#couldn't overstate how great it is even if i tried

[joyfulhottubstrawberry]

Actually unwell because of the good omens 2 final scene. The way you can see and feel that both Crowley and Aziraphale are doing this because they love eachother and just want to be together peacefully. The way neither of them understands what the other means. The way they are hurting eachother because they love eachother, but are just idiots who can't actually talk things out instead of assuming the worst. The so, so sweet and queer dilemma of either changing the oppressive system or running away from it and accepting that some things, especially those, rooted in violence and injustice, can't be changed. Once again, the queerness of it all. Going insane, actually.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i think one of the things that upsets me the most about velma and shaggy's relationship in sdmi--and boy there is a lot--is that not only is her constantly ''correcting'' him for minor, harmless, and usually completely reasonable things with physical and emotional abuse, well. abusive by itself. but so many of the things he does that she treats him that way over are very autistic things, and what she subjects him to is textbook abuse aimed at autistics in particular. (including the part where she gets more and more pissed whenever attempts at said emotional abuse fly over his head, because he's too bad at picking up cues for them to land fully.)

[cws: anti-autistic ableism, ABA, self-harm, physical and emotional IPV, victim-blaming, and abuse apologism. it's a lot and it's really fucking bad lmao]

-

like. there's a lot of examples there; shaggy's behavior coming across as autistic is worth a whole post of its own, and a lot of media depicts abuse targeted at autistic traits because ✨️hooray ableism.✨️but she straight up tries to Fix Him (read: force him to perform a Presentable Personality) by forcing him to wear clothes that are sensory hell, and trying to condition him to self-harm every time he does some small harmless, reflexive thing she thinks is Poor Socialization until he stops. and to catch himself doing it, and punish himself, without being prompted. i cannot fucking overstate how fucked up that is.

they even got down the fun little aspect of ABA where the methods of conditioning-through-pain are presented as toys and kiddish things: she gives him a rubber band to wear on his wrist, and tells him to snap it as hard as he can every time he says 'like.' 🙃🙃🙃🙃

like. this does not begin to scratch the surface of the abuse she puts him through in general. and again, characters being abused for autistic traits with the approval of the narrative is a common thing in media, which sucks. but holy fucking shit! they really took the 'violent ableism that is done to autistics irl' to the next fucking level here!

.......and it's portrayed as kind of cringey, immature teen drama on both sides. the self-harm, his dread over how much he knows it'll hurt, and the extreme pain it causes him to the point of screaming are all supposed to be funny. and her arc is all about learning to accept that she deserves better, because she was repressed and had low self-esteem and therefore putting him through fucking DIY ABA didn't make her happy.

🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

anyway if you couldn't tell i can't fucking stand sdmi velma and i have a lot of words in me about it. when one of your main heroes would have made a way more compelling villain as they are, on a more mundane level compared to all the wild fantastical shit they go up against, holy shit go back to the drawing board you have fucked up. she could have been genuinely good representation of a marginalized person dealing with the trauma of her experiences in some shitty ways she has to grow past, and an interesting flawed character, without being absolutely despicable--hell, she'd have made a great foil to pericles if they'd handled him decently too. they have a lot of parallels, which only gain more depth when you add their respective parallels with cassidy into the mix. and it really fucking sucks that we got this instead.

[minimuii]

Hi this is Basically a journal entry of one of the most surreal days of my life omg !!!

Aurora means so much to me, her vibes, her legitimely magical voice, her fashion sense, what she care about and how she shows that, her humor lmao, is it cheesy to say she's a role model to me? I adore her so much… I dont think theres another “celebrity” I've ever wanted to meet as much as her.

6/1/22

This is so stream of consciousness but - aaaHh ok ok so -  literally two days prior to the Boston Aurora Concert I was randomly scrolling on Reddit, (something i honestly never do) , specifically the Aurora subreddit cause I noticed people were posting concert photos and wanted to see them  :)). While scrolling I noticed a 6 day old post about someone giving away their Boston tour ticket free cause they had conflicting plans. Now I was sure this had to have been claimed by now but curiosity got the best of me and i reached out to ask. ... there is no way this hasn’t been claimed but - somehow - amazingly - 6 days later??? It hadn’t been.

On the day of - I had an interesting dream which I’ll describe later - I left for the concert with a bag full of my tiny aurora art prints that I wanted to give out to other concert goers :)) and also a bag of slightly bigger ones and a note for her in a separate clear bag that I really hoped I’d be able to get to her somehow.

Of course the concert itself was amazing.  It was my first time going to one completely alone without my friends and I made some amazing concert friends who made the night that much sweeter 💕 I was able to find a really wonderful spot which I was just- so grateful for, 1 person behind center stage on the floor 😭💕

After the concert came to its end and she did the final encore, I tried, emphasis on tried to hand her my care package but my attempts were futile. 😭 I made a weak attempt to throw it onstage - completely failed - (it kinda went up, and then dowwn lmaoO) - BUT I managed to catCH the failed attempt before I lost it completely 😳. Suddenly, the guy next to me, someone I had briefly chatted to before the show, offered to throw it for me ;0!! It all happened so fast but his throw was literally perfect and landed riGht in front of her. She promptly picked it up with a felt flower someone else had thrown, said her final thank yous and finally exited the stage !!!

Amazingly- the night didn’t end there, I continued to give out prints until I I was sure I’d run out - made even more lovely connections and was finally feeling ready to head out and leave the venue. Everyone seemed to had left from the entrance and it was starting to look pretty empty.

I was heading out finally when about 20 feet down the block where the building ended and around the corner I spotted a small but still sizable separate group waiting by the side for her to come out. At that moment I decided - well! why not?

Well- time passed. I had a great time chatting with another fan from Vermont!! A bit later, people were moving! :o

I fumbled with my bag as I stood up, replacing my sketchbook only to realize I somehow still had a whole separate pile of prints I hadn’t given out yet. The crowd movement turned out to be because of  Aurora’s manager, who had come out and started talking to fans. I gave him a print and an extra :) and continued to hand out the rest to the crowd until finally by chance I was left with one, final, one.

And suddenly, not long after- there she was 🥺!!!!

As she approached - all of us kinda fell silent but I could feel how we were all just beaming. We gathered close to the divider and just listened to her talk :) then, she took the time to go down the entire row of people one by one, received each gift, expressed her own gratitude and individually talked with each and every person. She even recorded a little video on someone’s phone for their kid who couldn't make it!! She started to hand out Annie’s gummies to everyone at one point :) i cannot overstate how kind she was.

The whole thing felt like a familial gathering honestly, everyone was just so happy it was so down to earth, it was sosososo lovely.

When she got to me I handed her my final print and mentioned how I had actually gotten something to her on stage. When she saw the drawing (to my surprise) her eyes immediately lit up with realization and she began searching her coat pockets. Within seconds she produced a bunch of the mini prints I had included in the ziplock bag from her right coat pocket and excitedly said “I have them!!!” 

I was so scared of running out of photo storage for the entire concert but managed by some miracle to get the whole exchange on video which ill link right here skjhdfhjds… 

Being able to tell her directly how much she and her music mean to me was , wow and her response back ;w; <3 im never gonna recover I think 🥺

Afterwards she asked if we’d be okay with a group photo sdjhkfdshj, insisted the barrier between us be moved by her guards and joined us!! Whenever she posts it i'll be sure to scream about that too ( I’m right next to her in it and i'm holding a strangers adorable dog lol!!)

At this point, I was already on cloud 9. But then, as we said our final goodbyes and the crowd dissipated something insane occurred to me.

Remember that dream I mentioned earlier? Well:

Excited for the concert I had dreamt that I kept running into Aurora in incredibly busy circumstances. I had kinda hoped to hand her art directly but both times it never quite worked out - too many people, too much going on around- that is, until the third time, when it was perfect and calm.

When  I was finally able to give her my art, I mentioned how I’d given her art before but how I wasn’t sure if she remembered it or had even gotten it. As soon as she saw it, dream Aurora’s eyes lit up, she recognized it! She then began searching around for an envelope, after finding the envelope, she sorted through what I can only imagine was hundreds of gifts from fans- and finally,  after a second of searching, she pulled out some of my art, smiled and said “You made this right? I have them!! Thank you!”

bruh???????

I woke up from that dream simply happy to have dreamt it, knowing the likelihood of something happening that was so slim and would likely never happen but thankful that the dream gave me insight into what it could be like  - only to realize many many hours later that the interaction I experienced was so- so so similar to how reality played out. I don't even know how to express in words how beside myself i am sdjhfhdsjk,,,

Also my phone ran out of storage RIGHT at the end when I tried to take a photo of a cool light I saw driving back 😳

—

Anyway – to think genuinely 2 days before I was not even going to this concert omg,,, <3 I’m so so so beyond grateful for everything and everyone, literally such a magical day what

6/1/22

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

fic authors self rec! when you get this, reply with your favourite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. let’s spread the self-love 🤍✨

I have this tendency for my favorite fics to be "whatever's most recent," just because it's still lighting up my brain -- but actually I don't have a lot of Most Recent Fic, so this is a great time for me to go back and think about stuff I loved that's in danger of being Lost to Time.

Fourteen Years (Stargate Atlantis) There's technically a pairing to this story (Sheppard/Ronon), but the vast majority of it is just character and worldbuilding around Ronon and his trauma, which is the thing I wrote most about in this fandom, because SGA did the TV Trauma thing where they were like "this guy's neat backstory is that he underwent the most horrifying agony imaginable for seven years and now he's tough and badass!" When like. That is not what it would do! Being isolated from human contact and hunted like an animal for years on end would make you very super fucked up actually! So accidentally, by forgetting his whole backstory and just making him a fun, laid-back badass, the show created this really interesting black box of a character, because how *is* he coping with *anything* actually? Anyway, I wrote several versions of answers to that question, but this is probably my favorite.

1001 (Schitt's Creek) This is actually the middle part of a three-fic series, but I don't see why you couldn't read it alone. I know coming-out stories are played out, but there is something really rich and lovely to me about people realizing in adulthood that they're not at all who they assumed they were, and obviously you should not read anything at all into that, please do not perceive me. This is a pretty short one, and I think it's well balanced between Patrick's experience of trying to understand himself and Patrick's experience falling hard for a first love. David is probably OOC here, although in my defense managing Patrick's emotions *is* the one thing in canon he tends to be level-headed about, so I'm letting myself have this one.

Orleans (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) You *cannot* give me an alternate universe in canon and expect me not to write fic in the alternate universe. So this is set in the Wish-verse created in s3, and it's written in second person, which is -- terrible, it's a very dubious choice that I do not recommend to anyone, but I was Trying Things back then, and I tried it. And I would never do it again, but for some reason I like this story, idk. I feel like this hits a lot of the beats that make it feel like a very archetypal Thing That Milo Writes -- weariness, regret, queer horniness, mortality, religious trauma. I actually like a lot of my old BtVS fic, looking back; there's definitely a rawness to the writing, but that gives it a certain charm. If this one works for you, you should definitely also read Witness and Pink Ladies.

And Watch What Happens (Supernatural) This is kind of weird one, existing in some kind of liminal zone between Canon AU and Just Plain AU -- it's got the same "coffeeshop AU without the coffeeshop" vibe that much of my Magicians fic has, but -- well, it's hard to explain how it intersects with canon and also not spoil the fic. All is not what it seems! I genuinely love this version of Cass, who was the most fun character I ever got to create right up until PGY Eliot, and not to overstate things, but I do think that spending most of 2018 writing from his POV sort of unlocked the Gender Achievement for me, like, oh huh, I think this might be the person I want to be! So, special place in the heart and all that.

All the Comforts of Home (The Magicians) My favorite Magicians fic is, of course, All of Them, even the ones that aren't good. But I'm having a renaissance with this one lately. It's got drama, it's got comedy, it's got philosophy, it's got full-tilt romance and it's got It's Complicated, it's got food porn and porn-porn and parenthood and like, the beauty of all life or some such shit. I devote most of one whole chapter to shitposting about The Sound of Music. I just really like it.

This was fun! I don't know who else has been tagged, but I'll pick @stormscoming and @nellie-elizabeth and @allegria23 and honestly anyone! Anyone who sees this should do it!

[maddiem4]

Interim

Hindsight has clarified a lot of stuff for me that was murky in the moment. For example, this exchange I had with Mr. Davis on a playground as a child. "What's up, Mr. Deadname? Why aren't you playing with the other kids? I bet they'd love to have you." "I can't. I'm too scared about my papers I have to write when I get inside. I keep missing assignments and getting zeroes." "Yeah. That's something I needed to talk to you about. Everything okay there, champ? Everything alright at home?" "It's just..." I struggled to find the words. "It's just that anybody else could live my life better than I am right now." I sniffled, pretty upset by this point, but not really at our teacher-slash-principal. "Anybody else could have a great life with what I've got to work with. Anybody. And I can't make it and I don't know why." Mr. Davis didn't really know what to do for me. I tried not to cry but my shoulders shook. He awkwardly patted me on the back. Gently, but... lost. Adults don't always have the answers either. "Hang in there." And then he gave me some privacy. I've thought about this moment in hindsight many times since my ADHD diagnosis. It's tough to watch your peers succeed, and not know why the same tasks feel impossible for you. And I thought I had this moment figured out. "I'm the future Mr. Deadname. I have the answers now. It all makes sense." I really didn't think I needed to examine this moment deeper. How many layers could there be? Well, more. More layers. And I'm feeling humble enough to believe I should never treat a memory as entirely unpacked. Who knows tools of archaeology the future will bring?

Because there was this feeling growing up, that I never had the tools to examine at the time. A disconnection. And it shows up surprisingly clear in this quote. Even this young, I felt like my life wasn't my life. It was somebody else's, and I felt like I was just... borrowing the body as politely as possible. It wasn't mine to wreck, and I better do a good job, because that's the right thing to do. It's what I'd want someone to do for me. The golden rule. It's hard to overstate how literal this felt for me. I didn't feel like I knew who I was, because I was constantly on duty trying to maintain a body for somebody else (that I'd never met) who'd be back Any Day Now. I wondered if they'd be proud of me. Or even just okay with what I'd done with the place. I tried to be normal. I tried to give them good material to work with. But I was never Mr. Deadname. I was the... interim Mr. Deadname. The steward, the substitute, the fill-in. Just housesitting with no end in sight. I couldn't internalize compliments because they were for him. I freaked out when I wasn't able to live up to who he was supposed to be - pretty often due to other issues. The thought that I might have to be the pilot for the whole rest of this life was wearying to the point of physical agony. I treated this hypothetical person like he was more real than me, more deserving of love, belonging to the web of people that came first before me. I put myself last, behind the facade even. At least he deserved to be around. And I didn't want any of it. It wasn't my life, I wasn't qualified, it was too much. Why did God put me in charge of this life? Why. Not. Any. Body. Else.

I do think a lot of my memory issues growing up come from being constantly detached at the time they were happening. As a young teenager I was already faking my way through some days in a fugue state. The memories I do have are more precious than painful in hindsight where I can relive them with knowledge I didn't have at the time. Moments where I shone through and didn't realize. Moments that could have felt so good if I'd known how to frame them.

I guess I'm writing this because I'm mourning a lost childhood, even a large portion of adulthood, that I only have in scraps. There is so much I could restore if I hadn't thrown it away. Because now I know that Mr. Deadname is not some real person that's gonna come back and tag me out someday. This is my life, it's my body, and I finally know how to shape it around me. I am not just the pilot. I'm the mind but I'm also the body, we're one together and nobody else can have it. And I'm gonna use it to live.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Sorry for another tedious anon but do you honestly think Harry thinks so deeply about things he's not particularly affected by? You seem to project a lot of your own interpretations on the motives behind Harry's actions, maybe to give yourself reasons to continue enjoying his actions. Have you ever processed your own feelings about Harry? I know you've said you don't love him but I feel like you don't want to look too closely on a lot of things because you don't want to put yourself off. Which I guess is a fair strategy for personal reasons but it's unfair to your readers who more often than not form their opinions because of your point of view or at least take your POV in consideration. You said Harry posted a video about Biden's kindness because positivity is a better motivator. In no universe do I think Harry thought that deeply about his tweet (which I doubt came from him in the first place) he has a very shallow understanding of how things work in real life judging from his lifestyle and his incoherence when talking about things that matter (arena interview). A lot of celebs are talking about biden as if he's a savior who will defeat the monster trump despite the horrible stuff that Obama administration did to other countries. It's the same as putting a black screen or singing imagine. Also you said he chose to show joy in Golden MV when he looked very emotionlessly excited. I couldn't associate any emotion to his expressions even though it looked like he tried to convey something. Same as falling and SOTT. But you seem to think he considered spreading joy to people through his music video. Do you think he sat down and talked about people suffering because of Covid and said "I wanna make a video of myself doing mundane things because it will bring joy to people"? Wouldn't an easier explanation would be from a business point of view? Something this whole era has been a great testament to?

Oh anon - why are you so worked up that someone has a different view of a celebrity to you? Why are you treating that as something that has to be examined? Perhaps most strangely - why have you had to greatly overstate what I said in order to suggest that anything but negative views of Harry are illegitimate.

I didn’t say that Harry posted a video that presented Biden as kindness because you need to give people something to vote for (I would never say ‘positvity is a better motivator).  I said that I can see that the video connected with Harry and that I think Harry’s message is better than fearmongering messages.

It’s absolutely fine that we disagree about the effectiveness of Golden.  But the idea that it’s somehow a shock that there’s a business point of view to a music video is bizzarre. There’s no contradiction between a music video having an artistic intent also being part of a marketing plan.  That is the essenece of what all music videos are.  I’m sorry if you’re shocked that pop music is a business, but that really isn’t a recent development.  

Even more bizzarre is your imaginary conversations about COVID that you think I think Harry is having.  Artistic intent isn’t some kind of charity.  I’m not suggesting that he made a joyful video as a solution to suffering.  I think he made a joyous song so he tried to make a joyous video (and whether he succeeded is a different matter).

Finally, I’d like to return to the strangest of your claims.  The idea that I somehow owe an examination of my feelings about Harry to my readers, who might be unduly influenced by something (me enjoying a music video? My hatred of kindness? I don’t even know what). Nothing that you said has any basis in reality, but even if it did what’s the worst that could happen, I could be influencing people to like a celebrity slightly more than they do otherwise.  Chill the fuck out.