#because I was tired of seeing the notes

[eightfourone]

yes I'm a famous author, I've had my writing cited on a wikipedia page

[saturnisfallingdown]

woah thats crazy. anyways guys check out this cool guitar solo

[VD: A clip of MCR performing a live acoustic set for 98.7 FM. Ray Toro plays an acoustic version of the "Summertime" guitar solo. End VD]

[miwtual]

im so fucking tired of the disrespect gifmakers get on the gifmaker website

[carlos55inz]

we need to have the conversation of how charles fans treat his teammates without falling into the accusatory zone that we want to harm charles by having this conversation.

i mean charles no harm, but it is something that is getting extremely out of hand and it needs to be talked about. some charles fans have gotten too freely with being cruel to others drivers.

people used to call sebastian vettel a CORPSE. yes, scuderia ferrari screwed him. yes, everyone loves sebastian vettel again NOW (because he is far away from it and free from this hell) but back in 19/20? charles fans, mainly on twitter, made his life miserable. he couldn’t win. he couldn’t make anyone happy. if he won, he was taking something from charles that belonged to charles rightfully. it he lost, he was old and bad and should retire already and this sport wasn’t for him. he wasn’t a team player. he didn’t care about ferrari. he wanted to screw charles over.

if you just got here, if carlos is your first experience of how charles’ teammates are treated, let me tell you. everything that is being said about carlos has already been said about sebastian. and it is crazy for some people to understand that because everyone loves sebastian again, so you can’t even imagine what he went throught.

and i’m sorry for generalizing all of charles fans, im a charles fan, but it is something we need to stop and look at and talk about. how long will we let it go. how long until it starts to happen to lewis hamilton, of all people. how long until they dismiss his victories and say he is old and should give up of this sport so charles can win.

and you know one of the worst part? charles loves to race. every time he had to fight for it, he loved it. when he and carlos race in that track, he comes out with a big smile and talking about how he loves to race carlos. how this is real racing. he loves to fight for it. to prove himself. to have to sweat for it.

all while his fans try to make everyone just bow down their heads and give him things in a plate, already chewed and easy to get. as if he would like that. as if he can’t prove himself worth otherwise. as if he isn’t good enough to fight for it.

[cannibal-nightmares]

let's make trouble in the dream world, we'll hijack heaven with another memory now; i make the most of the turning tide, it just split what's left of the burning silence

[shit-people-probably-didnt-say]

Wylan: Morning all, I had trouble sleeping last night

Wylan: I’ll be sassy throughout the day and simmering into the evening. Prepare for a possible tantrum around 3pm… and it will be your fault

Wylan: So lockdown the hatches, be ready and stay alert

[sparky-is-spiders]

S1 Jonsasha AU where Sasha is the Archivist and they start slowly spiraling as they uncover more and more mysteries. Their fascination with The Horrors drives them into each other’s arms. They stay later and later. The storage closet becomes a shared living space for them. Martin hasn’t noticed. Tim doesn’t know what to say to get his friends back. They’re losing themselves in the Archives. They egg each other on. They start becoming more paranoid. Jon is so endlessly, doggedly loyal. This is the only person who can understand him. This is the only person who he has ever understood. They love each other so so much.

[qcomicsy]

Lately I've only been wishing to grab a comic about my favorite character and just have a genuinely good time reading it.

[kyliafanfiction]

I sometimes feel like characters who do truly monstrous things while also having been victims of some pretty insane shit themselves are sort of an exercise in empathy. Or at least, should be seen as such.

Like, in real life, if a person who has been horribly broken by their experiences and failed by society than proceeds to rape someone - it's hard to feel the justifiable sympathy/empathy for that person (without excusing their rape, never do that) because well, you can look at this actual human person they hurt, or worse, and it feels gross and disrespectful to the rape victim.

And this is understandable. (And applies to more than just rapists/rape victims of course, that's just the most visceral one and thus picked for that reason)

But a fictional rape victim is... fictional. You can't 'disrespect' their trauma, and while obviously rape/whatever else is real, and people may related to the rape victim and thus see your comments about the rapist also being a victim as somehow being about their experience...

Well, it's not.

Because the rapist here, didn't actually hurt a real person. Fictional characters are objects. They're objects that often grab us by the throat and refuse to leave our fucking heads, yes, but they're objects. They are tools used by writers to tell a story, and readers to tell a story.

And one of the things fictional characters are good for is allowing us to consider experiences we never had, and imagine ourselves in other circumstances and lives. (Also just fun and fascinating and interesting to watch their stories).

It's very easy to feel for the rape victim in fiction, and rightly so. That's Level 1 Empathy there. Granted, some people IRL fail that, but that's not really what we're talking about here.

Advanced Empathy, hard Empathy is feeling for the rapist. Not for the rape, of course, even if they feel guilt about it, but if someone really was failed on multiple levels and was broken and damaged and went through the sort of psychological wringer that would leave most of us here on tumblr catatonic - they do deserve the same Empathy any human (any person) who went through all that.

Even after they also do the bad thing, critically they still deserve Empathy. And that is fucking hard. I very often have a hard time feeling bad for truly awful people who also deserve empathy and sympathy, real and even fictional (despite all this, yeah, I'm not perfect on this) for what they (separately) went through.

It also becomes even harder when what they went through is utterly bound up with what they did. How what they went through and experiences is in part responsible for what they did - because they still made a choice. The circumstances may have left them not in their right mind, may have left them feeling without choice, may have driven them to things they normally might not think of or do, but they still chose to do that bad thing. And that's not okay. They still hurt someone.

And yet - one cannot remove the action from the circumstances. So you can still feel empathy, and elucidate all the factors and circumstances as to what led up to their choices and why, and it doesn't change that they did the horrible thing. The rape, or the murders, or whatever.

But circling back - with a fictional character... they didn't hurt a real person. There's no one who is real that suffered. The things the character did IRL are bad because they hurt real people.

So you're not being disrespectful to the victim by feeling that empathy, or sympathy. By exploring the things that they were a victim for. Even by wanting to focus on those things - fictional characters should be compelling in all their aspects, if they're written well.

And yet, of course, if you do that empathy and do talk about what the bad person went through and all that context, people come at you. They call you evil, just as bad as the (again, fictional) character, or they say that you're treading dangerously close to the arguments people use to defend the real people who do these things in real life. Or you're disrespecting all the victims of these crimes IRL. Especially of course, if the person coming at you has a reason this comes close to home.

But again - fictional.

In an ideal world, we'd all feel sympathy and empathy when it's called for, regardless of what the person did. Even the worst most monstrous people deserve human treatment in prison. And if you don't have empathy, that's hard. Even if you do have empathy, that's hard.

So if you look at a fictional character (who doesn't hurt a real person by virtue of being fictional) that does horrible, vile things, but went through so much, and you still can't empathize or sympathize with them... I mean, it doesn't make you a bad person, not even close, this is still fiction, and there's people I should empathize with in fiction that I don't, but...

It's still a failure of your ability to be empathetic. And we're all humans. We're all failing at that, among other things, all the time. But... it's good to be aware of that. at least?

At the very least, bear that in mind when other people are talking about that context, and that victimization. And please, for the love of god, don't fucking pretend that the victimization didn't happen, that this person who did do terrible things (in fiction) suddenly didn't also (in fiction) experience awful shit, as if doing a bad thing erases all the bad things done to you.

Again - it doesn't necessarily make you a bad person, but like... the horrible state of prisons in our society is a real, actual problem. The way we as a society dehumanize people who do bad things is a real actual problem for a lot of reasons (not least because it creates an incentive for authority that wants to dehumanize a person or a group to expand the definition of 'did bad things' to make their dehumanization now acceptable, among other things).

So yeah. Fictional character who suffers but than also makes others suffer - that's a useful exercise in Empathy. And doing that doesn't make you or anyone else a bad person, or actually defending the sorts of crimes, IRL or Fictional, that this character did. Contextualizing is not whitewashing, empathy is not erasing, and humanizing is not disrespecting the victim(s).

So yeah, they fictional character did bad things. But there's more to them than that. And you can say but and talk about what comes after but without disrespecting the fictional victim. Because the fictional victim... is just as fictional. Just as not real.

Is it possible for this to end up being taken too far? Yes. But that's a reason to be mindful of yourself when it comes to real people, not to never do it. And when it comes to fictional people - again, fictional. Nobody was actually, really hurt.

(I really do want to make clear, before people read the tags, that this applies to all crimes these sorts of characters do, rape was just picked as the one to use as the example.)

[mcybree]

Flower husbands relationship with martyn in 3rd life? Why did they hate him so much? Why did Martyn try to get Jimmy to leave Scott that one time? Why did Scott say him and Martyn were going to sleep together once they were both dead? Many questions that plague me at night

IM STILL ON MY SCOTT 3L REWATCH THE. THAT FOURTH QUESTION???? HELLO???

(^ edit: anon clarified, ask was referring to the “I wanna cuddle together before we die” comment from martyn)

[steelthroat]

*looking at my history notes*

"Okay so this is 4.7k words long, I usually can read at least 40/50k words of fanfiction a day so I should be able to..."

[tricksterlatte]

Anyone else think short form social media based on algorithms designed to promote topics that create more engagement instead of more joy, the idea of fast fashion but conveyed through social media, and the fact you can monetize suffering and outrage better than ever has largely resulted in the death spiral of media literacy and the mass emergence of bad faith readings?

[abyssalzones]

this year I'm getting a thousand times more comfortable with the block button and it's like my best friend now. highly recommended.

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

i want top neuvillette who's still femme and a crybaby my god is that so hard

[heartbreakfeelsogood]

trying to figure out how i can get a haircut without getting an hour long lecture from a stylist telling me i need to stop coloring my hair because i DO plan on giving my hair a long much needed break from color but hearing it makes me feel really anxious and guilty

[bittermuire]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Nesta Archeron/Rhysand, Elain Archeron/Lucien Vanserra Characters: Nesta Archeron, Rhysand (A Court of Thorns and Roses), Elain Archeron, Feyre Archeron, Lucien Vanserra, Clare Beddor, and a greek chorus of background ocs Additional Tags: Light Angst, Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Secret Relationship, disclaimer elucien is very much in the background i'm just obsessed with them in this fic, clare is an underrated but reputable genius, going to seven thirty am mass together as a love language, the archeron sisters were raised catholic i will die on this hill, rhys is generally annoying but i still like him so what can we do really? Summary:

Nesta and Rhys went to high school together and graduated together and went their separate ways. Ten years later, for whatever reason, they cross paths again.