#but i do think you should work on your reading comprehension because frankly all i said was that i was in a college class with two dozen

[livvyofthelake]

queer rep in children's cartoons is obviously important. how much of a joyless bastard do you have to be to complain about that?

in a society that actively demonizes/hides their existence, it is obviously important for children to learn that all kinds of queer people exist.

Christ, we have homos in cartoons for 7 years & you weirdos are already sick of it!

I would've liked to see a trans woman on TV as a child. It would've made everything easier.

Today. Currently. That still does not exist.

But, PLEASE, continue kvetching. Prick.

love that you said all this and then still needed to get out more with this one

anyway. i feel like all of that is based on your incorrect interpretation of something i offhandedly said in the tags of a joke post but now i feel a need to disagree with you because you sent me this annoying ass message. i actually am sick of queer rep in fucking cartoons and the reason for that is because i don’t watch cartoons due to being an adult and i would like that queer rep to be mine instead of 5-7 year olds that do not even know what homophobia is and have no concept of the need for representation. yes i’m a selfish and narcissistic cunt peace and love

[torhues]

osamu miya.

"what do you think is the right way to ask someone out?" osamu's sudden question draws out your attention from your english assignment.

you take a moment to think, and while he thinks you're sorting out the most appropriate answers to his question, you're lost looking the answer to just one question that's plaguing your mind : should you tell him, or not?

"uh, who is it for?" you settle with the conclusion that he's asking that question out of curiosity. after all, you both are at an age where romance gradually becomes an integral parts of almost everyone's life.

out of all the years that you've known osamu— which is for around seven years for now— there has been only one time when you've seen him pursuing someone, and that was your best friend in middle school; and like the good friend you were, you helped the two of them confess to each other. you would walk to school and back, watching them holding hands, make plans without you because they were dating and it was understandable. you didn't mind, not at all, for you weren't in love with him at that point.

looking back now, you wonder if things would've turned out different if you hadn't helped your friend, or if you had realised your feelings a bit earlier. back then, you found it amusing to watch two people in love act like idiots, not knowing it'd all come back to you with a much larger impact.

"someone i like," he replies in his classic monotonous voice, as if he couldn't care less about not telling you who he has a crush on. it's exactly how it was back in middle school. had it not been for your friend, you wouldn't have known she was the one osamu had been planning to ask out all along. "goes to the same university as us, might even be in your biochem class,"

and your mind traces over the image of every single person in your class, crossing out the names that don't seem to fit osamu's taste in romantic partners. it's not the first time you're doing this. in fact, you've gotten used to figuring out whether he would be interested in someone just by looking at them. it's something you've learnt as you got better at hiding your feelings.

you've known him long enough to know who he might date yet still, couldn't bring yourself to believe that you could possibly have a chance with him.

"well, i can't tell you if i don't know the person," something about you makes osamu believe that you're a cupid. you're good at reading people, welcoming, albeit not so good at reaching out to strangers, but you are likeable, more than likeable, actually.

he has seen you set people up, including himself, and excluding yourself. the reason why you're not interested in pursuing someone anymore is beyond his comprehension. you have your fair share of knowledge about relationships, have dated a couple of guys before giving up altogether. it's not like your relationships didn't work, but it always seemed as if you were better off without them.

even while dating, it looks like your eyes are looking for someone else while being in someone's arms.

he sighs, putting down his phone. "just tell me what you like, people aren't much different after all,"

"uh, well, i hate public confessions and people who confess through calls and texts," which stands true for most the people out there. public confessions are more of a show off and confessing through texts is just, not enough. "also, i like to stay at home or be at some cafe so like, arcades, amusement parks and places like those aren't up to my liking either,"

you notice the smile on his face, along with the dreamy eyes and make him look prettier than he already is. frankly, the idea of osamu doing everything you like to ask someone else out hurts more than it should. you're probably not the only persons with those likes and dislikes. you know you should be happy for him and the person he likes because in the end, osamu is everything you, or anyone, could ask for.

"what about flowers? lilacs?" he asks, getting back to his phone.

"what are you doing, congratulating someone on their graduation?" his lips instantly curve into a frown, and you know in his head, he's snickering about how he is not the best when it comes to picking flowers, and that you shouldn't make fun of him for this. "i'd say tulips, they're a better gifts for first dates and confessions,"

one day, back in first year of university, osamu asked you why you don't seek relationships anymore. thinking about it now, you never gave him an absolute answer.

on some days, the answer would be academics, other days, it would be sadness looming over your shoulders after watching your ex with someone else. sometimes, you would excuse it by saying it's a waste of time and when asked when you're drunk, you'd say it's because you already have someone in mind, someone who can't be yours, no matter how much you try.

on some days, you wonder if osamu ever thinks about all the answers, or excuses, you gave to his question. there are times when the worlds makes compels you to believe that osamu likes you back, but then you realise that if he did, he wouldn't have asked out others all this time. you did drop hints regarding your feelings for him, and he failed to catch on for he for too busy looking at everyone except you.

"i wonder why you don't date anymore," the question arises again, flooding all the memories back into your head.

"i did have someone i liked, but he likes someone else," and you realise you can't lie to him anymore. "so, i gave up," osamu finds it amusing how you say those words with a smile, and he finds it despairing knowing that now, you've simply learnt to live with pain while pretending to be okay.

he shoots you a comforting smile, "i hope that wouldn't be the case for me,"

"me too," and you smile back.

he gets off your bed, picking up his jacket while offering soft apologies for the state your bed is in because of him. sometimes, you feel like there should be a warning for everyone who dates him : caution, this man doesn't know how to keep the bed clean. there are nights when you go to sleep thinking about how you're probably the only one who can keep up with this habit of his, and then wake up realising that it wasn't a problem to anyone it now so, it wouldn't be in future either.

it's like oscillating between the possibility and impossibility of him and you, caressing your little heart with false hope.

"ah, what should i say while confessing?" he shoots another question, making you snicker in annoyance.

"c'mon 'samu, you're not asking someone out for the first time,"

"just tell me,"

and you allow yourself to get lost in thoughts again. for a brief second, you consider telling him to not confess. the reason? your feelings, but again, you and him aren't meant to be together in the first place. it's just like how the saying goes— cupids must not fall in love— and you did the forbidden, knowing it would hurt you ten folds more every time you tie his threads with someone that's not you.

"i don't know, just give the flowers and ask if they'd like to go out with you or something," he chimes a faint thank you before leaving your room, and then your apartment. this time, you don't walk up to the door to see him off, neither do you wish him good luck, and surprisingly, osamu doesn't seem to notice your minute absence either.

it's fine, you tell yourself, one of you has to start getting accustomed to the other's absence. while the process has already begun for you, you hope osamu gets used to it as well. you need him to stop reaching you out for relationship advices because you don't know how long you can compose yourself before shattering once again. you try to distract yourself with essays due next month or even further, reading chapters that haven't been taught in class, reading research papers; just anything that can keep your mind off osamu.

you don't want to think about him, or what he's doing. maybe, he's buying the flowers, making preparations or calling his crush and asking them to meet him at their favourite place. even better if his crush confessed while he has been preparing a proposal of his own, it would be cinematic. you don't want to think about him at all, but the more you try, the deeper he engraves inside your mind.

the evening rolls by with you still sitting at your study desk with a bunch of papers lying around a not one complete work. there are rain splatters on your windows and you hope the off-season showers haven't ruined his confession. you can't wish for the other person to like him back, so you just wish for his happiness; whatever makes him happy, even if it means pushing him away.

and when you manage to drag yourself to the kitchen to grab something to eat and make yourself feel better, the sound of your doorbell hits your ears. the rain hits harder, you muster up the energy to walk up to the door.

there's osamu standing with a love sick smile and slightly wet hair, along with rain splatters on his shirt, and the bouquet of tulips in his hand. "will you go out with me?"

[looseinthecatroom]

Seeing folk being like:

"WOW isn't it surprising that Good Omens and OFMD and xyz other shows all ended their season with a conflict between the main couple??? Gays can't have anything! Haha gays don't ask the love of your life to run away with you apparently. Why are they doing this to us?"

Look. I ignored it at first thinking it was one or two isolated opinions, or people properly going "oof ow my heart. thank you can I have another?", but my chums

That is (one of the ways) how narrative structure WORKS. We do KNOW that, right??

Surely y'all can understand that this is the Hurt before the /Comfort? It is SO well documented. It's in NO WAY a unique story structure?

I GET that as queer folk, we've been primed to be overly cynical and expect the worst because that IS what they've given us historically, but this isn't, like, some 2005 sitcom executive who had a poorly fleshed out background queer couple that they then killed off. If it DOES go that way? Holy SHIT that would be WEIRD. It would be uniquely weird and something to talk about.

I know full well most of you aren't in the camp of genuine annoyance when you say shit like "Well my heart is broken now". But holy fucking shit I'm seeing too many of you who are??

I get it. I was a sapphic teen in the aughts. I want to have sympathy for y'all's fear of unthought out queer character writing playing with your hearts. (Lord knows I JUST dealt with exactly that this week with a game I got into and a set of characters I got proper invested in. Jumped and got invested, waited to be caught by a clever story but just hit the ground instead. (I was a Teenage Exocolonist. Otherwise fantastic game that I highly recommend) On a related note, we should, as a community, probably start talking about polyamory representation more soon, eh? But that's a rant for another day. (genuinely DM/ask me if you want to have those conversations. Not even kidding) cough)

But LIKE. There is no indication right now that these are like that? And frankly I don't know where my sympathy should end and my fear of poor reading comprehension/desire to encourage better reading comprehension should begin. I'm especially worried about some of y'all looking to neuter and sanitize every queer couple to the point that it's flavorless soft/happy garbage with no stakes tbqh. Which is a trend that's already worryingly out there.

And if you really somehow are feeling worried about the ""trend"" of couples having a falling out part way through their story in queer media right now, then by all means, at least take this as a reminder, and a dose of grass touching, that the central couple having a falling out in the second/third act is so so SO entrenched in culture as to be a RAGING cliche in basically any form of romance media ever.

[metvmorqhoses]

This is a letter submitted to me by the previous anon. I was left nothing short of appalled by it. In a few paragraphs this person managed to take everything I ever said on this blog about art, literature, gender, ethics, or even myself as a person, twist it to their own biased and, quite frankly, worrying perspective and use it to accuse me of being, at best, a Nazism and antisemitism apologist.

I’m very open minded, I’m able to understand most point of views even without sharing them, but this is another matter entirely. This is being unable to read reality correctly anymore. This is dangerously and hurtfully spinning things out of proportion. This is being unable to form a pure critical thought in a reality that is already mad and confusing enough.

I read extensively in the past few years about the plummeting of comprehension of the written word among all demographics, but that an educated peer of mine, mirror and parrot of too many others, could genuinely reason like this will always be beyond me.

Anon, you are right. I wouldn’t normally publish or entertain such profound drivel, but the things you just accused me of are not only absurd, but beyond serious and grave. You cannot throw such ideas and words so lightly at another human being, especially not inventing yourself every single reason for doing it.

So I’m going to answer, word to word, in the hopes to make you, or at least someone else, wake up from the horrors of a brainwasing this society is, at this point, irremediably affected by.  

“i do not think that your response to me displays “good disposition”, so i will be sure to match you in tone. you do not have to answer this, or even read it; i hope that you will read it though, if only to momentarily consider someone else’s perspective. quoting you verbatim from a previous ask/answer, “I absolutely hate to contradict the canon”. you’re right, the original books don’t glorify nazism, mostly the new content does. however, you say voldemort is the true hero. he is driven to exterminate specific groups of people for his personal gain. whatever depth you want to give him, that is still canon. you don’t deny it. you might not find it the most interesting part of him, but it is still there, and you still call him hero.

i and many others will never know most of our families because of a man and his followers who worked exactly like that. so don’t think of this as me trying to cancel you. i will not be reaching out to your friends or trying to get you banned from anywhere, that’s not what i’ve come directly to you for. i’d like to know what it is about two blood supremacists that you see not only so much inspiring complexity in, but yourself in as well.”

Honestly anon, considering what you are accusing me of, the hinting of which I had already perceived in your previous ask, my disposition towards you was and still is way better than it should be. I’m taking pity of your way of thinking and still hoping to somehow help you understand how wrong this is on every possible level.

I’m very glad you seem to agree the Harry Potter books are no Nazi hymn, but I unfortunately have to contradict you right away. I never, ever, glorified Voldemort’s figure or called him “the true hero of the story”. If you had taken the time to actually read the things the person you are accusing of terrible and very real things has always written about that fictional character, you would have noticed the whole point of my metas is, on the contrary, to underline his twistedness, his monstrous and yet very present humanity, his unfillable voids, his abysses in negative with still a wisp of something else enduring nonetheless.

You would also have noticed that I’m utterly uninterested in and rarely mention the blood-purity movement, not because I think there’s something literary wrong in constructing fictional evil after Nazism (nor, again, do I think there’s anything wrong in finding Nazism intriguing as an historical event and as a study of human nature), but because, as I previously tried to make you understand, I find it psychologically uninteresting in regard to him and not what his character is fundamentally about.

You also just took an ask in which I said I’d have liked to rewrite Harry Potter with Voldemort as the real protagonist (protagonist, not hero, the difference is huge - I linked it for you), and twisted it to construct this huge delusion about my preaching the bloodthirsty ideology of an evil wizard from a fairy tale. Voldemort went around even repeatedly trying to kill a child, why not accusing me of seconding infanticide too, since you are at it? Or seeing antisemitism everywhere is your main fixation since it touches you closely?

I would never call Voldemort a hero, and you know why? Because it would be incredibly dull. Voldemort is a villain. I appreciate him precisely as such. I’m not interested in finding his actions (at least not his monstruosities) correct or admirable, it wouldn’t be riveting. What makes villains compelling is their darkness. And this is because, most importantly, unlike all the people you are mentioning, Voldemort is the bad guy in a children book. Voldemort is not real. His darkness has no consequence whatsoever.

As for why I find Voldemort and Bellatrix compelling, if you had bothered to read my writings before accusing me of absurdities, you’d already have your answer. You’d know that it’s their character as people and mutual relationship that I find intriguing, not their ideology.

As to why I said I see myself in them, those are personal reasons I would never disclose to someone who cannot seem to count to ten, let alone understand utter complexity of certain childhood circumstances or unusual personalities, but (even if it’s obvious, even if I stated it multiple times for the thick idiots in the back) it’s obviously not their fictional murderous/blood-purist/unicorn-blood-licking tendencies I see myself, a real person, in.

I equally see myself in Dorian Gray, Heathcliff and Catherine, Frankenstein’s monster. I trust no sane person would believe I’m inciting the masses to make deals with the devil, traumatize children or set the world on fire out of spite towards human nature (even if the latter is tempting and people like you are making it even more so, I would admit).

“i am not always just an anon on the internet. i am a real person with a real family, real experience with antisemitism and racism in my everyday life. real books i like to read, real foods i like to enjoy, real fears and angers and excitements about the changes i’m seeing in politics and in the public these days. i am, in real life, affected by the ease with which some of my own friends can tell me “jews control the media” just because they’ve heard it on tv enough, from movies or talking heads or whoever.”

As it so happens, I’m a real person just as well. You don’t know anything about me. You for example don’t know that my grandmother spent World War II with real Nazis invading her very home, robbing her of everything and using her farm as a militar base. You don’t know the story of my family, you don’t know that I share many, too many, concerns and fears about the world we are currently living in too and I’m genuinely sorry about what you have to go through, because even without being Jewish I know something about it first hand. But this doesn’t give you the right to behave how you are behaving. You are in fact being just part of the big cultural problem you are denouncing. You are going after innocent people, judging them out of invented nothing. Even if you are surrounded by ignorant and racist people for real (I wonder to what extent, since you seem to highly exaggerate things), this doesn’t mean you have to blindly assume the whole world conforms to it by default, twisting everything you see to make it about you and your current, perhaps justified, fixations.

“consider also that you are a woman. you’ve said you don’t feel very strongly about any part of your visible identity, which is fine. but others around you likely perceive you as a woman. you will be treated differently by different people based on how they perceive you. you have to exist in the context of the world around you whether you want to or not. do you call it activism or wokeness to tell someone off for treating you poorly because you’re a woman, or do you call it standing up for yourself? now what if that person is andrew tate or jordan peterson, whose sexism reaches and influences many, many people around you? telling them or their parrots to think before they speak is not being woke. that’s recognizing a lack of respect and responding to it appropriately to shut it down before it gets worse.“

Again, you took something I said and completely failed to understand its meaning. I never said “I don’t feel very strongly about any part of my visible identity”. I actually feel my womanhood deeply, to extents you couldn’t imagine. What I said is that I don’t care to conform to this, in my opinion quite pathological, trend of labeling everything you are and put it on display for the world to see and use, in the hopes of creating an ever-more vacillating sense of identity, belonging and validation. I firmly believe everyone has the absolute right to be true to themselves and I have no problem embracing anyone who wants to intruduce themselves with a ten minutes-long list of pronouns, gender, sexuality, heath-status, ethnicity and religious beliefs, but this is not something I’ll be ever taking part of, nor the kind of circus I’d like the world to turn into, merely because for some reason I feel like this is more a show (a dangerous one, too) than a real quest towards inner truth.

Calling out idiocy is not being woke, anon. I confirm. Not agreeing with powerful people spreading dangerous ideas is one thing, making up the 99% of those terrible crimes in order to have a scapegoat for your witch hunts is another thing entirely.

“so why can’t i criticize your purposeful decision to deify a character who can all too easily become a model for others who want to take their hero worship of people like him further than tumblr?”

Because you are making this “deification” entirely up, anon. And the fact that you cannot seem to understand this simple fact is very concerning. If I preached Voldemort’s blood-purity ideology, you would have every right to criticize me. You are even totally entitled to have opinion about others tastes. You are not entitled though to make things up to further your own ideologies and worldviews and you should actually be capable, fairly educated as you are, to understand what you read.

“i guess i am not judging you for the art you enjoy, but the way in which you talk about it. people who are actually affected by these views have to be most wary when decent, intelligent people begin to repeat and think them. unfortunately, for my family, this was indeed the way real life worked in the 30s/40s. their kind, smart, beloved neighbors could still turn on them after being exposed to enough nazi propaganda, to films and papers and gossip. and now i have to feel like this in the present day because it is media like this, which “minorities” like us have always, always made our worries clear about (you can’t tell me discussion of cho chang’s name or the subtext of sex-aware staircases is new, because i was around to see when it began), which seeps into good people’s brains and creates opportunities for them to turn on us. this is why white supremacists and fascists use dogwhistles, why they won’t speak the quiet part out loud and will use whatever media they can to further their message under the radar.”

“The way I talk about it” is not at all what you are describing lol If you had actually taken the time to read what I wrote you would have (I hope) noticed.

Oh, yes. Calling a character “Cho Chang” is a terrible crime against humanity. Entire generations of children are traumatized. Also, oh my! Sex-aware staircases! Call the police!

No, anon. Good people don’t let anything seep into their brains and “turn on you”. Good people are good people. People that out of the blue, only because society validates them, turn against fellow human beings, for whatever reason, weren’t good people in the first place. Ideologies give permission for the real self to show, they don’t create anything from scratch.

“analyzing media is about opening your eyes to the context in which it sits. i’m afraid, and i think you’ll agree, that critical analysis skills are degrading on a mass scale these days.“

Yes lol I deeply and absolutely agree.

“i’m afraid that these books have always contained subtle problems, but those of us who were affected by them did not have such a free internet to express ourselves and were otherwise shouted down by fans at the time. i’m afraid that these books have always existed in a context in which antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia have only been on the rise. i’m afraid that someone like you, who is writing a novel, who has some reach now and who may gain even more of a following in the future, who touts herself as not only intelligent but a lover of ethics, may end up contributing, whether you intend to or not, to the mass of people who will turn around to hurt people like me.

i can understand the notion that voldemort simply used a preexisting Other that he despised anyway to further his own drive for power. lots of scholars would say hitler did the exact same thing. my question for you is not even why you see yourself in that, because i suppose it is understandable as a strategy to get yourself support for something by finding like minds already headed the same direction. but the key point there is like minds. no, my question is, why do you call him the hero?

not protagonist. not something akin to humbert humbert per nabokov’s original purpose.

hero.

a: a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability

b: an illustrious warrior

c: a person admired for achievements and noble qualities

d: one who shows great courage

at this point, it isn’t the harry potter books that praise nazi ideology and strategy. it is you. even if you don’t see it that way, i’m here to tell you that i can interpret your words this way, and if i can, then others can too.”

Apart from telling you, again, you are completely making up this way of mine of praising Voldemort as a hero and that you should probably read other people’s writings before judging them, allow me to “tout myself as intelligent” once again, and enlighten you with a banal fact.

Media, fiction, art is for the most part a mirror of who is consuming it. The fact that you can interpret, as you are doing, my words completely wildly, incorrectly, insultingly, tells a lot more about you than about me. If a person isn’t able to apply critical skills to what they are reading, again as you are doing, they are going to find exactly what they want to find in anything. Mind creates reality and you are a marvelous example of it.

It’s the same old debate about morality and amorality in art. Not very intelligent people keep bringing it up again and again through the eras, but the truth about it doesn’t change. I can use a knife to surgically save a life, cut bread or kill a person. None is inherent fault or merit of the knife, but of the hand who wields it.

I remember distinctly when Hannibal came out, the woke police wanted it cancelled because it romanticized murder and cannibalism. Everyone was afraid people would have gone out eating each other. What happened instead is that no raise in cannibalism was detected. Cannibals became cannibals regardless, perhaps feeling a little more represented in media. Decent people remained decent people. I hope you get my hint. Nazism didn’t become Nazism when writings of the Golden Dawn came out, talking about the superior race. Nazism became Nazism when a government used those writing as the mass excuse to unleash the most basic and terrible instincts of humanity to further its own political and economical ends.

I guess your vision of the world, in which the big evil blogger on Tumblr is going to write a new novel without perpetually denouncing every other word everything problematic anyone could possibly read in it and the good people around you will suddenly turn to eat you against their will because brainwashed by my subtle suggestions, could be a quite childish way to justify somehow a world that terrifies you, in which evil isn’t banal and everywhere, but has a tangible and therefore preventable reason.

I’m sorry, but the roots of persecution are as old as human nature, and you actually could even find something really akin to them in your own behaviour if you look very closely.

“in your response to me, you have strung together many lengthy ways of telling me what a brainless lemming i must be for having concerns about how people analyze media, but you couldn’t manage even the simplest ‘i do not support nazism’ after saying you find the history interesting. it’s not your interest that concerns me, but your inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to just confirm that interest is where it ends. unless you deliberately, explicitly, and vehemently deny this, others will continue to misinterpret you. you might be tempted to say that this will only be an issue with people who aren’t as smart or literary as you. let me inform you now that i am at least “a normally intelligent and educated person”, as you put it. we’ve read all the same books. i enjoy a lot of the same media you do. yet i am still not confident you will clearly denounce nazism even now that you have been asked. now imagine that you have even one follower who cannot be described with your above quote. it only takes one misguided person to be the next john hinckley jr., or robert gregory bowers, or dylann roof, or so on. you care not about morality, but about ethics. consider the ethical ramifications of this kind of public hero worship of a character who so easily maps onto a real life perpetrator of genocide without some sort of discussion about him ultimately being wrong. do i think we should all have to disclaim that we don’t condone what villains do? no. do i think you should have to say it every single time you talk about the subject? no, of course not. but if i cannot find it anywhere on your blog, then it has to be said somewhere.”

I’m sorry anon, but after everything you just said I cannot help but conclude those same books on you had very little effect. Maybe try to read them again. I dread what you might have made out of them.

[xxlovelynovaxx]

This ain't it:

Being anti-harassment is a central tenant of being proship.

Now, people can CALL themselves proship and harass or not be safe, but because proship went from "general pro-fandom stance" to "anti-anti" when anti/ship/pers coined their name, you are not proship if you are pro-harassment. Being proship is more fundamentally about anti-harassment nowadays than it even is about being anti-censorship.

And quite frankly, I'd trust someone more who is like "eh I'm not sure some stuff SHOULD be written about, but I'm not gonna harass anyone over it because it's not my business to police" over someone who is like "you should NEVER try to censor fiction and if you DO I'll suibait you and send gore and doxx you".

I judge people by their actions ONLY. Not all people who are neutral or even anti-leaning in terms of censorship ever in their lives bother to actually try to get any kind of regulation placed on fiction, but people who harass are actively fundamentally hurting people. I also judge those who do police and regulate fiction, but quite honestly, those who are anti-harassment are both still better people and still more likely to be someone you can talk to about the dangers of censorship who will listen and at least might become more neutral, than ANYONE who harasses ANYONE else in this discourse.

Also, if you can't recognize that "ship and let ship" is itself an anti-harassment self-mandate, you may need to work on your reading comprehension. The "let ship" part means "let other people ship BY NOT HARASSING THEM.

Yes, that part is limited to not harassing OVER SHIPS, but still. Also yes, that is fundamentally about censorship. Tell me you don't understand being proship at all without telling me. "It's about thinking people can ship what they please and letting them do so". So it's... not censoring types of ships, specific ships, or any shipping content you don't like or find problematic? Hmmmmm....

Anyway I don't get how you can write a post this self-contradictory and not see it.

Yes, don't trust people based on their stance; but because people can lie, not because proship hasn't become a generalized stance equivalent to "profic". And definitely not because "ship and let ship" somehow means "you can harass people and try to censor certain fanworks as long as they don't include romantic pairings". Proship is VERY SPECIFICALLY about not harassing people OVER FANDOM SHIT IN GENERAL and NOT CENSORING ANY TYPE OF SPECIFIC MATERIAL IN FANWORKS.

Anyway you could make your point about labels not automatically making someone safe (this is true of ANY label) without reducing the definition of proship to basically nothing and saying "it's about letting people do things but you can still try to get them not to do it via harassment". Or maybe you were trying to say "proship is about being against harassing over ships but nothing else" which would make more SENSE but be untrue using the actual common usage descriptivist definition of the word.

Even then... proship has grown to refer to general fandom attitudes. "Ship and let ship" has become "make fanworks and let make fanworks". Yes, there are unsafe people that use your discourse labels, but maybe it's not in fact that the majority of people who use it are using it wrong.

[emilyhufflepufftlk]

Is your recent Eadith & Eardwulf post supposed to be romantic? Because some of the lyrics/quotes imply that. And the second last photo is a bit hey hey 😬

They're SIBLINGS! Why am I seeing some posts imply differently...and some fics too, its disgusting. Especially the way that he treated her. He was abusive and toxic towards Eadith and put her in uncomfortable positions. He was a awful brother! Why are some people excusing that and downplaying how freaking abusive he was and changing his personality in fics to a "loving" brother...

Okay so I am going to assume you are being serious and not ironic or sarcastic.

I personally don't ship Eadith and Eardwulf. I think they have a really interesting, toxic dynamic which I thought suited the lyrics of the song. I have no agenda here. But if people want to interpret it as romantic I am 100% cool with that. I left it open to interpretation.

The lyrics I chose are from a song which is about a romantic relationship, however I think the lyrics work either way. And the second last photo you refer to is a screen from the show, I haven't altered it at all apart from the colours and cropping it a little so not sure why that's my problem.

We are all fully aware they are siblings but this is fiction, not real life. I suggest you chill out. I read/write stories which include things like rape and murder, me doing this is not me saying it's okay in real life.

I don't think you understood the song I chose if you think I am excusing Eardwulf or downplaying how abusive and toxic he was. The lyrics are literally about the man forcing the woman to do too much/things she's not comfortable with and manipulating her, and the woman wondering if the 'love' they have is really worth it. I personally think the line 'for someone I thought was my saviour, you sure make me do a whole lot of labour' suits them and their toxic relationship (either sibling or romantic) very well = he's her brother, someone she thinks she can trust and yet he's asking/forcing her to do all this shit for him.

You really did not need to send in this ask. If you don't like what I have made, keep scrolling. Ignore it. If you have a problem with me, block me. I don't care. Coming into my asks and whining about me 'excusing' abuse and incest in a fictional relationship which has no effect on the real world when if you had any kind of reading comprehension or critical thinking you'd know that wasn't what I was doing at all is frankly childish and you should grow up.

[lovecolibri]

I am LOVING your 911 takes, man [gn]!!! honestly, it's such a breath of fresh air after all the "the writers are actually geniuses and you lack basic reading comprehension skills if you cannot perceive their Great Big Technicolor Plan!" like, really, really??! this is a pretty run-of-the-mill tv show and frankly, I'm not seeing any high value shit that would justify this blind belief that they're doing anything except throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks as most tv shows of that calibre and genre do...

Hey thanks! 😊 I'm just screaming into the void over here, but honestly, like, what crack did they put in the first 3-4 seasons of this show because it should NOT be as good as it is as just another firefighter show. I used to watch CF but the constant musical beds is Not For Me and never has been so I think having a show that gives you couples to root for and then keeps them together?! That gives them drama but doesn't (usually) dial it up to soap opera levels but handles it like real people who make mistakes but also own those mistakes and learn and grow from them?! This show was SOOO good, and I think that's why I'm struggling so much now because now it IS getting to be soap opera levels of drama with Buck's stuff but the audience isn't here for that shit so they have to change it halfway through.

As for people reading deep into things, I DO like reading those metas! I CAN see what they're talking about, and I CAN see a depth to some choices or how it could work out in the end. But for me, knowing who is in charge and after having to witness the BT disaster and the "despite what s1 told everyone, Buck is a cheater actually and him and Hen agree you shouldn't tell your partner about it" mess, I think that it doesn't matter WHAT kind of narrative set up there is, or what makes sense for the characters, KR is going to twist anyone however she wants to make them fit into whatever plot SHE wants to write, NOT whatever plot would make sense for the characters. She's shown she's not above undermining the story or characters for the sake of drama or wedging in a character she actually cares about and wants to write for instead of working with the characters she was given. (GIRL! Just go pitch your own cop show and leave us TF aloooooone!) Also, a big thing for me is the JOURNEY. And the end destination being good or at least acceptable, does not always justify a shitty way to get there 🤷🏻‍♀️

[quicksandblock]

MCYT Demographic Survey Part 2 RESULTS

IT’S TIME!!!

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who participated! 1,654 people total responded to this - about four and a half times as many respondents as the first survey. It’s honestly incredible. I’m so happy the rest of you are as interested as I am in this stuff :D

The increased turnout is also why these results are being posted two days later than I’d intended. I want to give a HUGE thank you to my friend @quincepastey​ and my sibling @orestes-swimming​ for helping me out, and by helping I do mean they did basically all of the technical stuff for me, because my knowledge of spreadsheets was not up to the task. So thank you to Cupid for organizing all the data from questions 3 and 4 into something comprehensible for me, and thank you to Kal for making the charts! They are absolutely the MVPs and everyone reading this should go check them out. Thank you guys so much <3

Reblogs of this post are very appreciated. It would be awesome if the info about the results could reach everyone who submitted a response, so if you reblogged my first post about this survey, please consider reblogging this one as well!

For your convenience, here’s a link to the results of the first survey I did six months ago. Now - on to the results!

Question 1: What is your age range?

Compared to the results of the first survey, we can see that things have changed a bit! Specifically, the fandom has shifted just a little bit older. The solid majority of the fandom is still in the 15-17 year old range, but it’s gone down from almost half to closer to 40%. Almost a third of the fandom are ages 18-20, up from close to a fifth six months ago. 21-25 year olds have increased from about 10% to about 14%. And the youngest segment, 13-14 year olds, have gone from almost 20% of the fandom down to 12% - the sharpest change of all.

Finally, nearest and dearest to my own heart, there are now 26 whole people in the fandom aged 26-30 and 9 people aged 30+. Old Squad is growing, folks. We are... the 2% 😎 Special shoutout to the person who said their 15 year old kid got them into the fandom. I hope you know just how cool you are.

These results are interesting, but it’s also impossible to say how accurate the data is. This survey and the previous one were only posted on my blog, and they only reached a wider audience through the reblogs of my followers. So do these changes reflect actual changes in the demographics of the fandom as a whole, or is it just that my followers (and the people who follow them) have shifted older? To try to avoid this bias in the future, I may reach out to some well-known younger bloggers and ask them to reblog the next survey I do so that I can reach a more even audience.

Question 2: What is your gender?

Apologies for the small text, but there were so many unique write-in answers that I wanted to include them all. You may want to open the image in a separate tab for better quality.

In contrast to the age question, the gender spread of the fandom has remained pretty much the same. About half the fandom is still female, the nonbinary crowd has increased from 20% to 25%, 7% of us are male, almost 7% are genderfluid, and about 5% are agender. Just like last time, most of the write-in responses fell into the vague categories of either genderqueer or questioning.

No surprises on this one! The fandom continues to be overwhelmingly female and queer. Next time I think I’ll include genderqueer and questioning as options to try to catch some of those people into a formal category. All y’all are so valid, especially the person who wrote in their gender as “soup” <3

The results for questions 3 and 4 will be under a cut, because I don’t want to completely destroy people’s dashes.

Before I get into the last two questions, a couple notes. First, I want to explain how I came up with the list of creators, since a lot of people were either excited or disappointed by the fact that a few different people were on there.

On the last survey, this question was a write-in, and I had to transcribe and collate all the answers by hand to come up with the actual number of people who followed each creator. For this survey, I simply took the list that came out of the previous one and pasted it in! I also added a few people who no one wrote in six months ago but who are much more prominent now (Ranboo being the biggest example). So if you were excited to see your favorite small creator listed as an option, they were there because someone wrote them in last time! And if you wrote in your favorite small creator here, they’ll be an option on the next survey. The list is entirely crowdsourced and it will expand with each survey.

That said, the same also applies for more controversial creators. Specifically, I’m talking about CallMeCarson. Several people questioned my decision to keep him on the list - and to be honest, I considered taking him out. But in the end I decided to leave him in as an option for the sake of completeness and consistency with the previous survey. I want to emphasize that this is not me condoning his actions. But for the sake of the data, I felt that it was best to leave him in.

That said, let’s move on to questions 3 and 4!

Question 3: What creator(s) do you primarily follow?

So, it’s harder to compare with the previous survey on this one, and that’s purely because on the previous survey I didn’t have the help I did here. The chart I was able to make for the results back in October was frankly trash. Also, the fact that I split “followed creators” into two questions - primarily and casually followed - definitely throws things off. However, we can still do a certain amount of comparison!

The most obvious change is Ranboo. He straight up was not on the previous survey at all - I think he’d been streaming for less than a month at the time. Now, about 55% of respondents listed him as someone they primarily follow. The Dream SMP itself has also jumped dramatically. Previously, about 5% of people wrote in Dream SMP. That has increased to over half. Quackity has gone from less than 2% to about 30%. Karl has gone from 4% to 30%. Phil has gone from about 8% to a little under 50%. The SBI have jumped from 11% to over 40%.

Techno has gone from about 50% to over 60%. Tommy has gone from 45% to over 55%. Wilbur has jumped from 43% to 55%. Tubbo has remained steady at about 38%.

Dream has apparently dropped some of his following percentage-wise, falling from 50% to about 35%. However, George, Sapnap, and the Dream Team itself have all jumped from 10-12% to almost 30%.

I’m not going to go over the rest of the list, because that would just get way too long. However, I will drop a link to the spreadsheets of data for this survey and the previous one, so anyone who wants to can do some comparison of their own!

Question 4: What creators do you casually follow?

I won’t do as detailed of a comparison on this question, because there’s nothing to compare it to - this question wasn’t on the previous survey. However, it’s interesting to see how many more people follow Fundy, Nihachu, BadBoyHalo, Captain Puffy, Eret, Awesamdude, and Jack Manifold casually rather than as a primary favorite. Out of the top twelve, Karl, Quackity, Phil, and Tubbo are the only ones who don’t have a major discrepancy between the amount of people who follow them casually versus primarily.

I would be curious to hear people’s thoughts on why that’s the case! Personally, I would guess it’s a combination of each of their approaches to lore on the Dream SMP, the frequency and times of day that they stream, and the people they tend to make content with and be associated with by the fandom. I may go into that more later, but this post is already very long, so I’ll hold off for now. Here’s a link to this question’s spreadsheet for anyone who wants to take a closer look!

...And that’s a wrap! Good grief, this got long. Kudos to anyone who actually read the whole thing because I know my attention span would be challenged. I’m already thinking about the next survey - a couple people suggested that I add in questions about orientation and nationality, and while I want to keep the survey pretty tight in its scope, I am considering it. It would be even more data to process but it would be interesting to know!

I would love to hear people’s thoughts on these results! I’m only one person, so I know there’s interesting stuff I must have missed. Please, please feel free to reblog with your thoughts and observations! A lot of work went into this (both from me and from Cupid and Kal! Thank you guys again!), so I’m really hoping to hear what people think about it :D

I plan to reblog this and reply to some of the things people wrote in at the end, so stay tuned for that. And once again: thank you all for your interest in this project of mine <3 See you with another one in six months!

[letseatthebox]

weird as hell to put mouse nsfw where kids can see it. literally why even discuss patb nsfw?

i might appreciate more context - if you're referring to the fandom poll, there is this:

this is very much a warning that anything under the cut would be 18+. like i addressed that. this works the same way as any other website, whereby you have to click stuff to confirm you are over a certain age, and then it shows you the content. if there were any minors who did look at this, think "oh cool" and clicked on it anyway, to then be upset about seeing the content, all i can do is like... empathise? possibly suggest brushing up on their reading comprehension.

like, Kids Can See It literally everywhere if they don't follow guidelines that point towards not seeing it. i personally am an adult, all of my nsfw jokes and content are tagged so that people can block them. i would frankly suggest that anyone who shouldn't be exposed to nsfw content should... block the phrase "nsfw" anyway.

and if you're talking about stuff like making jokes in reblog tags, i'm... not going to stop doing that. i do check if the person i'm reblogging from is underage, so if i've made some kind of oversight in that regard, let me know. frankly it's not like the show itself has ever stayed away from jokes like that. explain "ball manipulation" to a thirteen year old.

"literally why even discuss patb nsfw?" i like these characters and i would like them to have sex with each other. they are both adults with the ability to consent, they are not related*, and they have a relationship that while unconventional, is very definitely mutually beneficial.** nobody seems to be as bothered with other fandoms doing the exact same thing, despite being on the exact same tumblr. apart from taking precautions to make sure minors don't stumble upon my content (and again, they shouldn't, unless they lie to the algorithm, which i cannot control) there's not really anything else i... should be doing. you don't get to tell me to stop enjoying something just because you personally think it's gross, and i definitely know that's your angle, and you're just hiding it behind fabricated concern for The Children. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe come off anon as well. not a good look. i might want to discuss this further with someone who isn't a floating orb with sunglasses. * i asked someone who works on the show whether they are in fact related, and whether this is something we will find out later. so far, this is a no. if they had indicated in any way that this were true (i was concerned about the paternal implications of ex-mousina) i would have immediately ceased. i would still cease if that turns out to be a thing, but... i don't think it will be, judging by certain aspects of season two.

** i understand their relationship seems dubious. this has been mentioned multiple times in canon, and each time pinky responds with enthusiastic consent for it. i understand the reboot joked about "systematic abuse", i think it was, so if the ship makes you uncomfortable regardless, i'm happy to assign a particular tag for you to block. just let me know.

[arledrone]

I was wondering what's things you like about each chapters in twst or your favorite event?I like hearing you takes on the fandom.Weather this can be the dialogue,relationships or exposition/world building.

Ex:I like the puns there cheesey but I find there funny or they get a smile out of me.

thank you and have a good day.

So far my favourite episodes in order are 4-6-1-2-3-5

Listen, 6 so far has the highest stakes, the most worldbuilding, lore, a really interesting plot going for it and insight on magic/blot, et cetera.  I also feel like it’s not just an aesthetic/mood thing with seeing that line greeting Ortho at the very end, it feels meta tying into the nature of what TWST’s universe actually is.   Objectively speaking it should be my favourite, but I am biased and still really love the story and drama in Episode 4. Jamil is so fucking extra doing desert death marches because he is That Bitch.

After that, 1 acts as a solid introduction to the initial routine of the story, and I think my favourite thing for it is Hanae Natsuki's performance as Riddle. He really ties it together, especially during the climax when Riddle starts flipping his shit. The intensity and emotion behind his voice really shines for me there.

2 is just. Objectively the worst of the episode writing. It really is. I've got nothing nice to say about how it goes about things nor what it does to the fandom's reading comprehension because it just fucking undermines Leona's character despite it being about him. This just ties into my enjoyment of control because I do enjoy the range of possibilities I can explore by looking at all that lost potential and discussing how it could've been so much more.

3 just honest to god does nothing for me. The Octatrio's whole schtick never appealed to me so I never felt much during their episode. That's really all there is to it. Its writing is fine, and Azul's backstory works well, but ultimately it hinges too much on the edge high schoolers roleplaying as some mafia club for me to have any real investment in it.

5 lost so much potential because 50% of it ended up just being idol training boot camp to showcase how overbearing Vil gets despite us already knowing that long before. It starts out strong, the middle slogs, and by the end it's just hopelessly confused on what characters it wants to focus on and focuses on, frankly, the wrong characters (like, seriously? Epel's magical 180 IMMEDIATELY after literally crying out of frustration, growing up under sexist ideas, having a long-standing conflict with Vil since the beginning of the year? And ONE instance is enough to change Epel's mind? Miss me with that shit, they just didn't want to deal with actually exploring Epel's shitty mindset, and actually having him gradually and NATURALLY learn on his own and just paints all of Vil's bullshit as 'actually correct'. What Vil SAYS is right, about Epel's sexism, yes. But the way he goes about it never gets addressed in a satisfactory way without some other dipshit ruining the scene (usually grim or ace for the sake of 'comedy' or whatever).

Not to mention Deuce having so much spotlight compared to Jamil and Kalim, when in previous episodes the dorm members assisting in other Episodes had plenty of good moments showcasing their skills at their best compared to Kalim getting one (2) meaningful scenes.

I could go on more eloquently about Episode 5's identity crisis but that's a post for another day.

By far and large my favourite event is (again, biased) Al'ab Nariya - it came as a pleasant surprise that it wasn't 100% orientalist bullshit. It's a fun event learning about the Scarabia duo's city AND we get Najma Viper, a true icon.

After that, I think the Star-Sending event is my favourite.  It’s just a fun event with nice insight on characters’ desires (minus Leona, Vil, etc you know the usual characters TWST has a death grip on when it comes to writing them) and ambitions.  Also the outfits slap.

 I do appreciate GM for going against the grain and criticising the usual ‘true love’ expectations of idealising what a proper ‘lover’ (specifically prince but i digress) should be like, and how being uncompromising in that isn’t healthy.  I also think it adds interesting depth to the event characters in it.

Halloween Round 1 certainly happened.  I like Round 2 better, it has a solid start, a fun middle, but the ending feels really anticlimactic even if logically speaking everyone expected it to be that way since it involves the game’s ‘poster boy’ and how hyped up his powers are, alongside playing into that concept of Fae and their fucked up sense of humour/morality.  I REALLY don’t like how they somehow justified all the bullshit that happened considering everyone else thought they were in genuine danger and somehow that was THEIR fault despite the shit going on?  Hello?

Beans Day just doesn’t do it for me lol.

Meanwhile I wish I could enjoy Fairy Gala since it has my faves in it but it's just Advanced Racism/Colourism and I can't wait for another round of bullying the fandom over it if the EN localisation doesn't roll a 20 on intelligence when translating it.

The stamp rally homeland events generally I see being my favourites down the line, but Grim's especially insufferable in the Harveston event and I need to writers to understand having a godforsaken mascot CONSTANTLY interrupting interesting dialogue/scenes to complain about being hungry is just lazy writing and a sign of not having a single funny bone in their body if this is their idea of humourous characterisation.

[poisonousquinzel]

https://lady-ha-ha.tumblr.com/post/160715688748/is-that-comic-before-the-reboot-and-which-one-is

(I have not read this comic) Is this true? (if so, ivy deserves someone better).

Post

Kay, first off both of those people are Jarley shippers so take everything they say with a grain of salt and then some, cause no. that part isn't about how much Harley loves Joker and will always choose him over Ivy. Literally you can tell ops don't know what they're talking about cause her whole thing in those issues is going to kill him for years of graphic abuse but ultimately falls back with him once she’s face to face with him.

Like wow, congrats on missing the fucking point again but not surprised from people who ship her with The Fucking Joker.

also, ffs, can anyone please have basic comprehension skills and realize that Harley and Ivy are both fucked up sometimes because they’ve got issues and that’s not comparable to Joker’s long ass history of graphic and disgusting abuse.

Harley and Ivy are villains, they're not a wholesome cookie cutter, White Picket Fence, super vanilla ship with no bad moments. They're both bad guys with a fuck ton of trauma that they both have to work through, and have done so at this point. 

Gotham City Sirens was published between 2009 - 2011, Harley and Ivy weren't blatantly romantic at this point nor had they had anywhere near the development that they’ve had at this point.

Like don’t go into Harlivy content expecting them to be the perfect wlw rep with no flaws during their arcs from BTAS to current time cause that’s just not realistic. They’re both deeply flawed people who’ve got a fuck ton of trauma that they need to (and have) worked through. 

I have talked about the BTAS issues here and this post is good at explaining them too. 

X

X

Harlivy is not and has never been a purely wholesome, goody-goody ship. They’re messy, they have issues, and they have bad moments sometimes, but they both worked through their seperate trauma and came out stronger and better because at the end of the day, they care about each other. 

Harlivy has messy, toxic moments sometimes, but they’re not, and have never been, abusive. There’s a difference between unhealthy moments and a ship being abusive. 

That’s completely different to how Joker acts Constantly, because he does not care that his actions towards Harley are abusive, because he doesn’t give a shit about her. 

He enjoys hurting her. He enjoys ruining her. 

Jarley has always been intended to be written and shown as a domestically abusive relationship.

This is also the first instance where it's directly referenced that there's something more than platonic between her and Ivy, other than the reference in Batgirl Adventures. 

Gotham City Sirens is also not connected to any verses.

This didn’t happen in the timeline we’re in rn with Harley Quinn (2014)/(2016)/(2021).

Comic timelines and shit are stupid and make everything more confusing and awful and I hate it sdfjdksksdkjsd

-

this is gonna be a long post since ops wanna just cut and paste random bits of the issues like jarley stans always do (cause jarley never has good moments that aren’t entirely surrounded by him abusing her) I’m going to show them in full context. *added a keep reading cause it is a lot

(All panels shown are from #15, #18, #19, #20, #21, #23, #24, #25)

So, Harley's entire thing at this point in the GCS comic in that she's been triggered by flashbacks of Joker's abuse and she breaks into Arkham with the intent to kill him.

The entire thing in these issues is showing her smarts and how she knows people's trump cards to get under their skin so she can break into Arkham. 

She’s trained to identify these things in people and she's fucking good at pushing people's buttons. 

this is also just one of my fav Harley covers so I wanted to show it jsdjksdks

“Trump cards. Everyone has one. Places where the armor we build around ourselves is weakest.” 

She’s right. And it’s now shown that Harley’s willing to use those below the belt trump cards if she has to.  

And frankly, I’d say this is worse than what she says to Ivy. And I’m not surprised she did it. She didn’t want to, she tried to get him to just open the door - 

“Don’t make me do this, Aaron. There are some secrets that should stay hidden. Things you should never learn about your own life.” 

but she’s also entirely fueled by rage and the desire to kill Joker. She came here for a reason and she’s not leaving until she’s done it.

“I’m going to kill you. For everything you’ve done to me. All the times you’ve made me feel useless and small. For all the times I will never forget. For all the things I can never forgive. All the memories -”

“Hello, Harley. I’ve missed you.” 

“Memories. That’s all I have left. The past is gone and all I have is... memories. 

Memories.

Memory. 

Gone.

I guess I too have a trump card.”

“Oh, Ivy. You know exactly what my answer is going to be. But you’re hoping you’re wrong, aren’t you?”

She’s also right about this, they already mentioned this in #18.

“How did I become the bad guy?”

“You’re the one choosing a man over her girls.”

“Are you kidding me? You would never say that to Harley, and we both know she’d dumb us in a flat second if Joker called her.”

“Hey! That’s not fair-- Actually, that’s probably true.”

“The difference is, she can’t help it. You can. And she’s working on it. You’re not working on it.” 

“Too easy, Ivy. Too easy. I know your weak spots. Now I just need to push.”

This is exactly what she’s been doing since the starting point of this post. She’s still in that mindset and she knows she can’t beat her on a regular battle field. Neither of them can. 

“Like I said-- You beat me in any level playing field. But I don’t fight on those fields.” 

Harley’s biggest strength as a villain is her ability to completely mentally stall her opponents and learn their weak spots. She wouldn’t win against the majority of the Big Bads if she didn’t fight on a different field than they are. 

so, like yeah, out of context what she says to Ivy seems awful and completely screwed up, and it is, but it’s also built up really well and it’s completely in character for her at this point in her fall during these issues. 

Is what she did fucked? absolutely. It’s not painted that it’s not. 

Ivy Literally Goes To Kill Her For It.

In the end of this all three of them are recaptured by Catwoman and Batman and that’s where we’re starting off at again. 

“Oh, Harley.

The only human I’ve ever called a friend.

To what lengths will I go? Where are my own limits? She is the Strangler fig. And I am the tree, choking underneath. 

Without me, she could never grow. 

But without her, I would fall if I grew too tall.” 

“Will she ever stand by herself? 

Will she ever be ready? 

She is in throes of madness. She sees him, her brain flooding with adrenaline, it makes her excited, nervous, then the feelings start to fade, and she needs more. And more. 

She sees it as passion. She sees it as love. 

But it’s not. It’s addiction. And she’s relapsing.” 

Ivy is well aware of the nature of their relationship. She’s not stupid and she’s been shown already to know that it’s something that takes time. It’s not a one off break up and it’s over. That’s not how abusve relationships work. 

What do I do?

I could use my pheromones to alter her brain chemistry.

I could leave her behind abandoning her to the wilds of her own mind.

I could kill her right now.

Show her how red Nature can be.

There's one other option.

It would require patience.

Even love.

Maybe I'm more human than I want to admit.

"You have one chance to answer this."

I know, if she agrees, she'll be doing it for revenge. For him.

"She put us behind bars."

But maybe if I get away from this place, if I give her something else to think about. Maybe she can break the cycle. But it has to be her choice.

"I'm going to kill her. Come with me."

So yeah, it’s definitely not a just “Harley hurts her and runs off with Joker and it’s just a plain ol’ her choosing him over everyone and that’s that.” 

Jarley shippers love to just reduce all her scenes and arcs down to their “epic love” and shit, but that’s taking away literally everything about her and reducing it down to the 3 panels that they’re “cute” in. Her arc in this part is fucking heartbreaking to read.

And Ivy damn well knows what’s going on with her. She’s smart and she’s the one that’s been there throughout all of this. She found her in the park after he shot her out of a rocket. 

And she knows it’ll take time for Harley to get over and through his manipulation, that’s just how it works with abusive relationships. 

But she’s also not forgiving at first, she’s mad and rightfully so, until she sees the sate of Harley’s cell and realizes how bad her addiction is at that time.

A lot of the unhealthy moments on Harley’s side when it comes to them are directly caused from the effects of being in an abusive relationship with Joker. Because she’s always in this area of her journey in those moments. She’s never fully over him or emancipated. 

And that’s realistic. It’s hard sometimes to be friends with someone who’s in abusive relationships like theirs, having to watch them return to that person time and time again and it’s frustrating after a while. 

I know from personal experience, it’s really hard to watch someone you care about go back or forgive someone that continues to hurt them. 

But abuse victims desperately need a support system outside of their abuser. It’s a crucial part of being able to escape, because when they do try to get out they need someone there or they’ll literally have no where to go but back into their abuser’s arms.

It’s heartbreaking and it’s really rough for everyone effected, but that’s just how it is most of the time. Especially in their case, as they’re not just regular folk dealing with this. 

If she doesn’t have Ivy, Harley has no one else to go to but Joker, on more than just an emotional level. 

She’s lost her job. Her income. Her home. Her livelihood. Her everything.

Most of the time she has no other choice but to return to a life of crime after she’s released from Arkham because she can’t get a job, she’s a notorious criminal and she’s got a lot of issues that don’t just disappear with a bit of therapy. 

She has no other choice but to return to Joker because the other alternative is the streets. At least she knows what to expect with him. 

And that’s not even getting into the manipulation, gaslighting and degrading abuse that he drills into her constantly. 

He’s made her believe she’s not anything without him. That she’s not smart or useful or anything. 

And that’s why it’s so damn important for her to have a support system and why he’s so damn against Ivy. 

Because Ivy is the good voice on her shoulder telling her he’s wrong and that she doesn’t deserve that. 

-

And on Ivy’s side, she’s aware she gets very near cutting off all parts of her humanity. 

She’s a plant goddess, she’s insanely powerful and she feels everything through the green. Frankly, she’s not even on the same playing field as these villains. She’s significanty more powerful than Harley and Joker. 

Her connection to Harley is what keeps her humanity in tack, because despite everything, she does care about her. She was the first person she let in, the first person Ivy called a friend. 

The person that was able to get through to her in #14/#15 when she was losing herself. The one that was able to get through to her that the dude was manipulating her. 

“Ivy, I know you think you love this guy... but you’re just gonna end up strapped to his rocket!”

She had to knock her out for the dude to trust her / not attack them anymore. But Harley got through to her by mentioning how they first met in the park when she saved her after Joker shot her off in a rocket.

And Ivy is understandable turned off towards humans considering her origin and trauma around that. 

She’s got a lot of trust issues.

But both of them work through their seperate traumas over the years because their affection for each other is stronger than the issues their trauma has given them.

-

and also, sometimes, they just have shit writers. that’s an issue overall in comic fandoms. Some writers just fucking suck at getting any of the characters right, let alone LGBT characters, who’re notoriously treated like garbage by DC. 

[nerdygaymormon]

What do you think about the possible excommunication of Natasha Helfer?

Before this week, the only thing I knew about Natasha Helfer is I’d read an article she’d written about masturbation being part of normal sexual development, and she doesn’t see it as sinful. I agree with her. 

Because of the publicity surrounding her summons to a membership council, I now know much more about her. 

She made a video about being summoned to a membership council scheduled for April 18th. For starters, a stake where she hasn’t lived since 2019 has decided to do this, which seems strange to me. 

Here’s the things the summons letter cites as “misconduct”:

Support for same-sex marriage

Teaching that masturbation is part of a normative sexual-development journey and should not be seen as “sin” or as a reason to keep our youth from being considered worthy to serve or church activities

Her stances on sexually-explicit materials, aka pornography (she believes this is because she educates about using a values model vs an addiction model in the treatment of such concerns)

She’s been critical of Church leaders

Concerns she has encouraged people to leave the Church 

—————————

I went to section 32.6 of the General Handbook which lists the things someone may face a membership council. Frankly, the things listed in the letter sent to Natasha Helfer are not found in the Handbook. 

I suppose these could fit under the charge of “Apostasy,” because she publicly declares opinions different from the Church. Here’s what the Handbook says constitutes apostasy:

Repeatedly acting in clear and deliberate public opposition to the Church, its doctrine, its policies, or its leaders

Persisting in teaching as Church doctrine what is not Church doctrine after being corrected by the bishop or stake president

Showing a pattern of intentionally working to weaken the faith and activity of Church members

Continuing to follow the teachings of apostate sects after being corrected by the bishop or stake president

Formally joining another church and promoting its teachings (Total inactivity in the Church or attending another church does not by itself constitute apostasy. However, if a member formally joins another church and advocates its teachings, withdrawing his or her membership may be necessary.)

—————————

Natasha Helfer is a well-known LDS marriage counselor and certified sex therapist in Utah. She’s written several articles that have been widely read. She’s been a recurring guest on the Mormon Mental Health podcast, Mormon Matters and appeared on many other podcasts. 

She’s particularly sought out because of her training & expertise and her experiences in helping members of the Church overcome their sense of shame regarding sexuality. 

As a marriage counselor, she helps couples where one or both goes through a faith crisis, she says she doesn’t encourage anyone to leave the Church but honors their choices and helps them work through their thoughts & feelings, and also the effect it has on their marriage.  

Because of the news about her being summoned for a membership council, I’ve learned more about her positions. Here’s a list of some of the things I’ve seen in her writing: 

Sex Ed in Utah public schools should be comprehensive and accurate

Sexual assault is a crime & should be talked about as such

The LDS Church should know how to address sexual misconduct and sexual assault much better than it currently does

We should embrace and minister to our trangender neighbors, not fear them and make church difficult for them

Excommunication is cruel and unusual punishment which often is a traumatic experience used by the Church to silence its critics

Service Missions should be setup to be meaningful and seen as equal to proselyting missions

LGBTQ+ members should be affirmed and included in their faith community

LDS teachings & messages to LGBTQ+ members is akin to bullying and has real-world consequences on their mental health & lives

Fear of the BYU Honor Code actually causes many to not seek repentance for fear of academic punishment

The Church teaching that only certain families that fit the mold will get to enjoy the afterlife together is harmful. Mormon Heaven = Sad Heaven. She lists many groups who are harmed by this teaching, including: mixed-faith families, LGBTQ+ individuals & their families, families where someone struggles with addiction, single-parent families, families trying to deal with abuse & trauma, families dealing with mental health conditions such as bi-polar or impulse-control, family survivors of someone who died by suicide

When the Church rescinded the policy of exclusion against gay couples and their children, it should have been accompanied by an apology, not just a brief statement of the announcement with no explanation for the change

Social media isn’t the problem, how we use it is. If we’re keeping in touch with family & friends with whom we otherwise wouldn’t because of distance, accessing support you wouldn’t find in your area, obtaining ideas & resources, these are good. Comparing ourselves to others’ “best selves”, debating others, writing mean comments and such are not helpful. Too often people behave differently online than they do in person

We should wish people well when they leave our church and faith community and wish them well on their spiritual journey. We do a good job at celebrating newcomers even though many of them had to say goodbye to something in order to say hello to us

We need to speak of abortion more than as if anyone who gets one is evil. Even the Church’s position makes room for abortion in certain circumstances and we should be more nuanced in how we speak of it

Biological sex and gender are not binary. This may be LDS doctrine but the sciences of Biology and Psychology say otherwise

She supported the law ending conversion therapy in Utah of LGBTQ+ people

Racism is a public health emergency in the USA, racism is more than hate, it’s in our systems. It’s in our scriptures, our folklore, our culture, our history

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. It’s acceptance and moving forward

She also has many articles & podcasts about improving marriage relationships, how to talk with your child about sex, tips for a mixed-faith marriage and similar topics directly related to her job as a marriage counselor and sex therapist.

I’m very impressed, from what I see. She is a tremendous force for good in our LDS community. We need people willing to speak the truth. 

—————————

Here’s two articles that especially impressed me. 

First is one is about masturbation, how it’s a legitimate way to meet one’s needs and some of the many benefits associated with sexual release. 

Second is one about pornography, the LDS culture gives pornography more power than it deserves with our blanket bans, secrecy & shaming, and calling virtually all porn viewing an addiction.

—————————

Frankly, based on what I post on my blog, I could be charged with all the same things that Natasha Helfer is being charged with.

Do I support same-sex marriage? Yes. Absolutely.

Do I think masturbation is a sin? No, and I think many Church websites, publications, and the General Handbook back up this view. 

Is masturbation a normal part of sexual development? Yes. And it has many benefits for individuals, especially singles like me, and even within a marriage

Is porn always wrong? I definitely can think of ways porn can be included inside a healthy marriage, perhaps as a way to help a partner get “in the mood,” or for someone with a higher libido to use along with masturbation, as part of foreplay, or even getting some ideas to spice up their love life. 

Have I been critical of Church leaders? You betcha. I think they’re wrong on LGBTQ+ topics and I say so. 

Do I encourage people to leave the Church? I don’t view myself this way, although I wouldn’t say that I try to get them to stay, either. It’s their path to walk. I know most LGBTQ+ people leave the Church, it’s the way our journeys normally go. I feel God has told me it’s fine for me to leave this church, so in no way do I think poorly of people who leave. This church isn’t ready for queer people and I don’t think God requires us to remain some place that harms us.

My understanding is we’re allowed to have beliefs that differ from the Church, as long as we’re not recruiting people to our side. Simply sharing your opinion or some differences in how you view things shouldn’t be something we can be punished for.

I suppose the difference between her and me is she’s seen as a high-profile individual and she’s using her credentials to give weight to her opinions, and I’m just some rando gay guy who has a blog.

[ardwynna]

Saying “children should not be exposed to sex” is not “infantilization” it is common sense, and has been agreed upon by society at large. And them being exposed to it doesn’t help them “learn and grow” it is traumatizing. It does the opposite of that. Please step outside your bubble and learn more about this before you do something harmful.

Let’s talk about my bubble. I was a health counselor in college. A high school biology teacher for a stint after that. I am a doctor now. Human biological and psychosocial development is a thing I actually have a bit of learning and experience with, if you can imagine. And I have given ‘The Talk’ in quite a few varied forms.

Now, by “children”, do you mean prepubescents only, the way people generally do? Or are you including adolescents as well, like fandom police? Either way, there is a level of sex talk you can give to prepubescents, they do often want to know where babies come from. Some of them even get the Penis-In-Vagina bit of The Talk and handle it pretty well.

Adolescents on the other hand, well, maybe you’re a fan of US-style Abstinence Only education. I am not. So not. Comprehensive sex education all the way. No ifs, ands or buts. They’re literally going through sexual development. How can you stomach keeping people ignorant about what’s happening to them? It’s dangerous, and in my thinking, unethical. They need to be prepared. You ever explained to a class of thirteen year olds what oral sex and dental dams are? I have. You ever described vaginal secretions and ovulation changes to sixteen year olds? I have. And for the record, they brought it up. Curiosity is normal at that age and they had questions. Some of them were already experimenting and putting themselves at all kinds of risk from ignorance. Lucky I have the actual schooling and certification to answer those questions, eh?

Now, lets talk about fandom. Fanfic is entertainment. Fanart is entertainment. Fandom content creators are for the most part a bunch of marginalized amateurs chucking out works for their own amusement and any friends they can make with similar tastes in this rapidly wildening internet. Fanfic is not The Talk. Fanart is not a How-To. You have a better chance getting a decent version of The Talk at PornHub. You don’t expect people to learn sexual behavior from Game of Thrones, do you? Why would you expect them to go learn it from fandom? Why do you think fandom is such a huge influence? Because I promise you, as huge a part of your life as it might be right now, it’s a drop in a bucket compared to the rest of the world. It just doesn’t have the reach or the capability to serve as an ‘educational’ source. Nobody is saying kids should come to fandom to learn about sex. But if they get an eyeful, honestly the stuff they see here isn’t going to be much worse than Cinemax on a Saturday night.

Now, we have established that adolescents have sexual interest, even if it’s just the academic kind for some of them. We have established that knowledge is better than ignorance. We have established that fandom is not nor should be the source of that knowledge, or sure as shit not the only one.

Now let’s talk about exposure.

To sign up for social media sites, and frankly most online accounts, you have to be at least 13. Adolescent. An age of sexual development and curiosity. At 13, you are deemed old enough to leave the kiddy pool and start swimming with the rest of us. And that means learning how to operate in the wider world. It means sharing space with a wider age group than you’re used to. It means learning how to decide what is for you, what is not for you, and what is not for you yet. Same way you pass the cigs and alcohol in the convenience store before you’re old enough, you can bypass a tagged, age-rated and warned-for fic and stick to something more age-appropriate. But you do have to get used to seeing these things, and passing them by, and saying “Not now.” That’s part of living in a society. If you opt to use a fake ID to bypass the barrier, if you opt to lie about your age online, that’s on you. Only you. The adult world does not stop just because minors exist. The protections of prepubescent childhood are not meant to last forever. Adolescence is a training stage.

So if ‘children’ are being exposed to sex in fandom, they’re exposing themselves. And that’s on their parents and caregivers for not giving them proper guidelines, not enforcing those guidelines, or not giving them enough proper education to satisfy their natural curiosity, or counteract whatever fantabulous imaginary sexual escapade they go looking for online. You can’t leave kids’ welfare up to distant strangers on the internet. Distant strangers, I must add, who have EVERY RIGHT to freedom of expression and living their adult lives to the fullest. The presence of teenagers does not change that. The teens have the tools now to protect themselves. They have the tags and the warnings. But they insist on acting like actual children, prepubescents, and not people who should be practicing their basic life skills. The teenagers on social media and fandom sites need to step up and meet fandom halfway. They cannot be babied forever.

So either the ‘children’ hike off to go ask Alice, if Mommy and Daddy completely dropped the ball, or they start practicing some self control. Because wherever the adults go, the kids follow. They follow despite lockdowns, they click despite warnings, they read despite age recommendations, and that’s entirely on the kids. Because nobody put a gun to their head and made them click.

[pillage-and-lute]

The Courting Ways of Wolves

This is Geralt struggling heavily with emotions. He’s a little dumb but he’s got the spirit. Fluff. Geraskier, platonic Yennalt and Yennskier with a healthy side order of Geralt’s brothers and Good Mom! Yennefer, who deserves all the nice things.

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Epilogue

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After the mountain, and finding Ciri, and tracking down Jaskier and Yennefer both, and dragging them up to Kaer Morhen, Geralt had looked forward to a nice, relaxing winter. His brothers and Vesemir would train Ciri, Yennefer, with whom he had come to an entirely platonic understanding, would recover from Sodden, and he had Jaskier back.

His apology had been poor, and he knew it, but Geralt had rescued him from the clutches of Nilfgaard and had bought him new lute strings and a notebook to boot. 

The strains of Her Sweet Kiss drifted through Kaer Morhen regularly, because his whole family, and yes, Ciri and Yennefer included, kept requesting that damn song. He hated it, Jaskier’s voice broke singing it and his scent was still sad, although less so than it had been the first few times Geralt had heard it.

Amazingly, the sadness had disappeared for the most part after one time, when Jaskier played the song after dinner, Yennefer had looked up from her book and said, cool as an icicle,

“For Melitele’s sake you melodramatic bastard, I’m not dating Geralt and I never want to again.” 

And now everyone seemed to want to hear it. Kaer Morhen’s training had not included music or poetry comprehension, so he was unsure why everyone kept looking at him oddly whenever the song was played. As far as he could tell, it was just another tragic love song. When Ciri started requesting Her Sweet Kiss after supper, and eyeing him while it played, he gave in. He cornered Eskel, the most book smart of the wolves beside Vesemir, who he suspected would be just a bit too acerbic, and asked him what was up. 

“He’s in love with you.”

“He’s not.”

“You’re an idiot,” Eskel said. “And a stubborn one to boot. He didn’t like Yennefer when you two were sleeping together, but they’re the friends now, right?”

“They’re not,” Geralt said, brow wrinkling. This was treading much too far into the realm of human emotions, which Geralt had never been good at, but they snarked at each other all the time still and bickered like children. Eskel rolled his eyes. 

“They are, its just sparring, but with words not swords. You see?” 

That made sense, words were Jaskier’s weapon, and Yennefer’s too, to some extent, and they did both seem to revel in creative insults.

“They’re friends,” Eskel said. “Now that Jaskier isn’t jealous anymore. Do you see where I’m going with this?” He could apparently tell from Geralt’s expression that, no, he did not know where Eskel was going with this. 

“Her Sweet Kiss is about Yennefer, who Jaskier thinks you love, and it’s about you, who Jaskier loves, and it’s about him, when he says ‘I’ as in “I am weak, my love’. My love is you, do you understand?”

It was dawning slowly in Geralt’s mind that he had definitely missed this, rather spectacularly, because now it was very, very obvious. He was glad he hadn’t gone to Vesemir, who would probably have given him a cuff ‘round the ear for being stupid, and it would have been deserved. 

Eskel, always so much better at reading emotions said, “Ah, you’ve got it, good. Now, what are you going to do about it.”

“I don’t know.” 

Eskel rolled his eyes so hard that Geralt hoped he detached a retina. “Of course you don’t.” His voice softened. Eskel had always been the one Geralt turned to for emotions. He knew Geralt didn’t get them, but wanted to understand and tried so hard that it hurt. Apart from a fair amount of good-natured ribbing, he always helped Geralt with the trickier bits of the human (or mutant) heart.

“Let’s start small, do you love the bard?”

That wasn’t small. That was a very, very big question, but Eskel had settled back in his chair and looked prepared to wait for Geralt to figure out the answer.

Did he love the bard? Geralt didn’t have anything to compare it to except Eskel and Lambert, and it certainly wasn’t like that. Except sometimes it was, like Eskel, Jaskier helped Geralt with reading when his head flipped the letters all around. Like Lambert, Jaskier fought anyone who insulted Geralt. But those were the actions of someone who loved Geralt, that was how Geralt could know (or could have known, if he’d been paying better attention) that Jaskier loved him. But how to know if Geralt loved Jaskier, not as a friend, but like a ballad, like the ‘my love’ in the song. But Geralt did love Jaskier like a ballad, because the songs always compared some lady to a bunch of other things. Geralt did that. He saw bright silks in a market and thought of Jaskier, if there were buttercups on the side of the road he thought of Jaskier, he heard a lute and thought of Jaskier, washed his hair and thought of Jaskier. Everything in his life made him think of Jaskier. 

And it wasn’t like seeing a goat headbut a farmer and thinking of Eskel and his goat from hell. It was also not the same as using a bomb and thinking of Lambert. Those were everyday things, as commonplace as thinking of Vesemir’s training. 

“I love him.”

“Yes,” Eskel said, “You really, really do. Now you just have to court him.” He sat back as if satisfied with a job well done. 

“Right, and how do I do that?” 

Eskel looked stumped. “I don’t know,” he said. Courting wasn’t part of the Kaer Morhen curriculum. 

“Do we ask Lambert?” Geralt asked, feeling a little panicky because now that he realized he loved the bard he wasn’t about to not court him.

“Of course not, he’s the least romantic bastard in existence,” Eskel said, rubbing a thumb over the scarred part of his lip.

“Not true, he reads romance novels,” Geralt said, proud to introduce this new and frankly hilarious bit of information.

“No.” Eskel’s eyes were wide.

“I found it in his pack last week, when I was looking for a sharpening stone, it had a picture of a lady in a torn dress and a shirtless man almost kissing, and the title said Tortured Hearts.”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“I’m not,” Geralt said huffily, “I read a bit of a page too and it mentioned a lot of throbbing.”

Eskel cackled and, over come with mirth, fell from his chair. That set off Geralt and they both howled with laughter, wiping a few stray tears from their eyes when they heard the door creak open. 

It was Lambert.

That set Eskel off again, which made Geralt laugh too, and Lambert just stared at them. 

“Did you two get into the vodka again?”

“No,” Eskel said, righting himself in his chair, “We were just discussing your reading habits.”

Lambert turned pale, then pink, then pursed his lips and turned up his nose haughtily. “Shows what you two know about literature. It’s a fine way to pass the time.” His cheeks were still a bit pink.

“All jokes aside,” Geralt said, when he’d stopped snorting, “I need to know how to court the bard.”

“Ah, finally pulled your head from your arse then?”

“It was me that did the pulling,” Eskel said. Lambert sprawled onto the couch next to Geralt. 

“Of course you did,” he said. “What you gotta do,” he paused. “No that’ll never work.” Geralt scowled at him.

“No really,” Lambert said, “It’d never work.”

“Try me.”

“Lambert, c’mon, we’re really stumped,” said Eskel.

“Well...”

“Yes?” said Geralt, leaning towards him a little. 

“In the books the man always writes her a poem, to proclaim his love, you know? Or failing that he writes her a letter, all curly writing, maybe some pressed flowers.”

“Oh,” said Geralt.

“Oh,” said Eskel. “Yeah you’re right that’s really not gonna work.”

“Jaskier’s all courtly,” Geralt said. “So I should do it, you know, courtly.”

“Ciri’s royalty,” Lambert said. “She might know, and Yennefer spends a bunch of time with nobles. They could help.”

“You said his family’s kind of old fashioned,” said Eskel. “Vesemir’s really old too, so he can help.

And that was how everyone in Kaer Morhen, except Jaskier, who had been distracted by Vesemir showing him a room with a nice echo, met in the library to begin plan Court the Bard. Eskel was scribbling ideas onto a sheet of parchment. 

“You should kiss his hand,” Ciri said. “And say please and thank you.” She thought of her grandparents. “And tell him how beautiful he looks when he’s covered in blood.”

“Kill things for him,” Lambert chipped in. “Show’s him how big and strong you are, makes him feel safe.” A few curious eyes turned to him. He shifted uncomfortably. “One of the books was about a hunter and and a dairy maid. He killed a bear for her.”

“Always ask before you hold his hand or kiss him,” Vesemir said, seemingly unfazed by Lamberts reading habits. No reason he should be, Geralt thought, we all know he has a stack of romance novels by his bed. “Take it slow, Geralt, be patient, and put in the work, he was patient for twenty years, repay it now.”

Yennefer spoke up. “You don’t have to stop being sarcastic with him, he likes it, but compliment him too. Tell him how much you like his music. He likes music, so you like music because it makes him happy, understood?”

Geralt nodded.

“Good,” she said. “And dance with him. He’d like that. Also get him flowers.”

“Not just flowers, get him stuff,” Eskel said.

“I bought him lute strings and a notebook,” Geralt said.

Ciri wrinkled her nose. “Yeah but those were apology gifts, these are courting gifts.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Not much,” Yennefer said, “Lute strings and notebooks are good because they’re useful and they show that you know what he needs, but courting gifts should also be more...” she waved a hand vaguely, purple sparks twirling about her fingers.

“Romantic,” Eskel said.

“Pretty,” Ciri said firmly.

“They should be able to show you can provide for him,” Vesemir cut in.

At the end the list was short and confusing, but at least they had a plan. In the spring Ciri would go learn about magic with Yennefer, and Geralt’s heart swelled at the way they both glowed with excitement at the prospect. Geralt would then be back on the path alone with Jaskier and he could court him. 

The list said, in Eskel’s simple, neat hand, Number One, kiss his hand. Number Two, use manners. Number Three, compliment him (his music, his features, how he looks after a battle?) Number Four, kill things and bring them to him. Number Five, bring him gifts that aren’t dead things. There was an asterisk by number five and it said, gifts should be useful, romantic, pretty, and provide for him.

It wasn’t much, but it was a plan. 

That night at dinner Jaskier wondered why everyone kept looking at him and Geralt. He figured he had stew on his face, there was some in Geralt’s hair. Geralt wondered why Jaskier kept swiping his face with a napkin and why Ciri kept pointedly running fingers through her hair. 

He couldn’t figure out all of human emotions, but he was going to defeat courting, once and for all.

[dylanobrienisbatman]

Omg give us ur rant abt hating d*rklina as a ship.. im petty

Okay Anon, so i saw this the other day and I wasn't in the right headspace to answer but i am now!

So to start off, I am firmly in the ship and let ship category. You like a ship, i don't care. That doesn't mean i won't rag on the ship itself but I don't send hate, I don't really engage with shippers from ships I don't like, and I am liberal with the block button and the blacklist feature. Cultivate your tumblr/online experience, y'all. You don't owe anyone on this hellsite (or any other) a damn thing.

However, I REALLY do hate d*rklina as a ship, and I have a big problem with the way the shippers talk about it, so I hope you were being serious about wanting a rant because here it goes.

As for the ship itself, i feel like the reasons I dislike it are pretty obvious and standard. It's abusive. He is her abuser. He manipulates her. He spends months grooming her and gaslighting her, intentionally trying to get her under his control so that when he literally enslaves her it will go over easier. He never actually loved her, he wanted to use her for her power. It's not complicated, it's not really 'up for debate', that is the way its written, and the author has explained that that was the intended interpretation of her work. I mean he literally sexually assaults her in the second book, and straight up tells her he's going to kill everyone she loves so that she has no choice but to fall to him because she is completely alone in the world. He threatens to skin her alive in the second book when they're on the boat, he has no problem torturing her to get Mal to do what he wants. That's not love. He does not love her. It's pretty black and white, its explicitly written as an abusive relationship. The point was to show how easily powerful men can manipulate and abuse young naive women who don't know any better and try to see the best in people. Alina 'fell' for the version of Darkles Sparkles that he intentionally created to try to control her. Nothing he told her was true, from his backstory, to them both being 'the only one like [each other]' (hello, baghra), to using Genya to convince Alina that Mal had abandoned her, everything he did was manipulation so that he could get her under his control. It is not a romance, it is not 'a ship war', d*rklina is not written as romantic. He is her abuser. Full stop.

There is also the point about him being just a generally horrible person all around. He's not morally grey. He just isn't. He sold an 11 year old into sex slavery, forced her to stay in that situation so he could use her, and then mutilated her when she defied him. He also groomed and abused Zoya, because he saw that she was exceptionally powerful and wanted to use her the way he wanted to use Alina. He enslaved Alina. He blinded and mutilated his own mother. He is a genocidal maniac. He shows no remorse, he doesn't care about anyone but himself and his own power. He is not the type of character that should be romantically shipped with anyone. If you like him, that's absolutely fine! One of my fave characters ever is Kai Parker from TVD. Dude was a straight up psychopath. He tried to kill multiple pairs of toddlers. He brutally murdered his pregnant sister AT HER WEDDING. He is a HORRIBLE person. But I think he's a brilliant character. But do I think he's a good guy, do I want him anywhere near any characters in that show in a romantic way (ehem b*nkai)? Absolutely fucking not. Being a fan of a villain character is fine, but fucking own that shit. Villains can be SUCH good characters, but they're still villains. Erasing the bad they've done so you can justify putting them in situations where they WILL harm the people around them because you can't level with yourself about the bad things they've done doesn't make you 'woke', it just makes you look like you don't understand the media you're consuming.

Which leads me to why I have such a problem with the way D*rklina shippers engage with the ship. They simultaneously wanna say "oh we know it's toxic/bad/abusive/etc., that's why we like it!" and then also they try to claim that it should be endgame, they romanticize scenes where he is abusing her (and by romanticize I mean they literally try to frame his abuse as romantic, not like "oh yeah my ship is interacting!!". those are different things. You can be excited about ship interactions without trying to say that things he is doing to her are actually romantic), they try to argue that he is morally grey/misunderstood/etc., and they straight up try to lie and say he's not her abuser.

If you wanna ship an abusive ship, own it. Be straight up about why you like it. It's okay to be into dark shit, y'all. It does NOT make you a bad person to be into dark shit. But this idea that fiction doesn't impact real life, and that people can't call the ship out for what it is is a problem is a very troubling trend in fandom. Nobody is saying you can't ship it, do what you want. But this idea that these people are 'oppressed' because fans of the show/book continue to point out the facts about the way the story was written and how the relationship is actually presented is fucking insane. Someone saying that D*rklina is abusive is not calling you out, they are stating a fact. It's the story as it was presented. You trying to say it's not makes it look like you have no reading comprehension. And this idea that 'well i'll be on the lookout for evil shadow wizards in real life lol' is such horse shit too. His shadow wizard powers aren't the issue. He is a powerful man who grooms and abuses young women. You're telling me you lived through the Me Too movement and you wanna act like thats not a real threat that young women face every day? You're telling me that you can't see that the actual real life connection you're supposed to be making here? Okay, well you should maybe deal with that and come back to me, because that's an issue.

Fiction is meant to teach us lessons. Darkles is meant to teach us something. He is meant to show us that sometimes, powerful men lie to, manipulate, groom, and abuse young women, and we should be aware of that. The story is about a young woman who is sucked into an abusive situation, and then she breaks free and in the end she is able to defeat her abuser. That is a really powerful story, and one that millions of real life women can relate too. To pretend that that story doesn't have real life connections makes you look insensitive and frankly, kind of cruel.

So basically, in the end, my biggest issue is that D*rklina shippers love to spout this nonsense about 'knowing' it's bad and that he's a villain, and 'that's why they like him', and then turn around and try to say that he's not actually the villain, he's not actually bad, and the things he does to Alina that are abuse are actually romantic and sweet. You wanna ship an abusive ship, you do you, but lets not pretend it's anything other than what it is, but romanticizing and normalizing abuse tactics so you can feel, what? morally superior? Cool? edgy and different? That has real life impacts. You are normalizing abuse. Real people will engage with that rhetoric, and it will make it difficult for them to see abuse when it happens to them or the people around them because they believe its romantic or normal to be treated that way.

You wanna be a villain stan? You wanna ship dark ships? Good on ya, but fucking own your shit, y'all.

[mirai227]

How to go from beginner to intermediate in a language!

Hi! I recently reached an intermediate level in French, and I am on my way to reaching an intermediate level in Spanish too, so I thought I would try to offer some tips and ideas about how you could reach an intermediate level in your target language as well.

What does an intermediate level feel like?

So from what I can gather, the beginner level (about A1/A2 on the CEFR scale for languages) is where you can communicate on a very basic level, and can only really understand beginner learners' content. Native material is kind of a no go (except maybe for children’s content). You can understand about 30% of what natives say at natural speed, and can struggle through some basic articles with key vocabulary, as long as you are already familiar with the subject and the key vocabulary. You can express yourself in quite a limited way, and can speak about familiar subjects, while being able to provide some simple explanations why. This self-assessment grid can tell you more about what you can and can’t do at these levels.

At the intermediate level (about B1/B2), native material is slowly but surely becoming more easy for you to understand. For me, it usually means that I can understand enough words and phrases when native speakers speak to piece together what they are discussing, though I can’t really provide specifics. You can understand about 50/60% of what natives are saying about a relatively wide range of everyday subjects (though specialised language for complex adult discussions on things like science and philosophy is usually too difficult at this stage). You can express yourself quite well on a wide range of subjects, though in an often clumsy and simplistic manner. At this level, you should be able to survive in a country where the language is spoken, and operate fairly well in a professional setting (if the language required is not too complex). You will definitely make a lot of mistakes, but not too many, so you should be understood by natives. This self-assessment grid can tell you more about what you can and can’t do at these levels.

What should your goals generally be here?

Greatly expand your vocabulary.

Improve your grammar to a passable conversational level (watch this video clip to understand what I mean).

Get comfortable speaking with native speakers.

Make sure that most of your study time is spent consuming or using your target language. Minimise contact with the languages you already know, except maybe for grammar.

Spend a minimum of around 1-2 hours a day on your target language.

How should you reach intermediate level?

Use a textbook for around that level. For me, I used the higher tier textbooks for GCSEs, which is about the level that I wanted to reach. I went through the whole textbook, learnt all the vocabulary that I came across, and did all the practice questions that I could find. This helped me immensely. Textbooks are usually organised to provide the base of what you need to reach an intermediate level. However, they should not be used alone.

Find a native speaker to talk to! Seriously, this helped me so so much. Before, I was not comfortable speaking to natives in French at all, but I started to speak with a friend of mine twice a week, and I was absolutely stunned by how much more smooth and confident my speaking became. I looked up words that I needed to know while I was speaking with her, and this really helped me fill in the gaps of my knowledge. I also learnt a lot of the nuances in French and and discovered some really cool and useful phrases. Try making a habit of speaking either with someone, or by yourself every day. If you don’t know something, then google translate is your friend! That way you can learn really cool set phrases. You can usually find someone to talk to on discord servers if you join some language learning ones, though be very careful about revealing any personal details or your face. Arrange a fixed time a few times a week and stick to it!

Study every day. Seriously, I really dropped the ball with my Spanish and because of this, my progress has been really slow. I could be at the intermediate level in Spanish already, but because I’ve been so slow, I’m not. Figure out what time of day you are most productive at (for me this is the early morning) and set a fixed time for studying your target language. It’s okay to experiment a little, and for it to take some time to figure out your schedule. With languages, at this stage, it is very easy to forget things, so going a long time without studying (longer than a month) is really going to hinder your progress. Still, you should always be your first priority, so if things are too busy for your studies at the moment, then it is fine to put your studies on hold for a while, or even stop them altogether. Just make peace with the fact that your progress will be a little slower than you might like.

Do lots of practice questions for grammar. It is all well and good to hear about the rules and write notes down, but if you cannot use it in practice, then frankly, you do not know the rule. Find a grammar workbook, like this one, or this one, and work through it. You can use HiNative to find corrections if you do not know the answer. Then, try making sure that you actually use it in your writing or speaking. Experiment, and learn from the corrections that people make.

Keep a journal in the language, and post it on websites like Journaly. Write about subjects that you already know about, and make sure that you use as many grammar rules that you know as you can. Try to elaborate on your reasons and opinions on things. It will be difficult at first, and you will make absolutely loads of mistakes, but as time goes on, you will gradually start to improve. Look up words that you don’t know, and write them down so that you can learn them later.

Try listening to intermediate content. Yes, it will be difficult, and you won’t be able to understand much, but as time goes on, you will slowly become more accustomed to the vocabulary you need to reach that level. Make sure whatever podcast you are listening to has a transcript, and highlight and learn the new vocabulary that you have discovered using Anki, or any flashcard app. Listen whenever you have time to kill, like on the train or when you are doing the dishwasher - it’ll really help!

Text natives on apps like Tandem or HelloTalk. It’ll get you used to forming the written language more quickly, and will let you practice more conversational phrases.

Make sure that you have the basics of grammar down, like all the essential tenses and basic particles, before moving onto harder things. Find a list of grammar, or a textbook that specifically covers intermediate level, and do lots of practice questions on each one.

Watch some native content on YouTube on subjects that you are familiar with and really like. Again, this will be difficult, but helpful! Make sure the videos have subtitles in the target language so that you can follow what it is about. Do NOT use english subtitles. It is vital that you get used to understanding the language without the crutch of the languages you already know. Look up the words that you do not know, and learn them using whatever vocabulary learning method that you like.

Read children’s (like, young children) stories and books to practice reading. It will be surprisingly difficult, because the grammar used in children’s books is usually for around a certain degree of fluency. Learn the vocabulary you don’t know, and try to practice when you can.

Learner’s material and articles are usually quite good for reading as well, as they are frequently quite challenging. You can find some in your textbook, or online if you google “[language] intermediate reading exercises”. You can probably also find reading comprehension books online if you try hard enough.

Learn vocabulary in context instead of memorising lists of vocabulary. Find the vocabulary you don’t know in all the content you are consuming, or look up words that you want to use yourself, and write them down with example sentences. Then, learn them using flashcard apps or websites like memrise, quizlet and anki.

For your pronunciation, shadow native speakers. Listen to how they say words, and imitate them. Personally, I use Easy Languages videos for this, along with random YouTube videos with subtitles in the target language. If a certain sound is difficult for you, then be proactive! Look up YouTube videos and articles on how to pronounce the word, and keep on practicing until you eventually get it.

Engaging with people on social media can be a fun easy way of practicing your TL. You can read or listen to posts and leave comments.

That’s it! That’s all the advice I can possibly think of. I hope you found this post helpful!

Here are some articles that I have found useful in the past:

How You Can Become Fluent in a Language - In Just One Year By Ramsay Lewis

9 points about language learning and how I’m learning 20+ of them By @ravenclawhard

Language learning tips for beginner & intermediate learners 🌍 By Lindie Botes/ @rinkodesu