#like nobody is reading anything WRONG here it just feels so fundamentally wrong to ME | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heartbeatbookclub · 2 months

Text

I was looking at a few posts about autism (as one does) and it just suddenly clicked into place a fundamental thing about Yuri's character that I'd been grasping at, but hadn't really been able to adequately identify. I still have a much longer and more thorough analysis going through a whole lot of my thoughts on Yuri's character and her experience of autism that i'm working on (of which this will likely be a component), but I thought I'd share this separately just to emphasize.

Post I saw which made this click for me was making fun of the fact that most media depicting impaired empathy in autistic characters explicitly depicts them with this unflappable confidence of never having been rejected by people they love. The crux of this is that in actual reality, autistic people almost always have that experience at some point, for some behavior, for reasons they don't really understand. "There is an invisible line where people will get sick of you, and you have no warning of when you're about to cross it." So frequently, autistic people attempt to ride a razor thin edge, walking on constant eggshells to desperately attempt to avoid crossing that line.

Very often autistic people will attempt to avoid doing anything at all which could be considered weird, or off-putting, and will try their absolute hardest to do things in a way that is acceptable to other people, sometimes to the point of outright suppressing their emotions, because they are afraid that they'll say something just wrong enough that the people they care about will push them away, and they don't understand WHY it happened, but they know it's THEIR fault. Sometimes masking is fighting to appear aloof all the time because you can't regulate your emotions in a way that is acceptable to other people.

And holy fucking Jesus, that fits the exact mold of what I've been trying to talk about with the particular way Yuri's anxieties manifest.

It really feels to me like Yuri has this constant fear of breaking the "rules" of socializing, despite not really understanding what those rules even are. She's constantly afraid of saying something wrong, when she doesn't even know what wrong would be, she's just sure everyone ELSE will know it when they hear it. I think a huge part of her social anxiety comes from her own understanding of herself as a very weird person who doesn't really get a lot of how to socialize, and it seems to me like she's probably dealt with her fair share of social rejection and isolation based on those traits. She then felt she had to take responsibility for those traits, probably because it's the one thing she can change, and she is the one common denominator in all of these bad situations (This is something which is pretty common, actually! "Everyone else can socialize just fine, and I have so much difficulty with it! I must just be broken in some way. I have to try super hard to be normal to make friends!")

I think a big part of why it's so apparent in the Literature Club is because she really thinks she's found a place where she can make friends in spite of all of her issues, so when she starts...being herself, and receives even the smallest HINT of pushback, she overcorrects and tries to rein all of herself in to fix her "mistake", because she really wants to make friends here, and doesn't want them to reject her as well.

She's had this experience of others pushing her away for being weird so often that, coupled with her acknowledged trouble for reading situations, when anybody responds poorly to something and she recognizes it, she immediately overcorrects out of fear of being an annoying burden to everyone around her, and that "correction" consists of suppressing herself into being "normal" (or at least "less weird"), because she believes nobody could actually like her just for being who she is. There's something wrong with her fundamentally, and to make friends, for people to like her and want to be around her, she has to "fix" herself.

it's just, like...

it's really hard for me to interpret Yuri's character that doesn't involve her being somewhere on the spectrum, bros. she's written with such delicately constructed autistic coding, despite the appearance of just being a hackneyed weird girl visual novel trope. she deserves the world.......

75 notes · View notes

fail-eacan · 8 months

Text

I just watched a youtube video about the prevelance of m/m shipping and comparative lack of f/f (and even m/f) in fandoms across the board. The maker of the video had many good points but what really struck me was realising just how much focus fanfiction puts on penetrative sex.

Not a topic I thought I’d be writing about ever, but here we are!

The youtuber (ObviouslyQueer) pointed it out and I can’t unsee it. The was sex in fandom is framed as all building to orgasm as its only purpose, the way that orgasm is expressed through male vocabulary in a way I just can’t even imagine a female equivalent for, it just blows my mind and I can’t even adequately describe to you how much of a breakthrough this feels like to me.

I have never had sex or watched porn of any variety, and partially due to that and partially due to my surprisingly prudish nature when it comes to displays of affection in my writing, I have never written anything that could be interpreted as sexual.

But if I were asked to, I could give you both m/m and f/m smut within a few minutes. Easily. I know the format. I know exactly how it all works out, at least in fanfic. I know the patterns.

Not so for f/f. Where would I even start? I haven’t read anything that discusses sti prevention in f/f relationships, I don’t know how consent or a conversation about sexual encounters would work in an f/f relationship. I can’t even picture it. How does it come about? What happens during? What happens after? Fundamentally, I don’t know how f/f sex works. And I couldn’t write anything about it. I don’t know any type of sex, but I could fake it with f/m and m/m. Why is this?

Additionally, what little f/f fic I’ve read has either had no sex, or had some sort of substitute penis- shapeshifting, straps, toys. And it always reads like something a kindergartener glued together in the dark. Because nobody has a clue what they’re talking about. And some people must, right? Why do they not write about it? Is it that stupid repression of female sexuality makes it feel awkward in a way other sex scenes aren’t?

I know it’s partially lack of representation and partially internalised misogyny but why does it feel so fake?

I think I’m rambling and also wording stuff wrong I just need to get this out and I’m still in my eureka mindframe.

#mlm #flm #flf #f/f fic #m/m smut #f/f smut #misogyne is how you spell it maybe help #sexuality #fanfic #fandom #this is genuine #lgbt representation #wolfstar #solangelo #buddie

40 notes · View notes

amoremoccidere · 2 years

Text

The Kairi Question (A Queer Reading of Kingdom Hearts)

I realize the first question that’s going to be on a lot of minds the minute I start talking about Sora and Riku as a romantic couple is how that fits with Kairi’s character.

There are, of course, the obvious responses, such as the fact that Kairi hasn’t played a major role in the story for a very long time, if her role could ever be called major in the first place, but that doesn’t delete her character from the story entirely.

Instead, I would like to revisit the fundamentals and really disentangle Kairi’s role from our preconceived notions of what the best friend to the male lead is “supposed” to be.

In other words, anything that is not explicit within the text is not canon.

Kairi is never explicitly stated as Sora’s love interest. The closest we come to it at any point in the story is in Chain of Memories, where Sora’s memory is addled and Namine, planting herself in Kairi’s place in many ways as her shadow, her Nobody, causes Sora to express disappointment in that they were never really friends, “Or anything more than that.” But that only confirms that Namine addled Sora’s mind to make him think he was attracted to her. Whether those feelings came initially from Kairi is left vague, even when Namine admits that Kairi is the girl in his life who is most special to him.

Feelings can also change, and people can realize that things they thought they once knew about themselves are wrong. Though I doubt this is something Kingdom Hearts would ever address plainly using specific terminology (even if Sora and Riku were to become an explicit couple in the future), since it has a certain tone that’s just slightly hovering over grounded reality, there are many people out there who didn’t realize they were queer when they were young and thought they had a crush on someone just because that person was their “favorite girl” and they didn’t realize there’s supposed to be a feeling that goes along with that. It’s a nigh-universal experience amongst homosexual and asexual people in particular. That feeling that you have to “choose” someone.

Sora’s feelings for Kairi could be interpreted as having never existed at all, or having once existed and then changed, or having been presumed by even Sora because everyone on Destiny Islands thought he liked her and he simply went along with it because he thought he was supposed to like her.

If they did exist at any point, it’s easy to support the interpretation that they don’t anymore.

Sora’s confusion when Kairi hands him a Paopu fruit--a colloquial symbol with romantic connotations--and the distress on his face is easy to read as a rejection.

It certainly isn’t an explicit expression of romance from Sora, in any case. There are none in the series. No verbal confessions, no kisses, no dates outright stated as such.

If there are no explicit confirmations, we have to turn to implicit.

But the problem with Sora and Kairi is that every scene between them that could be interpreted as romantic has a pointed, purposeful, and platonic parallel elsewhere in the series.

I’ll only give a few here to make my point, but I may make a post dedicated to this later, showing every single time Sora and Kairi do something together that’s repeated by another two characters at another point.

The existence of these platonic scenes juxtaposed against Sora and Kairi does not necessarily mean that it is impossible to read them as romantic, but that every scene between Sora and Kairi reliably has a platonic counterpart is worth noting when analyzing the purpose of these scenes.

So, if we’re assuming Kairi’s role in this story is not to be Sora’s love interest, since that role falls to Riku, then how can her role be read?

Well, personally, I read her role as--bear with me--to...not be Sora’s love interest.

And I don’t mean that in a she’s-a-strong-independent-woman-who-don’t-need-no-man way. What I mean is that she is there, specifically, to subvert the expectation that every hero in every story needs to get the girl. She’s standing in the role of “the girl” specifically to take up that space, but Sora has no intention of “getting” her.

Kairi has never been a particularly important part of Kingdom Hearts. None of her choices seem to matter.

In the first Kingdom Hearts game, her role throughout most of the story was that of a corpse. She was a MacGuffin, passed from place to place, from villain to villain, until she was rescued, just before the climax, leaving said climax for Sora and Riku alone.

In Kingdom Hearts II, she boldly left the islands in search of Sora only to be captured, passed again from villain to villain, and be rescued (by Namine this time rather than Sora)...just before the climax, leaving the climax for Sora and Riku alone once again.

In Kingdom Hearts III, if we count Re:Mind, then the story becomes more about Kairi toward the end of the installment...

...until you unlock Episode Riku after the credits, where the story goes right back to being about Riku and Sora.

...And then someone who looks like Riku and Sora.

The non-numeric games barely mention Kairi at all, usually giving her one or two short scenes where she has no lines. Even Birth By Sleep gave her less screen-time than Sora and Riku, and she only shared one scene with them while Sora and Riku were never apart.

And even Melody of Memory, a game with only thirty minutes or so of plot that was mostly about Kairi...

...ended with Kairi being told she couldn’t come, outright vocalizing what the rest of the games had all implied, finally saying it to her face. “This story...”

“...isn’t yours.”

And she’s disappointed. Understandably. Everything, this whole time, has been about Sora and Riku, and that’s something she can’t ignore anymore.

She’s the love interest that wasn’t. The girl the hero wasn’t supposed to get. She is there to be the subversion of a trope. She’s there specifically because she doesn’t have to be there. But that’s okay.

Why?

The only thing that’s been keeping her in these games all this time, the reason she keeps being pulled back into the story even when she’s not relevant, every single scene without dialogue given to her in those games where she’s otherwise absent...

They’re all there for one reason.

Sora loves her.

Maybe it’s not the way she wants. It’s certainly not the way he would have loved her in any other game. But he does love her. No game fully passes without at least a mention of her, because he’s thinking about her, or dreaming about her, or talking about her. And even if the story doesn’t belong to her...even if the romance doesn’t belong to her...he’s always going to love her.

She’s the girl Sora loved in the wrong way.

And I think she’ll be okay with that.

#amoremoccidere #soriku #long post #Kingdom Hearts

294 notes · View notes

deliciouswastelandgoddess · 2 years

Text

Kinnporsche and Safe-Keeping Fans' Expectations - The Genius of Kinnporsche's Plot Twists

Also read:

The Genius of Kinnporsche's Intimacy

The Genius of Kinnporsche's Wardrobe

The Genius of Kinnporsche's Humour

I'll be the first to point out plot holes in this show but I absolutely love the way they have been doing plot twists so far - well we are already at episode 14 so there isn't much else left to draw my conclusions now.

Calling them plot twists feels almost like an exaggeration because of how organic they are, I have never seen them done like this before. Despite the camp and some ridiculously unrealistic world building, these twists feel exactly like real life. Like they're confusing but also sort of make sense? Like they are so wild nobody could've predicted them but it's also so inline with the character that it's not jarring - a soft plot twist, if you will.

A real life example of this would be (and desis do back me up here) Priyanka Chopra getting married to Nick Jonas like- NOBODY could have predicted that but it's organic, it's real life, that's how the world works. Like, I am hoping this is making sense because I'm at loss of words now.

Now the plot twist that made me think of this entire meta is Episode 13, when Porsche decided to tag team with Vegas while Vegas decided to help Porsche because he's fed up of the adults and because he wants a way to reach out to Pete.

Not the brotp I asked for but definitely the brotp I needed.

Anyway, this had me thinking - this is what they have been doing it with us the entire time. Some of the plotlines are cliched AF but most of them really blindside you. Like I see so many people trying to predict what's gonna happen in the next episode and they are all wrong 99/100 times lol. They have made clowns of the audience but WITHOUT punishing us for our expectations (unlike some other western showrunners like Game of Thrones I am sorry for always making this comparison). KP's showrunners have subverted our expectations by giving us things that were even better than what we could have imagined.

Take the bathroom scene for example, it came out of nowhere, that was not at all how I imagined that scene would go, it was absolutely beyond my tiny tiny western media fed brain. It was a plot twist!! It was shocking!! I had to pick up my jaw from the floor when it aired!! I couldn't think of anything else for a month!! We all lost our minds over it!! It was intentional!! I want to have this scene framed and displayed in my house!! My life is divided between before I saw this scene and after!! This scene fundamentally changed my perception of humanity and sexuality!! I don't know what else to say here - it was earth shattering!!

You know what else was a plot twist?! THEIR FIRST KISS BY THE PIER!! I did not see it coming. I was only expecting flirting and a general romantic set-up, I was expecting Kinn to tsundere his way into figuring Porsche out but my man straight up went for a kiss right then and there!! And now it seems like such a perfect, organic thing, like we can't even imagine it any other way but when it happened you bet your little ass I was pleasantly blindsided.

Go to episode 4, their first time having sex with each other was also a plot twist! I was only expecting Porsche to ask Kinn about his feelings, tease him, kiss him maybe, etc but again!! They just- went for it?? Like?? I remember everyone losing their collective minds over it in the best way possible??

And then we transition right into episode 5 where again!! Plot twist!! Porsche is not happy the morning after and this was hard to watch ngl but they couldn't have been more careful and gentle in their handling of the situation.

The resolution of this episode was also, one of my favorites in the entire show with Kinn coming to Porsche's house and apologizing and asking him to come back home. This wasn't the plot twist though. The real plot twist of episode 5 was that Kinn isn't a badass Crime lord, Kinn is a clown.

Clown!Kinn appeared in episode 5, installed himself into our hearts in episode 6 and never left.

Which takes me to the most plot twisty episode of the season: the jungle escape - just littered with minor plot twists throughout. WHAT DO YOU MEAN KINN KNEW HOW TO OPEN THE HANDCUFFS? WHAT DO MEAN HE WILL TELL EVERYONE PORSCHE DIED IN THE FOREST?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE LIKES TO SEE PORSCHE HAPPY?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN PORSCHE FORGAVE HIM A LONG TIME AGO?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN KINN IS INTO OLD SONGS?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN???????

I could write a dissertation just about the beats of their cave conversation and how well they managed to convey Porsche's journey into falling in love with Kinn (who was already in love with Porsche by this time)

Another plot twist they had was Kinn straight up announcing that he loves Porsche in front of everyone - again, something I don't think anyone saw coming but that's how things work out in real life, don't they?? There isn't a dramatic reveal to these things they are just revealed. NOBODY could have seen that coming and if you did I congratulate you on having a large brain.

The hedgehog (RIP) being the plot driver to push the Vegaspete agenda was not on my bingo card that's for sure. The plot twist?? That Vegas is a cry baby and a hedgehog dad and Pete can't leave a pathetic man alone. Everyone thought they'd be the sexy couple but nah nah nah it's psych time you hoes, they are the pathetic couple.

Psych again! Because they are BOTH pathetic and sexy! Vegaspete plot twist number 2: Pete handing the rope to Vegas.

WHO???? THE FUCK???? came up with that??!! I want to know their names so I can erect a shrine in the honor of their brains. I don't even remember what I was expecting but I'm sure this wasn't it. PLOT. TWIST.

Psych again!! Pete is actually traumatized by the whole experience and it's so painful to watch you will want to die but also it's feeding us emotionally in way we never could have imagined!! (More deep dive into this in my post about Dehumanizing Pete here)

It's the stuff of the best fan-fiction but making it 100 times better without following any of the usual tropes. It's insane how big brained they have been and how much they really want to make the audiences happy. And that's it. That's the Genius of Kinnporsche's Plot Twists - they want to make the audiences happy. It's so simple.

#the way i haven't even mentioned kinn showing up at yok's bar in ep3 #or porsche calling kinn constantly in ep7 #or porsche dropping the l-word in episode 8 just like that #or kinn and Porsche going to the temple together #or Vegas showing up at the pool to serande (manipulate) Porsche #i had a 10 gif limit what was i supposed to do #kinnporsche #kinnporche the series #kinnporsche meta #vegaspete

231 notes · View notes

la-pheacienne · 1 year

Note

Tbh, I didn’t mind Rhaenyra disliking the idea of marriage and motherhood after watching her mother endure failed pregnancy after failed pregnancy and saw how it weakened her each time until she died. I feel like it’s realistic that she’d have fears about it and that she would be reluctant. And I think her reluctance does come from a place of fear and not a natural distaste, like Arya’s. And honestly, F&B never says that she was super into the idea of motherhood or anything, iirc. I don’t think it says anything at all about how she feels about it when she’s young, so I actually think the show’s interpretation is valid. (I could be wrong, it’s been a while since I read it, feel free to correct me if you know of a quote where it’s mentioned). I just wish the show had taken the time to explore her fears and how she overcame them, what her experience was with her first pregnancy, how she adjusted to motherhood after Jace’s birth, etc.

Nonnie when I watched that scene I didn't mind it either, despite the fact that it WAS anachronistic. Later on though, when I continued watching, I understood the faux feminist message the showrunners wanted to force-feed down our throats and everything came into perspective.

Yes it would be nice to include a scene where Rhaenyra is afraid of childbirth after her own mother died in childbirth and then a scene that shows how she overcame her fears. This is valid. However, I vehemently disagree with the general direction the showrunners took, putting Rhaenyra's (and Alicent's and Laena's and Aemma's) struggle with femininity at the core of the story, along with all these many atrocious torture porne-y scenes of childbirth. It's misleading in a very subtle way. The issue here isn't whether Rhaenyra/Alicent/Laena are or aren't "super into motherhood". The issue here is Rhaenyra was executed for being the first female heir to the throne. The show's approach, as I said, is faux-feminist, unifying the experiences of female characters that are fundamentally different (the only thing they share in common is their motherhood), where the focus should be elsewhere. It's no coincidence that the showrunners DIDN'T include a scene of Rhaenyra overcoming her fears of childbirth. Quite the contrary, they show her clearly struggling with two (2) childbirths, giving us the indirect message that actually she hates this and it's so fundamentally different to what she aspired to be. I'm not saying that showing a woman struggling in a childbirth means she hates her children. I'm saying that the deliberate choice of showing Rhaenyra's two entire childbirths in combination with Aemma's atrocious and entirely unnecessary one AND the disaster that was Laena's childbirth, and all this in the context of Rhaenyra saying "I hate the prospect of having kids" has a very very clear political message that has nothing to do with who Rhaenyra actually was in the book, and verges on feminist separatism, which is a very modern approach.

No guys, Rhaenyra wanted to have kids. She had SIX of them PLUS two step daughters, she had a happy family and she loved her husband. Nobody forced her to have these kids. The problem here isn't motherhood. The problem is misogyny. Instead of focusing on the struggle with motherhood as a whole, the showrunners should have focused on the actual political issue here = the green's misogyny/religious obsession, the treason/the usurpation/the war etc where men and women played a fundamental role in Rhaenyra's demise.

But oh well. This is an extremely nuanced discussion for the average audience I guess.

About Arya's "natural distaste" to everything concerning traditional womanhood Vs Rhaenyra's "genuine fear" I'll have to think about it. Yes these characters are different, Arya canonically rejects many gender norms that are imposed on her like marriage/motherhood etc, and Rhaenyra rejects other gender norms that are imposed on her (for example the norm that prohibits her from becoming a ruler). They are not the same BUT I consider Arya as an "evolution" of Rhaenyra in a sense, a step forward. I don't know if I would choose the words "natural distaste vs genuine fear" to describe this though.

#rhaenyra targaryen #fire and blood #hotd #house of the dragon #anonymous #motherhood #feminism #misogyny #arya stark

38 notes · View notes

spiders-hth-is-an-outlier · 1 year

Text

Okay, now that we've all had our fun, it's time for me to do some trauma dumping (for values of “trauma” that mostly mean “fandom bullshit” and “my dumb feelings or whatever”). If you love The Goncharov Thing and you don't want to hear anyone bitching about The Goncharov Thing, then godspeed and god bless, this is your exit ramp.

So I hate it, I hate it a lot, and I recognize and accept a thing that when I was younger I wouldn't have been able to recognize or accept, which is that my feelings of anger, resentment, and shame are completely my affair and mine to deal with – or to rephrase, I 100% know that nobody is doing anything wrong or unfair to me, please do not interpret anything I say as a criticism of the fun anyone else is having, I am literally just Journaling For My Wellness, and because maybe other people feel similarly and would find this cathartic to read, idk.

I always feel incredibly awkward being like, Hey Guys Guess What I Was Sad As A Kid! Because I will probably never be over the feeling that as a person who grew up with two attentive and loving parents in an environment of reasonable financial stability (like, we were occasionally Broke As Shit, but there was always food and secure housing), I had absolutely not earned the right to be sad. Unfortunately, my Disorder did not get this memo in a timely manner, and I was a weird, fragile, melancholy child who had trouble relating to other humans and only felt truly comfortable while reading books or watching movies, because those things – particularly but not exclusively in the fantasy genre – flipped a switch in my brain that made my regular (Weird, bad, unpleasant) emotions disappear, replaced by the emotions I was absorbing through the story (adventure! enchantment! the power of friendship!) This was, for obvious reasons, insanely addictive.

Maybe ironically, I actually got a lot better and happier as a teenager. I mean, I had the Angst or whatever, but at that point in my life I also managed to start getting slightly cool? My parents made me take acting classes, which they thought would be good for me, and lo and behold, it actually was. I started being able to talk to people, it turns out that being the weird kid who knows Vampire Facts and has read every fantasy novel ever written is kind of an asset once you manage to locate the Weird Kid D&D Clique, and eventually I was kind of like – legitimately cool, because the early 90s were actually a very dope time to be a Mysteriously Sad Goth Chick who could discourse at nearly unbearable length about Alan Moore. It was quite a specific swag, but I kind of had it nailed.

But the thing is that I was always very aware that I was fun and interesting because I had learned how to Discourse correctly, with the socially acceptable level of Moderate Goth Enthusiasm. Regular readers here at the ol' blog will probably note that I tend to alternate being Heartbreakingly Earnest with a certain level of ironic detachment and backhanded apologies for being earnest, and this is because I am still fundamentally a Heartbreakingly Earnest person who cares so, so, so much about dumb fantasy stories but in my experience people actually hate being confronted with that and are either extremely patronizing or irrationally angry when I fuck up and talk about things just a little too much like I give a shit about them. And I'm still really scared of getting those reactions, because it makes me feel Sad and Insecure and Small, like I remember feeling all the time when I was eight years old.

And fandom. When I discovered online fandom in my early 20s, it provided such an outlet for me. It felt like in that space, it was normal and not objectionable to take things just deadly, deadly seriously, to immerse yourself in the exact things I'd always felt pressured to know a lot about (to pass the tests, you know) but feel very little about, when in fact I've rarely felt Very Little about anything in my entire life. I experienced fandom for a long time as a place where I could actually engage with media the way I did as a kid – where I could really connect with it and absorb the emotional rush from it and deep-dive into what it was saying to me and what I wanted to say back. I cared so much about Due South and The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I cared so much and nobody told me to stop. I wrote whatever I wanted, and nobody told me to stop. It didn't feel embarrassing or Too Much. The fanfic and the meta I was producing during those years was about my bisexuality and my love triangles and my breakups and my gender, and it was also about Themes and Motifs and the fucking – power of friendship or whatever. It was about stories that I really, really loved, even when I also (looking at you, Stargate Atlantis) got so angry about how lazy and stupid they could sometimes be with their own set-up and premise. And I never felt weird about being more or less my actual self in fandom spaces – funny but also sad, romantic but also critical and nitpicky, sometimes kind of a lot and definitely not to everybody's taste, but just like. A real person that people could get to know and frequently like.

I left fandom for a long time, starting in about 2007, and I did that because it felt like the space was changing. Livejournal was on the downswing and Tumblr was coming up; I was in my early 30s and everyone else was starting to feel like a 17-year-old Harry Potter fan. But the real reason is that there was this – I don't know, this cultural shift it felt like, where you had to act cool in fandom. Fandom! The literal place where you had always been allowed to go and be deeply uncool! But now people were starting to enjoy consuming the fanworks, the art and the fiction and the vids, while also acting like they didn't...care much. About the things I thought we were all coming together to care about. In place of people who would track down bootlegs of some art film that the guy from that show you liked was in and make eight copies on VHS to mail to all their friends on the other side of the continent, you were getting fans who – had not watched the show at all. Who didn't feel any desire to. Or who had consumed the source material, but were totally comfortable just saying fuck canon, so suddenly the amount of weird shared fanon was exploding. You had the rise of the “fandom is my fandom” people, who were in it for the social elements and the kind of fanfiction trope/voice/aesthetic – you know, the one where now you can read a pro novel and know instantly whether or not the author cut their teeth in fandom. You started having people say things to you like it's not that deep and your book report is sucking all the fun out of fandom.

It's kind of hard to articulate how shitty all this felt to me at the time. It made me feel deeply ashamed of thinking too much and trying too hard and caring instead of having fun – “having fun,” because being allowed to be obsessive and intense and weird and kind of needy was fun for me, it was how I had fun, and it really hit some primal soft spot in me to have to start thinking of myself as the Weird Sad Awkward No-Fun One. It made me feel like when I was a kid and I hated talking to anyone because I never seemed to say what they expected or wanted me to say and I didn't know what they expected or wanted me to say and every interaction was a test I failed. I didn't want to write anymore, I didn't feel like I knew what to say even to people who had been fandom friends for years. I remember vividly the first time I knew that my time was kind of up, it was in a conversation with a popular SGA writer, someone who I'd always thought of as a friend and really looked up to. And I don't remember if I was doing some beta reading for her, or if we were just talking in general about the show, but I kind of picked her up on some point of characterization, like I don't think this is how Sheppard would react to that or whatever, and she said, “Well, the character work is so sloppy and inconsistent on this show, I don't really worry about it too much. I think of them as more like Pilot Doll and Science Doll, and I can do whatever I want in terms of characterization.” Which, like – absolutely that is anyone's right as a writer, and she was producing really excellent fiction! But it kind of broke my heart, because I suddenly felt...I don't know, like an idiot? Like, oh, here I am, like a fucking idiot, poring over my DVDs of this stupid show, trying to make things fit together, trying to understand the characters, trying to draw out the usable pieces and turn them into something that's worth loving the way I wanted to love it, and nobody else is doing that. Nobody else thinks that's anything but a waste of effort. And I remember that was the minute I first thought, I don't know if I'll ever feel at home here again. I didn't log off that exact day and never return, but pretty soon I did log off, more or less completely for ten years.

If you've noticed that none of this has a goddamn thing to do with Goncharov (1973), good eye. It's not directly related, except that I have this context of intense insecurity around the way that fiction affects me, in that I get really caught up in it and emotionally transformed by it, which feels childish and vulnerable to me and has been a quality that other people have frequently treated as dorky and off-putting if I don't put in the effort to be like Yes I Enjoy TV A Normal Amount. And it's actually a little bit of a pain point for me that even fandom now low-key acts like it's dorky and off-putting if you let your stupid fan hobby impact your life or your sense of self, and with the combination of those factors, Goncharov posting has really felt like – almost a flex. Fandom does what fandom does, whether the source is good or bad, if you've seen it or just seen the gifs, if it even exists or not. Is Goncharov a good movie? When you saw it, did it move you, did it scare you, did it confuse you, could you not stop thinking about it for days? Well, those aren't relevant questions, right? They don't affect the fic, the art, the memes, the Discourse – all that just happens, regardless. That's the joke.

I get it. That's the joke. It's a fake movie so people are responding to the fake experience of having seen it in a way that's indistinguishable from when, say, Good Omens or OFMD took over your dash for a few weeks there. The source doesn't matter, because fandom is not for or about that Nerd Bullshit where you curate and you saturate and you have a real emotional response that changes who you are as a person. It's all dress-up dolls now, acting out our favorite tropes on the trending tags, Content for the Content Gods. The joke is, you're a sucker if any of it was ever real to you.

The Goncharov Thing makes me feel like the butt of the joke, and again, that's not on anybody who does enjoy it, I'm not suggesting that there's an Objective Reality here where Goncharov shitposting is literally bullying or whatever. I put in all that embarassing personal shit because I wanted it to be clear that I know this is because of my personal shit, because of the specific history I have with this tension between being Sad and being Fun, with feeling incredibly vulnerable around feeling the actual enormous feelings that have always been my lot in life, while my brain is telling me to keep that shit to myself. Nobody is Goncharov posting in order to call me stupid, but it does make me feel stupid anyway, and it reminds me that I'll never feel like fandom is My Home in an uncomplicated way again, like it's a space that welcomes and rewards my authenticity. And that's fine, things change and nobody is owed a social space that caters specifically to their needs; I think it's healthier to focus on the fact that I did have that once, and not everybody does. I will never be ungrateful for the way that being in fandom helped me navigate my 20s, and I am still over here Just Vibing in my very dorky way, simmering gently in my obsession with a very weird tv show about a guy who loves a book in an embarrassing, irrational way that is, after all, a little bit endearing. I'm not ungrateful to have made it back here, either.

21 notes · View notes

infamousmonkey-cat · 6 months

Text

I wasn't gonna do a reaction post this week for reasons that will probably become obvious but then I was annoyed at myself for not doing one yesterday, because I would have felt like SUCH a smartie pants for predicting that Ed was gonna fish up one of the bottles, and now I just have to hope that you will believe me that I did predict that in the privacy of my own mind (though I owe it all to that one post from weeks ago that was like "what if a fisherman found the bottles" so I can't really take credit but ANYWAY). But yeah thoughts below cut

This got kind of absurdly long whoops. Also I am inevitably going to say stuff that people disagree with but man I am begging you to be gentle with me. I am just trying to work through some of my feelings about the show and other people are going to have different feelings and that is FINE and nobody is under attack here and there is room for different opinions peace and love

Quick disclaimer: I haven't been reading a ton of meta or diving into the tag or anything, so if I say something wildly off about the fandom response at any point, it's based on vibes from what's been on my dash and I may have got the wrong end of the stick there.

I'll go ep by ep for the most part but this point applies to both eps, so I'll dive in first: I seem to be in a minority within the more active parts of the fandom in that I truly do not have strong feelings about Izzy one way or the other. I do personally feel that his characterisation in season two is not consistent with that in season one, HOWEVER 1) I have not expended a ton of mental energy on doing a deep dive into his s1 characterisation, so I'm willing to believe I've missed stuff [not actually convinced of this but don't care enough to put my foot down about it] and 2) it simply does not bother me. I consider Izzy to be a secondary character that they've decided to somewhat retool in between seasons, and I am basically fine with it. You know who else is different this season? Jim! It seems pretty obvious to me that the development of BOTH these characters is due to the influence of the actors, and honestly, that happens in TV. I DO understand people's frustration that a character who espoused views and behaviours that were fundamentally at odds with the whole moral premise of the show has been rehabilitated so easily, buuuut... I don't personally want a version of this show where Izzy's rehabilitation arc is given tons of screen time, either, so I am okay with just accepting it. ALSO, this s2 version of his character--while not necessarily feeling entirely earned--is considerably more fun to me! I'm really enjoying his bitchy little one-liners and his drag act and whatever. To make a comparison, I did see some complaints early on that Oluwande's relationship with Zheng felt rushed, but to me they fully sold it with their performances: it was easy to read between the lines that there had been a growing attraction between them for a while. Point being, I think we need to be okay with allowing some of the secondary character/relationship development to be elided, because it is not necessarily a priority to have it all put on screen in front of us.

Anyway, moving on to ep 6: I don't have a huge amount to say about the bulk of this episode. For the most part I really enjoyed it. I think Ned Low is a great send-up of the monologuing villain with a lot of psychosexual baggage, and I loved the way that was resolved. I'm probably the only person in the world who didn't already know this, but I looked up Hellcat Maggie because the name rang a bell, and she was a member of the Irish-American Dead Rabbits Gang in the 1800s, which was also known as the Mulberry Boys, and their enemies were the supporters of the anti-immigration Know Nothing party. Supposedly she used to file her teeth down to points. I am not making any of this up. [Bob Dylan voice] Go home and look it up on WIKIPEDIA*

Anyway: the party planning/coconut shack date, Calypso's Birthday and the Ned Low showdown all worked great for me. Some of the stuff--Ed shoving Stede behind him and begging Ned to torture him instead--was honestly a LITTLE bit tropey for my tastes, but hey, they're classics for a reason. I kind of think it would have been interesting to see the opposite dynamic (though of course we do see Stede trying to protect Ed in his own way later in the episode): we've already seen this kind of thing from Ed back in 1x09 with the British, so a role reversal might have been a bit more interesting to me (since this season has been so much about role reversal), but like this is a very minor niggle.

I think that Stede's disposal of Ned worked narratively and wasn't inconsistent with his character (I get the vibe that some people think it was?), and I think that Ned's line about Stede being a "pet" and Ed only liking him for his "bumbling amateur status" was some really rich stuff (and a callback to the QAR crew's description of Ed and Stede's relationship back in 1x06). And of course the whole "pet" motif has been running through season two as well: Stede's callback to doggy heaven, Ed's cat bell, even Wolf the bunny. There's something really interesting there, but I don't know if there's enough time left in the season to really get to grips with it?

Moving on to the sex scene: here I seem to be a bit out of step with my own small fandom circle, because I had mixed feelings at best about this. I've seen the argument that the show was obviously framing it as being romantic, with the fireworks etc.; I guess that's what bothers me about it, because to me it was so obviously... off. To be clear, I don't think it was in any way non-consensual or anything like that, and hey, the kiss, out of context? Amazing! But IN context--Stede has JUST had his first real kill, which has been framed by the narrative and the other characters as a big deal. Also framed as a big deal: Ed asking to take things slow in ep 5. Ed comes to Stede to "talk things through", and brings up his own most significant trauma--the death of his father (right after we saw a super quick flashback to some of Stede's own dad-related trauma)--and Stede cuts him off with a forceful kiss. To me, it feels kind of obvious that their first sexual encounter is being linked with violence and childhood trauma in a way that is not, like, fun or sexy or romantic TO ME, regardless of how the rest of the scene is shot and intercut (which is not me making a moral judgment on anyone else's feelings about this scene; just stating my own emotional reaction to it). IF the show wants us to find this hot/romantic, then it didn't work for me and I found it jarring. If the show wanted us to find this kind of destabilising and compromised, then it worked for me but I feel like we deserved better!

SO. Episode 7. I'm just going to be super upfront right at the top: this episode really bummed me out and I didn't like it. Not saying I hated every minute of it or that nothing worked for me, but overall I didn't enjoy it. I saw on the official OFMD Instagram account's stories a couple of days ago some footage from one of those preview screenings they did of these episodes in a cinema or whatever. The MC was like "how about those episodes!" and I remember thinking, "wow, the audience seems kind of weirdly muted". Well now I get it! I would have been too!

I've seen people saying that Ed panicking and running off to become a fisherman is a mirror to Stede panicking and running back to his wife in 1x09, which does track, but I actually think that the symmetry here is multivalent, and there are also echoes of 1x08, which for the record is my most hated episode of season one that I can almost not bear to rewatch--not because I think the WRITING is bad but just because it is a little bit too real for me, in terms of situations I've been in where someone I care about who supposedly cares for me lets the worst person in the world treat me really badly, picks them over me and then acts like it never happened and expects me to just be fine with it? I DON'T LIKE THAT!

So yeah, listen, I always felt like Ed leaving with Jack at the end of 1x08 and then immediately coming back was kind of a double beat, or even a triple beat. We already had him threatening to leave and then changing his mind in the previous episode, and then we have STEDE leaving in the following episode, so I always felt like it sat a little bit oddly for me. I do think it's an important and enlightening episode in terms of Ed's character and in revealing some of the underlying issues in their relationship that they need to address (plus giving us yet another flavour of toxic masculinity), but I don't know, it has always bugged me a little bit even beyond the fact that it is just too personally painful for me to enjoy.

Slight detour here--I'm gonna bring it back--to say that, while I am more glad than sorry that we have had so much BTS and promo stuff for the finale, it does create a little bit of a sense of inevitability to proceedings that undercuts any dramatic tension? Like, I feel like we can fairly confidently put together the beats of at least the first act of next week's episode. Those being: Ed has left, he is in a rowboat, he realises that Stede is in trouble--under attack from the British no less!--and heroically turns back to save his true love. So--basically the end of 1x08 again.

As much as I have been enjoying the narrative symmetry thus far, it's in 2x07 that it starts to feel forced, for me. While I can totally buy that Ed starts to regret the sex for all the reasons I mentioned above (though to be clear I don't think he regrets it until later), and that he's uncomfortable with Stede getting drunk and rowdy and playing into a pirate archetype that Ed wants to leave behind (all of this ALSO mirrors/reverses Stede and Ed in 1x08 btw), the idea that he would decide to leave forever to be a fisherman? This is the same guy who spent the first three episodes of the season totally inconsolable because Stede left him, and regained the will to live because of a vision of Stede? And now he's just voluntarily leaving forever because of one conflict? I... guess this accords with Ed's previous behaviour in 1x08, but again, that's always kind of bugged me. I don't know, man, I know they need to set up the big romantic beach reunion scene, but I feel like they could have had Ed go off fishing to clear his head after an argument instead, and that would have felt a bit easier to swallow for me. Sure, not as dramatic, but more believable.

So, this brings me to something about the show that I am starting to find a little bit disappointing, which is that... I feel like it keeps undercutting moments of tenderness and queer joy! It didn't bother me so much in season one, I think just because the show was such a breath of fresh air in so many ways. But now, having committed to being the queer pirate show and playing into that in the marketing and kind of rebranding the whole identity of the show as being a queer love story (which is always WAS but wasn't initially marketed as), I kind of feel like there's a promise inherent in that. And yet again and again I feel like we're getting the rug pulled out from under us. Like--Stede's beautiful love confession in 2x04 being immediately mocked by Anne and Mary (I know people love Anne and Mary but honestly it was getting a little too close to Calico Jack territory for me at times). Like the sex scene feeling (to me) weirdly compromised. Like Ned Low attacking the Revenge before Ed and Stede can dance together! Like Ed deciding to cut and run, AGAIN, at the slightest sign of trouble. And I know it's going to get resolved next week, and I feel like the release schedule for this season (not to mention only getting eight eps obviously) has been to its detriment. I understand why they felt like they needed to put out episode three in the first week because our guys don't even share the screen until then, but I think 2x07 MIGHT have felt a lot more palatable if it had gone out with the finale instead. I also think 2x03 and 2x04 going out together might have felt like a more natural pairing, and would have meant that I was not overwhelmed with misery after the first three eps (actually I still would have been overwhelmed with misery because of stuff in my real life but like, LESS so maybe). Although getting to savour the 2x03 end scene for a whole week was pretty great, and ditto 2x05, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

Anyway. 2x07 felt really off to me, primarily in the characterisation of both Ed and Izzy, but also somewhat in the showdown between Zheng and Stede. I could understand it more if I felt that s2 had done a lot of work to establish that Stede is straying towards playing into a toxically masculine pirate archetype, but I think there are really only two times (prior to this ep) where this happens: the (dream sequence) opening of 2x01 and the third act of 2x06. Otherwise, we've seen him being really good at customer service, embracing the "tender" label from Zheng and fitting in with the Red Flag girls, counselling Lucius, saving his crew after the mutiny despite his heart being broken, bonding with Izzy, serving cunt in a cursed new suit, defusing the situation with Ned (until he didn't)--basically Stede has been really GAY this season? Like I honestly felt like THAT was the way he had swung, not towards performing violence and hypermasculinity. So Zheng's dressing down, while maybe working in the context of the scene or even the whole episode, doesn't feel well-integrated into Stede's season 2 arc to me.

Look, I'm going to leave it there. I know this is long-winded and rambling and I fully lost track of time and missed the window to use my Early Bird chest on Duolingo. I doubt anyone will read this whole thing. I just needed to get some stuff off my chest I guess.

*Anyone on Dylan twitter gets this reference!! There's tons of crossover between tumblr OFMD fandom and Dylan twitter, RIGHT? Anyway it was a thing he said in the outro to 'Goodbye Jimmy Reed' at a concert the other night. It was funny because of his dramatic delivery of the word 'Wikipedia' followed by him immediately running out of momentum and mumbling "Wikipedia" again with zero confidence. It was some nice late-career Dylan stage banter. I went to see him around this time last year and man this R&RW tour is great, even though I saw it in a pretty bad venue. The best time I ever saw Dylan was at the Brixton Academy, he played the intro to 'London Calling', it was electric. The first time I saw him was at the NEC arena in Birmingham and it was kind of a letdown but I have fond memories of it anyway, I went with my dad. I was talking to this bartender the other week about seeing your heroes live and honestly it made me realise that I haven't been to any live music in way too long! I'm happy to say that I got to see Bobby Womack perform live right before he died--actually technically I didn't SEE him, you see I was volunteering at Latitude and the bar was perpendicular to the stage. However I COULD hear him. One time I saw Nick Cave live and a woman standing behind me fainted on me! It was pretty stressful but I'm still glad I can say I saw Nick Cave live you know what I mean? The dream would be to see David Byrne but I doubt I could afford it... maybe it'll happen who knows

#ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd #this is nearly 3000 words long and some of it is just about different concerts i have been to #DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT #dear diary today i had a lot of feelings

2 notes · View notes

hungerkunstler070707 · 2 months

Text

i feel like I am slowly dying. nobody cares about how I feel and no one believes me when I say I am suffering. I don't have any close friends to speak to, my parents are unsupportive and my psychologist is not helping in the slightest. I try to make do with what I have: I always go to classes, try to study, attend social events and all I feel is an endless void forming inside me that gets deeper and deeper the longer I continue living. I am not having fun. I am doing the essential tasks to seem functioning. I've never been sick enough to stop doing them. I don't know if it's just the way I was raised, I remember my mother forcing me to dress while I was crying, making me study when I couldn't even read because of the tears in my eyes. I always thought that by just going through the motions of a normal life I'd be able to achieve it. I can't. There is something so fundamentally wrong with me, it's in the foundation of my being and to dig it out I'd need to remove everything I've built on it. I've never been sick enough for someone to notice what I am going through. I see my friend flaunting his cuts and burns everywhere he goes with his short sleeved shirts and short pants and then I look at myself with my arms completely covered in cuts, itching because the jumper I'm wearing pulls at them. I see my friends rejecting food in public and then I think back on how I starved myself for days before going out to just give everyone else a glimpse of normal life. I don't want them to worry about me and at the same time I crave their attention like a dog that of its owner. I feel like I could keep my act together for the rest of my life, balancing myself on the ledge between normalcy and complete insanity, having to perform for the rest of my existence. A non stop show of gut wrenching incommunicability for everyone to just glance at without second thought, because this is how it's supposed to be done. I need to be presentable, agreeable. I can't show any weakness to others. I am not allowed any of this. I never get close to killing myself either. I starve and starve and I continue to weigh the same, the wait feels endless and while this goes on life is passing me by. I see the people I know go out and experience the world and I can't do any of that. I am stuck at home because I finished my energy for the day, because I can't be around food or I'll eat it, because I need to study and I need to spend all the energy left on it. I want out. I want out but I am too cowardly to kill myself, too unworthy of help to go to a clinic. I tried to jump off a window a few times. I always choose this method because when I am on the ledge I can see my bones popping out of my skin on impact, I can see the faces of the people that will find me, unceremoniously splattered on the gray pavement or on the green, neatly cut grass, I can feel their horror and pain. That makes me get off the ledge, I don't want to cause more harm to this world. I don't want people to see me as a burden and at the same time, how carefully everyone threads when you are weak, how they speak to you more softly, how they care for you more because you are hurt and they can see it. They feel you are doing everything right, your open declaration of hate for yourself and for your body is immortalized in your own form and they can see it and they feel like you are owed an apology, special care. They want to make up for your pain and they are ready to do anything for you because you suffered so much. But I can't be like that. I am too fat, no one gets to know me enough to see how much I am suffering. I don't let anyone get close. I keep everyone and everything at a distance because I don't want them to feel sorry, I want them to think that I am ok, that even if I am going through a hard time(which I will downplay: "you know it's not too bad I am already working it out by myself I swear") they will think I can handle it without a hitch. GOD YES I AM HERE TO TELL YOU THAT I CAN'T. I've lied to everyone around me.

goodbye, I hope I can cut deep enough this time, deep enough to see yellow before I see red. I know I'll not be able to do it but it's ok, I have tomorrow to try again.

0 notes

realhankmccoy · 3 months

Text

god i hated it when the capitalist squares i worked with lit up a cigar. nobody in this country understands anything even my dumb faggot ass knows better

listen kids, if you think a cigar is an accessory you need to get out of suburbia and get out of the mall

learn what shit was and how it works and you might actually enjoy your life and your time here rather than just constantly trying to be shinier and better than others or more dominant or whatever the fuck is going on in America

i started smoking cigars at 18 so i'm offended when somebody thinks it's a capitalist or leatherman display of dominance which is just as upside down as you assholes can ever get in this cuntry you know?

i hate having to explain every fucking thing to you kitschy assholes in this country because if i don't explain it, you sit there with a Warner Brothers smirk on your faces and think i'm weak and stupid compared to you

when i'm just thinking, ok, your surburban ignorance and dominated-into-a-clone-by-the-capitalists-and-the-american-government attitude is exhausting

it's not hard, kids, read the basics of the roots of anything it takes fucking 30 seconds

You smoke a cigar for your spiritual development like i did until it intoxicates ya

You don't smoke it after a fucking banking deal to show off that you think you're tops, mmkay? you might as well use kitchen sponge as a toothbrush if that's how you're gonna act. go use a sock as a glove and wriggle your thumbs around in your hand-warmer-- even that would show more sense and understanding of what things are for

than a capitalist chompin a cigar as he cracks down on druggies.

good fucking god, this idiot conservative country, kids. you have no idea. just no fucking idea because you think the faggot arose yesterday out of the MAN, because you think -- like i've heard so many times before -- that those idiots are the trees and i'm the flowers

you couldn't have it more wrong

data suggests that homosexuality might be necessarily or have arisen in part as a society so that hetersoexuals can actually managed to bond with and love each other

which is what my gut instinct tells me one of my functions is, biologically, yes

but this is not something that is proven yet.

as for the matter of cigars, figure it the fuck out enough to stop making assholes of yourself in doing everything wrong

seen so many trump voters and cucks of trump get it wrong

there are many reasons to smoke a cigar, and one isn't bound by the past

but if you're gonna wear a plumber's helper for a hat or wear a tank top as underwear i might think you're a fucking idiot who doesn't understand how anything works, and yes that's how i feel about most american cigar culture. JUST ACCESSORISE IT THOSE GUYS LOOK LIKE THE BOSS

sigh. and many of them were the boss but the obliviousness kids, it's the oblivious

like how Nancy dared ya to get off drugs but was popping every quaalude in sight, uppers and downers riding the roller coaster

"Patti (Reagan) herself admitted that she stole the tranquilizers Miltown, Librium, Valium and Quaaludes from her mother's bathroom which she traded for amphetamines with friends to fuel her own drug addiction. "

are you following me kids, as i've segued to hypocrisy when the actual point is that a scarf isn't a sock just as a cigar isn't a victory puff in front of the squares over how you're gonna clean up and monetise the world and defeat them dirty hippie druggies

conjunction junction what's your function, kids?

"The close relationship between Maya and tobacco is evident through its incorporation in ritual and mundane practices throughout time. It can facilitate experiences that push the human mind into the realm of gods are fundamental to spiritual development, deliver protect from Earth Gods and aid in healing."

#cigars #cigar culture #mayans #mayan #tobacco #cigardaddy

0 notes

march-of-the-marred-gods · 2 years

Text

A Fell Angel and a Nephilim reluctantly sit next to each other at a rather long, oval dining room table. The former is the Father of all Nephilim, Amon, and the latter is his descendant via humanity, named Lazarus. Lazarus awkwardly attempts small talk amidst the happy chatter of everyone sitting around he and Amon.

"How's the search for Sarnon?"

"Not great. I think I taught them how to cover their tracks a little too well."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Thank you. I know they visit the communities as I do, so I hope one of the villages will give me some sort of sign that they're alive, even if it's just a brief sighting."

Lazarus stares into the whiskey in his glass. He feels something welling up within himself. He takes a sizeable gulp of his drink. He doesn't know what else to say, but Amon continues before he thinks of anything.

"On the bright side, I did reconnect with one of my other children. Her name is Claudia. We originally met when we were both with child. She had the misfortune of finding a human male to mate with that was immune to her spell, and he began abusing her. I visited their home as a guest, but the man rushed me out the door after he caught me watching him berate and hit her, for accidentally spilling tea on me. I came back to kill him in his sleep, and showed little Claudia and her children to a nearby settlement full of her siblings that had the means to care for them all. She began doing the same for her battered siblings after that."

"Wow, that sure is something."

"It gave me hope that little Sarnon was given the same care... if anything happened, that is."

"Yeah. I can see that...." Lazarus trails off. With every word Amon had just said, he became more frustrated, and he was now at his tipping point.

"I bet it feels good to talk about old stories about being some random Nephilim's hero, but you don't really fix anything on a fundamental level. How anyone gives a shit about you or what you have to say is beyond me."

Lazarus' son, Apollo, was observing quietly and carefully. He sees this as the time to intervene. He calmly leaves his seat, comes over to Lazarus, and whispers in his father's ear.

"Dad, it's really not the time for this. Don't start this again."

This had the exact opposite effect Apollo was hoping for. Lazarus' face had turned as red as a cherry, and his sclera had turned jet black. It was not out of embarrassment, but out of sheer rage. He grips his glass and it begins to crack.

Amon felt mortified that another one of his children felt the need to speak on his behalf. He speaks up, and the room starts to get quiet as the others take notice of what's happening.

"Lazarus, I wish I understood why I make you so angry. But the scope of my senses, while great, are still limited. I can't read one's mind. I only help my children if I see or know the problem. I can't help with things I don't know about. So if you have a dilemma, especially if I'm the cause, I'll be happy to help you out if you tell me what's wrong. I'll do whatever I can. Just please-"

An older Nephilim, Spencer, tries reprimanding Lazarus.

"Lazarus, you're acting childish and being disrespectful to Father. What is the matter with you?"

This latest comment was the final straw for Lazarus.

"Every fucking day someone asks me what my problem is with Amon. I keep telling you all, he makes me sick acting like he's done anything meaningful. Still, I get the same question, each time from a different person. You can't leave well enough alone? Then I'll clear the air for you all."

Apollo is scared of what this might entail, and tries to convince Lazarus to stop.

"You don't have to explain yourself. You don't have to do this right now-"

Lazarus shoves Apollo away. "Apparently I do! Nobody in here fucking listens to me otherwise! I'll tell you why Amon makes me sick. He let my whole village get murdered by Angels! I... I'm the last survivor of the Prytanny Northdrift settlement."

Amon's eyes widened with shock. "Northdrift... I can't believe it. I thought your accent was familiar, but I couldn't place it. Lazarus, I am so sorry."

"Of course you don't remember. You never visited us. Why would you want to? It's a frozen wasteland up there."

"But I did visit. One of the last times was about 400 years ago. It must have been right before you were born-"

"Then where were you when they killed everyone I ever knew? How can you answer for the corpses still buried there? I still hear their screams and cries for your help! Their agony is my own, and WE hate you!"

Amon was close to breaking down, his voice shaking. "Lazarus, please believe me when I say I had no knowledge of the attack until after it took place. I am not an all-knowing being."

"Why aren't you?! You're supposed to be our hero! As I grew up I heard all about how amazing you were. Everyone speculated you had clairvoyance due to how often you came to people's aid in the nick of time. I looked up to you! It was my goal to grow up strong enough to meet you, until that fucker Elias came by himself just to kill us all-- knowing you had just visited us 10 years prior. Somehow, he knew you wouldn't be back for some time. I hoped you would come save us anyway because you just had to know we were in danger. But you never came."

Amon took a moment to compose himself before speaking, lest he begins to show cracks.

"I'm sorry. I'm not some grandiose hero. Your community's speculations were just that. I really am nothing more than a father trying desperately to protect his young. I do fail at times, and it kills me when I do. When I heard about what happened, I rushed back to Northdrift. There was still blood and body parts strewn about. That's how recent it was. I thought maybe I could find survivors in that case, but Elias himself came down to drive me out, so that was impossible. I am so sorry for not being there. I didn't think he would go for such a small place with such massive forces. I thought you all were safer up there... But I was wrong. For that I apologize. I wish I could have been there in your time of need; I do."

"Well, your regrets mean jack to me."

"I know. But it's all I have to offer. Unless... you allow me into your heart; to be your family in place of the family you lost."

"How can you do that with thousands of other brats, huh? I'm sure I'm far from your favorite, anyway. Other Nephilim treated me like I carried the plague if they knew I came from Northdrift. Your children are accepting to all except those who had the nerve to get caught in, and worse-- survive-- an Angel's 'cleansing'."

"Oh, Lazarus. I didn't know this was going on, either. As for those that treated you terribly, I am deeply sorry. I will address that with everyone. But by thinking yourself so distant from me, you push me away. Will you at least consider my offer? It might help heal your wounds... at least a little."

Lazarus gives Amon a deathly stare.

"How about you fuck off? I only have room in my heart for my two kids, and the one person who did show up to save me when I was little. I owe my life to them, no thanks to you, or any of my fellow Nephilim who treated me like I was nothing afterwards."

Before Amon can stop and ask who Lazarus' mysterious savior is, Lazarus gets out of his seat, taking his now cracked glass with him. He snatches a huge bottle of whiskey off the kitchen counter and goes into the hallway without another word.

#oc #excerpt #no 666 amon #lazarus #HOOOOOOOOOOO BOY #i finally got around to editing this to have laz talk about he was treated

0 notes

olderthannetfic · 3 years

Note

I mean there are issues within m/m fanfiction, the problem is the arguments we see take things to the extreme. Either there's no issues and it's just women exploring their sexuality and how dare you mock the things women like! OR It's homophobic how dare straight women fetishize gay men! When in reality there are tropes and trends that do lean more towards homophobia or heteronormativity but there's no space for us (slash fans) to call that out without having to defend against the extremes.

This is so hilariously moderate that I think everyone would agree with it if they take it at surface value and don't read into your words.

Anyone who is a veteran of decades of fannish debate will read into your words.

The basic issue is that the conversation people typically want to have about things that are homophobic or heteronormative is pretty 101. They're coming to this fresh with great earnestness, but to someone like me, it's just going to sound like sealioning because we've had these same arguments in slash fandom and in queer communities going back decades.

For example, here are the standard Not Queer Enough bad things that make us just like the breeders according to 80s/90s queer community wank:

marriage

raising children

monogamy

roles of any kind including butch/femme

99% of A/B/O Is Just Het Tho or BL Is Bad Because Ukes wank sounds like all of this over again.

And then there's the eternal fight about whether Pride is for kink and adults and free expression of sexuality or whether it's for corporations and kids in strollers. Conform and kick your less acceptable members to the curb as a political strategy to get rights or be inclusive punk rebels but make fewer strides in legislation? It's a legitimate and eternal struggle in minority groups.

The obsession with Good Representation™ is part of this. So is not liking stuff that overlaps your group with kink and socially unacceptable sexual fantasies. In other words...

RESPECTABILITY POLITICS

If somebody sends me an example of a specific fic or trend they think sucks, I'll keep an open mind...

But I can tell you I have yet to hear an argument about any actual fic on AO3 that made me agree it was homophobic or heteronormative rather than just standard porn bullshit that the lizard brain loves.

People are always wringing their hands about shit that is super common in romance novels and erotica and live action pornos alike because audiences love it.

So for example, I really hope nobody expects me to take seriously an argument about m/m fanfic being bad for any of:

penetration = real sex, all other sex = foreplay

virginity is real and matters

ravishment

biology works how is hot and/or convenient to the plot

everyone has a giant dick

safe sex is boring and we're going to pretend STDs don't exist

everyone is a giant nympho slut

everyone is unrealistically monogamous

dick so good it converted someone

kink with zero negotiation first

zero realistic psychological consequences for anything

etc.

Someone's going to go, "Okay, okay, not literally always, but you have to agree that sometimes this trope is bad. Or it's bad that it's like 99% of fics."

No.

No I don't.

At zero times do I agree that it's a problem all porn does the dumb penetration=real sex thing. Yes, it's dumb. Yes, it's unrealistic. It's there because it's hot. If you find it un-hot, write something else.

I'm totally down to have a conversation about which trends are stupid or boring, but homophobic? Heteronormative? LOL.

Fundamentally, every single conversation about problems in m/m fanfic on AO3 starts from the assumption that fic should be looked at from a reader's perspective. This is the reader's whole media diet. They learn queerness from fic. They learn sex ed and biology from fic. They don't have access to other queer media. They're learning the wrong messages. Blah blah blah.

I look at fic as more like someone's porn (or the emotions equivalent) they wrote for themselves in their diary and were nice enough to let others see as a favor. Sure, occasionally, I think "Wow, author, I am so sorry for you that you view bodies and sex this way", but even then, how do I know it's not just that they're a bad writer? The only thing I'm learning from their fic is that some very weird stuff makes me horny. If I have trouble putting that fic in a wider context of realistic queerness or non-fanfic erotica or whatever else, that's my problem, not the writer's.

The only "problem" with m/m fanfiction on AO3 is that I cannot find any first time sex pollen RM/JK A/B/O where they're both alphas and JK is on the bottom and RM feels comedic levels of melodramatic guilt over it while JK's entire internal monologue is just the word "thighs" over and over and over.

1K notes · View notes

beauty-and-passion · 3 years

Text

My True Identity: foreshadowing and cruel irony

I promised this analysis long ago. I promised I would have finally started the rewatch.

And here I am. After all this time, it's finally rewatch time.

Before proceeding with this, let me clarify a couple points:

These analyses won't have a clear schedule. As you know, some episodes take a lot of time, while others are much simpler and/or shorter. I will just post every time I finish an analysis.

Not all episodes might be worth an analysis. Some might be fused into one post, others might be completely ignored. That doesn’t mean they’re useless, but only that I personally have nothing to say about them.

For now, I don't plan to talk about episodes I talked about, like DWIT and POF. But who knows, maybe there will be something else to add, when I'll come back to them? Still, for now don't expect anything new for these two episodes.

These are all my personal thoughts, so I could be completely wrong about everything. If you disagree/agree/want to add something, please feel free to do it.

As always, I might talk about all sorts of themes, so read at your own risk.

And now, let's begin.

_______________________________

An unclear plan

When he looked back at the first episode of what would've become Sanders Sides, Thomas himself admitted he had no clear plan about what he wanted to do. Would he film just a bunch of vlogs with these characters taken from his Vines? Would he do silly, funny sketches and talk about some random theme every time? He had no idea.

And this episode shows it: it really looks more like a simple, light-hearted vlog with funny characters, rather than what it would've become.

And this is probably what makes it a very intriguing start. Looking at it in retrospect, you can find a lot of stuff. You can see a lot of cruel irony, considering what these characters are saying and who is saying what. You can see a lot of points that will actually be discussed throughout the series. And you can even notice a lot of foreshadowing.

_______________________________

The main point of Sanders Sides

[Thomas]: Do I really know myself as well as I should? (...) I need to have a sit-down with myself, figure myself out, and maybe come to a better understanding that we all could learn from! Let’s do this!

This first episode might not take the future developments of the series into consideration, but the main point was still here.

Thomas doesn't know himself well enough. There's a lot he has to figure out. He needs to talk with himself and learn more.

Considering who are the last two sides Thomas learned about, this is just adorable. Look at this young Thomas, so cute and naive, thinking: "Oh yes, I will learn more about myself and it will all be fun and games! :DDD". So adorable, he has no idea what the future has in store for him.

This also connects to another point I mentioned in my analysis about the Dark Sides: before starting the series, Thomas didn't know his sides well enough. And we can see it in the way they interact between them and with Thomas.

For example, this part:

[Morality]: And no matter what, no one knows you better than yourself. Am I right, Tony? [Thomas]: Not my name. [Morality]: Then what is it?

I know it was a joke, but it was also a confirmation. Not even his own heart knows him well. Thomas never truly spoke with his sides - and they never truly spoke between them. They've always played a role - the teacher, the prince, the dad. Now they can start knowing each other.

_______________________________

Possible foreshadowing about Roman's arc

[Thomas]: Like, okay, relationships (...) where do I stand in those regards? [Princey]: I have a pretty ideal vision of love... There's someone out there for me... One true love... [Logic]: But you tend to overthink things, rule out possibilities with logic, dream up obstacles with each new connection you make... [Thomas]: And that when the anxiety kicks in. Maybe that’s why I haven’t found a person for me yet.

Oh boy, I can feel the last episodes and Asides looming over me.

Let's analyze each part of this conversation:

1) Thomas (and Roman) has a pretty ideal vision of love. One true love waiting for him. And now, guess what? Thomas is in love with Nico. And we all remember how Roman welcomed the idea of this new love in their lives.

[Roman]: I so... SO badly want this. I- I'm desperate for it...

And also how amazed he was, when they came back home:

[Roman]: A POET! To top it all off, he's a poet!

Considering the above premises, would it be so difficult for Roman to start idealizing this relationship with Nico? To consider Nico the “one true love” he talked about? To put him on a pedestal and, at the same time, search inside him all the characteristics the one true love should have?

This could lead to a very interesting possibility: Thomas putting Nico under the pressure of being his perfect man, to have all those characteristics his dreamy, romantic side wants to see. All while considering him incredibly perfect to the point of becoming inhuman.

All of this could end up only one way: scaring Nico. Maybe to the point of driving him away from Thomas.

2) Thomas overthinks, “rule out possibilities with logic” and dreams up obstacles. Could this also be a possible foreshadowing?

At the end of FWSA, when Thomas asked if they were ready for this relationship, Virgil stopped smiling, all while the camera slowly zoomed on him. The message was clear: Virgil isn’t ready for a change yet.

So we have Roman, who sees Nico as the perfect, ideal man of his dreams. And we have Virgil, afraid of changes, overthinker by nature and prone to self-deprecation.

The ingredients are all here: it is very possible that Thomas/Roman will put Nico on a pedestal and, the moment Nico is scared by Roman's adoration, Virgil starts to freak out and to talk bad about himself, because why someone so perfect and dreamy like Nico would ever love someone like Thomas?

This could potentially lead to a heated confrontation between Virgil and Roman that could be the metaphorical last nail on the coffin: Roman is already hurt because Patton sided with Janus. Nico drifting away from Thomas and Virgil's self-deprecation might convince him that yes, Thomas is truly bad and unworthy of love like Virgil says. He himself is bad and unworthy because he's not the perfect Creativity he should be.

And this can be a great starting point for his character arc.

_______________________________

OH THE IRONY part 1: no one learned anything (yet)

[Morality]: But that’s okay. The important thing to keep in mind is nobody’s perfect. Everyone comes with their own flaws. [Thomas]: Including me. [Princey]: Yes, someone will accept us, flaws and all. Until that day, I shall learn to love... myself.

Oh hey, look: the end of POF and Roman who still hasn't learnt nothing.

Jokes aside, I love how Patton is the one who says that everybody has flaws, but he excludes Thomas. It's Thomas himself who says he has flaws as well.

Doesn't that remind you of anything? Like this moment in SvS?

[Patton]: Well... Nobody's perfect... Except for Thomas! He loves his friends!

Patton saw Thomas as perfect and pure from the start. I love this, because it's very subtle and you don't notice it - until the events of SvS and POF.

But while Patton is finally learning (after almost 30 episodes) that Thomas isn't perfect, Roman is still very far from his goal of loving himself.

That's probably why he needs a romance this much: by focusing on someone else, he can easily ignore how much he doesn't like himself and his flaws.

And hey, I can even guess the name of these "flaws" he doesn't like so much.

_______________________________

These words are not foreshadowing at all

[Logic]: Um... Are we bringing up flaws now? Because if so, get ready to take a lot of notes. [Thomas]: Oh, uh... [Logic]: -continuing- Okay, you ready? Here we go. You procrastinate A LOT. [Morality]: You can be a bit selfish with your food and your other belongings... [Princey]: You’re definitely not the most adventurous person... [Thomas]: Okay, maybe this was a bad idea if I'm supposed to be learning to love myself. [Logic]: Ah, but remember, everyone has flaws.

Let's not forget that Thomas still had no clear plan, while filming this episode. This was supposed to be just a vlog.

But look at how the universe made these characters say these things. Look at dear sweet Patton, bringing up Thomas’ selfishness. How cute, he really has no idea what episodes are waiting for him.

And Roman brings up Thomas’ fear of changes. Awww, how cute, he has NO IDEA of the guy that will become his worst nightmare and his bestie at the same time <3

_______________________________

OH THE IRONY part 2: just look who's talking

[Morality]: Well, it’s important to be nice to ourselves and cut ourselves some slack every once in a while... [Princey]: Wouldn’t want to be our own villain, would we?

LOOK WHO’S TALKING.

Just look at the absolute irony of Mr. Selflessness talking about the importance of being nice to ourselves. Mr. Thomas-Should-Be-A-Martyr saying that cutting us some slack is good.

All while Mr. I-Thought-I-Was-Your-Hero tells us that we don’t want to be our own villain, right? Right?

_______________________________

Three fundamental questions

[Princey]: Well, what do you wish to look for in a relationship? What are you hoping to gain from having another person in your life? [Thomas]: Um... I don’t know. Someone who’s a nice compliment to me... someone who wants a long stable relationship... someone who indulges in the same sense of humor, and um... someone who can binge-watch cartoons with me.

This might be considered another foreshadowing of Thomas and Nico's relationship - maybe even the solution of the drama that will take place, after Roman and Virgil's fight we suggested before. The best solution: not putting Nico on a pedestal and seeing him as the perfect man, but appreciating him for who he is, for the normal guy he is - a guy Thomas loves and nothing else.

[Logic]: With everything you've learned, what do you wish to do with your education? [Thomas]: Ooh... I am not sure... I’d love to figure out ways to help the environment. Science was always my strong point and I love chemistry.

As I said multiple times, I think Thomas' decision to leave chemical engineering and become an actor will play a huge role in Logan's arc. And this question slighty hints at this.

At this point in time, Thomas still wants to use his education in a fruitful way. He still wants to use science, it's still his main goal. Doing silly videos is just an addition. "A good start", as he said:

[Thomas]: I think just being able to put out silly light-hearted content into the world is kind of a good start. It makes me really happy to do that. [Logic]: Well there you go. A good foundation.

And that's how Logan considers it as well: just a foundation. Not something that will take a huge part of Thomas' life. These videos are just a start.

This explains his reactions in the following episodes, especially how much he insisted on Thomas having a real job: after all, these videos are not something serious. Why focusing so much on them?

This could potentially be the starting point of Logan's increasing frustration and the reason of his final snap in season 3, that would also start his character arc.

But Patton’s question is what really surprises me:

[Morality]: What positive impacts do you inevitably hope to bring to this world?

Not only this screams POF, but it shows something for the first time: that Patton is silly, but he’s also clever. He’s not a complete idiot. He likes to be silly, he IS silly, but this question proves he's a lot more mature than he seems.

And if you think this is just a one-time thing, don't worry, we'll see it again in the future.

Is this a foreshadowing of my next analysis? Well, the episode was all foreshadowing, why can't I foreshadow something as well? ;)

( Support me on Ko-fi )

_______________________________

TAGLIST:

@willpowerwisps @royalprinceroman @reesiereads @mudpuddlenl @shelby-711 @allmycrushesaredead @aquatedia @sweetkirbi @whatishappeningrightnow @effortiswhatmatters @atlasistryingherbest @bella-in-a-bag @doydoune @miasheer @forever-third-wheeling @mishanthropist @corndot @payte @mcang3l @geekyapollokid @kawaiipotatuh @hypnossanders @idontreallyknow24 @imcrushedbyarainbow @simplyapannightmare @patton-cake @hereissananxiousmess @purplebronzeandblue @cynicalandsarcastic @empressserelene @dubstepbranch @chara-073 @lost-in-thought-20 @arobohamster @book-limerence

@riseofthewerewolf @frog-candy-bee @bosspotato01 @rosesandlove44 @methaley @sololad @firey-alex @sashootkahoot @chewy-rubies @groaaaaan @croftergamer @misty-the-girlflux-mess @thedevilseyes @arya-skywalker @csi-baker-street-babes @queen-of-all-things-snuggly

@virgildarknessdementiaravenway @mishanthropist @dracayd-universe @unknown-artworks @lonelyfangirl453 @starlightnyx @alienvamp-hesitantflowerface @stubbornness-and-spite @alittletoo-extra @averykedavra @iloveeverytjing123 @bookedforevermore @joyrose-fandomer @anachronismes @the-cloud-14 @mihaela-tbg @igonnatalknothing

@thatoneloudowl @grayson-22 @softangryfuckingdepressed @theotherella @boopypasta @nevenastark @varthandi @floofyconfusednerd @nothing-worth-mentioning @mikalya12 @roses-bubbles @cuter-on-the-inside @coldbookworm @orchidstanslogan @snixxxsmythe @frog-candy-bee @holleratyour-buoyancy @alexowlndra @fadingbagelbananapatrol @our-bloody-mari666 @cxsmospooks @riverraysong @sanity-whosshe-neverheardofher @charmingcritter @analogical-mess

#sanders sides #sanders sides theory #rewatch #thomas sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #ts patton #ts roman #ts logan #remus sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #ts remus #ts virgil #ts janus #my true identity #analysis

117 notes · View notes

argumate · 3 years

Text

tagline master post:

- dumb yet mildly chuckleworthy - shockingly flamboyant celery - Purveyor of impious and immoral libels. - approximately reasonable person with bad jokes - professional moderatrix - acceptable tier - certain playful irregularities begin to become evident - overdismissively flip - I was half correct - unwarranted confidence, unwarranted optimism, no outstanding warrants - a sinful (counter-counter-)signaler - insufferable superfluity of naughtiness - Imperfect Owling Weather - sometimes insightful but really dropped the ball on this one - welcome to my boring mind - fascinating, yes, my comment was facetious/hyperbolic - I think you have a decent point in there somewhere though. But keep it real. - I don't know how to use this website so apologies if I make mistakes! - we’re all garbage star children - gollum can get it, you know he can - but you came here for my bad take, so here it is. - a flawed pancake demiurge, unsure and unworthy of the massive power they wield - the fact that we haven’t bullied you off the site for being a centrist dweeb is another reason why we can’t have nice things - scrawling out brain noise and hurling it into the howling vortex of the internet, day in and day out, stopping only to sleep - an absolute cretin talking complete bullshit - taking a giant crap to general acclaim - this is a pretty facile dunk - yeah that’s right bitches this is a castration blog again for some reason - An elegant tagline for a more civilized blog - you’re Not Wrong but I hate everything I just read - false but surprisingly compelling - You wouldn’t still be reading if you were afraid of a little repetition - Incrementalism: It’s Better Than Nothing™ - blog bimbo - op has a lot of dumb opinions and i don’t support them but this is a good point - Canonically and also Historically Inaccurate - stable to the point of monotony - people yelling at each other, arguing about things that are outside the pale of conventional conversation, etc. - The Blog Who Knew Too Much (And Yet Nowhere Near Enough) - suspiciously capitalist, be wary - an idolatry of reason - merely insufferable - I’m now less confident in my opinion having heard this - I’m now less confident in my opinion having - our new tagline - blasé liberal humanism - the birds are torn apart by envy and the owl doesn’t care - tribute to the mad owl king - a Rorschach blot in the vague shape of an owl. - under some kind of faerie curse to never decline an invitation to an argument - I don’t like this but I recognize it is objectively good - the downside of petty internet fame - not -wrong- just a little shallow - A generous social safety net would solve this - It's fucked up to make public statements - unflappable terrible bastard owl - i’m just a slut for obscure & nerdy snowclones - it’s an issue that people have very strong feelings about (not me though!) - just some liberal - from the wack timber of humanity, no legit thing was ever made - how can someone be so massively wrong - the humanist with no self control - our resident ultra-relatable Aussie feminist Tumblr teen - this shit is not half as clever as you think it is - another goddamn Harry Potter reference for which I apologise profusely - come to the vault and check out my extensive collection of easily disprovable opinions - a stupidly misguided form of blogging - there is a certain level of dope that you fundamentally cannot reach without also being proportionally cheesy - you’re allowed to dislike argumate! tons of people dislike argumate! - nobody spends more time going through my posts than I do! - regular reminder that I'm a fucking cretin - euphoric diarrhea - most egregiously wrong - free to opine about anything - I’m sorry but you just had to see it. - an atheist with imperfect social graces - A glib and mildly smug saint - new tagline? no! - it’s no fun if you do it on purpose >:( - it may not be good, but it is very much the right kind of bad. - this is REALLY close to being funny - unflappable, funny, confident, systematic, unattainable, smart, and a certain je ne sais quoi - that certified argumate brand of cursed - Mr. Stupid Hippie Owl

179 notes · View notes

g00ngala · 3 years

Text

normally, this is the type of post i would put on my side blog, but i think i want to make a point that people actually see. feel free to unfollow for this i guess, but please finish reading before you do.

i'm gonna start out saying this. i am pan critical. please, if you're pansexual or pro pan, don't stop reading this. just listen for a second, with an open mind. i used to be pansexual, actually, and after that, when i realized i was a lesbian, i was just a supporter. however, the more research i did, and the more bi people who were critical of the label i listened to with an open mind, my preconceived notions stopped lining up with the facts i knew.

i'm gonna let you in on a secret: nobody who's "panphobic" thinks pansexuals aren't lgbt. nobody! well, that's a bit of a generalization, but what i'm saying is thats not the argument.

one thing i want you to know is that if you are pansexual, you and your experiences with sexuality are valid. the only issue i and many others have is not the people, but the label.

it's been covered in many posts before, and in some of my own, but the tl;dr of it is that the label itself not only has a problematic past, but a problematic present.

there have been a few different definitions of pansexuality. in order to prove my first point that there is no fundamental difference between bisexual and pansexual, i'm going to go through the most common ones i see in order of use and briefly go over why they perpetuate biphobia and transphobia, and i will link to some sources explaining stuff in more detail, and probably better because i am not an expert, nor am i bisexual. i am operating off of the information that trusted articles and bisexuals have shared. bisexuals, please feel free to correct me if i present any innacurate information or it i mess up my wording, and feel free to add on if i missed anything!

"hearts not parts": pansexuality is inclusive of trans people while bisexuality is not - this is completely false. it's incredibly transphobic to say that some sexualities include trans people while others don't, and it is also incredibly biphobic to insinuate that bisexuals don't like trans people. trans people are included in every sexuality.

pansexual means being "gender blind"/ caring more about personality while bisexuals have preferences - also false. this is wrong because bisexual people without preference have existed for ages. to say that they are pan instead of bi because they don't have a preference is ahistorical and biphobic. additionally, saying bisexuals only care about gender/ physical appearance is literally a biphobic stereotype. it insinuates that they're in it for the sex and they aren't committed/ they don't care about the emotional connection they have with people.

pansexual means all and bisexual means two/ two or more (most common definition i see today) - false. this is where i direct you to the bisexual manifesto from Anything That Moves: Beyond the Myths of Bisexuality (1990) by the Bay Area Bisexual Network, where it states this: "Bisexuality is a whole, fluid identity. Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or dougamous in nature; that we must have "two" sides or that we MUST be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don't assume that there are only two genders." pansexual has always been inclusive of all genders, and this is also evidence as to why bisexuality has always been inclusive of nonbinary people. saying that nonbinary people are not included in every sexuality is entirely wrong. nonbinary people are not a monolith, nor are they some magical third gender. you can't say you're only attracted to some genders. you can't divide attraction to nonbinary people based on identity when it comes to sexuality, because no nonbinary person looks the same! please read more about this here, this explains it way better than i can.

now that i've gone through that, i'd like to point out the problematic history of pansexuality, a masterpost on what I've gone over and more by a bi person, more reading on why pansexuality perpetuates biphobia, and even more evidence.

i would recommend checking out all of these sources, as they do a fantastic job covering some of what i tried to cover in this post but much better.

now, where do we go from here? the reason pansexuality rose to popularity, in my opinion at least, is because of internalised biphobia. knowing what you know now, that pansexuality and bisexuality are in no way fundamentally different, why do you choose to identify as pansexual?

i know how it feels to have the word you use to describe your identity, which is such an important part of you, attacked. trust me, i get it. but you have to step past that and look inside yourself a little bit. that discomfort you might feel with the bisexual label? that's internalized biphobia.

i can relate to this to some extent, but obviously not in the same way. as i stated before, i identified as pansexual before i identified as a lesbian. i liked the word. it was inclusive and it had none of the negative connotations lesbian or bisexual had. later, i realized i wasn't attracted to men, so i made the switch to lesbian, but it was hard. because of all those negative connotations from society, i still feel uncomfortable with being a lesbian sometimes. and i recognize that it isn't because i'm not a lesbian, but it's because of how society views lesbians. pansexual is a relatively new term to come into popular consciousness, so it has much less stereotype surrounding it compared to bisexual.

i'm not asking you to change your mind because of one post. i'm asking you to seek out information and other posts by bisexuals, ones you may not agree with, in order to get a clearer picture. and then just think about it for a while. that's all i'm leaving you with. come to your own conclusion. all i ask is just for you to listen, and PLEASE stop acting like actual arguments are in any way similar to "exclusionism" like aphobia, truscum bullshit or making fun of people with unconventional pronouns or ways of describing their genders.

#biphobia #pan critical #anti pan #hannah.txt #long post

44 notes · View notes

babymetaldoll · 3 years

Text

M&Money (Matthew Gray Gubler/Reader)

Prompt: Chocolate is a currency

Pairing: Matthew Gray Gubler/ Reader

Summary: After all their friends are gone, Matthew and Reader stayed playing poker and betting all their chocolates on longboards and kimonos.

Category: Fluff

Warnings: Bad poker references and mentions of sex.

Word count: 2,1k

Masterlist

(Y/N) stared into Gubler’s eyes trying not to move a muscle. Her look was fixated on his, as the two of them tried to read each other. Matthew raised an eyebrow slowly and she did exactly the same, resting her back on the chair and letting out a deep breath.

- “You are bluffing”- Gubler claimed, with a cocky smile.

- “Am I? really?”- (Y/N)’s lips curled in a small ironic smile, and her eyes traveled from him to the cards she was holding in her hand.

- “You are so obvious, Bunny, you don’t have a poker face”

- “Gub, you do know you only play a profiler on a tv show, right? you are not one in real life”- his girlfriend teased him, enjoying the moment of “tension” between them.

It was Saturday night and all their friends had already left, after yet another poker night. More than playing cards and betting, it was about getting together and laugh, having a few drinks, and just make fun of each other’s lousy bluffs.

By the end of the night, almost everybody but Gubler had lost all their M&M’s. And of course, the actor kept obnoxiously repeating “you shouldn’t play poker with someone from Vegas”, just like every time he won.

Gubler usually won, and (Y/N) had enough of that nonsense. She was the only one left with enough M&M’s to keep on playing, and after everyone left, she decided to make Gubler pay.

Yes, they were gambling M&M’s, ‘cos at the Gubler house the currency happens to be chocolate every poker night.

- “Actually, after you master the fundamentals of poker, all there is to learn is the psychology behind poker bluffs, and my love, you are absolutely see-through”

Matthew shook his head and smiled at (Y/N).

- “You should never play poker with someone from Vegas, Bunny”

(Y/N) rolled her eyes, annoyed.

- “Again with the same cheesy line, Gubs?”

- “I’m sorry, babe! you have a tell”- Matthew snickered watching how his girlfriend was starting to get upset.

- “Oh, do I?”

- “Yes”- Gubler played with the cards in between his fingers, enjoying (Y/N)’s eyes burning with anger. He was successfully getting under her skin.

- “Which is…?”- she questioned him immediately and took a sip of her whiskey.

- “I won’t tell you!”

- “Why not?!”

- “‘Cos there’s no fun if I do!”- he smiled again and left his cards on the table- “So? do you fold?”

- “I raise”- the girl counted her chocolates and moved all her yellow M&M’s to the pile right in the middle of the table.

- “Oh! I see!”- Gubler was enjoying being a cocky ass- “So you really wanna lose everything you’ve got”

- “Less talking, more betting, Matthew Gray”- (Y/N) furrowed her brows, giving her boyfriend an annoyed glance that made him chuckle.

- “Why are you so eager to lose?”

- “Why are you so sure you are gonna win?”

- “Oh trust me, Bunny, you are going down”

- “Wanna bet?”

- “We are betting”- Gubler snorted pointing to all the M&M’s on the table- “And by the way, here’s your 35 yellows and I raise… everything I’ve got”

The actor piled all his chocolates in the middle of the table and smiled. (Y/N) didn’t know if she wanted to kiss him or slap him… most likely, it was both.

- “All in?”- she asked and bit her lip. The couple didn’t say a word for a few seconds. They just stared at each other, waiting for the first one to crack.

This time, it was (Y/N). She just nodded and pushed all her M&M’s across the table in silence.

- “Ok, Bunny, show me what you’ve got”

- “Nope, first, let’s make it interesting”- the way she smiled, Gubler couldn’t tell if she was bluffing or not. So far, he was sure the girl had nothing, but if she kept teasing him like that, maybe she had a good hand.

(Y/N) didn’t know if Matthew had a good hand or not, she just loved to play with him. And most of all, she loved to win, and she wanted to win so badly, she was going all in.

- “Interesting how, Bunny?”- his voice was velvety and it made (Y/N) bit her lower lip as he spoke.

- “I raise, and bet… my new longboard”- Gubler stared at her still. Neither of them moved, trying to see each other’s tell. (Y/N) smiled, finally she was making him doubt his hand.

- “So you got bored of riding it? ‘cos when it’s mine, you are never going to get it back”- Matthew sipped his whisky and smiled.

- “Are you gonna raise?”

- “Yes, I bet the hidden screws…”- but (Y/N) chuckled and shook her head as soon as he started talking.

- “Gubs, the “one day I’m gonna give these to a special girl” screws have been in my drawer for the last two years, so stop using them as an extraordinary item and give me something impressive.”

Matthew opened his mouth to argue, but he knew she was right, so he just smiled. His pretty chocolate eyes shining in joy.

For someone who enjoyed hanging out with his friends all the time, he was glad everybody had left early. He loved that moment with his girlfriend. After all those years, he could tell he could never be bored with her, even when they were betting M&Ms or just laying on the couch watching movies.

His mother had told him once that’s when you know you find the one. And he hadn’t stopped thinking about it ever since.

- “My favorite kimono”- Matthew settled, and didn’t even flinch. (Y/N) held her breath. He wasn’t bluffing if that was what he was willing to risk, right? Two important things were on the table at that minute, and it was time to show their cards.

- “Ok”- the girl whispered and nodded. Gubler smiled and waited still.

- “You first, Bunny”- the way he whispered those words made (Y/N) feel she might have been wrong. She didn’t know if he was bluffing, but she kept her hopes high.

Matthew kept a big grin on his face as (Y/N) moved slowly revealing her hand.

- “Four of a kind”- the girl announced proudly. But Gubler didn’t even react. He didn’t frown, he didn’t smile. He didn’t even look at the cards. He just stared at her.

- “What do you’ve got, hon?”- and still, Gubler didn’t move- “Come on! don’t be a shitty winner, show me your hand”- Matthew chuckled and moved slowly. Painfully slowly.

- “Shit”- she whispered as she saw the cards on the table.

- “Just a shitty flush!”- he groaned and let his body lay on the table, pretending to be deeply affected, as (Y/N) jumped from her chair and shouted.

- “Loser!!! I won!! I fucking won!! I need to take a picture of this! I gotta send this to Paget! she ain’t gonna believe it! I win! you lose!!”

Yes, she wasn’t the best winner but, who is, really?

- “Enjoy your moment, Bunny”- Gubler mumbled still pretending to be upset, and made his best not to smile.

- “I want my kimono”- the actor gave her a mock groan and stood up.

- “Can you just take the M&M’s and be happy?”

- “Nop, I want my kimono”

- “I’ll trade it for…”

- “Nope, my kimono, Gubler”

- “Nobody likes a bad winner”

- “Nobody likes a loser”- her snarky words were reciprocated with an annoyed stare, that made (Y/N) laugh even more. She grabbed her phone and snapped a few more pictures with Gubler like that to have a memory of her glorious moment.

Winning to Gubler in poker was actually something to be proud of, even if it had been by random luck.

Matthew walked slowly to his kimono closet, followed closely by (Y/N), who kept jumping and giggling, still excited with her achievement.

- “Please, be careful”- he whispered as he stared inside the closet and picked his favorite. He touched the fabric carefully, letting his finger play with the silk for a few seconds.

- “Stop groping my kimono, perv!”- (Y/N) forced him to move from the closet and held the item closely.

- “It’s mine now! mine! mine! mine!”- Gubler held his breath and tried to remain serious, though it was turning to be harder if (Y/N) kept acting like a kid.

- “I don’t think it fits you”- he teased, and (Y/N) gasped immediately- “It’s too big for you, maybe I should have it back, yes, I will have it back, ‘cos you are not even going to wear it after all.”

- “No no, no, Gubs, it’s a poker bet! this kimono is mine”

- “Prove it!”- he demanded and (Y/N) stared at him blankly- “If it’s yours… prove it”

- “Why?”- she giggled and bit her tongue.

It wasn’t poker, but (Y/N) knew Matthew’s tell when it came to sex. The way he was looking at her, how he moved one step closer, almost touching her. How carefully he licked his lips. He was crystal clear.

- “Why what?”

- “Why should I wear it? it’s mine, I can do whatever I want with it”- the girl grinned and giggled, watching how Matthew started flustering in front of her.

- “I could simply just let it hang in my closet forever, and it would be ok, ‘cos it’s mine now, I don’t have to wear it, I don’t have to prove you anything…”

Teasing him was so fun, and he never let her have that much control either. It was weird, and it was tempting. (Y/N) was definitely enjoying it.

A few seconds later, she turned around and started walking upstairs, knowing no matter how badly Matthew would fight it, he would follow her to their room.

- “But why would you want to do that with this fantastic kimono? Did you feel it? It’s the softest thing on earth, here, (Y/N), feel it”- the girl chortled as her boyfriend wrapped his arms around her and forced her to stop. They stayed in the middle of the stairs, Gubler locking his arms around her, his eyes clearly undressing her without saying a word.

- “Yes, hon, it’s soft”- (Y/N) whispered, and tried to look away for a second. Matthew’s eyes were too intense on hers. She could feel how he pressed his already hard cock against her, like a warning. A warning of what was coming, a sign of what she was accomplishing.

- “I bet you have never felt anything as soft as this kimono against your skin”- the words sent shivers down her spine, as Gubler’s voice on her neck was low and velvety.

- “Last time you bet me something, you lost”- she moved again from him and continued walking upstairs- “So I don’t think you should play those games with me”

- “Not funny”

He followed her to their room and laid on the bed. (Y/N) walked around the room holding and looking carefully at every inch of her prize. Gubler stared in silence for a few seconds, and then, he continued.

- “It’s the softest thing on earth, you should wear it”

- “Mmm, I’m not sure”- all that teasing was funny, but Matthew was feeling already a little frustrated.

- “Come on”

- “I don’t feel like it”

- “(Y/N), please”

- “Why?”

- “You just won the kimono”- he stood up and walked to her

- “So?”

- “So? you should be enjoying the softness against your skin”- and that was all (Y/N) could take, ‘cos as soon as she heard those last words, she started laughing. Gubler was a little confused.

- “What? what did I say?”

- “Why don’t you just stop the bullshit and admit you gave me the kimono ‘cos you’ve got a weird kimono thing”

- “What?!”- he was busted

- “Just say you wanna fuck me senselessly while I wear this kimono and I’ll put it on”

- “I don’t know what are you talking about”- Gubler trying to look innocent under those circumstances was impossible. He knew it, (Y/N) knew it, anyone who could take a look at how painfully tight his pants were at that moment, would know it.

- “Really?”- he nodded, in one last effort to look innocent- “Oh, sorry, I totally misunderstood this conversation then, I’m gonna hang this kimono in the very back of my closet and I’ll never wear it then.”

Gubler sighed, defeated for the second time that night. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rubbed every word he spoke against her lips slowly.

- “I want you to put on that kimono so I can fuck you senselessly against the wall”

The girl let out a sigh of satisfaction and took off her shirt immediately.

- “You command and I obey, daddy.”

- “But I’m gonna need that kimono back”

- “Don’t push it, Gub”.

#matthew gray gubler #matthew gray gubler fanfiction #mgg fanfic #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #fanfiction #matthew gray gubler reader #let's see if tumblr decided to show this in the tags today #criminal minds #mgg #matthew gray gubler is my daddy #babymetaldoll writes

183 notes · View notes