see like the thing with 'carewhumpers' as a concept to me is it just like... i know this is prrrrobably not really how it's meant but something skeeves me out about the idea that kindness or caretaking mixed in with hurting someone can somehow meaningfully complicate or dilute the harm done to the point of making that character no longer a 'whumper' whereas someone doing the same 'bad' things but not ever being gentle or caring for them would just be a straight-out whumper. when like... that's how 90% of irl abuse dynamics work? so i just... don't really get the point, i guess. like to me it implies something about the 'care' provided somehow mitigating or combating the harm done that. i just do not personally appreciate or enjoy.
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you know what, I actually will talk about this because it's bothering me. The issue with focussing so heavily on syd and carmy's potential for a romantic relationship isn't that there's something inherently unintellectual about romance or whatever, it's that a lot of people seem incapable of doing that without immediately flattening the story and ignoring or intentionally misreading any and all nuance for the sake of that romance. Every scene suddenly becomes about how it impacts their relationship, every analysis is done through a romantic lens, every frame or line of dialogue becomes about finding some easter egg or hint that "proves" these people should start dating. Their dynamic is absolutely a fundamental part of this show, but if you can only see it as a will-they-won't-they, you miss so much of what the story is actually trying to say with these two.
There are good versions of this story where their relationship is romantic and there are good versions of this story where it isn't, but as soon as you decide them being together is "the point," you lose the ability to actually judge the story for what it is, not what you want it to be.
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how many times do i have to relearn the lesson that being productive actually makes me happier before it actually sticks?
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sth about how sapphire has low self-esteem even when he's considered a genius or otherwise extraordinary. and how that low self-esteem can lead towards him seeking validation from a wider crowd in a bid to smother his insecurities. how he uses that to feed his ego until he becomes reliant on it and desperately doesn't want to lose it. and it is validation specifically he prioritises over a deeper understanding or connection with others. because he would have that deeper connection in the form of beryl if he'd so accept it.
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I think. I think there's still a lot of "Well I don't want to be like THOSE girls," even among plenty of adults who truly do genuinely care about feminism. And I just want to say that trying to assure someone who is attempting to parse all of that out with "Oh, don't worry, YOU'RE not like One Of THOSE™️ Girls" does not........actually help.
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Do any of y'all have adhd and bipolar or know of any good accounts of what having both is like? I've noticed that I've been having some seriously abnormal moods recently, and the more I look into it, the more I think that it looks a lot like bipolar, but I'm not sure how it would interact with my adhd, or even if there's anything other than my adhd going on at all. Feel free to DM me if you don't want to talk about it publicly
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god i know that complaining abt fic which most of you haven't read, and which i won't, for politeness' sake, identify in this post, is a great way to come across as both dickish and boring—
but i've been rereading a very long, very satisfyingly plotty series that's a fandom darling and the thing is, when you read like 400k of an author's work at once it really starts to become painfully apparent what their priorities are, by which i mean two things:
holy shit they're obsessed with 'what if strong powerful men who could hurt you didn't (but did hurt Bad Guys) (and it was sexy of them),' which leads into
holy shit they do not appear to have thought through the implications of saying 'i will have my heroes take over the same power structures that have enabled abuse, make no real changes to those structures other than swapping out the leadership, and then claim that everything is wonderful now bc Good Men Are In Charge'??
like. i don't necessarily need every passing fantasy to present me with a coherent, revolutionary system of politics and ethics—sometimes things are just fun and sexy and not especially Examined and that's fine!—but by the time someone's written literally almost half a million words, and done a lot of worldbuilding while they were at it, i am going to start squinting if they seem to think a Good Man can e.g. become an emperor by killing off the leadership of multiple countries and installing puppet kings loyal to him and still remain a Good Man, even if the justification was that the original leadership was maltreating its citizens and deserved to be extrajudicially executed. like. this shit was a bad, autocratic move when the US did it in real life and it's still bad now that you're having our mutual blorbo do it in fiction!
and that's not even getting into the whole thing where like. they've got servants who the Good Man and his friends ""treat well"" but who very much remain second-class citizens in terms of how the story actually frames them and their concerns. [this was also a huge issue i had with foz m*adows' most recent book—everyone wants to write about fantasy nobles but they also want to make them good people and it's like. honestly i think it might be better to get comfortable writing about flawed people, but also—if your aristos aren't treating their servants like equals and your text isn't either, you haven't actually cracked the Moral Aristo paradox, sorry!] like, there's nothing that says your story has to depict a fully Healed World, nor should there be! but it's troubling if you seem to be convinced you've written one (and have your wide-eyed love interests constantly marveling at it!) when you very patently haven't.
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