#literally my very first tumblr post was an essay about this

[nerdie-faerie]

I literally had a meeting with my professor today about these upcoming assignments where she stressed to me not to get distracted and keep it narrow, right? I sat there and explained that I want to include this and I think this is related but I'm worried that it's not strictly relevant and will lead to me getting distracted which I do not have room for in my word count and she looked at me like 'yeah obviously? like why are you bringing it up if you already know thats whats going to happen?' because the issue isn't that I don't know what the problem is, I'm well aware of my problems, the issue is that knowing isn't enough to prevent it. I need you to tell me that I'm right in this assessment and that I definitely cannot include all of that. I need strict parameters because I cannot be trusted

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[ms-demeanor]

Hello,Do you have any tips for recovering from internet brain rot? It's like my patience has dried up and if there's a huge amount of text (even about topics I'm very interested in) that I have to read, I get annoyed and just don't interact with the material at all.

I have multiple tips!

TL;DR (Because of course I generated a wall of text): Take a break from the internet, create a schedule for getting yourself used to reading longer texts, take breaks while reading, and perhaps reconsider how you interact with The Internet and the world in general.

Here are the basic "to reduce the brain rot just don't interact" tips:

Take a break. Give yourself time off from The Internet (for these purposes The Internet is the social media industrial complex; clickbait news, recommended videos, social media sites, etc. You don't have to totally check out of email or your local news site, just get away from the huge time sucks). I'd say to take at least one day a week where you're online for less than an hour a day, and to maybe work up to doing a week-long break from whatever the main agents of rot are.

Once you've identified the main agents of rot, give yourself a time limit or set up rules for yourself. I don't let myself look at social media in bed, for instance; no staying up late on my phone, no scrolling before I get up and start my day. I don't give myself a strict time limit anymore, but for a while there I was very firm about "you only get to go online 4 hours a day" with myself.

Don't comment (or at least only share the things you really want to share). If you feel the need to argue, or if you feel pressured into sharing something, don't. Step back, maybe even open the post in a new tab or send it to yourself, and come back later. If you've been thinking about it and have decided it IS something you care enough to talk about, share it. If you look at the tab and feel stressed out or still feel reactive, close the tab and walk away.

Go out and interact with the real world in a non-work capacity for a few hours a week; take walks or go shopping or go out and take pictures of insects. Touch grass so that The Internet is not the only thing you're doing with your downtime.

Here are the "work on reading longer texts specifically" tips:

Set a reading goal for yourself. Maybe you want to read one New Yorker article a week, maybe you want to read all the way through news articles, maybe you want to read novels like you used to in high school. Figure out what your actual goal is and articulate that goal to yourself.

Set up a practice schedule and gradually increase the amount of time you're reading. Don't go from short tumblr posts to a novella, go from short tumblr posts to slightly longer news articles, then to slightly longer essays, then to a novella. You can do this in literal paragraphs if you want to - maybe your goal for your first day is to read five paragraphs in a row, and the second day is seven, and the third day is ten, etc, until you are comfortably reading for longer amounts of time without counting paragraphs. (Try this with books from gutenberg.org; read a classic you haven't read a few paragraphs at a time and if you find yourself going over your paragraph count, let yourself run with it. If you finish a book, good for you, find another one and start again.)

Set up a maintenance schedule. If your goal is to read longer news pieces, try to read a longer piece every week and try to read to the end of every news article you open. If your goal is to read novels or longer nonfiction, try to read a book a month (maybe setting aside dedicated time each week to read, maybe Thursday evenings are book time now). If you find yourself falling back into old habits, take a break from The Internet and do some more rigorous practice for a while.

If you find yourself getting frustrated while you are reading you can also take a break! Read until you get frustrated and then *instead of switching to a different page or closing the article* close your eyes or look out the window or away from the screen for thirty seconds (count 'em! count out the time in your head) and then continue reading. You can also take a longer pause and sit and think about why you're getting frustrated. Is it the subject matter? Is it just looking at this text for longer than a couple minutes (if you are experiencing FOMO because you're reading for another few minutes instead of scrolling, the harder tips at the bottom are going to be important to you)? Are you comfortable? Are you reading this text to procrastinate from something and the procrastination is making you nervous? Are you trying to read to the bottom of your dash and reading a long post is taking up more time than you want while scrolling? Are you bored? Genuinely and very seriously: are your eyes straining and does your head hurt (if this is the case when is the last time you had your eyes checked or your glasses prescription updated)?

Here are the much harder "examine yourself and reassess your reactions to things" tips:

Work on re-training your attention span.

Identify something that you enjoy and find deeply engaging, and schedule some dedicated time for that thing. Set a literal timer (it can be a short amount of time at first) and sit down and do the thing without switching to a different website or opening up an app on your phone. This can be re-reading or watching a couple episodes of a show you like or listening to your favorite album while you sit down and draw. What's important is to spend a longer time focusing on doing something you DO like before attempting to spend a longer time focusing on something you DON'T like.

When you're starting on things you DON'T like, start with things you mildly don't like, or that feel tedious but aren't actually unpleasant. One way I do this is by transcribing poetry; I look up poems that I connect to and I transcribe them into a notebook that I have for that purpose. I enjoy having the finished product, but I don't enjoy the process, so it takes some effort to stick with it. Maybe there is a boring book you have been trying to get through, maybe you need to detail your car, maybe you've been trying to take up embroidery - these are good things to make yourself pay attention to (having music or a podcast on can help, but avoid watching videos or opening social apps)

When you're okay at that kind of thing (doing something not actively unpleasant) work on your attention span for things you ACTIVELY don't like. I don't think you should be a masochist about this, but you should work on being okay with doing unpleasant things for a sustained period of time. All of us have to do unpleasant stuff sometimes, and it's better to be able to pay attention to it for an hour at a time than it is to put it off forever.

This leads into the next Big Tip which is:

Work on being less reactive

Find something that you dislike; I'm going to use conservative talk radio as my example.

Expose yourself to the disliked thing for short periods of time (under ten minutes, maybe under five minutes).

Work on moderating your emotions during the time spent exposed to the disliked thing. If it makes you angry, work on intellectualizing the anger without becoming agitated by it. If it makes you sad, work on accepting that sadness without letting it drag down your mood. This isn't precisely about becoming numb to stimuli, but it is about being more in control of how your emotional reactions impact you.

Analyze the disliked thing. Why does it make you angry? Is that on purpose by the creator of the thing? Would it make someone else angry in the same way? How would you explain the anger to a neutral third party?

Consider responding instead of reacting. Let's say you're seeing a lot of very sad and upsetting things online and it's making you sad and upsetting you. You re-share these things because you don't feel like there's anything else you can do or you get angry when you see people sharing incorrect information, perhaps you argue with people about this. Now try looking at the upsetting things through the lens of point number four. This has upset you; how has it upset you? And once you've thought about how it upset you and have articulated that to yourself, find out what you can DO. I cannot make conservative talk radio go off the air, but I can support the groups harmed by conservative talk radio; thus there is no point in me getting upset and angry about conservative talk radio when I could be helping the people they target instead.

And that gets us to the last big tip which is:

Ask yourself if you are spending your time in a way that is enjoyable and edifying.

We all have limited time in our days and limited time in our lives. If you are finding yourself frequently frustrated online, it's a good time to consider whether you want to be spending so much time online.

If you feel like The Internet has become a rat race in which you can't read more than a few paragraphs without getting frustrated, there's a good chance that not only are you spending too much time on The Internet, but you're also spending it on doing things that you don't particularly like.

A realization like yours, Anon, that you are getting frustrated with any longer texts, can actually be really helpful because it provides a good opportunity to look at what you're engaging with and consider the questions:

Is this something I enjoy?

Do I feel good when I do this thing?

And that's a great way to figure out how to get rid of things that are leading to your background frustration. Maybe that looks like paring down the list of blogs you follow, maybe that looks like unsubscribing from some youtubers and podcasts, maybe that looks like uninstalling apps, maybe that looks like blocking a whole bunch of people and terms on your socials.

I don't think that everything we do has to help us grow as a person or expand our consciousness or anything like that, but I do think it's important to prioritize doing things that you like and doing things that you feel good about.

Like, I'm not doing something *wrong* if I spend an afternoon on Youtube watching drama channels every once in a while, but if I come out of a few afternoons of watching youtube drama channels feeling restless and anxious and like I wasted my time - even if I enjoyed myself while I was watching - it's probably a good idea for me to take a break from drama channels and see if there's something I can do instead that will make me feel better.

ALSO, A NOTE:

You are an animal that requires significant enrichment in your enclosure.

Think about tigers. Tigers in captivity are going to be excited to get high-value treats for any reason. They will eat and enjoy the treats. But if a tiger in captivity is only given the treats and never given any other form of activity to engage with, it is not going to be a happy tiger. If you start putting their treats in a pumpkin or a puzzle feeder or giving them toys to play with, that is going to be a much happier tiger.

Please give your brain things to play with that are more than just treats (though it does need some treats!). Make yourself a happy tiger. Your brain need a puzzle feeder, not a treat button.

[nemastraea]

Doormat extraordinaire: Andrew Graves is down horrendous for his own sister | Part 1

Or as I like to call it, actual literal word vomit attempting a proper character analysis!

Here's a link to the AO3 version for archive purposes: The doormat extraordinaire has a bit of a romantic streak,

Content warning: This will heavily feature spoilers from Episodes 1 & 2 of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. Trigger warning: Abuse, cannibalism, child neglect, codependency, harassment, incest, murder, self-harm, and suicide. Disclaimer: I will occasionally reference an extremely normal essay from Sufficient Velocity commenter Leyleyfication (here). It would be a lot easier to read this essay first as Leyleyfication does a pretty good job establishing the following: - Ashley is dependent on Andrew to assure and validate her of her own insecurities, and - The game heavily implies that Andrew wants to fuck his own sister.

Anyway: The Coffin of Andy and Leyley! A game in early access where a pair of siblings are stuck through a seemingly never-ending quarantine together, desperate not to starve to death. When their cultist neighbor dies in a ritual gone wrong, they rationally resort to cannibalism. Fun!

I am definitely going to assume that you read Leyleyfication's extremely normal essay (I am on my knees, begging you to read that). Which is why this essay immediately starts with, "yeah, Andrew definitely wants to fuck his sister" as its baseline.

What I will be adding to that funny little cauldron of fucked up sibling dynamics in a horror visual novel are the following: Andrew's fixation and sexual attraction manifests as his desire to control, dominate, and possess Ashley. And it is framed as a fatalist attraction and the totality of his existence (for worse or even worse).

Because of Tumblr's limit for 30 images per post, though, I'm going to have to split this extremely normal and reasonably lengthy essay into... multiple posts! Yeah! I have no idea how long this will fucking go!

So first things first: how can we tell that Andrew is even attracted to Ashley in the first place?

Nemlei (Devlog 05). Note the hickeys above and below Ashley's choker and her left inner thigh, and Andrew's left hand creeping into her right thigh.

As Leyleyfication points out, the game primes us to believe that Andrew is a pushover and Ashley is his abuser. This occurs in the Steam page as it explicitly says Ashley is "in fact, very bad" and Andrew is a "doormat extraordinaire." Moreover, it's very easy to tell that Ashley is, on some degree, obsessed with Andrew:

She's happy to hear that Julia broke up with Andrew over the phone;

She repeatedly accuses him of finding the Lady from Room 302 attractive and he 'tried anything with her;' and

Her flashback to wanting to punish her friend Nina ("the Bitch in the Box") for crushing on Andrew.

Episode 1, dream and memory. Leyley previously said that Nina should know better than to 'steal from another woman,' referring to herself. The implication that Andy is hers is toyed with after this moment, when she says she'd put Andy back in the box.

The game does prime us to think that Ashley is Andrew's abuser. It also suggests that Ashley projects an unrequited and incestuous love onto Andrew. Before we consider Episode 2's narrative, Episode 1 gives the initial impression that if Andrew comes to reciprocate her feelings, it's more of a reaction and subsuming to her will. That it may not be something he wants for himself and independent of Ashley's manipulation.

But again, I do believe Andrew wants to fuck Ashley. And always has been. He just frequently vacillate between 'subtle' and 'really fucking obvious' tells that completely take advantage of the game's third person limited POV.

Keep in mind that both Andrew and Ashley are extremely unreliable narrators. We aren't going to get information they personally do not care about and that is on top of our own choices as the player.

(A digressive example: you will not learn that the founder and CEO of Toxisoda's company was a former surgeon unless you interact with the television in Andrew's Episode 2 dream and memory of their blood oath. Otherwise, it neatly ties into the surgeon that Mrs. Graves conveniently says she was directed to regarding the siblings' quarantine in the main story.)

When it's really fucking obvious

When you play as Andrew in Episode 2, his post-dinner argument with Ashley carefully frames them both. They are cramped in the foreground and Andrew's left arm is conveniently blocked by Ashley and the kitchen knife, as seen here.

Episode 2, common route. Prior to this, you can interact with Mrs. Graves for her to pointedly comment on the siblings being inseparable.

At this point in the game, their physical closeness is something we're used to by now. After all, we've already seen Ashley on his lap at least twice; Andrew slept in her bed in Episode 1; and Ashley confirmed they've shared the same motel bed multiple times in the one-week interim between Episodes 1 & 2.

But the game abruptly shifts to Mrs. Graves' POV when she enters the scene and not only do we see the two as physically close, but we notice a few more details.

Episode 2, common route. The first picture transitions from Andrew's POV to Mrs. Graves as it introduces us to her entering the scene.

The contrast of how spacious the kitchen is from Mrs. Graves' POV to Andrew's cramped POV is obvious. More importantly, Andrew's fingers loop through Ashley's belt loops when the two are huddled together. When Mrs. Graves clears her throat, the two don't really separate.

Ashley pivots on her left foot so that her body is turned to their mother, not Andrew, but she doesn't step away from him. Andrew, meanwhile, recoils from Ashley and withdraws his hand. But he isn't turning his body to face their mother like Ashley does here. His attention, at least in this moment, is still towards Ashley (and, yanno, the sink).

Episode 2, common route. Two things to consider in the second picture: Andrew hides Ashley's bite mark on his cheek with his left sleeve and he conveniently moves the pillow from behind him to his front.

The 'tell' isn't so much as the two are unusually physically close. Again, we're used to that by now. But it's how the two siblings react whenever Mrs. Graves comes into the picture. Ashley doesn't really give a fuck about whether or not people assume the worst of her or even her intentions regarding Andrew. To Ashley, their proximity is normal and anyone who sees that as a problem is not worth an explanation or reason.

But Andrew is at least subconsciously aware it's 'not normal.' As far as these moments are concerned, Andrew instinctively tries to do damage control by either putting space between them or keeping his hands occupied so they aren't visibly touching Ashley. Still, he either does not mind or actively appreciates his physical closeness with Ashley.

When it's really fucking obvious (but only in hindsight)

In Episode 1, Ashley passes out after trying to clean up after the apartment. Regardless of her passing out in the living room, the bathroom, or their parents' room, she will wake up on the couch with her head pillowed by Andrew's lap.

Episode 1, Ashley's POV. Andrew's hands often hover over Ashley's head, but more than that—

I personally didn't notice this until I replayed Episode 1, when I basically have the hindsight of Andrew's fixation with hair. But yes, his fingers idly twirl through the ends of Ashley's hair as they watch TV. It's implied that Andrew can and will do this when Ashley pillows his lap, awake or asleep. He does not recoil from it when Ashley does wake up and later on, in Episode 2, even continues to brush it from her face.

Episode 2, common route. Ashley fell asleep at the passenger seat, so Andrew had to have transferred her to the back seat to pillow her head again. Though, technically, she's more cramped at the back seat than if he'd just reclined the passenger seat.

So far, we've seen that Andrew has a natural tendency to not only be physically close to Ashley, but to hover over her personal space and be in constant and direct contact with her. Whether it's by having her head on his lap, twirling her hair through his fingers, or even constantly grabbing her by the head in various states of comfort, playfulness, or outright threat (but let's put a pin on that for now).

The weight behind this candid contact shifts when Episode 2 draws a pretty explicit parallel between Julia and Ashley. Assuming that you interacted with Julia's landline and heard Ashley's voicemails, you know (and Andrew knows) that Ashley draws that connection herself:

DO YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME!? Just because you can fuck him and I can't? You think that's love?! Are you fucking delusional?? Cumdumpsters like you are just that. He will never love you. Not like he loves me. I am the only one. I am everything. I am the secrets you'll never hear. When he lies in bed at night, and when he needs someone to hold on to... It's not you he seeks out. It is me.

Episode 2, common route. Andrew's dream and vision implies that Andrew's heard these voicemails before.

That connection extends to the hair contact as well, as Andrew goes in to hug Julia, cards his hand through her hair and requests she tie her hair up.

Episode 2, common route. Andrew's dream and memory of Julia when they're older. From the use of Andrew's present-age portrait, suggests is closer to the timeline of the game's events than his and Ashley's memories as Andy and Leyley.

From this moment, we can have one of two assumptions: either Andrew wants Julia's (black) hair put up like Ashley's, or Ashley caught onto Andrew's hair kink and puts her hair up to imitate it.

Regardless, we infer the following:

Andrew teases affection through touching and even pulling on one's hair.

His fixation on ponytails and pulling on them does not exclude his own sister. It still stands and without reservation, perhaps more explicitly since he can do it so candidly, as we saw before.

The last of that Julia-Ashley parallel is self-contained within Episode 2. But only if you end up in the Burial route regardless of Ashley's platonic or incestuous vision.

Episode 2, common route (first picture) and Burial route (second picture). It's worth pointing out that Andrew is actually disinterested and moody during his conversation with Julia, and only perks up when he mentions Ashley or feigns care for Julia (since he extends his care of Ashley to her as well).

The game ends up drawing parallels on how Andrew treats Ashley, for better or for worse, with his ex (which is definitely worse, poor Julia). In doing so, the game blurs the lines between romantic affection for Julia and 'platonic and familial' affection for Ashley.

Y'all, this isn't even getting into how Andrew respectfully gives his parents space and only crowds them when he threatens them with his cleaver. In his mind, Ashley and Julia are in that same space of physical and romantic displays of affection; something he reserves only for them (only without reservation for Ashley) that does not extend to anyone else. His ex-girlfriend, and his sister. Shit's wild.

When it's obvious BUT it's violent!

That isn't to say that his hair fixation (hair kink?) is completely innocuous, though, as it rears its ugly head (pun unintended) in Decay. Which is what that previous pin was for! Yay!

You end up in the Decay route if Ashley doesn't trust Andrew with keeping an eye on their parents. Here, Ashley sleeps on their parents' bed by herself and has an alarming vision: an unknown party chases after her through the in-between and when they catch up to her, it's Andrew. Ashley has nowhere to run and Andrew eventually grabs her and threatens to kill her.

Whether or not Ashley can defend herself depends on Andrew expending all of her gun's ammo when he deals with the hitman, or not. But that outcome divergence will matter much, much later (so that's another pin for us to come back to).

The sequence of events actually mirrors the way the siblings ambush the Lady from Room 302 back in Episode 1. There, Andrew closes in on her and grabs the Lady by her wrist and uses his front to pin and restrain her. With his cleaver to her throat, the Lady is completely at his mercy.

Episode 1 & 2, common route (first picture) and Decay route (second, third, and fourth pictures). Note that Andrew restrains the Lady from Room 302 by the wrist while with Ashley, by her hair.

Andrew asserts control of the person and the situation through violence. Whether it's by killing them (the wardens) or by threatening physical violence (the Lady from Room 302 and Ashley). It's always on the table for him. As Leyleyfication puts it, "He's so calculated in how he approaches his use of violence [here]."

That violence includes Ashley. It's always on the table where Ashley's concerned. The game even juxtaposes when Andrew threatens violence and physical assault 'playfully' versus when he's seriously out for blood:

When you interact with the wall of call girls' numbers and Ashley jokes about leaving her number on the wall, Andrew 'jokingly' threatens to backhand her for even thinking about it.

When you interact with their parents' latched window for a second time, Andrew 'teases' slapping Ashley if she doesn't find a way to open it. (Ashley jokingly asks if it's on her ass or at her face, and assumes it must be the face when Andrew says she'll have to find out.)

The two other times that Andrew exerts violence against Ashley are both in Episode 1 & 2. We can remember when that happens in Episode 1, when Andrew's had it with Ashley's fits and threatens to kill her:

Episode 1, common route. Y'all, Andrew was choking her hard enough for his grip to bruise.

It happens again in Decay when he confronts Ashley about repeatedly calling him Andy and therefore, breaking the promise he coerced her into from Episode 1.

Episode 2, Decay route. Another thing to keep in mind is that Andrew's outburst is preceded by Ashley prodding him about his current state and insisting that Andrew was fine with 'Andy' during their home invasion.

In Episode 1, Andrew resorts to harming Ashley because he's fucking had it with her accusing him repeatedly of trying anything with the Lady from 302 and, in her eyes, his 'infidelity.' Where she accuses Andrew of not loving her enough that if his eye catches another girl, he'd leave her behind or flip on her. In Episode 2, she's poking and prodding on his boundaries on 'Andy' and whether or not, once again, he's with her on their now-committed life of joint crime.

If I can give another example, it happens in Andrew's common route memory of Nina's death and his blood oath with Leyley.

Episode 2, common route. Prior to this, Andy expresses immense exasperation at Leyley's tantrums over him 'thinking about that bitch again.' When he goes to grab the kitchen knife, cleans it, and returns to Leyley on his bed—he's briefly considering killing her.

Andrew threatens Ashley violently whenever he intends to confront her on her perceived brattiness, for lack of a better word. And keep Leyleyfication's essay segment on Ashley's insecurities and need for Andrew's validation in mind here—when Ashley does this, she wants and even needs Andrew to comfort her. But her aggression treads Andrew's patience and really, his tolerance of her behavior.

When Ashley's anger, clinging behavior, insecurities, and possessiveness of Andrew slips his control and tolerance, he resorts to violence to coerce or even dominate her.

I think (or hope, if it's clear enough) it reinforces what Leyleyfication points out:

The truth of the matter is, Ashley can only make Andrew do anything because he lets her. I don't mean in the sense that I'm saying abuse victims let their abusers emotionally abuse them, I mean in the sense that he is clearly considering his options on the table and choosing to discard those that could stop her, or bring an end to any of this.

It also reflects on another aspect of why Andrew resorts to violence: in all three situations, Andrew remarks on Ashley's behavior and her sake. If she acts up again once they're out of the apartment, it'll cause trouble for him while they're evading authorities. If she's going to call him Andy from hereon out, what's the point of running away with her. If she expects him to leverage keeping 'her secret,' he won't because it's for her sake.

Andrew rationalizes his attempt to control of Ashley's behavior as being for her sake. But really, isn't it him confining her behavior to something he can tolerate and personally handle?

I'd also like to point out that Andrew admits that he noticed Ashley push for calling him 'Andy' during the home invasion, and he did not argue with her on it while they held their parents hostage and readied to sacrifice them. We can infer that when Andrew calculates his use of violence, that can also factor when, where, and how he exerts it.

--

Well, that's where I can reasonably end this half of my word vomit! Now, onwards, to part 2!

[entertwinedsewntogether]

Long, long time | L.H

luke hemmings x reader

summary: you don't know how much longer you can cope with luke being on tour

warnings: panic attack, anxiety, angst with comfort, hurt/comfort, fem reader, reader is really going through it, very brief mention of lack of appetite, bit of poor self hygiene, not proofread

a/n: first time posting on tumblr despite being on here for years. literally terrified, also how god damn good is the feeling of falling upwards live album. i started levitating, don't get me started on os/co i could write a whole essay. also the ending is so rushed it's not funny but i couldn't think of an ending.

plus, the ending was my grandparents wedding song and i think it's so romantic so i put it in.

~~

It was early. The night had kept you awake, closing your eyes meant seeing every mistake you had ever made play in your mind. The curtains on your window were left open, the empty street and faint stars mocking your every move. The dim streetlight was your only source of light, and something about it was wrong.

It had been two weeks of this, of constantly shaking hands and always looking over your shoulder. Showering took more effort than it should, you had a never ending stomach ache, it felt like you didn't need to eat or drink. Your brain had been on constant overdrive for so long that it didn't know how to switch off, and it felt like there were rubber bands, squeezing around your chest and your brain, getting tighter and tighter by the minute.

For two weeks, you had done the same thing each night. Sitting up in bed, crossing your legs under your thick blanket and rocking, back and forth and back and forth. Your hands found your hair. It was greasier than you realised. How long had it been since you washed it? Stretching out your fingers, they felt wrong. They look different then you remembered. How long had it been since you had looked at yourself? Your hands find your knees, gripping onto them as you continue to rock.

You really don't want to. But you know you should. Where is he today? What even is the date today? When did you last talk to him?

Oh, his voice. His sweet, sweet voice. What would he say if he saw you like this? And this bed. This bed is far too big without him in it.

Luke is worried as well. You last spoke three days ago, and it was only texting. Usually you facetime every night, but he hasn't seen your face in just over a week. He wonders if you are busy, are you seeing your friends, are you working more?

If you squeeze your eyes shut, you can see him. He is sitting on the bed in front of you, he is holding you, he is smiling that gorgeous soft smile that he sends your way whenever you feel down. You can feel his hands rubbing up your arms in a soothing manner, his lips pressing against your forehead as the sweetest act of comfort.

You raise a hand to his side of the bed, dragging your hand along his pillow. No. No. The corner of your eyes prick.

Standing up on shaky legs, you stumble through the dark until you find your phone, face down on your floor, next to some discarded clothes. When did you let your bedroom get this filthy? The hands digging at your chest begin to dig their nails in. You kneel down, sitting on your heels and click your phone on. It's far too bright, it stings your eyes, but nonetheless you gaze lovingly at your lockscreen. At Him.

His beautiful blue eyes, warm and loving, and his gorgeous eyelashes, god he is blessed. His beautiful smile, halfway to a laugh, bringing a sad smile to your lips. Your eyes blur as you touch his cheek through your phone screen, a ragged breath coming from your chest.

You unlock your phone, blurry eyes and shaky hands pressing his contact, and the big green call button. It rings once, twice, three times, four times.

"Hey honey! You ok? Isn't it early at home?"

You don't respond. Your mouth hangs open in shock. He's alive. He's breathing. He's real, and you haven't imagined him. His voice is coming through your phone, he is on the other end and you can almost feel him.

A deep breath.

"Luke," You sob, "Luke."

"Oh, my girl."

You can hear voices becoming louder, and some clattering, a door closing and finally, just him.

"Baby, what's wrong?"

"It hurts, Luke. It really hurts."

"What hurts?"

"My chest. It's too tight and I can't breathe properly, and my brain is so sore, every time I move it stings and burns. And my skin is too tight on me, but it's too loose in some places, and I don't recognise myself and I'm so scared. I'm so tired, and I'm so scared, and I can't sleep, and the bed is too big and the house is too silent, and I need you."

You say it all in one breath, trying hard to regulate your breathing as you hold onto the phone for dear life.

"Ok, can we take some breaths together? Nice and slow. You're ok. You're safe."

You try to breathe, and eventually your chest opens up a bit. You open up your mouth to talk, but suddenly it's all mush. You sit together in silence for a bit. Speaking is too difficult. You click the phone onto speaker, and try to make your way back to bed.

"I'm right here baby, I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere."

You manage to groan out a response, pulling your blanket over your shaking body. Another sob escapes your lips, and you wrap your arms around your middle, pretending that you are anywhere else, that you are anybody else, that you have your boy with you.

"I'm so proud of you, you're so brave, can we keep taking some deep breaths? Just copy me."

You listen to his breathing through the phone and try to copy it, the pressure in your throat easing slightly.

"I love you so much. And I'm home so soon. So soon."

"Yeah. Not soon enough." A shaky inhale, a shaky exhale.

"Do you want me to sit with you for a bit? I can be quiet, or I can talk, whatever you need honey."

He is so patient. He is so kind. The first time he saw you have one of these, he sat in the dark in complete silence with you for threehours.

"Talk to me. I need to hear your voice."

And so he does. He talks about what you will do when he gets back. He talks about hearing you in all of his songs, and how he can't wait to hold you.

"I need you to come home soon, Lu. I think I'm fading again. I can't sleep. I need you."

He hears the tremor in your voice, your desolate tone, your sniffles, your slight stutter. He feels his heart break in two, knowing that he isn't there to hold you, to put you back together and smooth your skin.

"I know baby. Not long now, and I'm all yours for as long as you need, okay?"

"Okay. I'm really tired. Can you sing to me?"

And he doesn't hesitate. You swear you can hear the slight smile in his voice,

"Always."

"Never thought that you would be, standing here so close to me ,there's so much I feel that I should say, but words can wait until some other day"

His voice is sweet. His words linger in your head and your eyes drift closed.

"Kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again. It's been a long, long time. Haven't felt like this, my dear since I can't remember when. It's been a long, long time"

Your heart feels warm. You know that it will not be easy. You know that the next two weeks will be hard. But you know that you will see him soon. And you know that you can live when you're with him.

"You'll never know how many dreams I've dreamed about you. Or just how empty they all seemed without you. So kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again It's been a long, long time"

[troius]

I just want to say a few things before you get to the end. First up, it's been a pleasure to read your thoughts on the series; like any fan, you have your own unique interpretations and it's always good to read how fans see certain scenes. It's also been fantastic to see fellow fans respond to your posts adding on to what you've written, again bringing your thoughts out more and generating discussion.

Also, seeing your thoughts has made me appreciate scenes and characters I never thought I would -- Yamamoto for instance, who would've thought?! They've also reminded me of why I fell in love with the series as much as I did, from the artwork to the themes to the incredible bonds between the characters. You've reminded me that BLEACH has it's flaws that can sometimes take you out of the story, but when it hits, it 100% HITS! It's a manga that's about the bonds we form, how they can help us overcome challenges and be a source of light in our lives. It's about the ways we overcome grief and the fear of death, whether it's literally fighting your way through it or slowly coming to a state of acceptance as time goes on. It's about the 'hearts' of people, about what they look like and how they're shared between those you choose. I could go on and on, but then this would become an essay and we'd be here all day.

All of this is to say, thank you for choosing to create a Tumblr account and deciding to read the series and give your thoughts along the way. I can't believe you've finally reached the end, it almost feels like I'm saying goodbye to the manga again!! I don't think I'm the only one here who sees you as a big and valued part of the community on here, so I hope you'll be sticking around! :)

Thank you so much Rays! Response under the cut because it went long.

This won't surprise you, but I too have grown in my appreciation for the series over the course of the uh three years that I've run this blog. Bleach has character concepts I've never seen elsewhere. It has moments of storytelling brilliance. It has truly, phenomenally astonishing art.

But more than anything else, I, like you, am impressed by the heart. For a story that's largely about the afterlife, Bleach is shockingly humanistic, locating virtue not in any system of belief, in any group or faction in the various conflicts that provide the setting for the manga, but in people. All people, whether they're our extremely relatable teenage protagonist and his friends, the occasionally sketchy adults in his life, or the various adversaries ranging from evil monsters to supernatural samurai to a regular-ass gang to a foreign apocalypse cult. Bleach never, not once, lets the viewer fall into the comfortable childish space of believing that there's good people and bad people in the world.

There's just people. Sometimes these people want to do bad things, like execute their sisters, or kidnap your girlfriend, or isolate you from your family, or destroy the entire world. Bleach doesn't flinch away from that either. But it (again, very humanistically) locates those bad actions not in the individual human beings, but in our relationships with one another through the systems and structures we've created to organize ourselves.

And yet in the face of the idea that humans do their worst work through other people, that's also where Bleach locates its greatest virtue. Alone, we're nothing. It's the bonds that we have with others that are what make life worth living, that are the source of everything good in this world. And navigating that dynamic, between spiritual bonds and structural shackles...that's really what adult life is all about, isn't it?

Anyhow, my adult life has been greatly enriched by all of you on here. But I'll take the chance to thank you specifically Rays, for being such a source of joy. Your positivity and passion are the sort of thing that makes a humble blogger want to come back for more, and I've deeply enjoyed hearing all of your thoughts, not just on my liveblog, but through your own posts and writing. I'll be sticking around for sure.

[lurkingshan]

Love in the Big City: Book Club Schedule

Okay, besties, here we go! Turns out a lot of you are into this nerd project so we will in fact be doing a little tumblr book club for LITBC! Here's how it will work:

We will begin on Sunday, February 4, and discuss a different section of the book each week.

On Sundays, @bengiyo will post a list of discussion questions for whatever part we're reading that week. You can use these as prompts for thinking, actually write and post responses to them, or just ignore them and do your own thing.

We will all write or share whatever we like during the week, using the hashtag [#litbc book club]. Everything from simple reaction commentary to full on essays is welcome. It's also fine not to post anything yourself if that's not your thing, you can participate by reading and sharing other people's posts.

Each following Sunday, I will post a roundup of everything people wrote during the week so we'll have them all collated in one place, and Ben will then post the next round of discussion questions.

This means we are going to be on the following schedule for reading and discussing:

Part 1: Sun, February 4 to Sat, February 10

Part 2: Sun, February 11 to Sat, February 17

Part 3: Sun, February 18 to Sat, February 24

Part 4: Sun, February 25 to Sat, March 2

With the final round up posted on Sunday, March 3. Of course, this is Not That Serious and if you fall behind you should still join in whenever you can and I will add your posts in later! Also, please note for your own planning that Part 2 of the novel is the longest, nearly double the length of the other parts.

For those who asked about where to acquire the book, the good news is it's very popular and generally easy to find translated in English. A lot of libraries carry it, and you can also find it at local bookstores, on Everand, on bookshop.org, and of course, Amazon.

For those who are seeing this for the first time and wondering what the heck I'm on about: go here for background on why we're doing this book club ahead of a couple upcoming drama and film adaptations. And if you want to be tagged into future posts please comment in tags or replies so we can add you to the list! We will also use the tag [#litbc book club] for all posts related to this going forward, so you can just track that tag if you prefer. [Note: if you want to be tagged please check your settings to see if other blogs are allowed to tag you. If you asked to be tagged on the first post and you're not in the list below, it's because tumblr wouldn't allow me to do it.]

Tagging here those who have signed up so far: @alwaysthepessimist @belladonna-and-the-sweetpeas @blalltheway @brifrischu @colourme-feral @dekaydk @dramacraycray @emotionallychargedtowel @fiction-is-queer @hakusupernova @hyeoni-comb @infinitelyprecious @littleragondin @literally-a-five-headed-dragon @loveable-sea-lemon @my-rose-tinted-glasses @neuroticbookworm @poetry-protest-pornography @profiterole-reads @serfergs @so-much-yet-to-learn @starryalpacasstuff @stuffnonsenseandotherthings @sunshinechay @thewayofsubtext @troubled-mind @twig-tea @waitmyturtles @wen-kexing-apologist

Excited to get started with y’all in a few weeks!

[gorgeouslypink]

i apologize in advance, this post is a bit sarcastic/mean as its inspired by thewizardliz and simone, but obviously how i usually convey my thoughts hasnt been working so maybe some of you can use it.

hey guys!! i think at this point, most of the community knows about the glossy/asteriaa plagiarism drama. if you don't and are interested, then look at @asteriaas-stuffs and @lotusmi 's blogs.

the reason i know about this is i have gotten multiple asks about this, basically along the lines of "i trusted glossy, now im so doubtful, this is like kira all over again, what do I do" like guys

no but seriously ive always been saying to not depend on bloggers and even wrote like a whole essay, sharing my own journey with doubts and the void and how depending on tumblr bloggers caused me to spiral into doubt and i shared why it's so detrimental to depend on others and attach your void concept to them and within days, you guys all went and depended on a lying blogger and fell for the exact thing i warned you against and then you come back crying to me. very genuinely, what do you expect me to do if you don't even listen to me after i shared my entire journey with you guys and was incredibly vulnerable about it too?

and the frustrating thing is i already know that if someone else were to come out right now and say they entered the void and will enter for you, most of you will repeat the same exact behavior again. this isn't the first time this kind of situation and has happened and at one point its hard for me to sympathize.

if you're someone who genuinely wants to change, read my doubts post and sabatoging post and make a genuine plan on how you're going to enter the void and stick to it. if it helps, literally sit down, open up my ask, vent a bit and then tell me why you havent entered the void yet and what youre going to change so that you will. i wont post but if acctually writing it out and sending a plan to someone will help you, do that. honestly, if you really went through the proof portfolio in my doubts post, you would've still been reading what I linked because theres a lot and you wouldnt have fallen for this mess, and you definetly wouldn't be doubting the void so maybe start there. if you can't handle being on tumblr without becoming a sheep for anyone who claims to have entered the void and attaching your void concept to them, then delete tumblr.

lemme tell you a little secret, no one is coming to save you. you are the creator of your reality so stop playing victim and if you really need a hero to save you, then become that hero. do what you need to do and enter the void!

[wartakes]

Firewatch (March 2024 edition, Part 1)

Yes, finally, the first War Takes essay for 2024. In it, I decided to take some time to consider some of the major flashpoints for crises and conflicts in the world, and I ended up writing so much I had to divide it up to post it on Tumblr (lmao). Part 1, under the cut. Enjoy.

It occurred to me recently, looking at my feeds on social media, that I've been (for the most part) laser focused on what's going on in Palestine and the broader Middle East. To a lesser, but still strong, extent, I've also primarily been focused on the state of the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine. While I think there are very good reasons for the focus on those two conflicts, its also made me realize how much more that has been going on in the world of conflicts and crises that has passed me by (or that I've intended to talk about and then completely forgotten about by the end of the day).

With all that in mind, for my first quarterly essay of 2024, I decided now was a good time to go around the horn, widen the aperture, and identify some other ongoing armed conflicts and burgeoning crises that are important to keep an eye on. It's been a while since I've done one of these in general, so I felt it was overdue (it also works out well for me because I had exactly zero ideas on what I wanted to write about for this one so consider this my equivalent of the teacher wheeling the big TV into the classroom when they're hung over).

I want to try and formalize this as a recurring piece that I do (at least) once a year to update folks on important goings on in the field of conflict and warfare, so with that in mind I have a fun new flashy name for it: "Firewatch." This isn't just me trying to be cute, but putting it in the context of "fires" also actually helps me a bit with trying to categorize things by severity and level of concern that (in my opinion) you should probably have at this moment in time.

Before we get into things, a few up front disclaimers. First: these are all entirely subjective assessments based on my own personal analysis and knowledge, with my being stronger in some areas and admittedly weaker in others; take it all with a grain of salt and know I'm not perfect; in that same vein, I picked conflicts that I thought in my opinion were the most important to keep an eye on at the moment, but that doesn't mean that others aren't worth your attention (again, this is all subjective and I'm not trying to overtly dismiss anything). Second: these are all based on what information I could find at the time of writing, and the situations could all change rapidly (my Haiti piece in this was literally changing as I was writing it), so keep that in mind too and know that this could all be made out of date rapidly by new events. Third and final: again, I'm not perfect; if I missed anything, I swear it wasn't a purposeful omission and I apologize and please let me know so I can reassess my analysis; I'm only one guy, and the internet is getting harder to search these days; I'm doing my best to just try and keep folks on the Left informed about what's going on.

Ok, with all that out of the way, let's dig in to what's going on with the fires out there.

Roaring Flames

These are the conflicts that are at the point that not only are things on fire, the flames are rising and being actively fanned in many cases. These are conflicts you've probably already heard about in between other pieces of news, but may not have as much depth on compared to other ongoing events (unless you're a weirdo like me who soaks up conflict news like a sponge).

Sudan

Sudan has been locked in a civil war (its third since independence, if you're counting) for what will be a year this coming April. Coming on the heels of years of political upheaval and a prior coup against a civilian transitional government launched by the Sudanese Armed Forces in 2021, the war was sparked by an attempt by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces to then seize power from the SAF back in April of 2023 amid a power struggle between the two forces. When the RSF coup went off half-cocked and failed to immediately take over the entire country from the SAF, you'd probably have been making the smart bet by putting your money on the SAF as opposed to the RSF. While both forces were roughly comparable in numbers of personnel (a lesson in why you shouldn't build a parallel military to compete with your military), the SAF had all the advantages in heavy firepower, possessing tanks, helicopters, jets, and so on.

However, the SAF has proven unable to snuff out the RSF over the past ten months or so of fighting, with the group proving remarkably resilient in its ability to take and hold territory throughout Sudan. This is despite the fact that the RSF is widely feared and hated, descendant from the infamous Janjaweed militias that were used by Bashir's regime during the War in Darfur to commit numerous crimes against humanity. In fact, after much of 2023 being a stalemate for both sides in Sudan, the RSF has made notable gains against the SAF in recent weeks and months, with the momentum of the war seemingly shifting dramatically in its favor. Part of this has had to do with increasing international involvement, with the leaders on both sides of the civil war seeking and gaining foreign support on the battlefield, such as supposed weapons support provided by the United Arab Emirates to the RSF, or even reported support by the Ukrainian special operations forces to the SAF (facing off against the late-Yevgeny Prigozhin's Russian PMC Wagner Group who have also been providing support to the RSF). However, in recent days the SAF appears to have had a rebound of its own, securing some high profile reversals against the RSF, showing that the outcome of this war is anything but certain just yet.

The international involvement in Sudan belies why this conflict should be on your radar. Obviously, a civil war in any country with almost 50 million people, like Sudan, will have widespread repercussions. Add in the fact that Sudan is located along the strategically important Red Sea (very topical at the moment, as you may have noticed), and also lays astride the Nile river, and you see even more reasons why international interest in Sudan is high. Add in the potential of the RSF winning the war and taking control of Sudan after having cut a swatch of indiscriminate destruction across the country, and more problems seem almost immediately around the corner (let me be clear, the SAF junta is by no means 'good', but the RSF is a unique kind of bad in its own right). An additional complicating factor comes from Sudan being between Egypt and Ethiopia, which have both sparred and threatened one another over usage of the Nile River (to say nothing of Ethiopia's own internal issues, which will come up later). But if you don't care about any of that, there's the sheer human cost in terms of civilians brutally killed, forced to flee their homes, and potentially starve. In so many words: this is a conflict to keep a close eye on if you haven't been already, both for reasons of geopolitics and of simple humanity.

Myanmar (Burma)

Thinking about Sudan makes me depressed, because all I can think about is all the innocent civilians caught in between bad (the SAF) and worse (the RSF), just trying to survive it all. But if there's one conflict going on right now that actually gives me some degree of hope for the people involved – and for humanity in general, really – its the ongoing civil war in Myanmar (AKA: Burma), which I've covered to varying extents in several past essays of mine.

Like with Sudan, the initial spark that eventually led to Myanmar's war was a coup d'etat. The Myanmar Armed Forces (commonly referred to as the "Tatmadaw" - or more preferred by those resisting the military: the "Sit-Tat") had already previously been in total control of the country of decades, and the coup came after years of apparent shifts towards democratization in the country. However, this was all dashed in the course of a day on February 1st, 2021, after the election held the previous November failed to deliver the result the military wanted.

An ethnically and religiously diverse country, Myanmar was already host to a number of political and paramilitary organizations that have waged low-level conflict against the central government (largely dominated by the Burmans or Bamar ethnic group, which makes up around two thirds of Myanmar's population) for decades, in search of better treatment and varying degrees of autonomy. But the brazenness of the 2021 coup and the incredibly brutal and violent crackdown by the military that ensued against those who openly opposed the usurpation of democracy, has served to not only energize and encourage resistance to shift to outright armed opposition, but also galvanize a broad front against the Sit-Tat and create a new sense of unity between the People's Defense Force stood up by the anti-coup National Unity Government to fight back against the Sit-Tat (many of their members overwhelmingly young people and students from the Bamar majority who protested the initial coup) and the preexisting ethnic armed groups.

The unity and energy that the combined opposition is bringing to the table seems to be paying dividends, as in recent weeks and months the junta appears to be on the ropes. Previously propped up with support from Russia and China, the Sit-Tat has been left wanting in that department as Russia has been increasingly distracted by its own war of aggression in Ukraine and China has been perturbed by the junta's inability to control Myanmar's shared border with China (which is one of several factors that has led China to lend support to some of the opposition groups and attempt to play a double game and preserve its relationships and influence in the country no matter how the war turns out). Due in no small part to the drying up of support to the junta and increased coordination and unity among the opposition, Sit-Tat has lost significant ground to the resistance in a series of offensives that have been ongoing since late last year. The situation has become so dire for the Sit-Tat that it has reportedly had to resort to enforce conscription for the first time in years (a move that has made many living in Sit-Tat controlled territory reportedly very eager to move out of it, for obvious reasons).

The international isolation of the Junta and its constant reversals on the battlefield seem to suggest that its living on borrowed time. However, many questions about this war remain to be answered; not simply when the Junta will fall, but what comes next? There is admittedly a possibility that the situation in Myanmar may not improve once the Sit-Tat is gone, or could even become worse – with some worrying the country could be ripped apart entirely. The prospect of infighting among the diverse members of the opposition shouldn't be ignored given Myanmar's history of internal ethnic conflict, but the idealist buried deep down under my cynicism holds out hope that this time things may really be different for the country. While the number of armed groups opposed to the Junta in Myanmar is vast and varied, most seem to be generally united under the ideas that authoritarian rule is unacceptable and that there should be some kind of confederal or federal democratic system in Myanmar with respect for the rights of all the groups of peoples that live there. While a lot could still go wrong and many issues that will need to be worked out in the aftermath if and when the resistance forces win, I say that's at least a good starting point for a new Myanmar and worth supporting and hoping for. This is why I continue to keep a close eye on what's going on in Myanmar even as other crises and conflicts fill me with more negative emotions, and I continue to hope the best for Myanmar and its people.

Haiti

Haiti is a country that has been plagued by a myriad of issues since it first gained its independence from France, many of them the result of outside interference. The state wasn't even recognized by many countries for decades for reasons of outright racism and slavery, with France later forcing Haiti to pay it reparations for the loss of French planters' slaves in the revolt that won them their freedom. Haiti then suffered imperialism in another guise through a twenty-year long occupation by the US Marines starting in 1915, with the US later helping to prop up the brutal dictatorships of the Duvalier family that lasted from the late 1950s through the 1980s. The 1915 US intervention was only the first in a series of 20th and 21st century outside military interventions by the United States and the international community as a whole that typically did nothing to substantively improve the conditions within the country (and arguably making them worse in some cases).

Even given the scale of the prior trials and tribulations Haiti has experienced, be it coups and earthquakes and various interventions, the country now faces a crisis unprecedented for it in modern times, with the country in the midst of an open revolt by armed gangs that is bordering on civil war. The current crisis began with the dramatic assassination of then-President of Haiti Jovenel Moise in July 2021, when a group of foreign mercenaries (primarily Colombians but including two Haitian Americans) that were reportedly hired by a Haitian doctor with Presidential aspirations stormed into the President's home in the Haitian capital of Port-Au-Prince and gunned him down. The President's murder created a power vacuum in the country, which was filled by Prime Minister Ariel Henry. In the time since taking over, Henry has failed to hold fresh elections on multiple occasions as tensions mounted and conditions worsened inside of Haiti, with armed gangs steadily expanding their control of the capital and levels of violence rising.

It was the most recent delaying of new elections – despite an agreement to hold them and pass on power by February 7th of this year – that served as impetus for the violence to escalate to its current level. Gangs and other armed groups have stepped up their violence to outright attacks on government buildings and institutions and stretching already overtaxed and under-resourced police and security forces to the limit and reportedly taking control of over 80% of the capital. These gangs appeared to have coordinated their actions, launching their wave of attacks as Henry was out of the country on a visit to Kenya in search of foreign police and troops to intervene in the country on his behalf. As Henry struggled to re-enter his own country, the gangs called for his ouster. After days of stonewalling and radio silence, following a conference of the Caribbean Community in Jamaica, Henry did just that.

While Henry is now on the outs (and will likely be missed by few in Haiti or elsewhere), the crisis in Haiti appears to be far from over. While their principal demand has been met, the gangs appear in no mood to back down, refusing to accept any new government imposed from outside forces. Instead, the gangs themselves seem to be aspiring to power – in particular, their unofficial leader, Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier, a former police officer and leader of the gang known as G9 who has been crystal clear about his willingness to seize power violently if necessary. But Barbecue also faces competition, such as from fellow gang leader Johnson Andre (aka "Izo"), and former attempted coup leader Guy Philippe – recently returned to Haiti after serving a sentence in the US for taking bribes from drug traffickers, and making no illusions about his own desires to take power.

As the violence in Haiti continues with an associated and worsening humanitarian crisis, the United States and other foreign powers have debated and struggled to put together troops and police for some kind of intervention force and stabilization mission for months, with few governments seeming particularly eager to step into the breech after the past few interventions. Among those that are willing, such as Kenya, they've experienced various domestic roadblocks.. All while the and number of dead and displaced continue to rise amid worsening conditions (with some migrants to the neighboring Dominican Republic being forced back across the border into Haiti). However, in recent years Haitians have been understandably apprehensive if not outright hostile to the idea of yet another foreign military adventure in their country that will likely not solve any long term problems and potentially make them even worse yet again. Even as the gangs wage war in Haiti, its important to remember that there are regular people who are also protesting their frustration with their prior, ineffective, corrupt governments, in addition to foreign interference. The right path forward for Haiti remains unclear, all while foreign governments, the gangs, and other aspirants to power seem set on a collision course if nothing changes. Given conditions seem unlikely to change for the better at this moment in time, we should be prepared for things to get much worse in Haiti – and potentially the Caribbean as a whole – in the near future. (Note: I'm dumb and didn't realize how stringent Tumblr's character limits are now, so find part two here, with the rest of my thoughts and a conclusion) Photo credit: @operation1027 (on Twitter)

[callsignfangs]

Aaaaaaaall right- I'm very curious.

I wanna know why you love Farah.

Do it- Yooou KNOW you want to. >:)

GIGGLING youre absolutely spoiling me right now 😇😇

I will take literally any opportunity to talk about the sweet girl so here we go 😻

Btw this is going to be completely unorganised, I’m literally just dumping my thoughts into a tumblr txt post 🧍‍♂️

Also ik for a fact that I literally cannot put my love for this character into words to forgive if my wording is horrible 😇

This is also for @missaimfire14red, who was lovely enough to drop this in my askbox as well 😚 Figured I might as well merge the two!! I’ll also be fleshing this out later for yous, hopefully into an actual semi-formatted essay lol 😭 /lh

Cw: Blood warning for clips & images of canon scenes

Now: Mwi (Modern Warfare one)

I’m gonna start off with her and Hadir. Their bond, like, HURTS me (in a good way 😇). They went through so much together - loosing both their parents, growing up in a warzone and almost dying + having to flee their home as CHILDREN, then being imprisoned for, as far as i know, almost all of their childhood and early adulthood.

DO YOU SEE THE WAY SHE LOOKS AT HIM??? 😭😭

Hes just her big brother and they love each other to pieces, literally quite possibly the strongest bond in the cod reboot imo. (See Hadir saying ‘I love you even if you hate me’ BAWLING)

And now let’s talk about her reaction to Hadir using chemical weapons.

Firstly, this scene, when she first finds out that Hadir betrayed them when he originally used them. I’m not gonna go too much into this scene bc I think it’s more about her bonds with Hadir, Price and Alex and I’m trying to keep this as a Farah post, but I might make another one abt this in the future. Lemme just say that she literally fights Hadir until she passes out. Ty 😇

Now what she says when she confronts him and he starts blaming Price for betraying them???

‘You betrayed yourself’. PAINNN 💔💔

She hated those weapons because they were used on her an her people and she just never wanted anyone to experience that ever again, even the enemy.

Let me reiterate that - she literally wouldn’t use the enemy’s own weapons against them due to the sheer inhumanity of it. Her morals are literally so strong that she practically disowns him because of it. She refuses to use the weapons that were used on herself, even on the people who attacked her. When I say I fully believe she is one of, if not the kindest, person in the cod reboot, I MEAN it. She rightfully refuses to give into the occupying forces but is still merciful enough to refuse to torture them the way they tortured her. She’s merciful in her warfare and her revenge and it just. It just breaks my heart 😇

Adding to that,

ALSO. Let’s talk about how, when she was being detained by Hadir, she had all the opportunity to kill him, literally weapon in hand, and she just let herself get taken. Was it for the greater good? Totally. But I think it also tells us that she trusts her allies enough to be willingly taken by the enemy (calling Hadir the enemy HURTS bro 😭). I also think it tells us that she still loves him, to some extent. She hates what he’s done unbelievably, but he’s still her big brother and she still loves him.

Okay, onto Mwii (Modern Warfare two)

First: Hadir’s death.

He tells her that she has the warhead and tells her to use it, but, ofc, she refuses. But then, what does she do??

SHE COMFORTS HIM. Tells him that she’ll defeat the russians, even if it’s not the way he was planning. That’s why I’ll literally NEVER take anyone saying they didn’t love eachother - bc no way would she ever spare an actual enemy (esp one she was technically interrogating) this kind of mercy, but she does for Hadir.

THEN the way he encourages her and her reaction 😭 She tells him that they have nothing to do with this, and I kinda feel like it’s either out of grief or because she doesn’t want them to know about this, in a way? She wants to keep their memories of their parents in a simpler time and doesn’t want to acknowledge what Hadir did, maybe even partially doesn’t blame him, because she’s angry too and she might even partially understand why he did it, yet she’s logical, kind, and thinks things through enough to know that it wasn’t the right thing to do, ethically or tactically.

And dont even get me STARTED on tactics. She’s literally the commander of her ENTIRE force ffs, you know she’s literally unbelievably smart, both against an enemy in general (Al Quatala) and against one with more populated and technologically advanced (manufacturing-wise, they have more weapons and are much more heavily funded). Not to mention her and Hadir literally produced weapons for their troops themselves. Personally, I don’t have much knowledge with weapons, but I do know that so many intricate parts go into them that it’s not the kind of thing a normal person can just do.

Admittedly, bc of the shift in focus for mw2, theres not much else I wanna talk about Farah-wise. I’m not gonna go into detail with the atomgrad raid bc honestly I dont have the time rn lol- might make another post about it.

The only other really notable Farah we got here that I’m gonna mention was Laswell’s rescue.

Firstly, let’s talk abt how she was willing to help, but was also smart about it. She didn’t risk forcing her people back into war, only pursuing the kidnappers once they reached Urzikstan, and the plus that they were Al Quatala.

Then, Farah’s ‘we share a common enemy,’

And Price’s ‘and a common friend.’

Honestly I’m totally projecting by saying Laswell is a mother figure to Farah bc there’s literally no plot evidence but. In my heart Price and Laswell are besties co parenting Gaz and Farah 😇😇 (and honestly all of 141 and ULF as well to some extent). But!!! Laswell does call her, Price, Gaz and Farah meeting as a ‘family reunion’, so there’s definitely some level of bond there. And then Farah proceeds to compliment Laswell on her moves which honestly had me giggling a little 😇

(Also can i just say I’m so upset we didn’t get a Farah reaction to Gaz’s heli moment?? Disappointing 🙄🙄 /lh)

Lastly: Mwiii (Modern Warfare 3) - and ofc spoilers for it.

For mw3, I’m only gonna go over her and Dena, mostly bc I’m running outta time rn lol.

They have such an adorable bond and I love them sm 😭😭

Can we talk about how one of the only times we see Farah smile,

Is at Dena? 😭 And Farah immediately asks about her mother? It’s such a like domestic sort of scene that I just love so much bc we get a little peek into Farah outside of Commander Karim 💟💟

Then they have the little moment in the car 💔

You can just tell how much Farah appreciates the encouragement and the trust between them

Honestly, I’m not gonna go over Dena’s death 🧍‍♂️ Like the other death in mw3, I feel like it kinda could’ve been handled differently/better (also like give my girl Farah a break jesus can she not be happy?? 😭 /lh)

Still, the way she promises to give Dena justice literally breaks my heart 😭💔

-

Anyways, that’s it for now 😚 At some point I wanna like come back to this and flesh it out a bit alongside other dialogue and plot stuff with Farah, I just didn’t have the time today :[

[burningvelvet]

on cancel culture, tumblr, lit crit shit, paranoid reading, and some observations on blogging about byron & the shelleys —

every day someone comments on one of my posts about old dead writers with the most insufferable and reactionary takes disguised under a veil of liberalism. go read eve sedgwick's essay on paranoid reading & reparative reading, and learn how to enjoy things!!! why are you trying to cancel people who died 200 years ago? stop!!!

9/10 times they've never read the writer in question, they just hear that these writers were problematic and without using their own critical thinking skills, and having done zero research, they readily condemn them. no real appreciation for literature, no real appreciation for history or culture. and if they do have these, or if they have done research, it's entirely biased, already marked with judgement (aka exemplary paranoid reading).

i think it's very interesting that percy shelley and lord byron were getting cancelled in their own time period left and right, and now they still face cancellation attempts for some of the same reasons, only now more often at the hands of self-described progressives who feel they do so for the "right reasons."

a major problem in discourse (both in and outside of academia) is that most people do not understand the difference between "criticism" in the academic sense (which is synonymous with "discussion," "analysis," "engagement") and "criticism" in the colloquial sense (synonymous with "condemnation" or "harsh judgement" or even sometimes "attacking").

so when we start talking about literary criticism, some misinformed people automatically seek to cancel every dead writer, burn every book, and disregard all of history, even the progressive bits, because they simply don't care, and think that they are being "critical" and that this is a good thing, when they are using the wrong definition of the term to begin with. if i taught a class on literature the first thing i would do is make the distinction between these two definitions.

a lot of people approach dead writers or old writing in bad faith (paranoid reading). they automatically denounce The Olds for being problematic, and then proceed to believe they are morally superior for their own lack of depth.

percy shelley is one of the most progressive and forward-thinking figures of his generation and it's honestly a miracle that we still have access to some of his works which were literally burned in his own lifetime, but that his friends and most importantly his best friend, his wife mary shelley, carefully preserved during his life and long after his death even in the face of social ruin and censure, because they recognized his immense merit and they desperately loved him and his work. this is a beautiful thing!!!

this isn't the narrative a lot of people prefer, though. a lot of people would have mary shelley, instead of being the publisher and defender of his works as she was, be forced into the role which she herself openly derided, of being percy's unwilling bride, victim, who merely tolerated him, who was herself either repressed or oppressed by him. nor is nuance allowed in this narrative.

this narrative is based on a reactionary stance disguised as progressive. that all women writers are mere victims to the men around them. nevermind the fact that mary shelley's husband was one of her biggest encouragers (as well as her trusted proofreader and editor; and all this also goes for her father godwin, but to a lesser extent, as one could more easily make the argument that godwin did emotionally neglect mary).

paint all male writers as abusive control freaks, and all female writers associated with them as their weak-willed puppets, all based on their biological sex and a surface-level analysis of their biographies. these people are arguably just as bad as the sexist pseudo-scholars who have claimed that percy actually penned the entirety of frankenstein and used mary as his puppeteered pseudonym. as if mary never sought agency of her own and never possessed a modicum of it!

for a fair analysis on percy and mary's connection, i highly recommend Anna Mercer's "The Collaborative Literary Relationship of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley" and her interview by Mathelinda Nabugodi for a TLDR version.

i find it interesting that my posts about percy shelley's personal life are not only much more popular than my similar posts about byron (probably due to percy's surname; the mary/frankenstein connection) -- but also that i see way more criticism against percy than against byron.

i think this is partly due to their portrayals in the ahistorical 2018 mary shelley biopic film (see: graham henderson's blog posts on this topic) wherein byron was somehow portrayed as less of an asshole than shelley (which i never would have thought possible had i not seen it). & maybe it has to do with interest in & misconceptions about mary in general. but this is surprising because in many regards, percy really is much more likeable and progressive than byron.

i once had a person hating on byron and trying to argue with me entirely under a post about percy shelley which had nothing to do with byron. whenever i try to critically engage with this sort of backlash on my posts, it is utterly pointless. none of them are interested in or respectful of the opinions of others, nor are they receptive to facts or nuance or engaging with any material in any mature or serious way.

it's especially difficult that they mostly comment on my more popular joking posts/memes, bc that sets up a false pretense for me or my blog to be taken unseriously, when i do take academic figures & topics seriously. my blog is a place for me to unwind and joke about literature, yes, but it's not like i'm just mindlessly joking about writers i've never studied. a lot of people assume that i'm genuinely ridiculing writers when i playfully make fun of them, so they take it as an invitation to do the same, when that's not my case at all.

— back to the percy/byron comparison: in the history of my blog posts, i've seen probably 30+ percy haters and maybe 5 byron haters. as i said, this is honestly bewildering. there are way more justifiable reasons for hating byron than there are for hating shelley.

if we're speaking solely in terms of political, creative, & ideological stances between the two, (and there are hundreds of books/essays comparing their lives/works/philosophies,) i agree and disagree with both of them on various topics. they're both extremely complex writers/thinkers/figures and very different people, despite having been friends.

but if i'm comparing them biographically speaking, if i had to let one of them babysit my children, i would choose percy 10/10 times. if i had to live with one of them, i would choose percy most of the time, although either of them would be tough as a roommate for different reasons.

but overall, percy was a bit more decent biographically speaking, though that doesn't make him a superior writer (percy himself wrote numerous times that he felt byron was creatively superior to him, but morally inferior). and i think most people who've researched the two would agree that percy is the more moral poet by most standards.

for these and many other reasons, it seems apparent to me that the majority of people who hate percy are often parroting the rhetoric of others & not actually thinking for themselves -- which mary endlessly wrote that she despised, as she devoted so much of her time and energy to defending her husband's moral character from critics, so it's especially disappointing that most of the anti-percy sentiment comes from mary shelley fans, who don't even realize how much effort she put into publishing his work and transcribing it as his pre- and posthumous amanuensis.

[lurkingteapot]

2023 post round-up/summary

Lovely @twig-tea tagged me here, so I'll try my hand.

I'd abandoned tumblr for about 4? 5? years 2016ish through 2020, had a short stint with it again in 2020, took peeks and vehemently disagreed with much of what I saw in 2021-2022, and grudgingly settled back in in 2023. I wasn't going to interact. I wasn't.

Jan-April: *crickets* I was being strong!

Then, I saw people moaning about how they'd learn Thai if only it was on Duolingo, and you know how spite can be funnelled into positivity? I did that! Result:

May

Popular: Free Thai Language Learning Resources, most popular by a landslide. This pleases me greatly, as I put a lot of work into it and always hope more people start picking up this language.

Favourite: maybe my thoughts on Ming, piggybacking off @kenmakaashi's post?

June

Popular: my musings on translation and how it relates to fannish reception of media, which was my most popular post of the year and 'broke containment', if only in a very small way. Some of the additions in the tags and reblogs are fantastic, do go have a look if you like!

Favourite: toss-up between my attempt at showing a parallel between a silly moment in Our Skyy 2 x BBS and a scrapped shot from BBS proper and this rant about Romanisations of Thai and why G**gle translate is the devil (that bit is in the conversation downthread), which let me meet @plantsarepeopletoo.

July

Popular: Summary of James Welker's 2006 essay "Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “Boys’ Love” as Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga"

Favourite: the offerings are slim here … let's go with the one in which I once more was salty about the way folks talk about BL

August

Popular: Only Friends' Ray isn't just The Drunkard, but also The One Who's basically Given Up On Himself, as per his title card (this one was so popular it got stolen and reposted – without credit or permission – to twitter 🙃)

Favourite: Thinking about Drama, the Romance genre, and tropes, and how those relate to our perception of BL (good additions from various folks in the notes; conversation with @visualtaehyun in reblogs and @twig-tea in the replies).

September

Popular: IFYLITA Ep 6 poem context notes

Favourite: toss-up between complaining about badly machine translated content in Love in Translation and musing on the name of Khun Yai's favourite bar

October

Popular: my long-winded answer to @zimmbzon's ask "Hi, how would a non-binary person (me) get around the binary gender rules and vocab in Thai?"

Favourite: uhhh … maybe my musings on honorific translations in kimi ni wa todokanai? (yes, technically a reblog from sideblog, shh)

November

Popular: most popular was this throwaway therapy vent containing food for thought and while I guess this meme is mostly fannish I'm linking it anyway because it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to (or something)

Favourite: when I called out the resemblance between the Last Twilight trailer and Intouchables (2011). Literally no one cared, but then @my-rose-tinted-glasses independently came in strong with receipts as soon as the actual first episode aired and made me feel validated af.

December

Popular: Why I'm pretty sure Last Twilight's "fried rice/false rice" joke was funnier in Thai

Favourite: the saga of the songs in Ep 4 of Last Twilight

I didn't do any round-up posts, but I'll include the other category @twig-tea added:

Five other posts that I want to highlight because I can:

BL Favourites Tag Game (July 2023)

Link to fujoshi.info with information on WHY you should check out that site if you're interested in having an informed opinion on BL and the genre's history.

contemporary issues in Thailand as mentioned in Only Friends ep 1

Thoughts on code-switching in Step by Step

Reply to @mynameisnotthepoint's comment-via-ask on my anti viki rant

I'm not going to tag anyone because I'm completely lost – I was mostly off tumblr for nearly three weeks; if you made a post like this you'd like me to see, please link me/tag me! <3

[unityrain24]

i've gotten a few new followers recently who seems to be loki series fans... and i just. you do realize that this is a very anti-series blog, right? it's in my description too

i know i haven't reblogged a whole bunch of anti loki series stuff lately, but it's not because i've "changed my mind" or anything. I am just to tired to read long metas (i haven't been reblogging many og loki metas recently either), i do not have the emotional energy to deal with awful feelings that come with the series, and also the other anti-series blog i follow also are getting emotional burnout from it so they aren't posting/reblogging a whole bunch of anti loki stuff either so that's less content for me to reblog.

but know that i am still very anti-loki series, and had strong feeling about it even before i got a tumblr account and literally no one in my life shared my views. When i finally got a tumblr account, like the first thing i did was read through all of the master posts of all the most major anti-series blogs. I read and reblogged probably hundreds. Like i combed through the archives. And i felt so validated finally.

The loki series was a terrible insult to lokis character. They took away his intelligence and his grace and his strategy and his humour and his masking and his cool reserved (but still witty) demeanor. They took away key aspects of his backstory, and invalidated every bad thing that ever happened to him. They didn't simply reduce his complex personality to something stupidly simple, they completely took away practically every part of his personality, and replaced it with things that weren't ever part of him. They blamed him for things he never did (and don't mention things he actually should be blamed for), called him inherently evil, and made him the butt of every joke. That thing you see on the screen is not the same character, not even a different character, but a bastardization of wearing someone else's corpse. The makers didn't even watch the previous installments he was in.

The series was questionable, if not outright terrifying, in its morals/messages (having the main character be stolen and stripped of everything, then work for a genocidal fascist organization and be happy about it)(portrayed either a questionable strange psuedo-incest abuser or an abusive fascist as the two romance options)(etc etc).

Even smaller less important things made it terrible. Making a show about "loki" then having it not be about him, but rather the tva, just to expand disney/mcu's while multiverse obsession? Having the series be called "loki" the whole aesthetic of the show being something painfully not loki? from the music to the lighting to the costumes to the plot to the everything? The lack consistency of the show to the installments prior/post it (again bc they don't care to research)? Gaps in logic? Also the fact that they seem to keep mixing up the concept of multiverses with timelines? (an alternate universe is different from a branch off of one universes timeline. Alligator loki, for example, does not make sense being a loki "variant" because the timeline could not deviate in a way that would make that happen). The fact that it was called "loki" but all the merch is racist genocidal tva? The fact that they condemn loki for certain things but praise the tva for doing far worse things? The way they made tom overact in such an embarrassing way? The way they marketed as having genderfluid loki, and then not only not showing it, but actively denying it?

i could go on and on and on but since i'm not formatting this as an essay the disorganization and lack of proper sentences/grammar is just muddling my point so i won't continue that long paragraph.

anyways.

and it's not "just" a show to me. its not "just" a fictional character. it's not "not a big deal." It is. It is a big deal. To me. I've dealt with mental illnesses my whole life, and when they get bad, they get bad. Dangerously bad. Having a comfort character/ world in my head i could escape to is a vital coping mechanism for me. When they first announced the loki series, a certain nervousness set in me, and with every new piece of information released, it got worse and worse, and my mental state got worse and worse. fuck man, i wanted to kill myself so that i wouldn't be alive when it came out (amongst other reasons). When it did finally come out, not only were all my fears proven correct, it proved to much, much, much worse than i could have ever imagined. It was horrific. It was like they stole what was dearest to me and disfigured it in front of my eyes and got the blood all over me and it would wash out, and the scent and colour and feel and taste of blood filled all my senses. My mental illnesses got a lot worse (both from reason related to and unrelated to the series), and i couldn't even use my necessary coping mechanism bc every time i thought of loki (even my og loki), the series and how it ruined everything would invade my mind. things were bad for me. and all i got was people saying "it's not that bad, your being dramatic, you should watch it!"

And perhaps i'm one-in-million in that sense, it's not like they made the series specifically to personally do that to me. And they don't know that it did.

but should they be ashamed? that they took something that was originally a complex piece of art and passion and expression, and did that to it? They turned it into some soulless money-making formula? They went from wanting to make stories to wanting to make money? From quality to quantity? Shouldn't they feel ashamed, that they disrespected the original artists and writers and filmmakers who put so much into it, only to not even watch them when "wanting" to continue it? Shouldn't they feel ashamed at their hollow greed and corruption? Shouldn't they feel ashamed for forcing an actor to ruin a character they cared so much about, and not allowed for their ideas?

even without what it emotionally did to people, they should be ashamed.

[familyabolisher]

I'm very curious about any more in depth thoughts you have on It Came From The Closet! It's been on my radar and I'd been planning to check it out soon as my next read, and this is the first opinion I've seen on it that isn't part of what feels like marketing reviews almost. Is it the analysis of the horror movies and themes that feels off or the way the essays are written? I'm a huge horror fan and I've definitely seen a...few queer horror takes that felt either like reaches or just "off" to me, but it's always hard to put my finger on it

i’ve only read the first few essays so it’s entirely possible that the volume will improve from here on out (though i … haven’t gotten my hopes up), but my impression so far is that it’s a series of schlocky, surface-level analyses providing a veneer of pop talking points around “horror” and “queerness” over what are often frankly uninteresting personal essays. v little insight and v little desire to bring anything new to the table; frankly, v little interest in the films they purport to be writing on beyond shallow rhetorical vehicles for personal reflection. my patience for The Personal Essay is vvv low at the best of times, but like, i can appreciate a work from which i can glean some compelling insights and articulate a thoughtful response. and, god, none of these pieces have crossed that hurdle so far.

like, if it’s not a long string of appeals to buzzwords like “queerbaiting” and “bury your gays” or v poorly substantiated appeals to "subversion" then it's incorrectly defined “reparative reading” or one writer citing that stupid mary oliver soft animal of your body whatever line out of literally nowhere. it’s just not insightful or imaginative. at its worst it does just read like an annoying tumblr post circa 2017. carmen maria machado writes an essay on jennifer’s body as articulating something essential to her bisexuality such that efforts to talk about the way in which it marketed itself via appealing to the homophobic cultural currency of teen lesbian eroticism somehow constitutes “gatekeeping.” this is not compelling or original critical writing, people.

almost every essay seems to fall back on the same base claim: that what makes horror horrifying relies on a currency of alterity which discursively constructs the “other” and that queer people can & will identify with the “other”—the monster in the horror film—in order to make sense of themselves & overturn the hegemony that the film may well seek to affirm. cool, awesome—this is not new analysis. i would not expect this kind of thing to be churned out in a book published in 2022; we know this already. i worry that overleaning into this idea of a “reclamation” of sorts a) risks forfeiting the language we have available to us to actually talk about the sort of bigotry which can fuel these kinds of stories; how many people talk about le fanu’s carmilla as a stunning depiction of erotic lesbian vampires and lose sight of its having been a v homophobic, colonialist text in their doing so?; and b) neglects the tradition of horror within alterity; horror being made not out of a conservative ethos that we seek to critically remould into a kind of limp simulacrum of a “radical” one, but one born out of a desire to tell a story against heteronormative social imaginaries in the first place. it’s all well and good to identify with regan from the exorcist and cite your poor understanding of reparative readings (not a critical framework i subscribe to anyway, but like, at least get it right?) in doing so, but do we have to keep limiting our discourse to this back-and-forth about whether or not we can salvage obviously homophobic/misogynistic/ableist/racist stories forever? lol. i watched Hellraiser for the first time the other day and that was queer horror that could be met with on far more compelling terms than whatever all this is.

[akookminsupporter]

I got on reddit a couple of months ago and I discovered that while many people are neutral about bts or even dislike them, most of them are really polite and nice about it, and most discourse about bts is in a positive or neutral light. It's not like twitter where they call them flops in every 2 tweets. So it's similar to tumblr because people can have normal conversations (most of the time) about kpop groups there. Of course there are trolls and straight up haters there too but they either get downvoted very hard or deleted so it's I think better. Anyway my point is that I go on reddit today to see what people are talking about because I only check reddit like 2-3 times a week. And the first post is literally someone asking why bighit is pushing jikook out of all the ships.. And I just sat here blinking at the screen because... Really? We are having this conversation AGAIN? It wasn't even in the bangtan channel/sub, it was in a kpop sub where you can talk about any group. But then I read the whole post and it was very clear OP was one of those people who don't watch official content and just lives off of clips that are posted in the first 24 hours. There are not a lot of comments right now but all of them are very normal and lowkey calling out OP for being stupid so I upvoted all of them 😂

But like every fucking time a DVD comes out and we have footage from multiple days or even months and we see jikook hanging out and do their thing, EVERY DAMN TIME we have this same ass conversation. Every time it's fanservice every time it's "why are they together" every time it's "why is bh pushing them" MF IT'S BEEN YEARS OF THIS. Don't these people think that if you see them, CONSISTENTLY hang out with each other EVERY YEAR, don't you think that maybe... Just maybe they like hanging out and being in each others company???

Even if you take shipping completely out of the picture. Like don't you think its fucking weird to see two people who have known each other for 11 years, went through some insane shit together and even more that WE as FANS probably don't even know about, they clearly support and love each other and like hanging out with each other... And then you go on social media and tweet: "why do people, who are friends, spend time together?" DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF. I need someone to go up to these people when they are out with their friends and ask them if they secretly hate each other and only hang out just to please their parents or something.

You don't need to ship jikook to see they like each other. You don't need to ship taekook to see they like each other. You don't need to ship anyone in bangtan to see that they love each other to the moon and back. These men are in each others asses 24/7 but sure, the company is pushing them to do fanservice because they don't make enough money or something. Whether you (not you specifically) think jikook or taekook or yoonmin or anyone is dating or not, that's your business. If you ship them, you ship them, if you don't, you don't. But you literally cannot fucking walk up to me, look me in the eye and tell me they don't like each other. These boys are first and foremost FRIENDS And if you see any of them together, it's because THEY WANT TO SPEND TIME WITH EACH OTHER.

I don't know why it's so hard for some people to understand this. Maybe because fanservice is a normal? thing in Korea and I'm sure many groups are doing it. But I checked OPs post and comment history and they follow bts for a while now so they have to know that the tannies have moved past/moved away from doing typical kpop things loooooong ago. They are not your typical kpop group. Two members hanging out with each other in front of or behind camera is not fanservice. Can we fucking wrap this conversation up already, I'm so bored of seeing this being brought up every year. Sorry for the long essay 😔

When it comes to Jimin and Jungkook, people would always prefer to believe anything but the truth, reality and what they themselves say. Wait till whatever they are doing comes out, it will be all this again and even worse.

Opinions.