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marcilled · 4 years

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5 years

It was 5 years ago today that a humble little minecraft server first opened its gates. 5 years ago, I started @quixol with a team of 8 friends. Today, only 4 of those original friends are still on our Staff team, and the server is a shadow of its former self.

There’s a lot I could talk about with Quixol, but before I get into it, I just want it to be known that this is a highly personal post from me. This isn’t an official announcement, but seeing as I’m an admin, it’s definitely of pertinence if you are someone who is a part of the Quixol community.

If you’re new to following me, or just don’t know what I’m talking about: Quixol is a trans-friendly minecraft server started by me and a few pals back on November 16, 2015. It’s primarily populated by folks from here on Tumblr, and is an LGBT+ only community. Over its 5 years, it’s gotten over 1600 unique players. And... Well, there’s a lot of history that took place during and after that, I can’t hope to summarize it here. You can see more on the about page on our blog.

So, yeah. Today is the 5-year anniversary of Quixol. Pretty big deal! And... we have nothing in store for today to celebrate that huge milestone. Pretty big bummer. The prior 4 years, the anniversary was the single biggest celebration of the year. We typically tried to schedule large server updates to coincide with the anniversary, just to make it feel that much more special. So, on the day that marks a whole half-decade of being online, why do we have no plans? It’s a long, complicated story. I’ll only be able to tell you my side of it. Everything written below is from my perspective, and doesn’t necessarily reflect how others think or feel.

Regardless of the lonely feeling on the server now, I just want to say, I’m really glad I could host such a fantastic community for so many years. Thank you everyone who has made the past half decade so special.

Long retrospective below (plus, discussion about Quixol’s future):

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Where to begin... All I can say at the start here is, don’t expect anything coherent, I typed this up while sleep deprived just the night before posting this, without much forethought of what I’d say in it. I just feel I need to get these feelings off my chest before I can mentally move on, you know.

Before I delve into this, I just want to put this sort of disclaimer at the top here: Despite how gloomy I make things sound throughout this post, Quixol is and was an amazing place, that I’m so glad to say I got to play such a pivotal role in. I wouldn’t trade my time here for anything. It’s been an honor to serve as an Admin over such an incredible community. I’ve seen countless new friendships forged, plenty of laughs and fun times to be had... I’ve even known several couples that met through their time on Quixol, I’ve known several people that came out or discovered more about their identity/gender/sexuality while on Quixol. It’s a great community, despite its flaws, and what we did over these past 5 years is nothing short of spectacular. I’m forever thankful for everyone who helped make this place as special as it is- you’ve all been such great friends. Thank you.

While I may speak a great deal about some of the lowest lows that happened on Quixol, you better believe it had some of the highest highs as well. Keep that in mind, so you know why I’m spending this much time and effort to commemorate this server that I’ve called home for so long.

I’ll start here with a rough timeline of Quixol... I’ll even include some screenshots for you all.

Old World (Nov. 2015 - Mar. 2017, mc 1.8 - 1.9)

Quixol began back in 2015 like I mentioned- whitelisted at first, but moved on to being unwhitelisted at a later date (I believe it was summer of 2016). Hundreds of people joined after the whitelist was removed, in just the first month or so. We owe that initial success to how much our blog post about the server got shared around, it served as a nice advertisement for the server. It was only posted to tumblr, so everybody who joined then was from the same sort of social sphere of 2016 tumblr. It was pretty lively, and we made lots of friends very quickly. A lot never logged in again after the first initial burst, but a fair amount stuck around.

The server started on minecraft version 1.8, which was before the end update that introduced elytra & all the controversial combat changes. Most people never even saw the server on this version, though, since it was still whitelisted when we updated to 1.9. The world we used back in 2015-2016 eventually got deleted at a later date, however we did provide an archive of this old world to download, it’s... somewhere on our blog, you can go find it if you poke around a bit. (Assuming the download hasn’t been removed from the website I uploaded it to, which would make sense since it’s just 20 gb sitting on some server doing nothing).

While there was plenty of merriment, there was also the fair share of drama. I can’t even hope to recall all the drama that happened in 2016, but one of our og mods got banned completely after the rest of the staff sort of woke up to the realization they were incredibly abusive. There’s lots of other stuff that happened then- I wish I could tell the “full tale” as it were, but it would be so long-winded that almost nobody would bother to read. Plus, my memory isn’t very good, so I would need to dig through old blog posts, discord messages, screenshots, etc etc to jog my memory... way too much work.

Protos (Mar. 2017 - Nov. 2018, mc 1.11 - 1.12)

2017 came around, and that’s when we updated the server to 1.11 and created a new world (Protos). That update happened on March 26, 2017- I remember because march 26th is my birthday, and the other staff made a cute little celebration for me on that day and I literally cried from how happy I was. It was the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in a long time. (God, I miss those times.)

A lot more happened during this time period, and honestly I’d consider the period in which Protos was our main, active world to be the most consistently active the server has ever been. It wasn’t always exploding with activity, but the people who joined and played during this time were consistent. And we had a relatively consistent influx of new players.

There was a lot more drama that happened during this time... More staff members left, mostly of their own accord (but never on a wholly positive note). Drama amongst some of the veteran/long-time players, arguments over how to interpret and enforce our rules.

Regardless of the troubles, I’d say this period was overall quite positive for Quixol. We even brought in our first batch of new staff members during this period.

Ghalea (Nov. 2018 - Present, mc 1.13 - 1.15)

I believe late 2018 was when we updated the server from 1.12 to 1.13. We rushed the update to this version quite a lot, which was a shame since it ensured the server had an egregious amount of bugs to work out, and lots of missing plugins/functionality. With this update, we made another new world (and, our current main world): Ghalea.

Regardless of buggy behavior, we managed to hit what I believe is the all-time peak concurrent player count we have ever gotten, which is something like 54-56 players playing at the same time. The server chugged so hard, I’m surprised it didn’t crash. All of those parties were so stressful to put on, but at the same time, incredibly fun and fulfilling to see when lots of people showed up and had a good time.

Funny, though: despite the success of the server, 2018 and early 2019 are the closest the server has ever gotten to absolutely tearing itself apart from internal staff drama. By early-mid 2019, several staff members ended up getting banned one after the other. So that left us with very few staff by that point (only 6 active staff, myself included, if I remember correctly).

2019 should have been a great year for Quixol, seeing as it was what many people referred to as the “minecraft renaissance”, “the great minecraft revival”, etc etc etc. However, the drama amongst the staff, coupled with drama in our personal lives, and just an all around lack of staff members to kick things into gear, resulted in a pretty lackluster year compared to the previous 4 years.

Despite all of that, we worked tirelessly to complete our greatest project yet, Chroma Park, just before our 4th anniversary on Nov 16th, 2019. It took a whole team of builders to complete, and several months in preparation/building.

With such a grand project completed, you would expect it would result in a flurry of new activity on the server... unfortunately, it ended up being almost the opposite. Because we called upon our “build team” to help with it, (several talented veteran players who volunteered their building skills), nearly all of our active players suffered some serious burnout after the major project they just completed. Lots of people just weren’t feelin’ up to minecraft anymore... And, that spelled the beginning of the end, really.

The culmination of this was that, going into 2020, activity on the server just... plummeted. Then, we all know what a shit year 2020 turned into. That just furthered feelings of burnout. I made another personal post about this, back in April- explaining why I had been relatively absent from the server for a while. It goes into more detail about the “hiatus” at that time, what caused it, why it continued so long, and how my personal feelings were at that time. Give it a read if you want. It even goes more in-depth about some of Quixol’s former staff, and how toxic behavior from them may have negatively impacted the community (especially in 2018-2019).

So, basically nothing has happened on Quixol in 2020... I took the time to update the server from 1.14 to 1.15 back in July, just so that the server was on a more stable version of minecraft- but all the effort poured into that resulted in basically nothing happening. Barely anyone even noticed, because it was such a minor update focusing on bug fixes. I hoped it would get the ball rolling again, but it just wasn’t enough.

While I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet, I decided it was for the best if I put any plans on the backburner for a while, and focus more attention on building infrastructure back up again. I spent some time researching sysadmin stuff, and looking into upgrading my PC. I set up a new discord bot that we’re currently using on Quixol, & have in a few other discord servers I’m active in.

Then, I got tossed one of the most difficult months of my life in a long time pretty recently. It’s very recent/fresh, but suffice it to say, a decent chunk of what made it such a horrible month was related to drama within the Quixol friend group, particularly... me being a shitty friend. I made another post about this a while back, but I won’t link it since it’s a bit vague and not super relevant to what I’m talking about here. Just know, September this year pretty much demolished any feelings of hope I had for continuing work on Quixol.

So, that leads us to... Today. The 5th anniversary of Quixol.

Where did it all go wrong?

Now that I’ve laid out as quick a summary of the past 5 years as I could, I want to talk about some of the mistakes we made along the way. The people that made Quixol what it is, and how that history always seems to tie me down.

To tell you the truth, saying that “it all went wrong” sounds horribly pessimistic to me. Sure, I felt pessimistic going into writing this, but... Just looking back on everything we’ve accomplished, there’s never really a point where it “went wrong”. Moreso, Quixol has had its fair share of flaws baked in from the very beginning. But, perhaps those flaws are what made it what it really is. I can’t go back and change the past, and neither can you. Perhaps the best we can do is just accept Quixol for what it is, and acknowledge its shortcomings while allowing ourselves to feel happy about the good memories we do have.

While I’m not going to cast away every pleasant memory I have of Quixol, I must admit I find so many of them tainted and forever changed, just because of how many people entered this community, made their stay known, then left or were cast away on a sour note. There are countless people that were a huge part of Quixol, of my life, my friends, that I don’t speak to anymore. People that hate me. Maybe even some that I hate.

If I go back and think fondly of those times, I remember how the people in those memories largely don’t think fondly of me anymore. I remember all of my mistakes, all of the ways I could have avoided that outcome. All the ways I could have worked with those friends, to work out our differences, to just fucking communicate. Sure... some of those friends, there was nothing I could do for them. Nothing I could do to make things work. But, all the same... it stings, thinking of everyone I used to know. Not knowing who is still a friend, or who simply has no need for me anymore...

So much of Quixol’s history is tied up in knots this way. Complicated webs of emotion, suffocating in the tethers to its past. So many things built on the server, just wasting away, never to be touched again... New players won’t even know it. They don’t know, can’t know the history behind those blocks that were placed. It sounds a bit silly talking about it this way, but that’s how it feels to me. There’s real history behind each of these blocks, all of the little farms and structures and silly signs. So much of it, nobody even knows. But it wears on my heart, knowing all of that history, and feeling so disconnected from it. Feeling cast away by the people who forged those memories.

It’s a disconnect that’s always hurt, to me. Maybe I’m just too sentimental, nostalgic. Maybe I cling to the past too much. But it feels impossible to ignore... So much of what made Quixol what it is today was left there by people who want nothing to do with me, us, anymore. What does that say about Quixol? About me...? About our group?

There’s a lot I could say about this, but it’s stuff I’ve mentioned before. I hang on too tightly to the past, and am often too critical of my own mistakes. But, sometimes the past is just the way it is, and there’s not much that can be done about it. Regardless, I find myself feeling regrets about every little thing that went wrong, and thinking about where all those people are now... Maybe one of them is even reading this right now. If you’re out there, hey. We can still talk. I’m not going to hold a grudge on you forever. It’s ok.

My influence

Since Quixol began in 2015, I’ve tried my best to be nothing more than an “Admin” of Quixol... not the “owner” or “lead admin” or “founder”, just “admin”. I hoped I could encourage the other admins to be leaders in their own rights. While each of the admins we’ve had has been great leaders in their own respect, I feel that every one of them has been, unfortunately, tied down by my influence to some extent.

In most aspects of life, I’m a very timid, indecisive person. I’m incredibly anxious, and lack confidence to a worrying degree. However, a different side of me can be seen in the safe, comfortable environment that Quixol provided for me. Surrounded by friends and people who I felt really got me, I became comfortable enough to show some level of confidence in myself... In all honesty, for a long time, I was never able to recognize this self confidence for what it was. I really was not, and mostly still am not, used to feeling confident in myself or my own abilities. Like, at all. So when I actually feel good about myself, like I actually know what I’m doing... Well, for a really long time, I didn’t even process it as such. I just felt like I knew the right answers, and that was it.

On Quixol, this often manifested in a specific way... Being proud of my own knowledge & skills with minecraft, I would insert myself into any discussion about Minecraft, the server, or just anywhere I could, and offer up my knowledge, opinions & help. This hardly sounds like a problem, but... The problem was just in my unwavering presence. I was everywhere on Quixol, you couldn’t escape me. I dominated the space with my presence. Not that I interrupted people (usually...?), I just would try to put myself anywhere a conversation was happening, assuming it was, like, appropriate for me to do so on some level.

Whenever I chimed in with my thoughts, eventually there became this sort of air of almost... superiority about it. This feeling that my word was “final”, or that I had some layer of expertise on everything, and that if I said what you said was right, that was a pretty good indicator you were on the right track. I didn’t pretend like I was infallible, and I don’t think anyone ever saw me as that. But the perception was generally that if Vivian says it, that holds weight to it. Perhaps this is somewhat unavoidable of a staff member, but... it was this way even amongst the staff.

I never really realized that I was creating this environment within the community, because it happened rather slowly. But as things moved along, other staff began to pick up on this (perhaps subconsciously). Including even the other admins. Quickly, my own insistence on doing things a Specific Way, became “the Right Way” to do things on Quixol... Whether I intended it or not.

Now, this is something I didn’t know until quite recently, but I actually have OCD (undiagnosed, but it’s glaringly obvious to me at this point). My ocd comes out in minecraft, and specifically Quixol, quite a lot. I have very ritualistic ways of doing things, whether it be while building a project in-game, to managing specific parts of the server- we have a very detailed format in which update logs are written, and I have very specific rituals related to updating plugins on the server, taking backups, etc. Even just the way I play survival minecraft has sorts of rituals in a way, like specific patterns in which I place torches. I’m not too educated on ocd, so excuse me if I’m using some terminology of this wrong, or if I’m spreading some sort of misinformation about it. This is just my experience.

Anyhow, with the extremely regimented way I manage things on the server, coupled with my constant presence in things, you can understand how this might lead to other admins, who have their own mental illness issues, to become very averse to doing a lot of admin-related duties. After months and months, years, even, of this sort of stuff... and... yeah. That leads to where we are now.

With my selfish behavior in the past, I’ve unintentionally created this staff environment where people are reluctant to make their own decisions, show their own creativity, etc. And that must feel incredibly frustrating if you actually want to do something to make a difference on Quixol...

I’m not even accounting for all the times I’ve butted heads with the other staff before, either. While much less frequent, I’ve definitely had arguments with folks in the past. And with the great amount of influence I hold over the server, it takes a lot of courage to stand up to what I say.

I’ve always resented that I hold this position of power over everyone else, and tried many times to address it. However, I don’t think I ever quite had a full picture of why things were this way. Now, I think I understand it better. Sadly, it feels too little, too late to make any significant changes without uprooting pretty much everything we have set in place already. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m being too pessimistic here... But, this is how I feel at the present moment.

I’m sincerely sorry to any current or former staff members, who have wanted to do something great for Quixol, but felt they could never convince me to go through with your idea... Or who felt pushed away from doing something they otherwise would’ve liked to, just because the attitude I gave, the environment my presence created, made you feel like you weren’t good enough or qualified enough to do it. You are good enough. I’m so sorry that my actions made you convinced otherwise...

I will say, this sort of mindset of mine, that I have to be the Most Right about anything relating to minecraft, or any hyperfixation/special interest of mine, has caused problems elsewhere, too. I talked about this in another post I made. I’ve only really come to realize all this stuff within the past few months, but I’ve been a really terrible friend to a lot of people. I never even realized until recently just how often I struggle with empathy, and how that’s colored so many of my friendships. Needless to say, it’s affected things on Quixol before, sometimes without me even realizing it.

My influence over the community also means if anybody’s relations with me in particular ever become marred, it must inevitably result in them leaving the community because there’s simply no escaping me. There’s not really anything I can do about this, though, aside from doing whatever I can to become a kinder, more

I’m far from a perfect person, and my imperfections seeped into so much of what made Quixol what it is. However, it’d be silly to suggest that I’m the singular reason that Quixol is flawed, if anything, that would be another form of arrogance- assuming that I singlehandedly shaped the way Quixol took form. No, it was always a team effort, and every single staff and community member held great influence of their own.

The Future

This part is probably why many of you clicked on this post... You want to know what’s going to happen to Quixol. You likely noticed I’ve been referring to Quixol in the past tense a lot in this post. Honestly, I’m not sure why I did that, it just felt the most natural to type it that way. But, I will be honest- the future of Quixol right now isn’t looking very bright.

This is a personal post, so I don’t want to deliver any sort of formal announcement about plans for Quixol here, especially since I haven’t run this post by the other staff before posting it.

For the past 2 and a half months, I’ve been taking a very long break from Quixol. Much greater than any previous break of mine... I’ve neglected to even log in for weeks at a time. I still keep an eye on the discord server, and check the mc <-> discord bridge channel to see which players have been logging in. But I have little to no motivation to play, even just casually.

While I’d love to give you some fun cool news about how this hiatus is ending soon and I have a million and one projects planned, that simply isn’t the case. I’ve gotten to this point where I’m rethinking everything about myself, who I am, and what I’m doing with my life. Surely, I can’t dedicate all my time and energy to running a minecraft server for the rest of my life, even though I do care deeply about this community. But at the same time, it’s not really my call to shut down Quixol, and I’d hate to pull the plug just because of my own lack of motivation.

So, for the time being at least, you can probably consider Quixol to be on a sort of “indefinite hiatus”. I am generally the one to update plugins, do major server updates, etc., and I likely won’t be doing any of that any time soon. I fully entrust the other staff to handle that stuff if they really want to, and I’ve expressed that to them already. But as things stand, nobody else seems to want to pick up the torch right now. Shit is rough for pretty much everyone, and we’re all equally burnt out. We’ve all grown up quite a lot since Quixol began, too. So... Don’t expect anything anytime soon.

If there are any updates, they’ll come in our Discord server first.

As for me, personally... I just need time away from all of this. It’s clearer than ever to me that I have a lot of personal problems I need to work on, and I think that the cozy safe environment provided by Quixol didn’t challenge me enough to really address those issues. I need time to focus on myself & my own growth. At the same time, I also feel like I need more experience being a part of a team, instead of just running the show. I’m not getting the kind of enrichment I need from running Quixol, so I’m trying to turn my attention elsewhere.

I’m doing this not because I want to abandon you guys, or because I feel like I want/need to move on from this community. It’s just... Something I need to do, for myself. And I’ll still be around, I’m still gonna be posting to my tumblr & twitter and stuff, and you can still reach me on discord. I’m just focusing my time elsewhere for once.

What does that mean for the future of Quixol? I don’t really know yet. But, for now, it’s not going anywhere. It’s just... also not changing anytime soon. Not even a little bit. I’m sorry to give you this disappointing news, but I hope you all understand.

I miss the good times on Quixol, too. I really do. Maybe we can share them again sometime? Who knows...

For now, that’s all.

It breaks my heart that we don’t have anything glitzy and glamorous to do to celebrate Quixol’s 5th anniversary... But it would be asking far too much of the staff to set anything like that up right now. Maybe we can have some sort of celebration later...? I dunno.

I hope you’re all staying safe & healthy out there. Thank you so much for reading this. I love all of you.

Happy birthday, Quixol.

#vivi bleats #txt #Quixol #long post

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williamsockner · 4 years

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I saw your comments about country music on the Chicks thread and I’m curious about your opinion. I grew up on country music and feel like “9/11 killed country” is pretty valid. But I’d love to hear your take because I miss it [country music].

Hi! So, my major issue with the “9/11 killed country music” post, as someone who listens to a ton of musical genres but has both a history of and soft spot for country, is that it’s a reductive, cherrypicking way to define an entire massive genre based on a handful of individual songs and high-profile artists that had their heyday at this point nearly two decades ago (Toby Keith, Big & Rich, etc.). It’s a very slanted read on pop radio country, and it’s not even remotely accurate to quantifying the broader genre.

It’s just bizarre that people allow their idea of the whole genre to be molded by a spate of reactionary right-wing songs that found traction immediately after 9/11 and then largely lost dominance in the genre. Most country songs on the radio are not about jingoism - they’re still about a lover done you wrong, or drinking after a hard day’s work, or finding happiness without much money, or teenagers in love, or about the tragedies of alcoholism and domestic abuse, or appreciating your small town, as so much of this genre has always been. If you look at the top 10 right now, there isn’t a patriot song in the whole thing (although two of the songs have overtly Christian references, but that’s always been part of country music too). The militaristic patriotism songs tend to just be one or two songs a year that end up in heavy rotation around the fourth of July and in September, but they get outsized attention comparatively because they’re so offensively grating.

And even after 9/11, for the last two decades most country songs on the radio still haven’t been “nationalist pop with twang”. Yes, in the 2000’s we had “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” and “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning” and “American Soldier”, but this was also LGBT+ supporter Shania Twain’s* and avowed Democrat Tim McGraw’s imperial phases, the era of “Before He Cheats” and “Concrete Angel” and “Red Ragtop”, the years that made a Blake Shelton song about breaking out of prison his calling card and gave Miranda Lambert a massive hit with a song about burning her abuser’s house down.

This isn’t to say that country is progressive. Country music has a major problem with being dominated by straight white men, and even straight white women spent several of the last years underrepresented** (to say nothing of LGBT+ artists and artists of color). But that issue predates 9/11, as does the whitewashing of country’s history; the aforementioned Ken Burns documentary does go into how white country musicians forced black musicians out of the scene and erased their accomplishments going back decades before 2001. “Proud to Be an American” and “God Bless the USA”, for the record, were recorded in 1980’s.

Country, as a genre, does lean more conservative than many other genres, but it still holds a wide array of political viewpoints, even on the pop charts. I’m not just talking about indie alt-country darlings, although I’ll get to those in a minute - even pop country megastars are a varied bunch. Eric Church, who currently has a hit on the top 10, just dropped a scathing track called “Stick That in Your Country Song” that cusses out underfunding schools and mass incarceration; Luke Bryan got a #1 hit in 2017 with a chorus that included “I believe you love who you love and ain’t nothing you should ever be ashamed of”; Carrie Underwood pinned an entire album and tour cycle around a single about escaping domestic abuse and recently released a song criticizing gun proliferation; Kacey Musgraves won a CMA for her hit single where she criticizes slut-shaming and encourages women to “kiss lots of boys or kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into”, then she won a Grammy for an album where she sings about smoking weed and dedicates an empowerment anthem to the LGBT+ community; Miley Cyrus had an explicitly bisexual song on her most recent “back to her roots” country album; Tim McGraw discussed running for governor of Tennessee as a Democrat and threw his support behind Obama way back during Obama’s 2008 campaign. I’ve been relatively unplugged from country radio for the last few years, but this is all stuff relatively off the top of my head.

And that moves us to alt-country. I die a little inside whenever someone says that they “just mean radio country” when they say they “hate country music”, because alt-country is just the tits. It just is. It’s the best. If someone says they listen to rock music, we don’t assume they only mean Nickelback and Shinedown - and yet somehow we’ve shut country out so much that we don’t even consider that there’s an entire world of the genre beyond what charts - and that world is rich and powerful and thoughtful and as valid a form of music as any other genre. Some favorites contemporary alt-country artists of mine (including some songs about immigration, opiate addiction, protesting war, sexism, agricultural exploitation, homophobia, one bashing Trump directly and even one about female cunnilingus): Courtney Marie Andrews, Ruston Kelly, Tyler Childers, Margo Price, Jason Isbell, Colter Wall, Ian Noe, Kathleen Edwards, Lydia Loveless, Lori McKenna, Amanda Shires, Ashley Monroe, Lucinda Williams, Over the Rhine, Samantha Crain, Shooter Jennings, Cam, John Moreland, Chris Stapleton, Lindi Ortega, Lavender Country, Cody Belew, Honey Harper, Lera Lynn, Nina Nastasia, Patty Griffin, Holly Williams.

The problem with the “9/11 killed country” attitude, to me, is that it’s a stance that requires limited knowledge of country that happened after 9/11 and a selective memory for the country that existed before 9/11. Jingoist country songs existed and found massive success before 9/11; more progressive country songs existed and found success after 9/11. Contrary to what people on tumblr seem to believe, the genre of country music was not just outlaw country, “Jolene” and Woodie Guthrie folk songs until Toby Keith came along; it was already highly Christian/gospel-influenced and highly patriarchal. And it was already full of goofy songs about getting drunk and partying and driving tractors, the predecessors to “bro country”.

I think, personally, we lose so much by centering “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” and Florida Georgia Line as the first things we think of when we think about country music, because those songs and acts aren’t representative of the genre, or even of the pop country charts. We lose a lot because we lose sight of all the fantastic progressive or apolitical music in the genre, and we lose a lot because we ignore the sins of pre-9/11 country and the opportunity to critique its history of whitewashing, heteronormativity and cultural Christianity by likening it to some sort of good ol’ days.

Thank you for letting me ramble!

*I’m aware of Shania’s ignorant-ass Trump comments, but those reflect more recent political developments for her and came with a hasty retraction.

**Although lol the pop, rock and rap charts have all been brutal to women for the last several years.

#music #country music #i have a lot of feelings about country music #this got long #not-quite-wild

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somethinwickedthiswayrides · 5 years

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hi! could i get a javier escuella smut? if you write smut i mean. the idea is that the reader is an o’driscoll who was captured and everyone’s mean to her (except kieran), including javier until she finally breaks down in the middle of camp and dutch makes everyone lay off, and javier apologises later. if you want, smut added at the end would be appreciated!

IT’S DONE! IT’S DONE! IT’S FINALLY DONE! After a week of working on this fic, it is finally 100% complete! :D My 100 follower special is finally complete!

Anon, I don’t think that you fully comprehended the can of worms you opened when you sent me this ask.

That being said, thank you all so MUCH for getting this new Tumblr user to 107 followers!

WARNING!; This is a LONG AF fic, almost 9000 words, so yeah. Also this fic contains smut, so be warned.

TW: Past abuse, mentions of rape, suicide attempt.

You were caught not too long after Kieran was, by Charles and Arthur on their hunting trip. You were heading back to the camp with supplies from the nearest town.

They had found you, captured you, and took you, along with the supplies, back to Colter. The entire trip you were silent, save for the whimpering while you were tied up in the back of the wagon.

Upon arrival at the snowed-in camp, you heard the two men chat with another before one called out that he was going to take you to see someone by the name of Dutch.

The name made you panic. If this was the Van Der Linde gang you were in deep trouble. They had a long-standing feud with your gang, the O'Driscoll’s, for years now. Ever since Dutch killed Colm’s brother.

A sudden hand on your calf knocked you out of your internal panic, and with a squeak, you shot your bound legs out and kicked whoever it was square in the chest.

There was a grunt and the crunch of the show told you that you either knocked the man on either his butt or his back. You backed yourself into the farthest corner of the cart and curled up as best you could.

“You alright there Charles?” You heard one of the men laugh.

“I’m fine,” the man you presumed to be Charles grunted, you must’ve caught him off guard, “I must’ve startled her, she’s got a mean kick though.”

“Need me to come over there?”

“No, you’ll just scare her worse.” Charles chuckled and reached up to pull the blanket covering the cart off, you blinked and squinted at the harsh light reflecting off the snow. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw a gloved hand reached out for you and with a gasp and a harsh flinch, you tried curling into an even tighter ball.

Charles gave a soft frown before gently placing his hand on the back of your shoulder, letting you get used to the touch while muttering low, so only you could hear, that he wasn’t going to hurt you, you slowly relaxed enough for him to pick you up and throw you onto his shoulder.

You squeaked and thrashed a bit while Charles muttered to you a bit more before finally asking if you’d prefer walking. You settled down a bit before making a small noise of agreement and he, as gently as he could, set you back on the cart before pulling out his hunting knife to cut at the bonds.

As soon as the knife got near your legs you whimpered and flinched again, causing the much larger man to pause before placing the knife on the rope to cut at it. As soon as the ropes were off you fidgeted and rubbed your ankles together trying to sooth the rope marks. The large man sheathed the knife and gave a small pat to your head.

“See? Nothing to fear from me.”

“You’re being too soft on her Charles!” Another man called out, you looked over your shoulder as best you could to see a heavy-set balding man and the other man from earlier, who had hogtied you and set you in the wagon.

The man in question simply grunted before helping you to your feet and placing a firm hand on your bicep.

“Since I don’t trust you not to run away, I’m going to keep my hand on your arm and guide you to where we need to go.”

“Not like I’d get far, even if I could outrun you my arms are still tied behind my back.” You mutter under your breath as you looked down, you flinched again when the man chuckled.

“So she does speak.”

You had gone silent again, keeping your eyes straight ahead as Charles guided you to Dutch and Hosea.

“That’s an unusual looking deer, Charles.” You heard an amused chuckle as you entered the slightly warmer building. You saw it had come from an older man sitting by a fireplace, a bundled-up woman peeked her head out of the nearby room to look at the newcomer, then you laid eyes on the one and only Dutch Van Der Linde himself.

He was a lot closer than you thought and you flinched so hard you accidentally knocked into Charles.

“Jumpy isn’t she?” The woman piped up with a raised brow, her accent tipping you off of her Irish descent.

“Very, it looks like she’s an O'Driscoll.” Dutch commented, frowning slightly at the green neckerchief wrapped tightly to your neck as a makeshift scarf.

“We found her taking up a cart full of supplies up to that camp you guys bushwacked. Ammo, food, that kind of stuff.” Charles stated as he placed his hand upon your lower back to steady you. You perked up slightly at the news that the camp had been taken out before your heart hurt for the loss of the only one there that seemed to care about you.

“Ha! We send you boys out for some food, and you come back with presents!” Dutch barked a laugh before setting his sights on you. “What’s your name miss?”

You were silent, eyeing him warily, looking for some kind of punchline, or just a punch. Dutch raised his hand a bit, reaching for your face and you flinched so hard that if it wasn’t for Charles steadying you, you very well would’ve ended up on the floor.

“What did you boys do to her? She’s acting like someone’s going to attack her at any moment!” The woman voiced her concern.

“It most likely wasn’t the boys, but those O'Driscoll’s that did this to her, they never did treat women very well.” Dutch frowned and gently placed his hand on your cheek, his thumb gently rubbing your cheekbone.

You continued eyeing him until you saw the older man getting out of his chair.

“Charles bring her over here, let her warm herself up.”

Charles nodded before gently guiding you toward the chair and had you sit down. The older man reached behind you and undid the ropes on your arms, freeing you. As you rubbed your wrists you listened to the men converse among themselves.

“Don’t mind them too much, they may be outlaws, but they’re good people.” The woman from earlier came over with a soft smile as she sat down in the chair next to you.

“I was always told that the Van Der Linde’s were far worse than any O'Driscoll.” You muttered looking into the fire.

“Sounds like something they’d say. Most folk here have a softer spot for women, they won’t hurt you.” She placed a hand on your knee with a smile, before introducing herself as Molly.

“Y/n, Y/n L/n.”

“Well Miss Y/n, now that we have your name, I was hoping you could tell us what you know of the O'Driscoll’s.” Dutch sauntered over with a small smile on his face. You raised a brow.

“Not quite sure what I could tell you that you don’t already know.” You muttered up at him before staring back into the fire.

“Tell us what you do, and we’ll see where we go from there.”

So you told him, you told him about the train, why they needed the extra supplies, what they were going after, and, while you didn’t know his exact location, you knew that Colm was planning on heading to one of his hideouts in New Hanover.

You didn’t have to tell them about your abuse, they could tell by your actions, the way you flinched, the way you paused when someone shifted, how you never looked at them in the eye.

After telling them all you knew Dutch had a new man, Lenny, come and take you to a small shack with a lit furnace inside, tying your bound hands up to a beam. You could tell the dark-skinned male was conflicted, you were an O'Driscoll, an enemy, but you were also a woman, a very scared and jumpy one at that.

He was polite, but it was clear he didn’t trust you, which was fine, you didn’t trust him either.

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In the following days, you didn’t see too much of the outside world, didn’t see too much of the people in this camp barring the change of your guard.

Lenny was a kind soul, once he found out you were literate the two of you would talk for ages about books, even going as far as to recommend some for each other once you got off this snowy hellscape of a mountain.

Charles was another, he was a much quieter sort, and you didn’t mind. Conversation with him was light, but the silence was never uncomfortable. He was the only one who took the ropes off your wrists to let them heal for a bit, very assured that you were either smart enough to know to not run, or in his abilities to stop you if you tried.

Bill was a sort that confused you, he was usually drinking, very loud and somewhat animated, but he didn’t seem to take any pleasure in you flinching or scooting away from him. The conversation usually boiled down to him insulting you for being an O'Driscoll, insulting your gang, and the odd awkward comment that you weren’t sure if you should take as a compliment or not.

Micah was the kind of man that the O'Driscoll’s told you the Van Der Linde gang was, he was rude, crude, cruel, and trigger happy. He took vast amounts of pleasure watching you flinch away from him. You tried not talking to him, but he just filled the void by speaking himself. Often insulting you, and describing just what exactly the boys could do to you. He made you want to take off your neckerchief and strangle him with it.

Javier was… Odd to say the least, he barely spoke to you at all, and when he did it was almost always in what you assumed was Spanish, and almost always what you assumed was an insult. The one thing he asked you in English was how you came to be with the O'Driscoll’s. You didn’t answer but the haunted look on your face told him not to press the matter.

One morning while Charles was watching you you both heard a commotion outside, Charles got up to take a look before walking your way to retie your bonds.

“Looks like we’re finally moving camp,” Charles stated as he got you to your feet and lead you outside. You blinked at the harsh white surrounding you, you were handed off to an older looking man, who simply called himself Uncle.

You were barely listening to the man spout stories while you watched everyone pack up the wagons, it was then that Javier and Charles started dragging someone very familiar out of the barn toward one of the wagons.

No…it couldn’t be…could it?

It was! It was him!

“KIERAN~!”

Everyone’s heads shot up and turned to look at you, this was the loudest they’d ever heard you, Kieran’s head popped up as well, and, while it took him a little longer, as soon as he spotted you his face lit up.

“Y/N!!”

Javier and Charles had to strengthen their grip as Kieran tried breaking free, fighting to get to you. By the time Uncle came around and thought ‘Hm, maybe I should tighten my grip on the lady’ you had already broken out of his weak hold as you bolted at top speed across the camp.

“Mierda! She’s fast!”

The next thing anyone knew you had tackled Kieran so hard that it ripped him right out of Charles and Javier’s grasp and right into the snow. Everyone looked on at the giggling sight of the two of you with partial amusement, partial irritation, and slight fear. Because if you were that fast in mud and snow, how fast were you on solid ground?

You and Kieran were giggling in the snow as you got your arms over his head to hug him, thankfully Charles bound them in the front rather than behind your back like Kieran’s were, while Kieran had to use his chin to pull you as close as possible.

There was a mix of gleeful ‘you’re alright’ and ‘you’re alive’, Kieran suddenly pulled back and looked you over.

“Did they hurt you?”

“No, no, I’m fine! Did they hurt you?”

“Who cares?!”

“I do!” You smiled as you nuzzled your face into his neck, his chin resting on the top of your head with a smile of his own. You two were suddenly snapped out of your happy reunion at the sound of angry Spanish, looking over you saw Javier yelling at a very sheepish Uncle.

“¡Estúpido Maldito idiota! You had one job! One!” Javier shouted at Uncle while several others from camp either shook their heads, glared at Uncle, or were just amused by the entire thing.

Charles had stayed by you two but was still glaring at the older man, he had trusted him to keep you from bolting or doing something equally stupid. Though, to be fair, no one knew you were going to react that way when they brought out Kieran.

You reached out and lightly tapped at Charles’ leg with your foot, not daring to untangle yourself from Kieran. Charles looked over at you two and saw a pair of sheepish and uneasy smiles.

“Sorry, I guess we got a little excited.”

“A little?” Charles raised an eyebrow as the pair of you turned scarlet and chuckled nervously.

“Come on, break those two up, we need to get out of here!” Dutch called out and everyone returned to work, Charles reached down and pulled your arms free from around Kieran’s neck while Javier dragged him to his feet. The two of you were placed into separate carts, and while you were a bit sad that you were separate, you were relieved that he was alive and well.

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The trip from Colter to Horseshoe Overlook didn’t take too long, before you knew it you were being unloaded with the cargo. Kieran was tied up to a tree behind the chuckwagon, while both of your ankles were bound and you were left at a nearby tree closer to the horses.

Seeing as you could do nothing else you simply watched as the camp put itself together, watching as everything got unloaded and everyone gets to work.

The hours turned into days, and you were barely moved from that spot, though now you were tied by the ankle to the hitching post. At least you could pet and talk to the horses. Even get up and walk a very short way.

While you still had Charles and Lenny who was relatively kind to you, now that you were out in the open, your aggressors only grew. The worst of which was Sadie Adler, who was cruel to you and Kieran to the point of being unnecessary.

Micah wasn’t much better, but he seems to have graduated from being crude and ruthless to being crude and perverted. Trying to 'woo’ you into his bedroll with empty promises.

Javier was another unnecessarily cruel one, though only in passing, calling you names in Spanish, or just outright calling you an O'Driscoll whore.

The rest were a mixed bag, some days they were nice and others they were mean. Usually mean.

It was getting rather hard to ignore them, Micah you could deal with, you’ve dealt with his lot before. But the rest, they never did anything but hurl names or harsh words. You were more used to people hurling rocks or throwing fists.

And poor Kieran was taking all this abuse while being starved. At least they’d feed you a little. Though you often wonder what witch the camp cook pissed off to make his cooking taste so bad.

One day Charles, Javier, and Bill rode out, and only Bill returned, you heard from passing conversations that they went down to Blackwater to collect one of their own. Then Micah and Lenny rode out to do some scouting, while you were sad to see Lenny go, you were kind of glad Micah left too.

One day you heard Kieran shouting and you called over asking if he was alright. He shouted back that he was fine, but it was strained, but since you couldn’t see him you couldn’t tell for sure.

There were some hushed voices than you saw Arthur pushing Kieran toward the horses. He called over Bill and John, with whom you haven’t had much interaction.

“Kieran, what’s going on?”

Kieran stopped his transit to John’s horse and was quickly by your side, cupping your face and making promises you weren’t sure he could keep. John called out to him to hurry up.

“Don’t worry little O'Driscoll, as long as he’s not spinnin us a yarn, we’ll make sure your boyfriend comes back in one piece,” Bill called out sounding snide.

Que you and Kieran looking at Bill like he was a lunatic and speaking over each other cause no, that’s my sibling, just no.

“Alright already, we get it, your more family than lovers, can we just get going now?” John piped up putting an end to you two screeching at Bill, even though you all could hear Dutch laughing by his tent.

As they all rode out of camp, and you called after them to stay safe, Dutch came up to you with an amused smile.

“Brother, huh?”

You flinched, not expecting him behind you. But looked up at him anyway.

“Yeah, we’ve kept each other out of enough trouble with our 'gang members’ that we adopted each other.” The venom dripping from your voice wasn’t lost on Dutch, and he smirked at it.

“Well, that little show you two pulled in Colter made everyone assume you two were husband and wife.”

“You mean you wouldn’t fling yourself at your best friend who you thought was dead cause someone told you that they bushwacked and killed everyone in the very camp they were at?”

“Fair enough.”

Dutch left you alone at that and you were subject to your thoughts. Which were enough to drive anyone insane. You didn’t even last an hour before you called over Mrs. Grimshaw and begged for something to do since you were half bored out of your mind and the other half was worried sick.

Within a few minutes one of the girls, Tilly, if you remembered correctly, brought over a large basket of clothes that needed to be mended, and she untied your hands and you two got to work.

Tilly was nice enough, and with some half-decent conversation you two had worked through the entire basket and were patching up smaller items when Kieran returned with John and Bill.

“Kieran!” You yelped and gently set the article you were working on back into the basket with the sewing needle as you launched yourself at the man, only you forgot that your ankle was still tied to the hitching post, so you just landed in the dirt with a thud.

“What’s she doing untied?” Bill asked as Kieran got off John’s horse and made his way to you.

“Apparently she stress works,” Tilly smirked as Kieran picked you up and set you back on the crate Tilly had kindly brought over for you, while you frantically checked him for any injury.

“Yeah, she does that.” Kieran chuckled and when you found no injury you breathed a sigh of relief before wrapping your arms around his neck.

“So how’d it go?” Dutch called out as he walked over.

“Well, Colm wasn’t there, but we took out several of their boys, Arthur stayed behind to raid the camp, and this little maggot actually saved Arthur’s life,” John smirked over at Kieran.

“Arthur must be getting sloppy if he needs help.” Dutch laughed and there were a couple of chuckles around the small group.

“I-I was wonderin if Y/n and I could join the gang? Out there, we’re as good as dead, but here, we might stand a fightin chance.” Kieran piped up as you looked up at him in surprise then at Dutch in hope.

Dutch looked thoughtful, on one hand, he’d saved the life of one of his best, and you’d shown you were willing to work and were gettin less shy around the men in camp. On the other, you both were asking to fully defect from the O'Driscoll’s, and while it could be that you two were just looking to get away from them, there was always the chance you two could be trying to play both sides.

“Hmm. Well, alright, I’ll give you two a chance. But you’ll only get one.”

You and Kieran looked at each other in pure joy. Kieran reached down to untie your ankle from the hitching post.

“And miss? That,” he pointed at your green neckerchief, “needs to go.”

“With pleasure.” You smiled as you pulled it off, and once your ankle was free you walked over to the scout campfire and tossed it in.

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Even though you were now in the Van Der Linde gang, things were looking harder than ever.

You and Kieran were picked on and ridiculed more than ever now.

A couple of days after you two were released from your binds Arthur had ridden out to meet up with Javier and Charles in Blackwater. A few hours later, closer to nightfall, they came back with a scraggly little loudmouth of an Irishman.

He seemed pleasant enough, not paying you or Kieran any mind, too wrapped up in the faces he knew.

There was a party that lasted throughout the night, song and dance, drink and merriment.

Even Kieran let himself go and had a couple of beers.

Knowing what he was like when he was drunk, you stayed sober to keep him from doing anything stupid.

You woke up extremely early in the morning, the sun hadn’t even started to rise yet, but you just couldn’t get yourself back to sleep. So with a sigh, you pulled yourself up, checked on Kieran to be sure he hadn’t covered himself in vomit or kicked his blanket too close to the fire, and got started cleaning up the camp of the empty beer and whiskey bottles.

“Well look at chu. Hard at work and it ain’t even dawn yet.” You jumped slightly and turned around and saw Arthur rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with a lazy smirk on his face.

“I’m sorry Arthur, I didn’t mean to wake you.” You gave a soft smile which he returned as he walked over to throw a few logs onto the camp’s main fire.

“You didn’t, I went to bed early last night, I like Sean well enough, but he just doesn’t know when to let a party die.”

You chuckled as you placed the empty bottles into crates to take into town.

“Yeah, I noticed that. I think the silence is what woke me up.”

Arthur laughed as he got the fire back to a roaring state.

“I’d be careful is I was you, I think Bill may have told Sean that you two were O'Driscoll’s.”

Great, just what Kieran and you didn’t need. More hate for the gang you two are trying to leave behind.

“I take it he’s not a fan?” You rolled your eyes as you wet a rag to clean off the tables, cause someone thought it would be a wonderful idea to play Five Finger Fillet while drunk off their ass.

“No one here is, but Sean should only give Kieran a couple of bruises and you a couple of harsh words. But he’ll warm up to you two rather quickly. He’s all talk.”

“Great.” You groaned which earned another chuckle from the older man. You were happy that at least Arthur had warmed up to you two, maybe more you than Kieran, but still.

Just as Arthur said, as soon as the day got along Sean made himself known to you two. Kieran was first, while you were sewing with Tilly, Karen, and Mary-Beth, holding some somewhat pleasant conversation, Kieran had stumbled over and called your name, his hand covering his nose.

As soon as Kieran had your attention he dropped his hand a bit for you to see his bloodied up nose. You gasped, set your sewing down, and had his sit on the crate you were.

You assessed the damage rather quickly and gave him an old cloth of yours to catch the blood while you ran off to get some water to wash his face clean.

In your rush to get to the water barrel, you had failed to notice Sadie stick out her foot to trip you. You hit the ground pretty hard, resulting in a few scrapes of your own.

“You should watch where you’re going little O'Driscoll.” Sadie’s raw voice cut threw you, you frowned to yourself but didn’t look up at her, simply standing up, dusting yourself off, and continuing to the water barrel. Though taking the long way around to avoid the blonde terror on your way back.

After cleaning off and patching up Kieran you sat back down to finish your sewing.

“Are you alright?” Tilly asked, motioning to your scrapes.

“I’ll live, I’ve been through worse than falling.” You mutter but never taking your eyes off the sock you were darning.

After the Sewing, you popped out to help Kieran with brushing down the horses, when you were stopped by the Irishman himself.

“Well now, you must be tha’ lady O'Driscoll I’ve been hearin 'bout.”

You flinched pretty hard at the new voice and looked up at him, though only keeping your eyes level with his neck.

“I-I-I guess so.” You cursed yourself for stuttering and the man chuckled.

“Well, just know I’ll be keepin a real close eye on you girlie. Can’t have you be runnin off to Colom, now can we?” While you raised a brow at the pronunciation of Colm’s name you couldn’t hold back the biting response.

“If I’m running off to that bastard it’s to shove a rifle up his ass.” You flinched again when Sean laughed rather loudly.

“Now see, things like that’ll get you somewhere!” Sean grinned and went to put his hand on your shoulder, only to find you a good few feet further away.

He blinked a bit but shrugged and let you get back to where you were going with a wave and another 'O'Driscoll.’

As you made your way toward Kieran you spotted Javier coming from that same direction, he gave you a sneer and called you a coño, whatever that was, nothing good you assumed.

That afternoon Lenny had galloped back into camp and called for Dutch, explaining in a hurried pant that Micah had been caught up in the Strawberry jail and that there was talk of hanging him.

Dutch had Arthur take Lenny into Valentine to get themselves a couple of drinks and they didn’t return until the next morning, both heavily hungover.

The next few days had been much of the same, abused by Sadie, ribbed by Sean, cussed at by Javier, sprinkle in the occasional harassment from Bill and you had your week. It was enough to make even a sane man crack.

The morning was thick and heavy, there was rain was on its way, though when you weren’t sure. Trying to get as much stuff you could get done before the rains hit you never really saw Sadie watching you.

You relaxed by the woods for a moment having a smoke break before returning to work when Sadie waltzed up to you for her daily abuse. But she had a different tactic today.

Walking around you, telling you how you weren’t wanted, how you weren’t needed, how useless you were, that if you weren’t here neither would Kieran, he would’ve left long before now, probably wouldn’t have come back at all.

Before she left she shot one more bit of abuse at you, that you should just kill yourself and save everyone the trouble.

You weren’t going to show her just how much she had gotten to you, but once you were sure she had fully left you crumpled. The recent weeks of abuse, the years of torture, and just how much you truly hated yourself rearing its ugly head.

All you could hear was the darkness of your thoughts, the memories of your mother’s death, the memories of the years being forced into men’s beds, the beatings, the abuse, the cruel names, the taunting, Sadie’s words.

They all went screaming through your head at a rapid pace. No one would care if you were to just disappear. No one could bring themselves to care about your well being. No one would bother loving someone so broken.

Kieran might even be glad your gone.

When you snapped out of your internal suffering you noticed that you had moved dangerously close to the overlook’s cliff. You don’t even remember getting up. You looked over the edge then back to the camp. Contemplating. You took a deep breath and made your choice.

And stepped off the edge.

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You felt something grab your wrist and you hit the cliff facing with a grunt.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” The person above you shouted.

You looked up and there was Hosea, he had kept an eye on you after he saw you moving through the camp like you were in a daze. He had rushed forward and was laying down in the dirt, hand tightly wrapped around your wrist, preventing you from falling any further.

His shouting had drawn in a couple of people from the camp, some of whom ran back to get someone.

“What do you care?” You asked, tears welling up in your eyes as nearly everyone in camp came rushing to the cliff, Dutch came forward to grabbed hold of Hosea’s jacket, so he doesn’t slide off the cliff with you.

“What do any of you care?!” You shrieked as you tried shoving Hosea’s hand off of your wrist and swinging around. Trying anything you could think of to make him let go.

Arthur and Charles both tried to grab your other wrist but you just slapped them away screaming at them to leave you alone.

“I’m just some pathetic little O'Driscoll who needs to just die, it’s what you all want, right?!” Your struggling was getting more frantic as the heavens opened up sending down a soft rain.

“It’s not like that!” You heard Javier call out.

“Bullshit! You were one of the worst!” With your current position over the cliff, you never saw Javier clutch at his chest and drop to his knees. Lenny had run off to get Kieran who was tending to the horses at the front of the camp.

“What about Kieran?! You just gonna abandon him like that?” Charles called out and that made you stop struggling.

“Kieran will be better off without me. Maybe he’d actually get away from you bastards before you end up getting him killed. Find someone nice to settle down with, he deserves it. He’d do so much better without his broken sister getting in his way.” You had stopped struggling by this point, though you were still trying to weakly push Hosea’s hand off of yours. You’re voice broken from the crying and screaming.

“Wouldn’t be much of a life without you though.” You looked up and saw Kieran holding out his hand to you, Arthur holding onto the back of his jacket to keep him from slipping off the edge himself.

“I’d be beating myself up every day that there was something I’d missed, something I didn’t say. Something that would’ve kept you here with me. So, please, Y/n, don’t make me face the world alone. Don’t leave me guessing as to why you left. Stay with me, and I promise you it will get better.” Kieran urged, tears welling up in his own eyes, begging you to take his hand so he wouldn’t be alone.

With a sniffle and a deep breath, you took his hand. He, Hosea, and Charles all pulled you up from the cliff facing and you collapsed into Kieran’s arms and just sobbed as the rain kept coming down.

Kieran pulled off his jacket to cover you with it, you never saw everyone’s pained expressions. How their actions had affected you so badly. You never saw how Hosea had to rub the aches out of his hand from how tightly he had to grip your wrist. You never saw how furious Dutch was becoming with everyone.

“Hey, Kieran, come on. Take her into my tent, I’ll close the flaps so you two are undisturbed. Let her calm down some.” Arthur muttered and Kieran nodded, picking you up and carrying you to Arthur’s tent. Arthur closed up the flaps and lit the oil lamp so it wasn’t as dark, before leaving you two alone.

Nothing was spoken between you two, not for a while. Both of you listening to Dutch and Hosea’s angry shouting about the whole situation.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Kieran cut you off, “I’m the one who should be sorry, for not noticing just how much they’ve all been affecting you.”

“Don’t be, you can’t control how people are.” You muttered and heard Kieran sigh from above you.

You tuned out the angry shouting and listened to the sounds of the rain and Kieran’s steady heartbeat, falling asleep.

While you were asleep, Arthur came by to check on you both.

“How is she?”

“Fast asleep.”

“Can you come out for a moment? Dutch wants to have a word.” Kieran nodded and gently set you down, bundled up in his coat, before following Arthur outside.

To Kieran’s surprise, Dutch wanted to tell everyone your story. After a little persuasion, he relented and told what he knew.

From the kidnapping of you and your mother, to her murder, to your years of physical and mental abuse. He told them everything.

By the look on everyone’s faces, they were horrified. Even Sadie looked aghast.

“Kieran?”

Everyone looked over to Arthur’s tent and saw that you had woken up and were looking for your brother. Kieran jogged over to you and held you close, afraid he was going to lose for real this time.

☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯☯

In the following days, the entire camp was in a bit of a strain, your near-death, Micah dragging Arthur into shooting half of Strawberry. Pinkerton’s finding Arthur and handing out threats and empty promises. Arthur, Dutch, and John shooting up half of Valentine. And to top it all off, the sudden move from Horseshoe Overlook to Clemens Point.

Everyone was tired and maybe a little cranky due to the heat and humidity.

Nearly everyone had come up an apologized to you for their behavior, including Sadie, which surprised you. The only one who hadn’t was Javier.

Well, Micah too, but you highly doubted he was going to apologize for being a creep.

Whenever Javier came near you he would put his head down and ignored you outright. You guessed it was better than harassment, but he always looked so pained.

You were left to wonder why.

You got your answer a couple of days later when Javier came up to you with something behind his back. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, before pulling out a large bouquet of wildflowers and handing them to you.

“I know that my actions and words against you were cruel and unfair. It wasn’t right for me to add to your abuse. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but, please, accept my deepest apology. I am, truly, sorry.”

He breathed a sigh when you didn’t respond, too in shock to have received a gift and apology from someone you thought didn’t care. He looked up at you and was taken aback when he saw there were tears in your eyes.

“Why are you crying?” Javier asked, reaching out to wipe the tears off your cheeks, pleased when you didn’t flinch away from him.

“I’m sorry, it’s just, I’ve never received anything like this before.” You looked down at the bouquet with a soft smile.

Javier frowned and plucked a flower out of the bouquet to place behind your ear.

“That’s just a terrible shame, a flower as beautiful as you should’ve been doted on, loved and cared for. Not dealt the hand you had.” Javier smirked when a blush dusted your cheeks.

In the following days, whenever he wasn’t on a job, you and Javier spent most of your time together, Kieran had been spending more time with Mary-Beth as well. It was clear he was going sweet on her, and you didn’t blame him, she was a pretty young thing.

You wondered if Javier was going sweet on you. You doubted it.

One morning Javier asked if you wanted to join him for a fishing trip. You agreed and got your fishing gear, you usually went with Kieran but he was currently learning to read with Mary-Beth, and you needed to get out of camp for a bit.

Before you reached the hitching posts, where Javier was saddling up Boaz, you were caught by Micah.

“Well, where’s a beautiful thing like you going off too?” Micah curled his arm around your waist and you resisted rolling your eyes.

“Javier and I are going out fishing so Pearson can stop yelling at everyone about getting food.” Micah sneered Javier’s name.

“Why do you bother hanging around that greaser? I can show you a much better time then he can.” The grin on his face told you exactly the kind of time he wanted to show you.

“Thank you Micah, but, no, I’m not interested in the time you’re looking to show me.” Micah sneered and pulled you closer to his chest, only to have Javier call you over.

“I need to go Micah.” You said as you pulled away from Micah’s grip and headed toward Javier, who helped you up onto Boaz.

“Micah giving you trouble again?”

“When doesn’t he? I swear he’s just as bad as any O'Driscoll.”

You got a chuckle out of Javier at this as you two rode off toward his fishing spot.

While you were enjoying your time at the fishing spot, catching a few fish and just relaxing, Javier seemed…fidgety. Like he had something to say but he wasn’t sure quite how to say it.

“You alright Javier?” You asked, looking over to him. He took a deep breath and sighed.

“Creo que estoy enamorada de ti.”

You had to raise a brow, still not understanding what he said. Javier shuffled around some more before reeling in his line and setting down the rod. He gently took your rod and set it down before taking your hands in his.

“I…I think I’m falling in love with you.”

There was a long pause as you processed the information, falling for you, what?

“C-come again?” Your eyebrows were raised so high they might as well been a part of your hairline.

“Lately when I see you my chest has been hurting, badly. Your smile brightens up my day, and when I’m not in camp I’ve been missing you terribly.” I looked down, your face flushing but Javier gently takes your chin and tilts it back up.

“Then earlier when Micah had his arm wrapped around you all I wanted to do was to run over, rip him off, and kiss you.”

“I’m a broken woman you know.”

“I know, and I’m willing to do everything I can to mend your wounds.”

“And if they scar?”

“I’ll kiss them until they stop hurting.”

You thought about it, he was opening himself up to you, could you do the same? Would you finally feel like you were healing or would he wind up breaking you worse?

“I’ll take a chance, but, please, don’t hurt me.”

Javier gave a huge smile, absolutely delighted that you were giving him a chance. He pulled you in close and gave you a tight hug, his face burying into your hair.

“May I kiss you?” You heard him ask, the sound of his voice so close to your ear that you couldn’t suppress the shudder running it’s way up your back.

“Y-Yeah.” You flushed as he pulled back just enough to angle himself to press against your lips.

His lips were soft on yours, and he tasted of tobacco and this mornings breakfast. The kiss was sweet, gentle, and loving. He didn’t want to scare you off, but oh did he want more. The taste of you had started an addiction that he couldn’t get enough of.

As soon as he left the kiss he started leaving little pecks on your lips, causing you to smile and try not to giggle at each one.

“Sorry hermosa, I don’t want to stop.” He muttered through each kiss finally causing you to giggle and try to keep up.

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

You and Javier returned to camp, hand in hand, both of you carrying a good amount of fish for Pearson’s stew pot.

You certainly didn’t miss the way Kieran smiled over at you, even going as far as to wiggle his eyebrows at you. You chuckled and nodded your head over to Mary-Beth and the man went red.

That night Javier had pulled you next to him at the campfire and everyone had caught on at that point, giving a few hollers and whistles. Even more, after you whispered to Mary-Beth, and she outright plopped into Kieran’s lap.

The poor man was red for the rest of the night.

The following days were sweet as could be, every morning Javier came over for a good morning kiss, a kiss before he left camp for the day to scope out any potential leads or for a job, and several more kisses upon his return. He always pulled you to his side at the campfire, sometimes into his lap when he wasn’t planning on entertaining the gang with his music.

One night while Javier was quietly strumming on his guitar, you by his side, Kieran decided to pipe up and ask you to sing for the group. Javier lit up, while you tried to hide behind him.

“You sing cariño?”

“Prettier than any songbird,” Kieran answered for you, you gave the man a heated glare from behind Javier’s back.

There were a few people around the campfire begging/demanding for a song, Javier looked at you with a hopeful glint in his eye and you just heaved a heavy sigh and nodded resulting in cheers from around the fire.

You sang a soft song, with a romantic lilt. Eyes were on you but you closed your eyes to tune them out and concentrate on your singing. Javier barely remembered to play his guitar, having to redirect his attention away from your beautiful voice to play.

When the song ended there was a round of applause for the performance, then a few whoops and hollers when Javier pulled you in for a heated kiss.

🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋

You could tell Javier was holding back at times. You could taste the familiar mix of lust and want on his tongue. But he always held himself back, excusing himself before things got too heated. You wondered why, not used to a man holding himself back from what he wanted.

You got your answer one evening when you were sitting on his lap, your legs wrapped around his waist while kissing him. He pulled away and called things to a halt.

“Why do you want to stop?”

“I don’t want to force you into something you’re not ready for. And I don’t want to make you feel compelled too for my sake.”

You were touched, so used to a man just taking what they want, that you had forgotten that there truly were good men out there.

“What if I was to say that I am ready, that I want this?”

“Then I would say not here. If you are ready, how about tomorrow, we’ll take a trip into town in the afternoon, rent a room and a bath, and not have to worry about disturbing the camp.”

You let out a giggle and nodded, it sounded perfect. With one last heated kiss, you got off of Javier.

You waited through the whole day with eager anticipation, the thought of spending the night with Javier sending thrills through you and making you work extra hard so you could speed through your chores.

Afternoon came quickly enough and before you knew it you were on the back of Boaz heading into town.

Javier wanted to take things a bit slow, arriving in the saloon he paid for a meal and a beer for the both of you to enjoy. Conversation with him was light and easy. His hand resting on your thigh, his thumb rubbing in small circles.

After the meal, he guided you up to the bath, which had already been drawn, and began kissing your neck as his deft fingers plucked at the buttons and laces on your clothes. Your fingers working on his as well.

You two didn’t stop kissing each other until you two were fully undressed. You pulled away from each other to look and see what you were working with.

Javier gave a pleased groan at the sight of your soft curves and the neatly trimmed curls.

You were in awe at the sight of Javier’s chest and were pleasantly surprised that he was already at half-mast.

Javier smiled at you and he stepped away to sink into the warm water of the bath and beckoned you to join him. With a small smile you sunk into the bathwater with him, both of you sighing and enjoying the feeling of each other and the warm water.

Javier grabbed the nearby bar of soap and quickly brought it to a foaming lather to wash away the filth from the last few days, gently massaging any aches away. Smirking at every moan you gave him from his teasing touches.

When he was done you took the soap from him and washed down his chest and shoulders, planting soft kisses along his collarbone before moving onto his arms and legs, continuing to plant kisses after they were nice and clean. You couldn’t hold back the smile when you cupped him to clean his now fully hardened dick and he let out a low moan.

After the two of you had been thoroughly washed you two stepped out of the bath and dried each other off, wiping away the trails of water as they ran down your bodies.

You two dressed just enough to be presentable and with a final heated kiss you two left the bathroom made your way into the bedroom.

Javier was back on your neck, kissing it while he once again peeled off your clothes from your still-damp skin, this time kissing and caressing every new inch of skin that was revealed until you were once again standing naked in front of him.

“You’re beautiful mi amor.” He muttered as he laid you down onto the bed.

“You’re pretty good lookin yourself, handsome.” You giggled as you pulled his shirt off to caress his chest and stomach. Javier smiled and shed himself of his pants so he didn’t have to deal with them later and returned to caressing your sides.

Javier leaned down to capture you in a searing kiss which you returned wholeheartedly, wrapping your arms around his neck to pull him as close as possible.

Javier groaned into the kiss and reached up to massage your breasts, then kissing his way down to kiss and suck on the rising peaks. You quietly moaned as you rubbed his shoulders and back.

Javier looked up at you through his lashes as one of his hands trails down to gently massage at your folds, groaning at just how wet you were.

“So wet for me already mi amor?” Javier smirked as you gave a moan and bucked your hips up into his hand.

Javier slipped one of his fingers into your core and groaned at just how tight you were, he gently thrust his finger into you as he continued sucking on your breast. You were groaning and panting at just how good he felt, but wanting to return the pleasure you reached down to cup at his throbbing dick, Javier moaned but reached down and pulled your hand off.

“Not tonight amor, tonight it’s just about you. I’ll get my pleasure, but you’ll get yours first.” Javier gently placed your hand back onto his shoulder before returning to your breast.

Javier slipped another finger into you and started kissing his way down your body, gently moving one of your legs over his shoulder to kiss and lick at your folds and that little bundle of nerves while his fingers stretched your entrance.

Your moans were getting louder, anyone on the other side of that door would be able to hear what you two were doing, but you didn’t care. Javier’s fingers and tongue were talented and he was going to pull every moan he could out of you.

You were getting close and he knew it, speeding up his hand so his fingers were pounding into you.

“You gonna cum for me amor?” You managed a hard nod while you were squeaking in pleasure.

“Do it, cum for me.” Javier wrapped his lips around that little bundle and sucked on it, hard, while swirling his tongue around it.

Your orgasm crashed through you while you let out a loud squeal of pleasure, your hips bucking up into Javier’s mouth.

After a moment Javier pulled back and removed his fingers to watch you ride the last of your climax, stroking himself with his slicked up hand, readying himself.

When you had calmed down enough to be able to look him in the eye he positioned himself right at your entrance, before kissing you hard.

“You ready?” He whispered in your ear. You wrapped your arms around his neck and planted a couple of kisses along his cheek and neck. Before responding that you were.

Javier nodded and slowly started pushing into your tight heat. The both of you moaning at the feeling of you stretching to accommodate him. When his hips were flush with yours you wrapped your legs around him.

Javier pulled you into another kiss, keeping his hips still so you both could adjust to the feeling of being connected. He didn’t want to hurt you, nor did he want to lose control and release to quickly.

“You feel amazing, mi reina.” Javier muttered against your lips, eyes still closed as he held himself back from moving.

You groaned and rolled your hips, not trusting your voice for much of anything right now. Javier groaned into your neck and he started gently pulling out and pushing back in.

Once he was sure he wasn’t going to hurt you he picked up the pace. Steadily going faster and harder, angling his hips to he would brush against your clit, one arm holding himself up while the other busied itself with your breast.

Another orgasm was building fast for you, with Javier working your body so well, and his lust coated voice heavy in your ear, you knew you wouldn’t last long. You tried telling him but all you could get out was moans and his name.

“You gonna cum for me again? Go ahead, I want to feel you come undone around me.” Javier growled into your ear as he picked up the pace even more. He knew he wasn’t going to last much longer either but he was going to feel you release around his dick if it was the last thing he did.

The faster pace sent you spiraling over the edge into the strongest orgasm you ever felt, with the blood rushing in your ears you couldn’t hear what you were saying, but Javier could, mostly his name and several proclamations of love.

Javier was reaching his limit and pulled back a bit so he could grip your hips and really pound into you, by now you had come back down from your climax and couldn’t do much more than squeak at the over-stimulation.

“I’m close amor, may I cum inside? Please?” Javier panted voice strained from the effort. You let out a weak 'yes’, your voice horse from all the moaning and panting.

With the last of your strength, you clenched your lower muscles to assist in sending him over the edge.

Javier let out a choked moan at the sudden tightness before pushing into you as far as he could go and spilling his seed deep inside you.

“¡Te amo! ¡Te amo! ¡Ay mi reina, te amo!” Javier cried out as he rode out his climax panting into your ear.

You stayed like that for a moment, Javier slowly coming back down to earth.

Once he more or less came to he gently pulled out, both of you moaning at the feeling, before flopping onto his side and pulling you close and kissing you again.

“I love you, Javier.” You smiled as you looked into his eyes.

“I love you too, my beautiful queen.”

#Somethinwickedthiswayrides #cleverslimepruneeggs #ANON REQUEST #smut #javier escuella #Javier Escuella x Reader #100 follower special #long post #very long post #rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption

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azeher · 6 years

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I don’t know if it’s tumblr as a whole or just my dash, but I’ve noticed a trend of complain-posts always fiction-related that claim some of the most ridiculous things, getting like a gazillion notes but then somehow dying, so the ridiculous claim literally evolves into something else. Usually this process of dying and evolving happens after some of the most racional people in the commments (always the minority btw) point out why the post sounds so ridiculous.

And the reason why is because the posts are usually hyperboles fabricated by people offended by people genuinely offended at a thing. You know which ones I’m talking about.

So for example, a months ago the popular posts were about:

“People say you’re evil if you like villains. If you don’t want a villain to be redeemed, you don’t want character development for villains.”

I still laught at that one. My ability to suspend my disbelieve goes so far folks: Yeah, totally people were back and forth calling others “evil”... for liking villains to top it. Yeah! Of course more than one person did something like that! Yeah!, of course people despise the idea of character development!! You know, the one that... works both ways.

And I saw hundreds of posts like this one but never saw one claiming “people who like villains are evil and villains can’t be redeemed!” Probably cuz even if they existed, they were most likey just one or two posts at most with like 10 notes and so, you had to be super petty to take it to heart. People say very stupid shit on tumblr everyday, are you going to pay attention to everyone? What I DID see, was people stating “I just can’t like/forgive this particular villain for these reasons:”. So, yeah, someone got offended and made an absurd post about it.

Whatever, this one evolved (FINALLY) into something along the lines of “IF YOU CRITICALLY THINK ABOUT ART YOU’RE PARTICIPATING IN PURITY CULTURE AND KILLING ART.”

I reblogged that one so you know which one it is. Basically the aim of this seems to silence people who have reasons to feel uncomfortable about specific topics in art, or rather they can’t voice their opinions because they’re killing art. I don’t believe in the integrity of anything that uses the “purity culture” phrase as an attack, because it blatanly ignores actual people’s struggles in real life reflected in art. “Purity culture” is basically what people yell at others when they point out their bad writing. Especially cuz no one in the publishing industry is banning topics from being written about.

Now, that post seems to have evolved into: “People are confusing thinking critically with dissecting and hating everything.”

This is the most ridiculous one so far. Honestly, I’d feel better if I knew a little kid wrote it but with the gazillion notes backing it up it hardly matters. So, are people even aware that every piece of art ever made is both hated and loved by someone? Of course people hate everything! Because people also LOVE everything! That’s how art works. I would get offended by others not liking something I liked too... when I was NINE years old ffs! It’s like the collective mob mind of tumblr is stuck at nine years old. And I cringe at the word “dissecting” when it comes to art because it’s like the people who use this word don’t live in the real world and don’t understand that it’s not one person critically thinking about art, BUT MILLIONS of people. Everyone is going to add something different. Everyone is going to find a different problem and point it out. Every piece of art has been “dissected” since art is a thing, it’s just that now people can post about it and share their ideas in fandom or communities. That’s what’s different.

And I don’t know about anyone else, but I DO prefer to live in a time where I can talk to the disabled, the mentally ill, the abused, the refugee, the abandoned, the oppressed... and understand their point of view and how or why they’re uncomfortable with what others might call art.

Everything is a matter of context, I would laugh at jokes as a kid I can’t laugh at anymore because I’m not thinking about the joke itself but all that it represents (the context), which as a kid I wasn’t aware of. As we grow up we learn more and more about the world, the implications, what no one talks about because everything would get awkward, aka, the elephant in the room.

Sure tho, while consuming fiction you’re not forced to look at the elephant all the freaking time. And you’re not forced to point it out so others look at it too, but silencing and complaning about those who do is simply immature at best, stupid in my opinion, and damaging at worst. No one can force you to stop loving something, but you need to grow up and get over the fact others might hate that thing you love.

And I know that this thread of evolving ridiculous posts won’t stop people from voicing their opinions. I know, cuz I’m voicing my opinion, but if you genuinely put art over real life people’s right to critique the art, then you’re the problem and need time to think about that.

#the biggest proof 'purity culture' doesn't exist #and that it can't force anyone to stop exploring and enjoying 'problematic' ideas is that nazis are a fucking thing #text #art #fiction #mine

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nedraggett · 5 years

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Thoughts on 2018

No need for me to be fancier than that! And yeah I realize that nobody should be using Tumblr any more but until I figure out a proper revive of my old Wordpress site, this will do for now.

So anyway: I wrote this up for a private email list reflecting on the end of the year in terms of things I especially enjoyed culturally. Well, why not share it?

My year went very well — steady at work and in life, being 47 means more aches and pains but you have to learn to live with it. The state of the world is something else again of course and we need not spend more time on the blazingly obvious. That said, the history bug in me has been constantly intrigued by the slow drip of the investigations (and revelations) and were it all fiction, I’d be thoroughly enthralled instead of quietly apprehensive, of course. November did provide some partial relief on that front so bring on the new year. In terms of my own written work, nothing quite equalled my heart/soul going into last year’s Algiers feature for NPR, but my two big Quietus pieces this year — on Gary Numan’s Dance and Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings — were treats to write, while my presentation on the too-obscure Billy Mackenzie at PopCon was a great experience.

In terms of music this has been one of the most concert-heavy years I’ve spent. Even having moved to SF in 2015 I only did the occasional show every so often — there was so much going on (even in a local scene lots of long-timers say has been irrevocably changed) that I was almost spoiled for choice, and part of me also just wanted to relax most nights. But deaths like Prince’s and Bowie’s among many others served as a reminder that there’s no such thing as forever, and you never know what the last chance will be. More veteran acts than younger ones in the end for me — greatest missed concert regrets this year included serpentwithfeet, Lizzo, Perfume Genius and Emma Ruth Rundle among the younger acts, while being ill when Orbital came through will be a lingering annoyance, still having never seen them live. But the huge amount of shows I did see outweighed that, ranging from big arena stops like Fleetwood Mac to celebratory open-air free shows like Mexican Institute of Sound to small club sets by folks like Kinski, Six Organs of Admittance, Kimbra and many more, including, for the first time in years, a show in the UK, specifically a great performance by Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera. If I absolutely had to grade my top picks among shows, Cruel Diagonals, Johnny Marr, Wye Oak, Peter Brotzmann/Keiji Haino, John Zorn/Terry Riley/Laurie Anderson, Laurie Anderson again separately, Nine Inch Nails, VNV Nation, Jarvis Cocker, Beak and, in terms of no real expectations turning into utter delight and thrills, a brilliant set by Lesley Rankine under her Ruby guise, with Martin Atkins on drums. Best damn combination of righteous ire, hilarious raconteurism and compelling, unique approaches to how performance can work I’d seen in a while. (As for recorded music in general, uh, endless?)

TV, as ever a bit sporadic, with a few things on my to-do list — still need to catch The Terror for sure, and what I saw of The Alienist looked good; I love both books so I need to see how it all worked out, similarly with the just-dropped version of Watership Down. Pose I definitely need to catch up with since it sounds like Ryan Murphy stood out of the way to let the best possible team do the business on it, but my real unexpected delight of a show this year was also Murphy-based, American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. While not down the line perfect, it was absolutely more compelling than not, and in fact at its best was a shuddering combination of amazing music cue choices, a reverse structure that helped undercut any attempt at making Cunanan seem sympathetic or an antihero, and, at its considerable best, a ratcheting up of terror and horror that a friend said was almost Kubrickian, and I would have to agree. And, frankly, Darren Criss really did the business as Cunanan, a controlled and powerful turn. Only a few of us seemed to be following it at the time, but when it scored all those Emmys, then while it was as much a reflection of Murphy’s status, it honestly felt well deserved. Meantime, you’ll pry my addiction to all the RuPaul’s Drag Race incarnations from my cold dead hands but it’s the amazing online series that Trixie Mattel and Katya do, UNHhhh, which remains my comedy highlight of the year, with at least a few jaw-dropping/seize up laughing every episode. (Kudos as well for Brad Jones’s The Cinema Snob, ten years running online and still funny as fuck while digging up all kinds of cinematic horrors.) Also, tying back into music a bit, late recommendation for something you can only see on UK TV/streaming so far, but get yourself a VPN and seek out Bros: After the Screaming Stops, in which the two brothers in the late-80s monster hit pop band Bros (never had any traction here but pretty much owned the entire Commonwealth and beyond) try for a comeback. It’s an unintentionally hilarious and harrowing portrait of two twins who have a LOT of issues, have clearly been through a LOT of therapy, but are still…not quite there. UK friends said it was a combination of Spinal Tap, Alan Partridge and David Brent and they were ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.

Movies, less specifically to choose from — I remain an essentially sporadic populist when it comes to what I see in theaters, but I can say for sure that Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse is a hell of a thing and will almost certainly prove to be a real year-zero moment down the line. Possibly the most affecting watch was Bohemian Rhapsody, in that I also saw this in the UK — in Brighton, which besides making me think of the band’s song “Brighton Rock” is also notably the country’s most LGBT-friendly city; those I was with felt the movie’s themes, successes and flaws/elisions deeply, and the constant discussion of it for the next few days was very rewarding. As for books, John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood, delving into Theranos and the amoral duo behind it, was properly enraging and compelling, while Beth Macy’s Dopesick, if not perfect, nonetheless adds to the good literature on the opioid crisis, while as ever indirectly calling into question who’s getting the focus and care now as opposed to in earlier times and places. My favorite music publications as such probably remain the two I most regularly write for, The Quietus and Daily Bandcamp, while Ugly Things is the print publication that I most look forward to with each issue, and am never disappointed.

Podcasts now consist of a lot of my regular cultural engagement, kinda obvious but nonetheless true. Long running faves include My Favorite Murder — Karen and Georgia are an amazing comedy team who have figured out how to reinterpret their anxieties in new ways — The Vanished, which at its best often casts a piercing eye on how official indifference from law enforcement is almost as destructive as their more obvious abuses (recent discovery The Fall Line does this as well, even more explicitly), Karina Longworth’s constantly revelatory Hollywood histories You Must Remember This, Patrick Wyman’s enjoyable history dives on Tides of History, my friend Chris Molanphy’s constantly excellent investigations into music chart history Hit Parade, the great weekly movie chats by MST3K vets Frank Conniff and Trace Beaulieu along with Carolina Hidalgo on Movie Sign With the Mads, and The Age of Napoleon, which really has hit my history wonk sweet spot. New to me this year was It’s Just a Show, a really wonderful episode by episode — but not in exact order — deep dive into every episode of MST3K ever, by two fun and thoughtful Canadian folks, Adam Clarke and Beth Martin. (Adam also cohosts a new podcast, A Part of Our Scare-itage, specifically looking at Canadian horror. It’s not just Cronenberg!). Among the excellent one-off series this year: American Fiasco by Men in Blazers’ Roger Bennett on the failed US World Cup attempt in 1998, Dear Franklin Jones, a story about the narrator’s experience growing up in a California cult and how his parents came to be followers in the first place, and the Boston Globe’s Gladiator, their audio accompaniment to their in-depth story of the life and ultimate fate of Aaron Hernandez. Finally, totally new series this year that quickly got added to my regular listening: American Grift, a casual and chatty look at various scams and schemes, overseen by Oriana Schwindt, The Eurowhat?, a running look at the Eurovision competition throughout the year from the perspective of two American fans, and The Ace Records Podcast, an often engaging series of one-off interviews with various musicians, fans and so forth by UK writer Pete Paphides (I highly recommend the interviews with Jon Savage and Sheila B). Hands down my two favorite totally new podcasts of the year were The Dream, a more formal story of American grifting in general hosted by Jane Marie — this first season’s focus was on multilevel marketing, and Marie and company’s careful way of seemingly backing into the larger story makes it all the more compelling and ultimately infuriating, especially in the current political climate — and the hilarious Race Chasers, a RuPaul’s Drag Race-celebrating podcast by two veterans of the show, Alaska and Willam, loaded with all kinds of fun, behind the scenes stuff, guests and an easy casualness from two pros that strikes the perfect balance between going through things and just shooting the shit. Returning podcast I’m most looking forward to next year: the second season of Cocaine and Rhinestones, hands down. Check out the first season for sure.

And there ya go! Keep fighting all your respective good fights.

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surflove808 · 7 years

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Do you think this cast is problematic and insensitive? Gather around the fire with me, you delicate tulips. Let me tell you a story.

There will be potty language. And there will be no straddling the fence to appease both sides. So, read at your own risk. But, absolutely always feel free to respond and engage in discussion!

When I got into this show, I fell down the rabbit hole like everyone else, and watched con footage and interviews and became more invested than I ever have in a show because of all the (perceived) incredible positivity and kindness reflected from the cast to the SPN Family and vice versa. I had never seen anything like it. And I was so impressed with this fandom and proud to be a part of it that I do something I rarely do - I gushed about it to friends. Even though I knew they'd give me shit. Because we think we're too cool for school or something. I don't know.

My love for this show and fandom eventually led me to Tumblr and the actors Twitter feeds. I went full fangirl. I thought, "Yay! Other people who enjoy this amazing show. Gifs! Funnies! Fanfics! Art! Support!" And there is that, undoubtedly....but there is also this seedy underbelly that gets far more attention that it merits. And I have become so disillusioned and angered by the shit I see here on the regular, not to mention Twitter.... that I feel like I need to disengage from following both (SPN-wise), so I don't burst a fucking capillary.

Before I do that.... to the handful of "fans" that have caused a Twitter uproar and instigated shortsighted and nasty smear campaigns regarding:

1. Jareds inappropriate joke

2. Mark Pellegrino and William Shatner defending Jared over some other Twitter bullshit. They didn’t cause the initial offense, they merely defended their buddy against all the flamers....which, apparently is not allowed for these specific individuals. They’re so evil. How dare they have a human response to seeing their friend get charbroiled online. It’s like they think they’re real people....

3. Jensen supporting his FRIEND JDM when he was harassed and lambasted on Twitter and Instagram for wearing a Blue Lives Matter t-shirt. *Also, see #2*

4. Jensens retweet of Pellegrinos very nice message welcoming India to the SPN Family (flooding Jensens feed with demands that he not support his castmate and friend because Mark stood up to them or because they don't agree with Marks ideology. Way to take something positive and turn it ugly, BTW. Sorry, India. Truly. I'm secondhand cringing over here.) *Also, see #2*

5. *See previous rants on this page*

Can you please fuck off already? I hear Antarctica is nice this time of year, and that knitting is a great way to take your mind off things and meditate. I might follow my own advice, in fact. But stay the hell away from my yurt. I am stabby when it comes to you people.

There are always going to be people who feel compelled to stir up a lot of shit over anything these guys say and do, and they generally also apply that rule to most things in life, I'm guessing. And I know opinions are like assholes (everyone's got one), but really, there seem to be a handful of folks that LIVE for the drama around here. Get a grip. Be useful. Because what you seem to enjoy doing - Tearing down public figures in order to promote your own agenda, and making threats and accusations and spreading them like cancer? It's not productive. It's toxic. With regards to THE JOKE:

I don't want to tell the joke. TELL IT! No, my jokes are all inappropriate. TELL it! Nah... TELL IT ANYWAY, WE DON'T CARE! *Tells joke* *Sees personal integrity torpedoed and potentially damaged career/legacy due to an influx of online articles based on a handful of tweets by reactionary "fans" who probably weren't even there* Nice set-up, people.

Neither one of these guys is or has ever been anything but gracious to fans, not to mention caring and supportive. That's why fans from all over the world come to see them and share their personal stories of hardship with this cast. And they are certainly not proponents of rape culture.

These conventions are for adults, by adults. And if you bothered to even watch a sampling of con footage of these guys, your delicate sensibilities would probably be overwhelmed by the sexually charged and deeply inappropriate things that get said BY some fans TO these guys. But here's the thing, these actors take it in stride and treat their fans like friends. And these cons are very intimate and personal, open and extremely funny. Is content inappropriate sometimes? Yes, thank Chuck. THAT'S USUALLY WHAT MAKES IT FUNNY.

Have you ever watched a comedy routine? How do you handle dark humor? Can you? If you can't? Don't watch. Don't play Cards Against Humanity either. In fact....turn the internet off and spend time around real people. Build up some tolerance. Take your newfound tolerance to a domestic violence shelter and volunteer your time. Immerse yourself in a new culture. Read a few books. Educate yourself a bit and grow wiser. Pick your battles and fight for what's right. Not for what you "think" is right for Twit hits.

And you know what? If you're the type of person who is going to go on a witch hunt that results in these guys having to share the same platform with guys like Weinstein and Spacey, with potentially irreversible damage done to their professional and personal lives over something like THIS? Congratulations. You've become the thought police. You're demonizing people who have done a tremendous amount of good in the world around them via campaigns that stem from a desire to reach out to their fandom and support of people in crisis, particularly women, over a lame joke that Jared and especially Jensen, didn't feel was appropriate to share in the first place. These are genuinely kind and decent men, maybe do some more background research and check your motivation before you irrevocably damage someones well-being and livelihood.

And because I don’t know any of your names or whereabouts, I can’t actually fuck up your life, can I? And even if I could? Why on earth would I?? Anonymity’s great, though....isn’t it? We can go online and sit on our own virtual Mount Olympus, raining down accusations, judgments and sentences with minimal effort, foresight or concern for the ramifications of our actions.

And Jared is a prime example of that sometimes. I’m sorry to say, because he is a good dude, but he’s guilty of some of the same flamebroiling of people that you excuse yourselves from in the name of self righteousness. The difference is - you can hide behind your anonymity. He can’t. And I’m down with calling people on their bullshit behavior (clearly), and Jared has had it coming a few times, but THIS? This is ridiculous.

Since you seem to be fond of extreme responses, I could make the comparison that encouraging, no....demanding that someone do something that they don't want to do, and then shaming them for it when they do what you've asked? That's REAL textbook abuse. Chew on that for a minute.

Congrats again, because when you search either of their names, that's the FIRST thing that comes up. "Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles made a rape joke". The joke in and of itself doesn't and shouldn't negate all the good they've put out in the world, but in the eyes of the general public outside the fandom? NOW it does. THAT'S what people now see.

It's amazing how a 7 word joke can lead to online character assassination that tears down over a decade of good works. And I wouldn't blame them one bit for shutting down future cons and/or reducing their conversation with fans to subject matter that strictly pertains to the show.

And if you have stated any iteration of "I will no longer be a fan or watch this show because of these horrible meanies"... GOOD. FUCKING. RIDDANCE. It would make the SPN Family a much better place to be if ya'll and your other easily offended brethren who can dish it out, but can't take it, would fuck off to parts unknown to fixate on something else and leave us in peace.

#SPNFamily #easilyoffended #supernatural #Jared Padalecki #cw network #creationcons #Jensen Ackles #dean winchester #Sam Winchester #Misha Collins #castiel #lucifer #mark pellegrino #william shatner #akf #you are not alone #random acts

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iced-blood · 7 years

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An Informal Thesis on the Burden of Acknowledgment.

I am going to go into a bit of detail about a controversial topic tonight, both because it’s been a while since I’ve actually written anything for this blog and because I’m apparently just tired enough to take things personally that I probably shouldn’t.

I call this topic the burden of acknowledgment.

Anyone who doesn’t want to sit down with Professor Ice tonight, you are hereby forewarned and thereby pardoned. No hard feelings, yeah? Seriously. I’m not out to stir the pot. I’m not here tonight looking to start an argument. I’m not going to mark this with anything other than my own, personal, tags. This is not a call to arms, nor is it a declaration of war.

That said, I have some things that I want to make clear about myself. I want y’all to understand where I’m coming from. These observations and beliefs are constructed from, and reflect, my personal experiences and no one else’s.

Cool? Cool.

Now, then.

You know how Seto Kaiba is my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! character? Maybe not. I try not to talk about it too much. The thing about me, though, is that I have a particular type of character to which I tend to gravitate. When I was little, I was always interested in the side characters. Like, imagine an RPG videogame. You know how a lot of them will have secret characters that you have to do certain things, quests and whatnot, to recruit?

I was all about those folks. Didn’t matter who they were. That was my jam.

Now, I highly doubt I could get away with claiming that Seto falls into that category. The kid is everywhere in this franchise. But he shares many traits and tropes with a lot of the side characters I loved so much when I was a baby-child, and so it was pretty much a foregone conclusion in every sense of the phrase.

Once I laid eyes on him, during that most formative episode I caught one weekend when I was 12, the contract was signed and sealed.

Anyone who’s been following me for a while might be wondering at this point what I’m getting at. Y’all know this. What’s my point in bringing all this up again? Well, it’s to clarify something: whenever we approach a piece of fiction, we put a bit of ourselves into it. We all have different perspectives, values, beliefs, interpretations; and this is important to remember regardless of which side of an argument someone might be on.

See, I’ve noticed something. When it comes to that kid with the long coats and the dragons, a lot of people I’ve run into here on Tumblr bring a … let’s call it a critical eye. Understand, please, that I’m not saying this is a bad thing. In a lot of ways, Seto is the definition of a problematic fave. I know it well. I ask that you who are reading this please trust me when I say this.

I know that the fiction I write, both on this blog and off, doesn’t present the most far-reaching interpretation of Seto, but the reason for that is because I’ve engaged with him for so long — keep in mind that I met him at 12 years old, and I’m now 31 — that I’ve narrowed down exactly what I want to engage with when it comes to this character.

Just because I don’t focus on the dark spots of his personality, in other words, doesn’t mean I don’t know, or acknowledge, their existence.

But more than once, I’ve been told that — in order to be a proper Seto fan — I must bear the burden of acknowledgment. I must openly, consistently, acknowledge and condemn these problematic aspects of his narrative arc. I must openly, consistently, acknowledge and condemn Death-T. I must openly, consistently, acknowledge and condemn his treatment of the main cast. Of Joey Wheeler, in particular. I must openly, consistently, acknowledge and condemn his unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Allow me, if you will, to reply:

No.

It is neither my job nor my responsibility to be fair and balanced about my favorite fictional constructs. I am not here to condemn abused children. I have argued — hard — against my own mother on this precise subject. If she can’t change my mind, and she hasn’t, then nobody else is going to.

I am very firm on this. I’m not being argumentative or antagonistic here, and I need that to be understood. This is my default state; this is me on neutral.

Seto Kaiba is a child. He is smarter than average, he is stronger than average, he is taller than average, he has far more power, prestige, money, and responsibility than average, but he is still a child. He is 15, possibly 16, years old when the story begins.

I — will — not — condemn — children.

If you hate Seto Kaiba — that is your right. You are absolutely free to do so.

If you hate him for specific, personal, or otherwise subjective reasons — that is your right. You are absolutely free to do so.

If you hate him for no reason at all — that is your right. You are absolutely free to do so.

If you want to go into detail as to why — that is your right. You are absolutely free to do so.

If you don’t want to go into detail as to why — that is your right. You are absolutely free to do so.

However.

Just as I do not, and will never, claim that you have to explain yourself in order to justify your stance — I do not, and will never, have to explain myself in order to justify mine.

This is a part of Tumblr’s purity culture which I have seen many times, and have a very, very real problem with; and this applies to all problematic characters, themes, and media — not just Seto Kaiba. Within the confines of the law, absolutely no one is required to explain or justify what they like or why they like it.

Not you, and not me.

Those of you in the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom who wish to condemn Seto Kaiba’s choices and actions, for any reason or for no reason at all, go right ahead. I wish you well.

Just leave me out of it.

#personal #i stand with the dragon king

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latinalesbi · 7 years

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How do you know that was Sherri & Teri unscripted last episode ?

They won’t script the behavior of party participants, they might tell them where to stand but I can’t imagine all that being scripted at all.\

Anonymous said: I definitely feel like they cut a scene when stef and Lena were talking to mike at the party. It felt way too short and the scene we did get didn’t really reflect the promo pictures.

I think it might have been shortened. The pictures don’t always match up with what was shot. At least we have that affection from pictures.

Anonymous said: Do you think they would make Aaron abusive ? You say he’s controlling so could that he a sigh ? Plus they haven’t covered that.

It’s a story they haven’t written. From where I am sitting, it’s classic controlling relationship. If all of Callie’s exes are there lol, he’s going to blow…

Anonymous said: I liked tonight’s episode. It wasn’t the best obviously, but Stef and Lena had some sweet moments together. I did miss the scene that we saw in the promotional pictures, with them talking to Mike. They probably cut that scene out. But a couple of things are bothering me. First of all, when Lena came home and everyone was having dinner, Stef and Lena didn’t kiss! That was the perfect opportunity. Is that not something partners do? My parents always use to kiss each other when they came home.

Secondly, did you see Stef pull Lena close and kiss her on the cheek at about 20 minutes in? They were in the background and it was when Ana and Gabe were talking and Jesus was just leaving. I actually think it was Teri kissing Sherri, and it was really cute. Why can’t that be something they do in the show? Teri and Sherri obviously don’t mind, the chemistry is there!!

And thirdly, I miss them showing affection to each other. I want to see them kiss, hug, make love. Or laying in each others arms. I am 23 years old and it is baffling to me that this show is the only show where there are 2 moms raising a family. I want to see myself represented, and I want to see a family that I once hope to have. I hope the writers understand how important it is. Sorry about the rant, lol. I just needed a platform to express how I feel and your tumblr is perfect for that.

I liked it too! They were sweet, funny and domestic. I know some claim we want to see the L Word, I never have said that. I want it to be realistic and comparable to straight couples. I also noticed that Lena coming home required a kiss and it was odd that it wasn’t scripted. This is where realism fails to pass the test. Second point, yikes thanks to you anon for pointing it out, as soon as I read your anon, I went to gif so thank you for that. I would have never rewatched that scene. When I saw it, I don’t think I looked at the screen. Third point, realism. I miss it too and we aren’t getting it in the finale :( It’s very sad. I am much older and I want to see that too. I am starting to have that family now. I am one month into foster parenting, and yeah we are finally less exhausted and missing sex lol. With teenagers that don’t need the same care, Stef and Lena can manage! And kissing, no excuse for it being completely missing. Mike and Ana have established date night, but Stef and Lena haven’t? Come on!

And thank you, you are always welcome to rant here!

Anonymous said: Oh man the Tess storyline could’ve been so good but they decided to sideline the story and give us bio parents shit

Yeah, this story hasn’t picked up at all. It has to go onto next season or I don’t really see the point. I mean, Tess is the next door neighbor, she’s not going anywhere.

Anonymous said: I feel like there might be a blacklash when Callie and Aaron break up cause some people might say it’s transphobia but it isn’t.

Yeah, there could be, but they should have picked up on that earlier and pitched for Cole to be the boyfriend. Aaron was this guy from the moment he showed up. The thing is if anyone has earned the right to tell different lgbt stories, it’s the fosters. I never had a problem with making Monte a bad person. I still think she is.

Anonymous said: The preview for next week only proves what you and so many other people have been saying - Aaron is really controlling. Now he thinks he gets to dictate who Callie can or cannot be friends with? And he’s a huge hypocrite because Callie & AJ were dating when he decided to disrespect their relationship by pursuing her even after she told him she had a boyfriend - to the point of being openly hostile and rude to AJ for no reason. I hope Aaron

Well, people are saying it now, but they weren’t saying it before. I never liked Aaron because of the way he behaved with AJ. He reminded me of this guy who broke up my friend’s marriage by being that friend who listened who confirmed her every suspicion and was always there to tell her she deserved better. Well, they did hook up after her divorce but it did not last. Clearly.

Anonymous said: I really enjoyed all the Callie and AJ stuff tonight. I wish they would just let Callie be single and work on herself, but if they insist on her being with someone I prefer AJ. He’s good for her because like you’ve mentioned, he calls her out on her BS when she needs it. But can also be really supportive. And they have a nice chemistry, I think. More than this weird forced stuff with Aaron, who is very controlling.

Yes, ideally Callie would take her mom’s suggestions and be alone and listen to her own voice. Boys don’t have to tell you how to feel. I think the chemistry with AJ was easier, this thing with Aaron has been forced and not organic.

Anonymous said: Trying to make Gabe (and a bunch of other equally unnecessary, irrelevant characters) happen is easily the worst decision this show has made. I enjoyed that we got to see Stef & Lena talk stuff out tonight (and how sad is it that I saw that as a win and not a given?) but all the Gabe-Ana-Mike nonsense, like. No. Why? I hope Gabe is gone for good. They need to stop wasting valuable screentime on folks whose last name is not Adams Foster.

I don’t even understand why he took up screen time. I think he made Jesus worse and he’s a terrible example. I think this show has conveniently forgotten that 1. Gabe was a drug dealer and Ana was high. They would never have been able to raise twins together. 2. Those grandparents, knowing what I know now, the system would have tracked them down and offered them the kids. I don’t even know what excuse they used on the show, but they would have gotten the kids.

Ok back to Gabe, he’s not a better person now, he can’t hold a job, a home, he still dates people who are not age appropriate, or appropriate period. And he takes advice from an invested teenager with a tbi. He deserved that egg on his face.

Anonymous said: it always feels like Gabe is only Jesus’ birth father, not Mariana’s. Like the guy leaves and write a letter to just Jesus ? Since he came it always felt like that. And I don’t understand why exactly Jesus would want his birth parents to get back together…. ? Why does he care ?

This is another problem, the whole thing has been obnoxiously heterosexually gendered. A boy needs a father and a girl needs a mother. I don’t get why he’s suddenly invested. It’s not going to change the fact that he was raised in foster homes and left to die in a crib. It certainly has not made his current situation any better. He unleashes his anger at people who have tried to help him but the people that hurt him, he worships. I am over Jesus, probably forever. It’s been gross.

Anonymous said: these kids doesn’t care about Stef and Lena. Jesus wants his birth parents to get back together, he is so invested in that. Brandon did a lot for Mike, but they never pay that much attention to their moms. They don’t do nice things for them. When Stef and Lena were going in couple therapy, the kids knew but no one did something to help. I didn’t see Brandon looking for them as he did for Mike in this episode. I’m sad for Lena and Stef, they are all alone.

I didn’t think of it that way but yep, they have never done anything for Stef and Lena, they got flowers or some shit. They take them for granted and essentially spit on them. It would even be ok if they didn’t bend over backwards for the bio parents. That’s what makes it disturbing.

Anonymous said: I know you’re a fan of Stef and Lena, but I can’t be the only who is annoyed by the fact the characters that aren’t in the main cast get far more screen time than Jude?? Jude is not even in every episode, and when he is it’s like 5 minutes max. It’s ridiculous.

Yes, I am annoyed. I’d rather see Mike than Gabe. I rather see Jude than Aaron. I think Aaron more than any other boyfriend has gotten so much airtime. I think that it’s probably Aaron and Gabe have had more screen time than Jude. I don’t know why the writers are so intent on worshipping Noah, David and Maia. They are just not that great or better than Cierra and Jude. Certainly not more deserving of time. Noah is absent and they mention it 30 times. Jude is gone and not a peep because he’s not important. It’s ironic that a show with 3 gay showrunners has marginalized it’s gay characters for heteronormativity.

Anonymous said: Do you think Stef and Lena will go to prom together since it appears Stef is dressed up during the next episode??

It might make some sense for Lena to do so but I don’t think so. I think they are at home with Tess and husband and the adults have drama there. I think big things will be revealed here, but so far this hasn’t been much about Tess. If Tess has feelings, then it’s about Tess and not Stef and that’s just not as interesting. I’d like to see the couples be friends, not sure I’ll get it.

Back to Prom. I think Callie calls in Stef to protect Ximena. Ximena may be in cuffs but it might be Stef’s way of keeping her out of Ice’s hands.

Anonymous said: I know that Stef loves Lena, but do you think she still have feelings for Tess. And will Tess be in the finale??

I don’t think she has feelings. Nothing this season has even hinted at that. I think she still feels that teenage rejection but it’s not the issue here. Tess will be in the finale.

Anonymous said: First let me say…I think you’re doing an amazing job balancing your time between raising your foster kids and still maintaining your blog!!! I have always valued your insight into the show and especially Stef and Lena. So, I would love to hear how you think the 5A Season Finale plays out. Do you think Tess admits she had feelings for Stef, too. Or do you think the episode will be based solely on the teenagers?? Finally, do you think the Fosters will be renewed for a sixth season. Thanks…

Thank you so much! It has helped that I took a month off work. It’s letting me get used to routines and the fosters will be over next week, just in time for me to go back to work.

I think we’ll get a good chunk of time at the Adams Foster house for a prom adult party. I don’t know why Tess’ son and his date have to leave from their house but they do and clearly their parents must be there. I think we’ll get a follow up about what has happened so far, but I am like 50/50 on what Tess intentions are. And that’s either poor writing or acting, or both. I can’t read her at all and the show hasn’t been building towards anything. I imagine we’ll find out why Tess moved and we’ll find out her true feelings about Stef in her youth. Then Stef gets a call from Callie about Ximena and she goes to fix that situation because god forbid they just have a normal prom. I am amazed it wasn’t a bomb or something. That’s next I am sure.

Season six? I don’t know, Brad said something the other day that sounded less sure than it did the week before. The ratings are in freefall and I am not sure they will. That will be really sad but you know, I can live with 5 season, especially if Teri and Sherri keep being insulted.

Anonymous said: Do you think Callie and Aaron will break up in the next episode?

Not likely, but they should.

#Anonymous

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zacfaq · 7 years

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PLEASE DON’T SEND ME “PASS IT ON” MESSAGES !! as sweet as some of they are they can be really annoying. i don’t check my PMs here! if you need to get ahold of me either send me an ask, or email me.

apparently necessary reminder: google exists! i’m not a know-it-all source, honestly i shouldn’t even be your second plan after google unless it’s a question specifically based on me or something relating to me

i try to avoid fandom drama as much as possible and keep a generally positive space, so please don’t come and ask me about stuff like that. thanks.

if you want to commission me please send an email to [email protected]. do not email me through this address if your intentions are purely social and not work related

-what do you use to record and edit your speedpaints?

i use OBS to record, and edit in sony vegas

-what do you use to draw?

huion gt-191 and clip studio paint

-what are your pen settings?

just the default settings. all my custom stuff/things i’ve downloaded from CSP assets are just things i think look neat but probably never end up using.

-a blog called papersans is claiming to be you! are they a thief?

that’s literally me, i use it to archive my art so i can find stuff easier without having to hunt through my tag. also available for people who just want to see my art n not my other posts

-when is your birthday?

february 6th!

-what is your sexuality?

gay. i like men.

-how long does it take you to draw?

idk like. awhile? sometimes 45 minutes sometimes four hours sometimes a week.

-can i draw you/your ocs?

of course! pls show me after it would make me very happy !!!!!

-favourite band/singer/musician?

i don’t know a damn thing about myself here’s a spotify playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Zk5o5g7nMnGt0vrJVEcDq?si=7cd248a0b64046ee

-will you do art for cheap/free?

nah. art is currently the only job/income i have, if ur interested in commissioning me you can either find my prices on like, any of my pages, but if not ur more than welcome to email me @ [email protected] and i can give you prices there !! -(venting or something involving abuse, suicidal thoughts, self harm, bullying, eating disorders, or other similar things in real life situations. even in fiction i’m iffy.)

i hate to sound rude or not be of help, but please don’t send these messages to me. they send me into horrible anxiety for several personal reasons. if you’re having such negative thoughts i implore you to speak to someone you trust without an anonymous mask, or do your best to seek help from a professional. i have my own things to worry about and as much as i’d like to help, i simply can’t.

-(asking for advice that isn’t related to art)

i would love to help but i’m not an ~all knowing source~. i can’t give you tips for school. i can’t give you tips for life. not only will i probably not know a solution for you but there’s likely a chance i’m in just as bad a situation as you/going through the same problem, as silent as i am about my personal life. also don’t use ‘asking for advice’ as an excuse to vent about things or to send me a paragraph describing in depth something listed above/that’s potentially triggering. thank you.

even if you’re looking fr art tips i’m not a great source i’m still learning, ur best bet is looking for already existing sources and reading through those bc i don’t preach the word of Art God. i’m also awful at explaining things

-why didn’t you answer my ask?

Main reason is i’m just really really bad at socializing, so it’s not anything on u. i’m almost always low on energy and when i do talk to people it wears me out really quick. i’m also just. not gr8 at talking in general so if i can’t think of a reply i tend to just leave things n then end up forgetting about them

-how do you draw [blank]?

honestly my art style is such a fucked up thing that’s so personalized to my own use i can’t do or make tutorials. the best i can do is direct you to my youtube.

-can we do an art trade?

sorry, i’ll have to say no. i’m not necessarily busy but i get stressed very easily, so i try to keep my art to either personal stuff or work ! if you would like art from me, please considering commissioning me! mutuals and friends may be the exceptions here if they catch me at a good time or we make plans well ahead to do smth when we’re both free to work on stuff

-can we be friends?

please don’t ask this. i’m awful enough at socialization as is and i just don’t fit well with most personality types. not to mention this is just overall a bad question. it backs the person being asked into a corner where they either have to say “yes” and end up in a friendship that actually isn’t working out and is maybe only good for one side bc they’re getting any and all of the benefits, and if they say “no” they look like a total dick bag and come across as an ass. don’t ask this question. it’s not how socializing works. it’s not how friendships work. thanks. -can you tag [blank]? unfortunately i’ve been a real bad place in terms of memory so i can’t tag tons and tons of things. i try and tag more general/basic things but i’m sorry i’ll have to pass on specifics. if i post or reblog things that trigger u or harm you it might be best to unfollow for ur own safety!! very sorry

if it’s specific words you’d like tagged please consider blacklisting the word itself.

-how tall are you?

i’m 5'11".

-can you promo me?

i’d rather not, doesn’t sit well with me. if you have a commission post you want me to reblog i’m happy to! but i won’t just do text based handouts, y’know? not a fan of being used for visibility for no reason, and chances are if i do it for one person it’ll happen with hundreds of others and i don’t want my blog to turn into a free advertisement zone that just floods peoples’ feeds with promotions.

-you reblogged something from someone extremely problematic/unsafe

thank you for letting me know! tell me what it is they did, even better offer proof on it. i’ll likely delete the post and blacklist their url to hopefully prevent their name popping up on my blog in the future. i won’t publish these asks mostly to avoid discourse or in the event false information is provided. sorta just safety precaution i guess

-you’ve done something bad

again, thank you for letting me know! if i post or say something questionable please feel free to message me and i’ll try my best to address the issue and adjust accordingly. i’m aiming to grow as a person so critique is welcome, both on me and my artwork. don’t just come up and call me an asshole or a prick or something, actually point out the errors and explain why they’re wrong so i can better understand and it doesn’t just turn into a defensive round of who’s worse, because i tend to be a very defensive person.

-i think someone is stealing/reposting your art!

thank you very much for telling me! don’t message them right off the bat, come to me first and i will deal with it. i’ve dealt with this shit tons of times and it’s tiring as fuck but i’d rather repeat the same stupid civil message over and over again than start a giant calamity over something and end up with someone getting hurt. if you do get involved please stay polite about it don’t throw insults just a simple “hey this art was done by princeofmints/tv-headache/zachary jack/dirtypip/(etc my other account names) and he doesn’t want his art reposted, please take this down or add proper credit.”

-can i use your art as an icon?

sure man. only on places like instagram, tumblr, or twitter though, and proper credit in an easy to see place must be given. if a piece of art is of my ocs or especially vent art though never use it for icons. thank you.

-can i repost your art?

the answer is “no” but i know you’re going to do it anyways. easy to see credit is mandatory. if you see somebody reposting my art please let me know and i’ll talk to them. if you want to use my art in things like image edits, i don’t allow that. want to use my art in a video? if it’s something like an AMV sure fine just credit me and inform me beforehand, if it’s something like a cringe/comparison video. no. i don’t want any association with work like that whatsoever. you may not use my artwork for fanfic covers.

-can i colour/finish one of your sketches?

no. even if you don’t intend on posting it.

-what is [insert some form of media/fandom]

https://www.google.ca/

-why do you have an entirely separate blog for your FAQ? you know you can make blog pages, right?

i’m well aware of that and originally my faq WAS set up on a blog page, but unfortunately many folks proved to be either lazy or just couldn’t figure out how to get to a blog page on mobile so i had to set it up this way for accessibility purposes.

-tons of your videos are gone, what happened to them? will they come back? can you repost them?

i set old videos on private for my own sake, i don’t like having my old content available bc it just looks old and stale and i don’t like it. there’s nothing deep about it, i just don’t want people interacting with my old stuff. as deep is it gets is i just deleted videos related to fandoms i’m sick of bc the association is fuckin annoying. these videos will not come back into public. i do keep them posted for my own reflection sake, but that’s it. don’t ask me to bring them back. don’t whine about me not putting shit back out just bc ur a little sad n gonna cry. guilting people is gross, reevaluate yourself.

if you want a song from an old video, just ask me! I’ll happily let you know what the music is in case u liked ‘em and can’t remember the titles or artists. i’ve also got a playlist full of the music i listen to so u can comb through there n see if the songs u want are there

#prince peeps

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kunkutarpulla · 6 years

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Rant: 18 things white people seem not to understand (because white privilege)

Hello, everyone! Since “white privilege” is a famous topic in this century, let’s talk about it. I took the text from Macy Sto. Domingo.

Remember guys: I’m not mocking her or hating her because of her skin color. Racism isn’t accepted. I despise her as a person.

I was originally going to post this on deviantART, but I post it in Tumblr instead, because these people need to listen the voice of reason.

Let’s start.

“I don’t wake up every morning with the intention of pissing you off, I swear, and whether or not you believe it, I’m here to help you. “

No, you’re here to show how stupid and ignorant you are, since you’re talking about something non-existent like white privilege.

“I want you to recognize that on a daily basis, you hold a set of advantages and immunities that are a direct result of the oppression of people of colour. “

No one in civilized countries like the USA isn’t advantaged or immune because of their skin color. Stop disgracing Albert Fish’ black child victims or Native Americans who were slaughtered by pioneers.

“That doesn’t sound nice, does it? Makes you squirm in your chair a bit and maybe feel a little uncomfortable, right?”

More like annoyed.

“But here’s the thing – I’m not here to make you feel comfortable, that’s not my job. I’m here to erase the invisibility of the privileges you have that continue to help maintain white supremacy.“

African slavery and apartheid already ended in the USA. Racism doesn’t equal white privilege. Using single racism cases to “prove” white privilege exists in the USA is like using single child abuse cases to “prove” oppression on children exists in the USA.

“I’m here to show you what your White Privilege is.”

I can show you what white privilege is.

“White privilege (or white skin privilege) is a term for societal privileges that benefit people identified as white in some countries, beyond what is commonly experienced by non-white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstances.”

Is anyone tolerating discrimination? No. There are no discrimination laws in your society, everyone are treated equally, no matter with the skin color. Do you have non-white politicians? Yes. You even had one as a president. Can black folks be rich? Yes. There are for example 29 black rich celebrities in US we all love and know. And do you know what’s funny? Asian people are getting richer and richer in America, they have highest study rankings and they have the best possibilities to get a job. Yes, even whites are losers compared to them. Why don’t you invent a new word and call it “Asian privilege?”

“1. White Privilege is being able to move into a new neighborhood and being fairly sure that your neighbors will be pleasant to you and treat you with respect.”

That’s called been able to move where ever you want and get good treatment, and it has nothing to do with white privilege. Except in some African countries, where white-only cities and discrimination laws are still common. Why don’t you go there to complain about white privilege? Oh, I forgot. You’re an SJW. Their lives don’t matter, because they don’t concern around you and your first world problems. My mistake! ;P

“2. White Privilege is being able to watch a movie, read a book and open the front page of a newspaper and see yourself and your race widely represented and spoken for.”

Show me one recent movie or book where white race is praised, and other races are mocked. And praising a one single person doesn’t equal praising a whole race. Donald Trump gets lots of negative criticizing for being an asshole and he’s white.

“3. White Privilege is being able to seek legal, financial and medical help without having your race work against you.”

That’s corruption, not white privilege. Just like money, corruption knows no skin color. There are still places where gays aren’t allowed to donate blood, because people still believe in that ridiculous AIDS myth. And in the “Bible belt”, Atheists aren’t allowed to hold the office. In Oklahoma, they can’t even get married. And there are much more Atheists can’t do, because they’re Atheists. Majority of gays and Atheists are, surprise surprise, white. Where’s that white privilege you’re talking about now?

“4. White Privilege is living in a world where you are taught that people with your skin tone hold the standard for beauty.”

No. They. Don’t. Every country has their own beauty standards and they change according to the culture, and they have nothing to do with skin color.

- In Ehtiopia’s Karo tribe, women create scars to their bodies, because body scars are considered beautiful, and they help you to get a husband.

- In Kenia’s Masai tribe, long eardrops and shaved heads are attractive.

- In Burma and Thaiwan, long, giraffe-like necks are an ultimate sign of beauty.

- In China, Thailand and Japan, being pale as a porcelain doll is considered beautiful. In Japan, women avoid the sun, while in China and Thailand; women are whitening their skin with skin-care products. Whitening skin was a thing before whites even came there.

- Maoris in New Zealand, take face tattoos.

- In Mauritania, being overweight is beautiful. That what SJWs like you love. My God, that’s cultural appropriation! Majority of overweight SJWs are white, so they have to go lose weight quickly!

- In Iran, surgical bandages are the most beautiful thing ever. It’s a sign of their social status and their path on the route to beauty.

- In India, women decorate their skins with beautiful paintings for festivals and celebrations.

- In Japan, stick straight hair has always been a norm and a sign of beauty. Again, noting to do with white people.

If white skin tone holds the standard for beauty, these beauty standards I mentioned wouldn’t exist.

“5. White Privilege is never being told to, “get over slavery”.”

Because white slavery is never talked about in school. Believe me, if it was, we would get a comment like “Our enslavement was worse than yours, get over it.” White Brittish sailors were kidnapped and sold as slaves in Africa. White women have been sold to Arab sultans. Germanians and Gallians were enslaved by Romans. Europeans ran serfdom. And the term “slave” originated from Slavic language, because majority of the slaves were white. Read history.

“6. White Privilege is having the prevalence and importance of the English language and finding amusement in ridiculing people of colour/immigrants for their accents and their difficulty in speaking a language that is not their native tongue.”

English is important language, because it’s an international communication language. Whenever you’re white or not, you must to study it. And if you move to country where people speak different language (France, Turkey, China), of course you study their native tongue. I’m a Finn, which means my native tongue is Finnish. But I still have to study both English and Swedish, which aren’t my native tongues, because English is important and Swedish is compulsory.

“7. White Privilege is arrogantly believing that reverse racism actually exists.”

Reverse racism isn’t a real term. It’s just racism. And yes, racism on white people actually exists.

Are you denying how Brits referenced Irish as “white niggers” or how they can’t go to heaven because of their hair color? Or that how Finns were savages in pioneers’ eyes just like Native Americans? Are you saying white Romanians aren’t Romanians? Or Albert Einstein and Anne Frank weren’t Jews, because they’re white? Or Sami are less important, because they’re white? History has lots of examples of anti-white racism. In American universities, white people’s rights are limited because of their skin color. How that’s not racist? And what about BLM? They hold lots of anti-white ideals, shout anti-white slogans like “Hunting season on whitey” and have even committed crimes for them. Just go to YouTube or any other sites you know and see what bad things they have done. And Asia has the most racist people; they don’t allow non-Asian immigration at all.

You are racist for denying existence of racism on white people and saying only whites can be racist.

“8. White Privilege is being able to stay ignorant to the fact that racial slurs are part of a systematic dehumanization of entire groups of people who are and have historically been subjugated and hated just for being alive.”

More like vice versa: You can say “cracker” without being labeled as a racist. But if we say “nigger”, we are racist, even though we wouldn’t be.

8 mile, albino, blue-eyed devil, cracker, dog-fucker, egg, flour bag, gringo, haole, ivory, Johnny Red, lobster, maggot, nigger magnet, ofay, pig-fucker, redneck, serial killer, tornado bate, umlungu, vamp, white trash, yogurt and zeeb.

Guess what these are? Racial slurs against white people. And that’s not even all of them. You can view the whole list in rsbd.com.

“9. White Privilege is not having your name turned into an easier-to-say Anglo-Saxon name.”

My name isn’t Anglo-Saxon, it’s Finnish. Nordics also had to adopt Anglo-Saxon names to use when they were baptized to Christianity, which originates from THE MIDDLE EAST, not Europe. You’re not that special.

“10. White Privilege is being able to fight racism one day, then ignore it the next.”

If you oppose racism, you always oppose racism. If you support racism, you always support racism. Political side isn’t a piece of cloth you change every day. It’s on your side for the rest of your life.

“11. White privilege is having your words and actions attributed to you as an individual, rather than have them reflect members of your race.”

Actually yes. People can referenced for saying “that white person” or “that black person”, and there’s nothing wrong with that. People do that, because they want everyone to know who they are talking about.

12. White Privilege is being able to talk about racism without appearing self-serving.

I don’t understand. How is a black girl who’s taking about her misery self-serving? That doesn’t make any sense.

“13. White Privilege is being able to be articulate and well-spoken without people being surprised.”

Show me one case where non-white person surprised everyone for being intelligent, because I have never seen a reaction like that in my whole life.

“14. White Privilege is being pulled over or taken aside and knowing that you are not being singled out because of your race/colour.”

Morgan Freeman is known as his own person, and he’s black. People love him, because he’s wise and knows what he’s talking about. They don’t give a shit about his skin color.

“15. White Privilege is not having to teach your children to be aware of systematic racism for their own protection.”

My God, don’t make me laugh! Everyone can be racist towards everyone, that’s how human race works. Learn the definition of racism and stop being so biased. And if you’re afraid to go out, study self-defense or move to safer place.

“16. White Privilege is not having to acknowledge the fact that we live in a system that treat people of colour unfairly politically, socially and economically and choosing, instead, to believe that people of colour are inherently less capable.”

We acknowledge that as well. How do you think there are white people in anti-racist organizations, if they deny the existence of racism?

“17. White Privilege is not having your people and their culture appropriated, romanticized or eroticized for the gain and pleasure of other white people.”

Firstly, we’re not claiming we own dream catchers, sombreros or kimonos. It’s not cultural appropriation. It’s cultural appreciation. You’re confusing us with Hitler.

Secondly, Kim Jong-un claims he invented hamburgers and sauna to spread the propaganda about that how great he is. These two are from white cultures.

Thirdly,

- Medieval Age is romanticized all the time.

- There are overly sexualized Viking and Scottish outfits.

- German Oktoberfest leads tourists all around the world.

- Sylvanian Families toys romanticize 50s’ England.

- Italian pizza has become majority’s favorite food.

- Greek cheese, olives and wines have lost of popularity everywhere.

- Finnish “Ievan Polkka” and Swedish “Carameldansen” are hits in Japan.

All these examples are from white cultures. This should also be cultural appropriation, according to your logic. Over 90 % of everyday stuff we do is cultural appreciation. Don’t oppose cultural appreciation if you support multiculturalism, hypocrite.

“18. White Privilege is being able to ignore the consequences of race.”

That’s simply called being racist, not having white privilege.

I know what white people have done in the past, and as a white person, I’m sorry about it. But every race in the world history has done exactly the same thing, even to people of their own color. This doesn’t give you any privilege to be racist today’s generation because of that what their ancestors did.

As a Finn, I understand what your ancestors have faced. Finns have been oppressed by Swedes and Russians in their history. And also kidnapped elsewhere to slavery.

I don’t hate modern generation of Swedes and Russians, or descendants of other oppressors, because it’s not their fault what happened. Without them, Finland wouldn’t be what it’s today. I have forgiven that, because it’s in the past. You should do the same.

Sorry hun. With your claims you just proved me white privilege doesn’t exist. That text was illogical, ignorant, arrogant and annoying, and it was difficult to take seriously. My final rank is 0/5.

Poverty rate (change percents into numbers): https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?dataView=undefined&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Other%22,%22sort%22:%22desc%22%7D

History of Ireland: http://www.libraryireland.com/HistoryIreland/Title.php

History of Finland: http://motherearthtravel.com/history/finland/index.htm

History of Poland: http://www.intopoland.com/poland-info/history-of-poland.html

Finndians: https://brucemineincident.wordpress.com/related-places-of-interest-2/finndians/

Sami people: https://intercontinentalcry.org/new-finnish-forestry-act-could-mean-the-end-of-sami-reindeer-herding/

Barbary slave trade: https://face2faceafrica.com/article/the-shocking-history-of-enslavement-of-1-5-million-white-europeans-in-north-africa-in-the-16th-century

Ottoman Empire: https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/ottomanempire_1.shtml

Mongol Empire: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-13e0517e00721e2bcff06236f46edc75

Armenian Genocide: https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/armenian-genocide

Political oppression in Iran (as far as I know some Iranians have white skin): https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/iran

Nazis and Jewish Holocaust: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008193

Anti-Semitism: https://www.britannica.com/topic/anti-Semitism

German culture: https://www.livescience.com/44007-german-culture.html

French culture: https://www.livescience.com/39149-french-culture.html

Russian culture: https://www.livescience.com/44154-russian-culture.html

Commercial of Japanese toys: https://image.rakuten.co.jp/ribbon-m/cabinet/epoch/sylvanian/dh-05_01.jpg

Sign which says “No Spanish or Mexicans allowed”, and as far as I know, Spanish people are white. http://www.texasstandard.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/03.Photo_No_Mexicans_Allowed1.jpg

Video about enslaving Slavics (Note: It’s a two-parter): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IILgM74iYZQ

Yes, racism against white people exists in South Africa. I don’t play favorites here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0GReiZyKc

McDonald’s in the Middle East: https://delhi4cats.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/saudi-queu.jpg

Asian little girl eating pizza: https://d3jkudlc7u70kh.cloudfront.net/children-eating-pizza.jpg

Black kids celebrating St. Patrick’s Day: http://annandamy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/St.PatsParade_kids.jpeg

POC woman in Viking outfit: https://images.halloweencostumes.com/products/22657/1-1/womens-forest-princess-costume.jpg

Ievan Polka from 1937: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myzO3eZh22E

Ievan Polka from 1952: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8fW2n_ma9Y

Original Caramelldansen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBOWWbCf-KU

That’s all, folks.

#white priveledge #cultural marxism #cultural appropriation #anti sjw #anti pc #sjws are cancer #sjw cringe #sjw logic #sjw stupidity

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i-am-gaylocked · 7 years

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You know what makes me really pissed right now?

On platforms other than tumblr there are loads of people joking about how the fandom is going crazy now because The Kiss™ didn’t happen.

NO.

Fuck you. That’s not why we’re angry.

Of course a kiss would have been awesome, but personally I never believed it to happen anyway, and I would have even lived happily ever after with less Johnlock scenes than we got in the end, even though I ship them like crazy - if only the rest of the plot would have made some sort of sense.

You wanna know what’s bothering me about the (supposedly) final problem?

1. Moriarty was hyped up as the ultimate villain for three seasons and frankly, almost everyone loved him. The creators themselves made such a big fuss about him - only to have him replaced by another supervillain out of nowhere. Moriarty was the ultimate mystery and his reveal was basically “actually he’s just a maniac sidekick executing Eurus’ plans who was kinda bored with living anyway so he killed himself just for the fun of it”. I know they made it hard for themselves to have a truly mind-blowing plot twist with Moriarty since they’ve been stirring his story up for more than two years and expectations were high, but this was anticlimactic and disappointing on a new level.

2. I don’t know much about storytelling, but I do sense that this was bad. For the last three seasons, there have always been subtle and not-so-subtle hints as towards what is going to happen next. Everything was connected and logical to follow and quite frankly, this unique way of building up a plot was one of the things that made me fall in love with this show. Compared to what we have experienced in former episodes, this whole fourth season was utter bullshit. Sure, the basic storyline was connected with the other seasons, but only superficially; most of the “"plot twists”“ happened out of nowhere and made the whole series feel very estranged all of a sudden. E.g., in TRF Moriarty said “Have you worked out what it is yet? The final problem? I did tell you… But did you listen?” - Typical Mofftiss style would have been that some very inconspicious Moriarty line somehow hinted at him pairing up with Sherlock’s unknown sister to “play a game” or destroy Sherlock or seek revenge or whatever. But nothing, NOTHING prepared us for this, although this subtle preparation was what made the show so amazing, which is why this season feels like total nonsense.

3. Eurus’ hyper intelligence was over the top. At the beginning, Sherlock was introduced to us as the ultimate mastermind and we all admired his genius. Then Moriarty entered with a similar, though very psychotic level of genius and we were like “ah, two masterminds battling each other, that’s cool”. Then it turned out that Mycroft is actually even smarter and quicker than Sherlock and everyone was like “well… He’s the older brother, there’s rivalry, he’s gotta feel superior in some way, that’s fine, still kinda fun” and it showed us the borders of Sherlock’s intelligence and made him appear more human, all fine and good. I also get that Eurus kind of reflected that even Mycroft is not the all-knowing, stone-faced, flawless, mature older brother and the ultimate version of smart. But continuously adding more characters to the “flawed mastermind” stack where every new one outsmarts the others feels very cheap and uninnovative. First Moriarty was said to be one of those minds that happens once every few centuries, then Mycroft supposedly straight up Fucked Him Over™ (although he actually didn’t in the end, i know), and then there’s suddenly Eurus out of nowhere and wait she’s even smarter than the rest of them?? Sorry sirs, I’m not buying this.

4. In S3, everything was hinting at Mary having some sort of connection with Moriarty (and we still don’t know how she got into Magnussen’s office that easily because I don’t think she proposed to Janine as well). When Mary’s A.G.R.A background was revealed, I thought it was kinda fucky and far-fetched; I’ve been waiting for the big Mary reveal in TFP. Instead, her conflict apparently counted as solved in T6T and she was turned into a lovable goofball who just so happens to posthumously send old DVD recordings of herself over to Baker Street to whisper sweet nothings to both John an Sherlock so that everyone forgets that she shot Sherlock with the intention to kill him, then drugged him again and overall just manipulated John an Sherlock all the time? Mary is a great, twisted character and I do believe that she’s able to feel love for both boys, but that ending was not her. They were trying to find poetic final words and they didn’t have anyone to give them to but the ex-assassin who murdered her husband’s best friend and lied and lied to her oh-so-beloved John? I don’t think so fuckers.

5. Normally, at the end of a movie (/episode) the viewer should be able to distinguish between such things as imagined/hallucinated locations, events and conversations and what happened in the ‘real world’ of that world. Now, this might have something to do with the fact that English isn’t my first language, but after TFP I’m still a bit clueless about how some scenes were connected and what was actually happening and what wasn’t. (I never had problems like that during the old episodes though, including TAB, which was also really fucky and inception-y.)

6. The Molly scene was hurtful as fuck, and not in a movie-typical, good way. There’s a grown woman who just can’t and can’t get over her crush: Mofftiss’ level of extending this idea always appeared a bit forced to me anyway, but that is neither here nor there now. This scene was emotional abuse, heartbreaking and humiliating and most of all, it was so, so useless. Wow, Sherlock was a dick to Molly once again and this time it broke her completely. This doesn’t help us understand Sherlock’s troubled mind any further nor does it advance the plot in any way, it just crashes another character straight into a brick wall because why the fuck not. (Loo did a great job in this scene tho, probz for that.)

7. I’m still not over how fucking cheap Eurus’ little horror game was. “Let’s lock a few people in one room and make them shoot each other, nonono listen to me this has never been done before because in our show the villain and his victims are related isn’t this awesome?” Wow yeah, truly groundbreaking. What a witty, unique idea. The only good thing about this was that Sian truly was great at pulling of four different roles in a very convincing fashion, credit where credit is due.

8. You don’t say stuff like “It’s making a funny face… I think I’ll put a hole in it” and then reveal that the so-called hole was nothing but a tranquilizer, seriously, where’s the classic Mofftiss genius style in that?

9. The plot and the plot twists of this episode (and the whole season 4 for that matter) were lazy and mainstream compared to BBC Sherlock’s usual standards. I used to love this series for its many-layered stories and characters, but here we have classic Hollywood horror and classic Hollywood psycho villain well beyond any boundaries of normality. Of course I’m not opposed to this kind of stories, but it’s common, you can find stuff like that everywhere. BBC Sherlock used to have a really special, unique way of storytelling and most of it got killed for the sake of cheap ass mistery overload and mainstream horror games.

10. Personally, I can begrudgingly accept the ending that we got, aka “open for interpretation”. If you still want to ignore the gayness that is screaming you in the face, go ahead and call it bro!parentlock, I don’t care. But what I do care about is the line “It doesn’t matter who you are”. I believe that it was never meant to be offensive or hurtful, but this version of Sherlock was introduced to us as gay (or bi or pan or whatever, but at least in some way sexually interested in the same sex). If Mofftiss were too scared to actually pull through with it or simply didn’t want to, that’s fine, I understand. But then don’t just go ahead and tell us that it doesn’t matter anyway. Because it does matter. I feel like these men fail to grasp the power they have over us and therefore didn’t see how hurtful this line was, but it did hurt people. Lots of people. Many of us had actual mental breakdowns because of this line. I know it was never meant to mean that much (or it wasn’t meant to be understood differently), but if you have a general understanding of the concept of fandom (Mofftiss sure have it), then you usually understand that there are sensitive topics that can be triggering and should be expressed with caution.

11. Where’s the big Mycroft reveal? All these adressings towards his physical health. How the hell were they implying that he fucked up in dealing with his psychotic sister?

12. I still don’t get the point of Irene if they were neither letting them meet again nor cutting her out permanently. She’s been a recurring thought of Sherlock since ASIB, but in TFP it was just like “Nah it’s not her she’s married idgaf about her anymore anyway bye” Like?? Dramatic flow? is where exactly here??

13. We still don’t know how Sherlock survived the fall. Just sayin’.

14. Yeah john totally cut his metal chains that forced him onto the bottom of the well with a fucking rope and he didn’t even need help for that matter he just pulled himself out of the water by his own hair Munchhausen style I THINK THE FUCK NOT FOLKS

15. No one will ever convince me that they actually jumped out of an upstairs window to escape an explosion and got away without a single scratch. That’s just bullshit.

16. An umbrella that’s also a sword that’s also a gun that’s also not functioning? Yeah, kinda funny, but also really stupid and not at all up to the standards of the usual witty humour of BBC Sherlock.

17. “Sherlock’s in love but who with?” in combination with the “i love you” scene were used to bait us all to start another war between straight!Sherlock and gay!Sherlock supporters in order to make sure as many people as possible would turn in, but the reveal behind this line was utterly disappointing. This was a humiliating and just not cool™ move.

18. They’re not seriously trying to tell us that Eurus, while having an extreme mental and emotional breakdown, built a fake cell in the garden of her old childhood house because Drama™?

19. General conclusion: This whole story of everything being connected and leading back to Moriarty and Sherlock’s childhood just deflated like a big gay balloon full of anticipation. They’ve been talking about this story forever, but the great opportunities it offered were not only ignored, but stuffed into a fucking meat grinder and mashed up into cheap boring mainstream moviemaking.

Also, I still think everything about this season is shady as fuck and I don’t accept a word of it and from now on I’m just gonna mark it down as another victim of 2016. Thank and bye

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worldofsurvivortibet-blog · 7 years

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EPISODE 1 (Part 2) - “I'll be sharpening my knife just in case” - Eddie

SEB

I'll be happy if I never have to see another fucking Robot Unicorn for the rest of my life...

NICHOLAS

Hey guys! So I am going to send it here so it's easier, but I already LOVE my tribe! Everyone is so sweet and easy to talk to (something that isn't always the case in these games). I am really trying to be super active and friendly and supportive towards people so that they feel like they should keep me around,,,, and i think it's working well since I got added to that fun alliance! I'm working hard for this reward challenge so I can prove my worth to all of these people on my tribe! That's about it for now! xoxoxoxo Nicholas

AMANDA

OK i have found that i hate this unicorn game. Like HATE IT. I am so over it. everyone seems cool so far. there is some people that i am already kind of nervous about because they just seem like they are already trying to play games and stuff. IDK but they just have me on edge but oh well. I think i am going to try to become close with them but idk i don't really want to be close with hem bc i don't trust them.

JARED

Honestly I am PISSED I was not put with Daniella or Trysten, and I’m stuck with the damn furry! But this will not bring me down, I am here to WIN and I will do whatever it takes to do that. Right now my goal is to just be social and try my best to talk to everyone, because god knows I do not want to be the first one voted out!

CHRISSA

we won that reward which is cool there's a reason i like that game, I hope we win immunity too so nervous still. I am hoping i am safe if we don't win either though. Voting if we had to, would be so hard.

ELENA

I am so happy that we won reward! I am a little bit confused about what exactly they are able to do at "the summit" but hopefully Dani and Darian will share with us when they get back! So far as tribe relations go, I haven't had a chance to speak with everyone yet, but I have made a couple of friends it seems in Seb and Darian. I hope to speak with everyone at least once before Immunity challenge is over.

DANI

I WANTED THAT GODDAMN IDOL CLUE! ME! I did! But my freaking Papa Jabari or whatever that dish was called didn't have jack SHIT! Grrrr.... I Didnt even eat that shit it tasted like acc trash! So I'm starving and now I'm stuck on a fucking mountain peak with a furry, someone who plays the victim all the time, a photographer piece of shit who I'm targeting, and a few other assclowns I haven't had the privilege of conversing with. GET ME OUT OF HERE NOW!

MATT

My lord Seamus got angry over something I called toast. I need to do that more *eyes emoji*

CHRISSA

flag challenges are ugly but I am here for it and the summit twist is cool that's all

JARED

Honestly, I’m mad. I wanted to go to the summit because I wanted to talk to Daniella… *starts sobbing* I just feel so ALONE! It’s not fair….

TRYSTEN

I'm not going to lie. I feel defeated a little. I just feel like the weakest link, and I'm not going to be surprised if they vote me out.

KENDALL

Okay I just found out newlyf's name, it's Ally. I was right the first time, which is weird because I am usually never right at all. So chances are we are in the Matrix, sorry to shatter your fragile reality :/. Now on to more substantial things: 1. The Reward Challenge Yeah fuck that challenge man. I'm not going to lie, for the first ten minutes it was sort of fun. I like addicting things and the music was pretty good but everything went down hill and it went down hill fast. I still have the bloody song stuck in my head. :( 2. Summit Interesting concept and I like the idea of having an excuse for not being as social. Unfortunately I couldn't jump at the opportunity because that would be stupid. It would put a target on my back if I did, as the possibility of me having an idol would increase. Plus the odds of someone from my group going was very high considering we make up 4/7. And low and behold I was right. Two of the people I trust the most went to the Summit and I got to keep my hands clean. I guess this also means that the idol thing was fake which leads me to say, really guys, really? I stressed out about this. 3. The Immunity Challenge Flag making challenge, I volunteered because nobody else knew how to use photoshop and I am really good at drawing. I'm no Picasso (early Picasso, not late Picasso, I could do that shit) but I think it will work. Not to mention I hate relying on other people because people are gross and that I need to prove myself of some use. If I'm not careful, they'll catch on that I am virtually worthless in most scenarios. Like I wouldn't even be good bait for the wild animals, I taste too much like arsenic. Anyway that's all folks, I'll be back with more scheming, paranoid ramblings and zombies. Well, maybe not those first two.

DARIAN

SHIT HIT THE FAN kinda. I got an idol on my first try today. But it wasn't for my tribe... I know..Im sooooo lucky that I find someone else idol. So I was than told that I had 45 min to decide who I was going to give it to. Instantly I had two ideas in my head Keyonjay or Ally. Keyonjay- He clearly is decent in challenges and would be a string partner to attempt to align myself with. He has also agreed that if he finds my idol that he will give it to me. So theres a win win there for me.. maybe Ally- She did really bad in the first challenge and that honestly puts a huge target on her back because she is the easy vote. The team stays strong and no one gets butt hurt. But if she has the idol she can make a move and take out a big player EARLY... Like Keyonjay hahaha. After talking it out with keyonjay and getting his opinions and than a little self reflection I decided to give Keyonjay the idol in hopes that he could be the one to find my idol and maybe even become a strong alliance member!! Ahhhh so stressed!!!!

KEYONJAY

Okay so a couple things. I got the best score on the first challenge out of pure luck. Like just somehow I literally got to like 55k on level two when the previous times i played i couldn't get over 10k on all three levels. Unfortunately we still didn't win which fucking sucks because I didn't wanna go to the goddamn summit at all, but the other tribe chose me because i got the best score apparently. Didn't really wanna be away from my tribe for anything to change with my alliances, and really didn't wanna be put in a position that complicates my game. Ofc immediately that changes because Darian just gave me an idol. like dsfsdsf wtf. I just met the kid. It's really nice though and obviously from my last game I see that you can't abuse people's kindness like that so I'm not gonna use it against him or anything or brag and call him dumb (I'm sorry Mitchy D:) but this definitely complicates things because if I had an idol, I'd rather be the only person that knows about it and now I have to contend with the fact that this idol is basically mine AND Darian's and I have to use it in a way that benefits both of us or risk a pissed off juror. God. DONT GIVE ME IDOLS! I DONT WANT THEM! THEY COMPLICATE THINGS! He wants me to use it on Ally if my tribe loses the first immunity, but hopefully I can protect her and make that not happen regardless, or we can win, which I doubt since it's a flag challenge and I fucking suck at these.

ACE

Alright we got 2nd on the challenge which is decent. And then the next chall is a flag making competition and considering Kendall and Jared know of my abilities hopefully they can leave it up to me. I'm gonna make a wicked gif. Anyways the Summit twist is kinda cool, I got food that gave me an idol clue but it at least told me where NOT to look. I'm probably gonna stick to mountainside since random.org told me to. The Summit is Me and Keyonjay, Matt, Darian, Dani, and Johnny. I already know Dani and Matt, Darian talked with me a bit and they seem alright. They use phone emojis a lot and Im not use to seein those on my computer so its weird a bittttt! Johnny isn't online yet so idk about them just yet. Before I left Jared wanted me to talk to Keyonjay about making an alliance with them. When I heard keyonjay would be at Summit I decided to volunteer myself so I could get the question in. Keyonjay said they were ok with Jared and wanted him to join the alliance with Kendall and Nicholas... uhh no I think we just meant something between us 3 we don't need that big of an alliance even though our tribe is amazing and we'll probably barely lose anybody =') Also Kendall and I sorta already settled Jared as our possible first tribe boot so that'd just make things a bit harder maybe? WHo's even left? Ally and Amanda... that's it rofl also I don't think Ally is Mega anymore lol delete it

JOHNNY

Since joining the game, I’ve found it really difficult to legitimately communicate with people. I can’t help but think a lot of these people are dweebs, who just sit behind the computer all day blogging on tumblr and obsessing over Survivor games online I’m sure, and there’s no way I can compete with no lifes who do nothing but scratch their ballsacks all day. Any who, I do kinda know Dani, who is in the Summit with me right now, and i recognize Jared from a few other games I’ve played, but I’ve yet to approach him yet about the game, but I’m glad I have that in my back pocket. I’ve really gotta start forming some bonds with people, because the conversations I’m having with most of these people are not strong, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these try hard motherfuckers already have a majority alliance, but all I can do is contribute in challenges and hope for the best since my social game isn’t going to be too strong this early on. I’ve made a bond with Crimson on my team because we have a mutual friend, so hopefully that can take me a long way for now. My plan is to just bond with Matt since he’s the only one from my tribe I can talk to, maybe strike a deal, let him think he can do anything with me in this game, when tbh I’ll probably slit his neck soon enough anyways

tbh I get the very scary feeling that a lot of people know each other in this game, and I honestly don’t have anyone in this game that I can truly rely on like some do, and I’m never going to know who is friends with who. Now I know what it feels like to kinda be a newb in the games I play when I just target the people I don’t know… Guess I’m getting a taste of my own medicine here

DANI

Darian is getting on my nerves so badly. Like ugh, shut up for like two seconds nobody cares if you're a photographer.

So Darian's dumbass comes up to me saying Carson/Julia have an idol in the game. Do I believe him? Yeah. Do I not wanna believe him? Yeah... But that's just how the game works. Oh how I wish I had that idol... *licks lips* Oh the things I would do to it... Grrr....

CARSON

Ok so I'm pretty sure Darian just exposed that he has the idol by trying to give me a fake clue. On 1/4/17, at 7:23 PM, Darian Goggin wrote: > I got a clue to an idol On 1/4/17, at 7:23 PM, Darian Goggin wrote: > It wasn't much but it's something On 1/4/17, at 7:23 PM, Carson (albania host) wrote: > omg On 1/4/17, at 7:23 PM, Darian Goggin wrote: > Don't search the Forrest On 1/4/17, at 7:23 PM, Darian Goggin wrote: > Or the mountainside On 1/4/17, at 7:27 PM, Carson (albania host) wrote: > I guess that can be kind of helpful lol So apparently you get clues to the idol at the Summit. Hell, there could even be an idol at the Summit. But regardless he got a clue... but he should have quoted it if it was real. Plus I went to the mountainside already and got THIS: On 1/3/17, at 9:24 PM, carson (tibet host) wrote: > You come to the spot where an idol looks to have been hidden, but there's nothing here! https://media.tenor.co/images/fb3f2d1e814190100a4ae401b1660d5b/tenor.gif He told me not to go to the mountainside because he already went there and got it and he didn't want me to find out its gone! And I guess its safe to say he's working with Dani now, who I also wanted to work with. I would go to her about it, but idk if she'd leak to Darian that I'm onto him. Right now, I'm just going to lay low with this until I need to use it. It sounds to me like Dani, Seb and Elena already know each other, and if Darian goes with them, they'll have majority. I wanted to work with Julia (and by extension Chrissa), but idk if it'll work out. Once again, I don't want to pry at all because no one really has a target yet. There isn't an easy first boot, so one slip up could cost me the game. OK THE PLOT JUST THICKENED Apparently, the Namtso idol is gone... which means all the tribes are searching the same area. So maybe Darian doesn't have it... but he could be protecting someone that does. I mean he's probably in cahoots with the ppl at the summit, And we can find the other tribe's idols. I'm so fucking shook.

JULIA RAE

ok so right now i dont know what im doing bc i dont really play survivor ,,, but i think im doing alright. i talked to everyone and i rly like carson and darian but that just my opinion! also darian told me that he'd be willing to get rid of seb if it came down to it ,,,, which is ok with me idk that dude and he kinda weird ngl! hopefully we win immunity bc if we dont idk what to do!! hehe love survivor!!

TRYSTEN

Holy Shit! I fucking did not expect us to get first, but thank yoouuu Johnny! *blows a kiss to the camera* moi!

CHRISSA

I am so glad we are not going to tribal, fuck the people who said those things lol just kidding it's their opinion honestly we just don't know who will judge and what they will like. it sucks.

DANI

I feel good I feel nice I've never felt so Satisfied I'm in love I'm alive Intoxicated Flying high It feels like a dream When you touch me tenderly I don't know if it's real But I like the way I feel Inside

DARIAN

Yasss we won immunity! No tribal! Which is great because no one really is on the outs rn so no one can really be an easy vote and that's scary! But I don't have to worry about that so yay!

KEYONJAY

So we lost the first immunity challenge and this really sucks, but luckily I'm in the majority alliance and then we kinda have Jared as an extra number even though he's not really IN the alliance or the alliance chat. I still have my idol that nobody knows about so I could make some kind of move if I wanted. Darian wanted me to use it to "take out a power-player" but I'm like, not gonna do that. It's WAY too early to make a big move like that and it would be completely illogical and senseless. It's better to just go with the numbers right now and not rock the boat. Plus I don't really see anyone on our tribe as a power-player necessarily. Kendall is definitely the leader of our alliance but I wanted it that way so I can continue flying UTR and focus on my social game. Now to see who will be the first to go from our tribe. :( Sucks because I really like everybody.

MATT

Well damn. Johnny is actually the MVP for this one. We can literally just relax and pretend like we give a shit about who's leaving only because it's none of us lmao.

ACE

I'm sad we lost, I like everybody on this tribe. I don't feel like bringing Jared down just yet, I brought up that Ally had the lowest score on the Reward challenge so we could possibly just go with her. Everyone in the Mofos alliance said they wanna keep me and Kendall for doing good work in the challenge but we'll see about that. I think I'm good with mostly everybody except for Amanda and Ally. I just spoke to Amanda and she said she'll vote Ally bc they haven't spoken at allll. Amanda doesn't seem to be in any alliance whatsoever. Kendall is a strong leader in the Mofos and I like that she's more leading than I am even tho I'm the one who suggested Ally. Hopefully that'll keep the target more on her than me later on in the game. Kendall just told me Keyonjay gave her an idol clue and it's the same one I got. So that didn't help any. I guess I gotta continue filling up that mountainside grid.

ELENA

I am so happy that we aren't going to Tribal Council because I really like everyone on our tribe right now! It will be sad if we lose any time soon because they are all just very nice and interesting people. I am so greatful for Carson for doing the most of the work on the flag, I do wish he had somehow incorporated the Yaks since I did the research on Tibet, it felt like my idea was ignored a little bit. But what matters the most is that it was a very good outcome! I can't wait for the next challenge!!

KENDALL

Welp, I might have fucked myself. Why did I volunteer? Why did I think that combining two mediums is a good idea? Dear lord, what have I done? Well anyway, here's a quick recap: Ace and Keyonjay went to the summit and when they came back Keyonjay told me he had an idol clue. He gave it to me because he really didn't want an idol, apparently they are more trouble than there worth. Ace didn't tell me anything about the summit and only talked about making the flag. She only brought it up when I revealed my idol clue. This proves to me that my loyalties should lie more with Keyonjay than Ace. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway after we lost the challenge I typed in the alliance chat "well at least we know it's either me or Ace". I meant it as a joke but they freaked out and thought I was pulling a Zane. I managed to clear up the misconception but I am still not sure if they still doubt me. In order to repair some sort of relationship with her, I showed Ace the idol clue which was the same clue she got. And now I'm nervous maybe she will show receipts of the conversation to Keyonjay and shift the target on to me. It wouldn't be too difficult, I'm a bit of an unusual person to talk to and I mostly hogged the challenge that we failed. Though chances are I'm being irrational so I'm not going to risk it. If I do start panicking and try to get my alliance mates out, I'll end up putting the target on my back that I've been trying to avoid. God I hate feeling fear, it's very gross. Well, all feelings are gross... it's just this one is inconveniencing me the most currently.

#wostibet #confessionals

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