#i had other problems with this person but that's irrelevant to this discussion. this isn't a callout post and they're not deserving of one.

[gamebunny-advance]

Spite.

People that can only enjoy things through spite really baffle me.

For a while, I was following someone that ran a fanblog for something that I liked, but alongside reblogging fan art, every other original post they made was about how they would hate X, and that Y was better.

X and Y were any number of things relating to the subject of the blog, and the specifics of what they were aren't relevant to the discussion.

It wasn't that their criticisms were unfounded. They sometimes had legitimate gripes with a work, and I even agreed occasionally with some of the things they said. What bothered me is that conversely, they rarely talked about the things they did like unless it was in relation to the thing they didn't like.

It was never, "I like Y because ABC, and y'all should check it out too!" it was always, "X is horrible and bad, so I'm gonna consume Y instead!" or "At least Y is better than that trash X!"

It was just very tiring. I don't know what made them like that, but there was always a bitterness to their posts that always made me uncomfortable, especially in relation to what the blog was about. I would think a person running a blog like that would be more forward about positivity and love, but the impression I got was that they were purely motivated by spite.

But I tolerated it for a while because I liked seeing the reblogged posts and "X" was rarely something I was personally invested in. It was only recently that the "X" was actually something that I cared about that I finally decided to unfollow them. For the second time. I'd actually gotten sick and tired of this behavior long ago, but I decided to give them another shot, which they blew yet again.

I dunno. I know some people enjoy when others "spill the tea" or whatever (it seems like several of their followers enabled their behavior), and I'm not beyond hearing criticisms of a thing I like (I'm usually the first to make them). But I think I get the most enjoyment from people who also share the things they love because they love the thing, not because they hate something else.

It doesn't have to be an unconditional love, it just has to be earnest. I say all the time that being critical of the things you love is basically an essential part of truly appreciating anything in this world. But beyond the spite and criticism, I want to know that the person has something that they truly adore without it being tied to primarily negative feelings.

I just never got that from this person. There was never a post where they could gush about something without bringing something else down with it. I never sensed an earnest love from them.

But, maybe some people are just like that. Maybe their joy stems from venting their frustrations, and I can understand that. But their joy, is not my joy, and I just have a limit to how much spite I can take from one person before I just can't have them in my purview anymore.

[cringelordofchaos]

welcome. I like your shoelaces.

And Your Rat's Eggs. •

Salutations, earthlings (or non-earthlings)! I don't know what you're doing here but beware for you are coming in for a ride! The only problem is the driver never went through a single driving lesson so don't blame me if we crash!

Beware, as this blog may include many depictions and discussions of unreality, swearing, death, trauma, ableism, racism, and more. At times I forget to tag these potentially triggering topics.

Yes, I had indeed attempted to make an introductory post! It heavily pains me to write this all, given my distinguished and embarrassing personality, but on this boat we strive to not care! Cringe culture is dead and I'm coming for your pancreas and brain tissue if you so dare to disagree.

So, without further ado!

x DNI x

if you're a bigot in any way (queerphobic, n@zi, racist, sexist, ableist, generally discriminatory, etc etc)

also this isn't really a dni criteria but pls don't behave inappropriately when interacting with me, keep it at a joke level maximum, I value my comfort over your pleasure

x NICKNAMES x

I am fine with anything you so dare to call me, be it a regular name or a homophobic slur. I quite frankly don't give a shit. However, nicknames I most prefer amount to DOMINO, TOKI and GOBLIN !!

x MY POSITION IN THE ALPHABET SOUP x

I am fine with any pronouns, though in terms of preferences I do gravitate towards they/them more than anything else. Everything else is irrelevant, but I am queer, and I don't think I make it subtle (?).

- https://en.pronouns.page/@CringeLordOfChao - my pronouns page

x FANDOMS/INTERESTS/GENERAL FAVES x

(I'm not as into some of these fandoms as I am in others, for example i barely know crap about Moomintroll I only sometimes watch some scenes of it on yt as a comfort show and I still listed it here, you can ask me about specific fandoms and how much I'm into them)(bold text = obsessed/into it enough to the point of being capable of infodumping about it/having a decent amount of opinions on it/having a conversation about it) (nvm idek anymore just ask me if I'm interested in it or not atm)

Video games: Skyrim, OMORI, BAD END THEATER, her tears were my light, Adventures with Anxiety!, Sonic The Hedgehog (general), Parappa The Rapper, Parappa The Rapper 2, Um Jammer Lammy, Minecraft, MineCraft StoryMode, Duolingo, Pokémon (general), Pizza Tower, Amanda The Adventurer, Cuphead, Word Trip, UNDERTALE. Tomadachi Life, ROBLOX,

Roblox games: Flicker, my eyes deceive, Adopt Me!, Royale High, Sonic Pulse RP, Horse Valley, Rate My Avatar, Speed Run 4, copyrighted artists, Pyrite Adventure, Wolves Life, Total Roblox Drama, Murder Island 2, Sonic World Adventure,

Neurodivergence (such as, but not limited to): Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), Bipolar Personality Disorder (BPD), Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FASD), Avoidant Personality Disorder (AVPD), Down Syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), etc etc

Animated series: The Music Freaks, hfjONE, The Owl House, Amphibia, Sonic Prime, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Parappa The Rapper, Sonic X, AVM Shorts, The Loud House, The Casagrandes, Legend of Korra, Pokémon, Total Drama (Island/general), Willcraft's Monster School, LEGO Ninjago, Spirit Riding Free, Moomintroll (2017), DuckTales (2017), My Little Pony; Friendship is Magic, The Cuphead Show, Sonic Boom, The Amazing World Of Gumball, Kipo And The Age Of Wonderbeasts,

Non-animated shows: Stranger Things, Umbrella Academy, Dark, Only Fools And Horses, The Modern Family, Sesame Street,

Comics: Sonic The Hedgehog (IDW)

Animated movies: Sonic The Hedgehog (1996)/Sonic OVA, The Last Guest, Nimona, The Lego Movie, Equestria Girls (all parts), Moana,

Non-animated movies: Sonic The Hedgehog + Sonic The Hedgehog 2 [i guess, I feel obliged to like it since I'm a sonic fan], Avatar, Alpha,

Webcomics (all available on WEBTOON!): Blooming Season, The Last Dimension, Unfamiliar, Jackson's Diary, North Korean Kid, Heartstopper, Is chair still in the park?, Ghost Eyes, Meow Are You?, The Recloseted Lesbian, War and Tea, Hyperfocus, Erma, Emmy The robot, Post Harbor, Spellward Bound, The Little Trashmaid, Of Aliens And Cacti, MAX has AUTISM, Hollow Kid, Aurora Borealis, Always Human, Will There Be A Tomorrow? (H), High Class Homos, Everything Is Fine, Home Sweet Ghost, Notumare, Heartstopper,

Books: The Name Of This Book Is Secret (all 5 parts), Hobbit, Ana, Teo, Warrior Cats (general),

Music creators: Radiohead, Rex Orange County, Laufey, bo en, Jack Stauber, Jay Vincent, Kaden Mackay, Olivia Rodrigo, if I was 9 again the only person on this list would be Alan Walker (I don't care about his music anymore), Pink Floyd, liana flores, Your Favorite Martian,

Gacha Stories: Boy With Bad Luck, Girl With Good Luck, The Music Freaks episodes 1-11, Shy Family, Shy Family PART 2, Lesbian Liar part 1-5, A Walking Disaster, Fated Sisters, A Beautiful Tragedy, The Mute Tomboy, literally anything made by Hxnnah rlly,

Favorite YouTubers: Flamingo, RosyClozy, TheOdd1sOut, Illymation, Hxnnah, [Brii Studios UwU], Cypopps, Emzii, NerdyArty, Marikyuun, ExtraRosy, WowzaDawg, foster on the spectrum, Behind The Meme, LilyTrescot SMP, JaidenAnimations, Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Ice Cream Sandwich, How To ADHD, LesbianMindflayer,

Favorite Tumblr blogs (not including mutuals srry xx): @/oneeyedleaf, @/nerdyarty, @/tmf-confessions (technically a mutual), @/i-say-ok, @/sonicshipbattles, @/uncharismatic-fauna, @/official-boob-posts, @/identifying-horses-in-posts, @/sonicthehedgehog, @/inthetags, @/notumare (tech a mutual), @/your-blorbos-are-queer, @/the-owl-house-takes, @/incognitopolls, @/my-autism-adhd-blog. @/hot-take-tournament, @/haveyouseenthismovie-poll, @/aita-blorbos, @/oc-aita, @/jagged--dust-jacket-analysis (also tech a mutual), @/hero-deserves-to-be-happy, @/just-a-blog-for-polls, @/thistmfcharacteris, @/sonicapproves, @/lordystrange, @/aphantimes, @/neurotypical-sonic, @/fishyfishyfishtimes. @/adhd-sonic-the-hedgehog, @/obelisart, @/queeradhdcultureis, @/pd-culture-is, @/content-free, @/starscatteredsky, @/hero-deserves-to-be-happy,

Miscellaneous: zoology, drawing, using Picrew, ninjas, goblins, parallels in writing (this obsession is eating me alive I swear I'll literally analyze my events as if they're fictional and I'll draw parallels between them and my favorite fandoms/past events pls send help), daydreaming, dust, media analysis, character analysis, calculators, singing, mushrooms, weirdcore, goblincore, sociology, vocabulary, MBTI,

Languages (both real and fictional)(I only actually know some of these)(still learning): ninjargon, dovahzul, spanish, japanese, serbian, english, na'vi,

Things I'm planning to get into : Zoology, crocheting, Terraria, The Lego Movie: The Sequel, The Wilds, Warrior Cats, crafting, Nimona (comic), Notumare, The Mechanisms, Dark, Inscryption, The Adventure Zone, DELTARUNE, Teen Wolf, Solitaire, Sonic X, Good Omens, Voltron, The Amazing Digital Circus, Steven Universe, Oblivion, Star Vs The Forces Of Evil, MineCraft StoryMode, Percy Jackson, the pink corruption,

My own stories/Fanfiction plots: ghost!SUNNY AU (OMORI), Mob Academy (Minecraft fanfic), Carla and Silvia, omori!Hanahaki AU (OMORI), Flicker fanfic, HOLLOW HEART, (feel free to ask about any of these!!!)

Things I plan to get into again: MLP;FiM, Ninjago,

x KIN/FAV CHAR LIST x

(bold text = absolute fave!!)

TMF - Jake Sterling, Millicent Brooks, Drew, Lia, Sean Everett, Daisy,

ST - William Byers, Eleven/Jane Hopper/Byers, Jonathan Byers, Robin Buckley, Joyce Byers, Lucas Sinclair, Dustin Henderson, Kali Prasad,

PTR - Jammer Lammy, Parappa The Rapper, Katy Kat

STH - Sonic The Hedgehog, Miles Tails Prower The Fox, Mimic The Octopus, Whisper The Wolf, Sticks The Jungle Badger, Amy Rose The Echidna-Rascal (personal hc),

TOH - Luz Noceda, Agustus Porter, Edalyn Clawthorne, King Clawthorne, Lilith Clawthorne, Philip Whittebane/Belos (do not excuse his actions whatsoever), Enzo Gabriel The Collector

Amphibia - Marcy Wu, Sprig Planters

OMORI - KEL/KELSEY, OMORI, SUNNY, MARI, THE MAVERICK/MIKHAEL, PESSI, CAPT. SPACEBOY,

SS - SpongeBob SquarePants

Minecraft - Creeper, The Ender Dragon, Herobrine, Enderman, Wolf, Fox, The Wither

RBLX Flicker - Eduardo, Rita, Mikah, Amethyst, Adora, Amani

TMNT - Michelangelo!!

TLH - Luna Loud, Lincoln Loud, Lenni Loud, Lucy Loud, Clyde ??

TD(I) - Noah, Izzy, Dawn, Ezekiel

Ninjago - Jay Walker, Nya, Zane Julien, Akita,

WEBTOON TLD - Alex Hill, Phillip Maxwell, Anne Marie De Delle

x SHIP LIST x

[character] x no one = I like the interpertation of said character being aroace/just not dating anyone in general. (Bold text)= otp

OMORI - suntan, sunflower, heromari, goldrush, sunburn, photobomb, KEL x no one, herobowen, etc

STH - blazamy, whispangle, sonknux, sonadow, sonic x no one, kittails, amy x no one, stickmy, sticknux (but in a very specific modern sth way), sticks x no one, sonjet, shadisper, etc

TMF - ooo boy... milliot, jailey, hailia, drake, laisy, saisy, dailia, dadie, jaisy, jenry, drew x no one, drakailey, henriam, ladie/salia, platonic draisy, platonic henria, more xx

PTR - sunny x no one, parappa x matt, parappa x pj berri, parappa x no one, etc

Ninjago - lava, plasma, techno, jaya, bruise, opposite, pixane, glacier, harumya (?), lloyd x no one, cole x no one, nya x no one, qp mud, etc

TD - noco, gwourtney, nowen, breoff, bfffls, dizzy,

WEBTOON TLD - alex x phillip, anne x

x ANIMALS I LIKE x (few are fictional) •

virgin island's dwarf gecko, blobfish, horses, roosters, unicorns, wolves, anglerfish, immortal jellyfish, lion mane's jellyfish, okapis, rats, reek stonefish, doves, pigeons, vultures, cats, echidnas, frogs, star nosed moles, naked mole rats, moths (they seek the light which only further strays them away from life, the truth), spiders, rock doves, blue jaya tongue skinks, australian ghostsharks, aye-ayes, goblin sharks, dragons, whatever the fuck atla's momo is, lemurs, squirrels, flying squirrels, capybaras, OMG I JUST FOUND OUT FLYING LEMURS ACTUALLY EXIST THEYRE CALLED colugos, gerenuks, jabirus, jaguarundis, japanese spider crabs, jerboas, pangolins, potoos, thorny devils, snakes, black cats, vampire squids, northern stargazer,

x TAGS x

ghost!sunny au, >:], to do list, omori!hanahaki au, important, urgent, rb, asks, animalsss, others art, others writing, vent? like among us?, I am not funny, byliner, house design inspo, minecraft fanfic inspo, mari appreciation 💜, sean appreciation, fictional birthday, music, rb, tickposting, mari wheelchair au, serbian shit, carla and silvia, my oc, my ocs, my story, mob academy, hollow heart, 🎩🕊️, 🎩🕊️ • ❓, my polls, polls, 🎩🕊️ • ✉️, 🎩🕊️ • 📜, 🎩🕊️ • 🪬, 🐀🥚, me on anon, freakblr colour war, hailey hair controversy, freakblr colour war 2, freakblr colour war ii, mecoded, cringe confession of the day, gay screenshot collection, my top posts,flicker webseries preparations, hyper-cis, freakblr lore, my mom watches tmf, into the rosyverse, background-chan,

x TAGS FOR FANDOMS x (aka fandom acronyms) •

omori, tmf, st, go, ptr, sth, avm shorts, atla, rblx, amphibia, yfm, etc (if a franchise has 2 words or more when I reblog posts about that franchise the fandom tags I'll use for them will be exclusively the acronyms even if it isn't most preferred)

<°•×•°>

9.1,13.19,15,18,18,25°

My life will end incomplete! ~~××

(I'll try updating this later)

(this is like the tenth time doing this, I'm only capable of making intro posts in ONE RUN I guess, I am in pain, sjkdcie)

xxOTHER NOTES:

I occasionally post pretty angsty, overwhelmingly negative, and at times violently suggestive vent content here. If you do not like that, please filter the tag #vent? like among us?

I might have depression and/or adhd so that's probably gonna mess up my life and social interactions ummm (I'm a sensitive individual so please don't be too harsh)

I sometimes draw, don't expect it to look good though. You can request any prompt !!

My Roblox accounts are FinVanzahDovahKiin and stejsi_079 !!

My DeviantArt account is Unoriginal Creator !!

Even though I had formerly stated that this blog may contain triggering themes (even though I can't quite recall much triggering posts/reblogs I have on here??) this blog is mostly silly, it's just me being me

I have a lot of TMF mutuals, we have a lot of inside jokes that may not make any form of sense to outsiders

Even though I had also stated I have my own fanfiction ideas I like, I have not written any of them down and God knows when I will.

I need to spend less time on the internet for the sake of my health

My YouTube account is [InsertUnoriginalNameHere] !! (I've deleted 90% of my former content. Also most of my videos on there are like 2 years because I stopped posting after my parents found out it existed)

I have an alt account @freakblr-lore !! Studying the lore of tmf but mostly the subculture of freakblr

I also have a tmf Sean Everett rp/ask blog called @mr-broom !

I ALSO have a tmf Daisy rp/ask blog called @x-daisy-x !

There's also another one @hailey-i-guess

Another one @xjaded-sadiex

I'm disappointed in myself. I made an rp/ask blog for an entirely irrelevant background character. What the fuck. @background-bg-chan

IM PLANNING TO MAKE A ROBLOX FLICKER WEBSERIES!!! Posts related to it will be tagged "flicker webseries preparations".

There's an Elliot one now too!! @xx0blooming-orchid0xx

@sussy-albertaretz-core my fan blog for the Roblox YouTuber flamingo

please ask me anything about any of my interests

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

I saw your posts about Redditors' very unfair interpretations of Loki. And the fact that they went straight to calling you a narcissist because you questioned who is a reliable narrator makes my blood boil. They're shutting you up by perpetuating stigma towards NPD and other Cluster B disorders. And also I hate the acceptance of police tactics that often lead to entrapment and false confessions being framed as therapy.

in response to this post describing the situation. the comment thread itself can be found here, if anyone's curious, although that just shows the specific context around my comment; the broader context was this post, and then this original comment, which unfortunately got a shit-ton of upvotes despite also being on the same general dumb argument, although before the commenter got aggressive about it. so then somebody else started arguing, and the original commenter argued back at truly ridiculous length, and then I butted in to say "er well could you maybe clarify a couple critical parts of your premise here because I'm nnnnnot sure the text supports them actually" which yes is a little obnoxious in principle but not at all unusual for this type of discussion? because...this is...how Reddit discussions go? or Twitter or Tumblr discussions for that matter, like nobody has to respond to your entire long-ass exhausting thing about how Loki Is A Nasty Narcissist With A Huge Body Count when all they really want to do is point out that you, uh, seem to have a tiny bit of a structural problem underlying your whole argument, just...right there? that structural problem? and that other one? right, and these things you're ignoring kinda render the rest of your argument a little bit irrelevant? and since you were saying that you were only talking about stuff that directly happened onscreen, then surely you have no problem talking about other things that happened directly onscreen, right? like, obviously you have answers for those things too, if this is all so self-evident. right?

...but also, I was genuinely curious who they meant by things being "explicitly stated by reliable narrators," and irritatingly enough I still am because they never fucking answered, just got pissy and flounced. like I'm assuming they meant Mobius and probably Odin? maybe also Thor? but I genuinely don't know because they literally refused to answer! probably because they knew I'm right and didn't want to admit it 🤷‍♀️

anyway. to be 100% scrupulously fair, this person speculated that I "identify with Loki's narcissistic traits and [am] trying to excuse them" rather than outright calling me a narcissist, but...you know, that's...a difference of semantics. I politely brought up some textual evidence about how maybe actually their reliable narrators aren't so reliable and also Thanos's coercion probably extended at least until the Hulk-smashing, and they responded 1) as if I was the person they'd already been arguing with (but then didn't take back any of the aggression when I said I wasn't, so, idk) and b) by personally insulting my character. soooo.

in hindsight it's actually kind of satisfying that they didn't even try to argue with me, just insulted me and flounced, because if they really had a good argument, they could've come up with something. kind of indicates they realized I had a good point and that's why they got so pissed.

honestly the thing that bothers me more is how common this viewpoint is that Loki's a narcissist, which...I hate to blame the show for but I kind of have to, because I don't think it's something I really saw until the show actually used the term, and then everyone started going "haha yes of course" without a second thought even though the vast majority of Loki's behavior isn't even remotely in line with either NPD or the more informal, nonclinical definition of narcissism that people toss around. (although, side note, I did read an absolutely incredible human AU Thorki series where iirc Loki did have clinical NPD, among other things, and it absolutely worked there. uh, mind the tags if you check it out though, maybe especially the parallel series from Loki's POV; it gets very dark in parts.) even aside from perpetuating stigma against real people with real mental illnesses, it's just--such a lazy, shallow reading, you know? and it's...honestly, it's unrealistic. you want me to believe that Loki was a narcissist by the informal definition and completely in love with himself (but also scared and hurt. these things do not fit) and blind to the damage he was doing until Magical Mr. Mobius's therapy session knocked some sense into him and forced him to do some introspection for the first time in his life, and only then did he realize some things that the all-knowing Mobius already knew about him, which caused him to make a sudden, massive personality change? yeah, no. come on. he's not stupid, lying to himself sometimes out of self-defense doesn't mean he lacks self-awareness, and nobody straight-up changes that fast. also if you want to tell me the poor kiddo who was in a constant state of breakdown from the Jotunheim battle onward was also too much in love with himself and that was the real problem, then uh...I don't think we watched the same movies.

...I guess that's the other thing that pisses me off about all this, that people keep putting so much emphasis on what Mobius did, giving him all the credit for the reality check that allowed Loki to become a hero or whatever the fuck. honestly? that was an accident. Mobius saw a potential asset and was perfectly willing to use all kinds of emotional manipulation and psychological torture to get information and see if he could turn this potential asset into a more long-term investment. the reality check wasn't what Mobius shoved in his face, it was what Loki found out on his own and had to accept for himself: that this was all real, that he did still deeply love his family and they still loved him and they were lost to him anyway, and his fucking preordained life ended with him dead at Thanos's hands.

Mobius gave him the opportunity to watch the tape and yelled at him for a while. that's mostly it. Loki did the actual work of grieving and processing everything alone and he deserves 100% of the credit, and actually I'm a lot more pissed about this than I realized. like, even if if that had actually been therapy, or even if we figure Mobius had some charitable intentions toward Loki in there as well as pragmatic ones (which...look, nobody in the TVA is exempt from ACAB so I'm not inclined to give him much benefit of the doubt, is all I'm saying), Loki would still be the one doing the work, and it's some ugly shit to act like this cop who manipulated him should get to take credit for that.

[utilitycaster]

Honeslty Travis and Laura are probably in the same category as Taliesin, all their characters are so solid that there isn't much to compare against. But if Sam settling into FCG after 30+ episodes puts them above Scanlan than Vax's Raven Queen character shift should put him above Orym. Also Beau is by far Marisha's strongest character, not that Keyleth was bad, Beau was just that good.

(As of 8:14 AM EDT today, April 15th: not answering new questions for this meme that come in but answering the ones already in my inbox)

So first off this meme isn't about arguing with me, it's about my opinions, and you are invited to make your own post if you still disagree but once I've said agree/disagree that's kind of it unless I invite more discussion. That said - disagree:

The question was not "who is the strongest overall" or "who has the best plot" or even "who do I like the most"; it was "who is the most solid and fully actualized" which I am interpreting as "who has the most considered and thought-out character concept from the beginning"; as the original question notes, Taliesin always has a very strong idea of who his characters are. Like, again: I do not like Molly. At all. I also think he is a well-crafted character whose personality fucking sucks on purpose.

My issue with FCG was that he actually had a well considered concept that was imo more detailed than Scanlan's and with a clearer path forward; my problem is just that it took 30 episodes to get to it. The concept was fine; the execution was too slow for me to get on board for half the current story.

Meanwhile, Vax is really just A Guy and beyond broad strokes for his backstory doesn't have any direction to the point that his directionlessness is itself the path Liam began to explore when the Conclave attacked! I think Vax's late game plot is fantastic, and I think it's very possible I will like Vax's story more than Orym's, but Vax as a character from the start was not as thought out as Orym was and what FCG was doing is completely irrelevant to this.

Also: Keyleth is, when we're talking about actualized, by far Marisha's strongest character. I think in the end I probably like Beau slightly more than Keyleth? I certainly would rather hang out with her though that probably says more about me than either of them. But of Marisha's characters, Keyleth is unique in that I can actually tell you what she was doing before the campaign; what she initially wished to achieve; and what she ultimately did achieve. I know the people in her backstory and how she feels about them. I don't have that to the same extent for the others. The reason Keyleth has the most plot focus of Marisha's characters is, frankly, that she has a well-conceived plot going in. Beau is a lot looser in concept, and finds herself along the way and it works because the Cobalt Soul is a sufficient hook, but in many ways Beau's story post-Campaign is the more interesting one. (Which, I'd argue, the cast even agrees with given their discussion of Liam and Marisha's C1 and C2 characters showing up in C3 and Marisha stating that Keyleth's story feels far more closed than Beau's.)

[ohsayit]

Hot take (not really) about boobies, just because I feel like it lol

Reblogged something about desexualising female characters and boob size. First and most importantly, I love boobies. I always love boobies. Secondly, I am unapologetic about being horny. (Hormone brain is something else. But that's another story for another day.)

As much as I enjoy people discussing how to desexualise characters so we get more personalities and stories out of them, I enjoy horny inducing characters equally. Yea I am looking at you, Larian and your array of thirst traps.

Though, the fantasy situation where I don't think human society could ever land in would be: realise and accept the fact that our dirty brains will just be horny regardless, because we are all filthy (lol) by nature.

People's brains get turned on by different things. Boobs, butts, body hair, hair on your head, eyes, lips, jawlines, hands, fingers. Anything and everything can be a trigger for someone's sexual desire and there is nothing wrong with it. Suit yourself and let other people suit themselves.

I love boobies, truly. I only like them sexy when I feel like it. I only think about boobs in terms of sex when: (a) my mind wanders and that isn't intentional, (b) when me and a real person are at it and in the act together, or (c) I am having a good time thinking with these pixels in my own bloody head.

I don't think the human society will ever be able to leave this sex topic alone because we had too long of a history smearing and demonising it, and proceed to use it as a means to manipulate, or whatever word you fancy, people into shapes.

Wanting to take the attention off from horniness inducing character designs? Great stuff. Inducing horniness with some rando characters that has less than 45mins to total voice lines in a game where, mostly likely, this character doesn't have more than 20mins in a regular playthrough? (Yea, I am looking at you again, Larian and this one particular thirst trap Rugan.) Also great.

I think we have a bigger problem of making it a boolean situation where you are either a thirst trap and renders any and all personalities irrelevant, either steer things off the horny chart so the character can really shine. Being able to both see characters' and real people's worth beyond their sexual value, and appreciate the boners they bless the world, is a such an underrated and hopeless needed skill/ability everyone should possess.

When it's not a "thing" anymore, that usually marks the start of everyone's good time.

Sex, ladies, objectification, and all that are deep topics. I am in no mind to unleash chaos on those fronts upon myself. I simply want to appreciate both real people and pixels in all sexual and non sexual ways. Give me pretty faces, purring voices, and nice boobies, please. I would love to keep enjoying a vast variety of eye candies.

Don't believe me? Check out my gibberish about Zevlor. For some reason I won't shut up about him despite not being my dearest.

[cosmo-lexies]

Midnight ritual - 6. Mistakes that change lives

Lucas:

The conversation was intense. Fenix was so nervous that I could smell his stress sweating. Although I wasn't able to understand everything, it's obvious that Fenix knew about our community and he was scared of our parents.

The mayor was leaning back in her chair looking at the ceiling while my father was motionless looking at the floor. I'm sure that he was angry; like a protector of the foundation is his duty to protect the secrets of the community. And he's the type of person who lashes himself out at mistakes.

"Mayor, I'm sorry. I don't know how we don't notice this big security problem," my dad said.

"I have one theory," Atticus' father said and we all look at him. "Treason, someone gave the information to the boy."

"Maybe, or perhaps an outsider witch. This would make sense, the boy borrows and some witch read it for him. The thing is how we resolve this problem," the mayor said.

"We must get rid of him," my father said seriously.

I got up instinctively. "Wait, Dad. We can't kill him," I said.

"Boy, this isn't your business," he answered me.

"But, he-e-e isn't de-deserve that. You ca-can't." I stuttering

"Lucas, I will do the necessary to protect our people."

I tried to say something more but I couldn't. I make some weird sounds in the effort.

"He was right," Rosemary said unexpectedly. "Don't misunderstand me, the faith of Fenix is irrelevant to me. However, if we kill him, we won't discover who he is and why he is doing this."

"Dear, although would want to do it, a contract of this characteristic is complicated to create."

"Mayor," Dorotea said from the corner where she had been observing until that moment. "I have the contract for a part-time job ready if you want anyone could be worth it for the job, even the boy."

Dorotea started to recite some words in an unintelligible language and a marbling white sphere appeared in front of her. She gave the sphere to the mayor who analyzed it.

"With the approval of two members of the council would be enough. Abraham?"

Atticus' father was thoughtful. "I will agree with your decision Elizbeth," he said.

I breathed calmly. My father on the other side was furious. He had a swollen neck vein in the same way that when one of my little brothers broke his boxing gloves signed by Marco Antonio Barrera, but he didn't say anything, he's a subordinate after all.

"Well, let's do it!" The mayor moved her hand in the air and the doors opened.

Rosemary:

I had been holding my breath since my mother opened the door until Fenix appeared from the side of the hallway. All of us stared at him.

"I'm sorry. I needed to go to the bathroom," his face and hair were wet. Likely he went to the bath to cool off.

Maybe I had convinced my mother soon. If we would have tightened the screws on him a little more. But it was too late to back down. He walked to the desk and then my mother moved a seat for him with her magic. I have to admit that he got some of my respect, at this moment he had more than Lucas at least. I don't like that people play with me but he was risking his life, and this shows that he's someone very brave or very stupid. For his sake I expected it to be the first.

"We accept your conditions," my mother said. He couldn't hide his happiness and clenched his fits like a victory sight. "The conditions are the next: You will be employed by the Foundation. As employed you have protection for yourself and your family. If you betray the foundation or reveal information about magic outside the community this contract will be broken immediately and then, losing your memories will be your least worry." My mother has a prodigious talent for threatening people.

"I accept," he said swallowing.

"Perfect. Paid, working hours, assignments, and other things will be discussed in an ordinary contract. Now, put your hand in the lower part of this sphere."

He obeyed immediately and my mother put her hand in the high part. The sphere shone and a lot of symbols started to move around them. Fayres are known for their incredible abilities to combine magic from different sources. I could detect at least twenty different writing systems but there were hundreds more.

When the sphere stopped shining my mother separated her hand and Fenix made the same. He stared at his right wrist with attention.

"What are you looking at?" I asked.

"The spell is like a golden fine thread around my wrist," he smiled at me. "Well, the first and more important, some extradimensional being entered our reality when I repaired the summoning ritual."

"What kind of extradimensional being you saw? Did someone else see something?" Abraham asked.

I and the boys shook our heads. I had a lapse of memories of the ritual but I would have detected some demon crossing the veil. I looked at Fenix for him to explain it.

"I'm not sure. He was in a pure magic state, it wasn't a body of any type at that moment. I saw it like a black fog."

"This doesn't sense, boy. You're trying to fool us," Mr.Garcia yelled.

"Not, sir. It's true."

"You saw magic as if magic could be seen," Abraham said sarcastically.

"I told you. He is trying to trick us. Give me five minutes with him in the x-room."

Fenix made an angry face and hit the desk "Yes I see it, always can I see it. I can see the spirits of them," he pointed with each hand at one Garcia "I can see the black veins this weird of you," he pointed to Abrahan "and can see the books of magic that were hidden in the library. I can see all of this." He ended with a big air mouthful.

I started to think about all the repercussions of his words. I never heard about an ability like this. Most powerful witches can sense and detect spells and sources but not see them.

"Okay," my mother said putting his typical pose with the arms forming an arc and his chin over them. "Can you explain to us about these powers? How do you obtain it? and when?"

Fenix reclined his back on the chair more relaxed. "I think that they're inherited. My grandmother had the same ability and I have been able to see magic since my childhood," he got up. "But this isn't relevant now. I'm talking seriously, something crossed into our world when I solved the Rosemary error."

Atticus:

Fenix had committed a terrible mistake. All of us are conscious that Rose make mistake like everyone, but this cannot be said. When we were six years old, we argued about if Pluto was a planet. Never will I forget this summer day under a tree in her garden surrounded by sun and without one blood droop.

She stared at him and smiled with the commissure of her lips, "I didn't make any error. I followed the instructions of Daemonium Vocans of Riono Miocato perfectly," she said.

"Not, I read the book and I'm pretty sure that the corner with obsidian of the pentagram must head real north not magnetic north," he said.

They exchanged glances intensely.

Dorotea took a step forward. "I'm sorry to interrupt but," she looked at Rose. "Did you sorrow the first or second edition? The first edition has a lot of errors," she asked.

Rosemary's face was still. I started to imagine what terrible things she was going to do to Fenix for this. I put myself close to her.

"These things happen, maybe the book was misclassified or the edition wasn't available," I tried to de-escalate the situation.

"Stop Atticus this's ridiculous. He was right, it's my error," she looked at her mother "I'm going to fix it."

She was admitting her error. We have been friends since childhood and I had never heard her say 'It's my error'. Why with this guy?

"Dear, relax. First, we need to know what kind of creature is. Dorotea, can you make an estimation, please?"

Doroteas took a sheet and a pencil, and then started to write complicated math formulas which I couldn't understand. "Considering the moon phase and the pentagram was irregular. I think that the creature is from the elemental plane."

My dad had a worried face which I had never seen on him.

"Elizabeth we need to mobilize the foundation, everyone," my dad said

"You're right, but calm this thing needs a few days to obtain power enough. Officer Garcia go talk to the police captain about the situation."

Lucas' father stood at attention, "Yes ma'am, but what is the situation?"

"An elemental, a force of nature made flesh. Elementals were involved in catastrophes like the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa or the 1755 Lisbon earthquake," my father said with a lost look in his eyes.

"We need all the police to search for this thing before it'd be so powerful," Elizabeth said.

I felt a chill. Both Elizabeth and my dad aren't scared people. They have a long life, they have lived through everything; wars, famines, diseases. And they were so scared of this thing. Mr.Garcia left the room and my father called his assistant. They started to make a lot of calls in a side of the room. The mayor got up and took her bag.

"Dorotea starts with preparations, in case we cannot expel this thing the facilities of the foundation will serve like refuge." She headed to the door and Rose followed her. Then she turned "What do you think you are doing?"

"Fixing my error," Rose said with a pretentious attitude.

"Not dear. This is so serious that the adults are going to fix it. You and your little group," she pointed to Fenix, Lucas, and me "stay here helping Dorotea."

[yamayuandadu]

Did Selene have a cult or is it one of the cases where she was only relevant in the myth?

The references are scattered, but they are definitely here. One of the Homeric Hymns is dedicated to her (you can read it ex. here; it alludes to a mythical episode which I have not seen anywhere else, maybe it's a local or archaic tradition, who knows; the dating of the hymn is briefly discussed here). She had an altar in the temple of Demeter in Pergamon (source), she might be present on coins from Lydia (source; but it might also be Hecate)... A problem is that there isn't really a good scholarly treatment of the matter. The closest I could find is a student paper. With no footnotes. The name Cleopatra Selene used by a few women from the Ptolemaic dynasty is apparently theophoric. There's brief discussion of this on the last page in this article. If you have institutional access to De Gruyter, there's a bit more on that (including explicit identification as theophoric) in the new book Sculptures from Roman Syria II; there's also a truly wacky example of interpretatio there, figures interpreted as "Isis-Selene" (sic). I have 0 idea how to even process what's going on with that. Based on the context I can't even tell if it's just a modern term for an iconographic type or if there actually is an ancient textual source using that term. Lucian of Samsosata gave us the smash hit about "another great sanctuary in Phoenicia, which the Sidonians possess. According to them, it belongs to Astarte, but I think that Astarte is Selene" - while I did not really see any recent analysis of it, it feels like a joke about interpretatio to me and does not square up with the material evidence (see here). I would personally also assume that the fact that Herodian referred to Harran as a cult center of Selene (Greek and Roman authors persistently assumed the deity of Harran was male and this surprisingly also pops up in later Arabic sources; the only exception I found while working on a relevant paragraph for a wiki article long ago was Historia Augusta which calls the moon god of Harran "Lunus", lol) can be used to support the argument that Selene received actual cult - I am not aware of any example of interpretatio of an actively worshiped deity with an abstract personification irrelevant in cult...? Other than possibly some of Philo of Byblos' hot takes (ex. if Pontos really is a stand-in for a deity analogous to Ugaritic Yam [so far not attested in Phoenicia] and not, you know, a Greek borrowing which cannot be ruled out).

[halfdeadwallfly]

Warning: maaassivvee vent incoming

So, I'm mad at my doctor.

I've been seeing her basically since birth. I've always had issues, if you will, but in the last couple years, everything just compounded, and stuff has been cropping up more seriously. I went to therapy, got diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. Was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and switched to a specialist. Got recommended to see an occupational therapist for related tics. Started looking for another general therapist to deal with worsening anxiety. Got recommended by my sibling's therapist to look into the possibility of being on the autism spectrum.

Through this, I've had to go back and forth with my normal doctor, discussing diagnoses, medication, etc. I've had to hear her opinions on my problems, put together through brief, cordial meetings of her asking me basically irrelevant questions about what she mistakenly perceives to be going on.

Anxiety? She asked about the stress of my school workload, and recommended that I go to prom. OCD? She asked about compulsions like hand-washing and checking locks. She attributed the symptoms that I tried to explain, for the most part, to anxiety.

My mom, not knowing how to deal with a tic attack, brought me into the office one day when I couldn't stay at school during a rehearsal. My whole body was sore and exhausted from shaking, my knuckles were bleeding from being tapped open, and I was trying not to cry waiting for it all to die down. When I went in for my next appointment, she awkwardly asked about "the things you have to do sometimes that make you stressed."

When I brought up potential autism screening, she was shocked and taken aback. She didn't think that could at all be an option, because, as she put it, I'm too smart. People with autism, she said, have trouble speaking, behave inappropriately in social settings, and don't understand social norms and boundaries. In her assessment, based solely on twenty-minute-long annual checkups (always, of course, accompanied by politely stilted small talk and guarded non-personal positivity), she determined that I have never really had any issues socially that would warrant concern. She said that I could maybe be on the spectrum, which would mean that I had some autistic traits, but not actually Autistic. When she asked why I thought to bring this up, I explained my thoughts about sensory issues, social struggle, stimming, and my preference to make plans and find comfort in routine. She was, of course, doubtful. She referred to moments that my mom cited as potential meltdowns during my childhood as moments when I get "tearful."

And it's just all so frustrating, because on top of having to deal with all this stuff and the rest of my life as it is, I have to worry about how this doctor will potentially completely misunderstand the issue and become a roadblock to getting better treatment and understanding for myself. I wish that I could have a medical professional on my side, to help and explain things to my parents when they misunderstand or underestimate what's going on, but instead it's just someone else in a position of authority that isn't getting it either. And I don't want to complain, because I know that there are so many people going through much worse, but it's just frustrating. I can only hope that my doctor is better with other patients who haven't had the opportunity to see other professionals like I have.

Anyway, TL;DR, my doctor doesn't understand my non-physical health issues and it's really annoying because I still have to go through her about it.

[carmen-berzattos]

Now tell us about Lucas :D Nathan is also an interesting character, isn't he?

ooooooh boy are you gonna regret asking me this. I have wayyyy to many thoughts. I'll try to contain them but make no promises lol.

Before I dive in, I want to acknowldege something. There are rumors that Chad Michael Murray was difficult to work with on the set of OTH. Allegedly he was the problem, but it seems that the Sophia/Chad relationship caused a lot of turmoil on set. I will not be talking about this. Because I don't know the details, for one. But also because I think this whole thing is narratively irrelevant. If Chad's behaviour has caused your to dislike Lucas, fair enough, that is your perogative. It's not an unworthy discussion or anything, but it's textually not relevant. And the text is what I'm interested in.

Okay, now lets get to Lucas Scott. My flawed boy that I love so very much. I'll also address Nathan at the very bottom and my thoughts about him. I also really love him, for the record. Just not as much.

First, let me clarify that when I say Lucas's character works, I mean it works in the seasons 1-3. Basically, as long as the writing is solid, the character works really well. He's pretty much a spot-on protagonist. It's when we get to season 4 that things start to fall apart writing-wise.

The thing about Lucas is that he is a great example of having a good person as a protagnist, who also has a lot of growing to do, and who also is capable of making a lot of mistakes and then set himself back up on the right path. Lucas's conflict in the show is two-folds:

He is a very caring and good person from the start, and he needs to learn to stay the path throughout by doing the right thing.

Because he is a very good and caring as a person, who is always there for others, he also needs to learn to let them in and to rely on them.

Even though the show is a coming of age story, it doesn't start with Lucas as an asshole, or a person who doesn't know who he is. Rather it starts with him as someone who is already good, who knows his heart, but who has never really been tested or put through the grinder. When the show starts, we find Liucas sheltered in his own world. He hasn't had an easy life, per se, being raised by a single mother who's always struggled to make ends meet means that he had to take on responsibilities and learn how to be reliable very early on. But he's never really learned to navigate difficult social situations or face life head on. Season 1 puts him through exactly the series of experiences that would lead to him finally facing the world. At the start, he goes from the enclosed world of just him, his mom, Keith, and Hayley, to being a jock in the basketball team, suddenly becoming a part of the "it" group, and suddenly being exposed to the world of his brother and father, both of whom he avoided like the plague in the past. And he kind of fails in the face of it all. He starts making mistakes. He judges Hayley too much for openning herself up to his brother, he gets a tattoo (lols I love this show's Big Deal reaction to tattoos when it's a normal Tuesday for me), he drifts from his previous friends, and mainly he gets caught in a love triangle and fucks up. Big time. He goes after Brooke when he is still hung up on Peyton, knowing full-well that they are best friends. Then he goes and cheats on Brooke with Peyton. At the start, his reaction to the cheating is disappointing, where he insists that he and Peyton should tell Brooke and pursue a relationship, but then he bounces back.

I think the episode that makes the difference here for Lucas is the one where Brooke thinks she's pregnant and he freaks the fuck out. In that episode, he comes to a series of realizations. First, he realizes that his actions have very material and severe consequences. But I think the more interesting realization is about his father, the bane of my existence, Dan Scott. He finds himself in a situation similar to his father's and understands suddenly how terrified his father was when he left him. That his father may never be excused for his abandonment, he is actually justified in his complete panic and choosing to abandon nest and ask Karen to get rid of the baby, something that Dan pushes Lucas to do. For a show that aired in the early 2000s, the question of abortion is handled with a surprising amount of nuance, accounting with sensitivity to all sorts of different factors and remaining nonjudgemental about either choices. But I think the real defining moment here comes at the end of the episode. Lucas goes to Brooke and tells her that he will be theere no matter what decision she makes. You see, he understands the fear that pushed his father to abandon him, but he will not let that fear take him over. He tells Brooke that he will be there, and he means it. And for the very first time, doing the right thing for Lucas doesn't just come naturally or as a byproduct of his surroundings. He chooses that path. And he means it. It's only a coincidence that Brooke doesn't turn out to be pregnant to begin with.

Following that episode, Lucas is unsatisfied with himself. He's remorseful. He's lost. He's unsure what to do. He messed up a lot. He knows it. The narrative knows it. Other characters know it, and us as the audience know it. At the end of the season he decides to leave, to start fresh, because he doesn't know how else to atone for his mistakes. The sheltered boy of the start of the show is no longer there. Now he has to figure out a way to be what he needs to be in this world. He has a good base, an overall good and caring heart. But he finds that that's not enough. Being a good person is about making the right choices.

In season 2, his leaving turns out to be shortlived and he comes back to Tree Hill immediately. And his arch in season 2 pretty much encapsulates his character conflicts that I mentioned earlier so perfectly. He spends the season making up for his mistakes in season 1. Season 2 does such a good job of showing all of Lucas's best qualities and how they can work against him. He spends the season being there for everyone. He establishes a great friendship with Anna where he carries her secret of being Bi and offers advice and support. He's there for Nathan as he builds a relationship with him. He is there for Hayley as she struggles with her new-found position of being a wife and also an aspiring musician. He is there for Brooke as she buolds her world back again. And in ways that are so thoughtful, too. He gives her a place to stay when he parents leave, not really expecting anything back, merely being satisfied with still having her as a friend. He's even there for Peyton in such a thoughtful way. When he finds that she is having trouble and feeling lonely, he reaches out. She tells him off because he's not really been there for her, so he reaches out to Jake, knowing that Peyton needs a friend, and respecting that that friend is not him. He encourages his mom to go after her dreams and go to school. This is Lucas as his best! His most caring! His most protective! His most loving!

Unfortunately, though, that heart is also his biggest downfall. His protectiveness leads him to not tell Keith about how Jules, his fiancee, is shady and working with Dan because he wants to protect him. He's also going after Dan, which is a terrible mistake that puts him in a very dangerous situation, especially since he's supposed to be 17 (lmao @ the idea of Chad being 17), but he does it mostly alone and explicitly because he doesn't want Dan to hurt the people he loves anymore. The worst offender of this overprotective tendency that he has, though, is his heart condition. Lucas finds out that he tested positive but keeps it a secret from everyone. Because he doesn't want to give up basketball, for sure, but also because he doesn't want to burden people with concern for him. Which continues to be a major problem for him: he's there for everyone, but is very alone in his trouble. When it's about him and his struggles, no one is really there to help him.

The other thing that makes Lucas's journey in season 2 so interesting is that he does everything right, and still gets nothing out of it. By the end of the season he's alone. Brooke leaves for the summer and their whole friendship is threatened by his admittence that he wants to be with her. Karen goes to chase after someone she loves. Nathan shuts him out because he doesn't want him to go after Dan and because he got upset that he went and saw Hayley. It all just backfires. This is so true to life. Good deeds aren't always rewarded. most of the time they aren't. You do everything right and you get nothing in return. But that shouldn't be why you do things right to begin with. A lot of times I'm surprised that OTH of all shows is capable of showing that conflict so well.

Season 3 for Lucas starts out really interestingly, but then unravels halfway through. His heart condition storyline takes front and center and he pretty much refuses to tell anyone about it. Hayley finds out by accident, but that's about it. Even more, he ends up stopping his medication because it's affecting his basketball performance which I think was a stupid move, but just the kind of self-destructive thing that a perfectionist guy with a hero-complex would do. Following that, he gets together with Brooke, everything is fine and dandy. The season drags in the middle a little. Right before it spikes up BIG TIME with the shooter's episode.

***Befor I talk about that episode, I want to say something about the Leyton in that episode. Consider it an addendum to yesterday's rant. In my mind, that kiss that happened in the library should not under any circumstances be considered in the same breath as what happened between Leyton in season 1. Fans trying to make it so makes me very uncomfortable, considering that Peyton thought she was dying and was delirious. The show seems to also not really make much of a thing of it, even the break-up of Brucas being triggered by Peyton's addmission, not by it. it's made light of and joked about. Later seasons try to make it into a Moment(TM) and that never sat right with me. But I digress.***

Now, the shooter's episode is important for Lucas not because of the Leyton stuff. But because Keith dies. There is an interesting scene after Keith's death where Lucas admits to feeling so fucking guilty about the death, losing it in front of his mom and repeatedly taking blame. And his mom, in her grief, pretty much says he's right. Honestly? Perfect set up, perfect storm for a Lucas arc where he learns that he doesn't always have to take responsiblity for others. That he doesn't always have to be the one to take the hits, to learn to be vulnerable. Keith's death, along with his heart condition will just create the perfect disaster. Right?

Not exactly. And the trajectory of the last few episodes of the season pretty much spell the end of any real good character writing for Lucas that we get. Everything just kind of ends? He admits to the heart condition. His guilt disappears. He loses baskeball and finds a new dream in one episode. And it all lands with a resounding... meh. The weird thing about this is that the show knows that Lucas has hyper-independence issues, that he is closed off and distant, that he never truly shows himself to anyone. In the season 3 finale, he has a major fight with Brooke and she flatout asks him, in probably one of the best scenes of the whole show, "why won't you let me all the way in?". That same refrain is repeated in season 4 when Lucas disappears on Peyton for a while, dealing with some shit on his own, and Brooke just says get used to it, it can be lonely being Lucas's girlfriend. My interpretation of that isn't that he's emotionally unavailable to the people around him, it's that he doesn't let the people around him truly see him. If the show is trying to say otherwise, they can actually fuck right off because till that point all shown evidence points to the contrary. But they don't really do anything about any of that. It's just there. But they never push him over the edge to make him deal with it.

If it were up to me, Keith's death would have created the perfect storm for Lucas becoming more self-destructive than ever, neglecting his health even more. Between his guilt and his grief, he just pushes himself more and more resulting in a terrible heart-attack/collapse of some sort that threatens his life and destroys his health. Season 4 would've been THE Lucas Scott season, one where he has to learn to rely on others, to let go of his hero complex, to be vulnrable and let himself be a person, and let go of his perfectionist streak and to stop feeling guilty for living etc etc. But we get none of that. It just fizzles out.

Lucas's character never really recovers from that unfortunate landing of his season 3 arc. Following that, the writers don't really do anything with his character. Season 4 he's there and active in a lot of stories, but there isn't anything new or interesting that they do with it. Season 4 could have been saved by a different ending and saved season 5 with it, but alas, it was not to be and that's not the point here. And then in season 5 his whole thing is being with Lindsey while secretly with Peyton and he cheats on Lindsey with Peyton and it's just such a fucking disaster. Honestly season 5 is the worst I can't even dignify it with an ounce of thoughtful analysis. All I can say is that it really just does a huge disservice to all its characters, but especially Lucas and to some extent Peyton.

JFC that was super long. Let me just quickly talk about Nathan before peacing out: I think Nathan is pretty much the typical bad boy gone good, so I don't have a ton to say about him. He's the kind of character that's easy to write because he starts at a very low point, so there is no way to go but up. So I honestly think he's an easier charcter to write than somone like Lucas, who needs a lot of creativity to keep moving forward and changing. I'm generally less intersted in those characters, so I gravitate less towards them. But I do think they do a good job with him overall. And his character and trajectory is really well done. I always enjoy a good Nathan scene. I can say more if you'd like. But that's the bottom line of it.

In conclusion: I find myself gravitating towards characters who are genuinely good and struggle with that goodness a lot. And I think OTH at its best really capitalizes on Lucas being a full-fledged GOOD protagnist.

Okay, I'm gonna go eat ice cream becuase I deserve a treat after writing a thesis on Lucas Scott of all people.

[a-wild-osborne]

I had this thought about the whole "your brain is a part of your body" and "mental illnesses often affect the rest of your body too" disk horse and tried to make sure I had the whole thought put together before I shared it.

Sure, my mental illnesses have a profound affect on my physical body, and that holds weight in many discussions. I am always a fan of finding common ground to stand on in every situation because then both parties can come together as a team to fight the actual problems instead of infighting and getting their feelings hurt.

However, when I need help coping with my Fibromyalgia or the other injuries I sustained from a car accident like my fucked up ankles or my fucked up hips that forced me to use a cane or just not walk at all, I'm not gonna get much useful assistance from someone who only has anxiety or depression. I'm sure they have many things to relate on such as being bedridden on bad days or the worries of whether they'll be able to participate in group activities (and that is welcomed and appreciated!), but they won't know how to help me with my physical disabilities much more than offering emotional support.

Sometimes what I need is help from other disabled people who share similar physical issues with me. I need help with exercises I can do in bed to help give my hip more stability. I need help with finding medications that cut my pain in a meaningful way without affecting my lucidity (the way some narcotics I've tried before did). I need help from people who know first hand what it's like to be completely physically drained from a flare up so I can have someone to relate to.

I'm not trying to say that ND/mentally ill people can't also suffer from physical illness or disability because they absolutely can. I was like that before my car accident, and now my support needs have changed. Someone who does not go through what I go through giving me their two cents is not gonna be worth much, and that seems to have happened with some of my mutuals as it has happened with me (I just refuse to post those things because fuck em).

I think about it like trying to find support in the trans community as a youngster over ten years ago. There were SO MANY TRANS WOMEN in these spaces, and I rejoice that they found security in those spaces, but it was really hard to find trans men to talk to in those spaces. I had to go out of my way to find communities that were meant for trans men, and then I found out about nonbinary people and rejoiced in transmasculine people being included in those spaces -- do you know why?

Because anyone masculinizing their body with hormones or surgery is going to have far more in common with my experience than anyone who either isn't doing that by choice or necessity or who is feminizing their body. I'm not trying to be some kind of way about it, but what does a trans woman have to tell me about taking testosterone for the rest of my life? About top surgery? About bottom surgery? These things are within the realm of research, but I don't WANT someone to tell me what I've already read myself. I need specific kinds of support from other transmasc people who are going through the changes I will go through, things someone who is going through different changes will have no personal experience with.

That's just my perspective, and I don't think it's really that Out There of me to say "Hey do you think perhaps when I need a space to talk about my specific needs and specific issues that maybe people for whom those things are irrelevant could, like, stay the fuck out of it? My disabilities are not a spectator sport and I don't need advice from people who want to make it all about them."

[sunfoxfic]

About the adrien with a dress and how people say it is the writers trying to be cool feminists and make adrien weak, like, see adrien on that dress actually made me feel more represented than any other girl character ever made me feel.

I look up to characters that cry, that are considered "weak" in people words and they are my goals actually! Adrien was more of my favorite character because at the same time he is "weak" he is also "strong" as chat (I believe both sides are almost the same whem it comes to feelings and all in general but you get what I mean) he don't needs mari but he also needs her, the same goes for her: she needs him but also don't need! They make me much more seem than just a strong character that punch the villan, although I need to say the femininity in ml isn't always made in a good way, they do bring something that others shows didn't bring to me.

This show has much more problems that should be discussed by the fandom but they prefer just talk about how they hate that adrien is white and rich unless of discussing the serious problems of the show.

Sorry this got a little personal! But yeah I never liked the way people talked about this types of things.

Don't worry about this being personal! It's very nice to hear this :D

And yes, you're right. When emotional vulnerability is seen both as feminine and as inherently bad, that's when the story borders in sexism. But they don't do this -- they show male characters being emotionally raw and honest and channeling that into healthy coping mechanisms when they have the means available (Adrien often doesn't have the means and still he somehow manages to do it).

And then, and only then, do they put Adrien in a very explicitly feminine thing -- a dress.

I think your saying that you feel more represented by a feminine male character than any female character kinda touches on something that wasn't necessarily related to anything I said in the post you're referring to, but very much so matters -- people don't want characters who share their identity nearly as much as they want characters they can identify with. Sometimes, often, you identify with characters who share parts of your identity, but not always. The goal is diversity. (I've said it before and I'll say it again: Good representation is diverse representation.)

And you're right! Part of the power of Adrien's character is that he reclaims what he doesn't have as a civilian when he's Chat Noir. We the viewers can see that and understand that. Marinette and Nathaniel and Marc can't. They see Adrien as separate from Chat Noir -- I mean, Ephemeral isn't necessarily relevant here but it's not irrelevant either -- so they can't say, "Okay, we're going to help him do what he already does." They see him as needing something he's never had, which isn't entirely untrue either -- he needs freedom from Gabriel, but they plan they were proposing wouldn't have gotten him that, not for long enough anyway, and they don't see the full truth behind it.

I'm just. Yeah, I have strong feelings about that scene, and the fact is that there is genuine criticisms to be found, but I just find it so counter productive to say that any mistake of the characters is just the writers projecting. Sometimes characters do bad things because the plot necessitates it, Janice. It's not all about Thomas Astruc being a douchewipe.

[bloviating-vy]

as a white person who has poc in my own family does that invalidate me having something to say about poc? maybe I'm reading too much into it but 'white people shouldn't have an opinion' feels too vague. it's almost implying that not all white people (although not experience it first hand igt) but have immediate families and/or significant others that do, should have an opinion.

I have a lot to say and would love to have a conversation about it but the way that people are like 'white people shouldn't be part of the discussion' makes me think that my words are less important. if white people are the issue, isn't it important that we have somewhat of a voice to help support poc/woc? to overcome racism, and all other types of indiscretions woc/poc face.

i would love to know if there was a way for white women/men/anybody could have a place to talk with poc/woc? my group of friends (in real life) don't allow me (who is a white minority as all my friends are poc) to talk without being told my words are 'irrelevant', 'not important' and 'too white'.

i just want to help but im at a stand still.

Hi, Anon.

I have several thoughts about your ASK and no bandwidth to sugarcoat because questions as such require a lot of labor. Here we go:

1) No, having a POC in your family does not give you dispensation to comment

Having POC in your family does not make you an honorary POC. It does not make you inherently less racist or colorist. It does not make you more qualified regarding the experiences of POC any more than having friends or a partner who is POC make you.

All having a POC in your family means is that you have a POC in your family.

2) Not everything is for you

While I cannot speak for OP’s 'white people shouldn't have an opinion' (I presume you are meaning OP or what other POC have perhaps said to you because I did not once ever say that in either article of mine), usually, this is said in the context of FFS Stop making this about you.

Can anyone can stop you from having opinions? Of course not. Can anyone stop you from giving said opinions? Again, no.

Trust me. We POC wish we had that sort of power.

Instead, we are constantly bombarded with white people’s opinions about POC. Every fucking day. Every fucking moment. We cannot escape it.

Instead of thinking of it as you, a white person, are not allowed to have opinions about POC, let’s switch it around to its proper context.

Ask instead: Is my opinion, as a white person, necessary at this moment as a historically oppressed person is discussing their experience of being a historically oppressed person that I personally, as a white person do not have any direct experience being even if I have friends/family/partner who is a POC?

3) You are not the center of the conversation

I would argue that you are never the center of the conversation and only think you are because you are used to living in a society and world that continually caters to whiteness and fears white women’s tears above all else except for the discomfort of white men.

I reiterate.

When POC say white people are not part of the conversation, we generally mean that your thoughts and opinions about our experience — especially when you speak over us and on behalf of us — are not necessary or wanted.

Your solutions are not helpful because they are steeped in whiteness. Your solutions, in fact, usually just perpetuate harm and white hegemony. You, as part of the problem, are not the source of the solution.

4) What can white people do if they want to help?

A quick search online of “anti-racism resources for white people” will swiftly and easily bring up a myriad of results. There are plenty of spaces for white people to ask other white people for help in their anti-racist journey.

5) Why am I suggesting white folks ask other white folks?

Because POC don’t owe you shit.

It is not incumbent upon the oppressed to educate the oppressor. I will say this until my last breath. (And this goes for any person trying to better themselves and decolonize their worldview.)

Do your work.

Search engines exist. These resources generally have spaces for white folks or POC who are willing to engage with white folks as they do the work.

Engaging with white people trying to sort out their feelings about racism and what they feel about POC is exhausting and 99% of the time causes us POC harm and undue emotional labor.

Your POC friends, coworkers, and strangers don’t owe you space to voice your harm. If they do not trust you to not harm them with your opinions, think about WHY. WHY are you not trustworthy? WHY are you not safe? WHY do they think you will not engage in good faith?

Trust me when the answer is not because they’re the problem. At the risk of being cheesy, I will quote RM in “Cypher Pt. 3”: Back yourself and look at the mirror.

[jojotichakorn]

my thoughts and opinions on "lovely writer": criticizing the critic

tw for discussions of age gaps, rape, and sex

before i turn into the mean and constantly dissatisfied archer that we all know and hate, i just want to say that i liked this show. i think it's great, actually! gene and sib are appropriately cute, the premise is nice, and the attempt at criticizing the industry is... well, an attempt, which is better than nothing. moreover, "lovely writer" came with gifts because it gave me my new favorite character, so you can't go telling me i'm trying to completely obliterate it or something.

besides, this specific post isn't going to get into analyzing the show as a whole anyway. i won't be talking about any irrelevant plot points, cinematography, sound design, or anything like that, though i could probably write a post just as long as this one about that side of things as well. however, i am here to specifically look at the problematic things that were both criticized by the show and included in the show without any criticism. i'm going to talk about the more serious side of things here, which means i'm going to get serious. and i'm going to be harsh. very harsh.

gene and nubsib: yes's and no's

overall, the relationship between gene and sib was a fair attempt at showing something complex, yet ultimately quite healthy, which i appreciate. there were some things i was especially glad about. the fact that sib dated other people before settling on getting together with gene, for example, makes the whole situation a little less codependent. however, as much as this show prides itself on not wanting to romanticize problematic relationships, there are at least two major problems with genesib.

the age gap (and why it was not needed)

i've tried my very best to give this entire concept the benefit of the doubt. at first, i was convincing myself that they were simply close childhood friends, then i was trying my best to believe that even though sib did have a sort of crush on gene (which sometimes happens to little children), gene only saw him as his younger brother, but eventually, the show gave me no choice, but to deem the entire storyline problematic, because they did their best to romanticize that relationship - from gene's dad seeing the "early signs" to the counting and kissing the cheek turning to counting and full-on lip-locking in the last episode.

i could go into how this could all easily be mended if little sib was shown as kind of obsessed with his older friend, but gene was shown as not being anywhere near interested in the kid. but the real question is - why was the age gap needed at all?

i've researched the age of the boys during the flashbacks to the best of my ability and it seems that gene is 11 and sib is 6 or 7. if sib was the same age as gene (or maybe just one year younger, but not any more than that), not only would none of it feel weird, it would also be quite appropriate to explore that first glimpse of romantic feelings some of us experience exactly around that age. i don't think it's necessary for sib to be much younger than gene (children can be just as impressionable at 11 as they are at 7, and as for gene being surprisingly nice and helpful and the other kids not wanting to play with sib, he could have easily been - for example - bullied by his peers instead, which would have the same effect).

moving forward to the present, i don't think the lack of an age gap would affect the storyline that much either. even if they desperately needed sib to be a university student, they could have that one-year difference i've talked about before, which is not as significant. sib could be in his last year of uni, while gene could have easily written his very first novel during his university years, which would actually make more sense (since that guaranteed him employment and freedom to write after he finished uni; and i would rather believe that he had time to write his first novel in-between classes than in-between shifts at work, which he would surely need to have if he started writing after finishing university).

so that brings me back to my initial question - why was it needed? and much like the show often does, i will leave this one up for your interpretation because i do not have any sensible answers myself.

the issue with sex and consent

"but archer!" - i hear you exclaim - "lovely writer is known for explicitly denouncing rape romanticization in bls, how could there possibly be any problems with consent here?" and i hear you, my dear reader. and you aren't incorrect, "lovely writer" is indeed very explicit at calling out bls for having rape scenes (and i do appreciate that). however, as i'm sure you know, there are different ways in which consent can be taken from a person, and there are different non-consensual acts that someone might perform. for example, there are many different forms of coercion, such as the person being persuaded until they feel like they have no other choice, but to say yes. touching someone or kissing someone without asking for permission are also non-consensual acts. i can go on and on, there are many examples outside of what so many people consider rape.

now, what if i tell you that though there (thank the gods) has been no rape present in "lovely writer", not all scenes with gene and sib are consensual? well, that's what i'm telling you because it's the truth. both the first kissing scene and the scene where gene and sib "try out different poses" have clear coercion in them. the entire "joke" of the scene before gene and sib's first time is literally built upon the concept of "a person is trying to run away from someone, who wants to have sex with them" and it is NOT funny. the later reveal of gene actually looking up how to have sex seems to be there on purpose, to show that everything that's happened is "ok" because gene was thinking about it. as a sensible person, i will only accept actual enthusiastic consent and not someone possibly maybe probably considering it. not to mention that right before having sex, sib asks gene one last time if he is sure, which is great, except it is immediately followed by "i'm not going to let you change your mind anymore", which - daily reminder - you are allowed to stop having sex at any point during the act if you start feeling uncomfortable with it. that's absolutely normal.

now the problem that we seem to run into here is that "lovely writer" appears to think that it's ok to push someone to the limit until they either finally agree or confidently and loudly disagree. the drama has repeatedly shown us that actually forcing someone to have sex is not ok; however, persuading and otherwise coercing someone, as well as taking an approximate guess of them wanting to have sex based on some marginally related factors, is ok. i would like to once again remind everyone that all of that is not ok.

one more issue i want to bring up in connection with sex is something i wish was common knowledge: it is NOT supposed to hurt during your first time. whether you are planning to have vaginal or anal sex for the first time, it should not hurt. and if it does, something has definitely gone wrong and you need to stop. you are not supposed to experience any pain or discomfort during sex, including your first time (outside of desired and therefore intentionally inflicted pain, but that's not what i'm talking about here). i have seen this misconception brought up many times in bls along with the other person "thanking the person who got hurt for bearing the pain to bring them pleasure" and absolutely none of that is normal. stop. please, just... stop.

criticism of the BL industry

there are certainly quite a few things i liked about the way "lovely writer" criticized the many problems that surround bls. i think they dealt especially well with the fan aspect. the breaches of privacy that are considered normal, the toxicity of social media that encourages people to comment on other people's personal life, harass and stalk them - all of that was shown in its full glory (or rather horror) and clearly condemned. it was also interesting to see how easily everyone around sib fell into the routine of having to hide genesib's relationship, just because "that's what's supposed to be done in these situations" - even tum did that without thinking twice.

however, i have not spent the past three years hating gmm for a show trying to criticize the industry not to focus on criticizing the production company and everyone professionally involved with the making of bls. don't get me wrong - they didn't completely overlook that side of things, but i found the way they approached it dissatisfying.

like yes, tum fights with his sister (aka sib's manager) and calls her out for her terrible actions, and the publisher (bua) eventually apologizes for what she did, but all of that feels a bit too... personal. i do not care about these individual stories. i care about you saying that the whole system is broken because it very much is. i wanted manner of death but with the bl industry, and instead, i got an "uwu the fans are demanding we do this, and our hands our tied" (which is a lie) and "uwu i'm just trying to make money" (which i mean... if you feel ok milking even more money than you already have by doing something unethical and immoral, then be my guest, but also go fuck yourself). besides that, i didn't see any criticism of tabloids or exploitative celebrities either (both of which we had examples of in the show), and that was kind of disappointing.

coming back to the fans for a moment, i also think that the criticism of real people shipping was entirely unsuccessful. we basically mostly got an "oh, what if this person's partner thinks they are actually dating", which... if a bunch of people on the internet who do not know your boyfriend personally and make all their judgments from screenshots and their imagination can convince you that your boyfriend is cheating, i've got some bad news for you and also a number for a therapist. partly i know why it was so complicated for them to get into it properly - the issue with real people shipping is an issue of privacy, boundaries, the perception of celebrities, acceptable interests, and many other complex topics. however, it's better to not criticize something than to criticize it badly and inaccurately (because the latter usually leads to even more encouragement of whatever you were attempting to criticize).

aey: the flamboyant villain

aey certainly starts as a promisingly complex character, but the farther we go from his backstory and his family, the less complex and the more evil he gets. eventually, the trauma he goes through is no longer enough to give him a get-out-of-jail-free card, and he loses all remaining sympathy after sexually harassing gene and pretending to drug sib. and i did start this post by saying that i am not to analyze any plot points or characters from the show here; however, i'm saying all this to prove a point that aey is a clear villain in the show. this is further cemented by the fact that by the end of the show he loses the only two people who cared about him, and the very last moment with him in the show is literally just him crying for about 3 minutes. there was no redemption arc, no pity, no revenge - he was left alone and broken, clearly punished by the narrative. and i've got a bone to pick here as well.

one of the first things that we find out about aey is that he is gay, and quite openly so. he is repeatedly described as very feminine by many characters, he flirts with men, he talks about being good in bed, and his entire character is built upon being gay (half of it directly, and the other half due to the fact that his entire backstory and therefore personality is also built upon the fact that he is gay). he is - for the lack of a better term - the gayest character in the show and the only one who is loud about being gay not because he is in love but simply because it is a part of him and he doesn't want to hide it. and he is the villain. not the disgusting publisher or the terrible manager - no, this guy was specifically chosen to ruin everyone's lives. and i can't say i'm particularly happy about that. *british voice* seems a bit homophobic love

not quite queer enough

as i said, aey is openly gay. gene and sib also eventually say that they are gay, gene's father teep is queer, so are tiffy and mhok. but it just doesn't seem to come up as much as it would in real life. the only time anyone has a problem with any of the characters being queer is when we deal with the parents. but knowing actual queer thai actors in real life, we are all aware how hard it can be for them, but it has not come up even once for aey, gene or sib (with genesib only being a problem because they are a "non-shippable couple"). being queer is far from being a non-issue in the industry, and i found it incredibly weird that it was never brought up (and i would also prefer if they brought that up instead of showing the unaccepting parents plot for the millionth time).

same goes for the lack of conversation around queer people on set. i think we all have a wonderful example of how much better a bl can get simply when it involves a queer director and/or screenwriter (gods bless p'aof), gay actors, etc. i also thought it was a missed opportunity that gene being a gay man writing a bl novel was never highlighted. if anything, everyone made a big deal out of him being a man writing a bl - never mind that he is a gay man that is far more qualified to write bls than a straight woman.

in conclusion, there are simply not enough queer issues talked about here for a show that is about queer people facing difficulties while making a queer drama.

tiffy and tum: the good, the bad, and the ugly

overall, tiffy and tum are quite cool. outside of my own personal feelings, i really liked the clear reversal of gender roles they have going on: he knows lots about make-up, she knows nothing about it, he knows how to sew, she knows how to repair a car, etc.

tiffy is also a nice addition to the precious few queer girls we have in bls. however, the way her being bi is executed... it isn't great. when she first talks about dating girls to tum, she says things like "even though i look like this" (implying queer girls have a certain look?) and "maybe it seemed normal because i was at an all-girls school" (which wtf does that even mean?). i think the worst thing, though, was when she assumed tum was gay. my best guess is she thought so because she initially thought that tum and gene were a couple; however, she should be the first person to know that just because he likes men, it doesn't mean that he doesn't like women or any other gender. even though there was nothing explicitly leading me to make this conclusion, this whole thing did kind of feel like the old "flipping the switch" stereotype (meaning, she used to like women, but now she likes men, and both of them can't happen simultaneously).

make it make sense

i think i've never been more confused in my entire life than when i found out that the director of "lovely writer" also happens to be the director of "th*arnt*pe". and if at first, i was asking a lot of questions about this peculiar individual, who went from working on the worst rape-romanticizing show we have ever had to a show that explicitly states that rape is not normal. but the more i thought about it, the less i was interested in him, and the more i was interested in whoever made the decision to hire him. there are dozens of different directors that have worked specifically on bls, and even more that haven't. yet out of all those, you decided to choose this one. the dude, who before your show has only directed the show with the biggest rape-y vibes. that casts a particular kind of shade on the entire show that i simply do not like.

conclusion

at the end of the day, i think what "lovely writer" tried to do was very interesting. it succeeded in some ways and failed in others. frankly, i think this show could have easily been made better if someone queer was involved in making it. that's always true, but especially so, when we try to talk about the issues of making a queer drama. either way, it's certainly a good start to this conversation; however - as i said - i'm still waiting for my manner of death but with the bl industry. this was unfortunately not it.

[witchcraftingboop]

Further Insight on Briar's Recent Discourse & Prim's Apparent Grooming of Younger, Newer Witches

It was suggested to me that instead of making one long post (which I was genuinely sorry for creating in the moment as well), that I should offer the second half in a separate one so that it is easier to share and harder to simply ignore as a wall of text.

Here is the link to the first half of the current JBird and Briar discourse floating around. I highly encourage everyone involved in the Witchblr community to review both posts and not just this final addition. 

Regarding Prim stirring the pot, I actually do have proof of that on my page somewhere if you wouldn't mind my sending it to you? The person I reblogged it from, Mahi, also received death threats from Prim when they were only 16 and Prim was 20 (I can't ask him to share that though because Prim has since used her following to drive him off of Tumblr and he's still fairly [and justifiably] sensitive about it.)

Regarding Briar's statements more specifically though, I can see where the confusion is coming from. After the "in France" part, she's just defining a relevant term (hence the use of "irrelevant details) and then giving an explanation of how she came to be so knowledgeable about that term/concept. I wouldn't say she's calling Prim's activism an "irrelevant detail," but pointing out how Prim uses it as a shield against backlash whenever another blog (not just tradcrafters) calls out her platform. I don't expect you to fully understand or see what I mean when I say that, of course. Because you are still new, and these are habits I've observed of hers from nearly a year of following their interactions. I would, however, like to point out that Briar doesn't say anything racist about Prim and does not once bring up her race. In fact, I think if you read her entire post and not just point 3 as Prim has it cropped out in all of her mentions of it, you would see more fully the depth and amount of frustration Briar is trying to express. Similarly, Briar never threatened to dox Prim. She has, in fact, repeatedly tried to point out that Prim should be protecting her online information and be more aware of how to stop others from finding out about her private life/situation. These statements, however, have since been warped by Prim and her followers to come off as a threat on her life. Briar's statements above aren't a threat of doxxing. She's never once posted Prim's personal information or told others to find it or use it in any way. She has, however, searched for Taglocks on Prim, something witches especially are known to look for. In that search she found more than she was even looking for, despite trying to tell Prim repeatedly to stop being so open online with the information she posts about herself. Doxxing though is not racist. It is something used by them, sure, but it is not inherently racist.

Additionally, Prim has raised money, sure, but I still have not seen any actual receipts as to her *actually* donating it to any public or private organizations. This, for me, is highly suspect. In reality, we still have no idea where that money is. Whereas with Briar, she took no money in for a couple days on her readings and instead merely asked that those requesting a reading first submit proof of donation to an organization linked in the post. She raised substantial money for the BLM movement, but no one seems to want to bring that up in all of their "she's a racist" discourse. Also, the observation that someone is misleading or gaslighting their following is not racist. Just because she said Prim was recently using her BLM reblogs & promotions to do it *this time* still does not make it racist. Questionable wording is just something the reader disagrees with, in my opinion, and should be addressed as such.

I'm not going to lie, I do feel a little frustrated at this point. I was really hoping to come to you and see that you had concrete proof to offer that Briar is a racist. I do understand that you have your own reasons for feeding into the assumptions and twisted outlooks already taken on Briar's words, but I don't have enough energy in me to fully swallow my tongue on this one. I really do hope that you at least consider what I've said here. I'm not sure what I can say at this point because all of the information I've read from you thus far has been purely conjecture or assumptions or just "not feeling right" about the wordings on a single post. A racist, from my perspective, is not something I would ever feel comfortable calling someone off of this lack of evidence.

I understand it is hard to separate preconceived notions from your mind when reading through the words of others, but I really do miss when you were more open to the words of others. If I could ask one thing of you, it'd be to please try to read Briar's post again but from the perspective of seeing it how it was meant to be: a witch who has been on the butt end of Prim's harassment for going on three years now. She is tired of the wild accusations and constantly having to defend herself, and even when she supplied her proof a couple years ago, no one wanted to hear her. She has, largely, given up on being heard, and now screams into what feels like a void when attacked.

Proof of Prim stirring the pot that I offered: An example of Prim actively seeking out the community and trying to stir the pot with an already dealt with situation that had passed over a year ago.

A direct source that I offered as further proof of what has occurred already: This is one from the account mentioned before who was directly involved with the previous discord server where the Trio incident took place a couple years back.

[A Reply.] I think, to be fair, I saw your comments on her previous posts through your main, and with how much aggression you packed into those messages, I don't necessarily blame her for deciding not to engage with your private messages. As I've said, she's very used to people attacking her like that, and in her mind, unfortunately, you've probably been added to the list of aggressive people ready to fling the blame at her rather than look at the situation as a whole. I do apologize for the way her post may have made you feel, but I think it's also important to remember the potentially aggressive things you left on her page (I'm not saying you meant to come off that way, but even I couldn't help but read that way). Also, regarding the ask, it's no small secret that the occultists of the tradcraft group are skilled and well-versed in hexes and curses. When reading her posts about how she may respond to further antagonism on Prim's part, I see a fully realized occultist wielding their most well kept and trained weapon: baneful magic. I'm sure Prim herself also understands that the "threat on her life" she's saying she's so afraid of, isn't a physical threat, but a metaphysical one. She has repeatedly and continually tried to drag these people through the mud, and now that they're refusing to just sit back and be canceled, she's afraid. She knows how strong their magic is, and they aren't shy about it 🤷‍♀️

[A Reply.] No, I completely understand where you're coming from. I, personally, have seen your willingness to talk things through, despite how aggressive you can come off at times in the things you say, so I think that's why I was genuinely so surprised to see your comments on some of her posts. But I do think her response and refusal to further directly engage with you is warranted and her right. Unfortunately, it is hard to tell who is genuinely open to talking and who is just trying to bait and add to the problem. And with how aggressive your comments were, 8 honestly think she most likely was responding from a place of "oh look another young Prim follower here to bait and berate me." I don't think she looks down on you for your age, but her views are likely a reflection of the fact that a lot of 18yos follow Prim and have openly harassed her without even asking for her input on the matter.

At this point, I would like to talk about the second half of the title of this particular post. Grooming. This is a very serious allegation against Prim that I have not spoken on previously because I had no proof that it was happening. With this person's permission, I would like to share how exactly they wound up fighting Prim's battles for her.

I will note: I am highly disgusted by what follows.

[A Reply.] Oh no! You cannot fault yourself for this! Prim is a known manipulator, and the fact that she was able to make you somehow think this is part of your being "gullible and naive" is just testament to the fact that she's gotten wayyy too good at what she does. This is in no way your fault or because of some fault within you. Practiced manipulators are cunning and dangerous even to the best of us. It was unfortunate that she chose you, but her twisting you around is in no way a bad reflection on you as a person!

I've chosen to include my reply to this person rather than our continued discussion because of how personal and involved our conversation turned. I've included it to show, as well, that grooming others to fight your battles is (though this should go without saying) NEVER OKAY. Prim has shown her true colors, in my opinion, and while I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt time and time again, I simply cannot permit myself to ignore the harm and damage she's inflicted on not only the tradcraft community, but also this innocent group of friends. A group who that has hitherto dedicated their time to sussing out predators, terfs, nazis, and racists. A group that should never have had to deal with being gaslit and manipulated by a well-known and respected blogger on this platform.

I cannot reiterate enough how sorry and deeply shocked I am at the information this person has brought to my attention. I am still stunned by Prim's activities and unable to fathom how many other potential individuals are out there being groomed to support and fight for her cause. I am sorry to the Witchblr community as a whole. I feel as if I have sat by and watched as Witchblr has been manipulated and am therefore complacent in the damage and needless hurt that has been allowed to spread throughout our community. I am just so very, very sorry.

I will be taking a couple days off of Tumblr because of this, as I feel as if I need space and time to think, but my inbox is always open and I am always available to speak with others on my return.

[janiedean]

Hi Janie, I try to word the next qustion carefully, and isn't meant agressively. At the moment I see posts going around saying "Brienne's only ugly for the male gaze", "lesbian maids would be totally into Brienne, not like Connington".As much as I love Brienne somehow I find a bit annoying that Brienne can't stay ugly. Sure, beauty standarts are a thing but... somehow it bugs me how a character can't just be ugly, and be more than her looks. Why do women always need to be evaluated by her looks.

well I mean... tbqh I personally really don’t feel that discourse for a lot of reasons, but the thing when it comes to brienne is that I think people should - again - make a distinction when it comes to personal taste vs her narrative.

as in: obviously tastes are subjective because all of us like different things and stuff that might be standard not attractive might be to others - for one if you read jaime’s first couple chapters it’s obvious that he’s very much into brienne physically but he doesn’t realize it because he doesn’t know he has tastes that aren’t cersei (and that’s a whole lot discourse to unpack), but like... I’m p. sure that the moment they bang jaime’s not going to be into her in spite of her looks, it’s going to be also because he’s into her like that. but as a general thing, brienne is *societally* ugly/not standard attractive/whatever you want, because all of her traits are stuff that both in the middle ages on a woman are not seen as attractive - like, honestly: tall, crooked teeth, large mouth, large shoulders, no breasts or hips and broken nose all at once are not what is considered attractive in a woman either now or in the middle ages and it’s not a thing that’s changed societally like thinness vs chubbiness (which was actually seen as more attractive before the last century). and the entire point of brienne’s character is that she suffers greatly societally for not looking the right way, and the point isn’t the male gaze because like...... she’s been treated like shit both by men and women (I mean, her septa? and when has she ever mentioned a female friend? before catelyn she didn’t seem to have any close rships with women and tbqh..... if you’re a **ugly** woman I can assure you 50% of your issues come from comments from standard attractive girls. like, sorry but she’s ugly by societal gaze.

and that is 90% of the source of her conflict and what made her want to become a knight eventually, so like... while it’s very likely that to a lesbian woman into that kind of features brienne wouldn’t be ugly and might actually be desirable  (but like... a modern lesbian because I can’t see a book canon situation where brienne gets propositioned by women but that’s another problem entirely) the problem is that a) brienne is straight so even if she was considered attractive by women it wouldn’t change her life for the better and sorry but in canon she is, b) whether she’s not ugly by some standard that’s not societal standard attractive, what hurt her was the societal standard attractive.

like, it doesn’t matter whether brienne is attractive to jaime, lesbians in general or whoever else, because 99% of the issues brienne has with herself which eventually drove her to being a knight - because she became one knowing she could be good at it but if she could have been a lady she would have - are because of her looks and the specific shitty treatment she’s gotten from everyone/most people is because of her looks, and all her traumatic experiences are because of her looks, and guess what her experiences are universal when it comes to the issues you get for being treated like shit because of your looks (I mean guys I had all of her same experience pretty much, every single time I discussed that in fic I got comments from people like AH THAT WAS ME TOO, everyone I know who had issues like that got the exact same comments/experiences, if you’re ugly/not standard attractive you will get some of that shit at some point in your life), so to me saying that she might not be ugly to some people or some category is absolutely irrelevant because the moment she is by the main standard/the standard most people follow, that standard is what hurts her/the main drive in her storyline. so like.... I 100% support the concept that she might not be ugly for some people/categories also because again, beauty is subjective and everyone finds something attractive so there will be statistically be someone into noncanonical looks at any point in existence regardless of what the canon is, for brienne’s story it doesn’t matter because being societally ugly is what drives her storyline. and her looks should be taken into account greatly when discussing her character because if she wasn’t ugly for most people she wouldn’t have half of the issues she has and she’d be a different character.

ofc that’s valid if you want to do like... canonical analysis when it comes to brienne, if you’re talking about your personal tastes when it comes to brienne bc you’d personally find her hot no one is going to stop you, but like I think that discourse greatly misses the point, as in that the moment you’re seen as ugly by standards then it doesn’t matter if to some people you might not be because beauty standards in society fuck you up and they fucked brienne up in all the ways they possibly could have. /two cents

again: she can be beautiful to some people and she should be for that matter, but it’s beside the point of her sl imvho XD

[preserving-ferretbrain]

The Lexicon Issue: A Retrospective

by Dan H

Tuesday, 15 March 2011Dan is up to date as ever~So a little while ago a concerned citizen popped up to say that they (I'd say she from the LJ handle but one doesn't like to presume) felt they should tell me that they had “laughed so hard at my cluelessness” in this article. She/he also kindly provided me with some links to discussions of the case, which I duly read and from which I was forced to conclude that, in the language of this commenter “cluelessness” means “being broadly correct about everything.”

What I objected to at the time was the fact that Rowling's objections were stupid and irrelevant, and people who have a better understanding of the law seemed to agree. There's a rather good list

here

of the various points people brought up at the trial, conveniently broken down into “stuff that is legally relavent” and “stuff that isn't”. You might notice that high up on the list of things that aren't relevant is “how lazy, sloppy or inaccurate JKR considers the Lexicon to be”.

Now this is mostly water under the bridge, the verdict is in – although it's possible there's appeals going on. A lot of people had good reasons to think that the court's rulings were a bit shonky in places (several people with actual law degrees were confused by the fact that the court ruled that the Lexicon wasn't a derivative work) but to be honest I think it all came out right in the wash – some decent analysis

here

sums up the key points pretty well and what it boils down to is “the Lexicon copied too much.”

Ironically, the Lexicon was – as the judge observed – a victim of its own enthusiasm. The basic concept was legitimate but it used too much original language (a good example from one blog is describing the sounds made by the “clankers” - the things that scare away the blind dragon in Deathly Hallows – as “like tiny hammers on anvils”). If Vander Ark had been more willing to mess with the Holy Writ, he'd probably have been absolutely fine.

But mostly, what I want to talk about here is copyright law, because I think it's kinda cool, and I'm kind of on a roll here with articles about stuff I know jack shit about.

Derivative Works

One of the most peculiar things about the Lexicon ruling was that it held that the lexicon was not a derivative work. The basis for this is rather obscure, but it seemed to be that a compilation of information about a work was considered sufficiently transformative that it was not considered a derivative work. This seems reasonable to me, but also seems to conflict with US legal precedent (specifically with

Castle Rock vs Carol Publishing

in which a Seinfeld trivia book was ruled to constitute a derivative work, and therefore to be in violation of copyright).

I suspect that this basically comes down to that old aphorism about laws and sausages. The definition of a derivative work is unclear (and the definition of fair use even more so). The strongest interpretation seems to be that even making reference to copyrighted material makes a work derivative – this seems peculiar to me, unless you're going to argue that “derivative” means “contingent upon the existence of”. This seems to be the logic that held sway in Castle Rock - the court ruled that the “fictional facts” of Seinfeld were protected by copyright. This is a peculiar idea in and of itself and one to which I will return shortly.

Of course the weakest definition of a derivative work – a direct adaptation to another medium – is also unsatisfying. Intuitively, it seems reasonable that fanfiction, for example, be considered derivative (in the legal as well as the literary sense), and certainly few people would dispute the fact that only JK Rowling has the right to produce an eighth Harry Potter book.

Where this becomes problematic is that “derivative work” is actually an extremely powerful term in copyright law. Authors are assumed to have an absolute monopoly on derivative works. This is a big deal – monopolies are generally a bad thing and it's relatively rare for them to be protected by law. Given the stakes, it's entirely predictable that while one court feels that Castle Rock Entertainment has the right to control the production of Seinfeld trivia books, another feels that JK Rowling does not have the general right to control books of information about her fictional world. It's a murky area of law and one with no clear right answers. Most people would – I think – accept that JK Rowling has the right to decide who can make movies out of her books (although Derek Bambauer argues

here

that she shouldn't – at least from an economic perspective) but I suspect most people would also accept that she has no right to decide what people write about her books.

Fictional Facts

One of the strangest aspects of US copyright law I dug up in my recent trawling through the intarwebs was the notion of “fictional facts” - this was a key element in the Castle Rock case, in which it was ruled that authors (or in this case entertainment companies) do retain copyright over matters of fact in their fictional worlds.

I have a policy when it comes to matters of law, which is to assume that if it looks like the law is made of stupid that it's probably covering up something else which is even more made of stupid.

Because on the face of it, the idea of “fictional facts” seems – well it seems pretty made of stupid.

We'll leave aside for now the fact that it's an oxymoron of the highest order, and focus on the weird implications. If I'm understanding the precedent correctly, the statement “Harry Potter is a Wizard” (or for that matter “Dumbledore is Gay”) is protected by copyright, due to its being a “fictional fact” created by JK Rowling. Now most uses of that statement will wind up being protected under fair use but it still seems to be based on the principle that authors (at least in theory) have the right to control information about the contents of their books, which seems perverse.

I don't want to go too far into slippery slope arguments here, but it does strike me that treating “facts” as copyrightable puts spoilers in a difficult legal position. I don't actually think that anybody will ever get sued for spoilering, or that any court in the land would uphold an anti-spoilering case on copyright grounds, but by a strict application of logic, spoilering looks a lot like it breaches copyright. A spoiler consists of the repetition of a fictional fact (which is copyrightable material), the act of spoilering cannot be said to have transformative value (indeed many argue that spoilers detract from the value of the original work), and a case can be made that spoilers directly compete with the author's original product (insofar as a person could, quite reasonably, decide not to read a book or see a film as a result of having been spoilered for it). A sign bearing the legend “Snape Kills Dumbledore” is, in essence, a derivative work which – since it consists only of copyrighted material repeated without commentary – may not be protected by fair use.

Again I should clarify that I don't necessarily think this is a problem. In America at least, a Snape-Kills-Dumbledore sign would be protected by freedom of expression, and the constitution trumps copyright last time I checked, but it does highlight some of the weirder implications of this idea of “fictional facts”. I also suspect that the distinction between a “fictional fact” and a – for want of a better term - “factual fact” is a narrow one. Part of the reason that the Castle Rock ruling went against the defendants seemed to be that their Trivia book had focused exclusively on episode content and not on questions about (for example) the cast or sets – such questions would clearly have been matters of factual fact and not protected by copyright. So perhaps what it boils down to is that while “Dumbledore is Gay” is a fictional fact protected by copyright, “JK Rowling declared in interview that Dumbledore was gay” is a factual fact and therefore fair game. This seems like a silly distinction, but it probably matters rather a lot.

For a start, people will in fact pay for fictional facts. One of the biggest points against the Lexicon back in 2008 was the fact that it had reproduced a lot of information from Quidditch Through the Ages and – that one about magical beasts the name of which I can't be bothered to look up – both of which were sold primarily as books of fictional information. The fact is that people do like to know More Stuff about fictional realities, and they will pony up real cash to find out More Stuff. The Harry Potter Lexicon does tell the reader a lot of Stuff about the Wizarding World, and much as I hate to admit it, some people really do read novels purely or primarily to acquire facts about a secondary reality (I think these people are culturally moribund, but they seem to exist) so from a certain point of view it does make sense to see the “fictional facts” of the Potterverse as having value and requiring protection.

On top of this, if “fictional facts” are not protected, then it becomes very difficult to see how the law protects authors from things like unauthorised sequels. If “Harry Potter is a Wizard” is not on some level protected by copyright, then it becomes difficult to see why I cannot write a book about a Wizard called Harry Potter with as much impunity as I could write a book about, say Napoleon Bonaparte or Abraham Lincoln. If we accept the (seemingly common sense) idea that the basic facts of fictional settings should be fair game for use and commentary we tacitly allow people to recreate other people's work from whole cloth. If I have unlimited license to refer to the facts of somebody else's creation, then in practice I have unlimited license to reproduce their work (since after all, any text is just information about the content of that text).

All of this leads to a rather difficult situation. Copyrighting facts seems dangerously close to copyrighting ideas (which would be a terrible, terrible precedent), but not copyrighting facts seems dangerously close to not copyrighting anything.

Who is Copyright For Anyway

Copyright is one of those areas of law that everybody thinks they understand but in fact nobody does. Intuitively we all get it. You create something, it's yours and you get to control it. A lot of people take this as a kind of moral axiom: these are the people who literally believe that JKR has the right to call the shots in all things Potter related, be it the production of reference guides, Dumbledore's sexuality, or whether or not Snape was redeemed. This is the “it's her world, we're just playing in it” doctrine.

The thing is that this is a naïve approach to the law. We can't just say “playing with other people's toys is naughty, so ban it”. Copyright exists for quite important economic reasons and, contrary to popular belief, those reasons have comparatively little to do with stopping people from bootlegging stuff.

Copyright is generally considered necessary because in a perfectly competitive marketplace, the price of any good tends towards its marginal cost of production, the price of creating one more unit. As long as you can sell a unit of a good for more than you spent to make it, you should and somebody will. This works great for bananas, coffee tables, bricks and door handles, but it doesn't work so great for books, music and video games. The marginal cost of producing a copy of a book is very small indeed (and the marginal cost of producing a copy of an ebook is effectively zero). If authors were not allowed a monopoly over their work, they wouldn't be able to sell it, because any price they could sell it for, somebody else could sell it cheaper.

Just to be clear here, this very much isn't about piracy. Piracy is a crime (well actually it's probably a tort, but let's not split hairs here) and crimes, sort of by definition aren't prevented by the law. Copyright doesn't stop people illegally reproducing copyrighted material because, well duh. FACT and its associated bodies would have you believe that Copyright Is Good because it Protects Authors from Bad People. This is stuff and nonsense. Copyright is good because it protects publishers from other, better funded publishers.

Consider: you are Bloomsbury, on the verge of bankruptcy you discover a promising children's author by the name of Rowling. These books get inexplicably popular. You celebrate.

Consider: You are every other publishing company in the world. You notice that Ms Rowling's books are getting extremely popular, you also notice that Bloomsbury, having paid the author an advance, paid the salaries of editors and proofreaders, hired cover artists and so on, has incurred a great many costs which you can avoid, simply by taking their product and reproducing it (using the resources which, as a large and established publishing company, you most certainly possess). The resulting competition drives down prices, which is fine for you but not so great for the company that has paid the substantial setup costs. Every other publisher in the world makes a tidy profit, Bloomsbury goes bust.

Worse, nobody wants to pick up the option on the next book in the series, because everybody knows that their competitors can sell flawless copies of the book more cheaply than they themselves can afford to sell them. Even if JK Rowling wanted to sell her next book, nobody would buy it, because everybody would know that whoever published first would incur large costs for little reward (this is true even given the substantial first-day sales for popular books, many ordinary customers would rather wait a couple of weeks and pay half the price).

Conventional publishing and distribution models are founded on the notion of copyright. The problem is not, as many assume, that people wouldn't write books if they weren't sure they'd make a lot of money from it. Thousands, probably millions of people are working on novels right now with no guarantee of financial reward. Thousands of people put their work online for free as a matter of course, and an awful lot of people actually pay vanity publishers for the pleasure of seeing their work in print. Copyright isn't there to reassure authors that they'll be paid, it's there to reassure publishers that they'll recoup their losses.

Now of course you can argue that the conventional distribution model for novels and the like is inherently broken because, well take your pick, information should be free, corporations shouldn't tell us what to like, whatever. Speaking personally, though, I actually have a lot of faith in the conventional models of publishing, at least for the mass market. Indie and self-publishing is great for niche materials (the indie-RPG industry, for example, works well because it services a small community and everything it puts out is effectively peer reviewed by the community it serves) but not so great for novels and the like. Anecdotal evidence

here at Ferretbrain

supports the observation that self-published books really are less good than those that are published conventionally.

The public interest is generally served by allowing authors, and by extension publishers, to control distribution of their work. This means that the commercial interests of publishing companies are served by seeking out high quality authors (allowing them exclusive control of a valuable resource) rather than by seeking out more efficient means of distribution (allowing them to better exploit the resources developed by others). It is not so easy to see how the public interest is served by allowing authors to control derivative works, particularly if the term is defined so broadly as to include things like reference guides. Put simply, I do not believe that one single person has ever been dissuaded from writing a novel by the fear that somebody might write a reference guide to it at some point in the future. Nor do I believe that any publisher has ever refused to publish a book on such grounds.

From this perspective, derivative works rights are a lot harder to justify. While it feels intuitively right that you shouldn't be able to make Harry Potter tie-in material without JKR's say-so, it's not immediately clear why: sure it might make her upset, but “it will upset people” is generally not a good reason for legislation. A hard economic argument would say that if there is a market for something, and the production of that thing will not be generally detrimental to the public good, then people should be allowed to make that thing. Ultimately, shouldn't it be up to the Invisible Hand to decide whether – say – a fan-made guide to a fictional setting is worth producing? This might lead to a market inundated with trashy cash-ins, but if there's a market for trashy cash-ins then those cash-ins have real economic value. Of course they might harm the value of the individual property but to my (admittedly limited) understanding, that becomes a trademark rather than a copyright issue (I can't go around putting the coca-cola logo on things, but that isn't because it's copyright, it's because it's a trademark which is a subtly different thing).

This article doesn't really have a conclusion beyond “good lord copyright law is complicated and unintuitive”. I shall end, therefore, by sharing the irrelevant tidbit that “uncopyrightables” is the longest word in the English language which uses all of its letters exactly once.Themes:

J.K. Rowling

,

Topical

~

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Arthur B

at 15:40 on 2011-03-15

One of the strangest aspects of US copyright law I dug up in my recent trawling through the intarwebs was the notion of “fictional facts” - this was a key element in the Castle Rock case, in which it was ruled that authors (or in this case entertainment companies) do retain copyright over matters of fact in their fictional worlds.

This is indeed an oddity, and to be honest I think it's something that could happily have been avoided. UK law has evaded this by and large by looking at the work done by the producer of a copyright work, and considering how much the person producing the allegedly infringing work is freeloading off that.* In the case of someone writing a book, the effort involved entails

does

entail cooking up a bunch of fictional facts if you're writing fiction or researching a bunch of actual facts if you're writing nonfiction, but the key isn't whether you've replicated the same facts so much as whether you're using someone else's brainstorming or research to make your own job easier.

Two cases which help illustrate the point are Ravenscroft v Herbert and the Da Vinci Code case. In Ravenscroft v Herbert, James Herbert lost because

The Spear

was found to have infringed the copyright on a pseudoscientific book of kook history by Trevor Ravenscroft about the Spear of Longinus, because he took the narrative presented by Ravenscroft in the book and used it as the basis for the background and prologue of his novel. How Ravenscroft came up with his facts (a mixture of conjecture and psychic mediumship, as it turned out) wasn't relevant: the fact was that Ravenscroft had put in all this effort to put together this narrative which he put forward as being nonfictional, and then Herbert had simply taken that narrative and copied it wholesale without attribution or permission to get the basis for his novel.

In the Da Vinci Code case, on the other hand, the guys who wrote

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

sued Dan Brown on a similar basis and lost because they didn't show that Brown was freeloading off their work - the court deciced that he wasn't simply taking their narrative and replicating it in the book, but was using those facts and combined them with others (from other sources and of his own invention) to come up with his own work.

The point is that the "fictional facts" - or nonfictional facts - aren't the issue, the issue at stake is the effort that authors put into obtaining/inventing those facts and stringing them together. The Castle Rock guys would have probably lost in the UK too because all they did to make their trivia book was to pick answers out of the scripts and they didn't really put in much in the way of original effort of their own. Rowling can't sue you for making a sign saying "Snape Kills Dumbledore" because the amount of effort it actually took her to come up with that fact is trivial. A sign with extensive quotes from the actual death scene? Now you're talking.**

* This is also relevant to derivative works. If Vander Ark was writing all the text in all the entries in the Lexicon from scratch then it would have been extremely unlikely that Rowling would have been able to make anything stick if she'd sued in the UK. If he directly copy-pasted great swathes of her text, he'd be obviously trying to make a quick buck when she in fact had put in almost all of the work in producing the text in the first place. Obviously there's a big grey area between those extremes, which is why these cases are decided by judges and not machines, but one of the considerations would be how heavily Vander Ark relied on the effort Rowling originally put in. If he wasn't very, very clear about where he was quoting from the original text and where he was making up his own stuff that'd probably also count against him.

** It's actually interesting whether you'd fall down on copyright if you wrote a book about a wizard who happened to be called Harry Potter but who didn't actually have that much in common with the actual Harry aside from the name. Also academic, since Rowling would have a much easier time suing you for "passing off" - because you wouldn't be freeriding on the effort she'd put into establishing her characters and setting so much as you'd be trying to freeride on the reputation she had established surrounding the Harry Potter name.

the constitution trumps copyright last time I checked

Actually, it doesn't.

The Constitution in article 1, section 8 empowers Congress to, amongst a whole lot of other things, "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". Granted, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and of the press too, but both copyright and free speech are conceptually enshrined in the Constitution; neither can necessarily trump the other. (Also the "limited Times" bit is getting increasingly laughable...)

Copyright is one of those areas of law that everybody thinks they understand but in fact nobody does.

In my professional experience the better someone understands the copyright system, the more embarrassed they are by it. At the moment it is a complete shambles.

Also, bravo for coming up with the best explanation of copyright I've ever seen from a non-IP professional. I'll have to kill you to protect the Guild's aura of mystery but I'll keep it painless. :)

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http://sunnyskywalker.livejournal.com/

at 23:41 on 2011-03-15

While it feels intuitively right that you shouldn't be able to make Harry Potter tie-in material without JKR's say-so, it's not immediately clear why

Maybe this is a case where it's more similar to a trademark: too many fictional works set in the Potterverse by people other than Rowling could constitute "brand dilution" or however they explain that. Although I'm trying to remember how it works for fictional characters/locations - you can have a cartoon mouse, but you can't make your own Mickey Mouse movie even if you give him entirely different adventures from his Disney* original, because the totality of the character is copyrighted. Or possibly trademarked. I'm not sure which. *really should remember this since I know I learned it*

*Speaking of the limited times bit "getting increasingly laughable..." Disney really, really doesn't want any of their copyrights to expire. And what a coincidence - copyright duration keeps getting extended, and Mickey is still private domain! This makes it even funnier that someone has made an educational film about copyright and fair use entirely composed of Disney clips:

A Fair(y) Use Tale

.

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Dan H

at 18:21 on 2011-03-16@Arthur

Actually, it doesn't.

And the ironic thing is, I'm pretty sure I actually knew that. I think it's just that "the constitution trumps copyright" sounded punchier than "the American judicial system is generally pretty strongly invested in the idea of free speech, such that it seems unlikely that they would uphold the precedent that spoilering constitutes a breach of copyright, even though it might be argued to under current legal precedents."

@sunnyskywalker

*Speaking of the limited times bit "getting increasingly laughable..." Disney really, really doesn't want any of their copyrights to expire.

Yeah, so I've observed. It's difficult because I can sort of see that even really old copyrights do definitely have a *value* for Disney - the question is whether it's in the public interest for Disney to retain those copyrights.

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Arthur B

at 18:38 on 2011-03-16

And the ironic thing is, I'm pretty sure I actually knew that. I think it's just that "the constitution trumps copyright" sounded punchier than "the American judicial system is generally pretty strongly invested in the idea of free speech, such that it seems unlikely that they would uphold the precedent that spoilering constitutes a breach of copyright, even though it might be argued to under current legal precedents."

To be fair it is kind of an oddity because the First Amendment says that Congress absolutely isn't allowed to curtail freedom of the press, but then the powers it does invest Congress with to give authors copyright protection can't exactly be exercised or enforced without curtailing freedom of the press. It's almost like the Founding Fathers were fallible human beings who were kind of making it up as they were going along or something.

There is probably precedent law I'm not aware of which settles the contradiction.

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Dan H

at 23:09 on 2011-03-16Presumably a big part of it is that "freedom of the press" is quite hard to define. I mean you could argue that requiring journalists to have any kind of ethical standards at all goes against freedom of the press.

I suppose the thing about it is that "freedom of the press" is all about the government not being able to stop particular stories or ideas from being published, there's a big difference between that, and trying to stop them from being published by *specific people*. I mean it's not censorship for the law to prevent newspapers from publishing articles which have been copied directly from other newspapers.

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http://sunnyskywalker.livejournal.com/

at 17:54 on 2011-03-17I guess that goes back to the debate over whether stopping people from shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater is not really restricting freedom of speech in some technical sense, or whether it is but it's an okay kind of restriction. If one newspaper copies another's articles verbatim, then stopping them doesn't actually kill the articles - they're still out there in the original publication. And sense it wasn't the copier's speech in the first place, their speech isn't being restricted. Or something.

One of the complicating factors with Disney is the person vs. corporation issue. It's much easier to see how an author benefits from a copyright which lasts for a certain percentage of his or her lifetime (or, if it's "life plus x years," the family can pay funeral costs, I suppose). Since individuals have limited lifespans, it's easier to grasp what might be a reasonable limit for copyright. It's a lot less clear when the copyright holder is a corporation which could exist indefinitely, other than "well, it would be better for the public for it to expire... sometime..." Although if they're legally supposed to be treated much like people, then they'll just have to suck up losing their copyright after 120 years max.

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Robinson L

at 15:15 on 2011-06-01

Speaking personally, though, I actually have a lot of faith in the conventional models of publishing, at least for the mass market.

Fair enough Dan, but I don't think much of your reasoning, as evidenced by this article.

Anecdotal evidence here at Ferretbrain supports the observation that self-published books really are less good than those that are published conventionally.

For the purposes of argument, I'll agree self-publishing tends to foster terrible writing a lot more than professional publishing. On the other hand, we've had plenty of evidence here at Ferretbrain that professional publishing also tends to foster terrible writing (check the first theme handle on this article). Professional publishing is less prone to it, but surely we can do better than this.

I'll go one step further. In response to one negative review of “Deathly Hallows” (I think it might've been Mike Smith's recap) somebody posted a link to a guy relating a conversation about editing. Basically, Party A argued that Stephen King's writing has gone to shit in recent years (anecdotal evidence

here at Ferretbrain

supports this observation) and that a good editor could make it much better. Party B rejoins that a good editor isn't going to touch a big name author because they'll rake in the cash anyway, and an editor's meddling might make the author sell less (or might coincide with the author's loss of popularity), or might piss the author off and convince them to take their business elsewhere. So now we have an example of a situation where the professional publishing system as it stands now actively blocks improvement rather than just enabling mediocrity.

Self-publishing obviously is not an improvement, but surely there's another possible system which could do better?

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Dan H

at 15:59 on 2011-06-01

On the other hand, we've had plenty of evidence here at Ferretbrain that professional publishing also tends to foster terrible writing (check the first theme handle on this article). Professional publishing is less prone to it, but surely we can do better than this.

Except that there's actually a world of difference between bad professionally published literature, and bad self-published fiction. Very little professionally published fiction is *actually incompetent* in the way that self-published fiction so often is. J.K. Rowling actually *isn't* that bad a writer - she's written a great many books that I personally dislike, and her writing is often pedestrian, frequenly overwrought and on very rare occasions actively clunky, but it is still genuinely head and shoulders above the vast, vast majority of amateur fiction.

The fact that somebody once said that Steven King had gone downhill and that somebody else suggested that this was because he'd got too big to edit is not evidence of any flaws in the publishing industry.

Once again, I'm very, very leery of any argument which assumes that popular things are only popular because the people who buy them are stupid sheeple. The publishing industry is not broken just because things I don't like are sometimes more popular than things I do like.

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Arthur B

at 16:10 on 2011-06-01@Robinson: If you think another system would work better would you care to propose one? I'd argue that the number of authors who, like King and Rowling, could pretty much dictate terms to their publishers are in fact quite small. And the reason they got that way in the first place was that they gave the reading public what they wanted.

The problem isn't instituting a system which prevents crap books from being published, because you can't, not in a way which isn't totalitarian. The problem, as a reader, is in tracking down books which you personal would enjoy and want to read. The world of professional publication is actually quite good at helping you do that, because publishing houses want to target the books they publish at those sections of the public who'll pay money for them, and even if your particular niche isn't catered to by the major publishing houses there will be niche small press publishers who are more than happy to crank out the sort of book you want. And on top of that, the more widely distributed a book is, the more likely it is that you'll have reviews to use as a guide.

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Robinson L

at 00:00 on 2011-06-02Okay Dan,

that

strikes me as a more compelling argument. I'm not really interested in arguing the the merits of the current publishing industry versus a hypothetical alternative model – I just found your argument as presented in the article rather unconvincing. Thank you for clarifying.