#my ass does NOT believe people love me or like me and therefore i cannot fault characters for this

[deityofhearts]

I actually can’t complain about characters not like, realizing or accepting that someone love or cares about them (be it in a friend way, familial way or romantic way) because Same

[2rats1gogh]

although i REALLY like the cast of HotD I can’t help but criticize the fact that they all are a little off for their canonical ages.

And it creates A LOT of problems.

Whenever I look at Olivia as Alicent my brain just cannot comprehend the fact that she is supposed to be the mother of Aegon, Aemond and Helaena. She looks like their older sister. I get that they were trying to go for the effect that “she was too young when she had her children” which is valid but still, she looks five years older than them at best. She is supposed to be almost 20 YEARS older than Aemond, yet in some shots of them together he looks like he’s older than her. It just makes it not really believable.

Rhaenyra is also supposed to be much much older than her siblings, yet they all also look just like three years apart. They don’t look like a woman in her mid to late thirties fighting with a man in his early twenties which is what it should’ve been. It takes away the drama and puts them on the same level.

Ewan Mitchell is amazing as Aemond but he looks so so much older than the actor who plays Luke. During Storm’s End, like many people have said, it actually looks like a grown ass man chasing a small kid, when the characters are supposed to be like four to five years apart. Where Luke is believable as a 14 year old, Aemond absolutely does NOT look 19.

Rhaenyra and Daemon also look fairly the same age because obviously there was no Daemon recast. They did a good job to make Paddy (Viserys) age throughout the years, but they kinda forgot to make Daemon age as well. And therefore Matt Smith looks the exact same in ep 1 and in ep 10, even tho these two episodes are like AT LEAST 20 years apart?? Matt Smith was in his early forties when they were filming, but by the end of season 1 Daemon is literally supposed to be in his mid to late fifties. The fact that Emma and Matt look around the same age, maybe having a 5 year age gap max, makes many people forget that they are two fully different generations of people, being around 20 years apart in the show, and hypothetically could’ve been father and daughter.

And obviously Laena. Other people have already talked about this, but I also find it super weird that the show tried to convince us that Laena went from (1) to (2) in like, i don’t know, two years maybe? And then after a timeskip of only like one decade, she suddenly looks like she aged 20 years? The actress is literally older than Emma, and Laena is supposed to be younger than Rhaenyra.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t really have a problem with changing some of the characters’ ages, but you have to consider casting the right actors as well. They did a fairly good job when adapting Game of Thrones, because they kinda aged up everyone and kept the same actors without having any timeskips. The only exceptions are probably characters like Brienne, because although I LOVE Gwendoline Christie, Brienne should’ve been a literal teenager.

[zetomato]

QSMP The fated cursed team?

Alright, so it’s my time on the microphone I guess.

Without going deep into the reason why (since it’s not the focus), I have a love/hate relationship with Purgatory. It’s an incredible feat for the Admins with all the details in it as well as the events planning, we get to see new sides of the characters, but I hate competition games (when the win is crucial) and how CCs from every team had their “I genuinely am having a very frustrating and not nice time” for various reasons.

This in mind, I’ve been following the “WHO IS CURSED?” question from the start like almost everyone… But with a different viewpoint. See, I’m someone who does a lot of LARPs and Tabletop RPGs, I’ve been animator and dungeon master (I DM once each week right now) so I know well the “Let’s make a plan and see how the players work inside of it” I didn’t really plan on yeeting a big speech on Tumblr, but I’ve seen a lot of people take hypotheses as facts and got surprised. So let me break things up a little.

The base of a goal.

When you’re making an event/a game/a RPG with a “Someone is cursed”, there are some things you cannot do. Now, the events were planned and, therefore, they planned on the number of teams to go from 3 to 2 from the start. This cannot sustain a “One team is cursed” from the start. Why? Because you have no clue who will win and who will lose. Before the egg event, one could have said “Soulfire will lose because they have put little time on their base compared to the other teams.” You could have said “Bolas will lose because they aren’t the best PVPer and have less gear.” You could have said “Green Gay Ninjas will lose because Red and Blue will ally against them.” Heck, you could have said “No one will lose, they’re going to try to tie.” (All of those before the event even started) Anything could have happened. I, for one, did not expect for Red to win at the beginning of the day. And yet they did.

Ok, let’s back up now.

If a team was chosen as cursed from the start, the admins had at least three ways of making sure the event would last past the egg event.

Make the cursed team with strong-ass players so they had no chance to lose. (Uncertain technique, would be way more visible than what we had/have)

Make the cursed team with every single nerf you can so they’re so obviously cursed that the other teams make sure they stay alive. (A very sad idea, everyone would just already know who needed to win or maybe kill them thinking it was a red herring, again, no one truly fit that 100%)

One person is cursed and they aren’t “cursing” their team until it’s a 1v1 (and not a 1v1v1) (That’s the one that would work the most if the cursed team had been chosen from the start)

Herding cats

Now, as a DM, I’ve herded cats for years now, and here’s what I learned. If you want a precise outcome to your game, you will have to use the three doors trick. Basically, you put your players in front of a choice of doors and whichever door they choose will lead to the room you wanted them to see next. It makes no sense to shoot yourself in the foot and leave the direction of your story entirely to your players if you know it needs to end in X number of games with a specific scene. This doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a cursed team right now, but with all they set up (the nuke, the ‘If they die everyone dies’, etc.) my DM brain is telling me that the cursed team will be chosen narratively at the end while giving meat to the bones of hints we got.

Alright, for the “Cursed team hints” now.

So, one of the most looked at things for the hints were the eggs messages. Let’s break those down quickly. I do not believe one can say “MESSAGES ARE CLUE” without taking ALL OF THEM as a clue.

“No matter what… Protect Tallulah.” Now, this message, like all others, can be read multiple ways. The first one could be about the only Tallulah we actually saw on the island (well, part of her likeness at least), the statue. This one was Red’s statue. So one could say that Red need to win, aka, they are the cursed team. But, you can also read it as “Tallulah will show up later on and she needs to be protected first and foremost.”*

“Nothing is off the table, run over whoever you need to win.” Well, this one, yes, also has more than one possible meaning. The first and most obvious would be “BBH and his team needs to win at all cost.” would fit, would make sense. But it could also be read as “The final choice will be hard, you need to make sure all the residents need to win.” All is a question of point of view. None of these ways to read it are wrong, which, I think, is the point.*

“Dads you won't believe it, it isn't fireflies on the sky run and don't stop” (translated message) This is the most hazy of them all. What vibe this one gives me is - especially since there are some of Richas’ parents in every team - about a future moment. Maybe a final event on the 18th. Another way to read it could be a warning about mobs. It seems less likely, but some mobs in Purgatory turn invisible after someone hits them, leaving only two white dots as eyes. This one is a stretch but my back needs it.*

One message (chayanne) reads more as a Red Team is Cursed. One message (Dapper) reads more as Blue Team is Cursed. * But you know how else you can read any of these three egg messages? Very cool one liners to bring up the hype about an upcoming event. (but they’re cooler as clues)

The wheel

The wheel is very much uncertain for me, mostly because I don’t think Tubbo was even meant to roll it. At least, definitely not when he did. He glitched through barrier blocks to reach it and then lava was dropped in a “Player get the heck out goddamnit you know you weren’t supposed to be there” way. (As a DM, I know that vibe. No, bard, you cannot SEDUCE MY GODDAMN DRAGON) Now, was he supposed to later? Maybe, I don’t know, but basing a lot of things on that, especially while ignoring that Slime (Red) and Roier (Green) were also there and could have been the ones rolling it doesn’t seem like a fair assessment.

The tickets.

So there’s another thing that is wild to me. They used the tickets to join purgatory, and only Red had the fancy ones. I would have said “Oh well it’s part of the bit to have slime on Charlie’s or feathers on Phil’s”, but the sparkles on Vegetta and the cat on Wil’s seem to pass way more of a message. Now, the one person who wasn’t in Red with a fancy ticket isn’t even in Purgatory Aka Quackity. ElQuackity wasn’t on the train with the rest, he appeared there, but also, it’s canon that he definitely isn’t Quackity and wants the eggs dead. I must say, the tickets seem like the most palpable clue we have linked to Purgatory but I do not know if it means they are or aren’t the cursed team. That could go either way.

Of course I was going to mention Tubbo so here it is.

In Escape Rooms, Tubbo would be what we call a wild card. It’s someone who grabs the information and tries to make all the possible links between everything. Those people are very useful when others are stuck trying to follow narrow logic or trying to give more difficulty to a riddle than what it needs. It’s an extremely important job since they can make the intrigue suddenly make sense. The thing, though, is that 80% of what a wild card says is in the array of “I’ve connected the dots” “You didn’t connect shit” “I connected them”. They will make sense of things that aren’t supported enough to be certain. Purgatory doesn’t help with both team’s heavy biases towards themselves, which they both have. Tubbo said a lot of stuff and made them make sense one way. But he also ignored the others (understandably, again, everyone biased) and ignored parts of clues he had access to. The man cooked, but it doesn’t mean that the meal is consumable yet.

Then, what?

Bottom line, no one gave us any clue of what could be a sign of a cursed team. We do not know what to even look for. What does a cursed team look like? What hint is for the curse and what is for something else? Everyone, watchers and CCs, are grasping at things, hoping it’s the right one. In my humble opinion, I think that there are hints, but they are versatile enough that the eye guy could choose any team and announce it as the cursed one at the end, bringing up some hints in link to that team and backing them up with new Lore so it becomes “obvious”. This would be my DM way at least. It would give the hazy hints meaning on any possible team when the time is right. Make the people believe hints were there for the final answer all along and not notice that there were just as many hints going the other way.

TL:DR; There is no clear definition yet about what is a cursed team other than what happens if they die. Many hints we have are uncertain and fit more than one team. The DnD Dungeon Master way that the admins seem to follow so everyone has fun might only choose a cursed team upon the last day so Lore can happen in the most narrative way possible. It would avoid any randomness players bring.

[cylidae]

Howdy. So I’ve noticed a ton of anti-recovery take surrounding the DID community - specifically fakeclaimers, so let’s talk about it. Sit down, get comfy, I promise this will only take… a while.

1. If you love having DID, you’re faking it.

I understand where this mentality comes from. It’s a mental illness, so it makes sense to assume everybody would want to get rid of it. Don’t get me wrong - if your DID comes with no problems for you, you don’t have it. It is a dehabilitating condition by nature. But let’s look at it this way.

You are stuck with this mental illness. You can take therapy to improve it, but you can never “cure” it (at least as far as we know now.) So why are we so opposed to people finding bits of happiness where they can? If this is inescapable, why can’t people find bits they enjoy?

No, it’s not good to romanticize it. That’s not what I’m saying. If you are pretending it is 100% ok, you’re making it harder for other people to get help by pretending it’s “fun.” But if you love your headmates, the community DID brings you, the different way of thinking you have? That’s a good thing! You’re learning to cope. Don’t bash people for that.

2. If you’re open about your DID, you’re faking it.

I cannot even begin to describe how much I hate this one. It set my recovery so far back. The internet made me believe that seeking out help was something people with DID never did. It trained me to see telling people as proof I’m faking. This just isn’t true.

DID is a disorder made to hide itself, yes, but not from others. From the person who has it. I’ve seen people say that DID inherently comes with shame for having it, but this isn’t part of the diagnostic criteria. We haven’t done enough research to really be able to tell if it’s the stigmatization or disorder itself that comes with shame.

But you know what really doesn’t help? Shaming people for asking for help. As if finding a place you feel safe enough to share means that you’re faking it.

3. If you use certain terms, you’re faking it.

This is completely untrue. Plural spaces use different terms. Using “split” and “headmate” doesn’t mean you’re faking. It means that you are engaged within plural communities, and therefore picked up their lingo. That’s literally it. Internet terms all start somewhere. You pick up terms from who you’re around. People seek out people similar to them. People similar to them use these terms. That’s literally it.

4. If you have fictives, you’re faking it.

Most people seem to believe fictives are a thing to some extent, but they’re ridiculously picky with how you have them. Too many? Faking. From a media they don’t like? Faking. Present in a “cringe” way? Faking. Seeking out things about the media they come from or people who share the same source media? Faking. From something that came out recently? Faking. I’ll just make a mini list within the list for these.

-There is no evidence that there is an upper limit to how many fictives a person can have or that they’re any rarer than brainmade alters. Anybody who says this is pulling it out of their ass.

-“Cringe” sources are one of my least favorite mentalities. People are constantly like “well I believe in fictives but really? Dream SMP?” If it’s too popular, you’re trendhopping. Too niche and it’s “Now they’re going for X?!?” There is no winning. They say they believe in fictives, but you have to be the most insanely specific fictive possible to be real in their eyes.

-I’ve seen a lot of people get pissy over cringe presentation. A lot of this is very transphobic. Such as a character from something who is a man, but is transfem within the system (happens way more with transfem alters, not sure why) or using unconventional pronouns. Being “cringy” does not mean you’re faking. And this should go without saying, but for the love of fucking god, being trans is not cringy.

-People often get a lot of flack for seeking sourcemates or engaging with their source. People call it roleplaying. It’s only a connection to your past though. It’s like wanting to see a childhood friend or watching old home video tapes. Anybody who says that alters aren’t actually connected to their sources is,again, pulling it out of their ass.

-I see a lot of “this jsut came out! How can they have an alter already?” Studies on how long it takes please? I’ve only had one split that ever took longer than a week. I feel like a broken record, but again, anybody who claims that there’s an amount of time to develop alters is pulling it out of their ass.

Shut the fuck up about fictives already. These people clearly think they’re invalid, but claim “they’re real, but not in literally every situation imaginable where they could exist.”

5. If you have healthy system communication/are functional, you’re faking it.

Untrue. Some systems just naturally have less barriers than others and some spend years breaking them down. Perpetuating the notion that recovering and learning to be more functional is “faking” is so insanely harmful. It tells people that they can’t make progress or be open about said progress, because making improvements to the way they live is faking a disorder.

6. If you’re X age, you’re faking.

I see a lot of “you’re a teenager! You can’t have DID!” Yes, you can. It develops in very early childhood (eight years old maximum. Teenagers rarely get diagnosed, true, but it’s possible to have the disorder has a teen. Everybody with the disorder did have it as a teen.

And before you say “Well you’ll never know you have it unless you’re diagnosed-“ give me proof. With every other disorder I have seen people be correct in their self speculation. Why is it so different for DID? Obviously without a formal diagnosis, you have no right to speak for the community or say you 100% have it, but self speculation doesn’t inherently mean you’re faking.

I also see “you’re this old and still faking?” So I ask, if being young means you’re faking and being old means you’re faking, what age am I allowed to just exist?

I need everybody to collectively shut up about all this bullshit. Sources or bust. And don’t say the excuse of “well it’s under-researched so we don’t have good sources yet-“ then don’t make fucking claims. You don’t know these people. Stop accusing them of faking. It’s very tiring.

[pumpkinstrawbrew]

How do you think Bruce and John's relationship dynamics look from Bruce's side? How did he first realize that he felt something for the Scarecrow? Does he feel remorse for kissing a man who is a criminal? Does he even consider John his boyfriend? And if so, how does he feel at the next gas attack on the city and at the next departure of John to Arkham?

well….

i’ll begin with saying, that bruce is destined to be miserable in my book. always. he cannot have it easy. i love how often he *canonically even* attracted to villains/morally grey people, an’ how it inevitably tends to clash with his hero codex an’ general worldview. that’s a pretty painful existence, really! the amount of ‘self-inflicted’ emotional/mental damage, that some heroes tend to put onto their own shoulders is honestly a wonderment of its own right. 

so naturally, when it comes to matters of the heart, someone like batman just cannot have it in a way, where it would ‘work out’. i feel like bruce’s an' selina’s relationships are a prime example of that. aka how he digs ‘bad’ kind of people, even if he knows that it most likely won’t ever amount to any sort of ‘sweet’, domesticated fantasy, that he might be wishing for. an' the thing with bruce is that he’s not dumb, he gets it. even if at first, he tries to deny it, attemtping to seek ways around it, in the end, he has to deal with the fact, that it is what it is. so i think, that at his core, bruce is always going to be conflicted about his ‘taste’, even if it does make hella lot of sense, takin’ in his history. in short, batman having a preference, that would actively make him cucked even from an ounce of normalincy is precious to me. 

with this in mind, the dynamic that bruce has with crane is a mixed bag, esp bc he can have slightly different relationships with scarecrow, depending on who he is at the moment. batman or billionaire play-boy. an’ depending on who he is dealing with, crane can also be bolder, more vicious, or actually, meeker an’ less aggressive. like, bruce wayne won’t put his scrawny ass in the dirt, bc it would blow his cover. meanwhile, the bat cannot be too forgiving with jonathan, bc he’s a hero, so it’s almost a rare chance to see how he can influence jon from both sides of the spectrum. an’ it also can show him more sides of jonathan too, considering that in most set-ups *including the ones that i have for them* crane is unaware, that batman an’ bruce are the same man lol. also, it would be nice for bruce to finally have a villain, who isn't specifically in love only with the batman aspect of him.

i mean, it’s kinda given that jonathan doesn’t fully bother with ‘unmasking’ the bat, bc he doesn’t really care who he is. it’s still be batman to him. therefore usually, i don’t picture jonathan’s reaction to the reveal of the bat being bruce wayne to be hella emotional *like in plots, where they’re just enemies*. he prob just be like ‘oh, this kinda makes sense, yeah’. everyone else be bitchy about it, bc how can their batman be some playboy, jock dude lol. jon won't be like that, since he doesn't separate the bat from the man beneath the mask. at least, not to the level where he wants them separated or won't stand those both halves existing at the same time. that’s why the scarecrow is the true one. he’s so needy an’ greedy, that he’d be happy to have both sides of a big bad bat. but back to the main point, i feel like bruce kinda always carries a sentiment of ‘i have to stop you bc it’s my job’, but also ‘i want to believe that you can better yourself’. an’ in cases, like crane’s, batman prob also wants it for jon’s own sake too, considering how often he ends up accidentally hurting or damaging himself.

n’ i feel like it would be even more painful an’ disappointing, if jonathan would still keep up his scarecrow act, while they had smth goin’ on. but such is the nature of jon’s emotions. they’re destructive, when negative an’ there is no reason to assume like his love would differ from his obsession. from how he usually perverse things, it's all the same to him. in a way, bruce be ready for that. he must expect jon’s feeling for him to be feverish an’ kinda extreme' no matter, if said feeling is ‘positive’ or not. i also cannot see jonathan *even if he’s not a scarecrow in some timeline* being normal about batman or bruce, bc he has no idea how to be ‘normal’ about anythin’ lol. bruce is more balanced in comparison, but he also has that odd bit, where he is sometimes more sympathetic to his rogues, than he is to their hostages. in crane’s case, it literally happened at least twice. he nearly killed people, but bruce was like ‘it’s awful that this happen to you, but you kinda deserved it tho’, making the victims pretty confused as to why the bat was more understanding toward his rogue straw-goblin, than toward them. an’ i don’t think, that bruce even always realises that he plays favourites an’ how it looks from the side. so i can’t say, that ‘remorse’ is the right word for what he will feel, if he kisses jon an’ makes out with' him, fully knowing that he’s not a good person. it’s more of a….grief, perhaps? disappointment in himself, mourning for all destroyed lives *jon’s included*, but also umbrage, that he cannot control it or make jonathan stop, unless jon will somehow find it in himself to stop. which is almost impossible. but at the same time, no matter how furious the bat is with the scarecrow, i love how bruce *in older media, at least* cannot bring himself to give up on him. 

in general, bruce’s view on crane is an interesting matter. to some extent, he pities him, but he also seems to get angry with him pretty often too. an’ for a good reason, esp since the bat clearly views jon’s intelligence as an admirable thing, but thinks that it’s a true shame how he uses it or for what, rather. this sentiment doesn’t apply only toward crane, of course. a lot of batman's rogues could have done smth good with their talents/knowledge/hacks if they applied it elsewhere. but i feel like on some level, bruce has an easier time ‘relating’ to jonathan, than to some of his other villains. there are dozens of parallels, that they share, but they also have so many things, that make them a great fuel to one another too, both as bruce wayne / jonathan crane an’ as batman / scarecrow. jon is essentially, one of batman’s most twisted reflections. so idk if he will ever like, openly think of crane as his bf, since it almost feels dishonest to call him this. he’s more of ‘the worst half’ an’ bashert in one. but i feel like people would tauntingly, jokingly call scarecrow’s bat’s bf or even gf. bullock surely would have, haha. but like generally, the villains an’ heroes alike tend to be overdramatic about their relationships with one another. their inner monologues are pretty funny bc of that too. like, they’d be in the middle of the fight with said enemy-lover, an’ randomly think of some well-articulated, poetic line, as if they sat their ass down to write it in a personal diary lol. bruce thinking about jon’s ‘awkward grace’ an’ long legs won’t ever be unfunny to me, even if it wasn’t written in a suggestive way.

anyways, i think that all of the above *besides the last part* prob also sums up how i feel batman reacting to jonathan being, well, himself. bruce would expect it. an’ it would sting more, for sure, but i don’t think, that there is any non-nuanced scenario, where batman would for example, just let jon go, bc they’re lovers now. he might be a bit more ‘forgiving’ to scientist aspect of jonathan’s worldview, but it won’t mean, that he’d agree with ‘end justifies the means’ kind of approach, bc he doesn’t want innocent to be harmed / suffer. he also against killing / death, no matter who the target is n’ whatever they ‘deserve’ it or not. they won’t ever see eye to eye on that. but if batman / bruce’s presence in jon’s life will be extended, an’ if he would try to make very little compromises, then maybe, eventually jonathan can be a bit less dangerous for others *an’ himself*. or maybe, he would somehow find a way to make batman ‘worse’. make him join the club, so to speak lol. 

like, when people think about the ‘enemies to lovers’ trope, i’ve noticed, that often one side of the ship does a 180 turn, an’ becomes somewhat okay with whatever they were not okay with beforehand. for me, it’s more of a stalemate of sorts. like each side might make some compromises or close their eyes on smth, but not be at peace with it. if we picture crane as suddenly rehabilitated, it’s won’t change the fact, that most versions of him had killed / mentally tortured people. an’ he might or can potentially do this again, even if ‘for a good reason’ this time.

the love can change a lot of things for them, but at the same time, it won’t change certain things at all. i don’t believe that love / deep feelings can cure jonathan’s mental illness. if anything, it would prob only complicate things. since sure, it might make him a bit more mindful about idk accidentally killing someone, bc it makes the bat upset. he might try to be more cautious, but not bc he suddenly cares about lost lives, but only bc batman does. it might be a bit better, than him not givin' a shit at all, but jonathan still be a sociopath, that only kinda cherishes how that one person views him, an’ it'll be the only reason why he would tone smth down. if bruce be like ‘okay, that’s not what i wanted, but i can try to make it work’. i suppose, it might be considered as jon slightly corrupting him as well. besides, bruce will have to pay a lot of attention to him, to keep jonathan in line. gotta like dom him everyday an’ such, just so that he’d be less vicious lol.

[surpriseroundtellyourfriends]

I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on Solomon

oops. this turned into a long-ass essay about racism, financial morality, and child programming, so I'll put it under a readmore. click at your own peril.

oughhh ughhhhh thinks about Solomon and gets ill.

I've given my Ben 10 racism speech before so bear with me if you know me and you've heard this before. (if you haven't: yes, you read that right, my Ben 10 racism speech.) listen listen listen. okay, so.

as someone who was raised as a conservative, homophobic, capitalist christian who fully held onto those beliefs and acted on them for a long time: it means the WORLD to me when I see an objectively terrible, morally awful person portrayed in a sympathetic light.

and it makes me want to KILL A MAN when I see a "sympathetic racist" (or capitalist, or homophobic, etc.) and the reasons they're supposed to be sympathetic are so laughably stupid that it ends up encouraging the idea that all bad people are intrinsically bad and cannot be redeemed.

the most common bad "sympathetic racist" character I see is "their family member was killed by a member of the group they despise. therefore, they hate that whole group."

that is NOT how ANY form of discrimination—including financial discrimination—works. I don't have a fear or hatred of long-haired boys because my stalker ex who tormented me for years was a brown-haired boy. even children can grasp that one trait of a person does not necessarily correlate to their other traits.

discrimination—for the vast majority of cases—happens due to child indoctrination. when an impressionable child is told, over and over again, that a certain group is inherently "bad" or "flawed," and told to exercise caution or hatred towards that group, a precedent is set. that child will likely be sheltered from good interactions with the targeted group, and therefore, any experiences they have of that group will be negative.

growing up, they will rub elbows with the targeted group a bit more, but they will already have a strong belief that has been "confirmed" by their tailored experiences. if they have any good experiences, they will cherry-pick information and repackage any positive feelings as "an exception" or the targeted group "deceiving" them, or even "having some good qualities but being bad/flawed at the core." they may avoid any future experiences with the group to avoid cognitive dissonance—effectively sheltering themselves like their parents sheltered them.

the reason I call this my Ben 10 Racism Speech is because Ben 10 is the first show where I ever saw a good depiction of a sympathetic racist character. we meet this one alien is a eugenicist, whose race believes they are the ultimate lifeform and that all other species are inferior. obviously, he's an antagonist. but Ben tries to befriend and help him, over and over, even when he refuses help. finally, when the alien loses an arm, Ben uses his powers to implant a new one on him. the alien assists Ben in getting back home—but refuses to go home himself, as he believes he is now "contaminated" (having DNA from another species inside of him) and is unfit to go back to his planet.

he literally tries to stay in a desert where he will die because he is so conditioned to think of his race as superior, that he is not immune to the racism. when a helpful medical procedure changes his own DNA, he thinks himself a lowly, disgusting creature fit only for death.

what does this have to do with Solomon?

well, Solomon certainly isn't a self-hating racist. (that would be Michelle.) but he IS—inarguably and unequivocally—a prime example of a monster who was raised to be a monster.

Solomon was literally raised by, and around, demons in hell. he was taught that mortals, especially the poor, were only designed to serve greater beings such as himself. in fact, the whole reason his family moved out from hell was because they were at the bottom of the social ladder there, but the top of the ladder on earth. he was taught that this was just the way things worked. he was trained by his father to one day kill his father, and consume his ashes, and that one day he would lay an egg and do the same.

he was taught these things as a baby. he has been raised his whole 17 years of life without contact to humankind. in fact, it's kind of astounding just how friendly he is on his first day of Valor Academy, even if he DOES see everyone else as "lesser than" him. he seems very strongly to desire a friendship and companionship that hasn't been provided for him at home, but he doesn't exactly recognize that friendship and companionship—the things he wants—necessitate equality.

but then he meets Benji. Benji, who—as far as he knew at the time—was an orphaned pauper boy with nothing to his name. quite literally at the bottom of the social ladder. but Solomon likes Benji. he's witty, he's funny, he knows a lot about the world. Solomon likes being around him. and Benji starts working to reform him. forcing him to volunteer at a soup kitchen. taking him out of that sheltered state and making him actually meet other humans, mortals, poor people.

and then.

then he meets Vika.

and Vika is a character I could do a whole other analysis on, but by god is she a bad combination with Solomon. because on one hand, she tells Solomon just how wrong he is, she's loud and brash and not afraid to state things as they are without coddling him.

but on the other, she refuses to take off her rose-tinted glasses about the slave colony she grew up in. she frequently refers to it as the best time of her life, as a perfect society, as something to be emulated. because she, too, was indoctrinated into a lie, and told that Donovan King Jr was their savior. and even if she no longer defends HIM, she still defends the slave colony.

and when she repeats that rhetoric, it re-activates Solomon's programming.

someone who didn't grow up with rigid doctrine, especially for such a length as 17 years, can probably never hope to understand how hard it is to break out. pathways in the brain are physically etched to rearrange morals, indecipherable from what might be "common sense" to someone else. and like the Winter Soldier, sometimes just one key phrase or story can set someone back years by triggering old programming associated with feelings of piousness or guilt.

Solomon was raised to be the worst kind of person on earth. and he wants to be better.

but god, is it going to be a struggle to get there.

[moralesmilesanhour]

Ooh wait I forgot to do this. Seems like an appropriate time so [game show music plays]

Malika's official spiderverse ranking (REAL)!

(Excluding Miles G and Miles' family sorry guys)

Miles Morales ‼️

Duh. He's like, the Main Guy and the reason why most of us are here. He's weird!! He's lame!! He's smart and annoying about it!! Just like me fr 🔥🔥🔥 hope he gets therapy soon and maybe some meds

2. Hobie Brown

Lives up to his character description in every way possible. He IS an anarchist and he WAS in fact, "this cool the whole time". Bonus points for being the first guy to fuck off to his dimension the minute he did what he had to do (help the youth and ruin Miguel's day). Extra points for Gender

3. Pavitr Prabhakar

He just debuted and he's already got several iconic one-liners under his belt. Banger suit redesign and FAWK Marvel for that first costume ‼️ It's really the curly fringe that does it for me like EATTT

4. Margo Kess

Idgaf she's literally goated. Had she gotten more screen time slhe would've been number 3 tbh. She's here to slay and found a way to stay her ass at home while being part of an elite Spider Squad. Women in stem

5. Jessica Drew

"But she's on Miguel's side!" And wrdgaf 🤣 she beats bitches up not just with webs but with A MOTORCYCLE!! And she's one of the only Spideys not masked Jessica is literally here to clock in, do her job, and clock out. She's #real I can't take that away from her. Bonus points for Issa Rae

6. Spot

I know. Look, I KNOW. But this is quite literally one of the most genius and thematically-coherent supervillain reveals I have ever seen in a superhero movie. HE WAS THE BAGEL GUY I WAS SO GAGGED! I left the theater and had to stare at a wall like this is excellent usage of pre-existing comic book characters to further one of the movie's messages, which is to not underestimate people!

7. Gwen Stacy

DONT GET MAD AT ME FOR PUTTING HER BELOW SPOT I CAN EXPLAIN

Okay look, she's cool. She's a punk that does ballet and she is part of the Hailee Steinfeld Cool Girl Industrial Complex. But she hasn't done anything that blows my mind yet and she clearly wasn't taking Hobie's advice like girl sjdlslk. I also doc points for pissing me off so sorry to her. On god we gon get you a girlfriend and some therapy as well 🙏🏾

8. Miguel O'Hara

Ohh brother this guy STINKS‼️ But they went sooo crazy w his character design shout out to Kris Anka. Bonus points for Oscar Isaac but minus points again for throwing a trash can at a high schooler. He only eats cafeteria food and has NO BITCHES! But upon reading about his character backstory ive decided that this guy is so unhinged and pathetic that it is now comical. Therefore I can't hate him. LEWSER

9. Peter B Parker

Sorry peepaw we're gonna have to put you down. At least Miguel can say that he has strong principles and believes in his own flimsy theory out of trauma. Miguel also doesn't really know Miles, , but Peter MENTORED HIM. Bro literally helped train living, breathing proof that anything was possible and that there was no "right" way for Spider-Man's story to go and he still let Miguel convince him otherwise. YOU HAVE A BABY THAT WOULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT MILES! Sir you may be a genius but you are not smart. Then he has the nerve to insult this kid's intelligence multiple times like don't piss me off. The betrayal puts him lower than Miguel because you've disappointed me peepaw 💔 and put a coat on that baby. I love him but he SUCKS

That's it 🫶🏾 please don't take this too seriously these characters are not real and thus cannot read this and I'm also kind of joking here

[hajimesbestdefender]

i saw this essay while i was trying to find kmhn and i have so many thoughts..

if you want to read my thoughts i recommend reading them as you read the sections because thats how i wrote it

okay i'll go chapter by chapter (there are 5 chapters)

chapter 1: faqs

faq #1: the blatant homophobia towards the women youre trying to "protect" in this is very ironic to me. your point here is just plainly incorrect. how on earth does wlw ships further the ideology that women only want men for sex? and what is with the shaming women for not being virgins? there is nothing inherently wrong with having sex, having a sexual past, or anything of the sort. you sexualized these women. miu & sonia have done nothing wrong, and deserve the equal opportunity to be in a relationship and be loved.

faq #2: it *is* simply a matter of preference. there is nothing wrong w preferring makoto/byakuya, hajime/nagito, or kokichi/suichi. yes, those characters (kyoko, chiaki, and kaede) were written to be the protagonists respective love intrest. however, when has a fandom *not* shipped a character with someone who wasnt their love intrest? i can give several examples. it is not down to gender. people can see themselves represented through these relationships, they can hold the belief that those ships work better for the characters, or they can plain like the dynamic better. it does not matter.

faq #3: ...what? that makes no sense. the whole question doesnt make sense. im just not gunna adress it, but it is there.

faq #4: those crushes could be arguable. however, there was a slight hesitation from nagito when he said it, leading many people to believe that. i dont know enough about v3 to speak on that other part.

chapter 2: nagami

once again, it comes down to preference. you cannot controls someones preference. if they like naegami? fine! if they like naegiri? fine! it does not *matter*. at the end of the day, these two ships are perfectly resonable, and do no harm. therefore, both should equally be resepcted. the reason why naegami has more fics on ao3 because people prefer it more. simple as that.

also, this exact senario has happened before in another fandom. in the hp fandom, hinny (harry/ginny, his current wife) is less popular than drarry (draco/harry, his rival). and yk what? they have damn near the same dynamic as naegami. the simple thing is: people prefer the dynamic more. it is not misogynistic to prefer a dynamic. (i could go into a whole ass tangent on how similiar draco and byakuya are, but i digress)

chapter 3: komahina

i could ramble day in and day out abt this ship, but i dont feel like retyping all of it so ima just ss my original ramble to my friends in discord.

(apologies for going off track for a little, PLS IGNORE THE PFP 😭)

moving on, you mentioned nagito lied about having cancer. he didnt. he said he had stage 4 malignant lymphoma and front mental dementia. both of which were never implied to be lies.

"chiaki died for him and the rest of the class"

oh, do you mean in the real world, where she was brutality murdered so class 77 could become brainwashed, and how hajime was already too far gone at that point? or do you mean in the simulation, where they had zero chance of getting out without leaving chiaki behind because she was ai and apart of the system? or the time she had to be executed to save the rest of the group? thats not an act of romance, it was quite literally life or death. in 2 of those situations, it makes no logical sense for chiaki to live and have the rest of the group die. shes a team player, through and through.

chapter 4: saiouma

chapter 5: stats

it comes down to prefrence. there is no misogyny here. it is just people preferring one ship over the other. nothing more, nothing less. this is getting embarrassing atp.

also, as someone pointed out in the comments: kokichi & suichi just have a lot more screen time tg. kokichi made it to chapter 5 & kaede made it to chapter 1 so theres more content to work off.

chiriho: ...you missed their entire story arc!! not suprising you dont actually pay attention to stuff. ALSO!! the transmisogny!! and, to top it all off: youre a terf. whos fucking suprised. chiriho hid under the cover as a woman because they were afraid. thats it. they wanted to become stronger and braver. thats their arc. you red far too into it to come to the conclusions you came to. (using they/them on chiriho bcs i felt like it)

sonia: youre promoting purity culture. women do not need so save their virginity for anyone. nor does anyone. virginity is something given up when that person is ready. sonia was ready. so she gave it up. shouldnt that be a symbol of women empowerment? (note: i hate the concept of virginity as a whole, literally just have sex nobody gives a fuck.)

miu: "she doesnt deserve to be called a woman because of how preverted she acts." you wrote this whole essay as a callout for what you precieve as misogyny. however, throughout the entire damn thing you promoted misogynistic take after take. you basically just said in fujisaki's section that women shouldnt be pushed into a box, and yet,,, youre here telling women they cant be sexual beings? that they have to be pure, clean, and submit to men? miu didnt do anything wrong. she expressed herself in the way she saw fit, and YOURE mad that the way she did so didnt fit your standards? get the fuck out of here, weirdo.

final thoughts:

op has been continuously misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic throughout this entire read. it is disgusting. now, this can be a blatant troll, but at the same time this is still perpetuating a very disgusting view on women and what they should be. as an afab, i'm disgusted. this is appaling. you disregard so many women writing this. queer women, women who didnt save themselves for marriage (because god forbid women do what they want to do.), or any woman that doesnt fit in your little box. you say youre against misogyny, but this is the most apparent example ive ever seen of a woman with internalized misogyny. if youre being serious? i truly hope you recieve the help you need, and do some interal work trying to combat this. writing 2,643 words worth of fictional parings you dont like when you can simply ignore it and walk outside is just sad. if youre a troll? fuck you.

(also, before you question that "writing 2,643..." line, i wouldve left it alone, but i happened to see it whilst on a 2 hour car ride to thanksgiving and i was bored as shit. sue me.)

EDIT: i came back to this because kendrick dropped euphoria and the hating he did in that song reminded me of my greatest hating moment: this post

[faroreswinds]

Some anon asks that are spoilers for Engage:

In Zephias case they also portray Griss who is loyal to her as sympathetic as well, and he’s just as bad as her too. So it at least applies to both. Also more than anything what she wanted was a child of her own, and Sombron promised to get her pregnant which would definitely backfire since she wants a child to love and Sombron has *Checks Notes* Zero love for his kids and sees them as disposable pawns and they exist in service of him for conceiving them.

Lol yeah, I saw that stuff. 

Some weird writing there. Although I like the idea of an evil lady who wants to have evil babies with someone she admires, I don’t think the overall writing for this particular character is very good. 

Especially since she still has the “whoops, I’m actually sympathetic!” part of her.

You know, maybe I'm expecting too much of the fe-fandom here but with Nemesis being the "dark emblem" of fe3h maybe Nemesis/Agarthan apologists will finally shut up.

Nah, but I like the optimism, anon!

Unfortunately, we are looking at a sunk cost issue here. People for years have written essays about Why Rhea Is Evil, Actually, and that typically includes the conclusion that Nemesis is Misunderstood TM. 

That will never go away. Look at the occasional conversation about Arvis! 

Alear: Time to rub again- Oh. Edelgard: What's the matter? Alear: I was hoping for Dimitri again. Edel: Not available. So- Alear: Bye. Claude: Told he didn't like you. Dimitri: Well better you than me. I think they're too into the rubs when I show up. Edel: Whatever. That lizard doesn't know what it takes to protect the world. Other rings: *Crowd laughter* Leif: Yeah, no. As someone on the run who mugged soldiers for supplies, kiss my ass "Flame Emperor". Sigurd: It's funny because that's Arvis.

I'm sorry if this spoils Engage for you, it's okay if you don't want to answer.

I'd like to know what you think about this joke Edelgard tells Alear in the exploration dialogue.

JP: https://twitter.com/Heavenly_harpe/status/1616704534189047808 EN: https://twitter.com/GBooAdvance/status/1616866763022663682

I used google translator for JP's text, however it just gave me the feeling that EN mitigated her aggressiveness.

Nah, don’t worry anon. I’m not protecting myself from spoilers at all. 

I think I agree with you. The English says

“You never abuse your authority, Divine One. I appreciate that about you.”

But the Japanese says:

神竜は、人々を不当に支配したりはしないのね。 良かった・・・あなたとは仲良くすることができそうよ。

“So (the) Divine Dragon does not rule unfairly over people. Good. I think I can get along with you.” 

The general idea is still the same. Alear doesn’t abuse their power over people, which Edelgard likes. 

But the English loses some of the nuance. Edelgard does appreciate it in the Japanese, but it’s more like since Alear isn’t abusing her power, Edelgard believes they can get along. 

This is more in-line with her character imo, although the Japanese comments on this tweet do not seem to agree. Edelgard doesn’t like it when people abuse their power, although she does herself but that’s another story. She does believe in just rule, it’s just a matter of how that just rule looks. 

As for the Japanese comments on the matter, the OP says this:

エーデルガルトはこんなこと言わない

“Edelgard would never say this.”

With varying comments saying things like “She’s acting since she’s still in her school clothes”, “She’s showing off her skills that she learned from Claude”, “I’m worried about how the Divine Dragon Tribe is treated”, and one person showing a screenshot of Edelgard saying that since Flayn is a dragon, she cannot hold any power over the people - therefore, the OG Edelgard denies Dragons. 

These commenters do have a point. While it is in-line for Edelgard to appreciate those who do not abuse power, she is still very much opposed to anyone but humans ruling over humans. It’s part of her mantra. 

I would argue, though, that this isn’t really Edelgard. These Emblem versions are mere shadows of their OG selves, so there is some wiggle room in how they can be portrayed. Plus, like... Edelgard is a very unique lord, in that she was a lord designed to betray you. That’s part of the twist of her character. But she has to stand in-line with heroes like Marth, Lucina, Erika, etc, who are the archetypes that are meant to stand against her. 

That’s not very marketable for a game centered around summoning past characters on the good-guy side. 

[llapdog]

the OFFICIAL god is home retrospective

well, i was gonna make this an update to the website, and maybe i will, or maybe ill just link it on the last page. but i have an account on tumblr already, and ive tried to keep godishome posting to a minimum. so this is just a little post (possibly long. i havent written it yet, after all.) (update: it's long.) about god is home, the process of making it, my thoughts on it at this point in my life, and what i might (heavy on that might!) be working on next. put under a read more, for your sake.

happy 200 notes, god is home.

the first thing i should say is the typical "artist gets any amount of success" thing: i am absolutely shocked by the reception god is home got.

ive been shocked. i dont think its undeserved (im actually pretty up my own ass about my own work, which i refuse to feel shame or apologize for) but it is still unexpected; as my first foray into proper Web Art territory, it really shouldn't have done that well. i mean, 200 notes isn't breaking any grounds, honestly, but it is still kind of incredible for what a small-scale project is. it will, i theorize, reach higher points, too. i suspect one day someone will find it again through pure chance, and it will get another little burst of reblogs, as tends to happen on this website. and thatll be surprising, and, most likely, embarrassing. but i digress.

while i've certainly implied it, i don't think i've ever explicitly stated that god is home is not technically my first online art project. god is home comes from a litany of personal projects. ARG concepts that never went anywhere, personal sites for the perusal of my friends made in an afternoon, countless ideas and concepts shared between discord dms and voice calls. but it is, uniquely, the only one of my works that has been shared publicly, not counting the old ARG that my once-friend-now-enemy created that i caused the spiraling death of. not saying which one, but i doubt anyone would remember it if i did.

that's to say nothing of the countless writing projects i've started and never finished. shoutout to all the half-baked haunted house manuscripts i got several chapters into before giving up on. your memory lives on in my singular success, and your influence will be felt for as long as i am creating.

that influence already lives, though. many of the ideas of unfinished projects crystalized in the story of god is home: haunted houses (and really houses in general, my obsession with them as a literal device so intense that it made me realize i am probably autistic), frayed relationships, failed parenting, living spaces, and the search for God where He cannot be. i've been obsessed with many of these ideas for as long as i can remember, and as such i have been unable to create anything unrelated to them until i could say with certainly that i had something to show for it, some published expression of my love for these themes.

god is home, therefore, has set me free. at least a little bit. i have felt legitimately tied to the narrative of a haunted house, inexplicably connected to it in a way that has felt inescapable. of course, gih does not take that haunting literally, but i feel it's felt in the corners, most prominently in the ending sequence. it is a house haunted by its inhabitants, by their relationship, and, of course, by God, or the lack thereof.

this isn't to say i'm done with haunted houses. i wouldn't want to be. i couldn't be. but i am at least willing to write about something else, now.

but for as personal as god is home is, its also not made for me. i believe i talked about this briefly in the actual website, but i made this with and for my friends. i was helped explicitly by gerry (@graveyardcat7, shoutouts) who did the art, and who also was the only one who "playtested" this thing before i showed it to the larger friend group. that group, those three people (really four, counting myself), are who this was made for. it wasn't for you, unless you're one of them. my audience is nearly singular.

that has made public reception to this both baffling, wonderful, and difficult. i certainly don't want to act like i'm tortured because people (checks notes) liked the thing i made, but it is certainly strange to see something so personal, almost private be largely taken as a piece of Relatable Media. it's meaningful, of course, indescribably so. theres a kind of beauty i didn't expect to knowing people found themselves in an expression of my own thoughts. to everyone who has expressed the importance of this story to them, i thank you.

what makes it even more baffling is that i fully expected myself to be portraying many aspects of this story incorrectly. while it is incredibly personal, it certainly isn't autobiographical. i don't particularly want to go into how, exactly, the story lines up with my life, but i think the most obvious and important is that i actually have very little personal experience with christianity. im not a stranger to it; i have vague memories of going to church, of knowing i was wrong in the eyes of god, in being vaguely uncomfortable with the visages of jesus' crucifixion.

but i am, ultimately, agnostic. an agnostic christian, maybe, but my family barely even celebrates christmas. i was also raised by an explicit atheist for the vast majority of my life, my father leaving the church when i was young. and my parents are some of the most supportive people in my life. they knew i was a girl when i was a kid, and they did everything in their power to make my life comfortable as a trans person (including, notably, talking to the organizers of a pre-school event to try and convince them to let me be tinkerbell instead of peter pan.)

my mother is christian, but she never forced it upon me. my religion was always a choice. and yet, somehow, christianity still got its claws in me, and i still fear hell. funny how that works. chalk it up to america in general, maybe.

a lot of the positive feedback ive received has been about its portrayal of christianity and the struggles of growing up in and around the church. so im glad i got that right. it is something i care about rather deeply, and i worried i had been portraying it borderline fetishisticly, despite my efforts to make it fair.

i worried a lot about what i was portraying, actually. theres this line i had to establish that i wasnt talking out my ass about this stuff, while still not wanting people to speculate about who i am, what my traumas are. i still dont want you speculating, by the way. it happens without meaning to, of course, but... you know. im a person, and to most of you, a stranger.

(shoutout to innuendo studio's and errant signal's videos on the beginners guide. made me fear being analyzed for all time. i watched them both as a kid.)

it's funny, but i feel like, in some aspects, god is home is more representative of the media that shaped me than the events in my life that shaped me. the most obvious inspirations are likely the indie web itself, deltarune, komaedalovemail, and, of course, hypnospace outlaw, a game that has shaped me deeper than i can really express. but the inspirations are innumerable; serial experiments lain probably shaped more of this project than you would ever guess (a fact i only realized after i started playing the psx game this week, hilariously), the album tallahassee by the mountain goats, the fucking chezzkids website, house of leaves, creepypasta, tabletop roleplaying games i played with my friends, jacob geller (particularly his haunted house analysis), several dozen modern art pieces, meow wolf the art collective, the goddamn aids crisis. (the aids crisis isnt media, but still, i can't exactly claim it as personal experience.) there's more, i know there's more, but it's escaping me.

it's an aggregation of things half-remembered. all art is. yet, i still feel some masturbatory urge to catalogue those inspirations. it is, i suspect, a very human urge.

but, ultimately, all of this is just pretext. i should probably get on with actually talking about making the damn thing. i made god is home in a week, largely at a job as a receptionist in a tax office. the work was seasonal, my coworkers deeply religious in the same way i was writing about. i hid my computer screen a lot. (my boss was cool with it, funnily enough.)

often, my best work is done in a fugue state. god is home is most of what i did for that week. i wrote, or i coded, or i looked up coding tutorials. and for a first draft made in a week with very little oversight, i think it's incredible it turned out that well. but... well, it is ultimately a first draft.

there's things i would change. most obviously, i would have an actual password input for that damn puzzle. the honest reason there isn't one is because i couldn't easily google a solution to implementing one. it is my deepest regret, and i hope you can all forgive me for this glaring mistake. i think some of the writing could be cleaner, or sharper, or more evocative. not that i have any interest in going for a second lap. gih is done, and it will remain done for the forseeable future.

...i don't have much else to say on that, honestly. i think my work is good. i think the central relationship is compelling. i think mary and michael are two of my favorite characters i've made, ever. as an author's secret, i totally think they should be t4t. i didn't make them a couple because it wouldn't have worked for the story i was telling, but it remains a sort of headcanon ending for the two of them. not for a while, though. don't take this as word of god, though. whatever you think their relationship is is correct. i'm not your dad.

i'm proud of the way i told their story. i'm glad it ends hopefully. hope is the main thing i wanted out of this story.

that being said, i do have one last thing to say: god is home is not an arg, and it makes me really sad to see people call it that. not a callout if you did that, though. i knew it would happen. its inherent that any media will be, in some way, misinterpreted. misinterpreting is the stuff media analysis is made up of, really.

so... that's the actual retrospective. but i promised i'd talk about what i might work on. so here's that.

i'm planning on making a personal site next, provided i can get the motivation. please note that i've been "planning on making a personal site" since the day gih was released, and so far i have done the following:

made a new neocities account

so it'll probably be a while. but if i ever do, it'll have some new story hidden in the margins. i don't think i have it in me to make a home without a few skeletons in the closet.

as for what that story will be... i have about a hundred different ideas. your guess is as good as mine, but know that it won't be about a house this time. most likely. hopefully.

i do also have plans to do something with unhomes, the sort-of-ARG mentioned in gih. i'm not done with this world, and i know i'll find some way to come back to it. maybe even back to michael and mary, but i make no promises.

alright. that's all i got.

i'm glad i made god is home, ultimately, and i'm glad it got some legitimate appreciation. if you're one of the people who likes it, thats rad. i'm sincerely incredibly appreciative of those of you who got something out of my work.

bye-bye. see you soon, hopefully.

[simonalkenmayer]

Hey, I just wanted to say about the societal narcissistic abuse that it actually is real, for anyone not necessarily believing it. Some of the foremost researchers on narcissistic behavior and therapists in that field have said one of the main problems is that we live in a society of narcissists and narcissistic enablers. And another one is no one sees it because of the nature of narcissistic abuse and the gaslighting and confusion that come with it.

So thank you for making that post so more people can become aware. I'm feeling very awkward now, but as someone who is coming to terms with my own narcissistic abuse right now, I feel like this should be a more widespread topic of discussion

As do I. One thing one encounters the more one speaks to this issue, is the pack of narcissists and enablers who want to downplay the severity of the issue by either saying “it’s just emotional abuse” or want to claim that narcissists are being stigmatized. I have and will always have several rebuttals, every time:

Why are you so offended that the emotional abuse that comes from narcissists, obeying specific narcissistic patterns is labeled as “narcissistic abuse”? Could it be you just cannot handle being called what your behavior indicates you are? If so, you need to tangle with your self-loathing, and not further abuse the victims by denying their experiences.

Stigmatizing someone for their destructive and abusive behavior is actually just what we call “consequences”, in this case. You are ill, fine. But your illness is defined and measured by how badly you treat others. Therefore, if you treat others badly rather than seek help and therapy to learn how to treat people better, I have absolutely no sympathy for you, and I will not render you a more protected status than the people you mistreat. It’s that argument that criminalizes abortion with stricter sentencing guidelines than it does the rapists who create unwanted pregnancies. It’s that logic that is willing to remove fire safety from a school rather than deprive a white man of his precious assault weapon, which he needs…for what purpose? It’s narcissism to presume your feelings have more value than the lives of others, so no…you won’t find me making that mistake

Just because you don’t want to acknowledge the preponderance of research in the field, doesn’t mean that it’s not real. It just makes you one of them, see number 1 for more details.

Please understand that I am owed fucks in this hell-adjacent reality to which your species has condemned the entire planet, and I will not be apologizing to you, or anyone else, for expressing my discontent at the actions of this pestilence you call a phenotype. I love you dearly, you’re delicious, but if you want to sit there and demand I treat you in a way that’s more comfortable for you to stomach, you may paste the softest part of your lips firmly to my concave butt cleft and enjoy what I make out of your biomass on a routine basis. I’ll even buy a special chair so that you’re less uncomfortable as you kiss my ass.

Thank you kindly for your forbearance and attention in this matter.

[song-tam]

💜,📀,🌹, i cannot memorize the questions and don't know any of ur ocs BUT thought these were good ones!!

HI INK LOVE YOU FR anyways im gonna do my main two ocs they live in my head rentfree. their names are arjun & kahan theyre very devoted gays swordfighting and shit they make me rot

💜 Music or Silence? Swords or Spells? Cities or Nature? - arjun's is music, spells, cities, and kahan's is silence, swords, nature. theyre opposite a little bit (fire and water red and blue)

📀 How easy is it to shock your OC? To confuse them? To lie to them, to manipulate them? How are they with feelings of trust? Can your OC be trusted? - OHHH thats a good one. makes me think.

well for kahan it is very hard to do any of that bc he's not a very easily trusting person in the first place. trust has to be earned and its very hard for someone to earn his, and even if someone reaches that point he's still wary of them. (arjun, his brothers, and the rest of the squad, including his lovely aroace mad scientist cousin, are the exceptions to this rule.) all that being said, kahan is not easily manipulated and it's very hard to get him to do something that goes against his beliefs. if you want to get to him, you wouldn't try to attack him head on - instead, you'd attempt to get to the people he loves. (enter arjun)

ARJUN, my beloved boy. like kahan, he's not really the type of person to tell his whole life story to everyone - that's not the kind of thing he's really into sharing and he doesn't believe that he really has anyone he can trust so unconditionally (exceptions include kahan, the squad, and his sister). the trust issues are real with him. HOWEVER, arjun has this sort of thing where he believes everyone is inherently good and he does try to give people the benefit of the doubt. sometimes this works out well and he makes strong allies; other times, it ends up hurting him in the worst way possible.

🌹 How easy is it for them to connect with others and make friends? On the flip side how easy is it for them to make an enemy of someone? Are they the kind of person who hangs around the food table at a party and never talks to anyone or are they the type who can talk to anyone?

okayy so considering the lack of trust you would assume that kahan sucks ass at making friends but actually hes a bit of a charmer. he doesnt get manipulated, he does the manipulating. hes conventionally attractive and he knows it and therefore he uses it to his own benefit on quests and such. completely unashamed about it too. hes not exactly flirty but hes definitley charismatic. people are drawn to him and because of that he has a million aquaintances approximately zero friends (well that is a lie bc. the found family the squad but before that his only real friend was his cousin). also he didnt like arjun at first though and arjun didnt like him either which is ironic considering theyre head over heels in love with each other

arjun... he can make friends? he doesnt have many friends but a slightly normal amount. most of them are the ones that are like him - lonely mfs with unresolved trauma. he has a bit of a savior complex id say. also he definitely hangs around the food at the party but he'll like. drag kahan over to the dessert table or smth cause he doesnt want to look too pathetic standing over there by himself also he needs kahan to help him hide fancy schmany desserts to take home. anyway he kind of like. psychoanalyzes people inside his head and he understands them well enough but he doesnt really. talk to them. idk id say hes very ambiverted and it really depends on whether or not hes going to make a million friends that day or hide in a hole.

[policemanofprincesspark]

Are there any popular fandom theories you just can’t get behind? I personally have a hard time believing Louis has been blacklisted from radio or that Sony intentionally sabotages his popularity. I thought the whole point of the closet was to keep making as much money as possible, why intentionally kneecap your own income source? His marketing could be better sure, but i haven’t seen enough evidence to indicate intentional sabotage. And even good marketing can’t force everyone to buy a product they don’t care for. Unfortunate as it is, i think he’s just regular old unpopular.

I honestly think it is a mix of both. There is some evidence I've seen that he could be blacklisted from radio play. It's easy to do something an executive doesn't like and for them to do this sort of power play. I agree though that Louis would never and could never do that well even if we could prove that he isn't being blacklisted. Fandom lives in a bubble. Louies and Larries adore Louis because we love him as a person. The general public doesn't give a rat's ass; they care about talent. I don't care if people want to cancel me for this but Louis has a weak voice. He can't hold his own singing live, often failing to hit high notes or being drowned out by the crowd and his own band. I don't hate his voice at all, but to me it's clear he never practiced as hard as, say, Harry, to improve. Also, fans need to understand that this is how the general public has always seen Louis: rude and untalented. In a way, they're right. A lot of his "sassiness", while funny and lighthearted, can go too far, and Louis does definitely have a bit of an ego problem; he himself has admitted as much.

I also don't believe a single bit of Louis's closeting is for him or his career. It's all for Harry. Look how famous Harry is. Look how much money he makes. This is all about money and always has been. I cannot say for a fact whether Louis chose it, but I'm leaning more toward his being pressured or coerced into closeting and babygate, because of his relationship to Harry. They have always needed Harry to appeal to women. They need him either straight or bisexual, and available. That means that he needs to be in PR relationships to generate publicity and so that women can project onto his girlfriends. He will never settle down with any of his "girlfriends", and he will probably never "date" any of them for more than 2 or 3 years, as per my guess. It's always been the same structure. Louis gets in the way. It cannot come out that Harry is married, much less to a man, and therefore not available for women to have their groupie fantasy. They think he's Jim Morrison, and that they have a chance of being picked out of the crowd for "backstage fun" if only they dress cute and do their makeup all nice. Fortunately Harry took some power back recently and decided to shave his hair off, the one thing he's always been known for, right after being declared the "Sexiest Man". It's only a matter of time before that title goes to someone else, when Harry ages out of the system. Maybe he's tired of being this "sex god", but what do I know? I think part of him likes it from what I see in videos, where he jokingly flirts with fans and laughs at their weird perverted signs. At the same time, I think he just wants to be out of the closet and for people to listen to his music and not pay attention to the way he looks. I don't know why people think they have a chance with celebrities. I'd rather appreciate his beauty from afar, while caring more about his music and his personality.

[impunkster-syndrome]

what if we're ship neutral but lean in a pro way?

Thing is, my ideas are more complex than just a binary. I'm just severely uncomfortable with proshippers that are so toxic because I tried to be friends with them and then it bit me in the ass. (Also covering for someone who was defending a known nazi sympathizer, zoosadist, and snuff enjoyer while engaging with lolicon content while still trying to be in spaces where minors were.) Deadass was going "Well, I am fine with content that sexualizes fictional kids and I am also a CSA survivor so therefore you're just an anti and your discomfort isn't valid." Also the excessive misuse of the term "purity culture" because it's actually for those with religious trauma who were brought up in a culture where your value is highly tied to your viginity.

Fiction does impact reality. It's why propaganda can be so effective and diversity in media matters. I was an alt-right shithead as a trauma response and reading Atlas Shrugged (Objectivist propaganda and basically a book that wants you to turn off your brain and be a sponge for the ideas it sells). I became so much worse after that until I hit eighteen and started deconstructing my beliefs. Now, I'm some sort of leftist, just unsure what exactly.

I'm also an adult, with a full time job and that really helps keep me out of this type of topic and those parts of the internet. Being online 24/7 and super involved in this kind of shit will make everything look like a binary to you, especially if you're a kid and don't have a lot of experience handling people offline.

Writing about dark shit is stuff I do. I had a whole twine text game idea based around my abuse to help people understand it from a kid's perspective in the back of my head for years. I plan to write about the time a guy was masturbating on a call with me at my work because of how traumatizing it was. So many of my OCs have aspects of the horrible shit I have been through because it helps me process it. So, I'm not inherently a "You cannot create content involving subjects like abuse, incest, rape, etc" kind of person.

But, there's a lot of issues with how people handle those topics. People who use rape as a motivator for love interests to get together sooner or they treat the rape as more damaging to the characters it didn't happen to. Incest shown as the ideal relationship between siblings instead of it being like having to be the adult as a child because of your mom waking you up at night for emotional support or asking you to keep her from killing herself or your biological father was sexually abusing you and seeing incest everywhere around him.

Thing is, a lot of people get their education of these topics through fiction, partially because people like to not talk about how these kinds of things impact victims. I had no idea that covert incest was a thing that I had been dealing with for years until I was about 20. So, fiction representing incest as this idealized relationship between siblings is what people will think of when I talk about it, especially in relation to my incest paraphilia.

Really, what I want is good representation of these topics that actually treats the topic and victims with respect.

Sort of like how DID representation that gets all the visibility is total trash (Toko Fukawa/Genocider Syo and Split, and if we look even older there's The Minds of Billy Milligan) and Moon Knight is basically a breath of fresh air because it is so hard for people to have to sort through all the bad representation to find the small bits of good.

I also fully believe that there are some people who will feel seen from bad or unintentional representation. Toko Fukawa/Genocider Syo is complete ableism in writing, but still makes me feel seen because of how I am someone split in two in even my own system.

TLDR: Don't come near me if you romanticize stuff like incest/paraphilias/abuse/rape/etc because it is fictional. It harms the people who live with those experiences and the trauma it creates, and effectively drowns out the voices of the victims. People learn about things they do not know of often through fiction. Anti/Pro is literally just making a complex issue into black and white thinking that harms everyone. I'm neither.

[mydarksadshadow]

shadow work day 8

date: 20 Dec '22

how much do I think I rely on external validation?

I think if we talk of social media (SM), likes on my posts matter a lot to me still. I don't feel like posting if I think that a post won't get enough likes. but now that Instagram does provide the like-hiding feature, it is so much better, and I will feel free to post shit now without worrying about how many likes it got or not. I recently did post something funny without worrying if people are gonna like it or not (post-wise and otherwise) and it was relaxing that nobody could see my likes. I have never been the type of person to get a lotta likes on my pictures from people I know and it has always sucked for me and sadly still does. So on SM, I shall continue to hide the likes count on my posts till maybe I make fulfilling connections in real life who maybe wanna like my pictures on SM as well. I am aware of how underconfident I sound but that's just the truth.

I do not really care for the approval of people IRL in general (unless I genuinely need feedback from them) but I would prefer to have my loved ones accept, love, and appreciate me for who I am (because I strive to mirror the same), so I don't go around being desperate for approval from unworthy low-life people like I did for the most part of last year (2021) and some of this year as well.

I actually wanna start feeling worthy (of my own self) again before actually caring for others' approval... it is so hard to show up consistently yaar. ekdum fuck up ho jata hai random, silly reasons ke karan. such an idiot I feel like. I just hope I get to get into a routine asap so I start to feel normal again.

do I tend to resist or embrace change?

if it's a type of change that I've been craving then I will embrace it happily along with the obstacles it will bring (big or small). I think I am really good with change; adaptability is perhaps my best quality. I only resist change if it is with/to something that I vehemently detest or do not want. (thinking of my parents as I typed this)

how did my first heartbreak change me?

romantic heartbreak I'm not sure I've had... Love did change me immensely though. what I consider heartbreak in my life is what my parents made me go through with the whole career-forcing situation. the abuse, neglect, and complete disregard for the feelings that I underwent was my biggest heartbreak. unfortunately, I can't say that I have seen any positive changes because of it. it's all negative shit that changed me for the worse; it made me underconfident again (all those years that I spent gaining confidence, all just seem to wash away so quickly), made me lose faith in myself (to trust myself enough to succeed in whatever path I choose, people or career-wise), forced me into lowering standards for people I chose to surround myself with, my confidence to stand up for myself just vanished into nothing, lost all self-belief, and worst of all, I stopped believing that I was hot shit, i.e., special. All cus my parents made me feel like crap for the most stupid reasons that didn't even matter, not then, not now, and they never will matter.

not sure if I will ever forgive them for this. although it doesn't hurt that much anymore. I am done crying over it. I just wanna move on for now. from this, as well as the fuckboy incident that happened last year.

Oh, and one final thing that heartbreak changed about me- losing the ability to cry easily when something wrong happens. I am just so habituated to burying every (little or big) bad thing that happens to me that I just can't seem to get past ANYTHING!! it is so frustrating to cry about stuff that happened ages ago, that I could have stood up for (or solved) right at the moment it happened. or soon after, whatever. I wanna learn to start feeling (and therefore processing) all my feelings again, especially the bad ones. I literally cannot remember the last time that I had a long ass crying session. It is a bit concerning now. I am literally always one inch close to having a mental breakdown at any time during the day (when I have not distracted myself by watching series or YouTube) but then when I actually cry, I can't for longer than a minute. it's so frustrating that it all comes out in a million tiny parts over a prolonged period of time instead of a few big crying sessions which I'd much rather prefer cus crying is relaxing and I haven't actually felt emotionally relaxed in a long time now.

hey, actually I can list one positive thing that came outta this heartbreak- my advanced ability to articulate my feelings in the clearest and most detailed yet concise ways possible. LOL.

[andsotheuniverseended]

this following snippet of conversation between Flint and a very powerful prophet (whomst Flint is very uncomfortable around because its a Very Powerful Prophet) really i think says a lot about Flint

Actress: you all play significant roles in the original prophecy

Flint: WE do??

Actress: not you

Flint: oh thank gods, okay, thank you

Actress: it’s very concerning, actually. i can’t see into your future

Flint: phew