#salters cannot be reasoned with

[plumsaffron]

Man I remember a tumblr user named ozmav allegedly started the Mari/bat ship which then spiraled outta control by the mentally deficient rabid salters since 2019. Checking online, ozmav’s accounts are inactive since 2021? Guess that person realized the negative attention they’ve received and completely jetted, leaving the tunnelvisioned brainwashed miracubitches to take the criticism and heat from the sane minded. Um bitch, what do you think would happen when you create a nonsensical ship within an unstable community? Not to victim blame or anything but I bet they were not predicting how bad the salters would get later on.

Since early 2021, I’m a recovering victim from the immense stupidity and closed-mindedness of the miracusalters like some people here. I’m thankful that there were some rational smart folks contradicting the stupid rabid fandoms otherwise I’d be stuck for a long ass time, being very mentally messed up by the salters’ lies and misinformation.

#ml salt survivor #surviving the stupid salters #salter survivor #i survived the ml salt fandom! #ml salt is a cult #ml salt is legitimately stupid #ml salt is for dumbasses #ml salt is for stupid people #ml salt causes brain rot #ml salt is toxic #toxic ml salt #salters cannot be reasoned with #ml salters are fragile little shits #salters be allergic to criticism

Pfft! These tags are joke tags! But you can go ahead and use them plum! Though I literally just saw your reblog of ppl dead ass comparing a deceased rl war criminal to Lila which is stupid! Reminded me of stupid ass bitches comparing bad or controversial musicians to actual criminals years ago… it’s like these people forgot that categories exist for a reason.

Though seeing the toxic Xover hetero ships like that on AO3, Wattpad and FFN dead ass makes me embarrassed as a heterosexual person. Anyone else feeling like they’d want to commit hetero erasure on themselves and even purge their own content of canon or fanon wholesome healthy het ships? Sigh* And some miracubozos claim to be lgbt+ open minded folks yet I’d sometimes keep on seeing the “evil cishet” characters like Lila or the occasional brainwashed follower of hers in their fics. Ngl, thought that was pronounced “ci-shet” or “cis-shet” instead of “cis-het.”

Very well then. I’ll include them tags.

*Sighs*. Stupid people will make absurd comparisons about anything.

Heh miracubozos claims. Sort of reminds me of when they say in tags that the character(s) deserves better but what they say doesn’t better things, it just makes it worse or puts them down (while ironically not liking this other character being put down similarly in various degrees canonically).

Or one that claims to be fan or defender of the character(s) but will say somethings without thinking carefully in an already polluted environment while ignoring they are giving the polluters more ammo against who they are a fan of.

I wish more sane peeps were here.

Salt is probably a cult (especially when a loser or reblogger or drones can say some manure end up getting over 150-300 notes at least)

Welp. That alleged thing though reminds me a lot about this clip

[woman-respecter]

https://www.tumblr.com/woman-respecter/779296509867032576/why-is-all-the-neopronouns-anime-fans-who-are-the?source=share

"#stop doing that shit to my girl jalter" I love how this could refference either his BDSM noncon shit with her and salter, his regular malegaze gooner shit, or him making her read communist "theory" lmfao 😭

"hentai addicted tankies" Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down? This tittle alone also includes the maoist transfem who thinks all humans have DID and that watching Ghibli films is morally and politically worse than jerking off to actual gore (Never ask her how young did Zeo Dong like his "women" btw), the white american native transmasc who deffends both AI "Art" and MahoAko, the barely not full-on porn openly loli "noncon" BDSM magical GIRLS anime (These things have no connection nor reason to solicit worry we promise!) or the brazilian transfem who has been ban evading over 10 times for suibaited amongst the antisemitism and rebloging dubiosly legal asian porn 😵‍💫

PD: tezuka is 100% a channer lolicon in denial. Not only for her deranged transphobic and misogynist rants against cis women and transmascs barely leaning on rape threats, but Katawa Shoujo is literally THE 4chan VN about fetishizing disabled high schoolers, and the redhead without arms is lore wise the most helpless and young looking one of the cast

yeah i was referring to the jalter salter bdsm 😭 like how are people taking the political opinions of a man who draws that shit seriously? why is bidoof’s law only applied to right wingers?

i somehow am not familiar with the rest of the people you are referring to…maybe i have seen them but didn’t know this specific info lol. real great lot huh.

and yes i unfortunately have played that vn when i was a teen looking for free vns and i am ashamed of that fact…it was so gross and exploitative. cannot imagine someone openly being a fan of. and i had been thinking of making a post about tankies like rin’s pattern of disgusting behavior towards transmascs (and how the people who make their entire online presence about advocating for and protecting their fellow transmascs largely ignore that behavior in favor of yelling at trans inclusive cis feminists who care a little too much about women’s rights for their comfort) but i chickened out bc i knew it would piss off so many parties lol

[sysmedsaresexist]

I don’t know how to explain to you that abuse victims are also capable of believing and perpetuating harmful and bigoted conspiracies and it doesn’t make their abuse fake and it also doesn’t make it super fine and cool for them to do that. Abuse is not a permission slip to perpetuate systemic violence.

Also, you’re a narc abuse supporter too, right? Because no one is allowed to critique the terminology used by survivors for any reason and if you do you’re fake claiming?

Mod Quill here alongside Mod Dude, because your ask is so off the wall confusing to me upon reading Dude's draft that I couldn't resist chiming in.

First, let's address the second part: Narc abuse is not only not part of this conversation, nor any amount of relevant to the antisemitism that Jewish individuals face, but also is simply you trying to obfuscate from the point you're failing to make. As someone who has struggled to unlearn ableism about narcissism, as someone who has had to unpack internalized trauma about pride, love, and "selfishness," I'm fucking offended that you brought this up as some sort of gotcha about JEWISH PEOPLE.

It's completely out of line to bring an unrelated topic into this. You're reaching at this point, flailing around and spouting bullshit to change topics because you've got nothing tangible to back your claims. Now you just want me to look bad because that's your last hope to walk away with any credibility.

I find it far more ableist to use narcissism and the ableism directed at both survivors of abuse and those with narcissistic personality disorder as a gotcha about RAMCOA. Narcissistic people are not your weapon in syscourse to be used.

Ugh. Okay. Now that that particular bit of disgusting drivel is addressed, let's get to all the rest.

By "abuse victims," I'm assuming you're referring to svali, based on the conversation being had on this blog. Pray tell, what do you believe she's doing and perpetuating? What systemic violence is she enacting? If her story is true, she has every right to say all the things she's saying, doesn't she? Where are we drawing the lines between sharing their story and systematic violence?

More importantly, and to the point here. Can Miller be connected to Svali's more "out there" claims? When was even the last time Miller quoted Svali? 2018? That's seven years ago. What did we know about Svali at that time, 7 years ago?

I'm not disagreeing with you; any community member can fall prey to harmful beliefs and conspiracies, regardless of what history they have. You are not immune to propaganda, etc etc..

You're right.

This is exactly what you are doing.

You are perpetuating a conspiracy about RAMCOA without any sources that actually discuss these topics. You cannot sit there and scream that every person who disagrees with you must be antisemetic -- or even worse, as some people are doing, suggesting that Jewish people who aren't following the Hate-Wagon are "token Jews." You do realize the mods include Jewish individuals? We're not simply talking out our asses, we are talking from a place of research and anti-bullshit.

Sadly, you are FULL of bullshit, so we are anti-you at the moment.

I can critique your logic on this topic without it coming from a place of bigotry. I am so, so tired of this discussion. The term RAMCOA was changed to OEA because of this bullshit discussion topic -- almost like the ISSTD did exactly what you all have been shouting about, addressing the (non)issue and trying to move away from the allegations of antisemitism.

When did that change occur? Oh, 5 years ago? Five fucking years ago? Five years of you all being able to access the resources, like Salter talking about the terms falling out of favor and needing to change? Or are we going with the idea that they did this for evil, bad reasons because they're secretly evil and bad, or maybe that the Gray Faction is the reason why the name change happened, like they've been pushing?

For fucks sakes. If you aren't going to give us something to debunk, then just go away.

~~~

Mod Signal here, popping in to advise that yeah!! Abuse survivors can absolutely be full of bigoted opinions and misconceptions. There are all sorts of horrifying campaigns out there whose express purpose is utilizing the fears of the marginalized, turning them against each other. These movements often outwardly claim to support a group of people only to have their own sordid, horrifying histories with that group.

To the point that when those campaigns get into hot water, their go-to lawyers are ones who are infamous for defending white supremacists and conspiracy theorists.

You know. The thing they were trying to get you to call other marginalized people, with the express purpose of systemically erasing them.

... Cough.

Anyway, as the Jewish Mod(TM), I'm declaring that you should probably keep accusations of antisemitism out of your fucking mouth while you yourself tokenize and patronize us just to try and kick a different group of systemically ignored people down the stairs.

The satanic panic was a bullshit period of time. OEA was a good-ass name change in my personal opinion. It's more accurate and it protects survivors against shitheads like you.

[luxe-pauvre]

I sat reading James Salter - "We cannot imagine these diseases, they are called idiopathic, spontaneous in origin, but we know instinctively there must be something more, some invisible weakness they are exploiting. It is impossible to think they fall at random, it is unbearable to think it” - and I found myself nodding in recognition. Whether it was pure chance or not, it sucked. It's a familiar pattern of thought. Luck surrounds us, everywhere - from something as mundane as walking to work and getting there safely to the other extreme, like surviving a war or a terrorist attack when others mere inches away weren't as fortunate. But we only notice it when things don't go our way. We don't often question the role of chance in the moments it protects us from others and ourselves. When chance is on our side, we disregard it: it is invisible. But when it breaks against us, we wake to its power. We begin to reason about its whys and hows.

Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff

[grandhotelabyss]

What's your opinion on MFA writing programs? Not a very favorable one, I suspect. I'm not living in the States now, but it seems to me the Iowa Writers' Workshop doesn't enjoy quite the same reputation it did when luminaries like Cheever and Salter taught there. Am I right?

The network it makes available is still the only way into the husk that remains of literary publishing. (Note how all the tributes and elegies to Louise Glück are from her former students or colleagues; I may be the only "common reader," and I am just a common reader when it comes to poetry, who has written anything about her.) But as literary publishing has lost prestige, so has the program. I didn't get an MFA, so I can't comment on the quality of the pedagogy. I'm sure everyone is trying their best. Obviously, however, the whole idea seems misconceived from the start, and not only because of the CIA seed money.

In reducing art either to craft or to psychology, the MFA has made fiction into a set of routinized procedures (show don't tell) and a form of group therapy (find your voice). You do have to learn techniques, but techniques alone cannot create great art, and the very greatest art has often been careless of technique. And individuation is part of the writerly vocation, but you're not finding your voice per se; you're finding a much larger, much more agonized and conflicted thing, which is the whole of your sensibility. If you want to write more than one book, this had better contain a veritable pandemonium of voices.

Such an education keeps you, almost as if it were calculated to do so, from the only true literary education: an encounter with the best literary works of the past, with the main line of the tradition. (There are non-literary educations that will also shape you as a writer, both in life and in school, everything from what you learn as a person in the world to what you learn as a student in physics class or history class, but those aren't my concern here.) The purpose of this encounter is not to make you slavishly worship literary tradition, but to enable you to transform it, even to escape it, intelligently; if you don't know your tradition, you are the one who will only be repeating it. But no, we have taken Hemingway's canny modernist streamlining of a vast corpus he had tenderly internalized—he did this for a good reason: a chivalric kitsch version of the canon had been used as propaganda to lead a whole generation of young men to their slaughter—and we have made an idol and a fetish of it, so that educated people today can no longer appreciate, perhaps can no longer even comprehend, a complex periodic sentence. I hold the MFA partly responsible for this decline in the general intelligence.

Meanwhile, the academic setting of the MFA turns the literary enterprise into a game of social oneupmanship, the pettiest form of competition. In the same way that runners and swimmers say you'll only make your best time if you race the clock rather than your competitors, you should be writing with and against Shakespeare, Austen, Woolf, and Faulkner, not some random matriculates on either side of you, themselves as stupid as you are, in a cramped and sweaty seminar room. Such environments—small groups full of young people either trying to be nice to one another or, more likely, trying to be cruel to one another in subliminal and deniable ways—also encourage the ideological herding we've seen in recent years. This helps to account for the vaguely "Soviet" feel of contemporary mainstream fiction: its endless promotion in book after book of the same collectivist ideological pieties, its implicit disparagement of strong imagination, unless this take the form of tediously allegorical fantasy.

In general, MFA fiction feels both overworked and underthought, the product of much tinkering but little experience (personal or mental), a filigreed little balsa wood figurine, and nowadays moreover inevitably carved into the shape of our age's political idols. To quote the old headline the malicious LRB editors slapped onto Elif Batuman's 13-year-old essay, whose arguments I have rehearsed above: "Get a real degree."

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Wilfred Owen: the man not the memorial

All a poet can do today is warn.

- 2nd Lieutenant Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (1893-1918)

The body of Wilfred Owen’s work is generally regarded as a memorial to the atrocities of war. Often heralded as one of the finest poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen has become a symbol to many of 1914-1918 encapsulating a sense of futility (the title one of his more famous poems), anger, and despair at the suffering endured by the soldiers during the Great War, or indeed any war before and after.

Poems like ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ convey the intense futility of it all, for “what passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”, whilst he evokes the disturbing psychological impact of the fighting in works like ‘Mental Cases’ where “these are the men whose minds the Dead have ravaged”. The canonisation of such works has preserved Owen as a symbol of the First World War and a reminder of its horrors.

This is not without challenge of course. Owen’s was only one voice representing one point of view and cannot be seen to capture the myriad of views and feelings of all the combatants and his generation, but at the same time that is not sufficient reason to dismiss his work as irrelevant to the study of the War.

More interesting to me is the feeling that Owen’s poetic legacy has put aside the man that was Wilfred Owen. Every schoolchild knows at least one of his poems but know very litte of his life as a man and as a soldier. It is easy to forget that he too was a flesh and blood man fighting in the trenches, with his own hopes and fears, uncertainties and complexities.

Born in 1893, Owen was teaching English to children near Bordeaux, France, when war broke out in the summer of 1914. The following year, he returned to England and enlisted in the war effort. On 21 October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles Officers' Training Corps. For the next seven months, he trained at Hare Hall Camp in Essex. On 4 June 1916 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant (on probation) in The Manchester Regiment. By January 1916 he was on the front lines in France. As he wrote in 1918, his motives for enlisting were twofold, and included his desire to write of the experience of war: “I came out in order to help these boys - directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can.”

On April 1, 1917, near the town of St. Quentin, Owen led his platoon through an artillery barrage to the German trenches, only to discover when they arrived that the enemy had already withdrawn. Severely shaken and disoriented by the bombardment, Owen barely avoided being hit by an exploding shell, and returned to his base camp confused and stammering.

A doctor diagnosed shell-shock, a new term used to describe the physical and/or psychological damage suffered by soldiers in combat. Though his commanding officer was skeptical, Owen was sent to a French hospital and subsequently returned to Britain, where he was checked into the Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers in Scotland in 1917. There he was officially diagnosed as suffering from neurasthenia (‘shell-shock’). 

It was there he famously met Siegfried Sassoon and his poetry took on a new direction and life. Owen spent the first part of 1918 in England training and recuperating. He did a short spell working as a teacher in nearby Tynecastle High School, he returned to light regimental duties. In March 1918, he was posted to the Northern Command Depot at Ripon. A number of poems were composed in Ripon, including "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". His 25th birthday was spent quietly in Ripon Cathedral.

In recent years much work has been done to restore Owen’s humanity, most notably Dominic Hibberd’s 2002 work Wilfred Owen: A New Biography, which, whilst clearing up other details of Owen’s life, confirms that he was gay. On one level that shouldn’t matter. But interestingly facts like this could cast some of his poetry in a new light, with particular regard to the vivid and sometimes shocking sensuality and even excitement that is undoubtedly present in poems like ‘The Sentry’, where “thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping/ And splashing in the flood, deluging muck”. An idea of the attractiveness and lure of war could possibly develop from this interpretation, particularly as Owen, like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, returned to the front line after absence.

Indeed whilst Owen's work rises above that of many contemporary poets, the circumstances surrounding his death at such a young age (25), and the news of his death, has added to the powerful emotions that surround Owen. Rejecting offers by his friends to pull strings and arrange for him to sit out the rest of the war Owen chose to return to the front to help the men he felt he had left behind. Owen’s battalion was part of the spearhead used to break the final German defensive line after a series of Allied advances following success at Amiens in August 1918. On 1 October 1918, Owen led units of the Second Manchester's to storm a number of enemy strong points near the village of Joncourt. For his courage and leadership in this action, he was awarded the Military Cross.

Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice which ended the war, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. A key problem was to overcome the Sambre canal defences and gain the Eastern bank, and on 4th November at 5.45am Owen was involved in the attempt to cross. The exact details of that morning are hazy, and all that is known is that Owen was seen leading and encouraging his men in the early part of the struggle, but was killed, possibly as he crossed the water on a raft, sometime between 6 and 8.00am. Famously the telegram notifying his family of his death arrived mid-day on November 11th as the celebrations around the Armistice rang out.

These are facts known to all of us. But what I found really eye opening was going to the place where he spent his last night before his death. It puts a different perspective on Wilfred Owen, not the poet, but the man and the officer who cared deeply for his men under his command.

Owen and his platoon had spent the previous night in the cellar of a Forester’s House in the wood outside Ors. Ors is mere two hours’ drive from Calais in the Nord-Pas de Calais region. It’s a small village and if you walk across the canal you can church bells tolling. To right and left the countryside resembles a French Impressionist painting. The waterway is lined with tall, leafy Poplar trees; there are meadows full of cattle, the hills beyond roll into the distance - an idyllic scene, glowing in the spring sunlight. It’s hard to conceive of the ghastly sights, sounds and smells that once shattered this tranquil landscape.

When I was driving with friends around there we visited key sites that marked the First World War. When we got to Ors we came across Forester’s House, now a memorial to Wilfred Owen. We were told by that by some villagers that a great number of British visitors came looking for Owen’s grave and the exact spot where he had been killed, and asking to visit the cellar of the Forester’s house. And so a grassroots campaign amongst locals began to raise funds to commemorate Wilfred Owen properly. British artist Simon Patterson along with French architect Jean-Christophe Denise took seven years to design a suitable memorial - by re-designing the building into a place for reflection and meditation - which eventually opened in 2011.

The tiny cellar remains bare and untouched, but the 18th century house above has been transformed into a 21st century sculptural object, its entire brick facade painted stark white to resemble bleached bone, the original roof encased and glazed to form a face-down open book. The gutted interior is now a sanctuary, lined by translucent glass panels, each etched with fragments of original text from Wilfred Owen’s best-known and much-loved works, complete with his corrections, scribbles and crossings-out. The drafts bear testament to the poet’s struggle with the barbaric absurdity of war: “My subject is War, and the pity of War.” Included are lines from Dulce et Decorum Est, Anthem for Doomed Youth, The Dead Beat, Strange Meeting, and Spring Offensive; each poem backlit by waves of coloured lights activated by the recorded voice of actor Kenneth Branagh playing inside the room. Branagh’s stirring readings pitch the poems across the open space. They rise and fall from the walls and reverberate around the roof lights, before flowing out into the l’Évêque forest beyond.

It’s an impressive memorial and a powerful place, made all the more effective by being so simple. Unlike other war museums, there are no artefacts, no tanks, no weapons or uniforms. It was created as: “a quiet place that is suitable for reflection and the contemplation of poetry,” gently glorifying the art that has come out of the chaos and tragedy of war.

It’s all the more remarkable that the local French took the initiative because Owen was pretty much unknown in France - but today his poetry has been translated into French for schoolchildren to learn and reflect upon the pity of war.

We visited the cellar and I tried to imagine what Owen’s last night was like. I could empathise from my own experience of the battlefield out in Afghanistan waiting to leave on a night time or day time mission in my helicopter. As any soldier will tell you,  everyone has their own coping mechanism to deal with the pre-mission nerves and unspoken anxieties. Some hide it better than others. I tried to imagine Wilfred Owen’s state of mind.

Thankfully we can have a good idea because he wrote a letter. Billeted in the cramped, smoke-filled cellar of a forester’s house in woods near Ors in late October 1918, Owen took time to write to his mother. His mother was to receive his letter on 11 November, 1918, the day the Armistice was declared, along with a telegram informing Susan and Tom Owen that their beloved son had died in action seven days earlier. The words of that last letter home are carved now into the stone wall of a curved walkway that leads to the brick-lined cellar of the forester’s house.

Entering the cellar, you are struck by how crowded it must have been that night when 29 soldiers were holed up here, smoking like chimneys.  As you begin to absorb the surrounding a recording begins of Kenneth Branagh reading Owen’s last letter to his mother.  It is observant, amusing - and deeply moving. Owen’s letter was designed to reassure his mother, saying nothing about the impending attack, but instead poking fun at his comrades that he cared deeply about.

To Susan Owen
Thurs. 31 October [1918] 6:15 p.m. [2nd Manchester Regt.]

Dearest Mother,

I will call the place from which I’m now writing ‘The Smoky Cellar of the Forester’s House’. I write on the first sheet of the writing pad which came in the parcel yesterday. Luckily the parcel was small, as it reached me just before we moved off to the line. Thus only the paraffin was unwelcome in my pack.  My servant & I ate the chocolate in the cold middle of last night, crouched under a draughty Tamboo, roofed with planks. I husband the Malted Milk for tonight,  & tomorrow night. The handkerchief & socks are most opportune, as the ground is marshy, & I have a slight cold!

So thick is the smoke in this cellar that I can hardly see by a candle 12 ins. away, and so thick are the inmates that I can hardly write for pokes, nudges & jolts. On my left the Company Commander snores on a bench: other officers repose on wire beds behind me.  At my right hand, Kellett, a delightful servant of A Company in The Old Days radiates joy & contentment from pink cheeks and baby eyes. He laughs with a signaller, to whose left ear is glued the Receiver; but whose eyes rolling with gaiety show that he is listening with his right ear to a merry corporal, who appears at this distance away (some three feet) nothing [but] a gleam of white teeth & a wheeze of jokes.

Splashing my hand, an old soldier with a walrus moustache peels & drops potatoes into the pot. By him, Keyes, my cook, chops wood; another feeds the smoke with the damp wood.

It is a great life. I am more oblivious than alas! yourself, dear Mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside, & the hollow crashing of the shells. There is no danger down here, or if any, it will be well over before you read these lines.

I hope you are as warm as I am; as serene in your room as I am here; and that you think of me never in bed as resignedly as I think of you always in bed. Of this I am certain you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here.

Ever Wilfred x

At dawn on 4th November 1918, the bodies of hundreds of soldiers littered these fields. Bludgeoned, blinded, blown to smithereens, their hopes and dreams ended in the first minutes of brutal engagement as they floundered through a blasted land, thick with mud, blood and the gory detritus of war. They lost their lives horribly in a futile attempt to claim a few extra inches on the map of Europe at a time when both sides knew the First World War was over, and to carry on fighting was a cynical, cruel waste of time and the lives of men wanting to go home alive to their loved ones.

After the action, shocked survivors found a pair of standing bodies - an English Tommy and a German Fritz - welded face-to-face in death by the impact of their bayonet charge. On that day, England lost more than its fair share of brave men. In their midst lay a poetic genius whose compassionate and skilful writing still stirs the souls and breaks the hearts of millions of readers almost a hundred years after his death. After all these years, Wilfred Owen’s bleak words: “I am the enemy you killed, my friend,” continue to carry across borders and speak to nations about the foolishness of war - its horror, grief and waste - and the terrible impact warfare still has on the world today. Second Lieutenant Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC now lies alongside 30 of his fellow soldiers buried beneath pristine rows of crisp white headstones inside the compact War Graves Commission Cemetery at Ors.

Any doubts of Wilfred Owen’s incredible bravery arising from his mental breakdown in 1917 can be quickly dispelled by his decision to go back to France. It is this little detail that is so often overlooked that truly lends pathos to the war poetry of Wilfred Owen. This is central to Owen’s complex identity that is lost by the reductive perspective of him as this mythic anti-war herald, and not as a man of immense sacrificial courage and an unspoken sense of personal duty to others.

Owen is not the only poet of the war era to suffer this arguable ‘dehumanisation’. Of course it is important to recognise what these figures reveal about war and its impact, but we must not lose sight of the men behind the symbols and thereby rob them of their humanity and thus their very human sacrifice. When we remember those who have lost their lives, our thoughts must be of the men, not just the memorials.

[iwasbored777]

I think what salters need to know is that Marinette has PTSD, especially from everything that happened post Chat Blanc, and possibly even before that.

But I think salters also need to know is that Marinette having PTSD does not mean she deserves it, or should suffer. Marinette is 14.

Marinette is also fictional, so yea maybe she is not personally feeling hurt by all the salt, it shows me that there are people out there who think that CHILDREN who may make mistakes, who may face trauma think they did something to deserve it.

Marinette represents a child who cannot speak of their trauma for a number of different reasons. For Marinette it’s about protecting her identity, her role as guardian and her friends and family from an evil person.

Children irl may not speak of their own trauma for similar reasons. Especially if they feel shame for it.

For “fans” to look at Marinette and say, “she deserves this for xyz reasons” tells me that they are willing to look at real children who experience trauma and ptsd and say they same thing. Fiction can and often does represent real-life situations.

Also Marinette’s pain and trauma DOES NOT take away from Adrien’s.

So thank you for supporting Marinette, and on calling out the salters. We need more like you!

And thank you for joining me, my fellow Marinette defender ❤️❤️❤️❤️.

Here's cute Marinette stuff for your soul:

This is still my favourite Marinette look!!! 😭😭😭😍😍😍😍

We stan and defend our wonderful traumatised daughter till the end of the line 💕💕💕💕🔪🔪🔪🔪

[morsking]

is shirou a mary sue? the guy is universally well liked, cooks like a pro at 17, has the most op power from all fate (and arguably one of the most cool powers on media), nothing ever happens to him on the true/canon path of each route, he does many stupid things but no one cares 5 minutes later, other times like in salter vs rider he is just a tactical genius out of nowhere

he is not.

shirou is well-liked but he isn't particularly popular. he is known at school for being helpful and handy but otherwise not that many people are aching to get to know him or involve him in their lives. most people only know shirou very superficially. he is not sought after as a person, only as a handy man. there's a really neat scene at the beginning of hf1 where people are talking about shirou in the dojo and see that while he's earnest, hard-working, and talented, he's a bit odd and intense and that makes him a little difficult to approach casually. the only people who really like him are those who sit down and actually spend time with him. apart from the heroines of the story with whom he has time to develop a romantic bond, you don't see other girls falling head over heels for him. in fact, in hollow ataraxia the homurahara trio and mitsuzuri are quick to write him off as someone they are vehemently not interested in romantically whatsoever.

he only cooks like a pro because he had to teach himself to cook since he was 8. it's vital to understand that since kiritsugu became increasingly disabled and was utterly incapable of living as a normal human being, shirou was forced to grow up well before he was ready to take care of his adoptive father. he learned to cook, do the dishes, do the laundry, and clean the house because there were no other real adults in the house. shirou's domestic usefulness didn't come out of nowhere, it's a set of skills he took on out of necessity and came at the expense of his emotional growth.

shirou's power also isn't op. it's stated multiple times in the story how difficult it is for him to tap into it. he's not a natural mage with strong magical circuits, and neither does he have any real "useful" magical alignments that would make it easy for him to use conventional magecraft. every training session shirou has is a life-threatening act where he pushes his body and mind to the utmost limit for the low chance he might succeed at strengthening or projecting something. whenever he grabs hold of an ability that elevates his combat skills, it's either a) done with saber's help in the fate route, b) acquired as his soul inherits experience from his proximity to archer in ubw and receiving mana from rin, or c) obtained at the expense of the integrity of his mind and body as archer's arm starts to supplant his existence in heaven's feel. and even then, there's limits to what he can trace and project. he can't trace divine constructs normally as seen with ea, and his projections eat through his mana. think about what happens in heaven's feel too. every time he projects something with archer's arm he leaps closer to death because he can't handle the strain.

to say nothing ever happens to him in canon is also disingenuous. he doesn't die in a permanent sense, but take a moment to consider the amount of mental and physical pain he suffers that forces him to confront something about himself and change. did "nothing" happen when he faced gilgamesh and heracles with saber? is growing closer to her to find the best way to help her assert her personhood "nothing"? did "nothing" happen when he fought archer? is realizing the truth of your ideals and grasping the resolve to realize them anyway in a healthier and more self-aware manner "nothing"? did "nothing" happen when he fought heracles, saber alter, and kotomine? is saving your loved ones and claiming your life as your own after years of not seeing yourself as a human being to protect those dear to you so they too learn to love and accept themselves "nothing"?

take a moment to consider in what ways shirou is stupid that aren't contradicted by him being smart in others. shirou is socially inept and utterly incapable of asking for help because he is a traumatized teenager who doesn't know what a normal life is. he has few friends. he survived a fire. he is constantly trying to make up for being unable to rescue anyone in the calamity that destroyed his childhood. he constantly jumps in front of danger to save others for that very reason and refuses help because he doesn't want others to get hurt because of him until he learns to overcome that fear of being destroyed and seeing others be destroyed. he is dumb at being a person because he's never let himself be one. he is smart in a fight because he's at least been able to process his stress and trauma in a way that helps him rationalize his way out of a crisis.

i feel the need to stress that a protagonist having special qualities fit for the narrative isn't them being a mary sue. it's them simply being a main character with agency, a main character that is engaging and interesting. how boring do you think shirou and the story would be if he was really a shit-ass mcnobody with no talents, personality, qualities, or meaningful connections to the setting? he'd be no different from every other harem protag the cishet male audience can use as a self-insert. he is supposed to subvert ideas of masculinity by being domestic. he challenges conventional ideas of heroism by showing how his ideals are flawed and how important it is that he self-actualize.

shirou faces consequences for his inaction and inexperience multiple times too. saber gets frustrated because he won't (tell her why he really won't) fight and that causes a rift in their relationship he must fix with honesty and mutual understanding. shirou's inability to protect himself from hypnotic suggestion gets him kidnapped by caster and forces archer to rescue him, and in turn their shared stubbornness elevates their conflict to deadly levels until they're forced to fight to work out their differences. heaven's feel shows you how his unwillingness to forsake who he is to properly scold sakura and save her makes the situation worse when sakura loses faith that shirou will keep his promise to her until he decides he will fulfill it for both their sakes. people do care! saber cares when her master doesn't see eye to eye with her! rin cares that shirou is too willing to throw away his own life for others! archer cares that he is at risk of becoming that which archer can't forgive himself for being! sakura cares because seeing the man she loves come home bruised and bloodied every night is wrong! illya cares because he is her only true family! rider cares because if shirou can't be sakura's ally then she's as good as dead! everyone cares because shirou has to learn to care too, and he does!

i'm going to ask you to try to engage with media without trying to uncover flaws under rigid standards like this because all it does is keep you from properly understanding what is being shown to you. you cannot hope to judge a story and its characters for all their flaws or merits if this is how you approach things.

[gentil-minou]

It does make me happy to read your takes on Adrien from the pov of a therapist. This is partially because a person I followed said they could speak on psychology because they took psych course(s?) in post-secondary yet said that Adrien's storyline was like listening to the world's smallest violin and that essentially made me question on how much "credentials" someone should have to be taken seriously. I know I don't have any but that their POV was insulting, especially if they've taken psych

So I'm kinda torn on this ask because I know anon is being complimentary towards me and what I have to say and while I am genuinely flattered I do think it's worth taking other folks' opinions into account. So yeah I guess that salter's opinion is valid and I don't want to be like they're views are wrong. Everyone is entitled to what they think.

But also, here's the biggest difference between someone who studies psychology and someone who does it clinically with real people: as a clinician we cannot let our own biases interfere with our perception of the client. In my work, I frequently come across people who have completely opposite personalities and ideals from what I have. I've come across people who if they met me in real life we would actively disdain each other. And I still see those clients. Because at the end of the day, if I let my own views interfere with my perception of them or their case I would cause legitimate and definite harm.

Let's take Chloe for example. I've made it quite obvious that I dislike Chloe, but fun fact I have clients who are Chloe. And I still treat them. If Chloe were my client, instead of focusing on how I hate her actions and how she's digging her own hole (like I mention when I talk about her as a fan) as a clinician treating her we would focus mostly on her trauma and abuse, as well as the reason why she gets into volatile relationships, with a focus on building self-esteem within herself as well as focusing on positive relationships. Never, ever, would I invalidate or tell her she's a bad person.

The fact is that anyone can understand the psychology of a character and their motives, but it's our biases that interfere with that. The person you are referring to, whoever they are, is letting their bias interfere with their analysis of Adrien. They have the knowledge, but they may not fully have empathy.

I know this probably comes across as vagueposting but I see this way to often in the fandom and how it's actually extremely invalidating. Because the reality is people can see themselves in these characters. That's why I react so strongly when someone hates on a character, because I know a lot of people, especially they kids I work with, who see themselves in the characters. So a person who thinks they are Adrien is going to feel attacked, just like how someone who identifies with Chloe is going to feel attacked when folks badmouth her (which is why I try not to do that too much).

People often forget that while the characters we talk about aren't real, the people who love them are. When someone learns how to balance unbiased psychological analysis with empathy, it's usually pretty obvious because they will be neutral and not let their own opinions interfere.

Even I'm not perfect, and still working on changing how I talk about characters. But if any one person starts claiming they're an expert in a character, then I start to doubt them because the reality is the only expert is the character/individual themselves. Everyone else, including me, is just trying to interpret and should be able to accept when they're wrong.

[familyagrestefanblog]

Kind request for when "Kuro Neko" airs tonight:

PLEASE let other people express criticism towards characters and the conflicts narrative. It is right that going into the episode already convinced that specific characters or actions are horrible and whatever are 100% at fault and awful human beings is definitely BAD, but right now way too many people have gone down the exact opposite direction, out of pure SPITE, where they already decided that everything a character does is 100% excusable without knowing the actual context either. I'm sorry but you cannot pull that. The scenario you made up in your head, based on barely any information to cope with this stress, does not stand above the actual Canon circumstances depicted in the actual episode.

You cannot excuse actions you don't know the context for the same way you can't condemn them. This is not how it works.

We have less than a minute of context for an episode that is over 20 minutes long. Let's say we have 30 seconds of a 22 minutes episode, that's 2.27 percent of the total runtime of "Kuro Neko". Everybody please explain to me how you are ultimately excusing or condemning a character and their actions already before the episode even airs when you yourself basically made up 97.73% of the episode remaining context?

I get it. The last weeks were super stressful for the Fandom and I personally am legitimately upset with the broadcasters that they continously air leaks, trailers or whatever that ALWAYS heat up the Fandom to such ridiculous degrees. But in that stress we created our own context for the conflict we don't like so we can excuse it in a way that eases our minds. The fact that we did this to deal with this stressful situation is fine because we somehow needed to get through this. But whatever it is that each and everyone of us came up with in that time have NEVER been facts and you CAN'T claim that they are. You are not speaking facts you are expressing your personal preferences for how you want "Kuro Neko" to go down, BIG difference. Because you and me making up 97.73% of the episode ourselves that fit our own subjective emotional needs are HEADCANONS and that's it.

Don't go around claiming that something IS absolutely excusable or IS absolutely condemnable and everybody who doesn't think that way is an irrational salter who needs to get their shit together. You don't know WHAT you are excusing or condemning, because there is NO WAY for you to already know that!

So whatever reason you and me came up with til tonight that excused or condemned either Marinettes or Adriens actions in "Kuro Neko" I'm asking you to keep that headcanon out of your viewing of the actual canon episode. You cannot already lay ultimate judgment upon a situation you know almost nothing about and the actual Canon episode doesn't own any of us to perfectly match our ideal narrative and execution we created out of stress and spite. Don't try to force the Canon actions of "Kuro Neko" into your little fraime work you have convinced yourself with no evidence that it is fact. You created that perspective with no actual ground backing it up.

People WILL talk about the actual objective events of "Kuro Neko" and the chance of those just so happening to fit neatly into your almost context-less judgment you created before the episodes airing is ridiculously slim. And you doubling down on it is not going to change the fact that you were never in the position to have made the judgment your doubling down on in the first place.

[kdylanspencer]

Forgotten Lyrics

“Hate in your heart will consume you too”

It gets in your bones, turns everything to ash

Sometimes you can smell it

Burning up the air around you

taking all the breath you have

leaving nothing left of you

nothing you recognize or can comprehend

My core belief has always been

that the reason we’re here is

“To love one another, take care of each other”

I’m not feeling that, and it makes me falter

I have failed and so has she

On so many levels

She is unreachable, unapologetic…

I face the blame alone because she is unwilling to share it.

She wants everything easy and all the attention

But doesn’t want to do any of the learning, giving, growing…

The hard work of maintaining and working through.

Choices were made, some of them bad, all of them hard

I miss my daughter, but I don’t regret the choice to protect what she wouldn’t or couldn’t.

And here we are again, right back where we started…Almost.

With new players, and a remixed lyric with no honor or respect for the layers of history or the concept of truth

Repeating the same mistake and inventing new ones.

I have hit the wall of endurance. I’m done doing backflips and parkours.

“I’m letting go…cause I can’t do this on my own…

Jesus, take the wheel”

You have chosen to build a wall between us

And now you’re putting one between them

This wall cannot stand.

Eventually two men will emerge

And build a bridge

And a river of truth will flow

What will you do then?

“Where are you now…can you hear me?”

~ K. Dylan Spencer

*lyrics from the following songs:

“Just the Two of Us” Song by Will Smith, Songwriters: William Salter / Ralph Mac Donald / William Harrison Withers Jr.

“Message of Love” Song by The Pretenders, Songwriters: Chrissie Hynde

“Jesus, Take the Wheel” Song by Carrie Underwood, Songwriters: Hillary Lindsey / Brett James / Gordie Sampson

“Papa, Can You Hear Me?” Song by Barbra Streisand, Songwriters: שרים אלדד / Legrand, Michel Jean / Bergman, Alan / Bergman, Marilyn

[stellarlex]

Hey Stellarlex, how do you feel about this whole war between Adrien/Chat Noir and Marinette/Ladybug in the fandom? A lot of people (mainly Chat stans) are upset because Chat Noir is kept out of the dark and it is shown to affect him since Ladybug doesn't tell him everything.

Okay, so, it’s a bit complicated for me. For one thing, I can understand why Chat Noir wasn’t initially brought into the know when Master Fu was still around. The first time two times Tikki brought Marinette to him it was because she had no choice like when she was sick and when Marinette had the grimoire. He initially didn’t plan to have any of them discover him for a lot of good reasons.

One, he was too old to really defend himself against them if anything went wrong with his choices, something Wayzz has continually mentioned in the series.

Two, it was to protect against Hawk Moth discovering that the Guardian was in Paris and that there were more miraculous that he could possibly gain.

Three, he wasn’t a fully trained guardian and the reason why he was so successful for so long was because of secrecy, barring Marianne, and because he moved from place to place. Had it not been for Marinette they wouldn’t have been able to defeat Syren. If any problem had come up that needed guardian knowledge he didn’t have they would have been screwed.

Now as for Chat Noir, I can understand why Fu wouldn’t initially want him to be in the know. Chat Noir is a jokester and tends to bend the rules a lot and not take things seriously until it comes back to bite him in the butt. It’s usually Ladybug that has to keep him on track.

I did like that Marinette didn’t like that Chat Noir was left out and was uncomfortable with that decision. So it’s not her fault.

Now when it comes to season 4 things get hinky, and it’s because of the fucking writers not making sense. I don’t blame this on Marinette because after Marinette confessed her identity to Alya….

(Mind you this was AFTER Alya was akumatized because Marinette wouldn’t tell her her secrets and even after somehow learning her lesson about people being allowed to keep secrets she still went back to Marinette to coax her secret out of her. But then Alya salters get called clowns because that hug was somehow Alya being a great friend when she literally learned NOTHING)

….Marinette gave Alya access to the Miracle Box, which Alya then took liberties she shouldn’t have that nearly almost caused Ladybug to be exposed as well as the location of the Miracle Box.

But then the stupid fucking writers chime in like, “Let’s give Alya a miraculous FULL-TIME like she didn’t just almost hand the keys to her bestie’s demise to a fucking supervillain!” Literally rewarding Alya for her dumb actions.

And then after that Marinette has a nightmare about how that decision could bite her in the ass and surprise surprise it fucking did. But then the writers had to make the episode about justifying how Marinette actually made the “right choice” to let Alya keep the Fox when literally none of that shit would have happened if she didn’t give the Fox back to Alya at all. None of the exposed heroes should have gotten a miraculous back, ever. Whether it was a new one or their old one.

Going off of that, I’d say it’s not Marinette or Adrien’s fault. Ladybug and Chat Noir cannot know who each other are while Hawk Moth is still at large. PERIOD. Marinette has already seen the consequences of that. The fact that people are even blaming her at all is fucking stupid. Giving Alya that miraculous full time is out of character for Marinette. She would never be that reckless with a miraculous, she’s too smart for that. She also wouldn’t give back those miraculous unless it was necessary, especially given how she didn’t even give back the Dragon to Kagami until Miracle Queen.

The best time to train new heroes is now, especially since she can now creat magic charms to keep people from being akumatized. It’s slow going but it would reduce Hawk Moth’s favorite victims and even his newer ones.

Despite not blaming Chat Noir or Ladybug, I do blame Alya somewhat, because she shouldn’t have coaxed the secret out of Marinette. She could have just left with the other girls and went home. I know people are claiming it as a victory that Marinette has some support, but the fact is that she’s more stressed out than ever because now she has to chase after Alya to make sure she stays on track with the secrets and it’s causing ripples in other relationships too when it didn’t need to.

Marinette’s best option for support, and I hate to say this, would have been Su Han. He could have offered her support and while he may be rough around the edges, she could have learned more from him instead of telling Alya. She broke up with Luka and was heartbroken because she couldn’t tell him, but then that sacrifice just got thrown away for Alya. Alya, who takes Lila’s word more seriously without evidence than her own best friend’s?

I can’t even….

But I will say who is ultimately at fault and that’s the writers, because they are trying very hard to make Marinette into some kind of villain when it makes zero fucking sense. They want to make everything her fault so they just throw shit together.

Also, I love how Nino in Rocketeer said that he and Alya knew their identities like that shit was standard, but then conveniently left out how Ladybug had only revealed their identities to each other because she didn’t have time to give them the miraculous separately because you know, Scarlet Moth and thousands of akuma butterflies were terrorizing the city. But nope, that’s a mark against Marinette for somehow betraying Chat Noir.

So yeah, it neither of their fault, some of Alya’s but most definitely the writers’ fault.

[petrenocka]

People are talking a lot lately about how Doomsday Squad needs to face narrative consequences for their actions. And while I don't fully understand what exactly do they mean by "narrative", I do believe there is truth to this statement.

But all the logical possibilities of this consequences will not satisfy c!Techno haters or will make them even salter. Why do I think so? Because of "Execution was hardly a punishment! Techno didn't lose that much, and even got to win an epic duel!" argument, because it makes sense. Because Technoblade has monopoly on violence, and not by having a lot of stuff, but by simply being himself.

The way this server works (so far) is that at the end, winner is determined in a fight, and Techno cannot lose these without acting wildly out of character or without his enemies exploiting his attachments. But the second option will make Techno seek out a fight in a circumstance when said enemy cannot take an advantage like that, and Techno is going to have his revenge. Thechnoblade is like that bald man form that one silly anime. He doesn't loose because he is physically unable to.

For example: Techno loses any or even all of his his pets? Pet War 3, Wither Boogaloo. Techno somehow loses his canon life or even two? DreamXD have mercy on the poor soul that did that.

His house gets nuked for whatever reason? Actually, lets take a deeper look at this one. Even if it doesn't result in a war, witch is unlikely, but possible (ask me if you want to know exactly how) audience will not be affected all that mutch. Why? Because even if Techno acts like it is the end of the world, we, the audience, know for a fact that he can just farm it all back. Techno never makes getting new stuff a big deal, he is constantly making jokes about his insane wealth not being to hard to get. This is the reason why losing his tools to Butchers wasn't as tragic as it could have been. Lets be real, his secret barrel alone is several times more expensive then the entire city of L'manburg, (Notice how I didn't use "valuable" there. Noticed? Good.) yet it is never a big deal. Technos wealth is not valuable. Even if Technoblade losses his entire inventory, enderchest, AND his base with his super secret stash (of course he has one) it will not be that big of a deal. The only things that are truly a loss in this scenario are artifacts, such as ORPHAN OBLITERATOR, Rocket Launcher and Toothpick.

What else? Philza dies? Actually an idea that might work, but first of all, no, I will cry. Second of all: so you kill Phil, but not Dream? WTF? And third of all: How will c!Techno deal with grief? DESTRUCTION!!! Bye Snowchester! Bye Eggpire! Bye literally everything! Even tho c!Techno suffers enormous amounts of pain in this scenario, he still emerges a badass in the end. A cool way to end the server btw.

The only ways for Techno to suffer, but not end up victorious in the end is being imprisoned in Pandora's Valt or comple death, or be betrayed again. Witch, first of all: how? And second: laaaaaame!

TL;DR c!Technoblade is too powerful to lose in a meaningful and lasting way, so the story physically cannot punish him without removing from the narrative completely or changing literally everything about his character.

[rjalker]

You know what? I'm not even mad. I'm just going to assume this person is being overly defensive because they've been dealing with Adrien and Lila stans and seeing the shit they say.

Here's the link to the fic, which this person has completely misunderstood.

Here's the link to part 2

Here's the link to part 3

Anonymous said:

Alright. I get what you were going for here. And before I say anything, your writing and the way you do descriptions and how the characters speak is incredible, really talented work. However, if this fic was a soup, it'd taste like the ocean.

Marinette is a horrible character, that's true. But Alya clearly isn't a saint either and Adrien is almost as bad with his obsession.

Basically, the way relationships and crushes are handled in this show is garbage.

But the way you portrayed Lila, who we as the audience knows is a pathological liar, makes her seem like you either love her and believe she hasn't done anything wrong or wrote this before her characterization took a nose dive. Not to mention it was shown within the episode of Marinette actually exposing her lies or them being shown fake. (i.e. throwing the napkin or when her disability suddenly went away when Adrien was moved to the back).

The show insults Alya's intelligence too often, but with the way you write her I cannot seriously believe you do as well. Ignoring all of Alya's (and nearly every other girl classmates) encouragement of Marinette's constant toxic behavior and the fact that Adrien is shown as uncomfortable around any girl whose shown explicit romantic interest in him, save for Kagami.

It really seems like you only wrote this for two reasons: 1. That you love Elder Scrolls

and

2. Hate Marinette.

If that's the case then by all means, vent away at how this child should have her superhero status revoked and end her days cold and alone.

But don't act like every other character is marginally better; because only a handful are, and neither Adrien nor Lila are one of those characters.

You're still an amazing writer so continue to hone your skills.

Like. I literally did not "portray" Lila or Adrien as anything. They are literally not in the fic at all.

IDK, maybe they're extra defensive beause 90% of the Marinette "salters" in this fandom are just straight up racist misogynists who will defend Adrien to their dying breaths, but IDK how to tell you people this, but rightfully criticizing Marinette does not mean I think Lila hasn't done anything wrong or Adrien's perfect or Alya's never done anything wrong (though it should be noted this fic was written in August 2020, lol).

Like. Oh my gods people. Criticizing one character does not mean I stan the other characters who literally aren't even in the fic.

How the hell do you come away from this thinking I have no problem with Adrien's behavior when I literally went out of my way to have it be a Known Fucking Fact that Marinette doesn't like being touched without permission and literally screamed in fear one time when Adrien came up behind her and touched her shoulder without warning??? Alya doesn't even have half the information going on in this series, and she notices that her friend has a problem with being touched without permission.

Anon, how about -- and I suggest this kindly -- stop interacting with Adrien stans, literally just block them on sight, wait like two weeks so you can chill out, and then come back and read this fic again when you're no longer instinctively defensive whenever someone criticizes Marinette because anytime an Adrien stan does it it's because they're being racist misogynists.

I promise you, I do not want Marinette to stop being a superhero, I do not want her to be "cold and alone" and miserable for the rest of her life. I promise you, it's possible to criticize this character without being a racist misogynist who is wishing death and worse upon her.

This fic is not about these characters being "horrible characters". This is not meta. This is about their interactions and relationships as they appear in-universe, with no omniscient audience POV.

It's just Alya, with all the facts she has at hand. Alya does not even half half the information Marinette does, and we as the audience have even more information than Marinette does!

The point of this fic is not to say "Oh Alya's perfect and has never done anything wrong, Adrien's also great and awesome and Lila's just a victim". The point of this fic is that from Alya's point of view, she has no reason to trust Marinette or take her word for it that Lila's a liar.

The point of this fic is that no matter what Lila's done, what Adrien as Chat Noir has done, that still doesn't justify the way Marinette acted towards Lila before she even met her or knew she was lying about things, and Marinette following Adrien around trying to sabatogue his relationships is not okay, no matter what other horrific shit Adrien does to her as Chat Noir.

The entire point of this fic is that Marinette is not perfect and needs to be called out, and, especially from Alya's perspective, with the little knowledge she is allowed to have (Because literally everyone, including Marinette, is lying to her!), Marinette's behavior looks like it is 100% motivated by jealously and posessiveness.

I literally did not "portray" Lila or Adrien at all. They are not in the fic. I cannot "portray" a character that is literally not in the story. What you read is Alya's perspective on them, and it is a limited perspective beacuse, again, literally everyone including her best friend is lying to her. It is not Alya's fault she doesn't have all the information when everyone, Marinette explicitly included--which is literally the whole point of conflict in this fic!--refuses to tell her the truth.

Block Adrien stans and other misogynists on sight. Block people who victim blame Marinette and say she deserves to be bullied by Lila.

Give it two weeks.

And then come back and read this fic again when you're no longer instinctively defensive because you've been trained to equate "someone criticizing Marinette" with "someone being unconscionably racist and misogynistic".

Like.

If that's the case then by all means, vent away at how this child should have her superhero status revoked and end her days cold and alone.

I don't know how you read this fic and came away thinking I want this child to "spend her days cold and alone" and revoke her superhero status, but I recommend you re-read it when you're no longer constantly facing the fresh hell that is Adrien stans, because that is not at all what this fic is saying. Even remotely. At all.

[twin-books]

🥚📢 Adrien salt in general. Like him being a pushy Nice Guy TM at best, a sexual harasser at worst

🥚 🥚 🥚Prepare for a gosh darn rant. This may take forever or I may just manage to condense it into a paragraph. I have a VERY big opinion on this.  But firstly, thank you for the ask. Now it’s time for me to die inside as I think about this.Alright simple 4 word opinion: LEAVE THE BOY ALONEElaboration: I think its finally become calmer but Adrien salt had been every where on tumblr for a while now. There was like no escape. We get it, you don’t like him. If I had to see another piece of Adrien salt I may have just quit Tumblr for a bit, it was that bad. It’s been ruining MLB for me. It’s been ruining Marinette for me. It’s been ruining ADRIEN for me. ADRIEN my FAVORITE CHARACTER in MLB. I have a hard time looking at the kid now without remembering he has millions of salt fics on him that I could not escape. It makes me sad and I hate looking at my favorite character and being sad. And I know what people are gonna say, “just block the tags” but its hard when some people don’t properly tag there stuff and there are some people with good Adrien salt. It’s rare, nowadays, but I will admit my boy needs to be knocked down sometimes. No character is perfect.Does he deserve it? Simple answer: NO.  He is a kid. Not just any kid. A FICTIONAL kid. There’s being rightfully angry at the writing of a character and then there’s hating on someone that does not exist because you either have nothing better to do or need something to take your frustrations out on. It really isn’t healthy. I actually genuinely worry for most Adrien salters who feel so attacked by people just liking his character. They treat people who like Adrien like they’re murderers or something. I have been lucky enough to avoid this. For some reason I have just been able to avoid salters coming after me even though occasionally I make some post that seem to kind of beg them to show up. But plenty of my friends have. Plenty of my friends have been harassed by these individuals and their works belittled simply because they gave Adrien a good role. I cannot put into words properly how angry this makes me. It’s just not okay. If you don’t like a character, that’s fine. You want to share your opinion? Sure. You find a post that has the opposite opinion and you want to go into a discussion on the topic, maybe even a debate? As long as the author of that post is comfortable with it. If they say no, leave them alone. That’s only the decent thing to do. If you find a post that is some type of art (art/crafts/fanfic/sugartag/AU/etc.) that praises the character you don’t like… Don’t go leaving hate comments on their stuff. Leave them alone. This goes for Marinette salters as well. Everyone salters, DON’T DO THIS! It is not only rude but you are RUINING the show for other people! Many people have considered quitting this show not just for the bad writing but for the fandom that twisted into such a salty fandom since the release of Chameleon. And if someone welcomes you into a debate… Please be courtesy. Don’t be a freaking a-hole and fill your message with sarcasm or “that’s lovely but here’s why your wrong” or swears directed at the person you are debating with or the thing you are debating on. Here’s my two cents on Adrien; Should he learn to take a no? Yes. Is he perhaps a bit too much of a jokester as Chat? Sure. Is he too forgiving? Absolutely. Is he a bit of a pushover? Mostly. Is he too love obsessed? YES. But I think its important to remember why this character acts the way he does. 1. HE IS A KID. I cannot stress this enough… HE IS A KID!! Kids do stupid things all the time. Kids make mistakes all the time. That’s part of growing up. Does it make it okay? No. Should he be condemned for this? NO! Unless he was committing murder or actually hurting someone with intent, he should not be condemned for this. Its bad writing that doesn’t allow us to see him apologize. He is a fictional character. A lot of the important stuff in this show happens OFF SCREEN which has been confirmed by Thomas Astruc himself! Don’t get all high and mighty and pretend you were a perfect little angel when you were a kid and didn’t do some messed up stuff. I know I did some pretty bad things and I was considered a “good child”. And if you really must condemn Adrien for these things than be fair and do the same with Marinette and every other kid in the show. Marinette does things that are arguably WORSE than Adrien and just because she apologizes (sometimes) on screen, that doesn’t make it okay. This fandom literally can’t forgive Adrien when he has apologized so why are you guys cutting Marinette so much slack? I am tired of hearing the argument “because the show treats her dirty” because Adrien gets treated dirty in the show ALL the time! Mostly as CHAT NOIR! But his life still sucks as Adrien Agreste. Which brings me to my second point…2. He is emotionally and (in some cases) physically abused. He has no good role models in his life besides Ladybug who is HIS age so it’s hard to treat someone YOUR AGE like a role model. Some people can do it, however, and Chat Noir is one of those people. Everyone else in his life besides Nino and the Gorilla are horrid examples. You may be wondering why I didn’t include Marinette? She’s wonderful. I love her. But she does not provide a good example. Kagami I didn’t include because she has a very similar life to Adrien and while they help each other, they also drag each other down. Chloe is obviously not a good example. Nathalie barely cares. Gabriel sucks. Alya isn’t the best role model. And Lila… Lila SEXUALLY HARASSES HIM! I don’t think people pay attention to this because they are so busy wanting to hate on Adrien who dares to upset Marinette in anyway they forget that he is a victim of sexual harassment and no one jumps into help him (though Mari has tried for selfish reasons really, but at least she’s tried). He is taught to believe how Lila treats him (despite obviously making him uncomfortable) is okay. He is taught to respect everyone and never make a fuss unless his father says he can. People, KIDS, learn by example and he has VERY BAD examples in his life. So yeah, of course he’s gonna do some bad stuff we don’t agree with. And no, it doesn’t make it okay but a lot of these Adrien haters seem to have a background of abuse and sexual harassment so I figure if anyone should understand, IT’S THEM! And because he is like this the very few role models he has, he takes what they say to heart. He can’t handle being unloved. He can’t handle abandonment. Ladybug, though she means no ill will, adds to this sad life by constantly teasing him and “knocking him off his high horse” not realizing he puts himself up there to make himself feel better because his life sucks. 

It genuinely sucks. His dad cares very little for him, his mom either died or left him and he has no idea, his best friend is barely available anymore since he’s always with Alya, Marinette is scared of him, he can’t even visit any of his friends half the time anyway, his other friends are bullies, his kwami (though adorable) cannot handle emotional problems, Ladybug treats him like a sidekick (on accident but it still hurts him), he’s stuck doing a job he hates in a desperate yet futile attempt to please his father, no one trusts him (NOT EVEN Ladybug from his POV), the only thing he seems to be good for is taking the hit for Ladybug and others. He obviously doesn’t like conflict, either. Why do you think we barely seem him in any emotional fights? Physical conflict when fighting an akuma or an obvious villain is different… But he can’t handle the idea of hurting anyone no matter how bad they are. He wants to see the best in people because there’s gotta be more to people than the terrible junk he has to put up with from almost everyone. He has yet to learn the hard facts about life. He is still a kid. Somehow he managed to protect himself enough in his life to be innocent and naive. And of course he doesn’t recognize Marinette’s feelings. He’s used to people showing him affection by outright saying it or just touching him uncomfortably, treating him as their possession. He is not used to real actual love. It’s kind of obvious when he tries to court Ladybug that his idea of love is only as far as shows and the people around him.And let’s get to the constant joking in battle… does he over do it sometimes? Yeah. But this is a NATURAL coping mechanism when in distress, especially with other people. He wants to make other people feel better and in turn that makes him feel better. He’s trying to calm people down. I do this all the time and sometimes I go overboard as well. I can’t help it. I want to laugh when life sucks. So I literally can’t blame Adrien for this. Not to mention it obviously helps Ladybug and his fellow heroes feel better, even if Ladybug sometimes (and rightfully) complains. He is trying to help any way he can. And he is also left being the emotional support to Ladybug when he clearly needs support himself but he obviously refuses to show weakness around the people he cares about. He denies himself help effectively making himself worse. The only person he shows any weakness around is Plagg, but Plagg is attached to him at the hip. I’m sure if he had some way to avoid Plagg knowing how depressed he was, he would do it. This isn’t healthy and can make you more unlikable around other people because you feel ingeniune and too perfect. Like a robot and less like a human. Yeah, Adrien can be a bit of an a-hole around Ladybug but she is the only person to show him actual respect to where he feels comfortable enough to let out his anger around her, and sometimes it is less about her and more about everything else but he sometimes treats her as someone he can vent upon because he was taught you can take all your frustrations out on one person by HIS FATHER who takes all his negative feelings out on HIS SON (and the whole of Paris but Adrien is unaware of that). No, it’s not okay but he is a human and he clearly feels awful when he knows he’s in the wrong. A lot of people just fail to express clearly to Adrien “hey, what you did, sucked” because he’s used to being told he’s wrong by being punished instead of being given some kind of warning or maybe forgiveness. But they don’t know that. Adrien has been conditioned to be a pushover but he is trying and he’s handling better than most people really could but it’s deteriorating him, and you can see that as the show goes on. Since he’s refused to ask for help and since no one jumps in to help him when he is in distress (every interaction with Lila) he will never really improve. It takes A LOT of work to get over this kind of conditioning and trauma. I could probably go on but this is long enough. Just know I’m not okay with the Adrien salt, it’s so toxic and they make Marinette too toxic but that’s another can of worms. And Adrien needs help. Thanks for coming to my tedtalk.

[angelofthequeers]

I feel you on the Luka thing. At first I thought he was nice and I was mostly ambivalent about him when he was introduced (adored Kagami though even then) and I was mostly eh about Lukanette (not my thing) but how his terrible stans are acting and their Adrien bashing basically made Lukanette a NOTP for me unless it’s past Lukanette. Your fic and guardiankarenterrier’s have been the only actual Luka content I truly enjoy (excluding more crack ish content like Lukatar and Luka x XY)

Honestly, that’s exactly how I feel about Luka right now, and I’m gonna make a longer post now that I know that I’ve got some agreement and support. So here are my full 12 am rambling feelings about Luka Couffaine and Lukanette, where I essentially hijack your ask and finally make my post. And I’ve only been sitting on this for this long because I didn’t see any point in annoying the salters and rabid Luka stans for the sake of an opinion but…fuck it, y’know? Fair warning that if you like Luka and/or you’re a salter, you might not want to read this.

Luka’s nice. That’s it. He doesn’t have any substance beyond that. He exists purely to serve Marinette, because every other character dares to not fall to Marinette’s feet and cater to her every whim so they are therefore evil.

And no, that’s not Marinette salt. That’s salter salt. Reflecting back on my salt days, the thing that sticks out to me most is the level of protagonist-centred morality and the sheer inability to see from anyone else’s POV. Take Chameleon, for example. Adrien doesn’t know that Lila threatened Marinette. The classmates have seen Marinette act jealous before and their perception of Lila is that of a nice girl who’s being targeted by Marinette. And if you fail to take yourself out of Marinette’s head and see how others might perceive a situation, that’s where most of the salt is born, because all that comes to matter is that Marinette Is Wronged and anyone who dared to not support her 100% is immediately Evil. Never mind that Adrien fought back against years of conditioning to lie down and take it in order to stand up for Marinette and even bargain himself to Lila to protect his friend. Never mind that Alya went to great lengths to prove Marinette’s innocence and even if she didn’t believe Lila was the culprit, she wholeheartedly believed that Marinette was innocent.

But that’s not enough nuance for salters and Perfect Marinette can’t dare to have flaws beyond being clumsy and Too Giving For Her Own Good, so meh. I swear this relates to Luka and I have a point

And that’s where Luka comes in. It’s because he’s a blank slate that he appeals to salters. They can project whatever they want onto him; turn him into the Perfect Boyfriend for Perfect Queen Marinette. He’s not a character. He’s a device. And that’s part of why my interest in him just…waned. There’s nothing to keep my attention hooked. Sure, ‘Silencer’ made me squeal because of the love confession, but only by forcing myself to go back and rewatch it for that rush. Once the episode was over, I just kind of…shrugged. Whatever. He said a few words and then walked off, and Marinette can’t be that in love with him if the confession’s never again brought up in his later appearances; where Adrien’s actively pursued Kagami, Marinette’s just kind of let Luka woo her and gone along with it whenever he’s around. And there’s nothing wrong with letting someone woo you, but when she’s been shown to actively pursue Adrien, it kind of doesn’t give the impression that she’s all that into Luka.

Honestly, it’s pretty much just this shitty meme that I made for a laugh

And why does he love Marinette? He “fell for her at first sight”. Marinette and Adrien didn’t fall for each other as soon as their eyes met, but rather after they worked past their initial impressions and revealed a different side to their partner; one that made their partner fall in love with them. Chat’s first impression of Ladybug was of a clumsy, nervous girl who was nice and who he liked but was reluctant to be a superhero in the first place. Marinette’s first impression of Adrien was of a spoiled brat. It wasn’t until Ladybug gave her speech to Hawkmoth and showed her fiery and determined side, until Adrien revealed to Marinette that he was a sweet and socially awkward boy, that they fell for each other. Even Adrien and Kagami had a heckuva lotta chemistry during their first meeting, with Kagami thoroughly impressing Adrien, and Marinette and Kagami’s friendship was established by working past their misunderstood first impressions, just like with Marinette and Adrien. Each of these relationships have a solid foundation based on working past incorrect first impressions and developing a mutual respect. There’s effort that’s been put into these relationships.

And people wonder why I ship Kagaminette so hard.

But Luka? He just took one look at Marinette and was like “mmm pretty girl”. He didn’t fall for her based on anything that he knew about her other than that she stuttered (which he made fun of, and you just…don’t do that with someone you’ve literally only just met). It made me question the legitimacy of her being “the melody inside his head since they first met” because like…their first meeting was talking for two seconds and then her convincing him that she could lockpick a little later on. Every other interaction after that? Still not enough to warrant Luka giving that whole speech to her. And their few interactions since then have been ’Frozer’, ‘Silencer’, and ‘Desperada’. Plus, he doesn’t talk to Marinette. He talks at her. Every interaction is him saying “You feel like this” and strumming his guitar, which…boy, it’s not healthy to speak for the person you’re romantically into, because that’s just gonna lead to a whole lot of miscommunication later down the line.

It could be a flaw that Luka falls hard and fast and he needs to learn to step back and get to know someone before going in. It’d just be nice to have enough substance to him to actually be able to make this conclusion. Maybe I’m just too aro to understand love at first sight.

And how old is he? 16? 17? Thirsting after a 14/15 year old? I didn’t even realise the age gap until now but Jesus, maybe he should find someone his age instead of going after a younger teenager.

And all the diehard Luka stans are also why I’ve grown to just not care about Luka. The way they demonise every other character and push Lukanette as Perfect and Pure - not through being flawless but basically through being Right and not doing any wrong except for a few teensy mistakes that are laughable - was enough to begin to turn me way off, and then from there I just slipped further and further from salt. That’s why, after I finished writing Défenseure, I just threw my hands up and wondered what the hell I was doing with my life. Every Lukanette salt fic is exactly the same. Same plot, same characters demonised with maybe a little variation if the writer’s feeling daring. There’s a reason so many of us are getting sick of salt, especially Chameleon salt. It’s all been done before. So many times. And that also contributes to Luka’s blandness, purely because fandom Luka is just as one-dimensional as canon Luka. I don’t care about canon Luka. But fandom Luka? I cannot stand, and it’s thanks to these diehard stans.

You know, for all the salters claim to loathe Adrien for being so Perfect, they sure seem to turn Marinette into a real bright figure of perfection. That irony is part of what made me turn away from salt in the first place.

There’s a saying that’s stuck with me since my early days of fandom, back when I was into HP and bashing was rampant: if you have to utterly destroy one character to make another look better, you’re only proving how bad the second character is. If you have to make Alya into a horrific demonic bully to justify promoting Chloé to Marinette’s new bestie and essentially switch their personalities, that says a lot more about Chloé than it does Alya. If you have to turn Adrien - who does not know boundaries because he was only ever taught to let people treat him like a piece of meat but who’s learning, to the point of standing up to Lila for Marinette and never once forcing himself on Ladybug whether physically or emotionally - into a horrific Nice Guy caricature just to justify Lukanette, that says a hell of a lot more about you than it does Adrien.

And that’s all I’m gonna say because it’s like 12.30 am and this is way more energy than I wanted to expend on Luka Couffaine. Tl;dr - he’s nice but that’s literally all there is to him. And nice isn’t a personality. It’s one trait.