#more specifically me and my *other* abusive ex were fans of his during that time; and gushed a lot to each other in private about his fics

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

one reason i'm grateful a) to have been getting into treating my meta as An Art Form as much as fanfic/art/etc, and b) that there's an import function for that on AO3, is that i write very little prose these days, and Actually Having Substantial Things to Post helps me get past the stumbling block of 'well there's nothing much worth going to the trouble for anyway, is there' to the 'alright let's address all the other baggage that makes using AO3 so emotionally fraught for you bud' step (staircase.)

[creek-cryptid-deluxe]

Hey everyone (aka the like... 2 to 5 entities that actually read my bullshit) sorry I've kinda not been *actually* posting but just reblogging random stuff I enjoyed seeing. Things have been... rough. So here's a smol condensed update:

Oral surgeon took out those 2 broken teeth... for $1700. Two or three days later, the last one on the other side of my bottom jaw crumbled even more. Now I just live with ambesol soaked gauze on it because getting it out would be around $900 in my estimation (based on the cost of the 2) that I don't have. I owe my dad $1k for the originals.

The Spawn's car had a radiator fan issue right before she left for her week of vacation in Puerto Rico. The Bf's dad couldn't fix it, so my dad took it to the shop he uses & they fixed it.

The Spawn & The Bf got back on Tuesday night. Wednesday she was beat down but figured it was jetlag. Thursday she seemed to be having really bad allergies but just in case it was a cold, I wore a mask & kept my distance. Friday Dad starts to have similar symptoms, so they think summer cold. I continue the mask & distance gig, even though both act offended at different times about it.

I also made a boat load of cupcakes from scratch on Friday because I had a craving. We had lemon white chocolate cakes with blueberry lemon frosting and raspberry chocolate chip cakes with my chocolate whipped frosting that I added a bit of raspberry pureé to. They were amazing. There are multiple adults that don't like cakes or frosting that loved them & Key (my neighbor & new bff) asked if I'd make cupcakes when her youngest needs stuff like that for school & allow her to take credit for them. I obviously agreed.

Saturday evening I hear The Spawn & Dad coughing. Now, they had both had a cough for a couple days but this cough sounded extremely suspect. So I threw covid tests at their faces & lo and fucking behold, The Spawn brought a souvenir back from Puerto Rico in the form of motherfucking covid. She & Dad tested positive, while The Bf & I tested negative. I scrambled to find a place to go so I could... idk STAY ALIVE but it was late that night. So I left the next morning & have been @ Lou's ever since... except that it was his week to have all 3 of the kids (V- a 12 yr old boy, A- a 9 yr old girl, & H- a 4 yr old girl. The oldest are from his first marriage, the last is from his brief marriage to my ex bestie. Both women let them run wild & cave to their every demand, so they are feral.)

It is now friday. The Bf was TOLD to stay downstairs, only going up wearing a mask to bring supplies to the plague twins. But nobody fucking listens to me & now he has it. Additionally, the upstairs ac went out over there so all my shit got contaminated by them crashing downstairs.

(Side note: during this catastrophe, The Spawn called me griping about how many bad things have happened since she got back and how she's the *only* one suffering. I attempted to explain that no she isn't & she proceeded to scream at me that Dad & I are simply inconvenienced... you know, my dad who is in the high risk age group and has the same virus in the same un-airconditioned upstairs as her & me who is disabled & heavily relies on a specific environment I've cultivated for myself but has had to evacuate from her own home into a place of CONSTANT noise all because she was careless on vacation & brought home covid. Everything that's happened aside from the ac is the result of her own actions. I hung up on her and when she text 3 paragraphs of abuse at me, I muted her, let dad know what happened & that I'm done providing anything outside of a place to live. This isn't the first time she's been verbally abusive when things don't go the way she expects or she is faced with the consequences of her own actions but now she's legally an adult.)

Lou's kids got to have a week of Auntie [Dr. M]'s Boot Camp, where we learn to respect each other & our home. We don't yell in the house, we aren't mean to each other, we clean up after ourselves. It was quickly learned that I don't respond to demands, require manners, don't tolerate lying or bullying, don't give a fuck if a tantrum is thrown or a dirty look is given, & absolutely give out consequences for actions both good & bad. They are unaccustomed to a woman laying down the damned law or someone consistently correcting their behaviors (because Lou is outnumbered & beat tf down).

I have also been able to help him with the house & yard (which I will be able to accomplish more of now that the kids are back @ their moms'). When he kicked out my ex-bestie a little over a year ago, he was left with the house & while she was a student/stay at home mom for the bulk of their relationship, she's a borderline horder and frankly a slob, so he was left with that mess. He was understandably depressed & then by the time he got more mentally healthy, being a single dad of 3 every other week made it an overwhelming task to get out from under it. So I did what I do... came into the house in a whirlwind of efficient cleaning & organization. He gave permission for me to just go through & do whatever I felt needed doing. (The borderline hoarding situation resulted in us finding shit he didn't even know about, and him giving me a bunch of shit like an unopened double boiler. We discovered 3 crockpots and an instant pot that he didn't know about. The crock pots went into a bin for donation & I gave him a manual for the instant pot.) When I finished the kitchen, he cried. Now I'm house/dog sitting today & tomorrow, so I'm going to buckle down & do some hardcore cleaning junk to as much of the house as possible. While the kids were here, I helped them do their bedrooms.

He asked why I would do all this & the answer was simple: I enjoy it, I'm really good at it, and I understand how hard it is to get out from under it when it's that bad, so if I can get it clean & organized it will be easier to maintain.

Also I can't go home til they all test negative & have sanitized everything. Woo.

So there's my overall update. My life is dope.

[Been a long time since I've had to do this but don't reblog my shitshow. Don't steal it for your buzzfeed or bored panda bullshit. Both those sites need to die imo. ( ಠ ʖ̯ ಠ) ]

[skyeet-the-writer]

okay i’m not sure if you are taking like open requests but corpse and reader are dating and nobody really knows but like the fans ship it and stuff, and they are playing among us with jack, felix, rae ect,, and someone invites somebody and it’s reader ex boyfriend and corpse notices that she’s acting really quiet and he texts her like “baby are you okay??” and she tells him that’s her toxic ex and during an emergency meeting, her ex suspects her and when she defends herself he says something along the lines of “don’t believe her she’s a fucking liar, she’s been one since the day i first met her” and everyone is like ??? but corpse flips out on him and just snaps telling him to leave his girlfriend alone which breaks his cover so everyone knows about you guys and just like really mad corpse and having to help him calm down and you get up from your seat to see him in his streaming room and just sit on his lap and he’s like “fuck that guy it’s okay baby we can just play minecraft or something” lmaooo 🥺🥺🥺 sorry i know that was so specific but the thought makes me so soft i would actually cry if you wrote this

This Is A Shout Out To My Ex

here’s my first request guys! so sorry they’re taking so long. i’m trying to get these done before i do anything else. hope you guys enjoy! x,

corpse x female!reader

summary: while paying a game with her friends, y/n’s toxic ex joins the game. when he calls her a liar, corpse snaps and defends his girlfriend

word count: ~4.4k

warnings: mentions of emotional abuse, gaslighting, near-death experiences, swearing, some angst but it has a super fluffy end!

Living with your boyfriend is, obviously, amazing in every way. You see each other all the time, you get to cuddle almost all the time, and you get to see his handsome face every morning.

Probably, the only downside is the fact that living together makes it nearly impossible to hide the fact that you’re dating.

But, somehow, you’ve managed to keep it a secret from you rabid fans for the past four months. You literally have no idea how because you’re pretty sure you accidentally got a glimpse of Corpse walking by while you were doing a vlog.

Miraculously, no one noticed it. Then again, none of your fans knew what he looked like, so there’s a plus. There were one or two comments asking who the person in the back was, but you lied and said it was a friend. Technically, you weren’t wrong.

And so you’ve been trying to keep your relationship with Corpse on the DL to avoid any stress or anxiety his way. You could deal with it, you’ve been doing Youtube for years and could handle almost anything. Corpse, bless his heart, might not be able to.

One morning, you’re awoken by some slight tugging on your hair. You crack your eyes open but the bright light makes you whine and close them again. There’s a soft laugh behind you and you roll over onto your back, scooting over closer to him. You stretch your legs and grin, still keeping your eyes closed. 

“Did you sleep at all?” you ask in a quiet voice, your head resting on your lover’s chest.

“No,” he answers in his deep voice and you feel him play with your hair. “Anxiety, insomnia, the usual shit.”

You hum and open your eyes slowly, deciding to brave the light. You blink up at Corpse who is staring at the ceiling. “What were you thinking about?” Your own voice is a bit scratchy and rough. 

He looks down at you and you take notice of how bloodshot his eyes are and the bags under his eyes. “How pretty you are when you sleep.” He grins.

“You watched me when I slept?” you ask and playfully narrow your eyes at him. “You creep.”

He laughs and you turn around onto your side, your back facing him. “Baby, no, I didn’t mean it that way.”

You smile. “You’re so creepy, Corpse.”

He doesn’t say anything but you hear him sit up in bed. You begin to ask what he’s doing but then he lifts up the back of your shirt to press a few kisses to your back. “You’re still here, though. With me.”

“Hm. Yeah.” You turn around and he gazes at you. “Because I love you.”

His eyes light up in the way that they always do when you tell him those three, simple words. You love seeing them light up that way and you grin. “I love you, too.” He leans in for a quick kiss.

“What time is it?” you ask when you pull away.

Corpse reaches over to his side of the bed and turns his phone on. “Noon.”

“Noon?” you shout and sit up so quickly you get a head rush. “We were supposed to be playing Among Us with Sean, Pewds, Toast, Rae, and them.”

“Oh. Yeah.” You turn and see him with his hands covering his face.

You walk over to him and kneel next to him. “Babe? What’s up?”

He just groans and you frown. He doesn’t feel good. 

You push his hair from his forehead. “I can tell them that you’re not feeling up for it. They all know you, they’d understand.”

He shakes his head and runs his hands down his face before they rest on his chest. “No. No, it’s okay, I’ll be fine.” He gives you a smile.

You kiss his cheek. “Okay, then, babe. C’mon, we’re gonna be late.” You grab his hands and tug him up until he’s in a sitting position. He pulls you in for another kiss but you lean away.

“You have morning breath,” you tell him when he gives you his sad eyes. “Brush your teeth and then I’ll kiss you.”

That seems to get him out of bed and into the bathroom while you change clothes. You change out of your sweatpants and t-shirt and into jeans and a shirt. He walks out of the bathroom yawning and you walk past him to go to the bathroom.

I wish he’d sleep, you think to yourself while brushing your teeth. After brushing your teeth, you wash your face and do a little bit of makeup so you don’t look like you just rolled out of bed even though you did.

Corpse walks into the bathroom as you’re finishing your makeup and has a mug of coffee for you. You’re the only one in the house who drinks coffee since he can’t, so you always find it so sweet that he makes it for you.

“You made me coffee?” you ask and he nods. You take it from him and give him a peck. “Thank you, love.” 

You take a sip and grab your phone from your nightstand and shove it into your pocket. You walk out of the bedroom the two of you share and into the kitchen to check on your cat. 

Before you met him, Corpse had never really wanted a pet. He said that they die and he doesn’t want to deal with that, which you understand. But after the two of you had been dating for three months and you had been living with him for a month and a half, you begged him to let you get a cat. You knew he couldn’t say no to you. 

“Where’s Inky?” you call out to your boyfriend after not finding your cat in the living room or the kitchen. 

“In here,” he calls back and you follow his voice. Corpse is sitting in his chair getting ready to stream. You spot a black cat sitting on his table, licking at his hand. Corpse laughs and pets the animal on the head. “Stop licking me, girl. Your tongue feels weird.”

You smile and walk over to him, picking the cat up. “Come on, Inky, let’s leave dad to do his job, yeah?”

The young cat meows up at you and stares into your soul with her green eyes. You lock her gaze and have a staring contest. You lose, however, and blink away. 

“Why is your cat so weird?” you ask, placing the cat back down and watch her run away. 

“Probably gets it from her mom,” Corpse mumbles and you hear a smile. 

You scoff and smack his hand away gently when he reaches out to you. “Fine, you don’t get a kiss before the stream.”

“No, wait!” he shouts and grabs your hand, pulling you towards him. “I was kidding, baby.”

You smile at him and cup his cheek. “I know.” You lean down and give him a long, deep kiss. You feel him smile against your lips and you pull away. He gives you a smile.

“I love you,” he mutters, brushing some hair away from your face. 

“I love you more.” You grab his hand and press a kiss against his knuckles. You take a step back. “I’ll see you in the Discord chat, babe.”

“Okay. Also, don’t close the door all the way!” he calls to you and you look back at him, your hand on the doorknob. 

“Why?” you ask, leaning on the doorframe. 

He takes a second to respond. “Because I want Inky to come in here later.”

You laugh but smile. “Okay, fine.” You walk away from the door and across the hall into your own recording room. 

Your room is a lot different than your boyfriend’s. His room is dark and doesn’t have a lot in it. Yours, on the other hand, probably has too much stuff. Most of it is gifts from fans like stuffed animals and other knickknacks. Your desk, monitors, and lights take up a lot of the already limited space. You turn both your ring lights on after closing the door and turn on the LED lights you have attached to the ceiling. You switch them to the f/c setting and put the remote next to your coffee mug. You sit down in your black and white gaming chair and set everything up after putting on your headset. 

You join the Among Us game after beginning your stream and then the Discord call. You seem to join before Corpse because you can’t see him in the call. 

“You’ve finally decided to join us, y/n!” Felix exclaims and you smile. 

“Am I late?” you ask, taking another drink of your coffee. 

“No,” Sean replies. “I mean, we played a couple of rounds to pass the time, but nothing interesting happened.”

You nod and glance at who all is in the chat. It seems to be you, Felix, Toast, Charlie, Rae, Sean, later Corpse, and someone else who’s tag sounds familiar. 

“Oh! I invited someone new!” says Rae. “He’s a friend from college. y/n, this is Dallas.”

“Hey, y/n.”

Your eyes widen and your blood goes cold at the sound of his voice. You know him. You used to date him. In highschool before you moved away. You remember how toxic he was. He would always blow you off when you wanted to hang out and when you did hang out, he always played video games and never talked to you. 

“Hi, Dallas,” you stutter out. “Uh, hey, didn’t you and I go to highschool together?”

You can practically hear his smirk. “Yeah. We did.”

“I didn’t know you two went to school together,” Rae says happily. 

“Yep,” Dallas says. “We were friends, too.”

You want to throw up.

Suddenly, your loving and not toxic boyfriend joins the call and your spirits lift. 

“Corpse!” you exclaim, almost letting another word slip out. 

“You’re here,” says Rae. “Good noon!”

“Yeah, I’m not a morning person,” he says and you just now notice how deep his voice is. “I just woke up.”

“Oh my god,” Felix says. 

“Jesus,” says Charlie, dragging out the ‘u’.

“You just woke up?” asks Toast. 

He’s a liar, he didn’t sleep at all, you think but keep your mouth shut and laugh. 

“It’s like a forty-hertz voice,” Sean says. 

“It sounds like short wave radio,” Charlie adds. 

You laugh. “You sound like spoken brown note.”

Corpse laughs. “This is me when I wake up, that’s what...” He cuts himself off and laughs again.

“I’m scared,” says Dallas. 

“I didn’t know it could get any lower!” exclaims Sean. 

“I didn’t know you could hit puberty twice.” Felix laughs. 

After some more laughter, Corpse is introduced to Dallas. 

“Hey, man,” Corpse says. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, you too,” Dallas replies. 

“Can we start the game now?” Sean asks when everyone is in the waiting room. You take a sip of your coffee while Rae starts the game. 

You mute yourself as your role is revealed and let out a sigh of relief. “Crewmate. Good, this makes this less stressful.” You go into the hallway, following Felix and Sean to go do wires. You clear the two of them and you three go up to admin. “Okay, so for those of you wondering about my reaction to Dallas joining the stream is that he’s my ex. Uh, we dating in highschool and broke up around the end of senior year. So this is pretty awkward for me.” You break away from Sean and Felix to go do a task in the greenhouse. 

You leave out the part about Dallas where he was borderline abusive. You remember him shouting at you for asking for the littlest of things to him gaslighting you and guilt-tripping you into going skinny dipping with him. 

Maybe that’s why you love Corpse so much. He’s the opposite of Dallas. He’s sweet and he’s caring. He’s never once raised his voice at you unless you were beating him in a game. Even then you both knew he wasn’t serious. And he had never once pressured you to do something you didn’t want to do. 

You’re brought out of your thoughts when someone reports Rae’s dead body. You unmute yourself and take another drink of your coffee. 

“I found her in decontamination,” Dallas says. “I opened the door and she was right there.”

“I was down by storage doing wires,” you tell them, putting your mug down. “And I was with Felix and Jack for the beginning and I’m pretty sure they’re cleared. So it has to be either you, Toast, or Corpse. Or Charlie.”

“You almost forgot about me,” he says and you laugh. 

“We never vote on seven, right?” Toast says. 

“Not if no one is sus, no,” Corpse answers. 

“I’m skipping,” says Sean. 

You nod and skip voting. “Same here.”

Everyone skips voting and you continue on. You do the rest of your wiring tasks and go out to the balcony where you notice Corpse standing out there. You smile and walk up to him and make your characters’ “eye” parts touch. “Look, Corpse. We’re touching eyeballs.”

You can just barely make out his laugh from the room across from yours and you grin before doing to do your task. You glance at your chat while you run to the reactor with Corpse. “How have you guys been doing? Hope you’re having a good day. Don’t forget to drink some water and eat something.” You smile at the camera and enter decontamination with Corpse and Toast. 

When you enter reactor, Corpse and Toast each go to do it and you head to the sorting in the lab when suddenly a body is reported. 

You decide to be quiet and drink from your coffee while everyone else discusses what happened. You zone out a little when Dallas talks and your mind flashes back to memories you’ve been trying to forget. 

“Wait, who are we voting?” you ask when you suddenly snap back to reality. 

“Felix,” Sean answers. “He vented right in front of me.”

You nod and vote for Felix and he gets ejected. 

pEWds was ejected 

1 imposter remains

You mute yourself once more and continue to do your tasks and stick with Corpse as much as you can. Your chat notices this and begins to blow up with the ship name they have for the two of you. You laugh at the chat as you scan yourself. “Why are you guys freaking out about Corpse and me? We’re literally just walking.”

Another body is reported and this time it’s Toast’s. You know who the imposter is. You unmute yourself and quickly say, “It’s fucking Dallas, it’s a self-report.”

“What?” Dallas exclaims and you immediately sense the hint of anger in his tone. He used to get so mad during video games and it seems like nothing has changed in the past few years. “How’s it me? It could be Charlie.”

“Charlie is dead, too,” Sean says. 

“Yep. And I know both Corpse and Sean are cleared because I was with Sean for a long time and I just watched Corpse get scanned.”

Dallas scoffs. “Well, shit, you got me there.”

After Dallas is ejected, the crewmates win and you all start another round. You suddenly don’t feel like talking too much anymore and do your stream in mostly silence. Just Dallas being there and in the same call as you is making you anxious and bringing up memories you don’t want to remember. 

Your chat asks you about this and you ignore it as you continue to do your tasks as a crewmate. Your phone buzzes in your pocket and you pull it out, looking at who it is. 

corpse 🖤

are you okay? you’re being really quiet

y/n

yeah, ig. just that dallas is my ex. toxic ex too

corpse 🖤

want me to kill him for you? im imposter

You smile and shake your head. “Oh, Corpse,” you whisper to yourself. 

y/n

no dont kill him lol

You put your phone back down on the table and look back at the game. 

You don’t pay too much attention to the game until the fourth round after you and Rae lost as the imposters. You’re a crewmate once again and you’re peacefully doing your tasks when suddenly something lays on your bare feet. 

“What the?” You look down at your feet and see a little dark fuzzball on your feet. “Inky, get off my feet, baby.” You move your feet and pick her up. You hold her in your arms like a baby the way she likes and rub her belly. “Okay, go see your dad.” Inky jumps out of your arms and you watch her leave your recording room. 

You turn back to your task and continue to do them without any interruptions. You notice, however, that Dallas has been following you for most of the round. You’re starting to get a little nervous and you run into the cafeteria to get away from him when he calls an emergency meeting.

You unmute yourself and Dallas says, “I think it’s y/n. I’m pretty sure she’s faking tasks.”

“Except I’m not,” you tell him. “You’re the one following me around, too, Dallas. What’s up with that, huh?”

“I’ve been following you because you’re acting sus.”

You glare at Dallas’s character on the screen, heat rushing to your face. “I’m literally doing my tasks, I know you saw me do the card swipe--”

“Don’t listen to her,” Dallas says and he sounds far too confident. “She’s a fucking liar. She has been since the first day I met her.”

By now your face is completely red from anger and you gasp. “Excuse me?”

“What are you talking about?” Sean asks. “I’ve known y/n for a long time, she’s never told a lie so long as I’ve known her.”

“That’s because she’s too good at it,” Dallas says in a snarky tone and you’ve never wanted to punch a screen more in your life. “Her and me used to date in highschool but I broke up with her because she lied to me about everything.”

“That’s not fucking true!” you shout and you can hear blood rushing to your ears. “I was the one who broke up with you after you gaslighted me about not hanging out with you enough when in reality you were always hanging out with your stupid football friends!”

“She’s lying--”

“The fuck are you saying about my girl?” Corpse demands. 

The chat goes silent for a moment. Corpse just called you his girl. You look at your live chat and it’s exploding with “i knew it”s and lots of keyboard smashing.

“Your girl?” Dallas asks after a moment.

“Yes. My girl. As in my girlfriend.” He sounds so possessive and it’s kind of hot to you. “Why are you calling her a liar?”

Dallas stumbles on his words. “B--because she is one.”

“Right. And how long have you known her?”

“I knew her in highschool--“

“Nevermind, I literally don’t care,” Corpse interrupts him. “I’ve been living with her for the past five months and she’s never lied to me about anything.”

Dallas is quiet for once. Everyone is. No one is really even breathing but your heartbeat is rattling your brain and blood is rushing through your ears.

“I don’t wanna play anymore,” you whisper. You swallow thickly and glance at your chat. Luckily, they’re all defending you and yelling at Dallas. You turn back to the screen. “Dallas, I’m not the imposter. And stop making stupid ass accusations.”

“I--“

“Kick him,” says Felix and you can tell he sounds mad.

“No wait--“ Dallas begins to say.

“No!” Rae interrupts. “I knew there was something off about you.”

“You don’t get to come in here and talk shit about our friend,” Jack says.

“I was kidding,” Dallas tries to explain.

But then something inside you snaps. You forgot how much you hate Dallas. How he always turned the blame on you when he did something wrong. How you almost lost all of your friends because he convinced them that you were a bad person.

At first, you thought he had changed. You thought that he had actually grown up. Turns out that people don’t change.

“Like you were kidding when you almost got me kicked out of the house because you made me go out with you to go drinking?” you ask. “Or how you played a stupid trick on me when I was driving us to school and I almost fucking crashed the car and nearly killed us?”

“Jesus.” You can hear him roll his eyes. “You’re still on about that? It was April Fool’s, you should have expected it—“

“I shouldn’t have expected shit!” you yell and it comes out raw. The memory flashes in your mind and you cringe. “That wasn’t funny, Dallas! You weren’t funny! I fucking hated my life in high school. I was already stressed out because I thought I wasn’t smart enough and you being my boyfriend and ignoring me and manipulating me didn’t help.

“So fuck you. Fuck you for everything you did to me when we were teenagers. Fuck you for making me think that you changed and were actually nice and then ripping that away from me. But you know what? Thanks. Thanks for being my ex because you made me what I am today and you’re the reason I moved to California and met the love of my life.”

You suck a deep breath in and wipe at the tears that had fallen. You put your hand on your camera. “Speaking of which, I need a hug from him. Bye, guys.”

You stop streaming and disconnect from everything. You turn your computer off, unplug your headset, and turn your lights off. You sit in your chair trying not to cry in the dark.

Corpse, your mind says and you open your eyes. You really want a hug. His hugs are the best. You take your headset off and walk out of your recording room. Before you walk into Corpse’s recording room, you head to the living room and grab a fluffy gray blanket and wrap it around yourself.

You don’t even bother to knock on the door and just walk in. His room is still dark and it appears like he’s angry. You can tell by the way his voice is deeper and how he looks like he’s shaking.

But when you tap on his shoulder, he looks up at you with wide eyes. “Babe.”

You sniffle and he pushes away from his desk. You shake your head and pull his arms up above his head and settle yourself on his lap, your legs on either side of him, and wrap your arms around his neck.

“Baby,” he whispers and you lean your cheek on his shoulder. “Just fuck off, Dallas.”

Your eyes squeeze shut and you shift up a little, pushing your nose into his neck. He smells nice. “Stop talking to them.”

“What?” he looks down at you and asks what you’re doing when you take his headset off. You unplug them, thereby disconnecting him from the stream. “y/n, what are you doing?”

“I want to cuddle with you,” you mutter and bury your face into his neck.

You feel him wrap his arms around your back and he pulls you up, leaning his head on your shoulder. “Okay, baby. We can cuddle.”

The two of you sit like that for what feels like a long time. You hear Corpse’s phone buzz, but the two of you ignore it. He kisses the side of your head and you smile.

You sigh deeply as he tightens his hold against you. “Fuck that guy, baby. It’s okay.” He moves his shoulder and you look up at him. “Wanna go play Minecraft?”

A grin spreads across your face and you nod. Corpse smiles back and picks you up, bridal style, blanket and all. You squeal and laugh as he carries you to the living room. “Put me down, Corpse!”

“Alright.” He drops you into the couch and turns around to turn the Xbox on.

You huff and push your hair out of your face, keeping the blanket wrapped tight around your body. “I didn’t mean literally drop me, dummy.”

He shrugs and sits next to you, handing you a controller. “Should’ve been more specific, baby.”

You scoff but can’t hide the small smile creeping onto your lips. “Jerk.” You put the controller next to you on the couch and move the blanket so it’s over both of your laps and you lean into his side.

After playing Minecraft for the majority of the afternoon and evening, you finally drag Corpse to bed with you after ordering pizza for dinner.

His arms are wrapped tight around your waist as your back is pressed against his chest. Inky hops up onto the bed and nuzzles your hand until you begin to pet her. She lays down on her belly and you gently pat her.

“Am I really the love of your life?” Corpse asks after a long time of sitting in the quiet darkness

You nod against the pillow. “Yeah. You are.”

You can’t see him, but you know he’s smiling when he kisses the back of your neck.

Your phone on your nightstand lights up and you head Corpse’s phone buzz again as well. You think for just a moment about all of the texts, all of the messages, all of the DMs you’re getting about what happened. For a second, you panic. What if people don’t think that you’re worth to be dating Corpse? What if people are calling you a pussy for how you reacted to Dallas? What if everyone hates you?

But those thoughts immediately go away when Corpse mumbles something in that husky voice of his that makes the butterflies in your tummy come back. “You’re the love of my life, too.”

“Yeah?” you hum, your eyes slipping shut.

“Yeah,” he says and you can tell that he’s getting tired as well. “And I’m gonna marry you someday.”

An involuntary smile spreads across your face and your entire body overheats. You bite your lip in the darkness and whisper,

“And I’m gonna say yes.”

But he’s asleep. His breathing has evened out. He shouldn’t have heard you.

You know he heard you somehow, though, because his arms tighten around your waist. You wiggle backward so that you’re flush against his chest and his head drops down onto the top of your head.

You place your hands over his and close your eyes. Finally, he’s sleeping.

--------------------

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[fruitless-nonsense]

So long time no see huh?

I just wanna say that I never thought that anybody would acknowledge my input in a million years. No one in my friend group really watched either tvd or to, so this blog is the first time I’ve ever let this out, and the fact that there were people that actually liked what I said meant so much to me I can’t even describe.

Onto why I haven’t posted in a while, that’s just my slow brain. With work and family, my brain likes to fixate on something related to writing and I become obsessed for a while. What started to grind on me was the amount I was putting out versus everything else I had to do in my life, so I decided to take a little break in which time I relearned my love of drawing, but I digress.

I still wanna post on here and plan to do so (maybe some actual tvd analysis idk), but it’s not gonna be as frequently as it was last month. That being said, I still adore each and every one of y’all especially those interacting with me and would still be honored to answer any asks I get the privilege of receiving.

With that introduction out of the way, I’ve decided to talk about some characters rather than another ship (mostly because I’ve already tackled the big ones as far as to is concerned), and these characters are none other than Matt Donovan and Jackson Kenner!

Finally talking directly about the vampire diaries (yay)! Confession: I don’t like Matt. Here’s the thing, the show tries to position him as the “nice guy” of mystic falls. This worked because they place him next to the other male characters (all problematic) during season one. I mean, there’s Damon (narcissistic psychopath), Stefan (recovering addict and vampire), Tyler (abusive bully), and Jeremy (temperamental and moody addict). When we look at Matt next to these guys of course we’d be forgiven for thinking he’s a good person, but what happens when he’s placed next to humans that are considered good individuals?

First example, Caroline! Disclaimer: if you are the kind of person who thinks Caroline was a horrible character until she became a vampire and basically like to tone police her for being an alpha female with completely human flaws that made her such a relatable character (not for me specifically, but even I could notice how real she felt), you’re wrong. I’m not gonna get mad at you, I’m just asking you to take a good look at what you consider a “good female character” and ask yourself what that says about you. That being said, as much as I love Caroline’s characterization in season one, I don’t like how the writers just made her story being a victim the entire time. The most obvious case of this was with Damon, which I know might take y’all a second because Damon fans love to sweep his season one actions under the rug just like the writers. What Damon did to Caroline was disturbing and made me uncomfortable (and they say Klaus compelling Cami was the first time compulsion was broken down with how messed up it could be). The worst part is seeing other characters be aware of this and doing nothing to help her, but this isn’t about Damon. That was the first half of the season, the second half shows a potential ship of Matt and Caroline which was…yikes.

I don’t wanna assume the worst, but I do find it rather clever in a sick way how the writers placed Caroline in a physically abusive relationship with Damon only to place her into an emotionally abusive relationship, so we’re too busy comparing Matt to Damon that we miss how Matt would stand on his own (but that’s just a theory). I know this was season one, but after rewatching a fiftieth time, I can’t help but notice how much Matt belittles her (ex. calls her crazy in a diagnosis kind of way instead of joking), this doesn’t even get into the Elena situation. I do respect him flat out telling Caroline that he’s not over Elena, but there’s that and reminiscing about his relationship with her in front of Caroline and Stefan! And they show Caroline so upset by it and Matt doesn’t even care, but he can’t do anything wrong! Seriously, looking back every argument always ends with Caroline being completely in the wrong and needing to apologize while Matt doesn’t have to do anything. Matt treated her like she was second best, something we knew from the pilot was a big insecurity for her. Why is this ignored?

Second reason: he’s so controlling. Like, it’s not just the writers and the characters singing his praises, he does it to himself. He can hate vampires, but it’s the fact he goes around saying “man, it’s hard being the only nice guy in this town, I have to be the moral center while all of my friends make horrible decisions which I will repeatedly tell them because I’m so smart and know what’s best for them. Man, it’s so hard being me.” This Matt challenges Damon for most insufferable character on screen. Best example is in season three when he drugs Elena and drives her out of town because it’s what’s “best for her” (okay dude). Again, I get he hates vampires, but so does Bonnie, yet despite this she still respects her friends choices because she understands it’s their lives (also I hate that every time Bonnie does get judge mental of her friends the show treats it like she’s being unreasonable and a bad friend, but Matt’s like that the whole time and it’s waved off as “he’s just being a concerned friend”).

Lastly is something everyone already talks about, when he’s not being incredibly toxic he’s so boring. Like, I understand that’s the point in a way, he’s the human, but after seeing how well they integrated Cami into the story in the originals despite her being human that excuse lost all weight for me. He does nothing but complain! If you’re not gonna do anything interesting with him, get him off screen (the later seasons are boring enough! I mean what?)! What really concerns me about Matt as a character is if he is what the writers genuinely believed was the perfect example of a “good guy.” The worst part is it worked! Technically, Matt is the best guy in the tvd cast by default and calling him out for being a toxic human is only a recent trend. Conclusion, Matt Donovan is trash and we deserved better male characters in tvd.

Now, if you think I’m stopping there you’d be wrong. Matt really is a bad person and character, and what kills me is how the community likes to compare the tvd mains to characters in to. Ex. Hayley is Elena (kind of accurate, but at least Hayley had her own story separate from the men in her life in season one) and Bonnie is Davina (I mean, they both do get screwed over by the writers, but I’d argue Bonnie is closer to Vincent since the pain they endure throughout the seasons is much more personal and vindictive). Lastly, and most frustratingly, Cami is said to be the originals equivalent to Matt because they’re both human. At least, I think that’s the reason because I have no idea why else people would say that (is it because in their deluded minds Cami is boring despite being so much fun for reasons I’ve already explained in another post?). So you’re probably thinking who do I think resembles Matt more if anyone? Who could it be? Or maybe I already spoiled it.

So…Jackson Kenner. It’s not a perfect comparison (Jackson has an active story in the show that plays a significant part in seasons one and two). However, in terms of personality they have the most in common. If it’s not clear from what I said about Matt, I don’t like Jackson either. I find him to be an insufferable hypocrite who always talks about keeping the peace yet is quick to start beef with the vampires (who are always portrayed as being the perpetrators and werewolves the victims and showing the conflict as black and white instead of gray on both sides, but I might be the only one who has a problem with how the werewolves treat the vampires in both shows). That’s in season one! Then there’s his controlling behavior towards Hayley and trying to get her to leave the Mikaelsons just cause he can’t be big alpha male next to Klaus (disclaimer: as much as I think Hayley is wrong for trying to abandon the Mikaelsons for good, I did stand with her on getting away from and daggering Klaus for a temporary amount of time. Complex discussion for another day). Then there’s season three where he gets so angry cause Hayley chooses to help find Rebekah (y’know the woman who protected Hope for months!) that he storms off to the Bayou and ignores his wife and insists she must choose between the wolves and the Mikaelsons (keep in mind Elijah never insists she has to choose a side and always refers to both as her family). This is a grown man by the way. I mean, at least the show doesn’t make Hayley bend to his will like season two (progress I guess?). So controlling, egotistical, hypocritical, and the show treats him like he’s the messiah of men because everyone around him are the worst (except Marcel). Sounds like a Matt clone to me.

Why are these two considered the prime example of how men should be by the writers? If it isn’t clear, just because they aren’t killing people every five minutes does not make them good! That could’ve been a decent message if it was noticed by people, but instead we hear how great Matt and Jackson are when they are the most relatable (in a bad way) kind of men in the show. That’s another problem, why are all the men in this show such toxic individuals to be around. The closest exceptions are Stefan and Marcel who personality wise are good, but are killers. Matt could have been what the writers wanted, but what we got was disappointing and annoying. So the women are butchered shells and the men are toxic, so I’m not allowed to like anyone!

[camilliar]

recs for someone new to omgcp

[February 2021.]

Reading, or not reading, OMGCP fics has come up in a couple of conversations I’ve had recently with artists newish to the fandom (ie. @jovishark; @decafffff), who are making OMGCP art (!!!) but haven’t started exploring fic -- but maybe want to? Which of course reminded me that I’ve never bothered to make an actual, concrete recs list for this fandom. So, I mean. Here is one.

The approach is, what do I think about when I think about OMGCP fanfic? What comes to mind, what stands out to me? I have excluded some very popular fics. Some of these I just don’t think are very good, and others I do think are good, and/or I enjoy them, but I don’t see why you’d need me, specifically, to recommend them. I am thinking of a story like maybe i’m waking up, which I discuss below because I link to a podfic of it. It has a lot of merits, to be sure, but it’s the second-most-read fic in this fandom by hits, and it’s got thousands of comments, and it’s by an author whose work is relatively widely praised and circulated. I am not sure what telling you more about this fic will add to the conversation; if you want to find and read it, you inevitably will. I’m happy to, say, answer asks about these kinds of fics, or talk more generally about them via DM or whatever. Feel free.

Also, I don’t think there’s a point to pretending to be objective about fanfic; this list has a perspective and that perspective is mine. In this fandom I largely read stories that navigate the tension around Jack, Bitty, and Parse, in various permutations. This is not to say that I’ve never read fic about the frogs, or that I have no interest at all in other pairings, but I am by no means an expert on Dex/Nursey and can really only speak to the one fic about them that sticks out to me because it goes beyond being merely Dex/Nursey and does something else. This is just to say that I am sure there are great and interesting fics about other things and ideas--but I’m not the person to hear about those from.

Likewise, I’m not super interested in stories that really reproduce that which is already in OMGCP. I like Zimbits--albeit maybe not in the ways or for the reasons most fans would--but I do not really need to see endless iterations of the same story about them falling in love and being cute together. I don’t think these stories are bad or they shouldn’t exist or that they have no merit by default. Still, I don’t need fanfic to give me more OMGCP. I need fanfic to complicate, to comment on, and to transform OMGCP. Many people don’t work like this! Totally okay! But I can’t rec you fics that do that.

What I have noticed, however, is that over time there appears to have been a shift in how people do write fic for this fandom. (Other than, you know, increases and decreases in activity pending the status of the comic, pairings going in and out of vogue, and so on.) Early on, say during Y1 and Y2, the comic was about the group of friends having a cool time at college together; about whether the burgeoning attraction between Jack and Bitty would manifest and, if so, how; and, especially, Jack’s past coming into fuller view for Bitty and how it would have to be dealt with in order for a relationship between them to work. YMMV on how great the comic executed there, but as Y3 went on these themes increasingly disappeared from the story. I think this means a lot of fic written over 2015-2016 or 2017 has one kind of tone, and was written mostly around these questions; after that, it feels like a new crop of writers and a new crop of ideas started circulating, that is, either embracing Jack and Bitty’s canon relationship and accepting its relative straightforwardness in text--or deconstructing it, imagining what readers aren’t seeing, or how problems not dealt with in the comic would manifest later. People who have read my fic know which of these I’m mainly interested in exploring.

All of which is to say, looking at what I’m reccing here, when the fics were posted or when I first read them probably has a lot to do with why they stick out to me so much. Because there’s no real culture of fanfic criticism--and I mean that in the positivist sense of broad evaluation not explicitly for fault and merit but rather, for context--I think it’s really hard to keep this in mind. But I’m obnoxious and I can’t just be easy about things.

Fic recs

In alphabetical order, somewhat unsorted; if a stand-alone fic has a summary I’ve included it, but in other cases I’ve recced a couple of conceptually related fics or series, which I’ve tried to just describe or explain as opposed to copying the summary off AO3.

There are so many more fanfics I think are great and worth reading! In an ideal world I’d come back and add more later, or create a secondary list that’s more along the lines of “if you like this, read these,” or whatever. But, being realistic, this is a starter kit. I’m open to talking about fanfic.

- - - - - - - - - - -

7-0-2 by Idday; Friends in Low Places and Sorry for the Blood in Your Mouth; I Wish it was Mine by blue_rocket_frost | I’m not sure it would be correct to say that I don’t like Parse/Tater, or that I’m not interested in Parse/Tater. I’m not interested in Patater a priori; I think it could be interesting, with teeth. These fics stick out to me when I think about this pairing, because they feel different. Accusations of a preference for just linking any two white men who happen to be hanging around have validity, but because of what hockey is and how it works and who’s hanging around it, it’s not exactly a leap to imagine what kind of gritty spark the friction between two closeted NHL players would create. A little violence in your sex? A little sex in your violence.

A Sight Worth Seeing by sadtomato | A four-fic Jack/Bitty/Shitty/Lardo explicit BDSM series. Either you want that or you don’t. It’s nothing hardcore, and not properly a four-way, really; more properly a kind of voyeuristic round-robin. There’s a more open and egalitarian view of sex here than I really get from the characters in the back end of the comic. It’s an expansive, propulsive view of sex and relationships that’s really nice to see. I love Lardo's detached coolness, and Bitty as a smooth operator; if you’re looking for some kind of Dom/sub dynamics world, this really isn’t it, but it’s a lively exploration into the sexual dynamics in a group of friends that’s super close to the good-times vibe you get from Haus scenes in the first couple years of extras.

call me son (one more time) by Summerfrost, Verbyna, and blithelybonny | This is a series, incomplete, and you will love it or be massively put off by it. I mean that as a compliment. I love it. The premise is, Bob Zimmermann and Kent Parson have been having sex since Kent was, like, 19. Everyone in this story has been chewed up: by themselves, by each other, by hockey. Plainly, this is a pretty bleak view of what OMGCP, as a story, is supposedly offering. If you want fic that is dark and glamorous, treading the toxic melange of substance abuse, sex-as-sublimation, and so much money you can’t possibly throw all of it away without trying, this series has that sick-inducing shimmer to it. But, again, its strength is its examination of Kent Parson, textually and meta-textually, as someone to be projected onto. Bob, Alicia, Jack, and Bitty all impute certain feelings of their own onto him, displacing their own issues to a character who’s centralized in every fic but defies neat or total comprehension. Some critiques I’ve read of this series feel it’s too dark, and I’ve also seen it argued on FFA that an overwhelming amount of praise heaped onto these stories has made it tough for other writers to make headway in writing Bob/Kent fic. But I’m also not sure you could engage with Bob/Kent fic without going down this road at some point? I’m sure there are ways to scale it back, but ultimately it’s a story about how hockey’s violent, homophobic, old-guard gatekeeping has continued to set the terms for a younger and ostensibly less toxic culture. I fully embrace PWP fics that tread on the power dynamic without fully excavating it, but buried within any PWP is the fact that a 53-year-old man is ensnaring a 19-year-old, no matter how much the latter is, realistically, into it, and legally empowered to consent. Not to mention the dynamics of it being a 53-year-old man who is the father of the 19-year-old’s ex-boyfriend, and a 53-year-old man who is an eminence grise in the field the 19-year-old is trying to make a career in  The sexual element--the vaguely incestuous nature of it--is making textual the subtext of how hockey works, actually: objectification of teenage bodies as older men’s capital.

Coach Z by thistidalwave | Just before the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, tp prospect Jack Zimmermann overdoses on his anxiety medication and is admitted to rehab. His future turns from a clear-cut road to the top into an uncertain path filled with therapy appointments, ignored text messages, a group of boys who aren't there to teach him a lesson about himself, and, of course, hockey. | I keep reccing this fic because it has 360 comments on AO3 but nobody, as far as I can tell, has ever read it; it never appears on rec lists. This isn’t the kind of fanfic I usually go in for, but I can’t help being charmed by it. This is a character study in the truest sense, a kind of Mighty Ducks-but-better view on what Jack’s time coaching peewee hockey might have been like. I have no interest in kids and my own aesthetic is maybe a little darker than this, but I admire this story because it injects vibrancy into a period of Jack’s life that OMGCP has left largely unexplored, and so has the fandom. We know nothing about what made Jack want to go to college, nothing about how he spent his days in between juniors and Samwell. It posits a very sympathetic and patient Jack/Parse dynamic, showcasing the exact kind of ragged teenage push-and-pull that would have led to the circumstances we see in Parse I-III. The outside perspective Jack needs is largely present in an OFC who’s not a love interest. Super unique, somehow both engrossing and low-key.

#dirtbags by angularmomentum | A series that is a Kent Parson/Claude Giroux fuckfest with feelings. I’ve long suspected that Parse is popular in part because he is the character who most easily elides OMGCP with the actual NHL, or rather, NHL fandom; I think he made it appealing to write OMGCP fics where the NHL is a factor. Case in point, this series, which is basically “what if Kent Parson was a real hockey player and therefore part of NHL RPS”? I have only read some NHL RPS, so I’m not the person to assess accuracy, but what I do know is superstar IRL hockey players take turns here as the caricature fanfic versions of themselves, and since Kent Parson is already that, it’s great how seamlessly he integrates into their social fabric. Rambunctious energy peppered with regret and loss, but ultimately this series is farcical, and it doesn’t take its sentimental ending too seriously--which, good.

fated to pretend by nighimpossible | 5 Jack/Kent fics that Ransom and Holster dramatically reenact for the Haus + the truth. | As a fic format, 5+1 doesn’t usually work for me, but this one isn’t just front-loaded with five too-knowing vignettes; it then wraps up by using its +1 better than you might expect. Sometimes I talk about economy of fic, and this one exemplifies it. A zero-waste fic.

go ahead and move along by originally | "Leave, Parse," Jack says. Again. Or: Kent finds himself stuck in a time loop. | Kent Parson is trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario on the day of Epikegster. I’m sure you can imagine, just from that, what happens. And yet I think this fic is super entertaining, reserving some key surprises. What this story is doing is something a lot, and perhaps even the majority, of great Jack/Parse fic wants to do: digging into the question of just why this can’t work in comic canon. Most often this is approached from the past, by writing teenage Jack/Parse deep-dives that examine their lives mid-juniors, or by writing AUs where enough circumstances are shifted that it does work, or via future fics that posit enough growth has happened, and enough things have changed. But this fic makes Parse live the same bad day again and again, testing multiple theories about just how dependent on circumstance and incident real life actually is. Another day, another tone, 10 minutes sooner, not at all--you just can’t know why it didn’t work until you exhaust every possible variable. I worry that this rec has sucked the life out of the story, though--it’s so fun!

I Saw a Life and Strange Lovers by @bluegrasshole | Most AUs in this fandom seem to retell the story in a new setting or with some big detail change, following OMGCP’s rhythm beat-for-beat. I think of this as, “It’s the plot of Check, Please, but” -- they’re doing high school football? They’re acrobats? They’re a/b/o? They’re in a DIY punk band? And so on. These two stories are not that! They’re both 1950s AUs, each deeply felt, and yet hugely different from each other. I Saw a Life is about displacement and fragmentation, two sides of a similar but incongruent social critique; Strange Lovers is a finely wrought social drama about coal mining in Nova Scotia in the 1950s, centered around historical events. I suppose a theme on this rec list is something like, “I don’t even like this, but” -- yes, okay, I don’t even like Dex/Nursey, but--! This fic is so overwhelmingly complete, the AU laid out so carefully that the story breathes with all the background details informing the writing that aren’t actually, in the story; you just know they’re below the surface. (With the exception of one investigation of Jack’s character in a short, separate fic.) I Saw a Life, meanwhile, really tests the limits of the notion that Jack and Bitty are soulmates--not by calling it into question but by asking, rather innovatively, how the setting and place of the comic itself activates that.

Les Hivers de mon enfance by staranise | What do you do when hockey is the language of prayer for your soul, and also the toxic thing that almost killed you? 2009: Jack Zimmermann takes a mental health year. God knows he needs it. | Here’s a fic by someone who’s no longer around so much, but she felt ubiquitous in 2016-2019 OMGCP fandom. Before any of that, though, she wrote this one lovely fic about Jack’s pre-Samwell recovery. The author is Canadian and really irritated by hockey culture, and I think this fic benefits greatly because she is clear-eyed about Jack’s being caught in an exploitative system; it’s hockey he’s in recovery for, in a way. There’s an epistolary element that works for me, too. I read this early on in my time in OMGCP fandom and it really stuck with me.

Lysistrata? I Hardly Know Her! (by which I mean everything) by @tomatowrites | It feels somehow like cheating to recommend OMGCP fanfics by my OMGCP BFF with whom I make an OMGCP podcast where we talk about OMGCP. You know the fics I really want to rec, like truly the ones that speak to some kind of shared depravity, are the ones where Jack is miserably mpreg for the second time and accidentally lets his kid see Kent Parson’s Long John Silver’s shrimp scampi promo spot, which obviously would get twisted into a self-hating three-way. How many times do I have to rec this fic? As many as I need to, is my feeling. If you don’t know, Long John Silver’s is an American fast-food chain that sells, like, fried pollock sandwiches; it is nautical-themed; I have never eaten there; I don’t know where there is one; I don’t eat fried fish. (Shrimp, on the other hand?) All of which is to say that it takes a real genius to investigate a premise that far out. And while a lot of people almost certainly will start reading this humanity’s depths-themed sex scene and back the fuck out, readers with refined taste will note that Kent, the point-of-view character, is right there with you, despairing that he can’t help himself. And so long as you’re in that story collection, honestly, you’ll love petite gems like Jack is transmasc, Jack and Shitty play hockey in 18th-century England, and oh, right, he’s from Georgia. Tomato holds the distinction of being probably the gamest author I know in this fandom, just really like fearless in her pursuit of any range of concept she’s pushed to. (I can push her to?) See, for example, a sublime bandom AU; Bitty is cancelled for buying a maybe-unethically exported Roman fragment of a youth’s torso; or, god, the masterwork that is this future fic series where Jack keeps relapsing and Bitty exiles him to their guesthouse. Do I think you need to read a fic where Bitty is snide about the teen prostitute whose baby they’re adopting? Yes, I mean, he would be snide, don’t tell me he wouldn’t. I could go on, but my main thing here is, if I have to pick just one, I’m going to pick this Lysistrata fic. The premise, literally, is that Bitty reads the Lysistrata and it gives him ideas. Like most of Tomato’s OMGCP fic, it’s a stripping away of the comic’s polite fiction that Jack and Bitty could possibly attain the ideal it reaches in the comic without some kind of messy, efflusive breakdown. Life is like that, you see! Tricky. Like a lot of people, although it’s tough to say precisely how many, I have always intuited that maybe Bitty is kind of a natural top? But obviously when you meet him, as a literal virgin, it’s hard to see how he’d go from zero to self-actualization so neatly. This fic floats a theory, and it has a fun little side plot for Whiskey, something I never thought about or needed before Tomato built it out herein. In conclusion, BONUS: Dex’s gay lobster novel.

only fools rush in and the light of all lights by decinq | This person wrote of the nature of the wound, one of the early, formative Jack/Bitty fics that was oft-recced when I was getting into the fandom in 2016. It forms part of a larger series that deals deeply with how Jack has been shaped by his struggles (? I hate this word) with homophobia and his own mental health. It’s a picture of the character as you might have imagined him much earlier in the comic’s run. The formatting is atrocious and he author’s flair is what Tomato would call “AO3 house style.” It’s a voice that works great for her writing. I think it’s at its best in these shorter fics; the former is about Parse and Shitty stumbling into a relationship almost accidentally; the latter, an eerie PBJ vampire fic. I had begun writing a fic where Parse is a vampire early on in this fandom, only to read this and immediately quit, because you only need one, and this one’s all I need. The Parse/Shitty rare pair fic shares its exuberance with hockey RPS when it’s good: here’s how fun it can be when you’re young, rich, and jocular. And I don’t even like accidental marriage AUs, they’re usually boring, so that says a lot. By all means, read the wound fic; read the entire series. But these are highly unusual.

OVERDOSE and Oomph and a little spin-o-rama by jedusaur | None of these are long, or plotty, and they’re all a little experimental. OVERDOSE is an AU set in a world where you know how you’ll die, but no details; Oomph, a little fic where Jack hears hockey pucks talking to him. This is the kind of stuff I used to think I’d find in fandom forever, coming out of Lotrips lurking in the 2000s: short, zany bursts of energy that surprise and delight. a little spin-o-rama peers at Kent’s character through the grim reality of being the hypertalented superstar stuck on a dead-last team. All three are sparse and stylish in a way that’s really smart, practically economical.

Sowing Season by @agrossunderstatement | Parse and Zimms, Zimms and Parse. Kent Parson's life, from the Q, through his early years with the Aces, to Jack's senior year. Canon divergent. A story of love, loss, moving on, regressing, hockey, and found families of all kinds. | Effectively a novel, digging into Kent’s personal history, mostly concerning his life in juniors but expanding into his present, overlapping with the plot of OMGCP. I think there is room enough for endless speculations on what went down pre-canon; this one offers a fuller life for Kent than nearly any others, digging into him as a whole person rather than as a satellite to Jack or the plot of the comic. Which isn’t to say that the Kent/Jack stuff isn’t dealt with here; it explicitly is. But the fact of Kent Parson’s life, if we can begin to imagine it beyond mere text, would exist before, after, and alongside Jack; he gets to juniors without Jack, presumably, and he is the captain of a hockey team without Jack, and Pinkerton lays the foundation of Parse’s character within a junior hockey that Jack also inhabits, more so that Parse existing for Jack, so to speak. And I’m not implying this latter tactic is wrong; I have certainly employed it, and others have employed it to great impact and effect. But, still, the title of this series tells you what you ought to know: Kent and his story are the potentiality of OMGCP, up to a point; seeds being planted. Young hockey players, similarly. The question implied there is, what will be reaped? And the answer to the latter, in a sense, that reaping is a sort of violence. Which makes this series sound pretty heavy, but it’s not -- more like, realistic.

(tell everyone) you were a good wife by @queerofcups | The biggest problem with pretending that he doesn’t know that Kent Parson is fucking his husband is that Jack can’t tell Kent how grateful he is. | The ne plus ultra of PBJ triangulation; I’ve been squealing to the writer about how good it is since August, begging for behind-the-scenes insights, and I’d only do that if I really meant it. The precarious social fabric stretched across these three chapters is fraying before the reader’s eyes. The details are delicious, and I don’t want to spoil them, but they sing in chorus with the plot. My favorite OMGCP fics, honestly, remove the romance narrative guardrails that keep things in the comic itself humming along. I think Dann’s take is to ask who in this comic has power and what they would end up doing with it. (Or not doing, from another angle.) At one point, early on in its telling, OMGCP looked like it was going to be a story dealing with the compounded traumas of hockey’s discontents. Then, of course, it wasn’t. This is a fic that steps back and asks what the fallout of that oversight would be. But that’s just the moldering core of this fanfic; it’s actually embroidered, like I said, with glittering detail. The color of the suit Bitty wears to his wedding is burned into my brain. The gray manicure of a woman Jack knows. The ingredients in a cake. This is one of those fics I still haven’t reviewed because the thought of stacking everything I could say about it into mere AO3 comments is inadequate.

when you’re ready by megancrtr | The Aces’ director of communications gets the call at 3:13 a.m. Jack Zimmermann has withdrawn from the draft. | “What happened at the draft” is so mythological it gets asked in the comic proper, and I’ve never counted how many fics attempt to answer this question--from Kent’s point of view, even--but it’s gotta be, oh, hundreds. This story replays the situation from the perspective of an Aces staffer who just wants to do her job, and gets at the jarring discordance between the plot of OMGCP in its quest for social justice and the business of actual hockey. Important context is that this story was written around the time the comic was playing out the end of Y3 and start of Y4, and Bitty pointedly asked Jack the question, “why can’t we?” This story reframes the question as literal, rather than rhetorical. A sterling example of fanfic being a gloss on its source.

BONUS, podfics

hockeyed up | There are many things on Jack's mind. Namely: hockey, hockey, Bitty, hockey, anxiety, hockey, hockey, anxiety, Bitty, hockey, hockey, anxiety, and hockey. | A fic read aloud by its French-Canadian author. Also a relatively early OMGCP fanfic; composed while the first semester of Y2 was posting, the story suggests a version of OMGCP that was in some ways more and in other ways less complex than what it would turn into not long after. The real power of this podfic, however, is that it’s read by the writer, so you can hear the intended emphasis in every line. Also, because she’s French-Canadian, Sophie’s intonation is what I picture when I read or write dialogue for Jack.

maybe i’m waking up | It’s almost funny. All he ever wanted was to play hockey, to play in the NHL, to win the Cup. This—Samwell, the team, the Haus—was supposed to be just a detour, but now it feels more like a destination he failed to realize he’s already reached.(Or: Jack signs with the Falconers, graduates, and leaves. It's the hardest thing he's ever done. What comes after is even harder.) | Don’t get too excited; this isn’t finished. A podfic of probably the best-known, most-recced fic in OMGCP fandom. Striking for its use of metatext woven into the story, this is one of several early longform Jack/Bitty fics that posits that maybe Jack has a lot more development to undergo before he can really, truly, be okay--or be okay enough to be with Bitty? To be honest, this story strikes me now as too long, but the parts in it that work are effective beyond that which fanfic demands. Meanwhile, this audio version only covers six chapters, but it’s so slick, so well-realized, so true to the story. Podfic as art.

my own dear friends | Ever since the day he met Jack Zimmermann, Shitty has seen it as his solemn duty to aggressively love him. (He just didn't know how aggressive the love Jack needed would be.) | There’s previous little Jack/Shitty in this fandom and a lot less quality BDSM,

the city’s ours until the fall | Kent has been, historically, good at this—forgetting about things until suddenly he doesn’t, and then it’s like the scar has never been there in the first place, just the wound. (Or: Kent Parson lets himself be happy, after all this time.) | I’ve never read this fic and I never will. I cannot imagine how, no matter how good it is, it could compare to the version that lives in my head, with Kent’s voice so totally realized. Vocal fry and pathos, a languid energy that I still think about when I think about Parse.

the model home | It’s going to be better, and that’s great, but sometimes Jack thinks, why can’t it be good right now? | j/k j/k, this is a self-reminder to finally one day review this.

[thetruthaboutbeliza]

The Truth

A thread of Beliza’s innocence. 

To start out the Pilot for The 100 was filmed in July of 2013 and Season 1 started filming in August of 2013. This would’ve been when Bob and Eliza first became friends. It IS possible they had a brief fling during this time, however there’s nothing to confirm or deny that. 

It’s believed that Bob started dating a girl named Jane Gosden sometime in 2014 and they broke up sometime in 2015. I had trouble finding information about Jane originally and the only source I had found online said they dated 2014-2015 however, that is incorrect. They were together for a few years and broke up some time after May 2014. Jane actually still has quite a few photos on her Instagram of her and Bob together and her with his family. She still interacts with Bob’s sister on a frequent basis as well. I’m still not 100% sure when they started dated but, they were at least together from 2012-2014.

Bob and Arryn met in April 2015 at Supanova in Australia. We know this by photos of them at the con together. Below you can see Bob in the green hat in the back next to Arryn. Barbara is also in the center there in light blue. There are a few other photos of Arryn, Barb, and Bob hanging out during Supanova. 

Arryn and Miles Luna were dating from 2010 until some time in mid 2015 (either May, June, or July). They wrote blog posts confirming their break up in August 2015 and stated they’d been broken up for a little while but didn’t want to announce it until after RTX. In Arryn’s post detailing their break up it is important to note she cited Australia as a reason for their break up.

Everyone wants to attack Bob and Eliza for “moving on quickly” from their exes, specifically Bob from Arryn but, Arryn literally left Miles for Bob. Did they cheat? I don’t know. No one does. But she clearly fell for Bob during Supanova and decided to leave her family/friends/boyfriend behind and pursue Bob and a life in LA. Now it is important to note that she said she wasn’t moving until the END of September 2015. At that point in time she was ALREADY traveling quite frequently out to Vancouver. Vancouver is where The 100 filmed. Some of the cast had photos with her during this time, she was being tagged in posts with them and Bob, her and Bob were talking often on Twitter, and in some of her photos that were more “cryptic�� (ie. photos of her at a coffee shop with her and someone else’s shoes) she mentioned something about “Aussies knowing how to do it right.” Bob is Australian. 

So sometime in July 2015 she started traveling often to Vancouver. August 2015 she officially announces her split from Miles but stated they’d been broken up for a bit but didn’t want to tell anyone until after RTX and that she’d be moving to LA to “pursue her dreams” by the end of September 2015. This pretty much confirms that the Anon Twitter account TruevFalse was correct in stating that Arryn still lived with her ex Miles for a brief time when her and Bob started dating. We don’t have the EXACT date/time of them officially starting to date but they were clearly talking seriously July-Aug 2015 if she was flying out that often to Vancouver where he was filming. At some other point she later specifically stated that she moved to LA for Bob. I’m not sure if this was in stream or where she stated this but, I’ve seen multiple people cite that she said that. Confirming she broke up with Miles for Bob. That alone should stop people from automatically attacking Bob and Eliza for getting together quickly. Was it quick? Yes. Even IF that had been cheating like Arryn claims - they wouldn’t have been in a relationship. Having an affair isn’t a real relationship and getting married a few months after officially dating is still fairly fast - cheating or not - but, that’s not for anyone else to comment on. Plenty of people have done something similar - hell some people get married weeks after meeting someone. When you know, you know. But if you’re going to attack them automatically for moving quickly, “Eliza stealing Bob”, or Bob leaving Arryn for Eliza - then you should be equally upset with Arryn for doing the same thing previously to be with Bob.

On to the abuse allegations. She states that Bob was controlling and isolated her from her family and friends and that she had no friends in LA. But that’s 100% HER doing. As I stated, she literally LEFT her boyfriend/friends/family/job to move out to LA where she knew no one to be with Bob. If you’re telling me he forced her to do all of that before they were even dating - you’re crazy. I do believe she left to pursue a better future in LA but, her main motive for moving was Bob. From there he then invited her into his group of friends (The 100 cast) and quite often she was out with certain members of the cast WITHOUT Bob present. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a controlling/abusive relationship but, I have. Also doing any sort of research on the topic will come to a very similar conclusion: abusers/controlling partners do not want you to have ANY friends, they especially don’t want you hanging out with THEIR friends outside of them being with you, and if they don’t like someone they tell you not to be friends with them, associate with them, or hang around them. Arryn was with The 100 cast a ton, like I said, a lot of times she was with them without Bob around. She quite often did photoshoots when she was home in LA with a friend, and she was still constantly hanging out with Barbara. My reason for bringing Barbara up is a few. 1) Arryn claimed Bob specifically didn’t like Barbara and thought she was a bad friend. This *could* be true, who knows. But if we’re going by Arryn claiming Bob was controlling, then he would’ve told her not to be friends with Barbara. Period. Now yes, Arryn would’ve had to see Barbara on occasion for cons or while they were doing promotion work for RWBY but, he probably would’ve told her to limit her interaction with Barbara during those times and outside of that - not communicate with her. That is what an abuser/controller does. 2) My other reason for bringing Barbara into this is because of Barbara’s boyfriend Trevor Collins and his ex Emily. Emily has talked about the abuse she suffered from Trevor for years during their relationship. She was much younger than he was and when they started dating he was controlling/abusive. She specifically stated she was NOT allowed to be friends with his friends or talk to them unless he was around and that he cheated on her with a co-worker (Barbara) and that they manipulated her by calling her crazy while she had suspicions but they denied it. Now that sounds awfully familiar to Arryn’s story and it’s quite hypocritical for Arryn to know her best friend did this and then to hate Eliza for “doing the same thing”. Here are pieces of Emily’s statement/story. Did Arryn steal part of her story for her own? I can’t say for sure. It’s also important to note Trevor is part of RTX which Miles, Barbara, and Arryn were/are a part of and that the “friend group” Emily was referring to probably included Arryn but, I’m not 100% sure on that.

Another part of Arryn’s story was that Bob FORCED her to be friends with Eliza. So he can FORCE her to be friends with someone but can’t FORCE her to not be friends with Barbara even though she specifically mentions he didn’t like her? She said he forced her to be friends with Eliza even though he had told her he “hated” Eliza but, I’m not sure when he would’ve possibly hated her as Eliza and Bob have been friends since filming began. There’s never not been interaction/photos/hanging out of those two. They’ve always been adamant about being best friends/super close. And Arryn was often seen with Eliza, again, without Bob around. I could imagine Bob trying to force her to be friends/friendly with Eliza while he brought Eliza around but, it’s incredibly odd he’d somehow force Arryn to hang out with Eliza on her own. 

On to the accusation of Bob being a biphobe and that he was not happy with her being bisexual. This one is just incredibly wrong for multiple reasons. Firstly, a few people defending Arryn have stated Bob has never shown any sort of support for Bisexuals or LGBTQ and that’s false. He’s actually been fairly vocal (to Bob’s standards anyways as he’s not very vocal on Social Media in general) about LGBTQ rights/support and has commented quite a few times about how proud he was to be a part of a show where they had a leading lady being Bisexual. Bob was also part of one of Australia’s first gay kiss scenes on tv. He went to Pride with Richard well before Arryn ever did and according to her statement she says “when he found out I was bisexual he was furious” but Arryn has always been openly Bisexual. She was constantly talking about it during on twitter during the time they were constantly tweeting each other back and forth before she officially broke up with Miles. There’s no possible way Bob didn’t know Arryn was bisexual before dating her. If he was biphobic, he simply wouldn’t have dated her, nor would he constantly be showing support for LGBTQ over the years. Arryn also frequently talked about being Bisexual still while they were dating. She was never not open about that. 

Those above are some of the times he’s been vocal about Bisexual/LGBTQ rights/support. He’s also a fan of Tegan and Sara and has liked a few posts of theirs. Then we have the post from yesterday of Eliza talking about being proud to represent Bisexuals by playing Clarke and Bob taking the photo/liking the post.

With Arryn deactivating her Twitter I can’t go through and find all the times she was open about being Bisexual while with Bob but, here are two instances I could find. So she never stopped talking about her sexuality while with Bob.

One of the biggest holes in Arryn’s story is when she talks about how she got a rental property for her and Bob in Australia and after doing the paperwork and moving everything in, shortly after he dumped her to be with Eliza and that they stole the place from her and that he never intended for that to be their place. The first thing about that is there was never a place in Australia - the place in Australia that Bob and Eliza have was BOUGHT by them and is NOT the place Arryn is referring to. I was incorrect about this statement - I got confused and thought Arryn had said in her statement that the house was in Australia but, she said “The Hills” and I remembered seeing some fans attacking Bob for posting photos of their house in Australia on his cover on Facebook as “rubbing it in her face” and combined those in my head. So I apologize. 

The place Arryn is referring to is the rental place in LA. I’m not sure how she made that error or why she didn’t correct it but, there’s that. So Eliza and Bob “stole” the rental home from her but, later on in her statement she confirms that she actually DID live in the rental house and that she left because she got spooked when fans found out she was looking for roommates since she couldn’t afford to live there by herself. She states that herself and plenty of fans have confirmed remembering seeing her looking for roommates during that time. Bob gave her the place originally, she couldn’t afford it and got scared, so she gave it back to him. That is the house where Bob and Eliza are currently staying at during quarantine in LA.  Now according to Eliza’s story of when her and Bob got together she states that she had signed a one year lease with her friend Nina in Vancouver sometime in Feb. 2019 and in March 2019 when they were unpacking Bob came over and asked her on a date. Going back to Arryn’s story, this couldn’t be true since according to her they were having an affair for at least 6 months that she knew of and that her getting their rental house in LA in December 2018 was essentially for Bob and Eliza she just didn’t know that at the time. These photos from Nina’s Instagram/Stories confirm Eliza’s side of the story.

So Eliza was still with Nina until at least May 2019. It wasn’t until June 2019 that Eliza was officially living with Bob and they had gotten Panda. 

If they stole this place from her, why did they not move in together until June?

Another part of Arryn’s story is about how she “caught” them together on camera while she was in New Zealand. That trip by the way, she was with her mother while Bob was home in LA recovering from knee surgery. She went on a trip with her mother (aka family that Bob isolated her from) while he was recovering from surgery. You’d think someone controlling would force her to stay and take care of them. Shortly after she “caught” them cheating, she publicly announced how much she missed Eliza and wished her a happy birthday via Instagram. So this was the “6 months” she was referring to, she “caught” them together, and then 6 months later in Feb 2019 he dumped her for Eliza. However, up until Jun 2019 (when they officially married/moved in together), Arryn was STILL friendly with them both on social media. Now I understand people want to say “well she was brainwashed by them, it makes sense”. Again, if you’ve been in a situation like this the moment you’re free from your abuser/s you cut the chord. It makes no sense she’d continue to be friendly with them both AFTER catching them cheating, AFTER he dumped her for Eliza and “stole” the house she got for them, and AFTER escaping her abuser. Giving her the benefit of the doubt and she did still feel the need to be attached to her abuser/s for a while after the break up, why was it that when she caught them cheating 6 months prior did she only claim she felt betrayed by one of her close friends and cut them off completely in June 2019 after Beliza announced their marriage? She had no problem cutting off the “betrayer” then. 

The youtube video below is an interview featuring Barbara and Arryn May 14th 2019 where at she talks about the betrayal. She says she had a friend betray a huge amount of trust even though they thought they were close and the best way to deal with it was to cut them completely off. (This was clearly about Eliza and is around the 53:00 mark). Mind you, going back to her statement she claims Bob “forced” them to be friends. In this same interview she also talks about getting a therapist (around 10:49 mark) “for no reason in particular” and “doesn’t know what she even needs help with” other than her anxiety and feeling like she didn’t want to dump all her problems on friends and wanted someone to talk to. She talks very light hearted about it and in no way indicates that she’s seeking therapy for an abusive relationship or anything similar. While watching this interview, at (29:40) is where she actually confirms moving to LA with a significant other. Confirming earlier that she left Miles for Bob. She also says that she found most of her friends were through said significant other (Bob) and although she’s friends with them even though they aren’t together anymore, she doesn’t have too many friends outside of that relationship but, (again she’s very light-hearted talking about this) that it’s because she spent so much time around them that your friends become theirs and vise versa and that she “really doesn’t want to make friends because she’s comfortable being alone”. She later (around 42:00) talks about how pretty much ALL of her friends have been because of boyfriends. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBtaCp_5Ro&ab_channel=RoosterTeeth

Now then, in her other statement she mentions her relationship with Miles briefly because people brought up that she cheated on him. She states “they were consenting adults in their relationship and he was okay with me being with a woman”. This is only true to a degree - he was technically okay with it, however she cheated FIRST, she started making out with a girl while drunk and he saw it and him and his friends thought it was “hot”. Afterwards she asked him if it was fine and he said “yes because I’m right here and it’s hot”. He also basically implies that he’d be “okay” with his girlfriend cheating with another girl but not a man. This is all from HIS mouth. Not only is all of that completely derogatory to bisexuals (I’m bi just FYI), it cancels out her statement of them talking about her being with another girl beforehand and him being okay with it because they did NOT talk about it before. He simply said he was okay with her being bi. 

Here’s the video: https://twitter.com/klarkbell/status/1294995706906849281?s=20 In her statement she also claims that Bob cheated on his previous ex (Jane) with Eliza. How would she know this first of all? And secondly, Jane is actually still close with his family. I can’t imagine she would be if he cheated on her. Especially because they dated for a little over a year where him and Arryn dated for over 3 years. Bob’s family cut off Arryn but, not Jane. It’s also a bit odd to me that Arryn’s mother is still friends with Bob’s mother. Terry is Bob’s mother, Bev is Arryn’s. 

Next we have the video that stirred Arryn’s statement to begin with where she was on stream saying “the last two women I dated were batshit, actually most women are batshit” and then proceeded to say that she has a history of dating “psychopaths and narcissists”. These are all incredibly gross statements and if you find yourself claiming that ALL of your relationships are either psychos, narcissists, and/or batshit - you should probably check yourself.

https://twitter.com/klarkbell/status/1302700329138565122?s=20

She says she’s terrified of Bob, always has been and still is. However, she never once claimed he was physically abusive. I don’t know a single person who’s been emotionally/mentally abusive who has ever used the term “afraid” when talking about the abuser. The ex I had that was controlling and the ex I had that was mentally abusive both had a lot of issues, they were assholes, toxic, and terrible partners but, I was never once afraid of them. I’ve dealt with a narcissist (actually the ex of my partner who has bullied/harassed me, not an ex of my own) and while being a pathological liar is a trait of a narcissist - it doesn’t make you automatically a narcissist to be a pathological liar and/or toxic. Nothing she describes = narcissist. So it’s not okay that she uses that term to describe Bob or any of her exes. Talk to anyone who’s been physically abused and you’ll get the statement of them being scared and/or terrified. However, you’ll also get a vastly different reaction from them compared to Arryn’s on how they speak about the abuse they endured and their abuser. If you’re scared of someone after being abused, you don’t call them names, you don’t laugh about name calling, or about the abuse you endured (no, not even to “break tension”), you’re terrified - you’re scared of speaking out extremely vocally because of “what they might do to you”. I’d also like to mention it’s extremely rare for the abuser to dump the victim. They’re controlling/abusive to KEEP you around, they SCARE you to KEEP you around. Not dump you to be with someone else. 

Abusive people also don’t just magically change/get better. They have a history of being this way and more often than not continue to be that way to future partners. Arryn claims Bob wasn’t supportive of anything she did, didn’t let her sing/do music, isolated her from family and friends, refused therapy. Yet, with Eliza it’s incredibly different. She’s always with friends/family and he’s often with them as well. She sings/does music as well and he’s supportive of it and everything she does including her foundation. And, he’s in therapy. They both are so she can figure out how to be a better partner for him due to his extreme depression/suicidal thoughts. I’d also like to remind you that Bob bought Arryn a new keyboard for her birthday one year and was supportive of her being in a friend’s music video in 2018.

Arryn was told at some point in a stream I guess about Bob going to therapy and she said something along the lines of “good for him although I doubt he’s changed”. If she didn’t think it was possible he could change, why did she say she tried to get him into therapy and he refused for years? Why would he refuse therapy but, go into therapy within months of being with Eliza? Since breaking up with Arryn, Bob has been incredibly vocal on social media about his mental health struggles where when he was with her he was fairly silent. He occasionally posted support for mental health awareness but, nothing compared to what he does now. Almost like his mental health got incredibly bad while dating Arryn and he was hiding it from the public/not allowed to talk about it. 

I want to say that the abuse and harassment Arryn apparently endured from The 100 fans while dating Bob and even after is completely uncalled for and I do feel bad that she had to go through that. No one deserves that. However, it’s important to also remember that there is absolutely NOTHING Bob could’ve done to stop that. Nothing he could say that would force people to stop saying shit. People are going to do what they are going to do regardless. True fans, should’ve been happy for him and supported his relationship. No celebrity can control their fans and the few times some of them have spoken out about their fans doing shit like this - nothing happened or it made the fans worse. Bottom line is fans have a problem of feeling entitled and that celebrities/their fav should listen to them. People didn’t like Arryn and nothing Bob said was going to change that. It’s incredibly naive to hold anyone accountable for someone else’s behavior. Much the same as Arryn isn’t able to control her fans doing the SAME thing to Beliza now. Bob and Eliza have both always been very open about how they don’t approve of bullying, harassment, and that you should “be kind”. That alone should be enough for fans to know not to harass/bully someone. They’ve both received hate mail, death threats, been told it’s good Eliza had a miscarriage and they hope she’s sterile, had mail sent to their house, etc. and they haven’t openly talked about that. They haven’t “told fans to knock it off”. Hell their marriage was literally found out by fans before they wanted to announce it because they found Eliza’s number and called her. That’s crossing a line too and harassing them but, they STILL didn’t say anything publicly. They instead announced their marriage and just said “we ask for privacy during this time”. So it makes no sense that you’d expect them or ANY celebrity for that matter - to have control over their fans, “force” their fans to stop doing shit, and blame them for what their fans do/have done. 

I do not believe that Bob is completely innocent. I believe their relationship was incredibly toxic and bad for them both and they probably brought out the worst in each other. I don’t doubt they had yelling matches and probably said mean things to one another. However, I 100% believe it was a MUTUAL thing. Arryn is NOT innocent or the victim/survivor and Bob is NOT the animal she’s making him out to be. It sounds more like she, not only felt betrayed by Bob and Eliza getting together, but that she was tired of their fans harassing her for years and continuing even after they broke up/got together that the only thing she could think to do was release a statement and throw Bob completely under the bus to save herself. If she’s painted as the victim and Bob the villain then surely the harassment will stop. Especially with how people blindly believe any statement released in regards to abuse or rape. After experiencing years of harassment she only decides to deactivate her twitter after people poked holes in her story and she realized not everyone believed her and she was STILL getting harassment. Again, she doesn’t deserve the constant harassment. I believe that is what pushed her to this point. No, it’s not okay that she’s lied and done this by any means but, I think she felt backed into a corner and lashed out. I can understand where she’s coming from, even though it doesn’t excuse it or make it right. 

One last note, something I remembered: she specifically stated Bob was the reason she deactivated Youtube and stopped posting/being on social media as much. However, she slowly stopped doing that while with Miles and in her statement about breaking up with him said she’d be taking a hiatus from Youtube but, would be back. However, I think she just decided against that because she wanted to unplug and live life. 

Now one of the major things everyone says is proof of her statement is that Bob has been silent. I’d like to remind you that usually guilty parties deny deny and are vocal. Bob’s silence is more proof to me that he’s innocent. He knows no matter what he says - won’t matter. If he denies it, people will say he’s lying. The victim/survivor wants to move on, they want to forget the abuser, don’t acknowledge them and just want to be happy. All of the things BOB is doing, not Arryn. I’ve seen people say “if he’s innocent he’d sue her for slander” however, how is that any different than the countless rape/physical abuse victims that don’t come forward or call the cops/take them to court? They don’t want to relive all that. They want to move on. The damage has already been done with her statement, same way as even though Amber Heard was proven a liar in court - the damage was/is done. Johnny still isn’t going to be able to work with Disney again, certain people STILL defend Amber despite the court findings/evidence. What would be the purpose of him denying it? The man is in therapy because he incredibly depressed/suicidal and looks so much happier/healthier in his marriage with Eliza. He just wants to leave it all behind. Denying it/suing her will just continue the lengthy process of moving on from everything and re-stir the pot. I’d also like to throw in there the fact that proving emotional/mental abuse is incredibly hard so it’s not like taking her to court over slander would really do anything. Johnny was able to fight his case because it was physical abuse and there was countless amounts of evidence/witnesses/documents/photos etc. Most people don’t have any solid evidence against mental/emotional abuse because it happens in person/in the moment. Unless you’re recording everything, you won’t have proof. It’s just he said/she said. That’s why the majority of Arryn’s statement was about cheating and not the abuse. 

[not-your-damsel]

I Gotta Let it Out, Please Forgive Me Guys

I got a random message on Facebook messenger from my bestest friend from the tail end of middle school until onwards… or so I thought.

*Names have been changed for this… mess? I’m so sorry guys, I’m all over the place 😑 and this is kinda long so, head’s up

She was like a sister to me, we told each other any and everything. We wrote fan fics for *N’Sync before fan fics were even a goddamn thing, before there was a place to even post them! She made the life move from New Jersey to Pennsylvania bearable and then livable after having my whole life uprooted once again. My Mom and I always moved a lot when I was a child so I was always bouncing from school to school once I thought I was finally settled and was steadily making friends only to up and move again. That coupled with constantly having to go to the hospital because of my illness didn’t bode well for my learning abilities. I’m great at everything else now as an adult but don’t even come to me about math or I’ll spit on you, I don’t make the rules 🤷🏽‍♀️

However, once my Mom met my Sister’s father, our living situation somehow downgraded from living in a beautiful brownstone house to then living in a trailer in a trailer park. Please don’t take that as me shitting on trailer parks or folks who live in them. I just despise them because they immediately remind me of the verbal, mental abuse/gaslighting I endured when we lived there which continued into PA and the house we moved to there is all. My stomach churns when I pass by one as I immediately feel like I’m 10 again and about to be in trouble and grounded for the next tiniest thing he deemed wrong of me.

Anywho, we moved to PA when I was 12, my little sister having been born in NJ just before we left it to come here and I was livid. Leaving all my friends behind after finally having a taste of actually settling in and making friends and not moving away right after the fact only to pull the rug from under me and do it again. As an adult now, I get it. It’s safer here than where we’d been and the taxes rock, no tax on food or clothing or pharmaceuticals and also utilities for heat and shit and not to mention, a better school system.

And school is where I met my immediate bestie, around the second or third day being there, we had to swim for gym and since I didn’t know I had to sit out for the period where the other girls and I started talking about *N’Sync and she asked me who my face was, which was Lance and then she said hers was Justin Timberlake and that she fantasizes about him. Anyone who can tell me that right off the bat with the same energy as telling me what their favorite color or animal is has immediately won my friendship. Immediately.

That’s how we met, that’s how we rolled and we stayed joined at the hip throughout the rest of our school years together. We’d been through it all, crushes, familial loss, pet loss, watching mutual friends come and go or fuck each other over, and yet her and I remained as though we were born sisters. I never needed a whole entourage of people to call my friends. Whoever’s gonna hang with me, I love and appreciate and protect dearly and those who won’t that’s fine as well. But she was a constant in my life, we both were constantly in each other’s lives.

She provided an escape and safe haven away from my home when it got to be too suffocating to be within my own home because of my overbearing stepfather and I taught her how to appreciate and accept and play video games, specifically of the survival horror genre and we’d get together for a sleepover when a new release would come out and we wanted to get lost in stories and scream for dear life at perfectly crafted jump scares. She turned me on to being a drama kid since her and I were in chorus together being Soprano 1’s, and it turned out to be one of the most fun things I did in high school.

But time passes and we graduated. Sad as I was to be parting from everyone, we all began to scatter, coming together during breaks to party and catch up. After moved to Queens NY to be with my fiancé at the time and she was doing her own thing. Over time, life got in the way. There was no grand fight to speak of, no secretly harbored feelings of ill will or hatred, nothing of the sort. Which is why I’m left feeling so baffled over how what was meant to be a great reaching out and reconnecting moment ended up turning into me feeling angry, dejected and feeling as though maybe there were some things she never spoke to me about when she should’ve.

It started out great, happy to hear from her especially out of the blue since the times I tried to reach her would always fall through. We caught up with one another, as you do, and then the conversation turned from catching up to suddenly me being questioned about why I never contacted her. I explained everything that happened, how I tried several times apart from the yearly birthday wishes and such, and how I never got a reply back, that I assumed it meant she had a different phone number. How as the years passed more and more, my insecurities of no longer being wanted by her ran rampant and that maybe she had better people in her life. I apologized for that, seeing now that I was blinded by that insecurity and that was something for me to sort out. That and that life literally got in the way.

I told her everything as honest and truthful to the best of my ability because I’d never lie to her, never had and never would/will want to. I admitted to her that I’m definitely different from the last time she’s seen me and that I’m now utter shit with the phone. I personally think it’s a mix of my Major Depressive Disorder mixed with my anxiety that I prefer messaging over actually talking on the phone. But that’s not for my lack of trying to reach her over the years.

However, that wasn’t good enough for her though apparently. She kept pressing me and questioning if “I ignored her” because of scenario A, B or C. She said that. She literally said, “Did you ignore me because of…”. She started labeling despite me telling her what happened, putting words in my mouth. It got to the point that I was just repeating myself over and over because she kept interrogating me on the issue, bringing up weak reasons as though she just knew that was the “reason I dipped and left her in the wind” when meanwhile, when you look at which of us two was the last to try to contact the other through Facebook messenger, it shows it as me and before that all my attempts to reach her through something I knew she’d see my shit to her through and yet I was never answered.

I ended up saying to her, “Look, I don’t know what it is you’re wanting me to say here. I feel like you’re trying to get me to admit to something to please you but I’m not gonna do that because if I did, then I’d be lying to you and I’m not here for that. I told you everything on my end here, what has happened and that’s exactly what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t secretly hate you, I could never hate you. It wasn’t your fault about what happened with my ex and I at your party, I’ve never held you responsible for his cheating actions. He cheated on me with Stan, not you, so don’t think that has anything to do with you when you stuck up for me when we all found out the next morning. Please stop fishing for a conflict that’s not there.”

I don’t hear from her after a long while and I explicitly tell her that I want to talk about this more the next day because this isn’t right and I want to clear up whatever it is that she thinks is wrong, that I love her and to have a good night as it’s past 2am at that point. She proceeds to bring up past scenarios hours later while I’m well asleep and she knows this, guilt tripping me about how she was there for me whenever I needed to be in the hospital but that maybe I had forgotten what it meant to be best friends with her and she then blocks me on all socials knowing I can’t even fight for myself because I’m asleep. All socials save for one and that’s Insta.

I call her out on that shady bullshit and tell her that it’s absolutely unfair that I sat there and I was being an adult and admitting to my mistakes and apologizing for them only for her to push all the blame on me for not contacting her which we established that I had many times and not been acknowledged. I said, “The phone works 2 ways, Sadie, 2 ways. Do not sit there and act like you’re not to blame as well, especially when I’m here admitting fault and apologizing for it and you haven’t even bothered to claim some of that faulted responsibility. That’s fucked because if it were me having come to you, yet again, and this time you answered, I would’ve taken my part of the blame and admitted to my faults here as well, I wouldn’t’ve piled it all on you the way you did to me. I was honest with you and it seems that’s not what mattered to you, what mattered to you was putting untruths into my mouth to fit your narrative that “I hate you”, “that you never mattered to me” and so on. Again, not cool. Will it hurt to lose you? Absolutely, it’ll kill me to lose you permanently, but not at the expense of a lie you want so badly to be true.”

Not only that, but several times throughout this conversation, she would bring up something factual that happened, that she knew happened, only to turn around and say something snarky like, “I wouldn’t know what happened or I wouldn’t know about that because you never told me about it.” I sat there for a good moment afterwards, seriously questioning if she was drunk or high or a combo of the two and just crossfaded because it made no damned sense!!!

I’m not gonna lie, I’m truly hurt by all this. I cried happy tears when we first started talking because it had been so long, and then by the end of it, I was left baffled, hurt, confused, and feeling like I didn’t even know this person anymore and crying in a panic that this was all actually happening. That I somehow unknowingly became a villain to my own best friend, my sister. It still feels unreal, the whole thing was so all over the place, it gave me whiplash. I don’t know what to do and I apologize for putting a portion of me and my troubles on here, I just needed a safe space to vent and let loose because I’m warring with myself of if this is even still worth it with her because this feels so… icky. Like in my gut I can feel that this isn’t the same person I once knew and I’m only gonna find more upset, hurts and disappointment and that feeling causes even more hurt.

Idk guys, I’m tired and worn out. I cried a lot so that’s gonna and made me even more tired only with puffy, splotchy pinky/red rings around my eyes that now are sensitive to the touch from wiping them so much. But thank you for letting me do what I felt I needed to do and just let this mess out. I know it’s all over the place but I can’t even bring myself to fix anything if there’s errors and shit. Love y’all.

[laufire]

Supernatural s3

It’s so unfair that the season that has Ruby AND Bela is so short :(((. I was done with it waaaay too quickly, and now I’m speed running through s4 xD (which, like the first time around, is Strong Mixed Feelings territory).

-My girl Ruby!!!! I was so happy to have her back, I kept grinning like a loon every time she was on screen. It’s quite interesting watching the 1.0 and 2.0 versions so close to each other, instead of as they air. I have... Thoughts, on whether Ruby as a double agent was something planned or that they decided as they went, but that’s for the s4 post. s3!Ruby really doesn’t come across as one (“I don’t believe in the devil” oh I wish sometimes xD, I love my nonbelievers), imo, but the beauty of such a device is that you can rationalize anything she does as devious if you want to xD

And it goes without saying that I love her interactions with Sam. THIS SHIP ISTG. I love how immediately ~attuned to her he is lol, his present and instinctive concern for her even if he tries to mask his interest as “practical”. And all the repeated times Sam’s conflicted between her and Dean -like when he deviates Dean shot (wasting one of the Colt’s bullets lmfao) or during the argument about the virgin sacrifice xD. And the “that’s my boy”/ “little fallen angel on your shoulder” quotes!!! Ruby 1.0 deserved to be railed by Sam too, smh.

My favourite episode of hers is “Jus in Bello” (which would be my fave of the season just by virtue of having both Bela and Ruby in the same episode lol. Not interacting, of course, the world as we know it wouldn’t have survived). I just love that she gets that final moment of I TOLD YOU SO to the brothers xD. I really like how she expands on the demonic lore of the show- I love, LOVE the detail about how all demons used to be humans, how they’re souls corrupted in hell. And that in her past life she was a witch (there was this really good fic in Spanish fandom about it... I need to hunt it down).

BTW, though I think her interactions with Dean in that episode are interesting, it really hammers home how much I hate him sometimes xD. Can you stop saying misogynistic slurs for TWO GODDAMN MINUTES, DEAN (and as we know from as early as this season, only HE can have demon/monster friends!! What a fucking hypocrite xD). I freaking love the moment in the finale when she viciously yells him about how she wishes she could see him in hell lmao (and how it foreshadows that when she shows sympathy later, it’s actually Lilith in disguise lmfao). I hate Dean gets the last word in their dynamic, tbqh. Until the s15 cameo, at least xDD

One thing that’s been bothering me xD: the French fries. Demons are vulnerable to salt, like other spirits, right? (and hey, look what a nice piece of foreshadowing that was). How does that translate to food lol. Because Ruby adores French fries, and they obviously contain salt. It’s like spicy food for humans? Or like pineapple? Inquiring minds etc. xD

-I still cannot believe Bela Talbot was only on the show for six episodes lmao. Her presence still lingers in the watchers’ heads so much?? Which is understandable because she’s Lead Girl Material if there was ever any lol. The care with which they styled her even?? You don’t do that for just any character lmao (I mean, just look at most of SPN’s female characters for comparison xD).

Her ship with Dean could’ve really been something, too -even if I hate Dean in it, I can’t deny it packs a punch, narrative-wise. I mean, the Batcat undertones alone!! The fake married undercover shenanigans!! And I think it’s really interesting that she’s such a blind spot for him; Dean’s unusually intuitive about people, but with Bela he takes everything at face value and she can fool him like no other (while, OTOH, is Sam who questions her facade and wants to see more). If he hadn’t been such an idiot (and such an asshole) he could’ve had a really powerful ship. Sucks to be him lol.

Anyway. Man, I love her. So much. I love how Gordon’s threats to kill her don’t work on her, and I love that the show basically said “Bela killing her abusive parents is good, actually” (I’m so tired of forgiveness narratives, you guys. This entire show is founded on revenge, so let me get my revenge fantasies in peace!!) xDD. And I love, LOVE that she withheld that truth from Dean, that she decided he wasn’t worth it. OTOH, you know, fuck the fans that got her written out, definitely; but on the other, I do love how her story ended (and that it was a clear "fuck you" to shitty fans). Doesn’t stop me for wanting to read and re-read (and maybe write!) even more “Bela escapes hell” fix-its, but still.

Also, very important question: what happened to her cat?? It’s the cat alright?? I’m going to headcanon that she left them with that cougar friend of hers lol.

-So. THE DEAL. Okay. Oof. I love this storyline, a lot. A loooot. I love the conflict it creates between the brothers (as long as there’s still conflict and Sam hasn’t yet started taking everything lying down I can enjoy that part of their narrative lol). I love Dean’s initial forced giddiness about “making the most out of his last year” and I love the moment Dean decides he does want to try to live because it makes the last few episodes all the most desperate and cruel (and hey, I’ve heard he only went to hell because the season was cut short due to a writers’ strike... if that’s true that’s so funny lmao).

My absolutely favourite part however? That you can FEEL Dean’s unvoiced resentment towards Sam. For Dean having to die for him, even if Sam never asked him to. He lashes out to Sam repeatedly through the season, but it really came to ahead in the dreamspace episode, where Dean confronts another version of himself that talks about how Sam was “dotted on” (the revisionism asldfkaf). This show is absolutely ruthless when it comes to showing you its characters’ ugly, unfair reactions to things and it’s my favourite thing evah.

Speaking of the dreamspace episode, OMFG. I loved both brothers there. Dean’s hallucination, seeing himself as a demon? And how he let out his anger about John?? Beautiful, truly (regarding John, I also loved their different reactions when it looked like his spirit had contacted them: Dean jumping on it and Sam detached skepticism). But my favourite part has to be when Sam uses the villain’s abusive father against him. Like. Damn. That was cold-blooded o.0

The second-to-last episode, when Sam tracked down that Frankenstein doctor to try and make Dean immortal was ABSOLUTELY HORRIFYING OMG. I loved that. I love that Sam wanted to use it for both them. It was some scary shit. I also love the scene where the crossroads demon questions whether Sam really wants to break the deal, I’m gathering it’s going to be nice foreshadowing later on in the show lol.

Anyway. I also found Dean’s death scene more impactful than Sam’s. Partially because of the horror of it, but mostly because I think at this type of scenes, Padalecki is better. Sam’s grief felt more real, Dean’s got me out of the scene (it’s the voice, I think. Sometimes Ackles’ voice takes me out of scenes, it sounds... forced).

I also really enjoyed how the time loop episode wrapped around this subplot. It managed to be both heartbreaking and mind-numbly hilarious lmfao. Like?? All the deaths?? Were so pathetic?? I tip my hat to Ackles because I don’t think most actors could carry plots like this half as well lmfao.

Sidenote, it’s always a trip to see The Trickster God knowing that fucker is Gabriel. Archangel “hey Mary do you accept God knocking you up” Gabriel. Which I guess isn’t exactly a thing in this show?? Since according to the wikia SPN Jesus was “just a man” (and let me tell you, I’m tickled pink by the fact that out of ALL mythological figures, specifically all CHRISTIAN mythological figures, the show decided to go “nah” on Jesus Christ. I mean, I guess he’d take away from Dean’s, Sam’s and Castiel’s resurrection narratives, but still. It’s so funny!!).

-Gordon Walker remains a superbly acted and fascinating character with extra racist nonsense alsdkfjasdf. But I can’t deny I loved seeing him as a vampire. He was terrifying. And I’m definitely shipping him with Kubrick, ouch xD

-The Ghostfacers episode is... something. As in, incredibly exploitative and homophobic and with an egregious case of BYG (and the first where I’d say it’s incontestable to claim the trope was used. s1 and s2 are muddy territory given the circumstances, IMO, but this one is 300% BYG), but so successfully manipulative my heart hurt for Corbett and Corbett x Ed still. Fuck them for that ngl. I do still enjoy how anti-Winchesters they all are though xD

-3x01 introduces the one nice marriage of hunters so far, between a black couple. The man dies in a gross, horrifying way within the episode ofc (because he was Mean to the the brothers duh). She makes it out alive, and since she doesn’t reappear in the show she gets to live. So for now black women have a sliiiiiightly better track record in SPN than track guys there: they get to appear in a few more episodes and be more fleshed out (Victor, Gordon), but as long as they’re only in one episode they get to live!! (Cassie, Tamara).

-Rufus and Bobby are exes, right? Right?? Probably still married in some state? You know that post about how when gay marriage was legalized across the USA there were a lot of issues because some couples had split and never bothered to divorce, since it was only legal in one place? That post was made for them. Pity Rufus is a black man, and as such has a limited number of allowed appearances before he’s killed off ¬¬

-I would’ve enjoyed Dean’s moments with Lisa and Ben more (it’s just so RIGHT that in this moment he’d want Ben to be his) if my knowledge of future spoilers didn’t perpetually have me in a state of “pls keep this guy away from kids” lol.

-They had Harmony’s actress (BTVS) and they made her a vampire!! The show’s hard on for the Buffyverse is a bit of a hit and miss but I can’t say I don’t relate xDD.

-I know Jensen Ackles can sing (in fact thanks to youtube I know a few of the actors can... is there a musical episode. Does this show have its own OMWF. I need to know). So why. WHY. Does he sound like that during “Dead or Alive”??? I actually like the scene but he sounds so off-key lmao.

-BTW, I found out that apparently Katie Cassidy and Lauren Cohan originally auditioned for each other’s roles añslkdfjasf. I can’t picture it. Ruby 1.0 is Ruby 1.0 and Bela is Bela xD. Although I’ve seen each playing roles that could meld with the other, just. Nope. Good choice on the casting there lol.

[gamergirluprising]

(WARNING SENSITIVE INFO WILL BE DISCUSSED OR GIVEN. IF YOU CANNOT HANDLE INFO REGARDING SELF-HARM OR BULLYING I’D ADVISE YOU NOT TO READ ON. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED)

Hello, everyone, I’d like to share somethings that have urked me and outright surprise me when getting deeper and deeper into this whole shebang cause honestly, this is too much to NOT notice. If you're wondering what I am talking about I am referring to all the stuff I found out about Viv and the fact that she never truly seemed sorry for what she's done to said people based on what I have found out and what she's said in recent years.

Now you all may say "G, she said she's sorry and that's that. Don't bring up things that happened years ago or have been resolved." and look, man, I'd leave it alone if it was CLEAR that she was truly a person of her word, wasn't a hypocrite, and didn't cause 3 people to be suicidal and cause/know of witchhunts that she KNOWS happened and/or wanted to happen. You guys can like her all you want and defend her, but be sure they are good defenses, understand WHERE I am coming from, and be mindful of what I am saying. Don't just ignore everything she did just cause you THINK she's super nice or because she's your idol.

I will also emphasize that I wish for NO ONE to send any unnecessary hate or anything of the like to Viv. You don't stoop to someone else's level just cause they did some bad crap. I just wanted to say any of this, loud and clear, cause its straight facts that shouldn't be buried just cause she wants to hold onto her image the best she can. That isn't at all fair to those victims who have been wronged and had their names tainted over her destructive and mean-spirited hypocritical behavior. AGAIN DO NOT ATTACK VIV AND DON'T THINK ME CALLING HER OUT IS A REASON TO HATE HER. We can be better than her in terms of handling things. Do not also think me calling her out shouldn't have been done JUST CAUSE you don't wanna hear it or not. If you don't wanna see it, you don't have to read it.

with that being said, LET'S DISSECT.

 S T A R V A D E R

First I have to start off relaying to you guys what Starvader had stated at the beginning of the document so you'll get a jist of why she even spoke up in the first place. 

 "I type this document with no malicious intent only my personal thoughts on how I feel recently about the situation since its been on my mind well every day now since 2013. At least five years I’ve had thoughts below as to my personal experience of meeting an ex idol and why sometimes meeting your idol isn’t the best approach. For me, that ex idol is Vivienne Medrano creator of Zoophobia and Hazbin Hotel. I’m not aiming to defame this creator nor do I think people should stop liking their work or stop supporting them. If you like their work there is nothing wrong with that but I will refuse to silence myself any longer due to how much this rarely leaves my mind and tends to come up. This has been a situation swept under the rug and most would probably state ‘ well why are you bringing all this up now it was so and so years ago you guys squashed this etc etc “ that being the case, sorry doesn’t fix emotional trauma that comes up frequently during depressive episodes and comments do tend to stick to people in a certain way. Apology or not, words have a heavy weight to them."

I put this here even though I will be putting a link to her doc because people will most likely not read or press the link and just act as if Starvader wanted blood. No, she stated her mind and was clear when saying she wanted no harm done to Viv.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRX8VEoTS7Xot7D9u5i7MMEgtT44mNEtgpl4FY7QDZCA7ZY2j-CTJF7Uw_JwSJ6WUQNVvaTQv60Igte/pub

In this link It tells anyone who comes across it what she and some others mentioned here had to go through when being compared by Viv, wanting to do what's right and still being "called out" and bullied while getting hate sent to them, and having been told how her dreams would never ever be achieved and that she should practically give up, how she put friends against one another, etc. It showcases screenshots of these examples. 

It all began with the accusation of art theft. The very thing she played the victim in with someone else. I'm sure some of you old-time fans of Viv know who this person was and are aware of the beef they had with one another. After reading Starvader's Doc, I want you to look at the post Vivziepop made to defame someone known as 

  D O L L C R E E P

This may be a throwback to you and you all may have thought this person was abusive. I won't say that they did absolutely nothing wrong since they themselves have said they did some wrong in the situation, but I will say that one was more of a problem starter than the other. 

http://web.archive.org/web/20151008172207/http://enoughisenough-dollcreep.tumblr.com/post/125101370456/my-experience-with-dollcreep

Notice in this post that the very things she did to Starvader she said DollCreep did to her and how she tries and paint DollCreep as this SEVERELY abusive person. Hell even in Starvader's document you'll see that DollCreep told SV that he talked with Viv about the whole thing regarding SV and Viv and she apparently listened at the time. Not to mention that the screenshots Viv put in that post were either take(very possibly) taken out of context or not even bad to begin with (though his reply about the face thing was odd and shouldn't have been addressed b but due to circumstances, I think that's why he was so cautious). I don't know DC like that, but this kinda makes me feel as though he wasn't a bad person Viv makes him out to be and more her trying to destroy his image ENTIRELY for her benefit, cause till this very day she still calls him an abuser and someone she doesn't want to meet again. 

if you continue on into the post she made, you'll see that she has made characters, EERILY SIMILAR to DC's, some WAY MORE than others. SV was willing to change some of the designs and even wanted to stop, Viv, however, seemed to take great offense over such an accusation and took to social media to make her frustrations known. SV kept this hidden from 2013 to 2018.

Oh btw, if you read the doc you'll see that SV wanted to commit suicide. DC actually attempted it. The cyberbullying ran that deep and it ANGERS me.

here’s what someone who saw the sitch had to say.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170619163024/http://dcs-personal-blog.tumblr.com/

can find everything here regarding what DC said about the sitch. You guys DO NOT ATTEMPT TO HURT THIS PERSON. It actually pisses me off that people even attacked DC and blindly believed Viv. It’s Johnny Depp’s situation all freaking over again

Here’s the picture of Viv saying that he was abusive, completely ignoring her behavior, and knowing hate would be sent to DC. Again won’t say that DC was completely innocent but damn man, was this necessary? DC even said that they talked it out and everything 

https://vivziepop.tumblr.com/post/179705403534/im-only-going-to-say-this-once

Don’t even get me started on the whole character credit fiasco that Viv refused to properly fix.

https://krieg-was-taken.tumblr.com/post/101438542866/dollcreep-kibadoglover45-dollcreep-even

Look at this as well.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200104224648/https://tyacutie123.tumblr.com/post/125800399071/beware-of-abusive-artist

it mentions SV again, but it also brings into light a parody character meant to mock DC during all of this drama. 

https://killapunk.tumblr.com/post/125896144245/dcs-personal-blog-enoughisenough-dollcreep/amp

DollCreep does the same thing back and is treated like the enemy. Hypocrisy at its finest.

now, most of you guys will be saying that this all happened in the past. It’s over, some will say, She’s changed (some of you may even say that these people deserve it. Yes people actually have said stuff like this to me or others) but here’s the problem, She still pulls crap like this to ruin people or to make others feel stupid. Just last year she was laughing with JaneGumball (who APPARENTLY made up with the victim) saying that she deserves it for being rude when the girl just said her opinion and was still a fan of Viv at the time, meaning she didn’t even mean to hurt Viv’s feelings and, hear me out, even if she did WHY FIND HER CYBERBULLYING FUNNY AND JUSTIFIED OVER AN OPINION? What sort of logic is that? That’s GREATLY immature and unnecessary, especially for someone her age (She’s 27 or 28 guys while the victim was 15, come on man!)

 and I’m sure some of you know what happened with the person who made a meme regarding HH and other animated cartoons.

She’s VERY MUCH AWARE THAT THEY WERE ATTACKED....and this is how she responds....wow O K A Y.

So no, she didn’t actually change because she most likely didn’t think she had to. People kept supporting her thus making her believe that what she did was correct. Oh and Faust is practically Viv as well. (As seen by the SV doc and this tweet thread)

https://twitter.com/melonbea/status/1206994000563068930?s=19

Hell Viv seemed to ignore this too, as well as a lot of shipping drama if it involves a specific ship, but I won’t delve too deep into that subject since I am not very aware of the things that go down in that side of the fandom. 

and there’s this 

https://afraidofmonsters-headcanons.tumblr.com/post/188662798256/so-lets-talk-about-this-blog-the-fandom-and-viv

and this

https://historia-kq.tumblr.com/post/190882421127

I’d advise you guys to hear these things out. 

Oh and Viv is the type to be a Hypocrite regularly,

https://twitter.com/VivziePop/status/613097846603026433?s=19

I could send you all the screenshots of her tweets but that should be another post on its own cause THERE IS A LOT. Like her Cancel Culture tweet, that tweet where she said, and I quote, “The hypocrisy is strong” back in 2014, November 29th. That time she had a thread of tweets saying, and I quote “never let someone dictate your value as an artist! Never seek the approval of someone else and conform to what they say you should do!” Despite doing this to StarVader.

If you guys want screenshots I can either personally DM or make a post showing her hypocrisy. Cause honestly this is rather, dare I say it, TOXIC. She’s manipulated people and has used them when they don’t abide by her rules or make a mistake that could have been resolved privately, she attacks and it’s saddening. I am TIRED of people getting hurt by her and I am tired of her abusing her power. If she wants to change I am COMPLETELY DOWN for that, but change starts when you want it. You can’t say sorry and expect people not to see past the lies or see that you obviously didn’t change. Sorry should mean what it means, feeling regret or penitence, but if you don’t at all exhibit these things then how are we supposed to believe that you are at all sorry for anything you’ve done currently AND in the past? I mean damn dude did you guys even know what happened to the cosplayer that Viv was mad about?

https://boricua-moonbakery.tumblr.com/post/616407364553310208

Now look, if you like Viv’s content, that’s your choice. I for one very much do like some fan content that i’ve stumbled onto and find some very creative and my cup of tea and while I’m not a huge fan of HH I still very much find the premise very creative. What I do if a creator of something is majorly sketch or strange I simply seperateb the content from the creator. I simply wanted to point out things many peeps don’t know about and any person who is a fan of Viv, I hope you’d at least understand WHY I am at all saying anything I am saying. I want there to be justice but I want things to be fair. I don’t want Viv to get hurt, but I want her to actually learn from her mistakes. I am not here to discourage you from anything, it’s your choice if you choose to stay and I will not judge you for it. I am a girl who SIMPLY wants people to be more aware of who exactly Vivienne Medrano is. She’s mistreated both fans of HH and ZP and it boggles me.

If you guys want more info, like her tweets that I mentioned, just message me.

      END OF DISSECTION

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Ive never really understood the hype surrounding Taylor Swift - I mean, I like some of her songs, but im not big on modern pop music so generally she just doesn’t really click for me. But I find it interesting that theres quite a few of Beatles/Swift blogs - like, they should have very little in common given that they’re from completely different eras and all, but somehow people seem to find a lot of semblance between the two. << and thats not me shitting on any of these blogs btw! Hope I don’t come off as rude or condescending there <3

Anyway, I was just wondering what got you into Taylor Swift? (I think ive read your post on how you got into the Beatles)

Hi, anon! Don't worry, I don't think you're rude or condescending! I agree they don't have too much in common and I don't really like their music for the same reasons.* I do have a playlist of Paul songs that have similar vibes to Taylor songs but it's mostly lyric-based. (Also the Beatles For Sale songs actually have quite the Taylor-tinge because Paul and John were not immune to Country Music)

I saw @stewy say once that a possible reason there are a good handful of us Swiftie-Beatle People on here is the appeal of a vast discography, which I agree with. If you have an artist/group with 200ish songs, it's just really fun to really dive into their work and explore all the facets. I also think: we're talking about the most popular band of all time and one of the highest-selling artists of the 21st century. They have a lot of fans so there's bound to be overlap, regardless of musical differences.

Moving on to your question: Getting into Taylor was an extremely personal experience for me and so my explanation is probably going to be kind of long so I'll put it under a read more.

It was spring-summer 2014, I was 15. I had heard the more popular songs of hers starting with Love Story and enjoyed pretty much all of them (I always found her hopelessly romantic point of view fascinating) but before I got a Spotify account in 2013 it was difficult in general for me to really get into an artists' entire discography so most of her songs had flown under my radar.

At the time, I was in this very weird sort of codependent online friendship with this girl who was basically my first real best friend and my first more or less crush. She was very depressed and I was very much in an I Could Fix Her™ mood, except that I obviously couldn't fix her and it made me feel like I wasn't enough and she had begun pulling more and more away from me and not replying to my messages and it was simply driving me insane. I consider it the saddest period in my life.

at some point during this period, I started trying to connect with other people (all online, I didn't know how to talk seriously to anyone IRL) and explaining the issues I'd been having, and one of the people who brought me joy and whom I actually felt not drained talking to was a huge swiftie. And IDK the fact that she loved Taylor and the fact that talking to her made my life better (and also the fact that I liked all the Taylor songs I knew at that point) just made me decide to give her a listen. And I think that whole "large discography discovery" phenomenon really helped me at the time (funny, because her discography has doubled since then). It gave me something new to focus on; there were just so many songs to discover, all telling such rich stories. I also have always loved bridges, they are almost always my favourite part of a song. And Taylor, god-bless her, loves them too and always puts her ALL in them. Like pretty much every bridge of hers brings the song to the next level, and even a lot of her songs I don't adore tend to have great bridges (Stay Stay Stay and Paper Rings come to mind). I think one of her most underrated qualities is how good she is at song structure and really building up an entire musical journey with a song. She also almost always adds cool ad-libs in her second and third choruses to keep the songs interesting and dynamic (or at least since she's gone pop). Anyways, back to the story: Then Taylor announced 1989 as her next album and released Shake It Off, and it was just like this great happy thing for me to look forward to, when I had very little keeping me going. The era was promoting a lot of happiness which in hindsight was slightly fabricated and it was just a really great thing for me to latch onto.

At the same time I was coming to realize that I was gonna have to pull away completely from my friend and all those break-up songs just… Hit, y'know? Like, some people seem to think Taylor's a one-trick pony because she likes to write break-up songs but to me, break-ups are just like this moment where you as a human can potentially feel every single emotion, and Taylor's songs have covered every facet of the concept. Here are some songs I remember from that period, that all meant a lot to me at the time because they explained my own pain to me so well:

Haunted, for the absolute terror you feel in the first moments you realize someone is probably gonna leave you. Come on, come on / Don't leave me like this / I thought I had you figured out / Something's gone terribly wrong / You're all I wanted.

I Almost Do, for the inner turmoil you feel when you know you have to stay away from someone for your own good but you really, really have to resist just running back to that person. We've made quite a mess, Babe / It's probably better off this way / And I confess, Babe / In my dreams you're touching my face / And asking me if I wanna try again / With you / And I almost do.

Last Kiss, for that absolute sadness that comes simply with remembering everything that was good and not comprehending how it could've possibly ended. I still remember / The look on your face / Lit through the darkness / At 1:58 / Words that you whispered / For just us to know / You told me you loved me / So why did you go / Away?

Forever and Always, for that feeling of desperately wanting to hold on to what you still have but at the same time realizing it probably isn't going to last and having no idea how to fix it, plus feeling like the other person doesn't even care. So here's to everything / Coming down to nothing / Here's to silence / That cuts me to the core / Where is this going? / Thought I knew for a minute / But I don't anymore.

Dear John, my all-time favourite song, for that moment you find clarity and realize that you deserved better and that you were headed in an extremely dark direction because of this other person. [DISCLAIMER: my friend did NOT abuse me nor did we have some inappropriate age difference. But the way she would ignore me and her general moodiness really affected my own mental health and self-worth problems] You paint me a blue sky / And go back and turn it to rain / And I lived in your chess games / But you changed the rules every day / Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone / Tonight / Well I stopped picking up / And this song is to let you know why.

(She's covered more aspects of break-ups in other songs [cheating, divorce, feeling awkward around your ex amongst others], these are just the ones I remember being really important to me when I was first getting into her)

She really helped me feel a lot less alone during one of my loneliest periods and I really can't thank her enough for that. Soon after this, I started crushing on a girl in my class and Taylor's love songs started to take on a new meaning for me as well.

What's crazy to me is, when she went on hiatus for a few years, a part of me thought maybe I'd grown out of her and no longer had much in common with her, but when reputation came out I was pulled right back into my love for her as a person and musician and then when Lover came out I found that she was still explaining feelings to me better than I ever could (specifically with the songs The Archer and Cornelia Street). And now with folklore and evermore she's simply absolutely perfected her story-telling and I find myself deeply moved even by the songs I don't directly relate to. I feel like she has this amazing ability to find the absolute truth in the specific. I've never had a summer romance with someone who already had a girlfriend and mostly wanted to go back to her, and yet the bridge of august feels so real to me, y'know?

Back when we were still changin' for the better Wanting was enough For me, it was enough To live for the hope of it all Cancel plans just in case you'd call And say, "Meet me behind the mall" So much for summer love and saying "us" 'Cause you weren't mine to lose

It's hard to explain but looking at this, like it's so much more than the story it's telling. It's talking about how when you're young you really need so little to feel satisfied; how sometimes the idea of someone maybe spending time with you is better than actually doing things with other people; and how if someone using you without much thought can make you feel like you're not even entitled to grieve what you lost. Sorry. I'll stop. Don't want to go insane.

So, all of this is very personal and unique to me, but I think really the main thing that draws me to her is how vulnerable and honest she is about emotions, how eloquently she can explain the pain of being alive to me. Some people think she isn't the strongest singer, but I think, much like John actually, one of her greatest assets is how good she is at projecting emotion. The song happiness is a song I think has some lyrically weak moments but her vocal performance on it is so raw and devastating that every single line works even when, looking at it on paper, it feels like it shouldn't.

Hope this rambling made sense to you, lmao?? I love talking about Taylor though so thanks for the ask! Also very open to giving song recs if you do want to check her out more but I won't unless solicited to lmao *Sort of off-topic but I do think there's a relation between my fascination with the Beatles' history and my love for a great break-up song. I like pain I guess :)

[caffeinated-chaos-bean]

Mid-2021 Blog Update

Hey guys.

So... It’s been a while. Quite a while... and I want to lay some things out as to why I’ve been gone and the blog has practically been dead in the water for half a year, if not for a whole year. 

I want you to know that what I’m going to say will be in heavy detail. I’m comfortable speaking on it, and what information doesn’t just include me will be using either public details that I know I can share or will be put in a short and sweet manner.

This is your trigger warning: If you need to click off or scroll past due to the mention of extremely bad mental health, toxic relationships and households, the mention of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, please do so now.

. . .

First off, I’ve lessened the amount of time I’ve been online due to my mental health. I was put on antidepressants as well as told to take anti-anxiety gummies in November and will be weaned off of those starting this October. A lot of my family and relationship drama on top of the world practically shutting down and going into chaos thanks to COVID-19 just took a major toll on me. With so much on my shoulders, stress from living with said things on my shoulders, unsupportive family members, and an emotionally distant partner, I was at one of the lowest points in the life. I’d never had to be on mood-related medication in my life until last November. I’d always been able to handle what was thrown at me, but mid- to late-2020 was what knocked me down that low for the first time in my life. Suicidal thoughts came and went (they weren’t often, only when I couldn’t bottle my emotions up any longer but didn’t have a way to express them either), but even when they did, I knew that it was just in my head. I never once chose to act on them, because to me, that is not a way to solve a problem or escape your inner demons. All it does it put your personal suffering onto those around you -- your friends, family, and those who cared about you even when you don’t see it -- and it doesn’t do anyone any good. When my doctor asked me about suicide, that’s the very explanation I gave her. Yes, they happened, but I’d never act on them; it’s not a way out and it puts your pain onto others and only worsens the situation for the long-term.

Aside from that, though... I move on to other personal reasons for my absence that helped trigger what was mentioned above. Mid-August of 2019, my then fiancé's mother was murdered by two 17yr old boys of whom she and their family knew. Going off the information that was made public, one boy had mixed meth with marijuana prior to the killing. He claimed that my fiancé’s mother mouthed off and made a derogatory comment about his deceased mother, thus sparking the incident. While he claims to have only stabbed her once, the autopsy report shows that her head/face and upper torso were “hacked, slashed, and chopped” repeatedly with “various sharp, bladed objects”. Not only did they murder her, the two individuals also set the grass around her body on fire along with her home. When we found out about this having happened, I had no idea how bad it would have turned my relationship upside-down. My now ex-fiancé didn’t come from a great childhood, there was abuse and CPS, among other things. But he had managed and was a good person. He could make me laugh and tear up at his jokes, sang beautifully, and did everything to make those around him happy. When he lost his mom, it broke him. It shattered his very being, because not only did he know the two who caused it to happen, he also was unable to reconcile and make amends with his mother for what he went through as a child. He was robbed of being able to forgive and be on good terms with her, and it broke him. He stopped communicating with family, he took bereavement after being pulled from work by family the day it was confirmed to be his mother only to to fired 3 months down the line when he tried to go back (fuck Walmart for that btw), and was slowly becoming a hypochondriac. He stopped talking to me, he would cry in his sleep, and grief made him lash out as was expected. But as the days dragged on, his motivation and care towards finding a new job dwindled. He and my mother would fight endlessly and I was caught in the middle of it, as we all were in one household. There were times in which I would keep my phone on my leg and record for my own personal documentation should I need it due to how bad my own mother would belittle me, belittle my ex behind his back, and just scream and go off. When I’d turn to my ex for comfort, he wasn’t much help due to his own deteriorating mental health. He took to discord, specifically the Vampire the Masquerade community, as his escape from reality. He eventually would hardly talk to me at all, show no compassion, and at times I tried to speak with him about getting a new job or suggesting part-time ones that I felt would be easy and as stress-free as possible for him, I would be shooed away without a word; if I tried to further my attempt to have the conversation, he eventually got an attitude and would just say “Bye!” over and over again while shooing with his hand to get me to leave. There were many days where I’d get off work and sit in the bathroom for an hour and cry because of my frustration and how I felt stuck between two people I cared about deeply (ie. my ex and my mother).

My ex has since moved out and no longer lived with us. He and I are no longer together, and he has cut off all communication to me along with his family. He isn’t living in California anymore, really. He met up with discord friends and is in another state. That’s the last I heard from him. That’s the last his family heard. He doesn’t talk to us or attempt to reach out or respond when his family reaches out. I still very much care about him and want him to get better, but if he has to do so by being away from everyone, then so be it.

While I was letting - or shutting out, rather - the emotions I was feeling once he officially moved out, I relapsed with my anxiety tick; with my trichotillomania. I have a good number of smaller, thinned out spots in my hair from unconsciously pulling out strands of hair when my emotions didn’t know how to regulate. I’m still fighting to get this under control, as I do still catch myself doing it and so does my mother. It currently is not as bad as when my ex first moved out and I had to adjust back into sleeping alone and without someone next to me, but I do still pull. I am looking into trying to get my sister to order me a HabbitAware bracelet for me this Christmas in order to help get my tick back under control. I know its something I will live with forever and go in and out of doing, as there is no cure or medication to curb trichotillomania, but its something to help me be more aware of how often I do pull and to train it to no longer be a muscle memory response.

Most recently, I’ve had to stop taking melatonin. I’ve had bouts of insomnia since my ex left, and eventually I took enough melatonin to not only build an immunity to it but also a slight dependence. I was taking more than I should have been, and I noticed the signs of it and have stopped taking melatonin altogether. Due to this, I have switched to hempseed oil gummies. I take 2 before bed and they have helped wonderfully. But, due to how easy it was for me to become dependent on melatonin, I do plan to take brief breaks from the gummies to avoid a similar situation. I also do not plan on seeking an insomnia medication due to the same reasons. I knew what I was doing was wrong and I knew i was becoming addicted, and due to this I do not wish to risk it happening with a prescription sleep medication. I will deal with my bouts of insomnia as they come.

I also am conquering my insecurities towards others knowing I am a fan of Michael Jackson; a moonwalker. In elementary school (5th grade, 2009), I went through a heavy obsessive phase when he passed. I’d never heard of him, and when I listened to his music that firs time I was instantly hooked. I was ridiculed at school after I performed “Thriller” during a talent show; I had classmates going as far as saying that I must want him to kidnap and r*pe me if I enjoyed his music so much. I didn’t understand the gravity of those comments back then the way that I do now that I’m 23, but I still knew to an extent that what they were saying was in now way a good thing. I shut out his music from mid-6th grade all the way until this year. I hadn’t listened to a single song aside from hearing “Thriller” on the radio during October. For my birthday this year, I had a friend take me out of town and get away for a day. The entire time, she surprised me by playing hours of his music when in the car with her. It has since reopened that connection to his music and I’ve been listening to his songs with a fresh take, with the mind of an adult who can comprehend his words and understand finally what he’s saying for each song. As such, I’ve become more comfortable with others knowing I’m a moonwalker. You can have your opininos of the man, you can choose to believe the tabloids and junk media or make your own conclusions after assessing the details and documents of his life, but I will enjoy the same freedom of opinion.

I know this is getting pretty long, but I wanted to fill those who still might be checking up on this blog for any sort of update or spec of life coming from it in on what’s practically killed the blogs for a good chunk of time.

I do plan to slowly start doing stuff again after Halloween. I have a video made that I plan to post for Halloween and I look forward to letting Kikumi and the others be open for asks again. Until then, may the wind guide you all. I hope everyone can have a safe and wonderful rest of August. I will see you in October.

[dramionediscussion]

About Ron in the Dramione Fandom

*Note: This is LONG and I understand if people don’t want to read all of it. So I wrote the parts that I think are important in bold [though they might not make much sense by themselves lol]. Also these are all just my opinions.*

I have recently been reawakened to the fiery hate that non-shippers and a considerable number of Romione shippers have towards Dramione, Drarry, and other non-canon-ships. While I understand people not liking Dramione due to the characters’ history and finding it difficult to see Draco as anything more than the bully and Death Eater that he was, I think part of it stems from the fact that there are a lot of Dramione shippers who ignore how Dramione is improbable if we were to go from canon material alone. And how a lot tend to blindly hate on Romione and openly ignore how Ron is actually a good character with flaws just like anyone else.

I see why non-Romione shippers don’t buy Romione [not being heavily focused on as a romantic sideplot, Hermione being hurt by Ron various times, etc.], but I‘m surprised how far some people have blown their anti-Ron arguments out of proportion. It’s different with Ron-bashing fics, since it’s more of a plot device than anything, and it isn’t reflective of how every Dramione shipper feels about Ron since I, amongst many, actually like him. Can I please get some opinions about where Ron stands in the DHr fandom?

Also, don’t people realize that if every fanfic adhered to canon or aren’t allowed to stray from it too far, it would narrow down the fics that could be considered ‘valid’? In ‘Dark!Harry or Hermione‘ fics we obviously have Dark!Harry or Hermione, and in ‘Wrong Boy-Who-Lived’ fics, Weasley, Potter, or Dumbledore bashing is a common element, but it doesn’t mean that those OOC portrayals are how its creators and readers see the characters.

That line is just thinner or downright nonexistent when it comes to Ron in some fics — which makes me wonder, as a Dramione lover, just how many Dramione shippers actually believe in or see Ron’s goodness. Not every single writer who’s written Ron-bashing fics hate Ron, and not every person who’s read and enjoyed them think that’s who Ron truly is — it’s just a part of his role in the story after all.

So this got me thinking…

Should more anti-Ron Dramione shippers strive to learn Ron’s character in canon better? They’re not obligated to like him, but at least recognize his positive traits and acknowledge that he isn’t purely his mistakes. I just feel like doing so could quell a fair portion [certainly not all] of the flames between Dramione shippers and non-shippers who are willing to understand. [If you can’t tell, I’m a sucker for the impossible — like peace between different ships in a fandom. I’ve given up on it tbh, but I entertain the thought occasionally.]

Of course, it’s completely impossible for the haters to change their minds about Dramione, but I hope that those who will listen know that not every Dramione fan blindly hates Ron, and that we know where Hermione, Ron, and Draco stand in canon. And hey! Dramione fans [Drarry, Ronsy, Pansmione etc. fans too ofc] simply love to imagine a Post-War world where those raised in extremely bigoted households have mended their beliefs, are trying to make up for their mistakes, and are coexisting happily with people from the Light! I don’t know about them, but to me that sounds like a pretty amazing and wonderful place [that Hermione would like to be a part of, but some aren’t acknowledging that]!

*Lastly: I know this long ramble was Ron-centric, but people do also assume that Hermione is always treated like a prize or Draco’s key to redemption, but that’s a whole other untrue assumption that would require its own essay to debunk. I don’t know if I should or want to write one lol.*

___________________________

Thank you, Wondering Anon, for submitting the above post.

Lots of things to unpack in this ask! Some readers DO hate on Ron more because of fanon//what they’ve read in fanfiction than what’s in canon, but there are plenty of reasons to dislike Ron based on canon. But here’s the thing: how I feel about Ron has NOTHING to do with how I feel about Draco and vice-versa. I can point out the flaws in both of them and still think that Draco might be better for Hermione. Heck, based on Cursed Child alone, I think Draco would have been better for Hermione. But again, Ron and Draco aren’t connected. I don’t have to point out why Draco is better in order to think Romione was a terrible idea. I can think it was a poor match regardless of with whom I the fanfiction writer want to write her.

You asked “ Should more anti-Ron Dramione shippers strive to learn Ron’s character in canon better? They’re not obligated to like him, but at least recognize his positive traits and acknowledge that he isn’t purely his mistakes. “

I think a lot of us DO know who Ron is as a character, and we still don’t think he’s a good fit for Hermione. Anyone who has read the books with a discerning eye can appreciate the nuance and the layers. All of JK Rowling’s characters are grey. As Sirius said, “We’ve all got light and dark in us.” And that’s part of what makes writing them so much fun. BECAUSE the canon characters are so layered and written in so many shades of grey, you as a fanfiction writer can take them in a lot of different directions. I can come up with plausible reasons Draco might go dark and be evil. I can come up with plausible reasons for Hermione to do questionable things. I can come up with reasons why Ron might cheat on Hermione or make her feel bad about her career and her success because of his own insecurities - because the roots of it are there in canon. 

It’s up to the writer to decide which characters they want to use and which canon characteristics they want to play up and expand upon in their story.

As someone else submitted, a Dramione story isn’t about Ron. It’s about Hermione and Draco and often about how they get together and fall in love. For post-war stories where the characters are adults, a writer may or may not want to re-hash everything that happened during the intervening years between the end of the war (when in canon it seemed like Romione would be a thing) and present day (discarding the epilogue), so they may choose to write in a Romione relationship that fell apart for a variety of reasons. They may slot him into the story as the ex who broke her heart because he was there in canon, and it offers readers a bridge from canon to the fanfiction story, but the story ultimately is not about him.

A Dramione story, especially a novel-length one, usually involves a lot of secondary or background characters, and how they are interpreted and used is entirely up to the author, even if it deviates from canon.

As an example: Lucius Malfoy. Now, I happen to like that pompous jerk, as I’m also a Lumione and a Lucissa shipper, but I know a lot of Dramione fans don’t care for him. In fact, the “evil Lucius” secondary character is part of MANY Dramione stories! The thing is, there’s NOTHING in canon to indicate that Lucius was EVER abusive to Draco. Regardless of his failings as a human being, Lucius Malfoy loved his child - even JKR acknowledges that the Malfoy family’s love for each other is their primary redeeming feature. Jason Isaacs himself decided to play up the role as a bully and bully Draco in the films. But he’s also the bad guy in a lot of Dramione stories. He’s written as abusive. I’ve seen him written as literally beating Draco or putting him under an imperius curse. I’ve seen him written as raping Hermione or doing whatever he can to keep Draco and Hermione apart. 

Is that fair to his character? Not really, IMHO. However, I also acknowledge that in most stories, Dramione needs a foil. There needs to be someone trying to keep them apart or cause drama in their relationship.

In a lot of stories, that’s Ron. In some stories, it’s Astoria (as Draco’s canonical wife) or Pansy or Daphne or some other witch Draco’s been seeing. In some stories, it’s his parents or his father specifically who act as the foil. Lucius works because there’s a lot more bad than good shown about him in canon. Astoria works because she’s a total blank slate. Pansy was a ‘mean girl’ in canon, so she’s easy to turn into the antagonist. But again, the story isn’t usually about them - it’s about Dramione. As a writer, I can’t really fault anyone for not wanting to spend a lot of time and space delving deeply into the psyche of the character attempting to ruin my OTP. 

If you as a reader happen to really love Ron but also ship Dramione, great! This fandom is huge, there’s room for everyone, and we are blessed with an abundance of stories. There are plenty of Dramione stories where Ron isn’t a character or where he’s written as more supportive of Draco and Hermione getting together. 

- Elle

[renlimotroll]

BinTRoLL guidelines!!

Today, I tried to translate (with the help of some friends) the Bintroll guidelines. I've always been meaning to do it but I always forget. 😅 Please read below!

-ABOUT-

■ What is BinTRoLL?

It's a laid-back Let's Play group launched by Siruko.

We won't do anything else but to have fun playing.

We said we won't so we won't.

-GUIDELINES-

■ A Request From BinTRoLL

Please refrain from using BinTRoLL's copyrighted works (videos, images, etc.) beyond the scope of private use.

Let's keep good manners and have fun interacting and creating.

■ About voice actor Hanae Natsuki and Hanae Natsuki channel videos

It is not under the category of the BinTRoLL guidelines.

Please follow the rules of the person himself or of Across Entertainment to which he belongs to.

-Q&A-

These are the questions and answers that have been given so far.

Please take note that we may post the questions from everyone as they are.

Q: What is the extent of private use, distribution and sales? 

A: There are no strict rules as to what private use may entail,

You can make it yourself and enjoy it privately, give it to your family and friends as a present, publish the pictures (images) on your personal SNS such as Twitter, and so on.

Regarding distribution, it refers to the unspecified number of third parties that has been licensed.

Regarding sales, it refers to the act of making profit such as money.

Q: I want to create derivative works using the characters of BinTRoLL.

A: There are basically no restrictions. We look forward to your masterpiece.

Q: I want to distribute and sell doujin works.

A: There are basically no restrictions on doujinshi and doujin goods,

Please refrain from distributing or selling official works or works that can be mistaken as official ones.

Q: I want to create works that partially uses official works such as tracing, printing, and clipping of videos.

A: There is no problem as long as it is for private use without distribution or selling.

Q: Are BL and Ero-Guro safe?

A: BinTRoLL members stated that they don't particularly mind being the subjects (of such works).

However, some viewers may be underage or uncomfortable with it, so,

It would be helpful if you refrain from including R18 elements in public as much as possible.

Q: Why the sudden guidelines?

A: Because we didn't establish our policies, it caused our viewers to have some conflict of opinions.

BinTRoLL doesn't want viewers to feel uncomfortable.

We have created guidelines so that you can have as much fun as possible without worrying about anything.

Click this for the original post!

Author’s Notes:

*Definition of some terms:

Derivative works- anything (like fanarts or fanfiction stories) that has copyrightable elements

Doujin works- you may have heard of doujinshi! 同人 (doujin) literally means 'people of shared interests', so doujinshi means a self-published magazine that caters to a specific group of people. Bintroll used the term 同人作品 (doujin sakuhin).

Ero-Guro- エログロ (eroguro) is a Japanese term based on the english words 'erotic' and 'grotesque'. It mainly refers to works that has elements of horror/gore and sexy/erotic scenes.

*Some additional information: (these are my own words based on previous statements from BinTRoLL)

× Please refrain from DM-ing Siruko-san, as he has said that important messages get pushed down.

× Depending on the streamer's rules, it causes some conflict when you mention BinTRoLL names in other streams. For example, Mintosu-san has strict rules about mentioning other streamers, but Limone-sensei doesn't mind. However, some fans may feel uncomfortable if other streamers are mentioned in the stream they are watching (ex: "Siruko-san started streaming now!", "Siruko-san did this and that!") It's a difficult area to navigate, so for me I'd rather not mention BinTRoLL in other streams as a general courtesy. If the streamer brings it up, it's all good. Still, it depends on the streamer themselves.

× Try not to ask too personal questions. Out of all of them, Siruko-san is the most likely to answer personal questions, but other members? Not so much. Try not to ask Siruko-san for other member's personal information too. A good rule of thumb is to let the members bring up the information then follow up on it rather than outright asking them (do not DM for the love of gods!)

× Believe it or not, people do actually ship BinTRoLL members (like me! teehee!) Some post FAs and fanfiction (believe me, I’ve seen both Japanese and Korean ones) Bintroll shipping is termed "nmmn" in japanese; it’s kinda like they're not just 2D charas and they're real, so shipping is hidden and found only by fujoshi fans. Of course we know it’s just our imaginations, and we know the limitations and boundaries. There’s a thin line of shipping real people, and we know better than to cross the line. That’s why I started this tumblr, after all, because I can never comment on YT or tweet so much about shipping, especially that public. All my shipping posts will be tagged as such and will have warnings, so you can steer clear of that. But just so you know, BinTRoLL said it’s fine to make BL, so if anyone comes to me criticizing my shipping posts, I’ll slap the BinTRoLL guidelines in their face. 😆

× Please, and I cannot stress this enough, do not pressure the members to appear. Remember, they do streaming for fun; they do have lives and work outside of this. I get what you feel, you have a favorite member and you want to see that member all the time, or you want to see them in complete attendance, but don't be greedy. I've been a fan long enough to always see questions like, "Where is this member?" or "This member hasn't appeared in a long time." and some push it to the extreme and DM BinTRoLL (yikes!!) Let the members appear when they want to and be content with it.

Let me tell you my observations. Mintosu-san is not the type to talk about himself, so you might notice he only appears to play games. He has his own MCup with his fans every Saturday too. Then, there was a time when Ichihachi-san was busy with his real life (I call it The Great 18san Drought), and during that hiatus many fans always asked where he was. Even Hakotaro-san gets these questions, and he is the type to prefer working behind-the-scenes.

Now, let me tell you why it's better to let them be from my past experiences. Whenever Mintosu-san appears in the videos, the feeling of great joy from the surprise is amazing. It's like, "Hallelujah! YATTA!!" When Ichihachi-san came back, everyone had a field day and kept rejoicing. It was a party! When you, out-of-nowhere, hear Hakotaro-san's greeting during a livestream, you'll just suddenly go "AAAAAH!!!" and it's the best feeling ever. The feeling of being pleasantly surprised is nice, because you don't expect anything so you were never disappointed. It's better this way, trust me. After all, everyone performs better if they're not pressured, and BinTRoLL are people too like us, so it's better to let them do their own thing and enjoy whatever content we get.

× Siruko-san has mentioned that it's okay to comment or chat in English (or any language), which is great for us international fans! He said that he's not that good in English (although I believe he's good enough) that he may not always understand it though. However, and these are my own opinions, please remember this before chatting and commenting in English.

Use simple english that's easy enough to understand.

Do not use sarcasm. It does not translate well.

Always, always be polite. Choose your words carefully.

Why do I say this? Sometimes I see English spams and I cringe. The difference between cultures can be great sometimes, and Japanese is known for the politest way of speaking, and they are often straightforward with their words. It's better to be careful than accidentally offending someone, right?

× Regarding distribution and sales of official works, this may be a gray area and it's difficult to explain. For example, you can use BinTRoLL character images which are the intellectual property of the creator Hakotaro-san and by extension of Bintroll, to tweet or even to screenshot and DM it to other people to discuss. You can also clip video highlights and share them on your sns. I think that the moment you profit from it, for example, selling keychains and mugs with official Bintroll art, or re-uploading whole Bintroll videos on youtube or other video-sharing websites, is where you violate the rules. As long as your use is for community-base and personal use, you're safe, but when you gain something official from it (like money or subscribers), that's not allowed.

BinTRoLL members are one of the kindest people ever. Siruko-san always hearts and reads comments on their Youtube, and he also used to like or RT every fanart and even follow back his followers (but he can't do it right now as Twitter almost froze his account). They even read the names of superchat donators at the end of each stream even if they don't really have to (and sometimes it takes hours!) That’s why I hope people won’t abuse their kindness. I hope people follow the guidelines (seriously, it's not that hard) and do not cross the fan line so that we can all get along with each other! In everything you do or say, remember to have manners and be kind, and surely you'll enjoy even more. ^^ 🥰

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me! I may not know everything about Bintroll, but I'll do my best! Let's all follow the rules and guidelines so that we can enjoy all the videos and live streams to the best we can. Have fun watching and interacting! Have a nice day~  🌻 Think before you click!

[popculturebuffet]

Close Enough Reviews: The Canine Guy

We’ve finally reached the end.. hopefully not of the season and there are hints that there’s a little more to come so fingers crossed, but of the massive bomb. 12 episodes, with three thankfully done already. 1 day. Doors open let’s go after the blurb and the cut.  Josh and Alex have a falling out over a yearly tradition that leads to Josh befreinding a talking dog raised on Jim Carrey movies, while Bridgette drags Emily to a cabin in the woods, wooo ooo, to try and get their music duo back on top and run into musical legend and living god Weird Al Yankovic. Dare to be stupid under the cut. 

Like many episodes of this show, and what i’ve said is a strength this episode is two plots tha tsomehow end up smashing into each other but unlike the rest it’s 22 minutes. The show was, unsuprisingly originally convinced this way, as recently revealed by JG himself during the show’s premiere day reddit ama, but the execs later decided to simply cut most of hte episodes down to 11 minutes to improve hte pacing, which as we’ve seen clearly worked . But this one DOES make full use of it’s 22 minutes and does make me hope if hte show gets a season 2 they feel free to ping pong a bit. So with that settled, let’s dive in.  Our A-Plot starts with a flashback showing Josh and Alex’s yearly tradition: Going to midevil times together, due to having seen it in the cable guy, even qouting it and other jim carrey movies as the two were super fans. This continues fine into college but by last year alex just.. isn’t as into it. IT’s a sacred friend ritural and all but Alex is just getting bored.  Things come to a head in the present where, when Alex tries to just flat out get out of it, as he has press agents looking at his viking novel he’s been working on who might actually publish it and as his characeter profile, if not the series makes clear, just like josh and emily’s own dreams this is his. It’s resonable, they could just resschedule.. but Josh feels betrayed lashes out, Alex calls medivial times stupid and historiclaly inaccurate (even if he loves fecatia dippers with tomato soup ), and Josh storms off. Josh wallows, and finds the mead tastes like horse piss (Which leads to an utterly great and gross gag when it turns out ita ctually is, the guy serving it says “He’s on to us”) And switches to brownies using the same horse. Sometimes a grossout gag can work.  However Josh soon finds a new buddy in a talking dog named dog guy who was tourtred by and is running from the scientest who created him for reasons we’ll get to in the climax. And since the dog was also raised on jim carrey movies, and gets josh’s refrences and love of htem, the two quickly bond. Alex is pissed and jealous, somehow more than with his own ex wife, to see this despite trying to clear his schedule to make things up to josh, as he’s still a good guy and can realize he was wrong, and has his meetings, which are boring or frustrating, whie also stalking JOsh and Dog boy. Alex in a fit of rage at seeing dog boy seemingly tear up his manuscript calls the scientest, who popped by earlier looking for him.. only to find out that he just tore up the ending because he felt , as ac ollege graduate no less, that it could be a franchise and the two become friend. WHile Josha nd Alex fight over him Dog GUy’s creator kidnap him and the two head off, their freindship exploding over josh calling the cops and the two both wanting the dog to be their new best friend as well as the whole medievil times thing. Meanwhile Pearles tracking dog guy’s creator, because as she explains to ready cold cases are her majong and lets Candace be the corrput denzel washington type which unlike the previous pearle bit has REALLY not aged well for a number of reasons, but none I can blame the show itself for. 

Alex and Josh head after dog boy and find that the crazy lady who made him is making animal films (It was tourture because she’s bad at it and she was still genuinely abusive) and seeing dog guy as a failure wants to chop up his balls (after using 80 diffrent terms with alex scremaing “Just say balls), to make new dog guys.  Meanwhile in the B plot we first see Bridg and Emily’s comedy rock act which is genuinely funny but fails to impiress with Bridgette having grown frustrated over emily’s focus on candace, in a nice parallel.It also shows that for all her social mediaing and partying, Bridgette DOES take her music seriously but it hasn’t been able to progress without her musical partner.Emily waffles on joining her for a cabin retreatto work on it, with bridgette evne assuming with a fake emily she made out of pillows that emily would bring candace but nope: Candace is left with pearle and josh is busy with a dog so Emily is free. Things still don’t go well: Emily still won’t focus and is on her phone constantly, and emilys defense of “well you were on your phone at your wedding” when BRidgette calls her on it falls flat in a nice moment when bridgette points out she’s divorced. It’s also a nice moment of self relfeciton that shows Bridgette has learned from “Robot Tutor” and accepted her part in her marriage falling apart. The two fight until an angel appearls: Weird Al Yankovic! Like I hoped it really is him! Not that it’s HARD to get him to do voice work, he’s done quite a bit and he’s always happy to pitch in for another comedian, as Red Letter Media recently pointed out he’s kind of the bridge to all eras of comedies as he never really went away. When the two ask which is better: using your family or shutting it out, he admits there’s no perfect way to write a song or no one right way you just do your best.. and in his case stab yourself iwth a narwhal tusk and pray to a demonci god. Then one of the crazy lady’s animals attacks, we get another trailer homage and as they approach our herooines both apologize, Emily admitting Bridg is like her sister and in a funny but still sweet moment BRidgette admits she’s like a half sister... and only dosen’t say the full sister because she has a sister and dosen’t throw that around lightly, but the sentiments the smae. But the animals are recalled to deal with Josh and Alex, so while Emily and Bridgette follow them we get our climax.  Alex and Josh naturally crumble under hteir new foes, but both , like their spouse and ex spouse, reconnect over their mutual love of dog boy and apologize for their behavior to one another, sharing one last dumb and dumber most annoying sound in the world.. which ends up being the key to defeating the animals with Pearle soon swooping in to arrest dog boy’s creator.. for unpaid parking tickcet,s a good gag. She’s in jail, Dog Boy is free and the whole madness and talking dog has given Bridgette and Emily a new song. Our friends are all best pals again, Dog Boy spends time with bost his best friends before nleaving to start his own theater and work on his acting career, so he could show up again and I really hope he does. That last part was revealed via a hilarious where are they now that shows where all the animals oepn up and we close, hopefuly not on the series but on this day Final THoughts; This was a really good one. While admitelly havn’t not watched any pf the classic jim carrey films in years, though I own dumb and dumber I just haven’t gotten around to rewatching it, it was a nice throughline and the kind of specific nostaliga this show is great at. It was also nice to see a conflict where alex is being througly resonable to start and shows that beneath his nutty exterior (he also assumes the scinetests plan is at first to make furries even sexier (his note, add more nips)) is a guy who like his friends has a dream. We see the same with Bridgette who most of the time is’nt on give a fuck mode but here we see there is something besides her friends and ex husband she cares about: her music. It’’s a nice roll reversal to see BRIDGETTE, be the one to take something seriously and Emily to be the one who can’t commit to it and it takes compromise and both realizing they need each other to work. IT’s a nice examination of the shows core freindships that also has a wonderful talking dog and of course weird fucking al being amazing as allways. A stellar close out to this swarm of episodes and hopefully not hte series.  I”ll give my thoughts on the season as a whole later if this turns out to be the season and in a few weeks if not, but for now I finsihed this matharthon and i’m glad: Close enough is a damn good show that while having some more eh episodes, has a good strong emotional core, a great cast, great humor and is creative as hell while improving on the genre and even it’s predecessor. Just a delight to watch. I have regular coverage of Amphibia and Owl House coming up saturday, and hopefully close enough will continue each week, but if not until we meet agian later days. I’m going to go lie down. WOO. 

[scripttorture]

Torture in Fiction: Avatar the Last Airbender, The Boiling Rock

Avatar, the Last Airbender was an extremely popular cartoon series centred on a group of children trying to save their world.

It’s a world where some people can control and manipulate (‘bend’) the elements, water, earth, fire and air. The element a person controls depends on their heritage; whether they come from the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation or from the Air Nomads. Only the Avatar can master all four elements and they are tasked with keeping the world in balance.

The story begins a hundred years after the Avatar disappeared. The Fire Nation massacred the Air Nomads. They’re raiding the Water Tribes and occupying much of the Earth Kingdom.

In this war-torn world two Water Tribe teenagers discover the Avatar, the last surviving Air Nomad, frozen in ice. He’s twelve.

With its wonderful art, powerful storytelling and compelling characters Avatar left a lasting impression on a generation of fans. It spawned comic books, a live action movie (by all accounts terrible but it’s the thought that counts) and a second set of cartoons following the next Avatar.

But I’m rating the depiction and use of torture, not the cartoon itself. I’m trying to take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims and torturers.

And I’m concentrating on a two part episode from season 3 that barely involves the titular Avatar at all.

It starts with two of the Avatar’s companions sneaking away to break into a Fire Nation prison.

Sokka, who is from the Water Tribe and can’t control an element, feels guilty about the fact his father and girlfriend (Suki) have both been captured. Zuko, ex-prince of the Fire Nation and a firebender, feels guilty for opposing the Avatar for so long and elects to help Sokka.

So they take a balloon to the most secure prison in the Fire Nation: the Boiling Rock. It’s housed on an island in the middle of a volcano, surrounded by a boiling lake. Their balloon crash lands and with no way off the island they decide to disguise themselves as guards. They then find that Sokka’s father isn’t in the prison and think their efforts might have been wasted until they see Suki.

They witness brutality from the guards, with a guard goading a prisoner, Chit Sang, into firebending and then locking him ‘the cooler’ a torturous cold cell. Sokka manages to contact Suki but Zuko’s identity is discovered by the other guards in the process and Zuko is taken prisoner.

In their defence, this is more or less how all their plans go.

Sokka plans to use the cooler to escape. Chit Sang overhears the plot and demands to be let ‘in’ on the plan. They need to unbolt the cooler from its moorings so they can use it to float across the lake. Zuko hides some tools and he and Sang stage a fight.

Zuko is thrown in the cooler and unbolts it from its moorings.

They meet with the cooler but Sokka has second thoughts, especially as a new group of prisoners, including Sokka’s father is due to arrive soon. Sokka, Suki and Zuko elect to stay and try to rescue Sokka’s father. Sang tries to escape with a few of his friends.

The attempt fails and the Warden has Sang tortured. The Warden claims that Sang isn’t ‘smart enough’ to have thought of using the cooler and he must have had help. Eventually Sang tells the Warden that a person disguised as a guard helped him.

The Warden has all the ‘new’ guards, including Sokka, line up to identify the traitor. Sang picks out the guard who goaded him a few days ago.

I’m giving it 9/10

The Good

Sang’s way of resisting, picking out a loyal guard as the ‘traitor’, is brilliant. And it’s realistic. I’ve recommended this strategy to writers because it’s what a lot of Algerian fighters did during the Franco-Algerian war. Seeing it in a cartoon series from a  decade before I began the blog brought a smile to my face.

The cooler is actually really similar to torturous punishments that were used in real prisons. In most places a hot cell seems to have been more common then a cold one but cramped cells kept at uncomfortable temperatures were regularly used to torture prisoners throughout the world.

Despite the existence of magic and different technologies the torture throughout this episode is all realistically low tech. We see guards threaten with fire and use it to intimidate but most of what they do seems to be beatings and torturous use of restraints.

There are suggestions throughout the story that torture and abuse are regular occurrences in the Boiling Rock. And the characters use that to cover up their actions. Sokka uses the ‘excuse’ that he wants to beat Zuko as a way to explain a guard hanging around a prisoner’s cell (and then uses a fake beating to pass Zuko details of their escape plan). Zuko uses procedure and the assumption guards should fear the prisoners as an excuse to keep his guard helmet on, covering his distinctive scar. The regular use of the cooler is what allows the group to unbolt it.

There’s no suggestion that the use of torture has made this prison safer for the guards, or made the prisoners more ‘cooperative’. If anything we see the opposite. There are regular fights. Sang can start a riot by shouting ‘RIOT’ to a crowd of prisoners. The prison is shown as dangerous and while the narrative never states this is because of torture it’s still avoiding a prominent apologist trope.

The guards, most prominently the Warden, seem to have very little information about what’s going on inside their prison. That’s consistent with the way torture effects investigation, cutting off sources of accurate information and destroying the ability to fact-check. The Warden doesn’t connect Suki to the escape attempt until she kidnaps him. Sang is only connected to it because he’s caught in the act. Zuko is only identified because he has a one in a million scar. Sokka spends days successfully masquerading as a guard and the only people who notice are prisoners.

Every incident of a guard threatening a prisoner seems to increase the prisoner’s resistance.

The torturers aren’t just positioned as ‘bad’, they’re shown as a mixture of incompetent and physically threatening which feels very true to life. The Warden is never positioned as some kind of action movie ‘badass’ or as a successful investigator. He’s a bully, pure and simple.

The Bad

I think on reflection these episodes do still underestimate the damage done by some tortures but they do this to a much smaller degree then most. The amount of time spent in the cooler is vaguely defined so it could be ‘safe’. But even short periods of time in freezing temperatures can be extremely dangerous. Sang is held upside down by guards, which can easily make victims pass out. Some of the physical effects are being glossed over here.

It’s difficult to say whether the series handles the impact on mental health well or not. Sang leaves the series shortly after these episodes and doesn’t have a speaking part again. Zuko appears to have lasting mental health problems, but they were present before and are narratively linked to his abusive family. The episode is also very close to the end of the series. There isn’t much space to look at the possible fall out of this one incident or for the characters to pause and consider what they’ve survived.

Miscellaneous

The cooler is the exception to the generally simplistic and low tech torture.  But the cooler is presented as something specifically designed to limit fire magic. It’s unusual within the world and it’s not overly complicated in use or design. In this case it’s something I’m willing to accept because it’s consistent with the rest of the Avatar world and it (arguably) isn’t designed specifically for torture.

Overall

I have a huge soft spot for Avatar. For me it was a show that struck a very good tonal balance. It goes to a lot of very dark places but it also makes space for humour, friendship and fun.

I didn’t really want to look back at it, I was worried that it wouldn’t stand up as well now.

And I was pleasantly surprised. This episode toys with a lot of unrealistic tropes and then veers off in another, better direction.

The result is a story that’s both surprisingly realistic and full of genuinely unexpected twists.

Yes there are flaws and yes there are things they gloss over that I’d rather they didn’t. But this is still a show aimed at children; I’m not sure I’d want to see realistic depictions of the physical injuries torture causes here and some of the common symptoms (suicidal ideation, self harm-) are also not things I consider suitable for 6 year olds.

And it’s just as important to consider what they do get right.

Torture doesn’t work here. Not to make Sang give up information and more broadly it doesn’t keep the prisoners ‘controlled’. We’re shown a prison where guards ‘rough up’ prisoners for fun and torture is a routine punishment. And that prison is anything but effective. There are fights every day. The guards seem to fear for their lives, both around the prisoners and (occasionally) each other. Sang can start a riot with little more then a shout.

And both of these factors, are important to the plot.

Sang’s refusal isn’t just a twist, it creates a distraction for the Warden and helps the group escape. The prison violence isn’t just a background detail; it lets Sokka create excuses to communicate with Zuko and Suki, creates distractions and gets Zuko in position for their first escape attempt.

Torture and abuse are integral to this plot. But the story isn’t about them grinding people down or ‘breaking’ them, it’s about the holes it creates in organisations and how people exploit them. It’s an interesting use of torture because in many ways it isn’t about victims or torturers. The focus is always on the escape plot.

Torture is used to show how incompetent the guards and the Warden are. It’s used to highlight the resistance of prisoners.

It’s used to create a scenario where Sokka can win. Because if the guards at the Boiling Rock didn’t torture Sokka’s plans wouldn’t work. Trust and rapport between prisoners and guards could have revealed the plot at any point. Without regular use of the cooler the first escape attempt wouldn’t have been possible. And without the background brutality of the prison as a distraction Sokka wouldn’t have been able to communicate effectively with the people he was trying to rescue.

I’ve reviewed quite a few different pieces of media at this point. Some of them handle torture well and some, not so well. But I think this is the first time I’ve seen a story that used torture more or less entirely to show the bad guys as incompetent.

Which is a really brilliant way for a program aimed at children to undermine torturers without dismissing the harm they do.

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[zurilux]

Vent session 4/26/20

A couple things. First, the not so serious. 

I’ve been living with my parents for a little over a year now since the second year of my boyfriend’s ST program basically makes it impossible to work while doing the program. We decided to move our in with our parents to save money (especially since there’s no way I could support us and our two dogs on my own.) My parents are fine. They’re not perfect but they’re fine. I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older though just how different I am from a lot of my family. My parents are definitely products of their time. They dont believe in therapy. I go to therapy. I’ve gone to therapy since I was a freshman in college (When I could go without them paying for it/knowing about it) I’ve recently started Trauma counseling, trying EMDR to process past traumas and maybe stop some of my more toxic/ bad habits and the cycle of abuse. (my current relationship isn’t abusive but I’m scared that I may make it toxic because thats really all i’ve known or if it fails I’ll go back to the cycle)  

I myself have had quite a few traumatic events happen in my life. In the last few years I’ve become pretty open about my mental health, hoping that it might help others (so no one will feel the way I felt, like I was alone etc) I think a lot of my family would benefit from therapy, as now that I am so open, sometimes my family will share their stories. My parents, like I said don’t believe in therapy, and now they also believe they are too old to be fixed. Especially my mom. Which, for me, is really saddening. My mom, when overwhelmed, will hit herself in the head. Which can make it hard to talk to her about anything serious because she also takes a lot of things super personally (and I cant blame her for that. I’m sensitive AF) and it sucks that she feels she, or her inner peace, is worth it at this point. I’ve found a lot of my family just doesn’t really seem to want to better themselves and would rather just say “This is how I am, take it or leave it” 

It’s exhausting to be around people who are in that sort of mindset when you’re working very hard to be better. Trying to be happy, get my anxiety/depression/PTSD under control, process traumas....

Also. some of my traumas happened in the house, or when I was teen living here. SO, sometimes just being in this house is a struggle. Being back in this room where my ex-wife tried to kick me out and pushed me to a breaking point. Being in this room where I found out my ex-wife kissed someone else while they were deployed and decided they didnt want to be with me anymore. Being in this house where I broke down shattered, screaming and crying for the world to stop spinning, and my ex-wife yelled at me, belittled me, harassed me so much over the phone I had to get my parents involved so she wouldnt speak to me again. In this house where I had to hide so much of myself, had to pretend so many things didnt happen....Its really hard being here. especially in this time of super stress, being in Quarantine and a Pandemic due to COVID-19. 

and to add on top of that, my mother has started trying to inch me out. My grandma is supposed to move in when I move out. I guess my grandma is hounding her, so in turn, she’s hounding me. Even after I have explained that COVID has messed with my boyfriends program, and my planned summer vacation. Originally he was supposed to be done in June, and we had a FL trip planned in Sept, so we’d move out after our FL trip, to save money, and hopefully not stress the dogs out. (moving to a new place and then all of a sudden your parents are gone for 8 days might be a little much for our pups). Depending on when he started, and how much money I saved, and if my coworker would be moving in with us we could possibly move in August, gives the dogs a month to adjust to their new surroundings before we would move. BUT, now....he may have to do a summer term, to make up for the lack of ST time in ORs at different hospitals, which means he wouldn’t start working in June, he may, depending on how they do their summer term, not be done with his program till July or August...and obviously he needs to work, for at least a month or two before we could move. also, we don’t know if we’ll be able to travel to FL in September, THere isnt really a point in going if Disneyworld and Universal aren’t open/fully functioning. soooo....a lot is up in the air. The added stress of my mom constantly asking when I’ll be moving out is not helping my stress level at all. It’s irking me more than I thought. I didn’t want to admit quite how much it bothers me. oi. 

Secondly, 

probably a month ago now...or a couple weeks I’m not sure (time is hard right now ya’ll) our dogs started fighting. Very suddenly. We’ve had Carbon since September 2018. Frank (Jake’s dog) and Carbon have never fought till this point. I’m not sure what changed because they both have lived with me (Frank and one of Jake’s parents’ dog dont get along, so he had to live with me) the entire time I’ve lived at my parents house...It seemed like we were making progress, we were able to have them out in the same room without any trouble for a few days recently. (previously we had been crating one, and switching them out about every 4 hours if we were both home) They do fine on walks together. they seemed to be doing okay, but then another fight happened a day or two ago...Jake’s suggestion is to remain living separate. I’ll move in with my co-worker, he’ll either move out on his own or with a roommate with Frank. 

to backtrack, Carbon is a almost 2 year old pit/lab mix. He was a rescue, I got him when he was 5 months old. He’s fairly mellow for his age, but he is 2, he’s young and playful. Frank is a 6/7 year old potato dog (he’s short, a little long and has a round/barrelesque body, supposedly a chihuahua, pug, staffy mix. He isn’t fat either, its solid mass. He’s older and grumpy. so maybe he just snapped at Carbon’s youthful shenanigans.  They both are very much daddy’s boys. they may have fought over his attention (now that they see him more, he has been basically quarantining at my house ) it’s kind of impossible to know. 

I don’t like the idea of living apart. I’m needy. Plus, for a majority of our relationship we have lived together already. Jake is not only my boyfriend but also my bestfriend. I’m very physically affectionate, and Jake kind of sucks at texting...Also, I’m worried that our schedules wont line up. I work M-Thurs 6:30 am to 5pm. his ST schedule could have him working 12 hour days, he could have to work on my days off. having him spend the night once a week is not enough for me, if I can help it, most of this year that’s all I’ve been getting and its been awful (Quarantine has changed that but, thats special circumstances) We already were only supposed to live apart while he was finishing his program, and now we may need to live apart another year...or more...for the rest of Frank’s life, unless Carbon passes suddenly I guess...thats a long time. I get that he doesnt want to crate them “forever” if we lived together. and if we wanted to go on a trip, we’d need specific people to help us, to be sure no fights ensued or whatever, if someone gets bit...it’s over. I understand that...it might not be fair to “crate and rotate” them for however long we need to and neither of us is giving up their dog....I thought maybe if we could get a big enough space maybe it wouldnt be so bad. we could kind of section them off away from each other...(this past year its been me and the 2 dogs in like maaaaaybe 500sq ft) but finding that might be difficult in our price range...especially since we’ll be renting and probably moving to Portland (which is expensive) it’s causing a lot of stress for me...my anxiety is causing me to overthink. Like. is this somehow a sign that we shouldnt be together? He and I got together before i was even officially divorced (granted he was supposed to just be a confidence boost, not actually a legit relationship..but we fucked up and fell in love) and he has broken up with twice over our three years...the second time really wasnt necessary because he was trying to take care of me, to not cause me to be miserable during his second year of school when he knew I wouldnt be able to see him much and that I am needy, but we ended up doing what I had suggested...which is what we are doing now..being together but living apart. sigh. I don’t know. It’s a lot going on right now. I’m not a fan....everything is super stressful as is...and now all this too...oi oi oi. sigh. it’ll work out somehow...right?