#that wasn't even the evil part the evil part was someone posted saying the manager from my least fave job was like family to her

[gideonisms]

went on fb briefly to see if it was as horrible as I remembered. It was! Stay safe out there people.

[emoani]

summary: the sith lord darth vader is in love with you and your baby blue dress

pairing: darth vader x f!reader

warnings: insinuation of sex, vader in love, but still an evil sith lord

observation: i dedicate this post to my corazón @fuckmyskywalker because his favorite color is blue

▪︎baby blue dress▪︎

You run your hands through your hair, smoothing it down for the thousandth time. Until you hear his breathing. Vader has finally arrived, and that makes you excited.

- Are you getting ready for our special night, honey? Have you already chosen what you are going to wear? -His voice comes out through the modulator, he was looking for you anxiously in that big suite, but he doesn't see you.

- It's a surprise - You tease him, with a smile on your lips, you were hiding somewhere in the room so he wouldn't find you, even knowing he could do it quickly with force.

- Ok, darling. I'll do my best to guess. Will I get to know what you're wearing tonight? - Vader joins in the fun.

- At night... - You pause pretending to think - I won't wear anything!

The Lord takes a while to answer you, his breathing gets faster. You had managed to affect him with so little and it was so much fun.

- Honey... Please say you're going to use something...

You laugh at him.

- Yes love. I'll wear it, usually in front of others.

- Don't make me anxious, my dear. What are you going to wear for our special night?

- A long baby blue dress - You describe what you were wearing at the time and walk slowly towards him, feeling his anxiety.

- Forgive me, but I have to be honest... You're going to look like a goddess, dressed in a baby blue dress... Your eyes and hair match the blue so well - As he's talking you approach and poke his shoulder. He, anxious, can't stop touching you from your hair to your beautiful blue dress. He is in love with what he sees - Baby, you look beautiful, my love...

You laugh, so happy as you wrap your arms around your man to hug him. You loved him so much.

- Who knew that one would say I would see a Lord so in love like this - you think aloud.

- Honey, I feel like a seventeen-year-old boy by your side. I won't be able to take my eyes off you all night!

His voice might not be able to convey that much emotion, but how could you not be moved by those words? Vader could look so bad to other people, but not to you because you understood him. And that's why he loved you. You understood why he ended up that way, you waited for him for years until he allowed someone into his heart again. You loved that bad guy. And he didn't care what people said. You loved him so much that you would always be there for him, follow him to every planet and ignore the bodies he would leave lying around.

- I don't get used to so many compliments - you says blushing.

- Don't worry. When I marry you, I will always give you compliments. I will always tell you how beautiful you are, how perfect you are for me, how you are the woman of my life...

Its robotic arms were around your waist, holding you as tight as if you were going to walk away.

- I'm looking forward to kissing you now. But I'll control myself until dinner time... give me a hug, I'll control myself until later.

You can't not laugh about it all. Oh, how she loved him.

- How will dinner work, since you can't eat with me? - Worried question - Won't you mind?

It wasn't the first time you said that. Ever since you started planning this night, you've been insisting that you can skip that part. But Vader always said he wanted to give you the full experience of a romantic night. That included dinner. He made it very clear that it wasn't an option to skip this part, however you were so insistent.

- We've already talked about this - He reminds you, walking around the room - I don't care, as long as I'm with you, my dear. I will feed myself with your beauty, with your personality, with your presence, with the air you breathe, with the same air you exhale when you kiss me. I'll be by your side, watching you eat... To be honest: I'll be very focused on you; I want to see every little bite you take...

So passionate.

- You're obsessed with me, so glad I am with you too

- I'm a Sith Lord, but I'm the most passionate being you've ever seen.

(...)

You continued exchanging flirtations the entire time. As you walked, while Vader chose a good ship to take you to the planet he chose just for that night.

The whole place was beautiful, as well as the dinner. The place he took you to was more romantic than he expected. The walls with glass chandeliers. The soft wood floors, and the brightly lit stairs. There are roses on the ceiling. It's all perfect.

And the dinner that Vader insisted so much on was great, and once again you imagined what it would be like if that accident on Mustafar had not happened, you were sad to think that he could no longer feel and enjoy certain things.

- Honey - Vader says and you know he was in your thoughts - I'm feeling good now. We still have the whole night ahead of us.

You finish eating and thank him. The androids begin to silently clear the food from the table.

- I'm anxious to know where this night will take us - You observe.

- I can use my mind to show you a little what awaits you. Do you feel, my love?

You, still sitting, raise an eyebrow without quite understanding what he is saying. Seconds later you tremble all over, feeling an invisible touch between your legs. Was he really teasing you like that? You bite your lip and lower your head in embarrassment. You were out in public, by the way. Even if there was no one else in the place besides the androids.

- So, my queen? Are you feeling my rage? My desire to have you in that blue dress?

You squeeze your own thigh, trying in vain to contain the trembling in your legs as he, through the Force, touches you.

- Vader, please... - You ask softly - Not here.

- Here, yes. Do you think you have the right to deny me something? - He speaks each word slowly, as if he wasn't doing anything - I demand to be rewarded.

And you who were being stimulated the whole time, trying to hold your breath, don't even think about stopping it. Who did you want to fool? He was the Sith Lord, your Lord and he could boss you around and do whatever he wanted. And he knows it.

- As you wish - You answer, making your submission clear.

[sugarywishes]

Could you go a bit more into your plans and the role of Elizabeth & Even in the future of your AU? I'm curious to learn a bit more about how their respective roles change things, as well as how it will end up playing out with Micheal & William also involved on the whole...

Of course! Answers below as usual.

So I'm trying really hard to not fully expose every detail of the Security Breach portion of this rewrite, but the gist of it is Glitchtrap/William, and the Afton kids return for a grand finale! And unfortunately Gregory, Vanessa, and GlamFred have to be in the middle of it all. (Which means HW 2, Secret of the Mimic or whatever games they'll be making in the future will likely not be added to this thing, unless I really like it but it's likely I won't lmao) (RUIN-ED is in a complicated situation in this rewrite, it's technically now an AU spinoff, that's not canon to the security breach section but is still related to it, but I'm over complicating things here, I'll explain it in other post!)

And as some of you know in this section of the rewrite/AU, Glitchtrap will use Gregory as a replacement body for Evan to inhabit to come back to Earth, and boy are they BOTH upset about this! (My Security Breach portion will include Gregory's family, the Casas, and they'll get a chance to interact with Evan a lot too, since they don't know that Gregory's kind of being possessed rn)

Speaking of the Casas, EVERYONE in that family serves as a 'mirror' to the Aftons (that does not mean they share the same personalities or anything, they're just the counterparts for story telling purposes, and I mean VERY important story telling purposes!) Julian is the 'William', Rebecca is the 'Clara', Gregory is the 'Evan', and Monica is the 'Michael'. You may notice that Elizabeth wasn't included in the line up (originally, before RUIN-ED came out, there were many theories that Cassie could be Gregory's twin sister and I was ALL for it because then I could finally have Lizzie have her own Casas counterpart, and then turns out she wasn't related to him, so I had to rewrite things unfortunately 😔) So now, VANESSA is the Elizabeth counterpart.

Going back to Evan, he HATED coming back, when he did originally wake up in Gregory's body, he had a full blown panic attack and was horrified by his surroundings, cause yk he was freaked out by Glitchtrap, an 8 foot tall gay ass bear, a white woman and a teenage girl who looked too similar to his brother whom he only remembers MURDERED HIM, that can really overwhelm someone! (Btw, Mike had been fully anticipating his father's return, but he didn't think Evan and Elizabeth would come back because he thought they moved on, they definitely did not!)

After a whole rescue operation (and losing someone during it, not a death though.) Gregory/Evan will go through a lot of trials and tribulations through family matters and trauma. Again, I'm trying not to spoil a lot about this section since it's pretty crazy, but they do become friends! They will be each other's first ever friends, actually, since Cassie won't be in this rewrite. SORRY ☹️ she will be important in the RUIN-ED AU/spinoff though! (Yk the one with the stupid ass kids/ocs)

For Elizabeth, she will end up attempting to possess Vanessa (although it was not part of William's original plan, and who knows? It could work.) I really want to say more details but I must restrain myself from doing so. She will be an antagonist along with Will, she's gonna cause some evil shit, and she'll get a redemption arc because it's what she deserves! (Yk after she learns her lesson) And there is actually a reason why she and Evan even have relationships with the MCI/KCI kids, even if Liz didn't actually meet them when she was still Baby. Let's just say, the afterlife prison for her was not cool! Thank goodness she managed to escape too.

And yeah, tons of Afton family drama is relevant in this too, it intertwines with the Casas family own trauma.

I'd really like to discuss more about what exactly will happen, believe me. But I'm saving all that for when I get to it! (And also because, I'm still working on it!)

[mdhwrites]

Five Reasons Why The Owl House Isn't Inclusive

Someone on Twitter asked me to elaborate on the concept of TOH not being inclusive beyond LGBTQIA+ labels, which I'm still happy it has, and I accidentally just made a five part list of them that helped bring together a lot of the points I've tackled not only recently but also in the past so... Why not? Let's actually make a kind of master post for this. These are five reasons why The Owl House isn't inclusive.

The demons

I don't entirely have an order for this, this isn't a top five thing, but we'll start with probably the thing that's the easiest to never even think about: It's treatment of the demons of the Isles of the DEMON REALM.

Every demon in the show is either a gag, a villain... Or the ones who get to have nuance or be good are the ones who pass the most for being 'human', much like how the witches are just humans with pointy ears. The first point is pretty obvious. A lot of random demons show up just to be made fun of for looking strange and then move on.

The villain accusation though is because like 90% of one off villains in this show, with no nuance or real personality and are obviously evil just because they're evil are demons. They also aren't allowed to be amongst the good guys for the most part. In the main cast, the only demon is Hooty who... Boy his treatment is AWFUL. It actually says TERRIBLE things about Luz that she treats him just as poorly as everyone else, especially when someone else manages to befriend him... Which the show uses as signaling to treat Lilith as lesser than the rest because now she's comic relief.

Finally the passing part. This is actually big for the fact that it's actually kind of racist in general. The only demons who are allowed actual nuance are the ones who look the most like witches or humans. Boscha and Steve are both theoretically demons as far as we know and they get kind of redemption arcs but much lesser ones than any more human character and both start as villains. Then there's Vee who is the only unequivocally 'good' demon and her whole thing is that she can pass for a witch or human. In fact, she's better at being human than LUZ is.

So point one and we've already got a weird undercurrent of an entire race being lesser than the conventional ones or... that'd be it if not for

1.5: Take a lot of what I said about demons and apply it to the guys of TOH because they're also treated like shit by the writers. They are either villains or jokes when they first appear and the only exceptions are either still pretty questionable for fitting one those roles... Or dead. You know, like Manny. I think Dell is literally the only ALIVE male character who isn't a joke or villain at one point.

2. Everyone's really fucking pretty. Like... period. Every character in the main cast is ready for the runway. The only main character who really comes close to being transgressive in their looks is Willow and like... Overwatch came out 7 years ago with Mei and that she wasn't a daring design choice then and Willow wasn't four years later. They're the definition of 'more to love'.

Admittedly, I'm normally fine with things just having pretty people. Yokotaro is based for giving an android a big ass because he likes pretty women. I don't think people should feel ashamed for that. It's just a problem when a lot of your contemporary competitors, or even old school competitors like Recess back in the NINETIES, who aren't even trying to preach inclusivity, have better body representation than the show that does.

And yes, that does tie back into the demon thing too as you might notice that all the demons who are accepted by the main cast or given more nuance are the ones who look the most conventionally attractive. Good job show.

3. Nothing here is actually transgressive.

So now we're getting away from looks and the like and actually getting into how well the show sells its theming and representation of those society rejects. The embodiment of this should be Luz if the show wishes to say that it accepts those with weird interests or behave oddly. The only problem is that Luz doesn't. At all. When she is, the things she's transgressive about are things like the safety of others and common human decency.

Luz never really defines herself by her interests after all. Azura exists sure but it gets like... A handful of forced references in S1 and then maybe a couple in S2, often not even by Luz eventually but Amity, which is literally what happens in S3 as she abandons the series effectively. This isn't technically bad. She has a healthy relationship to it for the most part. She doesn't hyperfixate or try to interject it into every part of her life. She's just a nerd... Which wasn't even a brave thing back when I was in High School a decade ago.

Straight up: I was a part of JROTC, the American school fast track into the military and people the first guy I ever heard squeal about how the Avengers were gonna happen, he swears, was a really dude in that ecosystem. He was more of a nerd than any of the drama kids I eventually hung out with and no one cared.

And Luz is less extreme than THAT. The only time she actually is is during her character introduction where she, you know, releases spiders on a classroom and also snakes that attack people. Or how about those fireworks? What was her plan with those? Set them off inside and kill burn down the whole building in the BEST CASE scenario? Because if she's been bullied so much, why would she expect her class to come outside for that? Regardless of the fact that you'd get expelled just for bringing that much gunpowder into school, let alone the other reasons she should have been expelled.

The worst part of all of this though is Lilith. Lilith actually hyperfixates. She cares a LOT about her interests and gets giddy about them... And it's almost always framed as mocking. Everything to do with her interest in history is almost always setup for a joke of some sort or to make her look smaller. She is also more genuinely interested in learning and excited about the Isles and its potential than Luz commonly but when she becomes that character, she isn't taken seriously anymore. She's a joke, just like her best friend Hooty.

So now we've rejected nerds. Can we really go deeper? Well, how about the oppressed themselves?

4: The oppressed are inconvenient to the show so they don't show up.

Because the Isles is meant to be bigotry free except for Belos (an ENTIRELY different topic that has bunches of problems of it own) the only people actually oppressed in the show, who are ever actually forced to conform and mind that conforming, are wild witches. But not only is their plight poorly shown but it's also inconsistent.

Eda is our ONLY representation of it and the show ever struggles to decide how genuinely illegal her presence is. She's allowed to just stroll into an Emperor's Coven funded school and enroll her student there. All it takes for her to be free for a day is burning some posters. But also on the other side, she is literally threatened with death ONLY for the crime of being a wild witch and not the rest of her rap sheet.

And why shouldn't it be? Systemic oppression isn't actually that bad by what the show depicts. Dana herself wrote Reaching Out where the coven system is treated like not going to college instead of a crime so severe as to have the death penalty. She also was one of two writers for The First Day where they treat the coven system as just tradition and not like multi-tracking is going to get these kids literally killed, if Bump himself isn't removed by Belos for enabling people to break the law in an episode where he SPECIFICALLY NEEDS GOVERNMENT FUNDING.

And as the coven system is the only form of oppression, no one has to actually deal with the social and sometimes legal pressures that makes one hide who they are. It can't say anything about those actually struggling because it's inconvenient. You can't just have Luz be accepted by all if her dream makes her illegal to most. You can't have her easily fall in love because that relationship is illegal. You can't have members of the government who have done literal witch hunts just turn around and be good guys because they are active participants in bigotry.

So the oppressed, the people actually other'd by the story that's being told, are pushed out of frame for the sake of the escapist fantasy of Luz getting to runaway to a magical world and save it. They exist solely to claim there IS a reason to fight but actually showing their struggle is one step too far apparently.

5. It leans into extremely harmful stereotypes of people with mental disorders and disabilities. Content warning for those topics until the BUT at the end.

This is the last one because not only do I think it's actually the most dangerous but it's also the most personal as someone who is literally disabled due to their depression. Who had to be really careful when writing about characters in crises not to peddle the same narratives most stories do. Extremely hazardous, painful narratives.

Hunter and Eda are both disabled by the logic of the world they live in. Both are incapable of magic in a world that expects it from them and it causes real difficulty in their lives, forcing them to require equipment and/or meds to aid them in dealing with the struggles these cause, doubly so for Eda because of the curse. It actually is good representation... Until you start thinking about and people start getting 'cured'.

Eda's is definitely more of a mental health disability with how much it's connected to emotions, stress, etc. like that than her physically being incapable of doing more. She suffers from not having enough spoons on any given day to do things with some being worse than others. Again, face value, this looks kind of nice.

Here's the insidious part: When she isn't medicated, when she isn't able to hold back her symptoms... she's literally a monster. Anytime she shows her pain, she is actively dangerous to those around her. Full stop. And there is no way to stop this except her murder. She will ALWAYS be a threat for the rest of her life, even after making peace with her diagnosis. After all, in the final episode she literally has to warn someone to get away because she's going to lose control. Worse yet, part of her getting a reprieve from it is to ruin another life. Lilith is made disabled because Eda's illness is so out of control that only through other people's sacrifices can she find help.

If none of this raises red flags, GOOD FOR YOU! You haven't ever had to be told you might lose your apartment just because they don't want to one day find you having done something terrible because they assume that will eventually happen, SOMETHING THAT HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ME. You've never been told to hide and lie about your condition, to pass as just a normal person, so you could get a job or just so you didn't appear wrong to others. So you don't seem like a ticking time bomb that will explode.

Hunter is a mixed bag comparatively. He's better because his disability, not having magic, isn't inherently dangerous. He's not going to kill anyone someday because of it. The problem is that he is still mostly framed as lesser because of his lack of magic and that he is helpless due to it minus one time he gets to show off his skills while without his staff... To no avail. Otherwise, everytime he doesn't have a staff, he is completely at the mercy of anyone around him. His heart to hear with Willow is even about feeling like less of a person due to it and how they've both struggled with the problem, which, you know, feels disingenuous when at the end the plant goddess forces him through the ground against his will because she has her own magic and is one of the strongest witches on the Isles. It's like telling someone missing an arm that yeah, when you were young you broke your arm too but you got better while the other person is still MISSING AN ARM.

And then he is cured... By the death of his best friend. At which point, he is whole, a complete person with his own magic... at the cost of a life. You know, just like how Eda only got the curse to back off by hurting someone she cared about too.

What the fuck?

And finally, for a bit more mental health rep: Luz. People like to claim that Luz is suffering from trauma, depression, anxiety, etc. in the second half of show and especially S3. The problem with this is that after S2A, Luz is just categorically is a worse person. This culminates in what most consider to be her lowest point, Thanks to Them when she has a speech in class that potentially hints at suicidal ideation. However, in the episode she decides that instead of taking responsibility and trying to fix her mistakes like she used to, she is going to just stay home and let an entire world die. Yes, she frames it as self sacrifice and having learned from her mistakes... but it's not. It's self preservation if anything.

Anyone on the Isles should be presumed dead or something akin to it with what she experienced during King's Tide. Anyone who goes back is going to fight a GOD to try to reclaim it. To have to beat someone who is leagues more powerful than any entity they've even fathomed before. Her friends have been trying to get home and planning for this all with the expectation that Luz would be by their side. But despite the fact that she explicitly blames herself for the situation, she's staying. There's no talk about how this means dooming her found family, how it means breaking up with Amity or anything like that. Her focus is entirely on herself and the mistake she made. They can all go rot while she gets to stay home with her mom.

This doesn't even go into Luz's lower empathy or her CONSTANT LYING that was more prevalent in the second half of the show. It all says one clear thing though in this context: Because she is damaged due to trauma and depression, she is a generally worse person. She cares less about others than a functional person would, as she was a better person before all of this, and loses her morality as she is willing to let people die instead of fix her mistakes.

All of this just makes it bluntly better if Luz isn't actually depressed during this time period and more is just being a bad person because things have gotten tough. Otherwise this feeds into a LOT of bad stereotypes for those who are mentally ill.

BUT.

I do not think any of this is done with malice. Any of the five points. It's just careless. I pointed out the narrative problems for properly including a couple of them and I could easily tell you why others regurgitate issues without blinking for many of the others. It's easy to make these sorts of mistakes if you're not thinking about it. If you're just taking tropes you like instead of trying to craft towards a genuinely coherent theme. It's made worse when you know you're in a landscape that is hungry for representation so being praised for it won't be hard so you don't need to fully commit.

As I said earlier though, this is kind of a problem for a show that wants to be about inclusivity. Who's main themes, at best, are about self actualization and self acceptance. About being who you are and finding the spaces that allow you to do that. And yet... So many are left to the wayside. Abandoned because the show has a very narrow definition of a 'correct' identity and if you don't fill those definitions, it will leave you behind.

If you want a show that actually accepts everyone, that allows for all parts of identity, I've seen only one season of Craig of the Creek and it is EXCEPTIONAL at it. All are welcome in the creek. No exceptions. If someone is alone, it's because of circumstance or self selection and even they are given chances to be a part of the community.

I wish TOH had believed in something even close to similar.

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I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[dirhwangdaseul-archived]

saw across the spider verse finally and this is my first post of many to excise this conflict the movies of miles have left in me since the very first one:

the copaganda wasn't subtle the first time neither was it this time but it did surprise me that gwenvs dad implied he quit like telling us that maybe his morals cannot come from abiding a code he doesn't have a say in? and i think they planted the seeds with hobie too, like there's even the scenes that try to justify the cops existing in a spider story as staples of his myth, those things felt more like that, justification for still talking about them in relation to heroism, because honest to god the movie doesn't seem able to come up with examples of cops helping lmfao, did they even notice? like did the writers notice? but honestly with both hobie and that line from gwen's dad i had a glimmer of hope

but that keeps falling short when i have to look at jefferson, like in the comics his stints with the law are more a contract to his desire to be good to the people he loves, like a tool almost, the fact that the movies went a step further to make him loyal to it is profoundly disgusting specially when i look at how rio who was supposed to be the one most heroic to miles, a nurse, was reduced in favor of raising jefferson the cop to stardom, like fuck, that has always felt so superficial and trite for a spider man myth, but it used to be that the conflict was because it put into question the morality from the law as something incomplete and rigid and ultimately useless against the threats the heroes come against, which are representative of the society the heroes and all their ills are meant to embody

heroism is what these cops are meant to represent for the writers and animators like that's the issue, that's why we fuckers of color complain, because today right now, people and cops and professionals and people with power keep pretending that cops can be called heroes, that they can take up the mantle of one of the most precious parts of society which is communicating the morals of a time as if they could be the only ones that could in their hands the understanding of the myth of good and evil in the time they inhabit, but it's all a lie like are people this blind to themselves, they're just human, they're just fucking people like us, they can't hold nothing for shit because they're also people who have been told to use power as their life and truth, a hero is so many fucking things but he who holds all truths, he's not, often the hero shows us the journey to be able to inhabit, create, mold and be those truths, but also that we could inhabit the lies so easily, if the hero falls so do the people so does the nation, and cops want to be entrusted with that story but they don't see it, they don't that they're not asking like people or heroes but like gods like myths, and it's crazy that this world wants to keep pretending that when someone says they are a cop, as if they truly were it, they're but playing mockeries of human beings, because all they do is enforce power they do not understand, and just because this movie managed once again to try to put the cops against the spider scenes people are eating it? when the text it self could only give us good actions of the cops in relations to their kids and families? when the writers comfortably ignored the social impact of the story of spider this time around in favor of the personal conflict which ended up falling short for me and other fuckers of color because of how many fucking times they couldn't stay away from implying cops are just good people and not the bunch of fucking criminals the state has sanctioned as executors of its will specially against black and brown kids in the us like you have got to be disconnected from reality to be able to ignore all that frfrfrfr

it's just not the story of our times you know? that cops are do gooders... they can't literally be, they're meant to embody power, and power is just power too, it all depends on who wields it, which tells you what being a cop really is, and ofc the military and other things that have to defer to command to call themselves functional, they're naught but tools, extensions of the state, when it comes to exercising power in today's society is all about functionality and quality and maintaining a machine, and thus we got eugenics and racism and discrimination so that people can form themselves into tools to enforce systems of oppression to others so that wr can become, we call this all morality and capitalism and whiteness keep pretending there's only one way to be and define ourselves and what we learn, perverts all into becoming money and abuses to protect the power gives participants in our dehumanization, we have to consider the story of this world fr, that there are abuses in place today because of history that they're tied to skin, that they're tied to identity and the disparities represent our inability to compromise into making life fair and humane for all, those who are not deemed are those who are not picture perfect functions of the system, race usually comes tied to a perception of less humanity, of ableism, of being born as less because of it, do people not see it or are they just good st ignoring their own words?

it's insidious that the story keeps pretending that jefferson morales is able to stand for the entire police and on top of that they imply that that's what would happen with jefferson dead like rio didn't die in the comics and it just made miles want to do good like as much as i enjoyed the twist by the end it doesn't sit right with me but at the same time they sort of implied that it's all about the superhero, so like idk part of. me think there's actually a division in the writing room, and by the end what's given me hope for that story to maybe break was hobie and gwen's storylines, albeit gwen's a bit more ambiguous it feels close to what jefferson should represent how miles does things that jefferson finds conflict and how maybe he cant keep supporting power but i just don't know how many people understand that either, cops are a job, they just follow rules, how many times have people working companies or for a living have had to do horrible shit to themselves and others because we were taught to endure it, cops are the most advanced and finalized version of that able to mutilate themselves and kill others in service of power coated in a story made to make them feel good

like fuck is there any way to leave this clearer? miguel has created what is basically rick and morty's fucking citadel abd just as fascistic as that one bitch thinks he can control time and space because of his dark story, miles breaks away from that, so does hobie, so does gwen by the end, right now maybe i want to leave it clearer, for me, that the story is a disaster due to the implication that cops are just like masked vigilantes and that the only difference is the legality of the act, when we know, maybe mostly by those that inhabit a reality marginalized, that cops just maintain divisions that are meant to protect a status quo, the two lines the story followed should have been used to contrast different moralities, those enforced by power and those sought out from a place of kindness and that much i can tell fell flat for me because of that fucking contrast nowhere to be seen, what i hate right now is have to wait to the next movie because in my head i keep replaying hobie looking with pride and miles breaking apart miguel little bitch o'hara, and gwen's dad saying he quit, because it meant hurting his own daughter, and theres a ray of hope there but idk people need a reality check, cops are killers, cops are murderers, cops are your enemy because they make you one, you don't get to choose your role when you're in a situation with them, and the writers need to leave that clearer because otherwise it is truly off putting to have this movie like this right now when atlanta's fucking cop.city is looking to become a model of fascism everywhere on the fucking world like do i sound insane or hyperbolic? i don't think so, we know history i hope, what this movie has done with the cops and heroism and race is truly atrocious but there's hope if they can be knocked into sense and that starts with looking at reality from those whose faces are put onscreen for us to see ourselves like can we really not make better mirrors of ourselves that empty tools of the state in the forms of cops? like can we really not be better than a glorified pencil. pusher crunching people for the state? is that all heroes can be too? how depressing man....

[aslket]

So I know I read something like this back in high-school on LiveJournal or something, but I reblogged a post about Camilla Hect reading Harrow's letter and I was reminded of Legolas

Because Legolas' dad got asked by Gandalf and Some Ranger to look after this horrible little creature right? Keep it locked up but alive, because it might know about something important. How they acheived this is anyone's guess, because Gandalf wasn't at all forthcoming about what that knowledge was. But however it's done Thranduil agrees, and Thraunduil's a king of his word, so they are apparently going to incarcerate this thing indefinitely. And it's an awful thing, it's so shriveled and cringing and weirdly small? Like a goblin-sized extremely old addict, who's been eating toddlers mind, but who Gandalf just literally tortured. Keep in mind, real goblins exist and the wood elves don't try to rehabilitate them, so they could presumably perceive that he wasn't 100% evil

Anyway this horrid little not-goblin can't eat real food, can't stand the sun, and obviously hates being locked in their cellars for over a year. So they let him out on the darkest nights to climb a tree in a clearing under gaurd. Wood elves aren't monsters, and this small being is clearly suffering, and they'll mitigate that if they can. Right for all sentient beings but orcs, Sauron and Rignbearers says Thranduil

But then. Then that little shit manages to communicate(?) with someone(???) while up a tree in the middle of a clearing gaurded by archers in the dead of night, and a bunch of fucking orcs bust him out. Or even worse, he didn't and they have a critical security crisis on their hands, instead of only an extremely severe one. This is not a great look for Thranduil, and now he's gotta let Gandalf know ASAP what went down because, as previously stated, the reason he agreed to house this weird sounding pitiable creature was presumably because Gadalf gave him some extremely incomplete and alarming info about why it was so desperately important he be safely imprisoned

Regrettably, nobody can ever fucking FIND Gandalf, which makes letting him know kind of difficult. A wizard is never late, because you can never actually pin them down for a fucking RSVP. So Thranduil grabs his son, after all the tracking and reapprehension of this fugitive has failed, and tells him to go to Rivendell and leave a message for Gandalf and That One Ranger with Elrond

This is a shitty job. Legolas' home just got attacked and a bunch of his people killed, and now he's gotta travel over the misty fucking mountains to find a hidden bloody valley and tell a literal 1/16th angel, on behalf of his people, that they've completely fucking biffed it. Jury's out on if Legolas has ever really left Mirkwood before, boy's never even been to Lorien, which is just across the river. The only sliver of a bright side to this is he won't actually have to tell Gandalf himself. If he shows up in Mirkwood looking for the afwul ittle guy, his dad gets to tell him what happened. The chances of "the grey wanderer" HAPPENING to be visiting Rivendell during the same day and a half Legolas spends there, probably just handing off a letter and mooching some supplies in a properly diplomatic fashion, approach zero

Then Legolas actually arrives.

So there's DWARVES here, and the son of the Steward of Gondor, and That One Ranger AND Gandalf. Apparently a council is happening, and Elrond's hosting. You guys didn't get an invite, which is pretty insulting, but apparently NOBODY got an invite and everyone just got up independently and decided to come here because bad shit was happening in their individual corner of the world. That's basically unprecedented, and not a good sign, but this is also a great opportunity for Legolas, and phenomenal branding on Elrond's part, really. All these people ended up here with news, and he's gonna make sure they all leave on the same page, and Legolas gets to take all that info back to Thranduil.

The only wrinkle in Legolas getting to be actually present for this once-an-age get together is that Gandalf and That One Bloody Ranger are ALSO here, and that's a little embarrassing, really. Sucks to advertise the you couldn't manage One Job in front of the DWARVES. But at least it's just that you lost track of one gross little creature, who's probably been eaten by orcs or something by now, so its not the diplomatic disaster it could be.

So everybody gets together, and Gandalf shows up with a pair of hobbits. Obviously Legolas has heard of hobbits, but its perhaps occurring to him at this point that they're Suspiciously small. He's only met one other non-goblin creature that size.

The council starts, and the fucking dwarves go on, but everybody covers the basic situations at home and they're pretty universally Not Great. But then Elrond says ok, now that we're all on the same page, we're gonna cover the important secret stuff. Legolas, at this point privy to state secrets of elves, men and also dwarves, might be puzzled here. Especially when Elrond proceeds to give a lesson on ancient history, starting three thousand years ago. That is a long time ago even for elves, and he's covering what, the fucking rings of power and the last alliance??

Actually, he's covering specifically one ring of power, and it whereabouts. And also that Gollum had it, and it comes up that BILBO did too (what the fuck??) and oh, also, That One Ranger is the lost King of Gondor. Cool. This is fine. Now everyone is talking about how glad they are that Gollum's under lock and key and can't cause any more problems, and Legolas literally leaps from his seat at this point to mention with considerable concern that he's actually not

This is real bad news for all of five seconds, but then Gandalf blows it out of the water when he drops the Saruman's-a-fucking-traitor bomb. And eventually this leads to Legolas agreeing to go on a crazy quest to MORDOR with four hobbits, a wizard, a king, a steward's son, and a dwarf. Literally everything Legolas thought was a huge problem has been revealed to be minor annoyances leading up to the apocalypse

And that's what I love about Camilla reading that letter. She thought she was dealing with some shit. She thought she was going to impossible lengths. She had NO IDEA

[thevindicativevordan]

Comics this week?

Great week this week.

Superman #11 - I was right that it was a Luthor under that armor, but it wasn't his sister Lena. Wish it was, this Revenge Squad is lame other than Pharm and Graft. Should've added Humanite to the mix. For a second I wondered if Williamson had forgotten the Bizarro tease, or if he had handed that off to Aaron, but it looks like Pharm and Graft simply got their hands on a dead Bizarro clone and used it for experiments with the Kryptonite. Guess the next issue will tell us the story of what went down between Lex and those two guys, I've enjoyed them but I'm ready to move on to the Brainiac storyline.

World's Finest #24 - A nice bittersweet note to end on. Magog kills Gog to keep the ALE out of Darkseid's hands... and thus alienates himself from the other heroes for good. Great to see Darkseid not job, but Waid hurt his takedown of Magog here by writing events in a way that makes the heroes chastising Magog for making the hard call come across as disingenuous. Darkseid crushed two Supermen with ease, no one else was close enough or able to stop him, Magog made the right call in my eyes. Our Superman is still willing to forgive David, and encourages him to seek redemption after the events of KC. I liked how Magog found that redemption by serving alongside a new generation including a new Superman (the Clark/Diana kid godfathered by Batman from the epilogue of KC). Until/Unless Waid chooses to flesh that story out, my headcanon is Magog served as the kid's mentor and helped guide him so he would avoid making the mistakes that Magog made. It's a nice note that Magog managed to forge a partnership with a Superman after all. And goddamn can Mora draw the shit out of Darkseid. Would love to see him do a Fourth World arc with the whole New Gods cast.

Wonder Woman #6 - Coolest Grail has been... ever basically? I'm a huge sucker for "the villain talks major shit to the hero before the two throw down" and I liked how Grail has a sense of honor compelling her to toss her own weapon since Diana has no sword. Grail constantly invoking her father as the source of her strength and pride vs. Diana invoking Hippolyta to the same effect feels like the first interesting thematic undercurrent between the two. Going to make a separate post on this, but finally, Grail brings something to the table beyond merely being an evil WW counterpart. Loved seeing Diana take on her entire Rogues Gallery, and while she might have "lost" (but since she took her entire Rogues Gallery down too I think we can say it was a tie), I think between Sov's narration and the Wonder Girls seemingly taking Steel off the board while keeping back, we can guess that even Diana's collapse at the end is part of her plan. Sampere is an absolute beast on art. Dude drew multiple pages that I can see becoming "iconic" down the road: Diana catching and throwing the Monument back at Giganta, Diana punching Grail in the face, etc.

GL: WJ #6 - I'm going to miss Varron man, even as a zombie he's such a dick and it's great to see him and John interact because of how much they despise each other Taking the form of John's dad is such a petty dick move lol. Hell yeah, PKJ's bringing in his Old God storylines from the Warworld Saga, I loved that stuff and am eager to see it continue. Great issue, John got to kick ass with all his constructs, and the reveal about the Revenant Queen is super messed up. She's a host for an Old God like Osul is, except she's Guardian John's wife. Could she be a Katma, or is this a new OC, perhaps even someone our John hasn't met yet? Can't wait to start unpacking all the Darkstar stuff next issue. Looks like the Darkstar is going to be revealed as an Aspect of Olgrun.

Batman #144 - Yawn. Another story where Joker tells Batman he loves Bats and Batman tells him to fuck off. C'mon, I liked how Zdarsky explained the three Jokers, but this is banal.

JLvGvK #5 - Alright we get it, Clark might be dead or maybe not, no need to keep beating us over the head with it. Next issue I want to see Lex's Mechagodzilla kick the BatMech's ass, let's see Lex finally get a big win. Then for the final issue, Superman comes back to team up with Godzilla and take Lex down.

Incredible Hulk #9 - Art did a good job of giving the whole story a macabre feel. Felt like I was reading a Hellboy story in certain parts. Damn Betty and Bruce simply can't catch a break can they? I hope we get more movement on the Eldest plotline soon, I want Betty to get freed and join Bruce and Charlie on their road trip.

Ultimate Spider-Man #2 - Hickman wrote this issue for the people who claim he's all plot and no character - this issue is nothing but character work. We get Peter growing into his own, his first fight with a supervillain, May finds out her dad is Spidey, Ben and Jonah begin investigating, and the Maker's Council pokes their head in via Captain Britain berating Fisk (or is it Captain EU given he's French?). I liked how May was scared of Peter's black suit and that's why he's going to change to the red and blue look, just like how MJ in 616 is the reason Peter switched back to his red and blue costume. I bet we get a Superman: For All Seasons moment where someone compliments Spider-Man's red & blue look and Spidey proudly says his daughter made it for him. There's an interesting parallel between Peter and Harry here. Peter keeps getting his ass kicked by Shocker while Harry keeps failing to kill Fisk. Both of them are trying to be who they're "meant" to be, but neither is great at it from the start, I really like that. Oh and while Ben and Jonah continue to be a great duo, I loved the squabbling between Richard and May while Peter and MJ were texting each other. Really want more interactions between them.

And yes of course I loved that OMD nod at the end, Marvel & Hickman know what they're doing!

I have a theory regarding Mary Jane. Here she's a businesswoman, and just like how the variant cover for issue 1 teased May finding out her dad is Spider-Man, the variant for issue 2 makes MJ out to be very successful as a businesswoman. Given this "zone" is run by the technocrats, I think we're going to see MJ get a villainous counterpart offer to what Tony offered Peter, the Maker's Council will approach her to replace Fisk after Spider-Man deposes him, or maybe even Stark later on down the road. It's made clear the the Council has lieutenants who rule their own sections of the overall domains shown in Ultimate Invasion. MJ getting her own offer of power from the opposite side is the kind of drama that could set up a nice character arc for her. I think MJ ultimately being tempted but refusing causes them to go to Harry next, who accepts.

[alias-sam]

Pierced by a Golden Soul

Chapter 23. Quiet Riot Part 2

Platonic Jojo's x Reader

Summary: Fate is a bizarre concept with countless more bizarre implications. In life sometimes such extraordinary events happen that the only reasoning left must be fate. The tragedies that constantly befall the Joestar bloodline for example may be the unluckiest series of cards drawn in human history, or perhaps the work of a greater power. There is no way to tell for sure. Had Dio Brando or Jonathan Joestar moved slightly on a divergent path the world itself would be left very different. The fate or luck of the noble Joestar bloodline has led to destruction of evil likes of the Pillar Men and DIO. This story is of a similar caliber to that of the other Joestars (as I am sure you are familiar with them). This is a story of lost souls, compassion, hope, and above all fate.

Word Count: 1,756

(Crosspost from Wattpad, full fic is already posted there.)

"You piece of shit!" Blaze sputtered, staggering back and hitting the wall.

"Don't act innocent, that was for the death threat earlier." You sighed. Blaze glared at you, holding his jaw in pain. "You need to learn how to take a hit. You talk real big, but I was holding back on that." Standing in front of the Learco's hospital bed, you looked down at Blaze in the darkness.

"What are you doing to my brother?"

"I don't know, but I've been trying to figure out..." You said, glancing back at Learco's motionless body, but quickly redirected your attention to Blaze. That was a problem you could focus on in a minute.

"How the hell did you get here so fast?" Blaze seethed, examining your steady composure and even breathing. In the darkened room he could still tell you weren't nearly as ragged or distracted as before. He was expecting you to follow him, but not like this. It didn't seem you were being affected by his stand anymore.

"There's a service elevator next to the south entrance of the hospital. I know someone who knows the building well." You took a step forward, cringing slightly as your foot touched the ground, it was an instant, but Blaze noticed it. "You made things 'fair' by telling me your ability. The least I could do was return the favor, so I came alone. I want to solve this amicably Blaze, so why don't we talk this out?"

"How come you aren't cowering in a corner somewhere?" Blaze asked, ignoring you. He stayed against the wall, keeping his distance. He had probably figured out your stand's range was incredibly short. "You should be dead already."

"I managed to deactivate your stand ability."

"You're bluffing."

"Am I?" You challenged.

"That's impossible..." Blaze mumbled turning away from you to face the wall. Without any kind of warning, he took a switchblade out of his pocket. In one fluid motion he quickly sliced a section of his thigh. There wasn't a moment of hesitance between his actions. You hissed in pain as an identical wound formed on your own leg.

"I knew it." Blaze waved the switchblade in your direction.

"Okay." You groaned as a few specs of blood dripped down to the floor beneath you and Blaze. "Maybe I lied."

You were hoping your little ruse would buy you at least a minute to say something. The truth was, the world was still twisted to you. It had only gotten worse the slower you let your heart rate drop. At this point, everything in the hospital has the consistency of jello. It was hard to keep your balance. Each step you took to get to the room made a loud squishing sound in your inner ear. It was a nightmare riding the elevator.

"I should have just gotten rid of you the second I realized you were a stand user!" Blaze said, approaching you slowly with his blade pointed at you. Maybe it was the pain caused by the stab wound or the delirium from Quiet Riot, but for some reason in that moment you giggled. Blaze growled. "What are you laughing about! What else are you hiding?!?"

"You can't hurt me." You smirked, looking Blaze dead in the eyes. "Not while we're like this." You were only being so confidant right now because any damage done to you, would reflect onto Blaze. He said so himself in the school yard.

"Yes. I. can." Blaze seethed as he came closer. Quiet Riot appeared under the hospital bed, grabbed your ankles, and pulled your feet out from under you. You tried hiding a laugh, getting yet another growl from Blaze. "What's so funny!?"

"You're a lot like your brother, yaknow that? You both try covering up how you really feel, but you do it so poorly." You looked up at Blaze from the floor. It was dark, but you could see his eye twitching. He stayed silent for a moment, before taking a slow deep breath.

"I'm going to sink this into your carotid artery." He mumbled with an empty expression. His blade was reflecting a sliver of light as it filtered in from the hallway. "Any last words."

"Yeah...remember what I said earlier about coming alone? I lied." Just as you said that, a crackling sound came from behind the open door. "Plan B Doc!"

"Wha-?" Blaze turned around fast enough to see the door slam closed. The only thing visible in the dark room was a gold light as it flared up and moved towards Blaze.

Jaya and Blaze looked at each other, illuminated by the dim glow of Jaya's hamon. After a moment, the two ran at each other. Blaze was an intimidating opponent given his stature, but Jaya didn't need to beat him. Blaze took a wide swing at the blonde girl, she dodged and managed to grab his forearm. After taking a deep breath, hamon surged from her hand and flowed into Blaze. The muscles in the Martez brother's wrist and hand were forced to contract and spaz out, causing him to lose his grip on the weapon. The switchblade landed in Jaya's awaiting hand.

"Are you sure about this Y/n?" Jaya's hesitant voice cut through the darkened room. Hamon emanated from your friend's leg as she kicked Blaze's legs out from under him.

"Do it!" You yelled as Golden Soul grabbed onto Quiet Riot, dragging it out from under the hospital bed. The shadow like stand wriggled out of your grasp and managed to slip behind you. Quiet Riot wrapped its arms around your throat. "Hurry!" You yelled as the stand's grip on you tightened.

"I'm really sorry about this." Jaya mumbled as she took the knife, and stabbed it into Blaze's shoulder. As she did so, a searing sharp pain slammed into your own shoulder.

"Are you two insane?!" Blaze screamed. Quiet Riot made a screeching noise before darting off into the shadows where you couldn't track it.

"Jojo? Probably." Jaya muttered nervously. "Me? I was made an unwitting accomplice in this."

"Let's just say, I think bleeding out in a hospital is a safer bet than having a heart attack on the sidewalk.I'm not going down without a fight." You groaned, painfully moving to stand up. "Turn off your stand ability and take it back!" You ordered.

"Never!" Blaze snarled. Quiet Riot appeared out of the darkness to grab Jaya and throw her aside. Blaze painfully stood up as well, and glared at you. "Stay away from me!"

Blaze shoved past the closed door and did his best to run down the hallway. He was limping from the self-inflicted gash in his leg, meanwhile holding his hand over the new wound in his shoulder. You gave chase after him, but you weren't doing any better. As you ran, the illusion of the hospital started to dissipate. Your heart rate was going up, so Quiet Riot's ability was going to disappear. Blaze led you down a hallway before coming across the elevators. He frantically pressed the button but turned to face you upon hearing your close approach.

"I remember you saying something earlier about not being a coward. Tell me Blaze, where did that go?"

"SHUT UP!" Quiet Riot appeared and hit your head. You staggered, but righted yourself, choosing to remained silent. "Stand back, or I'll kill you!"

"Please!" You giggled. "That tickled." Blaze's eyes widened and he stepped back. "What? You won't fight back because you're scared? Or are you annoyed that a so called 'novice' is beating you at your own game?" You walked up to Blaze until you were just two steps away. "How useless." You muttered. "Your bark, is a lot worse than your bite."

"Quiet Roit! Protect me!"

"Muda!" Golden Soul punched the stand away, and this time you weren't struck with the feeling of a fist connecting with your own face. You and Blaze stared at each other in silence as blood spurted from your individual wounds. Blaze tensed as you wiped some blood from your hands that had dripped from your shoulder.

"Thanks, that's all I needed."

Blaze tensed, expecting a barrage or attack, but nothing happened. He looked up and watched as you turned around and headed back towards Learco's hospital room.

"Where the hell are you going?!"

"Oh, you didn't notice? I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got a pretty serious stab wound on my shoulder. I'm headed to make sure Jaya is okay." You glanced back at Blaze with a sincere expression. "I'd suggest you go find your way to the urgent care wing." You noticed his bewildered expression and sighed. "Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of questions about you, and who you're working with, but I really need to focus on not dying at the moment." You took a few more steps down the hall before you heard Blaze following.

"I'm not letting you get away so easily!"

"I said it before, but I'll say it again. You and Learco are similar. You both flip flop between intense emotional states. Learco's always sarcastic and defensive but loses it the second he knows he's lost control of a situation. You on the other hand, try keeping up this... intimidating façade that paints you as calmer than you really are. Once you're worked up, all that calculating and brainstorming goes down the drain."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means-" You were cut off.

"It means you're just as impulsive as your idiot brother." A familiar and calm voice teased.

"Blake...?" You mumbled, turning around to see the one and only Blake Greenmin standing behind you. It had been a while since you'd seen him. If it was possible, he looked even more cocky than the last time you saw him.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Blaze glared at the blonde, and Blake grinned in return.

"I was told you were finally making a move by 'You Know Who'. I figured you'd screw it up though." Blake looked at you and winked. You visibly recoiled in kind. "Lo and behold, looks like Y/n really was too much for you. That's what you get for ignoring my warning."

"Stop gloating and get me out of here." Blaze seethed.

"Fine." Blake sighed and rolled his eyes. Know Your Enemy manifested and quickly rushed to where you were standing. "No hard feelings Y/n, nothing personal." Blake smiled as the stand wrapped hits hand around your neck, holding you a few inches off of the ground.

"Don't you dare-" You choked, summoning Golden Soul. Before you could defend yourself though, Know Your Enemy dealt a blow to your head.

[twilightguardian]

More Discussing Fixing RWBY Criticisms

I've been thinking of doing this for a while, since I know while my initial essay was ungodly long, it wasn't comprehensive. Plus, there's new criticisms and stuff I glossed over in my initial post that started my involvement in all this. Partially because it wasn't as big, but also some of the criticisms require a lot more time, effort and nuance to look through and discuss and my initial post had taken a couple of days to bang out.

I'll start off with a review that was posted due to my involvement in this. I think it was a good review, and it was brought to my attention because Raymond happened to see it and discussed it. This person has unfortunately blocked me, and I don't blame them for it, because I said some things that with my phrasing could be viewed in a less than good light. But I'll explain myself a little bit below, when I talk about my general attitude toward confronting people since I might as well.

I'm mainly posting this as a primer because it's going to encompass most of the criticism. And I think it's fair if the reviewer didn't find the faunus plotline to their tastes. Not everyone is going to be satisfied with it, no matter what and at the end of the day, no matter how hard someone tries, there's going to be issues someone will take with a work, or how a concept is presented, and there's ultimately nothing that can be done with it. The most that an author can do is their sincere best.

I think calling the White Fang 'the bad guys' in Fixing is a little simplistic. Sure, they are an antagonistic force to some extent, but they aren't bad or evil. The first volume has thieves posing to frame the White Fang and cover Roman's tracks. The second volume does have actual White Fang members, recruited by Cinder, and Roman forced in middle management between the two.

But it is established that there is corruption seeping into the organization and disparate groups in some internal political maneuvering in the background as people with different ideas move about among the different branches. This is where we get Onryu, who is only ever mentioned, Adam, who was under Onryu, and then Sienna and Ghira.

Volume 3 has Adam directly involved and pushing White Fang involvement in the Fall of Beacon. Adam abusing his power and influence, and later in Volume 4 blames the actions he pushed for on the Lieutenant who died. I think that pretty clearly establishes that these are individuals and mindsets within and not the White Fang as a whole who are considered bad guys, but people swayed by charisma and ideology to do a man's bidding with the White Fang itself in opposition to it in Volumes 4&5.

As for Blake, she said directly that their parents got a new extension to their home, and later it's stated that Ghira is newly crowned Chieftain.

Getting extra clarification on this, there was mention that Blake was meant to be 12 when she ran away, but her family's class status doesn't actually matter to this other than as background detail. But there was something that we determined was a genuine flub on his part because of this criticism, with him waffling on whether the house belonged to the Belladonna's or the house belonged to the Chieftain who'd move in once elected.

Either way, Blake isn't a rich princess-or-equivalent in Fixing, nor is it meant to imply that she is in the dialogue. I believe he could have been clearer on this, but the scene where he says 'newly elected Chief' is there.

I'm unsure if this is an issue or just stating a fact. But if it is criticism, then I'm not sure how racism being mostly an issue within the minds of individuals is a problem. We saw it be an issue all throughout volume 1 and it's mentioned with Cardin. Weiss' arc is also very much heavily focused on racism, even if her main issue is her perfectionist attitude about her team.

It's a little confusing when it's stated here that they're hoping it'll be treated like a big deal but then implies that they're brushing off everything with Cardin and Weiss as not being enough. I suppose in this person's mind, at least according to what I'm gaining from this review, the only racism worth talking about is systemic? I do not want to assume, but that's what I glean off this.

Well, I'd already said how Blake is not the pseudo Weiss-like character this person seems to think she is. But even so, that doesn't mean Blake hasn't experienced racism in her life. Especially after she joined the White Fang. I'd honestly think that if a faunus family like Blake's could gain that much affluence, then things have improved. And that's the point, isn't it? Adam's a true believer of the cause, and Blake attacked his core motive: One that has driven him to spite and hatred and malice, no matter where it may have started.

He's had a rough situation, but can he see past it? Can he see the concept of a good human? Or that the situation with the faunus has improved, even if there's still work to be done? If what he wants is no longer equality, but revenge, no amount of what happened in his past should justify Blake sitting back and watching Adam hurt innocent people. It's a cycle of hatred and violence, one that is easy to fall into.

That's ultimately the dilemma between Blake and Adam now, though I'm told we'll get a lot more into this as we go through Volume 6.

The comments feel very ideological, and such things can paint one's view of a work. But I just want to say that I don't think Blake's tragedies have to match Adam's in order for her to have an opinion on his extremism. Do I think that Blake being an orphan could make her case stronger? Sure. I don't think it's necessary.

In my rewrite/OW template, my interpretation of the White Fang is much more leaning into religious cult, with its members being raised and indoctrinated into an idea that humans are the enemy and will harm you if you let them. But the White Fang are also not the only racial justice group, with Velvet being a part of one in Vale and takes over as a student representative and leader of the movement at Beacon when the last one graduates.

In Fixing, we just had Ghira and Kali set up an all-faunus disaster-relief force that's separate from the White Fang as well.

There are many different routes that one can go with depending on how close or far one wants to take the ideas and worldbuilding and Blake can be adjusted for to fit the needs of that world.

There have been a couple of Sketchy Huntsman who have addressed this months ago. Your mileage may vary with how successful that was. There are some people who go to extremes with how careful one must tread when addressing other cultures to the point where it's almost not worth it to acknowledge another culture's existence. In writing circles there's also a growing concern over the concept of sensitivity readers hindering a project more than helping.

The term itself is also vague and muddies the conversation, and I much prefer the term 'diversity editor' as it better reflects their role in professional writing and what they're meant to do. But I digress.

This isn't professional writing. It's a fan project meant to expand upon and correct issues with the worldbuilding of this franchise. So what do we have?

This text claims that the Branwen tribe is inspired off the Ainu people. This gives a false impression it's meant to be a 1-1 comparison between real life Ainu peoples and the Branwens. That's not true. The SH who have addressed building up the tribe talked about how the Branwen tribe is a fictional ethnicity and culture that are based on multiple different cultures, not just one. There's elements of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Mongolian and yes, Ainu. They aren't representative of one ethnic group, nor were they ever intended to be. The main inspiration were those of Mongolian tribes, of which there are many. It was specified Mongolian Steppe Peoples, though there was contention with this use of words.

Pan-Asia is a term and ideology that seeks to unify all elements of Asian peoples. Japan itself has tried to use this term for its own imperialist gain. But for our uses here, Pan-Asian does not work. This isn't a unification of Asian cultures into a single amalgamus blob of Asia. This is creating a fictional ethnicity by taking inspiration from many different real life ethnicities. This contention seems to be under the impression still that no matter what, the ethnicity is still meant to represent a real group of people when that's not true.

I take issue with the idea that creating something by taking elements of other things is inherently bad. That is how art is made. An artist will look up pieces of different clothing to create something that looks similar to, but isn't quite like the sum of its parts. Collages are made out of what inspires you with the design. This is no different, and the exact method used in designing the clothes of the Branwen tribe, and broadly their ethnicity as a whole, made of many things but not directly any of them, but something new. It's fiction. We who write fiction are inspired off the real world, and may at times reflect it, but never copy it lest we get called out for being hacks.

The Branwens are bandits. They are nothing more than bandits in canon, a collection of people who gathered around Raven, though a handful may have been with her since they were young. Fixing turned them into a people.

I repeat that humans cannot create something out of nothing. We don't have that amount of creative freedom, and something is bound to be copied intentionally or not off of something that person has experienced in their lives, or looks up. It is not disrespectful to be inspired, to have no desire to create a perfect representation of a specific peoples in a world that is not reflective of ours.

It is correct that there is a misconception about what the bear is being sacrificed to. The bear, taken from its mother and raised like a person, is then killed off after two seasons with arrows until its throat is slit and the spirit of the god is released back into the mountains. The peoples are gathered for the celebration and the flesh is then eaten.

But the process of killing the god is itself still called a sacrifice, no matter if it is to something or for its own benefit. It is still a sacrificial ceremony where the life of the mortal bear is sacrificed to release the spirit of the god.

To take this concept and apply it to Vernal is called symbolism. Symbolically she is the bear, worshipped and venerated and kept close and raised well, but it is her mother's faults and failings that ultimately get her daughter killed, propping her up as a god and slaughtering her. Symbolism doesn't have to be directly comparable and to think that it must is to stifle creativity and art.

Yes, I have done research on Ainu culture, both because of my own interest with characters in fiction who were directly Ainu, but also because of this. Knowing the meanings behind things, the ceremonies, the practices, the beliefs does not mean I'll necessarily want to replicate it. In a way, like how Ainu art is respectful to the gods by creating something original, not replicating and creating a realistic image, so too does the Branwen's Ainu leanings not reflect the truth out of respect.

Honestly this is the end of the Fixing RWBY section. Stop reading if you don't care about what I have to say below because it's otherwise unrelated because this issue wasn't about Fixing, but the one time I talked about canon (legitimate hot take) and people got upset.

So, here we are. The 'stain' on my time here and the main reason I was blocked by this person in particular. I will clarify I was talking about Shay, not Shiloh, and I differentiate them by calling them by their names depending on whether I'm talking about canon or Fixing. And I was talking about Shay.

In my opinion, Shay did not sexually harass Yang and I'll stand by that. Why? Because I'm not someone who is going to look at every single negative and unwanted interaction and label it as such and my opinions are very strong on this. Sexual harassment can be any unwanted interaction because there is no solid definition. Because I have friends who have told me they witnessed these situations at parties, where the girl is upset the guy leaves and complains to my friend about it because she was playing hard to get so why'd he leave? I've been directly in Yang's situation myself, and arguably worse because the guy did end up touching me.

So why do I not view any of these three examples as sexual harassment? Firstly, context. The guy is drunk, and if anyone who has been around drunk people know, their mental faculties aren't exactly there. That means their booze-addled brains are too stupid to comprehend small little social faux pas like touching someone's hair or (in my case) reaching into someone's mouth because they're wearing fake vampire fangs and drunk brain goes what the fuck is that. He was clearly trying to flirt, not believing the girl he saw was as young as she claimed, because dumbo drunko brain. Yang was calm, slightly annoyed, but engaged in conversation with the guy. To me, thinking about how drunk people can be fucking stupid, can easily see the guy interpreting her engagement in conversation as egging him on and playing hard to get.

Secondly, I simply don't automatically assume malice in anyone, fictional or otherwise until it's made clear to me they're meant to be someone I shouldn't trust. There has to be strong evidence to the contrary, and even after the reveal of him being a bandit, he's played far too much for laughs for me to consider him any amount of legitimate threat.

Thirdly, and this was the thing I was trying to originally say: I don't like calling Yang a victim of sexual harassment. That implies some level of frailty on her part, and she was in control and comfortable in the space and with her abilities the entire time despite the small triggering of small episodes with her shaking hand.

Whether or not someone still agrees with me after this, that's fine. But I do not like the idea of infantilizing Yang as a victim of Shay and that idea triggered something primal in me. But I'm not a sexual assault apologist or whatever for looking into the context and not immediately assuming malintent due to my own personal experiences and the experiences I've heard about from close friends. This isn't out of nowhere. Some people are going to have their own experiences that aren't mine, and they'll interpret the scene a lot more maliciously than I have. I'm not meaning to downplay their experiences, merely state that my own has painted my perception of the scene, as their experiences also painted theirs. But at the end of the day, I stand by Yang was not a victim of sexual harassment.

As for mentioning someone's sexuality, the meaning people took from it was the direct opposite of what I'd intended, and I can in some ways acknowledge if I wrote it in an unclear way. I was trying to say that I did not believe she could use her lesbianism to play dumb on the topic of male dating and flirting because I thought she was too smart for that and didn't believe gay flirting could be that different.

[bambirex]

Waaahhh. You can’t leave the Pezberry one like that. Can we get a part two, angry love confession? Also can you post your glee stuff to ao3 plz? :)

Sorry, the angst train took me haha! Here's a version with a happier outcome! And i might eventually post the requests to my ao3, I'll put the link into my pinned post once I started :)

Warnings: none

**

The argument started when Rachel told Santana that she couldn't cook dinner that evening, because she was going out to see someone. Some stupid, pretentious nerd who had a role in the same production Rachel was in.

Santana had an awful day in general. She'd missed the train and then got told off for being late from work, then she managed to trip in front of everyone in her heels when she was going home. Her angry-meter was slowly rising higher and higher, threatening with an overblow. It's been a while since her so-called evil self, Snixx took over, but it seemed like she would be returning tonight with full force.

"I cooked dinner the whole week," Santana grumbled from the couch, "you can move a finger too, you know."

"And I've cooked the whole week before that," Rachel shot back. She was already getting ready for her date, currently doing her hair in front of the mirror. Santana wished she didn't find her roommate so pretty in that blue dress, especially when she was so angry with her.

Pining after Rachel was such a stupid thing. It would lead to nowhere anyways, and it was high time for Santana to make peace with that. She had already admitted to herself that her constant annoyance with everyone Rachel had ever dated was a product of her stupid romantic feelings- that was already such a huge task, why did she have to make everything even more difficult for herself by being unable to let go?

"Whatever, I bet that guy isn't even worth it," Santana scrunched her nose up at the mental image of some obnoxious dude kissing Rachel tonight. "You could just ditch him."

"You say that about every guy."

"And I'm always right. Remember Brody?"

Rachel scoffed. "That was one time! Not every man I see is your enemy, Santana."

"No, they're your enemies. They're all douchebags, and you don't even notice."

Rachel turned around. Her eyes were harder than Santana had ever seen them before.

"Well, maybe douchebag guys are all I have!"

Her voice was high-pitched, annoyed, but also hurt. Santana looked up at her questioningly.

"What do you mean?"

Rachel shook her head. She stared down at her feet, looking even smaller than usual.

"Just drop it, Santana. Gosh, you call me dramatic, and then you kick up such a fuss over dinner..."

How Santana wished this was only about dinner. She couldn't care less about who made the casserole tonight: she just didn't want Rachel to leave and spend the night with someone else, someone who wasn't Santana.

"I just don't want you to get hurt, Berry," Santana sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose tiredly. She felt a headache coming on. "Why are you being so damn stubborn?"

"Why are you?" Rachel crossed her arms, finally looking up again defiantly. "I just wanna have one freaking date without you snapping at me and preaching about how awful all these guys are!"

"I wouldn't have to preach, if you just listened to me!"

"Oh, like you ever do!"

"That's not the point!"

The tension rose higher and higher, along with their voices. Santana didn't even realize they got closer to each other, until Rachel was standing right in front of her, staring up into her face with stormy eyes.

"Why do you even care so much? Why does it matter to you, Santana!?"

"Because I'm in love with you!"

If the sound of their yelling was harsh, then, the silence was deafening. Santana clapped a hand over her mouth, all her blood rushing to her face as she realized what she had just said out loud.

Rachel's eyes were large and wide, and her mouth fell open. She blinked once, twice, her lips twitching as if she wanted to say something, but couldn't.

Santana wished the ground would open and swallow her whole. How could she be so careless, letting her temper once again get the better of her, and say this? How could she ruin everything so spectacularly with her stupid, unrequited feelings?

It felt like a fever dream from the second Rachel finally moved. She surged forward so suddenly that she nearly knocked into Santana, and pressed her lips against hers.

Santana's head spun and her ears started ringing. She thought she would actually faint, with Rachel's lips plastered onto hers, her hands grabbing Santana's waist almost angrily.

"I hate you," Rachel growled against Santana's lips. Her breath was hot and her hair tickled Santana's face, who gripped Rachel's shoulders helplessly, trying to keep herself up.

"I'm in love with you too," Rachel sighed, and Santana was horrified to see the tears in her eyes. She finally woke up from her haze and cupped Rachel's face.

"Rachel..."

"I've been in love with you for so long," Rachel whispered, the tears now streaming down her face, "but I couldn't tell you, and you would always act like you weren't interested, and now you have the audacity to scream this into my face!?"

"I couldn't hold it back," Santana admitted. She could barely fight back her own tears. "You should have said something! You were chasing these stupid dudes all along!"

"The same way you were chasing all those hot girls!"

They fell silent again. There was so much to be said, but Santana couldn't get the words out. She couldn't believe that Rachel had felt the same way all along, that she was so blind. They should have sat down such a long time ago and talk about this, but it seemed like overdramatic confrontations were their way of pushing through any emotional turmoil.

"So..." Santana whispered, gently running a thumb across Rachel's cheekbone, "are you still going on that date?"

Rachel chuckled, rolling her eyes. She turned her head to press a kiss against Santana's palm, her cheeks heating up slightly.

"No, I'd rather stay with you. If that's okay with you, too."

"Damn right it is," Santana laughed, before leaning down and capturing Rachel's lips in another, much softer kiss.

They clearly had a lot to talk about, but right now, the truth was finally out, and that seemed like a great start.

[theomnicode]

I don't exactly remember if it was you who thought about Saitama being trapped in time travel loop where he can't actually save the Earth from destruction. Anyways, the first thing that came to my mind was Mogami's arc from Mob Psycho (even though it isn't exactly the same). And then I wondered, what if some superpoweful mind-controling monster made Saitama went through something similar? (Let's forget he can punch through dimensional seals like in Phoenix Man's space) An empty grey world where everything is the same but something changed, the inflexion point: he doesn't have Genos. You can already guess what comes next , he doesn't join the HA, people think he's a cheater, they blame him for the meteor accident... His depression gets worse fueled by his loneliness and the ingratitude he receives. I know this is the typical build of villain Saitama au, but when he's at the edge of falling into the dark side he hears Genos calling him "sensei". At first he doesn't know where that voice comes from but his conscience keeps telling him he' missing someone very important. And when he finally remembers Genos he realizes how lucky he is to have him around and that he should value more his own feelings. That way he snaps back to reality and breaks away the mental prision he's been stuck in and wakes up in the middle of the battlefield. He kills the monster and Genos runs to him worried and startled that his sensei seems happier than usually. And Saitama doesn't say anything, but he knows his feelings are back, at least a bit.

OMG, this ended up being a whole fanfic XD

Sorry for the late answer!

That's a pretty darn cool idea and probably not at all unrealistic, since it's a formula ONE has used before.

I think you're refering to this post of groundhog day inspired by Majora's mask? Where the moon falls down and destroys earth?

I honestly thought that since we got time travel, we might as well have fun with it hah.

And if I am honest about superpowered mind-controlling monster?

He does fit the bill. Very well in fact.

If anything has been exhibited about OPM God's powers, is that they've always been affecting the consciousness.

He's a being who cannot be seen via normal means and only subconsciously. Even when he comes out of the dimensional space he resides in and his power creates thunderstorms to appear, his form cannot be perceived via normal means. Even Saitama only barely perceives him via subliminal messages like voices.

And the only time people seem to be able to perceive OPM God is within their consciousness or when they are in altered state of consciousness like Tatsumaki was barely awake. It would seem that God just resides in a higher plane of existence and there are hints towards God's non-physical form residing in the spiritual plane of all places.

That is, realm of the dead. Heaven, essentially. Not unlike the biblical god.

We did get a confirmation in CE and Phoenixman fight that the spiritual plane does exist and then Garou's spirit also made an appearance.

Then what OPM God did to Garou...it wasn't pretty. It was mind control, plain and simple. A bit more subtle than that but essentially yea.

And now that future Garou died...it begs the question that if OPM God resides in the spiritual plane...is Garou's soul even safe? What happened to his soul?

I have thought about this before and the Sanzu river mentioned by Zombieman and some easter eggs in OPM game and I have a feeling we'll find out at some point. Because God did not manage to do to future Garou what he did to Homeless Emperor after all.

Garou did die, but the way he died was distinctly different from HE. I hypothesise that Garou turned HIMSELF into salt to ward off evil, because otherwise God would just kill him and take his life anyway.

The interesting part though is that God just...kind of let this happen anyway.

Why didn't it just instantly suck out Garou's life? I can only hypothesise that Garou dying and Saitama learning time travel and going back still serves it's purposes. That it was meant to happen all along.

However, it means that if God resides in the spiritual plane, then Garou dying can still achieve a purpose.

There's one thing about the God's mural which references to the Aztecs, the temple shape itself.

The rationale for Aztec human sacrifice was, first and foremost, a matter of survival. According to Aztec cosmology, the sun god Huitzilopochtli was waging a constant war against darkness, and if the darkness won, the world would end. The keep the sun moving across the sky and preserve their very lives, the Aztecs had to feed Huitzilopochtli with human hearts and blood.

And then I was tickled a bit about what Joe Rogan mentioned about the aztecs. And their religious practices.

"The aztecs used to burn people when they were alive to really like freak them out. And then take their brains out and eat their brains. Because of all the hormones and all the things that were going on. But they found it gave them you know, whatever superhuman strenght or religious ecstacy."

In short, it probably slurps the life out of people's physical bodies and then noms the souls. And probably get more powerful that way. Phoenixman gives some good and apt metaphors about how God seems to be working in general. A depiction of Hungry ghost Preta.

I bet the more powerful the person is and the higher they can reach by stretching their limitations, the more powerful their soul is and by taking that power, it can get stronger.

Chances are, the Limiter is just a limiter to the power in that person's soul.

And there's probably a connection somewhere deep down in the lizard brain, the pineal gland. We've had some depictions of brain works before when Psykos merged with Orochi.

In the epithalamus of some species of amphibians and reptiles, it is linked to a light-sensing organ, known as the parietal eye, which is also called the pineal eye or third eye.[8] René Descartes believed the human pineal gland to be the "principal seat of the soul."

Anyways

If God is able to affect the consciousness and behaviour of people and also suck the life (read: soul) out of them by staring...who knows what happens when it gets even more power or there are more cracks in the dimensional seal.

Who knows what kind of mind fuckery it can exert upon people?

And since it created the limiters on humankind, there's probably no limits as to what it can do itself.

It is not to be underestimated.

[quietbluejay]

Scars Seven

part one of Mort vs Khan (i'll prob post character thoughts more fully in a separate post)

speaking of the Khagan…

this dialogue bit confused me but I'm pretty sure it's Magnus-Khan-Khan-Magnus-Khan also Magnus has been…off this whole conversation quoth magnus "change is the only constant"

ow ;-; I didn't even put the bit where Magnus is like "my choice was made for me, you're the only one who really gets a free choice and that's why everything is circling around you"

it's a good moment so the Khan slays the Magnus fragment

the fun is over it's time to shoulder those unwelcome responsibilities

uh oh Ilya sees they have unwelcome guests or not so "unwelcome"

she notices shiban's ship kind of…sliding and decides to say nothing man Arvida's a beast he's been stuck on prospero for who knows how long with no food or rest and he's still the mvp in this bug encounter the bugs just KEEP COMING though seriously this is like the ghost of every psychneuein that ever existed and Jaghatai has a dramatic entrance!

see this is how you do dramatics without going into opera buffa

and an interesting bit, i remembered this

"it runs in our minds like blood in a vein" lmao

the khan: ah. he has finally caught up :) :) :)

on the ship, things are not going entirely according to keikaku for the pro-Horus group

incomingggg time for the long foreshadowed confrontation

the battle begins! but back to the khan and as per usual

this is a sidenote but it seems a little silly to me that mortarion keeps kill markers on his pistol Mortarion's come to make his pitch

Shiban does his best to avoid killing his brethren

knowing what I know about how Shiban's going to end up…sob sob sob this hits harder

i always thought Mortarion was supposed to be on the taller end of the primarchs though come to think of it, I can't actually think of any actual times he gets described that way nurgle stretching him like taffy to 20ft tall doesn't count i guess he just has beanpole vibes

huh that's also interesting, I forgot that bit, I thought Horus had sent him how'd he even know where they were? "numerology" already? also Khan thinking about Mortarion as being on the edge because his perception is very different from everyone else's who saw Mortarion joining from miles away hmmm Mortarion calling Horus "the sacrificial king" and just being generally dismissive of Horus, feels weird unless he's doing it to try and sell their POV to Jaghatai …who is known to be close to Horus so. it's weird.

heh Jaghatai: lmao good luck with Angron and Curze as your only allies Jaghatai: don't drag me into this pit you've dug for yourself

see a friend brought this up and I think I agree - I think Mortarion thinks he wants to be in charge but actually he'd be happier as a middle manager or away from it all because literally every time he has been someone's subordinate it's been an evil overlord lol, so he associates being in charge with having any kind of independence

like Guilliman has that moment of fantasizing becoming a farmer - but he's constitutionally incapable of it, he'd end up running some kind of conglomerate and just accumulating things whereas I can actually see Mortarion actually pulling it off you know, if it wasn't for literally everything about their universe

actually wait did i copy the bit about mortarion calling people hypocrites i didn't him calling the Emperor that was valid but Magnus and Sanguinius? lmaooo

i'm honestly a bit confused as to what he thinks is the hypocrisy w.r.t. them

i…think he's referring to the hypocrisy in general of teaching the imperial truth and also doing warp stuff? at least based on context if it's not that I have no clue because you'd think "arrogance" would be his go-to insult hm i'm wondering how much mortarion and jaghatai here are meant to mirror shiban and torghun like obviously there's some lol but how much is meant to be a reflection I wonder…

the context for why i'm wondering is this exchange here

and over to ilya the fighting has spilled into the command centre the ships are also now showing up as Death Guard which is just so out of context for her

i do not remember what she ended up doing guess i'll get to find out again, much like other parts of this book

because suddenly Jermulan teleported in I definitely don't remember that

ah here's the actual bit i was thinking of

also this is that rarest of things, a fight scene I actually like i mean tbh i like the shiban-torghun fight scene a bit better as a fight lol but really i'm considering this whole sequence one giant fight scene

again, Khan doesn't get Mortarion, on like an essential level it kinda ties into his being like "we're both on the edge of things", and so that's the frame he sees Mortarion through funnily enough I think the Khan's understanding of Mortarion is actually a better character description of Perturabo in most ways well, do we really need two bitter grumpy dudes who are high on the list of "likely to commit war crimes with weapons that should be banned" the khan is at least happy about one thing

khan: i can see your future and it's all darkness

Wraight writes kind of cinematically, but not in the way other cinematic writers do if that makes any sense like I'm comparing to Abnett and Sanderson here

Wraight's kind of more…dynamic? in some ways not sure that's exactly the word I want it chews and talks gum at the same time, so to speak

ah yesugei has shown up, finally yeah the first time I read this I really didn't appreciate the setting enough

also I've been thinking as I've been reading this book that I agree with Skyborn re: Wraight being the best HH writer

like I think Haley is my favourite in general, haha, but I don't think he's the best (looks at Pharos and Wolfsbane) tbc...

[ittybittykittyfingers]

9/2/24

Every home in the world was visited by 3 alien chibi cartoon cats in their driveways. The cats had 2 demands: feed them canned dog food; and repeat whatever word they say back to them without making any other sounds for as long as the exercise takes place. Those who complied would be saved. Those who did not would stay behind. The cats wanted Earth to be terraformed into their litterbox.

I had experienced this day over and over again. Each time my family would fail.

At first I tried desperately to convince everyone this was real but we're all such goofballs. It had varying levels of success but I ultimately couldn't get everyone on board.

Next, I just couldn't take it anymore and kept killing myself in an attempt to exit the cycle, only to be consistently Groundhog Dayed back in over and over.

Finally, I was ready to try something radical.

I had some time before the cats arrived so I used that chance to collect the required items along with general survival stuff. A tired backpack exacted its regret for existing upon my equally regretful shoulders. It turned out that being prepared ahead of time worked to my advantage with getting my family to cooperate. They thought the whole thing was some elaborate bit I'd gotten together.

Unfortunately, even with this advantage, we never did make it out. We were always doomed to go down with the ship, I suppose. In the final iteration of this day I finally got to see what happened to the earth.

I saw low-flying helicopters dumping water like rain, like the kind you see putting out forest fires. The water kept coming. I caught a glimpse of the face of someone manning the vehicle. They looked like what I would, loosely, describe as a zombie- obviously being controlled by the cats. This one was particularly close to our house and swung back and forth threatening to collide with the house. Water flooded everything-- 4ft, 6ft, 10ft up and up. We managed to climb into our old mini-van which did surprisingly well. It acted as a water-tight boat.

Younger family members slept soundly in the trunk (hatchback minivan) while adults took stock of what we had and how we would get through the next few days. I was prepared with food and water and some medical supplies, so our focus turned to setting up shop on the van and establishing a contact point outside of our family. We needed to find a way to be useful. For now, we would focus on navigation and surviving the flood. The sunroof gave us access to the outside when the 'rain' finally stopped. We took to pulling in bodies to loot them, which wasn't exactly a pleasant chore on the best of days, but felt especially surreal to do in front of an ornate church spire where an oddly pristine type-faced banner hung that read “WE WORSHIP OUR EVIL OVERLORDS". I wondered how it was so professional looking when the event was less than a day old.

Tall buildings had dry floors. Given our early advantage, we had a modest surplus of useful items like weapons, drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, etc., your typical post-apocalypse staples. It was pulse-poundingly terrifying to approach windows of high-rise buildings but, for the most part, people were happy to trade with us and let us go without trouble. People were quick to part with food and seeds and tools if it meant a quick break from the insanity. The plan was to establish a rooftop homestead somewhere defendable, Project Zomboid style. Eventually, we'd level up into figuring out how to get underwater and scavenge.

Unfortunately, we didn't get that far and the next stage of the terraforming began. My writer's instinct wants to continue the story anyway but this tag is for what happened in my dreams. I honestly don't know what the next stage was. I guessed when I woke up into reality that it was gas because people in the van started dropping like flies. I just... suddenly woke up.

Thank you!

[voyagegrace]

Taken

I did a talk today as part of a service. It's a new type of service for my church, set up by me, M, C, and H. I didn't think my role would be talking as I'm not a fan of talking in front of people, but I'm good at writing and I've ended up writing talks. Like this one, they end up personal so really only I can read them.

I might upload the talk, but for now I'll just tell you that it was about pursuing an autism diagnosis and the sort of loneliness that comes with it. But as John 9 tells us, we are not created differently because of sin, but because we serve a higher power for God. I was talking with C afterwards, and she said something about how life puts you in situations that has you asking why. And it made me think about that one (i think it was a tumblr post?) about how when your dog eats chocolate you take it away from them because its bad for them, but they don't understand that, and how God (or the universe) is making things happen and we may not understand it now. We might never.

I really like the whole thing of God having a plan for us. It comforts me. I just wish we could understand things more, y'know? I thought that I had found my future. My one. Knowing what I do now, I feel foolish. I'll call him Hyde (not his real name, clearly, but he was a true Edward Hyde so). I was in love with Hyde. There's really no other way to say it. He was my supervisor at work, the same age as me, we went to the same secondary school, live in the same town. So I gave him lifts home (he couldn't drive) and we would spend just hours in my car talking. Even now I view those talks fondly. I thought that they were raw and honest.

(They were not.)

So I had a crush on him. I had for a while to be fair. But he had a girlfriend and I respected that. Then he cheated on said girlfriend, and from the way he spun it I thought it was truly awful, but I was his friend and had a crush so I justified it. A lot more happened that I just don't want to dredge up, but eventually he was single and I was single and he was driving me insane hinting all these things until one night he said he liked me.

He held my hands, he looked me in the eye. He told me we were going to go to dinner, we were going to talk, we were going to untangle these feelings. We were going to be happy.

I believed him. You would have too. He was very convincing. Knew all the right things to say. Then shit hit the fan. He left. I haven't seen him since.

And then I found out that he lied about a very serious rumour that would've caused me, three coworkers, and a manager to be fired.

Then I found out that he was talking shit about me behind my back. Saying I trapped him in my car. He was going to shave his head just to give me the ick. I was pathetic, I was obsessed. Truly I heard it all before in school, but at the age of 20? To turn me back into that pathetic little girl? That hurt. That hurt so so badly.

Finding out that Hyde was in fact Hyde broke my heart. I thought this was it. He talked to me about potential marriage, future children. He told me he would respect my faith even though he didn't believe. I was in love. I've never been in love before. But Hyde, he made this character just perfect for me to fall in love with.

Manipulative, evil, walking red flag. My friends told me all of this whilst I still thought he was a good person.

How is this relevant? Because I, stupidly, was almost angry at God for this. Why take him away? Why send someone to manipulate and hurt me? But I was thinking today that God doesn't control my feelings. Falling in love with Hyde was my own doing. But he wasn't good for me. He wasn't good fullstop. But God knew I wouldn't give up, I wouldn't let him go. He had to remove him in a way that would make me listen. Make me hate Hyde, so that my heart is open to what God is leading me to.

I know that the one is out there.

The lesson I should take from this isn't not to fall in love. Or that I should diminish my kindness or that I should be less trusting. These are all qualities that God wants us to have. The lesson that I am choosing to take from Hyde is that God was telling me he wasn't the one. I refused to listen so He made me listen. I will listen to Him next time.

And my friends. They all hated Hyde. Maybe that was the Lord working through them. Who can say?

I'm not sure this makes sense. I don't think anyone will read this (except maybe M. She encouraged me to make a blog. I might send her a link. Hi, M, if you're reading) but it was nice to just write. I'll listen to you next time, Lord. I'll let You lead my heart. I will love willingly and freely in Your name. I will trust that You will lead me to my one.

[moddymoon]

What's your experience of Tumblr?

I know I'm pretty sure what other people's experiences are. Because I have no reason to believe my experience is much different.

Every day I come on. Looking for something that might be interesting. Trying to connect with people. That sort of thing.

I don't much mind if I don't really connect with people, finding neat content is largely enough. Though it's not that likely to be a draw for long, as there's far too much of that.

If I was just finding "empty content" that wasn't really feeling engaging, I doubt I'd be around that long.

If I found people that I'd been connecting to, and just enjoying stuff, I could end up staying around for longer.

Right now. I'm finding some enjoyable, but not very connecting content. It's fine, and I'm willing to work a bit to get some engagement happening. I really would like that.

That said... That's not really what made me think about posting this.

In trying to engage, and connect with others, most of that connection has been ... People dropping into my DMs who almost exclusively haven't done the most basic looking at my blog.

People who I honestly have a hard time really calling people, as they are basically working to get people to either give them money (hey that's a fair thing if they are offering something, but hey I can't give it to them), or ruin people's lives.

They are engaging in on-consensual practices. They think that this is perfectly fine because they've gotten some idea, that there's a community which engages in genuinely non-consensual practices (there isn't there's a community that engages in simulated and negotiated practices that look to be non-consensual).

They seem to have not done any real research on their own part. There's a site that broke off, because Tumblr was "cracking down" on that community.

So instead of having that community here, which believes very strongly in consent. We have a mockery of it, which doesn't give a damn about consent.

That site, is hugely buggy, and basically doesn't work for anything meaningful, which is why I left it.

I also see the other side ... And I think it is still the "same coin". The people who say, "you can't view my blog if..." I get why you might not want some people to even view your blog. Maybe even wanting to confirm stuff. Sadly, they want to make it clear that they're not really talking about, "hey I just wanted to ask you this, because it's an impression I got..." and moving on.

They want to make it clear that they think someone is "evil" because they make them feel uncomfortable or whatnot.

You don't go yelling down the street about how you don't want to have sex with a guy... Because a guy happened to walk down the street, and acknowledged you. You acknowledge back, and walk on.

I have had experiences where it's not "acknowledgement" but a clear violation of my consent... But... What do I do... Maybe I frown, and walk on...

"Photog Matt" seems to think people posting meme type, "I wish this would happen to terrible people..." is a "death threat" but posting, "I will kill you" is perfectly fine.

Yes, "Photog Matt" Tumblr is toxic. It's toxic because of bad management, and deciding that people walking down the street basically minding their own business, looking in store windows is toxic, and people breaking store windows, and house windows is fine.

[the-acid-pear]

I dreamt with this Danganronpa game except it wasn't really Danganronpa, in any way. Sure there was ONE Danganronpa character that being Bandai (from Mirai Hen) but then it was filled w misc characters from non existent dr games. One was very cool to there were this group of young girls but I selected specifically one that was this purple and black glowing rock alien who was I insist a little girl like middle school or some shit but was kinda ripped by virtue of being made of rock I guess and her flavor text said something about her not giving a fuck.

I guess it's worth mentioning that the point of this game was to accuse someone but at fucking random I guess, or with what you already knew of the characters. I remember clicking on Bandai for this reason, who btw was notably ooc bc how on edge he was, and the flavour text shamed me like "are you going to accuse him when he didn't even get to read his letter?". But nothing else that is notable happened here.

This did transition to this blonde anime boy who had showed up earlier who has this weird blocky stylized hair and his lower jaw was like caved in but not consistently, kept glitching in and out, like a doll being inflated and deflated. He was talking to this girl who I also think was blonde, but blonder, longer hair too, and he explained that apparently the baras (his word) had beaten him up and that was why he had his face like that but it was ok and kinda was like so um wanna go out with me? And she agreed.

And here's a funny part because they went into this big futbol field and it seems like in my dream universe there was this argentine meme that came from an Instagram post of two futbol players back to back all romantic and one had a t-shirt with a 4 (no clue if this is a number used in futbol I don't like the sport) and like it was captioned like 4(for) MI PUTO ❤️ and so now these guys from the team were giving out umbrellas 4 tu puto and I guess diversity won bc they gave it to this seemingly straight couple. Being someone's puto goes beyond gender I guess.

After that the dream got a bit dark tho, and it's shorter because I forgot details, but I was watching this documentary about this horror movie's creator who apparently had developed schizophrenia and while at first it was manageable it was slowly consuming him. The narrator explained he was specifically terrified of these "evil orbs" that lives inside his closet. One remarkable shot was our guy sculpting or looking down at this sculpture (like one of those paintings with 3D elements) of an unicorn in a setting akin to the one from the birth of Venus, with such colors and vibe. But the before beautiful and peaceful sculpture was now infected by these evil balls, spreading all over the lower right corner of the frame, crawling up the horse's leg.

After this I walked away from the documentary but I was like "haha just like me except balls instead of liquid" and as I stepped closer to my desktop I saw it covered in this bleeding, dripping, darkness. My chair was barely visible on it. I thought for a second of my oc Shira, but I'm unsure what that meant. Maybe she too is terrified of these liquids? Might be canon. I have no idea if it was tangible or dream me was genuinely aware of it being just a hallucination, but I was still scared enough to not go closer, instead diverting my attention to my cat Vito, who was now nothing like him. Short dirty hair, even fatter, big circular face, and had an eye patch. I don't know how I reached this assumption but I was sure he too was schizophrenic and I got very stressed because I guess I didn't want my cat to be as miserable as he was at the moment (his movement was also Weird his neck twisted almost like a human one).

I stopped freaking out when I looked out the window, previously covered by the dark liquid and saw daylight and I was like Right it's 7 pm it's too early to freak out! And the clock did say 19:01 and then I just woke up.