big fan of essek thelyss, not the fanon interpretation, which is either "smol bean, tiny fragile elf who's a sweetheart and basically a child" or people mistakenly calling betrayal of one's home country a "war crime" and then proceeding to be flippant about it anyway, but the real Essek
pretentious motherfucker that committed treason bc he though he was smarter than everyone else
learned to float literally just to impress other rich people
canonically neutral evil
basically head spymaster of his country and master of lies but sucks shit lying to his friends
stayed bitchy even after his redemption arc
"there is nothing I would love more than to not be around you all for the remainder of this day"
a space wizard that crushed someone with telekenesis just to show off (the person was already dying)
sexy feet, nice ass, overall hottie
fell in love with a traumatized wizard of his enemy country and it was mutual despite all the betrayal
faggot
gave away state secrets to enemy wizard bc he though he was sexy
discovered time travel with his boyfriend
proceeded to say they shouldn't use time travel (bc now he's a good boy) but was willing to sacrifice everything and help if his bf wanted to use it
once confessed he had such a bad fight with his dad that his dad ran into the demon caves and never returned (essek doesn't feel bad about this at all)
young for an elf but still 120 years old, he called his bf "young man" and flexed on him about how much more evil he is
one thing that is fascinating to me about merrill's arc is the way narrative manages to convince a big part of the fandom that she's immature and irresponsible and overall stupid. what we know about merrill and what we actually see on screen is that she successfully avoids possession for 6 years while working closely with a demon, almost every time she participates in some magic/spirit-related discourse she acts calm and confident and has some interesting input, she actively uses her knowledge of dalish lore and tradition to reason with her keeper, and that she actually did make progress with fixing and studying an ancient long forgotten artifact no one knows particularly anything about. but then an old woman who's never been shown to be an undeniably wise and reasonable figure, a guy who got willingly possessed with no awareness of possible consequences and whose whole mindset is still deeply andrastian and a bunch of people who know nothing about magic start judging and doubting her and everyone's like. yeah. she's so fucking dumb.
So you know that thing that's floating around about Vivziepop not wanting to ruin people's fun by confirming Alastor's romantic orientation?
I was going to make a venty (untagged) post about how that's kinda queerbait-y* and arophobic. But then I was like "you know what, I should check the source because I don't remember the exact quote."
And it turns out I never actually saw the exact quote. Nor did anyone talking about it bother to include the context. And while I don't think either removes the queerbait-y* or arophobic aspects of the statement, they certainly make it better than it initially seemed to me.
Here's the stream (linked to the proper place): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5ONxBZoR0A&t=3793s
And here's a loose transcript (it cuts out some less relevant statements in-between but loses almost no context as far as I could tell): https://www.reddit.com/r/HazbinHotel/comments/mle06e/alastors_sexual_orientation_aromanticasexual/
*I am keeping the actual word on the shelf, I just don't know a better one to use here. I think what she said is SIMILAR to queerbaiting but is NOT queerbaiting.
With the queerbait-y stuff, it still maintains the "aromantic people, tune in, this character may or may not be aromantic. We'll tell you eventually, just keep watching!"
With the arophobia, it still maintains the prioritization of shipping over representation, and treats aromanticism as a subsect of asexuality at best, and as flat out not an orientation at worst.
I don't think either is as bad as my original perception, but they certainly aren't good. And keep in mind, this was 3 years ago, any number of things about her beliefs could have changed in any which way since then.
But what gets me is that Vivziepop absolutely did not say that everyone should just let everyone else have their fun. What she said was to have fun and be respectful of his orientation and the people that are represented by him. She says that multiple times.
I'm not feeling this generous, but I guess you could say the fandom had some kind of Mandela Effect over what she actually said.
I think it's more likely that a few people, maliciously or not, spread the incorrect paraphrase without context, and the rest of the fandom, reasonably, believed them.
Anyway the lesson here is check your sources before you contribute to misinformation on the internet.
i love obi wan in phantom menace because every time qui gon does something he doesn’t like he goes ooooooo I’m a sickly little hamster. look what you’re doing to me master. I’m shaking with anxiety like a middle aged woman’s decrepit chihuahua. and qui gon is like haha good joke obi wan let’s go commit human rights violations. and then they do
No one is more confident in their opinion of Supernatural than people who either only know about the show through Tumblr, have only seen a few episodes, or stopped watching in 2013.
Well if Logan tried to go back to see all the steps that lead him here he should probably start around 2021 when he first opened MotoGP race when there was nothing else to watch.
He was always hungry for more, watching as much different racing as he could, it's just motorcycles are a bit out of his comfort zone so he never gravitated towards opening a stream somewhere to watch.
Of course logan knew about it, about people in it and thought about Rossi the same way he did about Gordon and Hamilton if not for his own experience of watching than at least for how much lando was talking about him. As the Greatest of all.
It takes him a bit to learn all teams, how everything works and some major events but he gets there, fully emerged at that point.
Logan still doesn't watch all that much content of riders bc he's not interested in their personalities besides what they say about bikes but he catches glimpse of how insane it all is anyway and it fascinates him when he compares it to formula scenery where it's so political and everyone is second away from clawing at your throat.
Guys there are wild and don't have pr crafted personalities that they need just to survive. Next season starts, he gets into f2 and watching gets a bit more challenging on some weekends but manageable on most. And nothing would change if not for one bike that his eyes keep going back to and the guy on it that Logan starts watching press conferences forBc firstly bez is amazing and it's interesting to watch him on track. And secondly he's just so..... different, so open and always smiley.
It's fascinating to Logan because it's almost diametrally different from what he himself is. He loves a good hug don't get him wrong but living mostly alone on another continent from your family and all friends doesn't make for a lot of opportunities to express emotions through touches. Sometimes it feels like he can go weeks without meaningful contact. Also Logan can only watch how outgoing and extrovert marco is never even being close to that, sticking with few people that he knew the best.
It somehow transformed into following him on multiple platforms and watching whatever content motogp or his team would put out. It became kinda embarrassing at the point where he could understand a few Italian words from sheer amount of them that he heard before. It was a bit annoying not being able to understand a lot of stuff but he wouldn't prove "dumb American" stereotype by wishing for guy to speak only in English. Plus the way his voice sounded when he actually did talk in English was very cute, so nothing to be sad about.
Logan started wondering if this what admiration for drivers felt like because he never experienced it before always only motivated by his own desire to win not by those he saw on screens. It was pretty tough to rationalize by himself so he went to the most rational person he could think of (and totally not because it was his only friend on the grid,no) - oscar.
It was usual hangout for them only stained by somewhat awkward logan who didn't know how to approach subject until oscar points out his weird behaviour and makes him talk it all out while listening intently. In the end oscar just answered with short but straightforward "sounds more like you catching an internet crush that anything else" which made Logan spat out million protesters a second only stopped by solid hand on his forearm
"Look you should think it all over and if you still not sure I'll go to MotoGP race next month for promo so you can tag along and actually speak to the guy to see how you feel"It took him a while to evaluate everything and actually come to some form of conclusion but looking back oscar wasn't wrong, it's just Logan never catched feelings in similar way so it was confusing. But looking at it now it wasn't even surprising with how mesmerising marco was, resembling the sun whenever he went with his blinding smile and warm attitude. And Logan wanted to reach out to that shine too
But even ignoring all that he asepted Oscar's offer mostly to watch race itself because in person it would be way cooler than through small screen in shitty hotel room. Logan didn't plan on even going close to bez there because mortifying ordeal of confronting a crush that doesn't know you exist is a bit too much for him but it's not like anything ever goes according to his plan.
So this time what gone wrong was bez himself that catched a cute blonde guy laughing with sun rays in corners of his eyes while talking to someone but standing completely on his own otherwise looking a bit uncomfortable in unfamiliar space. And of course marco went to introduce himself because why waste such chance? Especially when his outstretched hand ready for handshake is met with blush and shuttering before he even managed to say anything besides "hi, I'm bez"
Actually, no, I disagree. Astarion has his reasons for many things he thinks and disapproves of, but some of them are just ... He doesn't like it when people are nice. He actively likes cruelty. Those are both true.
And yeah, you get why. He's well-written and his motivations are understandable! You can have a lot of very long and sad meta posts about how he thinks cruelty is natural and kindness is fake, but that doesn't remove his joy at cruelty and his distaste for kindness. Those things are still true. He can get better, yes. He does get better if you encourage him to. But he starts out as an absolute jackass.
Stop woobifying him fr. He's a piece of shit, even if he's a well-written one. Just because you understand him doesn't mean he's right or somehow the only sane person in the group. Cruelty is not intelligence, kindness is not a weakness. xoxo <3
Treating Wilbur as I do dream currently: Expect to see stuff for his character still reblogged, but I won’t tag for him anymore, and I’m disengaging with him as a content creator at this time. Don’t ask me anything else about this, I don’t want to talk about it.
Still probably gonna be offline for a while bc I’m still processing and need to not be barraged by opinions rn. Mostly posting this so I can run my queue. Staying on the content grindset 💪
At the advice of Shelby and her mods, I’m not going to speak his name like this again because he is not the point. Shelby is. But if I didn’t say anything I figured people would think I was ignoring it, which I’m not. I’m gonna continue my break and I hope you all are taking care.
As a final note:
This has brought a lot of attention to Shelby that she didn’t have before and for good reason. But please do not make her abuse into her fame. If this has compelled you to subscribe to her, follow her, and support her, then stay for her and not for her hurt. Watch her streams, engage with her. Be normal. Don’t ask her more, even if it’s from a place of good intention. She’s more than a victim: she is an artist and businesswoman just as much as every other streamer you love. She isn’t “the streamer who was abused by xyz,” she’s shubble. Let her return be welcome and supportive, but please let her get back into the routine she wants. Normalcy is probably the thing she wants most right now, and the best we can do is help her achieve that.