#now obv it's all very nuanced and complicated but like

[zmediaoutlet]

What's your opinion on the fandom rhetoric about how Sam lacks bodily autonomy but Dean has it? I personally think it's weird that it's such a widespread idea when it's just blatantly untrue. A big theme for Dean's character is that his body is seen as a weapon or tool for others to use, so it's strange that people claim that he has full bodily autonomy.

(...okay, that the gif is by 'unfuckablebogtroll' is somehow very fitting.)

I think my main opinion of the fandom rhetoric is that there are a lot of batshit bitter sam girls who screech that dean is a meanie meanerton who doesn't respect sammy's presh 'tonomy and there are a lot of batshit extreme dean girls who wail about how sam is a meanie meanerton who, idk, waterboards dean in his spare time or whatever they're complaining about this week (I've unfollowed as many as I can of both camps), so for the most part both groups can be completely flushed down into the sewers of 'jesus christ, do you guys ever actually watch the show rather than circlejerk the same four arguments about it? ...no? oh. well, at least you're honest.'

So, with that said.

Yeah, obviously Dean lacks autonomy. But there's a difference between autonomy and agency, and I'm not going to pretend to have a super solid grasp on either (since a lot of philosophical debate [especially by fangirls] makes me want to jump into the aforementioned sewer just not to hear it anymore), but I can at least kind of make a stab, since you asked.

At least in the way I understand it (do you see all the caveats), bodily autonomy is literally getting to decide what happens to your body, including where it goes and who's inside it and what's done with it, and agency is general decision-making of like the brain sort -- what decisions will I make, who will I be, and so on. Both Sam and Dean are assailed on both fronts alllllll the time. Fandom folks tend to exaggerate those assaults on their preferred brother (because, for some reason, egregious victimhood is the only way you get to be a cool character?? what is that about.), but as with a lot of things in CW's Supernatural, the actual facts are a lot more balanced than fandom weirdos will admit.

Sure, Sam's got a bunch of autonomy assaults. Torture, possession, etc. Most of the time, though, I see his agency as pretty intact. He may not necessarily want to do some of the things he does (childhood hunting comes in here), but he chooses to do them. Is he manipulated sometimes? Sure. Lied to? Obv. But there's an essential steel pillar at the center of Sam and whether they're good choices or whether they're bad choices, he is the one who makes them, and he lives with those consequences. This is part of why the s9 thing with Gadreel is troubling: yeah, it's about bodily autonomy on one (more boring) level, but the much bigger problem is that Dean overrode his agency -- part of why I tend to believe that Sam's biggest objection is that Dean lied and then couldn't apologize for it, when Sam's agency is the most precious thing he owns. Now, he's a smart guy, and there are times his agency does take a blow because of some canon circumstance -- he doesn't want to do X but the world will end if Y, so X it is -- but for the most part Sam's solid and he can live with what he has to do. Though he won't pointlessly die of blue balls about it. What a silly stand on agency that would be.

Dean, meanwhile, doesn't actually have his bodily autonomy violated too much. By which I mean: of course, Dean-as-object is one of my favorite tags, of COURSE he's used as a meatsack and a weapon and a fuckdoll and all those lovely things. But he's very rarely literally possessed; he's holding the blade or the gun or what-have-you. That said, his agency is in the fuckin' gutter, haha, and that's more often what I mean by Dean-as-object. From childhood he's fully expecting to be told what to do, to be used as a pawn, to be used in other ways, to take on someone else's responsibility and make it his own and subsume his actual desires and wants for the good of... whoever. Usually John, but not always. This is something Sam doesn't really... do, that often. Sam might hate that he's making a choice but he does seem to understand that he is the one making it, whereas on Dean's part it so often feels like the choice is automatic -- of course he'll do what John says, of course he'll sell his soul, of course he'll... kiss some lady so the Qareen chases him instead. Now, are all those things tied to autonomy, too? Of course. But with Dean I feel like it's a bigger issue that his agency has been taken out at the knees ever since he was ~5 years old -- the autonomy problem is very much secondary.

Agency and autonomy are tied together and assaults on both happen relatively equally to both characters. What matters more is their attitudes about it, and their natures (whether they're essential or if they've been nurtured into acting a particular way). And, of course, there are different times in canon where these tendencies shift or even flip, e.g. in late s8 where Sam's certainty wobbles, or in s10 where Dean's autonomy w/r/t the Mark of Cain is really dicey.

Violated vs violable, victimized vs victim. A ton of it is in the eye of the beholder and OBVIOUSLY fandom will just sail off in its own directions any ol' way, depending on what shipping mood someone is in, how much projection is going on, what the phase of the moon is, etc. But generally speaking I find that Sam has a lot of agency in his life but often his autonomy is imperilled; Dean has a lot of autonomy but his agency is practically nil. At least for a while. What's nice is that Sam does have agency and he uses that agency to choose his own path in life, decide what he wants, and what he wants is -- a life with Dean. Dean maybe never really had a choice in the matter, but so what? He can stay in his bunker, and fight the monsters he needs to fight, and -- lucky for him, there's a strong hand covering his left side. What more could a cat ask for.

[absolutebl]

Hi!

I love your Blog and love to read your takes in everything. So thank you so much for all your Posts and thoughts about the industry etc.

Here is my question: i came across one of your posts where you wrote "actually gay, not bl gay" (it was a Post about Jojo and Only Friends) and while I FELT that I TOTALLY understood what you meant and instantly was like "yes 100% clear" Id love to read and learn more about what this means exactly and why some bls feel quite heteronormative while some dont. Would you mind explain the take on "actually gay Not Bl gay" a little bit? And why some Shows feel just more queer than others (besides the unbelievable stupid "gay only for you" trope lol)

Thank you so much and I hope you will have a nice day!

actually gay, not bl gay

There's actually quite a discourse on this right now mostly originating with @waitmyturtles and @wen-kexing-apologist (Post @killiru references above is here.)

I tend to mostly talk about this in broad brush strokes as a queer lens.

But there's a great ven diagram (which of course I've lost the link to) that approaches the idea of and queer lens by tunneling into its approach and intent:

about queers

by queers

for queers

How do different BLs intersect in different ways with these three elements?

When I said "actually gay, not BL gay" I was alluding to this discourse. Specifically the "about queers" category of BL.

There are characters in BL who read as genuinely gay (as in belonging to the queer family of this terrible reality we live in) and then there are those that seem more performative (to exist in a bubble of fantasy were sexual identity is almost unimportant, only the romance matters, everything is safe sweetness & light). For some queers this can read as manipulative or even exploitive (because it is inauthentic to most queer experiences). For me, it's fine... even desirable. I like the safe bubble. I enjoy the utter delusional escapism of it. Sometimes I will call this sanitized gay. (Since it is designed to make gay palatable to non-gay identified folks e.g. seme/uke.)

A sanitized gay BL may be unintentional but it is nested in origin yaoi and mm romance whose target market has never been the queer community, and whose authors have historically not been members of it, either.

Let's be frank, we queers are generally a terrible target market, we don't have enough spending power - especially not for a piece of pop culture as niched as BL. And as creators we really want our voices to be heard (obvs), which makes us produce content that those unsympathetic or uncaring find uncomfortable. (Yes, I know, fuck them, but also, they have all the money and the entertainment industry is a numbers game.)

So in the arena of office romances, just as an example:

actually gay = The New Employee

sanitized gay = Our Dating Sim

actual gay = Step By Step

sanitized gay = A Boss And a Babe

All of the above have the same tropes, archetypes, and premises. All of them are BL. Some are just... queerer feeling than others. And the characters in those shows (Step by Step and The New Employee) read as more "actually gay."

This has nothing to do with the actors, chemsitry, or how much we may personally like the show (Our Dating Sim is one of my absolute favorite BLs). It has to do with how closely those CHARACTERS intersect with the reality of queerness as we inhabit it today. It will be lots of little touches given to the drama by director and script:

language use,

surrounding friendships (and friendship style),

mannerisms and physicality (specially body language around straights vs other queer characters),

makeup & wardrobe,

facial expressions,

surrounding queer-coded behaviors by side characters,

layers of story nuance that indicate a complicated queer-driven back story.

Markers of specifically a queer identity are given to the leads.

These kinds of BLs are satisfying the "about queers" category. ("By queers" can be difficult to extract because IRL outting is involved. "For queers" is the rarest kind of BL, because making something specifically for us often alienates the majority of the rest of viewership/market. I could be argued that SCOY did this.)

I'm sure I've missed things, but I hope that kinda makes sense?

By/For/About discourse from @wen-kexing-apologist here:

Parts 1

Part 2

Part 3

I'm indebted to them for the links!

More Queer Stuff from Yours Truly

BL Linguistics & Queer Identity - I Am Gay versus I Like Men 

Will BL Get More Honestly Queer? 

Queer lens (from the director) and chemistry (from the actors) in BL (A Tale of Thousand Stars)

Touch & Daisy in Secret Crush On You - Queer Coded Language and 3rd Gender Identity

BL in Taiwan & Gay Marriage

Debating Queerbaiting in BL ( + Devil Judge... is it queerbaiting?) 

BL Actors and the Assumption of Queerness - outing actors, coming out, being out, more:  Is that BL actor actually queer?

So is it really fetishization? straight women loving bl 

Some BL fans are sasaengs, and it’s a problem in this fandom 

BLs That Highlight How Society Treats Queers

10 BLs That Are Honest to a Queer Experience 

(source)

[sugartwst]

‼️SPOILERS FOR BOOK SEVEN‼️

You know I understand the frustration with Lilia but I also think that there’s some nuance here. I mean looking at Lilia for a second he’s just lost his magic which has been established to 1) be very important to the fae and 2) almost necessary to live in Briar Valley so it makes sense he doesn’t want to go back.

Also this was a very sudden change and one he noted he thought he had more time before. He’s essentially had the rug pulled from under him and now has far less ability to do things he used to. It’s also clear this is a part of aging and therefore means he’s either going towards or into his last leg of life.

All of this that I’ve mentioned to this point (and I believe dropping out of school) aren’t his fault. I doubt NRC would let someone who doesn’t have magic stay. (Yuu being a special exception given it’s the schools fault they are here and wouldn’t have a residence anywhere else).

It’s also like… he’s going through a really major life event, basically equal to a life-altering health complication, I can imagine wanting to leave high school after that.

As for leaving Silver… I honestly don’t think it’s that bad. Don’t get me wrong— Silver is very justified in being upset but most children don’t go to school with their parents and maybe it would be good that he starts to branch off from Lilia like every other child with their parents. I imagine him a lot more worried about Lilia’s health which is something Lilia can’t control obv.

Now do I think he could have broached it better. Yeah lol but also for all the reasons above I think it’s fair to think he did the best he could. After all he did explicitly say this was a surprise to him as well.

Him moving to the East is definitely a choice… but I don’t think a morally wrong one. It’s something he’s said he’s wanted to do when he got old for a while so it isn’t on a whim. It’s definitely going to be the hardest on Malleus who will have a hard time visiting, but he did seem to encourage Lilia to do what he wanted with his end-of-life plan even if it’s not what he wanted.

But as we know, Malleus is starting to overblot but I’d argue this isn’t Lilia’s fault. Lilia trusts Malleus and has enough faith in him to know this will hurt him but he will recover. Loosing people is a part of life.

Malleus really only started his downward slope once Yuu told him that they may be leaving soon (Also not Yuu’s fault lol) and having two people leaving in a way he can’t follow is what’s damaging. I think Lilia is right to think under normal circumstances Malleus would be able to handle him leaving but the circumstances are no longer normal with Yuu’s addition.

I also think it may be fair to add that even with the awareness Yuu was always meant to leave Lilia may not have thought that would happen soon or that Malleus was nearly as attached as he is to Yuu. Hindsight on that sort of thing is 20/20 y’know?

Like I get the frustration with Lilia (cause I’m frustrated too) but some of the Lilia hate seems a bit much. :/

What do you guys think?

🦇💕

[tirfpikachu]

this is controversial as fuck but i mean this is radblr... complex discussions and nuance are our meals of choice, right? right???

if you hate me after this that's okay. i want to say i at least have more experience in jewish spaces and with jewish history than most, though i obvs am not as knowledgeable as a historian who knows jewish history. so my pov is different than someone who has never been in a synagogue, where jewish history is constantly discussed at length. i'm open to people deeply informed about jewish history, and not just from tiktok vids and tumblr posts and articles written by greedy war-hungry journalists sensationalizing it all.

i have seen a jewish world where the gratitude for the land and the desire to have peace between all kinds of folks, all religions and all races and both sexes (on the leftist side anyways) permeates every speech a rabbi would give. jewish ppl were persecuted and enslaved since the beginning of time. pharaos enslaved jewish ppl bc they were seen as a lesser race and not deserving of their own land, so of course they wouldn't want to oppress another group, only their rich greedy men would, and the rich greedy men would feed their civilians lies and try to turn it into a coliseum battle. we are talking about two heavily marginalized groups with different needs. we are talking about a very complex situation, just as complex as the situation between biological women and transfem activists; at least in the eyes of transmasc & detrans women who have seen the issues in both tra communities and radfem communities and have unique perspectives. ppl hate us, duh. we make things more complicated. it's always so easy in war. one side is obviously righteous and deserves the land (even 100+ years after those new ppl settled there, and even if the current people never chose to take over the land, they were just born there and are usually at the mercy of rich privileged men who are a total minority in israel and heavily exploit people both israel and palestine, terrorizing their women and destroying their country with greed). greedy male billionaires are at the hands of most countries. do you really think people of israel wouldn't choose to go back to their og place if they could go back in time? sure. but right now their family has hundreds of years of connection with the land. i don't want them to have to leave or bow down to me or whatever. i want canada-like response to palestinian injustice. i don't wish for what hamas wants and has called for. you may want to look up everything he's actually said.

if you would not support... and i mean truly support, think about it as if it happened for real to you and your loved ones and local community, how chaotic it would get, how much stress and turmoil it would add to your life. if you would not support native americans - i'm saying this as a part mi'kmaw woman who partially lived in a rez in my very impoverished native community and facing the harsh impact of the government not caring abt indigenous peoples, so i know how much better things would be if white ppl had never come. if my female ancestors didn't get assaulted into pregnancy by white men, and became subhuman in the laws of the society. my family wouldn't be full of generational traumas and internalized racism. it would've been fucking amazing. but it didn't happen. and it would've probably made things worse in some way anyway. "winning" at war against white men wouldn't have solved everything either. i would've wanted peace between everyone who has been a resident of the country and has roots there. i am pro-immigrants. i am pro- focusing on the future and not the past. i am into reform and making the rich greedy men in charge alter their laws to respect palestinian victims and their families and truly atone. i want no more injured. any day spent fighting means more injured ppl, right? so wouldn't it be best to end the war? but i know ppl love a good gamble.

i don't want it to happen between indigenous folks and non-indigenous people. bc i care about my white friends and friends of color who aren't native, and if they suddenly lost their homes or citizenships, on top of their usual life stress, it would be heartbreaking for me to watch. i want white ppl to do better, i really do. and i'm white passing so i can only talk so much about that, but i did see it affect my native fam and i know the dynamic. i want white people to do better in a realistic way. i don't want to daydream about a forceful takeover of canada. hell, canada learned from things and inserted SOOOOO much stuff in laws and in schools to redeem themselves or at least prevent further oppression. and while it's not perfect and they can be stingy, to me it's 100% the right path. it's the right way to do things, the path towards international peace. is war the right way to solve this? aren't israel and palestine democratic countries? isn't there activism to be done THERE instead of just going out in the streets and cheering like war cheerleaders at hamas or at least making a snarky remark and brushing it off. are young progressives (it's mostly younger ppl celebrating the war lbr) really having a positive impact on palestinian lives? or are we just adding fuel to the fire? do you still see yourself as anti-war? or is some war rational, healthy, and worth it? you are cheering for a war. you are empowering a group that is trying to force its ways into a country through weapons and taking in hostages. you aren't doing fuckall to stop the situation for palestinians stuck in that hellish war-damaged land. do palestinian civilians deep in the war really want israel to give up the land and cease to be called israel after hundreds of years of history and culture and immigrant families (palestinian included) making lives there and getting attached to israel and feeling pride in it, since it is a country ravaged by more powerful governments overseas for years and years growing more and more corrupt politically? do citizens not want peace first and foremost? don't they just want the war to end? but people are saying "well this side is right and it's okay that they're encouraged to keep fighting! i want it to win :) yaayyyy go team palestine!!!!!" you are empowering people, hamas included, to harm not just israeli people (low on your priority list, i know... weird how in the russian-ukranian war, no one was cheering for the party who's in the right...? bc we knew that it'd just lead to furthering the war leading to more injuries and deaths and tortures, by encouraging either party and framing them as the inherent heroes who should get to win righteously (valkyrie style) like when schoolchildren fight and one side obviously is right but the fight isn't productive so it needs to end BEFORE they can figure out what happened, you can't try to deal with powerful men by making it a debate room. you can only deal with them by removing the weapons. activists should be focused on destroying weapons of war and empowering gaza civilians into doing protests and try to become a rebellion

you need to empower the marginalized to fight their own battles. and those battles are AGAINST THE RICH MEN, NOT THE OTHER CIVILIAN SIDE. YOU GOTTA BE WELCOMING THE OTHER SIDE AS ALLIES BC CLASS IS A HUGE DIVISION AND MOST OF US ARE BROKE UNDER CAPITALISM. THEY WERE ALL CIVILIANS SCREWED OVER BY POWERFUL MEN TOO LIKE THE CIVILIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES, FROM THE AGES OF GREEDY KINGS. WE NEED TO DETHRONE BOTH RICH PALESTINIANS IN POWER AND ISRAELI PEOPLE IN POWER BC OBVIOUSLY THEY KEEP FUCKING UP. most of the ppl in offices are older, and are stuck in old ways and make the country do dumb shit against another country. like with blm, like with #metoo, born this way, etc we had bystandards cheering for those social activist movements and the marginalized people made sure to have a strong message and clear demands, otherwise it was wasted breath and wasted activist energy. once dust settled and the injured were healed and ppl were housed properly, then we would reach out to the other side, do peaceful protests, and try to find realistic compromises. once both sides had time to cool their heads down and prioritize peace above all. gyns... we should be focused on the innocent civilians, especially in gaza, who are fucking struggling. we should pour water on the war flames, not boost the ego of one side, bc listen gang the rich men are in feral mode, they're privileged rich toddlers with too much influence, too stuck in the thrill of battle to notice the ppl hurting and if we keep the war going they'll get dumber and dumber. one side asks the other to stop the war, but the other side says that they're in the right so they need to rekindle the battle and settle the score properly to atone by doing something super drastic and unrealistic, and something that would be economically desastrous and dangerous for women and children especially. and something the other side doesn't fucking want to do bc it's been hundreds of years and their peoples (immigrants included) have settled there and built pride as a jewish people, a people who was heavily oppressed but now gets a life of safety after years and years of slavery and torture and mass killings by antisemites, especially around times of political stress. and ofc gaza has been ravaged with political tensions and greedy rich men for ages. there shouldn't be a war. people should be left to pick up the pieces of their life and rebuild their homes and get proper food and water before any kind of battle to prove their worth was to happen. at the very least there should be rules in the war. but usually one side is too inflammatory and it starts the bickering again. violent bickering btw. men in power during wars are greedy, impulsive toddlers who don't care about casualties. it's not israel that's the threat that needs to be squished down, it's the rich men in charge of BOTH SIDES

please read up on the actual history of israel & palestine. something NUANCED for once, with no bias whatsoever, totally neutral information gathering. if the message you're reading is simple and obvious, then you're probably not reading something nuanced. the world will always complex. more than tiktoks make it sound. radblr is about knowledge gathering and neutral sharing of information, right? so we should be able to have respectful female discussions of current events without bickering or generalizing or demanding for uncompromising forceful actions by a powerful greedy man (do we really trust hamas? do we? a greedy rich dude who has so much to gain by being the King of the war? has anyone done a background check on this guy? what is actually going on in gaza, are influential groups actually treating palestinians well? should they really be empowered or will the war just keep hurting civilians and isn't worth it in the end? is palestinian pain just collateral damage to us?

we should be able to sit down as a community, throw out the term zionist bc so many people are misusing it, cool off our heads as civilians, mostly civilians barely if at all impacted by the war and just watching on like sports commentors. we get caught up in the lore and the storylines too. we get really hyped up wanting Our Side to win. just need one more battle! and THEN we'll win. nope, we can't possibly consider stopping the powerful men battling it out. we can't possibly simply state "i believe in this bc of xyz" and talk it out spock style, like there's a marriage counsellor between the people tras call zionist and palestine activists. we're on the left, people. most of us are marginalized in some way, shape or form. do we really want two marginalized group to dish it out and hurt their civilians? just for an ego boost at finally winning at war? can you even truly win at war?

didn't we use to say that no one wins in war? like oldschool movies? didn't we use to look up to hippies?

hippies would be ashamed of the left.

oldschool anti-war cartoons would be ashamed of leftists.

victims are who matter the most, not the righteousness of men.

also, horrific things are happening to jewish ppl everywhere. antisemitism has always been consistent and terrifying. synagogues get so many fucking threats, even before all this. now it's next level. make sure to be a good ally to ALL marginalized folks. and, ofc, don't forget to call shit out on the jewish side too.

i am anti-war. can you really say the same if you don't want it to end? or you only want it to end "successfully"?

victims matter most.

peace is essential.

minimizing harm is our #1 priority. which means ending the war.

everything else is secondary.

and i know righteousness feels great. i know we want the perfect magnificent revolution. but if you watched a war movie before and listened to the war-stricken civilians... you know how this movie would end. you know how the survivors of the "winning side" feel years after winning. they're full of bitterness. or maybe romanticize it in their minds. but they have deep, haunting regret about the chaos it cost in everyone's lives, and anger at the greedy men in charge. it's why they're so full of ptsd. bc war is hell. fuck the war.

what is it good for? absolutely NOTHING!!! we are pawns being used by powerful countries who want to influence control over their citizens. they often love being at war and are excited at the violent prospect of taking over the other side. war can make them even richer. it can give them foreign women at their mercy. it can give them political power and pawns to play with to make their nation the greatest, of whatever patriarchal bullshit goes through their mind.

so yeah. fuck capitalism. fuck the war. end it first and foremost or palestinians will be more traumatized and tensions between the peoples will escalate year after year endlessly. end the war!!!

who knows though. maybe i'm just a naive feminazi hippie who dreams of peace and love and an end to all wars lol :']

[astralartefact]

Griff RoD Story Thoughts dae think war is bad maybe?

This write-up contains a whole lot of pseudo-deep complaining about the theme of Death as Salvation.

Content Warning for related Themes!

Okay, now that everything Griff-related is out I can finally say it:

I don't like Griff and a lot of his costumes look the same to me.

And I tried. Different from Rion and Dimos I actually tried and read all of his stories - which is why I'm writing this out today.

Not to say I can't find anything good in them - the End of his RoD story reminds me of one of the characters in the only book I ever read (Crime & Punishment) who commits suicide because without the eponymous Punishment for his eponymous Crime he couldn't find "Salvation" and therefore his only remaining option was Death to escape his guilt.

But there's only so much "Look at this 'normal' guy and what war did to him!" I can take before going numb and not listening anymore. You need to give me at least something else to latch onto. Like Lars has an existential crisis amount of shit going on that gives his story another layer about how exactly war is bad. Meanwhile Griff is just a guy who had a really fucked up thing happen that one time and he really can't get over it.

And sure. Maybe his stories are just about hammering down how PTSD works. Maybe it intentionally repeats Griff's one drop of guilt in the ocean that is war at nauseam. And maybe I'm just not keyed in to this type of historic fiction enough to understand the nuances. Maybe this is actually a very nuanced portrayal of the PTSD of sole survivors and I'm just not interested enough in this subject matter that I would know something like that.

But seeing as it ends in "the only thing that will save us from our guilt is death" I find that hard to believe. Not that there isn't value in showing the reality of veterans commiting suicide because of PTSD - but I don't think that's what's happening here.

I hate Death as Salvation as a trope. There is nothing valuable about it* and it should be wholly abandoned. (*if it isn't in some way followed up by a rebirth. then it's fine bc obv its not supposed to be real death but i digress) Any affirmation that Dying would in any way absolve you of anything you ever did is absolute garbage. It is a thoughtless and above all else lazy way to think about forgiveness - that anybody would just be better off if the person that harmed them just 'got what's coming for them'.

And Crime and Punishment would probably argue at this point that it's because you can't grow from your mistakes then. That Punishment is not (only) for the victim but for the offender to make amends with the past so they can move forward [without killing themselves]. And Griff's story can be read that way - not only is he never punished for his "Crimes", he is actively celebrated despite them.

But outside of that this Eye for an Eye mentality that a victim would and should get anything out of the misery and/or death of their offender is just another cycle of violence that our society is currently just basking in. It's an annoying itch that we just keep scratching because why not, it feels good right now and I promise I will stop before it gets worse! We all have urges that are 'natural' and yet we still all agree we shouldn't indulge in them - and Revenge should absolutely be one of them.

Forgiveness is a complicated process, both to forgive others and to be forgiven. There is no one way to go through it and there can't be only one since that's just the nature of our myriad unique human connections. But that's also what makes it such a fascinating thing to interrogate. Who is forgiveness for? How do you forgive? How are you forgiven? Do you even need forgiveness?

And I hate that thoughtless writers continue to use Death as a quick way out of it all, that we can just redeem a character by sacrifice because oh, isn't that noble, now what they've done isn't so bad anymore because i guess death is a currency now and this time it bought us a good ending.

But in Real Life Dying only becomes an option when something has gone terribly terribly wrong. An event in which somebody chooses Death is always a tragedy - and yet in fiction writing it is - different from reality - always a consciously constructed tragedy. The writer made this happen so the offender could die for their sins - because I guess there is just no other way that somebody could overcome doing a bad thing. Great news for all of us who ever did something bad!

So the way they went from "Griff talks about it to somebody for the first time and feels a little bit better about it" as if they went for a "Griff gets Group Therapy! You're not alone!"-Message only to still end up with both of them killing themselves is just deeply upsetting to me. If this is in any way supposed to be a story about regret, I feel like this could have been a "You will never get over it but at least you can talk to others so it gets easy enough to still live" story - because even if that's not a particularly groundbreaking narrative anymore either at least it's something actively helpful. But this? What is a veteran reading this story supposed to get out of this? Just die, it never gets better?

then again FF16 did this so much worse than Griff. at least reinkane has CrimePun parallels - and of course the overall framing as a whole is still 'this is what war does to a mf and should never happen' so i guess maybe that's the point? that even a winning war leads to people killing themselves?

Now. This is the point where the plot twists and I say: Okay. But maybe this is - deliberately or not - great writing actually. I didn't see this coming, I just gave what I wrote another read and then this occured to me:

There's just something here. Griff is one of the characters with a seemingly good amount of agency in this game - sure, he isn't a king or a ruler, he doesn't get to decide about this war, but he certainly has more agency than a good chunk of the characters in this game - he literally gets to tell Lars what to do - and yet. He just can't even think about trying anything else. His station just doesn't make it possible for some unpronounced reason. It doesn't even occur to the narrative that maybe he could - I don't know - Run away. Lead a Resistance. Even just interrogate his own actions. He did a bad thing and there's just absolutely nothing he can do about it but kill himself. (And there's something else here about why exactly death is an easier choice for him than anything else but this is already long enough)

Lars' story uncovers a truly wild revelation about this war they're fighting and it just. Doesn't affect Griff's story in the slightest. It doesn't come up once. He just doesn't know. Doesn't even notice. How can he not notice? When suddenly the people he cares so much about are gone and show up standing on the other side of the battlefield?

But you have to understand. This is really hard for Griff. He has to continue fighting because one time his actions killed so many. It's not the war's fault. Not the other army's. Not the bullets of the other soldiers. It's his fault. He did this. So he only has to fix himself. He can't possibly be asked to care about anything else, especially not whatever this fcking war is about.

And I don't know, doesn't that sound like... Ugh. I don't know the word, but it always comes up when people talk about white men. It starts with P I think. It's that word that people use! That you should check every once in a while... Ahh, who cares. I can just end this post about PTSD and war and not think about it any further because I do not have PTSD and the closest war will ever get to me is that maybe they're going to re-institute a draft in my country - but probably not and even if they do I won't have to go! And surely nobody on the world alive right now has a different experience from me. See ya!

also they could have made this story so much better if griff and the eyepatch guy fuc---

also also with how 063y and now griff went i'm so excited for argo. whoever is writing these has a lot of thoughts about men.

[honeyhotteoks]

It’s the beginning of the comfort arc we’ve all been eagerly anticipating and it delivered more than I could have ever imagined fuck! I have so much to say BUT FIRST thank you for sharing your writing with the world it literally is amazing through and through - so carefully and beautifully crafted - and every update makes my day/night <3

Big thing for me in the last few chps is i appreciate so much how you tackle themes that mirror real life. It's in a way that’s nuanced and really makes me feel really :(( - but in a good way - in a way that makes me and i'm sure many others feel seen on so many levels. Like:

(1) Hwa in chp 10 mirroring the experience of not being accepted by family as a queer person - but also, tell me if im going too deep into this - but there’s an intersection of identities that you unpack - of class identity (i.e. Hwa’s need for career security which he was leaning on his family for) converging with his family’s expectation of heteronormativity - which meant that back then, Hwa’s relationship with San couldn’t coexist with him pursuing his passion. Like that’s a very real thing for so many people and a pretty complicated thing to explore but you expressed it in a natural way that feels very validating.

And then (2) in chp 12 Woo illuminating the experience of being a minority - when he says ‘fucking alphas’ when yunho is like ‘our girl’ - like as much as I love that possessive/intense caring vibe, woo is so fucking FAIR!!! Like that entitlement (altho obvs for yungi we know it's different) is such male behavior and I’ve KNOWN that rage woo feels, that ‘ugh alphas’ feeling is one I and I’m certain many others have felt in the context of living in an IRL patriarchy and idk… the fact that you can write that experience in a way that hits that hard, succinctly with subtlety AND clarity - damn you’re so good and I hope you know you’ve done these experiences so much justice in your writing.

But anyway on another less #deep note (lol): the ‘yeah baby?’, the ‘can I put you down sweetheart?’, the searching eyes, the cautious but caring touches, the tender kisses (p.s. I died when yunho started licking her neck omg why would you do this to us) - JESUS it’s too much for me to handle but I need it like I need air so THANK YOU. Now that yungi and mc are in the very same intimate space, that very same apartment, that very same bed that yungi/mc all began, I'm on my tippy toes patiently awaiting a new and ~soft~ dynamic.

So happy to hear you’re excited about writing again and once again, AMAZING JUICE!!

-Cloud ☁️ xxx

CLOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! your comment literally just hit me straight in the heart as always, thank you so much.

to answer/comment on some of what you said.... yes absolutely to your comments on chapter 10. i obviously don't know too much about the member's actual upbringings or family finances.... but i certainly see a particular type of small town/working class energy from san. he projects a bit of life confidence and surety that personally informs a lot of how i write him. to me it felt natural to contrast that with seonghwa here and add an extra layer of tension to their relationship. i think for san, being rejected because of money was a hard line in the sand for him..... but that's also his own prejudices and life experience at play. i'm excited to work more with them in future chapters and expand on this.

also chap 12 like..... YESSSSS - the thing that i always love about a/b/o is that you get to play with that possessiveness to the nth degree and when you fold in elements around claims and bonds it gets even crazier. yunho and mingi have this very sure feeling that reader is theirs ....and yes, that's somewhat true just like they are hers......... but that doesn't mean that she (and omegas by extension) are just property. i really wanted to write the arc with minseok so that later on when all the happy endings happen, reader's autonomy is obvious, it's clear that it's her agency and her choice. so thank you as always for catching those moments.

on your last comment.......................there is SO much more comfort yungi coming i can't even tell you. i'm a serious sucker for hurt/comfort arcs as a reader and writer, and i just seriously believe that people who go through hard things like this deserve a person who can be there and hold them like they need to be held. it's truly my favorite thing to write as a romantic bitch 😭 so yeah get ready..... yunho and mingi are shifting into patient, loving, kind, and tender mode before things get back to hot and heavy

thank you as always, your comments bring me so much joy 💗

[musicfren]

so, with all of the talk that's been going around her about "misandry" I have perspective as a guy that I wanna share, and I can be the one to do the coddling or something

there.. is a sucky uncomfortable feeling that comes with learning that you're part of a systemically privileged group that has hurts people. Like it's this super unproductive guilt that doesn't have any outlet or anywhere to go, and people are gonna be mad at a category of people that includes you, might be short or dismissive with you about it, and now that you are aware of it you don't even get the luxury of thinking they're being wrong and stupid for it! XD

but like... this is not a systemic issue. It's not. It's not, its a personal sucky feeling, and the reason I know this is that it can be dealt with. You can re-frame how you think about it, tell yourself that guilt isn't useful and action is, recognize that when people talk about men as a group they are not necessarily personally attacking you the complex nuanced human sitting behind the screen, and it really suddenly is not all that bad. Like in the grand scheme of things, you can feel your feelings and move on and it doesn't come back to bite you later, and you don't have to live in the consequences of it for your whole life I see the argument a lot that men have substantially worse mental health than women (with some messy essentializing categorizing going on in that sentence), and people pointing to the fact that the suicide rate for men in the US is higher and like...first of all that's not true, the successful suicide rate for men is higher, the attempted suicide rate is higher for women, and if we wanna get into why that's the case we have to get into stuff like gun-ownership and substance abuse rates which are whole complicated sociological topics with all sorts of causes that don't paint as clean of a picture as you want them to. (plus while there are obvs societal expectations curtailing male expression of emotions, I can not believe I have to say this, there are also those for women expressing emotions! substantially more restricting and dehumanizing ones!) But second of all.. depression is very self-essentializing. It makes you feel like your depression is the whole world and you're going through the worst everything possible, and like.. that is also not true. Everybody is goin through it actually, we live in an atomized capitalist society where absolutely no one knows how to make friends or form community, and the world sucks. I promise you, there isn't a magically greener grass on the other side. And hey, if you've read my thing and are thinking "hey, that's not all that i'm experiencing! I'm experiencing things that are a lot worse and more real than what this guy is talking about!" consider the fact that I am a white, cis, straight, rather well off guy living in the imperialist core, and maybe it has more to do with that fact (and then send me angry anons about it ❤️)

[bbq-hawks-wings]

BBQ rambledumps for the first time in a while. Been running D&D.

What's up, my beautiful fellow clowns, how we doing today? I just logged in on desktop mode and saw a new message in my inbox only to discover it's a porn bot and they're sending videos AND strange URLs directly now. YAY!

Thank God, blurring content from users who don't follow you was an actual improvements made to this hellsite after years of fumbling features. Progress is progress.

Anyway, I originally came here intending to write about my Fodlan D&D campaign because I'm due to show some actual creative capacity here for once and prove I haven't completely gelatinized into a lump of depression and exhaustion. So yeah, more nonsense under the cut.

Nice, the icons have been switched around a bit - they're a little easier to read now.

SO! I wanted to two-fold introduce the campaign setting and talk about my players/characters - whom I will be referring to by their characters' names exclusively (except maybe Atlas) - because I'm actually having a blast with it all, and maybe some of you will appreciate the various eccentricities of this gaggle at my table, too.

First, the setting:

I...

LOVE.

FODLAN.

Idegaf about Fire Emblem as a larger franchise or series - this PARTICULAR story is EXACTLY the kind of thing that makes all the happy chemicals in my brain go brrrrrrrrr.

There's drama, political intrigue, romance, deep lore, references to various real-world myths, references to various real-world PEOPLE, repeating thematic motifs, a complex and nuanced look at conflict and war, a complex and nuanced look at religion and history, AND THE OUTFITS ARE SPECTACULAR?!?!?!

And if I kept thinking about it we'd be here all day.

One of the hardest things for me as a very n00b DM is that I know most of the power of the game and enjoyment for my players comes from the world they exist and play in. If I don't have a good grasp of how all the strategic pieces fit together across the map, how am I going to let my players roam and interact with it like it's always been their own idea and not me actually scrambling to slap something together that's satisfying for them while also not completely toppling my campaign?

And here I have not only this entire RPG I adore and already want to know like the back of my hand, that has characters that I delight in mimicking and writing for, that has nearly all the wiki knowledge I could ask for, but I also have the PERFECT excuse to write my Golden Route and let all my little chess pieces live happily ever after somewhere, AND there's a campaign setting already made for 5e!

Is the DM set up to have a good time?

Yes

Absolutely

With my setting chosen, I now had to figure out the various big plot flags to hit that would put it on course for the ending I want. Some big considerations I particularly kept in mind included:

Edelgard MUST start the conflict. There is never a scenario in this multiverse (according to canon obv) where she does not strike first because it's in her character to strike first for both her own survival as well as to protect those she's taken charge of. The second she thinks she has what it takes to confidently take her next move before her opponent the plot lurches forward full speed. This is what predominately sets her apart from Claude who is quite similar about the lengths he's willing to go to win but he's typically much more reactionary while Edel is aggressively preemptive.

If I don't want Edelgard to have all of Fodlan immediately in a standoff for survival that just looks like the other games with the other nations because of the complications that TWSITD throw into the plot, the truth of the Nabataen race HAS to come to light to her before anyone else. That means that she has to know BEFORE she retakes the Empire for her own regime. This means a BIG MESS for the Church of Seiros to deal with start-to-finish over the course of the campaign.

Going along with the previous point, once the true nature of the Church, the Children of the Goddess, and just what ACTUAL Fodlan history is (and remember, Edel hates these people pretending they're divine when they're clearly not, she is NOT putting up with that nonsense), Faerghus is going to be PISSED even if there's complicated feelings about how the nobility came to be, and Claude's scheming will get kicked into overdrive. There's no way I can't see it happening. Even if the Nabateans have FULL support and protection of Edelgard (which they will sooner than later) the bloody history between them and the nobility of the Kingdom will reach a crescendo and the Nabateans will have a LOT to answer for regarding their involvement in Fodlan history.

Where I want it to end is for all of them to overcome Thales and TWSITD with the help of Shez and Byleth. As a result, Sothis will be fully revived, she'll reward and bestow special blessings to the entire cast, and then she'll ascend into the heavens once again - but this time taking her hand of protection off of the world, opening the setting up to "D&D proper" so the players can keep playing in the sandbox they've grown attached to if they want, but they get way more stuff to play with now and we can actually use the core books for more than just basic rules YAY!

With that all set up in the back of our heads, let's introduce our players - all of whom besides Atlas is completely blind to the original plot (MWUAHAHAHAHAHA):

Umbrae: A knight from the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, Umbrae's father was one of the the victims of the Tragedy of Duscur. Discontent with the ambiguous non-answers that have been found regarding the massacre, Umbrae is on a mission to discover the truth of what happened and why - no matter what sordid secrets may be revealed in the process - so that the chapter of anguish and uncertainty for the nation can come to a close and healing can properly begin.

Godfrey: Originally from the Adrestian Empire, Godfrey was an aimless wandering sell-sword until he met the love of his life, Josephine - a monk of the Church of Seiros whose tender kindness brought light and hope into the lives of those she touched. She joined him with his platoon of fighters during the outbreak of plague in the Kingdom to treat the sick and afflicted along the way; but no good deed goes unpunished. While Godfrey and his men were called away to respond to news of a threat, the camp was attacked by those who feared their involvement was spreading the sickness. Godfrey returned too late to save his wife and unborn child and has since sworn an oath to the Knights of Seiros, now once again aimless in his purpose with nowhere to place his grief and anger except upon the heads of the wicked with the edge of his sword.

Booferd: A lowly thief from the Adrestrian Empire - there's not a lot to Booferd yet because he's only been to the first session and has been stuck studying to keep his GPA up. He's fantastic at this game, though, and I'll make sure he gets the chance to have a great time whenever he can play. He called Balthus "ball-face" in RP and he's going to get inspiration points for that.

Atlas: Hailing from the far-off land of Morfis, Atlas is an escaped experiment victim of TWSITD on a mission to save his fellow victims still trapped back at the lab and wipe the scourge of the Agarthans off the face of the earth. Unlike the Fodlan branches of the Agarthans, this base in Morfis raised humans like lab rats a la The Promised Neverland to simulate and study various conditions and outcomes their human experiments underwent. Atlas, an exceptional subject, escaped and eventually found his way to the docks of Adrestia where Hubert found him - seemingly incomprehensible and insane at first but then deceptively brilliant upon patient inspection. Hubert secretly scooped him off the street before he made more ruckus, cleaned him up and trained him, and then planted the unnerving foreigner into Garreg Mach as his personal mole (because Rhea loves picking up strays) - seemingly unconnected in every way while funneling information, secrets, and the nifty little gadgets he makes to the young man and his emperor who promise him a proper payment for his services.

This post is getting long and I need to get the kids up from their nap. I have more, especially since we're about 4 sessions in, so I'll probably make a new post soon. Feel free to send any ideas on how to tag this.

[apaintedmaypole]

The future for Vegas and Pete

WARNING. I'm having a lot of VegasPete thoughts and I need a place to put them.

TL;DR Version: Let VegasPete be messy! Let VegasPete be kinky! Only fic can save us! (Probably.)

ONE: I really dig @lutawolf's take on VegasPete in the book vs. VegasPete in the drama. Luta argues that book!Vegas is "basically a criminal sociopath" and that this is one of the key differences between book vs. drama Vegas. (Read the link for the full take.) I definitely buy this take on book!Vegas in the first half-ish of the book's story. I'm not sure the canon continues to support this interpretation towards the end of the book though? I'm also not sure the authors see Vegas this way. It's hard to say, but I suspect the authors' inclination is towards some sort of redemption arc. The question is, what kind of redemption arc? There are some really annoying ways this could go. It'll be interesting to see where the new VegasPete story (supposedly coming from the authors soon) will take the characters.

TWO: Overall, I find the drama version of the story more interesting. It feels like we're getting more developed and nuanced versions of the characters overall. (Although, obvs, it's hard to give the book a fair shake when you're relying on online translations.) The drama version of VegasPete gives us more of a history and context for the characters, which is important. We understand where they come from, what's shaped them, how they might be uniquely suited to one another.

THREE: BUT... here's the piece I think is crucial. The history and context the drama provides should not be over-utilized to "explain" or pathologize their kinks. Instead, I see this history as a) context for their individual weaknesses, struggles, and needs. And, b) context for their current inability to safely/sanely acknowledge and act upon their kinks. They each have so much fucked up baggage dragging them down. It is a huge obstacle to their ability to understand themselves, communicate with others, act in healthier ways, or form safer kinky relationships.

FOUR: This is also why I'm so drawn to this couple and so interested in where they go next. An important question to me is: What does it mean to try and "fix" Vegas and Pete as characters? Or, to try and "fix" their relationship? Or to give them a happy ending? What does that look like? I think the authors, the drama team, and fans are all going to have very different and competing takes on this. My take?Within this storyworld, no one's going to run out to get therapy. This is still a very violent and dysfunctional environment. Within that context, how do Pete and Vegas muddle through? I don't think their version of a happy ending is any kind of domestic fluff. I think it's something a lot more complicated. I'm not saying they can't have happiness. I'm saying that I don't think falling on stereotypical happy ending tropes (babies and domesticity) is the answer. Babies and domesticity can be interesting story elements to include, but they aren't a magical balm which should be used to erase kinks, erase the characters' histories, etc. This couple has to work on a lot of stuff within and between themselves if they're going to stay together and not self-destruct.

AN ASIDE: Does anyone else remember fic from the show Oz? (YES I AM OLD.) I feel like Tobias Beecher and Chris Keller may offer some interesting parallels and contrasts here.

FIVE: The final VegasPete scene in the drama makes me nervous. It's just so fluffy and domestic. Yes, it's very cute, but how did these characters get here? Is one month in a hospital enough for this kind of domesticity and affection? What happened to make this possible? Honestly, I don't buy it. There might be a fic out there which could convince me, but I haven't read it yet. Instead, I'm nervous that the drama's solution is to skirt all the issues and just throw family and a dead dad at the problem. As if that alone just magically "fixes" everything. And somehow Vegas is just soft and cuddly now? No! That dude is fucked up. Yes, he's had a big scare and he's learned some important things, but that's step one in a complicated journey. Also, Pete is not a martyr or a gentle fawn. He has his own forms of masking and survival. He has his own coping mechanisms. He's also very skilled at his job. I don't think the Pete's future is one where he just becomes domestic and plays house mom for Macau and Venice. If he's a metaphorical hedgehog, then he's got his own shit to work through too!

SIX: Ultimately, I think the drama version of VegasPete is easier for me to work with and to see a future for than the novel's version. However, I really don't think that future should be one where they leave their kinks or their baggage behind. I think the pairing works best when Pete and Vegas have a lot of baggage, are also kinky, and are trying to figure out what all of that means. I think their future involves them trying to disentangle their issues from their kinks. I'm not sure they'll be 100% successful at that, but the more interesting part is the attempt and the ongoing work. This is also why I think the more satisfying versions of VegasPete's future might be found in fic, rather than in a season two or a new piece of the novel. I'm not sure I trust the drama or the novel to fully follow through on the story they've started. The ending of the VegasPete story in the drama and the books give us hints that both book and drama canon may opt to go for a more superficial ending. Fic, however, has more freedom to be messy, sexy, and kinky in the ways that VegasPete seem destined to be messy, sexy, and kinky. But who knows, maybe we'll get a new installment of the book or the drama and they'll surprise me!

--- YES, this is overly long. YES, I am epically overthinking this. I don't care. I have a lot of feels and I need to process them somewhere.

Also please, for the love of god, PLEASE feel invited to send me fic recs. I'm reading any VegasPete I can get my hands on right now.

[vinceaddams]

obvs feel free to keep this private, but I got recommended the UFH channel by a friend of mine, haven't gotten around to watching anything from it. I trust your judgement on the content, but my friend considers it her main resource 🙃 of course, since you only watched a few videos you might not be able to answer this, but was there any specific really bad/unacademic approaches I should keep my eye out for that my friend might have adopted? we work on a historical festival together so im concern

(I was going to answer this privately but then it got really long and turned into a post I want to post.)

Oh dear! Well, It appears that the lady behind that channel only cares about the 20th century, so maaybe she’s got good stuff on the 20th century at least? I don’t know, but the 2 videos that I saw were so incredibly awful that I’m highly suspicious of all her stuff. 

The first bad thing about her channel is that her videos all have a one or two sentence caption and nothing else. (I clicked on a few more just to check) No sources listed, no links of any kind except to her merch store. I don’t recall her mentioning any particular sources for any of the things she said in the videos either, she just declared them very matter of factly. 

Good historians cite sources! Bernadette Banners’ video on the history of PPE has so many source links she ran out of room in the description box and had to put the rest of them on a page on her website.  (Oh poo, now I feel a bit bad because I love Karolina Zebrowska but she really needs to do better with leaving source links. But she does talk about doing research, talk in a more nuanced way, and doesn’t present herself as an expert or academic, unlike the UFH lady.)

Good historians also embrace nuance, and aren’t afraid to say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong”. Presenting things in a “this person did this one big thing, and then this happened, and that caused this” kind of way isn’t good because history is more like “all these things happened and as far as we can tell it appears to have influenced this, which was also connected to this other stuff that we don’t know all that much about”. History is foggy and complicated, no matter how much the general public wants it to be simple.

Her description of herself also seems a bit... misleading? In her about page on youtube it says “Amanda Hallay, a college professor specializing in fashion, costume, and cultural history.” but if you look at the CV linked on her website the only degrees she has are in creative writing and art history. I’m not saying a person can’t be really knowledgable about something without a degree, but her whole online presence is about being a “professor” who teaches this stuff so I find it weird.

And if the 1850′s-60s video is anything to go by, she presents things in a shockingly unprofessional way. She starts off by saying she thinks these fashions are ugly and ridiculous and that she has some “theories of her own” on them. @marzipanandminutiae has a post with a lot more about what was wrong with that video, and a few others I haven’t seen. She claims that hoop skirts were oppressive cages when in reality they were a liberating garment that allowed women to achieve full skirts without the heavy layered petticoats they wore previously. 

She posts a photo of a naked lady and says “Now lets start with a beautiful naked lady and cover her up with ugly and unflattering clothes. Now this sexy naked lady isn’t so sexy” I wish I was making this up but that’s almost word for word what she said. Along with a whole lot of untrue or exaggerated stuff about Victorian modesty. She says dresses with layered flounces were called “pagoda dresses”, which isn’t a term that anyone has ever used for those dresses. She says this is cut down from a longer video she uses for teaching class, and I find the thought of this being presented in a classroom quite appalling.

After spending about 95% of the video talking about womens fashion in an extremely condescending and disdainful tone of voice, she posts what appear to be the 5 biggest and most extreme examples of 19th century moustaches she could find, presenting them as if they were what every man looked like.

This part really grinds my gears, because she says “I haven’t said anything about menswear because there’s really not much to say.” She posts photos of suits from 5 different decades and says they’re basically all the same, and also basically the same as a modern suit. Excuse you, there is A LOT of difference between menswear of the 1850′s and the 1890′s. Yes the changes over the decades are more subtle, and the colours are often more subdued than in centuries past, but it is absolutely not (as she claims) “the century when men stopped doing fashion”.   I personally am not hugely interested in 19th century mens fashion, and can tentatively date things in the first few decades but after the middle of the century I can’t. But people who are interested and who study that era can tell the decades apart. Because they’re different. And there is SO MUCH to talk about! Suits for different levels of formality, accessories, waistcoats, sportswear, sleepwear, knitwear, swimsuits, loungewear, underwear, etc. are all extremely different from their modern equivalents. 

It’s perfectly fine to only study womens fashion if that’s what you’re interested in, but it is not okay to then declare that the history of mens fashion is worthless and nonexistent. Simply not being interested in a thing is no excuse for publicly shitting all over it. (I’ve seen people do this more than once. We already have so few men who do historical fashion stuff! Stop putting off newcomers who might be interested!!)

The fact that her online presence is so closed off is also highly unusual. Comments are turned off for her videos, and the only social media link she has is to a private facebook group. (There is also a link to a fb page, but it appears to have been deleted.) Turning off comments is of course the personal choice of the one posting the videos, but the fashion history side of youtube usually tends towards pretty decent comment threads, and people often have nice little discussions and learn stuff in them. Here it looks like she doesn’t want discussion, doesn’t want to be contradicted or asked for sources, doesn’t want to learn new things.

I had never even heard of this channel until I saw @marzipanandminutiae mention it, nor have I ever heard any of the many historical costumers/youtubers I follow mention it, yet somehow it has 55k followers? I don’t know the demographics that watch it (especially not with the comments turned off!) but I’d wager that videos like the 1850′s-60′s one I suffered through are mainly watched by people who like hearing things trash talked, rather than people who actually want to learn about fashion history. The same sort of people who loved that Beau Brummell twitter thread, which was also full of lies and unsourced garbage. People like to believe the past was way worse and grosser than it was because it makes them feel like we’re smarter and better now.

Lastly, the whole premise of the channel is just bad. Calling any one thing “The Ultimate Fashion History” is a bad idea. Her channel trailer says “Youtube’s number one channel for original fashion history content” “we’ve got it all, fifty thousand years of fashion history”. You can’t have one channel that’s the ultimate resource for ALL of fashion history! It’s a huge, HUGE subject, and even if she did do actual good research she’d barely be able to scratch the surface of fifty thousand years. That’s like saying one channel is the ultimate source for all of science, or all of music, or all of cooking. No one thing can come close to covering all of it. I will deign to admit that she’s at least right to call it “original”, because she has some very original lies I haven’t found anywhere else. 

Most people who study fashion history/historical sewing have one or several eras they like best and find most interesting, perhaps with occasional jaunts into other eras. This way we can focus and get a much better understanding of the eras that we find most interesting, rather than just a vague notion of everything. 

For example: I’m most interested in 18th century menswear, and so far have mainly researched and sewn 1785-95 stuff, and more recently some 1730′s. I usually focus on fashionable civilian clothing, so I don’t know as much about working class clothes, and next to nothing about military and other occupational dress. Even with this narrow area of interest, which I’ve been obsessed with for many years, I still have so much to learn! I could never make anything claiming to be the ultimate source for 18th century menswear, because I’m just one person focusing on some aspects, and there are other people out there who research other aspects of it and their work is just as important. It’s all so big and so much, even if you narrow it down to one era.

Amanda Hallay is basically holding up a bucket of saltwater and calling it the ocean.

I haven’t watched any of her 20th century videos, so maybe they’re better than the older ones I watched. I don’t know. (But even if they’re actually good they still don’t have source links.) Edit: okay, nope, turns out they’re just as bad! They appear to make up the vast majority of her videos, so if she’s most interested in the 20th century then maybe she should just... make her channel more clearly 20th century focused instead of trying to paint it as a channel for all eras?

TL;DR, the main bad things about that channel are:

Lying and making ridiculous claims, not citing ANY sources. Spouting easily debunked myths.

Stating things matter of factly without any nuance, even though history is foggy and complicated.

Being extremely judgemental about historical fashions and talking about how much she hates them and thinks they’re ugly, which really isn’t appropriate for a fashion history teacher. You can hear the disgust in her voice and it’s awful and I hate it.

Comments turned off on all her videos, leaving no way to communicate or have public discussions. Unknowing viewers are left to accept her statements as fact without any outside opinions.

Claiming one channel is the ultimate channel for an incalculably enormous subject. Says it covers 50,000 years of fashion history when it’s mostly just the 20th century.

I would like to add that I am not what I would consider an expert either, and have no formal education in fashion history beyond the one college class that was part of my 2 year sewing course. I have learned mainly from books and the internet, and as I said earlier I still have a huge amount to learn. I’m sure a more knowledgable historian could put things better than I have. 

But I’m confident in stating that primary sources are needed to back up a claim! Sometimes even widely accepted beliefs turn out to be entirely unfounded myths, like that one about doctors using vibrators to treat “hysteria”. Total nonsense someone made up in 1999.

Wow this post got way longer than intended. Anyways, yes, I do not like condescending slideshow lady.

[starlightshore]

im kinda want to get into this sort of thing so is it okay to ask u a few questions? if not just delete this, but here goes? would u reccomend game maker studio 2, and how hard is it to use in ur opinion? and is there anything u wish u knew at the beginning of making ur fangame?

aw anon you’re so sweet! don’t worry about asking about this, its really exciting to make games and trying new things! i would not say i’m an expert, and i wouldn’t even say i know gml like. at all. i just understand a how the code is used, but now what the code itself is or what to type exactly. like, i understand the theory more so than actually doing it. which is, eh, fine? i’m getting by, and i’m still learning. i’ve only been using gms 2 for 2 months now.

also, i’m using a fangame engine! i feel its kinda like cheating lmao, but its just meant to be a framework to build your own thing off of. and i still need to learn gms2 to use it, and i plan on doing more advanced and complicated things (ie: changing how battles even work structurally.) so. i’m not good at gsm2 yet, but uh, really once you understand coding its not any harder than i’d imagine w/ other professional game engines. compared to unity, i like this better because it seems built on the idea of making 2d sprite games. its SO much more simpler and the userface (while. i’m not a fan of how it has its workspace but whatever) is simple and easy to grasp.

i can’t say for certain if i recommend game maker. its very pricey and doesn’t go on sale often. (big sales i mean, it goes on 15% somewhat frequently) i really, really recommend doing your research first. 

so here i talk about what game engines i’ve used over the last year. (also i hear Godot is good!)

at the end of that post i said this: “TLDR; figure out what kind of game and story you want to tell/make. i could of saved a year’s worth of work if i just sat myself down and realized i wanted to make a completely new fangame separate from my old blog stuff. and that i wanted to make an rpg specifically.“

and so! past me has good advice. figure out the scope and what story do you want to tell. with AL, I know it has 2 chapters, and rn i’m only concentrating on chapter 1. chp 1 has 7 nights and one area where you fight enemies. its very story/character driven and is more so like. a deconstruction of the rpg genre than an actual rpg game. (i know that the word deconstruction is over used as hell, but it is what this is.)

it builds off the themes of the original, while focusing on things that i want to focus on and develop. ut, at it’s heart, is about stories and grief, i’m just taking it to a different extreme and angle.

uh, anyway, i really wish i knew what i wanted to make and understood the source material more and what i wanted to make. i’ve. thought really really hard over what UT means, what message toby was trying to convey, how he did it and what I thought about it. understanding what YOU want from and for your project is the most important thing. WHY do you want to make this? WHAT do you want people to feel and think about when playing? or even, after playing? it doesn’t have to be super deep either.

so, figure out what you what to make, and then you can work on the how. really plan your story, but honestly i wouldn’t recommend planning it in super big details right off. also, super helpful to have a friend help you brainstorm and plot check things for you. (shout out to my friend the sniffer

anyway, don’t plan things TOO detailed because things are GOING to change no matter how well you plan! just try to get get an outline done, then rewrite it 5 more times and then MAYBE you’ll be ready to tackle a more detailed version. then write it 5 more times. i can’t stress enough how important planning is, and how you shouldn’t expect everything to work out even on draft 10! things will work, and when they do, draft 10 is going to look like bad awful nonsense cause you’re at draft 20 now and everything is much more coherent and better. games aren’t written or consumed all at once on the fly. its not a piece of fanart, a fanfic, a comic. its not updated more than once. its out, and then its just out. plan for it.

and real quick, don’t worry about art assets! depending on how you do the art, that’s most likely going to change and its going to be polished LAST. i could go more into how you should think of art when game developing, but thats another topic. just. honestly use shitty art assets and worry about it later.

kris’ place holder sprite for deltarune ^ it don’t need to be pretty, it needs to be practical.

second advice: start SMALL!!! i feel i should of done this, and frankly i probably will have to sit down and do this lmao, basically, you should make boring small games to learn the basics. I know, i know, nobody really wants to recreate asteroid when you got big ideas of making stories and animations u wanna make. but like. you really need to figure out how the program works and how the code works in theory and practice.

ok so like, think of coding like this. i got this from a skillshare video series, so uh. i’m going to retell this but in a shittier and likely less nuanced way. sorry

ok so imagine. you’re telling this guy who is trying to get to Gary’s house. now, Gary’s house is just down the road, few houses down, now, you can tell this guy that and he’ll likely find the house just fine. but if you’re telling a robot it’s not going to understand what “down the road” means. what road? how long? it needs instructions that are simple and work in a language it understands.

so you tell the robot “go down two houses, stop at sign until x seconds pass, turn right, go forward 1 house, turn ect. stop at house, ring doorbell. IF Gary answers, go inside; ELSE: do not go inside, wait;

so this what i mean by understanding the theory behind the code rather than the code itself. yes there’s complexities and differences in each language, but they’re ALL based on the same concepts. different program languages are less like different speech languages, but rather different dialects of the same. (uh, like us english vs uk english) its just different rules and “spellings” of the same core concepts.

next advice: don’t be afraid to ask for help! but also! do so within reason! if people are OPEN for helping, be sure do so in the right environment and within what time works for them. compensate people for the time and effort if you can. ALWAYS try to figure out the solution yourself first. often with coding, it can be a simple solution that you could of thought of yourself if you took the initiative to. google is your friend, youtube is your friend! (ok, youtube isn’t, but in this case! yes!) the answer might not always be easy to find, and its perfectly fine to look for help but its good to at least try on your own first!

speaking of which! LEARN LEARN LEARN! be ready to devote A LOT of time to watching and reading about game development. this goes to every game making program, not just gms2. i watch. so many videos on gms. i rec having the video play at 1.5x or 2x speed to cut down time. obvs you still need to retain the information, so speed might be not a good idea then. and its REALLY GOOD to pause and type out the code and follow along. but its also good to just understand the concepts, and theres no harm in rewatching once you’ve understood it  better at a different speed.

things WILL click and work out for you, and its going to be a very time consuming and long journey to get there. i LOVE making this game and telling this story but I also had no idea what i was getting into! and i probably will have more advice once i’m further in, (i’ve only used gms 2 for 2 months!) but thats the best i can say for now! i hope you pursue your dreams and start making things!!! you can do it!!! 

the best time to start is yesterday, the second best time is right now! even if you put a little effort into it everyday, you’ll  build up progress and you can learn SO MUCH over time and theres this whole world of possibilities out there! the world NEEDS your story and your perspective, and i think creating it in anyway you can is necessary for humanity! your work will mean something to someone someday, and i am so excited for you to start your journey!

[ctl-yuejie]

opinion on the term bl?

uhhhhhh…very complicated. I might have written a whole rant post before on the topic on this blog on an empty stomach so it was most likely not very nuanced (I think it was about people saying that The Untamed didn’t count as BL).

buckle in, this got suuuper long

tbh i first came into contact with the term in the early 2000s and since the internet didn’t play any role at my age then, the only context I had were magazines (here in Europe) and manga publications.

I knew that BL was a whole genre in Manga and that it featured gay romance and that fans / content creators would refer to themselves at fujoshi. Now, at that time I was only figuring out that I was bi, didn’t know any Japanese and didn’t have any friends with cultural ties to Japan.

So based on the magazines I read, I started to believe that “Fujoshi” literally meant “Rotten Girl” because of the taboo of same-sex relationships and the tantalizing sense of the forbidden that comes with it.

While I read some BL manga (couldn’t tell you the titles anymore), I never referred to myself as a Fujoshi or being into BL because both terms seemed to apply only to Japanese people and the sense of “the forbidden” in regards to same-sex relationships didn’t fit to my reality (having been to a same-sex marriage with my family at age 8 etc) and also felt demeaning to me.

After learning Japanese and living in Japan I didn’t really question my aversion to the terms, since I did have access to the internet now but didn’t think of fact-checking everything I had “learned” pre-internet (I think it is important to note here that the magazines weren’t the highest in quality in terms of journalistic prowess nor scientific in any way. They were just short entertaining articles, aimed at teenagers like me, trying to profit from the still ongoing wave of japanese pop culture in the west) and my only experience with both bl content and real life fujoshi wasn’t that positive:

My feelings on BL and fujoshi culture were heavily influenced by 

- the wave of very sad and traumatizing gay movies in Japan that most of the time ended in double suicides of the main characters

- rape storylines getting romanticized in manga

- pretty heavily stereotyped gay characters in main stream tv series that were only there for comedic relief

- the Fujoshi I knew back then being weirded out by the thought of same-sex relationships between women and basing their thought on gay men solely on the content they consumed 

- not finding the hailed “subversion of traditional gender roles” or discussion thereof in the BL my friends consumed. 

- my gay friends in japan having very frustrating encounters with fujoshi who started to treat them like an open air circus and not making them feel supported in real life 

- people around me making judgments based on attractiveness on whether gay people should get supported, while the hint of a celebrity being gay was weaponized  against them

now, this pretty much sums up, why I tended to have negative thoughts on the subject and felt more sympathetic to the push from some people in the queer community in japan to please retire terms like “uke” and “seme” when talking about real people.

since then, i didn’t intervene when other female friends in japan would use the term for themselves, because it still was a term coined in japan and those people were actually supportive of queer people so i didn’t see how me being preachy about it just because of my experience and not calling myself a fujoshi or fan of bl would be of any help and/or called for.

jump to 2018/2019 and i started to read more papers about it on a whim because i started to watch Crossing The Line and for the first time in a long while I was in a fandom again where people called the genre “BL” and themselves fujoshi/fudanshi.

I came to know that what I assumed the origin story of the term “Fujoshi” to be had been misreported (shocker) by the magazines back in my youth and that apparently the term was also widely used in Thailand, Taiwan and Mainland China. especially the knowledge that apparently TERFs were behind a pushback of the term made me reevaluate my opinion.

Since I have really no insight into Chinese or Thai culture it is not on me to judge whether it is appropriate for people there to use BL as a genre signifier etc and from all I have read, in some cases it is really about finding a way of creating and distributing queer content in a place that is not lgbtqi+ friendly or use it as means of finding expressions for one’s own sexuality etc.

Obv. there are genre conventions I will get annoyed about and criticize (all female characters are evil etc) but those things are also not BL exclusive so there’s not much sense in condemning a whole genre that at least tries to push some conventions.

With the Internet and a global push for more lgbtqi+ rights there is now definitely a strong symbiotic relationship between queer content and real life social changes. so being harder on queer content (in general) because it isn’t perfect doesn’t make anything better for queer people. 

nowadays there has been some wonderful content in japan with a push for real life legal changes as well, taiwan has the marriage for all and thailand is also pushing for a civil union for everyone.

especially in the case of mainland china with strict censorship rules i will congratulate anyone who tries to sneak some ambiguity in. it saddens me that the rules are as strict and that there are even more hardships for lgbtqi+ people in real life but i would never say that not creating any content that could be interpreted as queer should be favoured over trying to do something, regardless of how lacking the result might seem. 

The reason why I ranted about BL as a genre term recently was mostly directed at western fans with no cultural ties to any of the aforementioned cultures, but i definitely didn’t stress that enough in my previous post.

Since I still don’t call myself a fujoshi or being into the BL genre I am suspicious of western fans calling themselves as such. because i project my own experience and knowledge on them and there are people out there who definitely emphasize the cheeky “rotten” side of themselves while not knowing (like past me) where the term comes from and that it does’t have to do with any “forbidden fruit”. i assume a certain laziness when straight people will try and convince me that they are allies to me, because they consume BL series, but will still call me “the man” in the relationship etc.

There can definitely be a need for a similar outlet that allows people to write about gender roles, sexualities etc in a similar way but very often the argument of “it is female empowerment to be into BL” is just warping the origin story of the term into an excuse for homophobic statements. I see the term get applied to western shows as well (when there isn’t a need for using a Japanese term, especially not when there’s a missing understanding of its origin) and actual mlm shows in asia being dismissed just because it doesn’t fit the BL genre conventions (point and example: people in the west discounting The Untamed as mlm content because they weren’t explicit about it; What Did You Eat Yesterday getting dismissed because of similar reasons and the diversion from presumed age and beauty standards of BL as a genre). That way western fans made BL feel quite restrictive and not interchangeable with mlm anymore, which just confounds me.

in the end it also comes down to scope: someone writing fanfiction, producing small indie series cannot really be harmful even when they content might seem so. so regardless of what the genre entails it is important to put everything in perspective and whether this is the hill someone wants to die on, instead of leaving space for artistic expression, cultural differences and celebrating the steps into a more loving world for all.

tl;dr: I feel many emotions; there’s always space to learn more and I am grateful to everyone who made posts about the racism in criticizing the terms “Fujoshi” / “BL”; I don’t use the term myself, but only feel wary when westerners use it; personally I prefer to use mlm or wlw as content describers but I am also not 100% satisfied with that as well

ask me my opinion on ______

[constablewrites]

Good Omens: Love, Growth, and Tropes

I’ve now watched Good Omens (in the same year it was released, put on your shocked faces) and like half of Tumblr, I have some thoughts on the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley. Like many of my thoughts, it comes down to tropes. (Spoilers, obvs, so most of this is under a cut.)

Specifically, it calls to mind Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: the tendency for a dark, angsty loner who struggles with their emotions to pair up with a kind, gentle spirit who can heal them with the Power of Love and who remains faithful even when their partner has doubts. (Think Anakin and Padme, or Katniss and Peeta.) As an angel and demon, Aziraphale and Crowley definitely have this light/dark dynamic going. And one of them is a rock-solid foundation of love and support… but not the one you might guess.

Crowley’s love for Aziraphale is a straightforward, uncomplicated thing, partially because, well, it’s kind of selfish, and that’s a demon-friendly angle. The Arrangement makes Crowley’s life easier, and in Aziraphale he has someone who understands his life and experiences like no mortal ever could, who also appreciates Earth and humanity like no other immortal does. Of course he repeatedly saunters into danger to rescue his adorable dumbass; who else is going to bitch about paperwork with him over a fancy lunch?

This also befits Crowley’s backstory–he casually forsook Heaven to hang with his buddies in Hell, so he has no problem casually forsaking Hell to hang with his buddy on Earth.

But Aziraphale? He never had to make that choice. He aligned himself with humanity from the very start, but he did so in a way that didn’t get him into trouble (aside from fibbing about his sword). In his mind, his love of humanity and his heavenly mission are perfectly compatible, and loving Crowley doesn’t hurt anything since at worst they just cancel each other out. All the right paperwork gets filed, everyone is happy, and he never has to give up anything he cares about.

This is where they’re at when they meet at the bandstand. Crowley thinks there’s no way he can save Earth, but perhaps he can still save his friend. Aziraphale thinks he might be able to avert Armageddon, but he’s still technically on the side of Heaven and Crowley is technically the adversary so he can’t bring himself to share that information. Running away with Crowley would be the open rejection that he’s managed to avoid for millennia, and he’s not quite there yet. (”You go too fast for me, Crowley,” he says sadly earlier in the episode.)

There’s also a timely contemporary bent to Aziraphale’s reluctance. He very badly wants to believe that the system works, even when it doesn’t make sense to him. He clings to the idea that somewhere in the hierarchy, there must be some sensible person who will listen to reason and stop the madness. He just can’t get his head around the possibility that chaos and destruction are what the system actively wants. If you’ve hung around liberal circles in the last few years, this is surely a sentiment you recognize. (Yes, the book was published in 1990. In the book, Aziraphale goes direct from phoning Adam’s house to calling Metatron, and Crowley straight disappears for 120 pages. This whole arc is original to the show.)

Aziraphale does finally get disabused of this notion and openly disobeys, at last dedicating himself fully to Crowley and humanity, repaying the commitment that Crowley has always shown to him. (And still does, even after Aziraphale turns down his offer. He says he’s going to just leave on his own, but instead goes off to sulk. Once he’s dealt with his demonic pursuers, straight back to the angel he runs.) It’s Aziraphale who steps in when Gabriel and Beelzebub try to (re)start shit, with Crowley backing him up as soon as he catches on. And when Satan himself is about to join the party, it’s Aziraphale who promises Adam they will stand together with him. He knows Crowley will support him because Crowley always has, and there at the end of the world Aziraphale is finally ready to trust that completely.

This is what playing with tropes looks like. It means taking a pattern we’ve seen before and adding nuance, complicating it and grounding it in specifics. You couldn’t just impose this inversion on any given version of the Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl pair; it comes organically from who the characters are at the beginning and who they become by the end. 

[justlikeeddie]

black sails fic recs

I have got and continue to get so much enjoyment out of Black Sails and its fandom! It's so nice that this anniversary week of posts has made me realise it is two years since my dash was abruptly filled with people having full breakdowns over the S4 finale, and I was like, “man, I don’t know why this field of corn or whatever is so important, but I guess I should watch this show and find out”. And I did. AND IT WAS.

I don’t know how to make gifsets bcos I am an idiot, but luckily for this fan content Friday thing I CAN post a non-exhaustive list of fics in this fandom that I am absolutely obsessed with. You’re welcome!!!

Unaccommodated Man, The Peaceable Kingdom, and Congress by kvikindi / @septembriseur

James/Thomas, post-series

James looks at him, searching, and Thomas fears he will recognise that Thomas is not really Thomas, not quite Thomas, not the Thomas he had been, and so he says, “I have gone a little mad in this world without you, but now that you are here—” And James makes a sound, a sobbing, laughing sound, and crushes Thomas to him once more.

Like...obvs. This is one of the best series of stories I have read in any fandom, or, actually, that I have read in any context. Both on a macro level - with unbelievable fluency, this series encompasses trauma, recovery, intimacy, forgiveness, literature, the conception of madness, agriculture, 18th-century Native American tribal language, etc, etc - and a micro level, in which not a single word is wasted, and not a single sentence is unworthy of being read three or four times. Anyway. I have re-read all of these stories multiple times and Congress more times than I would admit to if I actually knew.

consider them both, the sea and the land by youremyqueen / @deathnoting

Flint/Silver, post-S3

Flint frowns, stiff and unbending, and leans down just a tad so that he is looking John directly in his eyes. If he’s uncomfortable with their proximity, he doesn’t let it show.

“Remember when you told me,” he grits slowly, each word weighted with emphasis, “that you had discovered the pleasure of being both loved and feared? Is that what you would like from me? It is not enough that you have earned my respect, my friendship. You would now like for me to be frightened of you as well?” His nostrils flare, his rage is quiet. “I am not one of your men.”

John can feel the words on his face and he bears them without flinching, says only, “And I am not one of yours.”

Flint’s brow twitches, and he moves a hair closer, disgustingly close, warm and sour with the smell of whiskey, a solid and immovable blockade between John and what he wants. And he says to him, of all the unbearable things, “Isn’t that exactly what you are?”

THIS IS LITERALLY THE FIC THAT CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT FLINT/SILVER. For like three whole series I just didn’t Get It. And then I read this and was like.....oh.....I Get It. It’s a weapon. Their attraction to each other is a weapon. And sometimes they like using it and sometimes they don’t. And I have never, my friends, looked back

and into what it will be changed by @sea-changed

James/Thomas/Miranda, pre-series

"The Hartfords left for the country last week," Miranda says; "they've merely invited us to view the painting. They cannot resist showing off, even in absentia." She and Thomas share a look, smirking at each other as if sharing an old joke. Then she looks back at James, and her mouth quirks up at him. "So you needn't worry about their judgement."

James considers protesting that that wasn't, exactly, what he was worried about, though upon second thought he wonders if it truly wasn't. "That's very kind," he says, hesitating.

"Is it?" Miranda asks, almost absently. "We do not invite you along as a kindness, Lieutenant; I believe I speak for both Thomas and I when I say we rather enjoy your company."

James feels his face heat, not unpleasantly, and he looks down at the carpet. Miranda is usually soft and kind, but occasionally she does this, speaks plain and pointed. She and Thomas both do this, push and keep pushing: Thomas seems to do so with curiosity, prodding until he finds something interesting, but Miranda does it as if she had already found the spot she wishes to target, and goes after it relentlessly. James thinks suddenly, and unexpectedly, that she would not make a bad Naval commander.

THIS IS LITERALLY THE FIC THAT CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT JAMES/THOMAS/MIRANDA. I used to be weirdly militant in the belief that James’s affairs with the Hamiltons only made sense if they were two separate affairs that didn’t even really overlap. And then I read this and was like....right okay....if they DID have a threesome it would have been like this

There’s Plenty of Men to Die by @autoeuphoric

Flint/Silver, post-S3

The five of them share a glance, passing it around the table, man to man. Flint’s mouth twitches and Madi laughs shortly. “I would wager every man here fancies themselves in charge. This is a meeting of chieftains. I say let it remain so.”

“Although…” Silver says slowly, pulling the others’ attention on to him. Flint’s eyes flick his way, and to his horror he realizes he has nothing else to say. No point, no segue, no plan for a redirection of the conversation. He had simply wanted Flint to look at him. A fierce longing for the days when it was just the two of them fills him, laying their plans together, even though the threat of sudden and nonnegotiable execution was much higher. But he knew where he stood. Here, there are complications. Confusions.

This is just a tiny little snatch of a scene but every beat of it is perfect! Silver navigating his obsession with Flint, in the midst of everybody navigating their new relationships with each other in the new fragile and tentative anti-colonial alliance.

a question of needs (and not rosary beads) by @seventymilestobabylon

James/Thomas, pre-series

Still: James wants to talk. If Thomas means this to be—what it is, what it clearly is, then he should have the fucking decency to say something about it. He also, and intensely, wants the whole business to be transacted without any conversation, but he knows better than to hope for that. Thomas is not capable of it, that implicit understanding. Even when he kissed James—

Thomas’s thumb very light at the hinge of his jaw. He felt a thrill like fear, when it happened.

Even then, Thomas said, “All right?” when it was over, and would have said more, except that James nodded mutely, minutely, and stammered something incoherent that required his presence elsewhere. Thomas and Miranda both looked hideously understanding about it, and James considered—as he walked home through ill-lit streets and inhaled familiar smells of smoke and fish and tar and shit—simply climbing aboard one of the ships in harbor and never returning to London.

This is one of the few pre-series fics I’ve read that really digs into James and Thomas’s incompatibilities and differences and misunderstandings - and sets them against how badly they want each other, and want to understand each other, nonetheless. Don’t get me wrong, obviously 1705 is The Only Time James McGraw Was Ever Allowed To Be Happy (tm), and I’m extremely into reading about him and Thomas making each other happy! But also - it’s so interesting to explore James being so frightened of how he feels about Thomas that he can be unkind to him, and Thomas being so immersed in how he feels about James that he can be complacent and sometimes a little thoughtless about it. And this pulls all of those things apart so well.

you and i survived by youremyqueen / @deathnoting

Anne/Jack, Vane/Jack, pre-series

“She’s not mine. That isn’t—we aren’t—I mean to say, do you actually understand what love is, Captain?”

“Love is possession,” Vane tells him, with his usual unselfconscious melodrama. “Not only of women by men, but of men by women. The point of owning a woman is to see to it that she doesn’t own you.” He speaks as if he’s explaining some very basic and widely known conceit.

Jack winces. “What a viciously horrible perception.”

Vane rolls his eyes. “Christ’s sake. Don’t you ever get tired of acting like a fucking woman?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of acting like a fucking man?”

And couldn’t they unpack that remark for days?

The extremely funny author’s note “if someone had told me two months ago that i would write a fic that featured charles ‘only straight person in nassau’ vane as a main character, i would not have believed them” is also a summary of how I feel about this fic. WHO KNEW that on top of every other fucking thing I have to care about in this fandom, I also care a LOT about Jack and Anne and Charles fuckin Vane! A principled, terrifying, Aslan-transfigured-into-a-human nightmare of a man! This fic is so excellent and does such justice to all of them. Their triumvirate gets kind of supplanted by the Max-Anne-Jack situation from S2 onwards, and I always forget how nuanced and odd and interesting this three-way dynamic is when we first meet them. This story does such a good job at trying to explain what the fuck that dynamic is.

Katabasis by unheroics

James/Thomas, pre-series, canon-divergent AU

There were Flint’s men, one leaving the cabin, another ransacking a chest for treasures, another still turning to speak to Randall; the words exchanged escaped Flint, as all else did, once his gaze fell to the Englishman.

He knelt barefoot on the deck, and wore the undyed, colourless linen of prison or asylum garments. For a precarious second Flint could only think that his hands had had nary a mark upon them, five years ago, and now were as scarred as those of a gamekeeper or veneur. He looked nothing like the man whose presence haunted Flint’s dreams, always at the corner of the vision, always cold to the touch and bleeding from the eyes and mouth.

In all his careful planning, and all his mirthless revenge, Flint had never thought to anticipate a variable in place of a set value. The presence of other men about was like an anchor at his feet, dragging him underwater, but it was Alfred Hamilton’s blood on his hands that kept him immobile.

“Will you kill me?” said Thomas Hamilton, in a voice harsh from paregoric. His tone had a note of morbid, queer hope. “I could pay.”

To spare you, or kill you? It was excruciating to wonder.

One of the very first James/Thomas fics I read! And certainly one of the first fics I read that started to probe and pull apart the McGraw-Flint dichotomy, by literally dropping Thomas right in the middle of it. And while the actual end of S4 is, obviously, the greatest and most narratively and emotionally satisfying thing that has ever happened on television, and you can quote me on that - one thing we do never get in canon is Thomas in Nassau, and I love getting to read that here.

[fyrapartnersearch]

original, percy jackson, pokemon, avatar, skyrim, fallout ;

I’m AJ! I lost a couple partners in the holiday craze, which is totally fine! Now I’m lookin’ for some RPs to head into the new year. If we had something lined up and things fell off the wagon, no sweat, just message me again and we can get the ball rolling again! :)

  For original settings: apocalyptic (zombie, disease, extinction event, whatever), supernatural (fantasy, urban, sci-fi, literally anything). For fandom universes: Percy Jackson, Pokemon, Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Skyrim, and Fallout.

  Gonna run through my basic info and then onto the particulars. 💕

  ⥽ About Me ; ⥼

  • Name/Age ; AJ! 22! Finally!

  • Timezone ; CST! I don’t mind time differences, this is just so you know my general schedule.

  • Length ;  Depends on whether it’s novella or multi-paragraph. If m.para, around 3-5 minimum I guess? Novella would obviously be much longer.

  • Reply rate ; Varies depending on whether we’re doing multi-paragraph or novella. I can respond anywhere from every day to every other day or a few times a week to weekly depending on the writing style of the RP and my schedule.

  • OOC ;  I like getting to know my partners and sharing enthusiasm over our ideas and characters. Nothing hits quite like mutual investment! I like making playlists/pinboards/sending you videos or songs or memes that remind me of our characters!

  • Contact ; Strictly email for OOC and roleplay unless we’re using GDocs for the RP itself. You can find me at jackrabbitsonata@gmail.com.

  ⥽ On the lookout for ; ⥼

  • Doubling ; Not a deal-breaker!! I just prefer writing a cast of characters, so this is something that’s more of a bonus. Ideally we’ll double, but I’m down for writing just one character each. Let me know how ya feel about it!

  • Will only write MxM or FxF ; MxF’s not my cup of tea (I’m extremely picky with it, fellow gays u know how it is). If we’re writing a cast of characters then I’m fine with having an MxF side couple. And I STRICTLY write OCxOC! Canon characters won't be found anywhere near this stuff, folks!

  • 20+ ; Partner’s gotta be 20+ even if we don’t write anything explicitly adult! I’m outta my teens now and don’t have any interest in writing with them. Same goes for characters. It’s a 20+ zone for both partners and characters ‘round here, folks!

  ⥽ Yes! ; ⥼

  • Smut ;  I enjoy writing it, but it’s not a deal-breaker if you’d rather fade to black.  All characters will obviously be adults. I expect versatile characters in bed by default, that way we’ve got an even route for playing roles in bed. Admittedly this shifts a bit depending on the character I write but for the most part, yeah, I stick to verses.

  • Face claims ; Spent a huge chunk of my roleplaying years on tumblr (it was very over-the-top and flowery and weirdly formatted and grossly difficult to read, I know I know), so having a face for characters stuck with me. If you don’t have any of your own and want good resources to find a face, I’ve got some recommended sites I can throw at ya! Not a deal-breaker, though, and for certain fandoms (Pokemon, Avatar) I actually prefer not to use realistic face claims so we can just opt outta that when writing in these universes.

  • Depth & growth ; Not a fan of one-dimensional characters or characters who act the same from beginning to end! People change with experiences and the people around them, so this is to be expected. ESPECIALLY when doubling with a cast. I loooove complicated characters growing together.

  • Plotting & Worldbuilding ;  *For original settings/worlds! I’m not picky with this if we’re working with a canon setting, so if that’s what you’re looking for, we can skip this section. I run into loooads of folks who say they do this when they really don’t. We’re writing an entire world together, so there’s some degree of effort involved! I need specifics to use as a start-off point for the roleplay and a general outline for where the story’s going. RPs that are just random, spur of the moment with writing as we go on tend to burn out REALLY quickly for me. I know not a lot of people are into this, so I’m sorry about that.

  ⥽ No! ; ⥼

  • Single paragraphs ; I’m not too picky with a lot of length a lot of the time, I just don’t mesh well with people who don’t write more than that. Go ham. I like my responses meaty!

  • Limits ; Abuse, nonconsensual/sexual assault, pedophilia, incest (includes step-relations, adopted relations, and that figurative like if one character essentially raised another or they were raised as family), weird age gaps, BDSM, any kind of master/slave or dom/sub dynamics.

  As for the goods, I’ve laid ‘em all out for you here! Keep in mind that while all of these are fun on their own, I’m definitely the type of writer who’s into mixing and matching. Sci-fi apocalypse? Fantasy apocalypse? Fantasy supernatural stuff? Sci-fi fantasy? Sci-fi supernatural stuff? Supernatural apocalypse? Period settings? Literally whatever you could think of, I’ll give it a whirl. The particulars down below are just to get the ball rolling and catch some interest, some asterisks for current cravings but I’m soooooo honest when I say that I’d love to write anything down below and won’t shoot you down if you come at me with stuff. Hit me up with whatever you’d like!

    APOCALYPSE: My bread and butter! Bro. I’m all about the tense, harrowing, and especially gut-punching when it comes to how close people become to survive together in quiet moments of a world they used to know. I’m a big fan of zombies, so that’s my loose preference. I loved Black Summer on Netflix – the earlier episodes, at least, as well as The Last of Us. That’s the kind of vibe I favor with zombies/zombie-like creatures. But, ofc, an apocalypse can be anything! I love writing different takes on the genre since there’s so much to cover. Extinction event, pandemic, impact event, monsters/beasts, man-made, whatever. The more creative the apocalyptic setting, the better, so I’d love to bounce some ideas back and forth. Not too into a nuclear apocalypse setting, since that overlaps a lot with Fallout down below. I’ve also had some ideas of a futuristic/sci-fi apocalypse that I’d love to tell you all about if you’re interested!

  FANTASY***: High fantasy, low fantasy, medieval fantasy, urban fantasy, whatever. Love dragons, love magic, love weird fantasy flora, definitely love the classic prince/princess x knight or commoner schtick. You want prophecies? I’m game. You want elves? I’m game. You want steampunk? I’m game. You want none of that and wanna do something else? I’m game, baby. The possibilities are endless. I’ve had two particular ideas floatin’ around in my noggin lately: an apocalyptic-fantasy that takes place in a medieval fantasy realm wherein an ancient curse/plague erupts across the land with horrifying zombie-esque symptoms (obv with more fantasy elements than just that) that involves a quest to try and awaken a god or two OR some magic journey to the heart of it all and out and end to it, and a modern fantasy involving a run-down summer camp secluded deep in the woods. Two new counselors (our characters) start working there over the summer and things slowly unravel from there, either with faerie stuff involving replacing campers/staff (definitely aiming for the freaky horror faeries as opposed to like, beautiful or only slightly unnerving faeries) or the camp being run by a secret cult that sacrifices campers/staff.

  SUPERNATURAL/PARANORMAL***: Vampires and werewolves and demons, oh my! Can’t go wrong with horror, especially can’t go wrong with comedy-horror. I’m more of the type to prefer humans and supernatural beings together in a ragtag duo type of way as opposed to two supernatural beings, but anything’s cool in my book. Medieval/fantasy setting for a dark fairytale vibe, urban/modern supernatural beings slinking in the shadows outside of the human eye, supernatural sci-fi stuff, mysteries and danger lurking around every corner? Seriously, it’s a great genre! Any and everything is fantastic. I’ve got a loose concept of demons/the Underworld I’d like to get into revolving around a human accidentally summoning a demon or making a really poor deal with a demon and the eventual threat of the opposite effect (humans who work with angels/angels who clean up demonic stuff) since I’m struggling with the worldbuilding of it, so applying all that to a roleplay to give it a whirl sounds like a great way to work out the kinks. Plus, c’mon. Paranormal romance. End of the world. Flipping the script on angels and demons with the demons being “good” and the angels being “bad” but really there’s more nuance to that since they’re two sides of the same coin. What’s not to love there? I’m a sucker for human/demon relationships and/or human/angel relationships, what can I say!

  PERCY JACKSON*****: I haven’t ever roleplaying this verse before, so this is completely new grounds for me. I’ve seen some fun takes on it, though! Scoured older ads but haven’t reached out to anyone because the posting time’s pretty old, but a couple ideas I’ve skimmed through sound fun. HP got a period take on it, so why not put that spin on PJ with a period setting rather than in modern times? Or just a regular modern setting. Y’know, keep it classy, keep it sexy, keep it fun! I’m definitely interested in life outside of camp since they’d all be adults. Life’s supposed to suck for demigods, so let’s get into that. I’ve only read the first series but I’m game to read more or look over the Wikipedia if it suits your fancy! I’m REALLY looking for a PJ RP, seriously, message me.

  POKEMON: Man, I just… miss Pokemon, dude, what else can I say? :( I miss fun adventures and goofy scenarios and taking a more serious or realistic route with threats. I’ve got a couple of ideas from heists to evil Elite Four members to Poke-Jurassic Park, but I’d love to hear anything you’ve got in mind!

  AVATAR*****: Alright, not gonna beat around the bush, I had a killer post-Korra RP setting like a year ago that died off early on and now I’m kinda itching to put it back into action! Basically this whole thing just revolves around our own Avatar and world/conflicts. Something before Aang could be fun too? Or a couple Avatars past Korra? There’s so many routes we could take this! And so many things we could bring in! I had an Avatar marathon with my brother this weekend and I just miss this universe. I’ve never actually managed to RP it before, so I wanna remedy that!

  FALLOUT***: Played 3, watched various playthroughs of New Vegas, 4, and working on 1+2! I’m a recent fan and I’ve fallen head over heels for it! I’ve got ten prepped OCs for this universe so feel free to take your pic once we get into contact! :D I think it could be fun if we make our own setting for this, but I’m so down for piggybacking off canon settings. I love the Mojave in particular, but everything’s cool in my book. I’ve also got a couple plot ideas, so I can tell you all about ‘em when we get into things!

  SKYRIM***: Well I’m a new Fallout fan so it should come to NO surprise that I’m new to Skyrim too. I recently got into it after someone recommended it to me and I’m having a blast playing the game on the Switch! I don’t have any particular ideas but I’d love to dip into the water here and see what comes of it. I’ve got a couple character ideas already so if I manage to rope anyone into this universe I’ll be one happy camper.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

@thecicadasong yeah i havent actually had like, Anons trying to get fresh w/ me about what i Should be drawing (i think ive gotten anon hate like, twice? once for passing along a tweet abt respecting homeless people, another time i have No idea why they were trying to roast me but they were also...weirdly bad at it) but the very rare occasions someone’s tried to tell me i should be drawing different stuff for whatever reason Stick With Me b/c i’m often still steamed abt shit that mightve happened years back but it was THAT annoying lmfao & i reaaally hate when ppl get patronizing &/or when i can tell they’re acting like whatever angle they’re taking is going over my head or they think i’m clueless & i can’t even tell they see me that way lol and i’m like, oh my god i mean it doesn’t make me concerned if i Only Appreciate Boys b/c they’re mostly who i draw b/c yknow......my drawing corner is some rando over here just entertaining myself & Xpressing myself. and a real limited amt of my Interests = the ones im able/interested enough in to draw, & then i tend to wanna draw them a million times lmao....it’s not necessarily the One Unfiltered Reflection of all my interests and all the characters i like, cuz it’s not the only way i think abt shit and express things, & if somebody thinks that my Portfolio not being >50% Girls means that it’s b/c i’ve totally hated girls all along.....that’d be their prerogative i guess. also good lord but that’d be a bad litmus test anyways like.......alllll the misogynist dude artists who draw plenty of ~female characters~ like Yikes City ahhhhh god thats such a fucking cursed realm like. the people so sexist they should be banned from depicting girls and women in any medium. and banned in general God Anyways And Yeah like. the terrible relationships thing too.........like really, this is what you think is appealing???? its too clear sometimes when some man writing this kind of stuff has NO real idea how to think of a woman as an actual person and if they’re trying to write from that perspective it’s like “oh, let’s throw in a ‘smh boys are so stupid and sexist’ thought to realistically depict what it must be like to experience misogyny” and “something about a bra idk” and then call it a day, and if they’re trying to write Romance it’s just like....this Incredible Love that’s truly out of nowhere and they never bother explaining what sustains this, or they decide that the reason bitches liked pride & prejudice is totally because she thought he was a jerk and they fought but then it was like wait nvm we’re in love, right?? and they make that into like, some dude being able to be a total asshole and a really detrimental force in some girl’s life and somehow this Intensity can just be translated into Romantic Intensity no problem, it’s fine that like, they’re not even friends and who knows how to believe they can just get along in regular life and the guy is probably super disrespectful and diminishes her but whatever its fine All Of This And More.....there are so many terrible and annoying ways they do m/f relationships and it’s Really easy to just make it decently written!!! i mean of course sometimes there’s m/f ships that i think are tolerably written and i don’t hate it but also don’t particularly care one way or another but a small / hetero-leaning fandom will like Never Shut Up About It and it’s like ok please shut up about it......i mean really i definitely don’t ever go into any new piece of media expecting to give a shit about any Guy Girl couple. it was a pleasant but total surprise that i really like jeremy/christine (which is not me disavowing the nb lesbian jeremy hc by any means lol) and it was NOT complicated why!!! really in fact a couple of the biggest reasons i found it Especially Good is like, ten seconds in total lmao and it’s “jeremy and christine cracking up by squawking at each other on the couch” and “jeremy doing that Ecstatic Stimming Twirl after kissing christine for 0.003 seconds” lmao.....like!!!! consider showing that the characters can actually have genuine fun interacting with each other for longer than five seconds!!!! give us a single reason why they’d be drawn to each other As People!!! it’s notttt thaaaat harrrrrd aaaaaaaaaA THE WEIRD CHARACTERS yeah i love a true Quirky character and not in the like.....bad clichéd quirky way but like. just someone who’s weird!! the nerdy awkward guys who manifest this by like....maybe being a tiny bit socially clumsy are like, boring and whatever a dime a dozen. but when people are funky and in a sort of fun way and it’s genuinely part of how they interact with others....it’s real relatable lmao i don’t have any very Weird Persona at this point but back in the day i did a bit moreso b/c like, firstly interacting w ppl tended to make me Nervous so it’s like ah hell i’ll do a bit. and then also there’s the classic “well i have this Weirdness abt me that i can’t turn off that ppl seem to dislike, so i’ll put on this extra layer of weirdness that i can try to be vaguely entertaining with.” and then you aren’t popular at all still lol but at least you’ve got your niche amongst whoever does actually like you.....Weird Quirky Guys characters are fun and like, it’s funny that nato of the black suits is Like That in terms of being a lil weirdo who just kind of does his thing in his corner and might Say Something About Anything Apropos Of Nothing as his conversational style and he’s apparently that superlative student type but doesnt seem to actually give a shit and just has his specific interest and depression.......it’s like oh jeez!!! relatable lmao!!! everyone who has a kind of Veneer of communicating a bit erratically and maybe just always throwing out random shit when interacting with others to hope something sticks......but also the strangeness doesn’t even have to be at all performative b/c it’s rarer but super fun when there’s characters who do have that kind of more inherent weirdness that they can’t turn off that really puts people off despite like....them not really doing anything lol....now THAT’S what i call A Timeless Mood it’s funny lmao like i totally have clear Character Types and i always go for those ppl on the same general wavelength as me but it can be a bit Unpredictable and nuanced which ones will actually be adopted into the faves category......like naturally i go for the un-cool passionate excitable types but if someone’s real like, mad energetic or demanding/loud im like oops you lost me. i like people who like to / want to Socialize / have relationships but sometimes if they’re too outgoing / have that natural success at it all / are obv free of anxiety im like, again, you’ve lost me. you truly never know!! only the Most relatable can survive!! one that might seem like they should be a fave on paper might super annoy me lol or just generate Zero interest.......it’s nice to be surprised by which characters really strike a chord lol