#don't come at me with discourse

[raggedy-spaceman]

S02E03 I Know Where I'm Going

Like father like child ❤

[owlpero]

free will is all about headcanoning your faves as autistic

[yourfirstnamealoud]

I think some understand how transmisogyny functions and how trans women are cast as dangerous predators in an abstract way but it's shocking like. How people will not realize that they have for sure had direct contact with this thinking. Like when you pull up the Wikipedia page for any male serial killer for whom there's any evidence at all that they cross dressed or had like the slightest sprinkle of trans in them like. You will see that on their Wikipedia page! It will become part of how they are understood in popular culture! It's easy to see that and go 'oh well he wasn't trans actually' or 'oh well I guess that happened but it's irrelevant I personally don't care' but like, that information isn't included for no reason! The thing that makes that information notable enough to document on their gotdang wikipedia page is the transphobic, specifically transmisogynistic, assumption that the merest possibility of transfemininity is evidence of their depravation. And on top of that it also does the work of transfeminizing people who are Not Even Trans in order to promote and produce the idea that the transfeminine is monstrous.

[rowyndodendron]

Diomedes really cranked the "simp-o-meter for Odysseus" from 0 to 12 in approximately 0.6 seconds in book 10 (choose ur spy buddy) and im snort-laughing.

Partially because of how Unnecessarily Extra Diomedes is.

And then even more so because of how Extremely Done Odysseus is in his reply (every time he uses the "long-suffering Odysseus" epithet i fucking DIE laughing. I can FEEL the -_-)

But also, because I feel like the opposite is more typical (Odysseus having the flowery flattering speeches and Diomedes just, like, "read at 2pm"-ing him in return):

I am choosing to headcanon that Dio is very subtly/very gently teasing/mocking Odysseus. And that Ody has done the "oh i pick Diomedes the incredible, the unmatchable, unwinnable force of the gods' will!!!" thing to him recently and Dio is now just throwing it back at him in a "do u hear what u sound like when u talk???" Kind of way.

Which is why Ody is peak "i am Unamused by this, diomedes" in the scene. Because he knows he's being gently roasted in a way the others likely won't pick up on/which is Just For Him.

And i think that's beautiful

[queerum]

aromantics are way too comfortable implying friendship is the most valuable part of life to bitch about alloros doing the same thing with romance

[simaraknows]

i see your "'does he want to lick my boots or chop off my hands' is a Nicki reference" and raise you "what if Armand's relationship with sex is so fucked that his two modi are total submission and 'don't touch me or I'll chop off your hands' and Louis is still clowning on his trauma" in this essay I will

[privateolives]

This is probably because I grew up watching 24/7 animal planet, but what finally made the allo/aplatonic thing click for me were the nature's of big cats.

Lions are powerful, regal creatures who are uniquely adapted to pack life. They need these connections to live a healthy life; A lonely lion is a miserable creature indeed.

Jaguars are solitary, beautiful creatures who live happily solitary. They prowl their lush world with self-sufficient majesty. A jaguar is not lonely without a pack. In fact, forcing jaguars to share space with others they do not enjoy is just as damaging as forcing a lion to live alone.

A lion may choose to head out on it's own for the most part, but in the end must return to the pack to thrive. A jaguar can choose to trust and enjoy the company of others, but they never feel the need to form a pack.

Is a jaguar selfish for this? A psychopath, a narcissist or any other such horrid assumptions? Is it a less moral creature than a lion, who seeks others like it to thrive?

Is a lion pathetic, or needy, or selfish for wanting community? For requiring contact with others like they require water? For their inherent need to string complicated webs of relationships that may seem silly or dramatic to others?

Of course not. These are ridiculous questions to even ask.

They are simply lions and jaguars.

In fact, is a jaguar that chooses to spend time with you not as magical as a lion's love? For a creature that needs no bond to thrive to still enjoy your presence enough to share it a time? Is a lion who can prowl the night alone not impressive in its strength and resilience? Is it not awe-inspiring in its ability to conquer a life it was never wired for and reign still?

Are they not both beautiful and awe-inspiring in their own ways, without being wrong?

Alloplatonics. Aplatonics. Are we not both special and beautiful in both our bonds and self-confident happiness equal, in each our ways? Is there not unique beauty in lifelong bonded packs and magical encounters that need no perpetuity to carry life forward?

Are we not but lions and jaguars? Neither wrong, neither selfish, but just different and beautiful creatures in each our ways?

That's how I've come to see it, anyway.

[fushitoru]

note how if i have an opinion about something, i'll tag it as discourse? very demure. very mindful. i don't go clogging up x reader tags just so i can gain more exposure and ragebait more people! very cutsey, very modest. i also block people who make content i don't like instead of sending anon hate! very classy. very considerate.

[basket-of-radiants]

Why were you so disappointed by Rhythm of War?

This has been sitting in my askbox for years. I've taken several cracks at answering, only to get frustrated with the subject matter and burn myself out every time. I didn't like Rhythm of War. More than that, I didn't like it in a way that tainted my enjoyment of the entire series. And despite what it may seem, I don't actually enjoy discussing things which I don't like. I always want to talk from a place of good faith. Which is why now that my feelings towards the series are a little more positive, I think I can finally answer this.

I'm going to try to stay away from specific plotpoints and story beats for this post, because my goal isn't to nitpick (if for no other reason than it would take a week to write this post), I'm just looking to talk about my overall impressions. I think that might mean the only spoilers here will be structural? idk, if you haven't read Rhythm of War yourself then you should probably do that before looking for other people's opinions anyway. 

I liked Way of Kings when I first read it. I didn't love it at the time, but I liked it. Certainly enough to keep reading once I'd finished. One thing that made me a bit uncomfy, however, was the war against the Parshendi. They were this unknowable enemy which the book was not interested in knowing. An inhuman army. Their main purpose was to kill Kaladin's friends, or else be killed by Dalinar's armies. And yet the Parshendi, and the parshmen in the form of Shen, did show hints of personhood. And so it bothered me how Dalinar spoke so casually about how the Alethi had decimated their numbers, how the others used the war as a means to amass wealth and power. (It didn't bother me in a "this is a bad book" way but in a "these characters are bad people" way.)

One of my foibles as a reader is that when a book is very clearly treating one side of a conflict with more humanity, I tend to be a bit predisposed towards the other to account for that. And with the Alethi clearly being the invading party and superior military force, there was also some underdog favoritism. I didn't really like how the book treated the Parshendi. This is to say that going forward, the singers would be more important to me than any other through line.

So imagine my delight at reading Words of Radiance and meeting Eshonai, one of the Parshendi, who even gets her own point of view sections! They were no longer being treated as a faceless mass, we were getting to see things from their perspective as well. And it became plain to see the damage the Alethi had done to them. I couldn't really bring myself to root for Dalinar or really any of the humans against the listeners. I couldn't even bring myself to like most of these characters. I still enjoyed the book but once it became clear there wouldn't be a peaceful conclusion, let's just say that I wouldn't have wept for Dalinar and Adolin if Szeth had managed to off them. Like everyone in the book, I assumed that going forward all the parshmen would be turned into evil voidbringers in the everstorm and that the listeners were mostly dead. Except for Rlain, and Eshonai because I'd read or been told that book 4 would be Eshonai's book and thus had assumed she was fine. (Oathbringer spoilers, she was not fine.) So ultimately it was still a bit of a downer way to end the book. 

So imagine my delight at reading Oathbringer, where for the first time singers were being treated as people, full and real people, and where the human characters could no longer ignore or dismiss them. We met Khen and the others, common singers who were sympathetic and just wanted freedom from bondage. We see Venli grapple with the loss of her home. We see Leshwi and Moash connecting with and understanding one another. We learn of a history where singers were the original inhabitants of the planet. Parallel to this, Dalinar is having a truly excellent character arc about confronting one's past actions and acknowledging them to move forward and do better. I loved Oathbringer, for some years it was my favorite book, and I was excited as hell to see what came next. At the time, it seemed to me that there is a clear direction the story is going. Two books about needless war, and then a third where the main cast is forced to acknowledge the personhood of their enemies. This was so cool, all of my feelings from the previous installments were being validated, the characters were going to have to face what they've done in the past and outgrow their militaristic mindsets, I was so sure of that.

Imagine my disappointment when that does not even remotely resemble the direction the story went in Rhythm of War. RoW presented a clear, straightforward “us vs. them" narrative, where every character was totally fine with killing singers. Characters aligned with the singers were either flattened into wholly evil versions of themselves (Moash) or were expected to turn on their side in favor of the humans (Venli.) Because clearly there was no reason good people would be on the side that's all former slaves trying to stay free. Maybe there's some sort of accord or understanding between Navani and Raboniel that I might have found meaningful if the seeds of mutual understanding weren't already there in Oathbringer and then apparently ignored for a year by all the characters.

I have a lot of issues with how the listeners are handled in these books. (Here's some elaboration.) Following OB, I had thought that all my concerns were going to be addressed. Following RoW, I knew they never would be. 

Which is my main complaint, because that's the thread that matters most to me in this series.

I have a lot of other Things as well. Gonna just talk about a few big ones. 

One outsized source of disappointment that may seem a little petty, and which probably is, is that I felt mislead by the premise of the book. It had been announced that this book would center Venli and Eshonai, and I was unbelievably hyped for that. That did not really turn out to be the case. The purpose for their backstory chapters felt less about exploring them as people and contextualizing their arcs, and more about filling in gaps of world history. In the main plot, Venli was a POV character and she certainly played a role, but honestly not a very important one overall. To me she felt like a side character in her own book. I don't think it's controversial to say that the main character of RoW was Navani. A lot of people really like Navani and are happy about that. Unfortunately I'm not one of those people, and I found it all the more difficult to enjoy her when it felt like it was coming at the expense of some of my favorite characters. 

This particular gripe somewhat comes down to preference, obviously everyone prefers to read about characters they like more than those they don't, and it can go both ways. (For instance, on a craft/technical level RoW is probably the superior book to W&T, but I liked the latter a lot more because of my stupidly outsized attachment to Szeth and Nale.) But I do think there's something of a real criticism in how the book would rather focus on the feelings of a queen rather than those of a genocide survivor, and how the former's are given significantly more weight and import. It ties in with my main criticism, I think. 

And then there's how human/human racism had also been wholly cast aside as a plot point. Jasnah fixed slavery so that's resolved, and the only person who still cares about structural racism is the evil bad bad evil villain Moash/Vyre, who is now wholly irredeemable and who you're allowed to totally write off because he's sold his soul to Odium. I've already talked a lot about this. Other people have already talked about this, probably better than me. The writing was actually on the wall for me in OB, but again, RoW was when I fully accepted that this was never going to be addressed. 

There's something else that probably deserves its own discussion rather than being quickly tacked on at the end here, but here we are. This book changed how the series approaches war. 

In WoK, war was very clearly portrayed as a bad and inglorious thing. It was brutal, it was painful, those at the bottom died cruelly and unceremoniously and pointlessly while those at the top turned a profit. Every day was a new horror. The enemy were never evil, they were always just more people forced to go through the same thing. Through the next couple books, it felt to me that even if the characters had accepted war as necessary, there was still a tragedy to it. Conversely, in RoW (and W&T) war is basically a series of boss battles, in between which our protagonists can kill dozens of footsoldiers with barely a thought in the same way WoK had criticized.

Final note on all this, it sucks how we have no perspectives from the former-slaves-singers demographic. Those guys are really thrown under the bus, and seemingly get no self-determination now or ever. It was a glaring problem to me in RoW. Conscripted and enslaved humans and singers probably have just as much ground to form mutual understanding as a fused and a queen. (In fact they already had. In Oathbringer.)

In essence, RoW disappointed me because it left me with the distinct impression that none of the series's most important through lines (well, most important to me) were going to be resolved well. I liked W&T, but I haven't revised my opinion very much about the overall handling of these topics across the series. Maybe one of the reasons I was able to enjoy W&T so much more was because I no longer had such high expectations.

[burningcheese-merchant]

Hey Merchant! Brand new to the blog and I love it, but I was wondering your opinion on something. I’ve been noticing recently (especially on TikTok) people coming to a compromise in defending ShadowVanilla but/by antagonizing BurningCheese. They’ll say stuff like “SV has nuance but BC is just toxic” and while I can see that in a way, it doesn’t sit right with me. Again, just wondering how you feel about that (No hate to those people from me though).

Hypocrites. They're stupid, annoying hypocrites. Plain and simple. There's nothing to see except for that. It doesn't sit right because the chair is fucking busted dude, it's got 3 legs and two of them got mauled by termites and the rest got cobbled together by Patrick Star

If Golden Cheese was a man, BurningCheese would be just as popular as ShadowVanilla. It would have mountains of fanart on this dumb website and it would have a million fics on AO3 (400 and counting vs 40, yes I am bitter and disappointed, I'm only one person and there are only so many hours in a day I can't bridge that gap alone) and it would have hordes of dumb, horny fujos running interference for it 24/7 just like ShadowVanilla does. (And I specify GC being a man and not BS being a woman because let's all be real. Nobody cares about f/f ships. M/f and f/f are and will always be overshadowed by m/m whether any of us like it or not.) If they actually bothered to pay attention to the game, and to GC's and BS's characters and how they intertwine/compare/contrast, then they would see that their dynamic has equal weight and value. But they don't. And you know what? At least half of them didn't recognize the weight and value of ShadowVanilla, either, until episode 7 and 8 came out and the concept was directly spoonfed to them by the narrative. The OG ShadowVanilla fans went from rarepair hell to having their ship borderline gentrified, that's a whole separate tragedy honestly

You know what's blinding those people to BurningCheese? You know the truth? I'm going to explain better.

Burning Spice is a man and Golden Cheese is a woman. That automatically sets it back in the eyes of a lot of morons online. Hetero pairs bad. Also, BS hurt GC in the story, which is his literal job as a villain and all the Beasts do this, therefore misogyny abuse toxic blah blah blah. GC fought back and kicked his ass and never once tolerated any of his behavior but that doesn't matter I guess. Shadow Milk psychologically tortured Pure Vanilla and essentially mutilated him mentally/spiritually and turned him into a husk (Truthless Recluse). But that doesn't matter because gay = get out of jail free, also there's probably a dose of "lol men can't be abused or mistreated and anything bad that happens to a man is hot and/or deserved" underlining some people's thoughts let's not kid ourselves

Burning Spice is not a Tumblr Sexyman and Shadow Milk is. Shadow Milk is thin and nerdy and has multicolored hair and dresses like a literal and figurative clown and is kind of effeminate and is basically the final boss of all theater kids and is dramatic and charmingly evil and is confirmed to be about as physically tough as cooked pasta. Burning Spice is built like a brick shithouse and has to bend down to fit through a doorway and speaks in a rumbling baritone and is the "wrong" kind of evil (he is not suave or charming, he is all out bloodthirsty with zero dramatics or window dressing of any kind). Burning Spice is a traditionally masculine man and Shadow Milk is not. And the Tumblr I always thought I knew never liked men like BS, they like men like SM, and so far no one has done anything to prove me wrong. Tumblr Sexymen can do whatever they want and always be praised, regular sexy men can do the exact same shit and be condemned as toxic and abusive because they're perceived as threatening while Tumblr Sexymen are not

Burning Spice and Golden Cheese are not white/based on non-white cultures. They're both very dark-skinned, at that. Yes they are cookies not humans, but come the fuck on Burning Spice is literally Shiva but red instead of blue, certain cookies are obviously supposed to be certain races/ethnicities deal with it!! Skinny white boys have always been what Tumblr and TikTok girlies want, it's always been this way and always will be. Go look at the top pairings on AO3, 99% is yaoi with white dudes. (No you are not racist if you don't like BurningCheese, not liking a ship is not racist good Lord. Racism is a little bigger than that. I'm just pointing out a pattern)

I will say it until I'm as blue in the face as Shadow Milk is, I LOVE ShadowVanilla. I really do. I love them individually as characters and together as a pair, I love all the beautiful fanart, I love everyone's analyses of them, I love all the fantastic fics written by fantastic authors I will never in my fucking life measure up to I don't even know why I bother at this point, I do I do I do. But I am SICK of the hypocrisy. SICK OF IT. I am SICK of BurningCheese getting maligned while ShadowVanilla is celebrated in the same fucking breath. Look me in the eye and tell me SM is any fucking better than BS. Look me in the eye and tell me you'd still like ShadowVanilla if PV was a woman, instead of screeching about misogyny and abuse. I accept and love both ships for what they are and what they can be. If someone can't do that for whatever reason then fine, that's nobody's problem but theirs, it's shipping it doesn't actually matter do what you want, but don't try looking down your nose at others because "Fallen Hero/Heinous Villain Being Canonically Attracted To/Obsessed With Their Heroic Counterpart/Narrative Foil, Whom They Cannot Live Without Because They Are Actual, Literal Soulmates" is better than "Fallen Hero/Heinous Villain Being Canonically Attracted To/Obsessed With Their Heroic Counterpart/Narrative Foil, Whom They Cannot Live Without Because They Are Actual, Literal Soulmates" because ❓❓❓❓❓❓❓

I'm sorry Anon, I'm not mad at you. I'm happy to hear from you, I'm happy you took the time to reach out to me, I'm happy you like my blog and I hope you stay. I'll just be honest, I'm dealing with something genuinely awful in real life right now and I am not ok. I'm really not ok. I needed to yell at something stupid and ridiculous so I could pretend I'm not the utterly powerless creature I actually am, if only for a moment. I saw a punching bag in the shape of your ask and I started swinging. Worst part is I don't even feel any better, but I already typed all of this out so I might as well keep it

TL;DR: TikTok -> OPINION DISCARDED

[ingravinoveritas]

Speaking choices. It shows who a person is to repost the Jesus on the cross scene from GO and the importance of kindness and then spend the entire weekend shitting on a person’s social media posts because you think they didn’t express their love for their spouse enough or reposted something with or without knowing the possible problematic content and a picture you dislike.

Why do you spend your time picking apart someone’s lives? Do you think David Tennant would thank you that you are the breeder of critical content about his wife? That you and the others pick at every little thing searching for secret meanings that their relationship is a sham or abusive. It’s all well and fine to not be a fan of someone, but you do realize you are a creating a bullying atmosphere and encouraging others to judge a person by their social media posts. This is not the kind behavior you claim to want.

There are actual real and immediate problems in this world. The government is kidnapping people and putting them into gulags. A new Joseph Goebbles wants to “cure” autism and speaks about the autistic population in dehumanizing and dangerous language. This woman is not your enemy. She has never hurt you. She has never wronged you. And the fact you cannot help but revel in a completely benign post by being a judgmental, self-important, self-righteous person says more about you than her. The fact you spend your time attacking her than people doing you actually harm is really telling. Even if her social media posts can be awkward at least she’s fighting for social injustices, too.

Again, David Tennant would not thank you for what you are doing. You don’t know him. You don’t know his wife. And the fact that you think you do is really unsettling.

A person is not only who they are from their social media posts. From your posts I would presume you have a erotomania fixation on two actors and attack their spouse and partner because you think they’re unworthy of your fixations. I would think you are an arrogant, self-important individual who craves attention from sycophants. But I know that social media is not who we only are and I know you probably try to do good in this world. I don’t doubt you are someone who capable of kindness, but from what I see on your blog is hypocritical to your post asking for a kinder world. Do better.

Hello, Anon.

I hope this helped you feel better. I can tell that you must have a lot on your mind, to make the choice to put this message in my inbox. To say all of this--well, I suppose not to my face, since we are online and you're anonymous--but directly to me, or at least to the person you think I am.

In point of correction, I did not "spend the entire weekend shitting on someone's social media posts." I barely had time to even be on Tumblr this past weekend because of what I was actually doing.

What I did this weekend was take care of my parents. Not sleep, because my mother, who has Parkinson's, needed my help to get from bed to the bathroom at 4:30 in the morning. Ran around to the point of exhaustion helping my dad, who is still not very mobile because of his fractured ankle, and cooking an entire Easter dinner for the first time ever. All of this while also processing and coping with the emotions of that same day being exactly 20 years to the day my grandmother passed away. My Grandma, who always made every Easter so special.

That is what I did this weekend. And in the tiny moments where I didn't want to either cry or collapse, I posted on Tumblr. And out of the 1,000+ asks in my inbox, I answered two that were right at the top, because they were the easiest to answer. I also received multiple DMs that came in from others who had seen Georgia's posts and had a similar reaction, and there were public posts and comments made by other people hours before I'd even seen what Georgia posted.

The point I'm making here, Anon, is that you know fully well that I am not the only person who saw something wrong in what Georgia posted (particularly the video of the African dancers, which is a hell of a thing to reduce to "possible problematic content"). But you decided to come for me because although I am not your enemy, and I have never wronged you, I am the easiest target. Other people have made it acceptable to hate me. And that somehow means it's okay. In that same vein, how do we describe a bullying atmosphere? Would that be an environment where someone shares their observations based on multiple sources of information and opinions formed gradually over time? Where someone tells people not to blindly agree with anything, to make up their own minds, and speaks out against sending threats or hateful comments directly? Or would it be an environment where someone creates a blog (multiple blogs, even) solely for the sake of attacking someone? Talking about how ugly they are, how worthless their life is? Calling them things like "stupid bitch" and flooding the tags with hateful rhetoric almost every day for the last ten months, while encouraging attacks to where that person had to turn off Anon for almost a year because they were getting so many threats and insults.

That certainly seems a lot like bullying to me.

What's also interesting is that you go on to talk about the bigger things happening in the world and how it's more important to focus on those, a statement that is then contradicted by your subsequent point. By your definition, there should not be a reason to get upset about what RFK Jr. has said because I do not know him. He has never wronged or hurt me. But according to you, I'm only allowed to care if it affects me personally.

What this ultimately means is that someone does not have to (and should not have to) be personally affected to care about how something affects other people. I don't need RFK's behavior or actions to affect me specifically to care about others being potentially hurt by them, and the same thing applies to Georgia and how she treats people. That is where I am coming from, and that is why I care. Because I'm not the most important part of this equation, nor have I ever claimed to be.

(Also, in talking about attacking RFK Jr., perhaps you might have missed that I did exactly that last week, when I gave an interview in Newsweek and spoke out against his abhorrent comments about autistic people. Every facet of my life is dedicated to fighting for autistic people, particularly in the area of sex education and sexual health. Which tells me that you've never actually looked at anything on my blog other than what you needed to create a narrative about me that suited your purposes.)

My final point of contention is this notion of "do better," which I notice is only applied to people you dislike. The fans who have viciously attacked me and others earn a free pass. As does Georgia, whom it seems you expect absolutely nothing from. I fail to comprehend how it's possible that she can set someone up to receive death threats (as happened on Twitter a few years ago), "jokingly" insult her husband over and over, block fans for absolutely no reason at all (including an account that only posts about David's fashion)...and you will not hold her to a single standard. Yet you will come here and tell me to "do better."

Also, I very periodically receive kind comments/Anons from followers of my blog--comments I'm always surprised to get, as I still tend to be more prepared to read something negative than positive. I enjoy reading those comments and they make me happy, and by your definition, that makes me "arrogant" and "self-important" and someone who "craves attention from sycophants"...yet just last week, Georgia reshared hundreds of Insta stories from fans who'd listened to the recent podcasts, almost all of which were telling her how amazing she is, calling her "queen," saying what a great interviewer she is, how she should have her own podcast, etc. How is that different? Do you suppose Georgia shared those because she doesn't crave attention from admirers? Because that doesn't seem to make much sense.

The truth is, Anon, that if you genuinely believed that it's wrong to attack someone you don't know and who has never wronged you, you wouldn't have sent me this message in the first place. Because you would believe that no one deserves to be talked to this way. I believe that no one deserves to be bullied or made to feel worthless, and I have actively spoken against behavior that I've seen from fans to that effect. Hell, I've even defended Georgia on more than one occasion, because I don't have to like someone to think they don't deserve to be treated a certain way.

And if that is how you feel, then it is certainly not apparent from this message, because it seems to me that you think nastiness is just fine as long as it's aimed at someone you don't like.

I'm sure you do good things in this world, Anon. I don't doubt you are capable of kindness. But I have to stop and wonder when the only part of you I'm seeing here is a message full of needless cruelty.

[swordscleric]

I can't stop thinking about the post from a few days ago about how Critical Role has been great at doing personal faith but didn't put the necessary work in to discuss the religious/god angle of c3 in-depth. Like the fact that Cardinal Respa was linked to both the Dawnfather and the Chained Oblivion is, on a personal level, very interesting (fallen/corrupted priest goes hard) but like does that mean that there's a Papacy somewhere in Exandria dedicated to the Dawnfather? If so, are there more cardinals who ordain the bishops of the Dawnfather? Are there Conclave-level intrigues going on in the Dawnfather's Sistine Chapel? Why is the Dawnfather so Christianity-coded in vibes alone if there's no actual outline of his religious organisations? With Downfall the Dawnchild/Dawnfather thing makes the allusions to Christ as Son of God co-existing with the Father textual - was there a Dawnfather Schism around whether the Dawnchild was a separate mortal? Was there a Reformation about how the Dawnfather's Pope kept selling indulgences? Is that why the priest of the Dawnfather Grog & Pike offer a drink to doesn't partake because of a cultural shift between Protestant-Temperance-League-coded and Catholic-coded Dawnfather congregations? Why do I have so many questions about the religious organisation of one of the most important Prime Deities in Exandria and to Critical Role's 3 campaigns? How on earth were the cast (and us as the viewers!) meant to care about the gods if all they had were "really tall kings" instead of interrogating how religious organisations provide both a place of healing and community to a wide range of people and also a place of horrific harm and abuse for a wide range of people?

[thatswhatsushesaid]

well here's a new take on the wwx-wlj-wc sexual violence sequence at the wen supervisory office that i haven't encountered before: apparently some people over on the mdzs subreddit genuinely think it wasn't even wlj who [redacted because yikes] to wc. because we clearly can't use context clues, or our brains, to make the connection between "his woman" and the only named woman character who spends any amount of time with him in the text. aka wlj.

also apparently even if he did do the thing to wlj and made her [do the other thing] to wc, she had it coming, so we shouldn't care about anything that wwx does to her, or forces her to do.

anyway this fandom is the tar pit.

[welcometogrouchland]

I'm going to be so real I do not understand tim & steph shippers who feel that Steph dating Tim again would save her character. You can make an argument that giving Tim a more compelling love interest would be beneficial for him! And you can at least make an argument that the fujo mischaracterization of Steph would stop. However she'd still, inevitably, be treated as a prop character/extension for someone more popular 😭 it also wouldn't make her appear in more books! Tim doesn't have many frequent appearances at the moment either! You can just say you like the couple and want them back together without acting like you have some kind of moral stance

[joshua-beeking]

Every time you post something Hansry-related, I get the feeling of being at a sleepover with you and you show me the post and we giggle and kick our feetsies in the air.

A very accurate image if I ever saw one.( It's sweet, thank you!)

Might be weird for some to imagine a 34 years old man in a fluffy bathrobe having too many feelings over fictional bi knights but life is too fucking short, and the state of the world too damn depressing not to find joy in the little things that makes you smile.

Let's giggle and kick our feetsies as much as we want, passion makes life worth living and reminds us there's some good in this world and things are getting better, slowly but surely. Never would have dream to see this only a couple years ago and look where we are now.

[bekolxeram]

What's really going on with 911twt, i usually keep up through tumblr, but haven't seen what actually happened, only comments from bts, but understandable if you don't really want to get into it, thanks anyway :)

I'm the last person you should ask. I don't do twitter, and by the time I woke up this morning the drama was well on the way.

But you know those journalists who get screeners in advance for review writing purposes? They have a habit of vague posting about the upcoming episode after watching the screener, but this time they seem eerily silent.

@houseofevanbuckley posted this screenshot of one of the usual suspects liking a tweet guessing the episode is probably awful. And that's it, I haven't seen her posting anything about the show since then, other than a vague tweet beefing with cheese blog.

Another journo posted this, then later clarified that it wasn't about the show, but about someone. It's just a hunch but I feel like this tweet is also about cheese blog. (Also could be about the Richard Siken incident, but I don't know if she's involved) Again, nothing more about the upcoming fall finale other than joking about ABC giving us nothing but stills from the very first scene of the episode.

The weirdest one is from him. He simply announced that he wouldn't be covering this episode at all, and instead opted to follow JLH's new movie. He usually has a lot of thoughts about the upcoming episode and would post his reactions generously, but this time, nothing at all.

This is weird, I've never seen any of them act like that. There's been rumor of screener receivers allegedly leaking major info to some group chats. I don't know if it's true, and I certainly don't know if that side of the fandom know something we don't about this midseason finale, but the general mood there is the most pessimistic I've ever seen. It ranges from "it's that bad huh?" to "we're so over".

The extremely limited amount of stills seems to indicate major plot twist(s) in the episode itself. Adding it to the fact that the usually chatty journalists have decided to beef with cheese blog instead of talking about the show, I think they've probably seen something they really didn't like.