#and hes also YOUNG hes in his very early 20s. so he gets dismissed for his age a lot and he HATES IT

[aro-ortega]

cal and astarion do NOT get along. it started with astarion having a very dismissive attitude about cal where cal got the feeling that astarion was mocking him / dismissive of his abilities / telling him along the lines to "run along now, little boy" and cal absolutely hates these things so it already soured his opinion if astarion. and then astarion tried to bite him in the night, and cal reeaaaallly didnt like that astarion is lucky that he wasnt killed/sent away. but the funniest part of all this for me is when they were dealing with the flesh book; astarion wasnt there when they found it, but he was there when they acquired the stone to open it. and he wants it sooo bad, but cal wanted it real bad too, hes a sorceror he wants get better at magic / understanding it / have more magic/power at his disposal. so he refuses to give astarion the book and reads it for himself. he acquires the ability to cast speak with dead once/long rest as a ritual and, smug, he gives astarion the amulet of lost voices as a consolation prize since he doesnt need a mere trinket to speak with the dead any longer

#astarion is FUMING #cal is a sorceror and very OBVIOUSLY a sorceror with his pink hair and purple eyes #so hes used to people dismissing his abilities to control his magic and he HATES IT #hes also an urchin and has like No One bc people avoid him bc hes so obviously a sorceror and his mom died when he was like 5/6 and #and his human father is an asshole who never gave him or his mom the time of day #and hes also YOUNG hes in his very early 20s. so he gets dismissed for his age a lot and he HATES IT #yes hes young but hes experienced hes been on his own since he was 6 you dont know him stop dismissing him !!! #so yeah he doesnt like astarion. hes also mad at lae'zel for similar reasons rn but its not as bad as what he feels for astarion #wyll is 100% his favourite rn but gale recently complimented him and his talents/abilities so. gale is okay #hes not sure how he feels about shadowheart bc she seems to swing between dismissive and thankful to have him as an ally so. theyre fine #(they havent gotten karlach yet) #cal #bg3 #op

[snickerdoodlles]

I was gonna ask you for ☕☕☕ on Kim characterisations but I know that could put you at risk of assassination 💀 so free choice! Any ☕ on anything you need to get off your chest - I love u

😂 it is a choose violence game, let's play with fire 🔥 three Kim characterizations i don't much care for:

writing Kim as really old

like. hmmmm. i feel like a lot of fic out there is just really bad at characterizing young 20 yos, there are a lot of stories that write Kim's vibes like he's 38 yo or something. it's. bizarre. 21/22 yo is still so young. there's still so much uncertainty at that age and so much self-discovery to come. i've complained about this before so i don't want to just rehash that but. yeesh. some people really kinda suck at writing "kid in college" aged characters.

not letting Kim be playful

honestly, this one kinda follows on the previous point? there's a very annoying trend of writing ~older~ characters as only ever very serious. and like, aside from the irritation at the way people are really bad at early 20s vibes, people never outgrow playfulness. in canon, i'm pointing to Porsche trapping Kinn under the sheets and farting or them huffing their morning breaths in each other's faces (i love u canon ❤). but people still do ridiculous shit at 40/50/60/70/80/ALL THE AGES too. 40yo sisters who greet each other by punching the other in the boob. the 60yo neighbor who tells me my shoelaces are untied every time he sees me in sandals. the 50yo uncle who flicks popcorn in the mouths of anyone who falls asleep during movie night. there's no age limit to this sort of thing!

but while some of the ultra seriousness seems to be a weird age thing, it's like people also missed that Kim is playful? he's very intense when he's in mafia business mode and he's a nightmare to the guards (❤), but he plays along with Khun. he teases Chay. he has a good rapport with other university students. he can be more lowkey playful than others, but Kim's not made of stone, he has his fun too.

Wik being a burden on Kim

this one starts running into differences in headcanon-- like personally, i'm looking for fics where Wik is Kim's home. i've cried about this elsewhere so i'll keep it short, but Wik is the life Kim poured blood, sweat, and tears into to build up brick by brick. Wik is the life Kim wants, it's the parts of him he thinks are the best of him. i actually make the MC of the ep4 university one of Kim's best friends (i call him Green), and one of my favorite headcanons i've come up with for them is that everyone thinks Green twists Kim's arm into doing outreach events, but actually Green is Kim's connection to university news because he loves doing them but never knows who to ask. Kim desperately wants to be a source of good inspiration to others and have purpose outside of violence, and Wik is his way of doing that. Wik is not a burden on Kim (in fact, i'd argue Kim all but said he is a burden on Wik, but i digress).

so, that's my personal preference for Kim's relationship with Wik, but obviously not everyone's going to have the same characterization and that's cool. where i start to get annoyed is when people write him as very...hmm. dismissive? of it. or otherwise seems like he doesn't like any aspect of it. i straight up back click on any fic that has Kim fuck up the name of some popular musician. this is not a specific call out, but for example-- i remember reading something where there was this offhand line of Kim being like "and there's a request for a show with some other musician, wangson jack?" and just. no. back click, goodbye, nope. shit like that really starts to bug me. some of it is personal irritation at how awful a lot of english speakers are towards asian artists (which like. random fandom people are not at fault for the crimes of USamerican music reporters. but maybe consider that until people overall are less shitty and dismissive towards them, one off lines referencing real life musicians like this are better off deleted). but over all i just...really, really dislike disrespectful attitudes like that (esp for something related to the arts) and i don't want to read them in my favorite character. Kim is pursuing a career in the music industry for himself--Kim being, u know, Kim, he's going to take it very seriously and with that, also hold a lot of respect towards his fellow musicians generally speaking. at the very least, he's going to be cordial and pleasant with them because no one likes working with an asshole and Kim is trying to keep his mafia bullshit far away from his Wik goals. not everyone's going to have the same characterization headcanons i do for how much i think Kim would pour himself into music and love it, but i really don't vibe with any take where Wik is a burden on or a drag for Kim.

and a bonus ☕ because i luv u too anon: anything where Kim doesn't love his brothers or sees them as actual competition instead of the ones he wants to protect the most. this is not a surprise to anyone here, u all know how much i love brothers, but i've noticed that fandom gets kinda caught up in the chess metaphors sometimes. and to that i say: 1. Terry Pratchett yall: sin is when you treat people like things. 2. Terry Pratchett again: chess is a stupid ass metaphor for real life. 3. kp canon agrees with that. Korn is shit at playing chess. (the fucking. ep1 game. omfg. Chan is all but eating his pieces to let Korn win. i'm still howling over the scholars mate in ep5.) Korn is noticeably shit at all his hobbies that are metaphors for controlling people. which is the point! the boys fail every time they try to play his games, because you cannot play people like you would a game. every triumph is rooted in overturning the game board completely.

[ send a ☕, get a bitchy* fic opinion ]

*personal preference related, we’re not here to be mean

#thank u anon this was fun 😂 #kinnporsche #tea asks

[utilitycaster]

1. Why do you like or dislike this character? - Percy and/or Keyleth?

I like both of them, so:

I like Percy for the surface reasons of intelligence and witty comebacks and the general Taliesin Jaffe Arrogant Guy Is Confidently Wrong About Many Things reasons, but more specifically I like how incredibly aware he is of social structures and doesn't dismiss them as stupid or fake or meaningless just because he is aware how much artifice is involved. I love how much he validates Vex in this, as someone who's been on the other side of that social divide most of her life and who knows she "shouldn't" care but does, deeply. It would be so easy for him to say "look, titles are stupid and fake, I should know, I have one," but instead he says "no, I see what this means to you, because yes it's all an accident of birth and yes it is kind of stupid and fake, but it's also the reason why you lived rough for your teens and early 20s, and you are not silly for wanting this security." I also think he's a great exploration of guilt and of someone who has a lot of complicated feelings from the gods but does value their counsel; we don't get a lot of characters with that sort of nuance. His scene with the Raven Queen remains a standout for me and for all he can be melodramatic and obnoxious at times, he is also like 25, traumatized, and should be at the club. I think the question he answers (why would someone invent the gun) is an interesting one, and I think the way that his story ends up with the obvious inevitable happening and yet he still finds happiness is unexpected and wonderful to see.

I like Keyleth for a lot of reasons people will probably be annoyed about, which is...she is annoying. Annoying women: may we know them, may we be them, and may we raise them. Anyway, I think her terror of doing the wrong thing at the cost of doing anything sets up a fantastic arc for someone who is expected to become a leader. I admire how she knows she's not the most eloquent and is scared of her responsibilities but does not back down from speaking up when she disagrees with the party. I like how she's perhaps the only example of lifespan angst that is actually portrayed as making a lot of sense, especially since she is also extremely young (probably shouldn't be at the club given the bar crawling results. She should be at ZooLights and have like, one cider.) I think in general her fears are incredibly real and make sense for the character and shape her, and that's not something you see portrayed with this amount of depth very often. I stuck with the VM-era portrayal of Percy but I will say I especially love how Keyleth is portrayed in Campaign 3, because Percy hasn't changed a ton in adulthood, merely mellowed out a little, but Keyleth very much has as she's grown in confidence, as she was only at the beginning of that during the Campaign. I think her relationship with Vax is incredibly good for both of them; her sense of belonging to a place and his ability to support. I do like that she gets angry, especially after so much time being insecure, but I feel much has been made of her anger and I don't have a ton to add there, and also while I like that she is angry and expresses it, there are other characters I gravitate to for that specifically. Also I have incredible respect for her having to take on a much bigger magical burden than expected; I have said this before but my longest-running character was in a campaign where the player playing sorcerer switched to ranger, and the cleric left, leaving me as the only full caster and primary healer (though thankfully we got a baller paladin shortly after). The fact that Keyleth had to, and could, be whatever the party needed mechanically was a godsend. I know VM died a lot but they would have died like 20 times more without her and Scanlan and especially without her.

#answered #essayofthoughts #cr tag #*bad percy fan voice* i don't actually care about his mechanics very much. i mean big damage is fun and i love an action surge #but i have never been able to give a damn about dps

[bethanydelleman]

sorry if this is a stupid question, but I was starting to write a story taking place in the regency era, and wanted to do a sort of cliche governess marries the widowed father of her charge. But I wasn't sure how old I should make the girl. My understanding was that a governess would only be needed until the girl debuted which could be as early as 15. as of now, I made the girl 14, as, due to her father being over protective he wouldn't allow her to debut until she was older anyways, but I wasn't sure how common it was to get a governess that would only be there for a few years. the governess is sort of desperate for a job, so even if its a bad deal, its okay. I also wasn't sure if the girls hadn't debuted if they could go to parties, or if she didn't debut she would still be considered a child and not allowed (including smaller family/friends get togethers). For this last one I'm trying to remember how the youngest sister is treated in sense and sensibility, but cannot recall.

Thirdly, I was curious how odd it would be for a governess to teach horseback riding. From what I was able to understand, it wasn't improper for ladies to learn sidesaddle, but I wasn't sure who would teach them, or how common it was.

sorry to use you as like, a focused google search, but I was having a heck of a time finding anything about the specifics of governesses. Usually it was all vague terms like "Until the daughters came of age"

Happy to help! Keep in mind that most of my help comes from novels from the time period.

If this is set in the Regency, not all girls "came out" at 15, it depended on a number of factors including if they had elder sisters. Jane Austen's heroines are never out before 17, Catherine Morland and Marianne Dashwood being the two youngest. It also depended on a girl's maturity, as everyone thinks the immature Lydia Bennet should not be out (she is 15). I believe Maria and Julia Bertram (Mansfield Park) aren't out until they are 20 and 19 respectively, and Maria says she'll learn from her governess until 17.

As for how long you would employ a governess, in Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë, Agnes is hired by a family with pretty old girls, the eldest being 16 and very near to coming out and the younger 14, but the family both wants and keeps a governess. This was similar to what happened in Anne's real life, by the way. Agnes is not dismissed from that position even after the elder sister marries, she leaves because her father is dying.

Also, if the father is widowed, he might keep the governess for longer if he could afford it. Miss Taylor, Emma's governess in Emma stayed until Emma was 21 and only left because she married. As Emma was the only daughter at home, Miss Taylor transitioned into being her companion and would probably have served as a sort of chaperone despite being unmarried. Men and women did a lot of activities separately, so having a paid "friend" around for your daughter wouldn't be unusual.

As for gatherings, it's likely that daughters are attending small gatherings once they are mature enough to be quiet. Margaret Dashwood is invited to dine at the park, she is 13, in Sense & Sensibility, but she is not invited to London, which would involve large parties. Fanny Price dines at the parsonage in Mansfield Park, which would count as a close friend, but Mary Crawford remains unsure if she is "out". Even the young Middleton children come out after dessert to greet the guests in Sense & Sensibility, though some of the company dislikes this suggesting it's either not common or the children were expected to behave better (they are 8 and under).

I know nothing about who taught horse riding to women. The only lessons in Jane Austen are an uncle for his niece (Fanny Price) and a guy teaching the girl he's attracted to (Edmund Bertram/Mary Crawford). Fanny muses that Mary's brother could have taught her.

Last consideration, I would consider the skills of your governess. If one is being hired for an older girl, she would need more advanced accomplishments. Can she play, draw, and do fancy work? Does she have good references? Is she old enough that it isn't crazy for her to be in charge of a teenager? (Like is she at least 20?)

Here is what Agnes's employer wants:

For the girls she seemed anxious only to render them as superficially attractive and showily accomplished as they could possibly be made, without present trouble or discomfort to themselves; and I was to act accordingly—to study and strive to amuse and oblige, instruct, refine, and polish, with the least possible exertion on their part, and no exercise of authority on mine. With regard to the two boys, it was much the same; only instead of accomplishments, I was to get the greatest possible quantity of Latin grammar and Valpy’s Delectus into their heads, in order to fit them for school—the greatest possible quantity at least without trouble to themselves. John might be a “little high-spirited,” and Charles might be a little “nervous and tedious—”

Agnes Grey, Ch 7

#question response #governesses #If anyone knows more about horseback riding please add on #agnes grey #anne brontë #writing

[genericpuff]

So I have a question is hades telling Persephone his trauma with kronos trauma dumping? I see this word tossed around alot I just want to know if this was an example

It depends on which scene. If you're talking about the one early in S2 where Hades shares what happened to him with Persephone, that one's kind of a combination of lovebombing and trauma dumping + trauma bonding. And the reason I say that is because he basically takes away Persephone's moment to be vulnerable and talk about her own trauma and turns it into something about himself. Which he does a LOT in LO.

Like, this all happens after she's JUST revealed her side of the Act of Wrath and the events that led up to it (particularly involving her childhood) and Hades segues it into talking about himself.

Of course, that's after he shows her the tape of HER memories that he got without HER consent.

But of course Persephone's fine with it because she's not allowed to realize that her future husband might be a creep.

Anyways, it does seem like Hades is trying to "repay" Persephone for telling him her backstory, but that just doesn't work all that well here because it just comes across as insensitive. She's barely had any of her own time to reflect on the events that occurred VERY recently (though the timeline is unclear, know that Persephone was 19 when she moved to Olympus and the Act of Wrath had to have happened shortly before because she was clearly a young adult) and now she has to sit through listening to his baggage from 2000 years ago.

Like, this man has had two thousand years to talk to someone about this. But of course, it's the pink cinnamon roll girl that he met at a party and has known for TWO WEEKS who gets him monologuing about himself and trauma dumping.

And it's trying so hard to be painted as romantic, but really, it's just another case of Hades love-bombing Persephone.

This kind of dialogue is used in romance novels a lot but when you actually condense the timeline and understand that this 40+ year old man has only known this 19/20 year old girl for two weeks, it comes across as less romantic and more like he's just manipulating her. This is a VERY common tactic used by abusers and groomers (*note: this is a blanket statement that does not apply to all relationships) where they'll make the victim believe that they're just that special, that important to them, that they would tell them things they've "never told anyone before." Maybe this would happen in a relationship between two people that's been going on for a while, but someone you've only known for two weeks and you're still trying to get with? It's a bit more of a red flag there.

Meanwhile I'm staring at LO like, you're trying to convince me this man has never talked about his trauma ONCE? Not even with Hera, who he HASN'T EVEN TOLD PERSEPHONE HE'S BEEN IN A LONG-TERM AFFAIR WITH? Never mind the fact that he wasn't the only one who went through what he did, you're telling me he's never talked about it to anyone, in 2000 years? That's a load of baloney. The man needs a therapist, not a girlfriend.

And this isn't the only time Hades uses his trauma as a way to either trauma bond with Persephone OR to make excuses for his own actions. I can think of no better example than when Persephone finds out about his affair with Hera.

He makes the topic about Hera and her trauma. She does not know Hades is talking about this. She hasn't given him consent to tell Persephone about this. Hades is saying ALL this to get to the final point of: "I was in an affair with Hera because Hera and I were both traumatized and Zeus just couldn't understand that." (never mind the fact that Hades is also dismissing everything Zeus went through here just because Zeus doesn't have physical scars like Hera and Hades do, which is... ick.)

And then he goes off even MORE about his experience being sentenced down to the Underworld and eating the pomegranate and yadda yadda yadda the man literally will not shut up. Persephone at this point has opened up to him about her trauma once across the course of like, two episodes (and he doesn't even know about the SA yet!) and meanwhile Hades gets MULTIPLE episodes to talk about how sad and lonely he's been his whole life.

(he also thinks therapy is pointless because of course he does:)

He doesn't take any real accountability here for his actions. He doesn't take accountability for lying to Persephone about his affair with Hera. He doesn't take accountability for lying to Zeus - her husband and his BROTHER - about the affair for centuries, and he still doesn't know. And this is one of the first signs (chronologically) that Hades makes it a habit to form his relationships off trauma bonding and love-bombing.

(I'm so sad for Minthe here now in hindsight because she's literally telling Persephone that Hades is a chronic love-bomber but then she never connects that she should stop fighting with Persephone over Hades because of this. Like in any other comic, Minthe would be warning Persephone, not trying to get Persephone out of the picture so she can get Hades back.)

So yes, I would say Hades is absolutely trauma-dumping when you take into account the fact that he seems to be using it as a form of love-bombing and trauma bonding, and the fact that the comic spends way more time justifying his horrible actions through his trauma, while Persephone's trauma which is an ACTIVE PLOT POINT in her character arc and the comic, gets shoved off to the wayside so it can take a backseat to Hades' 2000 year old baggage. Screw what the women are going through, the man's talking.

That said, don't get me wrong, Persephone's still a horrible person who uses her trauma as an excuse for her actions too, but that's for another post.

In the meantime, have this great video about love bombing:

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #anti lore olympus #antiloreolympus #ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything

[princessasmosprincess]

Hazel

I want to write something on Lisette and Kallios in the future so let me introduce you to another member of their household.

Hazel, she/her, Demon of Envy. She has a fox tail that is the same shade of purple as her hair that fades into black on the end and antlers like a Siberian deer.

Hazel has been working for Kallios' family since Kallios was very young. She's older than him but not super significantly, their age difference is like that of a child and their teen babysitter (which amounts to thousands of years since they're demons). She has a few younger siblings, and she viewed Kallios as family as well, she was deeply affected by his death.

When Kallios became the head of the family, he threw himself into his work, partially out of necessity since he had to do a lot of political work on his own, which meant fewer parties would happen at the estate. He didn't need very much staff around the house so he dismissed them or sent them off to work for his extended family, but he kept Hazel on as his housekeeper.

She's friends with Barbatos and takes any advice he gives. They might have tea together once a decade and chat or they might spend time together during a ball when their masters take on the role as hosts, but most of their interaction is when they cross paths briefly at the market.

Hazel isn't a full time RAD student but she will occasionally take a limited offered course to learn something new or attend a special lecture, especially anything taught by Barbatos. She has very powerful magic but not quite to Barbatos' level, which is one of the reasons she looks up to him and respects him so much.

Personality-wise she's on the quiet side, not because she's shy, she just only speaks if she has something to say. She can be opinionated at times, and a bit uptight and a perfectionist. Some might call her an ice queen but she is actually very affectionate to those she cares about. If she doesn’t like you, that's a you problem, she is a great judge of character which is why she and Lisette got along right away (not to mention how she clicked with Adamas pretty quickly too). She's very no-nonsense and isn't afraid to put you in your place if you're being dumb.

Get to Know My OC questions:

1. She loves tea of any kind and she's usually takes it black to enjoy the flavor. She also likes hot chocolate.

2. Favorite flavor: She doesn't prefer one over the other, in the meals she cooks she wants the flavors to all be complimentary so that's what she likes.

3. Favorite food: Roasted Black Tapir

4. Favorite meal: Breakfast

5. She doesn't dislike any foods or flavors.

6. She can tolerate spicy foods fine.

7. Favorite animal: Bats

8. She wears a black silk nightgown with lace trim to bed.

9. Before she was with Adamas she slept mostly on her back, but now she's always the little spoon.

10. She's a morning person.

11. Hazel is a heavy sleeper, once she's asleep she's out.

12. On a rainy day she'll open the curtains and listen to the rain and probably sit down with Lisette to enjoy some tea and mending clothes.

13. She'd never admit it out loud but her favorite scent is the smell of her husband, Adamas. She'd probably say the scent of freshly washed laundry instead.

14. She smells clean with a little hint of floral, maybe lilac.

15. She likes baths when she has the time for them.

16. Hazel is an amazing cook and she's always swapping recipes with Barbatos.

17. She likes late spring, early summer, for all the fresh fruits and vegetables and flowers.

18. Her favorite holiday is the Devildom's New Year.

19. She prefers giving gifts, it's a control thing.

20. Hazel is 5'4/162.5 cm

#obey me #omswd #obey me shall we date #obey me oc

[death-in-a-handbasket]

HEY HEY HEY. assorted analysis and thoughts on yukito >:)

This doesn’t contain fic spoilers but it will make certain behavioral things about him make sense, so if you want to make your own theories and deduce it just from the canon content or the fic, that’s fine, but here’s the mechanics I’m working off of :0

So one of the few pieces of info we get to work with is that he’s been working for 20 years, suggesting that’s when the government took him in as well as indicating his ability kicked in when he was about 7. That’s frighteningly young. I don’t doubt he was inclined to be smart from the start, but the idea that he’d have to witness bloody accidental deaths as a child is bound to leave him fucked up in SOME way.

It also sets him up to be isolated early on. I have no doubts that he was likely painfully aware from an early age that he’s smarter than most and unavoidably dangerous. I have never seen any parents be mentioned or shown which tells me that he was either (in classic bsd style) an orphan, or he was forcefully taken from his parents— which is a whole other layer of yikes. Regardless, I can’t imagine the government was gentle towards him in any way, after all, he’s marked as a designated threat. From that, I don’t think showing emotion or socializing like a normal person is in his wheelhouse. I don’t think he knows much in the way of softness either, especially verbally. He is blunt and doesn’t give a fuck in so many ways, although I do think he comes by that naturally. (I don’t doubt that the way he displays love is acts of service. It’s All He Knows Bro.)

Now, this isolation created by his ability ends up manifesting in two ways. For one, he generally keeps to himself, you don’t often see him talking about his own opinions and interests, and you especially don’t see him discussing his past. He very rarely volunteers any information about himself, likely under the notion that nobody has ever asked nor wants to know. He probably also doesn’t socialize or talk about himself because he’s been put on such a pedestal of danger and intelligence that he likely feels that no one would understand any of it to begin with. He’s here to work, why on earth would you want to know anything about him??

The second way his isolation manifests is in the doll collecting. For one, one of the few panels we have of him as a child has him holding one, suggesting that they’ve been the only stable constant in his life. He’s bound to find that comforting, especially if it can’t leave him or be afraid of him. Plus, his ability cannot kill it, a rare grace in his line of work. It’s no wonder he finds them more interesting than people, they’re probably the only things that would bother listening to him. In essence, it’s a doppelgänger of humanity, except they understand him and don’t demand anything of him.

From what I see, his experiences with other people boil down to three main interactions. Criminals, who he is tasked to kill and who he likely wouldn’t want to know regardless. After all, he does hold strong that the world should not have murderous assholes in it. There’s civilians, who are not on the same level as him and wouldn’t understand him or his line of work to begin with, so he’d dismiss them as simply ordinary and rather stupid. The last encounter is anyone in the government, whose main goal is to use him.

All the government does is restrict him for an ability he did not choose to have and use him as a weapon, but they hardly see him as an actual person. In that way, he’s only ever valued for his ability but no one has ever taken an interest in who he is outside of that, he’s there to be useful, end of story. And of course, if he were to fail a case, they’d kill him. He literally earns his living, with every case he solves, he gets the privilege of being alive. And there’s no out in this deal either, they’ll work him til he’s dead and if he were to leave or go rogue, it would be a death sentence. In essence, as stressful as this current situation is, it’s the most stable option for living he’s got.

He’d sooner be on his deathbed than admit any of his feelings out loud. But the work, as much as he’s made peace with his situation, still likely takes a toll on him. Not to mention the inherent feeling of not belonging and feeling inhuman. But I think he takes his ability and his natural intelligence as a way to justify and be at peace with being alone, no point in fighting against it.

Thus, the idea that someone would want to know him and treat him like a normal person regardless of his ability and job, well that would be rather startling now wouldn’t it? He’s used to operating solo and being wanted for what he can do rather than who he is, that’s why friends with benefits is so comfortable for him, it’s a dynamic he knows. So the idea that someone is interacting with him for a purpose that isn’t linked to a demand of some sort is very strange and very new for him. If he acts weird, it’s because he is weird, he only has half an idea of how to interact with the reader. He doesn’t quite know how to human but oh baby he’s trying.

#fox’s soapbox #the scriptures #yukito ayatsuji #bsd #bsd gaiden #bsd ayatsuji

[vital-information]

It’s past time for Uptown Girls, almost universally panned when it first hit theaters 20 years ago, to be widely reconsidered and celebrated as a Y2K New York City fairy tale. Sure, the plot is far-fetched, and the ending in particular is wrapped up in a nice, convenient little bow, but Uptown Girls is a unique story about what young women can learn from each other.

Uptown Girls goes to darker emotional places than most other light hearted “chick flicks” of the early 2000s, and features career-best performances from Brittany Murphy and Dakota Fanning, as well as cameos from aughts superstars Mark McGrath and Nas. Uptown Girls was shot by legendary New York City cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who has also photographed the city for heavyweights like Martin Scorsese and Mike Nichols. In his 3-star 2003 review, Roger Ebert defended the film against its haters, dismissing “all cavils about the movie’s logic and plausibility as beside the point,” asserting that “this is not a movie about plot but about personalities.” Ebert was able to see and hear Molly and Ray as vastly different, but equally emotionally complex characters, in a way that his peers were blind to at the time.

…

Molly’s unflagging brightness and Ray’s grim cynicism are both completely earnest reactions to having been pushed into a position where they must parent themselves throughout childhood, and into young adulthood, in Molly’s case. Molly has chosen to never grow up, postponing adulthood for as long as possible, whereas Ray grew up too fast. What makes Uptown Girls so compelling is watching Molly parent her own inner child through parenting Ray, which comes to a head in the infamous Coney Island spinning teacups scene.

…

While not the only contemporary critic to be positive on the film, Ebert was able to see beyond the glitzy surface, bravely standing apart in his refusal to rely on gender bias to express disapproval of a film. Maybe the most significant thing Ebert praised about Uptown Girls was its performances; specifically, he compared Murphy’s comedic talents to those of Lucille Ball. “Molly Gunn is a comic original, vulnerable and helpless, well-meaning and inept, innocent and guileless…Murphy’s performance has a kind of ineffable mischievous innocence about it.”

Indeed, one could imagine a scene in I Love Lucy where Lucy attempts to get a job at a luxury bedding store, and consequently falls asleep on one of the beds, as Molly does in Uptown Girls. Murphy’s face is pure Ball as she realizes (too late) that she’s about to get smacked in the face with a swinging door, in a moment where she needed to look particularly dignified. Thankfully, Ebert was able to recognize that an actress’ performance should not be judged solely on “likability,” but on its more palpable merits, such as comedic timing and vulnerability. Ebert was also more favorable than most critics toward Fanning’s performance. He wrote that “Ray does seem prematurely old…in the case of Dakota Fanning, I think we are looking at good acting.”

...

Uptown Girls might still not be taken seriously today by the larger community of serious film critics and historians, but the film has found its audience of lonely young women trying to find their place in the world. If you search “Uptown Girls” on social media, you’ll find a sea of girls posting about their emotional connection to the film, and of course, their love of Murphy’s performance. Some of this could very well be written off as 2000s nostalgia, but a lot of love for Uptown Girls comes from a place of deep sadness, both for the girls that we once were and the girls we could have been.

— Katarina Docalovich, “Uptown Girls Reminds Us to Connect with Our Inner Child, 20 Years”

#uptown girls #brittany murphy #dakota fanning #film criticism #roger ebert

[soundofdistantthunder]

Odysseus and Me

Odysseus is hugely important to me. So I decided I'm going to write everything (that isn't private) down because my head and heart are too full of love to keep it all inside. So this is our story, from my perspective.

My current altar. I supposedly have a physical one, but it keeps getting ruined. So I have this for now.

I don't remember the first time I encountered Odysseus. His story has been one where so much of it I've heard/read/seen and gone "I learnt that before too." Not everything, of course, but enough of it is everywhere that I learnt his story without realising, so when I came back to learn properly, it was familiar.

So this story really starts with me very young (probably 8-10 or so), but I'm going to fast forward my teenage years to my early 20s.

In January 2022 I had covid and I was lonely. I was ill and shut alone in my bedroom to stop it spreading to the rest of my family. I had recently discovered Epic (the musical about the Odyssey) and loved it. I then found a YouTube playlist of the Illiad. I listened to it and felt so much better. Safe and less alone. Looking back I feel that the presence of Odysseus is what helped me. Without me knowing at the time he kept me company and along with the Gods he watched over me when I needed him.

Once I got better I continued to turn to Epic, The Illiad, and The Odyssey whenever I felt lonely or upset. I still do. Odysseus was always there for me and even though I was oblivious to how real his presence was at this point I still felt it.

Fast forward to September 2022, I got Covid again. I was less afraid this time but still lonely. I went straight to Odysseus and spent the week and a half I was ill consuming every single scrap of content I could possibly find. Mostly about Odysseus but also about all the Gods and other myths. I emerged after I'd recovered, almost ready to jump into my faith.

I'd been teetering on the edge for a few years, but it was Odysseus's gentle guiding that helped me step off the edge. It would take a few more things to properly convince me, but Odysseus was holding open the door saying "come in whenever you're ready. It's safe and I'll look after you."

I finally got stuck in in Novemeber/December 2022 and have a lovely group of friends I met through the online Hellenism community both on tiktok and discord who I believe Odysseus was instrumental in me finding.

Over the months since December 2022 he has been with me gently guiding me towards people and resources who will make my experience better and away from those who will make it worse. There have been several times I've felt lost or alone and something to do with him has helped.

Over the last few months sometimes he has been quiet, and sometimes he has been much more obviously involved. I have been the same. Or so I thought. It turns out a lot of what I do is devotional acts for him, things like research I knew were but other things like keeping in touch with my family I didn't realise until things changed again.

So that brings us up to about 2 weeks ago. Odysseus has been a gentle and increasingly paternal influence in my life. But things were about to change for the better.

2 weeks ago I started to realise that the epithet of "father" felt more and more right in relation to Odysseus. I am no stranger to using this epithet for the Gods, but this time it felt different. I didn't have the words for it at the time so I left it alone and carried on as normal in relation to him.

That is when Odysseus, patient though he is, began to get impatient with me and my lack of understanding what he was trying to ask me. He began sending me increasingly clear signs. It started with things I could (and did) easily dismiss as coincidences like songs and typos but as the week went on his signs got clearer and less easy to dismiss. Dreams and tarot conformations that were becoming increasingly clear. But I was confused and scared, I didn't want to assume and overstep a boundary or make him uncomfortable. I didn't feel like I was worth what he was saying and feeling and I still consider myself so new (although looking back we are not nearly as new to each other as I thought). It didn't feel like it made sense and I was struggling to trust my instincts no matter how many times he told me to (far more than I would like to admit to) because of how much I also wanted it.

Eventually some friends convinced me to just ask. So I did. I picked up my tarot deck and asked Odysseus if he would consider allowing me to think of him as a father figure. Before I'd even finished shuffling the cards I had my answer.

"Yes. I asked you first. Of course yes, my child." I very rarely get clairaudience because it scares me incase it's my own imagination. But when the tarot cards gave me the same answer I realised it was true. We then had a more detailed conversation about it and he was able to reassure all my worries. No he didn't want to replace my parents just be an extra one, no I didn't need to worry about him feeling like I was trying to muscle in on him and Telemachus he knows I'm not, no I wasn't too new or not doing enough, and no being (as he called it) blessed by Hephaestus (disabled) didn't change anything.

I've done a few more tarot readings since "just to make sure" and each one has been met by a laugh and an "it's still a yes, I asked you first remember. Stop worrying, my child" and a card confirmation of the yes. That was 3 days ago and now we are settling into having a name for this.

I'm sure more stories will come in the future, but for now this is between myself and Odysseus, son of Laertes, called cunning and man of many turns, king of Ithica, friend to the lost, lonely and homesick, and most importantly someone I have the great honour of being able to think of and call a father.

#hellenismos #hellenic polytheism #odysseus #family #found family #ancient greece

[gildead]

a stranger lucifer asked:

hi this is luci and i'd like to hear abt ... 5, 17, 10 and 18!

Vetra's Hot Munday Takes

5. dash commentary

I think it's pretty safe to say at this point that I'm a huge fan of dash commentary? It's one of the most fun ways for me to get involved in whatever conversation or event's going on on the dashboard, and it's led to some of the funniest shenanigans I've ever been involved in. A good example from this blog was the time when Ben and Gold were cursing up a storm, and you only need to go back a few pages to see how everyone got involved in some way or another.

If you're having trouble getting interactions, dash commentary and responding to open dash commentary posts are a great way to get your muse involved in some wild stuff. Just make sure the other person's good with that, obviously.

10. anons

Believe it or not, I've only gotten... one anon hate message in my entire RP career? It was back when I played as Wolf-- somebody sent me a message telling Wolf to kill himself? I think it was directed to him? Either way, it was really out of pocket and I ended up having to take the anon to task OOC because I was not in a good place during that time.

In my experience, anon hate has been really uncommon and that's partially because people are learning how to IP block and make fun of people hiding behind anon to be assholes, which is a trend that I hope keeps on going.

I'm not holding out hope it's gone entirely-- hell, I know there's gonna come a day where someone didn't read Gold's giant warning page/rules closely enough and is gonna come on anon crying because they didn't know the creepypasta muse was gonna do creepypasta things. The least I can do is cover my own ass.

17. fanon interpretations

This is specifically gonna be a Fire Emblem-related take, so if you have no idea what I'm talking about feel free to skip on down to 18.

I REALLY have found myself getting irritated when people on Twitter put a ton of analysis and thought into the Black Eagles and Blue Lions, but when it comes time for the Golden Deer they immediately get brushed off as 'hehe funny meme house' without the same amount of effort getting put into them. It's starting to get to the point where it's not cute anymore, it's annoying and dismissive as hell to Golden Deer fans. I myself am a Black Eagles stan and I think we should be giving them equal time and effort.

There's actually a LOT you can say about the Golden Deer from an analytical standpoint. Here, we have a house where practically nobody save Claude and maaaybe Hilda have any loyalties or ties keeping them to the Alliance and will jump ship without provocation. Perhaps it's the culture of self-preservation and backstabbing propagated by the nobility, where you feel like you can't get close to anybody without them using you for their own gain. Only through the player's direct intervention can these guys grow past that and work to create an Alliance that's more willing to work together than be at each other's throats.

...but sure, tell us about how Claude's the funny upside-down meme man for the fifty-morbillionth time in a row, I'm sure that joke hasn't gotten stale in the slightest.

18. shipping

The RPC's over-reliance on shipping can be really alienating for people trying to roleplay different types of muses.

Like, for example, Gold's dead AND a very young teenager. Aside from a very select pinchful of characters who are also dead and young teenagers, he's basically going to be locked out from any muse looking to ship. Even then, most shipping memes/relationship prompts are SO NSFW/romance-based that there's very little room for anyone who wants to write any other kind of relationship.

And that's not even limited to Gold. I'm talking muses who are minors, muses who are older than the early-mid 20s demographic most characters are in the RPC, aro/ace muses, nonhuman muses... it can be very tough to navigate the RPC when a lot of people are looking for shipping and it's oversaturated.

I think it's worth noting that there are plenty of non-shipping related relationships that get overlooked but are just as valid and rife with plot ideas. Like... Luci, you know what I'm talking about. Looks at your Jeralt and my Shez.

also gold's shipping rule is mostly in terms of smut/overly charged shit. i'm fine with 'awkward teen's first relationship' fluff. didn't know where to say that so i'm just dropping that in here.

#OUTSIDE THE TOWER. #WONDER MAIL. asks. #UNOWN RADIO. memes. #FACELESS STRANGER. anon. #suicide mention tw #[[i love getting to express my thoughts like this thank you lucifer]]

[solarlotus]

We need to talk about Yoda

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I first saw the OT in my teens and Yoda was always a fave, he’s cute, funny and wise. I spent loads of money (for the time) on a Yoda backpack, with his little head poking out like when he’s on Dagober with Luke.

But lately I’ve been having a reappraisal. I’ve contributed to discussions before about how I don’t hate the jedi, but am jedi critical, I believe they share the same flaws that most large, long standing institutions do (e.g. church, government) and have strayed from their core principles. They have allowed themselves to be a tool and miliatary arm of the senate, they are overly fixated on process and rules, more than listening to the living force.

Which brings me to Yoda, he is grand master through all this, we are continuously told he’s wise and powerful, but what evidence is there for his wisdom? He, along with others, humilates 9 year old Anakin in front of the council in TPM, that’s just not a nice way to treat a kid, that conversation should have been with Qui Gon. He is fixed on Anakin’s age and fear, with no empathy shown for him having been separated from his mother, or awareness the situation he is putting Anakin is will be exacerbating that fear.

Again, in ROTS, Anakin seeks Yoda’s counsel on his nightmares. I watched this again recently and was struck by how awful his advice is. It is obvious that Anakin is dreaming about someone he loves very much. Yoda doesn’t know who, but the whole let go of attachments is fairly useless practical advice, Anakin is not advised how he should do this, is not given alternatives, it kind of sums up the problem with the jedi at this period,  more concerned with their doctrine than the PTSD of a young man with a difficult childhood who has been fighting a war for years. Anakin is still in his early 20s at this point, so very young still.

When we meet Yoda in Empire Strikes Back he is introduced as a fun character (seeking Luke’s possessions no less), but has a very pessemistic view from the start about Luke, dismisses him without Obi Wan’s intervention would send him away. Luke is an innately good person, of course he has fear in him, no training, lost his adoptive parents and thrust into a war. Luke is again not given any useful advice, just riddles and platitudes.

Then we have Yoda’s alleged powers. Well, he’s pretty handy with a lightsaber for a tiny alien dude, but so are lots of jedi. He completely fails to spot Darth Sidious in their midst, fails to support Anakin, fails to stop the jedi losing their way so much. Given his age it’s fair to assume he’s been on the council longer than anyone so bears quite a bit of responsibility for the way the jedi currently are. 

I now find Yoda quite inflexible, like a priest attached to church doctrine far more than the spirit of Christ, condescending and as another jedi master points out in Rogue Planet, ‘what does a green tree stump know of a human child or a human child’s emotions?’ Not a lot. The speaking backwards thing is funny and was obviously done to amuse the audience, but it also means he’s never straight with anyone and that’s not very useful when people need advice and leadership.

In short, under his watch the jedi were corrupted and destroyed, lost their chosen one to the darkside and became a military arm of the senate. So I guess I lay a lot of their failures during the prequel era at Yoda’s door as he was in charge. I don’t think his personaility traits are a spieces thing either as Grogu has attachments and is emotional. (I adore little baby Yoda, he is everything with his space dad).

I realise most people adore Yoda, so please don’t flame me, just needed to get this off my chest!

#Yoda #controversial opinion #SW #jedi critical #yoda's share of the blame

[deranged-dr-void]

Muse Summaries (for mobile)

This is going to be a whole lot of information at once, so I’m going to put it under a Keep Reading so it doesn’t clog up your dashboards! 

Overall Summary: 

Years ago, Dr. Turnus Void was a well-renowned scientist and doctor in Manhattan. He specialized as a Neurosurgeon, in addition to being a Cytologist. He was seen as an inspiration, a hard young worker and a man who would do and did great things. He had a lot going for him and was applauded constantly for his work.

After some time, his co-workers (who’d always noticed something off about him) found Turnus to have a particular interest in Mythology and Vivisection (or experimenting on live organisms). He dismissed their concerns on it, but some years later, he was arrested and administered to a mental hospital after being caught attempting to operate and experiment on a live patient.

Barely a month passed before his escape from the institution. His case became one of the most widely-known in the United States at the time, and he was never caught. Most assumed him to have died, given his mental health.

However, Turnus was very much alive, shamed and filled with rage. The accusations of insanity and sadism put toward him shamed him, driving him to the brink. Determined to show the world his talents (and get back at all those who did him wrong), the doctor built himself back up, using the inheritance from his wealthy parents (both deceased, reasons “unknown”), and money from his previous profession to make and buy a mansion deep in the woods of Ireland.

There, in secret, Turnus began to kidnap those who came into his home, luring to his laboratory in the basement, where he tortured his victims by using Vivisection on them, turning them essentially into mythological creatures of his choosing, or simply morphing them with animal characteristics to make his own.

 He continues with this today, keeping his victims hostage as “servants” in the household. He has even experimented on himself, using various methods to enhance himself into a “superior being” of inhuman strength and agility. If he doesn’t trust someone in his home (whether it be an FBI agent or simply intuition at play), he goes by the name of “Henry Clark.”

Turnus sells equipment and vials of his “potions” and such of his own design on the black market, to keep up his lavish lifestyle. He is also not beneath thievery, and has several illegal means of income. In these exchanges, he goes by his alias of Henry Clark, and his fake I.D.s and paperwork to back him up.

Turnus believes that, one day, the world will see his accomplishments for what they are, truly seeing what he is doing as a positive thing, an advancement for humanity. He is determined to prove all those who doubted him wrong and go down in the history books as the “savior of his generation, and those to come.”

The Muses:

Full name: Dr. L. Turnus Void (alias: Henry Clark)

Age: Early to mid 30’s

Eye color: Light emerald green, sometimes black

Hair color: Black, neatly trimmed

Height: 6”6

Other physical traits: Turnus is slim and lean-figured. He has inhumanly pale skin, thin lips, and sharp, nearly hollow cheekbones. He has a few faint scars all over himself—along his jawline, on his wrists, his forehead, and chest—most from experiments done to himself. There is a cut along his throat where Violette once tried to kill him.

Sexual Interest: Undefined. Possibly asexual; he has never found someone he likes enough to determine if he has a sex drive.

Personality: Incredibly selfish and highly sadistic, cruel, egotistical, callous, critical. He has occasional mood swings and bouts of uncontrollable rage.

Zodiac: Capricorn

Creation 304

Name: Adora Hart

Age: Early to mid 20’s

Eye color: Grey-green

Hair color: Dark brown

Height: 5”1

Personality: Sweet, timid, gentle, sensitive, cautious, quiet, shy, caring, and soft-spoken.

Zodiac: Pisces

Experimentation: Adora was made into a mermaid. She has a red-pink, Beta Fish-like tail and gills (when immersed in/underwater). Her tail encompasses her legs, and when she is fully dry, it will unwrap like a flower, becoming almost like a scaled skirt around her legs (when others are around, she wears a long silk skirt to cover it up). This makes it difficult for her to walk. She also has fangs that grow in when she’s threatened. She mostly eats fish, which she wasn’t very fond of before her mutation, but now craves.

Background: Adora was born in Killarney, Ireland, where she spent most of her life. She grew up in a poor family, and never graduated high school. She worked in a pub near her childhood home for several years, until she decided to “leave the nest” and seek out work elsewhere. Unfortunately, with her limited education, she found herself unable to get anything other than another waitressing job at a pub in Milbrook, Ireland for a brief amount of time.

Dr. Void frequented the bar a couple of times before “amicably” offering her a ride home after work one day. She was wary about the offer, since the man made her uneasy, but the co-worker who usually gave her a ride was out sick, so she agreed. Void then kidnapped her, and she became the first of his successful experiments. Terrified and alone, she prayed that one of her co-workers or neighbors would find her, but since she had only recently begun her waitressing job there, not many locals knew her very well.

Adora’s mother and younger sister, her only living relatives, never found her, and Adora gave up hope of ever returning home. She was already introverted and quiet prior to her kidnapping, but she ended up drawing even farther into herself. Trust is difficult to earn from her, apart from her fellow “hostages,” who have all been through the same horrors that she has endured.

Creation 102

Name: Russell Vestine

Age: Mid-20s

Eye color: Green-blue

Hair color: Blonde

Height: 6”1

Personality: Flirty, upbeat, positive, playful, kind-hearted, outgoing, bubbly, and open.

Zodiac: Libra

Experimentation: Russell was made into a Naga. He has a long, handsome green snake tail and retractable, poisonous fangs folded against his palate. They are usually non-lethal, depending on the amount injected into his victim. Unlike Adora, he cannot hide his tail as easily and must use a wheelchair when guests come to the mansion, coiling it up beneath him and covering it with blankets. He also has a pattern of scattered scales along his chest and neck.

Background: Russell was born in Beachwood, Ohio. He grew up in a large family of four brothers and two sisters. He was always a bit of a class clown, but got straight A’s and excelled in all of his classes. He attended college at Stanford University with a degree in Biology and a minor in Computer Science. While in college, he studied abroad in Ireland, and ended up enjoying it enough that he returned there to find work.

Not long after moving there, he was doing some personal work in Ballyboley forest, and ended up caught in a storm. He came across Turnus’ home, and was invited in to take shelter. Turnus drugged him, and for weeks, he was subjected to small doses of poison injections, until he became immune to his own toxins. It was an exceedingly painful procedure. He was the second successful experiment, and Adora was doting at his bedside, while he, in turn, took on a protective role over her.

Russell is an optimist, and he tries to maintain a positive outlook for the sake of the others, despite the situation. He acts as a “nurse” for the others (his mother was a nurse and taught him and his siblings what she knew growing up), tending to wounds Void inflicts upon them. He makes the best of a bad situation (which is a massive understatement), and uses humor to diffuse situations.

Creation 008

Name: Dani Modisette

Age: Early to mid-20′s

Eye color: Brown, occasionally pale gold

Hair color: Brown

Height: 5”3

Personality: Intelligent, quick-thinking, energetic, sassy, sarcastic, and bright.

Zodiac: Aquarius

Experimentation: She was made with the inspiration of a Cheetah. She as a pattern similar to Vitiligo on her skin—black blotches, almost like ink, in erratic patterns on various parts of her skin. She has sharpened teeth, semi-retractable claws, and can reach speeds of up to 122 kilometers per hour. She occasionally makes chirping, churring, or stuttering sounds inadvertently. Her eyes will sometimes change to a pale gold, usually when she feels threatened. Void sometimes lets her run around in the forest, to exercise and let out some excess energy.

Background: Dani was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She lived with her parents and two little brothers, and studied Criminal Justice at Boston University. She spent some time as a police officer, and then did work as a criminal investigator. At one point in her career, she was sent to Larne, Ireland on business, and ended up running into Violette in Ballyboley woods. She went to Void’s mansion to investigate, despite Violette’s warnings, and was drugged and knocked out.

Dani was the last of the current experiments, and is often scheming with Violette for an escape. She doesn’t voice this verbally like Violette, but rather keeps the thoughts to herself. She’s intelligent and constantly thinking on her feet, not yet able to accept her place in the household like the others (who have mostly given up on the possibility of an escape).

Creation 204

Name: Donovan Azzara

Age: Mid to late 20’s.

Eye color: Brown

Hair color: Dark brown

Height: 5”9

Personality: Reserved, quiet, cold, hostile, patient, practical

Zodiac: Taurus

Experimentation: Donovan was made into a chameleon-like creature. His hands and feet are zygodactylus, tong-like in appearance, and they allow him to hang from walls. His eyes can pivot and focus independently of one another, and he can change colors. He often uses this to change his pigments and become essentially invisible to the naked eye.

Background: Donovan was born into a middle-class family in Como, Italy. He learned from his mother how to cook, and became certified in food prep and management at a small community college, and began working as a chef in a local restaurant. While there, he met a woman named Giacinta, fell in love, and became engaged to her.

Before their wedding, they took a trip together to Ireland, and ended up lost in the woods. Void captured them both, but ended up killing Donovan’s fiancée during the experimental procedure. Since then, Donovan has been in a permanent state of shock, keeping to himself in the household and rarely speaking. He remains invisible the vast majority of the time, ashamed of his appearance and the inability to help his fiancée, riddled with guilt. He’s been known to be volatile and outright rude, and feels hopeless with his situation, feeling that without his love, his life is not worth living. The only person he will ever really open up to is London.

Creation 009

Name: Violette LueElling.

Age: Mid to late 20s

Eye color: Blue

Hair color: Brown

Height: 5”6

Personality: Temperamental, easily set off, snarky, hostile, fiery, defensive, and bad-mouthed.

Zodiac: Aries

Experimentation: Violette was made to be a Phoenix. She has large crimson wings and can breathe fire and smoke. She occasionally molts, much to the amusement of the others. She folds her wings back and wears a jacket when strangers are in the house. She is occasionally allowed to fly around the mansion grounds, to stretch her wings, since they get sore very easily.

Background: Violette was born in Brooklyn, New York. She lived with abusive father and older brother in a cheap apartment, and she frequently ran away as an adolescent. When she turned 18, she officially left home, and pursued her passion for art. She was on the streets for a while, and was reckless and used illicit substances, until she moved in with her boyfriend. When he returned to Ireland, he took her with her, but they broke up a few months later.

She planned to eventually move back to the States. However, while doing a painting of Ballyboley woods, Void knocked her out cold and kidnapped her. She put up the biggest fight of all of the experiments, and even managed to actually hurt Void when he tried experimenting on her. She is hotheaded and constantly trying to escape from the mansion. She gets the most beatings from Void and is his least favorite “pet.” Although she has a horrible temper and “foul mouth,” she has an affectionate side as well, and will go to the ends of the earth to protect her fellow house residents.

Creation 224

Name: James Creekson

Age: Early 20’s.

Eye color: Blue

Hair color: Black

Height: 6”3

Personality: Guarded, a bit standoffish, gentle, sarcastic, helpful, thoughtful, understanding.

Zodiac: Virgo

Experimentation: James was made to be similar to a vampire. He has pallid skin, jagged fangs, and a constant thirst for blood, which is sated in small amounts. He is kept well-stocked on bags of fresh blood from Dr. Void, but if he is not given the proper amounts, he will begin to weaken and lash out. He is inhumanly strong, but not as much as Turnus. Sunlight irritates him, but strong sunblock can help ease the pain on his skin.

Background: James grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He lived with a workaholic father and busy mother, and attended School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and landed a job with a corporation that had him traveling a lot. While doing some work in Larne, Ireland, he ran into Void while having car trouble in a city neighboring Ballyboley woods. Turnus fixed up the rental car, and offered him a place to stay for a few days, while he got his bearings. Void kidnapped him, and made him into his third successful experiment.

Like Russell, James’ first few weeks were rough, to put it lightly. Having to adjust to his new, ravenous appetite for blood, he ended up attacking Violette, who had arrived shortly after Russell. Though this has left an uncomfortable barrier between the two, they’ve actually grown extremely close, and may even have feelings for each other (though they’ll never admit it). James is ashamed of his beastly actions and tends to avoid the others as best he can, to keep himself under control.

Creation 117

Name: London O’Dempsey

Age: Mid to late 20’s.

Eye color: Blue-grey

Hair color: Blonde

Height: 5”4

Personality: Cheerful, bubbly, outgoing, extroverted, friendly, hyperactive, sweet, caring, and easygoing.

Zodiac: Gemini

Experimentation: She was made into a ‘Pixie’. Her ears are pointed at the tips and she has insect-like wings that shine rainbow in certain lighting. She can generate a glittery dust that can either send people into a dizzying state or knock them out (Void sometimes uses this ability to kidnap new “specimens”).

Background: London was born in Nice, France. She was the single child in a wealthy family, and graduated college at the University of Toulon with a Master’s in Literary Studies. She is fluent in French, German, and English, and wrote articles for a local newspaper.

She came to Ireland on a trip with her family. At her hotel, she went down one night for a drink at the bar, and was intercepted by a gentleman there, who drugged her beverage and kidnapped her. She woke up in Void’s mansion, miles and miles away from the hotel. Although her parents searched for years for her, she was never found. Even with all that has occurred, London is ever the optimist, like Russell, and is extremely affectionate and fun-loving.

#the muses #summary #for those on mobile devices #outsidethevoid

[wickeddruig]

Elevator Music

pairings: rafe cameron x woc!reader

summary: you feel as though you and your boyfriend are growing apart until he is put in a situation where he gets extremely jealous

warnings: asshole rafe, swearing, jealousy, possessiveness, sex, elevator sex, unprotected sex, breeding kink, mentions of trapping (like with a baby) unedited work

word count: 1.8k

authors note: this is my first fan fic on here so please be kind, idk if the smut is good but i had fun writing it.

You and Rafe had been dating for a few years now, you were high school sweethearts that met in your junior year and now you two were in your early 20’s, you had spent almost 4 years together. You were actually celebrating your 4th year this weekend.

You got a room at a very nice 5 star hotel, you didn’t care about material things but being Rafe’s girlfriend you learned to appreciate it at least. You were going to enjoy the luxuries while you were here. There was a pool, bar, a nice 5 star restaurant attached to the hotel and don’t even get started about the view from your room.

The only thing about the trip you wish was better was Rafe, sad to say but recently you felt like he was distancing himself. He would lose patience more, didn’t touch you as often, didn’t pay you any attention. In high school he couldn’t keep his hands off of you, he would sneak into classrooms to make out with you.

He would get you to skip class to drive around and have sex in his car but more recently he’s not doing those things anymore. You two were growing apart. You heard the stories of high school sweethearts never staying together too long after high school but you were dumb, you thought you could beat the odds but it was starting to become clear that you couldn’t.

The two of you were seated at the restaurant at the hotel, you ordered your favorite go to meal which probably upset Rafe that you were getting the same thing at a fancy restaurant instead of trying something new. You weren’t really in the mood to try new things though.

He, of course was more adventurous than you so he was trying something different. Maybe that’s why he was losing interest in you. because even though opposites attract sometimes it can be complicated dealing with someone who doesn’t share much of the same interests than you.

“If you’re just going to pick at your food maybe we should just leave” Rafe said with a hint of annoyance. You weren’t picking at your food because you weren’t hunger, you were picking at your food because of the silence between you two.

“I’m not picking at my food, worry about your own plate” you snapped. you weren’t the type to just let anything he said fly by. Maybe that’s also why the two of you were butting heads

“Well, when i’m paying for it, i’ll worry about it” He responded with his nostrils flaring. You immediately started to roll your eyes. You needed a break from this so you placed your napkin down passive aggressively.

“I’m going to the bathroom” You said backing away from your table, Rafe flicked his hand in a dismissive way.

You got up from the table and as you were walking away you bumped into someone, you realized it was a young man in an expensive suit, a very handsome young man. He looked to be about a few years older than you. You were never really into older men but after seeing this guy you might think you actually were. i mean how could you know, you had been with the same and only guy for years.

You realized he dropped a bunch of napkins once you bumped into him. You bent down to help him out and your fingers brushed against each other, you brushed and once you finished helping him you walked to the bathroom.

Once you got in the bathroom you looked in the mirror placing your hands on the sink and letting out a sigh. We’re you that touched deprived that a you couldn’t handle hand brushing? it wasn’t even sexual but it didn’t help that you still felt dirty for feeling something considering you had a boyfriend. Not that Rafe even noticed he was too busy looking at his phone to notice.

You took a deep breath and went back to your table. Rafe was still on his phone as you expected. You both finished your meal and went back to your room not saying a word to each other. When you got into your hotel bed that night you both slept with your backs facing each other.

You almost cried yourself to sleep that night but after reminding yourself that you weren’t a pussy who cried because their boyfriend is a dick you feel asleep, thinking about the handsome guy from the restaurant.

You woke up the next morning feeling like a whole new person. You decided today you were going to go down to the pool. It was early so hopefully there were no kids there. Nothing wrong with kids, you liked them but you wanted to read your book while dipping your toes into the water and you couldn’t really do that if there was a lot of splashing going on.

“Is that what you’re wearing” Rafe asked with a bit of judgement in his tone.

“Yeah.. Why” You said looking at your body in the mirror, it was a two piece suit you had on, you thought that you looked good in it. you loved your body because why not love your body while you’re young? you’ll end up wishing you did when you get older anyways so better enjoy it while you can.

“It’s a bit skimpy” He said rolling his eyes

“Whatever” You responded rolling your eyes back at him. You snatched your bag from the bed and headed out the door. Rafe followed behind you which you thought was weird because he didn’t really have any swim trunks on and he hadn’t really given you the indication that he was going with you in the first place. You shrugged him off.

As you got into the elevator you noticed the handsome man from the restaurant was in their as well. Your chest got tight and you got a little nervous, if you were a lot more lighter you probably would’ve blushed. Thank the heavens for your dark skin.

“Hey, you’re the girl from the restaurant last night” The man said, making a joke out of it. his voice was so deep you couldn’t fainted, it wasn’t as sexy as Rafe’s though. The elevator music made everything all the more awkward.

“Yeah..” you trailed on with your hand scratching the back of your neck “Sorry about that”

You let out a nervous laugh and pulled on your earlobe, it was something you did often when you were nervous. You used to do it around Rafe, it used to be one of his favorite quirks of yours.

You honestly didn’t even acknowledge Rafe in the elevator, you didn’t want to deal with the confrontation if he had realized you were fancying another man in the same air as him. He hadn’t been giving you the kind of attention you deserve. You were starting to say something else to him but he got off the elevator on his floor.

“That swimsuit makes you look slutty” a voice from behind you said, obviously it was Rafe. You didn’t responded. That’s what he wanted and you weren’t going to give him what he wanted.

“Did you hear me” He said his voice raising again. You looked back at him and rolled your eyes. That must’ve triggered him because he pressed the button that made the elevator stop completely. This made you terrified because you always feared being stuck in an elevator

“You’re such a slut” Rafe said grabbing your cheeks in his hand and lifting your face up to look at him “You don’t think i noticed what happened at the restaurant? him looking at you and touching you? you’re my girl, not his”

“you don’t treat me like i am” you said

“shut the fuck up” was all he said before he crashed his lips into you, he pushed your body against the wall of the elevator, his hands roaming your body and sliding into your swimsuit bottoms.

He feels how wet you are. He glided his thumb against your clit causing you to shiver and he sticks two fingers inside of you pumping in and out of you slowly causing you to moan until he immediately takes his fingers out. You look up at him confused. He brings his other hand up to your throat and squeezes it roughly but not hard enough to harm you.

“are you wet for me or for him” he furrows his eyebrows

“you” you can barely speak, not because his hands are too tight but because you’re so turned on you can barely even speak, things in your relationship haven’t been this fun since high school.

“My girl” He smirks taking his fingers that were inside of you and sucks on your juices. He unbuckles his jeans and bushes them to the ground, he takes his hand off of your throat and forces you to turn around “I knew when i saw you come out the bathroom you were hoping you’d see him today, that’s why i had to come with you. you’re my girl and no one can take you away from me. got that”

you nodded your head, listening to the elevator music that still managed to play in the background.

“say it” he said as he whispered, slipping his hands into your hair and pulling your head back to his ear.

“i’m yours”

“exactly now let me show you so you don’t try to leave me again” he said pushing your head against the wall, his hand was still in your hair and he used his free hand to guide his cock inside of you.

He thrusted in your roughly as he used the hand that he guided his cock with to reach over and rub your clit with. you were moaning like crazy, at some point you couldn’t even make a sound, your eyes were rolling back.

“Fuck Rafe” You moaned out his name, he loved when you did that, it sent him over the edge, it made him thrust into you so hard you couldn’t even speak.

“fuck i’m so close” He said but he wasn’t pulling out, usually before he cums he pulls out because you two obviously weren’t ready for kids

“Pull out” You managed to say

“No, im putting my kids in you so you can never get rid of me” He whispered in your ear before nibbling on it. For some reason that turned you on even more and pushed you to your release. You both came at the same time.

Rafe pulled up his pants and helped you pull up your swimsuit bottoms. You didn’t really need help but he insisted. He pressed the button on the elevator for it to start again. He grabbed your hand as the elevator door opened and you both existed towards the pool.

#rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader #outer banks #obx rafe #obx #obx x reader #outerbanks x reader #rafe fanfiction #rafe cameron fic #rafe fic #smut #fan fic

[innuendostudios]

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

#video essay #alt-right playbook #Youtube

[scandalsavagefanfic]

Hello! I am a huge fan of ur writing. I've loved everything I've read of yours. I've read alot of what you've posted, except for a couple of the tags that are squicky for me (so I'm very thankful you tag very thoroughly). No judgement for the squick, it's just not for me. & when I'm having a bad day, I usually just go thru ur ao3 and find something to reread. I think about Therapy's Bruce & Jason every damn day. While I obvs appreciate ur darker more "problematic" content (I really vibe with some of the themes you write about bc of my own trauma, & so it's very cathartic to read about in a fictional setting), I am truly a sucker for ur more happy content. The Happily Ever After verse also lives in my head rent free. Idk more wholesome stuff just seems more special when you write it. Anyways. I would die for you. But the point of this ask is cause I'm curious as to why you don't like Urban Legends? I'm sorry if you already talked about it here or on twitter and I missed it. I was just wondering because I really enjoy your take on things and would love to hear why you dislike it. I've been enjoying it so far personally, but I am always open to DC comics criticism.

Aw thank you so much! I'm so flattered by everything you just said. You're so sweet ❤❤❤❤❤

I haven't talked about Urban Legends here or twitter (I haven't been very active in either place lately. Just a lot going on and no energy 😔) but I'm happy to do it here.

Before I start though, I just want to add a standard disclaimer and make it clear that if you like it, there's nothing wrong with that and you don't have to let me ruin it for you lol. Like what you like.

That said, since you asked...

I said this when I was talking about it on discord, that there is a difference between hope and expectation. I always hope that a new story centered on Jason (or anyone really, but things have been especially egregious for Jay for 15 years) will be good or at least treat the character with a minimal level of respect (to be honest, the bar is super fucking low). But my expectations always temper my hope, to keep it from getting unrealistic. Because my expectations are based on experience.

The long history of Jason Todd, since even before his resurrection, has been one of retroactively trying to make him "a bad seed" in order to absolve Bruce of any responsibility in his death.

I don't even expect DC or their writers to start honoring the fact that Jason was not an angry, reckless Robin (and less of the later than Dick or Tim and definitely Damian). There plenty of ways that retcon can be folded into his history and be compelling and sympathetic. And if they're going to stick with that retcon, I'm only asking that they do it in one of those compelling and sympathetic ways because Jason was 15 when he died, heroically, in one of the most selfless acts in comics, to save a woman who literally handed him over to be brutally murdered. He was 12 when Bruce plucked him off the streets, he'd been homeless and fending for himself for at least two years. I personally think that Jason's story hits harder for him and Bruce if their original, canon relationship, of Jason as starry-eyed and eager to learn and absolutely devoted to Bruce and Bruce to Jason, is preserved. But Jason's origins does leave room for a meaningful interpretation of him as angry and frustrated at the lack of meaningful results of Bruce's methods.

And that's really where my irritation at stories like Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer and Batman The Adventure Continues has it's roots.

Every time one of these stories comes out, I think (or hope, rather) that this will be the one that remembers and respects the origins of the Jason and the Red Hood, that takes into account the changed sensibilities of comics readers in the 30 years since Jason's death and the subtle, 20 year, retroactive campaign to make him the "bad Robin". The "born bad" trope is played out and literally no one likes the message it implies. That some kids are just bad eggs and there's nothing parents or the adults around them can do. Especially when it's played as the kid's fault. If Jason's time as Robin is going to be characterized by anger, then it should be rooted in anger at the social injustices he witnessed as he grew up in an impoverished, crime-ridden, area and the horrors he faced raising himself when every day was a battle for survival. There are topical, meaningful, stories to tell with that backdrop.

But those are never the stories we get.

⚠⚠ Spoilers for Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer ⚠⚠

I'm particularly disappointed in Urban Legends because for the first issue, it looked like that was the kind of story we were going to get. I was put off by the first flashback of Jason being mesmerized by Bruce's guns, and I got that feeling in my gut that it was a bad sign. Jason depicted as impatient and overconfident and the scene with the guns is heavy-handed foreshadowing that got my spidey-sense tingling. I had a inkling then (in the first three pages) of how this story was going to play out, but it was early and I could still see many narrative paths that could lead to a satisfying story. My concerns were soothed somewhat and the little flame of my hope fanned, with the flashback of Alfred scolding Bruce, with Barbara's concern for Jason. A bit of worry returned with the way Jason ruthlessly pursued an addict who didn't appear to be a dealer and with the ending of the issue. The stuff with the addict sat wrong with me but the ending was tempered some by how despicable Tyler's dad was written. The scene was clearly set so that the reader could sympathize with Jason's decision and the scene with the addict could be brushed aside as a side-effect of comics over-the-top need for constant action, so I still held hope.

Issue 2 made me uncomfortable and it's where my hope starts to take a backseat to my expectations. I can dismiss Jason's self-deprecating internal monologue as unreliable narration, except that the flashback reinforces his thought process to explicitly show that it's not unreliable narration, and should be taken at face value. Jason faces physical abuse at the hands of his mother's drug dealer and when the flashback continues later, Jason kills the drug dealer. To be clear, this is a pre-Bruce Jason. His mom is still alive. He's like... 10. He kills this guy for shoving his head into a wall and implying Jason's mother paid for her drugs with sex. This is a scene that serves a single purpose. To show that Jason has always been prone to violence.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is the small chance the drug dealer might not be dead. But the story obviously wants the reader to think he is, and it hasn't done anything to change that yet.

Starlin already did this story with The Diplomat’s Son in 1988 and he did it infinitely better. AND that’s still technically canon. So now I’m supposed to believe that Jason lost his cool bad enough to kill two douche bags before his sweet 16? Like it’s totally normal for abused kids raised in poverty, who’ve led hard and heartbreaking lives to just... haul off and kill people? That’s bullshit, and when taken with the Jason in the third issue, who is little more than an idiot thug, this story is really doubling down on some fucked up stereotypes.

Which brings us to the most recent issue. I went into this installment with very low expectations. I thought this story was going to be about Jason, through this experience with Tyler, a young boy with a similar background to Jason's, coming to the realization that Bruce's way is the best way and that Bruce did his best by Jason.

That would be annoying (in no small part because it takes increasingly absurd levels of plot armor to keep Bruce's no kill rule relevant, let alone irrefutably right). But I can probably live with that, if only because maybe if Jason officially falls back into line with the Bats crusade, maybe I'll get stories that treat him with respect, stories that don't relegate him to comic relief, dumb brute, or a background body with no lines in a story about the Joker burning Gotham (like Jason would just fucking stand there quietly for that).

And that may still be where the story is going, Jason realizing Bruce is right.

But holy shit do I not have the right words to describe how fucking insulting and gross issue three is.

From start to finish--including the flashback--Jason is written as cruel and fucking stupid. Like straight up dumb.

The entire issue is Bruce explaining the fucking basics to Jason like it's his first day. And Jason flies off the fucking handle and terrorizes a doctor he knows isn't a part of making the Cheerdrops, beats the shit out of some random addicts, and finally, when he can't accomplish anything on his own because he's a dumb brute he calls Barbara for help and rushes in with no information where he's promptly incapacitated and must now wait to be rescued by Batman.

This panel is the least of the issues sins but I can’t screenshot the entire story but it’s representative of the tone for the whole issue (and retroactively tainted the prior two issues).

This is beyond insulting. The only conclusions Jason comes to in this issue are the ones Bruce leads him to by talking to him like he can’t make the simplest connections. And like... in this story Jason can’t make the simplest connections.

This (and the Jason throughout the entirety of this issue) is a far cry from the Jason we fell in love with in Under the Red Hood, who was competent and strategic and intelligent enough to seize control of Gotham’s underworld from Black Mask (who’s no fucking slouch, he’s the first and only person to unify organized crime in Gotham) AND elude and manipulate Bruce until the time and place of his choosing.

This is a far cry from even the Red Hood and the Outlaws Jason who is competent enough to fight the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul (among very dangerous and skilled others) and smart enough to create antidotes for mind control nanotech viruses.

As he should be, by the way. Jason Todd is one of the best, most comprehensively trained fighters in DC’s stable of non powered vigilantes. He’s not irrational or hot headed. He’s pragmatic, tactically minded, and patient. He’s a detective. Right now. Has been since he was 12. Bruce doesn’t have to make him one because he already is. 

Jason is not a stupid thug who uses his fists because his brain doesn’t work. And I can’t tell you how so very exhausted I am by this narrative. 

This is actually the most egregious example of Jason’s skills and intelligence being not just undermined but dismissed entirely. Even Morrison’s Jason had some degree of competency. 

The one, single redeeming factor of this story is the art. It’s beautiful. And Marcus To is a godsend he seems to be one of only a couple of artists who remember that Jason was a child when he was Robin and I’m literally only buying this book because of him. 

Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to come out so... um... passionately lol. I’m just very very tired. My intention with this isn’t to ruin it for you, if you like it, that’s fine. 

But this issue shot this story to the top of my "Vehemently Despise” list. 1) Batman: Urban Legends (Cheer), 2) Battle for the Cowl/Morrison’s Batman and Robin, 3) Batman The Adventure Continues.

I hope the next issues somehow salvage this dumpster fire. But I’m not expecting it.

(Damnit. That sounded harsh again. To reiterate, I’m not trying to judge anyone who enjoys it, I just personally hate it and you asked me why lol 😅)

#Batman #red hood #batman: urban legends #nice art #shit story #or at least shit characterization #jason todd deserves better #this response got long and I didn't edit it #please forgive any errors #and/or unclear spots #spoilers

[flashflashhundredyarddash]

Shove You Out the Door

Jaime regretted not letting the Reach invasion happen.

The day started out fine. He spent two hours stressing over what to wear to the movies before he covered up his shirt with the same blue hoodie that he wore all the time anyways. When he showed up 20 minutes early for their noon showing Bart was already there, wearing shorts in deference to the early summer Texas heat, and Jaime had the very unchill thought of legs sjdjfnee and Khaji Da offered to eliminate The Impulse, even though Bart had been Kid Flash for two years already. Bart spotted him and quickly latched onto Jaime's arm, pulling him into the theater and chattering away about whatever sci-fi movie Bart had picked out.

They went to a diner afterwards, and when Jaime blew his straw wrapper at Bart he laughed in delight. When Bart got up to go collect 50 more straws and sat back down he slid into the booth next to Jaime, and Jaime panicked because oh god, are they on a date? Jaime meant for it to be a date and then had freaked and not actually said anything to confirm it was a date so technically they were just hanging out and Bart was fiddling with the woven bracelet that Milagro had made for him that he wore everywhere because actually Milagro was his best friend now, sorry Jaime-

Then Booster Gold sat in the booth across from them.

Jaime didn’t realize it was Booster Gold at first, so he cleared his throat and said, “This table is a little occupied,” and Bart blew a straw wrapper into the side of his face.

The man who had so rudely sat at their table and interrupted their maybe-date opened his mouth before Bart interrupted him. “Hi Booster Gold,” Bart said.

Booster Gold closed his mouth. “It’s just Michael right now, actually,” he said. His blond curly hair was dark at the roots and when he smiled Jaime felt awe at how white his teeth were.

“Can we… help you?” Jaime asked, because he wasn’t sure why a random member of the Justice League decided to look for one or both of them. He had the thought that maybe he was actually an alien or shape-shifter and was coming to kidnap them or kill them or something, but then dismissed that thought because that was stupid, and also why would an alien disguise itself as Booster Gold to come kill them?

“Actually, I was hoping I could help you,” Michael said with his perfect, shiny teeth. He spread his hands out and magnanimously stated, “I have decided to offer my esteemed superheroing services and mentor the new Blue Beetle.”

He glanced back and forth between Bart and Jaime.

“Which one of you is Blue Beetle?” he asked.

Jaime choked on his drink.

“Me,” Bart said, immediately, “I’m Blue Beetle and I definitely need your superheroing services.”

Jaime put his hand over Bart’s mouth and very pointedly did not react when Bart licked his palm. Bart could never understand the pains of being an older brother.

“I’m Blue Beetle,” Jaime said.

“You’re both Blue Beetle?” Michael asked.

“Yes!” Bart shrieked.

“No!” Jaime said.

“This mentoring thing is already so complicated,” Michael sighed.

“Look,” Jaime said, wiping his hand off on Bart’s shirt, “it’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but I’m a little confused. I don’t think our skill sets are really… compatible.”

“I get it,” Michael said. “You’re the Blue Beetle and I’m a time traveler from the future. On the surface we have nothing in common.”

“Wow,” Bart said, “You’re from the future? What’s that like? Has the world been invaded by crazy bug aliens?”

“What?”

“Ignore him. Like I said, I appreciate the offer, but I feel like I’ve got this handled. Besides…” Jaime couldn’t help the bit of hurt that bled into his voice, “why didn’t you ever show up when I first got the scarab? I could have used a mentor back then.”

Michael sighed again and rested his face on his hand. “I don’t know. When Ted died, I just… I just didn’t cope well, I guess. He’d been my best friend for so long and… yeah, you didn’t deserve to have to deal with that, kid.”

“Wait, you actually knew Ted Kord?” Jaime said, leaning forward.

“Yes?” Michael said. He reached for a chain around his neck and pulled at it to reveal the ring that had been tucked into his shirt.

“Oh shit,” Jaime said. “I’m sorry, man.”

Michael waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, grieving widow. But anyways, I’m cool now, I did the whole therapy thing, and since I was married to the last Blue Beetle, I figure that makes you my, like, step-protege or something.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Jaime said.

“Oh man, if you had showed up last week we would’ve gotten you something for Father’s Day,” Bart said, “Like a custom shirt that says world’s #1 guy who was married to the guy who was actually supposed to be my boyfriend’s mentor. World’s #1 replacement mentor.”

Jaime abruptly turned to look at Bart. “Boyfriend?” Jaime squeaked.

Bart squinted his eyes at him. “Have we not been dating for two months?”

“Should I go?” Michael asked.

“I thought maybe we were dating but I wasn’t sure? I do want to date you but I wasn’t sure if you wanted to date me.”

Bart huffed out a laugh. “You are so dumb. I don’t share food with just anyone. Also I already have my prom dress picked out so you just need to get a red tie.”

“I have a red tie!” Michael shouted, making them both jump. “I have like five hundred ties. Boom! You’ve just been mentored.” He pointed at the basket of fries in front of Jaime. “Are you going to eat those?”

Jaime slid the fries over to Bart.

“Oh my god,” Bart said, sounding a little choked up, “I love you so much. I will even let you eat some of these.”

“Am I nailing this boyfriend thing so far?” Jaime asked.

“Oh, totally, babe.”

Jaime nodded to himself. He was totally nailing this boyfriend thing.

“Ah, young love,” Michael said, getting up. He patted his pockets for a minute and then stopped. “I was going to pay, because I’m a mentor now, but I don’t know where my wallet is.”

“Don’t you own a quarter of Kord Industries or something?” Bart said.

“So! I’ll see you around, Blue, Blue’s boyfriend. Maybe you could help me out on a patrol or something. That’s what Green Arrow does with his kids, I think.”

“Sure, man,” Jaime said, deciding to throw him a bone. “See you around.”

Michael smiled brightly and then scribbled his number onto a napkin before leaving the diner, the bell tinkling behind him.

“Oh my gosh, did you see-” Bart started.

“His teeth!” Jaime finished.

Bart nodded aggressively, his auburn hair flopping. “I have never seen a man with more beautiful teeth. Well, except maybe yours.”

“You’ve got a pretty nice smile, too.” Jaime said, and reminded himself Bart couldn’t hear the way his heart fell out of its rhythm for a second.

“Yeah,” Bart said, leaning in, “Maybe we should compare notes.”

#author's note: booster knew how to find them bcus anyone whos anyone in the super community knows blue beetle and kid flash hang out #all the time so he just asked barry lol #blue beetle #bluepulse #jaime reyes #bart allen #kid flash #impulse #michael carter #boostle #booster gold #dc #young justice #yj #the burd squawks #fanfics #the burd writes #also milagro thinks jaime is lame but thinks bart is SO COOL FOR SOME REASON