#im gonna hit the hornets nest on this one and actually put it in the tags

[akalikai]

TMAGP EP 20 REACTION (SPOILERS)

Firstly before I even START, it's called social stigma. PLEASE tell me it's not another social influencer one I'm begging you I cannot take another laughing fit like ep 16.

Also wait the dedication is so me

WAIT ALICE CAME AS WELL??? ALSO HELLO SAMALICELIA PROTOCULE

Alice. Did you really talk him OUT of it??? Because lats I remember, Colin slammed the door in your face.

"It's more about who killed the Magnus Institute" DAMN

Okay I did kind of suspect that the OIAR had a hand in destroying the institute. But like also Alice knows a bit too much about Starkwell. Something you wanna tell us, honey?

SAM'S TALKING ABOUT THE PROTOCOL HOLY SHIT.

Alice babygirl. The things you are saying seem like you're actually inadvertedly conforming all of Sam's suspicions. Like are you saying there IS a government conspiracy???

Okay I love Alice but she's starting to take the s1 Jon route where she refuses to believe things are supernatural or suspicious to the the point where it actually makes LESS sense. Someone is gonna get hurt because of that. And if it's Sam, Alice is going to be in a WHOLE different world of guilt.

DID JON SEND SAM THE EMAIL ABOUT THE STARKWALL 1999 REPORTS???

Alice sweetie you have a point but being so...Dismissive of it when there's CLEARLY something was just not the way. Sam is obviously the kind of person who will keep digging unless you directly tell him the truth.

"We already know we work in a global atrocity factory. It's called the British Government" God Alice I love you

Alice's hatred for England fucking SENDS me I love this woman

I get where Alice is coming from like she's right unfortunately. But I think she's very much blocking out the supernatural part of it and seeing it more as a conspiracy theory than something. Yknow. Horror-y

CELIA IS DEFINITELY FROM THE TMA-VERSE HOLY SHIT BECAUSE IF SHE KNOWS WHAT THE INSTITUTE CAUSED IN TMA-VERSE, NO WONDER SHE THINKS IT WASNT THE WRONG IDEA TO DESTROY IT.

"Catastrophic, world-ending" HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT YEAH THATS BASICALLY CONFIRMATION. BECAUSE THE WORLD DID END. THE APOCALYPSE HAPPENED.

Oh Alice...this is going to drive such a wedge between Alice and Sam. I think the funniest thing is that Alice is absolutely not going to be able to stay away from the "hornet's nest", as she puts it.

At least Sam has Celia on his side, I guess?

OH MY GOD WE MET INK5OUL IM ABOUT TO FUCKING LOSE IT.

Ink5oul is giving Jude Perry why are they annoyingly hot

"Shame. You've got lovely skin" Ooooo Gwen is the hot tattoo artist hitting on youuuu

FUCK WHY ARE THEY SO HOT

Oh???? Hello wait what???? Does Ink5oul. Not know what they are???

OH NO DONT DO THIS TO ME I INK5OUL ABOUT TO GET BLORBOFIED. BECAUSE I WILL TAKE IT OF COURSE BUT THIS WAS NOT WHAT I WAS EXPECTING

Ink5oul is self-aware??? Oh God could they get sexier???

Something something addiction to being seeing or being known is so much the opposite of The Eye which is the fear of being seen or being known.

"Tattooed Prince Albert's cock or something" WHAT

Does this count as stealing designs??? Because the og artists is long dead but Ink5oul never says they referenced his work. It's important to me as an artist SO

OKAY SO Ink5oul's tattoos are like...Predictive? Like whatever they tattoo will most probably lead to the person's method of death?

The pipeline of small influencer to...whatever the fuck Ink5oul became

"The ink flows through me" BENDY IS THAT YOU AND YOUR INK MACHINE????

Hmmm so Ink5oul slowly became an external but rly without even their knowledge. Is this them becoming less human??

"Thats...very eloquent" GWEN GIRL WHAT DO YOU EVEN MEAN

Gwen you chose the WRONG PERSON to bite back against girl WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF

GWEN YOU IDIOT YOU'RE LITERALLY JUST AS BAD AS JON WHY DO YOU PISS OFF THINGS THAT CAN KILL YOU literally this reminds me of Jon yelling at Not-Sasha to shut up in ep 79 of TMA.

Hmmm wait okay so Sam actually heard the first Ink5oul case in episode 2, so I wonder if Gwen ever manages to open up to him again (Which I completely understand if she doesn't) he might believe her because he's heard what Ink5oul's tattoos can do. But like. Again very unlikely since Mr. Khalid over here really fucked up in ep 18.

It really interests me though that Ink5oul has no idea what happened to them. I looked up Sutherland Macdonald, nothing of note. But I think it's pretty obvious that by TMAGP, they found out the tattoo on the dead body was an Oscar Jarrett tattoo and was looking to get some... face-to-face inspiration.

I'm worried about Sam and Alice. I mean honestly, Alice does have full right to step away from all of this but her dismissiveness of Sam this whole time probably doesn't help her when it comes to him. She wants to protect him, but he wants the truth. It actually makes me slightly more sure that the Dyer in the ARG was probably her pre-transition because of the empathy levels. Not that she doesn't feel empathy, but I don't think she feels like there's anything she can say to change things, so she doesn't try. Which is exactly what she says in this ep.

Anyways ummmm SamCelia shippers I get you they're actually pretty cute and it does make me happy to see that someone is supporting Sam and genuinely hearing him out since absolutely no one else he's talked to about this will.

[sofipitch]

Honestly, knowing what has happened in other fandoms when black/BIPOC characters have been written in with prominent roles (race-swapped or not), I actually do believe the actors playing Claudia and Louis will be racially abused by many white/non-black fans. The show runners should be prepared for that, and I hope the writers actually are aware of the ramifications of race-swapping Louis and Claudia but keeping Lestat white because it does exacerbate their already canon toxic power dynamics.

Damn, I guess you're right anon, we should cancel the whole show, we should only show white ppl on TV from now on, because of a probability that a TV show will be the next OJ Simpson case.

I honestly should have just deleted this ask bc it's clearly not in good faith, with a false concern for BIPOC. However this is also not the first time I have seen this argument so I'm going to go ahead and give my response as to why I don't think loustat is going to be MORE abusive in the show, and that it'll be worse bc of the race change. I'm also probably going to go outside the realm of your ask, to point out other bad faith arguments.

First I've seen some people wondering why Rolin Jones, a white man, would change Louis and Claudia's race in the first place. But the thing is NOLA has always been a racially diverse city, it's actually pretty sus how white AR's vampires are.

Rolin Jones said this:

We made Louis an African American, which is not a swing if you consider the demographics of New Orleans.

Which is not wrong, the demographics of NOLA are stated as follows when Louis was originally turned in the books:

The report cites colonial census data from 1721 that show about 63 percent city's population identified as white. The remaining 37 percent were -- predominantly black -- enslaved peoples. In 1788, a new demographic emerges -- free people of African descent or "free people of color," enslaved people who were able to purchase their freedom primarily under Spanish law.

The thing is, NOLA today is mostly black, the break down of races as follows:

Black or African American: 59.22%

White: 33.40%

Asian: 2.89%

Two or more races: 2.55%

Other race: 1.75%

Native American: 0.18%

Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 0.01%

So when it comes to a series that is such a big part of NOLA history, it has to be weird for the actual people from that city to see themselves not represented in it. Which is why I believe RJ changes both Louis and Claudia's races to reflect where they are from (who unlike Lestat are NOLA natives).

When it comes to loustat being abusive, I tend to fundamentally disagree with a lot of the arguments I see on here, even before the show started, of Louis being the battered wife and Lestat the abusive husband. I think a lot of people project their own issues onto these characters but seeing Louis as inherently the victim to Lestat is often more based in wanting these characters to fit more into gender stereotypes than anything else.

But what we do know from the show is this:

Q about the Dark Gift being in the series. Sam says Lestat wants to make sure Louis loves him before he gives them the gift.

When Louis was turned in the series he is sick and in a very bad place, and Lestat drains him before asking him, letting Louis know that if he doesn't accept to become a vampire, he will die. X vs death isn't a very healthy dynamic. So changing this so that Lestat makes sure Louis is "the one for him" before turning him shows to me that they are going to try and make their dynamic less toxic. I also don't know where it came from but I saw a rumor that Louis asks Lestat to turn Claudia. Which means that while Lestat can def leverage "but think of the children!" to get out of their divorce, the way he baby traps Louis is less malicious.

I think these changes were made with their racial dynamic in mind. This is going to sound like I'm tooting my own horn but I cowrote a fic, The Long Way Home, with @sweetazathioprine in which Louis and Claudia are black. This fic is set in the book time period and Louis is still a slave owner (son of the master who later learns his mother was a slave and he's a child by rape, an unfortunately very common situation back when this kind of slavery existed in the America). Half the point of this fic was to show that Louis could be black with very little of him changed, and be the same person. We also had other goals, like addressing the horror of slavery rather than letting it be some romantic setting the story just happens to take place in, and also just writing a story where we could see ourselves reflected back. But my point is, there were changes/writing decisions my cowriter and I made knowing the potential power dynamics between loustat. Louis basically addresses every single one we do make, there's so much we just blatantly wrote out rather than trusting/hoping readers would "get it".

Now, the last concern I will address is "Rolin Jones is a white man how can we trust him to get these characters right"

The IMDB for the new series isn't finished, it still says there will be 8 episodes when we know there will be 7, it says Claudia will only appear for one episode but given her presence in the trailer and that she will be aging from "14-37" this season, and just how much Bailey was on set, I doubt one episode is the case. HOWEVER, from what is on there, a director for two of the episodes is a black man (his insta confirms this) and the only other writer is a gay latino man (I assume adding AR is a formality)

Again, this seems kind of incomplete, the number of episodes it says the directors are directing doesn't actually equal the total number of episodes. A lot of people where only giving V E. Scwab the credit for writing First Kill (a gay vampire/vampire hunter show that is also interracial, should that show also be canceled bc it "could have been problematic" but wasn't???) and the writers room was quite diverse.then Schwab showed a pic of the writing room, revealing all credit shouldn't go to her.

So my main point is that automatically assuming the show will handle race badly, and that the characters should all be white instead is a very bad tired take I have only seen white ppl make. I have said this before but I love this series and will be devastated if the show is bad, I will have to crawl into the ground and take one of Lestat's 50 yr coma naps. But a lot of people are trying to argue it will be bad and that we shouldn't support it, way before we actually get to see it. And a lot of the ppl making this argument are white ppl, acting like they need to act as some sort of guide to POC, acting like they are only thinking of our best interests when telling us how we should think and feel. I don't need that, I know some ppl in this fandom think they are shouldering The White Man's Burden, only wanting to protect us poor POC who are looking forward to the show, but I am perfectly capable of evaluating information on my own, thank you.

[alexvsinternet]

WHY THE SMARTPHONE HOUR IS JUST AS SAD AS MITB

Okay so this may be kinda controversial particularly in a michael-centric fandom do im just gonna drop a read more in case people arent interested

WARNING: ESSAY LONGER THAN ACTUAL ESSAYS I HAVE WRITTEN

okay so everyone praises MITB as being a musical masterpiece - which it is - and an emotional tear jerker - which it is - and incredibly performed - which it is - and let me stress i am not trying to refute any of that MITB was and remains to be one of my favourite musical songs but a lot of people miss that the smartphone hour carries a lot of the same sentiment towards many of the characters, particularly rich but also to a lesser extent jake brooke and jenna

take a look at rich goranski who finally broke free of the control that his squip had him under, realised what it was trying to do, and immediately tried to shut it down by the mountain dew red method which, is kind of understandable until you realise that every inch of rich’s self worth revolves around his public image

its very obvious that his change from a “loser just like [jeremy]” (the squip song) to the person he is by the beginning of the musical is what has prompted his spike in both self image and popularity and without any “real” friends that he can be honest to its really all he has

suddenly, him going round frantically asking if anyone has this discontinued drink seems like a much bigger sacrifice as well as chloe spreading and mutilating the story seeming like a much greater hardship and then it hits you *WHY* rich set the fire.

he was trying to stop his squip at any cost, including his own life. instead, he ended up in hospital, alone, everyone calling him crazy.

take a look at jake as a result of this too: losing his house and breaking both his legs, torn between trying to stand up for his friend and dealing with the grief that the fire caused him, all the while wondering why any of this was going on. unlike michael with jeremy, jake knew nothing about richs squip and so is left completely in the dark which makes it even more heartbreaking

right at the beginning of the song we see jenna being regarded with utter scorn by chloe, the person she idolises and is so desperate to be like, and after chloe hangs up it dawns on her that chloe only cares about the gossip she provides

its hinted at right in the opening number but this is where it really hits home

brooke, who gets absolutely no closure for her boyfriend “cheating” on her - as she perceived it - is absolutely shut down and ignored by chloe - “... it was totally his fault / And let's not let boys ever come between us ever again okay?” (the smartphone hour) - she decides to just accept it because thats how low she thinks of herself at least at this point but i personally see it as a running thing

shes always second to chloe and this, to her, was just a logical extension

and none of these characters

NOT ONE SINGLE ONE OF THEM

gets any sort of sad song where they talk about their feelings and ruminate and get pissed or anything

all this happens to the happy clappy “everything is fine” backbeat of the smartphone hour

they dont get the option to heal or vent or do anything at all: they just have to put up with it

and that is why the smartphone hour is MORE SAD than michael in the bathroom

thank you to @lalagirl16 for supporting my decision to swing a bat at a hornets nest and (unknowingly) helping me write some of this YOURE A SUPERSTAR MEG I LOVE YOU

[caskit2]

Gorillaz Analysis

Caskit’s not ready to throw all their cards on the table but the time has come!!! 

Okay then, I had to think long and hard about what I wanted to talk about here with Gorillaz cause DAMN!! 

I love gorillaz, 

I love the characters 

damon is a gift that we just dont deserve 

But how did I end up in the fandom pool? 

Well for one, I have heard of gorillaz music back in middleschool but at the time I was busy with Invader Zim and Inuyasha as well as jumping into this band wagon as well  (Full metal Alchemist) 

so by the time I turned to look at Gorillaz was when phase 3 was JUST wrapping up and making way for phase 4. which means I jumped into a fandom that had characters that I knew NOTHING ABOUT. Do you know what that means?

It means I also had no understanding or knowledge of why people shipped “this or that” in the fandom, but I gained some intel on the characters and the growing plot of the story, but other than that, I didnt understand why I was drawn to a particular “ship” in the fandom.  

*actual expression made, im not joking*

Once upon a time, caskit discovered 2doc and was not surprised that this was a ship. I have seen similar stuff that has a common theme that i was drawn to at the time. I was more interested in why fans ship them so I dived in head first into the boiling lava and came to a conclusion.,.....

I dont see them as able (capable?) of ever ending up in the way that most 2doc shippers would pick. The two are chaotic on levels of different tiers of “weird and gross” and I dont really have a reason as to why i was drawn to the ship, but It made me want to analyse what exactly a stable relationship is!

I basically walked around in that area of the fandom and didnt really form any “attachment” to it. I never really experienced a “healthy relationship”, lived in childhood and teen years were I went through life avoiding relationships. So I didnt have a good start, but I knew eventually that I would have to explain myself. 

I feel bad that I wouldnt be able to give a solid answer to what makes me want to sit down and analyse any scenario that has “present abuse undertones” but I know that in the past and how I grew up with what I was exposed to...That I would come to realize how unhealthy it is just for me. 

This post isnt particularly about 2doc itself, but its more about discussing how I handled MY reaction to something that I have seen over and over. In a way, I could see those abusive tones that were present.

Basically Caskit never experienced good healthy relationships and decided that it was a good idea to use gorillaz as a processing strategy....not a good idea in the end cause...OOOHHHHHHH 

It confused me more than before!!! 

I got friends that tag their stuff, and I dont really get so bothered with peoples own opinions, cause I was more worried about how I would come to understand everything. 

When I think about how fans are dividing and putting up a wall to keep “haters outa my yard”  it usually has to deal with shipping stuff, and character hating. And I guess I was confused about everyone’s perception of the characters.

Talking about the characters, I dont have a “least favorite to most” cause I have specific connections to them in different ways. 

I can find similarities to noodle for the expectations she had in a band at age 10 and growing up (plus we are both gays that dont like to publicly talk about relationships) 

I connect with Russel cause I lost a piece of myself  after a paranormal encounter and 3 near death experiences and suffer hallucinations. His protective demeanor to little noodle clicked with me. I see him as the Heart and soul, dedicated and warm friendly guy. ( you mean a decent human being right?)

I relate to 2d in a way that I share his enthusiasm, and mad bravery to live with the same guy who ran him over and caused 2 accidents that are permanent. 

I relate to murdoc in a weird way...  His childhood hits too close to home for me, as a CSA survivor of 2 incidents, pain addict and victim of abuse, draws similarities. But there were things that he has done that match things to my past like the abusive father, and dwelling on the darker aspect of a bittersweet reality. I was expressing physical violence to “show affection” and was never called out for it. I was not just a victim, I was also the abuser and since it was something that murdoc is faced with, is why I hated him. He is (for me) the thing I hate about myself. 

When I saw more and more fans hating on murdoc I wondered if people would ever think I was the same as him. Fans didnt like the way he treated 2d  and the rest of the band, And I agreed. Fans hated him for lying and causing drama and I agreed.  

His ignorance was a comedy slapstick (dressing in a nazi uniform cause he thought it “looked cool” despite russel telling him that its not a good idea) and was seen as the “crazy hooligan that has delusional dreams of fame”  and it bothered me that jamie used this to cover up allot of obvious issues that needed to be addressed. and the way that the fandom treated him made me think about how I would be accused of being like him. 

(thank goodness I didnt cause a car accident and have to sell my soul to satan for a shot at fame with a kickass band and didnt make uncomfortable sexual jokes or ignore others that tried to help me.) 

I can separate what justifies the hate on murdoc when it comes to abuse and causing shit to go down. becuase I did those things in the past, but it didnt take me more than a decade or more to realize that what I did was wrong! I didnt take forever to change for the better. so Im frustrated at him for taking so long to turn around and go “holly fuck im a bastard! I should probably fix that” 

Yeah NyOO ShiTT HunnayYY!! 

I dont hate him for being an idiot, I hate that he symbolizes all things wrong about me that never got closure! 

him admitting to being the cause of 2d’s social anxiety and eye damage as well as the abuse is easier said than done! but the fact that he is letting everything out of the “in-denial basket” is nice for me to see, cause right now Healing and progression in closure to issues of trauma is what is important to me. 

The endgame for my perspective on 2d and murdocs relationship is this: 

I dont want to ship them

I dont even see it as a thing regardless of character development and both guys working through their own shit themselves. 

I am not the best person to explain what a toxic or abusive relationship can be. 

Why? becuase I lived through it and I was both the victim and abuser to myself  and grew up without a good relationship (and I have a fear of positive affection) so I dont enjoy going through the same pattern as before where i shipped abuse in the past as a “dumb 13 year old weeboo” 

I dont view their relationship as romantic, or platonic, or healthy. 

I just want the boys to enjoy their own character growth individually. 

I would like to eventually see a friendship with them But I’ll be more excited if instead the whole band eventually gain a healthy relationship with everyone.  

Year 2018 marks the year I jumped in head first into gorillaz as a blind fruit bat 

(I call it the year caskit played with fire) for cosplaying ‘murdoc fuckn wrinkles’ at a convention around the time the fandom was yelling at him and jamming to 2d’s album. 

Caskit jumped into the shipping lava all for Behavioral analyzing and hopped over fences to see other fans perspectives of characters they liked and hated just to make sure Caskit could understand the illuminati that is Gorillaz. 

I made friends all over the fandom, and thanks to a few people, I gained more confidence to push my art skills and create some kickass art of Gorillaz. 

And yeah I yap yap about murdoc ( looks over @russelhusselhobbs im sorry you put up with my bullshit) but remember peeps. 

I like hearing about the others and have gotten more into 2d’s character as well as Jumping over the fence to go hang out with russel fans and listen to fangirling from friends and just trying to be a freakn fairy godmother and deliver some good representing art. 

And for those who aren’t aware, my past artwork is probably gonna float around so if its signed as Caskit or Caskit19 then its mine and if you see my old 2doc stuff.....,

for the trigger. 

But YEAHHHHHH!!! I wanted to throw all this on the table. and I dont know how to feel about that...(I swear my friend jokes with “need some feel good inc for Caskit” ) Kinda contemplating my choice between sticking my head into a hornets nest or jumping into a dark water trench.... the hornets nest sounds less likely to give me a seizure induced panic attack so ill go for that. ( I have a tolerance for inflicted pain so no you cant hurt me by using violence cause I dont have any consideration for myself and my safety)  

But yeah now I can get back to drawing fun stuff. (hopefuly caskit wont have to bore you guys with stupid shit ever again! xD)