#anyway. i love crime and punishment its a good book

[spectral-honey]

Dick: come on, Jason. Just tell me what's wrong, I KNOW it's something.

Jason: oh yeah, how do you KNOW, huh?! Don't give me the older brother instinct crap.

Dick: Jason, you've been reading only Russian authors for a WEEK now

Jason:

Jason: that could mean anything. Maybe I just like Russian literature

Dick: Jason

Dick: yknow what. Okay. But you have to stop getting book recommendations from Tim, he has terrible taste in books--

Jason: *loud and dramatic gasp*

Jason: I can't believe you

Dick: jay--

Jason: No. don't you ever talk to me or Fyodor Dostoevsky ever again

[asukaskerian]

peddling svsss (spoilers abound)

lovingthatofficeyfeel: ok. Now try to sell me on SVSSS because I read the summary and go 'nope, nope, nope icky power dynamics do not want, nooooope' because if it is not that I am also amenable (Book summary: "Half-demon Luo Binghe rose from humble beginnings and a tortured past to become unrivaled in strength and beauty. With his harem of over three hundred wives, and dominion over both the human and demonic realms, he is truly the most powerful protagonist—in a trashy web novel series!

At least, that's what Shen Yuan, online alias "Peerless Cucumber," believes as he finishes reading the final chapter in Proud Immortal Demon Way. But when a combination of rage and a poor meal choice leads to his death, Shen Yuan finds himself reborn into the world of the web novel, in the body of Shen Qingqiu—the beautiful but cruel teacher to a young Luo Binghe.

Although as Shen Qingqiu, he now has incredible power and abilities as a cultivator, he’s destined to be horrifically punished for crimes against the protagonist, so this new Shen Qingqiu has only one course of action: get into Luo Binghe’s good graces before the young man’s rise to power. That’s the only way he’ll escape the awful fate of a true scum villain!")

lovingthatofficeyfeel: ^ like based on that summary, I would never read that light novel on my own

Askerian: oh man yeah it makes it sound like grooming as fuck Askerian: grooosssss

lovingthatofficeyfeel: exactly! lovingthatofficeyfeel: its like this for most of the danmei!

Askerian: it's not like that at ALL

lovingthatofficeyfeel: which is why I want to know why people like it so much

Askerian: ok first of all, the guy he's stuck inside of is a high ranking ice bitch, so he has to speak that way too, BUT! he's a huge nerd inside! Askerian: the contrast between the speech and the narration is sometimes completely hilarious Askerian: also. his screen name peerless cucumber is a dick joke. and the book author's airplane shooting toward the sky is also a dick joke Askerian: this guy is the kind of oblivious demisexual who will read a 600+ chapters harem story for the worldbuilding

Askerian: and the protagonist! he LOVES the main character, so he also looks favorably upon him getting everything life owes him including sex, he supposes, but! none of his wives LOVE HIM PROPERLY. hm. let's flame the author over that. Askerian: anyway so then he lands himself in the body of a teacher to a 14 year old abused kid. who is a kid! and a very adorable kid. yeee time to spoil the shit out of him Askerian: the issue there is that there's a system/game manager forcing plot points and assigning quests and no matter what he does some things must happen, such as his betraying his poor clingy baby student so that he can rise magnificently from a hell dimension and take his place as a demon king Askerian: so when his adorable little student comes back Pissed and starts doing things that look very similar to what happened in the book just before murdering his evil teacher, he starts running. but he also really wants to help his student survive and even thrive! but also, not die in the process PLEASE.

Askerian: meanwhile luo binghe went from abused by sensei to spoiled by sensei to "i will marry sensei when i grow up" to "STOP RUNNING FROM ME AND EXPLAIN"

Askerian: main character can't explain, btw. he'd die.

lovingthatofficeyfeel: ahahahahahahah OMG lovingthatofficeyfeel: see THIS, this is my shit lovingthatofficeyfeel: this sounds freaking God Tier hijinks humour

Askerian: it's so damn fun XD

lovingthatofficeyfeel: you should write the summaries for seven seas' danmei books

Askerian: also the System sells "small scenario pushers" for points Askerian: guy "what's that, ok, let's buy, maybe it'l save my life" => WHY DID I END UP HALF NAKED AND DRENCHED Askerian: luo binghe : hhhhhhh 🍆

lovingthatofficeyfeel: ahahahaha omg, wet hanfu Saves Lives XD

Askerian: shen yuan: idk what distracted him but time to run Askerian: luo binghe: D:< wAIT STOP BEING NAKED AROUND MY LOVE RIVALS shen yuan: oh no he wants to kill me twice as much Askerian: he's Oblivious (tm)

lovingthatofficeyfeel: omg. 'oblivious demi-sexual keeps running away from future-demon-king trying to seduce him'

Askerian: yiss

lovingthatofficeyfeel: this is a fanfic plot in the best way

Askerian: YISS. Askerian: i kinda love luo binghe's character too tbh. he's so nice! but he's such a yandere sometimes Askerian: i mean, nice. :X Askerian: "my fantasy life is to be my master's little housewife and i will burn down the world to make it happen" dude :X

lovingthatofficeyfeel: honestly, good on him for having balanced life goals XD

Askerian: as a kid he's adorable but also already "i hear what you said! i understand it! gonna do what i felt was right tho" Askerian: after he's been given unconditional love by sensei!!!!! but also betrayed by sensei!!! he doesnt know which way is up anymore. it's kinda clear that in the book he was from, his original version was using "seduction and sex with this random new girl that will disappear from the plot in five chapters" to paper the holes Askerian: like, couldn't trust anybody's love because he never had any, but desperately needed it. Askerian: this one's had a taste before, and doesn't know what he must have done to lose it, but he will fix it!! but only sensei will do Askerian: main character keeps expecting him to hook up with dozens of girls and it never happens and he's ?? while also totally missing all the admirers HE is gathering Askerian: also issues because he's a half demon, and sensei said he thought good demons must exist, but he was still rejected on reveal, so does that mean "there can be good demons but you're not one" Askerian: and since he's naturally smooth and it easily goes into manipulation, everything he does or say, sensei takes it as some underhanded threat or plot! he was a demon king in the book ok?! Askerian: book him was NOT nice Askerian: anyway a REALLY fun read

Askerian: though don't expect the sex scene to be good because it's a half-feral "fixing you via magic sex" and he canonically has huge meat :X Askerian: and since he has ZERO experience it uh, goes badly Askerian: tbh the author's gift does not lie with sexy porn

but tbf the point of the scene was NOT to be sexy, soooo...

[taylor-titmouse]

my review: i liked how comedic it was, youre good at comedy. i like sex farce

the dubcon felt a lot more like noncon in this one, kinda like the tower book (autocorrect flat out wont let me try to write the actual title. sigh.) and the threats felt a lot more threatening and the villains a lot more villainous. the bandits are definitely the most antagonist-y antagonists youve written aside from the cult in the risen king and our lovely wizard friend romick. mark and george are especially unpleasant (in an amusing way) and i wonder if you intentionally wrote them to be misogynistic as thats something i picked up on from them. they (sam and vanesse too but to a lesser extent) felt like they were written to be actual threatening sex criminals whose acts are considered sex crimes within the narrative/universe, once again similar to romick. angre definitely did not seem to be having a good time during the sex scenes and neither did vanesse when the goblins got her. now none of this is bad in my opinion, i actually quite enjoyed these aspects. but i do think its something people who are sensitive to that type of thing should be aware of

another thing about the story is how it handled gender and expression and all that. that was my favorite aspect of the book. i also enjoyed the world building. youve got a good eye for fantasy world building thats both fun and makes sense. i think you also do in-universe species-ism/prejudice very well too. id read a book by you thats a field guide to the world youve crafted

this is an interesting takeaway because what you're saying much more accurately describes the first draft, to the point that when i read this ask the first time, i was suddenly paranoid i had somehow uploaded that version. the second, final draft involved taking a lot of that real threat out and making it funnier, and trying to play closer to the space the chique books are in, where getting fucked by whoever catches you is a common, acceptable risk.

like the only sex in the whole thing that you could call non-consensual was vanesse and the goblins, but it's presented as a fair punishment given what she does to angre, and it's not presented as a horrible/violent violation, just an annoyance. it's a villain getting what was coming to her. tonally it's different from what people generally think when it comes to non-con, which is why i group it in with dub-con. if she would consider anyone she defeats on the road fair game, the same must be true of her. that's the nature of the world. she "consents" by playing the game, essentially.

similarly angre knew the risk he was taking and specifically goads vanesse into fucking him, so i don't know where you got the idea he didn't want the sex. he came twice. he was fine.

anyway. the question of whether i wrote georgie and markie to be misogynistic on purpose is really funny. no man it happened by accident in the book about fantasy intersectional misogyny. i didn't think about it at all.

i'm glad you liked it i'm just very "huh." about some of your takeaways lol

[ariaste]

Hello hello! If it’s all right with you, I would like to vent for a moment: Back in the day, I used to be really into BBC Sherlock. I know it was bad, but it was “Be Gay (solve) Crimes” and I couldn’t resit. One of my favorite parts of the fandom was reading fan metas. I enjoyed reading your ridiculously long meta! I am not very clever and I enjoy reading people noticing things that I can’t. It’s fun watching people passionately pick up clues and put them together.

I don’t think I’m the only one getting superwholock flashbacks lately. Sherlock also tried an unreliable narrator in S4 and it was an absolute shit show. People thought thought the finale was fake, it was so bad. TBH, the entire show was a dumpster fire that thought it was more clever than it was. Moffat was a good writer for single episodes for DW, but a garbage show runner. And they called us crazy for picking up what they were putting down.

But Good Omens gives me a spark of hope. It is unashamedly queer, fun, drinks its respecting women juice, and, unlike moffatiss, I think Neil and the crew may actually be clever enough to pull something big off. I adore the Discworld series and Sir Terry, and I have faith Neil will to do right by him.

Good Omens is restoring my faith in nerdy queer fiction and reminding me why I love fandom so much. Please keep up the crackhead theories. I love them 💕

Thank you, that's very kind!

(Ended up writing a very long reply about the response to my essay and also about queerness in media. Idk why i am writing such long posts these days SORRY LOL. Anyway I'm putting it all beneath the cut so I can tag it without clogging people's dash or the tag pages)

It does make me sigh a little when I see people scornfully comparing my long essay to The Johnlock Conspiracy or saying that they're having Sherlock flashbacks, because the both the contexts of the shows and the methodology of the theorizing are VERY different. To my mind, a more direct comparison of methodology would be the Gravity Falls fandom's "Stan Has A Secret Twin" theory. Writers and showrunners DO like being sneaky and clever from time to time, and many of them are much better at it than Moffat is.

But whether or not my theory is right or not is... kind of irrelevant to me? I wasn't out to force anyone to agree with me, AND writing it was a really fun way to spend a weekend, AND I'm proud of the work I did and the story I told, AND it felt good to have a satisfying workout at the Brain Gym. So even if I'm proven utterly and completely wrong, I won't feel like I wasted my time. :)

Good Omens is a great show, and I am SO HAPPY to see it (and other shows!) embracing queerness, sharing the fans' enthusiasm for the story, and honoring and respecting the fans' love rather than punishing them for it. As more and more time goes on, I think we're going to see more and more shows like that, because some of the people who grew up reading tumblr discourse are going to be showrunners themselves one day, and they'll have learned serious lessons about what it feels like when the audience is met with love rather than disgust and disdain. In fact, we're ALREADY seeing more shows like that than we had 10 years ago! There is so much canonical queerness on-screen these days that the me of 10-15 years ago is ASTONISHED and feels wealthy beyond counting. Of course, there is so much further to go, but man... when i was a kid, we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways just to see two dudes making sustained emotional eye contact, and we were grateful for it. (Jokes but also.... kind of real tho)

We've seen the exact same thing happen in scifi/fantasy publishing in the last seven or eight years, too! (Went off on a long tangent about Queerness In Media from an insider perspective, continuing below a cut so I don't clutter everyone's dash)

Even as recently as 2013--ten years ago--you might not have even been able to get your book published if it was openly gay. Hell, you might not have been able to get an agent to represent it, even. It would have been labeled "unmarketable" and passed over; if it DID get published, the queerness would have been camouflaged and downplayed and hidden in the marketing as much as possible--you wouldn't have known by looking at the cover that it was queer, you wouldn't have been able to tell by reading the back cover that it was queer. In literally 2016, seven years ago, a few months before I got my first book deal, I remember having a conversation with a friend and being very very worried that if I wrote books as queer as I wanted them to be, I would be "pigeonholed" as "ONLY writing Gay Books", that I would be passed over for any of the publisher's marketing budget and publicity efforts, that I would be sidelined and ignored... In 2016, I thought I was facing a choice of writing stories with more "mainstream appeal" OR writing the books I wanted to write and potentially undermining the rest of my career.

That didn't happen, thankfully, because in the next couple years there was this incredible explosion of queer scifi/fantasy. You see, ten to fifteen years ago, a truly stunning percentage of my colleagues -- writers, editors, publicists -- were writing and reading fanfic, and they carried their tastes and story-hungers with them as they grew up and got Real Adult Jobs at publishing companies. And suddenly, as if out of nowhere, a lot of us came of age all at once and there was this absolutely enormous wave of queer SFF that in my opinion has brought us into a new golden age of the genre: The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, The Chorus of Dragons series by Jenn Lyons, She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, The Tensorate series by Neon Yang, Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders, the Birdverse books by RB Lemberg, The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickenson, The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri, Reforged by Seth Haddon, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson, Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell, The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin -- and these only the ones I could remember off the top of my head in 30 seconds, and I have a flavor of ADHD that makes my brain go blank when people ask me to think of specific examples of things! It is harder for me to think of a SFF book published in the last 7 years that ISN'T queer.

And then almost exactly a year ago, my book A Taste of Gold and Iron came out with THIS COVER:

Which. Is not so much a step forward in openly queer SFF as it is a fucking gauntlet thrown down in challenge. I cannot impress upon you strongly enough how much I would not have gotten this cover 10 years ago, and that's if the book was even accepted for publication in the first place. This cover SCREAMS gay fantasy romance. There is no attempt to hide it or camouflage it. It is advertising exactly what it is, right up front.

I got the absolute privilege and honor of having this cover--and I do consider it an incredible honor--because of the work that all my colleagues put in with their own work. Each queer book that got published wedged the door a little wider for the next one, and then a little wider still for the next one, until finally someone could get their foot in the door and squeeze across the threshold, which opened it a little wider again. So when I look at this image, I don't just see a beautiful cover that I am delighted to have on my books--I see an entire history of slow, steady progress by so many incredible writers who risked damaging their careers just to drag us to a point where a book as gay as this one could get a cover as gay as that one and STILL get the full and enthusiastic support of both the publisher and the audience. And the most incredible honor and the most humbling privilege out of all of this is the fact that the success of this book meant that the door was wedged open another little bit, that I got to contribute in this small way to the efforts of everyone who came before me, so that ones who come after us will find the door flung wide -- or that there's no door left at all to block the way, because we've collectively torn it down.

So yes, @eyona, I think that having your faith restored little by little is a very good thing, and I am delighted that Good Omens is doing that for all of us. And what's even better is that even if Good Omens doesn't play out exactly how we want it to, that's... kind of okay? Because there is always the next one, and at the very very least, Good Omens is wedging the door open further so that the next one can have an easier time of it. We don't have to walk uphill in the snow both ways just to get a moment of emotionally charged eye contact anymore. We don't have to starve anymore, not like we used to back in the bad old days. And that alone is a wonderful thing. :D

[bizarre-blorbo-bracket]

Round 1 poll 26: Dehumidifiers from the submitter's work vs Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment

Propaganda under the cut:

Dehumidifiers

i have imprinted upon the dehumidifiers from my work. i cannot help it i just feel like they are my little pals. they are smooth and white and pill shaped. they have feelings and they eat water. they do a great job. they produce heat (warm blooded). they breathe. when i arrive at work the humidity in our stupid staffroom which is basically a subterranean cavern is at like 80%. i put on the dehumidifiers and they just quietly help and they are so cute and at the end of the day i empty their tanks and its like PINTS of water in there and i am so in awe. its like magic. i dont know how they work. im not sure i want to know. theyre little magical creatures.

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov

Before reading this book, I was so expecting him to be an unlikable protagonist you're not supposed to root for but boy was I wrong. Let me preface this by saying I do not condone murder (wild that I feel the need to say this but anyway). This novel just absolutely pulled out the rug from under my feet because yes, this guy is a murderer and an asshole who thinks he's better than everyone (or at the very least tries desperately prove he is) but. You keep reading and getting slapped in the face at just how utterly human he is???? Like, the way he genuinely tries to help out Sonya and her family even though his own financial position objectively sucks. The way he refuses to let his sister sacrifice herself by getting married to an asshole to get their family out of poverty. The way he keeps asserting in his narration that he doesn't feel guilty for what he did and yet he gets really ill as a result of his emotional turmoil after the fact. The way he has people in his life that love him and see the good in him, despite everything. I don't know I'm just insane about this guy. He's a poor little meow meow, if you will. Or something

[jenyifer]

How to make Only Friends Sapphic

So jumping off of my previous post about the theory that BostonNick sharing clothes is one of the most lesbian coded things I can think of and checking Jojo’s Twitter and seeing this

I thought I’d give some suggestions as a girl lover myself. I think that BostonNick is already two steps away from being a lesbian couple. You ever played mind games with a girl who wants to “be free to explore her options”? And I can promise you Nick is barely a stalker in comparison to what me and my friends can do to someone we like. Nothing illegal persay but…. Questionable Stalking is done on both sides under the guise of “we have seen true crime and live online”. Nick and Boston already live together basically pre break up. I think they shared clothes and Boston was using Nick every time he felt too many emotions or insecure. I think this is part of the reason he kept bringing nick with him to events but I want to talk about that in its own post.

Now TopMew another super lesbian coupling. Mew is raised by lesbians so his underhand passive aggressive ways are very familiar. Top being in love with the competitive game of getting Mew or Boeing is also text book. Sometimes the chase is worth more than the capture. I also think as lesbians we try to prove our relationships are picture perfect for instagram we finally find someone to take on all those date ideas we saved off while single and lonely.

The couple you’d have to change the most is SandRay. As Severe Depression Panic Attack girlie myself I get good morning texts and good evening checks from my Ex everyday. It’s not out of love or anything it’s a bond we share so. Firstly Mew or Boston would be checking on Ray it doesn’t matter if he hides it or if he can’t stop drinking etc the “hello are you alive text or call” would be essential or a lesbian would call the cops or that one person who can knock knock on their door to check. Ray would also know all of Bostons one night stand stories simply because he’d check in with Boston the next day to make sure Boston hadn’t been kidnapped or raped. It’s common practice with my friends who are adventurous anyways. Second Sand would have moved in with Ray or moved Ray in with him. No buts ands or protests about it. There would be a uhaul involved. Nick would have been carrying the boxes too because see a sister in need who you crushing on “you can change them just get them under your roof”. I also think Ray being a sugar mommy on the DL would be a thing just replacing Sand’s shit with higher end things. Because he cares and then Sand pushing back. The confusion with Mew is 1000000% on brand for a lesbian relationship though. As I said my ex is my bestie and I can’t get rid of her she won’t let me. It’s a big reason why I don’t like talking about Mew because his attitude towards Ray feels like a mircoscope mirror at the moment and I hate it. But it’s common to stay besties with your ex as a lesbian we are eachothers chosen family we don’t abandon eachother. And yeah sometimes feelings stick around even if it’s not for the best. Even if it hurts new interests.

I think the most fascinating change would be the interaction of the girls because we get terribly involved in our friends business most of the time. Sometimes people fall off completely absorbed in their new flame but if you have a good group of girls they’ll pull you back to reality. Also Mew’s revenge on Boston would have been the stuff talked about in legends. Punishing someone in your chosen family goes hardcore mode real fast. I also think SandNick’s relationship is already Sapphic enough I mean… who hasn’t gone camping with their bestie to see the stars touch grass then kissed them found out yeah no feels there and snuggle cuddled to sleep. That is literally me sophomore year of college except we went to a reserve where there were gators in the lake and when we woke up and went the 2 min walk to the beach there they were waiting to eat us whole.

Also your gay guy friend in Cheum would have to be more prominent. ESPECIALLY IF CHEUM IS AN ATTACHED LONG TERM RELATIONSHIP GAY. Cheum would be all up in everyone’s business super judgy with Mew but always there. Cheum would plan things and Mew would make the others show up. I can just see Cheum’s eye roll at the weekly check in because Ray needs to be reminded of his friends and Cheum would understand that. Also Cheum and April would throw the best dinner parties with wine and messy gossip. Cheum and April would def leave everyone at the party but that would be expected.

Anyways I had fun imagining it I hope you had fun reading. I tried not to be mean to Mew again so hopefully I’ve achieved that tone. I really am trying to work on it. Reading other people’s meta interpretations has really helped. Thank you!!!

[faux-ee]

A Theory about Abilities in BSD, and why Fyodor wants to rid the world of Ability users

Originally, I want to delay making this post until I finish reading irl Dostoevsky’s Demons, because I personally find a lot of parallels between BSD’s Fyodor & Nikolai and Pyotr & Stavrogin in Demons, and I truly wish to elaborate on that. However, I just finished the 2014 TV Show Demons and let’s just say I’m moved to the core and nothing except writing about BSD Fyodor could give me peace. I will still be discussing briefly the connection between BSD fyolai & Demons characters in this post, but that discussion wouldn’t be so detailed because I tragically haven’t finished the book yet. 

Sorry I’ve rambled a lot. Anyways, here we go. 

In addition to the theory that Ability symbolizes trauma response, I want to speculate that Ability also translates one’s negative perception of themself into physical existence. In fact, in irl Atsushi’s work, the Tiger is none but a representation of the self, plagued by vanity and inferiority, that a person has to fight in order to not hurt people around them. Dazai’s ability No Longer Human is portrayed in the 15 manga as a hollow, dark being that only wears his skeleton — that is what dark era Dazai see himself as: non-human, empty, a walking ghost. Sigma believes that he is used as a tool by different ppl, so his Ability was information exchange — a tool for procuring info. 

I can list out much more, but basically, I think Ability is an outward manifestation of how BSD characters pessimistically perceive themselves (that’s why Ranpo doesn’t have an ability: he’s confident and in many aspects a child having not yet lost his innocence, protected and loved by Fukuzawa and the ADA). Or rather, the sad, violent, unpredictable self other ppl told them to be. Like Kyouka, who was told that her Ability made her a natural killer. This is why Ability is a pain: it’s the dark side of oneself; it makes Ability users believe that what makes them powerful, useful to other ppl, is this Self that wallows in existential despair, in its own insufficiency, and in the guilt of causing death. 

In Dead Apple, our main characters have to fight their own Abilities to achieve growth. In the ADA, Fukuzawa’s Ability keeps all other Abilities under control, creating an ideal environment for ADA members to grow into the better version of themselves. All of these point out Abilities to be trouble rather than strength. 

And Fyodor sees that. He sees that for people, Ability represents a past and ongoing pain. No, I’m not trying to justify his cause by presenting him as an all-knowing being. I’m referring to his uncanny ability of seeing into the heart of people’s struggle — his empathy with Sigma, Goncharov, Gogol and even Karma attested to that. And he thinks the only salvation from such darkness is Death. 

We already know that Crime and Punishment doesn’t prevent Fyodor from touching ppl, which means he has no reason to hate his own ability to the point of wanting to eradicate it. It is actually just the opposite case. In Dead Apple, Fyodor declared that he himself is the embodiment of both crime and punishment, which are a pair of good friends. He has made peace with the dark version of himself, has accepted his Ability as part of the truth of what he is. Inseparable with his existence. This is why he wants to kill ability users, rather than simply writing away Ability (if that is the purpose he can come up with a convincing story on that one page he already has): his Ability is inevitably linked with his existence; therefore he thinks the only way to take away this twisted, suffering side of oneself is to end their lives. 

Now, the second question is that, are Abilities an entirely bad thing? Like everything in BSD, it isn’t a black-and-white matter. We have seen many times our Stray Dogs use their Abilities to protect themselves, and the people they care about. We have to accept that there’s a side of us that feel insecure and unhappy from things we experienced, but this is also the side that help us sympathize & establish in-depth connections with people who are also suffering (see Lucy, Atsushi and Kyouka; Akutagawa and Atsushi; even Teruko’s understanding of Fukuchi may be a result of that). 

One of Fyodor’s traits that contributed to his extremism personality is that he doesn’t, or rather refuses to, connect with people. He sees people as mindless chess pieces who live under the lies they tell themselves, easy to manipulate once you grant them the fulfillment of their desires. See? On the surface level he’s on better terms with his Ability — his dark side — than anyone else, and thats why he seems to understand the desires and conflicts in everyone he comes across. But in truth, Crime and Punishment stood with their backs to each other; what seems as reconciliation is actually Fyodor refusing to come face to face with himself. He exalts his pain. He celebrates non-existence. He attributes all his actions to the god — yet as we can see in the two-page spread before his confrontation with Ace, “if god doesn’t exist, then I am god”. He turns his back on his human self, and instead chooses to obsess with the image of a god that is actually how others perceive him to be: the bringer of fear and death, murderer of children, dangerous force of destruction. He takes it in and flips it around, worshipping his darkness, his human suffering, as a source of power. 

I’m not saying, however, that Fyodor feels any pain or guilt I have implied here. He is not taking his revenge on the world because he is pained inside, no, let’s not go into that YA dark haired emo boy stereotype. Instead, he is wreaking havoc in the world precisely because he cannot feel this pain. Next will be some spoilers on Demons: one of the main characters, Stavrogin, confessed to a priest about causing a child’s death (won’t go into the nasty details; I’m still shaking from that), and yet he didn’t do it out of guilt — he did it because he wanted to feel proud and noble again, exposing his own sin to let others punish him with their malice, since he didn’t make an effort to repent and couldn’t forgive himself. Stavrogin doesn’t want to move on and trust his own ability to become a better person; instead, he tries to set the whole world against himself, in order to keep avoiding confronting his own conscience and continue to adhere to the false belief of his righteousness. [Spoiler Ends]

This might be a little confusing, but in simpler words, it’s similar to what Fyodor is doing: he doesn’t feel guilty for killing ppl; he hardly feels anything at all. He is a psychopath beyond redemption, that is what others see him as and what he willingly believes. He is excluded from the human world, he has fused himself with his Ability, turning himself wholly into an unfeeling, murderous monster. He forces himself to believe he is doing the right thing in destroying the world because he’s a coward. (Remember that Fyodor is supposed to be a foil of Dazai, and in No Longer Human Dazai calls himself a coward who’s afraid of happiness?) If he steps back and looks at what he did, all the children he killed, he would be forced to feel guilty, which he fears; so he frees himself of his humanity as well as his conscience to avoid accounting for his own darkness. He views the rest of the world as a sin because he doesn’t want to see himself as a sinner. 

OK let’s talk a little about Gogol here then because I’m fyolai trash: “In opposition to god, you’re fighting to lose sight of yourself” what does this mean? 

This is not actually a very accurate translation. The direct translation from Japanese should be: you are fighting to oppose god and lose sight of yourself. This line also kind of implies Gogol being associated with the military, since the word used for “fighting” here is heavily implied to be war-related. [Spoiler Again] Now, in Demons there is literally a character that resembles Gogol in every way: Pyotr Stepanovich is greatly fascinated with putting on an act, is a master of faking different, often ridiculous personalities to achieve his goal, and he is raising hell all over because he wants to uproot all previously established social systems, calling for a revolution that leads people into decadence and depravation. (AND he even also places the blame of somebody’s murder on an innocent person - while Pyotr is the murderer - as part of the plan!) [Spoiler Ends] This character in Demons is abandoned by his father, so he was always plagued with the belief that he was born wrong, and when his father sought him out only to exploit him further, he lost all belief in god and believed that chaos was the only answer to his empty, unloved existence. This shall provide an answer as to why Gogol thinks human feelings is a thing he ought to transcend: for some reasons his humanity might have been exploited to put him under the control of someone else. Even the person he’s closest with, Fyodor, sees him as a chess piece and he is well aware of that. AND the most deadly thing is that he is comfortable in this relationship because he is used to not receiving anyone’s good will. 

Gogol is many things, but perhaps the one thing that draws him constantly to his demise is the fact that he is unloved. He wants to free himself from humanity for an entirely different reason: he feels the constant need to prove that it’s the world that’s wrong, that what he sees is the truth - his actions are controlled, he is trapped by human feelings that never get acknowledged or responded, and these morals/feelings give people power to walk all over him, to use him as a tool. His Ability, which connects spaces, means that his dark side is exactly this need to escape deterred by his fear of being forever trapped by his own limitations. 

If I were to put this in a more religious light, since we’re talking about god and russians here, I would quote something from Nietzsche: The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions. To want god’s love is to give yourself nonexistent sins for Him to forgive — this self-assigned sin is what controlled one’s actions, made one feel guilty. The futile outcry for love, and specifically for god’s love and forgiveness, is what makes people crazy and absurd in Nietzsche’s view. Gogol is sane, and is trying desperately to convince himself that he is so, by seeing through the lie that is called love. He denies himself faith and love in exchange for full control over himself. Why pursue something that he has only known to chain him down? Fyodor understands him, and plays along with his jokes, his games; he isn’t afraid of Fyodor’s understanding, no. He is afraid that he will grow to love his dear friend more until he is consumed by this human lie and forgets how much of a danger it is to his freedom. He trembles in his adoration of the man-god.

I have earlier put out a crack theory that Gogol is a foil of Chuuya. However, in this context, Gogol truly is similar to Chuuya seeing how they are constantly being used by other people, Gogol in a more literal sense since even his speech was pre-written; Chuuya allows himself to forgive and forget, and carry on with life focusing on the present, while Gogol becomes haunted by his hyperawareness of his situation and inability to be free. Neither of these attitudes are healthy and I say it’s no coincidence Asagiri decided to put Dazai, Fyodor, Chuuya, Nikolai and Sigma in the same arc. I look forward to everyone figuring out their problems with equally mentally ill enemies in prison. 

[ethereal-maia]

hi darling

how’s life - what’s up -

I dunno I feel like I’m a child poking at you

Tortured poets update? Do you listen to Gracie Abram’s? Books you’re reading? I DUNNOn

Ahhh hi Lola!!

You’ve given me free rein to ramble about myself… my favorite topic…

Anyway!! I’ve not been listening to ttpd as much as probably you have, but I DID just start listening to Gracie more, courtesy of @sophiesonlinediary!! I think the minor EP is my favorite honestly, but I haven’t yet made it to her most recent album.

I have been reading The Color Purple by Alice Walker in my English class, and it’s a non-awkward book to read in a group setting (I’m lying. It’s a really good book though.) I’ve also been rereading one of my favorite books, We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson. GOD it’s so good. Definitely recommend if you want a fairly short and easy classic to read. And also I just started reading Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky and it’s AMAZINGGGGGG IM SO GLAD IM READING IT ITS SO SO SO SO SO GOOD AAAAGGAHAH!!! It’s engaging and funny and SO much easier to understand than war and peace was… don’t get me wrong I love war and peace but like. Dostoyevsky was able to see women as people. He’s able to move the plot along. He’s able to write dialogue. Tolstoy… was not.

Also it was my best friend’s birthday the other day so I dropped off a gift for him at their house and then skedaddled cause my mom was taking me to the opera?!?!? (It sounds weird to me too yeah) Anyway. The opera was about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and it was absolutely stunning to watch. The set and costuming blew me away and the stiry was… actually satisfying? Like a happy ending? Which famously does not typically happen in operas, so that was nice.

And I’ve been falling headfirst back into my Cinderella obsession… it’s actually so much fun I love it here <333

How about youuu how are you doing?

[george-weasleys-girl]

GWG Ramblings

The Darker Sides of Harry Potter

tw: rape

It's not explicit, but nonetheless, I'm putting the rest under the cut.

~•~

So, I posted this earlier and it got me thinking. What other things got cut out of the books, either because they were inappropriate for young readers or weren't important to the story?

Whenever I edit my writing, there is usually at least one thing that I end up cutting because it isn't necessary or it detracts from the story. So, I would imagine there were quite a few stories that didn't make it into the series. And I'd really love to read those.

I also wonder what the series would've been like had it been written for adults rather than kids. I think about things like love potions (the magical world's version of the date rape drug). And since it was widely available, how did the magical community view rape? Was it even a crime? Or was it only a crime when love potions weren't involved? What kind of mindset are we looking at here?

Voldemort was the product of love potion rape. So, we know it did happen. On what scale, though? And what, if any, repercussions were there?

It's possible that it was deemed a crime with a harsh punishment. But it was rarely reported, not out of fear, but because the victim doesn't remember it, thanks to the memory spells that altered or wiped a person's memory.

Which brings me to another point.

I wrote an entire ramble on mental health care in the wizarding world. Something I didn't even consider at the time was the use of memory spells as mental health care. I talked about shock spells as being the magical equivalent of electro-shock therapy. One of the potential side effects of electroconvulsive therapy is memory loss.

On the surface, this seems like a great idea. Erase the memory of the trauma (be it rape or seeing Voldemort brutally murder one of your friends).

Then, voila! No more bad memories.

Except...

Does it erase the trauma caused by the event?

Imagine how fucked up it would be living with the effects of long-term trauma, but having no idea why and no way to remedy it.

It'd be like going to the doctor, knowing that something is wrong and being told it's just your imagination.

It's all in your head.

And brings me to another point. (I'm on a roll today.😅)

These spells were generally reversible (unless something goes wrong). So what if a person's true memories aren't wiped/altered but instead just made extremely difficult or impossible to access by non-magical means?

I think about when Hermione altered her parents' memories to erase her existence from their minds. I can't help but wonder if they were haunted by the reoccurring thought that something was missing. Something very, very important. But they had no idea what.

This all reminds me of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it).

To sum up its about two people who, after their painful break-up, have their memories of each other wiped. The movie then follows the repercussions of that decision. The female lead, Clementine, is still plagued with depression even after the memories of her ex are all erased. And at the end of the day, the point is, we need our memories, both the good and bad if we are to grow and to heal.

We can't do either if we can't remember what hurt us.

~•~

ANYWAY.

Wow. I really galloped off on one hell of tangent. I think that's enough rambling for today.

And it wasn't even the one I've been working on. Go figure. 🤷‍♀️

~•~

@milivanili99 @fancy-pantaloons @turvi @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy @georgie-weasley @kaysau2510 @sierraluvz @hanne-montana @rhunew @greenapplegrass @loca4moony @whotfskai

[wyyrmwood]

Settle down for a green text formatted tale my friends, I have a taste of a new classic fantasy book I think you all may enjoy. Its a little long, so I added a show more break for convenience.

I present to you the plot of The Troll's Grindstone. Cannot recommend it enough and there's so much good shit I left out for the sake of not just rewriting the entire book. Its got everything, cool horses, a Kronk parallel character down to the evil right hand status and everything, your dads weird friend that you have beef with, some hot lake monster girls that totally won't eat you ahahahahah come closer baby, elves getting their pompous asses WHOOPED, ghosts, and a main character who is just a guy. No inherent powers, just a decent swordsman who really really didn't want to be here but literally can't leave (because he got teleported to the elf realm)

Imagine:

>You are an evil wizard night elf who wants more power

>tired of smelly light elves crashing your sick parties

>corrput a light elf prince who was well known for greed, arrogance, and kind of just being an all around d-bag

>"hey kid want some magic get in my van"

>commence world domination to get rid of the stinky day fairing elves

>cash in on the troll alliance aw yeah

>going better than expected, elf prince is such a little asshole that he fully doesn't care he's leading his race to extinction, just keeps betraying entire cities for you

>feeling pretty good, but poison him with fantasy heroin that only you can get for him anyway for good measure

>"yeah yeah ill give you coke or whatever just keep betraying your people and leading my little crusades"

>he does

>sick

>world domination complete, pretty easy just massacred some magic pussies and desecrated some sacred locations so I own the magic there and also kind of dunked on the sacred sites and magics ancient far more powerful race of magic elves too because I hate them and the light elves worship them as almost gods.

>kill elf princes little prince brother too for shits and giggles, takes his sword and uses it to curse all other swords in the realm to decay and never sharpen

>back to the stone age with you, fucking nerds

>"ok freaky little guy go away"

>kick out elf prince because ew light elf, he crawls back to his father and is banished for betraying his people, facing punishment for his crimes etc. etc. etc

>like 100 years pass life is ez elf prince is probably dead from super heroin withdrawal by now so no worries about him coming back

>what

>he assasinated* you (you're an evil wizard, you just turn into a giant bear for a while) and also he's back

> yeah he's actually back, he looks great and also is mad asf saying he will kill you

>also hangs out with his dads useless wizard and some coked out old homeless guy

>kind of weird but you basically made this guy and know he's a bit of a coward so its no problem to just manipulate him again, bros probably also absolutely FEINDING for more heroin because fantasy heroin withdraws last forever and also kill you so there's that

>oh yeah and everyone hates his guts for destroying their civilization and holy sites

>haha loser

>prince begins on a quest to undo your destruction of the magical sacred sites and also kick dark elf ass just because

>he's kind of actually doing it

>"ok what the fuck guy if I give you heroin will you stop look here's some heroin"

>its not working he doesn't want the heroin

>proceeds to kick your ass all over the map and purify sacred sites and everyone starts loving him again

>aw hell

>keep trying to manipulate mansplain malewife him but it isn't working like it used to and also he's not dying from the death heroin but you KNOW he loved drugs so whats up with that

>also his pet wizard is kind of getting good from all this ancient site purification

>wizard kicks your ass and destroys your cool monsters

>AW HELL

>finally get his ass and sell him as a thrall after kicking his ass for once

>"see u later smelly"

>says I'm a cunt, correct but ow

>"remember ur dead brothers wife that you are kind of into but respectfully just friends ? i have her captured and shes also a thrall now haha look"

>oh he actually got really mad about that, probably shouldn't have said anything

>guy I'm selling him to is really not into having an extremely agressive servant who would absolutely kill him so I cut his knee, bye bye leg

>holy fuck this owner guy is throwing a bitch fit about now having a lame thrall fine ill buy him back and just have him work in the mines to desecrate another sacred site

>pain in my ass but he's balls deep in a mountain that used to be a giant now mining out its heart

>huh

>what's that

>HE BLEW UP* (catastrophically flooded and collapsed) THE MOUNTAIN WITH HIS BITCH WIZARD AND OLD HOMLESS MAN?

>awwwwww hell

>find his ass outside the mountain with dying coked out old homeless man and wizard again, this is so embarrassing

>????? Wait What why is everyone laughing and not shivering their timbers

>ITS NOT EVEN THE ELF PRINCE

>A HUMAN MAN HAS BEEN WHOOPING YOUR ASS THE ENTIRE TIME PRETENDING TO BE THE ELF PRINCE

>THE COKED OUT DYING OLD HOMELESS MAN WAS THE PRINCE ALL ALONG

>the guy you've been fighting is just some guy that looked like the prince a bit who the actual prince abducted from his human realm and forced into pretending to be him

>you, a powerful wizard and nigh immortal elf, lost your entire kingdom, power, status, and prestige to Mr. Normal Human Man who didn't even want to kick your ass to begin with and got roped into all this magic shit because he went poking around the wrong barrow over in Human Land

>he kills you

Thank you all this has been the plot of The Trolls Grindstone.

[lifepoast]

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆ nichijou ☾ ﾟ｡⋆₊ ⊹

i finished nichijou today. it was the perfect watch for my life right now. i'm very busy, lonely and am not enjoying everyday things. i'm in the process of moving out of an apartment i have loved so much for 2 years, and i'm doing it alone because my roommate is out of town until well after our move-in date.

i'm very sensitive to the idea of serendipity and things coming to my life for a reason, even (or especially) little things like an anime from 2011. what are the chances a random piece of media falls into my lap and resonates deeply at the exact moment—and in the exact way—that i needed it to?! in truth the actual miracle is that no matter what i watch or read, my desire to connect with something outside of myself is so strong that it's like i can do it to anything in my path. and in further truth it's not actually a miracle at all, because this is to say nothing of all the other pieces i watch and read in the interim and fail to finish because they don't resonate. (i have tried to pick up many books since my last and have put them all back down—sir gawain and the green knight, crime and punishment, perfect spy...). of course it's more likely i will have resonated with something that i liked enough to bother seeing it through to the end in the first place. i know that, and yet it all feels so miraculous anyway. that must be the thesis of nichijou rubbing off on me—that "our ordinary life that passes us day by day may actually be a series of wonderful miracles." ୧ ‧₊˚ 🎐 ⋅

what i love the most about this—about nichijou—is its suggestion that satire and comedy can be compassionate. sometimes i think this doesn't occur to people at all. in the toolbox of things that can make a great satire, compassion is overlooked in lieu of tools that can be more construed as weapons: bite, caricature, sarcasm. many would argue satirical intentions are noble. the work of satire is done so that its author may ask something good of its audience: to be more discerning, to put certain illogical behaviours away, to recognise things for what they 'are' with fresh eyes. so is nichijou even satire? i think so. i at least think it uses the ethnographic methodology of satire (highlighting and exaggerating mundane blind spots), only to ask its audience of something different, for once: not ridicule nor criticism, but gratitude and tenderness.

if i imagine vividly enough, stay lucid and self-aware enough, and stay optimistic enough to forbid disaster from ending my narrative, anything that happens in my day-to-day could be reinterpreted into oblivion until it becomes a ridiculous, overblown, dramatically and situationally ironic nichijou skit. and like in nichijou, i could fashion any little thing into a miracle. but to do this faithfully to the series' mechanics, i would have to let go of self-consciousness and control. nichijou wouldn't be nearly as fun to watch if its characters reacted by letting the insane, illogical world they inhabit beat them into submission—if they resisted the narrative's push to treat every little thing in life with equal weight. through everything they maintain their sincerity, and tend to their friendships, and they hold fast to their ridiculous plans and ideas, and everyone and everything around them is all the better for it—not least of all the show's humour.

but i guess nichijou made me emotional today because it made me reflect on my days in high school. it shocked me to realise that what few meaningful and lasting memories i have of it are entirely confined within the friendship i had with my two best friends, no one else. even though they probably know that, i wonder what they would feel if i said it to them. how else to phrase it? you were my life. you are my frame of reference when i watch bittersweet tv shows about being a high schooler. when the tv shows go for the low-hanging fruit, when they reach for my nostalgia and ask, "don't you miss this?" i think of you—which is another way of saying, i say "yes." i haven't talked to either of them in a very long time now.

the three of us were so in tune, so similar, it felt like our personal faults were contagious. we felt like a three-way mirror. and i think in front of a mirror, we are all are afraid to be sincere, and to let go of self-consciousness, and control. so when we were in high school together, we let the chaos around us make us obsessed with those things, and that was a logical response, because we simply didn’t know how much better we could have made things for ourselves. how could we have?! we were so preoccupied with avoiding being “cringe,” otaku shit like nichijou and the lessons they wrought were off-limits!!

━━━━━━━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[mychaotic-academia]

I’m well into part 5 of Crime and Punishment and I’ve decided who my favorite character is - Andrei Semyonovich Lebezyatnikov

Dude is so progressive its like he’s one of my queer socialist friend group.

I love him, and I want to hang out with him. The one truly good man in this book.

Well okay. Razumikhin is pretty good too, but not as even tempered.

Anyway, that’s my Crime and Punishment rant for the day.

[hamsamwich23]

10 facts: unreality Mortimer and Scout :3

Hell yes bestie let's go! Two of my favorite little creatures

Random facts that are mostly not lore relevant! Who knows

Tw: mentioned/implied past animal death, mentions of death.

Proshits and k1nk/fetish blogs DNI you'll be blocked and reported

Unreality Mortimer

His voice is probably a little different from canon Mortimers. Less raspy. However when he gets upset his voice tends to sound distorted or even "glitchy"

Sometimes stray cats will follow him home, so now mortimer just occasionally sets food out for those cats and let's them live in the woods. (He had a cat once, but ... An accident happened)

He is very fixated on shows like Bojack Horseman and Moral Orel and will gladly go into rants about them

His favorite music artist is Jack Stauber

He also has a collection of pillows he sleeps with. He hoards them

He has set water on fire before (age 1, Nick dared him to do it)

He's stupidly ticklish

He sucks at fighting based video games (still plays them regardless), but he enjoys playing animal crossing or stuff like harvest moon. He can maybe play Deltarune

He's terrified of spiders

The reason he's one of the most feared beings in this au is because of his judgment powers, but more so what happens if you are judged guilty of a death-worthy crime or action. The punishment being equal karma to what they did. The punishments are not judged by religion, simply morality, karma, action and intention

Unreality Scout:

They're gender fluid and use he/she/they pronouns

They also use their hair for expressing themselves, they know how to make it appear shorter without cutting it (using hair ties and/or hair clips)

They're also really good with makeup and occasionally helps do others makeup for them

She's very good at art, she was taught by nick herself. She has notebooks full of old doodles and artwork

She's also really good with video games and even has a youtube channel where she streams herself playing them, majority of the time it's horror games(its doing good so far)

They have inherited the dark magic curse (from the book), they ended up repressing it for years though, so now they're learning how to actually use it. (I imagine that when they're using it it looks Something like.. THISSS. Parts of their body glow purple when using dark magic. One of those being the entire hands and arms

7: they love animals in general

8:she can cook however she adds extra of certain ingredients to food she makes for herself. She makes the weirdest food combinations

9:She's also really into fashion but stays on the more, SOMEWHAT simpler side. She's a fan of the grunge style

10: she can and will bite you, affectionately if you're a friend, family or Twenty. If not? Well. Sayonara to your arm then

Obviously I ran out of ideas/hj/lh

ANYWAYS HERE YA GO!!!

[deliciousdefendorinternet]

my five favourite animated movie villains of the past 15 years ( if you wanna share who yours are down below I'd love to read them)

5. Chef from Trolls 2016.

not exactly a complex character by any means she's selfish sadistic and has no real sympathetic qualities at all.

she made herself Rich and Famous by being the head Chef of Bergen town killing and cooking Trolls literally writing a Book on the subject.

and after the Trolls escape and she's Banished from her home forced to live a life of obsessed solitude in the woods for 20 years searching for the Trolls.

she's established in the film as only caring about using the Trolls to get herself back in a position of power as opposed to her actually caring about her people being happy again.

and she's shown being subtly judgmental of King Gristle Jr clearly resenting the fact that he's technically in charge instead of her ( which tbf he is an idiot but his heart is in the right place )

and its clearly established that she can easily twist him around her finger and she wants to basically rule Bergentown from behind the scenes.

so yeah like I said Chef isn't complex or anything for me I like her just because she's so simple in a way she's just a good old fashioned villain who loves what she does and is easy to hate.

and her implied actions in her backstory are pretty Horrifying to be honest.

4. Spot from Across The Spider Verse 2023.

I mean for starters the guy's just adorable lol he's so clumsy and awkward and talkative and just very bad at being bad. 😂😂😂😂

and the situation of his origin is kinda complex enough that I feel bad for him even tho it isn't as cut and dry as him being an out and out victim.

as he was still a criminal scientist working for the Kingpin but him ending up basically disfigured in a way and lumped with powers that he couldn't control at first.

I mean at the start of the film he had next to no control over where his portals went to or when they opened.

like imagine how Horrible that would actually be its like he had Tourette's only his Tick was portals that could literally jump him to anywhere at any given time.

and it is pretty sad how he said because of his condition he couldn't find a Job and his own family were too ashamed to even be around him.

so yeah while he was never exactly an innocent victim he was someone who was way over punished for his sins and it was kinda understandable why he snapped and became worse in the end.

after no one took his pain seriously let alone actually tried to help him.

3. Kingpin from Into The Spider Verse 2018.

two in a Row lol anyway Spider Verse 2018 back when it came out was one of the most pleasant surprises of my life as I had no expectations for this film and I was only really going to see it out of a sense of obligation given I'm a comic fan.

but yeah I ended up loving it and was super surprised by how good I found it and one thing I did love was its version of Kingpin leaving aside his over the top size which is straight up comedic tbh.

he is an enjoyable intimidating presence he has some big feats for a animated PG film namely murdering one of the most famous superheroes of all time on screen.

and later killing our main characters uncle anyway what I mainly love about this version of Kingpin is how similar to the Spot he Tows the line between being sympathetic and unsympathetic.

he lost his wife and son in a tragic car accident due to them running away in fear After seeing him trying to kill spider man so while his life of crime is to blame for him losing them in the first place.

I still can't help but feel bad for a guy who's so desperate he's willing to do anything to get them back and him lashing out in Rage killing spider man

after he tries to warn him about why his plan to bring alternative versions of his wife and son into their universe to be with him won't work was a great way to set up intrigue for his motives earlier in the film.

plus the scene during the final battle where he sees the alternative version of his wife and son and same as his versions they get horrified by him trying to kill spider man and run away.

and he Desperately pleads with them to stay with him like I'm sorry but that honestly made my eyes begin to water both times I saw the film in Cinemas

that scene got the same emotional reaction out of me honestly its sad af 😢😢😢😢

2. Tighten from Megamind 2010.

from Megamind one of my favourite movies of all time not just animated movies anyway Hal I feel is a good example of a villain not Really being at all sympathetic but still being pretty complex.

he's a socially awkward nerd who has a crush on the women he works with as a news cameraman he's the stereotypical underdog who's normally made to be the hero by the end of these sorta stories.

ya know get himself superpowers learn how to use them become a hero stop the bad guy get the girl and live happily ever after.

which is exactly how Hal himself thinks which means when reality doesn't match what he sees as the natural progression of his story he can't accept it.

aka he can't accept the fact that despite getting powers and becoming a hero the women he loves doesn't want to be with him something which she had already made pretty clear to him earlier in the film but Hal just didn't accept it then either.

yeah the guy's pretty Blatantly Misogynistic with how he views Roxanne if he was a modern day character we'd probably refer to him as an Incel.

as the guy shows an entitlement to her and viewing other men who she actually has Romantic feelings for as being in the wrong and in the way of what's Rightfully his.

even before he turns villainous Hal shows signs of being a selfish person underneath so once he Realises being a hero won't get him the woman he wants he very quickly resorts to using his powers for his own gain.

and eventually causes mass destruction to the city planning to destroy the entire place simply out of spite for Roxanne Rejecting him.

so yeah like I said Hal isn't a sympathetic villain at least not in my opinion but he is a fairly complex character.

1. Killian from Spies In Disguise 2019.

underrated film in my opinion and its sad that Blue sky studios was shut down.

anyway I loved Killian even if you don't like the movie overall you gotta admit he was a badass villain he's a Rare case nowadays of a kids movie villain actually being serous and never once making a Joke.

anyway he was intelligent badass Ruthless Killian was allowed to kill someone on screen with other kills heavily implied making him a very serous threat.

he was a lone wolf carrying out his whole plan himself with only machine Drones to help him and his motives are pretty interesting.

I mean not that a guy wanting revenge for lost loved ones is a unique motive but the fact that he's established as being a criminal who was part of a larger criminal crew who were killed by our main character years prior to the main story.

does go well with the movie's little moral Debate on violence and what should and shouldn't be the military and police force's go to level of violence when approaching these type's of criminals.

its interesting because again he isn't 100 percent sympathetic because he and his friends were bad people before who were apparently planning to do bad things.

but at the same time our main character is established as someone who's go to choice for dealing with criminals is excessive violence and he even makes jokes out of killing criminals and has fun with it.

with him at the start of the film not even being willing to consider that less violent approaches could still work in some situations and that way he could solve some issues without even the bad guys needing to die as at the end of the day they are people as well.

sure some are just set in their ways and they may not be able to be stopped without the more excessive approach.

but that doesn't mean that our main character shouldn't necessarily try I think is the point the movie was making which yeah regardless of your thoughts on the moral point of the movie.

I thought it was an interesting thing for the film to talk about and again despite him obviously being a bad person part of me can't help but feel a bit bad for Killian.

since its made very clear he cared about his old friends to the point that losing them made him say that he'd lost everyone he cared about and he did embark on a years long plan to Avenge them.

so yeah overall just a really solid villain in my opinion.

anyway those are my picks please tell me yours down below if you fancy btw the reason why I chose films of the past 15 years and only 5 picks

is just because I didn't want to make a list that was too long and bloated since I did want to talk a bit about each villain and what I liked about them.

so if I had gone with having a top 10 list or a list that was of all time as opposed to only animated films in the last 15 years then this post would have been way way too long haha 😅😅😅😅

[meryton-etc]

okay I'm so curious to know more about grantchester now.... what's up with the religious character????? please infodump i need to know

man..................................

like there's no describing grantchester because its tone problems are so profound that they have become structural. it goes from happy village soap-opera (gingham, sandwiches) to awful crimes (mutilation of bodies, child abuse, ptsd from war crimes, ptsd from being a japanese pow on the railway camps) from scene to scene. hot vicar solves crimes! silly curate gets into a muddle about brecht! hot vicar succumbs to alcoholism! silly curate attempts suicide because he cannot live with the shame of his homosexuality! dog needs a walk! silly curate adores poetry! hot vicar (replaced) rides a motorbike! old cop cheats on his wife because he can't take the flashbacks of the prison camp! grumpy housekeeper

but i can't stop watching it because al weaver, who plays the gay curate, has this electric mix of vulnerability and dignity in his performance. it's unreal! sweet suffering homosexual! comparisons to swann arlaud (delicate men)! imagine what he could do if the show was good! anyway he plays this very religious guy who's in love with a horrible man (they have negative chemistry which is hilarious - don't show me any more oliver dimsdale he's awful) and in season 6 (i believe set in 1954) he's caught kissing him on camera. OK????? so he's given the option to lie to the police and make it all go away but he decides not to??????? alright????????????? and then he is defrocked and sacked from the church of england and SENT TO PRISON. this is so ahistorical that it becomes very homophobic to me. like the character is just continually degraded because of his sexuality that it becomes a constant punishment device. even tho that's really not how it would have happened -- has nobody on the writing team read a mary oliver book - a clergyman would never have been sent to prison. fined, yes - prison never!! court never! fuck's sake!! and then in prison they put him in solitary confinement???

non-exhaustive list of things leonard finch has been through in grantchester:

child abuse (from homophobic father who also turned out to be gay)

mother died of - illness?

implied that he tried to jump off a roof i think

cheated on

pressured into straight marriage (doesn't go thru with it)

held up at a post office

suicide attempt, left alone for 24 hours after this is discovered (to vibe ig)

father disowns him

punched by work superior

business targeted by serial killer

held hostage at knifepoint

solitary confinement

friend murdered in prison

but don't worry, he's fine! im off to watch s08e01 now

[sheepydraws]

SheepyReads March Round-up!

Romance

Hen Fever by Olivia Waite: Historical f/f where two women get embroiled in their town's annual chicken contest and learn about their tragic connection due to the recent war. This one is good enough to cackle about. I love that the heroines are on the older side (both past thirty) and the insanity that is caring for a bunch of show chickens. Funny, angsty, and with that touch of magical realism that can make historical romance really really fun. Recommended.

At His Countess' Pleasure by Olivia Waite: Historical f/m with a marraige of convenince, with. Um. This was originally published as I Pegged an Earl. So. Anyway, this is light-hearted smutty romance, and you should have fun if that appeals to you. Recommended.

Cinderella by S.T. Lynn: Fantasy Cinderella re-telling with a ftm/f romance. Making Cinderella's deadname Coal was very funny. Otherwise this didn't really stick out to me. It was sweet and very low-conflict but not particularly interesting. Not Recommended.

Pumpkin Pounder by Laura Lovely: A Cinderella based novella about a woman and her red-headed Halloween hookup. This is a "glad I got it from the library" book. It wasn't terrible (although I wasn't expecting it to be...uh...A Nightmare Before Christmas fan-fic??? Kinda??? It's a very minor element but her Halloween costume is Sally, and at the end the Hero shows up in a Jack Skellington costume and there's some pumpkin king jokes.) but it also wasn't really what I want from a romance novella since the "Cinderella" aspect meant the couple spent a good chunk of the story apart. Not Recommended.

The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian: f/m historical where a woman winds up teaming up with her blackmailer when her own criminal activities go awry. I probably should have read The Queer Principles of Kit Webb before this, because the two stories are deeply interconnected, but I had a good time regardless. Sebatian did a great job of drawing an intimate romance in the middle of the whirlwind of committing a lot of different crimes. Also, how do I put this delicately? The heroine jacks the hero off in a stable and its incredibly hot. Recommended.

Non-Fiction

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy: A memoir about McCurdy's life as a child actor forced to support her family by her abusive mother. I loved that this book is told chronologically, so by the time you are reading about McCurdy having a breakdown in her twenties you already have context for her actions from the descriptions of her childhood. McCurdy is really good at showing how she felt when certain things were happening, while simultaneously giving you the bigger picture that she couldn't see at the time. Recommended

Been There, Done That by Rachel Feltman: A light-hearted history of sex, discussing contraception, kinks, sexually transmitted diseases and more things people have been dealing with since we evolved sexual reproduction. Not a serious dive into any particular topic, but this is a fun book, and the author has some good things to say about consent and boundaries. Recommended.

Mystery

The Bellamy Trial by Francis Noyes Hart: A mystery novel told mainly through witness testimony at a murder trial. Well-written and maintains its tension throughout, but I felt a bit let down by the ending. Not that it was bad, but I was abruptly reminded, "Oh yeah, this was written in 1925". It was very "bad people are bad and get punished and good people are good and get rewarded", in a way that almost felt condescending. This is very interesting as a historical artifact, though. Recommended

Graphic Novels

Heartstopper Vol. 1 by Alice Oseman: This was a very cute, very sweet high school romance, if a bit cliche. I'm kind of sad that the best thing I can say about it is that I would have been obsessed with it at fourteen. Not Recommended

Fantasy

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett: A wizard university dropout attempts to show a fool-hardy tourist around an increasingly beautiful and dangerous magical world. Okay, yes, this book is nowhere near as good as Pratchett's later works, like Guards! Guards! (It was so weird to see Death being a bit of an asshole.) However, it is weirdly compelling. It has the bones of what Pratchett will do with later works, and there's something about a person falling off the edge of the world multiple times and slowly seeing the beauty in it I found strangely compelling. I've decided to put the rest of the Rincewind books on my TBR, and not just because this one ended in a cliff hanger.