#even to the extent of becoming unrealistic for a teenager

[padfootastic]

hiii i had a question - how do you think other people saw sirius? like at his time at hogwarts, what was his reputation like? what impression did he give off? and also i feel like there are a lot of parallels between bella and sirius, and so what do you think their similarities and differences are? anyway sorry for the word vomit and the wildly contrasting questions

hello <3 do not worry, friend, here at padfootastic’s blog we specialise in word vomit. ur amongst ur own here ;)

for the first part, i swear my opinion on this has changed so much recently since i started leaning into the cold, arrogant Black heir type characterisation for sirius as well as looking at the black family as a bit more like,,,royalty among the WW type thing ykno?

so i think that all wizard raised kids have at least heard about the black family, mostly as a cautionary tale, almost always in tones of reverent fear/awe, and sometimes incredulously—sirius black, therefore, would’ve come into hogwarts with a lot of expectations/eyes on him. he almost immediately bucks all of it with his gryffindor sorting but people are still wary (bc the WW is so essentialist) so i think that like—lingering hesitance would’ve followed him throughout the 7 years, something sirius would be very conscious of too.

i’m also of the opinion that the black kids all received like,,,etiquette training and pureblood lessons etc etc so they all have a poker face/mask that they use in public as well as being learnt how to control their emotions (think fanon legilimency) and sirius tended to default to that, which ended up making people nervous.

so, basically, he gave off the impression that he was better than everyone else (he was); thought himself superior (lowkey yes but he was working on unlearning that, promise); didn’t care for the general public (absolutely true); and was a bit of a terrifying bastard who never got close enough to most people to dispel rumours/legends ykno?

(and ik i keep banging on this like a dead horse, but i think that most people, including those who knew him, were also a bit wary of his ~dark side bc of his upbringing and family’s actions wrt voldy. like, even remus and peter, on some level had that in the back of their mind. it was only james who never ever held it against him or treated it like an innate part of him/a flaw)

re bella & sirius, whooooo. i’m rly not a bella expert (that’s @narcissa-black-supermacy and i would love to hear ur thoughts on this, dani) but let’s see:

- both of them r very intense, very passionate people. translates into extreme, almost unhealthy loyalty for the people they choose as their own. also makes them very entrenched in & involved with whatever they choose to do- like bella being a death eater, and sirius being a part of the order/harry’s godfather etc etc.

- i think both of them were great at magic, on an intuitive level. like, it’s one thing to work hard at it, but for these, magic was like an extension of their hand, not a tool. this made them terrifying in battles and displays of power bc they just had. so much potential. (duels b/w bella & sirius were also some of the most explosive & entertaining)

- very arrogant, very ‘most people r sheep, and we’re better than them’ (which is almost a Black prerequisite, ik ik) and i can totally see them hanging out just to sneer at people lol

- also this is v random but both bella and sirius lowkey give me aromantic vibes? like, they don’t much care for romance or relationships as much as they do about a cause/person/dynamic, yeah?

for their differences, hm. i actually think those two were much more similar than not (being firstborn heirs) but i really think bella’s morality was way more skewed than sirius’, for one. also think she defaults to magic/violence/physical fights in disagreements whereas sirius prefers using his words. i don’t think i can ever see bellatrix like, slumming it, ykno? she grew up with the finest and she’s very happy to continue using it. sirius, on the other hand, takes it almost as a way to be rebellious and doesn’t mind living minimal & using whatever.

[alittlebitofloveliness]

A rant about Ponyboy

For a fandom made up of a lot of teenagers and middle schoolers sometimes I wonder if people have ever met a fourteen year old in real life, because some of the Ponyboy headcanons/characterization I see on here has him acting/being treated like he's at MOST ten years old. I know folks get annoyed by Johnny infantilization but Pony infantilization bugs me too. Don't get me wrong, I think some of the soft headcanons are very sweet but just...not very true to Pony's characterization in the book. I'm not saying he's some hardened criminal but fourteen year olds often don't outwardly crave cuddles/snuggles and petnames, and Pony canonically is known to dislike being babied. He also mentions throughout the novel that kids on the east side grow up quicker than kids from wealthier areas ('When you're thirteen in our neighbourhood you know the score. You're not so smart at ten."). It makes sense, given the area Pony's grown up in, how 'toughness' and masculinity are valued and the fact he's growing up in the 1960s that he wouldn't really want people to see the softer side of his family/the gang's dynamic. I think people also to fail to recognize how Pony has grown by the end of the book. Sure he's decided to stay 'gold' but the scene with the broken bottle does show to some extent that he's hardened himself at least a little bit and that he no longer sees the world through rose tinted glasses. Like, the Pony at the end end of the book is not the same Pony as the beginning of the book and he's not some tiny little kid hat needs to be protected by his big scary older brothers, he's a teenager who's learned he has to be smart and take care of himself without becoming closed off to the world. Like sure, Soda and Darry would still be protective, but I absolutely think Pony would walk to the movies alone after the events of the book and remember to carry a blade with him. Yeah, Darry's a good guardian but he's also twenty, and Ponyboy is fourteen- he wouldn't be tracking Pony's movements 24/7. Also, it's the sixties, it was pretty common for kids to be out all day and for parents/guardians to have no way of contacting them. Pony probably tells Darry he's going to study at the library and goes all over town. Cell phones weren't a thing yet. It was very much a different time. All this is not to shit on anyone's interpretation of him or their headcanons! I have some unrealistic headcanons of him too! Sometimes soft Curtis bros are healing! But I find it very interesting and somewhat disheartening that the majority of Ponyboy characterization I see in this fandom ignores how the story changed him (even when it's not a Johnny and Dally lives AU) and that he is FOURTEEN YEAR OLD living in poverty in a rough neighbourhood, and a smart kid who recognizes a lot of issues in the world. I just wish I got to see more of him as a fully fleshed out character who has lived through trauma from a young age and learned to deal with it with the coping mechanisms available to a poor kid in the 1960s, whose relationship with his family is strong but contentious, instead of an uwu sad boy who Needs to Be Protected At All Costs by his brothers.

[shewolf-sinclair]

making this a full post because i’m realizing not enough people understand this (this was something i commented on another post)

Regarding all the information we have on S2’s lack of romantic interests or themes for wednesday, it’s not to say there will never be any romantic elements especially in later seasons. But a lot of people, jenna included, don’t think it makes sense for Wednesday’s character for that to be a main focus right now. People hated the s1 love triangle, and while I see why (i am not referring to shipping wars) it was at least beneficial to the plot. (I say all of this as a multishipper) Wednesday (character and show) isn’t opposed to romance but it’s just not a priority which makes a lot of sense when you do the character work/study. I think to an extent the writers realize this, and the main reason they added it in the first season was plot development, and trying to cater to a gen Z audience. Such attempts made a lot of people, even those of us who love the show dearly, call many parts of it cringe. Because it was gen z culture but not in a natural way. it was over the top and forced. And I think they’re finding the same issue with how they wrote the romacey stuff. so they’re gonna dial it down. it may be added again later, but if so it’ll be laid back. not the forefront and main focus, and it will occur gradually as to be more realistic and representative of our generation which is what they are trying to achieve. You have to keep in mind that while all ages watch the show, it is YA and initially intended for people in and around highschool age. And I love them for making this decision (I say this as a hardcore shipper)

yes wenclair shippers this includes you too (while i personally dislike wenclair this is not a dig at the ship. but y’all need to realize it is equally unrealistic as any other ship rn)

That being said, while the show is trying to add less romance centered themes and plots, I need y’all to have some media literacy. It’s one thing (and perfectly ok) to headcannon wednesday as aroace for whatever reason you like. but please also understand that doesn’t give you the right to force that interpretation on other people. “but look at wednesday she hates everyone no way she could ever love someone/be in a relationship!” I beg you to look at any other Addams family media ever and learn her character. I made a whole post about it here.

However that post never really went in depth enough. It also didn’t mention the addams family musical (my beloved).

Wednesday has a stone cold demeanor but that is strategic. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t have feelings. We even witnessed them in the show several times. She felt anger in episode 1 when her brother was bullied. Disgust with her parents. Fear with Rowan. Intrigue as well. We later see exhibits of excitement with Fester and sadness and loneliness with Enid.

So now that we’ve established she actually feels things lets dig deeper. “She’s disgusted by her parents she hates romance!” wrong! She hates watching her parents suck face. no teenager wants to see their parents do that. its gross. She also has a strained relationship with them which makes it worse. We know she doesn’t like things she can’t understand, and in this iteration she hasn’t really experienced romance or romantic attraction before. So she likely doesn’t fully understand it (yet) and this outwardly rejects it. Which is partly why she is so skeptical when Enid gushes about Ajax. However throughout the season as she experiences similar feelings firsthand in regards to Tyler, she becomes less put off by others expressing affection. Though I do standby the idea she likely despises PDA.

She may not explicitly want it but she is in fact capable.

[thewomanintheshadow]

My biggest obstacle in life

I have to confess I have a problem. I don't know if it's a lack of discipline or just a compulsive behaviour that I can't control it but it's a big problem for me. It's like a cycle and even though sometimes I manage to fight it, other times I just give in to it.....Mental Cravings. I have been binge eating for the past 17 years of my life.

Growing up, I had a very loving mother who cooked delicious food for the whole family. The last memories I have of being skinny was when I was about 5-6 years old. I remember afterwards, I started gaining wait consistently.

Weight has always been discussed in my family and even from a very young age everybody would comment on how perfect I was in every way except when it came to my body weight. My mom had issues with her pregnancies when she was younger and after her last pregnancy she gained a massive amount of weight. I knew that she was struggling and it did affect her confidence since she used to be very beautify and quite the skinny looking model in her early 20s before she started having children. However, after gaining weight, I feel like she lost the confidence she used to have and to an extent she projected that on to me. My mother consistently reminded me of how awful it is to be fat and that it's very important for a girl to be thin because that way you are the most beautiful and the most successful woman. I mean.....even till this day I do agree with her and she was always right but at the time hearing her say that consistently was so annoying. She would consistently compare me to my skinny cousins or celebrities or actresses in American movies and would make comments such as "you are so much beautiful than them, they are only pretty because they are skinny".

Food had always been an issue for me since the beginning of my teenage hood and as far as I can remember I have laid on my pillow every night and thought about how I was gonna wake up and "go on a diet" the next day. Back in the early 2000s, the skinny models on Tv were the ideal beauty goddesses. Sometimes, these beautiful models and actresses were interviewed on their diet and would make comments such as "I only eat salads" or "I only eat one banana till the evening" or "I diet until I have lost all the weight". My mom would hear these and would look at me and say "see, these people don't eat as much, thats why they are so skinny". My father was the worst because he would consistently make comments about my body and how I should be eating less or lose weight. I always knew that they were just trying to help me but I think that was the beginning of my yoyo dieting journey.

Yoyo dieting started for me at an early stage of life. I would watch these beautiful girls in the movies such as Kristen Stewarts and Nina Dobrev and just fantasize about having their bodies. I would actually fantasize and visualize looking like a girl who had an hour glass figure and long straight blow-blowdryed soft hair. My hair was black, short and curly and I did not appreciate it. That was also the beginning of social media when my dad brought a laptop home and introduced me to the world of internet back in early 2010s. I quickly became introduced to the world of YouTube and started searching for videos such as "How to lose weight fast" to see if I could find a solution to my big problem. Deep down I was so tired and frustrated and just hated my body. I noticed from a very young age that my hips was much wider than the typically beautiful hour glass figure. Later I found out that I had an apple shaped figure.

Eventually after years of yoyo dieting, occasionally going to bed hungry not having dinner because "feeling full = feeling fatness" I developed a bigger problem with food and my habits in general. When I started exercising, I developed a huge unrealistic expectation that I was going to become skinning just within a matter of 2 months. Spoiler alert! it did not work like that. Even though I was exercising, I was still eating high calorie foods that where not "processed" or "fast food" but still did not help me lose weight. I became more and more frustrated and more desperate with time. I would concisely diet for weeks, and then binge eat and fall into my previous habits. This habits carried on for years. I thinking the last time I was 55 kgs was when I was in fourth grade where I was disgusting weight with a girl my age and she said "I weight 45 kgs " and I said "me too". Later I found out that I actually weighed 10 kilos extra than what she weighed. I started losing more and more confidence and I need that affected my ability to connect with people or having any true socializing skills. I hid myself in my room and started watching YouTube videos as my form of coping mechanism. I didn't even want to study anymore because I lost all motivation. I was also living in country/city at that time where if I wanted to go to the park, my mom had to drive 40 minutes until we reached the park. I could not even go outside and play by myself in the streets because it was not appropriate for a girl nor was it safe. If I wanted to go jogging outside, cars would actually stop and people would harass/talk to you. So....my life became YouTube. My screen time increased and I spent hours on my desk trying to fantasize about a world I did not have access to at the time.

[loominggaia]

Is their a number of teenage troll girls who take the wrong lesson from janella’s fame? Instead of “trolls can be beautiful too” they think “you must meet everyone else standards to be beautiful”?What kinda methods would they use to achieve this unrealistic standard in their tragic quest to become something their not?

This is a very common mindset in Zareen Empire--not just among trolls, but among all peoples. Zareenites are bombarded with toxic media messaging 24/7. This constant messaging warps their perceptions of beauty and reality in general.

Zareenite trolls (and ogres to an extent) are especially conflicted because the traits they naturally find beautiful (bad smells, lumpy skin, fatness, etc.) are opposite of what Zareenite culture tells them is beautiful. This culture presents an artificial version of beauty that real trolls can never come close to matching, and this leads to a lot of self-loathing among this kingdom's troll populations. Of course kids and teens are even more susceptible to this.

It's sadly common for trolls to harm themselves trying to match this standard. They try to starve themselves thin, use dangerous chemicals to burn lumps off their skin, take sketchy snake oil supplements, and even undergo back-alley surgeries to achieve the looks they see in the media.

Wealthy trolls might travel to Mogdir Kingdom, seeking a magical transformation procedure. These are very pricey and there are a lot of scammers out there pretending to be sorcerers, so the likelihood of getting ripped off or harmed by a botched spell is high.

Janella's critics say she shouldn't be paraded around by the media as a beauty icon, because this sends a bad message to all other trolls. Janella is far from a typical-looking troll. She's unusually smooth-skinned and delicate of bone structure for her species. Her features are rare, and critics say that by putting these rare features on a pedestal, the media is holding average trolls to an unfair beauty standard.

Of course there are arguments to make against these critics, but that's the gist of the whole controversy around her.

*

Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

[jade-j17]

BBLS

BBL culture has been around in the Black and Latinx community for a while. Women with tiny waists and big butts were idolized heavily in the 2010s. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Nicki Minaj, and Kylie Jenner significantly impacted making big butts trendy. Prior to this, the beauty standard was to be super skinny and have zero thigh fat and no butt. As their influence progressed, more and more people started to get plastic surgery to achieve the slim thick look. Surgeons everywhere were making a large profit and still are to this day. Women tend to see a lot of photos online of these crazy transformations and go one out of two ways. Some may start working out and go in the slow yet healthier route to achieve their dream bodies. On the other hand, some may want a “quick fix” and they end up getting surgery that is very risky and can endanger their lives. According to recent studies, Bbls, or Brazilian Butt Lifts, have been causing negative effects on the bodies of women who aspire to have perfect bodies similar to the ones they see on social media. The photoshopped images uploaded online have set unrealistic beauty standards and, as a result, have caused many women to resort to harmful body enhancement procedures in order to achieve what they deem as the “perfect body.” A ‘botched’ body is what it is called when the surgery goes wrong, and the bbl does not look very promising. Many surgeons utilize Instagram to promote their services, but it’s important to note that the results may vary from person to person. The health risks and even how well someone’s body may take anesthesia will also affect each person differently. The costs associated with bbls have skyrocketed to such an extent that people are resorting to cheaper alternatives, even if they are potentially causing their lives. I always remember my mother bringing up the fact that on Facebook, someone died due to the risks of plastic surgery, especially in a third-world country. Dr. Miami takes advantage of the TikTok platform to connect with his audience, and this generates interest among women seeking to book him for their subsequent surgery. He occasionally showcases the results of his clients in order to attract viewers. However, the downside to such impactful marketing on such a large platform is that it perpetuates the narrative that women need to change themselves to fit into a certain beauty standard. Despite this, it’s hard to deny the engaging nature of Dr. Miami’s approach. Social media isn’t any better. Women photoshop their bodies heavily, and it is usually people with a larger platform that do this in order to create the idea that they have the bodies they are editing. In reality, they look nothing like that. Fashion Nova and many clothing brands are known to do this because they market to the bbl community. This creates an idea in women that because they do not resemble the models that are being heavily edited, they cannot purchase said clothing. This again results in the desire to get surgery to fit the characters they want to play. Bbls have become so common that freshly turned 18-year-olds go to get their bodies done because they believe that their bodies wouldn’t change. In reality, our bodies are still evolving, and for a young adult, basically a teenager, to get her body done because social media is pushing her to do so, it should not be normalized. Even TikTok accounts are created and dedicated to showcasing the difference between the “social media vs. reality” photos of celebrities and models in their natural state versus their social media personas. Witnessing the contrast between reality and social media is truly jaw-dropping. It gets so bad to the point where there is an entire story on how a girl injected pig fat into her butt because she wanted to fit into these beauty standards that clothing companies, celebrities, and social media have set. Marketing should be used to promote healthy lifestyles and inclusivity, not lethal surgeries and dishonest pictures.

[ladyhindsight]

Hey there! I gave up on Clare's writing halfway through the Tales from the Sh Academy. I thought it would be a short series of stories about Simon's experience in the Academy and how he would change the system a little bit.

Instead we got a Herondale wankfest, Malec fanservice, Isabelle being toxic af and an excuse to introduce characters from TLH because MONEY.

So I have to ask: is it confirmed that Simon had to say goodbye to his family forever?

I hoped that he would make the SH realize how toxic and cultish that is, but apparently not? 😕

I remember that he told his mom and sister that he'd been recruited by a military academy, and how shocked they were that Simon had accepted, because it's so unlike Simon to join the military...

Clare likes to pretend she writes grey characters, but the reality is that she writes military propaganda and promotes submission to the Law no matter how shitty.

("dura lex, sed lex" is criticized a little bit... but only when it creates romantic conflict and forbidden love between characters; any other time no one cares)

Simon and Clary aka "normal", modern teenagers thrown into this strange, alien world could have made a difference (maybe in an Adult book that'd be too unrealistic, but in a YA book it would've been very fitting). Instead they assimilated and promoted the SH as the epitome of perfection, of what humans should be.

It's very disappointing and kinda disgusting.

Especially since irl more and more people criticize the military and police forces as tools of colonization, violence and even genocide (particularly the US military).

The fact that Simon was Jewish makes it all worse IMO.

Hellooo!

In the extra story in Lady Midnight, The Long Conversation, it is told that after the Dark War Simon became a recruiter whose job is to recruit potential candidates for Ascension, especially Sighted mundanes. When they hold the engagement party to celebrate Isabelle and Simon’s engagement, Rebecca attends the party, and she knows something about the Shadowhunters, but Simon hasn’t been able to tell her everything. Simon’s mom on the other hand, like you said, thinks he’s attended a military academy when he was in the Shadowhunter Academy and is oblivious to the Shadowhunter side of Simon’s life. So he’s been able to remain in contact with his family.

If this wasn’t the case, Simon would’ve been obligated to leave his family forever, something I believe other Ascendants have to still do if they become Shadowhunters. With Simon’s circumstances there was a great opportunity to call out these cultish Shadowhunter laws that aren’t well justified at all. Instead his character was given a loophole so that Simon doesn’t have to say goodbye to his family and can remain in contact with them, as if this does anything to fix the underlying problem.

“Lex malla, lex nulla” is there to challenge their hard and senseless laws in The Dark Artifices, but only to the extent it serves the story and some particular characters. Again in The Dark Artifices characters like Diana, Arthur, and Ty presented a good case why Shadowhunters should be able to utilize mundane medicine or at the very least consult it for the Shadowhunters to develop their own medicine. But Diana’s arc was finished quickly with no resolve or justice for her to having hide herself and the help she needed from her own people. Arthur was severely mentally ill, but the narrative constantly reprimands him for being unable to lead the Los Angeles Institute, offering him no help at all, and then Julian has to do his job because he’s afraid the Clave will otherwise separate their family if they find out about Arthur’s state. Another great opportunity to call out laws that separate families by force and deny people the help they need.

“Lex malla, lex nulla” also is used in the romantic conflict between Julian and Emma, the law that parabatai can’t fall in love for unknown reasons, because how could their love that is so amazing and good ever be against laws. There’s not even a hint of self-awareness in any of the characters, none of them criticize this law even though they don’t even know why the law exists in the first place. All they hang onto is some bogus tale of a “curse” and no one questions its legitimacy. Though I do get that turning into True Nephilim and killing everyone in sight (or at least the bad guys like they did in QoAaD) would be an issue.

When Alec becomes the Consul, the Clave-in-exile abolishes the law that Shadowhunters and Downworlders can’t marry in a Nephilim ceremony. As they should, but again it is to serve a story of particular characters having this obstacle. They do it so quickly too, it comes out of the bush at the end of the story in QoAaD that it’s ridiculous how they can’t change any other laws with such efficiency as well.

In The Long Conversation, Clary even makes a note how mundane psychological terms such as “misplacing fears” escape Alec because Shadowhunters don’t know anything about mundane psychology. It’s just said there and no action is ever taken to better the lives of the people living under such unconditional regime that does nothing to help anyone to perform mentally and physically well. Simon and Clary would’ve been great characters to bring reform to the Clave—having outside perspective how destructive and oppressive the Clave is—because the Clave is shit, and though the characters even agree, they do nothing in the grand scheme of things.

[bluerthanvelvett]

rant

TW// ed (I don’t have one I’m talking about pr0-Ana people and how ridiculous it is)

Scrolling through my homepage and I keep seeing like ED logs and shit. Wtf. pr0ana tumblr has got to be the single most toxic thing ever. Teenage girls should be eating around 2,200 calories A DAY to stay ALIVE. If u eat way less than that, you are not only depriving urself but you are fucking up your metabolism which is actually counter active to your “skinny” goal. That’s just the objective facts, I’m not even considering the emotional repercussions yet.

How can one be so engrossed in that way of thinking that it’s more important to them than enjoying life itself. Are you afraid you’ll be worth less just because you’ve got a round (fuckijg normal) stomach? News flash, THATS unrealistic. I know it must be hard to break out of a certain mindset and it is in no way your fault at ALL but people on here who deliberately post pro stuff are sick, it’s not “coping” ffs.

At the end of the day it’s you who is experiencing your life, why wouldn’t you want to enjoy it to its fullest extent? Who gives a shit if you’re not flat stomached all the time. It’s trivial

The way I’m trying to see eating, exercising and lifestyle choices are for me to become healthier and stronger. If you keep motivating yourself towards something with a negative aspect (eg “I’m so fat I need to do this to get skinny”) then it’ll never work for you and you’ll feel shit for the rest of your life. Mindsets the only thing you need to change

[friendly-neighborhood-kinnie]

Mr. Pigeon 72

Okay so I have like three specific things I want to talk about so spoiler warning⚠

Okay so the first thing I want to talk about it Kagami and Marinette.

Marinette wanted her friends to be happy so desperately that she ignored her own feelings and tried to recreate her friends feelings for the boy they both loved. She was willing to put aside ALL of her feelings for this boy just so her friend could be happy.

That's character development.

Then in the end, Kagami knew that Adrien and Marinette were good for each other and so she told Marinette that she should go after him.

Again character development.

I do like Kagami that slightest bit more, not because she said 'Adrien can be yours now' but because she didn't discourage Marinette on anything she did (at least not to much) and she encouraged her to go after him and I believe she was observing Marinette a lot this episode.

The next thing I want to talk about is how low key kind of disappointing the Ladynoir was. But also how I think it could be foreshadowing.

So we see that Rena Rouge made an illusion, we see more on how her illusions work. And we see how she makes Ladybug and Chat Noir act more professional then they usually do. They usually have banter and flirting. But this time they didn't. Yes it's because they were illusions but what if it also could do with showing how they might work together when Chat Noir finds out Ladybug told someone her identity?

They would still have to work together. So they would decide to keep it professional.

Okay the third thing is the umbrella scenes!!

Okay so I hardcore ship the love square and the umbrella scene is my favorite scene!! So to get a second one?

It was so cute.

Okay why I want to talk about this scene.

I've seen a bunch if people saying we're back to square one for the love square. But we're not. Not even close.

These two scenes parallel themselves.

In the first one we see that it's Adrien trying to make up for a mistake he made and make a new friend. He giver Marinette the umbrella. This causes her to fall in love with him. This causes her to be a stuttering, bumbling mess around him. She fell for him and she fell for him hard. He see her as his friend who he obviously cares for very deeply and even loves (although he doesn't see it yet.)

Now we look at the new scene and we see that she tries to give the umbrella back. He denies it and she decides let's both use it and you can walk WITH me home. She doesn't stutter she doesn't stumble and she's not awkward about being near him. The umbrella closes on them both and it makes them laugh. They share a moment but it's not read into to much. He realizes he can't go with her no matter how much he wants to. He goes to the car and he becomes clumsy around her. (It probably isn't permanent but it's important) they laugh again.

These scenes parallel each other and show that they have grown. And it might not be as much as we want but we have to remember these are kids. They are to teenagers who are trying to figure out there feelings both for each other and there superhero partners who happen to be the other.

I know that this isn't unrealistic because bein in love with someone to that extent is possible and I've been through it in my own way.

It's not creepy and it's not weird. It's normal for some people.

The love square is growing but it's growing with the characters, it's growing slowly because they are kids who make mistakes and need to take things slow sometimes. So where as part of the square will jump to development other parts will slow down to understand itself.

Anyway I just really love the literary master piece that is this show.

[seaweedinthebrain]

Hi so I just saw your ask to rua and

a) thank you so much for sharing this, because I feel that way about james and Cordelia’s arc too? Like, there’s so much miscommunication and just general chaos when in other scenes they are level-headed, rational teenagers capable of using their brains? Honestly, all the drama is just getting to me (just like with clary and jace with everything that’s going on). At one point i know it‘s necessary but it’s just… tiring, you know? I used to like writing about James and Cordelia when chog was the only drama that occurred but now... I just feel like Cordelia ‘escaping’ with Matthew is so uncalled for and very out of character. We see Cordelia be a badass warrior woman that loves her parabatai and her family (specifically Alastair and Sona) very dearly and she runs off to Paris with a man she‘s only known for like four months? Five? That doesn’t make any sense! (And I’m sorry for making this about myself but I just needed to say that people are just waiting for updates on my jordelia fic and I don’t like them as much now but at the same time I don’t want to disappoint people because of that? Does that make sense?)

b) yes. The thing about cc neglecting platonic (or even familial relationships, any type of relationship that’s not romantic to be honest) relationships? Yes. I just have difficulty seeing the main cast as a tight-knit group when most of the time there’s only developments with romantic interests shown… at this point everyone is just ‘hanging out because you are my friend’s partner’ and not ‘I genuinely want to talk to you and do things with you because you are a very good person that I’d like to know more about’. (And the fact that blackstairs happened was just urggggggggggh she ruined the good and healthy friendship shown in tmi and is, supposedly, develop in tda by romanticising it! It’s like you can’t have a best friend that you’ve known all your life without falling in love with them! This makes ace and/or aro people very discouraged because it seems like the only relationship worth pursuing is romantic relationships!)

hey you! yes to all of this, thank you!!! i'm gonna try and answer this in a sort of organised way

a) exactly. i get the use of the miscommunication trope, specially in YA content, to create conflict and drama and make sure the plot doesn't get flat. but that only works if it's used to a certain extent. the way cc is writing jordelia is just annoying to read because not only is it becoming out of character for them (as you said, they're both supposed to be smart and level-headed people), it is also nearly agonising to read, at least for me as someone who cannot stand feeling second hand embarrassment. miscommunication to create drama is a good trope if the author knows when it's time to stop. which cc clearly doesn't. reading choi i was just waiting for the moment when james and cordelia would finally solve that and when i started breathing easier after the bracelet broke, there comes the miscommunication again. just. no. it's been going for too long and at this point it's annoying. as for your fic, don't apologise for talking about yourself! the best advice i can give about that is: don't worry about disappointing your readers, because you won't. in my (frankly limited) experience as a fic writer of rare pairs with close to no fanbase, recognition and feedback is nice but it's not everything. at the end of day, your fic should be something you enjoy writing about a shipp you enjoy thinking about. if you've lost interest in writing about jordelia than find another pairing that inspires you! it's okay to lose interest in a shipp and abandoning a fic, every writer does it and no one has been burned at the stake for it yet, don't worry.

b) exactly². like, putting romance above friendship or family is a common enough thing in media and cc does not need to contribute to it. it's something that always bothers me and the fact that it's SO present in a saga that is so important to me is terrible. the thing you said about how the characters seem to be only "hanging out because you are my friend's partner" yes!!!! that's exactly the idea i was trying to pass when i used that quote from magnus!!! how am i supposed to believe this people are a close ride-or-die group of friends who save the world together when on page it always seems like they're just hanging out with each other out of "you're friends with my partner so i guess we're vaguely in the same social circle"? as for the blackstairs thing you said? yes. definitely. as much as i rooted for them while reading tda, i feel like cc usually seems to step into that stereotype that a boy and a girl can't be friends without one or both having a thing for the other? and that's in all of her series? like, clary immediately assumes jace and isabelle have a thing before she finds out they're siblings, simon spent years in love with clary and they dated even if they broke up later, simon and maia dated even if they broke up later, luke spent years in love with jocelyn, emma and julian with their whole drama, kit kissing livvy out of nowhere, dru having kind of a little crush on jaime, matthew being in love with lucie and then all of a sudden falling in love with cordelia, etc. i mean???? emma and julian are the best example of this, of course, but there are so many other romantic innuendos that had no need to be there and it would change nothing in the main plot. cc could have much more page time to develop platonic and familial relationships properly if she didn't disregard those in favour of giving more unnecessary scenes and credit to the straight and unrealistically sexualized romance between the protagonists (and i say "unrealistically sexualized" cause, honestly, who takes a condom to a rescue mission in an infernal dimension and has their first time on the floor of a demonic cave, like clary and jace? who has sex, weirdly also on a cave, while being held captive and immediately after finding out your parabatai, who also happens to be the fiancé of the woman you're about to sleep with, is dead, like will and tessa? and how come a 17 year old who had never even kissed someone before, much less gone further than that, is suddenly a "sex god", in cc's own words, like julian with emma?). anyways, cc needs to learn how to develop actual human relationships that don't involve people suffering for a "forbidden" love that isn't actually as complicated as they're making it to be or thirsting over each other in unusual places in her books, because i need close platonic relationships to feed my soul and, as an author with that many characters and such a big universe, she has millions of available opportunities to stop making stories centered around progressively weaker plots that by now mostly just make everything and everyone else the background for the overly dramatic main paring.

[dudewantscupcakes]

Calling it right now: Luka will sacrifice himself for Marinette/Ladybug in the “Miracle Queen” finale.

Was thinking about this theory way too hard on my Sunday afternoon, and felt the need to share the pain with Tumblr (you’re welcome!).

Spoilers (for Love Eater/Heart Hunter and Kwami Buster) and pain under the cut!

It’s already been well-established in the prior episodes that Marinette relies on Luka for emotional support (see “Captain Hardrock”, “Frozer” and “Silencer”), and some have pointed out this moment in “Desperada” as an indication that Luka has caught onto Ladybug’s secret identity:

I firmly believe the interplay of Luka and Marinette’s relationship, as well as this possible identity suspicion in “Desperada” serve as foundation for what’s to/has unfolded in the season 3 finale. This, what we’ve seen in “Love Eater/Heart Hunter”, and the alleged fact that the Miraculous crew were “moved to tears” by the final episode all point towards this conclusion: something tragic will happen in the finale, and they’ve developed Luka as the perfect martyr.

Disclaimer: Before Luka fans get mad, please understand that this is not a Luka hate post. I’m also a Luka fan, and I want nothing but the best for my guitar playing, slightly cheesy, teeth-rottingly sweet boy. But the (unfortunately shallow) character arc for Luka seems to foreshadow nothing but bad things for his future :( I hope I’m proven wrong when the finale airs in December, but until then, I am convinced bad things will happen to him.

Ok, let’s start from the beginning. “Love Eater/Heart Hunter” (I’m going to call the episode Heart Hunter from now on) starts off with Marinette’s narration, and it’s interesting to see who they choose to focus on the most during her monologue:

“And some have nothing to lose”, Marinette narrates as we see a happy Luka. He’s humming what is likely one of his drafts of Marinette’s ‘melody’, looking cheerful as usual.

What do we cut to in the next scene?

We all know that Marinette is (almost unrealistically) superhuman when it comes to multitasking and coping with pressure. But we are also reminded at certain points in the series that she’s only human. Despite her ingenious plans and effusive energy, she also makes mistakes and sometimes needs help from others. This scene where she trips while she’s carrying a stockpile of boxes for her parents (bless her soul) is a perfect microcosm of what the writers are trying to convey with Marinette’s character design: she often carries more on her shoulders than she can handle.

And guess who appears to help her out?

As I’ve mentioned before, from the storywriter’s POV, Luka serves as emotional support for Marinette. His prior development in “Silencer” showed just how far he was willing to go for Marinette’s happiness: even though he was controlled by an akuma, the passion and devotion he felt for Marinette was all from him. And this scene in Heart Hunter is a reminder of his ‘role’ when it comes to Marinette. He is her support.

Notice how the frame also includes the guitar in his basket. Luka is not a man of many words, choosing rather to express himself through music. In a way, his guitar is his soul, the medium he relies on to communicate his emotions – especially towards Marinette. The scene focuses even more on the guitar as he uses it to strum a song for Marinette, which becomes important at the end of the episode.

But before that, we get this adorable sequence:

Luka gives her a helmet and drives her to the hotel. Marinette hangs onto him from the back while wearing said helmet. Why include the helmet sequence? Other than instilling a message of bike-riding safety (Which is actually very important! Falling on your head without a helmet sucks, not that I’d know.), I think the animators were trying to hint at something else. Keep reading.

The rest of the episode unfolds badly for Marinette. She third-wheels on Adrien’s date with Kagami, sees Cat Noir growing distant from her, and suspects that she’s put Fu in danger. It’s a lot for person – let alone a teenager – to handle, and cracks start to form in her façade of nonchalance.

Who appears again when her stress is at its worst?

Other than the obvious fact that Luka comes to the rescue, let’s note how the guitar is not only a part of the frame this time, but its visual focal point:

The animators really want us to focus on that guitar, huh? If you’re still skeptical, guess what happens when Luka walks over to Marinette.

His bike falls over, the camera pans over to the guitar (again!) falling along with the helmet. And they’re both conveniently placed at the dead center of the camera shot. Why focus on the falling bike and the scattered items? Because they’re supposed to tell us something.

They fall when Luka loses his grip on the bike as he walks over to comfort Marinette. It shows how focused he was on comforting Marinette, prioritizing this over salvaging his items from the fall. As I’ve said before, Luka is a passionate, devoted person. And he feels these emotions for Marinette, almost putting her on a pedestal of sorts for the sake of making her happy (letting her go after Adrien in “Frozer”, resorting to criminal acts for Marinette’s sake in “Silencer”, etc.). This scene is a perfect visual illustration of the extent Luka is willing to go to for Marinette’s sake. He’s willing to ‘take the fall’ for her when it comes to making her happy.

The guitar is an obvious symbol of Luka himself, given his penchant for the instrument. But what about the helmet?

This scene shows the answer. Luka is giving her protection and will continue to do so into the next episode (hence why the episode ends on this scene). At this time, he’s protecting her in an emotional way, literally shielding her from the rest of the world as he embraces her and lends a listening ear.

The episode concludes with a shot centered around Luka, and I think that’s something significant to note. Heart Hunter starts and ends with shots focused on someone who honestly wasn’t that instrumental to its plot. Why? Because Heart Hunter is only the first part of a two-parter finale, and these shots serve as foreshadowing for Luka’s importance in the second part.

I mentioned before that Luka may suspect Ladybug being Marinette, and this is the perfect place for the writers to tie that back into the storyline. Marinette has just been driven over the edge due her thinking she has failed as Ladybug, and Luka is offering to listen to her problems. Whether Marinette will choose to disclose her identity in the process of alleviating her anxiety is admittedly still uncertain. But given how the finale provides the perfect opportunity for this drama to go down (see my comments about the crew’s reception to the finale) I am thinking that Luka will be let it in on Marinette’s secret in the next episode.

This, along with the consideration that Luka has already wielded a miraculous, makes me think that Luka will hold a significant, protective role in the upcoming story: a tragic hero’s role. Luka’s altruistic characterization, as well as Heart Hunter’s unsettling imagery point towards the possibility that he’ll put himself in danger for Marinette/Ladybug’s sake.

My shot in the dark is that he’ll attempt to wield both the ladybug and cat miraculouses in order to defeat Hawkmoth and Mayura; who may attempt to use the miraculouses they’ve just stolen from Fu. Marinette has been shown to be able to handle using multiple miraculouses, but it’s also been explicitly stated that this is a dangerous practice that requires physical and mental fitness. I am not so sure if she meets the latter requirement at this point in time due to the events of Heart Breaker, so Luka may offer to help her out. And she may let him help her.

Even though Marinette was successful in using multiple miraculouses in “Kwami Buster”, we also saw how exhausting this was for her. I can’t even imagine what doing the same would do to Luka, especially if their battle against Hawkmoth/Mayura is prolonged (as they are always in finales). My guess is that Luka will suffer consequences similar to Emilie’s, going comatose as a result of misusing miraculouses. For the writers, this is the perfect hurricane of drama needed to stir up the fandom but not jeopardize their future seasons/the love square: have the secondary love interest find out Ladybug’s identity, and then remove him from the equation once and for all by having him make the ultimate, tragic sacrifice for Ladybug. After all, he has “nothing to lose”, right?

Again, this is not a Luka hate post, and I want to make that abundantly clear. I personally hope I’m reading too much into this and that I’m proven wrong in December. But how the writers have characterized Luka so far in the series and in Heart Breaker makes me really anxious. :(

Prayer circle for Marinette AND Luka.

[gwynethlandivar]

Understanding What It Feels Like Is Simpler Than It Seems

TW: mention of e*ting dis*rders 

From a very young age, I remember having body image issues. It all started when I was about 11 years old. This is when I started to gain more weight than I was supposed to for my age and my dad consistently reminded me how fat I was and how I needed to stop eating so much and lose weight. Between my dad’s criticism and my self-doubt, I started to compare myself with all the other girls around my age at school. Even though I wasn’t the only big girl in my class, I seemed to be one of the only girls that were most bothered by the fact that I was overweight. Since no one could completely relate to the way I felt, I started to isolate myself more than I already had been doing since I didn’t have a lot of friends, to begin with. 

At home, both of my parents worked a lot, so I barely got to see them, and when I did my dad continuously critiqued the way I looked which made me distance myself from him. At school, no one seemed to understand how I felt. 𝙄 𝙛𝙚𝙡𝙩 𝙖𝙡𝙤𝙣𝙚, 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙖𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙘𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙄 𝙬𝙚𝙣𝙩. Since I was alone for the majority of the time, when I drastically reduced the amount of food I ate, no one really noticed, so when I lost about 23 lbs in a month, 𝘯𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘥, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴. The positive reinforcement definitely fed into my idea that the thinner I get, the more people would like me, which caused me to drop another 20 lbs in that same year. 

After achieving my weight goal, my relationship with food did not improve, I was never satisfied. Since I never saw myself thin enough, I would have phases in which I would allow myself to eat more, in excess even, until I would realize that I gained too much weight again. This created a cycle in my teenage years in which I would let myself enjoy food for a period of time only to get extremely upset when the weight gain came, for which I forced myself to stop eating and even considered purging it a few times unsuccessfully, to then lose all the weight again.

While all this happened, I tried talking to my friends about what I was going through, but they seemed to judge me for my actions, or oversimplify my problems and just tell me to “eat more and not be dumb about it”. They would just tell me to get over it, that I should simply accept myself the way I looked and not change as if it was that easy. I wouldn’t say that I have completely recovered from this cycle, but now that I certainly have a better understanding of what I was going through and the basics of nutrition, after doing extensive research over the past years, I understand that my friends had no ill intent and they were genuinely trying to help me, but they were simply misinformed. They believed that if I just stopped comparing myself to other people and “just think of myself as beautiful”, it would fix everything when this is far from the truth. I don’t want more people to feel as misunderstood as I did back in the day, so my personal experience motivated me to explain the major causes that push someone to disordered eating and e.d’s so people around them can understand them and empathize with their loved ones so they have the confidence to speak up about their issues and receive the help they need or even prevent situations that lead to eating disorders. 

The are many reasons and factors that affect someone enough that it could lead them to disordered eating. According to many studies, it has been determined that the three main categories these factors are classified in are: environmental, psychological, and biological. A misconception that the general public has been led to believe is that the real and only cause of eating disorders is simply “bad parenting” or the media’s advertising of unrealistic slim figures. The reality is that different types of eating disorders come with a different factor that has been proven to be the causation of these. For example, for anorexia nervosa, some common factors seem to be genetics as 40% of this seems it could influence and improve the risk of development, as well as having a perfectionist and anxious personality, for which this becomes a way of regaining the sense of control in their lives.

Psychological and biological factors cannot be always easily changed as these involve their personality and their literal genetic material. It is still being researched, but there has been proven that there is a connection between one’s genetics and being more susceptible to developing an eating disorder, which has no solution. What can be modified with time, however, is one’s self-esteem, as well as anxious and perfectionist behavior. To improve one’s self-image, it is important to be surrounded by supportive people to remind them that their value does not depend on their image alone and therapy would be a great way of starting this process of new self-discovery. 

Parenting, depending on how it is done, seems to indeed have an effect on people’s possible development of eating disorders. It has been observed that parents that have family meals build a better relationship with food for their children as they can teach them to have a balanced meal with an appropriate amount. On the other hand, parents that diet around their children, involuntarily model these behaviors in which they limit their food to look a certain way. Overall, it has been observed that parents with more open communication tend to have better relationships with their children and therefore build their trust as well as notice if their eating behaviors drastically change, for which it is recommended to build one’s children trust so they feel safe enough to speak about the issues they might be going through without judging them since this will make them want to avoid any type of serious conversation with them.

Even though there are uncontrollable factors, such as severe childhood trauma, dysfunctional family dynamics, stressful life changes, or even childhood sexual abuse, there are some environmental factors that can be controlled to a certain extent such as peer pressure among friends and family to look a certain way. If children are taught from a young age that all bodies are valid and there was implemented a mentoring program in elementary and middle schools in which younger children could talk with an older one about the things that worry them, about their feelings and house circumstances, many situations could be avoided as they could be advised and guided as these are things older teens have most likely experienced one way or another, or if the situation requires it, report to an adult the possible abuse some children take and take action if the mentor believes the child does not live in a safe environment. Having someone to talk to without feeling like they are in the wrong or feeling judged, could save the lives of many children and young teenagers as it would encourage them to seek help from their mentors and they could involve adults and professionals if the circumstances require it.

If small changes are implemented slowly into one’s life, such as simply having dinner as a family, or avoiding any unnecessary criticism not only to someone’s friends, but to the people around them as well, implementing a mentoring program in schools could not be completely impossible to fathom and it would definitely have a positive impact on people who are more prone to developing eating disorders. We cannot change what is being broadcasted in the media, but if we start by simply spreading kindness, people are more likely to approach us with their concerns, and therefore obtain the help they need. If people took into consideration that there are other people more sensitive to certain topics were mindful when they spoke and shared with those who don’t understand why, that it is not as easy as simply eating more or loving yourself the way you are, that there are deeper issues behind these disorders, they could 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗼 𝗮 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲.

PS. here are pictures of what I looked like at 11 before, a few months after, and then a year after I lost weight without people questioning it.

[liskantope]

Some thoughts on BLM and our current unrest

[Content warning for death and violence and even sexual abuse (although that’s not part of this week’s issue) and, you know, discussion of a current topic that’s very upsetting for many people. I can’t guarantee that the opinion I express won’t be additionally upsetting although I’m hoping for an open-minded rather than strident tone here. Also, it turned out super long. And I didn’t even get around to the protest vs. rioting discourse!]

This post is long, and since Tumblr for some reason has done away with the light horizontal bars separating sections of writing (I can’t imagine why, and I wish they’d bring it back), I’ll adopt the style of Slate Star Codex and The Last Psychiatrist to mark different sections.

I.

(The following hypothetical situation is inspired by the crimes of Jerry Sandusky of Penn State and Larry Nassar of Michigan State.)

Suppose it becomes public knowledge that in many American universities there are officials working in athletics departments who are using their programs to gain access to children and teenagers for the purpose of sexually abusing them. Say it is discovered that this has been going on for decades at most of these universities, with the perpetrators using their privilege and power to keep the suspicions of the higher-up administrators on the downlow. This would of course become a dominating national news item and lead to a public conversation about how poorly structured the system must be at universities to allow for such despicable crimes to go on, how we as a society are putting people in power who care more about their power than about the basic safety of children and teenagers, and so on. If enough people felt like university administrations or state governments were refusing to take action towards dissolving these corrupt systems, or if they disagreed with the actions being taken, there might be full-scale protests or even riots along with the vigils that would take place in any case. I mean, I believe all of this is basically what happened when the Sandusky and Nassar situations broke out some years back.

Now suppose that in addition, when looking at all these horrific revelations from universities all around the country, it became noticeable that the victims of these sex crimes were disproportionately young people growing up in poverty; let’s say fully one third of the victims were growing up in households whose annual income was under $30,000. (I don’t recall the Sandusky case in great detail but something like that was probably true there to a more dramatic extent since he got access to his victims through a program designed for underprivileged children.) This makes the situation feel even more tragic -- don’t kids from low-income backgrounds suffer enough disadvantages already? These monsters that are protected by The System are adept at preying on the most vulnerable, and clearly this (hypothetical but altogether not unrealistic) phenomenon highlights the vulnerability of those who are not economically privileged.

Now in such a situation, class issues would definitely become at least a minor part of the discourse, but I have a hard time imagining that the entire main thrust of the public outrage would focus on classism, even if (and this is something I can’t imagine either!) the only cases being projected by the media to become common public knowledge, out of the whole series of university athletics sex crimes, were the ones where mainly poor kids and teenagers were targeted. In fact, I expect that if any media outlet tried to present the entire thing as being a class issue and implied that it affected only poor kids, there would be a lot of backlash especially on the grounds of this coming across as a big middle finger to the higher-income-background molestation victims. I just don’t see it happening. Primarily, the outrage would be centered on the fact that university administrations allow high-ranking people in their athletics departments get away with despicable violations of young people for decades. The fact that a disproportionately high number of those young people are from underprivileged backgrounds would be treated as sort of a secondary issue, if properly noticed by the broader public at all.

So, if you’ve read this far you probably see where I’m going with this. And I know that the above hypothetical scenario furnishes nowhere near a perfect analogy to what has people riled up right now. But why is it that in my hypothetical nightmare crime scenario, the prevalence of the crime itself (rather than which demographic is disproportionately on the receiving end) is what constitutes the outrage, whereas in the real-life scenario of numerous documented instances of police brutality and murder, the entire thrust of the public outrage is centered on the notion that this is all about racism, that yeah there must be something seriously amiss in a system that lets cops get away with brutal violence towards innocent civilians but pretty much every single statement expressing that sentiment will frame it in terms of racism while the existence white victims of police brutality is essentially never even acknowledged?

From what I can see, in this age where everyday happenings can easily be recorded by random bystanders and the recordings can easily become accessible to the public, we are seeing evidence that a number of American cops are way, way too liberal with lethal violence, either through direct training or through a tendency towards paranoia of how dangerous a civilian under arrest might be or through psychopathic tendencies that attract certain kinds of people to a profession where brutally violent behavior is too easily excused in the courts after the fact. I don’t know to what degree these relatively few pieces of documented footage reflect a large part of the police force rather than just “a few bad apples”, but on some level it doesn’t matter -- an event like the murder of George Floyd should not be tolerated and the fact that many such instances are happening every year seems unacceptable. This is true regardless of whether Floyd’s race actually played any significant part in Derek Chauvin’s decision to apply very excessive force. Then there are statistics to reckon with -- I don’t have the skillset that some have for knowing where to look up data and rationally analyzing it, but to my understanding it’s quite unambiguous that American law enforcement officers kill a lot more people than the police forces of most other countries, and this would seem to point to a serious problem. I have generally heard that in absolute terms, in fact more white men are killed this way than black men, but relative to the ratio of white people to black people, black men are killed disproportionately often. Of course there seems to be no room whatsoever for discussion of any possible reason this could be aside from purely racist motives on the parts of the cops, which is certainly one of my issues with the whole topic, but let’s set that aside for the moment and assume for the sake of argument that this disparity is entirely attributable to anti-black racism. Even with this assumption, does it make sense to present the entire issue of police brutality as a purely racial one?

Here is another analogy to something that is not only non-hypothetical but is an even bigger current situation: the pandemic. It’s frequently been remarked on that Covid19 has been killing at a significantly higher rate among racial minorities. And yet the broader framing of the crisis we’re in hasn’t been that it’s an African-American issue or that every failure of government officials to respond effectively is primarily an instantiation of racism. The racial component of this is treated secondarily, in fact with far less emphasis than the direct crisis which affects everyone in the country even if not in equal measures.

With the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Abery, as with every other story of a cop killing of a black person that goes viral, it’s not only that the narrative frames the race component as the primary issue -- the race component is framed as the only issue. This is done in such an absolute and unquestioning manner that I’m still a little taken aback whenever I see each new “We denounce racism!” announcement from almost every company whose mailing system I’m in: my Unitarian Universalist organization, the university I work for, Lyft, Airbnb, etc., not that any of them actually suggest a plan of action beyond donating to Black Lives Matter and other related organizations.

I think I can answer my own questions about why the narrative is coming out this way. Some areas of social justice enjoy a much more prestigious position in America than others do, and racism seems to dominate all the rest. (I’ve come to see this as a very American thing, no doubt due to the exceptionally dramatic nature of my country’s struggles against racial oppression, although it’s probably the case in Canada as well and maybe to a comparable extent in other Anglophone countries.) There is no surer way to make an issue more hot-button than by framing it as a racial issue, except in the unusual case (as in my Covid example) that the issue is actually of urgent and immediate concern to all citizens. Opposition to something like police brutality could have some momentum on its own, but as motivation for activism it has nowhere near the mighty strength in our culture that anti-racism does. In the hypothetical scenario about child abuse at universities, we have one type of social injustice, economic inequality, which has mostly been relegated to the background in the recent history of social activism (yes, Bernie Sanders has had a significant following, but my impression is that even many of his most diehard supporters get more passionate about racial inequality than economic inequality, at least when it comes to fiscal issues other than health care reform). Whereas child molestation is condemned in the strongest terms by our society perhaps even more universally than racism is (even though this universality makes it less of a cause for energetic activism -- I never hear anyone complain that “we live in a molestation culture” or anything like that). So, issues viewed as racial have far more memetic endurance than non-racial issues or even the exact same fundamental issues when not viewed from a racial angle.

Or, here is another way that I’ve considered looking at it: because police violence happens disproportionately to African-Americans, police violence could be considered to be “an African-American issue”, and since anti-racism activism is already quite a strong force in modern American culture, the issue of police brutality will naturally find an outlet to the public through the lens of African-American issues. Therefore, this is the only angle from which most of us will ever see it.

Of course the obvious thing that someone would surely point out here is that pretty much all of the examples of police brutality we’ve been seeing for years have white people victimizing black people (George Zimmerman did not present to me as white from the moment I first glanced at him, and by many definitions he is a PoC, but I guess he’s close enough to white that people were able to ignore this). Therefore it seems logical to assume that anti-black racism is the only lens to view these events through. Well, it would be logical except that we should all be able to think critically enough to realize that there are probably tons of videos out there of innocent white people being victimized by cops but those aren’t the ones that go viral. In fact, videos of black people being victimized by non-white cops probably also don’t get very far in the memosphere* -- it’s occurred to me that perhaps if the Asian policeman on the scene had been the one in the center of the frame pinning Floyd to the ground, this atrocity might never have become public knowledge!

(*Did I just make up that term? Google isn’t showing anything.)

And honestly, for this reason, I can’t help feeling particularly bad right now for loved ones of nonblack people who were victims of such crimes while being treated as if their cases didn’t exist.

This is not me trying to covertly imply support for “All Lives Matter” here. I’ve never felt the slightest bit of attraction to that counter-hashtag, which has always struck me as subtly obnoxious in implying that Black Lives Matter’s name is equivalent to saying “only black lives matter”, which of course BLM is not saying. Black lives do matter and in many ways still constantly get devalued and it is good that there’s an activist group out there whose main purpose is to stand up for them. But my discussion above does point to a specific issue -- probably the biggest of two or three issues -- I have with BLM. It would be one thing to say, “Police brutality can be considered a black issue since it affects black people disproportionately, so we should form a Black Lives Matter group and include it as one of the things we want to fight against.” Instead, BLM’s rhetoric strongly implies, “Police brutality is entirely a black issue and we’ll round off the entirety of it to racism and make opposition to it our main plank”. (Compare, from an secularist activist group, “Anti-gay bigotry often arises from fundamentalist religion and the justification for anti-gay-rights legislation threatens separation of church and state; therefore we should consider it an atheist/secularist issue and place gay rights issues among our concerns” vs. “Anti-gay bigotry and legislation is simply a manifestation of religion’s attempt to dominate non-religion so we should make opposition to it our main plank and not acknowledge or stand up for gay Christians.” Again, not a perfect analogy, but I hope it shows where I’m coming from.)

II.

I already wrote a post exactly four years ago describing and criticizing what I called “protest culture”. My point in linking to it here is not to revisit the discussion about Bernie Sanders or even the question of protesters’ deep-down motives but to endorse the following paragraph describing the kind of protest activism I felt (and still feel) could be helpful:

I definitely think there’s an important place in our culture for organized protest.  Sometimes we ordinary citizens need to show our dissatisfaction to the higher-ups in a way that they are forced to notice and not ignore.  But I strongly prefer protests that express dissent from a particular action, propose a concrete solution, and include many people who are able to make nuanced arguments in favor of this solution.  If there is no good consensus as to a serious solution, then I’ll settle for some particular action that is being protested against.  For instance, I would have proudly joined the marches against the war in Vietnam had I been around for it, and would have joined the marches against the war in Iraq had I been a little older at the time.  I would consider joining protests against, for instance, particular amendments I feel strongly about.  I did not, on the other hand, feel comfortable with the “99 percent” movement.  What was it expressing a sentiment against, exactly, apart from the very vague notion that a few people at the top screw things over for the rest of us?  (And by the way, I suspect that demonizing the entire top 1% was too heavy-handed; it’s probably only some in the top .01% who have been doing the main damage.)  There seemed to be little organization to this movement, and little common purpose except “let’s protest for the cause of being vaguely left-wing!”  The best argument I remember hearing in its favor was when a student explained to me the main strategy behind the movement: they would essentially fight guerilla-style by occupying large areas for a very long amount of time in a way that the top politicians couldn’t ignore, never, ever giving it up until things change in Washington.  But I was still pretty sure that at some point, the movement would have to die down, and was willing to bet that this would happen before anything changed in Washington.

I’ve never felt as fervently as I do now that too many law enforcement officers in the US are out of control and some kind of reform needs to be done (or at least strongly considered, in a serious conversation) to the system so that it can be effective in keeping them in check and outlawing certain forms of excessive force. There’s a lot I don’t understand about the demands and risks involved in law enforcement, but I really can’t imagine how there’s any possible excuse for what Officer Chauvin did, or for his colleagues who stood by and watched him do it. One reason I’m bringing up everything I did in the section above is that a massive protest movement based entirely on opposing racism seems to me like the exact wrong way to bring about the kind of reform we need, in part because it fails to recognize that the link from the bare facts of these events to possible racist motives is far less direct than the link to the overpowered nature of American law enforcement.

What is a campaign centered on “Be less racist!” possibly going to accomplish? Yelling at the police to be less racist isn’t going to change the behavior of individual cops who might be subconsciously racist but don’t realize it, many of whom are likely to react with defensiveness (because racism on an abstract level is sufficiently shamed in modern western culture that nobody likes to admit to themselves that they’re being racist). It’s even less likely to change the behavior of individual cops who are maliciously racist. It’s not going to change the policies set in place for law enforcement when, in this day and age, it would be highly illegal and unconstitutional to have explicitly racist policies in the first place. (It can be argued that some of these policies are a part of systemic racism, but then in my opinion the activist movement should focus on attacking those specific policies.)

In fact, I can’t think of any situation, however race-related, where I expect it helps to yell “Be less racist!” except for when (1) you are protesting against a particular law which discriminates against people of a certain (minority) race; or (2) you are denouncing a particular candidate or person in power who has explicitly endorsed racism in public or in private. Both of these scenarios are highly rare in 2020. Maybe there are other neighboring scenarios I’m not thinking of at the moment, but I’m pretty sure our current scenario isn’t one of them.

I imagine that if we set race aside for a moment and focus on police reform, by waiting for background information on the Floyd case to come out and piecing together what led to this injustice and pinpointing which factors led to it, a difference could be made. I’m not saying that this should all be done dispassionately, and in fact acting with passion and emotional force is crucial. And I’m not saying that in the wake of such an obvious murder everyone should just stay quiet until more facts come out. It makes sense to cry out in pain and anger as an immediate reaction, and I’m not going to criticize anyone for doing this, especially someone who feels closer to the tragedy (yes, including through shared racial background) than I do. But letting this get immediately drowned in a rampage against perceived racism and only that, against a system that has shown time and time again that it clearly doesn’t think itself racist at all and perhaps (in at least most of its components) has no deliberate intention of being, doesn’t seem likely to produce anything but further acrimony and polarization.

[TL;DR for these last two sections: it would seem like a more effective response to focus on police brutality and overpowered-ness as the main issue rather than making it all about race.]

III.

I forced myself to watch as much of the video of George Floyd’s final hours and minutes as I could. I didn’t actually succeed in finding the full video, and maybe that’s for the best, because what I did see chilled me to the bone and distressed me more than almost any real-life footage I’ve ever seen. I’m not as eloquent as some at putting my raw emotions in writing and don’t know the words to describe how twisted up it made me feel to “witness” an obvious murder of a man whose greatest “crime” was resisting getting pushed into a police car, and to watch him dying one of the most undignified deaths I can imagine ever being forced on anyone. I felt momentarily physically ill and wanted to cry.

Others in my orbit -- mostly white people; my social bubbles have always been disproportionately white and Asian and certainly nonblack -- have expressed a similar emotional reaction to mine except with the added factor of disgust at the obvious racism present. This was just simply not part of my immediate emotional reaction. On a cognitive level I am aware that there clearly has to be some degree of anti-black racism in law enforcement, even independent of classism and other factors, and that could be of some relevance in any individual case (although it would seem very tricky to assess how much). But this awareness doesn’t have time to kick in when I open a video or news story that’s already been presented to me as “another black man killed by racist cop” which reminds me that this is embedded in a particular media narrative and makes me feel instinctively on guard against letting my perceptions be colored by it.

Black people seeing these apparently all feel on the level of deep, fundamental knowledge that this happened to Floyd because he was black and that it’s a fate they have to constantly fear happening to themselves, or at least that’s what the white people around me are constantly claiming. I feel epistemically helpless when it comes to knowing what the “average” (rather than one of those on the forefront of racial activism) African-American’s take on this is, or how fearful the “average” African-American is of the police on a daily basis as compared to a white person’s, especially prior to the age when videos of police abuse started going viral.

But I’m certain that a significant part of the African-American community is right now in a deep pain that I can’t really imagine, because I don’t quite know how it feels to perceive one horrible tragedy as indicative of something that is done to attack a specific minority that I belong to.

I expect that some of them learn about an incident like this, and an incident like the one with Ahmoud Arbery, and feel on the level of social intuition (I think I’ve sometimes called this “social sense”), developed from a web of personal experiences, that these individual terrible choices clearly had a lot to do with the victims being black. I would be a hypocrite to fault someone for reaching a strong conviction based on this kind of social intuition, because I do it myself all the time -- in fact, I often express such conclusions on this blog. I feel less qualified to rely on this social intuition and my own experience when it comes to race issues, but I invoke it all the time on this blog when I talk about male-female dynamics in order to argue on controversial position on gender relations, for instance, because I do have lifelong ample experience with men and women interacting.

If many black people in America have a deep instinctual feeling for the racial aspect of many of these attacks, then I do acknowledge that a lot of that is probably coming from somewhere other than media narratives. It might come from everyday interactions with police, observing that they are stopped and treated hostilely by the police than their white friends seem to be, or who knows what else. And those voices with their explanations need to be at least listened to. I wish it were easier to hear them through all the tribalistic noise and confusion.

So trying to better understand all this is part of my struggle at the moment. This post might not age well -- I wouldn’t be surprised if I view some of my turns of phrase in this section of it with some embarrassment even sometime in the near future -- but I need to commit myself to trying.

Anyway, I guess all of this is to say that my lengthy arguments above aren’t meant to claim that the instances of police brutality we’ve been seeing aren’t related in some way to racism, but that reflexively framing them in terms of racism seems guaranteed to bring only more pain to an already painful situation.

[amillioninprizes]

A Tale of Two P.I.s: How Stumptown Succeeded Where Veronica Mars Failed

A hardboiled female private eye with a drinking problem, a litany of temporary sexual partners, and trauma resulting from her romantic soulmate dying in an explosion that’s partially her fault solves mysteries.

This could describe either the freshman ABC show Stumptown, starring Cobie Smulders as military veteran Dex Parios, or Rob Thomas’s intended vision for an adult Veronica Mars in the wake of the recent S4 that aired on Hulu. Many VM fans turned to the former after the supreme disappointment that was S4 in order to get their kickass lady detective fix; a common refrain that I’ve seen is that Stumptown is the show that adult Veronica Mars should have been. Notably, Stumptown was recently renewed for a second season, while Hulu has declined to order more seasons of Veronica Mars. Now that the pain of VM S4 is less fresh, I recently watched the first season of Stumptown to see if it was worth the hype. Here are the reasons why I think that Stumptown has been renewed for a second season while Veronica Mars has, much like Susan Knight, been left dead in the water:

Dex is a competent detective

Like, I shouldn’t even have to say this, but: if you’re going to make a show about a private investigator, that character should be able to crack cases. Rather infamously, Veronica did not solve any mysteries in VM S4: Keith solved the bomber mystery, Logan solved the congressman blackmail mystery, and Vinnie solved the missing ring mystery. Veronica just kind of floated around being a mean party girl.

Meanwhile Dex, despite being less experienced as a detective, uses her smarts and background as a military interrogator to solve the mystery of the week. She notably utilizes disguises and undercover work, two former features of Veronica’s investigating that were missing in S4. The show also makes a decent attempt to portray the realities of her having to obtain a license to be a PI and work legally, including an internship and dealing with consumer complaints. Contrast this with the proposed future seasons of VM as a traveling detective--something that would be nigh impossible giving licensing requirements.

I think the contrast between the two’s abilities can best be seen in their opening scenes of the season: Dex, at the casino, is able to suss out a married dude hitting on her pretty quickly, comprehensively listing his tells. Meanwhile, Veronica’s first scene in S4 has her randomly smashing a client’s belongings to find hidden cameras and then unprofessionally overcharging her. If that’s how she treats clients, it’s no wonder that Mars Investigations is financially struggling at the beginning of S4.

Stumptown also does a better job than VM S4 of showing why the protagonist chooses to be a detective. For Dex, it gives her stability and a sense of purpose that had been lacking since her return from Afghanistan. On the other hand, Veronica is shown to be somewhat dissatisfied with her life in S4, but it’s never explicitly addressed why; it’s also not examined why she remains in Neptune as a detective when she could use her Ivy League law degree at any time and live anywhere, especially when she appears to no longer have a talent for being a detective. Logan briefly broaches the subject in one scene, but it’s dropped just like every other VM plot thread.

Dex is a marshmallow

As has been covered extensively elsewhere (including the pages of this very blog), probably the largest issue that people had with S4 of Veronica Mars outside of Logan’s death was Veronica’s characterization. Rob Thomas said in interviews that he told the writers this season to write Veronica like a porcupine; the end result was a portrayal that dialed all of Veronica’s negative traits to 11, added new ones, and completely removed the softer aspects of her character that made her such a compelling and complex protagonist. There was an attempt to give Veronica an emotional connection to the bomber mystery via the character Matty, but for most viewers it didn’t resonate due the flat affect of both actresses and poor writing. It was hard to feel like Matty was a sympathetic underdog when she had a wealthy mother ready to whisk her away to Paris for Spring Break. Veronica also doesn’t appear to have retained her former drive for justice; she mostly seems interested in collecting a paycheck (and if that’s the case I again ask why she isn’t using her Columbia law degree). She also weaponizes her white womanhood against a Latino teenager. What a great role model!

Contrast this with the also outwardly caustic Dex, who initially IS only in it for the paycheck. First off, even that’s somewhat noble in that she needs to take care of her adult brother with Down’s syndrome. Yet she quickly finds her sense of justice overcoming her desire to make bank. We see this early in the season when she turns against the PI she is shadowing in order to help a young mother obtain custody of her child from her wealthy, abusive ex-husband. This is also seen when she brokers a deal to protect the privacy of the biological child of a political candidate she’s been hired to find dirt on.

Dex also relies heavily on her support system--namely her brother Ansel, best friend Gray, food truck purveyor Tookie, and even police detective Hoffman. She resists her brother moving out because she’d be lonely without him, and her entire found family are instrumental in helping her with her cases. This isn’t necessarily different from Veronica per se, although Veronica treated her loved ones cruelly in S4. Additionally, Rob Thomas wanted to continue the show without them, despite how heavily Veronica relied on them both to help her with cases as well as emotionally.

Stumptown also shows that even if Dex hasn’t fully processed her trauma, she is capable of growing. She makes nice with her high school enemy after clearing her daughter of suspected drug dealing. Contrast this with Veronica, who punched her high school nemesis at her high school reunion (and for the five millionth time, no one wanted to see that) and was shown to have regressed as an adult to be more immature at age 35 than she was at 17. That didn’t make her seem more cool or noir, just sad.

Also, Dex actually manages to brush her hair. (But srsly I need to know how they get her hair to do that great wavy thing).

Dex’s trauma is thoughtfully addressed

As a corollary to the above point: there was obviously Something Wrong with Veronica in S4, but the show didn’t bother to explain what had transpired between the end of the second book and S4 to explain her seeming personality transplant; as a fellow fan has said, the show pretended to deal with her trauma but glossed over it in reality. For example, in addition to depicting her as being depressed and cruel to her loved ones, she is shown drinking heavily and doing drugs, both of which are out of character for her. Yet the show seems to glamorize it; none of her loved ones express any concern about this behavior and there are no references made to her alcoholic mother, whose actions negatively affected her growing up to the extent that Veronica had previously expressed wanting to avoid becoming like her. But despite the fact that she was obviously struggling with something, Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell stated that they needed to kill Logan because Veronica was somehow not traumatized enough. Apparently, putting Logan’s ring on her finger just magically erased her previous issues (unrealistic and harmful messaging to trauma survivors), and he needed to die because women can only be interesting if they’re damaged (misogynistic). Adding insult to injury was Rob Thomas’s assertion that Logan’s memory wouldn’t play much of a part of the show going forward because it would be too depressing and he needed Veronica to not be consumed with thoughts of him while engaging in “strange sex”, whatever that means. Yeah Rob, it would def be realistic for Veronica to just get over the fact that her husband and love of her life died of a bomb due to her oversight in a year and then continue on her merry way without any support from her loved ones!

Stumptown, however, explicitly connects Dex’s self destructive behavior with her past trauma: in the very first episode Dex is shown frantically texting contacts for a sexual hookup in the midst of a PTSD episode. The most powerful scene of the entire season in my opinion is one where, after experiencing a flashback to her time as an interrogator in Afghanistan, she goes on a bender at home and trashes her house to the soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” (As an aside, I would also like to point out that Stumptown deftly portrays the trauma and grey morality associated with military service, which could have been an amazing (and noir!) storyline for naval intelligence officer Logan in future seasons of VM if Rob Thomas wasn’t such a dimwit).

Additionally, the death of her not quite-fiancé Benny hangs over her, even though the event took place twelve years prior to the start of the series. Even before Benny is introduced onscreen in flashbacks in the penultimate episode of S1, the show does a good job of portraying just how much he and their relationship meant to Dex. The season culminates in Dex finding out that his death in an explosion in Afghanistan was not in fact her fault, as she had previously assumed. Interestingly, the show’s writers considered revealing that Benny had faked his death, but the head writer later stated in an interview that doing so would invalidate the trauma Dex had experienced for 12 years and would ultimately be cruel. While on a shallow level I wouldn’t have minded them bringing Benny back since the actor who played him was super attractive and had great chemistry with Cobie Smulders, the decision the writers made instead makes more sense for the world they have built and is far more thoughtful: it allows Dex to obtain a sense of closure and growth while respecting her grief.

Women over the age of 35 aren’t Satan

A criticism of VM since it originally aired is that the show generally portrays female characters, especially mothers and other women over a certain age, in a negative light (and Rob Thomas has been defensive about it just as long). The books partially rectified this by introducing the characters of Petra Landros, the former model turned owner of the Neptune Grand, and Marcia Langdon, the new Balboa County sheriff with a murky past. Marcia was brought back for S4, but considerably dumbed down and less complex than in the books (and there’s definitely something to be said that the first time a BIPOC woman is shown in a position of power on screen in VM that her character is diminished).

Stumptown, on the other hand, has two women as older female mentors/nemeses in positions of power: Sue Lynn, the matriarch of the local Native American tribe, and Lieutenant Cosgrove of the Portland PD. Both have complicated relationships with Dex: Sue Lynn ended Dex’s relationship with Benny, her son, yet repeatedly seeks her out for help with matters on the reservation. Lieutenant Cosgrove often finds herself at odds with Dex while the latter is attempting to solve a case, though she also encourages her to legally obtain her PI license. It shouldn’t be revolutionary to have complex older female characters as supporting cast on a female-centered show in 2020, but after 15 years of misogyny from VM it certainly feels refreshing.

Where Stumptown falls short

All of this is not to say that Stumptown is flawless. Despite my praise for including older female characters above, the show is still pretty dude heavy, especially Dex’s inner circle. The mysteries of the week are of fairly average quality, and several were reminiscent of some seen in VM’s original run--the season even ends with a “Who’s at the door?” gambit. I also didn’t love the storyline where Grey’s girlfriend gets Dex drunk and tricks her into thinking they had slept together in order to drive Grey and Dex apart--that felt like something out of the mind of Rob Thomas. It also bears mentioning that in the context of current events the generally positive portrayal of the police department and Dex’s close relationship with them should bear more scrutiny. And while the show is well done overall, it never quite reaches the emotional resonance of original flavor VM (but then, neither did VM S4).

Despite those quibbles, I think it’s a good show overall. I felt like as the season progressed the creative team figured out what worked and the cast seemed to gel together. I love the classic rock soundtrack (another area where VM S4 failed, given that it abandoned VM’s signature indie soundtrack for generic pop music), which in conjunction with Dex’s wardrobe gives the show a fun retro feel. By the end of the season I was firmly won over, and I look forward to S2. Hopefully the writers of Stumptown paid attention to the backlash to VM S4 as a lesson in what not to do going forward.

[weebuibu]

Understanding a SIMP

If you have been in around social media you might have come across the word “Simp”. According to the definition of Wikipedia “A simp is a man who foolishly overvalues and defers to a woman, putting her on a pedestal”.

But nowadays, internet has been using this word by shaming men for being decent, and nice. Which is not fair, it has become a toxic word! Teenagers throw this word for anyone who they think are nice to them. Not just that, the immature guys are now under the impression that “females don’t like nice guys”. Which is very stupid but they’re teenagers, they believe anything! 

Here, I understand that this word has been misused in a lot of ways. You can’t just label a guy for being nice. But the real simps are in fact very problematic.

Although, it's mostly used for males but I’m not going to lie, there are awful amount of female simps as well. We apparently just don't talk about it. 

Basically, chasing an uninterested person, getting heart broken, still not giving up. and the only reason they do is because of the unrealistic expectation of getting a reward in the form of their attention. and when they don’t get it, they blame themselves for not simping enough. 

Putting a person in the greatest position and treating them like a god/goddess to a level that they don't need to respect you anymore is what called extreme simping. 

If you want to identify an extreme simp here’s what they do. They’ll be crying over the same person every night until they fall asleep, they follow them religiously, even when they know they’re committed. They Put emotional Instagram posts like “love is pain”,” love Hurts” etc. They become overly emotional and protective about someone who’s never spoken to them. 

These are the people who'll do anything, go to any extent just to please them and then usually ends up getting friend zoned. 

Here's a difference between a simp and a normal human, a simp when they find someone slightly attractive, they’ll will turn their entire focus on them and ignore their other priorities. A non simp will never ignore their other duties and interests they will not be cancelling important things just for a person, or in other words, they'll never completely prioritize one person over everything. 

A simp doesn't understand that the only reason they're not getting laid, is because of their lack of personality. All they need to do is to work on their microscopic level of self-esteem and respect. 

I’m not trying to be rude or anything, but I think you are simp too! Or you have been in that place at least once in your entire life. In fact, I know I have been a simp as well. An important point to note here is that simping is not black and white, it’s a spectrum. You maybe a little simp for some people sometimes, or maybe you could be an extreme case. I believe, everyone has had their own simp moments, at least once maybe as a high schooler. If not? Then I think you’re really a gem of our society, and I’m proud of you!

[kendrixtermina]

The "waifu bait" criticism of Edelgard is so dumb given that most of the cast is technically waifu/husbando bait in one way or another, they're all meant to appeal to players as romance options, and she's the only one getting flack for it. (Well, not the only one, there were some people giving Dimitri shit too for being "wish fullfillment for stupid teenage girls who think they can fix a man," but I see the complaint most often with Edelgard.)

Yeah. I mean, you can boink Rhea and Jeritza!

It’s not like satelite love interests aren’t a plague onto anime and fiction in general, but I only ever hear this “you only like them because they’re waifu/bishie” thing directed at characters who very much DO have personality, unique compelling features and plot relevance. 

I’ve also seen this thrown at, say, Evangelion’s Miss Ayanami, as if all the fascinating sci-fi concept stuff and compelling narrative about finding your own worth and making a connection in a cruel lonely world wasn’t there - and at least we do see her through a “main character’s love interest” sorta lens. (I was thinking about how Byleth is actually quite similar, except more proactive with more of a dorky side, and less philosophical/reflective, but because Byleth is the MC we come off with a fairly different impression. )

Meanwhile with Edelgard they really didn’t pull any punches, the whole story is set in motion and dominated by her active choices, most the unique designs/outfits she gets are geared to look elegant/powerful.  (Apart from the usual ‘individually wrapped boob armor would break your sternum’ thing but you’d really have to know physics for that/ could be fixed easily by making the fit more sweater-like), she has a specific discernable philosophy and makes impactful choices, that can genuinely be agreed or disagreed with.

You can’t swag her into your way of thinking - you can only ally with her under the presupposition that you already actively agree. (See all the people complaining that you cant “criticise her more”, expecting her to be like Dimitri basically even though they are exact opposites. You can only get on her route by making two deliberate choices. I mean they wrote this with your first playthrough in mind, in-universe you’re not there because you wanna complete all aroutes but because you actively chose to join her after she spent a year unsubtly trying to recruit you to her cause)

You don’t talk Claude out of his tactics either. (and forcing it all into this comparision often leads ppl to overlook that he has ambiguities or character development at all, maybe he isn’t vilified but he gets simplified and therefore wronged just as much in the end. They’re not all Dimitri. The whole point of having three or four different potential deuteragonists to choose from is that they’re different)… heck, even if you look at Dimitri, you only get him back to what he really wanted to do back in part I before his black-and-white thinking and exaggerated sense of duty got the better of him. 

With all three, joining them eventually just enables them to get closer to their actual vision. Back when you meet her in Remire, Edelgard outright tells you that “with your power on my side, we could courttail the slitherer’s atrocities much more efficiently”. You don’t change her mind at all; You enable her to use “Plan A”. Same with Claude, who otherwise plains much more defensively both because he has less support and because he’s more jaded. And Dimitri essentially pulls a Sayaka, ie being unable to live up to his own unrealistic standards drive him to lose all hope and become the very opposite of the hero he wanted to be, but you do help him get back to that, or to a more balanced mature understanding of that. 

The best proof of that is that the popularity poll numbers actually went down after the release, ie a lot of ppl who liked her just bc they liked her design were turned off that there’s a specific personality there that isn’t necessarily their type/ a MO they don’t necessarily agree with. Or all those peeps complaining that the S-support was too understated for them. Claude got that too - They’re just not the most open/expressive people in the world, one would think that after playing through their routes you would know and understand that. Whereas Dimitri has been super emotional from day one (which is both his greatest strength and greatest weakness), so it figures that he’d be more conventionally romantic. 

- Hardly things that would happen if she were written to be “blandly pleasant”.  I mean generally speaking she’s not the best as showing her feelings and when she does she’s often pretty blunt at it even with her closest friends (El: ”Hubert! I order you to tell me what it is you’re not telling me!” Hubert: [elegantly weasels out of answering] El: [after he’s left the room] I’m worried about him tho. )

Seems senseless to claim that she’s blandly pleasant when she’s absolutely gotten a love-it-or-hate-it-marmite-reaction all across the board. It also seems to go along with the implicit idea that everyone who likes her is heterosexual boys. I’m neither, and it’s not like heterosexual boys aren’t ever interested in “plot” or “writing” I mean geez. Though I would resist the temptation to fully ascribe it to things like that. 

To an extent it’s simply confusion. “How can they like this thing that obviously sucks? Must be an ulterior motive”, whereas in reality ppl who like her have probably parsed what happened here differently to begin with (It depends greatly on how powerful you concluded Rhea was, ie, wether what Edelgard is doing is a conquest or a revolt. She certainly sees it as a revolt. Even today in the modern day most of us see revolts as legitimate, or at least, if they get overly destructive, as a fault of the bad government. Heck, there are many on this very site who would label all revolts legit by default (”eat the rich”, the more ‘original sin-like’ variants of privilege theory) which is further than I would go )

There certainly are a bunch of ‘cute’ scenes post holy-tomb scene and under the assumption that Edelgard is this my-way-or-the-highway type of person that many have her pegged as I can see how they might think that it “makes no sense” but that’s really down to wanting her not tp step outside of that idea they have of her. I mean even supervillains have silly everyday situations. Bin Laden loved Disney Movies, Hitler loved his dogs. By itself that has nothing to do with morality or likeability. It’s just being human. Supervillains blush, not because they’re not villains, but because they have blood vessels in their faces. It’s only logical that once you get close to someone and get them to trust you, you get to see more of their silly or vulnerable sides. It’s the same with Rhea. (except that the same people argue that having personable vulnerable sides at all makes Rhea good s of course it causes some cognitive dissonance when Edelgard also has them. I’ve yet to see ppl calling “waifuism” on Rhea (whom I would consider a full-fledged villain), and they shouldn’t - it’s characterization.) Same with ppl calling Edelgard a “manchild” for liking stuffed animals and sweets. She’s actually very mature and adult for her age, having some interests that aren’t super high-minded is just realistic and if you looked at her as a full 3D person who can have more than one trait you’d see that. 

This also goes with that tendency of holding up AM as the gold standard complaining about the lack of AM-like plot that they completely miss the different but equally compelling character arcs in VW and CF. That’s not a lack of arc, that IS the arc, it’s just a different arc: We get to see this tough, in-control high-minded character who’d completely given up on the normal life she wanted so much and resigned herself to never being understood finding out that she is very much still capable of normalcy and humanity and finding friendship and love and I think that’s beautiful. It’s my jam. 

And it’s meaningful precisely because it’s a change from only seeing the tough leader guise otherwise. Complaining about that is like complaining about getting to see Claude’s more wistful, dreamy, benevolent, not-entirely self-interest side in VW or claiming that the writing would be better if he were just a straight-up selfish trickster. Actually, if you removed their heroic traits you’d end up with a lot more generic characters. You’d simply get every wild card trickster ever, and every “Nietzschean” villain ever.  It’s the fact that they’re unconventional heroes that makes Claude and Edelgard so unique, compelling and interesting. If you like conventional heroes, Dimitri is right here. Your basic heroic fantasy ‘rightful king returns/ soft peace loving hero’, plus your basic jrpg guilt-ridden angsty protagonist. I mean there’s good reason that these character archetypes are popular. Plus he’s especially well-executed and recontextualized by the contrast to the others, but there he is, enjoy him! We’re not stopping you. 

It’s really Seteth who came up short arc wise. You could have given him an arc, the potential was there, he essentially transistions from protecting himself and his family to taking on his family’s heroic quest and rising up to that, but he doesn’t get like, a scene reflecting on that. Or you could’ve sent them on some mission to actually curb some corrupt cardinals etc, shown them actually reforming the church and realizing that it wasn’t all perfect, after all he very much knows that Rhea herself wasn’t all perfect. 

For all that much of media is obsessed with making characters “hot”, the truth is that if people like them for any reason, they will find them hot anyways, regardless of whether that was the intention. (unless the people in question are aroace, or the character is a literal, realistic prepubescent child)

You don’t have to “make”  a character hot for ppl to find them so.