#shouting into the void at this point

[jzargo]

Imagine if Cazador was introduced mid Act 1, and throughout the rest of the game repeatedly toyed with and tormented Astarion. Imagine if he consistently used his powers to control, manipulate, and torture Astarion throughout the game while dangling the prospect of his freedom above him like a carrot. Imagine if you weren't even able to kill Cazador and he just randomly hung out in your camp right next to Astarion for the entirety of Act 3. Imagine if the game devs just made repeated jokes about how hot and fuckable Cazador was and insisted that Astarion MUST secretly want to fuck his abuser. That would suck, right? It would be pretty scummy actually, wouldn't it?

Why is it ok when it's done with Wyll's abuser then? Why is the white man's abuser treated with an appropriate amount of weight, but the black man's abuser is reduced to the "sexy demon lady" that Wyll should be "grateful" is treating him like a dog? Can you imagine if people said that about Astarion and Cazador? There would be riots if someone even jokingly suggested Astarion should be grateful for being dominated by Cazador.

Please offer the black character the same modicum of decency you're offering the white characters.

[lurkingshan]

Dear Boston, I still love you even if this fucking show doesn’t. You didn’t deserve what you got in this finale.

[finniestoncrane]

i'm filled with love today!! new boy to thirst over, i had subway for lunch, i've booked my hairdresser appointment and will potentially be booking my helix piercing appointment soon, and i've been writing for my oc all day!!

how are you all doing my bugs who live in the computer? 💚💚💚

[mukuberry]

This voting period really just feels like im watching a bunch of people force a gay man back in the closet

I know thats not people's intentions but literally how else is he going to take this guilty vote. "I just don't want him to think his lying was okay" he doesn't! And he's not going to think that! He's actively trying to stop lying! All guiltying him will do is tell him he should have kept lying and continuing his relationship!!

"I just want him to have some kind of consequence for what he's done" Was Hinako literally dying not enough??? Sure, he didn't love her, but he still LIKED her. They were friends, they lived together, he married her because he WANTED to love her! He is literally drowning in guilt because of her death, I think he's had enough consequences by now. He might not be wearing his ring anymore, but he still carries it with him, he is very clearly still grieving her death.

"Innocent votes have no effect on him" Yes they will!! It didn't do anything last time because we forgave him for the wrong reasons and because he absolutely hates himself. Assuming we're right about him being gay, which I'm pretty confident we are, having his 'true' self validated rather than his fake one will 100% have a bigger effect on him this time. Guiltying him will only make his self-hate worse and show him that only his false self is forgivable, so he should keep lying to be accepted.

I know most people's intentions are not to make him keep lying, but regardless of whatever intention you have, it doesn't matter how you want him to take it, you can not ignore how he will actually take it.

[lunalikestowriteanddraw]

I think Frost and Torbek’s relationship would be…idk the right term for it. Soft? Domestic? Like, I know the fandom is generally pretty horny (At least, most of the fics on ao3 are), but I just wanna read about like soft and domestic moments between the gay furries

Like. I imagine that Frost would teach Torbek how to read and write (or, at least the basics of which). I also imagine that Frost is also weirdly in-tune with his friends emotions (kinda like irl house cats), and since Torbek is a walking whirlwind of bad emotions, I imagine Frost would give Torbek Calming Cat Cuddles whenever they have downtime (also whenever Torbek has a nightmare or something)

Idk, i think my desire to just watch them be cute and soft is partially because i just. Torbek deserves all the cuddles. They all do, but especially my sad baby boy. He deserves the world and then some. And I know Frost is capable of being soft and compassionate, even if he’s gotten significantly more murderhobo-y upon entering the Feywild.

Idk man, I just want these two to cuddle, is that so much to ask?

[forgetriestowrite]

There's something about how the Archeart kept saying "we are just like you, we are animals, etc etc" and like yeah at their cores all the gods are like mortals in that they want to survive but also no my dude, just because you can die doesn't mean this is going to be a simple yes-or-no decision, save the gods or don't, because you are not just like us, everything you do affects the entire world, and it's so interesting to me because it's a mirror to what Ashton said however many episodes ago about how BH should be the ones to make the decision because "we're nobodies", which yeah compared to gods you are nothing but you are also not the laymen anymore. You are not just the lowly criminal, just the farm girl, just the guard, just the toymaker. You are the last remnant of the Titans, an Exalted Ruidusborn destined to save or destroy the world, the Savior Blade of the Tempest, a centuries-old werewolf with more life and experience under his belt than most of the people you know. What you do affects the entire world.

AND

How the Archeart, the entire time they were saying all these things, relating themself to BH, had this tone like "I know everything, I know what's right and here's a simple solution, an out so you don't have to keep agonizing over this" but it's not simple. It has never been simple. "Predathos won't go after the world because you are just crumbs to it" but how do you know that. Because you're a god? I'm calling bullshit because this is the one thing that scares you, or at least scares your family. Just because Predathos ate two gods and nothing else before doesn't mean that's how it's going to go again, especially now that the gods are harder to get to this time. Like Orym said, when something is starving, it will go for the crumbs if that's all there is.

idk ruminating on that whole conversation has been really interesting because it looks like a simple solution, but it's another suggestion from someone who's afraid, but yet again thinks they have the right answer.

[rose-void-789]

Now that the series is over, I wanna get something off my chest. Ever since the end of the Togachako battle, and especially 429, I'm mad at anyone who has Toga as a hero either in a she never became a villain sense or a rehabilitation way and doesn't have Ochako interact with her. Let my girls talk to each other! To grow and heal, even if it's just in the background, don't let Ochako's promise be in vain. Even if it's in a platonic way, even if it's a throwaway line I just need them to interact.

[thdebtcollector]

if i had a nickel for every queer horror character ive seen with the surname Blackwood i'd have two nickels

link to the martin art

[djevelbl]

Quick question — could you realistically make latte art on IM!Cup's hair????

[demontouched]

i sort of understand why a lot of the ratgrinders are doing it. kipperlilly is a regular freak and she hates it, oisin inhereted some sort of evil from his grandma, ivy just Came Like That. the ones i'm a little shaky on are ruben and mary ann. ruben i feel like he mightve been peer pressured into it. he was just coming into bardness and wanted to be cool (bc all bards are cool, duh). and mary ann... who can really say? maybe under all that stone cold indifference she's just a follower. her rage is inauthentic. maybe she's so full of emotion she can't express any of them.

[daydreams-and-honeybees]

Been thinking about Atlantis: The Lost Empire lately so what if Milo x Kida but Huntlow

[the-lone-wolffe]

Oh to wander into the woods and get thrown into an adventure. To find a world that is beyond our own. 

[lurkingshan]

Kiyoi: *stares at Hira with longing*

Hira: He must be thinking about dumping me

[finniestoncrane]

good god two jump scares in one when my dad messaged me to ask if he can see me for my birthday because 1) eep no thanks man that’s gonna be awkward as shit and 2) it’s my fuckin birthday soon?? i forgor

[meova101]

Similarities between Ferrari 2022 and McLaren 2024, by someone who's clearly got a type in blorbos and likes to use comedy as a coping mechanism:

1. One driver with an outside chance of the WDC

2. Said driver also sold their soul to the team and is going down with that ship

3. Talented teammate who's pretty close but not the one with the outside shot at the title

4. Also it's the teammate's second year in the team

5. "We have two number 1 drivers in this team"

6. Previously mentioned talented teammate gets their first win that season

7. Somehow, everyone's annoyed after said first win

8. Strategy team might as well be five Spongebobs running around in a burning room

9. Managing to throw away a rather certain win in a mixed conditions race because of a pitstop

10. Not related to the teams in question but Max DNF's in Australia

Differences between Ferrari 2022 and McLaren 2024:

1. The colour of the car's different

2. Zak Brown can't speak Italian

[kyliafanfiction]

I sometimes feel like characters who do truly monstrous things while also having been victims of some pretty insane shit themselves are sort of an exercise in empathy. Or at least, should be seen as such.

Like, in real life, if a person who has been horribly broken by their experiences and failed by society than proceeds to rape someone - it's hard to feel the justifiable sympathy/empathy for that person (without excusing their rape, never do that) because well, you can look at this actual human person they hurt, or worse, and it feels gross and disrespectful to the rape victim.

And this is understandable. (And applies to more than just rapists/rape victims of course, that's just the most visceral one and thus picked for that reason)

But a fictional rape victim is... fictional. You can't 'disrespect' their trauma, and while obviously rape/whatever else is real, and people may related to the rape victim and thus see your comments about the rapist also being a victim as somehow being about their experience...

Well, it's not.

Because the rapist here, didn't actually hurt a real person. Fictional characters are objects. They're objects that often grab us by the throat and refuse to leave our fucking heads, yes, but they're objects. They are tools used by writers to tell a story, and readers to tell a story.

And one of the things fictional characters are good for is allowing us to consider experiences we never had, and imagine ourselves in other circumstances and lives. (Also just fun and fascinating and interesting to watch their stories).

It's very easy to feel for the rape victim in fiction, and rightly so. That's Level 1 Empathy there. Granted, some people IRL fail that, but that's not really what we're talking about here.

Advanced Empathy, hard Empathy is feeling for the rapist. Not for the rape, of course, even if they feel guilt about it, but if someone really was failed on multiple levels and was broken and damaged and went through the sort of psychological wringer that would leave most of us here on tumblr catatonic - they do deserve the same Empathy any human (any person) who went through all that.

Even after they also do the bad thing, critically they still deserve Empathy. And that is fucking hard. I very often have a hard time feeling bad for truly awful people who also deserve empathy and sympathy, real and even fictional (despite all this, yeah, I'm not perfect on this) for what they (separately) went through.

It also becomes even harder when what they went through is utterly bound up with what they did. How what they went through and experiences is in part responsible for what they did - because they still made a choice. The circumstances may have left them not in their right mind, may have left them feeling without choice, may have driven them to things they normally might not think of or do, but they still chose to do that bad thing. And that's not okay. They still hurt someone.

And yet - one cannot remove the action from the circumstances. So you can still feel empathy, and elucidate all the factors and circumstances as to what led up to their choices and why, and it doesn't change that they did the horrible thing. The rape, or the murders, or whatever.

But circling back - with a fictional character... they didn't hurt a real person. There's no one who is real that suffered. The things the character did IRL are bad because they hurt real people.

So you're not being disrespectful to the victim by feeling that empathy, or sympathy. By exploring the things that they were a victim for. Even by wanting to focus on those things - fictional characters should be compelling in all their aspects, if they're written well.

And yet, of course, if you do that empathy and do talk about what the bad person went through and all that context, people come at you. They call you evil, just as bad as the (again, fictional) character, or they say that you're treading dangerously close to the arguments people use to defend the real people who do these things in real life. Or you're disrespecting all the victims of these crimes IRL. Especially of course, if the person coming at you has a reason this comes close to home.

But again - fictional.

In an ideal world, we'd all feel sympathy and empathy when it's called for, regardless of what the person did. Even the worst most monstrous people deserve human treatment in prison. And if you don't have empathy, that's hard. Even if you do have empathy, that's hard.

So if you look at a fictional character (who doesn't hurt a real person by virtue of being fictional) that does horrible, vile things, but went through so much, and you still can't empathize or sympathize with them... I mean, it doesn't make you a bad person, not even close, this is still fiction, and there's people I should empathize with in fiction that I don't, but...

It's still a failure of your ability to be empathetic. And we're all humans. We're all failing at that, among other things, all the time. But... it's good to be aware of that. at least?

At the very least, bear that in mind when other people are talking about that context, and that victimization. And please, for the love of god, don't fucking pretend that the victimization didn't happen, that this person who did do terrible things (in fiction) suddenly didn't also (in fiction) experience awful shit, as if doing a bad thing erases all the bad things done to you.

Again - it doesn't necessarily make you a bad person, but like... the horrible state of prisons in our society is a real, actual problem. The way we as a society dehumanize people who do bad things is a real actual problem for a lot of reasons (not least because it creates an incentive for authority that wants to dehumanize a person or a group to expand the definition of 'did bad things' to make their dehumanization now acceptable, among other things).

So yeah. Fictional character who suffers but than also makes others suffer - that's a useful exercise in Empathy. And doing that doesn't make you or anyone else a bad person, or actually defending the sorts of crimes, IRL or Fictional, that this character did. Contextualizing is not whitewashing, empathy is not erasing, and humanizing is not disrespecting the victim(s).

So yeah, they fictional character did bad things. But there's more to them than that. And you can say but and talk about what comes after but without disrespecting the fictional victim. Because the fictional victim... is just as fictional. Just as not real.

Is it possible for this to end up being taken too far? Yes. But that's a reason to be mindful of yourself when it comes to real people, not to never do it. And when it comes to fictional people - again, fictional. Nobody was actually, really hurt.

(I really do want to make clear, before people read the tags, that this applies to all crimes these sorts of characters do, rape was just picked as the one to use as the example.)