#i just simply wish people were good

[somewhereincairparavel]

Just posting this for the ppl who LOVE to push the FANON narrative that Jason and Percy aren't close friends as CANON. Grover is listed as Percy's main best friend (along with Annabeth ofc but she remains in the girlfriend category) and Jason comes literally SECOND in the Official Riordan wiki fanpage, and he's even labelled as "one of percy's best friends" not just "friend" or "close friend" like the others.

I don't get why people deny this SO bad like- pls let the almost nonexistent rivalry they both had (which is mostly between Jason and Percy fans) stay fanon.

"Jason and Percy are just co workers, barely even friends" Yup. Sure. I was so mislead by this narrative before I picked up HOO and was pleasantly surprised by how genuine percy and jason's friendship was in the books.. I half expected them both to ignore eachother or something throughout the scenes with how much the fandom exaggerated their rivalry/coldness with eachother.

Fanon is awesome. But it's not when you push it as canon. Let them be two seperate things please.

[thesilverlady]

I'm not enough of a book purist to not being able to enjoy headcanons, crackships etc (as a matter of fact I do love them). But seeing newbies unironically and completely serious considering aemond to "trying to be the perfect son", or "heleana is the people's princess" or "rhaenyra is calm, collected and strategic", "Daemon is the family's clown, the agent of chaos" legit gives me a headache because they are nothing like that.

And I'm not talking about ppl writing fanfics with this type of characterization, but ppl legit having takes based on the terrible portrayal of the show. And even when they go to read f&b they still have the image the show gave them because they don't seem capable of letting go.

it just feels like Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen character assassination all of again.

There are so many people who consider Jon to be basically ned 2.0 and Dany a mad queen-girlboss-slay

I just wish we could seperate books from adaptations. That's all

[izzyizumi]

Digimon Ghost Game ~ Hiro & Gammamon + {Tanabata}! (Japanese cultural holiday taking place on July 7th!)

[startanewdream]

Hi Mah, I’ve noticed a lot of writers saying their fics aren’t being commented on or reblogged as much as they were before, and that it’s been discouraging. I can’t speak why for everyone but this is my story. I used to comment and reblog everything because I appreciated the hard work everyone put in. I got inspired to write a few fics of my own, hoping I would get the same support or even suggestions on ways I could improve my writing from all the writers I looked up to, but I got nothing. I spent hours and days writing, reading articles, and watching YouTube videos on how to improve your writing, but I never got one comment, like, kudos, or reblog from any of the writers I showed my support to. I started to notice people had their own little friend/support group and would reblog and comment on each other's posts or stories, but not the newer writers unless you were a phenomenal writer. If you weren’t worth their time, then you were unnoticed and not appreciated. It didn’t matter that you wrote long detailed comments on every single chapter of their story and reblogged their stories, hoping it would get more attention to help encourage them. You and one other blogger were the only ones that I got a comment from, and I ended up unfollowing everyone except for you and the other blogger. I stopped writing, deleted my stories on one of my low days, and unfollowed everyone but you and the other blogger. I stayed away from the Harry Potter community for a while. You two are the only ones I will take time out of my day to write comments for. I’ve read other stories, but I don’t comment on theirs unless it's by a new writer. I try to show encouragement and give suggestions in ways I wish I would have gotten them. I just wanted to say thanks, and I've come across some great new writers through your blog. I’ve been absent for a long time, but I’m back now. I hope things have changed and everyone is more supportive of one another. I don’t know if people are hesitant to help other writers but they take 5 minutes out of their day to read their stories and write two lines of encouragement or heck even a pm on ways you think the story could be improved, newbies will appreciate it more than you’ll ever understand. I just think if you want a little love then you need to show a little love too.

Hey, Anon. I went back and forth on how to answer this because yes, I understand it, but also... not?

I really don’t want to sound dismissive; I get it, writing takes time and effort, you put a piece of your heart there, and when people don’t seem to notice it, you take it personally. I've been there as, in a way, all who has ever posted their fan work have been. It’s shitty.

But you cannot control anyone else. If you are writing and posting because you want people to comment and engage; don’t. It will drive you mad, trust me, because there is no bar that will ever suffice. Write for your own joy... and read and review for your own joy.

If you want criticism, ask for it, send a pm to those who answer it. Join a discord. The review section in a fanfic is not the place for it, it would be just rude. And accept that sometimes there is no problem, no reason for why your fic is unnoticed; no one has ever cracked the code for what makes a fic popular, and honestly, I am glad for it. It’s cliche, but true: you are the only one who can write your stories.

Finally, I get the if you want love you need to offer some love, but also... it sounds entitled? Threatening? I am not sure. Fanfics are for free; they are supposed to be fun. When they stop being something that you can enjoy, what is the whole point?

I am sorry you didn’t feel your effort was appreciated. I hope that, despite everything else, you loved giving voice to the characters, crafting a scenario out of nowhere, and spinning words into something that was real and yours. I hope you stick around.

[cuntrytaylor]

ummmmm

[abimee]

every day i gotta remake that ryder drawing. i love men who die with no resolution <3

[unproduciblesmackdown]

billions figuring winston shouldn't just also still be there in the end with the guys we accept so he needs to be sent out, which, it's also remarkable to recall like "okay does he still technically, partially work at/for axe global then? it's a 'maybe' but what matters is that he's not There even if so"....the way that even if we infer he did get to finally be sick of waiting on better, we weren't even given so much of an arc of a couple episode's leadup showing him markedly being more frustrated / fed up with The Usual bullshit or anything like that, the way it went with one ep to spare "oh right winston's catchphrases! we all know & loathe them" like don't strain yourselves....that even in giving up on things, winston still has to be further let down by everyone even after quitting, like well that's probably ultimately helpful for him but it was (a) forced on him and (b) not sure i'd give billions the credit for anything sympathetic towards winston versus "well the only thing to be done with winston material is have fun while epic winners shit on him however they want," the wags plotline had no point just like the later one that could've been scrapped & transformed into "how about taylor gets any dialogue this episode"....the way that billions may imagine like hmm what to do with winston? all that can Ultimately happen with him is he has to go away and die, for him it's [out of sight out of mind out of Existence], just as has been the show's approach for the consequences of him being shitted on all th time for years before this: there are none, b/c we're not looking at them, and winston is never not completely [othered] including right now, and if it helps for some reason we'll talk about how we might be fine if he literally dies. and so we're graced with a "who knows or cares, he's just gone, finally. after being kept around b/c it's so fun seeing winners torment him" ending as the only one they find imaginable for winston

[heirbane]

still chewing on the fact that gaius and the wol really did do what they did with the best intentions, just with different morals and viewpoints fed to them over time

[youjustwaitsunshine]

someone is doing burnouts on the street outside

[alexis-royce]

ALEXIS WHY

Actually it took much longer for him to reach this point than initially expected, I think everyone deserves a round of applause for keeping him in high spirits and his senses functioning correctly for so long. Humans generally aren’t capable of that.

I think he’s doing quite well, all things considered.

[starblaster]

really sucks that there is no way for me to be less lonely (in any meaningful way) that isn’t cost-prohibitive and/or bound to be a short-term solution. trying to take 1 college class costs me money and most of my classmates are students a fair bit younger than me, who won’t stick around after they graduate, anyway. the community ‘classes’ available are one-time workshops, and what you’re creating is a single craft prescribed by the instructor rather than a series of works with mutual, depthful critique involved. no studio hours, either. the closest thing to what i’m looking for is an art-and-therapy program hosted by two people i’m acquainted with professionally on the other side of the city, and it only meets once monthly (if that).

[mummer]

hate to post a gawker article but this felt v pointed and interesting...

[starbuck]

so much respect to people who prefer AUs where their favorite characters get to live and be happy, but my thing with tragic characters is that their tragedies are so painful and compelling because they are inevitable… and so, for me, to undo these characters’ endings, to rob them of their cathersis, is to rob them of themselves.

[gothiccat69]

Sorry mate, misunderstood.

I'm glad I could explain clearly enough for you to understand.

I don't want another very long post, so I'm putting everything else I have to say in the tags.

[femonologue]

Many years ago, I was wandering around downtown Ottawa with my best friend. We ran into a friend of his who offered us some hash (it sucked), then said there was a really good house party nearby if we wanted to go. We were like, yeah, sure. So that's how we ended up at some completely fucking random person's house.

I look around to ask if my friend knows anyone here and he's simply gone, as is his friend. And this isn't some red solo cup hangout; this is a party. There's people counting out pills on the kitchen counter. I am clearly neither as cool nor as drug-savvy as the kitchen people, so I back away and instead wander aimlessly into the living room, which seems to give off more of a chill vibe.

A bunch of people are seated in a circle on the floor. One of them is fiddling with a big wad of newspaper or something. A really cute grunge girl with piercings and tattoos scoots aside to make room for me, so I sit down.

"What's that," I ask her, gesturing at the newspaper wad.

She gets a really big smile on her face. You know the smile. It's the I'm About To Watch This Innocent Soul Get High As Fuck smile. "You've never smoked a tulip?"

"What's a tulip?" I ask.

"It's like if a joint was also a bong," she replies. "You gotta try it."

"Alright," I reply, a little uncertainly. This will not be my first encounter with weed. I am more comfortable with the janky newspaper bong than I am with whatever the fuck is going on in the kitchen. Besides, this girl is really cute and I would like to have a friend here now that my existing friend has turned into vapor or been transported to the Upside-Down or whatever the hell happened to him.

I watch as one person holds the newspaper joint-bong upright and holds a lighter over the top while another gets beneath it, tilting their head back to take a puff. Apparently smoking this Cheech & Chong monstrosity is a two-person job.

"Oh," I say, looking at the fist-sized knob at the top of the wonky newspaper joint. "Yeah, it does kinda look like a tulip." Grunge girl smiles at me.

I watch as the tulip is passed around the circle, along with the lighter, and hits are cooperatively taken. It reaches grunge girl, who takes a huge puff and holds it for an extended moment before exhaling an impressive blast of smoke. She smiles expectantly and holds the tulip up for me, preparing to spark the gigantic meteor of dank that makes up its tip. By this point I have completely forgotten about my missing friend. I only care about making a good impression on grunge girl. I tilt my head back and hit the tulip like a smokestack.

It is the following morning. I am sleeping between a couch and a wall. I'm not positive that this is the same house I was just in. My memories are gone. Someone is yelling at me: "dude! Dude! Wake up, dude!"

I sit up. My mouth tastes like cigarettes. I do not smoke cigarettes. "Wha," I ask the yelling man, who I am quite confident I have never met before in my life.

"We're going on a quest," he tells me, gravely. "You have to come with us."

I look around. Neither my friend nor his friend are anywhere in sight. I also do not see grunge girl anywhere. I shrug helplessly. "Okay."

We embark from this house. I learn that the destination of this quest is Tim Horton's. This is a relief to me, as coffee and a donut sounds really fucking good right now. Somehow, the route to Tim Horton's takes us past the Governor-General's residence, which everyone else in the group loudly heckles on the way past. I do not know what the Governor-General has done to raise their ire, nor do I particularly care. I trudge along with my hands in my pockets, pleased to note that I still have my wallet, phone, and keys. I fervently wish that I could remember anything about last night. Maybe I talked to grunge girl. Maybe she's why my mouth tastes like cigarettes. The tulip tasted nothing like cigarettes.

I am asked about my politics. I voice my frustrations with corporate corruption, the pay-to-win electoral system, the lack of transparency and accountability. This is met with great approval. The guy who was yelling at me claps me on the back. I get the impression that we became friends last night. I don't recognize his face. I do not know his name and he definitely does not know mine. I behave as though we're friends anyway. We are comrades on a quest.

By the time we make it to Tim Hortons, the gaggle of stoners I'm walking with have all run out of energy and/or attention span. People order snacks and break away in pairs or solo, to call for rides or plan the day's events or just vegetate and wait for the drugs to leave their systems. I look around and find that my nameless friend has also gone to the Upside-Down. As I wash the cigarette taste out of my mouth with coffee, I unsuccessfully try to remember whether I saw grunge girl smoking tobacco at any point. I remember nothing. That tulip was so fucking powerful that it instantly sent me a whole day forward in time.

Alone in the city, I try to call my best friend and get no answer. I walk to the nearest bus stop, catch a bus most of the way home, and call up my parents to ask for a ride back. They ask where my friend is. I tell them that I have no idea; we went to a house party and I don't remember anything else.

When they pick me up from the bus station, they ask me some very safe, nonspecific questions, and seem to relax when I describe what little I can remember. It isn't until years later that I realize they were probably terrified I'd gotten rufied or something, and were so relieved to learn otherwise that they didn't even bother chiding me for smoking myself unconscious in an effort to impress a strange woman. In any case, they were probably happy to find out that I did, in fact, like girls; I suspect they had been privately wondering whether I was gay.

After getting home, I finally manage to get my best friend to answer his phone. I discover that he tried the kitchen pills, spent most of the night crossing the entire city on foot, and crashed at his cousin's house. He sounds like shit. I tell him that he should have tried the tulip, instead. He fervently agrees with me.

I never see grunge girl again.

That's okay, though. She got to see a clueless stranger get fucked the entire way up on some ungodly strain of giga-weed, and I got smiled at by a cute girl, and then I got to go on a quest. Wherever grunge girl is, I hope she's happy. I hope she's smoking the fattest fucking blunt and smiling as some kid passes out behind a couch.

[spacelazarwolf]

i think if we’re going to have conversations about consent we should talk about how consenting to something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a good experience, and having a bad experience doesn’t necessarily mean someone violated your consent. this can apply to a lot of situations but the two i’m thinking of right now are sex and transition.

you’re getting it on with someone. you enthusiastically consent to having sex with them. afterward, you feel a little weird about it. maybe even distressed. maybe they did something you didn’t enjoy and in the moment you just didn’t say anything. maybe you just realized after the fact that you were not in a good headspace for sex and now your mental health is declining. that doesn’t inherently mean the person you had sex with violated your consent. sometimes it just means you need to take a break from sex or work on communicating your needs or boundaries better during sex.

and with transition, i feel like this is something that gets consistently overlooked but like. there will never be zero detransitioners. there will always be people who decide that actually transition wasn’t right for them. they could have had the best most thorough doctors in the world who did everything by the book and got full informed consent at every step. and some people are still going to decide they don’t like the changes and wish they hadn’t transitioned. that doesn’t mean that the doctors violated their consent, and that doesn’t mean that transition shouldn’t be available to anyone. it just means that we need to have more resources available for folks who detransition.

regret does not automatically mean someone did something wrong. regret is simply one possible result of having bodily autonomy, and i think we need to get more comfortable with that.