#I’m convinced some of it is people being spoiled by large fandoms and also not knowing how ao3 works at all

[hopecomesbacktolife]

I’m not going to reblog the post itself because I don’t want that behavior on my blog, but oh my god I just saw a post about “looking for fics about your favorite character on ao3” and good lord the amount of bad takes both in that post and in the notes?? I have to just ramble about this for a moment because oh my god. it was ludicrous.

people were complaining that, and get this, unfinished fics exist. and that if you read an unfinished fic you’ll have to, get this, wait to read more until it’s published next. they were allll up in arms that there’s fics for a character that don’t cater to their specific interests. that they involve other characters and either do/don’t put them in a romantic relationship when they want the opposite for the character.

like at this point, most of you people in the notes on that post are 1) just being mean and condescending about FREE WORKS you can, may I remind you, READ FOR FREE and EXIT at ANY time! if you don’t like it!, don’t read it!, it’s so simple!, and 2) straight up do not know how ao3 works lmao

like I saw soooo many people in the notes complaining about a certain ship, dynamic, tag, etc, and like… y’all know you can filter by romantic vs platonic pairings, by ratings, by excluding certain tags or other qualifiers, etc etc etc… you know about ao3’s actually incredibly usable filtering and searching system… right… right??

at this point I’m just convinced a lot of these people are spoiled by large fandoms with 100k+ works for their characters and have decided to just be mean and condescending for no reason on main, about literally free fan works you can read for free any time that people spend hours and hours pouring their free time into out of sheer love for their craft. cuckoo bananas behavior if you ask me 🫠

I was legit so close to commenting that maybe they should try shipping two characters with <10 fics, with 0 fics, try liking a rare pair, try hyperfocusing on a character or niche type of fandom with a tiny but lovely circle of fans, and stop treating fan works and fic as Content TM that they deserve to have handed to them that caters to exactly what they want for free and maybe they’ll calm down lmao

like y’all aren’t cool you’re just being mean. we fundamentally approach fic in wildly different ways and honestly the way you do sounds exhausting. literally could not be me, I’m to busy finding joy in shared love for characters and not flipping the table in a rage because there’s one (1) element of the fic that isn’t specifically catered to me, maybe try that and you’ll feel better, hmm?

and yeah I’m aware that last sentence is me being condescending towards them, but frankly it’s warranted when so many people are being that mean and haughty for no reason lmao but truly those takes were horrific. fellow fic writers and even fellow fic readers I interact with, am mutuals with, authors whose works I read, readers who comment and interact with my works, fans of niche fandom subsets that run in the same circles as me— I hope you know this is so wildly not how I approach fics, I love just finding fics for my characters and forming these lil communities where we share our interests and love for them and hype each other up. I love what we have in these fandom niches and I hope you know I would never dream of being so mean and condescending towards y’all. fic writers and readers and fan communities are so special and I cherish it even if clearly there’s people in the notes on that other post who don’t know how to do that lmao. I love your unfinished WIPs, I love your fics that may only partially be what I’m looking for, I love when you write characters in a way I wouldn’t expect but shows your love for your particular headcanon, I love the variety and diversity and variance in fic. I love us. genuinely. fic writer moots I am hugging all of you and I frequently reread your works, even the unfinished ones. ♡

#personal #god this turned into a rant but sometimes I’m just shocked by how.. mean and condescending and holier-than-thou some people can be about fic #about works people write FOR FREE because they LOVE a character/ dynamic/ etc so much they can’t NOT let that love pour out into a fic tjat #once again you can READ FOR FREE HELLO #like god. maybe those people need to try not being a condescending bench (to quote Eleanor) and maybe they’ll feel better and be able to ac #tually participate in the wonder and joy and delight that is fan communities and fic communities idk man #I’m convinced some of it is people being spoiled by large fandoms and also not knowing how ao3 works at all #but like. this is not a streaming service this is an ARCHIVE it is a LIBRARY do you know how to use a LIBRARY #hello??? if you don’t like a book you can return it and borrow another???? not scribble in the margins about how you don’t like it??? #like literally w h a t. #unhinged behavior and not in a cute way. #being mean isn’t cute it’s just being mean. condescension won’t magically make your dream fic scenarios appear. sorry (not sorry tho) #anyways. there was no way in hellllll! I was going to reblog that post and bring that whole mess to my blog. so instead. making my own post #(somewhat like people who can’t find fic they want could also just make their own but yknow 🤭💋) #anyways fellow fic writers and readers I interact with and am friends with ily ily and pls know I never think of your works like that in a #million years ok ❤️❣️❤️ I’m sorry some people are Mean I’m so glad the people I know who are fic writers + readers aren’t like that ty ty

[eyrieofsynapses]

I wasn't planning to split my "hey, so you're gonna see some Star Wars stuff around soon, but I'm not properly rejoining the fandom" into two posts, but here we are. Mostly so that I don't subject all of you to a long explanation.

So: like I said over here, a couple good friends of mine convinced me to watch The Mandalorian, and it's all going downhill into the trash heaps of Star Wars from there. Once I've gotten to a couple other things--which might take some time--I may reblog some GIFs and possibly metas.

Here's the thing: Yes, I might put stuff up. No, I am not getting into the fandom proper again. And I do mean again--as in, I was in it around four or five years ago, quite a while before this blog existed. (You can look at my Ao3 for proof, but... uh... maybe don't. You know how it is with old fic.)

For the sake of clarity, and also because I kind of want to talk about it, I'm going to explain why.

For reference: I've seen all of the movies. I've also seen The Clone Wars up until the newest season. I watched all of Star Wars: Rebels, and that remains my favorite. (No, I've not seen The Bad Batch, so I don't know everything about what they did with Caleb.) I'm also fond of Rogue One despite my dislike of tragic endings. Aside from that, my knowledge extends to a scattered few books, comics, and a few other things. I have, only as of the last few days, finished The Mandalorian's second season; the rest of my knowledge is largely older.

As usual, my attention veered away and I hit my overload point. That's normal, by the way. But there's some other reasons.

First: Star Wars deals a lot with tragedy. I've increasingly found I don't much like too many sad endings, especially when they feel unnecessary. I like my characters whole and safe and happy at the end of the day, okay? Beat them up in between all you like, but... look, I like happy endings. That’s a me thing, by the way, not a flaw in Star Wars itself (mostly). If you like tragedy, go for it! I’m just not a fan.

Second: The Rise of Skywalker poisoned a lot for me. Between that and the way Disney's been beating the shit out of the MCU, I figured the newer Star Wars shows were rotten cash grabs and nothing more. It wasn't until my friends lured me into watching The Mandalorian that I realized otherwise. Somehow, despite Disney's hell-bent obsession with killing everything it touches, there's some good stuff coming out of Lucasfilm yet. (For now.) I am duly impressed.

Third, and most importantly: Whatever TRoS and co. didn't poison, the fandom often did. I've met a lot of awesome Star Wars people. I've also seen a lot of toxicity, especially online.

I cannot tell you how much "oh, this sucked because of A, B, C, and D, and this part is irredeemable, and I can't believe anyone could stand this bit--what do you mean you liked that? Fuck you!" stuff I've seen around. Mind you, I like constructive story critique. But much of the time it was just complaining, with zero positivity or genuine love. (It isn't just Star Wars, by the way; I see a massive amount of this in the DC fandom too. There’s others. It’s common in many large fandoms, I think.)

I get it, it's fair to rant about stuff you don't like. I do that too. I’m not going to say I won’t keep doing it here and there, because I’d be lying. Hell, I have a lot of bones to pick with Star Wars. I can and have torn TRoS apart. But it's one thing to do that, and another entirely to claim that you enjoy the thing while only ever hating on it. In particular, I'm sick of seeing people coming into spaces where people are enjoying the content, and then spoiling it rotten by only ever complaining. That was what really got to me: being in places where people were meant to be enjoying it, only to see endless complaints about everything bad.

That was the thing I really disliked about the fandom while I was in it--there was this constant cycle of people saying they enjoyed some piece of Star Wars media, then turning around and smacking it over and over without ever providing any positive feedback. I'm not here for that. I'm here to smack-talk TRoS, sure, but then talk about a) what went right, b) what could be done better, c) the context of the mistakes and the reason for them, and d) where Star Wars has avoided the same mistakes, because it turns out they've done a lot better elsewhere.

Look, I don't want to hear about every single flaw and nothing else. Media is flawed! That's part of it! Plot holes exist! Problems exist! I get pissed off about them too! I rant with my real-life friends about them all the time! But suspension of disbelief is a thing, and historical context is a thing, and recognizing the fact that writers are human and flawed too is a very important thing. If you've got a problem and you want to say it, say it, tag it, then move the hell on and don't press it on the people who want to enjoy that media for what it is. (Unless those people are being blatantly discriminatory and offensive, in which case, sure, call them out. But don't be an ass about it.)

For the record: I am absolutely down for calling Disney out on its racist/sexist/queerphobic/etc. bullshit. We need to do that, and we need to do it loudly. TRoS fucked up a lot with that, and it deserves to be called out.

But if we're going to do that, we also need to talk about where they went right. We need to talk about how supportive many of the actors were. We need to talk about how Rebels and Rogue One brought in characters of color and treated them right. We need to discuss the importance of Finn and Poe, both for being POC and where their implied romance worked despite its ultimate knock-down. We need to talk about why women like Leia, Rose, Ahsoka, Hera, Sabine, and Jyn--among many others--are good representation. We need to talk about how The Mandalorian and Andor are both led by men of color. We need to talk about the many wonderful platonic relationships in Star Wars. We need to celebrate the good, too.

...er, anyway. I'm gonna hop off the soapbox now.

Basically: I got lucky when I landed in the Leverage fandom and found out how positive a fan space can be, and I don't want to go back to only ever seeing people ragging on my favorite media. Past experience has taught me that the Star Wars fandom does a lot of that. I'm once-bit and twice-shy, so I'm not getting deep in on this. I'm not trawling tags, I'm not getting into arguments, I'm not interacting much at all. If somebody wants to have a positive and constructive conversation, I’m here for it. If I post and someone decides to start an argument for the sake of arguing, I'm blocking and moving on, and that is that.

Anyway. Upward and onward, and all of that. May the Force be with you.

#star wars negativity #star wars #fandom #synapse rants #synapse talks #...yeah okay we'll do that for a new tag too #I know I may be inviting some not-great responses to this #but like I said: no questions no second thoughts. just block #I'm here to chat and be cool and have productive conversations #not to strike up ridiculous and pointless arguments #that waste my time #so! yeah

[palmett-hoes]

i said in this post that i have original characters and backstories for neil's extended family. it took me,, a really long time to write it all down. it's been a full month since the original post, and this is still just a run through of things, not full prose, which i might be interested in doing one day but not anytime soon

now, some things to note about what i'm writing, why, and how. methodology, basically. this might not have come through yet in my posts, because i just don't post about my half-finished ideas, but i research a LOT. i like to base what i write about on real life, even if it's just headcanons and fanfic

also, i love helping people with research, so if anyone wants help with research for a fic or just their personal headcanons or anything hit me up!!

as a white person who wants to write characters from different ethnic backgrounds, i feel i have a responsibility to really do my due diligence and research as much as possible to consider things from every angle. and part of that for me is making sure that every character of color has a backstory. they don't just appear somewhere, i have to give them a reason for being there and a story for how they got there, even if that's not what i write their STORY about. people, come from places, basically. i follow a lot of demographic census information and population averages, as well as a lot of history, from as general as transatlantic trade in the last 500 years to as specific as the changes in a single city in a certain year

talking to other writers in the fandom i know i'm a little overzealous, but this is what gives me peace of mind to feel like i am putting the effort in to get things right

so anyway, as for what that means here:

i like writing neil as mixed black/jewish. it works well thematically for his character, as well as just what FEELS right for how i visualize him in my head

only, that can't simply come from nowhere. we know who his parents are. they need to also be poc for neil to be one, and they're a complicated pair to handle in that lens

one choice i made about that, for multiple reasons, is that everything about neil's parents' backgrounds should mirror each other. it can't simply be that one if them is black and one is jewish, or even that mary is both and nathan is white, because that says something i don't want to say any way you slice it. additionally, i want both facets of his ethnicity to be important to neil, and i feel as though he would want to ignore the half of himself from his father.

so: they both have to be mixed, giving them a sort of,, ideological equal footing, as it were. that way, i can also write three different experiences, rather than accidentally implying that This is what being black is, or This is what being jewish is, or This is what being mixed is. and that's also important to me, even if it's just in my head or not even directly addressed. it's still a big consideration of mine anytime i write about any of them

now, finally, onto mary and nathan! i'll put it below a cut because this is already long enough, the under-the-cut is much longer, and i don't want to wear out your thumbs if you don't care

mary hatford

canon timeline, neil was born in 1988. as a tentative number let's say mary was around 30 when he was born, meaning she would be born in the 50s. say her parents were roughly the same age, so they were born around the 20s

like i said, what's happening where in history is very important to me for building these backstories, and major historical events tend to have a lot of influence on population shifts. and well,, jews and europeans in the early-to-mid 20th century? there's no getting around involving world war II. nothing explicit, but it is mentioned and part of the story

mary’s paternal family are the hatfords. they're from the british west indies, largely jamaica, but they've been involved with shipping and trade all over the trans-atlantic region for generations.

they have a complicated relationship with the british empire, having both worked for them and against them at various points, sometimes both at once. similarly, they've tried multiple times through the generations to relocate the family to england permanently, but have been turned away or pressured out

they associate england and the british empire with power, and they both disagree with and desire that power in degrees which vary person to person. they do have a general idea between them though that living in england is a sign of status and authenticity, and while they don't want to leave jamaica permanently they do want their center of power to be in england, and there is a deep resentment against the anglos for not allowing them to stay permanently despite their wealth and influence, the fact that their work will always be looked down on and seen as lesser

i did come into building the hatfords with the primary idea of them being black british, and looking into the organized crime connection second. them being jamaican/west indies is a reference to the jamaican posse, who have a large presence in the london crime scene, although that's really the only connection. the hatfords aren't really yardies in any sense

the hatfords' status as organized crime is a little iffy. mostly they skirt the line between legal and illegal, owning legal trading companies and doing plenty of legal shipping. their main business in the criminal underworld is being middlemen moving supplies for other groups. they have a lot of contacts, and they serve an invaluable role in international smuggling, but they rarely get their own hands dirty. they move things from one place to the other and don't question too much what it is, though they don't deal in people

mary's father is named samuel hatford (first name in reference to samuel bellamy, the gentleman pirate king of the early 18th century). he was born in England, raised largely in Jamaica, then moved back to England as a teenager/young man. he's light-hearted and a bit idealistic for someone from a crime family, seeing the best in people even when they're cold and often believing in principle over profit, which at times put him in conflict with what's best for business

he almost enlisted in world war II, but instead convinced the family to work as weapons and supplies runners supporting the Allies and guerilla resistance groups

mary's mother is named cima ben nahman (ladino/judeo-spanish/sephardic names, doesn't really reference anything or anyone in particular). She's is an algerian jew. Born in algeria (city undecided, though algiers had the largest jewish community at the time), she moved to france for a few years as a young woman, probably for education. she joined anti-fascist organizations which became resistance groups once germany invaded

she's stoic, and has a ruthless mind for strategy. like most algerian jews, she's caught between her home country and its colonizer. the french empire played the algerian muslim majority against the jewish minority as a way to create infighting and distract the algerians from uniting and turning against them, but the algerian jews also then became reliant on the french for protection. (it's a really, really complicated situation)

cima sort of hates them both, both algeria and france. her only allegiance is to being jewish

(contrast this to samuel, who feels that he is BOTH british and caribbean, even when those two identities may be in conflict)

cima and samuel met when samuel provided weapons and supplies to cima's militia group. he took particular interest in them and went out of his way to help, above and beyond the other groups the hatfords were supplying

in the waning period of the war, cima was seriously injured, i'm currently thinking a land mine accident. she survived, but her recovery was slow. she lost an arm and had burns across half her torso, neck, and face. samuel brought her to england supported her through her recovery. in the hospital, they spoke a lot about why they each chose to fight, and the ways they did because neither were formal soldiers fighting for a country. samuel was in many ways fighting for an ideal, while cima was fighting for her people. cima also talked to him a lot about judaism and religion during this time, which samuel took an interest in. eventually, cima decided to stay

they got married. samuel converted, which was somewhat controversial with his family. however, cima agreed to join the family business, where she became an integral but sometimes ruthless member. after algerian independence, she brought some of her trusted family and community into the fold as well, some moving to england and others to france

both cima and samuel believed very heavily in responsibility, though what it meant for each of them was different. cima believed in preparedness and follow-through, samuel believed in family and protection, doing what's right outside of the bounds of the law. this contributed a lot to how they raised their children

when they were born, mary and stuart were raised in england (and i like to think they have an oldest brother). the hatfords were a big family, and influential, although careful about balancing the legal and less-legal sides of their business. the ben nahmans were smaller, and most of them were in france so mary and her brothers saw them less often. they were raised very religiously and culturally jewish, though close with the caribbean side of their family too, as well as being the first generation who were born and raised in england. this put them at a cross-section of three very different cultures, and was where mary first learned about changing and blending in with different groups

mary was the youngest and a little bit spoiled by her father, aunties, and uncles. her mother however was much less tolerant of her. clearly very affected by her time in the war, cima became extremely distrustful and suspicious, and tried to instill in her children a similar sentiment of secrecy and self-sufficiency, avoiding attention and casual relationships. she could be harsh on them, especially mary, who was the most resistant to this

growing up, mary was irresponsible and fun-loving, goading her brothers and cousins, getting in trouble, and starting fights. she didn't understand the tenuous balance of being organized crime, and at times put the whole family at risk by overestimating their sway. her mistakes affected the whole family but it was usually her mother who confronted her about them first and most harshly

she resented her mother's control, and didn't understand the reasons behind it. she also couldn't differentiate between the boundaries her mother sets as a result of her own trauma, and the necessary boundaries she set for the safety of the family, viewing them as one and the same, and leading her to hate any kind of control exerted over her

really, a lot of cima's character is just who mary ends up becoming after being married to nathan and being on the run. i like the story of a child becoming the parent they once hated. rather than learn from her mother, both her failures and her successes, mary becomes her, doomed to make the same mistakes. this is also why cima is wounded by a landmine, because mary dies in fire

---

nathan wesninski

nathan was HARD to come up with a story for, mostly because,,, WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS GUY WORK FOR THE JAPANESE YAKUZA

wesninski is a VERY polish name. the japanese-polish connection is,, not super strong

so anyway, working off the idea of the wesninski family being a polish jewish one, WHERE is he going to meet a japanese crimelord to get into a multi-generation debt/business arrangement with?

turns out, the answer is brazil

brazil actually has a large jewish population (roughly 10th largest in the world). it began with its colonization by the portuguese, but the 19th century to modern population largely comes from central and eastern europe. brazil ALSO has the largest japanese population outside of japan

also this story ended up being WAY more detailed and prosaic than samuel&cima's story, which is basically just bullet points. there's no reason for this i love both stories very much just for some reason the words flowed for me here and not there

to avoid having a second jewish story where wwII is prominent, the wesninskis get a page out of my own family's book: nathan's grandfather (neil's great grandfather) came to the americas fleeing the russian pograms around the turn of the 20th century

so

Wesninski came to brazil (city undecided, have a lot more research to do about individual cities in brazil). he had waardenburg syndrome(a hereditary genetic condition that can affect eyes and hearing) which runs very strongly in his family (his son, nathan, and neil will all inherit it), and he is completely Deaf. while he came to brazil alone, in his new home he connected both with the local jewish community and the local deaf community, and eventually marries another Deaf Jewish woman

eventually they were able to establish a kosher deli and restaurant in the city, one which became a common hangout for the Deaf community. then one day (probably around 1915), a group of japanese men came in, and kept returning

these were the moriyamas, recently arrived from japan, in a place with very few japanese people and businesses. they liked the wesninski deli because they didn't share a language with anyone in there, couldn't even be heard by most of them, and it would also be difficult for the authorities to question them. two layers of protection for a crime family in a vulnerable place

wesninski and the moriyamas were amicable to each other, but as they didn't actually have a way to communicate that was the extent of it. but the moriyamas were polite and payed well and didn't bother the other customers. als, as a jewish establishment, they had a lot of education resources, which were helpful to the moriyamas in learning about brazilian society, including beginning to understand portuguese

now, in japan, the moriyamas were a small yakuza family. they got driven out by their bigger and stronger and more established competition around the time when japanese immigration to brazil was just starting, so that was where they went. though they had little option in where they ended up, they also had little competition in establishing their business

i still have a lot of research to do about the moriyamas. about both how the yakuza operate and about how brazilian organized crime works, and about life in brazil for early japanese immigrants. so a lot of the moriyama details are pretty vague

now the wesninskis had a son, meyer (nathan's father. name in reference to meyer lansky, famous american jewish mobster of polish descent) who was around 14 when the moriyamas arrived. he himself was not fully deaf like his parents, though was hard of hearing and raised in the Deaf community. as he goes through his rebellious teenage years, well, the gangsters are right there

in the early days the moriyamas were still more concerned with mostly the japanese enclaves, but they had aspirations of expanding. meyer wasn't japanese, but he was helpful to the moriyamas who came into the deli to study. he was perceptive and bold, could keep a secret, knew his way around knives from working in the deli, and knew the city. he was a good asset to them, and he was interested in causing some trouble

over the next ten years or so, meyer got increasingly more involved, alongside the moriyamas becoming increasingly more established throughout the city. he goes from someone who helps out occasionally and relays information beyween parties to getting involved with minor shakedowns, bribery, evidence disposal. by the time he's in his 20s he's thoroughly enmeshed

his parents were older when they had him, and his father died relatively young, leaving meyer the store and his mother to take care of. they were vaguely aware of his connections to the moriyamas and didn't approve of what he did with them but he also kept the worst from them, and was always a diligent son, and the only one they had. he assured them no matter how far he went that he wasn't "really" part of the gang

"yakuza have tattoos, and see, ima? no tattoos. i'm still a good jewish son, not a gangster"

now the problem arises when meyer falls for camara da machado, a young Deaf woman who frequents the store

(based on/inspired by/FC yaya dacosta (where the name comes from) and rutina wesley)

she was a Deaf girl born to a hearing family who struggled to give her the support she needed, maybe even just a single mother, and she'd spent a lot of time alone at the deli from a young age (12-ish?). she was shy and quiet and a little bit of a shrinking violet, but the wesninskis became very fond of her. she started tentatively helping them out around the store which became a job. she was often included in family meals and holidays, and always had a bed in their apartment above the deli if she needed one, and more than once had helped patch meyer up after he got in trouble to hide the extent of it from his parents

she was a couple years younger than him but he'd always been sweet on her. and she'd had a crush on him from basically the moment she'd layed eyes on him. they'd known each for years and camara was basically family, and then one day when they were both in their 20s it just suddenly clicked for them

so meyer and camara fell in love. meyer was head of the house, had to keep the deli running, and had his mother, camara, and possibly camara's mother (undecided at this juncture) to worry about and he decided he didn't want to continue working with the moriyamas in case it dragged his family into danger. being a gangster was a fling of youth and he was ready to grow up

when he informed the moriyamas of this though, they,,, did not agree.

while MEYER might not have considered himself part of the gang, THEY didn't think he just got to walk away. he'd worked with them for too long and knew too much. there might even have been a desire to tie him to the family permanently through marriage. and well,, one man against a growing criminal empire can't do much

it was a huge shock to him, and made him truly realize how naive and reckless he'd been. he'd been a dumb kid who wanted to start some trouble, the moriyamas were career criminals. they expected that once you were in, you were in for life, and they did not take kindly to meyer disagreeing with this

he didn't know how to explain this to his family... so he didn't. they'd all told him they wanted him to stop, but he'd meant for the announcement to be a surprise. after learning that he would not be permitted to walk away, he chose to just hide it and continue with business as usual

it worked for a while, maybe a few years, a time during which the moriyamas were getting a lot more brutal as they got more established and increasingly looked to expand, putting them in competition with other gangs and greater law enforcement, until they were a true crime empire spread across whole regions of the country. meyer had lost a lot of esteem in their eyes by asking to leave, leading them to put him under increasing scrutiny and giving him more incriminating tasks, to ensure that he would be incriminated if he ever tried to turn them in. it's during this time that he first had to kill for them

then camara got pregnant

and meyer was terrified. he didn't know how the moriyamas would deal with a kid. the only marriages and children he knew of within the family were endorsed by the boss, many arranged by him, and he knew his wouldn't be approved. yakuza wives were heavily involved with the business too, and he absolutely did not want that for camara

he broke down and told her everything. she's horrified, and furious that he kept it from her, but she didn't want to give up her baby. it would be hard, but she believed they can keep it hidden, and if the moriyamas found out, maybe it wouln't be so bad?

(spoiler: it would)

they have a son, born natan da machado, under his mother's name

meyer and camara never got married. meyer was going to propose after he left the moriyamas but that obviously didn't happen. marriages were supposed to be blessed by the boss, and meyer never dared to ask. they already lived together, anyway

but with natan, they decided that meyer couldn't acknowledge him as his own. in the deli or in the streets, he didn't acknowledge natan. he was camara's bastard son, and meyer didn't want anything to do with him

it was a flimsy disguise at best. natan was mixed, but there was a strong enough resemblance to his father. even if his hair was a darker red or he had brown skin, they had the same eyes

they tried to keep him away from the moriyamas as he grew up, hoping they wouldn't see him and make the connection, but they also kept him very hidden in general, just in case. he spent a lot of time inside, with his grandmothers

and that was how natan grew up, feeling like a secret, his father cold and distant, only acknowledging him in their apartment. cut off from other kids his age. a hearing boy in a Deaf family (natan himself was HoH but still had most of his hearing. meyer and his maternal grandmother could both hear, but they had gotten out of the habit of it and mostly communicated through sign)

natan developed a deep feeling of resentment towards his father and shame about himself from a young age. he felt like a mistake, defective somehow. so wrong he had to be hidden away from everyone

there's only so long that you can hide a child, though, and when natan was around ten the moriyamas found out about him, and they were not happy.

they didn't like split attention or loyalty. they kept children and family under very tight wraps. they should be one hundred percent enmeshed in the moriyama empire, raised to be loyal and helpful in whatever way they were needed. the fact that meyer wanted and was willing to leave for this family, and then hid his son, was a huge betrayal

still, they gave him an opportunity to prove his loyalty: kill camara or the moriyamas would kill them all: her, natan, meyer, and both their mothers

but meyer couldn't do it, and instead he told camara to run and hope they didn't actually care enough to chase her down. and she did. and she couldn't take natan with her. (i haven't fully fleshed out why yet, currently thinking that meyer was given this ultimatium when they already had natan)

so camara left her son, and got away

i built the story of mary's mother as a reflection of mary's story if something had been different, and i built nathan's story the same way. his wife takes her son and runs away with him when the moriyamas try to take him from her. nathan's mother was in the same situation and left him behind

over the next forty years of his belonging to the moriyamas he gets to marinate in that resentment. from the father that ignored to the mother who ran away from him, he internalizes it as being something wrong with him, not the circumstances. the more he's taught to torture and kill and the more he excels at it, the more this belief gets cemented. he's good at killing, he was meant to kill. he's twisted and broken and wrong inside and he always was and his parents always knew

and then when it happens again but differently this time he throws away a decade and millions of dollars and his standing with his boss to hunt down his son and his wife because he didn't get to run away so why should they? why does mary love nathaniel more than camara loved natan?

from here, the exact detail's of nathan's story aren't quite solidified. whether he was raised by his father from then on or by his grandmothers (or whether his grandmothers left with his mother) or whether the moriyamas put him somewhere else entirely, but from then on he lived under the moriyamas' direct supervision, and they taught him how to turn a knife on a man

they took his mother's name from him, though, so he's natan wesninski, not natan da machado, because they own the wesninskis now

and when the moriyamas decided to expand beyond brazil when natan was a young man instead of a child, and settled on the east coast of the US, they renamed him nathan, because it sounded more "american"

---

so that's it. obviously there are still a lot of unfinished details in both stories, but they're strong enough at this point to stand on their own and i haven't changed or rethought a lot of the major details in a long time

i've become extremely attached to these OCs and their stories, and i hope they interest other people too. some day i'd like to write them out in prose properly, along with the story of nathan and mary meeting, but that'll be a while away considering the pace i move at

so until then i just wanted to put this out there

#aftg #tfc #neil josten #nathaniel wesninski #mary hatford #nathan wesninski #txt #my fics #my writing #my posts #black neil josten #jewish neil josten #cw gangs #cw organized crime #cw ww11 #cw wwII #long form post

[antiloreolympus]

8 Anti LO Asks

1. as a mythology buff, i honestly think it was really weird of rachel smythe to take Hecate, a goddess who helped Demeter search for Persephone after she vanished and heard her screams and shared in Persephone and Demeter's joy after reuniting... and then just make her into Hades's like... total bro who plays aggressive matchmaker to h/p to the point of trying to break up Hades's current relationship. but honsestly i refuse to believe rachel smythe did literally any research before making this comic judging by how she depicts the mythology she's taking inspiration from so honestly im not suprised

2. I don’t know if anyone on here has discussed this, but LO very much plays into the idea of “good victim vs bad victim”.

A “good victim” has suffered many things, but despite it they still remain cheerful and happy and pleasant, they do not put others out or lash out at them even if they are triggered, they do not become petty or angry or hold onto negative emotions. They, in essence, “get over it”. Thus, the narrative rewards them: they get many friends, a love internet they’re happy with, and a happy ending. This is what Persephone is. She’s the “good victim”. Despite her many hardships, we know she will not suffer in the end. She will get everything she wants and more. 

Then there is Minthe, the “bad victim”. They too have gone through many hardships, but they’ve become cold, angry at the world, they lash out and have trouble opening up and connecting to others, they even hurt others, themselves victims to the toxic pain they can’t get rid it. They do not and have not “gotten over it”.  Thus, the narrative punishes them, even when they try to better themselves. It’s never good enough. These characters often are lonely, the cast are large do not like them if not outright hate them, and they more often than not end up dead. This is what Minthe is. She is not a pleasant person, she’s a victim of a manipulative older man and a cruel, unjust society and system, and we know how her story ends. It’s in pain, her maiming/possible death framed as a joke and not even a genuine hint of sympathy towards her fate. She was a “bad victim”, she “deserved” what she got.

Now, you only often see this in fandom, since the actual works that deal with victims of trauma and how they react will often try to give more nuance to every shade of victim they may have on cast, but it’s very disturbing to me that Rachel seems to eagerly play into this idea, like she gets joy out of punishing a victim she created and watching them suffer even more at her hands. It’d be one thing if she kept Minthe a shallow, one dimensional character who was just evil for the sake of it, fine, but her showing us her actual complex nature and the very real struggles, trauma, and manipulation she went through, especially at the hands of our supposed “heroes” of the story, just to have her demise framed as a win for Persephone and a joke for the audience to laugh at? That’s highly disturbing to me. It’s one thing for fans to act that way, but the writer themselves? It’s very dark, to say the least. 

3. "I'm invested in working with fairy tales and folklore for my next project" oh no no no oh god please no. Fairy tales have been through enough hot takes and modern "betterments", they really don't need Rachel "Apollo is bad, actually" Smythe to add to it

4. Quick question

Greek Mythology is mostly incest.

So what if someone who is actually good at writing and storytelling and consistent artwork

Kept it in

For example Zeus and  Hera arguing like the married couple they are

And Hera uses older sibling card

With Zeus dumbfounded face

I don't know why but I want it but would it be weird since it's incest

Most fanfics always keep it out. Just keep it in if you want it to be closer than the actual methods you know

Hera is youngest daughter of Cronus and Rhea and older than her brother Zeus, who was also her husband.

I want to do it but like I have no clue how to start a webtoon so you know💀

5. Oh god, Hades not needing therapy because Persephone's "love" is enough? To quote my lord and savior Kennie JD: "not the p*$$¥ being therapy!"

6. uuuuuh sexual trauma warning.?

So I was writing a comment on the "Re: bpd" ask and i had a realization about persephone

She reminds me of how I was about the idea of sex

I'm demisexual and have sexual trauma and the idea of sex excited me but I wasn't able to like, do it. Me and my partner would mess around but because Mctrauma i couldn't do it cuz I hadn't exactly worked through my trauma and i wanted to get through that because i was finally experiencing sexual attraction.

Kinda reminds me of Persephone. The problem is at that point it had been 6-7 years since my trauma occurred and persephone's happened like last month.

Considering how everyone talks about persephone being a self insert i think Rachel has some things to work through

Also made the realization literally as im typing that Rachel's attitude towards asexuality could be because she's demi and doesn't fully understand what that is or means

becuase if you're ignorant enough you can 100% end up describing demisexuality as "being asexual and then like, slowly turning gay."

this ask weirdly personal so fuck it this is gonna be anonymous feel free to delete if it makes u uncomfy 

7. That’s also a part about Hubris Rachel clearly doesn’t get: it was always committed by rich, often people in high authority, NEVER lowly farmers or the poorest of ancient society. They always knew better. Niobe was a queen! Minos was a king! Arachne was the rich, spoiled daughter of a really successful merchant. Sisyphus was a cunning king. The trojan war was kicked off by royal drama. The list goes on and on. You have to notice these things and genuinely study the myths or you become like Rachel, who seems convinced the poorest people would be stupid enough to not only defy their bosses, but the gods themselves? They would be the last people to do such a thing! They don’t have the ingrained sense of entitlement and arrogance like the rich and powerful to even dare act like that towards the gods, as is the case with hubris. Because of this, Rachel ends up creating a narrative that the rich and powerful (literal GODS) are the real victims to those cruel, uppity poor people, going as far as to say in comic they deserve to be slaves for hades’ benefit and they’re wrong for ever hating Persephone for, you know, murdering them because she had a bad day! They should know their place! It’s absolutely insane that she doesn’t actually seem to realize what she’s writing. Unless she does, which is an even bigger issue, and shows a really dark look into how she views the world and society and how it should be run. It’s all a bad look. 

8. Have you seen the "The demon, is here in the room right now?" meme

Welp, that's literally Persephone and her "feeling"

I legit saw that video about a dude faking a mental illnes (and seeing a demon that made him do bad things) after he commited a crime and that was so cringy and I can't stop thinking about Persephone confessing her AOW like that

#anti lo #anti lore olympus #lore olympus critical #lo critical #anti lo art

[jonthethinker]

Does the Cerberus Assembly need to be reformed, or destroyed? And can it really be either?

Let’s start with an opinion we can all agree on; Trent Ikithon sucks. He’s clearly a very bad person, and our collective hatred of him is one of the rare things this fandom seems to actually agree on. What he’s done to his “disciples” is horrifying, and his general ideology is monstrous and abhorrent, although not surprising considering the role he plays in the Empire. We can, on this, agree that the world would be a better place if he was removed from power, correct?

Now this is where I start explaining my probably very divisive opinion.

A lot of people would say that all it takes to make the Cerberus Assembly better would be to replace the members like Ikithon with Good People. Maybe Caleb Widogast, for instance. If you simply put someone with a stronger moral character into that position, then its output in turn will also be Good.

This, whether knowingly or not, implies that institutions, even those like the Cerberus Assembly, are by their nature at the very least morally neutral. That all it takes to make an institution like the Assembly be Good is have Good People run it. You do that, and with time, all is well.

But what if institutions did have a moral character? what if the responsibilities and powers given to a body like the Assembly and its requisite components are not Good or even neutral, but instead very, very bad? And what if the incentives the people deciding who stands on the Assembly, namely the members of the Assembly themselves, are actually antithetical to any ideas of a substantially reformed Assembly in the first place?

Let’s think for a minute about Trent and his job. We are all horrified by his methods of creating his Volstruckers. But as much as it bothers me, what bothers me more, personally, is what they are for. While we tend to view them as arcane assassins, what they really are is a wholly unaccountable means of performing all of the Assembly’s, and by extension the Empire’s, dirty deeds not meant for public notice. And seeing as they fall under the sole purview of the Archmage of Civil Influence, this is largely going to translate to “managing dissidence and discontent” in the polite language a body like the Assembly would use to describe its work.

What this means is that its job, and the job of Trent’s office as a whole, is to keep the wrong ideas from getting too popular and the people from getting too loud about the awfulness of their everyday lives, and inside a broader system like the Empire, this is usually going to be dealt with by means of coercion and outright violence. While it’s easy to feel sorry for the incredibly abused and tormented people under Trent’s power, like Caleb and Astrid and Eadwolf, I feel like I’m one of the few in the fandom who has really considered the true extent of terror being unleashed on so many whose faces we’ll never know.

Peasant farmers’ organizing for lower taxes on their grain sales. Laborers gathering to raise hell over the low wages they receive from mandatory state projects. Citizens concerned about the unchecked brutality of the Crown’s Guard. Religious worshipers worried the Empire is straying from the path set by their gods. The mentally ill and other people who simply don’t comfortably fit into the grand scheme of things. Races of folks seen as outsiders suspected of conflicting allegiances. How many people like this have vanished in the night, either to be imprisoned or tortured or killed, or I guess in many cases, all three? How much suffering has been caused, hidden away from any measure of accountability?

And this brings me to my next point; While Trent is truly awful, his title, and the role he plays, are also awful, and I think you don’t get into a position like that in the first place without being someone like Trent. I say this because we’ve gotten to meet a handful of people on the Assembly outside of Trent, and they’ve all generally had the same things to say about him; he gives them the creeps and they don’t like him personally, but he has his uses. I interpret this to mean he performs the responsibilities of his office well enough, and while his methods and general demeanor may be off-putting, it isn’t worth causing a fuss about so long as the work gets done. If they simply ignore what he’s doing, they get the benefits of a suppressed polity with very little of the personal hangups of what it requires to make that happen.

So let’s say, for some reason, Trent dies or is imprisoned and disgraced, and Caleb assumes his role. Caleb has experienced a remarkable amount of personal growth, although not without his own stumbles and set-backs like any victim of severe trauma such as he. He is, in my humble opinion, a Good Man. I know if given the power of this office, he’d be motivated to end the traumatizing of children, and killing of parents, and perhaps even the wholesale disbanding of the Scourgers itself. He’d maybe seek to alleviate the suffering of those his office is meant to contain instead of inflicting more pain upon them. And wouldn’t that be nice?

But when you’ve got this entrenched elite like the Empire does, those sorts of efforts are not going to go unnoticed, and in many cases, are going to cause one hell of a backlash among the powerful, who more often than not believe in their heart of hearts that those lowly commoners deserve their lot in life, and to spare the lash is to spoil the child, and soon you’ll have a bunch of peasants thinking they can go so far as to ask for actual power, actual control over the direction of their lives, and for any empire, but especially this one, how do you imagine that’s going to fly?

I’m reminded of an anecdote out of Brazilian politics. Former President Lula da Silva is one of the the most popular Brazilian political figures of all time, and managed to massively alleviate poverty in Brazil while also working with Brazil’s entrenched elite to make sure not to piss off the wealthiest of the wealthy. But the comfortably upper middle class, or “petite bourgeoisie” as Marx would call them, were disgusted that all these poor people were suddenly climbing the ladder. According to some folks, they complained “The airports are starting to look like bus stations,” because for the first time, working class people in Brazil could actually afford to fly. This discontent among the comfortable led to a chain events ending in the false arrest and imprisonment of Lula and the rise of their current terrifying president Jair Bolsonaro. I learned from this, and other tales like it, to never underestimate how angry some people will become when their special status ain’t so special anymore.

This is to say, that while Caleb is an undoubtedly brilliant man, without the potential intervention of DM magic, I don’t see someone with his lack of political savvy either holding power long or holding onto his convictions long enough to do anything meaningful, if someone like him is considered for the job in the first place. AND even if he does accomplish all those wonderful things through this office and survives until he’s old and gray, he will eventually die. And judging solely on the general quality of character among the wizards we’ve met thus far, I’m not so optimistic about his potential replacement.

This example does spill out my major beef with the whole “Good Person in power” idea of reform. Good People either can’t live up to their values and actually wield power, or the clock itself defeats them and everything they ever stood for. This is also my problem with governmental models overly dependent on norms, as all it takes is someone willing to just completely ignore them,and for the people in power around them to have no incentive to stop them, for things to completely go off the rails. This is why reforms generally don’t last unless they universally redistribute power itself, from the top to the bottom, and even this is going to come with its own backlashes, and it generally doesn’t happen from polite attempts at reform by well meaning leaders, at least not all on their own, but through the sheer force of mass movements or outright revolutions.

And its not just Trent’s office that has this problem. It’s every single seat on the Assembly. His is just a particularly egregious example. Vess DeRogna didn’t get her job by being polite, of that much I’m sure. She’s clever, devious, and patient, not to mention her skill set and interests directly line her up for the role as Archmage of Antiquity. I don’t really think her sole interest is making sure nobody gets hurt by all these artifacts lying around, and neither do I imagine the Empire itself has any intention of keeping her discoveries behind lock and key; they pretty clearly want them mass produced where they can and immediately wielded against their enemies, both foreign and domestic.

And I’ve hinted at this earlier, but if you think Trent is a unique monster in the halls of Dwendalian mages, I’m going to have to disagree. I’m certain there are more than a few wizards in service of the Assembly and the Empire, who if not already believing similarly to Trent, could easily be convinced of his convictions, and ready to use his power themselves in an eerily identical manner. People like Trent aren’t as rare as we’d like them to be, and they’re all ready to grab power just as soon as they can.

So it would seem I come firmly on the “burn it all down” side of things. If only I believed it were that simple.

You see, I see the Cerberus Assembly as an institution that exists, in its entirety, for the cementing of power of the Dwendalian Elite and the progression of its interests. It protects them from threats both from inside and out, it teaches their children magic, it helps negotiate its trade, it aids in putting food on its table, and makes sure its armed for bear with the deadliest of magic only the Age of Arcanum and ancient elves could provide. It’s very reason for existence is to uphold the way of life for those on top. Even if it competes idly for who sits at the head of the table, it very much is invested in maintaining the structure of that table.

So if it were sundered and destroyed as an institution, what is to stop its functions from simply being absorbed by the broader Empire? What’s to stop the Empire from simply recreating the Volstrucker program under a different name? What’s stopping them from hiring its wizards to perform their original tasks, just under the sole discretion of the king? So I’d wager the problem isn’t the Assembly, but the very distribution of power required to maintain an Empire like Dwendal’s in the first place. The assembly is an immoral institution upholding a much larger, equally immoral institution. And you can’t truly solve the problem without tearing the whole damn thing down.

Do I think this campaign is going to be one in which our lovely players start a revolution? Hell no. I expect Trent at least to die or be deposed, and with the aid of some DM magic, things will get a little better. But Matt has given enough consideration to the political forces present in his world building, that I wanted to treat his world as if it were subject solely to the forces and motivations our own is. Just to see how things could turn out without a generally kind god like Matthew Mercer at the helm.

Plus I just really love trying to understand how fantasy political structures would really work. It’s usually a lot less depressing than real political structures, at least in so far as there are no real consequences for their abject failures. But I’ve rambled long enough. Thank you to the poor souls who read this ramble. You’re truly wonderful.

#critical role #cr spoilers #Caleb Widogast #Trent Ikithon #Cerberus Assembly #Dwendalian Empire #long post #this has been the thing consuming my mind while working sixty to seventy hours a week #so I hope the three people who are bored enough to read it enjoy the results of my hyper-fixation

[myonmukyuu]

hot milk tea, thoughts and feelings

I’ve only mentioned it briefly, but I’ve said that I’ll be taking a break from my SetsuAyu series - mainly because of my uni workload though.

But for now, I have a lot of thoughts about the entire thing as a project as well as myself as an artist. So I figured that I’d write a reflection of sorts (warning: it gets kind of personal).

Can you believe it’s been 3-4 months since the series started? I can’t, and I’ve been the one drawing all of these!! If you’ve been reading my work, I’ll say it over and over but I really appreciate it!!! Like I’m dead serious!!! Completely!! Utterly!! Without a doubt!!! I love all of you!!!

When I posted that first comic, I didn’t think it’d get the positive reception that it did get. Like, I’ve been producing basically entirely Muse content for years and suddenly decided to tap into Nijigaku? You could argue that it didn’t get that much attention, but either way, the attention it did get surprised me. I was so happy that people were engaged (and it still makes me stupidly happy, like on a level where I’m almost embarrassed to admit HAHA)

Recently I’ve just uploaded the bonus for the 3rd update which wraps up that part, and it really just clicked - that I really have invested soooo much time into this series. 36 pages now! And we’re only 3/10 main updates in!! I have so much passion for this - like a fire that can’t be put out. Every single update has something that I want to communicate/show so I always feel fired up. Heck, if you’ve spoken to me during the process you’d catch me always saying “I’m excited for the next one!!!” while working on it LMAO. It’s been my longest string of non-stop work. Usually I feel burned out more quickly but I was always so excited that I couldn’t stop! You’d find that I’m usually in a  state of conflict bc I alwaaaays want to talk about it but at the same time I don’t want to spoil anything. (THE NEXT UPDATE JUICY)

I think it’s a clear reminder of why I draw actually. The answer between each artist always differs, but I think it’s something important to be aware of. And well, for me? I’ve realised I’m a passion-monster. Passion keeps my blood pumping 100%. As a result... you could say I might be a more selfish kind of artist. Maybe it’s burn-out from running all those ask-blogs/RP when I was like 13-16, but I’ve realised that I’m having the most fun drawing what I genuinely love. It’s kind of why you’d rarely see me do requests and why I no longer do commissions. That isn’t to say that I hate drawing for other people. It can be fulfilling! But it’s more like - I barely have the time to draw for myself, so drawing for others is kind of a lower priority in general. It’s also why I’ve decided against studying graphic design when I graduated highschool. It’s just not happening as a career.

When I ask myself, “what kind of artist do I want to be?” I always think “Somebody who marches to her own beat and works hard to make content that she loves.” It’s also why I never delete anything - even my oldest art that makes me cringe. Because the me from 5 years ago put her love into that too. It’s really cheesy sounding but that’s how I see it LMFAO. I couldn’t do that to her. And also, just because I don’t like something anymore, it doesn’t mean that no one else does. So I’ll continue to never delete my old work. As a bonus, we get to see how far I’ve come too~.

I feel a little vulnerable admitting something like this and I’m pretty sure I’ve only told like 4 humans, but I think my #1 goal as an artist is that I want people to be able to look at my work (that I actually put my heart into) and think “this person loves this” or “this person works hard”. If you can do that, and sincerely feel the feelings I put into my comic, then I’ve already reached my goal. Can people tell how much I love these characters? The series? The concept? Can people tell how much work I’ve been putting into these updates? Can people tell when I’m having fun? It’s something I think about a lot. The idea of that people might think so makes me tear up HAHA - I get really sappy thinking about these kinds of things. And well, if people can’t tell then I’m not working hard enough!

That isn’t to say that I’m always putting my life-blood into everything I make. I’m mainly referring to the stuff where I do. I think it’s pretty clear when I’m pumping a lot of love into something. In general though, there’s always an intention for me to like communicate some idea or feeling and doing something like that requires maybe a bit of love~.

I feel like that as a character, Setsuna really resonates with me a lot. In personality? Not at all LMFAOOOO (she’s such a nice girl!!). More because of her ideals and principles. After typing like everything that I did up until this point, I bet you can guess why. I’ll keep it short and simple though, since this post is getting stupidly long.

Basically, I really resonate with her drive and passion as both an artist, and just in general actually? I’m a believer in that if you’re passionate about something, you can spread that passion. That’s the mentality I have with my art. If my love shows, then maybe other people will understand why I’ve come to love something. And maybe they’ll come to love it too. If I’m having fun, maybe they will have fun too! Very cheesy, I know, but that’s just how I roll!!!

Like rare pair? New fandom? Still applies. It might take awhile, but eventually either the people who love that thing will find me, or I’ll help people come to love something new (or at least see where it’s coming from lolol)! 

And as Setsu says:

You tell ‘em girl !!! That devotion is my driving force!!

Of course I know this is idealistic, but I think that’s fine. It’s no bother to me if someone feels indifferent/ negative towards my work because that’s just natural.

I think it’s a form of communication and that’s what drives my art. I’ve been intending on writing a guide/ or talking about my art process for comics for some time now and I think that’d be the first thing I’d mention? I’m always trying to communicate some sort of feeling/tone/idea and that comes from a place of love y’know.

I feel like I’m saying “love” and “passion” a lot - you can really tell I’m vibing with Setsuna huh LMAO. There are other reasons I vibe with her too, but I won’t touch on that.

Coming back to my SetsuAyu series. You can tell why I’m so happy about it right? The story, the pairing dynamic, I feel like that people are understanding what I’m trying to communicate - that people are receiving my feelings of love for it and that makes me smile so widely. I really put a lot into it!!

This series is the first large project I’ve ever taken you see and I’m so so happy that I’ve been able to get this far! It really means a lot to me. But it wasn’t actually the first comic series I’ve tried to do. I actually had a Muse long-running comic planned years ago - a Dancing Stars on Me! AU but it never came to life. I think it was my lack of confidence that held me back. It might be weird of me to pat myself on the back, but I’m proud that I managed to get going this time!! I’ve actually written the SetsuAyu series in a way that for the first half, I could drop the series if I really wanted to at any point (each part is pretty independent, and that description I always copy-and-paste is all the explanation you really need), but now I know for sure that I don’t want to drop it! I wanna keep going!! Even if it gets tough. Although it might be a little early for me to make such bold declarations, I’m only 3/10 through LOOOL. But that’s just the way I feel right now!

I know it’s irrational and it’s something I’d rather not admit, but an anxiety that’s always looming over me is the idea that I’m not working hard enough - or that people think I’m not? Each comic update...takes like a month right? And a month is a long time. There’s this part of me that is convinced that people think I’m lazy for working so slowly. And I know it’s not true!! It doesn’t make sense for it to be!!! But like I said it’s irrational.

I’m really proud of this comic y’know. It’s a really big commitment and I’m proud of myself for being able to commit. I work full time 9-5, and I also am in my final year at university. I’m... kind of busy lol. So the huge factor in that month-long update turnaround is just that I don’t have the time to always be drawing. But I try to draw as much as I can! If you have me on discord you might notice me work on it for like 2-5 hours, almost daily before I go to bed (1am). Of course I’m not only drawing, but after I get everything plotted out sometimes that’s all I do. This comic is super time-consuming LMAO - and I try my best to work on it a little at a time.

So yeah, the entire month of comic-production is me drawing every almost every night.

Yeah it, - it’s kind of exhausting. Even though I’m itching to work on my next update, I’ve decided to take a break for uni crunch which is why I say the next one might be two months. It’s really odd though. The other night I was in bed feeling restless. It was so weird not drawing till 1am that I felt like I needed to be doing something. This comic series might have weird effects on my habits...

It makes me anxious thinking that it’d be so long till next update. But I’ll do my best to push that aside ! Hopefully I can get uni done and dusted ASAP! I want them to date dammit...

I've decided that I want to see this series through to the end. It’ll probably be May next year when that happens though LMAO! Please bear with my slow turnaround time. It’s only been 3 updates, but I can already see that I’m improving with each one. With each update I feel like I really learn from the previous and I always feel this sense of excitement with trying out new techniques and trying to create different feelings. I really want to see how the last updates will look compared to the first!  Technically we’re 3/10 (10 is an epilogue), but after 6 I actually stop doing bonuses? So teeechnically I’m like 40% of the way through~.

It might be a little over-ambitious, but I kind of want to print it out and make a hard-copy when I’m done. I’m not sure about what the demand would be if I were to sell it, but I definitely want to print it for myself first and foremost (after touching up the earlier updates of course LOL). It’d be like a physical representation of my achievement. I hope I can make it there.

Anyways, I’ve rambled for far too long. I’m not sure why I suddenly felt like talking about uh, everything but yeaaaah. If you’ve read this far, kudos to you! You now have a window into my soul that I’m still not sure if I’m comfortable with revealing (but I’m comfortable enough because I’m posting this so...)! 

After reading all of this, can you tell why I always get so so happy after each update? It’s the fruition of what’s usually 2-3 weeks of non-stop hard work! Seeing people connect with it always sends me to another realm of bliss and I always feel soft like putty LOL.

#myon speaks #HOLY MOLY #ITS 2K WORDS #no pressure for anyone to read all of this #its just me rambling into the air~ #if you've been keeping up with my series: i just want to say thank you #this series is really important to me (i explain why in the post im not aboutta start rambling again)

[travllingbunny]

The 100 6x12 Adjustment Protocol

Unpopular opinion: I really liked this episode. Especially the first time I watched it (yes, I watch every episode the second time, usually a day later): it is the kind intense, plot-driven, high-tension episode that keeps you on the edge of your seat, exactly as you would expect from the penultimate episode of the season. My favorite episodes this season mostly focused on characters dealing with their demons and their feelings, but this is the part of the season when the plot has to kick into high gear, going into the finale. And this is not a bad thing at all, although it seems that reviewers mostly think it is, while the Twitter fandom is telling me that this episode was actually terrible, for… reasons. Most of which make no sense or are pretty irrelevant.

Although you wouldn’t know that if you just read what most frequent topics of discussion and comments about this episode are, it was the crucial episode plot-wise as the truth about the Primes was revealed to everyone in Sanctum, but thanks to Russell and co. constantly proving they are even more evil than we could have guessed, Sanctum was thrown into chaos, with violence erupting between believers (i.e. the brainwashed) and non-believers; and it also featured the death a main character who had been on the show and a part of since the start. I’m not sure about how I feel about that death and Abby’s arc as a whole. But in this episode, it was done very well – though it may have been predictable (and was kind of spoiled in the episode promo), and the strongest scene of the episode was Clarke learning about her mother’s death, not long after she had revealed to her that she was alive. (And with this, Clarke, Bellamy and Octavia are the only season 1 characters who were billed as mains and who are still alive - since Murphy and Raven were not billed as main characters in season 1).

Eliza Taylor really carried this episode, and a lot of the tension was about watching Clarke under over and worrying if she would be discovered. Not only is Eliza a great actress, playing Clarke, Josephine, Josephine pretending to be Clarke, and Clarke pretending to be Josephine - but Clarke herself turned out to be an amazing actress and plaed Josephine so well she managed to fool Russell – which her life and many others depended on - while, at the same time, going through emotional turmoil and having to hide it.

 I’m not sure about how I feel about Abby’s death in the context of her entire arc. It’s safe to say that it’s certainly not among the most satisfying character arcs on the show. She started off as an idealist fighting against the Ark establishment and one of the few people on the Ark in season 1 who were doing the right thing, but over the following seasons, her role got a bit lost between acting as the supporting character to Clarke (from giving Clarke moral support, to being controlled by ALIE to create drama for Clarke) and being a part of the Kabby relationship – which, to be fair, was one of the best developed (or very few really developed) romances on the show.  But between the two of them, Kane was the one who got the better character development and arc by himself. Abby was the Chancellor for a while, but then gave up that role in season 3, to be fought over by Kane and Pike. She also got other important relationship as a surrogate parent figure to Raven, and, to an extent, Murphy. But in terms of her arc, rather than her impact on others, she only finally got development in late season 4. Mind you, it was negative character development – which is a perfectly valid narrative choice, but one that fandoms usually don’t forgive characters. Because of the things she was forced to do, she lost not just her moral certainty but her faith in herself and, for a while, her will to live, and then her self-loathing turned into a drug addiction that she struggled throughout season 5. In season 6, she tried to recover, but instead developed a new addiction of sorts – her obsession with saving Kane, largely driven by her guilt over the things she did the previous 6 years and for kind of betraying the man she loves and indirectly causing his death, again (something that haunted her since Jake’s death) – which, in turn, led her to making some terrible choices and crossing moral lines. While I thought Kane’s death was perfectly fitting for his character, and that point, it would have been more interesting if the show had tried to have Abby survive and had to really recover and move on, rather than kill her off just a couple of episodes after killing off the ship she was a part of. One may even wonder if she was seen as useless for the show except as a part of the ship. Or, since her remaining main role in the show was as a mother to Clarke and surrogate mother to Raven, so she got killed off for their development/angst/possible bonding in future episodes. Which does make sense as Clarke is the show’s protagonist, and it was easy to guess that the older-Ark-generation characters (Abby, Kane, Jaha) would die once Clarke, Bellamy and Octavia are all adults and mature enough to not need mentors or ‘adult’ mirrors of themselves. Still, it would have been great if the show had given more attention and sympathetic moments to Abby herself in more than just this one episode, especially since the fandom has become determined to hate her – partially because it was convenient to blame her for other character’s actions, partially because fans are judgmental of any middle-aged mother character – especially if she is the mother of the protagonist – who isn’t focused on her children 100% of the time, even if said children are mature adults. But let’s forget about the fandom. It’s not necessary to have characters who suffer from addiction. PTSD or depression recover – Jasper’s arc was about someone who never recovered, but his death was the logical outcome of his arc and felt inevitable. Abby’s death isn’t really about her arc, it’s about Russell deciding to kill and bodysnatch her. Unlike Jaha and Kane, she didn’t get to go out on her own terms.

(I guess you could say that her injecting herself with Nightblood led to it, but Russell could have had her injected with Nigthblood anyway. Or you could say that he did it because he was convinced that she would look for revenge for her daughter’s death, so it was her love for her daughter that doomed her in a way.)

Still, this episode itself covered her death as well as it was possible to do – even if the fact that Abby got to save the life of a child – her granddaughter-by-adoption, find out that her daughter is alive (after having her heart broken in the previous episode, where she was made to believe Clarke was definitely dead), reconcile with and apologize to the two of the closest people to her, Raven and Jackson, and get closure – was a pretty big hint her days were numbered. Her death scene was good, with flashbacks of her happy days with Jake, with Kane, and many memories of Clarke, but the strongest scenes were those of other people reacting to her death, especially Clarke.

Raven has been a side character this season, but she has gotten some subtle character development lately, such as admitting that was way too judgmental with Abby. While she and Clarke didn’t get to talk things through, Raven has been, in a way, redeeming herself and making up to Clarke by making all the efforts to save her daughter and being focused on that more than anything else, just as Clarke is redeeming herself by trying to do the right and moral thing and save as many people as possible.

I’ve been really liking Gabriel more and more, especially in this episode, when he risked everything to stop more innocent people being killed by the Primes. However, what was his plan, exactly? Distract people and then – what – convince Russell to stop being evil? He is a bit like Kane – a guy who did bad things, had a moral awakening, and is now trying to be perfectly moral, but he is more pacifist than Kane was. And he comes off too naïve and sometimes ineffectual: he doesn’t want to kill anyone and allow any lives to be lost, and he can’t even make himself kill Russell – but if he had killed Russell, taken out and smashed his mind drive, he could have prevented many more deaths. 

Speaking of mind drives, it was smart of Clarke to find the instruments and take out Ryker’s chip and keep it to later blackmail Priya with. I just wonder why more people don’t do the same. Surely everyone should be aware that killing Primes is irrelevant, if you don’t destroy the mind drives? They don’t even have to kill the Primes, for that matter, just take out those drives, smash the damn things, and you’ve stopped bodysnatching.                 

So many comments on this episode were about Clarke and Echo’s hug during her reunion with her, Miller and Gaia. Yes, Clarke and Echo are not particularly close – this season, they were on amicable terms, and Echo was one of the people who wasn’t verbally attacking Clarke, but they barely had any interaction and didn’t have any one-on-one talks since that dramatic conversation in 5x12. So, a hug just like the one Clarke had with Miller was maybe a bit odd/surprising But it was also weird when Clarke called Murphy her friend when she found him Polis in 3x07 – even though they had only had terrible interactions up to that point, or when she called Roan her friend or was on great terms with him a couple of days after he almost started a war with Arkadia and threatened Bellamy’s and Kane’s lives to blackmail her into political concessions. Maybe Clarke and Echo were trying to show the “we’re comrades in arms” solidarity, or are trying to be friends because of Bellamy, or Clarke is just happy to see any of the Earthkru and is glad when they hug her as friends, or a combination of all of that. In any case, I almost feel bad for even discussing this, because it’s been so overblown– the fandom seems to talk more about Echo hugging people than about Abby’s death or the chaos in Sanctum

.Another hug that, however, wasn’t surprising at all., was between Bellamy and Echo, but even that turned out to be an issue, because, apparently, a lot of people were shocked and disappointed by the fact that Bellamy cares about Echo and worries about her life, or that Bellamy and Echo were happy to see each other after not knowing if the other was alive. I’m not sure what exactly anyone was expecting? That Bellamy would say “Who are you? I don’t know you, woman!” or act like he doesn’t give a damn? Echo is one of the people he spent 6 years with, has been at least friends for 3 years, and has been dating for a while, so he would have come off as a real asshole if he didn’t care if she were dead or alive. Of course he felt a lot of guilt over leaving her and his other people, because he was focused on saving Clarke. Especially after Josephine called him out on caring for Clarke more than for the rest of them. He already showed guilt over leaving them in 6x11, so it’s mind-boggling that this is what some say is “inconsistent character behavior from episode to episode”. Also, apparently, when Bellamy and Clarke have the most intense hugs with heart eyes and romantic music, it’s just platonic or “baiting”, but Bellamy and Echo’s hug that was no more intense than that between Clarke and Echo, and that looked similar to how Bellamy hugs his sister (even with the same pat on the back!) is a sign that Bellarke is dead and Becho is endgame (?!) ¯¯\_(ヅ)_/¯Even though, again, like so many Becho scenes, it had Clarke in the frame, focused on Clarke and her sad face more than on Echo and Bellamy, and included Clarke interrupting their hug, twice, once asking Bellamy “What took you so long?” Followed by Bellamy looking at Clarke, while Octavia was watching the situation and glancing at all of them. (I see what you’re doing, show. We’ve been there before - except Bellamy and Echo were kissing back then, not just hugginh, and this is the first time Bellamy saw Clarke watching them.)

Is it too soon for the Blake siblings to already be on such good terms that Bellamy is  even gently joking with Octavia? I’m not sure, but Bellamy has shown a great capacity for forgiveness, and he has now seen enough evidence that Octavia has genuinely changed, which is all he needed.

Bellamy, again, got to be the one to give another speech to the masses, helping kindle the flames of the revolution in Sanctum – though it wouldn’t have worked without Priya telling everyone the truth. (Good thinking on Clarke’s part to take Ryker’s chip, and good suggestion on Echo’s part to suggest using it to blackmail Priya.)  

It’s amazing that the Primes were obviously evil from at least 6x04, but we still keep learning just how horrible they are. Russell is an amazing villain because he is so infuriating – a megalomaniac and a hypocrite who genuinely seems to think he is godlike and has the right to murder and exploit others. And then there’s the way he uses language to normalize terrible things, with terms like “adjustment protocol” (translation: make your own people go wild and kill each other, hoping that the religious fanatics will kill the doubters). He is even funny (unintentionally, on his part) with the way he talks, and in this episode he had gems like “I am disappointed in you, Priya. I am disappointed in all of you” and “ A mind drive is a terrible thing to waste”.

I was wondering before if Russell’s actions would turn a lot of the Sanctum residents against the Primes – and they did, but many of them are way too brainwashed, and his solution was to drop the toxin and cause chaos, while the Primes go to the ship to get away until Sanctum is safe for them again. But why are they so sure it will be and that it’s the Prime loyalists who will defeat kill all the rebels, rather than the other way round? If it’s based on previous experience – that was about fanatics vs people who had doubts, but the rebels who hate the Primes are (at least) just as angry as those who worship the Primes.

And Priya got to experience that when Delilah’s mother killed her to avenge her daughter, after getting a confirmation that Delilah was really dead. It was funny that Priya was still hoping to use Delilah’s name to get them to help her, just as she was lying to Jordan a few episodes ago that Delilah was ‘with her’ and happy. I just hope that someone took out and smashed her drive – and Ryker’s drive that she had in her hands, so we wouldn’t have any more resurrections.

The royal guards were the most brainwashed of them all. They heard Russell more or less admit in his conversation with Echo that bodysnatching was murder, knew he was going to do it as a punishment to someone who almost assassinated him, but they kept believing in the crap about being one with the gods? And three of them got the “honor” to be hosts to the Primes: Jade became Jasmine (after having failed to protect Rose, who was meant to be the host for Jasmine), Gavin’s widow became the host for Miranda, and another guard, a bald white dude, became Caleb.  I can’t say I’m sorry for them – they were really “Too Dumb to Live”.  

It was fun to see Murphy and Emori dressed and made up in the Prime fashion (which looks a lot like the fashion of the Capitol from The Hunger Games) and pretending to be two of the Primes who whose mind drives were wiped by Simone – Daniel and Kaylee Lee. And there was a rare comedic moment when they realized they were playing brother and sister. Russell is a massive troll – he could have given them the identities of the parents, Faye and Victor Lee – it’s not like it would have made any difference. 

Clarke is really an amazing actress, to be able to fool even Josephine’s parents into believing she is Josephine, even when she had to hide her feelings about seeing Madi in pain and danger, and when she learned that her mother was dead. That scene was the strongest in 6x12 – even while we knew what would happen, Clarke finding out by seeing Simone in Abby’s body was really painful. That was too much for Clarke, who couldn’t hide her tears. Good thing that Gabriel was there to help by giving her a cover – and she did a great job playing a scene as a lovers’ quarrel and pretending that her pain was about Josephine’s disappointment with the “traitor” Gabriel. (And channeling a real experience from her own life  – as actors often do.) 

I’ve seen comments that Murphy’s actions in this episode were confusing, but it all seemed pretty clear to me. He told Emori and later Raven that he was doing what was good for their friends, too. He thought they were helping them all survive - which was definitely the case as they would have been burned if he hadn't come up with the idea about bone marrow. Then in 6x11 Russell threatened Emori to get him to bring "Josephine", even though Murphy was obviously already disgusted by the Primes at that point, seeing his reaction to when one of the guards touched him.  I don't know if he's still really interested in immortality, but since 6x10, the issue was "immorality or mortality", the latter meaning – death in the immediate future, since that the Primes were going to kill Emori, and probably him and everyone else. But he expected them to keep everyone alive if they play along. When they killed Abby, it was obviously too much for him, since he said it to "Josephine"'s face, with disgust: "All she did was help, and you killed her". That and knowing that Bellamy, Octavia, Echo and Miller are somewhere in Sanctum needing help, made him decide to stay and help his friends.

I loved the Clarke/Memori scene. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with Clarke telling Murphy that she’s proud of him, and it doesn’t mean that he does not get held responsible for his actions. He was held responsible in 6x10, to the point that his friends and himself assumed he would be the one chosen to die, and Abby slapped him and told him he would be. Clarke – who may not even know the worst of his actions (that he almost helped Josephine kill Clarke, and that he helped her manipulate Abby) – did not trust Murphy and didn’t tell him she was alive, but was watching to see whether he makes the right choice, and praised him when he did the way a mentor praises a student who fulfills their positive potential.

Quite a scene for Indra and co. at the ship – “Abby” and Clarke in royal robes and some blond guy in similar robes, pointing guns as Gaia, Madi and Raven. I don’t think the Primes have much of a chance, with “Josephine” being Clarke and the fact that the ship has 400 people who, if woken up, would absolutely wreck everyone in Sanctum, let alone a few pampered Primes. But it’s an interesting image: the Lightbournes always seemed like the evil version of the Griffins, especially with the casting choices for Josephine and both the original and the current Russell, so it is weirdly fitting that Josephine bodysnatched Clarke for a while, and now Simone bodysnatched Abby.

Rating: 8.5/10

#the 100 #the 100 6x12 #adjustment protocol #the 100 season 6 #clarke griffin #abby griffin #raven reyes #gabriel santiago #russell lightbourne #the primes #john murphy #bellamy blake #octavia blake

[kattaloop]

Lexa IS More Than A Symbol

I came to Tumblr for the Clexa GIFs and stayed for the very occasional long-form contribution. So I don’t know what’s being talked about and how, but a few friends asked me to comment on this. A week ago, @rivertalesien offered a lengthy reply to an anonymous question:

“Why is Lexa the one that people want to fight for but seems to be the only one kept dead? Not that ODAAT and WE had dead lesbians but they were cancelled and fan efforts brought them back like why is Lexa the only one who can't? She has to be more than a symbol though?“

I have my own thoughts on this issue, some of which I can’t publicly elaborate on. Let me just say that you’re right, Lexa absolutely is more than a symbol and should be treated as such. But what did River have to say about it all?

“First of all, the situations with ODAAT and WE are completely different: those involve complex negotiations with advertisers in order to cover the costs and where the show will be hosted. I know it’s fun to believe that fan campaigns had anything to do with it, but it is always, ultimately down to negotiations with advertisers and studios. It makes the producers and all look good to praise their audience for the “hard work” trying to save the series, but they all know better.“

It’s right to say that money is a driving force in any decisions the networks make. But you can’t isolate a show from the broader programing strategy, and, as far as I know, advertising deals are  bundled. As with any business, money isn’t the only deciding factor, either. Power and prestige have important roles in this game of film and television, and personal preference absolutely exists. As for fan campaigns, they add a voice, one that may have, and has, in the past, convinced executives to revisit the  issue in the first place. Would they have done the same thing without that little nudge from viewers? Maybe, but probably not.

“And Lexa is “kept dead” because, and this is only inference, but I think it’s a strong one: Jason Rothenberg lost a huge business/development deal as a result of the Lexa/Clexa fan drama.“

You did your research, I’ll give you that. But I’m unsure how well you understand the reality of this business. Considering that failed pilots are more common than green-lit ones. Considering that any pilot is a collaborative process with too many components in play than for an outsider to pinpoint exactly one reason as to why it failed. Considering that this industry, for all its rigid hierarchy and rules books, can also be one of the most unpredictable - one person leaves and the whole house of cards can crumble. Considering that you refuse to entertain the pros that would accompany Lexa’s return, pros that someone with Jason’s disposition might be equally interested in as in the more petty revenge fantasies.

“Jason Rothenberg spent the days, weeks and months after Lexa’s death cutting himself off from those fans who were hurt by his actions and no doubt working behind the scenes to make sure he didn’t lose his job over his unethical, unprofessional behavior. His supporters in the cast were openly derisive of Clexa fans who spoke out and a tone of trying to ignore or undermine the fan fallout was the given order. Showing real empathy and offering to work with the audience in order to heal the divide might have gone a long way for improving his image and the show’s. Rothenberg decided to hide instead.“

Yes to everything but the last sentence. You’re assuming - sorry, inferring. I happen to know that it was not his decision. Once again, isolating one aspect from its context and environment usually leads to wrong or, at least, incomplete conclusions.

“One very clear consequence of his queerbaiting is that Greg Berlanti, the very successful (and openly gay) producer of many DC shows including Supergirl, stepped out of a development deal for a new series tentatively titled The Searchers. The project was likely mostly Rothenberg’s, but without Berlanti’s backing, it was dropped. Story was that it was too “expensive” to produce, yet Berlanti went on to get a huge deal with the CW, producing Riverdale as well as the upcoming Batwoman. Would Berlanti want to be associated with Rothenberg after the Lexa debacle? Probably not and that’s probably closer to the real reason the deal went south.“

Except the queerbaiting isn’t even fully acknowledged, still. That’s a lot to base on “likely” and "probably.” Berlanti was already getting these deals. He also had his own issues to deal with. If the production was deemed too expensive, it doesn’t mean that there’s a conspiracy beyond the normal industry processes.

“Outside of The 100, he has no produced credits to his name and how he got the job of showrunner when he had no previous experience in any capacity in a writer’s room or on a production staff is certainly baffling. He very quickly proved he didn’t have the professionalism for the job and anyone else would have been dismissed.“

But he wasn’t dismissed, and that should tell you enough to not be baffled by the fact that they hired him, even without knowing the industry from within.

“The 100 went from 16 episodes to 13 because the order for renewal had already been given and the WB/CW put out feelers in the form of polls asking the audience directly: will Lexa’s death affect if you watch the show? Who does that unless they are seeking to reassure the advertisers that Lexa’s death wouldn’t be a big issue for long and spoil their investment?”

In conjunction with a noticeable drop in ratings and other measurable factors, this is probably a reasonable conclusion. They were hoping for a surge and were slammed, instead. There were a lot of whispers, but nothing I’d consider to be confirmed. What does this have to do with why they wouldn’t bring Lexa back? If anything, it suggests they know of her value.

“Fans are capable of all sorts of interpretations of a text (oh boy are we), but one thing that I think is generally considered across the board is that with season 4, the tone toward Lexa was more than a little OTT and a tad spiteful.”

I’m glad you acknowledge that much of this is based on interpretation. In summary, the praise Lexa received in S4 felt unauthentic, the Flame and Lexa were used as an emotional device, and Clarke’s actions were problematic. How’s that any different than post-307, when nobody seemed too bothered about losing their beloved Heda, when the Flame and Lexa were used as an emotional device, and when Clarke had sex as a coping mechanism and even questioned Lexa’s humanity? The latter were all written before the backlash. It mostly speaks to the show’s persistent issues with continuity, character development, and representation.

“This is just my interpretation, but with fans crying out for her return, pleading for a spin-off and so on, and generally being the most out-spoken fandom for LGBTQ rights and better representation in media (and a never-ending drag of Rothenberg’s name), is it likely that a production that never did anything to try and make amends ever going to give in to such pleas?”

As likely as any other production, to be honest. Allow me to go back to your earlier assessment. “They don’t care about fans’ pleas.” Would they bring Lexa back for the fans? Doubtful. “They care about their own benefit.” Would they bring Lexa back if it benefited them? Now we’re talking.

But they can’t just do it any odd way. As you also said previously, they know better. They may ignore us, but they watch us. They would’ve assessed the different scenarios. From a business point of view, they’d want to avoid another backlash. Then you have a diva showrunner to consider, and a guest star who is in work and, hopefully, wouldn’t return for a guest stint if it didn’t benefit her and Lexa. It’s a tricky balance, made even more difficult by a fandom that likes to tear itself apart over conflicting opinions every 3 months or so.

Considering all of those circumstances, I can’t think of a reasonable way to bring Lexa back other than at the very end. Which would benefit the production, but more importantly, a large number of fans, the tiny matter of representation, and ADC - if done right, which I give her enough credit to make sure before agreeing to anything. I’m not saying that it will happen or that it won’t happen. I’m saying that there’s a strong case for it happen, to balance out your rather one-dimensional approach.

“There is a cruelty to this because almost any other kind of story of this kind would involve a moment of catharsis, but that moment is constantly suspended, always dangled, but never in touch.”

Personally, I’d agree with that, but I can also think of writers who’d be into it. We’ve already established that Jason and his immediate team are lacking awareness and empathy. It makes little sense, therefore, to expect them to act differently, especially if they’re leading up to another shock twist. My guess is as good as yours on whether that’s something good or bad.

“They know what fans want and it’s arguable too that Rothenberg has twisted what the fans want for his own benefit: a spin-off of The 100, but one entirely about something decidedly unrelated to Lexa. Showing online fan interest might be one way of telling advertisers: see, there’s a demand for his work.”

No offense, but this makes no sense and it’s probably the most contradicting and subjective thing you’ve said thus far. If they know what fans want, then there’s nothing to twist. It’s actually part of the reason why the Lexa spinoff campaign started while the show’s still on air: to get the word out, to make sure they know exactly what and who we want, and what and who we don’t want. Jason started talking about a spinoff before 307, so there’s literally no ground for this argument, which also has no bearing on the question. So why bring it up?

“Unless advertisers demand it, is it likely that this unprofessional queerbaiting producer would do anything except the most spiteful of nods? That’s all he’s done at this point and the story this season looks more and more like they are going to finally close the book on any Lexa mentions ever again.”

Unless advertisers become involved in the creative process, this argument is also invalid. Thankfully, there are regulations in place to avoid that. And unless you know what motivates a person, you can’t speak to what they will or won’t do. Even if you did, you can’t be certain. Once again, this is a collaborative process even under the worst of circumstances. Things could go either way.

“Fight for Lexa, there is nothing wrong with her being a “symbol” of a fight for better representation.”

It feels wrong when you reduce her to a symbol, when you put her in the past, when you tell others to seek out other representation, when you dismiss her implied humanity. Our emotions in relation to Lexa are real, and that makes her real in all the ways that matter. What happened to “she’s more than just a character?” Well, she’s also more than a movement. Let’s not use their excuses when they kill of one LGBT character and put another on their place against ourselves.

“Keep using her light, but never forget where it really comes from, something Rothenberg will never understand: it comes from you.”

Now see, this is a great statement. I, too, believe that Lexa is a part of us. Her light guided me out of the complete darkness I had lost myself in, and it became part of my own light. I’ve never come across a character like that, or person, for that matter. A sentiment that still reverberates through the fandom and beyond. I believe that her light can help so many more people whom she wasn’t able to reach in the short time she was given. And so, part of my fight for better representation, better storytelling, will always be to let Lexa’s light shine again. She deserves to live. She deserves to have her story told!

#lexa #jason rothenberg #lexaspinoff #lexa spinoff #the 100 #lgbt #representation #unbury your gays

[raywritesthings]

Just Be Close at Hand

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen, Thea Queen, John Diggle Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen Tags: Pre-Relationship, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Episode: s04e17 Beacon of Hope, Metahuman OC, Sad Ending Summary: Some months after Oliver's broken engagement, Laurel is forced to reveal something long kept secret. *Can also be read on my AO3*

Laurel looked up as her door opened, and a smile spread over her face. “Mayor Queen. Here for business?”

“Not exactly. You catch the time?”

She looked at the bottom of her computer screen as he walked in and took the seat on the other side of her desk.

“Afraid not.”

“Thought so. Well, lucky for you, I make enough for two.” Oliver placed two tupperware containers on her desk and cracked his open. “Take a half hour for lunch with me, ADA Lance?”

Laurel pulled her own container closer and took the lid off. Apparently Ollie was in a soup mood; this was the second one of the week, and it smelled just as divine. “You’re spoiling me, you know that?”

“Someone has to make sure you eat. Can’t count on Thea for that, unfortunately.”

“We do order a lot of takeout when left to our own devices,” Laurel freely admitted. “She get any of this?”

“She’s at a lunch meeting. So that’s the both of you taken care of,” Oliver answered. He started to dig into his food and Laurel followed suit.

They’d fallen into this habit after he was sworn in. Either he’d swing by with something homemade or Laurel would knock on his office door to invite him out. It was a nice way to unwind outside of their busy schedules, and it made Oliver feel better about the lack of promotion he’d been able to give her.

Laurel and her father had both had to talk him out of appointing her DA considering how that would look to an ethics committee. It was no secret she and Oliver were friends and that she’d openly supported his campaign, after all. So a part of these frequent meetups were an attempt at an apology, she had to guess.

The other part likely was that he was simply lonely. Felicity was still maintaining their separation and had even expressed interest in trying out the dating scene again the last time Laurel had spoken to her when they’d met up for coffee.

“I’m kind of glad things crashed and burned with Oliver before we tied the knot, cause that would have been a nightmare to untangle,” the other woman had told her. She’d raised her cup as if it were a wine glass. “So here’s to us, the lucky ones who realized the error of our ways.”

“Right,” Laurel had agreed without meeting Felicity’s eyes, and then had gulped down a large portion of her latte.

As the mayor, Oliver was fortunately no longer stuck living in the base, but she had no doubt his new residence felt empty with no one to share it with. Thea stayed late there sometimes, but she’d seemingly decided Laurel’s apartment was home even when her brother was no longer living in the loft where she’d been attacked.

It was nice to have him around City Hall, at least. They talked about the various initiatives and programs he wanted to promote, and Laurel talked about the reforms their justice system could really use. She had a partner in improving the city both in and out of the field.

“You know, Daggett sent his people to try and see me again? Never mind one of my campaign promises was to stop letting corporate lobbyists have a controlling interest in local government,” Oliver said. “Makes me wonder why I stopped targeting billionaires.”

“Ollie!” She hissed.

He motioned back to her closed door. “I’m not admitting to anything.” Oliver turned back to her. “Anyway, you’re a lawyer. Confidentiality.”

She had to fight hard against a smile. “Well, we might want to hold off on Daggett for at least a few weeks. The timing would be suspicious.”

“If you say so. I’m thinking maybe we sneak in, grab some files of questionable content, and drop them on a certain ADA’s desk. Classic move, works every time.”

“A certain ADA, huh?”

“I know just the one.”

She couldn’t stop a small giggle that time, and Oliver’s face lit up with a smile. These lunch dates were one of the highlights of her day, and part of her wondered if they were for him as well — but of course, they weren’t dates.

It was wrong of her. So wrong. Oliver was looking to her as a friend while he went through the process of a relationship ending, and here she was fantasizing.

It wasn’t as if she’d wanted them to break up. Oliver and Felicity were both her friends, and she’d been happy for them. The best thing would be for the two of them to settle things; that’s what everyone else wanted. No one else was ever happy when she and Oliver were together. It was just a hopeless dream long past, and she only had herself to blame for being unable to move on.

“Laurel?”

She blinked.

“You okay?” Oliver asked.

“Um, yeah. Just thinking about a case,” she lied.

“Save it for after lunch,” he recommended. “You can’t always be working.”

“I can try,” she replied, only half-joking. But she returned her attentions to her soup.

His phone buzzed, and Oliver’s brow creased as he took it out and skimmed the message.

“What’s wrong?”

“Barry. He says he’s got a head’s up for the team. How quick do you think you can finish up here?”

“Probably about as quickly as you.” Laurel started clearing the remains of lunch off her desk. “You should get back to your office.”

“Right.” Oliver stood and gathered his things, but instead of leaving he caught himself with one hand on the door frame. “You know, here I am the mayor, and you’re still bossing me around.”

“Well, the mayor is a public servant,” Laurel reasoned. “And seeing as I am a constituent, that does make me one of your many bosses.”

“Uh-huh,” Oliver replied, though he was grinning as he added, “I’ll see you later.”

“See you.”

He left and Laurel dropped back into her seat, one hand combing through her hair as she let out a sigh. She really needed to give this up.

—-

“There’s a metahuman named Evan Piers that Cisco found on CCTV boarding a high-speed train to Star City this morning.”

Barry wasn’t in the base; they had him and the STAR Labs team on speaker just as they had them on speaker back in Central.

“He can project some kind of field that compels people to tell the truth.”

“We think he must be able to affect the frontal lobe, which is what usually suppresses the truth when people lie or keep secrets,” Caitlin elaborated.

“Yeah, so we’re calling him Lie Detector, okay?” Cisco told them.

“So how does this make him so effective?” John asked.

“Any time the police attempted to arrest him, they ended up getting into altercations with each other instead,” Barry replied. “Which allowed him to get away with the thefts. Plus he’s armed himself with guns and ammo.”

“He hit up Central while we were busy with another Weather Wizard blizzard,” Cisco added. “And we’ve still got Trickster junior to catch, or we’d just come up ourselves. Sorry guys.”

“That’s fine. We can handle it,” said Oliver.

“Yeah, guns are kind of more out thing anyway,” Thea remarked with a smirk.

“Alright, well just give us a call if you need backup.”

“We will. Thanks for the heads up, guys,” Laurel said. They hung up and got to work on trying to locate their newly arrived meta. It was slower going without Felicity, but a police report about a shootout in the warehouse district proved helpful. Laurel, Oliver, and Thea all suited up with John remaining behind to man the comms. They were taking turns on it these days.

When they arrived, the police had set up a perimeter around the warehouse Piers had holed himself up in. They’d have to come in from above to get around it.

Thea shot a grappling arrow into the roof of a nearby building, and Oliver followed suit. He reached out an arm without even looking, and Laurel stepped into a quasi-embrace.

It was hard to ignore the little jump her heart did when his arm wrapped securely around her waist, but Laurel did her best as they rose together up to the roof; and again when they repeated the process to swing over to the warehouse Piers was in.

“Spartan, you there?” Laurel asked as she backed out of Oliver’s hold. Focusing on the mission was the best way to ground herself.

“Yeah. You three should be right on top of him. I’d watch out for his powers, cause judging by the police report he’s definitely using them.”

“Thanks for the update,” Oliver said. “Okay, I’m going to get this skylight open and grapple down. Should be able to catch him by surprise without too much trouble.”

“What about us?”

“You and Speedy will hang back.”

Thea frowned. “Why would we do that?”

“Because I’m worried about you, and I don’t like to seem weak in front of you two,” Oliver stated bluntly. Then he winced. “That was not how that was supposed to come out.”

“Probably the truth field,” Laurel muttered.

Beside her, Thea crossed her arms. “Well, since it has come out, can I say that the whole point of a team is to be strong together? You always try to do this!”

“She’s got a point,” Laurel added before he could try to protest. “You say you’re grateful for our help one minute, but in the next fight you want to go it alone anyway. And I don’t know why you’d be worried about us seeing you in a vulnerable position.”

“Because I care about you!”

“And you think we don’t?”

“How about everybody take a deep breath,” John suggested over the comm. “We need to be focused on catching Piers.”

It was only then that Laurel thought they all realized how tensed they’d gotten.

Oliver lowered his voice. “Flash and the others said this is exactly how Piers operates. He waits for somebody to blurt something to the rest of the group and get them fighting each other. We can’t fall into that trap. Trying this one-on-one is the option I want to go with.” Oliver frowned. “I meant—”

“We know what you meant.” Laurel shook her head. He’d no doubt wanted to convince them that this was the best option objectively, not just the one he liked.

He got into a crouch and began working on the lock to the skylight. “Okay, well then can we just do this?” It was impossible not to miss the irritation in his voice. An Oliver forced to tell the truth was an unhappy Oliver indeed.

“Yeah, sure. Black Canary and I will wait out here since you think we’re so useless,” Thea grumbled as she started to stalk away.

“I don’t think you’re useless.”

“No, just that you’re fine on your own,” Laurel finished for him. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t love you.”

Her breath caught as her entire body froze. Horror swept over her as Oliver looked up sharply, eyes wide behind his mask. Thea had whirled around and was gaping.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Laurel blurted. “I mean I — it was — wasn’t—” Her teeth grit together trying to force the desperately needed lie past her lips. Why, of all things, was it a truth field?

The sudden staccato of gunfire shattered through the skylight, only narrowly missing Oliver.

“Focus, team!” John commanded.

“Sure thing. Cover’s blown!” Thea had attached a grapple and jumped down through the opening, firing off an arrow. Laurel rushed to follow her lead, unable to remain on the roof with Oliver alone.

She’d ruined it. She’d ruined everything. Why had she said it?

Well, she’d said it because a metahuman criminal had the ability to force the truth to spill out of people. As Piers staggered back from his dropped gun, one of Thea’s arrows in his arm, Laurel rushed him with her baton, delivering a pair of quick hits that had him dropping like a stone. She was left breathing harshly in the otherwise silence of the warehouse.

“Piers is down,” Thea said into the comm. Oliver stood only a few feet behind his sister, and it was impossible to make out his features in the lack of light. She had no idea what he was thinking.

Laurel turned and walked back to where the two grapple lines were still hanging down, taking hold of Thea’s and beginning to climb. It was much harder work than just hanging on while Oliver rode up, but she couldn’t even bare the idea of being that near to him in light of what he now knew.

Thea was up on the roof only a couple short minutes after her. “Green Arrow is securing Piers for the cops. We’ll head back to the bikes.” She placed a hand over her comm and continued in a softer voice, “Laurel, I’m so sorry.”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” she replied, eyes on the ground. Thea followed her back to the bikes and got on behind her.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

She wanted to believe that, but she couldn’t see how it would be. Laurel waited until Oliver came into view and then gunned the engine of her bike, turning them around and driving back towards the base. She shut off her comm for good measure on the chance that somebody was going to try and start a conversation that way.

John avoided her eyes when they got back, which Laurel did her best not to notice as she went straight back to change. If she was lucky, she’d finish that and be out of there before Oliver even parked.

She breezed past her friend once again and jabbed the button for the elevator, door tapping as she waited. It dinged, and Laurel stepped forward as the doors opened—

“Oh!”

Right into Oliver.

“Sorry!” Laurel backed up immediately, hands raised in the air.

“It’s okay. Laurel—”

She dodged around him. “I’m gonna be in the car. Somebody tell Thea?”

“Sure,” John answered.

“Thank you.” She entered the elevator and held the close door button, her stomach doing a weird flip as Oliver turned on his heel to watch her. His mouth was open with no sound coming out, and his eyes—

The doors closed. Laurel leaned back against the far wall and let her head thunk against it.

What had she done?

—-

The night was an uncomfortably quiet one. Thea hovered nearby as she heated up their microwave dinners, never quite saying anything but clearly wanting to. What was there to say, though? She was in love with a man who didn’t love her, and now they all knew it.

At least they hadn’t run into Piers until after Felicity left the team. Laurel couldn’t imagine the look of betrayal on her friend’s face.

She left early the next morning for the office thanks to her inability to really fall asleep that night, and she gratefully sank back into the familiar refuge that was work. Laurel didn’t know how long she’d been at it until there was a knock on her door frame.

She looked up, her typical greeting dying in her throat. Oliver stood there, watching her with sadness in his eyes.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she echoed, not ready to try for anything more.

He closed the door, walked in, and placed a wrap on her desk. “You have breakfast?”

Laurel gave a slow shake of the head. She reached out and took one corner of the paper protecting the wrap between thumb and forefinger, dragging it closer to her.

Oliver sat down. “I’m sorry about last night.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“No, but it wasn’t right.” He studied his hands where they rested on his lap for a while. “I did some thinking last night, about all of it, and—”

“Ollie, please don’t.”

He glanced up, surprised.

Laurel drew in a shaky breath. “Whatever you’re gonna say, you wouldn’t be saying if last night hadn’t happened. I don’t want you to force yourself to say something or believe something just because you feel sorry for me.”

“I care about you, Laurel. That’s not something anyone would have to force me to say.”

“But I’m not the woman you love.”

Oliver hesitated. “I’m not sure if you’re not.”

She looked down for a moment. Then she stood up and came around the side of her desk. “What I said because of Piers, it didn’t surprise me. I’ve known it for years. I love you, Ollie — but I would never ask you to pretend for my sake. Even if you aren’t sure. Don’t say anything. Not now.”

Her pride couldn’t take it if he tried in this instant to convince her. He’d been ready to be married only months ago — he couldn’t know if he loved her anymore than he could know if he truly was over Felicity. And she refused to get her hopes up for uncertainty.

He stood as well. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I am happy. I have a team, my family, a job that I love, and a city to fight for.”

She wasn’t expecting him to move, but he did, and before she knew it he was hugging her tight. Laurel’s hands landed just below his shoulder blades. “Oliver?”

“Sorry. It’s just — I tell myself the same thing every day.”

Laurel stood there, a terrible mix of sadness and longing stirring deep in her gut, and she closed her eyes as she rested her cheek on his shoulder. “You’ll be okay.”

“So will you.” Eventually, his arms lowered, and they both slowly took their steps backward into thee own spaces. Laurel readjusted her blazer, and Oliver smoothed down his tie. He nodded once to the wrap. “Please eat.”

“Okay.” Laurel gave a small wave as he exited the office, and then returned to the chair behind her desk. With slow, noncommittal movements, she unwrapped the food and took a bite.

Crunchy tuna. Her favorite. She took the napkin he’d packed and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

She really did wish sometimes that she didn’t love him. It would make everything so much easier.

#lauriver #laurel x oliver #laurel lance #oliver queen #arrow #thea queen #john diggle #black canary #green arrow #my writing

[notwhelmedyet]

More than Meets the Eye, beginner’s guide / resources

This guide is long. Use the headings to find the information you need & if you’ve got resources this post lacks send them along!

Has anyone pitched the comic More than Meets the Eye to you yet? It’s a very gay action-adventure comedic drama with robots and you would probably love it (especially if you’re lgbt and/or have good taste). Here’s a few posts/articles that will tell you why you’d love it:

This article review/retrospective was what got me to read MTMTE. (warning - it has a bunch of spoilers, that didn’t bother me but might bother you)

My semi-jokey MTMTE sales pitch

@zzxid’s salespitch with dancing rats

This full entire page of radical space socialist philosophy

15 Reasons Why MTMTE/the sequel is The Best Transformers Comic (warning - has spoilers, though some will prob go over your head as a new reader)

Kiss me, Chromedome - retrospective article by The Guardian, contains some spoilers

How/Where to Read

Okay, maybe you’re convinced. Now you want to know how/where to read MTMTE. Got you covered:

Detailed guide by @gaymilesedgeworth: How to start reading Transformers Comics

My very short answer: just read MTMTE in trade paperback form. That way all the issues are in order and you get all the extra stuff (there are prose stories after a couple issues that are very important so don’t skip them!) They’re available that way as both physical and digital books.

Here’s some ways to get access, legally (US centric, sorry):

If your local library has Hoopla (digital library subscription service), you may have access to some of the MTMTE trades that way. They’d be here; but check if you library has Hoopla first.

Your local library very well might have physical copies, so check their website!

If not and you’re very patient you can often request inter-library loans (your library borrows the books from another library) or request your library purchase materials.

You can buy digital trades via either IDW or Comixology. Comixology also includes the first 5 volumes in their comics subscription service. I’ve seen the series go on sale on both of these sites at least 4 times in the past 6 months, so keep an eye out! (Sometimes IDW participates in humble bundles, which are great, but those sales are far more infrequent)

You can also buy them in trade form from wherever you can buy books/comics. US links: Amazon, B&N, Comic Store Locators

Character Guides

So you’ve picked up this comic and oh boy there are a lot of robots. You’re a little intimidated. Maybe you’re having a hard time telling them apart.

If you have the paperback, there’s a guide to the characters on the back cover/the last page of the digital volume. See a copy here.

It’s okay if you keep reading not knowing who these robots are. For real. You’ll get the hang of it. Don’t worry if it takes you awhile and you’re confused. Everyone’s a little lost the first time through.

Some helpful posts in case you’re struggling:

Here’s a guide that matches appearance -> name, and one that matches name -> background info (both spoiler free for issues 1-22)

A visual guide by @squireofgeekdom​ and @kscinewt​: here

Another helpful visual character guide by @bluering8: here

If you’re confused and need help, please ask! I’m willing to answer questions, I know @gaymilesedgeworth has volunteered to answer new reader questions. (Willing to help out new readers? Lemme know and I’ll make this a list)

Lore & Background Info

Okay, so maybe now you’ve gotten into it. You want more information, you want to know all the background lore, you want to dig deep. Awesome! Got you covered!

The holy grail of Transformers information, TFwiki. A slightly snarky, overly-minutely-detailed wiki for the digital age.

They’ve also got a tumblr if you’ve got questions.

And Chris McFeely, one of the main editors, runs a Youtube series called The Basics where he explains characters/concepts across continuities

The podcast Sound.wav has episodes talking about every issue of MTMTE in great detail.

The writer of More than Meets the Eye, James Roberts, answers fan questions on his twitter. I’ve archived a lot of those questions at @jrtweetsindex​.

More than Meets the Eye has a soundtrack, because of course it does. People have made playlists collecting it on spotify and youtube.

Further Reading

I finished MTMTE, what’s next?

If you want the direct sequel to MTMTE, go straight to Lost Light, the sequel series. It’s still ongoing and (as of right now) 12 issues have been released. There are spoilers for it EVERYWHERE on Tumblr, fair warning.

There are also a bunch of other series within the IDW comics universe, depending on what you’re interested in.

@zandergb has a chronological listing of all the IDW comics

TFwiki summarizes the IDW comics line

alt chronological guide

another guide/reading order.

You don’t have to read all the books! If you want to just read Lost Light/MTMTE, you can do just that.

There’s also a bunch of animated series, which don’t exist in the same continuity as the IDW comics. Some of them are well liked.

@ponett has a guide that’ll help you decide which you’d enjoy

And here’s a brief guide by TFWiki

There’s also the Michael Bay movies which are awful and so is he. Not gonna recommend watching them, but if you wanted to learn about film theory by listening to Lindsay Ellis dissect them, there’s a youtube series for that.

Fan Stuff

Okay...but what about fan content and fanfic and art and community events?

First thing to know: Transformers content is posted on tumblr under the tag Maccadam. (more detailed explanation why) A lot of mtmte content is also under ‘mtmte’, so look there too. I only use Maccadam if I think a post deserves to be seen by a lot of people but opinions vary.

Second thing to know - the sequel to MTMTE, Lost Light is still being published and you will see ALL SORTS OF SPOILERS for it on Tumblr. To mitigate the damage, try blocking “LL Spoilers” “Lost Light Spoilers” and “Wednesday Spoilers”. You cannot avoid it all, so if you don’t want anything spoiled, get caught up on both MTMTE and Lost Light before browsing around Tumblr.

Fanfiction:

Warning! A lot of Transformers fanfiction is smut. Please take a moment to integrate this fact into your understanding of the universe. If you can handle that, go ahead to AO3.

If you’re curious about all the terminology used in those fics, here’s a guide to it (not every writer uses every word, but this will get you started)

If you’re not into the idea of robots having sex, here’s a link to AO3 with my personal best-effort safe-search (no guarantees, relies upon people tagging properly)

And here’s a blog dedicated to recommending good sfw transformers fanfiction

If you want to know more about Transformers fanfic, I did a whole statistical survey of it, cause I’m a dork.

Here’s an old-school Transformers-only fanfic archive (I don’t see a category for IDW comics but maybe you can find somehing)

Fanart&Fanfic Events/Zines/Gift Exchanges/Collaborative Projects:

As many active projects as I could find - I’ll try to keep this one updated

Fan Artists:

(same warning as the fanfic - there’s a goodly amount of transformers pornographic art, be aware of that and block ‘nsfw’ if necessary)

There are a ton of active fanartists who draw IDW Transformers art. If you search a bit under ‘Maccadam’ you’ll find them.

@iaconlibrary reblogs a great deal of fanart & is a great place to start browsing

Roleplay:

If you’re into roleplaying on tumblr @teletrans-comm-unit runs a master list of active rp blogs

Transformers: Lost and Found is a long-running independent game set on the Lost Light

TF:Galaxy appears to be a forum-based tf roleplay game

My Favorite Jokes:

The best amazon review

Emotional labor (nsfw-ish warning)

Bros with Vows

Hands

Conventions:

There are Transformers-specific conventions, which is pretty cool! I know nothing about them but tfwiki has some info: Official and Unofficial conventions.

Regrettable Opinions:

hey this is just a quick guide of things not to do so you don’t hurt other people in the community

Do not compare Megatron to Hitler. The comparison is both vapid and offensive, as Jewish members of this community have pointed out time and again.

Don’t say transphobic/homophobic/racist/antisemitic/sexist things. You’re better than that!

Don’t attack the creators of the books/harass them on social media/make bizarre unfounded accusations of them acting in bad faith

we’re really lucky that JRo and the other creators interact with us & answer questions and don’t you dare screw that up, I’m trusting you.

on a less serious but useful etiquette note: don’t tag creators into negative reviews of their work/people complaining about their work. It’s rude to the creator & the reviewer.

That was a short list but remember to also treat other people with respect & that it’s okay to disengage with content/people that upset you.

Fandom:

There’s a guide on Fanlore, but it’s freakishly outdated and doesn’t even mention the comics. If you’re a informed tf fan maybe you should update it. 😉

Tumblr!

MTMTE is a pretty small community on Tumblr, but there are a few cool folks. Remember, ‘maccadam’ and ‘mtmte’ are your tags of choice

Various websites!

Since the transformers fandom is super old, there are a bunch of dedicated websites with traditional forums to chat on. (most of these are news sites that also contain forums) idk anything about them but maybe forums are your thing:

TFW2005 - big site with a large community but be warned there appear to be more than a few alarmingly bigoted people on that site

TFormers

Cybertron.CA

Allspark.com

Seibertron

I’m gonna throw the IDW TF reddit on this list rather than make a new section

Discord!

there’s at least two active discords at the moment. I know nothing about them or discord, but maybe one of them would be to your liking:

#1 - run by @zzxid

#2 - run by ??

The community is, like all fan communities, is a mix of good and bad, awkward and friendly, opinionated and goofy, self-serious and offensive. You won’t like or agree with everyone and there are some folks you should probably block.

Just find some people who share your general outlook & are interacting with the books in the same way you want to 💕

-Lynn. I have no qualifications to write this guide, I am not an authority of anything. I just really want you to love these books. Last updated on Dec 24, 2017, click through to check for any updates.

image descriptions below cut:

[image 1: Panel from MTMTE of Rewdind and Chromedome kneeling and holding hands while Chromedome says “Rewind, my love, it’s not for me to say.”]

[image 2: Fortress Maximus covered in small brightly colored robots shaped like various animals saying “Don’t worry, my friend, all taken care of.]

[image 3: Swerve holding a cartoonish drawing of Prowl and pointing at it, saying “No! Prowl with the head spikes and the cruel mouth and the - cross all the time! Epically, preemptively, existentially cross! And cold! Supercilious and cold! Imagine Ultra Magnus without the warmth and people skills. How can you not know who Prowl is?”]

[image 4: Trailgate in holomatter form, holding the first issue of More than Meets the Eye and saying: “Besides, I didn’t say I didn’t like it - I just don’t understand all the words. And it presumes a degree of familiarity with the Autobot/Decepticon war that I still don’t have...I suppose there’s always the wiki. Or tumblr...”

Cyclonus from off panel: “I told you to stay off Tumblr.”

Tailgate: “You’re right: spoilers. I want to enjoy it issue by issue - it only goes up to 43.”]

[image 5: Drift smiling a big fake smile and saying: “Anyway - let’s move on.”]

[image 6: A panel of Cyclonus gazing out the window in his dark and empty bedroom with a panel of narration: “Of course we’re not the only ones. This ship is a refuge for the emotionally inarticulate.”]

#maccadam #long post #mtmte #more than meets the eye #transformers #intro guide #new readers guide #explanatory #my tags for sorting: #gay space car robots: IN SPACE #mine #nazi mention #overthinking it

[knightofbalance-13]

https://caddeter.tumblr.com/post/174539392695/for-fuck-sake

Dude, I just left the fandom. Why the fuck are you doing this?

KKKoBias, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Depression

Anger issues

A lack of impulse control

Asperger’s

Take your pick

No, seriously, what the fuck?  You harassed someone for an entire week.  You did nothing but attack they’re opinions and the user just because they dared say something mean about RWBY.  You enabled a portion of the FNDM to attack that user and made a bad situation worse.  And then, when people bring that shit back because A. That’s kinda hard to just forget.  B. You still practice the same behavior that almost caused someone to kill themselves. and C. You bring shit back all the time, no matter how legitimate what your saying is(Which knowing you, it isn’t), you try to make it sound like we’re the bad guys?

Funny hyow you don’t bring up the link in question whereas I did.

And do.

https://comments.deviantart.com/1/619991269/4290345087

Probably because if you looked at the comments, you’ll notice something:

A. While the comment chain began on Dec. 22 and ended on Dec. 27...The person in question only responded on Dec.26. Meaning that not only are you two days short but you’re also three days off. Two days of internet arguing is not that bad.

B. I didn’t enable anyone. I posted the link on reddit but I never encouraged anyone to attack them. And looking through the comments, it did NOTHING to the reaction which is mostly positive. I was wrong to post it on reddit yes, but that ISN’T your argument here so it is not correct.

C. I only bring stuff up when someone tries arguing a moral point. Dudeblade calling the CRWBY homophobic looks a lot less convincing when you see he is guilty of the same thing and still acts like he’s better.

D. I’m gonna be blunt: They weren’t gonna kill themselves. Having looked back at the situation in hindsight and discussed the situation: This was just someone trying to use suicide as a way to end an argument. I never told them they were shit or hell, even insulted them in the slightest or implied anything that would trigger such an event. And immediately afterward, they edited their journal entry with lies about the situation. None of this is like what an actual sucidial person would do.

You harassed a DeviantArt user and block evaded for an entire week, always ignoring when they told you to leave them alone.  You brought this into the RWBY reddit, and knowing you, I’ll be my entire house that you did it to tell them “Hey, look at this idiot.” You didn’t even bother to try and apologize until you were told to, like the spoiled, self-righteous child you are.  You called them a member of a fictional terrorist organization just because they said something you didn’t like and stood their ground.   You claimed you wanted to ‘educate’ anyone who disagreed, as in didn’t like, didn’t enjoy, didn’t find interesting or compelling, several emotional responses, completely subjective things, to see things your way.

A. I couldn’t have block evaded for a week if our conversation was only two days long.

B. Already apologized for it and stopped doing it.

C. https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/5khw9y/my_thoughts_on_pyrrhas_death_rwby_and_rt_by_jswf/

I never expressed that sentiment here. So do I get the house or do you just give it up?

D.

Being a terrorist isn't the point of the White Fang: It's the fact that they were once peaceful and in the right. Until their own hatred and anger devolved them into being no better than the force they fought. Kind of like what happened to you and your group. To the point that I see you as below me. And considering I think about killing myself, that's pretty fucking low/

Context disagrees with you: I did it to illustrate that he wasn’t any better than what he fought against.

E. Press Ctrl+F and type in the word ‘educate’.

I only said the word once and

And I never said "educate', just show them both sides of the argument. Just like in Civil War, there is no right or wrong here. Just a difference of opinions. I only aimed to give a balanced view.

It was a response to him saying that I was saying that. I never said that: you’re lying.

And you have the god damn nerve to try and say we’re making shit up?

Context, the link you gave never said that and what you’re referring to could just be me pointing out how you people make stuff up about the show, which is seperate from this argument.

jswb wasn’t and isn’t trying to shame people into not speaking against them, neither is the RWDE tag.  You are trying to scare people into not talking.  This has happened multiple times before.  Someone posts something you don’t like, and you stalk and harass them until they delete the post.  You threatened Kidgecat with physical violence over a shit post. The idea that you nearly caused someone to commit suicide isn’t an impossibility.  The only impossibility is the idea that you didn’t. You’re not some grand anti-hero trying to help the FNDM, you never were and never will be.  The first reason for that is that anti-heroes don’t see themselves as heroes.  The second reason is that every time you get involved, a situation goes from bad to worse as you pull out every underhanded trick, every lie you could tell, every alt blog you need to pull out and make, just because someone said, ‘Hey, I kinda don’t like this thing about RWBY.’  Be it an in-depth analysis or a fucking joke, you don’t stop until they concede, till they say your right and give up their opinion for yours.

1.

The guy I've been chatting with Knight of Balance, has basically says he wants to 'educate' everyone who disagrees with the direction the show has been going, insulting me and others who dislike Pyrrha's death and he wants to silence us. I hid his comments so he wouldn't get a chance to 'educate my audience', his words not mine. He says he 'won't let Miles and Kerry bring Pyrrha back'. Oh really? Let's show him that he doesn't control us. Do not be quiet about how awful, insulting, needlessly cruel, and forced Pyrrha's death was. Don't let them get away with it, let them know how disappointed you are and let your voices be heard. People like him think they can control us, let's show them how wrong they are. 

He says this right AFTER blocking me.

I broke down crying, shaking, nearly throwing up, I read all of those hateful, hurtful, cruel, and insulting comments and I replied to the guy's comment with a off-putting all caps reply telling him know that I was breaking down and was about to end myself and when I did that he backed off, probably feeling like he had won, because he said himself that he was 'metaphorically' willing to drag me down to hell. I was a nervous wreck, I was being overwhelmed and felt like I wanted to die. I grabbed some scissors and nearly killed myself but thankfully I was able to remember all of the reasons I have for living like my family, my friends, the stories I write and the fans I've gotten, the stories I want to continue reading or watching, I realized I had so many reasons to live so I was able to stop myself.

To stuff like this:

*Sigh* Look, I never meant for you to get this stressed out. Hell, I understand where your coming from. Thinking about killing myself is such a common occurrence now I'm not even fazed by it anymore. So putting aside my feeling towards you and your conduct, I want you to listen to what i have to say: Your life matters. No matter what you think I've said, no matter what other people have said, no matter what you say, your life matters. You have friends and family who love and care about you and if you kill yourself, all it will do is wound those around you. It's painful I know but it's true. The best thing you can do is seek help above all else. Trust me, psychiatrists maybe be expensive by by divinty' sake they are miracle workers. And I know you're sick of hearing about this anime but really, look up Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. That anime is a large part of why I get out of bed in the morning even thought I know there's a very good chance I'll choke to death on my breakfast, lunch or dinner or that my life probably doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. It taught me to keep moving forward no matter what I lose or what I suffer because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The journey is hard and long but it's worth it. I never intended on hurting you. Had I known you were this psychologically fragile or you were this invested in Pyrrha I would have said nothing. I understand where you are coming from and I'm sorry I did so much damage to you. I was wrong and you were right. Good day.

So I don’t think any of THAT is valid.

2. Link ouright contradicts you...And that was froma YEAR and a HALF ago.

3. And you guys have caused mental damage to several people in teh fandom. However not all of it is your fault because some people are just that way. Your reactions of ‘not my issue/fuck that person’ however...

4. Two points. A. Batman sees himself as a hero and he’s the basis for most anti-heroes. B. I stopped thinking myself as someone right a LONG time ago. I just act in what I think is best and trust that if I’m wrong, I’ll fail. I live by a ‘The right are the strongest’ AKA people who are right will defeat people who are wrong philosophy. People have beaten me before in debates and I have immense respect for them.

5A. Like not linking your proof?

5B. Like making up a quote?

5C. Stopped doing that after people told me it was wrong.

5D. Explain why I personally make an effort to care for certain critics of RWBY. Like @faboover who despite disagreeing with about Volume 4, I personally make an effort to help him and encourage him. Explain the CRTQ blog which I was the most active member of and made quite a few complaints about RWBY. Explain the event of this very situation you quote I NEVER call his opinion wrong, just his actions.

6. Then I wonder why a lot of my friends have differing opinions of RWBY.

You know what, screw it.  Not only is this going in the main tag, it’s only going in the main tag, and I’m doing everything I can to make sure the fandom sees you for the self-important, unrelenting, egotistical, uncaring, and cruel person you are.

So you try arguing a moral position while expressly trying to slander me? ... So you contradict everything you’ve done here?

And you got half of these wrong. I’m self important, I’m not egotistical nor am I uncaring. I am unrelenting though it switches from good to bad at times and I do have a sadistic side.

But here’s teh deal:

jswv is self important in thinking that disagreeing with them is hateful.

Sokumotanaka is egotistical because he thinks all criticisms against him are invalid and his opinion is objective fact,

And Dudeblade,someone I KNOW you personally interact with, is uncaring as he suicide baited an LGBT person after talking about LGBT suicide rates and proceeded to make a backhanded apology.

And the last two are EXCEEDINGLY cruel people, as well as sociopathic and bigoted.

So why don’t you call them out?

Easy: They agree with you. You don’t care about other people if they don’t agree with you. I’d bet if jswv was praising RT and I was arguing about how much of an ass kisser they were: You’d fucking love me.

Not that any of this matters: You people crossed the fucking line with that doxxing incident so i ain’t dealing with your shit anymore.

Go find someone else to call your boogeyman.

[roomba-your-ass]

Revelations Chapter 1

Fandom: Stormlight Archives

Pairing: Kaladin/Adolin

Spoilers: For WoK and WoR

Also on AO3 http://archiveofourown.org/works/13169070/chapters/30119982

Links to Chapter 2,  Chapter 3

Summary: Adolin was about to get up and get help when Kaladin suddenly inhaled sharply. Adolin froze in an awkward position, halfway between crouching and standing. The bridgeboy was glowing. Stormfather! The man was emitting stormlight, it leaked from his skin like some sort of mist. Wisps of it curled in the air before disappearing. Even Kaladin’s eyes glowed with it. He was like a cracked Shard, leaking stormlight that couldn’t be contained.

Set in WoR some time after the Assassin in White appeared before Kaladin and the Kholins, but before Kaladin figures out who helped cut the balcony or Shallan appears.

Chapter 1

Acting in accordance with his duties as a quasi-bodyguard and responsible for the safety of the person under his care, Kaladin wouldn’t let is personal feelings with his task. He was as diligent and serious as ever. Even if, now, the person under his protection was a spoiled and insufferable princeling who drove Kaladin to the brink of madness daily. The storming man seemed to enjoy taking every opportunity he found to torment, annoy, or try to embarrass Kaladin.

Even if Kaladin wanted to kick the arrogant princeling’s arse, he would still do his utmost to prevent others from doing so. He glanced at Adolin who was leaning against the wall, watching Kaladin search the surprisingly spartan room for any threats, face a weird mix of annoyance and amusement. Storming man. Kaladin ignored him, concentrating on finding anything out of place.

“How long is this going to take, bridgeboy?” Adolin didn’t know if he should be exasperated or entertained by the spectacle he was watching. There was commendable cautiousness in a guard and then there was this…paranoid distrustfulness this storming man displayed. Admittedly, there had been a failed attempt to harm Adolin a few days ago. The main goal seemed to have been to injure and incapacitate instead of killing him and he couldn’t help but think that it had something to do with his next duel. The stakes were high. The prize of Shardblade and plate was serious, hundreds and thousands of people often died over Shards. To have them change hands just like that, with a simple duel, could change the future of a house. He wouldn’t be surprised if his opponent’s family decided to make sure the duel wouldn’t take place in the foreseeable future in fear of losing their Shards.

“However long I need to make sure you’re still going to be alive come next morning, unless the building collapses on top of you, princeling.” Adolin hadn’t expected such a long reply. Usually the bridgeboy would try and prove that grunting was an acceptable form of answer. And to Adolin’s slight horror that was beginning to work. By now Adolin could interpret quite a number of grunts, far more than he was comfortable with. When had he even spoken enough with Kaladin for that to happen?

He watched as the bridgeboy inspected and examined everything. Even the space under his bed. Storms! The space was perhaps large enough to hide a skeleton but definitely not enough for a living, breathing human being. Adolin shook his head.

Just as Adolin thought Kaladin had finally finished taking his room apart and he would be able to relax in peace the man stopped and turned towards his goblet and the jug of wine, placed on a small table next to a comfortable armchair. It had taken Adolin a long time to convince his father that yes, Adolin needed an armchair and no, a normal cloth-covered chair would not be sufficient.

“Going to take a drink on the job, bridgeboy?” Adolin mocked, though he knew perfectly well that Kaladin would never do something like that. Being insubordinate on a daily basis, yes. Slacking off while doing his duties? It was about as likely as his father suddenly deciding to get drunk in broad daylight after following the codes so closely these last few years.

“Something does not smell right.”

“Probably smelling yourself. When was the last time you washed? Last week’s Highstorm?” Adolin scoffed but started to move away from the wall because if Kaladin said something wasn’t right he usually had a reason for it.

“Storm off, princeling. I think someone poisoned your wine,” he lifted the jug containing the wine and sniffed at the content before setting it down again, frown deepening. Then he picked up the empty goblet but let it drop immediately, cursing loudly and face paling visibly. The goblet clattered to the ground, the noise of metal hitting the floor dampened by a thin carpet covering the stone. 

“What’s wrong?!”, alarmed, Adolin rushed forward, stretching his hand out automatically, ready to summon his Shardblade. Though what good it would do, Adolin didn’t know. Seeing Kaladin staggering, Adolin put his hand to better use, steadying the bridgeboy instead. His heart was thumping loudly, a fast rhythm that reminded him of the battle field. Except that on the battle field he knew what to do. Helplessly and starting to panic slightly, Adolin helped Kaladin lay down on the floor. Were you supposed to do that with someone who had probably been poisoned? Would it allow the poison to circulate faster through the bloodstream? Adolin didn’t know. He took Kaladin’s hand in his, the hand that had picked up the goblet, turning it around and inspecting the palm. It was not difficult to see. There was a slightly swollen red dot in the space between thumb and index finger, like a small insect bite.

Adolin took a glance at Kaladin’s face. His scarred forehead glistened with cold sweat, breathing ragged. Adolin was about to get up and get help when Kaladin suddenly inhaled sharply. Adolin froze in an awkward position, halfway between crouching and standing.

The bridgeboy was glowing. Stormfather! The man was emitting stormlight, it leaked from his skin like some sort of mist. Wisps of it curled in the air before disappearing. Even Kaladin’s eyes glowed with it. He was like a cracked Shard, leaking stormlight that couldn’t be contained.

Dumbfounded, Adolin stared at Kaladin’s mouth that also leaked stormlight as it moved. It seemed like Kaladin was saying something but Adolin’s brain couldn’t grasp the words.

Kaladin was just like the assassin when he came to kill his father. That thought was enough to spur Adolin into action. He jumped up, hand outstretching once more to summon his Shardblade.

Before he could take a few steps back to widen the distance between himself and Kaladin his arm was grabbed and he was dragged onto the ground with a surprising strength. He stumbled, trying to steady himself before crashing half across the bridgeboy with a dull uff-sound, smacking his face on Kaladin’s shoulder. His nose hurt something fierce and a yellow pain-spren came out of the ground next to his head, wriggling its tiny tendrils in his direction.

“Storms, Adolin, wait!” Kaladin shout sounded frustrated as Adolin struggled, trying to remove his hand from the floor. It seemed to be stuck to the ground next to Adolin’s head. His other hand was still free though so Adolin formed a fist and drove it in Kaladin’s face, feeling rather satisfied when he felt it connect with a nose. A pained grunt escaped the glowing bastard’s mouth.

“I said wait, dammit!” Adolin’s other hand was grabbed and stuck to the ground as well, rendering him mostly incapacitated and limiting his actions even further. Adolin unbend his arms, which caged Kaladin’s body at a slightly awkward angle and seemed to mockingly remind Adolin that he never managed to court a girl long enough to get into a position like that.

Great, not only was he incapacitated but also forced to stay in this embarrassing pose. At least he wasn’t forced to straddle to man’s legs. Adolin grimaced at the thought. Not the problem he should be focusing on at the moment.

Adolin glowered, baring his teeth in anger at the bridgeboy and his own inability to do anything about the situation he was in. “Why are you glowing like the Assassin in White? I swear I’m going to kill you, if you have anything to do with the people that threaten my family!” Adolin wondered if he should try shouting for help but quickly dismissed the thought. The first people to arrive would be from Bridge Four and he had no doubt that they would be absolutely loyal to Kaladin.

Kaladin widened his eyes in surprise, at the accusation or being found, Adolin didn’t know. “Does it even matter if I swear that I have nothing to do with the people that tried to kill your father and the king? Or that I have nothing to do with the Assassin in White and am doing what I can to protect Dalinar and your family from any danger? Because I am.” Kaladin stared up at Adolin, his hard features softened slightly by the faint glow his skin was emitting, though he was still frowning. The bridgeboy probably even frowned while sleeping. Adolin was almost certain of it.

It was true that thee bridgeboy was always overly careful in that paranoid way of his. The thorough search off Adolin’s room not moments ago being prove of that. Without Kaladin, he and his father would have long since died on the Shattered Plains, naïve victims of Sadeas’ betrayal. If Kaladin had any connections with the people that command the Assassin in White it would’ve been too easy to simply let them perish at the hands of the Parshendi. Or not come to their aid when the assassin attacked them after the Highstorm. If Kaladin hadn’t pushed the assassin along with himself out of the hole in the stonewall Adolin had no doubt they would’ve died that day. He had been so utterly useless confronted with the assassin he might as well have been an untrained kid going against a champion. It made him angry and frustrated to think about that awful truth. But there was no point lying to himself about it. Perhaps if he had known and believed the talk about the abilities of the Assassin in White instead of thinking of them only as rumors. Even then, believing rumors about the powers of an opponent and knowing how to fight someone were two very different things.

“I believe that you had nothing to do with the attempt on my father’s or the king’s life.” Adolin frowned, “However, you did not do your best to protect my father’s life. You could have used the same powers as the assassin, maybe we could have beaten him.”

Kaladin glanced away as if feeling guilty. Well, he should feel bad about withholding important information like that, Adolin thought grimly.

“I can’t use my powers like the Assassin in White. Until I saw what he could do I had no idea things like that were possible myself. I’m getting better at controlling them though, I won’t be as helpless again.” Kaladin locked eye with him again, looking determined and Adolin suddenly remembered how close they were.

“So, you did use your full powers that day?” Adolin inquired.

Kaladin bit his lip, closing his eyes for a second before answering. “No.” He breathed the word out, looking guilty again. It sounded too soft for that kind of revelation and yet, at the same time too loud in the quiet of the room. Fury erupted in Adolin, hitting him like a bolt of lightning. He tried to ball his hands into fists, growling when he found he could not do that because his hands were infuriatingly still stuck to the ground.

#stormlight archive #adolin kholin #kaladin #Kaladin Stormblessed #brandon sanderson #kadolin #words of radiance #fanfiction #kadolin fanfic

[sxpiosexualx]

Hey! I apologise if you have answered this before but I was wondering, how did you end up shipping Jon and Sands?

Hello! (this is going to get lengthy unfortunately)

I distinctly remember it was during my attachment at this law firm in February, they didn’t have any work for me that particular day so I was on my phone scrolling mindlessly on Instagram’s explore page. That’s when I came across this page, @/jonsansa - it’s basically a page for Jonsa that sometimes posts meta from Tumblr(with credit).

When I first saw the page(this was after season 6), I was honestly confused. I think it was largely due to the fact that I’m not the type of person that watches a show for its ships, and GoT was the last show that I thought would generate such a huge fandom invested in a pairing. Strangely enough, I wasn’t opposed to the idea because if there’s one thing season 6 did for me, it’s that it made me root for both Jon and Sansa.

Season 5 left me knowing that one of two things were going to happen: Sansa was finally escaping Winterfell and heading to Castle Black, and Jon was most definitely going to somehow be brought back. However, I was still skeptical as to whether or not they would meet. Even after Jon’s resurrection, I really did not let my hopes get the best of me so when Sansa walked through those gates all I could think of was “holy shit it’s really happening we’re really doing this now omg omg omg” and let me tell you… I teared up so much. It was such a heartwarming scene and for once something good was finally happening, and then from there all their scenes together just stroke me as natural. The BoTB was by far the most emotional battle in GoT, I had so many emotions and was honestly crying and then that scene where Sansa swoops in with the Knights of the Vale happened and all I could think of was “omg thank GOD.” Afterwards I started appreciating Sansa as a character so much more, and reflected on how strong she was to have survived all that she’s been through. With Jon, I rooted for him just as most people did, but I never regarded him as a favourite. However season 6 left me liking Jon a whole lot more as a character, and Jonsa definitely had a huge part to play. Jon and Sansa’s arc that season was the one thing I really enjoyed watching.

So I read some theories, like the Tourney of Ashford theory and all of the Ned x Cat 2.0 parallels and I started getting reeled in and was convinced.

When season 7 started, that’s when I started going on Tumblr and engaging in the Jonsa tag. Prior to this, Jonsa was my secret pleasure - I had brought it up to a friend once and she was completely unwilling to embrace it as a possibility so I didn’t really have anyone I could discuss it with. Fortunately, this fandom has been so welcoming, engaging, and thought provoking. I was seeing Angry Kitten Jon unfold on screen while being spoiled with endless speculation on Tumblr on just how unnecessary shooting scenes like that would’ve been unless it was to buff the idea of Jonsa. I was so sad when Jon and Sansa departed but each week they had managed have them be mentioned in each other’s scene despite being away from each other. It became my favourite time of each week, and waiting for the next episode didn’t feel as hard anymore because they gave us plenty of material to discuss for the rest of the week. 

This was truly when I started reading more and more meta, but I wasn’t completely opposed to the idea of J0nerys because I hadn’t seen them together yet. When they finally met however, I completely rejected it - it just wasn’t as good as Jonsa. And of course I was anxious about the ““dreaded”” boatbang. I was frustrated too, because I had been thrust into the wonderful world of Jonsa only to have J0nerys be forced down my throat. But when it finally happened, I ended up laughing SO loud. I assumed they’d at least build up to it but if anything, it just made the idea of Jonsa that much more appealing and probable to me.

That’s basically how I got into it and why I stayed! The Jonsa community never really came off to me as “shippy” due to all the well thought out meta and book references. It managed to sell me an idea I never would have thought up myself. Of course, no one knows for sure how the series will end, the white walkers could end up coming in and destroying everything and everyone, but even if Jonsa never becomes canon, I’m forever grateful to all the joy it’s given me and will continue giving me. It was truly my happy place at a time where I was lowest in life this year, and has never failed to put a smile on my face so thank you to all the other Jonsa shippers - even those who don’t engage as much! Our ship is amazing and I’m happy to be apart of it(even if I seldom contribute in comparison huhu).

[Also, this is somewhat personal but I was in a very weird position and had just left the second abusive relationship in the same year, so I was somewhat alone. I felt isolated for the most part, so turning to GoT was a means of escaping for a bit and it introduced me to the best and most welcoming fandom, and I’ll always be grateful]

Tl;dr - Jonsa just makes the most sense to me, and makes a far better narrative than J/D in my opinion. It feels natural and I’m here for it, canon or not(though it has a fighting chance to really be canon and I’m hoping for it!).

Thank you for the ask and I’m sorry for typing so much! I just love my babies and this community I’m really ugly crying rn omg bye x

#jonsa #actuallyjonsa #Jon x Sansa #i love my babies #honestly this is so ugly im sorry its so long #i love the jonsa fam?

[avoresmith]

About Ajin and AV’s delicate feelios

I want to explain why I love Ajin because it's quite personally important to me and while my immediate social circle has heard me talk about this quite a bit in the last few days, ya'll haven't. In fact, most of you probably haven't even heard about this manga.

But to talk about it means spoiling a (fairly early) reveal of the manga. It's not a big deal to be spoiled for it probably, but I wasn't. So I'll start with just the Impersonal Deets for those of you who might like to go in unspoiled.

Ajin's premise is that of a world wherein within the last generation, humanity has discovered that there are ajin/demi-humans living among them. Demi-humans are in a lot of ways no different than regular humans, except that they can't die. They don't have super strength, they aren't a different species in the sense that ajin parents have ajin children (not as far as we know, anyway), they can summon cool ghosts with limited abilities and if they die they will return to life within seconds, unharmed.

You don't find out you are a demi-human until you die once, but demi-humans are considered nonhumans with no rights and society is quick to turn on them.

Ajin's focus is primarily on a ruthlessly efficient exploration of the world dynamics it's established around the powers of demi-humans and how they operate. It is really fun, because so many manga see the solution to whatever problem they set up as more strength, cooler super powers. Ajin is much more interested in playing chess with a pre-established and limited number of pieces.

Think about it: normal humans who don't regenerate from any injury unless they die, but WILL come back from any kind of death. How do you stop such a person and how do they make themselves harder to stop? Incapacitate them, okay. But if you injure them, can't they then just kill themselves to recover from any injury? Knock them out then, but not too hard or they might die, and then you're back to square one. Or tranq them, but careful not to cause an OD. Or, kill them repeatedly so they can't move. Long enough to get them in restraints that a human can't escape.

So then you have them, what do you do with them? What does an undying body that will regenerate any lost body parts upon death mean to what group of people? What would a government organization do with such a thing? What about a criminal one? What about a scientific one? What about a corporation?

What is the value of an undying body, and to who, how do you extract that value from it? And if YOU are unable to die, what do you do with it? Do you fight, knowing that death isn't an option as a release from your war if you lose? Do you hide? Do you go on a power trip? Do you see more or less value in life overall?

Ajin is largely a systematic exploration of these questions and dozens of others extrapolated through a very simple premise and lived by a group of amoral and largely un-empathetic characters.

It's terribly smart, pretty fast paced, and absolutely dedicated to its premise.

Character wise, you may care about about 3 or 4 people, as long as you aren't bothered by No One Is Actually Very Good and Almost No One Scores Higher Than A 3.5 out of 10 On Giving A Fuck About Other Human Beings.

It actually has some of my favorite character writing ever, but I don't have an issue with a cast of low empathy assholes.

For warnings other than that:

Bad at remembering women exist. For the majority of the manga there is Only One Actually Relevant Female Character. Weirdly also has some of the best writing I've ever seen for a tertiary female character. There isn't any fanservice, the author just seems to forget women exist outside of very specific tropes, but does write those tropes well. Seems to be improving slowly. I believe in him on this front more than I believe in Kojima.

The writing in the first four chapters is Not Good. It's very trope heavy, contrived, and nonspecific. I didn't find it painful but I did roll my eyes a lot and it set a really low bar, haha. Then artist takes over the job of writing as well, and there is pretty immediate improvement in both art and writing over the course of the manga. Has some fantastic scenes. Possibly the best mother character I've ever seen?? Also has one of the best versions I've ever seen of a specific villain trope.

Don't watch the anime, read the manga. It's available legally online via Crunchyroll and Comixology.

Now if you're like. GOSH AV, SEEMS INTERESTING, BUT IT'S WEIRD YOU HAVE SAID BASICALLY NOTHING ABOUT CHARACTERS.

Well friend that's because Ajin also has perhaps one of my favorite protagonists of all time but I can't tell you why without spoiling the first uuh. 17ish? Chapter of the manga. (it's monthly so that's about the first 3rd of what is out now).

So if you want to know more than I THINK NAGAI KEI IS THE BEST EVER AND YOU SHOULD READ HIS MANGA. Continue under the cut:

Nagai Kei, the 17 year old protagonist of the manga who gets hit by a truck in chapter 1 and finds out he can't die, is a sociopath.

Or maybe he's Incredibly Low Empathy.

I honestly don't care which, I feel like if you're quibbling over Full Sociopath or 90% Sociopath you're missing the point. He literally popcorns the deaths of thousands of civilians and acknowledges it as a 'pretty good move' of a terrorist to make. He has incredibly little empathy.

But he is also, inarguably, the hero of the story.

Not the most heroic of heroes, also inarguable. But that's sort of what the story is about, when it isn't about murder chess. The exploration of a kid who isn't motivated by how much he Cares About People, still coming to risk everything he has to Do What Is Right. And him turning away the chance to BE a villain, even though, aren't sociopaths always villains? Isn't that the constant implication, that if you don't Care Like Most People Care, you don't care at all? Without empathy, what motivates one to not be a villain? A huge number of canons would suggest the answer is nothing.

Fandom AND mainstream media really likes the romanticize the villainous sociopath. And look, me fucking too! I love many of those assholes. But it's also frustrating to watch people struggle to scrounge up reasons to justify lack of empathy as somehow an excuse for why a character can still Not Be That Bad even when they have done Super Bad Things.

Ajin, though Kei, sets a different standard. You can try to stop a war and save countless lives for motivations other than how much the suffering of others bothers you. You can choose not to kill for reasons other than some inexplicable conviction that 'all human life is equally valuable'. You can not give a fuck about someone's pain without being a sadist, and you can protect someone without fearing a life without them. You can make tons of Right Choices Which Benefit Others without thinking your life is worth less than a large quantity of people you have no personal investment in.

And it does it without actually disparaging empathy, either. The lesson isn't That Feelings Are Stupid And You Should be 100% Rational at all.

Rather, it's the nuanced story of a boy with little to no empathy struggling to navigate the feelings he very much actually has but has convinced himself he doesn't and can't have because lack of feeling for others is often conflated with lack of any kind of emotion. Kei has bought into this narrative as much as anyone, and constantly has a Logical Reason for everything on hand, lest he ever be forced to admit He Had A Feeling.

Kei's primary struggle as a character is admitting to himself that he cares about Very Specific Things, and that this motivates his actions when by every logical choice he really should be running as far away from the plot as he can get and never looking back.

And I… relate. Incredibly.

And I never have before, is the thing.

And that's okay. I was not yearning to have a character of low enough empathy that processes the world the same way I do. That inofitself would probably be a weird thing for someone with low empathy to even think to need. You don't really grow up giving incredibly little fucks about how others feel only to be distressed when there isn't media that you can relate to. I long ago Accepted The Importance Of Representation In Media but never in a million years would have told you "I wish I saw someone who had as little empathy as me being a hero, because actually I work pretty hard to fit a certain standard of Good Person, and this is an incredibly underexplored perspective".

But now that I've seen it, and it happened, I can tell you it Means A Lot, and I Had Quite A Few Feelings About It.

Reading Kei's story is in a lot of ways like flipping through a diary of my own emotional growth. We went into our teenage years with very different priorities (I was raised to value interpersonal relationships very highly and got into fiction at a young age, Kei was raised to see relationships as tools and has been fixated on medicine most of his short life), but none-the-less we've had a lot of the same questions, insecurities, frustrations.

And because SO MUCH of what Kei says, how he processes the world, how he responds in almost every situation, is viscerally familiar to me, I find myself terribly fond of him. I've never so much honestly wanted to shake a character and give him life advice because I know what he's going through and I know he can come out of it.

I'm also unfortunately fond of the author at this point. It certainly isn't impossible that I'm completely wrong and he is just very good at character perspective, but I find it difficult to imagine that he hasn't also really really been there.

And I'd kind of love to take him out for a beer sometime and shoot the shit about what it's like to be a confused teenager who is constantly disappointing people because they keep expecting an emotional resonance you haven't learned to perform on cue yet.

#op me #about me #ajin #media musings #manga recs #media recs #there will probably be more spoiler filled ajin plurks #idk #i have a lot of thoughts on it #but it's also weird to talk about #n e way #read ajin it's great #oh right #longpost

[tinnefoil]

A thought or ten about Karamel and Supercat

I genuinely wonder if the people who complain about Karamel being abusive 

1.) had similar issues with Supercat. 

2.) had the same kind of moral judgement “you are a bad person if you like something I have deemed unlikable” 

After all, Cat regularly belittled Kara and for example, didn’t think following Kara’s wishes to be called by her proper name was worth respecting till Cat deemed it so. Or how she kept Kara guessing on what she thought of Kara’s abilities as an employee (ie “The best part about you is that you never get sick” etc). 

Or considering all the complaints about Mon-El “gaslighting” (which is bad because it makes people doubt their instinct and such), how exactly would Kara and J’onn pulling off an entire scheme, just to convince Cat that Kara wasn’t Supergirl (aka: actual effort was put in to mislead Cat rather than just plain lying, which of course also happened), be rated. 

I wasn’t on tumblr while watching season 1, so I’m genuinely curious whether that was a thing. I read some pretty intriguing analysis of what Supergirl fanfic gets written and the person doing the analysis mentioned that even though a lot of Supercat and a lot of Supercorp gets written, it’s not necessarily the same people. Aka, rather than all the people who shipped Supercat just switching over to Supercorp, a lot of new people came in. So maybe there isn’t that much overlap between Supercat and Supercorp. 

Which wouldn’t be that unreasonable considering that they are very different relationships, that might also correspond to different kinks. 

==> Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the stakes are different when it comes to Karamel and Supercat, with one being a canon couple and one “just” being a highly popular fanon couple. 

For the record, I definitely thought that Supercat was one of the most intriguing and well written, layered relationships of season 1 (and if it was still around in season 2, there is a large chance that I would think it to be above Kara/Mon-El in the area of being well written). I wasn’t like super crazy shippery about it, but I thought it was very well done, and I did seek out some fanfiction on it and I was completely not surprised that it was popular and it’s definitely a ship I could have seen myself getting in more seriously as interaction with the fandom deepened (I generally wasn’t feeling very fannish during the time Supergirl season 1 aired, mostly because of real life politics getting me really riled up during that time). 

Not that I want to equate Mon-El and Cat here or expect a lot of overlap between Supercat and Karamel shippers. Even aside from any gay&straight/feminism issues, different expectations from the show, they are still very different characters and relationships. 

A large part of this is the power/experience difference, that just doesn’t function the same way in Kara/Mon-El. I would argue that Cat’s way of interacting with Kara was very different in motivation, too. 

Cat imo had a certain worldview. In this worldview she decided that there was something she didn’t like about Kara and that Kara should get rid off (being meek, not standing up for herself, not being ambitious enough) and she used aggressive behavior to point Kara in that direction. A lot of moral arguments can be had whether that was Cat’s place to decide, whether those are the proper tools, how behavior and logic like that could go wrong in real life. But regardless of how one judges that (as better or worse), I think in Cat’s context, in her own interpretation, she was doing this for Kara’s benefit, because she saw potential in Kara and not for her own benefit/out of selfishness (like to make herself feel better).

IMO Cat was clearly a person who didn’t feel threatened by the strength of others. She just considered herself strong and on top and she wanted to encourage people (like Kara and Leslie) to be as empowered as her (and of course she was immediately a big fan of another strong female player, in the form of Supergirl, showing up, btw, it really is a huge pity that we didn’t get to see substantial Alex/Cat interaction). Her insults weren’t meant to keep others small and below her. IMO Cat thought that her way of approaching life by being aggressive and assertive was good and that hence challenging other people to push back against her was a good thing. (and maybe she was particularly hard on Kara because she did like her lot, which again can be unpacked in a variety of different ways, including Cat’s upbringing)

Compared to that, when Kara and Mon-El bicker it feels a lot more unfocused and untargeted. When Kara rants on Daxam that is purely emotional, not primarily a tool to encourage Mon-El to become a better person by leaving behind his Daxamite worldview (and clearly her approach to mentoring was a lot more cheerleading and instructing rather than challenging, not strange since Kara in the end is a different personality type from Cat). Similarly a lot of Mon-El’s rants come off more as coming from a place of a person with a spoiled upbringing or just unfocused lashing out. 

Cat I would argue had a keen understanding on when she had to cut back. This is most illustrated in the episode where Kara loses her temper, fully expects to get fired and instead Cat takes her for a drink and gives her advice on how to deal with her temper and how find out the underlying reason for it and even apologizes for one concrete incident where Cat really was mad at her mom rather than Kara. So there was a lot more control in Cat. She knew immediately when things were serious and she had to ease up this time. This is very different from Mon-El genuinely not realizing or not having a sense for it when he is wrong/needing to smack into a wall every time to realize that he has messed up. Basically, Cat very much had boundaries, she just had different ideas than maybe some other people had on where they are supposed to be. 

#supergirl #supergirl meta #supercat #karamel #supercorp

[apirateandaprincess]

Why tonights episode was amazing and Hook is still a Hero

Okay, so I am a bit tipsy, and will probably be editing the spelling errors in this tomorrow, but I have been without internet for the last 5 hours, and HAVE been desperate to talk to my fellow Captain Swan fans, and more importantly in relation to tonight’s context KILLIAN fans about what all went down. 

Let me first start off by saying a few REAL things in regards to my own reaction tonight.

1. I LOVE THE THE FIRST 55 MINUTES OF THIS EPISODE lol. I’ll get to why I deep deep down love the last five minutes as well, but I have to say that was one of the best bromance episodes we could have asked for. I mean lets be honest, the captain charming Bromance is great, but we’ve been craving for some very straight forward acknowledgement on dave’s part and some actual upfront proper gif worthy touching/contact in regards to Killian and Charming for a long while. I mean the shoulder lean AHHH. That blessing scene GAHH. It was beyond perfect. 

2. I had a gut feeling they were going to have Killian be the one to do that. If you had a nervous nellie in your inbox asking if YOU thought it would happen. Hello, hi, nice to meet you. That was probably me. Did I let others calm me and did a large part of me think maybe he wouldn’t be the one to do that? Yes. Did I become even more convinced of that idea while watching? Yes. Did that make it sting that much worse? Absolutely of course.

3. If you were screaming during those last few minutes, don’t worry. I was over here in Florida, doing the same. You. Were. Not. Alone. 

4. Do I think they have Killian atone for his sins too much? Yes. But we all know dark dangerous captain hook is a thing many people enjoy watching, and if we don’t want present hook to show those behavior traits anymore, the only way to still see and enjoy those things is from seeing flashbacks of his darker past. So am I personally done with the atonement? Yes. But I also know that’s because A. I just want him to be happy. B. It’s not realistic to never see these dark sins of the past because dark gritty hook is entertaining AF and C. His atonement and redemption is why I fell in love with him to begin with. 

SO THESE THINGS ABOVE were the very visceral, very real things I wanted to get through before I tell you my after thoughts, and that’s not only more important, but it’s where the good stuffs at. 

So why was this episode awesome, and yes, even those last few bloody moments. 

1. First and foremost THAT BROMANCE YA’LL.

I mean we were given everything we wanted for those first 55 minutes on a silver fucking platter. I have yet to browse Tumblr. I got internet and came straight to writing this post but I expect 100,000 gifs after I’m finished here, of pure amazing moments. I mean they literally kneeled with each other. Charming literally put his head on Killian’s shoulder. They turned around in a dorky circle together and did magic as bros. Charming saw the good in him, and verbally fucking acknowledged it to Killian’s face all while being a little cheeky and telling him he was good enough for his daughter. I mean shit. Jane. Is. A. Fucking. God. for that scene.  

2. It surprised us

I know this may seem a bit transparent but let’s admit a few things to ourselves (and I’m generalizing a bit here). First, we want the best for our faves. Of course we don’t want Killian to be burdened and sad for things he did in his past when he is someone we watch the show for, relate to, love, or all three. It makes sense for us to want good things for him and more specifically for us to want him to have the opportunity to enjoy that feeling of acceptance and change that we saw him really acknowledge from David and even as a whole tonight. This is why our guts turned in the last few minutes. Because we knew he would hurt in response. Because we know what’s coming. And what’s coming is this: Good old fashioned angst on our favorite pirate’s part. A bit of loathing topped with a sprinkle of doubt in regards to his self worth. And it hurts us. But while we are admitting these things, let us admit another. We are some lucky ducks. We have gotten an amazing redemption arc and we are spoiled, by...well... spoilers. Once Upon A Time, at least for me, is not something I’m really shocked by anymore. I see things coming from a mile away. Being THIS into the fandom, allows me to do so. But tonight. I was legitimately surprised. Now I know I mentioned that I believed he would be the one to kill Charming’s dad. That is still true. But holy shit did this episode not direct me away from that thinking for the first fifty five minutes. I mean up until August drove up to Hook on the front steps, I had no bone in my body that still believed it would go that way. THEY DID AN AMAZING JOB at directing our beliefs elsewhere. And for the first time in a long time OUAT surprised me again. And surprising your viewers, is part of, at least in my opinion, what makes you not only still relevant but GOOD at your job. So, CLAP CLAP CLAP for Jane.

3. REGINA’S PAST

I wanted to make a quick post about Regina’ vs Killian because I know it’s going to be a topic of conversation at this point. Let me preface this by saying I know a lot of you know I’m not a fan too much of Regina at the current moment. I used to be. But these days it’s weighing more towards the opposite side. How does this relate to this episode? Well let me tell you. When I first got finished watching this episode one of the few things I thought of was how this (as in Hook killing Charming’s dad) was going to be used by the anti’s for why Killian is a horrible person. And in having that thought and thinking about the episode at the same time it reminded me even more so WHERE IT IS THEY DIFFER. My issue with Regina has never been what she’s done in the past, but how she handles what she’s done in the past in the present. It’s my personal opinion that Killian redemption arc has felt more authentic and true. We have seen him make real amends and strides towards being a better person. It’s more concrete for me. And while I think it’s the writers intentions to do the same for Regina and at the end of the day I do agree she’s changed, I just think characterization and writing wise the redemption arc for killian has been exponentially stronger and more believable/tangible. Again I’m bringing this up because this episode was a HUGE REMINDER that my issue with Regina isn’t WHO she was AND what she’s done BUT how she handles WHO SHE WAS and WHAT SHE’S DONE. So for all the nervous nellies wondering how can they root for Killian still... well...

This brings me to my next point

4. IF THIS SHOCKED YOU,???

Now don’t get me wrong. When I say shock I don’t mean surprise. Surprise at the writers making this decision. Surprise at them going this route. Surprise at the reveal. This isn’t where my ??? (CONFUSION) comes into play. What I’m a bit confused about his how people are shocked that Killian could have done this. He has admitted, to us, and to Emma that he has killed people and done awful things. He was a villain. If you like a villain on this show, odds are they killed someone and were a bit of a dick in the process and this killing/dickishness is somehow entangled with the born and bred heroes of the show. So while I want to say first and foremost to everyone reading, I am in NO WAY telling you how to feel. I do have to say if this caused you TO GIVE UP ON KILLIAN JONES as a character, than I’m not sure you were quite aware of who you liked to begin with. He WAS a villain. He’s done awful things. This is something we should all know by now. 

5. REACTION

So this episode was amazing, and yes even those gut churning last few seconds, because it is truly going to test the reactions of those around him. What happens when you have a literal blessing from those who used to think all you were was a pirate? What happens when just two seconds ago you knew you were a man of change and the world around you looked bright? What happens when you’re the only one who knows the ugly truth? What happens when the woman you love says she is okay with your past and all that matters is who you will be TODAY/NOW? What happens when the woman who says these things is the one you now want to marry? This REVEAL, as shitty as it may feel to many of us, is going to show us the true colors of those around us once again only this time it will matter more because the wedding is coming. And it’s going to be grand. 

We’re going to see the EMMA SWAN WE LOVE. The one who believes in her pirate and KNOWS he’s changed and roots for him outwardly despite his past. We’re going to see her believe in him, forgive him, and move on from the worst of the worst of his past and we will have the most solid example that as husband and wife they can make it through any ghost that pops up because they made it through THIS. 

We’re going to see David, who just accepted Killian (with no personal reasons not to) accept him once more but this time ITS GOING TO MEAN MORE. It will mean more because now when he ACCEPTS him and acknowledges that he’s changed it will be after also acknowledging that that change is from someone who did something that harmed him in the past as well. It’s easier to believe in someone’s redemption when the wrong they did didn’t directly affect you. It’s a lot more powerful to do so when it has. 

We’re going to see Snow do the same.

We might even see Regina relate to Killian’s past and current attempts to be a better person and support him as a result. 

Now don’t get me wrong. Will i think a few characters will be quite hurt/shocked. Yes. Some, namely David, more than others. But do I doubt they’ll move past it? Nope. Not at all. 

6. REEVALUATION. HOLY SHIT THIS POINT HERE IS WHY WHAT HAPPENED IS WRITING GOLD. 

Okay so i have a feeling most if not all of us CS/CC fans watched this with the same thought. OMG this friendship has come so far. OMG this is the most perfect episode. OMG look at how our pirate has grown and become a real hero. We watched this episode and we saw two REAL friends. We saw acceptance, and growth, and felt pride in Killian being seen as a HERO by not only Dave but by himself and in the larger SCHEME of the show. And after feeling all those amazing things... 

STAB.

Right. In. The. Stomach. The knife was planted and turned. And this is where the genius comes in.

Because after feeling all that we felt, we we’re hit with a dirty awful deed of our pirates past. Only this time it leaves us with a burning question. 

Is all the good erased because something already set in stone and engraved in history was brought to light? 

Is a person’s redemption no longer real in current time because you now know of something they once did? 

Do all the feeling that you felt up until those last few minutes disappear because something from the past was brought to light?

OR DOES HOW YOU HANDLE YOUR PAST AND WHO YOU ARE TRYING TO BE NOW STILL REALLY MATTER?

WE ...JUST LIKE THE CHARACTERS WILL BE, are forced to look back on everything good that just happened with new eyes. And this right here is some powerful shit. Because I’m hoping most of us know and can see/acknowledge/learn from this that what you did in the past DOES NOT INVALIDATE THE GOOD YOU ARE DOING NOW. Who you once were does not invalidate who you are trying to be. It is how you handle your mistakes that matter at the end of it.

Essentially we have all talked the talk. We have all admitted that the reason we love Killian Jones is because we have seen him change and make up for the wrongs he has done. And now, much like the characters, we can either continue to be people of our words or we can admit that all we’ve done is just talk. 

So at the end of it all I know that it hurt. And I’m not going to lie and say if I had to choose I would have wanted this. I wouldn’t have. I would have much rather it stayed happy and not have the gut hurting knife feeling stabby stabby pain that those last few minutes caused me. But i’m not also going to lie and say I didn’t see the creative genius in how this was all done or why it was done. I root for Killian Jones because the idea of redemption and becoming a hero is not only something I can relate to and enjoy watching but it’s also something Killian Jones has done exponentially well throughout this story.

 I know this pirates past and I’m not clueless to the wrong he’s done. Just as I’m not clueless to Rumple or Regina’s past wrongs. But it isn’t this past I care about or the past that has made me fall in love with this character and how it was written. No. I fell in love with the story of redemption. See It’s the man he’s trying to be now that makes me root for Killian Jones. It’s the way he has tried to redeem himself that has made me root for Killian Jones. And it’s Killian Jones that I will be most proud of at the end of this arc.

See This episode was an amazing story of bromance and change and forgiveness and redemption between two men that started as adversaries. It is something that I am sure I will be reblogging for years. It left me giddy for nearly the entire time.  

I have no doubt we will see after the initial feelings of his, the man we all love come forward and do what he’s always done. Admitted to his wrongs and try to make amends.

I also don’t doubt that after the initial reactions of others like David and Emma we will also see them do what they always do. Admit that people change and that it’s who you are NOW that matters. 

Having this happen at the end of the episode and before the wedding is going to make not only US people of our words but it’s going to make the characters people of their words and its going to be a strong concrete example that no matter what awful thing from the past comes up, these characters know eachother, know how they’ve changed, and will always decide to move forward and believe in one another as they do. 

TLDR: Killian Jones was a villain. He has murdered people. This is not shocking. We know this. But it’s not who he was that matters. It’s who he is. And who he is at the end of the day is someone who always ends up acknowledging his wrongs and making the proper steps to amend for them. And his redemption is always something I will get behind because it’s what made me fall in love with his character to begin with. Sure the characters AND the viewers, might react in a visceral way at first, some more than others, but at the end of the day they and we can either do one of two things. 

1. We can show that we/the characters are people of our words. That they/we truly do believe change is real and important that what matters most is who we are trying to be. What matters IS NOT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE THAT MAKES YOU REDEEMABLE AND A HERO, IT’S WHAT YOU CHOSE TO DO NOW. HERE. IN THE FACE OF HARD TIMES AND EVEN IN THE FACE OF YOUR WRONGS.

Or

2. We can admit we lied. 

#my thoughts are all over the place #but hope this gets through how i want #captain swan #killian jones #captain hook #anti sq