#he's not even IN the fandom but he has actual thoughts and feelings about these characters that i love and it is.

[joesalw]

Swiftie here. (Please don't be mean!) I'm a big Swiftie, I have all her cd's, own a lot of merch, and even went to the Eras tour. I know the lyrics to like 93% of her songs, and have previously defended her like it was my professional job. But this latest album…dare I say it just shouldn't have been made at ALL? I loved Joe and Taylor together, and felt like she was her best (and most tolerable) when with him.

Joe was handsome, intelligent, and kind. His biggest character "flaw" seemed to have been that he was depressed. And she risks a six year relationship on MATTY HEALY?! Instead of trying to save her stagnant relationship, she has an emotional affair and touches herself to the thought of another man.

She not only did these things, but then wrote THIRTY ONE songs about them! She will never do any wrong in the eyes of 99% of Swifties, but being in the Swiftie fandom and listening to the big circle jerk of this being "HeR bEsT aLbUm YeT", and I've had enough. The way she writes about her emotional affair with a terrible man while the (supposed) love of her life is suffering from depression is just cruel. We didn't need a song like "Guilty As Sin?". I didn't need the visuals that came with it.

I wish I could make this an actual post but let's be real, the Swiftie fandom would dox me in seconds. Sorry to unload all of this on you. I know you tag things "Swifties DNI", but I just needed to say this.

I'm all for swiftie rants/ ex swiftie rants in this blog lmao. feel free to say everything that you can't say in front of them.

[bluedalahorse]

on flaws as opportunities and organizing the beef

I’m in the place now where I have enough distance from Young Royals season 3 to think about what felt flawed about it for me, and it led me to some interesting revelations about how I understand the characters and the story.

And to be clear: this does not mean I didn’t love season 3 with every fiber of my being, or that I think it sucks forever. Even a great production has flaws. The wonderful thing about being in fandom is that we love our shows deeply but also like to pick them apart, and in picking them apart we come up with ideas for future fics and fix its and character studies. Writing flaws are always an opportunity.

Anyway…

Thesis statement: Wilhelm and Simon don’t actually have the same beef with August, and the show should recognize that.

Or, to put it more formally, August causes them different problems that need to be addressed differently. I think that by acknowledging that more directly, and leaning into the discomfort that creates between Wille and Simon as a couple, the writers could have cleaned up some of the Wilmon-related messiness I saw in season 3 and have been mulling over for a while.

Caveat: I still need to do a full, formal rewatch of the third season. But I’ve rewatched here and there these are my preliminary thoughts.

To start, let’s recap Wille and Simon’s conflicts with August in season 1. For Simon, August is a bully and a gatekeeper when it comes to the world of Hillerska. He makes fun of Simon for being “socialist” and puts Simon in a position where he’s bringing in alcohol and then drugs for richer students’ recreation. August doesn’t pay Simon back for the alcohol the first time, which also shows a profound lack of awareness of Simon’s financial situation. Despite bullying Simon, there are times in August’s mind that he probably thinks he’s done Simon a favor. I do think, as flawed as he is about it and as much as he’s making weird speeches and doing aggressive forehead kisses, August assumes he’s really helped Simon out by getting him on the rowing team. But from Simon’s point of view this is all just more gatekeeping. Simon sees Hillerska as his ticket out of Bjärstad, and he wants to succeed in his merits as a student and a musician. But the way August treats him reminds him that his talent matters less than how many favors he can do rich boys. It also reminds him that he’s expendable to Hillerska students—August is absolutely ready to let Simon take the fall for the drugs when he feels it threatens his position.

Wille, meanwhile, is not excluded or gatekept by August but rather included more than he wants to be. Prior to the release of the video, Wille mostly finds August’s “come here and let me play your surrogate big brother” antics annoying. The debate over whether to let Simon or Alexander take the fall for the drugs is something that increases Wille’s ire toward August and makes it more serious, enough that we see Wille out August for his money troubles. But Wille also entrenches himself further in the system as a result of their argument—he still uses Alexander as a scapegoat, and he offers to pay August’s boarding fees afterward as an attempt to restore the peace between them. Their relationship isn’t seriously fractured until August releases the video. This harms Wille in the sense that it sets Wille up to deny his authentic self and makes it hard for him to engage in intimacy without trauma getting in the way. In essence, it puts Wille in a similar position of trauma that August was put in when the Erik and the third years initiated him. (Much much much more publicly, yes, but let’s note that transfer of trauma, because YR is about cycles.) 

The video also throws Wilhelm into a space where he starts to doubt his connection with Erik, because Erik told Wilhelm he could trust August. At the end of 3.4, Wille tells August that Erik would hate what he did, but I suspect he’s been wrestling with the uncertainty over whether Erik would really accept him and Simon for a long time. I don’t know if Wille really trusts Erik even though he says he does. In my opinion, it’s August’s release of the video that first brings this sense of doubt about Erik into Wille’s mind, and for three seasons we’re watching him slow burn toward actually voicing that doubt and grappling with it.

I think it’s tempting to believe that the trauma of the video release unites Wilhelm and Simon against August, and makes them feel the same sense of pain and loss, but ultimately I don’t know if that’s true. I’m not sure I see Wille and Simon as two boys in love against the world, at least not in a way that isn’t complicated. For Wille, the video affects his ability to express himself authentically and makes him doubt his relationships with his family. For Simon, the scandal of the video will now forever follow him when he wants to break free of Bjärstad and become recognized for his own merits. These are different harms from the same event that need to be dealt with differently.

One of Wille’s flaws is that he doesn’t fully realize that. I think he tends to center himself without realizing it, and sees the harm that happens to Simon as an extension of harm to himself. I actually think this is pretty interesting, and pretty in line with how Wille would have been raised as a prince. We see Kristina telling him that everything he does reflects on her and the family, so it’s natural that Wille might see a threat against Simon as a threat to himself without really thinking through how they’re going to be impacted differently. And the “prince” as a literary archetype has always been somewhat rooted in the “rescue” of others.

I explained this to @heliza24 and she said something really smart, which is, “the thing that necessarily gets lost when you muddy that is how much Wilhelm’s violations of Simon resemble August’s violations of Wilhelm.” And she’s right. I’d been trying to find a way to say that some of Wille’s actions in s3 remind me of August’s more toxic traits, and that part of Wille’s hamartia in s3 is he can’t see the ways he’s behaving similarly to August even as he shuts August out. When August releases the video, it puts Wille in a position where the royal court and Kristina are forcing him to conform more-more-more, and to hide his authentic voice from the world. Wille in turn inflicts that on Simon, acting as the royal court’s mouthpiece when they want Simon’s songs or May Day pictures deleted. We see Simon worn down to the point where he’s almost fading away. It’s actually pretty upsetting.

To that end: I also can’t help draw parallels between Wilhelm’s insistence on public gestures of affection with Simon and the way August and Felice walk arm in arm after they get together, the way he clearly wants to be seen with her. I also look at the way Wille craves Simon’s constant emotional support—especially on the night of his birthday—and see August reaching out to Sara as his emotional support lifeline.

Now, for what it’s worth, I still don’t see Wille as this awful, irredeemable person. (I don’t see August as this irredeemable person either, for that matter, and this is part of why I see Wille and August’s healing as intertwined and interdependent.) But I do think one place that season 3 fell flat for me was in the way Wille never got to recognize that his own issues with August and Simon’s issues with August weren’t exactly alike. And for Wille to recognize that some of the things he’s trying to do to heal aren’t equally healing for Simon. (Seriously, I almost tore my hair out when Wille joined the choir. It wasn’t a romantic gesture to me—I found it creepy! Let Simon have one space to himself!) 

It probably would have helped to have one scene where Simon articulates that to Wille, and really point it out. I get it if we don’t have time for Simon and August to resolve their shit in one season, and since Wille is the protagonist, he and August resolving their shit is going to take precedence. But when Wille and August are still at odds in the first part of the season, I do feel this vibe where like, Wille assumes he’s the avenger for wrong done to both him and Simon. And I kind of wanted to see that reckless avenger vibe get addressed.

@heliza24 probably describes this better than I do, but season three does have a habit of obscuring Simon’s agency from the audience, mostly so the writers can manipulate the audience’s reactions to Wilhelm and Simon, and especially so they can keep us in the dark about the fate of the Wilmon relationship during the breakup cliffhanger between episodes 5 and 6. I don’t know if this was the greatest choice, to dangle the cliffhanger over our heads, because it ends up moving a lot of Wille’s development into the last 10-15 minutes of the season and creates an issue in pacing and character arc. I wonder if they could have spaced his character arc out a little more and infused the tension into other moments and ideas. I think that could have been more satisfying.

Incidentally, this is a season 3 writing problem that’s foreshadowed in season 2 with the way Felice and Wille’s friendship is written. Felice essentially becomes Wille’s confidant as Wille attempts revenge on August. This makes sense, as Felice has her own beef with August based on how awfully he treated her in their relationship, and she’s friends with Wille, so it’s a natural alliance. But once again, it’s different beef, impacted by Felice moving through the world as a Black girl with a rich white mom, and not a white boy prince, and Felice never gets a chance to say so. Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but it does matter because season 2 episode 3 ends with�� Wille kissing Felice just to feel something!!! And at the beginning of episode 4 everyone’s talking about what happened and what might be a new relationship between Wille and Felice!!! Gosh does that remind anyone of Felice’s predicament in the middle of season 1? It sure does remind the random girl in the choir, who says Felice only dates bluebloods!

The thing is, I wish Felice had been able to make that comparison more explicitly in her conversations with Wilhelm. Things obviously don’t get as bad with Wilhelm as they do with August, and Wille and Felice talk things out. But Felice doesn’t get to express herself about that as much as I wanted her to, and we don’t get much of a sense as to whether or not this changes Felice’s views of Wille’s revenge plot. She forgives him pretty quickly, and I don’t know if she should have. Just a little more careful planning on the writers’ parts could have given Felice the agency she needed in season 2.

Anyway! Let’s talk about stakes. The stakes for Wilhelm in season 3 are that he’ll become August—or more accurately, that he’ll construct an armored facade like August has constructed to get through life, and that he’ll hurt other people in the process. (This is true for Wille even with him being queer, I think. Wille may be queer, but his whiteness and wealth and power and literal hired staff of PR-minded humans are going to frame how the rest of the world responds to that queerness.) Whereas for Simon, Sara, and Felice the danger is that, in order to maintain their place in the upper class system, they’ll become dependent on someone like future August or future Wilhelm, who has a lot of power and spends most of their life in armored facade mode. 

Wilhelm and August reconciling is still important, because when they recognize one another’s humanity, they can actually be vulnerable with one another the way they need to be, and take that armor off. And I think by forging that relationship with one another, they have a space to really question the values they are raised with and act better to loved ones in the future. But we’re really just witnessing the first step. And there’s a lot more steps they need to take with one another, and with the other people in their lives.

What can I learn from this as a fan and writer?

Thinking about this actually helped me understand a point of view in fandom that I’ve always disagreed with. I still disagree with it, but I think I understand it better now. Periodically I’ll encounter points of view where August is seen as the worst kind of evil, the sort of person where you unite with each other to take him down once and for all. You know… Avengers Assemble! Or something. In some fan’s minds, he’s the kind of guy everyone at Hillerska should turn against at once and ultimately reject for the sake of narrative catharsis. A symbol of the corrupt system and nothing more.

And I never really saw August that way. He can be awful and annoying at times, and extremely harmful at other times. He often makes things much worse for our other main characters a lot of the time. Often times he is the most direct representative of the system that’s causing them problems. On the other hand, he’s also capable of really, truly caring about people and community, as much as he gets in his own way about it. We also know a greater extent of his trauma now and how it affects him. All in all he seems as human and as in need of liberation as all the other characters of Young Royals. It makes sense that he’s the one of five who hasn’t left behind the system yet, but I feel like one day he can maybe get there. I feel like those are the writers’ intentions, and the show’s intentions overall. Certainly this is also the version of August that Malte’s acting reflects.

I think I also understand now why I don’t always see eye to eye with others about Wille. I adore Wille, but I think sometimes the assertion others make that “Wille has one brain cell and it’s being in love with Simon” feels threatening to me rather than adorable. Wille is really really fascinating to me in that falling in love nudges him to question things about his position, but it doesn’t erase his relationship to his privilege entirely, and he can be pretty flawed in how he understands his power and how it plays out in a relationship. I think for others, they might see Wille as protective and caring toward Simon. Whereas I see him (and prefer to see him portrayed) as intending to be protective but definitely at times overstepping and putting Simon in a more negative place than before. I think part of this is caused by a writing problem in seasons 2 and 3. We see the negative impact the relationship can have on Simon—look it absolutely breaks my heart when Ayub mentions how Simon deleting his social media will make him sad—but I don’t know if Simon gets as much of a chance to articulate that to Wille or even to the audience as I want him to. And I also see Simon and Wille’s very different conflicts with August as part of that.

Moving forward… these flaws in seasons 2 and 3 don’t ruin my love of the show. They aren’t me saying the show is bad. They’re disappointing, because Young Royals is so good in so many ways that it sucks when it does let us down. But basically everything I like has a flaw one way or another, because literally no work is perfect. And right now I’d rather look at the flaws in YR and say, this is something I can learn from and play with in fanfic.

(And sometimes there are times when tumblr wants to explain all the flaws of a show away and idealize it and I wonder… can we not do that? Because sometimes claiming a show is perfect and flawless limits discussion and creativity. I get just as frustrated with people idealizing the Wilmon pairing and putting it on a moral pedestal, which has ultimately led to me blocking the tag from my dash. I like them a lot more when I think about them as complex teenage humans who fuck up a lot and not a godlike ideal of romance. I love them, your honor! But I think I need to love them independent of the tag.)

As for where this goes in fanfic, I think this once again leaves things open for fans to explore. Once again, I think there’s a whole interesting story to be explored in terms of how August and Simon work through their shit, and how that really has to happen in a space that’s in part independent of Wille. A shared relationship with Wilhelm might be the catalyst for why they’re working through their shit, but some of what’s going to happen has to happen without him there. (For what it’s worth, I think we see flashes of Simon and August beginning to understand one another throughout the series—Simon is running some really interesting mental calculus when he realizes August has an eating disorder, shout out to Omar’s acting there—but those threads always get dropped or interrupted. It’s infinitely frustrating to me as someone who likes both characters and wanted to see them talk honestly for once but didn’t quite get that.)

I also think this gives me interesting questions about where Wille and Simon’s relationship could go next in fanfic. Independent of the monarchy, I think Wille is still going to have to work through his instinct to be an angry avenger or reckless rescuer at times, and the part where he assumes he and Simon are harmed in the same way by the same things. Even in a world where Wille doesn’t have a title, he’ll still have wealth and white privilege that Simon doesn’t. And I don’t think that has to get in the way of their future happiness, but watching them navigate through that is something that draws me into a story idea.

So, you know. This has been an update on my fannish desires. At least, my fannish desires that do not involve the rest of the YR characters, various ships on Heartbreak High, and Interview with the Vampire season 2 finally airing today. There’s a lot going on in this brain and none of it is the work I need to get done.

[perfectfangirl]

i'm not new to the fallout fandom but

and i also haven't made a written post in years but yet i'm sure there's already discourse on the tv show about it on here with me not finding it right away but i'd like to talk about how cooper [the ghoul man] decided to unalive and butcher another [going feral friend] ghoul, roger. though terrifying and universally morally reviled... i think it's a genuinely interesting choice of him to me with having his companion hostage [vault dweller] lucy around. morally, on the scale, it was oddly compassionate, for lack of a better phrasing. stay with me now! [ghouls just do not perish under usual circumstances in this universe and that guy would've been doomed to a "life" to fallout's equivalent of zombism] and though obviously i do not like that he did that [lmao like i'm repulsed despite very much knowing how the "fallout" games can go down, i mean there's a cannibalism perk 😭] i still think it was choice. and i think he was thinking about lucy when he made, despite how um how disturbing that entire scene was fldgld listen. when he went to the lead farmer's house, they thought so lowly of ghouls, that man and his son genuinely thought he was eating the farmer's daughter 😭 and until further episodes, i'm basically of the mind he'd probably only consume either bad guys or ghouls or both who are about to turn but anyways. back to the main point. cooper already has to face the prospect that he could be one of "them" any moment too, since he was no vials himself in that episode. so it was duly hard for him to watch--- knowing that person like that and then seeing them slowly turn. i think he knew even with any vials, that man was finished. compassionate might be a very odd word for me to use here but i say this for a couple reasons. it's "compassionate" for this universe, at least. the wasteland is cruel and unforgiving. if cooper was just after meat, why... he could've just had lucy. but i think it was an interesting choice to consume a friend type person and a [going feral] ghoul. he's not even consuming a regular ghoul. he put down one who quite literally was already turning into a feral one. it's giving "lost cause" [this show hurt just like the games, swear] looking back on the scene, he kind of tries to have a [last] warm conversation with him. about food. human food. rewatching the scene now, i actually barely caught the fact that cooper shot roger as he was looking away from him. like, my goodness, he didn't hate this man at all. this was mercy k ill if there was one. in the back of my mind, i keep thinking "was this his call to make?". in a lot of ways, i'm still on lucy's side about everything. but lucy isn't a ghoul. and i don't live in the fallout universe. there's always some type of alternative yet this is what cooper thought he should do. a few episodes later, lucy can't reason with a ghoul anymore and has to do the same thing [minus consuming them]. i guess it was his call. she is gobsmacked that he's really about to butcher and eat that man and it's kinda funny he asks her name. some insane foreshadowing that's intriguing on subsequent watches no less. i want to keep this a little short for sanity's sake--- but like. when lucy asks cooper how does he live like this. why keep going. briefly. for a short moment. while he's turned away from her. he remembers. he wishes. he misses. who he was. before all this. then, feeling contempt for who she thinks she is, he makes her butcher roger. and it was in that moment i realized cooper was for sure playing a character to cope. but that's a post for another time, wastelanders ⚡

[forestmossling]

as has been previously established (or hasn’t? if not, that’s just crazy, this is a fundamental part of my personality) i am an unhinged crossover slut. i just love and enjoy crossovers, even between the most far-fetched and unmatchable fandoms possible, an incredible amount.

and a while ago i had this idea of teen wolf/stranger things crossover (which i obviously never followed up on because i never finish my projects) because their settings just vibe with each other. i thought about older steddie moving from hawkins to beacon hills for a break from all the supernatural stuff (*laughing evilly*), eddie becoming an english literature teacher and steve becoming a counselor in their high school while also helping out the lacrosse team. and danny, as he is wont to do, gets the hots for steve and actually comes onto him, because steve is a young teacher still and danny has bad experiences with older men not caring about his age as long as he’s down to get laid. and obviously steve is terrified and calls eddie immediately because he admittedly can handle this better, considering his own experiences with driving out to indy for questionable hook-ups with older guys while he was still in high school. and at first danny’s like “omg it’s so dumb why are they making such a huge deal out of this” and also pretty embarrassed about the whole situation, but soon steddie become his pillar of support, because they’re two older queer guys!! married!! literally teaching in his school!! (although he never openly admits how much this means to him). but since steve is more of a kindred spirit to him, he comes to him for advice and just to bitch about shit from time to time and steve basically takes him under his wing like he did to the party.

and then there’s stiles (yes, this is a danny/stiles scenario. you can take this ship out of my cold, dead hands, they’re my favorite in tw) who is absolutely obsessed with his new eng lit teacher who is open about also being adhd, is also an absolute nerd while somehow still being undeniably cool, and who doesn’t get angry at his dumb questions in class or snap at him for getting distracted, so he’s got a little bit of hero worship going on. and then there’s eddie, who can sniff a lost sheepie from a mile away and can see how isolated stiles is aside from being friends with scott, so he keeps an eye on him and gets caught up in increasingly weird but incredibly interesting conversations with him after class and privately hopes to corrupt him into getting into dnd. and then he notices the way stiles stares at danny in his class without seemingly even realizing it, or watches him say the dumbest shit to danny trying to get his attention, and immediately goes “boy, do i know the feeling”.

so obviously he tells steve and they hatch a plan to get danny and stiles together, because stiles is such a good boy and maybe dating him would finally stop danny from going out with very questionable older people, and danny seems begrudgingly amused with stiles’s antics anyway, so maybe there’s something there, and their whole dynamic just reminds steve and eddie so much of themselves, makes them think of what they could have been, if they had gotten their shit together earlier, so obviously they can’t just do nothing about it.

and then steddie get dragged into the whole supernatural bullshit (because of course they do), and steve takes out his trusty nail bat. everyone just keeps thinking like “who the hell are these guys and why are they in any way involved in this??” and stiles and danny seriously reconsider their matching scars.

[lgbtlunaverse]

Most annoying NMJ or JC take is when someone that dislikes them is like "oh you're a fan of him? *scoff* Well obviously you've only seen cql, where he was super watered down. In the novel he's a dislikable asshole and that's the objectively superior canon I'm working from instead of your woobified fanfic." Meanwhile your main canon is novel canon and you genuinely find novel Jiang Cheng and Nie Mingjue complex sympathetic characters.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Tanner 💔

[jamesunderwater]

okay okay okay okay read on if you want the latest shenanigans of me and the best friend.

pls enjoy a somewhat redacted version of our texts from last night, that culminate in him being the CUTEST, he's literally becoming a marauders fan bc he's my beta for dead to me. all he's ever done is read hp in his early 20s, like a few weeks ago he couldn't remember "who the werewolf was." let me tell YOU, someone actually getting into fandom stuff for your favorite fandom just cause they love you and read your fanfiction for you?????? is?????? THE NICEST CUTEST MOST ATTRACTIVE THING EVER especially if you're autistic. okay rant over please enjoy:

Me: 1. i'm not even tired fml 2. [insert me being anxious about ppl donating for my top surgery, asking for reassurance] 3. Hi idk sorry to be texting you like literally 20 minutes after leaving you 4. i hope you're magically already asleep this is so embarrassing chuck shut uppppp Him: 1. omg i'm so sorry :/ me neither i'm eating rice cakes 2. [insert reassurance and a question abt the donations] 3. you are so fine! omg I wrote out this text and then got self conscious because I wanted to text you something meaningless like right after you left lol: [insert him telling me something silly and cute about his nighttime routine] 4. Up town for REAL Me: 1. [lala st about being in bed] 2. [lala st about donations] 3. okay i feel so much better 💖 and for the record I always love to hear from you and I want all the fun facts. [lala st about his nighttime routine] 4. Are you telling me to shut up? Him: 1. [lala] 2. [lala reassurance lala] 3. 💖!! Love to share love to hear 4. No you GOON, I meant up as in "im awake"! But I see how that came off... Me: 1. 2. 3. 4. Wow so now you want me to shut up AND you're name calling?! Didn't know you could be so cruel, Jacobson Him: 4. Ok I really read that with my last name and all in Sirius Black's voice Me: 4. You read it correctly then Him: 4. !!!!! Me: 4. b. Good to know you have a voice for Sirius Black in your head......almost like you're a marauders fan Him: 4. c. Almost like this literal spectacular novel writer has gotten my mind into having actual personal thoughts/feelings about the marauders moment...feels sinister on his part idk 4. d. (I won't deny what you're saying tho...) Me: 4. e. !!!!!!!!!! 👀👀👀 call me Dr. Frankenstein cause I've created a monster Him: For real!! ✨👹✨ Me: a marauders monster if you will

[professionalowl]

not reblogging the post because i know it's a flawed test (and infuriatingly poorly worded to wit) but the RAADS-R autism test is going around again and i got an 87, which is i think what i got the last time i took it and also tracks - i'm personally pretty certain that i'm not autistic, but (autistic) friends of mine have historically been split on the issue because apparently i 'act' like an autistic person and they're often surprised when i say i'm actually not

[juusasu4evagrrl]

Genuine question, does anyone want to hear about naruto from the prospective of a Liberian person grappling with the generational trauma of a brutal civil war or is that too heavy??

Like there's, I like sasuke cause he's a cool dude, very wholesome do tell, and then there's, I like sasuke cause the government also tried to eradicate my people group that one time and holding empathy for that dumbass kid teaches me to examine a my own experiences with compassion, honestly what a downer like who cares.

I don't know thoughts???

[vaugarde]

i feel bad for any pmmm fan following me just now bc like i love literally everything ive read and watched so far except for magireco and thats what im watching rn

[thethingything]

oh one thing we do have now is a hawkmoth caterpillar emoji which means the rest of us are probably gonna use that constantly to talk about 🦋 and the other doubles of his source

[pictureswithboxes]

I cannot stand Miles (for the most part), and I’m so surprised by how well I write him. Because again, I do not care for this man.

[prapuna]

okay here's a stretched, baseless theory:

i think arthur was always supposed to die here regardless whether they had sacrificed the Friend or not because what if. the john/arthur patreon choice was to decide whom kayne would strike a deal with. and they managed to get a draw.

so there has to be a scenario that allows kayne to offer the same thing to john--bringing his friend back--and here we are.

[jrwiyuri]

I hate the stupid audio of Wilbur reading his fic and it’s he part of “you are a walking second place medal” with the alien blues cause I feel like it doesn’t represent the scene at ALL

[bastardlybonkers]

i feel like not enough ppl are factoring in the cultural clash between laios and shuro and the many micro agressions shuro faced while being in their group. literally the name 'shuro' in itself is one

his name is toshiro 😭 lets also not forget that he has his own communication issues, in the opposite way that laios does- thats literally a factor in their argument, that his envy for laios's ability to express himself sincerely manifested as part of his distaste for him.

ig all this to say like, was their fight heart wrenching, especially when reading laios as autistic? absolutely. anybody whos ever been in laios's position knows how much it hurts to realize someone you thought was your friend doesnt actually like having you around, especially when they didnt tell you and you had no way of knowing due to not understanding their cues. but im begging yall to step back and see the nuance of this situation cause im gonna be real a lot of you are kinda just brushing over it acting like everything is toshiros fault and that hes a terrible person when in reality hes an average guy who really, really clashed with laios and it led to a very long misunderstanding due to their supremely opposite methods of communication. even laios and toshiro, after letting everything out in their fight, were able to come to an understanding and start a foundation for an actual friendship built on better communication

ok yknow what Edit: i shouldve made it even more explicit at the end of this post, i hadnt thought i would need to since i started the post with this, but i think a few too many people are missing my point so i just wanna clarify. i shouldnt have said 'really clashed' and left it at that because yeah they did, but it wasnt just their opposite methods of communication, it is also very much that toshiro was experiencing microaggressions via laios. it may have been unintentional on laios's part, but it still happened and wore him down, made it harder for him to communicate on top of both the more subtle social cues that he was raised with and his own communication difficulties. i also want to say that the fandom reaction to toshiro and the complete ignorance of this point is also racist tbh or at the very least ignorant. i understand that the anime did not cover this panel, and neither did the manga, as this was an omake, but im gonna be real with you guys. there are enough context clues within the story to clue you into this. if you didnt pick up on it thats ok, but i think this is a good lesson in picking up subtext in the stories that youre watching and/or reading. kui shouldnt have to explicitly say 'by the way laios was racist to toshiro' for this point to be understood, and at the very least, when the author portrays a character in a sympathetic light (as kui clearly does) it should make you question Why they are doing so and what makes them sympathetic, rather than youre immediate and only reaction to be 'well i hated what this guy did/said so i hate them and they suck'. idk exactly how to finish this, just. idk. question your biases and gut reactions to things you see in media and stories, and think about whether or not theres subtext that youre missing.

[figsandphiltatos]

look i'm not trying to start beef with timmy stans (thus the lack of tags) but damn. reading red robin now and you always hear tim stans be like "damian was sooo evil, he beat up tim and tried to kill him uwu"

and like. kinda? like yes, damian attacks him first, but only after finding out that tim is surveilling him and waiting for a chance to take him down when he shows his 'true colors'

like if you actually read red robin, it's very obviously a 17 year old who should know better bullying a 10 year old who is (in dicks words) "bleeding a need to be accepted"

it's VERY hard to feel bad for tim here. of course damian is lashing out, he doesn't know how else to cope!! literally go read batgirl v3 issue 17 and then come back and tell me that if tim hadn't been the bigger man (which he's seven-fucking-teen you think he'd know better than to torment someone half his age) damian would have still been a little shit. he wouldn't have. we see the way stephs acceptance and compassion toward him softens him, makes them able to get along.

anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk. my point is that i'm reading red robin and feeling nothing but protectiveness and sympathy for poor fucking damian