#if you disagree idk you know how I feel about disagreement

[separatist-apologist]

Back by unpopular demand: Acotar characters as Tumblr shit posts

Rhys:

Feyre:

Nesta:

Cassian:

Elain:

Lucien:

Gwyn:

Azriel:

Emerie:

Mor:

[gibbearish]

ok i finished the first chapter and am gonna take a break now but im v excited to keep reading im really liking the way the author looks at things so far

[x-liv25-jamieswife]

Javery fight headcanons because we both know those two are going to have a major major fight at some point

averyjameson fight head canons

of course <3. i apologize if this sucks, i haven't really slept in days T-T. this one will be shorter than my other posts cause the topic isn't as broad (and wont just be about one major fight but just a fights in general too), but i hope you still enjoy them <3. @ariscats helped with some of these <3. she's amazing.

i've mentioned this before, but i think that their codeword, tahiti, was created as a result of one of their bigger fights in order to avoid them.

jameson is the one that created the code word.

i think a lot of their fights would be related to each of them keeping secrets. avery's mentioned not liking being vulnerable before which, i think, would cause issues in their relationship. she'd keep secrets in order to keep herself from being vulnerable and jamie would hate it and confront her about it. she'd be very defensive and wouldn't admit to keeping secrets which would make things worse.

i think jamie would also have trouble opening up which is smth that would annoy avery a lot. unlike avery, though, it's not because he doesn't want to talk to her, it's bc he's afraid of what she would think of him/not wanting her to see him differently. she'd confront him about it, but he'd deny it and tell her that he has no reason to want to lie to her (lies).

they're the type of people that, even when they're mad at each other, have to sleep in each others arms bc its the only thing that keeps the nightmares away.

i feel like they're also the type of people who would try their best to not raise their voices bc they know its not healthy but would end up doing it anyways.

most of their fights ends with someone crying (not because they hurt each other's feelings, but bc they end up becoming vulnerable with each other and that makes one (or both of them) cry)

i think that whenever they have a major fight, avery would do smth like not eat. she'd get so mad she'd forget to/she wouldn't head to the kitchen to get smth in order to not see jameson by chance. jameson would make sure to make/get her smth and leave it by the door or give it to oren.

they'd definitely have fights about how careless jamie is with his life. i imagine that whatever happened in prague caused a screaming match between them.

they'd try to resolve their fights before bedtime bc they hate going to bed mad.

jamie would get really afraid whenever avery is mad at him bc he'd get the idea in his head that she was going to leave him. that's why, now, whenever they fight, avery makes sure to tell him that she's not leaving him before hand.

i also think a lot of their fights would be caused by avery overworking herself/not taking care of herself, and jamie would get worried/mad and say smth about it (avery disagrees with him thinking its unhealthy bc she thinks its her duty).

speaking of overworking, avery would work so often she'd start neglecting jamie (there are fics about this). this would obviously also cause fights.

i also think that, near the beginning of their relationship, jamie would have a really hard time expressing his emotions properly and would try to hide them by acting careless/happy, enough to hurt avery's feelings multiple times.

when fighting, avery would get so mad and anxious she'd start digging her nails into her palms really hard (its something i've noticed she does in the books too so this is less of a head canon). even though they're fighting, jamie doesn't like seeing this and will grab onto her hands and hold them or will give her smth to hold if she doesn't want to touch him.

they're the type of people to take breaks from their fights cause they hate having disagreements. they'll have a screaming match and then one will go 'break?' and they'll pretend as if nothing happened and come back to the fight later.

ok so idk if this will make sense but ill try my best to explain it properly. avery reads the hate comments she receives and starts believing them, smth she'd never admit. instead of admitting it to herself, she'd sort of project onto jamie and convince herself that he thinks the same/believes the comments. their fights would revolve a lot around that, i think. avery would go 'so many people call my ugly and unworthy of you, why would you not think the same?'

speaking of those fights that i mentioned in the hc right before this one, these ones tend to not become screaming matches. jamie would try to comfort her calmly bc he knows screaming won't do them any well.

as their relationship moves forward, their fights get rarer, and when they do, they don't scream (if they do, very very rare)

idk if this is even possible but it happens to me so im guessing it is. i mentioned earlier that jamie gets scared when they fight bc he's convinced himself avery will leave him. well when he gets scared, he also gets cold so they always have a blanket on hand for jameson to use if this happens.

avery would get jealous of jamie's ex's at the beginning of their relationship bc she has shown hints of being insecure about her looks in the books. this would also cause issues with jamie.

at the beginning of their relationship, avery, like mentioned earlier, would get really insecure about her looks, enough that she would compare herself to girls online and people jameson followed (he only follows them cause they're family friends/extended family members, etc). the fact that jameson used to see her as a game and her own insecurities really messed with her head, but she never talked about it with jameson because she hated being vulnerable. this would cause fights until jamie realized what was going and then he created the code-word.

whenever they're done fighting, they always have these huge love confessions planned bc, like i said a million times before, they hate fighting and like to end it on a good note.

whenever they're done fighting, they give each other a little kiss and cuddle cause they hate being mad at each other.

[spurgie-cousin]

here's a ✨quick recap of the Jessa and Ben interview from the "Now That We're a Family" podcast✨for @undercoverduggarblog and anyone else who's curious if they spilled any tea.

I will say the couple who was interviewing them seemed to be the exact same flavor of fundamentalist as the Seewalds, so it was mostly the same cheesy fundie platitudes you hear in any "interview" the Duggars or similar fundies do. so this might be kind of short but there were a few interesting parts I'll highlight:

Jessa and Ben said that they were really focused on teaching catechism memorization to their kids, which I guess isn't super shocking information, I've just never heard anyone besides Catholics talk about catechisms lol. The Catholic Catechism for those who don't know is a separate thing from the Bible which kind of summarizes the principles of the religion, kind of like a cliff notes situation for all of Catholic theology. Other denominations usually focus more on individual stories from the Bible to summarize the principles of their faith, but according to Ben there is a Baptist Catechism too and the Seewald kids will be memorizing it. -

Ben says he was working for Jim Bob at the time he and Jessa got married doing lawn care, remodeling, and construction, idk if I knew that previously. He said he started tutoring Jessa's siblings after that, and now he's been a pastor for 4 years after doing an internship at his previous church. -

Jessa says some of the first conversations she had with Ben pre-relationship were about theology, and that she had been reading more about the Reformed tradition and practices at that time after talking to Ben. Ben says he got Jessa's phone number originally by asking Jim Bob if it was ok to talk to her about theology outside of church stuff. -

Both said even before marriage, they had a lot of disagreements theologically (obviously, bc Jessa was raised by Jim Bob and Michelle who basically made up their own version of Baptist). Ben says some of their biggest disagreements were on the topics of predestination (as we know, since he also got into it with JB over that), how God decides who should be saved, "The Atonement" which I assume just means Jesus dying for our sins (not sure what there is to argue about there), etc. He goes on to say he didn't see it as a deal breaker as far as courting Jessa because he was very into her, and also "a lot of Christians disagree on these topics", but he did want to try to eventually "figure it out". -

They say that they put the theological discussions on pause after Ben proposed. Jessa laughingly says "don't worry, we picked back up (after we were married)" and I guess for me personally I just don't understand how you can talk about these things SO much and never resolve them. Like how are you talking about predestination for MONTHS? and if you guys disagree about a subject to the point that your conversations end in anger and crying (i'll get to that soon) I don't understand not just agreeing to disagree. Honestly to me, it really sounds like Ben had a campaign from the beginning to change Jessa's mind about these things, which is good in some ways I guess bc he's slightly more progressive than she was raised, but still. It definitely feels like that was always the goal, to get Jessa to believe what Ben does, and I mean what other choice does she have in this world they live in but to give in? -

Ben says the theological differences really started bothering him after marriage (shocker). So they continued their arguments, Ben showed Jessa endless books and shit "proving" his points, and Jessa says she started to get pretty heated about their disagreements (at one point she says Ben was like "maybe we should just pray about this" to which she answered "you pray!!"). They both say they were never at the point of yelling, but Jessa would sometimes start crying out of frustration, as would Ben after seeing her cry, and they'd just end in the same place they started. Ben says he thought that if he just "presented a good argument" it would change Jessa's mind about these things they disagreed on and that he hadn't anticipated that they would struggle over this so much (have you met any Duggars, Ben??). -

Ben says that he realized these conversations weren't productive and that he wasn't "leading" Jessa well (🙄) so he started trying to diffuse hard conversations by being like "hey, let's drop this and go on a date", or doing something that would distract both of them before things got heated. -

Jessa says nowadays she agrees with Ben on more things and considers herself a four-point Calvinist. She says Ben used to have "hyper-Calvinist" tendencies and that he's chilled out a bit in that area (I don't know what she means by this lol). -

The couple who are interviewing them are also from big Christian families, and they ask Ben and Jessa if they ever get exhausted from trying to maintain so many relationships with both of their large groups of siblings, in addition to Ben's church members. Ben says yes, and that with Jessa's siblings (he specifically mentions hers and not his lol) there are just some that they see and have over a lot, and some they just "don't connect with as much" and don't see often. Jessa cuts him off here and says that her family does have weekly/monthly things they do where they see everyone. She also says there are certain family units that she and Ben try to connect with more than just at the big family gatherings (1. why'd she say it like that and 2. i wonder who 👀). Overall, Jessa says she always feels like she's not doing enough to maintain her relationships with all of her siblings and that it's a struggle. -

Ben and Jessa get asked about the time they take for just the two of them. Ben says they used to do a date night at least once a week, but that since having more kids there have been "seasons" where that hasn't happened (I'm so tired of hearing that word at this point in the interview). Nowadays they both say that they do maybe one or two date nights a month where they go out, and also a lot of at-home dates where they watch a movie or read together. The reading together sounds sweet don't get me wrong, but for me personally, I feel like I would be driven to insanity by taking turns reading aloud and not just getting to go at my own pace (I've got attention problems tho). -

The types of books they read together are also usually about theology (they just can't get enough). They say right now they're reading a book on prayer, and in the past they've read about things like Baptist Covenant Theology, which Jessa says "went over her head". The way Ben talks about it, I feel like the reading together thing is another attempt to sell Jessa on his beliefs (Ben seems super geeked about Calvinism). The interviewer husband says their reading together is good because it prevents them from developing separate world views from each other without the other one knowing (sounds threatening?). -

As far as the movies they watch for date night, Ben says "westerns, sci fi, something black and white". They say as far as morality and movies go, they're pretty similar on the things they "don't want to see" and they use those rating websites for parents to decide if a movie is "clean" enough for them to watch. Ben says he really loves fantasy, sci fi, and imaginative stuff whereas Jessa says jokingly that she prefers movies "with humans" or things like Dick van Dyke. Ben says he got Jessa to watch Star Wars once, which she describes as "everything I don't love", but she got into it a little bit by the end. They both like movies like Pride and Prejudice. -

The wife interviewer tells a weird story about how she and her sister got mad at their husbands for showing them Lord of the Rings because it's "creepy and weird"?? which I just included because of how egregious a statement that is lol. Ben defends Lord of the Rings and the interviewer husband says that he and Ben can appreciate fantasy bc they have the ability to think "deeper" than their wives (he's joking but it still made me mad). Jessa said she originally was worried that watching fantasy was dabbling in the occult and the other wife agrees. which isn't surprising but makes me sad.

[shawty-writes-a-little]

Young love

Aemond Targaryen x betrothed!reader

Word count. 2.5k

Summary: Aemond pulls a harmful little prank on his wife to be but things don’t escalate well (PURE FLUFF)

Warnings: Idk made up horror stories? Slight cursing

An: this was supposed to be a Halloween blurb

—

Aemond had settled to the dinner parties over and over as one of his princely duties. Of which included a marrying a lady of a suitable house. He had been aware of that and wasn’t resistant at all to oblige when it came to fulfil it. Hence they say sat at the grand table for the celebration of joining of two houses, soon to commence marriage of y/n and Aemond. They had known each other for a while Aemond had rather some sentiments involved with those kind gestures and love y/n held for everyone and everything in her eyes. His feelings for y/n grew more than quite a lot. As the dinner table escalated more into the celebratory grounds it left only the two of them at the table. Y/n nervously fidgeted with the ends of her dress while Aemond was unaware what conversation to strike.

Normally it was so easy to start a conversation with y/n, she’d always listen she’d always have an input ever so welcoming and calm he had found that to be one of the very first things that made him develop feelings for her. “Pretty cold this evening isn’t it?” he started off catching her attention. Weather wasn’t the general centre of most their conversations but as it got tense full for Aemond to initiate a conversation he went with the most common one.

“Yes!” Y/n said turning her head slightly from her chair to face him “10th of the full moon! My old nan used to say it’s the month of the spirits.”

“Month of the spirits?”

“She used to say this time of the year is when the dead come to visit…the evil ones rather-she had all sorts of stories about them. She believed them to be true” y/n chuckled shifting in her seat “Can’t blame old nan for telling her marvellous storytelling can you?”

“I don’t entirely disagree with your old nan” Aemond reply with a smirk on his face as he took a sip from his wine cup. Obviously he didn’t believe them to be true like y/n but he had came across the information lady y/n was known for a few jests and pranks…why not then?

“You can’t possibly be serious” at first she laughed moving further in her seat to get a clear look of his face which had unchanged expressions. “Evil spirits?”

“I don’t confirm all of them exist…or exist at all but I do believe not all stories are entirely untrue” his lips curled into a smile as y/n laughed again. The sight of her laughter could get him through everything he believed.

“Sure” she shook her head in obviously disagreement lifting her wine glass from the table.

“I too wouldn’t believe the stories but I lived through one I can’t bring myself to deny its existence.” This perked up y/n’s interest but only at a slight because she strongly believed spirits don’t exist other than old nan stories.

“Lived through one?”

He nodded leaning a bit closer to her “A few years ago the city watch was troubled with the missing accounts of young women in king’s landing—missing. Right from the entrance of their houses be it the merchant’s wife or a servant girl they were never seen again. This facade went on for a month or so until one moonless cold night like this one a trail of blood appeared from the forest borders—a long trail” his voice turned raspy to sound more intimidating as he continued “It was the witch’s cottage. She used these beautiful young girls to maintain her own youthfulness-“

“Used them? How so?” Y/n interrupted him midway contemplating later after she asked the question if she wanted to know the answer to that.

“The details are much darker than you could imagine-much much worse than your mind could process.” By this time he already had y/n believe every story her old nan told her was true but Aemond was making this up for the sake of a followed prank. “The witch was executed—the whole city was there to witness it but it is believed she still lurks the corners around this cold dark time of the year.”

Aemond’s face was quite closer to y/n being seated in their own seats beside each other, had they been talking about something else y/n would be completely flustered with how he looked at her, with how close he was to her but as of now she was beyond speechless. Y/n never took herself to believe in these hoax matters or stories made up to scare the little ones for their mischiefs but coming from Aemond? For all she knew of him Aemond wasn’t one to make up false stories given how serious he was.

“And where are you lost my betrothed?” He spoke leaning back into his seat a little farther from her face.

“Oh umm-“ she cleared her throat shaking her head. Surely even if what Aemond said was true it’s not that a witch was to pounce upon her this instant. Or at any instant for that matter. “That was-well” she let out a nervous chuckle looking for the right word.

“It’s alright my love you’re safe here on the insides at the red keep.” He finished the sentence for her.

“The insides?”

“Ah yes bunch of guards have reported to seeing the witch or whatever personality that might be at the night by the backyard garden-they often don’t go for duty there.” Aemond knew the guards don’t stand for duty the backyard gardens not because of a made up witch story but because nobody ever visited the small backyard garden and it had a much larger wall for any intruder to ever enter from there and he was so sure y/n wouldn’t ask anyone to confirm his made up charade.

—

The celebration ended as the night gathered and everyone retired to their bedchambers. Y/n’s mind had already traveled off the witch story Aemond told not paying much mind to it later even though it lurked the tiny corner of her mind. Before she could even change out of her dress there was a knock on the door. It was a servant on behalf of her mother and father who asked to meet her in the gardens. Strange. Given she had just bid them farewell for the night what must it be at this moment? The servant insisted it was a pressing matter so y/n didn't hesitate longer. Following the servant through the hallways to the gardens but not a soul was present there.

Before she could ask the servant if this is where her parents requested her to see the servant was gone. She turned to all sides looking for the servant but she only found herself at the dark corner of the garden and the lantern the servant had left on the floor. It was eerily quiet not even the night crickets made a sound. The chilly dead of the night feeling didn't help either. Before she’d barely took two steps towards the keep a low growl made her stop in her tracks. At first she wasn’t sure she heard it right but then there was another. Every fibre of her being begged her not to turn around but she did nonetheless. Now is when she thought of Aemond’s story. The back gardens.

It was too dark to see anything past the light of the lantern in her hands that went out only a few inches from where she was holding it. And the gardens further in were so dark you could barely make our a silhouette. “Is anyone there?” She asked raising her lantern shocked at how not so affirming her voice just came out. There was no answer just a louder growl again. Some other time y/n would’ve had the normal perception of the growl—an animal perhaps. But right now she was sure it was some evil spirit and was praying to every god in her head as she stepped backwards hastily.

She couldn’t make out what she felt but something made her loose her balance. The witch. Falling to the ground the lantern in her hands blew out as well. The growls grew much louder as she tried to stand up to make her run for the inside again but this time she subconsciously fell onto the grass again. She crawled further as the growls seemed to grow closer to her not having the time to stand up and run this time. She felt a block on her way back in the very so open garden but it didn’t seem to be a pillar. The witch.

This time she shrieked thinking these were her final moments. “Spare me! Please I beg of you!” Tears ran down her face as she begged for her life to the faceless sounds that surrounded her. She remembered what Aemond had told her about the witch earlier, ‘she used the young and beautiful girls.’ “I swear to the gods I’m not even that young neither as beautiful as you would like please spare my life!” She tried to negotiate with the spirit as she lied about her age and appearance.

This time a laugh broke out. It didn’t sound like a woman. Y/n screamed again, it’s a warlock then. “Alright that is enough.” A voice spoke from behind her which she had assumed was the witch herself but she knew that voice, very well. Aemond.

Lighting up the lantern that was on the floor Aegon held it to her face laughing uncontrollably. She looked back to confirm and it was in fact her betrothed. Aemond lent out his hand for her to stand up but she swayed it away standing up herself.

“You were really THAT scared of some pups?” Aegon spoke between his laughter as he patted the three dogs that surrounded them, which y/n thought to be spirits.

Her heartbeat was yet to fall back to normal she could almost hear her heart beat as if it was about to fall out. She looked at Aemond confused still very scared and now puzzled given barley a few moments ago she assumed she was about to die.

“This was only meant to be joke we didn’t gather you would truly be this scared—“ Aemond began as he gently tried to place his hands on top of hers for whatever comfort.

A joke? A joke?! Y/n yanked his hands away from hers furious and just as upset “Fucking cunt.” She muttered pushing Aemond out of her way as she ran inside the palace. Aemond watched her leave and run with a pace as if the spirit was still chasing her.

“Y/n wait—“ he called out but she was already gone. He stood guilty of his actions because he never intended to make her cry. His older brother still on going laughter pulled him out of his thoughts only to feel much worse. Aegon was rolling on the ground with unstoppable laughter “She must’ve thought the witch story was true” Aegon said to him panting in between his words. Which only made Aemond feel worse.

No, Aemond ought to make it right. Leaving Aegon to his remarks and jest about the whole prank he followed back into the keep. As he walked the halls back inside the keep to Y/n’s chambers he went through things he could say to console her somewhat. Thankfully for him the guards by her bed chambers still hadn’t returned, Aegon had set up the servant and the guards to leave as Aemond managed the dogs, both of which he regrets now.

Gently knocking on the door frame he called her name “Y/n it’s me Aem-“ before he finished his sentence y/n opened the doors.

“Come to gloat?” She asked as it broke his heart to see her face full of tears again. Stepping inside he shut the doors behind him, “I am truly truly sorry for happened it wasn’t my intention to hurt you in any way.”

Y/n exhaled shrugging her shoulders as much as she wanted to believe what he had to say she had another reality to her mind “My prince” odd. She had only ever called Aemond by a title as formalities when they weren’t alone so this seemed odd to him. “If you do not wish to be married to me you can simply ask of it. I understand if you desire someone else or don’t wish to be married at all or aren’t very fond of me. I understand the pressure and the duties but you could’ve simply asked me rather try to scare me off that way.”

Aemond stared at her for a moment completely baffled she thought this had anything to do with not wanting a marriage with her. “Do you really think anyone could ever not be fond of you?” he scoffed “How did you even manage to convince yourself that I of all people wouldn’t be fond of you?”

Confused she stared back at him “I don’t understand”

Aemond took a step closer to her this time holding both her hands in his as if they were glass. Her fragile touch. “Everything about you is maddeningly lovely, I consider myself the luckiest man in Westeros who gets to call you his, forever. How could I ever desire anyone else? You are the dream of my life, the only dream-ever since I’d met you. I am every so terribly in love with you. And what happened-I truly didn’t know it you’d be hurt this way, to see you cry is the last thing I want it was supposed to be a prank as I was told lady y/n of house *your house* had a knack for pranks. I hope you can forgive me for the unpleasant—“

Y/n closed the distance between them, brushing her lips against his. To Aemond’s surprise this was far from the reaction he expected but more than welcomed it. Wrapping his arms around her waist he leaned in further into the kiss.

“I love you, Aemond.” She smiled feeling butterflies saying it for the first time to him. Young love. He kissed her again hoping the world would go on leaving them unbothered when he had her this close to him.

“Though” she pulled away from the kiss for a moment to speak staying just as close “I would like to mention I wasn’t that scared with your little prank-“

“If that is what you want to me believe” he nodded as she laughed and it melted his heart to see her content. “Though Aegon might not let it go that easily” he told her as she huffed burying her face by the crook of her neck as they stood in her room in each other’s embrace and if just for now, everything seemed perfect. For Aemond it truly was. Every moment spend with her was perfect.

—

Feedback is MUCH appreciated (literally dying for some validation) <333

Tagging: @stuckinaf4nfiction @softieekayy @dumdaradumdaradum

[starrixle]

my final thoughts on sootcest

ok, so officially im gonna close off my thoughts here. ive received a good amount of feedback so this will be the last thing ill say abt my thoughts on glitterduo/sootcest:

i am indifferent on selfcest shipping. idk if its proship or not, but i will remain distanced either way, for my own and other people's comfort with me and my content

i still enjoy bursonas and i will still keep drawing them and be present in the fandom, but i will not be involved in anything relating to shipping

any glitterduo art i post will be strictly platonic, same for any of the other bursonas

i do not hate or support sootcest, nor will i attack anyone who ships it. i do not care what your opinion is, i won't hate you for shipping bursonas together. just do not involve me in it

it is not my or anyone else's place to speak on wilbur's boundaries, only himself

as for my own boundaries:

do not involve me in discourse relating to sootcest (or selfcest altogether). i dont want to be associated

do not repost my old romantic glitterduo art. i cant force everyone, but id appreciate if any reblogs relating to my older art were deleted

if you disagree with anything i say, it is not worth any more of my time or energy to argue back, and it is not worth yours either

please stop messaging me about sootcest!!! i will leave my inbox open but i will close it if i continue to get messages about it

i haven't given myself much of a chance to step back and realize how much getting involved and constantly feeling the need to post lengthy texts towards by thoughts has taken so much energy out of me. i do regret having an aggresive tone in my past impulsively made posts, which is why ive deleted a lot of them. but from now on, i wish to just remain as an artist that just likes drawing silly little wilbur personas. shipping bursonas shouldn't be a big deal to me. i have made my own mistakes throughout this whole thing, but i at least wanna close things off here.

i know my old glitterduo art has brought enjoyment/comfort to many people, but it has also brought discomfort for others including myself. i know im not gonna be able to please everyone and people will have their disagreements towards me no matter what.

but for the sake of my own comfort, im stepping away from this subject. i have no ill feelings towards anyone who has communicated with me about this topic, and i thank everyone who has been civil towards me and given me advice.

im moving on.

[navy-leader]

AH. Idk if my ask went through so, I’ll just ask again in case. I don’t remember how much you care about Chosen and the Dark Lord as a dynamic, but I’m not an expert on them and you seemed to post about them quite a bit SO. May as well ask for your opinion. I can’t send links in anonymous asks, but Sweet Hangman by Elliotly to me feels like a song from the Dark Lord’s perspective about Chosen.

I care about them a whole lot and GOOD LORD does that song fit my intepretation of Dark very well

To me, theyre a pair of overpowered ultraviolent codependent freaks who had zero socialization outside of eachother. They had nothing but eachother for years and even so theyve yet to learn a lot about eachother. They know goddamn near everything about eachother, their little quirks, their icks, their fears, their violent moments, but they never really grow as people just by being with eachother. They dont agree on everything, in fact they disagree quite often and those disagreements often end in violent fights, theyre both godawful at communication and arguments often devolve into fists, but they cool down at the end and move on with their day, its just how they worked with eachother. They got a lot of issues tangled in each of themselves and the other party isn't very well equipped to untangle them so things just stay tangled or get even more tangled. They consider eachother their best friend, no one else in the world gets them because they've never gone out much into the rest of the world, they dont let people in easily, and their social skills are so fucking shot.

Now individually, Dark has a tendency to follow and serve people even if she doesnt realize that herself, she was created with a purpose and followed that purpose until it got her cornered and ever since Chosen took her hand shes just been following and doing what Chosen was doing, and she didnt really realize Chosen's change of heart and thought that he was just being a gloomy weirdo and pulling away from her for no reason so she tried to earn back his affections by planning to destroy the rest of the internet. Because thats what Chosen wouldve wanted, right?

Chosen is a gloomy weirdo who has trouble empathizing and has a tendency to be in his own head too much, he does genuinely care about Dark its just that he doesnt really see what she actually needs and doesnt really think of himself of any importance to have his actions have an impact on others. When he realized the destruction he created with Dark was going too far he hadnt thought to really communicate that to Dark because he just assumed that Dark would get it, because theyve always went off the little clues they get from the other instead of saying anything directly, so itll be fine, right?

Anyways the entirety of AvA 5 was just a gigantic lack of communication and misunderstanding and Dark had created the virabots and plan to destroy AlansPC with Chosen in mind but turns out Chosen wasnt cool with that!! And of course like every other time they disagree they Fight instead of communicating like well socialized people 😭

And god id talk more but this is getting too long jahdgjw. Thank you for the ask!!!!

[mikelogan]

hello. i really enjoy your content, but i have to say i'm kinda disappointed on you still being a ts fan. this woman knows what disney does and yet she still gave them the rights, meaning she either doesn't care or actively supports the genocide. or maybe she decided to turn her morals off because money is more important. not to mention how she consistently associates herself with questionable people and how a person literally died in one of her shows on brazil and she gave zero fucks. this woman is not a good person and there are no excuses to being her fan anymore.

no, i fully understand what you're saying and where you're coming from. over the last like. idk year and a half? ive been pretty vocal about my disappointment, distaste, and disagreement with a multitude of the choices she's made lately. i 100% agree that her silence on the subject of palestinian genocide (as well as many other human rights/social causes) is at best a sign of apathy and at worst a sign of support. especially when miss americana was all about her wanting to be more outspoken and be an activist. that all feels so incredibly performative now -- and has for a while. a lot of things that she's said and done since midnights, which is when i became more active in the tumblr swiftie community, have left a bad taste in my mouth for her as a person.

like i said, i genuinely agree with what you're saying. the only thing i take issue with is that she didn't care that a fan died at her show. she donated money to the fan's family and took time to meet them. regardless of my many issues with her, i do think she can be an empathetic person and i don't think that she just straight up didn't care that someone died before her show. it's one of those things (of which there are many) where we'll never know her true thoughts bc she doesn't talk about things. which is frustrating in itself.

now that's not the point of your message, so feel free to write that off as a digression. i strongly disagree with her making yet another version of the eras tour movie and hosting it on disney+. I'm personally boycotting disney+ and have been for a while. I don't even intend on watching the new version and like the vast majority of everything I gif, that shit is pirated -- that's how I watched the original release of the movie. obviously my consumption/boycotting is just one person compared to blondie, who has influence over millions, who could make real change if she spoke out against genocide.

at this point, im not supporting her financially either apart from listening to her music. which i love. im sorry, but I do. if I didn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation. i think her constant churning out different exclusive versions of the same albums are a transparent money grab and maybe an effort to set more records as far as sales or streams or however that all works. and I'm not just saying that bc I literally couldn't even afford to buy a digital copy of an album right now.

so yeah. I appreciate that you enjoy my content and thank you for saying so, but if you need to unfollow or block, i understand. I've definitely toned down/completely stopped sharing posts about her as a person bc I'd much rather focus on just the music. and maybe that makes me a bad person for continuing to listen to and enjoy her music. im not saying i necessarily feel good about it, but i think the fact of the matter is that a lot of the celebrities, actors, musicians, etc. we like or whose content we enjoy hold views we disagree with and have different values or priorities. nuance exists. right now, im someone who is vocal about the palestinian genocide and I try to share resources/posts about it when they come across my dash and im also someone who is a fan of Taylor's music.

Idk, I hope what I'm saying makes sense at least on some level. I've done my best to word things coherently, but brain fog fucks w me a lot. and like. it's probably whatever, but I do plan on changing my url after ttpd releases. That probably upsets you more and I can see how people might think im a hypocrite or something and yeah, I get it. Idk, I just want to enjoy someone's music without endorsing them as a person, but that's extra difficult when the person in question is the biggest singer in the industry. but you'll never see me making excuses for her on things like this or the m*tty situation or numerous other things she's said and done that gross me out. im not so far up her ass that I think she's perfect or that I feel the need to defend her at every turn. like I said, nuance. anyway, if you feel the need to respond, i welcome you to do so as long as we both remain respectful, which I think we've done. this is a difficult topic, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss it. I appreciate your point of view and I'm sorry that I've disappointed you!

[olderthannetfic]

https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/748746425903497216/httpswwwtumblrcomolderthannetfic748312553692#notes

yeah i can't say i'm totally up to date on this comic drama, but i do think that sometimes discussions about fandom entitlement and harassment gets conflated with just being open to ANY criticism for work you do and it's like - those aren't the same thing. if you put your work out there into the world, people are allowed to say what they think about it. it's like when people took discussions about "fantitlement" that were about legitimately awful and antisocial behavior like racist Star Wars fans harassing Kelly Marie Tran off social media, and then using that same concept and the same rhetoric to talk about people being upset about the shitty Game of Thrones ending... like, critics writing bad reviews! Idk, I think it's way more entitled to act like "bad reviews" are a thing you are allowed to demand nobody write in response to your professional work on the most popular TV show on the planet, lmao.

I worry sometimes that I feel like too many people who want to be writers and artists are not learning about the importance of having a thick skin, because so often what assholes online mean by "thick skin" is "you're required to listen to every creepy and obnoxious thing I have to say, random stranger who has read/watched/played your creative work." And like that's obviously bullshit. But there's a difference between that and just learning to deal with *normal disagreement* and that *some people won't like what you make and might talk about it*, which is just normal and something not only ever creative has to go through, but has usually expressed themselves in response to someone else's work too!

Maybe some of this is that a lot of people are coming into this through fandom? Since it is a norm in fanfiction spaces not to give constructive criticism unless it's asked for. And so I wonder if a lot of people in that world who then become professionals really don't know how to deal with criticism and think it's the same as harassment. As someone who has been truly fearing-for-my-life, have-to-tell-my-employers-in-case-they-get-contacted harassed by fandom people, it's been bizarre some of the stuff I've seen people in fandom who haven't experienced that call "harassment," including people who I know have aspirations of professional writing, is just.... like they made an incendiary discourse post and tagged it, and are shocked when some people are reblogging to disagree! Or they wrote a deliberately "fuck-you" ending on a fic that was untagged, and then are acting like they're being "attacked" because some people are leaving some (very polite, like it's clear from the wording that they're trying to be as nice as possible) mildly critical comments about what they didn't like about or were surprised by in the ending. And in one case of the latter, claiming it "triggers them" and like.... yes, I get you can't help triggers, but you CAN help that if you know that strong disagreement directed your way upsets you that much, not writing something that you KNOW will and INTEND to upset people! (In this case, because you're thinking you're making some moral point about how "toxic" their ship is by writing a fic that presents them in a completely OOC way, and having them break up permanently at the end without tagging it as such)

--

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: "Rude, Red, and Royal"

Hello, everyone! Thank you all for your patience in waiting for this <3.

Time’s ‘a wastin’, so let’s dive right in. We open on the girls being escorted by the royal guards up to the palace which, as I said in my last recap, is in no way dependent on Ruby giving up Penny’s sword. They could have simply been ‘captured’ for the crime of denying His Highness a new birthday present and then, as Ruby does in a few minutes, weasel out a game by asking to cheer him up in recompense. The sword is superfluous to the plot, it doesn’t track that it exists in the Ever After, is only shakily compelling in its emotional impact on Ruby and, very soon, will literally be discarded. Though we had some genuinely good emotion last episode, what this could have been - should have been - is still far out of reach.

So they’re marching along and we get a shot of the palace as well as the... pieces? Monuments? Decorations? Embedded in the earth around them. I like the subtle nod towards a potential battle having taken place and the red stains against the white look - whether intentionally or not - like blood. It begs the question of what exactly occurred when Alyx visited. 

Yang: “Are we sure we should do this?”

Ruby: “Well, the Red King helped Alyx”

Weiss: “We’re not Alyx”

Real talk: I'm sick of team conversations consisting of the girls vaguely disagreeing with Ruby and then immediately bowing to her whim. This is, structurally, the same exchange we got in Volume 7 when Ruby decided to lie to Ironwood. Yang and Oscar go, ‘I'm not really happy with this :/’ Ruby reiterates her position, and then that’s it, everyone drops the subject. Why? Because Ruby is their leader? That doesn’t hold water anymore since Volume 8 gave us a Yang who’s upset with Ruby’s decisions and actively challenges her role as leader... at least until she’s suddenly, randomly worried about Blake instead. Now, we’re back to where we were in Volume 7 with Yang (and the others) only making token disagreements for Ruby to ignore. Why is everyone moving backwards in this show?

Never-mind that I actually agree with Ruby here. The girls have been shown plenty of evidence that they’re broadly repeating Alyx’s story, the fairy tale next depicts a King helping human girls lost in this world, and Weiss already tried - and failed - to just bypass all that and walk her way to the tree. Plus, it’s not like any of these guards pose a threat to the girls. You’re telling me they can beat the Ace Ops immediately after a major grimm battle, but we’re simultaneously supposed to believe that a bunch of foolish goons made of wood could take them out? So I legitimately don’t understand what Weiss and Yang’s hesitation is when all signs point to needing to do this, those signs imply a good outcome, they’ve failed to do anything else, and they are not - for them - in any real danger.

It honestly feels like RT is continually tossing in ‘disagreements’ so that they can claim the team still has diverse and rich relationships, but that only works if you ignore the realities of the situation and the fact that nothing ever comes of this division.

As they make their way the camera shows a bright blue butterfly following them. Given that this isn’t the last time we’ll see them, I can’t help but assume that the butterfly is another character (Alyx? Lewis?), or else is foreshadowing for someone with an association with butterflies. You know, like how we saw a crow a bunch of times when Qrow first showed up to fight Winter. Originally, I thought the butterfly was our Cat, but then the Cat just chases butterflies and tends to disappear rather than transform... so idk. We’ll see.

They arrive at the entrance to the palace and the guards start a big ta-do for His Majesty’s arrival. I'm not sure why the girls are freaking out? They’re supposedly oh so knowledgeable about fairy tales, this one in particular, they're going to see the King, but they don't realize that this is how the King is introduced? I can only assume this is an excuse to give us more absurd Weiss animations.

His Majesty arrives and, to the girls’ shock, he’s definitely not a King. He’s the Red Prince and the best thing I can say about him is that I really like the sound design. As a puppet, he clinks with every step and that consistency helps sell that this isn’t a human child. Other than that though? 

Oh my god he’s annoying. Like, he’s obviously supposed to be, but he’s annoying to the point where he’s not enjoyable to watch. I saw someone else compare him to Cordovin - an antagonist whose position and beliefs are immediately undermined because the narrative doesn't treat them seriously - but at least Cordovin was capable of holding a conversation without shrieking. Also, note that once again the girls’ conflict boils down to a joke. Why present them with a legitimately intimidating Prince they have to outwit when you can just give them a temper-tantruming child for the audience to laugh at, complete with snot bubbles?

The Prince doesn’t take kindly to them thinking he’s the King. “Well, I never! Coming to someone’s castle without even know who they are - and on my birthday!”

Eh, he’s kinda got a point lol.

As the Prince goes through his repertoire of screaming and jumping around, one of the guards angrily points out that “if it hadn’t been for your kind the King would still be here!” and everyone quickly shushes him.

Okay wait, so the girls are clearly recognizable as human then, right? I ask because that’s going to come as a huge shock to the Prince later in the episode, but here it’s treated as an obvious fact. How dare you be questioning the King’s disappearance when “your kind” are the ones who did away with him in the first place. So what are we supposed to take away from this? That this one guard is the only one to realize what the girls are and none of his buddies pick up on what he’s implied because they’re too busy keeping talk of the King quiet? That all these very obedient, desperate-to-please guards realize the girls are human and didn’t bother mentioning that to their Prince? 

That RT forgot this was supposed to be a Big Secret until the end of the episode and gave us a minor plot hole?

Regardless, Ruby curtseys to introduce herself and it’s cute enough to distract me. That's a nice shot.

The Prince continues to be annoying, to the point where I want to fast-forward through this scene, and Weiss whispers to Blake: “Ew. Did I use to be this unbearably pompous?” Weiss, I wish you were still unbearably pompous instead of unbearably ridiculous. Give me the Ice Queen over this goofy idiot any day. Still, I’m glad that she’s at least acknowledging her bad attitude from years ago, especially to Blake. It’s something... but not much. Again, this is primarily functioning as a moment of humor for the audience. We’re supposed to laugh at the Prince’s antics and Weiss’ unfounded worry - she was never that bad! Plus, the story doesn’t provide the time for an actual conversation. Like, say, Blake responding that no, you weren’t this annoying... you were just horrifically racist, which is worse.

I want everyone to remember that Weiss lost her inheritance and then deliberately escaped her abusive father. She returned to her Kingdom and was active in its destruction, leaving her without a home, without a title, and (to my ever-lasting frustration), no idea what happened to her own former ‘King,’ Jacques. She’s a princess without a throne, without a Kingdom, having spent years struggling with whether she’ll try to lead from that position of power and if so, how. What does it mean to rehabilitate the Schnee name? How does being a huntress and rejecting the 'crown' offered by her father (AKA being head of the company) accomplish that? Now she comes face-to-face with another entitled, bratty ruler who, on some level reminds her of her younger self...

... and we get a single, joke-y line about it.

If this Volume is meant to develop the characters, then actually let them develop. Next episode the girls will go through a literal seconds-long 'journey' that makes me go, "What was the point?" Each of these areas should have something that clearly ties into one of the girls' lifelong goals, acting as a sub-plot to Ruby's Volume-long depression. Visiting a palace with an annoying, abusive Prince is the PERFECT opportunity to let Weiss reflect on her own choices. Yet RWBY, as expected, has squandered it for more humor.

The guards take credit for finding Penny’s sword, despite Weiss’ protest, and present it to the eager, greedy Prince. However, he immediately kicks it away into the hedges because it’s green, not red. 

Okay, two things. One, as mentioned at the start of the recap I think this is a terrible way to (presumably) end Ruby’s journey with the sword - with the reminder that her 'journey' happened at the tail end of last episode and into the first five minutes of this one. To reiterate: what was the point of any of that? To show us that Ruby is sad about Penny? Yeah, we know that already. It’s bad enough that the story is trying to give her a grieving arc that should have happened at the end of Volume 3, but the best the story can do is tossing in a sword that shouldn't exist anymore, have Ruby immediately give it up to her enemies, and then leave it behind in the hedges somewhere, forever lost? I’m not saying the sword won’t show back up - I obviously have no idea what will occur throughout the rest of this Volume - but for now that’s a real bummer of an ending. Ruby runs to try and grab the sword and the guards block her way, so all she does is whisper, “How could you?” I don’t know, Ruby, maybe he did that because he’s a bratty, literal toy who has no idea why that hunk of aura is emotionally significant to you? The audience knows though, so how about you use that semblance of yours to fly around the guards and grab the sword? Or stay behind to snag it? Or endanger everyone by refusing to leave the palace grounds until you’ve found it because fuck everything that's a part of your friend!! Give us something to show that this last piece of Penny means something to you and that you’re willing to fight for it.

I mean, if I had lost a dear friend - twice! - and their weapon was the last reminder I had of them, and the only tether I currently had to my home, and the only means by which I had to defend myself with my scythe missing, I’d try a little harder to hold onto it. RIP to Ruby but I’m built different.

I actually really like that the Prince kicked the sword away because yeah, why would he want something green? And as established, he's a brat. But Ruby failed to do anything with that action and that remains oh so disappointing.

Also, second, why isn’t Ruby’s presence helping their cause? After all, Ruby is Little RED Riding Hood. The Prince might be mad that the sword is green, but shouldn’t he be pleased that one of the girls delivering it is dressed all in red? Take a look at this shot and how perfectly Ruby fits into the aesthetic of his Kingdom:

I kept expecting Ruby’s polite attitude and her overall look to be their key into securing a game. Or, more interestingly, for the Prince to decide that she will be his present instead: the sweet, young, ruby red girl who can play games with him forever and ever (maybe even with a Ruby who'd be tempted to stay because yes, that would be so much simpler...). Yet her coloring - a staple of RWBY's advertising, an in-world symbol of peace - has no influence whatsoever. It’s moments like that really undermine the arguments that such-and-such had to happen because this is the character’s inspiration. It clearly doesn’t have an impact the other 99% of the time, so why is that suddenly relevant? These girls are in a fairy tale, yet their own fairy tales have no bearing on how they navigate it.

For the crime of trying to present him with a green present, the two guards are taken out into the hedges and beheaded by their fellow soldiers. Now, at this point in the story it's unclear whether they've been killed (because they're clearly sentient beings), or if they're just, uh... disabled? (Because they're wooden toys that can probably lose their heads without actually dying.) Though now that I've written it like that, Option #2 doesn't sound much better, especially in a story that's supposedly exploring disability through one of our main characters. Regardless, the point is that even though the second half of our episode will clarify the guards' fate a bit - more on that later - for now the girls have a reaction like they've been killed. Or at least, they recognize that something truly awful has occurred.

So my question is this: why aren't they doing anything about it? Look, I realize that's a loaded question in the fandom given how often people want to run to the girls' defense - they're too tired, it's too dangerous, you can't possibly expect them to fix the whole world, etc. - but the fact remains that we are watching a story about heroes. So how can they just stand by and watch that happen? Or at least, given that they may not have been able to stop it, why aren't they trying to do something after the fact? Try to make a change? Ruby is grappling with the death of a friend and her own feelings of inadequacy. Weiss is, supposedly, worried about her own position as the heir to an abusive hierarchy. Yet neither of them is interested in doing something about the Prince, only playing nice so that he will help get them home. Is that the standard now? Our heroes will ignore the injustices they come across provided that this ignorance benefits them? That sounds a whole lot like Ironwood overlooking Mantle for his own greater good, something the girls went, 'We condemn wholeheartedly!' about. Toss in the fact that both Weiss and Yang just admitted that they didn't want to ask the Prince for help and you've got a recipe for them working to leave the Ever After in a better place than they arrived, rather than just playing by the harmful rules of Alyx's story in order to get what they want/need. 

Yes, you can make that 'greater good' claim given that they're trying to get back to fight Salem (and I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't weigh that given my own understanding of Ironwood's actions), but then at the very least give us a conversation where the girls debate the merits of risking a later/nonexistent return to help this world vs. ignoring injustice to help theirs. As it stands, I'm continually underwhelmed - if not outright appalled - by how the girls are depicted. What have they done since Volume 5 to actually help people? The most we've gotten is them trying to clean up messes they'd already made. Toss in the fact that there's no sense of urgency for them to get home - they're just meandering along, taking it slow, dodging the question of what they'll do about Salem when they get there, having cute romance moments on the side - and I simply can't buy that they're ignoring helping others out of a greater good necessity.

'Huntresses are heroes who help people who can't help themselves!' Blake will declare next episode and I'm like, okay, agreed... but when was the last time you helped someone? Was it when you ignored the Prince's horrible domain? Sat drinking tea while Atlas was besieged by grimm? Started a fight until you drew a Leviathan to an unsuspecting city? You've gotta put your actions behind those words, Blake.

And yeah, I get it. This is a small moment. It, like the vast majority of this Volume so far, is not meant to 100% be taken seriously. There's implied humor in the way the guards dig their nails into the path and beg for the Prince to reconsider. But at the end of the day, the story has given us a group of girls who, for the most part, already hate this Prince, watch him 'kill' two subjects due to a subpar birthday present, have a teammate who wants to be better than the caricature in front of her, and then... they do nothing with this. 

Hey, if Yang is going to be angry all the time, how about she be angry about this? Where's the fire they had back during the Mountain Glenn arc to fix the broken pieces of the world and help those who were most vulnerable? Where's the realization that this is a job and what they want - or even need - will always have to come second to the people they exist to protect?

Given some of the nice beats last episode, I was really hoping that I'd have more to praise in this one.

So Ruby watches this guy kick Penny's precious sword away and 'kill' two subjects. How does she react to that? By politely asking if they can cheer him up, of course. As said, I think Ruby is right that following in Alyx's footsteps is the best chance they've got of getting out of here (according to the information they currently have), but the writing really should have bypassed Yang and Weiss disagreeing if they wanted readers to ignore the moral implications of this. I mean, the Prince outright responds that "Beheading people does cheer me up" and Ruby's got this expression going as she suggests they play a game: 

We once again see the blue butterfly as it travels down through a tall tower of horns, straight into the chamber where the Prince's game is held. Oh, and we saw it before when the guard is distracted by it flying by and forgets to wish the Prince a happy birthday.

The Prince asks what Ruby will demand of him if she manages to win his game. "There's always a catch," he says. Actually, that's not true. Later the Prince will say, "If you win I will help you with what you ask," but initially his question is, "What exactly do you desire from me in exchange for playing my game?" As someone who loves fairy tales and constantly hopes RWBY is going to be more smartly written than it actually is, I jumped on that with an, "Ah ha! Rookie move, Prince! It doesn't matter now if you cheat to win the game, your original offer was to gift the girls something simply for playing, regardless of who comes out on top." Of course, RT didn't realize they'd written that loophole, this isn't even a cool world where loopholes matter, so absolutely nothing comes of this.

Still playing at the polite little subject, Ruby curtsey's again and tries a compliment: "Your Majesty, you are as wise as you are..." and then she stumbles, unsure of how to praise someone who's such an asshole. Little comes to the rescue - sort of - by whispering in Ruby's ear. She blurts "small" before she can think better of it.

To everyone's shock it goes over well with the Prince. I'm unsure if this is meant to imply that Little actually knew what the Prince would like to hear, or if they just chose a descriptor they were familiar with and ran with it. The latter seems a lot more likely to me, given the ongoing joke that Little is far less useful than they continually claim they are and the fact that, by their own admission, they’re an incredibly young mouse who has never traveled past their own acre. How in the world would they know about royal customs? 

Now in a better mood, the Prince agrees to take the girls to the tree if they win the game (not merely play with him). Ruby settles in and asks how they play, which sets off over-the-top laughter from the Prince and guards alike. I suppose this is just supposed to be off-putting or something? There’s no comment along the lines of, “You don’t know how to play [insert fantasy game here]? Everyone knows it! I play it with every subject who passes my way!” The Prince just starts explaining the rules, easy as you please. I can only chalk this moment up to the writers trying to get a, “They’re so weird and vaguely scary” reaction from the audience.

The actual rules are, frankly, unimportant. To the story, I mean. They have absolutely no bearing on who wins. Not just because the Prince is cheating from the get-go, but because the function of the game is to send all your pieces forward during the same turn and whichever piece wins their battle against the opposing side get to stay there. You could finish the game in two turns, tops--which is precisely what happens. Fool that I was, I had hoped that RT would put more thought into the game-battle that takes up the majority of the episode. You know, maybe hampering the girls’ combat abilities through a set of difficult rules they’re forced to follow, necessitating that Ruby step up as the team’s strategist for the first time in years and find a way to win through means other than brute force, even if the end result is still a technical loss due to cheating. I thought this might amount to something other than throwing 3/4ths of the team onto a battlefield with weak goons and letting them go to town, the trappings of rules and a game board and a puppet(tier) existing as more than just a distracting backdrop. Functionally, this is no different from the Prince angrily sending all his guards against Team RWBY, hoping to behead them for the crime of bringing him a green birthday present. We could have gotten this exact battle outside of the game, which makes the game itself superfluous. Which, you know, sucks when the girls are traversing a Wonderland-esque world where their ignorance should be their biggest weakness. But it turns out they’ve always been familiar with this fairy tale, Blake’s worry that they’re repeating Alxy’s mistakes is dismissed, and the girls don’t actually have to play the games they’re forced into. They can just punch things! 

Am I glad that we actually got some combat in the combat show this week? Absolutely. However, this has been one of the problems with Ever After from the start: designing a world governed by fairy tale logic, knowledge of stories, nonsense rules, contradictions... and then dropping a group of protagonists there who, as Yang herself says, would prefer to just solve everything with a punch. Suddenly, a core expectation of the series - that the girls will fight stuff - undermines the expectations of this specific Volume, made worse by the post-Volume 3 message that the war they fight isn’t winnable by brute force, yet, six years in, that’s all the girls have tried. As I believe I mentioned elsewhere, I think there’s a simple solution here in divvying up those expectations: force the girls to solve Ever After problems with Ever After tools, let them fight the Jabberwalker and Neo, and let them finally start the conversation about what they can do with Salem other than fight her head on... but unfortunately, none of this has occurred. Blake will later shut down Ruby’s Salem thoughts before they can begin, there’s no adherence to what Ever After is asking of them, and the girls won’t encounter the Jabberwalker again for another two episodes.

So we’re left with... this. Yang, Blake, and Weiss getting shrunk down when, narratively, that’s entirely unnecessary and the journey to get them unshrunk will take a fifth of the Volume’s entire runtime. I know we’ve already acknowledged that this Volume is filler, but given how much important stuff actually resides within that filler - discussing what happened in Volume 8, figuring out Salem, helping Ruby recover, mourning Penny, finding Crescent Rose, finding Jaune, dealing with Neo, etc. - it seems like a waste to be taking these detours when they’re so thematically unsatisfactory. Obviously in a story it’s about the journey, not the destination... but if the journey is badly written, how about we at least stop wandering from the main path so often?

Alright, enough of all that. I will say that I’m was quite pleased when the Prince revealed his ability to shrink the girls, displaying some pretty formidable magic. My first thought during the beheading scene was why the guards were obeying the Prince when, to all appearances at the time, he was just a bratty child with no way of enforcing his authority. I was afraid that this was just a case of, “They’re loyal because they’re guards and that’s just the way things are!” or that RT really hadn’t given this any thought; why hundreds of men-like beings with weapons were obeying a vulnerable child when, clearly, that wasn’t working out so well for them. Here though we see that the Prince is not vulnerable, he’s quite powerful, and that really helps to sell the fear we see permeating his Kingdom. 

Ruby is obviously concerned when her teammates are shrunk down to Little’s size, but honestly I can’t take her, “No one’s going to get hurt... right?” very seriously. Ruby is WAY past this kind of naive innocence. Girl, your friends are positioned alongside a bunch of beat-up warriors, facing a Prince who just beheaded two of his subjects. What do you think is going to happen here? More importantly, why are you worried? I’ve seen a couple of fans praise this moment because it highlights Ruby’s perspective post-Penny’s death: none of her friends are safe, anyone could die at any moment, etc. But Penny was facing off against a freaking Maiden, not a bunch of itty-bitty chess pieces with toothpick swords. (Here I point out their relative size because even if they’re now equal to WBY, Ruby is still large and could just flatten them all with one good stomp.) The point is that I’m continually unconvinced by this “So horror, much danger” characterization of the Ever After when we’ve spent the last three Volumes emphasizing how powerful, brilliant, strategic, and all-around perfect the girls supposedly are. We’re really supposed to believe that these literal pawns are worrisome to Ruby after they’ve faced down the likes of the Hound, the Ace Ops, Ironwood, Neo, Cinder, and their like? Imagine if Ruby saw a couple of Beowulfs 2/3rds of her team was about to fight, which to her were the size of mice, and she was all, “You won’t get hurt, right?” Ruby, those are literal MONSTERS out to EAT them, but that doesn’t matter because you’ve been taking out this kind of monster fodder since you were TWELVE. The show continually has it backwards, making the characters smug against legitimately powerful enemies and biting their nails over stuff they could squash in their sleep.

Which, you know, is precisely what happens. The girls have absolutely no difficulty taking out the chess pieces, further undermining Ruby’s worry.

Before that though she asks - very politely - for one of the pawns to move ahead a space, facing down the bigger, badder, meaner looking piece across from him. At first it looks like they’re pretty well-matched, but with a pointed look from the Prince, Ruby’s piece pretends to succumb to his wounds, collapsing until a magical stretcher appears to carry him away. He kicks back with a yawn, happy to be off the battlefield and, presumably, off His Majesty’s shit list.

Three other pieces meet the same end until Ruby gets to Weiss.

Ruby: “Weiss, do you think you could take that space?”

Weiss: “Have some faith!”

Again, I feel like the Volume is going for a total decimation of Ruby’s confidence, to the point where she’s entirely disengaged from reality (AKA, obviously Weiss can take out these talent-less pieces). Ruby can no longer summon up enough hope to fill a jar, she’s oh so worried that her elite team will fall to these grunts... but she’s also constantly telling people that yeah, they can handle this, and of course they’ll get back, and look now she’s acting like she always does with smiles and jokes - a part of the endless gags. There’s also no relief when Weiss does win her fight. I think Ruby’s smile is super cute there

but it doesn’t piggyback off of that worry at all. There’s no sigh and maybe a comment whispered to bring herself back to reality, “Come on, Ruby, of course Weiss was gonna win” - something to alert the viewer that Ruby is actually struggling with this kind of irrational anxiety and attempting to fight against it. As it stands, we keep seeing Ruby’s depression introduced and then it slips away again, unacknowledged until it randomly pops back up. “Have some faith!” Weiss says, which is clearly a callback to Ruby’s lack of it last episode, but nothing that happens either confirms or denies Ruby’s struggle. That shot of her smiling, while adorable, could have been taken from any moment where Weiss is being a badass. It’s entirely disconnected from the extreme of, “Omg can a full-fledged Huntress take out a toy in a fight what if another one of my teammates DIE?” Ruby has two completely separate personalities going this Volume and they don’t mesh at all.

The pawns are also super impressed with Weiss’ victory, same with Yang’s, and that feels... wrong to me? I mean, I’ve got nothing against a team that’s been beaten for who knows how long re-discovering faith (like Ruby) and rising to the occasion. (C'mon. I’m a Ted Lasso fan. I eat that shit up.) However, that’s not the conflict here. The conflict the white pieces are facing is not that they think they can’t win, it’s that they’re being told they can’t win. By the Prince. That was the entire point of the Look™ the white piece bowed to: Either you pretend to fall and deliberately lose this game, or I’ll ensure you suffer something so much worse.

Why then would the pieces suddenly rise to the occasion and try to help Team RWBY win? What have the girls done that convinces them to go against the Prince, risking who knows what - beheading, probably - in the process? Now, if I were writing Volume 9 I’d have had the girls trying and failing to save the guards, or at least arguing forcefully about whether they can risk losing a route to the tree in order to help others. Then, during the game, let Ruby realize not only that her pieces are deliberately losing, but that they’re doing so out of fear. Weiss and Yang’s success can be used as a rallying cry and a promise of safety. You help us win this game, securing our necessary prize, and we’ll use our incredible power to protect you from the Prince. The game dissolves into an actual battle, Team RWBY wins, the Cat arrives with an escape route, Ruby gathers up all the pieces using her semblance, and she sets them free once they escape the castle. Maybe they return at the end of the Volume to help in some final battle.

The point of this is not to do an actual re-write in 30 seconds, but rather to acknowledge that there’s no development here. We know the pieces’ initial motivation, but not what makes them change their minds. Really, this micro plot is representative of the entire show, with characters just suddenly doing things that make the audience go, “Wait, what? Where did that come from?” 

“Hey, hey, what about us?” The white chess pieces cry, suddenly eager to try and beat the Prince. “What do you want us to do?” This question shouldn’t even be on the table because you all are clearly terrified of what will happen if you fight for real and Team RWBY has done nothing to persuade you to their side. Indeed, once it’s revealed that the girls are human the red and white pieces start attacking them, the entire board eager to defend their Prince. This feels like a round robin Volume where every episode - every scene - has different characterizations.

As said though, Weiss, Blake, and Yang all take out their pieces easy-peasy and that produces some super cute interactions between the girls. My fluff-obsessed ass if kicking my feet and twirling my hair at those screenshots. At the time of this writing, I’m a couple episodes behind in Recaps (RIP I tried), which means that I’ve already experienced the less than stellar support Ruby receives in "The Parfait Predicament.” So I was pleased to return here and see strong moments of companionship - and romance. Yang works the crowd while Blake politely claps for her. In return, Yang cheers exuberantly while Blake blushes beet red. Putting aside that this is our bumblebee moment for the episode, I legitimately love that they’re supporting each other in this way, even during - perhaps especially during - such a comparatively easy fight. Combined with Weiss’ bow, it feels like they’re actually friends in this moment, playfully showing off for one another and providing unconditional support. This feels like old school RWBY, back when Ruby would cheer for Weiss during class, or Yang would bask in the Vacuo crowd. It was nice to see this dynamic again.

The Prince gets more and more frustrated as his pieces fall while simultaneously becoming suspicious of Ruby. Wanting to get to the tree is weird enough - especially to creatures who, as far as we’ve seen, never leave the safety of their own acres. Little who does not yet possess a purpose is the exception - so when Ruby reveals that they know someone who also used the tree to leave this world, the Prince really starts to lose it. He leaves the game table and... well...

Opinions about his character aside, are non-RWDE folks starting to see why we labeled Volume 8 Ironwood a “cartoon villain”? No, he doesn’t strike such an overblown pose like the Prince, but that kind of spotlight is (usually) used to showcase a drama worthy of ridicule - as we’re seeing here. RT obviously recognizes this, so the fact that Ironwood is given a similar spotlight to reveal his totally rational plan of bombing civilians heavily implies that the writers wanted him to look ridiculous; exaggerated to the point of dismissive humor. By the end of Volume 8 Ironwood was not a complex, fallen hero whose journey showcases RT’s writing chops, he was very close to another Prince: nonsensical, over-the-top, unworthy of respect not because of his actions, but because the environment is going out of its way to say, “Look how ridiculous this guy is.”

So in the grand scheme of RWBY the spotlight is a #choice. Within just this scene it’s fine, simply another way to show us how spoiled the Prince is and, potentially, that this world doesn’t follow the rules of Remnant (though it is harder to argue that the spotlight is real-real in a Volume making use of markers like sweatdrops, angry speech bubbles, etc.) The Prince finally asks the right question: “What type of creatures did you say you are again?”

Now, I get why some fans are upset with Ruby differentiating among humans, mice, and faunus. The line leaves a sour taste in my mouth too, if only because it severely undermines the allegory Blake represents in a Volume where she will (so far) compare herself to a literal cat three times. The point of giving the faunus animal traits and having others discriminate against them on the basis of that is to mirror the Civil Rights movement and, to a lesser extent, other minorities with visible differences. They’re all “human” in the sense of being bipedal primates with intelligence - emotional and logical - equal to others around them... they just happen to have an extra set of ears, or a tail, or the ability to change colors. It’s obvious why RT meant to equate that with the real life social issue of, “They’re human, they just happen to have dark skin,” or were born without a leg (disability), or can curl their tongue (a biological “talent” that not everyone shares). The point is that the faunus have been going, “We are your equals! We’re not a different, lesser species just because we have minor, biological and cultural differences!” the same way social justice movements have said the same about skin color. There’s such a variety within the definition of “humanity” as to make separate categories not just horrifically dangerous, but ultimately meaningless too.

However... RT doesn’t know how to write a racial allegory, which means that the faunus have been treated as a separate species from the get-go, in direct opposition to what their story is meant to represent. They’ve always been separated verbally like Ruby is doing now - “Humans and faunus” - and if you’ve engaged with RWBY’s supplemental content at all you’ll know that the faunus have a separate origin story, though one that does include humanity as a common ancestor.

It’s a mess of contradictions, but that means that Ruby canonically does have the wiggle room to make such statements. According to the rules of her world - generously helped along by being sci-fi fantasy - she is not in the wrong to describe Blake as a separate “creature” from the rest of her team... but that doesn’t erase the discomfort for the viewer as we go, ‘Wait? What happened to Blake being treated as an equal, not a literal animal and all that represents within her allegory?’

Of course, all this culminates in Ruby ignorantly admitting that the rest of them are human. I LOVE the first shot of the Cat’s eyes. They’re just like, ‘Oh, girl... you didn’t smh.’

Legit, there are so many fantastic shots this episode. The animators are working so hard, god bless.

As I mentioned earlier though, it’s weird to me that this moment is treated as a huge revelation for the Prince, especially since his entire guard seems to realize that they’re human from the get-go. Given what we learn later about Ascension, it makes sense that the Prince wouldn’t remember what humans look like, but none of his super loyal subjects were going to bring him up to date? Especially after what happened when Alyx visited?

So much of RWBY just feels unnecessarily contrived. Characters don’t react to the information they have, or work under their motivations, or remain consistent in their personalities. Things just #happen to move the plot along, regardless of how that sits within the story as a whole. At least it's all pretty this season.

But that’s hardly news to anyone reading this. Regardless, the revelation shocks the Prince and in his fury his face literally cracks down the middle. Frankly, I would have liked if this moment heralded a turn in the Prince’s attitude, moving from bratty and mostly harmless to terrifyingly cold... but that’s just me. I like characters that appear embarrassingly incompetent on the surface, only to reveal how dangerous they truly are when push comes to shove.

Weiss remembers that she can use her glyphs to steady herself - yay! - and a jazz-y soundtrack starts up that I really dig. All in all, I think this fight is solid. Nothing to write home about, but not a failure by any means, either. Though I fully expect the combat to get backloaded to the end of the Volume, it is notable that this is our only true battle so far. There’s a brief skirmish against the Jabberwalker in “The Parfait Predicament,” but to my mind it’s so short and easily won as to not really “count” - not in a combat-focused show, anyway. So this is the highlight battle of the first half of this Volume and though, as said, it’s by no means bad... it’s not exactly carrying the weight of those expectations either.

First, I stand by what I said earlier that it’s downright weird how Team RWBY treats these toys as a legitimate threat, especially after they just demonstrated how easily they are to beat. And again, Ruby could say screw the rules and help out by flattening them with her comparatively giant size. Blake gets thrown into the side of the game board and Ruby acts like she’s been stabbed--“You’re going to hurt them!” Ruby... honey... they have aura. You literally slammed your friends against a wall for FUNSIES during a food fight. The show (and the fandom) has always been weirdly unclear about which attacks are emotionally significant and which are not. These little nobodies shoving Blake is cause for great concern, but everyone should shrug off Qrow punching Oscar because duh, any huntsmen can take a hit. (Never mind that he wasn’t a huntsmen.) Yang losing her arm is a multi-Volume tragedy, but Weiss nearly dying from a stab wound isn’t worth a second mention. I feel like every scene I’m trying to find my bearings again - is this supposed to be a moment when the girls are legitimately scared? Confidently smug in their skills? Why is there not an obvious difference between when we get one over the other?

I’m not buying into the stakes here, is my point, which means that Ruby’s moment of doubt really fails to land. Yeah, I get that she lacks hope right now and is likely working under a very warped perception of their strength post-Fall of Atlas, but why not have her briefly crumble against something that truly tests her, either in skills or via trauma: the Prince’s magic, the Jabberwalker, Neo? A mere three episodes into the Volume, against a collection of low level grunts, does not feel like the time to put Ruby in this state:

Plus, it doesn’t last. Volume 9 continually proves to be very good at introducing Ruby’s hopelessness, but not doing anything with it. What’s the point if, literal seconds after she’s given up, she rediscovers her faith - WITHOUT EXTERNAL HELP! - and yells that they’re going to “Kick their wooden butts!!” Ruby doesn’t lack the hope to fill a jar, her hope supply is just fluctuating radically, depending on when the show is sick of her being a downer. This doesn’t feel like Ruby on an arc, it feels like Ruby continually edging into one and them immediately getting yanked backwards.

That aside, there are definitely some high points to the fight. It has a good flow to it, especially in the second half. It makes complete sense that the whole board would turn against the girls once they learn that they’re human, red teaming up with white, and I suppose that helps sell the danger a little more. I enjoyed how happy Yang was at the start, using Blake’s ribbon to plough through the crowd like one of the old-school team fights, even if she’s unexpectedly angry just a second later.

I’ve come across a lot of criticism of Weiss’ wing shot and... yeah, I can see where that’s coming from. It’s in pretty bad taste to keep giving the racist billionaire’s daughter angel imagery, especially during a Volume when she’s supposedly grappling with the guilt of destroying a Kingdom. RWBY has never been any good at picking up on the implications of its “cool” style. That being said, it is an awesome shot and I love the Yang was able to make use of the Knight’s sword. I mean, it would have been even cooler if we had scenes devoted to the girls’ training/character development and they’d discovered that this was even possible before enacting it with full confidence during a fight... but again, still cool. It’s another nice not provided you don’t think about it too much.

Also, I had to laugh at that epic image transitioning to Ruby, showing us just how tiny Yang actually is...

Yeah, that undermines the awesomeness a bit lol.

We’re given the shot from our trailer as the Prince looses his temper and does what I wanted Ruby to do the moment she was supposedly frantic over the safety of her team: upset the game board. Blake, Weiss, and Yang are thrown across the room and Ruby activates her semblance, catching them right before they go over the ledge.

...

.......

OH, SO YOU CAN INSTANTLY KICK-START THAT ABILITY AND SNAG SOMEONE MOMENTS BEFORE THEY PLUNGE TO THEIR DEATH. FUNNY, THAT.

Okay, obviously there are differences between Yang’s fall and this one, including that a) Little helps Ruby out and b) on the bridge Ruby would have been trying to snag a fully grown woman. But I’m not here to debate the details. I’m not here to quibble over whether Ruby would have been able to save Yang. I only care that she (and the others) didn’t try. The fandom has bent over backwards to explain that moment, how all these fighters with various forms of flight and well-honed instincts just stood there, leaving only Blake to make the attempt. Fans are so desperate to praise RWBY that they’re consistently overlooking the simple explanation of bad writing: RT made the characters stupid so that Yang could “die” and there could be a bees moment as a result. That’s it. Now that there’s nothing attached to the outcome, Ruby is free to remember that she has super-speed and grabs her friends like she always should have.

Man, what a detail to include just a few episodes later...

The Curious Cat finally reveals themselves, distracting the Prince with some ambiguously authentic sympathy. It’s just so sad that he’s failing to do “the one thing you were put on this acre to do.” AKA, win games. They warn the Prince that beheading Team RWBY would be a far more permanent consequence than taking the heads of his soldiers - implying that the guards are “fine” but, again, Team RWBY couldn’t have known that when they were being “killed” - and they slip a little bit of themselves into the Prince’s chest, helping him to calm down.

The Prince dissolves into crying instead of screaming and... weeps jeweled tears? I don’t understand how that fits his aesthetic - what does that have to do with being a wooden toy? - but far more importantly, Yukina did it better:

Ruby takes the Cat’s advice and high-tails it out of there, getting chased by the guards all the while. The castle is a bit labyrinth-like, so she has no choice but to trust the Cat’s directions - which turn out to be sound. That’s potentially an important thing to keep in mind as the Volume continues and we learn more about the Cat’s personality and motivations.

“I don’t know how that went so wrong,” Ruby says when they finally have a moment to breathe. Really? You met a temper-tanruming toy that beheaded his guards and threw Penny’s sword away without a second thought, but you’re surprised that he wasn’t eager to help you after you beat him at this own game? I get that they’re going for a ‘Ruby is vulnerable and tentative in her depression’ vibe, but these moments read so strangely after her hubris of Volumes 6-8, to say nothing of her experience in the wider, morally gray world. Ruby doesn’t trust established allies, but is surprised when an asshole who owes her nothing doesn’t come through? Consistency, consistency, my kingdom for some consistency.

I do like that Ruby thanks the Cat for their assistance though. This episode is the most polite we’ve seen Ruby in years, even if part of it is a manipulation tactic to get on the Prince’s good side, and honestly I’m digging it. This feels like a kindhearted huntress who understands the importance of unifying to succeed. Not, you know, the Ruby we saw with Cordovin, Qrow, Ozpin, Ironwood, and the Ace Ops.

As a minor point, I’d like to note that throughout this whole escape Little has been completely quiet about the Cat’s appearance. They were awake to help catch the girls and the Cat showed up just seconds later. They then flee through the castle and have a conversation in the hallways, yet not once does Little react to a Cat getting up in their face.

This is notable only because at the very end of the episode we’re going to get another, “Cat? What cat??” joke, because heaven forbid we let Ruby sit with their failure for a moment without interrupting it with a bit of humor that doesn’t even track.

Finally outside, the girls realize that getting a Prince instead of a King and his lack of help means that they’re not really following Alyx’s story. Weiss complains that they’re in the “stupid sequel” instead. Despite this revelation, the next thing Blake notes is that Alyx met the Curious Cat... so they should get their help!

So which is it? Are you following the story or not? I’ve got nothing against the girls still heading for the tree because that’s the only lead they’ve got, but we just established that an assumed ally is actually quite dangerous, so why would the Cat be any different? Again, not saying they shouldn't ask for their help given that the only other option is wandering aimlessly towards the tree (and that's if the world let's them go any farther), but maybe at least acknowledge the problem here?

I'd chalk it up to a "Wonderland-esque worlds are inherently contradictory" vibe if I actually thought RT was deliberately going for that.

We end this episode with the return of the Jabberwalker. It runs across an ~evil~ looking acre--kinda similar to Salem's continent, actually. Will we establish a historical tether between Remnant and Ever After?--and it leaves a trail of blood on a group of razor-sharp leaves, which is a cool detail. It comes across Neo, presumably having just arrived, cycling through various illusions in her fury. As the Jabberwalker closes in Neo's semblance...

*Sigh*

It evolves.

Look, outside of RWBY's larger context having Neo power up post-Fall of Atlas is a good choice. She's certainly at her lowest here, not just lost in a new world, but having just been betrayed by Cinder (again). Plus, it raises the stakes for when our heroes next meet her. No, my issue is that RWBY's semblance upgrades as a whole are fairly random and we've long lost the ability to distinguish a true evolution from incremental change due to growth. Harriet simply announced in Volume 7 that Ruby's semblance has hidden depths, but is splitting into three red blurs the upgrade? Is Nora handling that level of charge meant to be indicative of a change, or did she simply push herself to an already known limit? On the surface it seems obvious that an evolution is when the actual function of the semblance changes - Ren can now mask emotions and track them - but we've still got wrinkles like Weiss' semblance where, apparently, learning to summon instead of just producing glyphs isn't a distinct, evolved ability, it's just the standard end-goal. (And don't get me started on how she remains the only one with an inherited semblance, but no one seems interested in that.) Are we supposed to understand that Qrow's semblance changed on the airship when the bomb didn't drop? How do we measure Blake's abilities when she's stopped using them? I can't help but continually compare RWBY to other shows with power ups, ones where the characters have to work hard to unlock them, train anew to control them, deal with significant downsides that come with this power, or go through horrific emotional arcs in order to unlock them. RWBY- with the small exception of Neo for the last one- has none of this. Evolution simply happens, unprompted, the character can immediately use this new skill perfectly, and unfortunately it's rarely a strong reflection of their growth.

Ren can magically track his friend smack dab in the arc where he's supposedly being the worst friend ever? Right.

So Neo's semblance evolves, make of that what you will. Rather than simply changing herself or something she's touched with illusions, she can now create a large number of copies with (as we'll see later) their own morphing abilities. Wow, wow, wow, that's super op!!! I can't wait to see Neo fall to some generic Team RWBY attack.

I'm kidding. Actually I'm not, but I do hope I'm wrong 🤦‍♀️

For now though there's only the Jabberwalker in her way. Neo's clones close in as the Jabberwalker screams "No!" in true fear. Kudos to the voice acting there. This creature remains one of the few things I'm legitimately interested in this Volume.

And thus ends episode three! In lieu of flowers, please send prayers that I can eventually catch up on this project :3

[kingprinceleo]

BET YOU DIDN'T EXPECT ME SO SOON

I did the dessert vampires playlist first since it was the shortest!

Stampede- very good interplay with the characters. Gives the vibe of I respect you but we fundamentally disagree on some big issues. Would be fun to play in the background of like a joint operation scheme? like they've gone undercover at a fancy party and this is them working together during it

Vulture- this is such a Shadow backstory song like- i don't know exactly what happens with GUN and Maria in this au but THIS is the song you play to express his feelings. The first verse at least low-key also sounds like Knuckles during or immediately post transformation to Rouge. He's very angy

Welcome to the Circus- a jaunty little tune. bar/saloon coded, probably plays wherever Amy works i think?

Recommend songs for this playlist: Desperado by Rhianna and maybe the entire Anti album based on vibes alone.

Blood Like Lemonade- strong vibes

Trouble Valerie Broussard- more Rouge centric i think

For other playlists:

Like a Vampire Catrien Maxwell, for vamp au Sonic

A Little Wicked - im thinking of Rouge for it but if it fits a different character i wouldn't be surprised

Little Girl Gone Chinchilla - very vamp au Shadow coded imo

Eve Precious Pepala- Shadow coded

All up in your mind- feels like Shadow thinking about Sonic's effect on him in vamp au

Hope these are good and have a nice timezone 🫶🏽. I go to sleep now

~🩸🎵

welcome back fhbghbjfdfdg !!

This playlist is a little more tough to explain bc i havent shared the major plotpoint that changes the whole title of the au fjgfjghf, but ill get there eventually !! Stampede- idrk know how to explain this one beyond its just Them, their conflicts their compromises, how the two are trying to work together in the situation theyre in, big time agree on the respect with huge disagreements tho, thats one of their major sticking points Vulture- RAHHHHHHH THIS IS IS KNUCKLES @ SHADOW !!!!! the entire time its knuckles rage and defiance !!! and im slamming my head into a wall so fucking hard i prommy it makes so much sense when i share the plot Welcome to the circus- its a rouge @ knuckles song ! like i said the subject itself is kinda weak but it hits on some of their core dynamic pieces --- Desperado- this one i could see being very rouge @ shadow but its a bit too forward and honest ! rouge would defo more take the angle of "im following you bc ur hopeless without me <3" Blood Like Lemonade- strong vibes on its own but doesnt particularly fit with anyone at least right now, i might come back to it after fleshing more people out (also i am sadly biased against songs that are kinda slow sob. i need that constant stimulation music {i almost didnt include vulture in the playlist bc of its speed but it was just too accurate and picks up with some heavy hitting stuff near the end}) Trouble- very correct w the rouge part !! defo eying this one up in consideration

---

Like a Vampire- defo not vampire au sonic , it actually lines up more with desert vampires rouge (i adore the singers voice btw omg) idk if its going in any of the au playlists but it sure is going in mine ! dfhhdfhg A little wicked- shrug tbh ! i see it for rouge but it feels like its missing something, her spunk, her 4kids saxaphone (im assuming if you dont specify an au you just mean for the canon gamers !) Little Girl Gone- THIS IS SO VAMPIRE AU SHADOWCORE LITTLE UNHINGED BASTARD !!! the blood on my teeth line caught my attention....and then the screaming part sold me HDSHDHF hes sooo silly <333

Eve- im so sorry im really biased against love songs so i dont see it personally !! esp not for shadow </3 All up in your mind- eeh there are a few lines there that work, but overall just misses slightly. big fan of the idea that shadows just making up all those lines tho and sonics never said any of it, thats funny fdgjfjdgfg i feel bad for not enjoying all of them wahh, but i am just really picky tbh,,, its gotta bounce the braincell right... but i appreciate the suggestions sm!!!! tyyy!! have a good sleep !!!

[ca-suffit]

same anon… thank you for your response, i take your point and don’t rly disagree with what you’re saying… the nuclear family analogy is definitely there and i think bc of the time period they were somewhat boxed into this heteronormative dynamic but i still see shades of like a mother/daughter dynamic with lestat and claudia (he “made” her for example, baby traps louis in the book which is seen as a more feminine thing, kind of gives strict helicopter mom to louis’ more “chill dad” vibe) and i don’t see why those interpretations can’t coexist and why that reading automatically “masculinises” louis. there is definitely an issue w this fandom hypermasculinising louis/black men and i would definitely never consider louis to be “the man” in the relationship or whatever. it’s the same with top/bottom discourse when in reality i don’t think it’s that binary. but tbh what i mostly don’t like is when people get into the territory of “lestat weaponises femininity” or arguments that his feminine traits are inauthentic/a facade to conceal his real self being a patriarchal abuser. it feels very terfy and icky considering his misogyny/toxic masculinity is learned but his queerness/femininity is genuine

(context)

I'm glad I didn't scare u off! so much of this fandom (and prbly in general) ppl leave if there's any disagreement in opinions. they only want an echo chamber. it's pointless. idgi. anyway tho.

I kind of got lost whether ur talking about the show or book at a point. between them all tho, I do agree there's multiple interpretations in ways, especially if ur going across *all* of the versions. if it wasn't so antiblack here, we could prbly more easily talk about a lot of things more openly. when ppl shut down one discussion then it puts everyone on edge and we can't talk about much of *anything* else bcuz we aren't even addressing the main thing yet. a lot of this show's fandom issues are that white gays takeover every conversation and aren't interested in hearing about any racial aspects at all, even tho the main character of the show is a BLACK gay man. all ppl want to talk about is lestat and how louis should just listen to him and stop being so "mean" and on and on. it's prbly gonna be insufferable for S3 but I'm trying to avoid thinking about that lol.

"what i mostly don’t like is when people get into the territory of “lestat weaponises femininity” or arguments that his feminine traits are inauthentic/a facade to conceal his real self being a patriarchal abuser. it feels very terfy and icky considering his misogyny/toxic masculinity is learned but his queerness/femininity is genuine"

what the fuck?? well, I do know this fandom has sides to it that are v "phobic" to all of the LGBT community. tbh anne rice's writing about gay men isn't as progressive as ppl think either, so it's rly not surprising some of her fans are fucked up about it. I forget a lot that she wasn't a huge conservative bcuz her writing makes her sound like one sometimes.

but anyway. ppl need to learn all the ways that literally everyone can be a shitty person and for what reasons too. there's rampant abuse and racism in the LGBT community too, from any identity. there's no way to spot an abuser and say "these are the traits of an abuser and these are traits of a victim." lestat is never shown using any of this stuff to avoid accountability for his harmful shit...or weaponizing it?? I haven't seen these posts so idk what exactly they're saying, but based on what u wrote. tbh, as u said, it sounds like ppl just wanted a way to be homophobic and/or transphobic in a dog whistle way. this fandom *loves* doing that shit.

[suffersinfandom]

I was going to make some embarrassing, fluffy New Year post about how grateful I am for OFMD and this fandom and how cool it is to be here and participating for the first time ever (I mean, I made some goofy meme edits for BSG and Star Wars, but I sure as heck wasn’t brave enough to share actual thoughts). I was going to type about how awesome and smart and funny so many of the people I follow here are and how much I love all of the meta and art and fanfic, and I was going to go on about how important OFMD is to me and how much it’s brightened up my life.

But then I logged on and remembered how flawed this fandom is, too. It makes me sad to see all of the insults and personal attacks in a fandom that is -- or at least claims to be -- more queer and more accepting and more invested in kindness and goodness than any other I’ve come across. 

There’s the block button, I know (believe me, I use it every time I come across someone who goes on about how abusive Ed is because I absolutely won’t entertain that), but the hostility runs deep and blocking alone isn’t fixing anything. People act like the mere existence of interpretations that contradict their own are direct attacks on their character, and they retaliate by calling people idiots with zero reading comprehension and abuse apologists and cruel sadists who wouldn’t know suffering if it bit them on the dick and so on. It’s not enough to disagree; we have to tear people down and insult them and make everyone angrier by showing our followers strawman arguments being tossed around by ~the other side~. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely abhorrent takes that demonstrate, at best, ignorance on the part of the person making it. We should call those out! 

Idk, I just wish we could have discussions and disagreements without attacking actual human people. Like, I love it when people engage with things they don’t agree with in good faith and pick apart arguments and make new points. I even love passive-aggressive indirect responses to bad takes. Those can be very fun and, tbh, it’s not a fandom without a little pettiness, as a treat.

But it sucks to scroll around and see people in your fandom throwing out very personal insults and attacking others for interpreting things differently or thinking a fake guy is a piece of shit, y’know? I want better for us. We deserve better. 

Also, just to be clear, this isn’t in response to anything specific, okay? I was just generally set off when I scrolled through the OFMD tag today and saw yet another “well, if you don’t see things the way I do, you’re a stupid piece of shit who loves abuse” post from someone I hadn’t gotten around to blocking yet. Not to get personal, but as someone who was regularly called an abusive, stupid piece of shit by someone who was genuinely abusing me when I had the nerve to challenge them, that kind of thing can be legit triggering if it hits at the wrong time.

Also also: I do feel all of those things that I mentioned in the first paragraph! I’m so grateful for OFMD and the fans of it! There are so many brilliant and talented people around here, and I know I wouldn’t be as bummed about the unsavory parts of OFMD fandom if I didn’t love it so much as a whole. 

[longeyelashedtragedy]

How would you describe Frank's relationships at home with his family even though he seems to be so messed up and lost in his mind. Do you think his kids probably notice it(a factor could be that his older kids (taking account that their mum is his ex) don't spend as much time with him anymore looking at social media.

Another question is where do you think it went wrong for Frank with his relationship between him and his ex?

Sorry for the specific questions but I just wanted to hear a different point of view as I'm doing research for a fic 😅

Thank you and I love your writing btw!!!!

great question!

i have to say, i hope this part isn't projection because i am so weak for a footballer being a Good Dad, but from what i've seen (and i might have read him saying something to this effect, though not in these therapy language words) he made a conscious effort to Break the Cycle with his daughters and not be a complete controlling dick like his dad. i don't think we know anything at all about him + his younger kids (except for, where the fuck did they get curly hair from lol) so i'm talking about the older girls.

it's interesting, because my dad had an actual abusive and cheating father, and before my dad had kids he said he hoped he only had girls because he would have no clue how to teach a boy to be a Man and would probably fuck it up. luckily, he has two "daughters" so that worked out for him, and he's an amazing dad. i wonder if frank was the same, it could be?

as for the girls i don't know if they just are older with their own lives and don't want to be pictured online anymore, and he respects their privacy, or what. he does reference them in the diary of a ceo interview if you have watched it (if you haven't, and you're writing a fic, i totally recommend it--the two hours fly by i swear)--that now they're at high school graduation age and he's been giving them advice about the future and sometimes they have Disagreements where he agrees to disagree (i bet they're about politics lmao). it also could be that he's sort of depressing to be around right now? like, on instagram JT and Jody Morris and that crowd are always hanging out and playing golf and going to chelsea games and shit and frank is never there which makes me feel he's sitting around in a depression cave lmao.

as for the home life in general it's hard to know but the shit he and christine used to say about each other was cringeeeee. these days they just seem like they're kind of quiet and mind their own business and other than all their money they seem kind of normal? like "dad complaining about women Shopping all the time and facebook wine mom" vibes instead of nouveau rich celebs vibes.

elen! that's an interesting one. i'm not a fan of their relationship. like i feel like he and christine make sense as a couple/(marriage of convenience)in a sense but he and elen didn't make sense to me as a couple. if you read the parts about her in his book idk they're just...weird feeling? it had a very Wow a Hot Spanish Model is Interested in Me??!?!?!?!?! vibe to it and it was sweet i guess but weird. i can't see this dude being married to elen at all really. i think, and i actually think he says this in diary of a ceo as well, it really went wrong when his mom died :( as he said he spent the next year in a complete numb freeze state, was full of random anger, trying to repress his emotions etc, and many things suffered from that including his relationship. i think that could break a relationship up easily, especially if maybe it wasn't that solid to begin with?

(**it's VERY interesting that with both of the Ladies frank had insanely long periods of being...together but Not Married...HMMMM)

these are just my thoughts--let me know if you have any other Discussion Topics, omg. and i'm very curious about this fic 👀

[maimaiapologist]

🍙👁️💴🔧❔

TYSM for asking <3 idk if i've said it before but i'm still doing a playthrough with sal, so i'm still figuring out how tf her canon turns out. also, spoilers beware. (questions taken from here)

🍙 - Goro Takemura: When he and Sal truly get to know each other, after he drags her out of the landfill and literally saves her life, she can't help but empathize with Takemura. Both are strangers in a strange land, fish out of water who despise Night City and know that this isn't the place they're meant to be. However, his allegiance to Arasaka and insistence of still aligning with them even when Sal tells him that he has the chance of starting over and making a life outside of corporate servitude is something that ends up driving a rift between them and souring their relationship. In my canon, he ends up escaping Arasaka forces during Search and Destroy while Sal is the one who gets captured, and shit happens from there. I still haven't figured out his canon fate, but knowing who Sal ends up dating and the corporation's fate, I don't think that things go peachy for Goro. (Goro stans don't kill me pls)

👁 - Sandayu Oda: Besides a couple of snarky comments about his appearance and very impractical haircut that almost got her ass beaten, their relationship is… tense. Oda is loyal to Hanako to a T, and when some dusty nomad not only kidnaps her but also starts dating her disaster of a brother (while it's not elaborated on canon, I think Oda and Yorinobu would probably not get along very well) AND has the nerve to beat him in a fight, you can probably imagine how they feel about each other. At first, Sal is also low-key scared of him (those icy blue optics will always look uncanny to her and the mantis blades don't help), but she quickly realizes that he's just an annoying twink (her words, not mine).

💴- Hanako Arasaka: As it should be obvious, kidnapping your (future) sister-in-law doesn’t leave a good first impression (who would’ve thought?). Honestly, I still need to work on their relationship a lot, because, again, canon is still a WIP: while I don’t see Hanako as much of a rebel as her brother, Yorinobu still loves her, so I don’t feel like her fate would be the same as the other canon endings that aren’t the Devil (aka she ends up dead). But what I do know is that her icy, perfect, manicured facade lowkey scares Sal the first time they meet face-to-face and still does (she either feels like Hanako is judging her, plotting her demise, or both); but that if they ever get to know each other more deeply, they quickly get along and Sal ends up glad to have her as her in-law. Their fave pasttime is watching Real Housewives of Heywood and talking shit about the cast.

🔧- Saul Bright: Sal’s feelings towards him are… complicated. During their first meetings, she thinks he’s a stuck up asshole who wants to impose his own will on the clan, which is a big no-no to her. However, during Riders on the Storm, after she and Panam almost die trying to rescue him, Sal softens up and understands him a little bit more (after all, if Panam is willing to raid an entire Wraith camp to get him back despite their disagreements, he must mean a lot to the Aldecaldos). Sal does eventually side with Panam in her quest to royally piss off Saul get the Basilisk, but she still respects Saul even though she disagrees with him.

❔- Receiver/Sender’s Choice! (If there’s someone not on the list!): Let's talk about Claire! Two trans ladies who love cars obviously make for a long-lasting friendships despite Sal's extremely bad and dangerous driving (and Claire still wondering how the hell they even made it into the final race). After the Sampson incident, the two have a big fight where a lot of personal feelings are involved and end up not speaking to each other for a while; when Claire finally calls Sal back, Relic fuckery has gotten worse and the two don't truly reunite after the game's ending.

[evansbby]

This is an odd question but what’s your take on blocking? I have a kind of more complicated opinion on it because social anxiety, but hear me out lol. I completely understand that anyone can block anyone at anytime and should be able to do so. I’m not debating at all anyone’s ability to block. But I do think there should also be room for someone to feel sad about being blocked especially when they don’t know what exactly it was that they/didn’t do anything blatantly wrong. I think there are some people who interact with people in full-blown fights and don’t block them, but then see something from someone else that for some reason slightly throws them off and it’s an instant block. Which again, fine, but I feel that these same people wouldn’t want someone to do that exact action to them (if that makes sense). There’s also the component of making a friend on here and then one day they just block you for seemingly no reason. I think it’s tied in with the whole culture of ghosting and the normalization of just cutting anyone out of your life for the smallest of reasons. Idk, just as someone who feels emotions that cut to the bone, it has taken me a very long time to pull myself out of the automatic response of self-loathing whenever someone gets upset with me online or an online friendship goes sour. It hasn’t even happened to me often, but it haunted me for years. I would pour over how I acted and go into anxious spirals thinking I was the worst person and that’s why this person blocked me, when I knew they didn’t do it for any actual reason, just they had their own issues to work through and it resulted in that. I admire the ability of some on here to have polite conversations, even when there’s a disagreement. Makes the online world feel a little less terrifying when people are kind in that manner.

Oh I totally get you! I’ve been on this site for so long and on my old blog, people would be reblogging my gifsets but they’d have be blocked? At first I’d be like wtf I didn’t even do anything, I don’t even KNOW this person but soon I learnt not to take it personally. Everyone has the right to curate their experience exactly how they want it online. Not everyone will agree with your opinions and that’s okay! Sometimes you’re not gonna understand why someone has you blocked but at the end of the day it honestly doesn’t matter? Like, I get being hurt by it bc I used to get hurt by it as well but I’ve detached for it now. I kind of see it as a funny thing.

Also, I think it’s a real sign of humbleness and humility to be able to have a convo with someone when you disagree with them and both parties remain amicable. Specially when attacking culture is so rampant and everyone is so angry. I used to be super angry about every single issue when I was younger and I’d argue with anyone and everyone online. I’d even argue with my friends if they didn’t agree with every single one of my opinions. But you grow out of that, I feel. At least I did. I go by this mantra to only pick and choose what to be angry at, and with that outlook it’s so easy to just be able to sit back and be like “you know what, I’m not gonna be angry about this bc there’s so many things in life I could be angry about and waste my energy on, and this doesn’t rank that highly.” Idk, I’m just rambling now but yeah