#but it's kind of all i have right now irl...asides from my wonderful family who i'm so blessed to have

[citrusotakutea]

Hey op just curious what makes you hate the new Hellsing fanbase. As a fellow Hellsing fan I was wondering if I’ve completely missed something strange going on lately.

The new Hellsing fandom honestly irks me because of the surface level probing of the source material*. Yes, to most it's a hard core, dark, violent, mad and bad-ass anime but, like I've said so often, for so long on this dumb blog, it has the BEST female characters I've ever seen, recently rivaled by Arcane. Incredible depiction of platonic relationships and morally grey characters. To me, it's primarily a found family story, among other things.

The side characters are incredible, Yumi and Heinkel are the most underrated of the show. I mean come on priest and nun lesbians (lesbian used liberally). Heinkel is confirmed by the author to be an INTERSEX HUMAN. Alucard shapeshifts into a female (which, looking at the Devilman fandom, everyone took for an obvious trans metaphor, why not here?). The source material is as homoerotic as it can get between a lot of the characters (the tension between Sir Integra and Seras during the blood scene). Let's not forget Rip van Winkle, Pip, Walter, and Alexander. Alucard's teasing, Seras' naivety and subsequent maturity, Pip's endurance and playful wittiness. These characters and relationships are stuck in my head forever, they're all incredibly unique, fleshed out and worth remembering, no matter how short a time they spent on screen. And the character designs? As a long-time vampyr and catholic guilt fan, can I just say. Rawr. This show shaped how I dress like irl and my own shitty characters, as well.

Sir Integra is my favorite character of the show and one of all time. Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing. Like, an actually good depiction of a no-nonsense, androgynous as hell, unabashedly commanding (dare I say) woman? And it's played completely straight? No "Whaaa that's a woman?" every 2 seconds or "heh, you will listen to me despite my womanhood" from her. Powerful in her own right despite being the few "magic"-less humans of the series. 0 sexualized Ultimate scenes (sorry Seras and the "hot down there" comment doesn't count, that was banter). She was fucking knighted by the Queen of England before she was even 25, hence Sir Integra. Canonically bi-racial and South-Asian. I'm not even going to go into her character's willpower and values but. Hellloooo??? 

Not to mention, something noteworthy about the series, but Hellsing works because Hirano made time for silly moments. I mean, hell, one of the scenes I remember most vivdly was the gag of Heinkel lighting Sir Integra's cigar and being mega-pissed about it during the final battle, it's funny yet in character, despite many fans saying the humor throws you out of the "reality" of the show.

Oh no, but what do the new fandom gremlins talk about? "Alufart rails Y/A" "OMG VLADCARD'S BARA HAIRY TIDDIES I WANNA RUB MY FACE AGAINST THEM" (you know who you are) “I drew the most fucked up version of Alucard I could think of in my twisted mind”

and my personal "favorite":

"omg 🥺 what if intewa and alucard kisswdd", it's almost as bad as Seras x Alucard.

Unfortunately, I am a part of the ship police, so I'm gonna say right now that these two are my most hated ships:

1) Sir Integra and Alucard's relationship goes beyond romance to me. Since none of the new fans know the lore, Sir Integra is and will die a virgin (canon), it's literally plot relevant because by having sex, if she gets bit she will become a zombie slave (obvious but apparently needed to be said) and, taking a note from the 2001 anime, gone is any chance to continue the Hellsing mission. If she was bitten, plot armor aside, she'd have to off herself instead of becoming a vampire. (and for you freaks out there/pos, dare I say… ace representation? you can argue about desire and subtext later)

2) Seras and Alucard's relationship was specifically noted by the author to be a father/daughter dynamic, which is kind of obvious in the show. Like I said, fundamentally a found family series. Yeah, you don't need to treat found family like family family but I gen can't stand this ship.

I know that people will ship characters who've never been in a room together before. I can't stop people from shipping them and these two ships have ALWAYS been popular in the fandom. I typically ignore this and, yes, "don't like, don't interact" is my main rule. However, new fans ONLY talk about this stuff. None of the rest of the show seems to matter, just Alucard's hairy mustached tig bitties and him fucking one of the two women in the main cast. Or someone's self insert.

((tangent but personally my favorite ships are Alexander x Alucard (obviously in an enemies to enemies way), Heinkel x Yumi, and a romance only Seras x s.Integra. Like, you want old women yuri??? There ya go! They were in a mansion for like 30 years (I forgot) together, probably going missions alone and sharing their grief over Alucard and their unique experience/history. Like I said, I can't help who people ship, I'm not trying to say the source material is in favor of my ships or "how dare people interpret these obviously gay characters as straight". like no, that's not why I'm upset and ik alucard and alexander weren't yaoi-ing it up but like. alucard and s.integra shippers dni /j))

Not to mention, I couldn't help but notice, despite this information being readily available to my middle school self, no one knows the fckn lore or background of this show?? I honest to god saw someone comment that Hellsing Ultimate™ was a bad “remake” because it diverged from the original anime.

Here's SOME fun facts:

-the 2001 version of the show has a different ending than the manga because it wasn't finished yet (duh). Hellsing Ultimate is "soooo short" because production took almost a decade and it was trying to be a faithful, well-animated (that takes time bruv) adaptation. Oh, and a bunch of directional changes that I won't get into.

-there are multiple OVAs following Walter's youth in WW2 (Hellsing: The Dawn). Young Walter's design honestly was one of my favorites from the series so. Walter enjoyers. Check it out.

-there is a bonus book explaining a lot about the characters and process of creating Hellsing written by Hirano himself. whenever I got a hold of it, though (8+ years ago) there was no English translation.

-Alucard didn't just transform into a girl that one time, he was in his girl form the entire time during WW2 (hence why when people mention his possible affair with the Queen it might've been a sapphic thing but I think that mostly stems from the abridged series. the queen thing not the girl thing)

-Hirano used to be a Hentai mangaka and actually designed many of Hellsing's characters in said hentai or in short stories (such as Crossfire, it's basically extra, non-canonical Hellsing content) beforehand. Which, this used to be the most popular "fun fact" but has been lost to the sands of time now, so prepare for a lot of people rediscovering this.

-personal lore is I almost named myself Rip van Winkle bc of this show (quirked up Portal, Grell Sutcliff, queer-coded, rifle-wielding shawty)

Anyway, to sum it up, I hate when people don't interpret characters in the same way I do. Yes, I am a bad “fandom elder”, idgaf I am fundamentally a hater.

*I keep seeing this happen with old shows that resurface. Unlike newer or more popular shows where every scene gets scoured, characters who showed up for one scene get analyzed, and endless cafe AUs are made- older shows mostly get fan art of the main charas and the ships of the two hottest characters and that's it. Discussion of lore and themes are completely off the table. So I'm not surprised, just disappointed.

#long post #hellsing ultimate #hellsing #alucard #integra hellsing #seras victoria #et al #yeah i just get this way about media i've fundamentally tied to my person because I watched it as a kid and hyperfixated on it my bad #hellsing ova #lore dump #anyways rant over #sir integra #me #run on sentences aren't real #I heart hating #goddamn protestants #intersex #aromantic #gay people #queer coding #idk tags #did I mention it was a long rant post #oh and if I see “is Integra a woman” one more time... #edit for typo #oh and #lesbian #found family #enjoyers watch this show except don't if youre gonna be annoying about it

[f4irycafe]

I just looked at your masterlist and saw acotar, so I was wondering which court would you wanna be lady/high lady of and why?

this was the wrong question to ask me anon cause i could write an entire dissertation on this and y’all are abt to read it hehe hehe. please request more stuff like this i love this ask omg. i could talk abt this series for ages.

MY TOP 3 COURTS ARE UNDERNEATH THE CUT!

1. spring court

lol bet u didn’t think that would be on there. but high lord aside, spring and autumn have always been my two favorite seasons. i loved them because they were “transitions” not too cold like the winter, and not deathly hot like summer. watching flowers bloom, seeing all the animals come back out of hiding, watching my city like come alive again, everything about spring has always just has such sweet memories for me.

now if we wanna talk about tamlin i like the guy, or atleast i love the fanon version of him i’ve created in my head. whenever i imagine settling down with tamlin it’s always a couple decades after what happened in acomaf. boy has healed, and his court is flourishing, he has friends, newfound family, he’s thriving okay. i also feel like our personalities would go great together, he can be a little shit sometimes and i appreciate that cause i’m a little shit, always. for some reason i also feel like the people of spring have a very rich and deep culture, and i would love to know more about it.

i want to live and spring and dance thru the flowers at night with the fairies and then get drunk with my husband on top of a hill that overlooks out court and i feel like tamlin could 100% give that to me <3

2. summer

my second favorite seasonnnn + tarquin in the best high lord. politically and economically, tarquin checks ALL of my boxes. working towards democracy? love it. wants to ABOLISH THE CLASS SYSTEM? HELLOOOOOO that's husband material right there. i feel like he's the most genuine and caring out of all the high lords, and that really shows in how he rules his court. plus he is absolutely gorgeous...and black. so yes, he is quite possibly everything you could ask for in a husband.

i was born in the beginning of summer so i also probably have a personal connection to wanting to rule over summer w tarquin. i've always loved the beauty of the sea, and admired people who go out there every day for fishing and exploration and manage to come back alive. but i flourish in the summer. always happy, always outside doing something, even if its just reading on the front porch all day or doing stupid little sidewalk drawings with my friends. i do feel like tarquin would be a little bit too kind hearted to handle my sass, and that's where my third and most controversial option is.

overall, summer will always hold such a sweet place in my heart.

3. autumn dun dun unnnnnn

hehe i love eris. have always loved eris, will always love eris and there is next to nothing you could say to me to make me believe he is a bad person. he just. wow. everything about him is wow. this is def more a person based preference rather than a court/seasonal one. an eternal autumb doesn't sound AMAZINg, but where i'm from irl we never really get the whole red leaves thing in the fall, so i feel like it would be amazing to experience that in autumn. i def love the big meanie on the outside but soft for me trope. like i said in tamlins, i can be a little shit. like SHITTT sometimes. and i feel like eris matches my personality even more than tamlins. we both put on masks while were around other people, and while mine is a lot more enthusiastic, kind, and extroverted than eris' it would be nice to have someone to take it off around.

i feel like afte eris settles into being high lord he chooses very carefully who he wants close to him. he makes sure they all have good values and care about the people they were tasked to rule over. he creates a family of brothers for himself because his real one is so shitty. i feel like all the people he appoints would be strangers at first, but grow to have a bond thicker than blood. eris would be a great high lord and would want to protect his people more than anything, ALL of his people, not just ones who live in a stupid little secret city (cough cough rhysand).

my love. i feel like he would be the best husband. humor me, love me, do stupid devious shit with me. it would be really fun.

elles ramblings: LOl if you managed to read through that whole thing thank u i really appreciate it. and please please pLEASE don't be afraid to ask me other questions like this :)

#tamlin #eris vanserra #rhysand #rhys #tarquin #acotar #acotar x reader #acotar fluff #tamlin x reader #tarquin x reader #a court of thorns and roses #eris vanserra x reader #tamlin cafe <3 #tarquin cafe <3 #eris cafe <3 #f4irycafeblurbs📇

[sparksflamesembersashes]

Another thing about the Caryl situ.... What if, in fact, Melissa just got fed up with Caryl? What if Carol Peletier is Melissa McBride's "Misery"? Maybe the character she'd created had become the only thing she was judged by, and she just got tired of it. Not to mention, Melissa seems like a kind hearted and gentle soul IRL, and all the abuse, vitriol, and anger on the Twitter hellscape and elsewhere may have taken a psychological toll on her. Maybe the viciousness (mostly from antis, but not all) had been ripping her up inside for years and she just wanted to walk away from it. Maybe to her, Caryl is the monster they created and she just wanted it dead. You can't blame her. It's no wonder she all but left the social media platform years ago. She obviously hasn't cared to engage with fans on that level for a long time, and having read some of the hateful things people say to or about her or her character, I get it. She's only human, after all. And people get SO emotional about their ships! The pressure must have been insurmountable at times. Maybe she had to walk just to preserve her own sanity. We don't know, and we'll probably never know, because Melissa's personal life and her personal decisions are none of our business, and she is an intensely private person. Can you imagine how she feels if, in fact, this was entirely HER decision and HER choice, and we're all making it sound like she got screwed over by the network and her co-star? How absolutely mortifying would that be? I'm just saying what if... I am inclined to think she got shoved aside, but we just don't know. And if we're wrong, we're not helping her in rising up and protesting the cancellation of the spin-off... we're just prolonging her agony. No one wants to let people down, and the pain and sorrow from the fandom could be crushing her.

As for Norman, yes, he is an entitled male celebrity and he's had that status for a long time. But listen, the guy is engaged, he has a toddler with his fiancee (who is also a hot property in her own right), and who among us wouldn't throw almost everything else to the four winds to spend more time with the people we love and cherish the most? One thing the COVID pandemic has left in its aftermath is a new appreciation for the stuff that's most important in the world. Norman had mentioned in an interview that he'd been working almost constantly for 10 years, and when everybody went into lockdown, I think he discovered the meaning of true family time. Not to mention the risk of death can lead you to re-evaluate your life in general. So if he jettisoned everything to spend more time with Diane and his daughter, I can be pissed at him for doing it, but I can't really judge him over it. I don't have that kind of love in my life, but I imagine if I did, I'd do just about anything to hold onto it as long as possible. Are we really gonna gut the man over choosing his real life family over a fictitious one? I want to (you have no idea), but I won't. Because I get it.

So I'm just sad and grieving, and at first I wanted to protest and deny this new reality, and now I'm just accepting it. Because we will never know why it happened and maybe we shouldn't. And we don't truly know if anyone was cheated out of anything (except us Caryl shippers, of course). At the end of the day, Melissa and Norman are individual human beings with their own lives, and expecting them to bend to the will of a segment of their fans (no matter how large) to compromise their own life goals (and maybe their mental health) in order to maintain fictional characters we've invested way too much of our own time in is, IMO, unrealistic, and more than a little selfish. Maybe that's not the reality, but maybe it is. You know the saying, truth is stranger than fiction. We don't know all the truths here, only bits and pieces that we'll still speculate on for months to come.

I am a Caryl shipper. God help me. And if you accuse me of not shipping Carol, or not stanning Melissa, I will fight your ass to my last breath. But enough is enough. The shit I've seen on Twitter gets worse every day, and people behave so badly when they can hide behind a pseudonym on social media. There's no way to know if I'm hurting or helping by participating. Absent further factual enlightenment, I'm taking the path of least resistance and having a seat on the sidelines. The truth always eventually comes out, but I'm not going to feed any more fires until I know what the truth actually is. And that could take a while... if it happens at all.

I have given so much of my heart and my love to Caryl, and it's been more beautiful and rewarding at times than I could have imagined, but now I'm going to focus that love and my heart on real people, in the real world. Maybe that's exactly what Melissa and Norman have chosen to do. We just don't know. Caryl on, but keep it in perspective. Life is shorter than you think. Make it count.

#caryl #I'm finished now I swear just had to get this last bit off my chest

[alihightowers]

Hello!!!! I very much enjoyed the chapter update. Thank you so much for sharing this story.

I am processing so many emotions right now, it was so intense. I feel for my poor babies.

I was wondering who did you fancast for James? His he the same age as Kate?

And just to clarify in chapter 2, K+A are both 22-23 yrs old, right?

Also, I just want to say that I am fascinated by how the emotions are vividly portrayed. Without telling us explicitly what is going on, we felt the thread and the underlying tension within the dialogue with the characters (I don't know if that make sense). For example, the whole Kate/Benedict conversation, I am super fascinated by how their relationship did evolve during these 5 years; he seems to have been such a supportive person in her life and the person who know her best and her secrets (probably because they both were the closest to Ant?).

I wonder, why does everyone doesn't want Ant to know about [redacted]? Maybe, I misread that. Does Violet and the other kids know? I guess that it is because he is going through PTSD and the family want to protect him as he is trying to rebuild his life. But, I wonder, if knowing about [redacted] could give him hope and something to hold on to?

Kate is bottling up so many emotions, it feel like she is going to explode.

I spotted an infidelity tag (YES PLEASE and WHEN??).

Anyways there are so much more that I want to comment on but I will leave it there and wait to see how it will all unfold. All that to say, that I adore your writing, it is suspenseful, full of nuance and very evocative. I feel like I am in a movie where the characters have so much secrets and trying to control their emotions before shit hit the fan (if that make sense) LOL. I am living for it!

Anyways, I am so invested.

I hope irl get better for you. Take care.

Hi babe!!

I'm sorry, I don't know why I've done this to them. I promise it'll be okay though!

I don't have a specific fancast for him actually, it was mainly features that stood out to me and I wanted to make them the opposite of Anthony's. So I kind of left it up to the reader to conjure an image of their own. I also didn't spend too much time on it because he really won't be featured THAT much, but if I come across someone I think fits, I'll let you know! He's three years older than she is.

At present time they're 25 and 26.

It makes sense, I just can't believe anyone would think that of my writing lol. Even though I absolutely love both writing and sharing, I'm always second guessing myself, so this truly blows my mind and when I say that means the world and matters so much to me, it really does. ❤️

Aside from Edwina, Benedict is her best friend. He's been her rock throughout the 5 year gap and has been someone she can lean heavily on because, as you said, they were the closest to Anthony. The three of them spent a lot of time together, so he understands her better than most and she feels safe talking to him about anything. I do plan on bringing in more of their dynamic as the story moves along.

So, it's not that they don't want him to know, it's just too soon. He's only just returned, and not only is he coping with everything he's been through, he now has to relearn how to live a normal life. To throw something that huge and life altering at him at this stage now would just be cruel and unfair for all parties involved. It all stems from the deep need to protect, largely on Kate's part. But it will give him strong purpose and a bigger reason to be present.

And yes! everyone knows and has been very much involved.

Girlie is going through it. She's got a lot on her plate!!

LMAO, soon! I'm trying to be realistic with the pacing and don't want to rush into anything too soon. The tension has to build a bit before it completely shatters, you know? I guess it's kind of a slow burn, and I like writing teases, but not at a snail's pace. I'm too impatient for that shit lol.

Ahhhhh!!! I don't even know what to say, just know that I'm sending you so much love right now. I will literally remember this forever.

Thank you for reading and also taking the time to write one of the nicest messages I've ever received.🥹❤️

Thank you, love!!

#asks #my heart can't handle thissss!!!!

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 2x08 Review

Most Likely To was the best ep of S2 so far and ended one ship while launching another. Let’s dig in!

Gaston was super fun, a very nice showcase for both Larry and Matt. This is the kind of energy that early S2 was lacking. Also feels like the first ep where East High might actually have a shot at beating North High. Covid restrictions played a role but we really needed to see more rehearsal scenes and scenes of the wildcats just being theatre kids. This also may be one of the last times we see EJ perform as a student in the musical so I’m glad we got this.  

EJ has been criminally underused for most of S2, he’s marketed as part of the big 4 along with Nini, Ricky, and Gina and Matt Cornett’s name is listed 3rd in the credits but in the early eps of S2 you’d think he was guest star. Lately he’s started to become more important and tonight was an excellent showcase of why he’s such an interesting character. I’m not gonna check but this feels like it’s the most EJ screen time in a single ep that we’ve gotten all season long. 

Of course, the main reason for EJ’s increased screen time is because of Portwell. I’ve been neutral on them but tonight they really won me over’ their scenes were so sweet that they warmed even my cold black heart. Matt and Sofia are good friends irl and that shines through in their easy rapport and great chemistry. Gina snorting at EJ’s joke was cute and I loved the shot of Gina accidentally walking into the shot for EJ’s confessional. As an aside, they’ve been doing some fun stuff with the confessionals lately which helps add a bit of the metaness that helped make S1 so great.

The real big Portwell scene tonight was EJ and Gina talking on the couch at Ashlyn’s. Lot’s to love there. Gina’s speech to EJ about what she sees when she thinks of him was sweet and her saying that EJ tried to do the right thing and often failed but kept trying echoes what she said of herself during her confession to Ricky. Also when EJ asked Gina if she understood the feeling of having her life mapped out she replied, ‘’not really’’ which is almost certainly the inspiration for Gina asking a question to EJ and him responding ‘’not really’’ in their pre S2 face time call on the hsmtmts instagram. 

EJ is still wracked with guilt for the guy he used to be but Gina reminds him that he’s grown and is a good guy which leads to her slip up about her seeing him that way vs the rest of the gang hinting that she’s beginning to catch feelings for EJ. Which leads to EJ complimenting her and them having a moment that could well have led to a kiss if Ashlyn hadn’t come home. And they cap it off with Gina falling asleep and EJ covering her with his Duke sweater. 

It’s been nice not seeing Gina upset over Ricky these past two eps and it’s a damning indictment of the poor writing and pacing of S2 that her story in the first 6 eps can be summed up as Gina being upset over something Ricky said or did. Not only has Portwell allowed EJ to rise in prominence but also it’s allowed Gina to escape the rut her character was stuck in pining for Ricky. 

I hope after S2 is over that we get an interview where Tim explains how the Portwell plot came to be. The S1 finale set up some possible interest between them as did the pre S2 face time call but nothing came of it during the first 4 eps, they stood next to each other a lot but barely interacted otherwise. Notably in 2x01, which Tim himself wrote, EJ tries to grow a beard and tells Ashlyn that he says her as so young which is extremely jarring now that we know that EJ is crushing on Gina who is Ashlyn’s age. 

Was Tim not set on doing Portwell until he realized he needed to give Gina something else to do other than hopelessly pine for Ricky? Narratively, it made sense after Rini got together in S1 to put the other two Big 4 characters together in S2 but did Tim not want it to seem so obvious to the audience so he deliberately kept Portwell apart until 2x05 where EJ’s feelings make for a nice plot twist? Was he just reluctant to plug EJ back into the love square due to how much more complicated it would make things but later felt he had no other options? Or was it just plain old bad pacing and writing?

Of course, I wish that there wasn’t such a large age gap between Sofia and Matt but there are no Gina ships that avoid that problem, there’s also an age gap between Sofia and Joshua, just as there was between Olivia and Joshua and Matt in S1. Depending on when they film S3 there’s a good chance that most of it will be finished before Sofia even turns 18 which is deeply unfortunate. There’s a broader issue of teen girls being cast in mostly age appropriate roles while their male love interests are older adults and in particular it often affects female characters of colour. Netflix has a really bad track record with those kind of age gaps but Disney has problems too as we’ve seen on HSMTMTS and on GMW where by the end of S3 they had 18 year old Peyton Meyer as the boyfriend of 14 year old Rowan Blanchard’s character (not to mention canon Joshaya which didn’t have such a bad age gap between the actors but was problematic regarding the ages of the characters themselves).

A knock I’ve seen on Portwell is that EJ is just gonna leave for university next year but that was never gonna happen, Matt’s under the same 4 season contract as all the other mains and he’ll be sticking around in some capacity much like Sharpay ended up doing in the movies. It is true that EJ will probably have to move on at the end of S4 while Gina still has her senior year left but that will also happen with her and Ricky since he’ll be graduating at the end of S4. It was a big mistake to make EJ a senior but it also may end up being a big mistake to make Gina a sophomore. It would have been too messy to retcon EJ to be a junior but Tim probably should have taken the chance to retcon Gina into being a junior in S2.

That Rini breakup was so sad (missed opportunity for gotta go my own way). They managed to get in a Troyella reference with the treehouse. This was inevitable they just have not been communicating well though now that we know that Ricky thought Nini left YAC for him some of his desperation to spend as much time together as possible makes more sense. I think Rini is endgame if the series has 4 seasons but it wouldn't shock me if we never seem them dating again and they only get back together in the series finale. It also wouldn’t surprise me if Nini never dates anyone else for the remainder of the series or at least not seriously. 

We’re not even halfway through the series so it’s way too early to permanently slam the door on Rini though this time apart will probably help Joshua and Olivia move on from their own bitter break up before it bleeds too much into their performances. I do wonder if Tim really has a clue what he's gonna do with them for the remaining 24-28 eps of the series, assuming S3 and S4 have 10-12 eps each. 

Roman Banks killed If I Can’t Love Her and the montage of all the couples or ex couples was great.

It was nice to finally meets some parents other than the Bowen’s and Salazar-Roberts’. Kourtney’s mom was played by Dara’s actual mother and their dynamic was great as expected. It seems from their conversation that Kourtney's father is dead which I don’t believe has been mentioned before. Cash Caswell.... well it gets what the character is about across. He really looks and sounds like a rich Utah republican, I bet he knows Mitt Romney personally. I liked EJ going to tell his father that he’s not going to Duke and recognizing that he wants to build his own life on his own merits. 

We saw a bit of that S1 Miss Jenn energy tonight which was fun though I didn't like how curt she was with Seb nor did I like how rude Carlos was to Seb although we know that blows up in 2x10. 

Jazzara rising! I really liked how Jazzara and Portwell are sort of mirroring each other and since Mazzara knows about EJ’s feelings for Gina it wouldn’t shock me if helping EJ out is part of him showing a softer side in 2x12.

Of course Ashlyn is VP of the Nostradamus society. It's clear her family has some kooky new age beliefs (her parents are probably members of some naturopathic medicine group on Facebook that doubles as a gateway into Qanon)

It was nice to see Big Red being such a good friend to Ricky and the return of Ricky’s infamous pillow hugs. Lmao at Ashlyn just chilling while Big Red is comforting Ricky

Also Miss Jenn saying sexy and Big Red referring to pillow talk, the writers are adding a bit of spice when cooking up these scripts.

Looking Ahead: 

Looks like Gina may be wearing EJ's duke sweater next ep according to some posts I saw. Jack presumably is there to somehow help Gina decide what she wants with Ricky and EJ though him having wanderlust might also feed into Gina’s thoughts on settling down in SLC or moving with her mom around the country.

Let's see what mom of the year, Lynne Bowen, has up her sleeves. Ricky’s bedroom at her place in Chicago looks much nicer than the apartment Mike Bowen has so perhaps she makes a lot more money than he does. 

Not looking forward to the Zoom portions of the ep but I guess it was inevitable. 

There’s only two paths for Gina’s story to go in the remainder of this season; either she decides to move on from Ricky and give EJ a chance or she decides that Ricky is worth trying again and squelches her budding feelings for EJ. The former looks much more likely after tonight’s ep but either way it needs to be handled with care. Inevitably Gina and Ricky need to talk about what happened between them but if Tim really wants Ricky to continue being a viable love interest or even a good friend to Gina then he needs to really have Ricky apologize and show a thoughtful, kinder side of him that’s largely been missing this season. 

What I think Tim is doing is setting up Portwell getting together in 2x12 but Ricky pining over Gina until Portwell break up late S3 and Rina get together in the S3 finale before they break up later in S4 and Ricky gets back with Nini near the end of the series. If I had Tim’s ear I would tell him that he should pick which ship he wants to do, Rina or Portwell, but don’t do both. He wants canon Rina? Great then end Portwell before it starts and have Rina happen in S3 and introduce other obstacles to them getting together rather than having to damage EJ’s character and make him lose another girl he likes to Ricky. He wants canon Portwell? Great then have Gina and Ricky’s conversation be closure for the both of them and have Gina and EJ get together and break them up without Ricky being a cause of it or waiting in the wings to get with Gina soon afterwards. Doing both will be a disaster and I truly hope that Tim Federle carefully thinks over his mistakes in S2 and really plans out the remaining 2 seasons of the series while there’s still time to prevent things from going really off the rails like GMW and AM did thanks to the bad decisions of Michael Jacobs and Terri Minsky. 

Until next week wildcats. 

#HSMTMTS #Portwell #Rini #Gina Porter #EJ Caswell #Ricky Bowen #Nini Salazar-Roberts #Kourtney Greene #HSMTMTS Reviews

[softwarmfur]

ok. cough cough hackkk. ahem. midam enthusiasts. cage discussion enjoyers. chuck observers and likers. irl religions spn fans...ive called you all here tonite bc ive got a smackerel of shit i need to discuss. the last of the caffeine from the cherry coke i had earlier is taking its swan song (ha, ha.) dive thru my bloodstream right now. my hands are shaking so hard i can hardly type.

anyway, first thing on the agenda is: as a person who believes in God, something that i enjoy and also hate having to think about it, if God is thee ultimate creator, then all versions of God that exist in fictional media (such as supernatural) are just hollow facsimiles of him. Thus making Chuck (and all other representations of the divine in media) a demiurge of sorts. bc if the media. well. exists. then in this little fake story universe, he is a god. completely unaware as to the real nature of his existence. I’m referencing the gnostic system of thought in which there is an all-powerful creator who at some point created a demiurge that never became aware of its creator. It made the known universe, thinking itself to be the original god. Much to think about in terms of ‘Chuck isn’t actually god” theory. whatever.

second thing on the agenda: ive recently come to conclusion that caffeine, while fucking me up if over-consumed, does focus me and elevate my train of thought for a beautiful but brief period of time. the caffeine high i’m experiencing right now is coinciding with the natural waxing of my midam obsession, creating a beautiful eclipse of drug-induced frenzy and autism. my god i love being alive. on to the main point: i consider myself to be generally neutral when it comes to things such as midam one-or-two body truthing, beautiful room truthing, the timeline of their love story, what their relationship dynamic is exactly, etc. but overall i am ultimately a believer that adam let michael possess him out of a sense of combined fear, awe, and duty. michael, being michael, put adam ‘away’ for the stull cemetery confrontation and while still retaining a cold and callous attitude and a general sense of angelic entitlement, fully intended to fullfill his promises to adam once he was done using a vessel. thus, he was reluctant to let adam come back “online” when he was in the cage. once adam realized what had happened, he was understandably furious and refused to interact with michael. however, the cage has a way of bringing people together, namely, by being mind-numbingly, oppressively still (boring), to the point that adam and michael sort of sought each other out naturally and eventually repaired things between each other.

However, i have to wonder about THE very beginning of their work relationship-  Adam being approached by zachariah as a potential/eventual vessel for michael.

Related to this - sam and dean actually didn’t meet their brother until the fifth season, which kind of fucks me up if i think about it too long. we were TECHNICALLY introduced to the character or rather the existence of adam in the fourth season via the iconic “Jump the Shark”, but that ended up being the ghoul who had killed and consumed adam and his mother, which is super fucked. Would sam and dean have ever learned about their brother if it wasn’t for the ghouls’ family desire for revenge? as a bit of an aside, it does make me chuckle to think of dean and sam never meeting the ghoul, and then being contacted about adam during the fifth season with no prior knowledge of him. i’m imagining zachariah calling dean and being like, “we have your brother, come to this building in california if you want him back alive, yadda yadda” and dean just repsonding with. what the fuck? man, sam’s sitting literally directly to my right. in the car. is this some kind of a joke? fuck off. then he hangs up on zach and makes a comment to sam about angels being dicks.

on a sadder note, i’m trying to remember how long the period of time was between adam’s death and sam and dean’s first meeting with the ghoul. if my memory serves me right, it was some months before the ghoul could finally reach them. it makes me unmanageably upset to think about the Milligan’s little home sitting quiet and unwillingly abandoned, the air going at first stale and then foul with the smell of their remains coming through the tunnel system. Did Adam have any friends? a romantic partner? did they try to look for adam and his mother? did Kate’s nurse co-workers worry for her? are they still worried? or are adam and his mom afforded no one to give a shit about them because they’re side characters chuck cooked up to keep the story interesting? do their lives begin and end with their involvement with the winchesters? is is sad or funny to imagine adam, youthful adam, alone in a locked room with an archangel, looking up in the utmost terror, and completely misunderstanding the beast’s request for him? Adam can’t help it, he’s only human! very funny to me to think of Adam hoping he won’t get smiting for saying this, but, um, he’ll have to politely decline Michael’s request for “his body”, as he’s very sure michael has a very lovely personality, but he’s never slept with a non-human, and most certainly never with an angel. And, is it, like, a virgin Mary thing? Does he just want adam as some kind of holy womb? And if that happens is the birth going to be all fucked up, like the chestbursters in the Alien movies? Unnecessarily torturing myself by asking, well, is Adam trans? Is he filled with guilty rage and grief at the thought that god wants him pregnant? or, touching on what i asked earlier, would adam say he has to decline because he already has a very devoted boyfriend back home in minnesota who, by the way, is probably still worried sick over his whereabouts right now. On the flip side, would it be more in-character for michael to quickly rectify what he meant exactly and tell Adam he needed to possess him to defeat the devil, or for michael to take Adam back to minnesota in spirit and show him how his boyfriend is just beginning to move on from his death, and how adam suddenly returning to him would just screw him up further? You see, little one? what has died is meant to stay dead. allowing you to return to your life would just be...messy. the only reason you’re back on earth right now is so you can host me. If michael goes with the second option, is the minnesota he shows adam to convince him actually what’s happening, or is it a false vision hastily whipped up to nudge the human in the ‘right direction’? Or is it perhaps BOTH? Is michael aware, to some extent, of the ‘levels’ of creation chuck has made? does he know Adam didn’t exist until chuck needed new material? Does he know that the winchesters are the main characters, or from his perspective, Very Important to the plot? does he know that his father creates all people real, but some people are more real than others? does he know how real he is? does he reveal to adam the true nature of his old life in minnesota, how it’s a shoddy fabrication implanted in him by his father? Was adam’s consent based purely off a coerced existential crisis? Was adam’s consent desperate and confused? Did Adam even consent, or did michael just annihilate his entire sense of self to the point where Adam wasn’t even a ‘person’ anymore, just a self-aware plot device, and michael no longer needed a ‘yes’ to enter him? Would Michael knowingly push Adam to the asymptote of his own nonexistence just so he could bypass his father’s pesky consent rule? In any universe where he does do this, it’s never, ever, personal. (back to the whole Michael is a huge entitled dick until he has to make pretty with adam in the cage thing - does it ever weigh on adam, later on in the relationship, that, up until he and the archangel irreconcilably crossed paths, all of Michael’s interactions with humans were likely only ever transactional - brief bursts of light and terror, a bat snatching a moth out of the night air, a quick meetup to secure Michael’s access to their body. Is adam, in a way, sort of the prostitute michael fell in love and settled down with? If Michael ever interacted with humans before him at all...)

Pretend i didn’t say all that, up until i mentioned Adam’s possible partner back in Minnesota. when i think of Adam rejecting Michael on the grounds of “I have a boyfriend!” not only does it make me giddy, i think of the moment after in which michael immediately thinks out loud, “What does that have to with ME? I’m trying to banish my brother, the devil, and bring paradise to earth, and you think your boyfriend who doesn’t even know where you are will be concerned if I ride your meat for a day or two? Oh my god i didnt mean it like THAT i meant if just highjacked your vessel long enough to cage Lucifer-OK, OK, i came on a bit strong, I’ll admit, but PLEASE let me in man You gotta.” Are we feeling better? Think about that funny tiktok audio excerpt in which TisaKorean exclaims, “Man, I don’t give a fuck, I’m tryna get up in the club! I’m tryna go crazy, dawg!” Just imagine it, please.

Anyway. this post has become...unreasonably long, so I’ll cut things off here and wish you well, if you managed to make it this far.

#teehee this is deranged fan behavior...im not sorry about a word of it though. #i might as well tag this? it kind of became a whole ass dissertation so #midam #michael spn #adam spn #chuck shurley #midam dynamics #michael and adam #long post #just a general brainstorm of ideas surrounding michael and adam's unknowably complex relationship. and other things. #so insane how i could KEEP WRITING AFTER THIS...caffeine got me going CRAZY. #seriously off the shits. god help whoever's near me if i ever finally do actual cocaine. #forreal i havent done a huge long adamichael centric post in a while...i need to consume drugs more often i think. #ALSO SORRY IF THERES ANY ERRORS IN THIS....I REMOVED AND SWITCHED SOME PARTS AROUND POST-TYPE..

[fanficsandfluff]

The Snyder Cut: Headcanons (mostly of the tickly nature)

Bruce Wayne (Batman) ~ Batfleck, my love

He’s such a lover boy, and I can say that though I don’t exactly know how to explain what I mean. You just gotta understand.

He cares so strongly about EVERYONE. e v e r y o n e. Alfred, fucking loves the guy, jokes with him. The fucking “This is Alfred, I work for him.” MY MAN, STOP!

I think he just really wants to get along with everyone and wants everyone to get along in general.

But he lowkey crushes on Diana (at least in his mind, he’s keeping it lowkey, but we all see what’s happening)

I love the idea of this big hunk of a man getting soft with someone like Diana. 

She makes him genuinely laugh this one time by saying something funny, and then they’re both laughing together. 

Bruce definitely has one of those laughs where he throws his head back and shit and you can see his like Adam’s apple bobbing and everything.

But that’s if he’s really laughing.

And he has loud “HA”’s that are like really short but loud and then he kinda just snickers to himself for a while, holding his stomach.

And dude, the scene in freaking uhh… i think it’s BvS I’m not 100% (maybe i fucking imagined it who knows) where she like comes over to him and is fixing his wound….. tickle scenario hand picked from the gods right there

I can see a whole, “Woah!” from Bruce when Diana traces her fingers on some sensitive skin. And that Gal Godot smile is on her in an INSTANT. 

Bruce will laugh if he’s with the right person. Like I headcanon that if he’s being tickled, he will laugh if it’s done by Diana or Barry, then like he’ll be forced to laugh if it’s Clark bc he overpowers the poor bat, but then he just has these hilarious bouts of angry growls and chuckles if Arthur is going after him. 

I can’t even write about Batfleck being a ler because I will literally explode, so I’m done here 

(((((butseriouslyifanyonewantstotalklerbatfleckwithmehmuplz)))))

Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) 

I know the GIF isn’t from ZSJL but just let me live, ok? (Also I couldn’t find the one of Gal wiggling her fingers YOU KNOW THE ONE I’M TALKING ABOUT)

First off, Gal is the most horrible queen of giggles. I’ve seen those blooper reels. My god, girl, how do you keep getting hired?

SHE HAS SUCH A BIG SMILE IT’S LIKE THE ROCK IDK HOW THEIR TEETH AND MOUTH GET SO WIDE LOOKING

Diana will start tickle fights without a doubt.

She’s already very trustful and I also feel pretty handsy with people, especially those she may feel close to. So if she’s playful, you best watch out.

Her favorite targets are Bruce and Barry. I will not take criticism. Diana attacking Barry and reducing him to panicky shrieky laughs is my #1 thought. It’s not even living rent free, I’m commissioning it to be there.

Diana is one to laugh with her victims. She will wreck them and have a great time doing so. 

She’ll be ticklish if she wants to be, but it isn’t often she gets pinned and tickled or anything like that.

The guys try to stay away from her or not go after her with tickles for fear of retaliation.

AQUAMAN, CYBORG, SUPERMAN, AND THE FLASH UNDER THE CUT

Arthur Curry (Aquaman)

So…. my man isn’t really ticklish. I really don’t think he is, I feel like his Atlantean genes make his skin a special kind of hard, if that makes sense?

THAT BEING SAID ARTHUR IS THE BIGGEST LER OMGGG

He’ll try and act all cool and ‘whatever’ around the League cuz that’s kind of his persona.

But he slowly gets to like them more and more and his playful side starts to come out.

He’ll tickle Barry out of pure annoyance. Like if Barry makes any kind of comment, he’ll just point his finger out and get that glint in his eye and Barry is sprinting for the hills.

Here’s my favorite headcanon: Arthur will tickle Bruce because he knows it pisses him off when he does it. Bruce will fight back and keep Arthur in his sights at all time and curse and growl at him. And Arthur thinks it’s hilarious.

Arthur as a ler will taunt and tease until the cows come home

“Huh, big guy? What’s that? Ahawww that’s what I thought!... Not so fast/tough/etc. now!... I will wreck you.”

Victor Stone (Cyborg)

Unfortunately… not ticklish. :(

But this boy has the sweetest laugh you will ever hear, and I will die on that hill. 

Now that he has friends (superpowered friends, no less), he can slowly come alive and be himself. 

I can see Victor not getting involved in tickle fights at first, but at a certain point he’ll be all like, “Okay, step aside so we can do this right” and just PIN THE SHIT OUT OF WHOEVER IS BEING TICKLED. His extra robot arms are killer!

Okay, when he laughs for the first time in front of the group, there’s that cliche moment of pause where everything stops and everyone just stares and listens to him. It’s so rare to hear him laugh because the poor kid barely even smiled around them in the beginning. 

He SMIRKS

Now hear me out on this…

Okay, so half a face. Great. Weird. We love it. But you can see all of mischievous Victor when the guy SMIRKS. You see his eye squint and you can swear his robot eye gets a gleam of a different color. 

Wait honestly as I was writing that, the thought of Victor’s eye and like his apparatus changing color based on his mood is golden.

Me sitting here, lowkey wishing Victor’s robot body had some kind of cuddly mode like Baymax lmfaoooo 

Like the defense mode his body went into when he was around resurrected Supes, but for cuddles and being cute.

Clark Kent (Superman)

I was debating even including any headcanons for Superman bc I don’t care about him much, honestly.

I am v happy they kept in the whole ‘him staring at Flash through the speed storm’ scene bc I laughed so hard at that the first time i saw Josstice League in the theater. 

Also I didn’t really like the black superman costume??? I’m not a comic buff, so I’m assuming that’s why. I am like the one person who missed the color from the Josstice League cut. Don’t miss the stupid red sky in the finale, but I miss every other ounce of color that was just SUCKED right out of the Snyder Cut.

Clark and Bruce are besties now, I don’t make the rules. Bruce bought the man his house back. By buying the bank. He’ll take care of him.

And I’ve always simped for those two ever since BvS, bc I’ve already written like two fics where they tickle each other. 

Clark overpowering Bruce to tickle the shit out of him makes me so happy lol. Big strong boy Batfleck looking thiccc over here… but put him against Superman and he’s donezo. Because as mentioned earlier, I do think Bruce is pretty ticklish. 

But Clark can have his lee side when he’s feeling nice

He’s got that mighty chuckle, almost like how Thor might laugh. 

And he really likes getting involved in tickle fights with the League. He knows all of them are sorta afraid of him on the daily anyway, but have that power added to a tickle fight and it’s fun as hell. 

He’s gotten taken down by them ONCE. And I mean exactly (1) O N C E.

They all teamed up. Bing, bang, boom. Pinned him to the floor and they each took an area of skin and fucking SQUEEZED AND WIGGLED. They were trying to incapacitate him as quickly as possible. And dangummit, he laughed a lot! Like Clark realized just how ticklish he could feel if he wanted to feel it. 

And don’t even get me started on Lois, he’s big on getting her to giggle and she likes toying with him and running her hands all over his body (bc who wouldn’t?)

Barry Allen (The Flash)

I waited to write about Barry last because I have so much to say about this character....

and then I fell asleep and waited until the next day to write anything down about him so now I’m totally not in the mood and I forgot all the salient points I was planning on making.

fuck you, michelle.

I got a weird relationship with this character. He was mad annoying in the Josstice League. Thank goodness they trimmed his bad jokes down.

But now....

when he got hurt at the end and he was like crying and shit oh my god I wanted to hug him

His character got so... good

And I’m now at the right age where I can think about myself in a relationship with this character with no changes or shame

We both out here trying to find that one good job after college and everything

BARRY JUST WANTS FRIENDS, GUYS

HE’S THAT CUTE

And then he got this whole found family schtick with the Justice League!!! Lookit him!!! Thriving!

He has total little brother energy

like, pesky little brother. Bothers everyone, looks over people’s shoulders while they’re deep in thought or concentrating on something.

Asks a lot of questions.

All the more reason for the gang to want to tickle the shit out of him.

Barry just reads like a super ticklish lee. Like his whole character.

Maybe touch starved because he said he needed friends, and I don’t think he has siblings??? (sorry if i’m wrong about that, comic fans)

I already named some of my fav headcanons about him getting tickled by like Diana and such, and I’m sticking with it.

Barry does flee. He runs away with super speed.... but sometimes he just kinda wants the tickles so he lets them have at him. 

The chase is all part of the fun with tickling Barry, though. That’s what makes it so entertaining. And Barry isn’t afraid to be a little shit about it either. He will super-speed around his pursuers and poke their sides and tickle them back really quickly before they even know what’s happening. 

Barry doesn’t exactly hold back his laughter lol. He’ll protest and scream and squirm like crazy, but once he’s actually tickled, he loses it.

Pure boy. With funny ass facial expressions.

And it really doesn’t help that I never realized just how hot Ezra Miller is, even though I heard he’s not a great person irl. Oh well.

THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

Please please let me know if y’all have things to add, to squee over, to question me about... please. anything. i’m here for you. thanks for reading, guys!

#snyder cut #the snyder cut #zack snyder's justice league #zs justice league #zsjl #batman #aquaman #wonder woman #cyborg #the flash #superman #bruce wayne #arthur curry #diana prince #victor stone #barry allen #clark kent #tickle headcanons #batman tickle headcanons #wonder woman tickle headcanons #aquaman tickle headcanons #the flash tickle headcanons #cyborg tickle headcanons #superman tickle headcanons

[carpisuns]

Here I am for Carpisuns Appreciation Week! Your art is amazing, your writing is amazing, you're so kind and inspiring and comforting, thank you for gracing our fandom with your self. It's amazing how much content you create and how consistently you make me smile.

But I also wanted to thank you for something more personal to me: mentioning that you're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in your blog description. It probably seems small--it almost feels stupid to say it--but seeing that one line helped me so much. I was feeling very conflicted over my identity as both a Mormon and an ally (I now know I'm actually ace, but that happened later), because I saw so much homophobia in our church and it made me ashamed. I felt like I had to choose one side of me, and I hated that. Seeing a kind member who isn't just an ally, but openly LGBTQ+, made me so happy. It reassured me that I can be both at once, and I can be proud of both parts of myself.

So thank you. Thank you for being brave and living a contradiction that I long feared wasn't an option. Thank you for teaching me that we aren't contradictions. Even if it might have seemed small to you, even if it didn't take the courage it took for me, thank you. You're amazing.

It's so late here and I'm so emotional at night and I'll probably regret this in the morning but I just had to say thank you. So thank you.

Thank you for your kind words. They mean a lot 💜

I’m going to put the rest of this under a cut for people who would rather not read about religion haha. I was going to answer on priv but in case this would be helpful to anyone else in a similar boat I decided to post on main

I’m so happy to hear the effect my bio had on you. Tbh it did take courage, but it was important to me to have both of those parts of my identity side by side. When I was younger, I wasn’t very open about my faith because religion is something so deeply personal and also divisive, depending on who’s around you. And I hate conflict so I just wanted to avoid it at all costs, haha. But eventually decided that my faith was too important to hide like that. I thought, if I’m going to put a few words up there to introduce myself, it just doesn’t feel right to not mention it. My belief in Jesus Christ and my commitment to follow Him in many ways defines who I am as a person. So I decided years ago to put it in my bio and have always felt good about that. I’m not here to shove religion in anyone’s face or preach at them or judge them or anything like that—I’m just saying, “This is me and it’s important to me.”

As for the bi part, that is a lot more recent haha. It’s almost embarrassing that I didn’t identify as bi until I was 25, but the comphet is strong lol. I think it took me a lot longer to realize/accept my attraction to women because I am still attracted to men, so I can “pass” as straight and always assumed I was, and it was easy enough for a while to brush aside or repress or misinterpret my same-sex attraction. I questioned for years before I finally decided to try out the label “bisexual” in my head. And it felt right to me. It felt good to be honest about that part of myself. I am still not out to the public or the rest of my family, but I’ve told a few close friends and I wanted to at least be able to be open about it in my separate online spaces, to get more comfortable with the label as I figure out how to handle it with people I actually know IRL. But mostly I wanted to add those two extra letters to my bio because I feel like it’s important for other people to see them next to the name of the Church—and important to me most of all. To remind myself, yes, I can be openly bi and a faithful member of the Church. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. I am still committed to the teachings of the gospel, so I will not pursue relationships with women, but I can still be open about my experience and supportive of my LGBTQ siblings both inside and outside of my faith. I find it pretty freeing to be bi on the outside and not just inside my own head, you know? I’m not sure how it goes for other people but a lot of my early experience was wondering if I was faking it or tricking myself into thinking I was bi for attention or something. But literally why would I do that lol. This in-between space of being queer and a member of the Church has not been an easy place to live, but I’m trying to make a home here and I’d like to invite others too if I can.

And I guess that’s another reason it’s important to be open about both things. As I’ve been learning more about myself and my relationship with others and the Church and the world as a bi person, I’ve come to really crave a space where I can feel comfortable and open with both of those aspects of my identity—my queerness and my religious faith. I haven’t really found a space yet that supports both. Generally in queer-positive spaces, religion is (very understandably) a point of contention and pain, and I get why, as a Christian/Latter-day Saint, I may not be welcome to everyone in that space. But then within the Church and other Christian spaces, I have a hard time finding support or understanding at all. People don’t want to talk about it. They don’t know how. I think to some people in either space, my existence doesn’t really make sense lol. Like, how can you say you’re bi if you’re a member of the Church? Or how can you be queer and stay in that church? But I’m here and my experience is real and I know I’m not the only one. So part of my reason is to say to others like me, “Hey, me too. You’re not alone.” And I’m really really glad that it could speak to you that way.

For many years before I realized I was bi, I was drawn to the LGBTQ community and felt a desire to be an ally. I just didn’t know how. I felt like I had to walk some kind of line and support but not be too supportive, to love but not too much. But I’m not here to put limits on my love anymore. I don’t think that is what Jesus Christ taught. I am making the choice to stay committed to the teachings of the gospel, and I hope people respect that because it’s important to me. But other people will choose differently from me, and that’s okay and I will still love them and we will still be part of something together.

Sorry to say so much about this haha especially since as an ace person your experience is not quite the same as mine. But I have a few close friends who are ace and are also members of the Church and the space we’ve shared has been incredibly meaningful for me. I’m grateful you reached out and I hope my rambling helps you somewhat haha. If you ever want to chat, please feel free to message me! 💜

#starryarchitect #ask #nice things #personal #about me #religion #Christianity #lgbtq

[tumblezwei]

Why Kyoko Mogami is the GOAT

And why y’all are SLEEPING ON HER

Spoilers for Skip Beat, but honestly idk how much of the story I’m gonna get into for this since I’m flying by the seat of my pants. Still, read at your own risk.

Also this is LONG lmao

Kyoko Mogami is a 16 year old middle school drop-out that works two jobs day and night in order to pay rent for the Tokyo apartment that she lives in all by herself 6 days out of the week. Going into the first chapter, there are three things immediately clear about her. 

1. She’s cheerful, kind, and also kind of batshit insane. From the first moment we meet her, her personality is throwing itself at our faces and refusing to calm down. (apologies for the bad quality images, I work with what I have)

2. She loves Sho Fuwa, her childhood friend and rising rock-star that asked Kyoko to come with him to Tokyo after middle school graduation to support his career

3. Nothing matters to her as long as Sho is happy. Sure, she laments that her love for girly dresses, cosmetics, and fairy tale princesses will never amount to anything since all of her money is going toward paying the rent on her and Sho’s apartment, but that’s fine. As long as her precious Sho is happy, so is she. 

And, as you’d expect, things go to shit pretty quickly afterwards. During one her off days from her night job, Kyoko decides to visit Sho at his recording studio with dinner. After sneaking in past the hoards of squealing teenage girls waiting outside to catch a glimpse of him, she overhears him talking to his manager. 

“I’m the heir to a prominent Japanese inn, do you think I’ve ever cooked or cleaned all by myself?” She hears. 

“That’s awful,” the manager replies, “you make it sound as if you brought her just to be your maid.”

“She’s basically been my maid since I was a kid, or else I wouldn’t have brought her along with me. It’s not like I forced her, I asked her a question and gave her the choice. It’s only natural that she’d work her butt off to support me.” 

And he just keeps going. Once he’s made enough to live independently, he’ll send her back. How dare his parents try to set him up with a plain-looking girl like her. She doesn’t even wear make-up! 

As images of flash in Kyoko’s mind of standing in front of make-up stores with no money to buy anything, she takes Sho’s words just as well as one might expect. By unleashing the box of tucked away emotions she’s held in her chest and swearing to take revenge on Sho for using her and throwing her away like this.

. I failed to mention this at the start, but the beginning of the chapter introduces us to the most important piece of symbolism in Kyoko’s character development: Pandora’s box. 

For Kyoko’s entire life, she’s held this box inside herself. In myth, once this box was opened, all of the evil of the world is unleashed, never to be put back inside. So for Kyoko, the metaphor is quite apt. Hearing Sho’s words unlocks the box and unleashes a kind of anger that not even Kyoko knew she was capable of, a kind of determination and vengeance that has her dyeing her hair and staking outside of a talent manager’s house for days on end to whittle down his willpower and give her a chance to audition at Sho’s rival talent agency, LME. Every time she hears his name, or sees his picture, she’s filled with myopic sense of rage that no one can calm her down from. 

Her sole mission in life is to get revenge on Sho Fuwa, a sentiment that finds her at odds with LME’s top actor, Ren Tsuruga, who sees her one-sided quest for vengeance as an insult to people who truly love acting. But as if Kyoko cares, she needs to get revenge! 

I’m gonna drop the pseudo-narration for a bit because I actually need to skip over a fair bit of plot to get to what I think makes Kyoko incredibly compelling, outside of being the funniest female character in existence. We’re going to jump forward in time to Kyoko’s first acting gig. Well, not so much an gig as much as it is a competition. She’s been tasked to play the role of a dignified inn keeper that’s serving tea to the main male character. After having broken her ankle and been challenged by the real lead actress, this is her first shot to prove she has the talent to make it in the acting industry. So in order to immerse herself in the role, she utilizes her experience of being trained by Sho’s mother to take care of the inn that his family owned. It’s here that we finally understand that Kyoko giving up her life back home for Sho wasn’t just a spur of the moment decision brought about by infatuation. It was something she’d been doing for her entire life. Everything she knows how to do, every skill she’s obtained, has been because of Sho. And this is the moment that she realizes that fact too. (the first image is from after the scene is done, wherein Kyoko cannot snap herself out of her character due to the lessons she was taught as a child, despite her sitting position making her broken ankle unbearably painful). 

Even her righteous fury at being left in the dust is focused solely on Sho fucking Fuwa. Is there anything that she has than can be attributed to her own success? Does she have any skills that can’t be traced back to trying to make Sho happy? Who is Kyoko Mogami? Is she worth anything without Sho? 

And I want to make this clear right now, because I know the term “shoujo” makes people hesitate. THIS is what Skip Beat is about. Kyoko’s journey to find out who she is, and with every new role she takes on and with every experience she gains, she becomes just a little closer to finding out who she is and what she wants for herself. 

We watch as her love for acting slowly eclipses her thirst for revenge. A few arcs after this moment, she is contacted about a job to act in a music PV with none other than Sho himself. In the beginning, she accepts the job in order to prove to Sho that she’s climbing the ladder and catching up to him, but her performance suffers whenever she thinks about her revenge. And what saves her isn’t even putting aside her revenge, but prioritizing her own feelings above it. She wants to act! She wants to put on a good performance! So she needs to put aside those feelings of anger and draw from her past experiences to create a character that leaves Sho in the dust. 

I’m gonna bet y’all are wondering about the romance, though. Because this is a shoujo, and of course it has romance. But hey, guess what? That romance is equally compelling and is an integral part to Kyoko’s character too. In the first....5 or so arcs, Ren Tsuruga ‘s relationship with Kyoko crawls it’s way out of the it’s rocky beginnings, and he slowly becomes a mentor figure to Kyoko. He’s her superior in acting, and she looks to him often for support and guidance when she’s struggling to perform a role or having difficulty with her fellow actors. To Kyoko, Ren is the goal, his level of acting is what she aspires to be, so she can stand on equal footing with him. Before there’s even a whiff of romance between them, there develops a solid bond of trust and support. And once the romance starts. Hoo boy. 

To fully understand why it’s taken 12 years irl for a confession scene to finally take place, we need to bring back the metaphor of Pandora’s box. Because not everything escaped Pandora’s box when it was opened. Pandora was able to shut the box just in time for one thing to stay locked inside: hope. In the myth, this is a good thing, while negative and vile emotions run free, hope still exists within people to become better. But for Kyoko, the box isn’t a safe place, it’s a repressed place. She spent her entire life locking away the negative emotions she felt, placing a smile on her face and hoping for Sho’s happiness. And when those emotions are set lose, she locks the box back up, sealing something else inside. Her hope, her confidence in anything having to do with love. 

It’s not just that Kyoko isn’t in love anymore, she feels as if she can’t be in love anymore, that she’s entirely incapable of it. The idea of falling in love with someone else terrifies her. What if she goes back to the way she was before? An empty shell that exists for other people and not herself. The box has been sealed tightly again, and by God this time she’s not going to let anything open it. And like, I don’t want to spoil much in this, as contradictory as that sounds. Because the scene where she realizes she loves Ren? One of the best fucking scenes in any romance manga ever. 

And. God. I haven’t even touched on her mom. Kyoko’s desire for love, that became so warped under Sho and so desolate after his betrayal, can all stem back to Saena Mogami. A woman who, no matter what Kyoko did, rejected any affection that her child tried to give, and gave none in return. “Even a mother can hate her own child.” We get bits and pieces of what Kyoko’s mother was like, and the environment that a very young Kyoko was raised in before her mother left her in the care of Sho’s parents. And eventually we realize that Kyoko isn’t afraid of her love being rejected twice, but a third time. 

Like, y’all, I’m not good at these kind of essays. I keep wanting to go off on tangents, nothing is ever focused, I spend to much time just reading the manga instead of writing this fucking post. But please believe me when I tell you that Kyoko Mogamis character development is like none other. She’s truly at the top of her genre and it’s an actual crime that she’s so underrated. 

I HAVEN’T EVEN TALKED ABOUT KANAE, THE WEISS TO HER RUBY, THE TSUNDERE TO HER GENKI

Before Kyoko gets even a single arc with Ren, she gets two with Kanae. The first with Kanae as a central figure, and the second where Kanae is her support. She’s the one that gives Kyoko the eureka moment she needs to pull of her performance with Sho. They are one of the most developed and deep friendships in shoujo that I’ve ever seen AND Y’ALL NEED TO STOP SLEEPING ON IT. LOOK AT THESE TWO

And don’t take this poorly assembled post at face value, I’ve left out a lot of shit. Starting with how fucking funny this manga is. Kyoko’s special talent for her LME audition is peeling vegetables, there’s a running gag where Ren asks for her advice while she’s in a giant chicken costume, unaware that it’s her, the president of LME is an eccentric millionaire that likes to dress up in different themed costumes every day and loves throwing extravagant parties, Kyoko’s hobby is making voodoo dolls and talks to a miniature Ren doll whenever she needs encouragement or advice. 

And it’s all packaged alongside some of the most compelling character development I’ve ever seen (for both Kyoko and Ren), and some absolutely heartbreaking drama. You will never know true pain until “I don’t have a daughter.”

Read this, ya’ll. You won’t regret it. 

#I'm not going back over this because I KNOW it's not coherent but FUCK IT #skip beat #rambling #long post

[seoafin]

tbh,, i havent read the raws of the interview yet, only the translated ver from fan-translator and b4 i start, i think that this will be just me talking in circle and in no particular order AND a real mess (my brain does weird things after exams) but uhh here we go

gojou collects talented people, and by doing so he finds the people he can most probably relate to, except that he can't, not really, because something in the universe shifted when he was born. and it makes me think of how he's always known it, that he is special, and he's proven it, time and time again— he wants to take in talented ppl and he does, but there rly isn't much he can do for them. for they are talented, more talented than the world can understand,,

but they aren't gojou satoru

gojou took in megumi, bc he knew megumi was strong, and would grow up to be someone even stronger, but gojou can't facilitate or encourage his growth, bc for all they're similar, they are so fundamentally different. ALSO,, while geto was in his life, gojou rly judged everything according to his understanding of geto’s moral compass. gojou wears a human suit and geto is how he learnt to wear it well 🏃

the dragonfly analogy regarding to geto’s response to gojo, who was shown wearing a dragonfly patterned yukata in HI arc,, i’m trying to not think abt the fact that dragonfly symbolized victory in jpn....pain. i quoted from a web here for more explanation : In Japan the dragonfly is known as the "victory insect", or kachimushi, because of its hunting prowess and also because it is known to never retreat. Dragonflies are agile and fast fliers and can even hover, but never fly backwards

and bringing this up again, matricide and patricide are 2 of the 5 worst act to commit in buddhism, and it was said that if u commit one of those act u’re going to spend a real long time in the deepest pit of hell before continuing the samsaric cycle (higher chances to be born as an animal after that probs)— this might be geto’s divine retribution. held no power over his own body and could be considered that he’s the same as those “monkeys” 💀

ALSO the fact that sukuna's interest is "eating" rly drives home his hedonistic philosophy of seeking pleasure for himself. and he’s a cannibal...makes me think if he’ll just chomp on ppl with the mouth on his stomach

randomly, to date i think he hasn't really called himself a human, shaman, or a curse, and has held himself apart from all 3, and we've also the intro of the cursed wombs so i wonder if he’s trying to become, or is, a different entity altogether

so onmyoji got mentioned in the interview and what they practice is called onmyodo and abe no seimei and kano no yasunori were the notable practitioners,, and the kamo in jjk is the same as irl who served the imperial court back then

maybe i was right when i said that the relation between the govt. and jujutsu elders are similar to how the shogunate and imperial court work (ie, the former holds the actual power) but... lets see later,,

and i cant believe that i actually nailed it on the analogy of jujutsu practices by religion,,, so mahayana buddhism, shintoism, and taoism is present in jjk along with their respective jujutsu practices...but between the 3, it shld (?) be taoism > shintoism > mahayana buddhism (which could took a path to pure land buddhism)

it’s weird that the number of curses are supposedly higher in jpn comparable to other countries when taoism was brought from china....tengen sus

so the zenin family tree is sth like :

brothers: [toji's dad] ; naobito ; ougi

so toji, naoya, and maki & mai are cousins of the same generation

[toji's dad] → jinichi (probs) ; toji → megumi

naobito → other brothers, naoya

ougi → maki, mai

but yea i’d call anyone who’s within/close or below my age range as cousins and others above 30 as uncles/ aunts LMFAO,, i dont rly memorize my own family tree 😭😭 especially since most call the other by honorifics instead of names : aunt, uncles etc or attaching said honorifics at the end of a name for an older sibling figure/ older cousins [but like ppl in my country also call the other who are older with sibling honorific even if we’re strangers,,, rly similar to korea’s hyung/oppa—eonnie(unnie)/noona but some uses more genderless honorific] (1)

tw // topic of incest, mentions of abuse

if anyone got the wrong idea when reading this : i am not glorifying/ romanticising incest(uous themes),, i’m looking at this with absolutely no lenses of bias even tho im rly against it

初恋 = literally : first love, or puppy love

恋 = romantic love/ deep longing

i literally don't know how else to put this...🧍and with language barrier...using a western interpretation of the eng word "love" to explain a jpnese term is not quite that simple, unfortunately

that thread omg,, i rly do understand how exactly someone could associated kindness with love bc of my upbringing, it was when i was slightly older that i was just...oh so its not like that orz,,, so the most plausible explanation would be that

but the problem is that,, akutami never specify when exactly she had a crush on them,, and when megumi answered todo’s question she had a “♡” reaction 😶,, uhmmm there’s rly no way to look past this if its this way or be in denial

i’ve seen some of "why wouldn't mai react that way after hearing megumi say he'd like someone who's compassionate when she's surrounded by men like naoya",, well I MEAN,,, that, but also mai probs admires that megumi grew up so well out of the clan, regardless of the fact that he had the foundation (10 shadows) to do so. imo she seems happy for him the way she can't be for maki, bc maki ultimately had to leave her behind

hate to say it but yea,, the 3 clans most likely still practice inbreeding in order to preserve their power and presumably their wealth too 😀

i had an idle thought abt it at first but i filed it deep in the back of my mind asap,, bc i ont wanna jump to conclusion abt this out of all things too early. it’s probably not even in jjk, but all those elite clans in other ani/mangas that produce powerful heirs and whatnot also do the same,,, but this way of (my personal) thinking was influenced when i first got into tsukihime (type-moon),,, i read abt the nanaya family background and found out that they practice that in order to keep their bloodline “pure” (to keep it short : they have an optical power),, and i had this kind of assumption ever since so there’s that

i’m,, convinced the zenins' inbreeding made it more difficult for them to get powerful shamans bc they got 2 jujutsu technique-less children with heavenly restrictions in the same generation: toji & maki

even more convinced that maki might be a bit stronger than toji bc toji could see curses without aid while maki can't so the pay-off must be higher,,, SJJASN IDK ,,, plus naoya sort of implies his older brothers are nothing compared to him, and idk if we should take that as his arrogance or that his older brothers rly are weak/powerless. it would make sense as to why naobito had a lot of sons, ig, as head of clan

i feel so bad that if one of the factors that can caused heavenly restriction is inbreeding,, toji and maki and mai had no say in how they wanted to be born but are scorned for it,, typical asian families projecting their traumas and ideals onto their kids but get mad when they realize that those ideals are ugly...😁😁😁

since the zenin are conservative,, i wonder if they still hold onto old jpnese dining traditions. where in ancient jpn, hierarchical relationships were made readily apparent even within families. a dining table where everybody sat down and ate as equals would be unheard of. rather, each individual is given their own table that indicates their status,,, someone who is not considered “strong” according to the zenin’s views most likely have no place at the table, and probs eat when those who are “strong” finished/ serve them when they are eating

if toji was tossed into a swarm of curses,, i dont think abuse during said time is below them,,,

the zenin clan was already great, but they further amassed power and strength by, what i assume to be, marrying and adopting powerful individuals into the clan 🤔 ,,, i imagine they're like the hiiragi but without doing what they did to shinya (ons reference)

BUT after all that, i like to think that since akutami’s a big horror fan, jjk might be an outlet to explore said topics or even darker ones, so i wouldnt be that surpised abt it. given that there’s more than enough “red flags” before this was dropped : a reference to “tale of hikaru genji” when a grown woman asked for gojou’s number in HI arc (out of all things); granny who transformed into the man’s daughter, sat on his lap and man just touched her waist; mei mei and ui ui ; and...this (incestous theme is in the novel btw)

lets not start with whatever the fuck in kubo’s head in the interview otherwise i’m writing paragraphs with every curse words possible,, those big 3 mangakas are so— UGH,, a planet w out (cis) men like him sounds real good rn 😌 if one of yall out there decide to do it,, pls hmu rly cant do this shit anymore

akutami said i like my men pretty and i like women who will step on my neck and spit in my face (I REMEMBERED TATSUKI FUJIMOTO’S INTERVIEW WHEN HE WAS ASKED ABT MAKIMA AND IT WAS SO 😭😭😭😭) but ykw,, love that for both of them <3

when i said 3 : one piece, bleach, naruto. aside from the blatant depiction/ characterize of women in those 3,, idk if some ppl arent aware yet but oda is friends with two (2) convicted pedos,, man...the major disappointment and disgust when i first find out abt it

anyways this is just my 2 cents (which i think rightfully belong to the trash can) so pls just take this w a lil to no grain of salt - 🐱

YEAH THE ♡ LMFAO I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST A “good answer ♡“ heart BUT NOW IM RE-EXAMINING?????

honestly i wouldn’t be surprised if the three clans practiced inbreeding. but ik people are going to be  😡😡😡😡😡 about it when the queen of fucking england is literally married to her (something) cousin. i’m not justifying it but like....love the double standards, just as always with the west 😍

DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THAT FUCKING PED* LIST THEY SHOULD ALL BE IN JAIL. JAILLLLL. it’s all so gross. that’s why i fucking hate when people look towards manga for positive representation because the chances of that are super slim to zero, especially since the industry is saturated with misogyny and ped******* and a lot of other gross stuff.

i think ppl forget jjk is a horror manga LOL so obviously it’s going to confront darker themes. the question is whether it’s going to be done tastefully or not......

#honestly I don't have high hopes unfortunately 😭 #but who knows I might be...pleasantly surprised #idk I don't have high hopes in manga nowadays so hmmm #anyway as always I enjoy ur thoughts <3 ❤️❤️ #hope ur doing well!!! #and getting all those genshin impact goodies #🐱 anon #long post

[night-unfurls-its-splendour]

Bridgerton & Selective Justification: A Rant

With a Particular Aside in Which This Author Questions if There Isn't a Double Standard at Play in Televised Historical Fiction.

Ok so the other day i posted complaining about how ludicrous the "Will Daphne marry Prince Friedrich?!" Plotline is to me and i referred to Daphne as a "commoner". I got two comments on that post of people saying Daphne *isn't* a commoner because she's a Viscount's daughter. I did respond but I'd like to go a little more in depth into it my thoughts on why this plotline verges on abject silliness to me, based on my (i will freely admit) *limited* knowledge of British aristocracy and the source material itself.

So if anyone reading this has a more detailed knowledge of the Peerage and how it relates to Bridgerton please correct me I'm eager to know more.

So to start out my understanding of the pecking order goes like this:

DUKE/DUCHESS = Highest ranking title in the peerage. Often bestowed on important members of the Royal family not in direct line for the throne. Worth noting is the fact that a Duke in British peerage is different than a Continental Duke. On the European Continent title Duke/Grand Duke can be associated with sovereign rule of an independent state, which has never been the case in England. Dukes and Duchesses are addressed as "Your Grace"

MARQUESS/MARCHIONESS = English equivalent of Marquis/Marquise. Very high ranking in the peerage, closely related to Earldom, but more important  since it has it's roots as the title of border (marcher) lords instrumental in a country's defense.  

EARL/COUNTESS = Referred to as a "count" everywhere else. The difference is the heavy germano-scandinavian influence on early medieval England. "Earl" is derived from the Nordic term for what could be considered a chieftan. Earls being only slightly lower in rank than a Marquess could be very rich and very important. The Earldom of Northumberland was one of the richest in 16th century England.

Now at this point we start to get into the lower peerage.

VISCOUNT/VISCOUNTESS = Addressed as "The Right Honourable". Viscountsies in England tend to almost exclusively be secondary titles held by Marequesses and Earls and passed down to their sons. Any son of a Marquess or Earl is a Viscount. The oldest son inherits the title of Earl plus all subsequent lands estates and incomes. The younger sons could also be viscounts wherever there are titles enough.

BARON/BARONESS = lowest rank of the peerage.

BARONET/BARONETESS = The only British title that doesn't land you in the peerage, the rank of baronet is (as I have heard it described) the barnacle on the bottom of the British aristocracy. It's basically a weird limbo between a Lord and a Knight that was invented by King James I in 1611 primarily as a way to jack up taxes so tbh its kind of a joke.

So Daphne's brother Anthony is a Viscount. He inherited this title from his father which likely means that their father was a second son. As you can see from this ranking list I just did, in marrying Simon, Daph married up. Way up. Not unsusual, given that her family has money and is well regarded.

Now clearly Bridgerton works differently than ACTUAL Regency England. Here, APPARENTLY if you just make a good impression on the Queen she takes a VERY PERSONAL interest in your life and she will marry you off to whatever Foreign prince she's related to who happens to be visiting. But here's where it's a bit wooly for me because there are two different contexts for the term "commoner" in England.  I think we all pretty well know how the European Royal marriage market  worked up through the 19th century, since we all like to make fun of them being inbred. Because there's a bit of a hang up not just about "Royal blood" but also Diplomatic marriage.

In the context of people with titles or peerages being nobles/aristocrats and any one without being a commoner then of course, Daphne is a noble. HOWEVER the context in which I used it in my previous post was ROYALS vs NOT ROYALS. It's perfectly acceptable to refer to someone not of Royal Blood as a commoner. In my replies I used Elizabeth Woodville as an example of a commoner. Now she DID marry a royal (Edward IV) and of course this was a few hundred years before Bridgerton would be BUT EVERYONE thought Edward was crazy for marrying her and she was not well liked because she was seen as at worst a gold-digger and at best an upstart. It was not only an uneven match but a purely domestic one which cut of England from potentially politically critical strategic foreign marriages. This is how royalty worked.

Naturally the strategic aspect of marriages was *slightly* diminished in the nineteenth century, but not really and it was still considered extremely important. Usually a young royal looking to get married was doing so at their family's behest and had a pre-determined pool they more or less HAD to choose from. Marriage to commoners of course  DID happen. It was called "Morganatic Marriage". Prince Augustus of Prussia had a morganatic marriage to a Polish aristocrat. One of Charlotte's own sons, Augustus Fredrick, had TWO morganatic marriages which kept him away from court because his wife could not be recognised due to their having married in defiance of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, which requires all members of the  British Royal family to obtain the monarch's consent before marrying.

So I posed the very realistic question of "how would this choice to marry Daphne affect the Prince?" I don't know how morganatic marriages were looked on based on Prussian law but it seems likely, especially since Prince Friedrich is the direct heir that this marriage would have caused problems and i find it doubtful that Daphne would ever find herself addressed as "Princess".

I know that Bridgerton is fiction and that in being fiction it is pardoned  for not following courses that would be realistic in actual history. But at what point does "it's fiction" become an excuse for sloppy execution of world building?

The show takes the time to explain to the viewer (in one of the precious few moments of actual exposition) why there are black aristocrats [because the king married a black woman and things changed - which JUST IN CASE anyone is wondering, no Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was not in any meaningful way "bi-racial" irl, based on the research I've done.] With this kind of deviation from history in a Drama that does, without any official caveats in the marketing, claim to be set in England in 1813, the writers recognised that this needed to be qualified. And in qualifying it, they justify it. They take it beyond fiction into fantasy, but it is justified.

The reason they recognised it had to be justified is because they know that most of the viewers know this is not how it went in history and would hold them to account. So why isn't more care taken to qualify the Liberties taken with the REST of Recency Society?

They talk repeatedly about "Coming Out" into society, particularly regarding Eloise. And Eloise wears her hair down and wears shorter skirts because she's still considered a child because she isn't out. But the IMPORTANT, PRACTICAL parts of not being "Out" are COMPLETELY IGNORED. She and her younger siblings are OUT at SOCIETY EVENTS. CONSTANTLY. Eloise speaks when not spoken to. She speaks DIRECTLY TO THE FOPPING QUEEN (TO WHOM SHE'S NEVER BEEN PRESENTED, BUT I GUESS IF YOU'RE DaPhNe BRiDgErToN's sister you can do whatever you want). There are BABIES at BALLS in this show. For a story that's trying to sell you on the Strrrrrrictures of RRRegency Societeh they're TOTALLY NOT INCLUDING MOST OF THOSE STRICTURES except when the plot demands it.

Why, I ask, is this? Perhaps it is pure ignorance on the writers part. They don't qualify it because they don't know rules like this existed. In which case its just bad, sloppy writing.

OR

They do know about it and ignore it and don't bother to qualify it with a "Oh Daphne a match with Prince Friedrich is so advantageous how marvellous Prussia has recently accepted Morganatic Marriage ahahaha" because they think we a) don't know or b) don't care and ITS STILL SLOPPY WRITING. Which hey, most Bridgerton fans who swallow any swill where hot people catch feelings probably don't care, but that doesn't mean its not careless writing and it doesn't make it NOT condescending. Never write DOWN to your audience.

This show approaches (but by a hair's breadth doesn't reach) REIGN levels of bad in terms of historicity. And the writers of Reign, like the writers of Bridgerton never claimed to be making an authentic representation of history. But perhaps it's because BTon only has 2 actual historical figures (one of whom is SO UNRECOGNIZABLE from her historical counterpart in countenance and personality that they might as well have just made a composite character - "How much can you change a thing before it isn't that thing anymore?") Or perhaps it's the inclusivity shield  but it seems like Bridgerton is getting a lot more leniency than Reign did.

The pass I see given to Bridgerton is "its frothy fun" (and yeah okay these costumes are worlds more realistic to the claimed period than Reign was even with the jacked up, flat bustlines) BUT. SO. WAS. REIGN.

I don't even like Reign but I do think there's a double standard here and I would like to know why.

#thoughts on bridgerton #regency #historical fiction #questionable writing choices #bad writing #Bridgerton #daphne bridgerton

[frogsoks]

Dancing

Hey friends! How long has it been? Probably quite a while lol. I kind of took a mental break after a little drama happened irl, but meanwhile I took up drawing! I'm obviously not a complete professional yet, but I might post a couple creations that I find worthy of share. But enough squabble. Here's a work in progress for you to read :)

-----

“Cole! Stop hiding under the table and put your pants on, please!”

Lou sighed. Today was… not going quite as he’d planned, to say the least. The dance lesson started in 10. Great. They’ve got some time before they had to leave. And besides, it’s the first day today, they couldn’t possibly get mad, right? Right. Nothing to worry about.

Lilly giggled as she tried to pry her 3 year old child out from under the table. “Cole,” she cooed. “If we don’t get these pants on you we’re going to be late for your first dance class!”

Cole looked up at her from under the table, wearing nothing but his underwear and T-shirt, staring at his mother innocently with his wide emerald eyes. Those eyes quickly turned VERY mischievous, and he gave her a wide grin, his baby teeth poking out here and there from underneath his gums. Lilly laughed at the sight.

Then,

Cole ran out from underneath the table, fast. Well, as fast as a three year old who just recently learned how to walk could.

Lilly chased after.

Chaos ensured.

Lou chuckled as he watched the love of his life chase their child around the house. Laughing and screaming could be heard as Lilly picked him up, playfully tackled little Cole to the ground, and tried to pry his pants onto him.

_______

Cole pouted as he sat in the car, hating the foreign feeling of pants on his legs. He decided he didn’t like it, not one bit.

The evil Madame Stone had won this time, but the totally awesome, super cool and dashingly handsome Captain Dangerbuff still had a couple tricks up his sleeve. First, he just had to escape this prison-chair… thing.

Where were they taking him, anyways?

He looked out the clear cell walls to see every tree and building speeding past him. And- was that..? Ooh! Look! A lollipop! Maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all. It was painfully close, just wedged in between the two seats next to him. Seems manageable, and looks delicious.

He tried to reach for the sweet treat, only to find his arm couldn’t quite get to it. Great. Cole sighed. How was he supposed to-

The moving prison stopped moving. And.. the walls were opening too! Yes! This was his chance. And.. oh, look! It’s- _______

“Here we are..” Lou sang as he put the car into park and pulled the key out of its slot, making the rumbling vehicle die down.

Lilly was already out of her seat, and opening the door to Cole’s. Said toddler was currently trying to reach for a… lollipop? How did that even get there?

She giggled, finding it quite adorable. She reached for the seatbelts and undid them, scooping the now whining boy into her arms.

Lou sighed, running a hand over his face. Taking care of a child is much more complicated than he’d initially thought. Although, if he did think more deeply into it, it did have its perks.

Cole was certainly one of a kind, and nothing beat waking up knowing that he had a future to look forward to. Both for him, and his family.

After all, Lou was a happy man. He had a loving wife, and a beautiful son. He wouldn’t trade them for a thing.

_____

If there was one thing Lou wanted right now, was to trade Cole away to some far away place where he’d learn manners so he could have some peace and quiet.

Okay, maybe he wasn’t 100% serious about the trading part, but it would make his life SO much easier if his son would stop doing embarrassing stuff day after day.

After they tangled their son out of the car seat and straightened him up a bit (much to Cole's condemn), the family decided to take in the beautiful view in front of them that was known as "Miss Ferns Dance Institute". The name itself had sprung seeds of doubt into Lilly's head, but Lou had assured her that Miss Fern was the best person to teach Cole the basics before he could be enrolled in a "proper" dance school.

The sight before them... well. It was certainly quite a sight. The building itself wasn't at all as pleasing to look at as the world renowned Marty Oppenheimer, with suspicious brick walls covered in graffitis saying some... unfriendly messages, and the broken windows, a couple window frames lacking the window itself...

Long story short, it looked questionable. For a dance school. For toddlers.

_____

Once stepping inside, the school didn't look quite as menacing. It was actually kind of cute, if you saw the little drawings made by kids on the wall, and the coloured wooden floorboards. It looked more like a place where little children could enjoy themselves. The name still sparked a couple questions to Lilly, but she'd have to put it aside for now. Who was she to judge a school based on it's name, after all?

Of course, upon entering, Cole ran straight to the drawings on the wall, admiring the messily scribbled animals and scenery. Lilly smiled at the sight. She looked around the room, spotting a couple other families huddled here and there, talking amongst themselves.

Lilly gathered her own family together, and they sat down on the right side of the room.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Lilly whispered to her husband once seated. "What if Cole doesn't even like dancing?"

"My love," Lou said, grabbing a hold of Lilly's hand a gently placing a kiss on it, making her giggle. "This is his first class. You don't even know how he'll like it. Besides, I'm sure Miss Fern is wonderful. I've only heard good things about her classes."

Lilly rolled her eyes and laughed. "The writings on the building say otherwise."

_____

Lou was about to say something when he noticed the chatter had died down in the room. Lilly had called Cole over to her lap by now, whispering sweet words into his ear and placing gentle kisses into his dark hair, making him giggle.

Lou smiled but turned his head to where the rest of the families were looking, and waited for the well known and so-called wonderful dance teacher to come out.

What he'd said to his wife earlier was true, after all. He'd heard of Miss Fern from a couple members of his quartet, the Royal Blacksmiths, and all they'd said was 'Oh, Lou! Miss Fern is an absolute delight! You should try out her class' and 'Oh, Lou! she's even got a class for toddlers! You should enroll Cole there!'

Naturally after those praises he had to see just how good a teacher this woman was.

His thoughts were interrupted when someone started talking at the far sight of the room. It wasn't a woman's voice, though. Maybe her assistant?

"Well hello everyone! So great to see you all here with the wee ones. Oh, Lou! So glad you could come, my man."

Lou's blood ran cold.

He'd recognize that voice anywhere.

"Unfortunately for you, Miss Fern was unable to make it to todays class. Fortunately for you, she has a wonderful -and dare I say handsome- substitute here in her place today. Let me introduce myself."

Ugh. Here we go.

"My name is Teyandro Moreno, but you can just call me Tey. No long boring names in this house. And yes- you're probably wondering what happened to my eye?"

Dear god.

"Well, believe it or not, an alligator ate it. More on that later though."

No, Please.

"Now! What do you say we do a little... dancing?"

sigh.

------

yes. that's that, then. I hope you enjoyed! I'll definitely continue this is some way, still have to finish the drama I started between Lou and a (kind of?) OC with my name, ironically enough. Well I think he's cool. Just wait til he starts teaching the class ;)

Anyways, thanks for reading! I'll try to be more active on here now, no promises tho :)

<3

#ninjago #lego ninjago #lou brookstone #cole brookstone #lilly brookstone #the brookstone fam #i love them can you tell #an alligator ate his eye #dun dun dun #when will i finish this i wonder #we'll see #wish me luck

[sometimesrosy]

I have bouts of unhappiness from time to time, now more frequently than not. For more than a year, I haven’t talked to friends because of COVID and confinement. All of the friends I talk to are online, but there’s no human contact. One of them is spanish, so we never talked any other way. The others are mostly my boyfriend’s friends with whom we talk on discord. I only see my mom, grandma, boyfriend, and my cats. I work at a study center, but now even the kids I talk to through zoom because of a new confinement. I’ve been feeling pretty low and without a drive in life. I stopped reading, I stopped bullet journaling, I stopped writing, I stopped watching movies and tv. Recently I’ve started streaming video games, and honestly it’s the only thing that keeps me doing something outside of work, but I wonder when will I give up on it too. I’d like to blame this on the confinement, but even before we had it, I had already isolated myself from people. It’s really easy to feel lonely, to feel like I can’t connect. I know it’s not depression because I’ve had and I hit rock bottom then, so I know I’m better. I lost friends along my life, but most of it was for the best. I have found a life partner that treats me 100% well and who gave the best kitties I could have ever asked for. I have a mom that does anything and everything for me, a grandma that cooks for me, a house with fast internet. I have a job and students that like me. And yet, sometimes I feel like I’m here doing nothing? As if I have no purpose? I have so many interests it kills me to never be satisfied. I honestly think this is my problem. Anyway, I’m so sorry for the rant. I just felt I needed to let it out somehow. I know tomorrow I’ll wake up fine, but next week I’ll have another day like this. For now, I’m going to bed and cuddle with my boyfriend and kitties. I just wish I could change my perspective these days I’m feeling down. I don’t need to have a purpose, I don’t need to commit to hobbies. I don’t need to expect something of myself when I don’t even know what it is. Thank you for “hearing” me out. Please never delete this blog!

So here’s the thing I want you to remember:

You are living through unprecedented times. The pressures of a global pandemic, national upheaval, cultural revolution and environmental extremes have us ALL on edge.

When you take stock of your life, as you have here, you can see you’re doing pretty well. You have love and family and work and security and safety and the best kitties in the world, right? You KNOW depression and this isn’t it somehow.

And yet, you seem to think that you have to look for *your* problem, the reason why *you* particularly are feeling this way.

Nope. It’s not you. There’s not something wrong with you that isn’t wrong with everyone.

Now, I’m not a therapist, I’m not making a diagnosis here, but before this pandemic thing, there was a lot of upheaval in my life and I worked through it, leaving me in a really good position to ride out this global disaster that I wouldn’t have been in before. I mean it wasn’t good, but it’s like I experienced it before everyone else so am already on the way to healing from it while everyone else is falling into it. So from my experience and the research I have had to do for my own health and well being, what I think you’re experiencing is ANXIETY.

I think that because you told me you stopped doing the things you love, reading, bullet journaling, writing, movies and tv. That happened to me too. I mean aside from hyperfocusing on writing. It was rather stressful to STOP reading for me. And I kept feeling like something was wrong with me, then I discovered that not being able to focus on reading is actually a symptom of anxiety. And it’s common now. The world feels out of control and you feel like you should be doing something to fix it, only you can’t, and focusing on the things that are part of your life feels insufficient. You’re overwhelmed. Actually, there’s probably a bit of depression in there, too.

But I do know that I needed to read and watch COMFORT content. Something I’ve already read, or a literature genre that wraps everything up neatly in the end. For me, Historical Romance, because I need the Happy Ever After and I need the problems to be distant enough from my reality to not affect me. In fact, when I read a book that touches on traumas that are too close to real for me, I get tense and can’t continue. (I had this problem last week with a romance set in the civil war. I just can’t handle fictional racism and brutality in my escapism book when I’m trying to escape IRL racism and brutality. I think it’s because the MC was traumatized by it, where in the other books in the series, the characters were fighting it. Anyway, good books, The Loyal League Books by Alyssa Cole, the last is just hitting some of my triggers.) 

Still, I find myself unable to read science fiction or fantasy. I can ONLY read romance. It’s very weird for me, because I love SFF. But my brain is struggling to handle all the real life chaos, and there’s really no room in it right now to have comprehend the big thoughts and new universes of SFF. So when Bridgertons showed up, which is my perfect genre right now, and which I’ve already READ multiple times, so it isn’t even new material for me, THAT is the kind of thing I can watch. Superhero shows where I already know the characters. Fanfiction where it’s just two characters falling in love over and over again.

I dont’ mean to talk about myself, but as an illustration, I wanted to show you. You are overwhelmed and your brain wants to rest. Video games seems to provide that. Okay! Keep doing that. Just like I finally had to sign up for kindle unlimited so that I could zoom through all the romance books for comfort reading without having to buy new ones all the time.

This is how you are coping.

And if I read your ask right. You’re a teacher. I dont’ know what kind of teacher or if you’re irl or distance teaching, but I do know that the stress of teaching in this pandemic is INCREDIBLE.  Shoot, normal teaching is demanding enough, add the pandemic and OUCH. So I think you should recognize that you are a front line worker in keeping society running. You honestly don’t need to have a higher purpose than that... if you feel like you need to be DOING something important. You already are. 

Everyone can only do what they are capable of. Some people are in politics, some people are developing vaccines, some people are stocking shelves, some people are teaching, some people are raising kids, some people are volunteering. You don’t have to do it all. Find your place in your world and accept that you are contributing.

What you need to do right now is to take care of yourself. You MUST have time to relax. Value your family and boyfriend and kitties, just like you say. Rest, relax. Do NOT burn out. Stay healthy. That is important especially now. Eat right and drink water and sleep enough. 

I think you’re right. It is a matter of your perspective. You’ve forgotten that your life has turned upside down.  You’re expecting activity/energy levels from yourself that you had before the world was a flaming dumpster fire. But so much of your current energy is going to surviving in that flaming dumpster fire. 

EVERYONE is trying to survive right now, even when we have relatively comfortable situations. Recognize that and give yourself a break. 

#survival #anxiety #depression #pandemic #deep breath and go play some video games cuddle your cats and hug your boyfriend

[fae-fucker]

Review: Death Wind by Tara Grayce

Essie should be planning her happily ever after, not planning a war. Although they once were enemies, the humans of Escarland and the elves of Tarenhiel have allied to fight the trolls from the far north. But alliances are tricky things even in the best of times, and with Farrendel, the elves’ foremost warrior and Essie’s husband, captured by the trolls, the circumstances appear dire indeed. But Essie won’t give up, and she will make her two peoples work together to fight this war if it’s the last thing she does. One way or another, she will get Farrendel back, no matter what it takes.

Gonna be honest, didn't expect much given my lukewarm reaction to the previous two books, but this one? This one actually held my attention for genuine reasons rather than just being a light read. Because the plot involves a lot of conflict (arguably the biggest conflict possible, war), the pacing is steady, and two of the three POV characters are mostly suffering and/or being tortured, there's actually tension for once. It's a welcome change, and proves that the author is very much capable of writing it but just chooses not to in favor of boring and conflict-free family interactions.

With Melantha introduced as a POV character, we're offered a pretty buckwild concept for this series: a character that makes mistakes and has to live with the consequences. I actually found myself liking Melantha, not because I thought she was a compelling character (she wasn't) or because I felt bad for her (I didn't), but because she had what Essie didn't: flaws. There's even a point in the book where Melantha thinks about how much she dislikes Essie because Essie is so sugary perfect and everything Melantha wishes she could be, and I think it's supposed to show us how bitter and insecure Melantha is? Except she's 100% correct, Essie is literally too perfect to be a real person and I just sat there going "yeah, you're right, and don't feel bad for being shitty because literally nobody can actually be like Essie."

However, Melantha suffers from Stupid Bitch Syndrome, which doesn't exactly make for a good protagonist/POV character. She's not intended to be dumb, the book expects us to think she was simply misguided and bitter and not, like, a complete idiot who should've known better. But her instant remorse feels less like character development and more like her suddenly realizing she’s actually a huge idiot who fell for the enemy’s nonsense, which she is. She's supposed to be an older elf, a grown woman, yet she makes such an obvious mistake and immediately regrets it and folds like a wet blanket the moment shit hits the fan. It's honestly a bit pathetic. The only reason I preferred her over Essie was because she introduced some much-needed depth to the character roster, but that depth was still about the size of a teacup, compared to Farrendel's thimble and Essie's singular water molecule. Her relationship with the troll prince was actually ... interesting? It was all mostly unspoken, which I think made it stronger than the overly telegraphed thing Essie and Farrendel have going on, and I’m sure it’ll be flattened out and become boring in the next book, so enjoy this potential before it’s wasted.

Farrendel spends the entire book being tortured and thinking about how he's being tortured. I can't blame him, but it doesn't make for good reading. I honestly think his POV could've been left out altogether and it wouldn't have changed much. Melantha is already there with him letting the reader know he’s suffering, we don’t need two POVs telling us the same thing. Oh uh, except for the part where he ... puts his magic in a soul-bond pocket. I'd mark this as spoilers but it's literally on the cover. I guess if his POV was removed then we'd never know how Essie learned to blast his power in battle at that one convenient moment, but it barely affects the plot afterward so um, yeah. I'm having a hard time justifying his POV at all. I'm still not over that part btw, how Farrendel just ... makes a "mental fist" (no, really), grabs his magic in one and his soul bond with Essie in the other and just puts them together like he's connecting two cables to an adapter. And he knew to do this ... how? It's not like we've seen him experiment with his magic before, in fact he's been shown to hate it and only use it when necessary, but apparently this tortured and exhausted man has the presence of mind to try something as vague and theoretical as ... putting his magic in a soul pocket. He spends a few pages going “I wonder if I can do this” and then it works on the first try. He does consider whether it’ll hurt Essie and decides not to try it, but as I said, he does it soon after anyway so like ... I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny or show how little of a shit he gives about Essie, but that’s sort of the implication and I thought it was funny as hell. 

Anyway, the magic pocket is about as much worldbuilding/lore as we get from this series entry, aside from the trolls having their own political intricacies and tensions, which I’m assuming the next book will expand upon. The writing itself in this book was pretty bad at times. The repetition of certain words and names was really glaring in some parts and felt amateurish. Take a shot every time the word “magic” appears and you’ll be in the grave before the book ends. Prince Rharreth and King Charvod are almost always referred to with their full titles and names for some reason? A few editing rounds would’ve helped this a lot, methinks.

The plot is mostly moved along in Essie’s POV, which is slightly less insufferable than usual because she’s the one observing the movement of the two armies and there are actually action scenes in there that, while don’t exactly made me worried about her (there’s no way this perfect idiot will ever die), still provided some tension. But it’s honestly not much, the “war” lasted two entire weeks (and that’s including the strategy, logistics, and mobilizing) and with how fast the armies travel and how little resistance they face (and how Deus Ex Farrendel-d the final battle was, the guy is apparently full of godlike destructive power despite being starved and tortured, go off king), it all felt very unrealistic and easy. Like, we have two armies marching in the middle of a mountain chain during magical snow storms, all while being regularly assaulted by the defending army, and they still get there no problem, without a single mention of soldiers struggling not to die of exposure. Aight. I guess these elves and humans are just very resistant to the cold, for some reason.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason it goes over so fast in-universe is because the author wanted Farrendel to be horribly tortured throughout his captivity, but also knew that if that lasts too long, the damage will be too severe to easily resolve in the next book. But instead of easing off the hardcore torture, because then we’d lose out on that drama and those High Stakes, she decided to speed up the whole war thing, because hey, who cares about that, anyway? We just want Farrendel back, right? Riiiight? Better hurry up guys! Don’t want Farrendel to be too tortured to fix with some strawberry-flavored medicine and vague counseling in the next book!

So yeah, the plot moves on speedily, but at what cost? Mainly depth. Again. And once again, Essie suffers the most from being a bland caricature of a person and dragging the whole thing down. The author’s GR bio says she writes “spunky and tough” leading ladies, and I guess having no other things in your brain except sparkly kitten gifs is a certain kind of toughness in an “immovable object” sort of way, but “spunk” implies a of counter-culture edge that sweet widdle Essie simply does not have.

There was one small section where Essie felt bad over how the human and elven warriors were going to die, how many mothers and sisters and daughters would suffer just so she didn’t have to, but then we don’t find out the death count, the casualties are never even mentioned, and Essie moves on from this without even a single thought questioning the morality of a monarchy or her own position of power. Now, I get that that’s not the focus of this series, but it just adds to how Essie’s worries are always surface-level and never justified by the plot, how she never has to do any introspection and is never allowed to not always be annoyingly positive. Whenever she even begins to think something negative, she instantly, almost compulsively changes trajectory and just decides not to worry about it, and then it never comes up again anyway. This would’ve been like, an interesting take on toxic positivity and how Essie represses her own emotions, but no, the book never goes there, she’s just that perfect and wee and optimistic, even during a war and when her husband’s being tortured to near-death. It’s kind of insulting to read, honestly.

Oh yeah, that’s another thing that annoyed me. Even when she loses Farrendel, she takes it surprisingly well and focuses mostly on keeping a positive attitude for his sake, so he doesn’t feel her sadness through their “heart bond.” I never really felt her loss, her love for him, when she so easily could just decide not to feel bad “for his sake.” I want her to feel bad, I want her to miss him and to ache at his absence and to fear for what they’re doing to him. But no. That would just upset him more and hurt him more. So Essie doesn’t get to experience any negative feelings because it might upset her husband. Essie doesn’t get angry and determined to fight, she just keeps being her cheery little Stepford Wife self because being nice will keep everyone’s spirits up and make them hope and fight harder to preserve that hope!! :)

It just comes off as really flat and moralistic yet dishonest at the same time, because nobody would fucking react like this IRL. Essie might be a good person in-universe, but she drags the entire series down just by being perfect, cheery, and never, ever challenged or even allowed to challenge anything herself. Essie isn’t allowed to have any negative feelings because it might affect her husband, and yet we’re supposed to find this empowering somehow? We’re supposed to believe she’s spunky and confident and a sweet little firecracker of a redhead?

Eugh.

At least Melantha is an idiot, I guess. One whole female character gets to have a flaw, and she’s the almost-villain who needs to be fixed with love.

Idk man. The sexism in this series is like a constant undercurrent that grows stronger with each installment as our “understanding” of this world expands. All of Essie’s brothers, including the king, are at the front lines because they are manly men “have to” be there, while the women who aren’t Essie or Jalissa stay behind to be mothers and caretakers. It’s never expanded upon and just sort of accepted as part of both human and elven society and the narrative treats it like this obvious thing that even Essie doesn’t really bother noting how unfair and/or weird it is. There’s not even a single comment on it. Essie is in the war not because she can fight but because Farrendel needs her, and Jalissa is there because ... Um. Because ... she. Uh. She needs to be there when they confront Melantha? She’s Farrendel’s sister? Idk. Jalissa’s main point in this series so far seems to be the ship tease between her and Edmund that feels awkward and one-sided as fuck.

So yeah. The pacing and plot flowed along really well, but the characters and the writing and worldbuilding are all just really undercooked, which, at three books into the series, feels more glaring than ever.

But hey, at least it was a quick read!

#book review #elven alliance #death wind

[shitty-check-please-aus]

2020 Books Read So Far

Note: Most of these are audiobooks (listening to books counts as reading books and if you disagree I’d ask you to consider why you believe that), books I started and didn’t finish will be listed but not reviewed, and all my opinions are extremely subjective. I’m putting this on this blog because I want to and I think it’ll help me keep track of what I’ve read if I write it down in a couple places. 

Some notes:

I’m surprised that most of these are nonfiction! I don’t usually think of myself as a nonfiction reader. 

Having audiobooks has made me way more productive as a reader, since I can read while I’m doing repetitive tasks at work, when I have to stand on the bus, when I’m running, etc. 

Naked, by David Sedaris

3/5, the audiobook was “unabridged selections” which means “we didn’t edit the individual essays but you’re only getting half the book”– it would probably have been a 4/5 if it was a whole book. I liked that Amy Sedaris was reading parts of it, but that’s because I like her more than I like her brother. This is sort of an example of the difference between “comedic” and “humorous,” because it’s definitely the latter. 

Read it if: you want to read something pretty fucking weird. 

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, by Sarah Vowell

4/5, I saw this recommended a lot when Hamilton first came out so it’s been in the back of my mind for a good while. The book had a great cast, and having different people reading the historical quotes was an excellent touch! 

However, I think Vowell’s conversational style is a little jarring here sometimes. It’s like “wait, why are you talking about Bruce Springsteen, I’m not that familiar with his work but he definitely isn’t from Revolutionary War times.” I got her book Assassination Vacation at a used bookshop recently as well, and both books suffer from post-2016 hindsight, where she’ll say something about how incompetent and foolish the politicians of her time are, and I just have to snort to myself and say “Sarah, you’re going to lose your goddamn mind soon.” That’s a bit of an unfair reaction, but it’s hard to avoid having it.

I was also, maybe unfairly, expecting to learn more than I did. The problem is that I know a Lot about the Revolutionary War, and from the introduction I thought we’d hear more about Lafayette’s later life (my knowledge drops sharply after about 1810). The book basically ends after the Battle of Yorktown, though.

Read it if: you have not seen/listened to both Hamilton and 1776, or if you want to read a summary of the Revolutionary War with a focus on one French captain. 

Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell

3/5, honestly maybe a 2.5/5. Okay, so. Either I know a lot more about American History than I felt like I did or this is again a very surface level thing. Part of it is because she spends 123 pages on Abe Lincoln. There are 255 pages total. 2/3 of the states I’ve lived in are Indiana and Illinois, two states that fight about claiming Lincoln as their own, and I’ve been to D.C. 4 or 5 times, so I feel like I know enough about Lincoln. I know about John Wilkes Booth, and his brother Edwin who saved Lincoln’s son’s life, and the death train that took Lincoln’s body around the country. I did enjoy learning about the doctor who was probably conspiring with Booth and how he ended up saving tons of lives in prison when there was a yellow fever outbreak (also to be briefly unbearably nitpicky: I think she might have mixed up dengue and yellow fever? She calls yellow fever “breakbone” but I can only find instances online of people calling dengue fever that. Maybe they called them all breakbone in the late 1800s. If anyone reading this is an epidemiologist, let me know).

It was interesting to hear that Charles Guiteau, killer of President Garfield, was part of the Oneida cult. I’m trying to think of anything notable she said about Leon Czolgosz, killer of President McKinley. I guess she talks about how people assumed he was a foreigner because of his name, but I already listened to “The Ballad of Czolgosz” in Assassins, so I knew “Czolgosz, angry man, born in the middle of Michigan.”

This one is from 2005 so the politics stuff is a little more interesting, since at the time I was busy learning multiplication and spending one entire baseball season learning about baseball and following my team (they won the world series, I have excellent timing). I will say that in 2005 we did have Google, so I am again annoyed with some of her asides and personal anecdotes. Look, if you go to the Hemingway house and you don’t know there will be cats there, that’s on you if you don’t bring your Claritin. Hemingway is associated with only two good things, six-toed cats and Daiquiris. 

She also does not acknowledge that the parties basically switched platforms? Lincoln’s Republican party is not today’s Republican party, in fact kind of the opposite, so it’s weird that she starts the book with a dedication that’s like “to my lifelong Democrat grandpa, he’d be pissed I dedicated a book about 3 Republicans to him.” I guess she does sometimes say stuff like “how did Lincoln’s party become Reagan’s” (paraphrase), but she doesn’t actually get into it. 

Speaking of Democrats, she literally spends more time talking about Pablo Picasso than she spends talking about JFK. She doesn’t explain why she didn’t talk about JFK, but it seems bizarre to me to write a book about American assassinations and to leave out John Fucking Kennedy. Literally I’ve talked more about JFK in this section than she did in her assassin book. It’s not until page 253 that JFK gets a full paragraph. There are 255 pages total. Truly, if she’d taken a paragraph to be like “I’m focusing on the presidents who were elected before 1900″ or “the presidents whose immediate families aren’t still alive” or even “I didn’t want to travel to Dallas for research” or SOMETHING to explain why she left out JFK, I would have understood it more instead of flipping through the pages wondering what was going on. 

Read it if: You do not listen to too many history podcasts and you didn’t read the Wikipedia page for the musical Assassins. And I guess if you don’t want to acknowledge that JFK did also get assassinated and that was kind of a big deal. Actually just listen to Assassins instead. 

And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

5/5 as a mystery, 0/5 for its original title (not gonna say it here but if you’ve ever googled the name of HP Lovecraft’s cat, it’s along those lines). Less than 6 hours, narrated by Dan Stevens from Downton Abbey, fairly ideal as an audiobook. I am 95% sure I’ve already read this, because I spent the summer before I started high school reading every Agatha Christie book in the library (I do not have a list of all the Agatha Christie books in my library the summer of 2010, so there is some question). 

Read if: you want to hear the guy from Downton Abbey deliver the line “I’m not a complete fool!” in a tone that makes it sound like “I’m not a fucking moron!” Sidenote: Can anyone tell me if Brits say “solder” by pronouncing the L that I’ve always heard as a silent L? Or if Dan Stevens just fucked up that one word?

Over The Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love, by Jonathan Van Ness

4.5/5

This was a super enjoyable audiobook! It’s a testament to JVN’s considerable charisma that this book is full of him giving people in his past who would rather be anonymous Russian names, and it doesn’t get grating (as a Marina, however, I was shocked to not hear my name at any point; most of the other Marina’s I’ve met in my life are Russian). JVN has had a wild ride in life, and it’s a really raw, honest story of how he became who he is. I will say that if you are interested in reading this, please look up the trigger warnings; there are a lot of things that could be triggering to people. 

I feel a little bad at how much more I liked this one compared to Tan France’s memoir, but I also feel like whoever was ghostwriting that one did a bad job at making Tan seem... not extremely defensive, cocky, and prickly (it seems that JVN did not use a ghostwriter; Tan’s on the other hand, let the phrase “I’m proud to be a petty bitch” make it into the final proof several times). Also JVN advocates going to therapy in his book, while Tan kind of says that you should only go to therapy if you have no friends or family or life partner to talk to, which I fundamentally disagree with. I don’t know. I also feel like, if I were to get a makeover from the Fab 5, Jonathan would love my hair (I have great hair) while Tan would say that I’m dressing too old for a 24 year old and then take me to fucking Lane Bryant or Torrid (I wear a size 16 US so IRL options are limited). 

Read if: You like Queer Eye or Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness

Medallion Status, by John Hodgman

4.5/5

I really like John Hodgman’s podcast, and I got to ask him a question at an event he did at the Field Museum and he was very nice, so I went into this inclined to enjoy it. 

And I did! I had a good time reading it. I read it the first week of January and now it’s the second week of February so I have already erased much of the book’s content from my mind, but he somehow made the perspective of being a formerly kinda famous person really interesting. I would also recommend Vacationland, particularly if anyone wants to write an au where Nursey, as a New Yorker, has a vacation home in Dex’s town in Maine. That’s right, I brought it back around to the topic of this blog. And that would be a fucking fantastic au. 

Read it if: you like memoirs! it’s a good one. 

Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

Gonna give this one a 3/5 for performance, because Dan Stevens (again, because I liked his narration in the other one) does a really annoying American accent for a few characters, and an extremely bad Italian accent for another. I’m starting this review only a few hours in, so if it turns out that the Italian man is not Italian, I’ll revoke my criticism. Still a 5/5 mystery, though. I did have to stop many times when they were talking about Istanbul to go over to Spotify and play “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by They Might Be Giants. 

Books abandoned in 2020 (so far) (no real spoilers, I didn’t get more than a few chapters into any of them):

The Unhoneymooners, Christina Lauren

I got to a point where the main character was telling a lie that would put her newly accepted job into jeopardy, and it stressed me out so much as a relatively new hire that I stopped listening for the day and started another one, and then the week had passed and then the library took it back. I think I’d enjoy it more if I was reading it physically and I could control how fast I got through awkward parts (I am practically allergic to secondhand embarrassment). The performance was good and I did get a hankering for cheese curds. 

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

I had like three audiobooks checked out at the same time, and even though this was again an abridged version, I just didn’t have time for all of them. My mom has a physical copy, I’ll borrow that at some point. 

The Witch Elm, Tana French

This is one I may revisit someday. The main character is kind of an asshole, which is the point of his character I think, but it made it hard to get into the story. It’s also a 22 hour audiobook, which is kind of insanely long. Additionally, the narrator has a very slow way of talking, but if I tried to speed up the rate of playback I had trouble understanding his accent (I think I just have trouble processing really fast speech in general as well, but I would’ve had an easier time understanding someone with the same accent as me). Anyways, someone put a hold on it at the library and then I didn’t check it out again. 

#long post #off topic #Marina Reads #edit: put under a readmore bc I forgot to earlier

[antibioware]

ah okay thank you! sorry in advance this might be long and/or kinda dumb haha but i currently identify as bisexual but i am not too sure if im okay with liking men romantically irl because so far ive only ever had crushes on fictional men or men who were unattainable to me and so far ive jsut kinda accepted i might have to marry a man so my family doesnt realize im gay and im kind of okay with that but not really and i also very much want to be a lesbian but at the same time im (first part)

(second part) still very attached to being bisexual because its been my identity since i was like 13 and i am agender so idk if that like means i cant be a lesbian also ive been on and off questioning this for like 2 or 3 years now but its just weird bc i still think i MIGHT like men? if that makes sense? sorry this is all a lot and i was too nervous to come off of anon!

It’s ok don’t worry! (and it’s ok if you don’t wanna come off anon, I understand sending a message can be stressful as shit) This is gonna get a bit long, so bear with me.

about the agender thing, I’m agender too.  If you think being nonbinary doesn’t make it possible for you to be a lesbian, it isn’t true! nonbinary is a complex experience, and doesn’t just revolve around being “neither a man nor a woman”. Gender is a spectrum, and because of it it makes experiencing your sexuality a whole mess.

In my case, I am a lesbian and it took me a lot of time to accept that I was nonbinary too. I’m “woman aligned” because I’m a lesbian, but I still feel a good deal of detachment from the way a lot of (cis) women experience their being women, and I experience gender dysphoria. I’ve had the occasion to realize, through reading Judith Butler books and talking to other wlw, that it’s a common thing for gnc gay women (including also bisexual women, it’s not an exclusive lesbian experience) to only consider themselves women because of the way they love women.

Now, I have to tell you, wanting to be a lesbian is a pretty big sign that you may be a lesbian. This, + the fact that your only attraction to men is present when it comes to fictional men or unavailable men, are both pretty big indicators! And in this case, the trick I used to come to my realization was asking myself: would I be able to maintain a relationship with a man? Can I see myself dating a man right now, beside just settling down with one in the nebulous future?

For me, the answer was no, and so I started identifying as a lesbian. Even if you experience compulsory heterosexuality, the moment you realize you wouldn’t date a man, wouldn’t pursue one romantically, can’t even picture yourself with one right that moment, you’re a lesbian.

BUT! But, I identified as bisexual for most of my teenage years, too, before realizing I was a lesbian, and I understand being attached to the identity. For a while, I thought that changing my label would make people “doubt” my autenticity as a gay person, or that I was faking it for attention. Then, I realized cishet people have no authority over my identity, and they can go fuck themselves. Changing they way you identify as is growing as a person and learning more abt yourself.

So now the question is, do you feel like you have to identify as a lesbian to validate your love for women? Or do you feel like you have to identify as bisexual because of the possible attraction you have for men? In both cases, it all comes down to you. If you want to be a lesbian, you can be! But you don’t have to force yourself into the label if you think you may still have attraction for men or if it makes you feel unsure of yourself. The only big thing about choosing one or the other is that by identifying as a lesbian, having a relationship with a man is an immediate dealbreaker. that’s it. but aside from that, the bisexual and lesbian experiences are pretty similar.

A thing I can say is that there’s not a “fixed” answer. Constant self questioning is a big part of being LGBT and it never goes away. I wake up sometimes and wonder if I’ve lied to myself this whole time and I’m actually something else entirely. You don’t have to fear questioning yourself.  I’m sending you all my love and my support for the future, and I hope this helps clear your ideas a little (thought I probably just brought more confusion, ahah) <3

#long post #SORRY this was so long #Anonymous