#and i'm not talking cheap shit

[bellqmione]

wheelchairs and canes and glasses and hearing aids and every single other disability aid should be free btw and if you disagree i hate you

[randomnameless]

A Minor dispute.

Put it behind you. Deal with it.

No, this isn't related to devoted fans and their discourse lol (even if i had to take a jab at them with the title lol)

Ike: I have to ask, Sephiran. What are you after? What’s this all about? Sephiran: Why do you wish to know? You would achieve nothing by learning my reasons. You would help no one. I lost faith in lesser beings, and desire an end to them. That’s all. Ike: So why did you save me on that day? Sephiran: May I ask you a favor, Ike? Tell me how you feel about it now. Can you bear recalling those horrific memories? Ike: Yes… I’m fine, now. But I suppose at the time I wouldn’t have been able to take it. Sephiran: All beings endure tragedies for as long as they continue to live. It has always been the case that suffering is unavoidable. And this grim reality plays out over and over, in every country, under every ruler… As long as there are beings who feel, they will feel pain. Ike: So what? We should all just give in and die? Put it behind you. Deal with it. Sephiran: Do not make light of this… Ike: I’m not. Sephiran, I’m extremely grateful that you once helped me through a terrible time. But we have to accept that occasionally we all have to deal with hard times. I’ve had pain, I’ve had suffering, and I have gotten up and moved on. I don’t try to forget what happened that day. I just accept it… And neither that or anything else will ever stop me. Sephiran: You are a strong man, Ike, son of Gawain. But not everyone is as strong as you…

This scene is unlocked if you've seen Ike's FB.

Of course, Ike here doesn't know the fuck he is talking about, as he later expresses by wondering why Sephiran is suddenly called Lehran (maybe if the game left Miccy/Yune talk to him before the start of the map, instead of letting him do all the convo it would have been different?).

So, in a way, it isn't as callous as Ike telling Lehran to put the genocide of his people "behind him" or to "deal with it", because he doesn't know what Sephiran is talking about.

But in a way, I have the feeling if Claude or Petra told Dedue to "put the massacre of his family" behind him or to "deal with it", Claude or Petra would have received a certain amount of shit, even if, when they would have said those, they wouldn't have known what the fuck Dedue went through.

Anyways, Ike later learns what, or who, Sephiran is, and talks to him. Maybe he will apologise for his callous words, spoken when he didn't realise what he was talking about ?

Ike: Sephiran... I mean, Lehran... Lehran: I can't apologize enough. I was so terribly mistaken, and now there's nothing I can do to help. Ike: Don't worry. Lehran: What? Ike: Wanting to do something that matters is enough. Sometimes, how you feel is more important than how you act. Lehran: Ike I... there's no one that I think more highly of... Ike: No time for compliments. We still have work to do here. Lehran: Yes... yes we do.

Lehran apologises for having wanted to destroy the world (and drops Altina in a trashcan because Ike is now the person he thinks the most highly of!) - and in the general scale of things, yes, Sephiran has much to apologise for, so he better start pulling his weight and try to make up for having tried to kill everyone.

But the "your people were genocided? No biggie, deal with it!" is completely ignored - or it is, again, another example of Ike talking shit and the game convoluting himself to make sure he never faces any consequences, even if, in this situation, the consequence would just have been an apology, like the one he gave to, iirc, Mordecai and Lethe after calling him subhumans but not realising calling someone "subhuman" was insulting.

Sure, the line he gives after the fight against Sephiran still holds value :

Ike: If death is what you really want, then I’m not going to let it happen on my watch. I don’t care what you’ve gone through. I don’t care how much you’ve suffered. What you’ve done is unforgivable.

It's not because you suffered, or went through the worst humankind can offer, that you can inflict the same on people!

When Lords like Marth, Seliph, Leif, Roy, Eirika, even Elincia try to understand people and what led them to act as they did - without ever giving excuses or wondering if they could walk with their respective antagonists - Ike here refuses to understand, and only condemns.

Is it because Ike isn't a Lord, so he isn't concerned with some general "making sure this situation never happens again"?

But then, he is the one to say those :

“But, even the dumbest creatures will love their family, their friends and… even love others. They will all have things that they can’t afford to lose.” “We know that we’ve messed up. We’ll do our best to avoid more war and to make peace our highest priority. Ashera, just give us one more chance. All we ask is for one more chance.” “You were like a mother to all of life– Your children still require a mother like you. When you watch over us, we don’t always do things that make you happy and sometimes we even disappoint you. Still, I think we would like you to continue watching over us. How about it?” “We all need to work hard to accept each other. As long as we don’t try and run away from our mistakes, then I’m sure we’ll be able to see each other again one day.”

How can you do you "best" to avoid more wars, if you don't even understand why the current one started, or don't care about the reasons that led the fucker who started this current war to, well, start it?

How can we talk about acceptance if we don't "care" about what the others live through?

So, on top of writing a check his ass can't cash - since he will leave Tellius and not be there to "avoid wars" or make sure people "accept each other" after promising the goddesses "we" will exactly do that - Ike's words here are empty.

-> In a nutshell, Ike reveals with those battle quotes and conversations that he is not ruler/leader material - but we knew that since RD's start since we followed Miccy and Elincia - and more importantly isn't the kind of person asking "why" things happen, they just happen but somehow everything will work out when it will happen again - because the why, or the cause, wasn't identified - and I think it's a perfectly fitting answer for the Tellius Saga and the larger Branded "issue" : we will never know why it happens, it just happens.

(can we say the epilogue, with Ashunera returning, is an ultimate "fuck you" to Ike's empty promises at the end of this chapter, since it starts with another war happening in the background?)

---

Back to that nonsense of a battle convo, I find it really interesting how Ike is basically thanking Sephiran for having wiped his memory when he was a child, to help him "deal" with the fact he witnessed his father stab his mother, because at that time (when he was a kid), he wouldn't have been able to deal with it.

But then, Ike tells Sephiran to "deal with" the tragedies he witnessed and lived through...

After thanking him for sparing him the "deal with it" step- he now asks Sephiran to take - when he was a child.

WTF?

Ike explains how he is thankful, but he ultimately had to "got up" and "move on" from the pain, and accept it. And that's precisely the point, Ike managed to take on that pain, "get up and move on" thanks to Sephiran's own meddling and help - else, by his own admission, he wouldn't have been able to "take it".

But now, he asks Sephiran to take his pain, without any magic amnesia to help, and deal with it?

And while I hate the idea of trauma olympics, grown-up Ike (even in POR) can now deal with the fact his dad killed his mother thanks to Lehran's magic amnesia - but he tells Lehran to deal with and get over - 1) the genocide of his tribe, 2) assassination of his great (etc) granddaughter because she had his blood, 3) the loss of his powers for a crap reason and the knowledge that laguz are bound to "die" if they mingle too much with beorcs as he personally witnessed it, 4) severe depression after realising he is not a laguz anymore but not even a beorc since beorcs will use pitchforks at him even if they regarded him 10 seconds before as sage, and the rest of Tellius' general fuckery? - without magic amnesia or plot hax?

Reyson was very close to pull something similar in FE9 when he tried to erase people in the Forest using "ancient magic", but abandoned the idea when Leanne was found - if PoR!Ike learnt that, would he have told Reyson to "get over" the heron genocide and Naesala's betrayal?

Of course not, because I'm pretty sure Ike knows, before meeting Reyson and even picking Leanne, what happened in Serenes.

And in RD, when he says those words, he doesn't know (but he later will!) that Sephiran is a heron.

Tl;Dr :

Supreme Leader's "minor dispute" is frowned upon by everyone, even if she might genuinely not know about what Nemesis did that made Rhea so enraged, in a doylist reading, Supreme Leader is a character who ignores a genocide to push her own specist agenda.

Doylist reading of that RD scene is, Ike telling Sephiran to man up and deal/get over the genocide of his people - but unlike Supreme Leader, when he comes to learn the truth of Sephiran's despair, he dgaf.

Thankfully, this scene is only triggered if Sephiran survives, so Ike can later explain his behaviour : he doesn't care what kind of suffering Sephiran endured, since nothing justifies what he was trying to do (kill everyone).

Even if the thing he should care, but doesn't want to, is, for part, a genocide.

[byanyan]

oops, got myself thinking again about byan having a little hoard of weird and random trinkets and shiny things hidden away under their bed in the same way that some cats have collections of bottle caps under furniture.

like, none of it is particularly meaningful and they don't wear any of the jewelry that's under there, but they like to pull it all out once in a while to look at and are always adding more

[starkcontrasts]

SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF MY GODDAMN LUNGS bc andreas burning down saul's house/sky's house/the house where silva raised sky/the house where sky grew up/the house that had all of baby sky's achievements throughout the years/the house silva got to see sky grow up in yeah andreas burning that house to the fucking ground gave such bitter ex behavior, distilled angry father/husband behavior, a pure shot of my "how could you raise him without me? how could you keep him from me? how could you give him your father's sword? what about me what about us" and i am fucking LIVING the man was truly unhinged he was all like it's about sending a message BITCH WHAT WAS THE MESSAGE WAS IT "i'll never forgive you for raising our son without me" BC THAT'S WHAT IT WAS SENDING

[marypsue]

Ahh also as an addendum to my previous ask about the age swap (which I might’ve accidentally labeled as the body swap fic due to the foibles of being awake unexpectedly early ), I was curious what your criticisms are regarding Robin and Will’s treatments by the Duffers? I know you’ve alluded to being bothered by both but I’d be curious to hear more ( if you have the time/hankering!)

Hooboy. Okay. Buckle in. 

Obviously this is going to be a combination of actual literary analysis and Big Feelings That I Have, so like, please don’t take this as any kind of moral dictum on what to or not to watch, or how to or how not to interpret what you watch. Also, a lot of what makes me uneasy and unhappy about how canon deliberately handles queerness (as opposed to when it does queer things apparently by accident, which as you may have noticed, I have considerable amounts of fun with) has to do with behind-the-scenes context I’ve read about, so there’s a certain degree of Telephone involved. And I’m still only halfway through season four. There’s just so fucking much of it. 

With all that said. 

The behind-the-scenes context I’m most specifically concerned with are the season-one pitch bible(? I think that’s what it’s called) (which, it should be noted, ended up diverging in some quite significant ways from what ended up in the show) where the Duffers first raised the possibility that Will might be gay, and the anecdote that Joe Keery and Maya Hawke were the ones who decided Robin should be queer and had to really push for it and wrote and choreographed that scene in the bathroom. Put the two together, and it tells you that the Duffers planned that there would be One (potentially) Gay Character in their show. 

And that character was the one they spent an entire season directing violent, vicious, eventually outright murderous homophobic hatred at through the mouthpiece of a couple of bullies. You can say what you want about revenge narratives and those characters ultimately getting their comeuppance, but for Me Personally, it sucks all the fun and escapism out of season one to watch it thinking that those bullies only got punished when they aimed that vitriol at someone to whom it didn’t literally apply. Also I still have to sit through however many episodes of that vicious homophobia onscreen regardless, so, like, that’s a walk in the park anyway. /sarcasm 

And then there’s that whole bad business in season three, where it’s never been quite clear to me if we’re supposed to see Mike as having been in any way in the wrong. Kind of scuppers the argument, to me, that we’re supposed to be on Will’s side. And season four, which so far has had Will tagging along after people who are supposed to be his best friends but mostly don’t seem to give a single damn about him, doing absolutely nothing but looking morose and sullen and tragic and *coughcough* Artistic, and causing Problems for the nice straight couple. 

(Tangential to the point I’m coming to, but also, my son deserves better than to be reduced to a soggy cardboard standee with ‘GAY’ scrawled across it in magic marker the way season four seems to be angling toward. All the Byers, but especially the Byers boys, deserve better than season four seems interested in giving them. But I digress.) 

Also. I love Robin. If you follow me, you probably know that. I’m a hardcore, ride-or-die Robin girl. But. With Robin, from what I’ve heard of the context, the Duffers never intended for her to be queer. They wrote a girl who was smart and funny and sharp and talented and a little bit mean and a little bit insecure and a little bit weird but in an interesting, endearing way - as a love interest for Steve. 

And then, as soon as season four rolled around, once they’d been pushed into making her canonically, on-screen queer (in a beautiful, tender, heartfelt, true-feeling scene that they didn’t fucking write), suddenly she’s had a complete personality transplant. Suddenly, she’s an awkward, bumbling, annoying loser who’s only funny when she’s the butt of the joke, who’s no good at anything and who nobody really likes except maybe for Steve, an outcast even amongst the freaks. When she does do something smart or competent, everyone around her reacts with shock, like it’s wildly out of character instead of how her character was originally written. One of these versions of Robin was written with ‘gay person’ in mind, and it unfortunately wasn’t the one we were obviously supposed to like. 

In both cases, I get the feeling that the storytelling issues stem from this like...assumption that queerness equals isolation and misery and tragedy, and that there’s nothing to queerness outside of that. That there’s something inherent to queerness, something pitiable but repulsive, that causes the isolation and misery and tragedy (not that those things are imposed from outside, by, say, violent homophobia). That it would be absurd to imagine that queerness could ever be joyful, or playful, or that someone might ever, given the chance to choose, not choose to be straight instead. Or that there could be enormous friendship and community and heart and pride in queerness, or even that queer people might find friendship and community and strength in each other. Or even fucking talk to each other, ever. 

Which is especially infuriating, because the whole central theme of season one (besides surface appearances being deceiving) is that community and care between people who are very different but discover they have more in common than there is that separates them is what saves the day! That love comes in all kinds of forms, and they’re all important, and that love can be stronger than fear! 

But apparently, according to the Duffers, queer love doesn’t count and queer community doesn’t exist. It’s just isolation, misery, and tragedy, and I guess we the watchers are supposed to sit outside of it and pity Them for it (and be quietly, sneakily, a little bit nastily grateful that it’s not happening to Us). Because of course nobody watching the show is queer. Of course. This show is made for normal people. 

It’s part of the same attitude I’ve also seen play out with the Duffers’ inability to just let a white dude be bad. Oh, they want to talk a big game about how they’re on the side of the freaks, and bullies are bad, and everybody should be respected and appreciated for who they are. But when it cuts down to the bone, when applying that precept to a girl or a person of colour or a queer person makes a straight white guy come off as a monster, they keep trying to dodge it. 

The more antagonists they try desperately to rehab without ever acknowledging why they were antagonists in the first place, the more it starts to look like they simply don’t really believe that the people those antagonists hurt really matter. That, somewhere deep down where the assumptions that are so baked in you don’t even realise they’re assumptions live, they don’t really believe that girls, or Black kids, or queer people are as fundamentally human and deserving of respect and compassion as their beloved awful straight white men are. That what they really think about bullies is that bullies are bad because the bullies picked on them, instead of the kinds of people who deserved it.

(See also: that time a twelve- or thirteen-year-old Sadie Sink didn’t want to have to do a kiss in the Snow Ball scene, so the Duffers, who had just been joking about having her do it, actually made her do it. For multiple takes. Specifically because she didn’t want to. And then later related that anecdote to the press. Because they thought it was funny.)

Anyway. Personally, I’d prefer canon just never say anything definitive on the matter of Will’s sexuality and stop trying to push the narrative in that direction, so I don’t have to watch the Duffers spectacularly fumble yet another attempt at Writing About Marginalised Groups. 

(Also, this is absolutely not me saying Watch A Different Show - I’m here writing fanfic for this stupid show, it’d be pretty fucking rich of me to try to tell people to stop watching it. But I’d really love for many of its fans to get some more exposure to less-mainstream, more deliberately queer literature and film, so y’all can see what it really feels like to be seen and acknowledged and loved by a story, on purpose. I get it! I do! I too have wanted very badly to feel like something I loved, loved me back. 

But you don’t have to content yourselves with scraps. And you definitely don’t have to be so concerned with those scraps that you blame your friends, cousins, siblings, brothers in arms for ‘stealing’ some kind of ‘representation’ from you by asking to be seen and acknowledged and loved as well. The bastards who’ve been withholding that recognition from all of us would love nothing more than to watch with amusement, gorging themselves on a banquet, while we tear each other apart over a couple of discarded bones. Don’t give them the satisfaction. We don’t have to be isolated, pitiable, pathetic, miserable tragedies. Put the hollow promises of exclusionism and respectability down. There is queer art and literature and film and community and joy and love in abundance that you don’t have to beg anyone for, and you are invited to participate. This is me inviting you to participate. 

And cordially inviting the Duffers to meet me in the woods behind the 7-Eleven.)

...

tl;dr the way the Duffers treat queerness when they do it on purpose feels like a combination of othering, contempt, and misery porn, and I hate it. And that, in a nutshell, is the rant I’ve been sitting on for the last two-and-a-bit years. I’m getting down off the cafeteria table now. 

[thesmokinpossum]

You know, I used to be one of those person who believed that we should not shame people for their individual habits when it comes to climate changes but focus on the industries and I still believe that it's a more pressing issues in many ways but like…

Ever since I started working at the post office, I just cannot feel the same. I'm genuinely disgusted by the amount of people who will return 10, 15, shit even 20+ parcels on a weekly basis. There's people I see doing this every saturday like clockwork.It's pretty clear that they had no need for any of the bullshit they ordered, they just wanted the little rush of getting some parcel in the mail.

It's also almost always from the same 3 website (Amazon, Shein and Temu) so they're not only actively destroying the environment (and seriously, I think it's hard to realize how much plastic and fuel all those returns take if you haven't seen it first hand -just the amount of tape we use on them on a daily basis is enough to make me sick-), they also contribute to horrible working conditions for so many people so yeah, at this point I do think we need to start applying some shame to all that bs tbh

[savage-rhi]

.

[dreamlogic]

...

[salsflore]

ummmm

[medicinemane]

"DIY tiny home you can build in weeks", ok... now lets see the cost

...seven and a half minutes later, the answer is $75k... so when you include land and all the rest of it, so basically nothing right?

This is my problem with tiny homes stuff, it's for rich people

[luvevee]

Personal bitching but I'm unfollowing/blocking anyone in sight that posts about f/naf. Idc if you just got into it or it's a niche you've liked for a while, it's a literal dumpsterfire all the way to the core and I'm not tolerating it around me after 7 years of encouraged braindamage from the creator/fanspace surrounding it all ✨

[nerd4music]

I’m so goddamn tired of crop tops or oversized shirts with a boxy ass shape and irregular fitting. why are my choices either toddler sized tees or potato sack with a fucking cap sleeve, like don’t piss me off.

[elvenmoans]

So cool and fun and awesome how If I run my stove and my microwave at the same time half my apartment's power trips

[teamseaslug]

How in the hell do people balance eye makeup and lips because if I try and do both (unless it’s black lipstick) I feel. Cheap.

[born-to-lose]

Should I make a translation blog and get paid for longer texts or make tips voluntary in any case?

[neonstatic]

hate to be the little bitch who tips poorly. i always tip, mind you, but when i have to do the tip myself outside of the machine and i ain’t got that much cash on me... for shame. i feel Horrible. i’m the type to carry coins not bills, and i feel sooo damn wack when i hand a wrinkly, folded five dolla bill :S i wanna grovel on my knees fr,,,