#so do i take the chance lol

[inklore]

i know it’s kinda dead around here but i really want to do a little sleepover event to get myself back into writing since i haven’t really written anything on here in almost 6 months </3

[skitskatdacat63]

DTS S6E1 "Money Talks" - Fernando Alonso & Lance Stroll

[priceofreedom]

#Elmyra approving of Zack makes me so happy 😭 FF7 Rebirth 20 / ?

[tora-the-cat]

An interesting little fun thing with team 7 is that you assume that Sakura's gonna, like, woobify and simplify Sasuke by putting him on a pedastal,cause her goal is centered around him and shes a 12 y/o fangirl so like of course her understanding of him is skewed cause she doesnt see him as a person, just an object of affection, right? She's can't get Sasuke, can't imprint on and/or traumabond with him like Naruto and Kakashi do. They don't see him with rose tinted glasses, because they've lived through their own Horrors and empathize with Sasuke's experience.

......right?

WRONG lmao!! They have too many ghosts!! Naruto's single-minded codependent ass won't get out of his own way long enough to see Sasuke for who he actually is, only able to empathize with the parts of his trauma Naruto relates to and not really capable of understanding him outside of the context of himself (because Sasuke is. His other half). And Kakashi is far too jaded to be fair to him!! He can't decide if Sasuke is gonna end up as a mini-him or a mini-Obito or maybe a mini-Itachi, but either way he ALSO is too traumatized to see Sasuke AS SASUKE.

meanehile SAKURA'S autistic ass may have dogshit empathy, but you know what she does have? A special interest in sasuke. Nothing better to do then give herself a degree in Uchihaisms. She can write character studies about him. she can read his soul. Whenever she says something about him she is right. Every fucking time! She is RIGHT!!!!

'sasuke would NOT compliment me this directly or explicitly express worry unprompted, especially if it gets in the way of his goals' correct.

'Sasuke shouldn't hide that curse on his neck its not healthy BUT if I tell anyone about it he'll never trust me again, which might be even more dangerous for him then the curse mark. Like he can probably handle the curse mark but no one else can stop him from ripping peoples arms off.' correct.

Speaking of! 'Sasuke would not hurt me even when he seems to be...possessed? whatever the only way to knock him out of it is to present myself as Alive and thus something to be protected rather then something to be avenged, because he gets really stuck in his own head about revenge' CORRECT

'hey so um. like. Sasuke's gonna leave Konoha. I'm not sure anything can stop him at this point and honestly I'm kinda starting to doubt anything should, so the only thing I could possibly do to help him at this point is ALSO defect.' CORRECT!!!!

[whetstonefires]

I think a part of the reason I feel so connected to JGY and XY is that I, too, think everyone is lying about what a good person they are. Sure, there may be a few genuinely good people, but those are in the minority and never claim the title.

I don't know about never; some people are pretty straightforward.

And in some ways the whole point of the concept of 'a good person' is that the feeling of losing the right to consider yourself one can impose instinctive recoil from doing wrong, in situations where you don't have the leisure of working your way through an ethics diagram and choosing the logically moral path before reacting to a situation. It has practical utility.

But that system can backfire pretty horribly too, in a lot of ways. It can be hijacked by definitions of 'good' that actually make you recoil from ethical acts because they're deviant. It can lead to disappearing up your own ass lmao.

And definitely the threshold for 'talking about how you're a good person' enough that it makes you suspect as either a) a liar or b) someone who values that self-image over objective reality and other people's wellbeing is. Not very high.

Jin Guangyao, ironically, is one of those people who's so performatively A Good Person in his public life that in retrospect it looks like a red flag. Which knowing this about himself in an ongoing fashion ofc just reinforces his own cynicism about everyone else lmao.

Even Lan Xichen, who I think he may see as a genuinely good person, he also sees as an easy mark who will reliably choose what is comfortable over what is 'right,' if you just structure the scenario to make that an easy choice that's easy for him to justify.

Xue Yang's bitterness is in many ways more exciting than Jin Guangyao's because he has a way more unusual relationship to reality, but it does share a lot of notes.

The role of deception in his psychology fascinates me because as far as I can tell he's as instinctively straightforward a person as Lan Wangji, albeit along quite different lines involving a total lack of impulse control, but has adopted 'deceit' as a weapon against the wicked world in the same way he has adopted 'murder.'

But when he feels someone is not merely lying but papering over bad behavior with principles they are not living up to he is livid.

People claiming to be better than him because they're 'good' when 'good' is a construct of privilege, is the underlying idea he's not equipped to articulate. Except he takes that and applies it to 'hitting me to interrupt my random murder of some guy who happened to be within arm's reach when I wanted to hurt someone.'

Which isn't like philosophically perfect, but the underlying problem he's actually reacting to is that he understands the social contract as a lie that has never protected him but seeks to control him, while protecting rich men it has no power to control.

Which it is fair to be mad about, but then his feeling is that since that's the nature of the world and all people, he is entitled to amass for himself the power to inflict hurt without consequences as much as he possibly can, and to use it against the vulnerable for fun, and no one is entitled to interfere.

Which brings him to a place where he is violently angry at anyone talking about trying to treat other people well as a value, because either they're a hypocrite and a liar or they threaten his entire system of rationalization for why he can be The Worst and still In The Right.

'Everyone is equally bad, actually' is like, an understandable take for anyone who's had cause to become embittered. Everyone is free to make whatever philosophical peace they can with the world and by and large there's no ethical weight to any such opinion, in itself.

But it's an ideological crutch people tend to wind up leaning on very heavily when they can't or don't want to take responsibility for their own behavior.

Which is an approach that Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao, and Su She all share, and which not only is shitty of them, it...traps them in a wheel of doubling down on their own worst impulses because rather than going 'that was bad and I shouldn't do it again' they've repeatedly invested all this energy into making what they did actually the correct thing, according to their interpretation of the context. Which means they're more likely to do it again.

(I think this is how Jin Guangyao became a serial killer, for example. He followed a doing-a-murder-impulse and then internally doubled down on how he had nothing to be ashamed of, so he was more likely to do it again, every time.

Wei Wuxian's strain of self-righteousness about his revenge was less...thorough than Jin Guangyao's, because he had the benefit of going after people on the opposite side of a war from him while Meng Yao's first known murder plot was against a shitty boss. But it probably didn't help him not try to solve army-shaped problems with mass murder, even after that stopped being allowed.)

If any of them had just like, zero moral sensibilities they would have created very different problems, and very possibly fewer of them. It's making a central goal of your operations 'self-vindication in your own internal narrative, created retroactively via reframing' rather than 'figuring out what I think I should do and trying to do that' that traps them in the self-reinforcing murder pissbaby vortex.

So if you look at it one way, these three villains are themselves perfect examples of how pursuit of the 'feeling of being good' (or at least 'not the bad guy') can make you worse.

Notably Wei Wuxian was also extremely sensitive to hypocrisy in his youth; it was the only part of Madam Yu's behavior he was ever shown objecting to. But he's sufficiently mellow and cynical from regret and burnout by the 'present' timespan after his resurrection to just get disgusted and alienated about it, rather than outraged.

He wasn't even all that mad at Xue Yang, though honestly that may be partly because he stopped entirely characterizing him as a person at some point during their interaction. Like, there's no point being angry at someone whose moral sensibilities operate exclusively on the plane of 'is this unfair to me' for manipulating and destroying people who were good to him, and then getting obsessed with his own self-pity about it. This is not a person who understands how not to be, metaphorically speaking, a cannibal.

And Wei Wuxian did know better and still got roughly the same result, so what business does he have getting angry?

Anyway yeah those two villains are both delightfully relatable if you sit down and put their perspectives together; they are clearly operating with the same basic suite of human needs and emotions as everybody else, without that being in itself particularly exculpatory, which is honestly refreshing. They've just got the most fantastically toxic interpersonal habits that knowing them counts as some level of Suffering A Curse.

Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang do both stand as scathing rebukes of the society that created them. But within the narrative, wherein they're people, the fact is that each of them had agency and one of the things they chose to do with it was develop rationales for why they were the most special little guy and everything was someone else's fault.

And their moral nihilisms, while also grounded in serious trauma, ping me as emotional masturbation of this variety.

[sisterdivinium]

You know, for a show with so many female characters that so many of us love given how they all get time in the spotlight one way or another and they fill that time up rather wonderfully since they are deeper and more developed than what we're used to seeing in general media, it is peculiar (to say the least) to see so few "alternative" ships to the main one.

I'm not saying the canon ship doesn't deserve its attention -- I'm wondering instead why the canon ship and it alone seem to guide the WN fans who just so happen to enjoy writing/reading fic or fanart or whatever.

You'd think all these cool women would inspire more ships or combinations thereof, but those of us who aren't invested in avatrice just... Float along, around one another, ignored (and, yes, mostly undisturbed too; being unpopular does have its advantages and that includes a lot less weirdos leaving you strange or awkward messages -- it does not, however, shield us from people flooding our goddamn tags on AO3 with fic that has nothing to do with our little ships and I do wish such negligence of the pairing itself meant we didn't have to deal with this spam...)

I am also not saying that fandom activity should be based solely on shipping (and recently someone on Reddit was rather confused by the fact that a lot of it is, which is quite an interesting topic to discuss in itself -- after all, there is more to fan creativity than shippy fic... Or there used to be), merely that, here, it appears that a canon relationship can outshine interest in the other, non-canon ones. It's already there and it was doubtless well-done by the show, so it's natural that it should claim people's attention, sure. It's just that being canon was never the parameter for whether people were interested in these or those two (or more) characters maybe being involved and trying to explore what that could mean through fanwork.

There has always been a complaint haunting fandom spaces concerning the minuscule amounts of f/f fic, art, discussion, w/e based on how few (interesting or sympathetic or relatable) female characters there are in media at large. So what I'm curious about is why fan creations made around WN -- a show that finally gives us a whole cast of female characters that are what we have been craving for decades -- don't also reflect its diversity.

There are alternative ships (I'm here, all happy in my tiny Doctor Superion bubble, and I know there are Camila/Lilith, Ava/Lilith, Mary/Shannon, Mary/Lilith shippers out there, so a warm hello to you if you're reading this), but go on AO3 and compare the numbers of things tagged with these proper pairings to the grand total of WN stories. Better (or worse) still, do so with the "otp: true" trick or simply by excluding avatrice from the search to see how many are left.

It's... A considerable difference. And a mystery, at least to me.

[jakes3resin]

Modern Reincarnation AU Part 4 ✨️

Part 3

"John?"

Bucky storms past Jack into the townhouse. It's rude, but he'll apologize later. He doesn't know why he came here instead of his apartment. Old habits dying a hard drawn out death, maybe? He hadn't been thinking clearly. Hadn't been thinking at all really until he found himself waved through by his father's security detail.

"Oh, is that John?" He hears his father call out, dress shoes clicking against hardwood as he walks closer, but Bucky stomps up the stairs towards his room before he sees the man. His breaths come out in rushes as tears keep burning his eyes.

Shit, he thought he'd gotten those under control on the train.

Slamming his door, he slides down until he rests against the floor. He tosses his bag to the side wincing at the sound it makes. Hopefully his laptop survives. At some point he does actually have to do the work he went to the library to finish.

The library.

Buck and Curt.

They wouldn't, Bucky tells himself. They wouldn't. Curt was one of his best friends, and Buck loved him. They...

Fuck they were roommates! Why the hell were they talking about that shit in public? In the place Bucky considered his? Why even pretend? Why drag Bucky into this? Why?!

Bucky buries his face into his hands. His chest hitches as he tries not to sob. He doesn't want his father or Jack to worry about him. He doesn't want to talk this through.

He wants...

He wants Buck. He wants the other to pull him into his arms. To kiss him again as if today had never happened. There was something else about being with Buck, something he'd never felt with anyone else be they friend or lover. He made Bucky feel safe and wanted. Wanted not because of his family and connections but because he was himself.

Buck would know how to make him feel better.

He laughs quietly through his tears. Distantly, he can hear Jack briefing his father downstairs, the words faint but he hears his name and tears used together. His laughter is more sob than anything else. Of course, the one good thing he'd found would end up belonging to someone else. Story of his life.

✨️

There's too much work to do. At least that's the excuse Bucky gave himself for not confronting Buck and Curt immediately. There wasn't time for a confrontation and subsequent blowup of his life.

At least that's the lie he tells himself.

Bucky chews on the straw of his iced coffee as he skims yet another chapter. There's a pumpkin muffin in front of him that he swore would be his reward for getting through this fourty page reading. Midterms have come and gone, but Bucky still has deadlines to meet and research to complete. He can't sit in his room forever, as much as his father and Jack would sometimes prefer that. Better protection from whatever sent Bucky crying to his room as his father would argue. Better protection for his father's political career Jack would quip.

Speaking of protection, Bucky glanced to the side of the cafe towards his security detail. At least these guys attempted to blend in. His father must have briefed them on his track record with previous details. Bucky smirked around his straw. They'd be easy to lose come rush hour. A bit of fun even.

Bucky turned back to his reading, squinting down at the words.

"American airmen during World War II had a dismal life expectancy. It was not a matter of if an airman was going to be shot down but when. Once downed, airmen faced an uncertain 'reception committee,' as Second Lieutenant Kenneth C. Reimer noted in a drawing he made as a POW in Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany... 'for every [ground combat] soldier killed in action, three or four others would be wounded; air combat was completely the opposite. For every man wounded, three were killed.'"

"Bucky?" A hand settles on his shoulder jolting him out of his reading.

Bucky kept his shoulders loose as he turns around. Buck stares down at him, a bright smile on his face that Bucky can't help but match despite his grief. It wasn't even something he could control. Buck smiled at him, so he smiled back. Bucky felt pitiful.

Buck's sky blue eyes are clear and happy as they dart across Bucky's face. There's no sign that he realizes Bucky overheard him yesterday.

Bucky lifts a hand to calm his detail, all alert now after Buck's friendly greeting. He sees the nearest agent settle back into their chair but knows none of them are relaxed. He darts a look up at Buck, peering at the other through his glasses to see if he'd noticed the disturbance.

Buck's gaze, as it always does, doesn't leave Bucky's face. Even when he rounds the table to sit down, his eyes are pinned on Bucky and nothing else.

"Sorry I couldn't meet up yesterday," Buck dumps his bag onto the chair next to him. Bucky's smile twitches. Buck sits down across from him. His legs tangle with Buck's own under the table, Buck's foot gently bumping his ankle.

"It's fine," Bucky chomps down on his straw. "How was your advisor meeting anyway?"

"It was good," Buck smiles at him, not even a hint of guilt on his face. "Real good."

Buck had told Bucky he was called to fill in a shift yesterday and that was why he supposedly hadn't been able to meet up. A lie Buck hadn't even bothered to remember. His advisor meetings were also always in the morning on Thursdays. Today was Tuesday.

Buck was still lying to him, and he wasn't even guilty about it.

✨️

"I went by your place yesterday. You weren't home." Buck swings their clasped hands through the air.

"Hmm?" Bucky glanced away from the traffic around them. His detail were staying a conspicuous ten feet back, but they were annoyingly keen when Buck offered to walk him back to his apartment.

Bucky would lose them another day.

Buck laughed, deep and airy. Bucky struggled not to lose himself in it. That was what made this so hard. Bucky still loved Buck, and Buck still acted like Bucky was his whole world and then some.

"Oh," Bucky finally processed what Buck had said. "No, I went to my dad's for the night."

"Really?" Buck squeezes his hand. Bucky hates how much comfort Buck's touch gives him.

Does Curt receive the same...? No Bucky doesn't let himself finish the thought.

"How was it?" Concern bleeds into Buck's voice. Bucky hates how genuine it sounds. He's starting to use that word more than any other. The longer he looks at Buck, the more he has to hate to save his heart.

"Fine," Bucky shrugged stepping further away as they came to a stoplight. "The usual."

"The Bucky I know wouldn't give such a short answer," Buck stepped closer eating up the space Bucky had put between them. "Not unless something happened yesterday. Come on, you okay?"

Bucky felt the words bubbling up his throat.

I saw you. I saw him. Why are you here staring at me like I'm the most important thing in the world when you have him? Why are you doing this to me? I love you. I love you so much it feels like my soul hurts. I hate you.

"Spent most of the night avoiding his staffers." Bucky lied. "Barely saw him, Jack either, yet he still asked me to move home at breakfast."

Buck nods, accepting his lies. Was that what they were now? Not a relationship, simply a lie? Bucky wasn't sure anymore. His heart thumped against his rib cage, anger and love in every other beat, but he wasn't sure which would win.

Buck had become his whole world in such a short amount of time. He thought the feeling was mutual, but yesterday showed just how stupid Bucky really was.

"How about this," Buck nudged his hip. "Why don't I stay over tonight? We'll binge a few movies, order something, and have night in. Then,"

Buck paused with a stupid grin that, despite himself, Bucky still found charming. Fuck, he was truly pathetic for this.

"I'll sweep you off your feet and take you to bed. How does that sound?"

"Won't Curt be expecting you?" The question pops out of him without meaning to. Gale furrows his brow, confusion growing in his eyes.

"Curt won't miss me tonight."

Sure, he won't, Bucky thinks bitterly.

✨️

"John," Jack's voice was a surprise. Especially considering it was his father's number calling him.

"You've gotten much better at your Jack impression," Bucky answers just to be annoying. "Does he know you impersonate him on official numbers?"

"You're not as funny as you believe."

"Ooh, you even have his disapproving tone down. I feel like he's in the room with us!" Bucky laughs. He peers around the corner. Buck's still where he left him, buried in his phone texting someone.

Bucky doesn't let himself think about who that person is.

"Your father wants to invite you to a dinner tomorrow. You can even bring that boy that walked you home. The one that hasn't left." Pages flip in the background as Jack talks. Probably governmental reports his father was supposed to read.

"You know you're not his chief of staff anymore?" Bucky leaned his hip against the counter. "You don't have to read reports or wrangle his kid to government dinners to help his image as a family man. You're his husband now, you're the family."

"You're my kid too by that logic, so wrangling you gets to stay on my resume." Bucky snorts out a laugh. "Besides, it's not a state dinner or anything. He just wants to see you."

Guilt gnaws at his heart. Buck pokes his head into the kitchen, phone no longer holding all of his attention.

"Fine," Bucky groans. "But if he brings up the apartment again, I'm walking out with my food on my plate even if it's the good plates."

"See you tomorrow at 7 then. Bring your boy." Jack hangs up without a goodbye.

✨️

It'll be me, and it'll be you, Buck.

Don't count on it.

Bucky jerks awake. His dream flashes through his head too fast for him to remember anything. Scenes superimpose over each other, words jumble together. At least this one wasn't a nightmare. Those always left him shakey and off balance all day.

His dreams have always been vivid, ever since he was a kid. The child psychologists he'd gone to had said it was normal and simply a sign of a well developed imagination.

Bucky runs a hand through his hair groaning when he glances towards his bedside clock. It's nearly an hour until he has to get up, but he knows that he won't be getting back to sleep before then.

Buck lays curled up next to him on the bed. Bucky reaches out to brush a hand through the other's hair. Buck twitches leaning into the feeling for half a second but doesn't stir beyond that.

Bucky sighs. Extricating himself from Buck's long limbs takes time. Somehow in the night, Buck had nearly fused them together as if even asleep the man refused to let him go. Arms layered over arms. Legs tangled together. It's an excellent distraction from his dreams but not from the problems of the waking world. If only he could forget those once he woke up like he did his dreams.

It's only when he's pouring water for his coffee that he realizes he recognizes the voice from his dream. A first for him.

It'd been Buck's.

✨️

(Not a confrontation I know, but it builds my AU lol)

[fisheito]

my princess nonsense is being encouraged watch ouyt imabout to be eneaabled

OK WHATF ATHAT'S SO CUTE I HAD TO MAKE IT i know realistically there's little to no chance that rei DOESN'T know how to work heels 🤣 BUT IMAGINE.....ING.... YAKUMO GENTLY GUIDING REI IN HEELS, WEEKS BEFORE THE BIG GALA AND HAVING NONE OF HIS NORMAL FEAR OF PHYSICAL TOUCH BC HIS [TEACHER MODE] IS OVERRIDING HIS INSECURITY

[odakota-rose]

leaving this on my tumblr where i can actually find it bc i posted it on twitter last week and it's already evaporated into the void lmao

[arrietty-rune]

Hi I revived an AU i made in 2016 :D

I kinda want to share infos from it so be free to read it below this ｰ(°◇°〃)

That a steampunk AU that is kinda similar to the show (Kids having school, Larry having all the jobs, the Wattersons being the Wattersons) but with some differences. Have some i made for now~

First, the kids are in High School ! Most of them are like 15-16 years old

Darwin gains lungs like the same way in The Origins but he was never lost and didn't gained legs, so the Watterson bought him mechanics ones by a charity.

Penny broke by accident her shell when she was young: the remains of it are used as a mask

The void still exist and Rob was one of its victims by just touching a glitchy crack on a wall. His arm was infected and has being removed, replaced today by a mechanic one

-Talking about Rob-, his personality is a mix from his pre and his post void here, he's still an happy guy, loving passing time with friends and unaware of the world being fictional (all he saw from the void was the crack). But he acts more mature than other kids and can have anxiety easily, due to his past as being an orphan. He'is adopted by Larry and Steve, a while after being at the hospital.

Rachel is very much present in this (I'm sorry but I love her). She wear an eye-patch, saying that it cames from an old injury

Also hmm have some art from 2016 to compare bc why not lol (be careful they're cringe)

[warpolomewdarkmatter]

cumbersome and heavy body

[cold-neon-ocean]

Posting this by itself because :) I just feel like he should have gotten to wear the mech pilot suit at least once..

(my AU black version and the og green)

[uncarving-the-block]

Tumblr kind of sucks for asks like this but im looking for good resources on teaching HEMA fundamentals to absolute beginners. I’m taking over the fundamentals course for one of the schools I attend and would like to not be flailing wildly. YouTube, essays, whatever, is fine.

[universestreasures]

Snareshipping: Pick-up Lines. (Feat: @devildukem )

A Rarity's Birthday Day Festival 2024 🎁 (For Tes, AKA @ofhardknoxxx ) ONLY THE TAGGED BLOGS MAY REBLOG!!!

[ask-wren-zhang]

For your ask post:

If they were ever granted one wish, what would they wish for?

Sighs in wistful lactose intolerance, "to eat a cheesecake." 😔

[lord-squiggletits]

I need to reread the comics again to have specific arguments/evidence for this, but like

I feel a bit like I could've been sympathetic to the way other Cybertronian colonies view Cybertron, if it weren't for the fact that at least several of them (as in, ones that get notable dialogue/screen time) are so low-key self-righteous?

Like, idk... there's a lot of criticism of Cybertronians because they're so "warlike" and how their obsession with violence and vengeance is just dragging the whole galaxy down with them, but uh. The Autobot-Decepticon war was basically a product of societal ills bubbling over for like 6 million years beforehand and then finally boiling over into a 4 million year war that lasted as long as it did because the people involved had immense social/psychological trauma from being "raised" in an oppressive society.

So when the colonists come in being all 'omg you people are so violent and uncivilized why don't you just like, stop fighting' it kind of pissed me off a little bit as a reader/person like. Idk the colonists really came into this society of people full of massive amounts of trauma where even before the war society was super oppressive and no one has any experience of living "normal" lives unaffected by violence and bigotry. And the colonists were like "ummm wow why don't you guys just??? stop fighting???." Like idk it wasn't EVERY SINGLE MOMENT, in fact I think that when it was played for laughs it's quite a funny "fridge horror" type element. It was just annoying because like.... IDK???? It's just really annoying to watch a bunch of people who lived relatively sheltered lives on their own planets come to a different planet full of traumatized people and be like "omg why are you people so fucked up" IDK BRO MAYBE BECAUSE THEIR SOCIETY WAS OPPRESSIVE AND THEY LIVED THROUGH A LIFELONG WAR???

It also doesn't help that the colonies were literally founded based on imperialism and conquest so like, it's fucking rich to hear colonists scolding Cybertronians for their violence ruining the whole galaxy while literally sitting on planets that their Primes colonized from others. The hypocrisy of this is briefly mentioned in Unicron (literally the FINAL STORY OF THE SERIES) but like, that's basically the only time Cybertronian characters are given a reprieve of sympathy from other characters in universe and it's so tiresome.

I've talked to other people who didn't like the colonists and thought they basically (narratively speaking) existed just to shit on the existing characters, and it's actually really easy for me to sympathize with/outright agree with that assessment of the story considering how much of exRID/OP seems to be preoccupied with "Cybertron/the Primes/Optimus sucks" with very few reprieves for anything positive happening and even fewer chances for characters to get to explain themselves and experience a little bit of justice? Like, as the audience, it's just very frustrating to see the characters you spent hundreds of issues keeping up with get shit on by a bunch of "literally-who"s and then not really get a chance to ever defend themselves, either by literally defending themselves in conversation or having some sort of narrative thing happening that vindicates them at least symbolically