#and i think every thought i have is evidence of me being a horrible person and so then all of my thoughts start contradicting each other ?

[lighthouseas]

i need to start getting off tumblr more and going outside (not right now though it's raining) this shit is starting to flare up my anxiety

[madelynraemunson]

NEED…MORE…EX-HUSBAND!EDDIE…I AM FERAL AND FOAMING AT THE MOUTH PLEASE BLESS US MORE I’M BEGGING

IT’S ANGST O’CLOCK!!!

𝐢 𝐰𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐚𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 (𝐬𝐨 𝐢 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠)

ex husband! eddie x fem!reader

“all that still matters is ‘love ever after’ — after the life we’ve been through” — life after you // daughtry

WC: ~950 words

3AM. The witching hour.

The air smells of twilight musk and marinating dew. It's pitch black all around you, the nearest gas station being an agonizing 1.3 miles away. You're also 10 miles from Hawkins, pulled over in nothing but platform heels, a black mini dress, and expired pepper spray in your purse. To make matters worse, the only friends up who seem to be up at this hour are hungry bears and obnoxious, chirping crickets. And skinwalkers if you're where you think you are.

A horrible ending to a girls night out. Just what you needed.

Alone and afraid, you decide to call the number one person on speed dial, whose gradual distaste towards you renders itself very evident from the moment he answers the phone.

"What?! I'm trying to sleep."

"Eds." you whimper into the phone. "I need you."

There's a long pause in response to your petrified sobs, followed by the clicking noise of a phone keyboard before you hear cursing and the frantic ruffling of sheets.

"I’ll be there."

"Well?"

You watch as Eddie crinkles his forehead in concentration, examining your car while his soot-tainted hands explore every crevice of your hood. Routine maintenance has never been as issue because you've always had a personal mechanic at your feet. But since the divorce, you've gotten pretty bad about it. Otherwise, the you and Eddie wouldn't be stuck in this situation. Obviously.

"Weeelp." Eddie sighs, stretching out every bit of the syllable. He slams the hood shut. "She's just about blown out. You're lucky that thing didn't overheat too much with you in it."

You've prided yourself in not needing a man to change your tires, wiper fluid, OR oil nowadays. But in the midst of your journey towards self love and independence, you somehow forgot that your car could also overheat.

"Oh..”

You try not to watch intently as Eddie cleans his hands off with his hanky, the one he keeps neatly tucked into the back pocket of his flattering dark, denim jeans. Your eyes then trail towards his leather jacket, which housed his broad shoulders and delicious waist so nicely, you would've thought it had been tailored just for him. And you could just about fall right into him when he angles his torso towards you, his sculpted jawline glistening in the moonlight — but nearly not as glistening as those gorgeous chocolate eyes, the ones he used to his advantage during your marriage to get you to forgive him for whatever mistake he seemed to make that week. Before you could fawn any further, Eddie snaps you back to reality.

"When was the last time you put some coolant in this thing?"

"Some what?"

"You keep Prestone at the house?" Eddie pesters. "Antifreeze? Peak?"

Cheeks reddening, you shake your head. "No.”

"You get this thing examined often?"

“Not unless you do it," is what you shamefully admit. “For the most part…”

Eddie's face scrunches out of frustration. He knew this would happen.

"God, I hate when you do shit like this," he snaps. "For all I know your engine light could've been on for weeks."

"But it wasn't." you mutter softly. You're already scared. This is the last thing you need.

"You know your car in particular needs to be serviced every half year?" Eddie mutters. "Oil changes, tire rotations. Your break pads have also seen better days. Which is concerning."

"Ok.”

"And how many times do I have to say you gotta pay attention to this fucking radiator?!" Eddie hisses, slapping at the hood again with his open palm. You shudder at the loud *THUNK* noise that echoes across the woods. "We wouldn't be out here in 3AM if you had just taken proactive measures.”

"Stop YELLING at me!" you whine, a piece of your inner child spewing outwards to combat Eddie's belligerent word vomit.

"I'm not yelling." Eddie firmly insists.

He turns his back to you and starts towards your car again.

"Yes, you are, you always do." you croak miserably, balling your fists up in frustration. “You always do Eddie, and I'm sick of it! You always want to be right, and you always kick me when I'm already down to-"

“Okay, okay, okay." Eddie hushes you. He runs a frantic hand through his hair. "Agh, fuck, okay — I’m sorry.”

He looks at you with guilty, glimmering eyes as you shift your body away from him. Guarded, tense. Closing up all access of you towards him because he lost those rights a long time ago. Muttering to himself now, Eddie scrapes at the pebbles beneath his feet, fiddling with the chain of his wallet before he dares to speak to you again.

"I just worry about you a lot."

You peer back over at him. "Deadass?"

He snorts. "Well yeah."

With your permission Eddie stalks closer to you.

"I don't want to wake up to a phone call talking about my wife's car bursting into flames — with her inside." He rolls his eyes. “All because she hasn't been maintaining her shit.”

"I have been," you fib just a bit, though most of it rings true. just forgot to iron out some little details."

Eddie relaxes his shoulders.

"I know," he surrenders. “I guess there's a part of me that secretly hopes you'll still need me somehow. Some way, or another."

"I'll always need your presence," you reassure him.

Your ex husband softens up. He always thought that during your separation you had found another Superman to save the day. Some other handsome devil to fix your car and maintain all the leaky faucets inside your once shared home. But as you've always insisted, nobody has your back like Eddie. Your very own George Reeves. At your disposal for you and you only.

He suddenly wraps his arms around you, and as you predicted you ease right into him, the comfort and familiarity of Eddie melting away any ounce of hostility you guys have ever harbored against each other. You both have your days, but the love you two have for each other has always remained the same. Just changed form, is all.

"I'm glad you're okay," is all he says.

'I'm glad you're here," you sniff. "Always playing hero, per usual..."

"Well for you, always."

He plants a gentle kiss on top of your forehead as you two sway around in unison. You hum to showcase your endearment.

And he'd do it again.

———

🏷️ tagging peeps who seemed interested in this lil universe 🫶🏼✨ thank you guys for reading :)

@highinmiamiii @potatobeans99 @mediocredreams @joshlmbrt @eddiesxangel @enam3l @mmunson86 @davidblowies-blog @thatissonnina @oskea93 @aurora-austen @lesservillain @madeofmunson @xxbimbobunnyxx @eddiesghxst @munsonssweets @nailbatanddungeon @swiss-mrs @winchester-angel @belokhvostikova @curlyjoequinn @strangereads @marrowfrog00 @shadyunknowncreation @tuolcaniacoc @catherinnn @prestinalove @pleuviors @cinemabean @calumfmu @littlexdeaths

[ms-demeanor]

i mean realistically many people do deserve to be the victims of targeted harassment campaigns. if you're being an asshole you deserve to be screamed at by everyone present until you stop. some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

damn following up the last ask, ig it was someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out. my bad lol thought that was part of ur main post

I mean this is something that's still worthwhile to bounce off of even though you're not actually responding to me.

First of all, no, I pretty much don't think that anybody deserves to be the focus of a targeted harassment campaign. At least not the kind that are spun up on tumblr or twitter. I generally think that targeted harassment campaigns don't work to change minds, they only work to torment, isolate, and attack people, which will often further entrench them in their positions.

Sometimes people doing serious antifascist work will make a discovery like, for instance "the principal of X school is a vicious antisemite" and will run an *exposure* campaign to get them removed from a position of power, but with very few exceptions when you see an online callout post for a random internet user it's nothing but abuse and an attempt to bully them off of a specific website, not an attempt to protect victims or inform people of a genuine threat. "ABC is the new alt of this person with a documented history of starting cults, DNI, block and move on" is very different than "This specific user who is on staff posts harry potter fanart and is why fascists continue to exist on tumblr, let's make sure they know what tumblr thinks of them."

You are trying to frame bullying campaigns as normal consequences for antisocial behavior, but the antisocial behaviors under discussion here are "user posted fanart broadly disliked by the community and associated with specific ideologies long after the initial fandoms were crystallized" and "is the CEO of a social media website that is implementing features that the users dislike."

"People deserve to be screamed at until they stop the bad behavior" is punitive and shitty and so broad and open to so many interpretations that you're basically saying "it's open season on screaming at people." I think that it's bad behavior to support neoliberal political candidates who prop up capitalism but it would be horrible for me to run harassment campaigns against everyone who says "vote blue no matter who" even though I think that attitude perpetuates real world harms. (And it also wouldn't convince those people to change their minds! The fact that I think they are doing something harmful doesn't give me the social license to send hundreds of people to harass them! And it wouldn't work! These kinds of campaigns don't effect change they just isolate people and erode trust and civility jesus fuck we need to be coalition building not posting callouts over whatever activity has been deemed "freak behavior" this week)

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

oh buddy, I think I get where you're coming from here but considering the kinds of behavior under discussion this is just straight up fascist. You are literally saying that people should be banished from society for wrongthink because nobody under discussion here has actually committed an act of cruelty.

(one of the things that i'm putting under the heading of "tumblr conspiracist thinking" is "staff is currently and continually intentionally flagging certain LGBTQ tags and bloggers" - there is ample evidence that the current staff is working to unfuck flagging and blocked tags that was done long before this crew was working on it. People talk about "tumblr had to settle because their filtering disproportionately impacted lgbtq+ creators" and that is TRUE however that was a filter that was established under different owners with different policies and different staff; the implication that the current staff is guilty of trying to stifle LGBTQ+ content because a lawsuit started before the Automattic purchase of tumblr ended in a financial settlement is just bad, wrong, incorrect, faulty logic. And if I might indulge in a bit of my own conspiracist thinking: I actually suspect a lot of the flagging and tagging and blocking of trans women specifically might actually be targeted attacks of individual users by terfs - many of the things that are getting flagged as needing a community label are things that use tags that terfs follow to attack and if enough users click "this needs a community label" the post will get flagged - I don't know that that's what's going on but just operating on occam's razor I think it's a lot more likely that terfs are coordinating attacks on trans people than that there is a secret group of cryptoterfs on staff taking time out of their day to ensure that trans users get flagged, if only because I think that the vocally trans positive former members of the staff would have said something about it.)

So, given that my position is "it is unlikely that anyone on staff is intentionally targeting LGBTQ+ groups HOWEVER prior policies enacted harm against LGBTQ+ groups and there is visible evidence that the current staff is trying to repair that damage" I'm not seeing any behaviors here that call for individual employees or users to get targeted with harassment from thousands of users.

But anyway, back to the specifics of the ask:

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

Do you have any idea how frequently amends are made and never circulated as widely as the callout post? Do you have any idea how frequently callout posts are incorrect, and exaggerate the things that need to be amended? I'm reminded of Lindsey Ellis, who was the victim of a years-long targeted harassment campaign and made multiple apologies over the years who was finally driven off of her primary platform because she carelessly misspoke and the people who had been targeting her for years were able to make a post that she had long disavowed and was a relic of her dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence go viral. The internet doesn't let people make amends; people see accusations. They see the first post, not the follow up. That's why starting these campaigns is shitty and dangerous even if you *personally* believe that you'll forgive an individual once they "make amends." (and the "amends" people usually demand are "i want this person gone from the internet forever and cut out of this part of their life" - that's not really something that's fair to ask of people when so much of the world is online these days.)

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

No they don't. Straight up. If the manager of a wendy's sprays you in the neck with a milkshake you have the right to escalate your complaint right up the chain, take your business away and never come back, warn other people "hey the manager sprayed me with a milkshake, stay away," but you don't have the moral right to escalate the situation by screaming at them (and you certainly don't have that right if you happened to get sprayed with some milkshake while the manager was attempting to fix the frostee machine when you came to pick up your order, which I think is actually more analogous to what is happening here).

someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out

A big point that I think you're missing here is that @-ing staff when there is a problem on a post or you see harassment is generally pretty acceptable (though much less effective than filing a support claim), but the issue under discussion isn't @-ing staff, it was pointing thousands of angry people at two specific people who are *part* of staff and holding those two individuals responsible for all the problems that users see with tumblr.

partyjockers got nuked because their post directed a flood of harassment at one staff member in a post where they had highlighted that user's URL and name:

This is explicitly saying "users like the one I screenshotted are the reason you're being attacked by terfs" because one member of staff posted fanart from two franchises that tumblr-the-userbase has deemed off limits.

(Do you have any idea how extreme a bubble this is? Do you walk into barnes and noble and sigh because the managers are fascists who want trans people dead because there's harry potter merch everywhere? JK rowling is a terf and a horrible fucking person and I am no longer personally comfortable engaging with that fandom but people posting fanart of a franchise are not personally attacking you even if it feels like they are disregarding your humanity; you cannot consider other people's participation in huge, popular, mainstream fandoms as a sign that they are plotting against you this is why i'm calling this conspiracist thinking the entire scorched earth conspiracy spawned from someone interpreting a staff member's art as esoteric signposts signalling their hatred of trans people. Do you remember when the stupid harry potter game came out and this entire website was despondent because it meant that people didn't care about trans people? That's not actually what it meant! What it meant is that the vast majority of people on the planet have neither a twitter nor a tumblr account and have no idea how shitty JK rowling is to trans people and they don't interpret "harry potter imagery" as "covert terf signal" they interpret it as "possibly the most mainstream fantasy series in the last fifty years")

This isn't someone calling out the manager after they spray you with a milkshake. The manager asking someone to leave after they started screaming that the cashier's earrings were hate speech.

This analogy got out of hand but please just understand that there's a difference between @-ing an account that people are paid to monitor as part of their jobs and that they have support and coworkers to help with and @-ing someone's personal account.

Nobody got a post deleted because the used @ staff, they got their posts deleted because they focused viral negative attention on individual users.

[bennyden]

User hamatoanne's fic plagiarism

Hello, I’m the author of The Android, an AO3 Robot OC x Reader fic that was plagiarized by hamatoanne on Tumblr in her Aemond x Reader story, System Error. You can read my AO3 post for more info about the issue. As you can tell by the timestamps on AO3 and the screenshots of her now-deleted story, mine was posted months before hers. I didn’t want to make this public, but it appears Anne has not learned her lesson and is grasping at straws to keep her readers in the dark. She’s been deleting her stories to hide evidence of her plagiarism. I think you deserve to know who your beloved writer gets her words from.

I don’t know this fandom, but I’ve heard you guys can get pretty crazy. Control yourselves. The only one who needs to take responsibility is Anne. Don’t send hate to her mutuals. Don’t send hate to her followers. Don’t stalk or harass or dox anyone. Read through this post and form your opinion.

First bunch of screenshots: A side-by-side comparison of her story (now deleted) and mine (still up and linked above). I took screenshots in advance in case something like this happened so I’d have proof if I needed it. I decided to compare the first chapter of my fic with the first part of hers. I could do the whole thing, but I’m a busy college student and I think just a quick skim of the pictures below is enough for people to see the extent of her plagiarism. 

I have screenshots of her entire post, but I don’t want to make this too long to scroll through and Tumblr posts cap at 30 pictures. I’m assuming some of you have already read her story multiple times, so you’re familiar with the words. If you haven’t, then I should warn you that the fic that she plagiarized is very not SFW. I’ll let you know where the not SFW content starts so you can skip it. 

On the left is my story. On the right is what Anne posted (and took down).

Not SFW content starts here. 

Not SFW content over.

Finally, I DM’ed her. This was just before I posted to The Android on AO3 about the situation. To summarize, I wrote about how I would go about the situation and how hurt I was about a bigger creator stealing from me. I admit, I was too kind and too much of a pushover. I just wanted things to go quietly. She later replied with this and deleted her fic immediately. 

“I was completely stupid for not giving your credit” Why do they always play dumb? You copy that much and can’t even think to put my name there? You credit the artist but not the person who basically wrote your whole story? The story that gave you over 3k notes, so much more clout than any of your other stories has earned you? Total BS.

“I had every intention of giving credit where it was due…But I forgot” Right. Sure. Of course. If she felt guilty about plagiarizing, she would not be so shameless to accept praise like she did. I have examples of where she happily thanked people for complimenting "her work”, but didn’t want to bring other blogs into this, especially since they were none the wiser to her plagiarism. Ironically enough, someone even gifted her a badge for being a good writer the day she replied to my DM. She tagged that post “#a breath of fresh air on a horrible day”. I wonder why her day was horrible. Whoever gifted her that badge deserves their money back.

My thoughts when approaching her DMs were:

If she wants to keep up the story? Fine, just edit the post to say that it was heavily influenced by my story and leave a link to the original. I don’t mind. The readers will see that, click my story, compare the two, and think, “Hey, that’s not just inspiration! She plagiarized!” and her downfall would start from there without me having to do anything.

If she ignored me and didn’t fulfill that request, i would take matters into my own hands and expose her on her own post. Even more damaging.

In the end, she chose to delete the post entirely, getting rid of the evidence and her clout. I actually didn’t expect this outcome since I thought she’d like the clout too much, but I guess she decided this route would be the least damaging to her reputation. Everything was swept under the rug for now. 

And like a fool, I said thanks and went on with my life. But I decided to keep track of her. Because while I was too cowardly to do anything, I knew there would always be someone in the crowd who would take action. And it seems like people did. 

After reading the supportive comments from readers of my fic, I started to regret how lightly I handled it. I wanted to be mature even though I wanted her entire blog to fall and her reputation taken away. But I didn’t want to be a “bad person”. I wondered if I should keep pursuing the issue. I realized that my overly-people-pleasing behavior might lead her to continue her ways. I decided to speak out because others might’ve had their works taken by her and that my silence wasn’t helping. 

Next is her post, now deleted (I wonder why), about how she’s been so sad and how she’s going to be deleting her old stories and starting over. I’m likely not the only one she’s plagiarized from if she’s deleting other stories. At the time, I only saw supportive replies and reblogs on it, but maybe she deleted it after people started calling her out? Idk.

She’s playing the victim game pretty hard. Acting as a kind underdog even though she’s the big creator who stole from a nobody like me. I know I said on my AO3 update that people shouldn’t send hate to her (and even censored her name after she deleted her story) but I guess I’m a little happy that people sought to call her out on her shit. I wish I was as brave. 

Later, a nice person (we’ll call her Bob because she asked to remain anonymous) DM’ed me directly with a kind message. After seeing this, I decided I should take action and expose all of this since Anne obviously hasn’t learned and wants to keep it all hidden. Bob confirmed that I’m not the only victim of Anne’s plagiarism either.

Bob asked that I not use screenshots of our DM’s so here is a transcription of the important parts:

“Hey! I just found out that one of your fics had been plagiarized by someone in the HOTD community. First of all, I am tremendously sorry that happened…”

(For Bob’s privacy, I won’t explain her relation to Anne. Just know that Anne has refused to message her back).

“I definitely think you should make a blog post. with side by side comparison. I am still completely gobsmacked that she pilfered your entire story word for word and changed a few things. We found evidence that she had plagiarized multiple stories. Not just yours. We found out her mermaid!aemond fic was entirely stolen as well as a few others. She has quietly deleted them and hasn't spoken on them since.”

“We surmised that she takes ‘underrated’ fics from different fandoms and changes the name and that's it. It's almost like she believed that stealing from other fandoms was going to draw less attention than stealing directly from the HOTD fandom.”

So if you noticed that one of your favorite Aemond fics is gone, now you know why.

‘But benny, she still wrote her own sentences and just changed it around to fit aemond!’

Fanfiction is transformative. You know what the source material is and who created it. You know you’re not reading a copied and pasted text with maybe some words and sentences switched around. This wasn’t fanfic. According to Google, plagiarism is defined as, “the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.” (See what I did there? I credited Google. Is it so hard to give credit where credit is due?) She copied people's work, didn't give credit to the source material, and claimed it as her own. That's plagiarism.

I wouldn’t have had a problem if she properly credited me and linked the original story. I wouldn’t have had a problem if she didn’t blatantly copy and paste the entire text and premise. I wouldn’t even require getting permission to write a story based on my fic if she had satisfied those conditions.

She’s a 27-year-old grown-ass woman with enough free time to simp over some blond guy with an eyepatch. I’m a 21-year-old college student who only posts fics during the summer and winter because that’s when school’s on break. I’m too busy writing lab reports and essays to be an active writer online. The fact that she can disrespect smaller writers so tremendously should not be acceptable. The fact that she also deceived her devoted readers and friends about her "works" is also unacceptable.

What can you do about this? To be honest, I don’t know what to do. I’ve never had to deal with this before. I want to be a good person and say, “Don’t send any hate to Anne, don’t harass her. Just unfollow her and stop supporting her.” But that obviously hasn’t taught her anything. She’ll just make a half-assed apology, maybe go on hiatus, maybe disappear, and then pop up again under another name to steal from another creator. If you have any ideas on how to deal with this, please tell us. 

She can try to block me or delete her posts, but the evidence is out and the damage is done. Anything she does to hide this mess will only make it worse for her. I’d appreciate people bringing more awareness to this issue, especially if it can reach the eyes of others she’s taken from. 

Thanks for reading.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

In "KAOS" nothing is anything, and everything is wrong

Two disclaimers: I am no stranger to modern art, and I have no issue with queerness in shows, or in my own mythology (I'm Greek). I am also aware that KAOS is a comedy. It's in the gutter of British comedy, but still part of the genre. At least I laughed every time they said "Oh God!". I don't believe this is the same person who wrote the great and amusing "End of the F**king World"! The premise of "The gods in our modern world" appeals to me a lot, so that wasn't my problem either. My general issue with KAOS is its horrible delivery, bad writing, and piss-poor Greek representation.

This is gonna be long and full of stupid gifs, so sit comfortably, grab a coffee or some popcorn and... pame!

The "ILoveGreekMythology" Kid

Art without context is just a pretty thing to look at. Most of the time, this context can be found within the art piece itself, as the artist has taken care to weave it in. KAOS refuses to connect itself to any context besides the names and a few vague powers. It aims to exist outside of those "boring old stories of the Greek myth" and be entirely "fresh and modern". Something impossible when the entire show and the meanings are based on ancient recorded material. In other words, KAOS is so meta that it ends up being nothing. KAOS cannot stand on its own because you need more than the viewers being familiar with the Greek myth basics to pull such a show off.

KAOS tells us "See? I know all the names of the gods, and what they did, and I know all the locations, so I am qualified to tackle this". More or less like any Western kid who takes all their knowledge from PJO and Marvel and proceeds to unironically hate ancient deities and make a girlboss out of Medusa.

Here's a Greek word for you guys, ημιμάθεια, meaning "half-knowledge". Α Greek saying very well declares "Half-knowledge is worse than no knowledge". The confidence of thinking you know enough often leads you to grave mistakes whereas the humility of not knowing prevents you from touching shit that you shouldn't. When you have no idea what the original myth is trying to say and spit on its meaning, knowing a few names and locations is just smoke and mirrors. I don't believe the audience fell for that.

And don't get me started on the "subversions". A good subversion is intriguing and thought-provoking. In KAOS, every twist was hollow - Greek myth related or otherwise.

"What if Euridice doesn't love Orpheus?" I don't know, babe. What if??? What was the point of that? What did you show us? That women's stories are dominated by men and men don't listen to women, perhaps? And you chose to twist... the love story of Orpheus and Euridice to show this?? One of the best and most tragic love stories Greek mythology has to offer?? You just mocked the myth, you didn't make anything profound out of it.

The Greek Stuff (Nothing salvageable)

I was surprised to see they had a Consulting Producer (Georgia Christou) and an Assistant Script Editor (Isabella Yianni) who happen to be Greek. And I stress that because those people probably weren't hired or utilized for being Greek. We are not sure they were involved in cultural decisions because we have no evidence and because shows with no Greek elements can have more Greeks than that on their staff.

Okay, perhaps they took 5 seconds to ask Isabella about a greeting - which they proceeded to say in a wrong intonation 🙄🤌It's where Poseidon says "ya sás" in the Fates, by the way. How he said it sounds more like "for you (pl.)" than "health to you (pl.)".

Surprise! The only Greek actor present (Peter Polycarpou) has less than 5 minutes of screen time and plays the caricature of an immigrant with a thick (and inaccurate Greek) accent. He has a canteen, selling falafel which is not Greek, and Dionysus buys from him an unidentified tortilla wrap (which... is also not Greek, if you haven't caught up).

For the show they brought in actors of Maori, Nigerian and Sierra Leonean, Pakistani, Black American, Latvian-Jewish, Iranian, Egyptian, Indo-Fijian and Malay descent and you tell me it was impossible for them to seek and find an English-speaking, skilled actor of Greek descent in a show regarding Greek heritage. Sometimes I wonder, do y'all hate us so much?

They considered Greeks only to give us a simple (and wrong) greeting and a stereotype. Crumbs, we are supposed to be happy with. By the way, there are over 70.000 Greek immigrants just in the UK, usually in the urban centers, many of them students or fairly young employees in the corporate workforce. Not the largest minority but not hard to spot either.

Another plague of Anglophone shows: Almost everyone's Greek name is shortened. Yes, we know their full names but we are told that we will use the short ones. Greeks and their "long and difficult" names am I right fellas? Because saying "Ariadne" apparently requires 5 years of Greek language training, and no English word ever has more than two syllables.

Coincidentally, short names are cool in Anglophone imaginary universes and the "long" names are not. it's so strange Anglophones never make universes where it's cool for Greek names to be spoken in full hmmm... They don't even want to practice saying a whole Greek name for just 2 minutes in preparation for a show full of Greek names. And don't give me that "Greek is hard" shit when we only talk about a few syllables. If Greek kids can learn English since first grade and people here can sing English songs and spell English names, you have no excuse.

They also said the name "Fotis" means light, which is close enough but... ugh.. It's like saying Sebastian means "respect". I am not sure if they asked anyone or what their research was here. If I had the writers in front of me, I'd be like:

(This character from an all-time favorite Greek show is called Fotis)

They also made the flag of "Krete" an alteration of the Greek flag and the local Cretan flag. Which is the stupidest move, because they had to remove the religious symbol of the cross to make the flag fit the universe. These are flags created based on 1) Christianity 2) the Greek Revolution of 1821.

National Greek flag to the left, local Cretan flag to the right:

Flag of the KAOS' "Krete":

The only time they seriously took into account anything Greek, was the time when they decided to remove the religious symbol of our ethnoreligion AND (from what I could observe) keep the nine stripes?? The nine stripes of our national flag represent the syllables in "Freedom or Death". The colors are from the white foustanela of the mainland attire and the dark blue vraka of the island attire, the clothing of the Revolution fighters. (That's more of a meta explanation but the characteristics of the flag were decided during and nearly after the Revolution.)

I think I don't have to explain it more but it's not a homage to put the nine stripes in an ancient era where they have no meaning, and to replace a cross??? Let's... not replace religious symbols on national flags, okay? Thank you.

Another cultural element they changed was making everyone have a dedicated coin to pay Charon. Orpheus has Euridice's coin, "her coin", and he's meant to put it on her before she got buried. In Greek culture, any coin would do. Sorry that our culture restricts your script, dear writers. I guess you had to bend this too, in order to create a cohesive plot with a semblance of a twist.

Finally, the many "Kerberus" dogs were cute and I can understand the creative decision behind that. However, in a show full of inaccuracies, this made me roll my eyes a little. I think the showrunners know that Kerveros is not a breed of dog, and there can only be one of him because he doesn't have any other "Kerveros" to breed with. On the other hand, as demonstrated from art/writing on the internet, quite a lot of Westerners are not exactly aware of how our monsters work, so forgive my uncertainty 😅

Nothing is Anything

Every element KAOS played with ended up meaningless. In the words of a Lifo article:

“Zeus is a paranoid authoritarian dictator in mid-life crisis who fears losing his power and murders his aides to vent. Hera is a promiscuous goddess who repeatedly betrays Zeus and has mutilated mute priestesses for protection. Dionysos is a spoiled and immature zoomer who, apart from pranks, indulges in orgies with all genders. Poseidon a sadistic god of the sea, who tortures the crew on his ship for fun. Prometheus is gay and killed his lover so he could overthrow Zeus. Orpheus is a famous pop singer and Eurydice does not love him. Theseus is black and gay. The Erinyes are tough-as-nails mechs that look like they stepped out of ‘Sons of Anarchy’. The Fates resemble a three-member jury in a talent show. The Trojans are a terrorist group that acts against the gods. Crete is more reminiscent of California than the Mediterranean.”

The "River Styx" is a sea, the "River Lethe" is a lake, the gods are nothing more than spoiled humans, the Moirai are drag queens, the Cave is a club where you have to take a quiz to enter the underworld, and generally everything is modern, flat, mundane and anticlimactic. The producers aimed to achieve a work so meta that a "river" is now a concept, a metaphor, whatever you have in your heart. And those who want to see a river when we speak of a river are probably uncultured swines and don't understand postmodernism. Never mind that rivers are rivers in Greek mythology for a reason. That's not culturally interesting enough to explore compared to the new, cool approach of not assigning meaning to anything. That totally shows love for the original rich and meaningful material...

And the reason behind all this subversion? Probably the shock factor. They brought the characters to a point where they said "We have to save the world from Zeus" - Zeus! The father of gods, heroes and humans! - just because they could. It gives off a certain type of smugness that I personally don't like. I mean, I would like the smugness and cheekiness of KAOS if it wasn't a vapid and practically meaningless show. As nothing symbolizes anything anymore, we are just led from hollow plot point to hollow plot point.

If you cut it out of any cultural influence and see it as a story then it's... okay, I guess. But when you consider that it's meant to derive from certain material and it fails spectacularly, it's not a good story. It forgets its bases and doesn't play with the ancient elements at all. Disney's Hercules did it better, FFS!

Bad Writing (pt.1)

KAOS is not without recognizable themes but their demonstration is so juvenile and heavy-handed that it fails to influence a viewer of average intelligence. For instance, "Riddy" says to her religious mother "You dedicated your whole life to Hera, what about me?" Okay, KAOS, we get it. At the same time, this theme nulls itself because it turns out that Ridy's mother was right to do what she did, as she had a greater goal in mind. (And this, kiddos, is called Bad Writing, because your themes and scenes contradict each other)

The biggest theme I spotted was a criticism of religion and religious people who say "Do as I say, not as I do" and create exceptions for themselves. Only, it's not a criticism of anything real, in this case. It's a fact that some people in the clergy tend to preach peace and love and then they do harm, but we don't know, for example, that The Goddess of Marriage is a cheater and yet she pressures everyone into strict marriages. By focusing their wrath on divine beings who are not known for their hypocrisy, the creators missed the mark.

I can give KAOS props for how it handled Trojans to reflect real issues regarding how immigrants and war refugees are mistreated and blamed. I'd argue it was the only (nearly) well-done theme in the whole show because it had the least on-the-nose delivery and some genuine/serious scenes. But that's it.

More Bad Writing!

Jeff Goldblum's Zeus is shit. He'd crap his pants in an argument with a stern Greek dad/uncle his age. Is this character supposed to be intimidating? (Laughs in Mediterranean) That's not to say that Goldblum is not a good actor, but this role wasn't for him. The same can be said for the other actors, too. They are competent but they only give off the air of "The Greek gods if they lived in London, from the minds of people who think beards and body hair are an affliction". In addition to being misplaced, the actors cannot show their talent when following a script that resembles a children's book.

Why does THE GOD Dionysus have the maturity of a 15-year-old? I repeat, The God Dionysus. He's a freaking deity, and a very old one at that. He is not a teenager neither in appearance nor in experience. In our culture, he is mystical, mighty, wise. Why did they downgrade him so? Just for the plot? This is not Dionysus just because you named him so.

The dialogue rarely takes itself seriously to the point it has you wondering at times "Do people talk and behave like that?". In a comedy where everything is meant to be already extreme and parodied. Even in comedies, something must occasionally be serious so there is a healthy fluctuation in tone and the funny moments can hit you. In KAOS very few scenes treated their impactful dialogue as it should be treated.

The queerness and diversity (good elements, in general) were worse off for being in KAOS. Like, I want these elements to be there. I'm just sad about the whole situation. It's not enough that the show is shit, now you also give an additional reason for conservatives to shit on diverse and queer characters because they are part of a stupid narrative.

I'm the type of person who doesn't mind the queerness of Astyanax and Theseus being lovers in the context of this specific show but they're still the oddest pairing to me because they're from the most irrelevant myths and eras. Also, Astyanax in my mind is a baby who died tragically, for little reason if we are honest, so to bring him back and make him a love interest is... ekh.

In addition, isn't Astyanax supposed to be crippled after a fall from the city walls when he was a baby? Sorry to change subjects but the show is so convoluted and with so many issues that it's extremely difficult to stay on track with what's wrong.

To the person who thought this show was a good idea:

Whatever. Bye. I'm fucking done.

[lilislegacy]

to the people that don’t think percy and annabeth would have kids, or don’t like them having kids, can i ask why? im genuinely so curious!

let me first explain why i personally think they will have kids! — in heroes of olympus, the only thing getting percy through all his misery and trauma is the thought of his and annabeth’s future, and their family. in one of the kane crossovers, he sees a little girl with blond hair, and his first thought is that he would love to have a little girl who looks like annabeth and acts like him. and when percy and annabeth are leaving tartarus, annabeth tells bob that she and percy are going to tell their children about him. it’s not even a question in her mind that their children will exist. not to mention percy gets SO excited when he finds out his mom is pregnant, and when estelle is born, he is SO good with her. him and annabeth babysit her. so we know that they do really love babies, not just the idea of them. so in canon, they really want a future family together, and as stated several times, it’s that hope that keeps them fighting to stay alive.

i’m not upset about the other side or calling you wrong! every opinion is valid! i’m just genuinely curious where you’re coming from. like is it your own experiences and feelings that you’re connecting to the characters? is there evidence somewhere of them changing their minds that i didn’t pick up on? becasue in other series and fandoms and universes, when the characters are living in horrible worlds or have trauma or just don’t seem like the kid-wanting type, i completely understand people being against those characters having kids. not everyone needs to have kids - there’s more to life. but with percy and annabeth, that anti-kid future seems to go directly against their characters. from what i’ve read, true happiness to percy and annabeth involves kids. but other people might have read things completely differently!

don’t be scared to answer! i really want to hear your thoughts! i will delete any comments of people being rude about different beliefs. this is a safe space

[prismatic-starstuff]

actually you know what i'll. give some preliminary, very spoiler-heavy, underslept and stream of consciousness thoughts about the final boss; and by the final boss, i mainly mean—

—miquella, because my thoughts on him at this moment are clearer than my thoughts on radahn. (more on that later.)

(important disclaimer: i don't ship any of the characters mentioned in this post together, and i don't condone the behaviours mentioned. this is just a bit of a character analysis and my personal thoughts at this moment; they could change.)

i think miquella is genuinely all those epithets he has; kind and tender. i think he genuinely did want to make the world a gentler place. i think he meant, in his heart, every single word he said about compassion and love.

i do not think miquella knows what compassion and love are. or how to parse and display them in a healthy way, at least.

because healthy compassion doesn't boil down to 'i'll bewitch you so you're always gentle,' and healthy love doesn't boil down to 'i want you and so i'll take you.' but in miquella's mind, he genuinely believes that this is how these things look, and so those are the tools with which he means to build his new age; truly good intentions, but horribly misguided feelings and attitudes.

in the end, i think miquella is a very sad character. both in the sense of miquella personally being very unhappy, and also the sense that... analysing him makes me sad. because i don't believe he had any bad intentions whatsoever; i don't believe he was this conniving creature with malicious desires who knew full well that he was acting in cruelty... i believe he wholeheartedly thought he was doing good.

and i believe he was scared, and lonely, and desperate.

miquella, cursed with eternal physical childhood and frailty, didn't want the godhood that hung over his head like an inescapable threat. and so, when he found someone whose kindness and strength charmed him - as opposed to him having to do the charming - he clutched onto radahn... far, far too tightly.

and that's not good. of course it isn't. i'm not condoning any of it. but i just don't think it was out of cackling evilness or badness or malice; i just... think miquella really wanted someone to be there for him during the godhood he didn't want.

now, my whole opinion goes in different directions on whether or not radahn was in on this, wholeheartedly, ready to go. if he was, then fair enough, they made a vow in their youth and radahn's no victim. if he wasn't, then yeah, he was absolutely a victim in the situation.

i'm not gonna get too deep into mohg because that's very cut and dry and could take up entire posts in itself; mohg was used. used in miquella's well-meaning plan, yes, but used. which to me is... very odd, because it's making me reevaluate every single thing i thought i knew about mohg at all. it's a weird place to be in.

another thing about miquella is that he seems very much to be a person of extremes. if he's going to claim godhood, he wants to be rid of all that came before; including who he was. he literally went through the land of shadow ripping bits of himself off and out to get rid of them; got rid of a literal half of himself in saint trina.

and speaking of saint trina... i think it is extremely telling that she - literally the other half of miquella - tells us in no uncertain terms to kill him; as a mercy. that speaks volumes about the mental state miquella must be in.

lastly, there's the question of whether that eternal childhood was just physical, or also extended to miquella's mentality. personally, i think it was just physical; what he did exhibited a lot of unhealthy behaviours, yes, but... i don't think the root cause of those behaviours was him having a child's mentality. personally, there's not enough evidence there to believe otherwise imo.

so yeah... tl;dr: miquella makes me sad. he did some very bad things, but i don't think he's a bad person, which makes it even sadder. everything about him and radahn and malenia and mohg is fucked up and heartbreaking. and ultimately, i don't believe he's a deliberately manipulative evil nasty being; rather, someone who's drowning in despair to the point of self-destruction, someone who does not want his fate but is marching towards it as best he can, someone who did truly terrible things in the pursuit of what was at its heart a very innocent goal.

[anon-sect]

PART TWO (From the perspective of the objects, see part one for what happened previously)

Alexe had a temper issue.. if anyone pissed him off too bad, something happened to them, mostly non life threatening. It wasn't until he was in his forties that his temper issue gotten worse. Before only non life threatening injuries occurred on his victims, but that all changed after his first murder. He enjoyed seeing the life drain from the person that really made him angry. When he was finally caught, they were able to pin only ten murder victims on his record. That was only because those were the bodies they found with his DNA evidence on them. In fact, he actually had killed over thirty in total. The big difference was that the majority of his kills, he was able to completely dispose of the evidence or body. He never mentioned the other murders they couldn't find.

Regardless, Alexe was serving life in prison. Not long after that, he was informed of his status change. He would be offered up to be an object for another person to use as they saw fit. Unfortunately, he had no choice since the prison system sold him away to some company. He was extremely pissed when he saw a giant foot enter his sock body. The foot filled in his hollowed out insides and secured to his owner's foot. Back in his human days, this guy would just be another murder victim he enjoyed killing. But now as a powerless sock, he was forced to provide comfort to his owner's feet. He hated the very moment being wrapped around the guy's feet. The fact that the guy knew his sock is a former human and still used him as an object really made him angry.

Alexe was never remorseful about all those he killed. He had fun murdering them. Every urge he felt now was to kill the guy whose foot he was on. Being a powerless object really sucked horribly. He knew the foot would eventually smell foul, and he would smell like the guy's foot. It still didn't stop him from thinking what he would do to this guy if he could ever regain his humanity. For now, all he could do was be stepped on, stand on and shoved into stinky shoes. All of that totally against his own will.

Vice was out to make money selling high-end cars. Unfortunate for him, he was eventually caught, arrested, and sentenced to prison time for his crimes. He was only given 15 years, and he would be back on the streets, but the prison system made a change. He was sold away to be material to be transformed into an inanimate object for a person to use as they pleased.

Vice had hoped, at least, it would be a woman owner since he had no choice in his fate. He was disgusted when he saw it was a dude. To make him feel even more sickening about it, the guy chose him to be a sock. He would be forced to be wrapped around a guy's foot unwillingly. Powerless and no ability to move on his own made his fate mentally unbearable. He would have preferred a woman's foot over this guy's foot. He could feel the guy wiggling his toes in his sock body. The thought of smelling like a stinky foot disgusted him. He would be marked by foot odor of his owner's feet. He felt so degraded even thinking about that part, too.

Chaze tried in his new socks. They felt so wonderful on foot and super comfortable. He wiggled his toes in them. "I know my two socks are criminals, so I don't feel bad for you on my feet. In fact, let me show you how sorry I feel for you." He spoke directly to his new socks. He took them off his feet and unzipped his pants. He pulled out his dick. He placed one sock over it and thought about the hottest woman he knew. His dick got hard, and he began to jerk off in the sock. He released hot sperm into the sock, marking it as his property. He then did the same to the other sock. He rather enjoyed using the criminals like a cum rag. "You guys did the crime and now is paying the time as my property." He laughed as he put the unwillingly socks back on feet.

Alexe was cursing like crazy. A guy just jerked in him and marked him with his man juice. If he was human, he would first torture him and then murder him. He hated being so powerless.

Vice mentally cried, still taste the guy's cum. It was disgusting. Sadly, the guy could jerk in him again, and there was nothing he could do to stop him. If he could go back in time, he definitely would not be in his current situation

Cam was tired of day to day life. He just wanted a worry free life of not paying bills, doing chores, and just a life completely free of tasks or objectives to accomplish. The company gave him that solution. He now found himself as a boot for some stranger to wear. At first, he thought it was a bad idea as he felt socked feet enter his boot body. He heard that the socks were also former humans. He felt the socked foot press down on his insole face. It was painful as his owner stood up, applying even more pressure.

Cam realized he was just an object to him and nothing more. The owner didn't get a care about the human life under his foot, only that it served his purpose of supporting his feet. It was a painful existence and purpose. Not only the pressure of the whole body, but walking on all sorts of surfaces crossed his mind. He could feel the hard floor beneath his soles. The thought of walking on rocky ground worried him. He would feel all of that while his owner would feel nothing but cushion comfort. His life was now just to be under foot. Yet, it was the worry free life he wanted. He didn't have to do anything at all. It was a fair trade, he thought.

Mary had feared for her life after she betrayed the crime syndicate boss. She asked for the police to help, but soon found out some of them were on the crime boss's payroll. She received several death threats. She didn't know where to go to be safe. The company offered her the best solution. The crime syndicate would not know what object she was or who owned her. Only difference is that it would be a permanent situation. Her human life would be over forever, but at least she would be alive.

She felt the guy walk in her, pressing his socked feet on her face. She bared the pain of being walked on and crushed with each step. She contemplated whether this was better than running out of fear of death in her former human life. She was an object being crushed by a guy without a hint of mercy or care. But at least she was alive. The guy, in a way, saved her from being hunt down and murdered. This foot was her life saver despite all the pain it caused her to be under it. She decided she would worship the foot that kept her safe and alive. Her Master's foot was her savior and hero. She would gladly support every step it took on top of her with joy. This pain was worth it, knowing the crime syndicate would never find her.

Chaze loves the cushioning of his new cowboy boots. He didn't know if the two loved their new existence or hated, but they were really comfortable. Even if they hated, there was no way to reverse the process. They were forever stuck as boots, his boots. But he had more value placed on his boots than his socks. They willingly gave up their humanity to be owned. He sort of respected that part of them. He would take good care of his boots to show his gratitude for their sacrifice.

His new underwear was already wrapped around his waist under his pants. Blake made an excellent pair of underwear. He rubbed his crotch area. "How does it feel to have my dick in your face? You used to do this to me back in school. Now I get to do this to you for the rest of your life." He spoke as he let precum saturate his underwear with pleasure.

Blake remembered well the former nerd he used to torment back in school. He rather enjoyed it then. But never in his life that he thought the former nerd would own him as his underwear. He was his property now. He mentally pleaded for Chaze to have some semblance of mercy. Have precum on his face made him feel even more degraded than he already felt. He knew Chaze would sweat in him, and he would have to have a musky odor saturate his whole body. This was a fate he would never have wished for. But there was no returning to human life. He was forever underwear.

[hannahssimblr]

I spend three hours wandering around the estate looking for Goose. I've checked every front garden, every hedge and flower bed and under every car, looked inside bins and up trees by the time I'm forced to contend with the fact that I haven't confronted the railroad tracks yet. I don't. I never pluck up the courage.

I can’t fathom it, being the one to find him there, sweet Goose with his little kitten paws and soft pewter fur. This thought that I hadn’t even considered until Michelle spat it at me is tormenting me now as I forlornly wander the evening streets, calling out the name that I’m not even sure he knows to answer to yet. 

I stumble upon Jen in a little park we used to drink in when we were fourteen. She’s been out looking too, evidently, but has had enough and is sitting on the ground gazing out over the last russet streaks of sunset over Dublin Bay. 

“Have you given up?” I ask her. Her eyes are clouded with sadness 

“I have a feeling he’s gone, Jude,” she says. I feel a lump forming in my throat. “He mightn’t be. He might come back, you know, cats are known to show up after being away for days, weeks, months even,” this is the sort of bargaining a person who refuses to accept the obvious truth gets too involved with, and the kind I’ve been doing with myself the whole afternoon, thinking that maybe if I imagine Goose’s return with enough conviction I will magic him home again, but Jen, for once does not match my idealism.

“He probably doesn’t know where his home is yet, he’s too new.”

“Yeah,” I shift some loose gravel with the toe of my shoe. “Jen, I feel so awful.”

“I know,” she says, and holds her arms out to me to pull me to the ground and wrap them around me, “It isn’t your fault, it could have happened to any of us.”

“I ruined the entire day with my stupidity.”

“Shh, stop,” gently fingers stroke my hair at the nape of my neck, “you just made a mistake, it’s human.”

“Did I ruin your date?”

She pauses, “It’s okay, I don’t think she realised it was a date, and it's probably for the best.” 

The wind rustles through the trees around the park, and I feel chilled with the knowledge that change is coming. The school year is ending soon and now the future lies unavoidably ahead of me, a path completely untrodden. 

“You’ll find someone else to take to the debs,” I tell Jen, peering at the side of her face as her short crop of chestnut hair is backlit by the sunset. “You should have been the first person to get a date anyway.”

She gives me a half smile, unconvinced, “there are like, four lesbians in our year including me.”

“Out lesbians,” I point out, “You never know.”

“When I go to college it will be better,” she says firmly, “school is just destined to be shit, romantically, I mean.”

“In all ways, I think.”

She just laughs. 

“This stuff is bullshit anyway.”

“What is? Love?”

I rub my arms where goosebumps are rising with the cold. I should have worn a jumper. “Yeah, you’re not missing out on much.”

A silence follows, one that feels deliberate, but I venture into it anyway, “Michelle and I had a bad fight earlier.”

“I heard.”

“Us shouting?”

“Mm.”

“Sorry.” I wipe my nose which is running from the cold with the back of my arm. “It was terrible, we both said awful things.”

She just circles her hand on my knee in a vague gesture of comfort.  

“Sometimes it feels like she’s trying to hurt me, you know what I mean? It’s like she has all of this bad stuff stored up that she wants to, like, unleash. It’s so vicious. It seems like she really wants to dig her nails in and leave a mark on me, and then I get so defensive, like, because talking it out doesn’t work, I have to shout, and I have to be horrible too so that she’ll even react to me.”

“We all say things we regret when we’re upset.”

“Yeah, but it’s so destructive. I come away from it all feeling like shit. Like, this isn't who I am, I’m not a person who fights. At least I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be up there saying these things to her, but I can’t stand there and let her say them to me either.”

“Yeah.”

“And I worry a lot about what things are going to look like after this year is over, like, with college and stuff,” even mentioning it makes my stomach feel tight, “like, um, how she wants us to live together and all.”

“And you’re nervous about that?”

I sigh, “Well, I don’t know, it makes sense to do it, right? She thought we could get a little place near NCAD, and we’ve been looking at houses online, and… I don’t know. The idea of being around her all of the time, like, twenty-four-seven, sharing a bed, eating every meal together, walking to college, it makes me feel claustrophobic, and then I worry that if I feel that way now, how am I going to feel when I’m actually doing it? Surely it’s not supposed to feel so terrible, right?” I prompt her when she doesn’t respond, “Jen? What do you think?”

She pauses for a long moment, toying with the aglets on the end of her boot laces. “I think that you’re asking me for an opinion I’m not prepared to give you.”

“...right.”

“We agreed, I agreed with you both that I’d never talk to one about the other. It’s not fair on me and I don’t want to feel stuck in the middle of it.”

“But-”

“You’re both nice people and I love you both so much, but when you are together you are absolutely horrible. That’s all I want to say.”

I don't know how to respond to that, so I don't, I just sit in bad feelings and wish for the millionth time that my brain was normal enough to make good choices on its own and not beg them from other people.

I sniff again, though this time I’m not sure if it’s just because of the cold. “So, um, the acceptance deadline for those other colleges is coming up.” 

“The foreign ones?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you still going to turn them down?”

“I promised Michelle that I would.” 

Jen’s shoulders slump, all of her does, like someone has let the air out of her, but she just says, “Alright.”

I feel the teeth of my genuine desperation for her opinion, her approval gnawing at me. I just want the sage words of advice she’s withholding from me, “Is it a mistake? Like, if I reject their offers? Would that be the stupidest thing I ever did?”

“I don’t know.”

“I worked hard, you know? I really put everything I had into those applications, I gave them the best that I had and they loved it, they said really nice things about me in the letters, and sometimes, like, I think I’ll die, or something, if I don’t leave Dublin. But then there’s Michelle,” I fist the front of my hair in my hand, “and the things at home, and I don’t know what the right thing is, whether it’s hurting myself or hurting everyone else…”

“Jude,” Jen suddenly grabs hold of my face and forces me to look into her eyes, “you have to do what feels right, okay? I’m not going to tell you what to do. Like, just… you need to fucking search within or whatever.”

“Uh huh. What does that entail?” 

“I dunno!” She lets me go and stands up, brushing dirt from the back of her jeans, “C’mon, it’s cold, we should go home.”

“Uh, I was kind of hoping you’d be able to solve me, actually.”

“No, this time you can solve yourself. C’mon, up!” She presents her hand to me and I let her haul me onto my feet. 

“Ugh, Jen,” I say, feeling myself sinking back into a melancholy hole again, but she links my arms and brusquely walks me toward the playground gates with all the pep of a middle aged Sunday morning power walker. “You know what? I think we could both do with something nice to make us feel better.”

“What do you mean ‘something nice’?

“Like, I dunno, an ice cream or something.”

“What time is it? It must be after nine.”

“Yeah, so? I was thinking of that place with all the weird flavours, do you remember that?”

“Yeah, but it’s all the way in town. Effort.”

“You can drive, can’t you?”

“You want me to drive? Jen I hate driving.”

“I think you’ll do it for me.”

“Why’d you think that?”

She eyes me sideways, “After what you put me through today, hm?”

“That's manipulation.”

“No, it's payback.”

“Fine. I’ll go get the car.”

“Really?”

“Yes! Come on, before I change my mind.”

Beginning // Prev // Next

[bombusbombus]

It is vitally, vitally important that Clark Kent is boring.

I don't mean 'boring' in an inherently bad way. A desk job is boring. Data analysis is boring. Due process is boring. All of these things are imperative for a functioning society but almost nobody will ever be praised for them.

When my car got stolen a year ago, the guy who took it stole a bunch of other stuff too. I was sitting with a cop in a backroom of the campus police station for almost an hour while he was doing paperwork (to make sure everyone would get their stuff back), and at one point he looked up at me and he said, "sorry about this. It's not all shootouts and car chases like on TV."

And I almost said, "well, due process is sexy" (I didn't, for obvious reasons). But he looked surprised when I told him I thought due process was pretty cool. Like nobody is supposed to think due process is cool. Things are only cool if they're glamorous or flashy.

The guy who stole my car was horribly addicted to meth. The sheriff told me, "you should press charges so we can put him away for as long as possible."

The sheriff was lost in a world of heroes and villains. He was the "hero." The addict was the "villain." But the person who helped people was the guy at a desk, who went back over the mile long paper trail and returned every stolen item to its owner. The important stuff is when some guy in an office writes an algorithm to save endangered whales, or when the third double blind test finally shows sufficient evidence for the efficacy of a new cancer treatment. The goose that actually lays the golden egg almost never cackles.

This is why the 'Glasses' comic is so important, to me. We live in a world which glorifies exciting acts of heroism but not "boring" ones. We live in a world that thinks people like Clark Kent aren't important, when they're often doing the most important work, solving the systemic issues, saving people who aren't lost yet. Sometimes we need firefighters, but in a perfect world, we'd only need safety inspectors.

And sure, Superman is necessary within the story. There are disasters and villainy he can prevent. There are lives he can save. But being Superman is ultimately a terrible sacrifice, and if the heroism wasn't necessary he'd be Clark Kent all day. That's what makes him not a cop: he's not enjoying the car chases and shootouts. He avoids letting things get 'interesting' at all costs. He avoids glory.

The comic Strong Female Protagonist (by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag, BRING IT BACK) has several fascinating pieces of philosophy on superheroes and society, but my favourite is this:

Kal-el, living solar battery, isn't just someone who contributes to society from the outside or the top. He plugs away at boring, everyday kindnesses just like other humans. (This can make for great contrasts with Lex Luthor, who is the epitome of a light bulb person and could never understand why Superman would want to be a battery.)

Clark Kent is boring. Clark Kent plays things by the book. Clark Kent is sexy in the same way that due process is sexy, and any character who thinks the Clark Kent side is 'less than' the Superman side, is textually a goddamn idiot. "No glory save honour" and he will always have both.

[shoezuki]

ok it seems dream has slowed down or went to cry himself to sleep or something idk but now im gonna try n chronicle this shit as unbiasedly as i can. but whoooooa baby

anyways. it started when Nicolas Cantu (yes yes junkyjanker gumball voice actor) was replying to the dream parody account, dreamwastalen.

(also yes he knew it was a parody acct dude said he was roleplaying lmao)

Dream qrted the 'you can't joke when u an actual pedophile' tweet essentially saying that cantu is a horrible person, accusing him of assaulting dream, treating an uber driver horribly, and that he was saying the r word and being racist. Also says cantu apologized to dream on twitter by blaming it on alcohol and weed.

nicolas qrts, saying 'yes i slapboxed you in front of the hoes', confirming he mistreated an uber driver and said he tipped the driver well after and has been handling his drinking, says he called dream 'fat and a predator'. Nicolas denies being racist. He ends it with "hire a harvard professor to calculate why despite texting every twitch streamer in austin not a single one wanted to fuck you."

also in a qrt to a now private account that basically said 'dream reaching out to streamers doesnt mean he wanted to fuck them' nicolas said dream was sending streamers dick pics.

dream replies saying that nicolas didnt even tip and with screenshots of the dms nicolas had sent him apologizing. The dm is a massive text of paragraph . In an attempt to summarize it is essentially cantu apologizing for hitting dream n that he was out of line, mentioning he was drinking and high, that he thought dream would be an asshole but says he is 'humble, grounded and decent', that he relates to the pressure/discourse around having to deal w fame and havin a lot of influence at a young age, and also that he doesnt know who is and isnt lying w the allegations but he knows having lies n rumours spread bout u sucks.

worth noting im not sure when this message took place so I cant say if its extremely recent, but later dream i believe mentions it having to do with the latest twitchcon. idk [edit: looking ahead robbo mentioned this happened months ago]

Another contender, robbo, comes in saying he was there and that dream was slapped for calling a girl they are friends with a whore. They technically recant this accusation, saying they mixed the cantu slap up with another event that took place at twitchcon, but they continue to claim dream did this.

dream qrts this saying robbo 'wasnt even in the same state' at the time, that he doesnt know who robbo is, that he doesnt go around harassing women and accuses robbo of upholding the benevolent sexism trope of women being weak and needing to be protected by men.

Nicolas cantu makes a reappearance and screenshots dreams reply and tweeting it, then qrting his own tweet with a video of classical music and showing a text allegedly from dream (the name 'clay' at the top of the screenshot) saying 'tsk tsk whore' to someone. The video also has a clip from when dream was in mcc with captainsparklez and said 'we should lynch them' in reference to i think ppl allegedly cheating?.

thats the most of it so far. although robbo and dream continued to argue and at one point dream said he was going to sue them for slander/defamation and robbo qrted with 'sue me.' theres more to that bit but im not puttin screenshots this shit is already too long

anyways. my final opinion: i literally odnt know like half what happening here or if nicolas cantu really was racist or if that screenshot was 'real' and cantu said he wouldnt reveal who the friend dream called a whore is cuz he dont want to pull her into this. so im like what. but dream gettin clapped by nicolas is fucking hilarious and dream pullin the suing thing again is wild. i seen ppl in qrts saying how he already said he was gonna sue amanda and didnt, sayin he instantly pulled the dms w cantu but wont show the evidence showin amanda lied, etc. and those r a lot of what i think a this like. i feel he got angry and exploded again when eh coulda let it die out. but that always happens

[k4txlulzz]

(warning: this is a random late night rant y'all , feel free to not take this seriously its just my scrambled thoughts lol)

vanitas no carte fandom is a lot more chaotic than i remembered it to be😭guys what happened i just came back to see how the story progressed (BTW MY FAVE SCENES GOT ANIMATED SO WELL !! the eng dub is so good too)

okay so! vanitas is my favorite character and i truly think he has a good, selfless heart. but yk what? that kiss scene with him and jeanne keeps popping up in my head. but then i remember that if i consider that moment SA i'd have to consider ALOT more romance scenes in the story as that too and i just don't think there can be that amount of **intentional** assault scenes from the creator ?😭

folks have brought up the cabin scene and??? that just confused me. because i never even thought of that possibility while looking at the panels or the scene. people hate vanitas or vanijeanne or even jeanne because of this kinda stuff and . while im conflicted and even uncomfortable(the kiss scene specifically) i also believe that the creator would not make a character SA anyone like that and make it seem romantic. i see this as: if its shown to be cute or romantic and does not show negative mental consequences of the characters after the event, it was not **intended** to be assault. (edit: while vanitas is shown to be malicious in this scene, the incident gets brought up like once after and doesn't really turn into an obstacle in vanitas' and jeanne's relationship which is what made me think this) basically, if it's shown to be harmless, it was most likely intended as that. and i understand the issue with that one weird kiss scene, i don't like it either. its just that vanitas happened to be my favorite before i learnt all this and that made me try and look for an explanation or some sort of evidence that maybe this is a "suspend your disbelief" moment but i dunno. i just desperately don't wanna think that a character and one of the dynamics that mean a lot to me have gross, scary implications . the creator wouldn't write jeanne or vanitas to do something so horrible because those are some of the characters she wants fans to be invested in and that can't be done if those characters are assaulters😭 the kiss scene still does ick me though and i think the moment should have been done differently? in any case, i generally think that media literacy is something every fan needs to have. because otherwise we back ourselves into a corner and "criticize problematic stuff" ourselves into viewing every character as a terrible person who should not be liked

but then again, this IS just my opinion and, to be clear, i don't support assault being brushed off in any media

[edit 2: i also acknowledge that i may be leaning towards copium with this one but that doesn't mean i don't recognize the creator's attempt to create a complex dynamic and characters; i just feel like because of this one scene a lot of people hate vanitas and brush off his dynamic with jeanne entirely which is sad because they have a lot of stuff thats worth getting interested in. i just wanted to make it clear that this post is just me ranting about something and not meant to be taken as a proper analysis ^^🙏🏼 it has also been a while since i looked at VNC stuff and may have gotten a bit rusty. i acknowledge that SA may perhaps be a significant part of the storytelling in VNC but i don't really want to think about those moments for personal reasons and especially when it is shown to be done by a character that really does mean a lot to me:) i enjoyed reading the comments i got on this post and am genuinely quite grateful for them]

[max1461]

God I hate r/greentext. Why do I go on r/greentext.

Ok, so, let's break this down. Obviously both parents of the 4chan OP are at fault here. The mom is at fault for cheating, and the dad is at fault for abandoning his kids in response. The kids were innocent in this situation and they relied on him; when you have a responsibility for someone's care you cannot just abandon them because you feel hurt. Furthermore, it seems both the parents have been extremely callous about the whole situation (the dad forcing a name change, seeking to legally disavow the children who loved and relied on him, the mom laughing about the whole situation). These seem to be people who have been horrible to the vulnerable children in their care as a result of their own relationship drama and it is absolutely condemnable.

Next: the 4chan OP's response ridiculous, hateful and irrational. I am not going to judge the 4chan OP for blaming his mother more than his father. People often have a complex relationship to those who have wronged them, and even though I think the father's actions were completely heinous, it's not my place to tell the OP how to feel about that. In general I'm more likely to take this level of anger from a child at one of their parents as evidence that the parent probably didn't treat them well; OP feels how he feels about his parents and that is his business. However, his extension of his anger at his mother to all women is nothing but awful and hateful, and serves to harm more innocent people and make the world a worse place. Does he not care about his sister, who was just as much a victim in this as he was? That stands out to me particularly. How can he be so callous as to see someone who was abandoned just like he was, hurt like he was, and say "you have the same genitals as the person who wronged me, so I hate you too". It's unimaginable to me. One way or another, he's doing the same thing his father did: taking out his valid anger at one person on innocent bystanders, people who are at no fault, because they bear superficial relation to the person who wronged him. Why? Why do people not see the irrationality, the pointlessness of this, and the amount of hurt it causes?

But, ok, all of what I have described so far is principally sad. We live in a fucked up world where people are hurt and go on to hurt others. It doesn't surprise or offend me, though it makes me angry at the world. But what really fucks me up here are the comments, the commentary of people who are not involved.

The screenshotted comments are the top comments. The top commenter is a guy justifying abandoning your children because you feel emasculated. It is plain as day in the third comment how much more empathy he extends to the father in this scenario than he extends to the mother or any of the children. Why? Because the father has the same fucking genitals as him? It makes me feel such despair, and seeing everyone agree with him makes me feel such despair, the sheer thought-terminating irrational evil of sexism, by which these people can advocate abandoning those who rely on you because they are more concerned with the feeling of emasculation than with how it would feel to have your parent stop loving you because of something someone else did.

I hate this. I hate everything about this. The set of ideologies being used and propped up and replicated here are evil, cycles of hurt for the sake of cycles of hurt. Every r/greentext and r/4chan thread is like this. This is vile, it's truly vile to me. I hate that the world is like this, I hate that people find any of this compelling or reasonable. I hate this.

[feverdreamsanddelusions]

27

inspo by @painsandconfusion

[tw chase, past trauma, past hostage situation, revenge, knives, implied murder, psychological whump, dehumanisation]

Whumpee was running through the woods, panting and sobbing and wishing they were anywhere else. They'd already survived that fucking hostage crisis, and now this? Was there something wrong with them? Did they walk under a ladder, shook hands over the threshold? What the fuck was wrong with their life?

"Please, leave me alone!" they screamed. "Please! I didn't do anything!"

Their pursuer didn't respond. They weren't wasting their precious breath like Whumpee.

It didn't take long until Whumpee's shoe caught on a branch. They hit the ground with a loud thunk, making leaves and bugs scatter. They didn't have the chance to scramble to their feet again.

Whoever had been chasing them pushed them right back into the mud with a boot on their back, and all they could do was thrash like a pinned butterfly. "Please!" Whumpee tried again, positively wailing. "Please, let me go! Not again! Not again!"

"Do you have any idea how lucky you are?" The stranger sounded angry, and Whumpee couldn't imagine what the fuck they were talking about.

"I'm not! Evidently, I– please, I'm sorry, I don't understand, please, just let me go!"

"Do you think my friend got to go on little hikes after the incident?" They removed their boot and bent down, hoisting Whumpee up and slamming them against the nearest tree with a knife to their throat. "Do you think they were frolicking around, enjoying life?"

"I don't understand," Whumpee cried. "I don't understand, please..."

"Oh, you don't understand." The stranger looked at them with pure disgust, and Whumpee wanted to scream that they had the wrong person, because surely, there was no way they could've crossed someone so egregiously without even knowing. "Do you never think about the innocent person who died that day? The one the police and all of you let down? You know, the 'sacrifical lamb', as the reporter had called them."

Traumatic memories came flooding back by the dozen at the phrase. It was one they'd blacklisted on every platform, trying to avoid the news coverage as much as possible. "There was nothing I could've done!" Their therapist had said so. "I didn't want anyone to die!"

"Well, someone did." They pressed the blade into Whumpee's flesh, those empty eyes fixed on whatever monster they thought they were hunting. "And it shouldn't have been them. The sacrifice. It should've been anyone else. Anyone."

"No, no, please–"

"'Police treats hostage crisis like a chess game, sacrificing a pawn to save the rest.' Is that any fucking way to treat a human being?"

"I'm not the police–"

"It should've been them. It should've been you."

"Don't render their death useless!" Whumpee blurted out as a last ditch effort to at least get their attention. "If you kill me, if you kill all of us– Then why did your friend die? They saved us! It was unfair, it was horrible, I wish it didn't happen, but–"

"Shut the fuck up!" they snapped. "Shut up! Shut your fucking mouth! They didn't die as a sacrifice! They didn't die for your useless life to go on! They died because you were all incompetent and stupid! They died for nothing! They shouldn't have died!"

Whumpee flinched, their crying continuing with renewed momentum. "Killing me isn't going to bring them back!" they sobbed.

"No, it won't. It certainly fucking won't, because your lives are nowhere near of equal value. But maybe if I get all of you fucking parasites... Maybe then, they'll be able to rest."

[pinkelotjeart]

do you think rane feels even so slightly responsible for faulkner’s attempt? their whole “i’d have killed myself if i was you” monologue was so backhanded 😭

Gosh yea the “I would’ve drowned myself if I was you” was a WILD comment.

The thing is tho, is that I don’t think they intended it to be backhanded and was genuinely trying to praise Faulkner in that moment. Turning what was a vulnerable comment from Faulkner into them telling him how strong he is for bearing it all (which he clearly isn’t.)

Now we get me just rambling about the current state of the Rane + Faulkner dynamic my apologies for making this so long, I have many thoughts.

When it comes to Rane at the current I struggle to assess their thoughts because so much of what we get from them is through Faulkners eyes. Faulkners monologue about constantly being watched is from a very paranoid perspective. Right now every thought he has is him catastrophizing his own self deprecation. This doesn’t mean these things can’t be true, he is most definitely being watched on a constant basis, and his situation is horrible- But he is also a unreliable/paranoid narrator. So how much of his view of Rane’s whispers and stares are the ‘correct’ interpretation is very much up in the air.

We’ve not had any evidence from Rane’s side what their thoughts are on Faulkners attempt, outside of Faulkner believing he is on suicide watch (which I’m also inclined to believe, when your friend does something like that it’s reasonable that you’re keeping an eye out.)

Rane seems to have become more controlling. They have even taken up some of Faulkners liars tendencies. At the moment Faulkner is just paraded around by Rane, with seemingly no agency. Rane is his mouth piece, and his lead. Somehow Rane has ended up controlling Faulkners narrative. I am personally obsessed with the line of Rane curtly telling Faulkner they’ll pad out his shoulders. It’s Rane exercising control over the way he presents, it’s not a question but a statement.

It’s a really interesting change in dynamic and I really want to see inside Rane’s head. They’re not dumb, quite the opposite actually but they’ve always had a blind spot for Faulkners flaws. These flaws are way more apparent now, to a undeniable extent which is probably why Rane has taken up the roll of shading those flaws from the public the best they can.

Short version: I want to study Rane under a microscope

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Harriet Vane: Peter, have you ever considered this?

Lord Peter Wimsey: What?

Harriet Vane: Harriet Vane, murder suspect.

Lord Peter Wimsey: oh, really!

Harriet Vane: No, listen. Personal characteristics: once tried for the murder of her lover, and acquitted by the skin of her teeth. Says she found Alexis death at 2.10 but can bring no evidence to prove that she did not see him alive. Took three hours to walk 4 and a half miles to inform the police. Is the sole witness to the finding of the razor, the time of the death, and the conditions of the flat iron. Was immediately suspected by Perkins and is probably still suspected by the police.

Lord Peter Wimsey: Nonsense, Harriet. I really...

Harriet Vane: who have been searching her room.

Lord Peter Wimsey: Have them, by Jove!

Harriet Vane: yes. Don't look like that. They couldn't very well do anything else, could they.

Lord peter Wimsey: I have something to say to Umplety.

Harriet Vane: No, you can spare me that.

Lord Peter Wimsey: But it is absurd!

Harriet Vane: It is not! Do you think I'm witless? Do you think I don't know why you came galloping down here at a five minutes notice? It was very nice of you and I should be grateful, but do you think I like it? You thought I was pretty brazen, I expect, when you found me getting publicity out of the thing. So I was. There's no choice for a person like me to be anything but brazen. I can't hide my name, it's what I live by. If I did hide it it would only be another suspicious circumstance, wouldn't it? But do you think it makes matters any more agreeable to know that it is only the patronage of Lord Peter Wimsey that prevent men like Umplety from being openly hostile?

Lord Peter Wimsey: I've been afraid of that.

Harriet Vane: Then why did you come?

Lord Peter Wimsey: So that you might not have to send for me.

Harriet Vane: Oh. Now, of course, everybody will say "look what he's doing for that woman, isn't it marvelous of him? I suppose every man thinks he's only to go on being superior, and any woman will come tumbling into his arms. It's disgusting.

Lord Peter Wimsey: Thank you. I may be everything you say, patronizing, interfering, conceited, intolerable and all the rest of it, but do give me credit for a little intelligence. Do you think I don't know all that? Do you think it is pleasant for any man who feels about a woman as I do about you to fight his way along under this detestable burden of gratitude? Damn it! Do you think I don't know perfectly well that I'd have a better chance if I was deaf, blind, maimed, starving, drunk or dissolute, so that you could have the fun of being magnanimous? Why do you think I treat my own sincerest feelings like something out of a comic opera if it isn't to save myself the bitter humiliation of seeing you try not to be utterly nauseated by them?

Harriet Vane: No, don't talk like that.

Lord Peter Wimsey: I wouldn't if you didn't force me to. And you might have the justice of remembering you can hurt me a damn side more than I can possibly hurt you.

Harriet Vane: I know I'm being horribly ungrateful.

Lord Peter Wimsey: Grateful! Good God am I never to get away from the bleat of that filthy adjective? I don't want gratitude! I don't want kindness! I don't want sentimentality! I don't even want love -I could make you give me that, of a sort-; I want common honesty.

Harriet Vane: Do you? But that's what I've always wanted. I don't think it is to be got.

Lord Peter Wimsey: Alright. I can respect that. Only you have got to play the game. Don't force an emotional situation and then blame me for it.

Harriet Vane: But I don't want any situation. I want to be left in peace.

Lord Peter Wimsey: But you are not a peaceful person.

Harriet Vane: Perhaps not, but all this is so dreary and exhausting.

Lord Peter Wimsey: Call me anything you like, but not dreary! Great Scott that I have been boring you interminably for 18 months on end! I know you once said that if anybody ever married me it would be for the sake of hearing me piffle on, but I expect that kind of thing pulls after a bit.

Harriet Vane: *laughs*

Lord Peter Wimsey: I'm babbling, I know I'm babbling, what on Earth am I to do about it?

Harriet Vane: oh, it's not fair, you always make me laugh. I can't fight, I'm so tired. You don't seem to know what being tired is. Stop. Let go. I won't be bullied, Peter, I won't be bullied! And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to make myself ready for an appointment.

Excuse me, I'll be right here stuffing my face into a pillow.