#holy fuck OP your life is suffering

[agooddaytoscream]

LONG POST: About the situation in Inner Mongolia, Tuva, Kalmykia and Buryatia:

See this red piece of land here?

It’s almost as big as the actual country of Mongolia right?

…Wanna know why?

IT’S STOLEN LAND.

I am a Mongolian person from Outer Mongolia, it pains me to see my fellow siblings being subjected to a cultural genocide right now in China.

ALMOST NOBODY is talking about this.

Go ahead and search “Inner Mongolia” on any social media platform, see anything loosely related to it being stolen, or the eradication of the Mongolian language and culture in schools by the CCP?

Not much or close to none, right?

Unlike Tibet and Uyghurs, the other two biggest ethnic minorities in China, which have a number of campaigns/gofundmes/articles about the situation, there’s only a few articles about Inner Mongolia.

Do you want to know why you don’t hear about Inner Mongolia? Censorship and oppression.

Remember Tibet? And how China oppresses Tibetan Buddhism as a result, resulting in His Holiness, the Dalai Lama to leave his people’s homeland and reside in India? The biggest religion practiced in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia is Tibetan Buddhism.

I currently cannot find ANY campaigns aiming for a free Inner Mongolia, much less any recognizing what’s going on.

The Mongolic people have been the victims of genocide multiple times.

I’ve heard numerous negative opinions from foreigners online and in real life about the Mongol Empire and how “Mongolians deserve to be oppressed, China is doing them a favor, Traditional Mongolian script is used in Inner Mongolia and has a higher GDP, Outer Mongolia only uses Cyrillic.”

( Mongolia was colonized by the Soviet Union, and subjected to communism, do you know what it feels like for your own family members, brainwashed by communist propaganda during childhood, even now swearing up and down that Russians are superior and everything they do is correct. And when asked whether the innocent Mongolian Buddhist monks deserved to die at the hands of Russians, they said it was deserved?! This is how insane propaganda can get, nobody is immune)

Do you realize how fucked up that is?? To hear so many say your people deserve this??

“Mongolian is our mother language! We are Mongolian until death!” shouted ethnic-Mongolian students in China’s Inner Mongolia, in opposition to a government policy, ending bilingual education. Critics of this policy see it as the latest move in a decades’ long campaign aimed at erasing the Mongolian culture.

- PLEASE READ THESE ARTICLES, they’re not the most recent, but they tell the truth.

Why critics are asking if Inner Mongolia is the next Tibet or Xinjiang This is from 2023.

Inner Mongolia in 'War-Like State' This article is from 2011, however the events that were reported are still happening.

Mongolians in China Face 'Cultural Genocide' as Language, Culture Swept Aside: Group

This article is from 2021. It’s recent enough.

This goes without saying, but xenophobia is also extremely prevalent in China against ethnic minorities.

I highly recommend reading this specific tumblr post. I am also apart of many fandoms surrounding chinese media. OP makes many valid points and I cannot support them enough.

From personal experiences, I have also read about my people and Central Asians being portrayed as brutal, savage, uncivilized barbarians in many Chinese-American novels. It’s heartbreaking.

I despise how the world turns a blind eye to my brothers and sisters suffering, just because the severity of what my people endured is less than other groups, doesn’t mean that we should only focus on helping one minority, support all groups under oppression and colonialism no matter the severity of their situations.

I just found this Youtube video detailing the situation in Inner Mongolia, it’s beautifully done. PLEASE PLEASE WATCH THE FULL VIDEO, Beginning to End.

Why China Doesn’t Want You To Know About This Place.

Not to mention, the countries of Tuva, Buryatia, and Kalmykia are stolen by Russia just like Inner Mongolia. Throughout its history, Russia has seized foreign lands, colonizing indigenous peoples and destroying their national identity.

Note: I am not talking about the Sakha (Yakutia) because I am personally not apart of their community and will not talk over Yakut voices regarding Yakutia such as: https://www.instagram.com/verona.petrova?igsh=MXkyMHY3NDVoZjZxMg==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2iRvYqvu1M/?igsh=MTFucHg5aDdjaDFocA==

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by VERONIKA PETROVA (@verona.petrova)

The Tuvans are a Turkic group with their own language however, they share many cultural aspects with Mongolians. Tuva is the most poverty stricken place in Russia with the lowest standards of living.

The Buryats are an ethnic minority of Siberia whose population of around half a million largely follow a blend of Buddhism and Shamanism.

They are closely related to the Mongols, and the two groups share similar histories, cultures, religious beliefs, and lifestyles.

The Buryat language is considered one of the world’s most endangered languages.

Soldiers from Tuva and Buryatia have the highest casualty rates per 100,000 for Russia in the Ukraine war.

“These are some of Russia’s poorest regions: places where many young men see the army as their only chance to earn a decent living. And it’s these places that are now paying a disproportionately high price as Russian war casualties continue to rise.”

Please see: Free Buryatia Foundation, Buryat Liberation Movement, Mass Deportation and Ethnic cleansing of Kalmykia, The Kalmyk Deportations of 1943. Ukraine war: Tuva and Buryatia pay the highest price, but latest BBC Russian casualty figures show poverty not ethnicity the key factor.

Free Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Kurdistan, Armenia, Haiti, Yemen, Tigray, Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Arakan, Tamil, Eelam, Western Sahara, West Papua, Kashmir, Canary Islands, & everyone undergoing genocide / colonialism.

Spread awareness about the femicides in Kazakhstan:

The Rise of Non-Consensual Bride Kidnapping in Kazakhstan: Developing a Culturally-Informed and Gender-Sensitive Response

Kazakh Activists Urge Authorities To Toughen Punishment For Domestic Violence

Can An Ex-Minister's Arrest In His Wife's Brutal Killing Finally Bring Protections To Kazakh Women?

EurasiaChat: Gender-based violence rears its ugly head again

YOU DON'T NEED TO GO OUT AND PROTEST, SIMPLY REBLOGING, LIKING, SPREADING AWARENESS, AND REPLYING HELPS AS WELL!!!

[aflyingcontradiction]

Disclaimer: I know this is incoherent and has no actual point. Just spewing some feels onto my blog.

So, this post - first of all, not complaining about OP here. Unlike other people on here who have made similar points, they've got the decency to explicitly go "Your Mileage May Vary" and don't actually shit on people who are already feeling bad. ("How dare you feel bad about modern life, you horrible ingrate. The past was even worse." is an insta-block from me.) But holy shit, the sheer levels of CANNOT RELATE I'm experiencing about the statement "remembering that humanity has been reeling from traumatic event to traumatic event since before we were modern humans is very helpful and grounding".

My thoughts tend to quickly go somewhere along the lines of "Oh shit, we've been working on this for millenia and THIS is the best we can do? We are FUCKED". Or alternately "If suffering is the baseline of humanity, then what is even the fucking point?" (And I mean, that's without going into the whole "Okay, but for people whose parents were legitimately better off than them, it doesn't matter if life has globally gotten better. They're still going to experience it as worse because that deterioration is just closer to home." and "Some aspects of life have genuinely gotten worse. If those things happen to be your priority, you might genuinely have done better in prior decades.")

To be fair, my only solution to stave off despair at the state of the world so far has just been to explicitly go "My priority is caring for me and mine and I am keeping everything else at a distance unless I happen to stumble across a way I can improve things without decreasing our quality of life. If life explodes on a global scale in the future, I'll deal with that when the effects actually hit me". (With "me and mine" being people I actually know. Do I care about the fate of my nation? Only insofar as I live there, but as a concept: Nope.) Not particularly moral and very much doesn't always work but all the other options seem even more unworkable. So I guess I should be glad that some people can see "Life has always been bad" as ... encouraging, I suppose? I mean, in the end we're all equally helpless in the face of greater problems so it's cool that some people find inspiration in that state of things.

[spockandawe]

Well, this is interesting! So, in that post yesterday, there was one line that really baffled me, a thing about people brushing off a character as an asshole “because he shows literally zero growth.” I kind of set that aside because it was such a weird non-sequitur, and guessed that it was just someone’s sentences not quite keeping up with their train of thought, which has happened to me many times. Apparently I was wrong! I already spent long enough on that one post, I’m tired of talking about that, but this is new and interesting. 

Okay. I kind of wanted to see if I could talk about this purely in terms of abstracts and not characters, but I don’t think it’ll work. It would be frustrating to write and confusing to read. It’s about Jiang Cheng. Right up front: This isn’t about whether or not he’s an abuser. Frankly, I don’t think it’s relevant. This also isn’t about telling people they should like him. I don't care whether anyone else likes him or not. But I do like him, and I am always fascinated by dissecting the reasons that people disagree with me. And the process of Telling Stories is my oldest hyperfixation I remember, which will become relevant in a minute.

I thought I had a good grasp on this one, you know? Jiang Cheng makes it pretty obvious why people would dislike Jiang Cheng. But then the posts I keep stumbling over were making weird points, culminating in that “literally zero growth” line.

So! What happened is that someone wrote up a post about how Jiang Cheng’s character arc isn’t an arc, it’s stagnation. It’s a pretty interesting read, and I broadly agree with the larger point! The points where I would quibble are like... the idea that it’s absolute stagnation, as opposed to very subtle shifts that still make a material difference. But still, cool! The post was also offered up as a reason why OP was uninterested in writing any more Jiang Cheng meta, which I totally get. I’m not tired of him yet, but I definitely understand why someone who isn’t a fan of his would get tired about writing about a character with a very static arc. Okay!

Now, internet forensics are hard. I desperately wish I had more information about this evolution, because I find this stuff fascinating, but I have no good way to find things said in untagged posts, reblogs, or private/external venues. But as far as I can tell, that “literally zero growth” wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, it’s become fashionable for people to say that Jiang Cheng is an abusive asshole (that it’s fucked up to like) because he doesn’t have a character arc.

Asshole? Yes. Abusive? This post still isn’t about that. This is about it being fucked up to like this character because he did bad things and had a static character arc.

At first, that point of view was still deeply confusing to me. But I think I figured out the idea at the core of it, and now I’m only baffled. I’m not super interested in confirming this directly, because the people making the most noise about this have not inspired confidence in their ability to hold a civil conversation and I’m a socially anxious binch, but I think the idea is: ‘This character did Bad Things, and then did not improve himself.’

Which is alarmingly adjacent to that old favorite standard of ‘This piece of fiction is glorifying Bad Thing.’ I haven’t seen anyone accusing mxtx of something something jiang cheng, only the people who read/watched/heard the story and became invested in the Jiang Cheng character, but things kind of add up, you know?

Like I said, I don’t want to arbitrate anyone’s right to like/dislike Jiang Cheng. That’s such a fucking waste of time. But this is fascinating to me, because it’s like..... so obviously new and sudden, with such a clear originating point. I can’t speak to the Chinese fans, obviously, but exiledrebels started translating in... what, 2017? And only now, in 2021, do people start putting forth Jiang Cheng’s flat character arc as a “reason” that he’s bad? I’m not going to argue if he pings you in the abuse place, I’m not a dick. I’m not going to argue if you just dislike his vibes. I’m just over here on my blog and in the tag enjoying myself, feel free to detour around me. But oh my god, it’s so silly to try to tell other people that they shouldn’t like him because he has a static character arc.

I want to talk about stories. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to say, because it’s impossible to make broad, sweeping statements, because there are stories about change, there are stories about lack of change, there are all kinds of media that can be used to tell stories, and standards for how stories are told and what they emphasize vary across cultures and over time. But I think that what I can say is that telling a story requires... compromise. It requires streamlining. Trying to capture all the detail of life would slow down most stories to an unbearable degree. Consider organically telling someone ‘I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich’ versus the computer science exercise of having students describe, step by step, how to make one (spread peanut butter? but you never said you opened the lid)

Hell, I’ve got an example in mdzs itself. The largely-faceless masses of the common people. If someone asks you to think about it critically like, yes, obviously these are people, living their own lives, with their own desires, sometimes suffering and dying in the wake of the novel plot. But does the story give weight to those deaths? Or does it just gloss by? Yes, it references their suffering occasionally, but it is not the focus, and it would slow the story unbearably to give equal weight to each dead person mentioned. 

Does Wei Wuxian’s massacre get given the same slow, careful consideration as Su She’s, or Jin Guangyao’s? No, because taking the time to weigh our protagonist with ‘well, this one was a mother, and her youngest son had just started walking, but now he’s going to grow up without remembering her face. that one only became an adult a few months ago, he still hasn’t been on many night-hunts yet, but he finds it so rewarding to protect the common people. oh, and this one had just gotten engaged, but don’t worry, his fiancee won’t mourn him, because she died here as well.’ And continuing on that way to some large number under 3000? No! Unless your goal is to make the reader feel bad for cheering for a morally grey hero, that would be a bad authorial decision! The book doesn’t ignore the issue, it comes up, Wei Wuxian gets called out about all the deaths he’s responsible for, but that’s not the same as them being given equal emotional weight to one (1) secondary character, and I don’t love this new thing where people are pretending that’s equivalent.

When Wei Wuxian brutally kills every person at the Wen supervisory office, are you like ‘holy shit... so many grieving families D:’ or are you somewhere between vindicated satisfaction and an ‘ooh, yikes’ wince? Odds are good you’re somewhere in the satisfaction/wince camp, because that’s what the story sets you up to feel, because the story has to emphasize its priorities (priorities vary, but ‘plot’ and ‘protagonist’ are common ones, especially for a casual novel read like this)

Now, characters. If you want to write a story with a sweeping, epic scale, or if you want to tightly constrain the number of people your story is about, I guess it’s possible to give everyone involved a meaningful character arc. Now.... is it always necessary? Is it always possible? Does it always make sense? No, of course not. If you want to do that, you have to devote real estate to it, and depending on the story you want to tell, it could very possibly be a distraction from your main point, like the idea of mxtx tenderly eulogizing every single character who dies even incidentally. Lan Qiren doesn’t get a loving examination of his feelings re: his nephews and wei wuxian and political turnover in the cultivation world because it’s not relevant, and also, because his position is pretty static until right near the end of the story. Lan Xichen is arguably one of the most static characters within the book, he seems like the same nice young between Gusu and the present, right up until... just before the end of the story.

You may see where I’m heading with this.

Like, just imagine trying to demand that every important character needs to go through a major life change before the end of your book or else it didn’t count. This just in, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg go through multiple novels without experiencing radical shifts in who they are, stop liking them immediately. I do get that the idea is that Jiang Cheng was a ~bad person~ who didn’t change, but asdgfsd I thought we were over the handwringing over people being allowed to like ““bad”” fictional characters. The man isn’t even a canonical serial killer, he’s not my most problematic fave even within this novel.

And here is where it’s a little more relevant that I would quibble with that original post about Jiang Cheng’s arc. He’s consistently a mean girl, but he goes from stressed, sharp-edged teenager, to grief-stricken, almost-destroyed teen, to grim, cold young adult (and then detours into grim, cold, and grief-stricken until grief dulls with time). He does become an attentive uncle tho. He..... doesn’t experience a radical change in his sense of self, which... it’s...... not all that strange for an adult. And bam, then he DOES experience a radical change, but the needs of the plot dictate that it’s right near the end. And he’s not the focus of the story, baby, wangxian is. He has the last few lines of the story, which nicely communicate his changes to me, but also asdfafas we’re out of story. He was never the main character, it’s not surprising we don’t linger! The extras aren’t beholden to the needs of plot, but they’re also about whatever mxtx wanted to write, and I guess she didn’t feel like writing about Jiang Cheng ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But also. Taking a step backward. Stable characters can fill a perfectly logical place in a story. Like, look at Leia Organa. I’m not saying she has no arc, but I am saying that she’s a solid point of reference as Luke is becoming a jedi and Han is adjusting his perspective. I wouldn’t call her stagnant, the vibes are wrong, but she also isn’t miserable in her sadness swamp, the way Jiang Cheng is.

Or, hell, look at tgcf. The stagnant, frozen nature of the big bad is a central feature of the story. The bwx of now is the bwx of 800 years ago is the bwx of 1500+ years ago. This is not the place for a meta on how that was bad for those around him and for him himself, but I have Thoughts about how being defeated at the end is both a thing that hurts him and relieves him. Mei Nianqing is a sympathetic character who’s also pretty darn static. Does Ling Wen have a character arc, or do we just learn more about who she already is and what her priorities always were? I’m going to cut myself off here, but a character’s delta between the beginning of a story and the end of a story is a reasonable way to judge how interesting writing character meta is, and is a very silly metric to judge their worth, and even if I guessed at what the basic logic is, for this character, I am still baffled that it’s being put forth as a real talking point.

(also, has it jumped ship to any other characters yet? have people started applying it in other fandoms as well? please let me know if this is the case, I am wildly curious)

(no, but really, if anyone is arguing that bwx is gross specifically because he had centuries to self-reflect and didn’t fix himself, i am desperate to know)

And finally. The thing I thought was most self-evident. Did I post about this sometime recently? If a non-central character experiences a life-altering paradigm shift right near the end of the story (without it being lingered over, because non-central character), oh my god. As a fic writer? IT’S FREE REAL ESTATE. This is the most fertile possible ground. If I want to write post-canon canon-compliant material, adsgasfasd that’s where I’m going to be looking. Okay, yeah, the main couple is happy, that’s good. Who isn’t happy, and what can I do about that? Happy families are all alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, etc.

It’s not everyone’s favorite playground, but come on, these are not uncommon feelings. And frankly, it’s starting to feel a little disingenuous when people act like fan authors pick out the most blameless angel from the cast and lavish good things upon them. I’m not the only one who goes looking for a good dumpster fire and says I Live Here Now. If I write post-canon tgcf fic, it’s very likely to focus on beef and/or leaf. I have written more than one au focusing on tianlang-jun.

And, hilariously. If the problem with Jiang Cheng. Is that he is a toxic man fictional character who failed to grow on his own, and is either unsafe or unhealthy to be around. If the problem is that he did not experience a character arc. If these people would be totally fine with other people liking him, if he improved himself as a person. And then, if authors want to put in the (free! time-consuming!) work of writing that character development themselves. You would think that they would be lauded for putting the character through healthier sorts of personal growth than he experienced in canon. Instead, I am still here writing this because first, I was bothered by these authors being named as “freaks” who are obsessed with their ‘uwu precious tsundere baby’ with a “love language of violence,” and then I was graciously informed that people hate Jiang Cheng because he experiences no character growth.

[venfx]

magnus fic roundup

as tma comes to a close, i thought i'd post some of my favorite fics to come out of this fandom. most of these are classics, listed in no particular order.

A Weather In The Flesh by @cuttoothed​ | 3K | S1-S4 | Jon/Martin | Complete

"There is a span of years where Jon doesn’t touch anyone other than the occasional hand shake. It’s not so bad. He’s never been someone who’s needed physical affection."

Jon has never been any good at making people want to stick around.

↳ this is such a well-done exploration of jon’s character and his relationship with touch, and i’ve re-read it at least five times. sweet and sad and phenomenally well-written.

in the chillest land and on the strangest sea by imperfectcircle, singlecrow | 20K | Safehouse, S1-S4 | Jon & Daisy, Jon/Martin | Complete

Jon remembers a statement he read years ago given by a Jesuit priest, who said that the shortest prayer he knew was, just, fuck it, as in fuck it; it's in God's hands. He takes Daisy's hand and trails on after her.

or; hope is a thing with feathers.

↳ hey, you wanna fuckin..... feel things? read this.

The Magnus Institute vs the 21st Century: a series of emails and IMs by shinyopals | 26K | Series | S3 | Pre-Jon/Martin | Complete

The Magnus Institute hires a Data Protection Officer. He sets about diligently booking in meetings, writing policy documents, and training all the staff in the importance of confidentiality. Now if only he could get hold of the Head Archivist, who seems to have vanished again...

(Jon is only trying to save the world, but apparently some people think he should still be doing his day job.)

↳ i’d be surprised to find people who haven’t read this series, but it’s the definition of “the magnus archives is a workplace comedy”. also, alasdair stuart has actually read some clips of this on Twitch, so that’s a fun bonus.

Bell, Book, and Candle by yellow_caballero | 102K | Series | S3 into S4 | Jon/Martin | Complete 

In accordance with the Ride or Die Pact of 2009, Jonathan Sims can call upon Georgie Barker at any time for aid with no strings attached. Despite their rocky history, their childhood friendship, and Jon’s barely recovered alcoholism, this pact is sacred and must be upheld.

Georgie Barker may regret this. She may regret it when she discovers that the world is full of monsters and eldritch gods and dickhead managers. She may regret it when a punk rocker who should be dead collapses on their doorstep, a teenager again who needs their help. She may regret it when her stupid ex-boyfriend starts selling his soul for knowledge and the ability to keep his new family safe.

But she probably won’t. Georgie isn’t scared of anything - not a Clown’s apocalypse, not the apocalypse that Jon is destined to begin, and not Jon’s own loss of humanity.

Maybe she should be.

↳ if you’re looking for an everyone-lives-no-one-dies-happy-ending fic that also happens to be massively chaotic, look no further. 

The Reverb in These Holy Halls by @wolftraps​ | 98K | AU, S1-S4 | Jon/Martin | Complete

Undoing the apocalypse would have been enough for Jon, if all his people survived. Without them, Jon's only recourse is making it so it never happened in the first place. He's going to do better this time.

↳ quintessential time travel AUs. plot-wise, i feel like these can be difficult to write, but op does a fantastic job of tying things together in a way that makes sense. plus, it’s just fun to read.

jon sims v the nhs by @thoughtsbubble​ | 12K | Series | S3 | Complete

Joan Bright has a new patient. He's carrying an old tape recorder and is covered head to toe in scars. Jonathan Sims looks dangerous, but Dr Bright has dealt with all sorts of atypical individuals. She has no reason to be nervous.

Right?

↳ if you’ve ever thought “hey, jon should probably go to therapy”, then 1) you’re absolutely right and 2) this is... probably what would’ve happened. prior knowledge of The Bright Sessions is not required. also, apparently, this fic is written by the showrunner of The Underwood Collection? wild.

Family, Found by Dribbledscribbles | 9K | S4 | Complete

It’s Basira who catches onto it.

The collective shift that seems to come over them when heading in or out of the Institute. Not just the oppressive sensation of being observed, their every move catalogued for the voyeuristic cravings of some unseen Eye(s). That feeling remained with them even when they left the Institute these days, but it was always stronger inside its walls. That wasn’t the change. Nor was it the point.

The point was: making life worse for Jonathan Sims.

↳ i think being part of the avengers fandom circa 2012 has given me permanent found-family-trope brainrot, but you know what. jonathan sims can have a little happiness, as a treat. 

Road to Damascus by @titanfalling​ | 107K | Series | S4 | Jon & Tim | Complete

n. an important moment of insight, typically one that leads to a dramatic transformation of attitude or belief

Or, in which Tim becomes an avatar for the end of all things.

↳ tim dies and then he doesn’t. there is catharsis and world building. just....read it.

Come, Change Your Ring With Me by @backofthebookshelf​ | 29K | S3 | Peter/Jon, Jon/Martin, Peter/Elias | Complete

The Lukases demand the Archivist marry into the family, and the Institute relies on them too much to say no. Peter is smug. Elias is fuming. Martin is suffering. Jon thinks this might be tolerable if only Peter would hurry up and leave him alone already.

OR, the soap opera we call an Archives revolves around Peter Lukas this time.

↳ superb evil-bastards-in-love content, feat. martin pining, tim being obnoxious, and jon being... well, tired, mostly. i will literally never get tired of how op writes peter. 

creatures that i briefly move along by @dotsayers​ | 16K | Series | AU, Post-S4 | background Jon/Martin 

Mr Sims was so weird, was the thing. Miss Grant always said calling people weird was rude, and Anna sort of agreed, but she didn’t know what other word to use to describe Mr Sims.

He’d only been in with the class for a few days, really, and half of that he just sat at the back listening, but that didn’t stop her from making a swift judgement. 5BG had had student teachers before, back when they were 3ST, and they’d been uniformly normal.

Mr Sims was… actually, Anna had a better adjective. He was interesting.

↳ i just.... love teacher!jon fics. this series delivers. 

Once Bitten by @apatheticbutterflies | 1K | S4 | Jon & Daisy | Complete

Jon Sims has always been a jumpy kind of guy. Nervous. Twitchy. Daisy used to think it meant he was guilty. Turns out he was. Just not of what she’d thought.

Daisy learns how to peel an orange.

↳ daisy and jon’s relationship is an example of an instance where i’m happy to say “fuck what you wrote mr. jonny ‘chocolate torte of tragedy’ sims, i want them to be friends”.

pins and needles by mutterandmumble | 13K | S1-S4 | Complete

He’s got a reputation to uphold anyways; an uptight, rigid reputation that dictates the way that he interacts and functions and is such an integral part of him that he can’t let go of it anytime soon. He likes his safety nets. He likes his contingencies. He likes his privacy, and everything around this place right down to the walls seems to have ears, so he’ll stay tight-lipped up to and beyond the threat of death.

He’s good at that.

In which Jon takes up embroidery and bumbles through life the best that he can.

↳ out of all the introspective jon pieces i’ve read (and there are many), this one stands out. maybe it’s the symbolism or the characterisation, or maybe it’s the fact that i have an embroidery kit lurking in the back of my closet along with a hundred other half-pursued hyperfixations. whatever. this is excellent.

sleeping in by @ivelostmyspectacles | 5K | S2 | Jon/Tim | Complete

“Who are you trying to convince?”

Jon gives up, letting his head sag against Tim’s shoulder. “I don’t know.”

aka Elias gets tired of Jon and Tim's bickering, sends them away for a "team-building" weekend trip, and is sure to book them a room with only one bed

↳ this has everything you’d need from a “oh no there’s only one bed” fic. someone please get these men therapy.

if you try, sometimes (you get what you knead) by @ajcrawly​ | 3.5K | S1-S4 | Jon/Martin, Tim/Sasha | Complete

It starts with an abundance of boeuf bourguignon and ends up as a team tradition.

Food and love in uncertain times.

↳ more found family fic, this time with a diverse og!archival staff and food as a metaphor for love. hurt in all the right ways. made me hungry in the process.

[cluescorner]

have any opinions on part 4 of JoJo?

It's the best one in terms of writing, plot consistency, and actually being coherent. The relatively lower stakes (trying to find 1 serial killer instead of trying to save the world) lends itself very well to a story set in a small town and also allowed for more character moments. One of my favorite parts about Part 4 is that we get to see the characters just...being kids together. Like, one of my favorite episodes is the Harvest one where Josuke and Okuyasu are just being dumbasses together constantly.

Josuke is probably my favorite JoJo so far, but I haven't gotten past Part 5 yet so that might change. He really feels like just some guy who happened to be born into the Joestar family and now has to deal with this crazy new world. He makes a lot of mistakes because he's inexperienced and also a LITERAL TEENAGER, but he also is his father's son. He is extremely clever and can quickly manipulate the situation to his advantage. He's like a Joseph who's also a decent person and not friends with a LITERAL N*ZI so that's nice. He also wears his heart on his sleeve and he see him get visibly upset and happy and angry and just overwhelmed throughout the Part. He feels like a real person that I can relate to, not just a badass punch man with 3 personality traits. So he's the best JoJo so far imo.

I also think the general main cast is also all solid. There really aren't any that ruin the show for me, even of the ones I like least. Okuyasu is such a good character and I honestly feel like he was underutilized both as a fighter and as a character. The Hand is so overpowered and literally could neutralize Kira in the span of like 5 minutes, so I feel like giving that overpowered Stand to Okuyasu, a character who isn't exactly bright enough to understand the full capabilites of his Stand and how to utilize them, was a good decision. Even if it was ultimately underutilized a LOT.

And the potential behind his character, a kid who has been only with his brother and his father (who are both kinda monsters in their own right) for as long as he can remember who then LOSES his brother after trying to fight Josuke, who then becomes friends with Josuke DESPITE all of this and quickly works his way into his friends' lives, who has a power related to taking EVERYTHING AWAY IN ONE TOUCH (Stands are a reflection of their user's soul so...), AND who is shown to be extremely kind-hearted despite his trauma but is also likely suffering in silence?? I think Okuyasu had the set up to be the best character of the part but Araki just didn't follow through. This kind of stuff is why I enjoy fanworks so much, I have already read so many that explore Okuyasu and they're all fantastic. I absolutely adore Okuyasu and his 'death' was the first moment in JoJo that I almost cried real tears.

Koichi is...fine. I like him and I get why everyone else likes him. In any other season I'd likely have way more to say about him, but every single character is pretty good in this season so I don't really have that strong of feelings about him.

Rohan is so funny to me. Like, this man only cares about his manga and does NOT care about being a good person and he doesn't try to hide it. One of the first things he does is try to fight our heroes because...he wants Koichi for his manga. He was about to force Okuyasu to kill himself and Heaven's Door is such an OP ability that I feel like I don't have to say anything. And the only reason he loses is because Josuke doesn't like manga and he insulted Josuke's hair. This is the kind of stuff that I love about this part, the ways our heroes win are so weird and clever that it makes the battles feel more real. Rohan is also a pretty well-written character and he contrasts very well with the other characters to create some very fun dynamics.

Part 4 Jotaro is better than Part 3 Jotaro. A major reason why I didn't really love Part 3 is because I didn't like Jotaro as a protagonist. He's too disinterested and stoic for me to enjoy as the LEAD OF AN ENTIRE PART but I always thought that he would work better as something else. And apparently, that something else was a genuinely amazing mentor character. He has seen the worst that Stands have to offer and he's very familiar in dealing with them, so he makes for a great contrast to our extremely inexperienced team. And he's also given less screen time, which means I don't get tired of his stoicism and OP-ness as often. I actually enjoyed that he only uses Time Stop when it's absolutely neccesary, since that's the ability that killed SO MANY OF THE PEOPLE HE KNEW. But Part 4 Jotaro also isn't infallible. He almost dies to a FUCKING RAT and that was honestly one of the most human moments Jotaro has ever been given. He's just waiting for Josuke to figure out what to do while he keeps getting turned slowly yet slower into a pile of fleshy goop. And he also cannot handle Kira on his own like he could handle DIO because Kira is a far more subtle opponent. You can't just beat Kira by punching it until it dies, you have to actually think about what you are and aren't doing. It makes Jotaro feel more like an actual character and less of 'Protagonist Syndrome'.

On the subject of Kira, HOLY SHIT KIRA IS SUCH A GOOD VILLAIN. I still think that DIO is the best villain so far, but I flip flop on him and Kira more often than I'd like to admit. Kira is the perfect 'low stakes' villain. He's a serial killer with a fetish for hands and a desire to live a 'normal' life, which prompts him to stay hidden as long as possible. I tend to dislike whodunnits where the audience knows who the killer is, but Kira's inability to actually stay hidden for long makes sure it never feels like it goes on for too long. I also adored his ability, it's a far more 'planning' based one than any ability we've seen up until this point. You need to know what you're doing with your ability and Kira, though he's also a dumbass at times, knows Killer Queen inside and out. Bites The Dust is also a great ability for him to have and his weird sort of relationship with Shinobu also made him very fun.

The Bites the Dust arc is the best JoJo has to offer. In the same vein that many told me that the DIO's world arc +the final battle was worth every minute of the rest of Part 3, I am telling anyone who is still unsure of whether they want to watch Part 4 that the Bites the Dust arc is worth every minute you spend on Part 4. Though, if you really aren't feeling it, you can start when Kira first shows up and just watch from there. The other episodes are great, but if you don't like low-stakes slice of life stuff then just start when Kira shows up. Because the Bites the Dust arc is so good. It's just so good. It feels like a culmination of everything we've built towards throughout the season with crescendoing character moments and an impossible situation that only desperation and preparation (funnily enough the two traits Kira is most defined by) can solve. Really, the Bites the Dust arc is so good that I'm not even gonna talk about what happens during it explicitly. I refuse to spoil this arc, watch it yourself please. But try to find a Trigger list for it, because it gets DARK. Be safer than I was while watching it, lol.

So yeah, I love Part 4. It's probably the best part so far. Is it my favorite part? IDK, gay italians and women are real in Part 5 so I think I'm still more about that part so far. Part 5 is my favorite, but Part 4 is the best and it's honestly not even close. Even if you don't want to watch JJBA (entirely valid, I hate this show sometimes and if you aren't a fan of sausage fests...this show isn't for you probably) I still recommend Part 4 or at least the Bites the Dust arc. It's the best JoJo part, hands down.

[svpervixen]

Are you happy with yourself? Do you feel accomplished? Do you feel triumphant knowing that multiple people have to reckon with the horrors you put them through every single fucking day? That YOU are the reason why literal handfuls of people have been pushed into dark, insidious, terrifying crevices in their minds, thinking over and over again they won’t make it out alive because it’s just too much to handle? Because the mere thought of you is enough to make us physically sick and emotionally compromised? Are you proud of that? Or do you just not feel it? You just don’t care, right? You told yourself it was all mutual and you were JUST as much of a victim as us? Even though in the back of your air-headed mind, you sure as hell know that’s not the truth? You proud of yourself? You proud of your legacy of dishonesty and suffering? You proud of having a gang of people go after the same people you spent months/years abusing, lying to, coercing, manipulating, isolating, gaslighting, stealing from, slandering and using just because they wanted to tell the truth about you? Man, you must sure be afraid of your OWN actions to do the kind of shit you do to keep people quiet!

Does it make you feel like a god knowing that close to a dozen people have had to spend a significant chunk of their lives thus far actively fighting to survive and manage the trauma you put them through, the majority of it in silence? Does it make you feel better about your own trauma knowing that you have a higher number of victims than literally anyone who has ever wronged you? Do you feel like you won because you’re shameless and brash enough to lie your way through literally every single process of your life, from relationships to friendships to jobs to legal proceedings to side projects to your public persona?

Speaking of which, is your follower count worth it? How’s that supply bin going for you? “Ope, feeling down, let’s see how many people called me beautiful today! As long as I’m beautiful, I don’t have to think about the time I bashed his head in or choked her against a wall!” Works like a charm! Do the likes and attention make up for the massive black hole in your ugly ass heart? What about your “friends”? Is your massive circle of superficial friends worth it? Is your clown posse still kissing your ass and doing your dirty work for you? Are you still making them lie for you? Do you still send them after the people who stand up to you after feeding them bullshit stories and crocodile tears? Ooo, and are you still triangulating people??? You’re REALLY good at that! How many souls do you influence now? How many times has the circle changed in a year? How many people are survivors of abuse themselves that you’re manipulating into feeling sorry for you when, if they knew at all what you’ve done and how you lie about it, wouldn’t give you the time of day? You ever stop to consider how you emotionally extort people and the effects that has on trauma survivors? That last ones a rhetorical question really, given the fact I already know you don’t give a flying fuck about anyone’s integrity unless it makes you look good.

In that regard, how many people that once believed you over me eventually started to see through you and ditched you? How many of those people did you end up lying about? How many of their secrets did you tell others in an attempt to belittle them? How many have you just flat out fucked over because they were of no use to you anymore? I’m REAL curious. Enlighten me, holy one. Oh, and how many are your own age?

Last but not least, am I still the main villain in your story right now? How much of the last two years do you actually take in as what they were? Not much, I know that for sure. How many people do you mention my association to? What new tales of abuse did you come up with when that happens to sell me as the monster you know you are?

Does it work, sick fuck? Abusive groomer? Hm?

[leatherbookmarking]

this show is insane (part 32987423) (and maybe further liveblogging because)

right after a scene that blends a bisexuality joke with “haha this dude is annoying” joke there’s a scene that shows

the relationship of two characters who would be otherwise alone

how natural and inescapable the concept of death is to them, and the ways they deal with it both mentally and wrt handling things after

that lin nuoyan is Everywhere. what’s up with you, buddy

although having a little girl say you’re her boyfriend? congratulations You Made It

GOD SHE’S SO ANNOYING I LOVE HER

“if the turkey outfit is too much for a man, then he’s not a man!” a, it’s a turkey now?! and b, JIANG BAIJU SERIOUSLY

SHRIEKS HE POKED HER i love their relationship so much ughhhhh

SHRIEKS AGAIN they go 0-100 FAST. “is there any.... Service you need from me?” holy shit jxy CHILL

KJGFHSJKGSHF JXY i admire her dedication to the Bit

...at what point do we think jbj realizes this is not Chinese Medicine but, in fact, funeral make-up

MAGIC TRICKS :’‘‘‘) ah kuankuan but also GOD she’s gorgeous

he’s.... inserting jxy into his dream about his previous love...... right? oh my god. ohhh my god

ah. william. should have been expecting this

A WHOLE DAY. IT TOOK HIM A WHOLE DAY GOD BLESS

.........qian cheng.......... love........ so he’s not only jealous about jxy getting jbj BUT ALSO stupidly protective of william. to the point of ostentatiously bringing Better pillows and blankets. dude ilu

o Ho the illegal drugs plot thickens

EPISODE 14 but also lmao “can you stop rubbing your hands like a fly?”

screams did they really make a collection inspired by the stages of decay, HELP, HELP,

also, help @ the pronunciation of ‘morishige kinugasa’ :’)

ah. ah. i see. when in need of deep thoughts of death, jiang baiju is your friend

they’re ballroom dancing while she’s telling him about a book on the relation of insects and a dead body. this show is a gem

ohhhhh yeah the drug plot thickens IT’S THICK AS FUCK and ahhh add animal death to the content warnings :/

MAKE THAT TWO ANIMAL DEATH OH NO :0 i mean i knew this would happen but aaaauuugh :’////

i’m screaming the restaurant logo says ‘casual cuisine’ but they have a strict dress code, issues invitations to their customers and the entrance fee (?) is 3000cny which is roughly 470 USD per person. sure is casual

GOD jxy and lny need to stop being so cute

JIN XIAOYU IM SCREAMING i love this girl so much it RARELY happens

i. can’t believe they didn’t think of giving him a Gotdamn Fake Name this is the FIRST thing she would ask!!! obviously!!! i love stupid people

screams SHE’S HITTING ON HIM SO HARD the lads must be having the time of their life. hell yeah guys make your boss suffer

“OH FUCK ME IN A NON-RECREATIONAL SENSE”

ahhhhh it’s over for this week!!! YELLS but also it feels nice to see more scenes from op/ed, i see Things are going to happen more and more

[what-a-messsss]

1x10 rewatch

Ok, let’s get back to Walt Longmire: Disaster Boi of S1 and finish this season off with a...something.  Pleading look to the heavens, maybe?  

How do I keep forgetting that Lizzie is a thing, even after our decision to find her some nice Smitten Cowboy to be with?  Holy hell, but why are you still keeping your dead wife’s ashes in the kitchen?  At least you kept Lucian in your fucking truck.  In a coffee can.  What is with you and breakfast beverages??  We all know you need lots of therapy, but this seems like a kind of niche issue.

“Trust me, you don’t, uh, you don’t want that tea.”  Buddy.  

Poor Lizzie.  She really is so nice.  And he’s such a fucking disaster.  “You seem weird,” she says, in reaction to him going bug eyed from having to convince her not to drink his dead wife without her realizing that’s what he was doing.  Sweetie, you have no idea.  And she really does like him.  

This is.  So.  Gloriously awkward.  And Lizzie’s there in her bare feet.  And all we need is for Branch to show up and we’ll have a full house, and aaaaahahaha, Walt is so trying to freeze time with the power of his brain.  Staring off into the Not Here place with his mouth pressed just so...  Awwwww, suffer.

I had forgotten that Ferg was the one who actually did the body work on the Bronco!  Even did the paint work, because that old truck has never looked so good.  I know Omar loaned Walt his truck while the Bronco was “in the shop,” but I like that the writers gave Ferg the skills to do that.

“If anybody... has something they want to say, I suggest you think twice about it.”  We don’t need to say anything; we’re too busy laughing at you.

Oof, and then Lizzie hearing Martha’s voice still on the message greeting.  She’s really quite a good actress.  Lizzie isn’t a terribly subtle character generally, but she gives her these really fine microexpressions that give you occasional glimpses that there is more going on under the surface, and she’s not just an open book.  : (  Making me actually like her and feel bad, not just cringe when she comes on.  Dang iiiiiiiit.

Ok, that does NOT look like Sharpie.  I’m sorry, but that looks like a paint pen or lipstick more than it looks like a Shapie on the dead kid’s forehead.  Even if it were one of the jumbo Sharpies, they don’t write like that, they aren’t that colour on skin, and the thickness of the lines are all off.  Which is not really relevant, but it buuuuugs meeeee.  Pedantic little shit that I am.

Ope, Branch is basically past the angst about Walt not liking him and straight into just giving him nothing but attitude.  Which, while I can hardly blame anyone for giving Walt shit, does get old pretty fast.

Walt, you are So Bad at talking to people, even when it’s for the damn job!  Yeah, it’s fine to have Ferg fill Vic in, but at least acknowledge that she’s there, damn.  Honestly it would have been good for both Vic and Ferg for Walt to tell her to follow Ferg’s lead on this one.  He knows the case, the local history, the players, the situation, and probably more about archery than her, and she could stand to take the reminder that working 5 years in big city homicide still doesn’t make her the senior deputy and that she needs to be ok learning from even Ferg.  Shit, I keep finding more and more reasons to be annoyed at Walt.  Is he even really that good of a sheriff?  I’m shaking the ol’ Magic 8 Ball here, and signs point to frickin’ NO.  Ugh.

Five HUNDRED dollars says that he didn’t check with Mathias before going on the Rez for official police business again.  Jackass.

Can’t really blame Viho for being super bitter.  And Ayasha is so sweet.  This whole family dynamic is so well done.

Aw, Ferg is so excited about the gum wrapper.  “Still minty!”  How are you such a sparklebunny?  Bless.

Detective Falessssss.  His opening line is so great, but uuuuuuuhg, he’s as bad as Walt with his singlemindedness about the case.  

“Talk to Ruby.  She runs my life.”  She runs the department, bucko, and you’d be lost without her!  Lost, I say!  But you treat her like your personal social secretary, and that’s crap.

In Fales’ dubious defense, you were just super weird about that whole encounter.  

Omar!  You creepy little lecherous jackass.  Why am I still fond of you?  It’s really rather galling that I enjoy your character at all, but I doooo.  Thank gods he has the beard now; cleanshaven was just wigging me out.  “Vickie’s never shot before--”  “That is the second-to-last time you will ever call me that.”  And I chortle myself to distraction to the point that I have to rewind to catch the lines that I missed.  With her horrible plans when she gets drunk (I’m still cringing at that flashback of her with Travis) and her obvious thing for older men, I’m honestly kind of surprised she didn’t end up having a deeply regretted something with Omar at some point.  They do have good chemistry in an antagonistic way.  And he does so enjoy tugging her pigtails.  ...ew.  Why is my brain like this?  

“A little bit of practice, even a girl can make that shot.”  Aaaaaaand we’re back to kick him in the nuts.  Not that we ever really left there.  Such a butthead.

Boy oh boy, it sure is great the tone that all these shitty rich white people take saying “Indian.”

“That is what a normal person would do in your situation.”  Henryyyyyy, I love you so much.  Why can’t we spend more time with him in the early seasons?  Why are you drinking a Rainier?  Nooooo, please have better taste in beer than your boyfriend!  You have expensive tastes in bourbon, why can’t you have decent taste in beeeer?

Walt, what is the point of practicing darts when you are FIVE FEET from the board?  Seriously, you’re supposed to be like...  (a google later)  7 feet 9.25 inches away!  That’s...  That’s an oddly specific measurement.  Wtf.  No quickly apparent reason for that specific measure.  Resisting the pull of this particular rabbit hole to continue the ep.  

Aaaah, that’s right, this is still when Walt thinks that Henry may have killed the guy for him.  And BestDad Henry talked to Cady after the blow up about Branch, and he is a wonderful human being.  “It’s really none of your concern.”  Hoooooow dare you.  It is clearly a function of being bffs with that butthead that Henry just smiles (somewhat bitterly) at this instead of tripping him into the bar or shoving his head into the cigarette machine.  (Is that a cigarette machine?  Wtf is that thing with the yellow lit up portion towards the top? [14:05])  

“What a rich inner life you must lead.  From time to time, you should consider sharing some of it with the rest of us.”  The sass!  Swoon.  Henry.  Marry me.  

“I’ve got other problems.”  Buddy, you are other problems.

I wonder how many people/places Ruby just has on speed dial so that she can zoom through her list of “Where the hell is Walt now” to get in touch with him.

Aaaaand we’re back to Branch getting a bit big for his britches.  Whee.  Better fight about it like Big Boys.  Ffs.  “Go ahead.  Give me your best shot.”  ::Pat Benatar starts playing in the background::  Oh holy shit, I wish so damn much that I had any know-how about making vids.  I would be beyond amused by a spoofy hate vid of Walt and Branch being assholes to “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.”  Ooo, oo, or “Hit Me Baby One More Time!”  Aaaahahaha, these fucking losers and their fragile masculinity.  Get rekt.

Children.  Childreeeeen.  Stop it, or you can’t go to Timmy’s birthday party next week.

The irony of Vic being the one who is actually calling them on their shit and getting to do their damn jobs.  Well shit, they actually have a warrant this time.  Will wonders never cease.

Damn, Viho is smart.  Politically savy, pointing out the election coming up.  He’s got the wrong end of the stick this time, but the fact that he’s seen these angles and considered a bunch of things about the consequences already is telling about how smart he is.

Ruby is so pleased to see Henry.  She sounds tired (dealing with Walt and Branch and the sheer volume of bs that is accumulating in that office, no wonder) but still fond.  And the look she gives him.  I love her so much.  She puts up with so much.  And I love Henry continually calling Walt and the department on their shit and just being a dedicated activist for his community.

Fuck right off, Branch.  “Woah.  I know you’re Walt’s friend, Henry, but you don’t have any particular rights here.”  You are sliding into being a full on trashbag of a human being so fast, Brancheroo.  Reminding a young man of his rights and helping him avoid getting railroaded by your biased ass isn’t a bad thing, you rusty wingnut.

Ok, it might not be Glasses!Henry, but cowboy boots!Henry with the glow of righteousness upon him is also quite A Look.

Aaaaahahaha, for once Vic’s unholy yelling saves the day.  Being able to shout over a mass of raucous teens is usually reserved for teachers, camp counselors, and stage managers.  Looool and using detention as the threat.  And then jail.  Heeeh.

This is soooo weeeeeird: I’m starting to genuinely like Lizzie.  She just showed up and I remembered that it’s for dropping off that present, and then Vic is such a butt about it, and this poor lady is just trying to date a guy that she really likes and even gave him about 5 different outs that morning and he pointedly didn’t take any of them and dammit, Lizzie deserves better, too.  Fuck, Walt, you are such a disaster zone.  And Vic is a whole other disaster area that’s looking to, uhhhh, share a border.  Yike.

The present is definitely more Lizzie than it is Walt, with the wrapping and everything, but it’s still a sweet impulse.  AND THEN VIC, who told Walt how many times that he should call her?? gets all up in her business?  Poor Lizzie trying to figure out what the fuck this has to do with Vic or how it is even on the same planet as any of her business.  She does have some issues from her previous marriage, but she owns them.  And her BS meter is actually pretty finely tuned.  Sure picks up on Vic’s awkward boner for Walt in no time flat.  Not that it’s particularly well hidden, damn.

This kid is a rapist and a murderer and The Bad Guy, but at the same time, he is a high school kid, chances are he’s a minor, and Walt is talking to him alone in his office without any parent, much less a lawyer.  What the fuck.  

“Because Ayasha Roundstone told me so,” is a good line, solidly so.  And Walt’s all in The Righteous Hand of Justice mode or whatever, with the gravelly voice and standing over the kid, staring him down.  Effective.  (But where are that kid’s parents?)  Ah, that’s right, his dad is taking a shot at whatshisnoodle to make it look like he’s the killer.

Awww, Cady.  Honey, how long have you been waiting for you FailDad to show up?  Fuck.  Right.  This was how she found out that Martha was murdered.  He lies to her so much.  He manipulates her so much.  He passes all of this off on it being Martha’s wish, but he even acknowledges that Cady had a right to know and he chose not to tell her.  He denies Cady her own agency again and again.  He makes decisions for her without ever giving her a chance to choose for herself, and punishes her when she makes a choice that he doesn’t agree with.

It’s not “protecting” her from the pain.  “Protecting you from the pain,” is not a father’s job; it’s to teach their child how to manage it, help them live through it, and how to grow past it.  You’re damaging her.  Into the suuuuuuun, Walt!  Into the fucking SUN.

But fuuuuuuuuuuuck, her delivery of that same line, “Well, let me relieve you of that burden,” is sooo good.  You done fucked up, buster.  And you just keep fucking up.  I would say in new and exciting ways, but it’s generally in the SAME DAMN WAYS, dammit Walt.

This flashback is really difficult.  

They’re right about that technically being kidnapping, too.  Wyoming  § 6-2-201 specifically includes defining kidnapping as unlawfully confining another person, with the intent to “facilitate the commission of a felony; or Inflict bodily injury on or to terrorize the victim or another,” with unlawful confinement defined as “accomplished (i)  By force, threat or deception; or (ii)  Without the consent of a parent, guardian or other person responsible for the general supervision of an individual who is under the age of fourteen (14) or who is adjudicated incompetent.”  Meaning that not only could Walt charge Jake with the kidnapping of Rich, but also probably of Ayasha, since she was ruled an unreliable witness and would more than likely be legally considered a “mentally incompetent person” according to the states’ legal definitions.  

Not... that I have the Wyoming State Criminal Code downloaded on my computer.  >_> Certainly haven’t skimmed about 80% of it trying to figure out what charges would most make sense to be levied against Jacob at the end so that I don’t have to deal with him going in to a Federal prison on RICO charges.  <_<  Or what Cady probably should have been charged with after that mess with Tate and Catori.  Nnnnnnope.  Sure don’t, didn’t, haven’t. o_o

This is about the only time I can remember there being a legitimate reason for Walt not to have backup.  Since they’re off checking other locations.  Also, damn, that was some classic Old West quickdraw shit, Walt!  Noice!

“Why did you stop me?”  Because you have to testify, you little shit.  HE is not terribly bright.

Ooooooo, somehow I forgot that it was Branch who went to Jacob.  But that makes total sense; I can’t really see Jacob seeking Branch out, but once he walks himself into his office, Jacob will certainly play those new cards for all they’re worth.  Ooooooooo, and the Hotamétaneo’o headdress!  I’d forgotten about Branch seeing it, too!  Nice call back and foreshadowing to finish off S1!

“You will not find a chili cheeseburger of this caliber anywhere in Colorado.”  And now it’s 4:30 in the morning and I want a chili cheeseburger.  Thanks, babe.   Some daaaaaay, I will figure out which is my favourite Henry, but it is not this day, because godsdaaaaamn, the red checked shirt with that vessssst, is *chef kiss* a wonderful thing.   And the director knoooooows it = that pan down Henry’s back as he turns after saying, “I said nothing,” for noooo reason other than to have Henry’s ass on screen.  Seriously.  He says his line, it pans down, we get a primo shot of his jeans, and then it cuts away.  Solely a pan for Henry Butt.  Who directed this, and where do I send the fruit basket?  Dang, it was Nelson McCormick, and this was the only ep of Longmire he directed.  Huh.  In S1, there’s only one repeat director, who did eps 1, 3, and 7.  Interesting.

Focus, kid.  You are less than 3 minutes from the end and you’ve had it paused for over 5 minutes to wander around IMDb.  No wonder it takes you three flipping hours to watch one of these episodes.  What a mess, indeed.

“We all process grief in our own way.”  Buddy.  You have not processed.  You are a human <BUFFERING> screen.  You’re a walking loading symbol.  Walt, he gives you some basic vital statistics on the guy, but...  You haven’t even asked who it was.  Walt, you are so bad at this.  Fffffffff---  And there’s season 1.  lawd.

[telesthisia]

Heya guys just a few recaps of past headcanons on here because I legit went my city now with this blog and have too much ;v;

Hylia is an obscure and lost goddess by the Downfall Era, because of the vast records that only the Hyrulean Family possess most of the members are aware of all the eras that goes on in the official Zelda Timeline. BUT the final battle between Ganondorf and Link, with Link being the loser much of Hyrule’s history is lost to the great destruction that came with Link’s failure in the battle. With the brief power trip, Ganondorf only briefly succumb to the madness that comes with the Triforce that draws out the greed of humanity (I mean, Hilda and Yuga are both very good examples to what happens when you only have greed on your mind, no matter how will intended you are as with Hilda). It takes a sound mind and heart to wield the awesome powers of the Triforce... that in mind Hyrule more or less BURNED to the ground and so many things were lost before OOT Zelda and the sages sealed him away. And aside from the royal archives hidden away from the public, not many people know about the history of the nation. And well, let’s not forget the imprisoning war that went on in ALTTP as well as the plagues and disasters that hit before Agahnim came, so suffice to say even in Zelda’s time Hyrule was to shit. The only existing reference to Hylia is Lake Hylia and most believe the name is from the word Hylian so :’) 

As such, when she took the crown after the events of ALTTP as the sole heir since the Triforce could not revive the dead, she wishes to lead the nation to the Golden Age before war plagued the lands and before Agahnim fucked shit up. 

People are maaaaaad salty with OOT Link while OOT Zelda is on thin ice, which is why there are little to no references to them in the downfall period unlike with the other periods of time. ALTTP Zelda has so many feels for the OOT squad really after reading up the history about them.  

 Weeps this entire post is too much to shorten but very important to take note of!

Zelda is very OP in that she has the power of the goddess Hylia, power from the sages, and light force but it works against her rather than for her because Poor Health Issues™ and to add to that, she’s known as the “holy sacrifice”. Meaning those who want to resurrect Ganon much like Twinrova tried to must use Zelda as sacrifice for that, meaning her life for his. As such, she’s very much a big target for those who align themselves with Agahnim/Ganondorf or anyone who wishes to use her powers for dark arts really. Being Zelda is suffering ;v;!!! For the most part, she tries to keep her light magic on the DL but many are aware of the mysterious powers flowing through the royal family veins. 

In that regard, since Hylia is more or less forgotten, no one really knows that the royal family actually did in fact descend from gods. It’s funny, irl many kings lied about coming from gods to keep their power but in LOZ, the royal family try to present themselves as ordinary people to hide the secret of the fact that they came from a goddess. Mostly to prevent issues that could arise from this... :’) 

So with that in mind, what can Zelda do? She can heal, use telepathy, bless weapons, seal away darkness, break down seals with the help of the seven maidens, clairvoyance... and yeah that’s it I’m pretty sure!

She is a romantic, the edgy gothic kind that loves nature, heroic tales, and focuses on emotions but also explores the morbid and melancholic. And also a hopeless romantic but keeps this side hidden, all those romance novels are a secret that no one must know.  

[peanut-the-goalie]

@heyitssmiller​ newchapternewchapternewchapter

Black, you’re going to make us late

said like an old married couple

“Alright, alright. Coming. Here.” He handed Remus the cup of tea after he’d locked up the apartment and waited for him to take a sip expectantly, all eager gray eyes and puppy-like enthusiasm. Remus let that smile he was holding back slip through the cracks as he brought the cup to his lips. He took a sip, keeping his face carefully neutral.

this section like this paragraph and the next 2 - 3. THIS IS WHY I LOVE YOUR WRITING, I CAN’T NOT READ WITHOUT GRINNING

“Hmm?” He demanded, causing Remus to laugh. “What does hmm mean?”

“It means your tea is shit but I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

not me making heart eyes at the screen nope

“Please don’t drink anymore of this, holy shit.” Sirius took the lid off and dumped the contents into a nearby trashcan as they walked quickly in order to escape the bitterly cold morning.

I would advise not to dump liquids into the trash can, but we don't wanna kill the plants do we?

“That’s pretty hard to do when it’s a hot liquid. I’m kind of impressed.”

I want to attempt this now. I want Remus Lupin to be proud of me pls

“Well, I didn’t get my morning tea.” Remus replied, holding the door open for Sirius

sassy remus snarky remus my favourite remus

They hadn’t even shrugged off their coats before Logan was approaching them, a stiff expression on his face.

“We need to talk.”

nonono what what? hnnn are we making leo suffer through this whole story or smth?

Logan didn’t even answer, he just started walking

quiet Logan is the most concerning logan

“I’m requesting a transfer.”

Remus blinked, surprised at the suddenness of the statement. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Is this about that kiss you planted on O’Hara?” Sirius asked with a teasing grin. Logan’s expression shifted from blank to pained in half a second

1) Lo Lo Lo baby noooo

2) frick off sirius

Logan squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled sharply through nose. He seemed more worried about leaving his partners exposed than his transfer being denied. A thought made its way to the forefront of Remus’ mind, making him consider a different angle to why Logan was so upset.

ever loving protective lo

The Snakes were proven to be brutal and merciless and not afraid to start fights. Or finish them. Logan’s partners had never experienced something like that, and there was no way they’d be prepared if one of their missions went south.

what the fuck miller. crY

Leo laughed softly. “Alright there, Finn?” He blinked. “What year is it?”

I love finn

Logan couldn’t help but think he was beautiful even without a lot of rest. His hair was all disheveled, eyes big and sleepy, and voice all low and rough. It would take a hell of a lot to make Finn O’Hara not beautiful.

pining

But first: sleep.

yes sleep first always (i say as im planning on staying but for...more hours ew math)

Make my wish come true, baby all I want for Christmas is you!

Even the Christmas music was mocking him now. That was just perfect. Now if they added the word two to the end of that lyric, it would be spot-on.

mean music

A dark, cold room with only two beds, Logan noticed after he switched on the light.

ohmygodtherewasonlyonetwobeds

I’m just thinking about the unlucky one who has to sleep alone :(

How had this become his life?

The universe loves you, deal with it

“How are my sleeves still too short?”

SLEEVES ARE TALL PEOPLE WORST ENEMIES ack

ALSO LOGAN I JUST.. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

“Fight me.” Logan said heatedly, turning to glare at Finn. He stopped short and his gaze turned soft as he watched the redhead adjusting his tie in the mirror, all gorgeous lines and focused face. His tongue stuck out slightly as he tightened the knot of his tie and tried to straighten it.

It was still crooked.

SAY IT WITH ME, PIN-ING

“Your tie’s still crooked.” He said, reaching up to tug at the article of clothing.

Idk whether to yell or say awwwwwwwwwwwww

since the last op.

i’ve just realized op meant operation smh

But Finn was a conman. He literally fooled people for a living. Who was to say that Logan wasn’t just the next mark on a long list?

finn if you fuck with their emotions istg—

Finn sucked in a quick breath beside him. “Oh, Nutty, no.”

this made me smiLE

Finn closed the distance between him and Leo and reached up to ruffle his hair. Leo attempted to swat his hand away with an offended noise. “Harzy, do you know how long it took me to get my hair to look like that?”

Finn: I just wanted to touch his hair okay?

“She taught me how to dance by having me stand on her feet, so I actually learned how to follow before I learned to lead.”

im love. im love im love im love

Finn just pulled him closer, tilting his head up slightly to look at those soft eyes. “Try me, Knut.”

rgjhrflkuhko;iyh

Singing off-key was something Finn never thought he would find endearing, but – well. This was Leo Knut. Pretty much everything he did was endearing

miller aaaaah

Logan moved his gaze away to look at Leo, who was dancing with Regulus. They were pressed closely together, talking quietly. Leo looked completely in his element, which surprised Logan just a little. The normal, jittery movements of a pickpocket were replaced with the graceful, assured motions of a practiced dancer. He made it look as easy as breathing.

wait aw reggie and leo dancing because yayay canon friends change my mind

“Nice grab. I almost didn’t catch it.”

no. damn it reg

“Don’t play dumb. Just give it back and tell me who you’re working for. I promise I won’t kill you, but – well. I’m a Snake, and I do have a reputation to withhold.”

REGULUS, NO

Regulus froze, shoulders tensing. After a long stretch of silence he whispered, voice pained, “He’s alive?”

Remus looked over at the man in question as they listened in and watched his face absolutely crumble. “Reg.”

SAIJFDKHSD;F

June was great – nice, beautiful, whip-smart, and way too good to be messing around with people like the Snakes.

june june june june

A tall, broad man with cold eyes and a feral smile looked back at them

Grayback, it’s grayback isn’t it? fuck you

Sirius wasn’t even listening in anymore as sat next to Remus, forcefully prying Remus’ hand away from where it was gripping his shoulder too tightly and lacing their fingers together while Remus struggled to breathe.

I hate Grayback

Who knew a hug could be so complicated?

I mean they are though. I had my personal space so violated yesterday because my friends kept hugging me and they know I hate hugs unless i initiate them like a weirdo and i didn’t know what to dooo

“Finn, did you just say y’all?” Logan couldn’t see him, but he could hear the delighted smile in Leo’s voice.

Miller is rubbing us on all of us and i love it

The night only got worse when he looked over to the newcomer to face eerie, yellow eyes.

he remind me of a basilisk. Didn’t I name him tinkerbell? Im never going to see tinkerbell normally again, scary lil fairy

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: March Comes in Like a Lion S2, Episodes 1-3

Season 2, go! In which Rei’s growth makes me so fucking happy, the cast continues to expand ever outward, and somebody is gonna fucking PAY.

Running on Water

The first scene of Sangatsu no Lion was Rei waking up in his room after a bleak, depressive nightmare. The light was pale and peaked, the colors were washed out and grey, and his apartment was cast in heavy, empty shades of silence. It was as chilling an introduction to the terrors of living trapped inside your own head as I’ve ever seen realized. So when Sangatsu’s second season once again starts with a very similar scene of Rei waking up in his room, it couldn’t be clearer what kind of parallel it’s trying to draw. If the start of the first season was our introduction to Rei at his lowest, then the start of the second is our re-introduction to Rei after all the progress he’s made in the past 22 episodes. And the difference could not be more striking. Instead of silence, there’s a soft, welcoming background track. Instead of pale stillness, the outside light illuminates the empty space with a sense of warm comfort and the curtains billow in a wind that Rei no longer flinches away from. The space that seemed so alien, so bleak, now almost seems... hopeful. Like the dead air has been sucked out and replaced by a new sense of life. And just to drive that point home, whereas the first OP’s imagery had Rei sinking deep into the dark waters of his depression, this new OP shows him literally running on water, rising above his demons and pushing himself forward with unyielding determination. Rei Kiriyama is no longer drowning; at long last, he’s found the courage to live.

And I can’t even put into words how fucking rewarding it is to see. This poor kid’s been through so much, suffered so much shit he didn’t deserve, but he’s fought through hell and back to open up to the world, and he’s made it. He’s actually fucking smiling now! He’s having fun being the master of his school’s shogi club and hanging out with his new friends! He’s gotten cocky enough to do the classic glasses push in response to Hayashida’s shenanigans (”Please think on your own.”)! He gets invested in going full Doctor Stone with the chemistry kids! He’s actually eager about participating in fun experiments with them just for the heck of it (and they’re absolutely right, his delightful surprise made the whole experiment worthwhile)! And the sheer awe that bubbles over in his mind as he realizes he’s actually having fun at school for maybe the first time in his life is... gaaaaah, it’s so fucking good! It’s the happiest and most motivated we’ve ever seen him before! Hell, he even gets called out by so many people on the biggest stumbling blocks he still hasn’t gotten over- shogi being more a source of stress than fun for him, thinking he can breeze through the rookie tournament because he takes his opponents for granted- and it’s the first time it looks like those realizations actually get through to him! AND IT’S FUCKING HILARIOUS! Seriously, I could not stop fucking laughing at the way he blue-screens in response to being asked if he even finds shogi fun (”The background has metaphorical images as accompaniment”). But even that’s nothing compared to how fucking flawlessly Nikaido hands him his ass when he starts taking the tournament for granted again. Holy. Fucking. CHRIST. My sides still hurt from cackling at his embarrassed dash out of the shogi hall, he’s such an absolute jellybean it hurts. And the chairman leaving him to flounder in humiliation because it was funnier that way was was just the icing on the cake.

God, it’s just... it’s fucking joyful. I know I use that word a lot to describe this show, but it’s never been more apt than it is here. We’re seeing Rei finally start to embrace what life has to offer, finally start to value himself, finally start to take his life into his own hands and decide for himself what he wants to be a part of it. He even heads over to Akari and his sisters of his own accord, for no other reason than because he wants to see them, and he wants to share what’s going on in his life with them because he finally believes he has a life worth sharing. We’re seeing the hard-fought efforts of the entire first season burst into glorious bloom, and my cheeks still hurt from smiling so hard at it all. It’s spiritually fulfilling on a level I can barely put into words, triumphant and rapturous in the way that only the simple victories of ordinary life can be. It makes this kid seizing control over his own life feel as titanic as slaying a dragon, the smile that beams from his face in the presence of Hina and Momo the treasure it was guarding. Sangatsu no Lion has always been fucking amazing, but the emotions it’s reaching now are truly special. And if it keeps this level of quality up throughout the second season, there’s no question it’s gonna end up among my favorite anime of all time.

It Takes a City

But it would be a mistake to focus only on Rei here. After all, part of what’s made this show so compelling recently is how well it’s expanded its focus beyond him, getting us invested in the countless people whose lives intermingle with his. There’s almost a Gintama-esque quality to how expansive the cast is becoming. Following Rei’s life brings us into contact with a whole bunch of characters, we get invested in those characters by following their lives in turn, which also brings us into contact with even more characters who form their social circle, and each one of those characters gets a chance for us to follow their lives, and so forth and so on. It builds a vast, complex web of connections between the entire cast, with some people knowing everyone, some people only knowing a few others, and everyone presenting an opportunity to peek into a new social circle and meet even more people with life stories worth following. Rei may be the overall protagonist, but the tapestry of interconnected characters forming around him is just as important to the show’s focus. This is Shimada’s story now, and also Kyouko’s story, and also Souya’s story, and also a whole bunch of new stories we’re only just being introduced too. Sangatsu no Lion is officially an ensemble piece by now, and it’s a damn fine one indeed.

With a cast that big, a lot of these first few episodes are dedicated to setting up what stories we’ll be following moving forward, what characters we should have our eyes on and what journeys we should prepare to get invested in. It looks like we’re gonna be spending a lot of time with the elite shogi players in a big, high-stakes tournament. Souya’s still hovering in the background like a seagull waiting eagerly for his turn to shine, and we get a little more insight into him when it’s revealed that he drinks straight glucose in his tea to help keep his energy up in matches, an analytical approach befitting his almost inhuman nature. Meanwhile, his opponent Kamakura is a man of great stoic passion (”Sorry to interrupt when you’ve having fun, but can I have my shoes back?”), who carries himself with immense dignity but also scarfs down cakes at the speed of light, recognizes his defeat seventeen moves before it happens, and kicks a wall in fury over his loss when no one’s looking. Nikaido’s still on his Legendary Shonen Rivals LARPing kick (and Rei is more done with his nonsense than usual), Shimada’s understandably in a bit of a slump following his loss to Souya (here’s hoping he can fight out of it), and of all people, Gotou’s revealing tragic new dimensions behind his surface-level aggression.

Yeah, that shocked me too, but the time we spend with Gotou in this episode makes me realize that Rei might have been too quick to judge him. He’s the loudest voice to speak up in defense of Shimada’s honor when he’s being heckled by some snot-nosed brats (”It just annoys me seeing people heckle others when they haven’t even climbed into the ring themselves.”), he’s clearly struggling with the heavy burden of his comatose wife, and he just seems so... sad. I completely understand Rei’s uncertainty about him; if the same guy who’s causing his sister so much pain also stuck up for Shimada, how should he feel about him? And even Kyouko’s only becoming more and more compelling in her messiness. She actually went with him to help him buy presents for his wife in the hospital; that’s the most selfless thing we’ve ever seen her do, but she undercuts it right after by imposing on her personal space against his wishes. And as hilarious as it is for him to literally tie her to the bed to keep her from pouncing on him so he can get some sleep, it’s clear he doesn’t want nearly as much from this relationship as she does. He’s trying to distance himself from her, still caring about his wife, but he can’t quite outright tell her to piss off and leave him alone. It’s such a messy, broken, unhealthy bond, and as shocked as I am to be feeling sorry for Gotou, I’m genuinely nervous for how it could end up hurting both of them if they don’t sort their shit out.

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU

But that’s not what’s got me the most nervous at the moment. The true spike of horror that threatens to shatter this newfound comfort is possibly the most appalling turn this show’s taken yet: somebody’s been making Hina sad. Somebody at school has decided to make her life hell. And if you think you’ve seen me lose control of my emotions before, you do not want to know that thoughts than ran through my head when she comes home sobbing at the end of episode 3. Whoever’s bullying her better make damn sure they’ve picked up life insurance, because there’s not gonna be a scrap of them left when I find out who it is. I will eradicate them from the face of the earth so utterly there won’t even be a soul left to sink down to hell. Because that is the price you fucking pay for causing my favorite character in this show so much pain. And with Rei starting to relive memories of his own bullying, I can only imagine what painful parallels are gonna come up before all is said and done. I just pray he decides to be a kinder soul than me, because as much as I would love to see him act out justice, he in no way deserves the blood that would put on his hands. But mark my words, there will be blood before I let Hina suffer another minute. So get your umbrellas out, because we’re about to have one hell of a red rainstorm.

Odds and Ends

-lololol, it’s countermeasures all the way down.

-These cat shogi sections just keep getting more entertaining.

-”I don’t want to listen to reason right now!” i love him so fucking much holy shit

-Is it just me, or is there a lot more experimentation going on with the animation style? I dig it.

-”Do you guys do nothing but eat?” “It’s science.” ldskjskldjslkj

-”Throw those two out of here.” REKT

-”People who don’t cherish their family are trash!” Wooow, that’s a loaded statement.

-”To me, humans are the embidoment of chaos.” Ain’t that the truth.

-”A pie in the sky is tasty, but it won’t fill you up.” ...god dammit that’s such a great line

-”WE’VE GOT A CHILD PRODIGY HERE!” Grandpa, you’re the best.

-”The more I helped out, the sadder she looked.” This is the first time we’ve heard of his adoptive mom, and it’s already making me nervous.

-”I would play, and play, and play, and play, and play...” If you listen in the background you can hear me sucking in air, because Jesus fuck, I hate how I right I was in talking about his trauma.

Holy hell, what a show. See you next time for more of season 2!

[itsclownhours]

holy motherfucker: part 4 (5x13)

suffering: part 2

sounds lovely absolutely fantastic

where the fuck did he get a horse

oof bro looks like that hurt a tiny little bit

:D

NICE

lovely

:( how dare you hurt my wife :(

oh i see you're gonna do the weird sword twirl thing

so that's a yes

oof bro

great absolutely lovely

IT'S BEEN FIVE MINUTES

oh i see how it is

:/

lovely

you're a PHYSICIAN merlin

you tell him ON HIS DEATHBED

oh really you're n idiot

great

you think a little kid is gonna know where he is

THIS is why i hate him this right here

he wasn't stabbed in the chest he was stabbed in like...the liver or whatever

which is ironic if i'm gonna be honest here

pretty ironic

that doesn't mean he believed you

why is this the neatest her hair has been since the end of season 3

idiot

it's like noon

ope

oh great her again

oh God

great

fun

ope

bitch

oh God he told her didn't he

OPE

because the fucking dragon manipulated and bused him into thinking of no one but you not even himself

which again might i remind you isn't even in the same multiverse as healthy much less romantic

oh shut the fuck up

yeah you should have

an idiot? a bitch?

no it's still camelot

oh shut the FUCK up

eh

OPE

i'm glad some people in camelot have brain cells

fun

now kiss

ope

i knew what you would have done

merlin on this rare occasion was right you would have chopped his head off

idiot

FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE YOU IDIOT SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU FUCKING BITCH

this is why i hate merlin (the character)

and also kilgharrah

kilgharrah (derogatory)

merlin emrys (derogatory)

you shouldn't b

ope

fun sounds lovely

what are you just gonna leave the sword there

oh

D: how dare you hurt my wife

lovely no he is an idiot

D:

snek :3

D:

noo

you got this percival go save your boyfriend

yass ing

why is an incantation only needed something

yeah cause of the fucking dragon

D: D: D:

nooooooo

NOOOOOOO

D:

D:

idiot

great

fun

oh really are you

oh yea i forgot it's always a full moon in this show

great

lovely

and so you should it is mostly your fault yess

NOOOOOOO D: D: D: D: D: D: D:

oh fuck you merlin go die in a ditch

arthur's like 🎵hold me closer tiny bastard🎵

oh shut the fuck up you little shit

oof bro

i wouldn't have summoned him ever in my life

oh shut up you haven't failed at anything except having a brain cell and resisting kilgharrah's decade of manipulation and abuse

oh great so more people will have to deal with him

and it has been a pain in the ass to know you kilgharrah i hope i never have to see you again ever in my life

if i go to hell it will be filled with kilgharrahs

(and uthers and agravaines and arthurs but that's beside the point)

fun

where'd you get a boat what

and, my final thoughts: 

WHAT

BITCH THE FUCK

A FUCKING TRUCK HOLD UP

[hell0mega]

i don't wanna remove it cuz it's an emotional post but it said you won't ever be able to go back to being 14/15/16... god you know how fucking glad i am to not be those ages anymore. that I'm in school by choice at 25 and not forced to get up at 6 fuckin am. I'm glad i can drive and go where i want and buy what i want and eat what i want. I'm glad I'm in a healthy adult relationship and not in either of my abusive ones.

idk how old op was but holy shit. i hope you realize soon that teenage life kinda fucking sucks. if you're a baby adult still just trust me it gets better. if you get help and understand yourself and your surroundings you will feel better. unless you were fuckin cheer captain or quarterback and had life handed to you on a platter, and now you're out in the real world and have to work, then that's just whining. but that's not the vibe i got.

adult life can fucking suck too, obviously. you're on your own, you have a job, college can be a bitch, but at least it feels REAL. like this is suffering, but at least it matters?? the only thing suffering gave me in high school was sexual shame and anxiety. adult life suffering is giving me wisdom and rage.

idk what i was going with this. i just fucking hate seeing people reminiscing about high school cuz like. i didnt even have THAT bad of a time and know plenty of people who had much worse and i cant i m a g i n e wanting to go back

[helihi]

The Good, The Bad, and The Dirty: RWBY Vol7 Ep11

How can an episode with such potential be executed in the most basic way possible?

Tune in to find out

Overall rating: 3/10.💀

So, for those of you who are wondering, I didn’t write a review for the previous episodes because I was busy and also because I wasn’t really much into them. After praising the beginning episodes of the volume so much, it pains me that we’re here again: in the mediocre.

Remember back in volume 5 when the volume finale was slow, tedious and bad? Well, Toastyhat made an awesome edit of how a proper crew would execute a portion of the finale right. Today, I’m afraid we witnessed the same lack of narrative cohesion.

The Good:

The episode starts with a showdown between Ironwood and Watts. Contrary to popular belief, Watts didn’t turn himself into an android, he’s pure flesh and chaotic Sombra/Waluigi energy. I gotta say, the idea of using gravity and bullet count to increase the tension of the fight is a good idea, unfortunatelly, this section will be continued in The Bad. I just want to give credit where credit is due.

Also, after seeing so many survival documentaries recently, and listening to the song in the background, it was badass of James to injure his flesh arm to stop Watts. He’s 150% on this b*tch.

Next off, we got the two birds and the magical clover boi fighting against the serial killer and Orichimaru knock off aka Tyrian (I’m sorry, I will always see him as an Orochimaru knock off because of the tongue thing). The fight was well animated, choreograph, and seeing how these 3 characters used their moves and weapons in a creative way to handle Tyrian was nice.

I think it was obvious who was going to win in a 1V3 fight, but the question is still there: who is the scorpion crazy man gonna kill? Unless they break his tale, the possibility is still out there and it’s dumb.

As soon as Ironwood starts calling up everyone to base, I knew shit was gonna go sideways. It’s also important that the CRWBY didn’t show us what Ironwood saw. For those who thought about the relic being gone, then Atlas would’ve been gone; however, for those of us who thought it was going to involve Cinder and Neo, we are proven wrong shortly after. Cinder is playing on Ironwood’s fears to obtain the maidens powers and it seems very likely that the new maiden will possibly be Neo due to her whereabouts. Cont. On the Dirty section.

Next off, we have Ironwood’s breakdown, which I think was handled pretty well all together. It has been foreshadowed, the crumbs were leading us there, and after a couple of episodes, Yang and Blake’s betrayal plan bites them in the ass, as well as Team RWBY+JNOR+Qrow’s secret of Jinn. However, I want to express how much of a non betrayal it is: Ironwoods poor choice making lead him to a very dark path and everyone, especially Yang and Blake saved his ass from making everything worse.

However, Ironwood’s idea of doing the right thing is to only trust his judgement despite being proven that he can’t do things alone. I never defended his obvious choices or praised him as a hero or as a #protectIronDaddy squad member because I knew his authoritarian nature would inevitably lead him to the obvious insecure military man attitude he has.

On that aspect, I’m happy to know this was established previously and I reflected upon on my early reviews. His decision to arrest team RWBY and set his team up against them + Clover vs Robin and Qrow is reasonable and correct. However, I do have big points that I will criticize on The Bad section that rightfully piss me off.

The last thing this episode did properly was show us that Oscar is missing by the end with a proper cliffhanger. 

The Bad:

Just as I said in the intro: I’m afraid the fight between Ironwood and Watts loses its tension quickly. The fight feels slow and it seems like the song was slapped onto the background because the theme fits rather than the animation being built around the fight scene. The beat of the song doesn’t carry out the heavy punches and in the end it’s kind of distracting.

TBH, the fighting scene between the birds, the clover, and the scorpion was better paced and visually interesting. Why couldn’t they mix both to the song and done what Toasty did? That way the narrative of willing to give it all for the safety of kingdom would’ve hit harder and stood in even better contrast with the second half of the episode. On one side, u got your blood pumping as u cheer for ironwood and the others, while on the other you’re typing nononononoNONO ironwood why.

The next thing that bothered me was the scene were the Ace ups n the teams are called back by Ironwood, not only does the ship seem bigger and emptier, but we never cut to the othersI thought that for a moment the bees and there other Ace Ops were assigned another area before we cut to everyone in Ironwood’s office, WTF?! Was 1 more scene while Elm and Harriet spoke too much to ask?

Remember what I said about characters standing around doing nothing? HOW THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT YANG WAS OKAY WHILE SALEM WAS TORTURING HER LITTLE SISTER AND TRASH TALKING HER MOM!??????

The show does this time and time again: every moment where Yang could have a big reaction to something, she doesn’t. Every time Summer Rose is mentioned it’s to hit Ruby, not both of them, even if Yang suffered the loss of her mother and had to take her role raising Ruby. It’s obvious that the biggest impact is going to be Ruby since she never got to know her mother like others, but how the fuck can you not treat both sisters’ grief at their loss equally? Both are going to have different reactions and a different coping mechanisms, but they would still be there.

It’s not just the FNDM who forgets easily that Summer was Yang’s mom, it’s sees like the writers do as well. Yang wouldn’t even steal Ruby’s thunder, or the emotional impact of the scene in Ruby’s psyche if that’s what you’re afraid of.

Here we have Yang #AbandonmentIssues Xiao Long just letting her sister get berated and comforting her after? I call BS from here to the moon. We’ve seen Yang get triggered before, and there’s no way she wouldn’t have fired at Salem’s ghost.

Which dials back to my issue with the whole Ironwood, Ace Ops vs RWBY scene, are u telling me each of them waited their turn to talk and didn’t just start arguing until it hit the boiling point?

RWBY arguments always seem so empty and silent it doesn’t provoke anything in me but annoyance. How can the voice actors (specially Barb, holy shit that voice break) do such a good job with their lines and be given so little to work with? I understand Weiss being frightened, specially from where she comes, but Yang, Ruby, Blake, Arrow and Harriet?

BS From here to Pluto.

I’m happy Ruby got her phone out and called JN_R, but man, was that dissatisfying as fuck.

The Dirty:

Okay, I'm really not happy at Winter rushing to the maiden’s side because it’s obvious that her powers are going to get stolen. It’s just so ridiculously obvious that I do not understand after how many breaches Ironwood would even do that. NVM Winter. Hey, ever heard of a decoy? Didn’t think about ending the maiden’s life in a humane way to avoid her power getting stolen in the middle of a crisis?

Nah, maybe it’s just me.

--

Overall rating: 3/10. Too stilted for my liking,

A.N.: As expected people went and defended Willow. I will reiterate my position on her again and tell u to read the recent RWBY comic chapter. Willow is godawful and I do not stan at all.

[atamascolily]

lily liveblogs “terminator: dark fate”, part four

In which Sarah Connor suffers for the cause in the most ironic way possible.

(one, two, three)

I've already waxed poetic elsewhere about the "My entire body is a weapon"/ "Save it for the ladies" exchange, but let's just say the Rev-9's claim of "Metal hip - two tours in Afghanistan" is a) a great manipulation, and b) might even be true - certainly the part about the metal hip is! And the "thank you for your service," / letting him pass through is just... the irony... I can't even...

(and also, this MAKES SENSE when you realize that Legion was designed to process people and manipulate/control them and THAT'S why he's so good at it).

Sarah Connor gets picked up by a smarmy dude named Officer Rigby. "You belong in your own private cage," he tells her. He's probably going to die soon, and we are not supposed to be sorry about it. (And meanwhile, some random dude yells in the background, "I want to go, too!" No, you don't. Trust me.)

Grace does not believe in bureaucratic bullshit. And she won't accept "detainees" instead of "prisoners". YASS. At least there's fresh meds for her.

Oh! I just realized why she steals the guy's clothes.. it's because nothing else would fit her. It's tough being so tall.

Grace pulls the fire alarm and Sarah recognizes an opening when she sees one and manages to kick Rigby in the groin and take him and both her guards down with both hands in cuffs behind her back. LEGEND. Kyle Reese would be so proud of her, especially since he pulled the same stunt back in T1 in the police station sequence. 

Grace starts opening doors and people rush to get out, oh please let this not be a slaughter.

The dude who was with them (Flacco?) slams the door into the Terminator's face and he gets punched into a wall for his trouble. I hope he survived...

The Rev-9 jumps UP into the rafters, holy shit, and is scrabbling over the metal fence like the Rev-7s in the future scene, and it's so a) predatory and b) so feral and inhuman... and that guard who sassed Dani looks terrified as hell as she faces him down.. and gets slashed for her troubles.

Slaughter ensues, but only people in official uniforms thus far... Every one of them is mobbing the Rev-9 and just getting stabbed.

Oh, good, they found a helicopter. Someone gets punched out the door after them, and you think it's the REv-9 who did it, but it's actually Sarah! YASS. Dani wants to wait for her and Grace wants to get away. Dani doesn't want to leave Sarah (hey, callbacks to earlier!) and jumps out of the helicopter with the gun as the REV-9 runs at her. Dani starts shooting the REV-9 which is very cathartic for her, but Sarah tackles her and pulls her into the helicopter. The REV-9 jumps for it, but misses, and falls the ground and just looks... annoyed despite having no expression whatsoever.

The REV-9's accent with the sheriffs is interesting. There's the same "good ol' boy" attitude as "That's a nice bike" in T2 and the same cut back to our heroes that speaks volumes.

Cut to a forest in Texas. I have no idea if this is botanically accurate or not because I have no experience with Texas flora. But there are pine trees and maple trees, I can tell you that much.

I like how Sarah and Grace are ready to draw when they knock on the door of this ordinary-looking house in the woods, and Dani just looks at them like they're crazy.

Hey, and it's the same music as in the prologue, as Sarah recognizes the Terminator! He says her name and she raises her gun to shoot him except that Grace intervenes and she hits the ceiling.

“My name is Sarah Connor, you killed my son, prepare to die...” No, okay, she doesn’t actually say that, but I’m gonna do it for her.

Sarah stalks off when they won't let her shoot the Terminator. Dani and Grace exchange a look, and Dani goes after Sarah while Grace deals with Carl (his nom de... paix, I guess). They have the ... "So you're a cyborg, too?" talk, which goes about as well as you can expect.

Poor Sarah looks so broken sitting outside alone. Dani uses her people skills to rally her. Sarah's admission that she never took photos of John is a) heartbreaking, and b) good tactics, especially given how previous Terminators used photos, and how the REV-9 uses facial recognition software.

Sarah's sarcasm as she contemplates Carl's family photos is biting and hilarious and poignant especially given what she just said to Dani (and how a photograph was what brought Kyle to her in the first place). MY HEART.

We are meant to parallel Carl's treatment of Alicia and Mateo with Sarah and John, and Sarah and Carl in "Without purpose, we are nothing". The irony that Carl understands Sarah in this way, and that Sarah has been getting her raison d’etre from a Terminator the whole time... way to lay on the pain, writers!

I've heard a lot of critique of this film claiming that Terminators just wouldn't act like Carl, and I think that's not accurate. What exactly do people think a Terminator WOULD do after they finished their mission instad? It's not like Skynet or Legion or whatever gave them any other programming, and we know from T2 they can't self-terminate. So what are they supposed to do, just stand there??

Even though Carl doesn't have his chip removed the way the T-800 in T2 did, Terminators are very accomplished at learning and mimicking humans. They are adaptable. And I think the filmmakers are right that the T-800 would try to find a new mission--paralleling the old one--to give his life purpose. I think this is a very plausible plot device, and also a great opportunity for irony and parallels, which this franchise thrives on and I personally love.

(There's great fic from Carl's POV on A03 by Tyellas that expands on this that I LOVE, so you should all go read it RIGHT NOW.)

I also LOVE the growing parallels not only between Sarah and Carl, but Carl and Grace that the film keeps emphasizing YASSS.

Sarah is NOT PLEASED to learn she's been manipulated the whole time by the robot who killed her son.Understatement of the year. I was wondering when she was going to shoot him!

"Do you believe in fate, Sarah?" OW, MY HEART.

Oh. Interesting. So when Sarah destroyed Skynet, she released Carl from his programming, thus allowing him to learn?? Okay, I'll buy it. Which means that Carl was released at the same time as the other Terminators in all three films (though we get into the simultaneity problem, but that's a headache for another time). It's plausible if I don't think too hard about it, so I'll buy it. I wish people would stop calling plot elements they don't like/agree with "plot holes". That's... not what it means.

[so who is sending the other terminators? Are they from Legion or Skynet? what is their purpose? Since Sarah is a wanted woman in America, it makes sense if she was killing Terminators in Mexico, which makes me wonder if she's been protecting Dani until now???) I have a feeling the film will not answer this question.]

There's a dog curled up at Carl's feet when they cut to the next scene. This is NOT a plot hole, as some people have claimed. This is actually a clue that Carl IS as human as he claims to be... i.e, he seems to have mastered whatever subtle cues that makes the dog recognize him as human, and not a foreign predator. Obviously, YMMV, but I don't see it as a plot hole.

The secret storage armory is de riguer for a Terminator film, but I also enjoy the deadpan social commentary about human barbarism coming from a reformed murderbot. "And also, this is Texas." He's definitely living in the right state for that.

Wow. The training lesson at the shooting range was everything I could have hoped for. I love Sarah's wry smile as the watermelons explode.

OF COURSE SARAH CONNOR "KNOWS A GUY" with an EMP, lol...

Kudos to Carl for getting his family out of the way and for preparing him for this day. But it's clear he won't be back.

... how about that leather jacket and sunglasses? because he's about to start being way less human and way more machine.

oHHHHH he leaves the sunglasses behind, I was NOT expecting that. NICE WORK.

hello rev-9 smashing the family photographs, that's not symbolic of anything at all.

Hey, did they take all the guns with them or is the REv-9 going to use them against their owner?? was leaving the photo of the van on the fridge intentional? Too early to tell! Either way, ironic given Sarah's caution with photos earlier!

Sarah's withering expression as Carl lectures about interior design is GOLDEN.

I now want a road trip movie about this dysfunctional found family. I cannot believe they are only together for less than 24 hours. Thank goodness for fic.

"I don't commit treason for just anybody," is such a great line and one of my favorites in this film.  

Of course the EMP is probably going to disable/take out Carl AND Grace AND the Rev-9 because that's just how this kind of movie works, but there you go.

Sarah telling Carl to shut the fuck up is GOLDEN, they work so well together. Mommy and Daddy, indeed.

AHHH, the major bringing them the EMP on the sly gets shot. It's tough being a minor character in these films. Dani pulls him into the van but I can't help but notice in that position he's a human shield.

Okay, so leaving photos on the fridge was NOT intentional... maybe Sarah should have had an op-sec chat with Carl about that??

Oh, hey, the flesh-like bit of the REV-9 jumped out of the copter while the chassis keeps flying. That's a neat trick. And the moment where the fleshy bit jumps in and they merge is always cool.

Okay, so they're going to the air base. I guess another fight is in order. Ah, this is where the planes are coming in. Apparently, Grace is piloting. That answers my question from the trailer.

They just run the van right up the ramp and the Major is there to take awkward questions. "District contractors" indeed. I hope he'll survive this movie, but I have my doubts. Oh, he's not going with them - I don't know if that increases his chances or not. WHAT THE HELL KIND OF RELATIONSHIP DO HE AND SARAH HAVE ANYWAY??

They didn't bother to close up the back before taking off??? Wow. Okay, I guess that works...

Carl uses himself as a shield for Sarah, which just makes her mad...

The Rev-9 flips out of the burning helicopter onto the ramp, and Carl just takes him down and shoots him. It doesn't take, but it's pretty glorious. SARAH AND DANI ROLL THE VAN OVER HIM OH MY GOD.

Needless to say, I'm pretty sure the Rev-9 will be back... in an EVEN BIGGER PLANE.

Oh, so the EMP is dead...? Maybe they can improvise something.

Flasback! Dani beats the punks that are harassing Grace and talks the last guy into not shooting her because "this is what Legion wants us to do". FUCK YEAH.

"FUCK FATE" is basically the motto of this series (and a slightly more concise, if vulgar, reframing of "no fate but what we make for ourselves" or "no fate" in T2).

OH MY GOD THAT LOOK ON FUTURE!DANI'S FACE WHEN SHE RECOGNIZES GRACE...

"You are the future" - okay, this is very moving and dramatic, but I feel like Grace should have mentioned this back on the TRAIN why the fuck did she wait this long.

"You're John..." Sarah gasps... and just adopted a kid. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, Y'ALL. Carl was right, she needs a purpose or else she’s just going to self-destruct.

YESSSSS, I love it when movies answer my questions: apparently future!Dani told Grace not to mention it earlier, because younger!Dani wouldn't be able to handle it. Ah, the ouroboros of causality... I'll buy it, but I still think the film would have been stronger if they had had this conversation earlier on the train.

plane vs. plane hijinks ensue. Grace puts the ship on autopilot so she can actually do stuff. There's a lot of flailing as the ship starts to explode. The REv-9 climbs aboard and uses his oozy bits to rip all the flesh off Carl's hand. There's a humvee with a parachute, but the way the scene is laid out, it's kinda convolunted, but okay.. ... They bust the door open so the humvee can drop out. Carl pins the chassis to the plane but the oozy bits escape and go running free towards them. The plane explodes seconds after the humvee pulls free and parachutes to the ground.... okay.

Sarah Connor's "Aw, fuck," as they land on the hydroelectric dam is GOLDEN.

[aimmyarrowshigh]

aheavenlyrush replied to your post “I’ve been on tumblr since 2012 and I was even a John Green fan for a...”

i checked and it happened in 2015

aheavenlyrush replied to your post “I’ve been on tumblr since 2012 and I was even a John Green fan for a...”

i saw that jg post on my feed and i had no energy to comment on it but truly when i saw that you had i felt such relief!! i remember making that one post about stiefvater defending him and telling teenage girls to be quiet and the response to it still fucking haunts me i swear

Oy, was it really that recently? The last three years have taken 900 years. And yeah... Maggie Stiefvater’s post about it was a Really Bad Look, and iirc that was the environment that spawned the beginning of the batshit “Keep YA Kind”* concern-trolling thing (yep, also 2015) that was mainly used to silence girls and women and people of color whenever the four white cishet men in YA fucked up between 2015 and 2018, when it finally publicly came out that most of them were, yk, fucking up because they’re legitimately horrible people and maybe the people calling them out should have been taken seriously.

* The other notable “why the fuck is this happening???? why is HE the one getting the sympathy here?????” events from “Keep YA Kind,” which, listen, I would bet you anything that it was very very nearly called “Keep Kidlit Kind” until the only person involved with 1/4 of a braincell managed to realize the acronym on their Twitter handle looked REALL BAD:

Andrew Smith, a straight white adult man, says out loud with his human adult man mouth, that he knows he can’t write female characters well and relies on fetishization and stereotypes because he never really met a girl until his daughter (??? SO WHAT IS YOUR WIFE, ANDREW? CHOPPED LIVER?) and, being as that is Bullshit and also his books were also being lauded as though they were Infinite fucking Jest Jr. even though the interview in question was for a book in which mutant grasshoppers take over the earth and a teenage boy gets trapped in a bunker with a teenage girl who eventually has to git to birthin’ babies she doesn’t want and isn’t medically prepared to have safely For The Good Of Humanity, he’s called out.

He’s called out mostly on a technical, writing level at first, even! Like, “Here’s how to write a female character: you write a fully considered, well-rounded character. They’re a girl.” And Andrew Smith FLIPS HIS SHIT, does some op-ed about how his mother used to beat him so he can’t see girls as people, and makes his twitter private. The “Keep YA Kind” sycophants support him HARD.

And then this happens to pop up on a mysterious Twitter that just HAPPENS to start while HIS twitter’s offline...

NOTE: Jay Asher, author of 13 Reasons Why, was literally dropped from his publisher and SCWBI for being a sexual predator. So like, I don’t think he was bullied, I think his predation was being remarked upon. Like, idk, maybe that he was being called creepy or sth idk idk idk

And then when A.S. decided to unsockpuppet to promote his next book, The Alex Crow, which is about mutant crows and a bunker or whatever:

The “asshole” in specific that Andrew Smith was calling an asshole was delightful human being and fellow author Kate Messner, who, coincidentally, was one of the victims to come out against Lemony Snicket’s sexual harrassment, so she’s had a BULLSHIT time just trying to do her JOB of being an author while female.

Which leads to Tommy Wallach! All-around fucknut! Whose major interest seems to be being That Guy In Philosophy 101 Who Always Has To Be Devil’s Advocate, Even Though No One Asked, and has a deeply vested interest in making sure that teenage girl readers -- who are his target audience, because he chose to write YA, as an adult man who made a choice in what he wrote and chose to make it YA, and not, like, any of the hundreds of genres that AREN’T largely written about and for teenage girls, yk -- know that teenage girls are Dumb. Victoria Schwab actually wrote an essay for YA Books Central about the incessant problem that IS/WAS Tommy Wallach called “We Need To Talk About Tommy” back in -- you guessed it! -- 2016, but it’s offline now and I’m not going to go Wayback it rn.

I’m just going to copypasta YAinterrobang’s Wallach timeline because he’s exhausting, he reminds me of undergrad.

Wallach’s continual pattern of behavior is worth discussing, especially in the context of sexism in YA and the continual marginalization of “diverse” voices in the community despite the efforts of the We Need Diverse Books movement.

Wallach’s problematic behavior runs back over a year, starting with a defense of Andrew Smith where he ignores the opinions of author and advocate Tessa Gratton in favor of a dictionary definition of sexism. (Andrew Smith’s behavior and the fallout around his statements have, of course, already been documented on YA Interrobang in “The Curious Case of Andrew Smith, Twitter & sexism.”) Wallach postures that women are inherently “other” from men, accuses Gratton of “gin[ning]up the controversy” and explains that he is a feminist because he was “raised by a single working mother and she’s still my best friend in the world.”

[View Wallach’s defense of Smith and attack on Gratton as a .pdf.]

Fast forward to later that year. Author Justina Ireland takes to Twitter to discuss a book where she feels the black character is self-hating. Ireland, being black herself, is asked about the book in question; she says that it’s Wallach’s debut novel We All Looked Up. Though Wallach is not tagged, he swoops into the conversation and demands Ireland provide proof that his character Anita is self-hating before claiming that author Dhonielle Clayton, who is also black, is friends with him and “engaged” with him on the issues in the book.

Clayton later stated publicly that she had not done any sensitivity reading on We All Looked Up.

What brought Wallach’s behavior to the attention of the YA world as a whole came this past November in the wake of the horrifying terrorist attacks in Paris. When the hashtag #prayforparis went viral, Wallach responded with multiple social media posts and a blog post about how atheism was the only belief that could make the world a better place. (Though Wallach argues that it is not, in fact, a belief: “The fact that we have a word for it makes it seem like it’s equivalent to other belief systems, but it’s not. The absence of something is not equivalent to the thing itself.”)

[View Wallach’s comments on atheism as a .pdf.]

After Wallach Tweeted that he was a “a rabid atheist, and the world would be a better place if more folk were” – a Tweet he subsequently deleted before deleting his account in its entirety – he doubled down in a block post that outlined all the way religions failed and all the reasons atheism was awesome.

Those who tried to explain to him why this behavior was – to say the least – problematic found themselves quickly blocked or shut down; at once point, Wallach tried to explain anti-Semitism to Jewish author Hannah Moskowitz before claiming that “if [her]parents are atheists and [his]dad is Jewish, [he’s] as much Jewish as [her].”

(For those wondering, Wallach blocked me during this incident despite being friendly with me and having taken my advice previously; while he did believe me in regards to his behavior towards Justina Ireland, which you can see in Tweets above, my snarky comment to him about “the only good people are the people who are exactly like me” was, apparently, too much for him to take. As Wallach’s account has since been deleted and I purged my social media account in January, that interaction is no longer publicly available.)

Take this behavior in comparison to author LJ Silverman, who recently received a sea of anti-Semitic hate mail – including crude manipulated images of her in an oven – for Tweeting that she was worried about the upcoming election in the context of history. Wallach painted himself to be the victim, somebody “attacked” for insulting all of the religious folks in the YA community, while Silverman, who simply shared a worry plaguing her, became a victim of virulent trolls.

While Wallach deleted his social media accounts after this, there were no public consequences to his actions despite ill-will from the YA community at large. If another member of the YA community had spoken out – one of our Catholic or Islamic or Jewish or Mormon authors, for instance – the backlash would have been substantially worse, possibly career-ruining.

Wallach’s career, however, was not ruined; he recently landed a six-figure deal for a book trilogy centered around a “holy war.”

And thus, we return to Wallach’s dismissive comments on suicide – which, it turned out, were neither new or original. In a blog post deleted after it came to light during this discussion, Wallach rated “the top ten literary suicides (organized by emo-ness)” which included all of the characters of HBO’s Girls – “It’s really just a fantasy of mine.” – and, ranking at number one, Sylvia Plath – who is not a character but a real person who suffered from depression before taking her own life at a young age.

[View Wallach’s post on suicide as a .pdf.]

“I’m only going to talk about the fact that a successful YA author found it appropriate to glorify, romanticize, and mock what for many of his readers is among the highest causes of death,” wrote Schwab in her “We Need To Talk About Tommy” post. “That this author could be so very careless and flippant and insensitive about such a very serious issue is abhorrent. That two years after penning this post he still sees suicide as something to be made light of, to be used as a marketing tool.”

Simon & Schuster made no public comment about any of Wallach’s comments. His career, save for making enemies of some fellow authors, seems relatively unscathed by his callous actions.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, like, if you wanna read books by straight white dudes, go for it, but check them out from the library. Spend your book-buying money on books by women, nonbinary/other folks, and dudes who aren’t straight and/or white. Straight white men, PARTICULARLY in categories of literature that are largely targeted towards girls and women, and largely written by girls and women -- but published, edited, and marketed by other straight white men -- are lauded FAR above what they’re actually worth, as like, storytellers or human people go.

The Glass Escalator is a one-way trip to wonderland, but YA is a skyscraper that was built by women and I PROMISE you, whatever book by one of these dudes you’re considering reading, there’s a better version by a woman and/or person of color on the shelves nearby that just didn’t get 1/10th of the marketing money.

And of course there should be an effort to be kind on social media, but “keep YA kind”... to whom? To the people who were being silenced when they were pointing out legitimate problems with the behaviors of men in social power? (And one of whom, in the case of Jay Asher, was LITERALLY DANGEROUS BC HE IS A SEXUAL PREDATOR.) Like, really? There had to be a hashtag campaign to silence dozens of people with legitimate, not-bullying-just-pointing-out-problems-that-are-problems-with-stuff-you-did-dude problems, to make social media feel more comfortable for four middle-aged straight white men?

As though the outside world isn’t comfortable enough for middle-aged straight white men????