by a trans person handling the topic with nuance who has a lot of trans characters with varying perspectives?

obviously yes, remember that thats not the only way certain gay couples can have kids, remember that not every trans person is fully comfortable with it and keep that in mind, remember that surrogacy and adoption are also perfectly valid ways to give fan babies- but remember that there are OPTIONS. not that you need to condemn the idea of transgender parents in the first place unless they fit the very specific criteria of “proper transgender representation” and anything that dares deviate from that is proof the op is a transphobic monster (bonus points if theyre a trans creator bc i mostly see trans people getting shit for this and it kinda pisses me off. although idm if cis people do it either as long as theyre handling it with respect)

[iamumbra195]

Don't you love it when you get back into your childhood hyper-fixation that you remember very fondly as an adult and realize how fucking depressing the actual story is now that you have the capacity to understand it beyond cool fighting and characters, humor, and awesome friendships?

[martyrbat]

sorry but im still just thinking about how batman 105 (aka the comic where bruce gets his tits out and asks khoa to stay) begins with them having a sloppy breakup in the rain and khoa offering bruce to travel and save the world together, they'll live lavishly and gather resources. and then MAYBE they can tackle gotham together. hes trying to convince bruce to stay and that hes going to get himself killed because of his stupid bleeding heart and how he blames himself for every loss. that together they can conquer so much more. and bruce responds by calling him broken and telling him he's angry that bruce is always going to care about the people he saves. he's still determined to go, still choosing gotham over his best (and only) friend.

but he tells him this as theyre in the rain and khoa is still trying to convince bruce to change his mind despite the plane being there and knowing that bruce wont. bruce is one of the only people thats seen his face and knows his name, the only person that truly knows him—yet all those years they spent together still isn't as important as that vow bruce took as a mourning 8 year old boy. so he demands for bruce to never say his name again—he doesn't get that right or the one to see his face ever again. and bruce still doesnt change his mind, leaving khoa behind without so much as a glance behind him.

while batman annual 2021 is khoa bragging about his greatest feat—taking down madame midas, the woman who laughed as his mother was killed and as her father strong-armed his father's independent business. he doesn't tell bruce this but it still ends with bruce pointing out there has to be a reason he cared and spent so long on it. khoa denies it, of course, repeating back what he tells himself constantly. he doesnt care about anything (and, by extension, about anyone). but the comic literally just showed us, the reader, between those two pages that this isnt true! he had a personal motive, he recired back the words she told him all those years again! but after khoa says he doesnt care about anything is the first time on panel that bruce calls him khoa again (as far as i remember :p)

but then khoa is suddenly changing the topic!! not allowing bruce to continue, not even acknowledging the name or all the years it nust have been between the last time someone called him that—the last time BRUCE called him that. and its only after the accusation of khoa caring like how he does—of khoa not being ‘broken’ like how he said the last time he attempted to use that name!! AND that this is their last chronical interaction (on panel) before khoa is the one leaving bruce behind to train bao...

im sure bruce used it off panel before this (and it was probably during sloppy old man sex) but this being it on paper has been making me go >:3c!!!!

[wttcsms]

i absolutely love this plot bc there's something so fun and intimate abt having the worst aspects of yourself known by only one person + then that same person has the nerve to still stick around, has the nerve to be the only person who has stuck around & in essence, that's what you and kaiser are to each other.

[spicyicymeloncat]

You ever think about how whenever you hit a female character with the “buff, smartass, takes no shit, is never vulnerable” gun you might accidentally be reinventing the “tough guys don’t cry” mentality which is part of the reason why men have shorter lifespans than women.

Being vulnerable isn’t inherently female but you’re hating it for misogynistic reasons anyways and it helps no one on the gender spectrum.