#and like this is another part of the reason why the age gap discourse is so fucking stupid

[sapphire-weapon]

leans in really close to the mic

new hot take headcanon just dropped as a flash of brilliance while writing this fic

Ashley is more sexually experienced than Remake Leon is by the time they first meet, pass it on.

#remake leon can probably count on his hands how many times he's actually had sex by the time of RE4make #whereas if you think of ashley as ever having a boyfriend for any period of time during her college years #chances are #she's banged a lot more than leon has #then factor in that she's also a sorority girl #there's no way she wasn't fucking around when not in a relationship #and in much more compromising positions/circumstances #and like this is another part of the reason why the age gap discourse is so fucking stupid #leon might be 27 in RE4make but he still has the maturity of a 21 year old due to trauma #and because of their individual circumstances surrounding their lives #it's actually not crazy to think that ashley has more practical experience than he does when it comes to certain Adult things #it doesn't matter that she's chronologically 7 years younger than him she's more of a normal fucking human #and has more normal fucking human life experience than he does

[reddstarr-exe]

warranted by your recent post I have arrived to ask ur very much wanted opinion on ur personal cobymeppo head cannons on what u think their dynamic is like, like- what things from the anime and live action do you prefer over the other and take as final canon and what are the things that you just simply refuse to acknowledge or dont personally like about whats said or occurred between them? basically just certain personality traits or scenes and stuff

Oh! Their dynamic huh… I never really thought of that before 😅😅😅

Well I haven’t got to the point where I see them again (I’m on punk hazard) but I try to answer this question as best as I can 😁

The Live Action

There’s a lot of things that I preferred in the live action. (since it was the hook that reeled me into the world of kobymeppo/meppokoby 🤭)

They have more interaction and meppo doesn’t have as much of a golden stick of nepotism up his ass (as he did the episode of kobymeppo in the anime) he’s more (how do i say this) gentle and low-tempered,

i just can’t wait to see their interactions when they do the adaptation of the diary of kobymeppo!! *squeal* and i can’t wait to see their interaction with one another at marineford too!

i can’t wait to see them as chore boys as well🤭

Anime

I was watching the anime before i watched the live action, but around the end of water 7 when we see their glow ups i had that ultimate thought (“wait, do people ship koby and helmeppo together?”)

after searching it up and with that thought in hand, i went to go watch opla (not because of the ship thing i watched bc my brothers were watching it too)

and after the infamous bar scene and looking through tumblr for like minded folks my life and view on them has never been the same since (the kobymeppo fungus entered my brain) so watching the anime after opla was a breeze 😁 (it was not 😭)

When I first started marineford, every time they were together on screen i couldn’t help but smile 😭😭 ace’s death wasn’t even the worst part of the arc for me, it was me seeing the pink and yellow speckled flower of shounen-ai blooming in front of me🩷💛

just seeing them together made me TWEAAAK‼️‼️‼️😭😭

What I Don’t Like About The Canon

The vivre cards and due to them the “age gap” between them. and the no-funners that persist on using them. (whether they acknowledge it or not) This is the ONLY thing that i don’t like about the canon

The vivre cards state that koby pre-ts is 16 while helmeppo is 20 (4 year gap)

Ocean (cobymeppocean) made some age headcanons for them and I really like them so i have those headcanons too but some no-funner on twitter (the screenshot was taken on nitter bc i didn’t have twitter back then, do NOT find this person’s account i block on both twitter and here.)

they were pretty much shitting on his headcanons and they didn’t even bother to CENSOR HIS USERNAME.

be aware, their ages have been ambiguous for YEARS it was only in 2018 that their ages have been “confirmed”. The ages strawhats have been confirmed since VOLUME 4 (over TWO DECADES AGO.) that’s too many years too late!

And along with the yamato/kiku trans “discourse” is actually the main reason why i refuse to see the vivre cards as actual resources for ANYTHING one piece related.

But with that, that’s really all i have to say about them, really! I love them so much 🥰

#one piece #one piece fandom #kobymeppo #cobymeppo #koby x helmeppo #coby x helmeppo #helmeppo x koby #helmeppo x coby #meppokoby #meppocoby #one piece koby #op koby #koby one piece #koby #op coby #coby one piece #coby #op helmeppo #one piece helmeppo #helmeppo #redds text tag

[bookwyrminspiration]

i've been having some discourse thoughts recently and going back and forth, and I don't really have a final conclusion at the moment so I'm just writing it out to try and make sense of it. I am not intending to get into heated arguments or cause problems, I'm genuinely just trying to question thoughts and beliefs I've been holding to that i picked up from others to be certain whether or not they're solid and I want to continue in that manner because reflection, introspection, and critical thinking are good practices. and posting it because consulting and engaging with others and perspectives outside your own is helpful. so don't mind me trying to sort myself out it's a genuinely earnest attempt to properly reason it through

the crux of it is that I realized it seems hypocritical of me to say I firmly believe in shipping and letting ship, supporting fiction's right to be fucked up and unhealthy, controlling your own experiences, for people to do what they want with fiction because fiction is not reality and should be a safe space where you can explore fucked up things, agree that policing what you can and can't do with fiction is a dangerously slippery slope, and then also turn around and condemn wylinh/wylinh shippers

I don't like the ship myself, I've made numerous posts discussing why I find it harmful--the main thing being its an adult x minor ship (Alden and Della's relationship is completely different, do not bring it up here as a counterargument. you can ask me to explain further if you don't understand). But people are allowed to engage with things that would be harmful or predatory or questionable or etc. in fiction; it's fake. People have said it before, but writing about murder doesn't mean you want to commit murder and all that.

So then since its okay to ship fucked up things because this is fiction, the problem with wylinh seems to become that people ship it in the same manner they do other ships without adult/minor dynamics, not with the understanding that it's got questionable elements. That it's okay to ship fucked up things but you have to do it a certain way that I think is acceptable (you have to know its not really healthy irl), and I don't think that's a mindset I want to have? That people's shipping needs to meet a standard I set? Even if I don't like it? I'm not arbitrator I don't get to decide those kinds of things for others, I just get to decide for me

And another big argument that's been made (including by me) is that children/young teens read these books and find fandom spaces even if they're not supposed to be here, and that that exposure could normalize a harmful age dynamic. Because while Wylie and Linh may be lovely people, they're fictional and it's not reflective of how an age gap like theirs would look irl and children could end up missing red flags of predatory people in real life by thinking of it like idealized fiction. But think of the children rhetoric is one that has been often criticized as cover for more malicious intentions (such as in politics) with the convenient safe fail that if you disagree, you must not care about children.

Part of the critique of that rhetoric is also that the actions being defended don't actually help or protect children. So I'm now wondering, does trying to stop (I can't think of a better word at the moment) wylinh shippers actually achieve that goal of protecting impressionable kids from idolizing an unrealistic relationship, or does it just motivate them to hide it and not trust the people who are, to them, unjustifiably criticizing them?

Wylinh is a widely disliked ship in the fandom, and that's okay, we're all allowed our opinions including negative ones. I just feel as though I'm contradicting myself on some points and want to straighten them out for myself. I don't like Wylinh, I don't ship it, I don't engage with any Wylinh content because of the aforementioned reasons. But my personal dislike shouldn't shape fandom spaces and others' actions, and making sure people are shipping things the "right" way feels like a much more harmful slope.

And if the best course of action to align with that is to just focus on myself, not engage with what I don't like, and politely share my thoughts without forcing them on others or trying to control their actions when the opportunity arises (though maybe this isn't the best course of action, there may be others), that makes this whole post feel redundant because that's...already what I'm doing. I suppose this is just to change my internal perspective not my outward actions? My intentions?

There's no real final conclusion to this, it's just me going "hmm, I've been criticizing wylinh shippers for shipping what I think is a harmful ship, but I also believe in shipping and let ship and allowing fiction to explore harmful things and not controlling others. can these co-exist or do I have to rethink something?"

and I think the answer is I have to rethink something? and that something is criticizing people for shipping wylinh. i still maintain my critiques and dislikes of the ship, but that's a separate thing. i find it more important to maintain and respect individuals right to engage with fiction of all sorts how they want to, without control from others

there's probably a million ways to negatively misinterpret things I've said, so just know all of this is genuine reflection made in good faith. i am earnestly trying to figure it out, and if anyone has input or opinions or perspectives they'd like to share you're welcome to, provided its also in good faith.

alright cool that's all, please do not be mean to me as I try to be a better person because I know its a discourse heavy topic :)

#kotlc discourse #discourse #i can't help but feel like I haven't worded this well and its all going to go wrong if I post this #but also. i am not going to let myself be ashamed of questioning things. even if I come to a similar conclusion at the end #so. don't be like 'how could you entertain these ideas--' because you need to think through both sides to best understand your own position #and i'm trying to figure out what that is #i don't want to just go along with what others say I want to understand where I stand and why #and right now its that I think I thought of wylinh shippers in a way that contradicted other beliefs and values I hold #and I want to correct that #so. this post is me trying to figure it out #i keep writing tags to stall because I'm nervous you'll all hate me for this #but like I said. won't be ashamed of questioning things #also am open to other perspectives and changing my mind #i can learn #augh this is. stressful. be nice please I'm trying to be a good person #long post

[welcome-to-oslov]

Re: Gersha discourse. I wonder if it would work better if Gersha were a bit younger? Say, 32 instead of 37. Tilrey, at 22 when they were put together, still a decade younger. Earlier, Gersha still well old enough at 28 to be disturbed/alarmed/protective by how miserable & young teenager Tilrey had looked when they first met.

Analogous to our world, his life trajectory could be something like he did his top programming PhD (maybe being called to meet Linnett back when he was presenting around his disseration), was a prestigious post-doc for ~5ish years, and now randomly embarked on a career change with this Councillor position (as fancy consulting firms snap up top scientists in our world). All reasonably enconsed in his studies till now, not super social.

Then it could make a little more sense his naivete/inexperience, as well as his nascent rebelliousness (he thinks he isn't like that, but he is: shoving Besha for tying Tilrey up, etc.). At 32, that's still young enough for those traits to now be coming to the fore and being primed to be changed or bloom. (Rather than kinda incongruous in an almost 40yr old).

And as the youngest new Councillor of ~32, it also illustrates better why Verán & everyone are trying to get with him, don't respect him as a junior colleague, tease him for him & Tilrey looking so great together like honeymooners, etc. And why Tilrey's felt a little attraction, for the first time ever -- he's landed in the house of a guy who isn't just another in a long line of middle-aged+ owners.

And with their ages during Relationship 1.0 a little closer at 32-39 and 22-29, makes a little more sense why Gersha kept instinctually seeing & treating Tilrey (too harshly) as an equal somehow, someone with agency he could need things from & blame for not living up to it (vs 37-45 Gersha doing the same to 20s Tilrey & you're like, get your head out of your ass man!)

Gersha's still old enough to have a significant leg up over Tilrey, but young enough that it all makes more sense somehow.

Also: men are just so hot around 30 🥵

This makes a lot of sense to me, and I’ve been thinking about doing precisely this—narrowing the gap between them just a bit to 9 or 10 years. (Tilrey is 23 in ASB, so Gersha could be 32 or 33.) I still want Gersha and Besha to be the same age, but Besha got elected Councillor before Gersha by sucking up to Verán, and he married and had kids for political reasons, so I think he could plausibly be younger, too.

It would also be nice to have Gersha not be quite so old in the later parts I’m writing! 😅

[hamliet]

This might be a sensitive topic, but why is there a lot of discourse in regards to shipping re: toxic relationships, underage, csa and so forth?

Don't those kind of relationship deserve to be told, where they talk about what circumstances lead to such relationships or could make them unhealthier? Or even healthier in regards to toxic relationships but then again, those would be toxic for a reason.

I hope this is okay to ask as someone who is ignorant about this.

This is a difficult ask, and I won't do every nuance justice, as a disclaimer.

But, I think what you say is true. At the same time, framing does matter. I do think people tend to react to the fact that a story contains X Y or X and scream that it's automatically promoting that, when that couldn't be further from the truth. Framing matters. Framing tells us what to think. But critical thinking is dead nowadays, and arts aren't taught in the schools (which absolutely contributes to this), so people assume that portrayal=endorsement when it doesn't.

At the same time, stories that exist to preach one moral seldom make for great stories. The most long-lasting stories are complex themed stories that might more pose their themes as questions, springboards for further thought and discussion. However, this isn't the same thing as saying a great story is morally nihilistic, because also that's seldom the case. Most writers aren't Samuel Beckett.

Plus, sometimes people prefer different things in their stories for different reason. Fiction allows us to explore thoughts and desires in a fictitious, safe way. Enemies to lovers, when it's actually enemies to lovers as in "we tried to kill each other" can offer us a reconciliation with the parts of ourselves we hate or with people we wish were different in real life. It's also true that one story can heal someone and hurt another. Not every story is for everyone, but that doesn't mean said story shouldn't exist.

I'm "use critical thinking" on the side of shipping diskhorse lol. Listen to everyone and decide what you think on your own, because no one "side" has people who all think the same thing, so.

I like... spicy ships that some people would call toxic. I just do. Daemyra, for one. Spuffy is probably my favorite ship of all time. Reylo, which is weirdly controversial for being fairly straightforward for a beauty/beast type. These ships are full of dramatic tension and reconciling the opposites and making peace with the darkness inside you... and I love that. It speaks to a need in me. Justin and Brian from Queer as Folk is another spicy one because of its age gap; at the same time I genuinely think it's one of the best love stories I've ever seen in any media ever, and I say that despite the fact that I'd never IRL encourage a 17 year old and a 29 year old; I also don't think aging Justin up would have worked for the story, which I can't believe I'm saying but I am. It's a very good use of fiction given themes, purpose, and context, including historical context.

At the same time, I do think there's such a thing as an irresponsible story with weird framing. That isn't me saying that the writer or the people who like it are bad people inherently--people can have good intentions and fail! It happens. That's why critique is a good thing.

I actually found that Bing an Ben crossed the line into irresponsible for me at a certain point. I am happy others like BaB; the first 2/3 of the novel were, imo, fabulous. I also think its last third is objectively bad writing and can back it up with the text (and have!), and I think that the subject matter it deals with needed to be handled responsibly, and when compared to the author's other works, you can see it's not. That's where criticism comes in. I can also acknowledge personal triggers, too. Just because I think it's bad textually and irresponsible doesn't mean that there aren't aspects of the story that might have really helped people.

Fiction isn't reality, but it is a part of reality, and therefore it is shaped by reality and can shape reality. I personally think that there are not clear black/white situations a lot, but I know my lines and where they are.

When it comes to "why is there a lot of diskhorse", well, I can't speak for a lot of people. But I do think there's a human tendency to think the world should see us as the protagonists of the universe; ie, to have everything and everyone in the world agree with you. I'm definitely not exempt. I doubt you are. I doubt anyone is. I think part of maturing is to realize this tendency and to be aware of it, to keep it in check, although no one will ever do it perfectly. I also think a lot of people in an increasingly out of control world are desperately grasping for any power they might have to "cancel" someone or something, and I think people are desperate to matter and having people agree with you seems like well, you mattering.

Anyways: it's complicated.

#ask hamliet #tw #trigger warning

[jackalopey]

this is about ridiculous online discourse so theres your warning to not read it

but i am so fucking tired of grown adults thinking that theyre in the right for going out of their way to belittle and patronise children on the internet

does it matter if a 15 year old thinks your ship is creepy? like, seriously, why does that bother you? if you’ve been tagging it appropriately then the 15 year old shouldnt be seeing it in the first place, but also, if you dont like what someone’s saying you can block them

i don’t understand how people can reach their late 20s, early 30s or older and still not know how to maturely handle disagreements, but then, i guess it’s not that uncommon for adults to be insanely disrespectful towards children

not like the whole ‘discourse’ is actually ‘adults v minors’, anyway. it’s ridiculous that it gets characterised that way. there are adults who are ‘antis’ and kids who are ‘proship’ (which, you know is a whole issue itself, but let’s not get into it)

im not an ‘anti’ or a ‘proship’ because i think both labels are absolutely ridiculous and reductive, and if you make shipping discourse a major part of your identity and youre not a 15 year old im going to think youre fucking weird and want nothing to do with you, though id take being around an ‘anti’ any day

because, like, what impact is the anti really going to have on the real world? you can block them and move on. if it gets really bad you can turn off your anon or spend less time online. sure that sucks for you, and im not pro-harassment, but there are practical things you can do to limit how much of an impact it has on you

but rape culture is a thing that impacts every survivor, which is what’s being perpetuated when people romanticise sexual assault, csa, grooming or incest. i can’t get away from a society that thinks im to blame for my abuse, that im over-reacting being traumatised, or that abuse simply doesnt happen. i cant just turn my computer off and get away from it because its fucking everywhere

‘fiction doesn’t impact reality’ is absolute bullshit and if you’re an adult you must know that’s true. the simple fact that you’re writing or reading fic is evidence of fiction impacting reality. there have been countless sociological studies on the impact of fiction on how we think, propaganda is a thing, and fiction impacting reality is the entire reason why things like positive representation matters. or do you also think its fine for every fictional character to be a white cishet man?

to you, what you’re writing or reading about might ‘just’ be fiction, and you may not think that impacts your real life, but to me and many other survivors it reflects things that we’ve really experienced, and attitudes that we’ve seen

you write a fic where someone gets groomed, but the fic presents this as cute and romantic? yeah, well, that’s how my abuser wanted our relationship to be presented, too. you write a fic that involves an incestuous relationship, but hey it’s not a big deal because it’s not like they lived together, or it’s not like they had a big age gap, or it’s okay because they really care for each other? cool, that’s another justification that abusers use. you can’t separate these things from reality because these are real ideas that real abusers use to control their real victims

what’s a fun ‘taboo’ story to you is a lifetime of real trauma to someone else

this shit is why i don’t feel safe engaging with fandom. i love writing, i love discussing fandom with other people, and i’ve even started to enjoy drawing, but it feels like more trouble than it’s worth. do i really want to risk having an episode because some self-centered, patronising git thinks that pedophilia is actually super hot? hell fucking no

and like, i dont think either side is ‘right’, because it’s not like either side is one set ideology, it’s a bunch of different people all saying different things. but when the worst crime of one side is saying ‘thats a problematic heigh difference’ and the worst crime of the other side is saying ‘that 6 year old is sexy’, it’s really fucking easy to decide which one i’d rather deal with

(and yes i know im strawmanning both sides there, thats the point)

like god yall are so hostile towards survivors, and you either don’t know or don’t care, but i’m erring more towards the second one, because i bet not a single proshipper would ever be willing to actually listen

literally all i want is to be able to engage with fandom without having to see this fucked up discourse, but yall keep proving my point by refusing to tag shit

(and none of this is even getting into the way some of yall think youre above criticism. you want your fanwork to be respected but only when people are kissing your ass. cant take basic levels of social critique, throwing a tantrum if a 15 yr old doesnt want to see your porn)

#.txt #discourse / #ill probably delete this later #im just having a bad day #and im so fucking tired of not being able to engage with my hobbies #because i dont know when im going to see the most fucked up thing ever #idc if anyone wants to talk about this but im not here to argue it #if you disagree with what im saying please do us both a favour and hardblock me #no one needs to read this bc its literally just a rant #abuse / #csa /

[takerfoxx]

What Your Favorite Puella Magi Madoka Magica Ship Says About You

Inspired by DoubleCa5t's series, and since we're probably going to get an official video sooner or later, I'm putting my version out while I can.

Also, this is all in good fun, so don't take any teasing seriously.

...

MadoHomu (Madoka X Homura)

You are a firm believe in the inherent eroticism of this image.

You have episode ten memorized.

You have a very specific emotional reaction to “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper.

You have severe problems with The Rebellion Story, particularly in how it upended the optimistic note that the original series ended on and recontextualized Homura’s devotion to Madoka as something unhealthy and even toxic, but you still can’t bring yourself to reject the movie entirely, because at the end of the day, even you have to admit that damn, that dress.

The phrase, “X character did nothing wrong” pops up a lot in your internet discourse.

You ship CatraDora.

KyouSaya (Kyouko X Sayaka)

You’re always a sucker for how the dynamic of Enemies to Lovers shifts from antagonism to devotion without losing its obsessive intensity.

Your ideal date can best be summed up as Be Gay, Do Crimes…after which you have to call your responsible friend to come bail both of you out.

You know that important stuff happens after episode nine, but to be quite frank, at that point you were too emotionally traumatized to get invested and were only watching out of a feeling of obligation.

You were uncharacteristically smug after watching The Rebellion Story despite what disproportionately little screentime your ship received.

You also ship CatraDora.

MadoSaya (Madoka X Sayaka)

You don’t understand what all the fuss is about when it comes to Enemies to Lovers when there’s a perfectly good Friends to Lovers right there.

This is the same joke as the first part of MadoHomu, but with the Hot Topic switched out for a Footlocker.

You lost your mind on 4chan over Persephone’s Waltz on more than one occasion and for more than one reason (hey, ErinPtah!).

KyouMami (Kyouko X Mami)

You read A Different Story, and probably listened to that one audio drama.

You’re a firm believer in the inherent eroticism of exes that still long for one another.

You feel that a lot of the issues that both these characters struggle with stem from how messy their falling out was, and had Mami been more supportive and Kyouko not abandoned her after the death of Kyouko’s family, a whole lot of grief could have been avoided.

MamiSaya (Mami X Sayaka)

Your ideal date is getting sempai to notice you.

You have gotten into at least one altercation with Anticrack-Kun.

MadoMami (Madoka X Mami)

Your ideal date is getting kouhai to notice you.

You’re just here for some girls being friends, gals being pals.

MamiNagi (Mami X Nagisa)

You were already shipping Mami with the human form of Charlotte before The Rebellion Story came out, and even afterward you’re still unwilling to let go despite how uncomfortable it makes you now, to the point where “Aged Up Characters” is a regular tag in your ao3 searches.

Either that, or…

HomuMami (Homura X Mami)

You’re a firm believer in the inherent eroticism of passive-aggressiveness.

You were tilting your head in a particular manner during that scene where Mami ties up Homura, and feel that how it ended was a real missed opportunity.

You had to pause The Rebellion Story for about five minutes after the gunfight, and after you continued you shouted, “Goddamn it, Sayaka!” out loud.

HomuSaya (Homura X Sayaka)

This is the same joke as the first part of MadoHomu, but with the Sanrio switched out for a Footlocker.

Your favorite ao3 tag is “Hatesex.”

KyouHomu (Kyouko X Homura)

You know what's better than one edgy badass girl with a tragic past? Two edgy badass girls with a tragic past.

You felt that both these characters spent too much energy pursuing someone that just weren't into them as they were, and would better off settling with someone on more equal footing.

You are a firm believer in the inherent eroticism of game recognizing game.

You really wish that they reached that ramen shop in the movie.

KyouMado (Kyouko X Madoka)

Your favorite highschool relationship dynamic is edgy delinquent/ray of sunshine.

You are a firm believer in the inherent eroticism of “gap moe.”

HitoSuke (Hitomi X Kyousuke)

You feel that these two characters get way too much hate, and everything that happened wasn’t their fault. Like, come on, guys. How could they have known that their teenaged relationship drama would be exploited by a race of emotionless alien groomers?

Your main priority is keeping things canon…and you don’t have a whole lot else to work with.

HitoSaya (Hitomi X Sayaka)

You feel that the most effective way of resolving a love triangle is eliminating the heterosexual options.

You feel that when Hitomi declared, “Girls can’t love girls!”, Sayaka’s reaction ought to have been, “Challenged accepted.”

SayaSuke (Sayaka X Kyousuke)

You just want good things for Sayaka, but only in a first four episodes kind of way.

You are heterosexual.

SayaHitoSuke (Sayaka X Hitomi X Kyousuke)

You feel that the best way of resolving a love triangle is by connecting the bottom two axis.

You are heterosexual. Or possibly bisexual. Well, regardless, you are really horny.

HomuHito (Homura X Hitomi)

You’ve played the portable game.

MadoHito (Madoka X Hitomi)

You are constantly frustrated at how little attention this ship receives. After all, weren’t they friends too? But instead people seem to be more focused on shipping characters that don’t even like each other or never even interact in the show, and at this point you’re just glad that I acknowledged it in this silly meme post.

MamiHito (Mami X Hitomi)

You want to be a wealthy, unmarried Victorian duchess who is noted by history for your incredibly close relationship with your lovely companion who lives with you, does everything with you, up to and including sharing a bed, and after both of your deaths scholars will make note of what great friends you must have been.

KyouHito (Kyouko X Hitomi)

You were going out of your way to piss off Anticrack-kun. And really, who wouldn’t?

KyouSuke (Kyouko X Kyousuke)

You were going out of your way to piss off everybody, and I salute your courage.

HomuJun (Homura X Junko)

You are really into Pixar moms.

Also, obligatory…

KazuJun (Kazuko X Junko)

This is the same joke as the second part of MadoMami, but you’re also really into Pixar moms.

MadoKyu (Madoka X Kyubey)

I can’t say for certain whether or not you’re a monsterfucker, but you certainly enjoy the chaos that the very implication of this ship creates.

PolyMegucas (Madoka X Sayaka X Homura X Kyouko X Mami)

You don’t understand why there has to be so much drama between all these different pairings. All the girls are wonderful in their own ways, and they would be so much happier if they just stopped fighting, formed a loving and mutually supportive team dynamic as was seen in the first part of the movie, and possibly smooched one another.

Also, you are extremely horny.

#puella magi madoka magica #pmmm #homura akemi #kyousaya #kyosaya #mamisaya #kyoumami #kyomami #madomami #madosaya #homumami #homusaya #maminagi #mamilotte #kyoumado #kyomado #hitosuke #sayasuke #hitosaya #sayahitosuke #madohito #mamihito #kyouhito #kyohito #kyousuke #homujun #kazujun #madokyu #polymegucas #madoka kaname

[jedivszombie]

Okay gang, since there are a bunch of anons going fucking wild across the dash tonight about some joking posts about Mark Webber and Ann Neal - that were someone’s shocked reaction to the age difference between them. I thought it would be interesting to go on a little journey together. 

This little journey is the story of how Ann and Mark met, and will hopefully give you guys some insight as to why the ‘sexism’ and ‘ageism’ arguments you are currently using are bullshit - and why using these words in such a buzzword way actually is not the kind of critical thinking you think it is. And why this situation is more akin to a student and teacher starting a relationship - which I think we can all agree is not advisable, even if you don’t know why.

Below the cut is going to be a little discussion of Mark and Ann the early days; the reason the age difference is iffy at best and fucked up at worst; and, a little discussion about how these situations require nuance and the ways in which f1blr often likes to blow situations out of proportion. 

I have split it into three parts:

Mark and Ann: The Early Days (1994-1997)

Nuance, my old friend. Anon hate, my enemy. (tw: for racism here, be careful)

The pitfalls of discourse and the importance of looking after yourself.

A little disclaimer for you guys: I do not pretend to know anything about this relationship, other than what is readily available to learn about it from what they themselves have put out about it. I am just providing a timeline and some facts. Whatever conclusions you draw from it are your own.

Feel free to come for me if you so desire. 

Mark and Ann: The Early Days (1994-1997)

We start our story in Australia in February, 1994. Mark is competing in Australian Formula Ford Championship and Ann Neal is the new media and PR officer for the category. This is their first meeting. Just so we know what’s up here Mark was 17 at the time, and Ann was absolutely an adult (apparently there is a 13 year age gap, which may not sound like much but we will get onto that later, which makes her roughly 30 when they first met). 

Some key things to be aware of from this first meeting: 

Mark is 17, Ann is about 30. Mark is a young racer, Ann is the media and PR officer for the category he races in. 

In an excerpt from Aussie Grit, p. 57 to be exact, we get to find out what Ann had to say about the first time they met: 

“She thought I was a bit of a smart-arse when we first met. ‘But I liked how bold and cheeky he was,’ she says, ‘and how mature he seemed. When I asked someone how old he was, I was shocked when they said 17 – he was confident beyond his years.’”

In another excerpt from Aussie Grit, p. 61, Mark tells us other things Ann remembers about their first meeting:

“Ann remembers our first meeting and my opening remark about her being so important. She can even remember what I was wearing – a stripey green and red top, one of those United Colors of Benetton things – so that was pretty prophetic, as things turned out!” 

Now this may sound extremely cute to some of you, like they’re just having a normal ‘aww remember how we met’ moment. But let me please re-direct your attention back to the fact that Mark is 17 (and still not an adult yet if this is what you are gonna nitpick about) and Ann is very much an adult, in a position of power. 

So, a teenager makes a quip about how important you are and you commit to memory what he was wearing the day it happened? 

Now let’s bring in the first quote I put up there where Ann herself was recalling the first time they met. I would like to draw your attention to the following sentence: ‘and how mature he seemed. When I asked someone how old he was, I was shocked when they said 17 – he was confident beyond his years.’

Hmmmm, where have we all heard language like this used before? If, like me, you have some experience of adults trying to start inappropriate relationships with you as a teenager then you will be very familiar to this sort of language. The emphasis is on how mature he seemed, is what’s sticking out for me here tbh.

Now, if this had been a fleeting meeting, and they had met again a few years later, I would be more on board for whatever justification some of the anons have been trying to use. However, it wasn’t. 

Again from Aussie Grit, p.61:

“After that first meeting we kept in touch. My family sometimes met up with Ann and Luke for weekend get-togethers, and I ensured she got her motor-sport fixes by dragging all my old F1 tapes out. By way of revenge she would bring down all her British Formula Ford tapes for me.”

Oh cool, so she gained the trust of his family and Mark was hanging out with her son. This is so sweet Alexa, play Chosen Family by Rina Sawayama. Real talk though, again if this is how it had ended - with them just being family friends - then we would not be having this conversation. 

BUT, we all know how this little story ends so onwards we march. We shoot forward to late 1994, Mark has done okay in Formula Ford but his Dad is no longer able to fund him. SO, he turns to their old pal - the ever present and super helpful Ann, bless her heart - to try and drum up some sponsorship for Mark so he can race. 

Little background on why Ann was chosen to try and help with this, I’ll give you 3 guesses and only one of them is correct. Yes, that’s right, it’s her experience - which she has managed to get by being 30 and having a background in motorsports. She started out as a motorsport journo and ended up dealing with press and PR for Paul Warwick (Derek Warwick’s brother). In 1986 she started dealing with Johnny Herbert’s media before working for Formula Ford in Europe in 1991. 

Ann begrudgingly accepts and draws up plans with Mark, which leads him to a Yellow Pages sponsorship for his next season in Formula Ford, and beyond - how sweet, how nice, they are #winning! We stan teamwork besties! And Ann started working with Mark and his family to further his career. 

Ann had a plan for Mark, as outlined in Aussie Grit, p.69-70:

“By the end of 1995 Annie told me, in no uncertain terms, that – and I quote – I had to get my arse out of there. She didn’t just mean Australian Formula Ford, either: she meant Australia. She thought it was time for me to go and have a crack at some of the big guys, and she proposed to help me go about it in a serious, business-like way.

‘How the f#*k are you going to get to Formula 1 coming from Queanbeyan?’ Anyone who wants to trace my journey should start with a piece of paper that Ann drew up on 6 July 1995.”

So, now Ann has outlined her hopes for Mark and a glimmering career in motorsport. I would like us to know that at this point in time Mark was the ripe old age of 18, going on 19. 

In 1996 Ann and Mark moved properly to the UK so Mark could drive in the British Formula Ford Championship - at this point Mark is still 19. At this point he is living in the UK with Ann and her mother, and Ann’s son. 

So this is probably sounding pretty okay so far and sure it’s just a business relationship with a business set up, like no real cause for concern. But then we discover that this business relationship had turned into a relationship-relationship pretty damn fast. 

From the horses mouth himself, Aussie Grit, p.87:

“Back in England, Ann and I moved house to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, on the edge of motor sport’s equivalent of Silicon Valley. We had started out as teammates and friends on a mission but over time our friendship had deepened into something else. I enjoyed spending time with her and we felt entirely comfortable in each other’s company. Moving to England was a huge step for me and I think it was a case of us needing one another and that’s how the relationship was formed.”

Okay, okay, okay so I know at this point Mark is 19/20 he’s an adult right? He can make his own choices. But, can we please admit that at best it’s an iffy situation because of the position of power and authority she was in? In his life? For his career? 

There are a few other excerpts I found particularly interesting, about Mark’s family’s reaction (all from Aussie Grit, chapter 3):

“My parents came over to the UK in the English summer of 1997. While they were thrilled about how things were developing for me in racing, they’d been less thrilled by the romantic relationship that was developing between Annie and me....”  “...Annie was bitterly disappointed at my behaviour. Her plan to take me to the highest level of motor sport was starting to go horribly wrong, so she left Australia earlier than planned and headed back to Europe. My family arranged for Alan Docking to collect my belongings from the house we had been sharing and the one and only car Annie and I had at that stage...Campese Management told her that they had been instructed by the Webber family to terminate her role as my manager and that Campese Management would be taking over all aspects of my career, including the negotiation of my driving contracts.“

“While I knew Annie provided the support and guidance I needed in my racing career, I was missing her in so many other ways too. We were such a dynamic force in every sense; we could make things happen when we were together. We were teammates, soul mates, call it what you want.“

“As to Mum’s concern about our age difference, that has never been a factor for us. When we began to be more open about being together, perhaps the top end of the age gap shocked a few people. In those days people were less accepting of a big age difference between partners, especially when it’s our way round. It’s not such a big deal nowadays and it makes us laugh when so-called celebrities reveal they’re dating an older woman or younger man!“

While the Daily Mail is trash, the beginning of this video is very revealing to me - particularly Jackie Stewart’s comments from 00:12.

Obviously you can make up your own conclusions from all of this information, and I would once again like to point out that none of us - not me, not the anons, not you - actually know the nature of their relationship. They have been together for 24 years - good for them! Whatever they have going has obviously worked for them, this is not me trying to shit on that or anything, and I’m gonna be real I’m not the biggest Mark Webber fan. 

Nuance, my old friend. Anon hate, my enemy.

All I want to do is add some nuance to the conversation, an overview of the timeline, an understanding of what the facts are. So that some of those cowardly anons (or anon) can hop off their self-built thrones and get a grip. The sexism and ageism argument literally does not apply here, for all of the evidence and reasons listed above - if the situation was flipped we would still be calling it out. The only difference is you guys would probably be on board with it being called out. 

So Ann is a woman? So, what? Do you think she’s above reproach? You think one person’s 50 note post on this site is gonna rock the foundation of a relationship that has been 26 years in making? If you have answered yes to any of these questions then you are either: a) Mark Webber himself, or b) delusional as hell. You really think that responding by sending anon hate to a teenager, who btw only made a post calling out the age difference because she was shocked and had just discovered it, is the right way to go? 

You really think that sending me this message, attacking other people in such a vile and racist manner is okay?

So you don’t like Nehir and Sera? Good for you, go block them, if you follow them, unfollow them. Those options are free and readily available to you. 

For me, it’s so funny to see you hiding behind that little Anon mask spewing this vile shit. The commitment you have to proving that you are just a cowardly person with nothing better to do than rag on a bunch of different people for reblogging a post, that in the long run is not going to reach the people it’s about, is outstanding. I really hope you pat yourself on the back for this one. 

The pitfalls of discourse and the importance of looking after yourself.

There has definitely been a spate of ‘conversations’ that have been happening recently that have very much been straying into the land of discourse, over very small comments or posts. I think that some people need to remember that we’re all here for our own entertainment and as soon as it stops being fun - you are allowed to log off; you are allowed to block people; you are allowed to unfollow people. 

Sending anon hate is so counterproductive to whatever conversation you think you are starting or having with a person. Also guys, sometimes it’s not that deep - sometimes jokes are just jokes, sometimes someone finds out something they didn’t know about a driver or an ex-driver and they make a joke post about it. That does not give you the right to send them hate, or to make racist comments in other people’s asks. 

Sometimes these discussions require a debate and sometimes discourse can be good - but honestly? I’m worried about some of you guys, it is not healthy to get so angry at other people for the things they post on their blogs that you are not obligated to follow or interact with at all. 

I am also worried about people who turn every little thing into something discoursey. There are causes and issues to care about in this sport and community, for sure. But sometimes you also have to pick your battles - especially when I know a lot people in this community have fragile mental health. I do not say this to patronise any of you but to just provide a reminder that you do not need to engage with everything that makes your blood boil, and furthering some of these conversations sometimes is not doing you guys any good. Burnout is real. 

Please take some time to take care of yourselves, the pandemic is doing a number on all of us and I know being online gives you a gateway to being connected to people, but sometimes you just have to walk away from a discussion. Sometimes you have to just go and reblog something unrelated, or stare at a photo of your favourite driver, or listen to some angry music. Anything else to process your knee jerk reaction, to give yourself time to figure out how you feel about something and whether it’s worth engaging in or not. 

#maisie talks #the post that no one asked for but we sure as shit needed #anon hate below the cut #would also like to say that i am not pretending to know shit about their relationship and this is all information provided by the couple #themselves #under the cut is a bunch of information about their relationship up to you how you take it but i know how i feel #tw racism #i went insane i've seen the opposite of god #thnx ana for supporting my rage #here i am a hundred years late and a dollar short #mark webber

[juniorgman187]

Serpent of Eden (Part 1 - Reid Series)

Maybe he stole her innocence. Maybe she never had any . . .

Summary: Reader’s one night stand with Spencer turns into a year-long semester. (yes, for all you PLL fans, this is largely based off of Ezra and Aria don’t @ me)

A/N: Strongly suggest listening to “From Eden” by Hozier while reading 😌 Couple: Fem!Reader x Professer Spencer Reid  Category: Fluff, Angst, Series Content Warning: allusions to teacher/student relationship, age-gap, allusions to penetrative, public sex Word Count: 3k

BIG BIG BIG THANK YOU TO @andiebeaword​ @inkstainedwritergirl​ @thelovelyrose​ and @imagining-in-the-margins​ for their help with the title!! 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 

Babe

There's something tragic about you

I’d been absentmindedly humming the song as soon as I heard the opening tune, giving the song more attention than the impatient bartender in front of me who had to wave her hand in my face to bring me back to earth. 

“Hello?” She set her weight on one hip, clearly annoyed with me. “What do you want to drink?”

“Oh, right, sorry. Just a water please.” 

Mild humiliation manifested on my face, earning the concern of the stranger beside me. 

“You okay down there?”

I laughed softly to mask my shame. “I’m a bit jet-lagged. I just got back from Europe.”

I hadn’t noticed him sitting there before, probably because I practically slept-walked into this place by happenstance, but once I answered him, my eyes naturally drifted in his direction. Consequently, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. 

Something so magic about you

Don't you agree?

He was charming in the most peculiar way. His hair was a mess of curls, that I positively adored for a reason I couldn’t quite figure out; a stark contrast to his clean suit that targeted my insatiable desire for sharply dressed men. 

“Where in Europe?” He asked with genuine curiosity, sipping from a mug with steam floating out of it. 

“Iceland.”

He raised his eyebrows in earnest surprise. “I heard it’s beautiful there.” 

“It really is. The waterfall we visited was insane. Here, lemme show you a picture,” Pulling out my phone, I leaned over the seat between us to show him a photo I’d taken of the waterfall, not even realizing how close he was until I smelled his cologne. It was such a unique scent that I knew I could only ever associate it with him, even if I were to never smell it again.

There's something lonesome about you

Something so wholesome about you

Get closer to me

I brushed aside the nervousness I felt from his close proximity and slid back into my rightful spot a seat away. “You should definitely go if you’re considering it. I’m planning on going back this summer.” 

“Yeah, I’m, um, I’m definitely considering it.” He grinned, displaying a pair of dimples that made me weak. I let myself wonder if I was the reason he was considering going. 

Unconsciously, I turned my bar seat fully towards him, showing that he had my undivided attention, and asked, “So do you go to Hollis?” Referring to the college just nearby that I attended. 

“No, no. I graduated ages ago, but um, I work at Quantico.” 

“Quantico? Like FBI Quantico?”

“That’s right. I’m, uh, I’m a profiler for the Behavioral Analysis Unit. We specialize -”

“In building profiles for unidentified criminals. No, yeah, I totally know what you do! At the law firm I work at, the prosecutors use profiles all the time. That’s so cool that you do that.” 

He wasn’t even mad that I’d interrupted him, no, he was glad. He smiled, looking almost proud of me. 

No tired sigh, no rolling eyes

No irony

“So you work at a law firm?” His mouth hidden behind the rim of his cup. 

Doing my best not to look at the way he licked the taste of coffee from his lips, I had to consciously keep my eyes steady on his as I answered. “Yeah, I do. There are like generations and generations of lawyers in my family, so I’m just continuing that tradition, I guess.” 

The conversation paused for a moment again, while his stare lingering on me too long for comfort that I had to look away. 

No "Who cares?", no vacant stare

No time for me

“I love this song.” I muttered under my breath, simply bringing it up to find a reprieve from his overwhelming gaze. From my peripheral, I caught him smirking, still staring.

“From Eden. B-32.”

Him simply knowing the jukebox number for the song felt like a sign.

Honey, you're familiar, like my mirror years ago

Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on his sword

“Hozier wrote it in a tongue-in-cheek way from the point of view of the devil looking at something innocent and seeing it as a missing part. The song tries to woo a woman while admitting that the relationship would be deeply flawed.” He informed me.

“Wow, that’s beautiful. Almost makes me want a forbidden kind of love.” 

Oh, had I only known the irony of my sentiment.

“He’s so good with his prose and poetry. It’s actually what inspired me to go to Iceland. I thought a change of scenery might be good for writing. Not much here in Virginia that’s quite like the beauty of Iceland,” I rambled, catching myself and consciously slowing down the rate of my words. “But um, I don’t write anything really good, just stuff that’s for me mostly.”

“I’m impressed.” 

“Why?”

With the utmost nonchalance, he stood from his chair, sliding his drink down the bar with him as he took the empty seat closest to me. I tried not to let my vision drift from his face to his actions, in the same way that he kept his gaze firm on him while he spoke. 

“Well, I tried writing, but I didn’t get very far. You’re lucky. If you’re writing for yourself, it’s true passion,” He paused to glance at his empty glass, like he was debilitating whether or not to say this next part. “Maybe you’d let me read some of it?”

"Yeah. Sure. If you really want to.” 

“Yeah, I’d love to,” He chuckled. “You’re smart, you’re well-traveled - great taste in music. I’d like to know more about you.” 

Innocence died screaming; honey, ask me, I should know

I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door

Maybe the flattery got to my head, but I couldn’t help the sudden surge of confidence bursting through my veins. 

“I’d like to know more about you, too.” I confessed. 

Needless to say, we didn’t waste another second getting to know each other. 

Well, as much as you can get to know someone after you fuck them in the bathroom of a bar. 

Babe

There's something wretched about this

Something so precious about this

Where to begin?

. . . 

“And where have you been, young lady?” Holly asked, acting more like my mother than my roommate upon my return to the dorm. 

“The Hollis Bar and Grill.” 

“Doing what exactly?” 

I would be remiss not to take up the opportunity for witty banter. 

“Spencer.” 

She rose from her seat at an ungodly speed to chase me down and force me to explain everything. 

“Who is he?”

“Some guy.” I blankly answered, not finding it in my jet-lagged heart to recount every last detail. 

“So is it just Spencer? No last name?” 

“Oh, I’m sorry, do you usually ask your one night stands for their last name?” I shot her an accusatory stare. 

“Oh, is that what we’re calling this? A one night stand?” 

My agreeing nod was interrupted with the ear-splitting squeal of joy that erupted from Holly. 

“You had your first one-night stand!”

“Say it any louder, would you?” 

“Sorry, I’m just so proud of you! My baby’s growing up.” Pretending to wipe tears from her eyes, Holly pulled me in for a hug. The only way I could manage to get out of it was if I promised to tell her every little thing in the morning when I was well-rested, and fingers crossed, less jet-lagged. 

As promised, in the morning, I revealed to Holly all the details of the night before, including, but not limited to our thought-provoking discourse, his appearance, and his performance.

“At the end, he told me, ‘I will never forget you.’” I gushed to Holly. 

And he definitely meant it, because after tomorrow, he most certainly would not. 

. . . 

The first day back from Spring Break is typically the hottest day of the year, and today was no exception. It was breaching the three-digit-degree mark, which is how you know it’s hot, but we were still forced to endure the cruel and unusual punishment of wearing a uniform anyway. One that consisted of a white button-up, a plaid pleated skirt, and some type of University cardigan over it. 

Usually, this didn’t pose a problem, and I would comply, but we’d recently been hit by an ongoing heatwave that didn’t look like it was stopping anytime soon. 

Even as I got ready in the morning, with my windows shut and the air conditioning blasting, I was sweating like a pig. I had a paranoid feeling that my makeup would melt and run down my face by the end of the day, so I sat in front of the fan to cool myself off. I struggled with my hair - not that I didn’t normally struggle to style my hair every day because my kinky curls weren’t exactly manageable. But I had no interest in straightening it because I knew the humidity would just return it to its naturally curly state anyway, so I settled for letting it run wild. I’d probably work up a sweat trying to style it at all, honestly. 

As I packed the last of my things into my backpack, I finally slipped on my Uni cardigan over the rest of my uniform to complete it. I’d been delaying this part for the better part of an hour because I knew exactly what would happen the second I put it on. And just as I anticipated - I felt faint. My cheeks grew pink the minute I stepped out of my dorm; exposing myself to the sun that was visibly beating down on everyone in the courtyard. 

“Y/N!” 

Behind me was Christina, who was jogging to catch up with me. To be considerate, I stopped walking, giving me the opportunity to look at her wholly. She was only wearing the skirt and the button up, with her cardigan wrapped around her waist. 

“Are you allowed to wear your cardigan like that?” I asked after she finally caught up to me. 

“No, but I’m going to do it anyway. Stick it to the man!” She threw up her fist into the air with a proud grin plastered on her face.

Ah, yes - stick it to the man. One of Christina’s favorite five-word mantras that she stuck by. The other being - we do what we want. 

But, see, it was easy for her to say that because she never once faced repercussions for her actions. Take her hemmed skirt, for example. She shortened it by an inch - not allowed, by the way - but here she was, donning her hemmed skirt and receiving no punishment for it, not even earning a second glance from the campus security we just passed. 

How she managed to get away with as much as she did was beyond me. The only way I could describe it was that she had this magical gift of invincibility - she could never get in trouble for breaking the rules, completely untouchable. But for me, I knew the second I acted out, I’d be sitting in front of the whole school board, begging them not to expel me. My luck was just that bad.

“You don’t always have to do what they say, you know?” Her words were tempting fate.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why do you always have to be such a goody-two-shoes? Why can’t you just let loose? You’ll have so much more fun.”

“But that’s just it - I’m not here to have fun, Christina! I can’t afford to mess around every day and break the rules. I’m not like you, okay? I actually had to work to get here.” My voice had taken on much more anger than the situation warranted, which I instantly regretted. 

Her head cocked to the side in shock. “You don’t think I had to work hard?” Christina’s voice now matched my previous level of rage.

“I’m sor-”

“It’s fine. I’ll see you after class.” 

Great. 

I watched in lamentation as she briskly walked away from me, clearly upset. 

As if today wasn’t bad enough. 

Though I knew she wanted me to chase after her and beg for her forgiveness, I had much more important things to attend to. Plus, I trusted her word - she’d see me after class and I could apologize after then, but as for right now, I was going to keep my priorities in order. 

As per usual, I was the first to arrive, and the following class, I was, too, and so on and so forth. Christina would’ve rolled her eyes at my timeliness, but I preferred being early than being late.

By lunch time, I hadn’t seen Christina since our minor altercation in the morning, but to my delight, when I reached our lunch spot in the grass, she was right there waiting for me, just like she always did. 

“Hey, Chris. About earlier -”

“No need to apologize. I shouldn’t have pushed you to break the rules. Come sit.” She patted a spot on the grass under the shady tree for me to sit on, but not even the voluminous leaves above could mask us from the sun. 

It was noon now, probably the peak of heat, and I felt like I was being baked alive. Even the wind that passed through was a hot breeze, merely amplifying the humidity. 

And perhaps I was compensating because I had a suspicion that Christina hadn’t truly forgiven me, but I started to peel my sweater off my body with the guise that I was doing it because I was burning up, and not because I was trying to get back on her good side.

She was speechless at first, but then she hit me with a cheerful, “Yeah!” While she clapped in approval, I took off my cardigan and unbuttoned the top few buttons. 

I was almost enjoying myself and how rebellious I was being. It was very unlike me, but it felt nice not to care so much, but then I heard a voice too distinct to misplace. 

“Ms. Y/L/N!” 

Mine and Christina’s head both whipped around hastily to see Mrs. Whitman, who looked furious. 

“That is against the dress code. You will report to room R-412 after school for detention. Do not be late.” 

Lest I forget to mention, Christina was breaking the dress code, too, but again - her power of invincibility protected her - a power which I did not possess.

My jaw hung low in shock. 

“Oh my god,” I turned to Christina, with my hand covering my mouth. 

“I am so sorry, Y/N. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

I shot up from the grass, replacing my cardigan where it should be on my shoulders and buttoning the top few buttons of my shirt to regain some dignity. 

“Where are you going?” Christina called out after I abandoned her at the table.

I didn’t answer, out of pure rage, not that it was Christina’s fault, but that I’d actually foolishly broken the rules - and enjoyed it. 

The rest of the day was spoiled after that thanks to the impending doom of heading straight to detention after school was over. 

Christina texted and called repeatedly to apologize, but it would be no use. I wasn’t necessarily mad at her, although it wouldn’t have been completely untrue to say that I was, but I was madder at the situation. 

My humiliation was reinforced when after the final bell rang, I had to go against the grain of students, who were desperately filing out of the classes to return to their dorms, while I was headed for yet another “class.” I normally would’ve been one of those students, briskly shuffling out of a classroom with a million other people, trying to cram through a tiny door to leave, but now I was an outlaw, and I wasn’t sure that I liked it.

I found the room in no time, having studied the campus map until I knew it as well as the back of my hand. I even recognized the room number from when I asked my counselor for an application to audit Dr. Reid’s Criminology class, but I was declined acceptance, giving me all the more reason to hesitate to enter. I clutched onto the doorknob and lingered in the doorway, trying to find the nerve to walk in and commence my punishment. 

With one exasperated exhale, I swung the door open and marched in with my head down and my tail between my legs. Taking a cursory glance, I didn’t see a teacher anywhere.

“Hello? Dr. Reid?”

My small voice ricocheted off the high ceilings and reverberated back to me, instilling me with the chills of being alone in this large, empty classroom. 

I hadn’t yet taken a seat, mainly in case I needed to run for my life, I’d just need to pick up my feet instead of get up from a seat, but more so because I expected someone to be in here to instruct me on where to sit. I was more surprised that it was just me here and not anyone else, which made me reflect even harder on the idea that maybe I was the only one here because everyone else in this school had more discipline than me. But I also had to consider that the kids that were troublesome enough to land themselves in detention probably had no intention of suddenly abiding by the rules and showing up to detainment as they should. 

Out of nowhere, I heard the clunk and thump of shuffling footsteps. 

"Dr. Reid?”

From the stage I saw a figure emerge, briskly walking with a satchel crossed over their body and a coffee cup raised to their lips. 

Those lips. 

I’ve seen them before. 

Flashbacks of the night before began replaying in my head at a million miles per hour. 

“You okay down there?”

“Iceland.” 

“Quantico? Like FBI Quantico?”

“B-32.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Maybe you’d let me read some of it?”

“I’d like to know more about you.”

I felt the ground sway beneath me when the source of his familiarity became glaringly apparent. 

We simply stood there, gaping at each other like we couldn’t believe this was actually happening, totally, and completely speechless. 

“Spencer?” 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 

PART 2 HERE!

comment to be added to taglist!

#Criminal Minds #criminal minds fanfic #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic

[redjennies]

okay so I'm making this post because I want to clarify that my general desire to not engage with discourse isn't because I think it's all stupid, but instead stems from the fact that:

I don't think I'm particularly good at coherently and efficiently explaining my political and social views to an audience of 1000+ people and i am better expressing my beliefs in one on one or just smaller conversations.

a lot of it ends up being too topical and heated for me to engage with in the way that I enjoy approaching and critiquing media. I have a few hot button topics as we've seen me go off about, but mostly I tend to take a more large scale approach to critiqing media. unless it's truly egregious, in which case I tend to not engage with media that truly offends me, I generally don't tend to really feel as strongly about "character/actor/writer/etc bad" as "okay what does this say about [related social issues] on the whole." nitpicking a single person or media for the sake of being mad or disliking something isn't interesting to me because I feel like it places too much on "bad apples" instead of wider issues.

however, as it's not some stupid conspiracy theory or like just ridiculously hateful, I do believe thoughtfully critiquing the cast and story of Critical Role is fair game. while I like to remind people that a lot of things are improvised and it is a game and that should factor into our analysis as opposed to how we might judge a scripted show, I don't usually agree with the "it's just a game" sentiment. it is a piece of media and a company and that makes it fair grounds for criticism and with a company like CR that does seem to be at least somewhat in touch with its fanbase and does appear to care about social issues even if they are flawed people who are going to make mistakes, critiquing the show could be used for good.

for instance, the blowback about the "planned aging of Jester" was so big that it reached Matt and he felt he needed to addressed it. now as I said, that was a very stupid conspiracy theory and I'm annoyed at the fandom's behavior that Matt even had to say that, but there's another discourse going around about Beau's skin tone in the new official art that is a valid concern (I admittedly originally thought it was just closer to her lvl2 skin tone than lvl 10 but a side by side comparison does reveal it is noticeably lighter) if it reached the cast might lead to them correcting something I think people have a right to be upset about. it's also not a ridiculously hard fix. I'm not some amazing professional level artist and I personally understand skin tones can be hard and more nuanced than "just use a color dropper," but I've personally had moments after posting art where I decided that I thought the tone of Veth's skin was lighter than I'd like and fixed it. if I can do it for free, a profitable company and the artists they pay can too.

even on the topic of Jester and age gaps, personally, I find it repugnant to headcanon Jester as 20/21 and ship her with Fjord or Caleb. that is something I find really gross when I come across it and am not going to defend in the slightest. however, it was never officially canon and there's just as many reasons to believe Jester is in her mid-twenties and was just sheltered for most of her life as there are for believing Jester is in her very early twenties. I do want to clarify that position because it is something I feel strongly about and sympathize with people who do see her as young and are bothered by that. my mockery is regarding the idea that the cast specifically planned to go through a bunch of insane bullshit in order to age Jester up for the plot when they clearly didn't. if Laura and Travis were so bothered by a huge age gap between Fjord and Jester, they literally at any point could have just finally said Jester's 25 (or was until last night) and Fjord's 30 and been done with it, and frankly I wish they would have because Fjord potentially being over ten years older than a 20 year old woman is this uncomfortable possible interpretation of a romance that I don't blame people for having even though I never saw her character like that.

and that's kind of my point, bad discourse often obfuscates more valid concerns to the point where people feel they can't talk about these things without coming across as haters or being lumped in with people who are saying wild bullshit. I think for the most part, people are saying normal reasonable opinions but it keeps being overwhelmed with bad faith nonsense and that's why I don't like to engage with it. it's not fun and it goes nowhere.

#cr spoilers #just thoughts really #cr discourse #the drama

[victimhood]

As predicted, dear old predictable me is procrastinating again, but I’m fixated on the fact that @itsrottenvibes proposed that within my football!AU Yooker shippers call Yusuf/Nicky “Yucky” WHICH IS THE MOST AMAZING THING AND 100% ACCURATE

This is three Inception levels deep nonsense (The Old Guard > football alternate universe > “RPF” within this football universe) but I’m OBSESSED with thinking what the in-universe fandom is like. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out The Beautiful Game before you @ me.

Yusuf/Booker: MAJOR FANDOM SHIP. This ship attracts fans from rival clubs. Even AC Milan fans hate-follow Yooker on IG just to view their stories. There are wonderful, moderate Yooker fans, and then there are some SERIOUS DELULUS who comment on every IG post that Yusuf and Booker make with 4th wall breaking bad shit like “THIS REMINDS ME OF CHAPTER 14 OF [YOOKER FIC WITH 1000 KUDOS ON AO3]

Booker’s fanon characterization: major yt boi woobie, he is somehow the main character in 75% of Yooker fics, reflecting the unconscious racial biases of the fandom. He is granted all sorts of magical powers and leading roles in the most egregious AUs. Top or Bottom Booker discourse is something you never want to touch with a 10 foot pole. Top!Booker fans basically never interact with Bottom!Booker fans since the Great Fanwars of bad discourse.

Yusuf’s fanon characterization: depends on which part of fandom you look at, Yusuf is either the Gary Stu of Gary Stus, or some sort of Manic Pixie Dream Boy who fixes Broken White Boy Booker and helps him achieve his dreams. The most popular Yusuf POV fic is one in which he is a quasi-James Bond type character, and Booker is some sexy villain that seduces him on a mission. Fans with a Yusuf bias tend to be...the coolest part of fandom, and they have an incredible skillset in producing gifs/edits/media from clips of Yusuf floating on the internet (that Armani ad has been milked to death 28937428934 ways)

Yusuf/Nichi, aka “Yucky”: only Fandom Olds ship this, and even so it’s kinda a rarepair since so many left the fandom. It was a bit of a thing back in 2021, but like, there was this post about how problematic the Yucky BNFs were and everyone did a hate-pile on and since then Yucky’s kinda...an icky ship no one wants to touch.

The Yucky fans are disturbingly literate, and write incredibly prescient fics, but also kinda weirdly elitist about it. A group of Yucky fans, who apparently attend Ivy League-level colleges, made an exclusive community of fanfic writers where they write fics for each other. It’s this elitist group that attracted the hate. A lot of the good Yucky fics have either been deleted or orphaned on AO3, because their authors work in governmental-level positions now. The best Yucky fanfic is a space academia AU written by an actual PhD candidate and the quality of that fic is like...Margaret Atwood style prose.

Nicky’s fanon characterization: The Yucky writers write Nicky as a thoughtful, intelligent human being (despite...the misspelled tattoo and Eurotrash haircuts), which the Yooker shippers think is extremely OOC. These days (in the year of our lord 2027), Nicky is often the stock villain in Yooker fics. In Yooker fics, he is always some sort of weird possessive ex-boyfriend (of Booker, surprise twist), bc Booker is the woobie that needs to be saved from the evil captain by Yusuf.

Booker/Lykon: the cute happy corner of the most sensible fans. They know they’re not a big ship, but they love each other, and they write the cutest fics and they’ve offended no one.

Rachida/Booker: this pairing surged in popularity during the Women’s World Cup, for that enemies to lovers dynamic. However, as a het ship, just doesn’t reach the heights of Yooker, and is kinda seen as a crack thing.

Nile/Booker: someone wrote this fic after Nile 1 Booker 0 (it’s super porny and basically consists of Nile domming the heck out of Booker), and everyone went crazy over it like OMG THIS IS THE BEST CRACK...two months later WAT THE HECK THIS SHIP IS REAL??? 

Yooker fans pretty much have a total meltdown at the reveal that Nile/Booker is canon. Most go into delulu mode, and write compensatory fanfics in which Booker is somehow so deeply closeted he marries Nile to prove he is very het, but then he goes back to training at Inter and he can’t resist Yusuf anymore. The worst Yooker fans make Nile a total bitch, but they are just a vocal minority (like 10% of the fandom). Most Yooker fans continue because they are still being fed new content on an extremely regular basis, like when Booker posts photos of shakshuka captioned “brunch with the bestie”. Another 10-15% of the Yooker fandom start writing Nile/Booker/Yusuf threesome fics.

Andy/Booker: ...why. But they exist. They often get hate for the age gap in their ship.

Unfortunately, no one really knows that Quynh/Booker are a thing, although it is known Andy and Quynh are married (I think the...Olympic ski fandom is like...minuscule). But Andy + Quynh/doing kinky things to Booker fics exist on the internet.

[TOG FC SPOILERS BELOW]

On the eve of Yusuf’s wedding to Nichi, Booker gets invited to spa day with Yusuf. Of course he posts about this on his IG “spa day with the bestie”, which sparks 283291321932 Yooker angst fics. The predominant plotstrains are: (1a) Booker has been secretly in love with his best friend the whole time, and finally confessions to his friend at the spa. Yusuf calls off the wedding, and Yooker ride into the sunset. (1b) Yusuf and Booker have been on and off the whole time, and Yusuf confesses to Booker that he has doubts on his compatibility with Nichi. Booker makes a grand romantic gesture, and Yusuf calls off the wedding, and Yooker ride into the sunset. (3) Nichi is forcing Yusuf to marry him for [flimsy reason]. Booker, the hero of the day, swings in to saves Yusuf from abusive big bad Nichi. (4) Blatant pwp hammam porn fic

#this is deranged #it feels unhealthy to be this invested #tog fc #but omg ok there is one part of this headcanon that is stolen from real events #back in the day there WAS an elitist fanfic writer group in football RPF #some of those fics were insanely good #but the elitism of it was also...hummm...very uncool by 2020 standards #one of my all time favorite fics is a football rarepair by someone from that group #young and impressionable me adored the sheer wodehousian literary wit of that fic

[letterboxd]

How I Letterboxd #10: Chad Hartigan.

Filmmaker Chad Hartigan talks to Jack Moulton about his prescient new sci-fi romance, Little Fish, why radio silence is worse than a bad review, and his secret system of Letterboxd lists.

Chad Hartigan has won prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and the Film Independent Spirit Awards for his acclaimed films This is Martin Donner and Morris From America. He’s also been a Letterboxd member since way back, joining what he proclaims as “my favorite website” in 2013. Hartigan has always been an obsessive logger: he has transcribed all of his viewing data since 1998 and continues to work on filling in the gaps in his downtime.

Like many ardent Letterboxd members, Hartigan is a diligent list-maker, keeping tabs on his best first viewings of each year and assembling an all-time top 1,000 films over the summer (with an accompanying 26-minute supercut). Perhaps unusually for a member of the film industry on Letterboxd, he’s unafraid to hold back his opinions and regularly voices his critiques on even the most acclaimed films.

Hartigan’s newest film, Little Fish, is a sci-fi love story starring Olivia Cooke (Sound of Metal) and Jack O’Connell (Unbroken). Written by Mattson Tomlin, it’s set during an imagined pandemic—shot long before our own actual pandemic—wherein a disease causes people to lose their memories. It was set to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and then postponed due to Covid-19. It’s now out in limited theaters and on demand, and we were delighted with the excuse to put Hartigan in the How I Letterboxd spotlight.

Olivia Cooke as Emma and Jack O’Connell as Jude in ‘Little Fish’.

You made a pandemic movie before the pandemic. How do you feel about accidentally hitting that unfortunate zeitgeist and now consequently being asked questions like this one? Yeah, strange. The questions are fine. If it wasn’t this one, it would be another that you would have to answer over and over again. One of the things that drew me to the project was that it felt like a fantasy that wasn’t necessarily rooted in reality in a way that my other [films] were. I liked that it’s old-fashioned in its attempts to purely take you somewhere and wasn’t intended to hold up a mirror to our times—but then in the end that’s exactly what it’s doing. I’m curious myself, and I’m checking Letterboxd to see the reactions from people because I really couldn’t guess what it would have been like [now].

Are there any prescient details you’re proud of getting right? I’m so grateful and happy that Jack [O’Connell] is wearing his mask correctly. That’s the number one thing that I’m glad we got right. I think it was very smart of Mattson to focus the movie on [the relationship] rather than the details of this global pandemic. I feel the reason it’s not in bad taste is because it dealt with those things as a backdrop and instead focused on people just trying to remember what’s important and clinging onto those that they love.

Onto our own favorite memory aid, Letterboxd. How did you discover us and how did you manage without us? I’ve been on since 2013, so I’m probably one of the earliest people to jump on it. I love the interface and the diary, just aesthetically it was really fun. I’ve been keeping track of what I see with analog [methods] for as long as I can remember. I have diaries and planners so I logged all that old information. If I was running for president, my platform would be that everybody is required to use Letterboxd comprehensively, because I just love to know what everybody is watching all the time.

Do you talk about Letterboxd in the real world with the other filmmaking people? Yes, and I’m often trying to convince them to join. Other filmmakers are more concerned about having their opinions on peers be public knowledge than I am, I guess. I’ve made four films now and each one’s been bigger and more widely seen than the last. The very first one was a total no-budget affair that couldn’t get into any festivals and I was very excited when I finally got it into the Hamptons Film Festival. It was about half-full and one or two people came up to me afterwards and said they liked it. This was pre-Twitter so I spent the whole next day Googling to see if anybody had written anything. I was so curious to see what people thought and there was nothing—not a review, not a blog—just total emptiness.

When the next film got into Sundance, there were people tweeting their reactions and actual reviews and I read everything. People were asking if the bad reviews hurt me. Absolutely not—nothing can be worse than the radio silence of nobody caring about the first film. The fact that people care enough to sit and write about this movie—good or bad—is a win, and I’ve carried that onward. I like to see what people think, it can be helpful in how you view the film as a success or failure. You learn and move on.

Jack O’Connell at least remembers how to wear a mask in ‘Little Fish’.

Some filmmakers have told us they’re kinder to films after making their own, but you’re not shy at all about being critical. How did making your own films change your perspective as a critic? I don’t consider myself a critic so that’s why I’d be less concerned with someone reading what I thought. Why should they put any stock into what I think? If they get hung up on it then that’s their own stuff because I’m not a critic. Like everyone else on Letterboxd, I just love watching movies. Obviously I can appreciate and understand some of the technical aspects maybe moreso than people who don’t make films, but at the end of the day, rarely that’s the thing that makes you love a movie or not. There’s a great bit in Francis Ford Coppola’s commentary track for Finian’s Rainbow where Fred Astaire’s doing a dance number and [Coppola admits] he totally messed it up because Astaire’s feet aren’t fully in frame. He’s very honest about his mistakes because it’s one of his earliest movies. Then he goes on to say that he thinks there’s the same number of mistakes in Finian’s Rainbow as there are in The Godfather, it’s just that he made mistakes on the things that don’t matter for The Godfather. No film is perfect, but if it can latch onto this one magical aspect that connects you to it, that’s what makes you love it or not.

You had a project where you chart the best films made by directors at certain ages as you reached that age. Tell us more about it. That was a great project. I got the idea when I was 26. This was back when I had a Netflix DVD subscription and it was just hard for me to randomly choose DVDs to throw in the queue. I needed a system. I decided to watch movies from directors when they were my age and see if there’s some common denominator, something I can learn. At that point, there weren’t many, there were films like Boogie Nights and Fassbinder films. Not many people had made stuff when they were 26 or 27, so it was very feasible. Every year there were more movies and more directors to add to the list and it became time-consuming. I did it all the way up until I was 34 and the reason I stopped was because I had a son and there was no way I could continue this level of viewing output.

My favorite part of your account is the fact that you log every viewing of your own films. You know for a fact that you’ve watched Morris From America 26 times and Little Fish fifteen times. Why do you log them? What counts as a viewing? I’ve clearly watched those movies many more times in little chunks but I’ll only log it if we’re sitting down and watching it from beginning to end. I have a ticket to see Little Fish in the drive-in on Saturday, so it’s going to be logged again. Why do I do it? Like I said, I wish everyone was required to use Letterboxd comprehensively. That’s what it’s there for for me, an accurate log of what I watch. This is psychotic behavior but I’m tempted to have a Letterboxd account for my son. I’ll do his views for him once he starts watching movies until he’s old enough to take over. It’ll just be, like, Frozen a thousand times but he’s not old enough to watch anything yet, so we’ll see.

Have you discovered any films thanks to Letterboxd discourse that influenced your approach to filmmaking? For sure, I can’t maybe say specifically, but once I dropped the directors my own age system I didn’t replace it with nothing. I’m a Virgo and I have a little bit of OCD, so I have to have some system. I’ve replaced it with a new complicated system where I pull from different lists and that’s now my main source of how I choose a movie to watch. I have like ten or twelve different lists, each about a thousand movies with a lot of overlap. One of them is my own list of every movie I’ve seen in a theater and I’ll go and look through that and if it’s something I want to revisit. Recently I rewatched Twister, which I hadn’t seen in a long time and is an old favorite from when I was in high school.

I have a bunch of private lists I cycle through; every movie nominated for a Spirit Award, every movie that’s won an Oscar, every movie that’s played in competition at Cannes, the top 1,000 films at the box office. There’s another great website that I use as a biblical resource which is They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? and their lists of acclaimed films for all-time and the 21st century. I hit those up often. Something that I watched purely because of the very high Letterboxd rating and really loved is Funeral Parade of Roses. I try to see as many movies as I can that have a 4.0 rating or higher.

You respect the Letterboxd consensus. I do, but I don’t always agree with it.

‘Little Fish’ director Chad Hartigan.

Which is your most underrated or overlooked movie according to Letterboxd? I can say I was the very first person to log a movie called Witness in the City, which is an Italian noir movie I watched when I was doing my ‘directors my own age’ series. Literally nobody had logged it, so my review was like “whoa, I can’t believe I’m the first person to log this!”. It was very exciting for me because it’s great, but I’m the OG logger of that movie.

From your list of every film you’ve seen in a theater since you were twelve, which was your most memorable experience? The cheap answer is that it’s hard to top my own movies. The Sundance premiere of Morris From America at the Eccles Theater is maybe the best, but if I’m disqualifying my own films, seeing Scream 3 in a very packed theater in Virginia Beach was really fun, really rowdy. There was a trailer for a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie and I remember the climax was Van Damme going “you lied to me!!!” and everyone laughed. Someone did a George Costanza move later during Scream 3 and yelled out “you lied to me!!!” and everybody laughed again—so that’s a high. That’s the thing I miss the most about movie theaters, and the worry I have if theaters go away, is that so much of how we feel about a movie can be tied to the experience; who we saw it with, what we did before or after, what the crowd was like, or if anything strange happened. There are a lot of movies I have strong memories and affection for because of the experience of seeing them and I probably wouldn’t feel the same way about if I just watched it at home on my laptop.

I typically like to cap interviews off with what filmmakers thought was the best film of the past year, but we have your data to hand. For you, it’s Garrett Bradley’s documentary Time. Can you talk a bit about what makes the film stand out for you? One thing I learned about myself from the pandemic is that the motivation and desire to see new things is very closely tied to the theater-going experience for me. Once that was taken away and you could watch a new movie at home, it joins the pile of all the other movies. The fact that it’s new doesn’t really do anything for me. Why would I press play on Da 5 Bloods when I still haven’t seen Malcolm X? I gotta see Malcolm X! There wasn’t an urgency, so I saw far fewer films than in an ordinary year. But Time I found incredibly moving and important. Similar to what I liked about the Little Fish script, it’s so hyper-focused on one relationship and within that one story it has so much to say about larger issues and the world at large. It was an emotional and rich viewing experience.

‘Little Fish’ is on demand and playing in select theaters now. Images courtesy of IFC Films.

#little fish #chad hartigan #life in film #film director #letterboxd #how i letterboxd #letterboxd member #letterboxd tips #olivia cook #jack o'connell #romance #romantic film #sci fi romance #pandemic movie #covid movie

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 65 - Binary

Tessa: I suppose it isn’t language, not really, because, because language as we use it is about as far from digital as you can get.

I think this was the point at which I first had to start pausing the episode with some regularity because my partner had developed a case of chronic sneer face and I was kinda more interested in the exact reason than in an unbroken listening experience.

Tessa: The way people talk about it, it’s like you have to think you’re saying that our mind is everything we perceive, everything we are. That means you can never know when your grasp might be slipping. I’m not convinced that’s it, though. Or maybe deep down somewhere inside, you understand what’s happening to you and – no. I am, I don’t know which scares me more.

People weren't entirely sure what the Entity involved with this statement was, apparently, and I obviously wasn't thinking about it at the time of my first listen 'cause Smirke's list hadn't actually been introduced yet, but now this intro just SCREAMS Spiral. Of course, there are also strong elements of the Eye, with Tessa being forced to watch Sergey's pain.

Jon: Statement of Tessa Winters, regarding a strange computer program she downloaded from the Deep Web three months ago. Is that accurate? Tessa: Well, first off, I didn’t find it on “the Deep Web” – god, it’s like talking to my grandpa!

Jeez, rude much? Jon's in - what - his early 30s? (Mind, I too was thinking of him as older than that until his actual age was confirmed, though nowhere near grandpa age. He just reads as a lot older than he actually is. And Martin reads as a lot younger, so - not to open a can of worms here - but I'm really surprised I haven't come across 'age gap' discourse with regard to JonMartin - I mean, there's no actual significant age gap, if any, but that usually doesn't stop the discourse. Oh well, I also stay out of the main tag, mostly, so there's that.)

But then the responses start to break down, become more sinister, and keep referring to how much pain Sergey is in. Eventually, the only response the bot gives you is screaming and pleas to be released. The idea is that the chat bot is Sergey Ushanka’s mind, and he doesn’t like being in a computer nearly as much as he’d hoped. If it’s well-executed, it can be genuinely quite unsettling. - Statement of Tessa Winters

Oh, I can imagine that! This reminds me of some weird flash games I played as a teenager actually.

So, when I got a notification from the bot group I’m part of, and it was just a link to a file named your “Ushanka’s Despair.exe”, I didn’t hesitate.

And this is where even I started scoffing. WHO JUST DOWNLOADS AND OPENS A RANDOM EXE FILE POSTED BY SOME RANDO ON A FORUM? Like, at least mention that you had a VM set up or something!

One of them read “helphelphelp”, all run together, and another, “it peels my mind like knives.

Tessa's right, this is fucking unsettling.

It was only at that point that the possibility of malware really occurred to me.

Yeah, nah, sorry, but you don't set up your statement giver as some computer wiz, have her download and open a random exe file from a forum and then have her go "Whoopsidoodle, didn't think of malware" when her computer starts acting weird. My suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

Tessa: Yeah, I figured. I just saw your post and thought, why not? And it does feel good to talk about it. You know?

Oh god, she says this and sounds so relieved and then we learn what happens to all the people who give their statements directly to Jon and this is so PAINFUL in hindsight!

Tim: Oh, sorry didn’t mean to disturb you while you were being suspicious. Jon: It's fine. Tim: No, no, I’ll catch you when you’re not scheming.

Pfffft! Tim certainly doesn't feel he needs to hide his opinions anymore!

Tim: You’ve spent a month staring at that footage.

It's sometimes hard for me to remember that the statements don't happen on - like - consecutive days. This is a pretty elegant way of letting the listener know how much time has actually passed without being too expositional about it.

Tim: No, no, you listen for once. I was fine in research. Happy. Then you asked me to be transferred here...

Huh, Jon asked specifically for Tim to be transferred to the archive? Do we know why that is?

Tim: And the worst thing, the actual worst thing, is that no one here has my back, with any of it! Elias doesn’t care, Martin just wants a tea party, and Sasha – and you –

Oh, that's interesting, the way he breaks off when he says "and Sasha". What exactly has Not!Sasha been doing to fuck with Tim's mind?

My impression of this episode

My first listen was somewhat marred by my partner, who has been neckdeep in philosophy of mind and computational linguistics for years and has OPINIONS, scoffing endlessly at the clumsy intro and general set-up of this episode. Quite frankly, I wasn't super-impressed by the intro either and wouldn't have been if I had listened alone. But the episode does have some genuinely unsettling moments and really raw lines. And the supplemental is absolutely excellent, so much character development for Tim (we've been focusing so much on Jon's PTSD - I, at least, briefly forgot that Tim ALSO got wormed). So much raw emotion. And plot development, too, re: The Magnus Institute and the way it binds people. And the voice acting in the supplemental is just really, really good.

Favourite quotes

The angles cut me when I try to think.

#tma relisten #the magnus archives

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 2nd Season Ep5: “Wait For Me, Tororo Soba!”

In this week of Fruits Basket, we begin to see the ominous specter of Age Gap Relationships [tm] looming on the horizon, but more importantly we get to see the gang visit a haunted house together so that’s neat :)

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

I really just need to stop trying to predict how the anime is going to pace things out, lol. I was almost sure they were gonna skip the haunted house part since it’s really filler-y, and just add chapter 53 into this episode instead since it’s the last chapter remaining between now and the beach arc, but oh well.

I honestly have no clue exactly how they’re gonna handle the next episode now. Unless they start the beach arc halfway into the episode, we only have chapter 53 left to adapt. So I wonder if they might spend the entire episode on that and flesh it out with original material. Who knows.

Either way, I think combining chapters 48 and 50 in this episode worked better than I expected, in terms of making it a fun and mostly light-hearted episode before the beach arc starts, but it wasn’t quite as elegant as some of the other ways they’ve combined different chapters together.

There’s not really that much to say about the haunted house part, but I really liked it. Sometimes the comedy in the remake falls a bit flat, but it really worked here. Especially with how they played up the dramatic music and cinematography for Haru’s story about the haunted house props.

The main meat of the episode is the introduction of Kureno and his whole thing with Uo, though. Which is it’s own whole can of worms, lmao. I think they’re one of the more divisive ships in the fandom, and for good reason. I’m definitely in the camp of not liking their relationship at all, and for me it’s 50% because of their age gap, and 50% because I think it’s just a straight up boring relationship with barely any substance. I don’t really like ‘love at first sight’ relationships at the best of times, and this always felt like one of the laziest examples of it.

I think it makes a lot of sense that Uo and Kureno would fall for each other really quickly because of their own personalities and backstories and whatnot, but it doesn’t stop me from rolling my eyes at them having Extremely Dramatic Internal Monologues [tm] and arguments in public restaurants about all the intense feelings they have for each other after, like, ten minutes of knowing each other. And it’s not like they’re gonna get that much more time together between now and the end of the story, lol.

And then there’s the whole age gap part of it which is an issue all on it’s own. And considering that Uo herself comments on how iffy the situation is when she finds out how old Kureno is, I feel justified in being put off by it. I’m not quite as old as Kureno, but now that I’m in my early 20′s I’ve honestly just been getting more and more put off by these sorts of relationships. When you’re a teenager it’s an appealing fantasy to have, but when you actually become an adult you start to think differently about teenagers, and the idea of dating one is just weird. The way that Uo was being kinda childish and emotional about the whole situation really reminded me why this sort of relationship dynamic just doesn’t appeal to me.

In an in-universe sense, Kureno’s at least emotionally and developmentally stunted enough that there’s not necessarily as much of an imbalance in power or life experience as there would be otherwise, but that doesn’t entirely get rid of how gross it is.

This whole plot point is also indirectly making everyone think more about the whole Kyoko/Katsuya thing, which this is basically setting up for, and oh boy that’s also it’s own whole thing that I’ll talk about when it actually comes up.

It’s interesting that with the small changes this episode made to the flow of things, Tohru wasn’t there when Uo and Hana were talking about Kureno, and we thus didn’t see her mention the fact that her parents had a big age gap, but I don’t think it means they’re going to be changing that part of the story or anything. I think they just didn’t want to so bluntly foreshadow it for one reason or another. The age gap part of Kyoko and Katsuya’s relationship is pretty unavoidable, anyway. The most they could do would be to change Kyoko to a high school drop-out to make the age gap a little smaller, but it’d still be there, and I think the anime’s already mentioned Kyoko dropping out before high-school, so I think it’ll be exactly the same as the manga, for better or worse.

I know a lot of fans are gonna be wringing their hands in advance about all the controversy and discourse this is gonna cause when it becomes more of a major thing in the story, but honestly these sorts of things deserve to be criticized and interrogated. And it’s not like it’s the only thing on the list of stuff this series does that’s worth criticizing, lmao.

Which brings me to the fact that to my complete lack of surprise, I’ve also been seeing anime only people after this episode talking about how they think Akito’s a woman. I’ve said it before, but I think most fans of this series just don’t want to admit that that whole plot twist is actually extremely predictable and cliched. You can see it coming from a mile away as soon as you start seeing Akito have all those ominously depicted moments of intimacy with male characters.

It’s one of the things that the anime can’t exactly do much to change since it’s so integral to the plot, and they don’t really even seem interested in changing any of it, so I’m genuinely curious to see how people react to it, and I hope it spawns serious discussions about these sorts of tropes and cliches and the history behind them, and how differently they come across in modern times. Sorta like what happened with the Banana Fish anime a while ago.

Anyway, all that aside, I think the anime’s going to make me like Kureno a bit more than I did in the manga, even if I still don’t care about his relationship with Uo. Just giving him voice-acting is enough to make him feel like more of an actual character, lol.

#murasaki rambles #fruits basket

[neocab]

Translating the Cyberpunk Future

I'm a video game translator, and I love my job. It's odd work, sometimes stressful, sometimes bewildering, but it always provides interesting and inspiring challenges. Every project brings new words, slang, and cultural trends to discover, but translating also forces me to reflect on language itself. Each job also comes with its own unique set of problems to solve. Some have an exact solution that can be found in grammar or dictionaries, but others require a more... creative approach.

Sometimes, the language we’re translating from uses forms and expressions that simply have no equivalent in the language we’re translating to. To bridge such gaps, a translator must sometimes invent (or circumvent), but most importantly they must understand. Language is ever in flux. It’s an eternal cultural battleground that evolves with the lightning speed of society itself. A single word can hurt a minority, give shape to a new concept, or even win an election. It is humanity’s most powerful weapon, especially in the Internet Age, and I always feel the full weight of responsibility to use it in an informed manner.

One of my go-to ways for explaining the deep complexity of translation is the relationship between gender (masculine and feminine) and grammar. For example, in English this is a simple sentence:

"You are fantastic!"

Pretty basic, right? Easy to translate, no? NOT AT ALL!

Once you render it into a gendered language like Italian, all its facets, its potential meanings, break down like shards.

Sei fantastico! (Singular and masculine)

Sei fantastica! (Singular and feminine)

Siete fantastici! (Plural and masculine)

Siete fantastiche! (Plural and feminine)

If we were translating a movie, selecting the correct translation wouldn't be a big deal. Just like in real life, one look at the speakers would clear out the ambiguity in the English text. Video game translation, however, is a different beast where visual cues or even context is a luxury, especially if a game is still in development. Not only that, but the very nature of many games makes it simply impossible to define clearly who is being addressed in a specific line, even when development has ended. Take an open world title, for example, where characters have whole sets of lines that may be addressed indifferently to single males or females or groups (mixed or not) within a context we don't know and can't control.

In the course of my career as a translator, time and time again this has led into one of the most heated linguistic debates of the past few years: the usage of the they/them pronoun. When I was in grade school, I was taught that they/them acted as the third person plural pronoun, the equivalent of the Italian pronoun "essi." Recently, though, it has established itself as the third person singular neutral, both in written and spoken English. Basically, when we don't know whether we're talking about a he/him or a she/her, we use they/them. In this way, despite the criticism of purists, the English language has brilliantly solved all cases of uncertainty and ambiguity. For instance:

“Somebody forgot their backpack at the party.”

Thanks to the use of the pronoun "their," this sentence does not attribute a specific gender to the person who has forgotten the backpack at the party. It covers all the bases. Smooth, right? Within the LGBT circles, those who don’t recognize themselves in gender binarism have also adopted the use of they/them. Practically speaking, the neutral they/them pronoun is a powerful tool, serving both linguistic accuracy and language inclusiveness. There's just one minor issue: We have no "neutral pronouns" in Italian.

It's quite the opposite, if anything! In our language, gender informs practically everything, from adjectives to verbs. On top of that, masculine is the default gender in case of ambiguity or uncertainty. For instance:

Two male kids > Due bambini

Two female kids > Due bambine

One male kid and one female kid > Due bambini

In the field of translation, this is a major problem that often requires us to find elaborate turns of phrase or different word choices to avoid gender connotations when English maintains ambiguity. As a professional, it’s not only a matter of accuracy but also an aesthetic issue. In a video game, when a character refers to someone using the wrong gender connotation, the illusion of realism is broken. My colleagues and I have been navigating these pitfalls for years as best we can. Have you ever wondered why one of the most common Italian insults in video games is "pezzo di merda"? That's right. "Stronzo" and "bastardo" give a gender connotation, while "pezzo di merda" does not.

A few months ago, together with the Gloc team, I had the pleasure of working on the translation of Neo Cab, a video game set in a not too distant future with a cyberpunk and dystopian backdrop (and, sadly, a very plausible one). The main character is Lina, a cabbie of the "gig economy," who drives for a hypothetical future Uber in a big city during a time of deep social unrest. The story is told mainly through her conversation with the many clients she picks up in her taxi. When the game’s developers gave us the reference materials for our localization, they specified that one of the client characters was "non-binary" and that Lina respectfully uses the neutral "they/them" pronoun when she converses with them.

"Use neutral pronouns or whatever their equivalent is in your language," we were told.

I remember my Skype chat with the rest of the team. What a naive request on the client's part! Neutral pronouns? It would be lovely, but we don't have those in Italian! So what do we do now? The go-to solution in these cases is to use masculine pronouns, but such a workaround would sacrifice part of Lina’s character and the nuance of one of the interactions the game relies on to tell the story. Sad, no? It was the only reasonable choice grammatically-speaking, but also a lazy and ill-inspired one. So what were we to do? Perhaps there was another option...

Faced with losing such an important aspect of Lina’s personality, we decided to forge ahead with a new approach. We had the opportunity to do something different, and we felt like we had to do the character justice. In a game that's completely based on dialogue, such details are crucial. What's more, the game's cyberpunk setting gave us the perfect excuse to experiment and innovate. Language evolves, so why not try to imagine a future where Italian has expanded to include a neutral pronoun in everyday conversations? It might sound a bit weird, sure, but cyberpunk literature has always employed such gimmicks. And rather than take away from a character, we could actually enrich the narrative universe with an act of "world building" instead.

After contacting the developers, who enthusiastically approved of our proposal, we started working on creating a neutral pronoun for our language. But how to go about that was a question in itself. We began by studying essays on the subject, like Alma Sabatini's Raccomandazioni per un uso non sessista della lingua italiana (Recommendations for a non-sexist usage of the Italian language). We also analyzed the solutions currently adopted by some activists, like the use of asterisks, "x," and "u."

Siamo tutt* bellissim*.

Siamo tuttx bellissimx.

Siamo tuttu bellissimu.

I’d seen examples of this on signs before, but it had always seemed to me that asterisks and such were not meant to be a solution, but rather a way to highlight the issue and start a discourse on something that's deeply ingrained in our language. For our cyberpunk future, we wanted a solution that was more readable and pronounceable, so we thought we might use schwa (ə), the mid central vowel sound. What does it sound like? Quite familiar to an English speaker, it's the most common vowel sound. Standard Italian doesn’t have it, but having been separated into smaller countries for most of its history, Italy has an extraordinary variety of regional languages (“dialetti”) and many of them use this sound. We find it in the final "a" of "mammeta" in Neapolitan, for instance (and also in the dialects of Piedmont and Ciociaria, and in several other Romance languages). To pronounce it, with an approximation often seen in other romance languages, an Italian only needs to pretend not to pronounce a word's last vowel.

Schwa was also a perfect choice as a signifier in every possible way. Its central location in phonetics makes it as neutral as possible, and the rolled-over "e" sign "ə" is reminiscent of both a lowercase "a" (the most common feminine ending vowel in Italian) and of an unfinished "o" (the masculine equivalent). The result is:

Siamo tuttə bellissimə.

Not a perfect solution, perhaps, but eminently plausible in a futuristic cyberpunk setting. The player/reader need only look at the context and interactions to figure it out. The fact that we have no "ə" on our keyboards is easily solved with a smartphone system upgrade, and though the pronunciation may be difficult, gender-neutrals wouldn't come up often in spoken language. Indeed, neutral alternatives are most needed in writing, especially in public communication, announcements, and statements. To be extra sure our idea worked as intended and didn't overlook any critical issues, we submitted it to a few LGBT friends, and with their blessing, then sent our translation to the developers.

Fast forward to now, and the game is out. It has some schwas in it, and nobody complained about our proposal for a more inclusive future language. It took us a week to go through half a day's worth of work, but we're happy with the result. Localization is not just translation, it's a creative endeavour, and sometimes it can afford to be somewhat subversive. To sum up the whole affair, I'll let the words of Alma Sabatini wrap things up:

"Language does not simply reflect the society that speaks it, it conditions and limits its thoughts, its imagination, and its social and cultural advancement." — Alma Sabatini

Amen.

#Fabio Bortolotti

[hovercraft79]

Are you still a multishipper for tww?

I am. I am primarily a fan of Hicsqueak,but I also enjoy Mumbroom, Starbroom, the PHB&J’s that I’ve read and Hackle. I’m loving the new young Gwen and Algie series by @emiline-northeto  Heck, if someone wanted to write an Ada/Pippa fic (couple name: Pickle), I’d probably give it a read. There are more than two ships in this sea.

However, due to recent events, I thinkyou are really asking me about the Hackle ship, so I’m going to address it in more detail. The short answer is yes, I still enjoy and can ship Hackle. Forthe long answer, keep reading below the cut. But be warned, Nonny, for below the cut there be spoilers, Hackle and a cauldron full of my own opinions about this season.

—————————————————-

So, Brave Soul, you stuck around for the long answer. Good for you. Keep in mind that all of this is my own opinion,shaped and refined from viewing, many discussions with @hiccuphardbroom as well as what I’ve read from others. In fact, @marvellouslymadmim has posted a fantastic essay on the workings of insular societies and how this season reflects that. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you do.

 Also, I’m delighted to hear what otherpeople think, whether you agree or disagree with me (just a note that I doteach government and civil discourse is a must - I have a lecture and I’m notafraid to use it, lol). Now, here we go:

Did the writers use some plot pointsthat could be problematic? Yes. I don’t think anyone is denying that. However,they left so many gaps in the storyline that a healthy, supportive relationshipbetween equals is not only possible, it is possible within canon. I’m not just blowing smoke with this, I’ve plotted the story in my head already. It wasn’t even hard to do. For the rest of my answer I’ve tried to organize my thoughts into three sections so you can skip anything you don’t care about.

The Confinement

What exactly was the punishment? Whogave it to her? How long was it meant to last? The show doesn’t explicitly say.We know she was confined for leaving the grounds and risking exposure to thenon-magical world. Was she immediately given a lifetime confinement or just one for while she was at school? Was she really confined for life or for 30 years? Or as long as Indigo was stone? Did Alma give her the first confinement? If this was the highest law at the time, that sounds like Magic Council business to me. The episode didn’t specify any of these things.

We know Hecate broke the Code again to get to Indigo, give her magic and bring her to the school. Did this involve Hecate leaving the grounds again, with the help of the Wishing Star? Was Hecate’s punishment extended when Indigo turned to stone? Seems to me like it would have been. However, Gwen ‘so you got a girl turned to stone’ Bat and the fact that Mirabelle knew the spell to undo it off the top of her head, makes me think that maybe that isn’t as big a deal to the witching world as it is to us. Was the confinement extended because she broke the Code again while she was essentially on probation for the first violation? Heck, yes, I think it was. I think that is where the lifetime confinement comes into play, but again, the show didn’t say so.

I don’t think for a minute that theheadmistress of a school would have the power to impose a lifetime confinement on anyone. Did the show say Alma couldn’t? No, that’s my opinion, but there’s not a single person in my school district with that kind of authority. Can a headmistress do that in the witching world? Maybe. Maybe not. Again, they didn’t bother to fill in that gap. Who handed out that punishment? I think the Great Wizard/Witch at the time and the Magic Council did.

Was confinement the only punishment on the table? I wonder. Hecate was already being confined when she broke the Code again. What if the next step was stripping her of her magic entirely? Is it possible that Alma Cackle isn’t the bad guy? Is it possible that somethingworse was going to happen to Hecate and she or someone at Cackle’s talked the Magic Council/Great Wizard into lessening the punishment to confinement? Yep. It’s possible, because the show doesn’t address any of that. Did Hecate’s parents agree to this? Abandon her? Fight to keep her magic? Have her taken away from them because they didn’t teach her better? Were they even alive? Who knows?The show acts like Hecate doesn’t even have parents.

Was Ada there when all of this happened? Again, the show didn’t say. She would have been in her 30’s, so could she have been one of Hecate’s teachers? Yes. Would that be a major problem if she was? Yes. Would it be the equivalent of the ‘aging Mildred up’ fics that sometimes pop up? To me, it would be, and I’ve been extremely clear on my views of that. BUT the show doesn’t say that Ada was there. Is it also possible that Ada was somewhere else? Yes. Ada grew up at Cackle’s and knew that she would never be able to do anything else once she took over. Could she have done something elsebetween college and Cackle’s? Yes! It’s canon that witches are extremely long-lived. Could their gap year actually be more of a gap decade? Could there be a whole bucket of fics about the adventures of young Ada? Yes! Could Ada have been teaching at another school to get outside experience? Absolutely yes! In fact, that’s how it actually works in education, in the states at least. One doesn’t typically become the principal of a school you taught at without getting outside experience first. It’s entirely possible within canon that Ada never even met Hecate until Hecate was an adult. Which brings me to the next bit…

Hecate’s Adulthood

What happened to Hecate once shegraduated? We know she became the potions teacher and deputy head, but that’s it. How did she get qualified for that? Hecate’s school record showed she went on to higher education. How? One of the writers mentioned correspondence courses in an answer to a question from @reginleif420 The books tell us she was tutored by Broomhead. Who paid? Being confined to Cackle’s would only mean thatAlma had to provide room and board. She could, and would I think, put Hecate to work to earn her keep and I think Hecate would have wanted to do that. That doesn’t mean sending her to college, though. Or that she would teach. She could have been a kitchen witch or groundskeeper.

Did Hecate even stay in the castle? Shewas confined to Cackle’s – but the academy’s grounds are extensive. Did she live in Darkwood Cottage? Hecate offered to go there with Ada, so it must have been on the grounds. Indigo was still on the grounds but in the forest. Could Hecate have been some sort of forest witch healer or recluse or whatever in the woods? Yes. Did she ask to work at Cackle’s? Did Ada seek her out? Did Alma offer her a teaching position? Did Alma treat her like a prisoner or like every other kid/staff member? It sounds more like Alma did what she could to make Hecate’s life asnormal as possible. Once again, we don’t know how that happened because the show didn’t tell us. Instead it left gaps waiting to be filled.

Why did Hecate go into potions? Why did she even want to go to college? I think she might have studied potions hoping to free Indigo, trying again and again for years. Becoming potions mistress at Cackle’s gave her access to the lab, ingredients and the library – a good way to keep trying to save Indigo.

How did she go about getting the job?Did Alma hire her? Did Ada once she took over? Did Hecate want it or was she talked into it? Did she have the ability to say no? I think she did – not being able to leave doesn’t take away every kind of agency she has. Was she already a teacher when Ada came back to Cackle’s? Maybe. It’s possible. Almost anything –good and bad – is possible here because there is so little in canon.

However Hecate got the job, we do know that she must have excelled at it. At some point, Hecate became the deputy headmistress and there is no logical reason for that if she was truly viewed as a prisoner by Alma or Ada – or any of the staff. Hecate doesn’t just have agency at Cackle’s, she has authority. When Ada is gone, she is in charge. How did that come about? We don’t know, but there’s no way someone viewed as a prisonerwould ever be put in that position. We know the staff trusts her. Ada trustsher. When something was wrong with Ada, Dimity went straight to Hecate. When Ada is feeling inadequate and down, it’s Hecate she listens to. It’s Hecate she trusts to save them when the castle is freezing. Are those the actions of people who see Hecate as a prisoner? Are those the actions of someone who sees herself as a prisoner? I don’t think so.

What about Hecate’s social life? We don’t know much from canon, but we do know that she attends staff nights and her company is welcome there. She has friends. We know that there are many other adults who work at Cackle’s but apparently don’t live on premises (who are all those other witches in the teacher’s lounge?). Does Hecate socialize – or even have romantic relationships with them? What about any other teachers that may have come and gone over the years? Are there friends or lovers there? Maybe. Allof that is possible. Is it possible that she wouldn’t be involved with anyonebecause of the confinement? Also, yes. She might not think she deserved it orthat it was fair to chain anyone to her. Would she cling to the people in thecastle because she had no options, or keep them at arm’s length as long as she was confined to the castle? Either one is possible. But here is where I willcut the writers a tiny bit of slack. I don’t think the writers intended to create a storyline where Hecate is a wretched husk of a woman who was kept aprisoner until she developed Stockholm syndrome. That’s just not something that’s part of a tv show aimed at 12 year-olds. Which leads me to the finalthought…

Lifting the confinement

Here is where I am most frustrated withhow the show portrayed events. The most important scene regarding this confinement happened off screen and there is no excuse for that. The episode also seemed to span more than one day, which leaves even more gaps. The first time we hear Hecate talk about leaving is with Gwen, but she has already made the decision and it’s happening. How is that?

When Ada lifts the spell, they have obviously already talked about it because Hecate interrupts Ada’s goodbye to tell her that she has changed her mind and isn’t going to leave after all. Also, everyone has changed clothes from the wedding, Julie is gone, and Algie mentions that it’s prizegiving and the end of term. The real proof for me that time has passed is that some sort of announcement has been made about Hecate’s departure. We know this because Dimity has claimed Hecate’s rooms, planned to redecorate, and already bought the paint.  Could all of this have happened on one day? It’s possible. Could it have happened over the course of a couple of days? Yep, much more likely, in fact.

What does this time frame mean? For starters, it opens the possibility that Ada or Hecate had to get permission from the Great Wizard or the Magic Council to lift the confinement. Was Ada able to do it? Yes. Did Ada have the authority to do it? It didn’t say. Was theconfinement tied to Indigo being stone? Maybe. Was it a set 30 years? Theythrew that number around a lot, so… maybe? But if Ada could do it whenever she wanted or whenever Hecate asked her to do it, why would there be a gap at all? That leads me to think that the decision to break the spell wasn’t totally up to Ada or Hecate.

I agree with @saltbroom that by the endof the season the whole confinement thing just feels like a throwaway plot device. It felt like a line tossed in to make the situation more dire in Bad Magic, even though nothing in previous seasons had indicated Hecate wasn’t free. It wasn’t mentioned again until the end of the season, and then 30 seconds are devoted to lifting it? It’s like one of the writers said ‘oh hey, we’ve still got Hardbroom confined. Should we maybe do something about that? Oh yeah! Forgot about that, have Ada say this.’ In my opinion, it had no purpose or meaning to anyone - not even Hecate, apparently for all it seemed to bother her. Do I want more explanation? Yes.

And there you have it, my rambling thoughts on the whole thing. As you can see, I have way more questions than I have answers about those gaps in the story. That’s why am I still shipping Hackle. Because I know that there are some incredibly talented writers who write for that ship and I have every confidence that theycan fill those gaps. And I can’t wait to read how they do it.

#tww2017 spoilers #hackle #Hecate Hardbroom #ramblings #it's a kids show folks #ship and let ship #let's go back to having fun with this