#conversations • i think i talk too much.

[basimenkidu]

We made it. Found our happy ending. Who would have think?

[fearandhatred]

the devil entered me at 3am last night and i came up with this so here have a post-s2 crowley pov poem. pls be nice to me i don't even write poetry i have no idea what's going on

anyway i imagine this being read like an analog horror video

[raytorosaurus]

Sorry that this post is long but I would appreciate it if other white people read it and thought about it. I've been reading a lot of posts and the tags on them and I just want to make it very clear that this conversation isn't really about Ray getting 'attention' or his talent getting acknowledged. We should not be minimising this to “we need to acknowledge that Ray is an excellent guitar player” because everyone knows that, all you need is ears. True, it went largely unappreciated by fans at the height of mcr’s fame, but at least that's different now. What we're talking about now is about so much more than that - in fact, part of the problem is Ray getting reduced to nothing but the guy who shuts up and does the solos. We're talking about a pattern of behaviour that has been so deeply rooted in this fandom for so long that it's almost invisible to white people. It's a collective problem but it's perpetuated by individuals and needs to be addressed at an individual level first before it can begin to change.

I will acknowledge that, at least in my circles, things have started to change a little bit this tour in regards to people noticing him and discussing him beyond just his solos. But on the flipside that's only highlighted the larger issue, which boils down to how differently Ray is treated from the rest of the band. This is a consistent pattern. If he's not being ignored, he's behind separated out and set apart from the others - either being put on a weird pedestal or given suspiciously backhanded compliments.

Back in 2020 when I'd be lucky to see three posts about him a day on my dash I used to spend a lot of time scrolling through old inactive blogs to queue Ray pictures. Back in the pre-breakup days, if he wasn't being called "princess fro fro" he was being called ugly or he was the target of straight-up racial slurs. There was a weird narrative that he like, lowkey bullied Frank or took more credit than he deserved for mcr's guitar parts (which is painfully ridiculous and only proves that nobody paid attention to a single word Ray's ever said). Until very recently, the punchline of one of the main "jokes" (quotation marks because the word joke implies it was ever actually funny in the first place lol) in this fandom relied on Ray being at least casually homophobic. And these were blogs that posted Ray - I can only imagine how much worse the people who actively didn't like him would have been.

Nowadays, I post a lot of Ray content so I see a lot of tags from people outside my circle of mutuals. Let me tell you, there are Patterns. First of all, there's the classic "tags that completely ignore Ray to make the Ray post about Frank and/or Gerard instead." But more and more often what I'm seeing is if he's not being infantilised, he's being treated as some hyper-masculine, omni-competent, suave sex god or something - each of these things are equally reductive and dehumanising - and each of them are different manifestations of racist stereotypes and common fandom attitudes towards people of colour. Sure, Frank also gets weirdly infantilised a lot, but in a very different way - Frank is woobified in the way people often treat their fictional faves out of affection and horniness, whereas Ray is just reduced down to a personalityless nice guy - something that is also very common with fictional characters of colour. Then there are people who act like he's some kind of long-suffering untouchable genius who puts up with the little weirdos in his band because they worship his talent or something, as if he's not on equal footing with them as their peer and creative partner. And then you get the people characterising him as some kind of rough macho domineering dude because he's…tall? I guess? And plays guitar with confidence? Or is it just because he's brown.

I just..genuinely want you to sit down and think about a reason Ray might be singled out and separated from the rest of the band like this.

Is it because he's quiet in interviews? Mikey was always quieter. Also, Ray has done a lot more interviews than you think, they just haven't been circulated by fans as much. Also, he's literally the second-most featured band member in lotms - you know, the almost sole source for their fandom-driven personalities back in the day.

Is it because he's less feminine than the others? Both Mikey and Frank regularly present as more traditionally masculine in their fashion choices and mannerisms etc. The only thing “more masculine” about Ray than the others is...his body type I guess. There’s a whole conversation there about the intersection of gender and race and racist perceptions thereof.

Is it because he's private and keeps out of the public eye? So does Gerard.

Is it because people historically found him less attractive than the others? I shouldn't have to explain that that was the racism all along (yes, I know there's no accounting for taste, but Ray was regularly and actively mocked for his non-white features, and noughties beauty standards, especially in the alt music scene, were overwhelmingly white and racist. I regularly get tags to the effect of "when did Ray get so hot???" and honestly it's pretty telling that he's only widely acknowledged as attractive now that he's lost weight (whole other important discussion on fatphobia in this fandom here btw) and his hair has changed texture and beauty standards have shifted so certain racial features are fetishised rather than mocked.

Is it because he wasn't involved in one of the iconic bandom boylove duos? News flash, all "ships" are made up fan theories. Rpf and/or tinhatting is based on what fans notice and what rumours they perpetuate. Besides them kissing on stage a few times to make a point over 15 years ago, you know frerard lore because people talk about frerard lore. You know petekey lore because people talk about petekey lore. The truth is nobody cared enough to pay attention to Ray back then. (To be clear, this isn't me trying to tinhat anything about him, I'm just once again pointing out the obvious disparity in how Ray is treated compared to the others.)

I consistently see people acting baffled at how he's been behaving this tour - skipping or bouncing around the stage, eating his solos up, being physically affectionate with his bandmates. I can tell you he has literally always acted like that. Sure, this tour is special - he's certainly a lot more confident than he used to be and seems happier than ever, but really the biggest thing that's changed is now we get full footage of every show so it's literally impossible to overlook.

I also see people acting baffled when others point out the way Ray's been mistreated by fandom - being shocked that anyone would crop Ray out of band photos etc. I guarantee you that almost every single one of you has reblogged pictures where he's been actively cropped out, because some of the most iconic Frank-and-Gerard pictures that constantly get passed around on here are just that. "But how would we know" - sure, it's not your fault, but it's a small example of the way the more blatant Ray erasure from the past gets passed down to new fans and perpetuated by them unknowingly in turn. Cropping him out of pictures is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how his talent and personality and significance to the emotional heart of the band has been overlooked. I can't tell you how many iconic well-known quotes from interviews or paragraphs from Not the Life it Seems directly precede facts about/quotes from Ray that nobody seems to have heard.

So again, this is not really a popularity thing - it's hard to measure but I'd say in the past few months Ray's overtaken Mikey in terms of mass popularity, at least on tumblr. You don't need to performatively post once a day about how Ray Toro Is God or how much you want him to rail you or how much you want him to rail your white fave because "he's the only one who can top" (you Realise how this sounds right?). I'm just asking you to confront your internalised biases and the external biases ingrained in the culture and history of this fandom, and start treating Ray the same way you treat the rest of the guys. He's not an untouchable god and he's not a sunshine cupcake, he's just Some Guy who's really fucking good at guitar. He's a proud stay at home dad, he's cringe as fuck, he loves to cook, he listens to podcasts about fucking Apple products for fun, he writes (very) shitty poetry, he takes his sons to women's rights marches, he invests in bitcoin, he cries when his mom sends him postcards, he drives a douchey car, he loves children's cartoons, he's a corny liberal just like the others, he loves his friends wholly and openly. Just…please acknowledge the history of racism in this fandom, think about how you as an individual might knowingly or unknowingly perpetuate it, and try to do better. And please just treat him like a human.

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

something I always found frustrating about women ministry (or whatever we wanna call it I don’t have a better word for it) is all this emphasis on our brokenness and who society tells us to be and body image and being heartbroken and mistreated by boys but God loves us anyway and I just like ….

have never felt those things and I know it’s Out There obviously but if that’s the only way we’re relating to God it just feels… limiting? Not universal?

[04tenno]

So, uh...

Mine lived(?)

How Are We Doing.

[note-boom]

The best thing about BSD Lucy Montgomery is that she is trying so hard to live her fairy tale dream, like asking Atsushi to save her from the Guild and all that nonsense.

Instead, she just gets beaten by him once when they're enemies, gets out of the Guild on her own, and has to save that sorry boy's life over and over again.

Like, sorry, Lucy girl...you're not the damsel in distress in this fairy tale. You're the prince charming who had a bit of a villain arc and now is doing good out of sheer spite and stubborness. Better luck next arc?

[soullessjack]

this isnt rlly a serious post more so than a thought I need to verbalize but like. there’s an INSANE difference between the fandom being like “hey what if jack was actually his age and got to be a little normal” vs y’all treating a grown ass man like he has to cover his ears when someone swears or sleep with a nightlight on because he’s afraid of the dark, and throwing the P word around to anyone who thinks he’s attractive. one of these things is not like the other.

[scintillyyy]

and the thing is that dick *did* need tim's emotional support and help during the beginning of the batman reborn era because dick's life was also falling apart and they did need to help each other badly and tim leaving him to fix everything and handle the city and damian by himself *was* mean and a bit selfish, but also if tim had stayed to do this, there would have been no real chance for good independent growth for himself (in-universe and narratively speaking) and staying to help dick manage the city would have also meant deprioritizing his own wants and continuing to push down his own grief to do what's best for the greater good and ignoring both his suspicions and what he felt he needed to do at the time (search for bruce, prove himself right, have a breakdown around the world as he figured out his place in it) to focus instead on prioritizing what was currently best for current batman/dick's sake. which is just. kind of a continuation of what he's done/tried to do since he showed up in alpod. (would therapy probably have been a healthier option to move past this? well, yes, but unhealthy coping mechanisms or gtfo frankly) (anyways despite the fact he left to ostensibly find bruce, which is still batman related, leaving is still what allowed tim to get into situations that made him solidify himself as the person he wanted to be moving forth into adulthood + get to the point where he is still helping batman but also is starting to prioritize himself over prioritizing batman's needs so leaving was the objectively correct decision for himself)

anyways, they were both doing the equivalent of putting on their own oxygen masks first here instead of prioritizing what the other felt they needed at the time. and that's okay. they're both allowed to be a bit selfish at this point.

[uncanny-tranny]

Life got more interesting when I learned that everything is an argument, everything is political, and everything is deeper than it seems. Everything is the product of something, and it's up to us to figure out what that "something" is. We are interesting as fuck! We are deeper than you think!

It might seem really tedious, but recognizing this has made me so much less incurious. I now want to learn about us as people. Everything is deeper than it seems.

[holocene-sims]

next // previous

august 26, 2021 4:00 a.m. a balcony, somewhere

time somehow seems to simultaneously slow to a crawl and race beyond the speed of light. grant doesn’t remember when they’d ended up perched like lovebirds at the pinnacle of a staircase, peering out over the night-drenched landscape, but it must have been a while ago. customers have long since stopped streaming in and out of the restaurant on the street below.

he remembers in better detail the stream of their conversation–they’d shifted from food and a strangely peaceful, humorous discussion of kicking the bucket to movies, and at some point, paranormal stories came up along the way.

it’d be hard to forget talking to yunha.

there’s something curiously enrapturing about her, something that had drawn him to her when he first made eye-contact with her.

the look in her eyes, maybe. it’s piercing, like she’s baring right through your skin and into your soul, but not malicious or judgmental. it’s friendly, it’s curious, it’s playful.

the way she speaks, maybe. she’s the most engaged conversationalist he’s ever encountered. everything you say, whether she agrees or disagrees, is met with affirmations and a lot of nodding. yes, yes, of course. i see, i see. i understand. ohhh, wow! really?

she’s unraveling every shard of the puzzle that is his personality and piecing it back together in one whole picture, analyzing it. figuring it out. appreciating it.

or maybe it’s the sweetness that radiates off her. she appears unafraid to smile, instead all too happy to flash those pretty, crooked bunny teeth for the world to see.

“so, i'm going to guess you’re not accidentally good at singing.”

she seems not to mind revealing her own puzzle pieces either, and the more she says about herself, the more fascinated he is with her. with who she is. with what makes her tick.

“i hope it’s not an accident,” yunha replies, laughing, “because shit, then years worth of practice was a waste.”

“time enjoyed is never time wasted.”

the unabashed cringe of the line garners an immediate eye roll, but she still seems to find it funny.

they’ve definitely been sitting here a while. grant straightens his back, fixing his gradually slouching posture, and is is met with an immediate flash of pain, distinct from the chronic dull ache underlying every day of his life, that radiates down every vertebra.

“what got you into music, though?”

yunha’s rosy pink lips purse in thought as she dwells on the question.

“a lot of things. my parents like music. i listened to a lot of different kinds of songs my whole life, first with them, and then later with my friends. i had some time between classes and studying to spend having fun, but i couldn't spend any money, so my friends and i would go to this music store. we walked around and picked random albums to listen to on the headphones. we never bought anything.”

grant nods supportively. “what’s, like, the first album you remember really liking? or albums. you don’t have to pick one.”

“ah! i treasure so many albums. seo taiji and boys IV. i think that’s still my favorite nostalgic album ever. i also remember fondly, um, this girl’s in love with you by aretha franklin. i heard that at the music store, and i was so impressed by her talent. i still am.”

“i'm not a music expert. surprise! i know, i know, i'm sorry to tell you, i did not practice for centuries for that wonderful spice girls performance earlier. no, but seriously, i most often just listen to the same old emo stuff i liked when i was 13. so, unfortunately i don’t know the first album at all, at least not yet, but i do know the second one. you have fantastic taste, that’s a classic.”

despite his ignorance, yunha still smiles from ear to ear. “you should look up the first one! look up, like, seo taiji ‘come back home.’ that’s the most popular song on the album. i don’t wanna bias you, so listen on your own and make your own opinions.”

“wilco. and if you don’t mind me asking, how’d you turn the interest in music into a skill? you are talented, but i know it's very much a skill. it does take a lot of practice to become tangibly good at music.”

“to express myself,” yunha says plainly, “it’s easier to tell your story in art than talking about it, and singing is free. you don’t need supplies to learn it. but yes, i needed that kind of outlet, you know? i always liked singing, always did it, but i needed more than only entertainment from it over time.”

“oh yeah, art is helpful. i really should have gotten on that train earlier. i got on board about a year ago. it's much better for you than intellectualizing everything. or at least that's what i tend to do. do you perform, by the way? outside of karaoke, that is."

"sometimes. but also, not in a long time."

there falls a brief, but peaceful lull in the conversation. grant’s eyes draw to black night sky as he recalls the last haphazard art he’d created–the mushy-gushy attempt at processing the universe. seeing it hanging above him now, his thoughts are no less conflicting. light pollution washes out the shining sea of stars, but the sky still retains its beauty, its bewilderment. visible or not, an infinite chain of dimensions and celestial bodies exist in the vacuum of space, orbiting independent of him, yet factoring in the tiny fraction of his mass on the mass of the earth in their delicate ballerina dance across the fabric of spacetime.

the universe must have created me for some reason, for something other than anguish.

his own words. again. ever-present.

“i miss seeing the stars.” yunha’s buttery soft voice breaks his concentration. “you can’t see anything here.”

“polaris.” grant raises his left arm and draws his index finger across the sky until it hovers above the only star he’s seen thus far. “technically, that means we should be able to see sirius, too, but we don’t need to get all science-y and talk about magnitude and that polaris isn’t–”

“i would like it if you did.”

she was thinking of the stars, too.

synchronicity.

“aw shucks! well. i’ll say this, polaris isn’t the brightest star. we just talk about it way more frequently because it has the most cultural significance in the northern hemisphere for, you know, navigation reasons. but hey, give it about 12,000 more years, and it even won’t be the north star anymore. thank you, wobbly earth axis. but also boo, woobly earth axis, because it's a little sad to think about.”

yunha’s eyes glitter with fascination. “it’ll be something else?”

“yep! the next north star will be vega,” he explains, “come on down, you’re the next contestant!”

“maybe we’ll see it happen.”

“if my consciousness is still floating around as little dust particles, that’d be pretty sick. you know? forget fly me to the moon, fly me to vega. why not?”

“i don’t think i'll be dust,” yunha says, not missing a beat at all, even as her focus remains fixed on the faintest twinkle emanating from polaris, “it’s kind of troubling. you don’t want to be, like, stuck in the whole cycle of the universe, but if you’re still here, you can see some really beautiful things.”

“ah. reincarnation?”

“if you’re asking me, you’re not going to be dust. either you escape the suffering or you come back in some kind of physical form, human or not, and you try again.”

grant thinks about it for a moment. and then the feelings, like usual, spill out at once.

“i'm not going to lie, that idea has always given me the heebie-jeebies. i think it’s very cool as a concept, but i'm, like, man, i don’t want to do this shit again. also, look, we're doing the thing again. oh, and shit, that sounded judgmental. i just run my mouth too much."

"most people don't know they lived before. you can't really remember your other lives without a lot of study," she answers, "and no, you don't. i prefer to hear your real opinion. it's actually stupid when people tell you what they think you want to hear."

"do you ever wonder what you were up to last go-around?"

"not too much, but i always heard strange birthmarks and scars are signs from your last death. fears, too. things you avoid. so, i guess, like, a clown stabbed me in the neck with needles."

"are you afraid of storm drains, by any chance? if so, i think pennywise had it out for you."

"hahaha." yunha shakes her head. "wait, i have to ask. is it not worse thinking you can only live once? that's not uncomfortable? feeling like you have to make everything perfect in your one lifetime?"

"oh no, it's terrifying. dying and just being done with everything is eerie, too, because there are nice things to do and see here in the real world. you’re right about that. and yeah, there is a lot of pressure to get it all right. also, that's not even mentioning that there are people i love that i don’t want to be gone forever. i'd like to think they remain somehow. conscious or not. i kind of think they do, but i don’t know. am i contradicting myself? capital-P probably."

“you don’t know what to think.”

grant immediately bursts out laughing. “yeah, no, absolutely not. i do not know. i just kinda waffle around and hope some scientist throws out some numbers and whatnot that proves some explanation of everything correct. but that’s impossible. it’s literally impossible. we can’t even simulate or predict the wacky physics that were going on at the exact moment the big bang happened.”

“not to be, like, all quirky, but...” yunha reaches over, patting him on the shoulder. “maybe don’t think about it? you’re gonna go crazy. you can just not know? and it's fine. this doesn’t mean anything anyway. the answer to anything is already in you, it’s not out there.”

and then she, too, starts giggling all over again and her cheeks blush deep red from sheepish cringe.

another stereotypical line, but he doesn't mind. they sound better coming from her than him anyhow.

a second later and she checks the time on her phone. her cheesy smile erodes into a slight frown.

“ahh, i really need to leave soon. i have a schedule in the morning.”

grant checks the time as well, drawing the sleeve of his hoodie up just enough to read the minuscule roman numerals on his watch.

on the watch an ex-girlfriend gifted him. not päivi, but...

4:00 a.m.

fuck.

right.

you’re leaving the country in two hours.

[electric-plants]

cyno: i would give anything to know how alhaitham’s brain works

kaveh: haha be careful cyno, alhaitham would take that as a marriage proposal

cyno: ah so you think that one could work then? i’ll add it to the list

kaveh: ….please tell me you are not adding that to a list of actual real proposal ideas right now

[natelia-aldelliz]

I wanted to try and find my headcanon of Roach's face because for some reason my brain decided that I couldn't keep writing my fanfic if I didn't know what I wanted him to look like beneath his mask... So obviously the full picture wasn't planned. (Also I went the easy way for the background because I remembered that I wasn't getting paid anyway so why make myself suffer)

I don't know if the design is definitive, but I find him cute. I made him Welsh, because why not. He can bond with Soap over why the fuck do the English exist.

Anyway they're gossiping about someone at the pub like the little shits they are. Also I don't know if it's obvious or not, but Roach has the mask sun-tan line. Ghost does too. Speaking of Ghost, he's on the other side of the table, looking like that :

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

im not autistic but i believe in their beliefs (because i share like 80 % of symptoms typical for autistic women with yall)

[commsroom]

something really gets to me about eiffel and hera talking to themselves while addressing each other - in am i alone now? and the watchtower in particular. i can't say this to you, but you're still the person i want to tell it to. i know there's no way you can hear me, but if you can...

eiffel talks to himself a lot, and he is very used to being alone with no one paying much attention to the things he says, so i'm not sure he ever realized exactly how much until he was on the hephaestus. in the early days of the mission, i imagine hera responded to a lot of eiffel's asides and sort of embarrassed them both. and then that sort of... shifted. their relationship shifted, they got comfortable being around each other, and eiffel's conversations with himself started including hera, too. i like the idea of that as an establishing moment: that, at some point, there was a first time eiffel said something in an empty room, and hera was so used to him talking to himself that she didn't realize it was meant for her, and he asked her, "hera? are you there?"

i imagine hera still talked to eiffel, too, when they all thought he was dead. with each day increasingly longer and more difficult, that she would vent her frustrations to the empty comms room the same way he would've encouraged her to when he was there. she can't talk to anyone the way she can talk to him, and they just... keep talking to each other, even when they can't. they are so much a part of each other, the voice of encouragement and comfort in each other's heads. for so long, all they can really do for each other is talk, and they maintain that connection even in absence. they ask each other "are you there?" like reaching for each other's hands in the dark.

[therainbowwillow]

I am not by any means someone who has a large platform on the internet, but seeing as my most popular post of all time, seen by tens of thousands of people, was on hbomberguy's Plagiarism and You(Tube), I would like to publicly get my thoughts straight on what has happened since.

I've seen a lot of discussion about who is to blame for James' recent mental health crisis and I would like to firmly state that hbomberguy (and Kat, his producer), others who made good faith videos on the situation (The Ace Couple, Jessie Gender, Todd in the Shadows), and people who commented on the situation in good faith are not to blame in the slightest. At the same time, I understand that the sudden loss of support, friends, and a career undoubtedly harmed James Somerton and that it is upsetting to me to see anyone put in that position, regardless of their actions. I believe that hbomberguy used his platform responsibly. From the beginning, I noticed that he was making clear, intentional choices regarding his treatment of the situation, including framing Nick as a possible victim rather than an accomplice to the plagiarism, reminding his audience not to harass James Somerton, and refusing to stoop to personal attacks in his video. Having seen hbomberguy's professional handling of the situation, I believe that he is a person who has a good understanding of the sway he has online and how to use that power delicately. I'm sure a choice was made weighing the benefit of speaking out against the possible harm and I believe that hbomberguy & crew made the correct decision. The same goes for The Ace Couple, Jessie Gender, and Todd in the Shadows. I think it is a creator's duty to understand that regardless of how professionally they treat a situation, there are bound to be some bad actors in their audience who will attempt to harass others in their name. It seems to me that all of these creators understood that and made an educated decision to speak out publicly. Had they kept quiet, harm would have continued to be done to the authors and artists who had their work stolen and monetized by someone who did not fairly compensate them (or even acknowledge their existence). With this in mind, I do believe that it is important to have empathy for James as well. I understand feeling hurt, betrayed, and skeptical of the legitimacy of everything he says from this point on, knowing what we know now about how he built his career. I have those feelings myself. They are valid. However, there is no situation in which people should be publicly speculating on the legitimacy of his mental health struggles or celebrating his suffering. I do believe that James knew what he was doing, I believe he knew that he was causing some harm (to what extent he understood that, no one but James can say), and I do believe that it was wrong. At this point, the community does as well. I think the best thing for him would've been to step away from the internet, but at the same time, I understand why he did not. He went from being a fairly popular online queer voice to one of the community's most hated content creators. I imagine there was some whiplash and confusion and that it must've been upsetting and scary. James did not make the right decision in trying to come back and that poor choice was his own, but at the same time, I don't think there's much use in rehashing that to him in the comments of his apology or on Twitter.

I don't think it would've been any better to let his actions fade to complete obscurity, but I also believe that trying to hold him immediately accountable was doomed from the start. If there was a path forward as a content creator, James strayed far from it. Regardless, I think the moral thing to do right now is to treat him with grace and not speculate about his honesty or intentions online. I hesitate to invalidate people's concerns, but regardless, they don't belong in the public sphere at this moment.

Ultimately, I wish James the best. I hope he finds safety, comfort, and happiness going forwards. I also wish hbomberguy & team as well as all the other creators and audience members who spoke to their experiences in good faith all the best. These people are not to blame for James' mental health struggles. If we mean to reduce as much harm as possible, I think the ideal path forwards is show empathy for everyone involved and lay the idea of blame to rest.

[derpinette]

SPERG YOUR HEART OUT