#and unwilling to engage

[lediz-watches]

Suspicious Minds

I uh… I may have lost my patience slightly in this episode. I’m sorry in advance.

But SERIOUSLY EVEN CARLOS MADE ME MAD. ARGH.

I’m liveblogging The Winchesters as a Supernatural!virgin. Please keep my lack of knowledge in mind if you continue...

In episode thoughts:

Oh dear! Gracious! Oh, my, I do so hope an honourable gentleman has come to – why, that’s not a gentleman! Goodness!

Such luck! I shall murder this woman with such style and grace! How wonderful!

Sorry, I’m done now.

Oh, Mary looking for life outside hunting! I actually am shocked this time.

But I’m reminded by how weird American college is. The idea of going to uni without knowing what you’re studying is so foreign to me. We apply for specific courses, and the entrance requirements change depending what you’re planning to study. In a non-American school, Mary would need to have a plan before even thinking about applying. It’s so odd to me.

Aww, Carlos is super twitterpated still.

And an idiot.

You know, some people think Mary Poppins actually is an eldritch creature, for the record. Just a good-aligned one.

…This actor looks familiar. Pause. It’s going to bother me until I find out.

MISTER SHEFFIELD! I KNEW IT! Mwuahahaha yessss! Okay, carrying on.

He feels like a future Lata. Except he’s distressing. Monsters may be monsters but I’m not on board with lobotomising people into service, believe it or not.

I take back my Lata comment. He’s like an evil Lata. Creepy good.

Oh, Roxy. Welcome back.

They’re acting like she looks like a mess, but she’s still gorgeous. Show, come on. She needs to clean some messy eyeliner and brush her hair. Some people spend hours on that look.

Lata… don’t you pull an Ada, on me.

Oh, this creepy dude is creepy but I’m kind of enjoying it, I’m not gonna lie.

You know, I know who Dean is, because of course, but if I didn’t, I would not have any reason to give a damn about the akrida wanting to kill him. I would, however, be confused about why they want to kill him. He has not yet actually had anything to do with the akrida, as far as I know, he’s just been AROUND. This is yet another instance of this show needing Supernatural to make sense.

Creepy good isn’t lying to you, kids, he’s just not telling you his life story. Why do you care why he’s got a vendetta against your enemies? Honestly, the way this group worries about morals sometimes is so all over the place. PICK A LANE. And don’t just tell me you’re hypocrites, that does not excuse you.

Oooh, Lata, I do hope you’re having fun in between shop talk dreams~!

Oh no. Creepy good did lie to you. He’s the assistant. How terrible?

Oh, no. In addition to LOBOTOMISING SENTIENT CREATURES he also did human experimentation. How shocking. Again, I have to wonder at the morals and ethics of this show. I think this is a me-problem, but I do not like the whole we-draw-the-line-at-physically-hurting-humans thing. If you’re willing to accept a guy torturing and enslaving sentient creatures, you should be willing to hear the context of the human experimentation. I’m not saying I’m okay with it, I’m just saying these characters should be. Be mad about it, sure, demand explanations, sure, but don’t go in guns blazing.

…phony accent, oh god, no, don’t do that, please. This actor is so very British, and that Southern Twang is a notoriously difficult accent to pull off.

…I like Roxy’s decision here. I like the allegory. Remember, and recover, and grow beyond your pain.

Oh, of course creepy good is creepy bad. But I stand by my statement about ethics. Of course he’s proven bad, but up until he did all this targeting the main characters bit, these characters feel like the type who would go along with bad morals For the Greater Good.

Who the heck is big guy and where did he come from?

Golems. Kay. The show has not explained how they work in this context. Golems, as far as I know, are creatures baked from clay and given a degree of sentience. And yet Mary is acting like they’re unforgivable magic.

Oh, look, John’s trying to be charming again. I wonder if the goo will go in his mouth.

…well, it didn’t, but uh… that’s a real human looking creature you just mercilessly killed in gruesome fashion.

And a legitimate human you just killed in less gruesome fashion.

ETHICS!

Mary. Mary, note what you are saying. Apply it to the actions John has taken so far. Please, Mary. Mary, please. Don’t say ‘us’, say ‘you’. Say ‘you’, Mary.

Okay, Carlos, I forgive you so many things, but comparing Roxy’s situation with yours is not particularly forgivable and you need to just not. Just no.

That was some TIMING, Millie. And cops. I was going to say what Akrida!Kyle is doing is almost a compelling twist on hearsay cases, but it’s been dramatised a bit much. You were so close to making me invested in a John storyline, show! So close!

Okay. So a few things here, and I think the main one I should address is my own prejudice. Because it’s another one of those things that stops me from watching a lot of fantasy and sci-fi if I’m honest.

I don’t like the idea that just because something is not human (strictly or otherwise) it should be considered fair game. There are multiple reasons I don’t like it, but I think in the end it comes down to this assumption that it-is-different-from-me-and-therefore-less. What this show calls monsters are all clearly sentient creatures with lives and thoughts and emotions. Even the akrida, which have basically been portrayed as worker drone ants, have jokes and preferences that were highlighted IN THIS EPISODE. They’re… remarkably human for CGI monster bugs.

But the show just Accepts As Fact that monsters are bad, humans are good. Even as it shows that humans are not good. They will slaughter monsters wholesale without blinking, and the Men of Letters quite rightfully seem to think of hunters as vicious killers willing to do terrible things in the name of what Dean calls righteousness, but physical harm to a human is Bad.

I mean, look how quickly they almost turned on Ada for the crime of (gasp) having a consensual relationship with a djinn. She had to rush to defend herself. Why? Maybe Supernatural gave a big long reason about why djinn are bad, but in all the stories I’ve ever read, they’re usually just as petty and loving and fickle as humans, with some extra power and less emotional control. Big deal.

And yes, Creepy Good was bad. I don’t mind him being bad. What I mind is the way Mary and John framed him as untrustworthy not because he did terrible things but because he… let himself in to the building that is much more his right to play in than theirs? They do realise they’re squatting in the Men of Letters’ house, right? Ada is literally the only one that’s supposed to be there. He had a KEY.

And the golem. I don’t have the context to understand the response Mary had to the golem. So as much as that dude came out of nowhere, so did the whole concept of him! Golems are not… the myth of golems is not consistent enough to just throw a golem into the story and have it be acceptable. Frikkin homunculi are more consistent and more recognisably Bad than a golem and yes I know in some stories they’re the same thing but golems are usually made of clay and homunculi are human parts and that would have fit Mary’s reaction a little better when mostly I’m just like golems are moving objects, so okay, cool use of magic?

-FURIOUS FLAILING CONTINUES FROM LAST EPISODE-

And Carlos and Lata, usually I love you guys, and Roxy’s story was so good but my god, the A-plot absolutely DESTROYED my willingness to put up with THAT UTTER NONSENSE where you would DARE compare being SCARED of INTIMACY with A FUCKING RAPE ALLEGORY.

THAT, MY FRIENDS, MADE ME VERY ANGRY.

…

Deep breaths.

…Okay, gonna take a break from this show for a minute now, before we move onto chapter eleven. …more breaths.

(or back to chapter one if you dare.)

[eerna]

I. It's been 100 pages. And only now does he realize that he isn't just hihi cute marrying his childhood crush but signing up for a kingdom. I am crying I love this kid sm

[hussyknee]

[Video description: Dated black and white video of an interview between a man off-screen who speaks in an upper-crust English accent and a handsome brown man in his thirties seated at a table. He is lean with short curly dark hair, a very sixties moustache, and wearing a casual shirt with an open collar. The camera is zoomed in on him, leaning forward on his elbows, head low and tilted towards the interviewer, brow furrowed, and an intense gaze that flicks down at the table after each question in careful contemplation. He speaks with an Arab accent. The timer of the video recording ticks away at the top left of the frame.

Transcript:

Interviewer: "Why won't your organisation engage in peace talks with the Israelis?"

Ghassan Kanafani: "You don't mean exactly peace talks. You mean capitulation. Surrendering."

Interviewer: "Why not just talk?"

Ghassan: "Talk to whom?"

Interviewer: "Talk to the Israeli leaders."

Ghassan: "That's the kind of conversation between the sword and the neck, you mean."

Interviewer: "Well, if there's no swords or guns in the room you could still talk."

Ghassan: "No. I have never seen any talk between a colonialist case and a national liberation movement."

Interviewer: "But despite this, why not talk?"

Ghassan: "Talk about what?"

Interviewer: "Talk about the possibility of not fighting."

Ghassan: "Not fighting for what?"

Interviewer: "Not fighting at all, no matter what for."

Ghassan: "People usually fight for something, and they stop fighting for something so you can't even tell me speak about what—"

Interviewer: "—Stop fighting—"

Ghassan: "—Talk about stop fighting why?"

Interviewer: "Talk to stop fighting to stop the death and the misery, the destruction, the pain."

Ghassan: "The misery and the pain and the destruction and the death for whom?"

Interviewer: "Of Palestinians, of Israelis, of Arabs."

Ghassan: "Of the Palestinian people who are uprooted, thrown in the camps, living in starvation, killed for twenty years and forbidden to use even the name Palestinian?"

Interviewer: "Better that way than dead though."

Ghassan: "Maybe to you, but to us, it's not. To us, to liberate our country, to have dignity, to have respect, to have our mere human rights is something as essential as life itself."

Ghassan Kanafani is one of the heroes of the Palestinian liberation and celebrated in the canon of modern Arab literature. Forced out of his home with his family during the Nakba in 1948 at the age of ten, the shame of their surrender to Zionists moved him to devote his life to Arab nationalism, Marxist movements and Palestinian liberation through his career as a newspaper editor, journalist, novellist and non-combatant member of the armed resistance group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He coined the term "resistance literature" for the genre of his writing, that came to be instrumental in shaping the Palestinian national identity and ideology of its resistance. In 1972, he and his 17 year old niece were murdered in a car bomb by Mossad.

His obituary read:

"He was a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ball-point pen, and his arena the newspaper pages."

[so-bitya]

mmm don't know why fans took dynamics between o!ciel and lizzy and replicated them with r!ciel. like what's the point of the whole twin reveal if not to explain the dissonance of how ciel's perceived by others, esp from lizzy.

like o!ciel isn't familiar with lizzy at all. he's prone to misunderstanding her, or lacks the emotional awareness of why she's so invested in their relationship. like how she asks if he hates him, and he denies the possibility, but likewise, he never thought she could be so desperate about their relationship in the first place! (like he really thought he could just stand in as her fiance, not even imitate r!ciel really, and that would be enough for her).

and it was assumed ciel was that way because he was traumatized (or never really cared about the engagement in the first place), but now we know it's not true. He simply did not grow up as lizzy's fiance. and even more so, it doesn't make sense that r!ciel would have the same relationship with her.

r!ciel would get lizzy's enthusiasm, or expectations at least, towards their marriage. like that was their life plan of course they're both looking forward to it (because if not, what else then....?) he has far more experience with her, saying right things, convincing her into doing the things he wants (while o!ciel always struggled with this). He uses the right gestures, leads her with his hand, he remembers how to play house with her.

so how in any way would their relationship be the same?

[furiousgoldfish]

like/reblog if you are intent on never forgiving your abusers, never want to see them or hear from them again, and your life is better for it.

[not-too-many-eyes]

Mutuals lets destroy the concept of purity culture together <3

[leonardalphachurch]

every time rwby stuff gets recommended to me i remember how fucking obnoxious i find it that that fandom has quarantined off all criticism into its own tag. i’m so happy rvb is a hater fandom and we put all our grievances in the main tag i think i’d die otherwise

[booksandmore]

what if i told you the endeavor is the type of person bakugo would have become (relentless, ambitious, cold and unliked) without midoriya. what if i told you that endeavor is the end result of a person with innate talent/potential brought up in a society that only sees value in power and strength and not in the individual. what if i told you that inspite of the ways he hurt them endeavor really did love his family, felt remorse for his actions, and is actually, activly trying to do better. what if i told you that todoroki enji is not your father. what then.

[anonymousad]

read MORE carefully when you feel attacked, not less

I honestly wonder about the reading comprehension of some people because some of the reactions to my posts seem to go like this:

me: I think pancakes are better than waffles other person: WHAT THE FUCK, WHY DO YOU HATE WAFFLES

and... no, that isn't what I said?

I didn't say people don't deserve to be compensated for their work, I said that you can't be trying to pay people like it's a salaried job without having that kind of stable and consistent business income. that's literally how businesses go bankrupt all the time.

I also didn't say that you can't/shouldn't be able to make money in audio drama, I said that you need to do it SUSTAINABLY. off the top of my head I can name several shows that do just that (WOE.BEGONE and Malevolent being two I've mentioned in the past), not to mention people like Lauren Shippen. timing and luck have a lot to do with success, absolutely, so that isn't to say it is easy or guaranteed if you follow in those kinds of steps, but it does show that it can be done in ways that are self-sustaining rather than constantly asking for large cash drops to stay afloat.

speaking of, I didn't compare Harlan to JK Rowling, I pointed out how "death of the author" has been deployed by people who don't want to face HER hatefulness while still engaging with Harry Potter (I know many people like this as we all do I'm sure) as an example of why you have to be cautious when throwing it around as an excuse.

and I definitely didn't say that a Black woman was hoarding resources by having a crowdfunding campaign with a high goal??? very weird assumption for you to draw from what I actually WAS talking about, person on Bluesky. almost like you didn't actually read and understand that whole section before trying to jump down my throat about it.

I have found, both in writing this blog and generally in life, that the more people feel defensive the less they are able to engage with what is being said. anyone who has ever tried to argue for trans or gay rights with a right winger has experienced this, it's the reason that "debate bro" types are so successful. you pick out the parts that make you feel angry and you go on a tirade about them, rather than stepping back and trying to synthesize the whole message.

not once has one of the people defensive about the crowdfunding stuff addressed my key point of it being "unsustainable" in their responses to it. that is literally the thesis, sidestepping it does not make it go away. it just reinforces to me and others that you are not thinking long-term about what will and won't work for us as a community.

I should also say that none of what I post comes just from me. every single thing I've said on this blog has come from at least a few different people. it is not a one-person opinion party, something I'm not sure I've ever said outright. especially with the crowdfund stuff I have had conversations with at least a dozen showrunners who all think the current methods do not work, are not sustainable, and are only benefitting the same people over and over. I have these conversations with my "colleagues" (because I can't think of another word) in the space because I find it interesting and important and valuable. I am engaging with these conversations outside of this blog because I have an emotional investment in us as a community figuring this out so that we can thrive.

I still regret not making this blog when I first desperately wanted to to talk about The Magnus Protocol campaign. (I do have thoughts on the TMA ttrpg though, as a general thing that exists and also based in some basic understanding of how the selected system was a bad choice for what people will be hoping to get from this thing so people will likely be disappointed once they actually play it)

anyway, that's all I have to say on that right now.

tldr: I know my posts are long and there is a lot to get through sometimes. but if you are going to fixate on one sentence and ignore the larger context you are setting yourself up to misunderstand the actual point being made. and yes, there is usually a point, one that I find important enough to bother writing about in the first place.

actually, I should also say that I would be more than willing to have a conversation with Tal or someone else from that part of the community who believes that the current crowdfunding model is working and will continue to work in the long run. seriously, if I am missing something obvious then explain it to me so I can understand what about this is working. and I don't just mean working for you, I mean working for the community and creators as a whole. because I still see a lot of campaigns fail for much less, even when following the vague tips being handed out about how to run a successful campaign.

[goddesstrolls]

the real question is how many times has darvai been reprimanded for getting into 45+ minute long discussions about art history with patrons

[seased]

p3p was THE MOST ive enjoyed a persona game. i can understand the persona 3 appeal. HOWEVER. the catch is that i cannot go back to a world without girl. i have no interest in reload (no girl), ive lost much of my interest in p5 (i see kasumi and KNOW she was the femc). persona might be forever tainted by longing for girl. thank you p3p

[coldresolve]

So I've read a lot of your posts and replies about torture apologia and I wanted to ask you what you think the best way to educate people is without throwing books at their faces and how best to signal to readers that you're writing unrealistic torture.

I'm asking this as someone who is moderately educated on torture and its effects. But I do enjoy reading and writing some of the more outlandish tropes like brainwashing in over-the-top settings for a variety of reasons I'm not going to mention here because explaining that would take ages and risk my anonymity.

Because there is a way to tell people that you're writing erotica that shouldn't be used as educational material for safe sex or bdsm etiquette (because its purpose is to be fantastical and unrealistic) and while it's going to be way harder with torture since people are less educated on it, there should be a way to go about it, right?

for the record i'd prefer the torture discussion sorts of questions to go over to @dark-audit, but im too tired to copy this over rn lol

i'll say this: if you're going to knowingly perpetuate myths and/or make themes that inadvertantly justify the use of torture, a good handful of which are so accepted in public discourse and fiction, a good portion of your audience believes they're factual long before they read a single thing you've written - you better make sure you signal that that's exactly what you're doing, and systematically shut down any suggestion that treats your depiction of torture as realistic, or, yknow, thematically moral in the context of real world politics. one thing is disclaimers, another is having regular conversations with your readers about how torture actually functions, which means you're gonna have to dip your toes into reading up on the topic. this is the bare minimum for handling this sort of thing responsibly imo. the current conventions for depictions of torture are misinformation and justifications. if you want to change that status quo while sticking to harmful narratives "for a variety of reasons I'm not going to mention", you're gonna have to put some serious effort in out-of-text. apologies but you dont get the good boy points for free lol

the better option would be to maybe perhaps not indulge the myths, no matter how compelling they are to you? it requires a bit of effort but if the alternative is turning a blind eye to apologia, maybe it's worth that effort. imo torture is an interesting and cathartic thing to write about even if you stick to depictions that are in line with reality. there are so many facets to it you could dive into, i don't really see the point in engaging with war on terror/reeducation rhetoric. but maybe thats just me

[ysolt]

You know who I am, I am upset that so many people are speaking badly about one of my friends because the two tweets you've posted.

She's a great person who helps lots of people, it makes me quite sad seeing all those people saying how she's got to be vapid or unwilling to engage with difficult subject matter because of two tweets done three years ago.

see if i made stupid tweets i would simply delete them some time between posting and 3 years later so some random chick on tumblr couldnt blow me up for failing 9th grade literacy understanding. but im just different.

[so-bitya]

This character in canon is dead to me. They are dead to me and their arc ended in the grave. They are defined by their last moments and continue to haunt the narrative today by maybes and lies of what could have been...

They are dead to me. I am killing them in my head. I am stabbing them in my head over and over, until they're blood on my chest and you will never understand, you will never understand with your poorly reanimated zombie of a rotting corpse of a character, that can never be as real as the pulsing beating mess of a person dying in my grasp.

[blades-of-miquella]

[CGworld anon] Japanophone Jon_dArc on Reddit translated part of the article in the short thread "Who is the most skilled boss in elden ring lore?", and clarified some wording. I brought it up because some Radahn fans assumed he was winning in the trailer and let Malenia get up because of honor. In actuality, what we saw was Radahn trying to pick off an already-exhausted and wounded foe after throwing his army at her. And still getting stalemated and impaled pre-Rot. Almost the opposite context.

having discussions about malenia and radahn in a broader context (e.g. reddit threads) is kind of a lost cause because a lot of people have attached themselves to the idea of wholesome can-do-no-wrong chad radahn vs the vindictive evil bitch malenia. i won't comment on that too much in depth, but it leads to very skewed discussions where people insist malenia was weak and just cheated him out of a fair fight.

the game indicates to us that radahn is not underhanded, per se, but maybe driven is the right term. he relentlessly pursued the title elden lord enough to heckle several demigods and make a good attempt at sieging leyndell. his idolization of godfrey runs deep. it seems clear that his exchange with malenia wasn't one of honorably waiting for her, but more that he was taunting her (again - the line of "meeting radahn's measure").

but to that end yeah i agree with that assessment of the trailer. it's particularly reinforced imo in how the items around her describe her skill and determination, and it also reminds me of her cut line when she killed the player. the full exchange was originally "Now do you understand? I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella." which to me she's conveying the spirit of what's described in that article; perhaps, even, that this is what she said to radahn.

and radahn in the trailer certainly seems like he was expecting her to lay down and die; he's taken by surprise when she continues to fight with the shattered prosthetic.

part of the problem with discussing their battle is that the story trailer (extraneous media) is the only context we have for the battle of aeonia & their part in the shattering at large, which is really unfortunate. the total lack of explicit and in-depth context here is probably my biggest gripe with the game.

[dreamsoftheheart]

convenience was and is a mistake. it is the journey and exploration and attempt that makes the life.