#I will not emerge the same person

[morphean42]

It is with a heavy heart that I must admit defeat. For Five glorious years I have been apart of the Supernatural fandom without having seen an entire episode. I have seen the edits, the meta, the fanfic and fanart. I was there when Destiel went canon and almost made Putin resign. And yet I’ve held onto my sanity, I committed to the bit— never watch that hell spawn of a show. But, good comrades of Tumblr, I must now declare the bit to be over. It was a good run, but I will be venturing into the dangerous world of Supernatural once and for all. May god save my soul.

[brofightiscancelled]

end of first year

[quietwingsinthesky]

Dean is such a paradox for me because on the one hand, I have been actively triggered by him in the show, there are moments where, intentionally or not, the writers managed to create a portrayal of manipulation and abuse and control issues that it sets off actual alarms for me. And on the other hand, I would not have him any other way. There is something — not comforting, that’s too soft a word — about knowing where Dean’s actions stem from, having seen and learned all that we do about his childhood neglect and parentification and the trauma he goes through repeatedly in the show, and that he doesn’t come out clean. He comes out a goddamn mess who ends up hurting the people around him in reaction to his own pain!

There’s a reality there that’s. Almost nice, actually. Distressing to watch, but it is a fucking mess, it’s a good mess! He’s got zero healthy coping skills and a healthy relationship with say, his brother, is terrifying because it leaves him open to abandonment!

I’m not sure I’m wording this correctly. There is a way to be a good abuse victim. Take the pain, martyr yourself on it, and then, even if you have no support or idea how to, then you have to become a Good Person who never hurts anyone the way you have been learning to your entire life. Simply toss everything that shaped you out the door and emerge a saint with a tragic backstory. And Dean is not that. And that’s so fucking good. Everything that he has gone through continues to effect the way he treats the people around him, and he can’t fight the behaviors he might recognize as harmful because he also sees them as protecting him (or protecting Sam by keeping Sam with him.)

And sometimes, idk. It feels good to see a guy who didn’t heal the “right way.” Who mostly didn’t heal at all, just keeps the wound open because it’s easier that way.

[tytangfei]

some people are upset about yuan qi/ gu jin being so flippant about godhood and not wanting to return to the god realm. I support him wholeheartedly. I watched his god mother shang gu--who technically birthed him but wasn't the same immortal mother Hou chi who carried him for months and loved him and expected his birth with joy--leave him for hundreds or thousands of years. It wasn't HER, not really, and frankly I've not forgiven her for this.

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[transvaltrans]

Looking back on the books I read this year, and was reminded of just how much Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief- absolutely frustrated and disappointed me. Spoilers ahead.

To some degree, this was going to happen; the whole series has been heavily hyped up to me, it's hard for any book to live up to such lavish yet vague praise. But, you know, I actually got through most of the book without being distracted by my own expectations. It was tense, and spare- it felt like every word mattered and hinted at an underlying truth. I love when books withhold from the reader, and nudge at you to consider what might be left unsaid. And I was so, so satisfied when my predictions paid off (totally called Gen palming the stone rather than losing it).

The worldbuilding was interesting and unique, I enjoyed that the author wasn't committed to a super specific and our-world-accurate timeframe for technology, and I found the characters compelling and variable. I always enjoy travel stories, nevermind stories about thieves.

Which is exactly why I was so annoyed by the ending.

Again: I love twists. I love being able to predict them, and I love being surprised. I did not feel like any of the twists in The Thief were unearned; it's a well-composed book, with plenty of foreshadowing.

However, one of the twists, despite being foreshadowed, absolutely blindsided me- because I would not have considered it as a possibility, due to undermining exactly what had me so excited to read The Thief in the first place. Fantasy literature sometimes shies away from politics, into pure escapism and fluff. Even some of my favorite fantasy books are pretty hollow when it comes to their fundamental beliefs, and shy away from challenging the status quo- unless it's to restore old glory (cough The Old Kingdom series).

But I can almost always count on stories about rogues, and thieves, and con artists, to at least bring up the issue of class. These characters so often come from disenfranchised backgrounds, from the poor and displaced. They're street rats and gutter scum, who have clawed their way up from the bottom, and never forget where they came from- can never forget, from the way others treat them. Theft is subversive; there's a reason we won't let go of Robin Hood, but even more self-motivated thieves often have something to say about the unfairness of wealth distribution. Stories about thieves almost always have something to say about the relationship between the wealthy and the poor.

So, yeah, I was really fucking annoyed at the reveal that Eugenides was actually the Queen's cousin. That pretending to be from a lower class background was so insufferable to him; that of course he's only so educated and knowledgeable because he's a noblemen, that it was so hard for him to pretend to be stupid and crass like a peasant. That the reason he was so pissed about being disrespected by his captors wasn't because they beat him and imprisoned him and insulted him constantly, that they treated him as less than human because he was poor and a criminal, a tool for their own use and disposal- but because he was one of them, and it injured his pride- his noble pride, not his human pride- to be treated like that. Like he wasn't one of them, and deserving of their respect.

Fuck, I hate it so much. It immediately took away my favorite parts of the book- the tension between Gen and the magus's companions, the weight of the magus having been a commoner once, the way Gen constantly stuck by himself and refused to just accept his shitty treatment- the way every monarch treated him as a means to an end. I thought there would be more tension in Gen having conflicted feelings of resentment and camraderie with the magus- I thought it would pay off with either some of them acting in his interest for once, and/or some of them rejecting their freindship and leaning back into that class difference between them.

I'm not opposed to Gen having been working for the mountain kingdom the whole time! But there are so many other ways to do that- I was suspecting that someone was holding his family hostage in some way. It's easy to imagine a story where Gen is a lower-class thief, who was also being used by his own country's royalty.

But, making Eugenides a nobleman is a subversion of the classic trope- which means it's clever and interesting. Uugh. It just exhausted me, and- disappointed me. I loved so much of this book, and it had been a while since I'd read a good low-fantasy story about thieves. It was suspenseful, with rich descriptions, and interesting character dynamics. I thought I was getting something like Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge, or The Goblin Wood by Hillary Bell- not necessarily stories about thieves, but stories about the underestimated and undervalued, peasant con artists and hedgewitches. But with more of the tension and bite of your average dnd rogue getting up to stupid shit (my go-to class since I was a kid).

I totally understand why people love this book. There is a lot I really admire within it. But man, I don't think I can get over how much that final twist- not just rejected my original interpretation of the story. That's fine, plenty of good science fiction or horror does that. But that it specifically rejects the character and story type of the lower class thief. The very name of the series, The Queen's Thief, had me expecting a story about that seeming contradiction; about the power imbalance, and a constant game of cunning, of maintaining autonomy despite being bound to a royal power. And I expect there will be some of that, in the later books; it just loses a lot of its appeal, when it turns out Gen himself is a nobleman, who was doing a favor for his cousin, the queen.

I liked that the book ended with more insight into the mountainous kingdom, and Gen's feeling of belonging and pride to a cultural group everyone else had been deriding- but that didn't have to be accomplished by him being related to the nobility of that country. None of this had to be accomplished through Gen being a nobleman; it just felt like a 'gotcha' subversion, taking away, rather than adding more.

[icewindandboringhorror]

If you became super rich and could design your own house, but could only add THREE unnecessary/random/expensive home additions (like how people will have bowling alleys, movie theatres, closets with museums of shoes, car display rooms, spa rooms, wine cellars, etc. in their mansions) - what three would you choose?

[lunarharp]

lazy scribbling of my baldur's gate 3 characters

[blujayonthewing]

had the thought 'it might be interesting to also collect a cicada nymph before it can molt and keep it as a wet specimen' and then immediately the concept of a cicada quietly growing underground for thirteen years to finally, finally emerge into the world only to get killed and put in a jar before it ever has a chance to stretch its wings just because some idiot thought it'd be neat nearly made me cry

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

also it EATS AT ME that he doesnt ask her WHO SHE IS. i was expecting this to be the first, second, third, fourth question. INSTEAD HE JUST STARED AT HER

[taliskermortem]

look i just... dont like mew

[the-trans-dragon]

Y'know it was REALLY goddamn evil and nefarious that the oil fields gave my mom (a single mom working 3 jobs to raise 2 kids) a single $5,000 check in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure to never complain about them.

Of course we fucking took the money. Even with her working 1 full-time job and 2 part-time jobs, she barely made over $1,000 a month. Of course she took the money. We though about moving but we still couldn't afford it. She was so frugal with it, though. It did give us a sliver of financial security for years.

But goddamn. $5,000 is table scraps to them, and they bought her silence with it because she couldn't refuse the chance to slightly lessen the weight of poverty on her family.

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

As I now read that the state or federal government intentionally murdered dozens of people with a wildfire in Hawaii, I am once again wondering whether there is such a thing as a natural disaster or a genuine catastrophe in the minds of terminally online people who think everything was done by Them

And like

Every single time? Nothing bad has ever just happened? And it’s never incompetence or neglect? It’s always malice? It’s always because They planned it?

[unnamed-atlas]

Really disappointed to find out there isn't a community of people writing geowizard fics where he does his exploration missions in fictional settings. We need to start putting that guy in situations. Make him cross the elden ring map in a straight line and somehow come out perfectly fine at the end. I want him crossing Night Vale without using any roads and cutting through the dog park and somehow coming out the other end unscathed. I want that man thrown into a minecraft server like hermitcraft or empires and running around them in the same style as his 'how not to travel' series. I want him choosing a random direction, walking into the countryside, and ending up in rosswood park. I want him playing geoguesser in the adventure time universe and being cracked at it. Do you see my vision.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

another billions analysis thing is like so yeah while it's like "hmm let's think about power" but then doesn't really do that, what's there to offset that is "but let's think about what these people with billions(tm) are doing because of their like personal feelings & lives & whatever" and the personal feelings are the thrilling journey of s1 men following the compass of their ego & the way their personal lives matter at all beyond this is about their Relationships. except the relationships are also actually about the power billions isn't really thinking about because the ones billions focuses on involve this Fealty where one person does whatever and the other is just stuck with it. sure they might air some unhappiness sometimes, but if it's not punished or ignored from the start anyway, it'll still end up so inconsequential that it's as though it never happened. and what's left to offset the way that can't mean anything if you again take it for granted that of course people are just locked into such relationships & best they can do is fix it from the inside or embrace it as is? is "do you think this character is a winner among losers & you want to see them pwn everyone & do whatever they want forever" & if you like all the media the creators do like

[tamagotchikgs]

last night i was poking around in my mouth as u do and i reached back where i had always felt this hard thing w my tongue for awhile now but was like ah maybe it's just like. my gums being inflamed in the back or smthn BUT,, no i poked that thing with my fingernail n it is a tooth that is a whole ass wisdom tooth