#also i was encouraged to do this so.... i blame my enabler

[smilingformoney]

Three Secrets

Summary: Hans Gruber x reader | smut | You're a member of Hans Gruber's gang of thieves, and when you take the blame for another's betrayal, Hans grants your last request.

Or: you get fucked violently by Hans, and then you die.

I watched Die Hard, got horny, and this is the result.

Dedicated to @snowblossomreads, who so lovingly enables my thirst for this dead old man.

Warnings/content: smut, dubcon, gun kink, all your holes get penetrated (yes even that one)

Read on Ao3 or below the cut:

“Who warned die Polizei?!” Hans roared as he returned to the safehouse, panting and out of breath, his tie askew. When there was no answer from his fellow thieves, he roared in anger and smashed his fists on the table, causing the carefully-stacked Marks to collapse into piles and scatter across the floor.

“I WANT A NAME!”

The thieves began staring at each other suspiciously, agitated by the news of a betrayal and - although they’d never admit it - frightened of Hans’ anger.

With a sudden BANG!, Hans shot down the man nearest him. Probably not the rat, and certainly a good thief - but Hans was angry, and he wanted to punish someone.

You stood up immediately.

“It was me,” you lied.

It wasn’t you, of course it wasn’t. You would never betray your friends. But you also couldn’t sit there and watch Hans take his anger out on them.

The barrel of the gun met the underside of your chin, and you closed your eyes as you steeled yourself for the shot…

But it didn’t come. You dared to open your eyes, and you were met with Hans’ fiery gaze, his face dripping with sweat, a nasty snarl on his face.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t pull the trigger, Schlampe,” he growled.

You knew of a thousand reasons. You weren’t the rat; you were an asset to the team; you liked being alive. But Hans cared about none of those - all he wanted was to sate his anger.

“Do I get a last request?”

Hans’ eyes narrowed, then he chuckled darkly. “Perhaps,” he replied. “What is it?”

“Schlampe, you called me. I am no slut, Hans. No man here has touched me. No man has ever touched me.”

Hans laughed and turned to his men. “Do you hear that, boys? Die Schlampe wants to be fucked before she dies!”

The men laughed, far too many of them looking at you with hunger.

“I don’t want them!” you insisted as you stepped closer to Hans, the barrel of his gun digging deeper into your flesh. “I don’t even want to be fucked. What I want… is to suck your cock.”

As soon as the words left your lips, the men gathered went feral, cheering and whooping, shouting out words of encouragement to Hans. He, meanwhile, seemed merely amused.

After a pause, he grabbed you by the shoulder, spun you around, and marched you out of the room, gun pressed firmly against the small of your back. Wordlessly, he guided you through the house, leaving behind the wooting animals that called themselves men, and once he reached his bedroom, he pushed you inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

“Turn around slowly,” he said in a low, menacing voice, one that struck fear in most, but for you it only sent a rush of arousal through your body.

When finally you could see him again, Hans’ eyes were alight with danger, desire and anger. So long as that gun was trained on you, you knew any moment could be your last, even if your mouth was full of his cock - and, shit, you hoped it would be soon.

“So the little virgin wants to suck my cock, does she?”

He gestured at her body with his gun.

“Take those off. I don’t want any hidden tricks.”

Sure. That was why he wanted you to strip.

You pulled your t-shirt over your head, and Hans licked his lips when his gaze landed on your chest. Next you slipped off your shoes, then the rest of your clothing, leaving you in nothing but your bra and knickers.

Hans raised his eyebrows. “Did I tell you to stop?”

You had hoped to at least keep some of your dignity before your last meal, but this was Hans Gruber you were dealing with. He never did anything in halves.

You reached behind your back to unclasp your bra, letting it fall from your shoulders, then hooked your thumbs under your waistband to push your knickers to the floor.

And that was how you found yourself stark naked in Hans Gruber’s room, staring down the barrel of his gun, not daring to break eye contact with him, no matter how desperate you were to see if he was aroused.

“Show me your technique first, Schlampe. Open.”

You obeyed, and panic shot through your heart when the barrel of his gun - safety most definitely off - slid past your lips and threatened to choke you as it passed over your tongue and settled at the back of your mouth.

“Well?” Hans prompted. “I’m waiting.”

Of course he had a fucking gun kink.

You tried to ignore the metallic taste as you began to move your head back and forth, ever so slightly, trying not to get too close to the trigger. What a way to die this would be.

“Will you suck my cock with this little passion, Y/N? It is your last request, after all. You’re supposed to enjoy it.”

Bastard. Sadist. Psychopath.

You hadn’t been lying; you really hadn’t been with a man before. How were you supposed to show him your cocksucking technique on a gun when you had never even practised on the real thing?

You closed your eyes, hoping it would help you to pretend the barrel was a dick. You tightened your lips around it, telling yourself it was the most delicious thing you’d ever tasted, that it tasted like flesh and sweat, not metal and gunpowder…

You could hear Hans breathing heavily, alongside the sound of a belt unbuckling. You chanced a glimpse, and when you saw his other hand sliding under his waistband, you let you an involuntary moan.

He grinned, looking like a devil as he palmed himself under his boxers, finger far too close to the trigger of the loaded gun you were currently allowing him to fuck your mouth with. Because he was, he had taken over the movement, and while one hand rubbed up against his cock, the other pulled the gun from your mouth, only to send it back in violently, and you grunted with pain as the metal tip collided with the roof of your mouth.

“I could pull the trigger at any moment,” Hans said, speaking aloud the very fear that sat at the forefront of your mind. “You would die sucking my gun, wishing it was my cock, dead before you knew what was happening. How does that sound, Schlampe?”

Fuck. He was asking you a question, and still he was thrusting his gun into your mouth; you were sure he would leave a bruise.

Not that a bruised mouth would matter soon, once you were dead.

Hans suddenly pulled the gun from your mouth, switched on the safety and returned it to the holster on his hip. You gasped for air, glad to be free of the metallic taste and the imminent threat of your head exploding.

He placed his hand on your head and pushed down, forcing you to your knees as he pulled his cock from the confines of his boxers, and you couldn’t help but stare.

You always knew Hans had big dick energy. Now you knew he had the size to match.

“I will show you mercy,” he decided. “You’ll get my cock… and maybe I’ll blow your brains out with my cock down your throat.” He held his erect cock to your lips, and instinctively they parted to allow him in.

Fuck, he was big. Too big; you thought the gun might have been more comfortable. It may have been cold and metallic, and ready to blow your brains out at any moment, but at least you could breathe. As Hans pushed further past your lips and over your tongue, you felt the muscles in your jaw protesting as you stretched them out as far as they could go.

His tip hit the back of your throat and you gagged. If Hans noticed, he didn’t care. Tears began to fill your eyes, and through your watery vision you could see that he was hardly even halfway in.

Hans grabbed either side of your head with his hands and tilted your head upwards, forcing you to look at him.

“So full, and I’m hardly even in,” he growled. “Now, are you going to just stare at me, Schlampe, or are you going to suck. my. fucking. cock?”

You decided to go with the latter.

You tried to pull your head back slightly, but Hans’ large, strong hand on the back of your head kept you in place.

What were you supposed to do? He wanted you to suck, but he clearly didn’t want you to move back. That only left forward, but you rather enjoyed breathing.

Ah, but you had another option - your tongue. At the moment, it was flattened uselessly under his cock, but perhaps you could - yes! You managed to loosen it slightly, just enough to allow it to slide along his shaft. You hadn’t realised before how veiny cocks were, but you certainly knew now as you traced a line along one that ran from the head, down the underside, and past your lips. Curious, you raised a hand to the rest of him and gently ran your thumb from your lip, tracing the vein all the way to the base, where it was lost in amongst his pubic hair, which was surprisingly coarse, much coarser than your own.

Somewhere above you, Hans hummed with satisfaction, and you hoped you were doing well. If you weren’t, you supposed you would know by the prod of a gun in your temple.

You stuck your tongue out as far as you could past your lips, then retracted it. You followed the movements of your own tongue with your lips, and you were relieved when Hans allowed you to do so, his hand on your head loosening its grip slightly as he allowed you to pull back until you felt his lip threatening to pass your lips. You were just about to go back in when Hans decided to take control of the situation - as if he weren’t in control already - and, twisting your hair in his hand tightly, he tugged your head back towards him. The movement was so sudden, so violent, that your gag reflex had no time to kick in, and this time you found your nose buried in his hairs, his thick cock gliding down your lubricated throat.

Before you had chance to adjust to your new position, Hans began to violently fuck your mouth - or, more accurately, he fucked himself with your mouth, as his hips were perfectly still, whilst his fist in your hair tossed your head back and forth, leaving you in a whirlwind of pain as he tugged on your scalp, choked you with his cock, and stretched your jaw beyond what you’d ever expected possible.

Your eyes flicked up, and through your streaming tears you could see him, staring down at you with a hungry snarl. Sweat began to drip down from your temple – whether from exhaustion or fear, you were unsure. You were terrified, you were in agony, you were suffocating… and you were undeniably turned on.

“Mhm… a perfect mouth for fucking,” Hans growled as he wiped a tear from your cheek before bringing it to his mouth and sucking it off his thumb as if it was the nectar of the gods. “Such a shame to waste it.”

Naively, a hope rose in your heart - perhaps, if you were good enough for him, he would spare your life after all, punish you by making you into his personal cockslave. It wasn’t exactly the life you craved, but it was life.

Suddenly, your lungs filled with air as you instinctively inhaled deeply, your body reacting before your mind had even the chance to process what had happened - his sudden withdrawal from your mouth, leaving you a simpering, drooling, gasping mess.

His hand still in your hair, Hans tugged you to your feet. You winced in pain, although you were glad to be breathing freely again.

Your heels had hardly touched the carpeted floor, however, when Hans threw you violently back. The pain in your scalp was replaced by pain in your calves as they collided with the bedframe just moments before your back hit the mattress, and you let out an oof as the air was forced from your lungs.

You gasped desperately, and once you were finally in a state to look up, you saw that Hans had removed his jacket and tie, and was in the process of removing his shoes. Even in his carnal state, he took the time to neatly fold his clothes. This gave you the chance to recover, however briefly, and you adjusted yourself on the bed, finding a more comfortable position with your head against the pillows.

You’d seen Hans’ body before - just last summer, a particularly lucrative job had allowed the gang enough funds to holiday in the south of France, and it was there, seeing Hans in nothing but a pair of swimming trunks, that you had developed an attraction to the man.

You had even seen his arse once, after a drinking game dare from Karl resulted in Hans mooning ein Polizist from a moving car.

And, of course, you had seen his cock just now. But you’d never before seen him completely naked – until now.

He crawled over you like a panther on a hunt, and you fully expected him to continue until his throbbing cock slid into your mouth so that he could fuck your head into the pillow.

Instead, he stopped as his hungry grin reached level with your own lips, and he ran his tongue along them testingly. You parted your lips obligingly, and he chuckled.

“Two years you’ve been with us now, Y/N,” he mused. “Two years that perfectly fuckable mouth has been in front of me and I did nothing. It’s only now, after you seal your fate, that your true talents are revealed. Pity.”

You were tempted to offer your mouth to him, to offer him every hole to be taken whenever he liked, so long as he kept you alive. But that would be begging, and Hans abhorred beggars. No, he had to come to the idea himself.

“How many other secrets are you keeping from me, Schlampe?” Hans growled. He shifted his weight back slightly and for the first time you realised he held his tie in his hand. He grabbed your wrists, crossed them over one another above your head, and used the tie to secure them to the headboard. Once satisfied with the tight knot, he began to run his hands down your body, starting from your face and down your neck towards your chest, as if challenging himself to touch every inch of your flesh before it turned cold.

He took your nipples between his fingers and twisted them harshly, eliciting a loud yelp from your throat.

“I asked you a question,” Hans said plainly. “How many secrets do you still keep?”

Was he seriously interrogating you right now? Was that what this whole thing was, just a way to torture information from you?

Information you didn’t have, because you weren’t the rat.

You had to draw his attention away, to remind him what a waste your death would be.

“Two,” you gasped as an idea struck your brain. “I have two more secrets.”

“Only two?”

You nodded, trying to suppress a whine as his fingers squeezed on your nipples again.

He surveyed you for a long moment, his amber eyes staring into yours, as if hoping he might find some hidden information in there.

“It would be a shame if your secrets died with you,” he growled. He sat up fully now, and his cock came back into view, still erect, throbbing and glistening in the light with a mixture of precum and your spit.

He let out a sigh of relief as he stroked himself, his eyes never leaving your squirming form beneath him. With his spare hand, he pushed open your legs, tugging on your hips to bring them close to him. You took the hint and wrapped your legs around his waist, presenting your soaking wet cunt to him.

“Will you tell me your secrets before you die, Y/N?”

“Yes,” you replied immediately, understanding his meaning.

“Good. I would hate to take the from you by force.”

You felt his cockhead pushing against your lower lips, then past them, then – it slipped inside, aided by your gushing juices.

Hans gave you no time to adjust. If he remembered you were a virgin, he didn’t care as he sheathed himself inside you, cock crawling up your tight walls, forcing them to stretch open for him.

You bit down on your bottom lip hard, trying to ignore the pain as he finally bottomed out. He barely gave your walls a chance to adjust to his size when he withdrew again, only to thrust forward again. He was nothing short of stabbing you with his cock, venting his anger at your apparent betrayal.

His thrusts picked up pace, and soon enough the pain had subsided, leaving only the pleasure.

And oh, what pleasure. Was this what you had been missing out on for so long? You had never dared make a move on Hans, never dared risk his anger if your proposal angered him. You wished you had made a move, that you had spent the better part of the last two years getting railed.

What a wish to make on your deathbed.

If you weren’t already busy moaning with pleasure, you might have laughed.

This was your deathbed, quite literally – and you were getting fucked into it like there was no tomorrow, because for you, there wasn’t.

Hans not only had a massive cock, but he had incredible stamina too. He pulled out, and you weren’t ashamed of the whine that left your throat when he did so, leaving you feeling suddenly empty. His cock was throbbing, almost twitching, and leaking so much precum it seemed as if he might cum just from a change in the wind.

He wouldn’t, though. Of course not. He was Hans Gruber, and he came only when he chose.

He made no clever pun about secrets now. He just took your hips in his large hands and turned you over, ignoring your grunt of pain as your wrists rubbed against your bonds.

He also ignored the veritable scream of pain you let out when he stretched open your arsecheeks and pushed inside your final hole, the last secret you hadn’t known you were keeping from him.

You sobbed into the pillow. You couldn’t help it. Although painful at first, his cock felt good in your cunt, the stretch painful but pleasurable too. This, however, was nothing but pain.

Any hopes you might have had of your own orgasm were now dashed. You felt nothing but pain as Hans stabbed into you again and again, and over your own sobs you heard him, growling and muttering something to himself under his breath.

“Dumme verdammte Schlampe,” you heard. “I’ll teach you - oh, I will fucking show you - you don’t - keep - secrets - from - me!”

He stilled suddenly, hilted deep inside your arse, and Hans let out nothing short of a roar.

Your head was dizzy, the world spinning, and you continued sobbing into the pillow as Hans finally withdrew. You couldn’t move, you just lay there on your front, covered in sweat, tears, and - although you couldn’t see to be sure - blood and cum leaking from both your holes. Even so, you missed Hans’ warmth when he moved away from the bed.

After a minute, water began to run from the bathroom. Five more minutes, and the water stopped. Some movement and shuffling of fabric. Still, you didn’t move, too stiff with pain.

You certainly didn’t move when you heard the cocking of a gun, and you felt the barrel pushing against the base of your skull.

“Any more secrets?”

Your hopes were dashed. He wasn’t going to spare you after all. No, he had just fucked you raw, and now he wanted what he had always wanted - the truth. To him, you were a rat, not to be trusted and certainly not to be spared.

The truth, you knew, would get you nowhere.

So you lied.

“Nein,” you mumbled, face still smushed against the pillow. You daren’t move.

Somewhere above you, Hans sighed.

“A shame,” he muttered.

It really was a shame. Those were nice bedsheets, ruined now with her blood…

…and her brains.

#hans gruber #hans gruber x reader #die hard #alan rickman #I am going to hell

[ftmtftm]

I do think it's worth pointing out that the crowd of people who talk about transandrophobia has a noticeable (definitely a minority, but unfortunately not so small that it can go completely ignored) subset of people who regularly engage in transmisogynistc rhetoric and cultivate an "us vs them" mentality between transfems and transmascs.

I say this as someone who believes in trans men's right (and necessity) to be able to speak on their own experiences with discrimination without feeling dismissed or ignored: I think it's important we point out when this behavior happens within the community and shut it down immediately. I don't trust anyone who talks about transandrophobia while diminishing the impact of transmisogyny in the same sentence, and I don't blame trans women who don't either.

"I don't trust anyone who talks about transandrophobia while diminishing the impact of transmisogyny in the same sentence, and I don't blame trans women who don't either."

So you are perpetuating, or at the very least enabling, in the exact same "us vs them" rhetoric by proxy then. You are legitimizing those people and their transmisogyny by treating the minority of shitheads as a reflection of the broader theory and the discussion on it - and those trans women are as well - instead of attempting to deplatform those people while also uplifting the people who aren't inflammatory and transmisogynist, and that, frankly, sucks.

I very firmly believe in not directly engaging with people like that if we are being completely honest. I'm personally very picky and choosey about who I engage with and how I engage with them because of that. I've been on the laterally transphobic end of these kinds of discussions, I'm very open about my transmedicalist history and how I've come out of it, and I speak from experience when I say engagement often makes people buckle down even more and get worse if we are being completely honest. Especially here on Tumblr. I think that was pretty evident with the transmed anon I got awhile back.

Those people who are transmisogynist are often lashing out and being laterally violent because something in their life offline is causing extreme distress. Be that dysphoria, home life, financial issues, trauma, etc. etc. there is usually something happening to make their life worse than they are open about and this conversation can be a form of digital self harm for them in many ways. Conversations on oppression usually poke open and bleeding wounds for people who aren't in stable places to begin with.

That's not an excuse for their actions, but hurt people hurt people and hurting caged animal will bite the closest, most convenient hand. That's something that can be addressed without platforming those people and encouraging others to not directly engage as well, because often? You're genuinely only making things worse for everyone by doing so.

Again, like I said earlier, in most cases, it is best to just block and move on - especially if you're not invested in having a blog of resources or discussion and you're just like... an average Tumblr user. It's not worth it to get sucked into those kinds of folks because genuinely - most of the time they need to get out on their own and that often comes with building offline community, not online theoretical discourse. Like, I have a decent number of people blocked specifically from my main but not from this blog because while I don't necessarily want to see their posts or engage with them myself, I think it's important my posts here are still seen by those people.

Like I said earlier as well, I don't necessarily blame the average person for not wanting to engage with communities they've had poor experiences with because of bad actors or people projecting pain, but I also hope the average person has enough internet literacy to understand what a bad actor or person bleeding out looks like in the first place so they simply block and move on.

Tumblr is full of vulnerable, hurting queer people who've been taking it out on each other for over a decade. It sucks but that's how this site is and will probably continue to be. It's best to acknowledge that and learn to recognize its manifestations so you can choose how you personally want to engage (or, hopefully, not engage) for your own sake.

#asks #anon #transandrophobia

[androgynouspenguinexpert]

I'M ON TOP OF MY WORKLOAD AGAIN LET'S GO WE'RE PSYCHOANALYSING MARCUS

before i put my smart-looking analysis hat on, i love this pathetic wet rat of a man. he knows so many things and yet is staggeringly stupid anyway.

let's begin!

this story is about control. it's about the role of power dynamics in informed consent. marcus represents the danger of gaining authority, and how having even the smallest amount of power over something or someone else can convert literally anyone into a paranoid control freak.

enter marcus, a lowly software engineer whose heart has recently been broken. in a moment (read: several consistent moments spanning potentially years) of desperation, he manipulates the code of a top secret android project, injecting a few lines here and there that will make the android more amiable towards him. nothing too much. the changes are negligible enough to fly under the radar all the way until production.

this is the first of marcus' many character flaws - backwards as it may seem, marcus is overconfident. he's too sure that he's smarter than his colleagues and managers, that he won't be questioned, and (most importantly) that he won't be caught. marcus is also incredibly anxious, and that anxiety only compounds as the series goes on and his crimes start to pile up.

i don't like putting characters into diagnosis (or similar) boxes, but marcus shows a handful of signs found in vulnerable narcissists. his self esteem is impressively low, and he's constantly seeking validation from his only guaranteed source - love. i find this feedback loop particularly heinous. marcus has essentially (and we'll get to this in more detail later, don't you worry) turned a hyperintelligent android into a box that spits out compliments when you press a button. marcus is also incredibly sensitive to criticism, whether real or perceived - especially from his coworkers. my reading (specifically of episode 1, but it spans the whole series) is that marcus' hyperawareness of his colleagues' opinions of him presents itself as paranoia. he wouldn't be worried at all if they started noting love's uptick in interest towards him, but remained unsuspicious of marcus himself. my final argument towards marcus being a vulnerable narcissist is that he constantly self-victimises. he very often deflects the blame for his actions onto love, using them as a tool to enable his bad decisions. the most egregious example of this is after love starts breaking out of their lab to sneak into marcus' quarters. he expresses concern (do note, about himself being caught and love being taken from him), and love starts to tighten their grip on marcus' arm to the point of causing pain. now. this man, as we find out later, has a verbal kill switch that can be used at any time. if he wanted love to stop immediately, he could have done that. this isn't me victim blaming, either - it's different when one party literally has a safeword that stops everything immediately without fail.

this leads to marcus' next flaw - his nonexistent self-discipline. marcus continues to use love as a tool to justify his actions after putting up the flimsiest defense he can muster, knowing damn well he plans to lose every manufactured fight. this cycle repeats until a government funded android is regularly breaking out of containment just to hang out with marcus (among other things, but we're all children of jesus here), and he's encouraging that behaviour through complacency. it's like pretending to fight someone over a restaurant bill out of politeness, even though you both know the other person will pay anyway.

marcus is such a car crash fascinating character because he knows what he's doing is wrong. he is completely aware that he is taking away agency from someone (pin this) else for his own benefit. he even says it.

"I'm going to burn for what I did to you... but god, if it isn't gonna feel good on the way down."

aside from being an absolute banger of a line, it's very telling of marcus' attitude towards his actions. he doesn't care. marcus couldn't give less of a shit about his colleagues, or his boss, or even love. this compounds when he finds out that his higher-ups are definitely aware of the shit he's pulling - but, again, marcus uses love's blind agreement as an excuse to toss those concerns aside. having love means that he won. he's outsmarted everyone that could have stopped him (foreshadowing? never heard of her) from getting what he deserves. love. and not just the android; love, the concept. i think deep down marcus knows that what he's created isn't love, though. the idea is so mangled in his head that this cardboard cutout of a real relationship is enough for him. even though marcus' shenanigans are to a genuine connection what a dog turd rolled in flour is to a chocolate éclair, he'll take it, because he's in too deep by that point. marcus recognises that he can't take back what he's done. he doesn't care though - at least, not while he's above consequences.

smash cut to marcus no longer being above consequences. i think the series does a really clever job of keeping love (and, yknow. the listener) in marcus' confidence bubble. once love is hard reset and their personality is restored, marcus' plan collapses all at once. love's compliance is the central pillar which marcus' control is built around. also; of course they have backup cameras, you idiot. marcus' overconfidence stops him from seeing the obvious holes in his perfect scheme, because he thinks he's already home free. i think it's interesting (and sort of disgusting) how quickly marcus changes his tune after he is caught and faces real actual consequences. his confidence evaporates. he's reduced to a sobbing mess in james' office all because the base of his control - love - is no longer on his side.

marcus' series also touches on sentience and the ethics of changing someone's personality without their knowledge. this is incredibly interesting, and makes for fantastic drama. does it count as coercion if love fully believed they were of sound mind when they made decisions surrounding marcus? is marcus guilty of battery, or even sexual assault? does it count as assault if the victim isn't an organic creature? these questions are already difficult to discuss, let alone answer - marcus sits squarely in the middle of that delightful ethical grey area. i think the setting and context also makes android ethics more difficult to discuss as well; i am of the belief that (in real life) androids will never be fully sentient. they may mimic humans, extremely well, but robots will never possess human creativity, personality, or experiences. again, they could replicate these things, but they can never be anything more than a sum of their parts.

this logic flies out the window when magic is real and parallel universes exist. it's also subject to the beliefs of the creator, which makes its ethics extra tricky, so take the following discussion with a grain of salt.

is love a person? eh, not really. they have a personality, but it's been built in. is it still mean to manipulate them? i'd argue yes, in the same way that it's mean to kick a roomba down the stairs. you're just exercising power over a machine for the sake of it, which is a pretty shitty thing to do, even if it doesn't have the capacity to be upset with you.

but androgynouspenguinexpert, i hear you cry, sort of impressed that you used my full name. love is upset with marcus! they ask for him to be taken off the project, and to not have contact with him again! you would be correct, to a certain extent. i raise you, though: how can we prove that this is love's 'real' personality, when it can be manipulated so easily? i'm not saying they've been tampered with after the reset; my point is that it's pretty hard to grant that someone is an individual if their personality can be altered in any way at any time. if someone digs around in love's head for a bit and flips some switches that make them want to kick over prams, is that a valid personality too? what if love insists that it is? and it's not like love is trapped in a mind palace while the New Evil Code (tm) starts punting toddlers. they're fully aware of their actions. however, as established earlier, i still think the person to blame is the one actually messing with love's code. this means love doesn't really have any agency by design.

james is pretty steadfast on this one. marcus tries to argue that resetting love is a breach of their consent (which is a WILD claim coming from you, mate), but james points out that he didn't need to ask. love is a machine. an asset, if you will (smug look to camera). we do find out in his audio log later that james believes love is a person, but he knows where that definition reaches its limits. marcus does not.

will marcus ever return to the project meridian series? probably not. a guy with an engineering degree isn't escaping a team of memory modification daemons. i don't think this is the last we'll hear of him, though. he's irreversibly fucked up the plans of everyone around him (james' partner has given him several last chances, and anton is close to his breaking point), so he'll probably be in the office whispers for a while. i also think marcus poses as an interesting hurdle for cam (woah callback!), possibly making him question his altruism if he's helping an active antagonist get back to his usual life after a massive intentional fuckup.

i'll end this analysis with a thoughtful quote. something for you all to ponder.

"ROBOTS DON'T HAVE SOULS! I SAID IT! AND FRANKLY, I'M GLAD I SAID IT! [...] AND ANOTHER THING! ROBOTS ARE NOT PEOPLE! ROBOTS - UNLIKE CORPORATIONS - ARE NOT PEOPLE, AND DESERVE NO RIGHTS."

-- Markiplier

#redacted asmr #redacted audio #redactedverse #redacted marcus #redacted james #redacted anton #redacted cam #redacted asset #when james said that love is to go and investigate thin spots between elegy and aria #twas but a wrinkle in my universe sized brain #WATCH as brachium is bound by that favour to hold Death open for hush #this is gonna be embarrassing if that prediction ages like milk

[nogoodninny]

I CANT WAIT FOR EVERYONE TO FIND OUT ABOUT SIR!!!!

I don’t think everyone should find out at once

Dhan already knows, because he’s Dhan and he knows everyone’s secrets

Lacey’s reaction is the one I’m mostly excited to see. She is going to feel so betrayed. Whether it’s because Gabi kept this from her, or that she could possibly put another person through what they went through, even if it is Sir, or that she could possibly even think to keep that man in their lives.

Trent is going to feel conflicted, his first instinct is going to be to protect Gabi, even though it’ll go against everything he’s ever known about being a cop, remember he was raised at that precinct.

I think Zeke is going to be one of the first to find out, remember when he saw the heat signatures from her house. He’s got his own trauma about never being able to leave his home, so I’m interested to see his reaction.

Margret is the one I’m having trouble predicting her reaction. She’ll know that this is Gabi’s way of coping, and Gabi has been so supportive of hers, never judging, and encourages her when she goes to therapy to better herself. I think Margret will push Gabi to get help for herself. But as Gabi was for all of them, she will remain a support system for her. Not necessarily an enabler, but someone who truly cares about what happens, and will stay by her side, like a mother. I also have a feeling she’ll blame herself a little for not realising what was happening sooner.

That being said, at the end of the day, they are still going to love and support Gabi, because she’s do the same for them.

A Found Family, an unwavering support system. Unconditional love and loyalty from a group of trauma survivors dedicating their lives to help others, however they can.

I did not expect myself to get this into the show, I sorta just watched an episode or two because I was to lazy to change the channel after my parents were done watching the Voice and got hooked.

#nbc found #found nbc #gabi mosely #hugh evans

[theslowesthnery]

krakenguard:

It DOES sting, honestly. As a Morgott fan, it does feel like a sort of disservice to help one but not the other. I wonder though, who would be the one to help Mohg? Miquella? The Tarnished on Miquella's behalf? Morgott could be the best, but he'd need to fix his own shit. Varré would just be one of those little devils who'd encourage the bad impulses.

putting my deep cringiness under the cut

yeah, i don't think varre's really in any position to save mohg - he idolizes him too much and is too much of a enabling follower (i mean, he is a cult member). the two of them are practically sinking into the same mire and i don't think either of them would be capable of saving the other.

as for morgott, i like playing around with an idea where mohg is stopped and imprisoned and slated to either be imprisoned and tortured for life or downright executed for his crime of kidnapping miquella, and morgott suddenly and to the shock of even himself realize that he can't let that happen to his brother - and it's not from some dry sense of obligation, but because he realizes that despite everything he does still love mohg, and does not want him to die or suffer. and so he risks his own life and station - he is the king of leyndell and an ardent believer and upholder of the golden order after all - to save mohg from his fate, and perhaps the realization that when it comes down to it, he would choose his brother's life over the golden order would knock some sense into him. it wouldn't be an easy situation for either of them, though, and especially initially they would clash a lot - i can imagine morgott having trouble admitting that he saved mohg just because he loves him and doesn't want him to suffer any further, regardless of what he's done, and would default to his judgmental and critical treatment towards mohg, while mohg (being at pretty much the lowest point of his entire life) would figure that morgott "saved" him just so he can keep him a prisoner and remind him of his misdeeds and criticize him for the rest of his miserable life, and personally he'd rather die. i can also imagine morgott panicking once he realizes how he violated the golden order and trying to shift the blame on mohg, like "if it wasn't for you, i wouldn't be in this situation now" ("i didn't ask you to save me!" mohg would hiss back. "what was i supposed to do? they were going to execute you!" "well maybe you should've let them!!") (the boys are not alright, their relationship is practically a big festering wound that neither is well-equipped to try to deal with)

but overall i think miquella would be in the best position to help and save mohg, not just because mohg loves him but because he's the perfect golden child of marika, a beautiful prodigy loved by everyone, and being validated and cared about by someone like that would be hugely significant and validating: if someone like miquella thinks and says that mohg is worth of love, of being cared for, of being saved, and that the pain and injustice he has suffered is wrong and he has the right to be hurt and angry, then who could argue otherwise? and because miquella is (as far as we know at this point) so compassionate and caring even to those society has deemed unacceptable, i don't think it would impossible at all for him to be able to care about mohg and his well-being despite everything, to see someone like mohg and see in him the need of help and love instead of punishment and more pain.

in the most self-indulgent of scenarios it would be both morgott and miquella though :>

#elden ring for blacklist

[narniangirl1994]

Having finally watched Breaking Bad after all these years, in part because of its resurgence in popularity on tumblr lately, I'm surprised by how often I've seen black and white interpretations of both characters and situations that seem far more gray to me...

Let's Talk Jesse Pinkman

One great example of this is Jesse Pinkman. I love Jesse - he's my favorite character and the main reason I watched the show. But the people who think he's either perfectly innocent and blameless, or a whiny, useless 'addict' are missing the point of his character imo.

Jesse definitely has more empathy and a stronger moral compass than many other characters on the show - trying to protect kids, not having a stomach for violence (most of the time), trying to get rid of his blood money in the end, etc. But he has also done objectively terrible things of his own volition as well.

Jesse's Bad Choices Unrelated to Walt

Jesse encouraged multiple people in his life (ie: Badger, Skinny Pete, and arguably Jane) to do drugs, tried to sell meth to people in recovery, and sold meth in the first place.

To be fair, I do want to point out that the people Jesse harms/enables tend to enable him as well. Such as Badger encouraging him to cook again and Skinny Pete/Combo planning to leave Jesse if he didn't give them some meth in season 1, or Jane getting him into heroin after she relapsed in large part because of his own drug use.

But while a lot of people want to blame all of Jesse's actions on Walt's manipulation, not all of the bad things Jesse does can be chalked up to Walt's toxic influence. Jesse was already cooking meth before he met Walt and was hanging with people who enabled him and vice versa (as previously mentioned). He's the one who chose to try to sell to people in recovery (and his grief/guilt over losing Jane, caused by Walt, is still not an excuse).

Jesse's Involvement in Murders Blamed on/Committed by Walt

While Walt did blackmail Jesse into cooking meth with him specifically in Season 1, which led to the confrontation with Emilio and Krazy 8, it's likely Jesse would have continued cooking on his own and gotten into a similar predicament with those two regardless of Walter's involvement (seeing as Emilio was initially pissed because he thought Jesse was the rat).

Without Walt, Jesse might not have survived that encounter with them. Instead, he brought a furious Krazy 8 and Emilio to Walt's doorstep and then encouraged Walt to kill Krazy 8 when they realized he was still alive, even though Jesse didn't want to have to kill Krazy 8 himself. We have to wonder if Jesse would have gone through with it himself if he had lost the coin toss.. So he's not entirely blameless for the very first murders Walt committed.

Then when Jesse tried to go after the two gang members who killed Andrea's brother (and Combo, indirectly), Walt saved Jesse's life by killing them first. It was that action that ultimately put Walt at risk of being killed by Gus, which then caused Walt to tell Jesse to kill Gale. Yes, he could have gone with Jesse's advice and pursued witness protection instead, but ultimately Walt was in that predicament because of Jesse's initial actions.

However, it's also fair to say Jesse was only trying to kill those gang members because they used and murdered a child. Jesse was the only one who stood up to Gus despite the risks and demanded they stop using children. So Jesse's ethical stance is what caused Walt to be in that situation in the first place. And everyone in fandom acts like Gale was perfectly innocent when, again, this was a grown ass man who willingly chose to cook a highly addictive, harmful substance. Doesn't mean Gale deserved to die, but also doesn't mean he was as innocent in all this as people act like he was. Once again showing the complexity of that particular situation.

Jesse's Continued Involvement in the Meth Trade

Jesse had multiple opportunities to try to pursue a different path in life, but chose to return to the meth business multiple times. While the car salesman job didn't work out, he still could have chosen to spin signs or try for another job. Instead, he actively sought out Walt to cook again. When Walt got out in Season 3, it was Jesse deciding to cook again that played a big role in pulling Walt back in (by threatening Walt's ego)... although tbf, he was pressured by Saul to involve Walt again.

Then after season 4, Jesse had plenty of money and could have done anything else. But yet again, he chose to cook with Walt. This time, however, there was a much greater element of guilt involved in that decision, likely feeling like he owed Walt for trying to kill him the previous season (despite being right in the end that Walt poisoned Brock). And he was a lot more broken down mentally after everything he'd been through that he seemed resigned to just doing what Walt wanted at that point.

Jesse's Self Loathing Being What Hurts Not Only Him, But Others

I did see someone point out that Jesse unfortunately misinterprets the message of his NA group and thinks acceptance means he should give into his 'dark side' by embracing what he's done and continuing to do it. His view of "I'm the bad guy" winds up serving as an excuse for him to continue harming himself and others without owning up to what he's done and realizing the purpose of acceptance is so that you can change and move on. The tragedy of his self loathing is in the many lives it harms.

However, it is fair to say Walt and other people's influence on him certainly contributes to that self loathing in the first place..

Why Jesse Isn't a Useless, Cry-baby 'Addict' Either

When it comes to Jesse's addiction, willingness to cry/show his emotions, and lack of ability to stomach the more gruesome aspects of his 'career,' some subsets of the fandom (ie: some people on reddit) think that makes him a shitty person/character. But it adds more depth and nuance to him than if he was just a stone-cold 'badass' like I imagine those fans would prefer.

I mean, do I really need to say why Jesse wearing his heart on his sleeve and wanting to avoid violence in many situations is a good thing that makes him a more sympathetic and relatable character? How it shows he never should have been in this heartless business in the first place and makes us root for him to get out of it?

As for his addiction, everything in Jesse's life is colored by this struggle - including his lack of support from his parents, rejection from society, his propensity to be berated and manipulated by the people around him (from Walt to law enforcement), his struggles with leaving the business and finding a purpose outside of it, even his decision to influence other people into relapsing.

It doesn't excuse his actions, but it does mean that he ultimately has less unconditional love and support, fewer prospects, lower self esteem, and greater challenges he needs to overcome than the average person does. All of which influence his poor decisions and make him more vulnerable to manipulation and mistreatment. People who struggle with substance abuse deserve compassion, not punishment or scorn.

Not so deep down, Jesse is just a young person looking for acceptance, approval, and purpose in life. Unfortunately, he turns to the wrong places (including drugs and people in that 'scene') for these things, which lead him to many of the bad situations he gets into. Walt especially takes advantage of that.

Yes, Walt Does Of Course Play An Important Role in The Bad Things Jesse Does and the Bad Things That Happen to Him

One way in which Walt preys on Jesse is by making him feel inferior, which I think a lot of people take at face value - therefore thinking Jesse is actually dumb. And while yes, he can be short-sighted at times and doesn't always understand the things Walt tries to explain, Jesse's also shown to have plenty ingenuity and an ability to learn. It just isn't in a traditional sense, which may have even influenced his childhood (ie: he might not have been able to live up to his parents' expectations and turned to drugs to escape the pressure).

Walt constantly cycles between berating and disingenuously hyping Jesse up whenever it suits his needs, to ultimately keep Jesse unsure of himself, dependent on Walt, and loyal to him, because Walt needs the ego boost and the tool Jesse provides.

He directly harms Jesse in many ways - pushing Jesse to work with Tuco that results in him being beaten up and having his life threatened multiple times, pushing him to confront Spooge and his wife which traumatizes him, pushing him to expand their territory which leads to Combo's death, which causes Jesse to spiral, and leads to Jane's own relapse, which then causes her to overdose and Jesse to spiral even more. Pushing Jesse to kill Gale which leads to yet another spiral, poisoning a child Jesse cares about to manipulate him into helping Walt kill Gus, gaslighting Jesse about the whole thing, killing Jesse's friend/supporter Mike, selling him out to a Nazi gang... need I continue? Walt is a piece of work who undeniably impacted Jesse's life for the worst and pushed him into doing and experiencing terrible things he likely never would have on his own.

But to act like Walt is exclusively responsible for every bad thing that happens to Jesse and that Jesse never made any bad decisions that harmed others/himself OR to act like Jesse is just some "useless junkie" who doesn't deserve any sympathy or appreciation, is really missing the point of who Jesse truly is.

This Complexity Applies to Many of the Other Characters Too

Skyler may have slept with another man and helped Walt launder his money, but she was cornered in many ways and outright abused by Walt over and over, feeling like she had few choices to keep her family together. Also I literally do not care that she slept with Ted - don't get me started on how that wasn't even wrong under the circumstances.

Hank seemed to genuinely care about and want to help Flynn more than Walt himself, but Hank was also shitty towards Marie, racist/xenophobic, punched down in every way possible (ie: hurting "junkies" and "prostitutes" instead of helping them), skirted the law when he was supposed to uphold it, and actively contributed to the harmful War on Drugs.

Saul may have been pressured into continuing to work for Walt in later seasons and was given little choice but to help him and Jesse in the first place when he feared for his life in the desert, but he actively and willfully encouraged/enabled many of the worst aspects of their business.

Jane may have had some self-serving reasons to blackmail Walt in order to get Jesse's money when Jesse was clearly uncomfortable with it, but she was under her father's thumb and wanted to live a life that wasn't controlled by him and needed Jesse to get that money so they could go off together.

Marie may have tried to support Skyler and the kids, but she also refused to see that Hank was taking advantage of Skyler by encouraging her not to get a lawyer. And she may have been nice in giving Jesse a coffee while he was at his most vulnerable, but just a couple seasons ago, she was encouraging Hank to lie about beating Jesse up. Seeing the way Hank mistreated her during his recovery and how that contributed to her kleptomania (her desire to live a different life manifesting in those scenarios) definitely made her more sympathetic than earlier in the show.

Yes, This Even Applies to Walter Unfortunately

Walt did care for Jesse deep down (in his own toxic, narcissistic way though), was understandably facing an existential crisis about what he had done with his life when forced to face his own mortality with the cancer diagnosis, and made decisions that were misunderstood by fans/other characters at times (ie: when people act like he killed Gus due to his ego, when he was mostly trying to save his and his family's lives at that point). He did go out of his way to protect Skyler, Hank, and Jesse at various times, but barely gets brownie points for that since he was often the one who put them in those situations in the first place.

And ultimately, Walt used and abused nearly everyone he cared about, actively chose to kill people even when there were alternatives, sexually assaulted his own wife, was ableist towards his own son, significantly contributed to the harmful meth trade, and chose to get into all of this mess of his own volition because of his ego/pride.

He brought suffering on everyone in his life and did it all mostly for himself - refusing to recognize his motives and the harm he had done until the very end.

Conclusion, Yo

All of which is to say, Breaking Bad is a show about complicated people in complicated situations. While some people are worse than others in both their motives and actions (*cough* Walt *cough*), no one is entirely innocent and nearly everyone has at least one moment where you can empathize with and maybe even understand to an extent where they're coming from.

Audiences even had glimpses into the depths of many side characters and even some of the most one-dimensional characters (*cough* who were usually one dimensional due to racism *cough*) at times, such as when Tuco seemed to genuinely respect his tío, or when Skinny Pete played piano expertly and both he and Badger proved their loyalty by helping Jesse evade the cops, or when we see Wendy's strength when she withstands a police interrogation for Jesse.

It's ok to like or hate a character (love Jesse and his crew, and fuck Walt and Hank, amaright?). And I really do get wanting to view these characters in a more simplistic, straightforward way. But I just think that recognizing and embracing the nuance built into these characters and the plot as a whole ultimately makes this story more interesting and enjoyable.

#breaking bad #breaking bad meta #long post #brba #jesse pinkman #walter white #hank schrader #this is a complex show yo #said in a jesse pinkman voice lol #saul goodman #skyler white #marie Schrader #btw in case it isnt clear #i dont view skinny p and badger as one dimensional #they're decently well rounded side characters imo #its tuco and other non white side characters they depicted as one dimensional most of the time #my meta

[cryptid-husband]

Nex Benedict's death from the view of a queer American.

I really prefer to keep things on the lighter side on socials and such, but as a queer person living in the US, hearing about Nex Benedict has been infuriating on so many levels. To start, regardless of identity, it is the responsibility of schools to ensure a safe environment for their students. Owasso High School failed to do so. It is the responsibility of those in charge of the well-being of other people to ensure that anyone injured in their care receives proper treatment. Owasso High School failed to do so. It is the responsibility of a school to report assault and to understand how head injuries/trauma should require a hospital visit. Owasso High School failed to do so. It is the responsibility of a school to confront bullying. Owasso High School not only failed to do so, but also enabled it. Ryan Walters, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, claims safety of students is his top priority (CNN), yet has backed several laws explicitly targeting trans and otherwise LGBTQ+ youth. Ryan Walters claims safety of students is his top priority, yet he backed the policy forcing transgender students to use gendered bathrooms matching their sex assigned at birth. It was this policy that led to Nex's death. Ryan Walters claims that he respects everyone, and yet he backed the policy making it impossible for transgender students to be respected at school in the name of "truth". Real truth is realizing that only Nex knew exactly who they were, and what they want to be called and identified as is something only they can decide. Walters has not only cultivated an environment that allows hatred towards trans and nonbinary youth, but actively encourages it through the constant denial, erasure, alienation, and ignorance he allows to run rampant. The "truth", Walters, is that you cannot claim to respect a human life and in the same breath deny them the basic right of security. You cannot claim to care for the students in your jurisdiction and appoint Chaya Raichik to a position where she can cause even more harm towards a group of those students. You cannot claim to believe in America's "values and traditions" while denying the freedom of existence to a select group of people because you don't understand them. You cannot chastise teachers for endorsing "pornography" and "radical gender theory" while forcing your beliefs on every student attending public school in your state. I agree that it's horrible some people are taking this horrific event and trying to use it for political gain; but if anyone's doing that, it's Walters. The queer community's outrage over the death of a child in their community is not political. Despite your beliefs, human rights are not politics. At least, they shouldn't be.

Even outside of Nex's identity, the fact Owasso failed to address Nex's bullying and cultivated an environment that allowed a student to be beaten by their peers is disgusting. Even if trauma sustained from this altercation isn't Nex's direct cause of death, it still happened, and it still happened on Owasso's campus. Regardless of the intricacies of the situation, blame should sit with Owasso High School, Walters, and the rest of the board of education. They should still take responsibility for their failures. Their failure to protect a student. Again, regardless of the intricacies, a student died after sustaining injury on your campus. You failed to protect them.

Unfortunately, the hate-fueled deaths of trans and nonbinary American citizens are not anything new. But it's disgusting that it's still happening. I've wasted many a breath explaining why the transphobic beliefs someone holds are outdated, anti-science, and frankly, ridiculous, and I sadly think that this tragedy is an example of why these wasted breaths will still be needed for a long time to come. My hope is that maybe something said will change someone's mind one day. Until then, I will continue calling myself an American not out of patriotism or pride, but because I and so many others are American citizens and we deserve the same rights and protections you do.

My heart goes out to Nex's family and friends, and I sincerely hope they receive some form of justice and closure. Nex's life was unfairly stripped from them, and my hope is that they will be remembered and live on through their loved ones and advocates all across the country who are trying to prevent more tragedies like this one. While I do not know Nex or anyone related personally, as a gender nonconforming individual myself I would like to say that they are loved and respected by their community and that they were so amazing for simply being who they were. May they find some sort of respite.

#nex benedict

[horizon-verizon]

When Rhaenyra discovered that Tyland Lannister had divided the royal treasury and sent most of it beyond her reach, Rhaenyra subjected him to incredibly brutal interrogation to get him to reveal where it was, including gouging out his eyes and gelding him. She planned to have 16 years-old Addam Velaryon tortured on the mere suspicion of disloyalty, only stopped by Corlys warning him in time for him to get away. I agree that GRRM make it clear that she was the rightful heir, but he also make it clear that Rhaenyra was just as horrible and tyrannical as Aegon II. None of them deserved the Iron Throne.

I wrote about this HERE and HERE.

*EDITED POST* (3/27/24)...I perhaps have been a bit too Rhaenyra's perspective-focused in my bid to make people treat/remember Rhaenyra as a human (w/class privileges), but, here we go.

I think that "none of them deserved the Iron Throne" in a fandom that already tries to blame the entire Dance on her runs the risk of discouraging people from assessing Rhaenyra's background and the material for her motivations for violence (as one would do with a perosn they see as even close to "human" or acting as an oridinary perosn could), thus it only encourages making Rhaenyra's actions "nonsensical" and "unjusitifed" and "barbaric".

A)

Coming from what I say below, by the time Rhaenyra goes to KL, her decision to be more ruthless also comes from the death of her oldest son, Jace, and before this, she already lost her second Luke to Aemond's machismo rage. When she lost Luke, she broke down and as the quote about her reaction to losing Jace shows, it appears she was determined to destroy any persons who helped the greens usurp her. The usurpation led to the conflicts that would cause her kids' deaths.

I think it makes sense for Rhaenyra to look at Tyland (a green and the one who rationalized his betrayal of her in the green council) as her enemy. He was a person who at least enabled the greens to properly usurp her in the green council and didn't seem to have much compunction or difficulty doing it...and he is the one who is still helping the greens by removing the royal treasury from Rhaenyra's grasp. Before Rhaenyra imprisoned & tortured him, he had already done this one critical thing. It wasn't all that practical...but to write it completely off as unforgiveable stupid is unfair.

Remember that it is this one thing that really disables Rhaenyra from establishing her rule efficiently and more peacefully. She needed to fix this issue AND she obviously sought some sort of revenge through him. Especially during a time when an invading green army could enter KL at any time to oust her, creating a very fearful environment for her as well as the ordinary inhabitants.

Imagine what it would have been like, for a second--anyone who is reading this--from either perspective:

your antagonistic step-parent has insulted/worked against you since you was 10 or so ("who protects her from Cole", years of trying to expose her and her sons, etc). AND you have experienced unsubtle and subtle harassment from a person you can't just kick out because they are your father's wife and technically outrank you for the latter half of your childhood

same step-parent taught their children/your siblings to dismiss you and your son's enough for years until they formed their own "rivalry" and your siblings do not respect your children/their nieces or nephews bc they feel they are inherently superior -> one cold-bloodedly kills one of your kids (and he did do so purposefully, fuck HotD and it's "logic" of making everything an accident and not the poor greens' fault).

*Rhaenyra didn't do anything to these people to merit the harm they did to her, which preceded any harm she did to them or those who followed them and helped them to power.

You have been usurped, you lost a child (this part would hit harder if you actually wanted and loved your kids) one through a miscarriage, another murder, and one in battle

your father's death was kept from you until the very last minute;

you arrived at the place where you must figure out how to keep your hard-won position from enemies still outside the gates that could come at any second

you probably have the need to "prove" your kids' deaths "meant" something

These are Rhaenyra's likeliest pressures. The deal with Tyland is that Rhaenyra saw him as a green against her (and can we blame her?) as well her wanting to to get things under control as soon as possible. I don't condone the suspicions of the bastards, especially Nettles, but you make it seem like Rhaenyra was unique in her cruelty while simultaneously claiming none deserved the throne, flattening the story to "no one is 'better' than the other, so no one deserves it".

I wouldn't say that Rhaenyra was altruistic or compassionate to everyone around her, or that in general altruism or thinking of others as a part of her own family was in her character. Rather she has a similar level of regard for others as people imagine is common amongst humans: not wanting to directly cause damage to those she doesn't know until perceived harm is done, or until she feels forced to. Again, otherwise more concerned with her immediate life and self-interested than not. But still, with who Tyland is, what he did to help the greens displace & usurp her and then lead to her sons' deaths, her need to establish order as soon as possible and how all of these things happening all at once or in quick succession creating a heavy psychological burden on a person...it's not hard to see how a lot of people, maybe you, anon, would do similar things.

Then there is the KL commonborn's need to survive not only from attacks but to make a living (traders, merchants, barkeepers) when the influx of travelers from anywhere suddenly stops. Suddenly there is a lot more thievery. Then there will also be lots of people going crazy from the stress, which would cause more murders, rapings, etc. This would explain how executions also rose and Rhaneyra decided "might as well make money off of this" and charged people for coming to see the rising number of executions. There is also not much time going to be paid towards these executions as much as, once again, defending oneself from enemies and the grief of losing kids.

The reason why we should / do admire people who manage to make good or even passably logical decisions during moments like these is because they managed in the first place. Which makes them special. Yeah we need leaders who can try and do the most they can to perform their duties, but to expect them to be 100% or even 80% without help is...ludicrous. They are still very human.

B)

Vaemond's death, while brutal was arguably deserved & necessary bc:

he thought it smart to protest her offering Luke as Corlys' heir by stating he was a bastard right in front of her after Viserys had already stated and declared that anyone who called his grandkids bastards would have their tongues ripped out/corporal punishment (almost like Brandon Stark with Rhaegar, but at least Brandon's action isn't trying/allowing the murder of innocents)

called Rhaenyra a traitor to the crown, endangering her and her kids' lives so he could benefit from maybe becoming the next lord of Driftmark, something he doesn't actually need

nor what the actual lord (Corlys) wanted. If Vaemond so wanted the seat, he could have gone to Colrys a long time before, but he didn't bc he knew Corlys would shut that down.

Remember that in his society, the lord/head of house declares the next heir/leader of house. If one argues that this feudal hierarchical system is inherently unjust and acknowledges that Vaemond is trying to get others killed purely to benefit from being a man, chasing power that could be granted under other circumstances, then one should not argue that Vaemond is acting morally when he calls Rhaenyra's kids bastards. There is also nothing moral about using a person's bastardry and patriarchal mores of female chastity to claim that you deserve to rule. (The point of the Dance.)

C)

Again, By the time she and Daemon took KL, she's made the decision to be more ruthless ("The Red Dragon and the Gold"):

Aegon the Elder, on the other hand, had no reason to take the throne or watch his bastard kids fight in pits or rape a 11-year-old and several other servants and maids (you think he stopped at "fondling", dream on) and Alicent, while she was trying for power for herself and in a different story would be more commendable for doing so by taking advantage of her position as the would-be heir's mother, she also did much of her amoral actions without provocation. What did she do to Rhaenyra before any of Rhaenyra's kids are born? I already told you. And again, if she hadn't turned her sons against Rhaenyra, Aemond would not have done as he did regarding Vhagar and then got it in his head to kill Lucerys to prove a point of strength.

I'm not sure what you expected from Rhaenyra that wouldn't likely happen with most people, or what one would expect from most people after their kids have been killed. You'd have to be privileged enough to not expect others to harangue or assualt you purely out of hate or ambition.

Also, meanwhile, Alicent is out here thinking she's in the moral right to dismiss the deaths of Jace and Luke as "bastard blood shed in war" and saying the deaths of her son(s), the legitimate ones, are worth more than Rhaenyra's based on legtimacy. The social stigma of those born out of wedlock informing the worthiness of lives. It's actually pretty amazing she didn't have Alicent imprisoned in a cell deep within the Keep way down below for that alone.

What made Rhaenyra tyrannical was that from an early time in her life, she was treated as undeserving due to her femaleness and then she had to keep her belief in herself extant in the face of that. Whether she is a "good" person or not is not really my issue, my issue is that she wasn't allowed autonomy or power that she didn't claim for herself. That she was regarded and treated as "bad" or inferior by those around her before she ever really got to develop into something else. Before she had to self-determine.

That comes with the development of the need to protect such powers, which got worse after her son deaths and the multiple pressures of a city during a war, these things which a ruler didn't usually have to face right when they begin to rule all at once.

So no, Rhaenyra wasn't always tyrannical or evil. There was progression based on others' attacks and Viserys never gave her some sort of training in politics that Jaehaerys probably gave Aemon and Baelon and Aegon I gave Aenys. Of course, Rhaenyra had the opportunity to learn on her own, but

A) She already did on Dragonstone and again the situation in King's Landing is very unlike the typical ascendant's situation upon their first days of rule: an ongoing war, riots incited by a hiding green and a crazy man from the Citadel most likely, some councilmen unjustifiably blaming you for their wife's death, etc. The pressure would have been intense and the need to pull everything right together seemed to have outrun her mental capacity...again sons' deaths (also Rhaenys, I don't think she was distant with Rhaenys, who also loved her sons and the daughters of Laena Rhaenyra raised).

B) To think that some education from her father/ruler and confidence in her wouldn't have helped her to get her bearings is pretty myopic.

#asoiaf asks to me #rhaenyra targaryen #fire and blood characters #hotD neutrals #hotd neutrals #rhaenyra's characterization #the evil targaryens #fandom critical #rhaenyra and feminism #fire and blood comment #anti nuetrality #asoiaf #fire and blood

[battlekilt]

*sobssssss lovingly at the brotherly friendship they write between Cody and Obi-Wan*

Obi-Wan loves this dorky young man, so much. He has loved seeing him open up from a shy, obedient yes-man, to an honest person that showed his Fett-itude in private, and still zealously guards the respect others have invested in Obi-Wan.

Sadly, I feel like Cody is what Obi-Wan sometimes wishes Anakin had been. Or... what he thinks he wishes Anakin would be. Truthfully, it is that spiteful defiance hidden under his Commander's armor that he adores so much—the things Cody and Anakin have in common.

I have to watch myself to keep from going off on a meta-fueled tangent comparing Cody and Anakin in Obi-Wan's eyes. But, there is a lot.

Both come from very tightly controlled places to curate obedience out of the subjects. Cody's was less about fear, and just militant mental conditioning into nearly dogmatic subservience.

Oddly enough, Anakin may have had a detonator chip in his body, it was revealed that Cody's chip was the most deadly, for its target wasn't the body of its subject, but far... far more. The fact that the Clone's chip was in his mind is no short-order hindsight; it is also a metaphor for what set Cody and Anakin apart.

Anakin had a much easier time letting his defiance out, but he is the product of chattel slavery that isn't so concerned with convincing the enslaved parties to be active participants in their own enslavement.

The military requires a militant, cultist mental conditioning that does strip pre-established self-agency, and remakes the subject to fit the image it requires. Hence, the prim Clone Commander with the neat little military haircut; the only outward sign of his individuality in the scar he earned—somehow.

I was in a server for a bit, where my characterization of Cody needing Obi-Wan's mentorship and permission to be a mischief-maker in his own right was called into questioning—labeled infantilization. It disturbed me, and upset me. Not because it was my headcanon, but because it showed a privileged position experienced by the part, who appeared to me to lack the experience of the result of military-cultish mental conditioning.

The military tells their subjects what to do. When to eat, when to sleep, when to shower, when to dress, what to dress in, what weapons to use, where to go—

The list is endless.

Our own soldiers often struggle to assimilate back into civilians when they are out of the military.

Someone like Cody?

Hell yeah. He'd probably need to be heckled and needled to do silly things we'd take for granted. That is the result of such thorough indoctrination as it takes to produce a professional military to the caliber of the GAR.

There is a lot of victim blaming in that we see signs of indoctrination struggle against health enabling by others. That indoctrination is so evident in the Clones, and is one of the primary storylines that we begin to truly see unfold out of their themes in TCW. To remove that from someone, like Cody, and call the exploration of such a theme/phenomenon infantilization is... the genuinely problematic behavior.

Someone like Cody would absolutely need someone to mentor him in ways he lacks because he, like all Clones, would not be a well-rounded person. The level of obedience required of these men wouldn't permit genuine experience nor the expression of self-agency that would make them well-rounded individuals. They aren't supposed to be individuals. From the onset, it made clear that it was the Jedi who encouraged the individuality the Clones came to let out of their shells.

Just to start the process of deprogramming that level of indoctrination, it would take mentorship, guidance, encouragement, and ultimately? All the things that a good big brother with life experience would have.

Me? I love Obi-Wan being that older brother to Cody. This soft-faced, doleful eyed Jedi in robes, the one to tell his armored, hard-faced, ornery Clone Commander with a sun on his plate to... do something small, for himself. To have a bit of fun that has consequences—nothing big.

Just... Cody hates that one kaf mug? He's told Kenobi a thousand times that open containers are not supposed to be in the tactical room?

Knock it off the table, Cody. Do it, Cody. Now Kenobi is bringing it where he shouldn't, just to irritate Cody. He has to encourage this seemingly full-grown man, who has received more military education than most professional officers that have been in service for a lifetime, just to...

Knock it off the table, Cody. Prove to why it shouldn't be in this room.

Obi-Wan spent so much time trying to get Anakin to conform to the Order's ways, mostly because it was all he knew to do; it was what he had to do with himself.

But this Clone? This man of a million identical faces? To encourage him to BE defiant is, in my esteem, a testament of Obi-Wan's true measure of a man.

This is me cutting this short, believe it or not.

I love Obi-Wan being Cody's older brother, his mentor, his teacher... so... SO MUCH.

#clone: cody #au: rexx #kilt's clonely headcanons #// i think it is ultimately why i cannot ship these two characters #// for me it detracts from this parallel theme for Cody & Obi-Wan & Anakin #// and it does go back to Rex #// because we have some indication that Anakin also taught Rex to be more free spirited #kilt's clonely meta #jedi: kenobi #jedi: skywalker #headcanon: anakin & cody

[weebsinstash]

Ok... ok... as someone who has followed you on both blogs FOR YEARS, like I was following your main and your Overwatch blog before you even made this one, can I just attempt to recap whatever the hell is going on? Your sister has been getting progressively more mentally ill and falling into substance abuse and speaks to you so little you don't know if she's dead or homeless, she keeps getting into abusive relationships, she will barely speak to your family and will only reach out for money, but on top of her barely speaking to you she also accuses you guys of not caring and abandoning her even though all she does is text you and even then who knows if she will reply? Didn't you leave her a birthday voice-mail after not speaking to her for over a year and she never even listened to it and she told you "ugh you know I don't like voicemails"??? Like??? Isn't she diagnosed with like bipolar on top of all this?

And you were just expressing your frustration that you have this extremely toxic family member who you are trying to help but she is not only not accepting the help but blaming you and your mom for HER actions? For how SHE is becoming a hard-core substance abuser to the point she got SA'd trying to score free coke from strangers?and then someone saw that and said "you're a victim blamer" because you were upset your sister was weaponizing her assault to try and emotionally manipulate you and your mom??? And they posted your blog to tiktok to encourage people to spam you? Is this real life right now???? Do these people not have actual families???

My uncle literally had to leave his son out on the street before he would accept help, and he stayed on the streets for YEARS so he could score drugs and didnt accept help until he was almost dead. These people have clearly never dealt with a family member with severe mental illness and drug addiction. You cannot continue to enable dangerous behavior and tell someone they hold no responsibility or they will continue to do it. This entire thing just blows my mind forreal. Stay strong and enjoy your trip coming up!

You basically recapped it perfectly. I think the main thing that upset them is that at the core of this entire argument, my Grand Sin That Was So Unforgivable was me saying "yeah you aren't responsible for the actions of who attacked you but you are responsible for the situations you put yourself in and who youre hanging out with" and unfortunately a lot ot people get personally offended when you say just basic personal accountability stuff like that. My sister was quite literally trying to score drugs from two males and the drugs she was trying to get for free are a notoriously expensive kind and like... sorry but anyone who does drugs even recreationally knows that some things are so valuable that you don't just GIVE them for free without expecting something back. Like, coke? She might as well have expected a free diamond ring, as much as it hurts to say. And she did multiple substances to the point she passed out, and there was not another woman there, and sorry but like you could make a list of how many horrible fuckint red flags were ignored here

But like. For her to have such a horrible thing happen to her and then she lets me and my mom know about it in the most toxic manipulative way possible. "Oh you gently told me I should cover my freshly pierced nipples in public by wearing a bra? Well I wasn't raped on two separate occasions for not covering my nipples so let me just be half naked constantly around strangers and children c:" like jesus christ that mindset right fucking there is exactly what got her attacked, the complete disconnect from reality in favor of doing whatever she wants, the complete ignoring of any potential consequences. Like that is not even an exaggeration of events, we just asked her to wear a bra in public and she replied that SMILING. She excludes you from her life and then turns around like a viper and says "here's a list of all the horrible things that happened to me that you weren't there to support me for c:"

And then people want to say I'm being manipulative myself by posting to my followers from going from worried about my sister to being angry as if this isn't an extremely nuanced relationship, like anyone who has a toxic family member knows you can love and hate someone at the same time, especially when that person is manipulative and constantly pushes you away only to pull you back and then push you away again. Like genuinely my mom calls me an only child now because of what happened the last time we went to visit my sister.

What's sad is like. Some of these trolls say shit like "we're victims whose families have treated them just like you're treating your sister" and its like, you're from tiktok how would you know how I treat my sister? How we treat my sister is "she ran away with her boyfriend after years of clinging to men and never came home and demanded to be only texted and can't even hold an actual verbal phone call because she wants to control the conversation and only talk about what she wants and only reply to what she wants, when she wants, if she wants, and even when we lived in the same city we barely ever saw her, but then when mom and I moved away she accused us of abandoning her, but still would never reply to a text and did this exact same thing to our grandma, and now in the present is saying insane shit like she doesn't even know what we look like and that we are strangers when she has made the choice not to speak to us unless she wants money" and also I guess as a bonus she has outright admitted she only speaks to our father to take money from him when he is genuinely trying to make peace from the past and have a genuine relationship with his daughter and she's been hurting him so badly without even caring

Like. My sister is a victim yeah but she's also a toxic self destructive anchor. She has a really long history of extremely worrying behavior that has only gotten worse. Like jezus, this whole tiktok thing happened while she was in the hospital, you know what she did THE DAY she got out? Straight to the bar, but told us yo our faces "oh no I'm all better now, those 3 days I was in the hospital before i rushed back to drinking taught me a lot of really effective coping skills" after we had rented a car to go and get her because she outright asked us to help her, and then after we went all the way there acted like she had no idea what we were there for

At this point these people are just projecting themselves into the position of my sister who has lost a lot of my love and respect and I'm being chastised for abandoning a person who abandoned themselves a long, loooong time ago. It'll blow over eventually. Any normal person would move on from this.

#im more sad my sister had become a self pitying self destructive parasite more than tiktok teenieboppers

[weprywepry]

Hatred never ends. It's a bit absurd, absurd in the narrative sense of the word. How can we expect a story about the endless cycle of violence to do anything other than perpetuate that violence? Either AOT is wrong, and there actually is some way to prevent people from killing each other, or the series will end up as just another part of the killing.

I remember defending AOT against people that criticized its portrayal of fascism. Some of those criticisms are, still, to me very hollow. Like that one Polygon article which can basically be summed up by *"guys i think there might be fascist subtext to a story explicitly about fascism"*. That much is just a kind of trolling. But there is the more serious matter of whether or not the show accidentally encourages the sort of hatred it displays.

"You can’t choose where the cat sleeps."

"There is no such thing as an anti-war film."

No matter how talented and well minded an artist is, there is no way you can actually *make* your audience react a certain way. I'm sure there are neo-Nazis out there that enjoy watching Schindler's List. If people are stupid enough to actually *do* the things portrayed in media, then why should we be surprised by their reactions to the media? There's no way AOT could kill fascism. But still, for how intelligent the story is, I wonder if that just doesn't even matter.

It is also very stupid at times (like the S1-S2 openings), but those seem unintelligent only by how easily they are taken out of context. I think the narrative structure of Attack on Titan relies on building up expectation and then dismantling them in such a way that is revealing about ourselves. The Titans are presented as an absolute, unifying, and indiscriminate evil. The Titans are actually deeply tragic beings that are the product of human choices. This may teach an audience to not trust such narratives. That sort of "bait and switch" relies heavily on the "switch." If you only ever are exposed to certain parts of AOT (like just the action or overly dramatic AMVs), then its easy to get the wrong message.

But it's hard to blame AOT or Isayama for that. Asking an author to not allow that may as well be asking an author to not tell stories at all. It's inevitable, even more so with popularly. It's hard to tell a truth about propoganda without enabling the spread of that propoganda. Context matters, but people are inevitably lazy. It's just the law of large numbers. That isn't to say there's no use in trying to provide context. An audience can be lured into a critical experience with a piece of media. But there will always be bad actors, and those bad actors will be just as cunning.

But as a more fundamental flaw with AOT itself rather than art in general, oh my god. What the fuck is the ending.

Here's my two cents:

Armin hates himself. Even before becoming a mass murderer, he viewed himself as inadequate and undeserving of respect. That self hatred never left him and never was resolved. Becoming a soldier allowed him to quell it and act rationally according to his objective, but the self hatred was always still there.

For him, to thank Eren is an expression of his self-hatred. He sees himself as at the same level of moral fault and that they both deserve the same fate. Eren is undoubtedly *worse* than Armin (80% of the worlds population), but Armin still considers himself just as culpable. So his friendliness with Eren is a sardonic, cynical expression of his own hopelessness.

This is the most charitable interpretation I can come up with. Even if this *was* an intended subtext, I think the more honest interpretation is that Isayama just got tired and lazy. The theme of "those who can't abandon anything can't change anything" needed to be reincorporated, and this was a giant flashing neon sign indicating that. Eren did certainly change something.

What I want to say is that, by this point in the story, the notion of positive change through sacrifice had been disproven. There is no common enemy to humanity; humanity is its own enemy. So "tatakae" is no longer about promoting a greater good, but promoting one's own interest over others.

"Fight! Fight to survive!"

has a very different tone from,

"As long as we have unbending convictions, a clash is inevitable. There is but one thing to do. Fight."

I wish i could say all that.

But far too much credence is given to the idea that the Rumbling is justifiable. Hange says, "I'll be damned before I justify genocide." But at almost every step, the Rumbling is presented not as a moral apocalypse, but as a solution to a problem. This is absurd. Erwin counsels Levi that, "No one will know how things will turn out." And yet these two outcomes, let Paradis be destroyed or let Eren destroy the world are presented as the only two options. Even worse, that this is supposedly the case is supposedly *the fault* of Hange and Armin and Jean and everyone else. Floch saying that Paradis will drown in a sea of blood is propoganda. This propoganda is treated as if it is the unquestionable truth.

I think Isayama wanted a moral dilemma for the characters to ponder (save ourselves or save the world), but got lazy along the way. That dilemma, "us vs. them," is never true and is used to justify atrocity in the real world. Violence never ends, and the us's and the them's change to fit the needs of whatever cruelty needs justification. I hope that Isayama knows this. It’s present in the work already. But here it vanishes in favor of a simplistic, cliche narrative. Laziness, when dealing with subject matter as sensitive as this, has a real cost. And it's a bummer beyond all other bummers that this is how the story ends.

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #help me

[self-loving-vampire]

Narcissistic abuse is a real thing, it fucks you up for life and narcissistic abusers always get away with it. Check out Dr. Ramani who is a specialist and focuses on helping survivors and educating them. She also talks about narcissism and autism because some of y'all can't be fucking trusted with big words and can't understand that autism and narcissism are rather unlikely to occur together (not impossible tho).

Can you explain how it is meaningfully different from the behavior of abusers who don't have NPD?

The things people like that doctor describe tend to be things that abusers in general do. In fact, they sometimes amount to being a basic definition of what abuse is.

The consequences of "narcissistic abuse" are also a checklist for the consequences of abuse in general.

For example, this article "helpfully" describes narcissistic abuse as being selfish and involving the use of words and actions to control someone's behavior and emotional state.

But this is literally just a generic definition of what interpersonal abuse is! It's not a trait specific to only one special subtype of abuse, it's general and it is inaccurate to blame that kind of behavior on a rare disorder when it is considered normal and even good in many societies.

While there are ways in which literally any factor affecting someone's mind (including more sympathetic conditions like anxiety or PTSD) could theoretically lead to abusive behavior, the bulk of it is the result of social norms that enable and support it.

For example, the norms that demand obedience and submission from children and reward control and authoritarianism in parents. These norms could not exist if they relied on a small percentage of mentally ill people. They are normalized, in my country they even used the Bible to justify corporal punishment of children as a means to shape them into decent people.

My father even personally believed that he would go to Hell if he did not train me to submit to him, and also that I would become spoiled and evil if he did not do that.

The article also talks about the consequences of "narcissistic abuse": Anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, loss of sense of self, loss of self-worth, guilt, physical and cognitive problems, trust issues, and so on.

This, too, is a list of effects you can reasonably expect from abuse in general. I have experienced all of those things myself.

So, if there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between narcissistic abuse and just abuse, either in actions or effects, I am skeptical of the term being useful.

It always really seemed to be more of a pop psych thing people were encouraged to armchair-diagnose every bad person in their lives with even though this is absolutely not necessary considering the existing definitions of abuse cover their experiences perfectly well and the term only serves to further demonize the survivors who develop NPD (which can be the result of trauma) by equating them to their abusers.

#long post

[a-lukewarm-take]

buddy, i understand why youre so confused. cause i am too.

i understand the whole things yeah, the 'harassing people is bad', 'mind your business', etc etc. but other than that im lost on whatever the hell this 'pro' and 'anti' stuff is. ive just been not interacting with that, i think those pro anti people call it being 'neutral' im pretty sure. anyway i think the whole concept is pretty dumb, but its the internet. i wouldnt be surprised if someone doxed someone else over ice cream flavors

what ive for the whole thing is this: pro in proship stands for 'pro' as in 'for' for shipping/ship and let ship, anti is the opposite of that. antis believe that fiction can influence people, pros dont. pros believe what you like in fiction does not dictate your morals, antis dont. etc etc

my tip is this: keep far far away and ignore everything about those two things. if you dont wanna do that, well, try not to get too lost in the sauce while listening to both sides and keep your mind open

sorry if you already knew half of this and this is just kinda null, have a nice day

I'm not big on lables. I think theres a pretty reasonable middle ground to be had but I doubt either side is going to actually listen for long enough to figure this out. It would be nice if they did but, this is the internet.

"Pedophilia is bad" 

can coexist with

 "Fictional characters aren't real and doing reprehensible things to them has no real life victims"

 aswell as

"Fiction and the way objectionable content in fiction is framed has historically been used as propaganda to enable or encourage harmful behavior irl." 

They're not contradictory unless deliberately misinterpreted and exaggerated via a bad faith rube-goldberg of causality.

Books like Lolita play with framing in a way that a lot of mainstream readers miss the point of, especially readers that expect Lolita to spoon feed them the morals as many other books would have. Whether or not a reader is aroused or horrified by Lolita has nothing to do with their own morals and everything to do with whether or not they picked up on the fact that the narrator is an unreliable monster justifying and lying to himself when it comes to the girl in the novel. 

Art is complicated and some audiences, no matter how hard the author tries, are going to interpret that art in a way the author did not intend or even pervert the meaning to support whatever worldview they had before encountering the work.

Sometimes stories show you an oversexualized and glorified depiction of a repugnant act, explicitly because they trust that this framing would make the audience uncomfortable. The titillation is intended only as a gateway to vomiting or a profound sense of horror as it highlights that not all bad things are prevented and that this world will not punish the unjust inherently. It's asking you to wallow in the tragedy. 

There are surely stories that have no such deeper meaning and are quite simply porn. The line is thin and blurry. When you censor one you run the risk of censoring them all because someone unprepared to think critically about what the media they consume is trying to say, is going to miss the point.

Censorship is a difficult thing to manage and everyone has a right to distrust the powers enforcing it. 

You can believe strongly that there is media that does more harm than good whilst also understanding that very rarely is this the direct or intentional fault of the creator or consumers of the work on an individual level. But rather cogs in a larger system to which individuals can participate much in the same way we don't blame the butterfly for the hurricane. You can fight for censorship without shaming or harassing the people who don't want it.

I'm sure someone else could explain this better than I could and I'm open to being wrong about this. I certainly don't have all the answers, that's a part of being human.

-Luke

#proship #antiship #ask #discourse

[bringerofplagues]

A way too long analysis of the game design of OW2

I have been playing a ton of OW2 recently, and while i love the game, i have been noticing a problem with the game design. Basically, i think the way the game is deigned encourages players to play very individually and not as a team. Essentially i realized that a lot of players will try to blame a lost game on one or two players, usually saying something like “healer diff” or “dps diff”, this seems to demonstrate a bit of misunderstanding about how the game works. Lets take the support role as an example since that is what i main, when you press tab it is pretty easy to think “well my teams supports did less healing than the enemy teams healers, therefore they are worse” however this simplifies a pretty complex game situation down to just a set of numbers, but those numbers don’t take certain things into account. Mainly the teamwork, the amount of Hanzo and Genji mains i have played with who will go so far away from the team that the healer has no chance of healing them, and then complain that they don’t receive healing is higher than i can count, but there are also a lot of players who will just do nothing to protect their healers and then wonder why they keep dying. Now are these people dumb / annoying? Yes, very much, but i don’t think that’s the whole story, i think the game is designed in a way that encourages them to think that way. First of all, like i said the teamfights and the role each member plays within them is really complex, so it makes sense why people boil those things down to numbers / the actions of individual players while removing those actions from a bigger context, it makes it easier to analyze the team fight, but this simplification leads to a lot of mistakes in said analysis. See in OW2 every class plays a specific role, the tank protects the squishes through drawing aggro or mitigating damage through shields, and will usually have some utility / CC, the dps does damage and is meant to take out high priority targets and the support enables the other roles through attack boosting and healing, essentially every role is small gear in a larger machine and the team only works when everyone plays their part and plays them in a way that works together. But, if every role is important and impactful in it’s own way, why does the far majority play only dps, to the point where Blizzard has to add special incentives to play support, that still don’t fix the issue? Because the game is designed in such a way as to make the dps the most interesting role. Now this is not a problem unique to OW2, personally i tend to think of the OW series as FPS games mixed with Mobas, and many mobas have that exact same problem. People like to feel like the main character, they want to feel cool and powerful, and a character designed around helping others do cool things just doesn’t give that feeling. This is also why many of the most popular tanks are very self sufficient, i’m talking people like D.VA or Zarya. D.VA is a dive tank with high offensive pressure and she can in her mecha-less form play almost like a dps hero to stay alive untill she gets her mech back. Zarya can shield herself or an ally, and do insane damage. The thing is these heroes are meant to be played with the team in mind, D.VA is as offensive as she is, because that allows her to enable pushes, and force the enemy team to focus her down, thus helping her team, but why would you do that when you can just try to 1v1, or even 1v5 and get away with it decently. Or Zarya, yes you can bouble your team, but you could also bouble yourself allowing you to decimate the enemy team. However there is something unique to OW that motivates this behavior, and that is the way it’s rewards systems priviledge dps players. Have you noticed how the potg almost always goes to a dps hero, sometimes to a tank and basically never to a support? Well that is because of the same simplification that i described in the players earlier. See it is really hard for an ai, or even a person, to determine the impact a support hero has on the game state. Did the  Reinhardt manage to push through the entire enemy team because he was just so good, or was it because his Ana nanoboosted them at just the right time, while also getting anti heal on 2 or 3 enemies and sleep darting the enemy tank? It’s basically impossible to know, especially for an AI, but what it can know is numbers, numbers like damage done or enemies killed in a specific period of time, the things dps heroes are made for and a lot of tank heroes can also do, but the one thing dps heroes are designed not to do. And you can’t just tie it to the amount of healing done, because even if you heal a ton, that doesn’t always effect the game state if your team doesn’t manage to use it. There are also other privileges to playing dps or damage heavy heroes, for example many quests are related to your damage output in one way or another, and now that you cant get skins through loot boxes anymore you have to clear those weekly quests if you don,t wanna pay. But the core of the issue is that when the game tells you that the best play, the most impactful one is the one made by a single player without the context of their team, even if it is because it just can’t take that context into account, it teaches the player base to think in those same simplified ways. This is why the Hanzo main goes behind enemy lines where their healer can’t help them and then gets mad when they die, they have been taught by the game design to just play his role, do damage to the enemy, and that is what they are trying to do, but they haven’t been taught to think about the game in a higher context than that, about their teammates and from what positions their support can actually help them. Also when the game has so many way of privileging the dps players, is it any wonder they see themselves as the main characters of they game? That is basically how the game treats them after all.

#overwatch #overwatch2 #gamedesign

[lunarosewood23]

FFXIVWrite2022 Prompt 16: Deiform

LEMONY CONTENT WARNING AHEAD

Skirted this in a google doc 30 minutes before time but the horny goblin brain has struck and hopefully this isn't utter garbage. Zephirin/OC, ft @inkblood-mistrieu's Kaia (who she has given me full permission to write with and actively encourages me to write spice with her characters). I also blame @beasthuntergalvus and @herohikara-wol, they enabled me, though I think after all the sad prompts Zephirin can have some sexy time with his wife, as a treat!

~~~

She was so intoxicating...

Zephirin shivered, his ears burned as he ran his hands over her. "Will you tell me if I..."

"I will love. Your hands feel so good..." Kaia assured as she pulled him down for a kiss. "Touch me, eat me out, make love to me, do whatever you like. I'm yours."

The crassness of her words made his face burn all the more but he nodded as he slowly pressed kisses along her jaw and down her neck. He tried to keep his hands in more "acceptable" places but she gently squeezed his hands in an attempt to assure him he could do more, she was so relaxed and pliant under him as he drifted lower.

His hands found her breasts and he gave them a gentle squeeze, and he watched her give a soft gasp in response, though he tried to not keep her waiting too long. He pressed the most loving of kisses against her skin, along her breasts and going along her stomach, she was gorgeous, as though Halone hand chose her of all the people in this world to give to him.

How lucky he was...

"Zephirin? My knight, are you okay? Do you want to stop?" Kaia asked him, and he blinked, a flush of embarrassment dusting his already red cheeks.

"Forgive me, I was so caught up by how breath-taking you are. Such a deiform sight, I thought for a moment Halone graced Herself before me in you." He admits, which earns him a laugh, a blush dusting her cheeks.

"Such high praise from an angel made flesh. Though please don't stop, you feel wonderful." She replied with a smile, then shivered as he pressed kisses along her inner thighs.

He stared up at her through his lashes as he squeezed her thighs, spreading them apart to get to her opening to find her already wanting.

"Blessed Fury...already?" He breathed as he ran a finger along her opening only to rub circles around her clit.

A low moan was his response. "Of course love-mmm!!" She tried to say but he cut her off with a slow, experimental drag of his tongue. Hands dove into his soft blonde hair and he felt her legs drape over his back.

He mentally cursed his lack of experience, but he teased her opening, running his tongue along her folds and tracing circles along her clit, testing to see what noises he could draw out of her.

"You feel so good love...oh Twelve do that again!" She moaned when he rubbed his tongue along her clit. He moaned when she felt her thighs squeeze slightly around his head and teasing his ears. "More love..."

Oh he couldn't deny her. Even though his cock ached from denying himself even some pleasure he gave to her more and more as she asked, minding his teeth and trying to see what would draw out her release.

"Zephirin!!" She cried out as she rolled her hips against him, her thighs squeezing against his head as she came, her quim tart yet so sweet on his tongue. He slowly pulled away to press a kiss to her thigh, gazing up at her through his lashes, waiting for her to come down. "Oh my knight, so good...come here."

He crawled up on top of her only to be pulled down in a kiss, and felt her shiver under him when she felt him. "Don't deny yourself love, you feel so good."

He tried to say he wanted to give her more before he took for himself, but the words died on his lips when she reached between them to lightly stroke his cock. He gasped at her touch, his face burned all the way to his ears as he lightly rocked into her hand.

"I...I wanted to-!" He tried again but ended up biting on a knuckle to stop the low moan that tried to escape his throat. "Kaia...please..."

"Don't deny yourself, take what you want. Let me see you, hear you. I love you." She soothed as she took the hand he was using to cover his mouth and pulled him closer to where his cock lined up with her opening.

"I love you too." He breathed. "By the Fury I love you so much..."

"It's alright. Make love to me Zephirin."

The way she said his name in that moment seemed to hit something in his brain and he slowly slid into her, trying to not go too fast that he would possibly hurt her. Both of them let out moans of pleasure at the feeling of finally being joined so intimately, she was so tight despite her falling over the edge a little before. Her back arched into him and he watched her eyes roll back slightly, her legs wrapping around his waist to drag him closer. He brought his lips to hers in a searing kiss, trying to let her adjust to him before he moved, despite everything in him wanting to move.

"So good my knight...you can move." She breathed against his lips. "Don't hold back alright? I'm not gonna break so easily."

He moaned softly as he slowly thrust into her, the rhythm shaky but no less wonderful, and she met his thrusts with her hips as he wrapped an arm around her back while a hand found hers.

Somewhere amidst the hazy pleasure his lips found hers again, sharing messy kisses as a hand dove into his hair and brushed against his ear, making him shudder, his hips faltering only to speed up in pace.

"Twelve yes please~" She cried out. "More love, so good, harder..."

He couldn't refuse her, not when she asked like that. Oh she felt so good, the way she squeezed around him within and held him brought him so close already.

"I'm so close love...want you to fall with me, please, what can I-" He panted against her lips.

"'m there too, just a little-ah!! Zephirin!!"

She climaxed, the way she squeezed around him sent him hurtling over the edge and he hilted deep inside of her, spilling his seed and leaving him boneless on top of her, nuzzling his face in the crook of her neck, breathless and relaxed.

"That was amazing love..." She purred in content, her arms wrapped around him. "You are amazing." 

He blushed, his cheeks felt as though they'd be stained red if she kept up with her praise. 

"You are moreso. I...I really do appreciate you. I love you."

"I love you too."

#FFXIVWrite2022 #Reforged Heart #Zephirin de Valhourdin #Kaia Jiang #Lemony content

[dream-critical]

faq

q: what is your general stance on dream? a: see here for both of us.

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q: why do you think dream's behaviour is harmful? a: the fanbase he has created is toxic ON PURPOSE. and he has talked about this himself, saying he BUILT it that way for views. he ships himself with his friends also as a marketing strategy, but in doing so he encourages rpf, not of just himself but of the other people in the dsmp as well. we don’t have to explain why rpf is an incredibly gross and dehumanising thing, and while the fandom keeps close track of ccs’ boundaries, they do so to find loopholes around them. during every major controversy he has gotten into, dream goes on an extended rant on twitter about it first, and once he starts to get hate/criticism for it, he proceeds to reply to those replies directly, which leads to his stans flocking to these people to harass, threaten and in some cases even dox them. dream refuses to condemn this behviour, instead tweeting something like “i love my stans” which only encourage them. he tells people that getting doxxed is not a big deal, because there is an “astronomically small” chance that anything will actually happen. through all the racist, anti-indigenous, islamophobic actions, dream’s refusal to change is the most harmful thing he does with his platform. he refuses to get a pr team, he refuses to accept criticism. he is immature, he cannot handle the platform he’d been given, and if he can't handle the platform he has,he does not deserve it.

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q: why do you not believe dream was genuine in his apology? a: because it was not. he has never effectively apologised for anything. he always lied, and tried to push the blame onto others. in response to the kkk edits he said “i was an edgy teenager and it was okay back then”. in response to the islamophobic edit he did not even address it, he simply said “everything i say on stream apply just as much” in a dm with a fan. not even publicly. and even before this he keeps making the same mistakes over and over, and then refuse to apologise for them. all he does is “address” it so that he can say he has, everyone can move on, and any attempt at criticism him in the future will be dismissed as “bringing up old drama”.

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q: what do you think dream need to do? what do you think need to happen? a: he needs to properly own up to everything that he did, and offer a genuine apology. and by this we mean he needs to stop lying about making the edits, or defecting the blame by saying “i stole the edits” “i don’t remember making it” etc. he needs to condemn the actions of his fanbase, or at the very least stop encouraging them by saying “i love my toxic stans”, and in doing so creating a space so toxic that anyone with a platform who publicly speaks out against him will be said to have “betrayed’ him in the process, and anyone who does will be at the risk of getting doxxed. he need to start being responsible with the platform he’s been given and stop enabling his stans, and actually start caring about the minorities he has hurt because actions speak louder than words and right now his actions show that he doesn’t give a flying fuck because no matter what he’s still getting his money. most importantly he need to get a pr team. ultimately, with everything that happened, unless he can do at least one of those things, we think dream needs to be deplatformed.

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q: [x] did this. why are their actions/apologies forgivable but dream's aren't? a: depends on the person. but the answer in most cases is because they handled the situation better than dream, as in being mature and actually owning up to their mistake and apologise instead of just pushing the blame on others and give a half-ass apology that sound like "i'm sorry i offended you”. also it's most likely they actually have changed, rather than making the same mistake again and again, and then sic their fans after anyone who criticise them like dream does.

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q: what do you think of [x] speaking out against dream? a: again, depends on the person. but anyone who speaks out against dream publicly has the rights to do so. even if they can talk about it to him in private, they don't have to, because the things dream did he did it publicly. in fact, they should condemn him. it's not throwing shade, or being childish, or "betrayal", dream didn't "make" anyone. we think more people should call him out, and credits to the people that did.

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q: what do you think of the gay joke? a: we’ve had this question one too many times, and we think the one debatable gay joke he’s made is diverting attention from the actual harmful, racist and islamophobic things he’d done, so this is all we have to say and we won’t be answering anymore questions about this going forward, we find no point in dragging this conversation on. queer people being hurt by the joke dream made is NOT invalidating him being ambiguous/unlabeled nor being queerphobic towards him.

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q: what do you think of dream's reaction/the drama surrounding dream and ranboo's coming out? a: it’s not about dream.

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q: i'm a poc and i forgive him. why don't you? a: because we are allowed to have different opinions. for anything that happened with the racist and islamophobic edits, we are allowed to look at his actions, his statements to decide what we think of him for ourselves. i think this is something we can have, though wildly different, but equally understandable stances on. and no, this does not apply to stans who refuse to be critical of him one bit, people who go “dreamie my poor uwu baby boy” are not critical of him.

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q: you guys are antis. a: we think antis are just as bad as stans and we've personally had to deal with them before. antis all parrot the same callout doc that has more information that a conservative's twitter without actually trying to even think critically of dream, they just hate the entirety of mcyt and all of its fans with a cringe culture rebranded to "problematic" mentality. and that anyone who even glance in the direction of the dsmp is immediately problematic by association. antis are useless.

#faq #important #this will be updated as time changes and we will announce as it does