#sorry in advance for the dissertation

[destinyc1020]

Do not take this the wrong way but what is Tomdayas and Tom stans problem with Timothee it’s honestly weird. They get mad and hate on Tim and Z’s friendship and when stans post about it saying it’s not real and they are playing it up. But Tomdayas can say stuff like loving Claire and tuwaine’s friendship when Z’s mom is for sure not friends with him although I’m sure they are cool and cordial. It’s just gives off the vibe Z can’t have male friends or anyone one of the opposite sex around her unless she knows them through Tom and it’s weird.

Idk I just think it’s funny the same way tondayas say people are doing too just h abkut tim and Z’s friendship when I mean they gotta be cool if they was shopping for his apartment and she helped him clean it up. But it’s just shows how Tom stans get offended on his behalf and how poorly they think of Z. Because what’s the problem with her having a male friend. Stop worrying about the weirdos that purposely ship then to get a ride of Tomdayas and understand Z is allowed to have a life outside of Tom and that includes friends of the opposite sex.

(Sorry in advance to @melodichaeuxx-lacritquexx and her ADHD lol 🤭, but some things just have to be said)

TL;DR Version:

Anon, there are a lot of things you have misconceptions about, but I will just say that a LOT of the answers to your questions are due to Timdaya stans. Go blame them. Us Tomdaya Fans over here are just tired of the constant disrespect. That's basically it.

Click below 👇 to read the "LONG" version if you dare.... 😏

The LONG Version:

Do not take this the wrong way but what is Tomdayas and Tom stans problem with Timothee it’s honestly weird.

Most Tomdaya fans I know don't necessarily have a problem with Timmy. They have a problem with Timdaya stans or Timothee STANS. Even if some Tomdaya stans DON'T like Timmy, it's more so because Timdaya stans are annoying, and/or Timmy stans can be insufferable and view him as superior to every other actor out here in his age bracket. Not to mention, a lot of his stans bully Tom online. 🙄 So, is it any surprise why SOME (notice I said some) Tomdaya fans might not feel all that particularly warm feelings towards Timmy?? 🤔

Just for the record, I don't have anything against Timmy personally. 🤷🏾‍♀️

They get mad and hate on Tim and Z’s friendship and when stans post about it saying it’s not real and they are playing it up.

It's because Timdayas do the most, and SHIP Z with Timmy, when she is clearly in a relationship with Tom, and has been for years. It's very disrespectful imo. Why isn't this sinking in w/you all? 🥴 Idk why this is so difficult for some of you to grasp.

Second, why are you all always posting about Timmy and Z's "friendship", which is something you barely even rarely see unless they're filming or promoting Dune together? This "friendship" thing just sounds like another sly way for Timdaya stans to try to ship Z with Tim on the down low, and many Tomdaya fans see right through it. 😒

Also, Timmy and Z might be "industry friends", but even they don't seem to be "besties" like you all think. So a lot of the Timdaya "friendship" is OVERhyped, for sure imo. 🤷🏾‍♀️

But Tomdayas can say stuff like loving Claire and tuwaine’s friendship when Z’s mom is for sure not friends with him although I’m sure they are cool and cordial.

Girl.... Obviously you haven't been in the fandom long enough if you're making silly statements like this. 😒 Claire is indeed friends with Tuwaine.

She's even made him jewelry.

Claire and Tuwaine hugging at a premiere....👇 That was a loooong ol' hug too lol. 😅 That wasn't just a: "Oh hey, yea I remember you..." in passing type of hug.

Claire and Whitney (Z's cousin) went to go see Tuwaine's play "Barbershop" years ago when it was playing in LA.

That's not just a "cool" and "cordial" thing imo. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Tuwaine and friends out to eat w/Claire in attendance....

Idk I just think it’s funny the same way tondayas say people are doing too just h abkut tim and Z’s friendship

I have no clue what you're trying to say here....

It’s just gives off the vibe Z can’t have male friends or anyone one of the opposite sex around her unless she knows them through Tom and it’s weird.......Because what’s the problem with her having a male friend.

For the LAST time .... NOBODY is saying that Z can't have male friends. 🙄

Tomdaya fans just hate the stupid Timdaya shipping and constant disrespect to Tom, and even Zendaya herself. Blame Timdayas, not US.

Z has been very close friends with Kamil for YEARS, and NOOOO Tomdaya fans have ever had an issue with that. You know why?? Because people weren't being disrespectful and shipping Kamil with Zendaya.

Fans have been VERY supportive of Z's friendship with Darnell as well. Keep in mind, stupid people on the internet aren't shipping her with Darnell, or reading into small miniscule gestures and trying to imply a romance (or even a FUTURE romance) aka..... things that just aren't there. 🙄 And quite frankly, (IMO) will NEVER be there. Stop trying to make fetch happen with Timmy and Z.

As you can see, Z CAN have male friends. Nobody has even made any issues about Z and her co-stars Josh and Mike from "Challengers". They are just about as "friends" with her as she is with Timmy right?? Soooo.... Don't you see what the difference is???

In fact, I'd even venture to say that nooobody had an issue with Timmy when Z was dating JE, and Z and Timmy were both spotted in that Bed Bath & Beyond together in NYC. Literally NOBODY made a fuss about that. Most people weren't shipping them during that time. Gee...wonder why...😒

Anyway, Idk why some of you all can't see that Timmy and Z are in two totally different stages of their lives rn. Z is practically engaged to Tom......Timmy's been living the single "Bachelor Life" for years. Nothing wrong with that at all, but it's just facts. Call me when Timmy has had a relationship with a woman that actually lasts longer than 2 years before you even think to be shipping Z with him lol. 😅

Believe me Anon....NOBODY in Tomdaya World is threatened by Timmy or worried for Tom's sake. Zendaya loves Tom to death. Everyone with a pair of EYES can see that.

Tomdaya fans just don't like Z being shipped with male actors who are NOT her boyfriend, and male fandoms who constantly disrespect her AND her boyfriend. Plain and simple. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Why you can't see this very simple fact is beyond me.

[afemalegazing]

On Nick Blaine, Narrative Betrayal, and the Engineered Silence of a Fandom

This essay was originally posted on the private Osblaine subreddit. I'm posting it here in advance of the upcoming (final) AbovetheGarage podcast meta episode so it's accessible for anyone who wants to read the essay in full.

Spoilers for THT & lots of fan rage below the cut.

Sorry for the essay, but I feel so beside myself and gaslit by the whiplash of this experience that I needed to unload somewhere, and while it feels futile to even try to explain all of my thoughts at this stage, I feel compelled to share where I've landed. I'm so unbelievably down over this, guys. Gutted, as I know all of you are.

Nick Blaine wasn’t just killed, he was sacrificed on the altar of The Lesson™. An out-of-nowhere, contextually empty erasure of characterization, meaning, motivation, and continuity, all to teach the audience The Lesson™ we never asked for or needed to hear.

Nick wasn’t given a resolution. He wasn’t honored. He wasn’t even mourned! Not by the showrunners, writers, cast members, or other characters—and most painfully, not by the woman who we know loved him so deeply. Instead he was reduced to a message delivery device about evil MAGA Nazi incels or whatever buzzword is currently very popular on Twitter, in the most contrived and unearned narrative fashion possible. Once this utility was fulfilled for the whims of sycophants like Chang/Tuchman/Miller/Moss/Fagbenle et al these people just threw Nick in the trash where they claim he apparently always belonged.

And the worst part is that the show expects us to applaud. It expects us to look at Joseph "Pick three women June the rest die of radiation poisoning" Lawrence, and Serena Joy "But I never thought they'd take MY finger or MY child" Waterford with enormous pride and empathy and understanding. Don't even get me started on Lydia...I have PhD dissertations about that fascinating and deluded narcissist in my comment history, too.

To be clear, I love all these characters flaws and all, they engross me, and it's intriguing watching their dynamics unfold in this often hideous, violent sandbox. But in the end their arguably unnecessary redemptive arcs are heaped with praise and encouragement and the writers bait us with how terribly complicated and brave they are, while substantially less problematic Nick isn't offered the same consideration or forgiveness or grace (and now perhaps never will be) according to that very same moral framework. June herself generally gets a pass as the protagonist, even though she has long been a flagrant thematic and ethical mirror for all the considerable deficiencies we see in the antagonists. So who decides a character's worthiness for redemption or value then, and how? It is simply all SO INCONSISTENT. The framework gives everyone else the space to breathe, err and exist. Whereas for Nick, the framework is solely punitive. Why? Why is this?

Nick's actual unforgivable crimes: folding under Wharton's wall threats three episodes from the finale after YEARS of repeatedly saving June + Nichole's lives and helping them escape, being a lifeline for finding out Hannah's whereabouts, gathering intel for the American intelligence agencies, smuggling contraband to the Jezebels and also to Luke over the border, delivering Fred on a platter so June and the other handmaids could rip him apart, executing other wicked Commanders for their violence against vulnerable women....just a sample of his awful deeds. Keeping in mind that all of thirteen and a half minutes ago in the show's timeline he risked it all and was forced to murder two teenaged boys in broad daylight during a highly scrutinized diplomatic event, to save June's fucking idiot husband.

I'm so utterly baffled that I don't even know how to unpack the stupidity of the choices these writers have made. We are all such brain-dead slop consumers that a recent magazine interview had Chang confirming Nick's many atrocities, none of which are ever shown on screen or even alluded to in the dialog but which she assures us DEFINITELY happened, A LOT (trust me bro). This little blurb is apparently sufficient evidence for the narrative to unceremoniously dispose of Nick, his legacy, and all he meant to us. Have you ever heard of a TV show whose narrative coherence literally requires supplemental reading materials? It's fine. Just eat the slop you fucking morons. Eat it and like it.

This isn’t tragedy, this is didacticism. This is when a writer's room decides that making a point is more important than telling a good story. When characters stop being human and start being metaphors. When you trade nuance for shock, ambiguity for ideology, and call it brave.

Nick Blaine meant something to me. I saw myself in him. I saw my own passivity in him—I also saw my capacity for great bravery and connection in him. He was kind, vulnerable, morally gray, emotionally grounded, deeply tethered to June and thus to me, the viewer, experiencing her world. He was human. His gentleness, his love for June and Nichole was such a vital counterpoint to the monstrous cruelty of Gilead. But rather than explore that complexity and offer him the obvious arc his character had earned, the show retconned him literally at the finish line, flattened him, eliminated all of his human dimensions. At the end I actually laughed—horribly, in grotesque & amazed outrage—like these writers were saying to me, Hey idiot, he was the real baddie all along, believe us that he deserved this, we're the experts. And thought I would just gleefully swallow this and lap it the fuck up. I'm not exaggerating: I legitimately don't think any of them watched the show in its entirety before they sat down to write this season.

Narrative cohesion and character continuity was clearly not their focus, why? Because message-driven media no longer trusts its audience to feel anything honestly. It has to teach us. To scold us. And if a character has to die in an embarrassingly hamfisted way so we can 'learn' something about the cost of love, or the futility of hope, or that there's actually NO GOOD MEN ANYWHERE unless they are played by Bradley Whitford, or the strength of a woman alone and any romance be damned, then so be it. Our fault. We watched it wrong. Silly females with our silly hopes and love stories and delusions.

This is not storytelling. This is narrative punishment, and poorly disguised moral performance art. I half expected the episode to be dedicated to All The Antifascists Out There On The Right Side of History Like Us when the end credits rolled. Story? Nah. Preachy lesson for dumbass audience who can't think for themselves? Hell yeah. Nick exits stage left as a convenient device for the showrunners to serve up as a pawn in their thematic chess game, designed wholly to teach the audience The Lesson™. He was the sacrificial lamb for their bizarre in-script anti-Nazi rhetoric (so overt it was cringe-inducing, and included for whom? all those Nazis gleefully tuning in to THT every week?) This conclusion is the final heart monitor flatlining after a long meandering decline of the show's earlier great writing.

It's not edgy or profound to gut a character’s arc for shock value. You’re not feminist or radical for flattening moral complexity into black-and-white symbols. It's an absolute mess of lazy, trite metaphors for THE CURRENT TIMES, this story is IMPORTANT and RELEVANT! And Hi, writers? We also live in the world???? God, it's so patronizing. It's so condescending. I'm so exhausted from this cheap process of demoralization.

And I looked around for the outrage and confusion and anger that should have echoed across the fandom and instead I saw silence. Sanitized comment sections. Applause from brand-friendly fan accounts with lots of emojis and lots of "OMG LAWRENCE PUTTING HIS HAND TO HIS CHEST 😭 !!!!!" The algorithm drowning dissent like it’s inconvenient noise. Entire social media posts being deleted out of nowhere.

This isn’t fandom, and hasn't been an organic one since streaming took over the market, or even before. It’s narrative control via PR management and we are all witnessing manufactured consent in real time. I'm not trying to be dramatic or cynical, it's just the truth. This is how it works now. Delivering twisty shock content drives up engagement on platforms, and tracking that engagement data is an enormous factor when OTT platforms are considering each season-to-season renewal. But man is it still disheartening and mundane to see it happening after so many years of stupidly giving a shit.

The emotional response to this episode should have been explosive fury and instead we get this eerie illusion of consensus, because anything that challenges The Lesson™ and inversely How Good They The Holy Virtuous Writers Are As People For Teaching It To Us Deluded Plebs gets buried or deleted. They want you and I to feel alone in our bewilderment, and to doubt our own perceptions of the show we've been watching and analyzing for an eon straight—it makes them feel better about the god-awful job they have done in the hopes they win some meaningless self-congratulatory accolades at the Emmys. And if you dare to feel betrayed or express that, you’re told you’re missing the point and somehow have been for an entire decade along with the majority of the fanbase with two eyes and a functioning brain in their skulls. It's so absurd it's almost satire. Someday it will be satire I think. But this is how it is right now, and I'm telling you, it's entirely on purpose.

To the writers, showrunners, social media managers + Hulu press interns:

I see exactly what you did, and what you are currently doing to manage the fallout.

You killed a beloved character not for plot or for truth or to honestly serve the story's natural conclusion, but for theater and for social media engagement. For a moral takeaway. For prestige TV applause. And worse—for the proud, smug, holier-than-thou sniffles of liberal feminists who require all media to pander to the current political 'thing' rather than just telling a good goddamn story. Congrats, the whole IP has been permanently ruined by this type of short-sighted shallow garbage and will never recover its early reputation. This could have been a timeless piece of television with some hiccups; now it will forever remain a preachy manipulative product of one particular era. An ode to our fragile cultural psyche and its associated political catchphrases and ego interference. It's limp and it's finished, like GOT was at the end. No one will care or remember or rewatch this trauma-porn soap opera when all its nuance and ambiguity and soft edges have been snuffed out in the most incomprehensible way. THT will be forgotten, like every other show before it that has gone on too long only to totally blow it in the last inning. The Testaments is probably dead in the water too, and will be canceled lightning fast without a doubt if this tripe is any indication of this team's ability to go meaningfully off-book. It gets proven over and over and over again with zero room for doubt that audiences don't like to be lectured and morally grandstanded to, but here we are yet again.

In conclusion, this absolute swill is what happens when writers try to write at the audience rather than for the characters.

Nick Blaine somehow became the worst villain amongst these brutal, sadistic people, all the social architects, economists, rapists, abusers, traffickers, slave-owners, murderers. Not because he was actually always that way 'off-screen' of course, but because the people who were compelled time and again to watch his complex character evolve and grow had to be taught The Lesson™. Nick Nazi, Nick Complicit, Nick Evil Forever, Nick Dies A Coward, durrrrr. Just stop. Stop caring! Just eat our slop. They turned a living, breathing character (who we loved and puzzled over for years and paid their bills to spend time with) into a morality lecture to tell you how goddamn dumb you are, they replaced his arc with a sermon and then expected us to clap.

But I’m not clapping. I’m grieving. Because it's all just such an awful, incredible waste.

I'm grieving the time and energy I've wasted on a product that the creators stopped caring about and lost interest in understanding. I’m grieving a character who mattered more than this, and a profoundly loving relationship that moved my heart amidst all of that darkness, and a story that once knew how to hold pain with complexity instead of turning it into hollow, curated shock.

They didn’t write an ending, they wrote a manipulative virtue signal to make fools out of all of us who actually dared to give a shit. I won't pretend that it's important art with something to say, and I will never again give them the benefit of my dollars, attention or engagement.

[retiredteabag]

Can I please request smau/fic about jjk men noticing reader hasn't been eating. I know not a lot like to wrote about ED as it can be triggering for others. But for someone who suffers from ED as well, I find this very comforting, for people to be aware of what we go through internally, looking good vs starving to death, lack of confidence and self-esteem, always an option, plan B or second best, losing control in everything else so you cpnyrol the one thing you can, which is your eating. Sorry, got a bit carried away there but I would totally understand if youre not comfy with this topic. Thanks in advance!

I realize now that I probably ought to make a “rules” tab in my dashboard but this anon was very respectful so I’ll say this here.

I will be making a smau about the characters noticing you not taking care of yourself, however:

it is important to not romanticize the idea of people taking part in noticable mental illness. It is imperative that people learn self love, not because others love us, but because we are created special and unique. You will not feel the need to seek love, affection, and attention from others once you are able to fully love and appreciate yourself.

Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the idea that we are “comforting” ourselves by seeking out media that aligns with our internal struggles when, in reality, what is best for us, is to work on our own mentality.

Self triggering, or rather, the action of avoiding contrast effects, is not good for you, nor is it a form of healing. I highly recommend researching this topic in Benjamin W. Bellet, Payton J. Jones, and Richard J. McNallys study, “Self-Triggering? An Exploration of Individuals Who Seek Reminders of Trauma” from Harvard University’s Department of Phycology, a doctoral dissertation.

If we make the active effort to not seek out toxic/competitive/dark media, we can make huge strides in helping ourselves. I say this as someone who has struggled with disordered eating in the past, has lost a loved one due to an ED, and at one point thought they were impossible to overcome.

Learn to take care of yourself as though you were taking care of someone else. I can confidently say now, it is completely possible to prevail through these circumstances: only, we must first actually desire this end.

Having said all of this. The day after tomorrow the smau will come out as “you’re not taking care of yourself”.

[uriekukistan]

alright i've been seeing so much megumi hate recently, and especially after the new chapter (not on here, mostly twitter youtube and tiktok), so as president of the megumi defense squad, here is my dissertation defending him against the bum allegations.

i've seen a lot of people comparing megumi's situation to yuuji in shibuya, and saying that megumi should be able to "just get up and keep fighting," so i'm going to tell you why this is not a fair comparison, and give some context on yuuji's "recovery" from shibuya that i feel people are missing when they say this. this is quite lengthy, sorry in advance

i. fundamental differences in the ways in which yuuji & megumi view saving people

yuuji wants to save everyone. he wants to save as many people as he can because of what his grandfather said to him on his deathbed. this is what kickstarted the events of jjk. if yuuji hadn't felt this way, he never would have eaten that finger to say some guy he met an hour ago, which is another point. yuuji cares for people easily. he threw his life on the line to save megumi immediately after meeting him. he mourned junpei, who he spent all of a few hours with in total like he had known him for years.

this is very different from megumi, who both does not get attached to people easily, and does not care to save everyone. he only cares to save people he deems worthy, and as far as we know, this list consists of only tsumiki and yuuji. its even unclear if he feels this way about nobara or gojo, despite them also being relatively important in his life. as you can see, when he thinks about saving people by his conscience, the only two characters shown are tsumiki and yuuji.

this is why he sometimes gets some criticism for not doing a half-assed job as a sorcerer, but i think its important to remember that he does not actually want to be a sorcerer, only doing it out of necessity to keep tsumiki from the zen'in clan. the times where we do see him taking things seriously are when yuuji and/or tsumiki's lives are what's at stake.

so in shibuya, after watching his own hands slaughter innocent people, and watching nanami and nobara die, yuuji is able to keep going because there are still more people who need to be saved, and he wants to save everyone. in contrast, megumi has watched his own hands kill one of the two people that he cares about saving, and severely maim the other one, so what is there to keep fighting for, given the way he views the world?

and i think it's also important to note that megumi has not been aware of his surroundings since sukuna v yorozu, so saying that he should get up now to save yuuji is not reasonable because he doesn't even know yuuji is there.

ii. the environment yuuji was in in shibuya vs the environment megumi is in right now

now none of that is to say that yuuji did not also break down and want to give up in shibuya, because he absolutely did (actually, im not sure if this is canon or just my theory, but the reason he did not switch back with sukuna at the detention center was because he wanted to give up), but the circumstances were way different

within minutes of watching nanami and nobara die, todo & nitta were there to encourage him and get him back on his feet (most of that was due to todo, but nitta was also telling yuuji not to lose hope).

meanwhile, megumi has been alone for over a month now, save the few seconds in 251 where i'm pretty sure he didn't even know yuuji was there, with nothing but his own misery to keep him company. sukuna took over his body and killed tsumiki with megumi's technique on november 16th. the shinjuku showdown takes place on december 24th. that's over a month stewing in guilt and mourning with no one to support him at all. that makes it a lot more difficult to bounce back quickly like that.

iii. more context on yuuji

even after todo's little pep talk that gave him the strength to get up and finish mahito off, yuuji didn't just "bounce back" and stand up to keep fighting in the way people think he did. in the days following the shibuya incident, he was really directionless, probably a bit reckless, because he genuinely didn't know what to do with himself, and didn't know if he even deserved to be alive. in my personal interpretation of yuuji immediately post-shibuya, if it weren't for choso, he would have likely lost his life, as he just showed a lack of self-regard in those days following. just one example:

it's not until megumi shows up again that yuuji finds a direction to go, and even then, he's operating with the mindset that once everything is over, megumi and tsumiki are safe, and gojo is unsealed, he will die and stop causing trouble for everyone.

so again, i think the megumi/yuuji comparison as a way to hate on megumi is not fair, both because there are important differences in the way they think and their situations, and because yuuji's reaction post shibuya isn't quite as resolved and strong as people make it out to be. this is not to say that yuuji is not strong! he absolutely is, just to point out that he, like megumi, was/is also lacking the will to live, and there's nothing wrong with that! wanting to give up is a completely reasonable reaction to being in this situation as an ADULT, let alone at 15 years old.

if you've made it this far, thank you for listening to me ramble 🙏 pls let me know any of your thoughts as well, i'd love to chat about this!

[johnslittlespoon]

morning reblog + snippet <3 need to get in the habit of doing this but somehow once the chapter is actually posted i get nervous despite sharing bits and pieces the whole time i'm writing lol?? silly!

sappy but waking up to the ao3 comment emails had me giggling kicking my feet twirling my hair this morning, i rly do tear up reading them, i'm so so thankful for every interaction on this fic and ik i repeat myself every time i post a new chapter but i just. appreciate the love so much and i'm so grateful for the patience i've been shown as i navigate a proper long fic for the first time!! wowie

idk what i did to deserve stumbling into a fandom so kind and sweet and supportive and INSANELY creative and talented (simultaneously thanking barry and hating him for getting me attached to that precious little lieutenant and then ripping him away just as fast fml), i genuinely feel so lucky to have something to be excited about every day and as much as i love writing this fic, i can't wait to be done so i can lock in and pour over all my friends' fics and give back so much love :')))

You're A Dog (I'm Your Man)

Ch. 5/8 – 'I Count My Time In Dog Years'

[WC: 27K | Gale Cleven/John Egan, Pining, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Requited Unrequited Love]

John Egan loves like a dog.

[AO3 LINK]

[humbledragon669]

Back for a spell

Alright, I'm not really back-back. I mean I haven't suddenly written another 1500 words on a tiny 5 minute segment of a single episode and spent countless hours making GIFs and audio clips to prove a point. Sorry.

But.

Do you remember, what seems like a very long time ago now, I said that I would be away for a bit because I was about to start getting VERY busy with an MSc? Yeah. That happened. It REALLY happened. I don't really sleep or see the outdoors anymore. And if the hubbie didn't cook for me, I probably wouldn't eat too much either. Anyway. The home straight is here! I am now writing my dissertation and what I came here to say was that I would really love it if there are any of you out there who would like to help me, I've written a little survey that forms part of my research. It should take about 20 minutes and it's about phishing training.

I promise (and I really do) this isn't some clever/obvious actual attempt to phish you - I really am doing an MSc in Cyber Security and my dissertation really is about how effective current phishing training techniques are.

If you're able to fill it out, great. If you want to share it so other people can do the same, also great!

I appreciate this probably isn't the sort of content you're accustomed to from me, but it's all I have right now. Outside of that, I actually can't wait to get back to writing GO stuff - I miss those boys so much!

For now though, I shall return back to the darkness behind my desk and say thank you to all in advance! Hopefully see you in *checks calendar* about... 10 weeks?

[slowburningechoes]

hii, i apologise in advance for this being a very long message and do not feel compelled to read it, as it is a lot of writing

I just really want to thank you for posting all of this stuff because as weird as it sounds Robert is kind of the only reason for my happiness these last few months, and i am so so so appreciative... i listen to the selected shorts when i go to sleep LOL so thank you so much for uploading all this stuff

im also so happy for you to meet him, he is so so sweet, as well as you being so sweet when you met him, and as an artist it makes me really happy to see him love your watercolours which were BEAUTIFUL by the way

im 16 and live in the uk, so i was heartbroken when i couldnt come fly to america to see betrayal. but to be honest seeing everyone meet him and seeing how kind he is has cheered me up!! i just really hope hell do another play someday and im worried he wont do another one again or for a while, but at the end of the day i just want him to be happy so ill be pleased no matter what

also, thank you in advance if youre still uploading the audiobooks into mp3s, i love his voice so much!!! i have bridge to terabithia on CD which is the only one i could get in the uk LOL so i am so excited to hear more thank u so much!!!!

i just wanted to share my love for him, and tell you how thankful i am for your posts : )

(ps i dont know how tumblr works so im sorry if ive sent this wrong, or given you loads of notifications for sharing your posts.....)

oh, this just made my entire week!!! thank you for this sweet message.

first off — no need to apologize! I adore reading any drop in my inbox, no matter how brief or long!

secondly — you are so welcome. your expression about RSL being one of the only things to bring you joy lately is not weird at all. it’s honestly very relatable. these past few months have also been difficult for me in numerous ways. there is so comforting about his work, his voice, and his overall presence that is difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t understand — but i definitely do!!!

i am so glad that seeing our interactions from Betrayal brought you some happiness. i’ve said this before but i really tried to bring all the love for him from across the world and give it to him. i wish everyone could’ve been there and gets the opportunity to see/meet him at least once! i felt very honored to have that opportunity, so i tried to communicate just how loved he is around the globe! (i’ll keep my fingers crossed you get to come see him in a show one day — or that he makes his way back over across the pond! you never know!) i hope he’s taking time to rest and spend time with his girls, but doesn’t disappear entirely for too long!

thank you for your kind words about my artwork! they were truly a labor of love. i remember bringing up making them to @ridethecyanide as a bit of a hypothetical, but i am so glad i went through with making them. he is such a genuine soul with such a warm heart, it felt so nice to try to give back some of the happiness he has brought to myself and so many. his reaction and our interaction in general was more than i ever hoped for!!!🥹

i am definitely still planning to convert the physical copies of audiobooks i have to mp3 files to share with you all very soon! i have to get over this last hump with dissertation, but know that they ARE coming!! likely sometime in the summer.

i agree! his voice is so smooth and wonderful, i could listen to him talk and narrate for hours. i love hearing him do different accents and tones within them. my southern heart adores his attempts at country twang, like when he voices the mother in bridge to terabithia! it’s adorable.

thank you again for dropping this in my inbox!!! i am so touched my content has helped spark some joy in your life. i hope more happiness comes your way soon!! and if you still need an RSL fix, there is much more to come on my end, love. <3

[mariacallous]

Egypt’s two flagship universities, Cairo University and the American University in Cairo, are ranked 350th and 410th globally. According to the QS World University Rankings, there are at least 1,200 schools around the world that are better than Damascus University. In Turkey, Middle East Technical University comes in at 285th, Bogazici University—which was founded by Americans and modeled after the small liberal arts colleges found in the United States—is 418th, and the training ground for Turkey’s civil service, Ankara University, is ranked lower than 800th.

There are multiple reasons for these poor rankings, but one common factor runs through them: government interference. When the security services are monitoring the quad and faculty offices, academic freedom is compromised, which directly affects the quality of research (if any research is being conducted at all). There is a problem with credentialing at some of these schools. Melih Bulu, whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appointed rector of Bogazici in 2021, confronted several credible allegations of plagiarism during his seven-month tenure leading the school. It is not unheard of in Egypt for elites to pay to have dissertations written for them.

Of course, this kind of malfeasance is not confined to the universities of the Middle East, but Bulu in Turkey, like the people paying for the prestige of advanced degrees in Egypt, and others like them across the region, are the symptoms of broken systems of higher education—a state of affairs to which governments have contributed. There are many talented students and faculty in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, but state interference has made it impossible for universities to fulfill their mission.

This sorry condition of major universities in the Middle East should be a warning to everyone who cares about higher education in the United States, American competitiveness, and U.S. soft power. There is no other country whose universities can keep up with the pace-setting, world-class nature of those in the United States, whose faculties and students can (until recently) pursue knowledge without fear of state interference.

The quality of American higher education built and nurtured on the principles of free inquiry is the reason why people all over the world want to send their kids to college in America. Three of Erdogan’s children went to Indiana University. In Jeddah, it is hard to find a member of the Saudi business elite who has not attended UCLA or USC, and there are a noticeable number of Harvard, Yale, and Tufts graduates in Riyadh. When I was studying for my doctorate at Penn, there was an army of Turkish and East Asian students in attendance.

Columbia, Penn, Harvard, and other American schools that are in the crosshairs of the Trump administration have a long way to go before they resemble their counterparts in the Middle East. They are at risk, though. The White House’s determination to punish these universities for both real and perceived transgressions puts the world-changing work that is being done at these schools in jeopardy. Students and professors will flee when resources are rescinded or never appropriated, and fear will force political conformity on cacophonous campuses that by their very nature encourage creativity, experimentation, and discovery.

All that said, any objective observation of what has gone down on campuses over the last 18 months makes clear that American universities have a range of problems, many of which are their own making. The stories of timorous leadership, rank antisemitism, left-wing dogmatism, and political activism masquerading as research are well-known by now. It seems that a large number of graduates are credentialed but are neither well-educated nor curious about the world—steeped as they are in the moral absolutism of contemporary pedagogy.

These are real problems, but, of course, the news stories and commentary about campus excess purposefully overlook how universities are critical to the development and understanding of artificial intelligence, discovering cures for various forms of cancer, developing a vaccine for AIDS, advancing quantum computing, understanding de-democratization, and gaining insight into ancient civilizations, to name a few random and notable examples. In its zeal to punish universities and establish control over them, Team Trump—which is chock-full of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other elite school grads—is risking current and future achievements, inventions, and innovations.

Hardly anyone would dispute that certain departments and certain schools are hotbeds of radicalism whose faculty and students demonstrate a yen for extremism so long as it is cloaked in the de-colonization paradigm. One of the privileges of tenure is the right to say stupid things without fear of political retaliation, though it seems the most outspoken professors believe (erroneously) that tenure and academic freedom insulate them from criticism outside the rarefied turf of academia.

Still, the overindulgences of some faculty is not a good reason to rescind hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants. That hurts everyone, and contrary to President Donald Trump’s worldview, it will not make the United States stronger. Indeed, one of the best ways to help the Chinese Communist Party is to hamstring American universities and colleges.

There is no doubt that U.S. universities had become damaged even before Trump’s interference. For those who do not work or study at them, it is hard to fathom how widespread intolerance and illiberalism are at schools that so ostentatiously promote their commitments to the opposite. But state punishment will further impair American higher education, just in different ways. Columbia is not in danger of becoming Ain Shams University (ranked 592nd in the world), but policing it in the way the Trump administration has will perhaps render it more politically pliant and palatable—yet also less creative and less conducive to discovery. That is closer to the zombie universities of the Middle East than anyone, including the president’s supporters, should want.

[radiantcircle-if]

it's september 1! 😩

so i said that i planned to continue trying to write an average of 500 words a day for august, but then i spent the first half of the month feeling depressed because living alone is deceptively difficult 😭 so i gave up having a goal to focus on self-care. thankfully, i'm in a much better headspace 💕

so in august i think i added around 2,000 words story-wise (i didn't keep track in an attempt to not feel so bad about a tiny number 🫣), but i also decided to add a major choice into the first plot beat of chapter one and that set me back a little. i also did some coding and moved my draft from gdocs to scrivener for the corkboard and color coding. in the end, the rest of my writing has mostly been spent on exploring the shared backstory between mc and all the ROs.

definitely the most fun i had this month was answering all of the great asks sent to me. i have a few more asks half-answered in my drafts so uh i guess expect more essays, and once i have those finished, i'll answer the newer asks i've got. thank you for sending them in 🥰

(i'm saving the nsfw asks for after demo release, which i'm planning to be the full first chapter. plan is still fall! but probably late fall.)

for those curious about the change in the chapter, you still arrive home, reunite with your brother, and spend some time with one of your dads, and then that's where there's a shift. i moved the reminiscing for the next plot beat when you arrive at your family's solstice party. instead, i decided to throw in a really fun decision that i won't spoil 🥰

coding-wise, we've got a profile now. also made some more unnecessary design decisions like changing the font and adding more colors. i love vibrant colors, but i know they're annoying lmao i'll definitely include a black/white theme.

here's a preview of what i've got so far, though same caveat as before: any of this design could change between now and the demo. some of it already changed in the last month like twice. i am indecisive as hell when it comes to aesthetics...

(the name on the profile is from a french band called odezenne that i really like if you're looking for a random recommendation.)

plan for september is to go back to writing an average of 500 words a day at least for the first half of the month. unfortunately, i have to work on my dissertation as well and the academic year starts near the end of the month, which means i'll be busy with teaching/grad schooling again. that'll slow me down for sure, so i'm sorry in advance.

ok that's all. until next update 🙃

[aboutnavi]

Very quick, very brief spoiler for the next chapter of the waves! Sorry in advance, but this chapter is getting bigger than planned, so it will take a little while to get uploaded, but it's coming hahaha I'm still not finished with my dissertation (hopefully I'll be free in June) so I'm just trying to fit my writing in the five minutes I get between working on the dissertation and working at my real, life-consuming job. Not easy, actually, because most days I'm just extremely drained and have zero creativity and energy to do anything but we are pushing things forward.

[scoonsalicious]

The Pocket MCU: Avengers 1/?

In Which Pocket Meets the Avengers for the First Time.

Word Count: 1.5k

Scene In-Movie @ 53:45

You offered Couslon a Sour Patch Kid as you walked toward the bridge with him and Tony. You could hear a group talking up ahead, mentioning something about iridium. 

“It’s a stabilizing agent,” Tony said, immediately jumping into the conversation. 

You continued your conversation with Couslon. “It’s really not a problem, Phil,” you told him. “Take the jet.”

“I’m just saying, pick a weekend,” Tony turned back to add. “I’ll fly you to Portland. Keep love alive.”

You nudged Coulson with your elbow, giving him a reassuring glance. “Think about it,” you offered as you followed Tony onto the bridge. Your eyes lit up when you saw Natasha Romanoff sitting at the table in front of you. “Natty!” you exclaimed, rushing forward to give the spy a hug. It had been ages since you’d last seen her.

“(Y/N)!” she exclaimed, returning your embrace. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but what are you doing here?”

You shrugged and rolled your eyes. “I go where he goes,” you said, gesturing toward Tony.

“I’m sorry, but who are you?” a sandy haired man in a red, white, and blue getup behind Natasha asked. He turned to Coulson. “I thought this was a top-secret situation. Need-to-know, only, and you’re just letting civilians in here?” He gave you a once over, taking in your black leggings and your off-the-shoulder Disney World t-shirt you’d had to tie back with an old hair tie. 

“Trust me,” you said, popping another Sour Patch Kid into your mouth as you sized up the man before you who could only be Captain America, himself– Steve Rogers– “you’re gonna be real glad this one’s got his own handler.” You jerked your head in Tony’s direction.

“Hurtful,” Tony called out as he moved toward a row of computers on the bridge. “The iridium means the portal won’t collapse on itself like it did at SHIELD.” He passed a big, beautifully beefy long-haired blond man that looked like he came straight from a viking saga and patted him on the arm. “No hard feelings, Point Break,” he added, “you got a mean swing.”

“Dr. (Y/L/N).” Bruce Banner stepped forward and reached for your hand. Your eyes widened in surprise at being recognized by someone as prestigious as the Bruce Banner as you wiped the sugar on your fingers off on your leggings. “I read your dissertation on examining the ethical considerations and societal implications of developing and deploying advanced technology for global live-saving purposes. Brilliant work.”

“Oh, shit,” you said, blushing as you reached out to shake his hand. “Dr. Banner, thank you. It’s an honor.” Sometimes, you forgot that you, too, had finally managed to snag your PhD. And to be reminded by someone like Bruce Banner was… well, it was fucking flattering.

“This little one is a doctor?” boomed the tall, viking-like god of a man. “She is so small, I feel I could place her in my pocket and abscond away with her home to Asgard before any of you would even notice she was gone!” 

“Who is he and can we please let him do that?” you whispered to Nat, who managed to conceal her laugh behind a cough. 

“(Y/N), this is Thor. Thor, this is (Y/N). You already know Dr. Banner, and this is Steve Rogers and Maria Hill,” Nat made swift work of the introductions. “(Y/N) is Stark’s–”

“Ward,” Tony interrupted. “She’s my ward. I’m her guardian. It’s very touching, very heartwarming.”

“Chief Technical Officer of Stark Industries,” you amended, shooting him a glare. “Legal adult, thank you very much.”

“Listen, Doctor Pocket,” Tony began, but you interrupted him.

“If this Loki guy gets a hold of iridium,” you began, talking over Tony, “he’ll be able to keep his portal open as wide and stay open as long as he wants.”

“Uh, raise the mizzenmast,” Tony commanded, raising an arm over the bridge. “Jib the topsails.” Everyone on the bridge gave him a confused look. “That man is playing Galaga!” He pointed to a crew member of the helicarrier who was, in fact, playing Galaga. “He thought we wouldn’t notice, but we did.” You rolled your eyes and sighed. Tony needed to be the center of attention at all times, otherwise, he tended to… act out.

Tony proceeded to look around the bridge controls and Tony covered one of his eyes. “How does Fury even see these?”

“He turns,” the woman Nat had introduced as Maria Hill deadpanned.

“Sounds exhausting,” Tony said, running his hands over one of the screens. “The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily.”

You put a hand on Nat’s shoulder at the mention of Clint’s name and squeezed gently. You knew how much he meant to her, how devastated she’d been when she’d learned he’d been compromised.

“So, the only major component he still needs is a power source of high-energy density,” you added. 

“Something to kick-start the Cube,” Tony agreed.

“When did you two become experts in thermonuclear astrophysics?” Hill asked, arms folded across her chest.

“Last night,” Tony replied. At Hill’s disbelieving look, you added:

“The packet. Selvig’s notes. The extraction theory papers.”

“Did no one else do the reading?” Tony asked, exasperated.

“Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?” Captain Rogers asked, trying to get the conversation back on track.

Dr. Banner paced in the background, thinking. “He’d have to head the Cube to 120-million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier.”

“Unless,” Tony added, “Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect.”

Banner opened his arms. “Well, if he could do that, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet.”

“Finally,” Tony said, holding a hand out to Banner. “Someone who speaks English.”

“Hurtful,” you shot back, but Tony just stuck his tongue out at you.

“Is that what just happened?” Captain Rogers asked as Tony and Banner shook hands behind him.

“It’s good to meet you, Dr. Banner,” Tony said. “Your work on antielectron collisions is unparalleled. And I’m a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage-monster.”

“Do you want me to book the honeymoon suite for you now, Boss?” you asked with a sardonic grin, “or do you want to wait until the two of you have found a place to register, first?”

“Jealousy is an ugly look on you, Kiddo,” Tony said with a grin. “Daddy can have more than one genius friend.”

You pulled a disgusted face. “I swear to god, if you ever refer to yourself as ‘Daddy’ in my presence again, I will rip that arc reactor from your chest and shove it so far up your ass that you choke on it.”

Tony looked contemplative. “Yeah, yup– I hear it now. Horrible choice of words, totally my fault. My apologies. Never again.”

“Wait,” said Captain Rogers, clearly confused. “I don’t understand. Are you her dad, or–”

“Absolutely not!” you and Tony both shouted at the same time.

“I was hoping you might join Dr. Banner in tracking the Cube,” said a voice from the entranceway to the bridge. You turned and saw Nick Fury enter the room. “That’s Banner’s only purpose for being here.”

“Oh, hey, Nick!” you chirped. “Sour Patch Kid?” You held out your box to the SHIELD Director. 

“You got any blue ones?” he asked, to your utmost delight, and you fished through the box to dig out two before placing them in his outstretched palm.

“They’re my favorites,” you told him, smiling. “You’re lucky I like you.” Fury winked at you– or, maybe he just blinked, you couldn’t tell with the eyepatch on– before bringing the candy to his mouth. 

Captain Rogers narrowed his eyes at you. “Maybe we should start with that stick of his,” he said, eyeing you up closely. “It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon.”

“I don’t know about that,” Nick said, trying not to pucker his face as his Sour Patch Kids proved sour, “but it is powered by the Cube. And I’d like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys.”

“Monkeys?” said the sexy viking-man–Thor, you reminded yourself– he had a name! “I do not understand.”

Captain Rogers excitedly pointed a finger. “I do!” he said, and Tony rolled his eyes behind him while you tried to stifle a giggle. “I-- I understood that reference,” Rogers nodded happily, looking to you, as if for approval. You just nodded at him.

“Good for you,” you said.

“Shall we play, doctors?” Tony asked.

“This way, sir, madam,” Banner said, indicating for you and Tony to follow him into the belly of the helicarrier, where no doubt his lab was waiting.

You turned back one last time as you followed the two men, wanting to wave a farewell to Nat before the ship swallowed you up. The second after you turned, you notice Captain Rogers turn quickly turn away from you, a blush coloring the side of his neck.

Huh, you thought as you turned back to follow Banner and Tony. If you hadn’t known any better, you’d have sworn Captain America had just been checking out your ass.

[enbyleighlines]

1, 5, and 7

Oooh, thank you for the ask!

#1: the character everyone gets wrong

I wouldn’t say EVERYBODY gets this character wrong, but…

Apologies in advance, but I’m going to revert to my Jiggy apologist roots and say Jin Guangyao from MDZS.

And okay. I get a large part of his character is intentionally left up to reader interpretation. At the same time, however, I think cql (and to a lesser extent, the donghua) have really skewed the fandom’s views on him. Both shows tend to place him into a more “cartoonishly evil” role, and often show him outright gloating when one of his plans comes to fruition.

In the novel, we never really get a peek behind Jin Guangyao’s mask. We don’t know to what extent he regrets his actions, or truly believes that he had no other choice.

Also, cql-only watchers tend to see his decision to hide Lan Xichen from the Wen as a decision either based on his feelings for the other man, or as an attempt to put himself back into Nie Mingjue’s good graces after betraying the Nie Sect. After all, in the show, he has already met both of his future sworn brothers. But in the original novel, Jin Guangyao was a complete stranger to both of them. He had no formal training in cultivation. He was little more than an ordinary civilian, albeit one that was more educated than most about the politics of the cultivation world. Hell, he was working at a bookshop at the time!

There’s a reason that Lan Xichen regards Jin Guangyao so highly, and why he is so resistant to believing anything bad about him.

Jin Guangyao risked everything, making himself an enemy of the strongest and most influential cultivation clan at the time, for a complete stranger. Perhaps he hoped his heroism would finally grant him some esteem in the cultivation world— but that was far from guaranteed. And if that was his only motivation, why not try to join the Wen Sect instead, especially when it seemed like they were the most likely to win the war?

Plus there was his whole thing about the watchtowers. He was building them for the good of the common people.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not one of those people who is trying to say that Jin Guangyao did nothing wrong (as much as I like to joke about him being my poor little meow meow.)

He committed many awful, inexcusable atrocities towards the end of his life. I’m not going to say he didn’t.

I’m just saying that he HAD the capacity to do good things. That working undercover during the war, forced to torture and murder his allies for the sake of maintaining his cover, and later, being rewarded for those actions, and other actions he took following his father’s orders… not to mention what working closely with resentful energy for all those years might have done to him…

Well, I just appreciate fics that explore what might have happened, had he made better choices. Because I think that’s the point of his character.

He could have been good.

He just chose not to be.

#5: worst discord server and why

I honestly don’t use discord that often, so I couldn’t tell you.

#7: what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

None of them. I’m not sure why, but fandom has never been able to make me hate a character I like. Some fanfics have gotten me to like characters I previously hated. But if the fandom tries to make me hate a character, or is wrong about a character, it just makes me love that character that much more, if only out of spite.

Again, thanks for the ask! Sorry for the novel-length dissertation on Jin Guangyao. I just love him, okay?

My precious little meow meow…

[whinlatter]

i MUST hear your thoughts on "im your man" by mitski and how it's the ginny/harry/sirius trio anthem in "beasts"...must hear

what have you done asking me about this...... a great and terrible mistake........ the air is thick with sirens...........

basically i'm your man is an absolutely perfect song about feeling unworthy and undeserving of the love someone gives you, and a feeling of great dread that one day the other person will realise it and leave. it is - for this reason - so eye-wateringly ginny-sirius-harry coded i simply cannot bear it. that whole album (the land is inhospitable and so are we) is heaven and there are so many songs on it that have been absolutely dynamite for getting the juices flowing with this fic (the frost and star are my hinny anthems for chapter 12  👀)

so i am taking a short dissertation writing break to offer an entirely unhinged rant about i'm your man complete with some mild beasts spoilers because apparently i care a lot about this inexplicably. thank you so much for humouring me!

you're an angel, i'm a dog or you're a dog and i'm your man you believe me like a god i'll destroy you like i am

the first verse plays with the idea that there are three tiers of being - dog, man, angel/god - that all exist in relation to each other. the narrator sings the song to put themselves down. you're an angel, i'm a dog - meaning, i'm lowly nothing compared to your pure divine greatness. in the next line, a twist and advance on that idea: you're a dog (faithful, honest, loyal, loving easily and with such trust) and i'm your man (the one who is responsible for you, who you look to protect and sustain you, who is unworthy of that kind of adoration). you believe me like a god - you trust and believe in my power and ability to take care of you and guide you. but then: i'll destroy you like i am - the only real godlike power the narrator identifies with is the capacity for destruction and ruin.

ok partly it's... you know....... the dog thing because i am very on-the-nose. (obviously sirius as padfoot, but also the distinctions in the wizarding world between beings as the moral civilised entities vs the beasts, the wild and lawless and violent magical creatures). but it's also this suggestion of hero worship and adoration from one character to another, and the object of that kind of love struggling to feel worthy of it and fearing the power it has given them over the other person. it's such a huge vibe for how i'm thinking about these characters !! i feel like it works both for harry and sirius' relationship as well as harry and ginny's: the love and reverence harry has for sirius, when sirius is filled with so much self-loathing and guilt and awareness of his own failings as a parent figure, and the way harry comes to love ginny and think of her as this pure singular light and symbol of all his hopes for a bright and good future, which (i think!) would be a lot for ginny to take on and live up to and feel deserving of. there's even shades of it in how i imagine ginny feels about sirius in the flashbacks - little ginny looking up to sirius like he's a god, hanging off his every word, sirius backing away from being responsible for this child's admiration and desire for guidance from him.

i'm sorry i'm the one you love no one will ever love me like you again so when you leave me, i should die i deserve it, don't i

i mean this is a pure sirius verse imo also with such harry shades to it ('i deserve it don't i' pure ootp harry angst). but i see some of ginny in this too ('i'm sorry i'm the one you love' - her wish that she could just be such cool and chill and easy and trying to live up to this idea harry sometimes as of her as so strong and stoic and able to deal with things, and then her feelings when all that comes crumbling down....)

i can feel it getting near like flashlights coming down the way one day you'll figure me out i'll meet judgment by the hounds

the feeling of being hunted! sirius and harry as wanted men! ginny getting found out and caught in her secrets and half-lies! 'i'll meet judgement by the hounds' god. god

people always gave me love others were never to blame after all you believe me like a god i'll betray you like a man

i think of this verse as the sirius and ginny verse. here the narrator locates the source of their unworthiness internally, not in being deprived of love by others, but in something fundamentally broken and tainted inside them. sirius as a character can't blame a total absence of love for what he's become - he was loved, he blames no-one but himself for the loathing he feels for himself. ginny, too, could not have been more loved, both before the TMR ordeal, but also thereafter - she comes from a family that adores her, she is widely liked and admired; but still, there's something missing in her sense of self. i do not wish to spoil future chapters but yeah this is bit is a Big Mood as we come closer to understanding ginny's war and what it asked of her

in chapters 10 and 11 of beasts, i started to play with this idea of the traitor, of a person who has made a great and terrible choice to betray the people close to them and in doing so revealed a true self that was there all along but lay dormant. so far in the fic, i've tried to thread in a lil drip-drip-drip of questions about the self, who a person really ever is, and about the choices characters make because of their sense of who they are, especially moral choices, in a war and under a regime that must, ethically, be resisted.

of sirius, harry, and ginny, so far it's sirius who knows most about what it is to be a traitor: someone who spent the bulk of his life assumed to be a turncoat, who is consumed by his hatred of wormtail and the memory of his treachery, who can't even begin to grasp the layers and dimensions to his own brother's betrayal, and who fundamentally still thinks of himself as a traitor to his best mate, believing himself to having 'as good as' killed lily and james. harry is the one who's full of trust, throughout the war:

'“No,” Harry said out loud, and they all looked at him, surprised. The firewhisky seemed to have amplified his voice. “I mean . . . if somebody made a mistake,” Harry went on, “and let something slip, I know they didn’t mean to do it. It’s not their fault,” he repeated, again a little louder than he would usually have spoken. “We’ve got to trust each other. I trust all of you, I don’t think anyone in this room would ever sell me to Voldemort."'

“No, I think you’re like James,” said Lupin, “who would have regarded it as the height of dishonour to mistrust his friends.” Harry knew what Lupin was getting at: that his father had been betrayed by his friend, Peter Pettigrew. He felt irrationally angry. He wanted to argue, but Lupin had turned away from him...'

ginny, of course, knows what it is to be betrayed - by her first real friend, by her own brother. but i just think these two final lines, the twist on the first verse, are such a huge huge mood for drawing some of these ideas to the surface as the plot inches (v slowly lol) forwards - the idea of a character who has had every faith put in them by someone who loves and believes in them, who fears that they wll buckle under the weight of it and betray that love and trust in terrible ways. to betray you like a man - for the great moral sin to be something inherent to no other creature or being but man - is just such a powerful cool as shit line that is really gettin me going for writing the next bit of this fic.

wow i didn't even know how much i cared about this song but turns out it's a lot???? troubling for me!

[badbatchposts]

🎱 🍓 🌵🔪🪲. I reblogged the ask game from you, so I wanted to be courteous and send you an ask! I'm honestly curious about these.

Thanks for the ask, friend! It's really nice to be able to reflect on some of these things!! Sorry in advance for the super long responses lol.

🎱 ⇢ post your AO3 total stats:

Works: 2

User Subscriptions: 6

Kudos: 204

Comment Threads: 84

Bookmarks: 67

Subscriptions: 51

Word Count: 67,351

Hits: 4,652

I honestly have no sense of how these stats compare for the usual fanfic writer, but it makes me happy to see how many people have subscribed to my longfic, especially since I don't always get a ton of comments on new chapters. But it seems people are reading! And definitely more people than read my dissertation, lol.

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

I used to write a lot of original work in high school and early college, but then as things got busy--and as I convinced myself my writing wasn't good enough to be worth it--I largely stopped. I always felt guilty about it. I really enjoyed writing, but didn't think I was creative enough or had the right amount of stamina that it took to complete a long work, and I had this perfectionist idea where it felt like it wasn't worth doing if I couldn't be the best at it.

Then right as the new Bad Batch season came out this year I was struggling a lot with burnout and found that I was spending a lot of time thinking about the show, and decided that I might as well start reading some fanfiction--for the first time ever--and felt like writing it would be a nice creative outlet that might help me recover from my burnout. It really has been great, and some of what's made it so good is actually exactly the sort of things that used to make me think writing fanfiction wasn't worth it. Namely: it's not professionally publishable.

That is, legally, I will never be able to professionally publish and profit from any of what I write--it can only be posted and enjoyed. This actually just took so much of the pressure off. It doesn't have to be perfect--it doesn't even have to be very good, because that's not what it's for.

I started thinking of it more as an exercise for working on my writing skills (things like, okay, in this chapter I'm going to practice writing dialogue, or in this next one I'm going to work more on establishing an interesting setting). As a result, I'm now thinking more about the writing process and improving my storytelling, rather than worrying about trying to make it perfect or good enough to publish or feeling competitive or down on myself when I encounter writing that I feel is much better than my own. It's been really freeing.

All of this happened over ten years since I stopped writing in college, and the other great thing has been seeing that my writing skills didn't disappear. In fact, they've gotten better and grown as a result of the learning I did in the meantime. I'm now much better at envisioning narrative arcs, outlining, getting myself to write consistently instead of just waiting for inspiration to strike me, and a whole load of other skills. It's really helped soothe a part of me that worried that I had abandoned writing, that it was too late for me to "do" anything with it, or that I only would have gotten worse.

🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love

Parasailing in Rio de Janeiro with a Caipirinha in Your Hand

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I've been spending a lot of time researching historical kitchens on sailing ships and historical brothels for the Pirate AU that I'm working on. Once for an academic paper I was working on a novel that depicts a (non-sexual) human-animal relationship but through very intimate and erotic terms, and I accidentally googled a combination of terms that came back with information on bestiality while on my university's wi-fi.

🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

The most recent thing I wrote for my Pirate AU (I'm skipping ahead SEVERAL chapters to inspire myself with the steamy bits haha)

“I hardly think I can get into much trouble here. Your crew have been perfect gentlemen.”

Hunter’s eyes glinted in the half-light of the lamps. Though he didn’t move, all of a sudden she was all-too-aware of how close he was, how easy it would be for him to reach out and touch her. “And what about me?” he murmured. “Haven’t you heard from the ladies in port? I’m a scoundrel. A very dangerous man. Maybe you ought to be afraid of me.”

Thanks again, this was a lot of fun!!

[pedrocomicreviews]

Lightning Round Reviews #2

I read a lot of comics every week but don't have it in me to write a small dissertation about each one, so here's some thoughts about a few books! This time it's Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil, The Incredible Hulk, Thunderbolts Doomstrike, Superman, Justice League Unlimited, and X-Manhunt Omega jesus lord that's a lot of comics. This is the big post for the week of March 26 2025.

The Amazing Spider-Man #70 

Overall, 8 Deaths had two jobs: being a fun Spider-Man story post-Paul, and being a One World Under Doom tie-in. It did both of those well enough, and I’ll probably read the new ongoing when Kelly takes over. I did think it’s a little off-brand that Doom made objectively the right choice by getting Peter to do this, since so much of One World Under Doom’s tie-ins are about showing the cracks in his armor. But as they end, you kinda start feeling like the stories only really work if he was at least kinda right, or if he had a reasonable enough plan to make the world a better place by doing bad things first.

Overall a good time, even if I don’t like the current cast in Spider-Man aside from Bailey. Kelly’s still got it, the art was decent most of the time, and although it was a magic and mystic arts story with Spider-Man in it, I’m kinda glad it was also just a solid Spider-Man book.

Daredevil #19

This was really silly and I can’t believe this story lasted 19 issues. I really don’t have much to say aside from no one acts right in it and it asks me to care about things that just don’t feel right. That “choice” Ahmed had Matt make just doesn’t register and I don’t think it’s just me being cynical. I don’t know what the point of this was but it didn’t really do it for me. 

Incredible Hulk #23

I feel like this book has meandered too much and it really needs that Imperial shake-up that has been announced. Maybe it was already supposed to have ended or maybe it’s stretching to get to the crossover, but it kinda… it’s kinda the same thing every issue, and this many issues in I’m kinda not interested anymore. It’s still well written and has great art, but nothing’s happening. It’s just kinda grotesque for the sake of aesthetics and then the characters do the same thing they’ve been doing for two years.

That shot of Hulk squeezing a demon out of Charlie’s skin like toothpaste was wild though. And you’re telling me Red Label books ever had a chance.

 

Thunderbolts Doomstrike #2

What’s even the point of liberating Austin, Texas from Doom. It’s not like Austin is isolated on a map, like… what about San Antonio? Can you just see the line where Austin ends now? Because the rest of the places have electricity? And schools? Hospitals even?

Like, look, I understand I’m supposed to be rooting for Bucky here, it’s just… yeah, no, he’s doing this for himself. Shelbyville was destroyed by Doom, yes, but he retaliated after Bucky lost a fight he started. The “stop hitting yourself” feel to this whole situation is impossible to wade through. Even the story says so, but it’s the villains saying it, so it’s supposed to be wrong. I don’t know, am I losing my fucking mind here? Is this just not that well pulled off?

It’s also just another book where the Hivemind adds a “Wild West” aesthetic to characters, and in my experience I just don’t like those. Guardians of the Galaxy did the same, if I recall. 

Anyway, the Thunderbolts are being destroyed one by one so they look like the movie version in a few months, this is what this tie-in is actually about. Oh well, I really liked the Revolution era.

Superman #24

Event Leviathan was months ago?! Be so for real right now, that was half a decade ago. I guess they mean Shadow War…? What the hell was Shadow War, even? Does anyone want to remember?

I’m sorry, the issue has some interesting points to it– Superman dealing with whether or not he should actually help the world with technology and advancing humanity or just keep punching people is always topical, but, god, holy shit, the timescale is so fucked.

But yeah, this is just the beginning of a reset to the status quo for these characters for when Slott takes over. The cool things I liked about the setting are being put back to where they were and characters have to regress or simply act out of line for it to happen. Rip Supercorp and Rip jacket era, you were too fun for this world, you rocked too hard, you swagged too different.

Justice League Unlimited #5

The mystery box opens revealing an okay twist aided by astounding art, maybe some of the best in Dan Mora and Bonvillain’s lives. Genuinely worth reading just for that.

The rest of the comic continues to not really have main characters, arcs or anything more than a plot that’s going into a crossover. I hope the second story we tell in Unlimited focuses on less characters, because these issues are really the same issue over and over again. Beautiful, though, for real.

X-Manhunt Omega

Let it never be said I’m not fair: the end of this has settled the differences the mutants have with each other, and despite the quality of the event itself, it has ended in a way that I believe will take this franchise to a better place than it is at now. It was also a fun little homage to the beginning of the Krakoa era, and ends more or less how I expected that era to end.Whether or not it’s worth a read will vary per person but hey, goofy ahh storytelling decisions aside, I am now once again looking forward to seeing some of these characters, which wasn’t the case last week.

[majorproblems77]

So I've got my dissertation to finish this week as it's due next thursday so sorry in advance if I'm just not able to answer things for a few days!

I'll miss ya!