#i just find it super fucking unfair that i’ve done literally everything in my power AND MORE to get all this sorted out; yet my start date

[lightlycareless]

lmao i don’t agree much with that comment, like we’re all allowed our own opinions but i guess i’d get it more if the story was a shorter one but it’s obviously not going to be (which i love) and y/n is coming from a pretty sheltered background from my understanding.. like 🤷‍♀️ i’ve loved the pacing so far of the story and with the events that y/n has been through since coming to the estate i find shes been handling it the best she can rn. ofc she didnt come to the estate being a mastermind????

Heya anon!! Thank you for sending an ask 🥺❤️

I'm super happy you're liking the story so far hehe, so buckle up cause we still got more to go through!!

Also, I literally just posted my response to that comment when I got this ask lol so I'm not sure if you got to see my insight on their opinion (which you're more than welcome to read it :3) but if you have, just ignore this part hehe

More stuff under the cut, cause it's somewhat long I'm sorry I guess I'm just venting hahah

I don't want to go ahead and say that this person was ill-intended, of course not! Everyone is entitled to their opinions at the end of the day and I'm grateful they feel comfortable enough to share their thoughts with me, but their comment just reminded me of the whole Padme didn't love her children discourse in the SW fandom.

It's kind of the same misogynistic mentality where they expect the woman to kind of just... forget their individualism and offer their entire life for the good of others (Luke and Leia for Padme — Mai, Mai, the staff and I guess even Naoaki for Y/N) while the men get a pass, you know?

Like, Padme saw the love of her life turn to the dark side and all that she fought for (the republic) basically disappear, things that would obviously affect her physically and mentally, and yet, there's people that call her a bad mother/person because she died (NOT LIKE SHE WAS CHOKED BY HER HUSBAND WHILE HEAVILY PREGNANT BUT OK). I'm just like damn, she is entitled to her own suffering you know? And it's not like she gave her life away for the greater good of the republic but go off.

To expect Y/N to be some kind of activist/martyr is unfair to her own duel—and while there are victims that have taken their experiences as some kind of motivation to speak for those who can't, it's just... not realistic to expect all victims to be capable of standing for themselves. If I were to meet someone like Y/N, I would offer her my support, instead of demand her to do shit for others just because she allegedly can. (guess we forgot Naoya basically blocked her from the outside world and the rest of the estate too 🤔 oh, and the execution too 😒)

And yes, she was raised in a sheltered household thanks to the efforts of her close relatives (who knew how fucked up the world is out there) as well as just turning 18 before getting married. Like, she hasn't experienced the world, you know? However, this is actually something I plan to explore a bit more in the next chapters so that's all I'm going to say about it hahaha.

Besides... in a society as sexist as the ones we've seen in the fictional world of jujutsu kaisen (as well as in real life) women more often than not, just held titles out of formalities and the power they held is nothing compared to their male counterparts.

Rest assured, if it were that easy, Y/N would've done it:

She's already demonstrated that she cares about her surroundings and is less than thrilled on how the Zen'in men behave (Fuyue, the servant she saved from Meiko, how she was cognizant enough to separate the acts of her husband from Naoaki, thus, starting to develop a friendship between the two, understanding Mariya's POV as well as how it was illogical of her to expect her staff to drop everything to help her when they had their own problems to worry about, THE APPRECIATION OF JUNKO, THE MOTHER OF MAI AND MAKI) but she's also deserving of nice things!!!

This story has been really difficult to write in that sense, but in the end, just shows how certain stories aren't always smooth sailing.

p.s. imagine if she was the mastermind tho? y/n be like "I made Naoaki and Naoya my bitches so the Zen'in clan will be mine!!"

Also, it's fiction. Not everything has to be super realistic. Just sit back and enjoy the show 😎✨ after all, we still have the rest of the story to go through.

And to live through the wise words of Valentina:

#ask #ask series: first it hurts— #I appreciate all opinions #but i just wanted to put this out there #also #why is it always the reader/naoya fics where people expect reader to like singlehandedly change the whole zen'in clan? #its a nice thought #but not realistic #it's very... emotional taxing #not even gojo #who is the strongest most influential character in the whole series #can do much on his own lol

[letstrywritingmaybe]

Starting to think me being productive is the reason for my sports woes, so maybe I should stop writing. Meanwhile I finally wrote snow on the beach for midnights. I’m gonna chill for real though and read my books I got from the library that I haven’t touched yet

Update: I know I said no writing. But I just have to note googling lawyer from reading through emails to make sure they’re not divorce lawyers as an idea. Group chat convos that are not fandom related can also lead to great inspo

Update 2: still very much stuck on this ship and got no reading done. It hasn’t even been a full day. Good news is I wrapped all of my Christmas presents! And I have no desire to write so I guess I’m still going strong on the no more writing and see if that ends my sports woes. Will still be doing my regular updates though. And while I’m here, I reread my green card au today and it’s so self indulgent, I’m so happy I wrote it. I was kinda stressed while writing it and I wasn’t super happy with the ending at first, but when I went to reread it today I was like you know what? This reads like a shitty drama, and I’m okay with that. I mean I used to watch terrible dramas all the time, and I liked some of them. They can’t compare to the really good ones, but they have their moments. So yeah. I’m glad I wrote it and included American references cause it’s what I know

Update 3: I know I have no business saying shit cause I’ve written it before, but idk if I could see them cheating tbh. At least not in canon, which kinda gave me an idea that’s semi similar to a fic I read before… but I digress cause I’m still on my own writers strike. I think I’ve been ruined by the summer series and the vampire diaries, I’m really not fond of brothers fighting for the same person. Even if that person is my queen, it’s just so messy! So awkward too once you get past the initial stuff that people find intriguing about love triangles. Best case scenario in my eyes will always be the person they fight over doesn’t choose either and the brothers are cool again. But that never happens. I’m very family oriented so it just makes me sad to think that it fucks everything up. I know I’ve written about messy ship drama, but I don’t think I’m fond of reading it. Even when I’m writing it myself I’m kinda just like why is this happening? I don’t enjoy the process, but sometimes the story calls for it. Cause my fics write themselves and have a mind of their own. Idk I would just rather it be a non family member fighting for my queen. Plus in the context of shinshi versus CoShi, shinshi wins every time for me. I like when they both take the antidote or they both stay as their shrunken forms. I like when they’re equals. It’s literally the reason why I’ve never written a ShinAi fic despite it being popular. I hate the idea of it. I’m such a hater of the canon ship that I hate them even getting a shot for like ten years while my queen doesn’t get to move on. That’s so unfair. I would much rather she get to date and try and fall in love with other people too, instead of just waiting for him to turn around and realize he loves her. *sigh I just read some fics and I’m having mixed feelings, so I’m venting here cause I’m not an asshole who says mean shit in comments. Easiest way to get on my shit list is to hide behind screens and spread hatred, we get enough of that irl

Update 4: I was onto something about not writing to end my sports woes! My pens won!!! And we scored TWO Power Play Goals!!!! And a shortie!!! And it was big Jeff Carter!??!!?? Alright, I guess I should never write again. But to celebrate I will probably post the last chapter of devour so I can wrap up another wip

#cynful babbles #I also finally got my hands on a Sherlock Holmes book and am currently halfway through it #so that’s been cool I guess. tbh I don’t get shinichi’s fascination so far #I’m more of a Poirot fan myself but I haven’t read all the books/series so I shouldn’t count Holmes out yet #also got another poirot book to read too and I’m excited about that

[nikkoliferous]

Phase One: Thor

Since I was looking up my past live-blog of the novel and realising how annoying and repetitive reading through it all is because of my having structured it as a bunch of reblogs, I’ve decided to organize it all into one long-ass post instead. In case anyone else wants to read it in the future. Or in case I decide to re-read it. Because I’m hilarious. 😅

SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO

My Hilarious Yet Wrathful Overview Of Phase One: Thor, Redux

—

If your son who’s to become king requires a babysitter to not screw it all up and also the idea of him being king is stressful enough to put you into a coma, maybe, uh… reconsider doing that? Just a thought.

But you see here why Odin was so deadset on Thor becoming king, despite him being ill-suited for the role. It’s not about what’s best for Asgard; it’s about personal legacy. Thor is Odin’s mini me, and Loki is very much not. There are places within the text where Odin laments Thor “lacking his father’s wisdom” (he’s definitely inherited your humility, though, Odin!), but he hopes for Thor to grow into a “wise king” like himself. Whereas he holds no such illusions (lol, pun) that Loki will ever take after him.

now with tag commentary! #this scene is in the script and both novelizations #(though in reading this novel seems to just be a more complete version of the junior novel? #idk i'm confused because they're supposedly written by different authors but so far the text is identical) #and it drives me insane each time i read it

“Haha, I’m a warmongering piece of shit, isn’t it funny?”

I know, I know. I try to cut Asgard some slack for being such a militaristic culture because social changes happen slowly and when you live for thousands of years per generation, it makes sense that your views on things like war would be regressive. The text says Odin has ruled Asgard for tens of thousands of years (so much for taking Loki’s “give or take 5,000 years” line literally; sure, the Odinsleep would have extended Odin’s lifespan, but by that much? Idk).

Still, fuck Odin. Especially since he’ll eventually try to shame Loki for doing the same thing he’s fucking boasting about here. And on a much smaller scale too.

…is it, though?

I actually think Loki’s relationship with being the centre of attention is really interesting in its complexity and we don’t discuss it enough. I’ve said this before, but he strikes me as the sort of person who craves attention but also wouldn’t really know what to do with it if he had it. He craves it as a result of neglect, because he’s never been shown recognition or validation. This is why he seems to revel in it in Stuttgart, even in (or maybe especially in?) his brainwashed state. But he also frequently comes across as pretty introverted and has horrible self-esteem, so I think on another level, sustained, genuine attention would make him feel kind of uncomfortable. Loki seems to believe that in order to be loved or respected, he has to literally be Thor, though. And Thor has always been the centre of attention, so for Loki, attention is synonymous with respect.

I find Loki’s relationship with wanting attention especially fascinating because I too both crave and fear it. As a borderline, I need it. When no one is paying attention to me, I lose my sense of identity. I feel as though I literally cease to exist. It’s excruciatingly painful. And yet, I have no authentic sense of self; I’m just a chameleon, and the closer people get to me, the more likely it is they’ll see behind my mask. They’ll realise it’s all a show and that I’m actually no one. And then they’ll leave. I can’t help wondering if that’s how Loki feels sometimes too.

Wait, what? You mean goat. His horns are shaped like a goat’s. This is a ram: 

This is a goat:

This is Loki:

Do you see now? They’re like a goat. Not a ram. Not a cow. A GOAT.

This book was written before Ragnarok was a thing, so it may be unfair to connect the two, but it still seems worth noting that it was Thor who reduced Loki to being no more than a trickster to begin with. “You could be more,” my ass. Loki’s problem has never been that he was one-dimensional; it was always that the people in his life, including Thor, refused to see any other dimensions to him. Which makes those words particularly cruel—as if they aren’t cruel enough already, what with the physical torture and all. 

Always happy to have cause to point out that

Loki was on Thor clean-up duty their whole lives; he certainly was not trying to kill Thor.

People like to point to Loki’s attempted genocide of the Jötnar and attempted(-ish? lol) conquest of Earth as proof that he’s some kind of violent maniac. But in a little place I like to call reality, Loki was historically far less aggressive and bloodthirsty than his peers.

Question: why is one conqueror evil and the other is righteously entitled to ruling over the Nine Realms?

Asgardian exceptionalism FTW

I can’t even begin to imagine what would lead you to expect such a thing, Odin. 😂

Uh, ‘cause it is?? And also their planet is MELTING without it??

This is all only within the first two chapters, btw. Lmao

—

—

—

“Looking for answers,” my foot.

YOU WOULD THINK SO, WOULDN’T YOU??

#i mean unless you knew heimdall #he only commits treason on days that end in y

—

—

What’d I say? Thor clean-up dutyyyyy 

Just wanna remind everyone that this 

is why he’s smiling during this scene 

because it makes me laugh every time. 😂 

—

My heart breaks every time I remember that second excerpt because literally ALL OF IT happened to him when he survived falling through the wormhole. My poor boy. 😭

But also of note… Loki gets cold (and also does not like being cold). This interests me because 1) as many are aware, the prevalent headcanon that Loki has a low body temperature irritates me and 2) it possibly(?) lends weight to the theory that he may not be fully Jötun, whether by virtue of his birth or Odin’s spell.

Haha, look at this Feminist Icon™ trying to take credit for his female friend’s accomplishments! Truly inspiring. 

#for some reason the ragnarok lovers have somehow decided that thor is both a feminist and lesbian icon #whatever that means 🤷‍♀️ #and i'm still trying very hard to figure out why #is it literally just because he *says* he respects women or whatever in that dumb rambly conversation with valkyrie?

Ooh… you were so close to getting the point, Volstagg. So close. Take your tongue off Odin’s boot for just a couple minutes longer.

Also, the author just forgot the name of the Casket. How did this book get published? 😂

JUST LOOKING FOR ANSWERS, HUH?

Because fuck Loki, amirite? He, uh… he’s a prince too, you know.

Also… Fandral, you dweeb 😂

…am I reading too much into this, or did Odin just literally forget that Loki exists?

On the other hand, the author also seemed to forget Loki existed for most of this chapter, so who knows. 🤷‍♀️

lmao @ Jane immediately trying to convince herself she’s too rational to be attracted to a stranger 

Honestly, though, big mood. 

Just your periodic reminder that Thor’s sycophantic friends KNEW Loki was right and decided to throw him under the bus anyway. 

Just as I’ve always said: That was it. That was their ENTIRE rationale. That Loki *could* have done it, therefore he must have. Please tell me these people have nothing to do with Asgard’s justice system.

…lol, jk, Asgard has no justice system.

Ok, first of all, no.

Second: thank you, Fandral. You’re a self-absorbed cad, but also evidently Thor’s least stupid friend.

Thirdly, how…? First, it was, “Loki arranged all this because he’s jealous of Thor.” Now they’ve suddenly jumped all the way to, “All of Asgard is in danger.” What exactly does Sif think Loki is planning? He’s gonna, what… assassinate Odin and then sell Asgard to the Jötnar?

—

Please stop hurting me.

Just so there’s no confusion: this one sentence explains everything Loki did for the rest of the movie. It explains how a person who has been historically non-aggressive suddenly transforms into a warmonger. To prove himself a real Asgardian, like his brother and father and grandfather. 

—

…why did Odin fall into the Odinsleep in two completely different scenes in this book? I’m super confused.

Also, we really need to talk about how cruel it is of Marvel to keep forcing Loki to prove his loyalty again and again and again when he’s been doing so almost literally since we met him. And by “we need to talk about it”, I mean I need to tie Kevin Feige and co. to a chair and spend a minimum of five hours lecturing them on how poorly they understand their own fucking character.

Let’s just be clear here: they’re talking about Loki. They’re saying Loki, their LEGITIMATE king, is an enemy of Asgard, based on evidence so paper-thin it’s practically invisible. Just… please, let that sink in. Take a moment to appreciate how utterly fucked up that is. 

I’m sorry (not really), but Thor was so much funnier before Ragnarok.

This scene has always kind of bugged me. If Odin removed Thor’s powers, how come he can still control the weather? Confusing.

So what exactly was Thor’s plan anyway, before he realised he couldn’t lift Mjölnir? He was just gonna call on Heimdall to help him commit treason AGAIN, show up on Asgard against the expressed command of his king, and… Odin would just shrug and be like, “You got me, son! I guess I can’t keep you down. Welcome home!”?

…I mean, I guess that more or less is what happened in the end, but it’s hard to imagine it would have still gone down that way without all the stuff that happened with Loki. Idk.  

#look what i'm saying is... thor is not exactly a thinking person #no one on asgard is a thinking person #except loki but he's crazy now so he's also thinking somewhat poorly lol

Cool, Thor. Now imagine feeling that way for ONE THOUSAND YEARS and develop a little fucking empathy for your brother.

But you won’t.

You’ll brush off his feelings of worthlessness as “imagined slights”. 😒

Nice that somebody knows how the royal line of succession works, I guess… 

That sound you hear? Yeah, that’s just my heart breaking. NBD. 

First, they mislabelled it the Casket of Eternal Winters. Now it’s the Cask of Ancient Winters. Author must have been thirsty when they wrote this. Lol 

Look, not to nitpick, but this is not the recommended procedure when you see a storm that you don’t believe is of supernatural origin coming. I’m just saying. Lol 

Uh… ‘cause he is?? And your pals are committing treason AGAIN, Thor, so it technically is responding to a threat to Asgard. Just FYI.

Anyways, this is an important point that doesn’t get made often enough. People want to act like Loki illegally usurped the throne somehow, but even without the deleted scene that explicitly shows Frigga passing rulership to him (a scene which is, for some reason, entirely skipped over in this book, but whatever), understand this: Loki could not have controlled the Destroyer unless he was legitimately King of Asgard. The fact that he’s able to do so is irrefutable proof that his rulership is valid.

lmao you little shit

So… here’s my issue with this scene (and with Thor as a character): He always assumes that Loki’s acting out specifically to hurt him. That Loki’s entire life and thought process revolves around Thor. He does it in this scene, he does it in The Avengers… it’s just a chronic thing with Thor. Everything is viewed through the lens of Loki inexplicably hating him.

But that’s… just not accurate. Yes, Loki harbours a lot of jealousy towards Thor. But that’s not what’s happening in this scene. Loki is not trying to kill Thor here because he wants him dead; he’s doing it because Thor (and his friends) are getting in the way of Loki completing his ultimate goal. Loki tried to solve this problem non-violently, by lying about Odin being dead. It’s Thor’s friends who all but forced his hand by going behind his back and trying to bring Thor back to Asgard against Loki’s (and Odin’s!) direct orders.

For all the humility he’s learned in the past few days, this entire speech is still really all about Thor. About assuming that Loki’s doing this for personal reasons, because he holds a grudge against Thor for some unknown reason. This is implicit in his request to “take [my life] and end this.” It never even occurs to him that his friends are traitors to the Crown and Loki, as King of Asgard, is perhaps justified in pursuing them.

It also needs to be acknowledged that Thor’s apology here is hollow, even if it’s ultimately coming from his heart, because he has no idea what he’s apologising for. “Whatever I have done to wrong you” is not an apology. An apology addresses specific hurtful actions taken and commits to not repeating those mistakes in the future. Thor cannot commit to not repeating the hurtful things he’s done, because he doesn’t know what he’s done. Despite his best intentions, what Thor is doing here is actually kind of manipulative. He’s not addressing any substantive issue between the two of them; he’s just trying to talk Loki down. And it ultimately fails not because Loki doesn’t care or because he wants Thor dead, but because it doesn’t actually change anything.

Finally and only semi-relatedly, we should maybe at some point talk about the fact that Loki, who is stated to be a master tactician, has displayed a weird pattern of hardly ever being as lethal as he could be. He freezes Heimdall in place instead of killing him outright; he backhands Thor with the Destroyer instead of incinerating him; he, well… *gestures vaguely at almost the entirety of the first Avengers movie* Anytime the violence is even a little bit personal, he seems to hedge. Odd behaviour for somebody who’s supposedly super evil.

I’m sorry, I know I’ve pointed it out at least a hundred times before, but I just can’t encounter this scene in any form without taking a moment to appreciate how underrated and hilarious it is.

I also genuinely wonder how many Ragnarok stans who have accused me of having no sense of humour, have failed to laugh at moments like this one. Kinda feel like if you need to have the comedy spoonfed to you in the form of ass jokes, maybe you’re the one whose sense of humour is lacking. 🤷‍♀️

Let’s be super clear: this is not what happened. Loki did not betray Odin; he was betrayed by Odin. He did not open Asgard to its enemies; he attempted, misguidedly, to destroy Asgard’s enemies. And he most certainly did not commit suicide out of a sense of guilt.

I’m not saying Loki did nothing wrong, nor am I saying he feels no regret for the lives he has taken. What I’m saying is there’s no indication that he believes he betrayed Odin or Asgard in the process. Which makes perfect sense, because he didn’t. Everything he tried to do was for Odin and Asgard. It was misguided and horrible, yes, but it can hardly be classified as a betrayal.

The insurmountable burden on Loki is not that he did terrible things, but that no matter what he does or how hard he tries, Odin will never look at him with anything but contempt. Consider once more these passages from the very beginning of the book, at Thor’s coronation:

—

Consider that this book goes to great pains to point out that Odin favours Thor because Thor is a warrior like him. And yet even when Loki embraces that, even when he acts more war-like than ever before, Odin rejects him— just as he always has.

There is a reason why this moment is the last time Loki will ever call Odin his father. Because he realises once and for all that, no, nothing he tries will ever be good enough; no, Odin won’t ever look at him with pride. That is Loki’s burden. That is why he lets go.

The epilogue is really just two pages of making me want to vomit. 

There’s your party where Thor and a certain subset of the fandom insist that Loki was mourned. There’s barely an indication here that anyone even perceives his demise as a negative thing.

“[Sif] could see Frigga thought [Loki was dead] as well” also contradicts the tie-in comic for TDW, so I don’t know what the author is on about there. Unlike the majority of Marvel comics, the tie-in comics are canon to the MCU, so it’s a bizarre statement to make.

COULD YOU SMEAR THE DEAD* ABUSE VICTIM A LITTLE HARDER, PLEASE? Fucking hell.

No matter how many times I encounter this scene, in whatever format, I still fail to become desensitized to how disgusting it is. I realise there’s a good chance that whatever version of events Thor has been told was twisted at best; but how you can look at a man whose son has just committed suicide under any circumstances and say there will never be a better father than that guy, is utterly beyond my capacity to understand.

And Odin’s “you’ve already made me proud” line just feels like extra salt in the wound because, again, Loki let go because he realized Odin would never say those words to him. And yet they come so damn easily when it’s Thor.

Fuck this entire family so much. I think I hate them more than Loki does. Sometimes I wonder what he would think about that. How he would react to knowing that not only is he actually loved, but that he’s so loved that people are genuinely furious at the way he’s been mistreated. That there are people who regularly devolve into full-on rants because they just can’t contain how much anger they have towards the people who hurt him. I think he’d have a hard time wrapping his head around that concept, tbh.

Anyways, to end on a not-completely-depressing note, I’m still waiting for someone at Marvel to explain how Loki knew what Thor said in this scene after plummeting into a wormhole. ‘Cause he references this conversation as Fauxdin at the end of TDW. So like… ?? Did he steal Odin’s memories before he erased them? Because that would be… kind of neat, actually. And very clever. Not entirely ethical, of course, but it’s Odin, so fuck ethics.

WELP, THAT’S IT. Thanks for following along with my dumbassery, hope you enjoyed yourselves. Lol

#phase one: thor #loki meta #thor meta #odin's a+ parenting #frigga's b+ parenting #topic: thor and loki's broken relationship #loki #thor #heimdall #lady sif #the warriors 3 #jane foster #ragnarok cinematic universe #mcu #topic: asgardian hypocrisy #topic: asgardian militarism #topic: odin's family dynamic

[quakerjoe]

Biden, #MeToo, and why I can’t support him.

Anyone who supports Biden, by my reckoning, is fine with putting their name to yet another sexual predator in the White House

Where’s the outrage, people? All you #MeToo supporters out there are fantastically quiet about the accusation leveled against Biden. Where are all of you who were appalled at the recording of trump bragging how the rich and powerful can just walk up and grab a woman by the pussy? That’s what Biden actually DID (allegedly). If you’re fine with Biden, hand in your #MeToo card and strike the word ‘feminist’ or ‘humanist’ from your personal bios. 

If you don’t know a woman who’s a survivor, then you don’t know women. That means that none of them have trusted you enough to tell you their stories. I’ve heard many. Once upon a time, I was in a relationship with one and I heard her horror story. She felt that her freaking out when we tried to get intimate with me was unfair so she left. Then she killed herself.

Is Biden REALLY better than trump? Really? Really? Of trump, whom I loathe more than anyone else on Earth, I can say, with all honesty, this much: I KNOW where I stand with him and his band of fuckwits. ALL of his fuckery has been mostly done out in the open. While everyone’s freaking out over it, they’re all huddling behind Biden; many out of such sheer desperation to remove trump that they’ve literally allowed the Democratic party to compromise them and their morals and core beliefs. IF you’re supporting Biden, you’re not compromising, YOU’VE BEEN COMPROMISED. You ALLOWED the Democratic party to lower their own standards SO low they’re practically as filthy as the GOP only there’s one sad, horrible difference between them and just one- While the GOP is openly vile, reprehensible, and are more than willing to fuck you all to your face; fuck you and fuck yours and go fuck yourself... Democrats smile, say nice things, then stab you in the back. Democrats now only pay lip service, make half-baked and half ass attempts to try to convince you that they’re Left in some way, all while being far right of where they were years ago. There IS no Left anymore, and you’ve been dragged along with them. When is enough, enough, people?

There’s clearly only ONE person the Democrats hated more than trump- Bernie Sanders. Between mainstream media ignoring him and Dems ganging up to defeat him, clearly the party doesn’t give a flying fuck about YOU. They’re just not into you, baby; it’d interrupt the cash flow from their donors, most of them being the same rich twats buying GOPers. Look how fast Bloomberg bought Dems!

Now you’re all acting like trump supporters for the BlueMAGA. Seriously? Really? The rapist? The guy whose motto is essentially “Don’t worry, I won’t change shit; I’ll just bring us back to normal (meaning back to the era that brought us trump in the fucking FIRST place).

How many of you BOTHERED reviewing Biden’s super-shitty policies and actions over his career? (crickets) How many of you have any spine enough to see just how fucking useless he is at this stage? Fuck me, man; this asshole can’t even speak! We already have that. He’s already got various degrees of sexual assault on the books. We already have that. He’s all to eager to work with the GOP and cater to the rich. We already have that! He’s boring as fuck, abrasive and he does NOT inspire voters to come charging out this November.

Trump does, though. His fanatics are breaking down the gates during a pandemic; you can bet your privileged asses that they’ll be out come November assuming they did’t keel over dead from COVID-19. That may be the only edge that Biden gets as he does and says fuck-all nothing except hope that trump screws up enough to get his base to stay home and enough of his own Biden Bros to show up. That’s his big plan, kids.

Kiss your $15/hr good-bye. You don’t seriously thing team biden will really pull that off, do you? For fuck sake, according to Liz Warren, if the min. wage  kept up with cost of living and inflation, it should be at $23/hr NOW. According to Robert Reich, it’s even higher. $15/hr was what we needed well over a decade ago. If biden does pull it off, it’s a token fist in your ass at best, you puppet.

Kiss M4A good-bye. It’s evident that you’d rather dump your cash into the overpriced, empty promises of insurance companies, big pharma, and stoke the fires of endless war with financing the Military Industrial Complex than live a safe, healthy life.

Kiss any sort of Green New Deal good-bye while Pelosi and the others sneer at it and look down their noses at you.

I certainly don’t WANT more of trump...

...but thinking biden will make things better is foolish. Trump will happily stab you through the chest, but the likes of biden prefer to smile while they stab you through the back using the blade forged out of empty promises and lip service. Fuck, if you’re keeping track of the Dem. pundits, they’re already lining up to blame biden’s apparent loss on Sanders and people like me. They’re ALREADY gearing up for him to LOSE. What does THAT tell you? His popularity is utter shit compared to HRC back in 2016.

Let’s not forget that most of Bernie’s supporters backed HRC in 2016 and voted for her. Before that, let’s not forget HER followers’ loyalty when MOST of them bailed on Obama to support McCain. 

I won’t put my name to a vote for Biden. I won’t. I’ve heard too many tales of horror from Survivors and given that Al Franken’s career was burned for much less, I don’t appreciate the HYPOCRISY of the #MeTooExceptBiden rhetoric. MY moral compass, my values, my principles will no longer be something I give the DNC permission to shit on and compromise. If the US needs another 4 of trump burning the house down to wake the fuck up and LEARN that the Dems are a band of feckless twats on the take and actually start voting for PROGRESSIVES and those who are actually LEFT, then so be it. Let the children learn by touching the hot fucking stove; I’ve warned them enough, for years and years now. It’s time to grow a pair of whatever inspires you and wake the fuck up and stop fronting rich, white guys who are all for helping the rich scam us into tax breaks and socialism for them and their corporations while fucking us all in the ass without a kiss first, a grease up, or so much as a reach-around.

Year after year we do this shit and it’s getting worse. Yay, we won the House. So fucking what? What have they ACHIEVED? Pelosi scoffs at saving lives with M4A and we, as a party and a nation failed to get the Senate. The GOP is still cock-blocking everything, good or bad, passed by the House, so really, no big “blue wave” there to brag about.

These people are not stupid. They know the general population is complicit and disinterested in change. Look at all the anti-gun protest after every school shooting? Has much been done since? Technically, trump’s been more hard-ass over gun control than Obama! Holy shit, guys! The “Pussy Hat” march. What’s changed? Meh. Not much. To the GOP and corporate/establishment Dems, women are cheap and nobody cares. Point gone like a fart in the wind. The GOP and the Dems alike know that they can keep you all punching DOWN instead of taking a moment to glance up and see who’d really punching YOU. So long as they let you march, protest, bitch and scream now and then, you’ll get it all out of your system and then it’ll settle down and go back to “normal”.

“Normal” didn’t used to be finding it acceptable to have a documented sexual predator in the White House.

IF you have no problem with Biden, then you must also have no problem with Weinstein, right? Cosby? Judge Kavenaugh?

Uh huh.

I don’t want trump. I want him gone. I refuse to do it with biden taking his place because seriously, the guy wanted to shitcan SS and Medicare/Medicaid. He was gung-ho for Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s a bucket of charred turds.

Look all the women you love, if you have the courage to do so, and you tell them “Hey, I’m fine with electing another rapist for president!” because that’s literally what you’ll be doing. Why don’t you beat and slap her around for a bit before you go out to vote while you’re at it. Backing biden only continues giving permission to the Dems to offer you the worst possible candidate so they can keep their cash flow going.

Have some courage. Have some dignity. Have some fucking empathy and compassion, for fuck sake. Then, maybe, a woman might trust you enough to tell you HER horror story of survival.

#MeToo #MeTooExceptBiden #BlueMAGA #SayNoToJoe

[ju-liberty]

Clint & Natasha

(Or, the deeper approach into their psyche and love)

Turns out that Endgame hit me harder than I could ever have prepared myself, and I don’t like what I have read from other perspectives about their platonic relationship very much, so I’ve decided to write my own. At this point I don’t even need to fight anyone to prove anything, what they are to one another up until now have already far exceeded any ordinary relationship in the entire cinematic history.

There are some fatal plot holes that are hardly dismissed as a writer myself but I’m going to be a good person to ignore all of them and even pretend to forgive the ridiculous five-year period that made no sense to the character development and motivation.

1. Firstly, let’s talk about Natasha’s roller-coaster emotional ride.

Natasha in the last piece of the Avenger series was, as Scarlett has said herself, ‘hardened’ by all she had lost, and simultaneously softened and vulnerable in a way we had never seen her before.

She loved so hard and so deeply that if before we didn’t dare acknowledge it, now it was pouring all over her facial expression as though she didn’t even bother to hide it anymore.

Okay, please give me a specific number of times you have seen Natasha Romanoff with a breakdown. With tears? Except for the time when she thought Nick Fury was dead. There was only one time under Wanda in AoU that she was off her game, then again we all know who was there in half a second later to look after her.

This time, though, this was different. Nobody knew how to handle her the right way, and nobody was there anymore. The perfect timing of Steve’s appearance was so precious and realistic I can’t appreciate it enough. Steve was not Clint, probably hadn’t seen Nat at her worst the way Clint did, but he was there at that precise moment to stay with her through the misery. What could be more fulfilling in a friendship? Your friend was there, burdened with his own misery and could not ease yours but he was there nonetheless. If we take a careful look at the predicament, we could see that Clint, in this case, was the very source of her distress instead of her comfort. And if you have seen the way she grieved, it’s so blindingly obvious that he was more than just a friend to her. He was family. The one that she had lost.

It wasn’t like Natasha would need Rhodey to give her the precise location of Clint Barton—we have seen the way Clint found her in the most unbelievable circumstance in their own classic way in AoU—she had always known where he was, she must have been keeping track on him, and yet she chose to stay away and pretended she didn’t see what he was doing anyway, because she believed she could not give him hope. The way she went straight to him and took his hand bravely felt like she had always known where he was in all her life and all it took was just a sparkle of hope.

And then there’s the arrow necklace, oh yes, that was fucking thrilling. We grown women do not wear jewelries to honor our siblings or close friends, and let’s not ignore the Godly timing that the necklace first made an appearance was actually right after her breakdown for Clint. Listen, if you have spotted 40+ ester eggs all over the movie, you must have known by now that there was no such thing as a coincidence in every scene, for example her ballet shoes in a corner or the sandwich that was cut diagonally. So if she wore the arrow necklace over a black t-shirt instead of a white one in a dozen of close-up shots with one of the most breaking expressions on her face, there was a reason for it. I suspect it had something to do with her breakdown and the necklace was possibly the symbol of her determination to set things right (to find her partner and to bring him back) now that they had found a way out of their failure.

That didn’t happen just once. She wore the same necklace when they went to Bruce. And what’s more terrifying? She wore it in the same room with Clint in the most comfortable atmosphere between them as though she knew that he knew and they both knew what it meant to them and were completely okay to show it. That could mean she didn’t take it off until Vormir, or not ever. Whether it really had something related to Clint or not, do interpret it in your own way, I don’t care, facts will always remain facts.

And then there’s that mind-blowing moment when Clint was back from the time-travel and she was up there in a second like their life depended on it. There was so much love radiating from her when she went all of her way out to articulate the word ‘family’ when there was not a single one of the team had dare mention before, and so much love for Clint that she didn’t bother to conceal it. Either family or friendship, her love had already gone way beyond those with a simple touch of her hand on his face and that look on her.

Just—that look.

2. And Clint Barton, the most underappreciated character in the MCU history.

One of the things Jeremy has shared about what he enjoyed the most about his character was that Clint Barton was just a normal guy. He has no super power or physical enhancement and yet he chooses to fight alongside the heroes with his partner. He is normal, and despite everything that he has been robbed from the insane story line, he as a character still has grown so much through each movie. He is human, he lost, and he grieved.

I’m not going to pretend the family didn’t exist because they did (and it was a pleasure seeing they got dusted) and their disappearance did pull a string or two on this new side of Clint and his newly introduced skill sets that I super enjoyed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with him going vigilante given his background of a master assassin and the darkness of his personality and PTSD, and the five year time skip that had been done poorly in the movie did nothing to ruin his perfect characterization. 

Since a lot of articles have been talking about Thor’s stages of depression that should not be taken lightly as humor device, remember that Thor wasn’t the only one who suffered from mental disorder and please also don’t compare the kind of loss they all had to confront alright? Each person had to go through different kind of manifestation of mental illness, and for a former agent like Clint to go into hiding and killing as coping mechanism was completely acceptable. Don’t give me the morality bullshit, we are talking about fictional characters here, thank you.

Even though the five year excuse was unfair, why should we pay too much attention about it when we could have all we should have and Natasha was still the only one who could come for Clint? You can’t possibly forget the way she held out her hand and he immediately took it without hesitation like five years of distance between them never existed. That display of vulnerability and utter trust that he only showed in the presence of Natasha was pure gold. He knew she would find him as much as he knew once she did, he would be willing to come back with her.

Did he still grieve, though? Intensely. Did he want to die? More than anything else. Did he also have to live? Yes, yes, and yes.

Ever since the beginning to the end, he never stopped grieving. Have you noticed the way he wore his eyes in almost every scene? It’s a tortured look. Clint Barton had come such a long way from the first time he was introduced as a sassy, witty archer to this broken, quiet man with a constantly tortured look. And every step of this journey, Natasha was there with him.

Did he let himself heal? Also yes. In those little moments like when they sat next to one another discussing the plan to get the stones, or when the whole team were getting ready for the mission and he sneaked a glance at Natasha at the other side of the room, or in the spaceship when he initially brought up Budapest with a laughter in contrast to the first time it was mentioned by Natasha in the first Avenger movie. He was allowing himself to heal only because Natasha was there.

Clint and Natasha didn’t act that comfortably around anyone else but each other, and only with one another, they were able to heal themselves gradually.

3. Then Vormir happened. Their journey to the end.

From now on, I am talking about their love and how it was manifested through Endgame.

The parallel cinematic wasn’t just about Natasha finding and bringing Clint home in contrast to how he had made a different call in the past, it was their entire journey with little things, like the hand holding: if Natasha first took Clint’s hand to take him home at the beginning, Clint was the one who took her hand at the end of their conversation.

It was the extended bargain that had started from the first conversation between Natasha and Loki until Red Skull: the world was still on the balance and their bargain was still (forever will be) ultimately for one another.

I see hundreds, hell, thousands of wishful thinking for the Vormir scene to be more than just a forehead touch. Like, you wanted more? Was it even possible to be more? God no. Please look up infinite intensity. Romance didn’t even fit here. It was deep-rooted emotional intimacy, I would call. Like, you want to scale them down to an ordinary couple in a romantic movie who confess their undying love for each other and then kiss and make up and walk towards the horizon holding hands? Look, Disney fairy tales are always available all over the world except here - we are not sugarcoating a single fraction of a second they had here - not that way, never, okay?

What can you ask for more really? The man was fucking married and lost his family, and yet he literally spent almost every second of his scenes putting Natasha ahead of every single other people of his life including himself in all movies (and interview but we are not even talking about that, damn), exactly the way she had done for him. They were each other’s priority without a single discussion. What more could you actually imagine them to be? They didn’t just fight alongside one another. They literally fought against each other while calling each other idiot and a pain in the ass, just to die for one another.

That, was blatantly, blindingly, obviously fucking love.

Since Clint had been grieving and this was not a fairy tale, admittedly, he wanted to die. The way he recklessly threw himself into relentless massacre, as shitty and underdeveloped as it is, the way he volunteered as an object for a possible one way trip (again, shitty choice with the farm as if it was the fucking symbol for a life of a master assassin), it was clear that he had been suicidal. Natasha could be his anchor, but at the first chance he got, he immediately relapsed into his suicidal intention. He chose to die because he wanted to, and he believed it was as best as life could get.

And then something changed. The moment he realized what they would do in this circumstance was manifested in the way they looked at each other, it was heartbreaking and beautiful.

But they knew each other without a word and fought on an equal ground. They knew they were each other’s dearest person, this they knew without a single banter or discussion. That was when the self-loathing was replaced by love - whatever the fuck kind you want to interpret - it was love and not guilt or responsibility or debt anymore. Because guilt could not earn them the soul stone. He wanted to keep her alive even more than he wanted to die. Everything that remained in that moment as the world did cease to exist, was love.

Do you remember how many times Clint had called her Natasha? Each time was different, and yet none was like this one, because he knew this was it, this was the last time, so he said it with a smile so understanding and agonizing and most of all, so damn loving.

With the mere look he gave her when he called her Natasha, let me tell you, even if they gave him 10 more families all over the world with a hundred of children, Clint Barton sure as hell would still put Natasha Romanoff before every single one of them without a second thought and love her enough to die for her as many times as it took.

This. look.

And the look Natasha gave Clint when he ran over the edge and when he held onto her hand, as much as gratitude and fear, the only thing that had been constantly staying there, was love.

4. What’s left

We grieve that she wasn’t among those in the final battle, that was such a sick joke I agree, however come to think of it, Clint wasn’t, either. That went back to the beginning when they were spies, not soldiers. They were the best with their skill sets when sent on specific missions. Taking out all other characters, if you squint, you probably could see that this really was their own journey to go back to the way they used to be in the old days with just the two of them, either fighting alongside one another, or just fighting for the other. Tragically, Natasha did not come back, then again you did not see Clint as a whole person ever again. She wasn’t in the final battle and neither was Clint (except doing his side job for a few minutes), because they were meant to fight together or not fighting at all.

Natasha deserved to live. Of course she did. Do you know who understood it the most and fought for her life harder than anyone else? Clint Barton.

But living isn’t that simple as black and white, and if you turned the ending upside down in which Natasha lived and Clint didn’t, imagine the life she was going to live without her partner, best friend, soulmate. It wasn’t because she had no family that she deserved less to live, no, it was exactly because death was the easier way out than enduring the trauma, which by now Clint was shouldering for her.

Think of it this way: It wasn’t the family reunion we were seeing, it was Clint looking at those loved ones he was supposed to save and only seeing his other half spilling blood and losing life for them to live. Like the way it was supposed to be him. Like the way he kicked off the gauntlet after the reversing snap and treated the stones like ‘a goddamn thing’ instead of feeling thankful for them for bringing his family back. Clint was never going to get over it, to be honest he was never going to truly live anymore.

A life where you constantly grieve and loathe yourself, do you think Natasha would have deserved it? What Clint was shouldering in her place wasn’t a second chance at life nor another debt on his ledger, it was a downright bloody punishment.

So again, hello to Disney fans. If this was one of the fairy tales, if AoU did not happen and the only one they had was each other, there is no doubt that they both would die together. Screw the world, end of story. However, what made their love so intense and so much more painful than that ideal scenario was when Clint realized as much as he wanted to jump after her (oh trust me he longed for it), he wasn’t allowed to let Natasha’s sacrifice go wasted. See, this is the difference between a romance and a bond so deep it overruns everything else - he had to make it worth first, and then he would punish himself later - which already happened immediately, all of his emotional catastrophe and enormous anger. Clint was punishing himself badly and he would not stop. Ever. If losing his family already hit him that much, imagine how quickly he was going to abandon his life without Natasha. Remember how easily he let go of the gauntlet and the stones - the family and the world might be let go in the same way without remorse.

While we are saying a proper funeral was a better display of gratitude that Natasha should have deserved, can we take a look again at how most of Clint and Natasha’s battles were like? Against their inner demons. Behind the scenes. That was how they operated through the years. That was just what they were. And remember, Clint chose to share his lasting grief with Wanda who had lost her other half, not with his family.

As lacking as the ending was, simultaneous it was a given that the two of them were manifested in the right way. Clint and Natasha were spies not soldiers. It was not fair, it was terrible, but when we learn to live with what we got and twist it around to make it work, life becomes acceptable.

5. Last but not least

Clint and Natasha. What these two had for each other was the love so intense and profound it went beyond boundaries of common relationship and left them devastated for the rest of their lives. And that, I tell you, is fucking magnificent.

To wrap it up, do I hate Endgame? Not at all. Simultaneously do I want to rewrite it? No, not in 14,000 possible ways except one in which the farm family somehow would get erased infinitely, accidentally, magically, whatever, and Natasha would live.

Wishful thinking, but why not?

#clint barton #natasha romanoff #clintasha #avengers endgame #marvel #mcu #too late to say this much #but I couldn't sleep well for over a month #needed to let this out once and for all

[azuresquirrel]

rhiorhino

replied to your

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Someone remind me to later put down some random...

Oh? I’m super interested to hear your thoughts!

oh god I love to say that I’m going to talk about a thing and then forget about it and then be unable to come up with anything coherent

BIGASS SPOILERS FOR BOTH THE ENDING OF THE GOOD PLACE AND BOJACK HORSEMAN INCOMING and also this got so fucking long so I’m throwing it under a cut anyway

I’m going to try to put things as simply as possible (ETA: oh my god, I didn’t) - I thought the very last episode of The Good Place was a lovely and fitting send off for each of the individual main characters we’ve gotten attached to, but in terms of setting up big philosophical truths regarding morality large parts of season four really let me down.

(wow you expect a network TV sitcom to give you Big Truths, Shannon? Well when you put it IN THE PREMISE, KIND OF? and no I’m not expecting TGP to answer the question of life’s meaning, if we were capable of answering that question for good I think we would’ve managed it at some earlier point in history than an NBC sitcom, I’m just saying you put that out there)

I’ve been seeing a sentiment floating around that TGP had a great season 1 and 2 and then seasons 3 and 4 were lesser. I don’t agree on season 3, I found that on par, but season 4 verged on some issues I had with the last season of Parks and Recreation where characters were suddenly given absurdly over-the-top happy endings and what little conflicts there were were contrived and solved without much effort.

Basically I’m deeply unsatisifed with their treatment of the Actual Good Place, and if they were going to go there and fix it it had to take more than ONE EPISODE. 

Also this is ENTIRELY a “me” problem but I don’t think the sentiment that “life only has meaning because it ends” is a profound, radical statement (honestly I’ve heard people say it so often it might as well have the depth of a “Live, Laugh, Love” poster). For that to be the answer of how to “fix” the Actual Good Place left me cold and underwhelmed. Everything the show said thematically up to that point was that the reason people want to be good and owe it to themselves and each other to be good is COMMUNITY and CONNECTIONS. I thought the focus should’ve been on THAT versus immediate instant gratification of all of ones hedonistic desires, but what do I know.

Also I found the sheer terror at the prospect of the nothingness beyond death as shown in “The View From Halfway Down”, the penultimate episode of BoJack, to be a much more honest and resonant reaction. To me the whole “oh life only means something because it ends” is just as much a coping mechanism as is the idea of an “eternal paradise” to try to offset the terror that we simply Do Not Know what death is like.

Speaking of BoJack, things ended on a more hopeful note in that show than I expected, but it didn’t feel inconsistent with what had come before, and was more satisfying because it faced extremely difficult questions about the behavior of its protagonist and the duties of the people around him to help him or not in the face of that.

Perhaps that is unfair of me to ask from The Good Place, which was always conceived as an inherently optimistic show, and more focused on ideas of “what ideal environment would make people choose to do good” and less so on grappling with what to do about truly evil actions. 

But I find that in its specificity - in choosing to focus on essentially a few individuals instead of making broad statements about “Good,” BoJack more successfully grappled with the real kind of moral dilemmas that we face in this very imperfect and very real world we live in. 

People can make mistakes, can do bad things. It’s good to help people and to help them be better. These things are easy to say. But what happens when other people are seriously hurt by someone’s bad actions? When it’s a person who has a lot of power - power of money, fame, social status - and that person’s victims, their “collateral damage” don’t have that? BoJack doesn’t say that people can’t change - they can. But does that actually erase the hurt? What role does consequences play in a just universe?

It’s easy to condemn actions from Evil Characters twirling their moustaches. BoJack makes you sympathize with him. It’s hard not to want to root for BoJack when you see his terrible, terrible childhood, how the deck was seemingly stacked against him from the start. But the show BoJack makes it very clear that that stopped being an excuse from him deciding not to grow a very long time ago.

In the end, BoJack got exactly what I wanted for him. I didn’t want him to get a happy ending, he didn’t deserve one from his actions. But I also didn’t want him to get a bad ending, giving the idea that some people are just doomed from birth and will never get better. What I wanted was for BoJack to experience the consequences of his actions, but also to be able to find peace for himself. And both things happened.

I’ve also seen it floating around that by not killing BoJack, but by letting him live in the final episode, that the show “let him off the hook.” I absolutely disagree. Despite said terror in “The View From Halfway Down” death would have been a way out for BoJack. For him to not have to wake up the next day and deal with the mess made by his own actions again. And finally everything caught up to him. As said in the final episode, “sometimes life’s a bitch and you keep on living.” Becoming a corpse in his pool from yet another self-loathing bender was seemingly BoJack’s destiny, but he doesn’t get that. He needs to do the hardest thing possible for him - learn to live with himself.

So it’s much more fitting that we don’t end with BoJack’s End. It’s left up in the air. There’s a hint that he might relapse to addiction again (not to drugs or alcohol but his worst addiction of all - the spotlight), but it’s not final. 

The show also makes it clear that it is more than okay for the others around BoJack to move on with their lives and not be defined by his toxicity. The show doesn’t condemn Hollyhock, the kindest and probably most mature character, for cutting BoJack out of her life when the interviews aired. She doesn’t exist to be BoJack’s “morality pet” to exist in order to prove he is a Good Person because he cares about her and her opinion of him. She had a life long before BoJack and she’ll have a life long after him, and faced with that pattern of behavior she made the most healthy and safe choice for herself.

And likewise with Diane, who has struggled so much with her own mental health issues and is far from perfect but always cared so much more about the potential consequences of her actions than BoJack ever has. (of course you could argue she took it too far the other way, as Guy said once, “I don’t know why I should have to suffer because you have a moral perrogative against feeling good”). Of all the characters Diane struggled the most between her duty to BoJack as a friend she cared about personally, and his actions as yet another rich, protected, powerful man with a history of damaging less powerful women. And the finale lets her let him go. “What if this was the last time we ever talked to each other,” and Diane doesn’t answer.

Because for BoJack to have everything he ever wants, after the hurt he’s caused people like Penny, Charlotte, Sarah Lynn, Gina, many others - is that really a fair and just universe? 

BoJack is messy the way that life is messy and it doesn’t provide easy answers, but it does provide hope, it gives us the truth that life, that living with yourself is often just FUCKING HARD, but you keep on doing it. In the hope that maybe you’ll find some peace. And it doesn’t ignore that real pain caused doesn’t magically “go away” when someone decides to “get better.”

Basically, BoJack to me really grappled with difficult questions of what is to be done when someone we like does bad things, and what are the necessary consequences of that when real hurt has been caused. 

Early on The Good Place was radical for suggesting that the mundane flaws of its main four humans - not war criminals, but selfish, conceited, passive, and unthinking - made them indeed, not good people. It was then radical again when it basically came to the conclusion that true goodness is compromised in a capitalistic system. But in the final season it just kind of devolved into pleasantness instead of grappling with real questions in the way BoJack did.

Again, no one on The Good Place ever did anything as bad as BoJack did - for one, none of them are culpable for the death of a woman in their care like BoJack was for Sarah Lynn - but there was at least some meat to its philosophy. Rolling into paradise and fixing it in the space of one episode does not match that depth or complexity, nor give the sense that anything is really on the line here.

OKAY I HAVE NO CONCLUSION TO THIS, this is literally just unconnected thoughts I have on why I found one series end more satisfying on a thematic level than another’s - maybe???? God help you if you read all the way through this, I have to get back to work now.

#rhiorhino #replies #The Good Place spoilers #Bojack Horseman spoilers

[buffyverse-rewind]

S6 E5 “Life Serial”

Augh, I hate this episode. Is this review probably going to be biased?  Yeah, probably.  I’ve literally put off watching this episode for weeks.  

Right off the bat we have Buffy coming back from her off screen rendezvous would Angel, bringing home a bucket of chicken, taken by surprise by the fact that the others have already eaten.  

(Sigh) Seriously, I know this was early 2000s, and Buffy may or may not have had a cellphone, but who comes back from out of town after, what, at least a day or two, and stops to pick up a family dinner without first checking with the family if you should?

But never mind that, what the actual hell Giles?  Buffy’s home a minute and she’s supposed to have her life plans figured out?  He’s not necessarily wrong to want to engage her on that subject, but come on, asking her out of the blue like that, apropos of nothing and in front of everyone?  Why right then?  Why not give her a little after whatever drama you know probably went down with Angel, and more importantly, why wait until you can have this conversation with Buffy privately, when the two of you are alone?  

But of course the segue into Giles’ question is that “they’ve been talking about Buffy’s plans” – meaning that Giles and the others were discussing what Buffy should do with her life without her; which is super classy.  Girl was dead for months, back a week and everyone’s so concerned she doesn’t have life all figured out.  Fuck you Giles.  What happened to the tactful, thoughtful Giles from season 3, who was the only one in the group with concern for Buffy’s emotional well being; and actually took the time to draw out from her the issue that was bothering her about how things went down with Angel at the end of season 2, so that she wouldn’t feel pressured or backed into a corner?

And then there’s the fucking Trio…. God I hate this season.  Like, Warren was pretty much an asshole from his first episode, so him as a recurring villain doesn’t surprise me.  Andrew is… Whatever.  He was invented for the purposes of this plot and he continues to serve whatever purpose the plot dictates.  But come on, Jonathan should arguably be better than this.  Yeah, he’s done fucked up on a couple of occasions, but the idea that he would out and out be on board with intentionally being a super villain or criminal is ridiculous.

A bigger issue here of course, as is often the case with the conventional depiction of most “super villains” is the sheer redundancy of their goals.  They want to be rich and powerful yet have all of these resources that already suggest they already are.  I mean, Jesus Christ, with all the shit Warren can do, why does he even need to mess with the Slayer?  Why does he have to do any of this?  He could go to Silicon Valley and practically print his own money and do whatever the fuck all he wants to do; legal or not and he’d be rich enough to get away with it.

The time dilation part of the episode makes zero fucking sense.  What exactly is happening with Buffy from Tara’s point of view that she continues to go about her day like Buffy isn’t just frozen in place?  At one point she even just leaves Buffy behind.

And then there’s Buffy’s day with Xander.  Can I just say, “Fucking Xander.”  It has nothing to do, necessarily, with what’s happening in the plot, just in general that Xander is a fucking tool.

Now of course, there’s the scene itself and Xander…. Well, he’s not strictly a tool in this scene, but he does seem to be a fucking idiot.  I mean, Jesus Xander, have you only just met Buffy?  You’re acting like you haven’t fought demon possessed robots or been possessed by a Hyena; and feel the need to tell Buffy not to talk about the strange things you all encounter on a regular basis.  Although considering that “Tony” the foreman also lives and works in Sunnydale, evil lint is probably the least crazy sounding thing he’s heard about or seen firsthand.  For that matter, neither should the creatures that attack them later.  This show loves to have its cake and eat it too; Sunnydale is a hotbed for paranormal activity, high mortality rates, all manner of demons casually going about their day; yet it’s still supposed to be like any other run of the mill city where no one has ever seen nothin’ out of the ordinary and skepticism abounds.

And then Xander introduces Buffy to the less than enthusiastic crew, gives her no kind of job orientation and promptly ditches her to work elsewhere; so… yeah… even when he’s doing Buffy a favor getting a job, Xander’s kind of a tool here too.

(Sigh)  Why do you have to go and ruin a perfectly fun Groundhog Day-esque time loop trope with this crap?  And come on, this causes Buffy to never want to work in the magic shop afterwards, that she’d rather work at the fucking Double Meat Palace?  She’s at the shop all the fucking time otherwise, why not get paid to fucking be there?  

And she didn’t include shipping, well that’s on fucking Giles and Anya for not properly training her, or making sure her first sale was done right.  Jesus tap dancing Christ, this episode pisses me off.

And if the fucking hand can move on its own, why is it just out where it could escape or something? How did Anya or Giles expect to find it when they need it, let alone catch it or package it?  How was it transported there in the first place? Why didn’t Buffy fucking ask for help?? God, I hate when writers have to resort to making the characters idiots in order to make the plot happen.

And was Buffy saying the hand was just “playing dead” a nod to Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch? Because if so, fuck you.  Don’t besmirch the Python with this shit. (Warren’s line pretty much confirms this.  So yeah, fuck you.)

If time is looping, how are the Three Amigos watching each loop?  Is time only looping within the shop? If so, how does the unsatisfied customer keep coming back?

And fucking playing poker for God damn fucking kittens…. Fuck season 6.

 Does this episode get credit for introducing us to Clem?

…. No… Because what the hell do they actually do with him, other than use him for comic relief?  He becomes Spike’s funny looking sidekick.  

Because drunk Buffy was such a comic winner in “Beer Bad,” the writers felt the need to revisit it.

Now, you see Giles, this is when you should be talking to Buffy about her life and her plans; you’re alone and these things are on her mind. She doesn’t need to have the answers, but you could be helping her find the path that might lead to those answer. THAT is what she needs.  The check is arguably appreciate too in the meantime, but given that he’s so concerned about her being dependent on him that he soon leaves the fucking country, this last scene may or may not be misstep for you. You could be making the case for her to come back to the magic shop.  You could be helping her figure out other ways of supporting herself financial that wouldn’t interfere with her Slaying; which no matter what anyone else is says, is her job; one for which she doesn’t get paid, but takes first priority over everything in her life, including her life and expecting her to find a job that she can live on that won’t conflict with that is just absurd.

Let her using the training space in the back of the shop to offer self-defense classes.  My personal preference would be for the two of them to open a funeral home together.  It makes all sort of sense as a front for a Slayer; you have early access to the recently deceased, it explains you coming and going from all of the cemeteries.  I say mix some holy water in with the embalming fluid and the instant a new vamp turns they go poof.

But barring that, just sign your fucking share of the magic box ownership over to Buffy.  Maybe that’s too unfair to Giles.  After all, it’s his business, his income, but he doesn’t apparently need it.   The only reason he bought the business in the first place wasn’t because he needed the money, but because he was bored; and now he intended to be a silent partner in the business while he did fuck all in England.  His status as a reinstated Watcher is ambiguous at best, but at the very least he got some hefty back-pay and may still be receiving a check from them. Meanwhile, if Buffy got his share of the magic shop business, it may not be much, but it would ostensibly be enough to keep Buffy afloat.  She could be as much of an active or silent partner as Giles was.

But oh, no, that would solve all the contrived problems that Buffy is facing this season.  Giles wouldn’t have a reason to leave (which would presumably cement his status as active Watcher, meaning he’d definitely still be receiving his own separate income from the Council, while ensuring Buffy’s financial security.)  Buffy might have found the strength to confide more so in Giles than in Spike and avoid that toxic relationship. Who knows if Giles being around would have made much of a difference with Willow, seeing as he was there for Tabula Rasa, but maybe he would have stepped in before things escalated following Amy’s return. But I digress.  I hate this episode.

[seesgood]

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY OF MY LOVES ARE ORIGINAL CHARACTERS? no? cool well ya’ll are about to find out .and BELIEVE ME when i tell you that you should follow the shit out of all of these guys. if you haven’t already. and if you haven’t, what are you doing you’re so missing out!!! 

@bloodmirrored ; @keeperofhumanity ; @1000liveslived ; @dissolvedshadows ; @wulfking ; @oddyssea ; @peaceific ; @grcdy ; @beaniesandmachetes ; @cordeliakomskaikru / @rainkilled ; @roaming-agent ; @motherbuilt ; @lead-pencilskirt ; @sterxid ; @scarredesmeralda

alright this time i got smart and am listing in alphabetical order so it’s easier for ya’ll to find your little love blurb: 

@1000liveslived --- so i know i was later than most people to hop onto the ‘holy shit jess is literally one of the most incredible humans’ bandwagon but i’m here. and i have my little conductors hat. and we gon fuck some shit up with love alright? but you know i love you. let’s talk about how much i love emma. emma is realistic. and dynamic. and she breaks your god damn heart as much as she makes it soar. emma, to me, feels like the kind of character that could exist in real life. she has flaws, she has strength, she has this lingering air of reality about her that not many people can bring to an oc. and tbh all of your ocs are like that and i love them all so much. they’re such unique characters and i love them more than anything.

@beaniesandmachetes --- ok so i know you’re technically not on jake as much anymore but tbh this is the blog where i first fell in love with everything about your blogs. for starters, your writing is to die for, writing with you has always been one of my favorite things. i love all the little details you put into jake and how you make him stand out among other ocs and other blogs that use jared as a fc. and while we’re at it, let’s talk about jared as a fc bc like honestly once in awhile an oc will come along where the fc is honestly just PERFECT and it makes the character and drives everything and tbh i can’t imagine jake with any other fc. jared is perfect. every last minute detail ( which i’m sure you’ve thought through bc you’re just that attuned to your characters and i love it ) is perfection. seriously i am deathly terrified of zombies but like your blog would make me try and watch twd again. which is a big thing, ok? bc i’m literally terrified of zombies.

@bloodmirrored --- icb i’m literally mentioning you on all of these ffs everyone’s gonna know i’m trash for you. but you have 800 blogs and i can’t tag them all so i’m just gonna tag this one especially and give @reapcriisms a shout out bc fuck man i love aleksei but ok anyway let’s talk about the sweetmeadows: bc i. love. them. so. freaking. much. you’ve made such a wonderful, organic, and believable contrast between the twins. where i don’t think they could exist in a verse where the other one doesn’t. as stand alone characters, they’re phenomenal, but when you put them together it’s like this magic just happens and you get to this whole other level of understanding and quality and overall perfection and i’ve told you before and i’ll tell you again that you honestly do develop some of the best ocs i’ve seen. like you have 800 of them.

@cordeliakomskaikru / @rainkilled --- le sigh. i’m mentioning both of them under one little paragraph bc i don’t wanna seem unfair but i feel like you should know by now that i could go on about your muses for 1800 days. seriously though. i’ve never met anyone who could have the kind of muse range that you do. like all of your muses, be them canon or oc, have different voices and mannerisms and none of them bleed together ( which tbh i feel like is super hard to do idk how you do this ) and i honestly forgot ( like legitimately ) that cordelia and peter weren’t “canon” like i got super confused when the trailer came out and i was like what an outrage where is cordelia i am going to riot oh shit wait she’s not technically in this show whatthefuck basically though, everytime i think i can’t love you more, you go and do something else that makes me love you more. just stop. my heart will explode. and i will die.

@dissolvedshadows --- throwback to those like 6 months where i did nothing but stalk your blog and constantly hover over the follow button and debate whether or not i should just go for it bc i was like ‘well shit if they don’t follow me back imma die’ BUT YOU DID AND HERE YOU ARE and skdjfsdkjlfh wow ok lets talk about caleb and ana. i am a sucker for characters who have two seemingly contrasting characteristics but somehow it works. like case in point, the thousand year old terrifying pretty much all powerful immortal demon who can’t figure out how to google things and ana the badass ‘could probably kill a man with boots and look fab doing it’ but who also i feel like just kinda needs someone to love her ( coughconnorcough ) and it takes someone with serious writing chops to pull that off, which --- hello, it’s you. it’s literally always gonna be you. i don’t think i’ll ever be able to accurately describe how much i adore you. but it’s a lot. a whole lot.

@grcdy --- !!!! JURASSIC WORLD OC !!!! like honestly i don’t know why the whole world doesn’t follow you for just that reason alone? which yes, would do you a total injustice bc you are so much more than just a jurassic world oc BUT YOU’RE A JURASSIC WORLD OC but ok, fangirling about your amazing oc making decisions aside, can we all please collectively appreciate bella? please? because girl is fuckin fantastic. like strong and smart and tough and incredible and badass and all around just a wonderful character that should have existed in the movie ( and now does, in my mind, thanks. ) and i just like, you guys. jurassic world. original character. plus great writing. plus and even better mun. plus just a great fucking character there are no drawbacks.

@keeperofhumanity --- i know you’re not as active on z anymore which tbh i think is a tragedy because of all of your characters ( which are all awesome ) z has always had such a soft spot in my heart. not only have you managed to make a character that is totally and completely badass without going over the top and in your face about it and making it hard to write with, but you’ve managed to weave in this incredibly soft and tender side of her. very few people can do that with the amount of finesse that you’ve managed to. and yes, no matter what blog you’re on you’re an incredible writer and an incredible human, but fucking hell ash you literally mined gold when it came to zandra. she’s incredible. like you.

@lead-pencilskirt --- emma aka the biggest sweetheart of an oc ever to be made aka the love of my life aka idk how you made her this amazing and how you yourself are this amazing but holy shit it’s like the holy grail of rp blogs. like writing with emma feels breezy. chemistry is natural, writing is fun, our threads are kinda just a nice break to be able to reply to. i love well developed ocs that feel like they could super easily just step out of the rp world and into the real world and we would never know the difference and emma i feel like fits that mold to a perfect t.

@motherbuilt --- and here we have another one of those oc’s where i have to literally remind myself that she’s not “canon” because she’s so canon it hurts. honestly i swear i don’t know how you do it or how you’ve made her this true to life and fit her in so well to the t100 universe but you’ve struck gold, okay? because lou feels like a part of that universe. she feels like she belongs with the other characters. and the whole idea of this scared kid who is gonna have a baby on the ground where they’re all probably gonna die? it’s freaking genius. plus lou herself is just all sorts of tough and badass and inspiring but also has this soft side and she’s so loyal and i love her to death. and i love all of our threads so freaking much.

@oddyssea --- okay but you literally took like one of my favorite tropes ( the bantery treasure hunting guy ) and made him better. and you gave him an accent. and you developed tf out of him to the point where i’ll be like psh nice try indiana jones but karter kane coulda done all that and looked better doing it ( which is hard to do, i mean we’re talking about young harrison ford here okay? ) but alright like, not only is karter an incredible oc but he’s one of those muses that i just love reading things for. i love all of your threads, even the ones that don’t even involve me in any way shape or form. you made an oc that’s fun to read and fun to write with and is just all around a great character. fuck man i could go on and on about how incredible he is and i probably will for the next billion years bc you’re stuck with me ( and care ) for at least that long 

@peaceific --- when i first followed you i honestly had to like refrain myself from getting giddy everytime you expressed an interest in writing with me. because you have been and always will be one of THOSE blogs. like the blogs that just radiate in the quality vibe. everything about noah and your blog and your writing and theme and everything is so perfectly matched and formatted and organized, i envy it. and even beyond that, noah is a fucking incredible character. like the most original idea for a character i’ve seen in my time here. i can’t get enough of writing with you. i can’t get enough of talking to you. i just wish i could constantly force you to bask in that kind of love day in and day out until you were like ‘damn ok i get it we’re loved’ 

@roaming-agent --- my girl. caroline’s girl. literally like i feel like you me and lissa need to make some kind of charlie’s angels verse with these three bc that’s totally the vibe i get from them. honestly though i just really love taylor. there’s something about her that’s really innocent and sweet despite the fact that i am fully aware that she is a not so secret badass at heart. she feels so real, and i love the development you’ve done with her and how you’ve expertly woven her into frank and joe’s lives and stories and it just brings new life and new levels and new angles to everything. plus, you’re literally one of the best people to talk to and write with like you’re such a freaking sweetheart idek how to deal with it.

@scarredesmeralda --- alright so we haven’t written yet and we’ve only been following one another for a little bit but already i know i’m gonna love you. because not only do you have a great fucking oc who you’ve managed to adapt to so many different verses ( which is no easy feat, i know ) but you are just like the nicest person ever. you’re like a mama lion protecting her cubs and i love that you’re so bold about what you believe in, i love talking to you, i cannot wait to write with you and explore different verses and muse chemistry and just see how things go. i give you all of the applause because you deserve it.

@sterxid --- ok but will i ever flail enough about how much i adore you and your blog? probably not. but we’re gonna keep trying until you get sick of hearing it. the first time i fell in love with your blog, i fell in love with one of your promos and honestly it was so gorgeous and simplistic and i just had to follow you because i needed more of that kind of quality on my dash. and you did not disappoint. not even for one second. every edit you make has this raw, simplistic, but gorgeous quality that is so aesthetically appealing and it’s all backed by this fantastically developed and written character. i swear lik everything about your blog is so downright gorgeous that i don’t even know how to properly express how much i love it except to flail over you constantly. so that’s what i’m gonna do.

@wulfking --- the god damn love of my life. i’ve told you a lot about how incredible alex is but now i’m just gonna tell you again bc you definitely don’t hear it enough: alex is incredible. you have put so much thought not only into the character you’re writing but into the world around him, his species, his family, his background, his mannerisms that he could ( and should ) be a real canon character somewhere. only i feel like even that would do him a disservice because he is so beyond the constraints of any canon anywhere. you write alex with a kind of adoration and love and skill that i could never hope to have and that a lot of us i think could never really hope to have. you’re just a natural born creative mind and a talented writer and you inspire me on the daily.

#rpc positivity week

[gotgifsandmusings]

My idiocy, reading lenses, and GRRM

So, I was away all weekend with family things. But as I said, I wasn’t able to stop thinking about my most recent podcast and the feedback I’ve received in reblogs, @’s, my inbox, direct messages, and replies. Which like, an absolutely sincere thank you for anyone who took the time, in whatever capacity.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Julia and I recorded a UBS episode called “is GRRM literal garbage,” which we were using as a platform to talk about the flaws of ASOIAF, while sort of being playful about the way that online dialogue puts things in such, you know, black and white terms. People are perfect or they’re toxic and garbage, right? And because of that, there are a lot of times where we feel—or really where I feel, cause it’s just my own thoughts I’m vomiting here—like content creators who at least like, *try*, really do receive unfair criticism.

But yeah, most of the feedback we got was very negative. Particularly, Julia and I—we’re two white women, and we recorded a segment on racial portrayals and racism in ASOIAF, since there are so many problems on this front that we felt disingenuous not doing it. We made sure to call out how we are white before entering into this discussion, and also said something like, ‘hey, if we miss something or if you disagree with us, please tell us so we can engage, because we are limited by our own lack of experiencing racism.’ (And anti-semitism is...not at all of the same vein; nothing pisses me off more than when white jews try to distance ourselves from our racial privilege, to be honest).

Well, not surprisingly at all, we missed stuff! Because of course we fucking did. And it wasn’t just that, but we also put ourselves in a position of saying, “oh we’re apologetic of Martin” and then trying to like...come up with reasons for what are obvious problems through the lens of intent or some shit, which is just...so not what should do ever. Hell, it’s not what we should do with any topic, let alone one where we’re entering into the conversation from such a place of privilege. So yeah, we missed stuff and we sounded like we were apologizing for racism which is not only not our place, but not even what we set out to do.

This wasn’t unique to the problems of racism in ASOIAF either; I received a lot of asks saying that it really felt like I was trying not to let my lens of Martin be challenged. And really ruminating on all this the past few days...there’s a ton of truth to that. Which is a bit silly, because I never exactly thought myself as holding Martin up in the first place—just what I got out of these book series. So what was it I was resisting?

It was Gretchen ( @gnelliswriter ) who ended up framing everything to me in a way where these things that were concatenating—all this criticism that I trying to absorb and understand, finally clicked. Because she talked about the balance of the 3 lenses: Doylist, Watsonian, and Reader Response. Which is also like, viewer response and gamer response, of course.

When she said this, it was just like...“Oh.” Because, Julia and I focus a ton on Doylist vs. Watsonian, you know? Watsonian being a character-level analysis, like “Cersei did this because she was feeling X.” Doylism then looks at what the author is trying to say. “Martin had Cersei do this because he was making a point about Y.” Julia’s the one who explained this to me in the first place—my background is engineering and I hadn’t done any type of literary analysis until the Arianne reread.

However, in terms of dialogue surrounding media, there is quite clearly a third lens. Reader Response is the *reader’s* takeaway. “Cersei did X and regardless of what Martin wanted that to mean, here’s what the message was that I saw, here’s how I reacted, and here’s the implications of it” (or just some aspect of this).

Which...this is the most obvious thing, because it’s the ONLY THING I talk about with Game of Thrones, right? Like, I say GOT isn’t worthy of Watsonian analysis, because it’s not, but then the series of retrospectives Julia and I do where we’re desperately hunting for a Doylist rationalization also reveals that...D&D don’t really have much to say anyway, and they don’t seem to particularly care. Then in these essays, we always go on and say, “Well okay, regardless of that, HERE’S the implications, and they suck donkey dick.” And fuck, I wrote an entire piece on the difference between intent and result, and why results really really matter.

So this whole thing, like... I don’t know, I realize I’m not an English major or anything, but in some ways I kind of feel like Reader Response is actually the only lens that matters? (I can hear the gasps from my academic friends right now.) Or at least, it matters the most heavily, because that’s where engagement is, and that’s where the dialogue occurs that fosters empathy and understanding. I suppose most stories I consume do also foster empathy in some ways (unless they’re nihilistic piss slop), but they’re not ever going to replace the experience of hearing a diversity of voices and viewpoints on something.

For example, with Legend of Korra, which I love, I had zero problems the first time I heard the line in the end about how Korra “needed to know what true suffering was so she could become more empathetic.” I thought the intent was clear, and it was a powerful way of showing someone recontextualizing their trauma and finding a healthy state of mind. However, after reading what many women of color in the fandom wrote on the matter, I understood why that had felt offensive to others, and why it was so uncomfortable to have had two white men put those words into the mouth of a brown, bisexual female protagonist.

So now I’ve like, written fix-it fic of that moment. Because the Reader Response to Korra’s words created that dialogue where otherwise my own lens wouldn't have been challenged, even as a bisexual woman myself. White women simply don’t have a history with the trope of being beaten to “learn respect” that women of color have in media. That’s a privilege, so learning about it was really important. All I want in life is to somehow work towards a world where people don’t feel like shit. The more we learn about the shittyness that exists and try to understand it, the better equipped we will be to fix it. Why *wouldn’t* we prioritize a lens of analysis that can bring that about? 

Honestly, as soon as Gretchen labeled “Reader Response” a third lens, it’s like the clouds parted, and the sun shined onto my own striking idiocy with how I’ve been talking about everything and framing everything (I think we’re going to do a joint piece on this soon). Cause like, it *is* deeply hypocritical—my approach to GRRM compared against my approach to D&D. I say it’s because of “benefit of the doubt”, and that’s a thing, but that doesn’t really explain what was actually happening, it’s more of “I don’t really want to think about this cognitive dissonance”, and it certainly doesn’t help me grow from what went so wrong on the podcast. I was using it as a rhetorical crutch. 

Like, before Gretchen parsed this out with me, I kind of thought a laser-focus on the flaws of a story was just someone being “too Doylist.” But that’s not actually a thing. How would that be one? You can’t try and figure out what an author is saying ~too~ much, though I guess if you only care about what the author’s saying you may, idk, not feel as into the characters or something.

No, what it is, is Reader Response and how you felt interacting with media, which...media is not created or consumed in a cultural vacuum. If I believe media analysis matters, which I do, it’s because of Reader Response. I’m not trying to take “death of the author” to the extreme, but there is a point where whatever authorial intent exists just doesn’t matter. There are impacts reading stories have on people, and on conversations.

So all of this makes how Julia and I approached a podcast about ASOIAF’s flaws all the more stupid. Because basically what we did was read out a laundry list of problems, which are all Reader Response by nature; if we happened to think it wasn’t much of a problem we’d say so (like when I said that I didn’t think Arya and Sansa’s scripting as sisters was sexist, which like...I’m sorry, but I’m sticking to that one), but otherwise the conversation was kind of us going, “oh this is an issue, but here’s maybe a Doylist or Watsonian reason for it.” And that’s...not constructive? I mean, what does that even do?

What should have been a tip-off, too, is that the only time we didn’t do this was when Julia tried to come up with an explanation for Dany’s scene with Irri, and I got really pissed because I just didn’t see any value or justification in it. As a queer woman, my reader response to that was super, super negative, and I had no patience for anything else. Well, Julia and I are limited by our own lenses and backgrounds, so apply that to other issues, and we don’t have experiences where we would get pissed about stuff about which other people are probably seething. But that doesn’t mean the people who are seething should have to listen to the bullshit of “well here’s a point you can consider that makes this gross ass thing valuable!” What the hell do we know about it?

Which, it wasn’t really what we were trying to do, but it absolutely is what the podcast ended up being. And frankly, it’s not like I’ve ever gotten positive or worthwhile takeaways from the way Martin portrays race, with maybe a small exception being the in-verse prejudice against Dorne getting deconstructed within Dornish POVs. That’s just because it even further hammers on POV-bias and shines a lens on Westerosi perspectives in a rather stark light, though I still question its effectiveness. And sure, you can apply that deconstruction elsewhere in the story and assume everyone is an unreliable and biased narrator (they are), but what value is there in Dorne being the only place that actually gets a closer inspection?

And even if Martin is doing something to a point, that doesn’t make it a helpful point or a necessary point. Like, oh we now know Dany’s in way over her head, and doesn’t understand the political or cultural complexity of where she’s trying to rule or what she’s trying to accomplish. Okay, but I’m about 99% sure that same point could have been made with Essosi POVs?? And almost certainly a lot better and clearer???

For fuck’s sake, if we hadn’t had any female POVs for the first three books and people were telling me, “oh it’s to make a point on women’s place in this society,” or idk to prove how unknowable women are to our male protagonists or some shit, there’s no way I’d even be reading this series. And it’s not as though I have any patience for super stereotypical jewish portrayal; it’s just that that’s not exactly possible in ASOIAF. If it were, you can sure as hell bet that I wouldn’t appreciate two goys telling me it’s all for the greater good of writing a...really gross world, or showing how much a character appreciates jewish culture. That doesn’t make any goddamn sense!

Look. Julia and I have gotten a lot out of Martin’s critique of the patriarchy. You can bet your ass a large reason for that is because there’s so many female POVs, not to mention male POVs who are also victims of this horrible setting, such as Theon and Aeron being victims of sexual assault (Theon’s chapters being a much more intimate look), Jaime struggling to define himself in a martial world now that he’s lost his hand, Sam’s trauma from his abusive upbringing, and so on. Julia and I also give Martin leeway because looking at his work chronologically, things do seem to be improving. Which...yay? Snaps?

But really, it’s something @witabif said to me that stuck in my craw as I was talking this out with pretty much anyone in my proximity the past few days: I have a huge tendency to take *my* positive reactions and takeaways to ASOIAF and apply them to Martin’s intent. I think the conflation of Reader Reaction and Doylism is the largest part of that, but what’s funny is I work overtime to not do that, especially with GoT. How many times have I said “we can’t know what’s in D&D’s head,” or steel-manned some dumbass plotpoint of theirs?

At the end of the day, all we really have to judge content creators on are their bodies of work. It’s why I say “it’s the pattern.” And Martin’s pattern? It’s one of a dude who is a pretty skilled storyteller, but also very much out of his depth in a lot of departments. Does he do better than most other 69-year-old white cishet men living in New Mexico? Probably. Is he making an effort to be more thoughtful as times go on? I mean...it feels that way in some places, but that doesn’t erase what’s hurtful in the books now, or what’s ugly, or most importantly, what’s shaping a large part of our cultural conversation because let’s be honest here: these books are hugely successful and have that power. This is why I’ve talked over and over again about fiction mattering. Fuck, this is why I engage with GoT at all and think it’s worthwhile looking at its flaws.

Really, ASOIAF isn’t any different. I mean, it tells a coherent story, so it’s different on that front. And I do find some of the takeaways of the books valuable. I also stand adamant that what Martin does with close PoV is impressive, and he is a gifted writer who can tease out nuance quite well. The battle between good and evil truly is within the human heart, and the experience of reading the books, and then rereading them where you find these other depths, has been one of an engagement I haven’t quite matched elsewhere yet.

But, part of liking something and caring about something means a willingness to engage with its flaws, no matter how deep or uncomfortable they are. Engaging shouldn’t be excusing, and even if I’ve found ways to tease out meaning (for instance, Cersei and Taena’s scene lands one way for me, but not at all the same way for many other wlw readers), my personal reaction and truth is...just that? And I do suspect that a lot of times, I’m seeing something there he didn’t see at all. Which is a tension I should have been digging into this whole time.

Looking back at the podcast, it was a horrible fucking structure for it. I don’t even know if it should have been an episode, to be honest. Because like, aside from just explaining what these problems were, and maybe sampling meta of people who had written on specific issues, there’s not much to add. We can’t proclaim someone to be literal garbage (which was part of the joke of the title), nor can we we proclaim them to be good enough, because...who the fuck are we anyway? I think what we could have done is had discussion about how to engage with deeply flawed media, as kind of a “Here’s all that’s wrong...so, what now?” thing, but we didn’t even discuss our approach beforehand.

I’m thinking about pulling it out of the feed entirely, and please let me know your thoughts on that. On one hand, I think it’s important to not hide from our mistakes and to allow a pathway to grow from them. For that reason, and because I just really want to after taking in this feedback, I’m working on a direct follow-up episode to it for the near future. On the other, I don’t want subscribers still hearing a conversation that’s out-of-balance and problematic, and I can see no reason why the follow-up discussion episode would require the former episode in the feed. I’m leaning towards the latter, but definitely value everyone’s input in the matter.

After typing all this out...it’s not complicated: it comes back to me not wanting to challenge my views on Martin. I didn’t. But now they have been, and it has been because of how amazingly thoughtful this fandom is, as well as the responses and suggestions I’ve received. And you know what? Yeah. I’m disenchanted with the guy. It’s not like a lightswitch, but seeing the misalignment between *my* reader reaction and *his* pattern/messaging has been eye-opening, embarrassing, and frustrating. He’s just some dude with a fairly unique approach to genre fiction and a few good ideas; there’s areas where he excels, and areas where he needs a lot of improvement. A lot.

I’m still going to say stop bothering him about writing speed and stop consulting actuary tables, because that shit is creepy. But otherwise, he’s welcome to fight his own battles. God knows he has the resources. I still think I will land in a different place with how effective his scripting of women is, among other things, and I look forward to continuing to have spirited discussions about all of that. However, it’s now with full cognizance that it’s our reactions and experience to the media that we’re discussing, and my own has diddly squat to do with Martin’s intent.

Which I should have realized from day fucking 1.

#the 'put it in writing'' won by a healthy margin #but I'm going to do a video follow-up too I think #should be tonight #asoiaf #grrm

[gayglitterqueen]

Scars and Nail Polish

Rating: General Audiences Warning: Minor injuries Words: 5115 Pairings: Malec Notes: Superhero au!!! Summary:  Written for isabellebiwoods for secret santa, who asked for superhero au!

AO3

i might have forgotten to post this

Magnus might be screwed.

Okay, scratch that. Magnus is screwed, there’s no use beating around the bush at the moment. Now when he’s probably about to die, or at least get captured by Valentine. At the very best, he has to hope that Valentine himself finds him instead of a lower level squadron of nobody supers. Getting captured by them would just be embarrassing.

Currently, Magnus is seconds from passing out in the middle of wrecked street in the heart of New York City. He shifts slightly, and, yeah, it feels like he was slammed down so hard there’s now an indent in the street in the actual shape of his body. He’s not even sure who got him, he hasn’t bothered to learn any names in the Circle other than Valentine. Well, that’s not completely true, but it’s better than admitting he didn’t see who got him.

It sounds like the fight is still going on. He’s seen several other supers join up, only recognizing two. Naturally, he had seen Catarina on the ground, healing people as the fight went on, and he swears he saw Clary chasing after Valentine, tell tail red hair flowing behind her.

And here he is. Flat on his back. Waiting for the fight to end or for him to get his energy back. He has used up all his remaining strength teleporting out of the middle of the battle, only for someone to sneak up behind him and use the unfair advantage of super strength to try to mold him into the ground. If only he hasn’t used up so much energy with his energy blasts during the fight, he might be able to teleport back to his apartment, but no.

He’s stuck here.

Magnus lets out a long breath out of his nose, wondering how long this will all take. If he’s out much longer Chairman will find hi way into Magnus’ closet and start taking his boredom out on his clothes. That image is incentive enough to at least attempt getting up. It already feels like he won’t be able to move, but he won’t know until he tries it. He sucks in a deep breath, pushes up, and

Fuck that.

Every muscle he has yells at once. No, no, nope. He’ll just lie here and accept death instead, that sounds much nicer.

A sudden boom overhead explodes. Now Magnus is pretty sure death is the most likely option at this point.

The Circle has always been a pain in the ass to deal with –their own fucked up version of justice seems to be centered around screwing literally everyone over – even before Magnus joined the fight to stop them. But Valentine Morgenstern is a special kind of pain in the ass. Mind control and matter creation are such a wonderful mixing of powers, especially when they’re in the guy you’re trying to beat.

A crash follows and Magnus tilts his head back just in time to see a building start to collapse. The street is suddenly flooded with smoke and debris.

Magnus shuts his eyes, waiting for smoke and dust to fill his lungs, but several moments pass and nothing changes. Slowly, Magnus peeks one eye open. He’s greeted the world being filtered through a shimmering light red.

“What the fu-”

“Shh.” Someone hisses and it sounds like it’s…right above him? Then there’s a pressure he can’t see on his mouth, further silencing him. “Wait a second.”

A handful of more crashes happen and then are followed by tense silence. The pressure on his mouth is suddenly gone. The air above him blurs and then he’s face to face with a familiar masked superhero, hovering just a few inches above him.

He’s seen this face a handful of times before. Well, more specifically, he’s seen this black mask before. It only covers the bottom half of his face, leaving the most gorgeous pair of hazel eyes available for him to admire. They’ve interacted only briefly, running into each other on smaller missions, during which Magnus may or may not have taken small opportunities to flirt. Still, they’ve kept their distance mostly, so it’s a little jarring to be this close.

“Hello there.” Is all Magnus can think of to say, stunned from both the encounter and still from the hit.

The superhero – Magnus then remembers he doesn’t even have a name for him yet, he hasn’t seen this masked face in the news at all – raises an eyebrow, but all Magnus can focus on is the small scar running through it. “Um, hi?” He tilts his head slightly, eyes flickering as he examines Magnus’ face. “Are you alright?”

“I would like to say that I’m much better now that I have a cute boy on top of me, but the pain is kind of ruining it.” Magnus admits.

He desperately wishes that this wasn’t a situation that calls for masks and secret identities, mostly because the hero above him doesn’t laugh. Magnus has no idea if he’s frowning or smiling down at him. “Do you have a concussion?”

“I’m no doctor, but I’m kind of hoping I don’t. Now, not that this position isn’t lovely, I would prefer to be standing on my feet. Do you happen to have any plans of getting off me any time soon?”

There’s still no concrete expression behind the mask, but Magnus swears he catches the faintest trace of pink just above where it ends on the tops of his cheeks before he ducks down, completely hiding his face. “Right- sorry, sorry.” He mutters, climbing to his feet. The red force field around them shudders as he does so, expanding to make room for his height. “Can you get up?”

“If I say no, will you carry me?” Magnus bats his eyes. The hero doesn’t respond. “Right. It doesn’t matter your answer because, no, I can’t.”

The hero leans down, grabs both of Magnus’ hands, and slowly pulls him back up to his feet. It’s surprisingly easy. Magnus wasn’t exactly stuck, but instead his body so tired it refused to move. Refuses to move. He stumbles once he’s on his feet and reaches out to latch onto the hero’s arm.

“I’m all out of power.” Magnus explains, letting go of one hand to rub at his face.

“How long until you’re good?”

“Just give me a few minutes.” Magnus doesn’t mean for it to come out as snappy as it does, but he’s tired and the longer he stands the more he feels like he’s just going to collapse to the ground and be done with it all. This doesn’t happen often, he’s usually much more considerate about it, so it hurts even worse the rare occasions it does. So sue him if he’s grumpier than usual. “I’ll be right as rain in no time.”

The hero raises his eyebrow again, this time clearly unimpressed. “Come on. I think the worst of it’s died down, but we should still lie low.”

“We?” Magnus just gets out the word before he jumps, hands flying off the hero’s arm. It feels like someone has shocked him after walking across a carpet with their socks on. The hero is having none of that apparently, he reaches out to take one of Magnus’ hand in his own. The shock is still there, but Magnus is expecting it this time.

“It doesn’t hurt so much if you get it over with quickly.” The hero explains in a gentle voice. The sparking feeling fades and is replaced by a ripple, starting from where his fingertips touch the hero’s hand to the rest of his body. It looks like ripples as well, a soft red washing over him and the hero. “This way no one can see us.”

“Ah, the perks of invisibility.” Magnus holds his hand up to the light, frowning when he sees it doesn’t look any different.

“You aren’t see though or anything.” The hero is struggling to keep his voice dreadfully dull.

“I can tell.” Magnus quickly replies, dropping his hands to his side, unwilling to admit he had hoped for that.

The hero rolls his eyes, Magnus wonders if he’s frowning. “Come on, follow me.”

Magnus has to lean on the hero much more than he would like to admit as they hurry down the street. The smoke still hasn’t cleared yet, but the force field around them keeps up easily, keeping everything out. They’re several blocks away when the hero tugs Magnus into an alley, both of them taking a moment to lean against the brick wall.

The silence between them is shockingly comfortable, but Magnus can’t help but fill it. “I’m very sorry, but I don’t think I’ve gotten your name yet. I don’t recall seeing you in the news much.”

The hero huffs – a laugh? – and his posture relaxes a tad. He leans his head back against the wall, eyes closing. “It’s kind of hard to get credit when you do most of your job invisible.”

“So, do you have a super name yet? Or is that still undecided?”

“Call me Lightwood.”

Magnus can’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. “Interesting choice.”

“Like you’re one to talk, Bane.” Lightwood opens his eyes to give him a look that Magnus is assumes is teasing, but just makes him want to rip that mask off his face so he can know.

Instead Magnus scoffs. “Excuse me, that is a very good name. Short, sweet, and to the point.”

“If you say so.” Lightwood rolls his eyes before slipping them closed once again.

“I will admit, it is nice to know you’ve heard of me.” Magnus grins, shifting closer. He can feel a hum of energy radiating from Lightwood, warming the air around them.

“Who hasn’t? You’re kind of hard to miss.”

“How so?”

Lightwood, without opening his eyes, gestures to all of Magnus. “The hair, the costume, the- hell, even your mask has glitter on it. I don’t understand how you sneak up on anyone.”

“Small price to pay to look amazing.” Magnus shrugs. “What about you? Mr. All Black. You can at least turn yourself invisible, you don’t have to try to blend in with the shadows. A nice blue would do you some good. Cobalt? It would bring out your eyes.”

Lightwood snorts. “My eyes, huh? Also, I look good in black, so I don’t see a problem here.”

“Hm, I can’t argue with that.” Magnus purrs, taking a moment to let his eyes rake up and down Lightwood’s body. Whoever decided super suits should be tight fitting is a saint, honestly. In the back of his mind he can feel something, distracting him. His muscles still ache and he feels bone tired, but he know sit’s been long enough. “As much as I would love to stay and continue discussing fashion, I believe it’s time we part ways. Is there anywhere specific you’d like me to send you before I head home?”

Lightwood opens his eyes and looks Magnus over, as if making sure he really is okay to go. “Nah. I’m pretty sure my apartment was fucked up in the fight anyway, I’ll just head to a friend’s place, not so far from here.”

“Suit yourself.” Magnus shrugs. Slowly, he brings up his fingers and snaps. Where Lightwood once stood is his bed and instead of an alleyway surrounding him his bedroom does.

He doesn’t bother taking his suit off before collapsing face first onto the bed.

Alec could be doing better, all things considered.

His sister had once told him to keep a list of good things when everything gets shitty. He doesn’t exactly have one at the ready for this kind of situation, so instead he decides to improvise it.

Okay first off: the lid out of the sewer isn’t actually as heavy as he imagined it. Sure, his shoulder screams like a bitch as he pushes it up and it may be making his bleeding worse, but at least it can be pushed up. Next, he’s actually found his way out of the sewer. He’s never appreciated fresh air more. Then…

Nothing.

It’s a short fucking list. Isabelle would be so disappointed. Well, she’d also be disappointed if he dies from bleeding out, so there’s a few more urgent issues to attend to, even with her feelings in mind.

Alec pulls himself up onto the street and falls forward onto his chest. He knows he should get moving. The big, ugly fucker Valentine sent after him is still on his tail. Alec had only managed to stun him for a few moments, just enough to get a decent head start, but it won’t last long. He needs to get up and start moving or at least hide. But his shoulder feels like it’s been ripped apart, he’s soaked to the bone, and isn’t sure any of his muscles actually work anymore. The only thing he is sure still works are his blood vessels and he only knows this because the puddle of blood he’s lying it is slowly getting bigger.

Okay, so things aren’t looking great.

He manages to pull himself up and only hiss a significant list of curses, not shout them like he’d prefer to. He reaches up to press his hand around where he’s pretty sure the wound is, but it all feels bloody and mangled so he’s not quite sure.

“Oh dear. That doesn’t look good at all.”

Alec automatically tenses at the voice, already debating if he should run or fight, before forcing himself to relax. He knows that voice. He knows that tone. He turns and isn’t surprised to see Bane standing before him.

It’s really unfair, how no matter what he’s doing, Bane always looks good. Hell, he looked good last week when Alec found him almost passed out. It has to be some magic. Maybe the glitter or something. Or the bright lipsticks he always wears. Last time they’d seen each other Bane had been covered in dirt and completely worn out, but now it’s Alec’s turn to look like a mess as Bane looks down at him, completely put together.

Bane’s lips curl up into a smirk, they’re painted a bright pink this time around. “Need a little help?”

“Um, yeah, kind of.” Alec nods, hoping the reason he feels so out of it is because of blood loss. He pulls his hand from his shoulder and looks down at it, seeing it completely soaked red. “That’s not good,” he mumbles to himself.

“I’d say you’re right about that.” Bane agrees and suddenly Alec isn’t on the ground anymore, but in the air. Rather, in Bane’s arms.

His eyes widen in shock and his good arm automatically reaches out to latch around his neck. Being carried bridal style out of a fight by Bane wasn’t exactly how he pictured the evening going. “Uh- ah- wh- what are you doing?” He does his best to keep his voice from squeaking, but he can’t do anything to control how hot his face is getting. Thank for for the superhero mask.

“Helping.” Bane says simply, yellow eyes gleaming with delight. Alec wonders if it’s an effect of his mask, which only covers the top half of his face, or if it’s something that came with his powers. “Now, this may feel a bit odd, but don’t you worry your pretty little head.”

“Pretty?” Is all Alec’s head can come up with as a reply before he’s enveloped. It lasts half a second at most, but it feels like someone’s thrown a heavy blanket over him. One minute he’s surrounded by a darken street, feet away from the entrance to the sewer, the next he’s in a harshly lit room next to a white bed. “What the-?”

Alec doesn’t get to finish his question. Bane quickly sets him down on the bed and holds up a finger. His nails are painted the same pink as his lips. “I’ll be right back.” He doesn’t teleport out of the room, but instead heads towards what looks like a bedroom door. He shuts it closed behind him.

Alone, Alec has a chance to take in the room. What he’s lying on is clearly a hospital bed, but the room isn’t. It looks like an apartment bedroom, wooden floors and a green, musty carpet. There’s bright lights hung up on the ceiling and all the windows are boarded shut. Maybe Alec would have had better luck in the sewers.

“I hate you.” A woman’s voice sounds out. Alec nearly jumps up as the door is thrown open. A woman with dark blue skin and bright white hair walks in, features that he can see pinched in frustration. The bottom half of her face is covered by a surgical mask. Bane follows closely behind, his own ease contrasting. The woman walks up to Alec, hands on her hips, but thankfully her frustration doesn’t seem to be directed at him. “Name?”

“A- Lightwood. It’s Lightwood.” He almost fucks up by giving his full name. It feels like being back in a hospital, nurse checking his information. She sounds just like a nurse.

“And what exactly did you do to your shoulder?” She asks, turning to a small table next to the bed, opening a draw. She pulls out a pair of scissors. She begins cutting off torn pieces of his suit, placing them onto the table next to her. “Hope you know how to sew.”

“I got, um-. I went after two of Valentine’s super’s and this one girl had really sharp teeth. She got a bite in before I could knock her out.”

At the end of the bed Bane winces in sympathy.

“Ew.” The woman mutters. “Stay still for this.”

She presses her bare hand flat against his wound. He flinches at the initial stab of pain from the contact, but quickly it’s replaced by a different feeling. Like someone washing warm water over him, the pain starting to numb away.

“Cat here is a healer.” Bane explains, leaning over the railing slightly. “She runs this little joint.”

“Cat?” Alec repeats, head still a little too hazy to make sense of what’s going on.

“Meow.” Cat deadpans, eyes still focused on her hand. “And, yes, I do run this place. And it runs a lot smoother if people call ahead of time to let me know they’re coming.”

Bane shrugs, still smiling easily. “It was an emergency.” He turns back to Alec, yellow eyes lighting up. “This is one of the few places we supers can come to recover without giving up our secret identities. Unfortunately, it’s a lot less than legal, but it does have real doctors and nurses, so that’s a plus.”

“Hm,” Alec hums in agreement, but he can’t seem to find anymore words. He’s too busy watching Bane’ hands, how he moves them when he talks, how the pink nail polish catches in the light. He’s so pretty.

“I think it’s hit him.” Cat mutters, finally looking up to look back at Bane. Her hand drops from Alec’s shoulder. “Lightwood, do you want to rest here? Or is there somewhere else you want us to take you?”

“‘M staying with a friend.” Alec mutters, reaching up to touch his shoulder. It’s smooth skin, not a trace of what happened.

“Ah, yes. I remember you mentioning them. Are they a super?” Bane asks, tilting his head.

Alec almost laughs. Lydia, a super. Like the government works with supers. He doesn’t. “Nah. She’s just a friend.”

“And do you think she’d mind me dropping you off there?”

“Nah.”

“Well.” Bane claps his hands together, startling Alec. “That settles it. Just give me an address and I’ll drop you off. And then,” he looks at Cat, “I’ll head on back to help with your shift. How does that sound?”

Alec shrugs and Cat just frowns, raising an eyebrow at Bane.

“Well, aren’t the both of you just darling ? Lightwood, do you remember the address.” He does. Barely. “Across town, that’s not too bad. See you soon, Cat.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.” She replies, heading back to the door.

Alec doesn’t think to thank her until she’s out the door and he’s back in Bane’ arms. And then he forgets all over again because, well, isn’t this a comfy place to be? The blanket feeling is back and then he’s in Lydia’s living room. The apartment is completely dark, since Lydia won’t be back for another two days for some work trip.

“Where do you sleep?” Bane asks, glancing around.

Alec can’t help but lean his head into the crook of Bane’s shoulder and, oh, this is much more comfy. “Couch.” He mumbles.

Bane walks over, just a few feet, and leans down to set Alec lying down on the couch. Alec frowns, preferring for Bane to keep holding him. He looks up and there’s an odd look in Bane’s eyes, but Alec is too tired to figure it out.

“So.” Bane sighs, crossing his arms. “Cat’s effects usually wear off in twelve hours. You really just need to sleep it off. If it hurts just take some Advil or something and try not to get bitten by anyone else for the next few days. Lightwood? Think you can manage that?”

Alec hardly manages to nod. “Yeah. Sleep. Advil. Got it.”

Bane sighs. “All right then.”

Alec’s halfway asleep in seconds, but he when he wakes up he swears feeling a hand running through his hair and someone placing a blanket on him.

Now this is a cute neighbor.

Such an improvement from the last one, a stuffy old lady who didn’t even have the perk of owning too many cats. She hated everything that had a heartbeat and always scowled at Magnus whenever they crossed paths. Luckily, Magnus had found out a few weeks ago she was moving out, by waking up to the sound of her yelling at some poor moving boy for apparently breaking something. There had been no news of anyone moving in, and Magnus didn’t dare keep his hopes up for someone decent, maybe halfway decent. The new neighbor’s boxes had appeared just two days ago in the hallway.

Yet, this is the first time Magnus is seeing him. And even if Magnus had let himself raise his hopes, he would not be disappointed. It’s been so, so long since he’s had a neighbor he can properly admire.

They’re in the laundry room, which while not the perfect place for a first meeting, Magnus doesn’t really mind. It’s a small room with an even smaller window, paint peeling and machines yellowed, with two tables on opposite ends of the room. The new neighbor is on the far side of the room, laundry basket at his feet, hunched over what he assumes to be his clothes.

Not the perfect place, but it’ll do.

Magnus doesn’t really mean to sneak up on him, but years of having to be stealthy makes it a habit hard to break and he walks up completely silent. His eyes rake over his neighbor. He’s only gotten a small glance at his face, but is more than ready to take in his broad shoulders and big arms.

It may also have been a while since Magnus has had a good hookup, so why not take up the opportunity?

“Hello there.” Magnus practically purrs once he’s at the table, laundry basket resting on his hip and smirk on his face.

His neighbor jumps slightly, grip tightening on a shirt in surprise. He turns to look at Magnus with wide eyes and-

Oh, yes. A definite improvement.

“Um, hi?” His neighbor seems a bit taken aback, but if it’s due to the fact that Magnus surprised him or he just wasn’t expecting anyone to join him today he can’t tell. “Can I help you?”

“Well, I happened to notice you’re the new neighbor in the building and we haven’t been formally introduced.” Magnus sets his basket down on the table and reaches out, pink nail polish glittering in the light. “I’m Magnus.”

His neighbor’s eyes dart to his hand, pausing for a second before dropping the shirt and fully turning towards him. His lips ease up into a smile as he shakes Magnus’ hand. “Alec.”

“Short for Alexander?” Magnus asks, now taking his time with letting his eyes roam up and down Alec, able to completely appreciate him.

He doesn’t miss the way Alec’s face seems to heat up. “Um- yeah, but I- but no one ever calls me that.”

“I don’t know, I quite like the name. Alexander.” He repeats the name and, yes, Alec’s face is turning a lovely shade of pink. It’s been so long since he’s had the chance to properly flirt, between saving the world and his day job he just hasn’t had the time, he’d forgotten how much fun it is. “But, if you really insist, I can just call you Alec.”

“No- no.” Alec stumbles over the word, like he’s trying to get it out too fast. “It’s – fine. It’s fine with me.”

Magnus grins. “Wonderful.” He turns to face his laundry basket and begins pulling clothes out. He can practically feel Alec’s gaze on his hands, but that’s normal, people are often taken aback by his amazing wardrobe. “I happen to live just down the hall from you, I’m surprised he haven’t met before.”

“Really?” Alec’s voice sounds oddly tight, but when Magnus glances over he’s staring down at his clothes, back to folding. “I’ve been busy with – work. And moving.”

“Understandable. Do you work nearby?”

“At the police station down the block.” Alec shrugs.

Magnus chuckles at that before he can stop himself. Of course he does. “That must be fun. Being a cop in a big city inhabited by superheros. I always hear such positive things from them about supers.”

Alec snorts, rolling his eyes as he finishes another t-shirt. “Oh, yeah. Everyone there loves supers.”

“And you?”

It’s not like it matters, really. It’s not like Alec could figure out who Magnus is. That’s what secret identities are for, that’s what Magnus’ mask is for. It matters even less if this does turn out to just be a quick hookup where they end up saying hello every once and a while in the hall afterwards. He shouldn’t ask, he already knows the answer. But part of him wants to hear Alec say it. To confirm, no to deny what his assumption is.

“What do I think of supers?” Alec asks, once again turning to Magnus. He looks surprised again, but more of an I-wasn’t-expecting-that rather than a you-almost-made-me-jump-out-of-my-skin surprised. “I don’t- I mean. They save people, right? They try to protect yo- us. So, isn’t that what matters?”

Magnus slowly turns to look at Alec again, eyes widening until he’s sure they look comical. That. Uh. That wasn’t the answer he had been expecting. It’s a well known fact the police hate supers. They didn’t at first, but now apparently they get in the way too much and cause more damage than they’re worth. So. Yeah. Maybe Alec isn’t actually a police officer, maybe he’s just a receptionist or something? Do police stations even have that?

Magnus tries to remember every crime drama he can and if they have one or not.

“I… suppose.” Magnus choses the word carefully, reaching into his basket. Instead of touching cloth he feels the plastic bottom. “But don’t all-. Hm. Isn’t it quite common for police and supers to not get along?”

“So? that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing good work.” Alec raises an eyebrow and immediately Magnus’ attention is captured by the small scar running through it-

Oh.

Oh no.

No.

That can’t be-

Can it?

It can’t.

But it’s not like…it’s common. It’s not like he’s seen a scar like that in the exact same place on the exact same eyebrow on a lot of people. Only one. He’s only seen it twice.

Magnus forces himself to take a deep breath and not just start yelling. His mind is racing and it takes all his effort to sound as casual as possible. “True. I’m sorry, I was just a little surprised.

"You wouldn’t be the first.” Alec admits, eyebrow still raised. His scar still stands out clear as day, mocking Magnus now. He wants to reach up and touch it, make sure it’s real. He wants to dig through Alec’s basket, see if he can find any piece of the familiar super suit.

He doesn’t do any of that.

“It’s a shame, really.” Magnus continues, and wow, he’s impressed with himself that he’s keeping the act up so well. “If there were more people like you maybe others wouldn’t jump to conclusions. Forgive me, darling?”

Alec huffs out a laugh, and oh god, does he know? Does he recognize Magnus too? That’s what his lips look like when he laughs? Secret identities were a good idea two minutes ago, but as of now fuck secret identities. Magnus has to know.

“I think I can find it somewhere in my heart to do that.” Alec smirks and now Magnus can’t look away from his lips instead of his scar. “What good would a grudge be against my brand new neighbor?”

“I know of some badly written comedies and sitcoms that would heavily disagree with that sentiment.”

That gets an actual, full on laugh out of Alec. Magnus is starting to move out of the territory of downing in questions to a much more comfortable place. “Fair enough. I’ll see you around, I guess?”

Magnus has been so distracted that he hadn’t even noticed Alexander’s already done folding. How long has he been done? Hopefully not too long. He watches Alec bend over to get his basket. Yes. He’s now sure that it’s the same person behind the mask. “Fuck yes you will,” he mutters.

Alec brings the basket up with me and look at Magnus, question in his eyes. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I said I hope we do.”

“Oh.” Alec offers him a small smile in return, hands stumbling over his clothes as he hurries to put them all away. He keeps his basket held firmly in front of him. “I hope so too, Magnus.”

As soon as Alec’s out of the room, Magnus pulls up his phone to look up rare pictures of Lightwood, just to double check he isn’t losing his mind.

Nope. Same scar. Same hazel eyes. Similar messy hair.

Magnus’ mouth twitches up, the beginnings of his own smirk.

Oh, he can’t wait to see Lightwood again.

#shbetanetexchange #shadowhunters #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #text #mine #my writing #shadowfamnet

[survivorinternational]

Episode 8 - "You got outwitted and outplayed, and soon... you will be outlasted." - Michael

HAHAHAHAHA omg I didn't get voted out and I still have an idol this is awesome! And good on everyone for breaking up that 4 I'm kinda glad Randy is gone but I'm glad I didn't have to be the one to do it. 

Things went odd last round, i think any trust i had in the undersog alliance is gone and vice versa, i think they were playing me and i surprised them with immunity. At least that showed Allan where he stood with them. Now I’m back to putting it all in with the ala mai alliance. To emily, liana, allan, and vilma though, I want them to think of my as a possible flipper. Good god Im a messy player.

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V-RSwer7lduEhNN176RfuaIrZZEzyqpe/view?usp=drivesdk

That tribal was a fucking mess. No-one was willing to throw out names until the last min which lead to the most stressful, panicked scramble I've ever seen. Originally there was a chance that there were enough votes for Randy. Emily seemed very hesitant to on her OG tribe and Allan wanted to vote elsewhere. About 3 hours before Tribal, Allan suggested the numbers would be there to take out Liana, and after some discussion, the vote seemed to switch onto her. Then, as if noticing he was safe, Randy pushed for a vote onto Jacob. This immediately got everyones back up and caused all the votes to go back onto Randy. It was his own fault he got voted out and frankly... I am glad. The reaction from both Randy and Clash is comical and sad at the same time. Randy seemed to take the vote far to personally and the way he acted after is not in the spirit of the game (calling people ugly and dumb cunts in PMs) Clash saying "no-one told him about a Randy vote" and that everyone lied to him... Im sorry, but this is a game that involved Outwitting... you got Outwitted and outplayed and soon... you will be outlasted. And don't pull that "everyone lied to me" bullshit... You lied to everyone else as well... you even said to me that you "spoken to Jacob to much to vote for him" what happened there huh? All in all, With that tribal out of the way, it seems like we now have a few alliances. The OG Ala Mai (Jacob, Tyler, Stephen and myself), The Trust Cricle (Vilma, Emily and myself), the outsiders (Clash, Pat and Liana) and Allan finding his way. If I can get Allan on board, we should be able to flush out one or 2 idols next vote while still taking out an outsider. GAME ON MOLES!!! 

i bid all my money on one item and it ended up being nothing i guess that’s what i get 

Final 10 baby. I've been trying to lay low, talk to people and make a minimal presence, but after the Randy vote, and ironically having the most votes out of anyone this season, it's been hard. At this point I've managed to wriggle my way into a position that almost anyone can come talk to me, hopefully I can do some more talking to the likes of Patrick, Allan and Liana. I don't want them to potentially be on the jury thinking that I don't want to talk to them at all.

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Received votes at 3/3 tribals, and if Liana's group targets me again, and flips Emily/Vilma, I'll be a goner. I tested the waters with Michael, Clash and Stephen about voting Emily, Michael wasn't down so I pulled back instantly, I'm now hoping that that didn't make a lasting impression and I can get the vote onto Patrick again. If I can get Clash to use his extra vote on Patrick, and get in touch with Vilma/Emily/Allan, I may be safe.

-_- that is all

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So things are weird atm. Jacob and co want to vote out Pat, and think Clash is on board with that. Clash is telling me he is lying, and that he is really trying to get me Liana Pat Allan Himself and his extra vote to vote out Emily. Soooo Idk what to do. On one hand Emily is a strong player, on the other hand Clash is A Mess(tm). However Clash thinks we’re tight. It boils down to who i want to piss off, Emily and co. who arent really working with me, and by extension the rest of og ala mai. Or, Clash and co. who are a little less together, but maybe thats better in the long run? 

so apparently jacob has doubted my loyalty and is coming for me. fat fucking chance you arrogant moron. i saved you the past two round and now i’m going to be the reason you go home! like literally! do not fucking cross me it will not be pretty! :) he has made me mad beyond belief so a blindside WILL be coming honey. it will be.

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not little miss emily heading a big blindside against jacob and the ala mai boys? yee freaking haw! i think this will literally work. we should have like six or seven votes on jacob if my plan works out how i want it to :)

Hi, yay randy went home he wasn’t my favourite. Now pats the target and we’re having a hoot of a time

What is even happening. I cant keep up with this game and I'm so frustrated with being played by everyone all the time.

I feel bad I didn't have time to explain the last round properly, but all I'm gonna say is it was quite messy and I changed my mind a couple times. Ultimately Em got put off by Randy's unwillingness to vote Liana and he threw my name out so we felt more comfortable voting him out instead of Liana. Moving on to this round: I'm p sure the og Ala Mai bois have an alliance I just hope Michael doesn't leak everything to them I'm trying to be as open as possible with both Emily and Michael so they would trust me 100% I need to be able to trust at least some people's word here Jacob has lowkey been dictating the merge votes so far Seems like he is kinda dictating this one too I think last round going his way gave him confidence to throw names out I'll let him do that in hopes of keeping away from the spotlight But since we're voting out people he's the least connected with, I have to try and remember what would be the ideal moves from my perspective I think getting rid of one of the people who voted in minority is a solid idea for this round Because if we got rid of someone else they would have a solid group of three for next and that's kinda dangerous (and the suspicion of Clash having an idol on top, yikes) But after next vote it might be time to get rid of one of the Ala Mai bois I feel I've done an okay job seeming quite unthreatening lately I don't see why I should get targeted over some more dangerous players My biggest fear is Clash idoling me out because he holds grudges I'm fine staying in the background for now, it's only f10, bigger plays will come in picture later Although it'll be difficult for me to make any with zero advantages in my pocket That's my biggest concern Other people will be able to claim moves as their own because they have advantages they can use And I'm just relying on people using them to help my position And not against me I'm kinda a potential goat at this point But it's too early to worry about that Just trying to keep my name away from people's mouths So I had a good convo with Emily and she really doesn't want to vote against Patrick which I don't blame her for. I personally wouldn't mind one of Clash/Pat going home especially with the possibility of flushing an idol in the process. But on the other hand Jacob has been on a power trip lately and was trying to turn people against Emily earlier. Everyone kinda knows Emily and I are close so it would be an indirect stab at me as well. I'm not a big fan of that kind of thinking. He even made a chat with Emily and I without asking either of us if we wanted to be in one haha that was funny. I think he definitely has a chat with the Ala Mai bois and made the chat with Emily and I in hopes of being able to guide our votes through that one as well. It's not a great look for him, I must say. So Emily and I were toying with the possibility of siding with Patrick/Liana/Allan/possibly Clash and voting Jacob out instead. I'm not exactly sure if it'll happen since people are having trouble responding to me, that makes me think they already have a plan in fruition that I'm not aware of. Or they just trust people will vote Em with them, not sure? Also Clash and Jacob have gotten closer recently, I'm scared Clash wouldn't want to vote Jacob out but I'm not sure. But as far as I know I'm probably voting either Clash/Patrick or Jacob tonight. Let's see how things develop from here. I'm kinda ready to go home though tbh, this game is starting to stress me out. I'm up for a Vilma blindside. 

Once again... This scramble is a mess What should be an easy vote on Pat or Clash has now evolved to people wanting to make moves and others trying to react. Jacob asked me last night to put forward my vote towards Emily which I find extremely strange after she helped save him the last two TCs. I explained that if we vote out Em this TC, Vilma and Allan would turn and Ala Mai will become the target. Emily and Vilma decided that they dont like Jacob talking about this vote and are now trying to rally numbers against Jacob And to top it all off, Clash may have an Idol... ARGH!!!! In my mind, this vote should have been a 4 Pat, 3 Clash and 3 ??? Vote with my using my vote blocker... but now things are everywhere. Hopefully i've done enough to keep my name out of talks 

I want this to be known that IF I go home I knew I couldn’t trust allan and that he or Stephen was leaking everything to Emily and she knew. If there are no Jacob votes I will be impressed but also impissed, and I’ll be mad because that will likely mean I’m going home. I really think they was me out. Little ol me. Super unfair. But I guess we’ll see. And tbh clash is hinesty bae. He’s been super great to work with I like him a lot 

So last round was a mess and I think this one will be too. Let's go back to last TC. Basically Randy was being rude af towards me because I told him I wanted to vote Michael out and because I knew there was a group of people already voting Randy out I decided to take him out too. I honestly feel like I was deciding vote and that move will either make or break my game imo. Now, at the auction, I won the ability to exile myself for 24 hours and miss TC. I was really tempted to use it this round but I figured it would make me an extremely easy vote when I came back because there had already been tension. So I'm holding off until at least next round to use it and the plan right now is to blindside emily using Clash's extra vote. I really hope the plan works but even if it backfires, I think I can take a backseat and let all the drama unfold in front of me. 

i could very much be going home this round BUTTTTTT i am optimistic that it will be JACOB going home instead of me or clash. tldr: jacob wanted to flush an idol of clash’s, that clash may or may not have... he kind of insinuated to me he had it but lmao! jacob’s real plan was to vote pat so i decide to go to pat, clash, and liana with this new plan and tell them what’s up. while they were (rightfully so) upset with me from last round, i think they believed me and are on board to vote for jacob will me, vilma, and allan. and michael is aware of this plan but is voting pat to save face (or idk who he’s voting tbh) anyway i think i have successfully planned a blindside against jacob but also i’m playing so freaking hard at this rate i’m playing for fifth place. no one is going to let me get to the end of the game if i keep going so HARD lmao! i need to calm down next round for real omg

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just. a confessional. to say how much i love vilma. i knew we were put in this game together for a reason. i love her

So after Randy going I lost my closest ally but now I am gonna try and get Stephen and Allan back and make them flip on Emily and hopefully Emily goes that will break up Vilma too 

Uhh I don't think voting Jacob is the best move for me But I'm just gonna go with it it's too late to change my mind I'm playing such a weird game I'm playing for 3rd place right now But I just wanna be loyal to Emily and Michael ugh they're so great Last round I didn't feel bad because I was voting for someone who wanted me out anyway But I think Jacob kinda trusts me so I feel bad voting him Plus he is actually really nice But he didn't tell me about the plan to blindside Emily though Even though I guess it was Clash's plan originally I still wish he would've told me I think this flip will backfire on me next round Emily has better ties to the other side I feel so I'm going to be the one struggling more from flipping And we won't even flush any of the idols out I feel sticking with the split would've been much smarter But I don't think Emily would budge, she won't vote Pat this round Oh well It's kinda new to me to be playing this crazy? I won't win but at least I'm trying out something new lol Chaos Vilma... Yay? Nay? Also a bit paranoid someone has told Jacob what's up and they're coming up with a counteractive plan as we speak but. Tbh I'm tired and I just want to sleep. If I get fucked I get fucked and that's okay. I love Emily. 

More worried than ever this tribal, I'm pretty much guaranteed to never catch a break with votes, still not sure why. I'm also going against Clash here which I hate to do, but I'd rather hurt Clash, than hurt all of ala mai.