#but he...held some beliefs that i think. are objectively bad

[ughmulder]

I've gotta stop keeping tabs on my ex via Spotify playlists but his shift towards Midwest emo music is...interesting

#teehee #like besides american football all of the music hes added to his playlists were songs i explicitly showed him #like i showed him those songs #im crazy but im free #it honestly means nothing i know that but a girl can dream :) #me dreaming about him every night and this and the fact that he posted something to his story one time #that was an inside joke between the two of us and bc he literally had NEVER posted on his story before #its all nothing #i do keep thinking about him though #the fact that he just wanted me to be happy #the fact that he just wanted to say how great i was and that i was so powerful the week after we broke up #and the fact that he said he'd had so few friends like me in his life #well emphasis on the friends #it was a situationship so he's not Technically my ex but Technically he is #but he...held some beliefs that i think. are objectively bad #he said i was the kindest person hes ever met #WAAAAAH #journal #and bc of his thoughts i dont even think its good for us to be friends #harry

[buckets-and-trees]

Fandom: MCU Title: The Pool Party Op Characters/Pairings: Bucky Barnes x female!Reader, Sharon Carter Word Count: 1.2k 

Summary: Post TFATWS. The Power Broker hasn't made any major plays, but finding out who they are is still a priority. Bucky has been working on and off with Sharon to track them down as there are potential leads. This mission has them attending a luxury pool party in The Maldives.

Content Warnings: sexual situations (kissing, vaginal fingering, vaginal penetration), strong language Logistical Notes: Filling my twelfth square for Bucky Barnes Bingo @buckybarnesbingo - Y5 "Pool Party" - and Hot Bucky Summer Week 8 - "How did you meet?" undercover mission, high stakes op.

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

“You’re sure that–“

“Yes, I’m sure, Bucky,” Sharon cut him off over the comms. “I’ve told you a hundred times. Everyone here lives in the grey area and after everything you were technically responsible for leading with the Thunderbolts team, the status of you as the reformed and squeaky-clean good boy is not a widely held belief anymore.”

“I know you managed to get me on the Power Broker’s guest list, but I still think this is too easy,” Bucky murmured loud enough for Sharon to hear.

“Tell me when you haven’t been able to trust me.”

He sighed. “I know.”

“And if things go sideways and you have to go full Winter Soldier mode on someone, all the better for convincing them you’re back in the Big Bad Business.”

“It just feels weird to know I’ll be strutting around with the arm on full display.”

“So that’s the real problem. It’s a pool party. People will look at your arm, but then your abs are going to steal the show.”

Bucky could feel the immediate flush of heat rushing up his neck, over his ears, and cheeks.

“I’ll get you in. The plan will work. Just be ready to improvise – I only told you half the plan because I knew you would argue with me over the rest of it. I’m going radio silent now so you can’t bitch at me and because that was already part of the plan anyway. Make good choices, Buck. I’ll check in with you in twenty and see you at the extraction point in forty-five.”

Bucky closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and took a few deep breaths. This was, in fact, not the first time Sharon had gone rogue on a mission, but he did trust the track record they had together. He would never tell her a part of him reveled in the challenge that went with working blind or having to improvise. She didn’t need that kind of encouragement.

And he trusted her, which was more than he could say for most of the people he got assigned to work with or who assigned him to missions these days.

Bucky was always wary of putting operatives who were basically civilians into the field during missions, but he understood that sometimes the objective required it to ensure they achieved their objective.

Sharon had told him that much – that he would be working with a desk agent and providing cover for the mission in addition to actual security and extraction if it came to it. She said she would be talking to his assignment when he arrived, they would make eye contact, and then Sharon would move out so Bucky could move in.

They still didn’t have credible leads on the identity of the Power Broker, but merely being at the party, Sharon was going to mingle and grab facial scans for as many people as she could with the photo-contacts she’d been issued while Bucky assisted with the other key objective.

The Power Broker’s communications were behind an impenetrable wall that the team at the CIA had been unable to hack for over a year, so when they got a tip the Power Broker was hosting a glamorous end of season pool party at their luxury vacation home – or in this case, summer fortress. The play was to bring one of the CIA’s top hackers to a party Sharon was tapping into some of her old Madripoor experience to get them on the list for, and access and bleed whatever information they could from inside the system.

That hacker was you.

He sighed when he saw it was going to be a standard meet-cute play, sneak into the house to find someplace more private, and clearly that place would be the home office. He excused himself from the present company he’d been an idle party to conversation with and moved to the steps out of the pool, grabbed a towel from the rack, and wrapped it around his waist, then grabbed two drinks off a tray one of the servers was circulating around the crowd and approached you.

The plan was good. He didn’t like it at first, but he was sold on it now.

His lips on your neck, his right hand cupping your mound and his left hand palming the delightful weight of your breast in his left hand, grinding his hips against your ass, this plan was perfect.

The soft, broken whimpers escaping your mouth were satisfying, indulging a hunger he didn’t know he’d been suppressing until it was finally unleashed in this moment. Now he didn’t want to stop.

It seemed like you didn’t want him to stop either. 

The person who had come to check on the room and “caught” them was long gone, wouldn’t be coming back any time soon, and if they did they seemed too mortified to do more than check for noises and maybe knock on the door, but Bucky could tell they wouldn’t open the door again, so… he could stop, but there seemed no reason not to carry on.

He pressed hot kisses along the column of your throat from the base up to just below your ear, then paused to ask, “This okay?”

“Yes, yes,” you managed.

“You want–“

“More,” you moaned, putting your left hand over his to encourage him to continue his ministrations there, and clutched at his bicep with the other.

He didn’t need more encouragement than that. Bucky sunk two fingers into your slick cunt, and you rocked up against him. He smiled and licked the shell of your ear.

“Bucky…”

Your tone seemed almost hesitant, so he slowed for a moment. “What is it?”

“I mean more, Bucky,” you said.

“Fuck,” he groaned as you pushed back roughly against his hard cock. “You can have it, doll.”

Your hands reached back to tug his swim trunks down. He took over, pushing them down his thighs, and you hooked your own fingers into your swim bottoms to drag them down, and you leaned forward, resting your forearms against the desk, presenting your pretty pussy for him.

Fuck.

Okay.

He lined up the head of his cock with your slit, then pushed in and gripped your hips. The first full thrust he took slowly, sinking in balls deep. You were such a shy thing, and half of the fun once he’d discovered that had been flustering you, standing too close – because he needed to in order to keep the cover intact, the intentional but not strictly necessary touches, and now to have you decidedly not shy any longer as he pumped in and out of you.

He could do more missions like this.

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

#bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #hotbuckysummer2023 #buckybarnesbingo2023 #bbb2023 #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfic #aspen wrote something

[mlmxreader]

the cod fandom has a serious issue w saneism

I'm genuinely not joking. so many of you fuckers are guilty of being absolutely abhorrent towards people with personality, schizospec, psychotic, dissociative and trauma disorders and you need to stop before you genuinely harm someone. no, you're not "cute" for it - you're an ableist, nasty little cunt for it.

so, let's go through it a bit; I'm not gonna go in-depth, bc ik some of you lot won't take criticism w/o treating it as a personal attack, and ik a LOT of you don't actually give a shit abt hurting people either. but I'm gonna quickly cover some things that need addressing.

First and foremost: "delulu".

"delulu" is a term that's been shortened from "delusional" to essentially mean "I have a thought/opinion that few others have".

which isn't the correct way to actually use this term whatsoever; according to the correct definition, a delusion is stated to be "A delusion is a strongly-held or fixed false belief that conflicts with reality.", and an example of that would be (for example) if someone believed that their behaviour, thoughts and emotions were being controlled by the government or aliens. THAT is a delusion.

"Soap isn't dead uwu" is not. by using the word "delusion" colloquially and by using "delulu", you are minimising and misusing a term used solely meant for usage within the mental health field. it's not that hard to say "I have the opinion that-" or "I think that-", because what you're experiencing isn't a delusion. it's an opinion.

Secondly: "psychopath/sociopath".

"psychopath" and "sociopath" are widely misused and derogatory terms used often towards people with ASPD to portray them as violent, evil, etc. and within the cod fandom is often used as a derogatory term for villains like Makarov and Shepherd and Graves.

the terms themselves are wildly outdated and no longer used within the mental health field due to their derogatory and untrue definitions; "psychopath" and "sociopath" can ONLY be used by people with ASPD and other such disorders, otherwise, it does count as a slur.

if you cannot reclaim it, you cannot use it.

otherwise, you're only pushing and furthering stigmatisation and stereotypes that render it HARDER for people to seek help and support for their mental health.

Third: "schizo".

"schizo" is a fucking slur. end of. it is a slur against people with schizospec disorders. it's a slur, stop using it.

it's not cute and it isn't funny; the word is a slur, and if you cannot reclaim it then why are you using it if not to treat schizospec people as a fucking joke?

why is our mental health a joke to you when you would kick off if someone did the same to anxiety, or depression?

why is it okay to treat one disorder as a joke, why is it okay to treat schizospec people as if we're second class citizens?

Fourth: "psycho".

the same as above, "psycho" is a fucking slur. stop using it.

the word has a long, long history of being used in a derogatory, offensive and bigoted manner in order to portray someone as being violent, evil or otherwise terrible - "he's such a psycho!", "she's acting psycho!" - and yet, the cod fandom throws it around as if it means nothing despite the fact that one quick look will show that "psycho" is a slur and is as bad as calling someone a "faggot" as a slur.

Fifth: the treatment of Nikto

in recent weeks, Nikto has become sort of the "new" König - he's an object of desire and attraction, which... Sure, whatever.

but Nikto canonically has dissociative identity disorder, a mental health issue that is largely misunderstood and mistreated massively.

the fandom treats Nikto two ways: either his mental illness boils down to "uwu soft baby" disease, or it doesn't exist at all.

that is NOT how dissociative identity disorder works; by treating Nikto as if he's some completely innocent, infantilised, glamourised depiction of dissociative identity disorder, you are further perpetuating that it is NOT a serious disorder and it is NOT something to take seriously.

furthermore, by acting as if his mental health disorder doesn't exist AT ALL, you are also furthering that a character CANNOT be desirable, loved and attractive if he has any kind of mental health disorder.

how would you like it if someone treated anxiety or depression that way?

how would you feel if someone erased depression to make you an object of desire, instead of treating it with respect and decency?

it's not nice, is it?

so why do it at all?

conclusion

the cod fandom has a massive, massive issue with saneism and ableism, and it needs to stop because all you're doing is being shitty and bigoted towards marginalised people to the point where even something that's supposed to be FUN can't even be that anymore because people with these disorders have to CONSTANTLY be on guard and CONSTANTLY have to deal with stigmatisation and demonisation to the point where no one can be trusted outside of ourselves.

so stop it, have some fucking courtesy for your fellow man and have some respect and decency for once in your lives.

yes, you can reblog, but don't fucking derail.

#call of duty #cod #call of duty x reader #cod x reader #call of duty fandom #cod fandom

[corruptedcaps]

Moral Objection: Part Three

Read part one here

Read part two here

The next morning came with the now familiar hangover of her transformation. Thankfully she had left Jack’s before he had to see her for who she really was but was now laying in bed alone with regret once again at her actions.

“Why do I become such a heartless conniving bitch when I transform?” She said aloud not to anyone in particular however she soon heard a voice reply.

“Because it’s who you’ve always wanted to be.” Said a familiar voice that sounded like it was right beside her.

Sitting up with a start she looked around unsure of where it was coming from. “Who said that? Where are you?”

The response was soft but clear. "Go to the mirror." Heart pounding, Keira complied, her steps hesitant as she approached the reflective surface. Her breath caught as she stared at her own reflection, her heart racing in disbelief. The image that stared back at her was not the plain Keira she had known, but the beautiful and cruel alter ego she had become.

Staring at the reflection that both fascinated and repelled her, Keira took a deep breath and spoke aloud, her voice determined but tinged with desperation. "This isn't who I want to be. I want to be kind and good, to make a positive impact." Her words hung in the air, a plea for some form of redemption.

The voice, mocking and haunting, whispered in reply, its tone dripping with cynicism. "Kind and good, they're just other words for being naive and weak. Look at the world around you. Do you think it rewards kindness? Power and beauty are the currency of success."

Keira's heart ached as she listened to the voice's words, its cynical perspective challenging her deeply held beliefs. She fought against the doubt that threatened to consume her, a battle raging within her mind and soul. The temptation of power and confidence still held its grip on her, but a small ember of her former self refused to be extinguished.

“You need me Keira, you want me! Even now I bet you’re getting off on the wicked things we got up last night. Jacks big dick pounding our perfect pussy. If he passed you in the street today he wouldn’t even notice you.” Her evil persona said with a knowing smirk.

It was true, images of being her hotter self consumed her mind. She could still taste the lipstick on her mouth, feel the tight dress clung to her perfect curves, the lustful gaze from every man that saw her. It was all intoxicating and her body was reacting in kind.

“Go ahead, slip that hand into your panties and fantasize about being me. You know you want to.” Her reflection said with a velvety smooth voice, sending Keira into an almost trancelike state.

Keira’s hand traced the lips of her pussy first, before slipping two fingers in. Her mouth let out a little moan as she looked at her evil reflection smile satisfactorily. Keira knew she was losing a fight for her very soul but in that moment she didn’t care.

“Picture what an evil bitch you can be when you embrace me. I’ve been buried all these years inside of you, Elissa just helped bring me out. Admit it, you love what a mean bitch you are when I’m in control.” Her evil side hissed but Keira was about to give in yet.

“Nooooo! That’s not true! I’m a good person! Ohhhhhh god!” She groaned as she fought against her stronger persona while still playing with herself, unable to stop.

“No Keira! You’re good at being bad! Your a fucking natural babe. Imagine the cruel shit we could get up to if you gave in and we became one. Think of how hawt it would be! We could take Elissa down and become top bitch.” The voice continued and Keira was beyond turned on. It was impossible for her to resist. Being hot and mean was one thing but the chance to replace Elissa was too good to pass up.

“Ohhhh fuck yessss! Fuck my morals and my ideals! Where has that gotten me?! I want power and beauty and money! I want to be a spoilt mean bitch! Ahhhhh!” She moaned loudly as she came hard over her fingers. She felt all fears and anxieties flee from her mind as her meaner persona enveloped and merged with her. It felt good.

Standing up she tasted her fingers with a smirk and looked in the mirror. Her hotter reflection was gone, replaced with her plain as dirt look which she scowled at. She had the attitude now, she just needed the looks.

Picking up her phone she dialled Jack. Like a good boy he picked up after just one ring.

“Jack, remember that better deal I promised you? Well it’s time I reveal it to you. Here’s the plan…” Keira said purring down the phone as she laid out the plan for him while fingerling herself some more. She couldn’t wait.

To be concluded…

[elliescardcollection]

I try not to let myself get too worked up over anger directed towards Abby or The Last of Us franchise in general. But since the show did so well and season two is coming, it simply cannot be avoided and I just have to rant for a moment; one of the most irritating arguments about The Last of Us Part II (imo) has to be “Joel just shot Abby’s dad, but she tortured Joel in front of Ellie… so Abby is bad” or “Abby just found her dads body, Ellie watched Joel die.”

Now, I’m one of the biggest Abby apologist out there and even I’m willing to admit, what Abby did to Joel is objectively worse. BUT the people who use this to justify Ellie and villainize Abby, drive me insane. We, as an audience, have all that information and we can make that assessment. However, Ellie and Abby do NOT know ANYTHING about each other. I genuinely don’t think she even fully realized Joel’s importance to Ellie. She let Ellie and Tommy live, which she knew could create issues in the future, but she chose not to kill/punish two ‘innocent’ people for what Joel did. KILLING HER FATHER. Abby is driven by vengeance and in the cruel world of the last of us, this is ‘justice’. it’s a theme through both the games and the tv show.

Abby found Joel and tortured him because she felt justified in making her fathers killer feel her pain. Ellie followed Abby and co. all the way back to Seattle and killed everyone who meant anything to Abby because she felt justified to make Joel’s killer feel the same pain. It’s not about who was more wrong.

The Last of Us Part II changed me in ways I cannot explain. The first time I played the game, I was so on board with Ellie. I felt so justified in killing Abby no matter the cost… and when she started torturing Nora in the same way they did with joel, I encouraged her. I remember thinking ‘It’s fictional, it’s a video game, it’s justice in this world and nora deserves it.’ It wasn’t until the end of Abby’s day two when Owen hits Abby with “maybe we stopped looking for the light” and shortly after it cuts to a dream. Not a nightmare like she had been having throughout the game, but a dream. Walking down that same dark hallway, but this time a bright, white light shining through the door to the operating room where she had found her dads body, only this time he was alive, smiling back at her. It clicked in my head, this was a real person to her. It wasn’t just some faceless npc, It was her father. He was her light. And joel took him from her. It FORCED me to look past my own bias and challenge my own beliefs and world views. It made me a better, more understanding and more empathetic person.

Ellie killed all of her friends and half of Seattle for the same reason that Abby killed Joel. And by the end Ellie still didn’t even know why Joel was killed to begin with. When she and Abby meet at the theater, she offers herself up to save Tommy. Saying, “I know why you killed Joel. He did what he did to save me. There is no cure because of me, I’m the one you want!” But Abby didn’t care about the cure, she cared about the people she loved and she JUST found Owen, who was arguably the most impactful (Seattle) death for Abby. The person closest to her, the person who held her when she lost her father, was killed by the people she chose to spare. And so the cycle of violence continues.

People are inherently selfish. We are narrowed minded creature who don’t often look outside of our own perspective. When Abby killed Joel, she was so focused on retribution, that the thought of her taking someone else’s light didn’t even cross her mind. Which is why the ending is so impactful to me. Ellie recognized it. She realized that if she killed Abby, she was taking something away from Lev. The same thing Joel did to Abby and the same thing Abby did to Ellie. Ellie ended the cycle.

TLDR: Ellie and Abby know nothing about each other and are viewing the events of the games exclusively from their own egocentric view. BOTH of them did awful things but BOTH were ‘justified’ in their actions, regardless of who was more at fault.

#THE LAST OF US SPOILERS #TLOU SPOILERS #RANT #TLDR #the last of us #the last of us part 2 #tlou #tlou2 #ellie williams #joel miller #Abby Anderson

[kingsmoot]

Ok, so. It's interesting and really sad to me that Tyrion - a person who has suffered sexual abuse (w Tysha, that bit where Cersei hurt him as a baby, and probably many more lesser things) - has this more complex attitude towards Sansa than most of the creepy men in her life. In that aside from consistently trying not to marry her, he also acknowledges that she's a child, a little girl, not supposed to be in this situation (considering the world of Westeros, this is... almost entirely a conclusion he came to himself, as the only other character we see thinking of a teenager this way (iirc) is Ned. Most likely the average decent people are aware of how gross pedophilia is but. You get what I mean!) He doesn't show this same attitude towards Lancel which is it's own thing but also ties into his attitude towards himself.

He's aware that she's too young for this, but the fact that he started a sexual relationship at 13 himself (alongside he desperate need to be wanted and loved, but especially wanted) makes him still... try it with her when they get married.

And the line that really hits me is, "You're a child [...] but I want you. Does that scare you, Sansa?" Which, on so many levels:

a. Gross

b. It's partially because of how Westeros sexualises kids and teens (remember Arya? The nine year old?) that he's even aware of her sexuality. She's been advertised as a sexual object by the Lannisters all day.

c. Gross, and also Tyrion is immoral as hell

d. He's never been grey in this particular direction before and that's horrible to read! Until now it's mostly been him lashing out at people (he thinks are) prejudiced against him. ADWD is coming...

e. IDK if he'd still be this sort of - we'd call it a pervert but it's not perverse in the nobility of Westeros is the horrible thing - individual if he was in a less child-eating setting, (bc that's some heavy psychological theory there) but the idea that he would, he'd just never show it, is almost more hair-raising than the more visible sliminess...

completely agree wrt tyrion's understanding of sansa as a child being unique to him. cersei and tywin both say explicitly that because she's had her first moon's blood she is a woman grown and ready to be wedded and bedded. and in general, child brides abound in westeros. it is a cultural norm to marry off girl-children. tyrion is a singular and notable exception in saying that this is wrong and he wants no part in it. tywin even expresses annoyance when he first says this because sansa is meant to be his "reward" for a job well done on the blackwater because of how her status as heir to winterfell would bolster tyrion's own inheritance as a second son.

i actually think that tyrion not showing this attitude towards lancel is a reflection of how sex in general is framed in westeros (which isn't too different from how sex is framed in real life) where it is something that can only be good for men, never bad, and is expected to be bad, painful, uncomfortable, or unwanted for women but they should be doing it anyway. i think tyrion's acceptance of lancel being crushed between the cogs of lannister sibling machination is a combination of his own traumatic sexual experience in his youth, and the culturally held belief that regardless of cersei being twice lancel's age, she is the most beautiful women in the seven kingdoms, and even if she is going to bite his head off and eat it at the end of this, he should enjoy the experience.

i also think you pointing out the fact that average people are likely aware that pedophilia is bad is a very interesting part of the series in terms of how smallfolk view the intricate depravities of their nobility. there hasn't been a lot of smallfolk perspective so far in my reread (beside arya's adventures with hotpie and gendry which lend a really good perspective but not specifically on this) but i get the sense that they aren't keen on the child marriage and dynastic incest.

i think the thing to remember is that like, we as readers can be disgusted at tyrion climbing into bed naked with sansa and telling her he wants her, because we as readers have a better perspective on this situation and haven't been raised in westeros. that's a good thing! i think that scene is definitely supposed to make us feel ill. but the important thing is that tyrion chooses not to "exercise his rights as a husband" and rape sansa in their marital bed, which is unheard of in westeros.

even cat and ned, who are like in general the golden het standard of a perfect westerosi arranged marriage, even cat describes that she was terrified of her wedding night, that she "gave her maidenhead" to a dark sullen stranger and watched him ride off to war. like it is simply not done in westeros that you would spare your wife her expected marital rape. it is what she has been preparing for all day and it is what is expected of you, her lord husband. cat even watches roslyn cry all the way through her own wedding and thinks "well of course she would be inconsolable, she must be so scared of getting raped later" (with the understanding that the crime of rape does exist in westeros and can be charged for but the definition of rape does not include the sex forced onto women and girls in their wedding beds, so cat does not think of this as rape in her mind. but i do.)

so i think in this case tyrion is grey to readers because we have the understanding that it is wrong to rape a 13 year old girl and inherit her lands and get her pregnant so that they pass into your household lineage so that the lannisters hold the west, south, and the north. but by westerosi standards he's doing some sort of baelor the blessed schtick that everyone finds annoying.

#ask tag #worlds best sippycup #tyrion tag #sansa tag

[of-solitude-past-and-present]

YOUR WRITING>>>>>

I don't know how you came up with Naga Scaramouche but I've been brain rotting for days now 😩

Do you have any ideas how'd he'd react if someone goes out of their way to look for reader after they disappeared?

Especially if they mightve been a love interest at some point or the person clearly has feelings for them 👀

(referring to this)

A friend of mine actually came up with the idea for naga scara!! Together, we fleshed out the plot. It wasn't originally a fic, though, it was just a rp that got me brainrotting afterwards. I couldn't stop thinking about the whole concept until I finished writing Hidden in the Sands. The fic literally wouldn't leave me alone unless I was working on it LMAO

I'm going to take this as an excuse to talk a bit about the behind the scenes here (you have NO idea how much I've wanted to infodump about this fic)–originally, the reader was actually my friend's interpretation of Lumine and Sanad was originally my Alhaitham. I also played the part of Kuni himself. It was a bit awkward, actually, because Alhaitham and Kuni had to talk to each other a little bit and it felt like I was talking to myself.

I've changed the personalities of the reader and Sanad greatly, as you might have already guessed, since Sanad behaves nothing like Alhaitham; Sanad's more like one of those "prime examples" that Alhaitham talks about when he says, "Book learning alone is not enough to cultivate intelligence." Sanad is, intentionally, a very flawed but still reasonably likeable character. I want to talk about him too. Oh boy, looking back on this I sure did talk a lot about an OC I don't think anyone genuinely cares about.

I wanted to make him come off as normal, like an actual human person. He really is just a regular dude, he's just been kinda brainwashed by the Akademiya, as shown by the lines, "The Akademiya has declared them to be just baseless nonsense, so of course I don't think they actually exist." and "Desert dwellers tend to be... fearless." He's absorbed many commonly held beliefs (and biases) in the Akademiya, a textbook example of someone who's been taught what to think rather than how to think. I wanted him to be realistic. However, he's still funny, charming, and overall good-willed, even if he's spineless and very easily led.

I've greatly changed the fic from the original rp, and only the base premise (yandere!naga!scara and the whole "commissioned to find the culprit for some strange murders in the Hadramaveth") remains the same. It went through several versions at first. In fact, before I came up with Sanad, I was going to have Cyno replace Alhaitham! But ultimately, I realized Cyno was actually competent and I might have had to write a proper fight scene, which I did not want to do. You can still see a remnant of the first draft I chose to leave in (from when Cyno was the disposable companion) in the bad joke Sanad tells at the beginning of the story.

Using Sanad also had other benefits that I feel helped pull the fic together!! His cowardly nature gave reader a chance to endear themselves to Kunikuzushi, for refusing to abandon Sanad even after he (frankly, understandably) ran away. Even this early on, I had decided that whatever backstory naga Kuni might have had, it absolutely had to revolve around betrayal since canon Kuni's backstory is so deeply tied to it.

It's a really minor pet peeve of mine, and it doesn't bother me too much, but I usually don't really like it when the yandere starts to fixate on the object of their obsession for no reason than, like, "love at first sight" or "they simply caught my eye for some vague reason I cannot put into words." It's not bad, per se, and it's not even a solid rule of mine! I can think of several fics I love that don't give a solid reason, though the characters in those have such a dynamic that you still understand why one became so interested in the other to begin with... (I'm making this more complicated than it is, I think, but I'm beginning to think it's just I just don't care for it when the MC has the depth of a piece of paper.) Anyway, I'm getting derailed again, but I chose to give Kuni a reason to empathize with the reader in the form of Sanad and his "betrayal" because of this preference of mine.

However, and I think I've touched on this a bit in a previous post, this wasn't the only reason Kuni decided to spare them. In fact, even after he decided to leave you for last, he still thought he was going to come back to kill you. What really interested him was your insistence on saving Sanad even after what Kuni perceived as a betrayal. Why would you try to help someone who didn't even make an attempt to help you? It doesn't make sense. You're too soft, it's endearing.

Whether or not Sanad's actions are justified is debatable, though I personally understand them. He's never fought in his whole life. If you, the experienced monster-fighting adventurer couldn't do it, how could he? He doesn't even have a sword. It's certainly cowardly and rude to say the least, but given the circumstances, I think it's the choice most people would make in that situation. Of course, it's absolutely something Kunikuzushi could have (and did) twist into something completely different. I think I made it pretty obvious, but contrary to what Kuni said, Sanad had no such malicious thoughts when he left you there. Kuni is extremely jaded; his perception of the world has been mostly shaped by the betrayals he's experienced, and he's no different in this AU. As I said before, Sanad's not a terrible person, just terribly average. If he had survived, he absolutely would have had survivors' guilt.

Anyway!!! I'm not sorry about the infodump, thank you for giving me the slightest reason to tell you all about it. Here's what you actually asked for.

Kuni views most people as inconsequential, little more than helpless ants. He doesn't care about them in the slightest. If anything, they irritate him. So when someone shows up–an old friend, a crush, anyone–his first thought is to get rid of them if they venture too far in, and especially if they see him. Even if he doesn't know that they know you. If he lets them go, more will come. If he finds out they're looking for you, specifically... well, it doesn't really change his plans. He's going to kill them no matter what.

It does motivate him though, to be a bit crueler, to make it last a bit longer. What they are to you doesn't change the outcome, but it might sour his mood a bit more if they were anything more than friends or family. It's not likely that he'll leave them be long enough to find this out, though. Logically speaking, they're probably not going to tell a monster like him all about the friend/family/crush they're looking for in this desert, especially not when he's clearly unfriendly.

It's not totally impossible, though. This hypothetical person would have heard all about the strange attacks (as mentioned in the fic), so seeing a large half-snake person could make them realize that Kuni was most likely the cause for your disappearance (even though they'd assume it was murder and not kidnapping). Even so, I doubt they'd have a little chat over tea about who all Kuni has murdered recently.

Anyway, I digress. Assuming he figures it out somehow, whether or not he tells you about them depends on his mood and your behavior. Unfortunately for you, dealing with people irritates him. Especially when they're specifically looking to take what's his from him.

He'll come back covered in blood either way, but if he's in a bad mood, or you haven't been on your best behavior, he'll tell you all about what they looked like. He makes sure to mention that they were looking for you, and describe in detail everything he did to them.

"I'm going to leave his corpse out to rot in the sun," he hissed into your ear, pulling away to look you in the eye, "for the vultures and serpents to feast on. It serves him right. He was on a fool's errand; it's impossible to retrieve what's lost to the sands."

#naga scara #yandere scaramouche #genshin impact #the first part of Kuni's dialogue at the end of the post is actually ripped right from the rp #alhaitham met the same fate as sanad #thank u for letting me infodump about it. it's the neurodivergency #I like sanad a lot despite his many flaws #oh my word i came back tk this and 2/3 of this post isnt even what you were asking for #id say im sorry but genuinely i am not #i really did see ''idk how you came up with naga scara'' and just went ham huh #tumblr messed up my tags LMAO sorry if they didnt make sense before

[surpriseroundtellyourfriends]

I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on Solomon

oops. this turned into a long-ass essay about racism, financial morality, and child programming, so I'll put it under a readmore. click at your own peril.

oughhh ughhhhh thinks about Solomon and gets ill.

I've given my Ben 10 racism speech before so bear with me if you know me and you've heard this before. (if you haven't: yes, you read that right, my Ben 10 racism speech.) listen listen listen. okay, so.

as someone who was raised as a conservative, homophobic, capitalist christian who fully held onto those beliefs and acted on them for a long time: it means the WORLD to me when I see an objectively terrible, morally awful person portrayed in a sympathetic light.

and it makes me want to KILL A MAN when I see a "sympathetic racist" (or capitalist, or homophobic, etc.) and the reasons they're supposed to be sympathetic are so laughably stupid that it ends up encouraging the idea that all bad people are intrinsically bad and cannot be redeemed.

the most common bad "sympathetic racist" character I see is "their family member was killed by a member of the group they despise. therefore, they hate that whole group."

that is NOT how ANY form of discrimination—including financial discrimination—works. I don't have a fear or hatred of long-haired boys because my stalker ex who tormented me for years was a brown-haired boy. even children can grasp that one trait of a person does not necessarily correlate to their other traits.

discrimination—for the vast majority of cases—happens due to child indoctrination. when an impressionable child is told, over and over again, that a certain group is inherently "bad" or "flawed," and told to exercise caution or hatred towards that group, a precedent is set. that child will likely be sheltered from good interactions with the targeted group, and therefore, any experiences they have of that group will be negative.

growing up, they will rub elbows with the targeted group a bit more, but they will already have a strong belief that has been "confirmed" by their tailored experiences. if they have any good experiences, they will cherry-pick information and repackage any positive feelings as "an exception" or the targeted group "deceiving" them, or even "having some good qualities but being bad/flawed at the core." they may avoid any future experiences with the group to avoid cognitive dissonance—effectively sheltering themselves like their parents sheltered them.

the reason I call this my Ben 10 Racism Speech is because Ben 10 is the first show where I ever saw a good depiction of a sympathetic racist character. we meet this one alien is a eugenicist, whose race believes they are the ultimate lifeform and that all other species are inferior. obviously, he's an antagonist. but Ben tries to befriend and help him, over and over, even when he refuses help. finally, when the alien loses an arm, Ben uses his powers to implant a new one on him. the alien assists Ben in getting back home—but refuses to go home himself, as he believes he is now "contaminated" (having DNA from another species inside of him) and is unfit to go back to his planet.

he literally tries to stay in a desert where he will die because he is so conditioned to think of his race as superior, that he is not immune to the racism. when a helpful medical procedure changes his own DNA, he thinks himself a lowly, disgusting creature fit only for death.

what does this have to do with Solomon?

well, Solomon certainly isn't a self-hating racist. (that would be Michelle.) but he IS—inarguably and unequivocally—a prime example of a monster who was raised to be a monster.

Solomon was literally raised by, and around, demons in hell. he was taught that mortals, especially the poor, were only designed to serve greater beings such as himself. in fact, the whole reason his family moved out from hell was because they were at the bottom of the social ladder there, but the top of the ladder on earth. he was taught that this was just the way things worked. he was trained by his father to one day kill his father, and consume his ashes, and that one day he would lay an egg and do the same.

he was taught these things as a baby. he has been raised his whole 17 years of life without contact to humankind. in fact, it's kind of astounding just how friendly he is on his first day of Valor Academy, even if he DOES see everyone else as "lesser than" him. he seems very strongly to desire a friendship and companionship that hasn't been provided for him at home, but he doesn't exactly recognize that friendship and companionship—the things he wants—necessitate equality.

but then he meets Benji. Benji, who—as far as he knew at the time—was an orphaned pauper boy with nothing to his name. quite literally at the bottom of the social ladder. but Solomon likes Benji. he's witty, he's funny, he knows a lot about the world. Solomon likes being around him. and Benji starts working to reform him. forcing him to volunteer at a soup kitchen. taking him out of that sheltered state and making him actually meet other humans, mortals, poor people.

and then.

then he meets Vika.

and Vika is a character I could do a whole other analysis on, but by god is she a bad combination with Solomon. because on one hand, she tells Solomon just how wrong he is, she's loud and brash and not afraid to state things as they are without coddling him.

but on the other, she refuses to take off her rose-tinted glasses about the slave colony she grew up in. she frequently refers to it as the best time of her life, as a perfect society, as something to be emulated. because she, too, was indoctrinated into a lie, and told that Donovan King Jr was their savior. and even if she no longer defends HIM, she still defends the slave colony.

and when she repeats that rhetoric, it re-activates Solomon's programming.

someone who didn't grow up with rigid doctrine, especially for such a length as 17 years, can probably never hope to understand how hard it is to break out. pathways in the brain are physically etched to rearrange morals, indecipherable from what might be "common sense" to someone else. and like the Winter Soldier, sometimes just one key phrase or story can set someone back years by triggering old programming associated with feelings of piousness or guilt.

Solomon was raised to be the worst kind of person on earth. and he wants to be better.

but god, is it going to be a struggle to get there.

#valorpunk #solomon dracul #character analysis

[gale-gentlepenguin]

I have, submitted for your approval, the ultimate showdown. G Gordon Godfrey vs J Jonah Jameson. Who talks more trash about superheroes?

(What a fun question I would love more of these)

So G Gordon Godfrey is a f***ing Shill that will praise whoever and insult others if he thinks its good for Ratings. I think his dislike of heroes is very bland and one dimensional. If we are talking Justice league the animated series

If we are talking Young Justice or in the comics, G Gordon Godfrey is actually an agent of Darkseid meant to sow distrust in the public and purposefully goes against the Justice League in order to please his master.

J Jonah Jameson goes against Vigilantes, specifically masked ones. The reason being he wants heroes to be held accountable since they are taking the law into their own hands. Its Why J J funded Scorpion to take down Spiderman. But unlike Gordon who's belief contradict and shift depending on objectives, JJ has solid footing in his beliefs and is fine with heroes like Captain America and Fantastic Four because they are out in the open and accept what they are accountable for. He also is for Journalistic integrity, always disclosing bias, and will ask the hard questions. So I actually have some respect for the J man.

So if we are talking just straight trashing heroes, I would say G Gordon Godfrey because it is his literal mission to do so and his whole thing is making heroes look bad.

While J Jonah Jameson is more personal and devoted on the attack on Spider Man and Vigilantes. He is more personal with his trash talk and obsession. But J wont violate journalistic integrity to diss Spiderman,

So gotta go with the G for being the slimeball with no morals

#g gordon godfrey #j jonah jameson #this is a great question #dc #marvel

[weirdnaturalscience]

The one time you can find an "evolution of man" poster that depicts a woman it's most likely about that woman becoming a bimbo, and it puts her in heels and all sorts of suggestive and sexual positions. Thanks, google! Love that for us as a species which prides itself on doing ""serious science."" Love that I can't just look for such an innocuous thing (evolution of woman!) without being bombarded with reminders of misogyny. Could people like, pretend to view women as people, or pretend to at least understand that women evolved alongside men and are not just sexual objects? Anyway. Now you're going to hear my rant on this idea of "the dumb slut."

Alright! The phrase "dumb slut" is of course highly misogynistic but it's also fascinating to me. Here's why: with weird accuracy it communicates this belief about human abilities that was popular around the heyday of scientific racism. The extremely racist jist of this belief system is that physicality and intelligence lie on opposite ends of a spectrum. Now, what we know about intelligence nowadays is that it's nothing like this whatsoever and this is bonkers and unscientific in so many ways, but racists dont care about facts and never will, so. Anyway. They held that Black people were too far on the physical end of the spectrum and Asian people were too far on the intellectual end of the spectrum. You see this reflected in racist stereotypes today about Asian men lacking sexuality and the myriad stereotypes that overly sexualize Black women and men, deeming especially Black men as sexually threatening. In this racist worldview, or course, white people are in the middle where everything is just right. How convenient and disgusting.

So where does this leave women? White women, that is, because we're talking about violent racists here. Well, they've gotta underline that these white women are still inferior to white men, so they view them as more animalistic than men. Less evolved, you could even say. The complete lack of a woman on the evolution poster emerging from the mists of time I'm all her homo sapiens glory starts to be a bit more maddening. Women are unimportant, we are reminded. Less intelligent than men. "Dumb."

(Blackwell, a woman and contemporary of Darwin, wrote to him that while his theory of evolution was nice and all, he had forgotten that the females evolved too, alongside the males, or this whole survival of the fittest thing wouldn't work, and isn't that important? ....He assumed she was a man. Also he was too sexist to consider female animals as important.)

So anyway, women have to be sexual but not TOO sexual because a woman in charge of her sexuality is scary and bad. Remember that physicality vs intellect thing? It seems very related to the idea of women on a spectrum from dumb, hot and sexual to smart, unattractive and frigid. I see this stereotype around me constantly, this idea that sexual women are dumber and less attractive women are smarter. It's INSANE! This is insanity! How is this shit still circulating?

Some of it just feels like patriarchal wish fulfillment, also. Smart women can think for themselves and may resist male control. Therefore, let's hope all women interested in sex are not smart!

Question to sexist men: if all the women interested in you are dumb, for the sake of argument, what does that say about you, exactly?

I'd also like to talk about the word slut for a minute. See, here's the thing. Some people want to reclaim the word slut and that's valid but here's my take:

Sluts don't exist. Slut is a word to refer to a woman who likes sex and that's bad. No such woman exists. File not found. Sorry. Like, no. Women who love sex exist. Women who hate sex exist. Women who want to have sex with multiple partners exist. Women who masturbate exist. Women who love sex and that's bad? They don't exist. Why? Because women being sexual isn't bad and never was. I'm so done with this bullshit. I swear to God if I have to even hear the phrase dumb slut ever again... and don't come at me with the whole "no a slut is a woman who cheats" thing. Men will call a woman a slut if she's a FAITHFUL AND WAS JUST A VIRGIN BEFORE HER ONE RELATIONSHIP. OKAY? Cheating is an entirely separate issue, and men who cheat.....not called sluts.

Leaving the discussion of homo sapiens for a minute, females primates love sex, by the way. Female primates maaaaaaaaaay love sex more than male primates at times. Female bonobos rub their clitorises together on average every TWO HOURS. Okay???????? Two HOURS! Are you hearing this? We are very closely related to these animals! Hello! They are having like.... OLYMPIC levels of sex! It's actually really impressive.

I'm sick of this idea that women wanting sex is bad or even rare! The only reason people think women have lower sex drives than men is the SHAME WE ATTACH TO FEMALE SEXUALITY! Add a dash of the threat of considerable violence against women in many cultures across the world and the pervasive lack of birth control options and here we are. Meanwhile our close female primate relatives are perfectly happy initiating sex, having gay sex, rubbing their clitorises on males, screaming until they attract male attention...you name it, they've done it and honestly, you go girls.

Female primates get oral sex from males. Female BATS get oral sex from males, but that's less relevant.

Sluts don't exist. Dumb sluts doubly so. If being a slut were even possible it would definitely not be a dumb course of action, you dumb mother FUCKERS. Listen: compared to other primates homo sapiens have like INSANE amounts of sex. Like our time would have been better spent foraging for food. EXCEPT there were reasons for this insane amount of sex: inciting male-male competition (this is public sex need I remind you), sex as courtship, a way of females to assess male fitness directly (stamina), female access to males, not to mention more complex social and hierarchical reasons, because primates are nothing if not constantly creating complex social systems to compete within.

Ever notice how we NEVER linguistically associate sexuality with stupidity in men? Yeah because we don't. We praise sexuality in men and associate wit with attributes like drive and determination, even creativity. We're never like look at that dumb slut trying to talk to women at the bar. Look at that dumb slut, he wants to get laid, after which he will become even dumber. Yet it feels like everywhere is this narrative of the hot woman with the "empty head," even the idea that fucking is going to make women stupider!!!!!! (Do you guys have brain damage? Are you for REAL right now? Do you believe like some medieval peasant who never bathes that the thoughts are being sucked straight out of a woman's brain through her clitoris? Please stop immediately and never speak again.)

The take home message is this!!!!!!! Not to discount that asexuality exists and is 100% normal and natural, our species BY AND LARGE is kind of nymphomaniac and that's okay too. We've somehow convinced everyone that human women are less sexual than human men???? and then when women protest because they want to get laid we're like YOU HORRIBLE SLUT! Just to add insult to injury we call back into play this idea that sexuality and intelligence oppose each other. Which, again, has no basis in fact, but does have a basis in soundly debunked racist dog shit.

Sluts don't exist. "Dumb slut" is a phrase that makes misogynistic ideas all too apparent in their ugliness: lies about female inferiority, lies about female sexuality, sexist mens' wish-fulfillment about a sexual but controllable woman.

You know what women did not evolve for? This shit.

#rants

[decepti-thots]

Hello! Your latest posts about Rodimus were great! But I have a question that has been bothering me for quite a while and I really want to read your opinion because I think that your understanding of these characters is really good and you are as unbiased as one can be (and it helps that you don’t latch on to James Roberts’ or artists’ twits!). Do you think Ratchet is being disrespectful and abusive during his belief debates with Drift? It’s silly, but lately I saw people who share this opinion.

Ahhh, this old... argument. By which I mean ship war. Is that really cropping up again?

This discussion obviously involves a discussion of at least the abstract invocation of abuse in discussions of shipping, so just to be safe, I will cut it.

Well in case the above didn't give it away: no, I do not think Ratchet is being 'abusive' during their pre-relationship spats. I will in fact plant my flag in the sand here: I think any reading of their interactions which attempts to invoke the very real, very serious concept of domestic abuse is offensive in its insistence on exploiting serious topics for the sake of what is very much silly ship war nonsense. It's a part of the tendency of some parts of fandom to not be able to simply say 'this ship does not appeal to me' or 'I feel this ship was badly executed and so did not enjoy it', because that would make their dislike of a pairing too subjective and they need it to be objectively bad and wrong, so a bad-faith reading is used to make the matter a morally weighted one. A relationship didn't just lack chemistry or come across as insincere or seem too sudden for characters who previously butted heads; no, it's abusive. Relatedly, you are bad for shipping it, and you should come ship this thing I just so happen to prefer. To call this tactic in poor taste would be underselling it, I think.

Disrespectful, well, that's very different. I think Ratchet is absolutely disrespectful towards Drift at the start. That is a major foundational point in how the comic sets up their history; Ratchet acts like he is angry at Drift because he dislikes Drift's kooky religious views, but in reality he is angry at Drift because he sees what Drift went on to do after Ratchet saved his life as. Well. Unworthy of respect. The annual makes this pretty clear; their arguments aren't just about Drift believing in crystal healing or whatever, the discussion they are having underneath is about Ratchet feeling responsible for the atrocities Drift committed as Deadlock.

Which I think is where the milder version of this comes in- the idea that Ratchet is disrespectful of Drift's religious views and that Drift shouldn't give the time of day to someone who treats his deeply held views so flippantly, so the relationship sucks because ew, Ratchet is a Bad Boyfriend. Which... I can see how you might come to this conclusion, the indications that a) this is not what they are really fighting about and b) that Drift is in fact playing up part of it on purpose and it's not wholly sincere, are not unambiguous, nor are they super obvious. I disagree, personally. But it's up for interpretation, and you can absolutely read the comic as saying that yeah, Drift is super religious and Ratchet thinks he's dumb for it, that's all just real and there.

In which case, well, that's an absolutely fine reason to not like the ship, obviously! Some folks are not into the 'we started off antagonistically and slowly came to begrudgingly respect each other and whoops now we caught feeeeeelings' dynamic- because watching people not like each other is not fun to them even if it is temporary, or it reminds them of shitty exes they've had, or like. Whatever reason. That's fine. But it's not some sort of 'gotcha' that 'proves' people are wrong to enjoy that stuff. So someone doesn't like relationships that start out, pre-romance, where people are mean to each other over disagreements. Cool! Lots of folks don't, and I think folks that don't are likely to bounce off dratchet. But that's an assessment of personal taste rather than quality or, in the most hyperbolic versions of The Diskhorse, morality.

In short: nah, that's overwhelmingly folks who just don't like a ship and think if they moralise hard enough they can like. guilt people out of shipping it. tbqh. i mean less the 'disrespectful' part, but certainly folks out here insisting ratchet is an abuser are being disingenuous.

[qqueenofhades]

Sorry I need to vent about Dr van helsing. I’m not even that far into today’s Dracula update, but Quincy saying he’s honest?! He hasn’t told anyone anything! I mean I guess he hasn’t been lying but that’s just because he’s not telling people things, and then he’s getting mad that they haven’t figured out what’s going on. He’s probably an awful teacher; he would def teach like middle school level kids as if they’re in a doctorate program. Imagine keeping that many secrets and being called honest.

Another thing about van helsing, is there a reason why he didn’t just remove her head and do whatever else de-vampiring things that needed to be done without an audience? Like him and Seward saw her in the coffin, then he gets all of her suitors together to go back the next day but her body’s gone; why not just do the procedure that first day, either with Seward’s help or go back later without him? It just seems cruel to casually ask her fiancé if he’ll help with beheading her corpse.

Aha, well, you sent me this yesterday, but I will answer it in light of today's update. As I have said about VH before, he is two things: one, the archetype of the Eccentric Genius With Bad People Skills, and two, almost an exact narrative parallel/foil to Dracula. Dracula is the menacing foreigner who comes from abroad to hurt Lucy; Van Helsing is the benevolent foreigner who comes from abroad to help her. Except as I've also discussed, his methods are so similar to Dracula's -- the secrecy, the unnecessary possessiveness over Lucy, the conviction that only he knows what to do, etc -- that he totally fails at it, comprehensively. All his eight million PhDs didn't teach him any social skills (can attest from personal experience, this is accurate to PhD students). So he's already playing a game of catch-up and often doubling down on his mistakes rather than fixing them, since he's still so stuck in the Only I Know What To Do. And he... doesn't.

So in the last two entries, we essentially see VH waaay overcompensating. It has struck him that it might be useful to have everyone given definite proof as to what they're dealing with, i.e. undead Lucy and the vampire who made her that way -- and in his mind, the only way to make them finally and fully believe is to have them see it for themselves. He's obviously not entirely wrong here, since Seward briefly backtracks in believing him even after seeing it, and it is overall a horrible situation. So VH wants to make VERY SURE that everyone knows he didn't actually kill Lucy or otherwise hide the truth from them (even if he did, uh, kind of hide the truth). So his method is just to go full bore, blunt-sledgehammer of truth, make them ALL see Vamp Lucy so they are all on the same page and have had that same experience, and basically get them into the belief stage as fast as possible. This is, again, after he held off on it before, but, well, needs must and all that.

It is obviously an absolutely horrible ordeal for Arthur to have to kill Vamp Lucy, but it does seem to give him some peace, and her as well obviously, so he's ultimately grateful that VH asked him to do it. There is an obvious narrative/sexual symbolism in Arthur, who was supposed to take the "blood" of Lucy's virginity, now taking the blood of her carnal/voluptuous (LEARN ANOTHER WORD, BRAM STOKER) over-sexual vamp self instead. He has already said that he feels married to her due to the blood transfusions, and this is a dark echo/mirror of the wedding night they will never get; Arthur is LITERALLY penetrating her with a phallic object, as he was supposed to do when she was alive. So they're consummated, in a way, and it gives Lucy her "virginal" peace and purity back, saving her from the dark sexual/physical ravages of Dracula by re-establishing her as a respectable married woman, even in death. So that's why I think Stoker did that.

As for VH, he then finally gets on board with the "everyone should know everything" train, and gives them all a long and delightfully pedantic lecture about the origins of vampires, who Dracula really is, etc etc. Except then he straightaway doubles down on yet ANOTHER of his long-running mistakes: he is the one who suggests that Mina should be excluded from the group "for her safety," when it wasn't until Mina taking this all into her own hands that they got anything done. Mina has been by far the most fearless and effective Dracula investigator thus far (along with Jonathan, #HarkerPowerCoupleFTW). This is despite the male characters' casual or benevolent misogyny toward her, especially Van Helsing's. He gushes over her and worships her as a goddess and keeps talking about how she's really like a man because she's so smart and doesn't have Hysterics!!! like those other ladies! But he still doesn't trust her, even now, to have the proper fortitude for the work, and I feel confident in saying without too many spoilers, that yeah, that is gonna backfire BIG TIME. In some ways, VH is the ideal Victorian patriarch, but as we have seen throughout the book, and as I have written about in previous posts, that model of behavior is repeatedly shown NOT WORKING. His effort to "protect" Mina might be well-meant, but it is patronizing, misogynistic, assumes (STILL!) that she can't do this work on the same level the guys can, and yet again, womp womp, VH is gonna be wrong. Stay tuned.

#anonymous #ask #dracula #dracula daily #abraham van helsing #lucy westenra #mina murray

[onwriting-hrarby]

Rotten Judgement – On foreshadowing (II)

Following our series of hints in the narration, and to celebrate the new chapter, today I’m going to talk about:

The foreshadowing about Eren’s marriage proposal to Mikasa when he was 17, and his rejection.

The marriage topic was something I had had in mind until “I did not live until today”. The proto-idea of my first fic included a scene like this—the character of “Eren” knocking on “Mikasa”’s door to confess—so I was really up to writing this upgraded scene. However, as one of my goals was to dose the information, I had to make it clear from the beginning, but not too clear so that when it came to chapter 11, it would still surprise the reader.

Given, I still think that if this had been a novel and was read all together, the hints would have been clearer (maybe!) and with retrospect, I would have had to make it even clearer so that the readers would remember these hints. But I didn’t, so here I am, reminiscing.

Eren’s first rejection

To introduce Eren’s complex guilt about bullying Mikasa and also trying to protect her, it was crucial that he’d have to reject her. That way, Mikasa could have some pent-up anger towards him, and then his confession would be misunderstood by her—she would be thinking, “Is he confessing because he feels sorry for me?” But in reality, Eren was proposing because he always loved her, but he was late.

Eren’s rejection is first introduced in one of the first paragraphs of the story, from Armin’s pov: “One would be pretty stupid to reject her, and Armin knows just the guy.” After that, when Eren and Mikasa meet in Chapter 2, Eren’s motivation, guilt and sadness are already set very straight-forward: “to get to the third date before thinking what it would have been if he had not been a prick, if he had not been so late.”

In Chapter 4 we even get much more information about Mikasa’s confession and how it happened: “he could have never imagined that he would hurt her so deeply —that he would say no and she would run down the stairs from the rooftop; that he would mouth the joke and would see how her eyes watered. […] all puddle, all guilt, and, above all, all Mikasa.”

But after Eren’s rejection comes Mikasa’s anger and hate, and it was important to introduce this too so that the reader would know that Mikasa held a grudge against him. I decided to do that from Eren’s POV, because even if Mikasa thought about the moment she confessed, that confession towards Eren was overwritten by the bullying after, Armin’s experience and the proposal three years after: “She humiliated him in front of everyone, that wrench —with that beautiful, gentle smile of hers. He hates her. Eren definitely hates ­her-who-must-not-be-named.” [Chapter 1] Eren needs to believe that Mikasa hated him because of the rejection, and not because of the bullying, because he doesn’t want to come to terms with what he did. If he does, then it crumbles him, because he acknowledges how bad he hurt Mikasa—much further than a simple rejection: “he remembers himself being the victim of that hate, never quite believing that it had come to this, even if he had every hint that of course—it was my fault, it was my fault—she would break his heart at his turn.” [Chapter 5]

The topic of “providing”

One of the toxic ideologies of Eren is that the husband needs to provide for the wife and family. That comes from Grisha’s beliefs, and it completely sets the mood for his love for Mikasa. Since he’s little, Eren knows that Mikasa is poor: when he proposes to adopt her to Carla and Grisha back in chapter 3, they tell him that she’s not an object to keep, so Eren knows that he has to work harder to keep Mikasa in his life. When he elaborates his—childish, yes—plan to protect her from Floch by hurting her, he only has in mind Mikasa’s protection and providing:

“(Grisha) It’s in our blood to provide for someone, Eren.” […] Eren doesn’t believe in providing, in marriage—that he has long forgotten these are his solutions because he thought so hard once that they were, he ended up broken. […] He could tell Grisha that he got onto his knees some years ago. He could tell Grisha that Mikasa is back.” [Chapter 10]

The topic of providing is understood differently by both of them. While for Mikasa, providing means mostly economically, Eren understands providing as something whole. Back in chapter 4, we see how Eren is a care-giver and we get a first glimpse of the scene of the orphanage: “Or the way his smile tilts every time he can provide for someone —being it helping Connie with a massage […] and then the stairs changing, morphing in the dream into some porch stairs, in which Mikasa is standing above him, looking at him with tear-streaked cheeks, and Eren is crying, and they are both three years older than they were in that dream, young, utopian, and she says, You’re quite late, now, Eren.”

Also in chapter 4, before that paragraph, Levi acknowledges Mikasa’s problem with providing: “’You have a problem with providing, Mikasa’, he chooses to say, instead of berating her further. She blushes, tries to hide her face in her exposed neck. ‘You don’t like depending on people, and that’s why you’ve been heartbroken.’

She merely whispers: ‘So you know.’”

This “So you know” is emphatic because Mikasa is referring to Eren’s proposal. Levi knows it—he was their homeroom teacher after all—so it’s the first hint about the conflict of providing.

However, Eren and Mikasa don’t acknowledge this problem together until chapter 7. In part, it is because if they speak about providing, they need to tackle the proposal (which we’ll talk about in just a second), but also because Mikasa has grown and realized that Eren’s wishes, even thought not really respectful of what she was, came from the best of him. As they drink beer after Marco’s funeral, though, the truth spills out when talking about how Eren had to take care about Carla economically after she was diagnosed by breast-cancer:

“When he looks at her, Mikasa’s gaze is beaming under the brewery lights, as if she had fallen into a realization. Maybe she has, Eren thinks, and her cheeks are blushed as she whispers: ‘You did what you had to do to provide.’

He merely says: ‘I would never stop providing for the ones I love.’”

Eren is smooth, but he’s basically confessing in here. Mikasa is too clever to ignore it, so that’s why she grows defensive about it and they begin the “famous” rant about this being Eren’s redemption story.

The proposal—sacred matrimony

If you’ve reread some passages of Rotten Judgement, you’d have known that the topic of marriage (they ironically call it: sacred matrimony) appears quite early in the story. In fact, we have the first mention of marriage already in Chapter 2, before Eren meets Mikasa 10 years after: “He has never even believed in sacred matrimony. Of course, the girl is not here, and it’s alright, it’s not a big deal, he tells himself, it’s not like I was to marry her. Then the mind goes back in time, to a promise.” Aha, my friends: we kinda knew that Eren thought about Mikasa romantically enough to promise her to marry her. The first thing we read after they see each other for the first time in years is: “They could have remembered the time when they were eight, or the time when they were eighteen —the first words they said to each other, sweet and toothy; the last words they said to each other, crying and angry”. So, we know that the first words were when they were little, and the last ones were a disaster.

I decided to introduce Eren’s beliefs after that. In chapter 3 we go back to the past for the first time, and we realize that little Eren wants to marry Mikasa. He talks about it with Carla, but because of Carla’s traumas and her relationship with Grisha, she takes away Eren’s romantic beliefs from it when Eren asks what marriage is:

“‘A contract’, Carla looked at his son, eager to know, curious as always, as she turned off the faucet, ‘is a document that you sign. It’s binding. Do you know what binding means?’ Eren shook his head no. ‘Binding means that there’s no going back. Once you sign it, there’s no saying, I don’t want her anymore. You won’t be happy that way if you’re bound to someone whom you do not like. Do you understand?’

Eren nodded. Then, the fire burnt in his eyes as he looked at his mom and said: ‘But what’s the issue, mom? I will always want to be bound to Mikasa.’” This is one of the first clear foreshadowings about the proposal. 

But if he read further in the chapter, which is called “The contract”, we get to the party where Historia and Jean make Eren and Mikasa sign a contract saying that they won’t make war: “Historia and Jean watch Eren and Mikasa with avid eyes. They watch how their eyes meet, how their eyes skim over the paper, come back to their orbs, blush. They bite their lips, scrunch their noses, and want to get over with it. They take their gaze away from each other as if it burned.” In Eren and Mikasa’s reaction, they are acknowledging what a contract means and how the proposal went, even if they don’t say it: they feel ashamed, almost disgusted by it.

Yet: they think the same thing. They understand marriage as the same thing—a contract, providing, almost devoid of romantic love. Because they don’t understand marriage as an effort, only as a saving mechanism, they don’t think marriage can last, because it will make you responsible and miserable. The others (and, so, the reader) realize that something is wrong with Mikasa and Eren and marriage in chapter 4, when Mikasa confesses the reason why it didn’t work with Tetsuki:

‘“He wanted to marry, and I didn’t.”

The truth of it still catches Eren’s breath.

[…] “Well, Sasha, I don’t believe in sacred matrimony.”’

The fact that Eren is listening to the conversation, and how the reader reads into Eren’s reaction, is primordial here: I gave it to the pacing so that the reader follows the same hints as the friends, so when Sasha marvels saying that Eren says the same about marriage, the reader also is reminded of that (since Ymir says it about Eren in chapter 2!), but when placed in that conversation, there’s an “ah-effect” (hopefully).

Mikasa reminisces the proposal quite early, too. In chapter 5, we have the scene playing again but from her POV: “For his lips on hers—demanding, forceful, salted with tears. She has always wanted it so much—but has forbidden her to think about it during those ten years. Moving on implied not thinking about Eren.” After that, she confesses to Armin that even if she was in love with Eren at the time, love was impossible: “’Well’, she says, now bitterly, ‘not all those relationships end up with love, neither.’ Armin knows that in her downcast smile, there are some green eyes.”

The duality in here is that the reader can think that she’s talking about her rejection in the rooftop, but really, she’s talking about how their relationship ended. Furthermore, her guilt is something that also stains all of the narration, because it’s not as easy as “Eren was the bad one, and Mikasa the good one”. This is definitely something that I don’t like in stories: I believe I do my best when I portray the grey of the characters, and how everyone moves according to their mistakes and their interests.

So, having Mikasa also feel guilt towards Eren put another layer in the narration, because it made her feelings much more complex: she can’t forget him for the hurt he did to her, but also feels compelled to know that she hurt him in the same way by rejecting his marriage proposal.

Although we know why Mikasa rejected the proposal in chapter 13 (she couldn’t stand Eren’s pity), it is already in chapter 10 that we get Mikasa’s truth about how she feels towards the whole ordeal, even before we know, a chapter after, that Eren proposed:

“‘It’s just so shameful, to accept that I hurt him. I’m not sure how we can fix the damage we made’, she exhales. […] ‘But, sometimes, as we’re together, Levi—I don’t know, sometimes, he makes me wonder if I ever really wanted to leave him.’”

***

Next, and to finish off the series, we will talk about Mikasa’s voice. I am still very happy about chapter 13 (I feel like it’s one of the best chapters I have ever written…) so I want to talk to you about how I had to introduce the problem with the voice very early on. If you reread the first or second chapter and find the first time Mikasa’s voice appears, you’ll get a very delicious cookie! (hehe, kidding).

Thank you for reading. Rotten Judgement chapter 14 will be up tomorrow <3

—Hera

#writerblr #writing #writers on tumblr #creative writing #writing community #writersociety #writer problems #writers of tumblr #writing life #aot fanfiction #eremika #eren jaeger #mikasa ackerman #attack on titan #rotten judgement fanfiction

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 5/9/22

death to all callery pears but especially the one right outside my home office window

listening a pair of wistful little things about the passage of time, bc i am pre-grieving the evil lair and will probably take a week off the tuesdayposts the last week of the month and if i do not have fifty-two songs in the playlist at the end of the year my brain gets displeased

mr wriggle by cosmo sheldrake (mr jukes edit). now if you held a gun to my head and asked me to describe this song, this is somewhere between droll and whimsical. like instead of early aughts whimsigoth it’s whimsi-cottagecore? a rare instance of liking the remix better than the original- mr jukes had a very light hand here by getting rid of a vocal i find irritating. it sounds brighter? hope that helps. “put some pickles on/play the mellotron” YES mr sheldrake you’ve rhymed a silly pairing of words you’ve done it again!!! this sounds perhaps condescending but i do think he is a rare example of a lyricist who really loves playing with words and mouthfeel. how did i find this: poking through back catalogues while in the video game data mines, i think @maverick-ornithography originally turned me onto mr sheldrake

also, castle in the clouds by cut worms, off an "acid western” playlist from tiktok that is full of goddamn bangers. ideal uptempo but non-distracting work music. upsetting how quickly tiktok has dialed into my interests.

anyway this song was released in 2020 and borrows from the late sixties country sound with a fascinating inexplicable reference to the song house of blue lights (here is my favorite cover by ella mae morse)??? one of the youtube commenters described the vocalist as george harrison-esque and that’s not Wrong, but it’s a little more mellow. the music video has charmed me beyond belief with a collage of late fifties/early sixties footage of america telling stories about itself (I KNOW. I KNOW. OKAY. I AM A WEAK AND PREDICTABLE WOMAN).

i really really love the way the phrase “castle in the clouds” comes in on the chorus, almost as an aside? this is a song made for any number of blorbos

And when you look to see what’s inside Oh no it’s true I can’t believe Oh no it’s you Haven’t I seen you before

-

reading chainsaw man, a shonen...horror? workplace comedy? bureaucratic malevolence? manga. occasionally i get the urge to read something that’s gross but not necessarily scary. vampirella comes to mind. hellboy and spinoffs do a very good prickling dread but aren’t necessarily scary either. read through All of hellboy but not all of the brpd in the summer of 2019 when i was stuck in the worst internship ever, probably due for a reread.

this is teens being gross the manga, a lot of it makes me suck air through my teeth but it got me to care about several characters Real quick. like look at this girl. this loud rowdy girl in a suit who is So bad at lying. i want to see her grow up big and strong

how did i find it: don’t worry about it

-

watching hey did you see the new us chemical safety board video

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playing breath of the wild! i would say that this lava section of the map can go straight to hell but it (and i) are already there.

-

making acquired this Object out of a free pile (same one as the brass lamp several weeks ago) and have been trying to figure out a use for it, bc i do like my containers to contain something, and fuck it idk onion holder now. everything is permitted

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem #i want to rip my sinuses out of my face

[iturbide]

Let's not forget claude himself says that killing a prince of Almyra can lead to greater conflict with Almyra. AND the fact that Shahid (and his men) could have been taken hostage instead ! Like DUDE he could be used as a bargaining chip!! (similar to Petra being used as insurance to keep Brigid from attacking again). Hold him hostage, let Shahid stew in his failure, and let it be a reminder to Almyra that fodlan IS NOT. WEAK.

Ugh 3 hopes claude is so dumb. Shahid honestly would've been way more useful alive. Tbh It would've been more interesting if they delved into almyra more! I also really wanted Shahid to stick around for family drama.

And frankly it should prove to claude that fodlan isn't keeping to themselves due to Rhea (someone have him meet Cyril), it's far more likely it because they're constantly being invaded! Dagda Brigid Sreng Almyra and now the Empire itself. And even then they still have trade with them. They arent isolationist, fodlans people are understandably wary and hold resentment from past invasions. Killing Shahid and Rhea ( the archbishop who allows foreigners into garreg mach) is so pointless when having them alive is way more useful. (Like there's a reason Edelgard wants her captured alive , how does he not even consider that )

My imagination is just running wild rn. When I think of the possibilities and then realize what GW turned out to be I'm like 😐 so disappointed lol

OH SO CLAUDE DOES SAY THAT KILLING AN ALMYRAN PRINCE IS A BAD IDEA I thought I'd imagined that since it hasn't been brought up again in all of this discussion. I was starting to think that I'd imagined hearing that he said that, because I remember thinking on a few occasions why would he do that after he said himself it was a bad idea?

BUT YEAH EXACTLY taking Shahid prisoner would have made a lot of sense, and those are some great examples of why! Besides making Shahid stew in rage at being not only bested by but captured by a Fodlani force, whether he's held as a bargaining chip to stave off further aggression or sent back to Almyra as a diplomatic show ("we trust you'll handle this appropriately," which comes across as goodwill -- but since his dad would undoubtedly hear that the message is from his favorite son, it blows the lid off all the shit Shahid's been up to), it feels like there are more potential benefits to his survival than his death.

Admittedly, though, I don't think that Claude ever felt Fodlan kept to themselves only because of Rhea and without any other reason. I don't remember Claude objecting to Fodlan's isolationism -- he objected to the racism, the belief on the Fodlan side of the Locket that Almyrans are barbarians and savages. From his A support with Byleth in Three Houses (emphasis mine):

"I wasn't born in Fódlan. Where I come from, the people of Fódlan are looked down on as cowards. Technically, that cowardice runs in my veins. On my mother's side, anyway. That's why the people who were around me when I was growing up thought of me as an outsider. But I don't believe the people of Fódlan are cowards. That kind of perspective is just based on ignorance. The person from Fódlan who I know best is my mother. She fell in love with a man from the wrong side of the border and had the guts to leave home to pursue that love. I always threw that in the faces of anyone who tried to make a fool of me. My mother is proof the people of Fódlan aren't all cowards. I need to destroy the prejudices that have taken root in my homeland. That's why I came here, to see Fódlan with my own eyes. I thought I might be able to find a new perspective that could help me change things. And what did I find? That the people here view anyone who's an outsider as a beast of sorts. I was shocked. Even though our cultures and beliefs are completely different, our two lands have that much in common. That's when I realized the only way to change things is to bring the whole world together and start anew.

He wasn't trying to blow open the Locket or insisting Fodlan needs to end its isolationist policies, he specifically wants to pave the way for cultural exchange and understanding so that the Locket isn't necessary anymore. It's the racism that he's always wanted to tackle first and foremost -- such that he didn't realize some of the other social issues going on in Almyra, such as the lack of support for orphans and other vulnerable groups, something he thanks Cyril for opening his eyes to in their B Support in Three Houses.

I still stand by the notion that Claude got bodyswapped with an Agarthan. All the murder makes a lot more sense in that context.

#answered #anonymous #fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem warriors: three hopes #fewth spoilers #i swear i will actually play this game someday #that day is just not today #and it won't be tomorrow either #but the evidence does seem to be mounting #in favor of claude getting bodyswapped

[basicsofislam]

THE COMPANIONS OF THE PROPHET (PBUH) : Abdullah bin Suhayl (r.a.)

Hz. Abdullah bin Suhayl became a Muslim in the first years of Islam. He was subjected to unbearable tortures of the polytheists. Upon the permission of the Prophet, he migrated to Abyssinia. He stayed there for a while. He was fine there.  Nobody prevented him from worshipping. However, like all muhajirs, he experienced the agony of being separated from the Messenger of Allah. He could not put up with it anymore. He returned to Makkah risking all sorts of suffering and torture.

Suhayl’s father, who was a polytheist then, became very offended and angry when his son became a Muslim and especially when he migrated. He became very happy when his son returned. Now, he had the opportunity. He planned to punish Abdullah and to make him give up his religion. He took action immediately. First, he beat him violently; then, he tied him to a pole. He increased torture so much that Abdullah had to pretend to be a polytheist though he believed in the heart. Thus, he got rid of his father's cruelty.

Suhayl untied his son. He gave his son many things. He became very happy that he returned to idols. Days passed like that. The polytheists prepared an army for the Battle of Badr. Suhayl himself joined this army and he took his son with him. He did not think that he could still be a Muslim. However, Hz. Abdullah was still a Muslim. He did not give up his religion; he only said that he was a polytheist. He had a strong belief in his heart.

Hz. Abdullah had always looked for an opportunity to rejoin the Prophet since that day but he had not been able to rejoin him. He thought this would be a good opportunity for him. On the other hand, he prayed to Allah Almighty and asked for help.

The two armies confronted at Badr. Although Abdullah was among the polytheists bodily, he was with the Muslims spiritually. In his inner world, he was planning to rejoin the Messenger of Allah and to fight against the polytheists. The number of the polytheists was much more than that of the Muslims. He thought it was necessary to go to the side of the Muslims as soon as possible. He finally found an opportunity. He made a move and joined the mujahids. The dream he had had for months came true. He would not be sorry even if he died now.

His father became very angry when he saw his son among the Muslims; he uttered bad words. However, Abdullah did not heed them. He said to his father, "Allah Almighty made it good for me." Then he attacked the polytheists with all his might. He had always waited for this moment. He fought heroically in this battle. He was appreciated by the Prophet. He was 27 years old then.

Hz. Abdullah joined all of the battles with the Prophet. He was also present in the Expedition of Umrah. During this expedition, he experienced an incident that deeply saddened him: The polytheists did not want to allow the Prophet to enter Makkah. However, they wanted peace. They appointed Suhayl bin Amr to make peace. Suhayl objected to Bismillah being written at the beginning of the treaty and the Prophet being mentioned as "the Messenger of Allah". He said, "If we believed that you were the Messenger of Allah, we would not fight against you!" The Prophet accepted all the terms of Suhayl in this agreement. He showed some of the Muslims as witnesses. One of the witnesses was Abdullah.

This impudent act of his father’s saddened Abdullah a lot. He lowered his head out of embarrassment.

However, a little later something that saddened Hz. Abdullah more than this occurred: Hz. Abdullah's brother, Abu Jandal, had been chained by the polytheists because he was a Muslim. However, he managed to escape and took refuge in the Prophet. Suhayl bin Amr was surprised to see his son suddenly. He held Abu Jandal’s neck. The branch with thorns in in his hand hit Abu Jandal’s his face. He said, "O Muhammad! This is the first person you have to return to me in accordance with our treaty." The Prophet did not want to accept this demand first. However, Suhayl insisted, "I will not sign the treaty!" The Prophet had to accept it. He handed Abu Jandal to his father. He said to Abu Jandal, “Be patient. Ask Allah for a thawab for this. Allah will soon show you a way.” Abu Jandal accepted the request of the Messenger of Allah willingly. He returned to Makkah with his father, taking the risk of all kinds of difficulties. This incident saddened all of the Companions deeply there. However, Hz. Abdullah was even more distressed but he was patient. He believed that Allah Almighty would create a solution.

Hz. Abdullah was also present in the Conquest of Makkah. Like some ferocious polytheists, his father, Suhayl, was among the polytheists to be killed when captured. He asked the Prophet to forgive his father. The Messenger of Allah forgave him for the sake of Abdullah and his brother Abu Jandal. Hz. Abdullah became very happy about it. He immediately rushed and found his father in the place where he was hiding; he gave his father the good news. Suhayl bin Amr did not even think that he would be forgiven despite all of his hostility against the Muslims. Due to this kindness of the Prophet, he became a Muslim by uttering kalima ash-shahadah. After that, he started to work for Islam with might and main. From time to time, he cried, remembering his previous life

Hz. Abdullah made great efforts to suppress the movements of apostasy that occurred after the death of the Prophet. He made jihad heroically. Finally, he attained the rank of martyrdom. At that time, he was 38 years old.

During hajj, Hz. Abu Bakr expressed his condolences to Abdullah's father, Suhayl bin Amr. Suhayl, who had tortured his sons years ago because they were Muslims, said, "I wish I had been martyred too!" Then, he said:

"The Messenger of Allah informed me that a martyr would intercede for 70 of his relatives. I hope that my son will not intercede for anyone before me. "[  Tabaqat, 3: 406; Usdul-Ghaba, 3: 180-181; Sirah, 3: 331.  ]

#Allah #god #islam #quran #muslim #revert #revert islam #convert #convert islam #converthelp #reverthelp #revert help #revert help team #help #islam help #salah #dua #prayer #pray #reminder #religion #mohammad #muslimah #hijab #new muslim #new revert #new convert #how to convert to islam #convert to islam #welcome to islam