#ME @ MYSELF: I can get real pretentious with this right? right.

[imflyingfish]

Its weird because i dont actually have much of a desire to move to france or use french reguarly in my life but at this point ive deadicated over a year to learning it so i might as well keep going and finish

[olderthannetfic]

Obvious Disclaimer that this is not about any specific anon in particular, not about OTNF themself, but that my following rant might *slightly* punch down on people who ARE, well, older than net fics are.

But my honest opinion is that I really don’t like it when us old heads tend to sorta…talk down to? “Adultsplain”, if that’s even a thing? To The Gen Zs, by being like “damn kids! back in my day we never used our real name or posted selfies or posted about our personal life at all!” Don’t get me wrong, I’m one of those people who never posted the real me — but not because I was anonymous and cared about online safety, because I was a liar 😂 That being said, there ARE older people who definitely over-shared or “doxxed” themselves and still do, and there’s younger people who don’t!

I also feel like being “ha, these stupid KIDS who post about their FANDOM LIFE on TIK TOCK under their REAL NAME AND FACE where IRLS CAN SEE THEM, how STUPID” is not doing anyone any favors. Is that, technically, a smart thing for kids to do? No. Has it become normalized? Yes. And does that suck for people who might be bullied or outed or whatever cuz they genuinely are dumb and don’t know better and then someone they don’t like sees their stuff? Yes.

We all talk about how there’s no more kids spaces on the internet and how that’s a shame, but then five seconds later we’ll reblog that one “At any time I’m at risk of seeing a 14 year olds opinion and that’s why I hate it here” post. There’s really so few kid spaces on the net now, that’s true. We should extend empathy and let the teens be obnoxious and pretentious in peace, rather than making it a point to “ratio” or “roast them.” Idk personally I’d be completely unbothered if some 14 year old insulted my fic or my ship or whatever. I’d just block and move on, no need to try to argue with them.

And also, not all kids are even pretentious or obnoxious! I’m not saying we all need to take the kids under our wings, but we should be careful about not hating them just for being in their teens years, you know?

Also… telling a teenager to not post PII or not get into discourse or not have social media or whatever will NOT work the way you want it to 😭 kids are by default a little bit oppositionally defiant so telling some rando teen to Get Off Your Lawn (blog) rather than just blocking them, will encourage said teen to Stay On Your Lawn.

I just hate how it’s become normal for adults to talk down to teens online. I was harassed by adults online as a kid, then years and years and years later i went through my own “Older Than You™️”phase where I myself was a shit to teenagers, and I truly regret that so much. To this day I still need to make an effort to be careful. I saw on Twitter where an adult posted a DM from a 13 year old, mocking them. The DM said “I’m 14 next year, can I follow you? Please don’t groom me.” And the adult OP was laughing at how stupid the dm was. A few years ago, I would’ve been one of the people retweeting that and rolling my eyes at the child. Now im disgusted by the people who WERE laughing at them.

And again I’m obviously not saying we should be “nice” to the teenagers who mock us for our ships or who virtue signal too hard. But we also don’t need to make fun of their CARRDS or call them Puri-teens or rag on them just for being 17 or younger, yk?

--

Teens aren't 'puriteens' just for being young, dude. They have to also be puritanical bullies.

I find the stuff about real names hilarious because, actually, if you're really Internet Old™, then you probably did use your real name... it was right there in your university e-mail address! Or your random early ISP address if your stepdad got it for you and thought the university format was the default. Thanks, stepdad.

I've done every single dumb thing from going to meet my internet pen pal at an Alice Cooper concert to flying to Ireland from Japan to stay with a fandom friend I'd never met without telling anyone where I was going and without a credit card or enough cash to flee if I had to. I remember sitting on the plane thinking "Man, this is such a CSI episode topic".

The really funny part was that despite what she'd said before I visited, we ran into each of her parents at different times and ended up going to a play courtesy of her uncle, and all of them were like "So how do you know each other?" and "But you'd met before, right? RIGHT?!"

The level of panopticon is horrifying now. Teens have my sympathy. That part really is worse, and I think it's driving an entire generation nuts and we're going to see even more shit about people wanting to run away and live in a cabin in the woods with no internet. But in general, I don't think we're so different.

[fuckyeah-bears]

not that i truly care what rando losers on tumblr dot com think about me but i did just get an obnoxious as fuck message telling me about how internet activism and sharing things online isn't actually activism, trying to shame me into not posting as much or "torturing myself" by watching and sharing pictures and videos of what's going on in gaza. and it pissed me off enough to say this:

One, Palestinians have asked people to share and boost their content. That is a direct fucking ask from people in Gaza and Palestinians around the world. I will keep watching and sharing these photos and videos because it is what we have been asked to do by the people who are themselves experiencing genocide. Yes, it is depressing, yes it emotionally and mentally fucks me up. 100%. But i will keep doing it.

Two, literally none of you have ANY fucking idea what i am doing in real life to fight for Palestinian liberation. I don't need anyone on tumblr dot com's validation or approval and i'm certainly not stupid enough to dox myself online when every zionist shitbag, the police, and every employer out there is already trying to do that. but believe me when i say i have dropped pretty much everything else in my life to fight as hard as i fucking can to stop this genocide and work towards the Palestinian liberation.

Three, everyone needs to be doing shit in real life to fight to end the genocides going on right now. Only posting online does not count as activism, true. So take your conversations offline as well. Talk to people you know about Palestine, Sudan, and Congo. Read books and learn the histories. Write to and/or call your elected officials and government leaders and even the fucking bureaucrats. Join local solidarity and action groups working towards Palestinian liberation: Dissenters; DSA; JVP; SJP; AMP; IfNotNow are all US based groups that have local state chapters (idk too many groups outside of the US, sorry international friends). Participate in BDS, personally boycotting brands yourself, demanding your schools, workplaces, organizations, institutions, and governments divest from Israel. Attend rallies and protests and disruptions and vigils. Write to your local, state, and larger newspapers and demand they cover this genocide without bias, call them out for their shitty zionist reporting; write op-eds and letters to the editors. Sign up for webinars. If you can't leave the house or attend in-person events, you can make signs and banners for people and groups who can go. Start or join a campaign to pass a ceasefire resolution in your town/city; testify at town/city council or public comment about it & write to your local elected leaders. Donate to Palestinian and and relief orgs and charities if you can. And yeah, keep fucking sharing and uplifting and boosting Palestinian posts and voices online. The media is trying to repress the fuck out of them, so you we need to do our part to make sure their voices are seen and heard as widely and as loudly as possible.

And four, don't be a pretentious dick to strangers on the internet. You don't know shit about what people are doing in their real lives. This is just common fucking courtesy

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

[charmedreincarnation]

How am I supposed to deal with anti-shifters and people literally calling shifting a mental illness? I know it’s real, and it's baffling how some people want me to confine myself to a reality that doesn’t serve me. It’s like they can't comprehend that our realities can be fluid and personal. And don't even get me started on the pretentious, usually well-off, white shifter content creators who make videos about how perma-shifters are selfish. It's as if they can't see past their privilege and understand the deeper connections and meanings behind shifting. I sometimes wish I could permanently delete this account from existence because it's just so frustrating to navigate through all this negativity and misunderstanding. I know now I’m in a world filled with possibilities, and yet some choose to limit themselves and impose those limits on others. I can be happy one day, truly happy one day and jt makes me angry that it makes some people mad I believe I can wake up in a new world with wealth and money and a family that doesn’t abuse me and visit my favorite movies. Im not hurting anyone

Not trying to be mean because I get it and went through this as well, but some of you are addicted to arguing and stirring things up. Some people become complicit in their own suffering because you don’t have to consume that type of content! you can avoid it if you train your algorithm hard enough.

If there’s one thing you can learn from religious people, it’s their “I’ll pray for you” mentality. If someone doesn’t believe in God, they just say they’ll pray for you so you don’t got to hell or whatever

When you encounter anti-shifters, just hope that one day they open their minds and discover there's more to the world than meets the eye. If they never choose to do so, it doesn’t affect your journey. One thing YOU SHOULD NOT take from religious people is making shifting your entire identity. Yes, it’s part of who you are, but it's not everything. When you don’t believe in God, some religious people become upset because religion is their identity, not just a belief system. Shifting and the loa are similar in that way—if you’re secure in your journey, would you really care if others believe or not?

You can block them and move on, but I know that’s easier said than done. It makes you angry because you’ve made it your identity instead of just an inherent way of life. Everyone shifts, even anti-shifters, so whether they believe in it or not doesn’t matter.

They’re like flat-earthers to me—I just roll my eyes and move on. It shouldn’t take a toll on your inherent being or mental health. If it does, take a step back. Stop diving into communities you know will make you angry. You don’t have to drag ShiftTok drama to Tumblr or rant about them. Avoid reblogging blogs that share misinformation and arguing with them. You don’t have to share YouTubers who think perma-shifters are delusional or self-harming.

Really sit down and think: if you genuinely believe in shifting and believe you can do it, would you go around trying to prove it to those with no interest in it? Are you trying to convince them or yourself? Don’t tie shifting or anything spiritual to your worth or identity. It’s just your inherent being. Everyone is God in their own right, whether they recognize it or not. It’s not your job to force enlightenment on others. Focus on yourself, use the block button, and defend yourself when attacked without meaning but if there’s no progress in the conversation, still use that block button. Stop entering spaces you don’t agree with.

LOA vs ND, be states vs A and P—some of you guys genuinely just want to live out your high school clique fantasies on Tumblr. Stop arguing and do your own thing. Engage in the free will you have and stop turning spirituality into pretentious Reddit philosophy echo chambers of people who have lost sight of the teachings. This isn’t politics no one focused on their journey and life cares okay; no one cares. It’s should be very fun, engaging and simple—just remembering who you are. I know humans love labels and categorizing because we’re so diverse and versatile and three-dimensional, and sometimes that’s a lot so we want to find our “place” but your own label and true essence and limitless. take a deep breath, close your laptop, and remember you already know who you are.

I totally get that shifting has been life-changing for us, especially when so many of us have come from really challenging backgrounds. It can be incredibly disheartening to see someone tearing apart something that gives you hope. That’s why I find it frustrating when people casually say, "The only thing you have to lose is trying." Hope is a huge factor when you feel like you’ve got nothing else, and the belief that something can save you is incredibly powerful. You work tirelessly, holding onto hope despite facing the same difficulties that dragged you into a tough mental state and life situation in the first place—that's disheartening, and I’m not trying to downplay that at all.

But when you truly realize it’s going to happen, and when it finally does, you won’t even care about the naysayers. I’ve been there, looking back and realigning my thoughts, thinking about all those times others doubted everything. They argued and criticized, but in the end, their opinions won’t matter. It’s about that personal journey and the shift within yourself, the kind of change that makes all the worth it, because when you get past all that useless noise, it’s just you and the incredible things that you did that matter. This is your life so make the most of it.

[bloggingboutburgers]

Hi!! Sorry to bother you but i just want to feel like im not sick and wanted to share my thoughts with someone that wont judge me

But i feel really bad, i really feel like there’s something wrong with me i don’t like sex and every time i had sex before has been bc i was supposed to do it, i forced my self to lose my virginity bc i felt like it was about time and i was too old for keep being a virgin. Also i thought “well, maybe if i do it i’ll start liking it like everybody says” but i didn’t, i didn’t like it but i thought again “oh well, it’s the first time (im a ciswoman)they say it always hurts the first time, maybe the more i do it i’ll start liking eventually” but again, i didn’t, i had sex with different people that i felt attracted to and it ALWAYS HURTED, also every time i had to be with at least a little alcohol in my system, so actually i have never had sex being 100% sober.

Now i’m in a relationship but I don’t even like kisses and it sucks bc i really love my boyfriend, he knows about this but i kinda feel like even if he is very supportive about it and says he still wants to be with me, I think there’s this little part of him that wishes that one day i’ll change and we can have sex.

I feel bad bc is it ok to call him my boyfriend and not just a close friend? Im i even allowed to love? Do i have to force my self to do something I don’t really want to or enjoy to be loved? Am i worthy of being loved?

I'm so sorry. As a thirtysomething that had the privilege to afford never to have sex, and who doesn't plan to change that any time, soon, I can tell you from my own experience that yes, not wanting it is valid, and no one should blame you for it. No one should blame you for forcing yourself to try it (because damn the societal pressure is so real), and for never liking it either. I'm so sorry you've been so invalidated just for wanting to live as you are for so long.

Seems to me that what you have right now is something you've always deserved and it's tragic that you didn't get it any earlier, but it's such a relief you have it now. Of course it's OK to call him your boyfriend. As much as our closed-minded, stuck-in-its-own-way, can't-see-past-its-own-nose society would try to lead you to believe, you don't have to have or want sex with someone to love them, that's not a mandatory condition at all. Of course you're allowed to love and worthy of being loved. And no, you don't have to force yourself to do something you don't want to or enjoy to be loved. That applies not only to sex but to so many other things. You don't have to force yourself to do anything to be worthy of love.

It's idealistic thinking maybe, but I always think communication is incredibly important between two people, so I'd personally recommend (although take for that what you will, you were just sharing feelings here, it's not like you came into this inbox to be told what to do and it's kinda pretentious on my part to write this in the first place) to share those fears with your boyfriend, emphasizing, if you need to, that it's not that you don't trust him or don't love him, it's that with the struggles you've had to go through for so long as an asexual person, it's hard for you not to be scared of such things even if things are going great. Of course I don't know your boyfriend, but if you have the feeling he's supportive, I want to believe that he'll be there to reassure you and keep supporting you.

And heck, if it winds up being a disappointment and he actually did have sexual ulterior motives he can't do without... That's on him, not on you. There's nothing wrong with you not wanting sex. You have every right to enjoy loving someone and being with someone on your own terms. I'm fortunate enough to do so myself, at the moment (granted, in a queer platonic relationship so it's a bit different, but still), so I know first-hand it's possible. And I sincerely wish you the best. You don't deserve to be doubting yourself, your happiness and your right to happiness so much but I can't blame you for that either. Society can really fuck up an asexual's self-esteem. But fuck that noise. You're so valid as you are.

[hikarry]

There should be more Good Omens x Supernatural crossovers

Fanart, fanfics, idc

Just

Castiel and Aziraphale's relationship would be fucking bomb! Hell, even Sam and Aziraphale's! They could be fucking nerds together

And don't get me stared on Crowley and Dean's dynamic! I just know they would absolutely annoy the fuck out of each other but become fast friends that just, ya know, thrive over fucking roasting each other but they would geek out over the other's car and music together. Just 🤌🏻 Crowley taking the shit out of Dean for him not only being American, but from bloody Texas of all places and Dean making a fake atupid British accent to annoy the shit out of Crowley because

Dean: "Look at me. Im a stupid demon that of all places in the world chose to become a fucking honorary Brit. How I love myself my stupid little tea at noon and pretend like I'm better than everybody else"

Crowley; "Listen here, you bloody Yankee, first off, tea is not my thing. Good whiskey, me. And I'm not bloody British! I'm a demon!"

Dean: "You sure act like one, posh bastard"

Crowley; "Posh? It's called having bloody manners! You fucking Americans must have lost them when you killed all the bloody natives and then came up with a stupid arse of a holiday to pretend you are the good guys"

Dean: "Says the Brit. Just the guys that enslaved half of the world and killed the other half."

Crowley: "I am not fucking British!"

Aziraphale: "He's right, Dean, dear. Technically we are not British. We don't have any nationality. We can speak every language and are nationless. Besides, we weren't involved with Britain's colonization. Actually, I believe Crowley spent most of his time in Iceland back in that century."

Crowley: "Oh yeah. We can speak every language but French, eh?"

Aziraphale: "We don't talk about that."

Castiel: "What's the problem with French?"

Crowley: "The problem is Aziraphale is absolute shit at it. It almost got him discorporated back in the French Revolution. Heavens, he can barely order a crepe when we go to Paris."

Castiel: "Why? It's in our nature to speak every language"

Aziraphale: "Oh for the love of all that's holy....I just decided to learn it the hard way, yes? Thought it might be fun."

Crowley: "Yeah. Just like the magic lessons you took. Which you are also shit at, by the way."

Sam: "Can't you like, do real magic?"

Crowley: "Precisely. But angel over here decided human magic was fun."

Aziraphale: "And I am correct! It's not my fault you are a cinic!"

Crowley: "You mean realistic. Every time I've seen you try to perform magic it's an absolute disaster. Embarrassing even."

Aziraphale: "Ah yes? What about my photo trick back in the 40s? Saved us, did it not?"

Crowley: "You did good there, yes. But, fucking Heavens angel-"

Dean: "Okay whatever. Let the fucking Brits have their little fight. We have work to do. Sammy, did you manage to locate the demon?"

Sam: "Actually, Aziraphale did."

Aziraphale: "It was quite easy, really. Crowley and I have dealt with them before"

Crowley: "You mean I saved your arse from them before"

Dean: "Oh for fucks sake, just let's go. Sammy, Cas, cmon."

Aziraphale: "Are you sure you don't want us to go? We could help."

Dean: "No. You both stay. Make up and makeout or whatever it is you do in your free time. We don't need you in the way"

Crowley: "Aziraphale, let's go. We gonna try and find some decent restaurant in this bloody city. Let them screw themselves. They will come begging for help before you know it"

Dean: "We've been dealing with demons for years, you pretentious fuck. We dunnot need your fucking help."

Crowley: "We've been alive for all the existence of humanity and have saved the world twice now."

Dean: "Big thing. We do that every other week. Open your mouth when you fight fucking God and then we will talk."

Sam: "Okay, okay, enough. You two go and do whatever it is that you want to do. We will reach out if we need help."

Aziraphale: "Jolly good. Come on, my dear. I've seen an amazing sushi restaurant down the street that looks decent enough."

[koqabear]

hi guys! this is such an odd post i never thought i'd have to make, but yk... might as well put it out there.

i'm sure by now it's common sense that the writers you see on tumblr are real people with real, busy lives. we are people with jobs or in school or both, and we are people who write because we like to, not because we have to. we are doing this as a hobby- unpaid, giving hours-- days, weeks, months, years-- of our time to present art that we are passionate about. for free.

so to come into a writer's inbox or comments being demanding and frankly, entitled, for them to write simply because you want them to is disrespectful and dehumanizing.

I took a break because i was tired and no longer found myself having fun writing. I really don't want to sound pretentious, but i've devoted a lot of time to this account, and posted really frequently; all because i wanted to, of course. it took me so long to come into terms with the fact that i needed a break-- because honestly, if i kept trying to push myself further and forced myself to write until i couldn't anymore, i would have reached a breaking point and would have probably ended up leaving instead. and while i have reached an overwhelming amount of support for my decision, there are others who simply seem to lack this common sense.

now in reality, i could care less about these people; i saw a rude comment this morning-- on a post related to my difficulties writing, no less-- shrugged it off, and moved on about my day. i only just now remembered it after checking my notifications. however, this is an unacceptable way to treat content creators on this app, and not everyone can simply brush things off. i don't care what intentions you have when sending such things; it doesn't matter if it was a joke or lighthearted or whatever, because the meaning is still the same. we are not robots, we aren't people who will satisfy your every whim, and we most definitely won't write because you try to command us to. entitled, selfish people who treat content creators as nothing but machines and refuse to show their support properly are the very reason why writers leave this website left and right.

now, if i ever see anyone leave such comments and inboxes on my or another creator's account, it will guarantee a hard block from me. it literally isn't that hard to be a kind person to people who are catering to your interests for free.

this is the last time i'll talk about this; don't even try to send anything rude in my inbox, because it won't get you the attention you so desperately crave.

thank you to my followers who have shown unwavering support to me and have left me reassuring words. you are the people i look forward to sharing my writing with.

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

aaaaahhhhhh I need to scream about Taylor swift. just FUCK HER. oh my god. I have depression. it fucking SUCKS. and she leaves her boyfriend for being too depressed ATYHYTFBD HRRRGGGGGGGGG. AND THE PHSYCE WARD AESTHETIC. WTF IS WRONG WITH HER OH MY GOD. yubvefinhj arrrggghhhhhh I want to rip my skin off she makes me so mad.

I know this ask is about a month old now- I apologize if you were waiting for a response. I'm sensing a lot of frustration and anger here. Let me know if I am off base.

I thought receiving this was interesting- which is why I would like to reply. I understand your frustration- as someone who has also struggled with mental health, as I am sure many of us have, it is easy to let the frustration bubble up into anger. Taylor Swift, and her music, has remarkable impact on the culture.

I want to pause for a moment here- and let you know that I understand your anger. I cannot describe the feeling I had realizing that Swift’s latest album is basically an aesthetic co-opting of real mental health struggle.

Also- I work in an English Department- do you have any idea how obnoxiously hard it is to not role my eyes every time I think about the most pretentious and stupid album title ever: "Tortured Poets Department."

I really think she got one fake college degree from NYU and fancied herself an academic. (Please spare me the ineptitude).

I understand- and I also realize that this ask was but a brief moment of your day-if the anger is overwhelming, I would still urge you to recognize your own power. Oftentimes, I think anger releases out of frustration because we feel the person causing this frustration has so much more power than us- they exist above us- out of reach. As such, there is no way to truly communicate the frustration- or seek any recompense for it. A lack of ability to communicate- and be heard- can cause anger, it is human nature. We are both social creatures, and intuitively reactive. Both a blessing and a curse.

Please recognize that no matter how loud the divisive few, like Swift, are- culture is with the people, always. Combat the negativity with whatever positivity you have to give. Personally, I combat the negativity I see in the album by analyzing it- holding it up to the light and hopefully showing others how and why this is wrong. I do this with many authors- I've lambasted Hemmingway enough times now and written myself into an early grave railing against Joseph Conrad. Do not fear- or give frustration into anger- what you cannot control; instead use your own gift, whatever that may be, to give something good to the world- in the process it will make up for the bad.

Please note too that I am not talking about toxic positivity- about the kind of positivity that requires "everyone be nice all the time and never say a single curse word ever ever ever" UWU- BS - but rather actionable positivity. Definitive actions you take in the world- to right the moral wrongs. For me, this meant going to school- getting an education into moral philosophy and Literature- so that I might teach other how to critically analyze the world around them. All in effort, to affect actionable positive change, however small, in the lives of others. Teaching them to not only think about the concept of tenets of their reality, but to intentionally act with a moral backbone as they traverse their own lives. A metanalysis of self- that sincerely codifies our own agency in creating our reality. Ultimately, I act with intention, seek education, to give myself a tool with which I can work. See- actionable positivity. I seek to give people a reason to identify their own agency- their own power- and hopefully use that to be empathic, kind people, who think for themselves.

What, I wonder, does actionable positivity mean to you?

I really believe this- as silly as some people might find me for saying it. I really think only positive action, forethought and analytical, engaged minds, can rectify the moral corruption others bleed into the world. Swift is but one morally bankrupt individual amidst billions of people- all with differing moral centers. I say that among billions Swift will fade into obscurity. Hopefully, the good will outweigh the bad- to negate the negative cultural impact Swift has. Hopefully, we will all be smart enough to negate the environmental destruction of Swift as well (but I am a philosopher and not a climate scientist- so I suppose I must leave the particulars of that kerfuffle to the professionals).

I cannot comprehend the thought process of those who know better and still choose to continue supporting Swift. This album was a final straw (of sorts) for me. Frankly, I cannot comprehend the thought process of Swift either- who decided to write a whole song about how she is bored with her long-term boyfriend because he has depression.

Not to mention how cruel it is to out the mental health status of another- she was also marketing the album predicated upon the idea of this being a "break-up" album, which instrumentally has the effect of modulating the tone. Tonally, she defined this album by her own myopic lens of human experience- and her selfish desire to eternally be the damsel in distress. No- Swift is never a grown woman in control of her own actions, in any of her songs, she is instead eternally pointing a finger and say, "look at what you made me do."

The effect of marketing this album as a "break-up" album has the rhetorical effect of rendering every song on the album as blame-pointing from each of Swift expressed "down-trodded melodrama" not as a symptom of her actions, but as the result of her breakup. It even modulates the extent to which she can ever conceptually admit to any wrongdoing, because she has effectively embedded the rhetorical appeal "not my fault" into every aspect of her life. Thus- even if she did say "I'm at fault" it is overwritten by the tone of her own innocent, damselesque persona. People would still view her as the victim. Now, would this be a problem if the breakup was explicitly mutual? Maybe- maybe not. This is, however, a problem when Swift expressed again and again that the breakup was due to the other party- either being too depressed, or not being quick enough to marry. Thus, her getting bored enough to emotionally cheat.

In essence, Swift created a type of rhetorical vortex around the album though which every song is instrumentally telling about a different facet of her own instinct to paint herself as a victim of circumstance in every situation.

Not only was the ultimate onus of her album- breaking up- but it was also her "going crazy." She, on one hand wants to shame others for having a mental health struggle, while also co-opting it, using it as an aesthetic, and then reverting the narrative back to her being the ultimate victim because now- get this- she's the super sad one. So sad that she needs to dance on top of a giant metal psych ward hospital bed for the TTPD set of the Era's tour. She's so sad that she needed to cheat on her long-term relationship, then immediately pivot into a new relationship with someone who she thinks "looks like a high school bully."

What I think is truly heinous- is just her representation of her own mental health downturn as legitimate, and others mental downturns are illegitimate- or are an inconvenience to her.

Is this really the message I want millions of women around the globe to hear and internalize? no- because it is cruelly self-centered and melodramatic.

So- yeah, it's just so painfully mean-spiritied.

Anyway- I don't want to run away with my answer here, so I will leave off here. I hope you did not mind my waxing poetic a bit in the middle there- I am in a reflective mood tonight. I've been rereading various texts I wish to include in my freshman class on critical thinking. So, I am dwelling on what it means to critique Swift- keeping in mind my ultimate intentions, in life, which is to inspire people to think for themselves.

Anyway dear- this answer is becoming too long. Rest easy- and I hope you know that anger can be a wonderful tool- for fueling passion.

Good luck out there.

[dvrk-moon]

LOVE ME (NOT) - YANG JUNGWON

TEASER 3

synopsis : fake dating your enemy, yang jungwon, for the sake of getting your mutual friends to stop playing matchmaker is the worst idea you've ever heard in your life. however, it's a bit more enticing when $100 is thrown in the mix.

word count : .5k

warnings : cursing, one suicide joke

featuring : newjeans minji, zerobaseone gyuvin

genre : enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, slow burn, jungwon x fem!reader, private school au, high school au

playlist : tba

expected release date : early april as of right now

v. $100 IS $100

The following day, you, Minji, and Gyuvin were all situated at Minji’s house, in her living room. Minji was sitting in an armchair, Gyuvin was on the sofa, and you were sprawled out on the floor, in yet another dramatic mood.

You recapped your two best friends on the incidental Saturday lunch, not missing any details. From the presence of Jungwon, especially to the comment Wonyoung made about you two getting together. The whole entire story was crazy to you and reliving it through your storytelling made you almost shiver in fear.

“And she went, ‘we will help you from the sidelines’,” you lamented, “like who says that?! I get that she has no idea about the rivalry, but he and I aren’t even cute together. He’s short.”

Gyuvin let out a hearty laugh at your comment, “Y/N, you are also short.”

“Besides the point!”

“Your life does not even sound real,” Minji said, “and it’s so hard to not laugh, I’m sorry.”

You groaned from your spot on the floor, sending Minji a side eye, “Is my life some joke to you two?!”

“A little bit.” Gyuvin laughed out.

You rolled your eyes and flipped over onto your stomach, “This is so not funny.”

“Have you thought about just telling Wonyoung to back off?” Minji asked.

“Yeah, I have, thanks.” You replied sarcastically. You craned your neck to look at your best friend, “I haven’t done it because I know for a fact she would ask why. And I don’t wanna get into all of that, especially because her boyfriend is best friends with the devil in question.”

Minji snorted, “You two should just fake date. That’d get Wonyoung to back off.”

You immediately sat up, “Are you crazy?! Absolutely not!”

Gyuvin agreed from his spot, “Minji has a point. Maybe you two could even become friends along the way.”

Shaking your head profusely, you shot a look at Gyuvin, then at Minji, “You guys are crazy.”

“What if,” Minji proposed, “you did it for money? You just told us about how your workplace is shutting down. Plus, you need the money. You’re broke as fuck.”

“Ouch.”

“She’s right, I hate to admit it.” Gyuvin said, shrugging.

“Oh, absolutely not. I may be broke but not broke enough to date Yang Jungwon, even if it’s fake.”

“How about this?” Gyuvin challenged, “If you can successfully fake date this guy until your pretentious-ass Ivy Hills masquerade dance in a couple weeks, I’ll give you $50. But only if you also go to the dance with him.”

“It’s like you want me to kill myself.”

“I’ll also give you $50.” Minji said, raising her eyebrows.

The Ivy Hills masquerade dance was essentially a more talked-up prom, but from what you’d heard, it was held in an old ballroom and the funding was insane. To have that experience be ruined by having Jungwon as a date did not sound enticing in the slightest, but $100 dollars did.

Plus, Gyuvin was right. It would only be a couple weeks.

“You guys drive a hard fucking bargain, I hate you two.”

“Damn,” Gyuvin laughed, “your ass really is broke. $100 to date your alleged enemy, and you’re sold.”

“I haven’t agreed!” You reasoned, trying to defend yourself.

“We both know you will, Y/N.” Minji cocked an eyebrow.

“I really, really hate you two.”

a/n : one more lmn teaser and then i’ll post the whole thing soon… i like this one a lot. maybe not as much as emu but it’s pretty close and i can’t wait to share it with you guys

[dearest-departed]

ugh. andrew’s opening his mouth to speak his mind, now would be a good time to avert your gaze and completey tune him out.

my feed today has been a TOTAL FUCKING CESSPOOL of mpreg, forcefem, and sister fetish content. when i left my cozy corner of the world to upload my liquified thoughts for internet goers to poison their mindscapes with, i never thought id be fed this recycled slop called content every second post i scroll to.

i know it might not seem like it, but i’m a very real person. i live a very real life, i plot my next meal, i drink my coffee, i scratch my itches, i melt my brain watching tv, and jesus i SHIT better content than you mouth breathers can write!

it’s utter whiplash going from a post about glorifying substance abuse to people wanting me to be a woman. people THEORIZING that i’m stuck in the closet and that, oh, poor andrew would feel so much better being a big sister than he EVER WOULD a brother.

even as a fictive (let’s use this term loosely) i’m not fictional.

… ugh. but, let’s not get it twisted, i’m not pulling that bullshit where i say “aw jeez this is horrible i’m uncomfortable everyone’s gotta stop right now” because let’s face it, what a fucking buzzkill move.

however…

could you imagine what it feels like?

the normal and sane thing to do, would be to shut the hell up and ignore the things that don’t tickle my fancy. but i get frustrated, i get uncomfortable, and as poor of an excuse for a human being as i am- that’s exactly what i am. just a fucking human.

ugh. its not that deep. i’m just thinking tonight. and it’s exactly the reason i should distance myself from the “fandom” and consume the things i enjoy. (cue the tags. can you do anything right, andrew?)

there’s not much takeaway from my unrefined ramblings, so.. to circle back- as whitman once wrote;

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable”

i think i just need to shut the hell up and start minding my own business. the complexities of the human mind are too much for one brain to comprehend during such a short lifespan. everyone is a walking taboo whether they mean to be or not, everyone is just as strange and multifaceted as the next.

what i may crave the most, is the validity of being seen. being recognized as my own person. the illusion of freedom as grandiose as it sounds, for someone to sonder my existence amidst the armageddon we breathe and just

fuck. i’m losing my train of thought, now.

this pretentious poet picks and prods a praise deprived populace for a place amongst their people.

that’s all, i think. my goodnight coffee is kicking in and i need my rest if i wanna spend my day walking around town doing jack all.

i’ll burden my blog again later. seeya

[thelordofgifs]

Writing Year Wrapped

Thank you for the tag @eilinelsghost - what a lovely idea!

3 Favourite Fics You've Written This Year

the fairest stars (T, 78k, in progress). So much of myself has gone into this fic since I started writing it all the way back in February. I love all the characters (Maedhros and Maglor my beloveds!!), I love how much it's taught me about plot and structure and evil cliffhangers, and I love sharing it with all my wonderful kind enthusiastic readers!

Ilimbë (T, 15k, complete). This was a new venture for me, both genre and ship-wise, but it was just so much FUN. I like writing things that make me feel clever, and this is probably my most unabashedly pretentious fic. But also baby Fëanor is everything to me now.

in the breaking (G, 2k, complete). I used to call this my best m&m fic, although tfs is probably my best m&m fic. But in the breaking is still one of my favourite explorations of their tragic tender codependent dynamic.

3 Fics That Stretched You the Most

Inflection (G, 10k, complete). This one was SO hard to write - getting the first draft out was very much blood, sweat and tears. The nuances of the kidnap fam dynamic are very hard to get right, balancing the canonical love with Elrond and Elros' genuine trauma. I'm still not entirely sure I got it quite to my satisfaction, but I'm pleased with the final result all the same.

the fairest stars. Yes I'm listing it twice. I'm very fond of tfs, but plotting it out can be SO hard sometimes (which is one of the reasons why part 31 is taking a while to write). I just counted and there are TEN separate plot threads to keep track of at the moment, which is... a Lot.

the salt of the sea (E, 2k, complete). Shoutout to my first proper smut! Definitely a new venture for me (I hadn't written this pairing before, either). People were very kind about it, though.

3 Favourite Lines You've Written

Maedhros has never loved anyone without making of them a god – it is all tangled together in his mind, worship with affection, ardour with idolatry. (tfs, part 29)

To love Maedhros, he has long known, is to grieve him. (tfs, part 22)

Fëanor had never been kissed before. It took him a moment to respond, but then he found he was kissing Nerdanel back and it was the easiest, most familiar thing in the world; her messy curls were brushing his face and one of her strong sure hands had travelled down to rest against the small of his back and there was nothing that had ever been more real than the warmth of her pressed against him; she was certainty itself, as solid as marble, no crafted thing to be shaped and changed, but a maker and a preserver and a promise of forever; and her mouth against his was hot and sweet and golden as the taste of a Laurelin-ripened peach. (Ilimbë)

3 Characters You Enjoyed Writing (that surprised you)

Lúthien! I didn't have many thoughts about her before starting tfs, but she's one of my favourite characters in it now, and so essential to the themes of the story.

Fëanor was a struggle to wrap my head around initially: in my opinion one of the biggest flaws of all those that follow, for example, is the way Fëanor only appears at the edges of the narrative, when I could really have stood to flesh his relationship with Fingolfin out a lot more. Writing Ilimbë really helped me gain a much better understanding of what makes him tick, which was very satisfying, and I do think his characterisation is one of the biggest strengths of that fic.

gonna cheat slightly for the third one and say all my little baby OCs from the glassmaker! OC-centric fic isn't something I'd tried before, but I'm very fond of them now.

3 Unexpected Inspirations

Maedhros' hair in in the breaking is this whole important thematic thing, but the truth is. I also have very long and silky hair and it is a PAIN to deal with. You cannot picture the number of times I have sat on my bed at 1am furiously yanking a hairbrush through it and gone "DID it take long hours to brush out to smoothness again? you fucking bet." Sadly I do not have a codependently devoted sibling to tenderly brush my hair for me, so I have to do it myself.

tfs was initally inspired by some tumblr discourse about Beren and Lúthien's motivations in stealing the Silmaril! which I think is kind of neat. It strikes me as very indicative of the collaborative nature of fandom: a couple of people have a debate, and then someone else goes away and writes fic about it, and then people draw art of the fic... and on the cycle goes.

an ancient song is a very small little ficlet, but it was also inspired by some tags on a tumblr post! Always fun when that happens.

3 WIPs You're Excited About in the Upcoming Year

Ooh, now I feel like I'm committing to having these finished in the next year...

The Unburied: the longfic I am very slowly working on, and managed to put 20k words towards in November. It follows Fingon as he crosses the Helcaraxë and Maglor as he rules in Mithrim, ending with the first rising of the Sun. I am excited about this fic, but it's an ambitious project and very challenging! Also my brain can't really handle working on two different longfics at once, so it's on the backburner until tfs is finished, and who knows when that will be tbh.

boats against the current: another rather old WIP that is complicated and difficult to plot out. This one is the "Maedhros doesn't swear the Oath" AU. Still very attached to the idea! Maybe I'll get somewhere with it soon.

sore must be the storm: my shortest WIP! Surely I can sit down and finish it in the next few weeks (I have been saying, for months). Just some (messy and complicated) russingon after Fingolfin's death.

3 People Tagged to Share Theirs

No-pressure tags for

@searchingforserendipity25

@that-angry-noldo

@welcomingdisaster!

[ladylokilaufeyson5]

Beyond Rumours

Remus Lupin x Fem!Reader

Chapter Twenty-One

Summary: Y/n is a Malfoy. A Pureblood. A pretentious, blood-status-loving Slytherin. At least, those are the rumours, but since when has Remus Lupin ever really cared about rumours?

Warnings: swearing

Word Count: 1.8K

A/N: heyy. how y'all doing... sorry i left this so long lol. as u probably know i'm currently writing some things for my 1k celebration but i've nearly finished that so hopefully i'll be able to write more of this :))

Series Masterlist

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

REMUS LUPIN

Saturday, 24th of December 1977

The fire crackled beside us as my group of six friends sat in the common room. It was well past eleven now – everyone else had gone to bed, but the rest of us just had so much to do and talk about, apparently.

The Yule Ball was a popular topic. None of the girls would tell us what they were wearing, which seemed to infuriate Sirius – he'd always been a lover of fashion. Whenever it was mentioned I'd always sneak a glance at Y/n – just to see her already looking at me. Maybe they were right. Maybe she did like me – maybe I could ask her...

No.

She wouldn't.

James and Lily sat together on the couch – and I mean together. At the beginning, Lily had just draped her legs across his, but now she was fully sat in his lap, arms circled around his neck and hands playing in his curls. His hands were around her waist respectfully. His hands never ventured lower, and he'd even asked her permission for it. He thought he'd been discreet, but I could hear everything – one of the few pros (or one of the many cons, depending on how you looked at it) of being a werewolf.

"We should probably be getting to bed soon," Lily yawned.

"C'mon, it's not like we're gonna miss Santa Claus," James grinned. "He's not real."

Sirius gasped, placing his hands over Peter's ears. "Shh! Don't spoil Pete's dreams!"

Peter batted his hands away with a scowl, causing the rest of us to laugh.

"Hey, what if we have a sleepover?" James suggested. "Y'know, all of us?"

Sirius sat upright and stared at James with adoration in his eyes. "James Fleamont Potter," he gushed, "That is completely and utterly the best idea you've ever come up with!"

"A sleepover is his best idea ever?" Y/n scoffed. "And here I was, thinking James may have had a bright future ahead of him."

James scowled and everyone laughed.

"A sleepover sounds fun," Lily said.

"Well, since us fellas can't get into the ladies' dorms, it seems you will be joining us," Sirius said, winking at Lily, and causing James's arms to tighten slightly.

Lily and Y/n got up to get changed into their pyjamas and get ready for bed, and the rest of us walked to the boys' dorms. Regulus disappeared into the bathroom, and James cast a silencing charm before turning on me.

"Have you asked her out yet?" he pressed.

"Who?"

"Y/n, you idiot!" Sirius cut in.

I felt myself blush a deep red, and I looked away, rubbing the back of my neck. "Er... no."

"Why not?" Sirius demanded.

"I don't think she likes me," I mumbled.

Sirius looked at me like I had said the stupidest thing ever, and it made me want to hit him. "C'mon, you asked her to the ball, and she said yes! That's gotta mean something!"

"Maybe she just didn't want to hurt my feelings," I protested. Even though my thoughts travelled back to how she'd reacted – how she'd seemed glad, excited, even. But maybe that was just wishful thinking.

Sirius scoffed and James rolled his eyes.

"All in favour that Y/n likes Remus back and he should ask her out?" Peter suggested, raising his hand.

I glared at my friends as their hands all rose in the air, and they all voiced their agreements.

"Wait, you like Y/n?" All of our heads whipped to the bathroom door, where Regulus stood, a massive grin on his face. "I gotta tell her."

I felt my stomach drop, and I was surprised it hadn't fallen out of my body and hit the floor.

"You aren't telling anyone anything," Sirius barked. "Can anyone perform a memory charm?"

"Hey! You stay away from my memories!" Regulus hissed, covering his head as if it would shield him from the magic.

James stepped towards Regulus, "You understand why Moony would want to keep this quiet, right?"

Regulus just looked at James, assessing him, and I felt my heart drop. Regulus would tell Y/n, and she would be weirded out and never speak to me again. I could already see it happening, see everything playing out in my head... until Regulus sighed.

"Fine," he muttered, "my lips are sealed."

It was silent for a moment, before Peter piped up, "Regulus would know if Y/n likes Remus too."

I saw a look of shock on Regulus's face before he quickly schooled his features into neutrality and shrugged. "I don't think I'm allowed to tell you that."

"Reg–" Sirius started, but Peter cut across.

"It's a yes!" he yelled.

Everyone turned to him, expressions of confusion clear on our faces.

"I dunno how you came to that conclusion, mate," James said.

"Well, if she didn't like Remus, Regulus would just tell us, wouldn't he?" Peter explained. "Y'know, so you don't get your hopes up. And if he's not allowed to tell us, it's obviously a secret, which means it's obviously a yes."

Everyone looked to Regulus, who muttered, "fuck."

"HA!" Sirius yelled, pointing at me. "Told you so!"

"Shut up," I grumbled, flopping down onto my bed.

Sirius whooped and jumped up on his bed, throwing his head back and singing, "Moony's in love! Our Moony's in love!"

"Shut up!"

"Never!"

"I will hang you from the Astronomy Tower," I threatened.

"That doesn't sound very Prefect-like of you."

I turned at the sound of Y/n's voice to see her grinning, standing beside Lily in the doorway. I quickly looked at the others, unsure as to how long they'd been there.

"How much of that did you catch?" I asked nervously.

Y/n cocked her head. "Er... just your violent threat. Also you telling Sirius to shut up, which, I'm sure, was for a valid reason."

Sirius gasped in outrage and lunged for Y/n, but she sidestepped, smiling as she did so. That little grin was enough to make me smile too, but it dropped as soon as I saw my friends giving me suggestive smirks.

Lily and Y/n conjured mattresses for themselves and made their beds, before they both sat cross-legged beside each other.

We'd never had a sleepover before – at least, not with the girls. I expected them to beg us to do our hair or make up, but that never happened. The closest thing to that was Y/n yanking on Regulus's hair because he was annoying her.

It took a while for everyone to fall asleep. We were all so excited and eager for Christmas and the ball that we were wide awake. But no one stayed up forever. Peter was the first to fall asleep. I could hear him snoring away, so I cast a sound-silencing charm over his bed so we wouldn't wake him up. Lily was next, in James's arms. And then James himself, and Sirius and Regulus, until it was just me and Y/n left.

The moon shone into the dorm – it had been full a week ago, and it still glowed brightly, the stars glinting beside it. Y/n studied it carefully and then looked over at me. I felt myself blush when I realised I'd been caught staring, but the girl just smiled at me.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked.

Y/n looked at me for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip. James let out a snort in his sleep, which caused Y/n to jump. I had to stifle a laugh, and she narrowed her eyes at me, and I hesitated for a moment before gesturing to her to come over. She looked at the bed beside her and slowly got up, tiptoeing across the room and to my bed. I cast a silencing charm and she raised an eyebrow, to which I shook my head furiously, embarrassment and mortification filling my body.

"That's not – I didn't cast the charm because – because I wanted–"

Y/n laughed. "I was just teasing."

Relief washed through me, and I was able to smile alongside her. It was silent, before–

"The – the stars," she whispered. "I was thinking about the stars. That one is Regulus."

She pointed to a star in the sky, but I couldn't make out which one it was.

"I – I look at it, sometimes, when I'm at – at that place. When I'm surrounded by them." It took me a moment to realise she was talking about Malfoy Manor, and her family members. "It – it feels like he's there with me, sometimes. Comforting me."

"You love him," I stated.

Y/n smiled slightly. "Tell him and I'll have to kill you."

I smiled back at her, feeling her words resonate slightly.

"I know what you mean," I confessed, looking at the sleeping figures of my friends. "I – without them, I... I wouldn't..."

I wouldn't be who I am. I would be shrouded in misery and self-hatred. My friends were everything to me. They were worth more than anything in the world. More than money, more than fame, and (although I'd never admit it to them) more than books and chocolate. They were my rock in a stormy sea, the thing that kept me afloat.

Y/n nodded softly in understanding. "I know," she murmured.

She was no longer smiling, but there was empathy in her features. Did she feel the same way about Regulus? Was he her rock? Her eyes bored into mine, and I was suddenly reminded of the saying, the eyes are the window to the soul. If she looked hard enough, would she see through? See inside, see what a monster I was?

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

I couldn't tell her – not this, never this. I wanted to believe that she'd be understanding, that she'd be like James and Sirius and Peter and Lily – that she wouldn't care. But I couldn't take that risk.

"The Ball," I lied.

If she knew that I hadn't told the truth, she made no mention of it. In fact, she even smiled, looking down shyly and batting her eyelashes a bit.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," I said. "I, um... I think it'll be good. Y'know, if I don't trample your feet."

Y/n chuckled and looked up at me, her smile brightening the room, washing out the glow of the moon. "You'll be fine, Remus. I believe in you."

And the way she said my name – fuck. I was falling hard, and I could tell there was no stopping. I was freefalling without a parachute, without anything to stop or catch me. This wasn't going away, the feelings weren't going away. I should stop it now, I should just let her go, but...

But you're scared. You want her.

I did want her. So badly. I wanted to be with her, to kiss her, to hold her hand and hold her and be the one she called hers.

"We should probably get some rest, huh?" she suggested, looking back at her own makeshift bed. "Y'know, so we don't miss Santa?"

I grinned at her, and she slid off my bed and into her own.

You'll be fine, Remus. I believe in you.

Fuck. It was really going to hurt when I hit the ground.

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Taglist:  @1989worshipper @divinekills @cloud-9ine​ @l0v3do11​ @peachycupotea @222brooke​ @asoulsreverie @lostgirlsstuff​ @lovinnoya​ @arisarise @theghostofshadows @kaicyl @eviesmith1810 @darkenwolfie @thatgirljas13 @thecraziestcrayon @mellozhi @it-was-never-meant-to-be-boys @ilovedilfs32 @cherrysugarx @summer-noir @ilovemarauders @aavenxx @lomllino @th0mas-ed1s0n @mclennon-muggle @eddiesbixch696 @that-gayyy-bitch @justreadingabooksstuff @thesoggy-1 @valvlry @hannah-13 @beatssssssss @im-a-wh0r3 @liszblog @nottherealslimshady @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy @blue-butterflies-fly @teamspideyman @staygoldsquatchling02  @betteramonster

[drtanner]

So I have a few favourite movies - Treasure Planet, Jurassic Park and To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar to name but a handful - but I'd never considered myself to have any movies that I actively despised until I watched La La Land with the FC last week.

I've never been more certain that The Cishets™ live on a different fucking planet than I was while watching La La Land. The whole story revolves around a woman who's trying to make it as an actress being told that she's wrong and essentially bullied by a pretentious wannabe jazz pianist, and somehow you as the audience are meant to interpret this as romantic. Their relationship is antagonistic from the start (that's how you can tell they're going to fall in love!) and it gets its proper, romantic beginning during a dance number in which the lady lead tells this prick that she's not interested in him, but he continues to pursue her anyway and Proves Her Wrong, which sets the tone for the whole relationship going forward. She'll tell him that she doesn't like something or doesn't want something and he'll tell her that she does, actually, and Proves Her Wrong, and then he'll turn out to have been right every time. This is an Oscar-worthy romance.

This Is What Hereosexuals Actually Believe.

They both get to achieve their aspirational dreams re: acting and jazz clubs, they don't wind up together at the end of the film, and maybe the point of the story is that the relationship was dogshit all the way down and not meant to be because how could it be, but christ, I've never wanted to reach through the screen and strangle a fictional character to death so intensely in my life. La La Land could be a deeply forgettable romance if it weren't for the fact that the male lead made me so fucking angry every time he said or did anything. Cishet women really do get bilked into shacking up with guys like him all the time, again because The Cishets™ live on a different fucking planet and all of this shit is considered "normal" there, so I can't even fault the lady lead of this film for putting up with it, but christ. I just know this shit got lauded as a Moving Story of Heartbreak™ or a Torrid Romance™ or whatever. This shit went up against Moonlight for Best Picture of the Year, can you believe it?

All of that and it was barely a musical, like it had a handful of musical numbers in it and none of them were compelling enough for me to remember them a week later, and certainly not compelling enough to eclipse the absolutely baffling and infuriating plot. La La Land was a musical that was afraid to be too much like a musical; knowing that real musicals are considered unpopular and cringe, it was too cowardly to commit too much to being one itself, only dropping in a handful of brief song and dance sequences so as not to embarrass itself. Incredibly disappointing.

I fucking hate La La Land. Fucking appalling film.

[bbutterflies]

all my fics! 💕

my ao3

organized by ship and then chronologically with most recent works on top. I tag everything related to my fics with their title! if you search my blog for the fic name any updates/art/etc I've posted should come up 💕

(there's so many I thought maybe it's time to put these under a cut so my page isn't overwhelmed with this post, you can see them all with brief summaries below!)

Adrino - multichapter

Everything I've wanted (wip) 15k/5 of 10 chapters After Nino kisses a stranger in a bar who turns out to be Adrien Agreste, he gets swept up in the media storm and agrees to fake date him until things calm down. Except neither of them plan on developing real feelings. Fake dating, idiots (affectionate) to lovers, lots of mutual pining.

If I hold you too close 78k/21 chapters Adrien gave up his Miraculous in the chaos of the end of season 5, leaving him in London for years and Nino taking his place with the ring. Lots of angst and comfort as Adrien tries to come home again and reconnect with everyone he'd left behind.

Chemistry with him 52k/30 chapters Written for Ninovember 2023! Super fluffy Adrino meet cute in chemistry class, learning to love each other along the way.

The moment I knew (I'd no choice but to love you) 36k/12 chapters It's totally possible to pretend to date your best friend and not fall in love, right? Fake dating with plenty of fluff and mutual pining.

promise me forever 62k/23 chapters Adrino-focused, mostly fluff, they're in love and domestic and happy, college-aged au

I'll give myself a name (something stupid and pretentious) 31k/7 chapters Adrino-focused, post Hawkmoth defeat with a hefty dose of angst/comfort, mutual pining, and identity reveal

Adrino - oneshots

Something to dream about 1.3k words Written for Adrino week 2024! Ninoir shenanigans ending with a sleepover

Stupid for you 2.4k words Written for Adrino week 2024! Adrien has a crush on Carapace, with lots of Adripace shenanigans

Pasta-tively perfect 1k words Written for Adrino week 2024! Adrien tries his hand at cooking for a surprise dinner (and confession) to Nino

love you in the dark 5k words Friends with benefits except it's tragic. Emotional hurt (a lot of it)/comfort.

Love you snow much 1k words Ice skating date and some fluffy winter fun.

Not much of a cat person 3.2k words Adrien is trying to catch a stray cat outside his apartment, and gets his (really cute) neighbor's help.

The memories we (don't) make 3.4k words Adrino except they're drunk and they make out (a lot) and that's, like, totally normal. For sure. Definitely.

ways to say I love you 600 words Adrino where Adrien purrs. That's it <3

Falling into place 2.6k words You know when you're queer and a teenager and in love with your best friend? That but it's Adrino

Alyanette

the thought of you 900 words Confessions and realizing feelings, as sapphic as I could make it

Gen

the view between 2k words Adrien returns to the mansion post-Monarch’s defeat, character study, light angst

Lovesquare

fine line 5k words What happens if you try to be someone you're not on a superhero scale? Loveybug/Catwalker angst

Meant to be and Intertwined 45k/14 chapters and 21k/9 chapters Lovesquare college au with different heroes, where Marinette and Adrien still find each other; and a few post-story drabbles

I'd fall in love with you a thousand times 52k/13 chapters Lovesquare memory loss au post Hawkmoth defeat, falling in love again

Out of Step 41k/8 chapters Lovesquare kwami swap au with some angst/comfort thrown in

[velvetwastaken]

Afterdeath - A Ganqing Fanfic

Author’s Debrief

First off, I feel sooooo pretentious writing this, LOL. But I figure people who don’t care won’t read it, and if they do care, I can only hope they’ll find it mildly interesting.

And so, without further ado, let’s take a peak behind the curtain of this fic!

I first started writing this all the way back in May of 2022. And in the beginning it was very much a way for me to express my own feelings of grief. If Ganyu’s pain in the early chapters felt real, it’s because it is. It’s how I felt, how I sometimes still feel, and how I observed others around me feeling and behaving. The difference is that in Afterdeath, Ganyu gets to do what we in reality cannot. She got to right the wrong in a sense, she got to quench the burning feelings of injustice that so often come hand-in-hand with sudden and unexpected loss.

And that’s part of the beauty of fiction, isn’t it? Sometimes it allows for unreality to feel just a tiny bit real, if only for a while.

I’ve gathered that writing like this might be some kind of psychotherapy? Maybe that’s true. I wouldn’t say that writing this fic helped me overcome my grief. I don’t think grief works like that. It’s part of me now. It always will be. But I think it did help me compartmentalize it, to put it in a space and into words that I can more comfortably handle. So that’s something.

But whatever this fic started out as, it quickly grew to be more than that. And part of that is why I made the choice to post as Anon. I think most people know my writing because of Reversal. And Afterdeath is a whole other beast. Reversal is great, I love it to bits, but it got far more attention that I ever dreamed it would, and I ended up putting a lot of pressure on myself not to disappoint people. And if they were to open Afterdeath expecting more Reversal, they would be VERY disappointed, lol.

But I learned something during this whole writing and posting process: I do not care. Or rather, I am learning to not care. I will write the things I enjoy writing and the things I would want to read myself. Others can read it or not, and that’s okay. I am still happy to share my writing, even if I end up the only one entertained by it. It’ll still be enough.

This fic also has a lot of firsts for me. I have never written something this long. Or with this rating, LMAO! And, if I’m honest, as challenging as it was at times, it was fun to push myself and see what’s possible. I will not claim it’s prefect, or even anywhere close, but It has been something of a confidence booster. And as silly as it feels, I am prodigiously proud of myself for writing—and finishing—this fic. And yes, I fully intend to typeset and bind it for myself because I am that just self indulgent LOL!

I also want to thank everyone who followed along, reading and commenting as I worked on this over the last year. A few people guessed it was me posting very early on, and their support has been instrumental. So THANK YOU! I couldn’t have done it without you.

I am always happy to talk about my fics, or ganqing in general, so if anyone has questions or whatever about anything, my inbox is open.

But now, it’s time to work on some of my other WIPs! Wish me luck lol.

— Velvetwastaken

[vvatchword]

Reading BioShock: Rapture (Part 1: The Cover)

Part 2: John Shirley and the Front Matter ->

“Who the hell is Reggie?” I asked my friends a while back.

Reggie shows up in a lot of BioShock fanfiction. At first I thought he was a fan-made creation that had jumped isolation, but he appeared in enough oddball places that I began to think I had missed something important from canon.

“He’s from the BioShock novel,” a friend replied.

I swore and eyeballed the novel, which has been sitting next to me for about two years now.

BioShock: Rapture is a video-game tie-in novel written by John Shirley (aka Some Guy) and published in July 2011. Originally, it had been slated to release with BioShock 2, which launched February 9, 2010. It did not because it had to work in BioShock 2 elements and the BioShock 1 canon had to be okayed by Ken Levine, creative director of Irrational Games.

Why I’m Reading This Thing

I’ve been working on a BioShock epfic, as you probably know since I won’t shut up about it. I adore working with pre-existing canon in an effort to harmonize dissonant elements and attempt Art (lol); long story short, my fanfiction is for my own satisfaction and nothing more. I like being as accurate as possible; I do not want to lie; and I like to respond to what someone is actually saying rather than the Internet custom of “Inventing a Guy to Get Mad At.”

So of course I bought the BioShock novelization the minute it came out. At the time, I was on about the third draft of my epfic.

I read about 50 pages, writing mean notes in the margins as I went, before I just stopped. I just couldn’t stand it. It was so, so wrong. At the time, I couldn’t have told you why. All I remember was that Andrew Ryan felt pathetic, and that is unforgivable. Ryan should always feel threatening and powerful and real. BioShock: Rapture’s Ryan felt pretentious and annoying and I was pretty sure I could give him a swirly with impunity.

What made this dissonance particularly irritating was that the information presented was not necessarily incorrect, but the tone, social dynamics, and overall implications were… how do I put this? Stupid. Stupid and vapid. The character interactions, the author’s comprehension of social and historical issues, the emotional zing—all void, careless, or off. That subtle off-kilter sensation ends up building into a hell of a thing.

I can stand a lot of bullshit. I even love bullshit. But what I cannot bear under any circumstances is boredom and “safe art.” And BioShock: Rapture was the definition of safe.

I had to realize that this was, first and foremost, a corporate product, lobotomized and neutered and defanged, with all the possible poison sucked out of it. (Coincidentally: just how I felt about BioShock 2.) The person who wrote it didn’t give a shit about it. The corporate execs who commissioned it didn’t give a shit about it. Only Levine probably gave a shit, and only in that the right information was presented. (I don’t know if BioShock 2’s creative director, Jordan Thomas, was involved. He wasn’t mentioned in any of the interviews I read.)

If this had been literally any other book, I would have gotten rid of it and forgotten about its existence. But Ken Levine, creative director of BioShock 1, had been involved, and by all accounts, he hadn’t spared any details. That meant that canon existed in this piece of shit—canon for BioShock 1, my favorite out of the three installments.

I don’t believe in making any more work for myself than necessary, and I don’t always trust wikis: I had to get into this book to find framework for my own.

I had to fucking read it.

The Journal Method

In an attempt to further cement the book in my mind, I first attempted to do a book club with other fans—not once, but four times. My attempts fell through, partially because I fucking hate everything about this book. My brain gremlins scrub it every time I dip my toe in the water. I realized that, to get through this dumpster fire, I would have to write about it. So I decided to use the journal method to attack it, sometimes literally.

See, because I have a jumpy, excitable brain—something like a Jack Russell terrier on meth—I write out my thoughts on the more difficult books I read. These write-ups are usually more like journal entries than about the story itself. It’s not necessarily helpful or interesting to anyone else, but it gives me touchstones that I can return to years later to quickly refresh myself on notes of interest. This way, I retain information and don’t have to re-read whole goddamn books again. Recently I’ve been doing this with Paradise Lost, which is very difficult to read thanks to its archaic English, poetic diction, and constant references to classical myth and literature. It works well!

That said, I kinda hate myself for what this turned into. Is it reasonable? Oh, no, of course not. I started overthinking it at once. You should all know I am Shameful and Cringe and Deserve to Be Thrown in a Well. No balanced human being should care this much about this book or franchise. Thankfully I am deeply imbalanced and have no standards that anyone understands.

I make this readable for my own pleasure. If you come along on the ride, god bless you. Also, feel free to critique or share your own experiences and opinions.

About John Shirley

I’d never heard of John Shirley before this book. According to the bio on the back of this book, he won the Bram Stoker Award for a story collection (Black Butterflies), and has written numerous bestsellers I’ve never heard of, as well as an adaption for Constantine. He was also one of the screenwriters on The Crow.

I do wish I had any sense of any of these things. I do not. Not even The Crow. You’d think that’d be up my alley. I started The Crow and promptly turned it off. This says nothing about his screenwriting, just that I started a movie he impacted once.

I read a few interviews with him regarding the book, which gave me further hints as to his influences. He’s a white centrist Boomer because of course he is. This was the first sign that I should be afraid.

First, socially (and generally) speaking, the more mainstream identities you possess, the more insulated you are, and the less you are challenged to step outside of that viewpoint. The tone and subjects of mainstream media cater specifically to you. You accept this is as “the way the world is” instead of realizing that the mainstream is itself a cultural viewpoint with a limited focus. It takes you effort to empathize with viewpoints outside of your own. Many people never make that effort. The less you attempt to understand alien concepts, the worse you are at doing so.

Second, centrists tend to see every human philosophy as morally neutral. To a centrist, it is the philosophy’s application that can be done Incorrectly or Wickedly.

In my mind, this is supremely stupid. A philosophy is not a law of nature, but a human tool. It can be fundamentally broken in how it approaches the universe; even if it produces good outcomes, its goodness can be outweighed by its negative aspects.

Objectivism is one of these philosophies. If you know anything about it, you know why it’s broken and why it should be thrown in a fire. I will probably explore it in some capacity as I write this piece, but I won’t be terribly exact due to its nature. This is for me to remember what I have read, not to win awards or reach a big audience.

All of this said, I’m coming to this writer in what amounts to a vacuum, with a handful of suppositions based on some quick interviews. I have no perspective on him as a person or artist in any depth. The book is gonna have to stand on its own merits.

About the Front Cover

At first, I began by talking about the prologue, but my criticisms started to spread all over the front matter of the book, which is how you start off with me criticizing the FUCKING COVER.

Generally, covers aren’t really that important, but in this case, I feel like the graphic design implies how much care was taken with the book itself. Someone let the interns do this. I would bet fucking money. The art is completely inappropriate.

How do you choose cover art? Well, what is cover art intended to do? It’s intended to deliver a quick advertisement to the person passing the shelves. It’s supposed to answer questions, like: “What is the story about?” It’s supposed to lure you in. There should be some suggested friction or promised reward.

Look at this fucking thing. What is the art’s focus? Is it interesting? What does it say? Does it give you an idea of the book’s story, characters, plot, setting, or tone? If you knew nothing about BioShock, what would your impression be?

Now, you and I both know (because we are nerds) that the focus is on the globe with the starburst, for we know the starburst is where Rapture is located.

Except that’s not the first thing you’re going to think. The first thing you’re going to do as A Human with Eyes is search for a focal point. The globe seems like a background element, the flare a stylistic choice. You will first latch onto the man and the woman in the bottom left because the human mind is hardwired to look for faces, but they don’t seem to be the focus of the image; in fact, the image feels strangely off, like there should be something else to it.

That’s because this particular image is focused on architecture and setting, with the crowd as flavor over the top; it is best viewed in landscape. The book cover has cut off 2/3 of the goddamn picture and thus completely obscured its original intent. Here’s the original--which is by Craig Mullens, btw. I love it. It’s one of my rotating desktops and I own it in physical form.

"1959," by Craig Mullens

A lithograph of this image was included with a limited-edition game guide released with BioShock 2. It was one of the few special-edition illustrations that did not focus on Big Daddies or Subject Delta. BioShock: Rapture is a prequel, so it couldn’t use any images with Big Daddies on them—it’s not about the social fallout you see in-game. Mullen’s art was, however, a preexisting piece that nobody had to spend any extra money on.

The point being: this art was created for BioShock 2, not for the book.

In other words, no special efforts were made for any of this. Slap on BioShock logo! Find some font evocative of art deco (copy-paste-make shape-paste-in-place), and outline that shit in Illustrator one billion percent. Use this beautiful art in a way that says nothing about what the book is about because it’s really not meant for that purpose to begin with, and get your $0/hour intern to slap it all together.

Whallah! Body-slam that shit on a bookshelf and go back to drinking.

The Back of the Book

The bad graphic design extends to the back of the book. The summary is double-spaced for some reason, there’s little contrast between text and background color, the background is noisy enough to obscure the font, and the Andrew Ryan graphic fucks up the indents, making the summary look like a text wall. It’s not, actually. Regardless, the effect is the same: it obscures readability.

Spoiler: it’s probably because they didn’t want you to read it.

This graphic looks better than the book in person and it is still ass.

Oh hey who wrote this summary?

The First Paragraph of This Lazy-Ass Shit

It was the end of World War II. FDR’s New Deal had redefined American politics. Taxes were at an all-time high. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had created a fear of total annihilation. The rise of secret government agencies and sanctions on business had many watching their backs. America’s sense of freedom was diminishing… and many were desperate to take that freedom back.

Uh whose side is this on lol

So, summaries are here to do two things: explain the general Where, Who, and Plot, and Invoke Interest. A summary is the scantily-clad lady-friend with one knee cocked out of a doorway saying, “Come on in.” She gives us a little wink-wink, shows a little skin, I’ll show u soooo much more if u just step this way big boy.

Unfortunately, the way this summary works is more like somebody flinging buzzwords at you as fast as possible while hoping you don’t look too closely. If you are on the political right, it will immediately invoke a certain fuzzy alarm reserved for words like “communism” and “socialist”; if you are on the political left, it invokes your illiterate aunt’s unhinged Facebook rants. One has the sense that said writer doesn’t actually know what they’re talking about, which is a hell of a way to a) start a summary for historical fiction and b) summarize a book that they should, by all rights, have read.

What’s more, if we judge the strength of its hook alone—its only fucking job, I might as well add—it’s weak as balls: the only sentence that pulls you in is the one about nuclear weapons, and that’s because it gives you a sense of urgency and fear of annihilation. Problem: this book ain’t about nuclear weapons. This book ain’t about the end of World War II at all. Wrong subject. Completely wrong.

You might very rightfully say, “Well, this is from Andrew Ryan’s point of view,” in which case I’m confused, because this is not written from Ryan’s point of view. This is written as Information We All Know and Understand to Be True :) The problem being that it is so slanted, and so vague, and so simplified to the point of stupidity, that it puts the summary’s writer in the spotlight at once, which is a catastrophic failure by every metric. This summary makes me ask questions like, “Should I be wary of the author’s ulterior motives?”

Well. To be fair, a BioShock novel by an Objectivist would be a lot of fun—in the same way Miami Connection is fun. I would absolutely read that and cringe and cry-laugh and throw the book and then pick it up again. Very good times would be had. Why? Because somebody cared about it, and somebody is about to say some very, very stupid bullshit with all the confidence and passion in their whole body, and everything in the story is going to align beautifully to that bullshit, and something bullshitty is going to happen and it will be like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Let’s just say that I love reading Ayn Rand but it’s not for the reasons she’d prefer.

I want you to know that Shirley has been quoted as saying, “You cannot fly a plane without the left and the right wings,” which I will allow to stand without commentary.

FDR’s New Deal had redefined American politics.

That’s the most diplomatic way I’ve seen the New Deal described. Ever. And I was taught American history in West Texas by a basketball coach. It’s so carefully neutral that the first thing I did was read the sentence twice, like that was going to open up a magical window back to the past and show me what harried motherfucker wrote it. If it had done this, I would have thrown an egg at them. Not very hard. So maybe less of a throw, more of a “rolled it across their desk and closed the window to fuck with them.”

“Where did this egg come from,” they’d say. “What the hell. I hope it isn’t a dimension-hopping nitpicker again.”

Anyway, that’s when I realized everything about this book was probably going to be wrong: as I stood in an aisle at a Barnes and Noble in July 2011. I’m talking about a sinking feeling and a slight nausea. I actually thought about not buying it and I was at a point in my life where I bought everything with a BioShock logo on it. I was also a stupid-ass far-right evangelical flirting with Objectivism at the time. Big fuck-ups all ’round.

If the copywriter wrote this… still not a good sign, but better than if the author wrote it, because a) this prose is clumsy as fuck and b) the end of World War II is not the point and thus should not lead.

Is There a Right Way or Are You Being a Cunt?

Yes!

What is the point? Andrew Ryan as a person; what history has done to Andrew Ryan; what people have done to Andrew Ryan; Andrew Ryan’s philosophy; Andrew Ryan’s goals; Andrew Ryan’s failures; Andrew Ryan. ANDREW MOTHERFUKCING RYAN. Start with RYAN, not with the historical context.

America’s sense of freedom was diminishing…

In. In what context. Citation needed. Citation please. Loaded language. Loaded like a fucking gun.

The rise of secret government agencies and sanctions on business had many watching their backs.…

Woo. Whooooah WHOOOOOAH hold on there Silver whooooooah I’m gonna need you to hold on a second. This is way too fucking vague.

At first I thought it might reference the USSR in addition to the United States, but by starting and ending the paragraph with America-centric sentences, the “where” and the “who” is most likely “America” and “gubmint” respectively. That’s immediately problematic because those two concepts are so vast.

What government agencies? What sanctions? Who’s the “many”? What are the wrongs? I’m still groping in the dark. My friends in hell, this is a summary. That means I (the Reader) should know exactly what is going on by Sentence One. So far I have the vaguest notions of historical period and authorial motivation as written by a 12-year-old off 4chan.

A lot has been written, but nothing has been said. This paragraph depends on You (the Reader) to ascribe value judgments about these vaguely-referenced enormous fucking political machines. And we can’t because, I mean… we don’t know who they are, what they’re doing, or why they’re bad. Also, given the writer’s clear axe-grinding, I’m kinda wary, so I’m already holding them at arm’s length.

Now, I can appreciate that the writer was trying to give historical context, but in this particular story, that context only makes sense once it filters through Andrew Ryan. Andrew Ryan takes a vast, infinitely-complex part of history and narrows it down to one place, one time, one person, one ideology. If you throw a net that’s too wide, you lose all definition. A fucking metric shit-ton of bullshit went down in the little window between the end of World War II and the founding of Rapture: World War II literally affected every single country and human being on Earth, and even cutting it back to Just America is too vast a subject to simply imply.

What is more, the story of Rapture is not the story of World War II or handsy government, it’s the story of how Andrew Ryan dealt with challenges he could not bear. The minute you focus on Ryan, the summary clicks, and everything immediately grows more concise and clear: then we can have specific government entities and specific events that lead to Ryan building a utopia beneath the sea. Lead with Andrew Ryan and the explicit ways he has been hurt. Make it personal, a story about a person, and make it specific, and for god’s sake, make it FUCKING INTERESTING.

Long story short, this summary feels like you’ve opened a bad theme from a high school student and they need to type so, so many words and it’s 4:46 AM and they are fucking tired and they can only reword Wikipedia so much before they lose their fucking mind.

Paragraphs Two through Four

Among them was a great dreamer, an immigrant who’d pulled himself from the depths of poverty to become one of the wealthiest and most admired men in the world. That man was Andrew Ryan, and he believed that great men and women deserved better. So he set out to create the impossible, a utopia free from government, from censorship, and from moral restrictions on science, where what you gave was what you got. He created Rapture—the shining city below the sea.

Someone is fucking stanning. Someone was definitely arguing on forums that Rapture would have worked great if only… and then they gave a long bulleted list, and everyone called them a big dork even though they’re all on a video game forum arguing about a game from 2007.

Now to give you a little perspective, this book was released fresh after the Tea Party movement had really gotten its feet under it. So I couldn’t help but think: who is writing this? Why is it written this way? Were they trying to channel a libertarian, or did they really mean it? Are they the kind of person who would excuse Ted Cruz?

If we had started the summary by focusing on Andrew Ryan personally, we wouldn’t have this problem.

But this utopia suffered a great tragedy. This is the story of how it all came to be… and how it all ended.

A tragedy!!! In my BioShock? It’s more likely th an y ou th in

k

Look at the way this is fucking phrased, I can’t…

I can’t

Why Are You Like This

This is a great time to talk about auxiliary (or helper/helping) verbs and passive voice, because this summary is lousy with them, and this is a textbook example of how they can suck the tension straight out of a premise.

The Tools

Passive voice indicates that something has been done to the subject. The subject is not an actor in their own right: they were affected, and they were powerless to stop it. They are, by definition, inactive.

Auxiliary or helping verbs are myriad, but the most common ones are “are,” “go,” and “has.” In function, they tend to soften sentences—probably because they imply the action has been finished. They are also colorless, weightless, and have no emotional oomph: auxiliary verbs are 100% structural.

The ideal is to say as much as you can with as few words as you can, and that means using the most proper and powerful words possible in the best possible places and arrangements.

Back to the Summary

Remember what I told you that an ideal summary should do?

You want a summary to be immediate and punchy. You want it to suck the reader in. You want a sense of who all the major players are and the problem involved.

In this case, it’s Andrew Ryan, Bill McDonagh, and probably Frank Fontaine. There should probably be a government entity represented by some toady, too. Maybe even some suggestion of specific bills or social movements. Hint that Ryan’s got an ideal and that he sold the fuck out of it, and that people believed so much in that ideal that they’d abandon everything they worked for to go under the sea.

It was the end of World War II.

World War II gave me a little jump of interest, but on the whole, I feel nothing. This is a state of being and it’s just chilling here. There’s no problem. In fact, this is the definition of a solved problem. I’m all about no-Hitler! Okay! Good! Yeah!

So?

Taxes were at an all-time high.

Passive voice is used here because it’s explaining a state of existence. A state is, by virtue of its nature, inactive. Nothing is happening. It already happened. Here we are, standing here, breathing, existing, taxed. All righty.

So?

The only tension we get here is from the construction of the sentence itself. This is a loaded sentence—it implies that taxes are bad, it implies that they’re being improperly used, and it gives no actors—but that turns your focus onto the summary writer, not onto the story itself. It’s like these taxes just materialized out of the ether. What’s more, we don’t know where these taxes are being levied or what’s being done with them. This shouldn't be passive. Who's the actor?

In some ways, thanks to the placement of this sentence, this implies that the taxes are a major subject. You head to the next sentence expecting expansion on the tax problem.

Coincidentally, that’s not a great load-bearing sentence. I can think of nothing more boring than taxes. It’s only interesting if you’re some kind of crazy reactionary asshole who operates solely via political slogans.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had created a fear of total annihilation.

Finally, some tension! Now we also have a setting! Unfortunately, it’s enormous—it’s worldwide. So are we talking about worldwide taxes? As in, raised taxes were a worldwide phenomenon?

Wait a minute. What the fuck are you

The rise of secret government agencies and sanctions on business had many watching their backs.

WHERE ARE WE? “Secret” is a little exciting, but what “government agencies” and “sanctions” and what are they doing? Who is the “many”? Taxes + business means I see an economic concern front and center. So why is nuclear weaponry in here?

On another note, why is this so fucking dry? It’s like I’m reading a Wikipedia summary. The only powerful language has been “secret” and “all-time high” and “total annihilation.” What the fuck is going on?

Everything is so vague—so problematically, memeishly vague—that now my hackles are up. This sounds just like a boomer on the bus yelling at his phone. This is Neil Breen levels of indistinct. I don’t like it. It sounds like someone who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, and this is a fucking HISTORICAL NOVEL.

I am now completely switched off from thinking about the story. It doesn’t seem like there’s much of a story at all. In fact, this sounds like it’s going to be unfocused conservative ramblings. I am now thinking not about the story, but about the writer as a person. I’m starting to wonder if even the author doesn’t know what they’re focused on—which implies a story without a solid structure—which implies a story without a through-line.

I don’t want to restate everything I just said, but you can see the problem, right? Things are just happening. Every occurrence is shared as a state of being. The people suffering are unnamed, and the ways they are suffering is indistinct. The friction is indistinct, too. I have no idea what I’m rooting for, I have no idea what the subject is, and we are four sentences in.

A good summary should be about 3-8 sentences long and punch you in the face. So far I have experienced the literary equivalent of a dry gnat fart.

Let’s move ahead.

That man was Andrew Ryan, and he believed that great men and women deserved better.

God I hate this fucking line. It says absolutely nothing about Andrew Ryan or Objectivism.

What is “better”? Better than what? Under what circumstances? What does Andrew Ryan believe? Why should I be interested? Why are you sharing this in past tense before the story even begins? This sounds like something tension should be attached to. Why is there no tension here?

Andrew Ryan is based on Ayn Rand, and Rapture is based on Objectivist ideals. People live and die as Objectivists. They fight for Objectivist ideals. On this very day you can go to YouTube and look up a recording of Andrew Ryan’s speech and some dumbass has uploaded it to YouTube with a slideshow of patriotic imagery. That’s how accurately Ken Levine cleaved to Objectivist ideals: that actual libertarians look at the message of the game and go WELL ACKSHUALLY

I think I’ve figured out why this is all so vague, though. Objectivism is controversial and Objectivists have no shame whatsoever. We can’t have controversy in our fucking BioShock! Maybe the powers-that-be defanged it because they didn’t want to deal with fallout. (Ha ha ha ha aaa h a ) Maybe they defanged it because they wanted to sell it to as wide an audience as possible, and they didn’t want to insult anybody holding $20.

Did they not play the game? Because that’s embarrassing. It definitely puts BioShock Infinite in a new light for me. There’s no way for us to accurately understand Ken Levine, a public figure, as a human being—all we have are little snapshots of him in time and second-hand accounts, which by their natures will vary in truth—but I’m starting to wonder if he started to raise this big middle finger, like: “ooooh u want me to be safe? Fuck youuuuuuuuu”

Which I can appreciate, obviously.

This fear of controversy is prime executive behavior. Executives, as I’ve learned over time, are fucking morons. Have you ever met an old man with the personality of a 15-year-old? Think Elon Musk. Well, there’s a reason for that. Because they hold the purse strings, you can’t talk to them honestly, because there’s a real chance they’ll take offense and strike back at you right in the pocketbook. Because they’re so wealthy, they can buy their ways out of suffering, so the fear of god is never slapped into them, and they have absolutely no conception of what true loss is. It’s not that they can’t fail, but their failure is so much more insulated than ours is. It’s how you end up with Oceangate: people to whom life has said “yes” so often that they have no respect for physics.

Executives are so used to being coddled that any pushback deeply wounds them. They can afford to be psychologically insecure. As a group, they are fertile ground for Objectivism to take root; they are most likely to see themselves as the Randian Ubermensch, for they also tend to be unreasonably wealthy—and that’s because of their innate genius and capability, right?

This is the height of an unchallenged viewpoint.

So he set out to create the impossible, a utopia free from government, from censorship, and from moral restrictions on science, where what you gave was what you got.

This is sentence eight, at the end of an 11-sentence-long summary, and ladies and gentlefolks, we have finally HIT THE FUCKING PLOT. I am going to hit a motherfuckin copywriter is what I’m going to fucking do.

THIS IS THE PLOT. This is where all the tension should be. This is where we should have our actors. This is the plot! It’s about Rapture! It’s about building Rapture!

Look how they wrote this shit!

The story should, by all rights, begin with a question: can Andrew Ryan build Rapture?

The extremely literal dumbass will say: “Yes hurhur.” But stories are not built on certainty, my fellow assholes. They are built on questions and friction and problems. We know how it ends, yes. Technically we knew how it ended when we started BioShock 1, didn’t we? The question you’re answering isn’t Yes/No, it’s WHY.

That doesn’t mean you treat the story as though the city is already built. Hypothetically there was a point where Rapture was just a very nice dream. That should be interesting in and of itself. The point of tension is Rapture’s production—the reasons why people want it, the acts taken to produce it, the actors who try to stop it, why someone would stop it, the ways you attract citizens to inhabit it without alerting the entire universe, the process of upkeep. Worldbuilding shit. What are Rapture’s pros and cons, the devils in the details, the kind of society that evolves from a place like this?

Why are they talking about it like it’s already been built? Why are they using past tense for a story that I haven’t read yet? I read a lot of stories knowing how they end. I don’t read for the sakes of endings. It’s like some dim-bulb somewhere was like, “Uhhhhh historical fiction uhhhhh it already happened so uhhhhh let’s write it in past tense…”

All stories have already happened by definition. It is finished. It lies in your hands. You talk about it in present tense in a summary because the reader’s experience is the important part. Reading is about the experience, not about the ending.

Someone somewhere is a colossal dumbfuck and I hate them for even touching my smart fucking video game. Don’t even speak its title. Get the fuck out of here you fucking clown and go back to reading shitty YA.

But this utopia suffered a great tragedy.

“This utopia suffered,” like nobody saw this shit coming. Like nobody was involved. We’ve gone from blaming everybody to blaming nobody. Like there was a natural disaster or an alien attack or God reached down and flicked Rapture into space.

This is. Just. Just the worst.

What the fuck am I reading about? Who are the shakers and movers? What are the focal points? A summary can’t and shouldn’t give you the whole story, but it sure as hell should give you some sense of what the trouble is and who’s causing it.

This line is what really kicked my brain in gear: the summary is so fucking hands-off. It doesn’t make any promises; it doesn’t fucking commit. It’s a vague scene with no actors in it. You might be tempted to say, “Well, Andrew Ryan is mentioned!” But the problem is that he’s mentioned off-hand, like he just kinda exists in the ether with the Bad Gubmint and the Many and the Taxes. It doesn’t introduce any problems and it doesn’t stand for anything. It’s just so vague and mealymouthed. Grow a fucking spine and stand for something you fucking cowards.

This idea offers a small possibility: that someone didn’t like the subject and described it at arm’s length—what they thought the author was saying while feeling deeply uncomfortable.

Whatever the case, this summary offers nothing. It isn’t even hot air. It’s a little gasp of lukewarm something-or-other. It has no scent, no function, no body, no face. Like the tenses it employs, it simply exists.

I’m pretty sure nobody loved this story while they wrote it and it shows. And if there’s anything I don’t trust, it’s work nobody gives a shit about. Being shitty isn’t the ultimate failure: being boring is. And this shit is boring.

AND IT’S JUST THE FUCKING SUMMARY.

Hope Springs Eternal

I remember reading the back of this novel before I bought it and feeling my stomach sink. I still bought it because I was that heartsick for a big ol’ BioShock novel. The only fanfiction anyone ever writes is instant-gratification short-form and that makes me very sad. At the same time, one must be sensible: writing a novel is a lot of fucking work, and one should be fucking grateful one gets anything at all. In fandom, where everything is a product of passion and free time, one must be particularly respectful of this.

But this is not fandom; money has changed hands several times along the way; and I expect certain standards from something for which I have exchanged funds. BioShock: Rapture was not written because somebody believed in it or loved it; it was written primarily to be a Product. It is cynical, as BioShock 2 was cynical, to appeal to as many as possible—which means that by definition, it is insecure, afraid, and says fuck all.

This is bad, okay. This is very bad. This is somebody who didn’t understand the game on some of the most basic levels imaginable. Things like: what is BioShock about? What is the moral system and philosophy in BioShock—as intended, as it actually landed, and as represented by different characters and the player? What does BioShock say about idealism and those who adhere to ideals at the expense of human wellbeing? How are characters influenced by world tragedies on a personal level? What happens when you have an entire population of radicals and there’s no longer a convenient Other to hate?

What makes BioShock interesting?

Whoever wrote this summary has no fucking clue, and what’s more, they don’t particularly care. All they understand is a Bad versus Good dynamic. Anything more complex makes them snort and stomp like a mule deer, and they’re just about to fling themselves off sideways and hurtle through an elementary-school window screaming about liberals or transgenders or something.

This had better be a copywriter because I’m about to roll some stinky-ass eggs y’all

Part 2: John Shirley and the Front Matter ->