#get out of here and go learn some basic human empathy

[famewolf]

https://www.tumblr.com/famewolf/717956178790039552 the argument “you’re trans friends / jewish friends etc etc wont trust you” is so silly like i’ve never even met a trans or jewish person why does everyone assume we have them as friends :/

I'm baffled. The answer is simply, 'not everything ever said is about you'. No one assumed anything, but you sure did assume that this post was about you, despite you saying to yourself 'hey, I don't relate to this, why is this about me? Why are people talking about me?' This comment was towards "allies" who still put their friends and loved ones at risk because they lack basic fortitude. If you aren't friends with folks different from you, if you lack the ability to accept or understand people different from you, then I hope that one day you gain Empathy as an ability. Life without it is barely life at all.

[max1461]

This has mostly disappeared from my corner of the internet over the last few years, but it used to be the case that every once in a while some story would go around about a corporation or a government doing some fucked up shit in pursuit of their self-interest, and people in the comments and reblogs would act utterly aghast that said government or corporation would do such a thing.

This was always baffling to me, and I have only ever been able to interpret it as a sign of profound naivety. Of course, I too think it is awful, sad, and unjust when people are exploited, killed, abused or so on by the institutions of our society. But "aghastness" is not synonymous with these things, to be aghast is to be (or present yourself as) in some sense surprised. And surprise is wholly unwarranted here.

I suppose this is part of my worldview that feels very fundamental, it feels deeply obvious, and I struggle to figure out how to talk productively with people who did not get the memo: exploitation and abuse of others in pursuit of self-interest is in some sense the natural behavior of agents in any kind of competitive context. It requires a lot of effort and coordination to mitigate this behavior. We do not feel "aghast" when someone is bitten by a dog. Dogs bite people, idiot! And corporations exploit their workers, lie, cheat, and steal, unless you work very hard to prevent them from doing so. And governments exploit and neglect their citizens, and go to war and kill and maim, unless you work very hard to prevent them from doing so. Individual humans, as members of a social species for which cooperation is paramount to survival, have quite a lot of specific programming whose purpose seems to be to discourage us from doing these things (empathy, loyalty, etc. etc.), and yet very often we still do them!

I have relatives who have a hard time believing in US atrocities abroad, on the grounds that "Americans are the good guys, and the US just wouldn't do that". This is very stupid! Do you think the US got where it is today without cracking some eggs? Bullshit. There's never been a government or a military in the history of humanity that "just wouldn't do that". I sometimes see posts on here from tankies, defending Chinese or Soviet atrocities on the grounds that these things must be Western propaganda, a socialist government just wouldn't do that. Again, I find this so obviously false as to be essentially beneath engaging with. We don't live in a just world! Often, a very effective strategy for achieving whatever it is you're trying to achieve will involve treating people like shit. It is what it is.

I'm not trying to play defense for injustice here. Obviously I think we should do as much as we can to prevent these abuses. But I think that doing so must start with basic recognition of the following: it is the nature of institutions—being as competition between them is essentially unavoidable, and being as their decision processes are unavoidably removed from the face-to-face social context which is so load-bearing in motivating respectful treatment between individual humans—to abuse people in pursuit of their (perceived) self-interest. This behavior is mundane and expected. It can be mitigated in various ways, ideological and structural, but it will probably always be with us to some degree. To look at it and express shock in any capacity suggests a completely misguided understanding of how the world works.

This is the first and most important thing I ever learned about politics or society.

[semisolidmind]

How did Wukong find MK and decide to adopt him?

non-spoiler answer: wukong found mk when he was small, had a rare moment of empathy, decided to adopt him and raise him as his own.

(season 4 spoilers: context taken from later episodes in the season. also bad end mk lore, ig)

spoiler answer: stone egg.

mk comes from a similar place as wukong; made from the same stone, although mk came out as a young child instead of a fully formed adult. despite having a small thought about "sparing" mk the pain of a life as a monkey demon by killing him then and there, wukong decides to adopt mk and raise him to be as strong as he can. think of it like an extra middle finger to heaven from the monkey king (that and the fact that the only person wukong ever would have felt comfortable having kids with has been dead for thousands of years and he isn't sure if she's gonna reincarnate, so mk may be his only chance at having a legacy).

i have a theory that the reason mk looks human in the show is because he saw humans when he wandered into the city, so he unconsciously changed his form to look more like them. like, the magic that created him knew he'd be safer if he looked human.

however, seeing as villain wukong decided to adopt him and raise him alongside the other monkeys of ffm from the beginning, mk's form in this au is similar to the monkey form we see in the show. he has better access to his powers that way, on top of swk actively discouraging him from looking human.

it's like the reverse of what we see in the show. mk has been raised (by wukong) to believe that humans are mostly terrible, so he should be happy being a monkey demon. when he does his gold magic glitch-out thing from the later episodes, he looks human during said glitch. it's a sort of reflection of his mental state; he's come to see himself as more human because of his exposure to mortal society and his changing ideals, but the distrustful, cautious side of him can't face that fact.

the mk of this au has some considerable differences from the normal mk. the biggest one being his skill level in combat. in this iteration, swk has been training him from day one, so that classic mk clumsiness is practically nonexistent. the kid's basically a living weapon (almost) on par with one of the greatest fighters in the world. there's an innate power and grace in his movement.

he's a lot more brutal in his fighting style as well. you get trained by a villain notorious for going all-out, you learn to not pull your punches no matter the opponent.

this is compounded by the fact that mk has his own staff. villain wukong isn't about to give up his signature weapon, and it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to just...go steal another magic pillar from the eastern dragon palace.

"Like that old codger could stop us. C'mon, kid, let's go get you a real weapon."

another difference is mk's general attitude. sure, he's still a fairly happy kid, but he was raised to always keep his guard up. strike first, ask questions later. his first meeting with mei was an all out battle, because he didn't understand that this dragon decendent wasn't trying to hurt him. he's a bit more serious here too, and it's mei who's the upbeat one between the two of them. she's also the one that introduced him to pigsy, sandy, and tang. she's kinda his safety net as far as mortal interactions go, teaching him the ins and outs of mortal culture.

this version of mk can kick red son's ass stupidly easily. the whole dbk family, really. to the point that red son's terrified of him, though he tries to hide it behind a superior attitude. this could go for all the demons in the show, really. mk scares all of them to a certain degree.

he wouldn't reallyneed his friends help, in this au. he's got this idea in his head that he shouldn't be dragging his much less powerful friends into fights he can easily finish on his own. he's been raised with a "help yourself, because noone else will. in fact they'll be in your way" type mentality when it comes to battle.

his story in this au is more of a "allow people to get close to and care about you, not everyone is trying to kill you" arc, instead of a power-up, training arc. mk needs to learn to let people help him, and allow himself to be open.

to sum it up; mk is seen as a monster like his father, and is learning to be less of a monster. he wants to be a hero.

"I...I don't wanna be like him. I wanna be better, I want to use this power to help people, to protect them! I just...don't want to be what the world thinks I should be."

[buckyalpine]

Tw

Hi sweet dolcezza (that is Italian and means sweetness so sweet sweetness :) )

Hope you are doing well, I want to thank you again for your beautiful blog and wonderful works.

I am reading the last things you posted, beautiful as always!

Since I live for the drama, the sadness, the darkness...

I was thinking about how a broken boy with traumas, Bucky 🫢, would react about his girlfriend having mental health problem.

Maybe she has been developing them...

She wasn't always like that, she lost her sparkle and he doesn't know her like this, he sees another person, another woman, another human.

He can't understand and is confused, maybe mad.

On one side I think about him being supportive, on the other I think about him being disrespectful and invalidating, like he had lived major traumas but, he says "he is not complaining so much about it or playing the victim" like her.

-I had this hint because my mental health is not good, I have severe OCD, since I was a kid basically I remember being this way since the age of five four. I am struggling with ed and borderline personality disorder.

And I had partners that, even if they lived traumas, still invalidated mine a lot and called me names, so the were basically toxic.-

And i can't picture where Bucky could fall. Toxic? Supportive?

I love him, but sometimes he acts shady and not always I can read him.

I see him dark most of the time.

But they can always repair the relationship and be together or not?

(I am problematic with toxic guys ahahahaha)

Sorry for this and my life story, noone asked about buy still. I just think you are the best person to write something as deep.

I really hope you are doing good and enjoying your day so far.

A lot of kisses and hugs and support.

🌺

18+

Babes we are one in the same with toxic men. I like to think there's the version of Bucky who has so much love and empathy for others going through mental health struggles and then there’s the Bucky who loves you but doesn’t know how to process things and acts impulsively. Here, we look at the second. 

Warnings: Angst, Mental health issues, some toxic behavior, (happy ending, they learn to fix things)

Disclaimer: Some of the stuff in this fic are things I/others have gone though so please refrain from comments about why the reader stayed or what the reader should have done or how the story should have gone. Sometimes I get super sucked into the angsty parts and struggle to undo the damage so don’t read too much into it. 

I imagine it starts off bad because Bucky's still learning to deal with his own mental health and there are times where he can be selfish without meaning to. He's so used to having you comfort and take care of him, he doesn't know what to do when you start to change. He’s been through so much, he can’t imagine someone else feeling his level of anguish.

You’re no longer the same person he fell in love with. Your sparkle is gone. A grey dullness encasing you. He doesn’t know when things changed or why but he just wants you back; the distance between you both gets worse with each passing day. You try your best to still be there for him because you know he needs it; you love him with all your heart even when your own feels heavy. 

"Baby, are you okay?" 

"I’m fine"

Bucky practically scoffs when you ask him how he’s doing because you should know he’s never fine. He’s never okay. He doesn't know why you bother asking him when its the same shit he deals with on a daily basis. 

You can't bring yourself to tell him how you're feeling because you know he doesn't have the capacity to help you when he's struggling himself. He shrugs, not knowing what else to say, letting you wallow in your misery, taking his frustrations out during his workouts instead. Things continue to worsen; you fall deeper in your spiral while Bucky continues to shut you not, realizing it’s you who needs him. 

“Can we talk?”

You’re desperate at this point, hoping maybe he’ll at least listen but he shakes his head instead. Bucky can’t stop the bitterness that starts to rise in his chest; he missed his ma, his sisters. His missed living in a world where he understood the things around him, where he didn’t have to feel like a lost toddler every time he stepped outside. His feelings have nothing to do with you, he really does love you but all the bitterness spills onto the one person who is always there for him. 

“What’s the point y/n” 

“I-I just feel...” You shrug, not knowing how to tell Bucky of all people that you felt empty. 

“What do you feel. I don’t know what you even complain for” 

“I feel like I have no one Bucky” You felt your stomach drop when his eyes bore into you, as if he's challenging your feelings. 

“You still have your cousins, other family, friends. You complain so much but you’re so spoiled. I’m going through shit too, but you don’t see me acting like a victim”

You swallow the anger that tries to rise, trying to understand his point of view. It all comes to a boiling point because you're trying your hardest to hold it together while he doesn’t see your spiral break down.  You felt your heart splinter; after every time you had held him, loved him, cared for him, he looked at you with emptiness. 

“Bucky, I know you’re going through things-

“Things? You think I can just turn this fucking shit off y/n? I’m not fucking normal, and you’ll never fucking get it. Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you, I’ll stay at Steve’s tonight”

He makes his way to the door and you know you can’t be alone tonight, there’s too much going on inside.

“Please don’t” your voice is a plea, your practically begging at this point. You can feel your throat tighten because you feel selfish for struggling when he’s been through so much worse.

“Bucky please stay” you trail behind him, your knees shaking. You try to tug at his wrist but he doesn’t let you. When you finally try to cling onto his arm, his composure breaks. 

“GET OFF ME” he pulls out of your grasp, sending you stumbling back. He’s usually mindful of his strength but he doesn’t think and you lose your balance, ending up on the floor. He freezes in utter disbelief with himself, he’d never in a million years even try to hurt you. 

“Fuck, baby I’m so so-”

“Don’t”

Your eyes are now stone cold, your voice was low. He tries to help you up but you scramble away from him, adding distance between you both.  He takes a step forward again but something isn’t right, he finally sees how broken you look. 

“Y/n….”

“GET OUT”

Your voice tore through the walls and his eyes are wide with fear because he's never seen you so broken. He’s never heard you raise your voice like this; you’d always spoken to him softly. He’s scared because he didn’t mean to push you to your breaking point and he doesn’t know how to take it back. 

"I-"

“GET THE FUCK OUT” 

You pick yourself off the floor, your heart beating through your chest. You practically see red, after everything you had done for him, he called you selfish; you sat through every one of his panic attacks, his depressed days, his nightmares. He couldn't listen to you for one night. 

"You fucking piece of shit"

You angrily tried to wipe your face, moving away from him to pack a bag, not wanting to be near him for a minute longer. You go straight to your room while he runs after you, panic rising, he wants to cry but he can’t, not right now. 

“Doll I’m sorry-

“I don’t care” You rummage through some of your belongings, feeling yourself go numb. You felt like your mind didn’t even belong to you anymore, your body moving in autopilot. Bucky hates the vacant look on your face, he wants to hold you and tell you he’s sorry. He tries to wrap his arms around you, not knowing what else to do but you shove him away, shaking your head.

“Don’t-don’t touch me, don’t ever fucking touch me again”

He watches helplessly when you rip yourself away, shoving a few things into your duffle bag, not meeting his eyes. 

"I-I don't fucking love you, I-I'm d-d-one with you"

“Baby please don’t go” 

“Oh, so when you beg, I have to stay?” You scoff, letting out a humorless laugh “Fuck off”

He’s terrified now because while your movements are robotic, your body is shaking and you don’t even seem to notice. Bucky hates seeing you trembling; you’re about to leave the room and walk out but he stops you. 

“Bucky, move” You suck in a breath, your nails digging into your hands, but he stays rooted in place. 

“No bubba”

“Don’t call me that” Your voice trembles, another surge of anger flowing through you when he tries to reach out for you. “I SAID DON’T TOCUH ME”

He pulls you to his chest and you try to rip yourself free but he doesn’t let you go. 

“LET GO”

Bucky shakes his head, hugging you tighter, his tears dampening your hair. The screams and wails ripping from your chest burn his insides, you desperately try to escape but he cradles you closer. 

“M’sorry”

“L-let me g-o”

“M’sorry baby, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” He doesn’t care that your hitting his chest, he doesn’t care that your hands keep striking him. He can feel your body give way, your breaths uneven, months of pain spilling out all at once. He hugs you tighter like he should have done ages ago, realizing you needed him more than ever. Your body continues to fight but your angry screams turn into pained sobs. 

“I’m so sorry my babygirl” 

He carefully carries you to the bed where he can hold you in his lap. He tries to think of what you do for him, warming your body, rubbing his hands along your back and arms. He feels awful because you always take such good care of him and he was grasping at straws trying to do the same for you. You deserved so much more. 

“Shhhh” His lips brush against your forehead, one hand gently rubbing your chest while the other continues to soothe your back so he can regulate your breathing. “Slowly baby, breathe with me, okay?” 

You say nothing, but you try to follow his breaths, letting him take care of you. He continues to tell you how much he loves and cares for you, how sorry is he for hurting you. Exhaustion takes over and you allow yourself to fall asleep with him. A part of you is still angry but your too weak to move and you need to be held.  

You wake up in the middle of the night feeling his chest tremble against you. His soft sniffles are muffled as he tries to keep his cries down while cuddling you close. 

“Bucky?” You lift your head to see his broken expression. 

“I’m s-sorry” He chokes out, breaking down. He feels selfish again because he should be the one comforting you but he was angry with himself. “I-I can’t believe I hurt you angel” 

You move up so you can wipe some of his tears, his face puffy having cried for hours through the night. 

“I just needed you” You gently your fingers through his hair trying to calm him down. 

“I-I said shit I never should have said baby, I’m sorry. M’sorry sweet girl” 

“Why did you say those things” you whisper, your voice still hoarse.

“I’m so sorry angel, I- there’s not excuse, I’m sorry I was so selfish doll”

You nod, still feeling drained though a part of you feels better. You hadn’t fully forgiven him yet but you knew he meant every word plus there was no one else in the world you loved as much as him. He thinks about the way he mistreated you, realizing he really didn’t deserve your forgiveness at all. Your words replay in his head and his breaths become shallow. 

“Do-do you not love me anymore?” His voice is a broken whisper. You knew you didn’t mean it. The thought nearly kills him. He would have gone through hydra again over ever losing your love. Your thumb brushes over his lips silencing him. 

“Please don’t say you don’t love me”  He nuzzles himself further into your side, hugging you tightly, his voice a whimper. “Please, I’m sorry” 

“I was just angry Bucky. I love you” He calms down slightly but hes still on edge with himself. He wants to do better. He wants to take care of you. You had been there through everything for him and you deserved the same love a thousand times over. 

“I promise I’ll try harder angel” 

He stays true to his word. 

It doesn’t resolve overnight.

But he learns. And so do you.

He’s patient with you. He gives you endless love. He has his own hard days, and so do you but your by each others side through it all. He sees your sparkle return brighter than ever, 

Because he really does love you. 

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[passionesolja]

Serious question and all answers is valid.

So, the Darth Plagueis novel keeps a lot of shit about Sidious’ training unknown (we get one snippet of what his early training was) but

like what do y’all think Plagueis did to Sidious to make him Sidious?

Bc yeah Sheev Palpatine is a selfish and bratty young man but you’d have to be super biased against Sheev Palpatine to not see the huge difference in personality and behavior between Sheev Palpatine pre-Plagueis and Darth Sidious.

Sheev is going against his dad and being really petty about it, but a lil self centered brat. Sidious is a psychopath and a puppeteer.

I mean that generally I am NOT pro-Cosinga Palpatine. I can’t stand him he literally was a terrible father and his treatment of sheev is what made Sidious form into existence. He the Dario Brando of Star Wars tbh

Basically what I’m tryna say is that Sheev Palpatine as we see him before Plagueis is nothing like Sidious, like yeah you can draw some vague connections but realistically, Sheev probably would’ve become a better person once he hit 21 and matured a lil bit. Maybe lived life more and learned empathy from it.

Sheev Palpatine was not on the course to being a Sidious type Mf before he became Plaguies’ apprentice.

Maybe I’m just biased here but Sheev not having tact and empathy during an vehicular homicide he committed when he was probably like 13-15 years old doesn’t damn him to being Sidious. It doesn’t say anything about his true nature as a human being other than him being a lil immature and selfish dumbass kid.

Anakin wiped out a whole village at 19 but mfs still paint him as an victim. Sheev was 17 when he became Plaguies’ apprentice so we can garner that he wasn’t that old when he accidentally smoked them two pedestrians.

I know that y’all like to paint Sidious as being evil but it’s obvious that whatever happened to Maul and Vader and nem likewise also happened to Sidious but Sidious just was boss bitch enough to take Plaguies out.

[deadbydangit]

Ooo, I have an idea. I hope it's alright to request!

How about killer S/o who's power is literally their tears. Like the Entitiy saw they cry so much their tears are basically a weapon they can shoot out. They're really sad and sensitive, and often clings to whoever they're with out of fear.

This with maybe Ghostface, Joey, Oni, Huntress, and Leon?

I like it. I hope you don't mind if I simplify it a bit as a killer who doesn't want to be a killer.

With a depressed Reader who doesn't want to be a killer

Ghostface, Legion (Joey), Oni, Huntress, Leon

Ghostface

Why are you crying all the time?

Murder is fun!

Danny can't understand why someone who has been given the power and free rein to kill won't take it.

Still, it's hard for him to watch you cry all the time.

And he finds it a little annoying.

The world isn't fair.

Honestly, the world is kind of a bitch.

But he really hopes you can take advantage of your situation and learn to at least tolerate it.

Still, he feels kind of bad.

You didn't choose this.

But, without it, you two would never get to meet.

So at least there is that upside, right?

He'll sit with you and listen, but don't expect too much more than that.

He can give you hugs and kisses.

Maybe even tell you some funny stories.

Empathy isn't his thing.

He loves you, he just doesn't know how to show it in terms of sympathizing with you.

Legion (Joey)

Being a killer wasn't at the top of his list of things he wanted to do.

But, here he is.

Yeah, he had doubts in the beginning.

He even felt like a piece of shit.

So he knows what you're going through.

Taking his first life, he threw up and buried it in the snow.

He'll be there to listen to you.

You can cry as much as you need, he isn't going to judge.

Because he's been there.

He hates seeing you in so much pain.

You didn't deserve this fate.

If he sees you crying, he's going to hold you.

Sometimes he'll even cry with you.

He's hurting for both of you.

He can't stop your pain.

But he will always be there for you.

Oni

The world is unbelievably cruel.

He knew that better than anyone.

He knew why he was here.

He curses the Entity for what it's doing to you.

This shouldn't be your fate.

But your fate, just like his, is sealed.

He won't let you suffer in silence.

He's hugs may be bone crushing, so he'll lighten them up.

He'll dry your tears.

He's not great at the whole comforting thing.

His life wasn't filled with too much affection.

He's going to make a sincere effort for you.

Kazan is going to teach you all he knows.

He loves you, and he won't let you cry alone.

Don't worry. You're in good hands.

Huntress

She grew up in this lifestyle.

So killing holds no significance to her.

You kill, or be killed.

That's what he mother told her even before she started walking.

But Anna knows she isn't like other people.

Most people didn't grow up like her.

Taking a life, no matter if it's human or animal, is difficult at first.

She'll assure you that you shouldn't be ashamed of weakness.

Weakness just means you have room to grow.

And she's going to help you get there.

Don't worry about making mistakes.

It took her practice too.

She's going to teach you, just like her mother taught her.

She'll let you cry.

The realm is stressful, everyone deals with it differently.

She'll make sure you know she's there for you.

Leon S Kennedy

Yes, he's a survivor.

Yes, you're a killer.

But Leon, unlike most of the other survivors, has killed before.

Taking a life isn't something simple.

He understands how much pain you're in.

It's okay to cry.

He's cried before too.

When his friend, Luis, was killed right in front of him, he sobbed like a baby.

He shared this with you, because sharing weakness makes him feel closer to you.

So cry.

He won't judge.

He would never judge you.

He'll lay you on his lap and let you cry it out.

He loves you. Killer or survivor.

[undead-potatoes]

I've been trying to figure out just who Aurora is, or rather why she is the way she is and why she fights the Urge the way she does.

I think she was always going to be a resist Durge, both bc of the way I make characters, but also bc of my own issues with intrusive thoughts. Like it have gotten so bad at times that it have brought on borderline suicidal thoughts for me, and playing a resist Durge has been strangely cathartic while still having fun with it bc it's taken to such silly extremes (and it's fun to be unhinged about shit sometimes). To fight the demons in your mind with everything you've got, and fucking win? Because at the very core of you there's a good person? That's the real power fantasy right there.

The basic idea is that getting non-consensual brain surgery and tadpoled caused a sort of factory reset in her brain, reverting her back to a version of herself similar to the time before the Urge.

I need to write a post about her background and all, but tl;dr: she grew up in a small, but close knit community in the poorer areas of Baldur's Gate, consisting mostly of other dwarves. So much of her upbringing was about the love and joy forged in human? dwarven? connections, and in looking out for one another. Her adoptive mother was also of the altruistic sort, which might be where some of Aurora's more self sacrificing tendencies stem from.

It's a funny little case of nature vs nurture. On one hand she's a child of Bhaal, his literal flesh and blood, with death and murder at the very core of her being. On the other there's years and years of learned empathy and kindness, genuinely felt and displayed, and it has wrapped itself so tightly around that bloodstained core that it can't simply be cut away.

She've also been fighting the Urge for a long time, I think, since before she was an adult. This has no real base in canon, but I love the idea of it starting small when she's a little kid, and her having to learn to live with it, to suppress it the best she can. That she would work so hard to be so good, in opposition to the depravity boiling hot in the back of her mind, which is partly why she's so good at resisting later on; it's second nature to her, as natural as breathing.

When she wakes up on that beach it's just her again, a ghost of her former self, but it's her nonetheless. The Urge is there too, trapped among the threads of her former life once again, and held in check for just a little bit longer.

This feels like a lot of words saying a whole lot of nothing, like there's about 19 layers of further explanation and nuance that naturally connects to all of this but is hard to explain simply. Reading through all of this feels so fucking cringe, but I'm trying to be sincere here so I'm just pushing through it. It doesn't have to be good, it just have to make me feel good (and a little insane).

Kinda unrelated, but it's also important to me that Aurora just has all the weird little tics, like doing the etch-a-sketch head shake, loudly telling her Urges to shut up, or doing a bunch of weird fidgeting when she's especially stressed out. And then ofc doing her very best to hide or mask that when other people are around and can see/hear her. Baby girl I'm giving you so much of my mental baggage, I'm so sorry and I love you.

[galadhir]

Another post in the tag of a villain who is my blorbo, saying basically that people who are villain stans don't understand the story right, they don't understand the villain's victims are people who deserve sympathy. That villain stans must be immoral ourselves because otherwise how could we love a character who had done so many horrible things?

And I'm like - you do understand that sympathizing with the characters who are drawn to be sympathetic is level 101 sympathy?

Yeah, you can empathize with and feel sorry for the human frailties of people who never did anything wrong. Great! That's good. It's good to have sympathy and empathy for good people.

But - and I'm going to go all religious here, because purity culture is supposedly based on Christian beliefs and I am a Christian - you've got to learn to be sympathetic and empathetic to the bad people too.

This is right there in our religion "Judge not, lest you be judged." "First take the plank out of your own eye before you try to take the speck out of your brother's." "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. I will repay." (Namely - it's not up to us humans to take revenge.)

Famously, Jesus stopped the people from executing an adulteress (a crime which carried the death sentence at the time) saying "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," at which point the accusers slowly realized that they were not exactly guiltless themselves and slunk away.

We are in fact commanded to love our neighbours (where 'neighbour' means 'everyone living on this planet with us.')

And loving our neighbours sometimes requires accepting that people who have done horrific things are still worthy of the respect given to all humans by virtue of being human.

That's a really hard command to obey.

(Frankly we should expect the commands given by a superhumanly good Creator to be too hard for us. God is better than we are capable of being, and that's how it should be.)

It's really hard to look at someone in real life who has done something abhorrent and accept that they too are a person who deserves to be treated with full human rights and dignity.

It's hard to get over the very natural revulsion and anger that tells us it would be righteous to treat this sinner with cruelty in return.

But that would not be righteous at all. ("Do unto others as you would have them do to you.")

Fortunately we have fiction. We can use fiction to help us develop our empathy. The villains in fiction have not actually hurt anyone in real life, so it's safe to handle them. It's safe to figure out why they did what they did, and ask yourself - if you were in their position would you have done better?

Which is also a good question.

"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." 1 John 18

Which means that (by God's standards) there is no distinction between good people and evil people. We are all just people. We all need grace and mercy.

And we can practice our understanding, compassion, empathy and mercy by loving our fictional villains in a similar way that God has loved us.

Maybe one day we will be called on to forgive a person in real life - to be compassionate and merciful to them - and it will have helped to have confronted the darkness in the heart of man already in our imagination.

Or maybe we'll just learn to be a bit more humble about ourselves while we also have some fun.

We're really not called to stop at Compassion 101. That's only where we start.

[literalite]

asks

these r all the asks i got last night about the whole aesthetic discussion i'll answer in order of when i got them :p

truth b told if i started simblr like. today and knew nothing about photoshop then i'd probably be pretty demoralised too but also thats exactly how it was starting simblr anyway i just worked on it until i was happy w my skills... no one gave me a cheat code i just put time and effort into it

i agree with u im ngl like i do sincerely wish everyone had the opportunity to put hours and hours of their lives into learning how everything about this works if thats what they truly wanted. also if anything doing it solely by urself will make the process all the more time consuming but if u ask around for help people (including me! im down to help fr) will usually give it to u and that'll speed up the process more. being mad at me for having that is pointless what am i gna do go back in time and unlearn it all and for what? dsfghjk

okay i did see this being said a lot and uhhhh i was trying to understand it but like. i also don't. like ok with cluttered aesthetic build shots or yknow the odd landscape with heavy bloom shader on it i guess if ur looking at it completely from that pov yeah i guess it looks like some posts that "blow up" r just sort of the same shit. but the fact remains that its also it's good shit like anyone can clutter a room and take a photo of it what really counts here in my opinion anyhow is shot composition. and there's literally preestablished rules for this sort of thing u can google cinematography basics and get it for free... there's a whole field of study looking into what draws the human eye. like maybe the core concepts behind what makes a popular post popular is the same but thats because it just works. if u wanna shy away from that entirely but then complain about ur posts not being as popular then that's very much a u problem it doesn't have anything to do with the rest of us

amen these are my ocs wdym these are "sims" LOLLL these are the real people living in my head if i bust my ass making them look good then thats a choice i made

u can call this an empathy problem and try explain it to me more but i dont see how other people feeling insecure about what their current ability scales up to is any fault of mine or my problem to bend backwards to try fix... or even how i could. like is the standard high now yeah honestly it is. the learning curve was steep as hell when i first started as well. no disagreements here. but what am i supposed to do about it LMAO like i didn't create the human proclivity to be drawn to beauty i just ride off of it.

idk why i'm the bad guy for being honest for my reasoning behind what i do and don't reblog? lots of other people have been saying they dont really care about aesthetics which is great but if i said that i'd literally just be lying to you. i'm not gonna apologise for not lying... i like being able to see the passion and energy poured into the same video game we're all playing it's only natural to appreciate that- if that reads as passive aggression and u don't understand my stance that's fine by me

i would say for me personally try watch visual media that u can recognise as "beautiful" and not to shit on like. cw shows but i mean stuff that is marked by its cinematography being truly excellent. and just really examine how those set and lighting designers use angles and lighting and how the people filming and editing choose to frame their shots to achieve what works. hell looking at art helps with this too. look at other people's stuff on simblr analytically try to seriously work out why it appeals to people the way it does. ik u asked for editing tips but i think it really starts ingame you can have the most incredible editing style but it doesn't work if ur shot comp doesn't work then it'll won't hit as hard

take time to learn what most of the adjustment layers do on photoshop, and what all the blending layers look like, download other people's psds and play with them on top of ur shots to see what works! what u personally think looks good will be different from what i personally think looks good, i like dramatic lighting and muted colours and mid level contrast so not too strong but i can't speak for whether you will too. ALSO im a religious user of @/simmerstesia's psd set here i think a well chosen shot can be really elevated by using something like this to really give it that final polish

additionally if u have any like really specific questions or need some advice u can ask me on discord my dms are open like i can talk u thru it. promise it's not as daunting as it can look

[stargirl1331]

Petition for tumblr to let me write bibles on post comments without having to write 100 of them.

C, you've no idea the can of worms you just opened, I get so weird about this stuff and I straight up cannot form thoughts right now because my brain decided to go stupid for some reason so-

Ok, trying to write this one again because what I was going to send looked like word vomiting, I wasn't joking with my brian going stupid. Y'know that feeling when you want to say a lot but the words won't come out so you just feel dizzy and like you might throw up? That but like in a good way, like I'm having butterflies but in the brain. Anyway.

So your poem was about internet and online friends, I started thinking about relationships and how you can love people without faces and that reminded me of Her (2013), a movie about a dude that falls in love with his universe's Siri/Alexa with whom he starts to develop a wholesome and cute relationship.

And then there's the song Computer Boy by Poppy, where she falls in love with an AI (back when AIs were cool, when they were just a concept for people to go insane and write fiction about and not an actual thing that kills art) and it's basically a silly reference to online dating and I just love it.

But Poppy's character (she's a character) started with the concept of a girl who wanted to be internet famous, except she was actually an AI/robot created only and specifically to be famous (a critique of the music industry) and she actually lived ON the internet, like that was her house. There's just so many things about her- actually, there's this FANTASTIC youtube essay about her that explains everything better than me and since you seem to like her- here

https://youtu.be/DfAUfoPsFoE?si=74LKoetoDaymvBQo

Then The Machine is about so SO many things, in this specific instance I meant like the humanization of machines; when they develop consciousness, empathy and feelings and where does that leave us, how different are they from us and we from them? Can a human and a machine fall in love? Have a connection?

New Flesh is technically horror, technically transhumanism; when the human and the mechanical combine, it's about the morphing and transformation of our bodies with the coming of the future, if we're not our bodies what are we? Can we even be considered humans without one? New Flesh is all about the relationship between human/body and machine and you comparing dna with codes made me think of that when writing in the tags before going "what does this have to do with anything?" but yeah man-machine, I remember now.

Basically, your poem reminded me of loving people that don't have a physical and/or human body, I went "awww, they're in love with the computer, with the robot :3" and related it with other things that don't have that much in common but whom I'm obsessed about.

It took so long to formulate this, I short circuited for a while. I'm normal now (lie). Hope this makes at least a little bit of sense and I don't sound out of my mind.

This is all so cool???? I’m currently like absolutely obsessed with poppy.computer no I’m not chewing on things nooooooo. Dante please info dump in my inbox literally anytime ever I love hearing your thoughts they are always so awesome and I learn so much and find a new thing to hyperfixate on.

[prettyboykatsuki]

i’m so over this new era of newgen watchers of rlly anything if i’m being honest. i’m gonna sound gatekeepy and annoying but i’m willing to put up with it if it means i get to rant about this to someone who might understand. i just idk maybe it’s just me but i feel like back then interacting with media wasn’t this popular? not just anime but shows in general i’ll go as far as to say book and movies also? like before covid i know lots of people who would tell me they didn’t watch tv n i feel like after it specially with the rise of tik tok these new watchers don’t know how to interact with said media?? n demonize any kind of movie or show that isn’t ideologically pure?? like idk i just see people n maybe it’s cause i’m on tik tok a lot so maybe it’s on me but i just feel like they don’t know how to watch stuff if it makes sense?? n get fake morally outraged at anything n anyone💀💀 i feel like they never learned how to take the characters out of the context of a story n enjoy them as separate entities?? idk like watching media has become this pseudo intellectual experience where these creators pat themsleves on the back for saying a bunch of words that mean nothing rlly as long as they sound smart. n it’s pissing me off. of course i think there should always be some kind of discourse revolving the stories we are watching but idk💀💀 ik it’s not important what a bunch of teens think of a show i watch but also i’ve seen the power of tik tok n it can be a lil scary thinking about the way they can just influence public opinion if making a tik tok about colleen hoover got z library taken down n the guys who made the site sent the prision

HELLO ANON YOU SENT THIS MANY DAYS AGO AND I REALLY WANTED TO GET TO IT WHEN I HAD A BIT OF FREE TIME AND THAT TIME IS NOW

so the tldr for this is that i agree. like. i don't really think this opinion is gatekeepy at all and i think its one of those things that on the surface seems unimportant but it speaks to how society is function (or in this instance... not function)

there's like. a lot of layers to this particular issue that i think would be very difficult to dissect meaningfully on here but i will try my best to try and explain my viewpoint of what it is. i actually talked about it on my sideblog the other day and i think we're sort of harping on the same point

we're always talking about media literacy on this app and how it's important and a lot of the time - i get feedback from people saying it isn't that deep. sometimes i'm inclined to agree, but i think more and more i'm coming to terms with how people are becoming increasingly... dependent? on escapism and fiction to give them moral guidance and substantiate their own goodness.

it happens especially in teens, especially younger teens but i think young adults aren't exempt from this either.

and the reason i think this is happening is because because of late stage capitalism and the increasingly predatory attempts to market off of fandom culture through sanitization.

this obsession with ideological purity and the lack of empathy towards real human beings is basically one long response to that collective state of exhaustion. 2020 was a year that showed companies how profitable fandom could be and in attempts to increase that profit - there was action taken both in the production and marketability causing the actual processing of content to become extremely evangelical and morally pure.

late stage capitalism has also created a sense of isolation. in karl marx theory of alienation - he details this phenomenon better than i ever could. but the basic concept is that the larger the gap becomes between the proletariat and their labor, the more people will lose touch with their humanity. and in that their sense of self. we're effectively seeing that happen in real time, and it's explanation for all the invasions of privacy, casual bullying, and generally lacking sense of self that people experience.

when you take extremely sanitized media and people estranged from a clear identity - you create a breed of people who are aimlessly seeking to become part of something in order to reconnect. no matter how negative or dangerous (which is also why we've seen a major increase in violent and cult like reform / fringe movements). when production of that media is so fast and so easily available, you get people who are mindlessly consuming things and creating these incredibly pseudo-intellectual and nonsensical debates in order to feel connected to that false identity.

i don't think it's gatekeepy to point out that this is happening. this obsession with creating fake moral panic about problematic and entirely fictious media is doing almost exactly what it's supposed - which is taking away real and legitimate critique of the world around us by ensuring and reinforcing that ideological purity and goodness can be bought in sold much in the same way we buy a can of coke off the shelf.

if you watch the right movies, and read the right books and watch the right shows you can be good without any effort. that's what people are often convincing themselves of. because its both messy and exhausting to confront that goodness within a human being is deeply complex and easier to uphold these weird and impossible beliefs.

[vegitoswife-archive]

A/N: Aunt Flo is here for her visit with me, and I’d like some catharsis, so have this! As always with my fanfiction of these two, how I interpret them stems from personal headcanons, since they have basically nothing in canon. Got to give them something to work with.

Prompt: How would the fusions of Goku and Vegeta aid you during your cramp-filled menstrual cycle?

[ Vegito x Gender-Neutral & AFAB!Reader ] [ Gogeta x Gender-Neutral & AFAB!Reader ]

CWs: Menstruation talk, Light sexual themes.

— This man is a bit clueless. He has memories of Goku helping Chi Chi deal with her period, but they’re all muddled and foggy. So, Vegito’s arrogant self might do a poor job of expressing some empathy for your unrelatable plight, but he will do his best for you. Contrary to how he jokes at times, he does actually love you a lot.

— He can do simple tasks like fetch you water and painkillers no problem, but if you request more physical things like he rubbing the achy parts of you, you might have to remind him to not be too hard. He usually never forgets his strength, but in this monthly period of suffering for you, your body does require a little bit more tender care that he forgoes. Cuddling is always a safe bet.

— Gito does tend to forget things quickly if they aren’t something he constantly thinks about on a day-to-day basis, so if he goes out to buy you more pads or tampons, you’ll desperately need to send his phone a picture or two of the brands / versions you want so he’ll get it right. Please save your proud, universal-level warrior the embarrassment of walking into a pharmacy and looking utterly puzzled in the feminine care section.

— Whether your appetite is very active or very hindered, he’ll make sure you’re at least relatively fed. Cooking isn’t his forte per-se, but he knows how to whip up a couple of dishes that can be both filling and easy on your stomach. Getting take-out is also on the table. If you’re not in the mood for much outside of mere snacks, he’ll buy bags full of them for you. Eating something is better than nothing.

— Don’t worry about the other unpleasant, additional effects your body often undergoes during your cycle. You got gas? Sure, Saiyans have a sharper sense of smell compared to humans so Vegito won’t like his nose picking up the stench, but he isn’t so immature that he’ll hold your bodily functions against you. And thanks to the assortment of food he eats on a daily basis, whenever he gets gas, his poots usually smell worse than yours anyway. He has no room to talk.

— If your libido is running wild and you’re itching to take extra showers with him...he’d be more than happy to take you up on that. The warm water is soothing, will wash away the blood, and having an orgasm (or two...or three...Vegito knows how to pleasure you to say the least) could help in relieving some of the pain of your cramps to boot. A win-win situation!

— Just like Vegito, he also can’t completely recall the memories of Goku learning about what to do for Chi Chi during her time of the month. Unlike Vegito, Gogeta would actually do his own research into what he can do to help make your cycle as easy to bear as possible. He’s all about gaining knowledge, especially if it’s for your sake.

— No matter what you need, he’ll get it for you. After he memorizes your “basic care items”, you can expect for he to fetch them for you without you needing to ask. He’ll give you massages if you’re suffering from muscle aches, face held in its usual stoic manner but his eyes say more than enough of how soft he is for you.

— Gogeta will go get you more pads or tampons without compliant, but he will bring you back a surplus amount. As in, enough to last you the rest of your current cycle, plus the next three or so further down the year. You might have to find a place to store the extra packs until you need them, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

— It’s rather funny because he doesn’t seem like the type at all based on his typical demeanor, but you know that your beloved can be quite the mother hen in his own way. When he’s home from training and his shift at his workplace, he will cook you meals. He’ll make sure you’re fed and have leftovers of nutritious foods to eat. If part of you starts to feel that you might be unintentionally taking advantage of his kindness, he’ll shoot those doubts right back down. If he was feeling ill (rare but not impossible), you’d do your best to look after him. What kind of partner would he be if he didn’t return the favor?

— If you’re gassy, pass it around him if you must. It’s better for you to release it then to hold it inside. But don’t be offended if you catch Gogeta spraying a little air freshener behind your back. Please, keep his superhuman sense of smell in your thoughts. It is perfectly ok to find his dramatics funny though; his also tend to smell worse.

— Gogeta prefers taking baths with you over showering, but he knows that the bathwater getting tainted by your flow of blood would be no good - if you don’t like using tampons. He’ll wash your body with such gentle movements that your libido might flare to life if it wasn’t already. You’ll be kept in there with him until you’re feeling content. He’ll try to behave, and not leave too many lovebites on you. You’re dealing with enough pain in your cycle as is.

[infamousbrad]

"Tell me, who goes to Hell?" "Um, sinners, I believe."

Remember that episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye asks the chaplain "who goes to Hell?"

Hazbin Hotel is apparently going with the same interpretation that I was taught in my (mostly Independent Fundamentalist Baptist) theology classes: nearly everybody. Just like it says in Matthew 7:13-14. Let's say that only a generous 1 out of 30 dead people go to eternal Heaven, like it seems to show in Hazbin Hotel, and everybody else deserves eternal Hell.

You don't find this in pre-Macedonian-era religions, you know. For almost all of recorded human history, basically every religion taught that maybe 1 per 1,000 people are lucky enough to go to heaven, most of them nepo babies because they have at least one divine ancestor, yes.

But fewer than that, maybe 1 per 10,000, are bad enough to deserve a customized torture pit in Hell. Usually only the most popular, wealthy, or politically powerful sinners, the ones whose monstrous examples lead the most people into sin, are tortured eternally as an example to the next 100 generations.

Everybody else? Seems to spend some time as a time-looped ghost in a purgatory-like realm, getting over their life habits and their life trauma, before their soul gets a new life, another chance to be morally heroic.

But, man let me tell you: humanity in general started getting more spiteful about the dead, some time between around 300 BCE and 300 CE, because this idea came out of nowhere but then really took off like a rocket:

"Fuck people, they're all no good, except maybe me and a couple of people like me. Fuck purgatory, fuck reincarnation, everybody but us gets creatively and specifically tortured forever, 'cause that's what they all deserve. And if my tribe and me don't watch our asses, we'll deserve that too. Humans suck. To literal Hell with all of us."

And yeah, I've read enough history and theology to know the literary history of this idea, where and roughly when it originated and how, by sword and famine and gun, it was spread.

But I also have seen that nobody has the guts to say this to a grieving family at the funeral, no, everybody's loved ones are in heaven at the funeral service. Only a few of us are so devoid of empathy to say it to their faces; only the worst of the worst stick by their guns on that, people addicted to hate. Only the actual worst of the worst of us, yes again, maybe 1 per 10,000, are so psychopathic as to tell the grieving that their loved one is in Hell.

When we're facing the grieving, everything we've learned and everything we've said and everything we think we believe collapses ever so briefly in the face of naked human sorrow and we all of a sudden know, again, that there cannot be a molecule of justice in the universe, let alone the heavens, if 29 out of 30 people go to Hell. Can't be. But then we leave the funeral and that 2,000 year old moral illness creeps back in.

So here's my question. I mean, I've read a fair amount of history but I genuinely don't even know where to look for this answer, do any of you know?

What the actual fuck happened to us around that time?

What was going on back then that this obviously wrong sick and twisted meme got so dominant? What changed? Whatever it was, is it why so many of us are still trying to convince ourselves and each other that it's true? Why do we want it to be true, why do we hate ourselves and each other this much?

[queen-astras]

this may be a problem (serious).

🚩Rant 🚩

I want to preface this by saying I strongly believe that humans are humans and should be treated as such and with respect regardless of financial status, race, skin color, gender, who they love, or physical and cognitive ability. However, some of what I say below might seem to contradict that.

Background: our school has a freshman transition program, where freshmen at the school learn the customs and rules through once-a-month sessions. However, recently I think it’s began to take on more of a different stance. I do respect what they are trying to teach but I think this is the line.

Today’s lesson was about empathy and gender identity. Now, those two things are very different but they happened to be in the same lesson.

We did this activity where the leader said a statement and we had to step forward if it applied to us. Now, there were some generic statements like “do you play a sport” and such, but one that stood out to me was “have you ever witnessed an act of homophobia or sexism?”

Nothing special. But.

In all those questions about accepting differences and noting acts of disrespect towards certain communities, not a singular one was about disability awareness.

The closest one would probably be “would you actively stand up for the rights of people different than yourself” and that too is a very broad statement.

They proceeded to have this lesson about gender identity with a little empathy sprinkled in - which I feel like was hardly necessary to spend one and a half hours on this singular topic that I’m sure many of the students have heard about through social media. I know I have - but that’s beside the point.

I feel like… there’s a lot of emphasis on the queer community nowadays. Don’t get me wrong at all, I do respect what that community has gone through in being accepted and having basic human rights. But as I said, everyone is human and deserves the same amount of spotlight on their struggles. The. Same. Amount.

You want to talk about being empathetic for people who are different! Teach the kids about disabilities. Teach the kids that we’re not weird or lesser because our eyes or ears don’t work or our brains function a little differently. Teach them how to make your world more accessible. Teach them how to help us. Highlight our struggle too. No one ever does that. June is always filled with rainbows and pride but not an October goes by with the same enthusiasm.

My pera? She got kicked out of ILS (intensive learning) for making too much noise. They got a handful of classrooms in the back corner of the school with little to no air conditioning. They were given some dirt and told to make a garden. Whereas there are so many open opportunities for others. “Visit us in the mental health center!” “Join our club to show more support!” “Here are flyers and posters!”.

I’m going to stand on this hill with my mobility cane raised like a sword until we get the same amount of recognition regardless of whether anyone stands with me or not.

Or maybe I’m just irrationally angry…

[dw-flagler]

this post is literally just me complaining about an obscure spider man spinoff comic from 2006 for like a thousand words. Don't read it. I'm serious.

So i read the series amazing spider-girl because i was on a spider kick. I didn't want to go to theaters to watch across the spiderverse so i'm waiting on a dvd release or something that would allow me to watch it for no money and still get that nice and crisp 1080p.

So i read amazing spider-girl. It was a lot better than I was expecting. Not, you know, legendarily good. But better than you'd think for a comic spinoff starring a girl in 2006. and here's the kicker. It wasn't ultra hypersexualized. Amazing W for american comic books compared to japanese manga.

(Also a couple issues were about mutants as a classic comic paper-thin metaphor for being gay (one issue was quite literally titled The Closet) that was, again, surprisingly good. Again, not great, but like way better than you'd expect from a product of its time and culture)

And then I got to the spider-girl equivalent of the clone saga. It was actually pretty neat. There's just one clone, and it never actually comes out and says who the clone is. So there's two May Parkers now. One is a clone and one isn't, big identity crisis dealie (and actually there's this abandoned idea where they both end up with both sets of memories at the same time and now they don't know whos the clone or who was the one raised by the parkers and who was left in a french tube for 16 years). Neat. then peter becomes the green goblin for a minute and they fight A Battle In The Mind Palace, which is weird but fine. (Oddly, the green goblin is way more accepting of the concept of having two daughters than peter. He even calls peter out on it?)

But then we get to the fun part. Both of the Mays survive, and one of them, who we're gonna call April (even though she doesn't name herself that for a few issues after this) for simplicity's sake, has cool symbiote powers, was basically born yesterday, and doesn't quite understand the concept of empathy. In other words, a home run character. She's even fucking Blue! Fucking bang up job, lads, we got an all time classic!

And then we get to that classic angst. Like i said earlier, peter is not on board with the concept of having two daughters. But may is like "can we keep her?" and the other options are letting an emotionally unstable Blue girl out into the world unsupervised (unacceptable) or just... i dunno, killing her? So clearly he has to keep april in his house. He fuckin hates her for it though. Like shit dude, the unearned hostility. And may is trying (not quite as hard as she could be but trying nonetheless) to give april a normal-adjacent home life and a loving family (something that I believe all humans freshly spawned from french tubes deserve). MJ's sorta in the middle, doing that token mom thing of being like "yeah!" and then not actually doing anything to help. So april is stuck in this loop of a family that at best tolerates her and at worst actively despises her (and since she has memories from may she's watching the family she remembers loving her for her whole life doing this to her). In fact, she chooses her name out of spite because she feels like everyone sees her as an inferior copy of the girl they actually care about (april comes before may).

I mean, this is great. You've really what looks to be a great character. So I was utterly devastated to learn that she Goes Insane From The Stress and becomes a villain. However, she Learns The Value Of Love later on and sacrifices herself to save may in a typical comic redemption arc.

:(

So, normally, if you don't like how a thing went in a popular story (especially something modern), you could reasonably expect to see some people agree with you. Some of them might even be good writers. That's when the magic happens. So I look on Archive Of Our Own, and what do I find, dear reader--what do I find? Nothing.

Worse than nothing, actually, I find several father-daughter incest smut fics.

(To be fair, actually, I found one fic that covered some of this, but that was like 1k words long.)

In conclusion, shit is wack.

[thatstudyblrontea]

Hi! Just had a random thing pop into my brain and you were the first person I thought of who might be able to help me answer :)

I read a fair amount of books but lately I’ve come to the realisation that (mainly due to health reasons) that I don’t remember much about the book that I’ve been reading, doesn’t matter if I last finished a chapter five minutes ago I couldn’t tell you what I had read. I find that this reflects in how I leave ratings on Goodreads because unless I didn’t finish it or truly hated it I give everything four or five stars because I don’t remember much from it.

That was mostly just rambling 😅 what I’m here to ask is if you have any advice on things that I could track/make note of whilst I’m reading? So that that way I’m more connected with what I’m reading and not just going through the motions and forgetting everything about the book.

I think this makes sense?

Thank you in advance for any help :)

Hi!! I'm so glad you thought of me, I'll do my best to help you 🌼

I think taking notes while you read is a process you have to get used to – but this also means you'll get better with time, learning more about what you like in a book and what helps fetch back a particular memory. I'd suggest to reserve a notebook just for your book tracking, so that it's easier to revise, be it physical or digital. Start with the objective basics:

characters' names and particular traits: the protagonist's best friend briefly mentions that he had a complicated relationship with his mother when he was younger? Write that down: if the book is well written, it'll help you catch ulterior references as the story goes on, or explain some of his actions; if it isn't, it will make it easier to notice discrepancies in character arcs;

relationships: is that character a friend, or just an acquaintance of the protagonist? How does the relationship progress, do you notice subtle changes in the way they speak to each other? What could that mean to how the relationship will progress in the future? Writing down your hypothesis could help you remember these things even without having to look them up again. Try creating a timeline, if it suits you;

places, time, events, plot twists: this is self explanatory, but I'll try to expand on it. I personally often have a hard time remembering what time of the day the action is taking place at, which can change things a lot; writing that down could help you pick the story back up from where you left it, without having to go back, because sometimes you think mc is extremely clumsy, when the poor folk is running in 3am pitch black darkness, and you can't really blame them for tripping a few times. Maybe this is just me, but I hope you got the concept – if there's something you find important that you probably won't remember, like a vague mention of some background character dining that indicates it's almost nighttime, write it down.

Now, since you've also mentioned reviewing your books, I think it would help to write down your impressions and emotions as you go:

pace, flow, and language: has Chapter 3 finally picked up the pace? Was that long descriptive paragraph enjoyable, or unnecessary? Are the sentences too complex or long? Or are they so short you're having a hard time getting into the story?

empathy: is the protagonist likeable, can you sympathize with them? If not, is it because they're the kind of person you wouldn't hang out with, or because their actions and emotions aren't natural and human (if they're human) enough? Are their choices consistent? If not, do you think they're well-constructed flaws, or plot holes?

Wasn't sure about what you needed to hear, so I kind of threw a lot into the mix. I hope it was clear and exhaustive enough, let me know if it helped! ✨