#I will probably write this essay whether anyone wants it or not

[hellfireclubmember]

Pretty Girl

a/n: Okay, I haven't written a legit fanfic in years so I'm so nervous publishing this. Any feedback would be appreciated. Also I was thinking of making a part 2, lmk if any one would like me to

warnings: none, just fluff, maybe annoying mutual pining. also probably a few mistakes. I didn't thoroughly proof read this

word count: 1.9k

summary: Dustin can't stop talking about the sub he got to fill in for Lucas, making Steve want to smash his head into a wall. That is, of course, until he sees you.

PART 2 HERE PART 3 HERE

disclaimer: reader is 18 and a senior in high school

Steve was losing his mind. He loved Dustin Henderson as if he were his little brother, but he might just strangle him at this very moment. First, he would not stop talking about Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson and now he won’t shut up about the substitute they had to bring into their little nerd club to play their little nerd game.

“… she’s just so cool! She had no idea how to play, Mike and I gave her a quick lesson before the session and then she goes and lands a crit hit on the most powerful dark wizard of all time!” Dustin was so impressed he couldn’t see that Steve wasn’t even really paying attention anymore, choosing to stack the new releases in alphabetical order instead. “She’s so pretty too” Dustin sighed “and nice.”

“Is Dustin still talking about that girl he forced to play Dungeons and Dragons?” In walked Robin from the back room. She sat down behind the counter. “Hasn’t stopped.” Were the first words Steve had said in the last twelve minutes.

“I did not force her!”

Dustin had found you sitting alone at the very back of the library whilst writing an essay for your English class. You were one of the maybe four students that were in there. Most of your peers excited for the basketball game that day after school. Dustin had realized he had seen you before and almost all the times he had seen you, you were alone. The boy figured asking you would be a win-win; this way you could maybe gain some more friends and he wouldn’t have to die. He rushed towards you, rambling about hellfire and getting his ass kicked by Eddie before he knew it you were agreeing to help. In all honesty, it wasn’t very easy for you to agree. Your stomach twisting at the thought of being in a room full of people you didn’t know but saying no to this boy somehow seemed worse; like killing a unicorn or something.

After agreeing, Mike and Dustin sat with you in the library and helped you create a character sheet, explaining the basics of DND in the short period of time before the session. You were never really expecting to have fun. In fact, you were fully expecting for your character to die immediately. When she didn’t you started to pay more attention. The excitement around you fueling your own. It was nice to be a part of something, surrounded by people that loved something so much made you feel warm and happy. You had never felt so at ease, comfortable doing something out of your comfort zone.

“Yeah? So, cornering (y/n) in the school library the way Steve does every female customer was the ethical thing to do?” Robin said.

“Dude! I don’t corner anyone.” Steve looked up indignantly from the VHS tapes at Robin.

Robin rolled her eyes and continued her scolding. “You know she was gonna say yes, she’s the nicest person I know. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say the word no.”

Steve was listening to them argue about whether Dustin dragged you to the nerd meeting or not when he heard the door to the video store open. His eyes landed on you walking through the door. The prettiest girl he’s ever seen walking into the fluorescent lit store. Lips parted as you tried catching your breath from the bike ride there. Steve felt like he forgot how to act like a human being, not even being able to execute his usual greeting or offer a charming smile. He watched you look around the store. Pretty eyes scanning until they landed on something behind Steve. You raised your hand to give a small wave. A wave he almost returned had Dustin not spoken up.

“(y/n). hey!” Dustin said as he walked over to the front of the register, right beside Steve. He had his eyes fixed on you, stare unwavering as you made your way toward Dustin and himself. Your eyes flicked over to Steve, acknowledging him with the cutest smile he had ever seen. Steve was never this awestruck by something as simple as a smile but he wished he could tattoo your smile to the inside of his eyelids so he could never forget it.

“Hi (y/n).” Robin was the next person to greet you.

“Hi Robin, I didn’t know you worked here.” He finally heard you speak and Steve never thought a voice could be so sweet.

“You know me, never one to brag.” A small giggle escaped your lips and if he thought your voice was sweet your laugh was like cotton candy; soft and pillowy. He couldn’t help but want to make you laugh for the rest of his life. Robin watched Steve look at you with the dumbest look she’s ever seen on his face, which is saying a lot. She genuinely had to bite back a laugh. “You know the hair, right?” Robin nodded her head towards Steve. That was his queue he had to get rid of the heart eyes and turn on the charm. You looked up at him which is when it finally clicked. He recognized you from his time at Hawkins High. Remembered you walking the halls alone with your head down most of the time. He never thought too much about you back then, which right now he regretted greatly, distracted with his douchebag friends and his relationship with Nancy to ever really notice most people.

“Yeah, I remember Steve.” You nodded your head. “Hello.” The hint of another smile on your lips. He so desperately had to hold himself back from hugging you. He wanted to be close to you, to hold you. Steve really didn’t understand what had gotten over him. Sure, he had liked girls before but being this whipped so immediately was definitely new to him.

“Hi, sweetheart.” He tried licking moisture back onto his lips, but his mouth was dry. He leaned back onto the counter and smiled. Trying his best to be as smooth as possible. He didn’t want to look at Robin or Dustin, mostly because that meant having to look away from you but also because he knew the look on their faces right now would be one of disgust.

The skin on your face started feeling incredibly warm. You had never spoken to Steve when he was in school, to be fair you hadn’t spoken to many people but speaking to King Steve seemed an impossible task. He was like art at the museums you liked to frequent, beautiful but untouchable.  

Dustin removed his gaze from Steve whilst shaking his head and placed it back on you. “What are you doing here?” He asked. Right, you came here for something. What was that something? The brief interaction with Steve was enough to make you slightly lightheaded. You started nipping at the inside of cheek, rummaging through your head.

“Oh, I accidentally took your DND notebook yesterday. It said return if found and then your address was inside, which by the way I think is an awful idea. There are weird people out there, Dustin. You have to be more careful.” Steve and Dustin making eye contact, both thinking about the irony of telling Dustin to be safe. You reached for his notebook inside your messenger bag. “When I got to your house your mom said you might be here.” You took a few steps, offering him his journal. Now close enough to be able to smell Steve’s cologne, your gaze drifted for a second up to his face and he was looking down at you. The second your eyes met, he smiled, making you look away abruptly. He was making you way more nervous than usual. Your hands were getting clammy, and your breath was a little shaky. Steve Harrington was so beautiful. You always knew this but you had never had the honor of being this close to him.

“Dude, this is like the second time you’ve saved my life!” Dustin grabbed the notebook with a wide smile. You let out a small laugh. This kid’s smile was infectious, no matter the situation, if Dustin smiled you smiled. Those are the rules.

“Trying my best.” You closed your bag whilst taking a few steps back. Trying to make some distance between you and Steve, hoping to any God he couldn’t see your shaky hands. “Right. I’ll just get going then.” As the words left your mouth Steve started to panic. He can’t just let you leave. He had only said two words to you. His brain going on over drive trying to think of ways to get you to stay even a little longer. He looked outside at your bike and then at the dark clouds in the sky. It was definitely going to start raining soon.

“Wait!” He said this a little louder than anticipated. He cleared his throat as you turned your head to look at him. He smiled softly as he looks at your eyes again. He thinks he could look at your eyes all day. “You just got here; you should hang around with us. It’s for sure going to start raining soon. I can’t let a pretty girl get caught riding her bike in the rain.” Dustin snickered and Steve elbowed his shoulder immediately to get him to shut up. The taller boy watched as your eyes widened slightly at the use of the word pretty. You were so cute it was driving him crazy.

“Yeah, dingus is right. You should stay, besides tonight’s movie night. You can join us at Steve’s house. We’re gonna pig out on junk and watch horror movies. Steve is going to drive us all home after, he’s our trusty chauffeur.” Steve looked at Robin as she spoke, and he swears he could’ve planted a kiss on her forehead right then and there. Robin looked at him for a second with a small smirk on her face.

You fiddled with the strap of your bag as you thought about it. It would really suck to be caught in the rain, besides this could be fun right? You said yes to DND and that was fun. Doing things you wouldn’t normally do seemed to be working for you so why stop now? Of course, this had nothing to do with the way your heart raced when Steve looked at you or the way you really wanted to be in his presence longer or how pink and shiny his lips looked or how you wondered what his hand would feel like holding your hand.

“I would really like that.” You smiled at Robin and then turned to look at Steve. “If that’s okay with all of you.” This was directed more at Steve than it was to Dustin. There was a moment of silence as Steve stared at your pretty face, a smile adorning his features making him look like a lovesick puppy. It was Dustin’s turn to elbow the idiot to his left. That was enough to break the trance.

“Of course it’s okay with us. Right Dustin?” He glared at the boy that just assaulted him.

Dustin nodded his head. “It’d be an honor to have you at our movie night, (y/n).” Steve reached over to pat his younger friend on the shoulder.

“It’s set then.” He said, more excited for it to reach closing time than he has ever been.

#stranger things fluff #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson #robin buckley #stranger things #billy hargrove #billy hargove x reader

[yrluvjane]

| ʜᴇʀ ɢᴏʟᴅᴇɴ ɢʟᴏᴡ |

[Harry Potter x fem!reader] [Warning: most annoying ending ever.]

"I never promised Hermione anything, I mean, all right, I was going to go to Slughorn's Christmas party with her, but she never said . . . just as friends . . . I'm a free agent. . . ." Harry mocked Ron voice as he sat with Y/n in the back of the library, filling her on the Ron's latest speech about his freedom. "That book please." Said Y/n mindlessly pointing towards a heavy-paged blue book titled Transfiguration of sentient beings.

"We're taking this in two weeks! Why in Merlin's name are you doing it now?" He asked flipping through the book but shut when he saw an entire 13-paged chapter on transfiguration of garden animals. "I like to be ready, and Hermione isn't being any better really."

"He's at perfect liberty to kiss whomever he likes, I really couldn't care less." Said Y/n making a face which Harry believed had to be Hermione's. She raised her quill and dotted an i so ferociously that she punctured a hole in her parchment.

"You should really start studying." Said Y/n without looking up. He bent a little lower over Advanced Potion-Making and continued to make notes on Everlasting Elixirs, occasionally pausing to decipher the Prince's useful additions to Libatius Borage's text.

"And incidentally," said Y/n, after a quite a while, "you need to be careful."

"For the last time," said Harry, speaking in a slightly hoarse whisper after three-quarters of an hour of silence, "I am not giving back this book, I've learned more from the Half-Blood Prince than Snape or Slughorn have taught me in - and I thought you were on my side -"

"I'm not talking about your stupid so-called Prince," said Y/n, giving his book a nasty look as though it had been rude to her. "I'm talking about earlier. I went into the girls' bathroom just before I came in here and there were about a dozen girls in there, including that Romilda Vane, trying to decide how to slip you a love potion. They're all hoping they're going to get you to take them to Slughorn's party, and they all seem to have bought Fred and George's love potions, which I'm afraid to say probably work -"

"Why didn't you tell on them then?" demanded Harry. "They didn't have the potions with them in the bathroom," said Y/n scornfully. "They were just discussing tactics. As I doubt whether even the Half-Blood Prince" - she gave the book a suspicious look - "could dream up an antidote for a dozen different love potions at once, I'd just invite someone to go with you, that'll stop all the others thinking they've still got a chance. It's tomorrow night, they're getting desperate."

"There isn't anyone I want to invite," mumbled Harry, who was still trying not to think about how Y/n would certainly go with Hinderson, a Ravenclaw prefect, any more than he could help, despite the fact that she kept cropping up in his dreams in ways that made him devoutly thankful that she could not perform Legilimency.

"Well, just be careful what you drink, because Romilda Vane looked like she meant business," said Y/n grimly. She hitched up the long roll of parchment on which she was writing her Transfiguration essay and continued to scratch away with her quill. Harry watched her with his mind a long way away. "Hang on a moment," he said slowly. "I thought Filch had banned anything bought at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?"

"And when has anyone ever paid attention to what Filch has banned?" asked Y/n, still concentrating on her essay. "But I thought all the owls were being searched. So how come these girls are able to bring love potions into school?"

"Fred and George send them disguised as perfumes and cough potions," said Y/n. "It's part of their Owl Order Service. A Hufflepuff kept showing it off in the common room."

"Yeah, well, never mind that," said Harry quickly. "The point is, Filch is being fooled, isn't he? These girls are getting stuff into the school disguised as something else! So why couldn't Malfoy have brought the necklace into the school - ?"

"Oh, Harry . . . not that again . . ."

"Come on, why not?" demanded Harry.

"Look," sighed Y/n, "Secrecy Sensors detect jinxes, curses, and concealment charms, don't they? They're used to find Dark Magic and Dark objects. They'd have picked up a powerful curse, like the one on that necklace, within seconds. But something that's just been put in the wrong bottle wouldn't register - and anyway, love potions aren't Dark or dangerous -"

"You broke into a gate that was bewitched by Dumbledore!" Whisper-shouted Harry as Y/n hit him with a parchment roll on the head before shushing him. "And if I didn't, you would've been dead due to frostbite." Said Y/n with a glare and slamming her book shut signaling this discussion is over.

True to her words, Romilda Vane had cornered him the moment he had climbed through the portrait hole. "Hi, Harry!" said Romilda, "Fancy a gillywater?" He could imagine Y/n giving him a "what-did-I-tell-you?" look over her shoulder. "No thanks," said Harry quickly supressing a snort. "I don't like it much."

"Well, take these anyway," said Romilda, thrusting a box into his hands. "Chocolate Cauldrons, they've got firewhisky in them. My gran sent them to me, but I don't like them."

"Oh - right - thanks a lot," said Harry, who could not think what else to say. "Er - I'm just going over here with . . ." He hurried off, his voice tailing away feebly.

When he arrived in the entrance hall at eight o'clock that night, he found an unusually large number of girls lurking there, all of whom seemed to be staring at him resentfully as he approached Luna. She was wearing a set of spangled silver robes that were attracting a certain amount of giggles from the onlookers, but otherwise she looked quite nice.

Harry was glad, in any case, that she had left off her radish earrings, her butterbeer cork necklace, and her Spectrespecs. "Hi," he said. "Shall we get going then?" "Oh yes," she said happily. "Where is the party?" "Slughorn's office," said Harry, leading her up the marble staircase away from all the staring and muttering. "Did you hear, there's supposed to be a vampire coming?" "Rufus Scrimgeour?" asked Luna.

"I - what?" said Harry, disconcerted. "You mean the Minister of Magic?" "Yes, he's a vampire," said Luna matter-of-factly. "Father wrote a very long article about it when Scrimgeour first took over from Cornelius Fudge, but he was forced not to publish by somebody from the Ministry. Obviously, they didn't want the truth to get out!" Harry, who thought it most unlikely that Rufus Scrimgeour was a vampire, but who was used to Luna repeating her father's bizarre views as though they were fact, did not reply.

Whether it had been built that way, or because he had used magical trickery to make it so, Slughorn's office was much larger than the usual teacher's study. The ceiling and walls had been draped with emerald, crimson, and gold hangings, so that it looked as though they were all inside a vast tent. The room was crowded and stuffy and bathed in the red light cast by an ornate golden lamp dangling from the center of the ceiling in which real fairies were fluttering, each a brilliant speck of light.

"Harry, I'd like you to meet Eldred Worple, an old student of mine, author of Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the Vampires - and, of course, his friend Sanguini." Worple, who was a small, stout, bespectacled man, grabbed Harry's hand and shook it enthusiastically; the vampire Sanguini, who was tall and emaciated with dark shadows under his eyes, merely nodded. He looked rather bored.

A gaggle of girls was standing close to him, looking curious and excited. "Harry Potter, I am simply delighted!" said Worple, peering shortsightedly up into Harry's face. "I was saying to Professor Slughorn only the other day, 'Where is the biography of Harry Potter for which we have all been waiting?' " "Er," said Harry, "were you?" "Just as modest as Horace described!" said Worple.

"Here, have a pasty," said Worple, seizing one from a passing elf and stuffing it into Sanguini's hand before turning his attention back to Harry. "My dear boy, the gold you could make, you have no idea -"

"I'm definitely not interested," said Harry firmly, "and I've just seen a friend of mine, sorry."

He pulled Luna after him into the crowd; he had indeed just seen a long mane of brown hair disappear between what looked like two members of the Weird Sisters. "Hermione! Hermione!"

"Harry! There you are, thank goodness! Hi, Luna!"

"What's happened to you?" asked Harry, for Hermione looked distinctly disheveled, rather as though she had just fought her way out of a thicket of Devil's Snare. "Oh, I've just escaped - I mean, I've just left Cormac," she said.

"Under the mistletoe," she added in explanation, as Harry continued to look questioningly at her. "Serves you right for coming with him," he told her severely. "I thought he'd annoy Ron most," said Hermione dispassionately.

"I debated for a while about Zacharias Smith, but I thought, on the whole -"

"You considered Smith?" said Harry, revolted. "Yes, I did, and I'm starting to wish I'd chosen him, McLaggen makes Grawp look a gentleman. Let's go this way, we'll be able to see him coming, he's so tall. . ."

The three of them made their way over to the other side of the room, scooping up goblets of mead on the way, "Who are we hiding from?" whispered a voice from behind them as Hermione shreiked.

"Y/n! Oh thank merlin!" Said Hermione placing her hand on her chest as if she just had a heart attack. Y/n chuckled, "Sorry?"

She looked beautiful.

Harry's breath hitched and caught in his throat as he raked her up and down with his eyes. She was dressed in a stunning, glittering gold dress that pushed off her shoulders and slitted up her thighs leaving others imaginations go wild, especially Harry's.

She had her hair tied up in a low bun, decorated with pearls. Her gold heels reflected the light. Her middle finger had a gorgeous wildly sparkling gem on but what caught Harry's eyes wasn't the expensive rock.

It was the large bruise forming on her knuckles, staining her skin with blueish purple marks.

Harry's hand immediately grabbed hers in worry, his mind racing with what could have caused it.

"Y/n! What happened?!" He asked, the monster crawling inside him was both in rage and worry. It was as if it wanted to climb out and tear everyone apart and push Y/n behind it, protecting her.

"Oh, it's nothing." She said as she pulled back her hand a dismissively waved it.

"Y/n punched one of Williams friend's in the face after he said something bad about you, Ron and Hermione." Luna said in her dream-like voice as if she was retelling a story.

"What?!"

"Why?"

Both Harry and Hermione asked at the same time though Harry felt the monster calm down and he had to hide the grin that was about to litter his face.

She defended him. She had punched someone for him.

Well technically she punched someone for you, Ron and 'Mione ... A voice in his said but he pushed it away. Harry felt special.

"He just said something unacceptable." She replied just as Luna interupted

"He said Harry is bias and an attention seeking freak, Hermione was disgusting for dating Weasley, Krum and Cormac and that Ron was a patheticly poor excuse of a wizard." Luna said expressionless as Y/n tried to send her 'Cut it' signals with her hand but the Ravenclaw ignored her.

"Y/n then punched his face in front of the Ravenclaw common room, breaking his nose. Then she told William she couldn't date someone who had friends that shamelessly talked in such vulgar ways and she'd rather date a Slytherin. And made sure to remind us that Hermione here is the smartest in our year, Ron saved every single throw at the match and Harry was more braver and selfless than all of us combined. That's why he isn't here, he was escorted to the infirmary."

Hermione seemed both shocked and grateful as she lunged herself at the Hufflepuff and started muttering nonsense of how she shouldn't have done that and how she'd get in trouble and how she's grateful for her words.

Harry on the other hand was a grinning freak inside. She thought he was brave. He felt the urge to giggle and held it in. Sure he was pissed off with what Hinderson's friend had to say but she stood up for him ( them ) but who cares.

She said he was braver and selfless then all of them combined. But before he could let the butterflies in his stomach get the best of him, he needed to make sure.

"So you and Hinderson are over?" He asked as Y/n nodded. "Did I go to far?" She guilty asked her friend but Harry answered and answered too fast.

"No!" He had shouted gathering some of the surrounding people's attention causing the three girls to look at him either in shock or curiosity. Hermione squinted her eyes at him and raised her brow.

He felt his face flush as he stumbled for words. "Sometimes they're just not meant to be." Grimcing as he remembered his epic failure of a date with Cho last year.

"Yea, so? I don't have a date and Hermione is hiding from her date. . . May I have this dance, Miss Granger?" Y/n asked in a deep posh accent that made Hermione giggle and blush.

"No, yo-" Hermione began but squealed when Y/n pushed her onto the dance floor. Y/n placed a hand on Hermione's waist and grabbed her other hand in hers as Hermione placed her hand on Y/n's shoulder, laughing as the latter lead them across the dance floor in quick, funny strides.

"You like her." Luna's voice came.

"Yea, I do." He said. He's face morphed into a soft lazy smile as he watched the Hufflepuff twirl them in circles making Hermione laugh as she tried to slow the badger down.

"I'm sorry Luna, I didn't mean to ruin your night." He said but the blonde waved her hand and smiled at him warmly.

"Your my friend Harry, I'm happy if your happy." She said, Harry stared at her with a friendly smile before bowing down slightly and placing his hand out.

"Miss Lovegood, may have your hand for this dance?" He asked as the Ravenclaw smiled before pulling a chuckling Harry onto the dance floor.

An hour later, Harry sat with his drink on a couch alone while Luna spoke with a friend on the other side of the room. He looked around staring at the dancing figures as they twirled and swayed under the light.

His eyes caught Y/n' figure. It wasn't that hard, she was glittering like a disco ball, her sweet laugh filling the room, making Harry smile.

He watched her dress flow every time she twirled.

How the strand, that fell from her elegant hairdo, swayed every time she laughed, throwing her head back.

He watched how she tapped her, done white nails, on the glass of her drink, into a rhythmical sound.

He watched how she twirled Hermione and complemented her in a deep voice mimicking a man, making the bushy-haired girl swat her arm playfully and covered her mouth as she laughed.

He sat mesmerised by the ethereal beauty that filled his mind, painting his every nerve and cell in a glowing haze.

His thought we're cut off when he felt the couch dip next to him. Hermione had just flopped down next to him, out of breath sporting a happy smile.

"Oh, I don't think I've ever danced so much. Should've gone to the Yule ball with her, boy can she keep going." Hermione said as she turned and faced her friend, who was staring at the said girl.

"Go, go ask her to dance!" Hermione encouraged as Harry shook his head bringing his glass to his lips.

"C'mon Harry, you can go dance with her and grow this relationship into something more or you can spend the rest of your life regretting it for being a coward." Hermione said as Harry kept quiet for a moment, downing the rest of his drink.

Hermione was about say something else when Harry jumped up and placed his empty glass on a passing tray. "You're right, 'Mione." He said.

He walked over to where Y/n was speaking to Zabini, his chest tightened at the sight wanting nothing more than to hex the Slytherin into the next century.

As Harry aproached them, he caught Zabini's eye, who looked at him in disgust before saying a few words to the Hufflepuff and leaving.

"Hey." Harry said softly as Y/n made a surprised sound before chuckling and facing him with a tired smile.

"Hey, well don't you look ravishing?" She teased as Harry felt a shiver run down his spine, the words making more problems then it should.

He swallowed before putting on a similar tone. "Isn't that my line?"

"You wish, Potter. We both know I'm much more of a gentleman." She said. Harry's eyes locked on her lips as she raised her glass and drank it.

"Dance with me." He said abruptly. She raised her brow and put down the now empty glass at a nearby table.

"Are you asking or demanding, Mr. Potter?"

"Will you give me the honour and pleasure of having this dance with you?" He asked putting his hand out, every fiber in his body begging for her to say yes.

"The pleasure is all mine." She said as she slipped her hand into his.

He slid them to the middle of the room as he placed a hand on her waist and held her other hand in his.

"You look gorgeous." He said filled with seriousness. He watched as she blushed, chuckled, looked down then up again at him.

"I'm not the one who's got the eye of everyone in the room." She said.

"You're mistaken, you're the most beautiful one here. They're blind if they think otherwise." He said, he felt her grip on his shoulder tighten.

"Didn't know your the charmer type, Harry."

Harry.

Harry.

The sound of his name on her lips made his heart beat like never before. He let go of her waist and twirled her around, bringing her closer to him.

Her hand rested on his chest as his slipped slightly lower than it was before. "Maybe there are things about me you've yet to see." He whispered.

"Maybe there is." She mumbled as she drummed her pointer finger against his chest. Harry pulled her out before twirling her out and pulling her in, wrapping his arms around her waist as her back flushed with his chest.

"Harry." She whispered as he twirled her out. There it was again, his name. His clothes felt to tight. The air felt too hot.

When she came back this time her hand was on the side of his neck wrapping around it as she brushed his jaw with her thumb. He's hand dropped to her hips, brushing his thumb up and down.

"Y/n." He whispered so softly he barely heard it. It came out as a warning, as he shut his eyes.

She was close, too close.

"Yes?" She asked as she ran her hand down his shoulder and to his chest, the hand that held hers tightened it's grip.

"Yo-" He was about to say something when the perfect moment was cut off by Hermione's shouting.

"Get off me!" She shouted, both and almost everyone in the room faced the commotion.

Both Harry and Y/n rushed over, apart of both their minds annoyed and slightly pissed off.

"You don't have to make a scene. Let's just dance." Cormac said.

"I said I don't want to." Hermione said as she stepped back from him. Y/n stepped in front of her pushing her back, behind her.

"This is none of your business, L/n. C'mon Hermione, if it was anyone else they'd beg for me to dance with them let alone date them."

"Shove off, Cormac. Hermione values those with brains and character." Y/n said as Cormac scoffed, pushed Y/n and reached to grab Hermione's wrist.

Harry was already on his way to punch the bastard when, Hermione raised her fist and punched right in the jaw.

Before anything else could happened, Y/n kneed him where the sun doesn't shine.

"Nice form, 'Mione." Y/n praised as people turned their heads to see Cormac rolling on the floor. Hermione on the other hand stared at her fist as if it punched Cormac with it's own mind.

"Next time she says 'No' you get the hint and piss off," Y/n commented as she kicked him with her heel. People began to rush over and crowd the boy.

"Y/n!" Hermione yelled horrified.

"I've got detention anyway, may as well stretch it to it's limits." She joked just as she got pulled by Professor Slughorn. Harry stared at Cormac with undisguised disgust before grabbing Hermione and rushing her out after saying goodbye to Luna and Y/n.

That night, Harry stayed wondering at all the possibilities that could've happened if Cormac wasn't being a pain, which made the Potter hate the boy even more.

#harry potter x reader #harry james potter #harry james potter x reader #harry potter #harry potter x fem!reader #harry james potter x y/n #golden trio era

[lemmeurs]

okay. here is my 1600+ words essay on raphael. if anyone would like to adress anything from it, please do but keep it civil! i am so damn invested in this topic, i wanna hear everyone's thoughts

raphael rant

(DISCLAIMER: this essay was not written in order to justify Raphael as a character or any of his actions or intentions. i am completely skipping any point of morality, whether my own or just in general, i simply wanted to somehow try and write my feelings and thoughts down while looking at the whole thing from a subjective point of view, analyzing the design of the game, the plotline and his whole persona and just.. idk i wanted to see whether anyone else felt the way i do because i have been going INSANE over this for the past few days)

hi. i have come here today to express my thoughts and feelings on Raphael the cambion and "his final act". this is being randomly and spontaneously written in my notes app so please excuse the absolute chaos that this essay will be (no i won't be rereading it, fuck it we ball) (CONTAINS BG3 ACT III SPOILERS!!)

first of all — i am so beyond devastated that he gets killed. and not just by anyone, he gets killed BY US. THE PLAYER. WE AS THE PLAYER DELIVER THE FINAL BLOW THAT ENDS HIS EXISTENCE. not only is that very upsetting (because come on, hot devil man, obviously i don't wanna kill him??) but it also makes me feel so.. awful. like, everything about this is wrong and i hate the fact that there is no other option.

because let's review the course of the story in the house of hope:

- we barge into his house unannounced, uninvited, while he is absent

- we invade his privacy by entering what's his own personal space (yes, i know he stole it from Hope in the first place but that is not the point here — whatever his devil business is, it's still HIS, you know?? like he is a devil, this is the kinda stuff they do and honestly? i didn't want to stick my nose into it. but obviously i did because tHe sToRy etc etc. but still, it was his own thing that basically doesn't affect the player in any way so TECHNICALLY you dont have to free Hope. you can, if your character's moral compass advises so, but it doesn't affect the main plot.)

- we then proceed to walk around his house freely, lie to his archivist in order to look at the stuff we're already planning to steal

- we meet his personal incubus whom then we have the chance to either use or kill (i fought Haarlep so that's the point of view i'm looking from at this here, in which case i also robbed their corpse) and we rob his safe. and his whole bedroom actually. we read his journals. we use his bath.

- then obviously we go and rob his entire archive which includes all of his most precious possessions

- upon stealing, we slaughter every single creature in his house, fighting our way through to get to Hope's prison

- we then kill the two spectators he has guarding her (they were probably super hard to obtain??) and we just. free his prisoner. because yeah, that is the right thing to do, IM NOT SAYING THAT'S WRONG, but let's say we skip morality for a second, let's just focus on the fact that we have no ulterior motives in freeing Hope. we just wanna mess with HIS business because why not since we're already ruining all of his plans.

- and then we have the audacity to try to leave before he comes back and act like we were never there while his entire house is turned to shit.

now let's look at this list again but this time keep in mind the fact that at that point, he hasn't done A SINGLE THING to us. like, he has never harmed us, he treated us with (let's call it) "respect" and politeness, he was fine with our hesitation towards his deal and was willing to give us time. he was never aggressive towards us, he was never "the enemy".

and now you can say - okay wtf is wrong with you, that man literally admitted his intention of conquering the worlds, enslaving all mortals and basically becoming the tyrant of all while also most likely stealing everyone's souls for his own pleasure.

yes, he did, and yes, that's bad. but just because those were his intentions does not give us the right to do all that shit to him AND THEN KILL HIM. AS IF WE HAD THE RIGHT TO SERVE JUSTICE HERE?? YEAH HIS PLANS ARE EVIL BUT IT IS NOT UP TO US TO DICTATE HIS CONSEQUENCES. HIS PLANS WOULD ONLY SUCCEED IF WE GAVE HIM THE CROWN IN THE END, SO JUST- DON'T?? LIKE DO YOU GET WHAT I MEAN. IM NOT TRYING TO JUSTIFY HIS ACTIONS OR INTENTIONS, BY ALL MEANS. i'm just trying to express how weird this all made me feel because not everyone decides to play as the selfless, lawfully good hero of all, protecting the world from all evil, ever! this is roleplay, afterall!

and them obviously he comes home. he is furious, as he should be. but mostly he's betrayed because, as weird as it may be, he trusted us. he admitted to growing "quite fond of us, in his own way". he thought we were some weird sort of.. acquaintances? friends maybe? (again, i know most of our relationship with him is mostly just him manipulating us but still, it's quite clear he wasn't expecting this betrayal) and we just barged in there and disrespected him in the worst way possible. so obviously he wants to kill us now and obviously we can kill him since he's just a boss in a game. and that's what we do. and then.. that's it. we're the good guys. we ruined a man's whole career because we needed one of his toys, murdered him in his own house and just left. and we're supposed to be the good guys.

i think the source of my problem is that Raphael is never introduced as evil. we don't meet him as the big bad villain that we know we'll have to kill at some point. i swear to god, at the beginning of act 3 i trusted that man way more than i trusted the Emperor and i was so close to agreeing to his deal just because i felt like i could trust him and he would keep me safe (for some reason, let's blame it on those wonderful eyes of his).

we meet him so early on in the game and he follows through all 3 acts, making it feel like he's gonna be some key character that will matter in the end - turns out, no! we were just supposed to rob and kill him. and that's literally it. talk about wasted potential.

when i first met him i got the "unofficial narrator" vibes from him, as if he was only supposed to seem intimidating and "evil" but you could sense there was so much more to him and i was dying to see how his story would unwrap. i was so ready for a redemption act, a plot twist, anything. man was i disappointed. because how cool would it be if he turned out to be a part of the "gather your allies" quest?? imagine having him as an ally and an ACTUAL friend in the end??

and don't even GET ME STARTED on what the orb in Helsik's shop shows you after you kill him. the fact that he's not even dead yet but ABOUT TO BE DEVOURED BY MEPHISTOPHELES. ABOUT TO BE DEVOURED. BY HIS FATHER. HE. WHAT. THATS THE ENDING HE GETS. and we are the ones that served it to him when he got RIGHTFULLY pissed at us for doing all that shit to him. and im supposed to just be fine with it?? i'm supposed to feel like this was the ending he deserved and i did the right thing??

god what i would give for a different way. idk. striking a new deal with him. saving him from Mephistopheles afterwards. REDEMPTION ARC?? ANYTHING?? NO? THATS IT THEN?

now i know that you dont HAVE to kill him, you can either agree to his deal or just ignore him and the house of hope altogether. but that just defeats the whole purpose of this character?? agreeing to his deal and giving him the crown at the end results in a pretty bad ending and ignoring him means that yeah, you don't have to kill him but you also don't get anything else from him anymore. like he has no other endings, just either death or his big evil plans. and for a game with so many choices and so much branching, it just feels almost weird that that's all he is there for. then why do we meet him in act 1? why does he follow through to act 2? (yeah, astarion, i know, but i cant help but feel like they could have put a completely different way to read his runes there if they didnt want Raphael specifically to help us) WHY ARE WE ALREADY SO USED TO HIM BY THE TIME HE PRESENTS HIS DEAL? if the whole hammer business is the only thing he's in the game for, then we may have as well been introduced to him only in act 3 during the whole Voss quest. but we knew him already and he felt like some sort of a.. friend lets call it? idk. this just does not make sense to me and makes me genuinely so sad.

as i'm writing this, it's the third day after ive completed the house of hope and i literally can not think about anything else. like my mind is just going on and on about this and i cant get over it!! im actually GRIEVING a fictional devil and i dont know what to do with all these.. thoughts.

so now i actually genuinely MISS THAT MF. I MISS HIM. GIVE HIM BACK. I WASN'T DONE AND NEITHER WAS HE. PLEASE PLEASE LARIAN I CAN FIX HIM—

okay i think thats it for now. idk i wrote this so chaotically i already forgot what i said and didnt say. im just. im feeling so many things. im so fucking sad and mad that this is how it ends. rest in peace hot devil man i will never forget you.

#bg3 act 3 spoilers #bg3 raphael #bg3 spoilers #raphael the cambion #raphael #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 spoilers #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 act 3 #larian studios #bg3 essay #baldur's gate iii #bg3 discussion

[mdzs-fanon-exposed]

Introductory post: Please read! :)

hi everyone! welcome to my very own MDZS-specific iteration of the unparalleled @svsss-fanon-exposed and @tgcf-fanon-exposed. this blog is designed to find the differences between canon and fanon in the Mo Dao Zu Shi/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation fandom.

this blog is NOVEL CANON ONLY. although i may occasionally cite the drama or the donghua as the potential source for any misconceptions, the canons of these adaptations differ too much from the novel canon for my purposes (plus i haven't finished either one. whoops).

how this whole thing works:

send me an ask! is this thing you thought was canon actually fanon? is that fanon idea supported in the books? where? why? how?

i'll answer the ask with a rating, using SVFE's helpful rating system (explained below), and then go into detail. generally a post will include textual evidence supporting my rating, and possibly an analysis of what this means/where an idea came from.

i'll do my best not to introduce my own personal opinions or biases into the posts. if you have any textual evidence that you think disproves or otherwise contradicts one of my posts, i'm always happy to be corrected! HOWEVER. please do not argue with me or anyone else unnecessarily; this blog is not supposed to be a site for or source of discourse. i will block anyone who is repeatedly coming at me with bad faith. i'm doing this project for fun, and i want to keep it that way for everyone :)

posts will probably be sporadic so i don't burn myself out and lose interest. however, i want to try and answer as many questions as i can! submissions will open and close based on demand so i can stay on top of things.

some important things to keep in mind:

i'm not here to dunk on anyone's headcanons, and i am fully supportive of everyone's creative choices in the fandom!! (in fact i have many headcanons myself.) DO NOT harass anyone for their interpretations of the series. my purpose here is just to clarify whether certain ideas are textually supported, NOT to give an opinion on them.

i'm doing this blog for fun, so i'll be treating it as a casual project. i will only be using the official english translation of the novels, with the supplementary exception of the exiled rebels fanlation. i don't speak any chinese, so i will not be using the untranslated raws or any non-english fandom sources in my posts. although i'll be doing research as needed, i also will not be evaluating any headcanons purely based on chinese cultural norms, due to my unfamiliarity with them. if you are more familiar with any of these sources and have more information to add to a post, please let me know!

BECAUSE this is a casual project from someone whose only credentials are being completely obsessed with mo dao zu shi and knowing how to write an essay, anyone is welcome to make a blog that does this but. better. let me know if you start one and i'll point people your way lol.

finally: i will NOT be entertaining any character bashing in or on my blog. i've noticed that a lot of mdzs characters have some very... strong opinions about them across the fandom, and i may evaluate the "canon status" of asks that address specific aspects of these opinions, but as a general rule: i am going to be neutral-to-positive about EVERY mdzs character (yes, even that one. and that one. and-). and again, this is not a personal opinion-based blog, i'm looking at textual support, so honestly i don't think this disclaimer is necessary. but. just in case.

💥💥the rating system:💥💥

CANON: what it says on the tin! this fact is supported by the text. if you're trying to be as canon-compliant as possible, this rating is for you.

RUMOR: this fact is an in-text rumor. although this idea is mentioned in the novel, it's still not explicitly confirmed as canon. the characters themselves don't know if it's true or not!

FANON – SUPPORTED: not directly stated in canon, but it's a very likely interpretation, taking into account factors like cultural norms and occam's razor! this rating might be retroactively added to a post previously rated FANON – NEUTRAL, based on crowdsourced information about the raws or chinese culture.

FANON – NEUTRAL: it's not canon, but it's not NOT canon. the text neither confirms nor denies this interpretation, so it's up to you whether you want to consider it true to canon or not. the world is your oyster.

FANON – UNSUPPORTED: not directly stated in canon, but it's a very unlikely interpretation, taking into account factors like cultural norms and occam's razor. this rating might be retroactively added to a post previously rated FANON – NEUTRAL, based on crowdsourced information about the raws or chinese culture.

FANON – CONFLICTING: this idea directly contradicts something stated in the text. if you want to stay as canon-compliant as possible, this rating is not for you.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #mdzs meta #here goes nothing i suppose #i want you all to picture the 💥 emoji as if 'the rating system' was a youtube title screen with a bunch of explosions and air horns btw

[your-name-is-jim]

Have you ever been engaged, Mr. Spock?

So, I know that in 50+ years everything has been said about Kirk/Spock, but I want to talk about this anyway. :D

In one of the first episodes, specifically "What are little girls made of?", we get a pretty interesting scene:

In context, Christine is hearing her fiancé's voice after 5 years, but because of his unusual request, Spock wonders if it's actually him talking. Christine is sure that it's him, and she probably thinks that anyone who's been in a close romantic relationship would get it. Which is why she teases the First Officer: "Have you ever been engaged, Mr. Spock?"

After her question, the camera switches to Kirk (okay, I could actually write another essay about why the hell do they show Kirk right after Christine asked Spock if he's ever been engaged???, but whether you believe it or not, this isn't what I want to focus on here :D), then we finally see Spock.

NOW, let's see what happens. First of all, Spock doesn't answer the question. Why? We might never know what Star Trek writers were thinking when they wrote that episode, because it was very early in the series. If I had to guess, I'd say nobody had planned Amok Time when the first part of season 1 was shot, but it's also possible that they were already considering giving Spock a Vulcan fiancée/wife. Either way, since we can't prove anything about the creators' intent, we can at least talk about what is actually canon in the series.

Spock's answer to Christine's question "Have you ever been engaged, Mr. Spock?" would be "Yes". Spock is currently engaged to T'Pring, he's been engaged since he was a child. Even if we don't know anything about it when we watch season 1 for the first time, "Yes" is the canon answer, the only 100% official one.

So, let's think about it again: Christine asks Spock a private question about his romantic life, and Spock doesn't answer. Well, to be precise, this is what he does:

Yeah, it's just a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, sure, but you can see that he lifts his right eyebrow. That's his way to answer. Now, I'm sure a lot of you are starting to suspect what I'm getting at, but let me sum it up first:

Someone asks Spock a personal question about his romantic life. ("Have you ever been engaged, Mr. Spock?")

Spock raises his right eyebrow and doesn't answer.

The 100% canon answer to that question is that he is indeed involved in that kind of matters. ("Yes, I am currently engaged.")

Why doesn't Spock say anything? Well, we know that Vulcans don't like lying, but they can refuse to answer. So we can deduce that Spock doesn't want to reply to that kind of question, especially when the truth isn't "no, I've never had a mate", but something that would make others too curious. Spock is a private person, he doesn't like the way humans make everything about feelings and emotions. Maybe it wouldn't be a problem for him to deny everything about his potential romantic/sexual relationships, if it was the truth.

Anyway, speculations aside, the most important thing is that the episode "What are little girls made of?" sets a precedent:

- Someone asks Spock a personal question about his romantic life. - Spock raises his right eyebrow and doesn't answer. - The answer is YES. SO, YOU KNOW...

- Someone asks Spock a personal question about his romantic life. - Spock raises his right eyebrow and doesn't answer. - The answer is YES. YOU KNOW RIGHT?

- Someone asks Spock a personal question about his romantic life. - Spock raises his right eyebrow and doesn't answer. - The answer is YES.

From "Star Trek The Motion Picture" novelization, Roddenberry's footnote:

Someone asks Spock a personal question about his romantic life. ("Did you and Admiral Kirk become lovers, Mr. Spock?")

Spock raises his right eyebrow and doesn't answer.

The answer to that question is...

YOU KNOW, RIGHT?

#spirk #k/s #kirk x spock #spock #star trek tos #james t. kirk #star trek the original series #christine chapel #roddenberry footnote #star trek the motion picture #star trek novels

[simpforfandoms]

to be loved

please send in requests, it’s like the only way I have actual motivation to write. wrote this in an hour after writing a six page essay. sorry I haven’t been active

summary: you want to be lost in him, but not in this way.

pairing: bruce wayne x reader (no pronouns used (at least I don’t think))

genre: angst no comfort because in real life that doesn’t happen.

warnings: no editing

word count: 1.6k

masterlist

“You’re being so much like your father”

“My father was a good man.”

“Oh please, your father was a corrupt business man!”

The conversation is now a full blown argument. It wasn’t about getting your point across. It wasn’t about trying to state your mind. No it was a competition. Who could respond quicker? Who could hurt the other person more? Who would win? No more educated statements, only rash insults.

“Don’t you dare talk about my father that way!” He yells walking toward you, as to challenge you.

You shake your head at his tactics, “Everyone told me you got the worst qualities from your father. The self absorbness, the playboy facade, and the way you can never see when to give up. That you would never make a good husband” You scoff in disbelief. “And I defended you! Never noticing your red flags because you hid them so well!” You cry out

“Oh you want to present yourself as a victim to make yourself feel better? You and I both know you chose this life” He screams at you.

In every argument you have ever had, never once had he screamed at you. In all the rage and frustration, your beloved and devoted husband had never ever been as mad at you as he was now. His eyes were hardened and no matter how deep you looked into them you could find not a once of love. The very realization of this made you sick to your stomach, and you instantly feel tears well. Whether they were from shock, frustration, or sadness, you didn’t know. In truth, you knew you had no right to be upset at his words. You’re the one who started the argument. But some selfish part of you did want to play the victim. Deep down you knew there was truth to his words, not that you’d ever admit it.

“You wanted it until you didn’t.” He states much calmer than before. You assume this is probably because he noticed your tears or maybe it was because he just wanted to stop the yelling.

You shake your head rapidly, as if to stop the tears, “What choice did I have? I wanted you! Not the Batman. And when you told me that you couldn’t- No that you wouldn’t give up the mask, I understood, I really did. And when things started getting tough I was there for you because I love you. And to love you means to love every part of you including Batman. But now it seems you’re consumed by it, him. The man I fell in love with is no longer there. It’s just a shell of a man that once was. I don’t recognize you anymore. I look at you and all I see him”

You look him in the eyes to see anything, anything at all, but you see nothing but a mask. A mask he was putting on. You sigh. Maybe this is the end of it all. You didn’t want it to be. You love him. Hell, you had given your whole life to him. You didn’t go out and explore the world, unlike Bruce who left you for a 7 year journey. But you never once dated anyone else during that time. Remaining faithful. Because you loved him and couldn’t betray him like that even if you were on a break. When he said he had to leave to do something important, you promised him that you would be there when he came back with open arms. You’d know him since you were children, dated since you were teenagers, married since you were adults. Never once have you dared to look at another man. Bruce was the only man for you. You were sure of it. But sometimes you wondered what life would be like if you hadn’t waited for him all those years ago. You often get postcards from your old friends exploring the world. Each and everyone you read with a pinge of envy. Envious that they got to live their life while you’re here in Gotham, still with your Highschool sweet heart. Maybe that’s why you never went to any of the stupid highschool reunions. You knew they would judge you for being in the same spot and relationship you were in all those years ago. They would ask you what have you done? And you wouldn’t know how to respond. Truth is you’ve done nothing with your life but Bruce. He was your whole life. Your whole goddamn universe. But somewhere alone the line you got tired of it. Tired of it all. You felt stuck. And that’s the worse feeling in the whole world. A third wheel in your own relationship. You can’t just leave him because throughout the years it became a kind of codependency. He couldn’t function without you, and you without him. But you can’t do it anymore. It deteriorating you. Can’t he see your sunken eyes from staying up all night waiting for him? Your callused hands from stitching his wounds? Your biten lips from biting them every-time he goes out in fear he might not return? You love him with all your heart but sometimes love just isn’t enough.

He lets out a long breath and closes his eyes. He loves you. He knows that. He knows you better than anyone, but yet he doesn’t know what you want him to do. Perhaps he should do what he wants to do. But what he wants to do is run out and go punch some unsuspecting criminals to blow off steam. What good would that do if when he gets back you might not be there? However this is Bruce Wayne we’re talking about. The Bruce Wayne that is afraid. Afraid that even if he does try to talk it out you’ll admit something that will be harder to swallow than you just leaving unannounced. He wouldn’t know how’d he handle it if you ever blatantly told him you were leaving and why. He can stand you leaving without closure because then at least he can still have hope. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he had to accept the truth. That it’s his fault that you’re leaving. So he did what he does best. Leave to go punch some bad guys.

You scoff through tears in disbelief, he had turned away from you to go on patrol. Typical Bruce. You wanted him to fight. To argue. To reassure you that everything was going to be alright. That he still loved you. That he cared. But he doesn’t. Instead he gets into the Batmobile and drives off. You don’t know why you expected more from him. You had almost yelled after him. But you didn’t. Now no amount of words can fix what’s already broken. It’s time you let go of this broken ship before it takes you down with it.

…

When Bruce gets back he’s not surprised that all of your stuff is gone. He anticipated it. But yet it still hurts. A part of him had hoped that you would be waiting when he got home. Opened armed and ready for his apology, like you had done so many times before. This time was different though. You had pulled your heart and soul out to him and he ignored you. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. You finally came to your senses that you deserved better. Bruce let’s out a weak smile at the thought of you finally being happy in all the way he couldn’t make you. Your crinkled eyes as you smiled. Your laugh that you thought was the ugliest thing, but the most beautiful thing to him. You deserved to be like that all the time. You deserve it all, he thinks. He is taken back to the harsh reality of the situation by a soft knock. He can’t help the way his heart leaps at the thought that it might be you. But then he opens the door and sees Alfred. His hope instantly fading.

“Master Bruce, I brought you some sleeping tea. As I imagine that it might be hard for you to sleep.” That’s all Alfred says, and places the the tea tray on the bedside table.

Nothing more nothing less. That’s what everyone loves about Alfred. He knows not to bring up you gone because he knows Bruce isn’t ready to talk about it. But he’ll bring him tea to silently let him know that he’s knows and he’s there. Bruce wonders if he had done the same for you. Well comforted you as you were leaving. Reassured you that you’d be okay. He’s glad that Alfred brought him some tea so he can go to sleep where his dreams with you reside. Bruce can’t help but feel the ache in the top of his stomach at the thought of you. Guilt? Sadness? Anger? Perhaps all three. He’s mad at himself for not fighting for you when he had the chance. Guilt for not giving up the stupid Batman. He knew you would do it for him. Had he said the word you would do anything for him. If he had told you to stay you would’ve. Guilt for keeping you in a this relationship for so long when you deserved so much better. His subconscious knew that he couldn’t keep you trapped in a relationship with him forever. So he let you go. He loves you, and you him. But like they always say if you love something you have to let it go. But letting you go it is better than losing the love completely if he continued to drain you. It would grow to become a even more resentful marriage than it already was. At least now there was still love left, and cherished memories not ruined by hate and anguish.

#batman #bruce wayne #bruce wayne x reader #Bruce wayne x reader angst #angst #no comfort #marrige #bruce wayne one shot #Bruce Wayne x reader one shot #Bruce wayne x you #Batman x reader #dc comics #dc comics imagine #Spotify

[mppmaraudergirl]

Thank you so much for emphasizing the importance of the platonic friendship between the Marauders! I have always been torn about Wolfstar because while they do make sense in a way and unlike some other ships *cough* Jegulus* there actually have been hints about them in canon. But since we know that in the 1st wizarding war Sirius and Remus were mistrusting each other, I feel like the only way they could have happened was during Hogwarts times and then had a bad break up in 7th year. But somehow I could never imagine how that could have happened without the deep, beautiful platonic relationship that defined the Marauders suffering from it. There would have been so much drama and Pete and James would have constantly been caught in the middle. Same with Jegulus. Dating a best friends sibling is always problematic, but since Sirius and Reg had such a difficult relationship already, James dating his actual brother would have ruined this found brotherhood between James and Sirius

I'm gonna try to not write an essay response to this (lol). On top of being the number one fan of platonic Marauders friendship, I really struggle to see Sirius in a relationship. I could actually get on board with post-POA Wolfstar, but the school years are hard for me because of all we see during the war.

First off, I think the relationships you grow up around have an immense impact on you as a person. So I think Sirius would not see marriage as a union of love, but one of duty, a requirement to continue the bloodline and all of the "power" that came with that. Ignoring that he'd probably reject that notion while he was rejecting everything about his birth family's lifestyle, I just don't see him having interest in it. I think partly because it was presented to him as transactional ("You will marry a girl of worthy blood status and sire an heir"), but also because we see a restless energy in Sirius and marriage would be just another thing to tie him down when he sought freedom. This is a dude who'd rather have lived in a cave eating rats than return to his childhood home even years later. He charmed a motorbike to fly. He wanted to be free to be himself, not who he was born and raised to be.

Obviously this is painting with a broad brushstroke. After all, Sirius could absolutely date without marriage as the endgame but I just don't see him simping or fawning over another person, whether that be Remus or anyone else (I think back to SWM where the girl was eying him and he couldn't give two shits about it. He was looking for James!). I consider Sirius to be aromantic or just outright uninterested in making a romantic connection. Boy really needed some counseling and healthy mentorship in his life, and while I do think he saw that with the Potter family dynamic (familial and romantic), I'm not sure at 16 that would have been enough to ready him to be anyone's partner.

Anyway. Give me all of the platonic ride-or-die Prongsfoot. The boys who'd go to the ends of the earth and back for each other. If you read my works I'm sure this comes as no surprise. And just to add: I do see how people find it compelling to work through the drama of a Wolfstar breakup or the dating best friend's brother dynamic in J*gulus, but I'm generally not sold on it and not particularly interested in it for these characters.

#platonic prongsfoot #mpp rambles about the marauders #the marauders #to be safe I'll be adding tags #anti jegulus #anti wolfstar #sirius black

[laurzzz]

How do you get into DCA? I've been meaning to see what the buzz about Sun and Moon are, but I'd like context first!

Oh god, okay. Uhm!! You might want to sit tight for this one, Anon, because I'mma go full on ramble/essay writing mode—

All under the cut! It actually got real long LMAO also spoilers if you don't know much or anything about FNAF: Security Breach

Okay so the first appearance of the DCA, or otherwise known as the Daycare Attendant, can be seen in FNAF: Security Breach that was released back in December of 2022, if I'm not mistaken. I don't think anyone expected them to pop up, let alone the new Glam Rock designs of the "main four". I'm saying "main four", because Freddy and Chica are the only ones that stuck from the OG characters when Scott Cawthon (the creator of the game and a buncha other novels in relation) was still developing the game. Security Breach (SB) is handled by Steel Wool now so things are very different from this update and onwards. Alright! Back to the DCA.

So basically the DCA is canonically an animatronic that tends to children in the Pizzaplex' Daycare! You can probably see many people, including me, draw the DCA as two characters but actually! The DCA only has one body and shares these two characters inside it— Sun and Moon. Now, whether these two characters are two different identities of their own or just theatrical pizzazz for the animatronic is still not fully delved into, I think. But it's commonly accepted that they're two separate personalities.

In SB, Sun is portrayed as an upbeat, optimistic, and over-all friendly character, while Moon is seen as more of a threat— however, the fandom sees him as a gremlin with a cat-like personality so. Y'know. Very appealing, IMO. But! There's this new update that came in just recently after Ruin (this one's after SB, but there's little context to Sun and Moon as separate beings and the focus is more on Eclipse, a secret third identity inside their shared body), and it's called Help Wanted 2. Here, Sun is seen as more sassy, bitchy even, irritable, and overall impatient. Moon practically still stays the same though. People speculate that Sun acts so differently in this game because of two things: 1) You play as an adult whereas in SB, you play as Gregory, a child that snuck into the Pizzaplex; and 2) Trauma— for being cooped up into the ruined/abandoned state of the Plex for so long with their consciousness still intact. Moon isn't any different because in SB, he's a threat due to him being affected by the same virus (the Vanny/Afton virus) that affected the other Glamrocks too! This virus basically made the animatronics lock targets on you, Gregory, the player. I'm not sure if the virus was fully removed after Security Breach in Moon or he just acts like a gremlin by default with the addition of the command to kill the target set by the virus. He's just skrunkly like that <33

Alright now that you know the basic lore of their canonical characters, let's talk fanon. So you see these two right here?

That's what they canonically look like. We call them the biblically accurate designs WAHAHAHA. Anywho, fanon is sorta different because during the time that SB was released, there was barely any substance for the DCA's lore. Everyone basically grasped on to them for different reasons. Some really liked their design, some liked the concept of a parental/guardian figure, some liked their personality, some just liked having a fresh new set of characters, some even relate to their dynamics due to having DID, etc etc.

This lack of lore during this time was what made the DCA so malleable. Which in turn, made them basically appeal to anyone who's willing to give them a shot. There are people who interpret them as siblings, some just friends, some ship them with each other, some ship them with their OCs or their self-inserts. There are also so many variations of their designs by many fanartists, different AUs (literally so many! I haven't seen THIS many AUs since Undertale blew up), and even their personalities were tweaked too! They can go from complete platonic, warm, and cuddly, to complete romantic, suggestive, and x-rated in a hot minute when portrayed in the fandom. And again, that's because we don't have as much lore and confirmed canonical substance as compared to the other animatronics at the moment. Though we are getting them slowly with each new updates! Lots of theories coming up too but I won't delve into that.

I personally liked the DCA back then because I liked the concept of a character having multiple identities and sharing a single body— specifically, a robot one. I only dipped my toe with the DCA during early 2022 but when I joined here on Tumblr during late 2022? It was a completely new and different experience. I got sucked into the fandom head first thanks to all the fanart and fanfics I consumed while I was adjusting to a lot of changes in uni at the time. They help me cope in a lot of ways. Not to mention the DCA fandom here on Tumblr— GODDD. I love them, I love you guys. I will never forget all the kind words and gifts I received from people in the DCA fandom. They're all so welcoming and supportive, it's very heartwarming. I've made a lot of good friends and moots in this fandom and I don't think I'm leaving it anytime soon. If I do, then it's just a little break to fixate on other characters. But ultimately, the DCA and this fandom, by extension, is what I go back to when I need comfort. It's home to me.

Okaaaaay that was very. Very long I hope I gave you enough context! I don't think I did because of the many other things that go on here (/pos) so I implore you to run around and explore for yourself. There are many foods and desserts to go around for everyone, young and old! But if you decide that this buffet isn't for you, then you're very much free to look for other options. We'll welcome you back just as much either way!

#food #i love the DCA.... they mean so much to me.... #and all the experiences and memories attached to them #someday i'll get a tattoo of them or someth that insinuates their characters.... #anw off i go again to study AJDHSKHSKS #not me writing an online essay about my fave characters omygod #dca fandom #daycare attendant #sundrop fnaf #moondrop fnaf #this probably counts as #laurswrites

[sotwk]

Hi! What character do you think most people get wrong? Or what’s a character that you see differently than most other fans?

Hi Elleth! What a great question--and the kind of topic I'm amazed anyone wants to hear my opinion on!

I'm of the belief that there is no wrong way to write fanfiction or headcanons. I support creative freedom in all fandoms, even in one so "classic" and "high literature" as Tolkien's work. We all have a right to our own takes, interpretations, and AUs, as long as it's all done for fun and love of the original content!

Some takes on characters are more popular, some are less popular, and that's all there is.

I'm one of those writers who tend to be more canon-compliant and less "out-of-the-box" creative, whether in Tolkien or any other fandom. I guess my Type-A mind likes having a structure and "rules" to work with! I like to tweak things here and there to please myself, usually by "saving" doomed characters, but for the most part, I tend to run with what Professor Tolkien wrote and fill in the blanks as best as I could.

What do I see differently from most other fans?

I'm probably in the minority regarding Thranduil's "once in an immortal lifetime" love for his wife, his Elvenqueen, the mother of his children.

The "Eldar marry only once" custom, as described in the "Laws and Customs of the Eldar", is one that I personally subscribe to for my Elven characters, but perhaps even the most for Thranduil.

Not only does Thranduil have zero desire to marry again after the death of his wife, but he never takes interest in anyone else romantically, passionately, or sexually, ever again. Most writers enjoy giving him a second chance at love by having him fall for and/or marry someone else, and that's totally valid, but I personally don't envision that for his character.

In my mind, Thranduil in his youth was disinterested in romance, and perfectly content with staying unmarried for his immortal life. But then he met Maereth, who changed almost everything he believed about his own purpose and destiny. He saw her as his life partner, someone meant to exist alongside him and he beside her, forever, whether on Middle-earth or Aman. That's how he explained the deep affinity and immutable love he felt for this lady, anyway. She was simply irreplaceable.

Thranduil is arrogant, self-assured, and supremely confident in his attractiveness, and combining this with this extroverted, mischievous nature means he tends to be a playful flirt. But he views love as the most serious of matters, and the giving of one's heart as nothing to be trifled with.

Another unpopular take of mine is that Thranduil is not lustful or easily sexually attracted to others. He did not even feel that desire for Maereth until he had already known her for a few centuries. While their marriage included a healthy sex life that begot many children by Elven standards, without Maereth, Thranduil's interest in sex disappears entirely (again aligning with what was written in LACE).

Although I wholeheartedly agree that Thranduil is a sexy character, I suppose I just don't view his character as actually being very sexual. (Hopefully that makes sense?) There is more than enough to preoccupy him with his many duties: standing guard against The Enemy, serving his people as a good king, caring for his wife, and raising his children and grandchildren well.

SotWK Fancast: Jennifer Connelly as Elvenqueen Maereth

I could certainly write countless essays about how much Thranduil loved Maereth, but goodness, I really need to actually write STORIES about it! Part of my writer's block is probably intimidation, since I feel I have to justify Thranduil's eternal devotion to this one special person. What a lady she must be! He certainly must have had many good reasons to love her so dearly!

Receiving Asks certainly helps motivate me, so thank you again for this great question and giving me a chance to share my thoughts!

Elves HC Tag List: @a-world-of-whimsy-5 @achromaticerebus @aduialel @asianbutnotjapanese @auttumnsayshi @blueberryrock @conversacomsmaug @elan-ho-detto-elan-15 @entishramblings @fizzyxcustard @freshalmondpandadonut @friendofthefellowshipsnerdblog @glassgulls @heilith @heranintomyknife23times @ladyweaslette @laneynoir @lathalea @lemonivall @LiliDurin @quickslvxrr @ratsys @scyllas-revenge @stormchaser819 @talkdifferently6 @tamryniel @tamurilofrivendell

For more Thranduil/Mirkwood headcanons: SotWK HC Masterlist

Other useful links:

Introduction to SotWK

Fanfiction Masterlist

Fanfiction Request Guidelines

#sotwk answers #thranduil #the hobbit #lotr #tolkien #thranduil headcanon #thranduil x elvenqueen #sotwk oc #elvenqueen maereth

[kikikiwi27498]

Good morning darling! Here are some more yr fic asks! I'm curious about 20, 36, 37, 42 and 44 💜

Wish you a splendiferous Sunday!

Hello! Thank you so much for asking, and sorry this took so long! Work has been crazy and I might have gone a little overboard haha. I'm going to answer everything in one ask, so here are numbers 6-13 as well. Also these are basically all Wilmon fics because I love those boys so much.

From the 2023 Young Royals Fanfic Ask List: (I'll do more of these if people want, I love talking about fics)

6. Favorite one-shot fanfic: Pretty much everything by NerdGirl07, especially Promise Me (You're Safe) and Centre of the Storm.

7. Favorite chaptered fanfic: I have so may favorites. As Long As We Have Each Other by groenendael (@groenendaelfic) is my current favorite post-season 2 fic. Right now I'm reading Doesn't Everyone Belong in the Arms of the Sacred by painterssong (@alltoowille) and I'm loving it.

8. Fluff recommandation: This is such an angst-heavy fandom, sometimes it's hard to find pure fluff. I loved Playing House by LovelyLittleLosers (@lovelylittlelosers), Wille experiencing normal things, even just getting lost in Ikea, brings me so much joy.

9. Crack recommandation: Simon Eriksson: Just Some Guy From Biology and Patience Is A Virtue and I Have None, both by fandom_commitment_issues (@zee-has-commitment-issues).

10. Smut recommandation: Love Would be Burning Red by embracethevoid (@ungaroyals) and disruptedthesky (@omar-rudeberg) and You Can Send Me to the Lord by YoungRydbergs for smut with plot. They're both parts of series, so you might want to read the other parts first, especially for You Can Send Me to the Lord. If you want smut with less plot, I liked the Sense and Sensuous series by YulianaHenderson. (one of these days I need to make a spicy fic rec list)

11. Angst recommandation: This fandom writes so many incredible angst fics, it's hard for me to pick! I loved A Palm to My Mouth, I Said it, Almost by MyArtificialFlowers and It's All So Incredibly Loud by pysanky (@pysankywrites-updates). Please read the tags before reading these, they are both very angsty.

12. Kid fic recommandation: I love kid fics so much and girl dads Wilmon even more, though I have many thoughts about whether Wilmon would want their kids to grow up royal. Some of my favorites are Thoughts On a Stormy Night by LaChicaMarvel and Painted Memories by NerdGirl07, as well as When Dividing up the Universe, You Could Have Mine by the_old_stairs.

13. Christmas fic recommendation: And That's How Simon Got Banned from Christmas Decorating by ASkyofKai. If you want a slightly angsty one, Merry Crisis by pysanky (@pysankywrites-updates) - ngl I'm low-key obsessed with the Third Year Things series, it's perfect and everyone should go read it right now. (if anyone knows any other third year Wilmon fics please let me know, I'm dying to read more)

20. Your « not Wilmon » favorite ship/couple: Henry/Walter (do they have a ship name?? Wenry? Halter?) probably. It's an angsty post-breakup fic, but I loved Closure by stretchoutandwait (@stretchoutfics).

36. Your favorite trope: This is kind of basic, but I love friends to lovers. I'll also always read a sick fic where Character A has to take care of Character B (bonus points if Character B insists Character A leaves so they don't get sick, and/or they deny that they're sick), such as Baby, You're the Cure (So Let Me Close to You) by isnt_that_wizard (@skateboardtotheheart) - it's part of a series, but you can read it on its own.

37. The trope you didn't expect to like: Only Fools Remain Sane by Elin98 made me love fake dating.

42. Do you like to comment on the fic you read: I do! I'm just really bad at doing it consistently because I tend to write whole essays so it takes me a long time.

44. On what device do you read: Mostly my phone, but I use my laptop too.

#katie answers #katie's fic recs #darktwistedgenderplural #young royals #young royals fan fiction #fan fiction

[exeggcute]

am I wrong in thinking that a lot of the backlash we're seeing against AI art/writing is actually helping legitimize these tools by giving them more credit than they deserve? like, the "AI is gonna make honest hardworking humans obsolete and put artists out of a job" fear buys into the assumption (which former crypto dipshits who don't know what a LLM is but need something new to glom onto desperately want you to believe) that these tools are capable of producing human-quality work in the first place... and from what I've seen (particularly with writing) this does not seem anywhere near true, at least not yet.*

I guess the legitimacy thing just feels like it's playing into the hands of the AI-is-coming-for-your-jobs grifters because it's glossing over the many shortcomings that these tools have as tools—not even to get into the legal/ethical grey areas of how their creators are sourcing the content to train these tools; to me, it's less that people shouldn't use these tools to write their next self-help book because you're putting ghostwriters out of business, and more that they shouldn't use these tools to write anything where quality or veracity are important because the output itself is riddled with issues. whether it's writing code that doesn't work or fake scientific papers about how eating glass is good for you, AI tools produce a lot of garbage and there's no real way to tell the garbage from the not-garbage without getting a human involved anyway to do some serious editing and curation.** so I feel like a lot of "is AI bad" conversations would be more productive if they focused on the risk these tools pose as a runaway source of disinformation that makes it hard to sort the wheat from the stochastic chaff (whether it's in the form of word salad essays or visual deepfakes), or how most (if not all) AI models are susceptible to reproducing the same racist/sexist/etc. biases present in the data they were trained on.

*(I do think there's legitimate concerns that some people will still try to replace human art and writing with automated facsimiles on the wings of all this hype, but to that I would counter that anyone who's opting for subpar machine-generated facsimiles instead of reliable and effective human-generated content just to save a buck has probably already been devaluing human-generated content from the start; it may not be an "using AI instead of paying an artist" thing so much as a "this person never thought good art was worth paying for to begin with" thing. which is certainly a related issue, but it's a notable distinction.)

**(I can see a near-er future where creatives use AI to augment their own work rather than to replace it, and some people might be there already, depending on who you ask, but afaik this is neither the future that creatives seem to be worried about nor the future that grifters want you to believe in.)

[viv-hollande]

As Promised, The Israel-Palestine Megapost of Doom

Content Warning: This post discusses both the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the current Israel-Gaza War. As such, it contains frank discussions of apartheid, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocides both past and present, racism, antisemitism, colonialism, terrorism and more. As an additional tone warning, I guess: I am by nature a pretty flippant person. I’ve been criticized for that in the past, and probably will be again in the future. I don’t know if it's just who I am, or if maybe I need a therapist. I have tried to reign in some of my worse impulses, especially when talking about the actual events themselves, to try to give due respect to those affected. Nevertheless, if that kind of attitude offends or disturbs you, maybe sit this one out. 

This post is brought to you in its current form thanks to the generous actions of Dr. Henry Kissinger, whose untimely death many decades after it was deserved nevertheless brought me joy great enough to drag me out of angryposting mode and into hopefully more coherent essay-writing mode. So here is the partially revised, partially rewritten, and greatly expanded post that I promised. 

While I don’t have a cohesive thesis, I have written this with the intention of addressing/responding to the state of conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict, and around the ongoing Israel-Gaza crisis. I am focusing substantially on the online discourse because it’s the only thing I have even a chance of changing. I’m a soon-to-no-longer-be-teenage college sophomore without a lot of disposable income. I’ve already called my Senators and House Rep. I really don’t have much influence beyond my power to try to persuade random internet users to be less bad. 

I’ve tried to restrain my tendency for purple prose, self-righteousness, and gratuitous moral judgements; you can be the judge of whether or not I succeeded. I know that I am definitely not an expert or authority on this topic, but neither is most anyone else on this fucking website. It didn’t stop them and it won’t stop me. 

But before that, some brief words on my previous post. Unlike my usual angryposting where I tend to regret everything I say and do while in the anger spiral, I can actually say that I stand by more or less everything I said in that post. I do have one correction and one clarification though. Clarification: the “Stealth Echoes” I am referring to are instances where the word Israel or Israeli are placed in quotation marks specifically. Example: As per a spokesperson of the “Israeli” Defense Forces, “Something something ceasefire violation.” Used as such, the “Stealth Echoes” around Israel or Israeli are used to signal belief in the illegitimacy of Israel. It’s literally just (((echoes))) revived. A few people thought I was talking about the use of quotes in quotation marks. Now, the correction: in my anger, I believe that I overstated the prevalence of the “Stealth Echoes”. I said 20-40%, which upon reflection was too high, brought on by seeing a long string of said posts in rapid succession. I would now say that the figure is closer to 5-10%, jumping up to 10-15% if you include instances of censoring Israeli like I*****i and the use of words like Isntreal. I feel that as a practical matter they are indistinguishable; they serve the same purpose. Whatever the number, it is too damn high and should not be going unchallenged. If you’re using them, stop. If you see someone else use them, either in a tweet or on Tumblr, don’t share them. 

That done, on with the post!

To start with, I want to establish some important concepts and ideas that I’m going to expand upon later so that you are aware and thinking about them going in. Some of these will seem pretty basic, but they are important. Trust me. 

Words mean things. Seriously. Words have meaning, both in isolation and as part of sentences. Many words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use them correctly. Incorrect usage of words deprives language of its utility and power. At certain points in this essay, you might think that I am being overly pedantic, but that specificity is important. 

Humans possess a strong drive to create narratives, especially out of history. This is normal; almost all humans do it. However, the tendency towards narrative creates a pitfall where the narrative begins to supplant the actual events in discussion and popular consciousness. Actual history is reshaped, often through omission or erasure, to fit the existing narrative. It is this narrative, not the actual history, that informs attitudes and debate. This is a problem for all history, but especially with a history as long, divisive, and deeply emotionally effective as the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

Pragmatism and idealism are broadly speaking two competing approaches towards making plans and decisions. Pragmatism is generally concerned with evaluating the state of reality and making decisions based on their objective practical effects. Though they are not necessarily incompatible, pragmatism possesses no inherent obligations to concepts like justice, morality, or good. Idealism, by contrast, is concerned with defining what the world should look like and aims to achieve that goal. This ideal world can theoretically be informed by anything, but is usually defined by morality. I generally believe that what is is more important than what should be. Whether in matters of politics, diplomacy, or war, it is better to evaluate the state of reality as best you can and tailor your goals to what is practically achievable rather than trying to force reality to conform to your idealized future. 

In general, I will try to avoid ascribing intent to any individual or action, except where I feel that concrete evidence of intent is publicly available. Astute readers may know where I am going with this. 

Rivers of ink have been spilled teasing apart the differences between Israelis, Jews, Zionists, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and more, and between Palestine and Israel. This post is long enough without retreading all of that here. Nevertheless, I will do my best to use specific, accurate terminology where applicable. 

The past is not the present. There are many facets to this point, and they will come up fairly often. For now, just keep this in mind. 

With that over with, on to…

Anti-Colonialism & History

The Israel-Palestine conflict is usually characterized by the pro-Palestinian camp as an anti-colonialist struggle. In isolation, this is not a statement that I would disagree with. The modern history of Israel and Palestine is a history of colonialism, or near enough for government work. However, as I mentioned earlier, the actual history of Israel and Palestine has been reduced to a simplified narrative of righteous anti-colonialist struggle. That narrative erases the genuine complexity and nuance that is present in the Israel-Palestine conflict. I have not the time, patience, nor expertise to explain the 100+ year long history of this conflict; for a reasonably comprehensive, and as far as I know, accurate summation of the origins and course of the conflict, see this video. However, I do want to note some things that I see as important to the conflict or my arguments about it. 

The Jews, whether defined as a group ethnically or religiously, have a historical connection to the land of Israel, and thus possess a potentially (we’ll get to it) legitimate claim to the land; this is, in my opinion, an important intellectual and practical difference from other examples of colonialism.

The ideological motivation behind Zionism was and still is complex, but an important and undeniable part was a desire for a safe haven from antisemitism. Keep in mind, Zionism as an idea first began to spread in earnest in the latter half of the 19th century, during an aggressively antisemitic period in European history. France experienced a surge in the popularity of antisemitic, pro-Catholic revanchists, monarchists and proto-fascists after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War; this would culminate in the Dreyfus Affair. The Catholic Church itself was a powerful institutional advocate of antisemitism. It took until the Second Vatican Council, in the 1960s, for the Catholic Church to declare as official church doctrine that Jews, literally all Jews, past, present, and future were not in fact categorically guilty of the death of Christ, as had been church doctrine for literal centuries. The 1960s. Russia experienced wave after wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms that lasted well into the 1920s, only really ending after the Bolsheviks victory in the Russian Civil War (though this would not be the end of Russian, and later Soviet, antisemitism). The rise of German nationalism was intimately and irrevocably tied in with antisemitism's rise to cultural ubiquity in the German Empire and later Weimar Germany. Even in the United Kingdom, which in the 19th and 20th centuries was positively tolerant by contemporary European standards, reflected in to appointment of Jews in prominent political positions up to and including Prime Ministers, was facing a resurgence in antisemitism. It may seem that I'm harping on the point for far too long, but a) I want to emphasize the truly dire straits facing the Jewish diaspora even before the Holocaust and b) while I would like to believe that the historical threat of antisemitism is accepted as common knowledge, I have been wrong before. See also: previous angry rant.

This point is possibly the most important: many Zionists, before and after the Holocaust, believed that the only way to secure the safety of the Jews in Israel was the creation of a Jewish majority state. Back when the land that was to become Israel and Palestine was believed to be mostly empty, this would have seemed easy to achieve by simply settling the area with a new Jewish population. However, after it became known that the land intended for a Jewish state was in fact inhabited, and by a substantial population no less, any intelligent Zionist would have known that the creation of any substantial Jewish majority state would require the forced eviction of the land's extant, mostly Arabic population.

I was struggling to find a place for this, so it’s going here. I have thus far avoided the use of a popular term used in relation to Israel; settler-colonialism. I have avoided its use because I see it as overused, poorly defined, and ahistorical. According to Wikipedia, accessed 30 November 2023, “Settler colonialism occurs when colonizers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers.” If defined as such, I argue that the term settler-colonialism is practically useless because it describes literal millennia of human history. Using this definition, I have compiled a non-comprehensive list of examples of settler-colonialism, in roughly reverse chronological order: Israeli settlements in Gaza, Russification of Kaliningrad, Russification of the Crimean Peninsula, Sinicization in Xinjiang and Tibet, started by the late Qing and restarted by the PRC, British conquest of independent Boer states, Boer conquest of modern day South Africa, Ottoman colonization of Greece and the Aegean Islands, Russian conquest of Siberia, the Japanese colonization of Korea and Taiwan, centuries of successful and failed conquests of Cambodia by Vietnamese and Thai kingdoms, conquests by the Inca Empire, European colonization of the Americas, Venetian colonization across the Ionian and Mediterranean Seas, Turkic migrations into Central Asia and Anatolia, the Mongol conquests, the maritime empires of Indonesia, the Muslim conquests and subsequent Arabicization of North Africa and the Middle East, the entire history of the Roman Empire, any of the dozens of examples of Classical Greek colonies in Greece, Anatolia, Sicily, and southern Italy, the Achemenid conquests. Hell, the Phoenecians were so into colonization that one of their colonies eventually became a colonial empire in and of itself, and if you believe that all of those colonies were established on empty, virgin land then I got a seaside condo in Almaty to sell you. Though I don’t have time to go through them all, all of the above examples have either been cited by academics as examples of settler-colonialism, or share substantial commonalities with cited examples in my opinion. My problem with settler-colonialism as a term is that it is fundamentally based in modern concepts of indigeneity and nationalism. To put it bluntly, applying ahistorical modern concepts to a time and place that knew nothing of them is stupid. The vague definitions and overuse of the term compound these problems and threaten to misrepresent a near-universal human practice as an exclusively Western European phenomenon, and serve to complicate and frustrate conversation around instances where a more specific definition would be useful to meaningfully distinguish between it and other colonial projects; South Africa being a prime example. Specific language used accurately is important. All that being said, modern European colonialism more broadly and the effects thereof are important fields of study, and due to both temporal proximity and geographical reach, colonialism as it was practiced by modern European empires has had an outsized negative impact on the living conditions of billions of people currently alive in the year 2023. Sorry for all that, I just had to get it off of my chest. 

So, back to the problem at hand. The point of view that sees Zionism as simply another expression of European colonialism is, in my opinion, oversimplified or even outright wrong. The fundamental problem with viewing Zionism as just another European colonial endeavor is that European Jews were generally not seen as European, but as either foreign invaders or domestic subversives. European Jews were generally excluded from the national identities developing across Europe, with very few exceptions. Where Zionism did recieve gentile support, it was secured through moral arguments and intellectual persuasion, not sinister influence. Zionism, while it was influenced by colonialism, Orientalism, and even aspects of white supremacy, was an intellectual idea and practical endeavor primarily advocated by a subset of the Jewish diaspora. In contrast to European colonialism, which was motivated in part or in whole by a mix of greed, national pride, white supremacy, and the belief in a ‘benevolent’ civilizing and christianizing mission, the intellectual underpinning of Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people possess the most legitimate claim to the land that is now Israel and Palestine as their historical homeland. That belief beggars an obvious question: do they? 

Maybe?!

This is a large part of the reason why arguments about Zionism get so tangled and ugly and GAHH!. Zionism is the product of applying late 19th century concepts of nationalism and a people’s right to a homeland to a people exiled from their homeland over a thousand years before. Except it’s still more complicated than that, because the return of the Jews to Israel is an idea that is as old as the exodus itself. So the end result is that who you support is often decided by your personal answer to any number of thorny, complicated questions. Are the Jews indigenous to Israel? Are the Arabs indigenous to Palestine? If a people are expelled from their land, do they have the right to return? If yes, does that right expire? If it does, then how long does it last? Should special privilege be afforded to a people without a current homeland? What about a people who have experienced suppression, violence, and social rejection? Is it possible for a land to have multiple indigenous groups? If so, what about the right to return? Can one indigenous group act in a colonialist or imperialist manner towards another? 

These questions do have answers, but even a simple yes or no requires additional explanation, elaboration, and will inevitably conflict with opposing answers. The concepts they rest on are complicated and nuanced. One that I’ve mentioned before, and one that you’re probably sick of hearing about at this point, is indigeneity. The reason I harp on this is because it is another modern idea, overused and poorly defined, that is useful, but whose applicability is less universal that an America-centric conception would suggest. Unlike in the Americas, where the dividing line between indigenous and immigrant is fairly clean cut, the Old World’s long list of conquests, migrations, depopulations, pandemics, and famines make the concept of indigeneity really fucking messy. As an example, consider the Turks. The Turks live in Turkey, or at least most of them do. Turkish nationalism, as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, considers Anatolia to be the homeland of the Turkish people. Do you know where the Turks are from? 

Mongolia. 

Or at least that general area. Archeological evidence is a little vague. I had a summary of that whole process here, but it was too long and I cut it. Summary2, the Seljuk Turks came to rule over Anatolia in the 10th century, starting a roughly 1000 year long process of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic conversion. In the late 19th century, the multiethnic but Turkish-ruled Ottomans began to develop and promote Turkish nationalism, partly in response to European nationalism. Because the Turkish people lived mostly in Anatolia when Turkish nationalism was developed, modern day Turkey adopted the status of homeland to the Turks. In conclusion, shit’s wack. 

This is just one of literally thousands of examples of ways in which the concepts of nationalism and indigeneity are, seriously, I’m not just saying words here, complicated. They just are. These questions don’t have simple, satisfying answers and the discussion around them should reflect the nuances of the situation, but usually don't. 

I have seen people expressing sentiments along the lines of, “Sitting back and debating the inexhaustible complexity of the Israel-Palestine conflict ad nauseam is obscuring the active suffering of the Palestinian people.” This is a sentiment that I understand, but do not agree with. It is important to talk about the abuses that Israel is committing in Gaza and in the West Bank, and to condemn them as criminal and immoral. But the discussion around the Israel-Gaza War does not take place in a vacuum. Discussions of the current war and of the wider conflict inevitably leave the realm of discussing what just happened and enter the realm of why. And the answer to that why? is almost inevitably wrapped up in narrative. There is an overwhelming tendency for the pro-Palestinian camp to reject the idea that Zionism might, in even a small way, have a legitimate argument. For most of the pro-Palestinian camp, the answer to the fundamental underlying question of Zionism, are the Jews indigenous to Israel? is no. Full stop. That is the narrative of Palestinian resistance. That is the narrative of anti-colonialism. That is the narrative that says that Israel is a European settler-colony. That is the narrative that delegitimizes the State of Israel. And that is a narrative that needs to change because that narrative makes negotiation and compromise impossible. Delegitimization is to nation-states what dehumanization is to people. Throughout the entirety of the American Civil War, President Lincoln referred to the conflict as a “rebellion” and the Confederacy as “rebels”, “insurrectionists”, or “traitors”. Direct quotes. A legitimate state possesses rights, can be negotiated with, and once recognized cannot be derecognized easily. An illegitimate entity must be crushed. Regardless of the crimes of Israel, and oh boy, are we going to get into those, an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict will have to be a negotiated resolution, because Israel isn’t going away. 

I have my own personal beliefs about all of the above questions and more. I won’t share them because they aren’t important, and it's not really my place. However, to reiterate some of what I have said; I do think that the history of Israel and Palestine can be accurately characterized as a colonialist history, but I feel that the narrative of anti-colonialism papers over the moral complexity of the situation and intentionally delegitimizes Zionism and Israel.

Now, you may have noticed that I’ve mostly been focusing on my problems with the pro-Palestian side, for several reasons. Once again, this essay is supposed to be less about the conflict itself and more about the narratives that I have been seeing online. Since this is an overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian website, addressing that narrative has taken precedence. For that same reason, posting anti-Israeli content does feel a little bit like preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, I have many, many thoughts about Israel and the pro-Israeli narratives, and I clearly have no compunctions whatsoever about screaming my bullshit into the void, so let us now talk about… 

Israel & Narrative

And also a little bit more about the Palestinian narrative. Sorry, everything’s kinda interconnected and it's hard to separate sometimes. 

So I know that I tagged my last post as “kicking the hornets’ nest”, but this next bit is more like throwing a hornets’ nest at a bees’ nest sitting on the back of a tiger, but here goes. 

For at least 90% of the people on this site, the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is completely irrelevant, except for its utility in constructing narratives. 

A bold statement, you say. Well yes, but it’s a bold statement that I will stand by. Most of the discussion on this website, and elsewhere, is being driven by people for whom the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is either an academic matter, or a cudgel to beat their opponents with. There are, as always, a few exceptions. The Holocaust is one, in no small part due to its scope and relevance even outside Israel-Palestine. The First Arab-Israeli War, and concurrently the Nakba, is another due to its status as as the opening salvo of the Israel-Palestine conflict, due to the immense suffering it caused to the Palestinian people, and due to its close relationship with the right of return, which holds importance both as narrative component and as a practical political issue directly affecting the lives millions of Palestinians. Things are messy and everything has caveats. 

Jupiter the nonbinary MCR stan from Wisconsin did not buy an authentic keffiyeh from a Palestinian factory or participate in the local Free Palestine march because they’re intimately versed in and personally affected by the geopolitics of the Six-Day War. 

They’re doing all of that because Israel is a colonialist Amerikkkan puppet that attacks its neighbors without provocation, and Bibi’s latest genocide just killed a few 9/11s worth of children. 

David, 41-year-old 4chan refugee, closet brony, “Classical Liberal” of the Carl Benjamin variety, born and raised in Buttfuck, Upstate NY, isn’t ranting and raging about the ceasefire agitators over Thanksgiving dinner because he’s thoroughly studied and is greatly aggrieved of the history of terrorism in the Palestinian liberation movement, or because he put the work in to fully understand the 2006 elections in Gaza and wholeheartedly regrets their outcome. 

He’s worked up ‘cause the bus-bombing towelheads have done it again, and he doesn’t give a hoot how many Gazans die ‘cause they shoulda known who they was votin’ for. 

Tumblr user viv-hollande, pro-incest Kaeluc truther from [redacted] USA wasn’t crouched over the toilet losing his lunch studying the long, tragic history of the Israel-Palestine crisis. 

He was losing his lunch because they just bombed a hospital, 500 people are dead, the bastards did it and they’ll deny it just like with Hook and Miller and Abu Akleh, shitting hells it’s never going to end- 

viv-hollande jumped to a conclusion that was informed by a narrative, and proceeded to waste several hours angrily arguing with an Israeli Tumblr user and stubbornly denying credible evidence and what he was seeing with his own eyes because of a narrative, much of which he read about but did not live through. There remain many questions about what happened at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, but the preponderance of evidence has fallen on the side of a Palestinian misfire. If you think that the evidence provided by over a dozen governments, media outlets, and independent analysts was all fabricated on the orders of Puppet-master Bibi, stop. You’re being an antisemite. Please learn from my fuckup. 

The above statement mostly applies to the world worth of spectators to this conflict and not to Israelis and Palestinians themselves. For those who lived through those events, or who have family who lived through them, there is obviously a direct personal connection to that history which, on a human scale at least, really isn’t that old. There are survivors of both the Holocaust and the Nakba still around. 

I also want to re-emphasize, just in case it got lost in the sludge, that the above statement concerns the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, not current events. Even for those far removed from the conflict, witnessing the ongoing bloodshed in real time is still a traumatic experience that is bound to provoke strong emotional responses and influence people’s position on the wider conflict. Narrative or no, seeing dead children is going to have an effect on you. 

With that out of the way, on to the actual pro-Israeli narrative. In no small part due to less exposure, I am less confident in my analysis of the pro-Israeli narrative than I am of the pro-Palestinian narrative, especially as it pertains to Americans arguing online. But, I have divined a few significant main points. 

One of the most important parts of the pro-Israeli point of view is that of a siege narrative. The Israeli narrative holds that the state of Israel has existed under the threat of existential annihilation since its inception. I have also seen in many places a direct conflation of the military and political threats to Israel’s existence with the wider history of antisemitism and specifically with the Holocaust. This goes all the way up to Benjamin Netenyahu himself, who falsely claimed, among other wrong things, that it was the Grand Mufti of Palestine who convinced Hitler to order the Holocaust. This statement was roundly condemned by basically everyone, whether Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian, for good reason. It’s tantamount to Holocaust denialism. 

The pro-Israeli narrative fundamentally denies the legitimacy and/or existence of Palestinian identity and a Palestinian state. In many cases, it denies the Palestinian right to a state in Palestine at all. This stance is directly related to the perceived necessity for a Jewish-majority Israel, and serves to facilitate the forced removal of the Palestinians from Israel and Palestine. In addition to being morally abhorrent, this stance represents a fundamental obstacle to a negotiated end to the conflict. While I can’t prove it, I very much suspect that some, especially the loudest deniers of Palestinian identity, are aware of this and continue to do so intentionally to undermine peace and facilitate Israel’s continued expansion at Palestinian expense. 

For Americans, especially after 9/11, the narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been folded into the wider narrative of the War on Terror. Israel-Palestine and the War on Terror are connected, but that connection is a lot more complicated than the American narrative, which, in its own racist, uninformed way, can’t tell the difference between Palestians, Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Afghans, and the completely uninvolved Sikhs, several of whom nevertheless were attacked and killed by racist, overzealous American “patriots”. This conflation degrades the conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict and reduces the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. And while this last bit is essentially unfalsifiable conjecture, I suspect that the collapse of the War on Terror, and the changing narratives around it, plays a part in why the reaction to the current war has been substantially more pro-Palestinian than past flare ups. 

As you can see, Israel and its advocates are guilty of many of the same tactics and narrative techniques that I criticized so fervently among Palestinians. The biggest, and most infuriating, has been the consistent denial of Palestinian identity and insistence that Jews/Israelis are the one and only true indigenous people in Israel and Palestine, and the consistent delegitimization of any Palestinian state. This attitude has no doubt played a significant role in prolonging and extending the conflict, and with it the suffering of the Palestinian people. For more details on that suffering, let us now turn to…

Israel & War Crimes

“Israel is definitely committing a campaign of forced displacement, possibly amounting to ethnic cleansing, but I remain unconvinced of the crime of genocide,” - viv-hollande

The above statement in my previous post generated some pushback. I expected this, and planned to dedicate a whole section of the longer essay to supporting this claim, and elaborate on my meaning. Here is that. Oh, and full disclosure, this is probably the most pedantic that I am going to get in this, and I fully expect that that will piss people off for eminently understandable reasons. Nevertheless here I go. 

I would like to start by recalling the first of my establishing points: words have meanings, some words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use words with specific meanings correctly or else risk the degradation and dilution of the words themselves. Meaningless words are useless. With that out of the way: 

Genocide, as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is defined as any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The five acts are: 

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting upon group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

So, we’ve clearly seen evidence of four of the five acts which potentially constitute a genocide, so why am I opposed to its use? The answer is intent. This is an issue that has been raised by others online, and the response is always a mix of a) harping on definitions while thousands of Palestinians are being murdered obscures their suffering and allows Israel to act unchallenged and b) here is the evidence that Israel intends to commit genocide. Addressing those in reverse order: 

I have seen many posts with supposed evidence of Israeli intent to commit genocide. But when they are coagulated, they look less like an actual argument and more like a conspiracy board filled with singular quotes, out-of-context statements, and tweets from some random Israeli expressing dehumanizing, borderline genocidal sentiments. I’m sorry, but this is not evidence of intent. Neither is pointing to Gaza, saying, “Look at what is going on! This clearly shows intent”. It doesn’t. Is a genocide happening in Gaza right now? Maybe. Its unsatisfying and frustrating, but intent is something that will likely be impossible to prove or disprove without access to Israeli government documents. It is classified meeting minutes that will prove or disprove intent, not tweets from Israeli bloggers. 

If you are angry at me for harping on definitions and technicalities, that’s understandable. But remember, words have meanings. I am not convinced that a genocide is happening in Gaza. But d’ya wanna know what is happening? 

War crimes. Crimes against humanity. Ethnic cleansing. Forced displacement. Criminally disproportionate military action. Killing and targeting of journalists. Attacks on medical workers and facilities. Attacks on shelter areas. Attacks on UN workers and facilities. 

All of these are crimes. In a just world, their perpetrators would be spending the rest of their lives behind bars. They are barbarous acts of cruelty that should be condemned, regardless of whether or not they meet the qualifications of being an act of genocide. 

Israel’s attacks on Palestinian water sources is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

Involuntary detention of children without charge is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

Indiscriminate bombings of civilians are crimes, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

The Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip, both before and after the 7 October attacks, is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

The word genocide is used on this platform like a fire alarm. Pull here to warn people about oppression and mass slaughter. But genocide, like all of the other crimes mentioned above, is a word that has a meaning, a definition. That definition is imperfect, but it is what we have to work with. Using these terms specifically and correctly is important. 

It feels sometimes that discussion around atrocities turns into a matter of genocide or nothing. People treat the usage of more accurate and specific, but ‘less severe’ terms as a form of denialism. It is that attitude that makes discussing these supposedly ‘less severe’ crimes incredibly difficult. ‘Cause guess what!

Every single one of the crimes listed above is a barbarous crime, and you should fight and condemn every last one of them with the same fervor as you should genocide. None of them are tolerable, none of them are lesser. They are, one and all, abominable acts of criminal violence. The overuse of the term genocide makes it harder to effectively fight all of the others and perpetrates a narrative, consciously or not, that its a matter of genocide or bust.

Hamas & Revolution

The Islamic Resistance Movement, more commonly known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, is in my estimation the most militarily and politically powerful Palestinian organization in the world. Although its stated goals have changed several times over the years, Hamas has generally characterized itself as a defender of Palestinian nationalism, an advocate for Palestinian liberation, and an opponent to Israel, colonialism, and imperialism. 

Hamas is also an aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization, and every time I see expressions of support for them you should feel sick. I certainly do. 

Open expressions of support for Hamas have been rare, but far from zero. Most of those who do support Hamas uncritically accept the premise that Hamas is an anti-colonial revolutionary resistance organization fighting against Zionist occupation. This post is way too long and my deadline is rapidly approaching, so instead of breaking down all of that, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that that statement is true. Even if true, none of that prevents Hamas from also being an antisemitic, aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization. 

One of the basic assumptions of the anti-colonialist narrative is that colonized=good, colonizer=bad. This flattens nuanced and complicated conflicts and leads to the excusing and justifying of criminal acts on the basis that they were committed in pursuit of a just cause. 

Anti-colonialist struggles are justified according to the right of self-determination. Many of them nevertheless committed criminal acts. 

There is a tendency to treat conflicts, past and present, less as actual events and more like culture wars. It has become fashionable to condemn the United States by rote, to shout “Up the Ra”, without actually addressing the reality of the situation one is commenting on. As an example of what I mean, take Morocco. Last year, Morocco was briefly appointed as the symbolic standard-bearer of anti-imperialism for… winning football matches against tHe DrEaDeD cOlOnIzErS. Today, Morocco is imperialist persona non grata and traitor to the Palestinian cause. Neither of these judgments were made because of the practical, on the ground reality of decolonization, anti-imperialism, or the Palestinian cause. These judgments were made because of the narrative of anti-colonialism. If the actions of Morocco, or anyone else for that matter, work in favor of the narrative of anti-colonialism, then they are lauded. If their actions contradict that narrative, they are condemned. Are there important geopolitical implications of Morocco’s decision to support Israel in exchange for support in Western Sahara? Yes, of course. Realistically speaking, they will probably be minor and mostly symbolic. Morocco isn’t sending soldiers to help occupy Gaza, and Israel won’t be sending soldiers to support the conquest of Western Sahara. Does any of that matter to users on www.tumblr.com? No. 

To the supporters of Hamas, I don’t have a lot to say here. Hamas has been open about its antisemitism, and both Hamas leaders and official Hamas statements have openly called for genocide against Israelis, and sometimes Jews more broadly. Hamas engages in blatant conspiracism and has gleefully spread stories about a Jewish-controlled globalist shadow government trying to bring about the NWO. While they did officially amend their charter in 2017 to state that their fight is with the “Zionist enemy” rather than the Jewish people writ large, I find it difficult to believe that they are being honest with their intentions, and even if they are, the 7 October attacks show that they consider Israeli civilians as part of the “Zionist enemy” and thus fair game. 

River & Sea

In my previous post, I made the assertion that the popular pro-Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is an antisemitic slogan. As I expected, I got some pushback on this, but have no fear, I have a qualified justification. 

Slightly modified, I uphold the statement that, as a practical matter, in the year 2023 “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a de facto antisemitic statement. 

To fully explain what I mean here, and to address some of the confusion that I have seen with regards to the history of the statement. Shoutout to @starsakura17 and @screaming-weevil for having a conversation about the term and trying to research the history of the phrase to better inform themselves. That’s something we all, including me, should do more often on more topics. 

As far as I can discern, the origins of the “River to the sea” part of the phrase are unknown, but Zionist sentiments about creating a state between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea actually predate the First Arab-Israeli War and may predate Mandatory Palestine. The phrase first became associated with the Palestinian cause in the 1960s, when it was used to express opposition to the partition of Palestine and support for a single state in Palestine. How exactly this state was envisioned varied dramatically, but even back then, the 1964 PLO Charter expressly excluded the mostly Jewish immigrants to Palestine from their definition of Palestinians. Gee, where have I heard that before. Now, the PLO do not and did not speak for all Palestinians, and there were many Palestinians and Israelis who advocated for a single state that would be democratic and secular, thus creating a free Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Thusly, if you asked me in the 1960s whether the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is antisemitic, I would say no, but I would probably note that it is used by antisemites and caution you to be careful with your usage. 

However, it is no longer the 1960s, and the usage and users of the phrase have shifted over time. The most important change is the rise of Islamic militant groups, most of whom have adopted the phrase as a call to destroy Israel and purge Palestine of Israelis and/or Jews. In addition, the geopolitical landscape of Israel and Palestine has changed. In the early 1960s, when the land between the river and the sea was under total occupation by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and when the idea of a single, secular, democratic state was at least theoretically possible, non-antisemitic usage of “From the river to the sea” was both possible and fairly common. There were individuals and organizations with actual influence on both sides that could have or did try to lead the charge for this exact solution. In 2023, that is no longer the case. 

When I see people using the phrase “From the river to the sea”, my first question is how will that happen? Who will end up in charge of the land from river to sea? Remember, words have meaning, and political slogans do not exist in a vacuum. In the year 2023, there is only one organization with the political clout, popular support, and military might even hope to create a free Palestine stretching from the river to the sea: Hamas. Barring an externally imposed settlement, there is no other entity that could feasibly achieve such a state. You saw what they did on 7 October; what do you think their plan is for the rest of the Jews in Israel? 

If you object to my connection between “From the river to the sea” and Hamas ruling over the whole of Israel and Palestine, then go ahead. Tell me how, exactly, a free Palestinian state from river to sea can be created without giving Hamas free access to the people they openly want to exterminate.

Regardless of its origin, regardless of your intention when you say it, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a statement that has been proudly adopted by the most virulent and violent antisemites on the Palestinian side. Whatever its intention, it is at best a slogan with a confused and muddy history that is deeply linked with antisemitism; at worst it is incitement to genocide. 

SO STOP USING IT. Any slogan that has to be regularly qualified with “but not in an antisemitic way” is a slogan that you should not use. There are better, non-antisemitic slogans already in use; you do not need to cling desperately to this one. 

While I’m here, I may as well address the phrase “Free Palestine from Hamas”. Like “From the river to the sea”, it's a theoretically neutral or even positive slogan. However, I see it most commonly used by those who vocally support the ongoing, indiscriminate destruction of Gaza and slaughter of the people living there. Whatever your intention, this phrase is associated with those who believe that any action is justifiable as long as it might possibly kill even a single Hamas member. 

Conclusion

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter, or at least a more coherent one.” - viv-hollande

If you made it this far, you have my respect. I’ve said a lot here, probably too much. I am sure it means something; I am not sure if it means anything significant. 

A lot of people are probably mad at me right now. Some of that is probably fair. Some of it is probably not. 

I had someone accuse me of being “fundamentally unserious” under my last post, which is a very weird and kind of funny thing to say to a teenager. 

I’m really struggling with how to finish this, ‘cause I am well and truly running low on steam, and I have French homework that I’ve been putting off. I’ve scrapped, like, three entire sections that I either didn’t have time to finish, or that I felt were even more poorly written than the rest of this incoherent mess. Maybe I’ll turn them into dedicated posts. 

As a final conclusion: The Israel-Palestine conflict has been saddled with millions of uninvolved rubberneckers who all seem to have a lot to say about every aspect of it. As humans tend to do, these bystanders have created narratives of war and struggle, of oppression and revolution. It is these narratives, shaped by history, but also by biases, bigotries, personal values, and misinformation. We choose a good side, and subsume that side into our own personal in-group. We excuse the faults in our allies, and exaggerate or fabricate faults in our enemies. The Palestinian cause categorically dismisses the Jewish right to a secure homeland. The de facto leaders of Gaza are aspirational génocidaires. The pro-Palestinian cause as a whole doesn’t care to consider the fate of the Israelis, millions of who were born and raised in Israel and have nowhere else to go. Simultaneously, the Israelis deny the suffering of the Palestinian people, wherever they may reside. Many current and past leaders of Israel are war criminals, and few, if any, of them will be brought to justice. Make no mistake, this is not a case of “both sides”. As the stronger party to the conflict, backed by the strongest nation on Earth, Israel has had most of the power to choose the timeline for the end to the conflict. As it stands, it seems more and more likely that that end will result in the final, irrevocable extinguishing of the dream of a Palestinian state. That end would be a tragedy, and it would be a crime. 

If you’re not sick of me telling you what to do at this point, you have the patience of a fucking saint. To those still here, I say this: condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry wherever they occur; all conflicts have long, complicated histories that get flattened by the desire to ‘pick a side’; exact language, used specifically, is a delicate, precious thing that must be safeguarded; Israel’s crimes in Gaza, whether they qualify as a campaign of genocide, rank as some of the worst committed in decades, and the western political establishment’s tacit acceptance and endorsement of that campaign of horrors is, in and of itself, criminal and immoral, and both should be fought with as much energy as you can possibly spare. 

Fuck Bibi, and all those who enable him. Fuck Hamas. Fight war crimes. Ceasefire now. Free Palestine. 

A Message To Israelis and Palestinians

I struggled the most with what to say here. As I’ve repeatedly said, this post is intended not for you, but for the crowds of virtual bystanders to the incomprehensible crimes being committed in Israel and Gaza. As someone with, as they say, no skin in the game, I feel uncomfortable addressing you in a way I generally don’t when confronting my peers. I don’t know if you want or need the perspective of yet another rubbernecker, especially when what I do have to say is so insubstantial. But I would feel remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the people over whose heads I have been shouting for so long. So, for the final time, here goes. 

I am so sorry for what you are going through. To the Israelis, to those living in fear of rocket attacks and suicide bombers, and especially to those who lost loved ones in the 7 October attacks, or who are living in limbo hoping and praying for the release of the hostages, I express my deepest condolences. To the Palestinians of the West Bank, who have suffered the encroachment and aggression of Israeli settlers and Occupation soldiers, and who must soldier on through the ever-tightening vice of apartheid, your resilience inspires me and your suffering devastates me. To the Palestinian refugees, who have been driven out of their homeland and now must wait endlessly for a return that may never come, please know that you are in my heart.  And finally to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, who have been subjected to years of indignity, abuse, and violence, who have endured overwhelming, disproportionate, and indiscriminate retaliation for every terrorist provocation, who have been starved, bombed, shot, beaten, and brutalized in ways that I, sheltered as I am, could never possibly imagine, and who are at this very moment deep in mourning over the thousands and thousands of parents, children, siblings, cousins, friends, uncles, grandparents, nieces, nephews, acquaintances, colleagues, and everything in between, I offer you have my most sincere apologies and my grief at your losses, pale as they must be in comparison to your own. I don’t know if they’ll help, but they’re really all I’ve got. 

I wish I could offer you hope. I wish I could offer you a solution. I wish I could do something, anything, that would actually have a meaningful impact on any of this. But I can’t. I’m sorry.

#long post #really long post #israel palestine conflict #i/p conflict #i/p #israel gaza war #antisemitism #islamophobia #war crimes #crimes against humanity #ethnic cleansing #viv lectures #fuck bibi #fuck hamas #free palestine #ceasefire now #kicking the hornet's nest #and the bee's nest

[bl00dbitch]

i replayed book 3 so that i could see some scenes that i didn’t get during my first playthrough so here’s a simple thread of some screenshots w/ commentary from m’s route (warning: there’s a lot) that had me tearing my hair out, gnawing on my own arm, throwing up, & entering a comatose state - spoilers for book 3 below the cut !

this scene had me

i’ve played thru nate’s route & adam’s route w/ this scene and i love how inconsolable mason is in comparison - like he’s not rational abt it at all lmao (i haven’t played f’s route w/ this scene yet so i can’t comment on that)

just the casual “i tried to make sure we didn’t wake u up” felt so domestic- i know some ppl are probably like “this is literally the bare minimum” but no this is the equivalent of a declaration of love for m (i swear i’m not delusional)

the way he’s so attentive & is almost banging down the door to help us but still maintaining that boundary is so sweet

this is truly The Scene for me in m’s romance- like i feel like i could write an essay on the emotional depth and intimacy of this moment. this was hotter than any sex scene ever imo

this is one of those scenes that really helps encapsulate the dynamic between angela (my detective) and mason- like my detective is a lot more open w/ her positive feelings vs. mason is more closed off in that regard + can’t help but look for an ulterior motive to kindness. it kind of reminded me of an earlier moment where mason & angela are arguing over whether compassion is a weakness or strength in the field; also, they are so good at calling out each other’s weaknesses & then following through with subtle reassurances? like i remember an earlier scene where mason is like “u don’t have to thank me for apologizing for being a dick” or when he trusts her capabilities & then here where my detective is like “i mean what i’m saying” or after the whole necklace scene where she’s like “u don’t owe me anything for helping u” is just perfect. she’s always addressing his issues w/ emotional intimacy & trust while he’s always addressing her issues w/ self-doubt & avoidance of negative emotions

this was so cute ??? my detective is a people person (i really doubled down on the opposites attract trope w/ these two huh) so she was happy to take over but it was just so sweet to witness mason defer to us during such a personal scene

get u man who’d rip off the arms the arms of anyone who’d try to touch u … listen the detective can say “that’s intense” all they want but we all know they found that hot- also him just casually throwing in the “i don’t like not being near you” had me sick

i chose nate as my bestie bc his & angela’s personalities just mesh so well together (they kind of give sibling vibes? not in a realistic way but like in a “this is what an only child thinks siblings are like” way- ie. sickeningly sweet) anyways, i just like nate’s subtle digging to see what mason’s intentions are + mason’s swift response of “i’m not playing around”

the way he beelines to her … the way he goes “i couldn’t have lasted thirty seconds here w/out u” pls give me a swift death at the hands of a firing squad thank you

& that is all? maybe? that is all until i decide to replay the other routes w/ my other detectives or come up w/ more things to scream about with m’s route

#wayhaven mason #wayhaven chronicles #the wayhaven chronicles #wayhaven book 3 spoilers #wayhaven book 3 #twc book 3 #twc #interactive fiction

[mastermindlor]

On Theo Raeken and Manipulation

Introduction:

The purpose of this is to explore what manipulation really does and the effects it can have on people – especially young children. And, as should be no surprise to anyone, it is also an ode to Theo Raeken. A defense of Theo Raeken, if you will. I’ll be referencing three scholarly articles, one Tumblr post, and the show Teen Wolf (obviously). But, I will admit, most of this is speculative. I’m going to try hard to keep it to canon, but I know my bias is going to be in there. But instead of stating it as fact, I’ll ask open-ended questions you can feel free to fight with me about. But this really isn’t the post I intended on making. I intended to write a pure essay on defending Theo Raeken, but that’s been done before no one listens. I thought I’d switch it up and put my Psychology degree to good use, finally. Okay, that’s enough introduction. Let’s roll.

Who is Theo Raeken?

If you don’t know, you should probably stop reading unless you really care about manipulation and its effects. I’m writing this assuming you know who Theo Raeken is and why he needs defended.

Definitions of Manipulation

All of this comes from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344540018_PSYCHOLOGICAL_ASPECTS_OF_MANIPULATION_WITHIN_AN_INTERPERSONAL_INTERACTION_MANIPULATIONS_AND_MANIPULATORS. They refer to different types of manipulation, and use other terms for it occasionally. They start by defining “influence during interaction” – a subtype of manipulation – from psychological dictionaries as “a process when an individual is changing the behavior of another person as well as his/her attitudes, intentions, ideas, as a result of the person’s activity.” Cause and effect changes occur in the person’s mind, such as psychological characteristics of the individual*, group norms, public opinion, et cetera. Psychological impact can be explicit or implicit, depending on whether the goals of the manipulator are communicated in advance and not hidden. This is clearly the case in season 5 – Theo knows all about the Dread Doctors’ plan – but whose to say it was always like this? You can assume perhaps it was, if he knew what he was doing it for when he took Tara’s heart. But just because they told him one thing doesn’t mean they told him everything – did he know of their master plan when he was 8/9/10 (I wish canon gave us an actual age)? We have no way of knowing this, so for the sake of this article we’re going with the assumption both occurred at different stages. But implicit (covert) psychological influence emphasizes its destructive characteristics. Meaning, manipulation, at its core, can be positive or negative, depending on what the person is being manipulated to do. But obviously Theo wasn’t selected to do benevolent things, so we can get a sense of implicit manipulation here.

There is a latent impact in manipulation that can make the victim susceptible to pursuing various goals and intentions of the initiator. I talked to Des (the wonderful @bendystrah) about this particular point. Once again, what we know about Theo’s childhood is very limited. We don’t know what all he did for the ten-ish years he was with them. We don’t know what all they did to him. We don’t know a lot. But this point is saying the victim can be persuaded into doing what the perpetrator wants, even if they’re not their own goals or intentions. I bring up this point for a reason. We all know in season 5 he was acting on his own free will most of the time (does he even have free will still? Or has it been totally warped and convoluted?), but we know little about what happened with Tara. We know how she died, and why she died, and who is responsible for her death (well, I’m about to refute that one actually). What we don’t know is if Theo woke up one morning and went, “Huh, I kinda want Tara’s heart actually.” You can hate Theo and claim he did, but again, we have zero evidence that points to the fact Theo was already an evil child. We all know he was being visited by the Dread Doctors before Tara’s death, so I think it’s pretty obvious they were the ones who wanted Tara’s heart to make Theo a genetic chimera. Why her heart? Why them? We don’t know that, but we do know their goals and intentions – to make Theo a genetic chimera – and they get Theo to do the dirty work for them for whatever reason. So, in this point, I am claiming it’s possible Theo was completely manipulated into doing this and didn’t have any intentions of ever doing it until he was visited by the Dread Doctors. I mean, this is literally laid out in 5x16, so I’m just talking to talk. If you aren’t insane like me and don’t remember every Theo scene in an episode by just its number, it’s where he’s talking to Stiles in the sewers.

STILES: The guy who murdered his own sister when he was nine?

THEO: Yeah, I was nine years old. I also believed a guy in a red suit came down the chimney to deliver presents. So when three people in leather masks showed up and said that my sister wanted me to have her heart, I believed them, too.

So we know what the goals and intentions of the Dread Doctors are. It’s not hard to assume Theo is telling the truth in this scene (for a number of different reasons, including why lie and it lines up nicely with our theory), and, if he is, it goes to show he was psychologically influenced into doing this.

Furthermore, manipulation is always negative. Even if the goals were altruistic – which they are clearly not here – the process of manipulation is a negative one. This doesn’t really tie into our thesis here, but it is important to note.

The object of manipulation is viewed “as a means of achieving one’s own goals . . . without taking into account the interests, will, desire of the other side.” Meaning: the Dread Doctors didn’t care what Theo wanted. He was not their equal. They didn’t sit around a table and gently ask Theo what his interests, will, and desire was. We’ll never know Theo’s true interests, will, and desire before it was warped* into something else.

Okay, this next point is a bit complicated and is giving me a little bit of a headache (and I’m also a little high, which is so fun to admit to in an essay). But basically, “the manipulative impact focused on personality structures is characterized by the actualization of an interpersonal conflict, when the recipient of the manipulation is held responsible for the choice made through suffering in doubt.” So let’s break that down. That’s basically saying, there’s an impact of manipulation in which the victim is held responsible for what they did while being manipulated and thus feels interpersonal conflict. And obviously Theo is. No one ever argues the point that he killed his sister. And I’m not claiming otherwise, so don’t come at me yet, but this definition is claiming the victim of the manipulation is not at fault for their actions, but the person manipulating them is. And, as a result of this, the victim has interpersonal conflict. I mean, do I even need to say it? Theo’s entire Hell is this interpersonal conflict. To continue, it is claimed that “this type of manipulation the exploitation of the personality, because here . . . the desire [is] to shift the responsibility for the committed actions to the recipient, while the manipulator gets the win.” Once again, this claims the victim is not responsible for their actions, but the perpetrator(s) of the manipulation is. Now is where it gets tricky, and starts to give me a headache. It is said in these cases “it is extremely important for the manipular to create an illusion of choice for the agent of influence” and “when a person is sure that he/she is acting of his/her own free will, he/she will do much more than when he/she knows that he/she is fulfilling someone else’s decisions imposed on him/her.” Okay. I took a break (finally) and now I’m back. Knuckles cracked and everything. So, what this is talking about is when the manipulator wants something but, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to do it themselves and thus use the victim as a conduit to carry out their crime. They make it feel like the victim’s idea, because this makes the victim more likely to do it. I talked to Des about this one too, and what conclusion I came to was how this could possibly – possibly, still no coming at me yet – be the case with Theo’s desire to kill Scott. We know Theo wants Scott dead for his powers. But do the Dread Doctors also want him dead? That, here, is the key question. Me and Des think yes, as having Scott out of the way would make their work easier. But they don’t care so much that they’ll do it themselves. But what if they, really, want Theo to kill Scott? We don’t know if they do or don’t, so we can’t say for sure either way. I’ve done a little research on this but can’t seem to find any solid conclusions on the matter (trust me when I say I looked). So this one isn’t really sturdy, but it’s an interesting theory that the Dread Doctors allowed Theo to feel like he was making his own choices when really he was just helping the Dread Doctors carry out their plans. Maybe they, too, wanted the chaos and discord within the Pack. Now, obviously bringing the Chimeras back wasn’t their goal – hello, why kill them, then? – but I believe they also could’ve stopped Theo had they wanted to. They could’ve stopped Theo from doing anything if they had wanted to. The fact that they didn’t doesn’t point to them being nice and chill and just letting Theo do what he wants. To me, this is more likely stemming from the fact that, somehow, this all fit into their master plan – or, at least, didn’t interfere with it. But, like I said, if they wanted to stop Theo from doing any of this, they could’ve. Which makes me wonder if Theo’s free will wasn’t as free as it appears.

This article also mentions how authority is a particularly sound influence, but I will also explore a similar topic later on so I won’t bother with it now.

*This definition refers to the fact manipulation can cause changes in the psychological characteristics. Now, as a later source mentions, we will never know the full story of Theo’s childhood. All we know is what the show tells us, which isn’t a lot. But we can assume he wasn’t, like, one of those “evil children” who were just “born that way.” Because Scott or Stiles would’ve mentioned that, if he’d gone around killing animals or something. You can argue they didn’t know, but we also have literally zero evidence that he did do anything like that, so it’s a weird assumption to make. He had asthma, and played Little League, and no one ever mentions anything blaringly wrong with his early childhood. What I’m getting at here is a change in psychological characteristics. Maybe Theo was evil before, and that’s why the Dread Doctors targeted him. Or maybe he wasn’t, and went through actual psychological changes in his characteristics which caused him to act differently than he ever would have had he not been put on this path.

*In season 5, his interests, will, and desire are having a Pack and having power. These are his intentions and goals. First of all, I want to note that none of his goals are “murder.” Does murder fall into his plan? Absolutely. He’s clearly very much okay with it. But it’s not like his motivations are as shallow as “killing is fun!” He has reasons to kill Tracy and Josh, and reasons for wanting Scott dead. You can argue what he did to Scott was the worst thing he did, because he killed him out of emotion, not gaining anything from it. I know I’m basically saying premeditated murder is better, but that’s not what I mean. I just mean it isn’t like he originally set out to kill people for a good time. Killing people just happened to be the way to get what he wanted. Furthermore, who knows what his intentions would’ve been had he not lived the life he did? His intentions were formed as reactions. Wanting a Pack was a response to, well, not having one. And wanting power was a response to having none. If he’d been able to live a normal life, there’s no reason to assume he would’ve ever had aspirations like that.

Who is Manipulated?

Everything in this section comes from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8905186/. This article, actually, does not explore the heading at all. It explores radicalization in a religious sense in prisoners who were manipulated. But, the data in the article made it worth using for our purposes here. Starting with the fact “that the process of radicalization follows several phases, during which the recruiters indoctrinate and prepare young people for the use of violence.” And that sentence is what this section is really about: youth. This section will demonstrate how crucial of a factor age is, and what that says about Theo.

“According to this model, recruiters identify their targets in vulnerable contexts.” What this means is that the victim is usually already vulnerable in the eyes of the manipulator. Now, we don’t know why the Dread Doctors chose Theo. We know, like, three things about his early childhood, and none of those three things are even his age. But one of the three things is that he had asthma. Okay, you say, so did Scott. Well, maybe the Dread Doctors were looking for someone who had asthma and also a sibling. That sounds unlikely, but I’m simply illustrating the point that it is a possible weakness he had in his health, making him potentially already vulnerable. Or maybe he had shitty parents. Or maybe he had great parents. We don’t know anything else about his childhood. So we can’t really confirm this point, but what’s important is that we can also not deny it.

Next, “the first phase is psychological submission (emotional radicalization), whereby the young person loses their autonomy and becomes dependent.” Well, this is pretty obvious. The Dread Doctors took Theo away from his parents, and thus he became entirely dependent on them. What else is an 8/9/10 year old supposed to do? He has to depend on them, he has no other options. He can’t just depend on himself, because how is an 8/9/10 year old supposed to have or make money? How’s he supposed to eat? Where is he supposed to sleep? So, yeah, he’s dependent. But, this is also “achieved by using persuasive and aggressive communication strategies, such as social isolation and inducing confusion between reality and fantasy.” We definitely can check the social isolation. Now’s where one of the Tumblr articles comes in. In this post (https://demonzdust.tumblr.com/post/178486817906/part-i-introduction-theo-before-the-dread) the author states that, “We know that the Dread Doctors kidnap and experiment on people while they are still conscious. We also know that they are capable of inducing hallucinations. They can do all of this unbeknownst to others. That leaves them with a lot of tools to shape a young Theo into what they wanted.” I reference this post because it says what I wanted to say better and more succinctly than I could. Especially the part regarding the hallucinations, and how that ties into the article’s point about inducing confusion between reality and fantasy. Like we’ve said, we don’t know what all the Dread Doctors did to Theo. But it’s entirely possible they confused his reality and fantasy, at least for a period of time.

Now we get more into the actual article, which is about religious radicalization. But we’re going to spin this into a Theo context. “Finally, in the third phase of violent disinhibition and legitimization (violent radicalization), the recruit validates the use of violence by associating with the mistreatment and oppression allegedly suffered by their new group, identifies the enemy, and shifts responsibility by making an attack essential to improving their situation.” Okay, that was a lot of words. Let’s break it down. In short, for there to be violent radicalization, setting a clear enemy and making the victim feel like attacking that enemy is the only way to improve their situation must be present. This goes back to my earlier point about the Dread Doctors and possibly wanting Scott dead/chaos and discord in the Pack. Did the Dread Doctors convince him this Pack consisting of his old friends was the enemy? Did they make him think they needed to be disbanded for Theo to get his own Pack and the power he’s craving? We don’t know. We can’t say yes, but we also can’t say no.

Next is where we get into the youth aspect of this section. Youth is noted as “a particularly relevant stage in the radicalization process.” We know Theo is young. As young as 8 when this started, and around 18 during season 5. This article talks about 20-28 being young, so Theo would fall into the category of being extremely young. If youth is a relevant age in radicalizing 20-28 year olds, what exactly does it do to someone who might be 8 years old? The article continues by stating, “Age could be considered a risk factor for radicalization.” Which just means that Theo had a risk factor already before ever being visited by the Dread Doctors. Why? Why is being young more of a risk factor? Well, I’m glad you asked, because I have answers. 

The experience of more extreme and variable emotions

Greater threat/stress sensitivity

Commitment with violence

Basically, young people experience more extreme and variable emotions due to “deficits in both emotional regulation and emotion reactivity (sensitivity).” This also applies to the second point, and why threat/stress sensitivity is greater. Now, the last part is more for adolescents than a child. But it states that the youth are more likely to engage in risky behaviors and commit more violence than other age groups. Now, these are not reasons Theo is the way he is. Everyone is a child/adolescent at some point. But these are risk factors, and they could have played a role in making Theo more susceptible to manipulation and violence.

Barely Even Human

Yeah, I know it was cruel to name this section that. But it fits. Everything in this section comes from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-manipulation/. This article defines manipulation as “radical programming or reprogramming of all or most of an agent’s beliefs, desires, and other mental states.” The thought is that “that manipulative influences bypass the target’s capacity for rational deliberation.” This is implying that the Dread Doctors and their manipulation of Theo could’ve bypassed his ability to really think about the choices he was making. This has long-lasting implications. If we believe this to be true, it is possible that the Theo we see simply doesn’t have a “capacity for rational deliberation.” Meaning, he acts in irrational ways, or ways that look irrational to others but seem rational to  him because he lacks the ability to purposefully and calculatingly make decisions. Instead, he acts in a way that meets his most basic survival needs. And what does a wolf need? A Pack. And what does someone who has been manipulated for a decade need? Power. He needs a Pack and power, and thus those are his goals. Are they rationally deliberated goals? We don’t know, but this article suggests the possibility that the answer is no.

“Manipulation is commonly used aggressively, as a way to harm the manipulator’s target, or at least to benefit the manipulator at the target’s expense.” This point doesn’t have a lot to do with the points I’m making in this essay, but it does make me sad for Theo.

“Another natural way to account for the wrongness of manipulation would be to claim that it violates, undermines, or is otherwise antithetical to the target’s personal autonomy.” This is, more or less, what we talked about earlier. That Theo may never have made any of the decisions he made if not for the Dread Doctors. This implies none of this was done out of his own personal desire to do so, and that it may very well be things he never would have done otherwise. The article goes onto further state that, “It is natural to regard [manipulation] as interfering with autonomous decision-making. The idea that manipulation is wrong because it undermines autonomous choice is implicit in discussions of manipulation as a potential invalidator of consent.” Meaning, Theo’s consent wasn’t important during the time he spent with the Dread Doctors. The Dread Doctors didn’t take it into consideration. This doesn’t mean he actively did things he didn’t consent to doing, but it does bring up the possibility for further discussion.

Lastly, this article states that, “In this view, manipulation involves treating the target as a device to be operated rather than an agent to be reasoned with.” We already know the Dread Doctors viewed Theo as an object. Whether he could be a success or a failure. They never cared about him as a person, merely as a tool to do things they couldn’t/didn’t want to do. If you view Theo this way – as a device to be operated – it takes away some of the blame placed upon him for his actions. He was wound up and made to go, simply put.

Conclusions

TL;DR: Manipulation is bad. Don’t do it. Theo was manipulated, and primed to be so because of his status as a youth. In this essay, we explored his actions and the possibilities behind why they occurred. Our conclusions are that it’s entirely possible he was completely manipulated by the Dread Doctors and thus acted as a puppet whilst they pulled the strings.

If you disagree with anything I said, let me know. But not just in a “screw you you’re stupid” way. Let’s have an actual conversation.

I hope you enjoyed this at least a little bit, or learned something from this. This is Kay, signing off (for now . . . ).

xoxo, kay

#theo raeken #teen wolf #meta #babygirl

[just-a-carrot]

Possible Our Wonderland Fanwork Contest (please vote!)

HEY ALL

So I've never done anything like this before. Mostly because I am super awkward and anxious and also assume no one would join and then I'd be super sad and look like a doof. So I wanted to do a poll and gauge interest first.

Since this month I'm so out and about with family stuff and also am just a bit burned out so am a bit slow and quiet on posting stuff so I feel a bit guilty, I began ruminating on whether some kind of fanwork contest could be fun over the next month or so. However, I don't want to do it if no one would be interested, thus the poll:

My initial idea for it would be something where people could submit either art or fic (i guess other types of writing would also be fine, too, like if you wanted to write some sort of essay or analysis LOL unsure if anyone would ever want to do anything like this but thought i'd keep it open just in case), and everyone who submits would get a small quick sketchy head-shot of someone of their choosing from me (so like an OC or a non-OC or fanart or whatever) as thanks. And then I would do a random wheel spin thing to select 2 people from everyone that submitted to draw a more polished art piece (there'd be some restrictions on things I'm not super comfortable drawing but would be mostly pretty open; i'll include more details if i actually go ahead with the contest). Unsure yet if I would allow for multiple entries for more draws... I'd have to think. I'd maybe do it but restrict it to two or three or something. And it would have to be a fanwork(s) created specifically for the contest to make it more fair for everyone. And it would last maybe from mid-September to mid-late-October-ish (leading up towards Halloween, which could be fun and spoopy alkdjfalsd).

IS THIS SOMETHING PEOPLE WOULD BE REMOTELY INTERESTED IN?? (please vote truthfully)

It would be combined across both Twitter and Tumblr because otherwise it would be too hard to manage/split I think. POLL IS JUST 1 DAY THIS TIME BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO WAIT A FULL WEEK so please vote lkjflkdJFDLKAJDL

#our wonderland

[katyspersonal]

Before you deride anyone for being an "idiot", you should probably shit can the Meyers-Briggs pseudo-science in your description. You know, that way you don't look like an idiot who buys into that stuff.

Naaah, I still think that accusing a very anti-nationalist creator that created a very anti-nationalist movie FOR nationalism just because his movie used trademark brilliant Japanese nonverbal display instead of spelling stuff out like poorly written modern Western media IS pretty "idiotic". Waaaay more "idiotic" than MBTI stuff. 🌛 (retroactive, because I already did take my insult back several days ago)

I'll have you know that whereas MBTI is definitely not as binding and fails in what it tries to do (just like every attempt to strictly categorize people failed), it is actually SUPER handy to communicate a LOT of traits and patterns within a short abbreviation instead of a long essay! For example, people that know MBTI lore will read that I am ENTP and instantly expect me to be a lover of debates and "devil's advocate", be bad at talking about my feelings genuinely and sound hurtful without any intention to do so! If person chose to describe themselves with an MBTI label, it doesn't necessarily mean they are the type to take it super seriously, but often it is a way to communicate what to expect from their personality in a really compact form! Or at least what this person believes about themselves, which is also good for "communicating without communicating" :p Most people that have MBTI in their bio/pinned/whatever aren't as serious about it. Those that tried to choose friends/couple and form a collective according to MBTIs are long ago extinct, trust me!

I also found MBTI useful for some writing stuff. To define a type, you have to make 4 choices between 4 pairs of traits: 1) Introvert or Extrovert; self-explanatory 2) Sensory or iNtuitive; so, oriented more in "physical" reality and present or into past, thoughts and concepts 3) Thinking or Feeling; so, stronger at logic and thinking, or at empathy and tact? 4) Perceptive or Judging; so, an open-minded person that is okay with leaving loose ends or a person that needs clear distinction and final conclusion! Yeah they are very bare-bones descriptions and there is more to say about the 8 'letters', I am just cutting to the chase! I never passed MBTI test, I just figured which one of these aspects applied to me and it made ENTP abbreviation! Then I read the description of this type and could recognize a lot about myself. You can for example do that for a character you want to develop, get the abbreviation, then go read full description of this type and I guarantee you, there will be MANY things in the text making you go "damn this makes sooooo much sense for this character 👀" or otherwise inspire a vision of them!

I agree that people that get too caught up into MBTI stuff can be frustrating, and that accuracy of MBTIs is long ago debunked; again, no way to split humans into clear cut types works and we are all too different! Zodiac signs stuff is a similar problem. But, these things are good for communicating aspects of your personality quickly, for finding which sides of yourself to focus on and get "coherent shape" (very useful for my personality disorder ass!) and are good for WRITING! I've even found using MBTI descriptions as a help a good preventive measure from too much self-protection onto characters I am writing! You know same face syndrome issue in drawing? Sometimes the same problem is possible in writing personalities, MBTI is something that helped me to double-check whether I am doing this. Don't harshly discard a thing just because you haven't found an efficient way to utilize it! MBTI failed at what it intended to do but succeeded at being a good compilation of distinct traits and ways to think, act and react!

On the other hand, believing in anti-scientifical things is not necessarily a sign of being a judgemental, narrow-minded, "idiotic" person: a person is only an "idiot" when they make themselves be.

___________

That being said, I don't blame you for being strictly negative? MBTI craze, Zodiacs stuff and similar things have history of really annoying people wasting their time and being weird about what they tell others but that's not my case. In my country MBTIs are in general 90% fandom of memes xd I might consider removing ENTP from my bio in the future if I estimate people are more likely to expect the worst (like you did) than take it for fun after that """science""" has fallen but I just dunno yet. But I'd appreciate if you didn't use harping on me for a mistake I already apologized for to express your disapproval of MBTI stuff 🌛 Not only it is cruel, but also even UNDER assumption that liking MBTI stuff makes me an "idiot" your logic doesn't work - why would doing one stupid thing remove my right to call out another, irrelevant (!!!) stupid thing? This is like saying that only "perfect" people are allowed to offer criticism and disapproval towards frustrating situations and I am not here for this sort of attitude. Someone can be competent in one area and be a complete moron in another area, does it mean they can't talk about what they're competent at anymore?

#ask replies #personal #anon you are valid to feel strict negativity but you didn't go about it very well #“you can't be upset at fake nationalism accusation if you like an anti-scientifical thing” #*blue screen of death* #I don't know if this is your first time doing something like this or a habit but please realize why its bad #like yeah by choosing idiot as an insult I supposedly claimed that I am on the contrary very smart #but 1) I took that insult back and 2) I don't really do that x) #I know I am a dumbass in many things and ESPECIALLY social and emotional things #people can be morons at one thing but competent at other thing! #so they can offer a good take in one field but kill everyone's braincells in another field! #it is not all so black and white #I really don't think I am smarter than everyone.. g #but I am smarter than SOME people in SOME areas! #just like everyone else is smarter than others in their own areas