#like i know it's not cool or trendy or whatever in this fandom to be like 'the dark side is wrong and not the natural state of the force'

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

What do you think Divus was like during his student years in NRC?

Personally I think he was a mixture of Ace, Cater, and Vil. A mischievous troublemaker who was also trendy and sociable with a good fashion sense. Since he is the potion and science teacher, I think he was in Pomefiore.

Also I don’t know if this is true or not, but I heard somewhere that Divus mentioned that he was always followed by two lackeys, who I have no doubt are the twisted versions of Jasper and Horace.

We actually already know some things about Crewel's student days from canon (mainly taken from his Unified Exams voice lines and/or from Happy Beans Day):

Trein was a teacher at NRC when Crewel was a student.

Trein says that Beansfest got out of hand during the time Crewel was studying there, which led to there being stricter rules imposed for the current iteration of Beansfest. (It is not known if Crewel himself contributed to that aforementioned chaotic run.)

There was an incident when student!Crewel accidentally overturned a pot of mandrakes. Their screams shattered all the glass in the Alchemy workshop.

Crewel tells us what he wasn’t as rowdy as the kids are nowadays.

He’s still in contact with two of his “henchmen” (ie his juniors) that he met back in school. Crewel implies they aren’t clever, but that he can be himself around them. These two men are most likely twisted versions of Cruella’s hired help, Jasper and Horace.

From what we know of the canon, here are some conclusions I've personally drawn:

Knowing Trein and Crewel's current relationship (they disagree on trivial things like whether cats or dogs are better; it gets Trein riled up), I assume that they've never really gotten along. Perhaps Crewel was a constant sore spot for Trein or was frequently reprimanded for his behavior in spite of having excellent grades.

Crewel has a voice line in which he advises the player to not wholly devote their efforts to studying and keeping their head down, or else they will become inflexible as adults. He also advises them to “go wild once in a while”, but not so wild that professors will scold you. This makes me think that Crewel had a similar attitude when he was a student himself. That is to say, he was a good student, but also had his rebellious streaks and moments of acting out. Maybe he went too far sometimes, which is why he now informs the player to not cause trouble for their teachers in the pursuit of seeking thrills or a break from their studies.

As the sender has mentioned, Crewel has good fashion sense and currently teaches science courses, meaning he must be proficient in the area. These traits make him a suitable ex-Pomefiore student, as that dorm tends to have students that enjoy aesthetics and excel in potion-making. (This is also the popular headcanon within the fandom.

Crewel has what I would call “refined” tastes and interests, such as sports cars. I feel like he also had this discerning eye for quality and trends as a student.

Crewel is strong-headed and asserts himself well. He walks into a room and just commands it. Because of this, I see him easily being kind of a “leader of the pack” kind of guy—a cool, charismatic person that others can’t help but follow or admire, even if they hate his guts or find him pretentious. I don’t know if I would call him friendly (like, I don’t see him as outgoing), but rather he’s just got a magnetic presence that attracts people to him and definitely knew how to navigate a complex social web.

He gives me the impression that lots of his classmates looked up to him or called him “aniki” (as a sign of respect) 😂 (Twisted Jasper and Horace definitely do this www)

Sometimes I feel like Crewel’s leadership capabilities weren’t used for the… best purposes? Like I’m sure he had his spats of immaturity and led his boys to pull off some stupid pranks or whatever. Maybe they put Lucius in a tree so they can all get out of an exam while Trein is looking for his familiar?? But then they all get an earful about it later… That’s just one example off the top of my head!

The student!Crewel I picture is a lot like Vil in many ways, but stands on his own due to his wild side. Someone who is cool, confident, fashionable… with his own set of rules and a slight edge to him that isn’t very Vil-like.

I hope that sufficiently explained my thoughts ^^

#twisted wonderland #twst #Divus Crewel #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst #Cruella de Vil #Horace #Jasper #notes from the writing raven #question #Mozus Trein #twst resource #twisted wonderland resource #twst headcanons #twisted wonderland headcanons #Vil Schoenheit #Lucius

[davekat-sucks]

"OH my god, Anon! [Feferi]'s PETA!"

spot on on, because if meenah is more like caliborn, feferi is more like calliope. and thats how you get beforus, a nanny state planet that pretends to be an utopia. tumblr. speaking of which.

I'm cool with whatever people do in their spare time, you know, you do you. But what ticks me off is when they start acting all authoritarian with their headcanons, insisting they are canon and claiming others are clueless, ignorant, illiterate, tone-deaf, every internalized or externalized -ist and -phobic under the sun etc for not seeing it that way. Treating fictional characters with more decency than they do with real people essentially. So because I dont give a single iota of a fuck anymore, let me call out this retarded fandom that butterfly effected all western fandoms turning into warzones and hussies lazy hack ass really quick.

Here's the deal: Some people really just wanna show off how "woke" they are to others, so they slap labels like they're trendy accessories and project onto characters without giving a damn about their background or personality. That usually backfires and ends up with pretty darn terrible results. We all know this, we've heard the HS2 horror stories. And that's exactly what went down here again.

Because, lately, there's this, as I said let's call it headcanon, floating around insisting that the Vantases, Kankri in particular, are canonically aromantic asexual (aroace). The Vantases are the worst possible candidates in the whole webcomic for this. Why?

1: celibacy ≠ aroace. first one is not an orientation, but a choice to abstain from acting on attraction. and the other IS a orientation, not a choice, where you feel little to no romantic or sexual attraction. so much for respecting some people's identities and values. If the vantases HAVE to be assigned a human label despite being fucking aliens, why not demisexual???? kankri even asks karkat if he might be "panquadrantic demiromantic", doesnt that fit how the signless took time to open his heart to the disciple and had a love that went beyond all quadrants with her?

they are both HORNY and THIRSTY as hell for the pyropes, the captors, the leijons, john egbert, i dont fucking know, take your pick. make them fuck a clown. That's why Karkat is obsessed with romance and Kankri panders so hard, they are both that pathetically desperate for someone to connect and care for them back as obsessively intense as they are with everything.

3: Some previous anon pointed out how HIC, besides being an authoritarian tyrant that wanted galaxy-wide conquest, is an eugenicist fascist. Yes. She genocided limebloods. So did Beforan Feferi actually. And you know Karkat's handle? carcinogeneticist? How he inherited the Signless's burden? These things are all related, and let me use a comparison to explain how or why. Imposing this label onto them would be as perplexing as suggesting that Aang from THE LAST AIRBENDER, being a monk, should also be aroace. Right after all the airbenders were wiped out by firebenders, also authoritarian tyrants that wanted world conquest. Do you see the parallels? Karkat and Kankri have significant self-esteem issues, stemming from their mutant blood, from which bloodcaste they mutated from? Limebloods. The caste that has faced intense persecution, to the extent of genocide, on BOTH planets, resulting in their GENETIC LINEAGE being wiped out from the troll GENE POOL. Limebloods are EXTINCT. That's why their mutancy is their burden, it saved them from being killed, but condemned both to a lifetime of suffering and hiding under the same culling regime that killed their kin. And that's why the burden is the responsibility of revitalizing their bloodcaste BY PROCREATING. ADDING THEIR GENES TO THE TROLL GENE POOL. But because both Karkat and Kankri are fucking idiots with crippling self-esteem issues and Hussie wrote with his asscheeks, what did these two chucklefucks do instead? One praised the Empress that wanted to kill him and wanted to become her thresecutioner, and out of desperation did the devil's tango with the worst and most disgusting vile living being available, a hussie self-insert. And the other became fucking CELIBATE to focus on what was truly important to oppose the regime he disagreed with… performative bullshit that nobody asked him to care about, overcorrecting to the point of being even more offensive than the start, and not actually solving any problems but creating more. To make "progress as a civilization" with trigger warnings, HE DIDN'T PRESERVE THE FUTURE OF HIS OWN BLOODCASTE. NEITHER DID KARKAT WHO WAS TOO BUSY WATCHING MOVIES. And that was actually clever writing, because if you are a fandom activist who hates kankri, and also think hes unironically aroace because he's celibate, congratulations! You fell for the trap, youre exactly the kind of person Kankri is satirizing, he also missed the point by hyperfocusing on labels and hating himself, and like a self fulfilling prophecy, became the same thing that he was fighting against without realizing because he unwittingly ended up aiding troll eugenics by doing the hard work and taking himself out of the dating pool!

So next time you see a pretentious writer vagueposting about you or your interpretation of a character or guilt tripping you because you dont adhere to their offensive stereotypes, check if they headcanon Kankri as aroace, and if they do, you can simply smile and rest assured knowing that nothing you do will ever be as disconnected from reality or as far off the mark regarding character interpretation as that. Why would you listen to these evil people? Are you like Hussie?

That is truly why Davekat really fucking sucks and always fucking will,

Because not only did it ruin everything with their nonexistant chemistry-less relationship but because thanks to it and pandering to its stans, Sea Hitler won and both muties are out of the gene pool and limebloods remain extinct. That IS actually canon.

And while Johnkat and Jadekat are excellent, Karkat and Kankri's harem of trolls is better than davekat. Suck my dick.

PD: What's that? Baby HIC married Karkat? Doesn't surprise me. Grooming kids is her whole thing. There really was no excuse for not making Karkat fuck Sollux or Terezi instead.

Karkat and Kankri's Harem are better than Davekat. Meenah, Porrim, and Aranea sprites from @befriendus Damara sprite by @magua-vida

Condesce, Disciple, Redglare Neophyte, and the Dolorosa by elanor-pam

#homestuck #homestuck fandom #Karkat Vantas #Kankri Vantas

[creation-help]

Can everyone just genuinely shut the fuck up about "cringy" art styles. Unless you're actually critiquing something harmful (no, "bad art" or "it's stunting your growth as an artist" is not it), just leave people alone. Imagine growing up thinking some specific way to put fukin. Lines and colors on a canvas is wrong somehow. Because it's cringe? STFU about bean mouths and calarts styles and obvious Fandom art styles and bases. Youths on the internets don't need to make their art appealing to the masses despite what the vile vile algorithm, or the latest art rant tuber says. "It looks ugly!" I don't care. Something looks ugly to everyone but that doesn't mean you get to be a prick to others.

You could be focusing on unlearning harmful biases like colorism or fatphobia or offensive caricatures. That is actually a problem. But we know yall are not doing that when you're making fun of people's art styles. Everyday people aren't corporations or professionals who have to make their art a certain way to pay the bills. We're just people drawing and painting or whatever else. People call cringe culture dead yeah well show it. It's not cool to bully people no matter how trendy(???!!?) it is apparently

#Art rant #(ironic tag lol considering the post) #Artist positivity #artist inspiration #Young artists #small artists #support artists #support small artists #My thoughts

[lukeofe]

Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Rocket, And Why I Keep Thinking About This Damned CGI Raccoon

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOLUME 3 SPOILERS AHEAD

For much of early to mid 2023, I had been in a rut. My work on personal writing projects had ground to a halt, and I was now more focused on the minutia of specific lines and the emotions they conveyed in the moment rather than seeing the overall work for what it was. I was anxious, terrified that I didn't know whether I was saving my work with any given edit or ruining it.

Eventually, I figured it was time to take a break from the things. Time to let my mind rest so I could let go of this arbitrarily high standard I had set for myself. While this relieved my anxiety, it brought about a new ailment: a sense of depressing aimlessness. I had dedicated essentially my entire life to my work for so long that to be without it felt wrong. I realized that ever since I'd went all-hands-on-deck with my perfectionism streak, I had taken to eating the exact same meal three times a day. I had stopped going outside. I had stopped listening to music. My passion for life had disappeared without me realizing it, and I was left with nothing but dark musings on my own mortality and the unshakable notion that I was wasting time. That I no longer had purpose.

I was never really invested in Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe. I had seen some of the films, but did not feel overly attached to them outside of "Hey, that was a cool movie." The one aspect of it that both I and my family came to the theaters for whenever a new entry released was Guardians of the Galaxy. I've always been fascinated by the space opera genre (there's a reason I write so much of it) and James Gunn is great at weaving comedy and sincerity into his work in equal measure to create characters that are easy to care about, something I cannot say for other aspects of the MCU. Still though, my fandom of Guardians' characters was only in passing... until in May of 2023, when I watched Volume 3 on a whim.

I'm sure you've heard of the 'Gifted Kid to Anxious Adult Pipeline.' It's something I'm fairly sure I experienced first-hand. When I was young I was considered smart for my age. I was also considered a troublemaker who hated listening to authority. At the time, I had yet to be diagnosed with Autism or ADHD, so I'm sure my teachers and the other adults that interacted with me simply thought I was 'disobedient' and just needed to 'apply myself.' I suspect that this notion carried over into my modern life and education somewhat as well.

Once I had my diagnoses, I knew that I was different. I knew I had a reason to not concern myself with being in line with what was trendy or popular, and I had a prime excuse to violate the social norms I hated most. It also made me incredibly aware of how specific the aptitudes I possessed were. I am no savant, but I've heard from a lot of people that I'm good at what I do, probably on account of me pushing myself to fully commit to whatever task I engage in to the point of anxiety-inducing perfectionism. I suppose that's symptomatic of the high expectations people had for me in my youth.

Something that probably didn't help was the fact that my ADHD makes it incredibly challenging for me to focus on things I'm not burningly passionate about. I can handle whatever task is thrown at me, but it's extremely emotionally distressing unless I want to do it. It's not a sensation of boredom or irresponsibility, but a deep pain that registers on a level beyond the physical.

The common core education system didn't care, though. It, and all of the adults in my life, demanded success above all else. And so I pushed myself to success above all else. The latter half of my education felt like a constant struggle to survive, a battle against my own nature to ensure that I could secure a comfortable future (and so I would not lose the things that made me truly and wholly happy - my video games and my comfort objects, i.e. stuffed animals and inflatables.) The cost of this battle was only my happiness, and to some extent, my personhood.

The time that I began this 'fight for my life' in my education was also the time that my older cousin began to have a major presence in my life. He'd grown up rougher than me, adapting to become more 'street smart' to avoid hazing from bullies. I think he saw me, a neurodivergent, scrawny, and likely pretty obviously queer kid, and wanted to make sure I was safe from the riff-raff he was used to. So he tried to toughen me up. He taught me how to walk right, what clothes to wear, how to keep my voice and head down to avoid trouble with the older kids, etc. (He even advised me to burn my collection of stuffed animals - advice I will never regret ignoring!)

I think it was this, the growing disparity between my perception of maturity and my own comforts, and the overall apathy of the world around me towards my academically-based emotional distress, that made me into a more reserved person as I became a teenager. I already had trouble making friends, considering that so much about my interests and personality were - and still are - intrinsically based in the nebulous, indescribable web of my life experiences. But this was the turning point that rendered me closed off from almost everybody, save for those few special people I could and can still be candid and emotionally open with. I became afraid to make new friends, scared that the more they'd find out about me the more they'd realize how strange I was, and say or do something horrible to me or the things I love.

I wanted to share this experience and the way it made me feel with others, and I think that's why all of these sentiments (intentionally or not) worked their way into my writing.

(I swear this is about Rocket, just be patient.)

My main story, WarTorn, is set in a space opera universe where humans and anthropomorphic animals co-exist, and sometimes groups of the former decide to try to destroy the latter in big wars that are metaphors for religious persecution of LGBTQ+ people, and there are ancient secrets left behind by past intergalactic civilizations, and so on and so forth, but for the sake of this current topic of conversation there is only one aspect that matters: the main character, the namesake of my online presence, Luke Sanders.

Luke is spotted out as a child by the government of the human-anthro' Coalition to take part in a Super-Soldier program to destroy the puritanical anti-anthro' army that has risen in the dark corners of this fiction's Galaxy. They take him and a bunch of other children, both human and anthro's, and mold them into the soldiers the Galaxy needs them to be. Luke becomes a hero, but after all of the brutal training, extensive education and brainwashing, and the agonizing and near-fatal chemical and cybernetic augmentations, he has lost his personhood. He sees himself as a machine, existing only to serve and be a beacon of strength to the people he protects, burying his emotions so he can't be judged for them. But while he attempts throughout the story to steel himself from his emotion, it subconsciously slips in anyways.

From the beginning of the military career he lost his childhood training for, his life is painted by tragedy. He loses his childhood best friend early on, and his lover much later, both people he had formed bonds with that defied physical description. Every loss becomes not just an emotional toll but a personal failure, and he beats himself up for not being able to meet the expectations placed upon his shoulders. Eventually he becomes so afraid of losing the ones he loves that he stops loving altogether, and becomes even more stoic and isolated than before. It's only after circumstance forces him to create new bonds and become close with new friends that he realizes that he is indeed a person, that his feelings matter, and that the time he spends with the ones he loves while he has them make all the heartbreak worth it. Later, when Luke and the Coalition finally win the conflict against the puritanical threat that has gripped the Galaxy for years, and Luke is able to get his happily ever after, he can't help but feel aimless in a universe where he no longer has purpose. His journey becomes finding a purpose of his own, fully becoming a person, finally free of the high expectations he likely imposed upon himself. One big dramatized metaphor for my own personal feelings throughout life.

In Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, the snarky and cynical Rocket the Raccoon's past is explored heavily. He is revealed to have once been a raccoon from Earth, taken at a young age by the evil High Evolutionary and molded into a thinking and speaking creature through extensive and cruel surgery and augmentations. Despite the hardship, he is driven by his connection to his friends (three other test subjects, Lylla the Otter, Teefs the Walrus, and Floor the Rabbit, all three of whom have also been extensively modified) and together they look forward to the promise of a happy life in the High Evolutionary's perfect society once his work is done. However, eventually it is revealed that the High Evolutionary no longer has a need for Rocket and his friends - they were only created for their intelligence and ingenuity, for their knowledge to be a stepping stone towards a better iteration of the High Evolutionary's perfect beings - and that he and his friends are to be killed. Rocket attempts to break Lylla, Teefs, and Floor out of their captivity, but all of his friends who he was up until this point motivated by the dream of a perfect life with, die in the escape attempt. Rocket is left the only survivor, alone and depressed now that that the only things that made him happy and hopeful in the universe have been ripped from him. He becomes cynical and jaded, afraid to let others too close to him for fear of losing them too. He feels like a monster, warped and created without purpose. He only overcomes this when forced into an alliance with the other Guardians, who are also carriers of their own trauma, and together they create an unbreakable bond. And it's only on the verge of death, in his darkest hour, that Rocket is visited in a dream by his friends, and Lylla tells him that his existence is more meaningful than he knows. He pulls through and rejoins his friends in the fight, not only defeating the High Evolutionary but saving the other animals that were being tested on, learning that he is indeed a raccoon in the process. Up until this point, he has seen 'raccoon' as a demeaning term, something to label him as something other, something less than a person. But here he realizes it's actually his identity, that he's not alone and never was. And by the end, he heals, ready to find that purpose and set his own expectations for himself.

I wrote the entirety of WarTorn way before Guardians 3 came out, so seeing the parallels between Rocket's story and Luke's, especially when Luke is so heavily inspired by my own life, was an extremely emotional experience. I've been going over scenarios in my head where Luke and Rocket interact. They'd clash at first because of their different personalities (and because Rocket is Rocket) but slowly realize how similar their lives and troubles are, and then help each other find their missing pieces and become better people. I adore the idea of these two forming an understanding of each other's histories just from seeing each other's reactions to little things and recognizing their own trauma in each other's behavior, to the point that they know they can confide in one another and be met with unabashed understanding and acceptance, free of judgment because "Hey... I've been there." And in some abstract way, I have too.

The first thing I had thought leaving that theater was "I want to hug that raccoon and let him know that he is beautiful and loved." So I ordered a plush. I needed something physical to latch onto, some way to express this overwhelming emotion physically. And now he has a special place in my arms as I lay in bed or on my desk as I work or in my canvas bag when I go out of the house.

Rocket is very important to me. He's the first thing I had poured over in months that wasn't "oh my God I'm a terrible writer" or "I'm going to die someday." And that puts him at least somewhat above all of the other comfort characters and hyperfixations I've had over the years. Because he's the first thing I have loved with all my heart in a long, long time. And now, whenever that oppressive melancholy begins to creep up my mind, I think of him and the parts of my life that led me to being so emotional about him, and I am reminded that love and feeling still exist in my heart, and always will.

#rocket raccoon #gotg vol 3 #gotg rocket #guardians of the galaxy #guardians 3 #guardians 3 spoilers #gotg #gotg volume 3 spoilers #im probably reading too much into all of this but its is my life

[hekateinhell]

GOd you’re so right about the whole Armand/Lestat thing. I hadn’t been able to put my finger on WHY it bothered me but I’ve noticed how it’s all of a sudden trendy and cool in some sections of the fandom 👀 to mercilessly clown Armand for being down for Lestat so bad while getting rejected time and time again and while YES, that’s basically what happened, it’s also SO much more than that and it’s so fascinating and complex and they’re ultimately so full of feelings for each other and the way it gets lost in the discourse kills me 😭

Honestly, it's like the only one who doesn't know Lestat loves Armand is... Armand.

Lestat tells it to the reader twice in TVL alone, before he leaves Paris and then again when Armand comes to see him in New Orleans. This man has known he loved Armand since he was twenty-two years old.

I just feel like you might miss a lot of the nuance, and really the overall beauty of the tale, when you decide things straight-up don't exist because it doesn't fit into your shippy worldview. There's fanon, and there's canon. Fanon doesn't cancel out canon or vice versa. There's stuff we do for fun and stuff we present as fact to others in discourse.

It feels like a much more recent trend imo, this trying to workshop VC to fit into a Twilight/CW mold. And it just doesn't work because the text contradicts that directly. VC was never a love story between two people and I think that's part of what makes it so unique.

Ultimately, my belief is that people are welcome to do whatever they want in fandom as long as it's not hurting real life people and this is definitely not - I just don't see the point here I guess! But your milage may vary and all that. IDK.

#maybe i'm too old rip #you ask and hekate answers #armand #lestat de lioncourt #armand/lestat #vc

[subbyenbywitch]

hi! i’m robin, a 30something white enby femboy type person. my pronouns are they/them.

some cool things about me, probably!

i have four really amazing partners! i live with two of them and our adorable kitty.

my gender is in a sort of soft enby boy kinda place.

i'm ace, but hella kinky & hella subby. please bully me. (consensually.)

i’m an extremely novice polytheistic witch.

i’m a furry kinda?

i’ve worked in the service industry for my entire adult life (okay to be fair that’s a not so cool thing about me), in retail for a long time (that sucked) and now as a barista (that sucks markedly less and i’m extremely good at it). FUCK ALL THAT SHIT I GOT A KICKASS JOB AT MY LOCAL COMIC/GAME SHOP, LET'S GOOOOOOOOO.

if it ever seems like i’m autistic or i have adhd, that would be because i’m autistic and i have adhd.

dnis/content warning/etc after the cut.

so, yeah! i’ll probably write about movies and tv (but not like, tv that your coworkers at work incorporated are talking about like … whatever replaced game of thrones as that thing, more like… star trek: the next generation or that she-ra reboot that is just old enough to not be relevant anymore but just recent enough to not be a trendy rediscovery) and definitely books and maybe podcasts and maybe video games? i tend to play video games in spurts so it’ll be a lot at times, and radio silence at other times.

just for funsies, here’s a brief list of fandoms i gravitate strongly towards! some of these things might not be actually fandoms or might not have very active fandoms idk? i might write about these more often or have stronger opinions about them. or not? adhd! these can alternatively be read as additional reasons to bully me. please feel free to read them that way.

sonic the hedgehog

pokémon

star trek

dungeons & dragons (and, relatedly, dimension 20)

kaiju movies

anime and manga kinda?

cartoons kinda if that counts? (current favorites: the owl house, she-ra reboot, futurama, star trek: lower decks wait that should go in star trek not cartoons or should it go in both oh no)

comic books/superheroes kinda? (the archie sonic the hedgehog and dark horse star wars comics were a huge part of my childhood, i also got hella into batman, spider-man, and x-men at times.)

undertale

knives out? is that a fandom? whatever. i love those movies.

the matrix

the wachowski sisters’ oeuvre in general (speed racer is one of my favorite movies of all time.)

lord of the rings (the movies, not the books)

halloween. the holiday, not the movie. the color orange. pumpkins. etc. yeah, i’m weirded out that it took me until comparatively recently to realize i needed to be a witch, but here we are. (oh yeah i’ll also probably write about witchy stuff at times? maybe.)

not harry potter anymore for obvious reasons, but things that hit a similar spot? (really loving the simon snow books rn.)

star wars? (i used to be a huge fan and read all the eu books and wrote fanfiction but idk i’m kind of bored of it lately? but with the way adhd works maybe i’ll get obsessed again, who knows. probably not though. this is less to indicate active engagement in the fandom, more to indicate it used to be A Thing so if i suddenly have very strong opinions about it outta nowhere, there ya go.)

james cameron’s avatar i guess? i got really into avatarland after watching a really cool youtuber’s video about it, and then i actually went to avatarland (yes i’ve called it that twice now despite knowing that’s not what it’s called but also that’s totally what it’s called leave me alone) on a family vacation and i am literally wearing an avatarland spirit jersey i bought on etsy while typing this and i am incapable of irony so my enthusiasm for avatarland kinda spilled over to appreciating the source media okay i’m gonna stop this extremely long parenthetical now thank you for coming to my james cameron talk.

but like, i like other stuff that’s not media too! like… organizing media on shelves? (why have i not been shoved in a locker yet what the heck.) okay, that’s another thing about me. i’m kind of an amateur librarian? i might also talk about theme parks i go to when that happens (a few of my partners are super into those so yeah!). and museums!

on a less fun note, please do not interact with me if you're transphobic/homophobic/racist/etc etc. just don't. i'm just gonna block you, it's really not worth either of our time. also please do not interact with me if you're a minor, and please do not flirt with me if you're technically not a minor but are significantly younger than me. i'm just not comfortable with it.

if you're an anti-shipper you'd probably consider me a pro-shipper? i don't super care about those kinds of labels but i know that's like... A Thing here, and want to be very clear. so if you don't want to interact with people who don't think fanfiction should be policed & criticized as though it were real life or general audience mass media, you probably don't want to interact with me. if i do write any fanfic i will tag it appropriately, but i really think everyone needs to calm down about this shit.

and last but not least, i will tag liberally, but a blanket content warning:

i frequently explicitly discuss themes of kink, sexuality, violence, mental health, and other mature themes in a manner intended for an adult audience.

also, i am a survivor of both childhood and intimate partner emotional abuse, as well as sexual assault, and these come up frequently in my writing. reader discretion is advised.

on a less serious note, i am unapologetically kinky, subby, and thirsty af and i’m going to include a lot of personal asides from that perspective. i’m also a furry and a monsterfucker. don’t say i didn’t warn you.

see you around, hopefully!

#about me #about this blog

[rahabs]

Honestly curious - why is it specifically weird to you that white people are getting Astarion's scars tattooed?

Honestly, it's because i) I've only seen white people getting them, which is the main reason I specified white people; ii) it reminds me a little of the "white girls getting dreamcatcher tattoos" trend. I'm not saying I'm right in that comparison, but for whatever reason that's what it reminds me of.

The best I can explain it is that... white people getting dreamcatcher tattoos often do not know what dreamcatchers actually mean, or what they do, or the stories behind them. Instead, they do it because it's Current Aesthetic (TM) and they think it looks neat and it looks pretty and maybe there's a shallow surface-level reasoning beyond that, sometimes they'll say they're "honouring native culture" (even though many native cultures do not have dreamcatchers), but by getting the tattoo itself they demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding or fundamental ignorance on what a dreamcatcher actually mean and what it's designed to do in its cultural context.

It's sort of like that for the Astarion tattoos. I don't really understand why anyone would want to get that tattoo knowing what it is in the game, what it does, the story behind it, etc. Some people say it makes them feel empowered and I'm not going to say it shouldn't, just that I do not understand at all. And so far, of the... 50-some plus pictures I've seen posted of people getting this tattoo, it's only been white people. Hence why I specifically said white people. Of course, there could be non-white people getting it, I just haven't seen it (and considering how fine-line the tattoo needs to be, it makes sense that people with darker skin might not want to try it).

Again, not saying I'm right to make this comparison, it's just what it reminds me of instinctively. It could be irrational of me, but knowing what the contract represents in the game, knowing how much Astarion hates it in-game and what it represents within the context of said game, it's odd to me that so many white people (and again, I say white people because so far, of all the photos I've seen--and I have seen many--it has only been white people getting them) get it while trying to justify it by saying they're "honouring" the character. It just seems like the Current Trendy Thing, ignoring the context of the game, the way white people getting dreamcatcher tattoos ignore the context of what a dreamcatcher is and does. It's a shallow comparison, perhaps, but that is what it reminds me of.

And yes, of course, people can get tattoos because they look cool, but I just don't know why you'd want that permanently tattooed on your body knowing what it means. On a jacket, sure, but then again I've never been obsessed enough with fictional media fandom to get something from it tattooed permanently on my body, despite my many tattoos.

As with anything, though, it's their body and they're free to tattoo whatever the hell they want on it, same as I tattoo whatever I want on mine.

#anonym #ask #reply

[denimini]

"Unlike some other people, I don't find it even remotely hot. I would say watching JK do it had the opposite effect on me than on many other people - I found it disgusting."

Thanks for being so honest. I feel the exact same way. I’m not dictating how he should behave. He is an adult, he does whatever he wants. However, I’m allowed to think it’s dumb and bad. And I’m tired of people saying we should shut up about it, that we’re not allowed to comment but just accept it. I totally disagree, he has a huge influence on his fans, especially the youngest. Heck, so many Armys were saying how hot he was in the pictures of him smoking! As an ex-smoker myself I find it really concerning. I naively thought smoking wasn’t perceived as a cool thing anymore. I hope no Armys are going to be influenced and start smoking because they think it’s hot. It’s why most of us started, let’s be real. We wanted to be part of the cool tribe. With celebrity comes responsibility. Jungkook knows Armys buys the same stuff he buys, he knows he can have a big influence, that’s probably why until those pics we never saw him smoking, even though there were rumors about it already. And I want to emphasize that by no means I’m saying that he should not do it, it’s his life, his decisions, but we as fans should be able to criticize it and speak up to warn others Armys.

I honestly agree with you. On TikTok especially where the videos of him smoking are everywhere, you could never find a comment other than "OMG he is sooo hot", and these comments are from mostly young people in their early 20s. Yeah , JK is hot, undeniably so, but there is nothing hot about the act of smoking. It's simply poisonous to our bodies. For years smoking had become something uncool and vile, and then Gen Z made vaping trendy and popular , and it's like we're back in the 90s when the image of a hot chick or a band player after a gig, smoking a cigarette, was all the rage.

Nostalgia is cool and all, but some things really should stay in the past.

Jungkook is so obviously doing the whole "bad boy who does what he wants and doesn't care about anything" play and young people are eating up. They seem to forget this has been done soooo many times now, it's hardly anything new.

I have to say, I am getting kind of annoyed with the fandom overly sexualizing and glorying everything JK does as the hottest thing to ever be done, including the dumbest shirt ever, like a singer smoking. I guess some people want so badly to be "woke" and "supportive" and not like the "bad fans" who baby their idols, that they don't realize they are starting to sound and act exactly like the mindless fangirls, people have been accusing us of being for years.

#jungkook #jikook #kookmin #bts #jimin

[greyjedireylo]

In Kylo's first scene, he stops a blaster bolt in midair, he blows up an entire fleet of X-wings in TLJ, he corners the Resistance in a mine and almost destroys them. What always stops him from succeeding? His conflict over his beliefs and his emotional baggage. He's powerful, but he keeps getting in his own way. Even his lightsaber works as a metaphor for that: Ben Solo built a perfectly good lightsaber when he was Luke's student, and only trying to corrupt the crystal made it fall apart.

^^^^^^. Ben’s failures are a symptom of the fact that he’s not meant to be in the dark. it’s a good thing that he fails, because that means he’s not fully committed to the dark and he’s capable of change.

the lightsaber thing is the PERFECT metaphor for him (and Adam has even talked about that before). I wrote this idea into one of my fics and I’m just gonna share the excerpt here because I think it gets the idea across well:

Ben was silent, and just looked at her gravely, no doubt considering his struggles with his own kyber crystal, how he’d cracked it when he’d tried to bleed it under Snoke’s tutelage, how unstable it had been ever since, a thing of light unnaturally bent to the dark, yearning to return to its true nature, its natural state.

Much like its master.

This is EXACTLY WHY the fact that kyber crystals are naturally clear and must be unnaturally bled to be bent to the dark side is such a powerful metaphor–that’s exactly what the dark side does to a person as well.

#AND the fact that kyber crystals can be reclaimed from the dark #and returned to their natural state #i love it so much it's such a beautiful metaphor #like i know it's not cool or trendy or whatever in this fandom to be like 'the dark side is wrong and not the natural state of the force' #but that's the truth???? #everyone's always confusing the living force vs the cosmic force #and what morality in SW actually is #asks #i love the smell of redemption arcs in the morning #the force

[luckycharming]

Sometimes I hate when the fandom takes fanon headcanons or ideas and treat them as canon material when it's not and then get mad when not everyone in the fandom vibes with it. Like, it's not an inherently bad thing, and most of them are actually pretty damn cool. But sometimes I just think to myself, he or she are not, in fact, gay or lesbian just because the majority of the fandom, for whatever reason, depicts that character(s) as their gay baby/lesbian girl boss wife. Like, if that's how you feel, good for you! That doesn't make that thought true for everyone though.

Therefore, people AREN'T automatically homophobic/lesphobic just for not viewing a character the way that you do. And to be real, if y'all can project your sexualities and identities onto these characters despite it conflicting with canon depictions/material, you cannot turn around and deny other members of the fandom that same right as well.

Obviously, there's exceptions and stuff, but still. You can't say he's gay or she's a lesbian, even though canonically speaking they're not and are straight, then turn around and get mad when someone else headcanons them as bi, pan, trans, ace, etc. That's not how that works. And low-key, that kinda shit is biphobic, panphobic, transphobic, acephobic, etc. because a lot of the l and g in the lgbtq don't support those particular identities or want us to get any kind of representation or support because they think it takes away from theirs, even though it literally doesn't, but y'all ain't ready for those conversations.

And hating straight people has never been cool or trendy, so maybe stop doing that? Like, you hating someone solely for their identity is hypocritical when you know how it feels to have someone hate you solely b/c of yours. M/F ships aren't boring just because they're m/f, and y'all need to stop doing that shit too. You can't say ship whatever you want (within reason) and then get mad when people do it lmao

#itakugi #fushikugi #gojohime #sugushoko #yutamaki #miruhawks #eraserjoke #sorikai #rokushi #naruhina #sasusaku #zelink #midlink #miphlink #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #bnha #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #kingdom hearts #naruto #legend of zelda #this applies to every fandom #y'all can fight me #idc idc #fandom discourse #toxic fandom #toxic fanbase #some of y'all can't or won't let people have shit and it's annoying

[wonderlandleighleigh]

Can we have more of Gordon Ford being an asshole (to whatever degree you want to write?) I'd like to cement this negative characterization in the fandom's brain before we see literally anything significant from him.

I actually just wrote this the other day. It's a long one because I'm hoping it'll be a bigger story, but here ya go!

Jealousy isn’t something Lenny is too acquainted with these days. Obviously as a concept, he knows it. He’s felt it before (he married a stripper, after all. It happens), but these days, in his thirties, he generally doesn’t get head up about it.

He thought.

But seeing Gordon fucking Ford wrap an arm around Midge brings on that old, long-forgotten feeling of boiling blood and gritted teeth. 

He plays it cool, obviously. Lighting a cigarette and taking a slow puff as he chats with some reporters. Doing Gordon Ford’s show is a matter of course these days, to hype any project, and he’s got a run of big-ticket shows here in New York coming up. 

Midge is the house comedian. And Ford apparently thinks that makes her his girlfriend. 

Midge’s face says otherwise; that she’s trying to extricate herself without making a scene; that she does not want that man touching her. That she just wants to get this round of interviews over with so Lenny can take her out for a late dinner and then take a walk on a nice April night. 

“And what do you think of Midge Maisel?” the reporter asks. 

Lenny grins. “Other than being one of the funniest women out there right now, she’s also one of the kindest, and she’s drop dead gorgeous.” 

The reporter looks surprised. “Are you two an item?” 

Lenny’s grin widens. “Ask me tomorrow.” 

***** 

“I have an idea,” he tells her as they sit down to dinner. He’d picked somewhere a little more public; a little more trendy, and Midge looks excited, taking in the place. It’s certainly not one of their usual haunts. 

“Okay,” she says, turning to look at him. 

Lenny smiles and takes her hand. “You fucking hate when Gordon Ford decides to get handsy.” 

Her smile falls. “It’s getting a little aggressive,” she admits. “When I started it was an arm graze - which - whatever. Then it wrapped around my shoulder. Okay, maybe he’s friendly. But now it keeps snaking around my waist, and it’s been getting closer and closer to my ass. And look, I have a great ass, but he could at least buy me a drink first.” 

“Or,” Lenny smirks. 

“Or what?” she asks, tilting her head. “That look is a naughty look, Mr. Bruce.” 

“Or, Mr. Bruce and Mrs. Maisel could make things official,” he says. “And let the whole world know that we are an actual, honest-to-god, goes out to dinner, puts the kids to bed together couple, and Gordon Ford can fuck off.” 

Midge smiles slowly. “You want to be a real couple.” 

“It’s probably about time,” he shrugs. “We’ve been sneaking around since January.” 

“You’re jealous,” she surmises. 

“I most certainly am not.” 

She keeps smiling at him. It’s an infuriating smile. He loves it. He hates it. Ugh. 

“You’re jealous that I work on Gordon’s show and he’s around all the time,” Midge says.

“...I don’t like the way he looks at you,” Lenny admits. “And you don’t like it either, may I point out. This would solve both our problems.” 

She raises an eyebrow. “Are you ready for that level of public scrutiny? They’re gonna label us a ‘comedy power couple,’ they’re gonna follow us around with cameras, they’re gonna make up crazy stories about us.” 

“Ah, I’ve been outta the papers too long,” he jokes. “I’ve been too good a boy.” 

“Our managers are both going to lose their minds,” Midge reminds him. “Susie was happy to keep this quiet.” 

“Fuck ‘em,” Lenny waves a hand. “I’d rather kiss you in public and watch Ford wriggle like a worm on the hook.” 

Midge smirks as she looks past him at the door. “You’re in luck.” 

He lifts an eyebrow. “Oh, am I?” 

“Mhm. He just walked in with his buddies.”  

“A fortuitous turn of events.” 

She grins, leaning in. Her eyes are shifting between his own and behind him, where Ford and his asshole friends are. “How do you wanna play this?”

“What?” 

“Light kiss? Slow? Steamy? What’s the tacti-” 

The kiss is slow and soft, and tender. Like they’ve been doing this for three months. 

Which they have. 

He vaguely registers some chatter around them, but he likes focusing on Midge much more. He doesn’t care how red Ford’s face is, or if there are reporters fumbling for paper and pen. 

There’s just Midge. 

He ends it by shifting his lips to her cheek. “How’s that for tactics?” he asks softly. 

“Hm?” she asks dreamily, blinking at him.

Lenny grins. “How’s our friend doing?” 

“Oh,” Midge sits up, clearing her throat. “He looks pretty unhappy.” 

“Perfect. You hungry?” 

“Starving.” 

*****

“Tell me what this is.” 

Midge blinks down at the photo of her and Lenny kissing in the newspaper. “Just enough tongue to be indecent but not enough to get us thrown out of the restaurant.” 

“Miriam!” Susie cries. “I thought you two weren’t gonna make your relationship a bid deal!” 

“Well, things changed,” Midge tells her. “And once my sandwich gets here, I will explain.” 

“Explain now.” 

“Susie, I promise it’s gonna be fine. Nothing is different.” 

“Except that the entire world thinks you got where you are by fucking Lenny Bruce,” Susie grouses. 

“They already thought that.” 

“You didn’t have to give ‘em confirmation!” 

Midge takes a deep breath. “We found it inconvenient to keep sneaking around.” 

“Inconvenient how?” Susie demands. “Your parents already know. His mother knows. I know, and his manager knows. Why do this?” 

“To get Gordon Ford to back off,” Midge tells her. 

Susie goes quiet. 

“Susie-” 

“I’ll kill him,” she says simply. “I’ll rip his balls out through his throat.” 

“Nothing happened,” she assures her. “But…it was starting to head in that direction, so Lenny and I…decided to make things a little more overt.” 

“A little?!” Susie grabs the paper. “Miriam. This is not a little.” 

“Everyone who’s seen me on Gordon’s show knows I’m talented,” Midge argues. “Dating Lenny publicly doesn’t change that.” 

Susie groans. “Fine. Fine. Okay. Fine. You’re public. Fine. Great. We’ll just- hope this doesn’t bite us in the ass.” 

***** 

David Fidel is a good manager. Understanding. Very patient. Lenny is lucky to have him. But he can be a pain in the ass. 

“This is…actually great,” Dave nods. “This is the most innocuous thing you’ve ever been in the papers for. It’s downright fucking adorable, to be honest.” 

“Gee, thanks.” 

“I mean, kissing the girl you’ve been seeing for months in public can’t get you arrested or blacklisted from a club. I will take it.” 

“You’re too excited.” 

“Hey! You’ve got that gig next week in Harlem. Let’s get her a reserved table.” 

“Dave-”

“And I’ll schedule a late breakfast for the two of you for the next day!” 

“Oh, jesus.” 

“This is gonna be the most adorable thing you’ve ever done,” Dave promises. “Or I’ll die trying to make it be.” 

“God, I hate you.” 

Dave picks up the phone. “Bonnie! Make sure there’s a reserved table for Midge Maisel at Lenny’s next show, and make sure there’s a rose settled there.” 

“Fuck you, Dave.” 

Dave grins at him. “Her favorite color is pink, right? Bonnie! Make it a pink rose.” 

Lenny rubs his eyes and wishes he could throw himself out the window.

***** 

Midge gets ready for the show the next night, turning around and coming face-to-face with Gordon. 

“Whoa!” she yelps. “Hi, Gordon. Ready to break a leg tonight?” 

“Sure,” he says, watching her as she turns back to the mirror to fix her makeup. “I uh…saw the whole thing with Lenny Bruce.” 

She smiles, mostly to herself. 

“How long has that been going on?” Ford asks awkwardly. 

“Well, we danced around it for a long time,” she shrugs. “Years, actually. But we officially started dating at New Years, and we decided to keep it quiet. You know how the press can be. But…” she sighs heavily for effect. “We’ve been getting tired of the sneaking around.” 

“Oh. Well. Good for you. I guess.” 

#fic #tmmm #Midge/Lenny #Midge x Lenny #au #Let's make Gordon Ford an asshole

[protectwoc]

why all reylos are racist

y’all can go ahead and cancel me now because some of you are not going to like what i have to say and i am completely okay with that.

this recent gq interview with john boyega has incensed me. hearing all the things he went through, from disney and from “fans” and with no support from anyone… i’m livid. sometimes when i think about it for too long i start shaking, i’m so furious. and the response from the reylo fandom has infuriated me to a degree i honestly didn’t know was possible.

some of you may have seen my recent tumblr rampage. it’s reylo bullying hours here on my blog, and i’m not sorry either. one person threatened to post screenshots of my comments, which like… okay? i know what the fuck i said, it wasn’t that long ago. in fact i was going to include the screenshots in this post right here, but they blocked me before i had the chance. sorry. i’m sure somebody has them. anyway…

over the past two days in the star wars fandom we have seen something unprecedented: an outpouring of support for john boyega. both reylos and anti-reylos have joined forces to voice support for john in the wake of the gq interview (and the blm protests, let’s be real, some of y’all would not have given half a fuck if it wasn’t suddenly cool to be antiracist). and this showing of unity is one of the most rage-inducing things i’ve ever seen in a fandom (which is saying something; i have seen some shit).

reylo fandom, full offense intended, but where the fuck do you get off? you’re supporting john now? where was this support when tfa came out and you couldn’t stand the thought of him next to your white-girl-self-insert? where was it when tlj came out and your boy ryan completely sidelined him? where was it earlier this fucking year when y’all twisted a harmless joke (like yall haven’t spent years writing reylo-throne-room-sex-meta BULLSHIT) and ignored the vile racist shit coming from your own fav’s mouth? but you’re supporting him now? now that being antiracist is trendy? fuck outta here with that bullshit.

your fandom is the reason for the vast majority of the absolutely subhuman treatment john has endured over the last few years. your fandom influenced ryan (yes i know what his name is) to write tlj the way he did, you have behaved indefensibly here on tumblr.hell writing and drawing and fantasizing about all sorts of racist bullshit, and y’all have STAYED in his twitter mentions spewing hatred seven ways to sunday. but NOW, without a shred of self-reflection, you’re supporting him? now his experiences are valid?

the way that your fandom refuses to take accountability for its actions makes me see red. y’all stay on some “not all reylos” nonsense and i am SICK OF IT. i’m only gonna say this once, and i want you to hear me: you cannot be a reylo and be “antiracist”. you cannot participate in a fandom that has behaved the way yours has and say “blm, uwu acab.” you can’t. like do you think black people are dumb? that we can’t see right through you? we can.

“but rae,” i hear you whining. “you’re gonna say just because i like two characters together i’m a racist?” and of course not. that would be ludicrous. i think just because you knowingly engage and participate in a fandom that has racism encoded in its dna, you’re a racist. i think because y’all are in bed with racist harassers, racist trolls, and racist content creators, you’re a racist. that’s what the fuck i think. y’all lost the right to “it’s just a ship” me the instant you dragged john boyega into this.

here’s an example: i watched tfa about three days after it came out. i watched the first half, saw the obvious relationship set up between finn and rey, and thought, “aw, cute.” then i watched kylo and rey fight, watch him offer to teach her, and thought, “... interesting.”

when i got home i checked tumblr for finnrey content, saw the outpouring of love from black fans, all the cute fanart and fics blooming, and smiled. then, slowly, guiltily, i searched “reylo.”

BOOM. racism. the things i saw in the tag that night are tattooed on my brain. reylos rejoicing about the obvious rey/kyle pairing because “sw would never put her with that monkey finn”. calling him an “oaf”, “useless”, “bumbling”, “stupid”. reylos joking about how “when they talked about the Dark side, [they] didn’t think they meant that kind of dark.” “woke” reylos pretending to ship stormpilot in an obvious ploy to get finn away from kylo. and in between all of that, cute ship art. fun fics. talented gif makers. and nobody saying shit about the reprehensible behavior going on in their tag.

reylo is built on a foundation of racism. from that first week, racism has been woven into the fabric of your fandom, and it’s been going unchecked. and i don’t mean calling out other reylos. that’s not enough. i mean taking actual steps. y’all have been sitting in a cesspool of racism for five years, and its time for you to get the fuck out or shut the fuck up about being an “ally”. y’all need to leave this fandom.

don’t agree? here’s another story. in 2017, when i still watched supergirl (before i grew taste) i shipped karamel. for those of you who don’t know, karamel is the ship of kara zor-el (supergirl) and mon-el, her second love interest. when supergirl was moved to the cw for its second season, the decision was made to abruptly end her romance with jimmy olsen, played by mecahd brooks (a black man) and replace him with mon-el, played by chris wood, a white man, who was revealed to be, among other things, an alien slaveowner, as well as a playboy and all-around terrible person. and i shipped them. look, i’m not defending myself, but i never really bought the chemistry between jimmy and kara. even though mon-el’s introduction and the way that they carelessly disregarded kara’s feelings for jimmy made me uncomfortable, i thought the way melissa played her attraction to chris wood was more believable (and again, i’m not defending myself, but they are now married so it’s not like i was wrong). so i shipped them. simple as that, right?

well, no. not really. because the inherent racism in the way the writers wrote out her admittedly sweet romance with a black man in favor of a white slaveowner jerk kept bothering me. and finally i decided that it made me too uncomfortable to participate in. i never really reblogged any karamel fandom stuff, but i completely divorced myself from the fandom. i stopped reading karamel fic, and i switched to reblogging exclusively jimmy/kara content until the fandom died out/i stopped watching. i made a choice that real life racism is more important to me than a fucking fandom or a ship, and then i acted accordingly. simple as that.

and i’m not saying you have to stop liking the reylo dynamic. i still like the chemistry between kara and mon-el. i’ve shipped problematic ships before (bamon comes to mind) and i don’t think there’s anything wrong with that (to a point). but there’s a difference between liking a ship dynamic and engaging and contributing to a fan culture of racism. you have to stop participating in the fandom. y’all are in bed with people indistinguishable from confederate-flag-waving-all-lives-matter-touting racists and you don’t feel the need to get out of that environment? there comes a certain point where you have to decide if fandom bullshit is more important to you than fighting racism, and unfortunately, reylos have chosen wrong. that, ladies and gentlemen, is why all reylos are racist, regardless of what they say. roll credits.

except i have more to say, so i’m gonna say it. first of all, i’m not trying to hold myself up as some kind of paragon of virtue. i’m not holier-than-thou because all my ships are “woke” or whatever. chemistry is subjective, and we’re all going to be attracted to different ship dynamics, and there’s nothing wrong with that in theory. what matters is the execution. i finally had to say one day, “you know, this ship and the racist baggage it carries is actually less important to me than battling systemic racism on every level, including the fandom level”. y’all thought being antiracist was gonna be easy? that you wouldn’t have to make some actual changes, to make some actual sacrifices? sorry not sorry to disappoint. and if i, a normal-ass person with flaws and problematic thinking that i’m still dealing with and the whole ine yards, can make that decision, then other people should be required to as well.

(what really irks me is that the karamel fandom wasn’t even really that bad! i definitely could have gotten away with being a karamel stan in 2017. thankfully the supercat and supercorp shippers were doing the lord’s work and bullying them into submission (don’t think i’m letting y’all off the hook either, y’all have got some racism to deal with as well but that’s an essay for another day) but like most of the racism happened at the writing level; the fandom itself wasn’t engaging in racist clownery on the regular. but like the reylos are. y’all see racist bullshit coming from your neighbor, fav fic writer, artist, gif maker, whatever, and don’t say shit? don’t feel the need to distance yourself from them? gtfoh.)

i made this argument earlier when i was on my rampage (which i’m still on btw so don’t clown in my inbox, you will get your shit rocked) but i’m going to make it again because i feel like its important to note. when i pointed out that existing in the reylo fandom while you are aware of its racism makes you complicit in that racism, a white reylo told me earlier that (paraphrasing, my memory’s not as good as it used to be and i did mention that they’d blocked me) “you don’t solve a problem like systemic racism by ignoring it. leaving the fandom would be allowing it to happen.” when i pointed out that that’s police officer rhetoric almost verbatim, she (a white reylo) admonished me (a black woman) not to compare police brutality to a “ship war.” lmao.

look, clearly y’all need a refresher on what “systemic” means. it means, quite simply, that there are systems, large and small, allow for racism to exist, and it also means that allowing for racism to exist on the small scale means expecting it on a large one. like you think police officers spring fully formed from the head with racist ideals already ingrained? no! they learn it and learn to justify it with “well just because my friend made a racist joke doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because i laughed at my friend’s using a racist term in my video game doesn’t make me a racist” and “just because my friend is a racist doesn’t mean i’m a racist” and then we have people watching their coworkers kneel on a man’s back for 8 minutes with no remorse. i’m not gonna solve police brutality by fighting reylos on tumblr, but fandom racism is real racism with consequences on our world, and i don’t tolerate ANY type of racism. and the fact that you are so willing to not just tolerate it but justify it should say something to you.

and not all reylos are like this. similar to cops, good reylos don’t last. i have seen people grow so disgusted by the racism in the reylo fandom that they publicly turned their backs on it, and those reylos i respect. you’ve heard of “the only good cop is an ex-cop” well get ready for “the only good reylo is an ex-reylo”.

(and also like far be it from me to justify a cop but one could at least say they have their livelihoods to think about (not like they couldn’t just pick a nonmurderous profession but i digress) but you reylos can’t even choose between taking a stance against the hateful and unjustified bullying of a man who had the audacity to… get a job (?)... over a ship? come on now.)

the point of all this is, for all their posturing about “being antiracist” and “fuck 12” and “support john boyega”, reylos have decided that a relationship between two fictional people is more important than all the black and brown people who are hurt by that decision and the consequences of that decision. and before y’all pull some “b-but there are POC reylos!” (stop fucking using poc as an adjective, its a noun, it stands for person of color, please use it as such) internalized racism is a thing. busting out your token “reylo of color” (see how easy that was?) is not going to change my mind. all reylos are complicit in the racism of their peers, and being complicit makes you culpable. full stop.

and that is why the public support of john boyega from the reylo fandom has me seeing red. renounce your fandom or keep that man’s name out of your mouth. anyway, this was long and ranty and entirely stream-of-consciousness and i’m refusing to edit it so it’s probably completely incomprehensible to anyone besides me but if you made it this far thanks for reading ig. all reylos are racist, blm, fuck 12, acab, stan john boyega, don’t clown in my inbox unless you’re coming to bully me for being a karamel shipper, which i deserve (or do, i couldn’t give less of a fuck). good night.

#john boyega #anti reylo #raetalks

[androgynousblackbox]

The anon tries to listen to POC, but often there's an extreme distance between how their Asian colleagues interpret a piece of media and how it's interpreted by American diasporas. For example, Asian friends interpreted the anarchist themes of Joker and praised the film, while the American fans focused on the fandom grown around the character and the "white characters get away with murder, Black characters don't get away with shouting" epidemic in American fandom and hated the idea of it. (1/2)

Anon observed similar situation with Shadow and Bone fans - Asian fans disliked how the racism subplot was executed, while American fans loved how the canonical couple is between two Asians (both actors are mixed & none of them is American, but fans neveral talk about the nuances). The anon's Russian self can't help but laugh at the Russianess being little more than poorly applied decorations in the setting. Of course, they're generalising, but those are the trends they observed happening. (2/3)

So, there's this. In Russia, Japanese teachers teach students how to wear a kimono properly and how to perform a tea ceremony while many Japanese Americans hate the idea of foreigners doing it. In several Asian countries, Joker became the face of rebellion while many Asian Americans see him as face of far right. Shadow and Bone has many Asian American fans, but the series is seen as clumsy at best by many Asian and Russian viewers. What do you think takes priority? (3/4)

The anon cannot write reasonably short, for which they are sorry! They remembered an earlier discussion about how Captive Prince is anti-Black and arguments like "it's not chattel slavery and the characters are not Black" are sealioning. But the story is written by an Australian and rooted in Australian understanding of race (the author is of the same raciallized ethnic group as the protagonist). The anon, who knows USA realities only from social media and fanfics, is really worried. (4/4)

Okay, this is a lot and before saying anything, I think is fair for me to say that I am nothing but a white latino on the internet trying to navigate english speaking fandom so there's only so much I can even say at all because my own knowledge is limited. I try to educate myself whenever possible but there's stuff I still have yet to learn. Having said that, yes, discourse such as any of these are always going to be vastly different from one culture to another because any form of racism is always intrinsically tied to the culture of the place where it happens. This is not to say that there aren't universal forms of racism, like how darker skin is generally considered less attractive or desirable on many places (including Latinamérica), but a lot of it is related back to the history of each country and whatever relationship they have to any particular race. The issue you mentioned of cultural appropiation is a very american one because america reunites so many people from so many different cultures that want to be seen and respected like everyone else. Again, not to say that it's not an issue on other places, but the way the discourse is handled and talked about is very much an american because of the way America is at the center of so many discourses and also the history of America dealing with different cultures, which is to say, not good. Anti-asian racism is a very well and alive thing right now that has resulted on hate crimes against asian just trying to live their lives, promoted and kept alive by even people in power who don't care about what happens to them. Imagine how terrible it is to hear a ex-president of America blame you, your family, your country, everyone who just looks like you, because of a disease that is killing other people. Your culture gets mocked, you get told cruel jokes about the food you eat, about your broken english, get questioned about stuff you had nothing to do with... and the same people who do that, then turn around and are using that same culture they treated less for to make themselves look cooler and trendy? And that doesn't translate at all in you being treated any less shitty, it just means that any meaning your culture had before is reduced to pretty things for other people to use and then forget about the moment other pretty thing caughts their attentions. Wouldn't that make you feel like shit? When asian american or black american or native americans talk about cultural appropiation, it's not about just saying that you can't do this or that because they are meanies who don't want to share their fun pretty things. It's about asking people to please reflect in why it's only cool when others do it but they don't, in how it feels insulting to see things that have a cultural significance to you reduced to a gimmick like any other, on asking why their fun pretty things can't be enjoyed by them and get mocked, insulted and ignored when they tried to do so. Sometimes it also means literally taking away business from communities that needs them without any recognition or payment. I have no clue about the history of Russia with Japan specifically, but if it's a Japanese person the one chosing to share that element of their culture with other people who, I assume, respect it and want to learn about, then that sounds like cultural appreciation for me and it's not at all what anyone in America is talking about when they talk about appreciation. Using a kimono and serving tea on a traditional way is a neutral act that only gains significance because of environment where it happens. About everything else... it's complicated and I am 100% with you when you say that it's very difficult to navigate as a non american don't wanting to come across as insensitive or uneducated or a full blown ass without meaning to. Unfortunately for us, the online discourse is not especially gentle for anyone who doesn't know everything American related and all the intrincated race relations on a first moment. I know this is especially hard for asian fans when americans ones want to insert their own

intepretations into their works just to make it look worse. I get it, because people say "listen to POC" but that really doesn't tell you shit of WHAT to listen for and how to understand when different cultural perspectives clashes with each other, which is almost entirely inevitable because we all come with our own cultural baggage. And even between two black americans or two asian people from the same asian country you could have vastly different opinions about the exact same topic because of them prefer to concentrate on different aspects of it. I guess the best thing to do is... do try to know what people are saying. If these group of people are saying this show is this or that, try to come to understand why they say it. And if other group is saying otherwise, listen to why. Sometimes you don't need to interject at all, sometimes your own opinion is not really needed, but at least try to see where everyone is coming from and realize that everything is an ongoing conversation where nothing is set in stone forever, especially when you account for reclamation, parody and other things that influence the way we percieve anything. Ask questions if you are confused, because you are going to be confused a lot and I am sorry, but that is part of the process. Read books if you need to. Google a lot, but also talk with people, watch videos of people talking about it and, if you want to engage, do it with a mentality of wanting to learn and understand. I hope any of this can be helpful at all. If not, I am sorry. I am still trying to figure out things myself.

#long post #racism mention

[thekytchensynk]

Business Lunch (Fictober Prompt 15)

Prompt number: 15

Fanfiction Fandom: Ducktales

Rating: G

Warnings: No warnings

Read this story on AO3

The letter had arrived without a return address, which had set off some warning bells for Fenton and ALL of the warning bells for his mother.

"What is this?" She gestured to it. "What sort of fool thinks we'd-" She trailed off as Fenton just opened it the way he would any other piece of junk mail, giving him a look of disbelief mixed with anxiety that, once upon a time, would have meant he was grounded, big-time.

"No one would send me a bomb or something through the mail," he argued.

But it didn’t turn out to be either junk mail or some sort of booby trap. It was, instead, a letter inviting Fenton to a “lunch meeting to discuss a potential scientific opportunity.” It didn’t even use a name, just starting “To the lucky resident” instead.

His mother’s eyes further narrowed. She didn’t even need to say anything -- he knew the contents made her even more suspicious. And to be fair, Fenton couldn’t blame her. To a detective, this had to look like step one in either a scam or crime.

But he’d already decided to check it out. The “meeting” was to be held at a fairly popular cafe called Serene Subsistence, so the chances of someone trying something were low. And if the person knew where he lived, they also probably knew he was Gizmoduck -- he wasn’t sure anyone in the neighborhood didn’t. So if they did try something, he had ways to handle the trouble.

So the next day, Fenton made his way to the cafe. Since it was a nice spring day and since the letter hadn’t specified any particular seating arrangements, he chose to sit at a small outdoor table in front of the place, shaded by a blue-striped umbrella and looking through the minimalistic menu.

Fenton hadn’t eaten at Serene Subsistence before, and now that he’d arrived, he sort of understood why. His instincts must have seen something in the decor, or in the sign design, and warned him off. Instead of describing the various options, the menu gave each one just a picture, a name -- something like “the Green Continent” or “the October Surprise” -- and a small list of icons to indicate whether the meal was low-salt, low-fat, gluten-free, all-organic or a host of other things. Huge swaths of white space surrounded each entry.

“You’d think they could put a few lists of ingredients,” Fenton mused out loud, squinting at the menu as though that might reveal hitherto unseen text.

“Awww. come on, where’s the fun in that?”

“You.” The word was out of his mouth before he could stop it, disgusted and angry and very out of place in this hip cafe. If that hadn’t drawn people’s attention, the way the glassware and silverware rattled as he slammed the menu to the tabletop would have.

Mark Beaks waved a hand at him dismissively as he pulled up the selfie camera on his phone and snapped a picture of himself in front of the table. “Come on, calm down, we’re not here to fight. We’re here to talk business.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I’d known I’d be talking business with you,” Fenton said, enunciating hard to prevent his full anger from leaking through.

Beaks grinned at him as though he were a kid who just got his times tables right. “Of course. That’s why I didn’t put my name on it. Uh-duh.” He pulled one of the other chairs at the table out and plopped into it without looking, eyes already back on the phone. “So, yeah, thanks for not looking into that too much, I would have felt really stupid if I get here and you hadn’t shown up.”

Fenton would have loved to have done that. He would have loved to be anywhere but here. Just showing up had given this arrogant tech addict a win, and this guy liked nothing better than wins. Which left him which the difficult task of trying to decide if leaving or staying would give this guy another win.

Or, which would be better for him. After all … what did Beaks want? Why would he be here? If he was plotting something, odds were good that just letting him talk would get it out into the air. Would that be worth dealing with a bit of Beaks to find that out? Maybe stop something before it started?

With a sigh that couldn’t even contain all of the disappointment he felt at doing this, Fenton sat back down. “All right,” he said. “What do you want?”

“Simple. I’m headhunting.”

For a brief moment -- blame too many supervillains -- Fenton thought he was talking like … literal headhunting. Like decapitating people. Luckily, before he could let his reaction to that get onto his face, the clinical part of his mind reminded him that this was a business meeting, and that in business parlance, headhunting had a whole other meaning.

“So, what, are you checking someone’s references?” Fenton asked, trying not-terribly-hard to cut the venom out of his voice. “Looking for recommendations? People who might be willing to build a body-bulking villain serum to-” His mind put two and two together and came up with an answer he did not like.”Are you trying to hire Dr. Gearloose away? Because whatever his reputation, he’s very loyal to the-”

“Gear wha?” Beaks finally looked up from his phone again, and he looked and sounded so puzzled that Fenton felt sure it had to be real. Any skill Beaks had at deception didn’t really center on fooling others with an act so much as just ignoring most people so you never had to worry about fooling them.

Despite that Dr. Gearloose not being the target was good news, Fenton found himself somewhat insulted on his mentor’s behalf. “He’s one of the greatest scientific minds on the planet,” Fenton said. “But you’d never get him away from his lab.”

“Ohhhhh! The guy whose stuff always goes evil!” Beaks said, looking pleased at having worked this out. “Yeah, no. Not interested. Scrooge can keep that stuff. Not good for the Waddle image when things suddenly go all…” He finished the thought by curling one hand into a claw-like shape and making a rasping sound that Fenton assumed was meant to personify “evil.”

But if he really, honestly didn’t care about Dr. Gearloose … “So why are you here?”

“For you-” something about the way he said it made Fenton think there was initially meant to be another word there -- his name probably. But Beaks had probably forgotten it. It was certainly on brand. “I said it in the letter, right?”

“The letter was vague,” Fenton pointed out. “And it’s not like the two of us are exactly on good terms.”

Again Beaks wave a hand, as though dismissing the entirely valid criticism out of hand. “Past is past,” he said. “Just let it go. I want to offer you a spot at my company and I don’t want any misunderstandings to get in the way of that.”

“Misunderstandings?” Fenton’s voice rose again, drawing more stares. Forcing his tone back to an annoyed murmur, he added, “Like when you put countless lives in danger just for your … your click count?”

“Clicks? What, no,” Beaks said, seeming scandalized. But Fenton counted in his head. Three. Two. One. “It’s likes, man. Engagement is key. Clicks. Who even clicks on something anymore…”

“Whatever,” Fenton said.

“But yeah, I meant misunderstandings like that,” Beaks added, almost as an afterthought. “We just need to move past that and see if we can come to a beneficial arrangement.”

The absolute nerve of this guy. “Listen,” he said, and this time it really was a bare whisper. “The suit will never go anywhere near you or your-”

“Wait, wait wait.” Beaks interrupted, shaking his head. “Not that. You. I got to hear some of what you showed off to Dee on that infiltration mission, some seriously interesting stuff in there. We could use someone with that sort of brainpower in our labs.”

That brought him up short. Him? The offer still wasn’t tempting, but that one reveal had changed the entire perception of their conversation. This was about him? About science?

And also about the info he learned from spying on what you thought was a date, the logical part of him mind reminded him unhelpfully.

“You want me to … invent things? For Waddle?” Fenton repeated, just to make sure. This felt wrong, like a trap. It seemed like something that might actually be part of a real business, not the sham that Beaks seemed to run.

Beaks was back on the phone again, and Fenton would have assumed he’d checked out entirely if he didn’t keep on answering questions and comments. “Well, yeah,” he said. “The awesome Waddle devices that trendy young influencers just have to have don’t invent themselves, you know. Slap our name and logo on them and boom! Instant must-have gear. Something for the shareholders to talk about. I gotta prove I can still bring in the cool -- and the cash, too.”

Ah. “So anything that the people in your lab, you take credit for?”

“Duh.” Beaks looked across the table at him, and for the first time in this entire conversion, it felt like he was actually being serious. “People don’t just want the goods, they want to feel like they’re buying into something larger than life. If I sold our phones under some other random name with a stodgy old buzzard as the CEO, you know what sort of market share that would get? None. Because people don’t just want a phone, they want a phone from me. It’s the same reason people react so strongly to you when the cops could usually do the exact same thing. Because they weren’t just saved, they were saved by a hero.”

He hadn’t thought about it that way before, and now, he sort of wished he never had. A hero? His mother was a hero. She’d saved as many people as he, probably more, and she also did the things needed to bring them to trial, to let justice do its work. All he could really do was stop what was right in front of him. Maybe Beaks was right about how it worked in business. But that was maybe the best reason of all to just stop listening to the idiocy that came out of his mouth. All it did was validate Beaks’ own sense of importance.

He stood. Started to leave. “Thanks, but I’ve got to go.”

A chair scraped. “Hey!” Beaks’ indignant voice followed him.

He felt the hand on his shoulder, trying to tighten with some degree of command or control, but it felt laughable. Weak. And then Beaks said, “Hey, amigo, hold on, tell me what the problem is. We can work something out.”

Whirling, Fenton said, “If I was interested, what would the starting pay be?”

Except he said it in Spanish. Not as fluid as his mother’s but still far more dancing than that one thudding word when Beaks has uttered it.

He expected the confusion -- the tech CEO wasn’t fooling anyone into thinking he could actually speak another language. But he got the other thing he expected to see almost immediately. The narrowing of the eyes. The darkening of the expression, as anger took the edge off Beaks’ carefree attitude. He’d been asked a question, he didn’t understand the question, and he thought not being able to answer it made him look foolish. That more than anything else told him all he needed to know.

“All right. Not interested, thank you.”

He didn’t even wait around to see if Beaks reacted to that. He just walked away.

#fictober20 #15 #ducktales #fanfic #fenton crackshell cabrera #mark beaks

[redfoxline]

Thanks to @whumptober2020 for their hard work at organizing the challenge! I’m so excited to participate this year! =D

Whumptober Day 01-02

Theme: ‘Let’s hang out sometimes’ + ‘In the hands of the enemy’

Prompts: ‘Waking up restrained’ +  ‘Kidnapping’

Fandom: Final Fantasy XV

Word count: 2264

Summary: Prompto opened his eyes to the sight of blood spots on his white shoes. The very same pair of sneakers that he had begged Cor to purchase for him as a gift at the beginning of the school year. Cor, who was neither his father nor his foster parent, but who looked after him like a godfather anyway. Cor, who abhorred spending unnecessary funds on trinkets, but ended up paying a pair of shoes a third of his wage just because they were trendy and Prompto had wanted to look cool. Barely one semester in, and Prompto got them ruined.

Prompto opened his eyes to the sight of blood spots on his white shoes.

The very same pair of sneakers that he had begged Cor to purchase for him as a gift at the beginning of the school year. Cor, who was neither his father nor his foster parent, but who looked after him like a godfather anyway. Cor, who abhorred spending unnecessary funds on trinkets, but ended up paying a pair of shoes a third of his wage just because they were trendy and Prompto had wanted to look cool. He had made him promise to take good care of it, at the very least, because it was useless to spend this amount of money in mere shoes if they didn't last the whole school year at least.

Barely one semester in, and Prompto got them ruined.

His internal laments were cut out by pain. Like a wake-up call, his brain finally registered that he was sitting in a very uncomfortable chair. Around him, nothing but plain, dented walls of some sort of warehouse. The door was locked, a brand new padlock glistening in the beam of sunlight.

Fear rose in his throat like bile.

Prompto lurched against the ropes binding him, straining his neck to get a better look through the window. He could barely see the top of some skyscrapers further away, and the sky. Was he that high? Was he in some kind of abandoned parking lot?

There was a district full of this kind of building near the checkpoint entrance of Insomnia. Prompto had never set foot in this area. It was rumoured to be haunted by the old people in the Niff District. Noctis had promised him it only was an urban legend, that it was empty because no one wanted to build a house this close to the gates, where fights would happen should deamons or niffelheim army sneak past the Wall.

Noctis! He smiled at the thought of this friend. Didn't Noctis explain to him what to do in case of kidnapping?

"Don't provoke them. Keep a low profile and give them what they want until rescue comes to get you," Noctis had recited in an obviously bored sigh. "Look at them and your surroundings. Try to gather as much information as you can. If you can communicate, try to give as much information as possible about your location. If they leave you behind, keep hidden until sunlight and get to the nearest place with a phone. Only act against them if it's your last resort."

That wasn't very useful to him, Prompto thought. !there was no one to make demands. Not that he could grant any, anyway.

He tried to move but the chair had been screwed down to the concrete. Grumbling in defeat, he looked around for another option, until his eyes found the door and its padlock again.

Wait. How come he could see the padlock? Shouldn't it be outside?

A wave of dread ran through his body and made his skin crawl.

If it was inside, it could only mean that, whoever had taken him there, had locked the both of them in.

After a long minute where terror froze him into place, he tried to turn around. A large wood board had been screwed on the back of the chair, preventing him to fully see what was behind him. He craned his neck as much as he could, his eyes turned so far back he felt they would just pop out of his head, he managed to glimpse at a tinted mirror. From the look of it, Prompto imagined it was large enough to cover most of the wall.

His stomach twisted. If there was a door to access the other side, it probably was right behind him.

How many were they? Were they watching him? He could imagine their stares burning his neck through the wood board.

The sob escaping his lips took him by surprise. He valiantly tried to blink back the tears but they fell anyway, tracing burning tracks on his cold cheeks. The empty room suddenly felt freezing, extracting another full-body shiver out of him. He didn't dare to speak up. Whatever they wanted, Prompto couldn't give it to them. Not that he would have wanted to, anyway.

They probably expected him to be able to provide information about Noctis, he realized.  Maybe they would even ask for ransom. His face had appeared enough times in tabloids, trotting along with the Prince, for them to understand Noctis would go to great length to retrieve him.  Too bad for them. The only information he knew about Noctis that was public was his love for fishing and tomato-flavoured chips. No one would have been stupid enough to let a civilian like him get access to security data. If there were in for the money, though, he wasn't sure about what would happen. Certainly, King Regis wouldn't let an underage civilian,  especially a friend of his son, in the hands of his kidnappers. He wouldn't pay, though. If he sent the Kingsglaive, Prompto wasn't sure what would happen to him in the crossfire.

Hope bloomed in his chest when his internal voice of reason - which has suspiciously started to sound like Ignis as of late - reminded him they could do it for intimidation. To prove they could get close to the Prince. Anti-Crowners. They would have left him there.

Metal scratching the concrete dashed all hope away. Someone had opened a door.

Someone had opened the door right behind him.

His world went spinning and stopped whirling at the same time. There was nothing to feel but the utter terror blossoming in his belly when the man came into vision.

"Prompto Argentum." He knew what fearing for his life meant, now that his own name had left the man's lips. "Good afternoon, kid. You slept for a very long time. My buddies and I were wondering if we might have roughened up you a bit too much."

The blood on his shoes, Prompto realized. It came from somewhere, of course. He felt bad overall, but no place hurt more than another, so he assumed they hadn't beaten him up that much. It wasn't like he remembered how they got him there.

"Do you know why you're there, Argentum?"

He shook his head. The man grinned and snickered.

"He doesn't know why he's here! What an unassuming boy!". His hands plumped on Prompto's shoulders, all amused attitude vanished from his face. "Are you serious?"

Prompto couldn't get a word out, but that didn't seem to matter to the man. He turned back, leaving Prompto with a bad case of trembling knees, and started rambling.

"What a joke. He doesn't know!" The coldness of the man's glare would have been enough to pin Prompto down to his damned chair if he hadn't been tied up already. Prompto had seen Coeurls on Lucian Geographic who looked less murderous than his perpetrator.

"You're the bestie of the Prince and you don't have a clue what business we could have with you, kid?" A raucous laugh that didn't sound right ricocheted against the walls.

"Guess what? You're a lucky one. We're not bad guys. We don't care about the Prince. He is a kid too, and we're not child murderers. No need to be scared of us. We just want information about a man, and you happen to know a lot about him. Right, Argentum?"

Names and faces flashed through his mind. Who could he know that would have that much importance to that man? He didn't know the King personally, hadn't met him yet. Neither did he know Gladio's dad. The man probably didn't mean Ignis, because even if Iggy was the future Chamberlain, he wasn't one yet, and anyway he was barely legal so he didn't have time to do anything some crazy old man would want to...

"Seems like the Immortal is quite fond of you."

What?

"The Immortal?" He heard himself whisper, bewildered.

"Yes, the Immortal. Fancy that you know him. We've been tracking the little Prince for a while just to catch him. Seems like a busy man. Even if he's the head of the bloody royal security, we never saw him in a mile radius of the prince."

The man laughed and squeezed Prompto's shoulder. Hard.

"And here you come! The Immortal never visits the Prince, but Uncle Cor sure wouldn't miss the chance to take his dear nephew shopping, Imma right? Or are you his son, maybe?"

"I'm not. I'm really not!" He insisted, feeling the man digging his fingers deeper into his shoulder, making him wince in pain.

"Sure thing you aren't, kid. Why would the Immortal spend his time with you then?"

"I swear I'm not! I'm niff! The Crownsguards took me back in Insomnia when my parents were killed in Gralea!"

His pleas only made the man angrier.

"Likely story, eh? Someone like him wouldn't spend so much time with you if you weren't linked somehow."

A series of impatient knocks on the tinted mirror interrupted him.

"OK, kid. I just have a few questions about daddy dearest." If he ever made it out alive, Prompto would never laugh at B-Movies lines ever again - in real life those were downright terrifying to hear.

"Where does the Marshal live?"

Where did-Where did Cor live?

The walls of his apartment were painted with a light yellow. In the evening, the living room gleamed in the golden light.  Being perched on the 32nd floor, it felt like being nestled in a cocoon nest, unreachable and above the clouds. Prompto had stayed the night a few times, whenever Mrs Argentum had to go away and needed him to be watched and every time he had managed to snatch a handful of amazing sunsets snippets. It didn't hurt Cor hid a fantastic collection of photography books in his office and could make a killer paella.

It seemed crazy people wouldn't know where it was situated. As far as Pormpto knew, the location wasn't a state secret. He wasn't an important person either. No matter what Noctis said, Cor wasn't exempted from following the rules. If the location of his apartment was deemed sensitive information, Prompto would never have been allowed up there.

"I don't know," he heard himself say, anyway.

"You don't know?"

"I don't know," he repeated, feeling a bit more sure of himself despite the tremors of his voice. "I suppose he has an apartment in the Citadel or something."

Next thing he registered was pain.

The punch would have sent him flying if the chair hadn't been screwed onto the ground. His vision turned blurry from the tears and he could hear the man yelling and yelling, but could not concentrate enough to understand what he was saying.

"Think you're funny, little shit? Think this is a joke?!"

"Calm down Dan." A new voice piped in. "Not gonna help if he can't answer."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"N-No." He kept his eyes on the ground.

A kick to his knee tore a cry from his throat. Finger dug hard at his jaw, forcing his chin up.

"For a Niff you're quite loyal, aren't you?" He shoved him back, dirty nails scratching Prompto's cheeks. "Perfect. Then if you don't know where he lives, you can tell me where he works, right?"

"The-The Citadel?"

"And how does he get his orders?"

"By phone -I think he has some by the phone. the secured stuff. And - hum, he gets summoned by the King sometimes."

Wasn't it common knowledge? Or was trying to coerce some other information from him with those questions? He hoped not. Had he revealed sensible information?

"This number...is it his secure phone, or his personal mobile."

A screen was pushed under his nose - Prompto hadn't even noticed the other guy walking in! - with Cor's name flashing right at him. Despite the new crack on said screen, he immediately recognized his own phone.

"It's...I don't know. I've never asked, "he stammered. "I think it's his personal phone?"

"Does he usually pick up right away when you call him, or does he call you back?"

The new man spoke with a heavy accent, Lucian accent. His calm demeanour was throwing Prompto off. The violence and the rage of the other man, that was what Prompto expected from a kidnapper. What was up with this guy? And what kind of questions were these?

"I- we - I mostly text him and he calls me back."

They couldn't do anything with that kind of information, right?

Wrong.

Wrong, he realized, when the new guy threw a punch and took a picture of his crying face.

Wrong, he realized, when he made a show of tapping the 'send' button. The tiny arrow icon flashed blue a few times before the picture was sent to Cor.

Wrong, wrong, wrong wrong...

Seconds grained like sand into an hourglass, stretching as they fell, until the screen lighted up back to life, displaying the text as 'read'.

Immediately his phone started vibrating.

He didn't need to see the ID to know who was calling. The cruel smile spreading on the new guy's face was telling enough. Before he could do or say anything, though, the two men left and snapped shut the door behind them. He strained his ears but quickly gave up. Walls of concrete didn't let pass many sounds, let alone distinct conversation.

With nothing but fear and uncertainty for entertainment, he went back to staring holes at his bloody shoes.

#whumptober2020 #no.1 #no.2 #waking up restrained #kidnapping #final fantasy xv #fanfiction #violence #hurt Prompto Argentum #beating #ansgt

[natelia-aldelliz]

Hi, I'm not dead and I want to complain again !

So..... You would think that being stuck in my room for who knows how long would make me want to draw or write again...you would be wrong ! I'm hitting a hell of a block right now...

One thing it has made me want to do though is read Les Misérables...again... I already read it once though, so needless to say I'm going to skip things, or maybe even just read the parts with les Amis de l'ABC... Yeah, I'm lazy...

The thing is I started reading fanfics about that again, mainly, to be honest, Enjolras/Grantaire because I could die for them. And there are things in some of these fanfics that I absolutely despise and that make me want to drop the fanfic instantly. Should I rant about it ? I want to rant about it. Yeah, I'm gonna rant about it...

First of all : don't give Grantaire a first name that starts with R... It takes all the joke away. If there's anyone who didn't know, his nickname is R because Grantaire and Grand R (meaning Capital R) is pronounced the exact same way in french, so he just goes by a capital R and it's clever.

But it can be worse than just a first name starting with R : it can be René ! Do not, please do not call him René..... Maybe it's trendy or sounds cool in the US, I don't know, but in France it's really just a name for really old dudes....an ugly name for french dudes... If you really can't live without giving Grantaire a name starting with R, consider Rémi instead, way better than René...

Second : Enjolras... Don't call him E.... Like if you don't have time or if it's just writen somewhere, sure, but don't make someone, in a dialogue, call him E, no one does that in France, calling someone by their initial. And even if, E is pronounced "uh" so it's not even pretty like R could be (it's pronounced like "air") call him Enj instead, it's pronounced like "ange" which means angel, perfect for him isn't it ?

Jehan, now ! He/They (or whatever you headcannon Jehan to be, personnally I like the nonbinary headcannon, so they for me) is a Romantic poet. I've seen far too often people understanding it as them going "oooh a pretty flower, that reminds me of my lover, I want to gift it to them so they'll be happy" and I mean, nothing wrong with that, it's just really not what Romantism is, it's more like "oh a flower, yesterday there was none, tomorrow it might be gone, a fitting and colourful comparison to how life is fleeting and death might be upon us all, but without the stark contrast of death surrounding us how can one appreciate life?"

Combeferre, I love Combeferre, and he's generally well written, but not as savage and nerdy as he truly is... It's the guy that writes to the Académie Française (the ones that do dictionnaries and that decide what word is french and what word is an evil virus of Satan) to notify them of their spelling mistakes....like who does that ??? And he's also the guy that had the 19th century equivalent to a mic drop and the crowd going "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH" when talking to Marius.... Yeah, I don't really have anything to say against the way people write Combeferre, I just wanted to talk about him because I love him.

One last thing (because I can't remember anything else right now) : les Amis de l'ABC... I do think that everyone in the fandom knows that ABC is pronounced the same as abaissé, so the Friends of the Abased... But that's not all it stands for, it's also a pun, as it is with R, but not only, it's also quite literally ABC as in the alphabet, because they don't just drink and plot their revolution, no, they also teach freely poor people how to read and write ! And if you do a modern AU, you can still do that, just say they do free evening classes to teach migrants how to speak, read and write french or something, I don't know...

Oh wait, no, one last last thing : make it happen in France ? Please ? You can make it happen elsewhere if you give a very good reason for it, but if it's just because you don't know anything about France, ask internet, there's a lot of French there, especially now that France is in quarantine... If you can write a fanfic about Les Misérables, you can learn a bit about France... I'm available if you have any question about how France works ! (though I don't know a lot about Paris 🤔)

#les misérables #les mis #les amis de l'abc #enjolras #grantaire #combeferre #jehan prouvaire #rant #i hope i didn't offend anyone... #sorry if i did? #i'm just really really bored right now...