#and i’m dying lmao

[tired-biscuit]

“i’m too embarrassed to moan during sex” i don’t know about you but if he ain’t all up in my ear like this then i don’t want him

[depressedfungus]

Baldurs gate isn’t a dnd game it’s a really really really hard dress up game

[candycryptids]

Do me a huuuge favor and reblog/like/whatever this post if you’re cool with random character questions to your inbox

[justtrashperson]

I am not immune to the blue haired Richie idea

[silksongeveryday]

Drawing Hornet everyday until Silksong comes out - Day 359

Request by anonymous!

I’ve been pretty sick and out of it the past couple weeks so I’ve been replaying hollow knight, finally gave steel soul another go since I haven’t beaten it before and now I’m twelve hours in and scared to fight the radiance

[no-where-new-hero]

omg I need your thoughts on the terminally o line author culture bc ngl it makes my eye TWITCH, there are authors I deliberately avoid even tho I've heard their stuff is good bc they're like that 🙈

HHHHH oh good lord, okay, from how I see it, there are two angles on this, both aggravating and sad: the official decree one and the spontaneous ecosystem one.

The officious one is that the nature of publishing nowadays demands an author have an online presence. You need Twitter/X. You need to let every potential reader know your book is coming out. You need engagement through reviews and pre-orders incentives (if you buy now you’ll get a special keychain!!) and word of mouth assurances from your peers that yes your book is as cool as you say it is. You need a newsletter with links (more buying! more voting on lists that are simply popularity contests!) and promises you’re still working on the next thing, don’t forget about me in the morass of everyone else doing the same thing. You need an Instagram and TikTok now to post pretty pictures and videos because one or two authors made it big off this kind of promotion and now everyone thinks it’s the ticket to the bestseller list (sadly, it seems to be working). You need an OnlyFans (a joke but I do recall a twt spat that was a joke/not joke about how rupi kaur will always be more beautiful than her critics and people who took issue with the conflation of beauty with talent). At the end of all this, you’re basically an influencer, a content creator creating content for the content you should be focusing on creating, the finished novel. And the novel itself seems to be disappearing behind the masks used to promote it (fanfic-style tropes, moodboards, playlists, memes) until I now no longer trust the book that I’ll pick up to have any resemblance to the enticements that brought me here. I’ve seen an author or two complain about the stress all this self-promotion generates, but it’s become such an entrenched part of the industry, I think people just accept it. And thus spend too much time online hoping that if they tweet just a little more, produce just one more reel, maybe that’ll be the difference between a sale and no sale.

The other side of this, distinct but obviously connected, is the ecosystem created by this panic of being perpetually visible coupled with the fact that so many of the new authors came of age during the rise of internet fandom culture. That opinionated community mindset that blurs the line between anonymity and friendship is the lens they bring to their own work. I mean, it makes sense I suppose—if you love yelling about characters and words, why wouldn’t you do that once you start to produce your own? This really came home to me hearing about that reviewbombgate “scandal” and how people involved were in reylo circles and that was used to provide receipts. You’re interacting with your readers and peers about your intimate work but they are also all strangers. They will not always give you the benefit of the doubt, and now—as opposed to the past when maybe the worst that could happen was a handful of bad reviews in newspapers—you will either be tagged in hate reviews, sub-tweeted, explicitly called out, demanded to atone for your sins. It’s no longer the morality of consumption but the morality of production. Of course, the easy answer is just log-off, touch some grass. But that can work only when you and everyone else are separated by anonymous accounts or when you have no platform to maintain. As an author trying to make your livelihood from this, suddenly it’s do or die. We’re in a strange moment of authorship bringing the Internet’s echo-chamber and claustrophobic into the real world (this is a lie: publishing now is no longer the real world. But it looks like it) and thus you can kind of no longer escape things.

Will the average reader who isn’t aware of all these machinations care about reviewbombgate? Would a reader browsing at Target think about the controversies around Lightlark? Very likely not. But the impression I’m getting more and more is that the average reader isn’t the one buying all the books. Or shall we say—a bestseller’s status relies on bookstore stock. Bookstore stock is only huge when they know a book will be a good investment. They’ll only know a book is a good investment if it and its author has street cred based on booktokkers, bookstagram, bloggers and reviewers (have you noticed how many books out these last maybe 1-3 years have these kinds of accounts thanked in the acknowledgments? Yeah), and THESE are also chronically online people who will Know. And decide the cast of fate.

Honestly, @batrachised, I see why you avoid these kinds of writers, though I wonder how long it’ll be before the disease becomes epidemic.

[jojo-schmo]

[The Forgotten Land Roleswap: Chapter Two 37-39]

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[theluckiestlb]

[lilas]

extremely attracted to him rn

BONUS:

[twistedappletree]

mdzs where everything’s the same except jin ling rides fairy around like a horse into battle

[brynalyn]

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Laios would do for a living in a modern day au - I’ve seen some theorizing about how his love of monsters/ecology/nature would make him a good biologist. Which is true! But I personally could see him being just Some Guy, maybe a college or even a highschool drop out, who joined and then left the army, working random odd jobs like dish washer/mover/warehouse worker. He visits his college going sibling falin who is so concerned she decides to dropout (even though she only has a bit of schooling left and coincidentally is working to become a biologist/career inspired by something laios suggested once) and get an apartment with him because he’s practically homeless and in a rough state. Then they both get a job at the same place, like for instance….. a card/game shop perhaps?? Or even something that sells funky pops and wall scrolls side by side you know! Maybe even ran by the short and super young looking chilchack whose “secretly” a good boss/cares about his employees?? 🤔🤔

Like I just think laios would be just some guy who ends up discovering a rich world outside of trying to pay rent in this world in creating his own characters and worlds in things like dnd and the furry fandom. He is a great artist although members of his tabletop group don’t always appreciate him making their characters or themselves fursonas …but drawing monstrously beautiful creatures representing someone’s self is practically a love language for him so they accept it however begrudgingly.

[futurequibblerjournalist]

Barty is a flexible little fuck and you can’t convince me hasn’t tried bending himself like a pretzel to suck his own dick

[pillow-boi]

I present you Brutalis, or just Brutus for friends (obviously not her real name), my dnd chaotic warrior obsessed with the idea of becoming famous.

[lionfloss]

[mogai-sunflowers]

honestly shout out to “visibly queer” people. shout out to us because it’s really fucking scary. i think people think that if you’re visibly queer you’re automatically confident and unafraid and while I’m sure that’s true for some people, in my experience that’s not the case. I make a choice to be visibly queer because of the amount of times people have told me that it makes them feel safer to be themselves. That doesn’t mean I’m suddenly completely unaware of what could easily happen to me every time I leave my house. It’s more than nerve-wracking. I’ve even seen people say that the visible queers are privileged because clearly we’ve never faced discrimination otherwise we wouldn’t have the freedom to be so open but that’s really dismissive of the work so many of us have had to put in to be confident enough to be that way. i see the eyes on me as I walk down the street and they burn into my skin. It is scary. I see a lot of support for people who have to hide their queerness, which is not a moral failing in any way, but bravery isn’t just one thing. Visibly queer people are not silly stereotypes. Twinks who fit every gay guy stereotype proudly are not your enemy they are your fiercest allies, so are the genderfucky trans people who don’t make an effort to pass as cis and the butches and studs who are fucking proud. We’re brave and just because we appear so confident and impenetrable on the outside doesn’t mean we don’t have the same struggles or support needs. So just shout out to us. I’ve had a few… experiences… lately and it’s made me reevaluate my decision to always be so open, but I’m willing to risk my safety to make a change and make others feel safe and I and others are brave for that and deserve your love.

[emblazons]

So I know I said I was tired (I am lmfao), but:

As I was thinking about that ask regarding Jonathan and Mike both trying to fill "fatherly" roles for Will and Eleven because they've been parentified, I realized that the fight mlvn get into and the talk JonWill have in MADMAX in S2 are reflections of each other—both proving that JonMike are trying to soothe their charges with a familial type of love (given the mlvn fight also parallels an El/Hopper argument in S2)...but also proving that the Byers Brothers love and trust each other in a way El and Mike just don't.

Let's see if I can explain.

In both of these conversations, we get a “charge" (aka the 'child' in the relationship—El and Will, in each case) who is isolating themselves after something painful/traumatic. Both of them are making art in their room as an expression relating to what's going on in their hearts/minds...which is when Jonathan and Mike come into their room, notice the art and then something is wrong, and invite Will/El to connect emotionally by talking.

From there, we get Jonathan and Mike pushing just hard enough to get something out of Will and Eleven—getting them to get just close enough to the heart of the problem to get defensive, and admit that they feel outcasted and different (in will's case like a "freak," and in El's that she's a "monster").

Both Jonathan and Mike try to comfort Will and El by leveling with them about the way they too feel different, trying to make them see that they are valuable in their difference and lack of normalcy as outcasts/freaks in the wake of "nobodies—"

But, as we know from the actual fights themselves, Jonathan succeeds in soothing Will and making him feel valuable despite how others make him feel for being "Zombie Boy," while Mike pretty much (forgive the reference) rolls a one on persuasion trying to convince El that she is inherently valuable to him in her difference.

Basically: these fights intentionally mirror each other, and through that show us that both Jonathan and Mike are trying to have a "replacement father" moment for Will and El...while also showing us that one of these parentified figures (Jonathan) is mature enough to step into an older brother/father role...whereas the other one (Mike) certainly is not.

Even just in these scenes, we can see that Jonathan and Will have a depth of bond and trust between them that Mike and El absolutely do not—down to little context clues that show us why Will is open to relating and repairing with Jonathan (because Jonathan knows Will well + Will believes he’s loved) where El is not. Ex:

Jonathan offers Will options when he comes in to talk about movie night, showing that he's open to what Will wants and desires without projection or expectation—where Mike simply assumes El is the same as she always has been (in this case food-wise), despite her not a day before saying directly to him she was open to something new and different (El Rodeo for burritos...which Mike even says aloud to her is 'weird').

Jonathan builds an "us v the world" moment with Will by both saying they are best friends (leaning into their closeness) while showing he knows Will by making a reference to an artist he likes...where Mike, despite admitting to also being bullied, immediately alienates El by reiterating how she's different from him and everyone else.

Jonathan even says something similar to Mike by saying it's better to be different—Jonathan just frames being different as the power (with emphasis on the humanity of the difference), whereas Mike frames the power as central to being different.

TL;DR: this is just one of the many moments that show Jonathan and Mike have taken on similar roles in Will and El's lives (emotional father replacement), though both the maturity of the "parentified" figure and the depth of the relationship between each pair is put into stark relief when you compare them.

The effects of parentification are clear in the way both Jonathan and Mike interact with Will and El in a way similar to a fully adult male/fatherly figure (see: the Hopper/El scene parallel)—both of them are trying to comfort/console from a place of (somewhat) authority/experience over Will and El...Jonathan is just equipped to speak into Will's life in a way Mike never could be with El.

also, a bonus if you made it through this: the real kicker proving these scenes are intentionally written & edited as parallels on some level comes in the very next shots after these...when we cut to the exact same setup shot of a TV, followed by a shot of Jonathan and Will. :)

anyway. more parentified byler in-law commentary to come lol