#there is a kind of making shit up that comes from zero exposure to the canon

[ripplestitchskein]

I'm new to stolitz and HB and your takes/ your essay was a breath of fresh air. Maybe it's because I'm new here in the HB fandom, but I've seen more people talking shit about Stolas/"Stolas fans" than actual "toxic" Stolas fans? And don't get me started on those horrible ass takes calling Stolas a sexual assaulter/abuser or comparing Stolitz to Angel and Valentino, likening Stolas to Valentino.

It bothers the heck out of me but at the end of the day, with more exposure to that noise I can navigate how to tune it out and they can stay bitter and talk shit about everything they watch while we wait for "Full Moon"

Welcome Nonnie! Thank you so much! I’ve really missed doing things like this. It’s been awhile since I interacted this heavily with a fandom as nothing has really caught my brain this intensely for a long time so it’s nice to discover likeminded people in it. I’m new too! We can be new together.

It’s funny, I didn’t even know about HB until after I watched Hazbin, I had seen literally zero things about it, and while I had heard of Hazbin over the years and had seen Alastor I didn’t know what it was, I thought it was one of those popular dating sims, or like a new tumblr sexy man thing I hadn’t heard about which is hilarious to me now. A bunch of my IRL friends were talking about Hazbin a lot though and I love musical theater and have been on a personal art journey for a while (it started as getting better at art for video games, I’m a software engineer, but turned into me making a comic somehow because I’m a lifelong writer too) and the art style intrigued me so I decided to check it out. I loved it a lot, but like a normal amount. When I came on here people were talking about Helluva Boss so I’m like “ooh, more content” so we watched that and my brain saw Stolas and Stolitz and started the sirens. Like literally a “Oh no I love him” moment in LooLoo Land.

There are just characters and ships that hit just right. Imagine my surprise when I went into fandom spaces and there were people with these crazy interpretations of them and of Stolas I couldn’t reconcile with what I’d just watched. Like at all. Well I was surprised, but I’ve been around a fandom or two so I wasn’t that surprised but in this instance it was especially strange to me. It didn’t jive AT ALL with the show I just watched. Honestly, that intrigued me as much as the ship did.

Especially the Stolas takes. I’m like “This guy? This complete dork who is trying to mirror what his crush wants so bad he might as well be made of silvered glass?” “Evil Sexual assaulter? The guy in the royal romper who sings to his daughter and gets excited over legal contracts and makes silly little owl noises? This is the guy who has some evil sexual coercion plot over the dude who threatened to fuck his employees 11 minutes into the show and can’t go ten minutes without saying cum?” It was REALLY confusing let me tell you. Like you have this really fucked up reality where murder is A-Okay and characters that say vile shit to each other as a matter of course and people are all up in arms about a transactional sexual relationship? It just seemed like one of the least problematic things some of these characters do lol and I felt like I was in a room where something important happened and I missed it.

I’m pretty good about taking in different views, because of my ND I try really hard to understand where people are coming from and kind of assume I missed something everyone else knew from being in the fandom for so long, that being new I didn’t know, but the more I looked into it the more it seemed tied to an interpretation of the character that wasn’t in what I had watched. I watched the VivziePop channel playlist which does not have the Pilot. When I found out about the original Pilot some quotes made a *little* more sense especially with the huge gaps in content releases, but I’m still fucking baffled a lot of the time tbh. Sometimes I feel like these people are watching an entirely different show based on that Pilot and our social media have crossed universes.

I’m used to this though, the last major characters to take over my brain were MXTX characters, Bakugou from MHA and Killian Jones before that so I am pretty used to people having character interpretations who can’t get past first impressions, and ignore like literally years of development. (More about the last two, the MXTX fandom is one of the best I’ve been in, everyone seems to be really happy with the canon content there all around, I can’t think of any hate I’ve ever seen about any character tbh, even the actual villains. Fan fiction game is on point too, so many good writers in that fandom).

I’m also used to people ascribing love of a fictional character to a real life moral failing. My view has always been that I enjoy more complex characters and stories that aren’t always squeaky clean because it’s fiction and it’s fucking boring if everyone in it are these perfect unflawed cardboard cutouts who always act the right way, never hurt other people, and never make mistakes or fuck up or miscommunicate. People approaching relationships from differing points of view, struggling with darkness and trauma, and reconciling their issues especially together or to BE together is the fucking BEST thing about fiction.

Fandoms are fucking bizarre is what I’ve ultimately landed on. And they don’t understand what toxic means. Or problematic. Like just plain do not understand those words.

We’ll be fine Nonnie! Let’s just keep flailing over things we love, crying over the angst train that is surely coming full speed at our faces (and will probably have to deal with for years because of the release schedule), and enjoy theorizing, speculating, analyzing and creating content with other like minded people! Come vent in my inbox anytime and I’ll keep writing War and Peace length essays about 15 minute long episodes.

Seriously though, the man wears a ROYAL THEMED ROMPER how could ANYONE hate him? I love him so much.

I will say the one downside of this fandom is I know more about avian genitalia and reproduction than I ever needed to.

#anon #anonymous #Stolitz #stolas x blitz #I haven’t had a Nonnie message in forever! #we’re back baby #full on in it now #stay tuned for more of my ramblings #a lot of sobbing #like a lot #25k more viewings of look my way #and some art prob #prob a fanfic or two #let’s see where the blorbos take us

[nyanbinary-perineum]

!!! hiii red im back fjkdnsjg

can i ask what your favourite games have been lately? any you'd recommend? ^_^

Kind of a mess lately hehe

I guess one of the games I'm currently playing comes close to favorite- but most of my faves aren't things I'm currently playing :3

Lately it's been a good amount of Helldivers 2, but I'm slowly creeping away from it because my playgroup has moved on and solo / randoms is not the most fun way to play x.x

I do really love that game though ^.^

Recommendations are hard 🤔 Because I usually try to gear them around what I know the other person can play, otherwise I'll be spouting all kinds of random nonsense 😅

I guess I can throw random names and my explanations out there with zero regard for anything >:3

With the release of Monster Hunter World the series got a LOT of exposure that it rightfully deserved.... and that Capcom quickly converted into microtransactions and content skimping >:(

But a lot of people still haven't given the "old gen" monhuns a chance and I truly do believe they are missing out :3

Finding the means (emulators exist though citra getting into hot water makes that slightly more annoying) to play is worth it-

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

THE best monhun with the perfect amount of content, the only actually good single player that balances silly and serious to be worthwhile to not mash through the dialogue (but you can!), 10/10 unique features, and the best end game of any monhun because it's just plain rewarding and fun and gives you more than enough to do until you feel sated :3

Nier Automata

if someone wants to dwell on life and existence and sentience and cry a lot in between fun hack and slash gameplay.

Omori

if you want to cry through a story involving the best characters ever, the best friends around, love them so much, beautiful story and great gameplay and 💜 Also Omocat is from all accounts I'm aware of, kind of a shithead, so take that grain of salt.

I'm not calling it based on their use of problematic terms years ago that haven't come up since but keep getting dragged out as "Proof!" but rather because other people who worked on the game have come out saying "Yeah, that was a really toxic environment like holy shit" so I'm more on about that. Game itself good :3 Situation makes it hard to recommend despite being something that hit my heart so hard :/

Wario Land: Shake It!

is quite possibly THE best wii game I've ever played. The Wii has so many fucking industry defining masterpieces in it but no one ever brings up Shake It and Shake It was maybe the most fun I've ever had in a traditional 2D platformer. AND THE CHARM! THE FUCKING CHARM!!!!! Literally smiling just thinking of that game it's so good.

If anyone considers themselves a fan of pokemon as a whole and wants to try an interesting take on the genre that's a lot more

"Team Building > In Battle Actions"

"Pre-planning and letting it play passively > Active decisions"

Then PLEASE try Dragon Warrior Monsters or Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 for the gameboy color ;-; It's one(ish, I'm counting 3 games as 1 game since 2 has 2 versions lol) of my favorite games ever ;-;

Uh, I usually don't recommend it because so few people who say they are into tactical RPGs are talking about the same thing I'm ever talking about (instead always referring to like, Fire Emblem, which has fantastic tactical gameplay especially on harder difficulties but has never once scratched the particular itch *I* have for the genre because of-)

Final Fantasty Tactics (Or War of the Lions for the PSP version)

FFT is quite literally my favorite game. I've played it through so many times and plan to do so again in the future. It has a very quality remake that is mostly positives with only minor negatives (some complaints to be had on additional content that was added and 'some' translation changes have bothered me but it's really good!).

The sequels are...... Very Different Games both in mechanics, intended audience, and style. I spent almost every year I've been on this earth saying they suck ass, but after having beaten both of them for my game blog and sitting on it for a while after (a necessary part of the process) They Aren't That Bad. FFTA is not a game I would recommend, but FFTA2 has some stuff to offer that I would inch towards recommending. Neither are considerations for this list though.

Here's everyone's reminder to play Chrono Trigger if you haven't, if you play with your mind on and your eyes open you'll spot so many incredible things from impeccably designed encounters to incredible mechanics to incredulous story telling >:3

Hmm. I did take this opportunity to instead yell a lot of normal or well known things instead of all my niche ideas but I uh... I really can just talk about games for the rest of my life and never get bored, just turning my head 30 degrees will show me 300 more titles to ramble about so I thought playing it a little safe was a good idea :P

Uh, y'all heard of Undertale or Deltarune? Thems pretty good gaming.

#nyanbinary-thoughts

[pixelgrotto]

March Of The Dead, The FRANCHISE

Approximately one year ago was the release of Book of the Dead, a Pathfinder 2e supplement that focuses specifically on undead. It's the sort of tabletop RPG book that I really like: the type that hones in on a specific creature category and just hits you over the head with new monsters and a bucketload of lore. These sorts of books are less en vogue these days among major publishers than they were in the D&D 3.5e era, probably for economic reasons. (I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to buy 250 pages of in-depth factoids, including treatises on ghost biology and paragraphs revealing that undead learn Necril via steady exposure to constant streams of negative magic.)

Anyway, Book of the Dead is packed to the brim with all kinds of ghoulish stuff, and there's also an adventure in the back dubbed March of the Dead, which involves the PCs investigating a town where all the residents have been turned into zombies by naughty cultists. Basically, it's the village section of Resident Evil 4. I immediately wanted to run this, and began wondering who I could GM it for. Incidentally, around this time I was enlisted by Paizo to freelance on the upcoming Pathfinder Lost Omens: Tian Xia books, which are intended to remake the game's Asian-inspired setting into something a little more fitting for 2023. A bunch of writers from the Asians Represent podcast were called to work on the books ("Up in the sky! It's the Asian Signal!") and after I realized that some of my colleagues hadn't played the game they were writing for, I asked them if they'd be down to try taking cultists to suplex city. They said yes, and me, Daniel Kwan, Drew Quon, Emma Yasui and Jacky Leung ended up playing for a whole year.

This was my first time GMing for a group who all had some kind of public presence on livestreams and podcasts, and it was instantly fun in the sense that here were folks who were naturally charismatic and used to speaking to an audience. At the same time, because our game was private, everyone was freed from the normal restraints that come with livestreaming and able to go as bonkers as they wanted. This commenced almost immediately in our Session Zero when everyone gravitated towards the more colorful character options, because who wants to play one of the Core Rolebook ancestries when you can be a living toy, a robot, a catperson and a skeleton?

And so, March of the Dead kicked off in solid style as the PCs dove into the town of Fiorna's Faith and ripped apart multiple flavors of zombie with much gusto. I ran the adventure pretty close to how it's written in Book of the Dead, and can confirm that the middle section where the party has to lock themselves within a house and defend against multiple waves of undead assailants is pretty awesome, and very close to the scene in RE4 where Leon and Luis get stuck in a house and shoot the crap out of 100 jobbers in a great example of male bonding.

But even more awesome was how each character's personality quickly crystalized into something special, setting the stage for their future development. Daniel's poppet gunslinger Tapio had a kitbashed gunblade and a deranged desire to BUST on his enemies, which led to lots of dialogue which would've gotten all of us cancelled if we'd been streaming on Twitch. Drew's fighter, a automaton named Kaine, unlocked memories of his soul's prior existence by beating the shit out of dudes and just as equally getting the shit beat out of himself. (Kinda like the Thousand Years of Dreams segments in the Xbox 360 RPG Lost Odyssey, minus the shit beatings.) Emma played the coziest member of the crew - a catfolk named Weetabix who was also a summoner who could manifest a giant flying squirrel named Rudiger, thus placing the party on the pathway of aquiring an ever-increasing entourage of furry friends. And Jacky combined the skeleton ancestry and duskwalker heritage (even though I think they're technically incompatible) to make Ozark, a min/maxing Ghost Rider magus of Pharasma who broke the entire system by parkouring 80 feet each turn and constantly healing himself with illegal necromantic juicing practices.

With such a colorful cast, it would've been a shame to stop with just one adventure. So after the party smashed Harlo Krant, the so-called "seed of evil" set up by the cultists to spread undeath through Fiorna's Faith, I homebrewed March of the Dead 2 as a continuation. (No gimmicky subtitles here, just straight up numbers!)

If the first March of the Dead was RE4's village, then I designed the sequel to be the castle section, and I wanted to go big with a bunch of setpieces centered around a fortress siege. It's hard to do mass scale battles in most D&D derivative systems, so instead of trying to have the party command an army I mostly just relied on the supplement Guns & Gears, which has a series of stat blocks on siege weapons which worked better than I expected. The idea was to have the PCs use the seige tools to turn the tides of war in an already ongoing battle between the cultists and a friendly group of Serenrae-worshipping orcs (the Burning Sun tribe, which received a mention in Lost Omens: Knights of Lastwall, another book I heavily relied on for setting lore). Alternatively, I also gave the PCs the means of sneaking into the fortress Sam Fisher-style. The party ended up taking the stealth option, but not before Kain rolled a natural 20 to catch a cannonball in his hands and throw it back at the baddies, which was awesome.

Inside the fortress I had separate rooms and passageways devoted to each cultist, and all of these areas - or the cultists who inhabited them - were meant to hold some sort of significance towards one of the PCs. There was a gnome summoner intended as a foil for Weetabix, a tech-obsessed tinker dude who had essentially created undead automatons for Kaine to contend with, and a fleshwarping dwarf who'd imported cadavers from all across the world and used Tapio's former body to form a flesh cape for his skinstitch golem. Ozark, meanwhile, got a friendly ex-Pharasma cleric NPC to help him in the last fight. Not all of these connections worked out exactly as planned - for instance, the gnome could've turned against her fellow cultists if successfully swayed by Weetabix, but she got her face melted off with an eroding bullet before she could utter five words.

Despite this, it was a fun exercise to tailor the story to everyone in small ways, which is always one of the biggest challenges when coming up with homebrew adventures. Probably one of the most memorable moments was when Daniel was able to obtain the Horn of Aoyin, an item he had previously designed while freelancing for the Pathfinder conspiracy-themed book Dark Archive. There's nothing like a writer getting to add their own magical item to a character sheet, using it in-game to inadvertently cause their companions to go into a cannibalistic rage, and everyone going: "Wow, what asshole made this thing?"

Alas, Drew had a scheduling conflict that kept him from joining us for March of the Dead 3. But the rest of the party was able to go on a final rodeo, and this one marked a dramatic turn as the crew departed Avistan to chase down more cultists in Tian Xia, a development I knew I wanted to do eventually, seeing as how we were all writers for the upcoming Tian Xia books. If we're to equate March of the Dead with a 1970s film series, I like to think that this third movie is the schlockfest that went left field and randomly features the protagonists going to Hong Kong, as in other "third volume in a forgotten franchise" cinematic masterpieces like Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge or The Gods Must Be Crazy III. The PCs also had a good reason to go to the Dragon Empires, thanks to the fact that Tapio was quite literally a made-in-China puppet who now had to return the Horn of Aoyin to the Lantern Lodge in Goka, AKA the only region in Tian Xia that's been updated for Pathfinder 2e thanks to the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix adventure path.

I relied heavily on Fists of the Ruby Phoenix's second volume, which has a Goka gazetteer in its adventure toolkit section but also an article on kaiju. I knew I wanted to do a giant monster attack on Goka, but instead of focusing on Mogaru (AKA Golarion Godzilla who actually does attack the city in Fists of the Ruby Phoenix), I was drawn to Jakabu the Ethereal Leviathian. Jakabu's a flying whale surrounded by undead sea creatures who I like to think may have been inspired in part by the bakekujira yokai. He exudes a Princess Mononoke "nature is mad at the world" presence that I liked, and since I was never able to run the Spelljammer Astral Whale-filled campaign of my dreams for D&D 5e, I figured that now was the right time for a kujira kaiju to take to the skies. Plus, Jacky had mentioned at one point during March of the Dead 1 or 2 that it would be cool to fight an undead whale.

Since the party was level 10 by now and had gone from a village to a castle, it was time to escalate the stakes by giving them an entire city to explore. Jakabu was literally raining thalassic horror on Goka thanks to a bunch of Circle of Despair terrorists from Minkai who were controlling him, and the baddies were led by a Sephiroth-esque bishounen who was in league with a greedy nalfeshnee. (Shout out to Undying Corruption and the good people at Nine Heavens Press for inspiring me with their geumdwaeji, a pig-like demon who takes a lot from both Korean myth and the traditional depiction of the nalfeshnee.) I like hexcrawls, and this "city under crisis" setup was perfect for a simple hex map featuring a slew of random encounters for the party to explore as they traversed Goka's streets. Keeping the Resident Evil theme alive, I looked to Resident Evil 6's China levels for a vibe to emulate. That game has a ton of problems, but the levels in the fake Chinese city Lanshiang remain an awesome standout worthy of becoming inspirational fuel.

March of the Dead 3 ended with the party battling the bad guys atop Jakabu himself, Shadow of the Colossus-style. Along the way they friended the famous sorcereress Hao Jin, who restored Tapio back to his human body via cloning and also gave me an excuse to speak in goofy HK English/Singlish. Which leads me to another important point - I mentioned earlier that this was my first time GMing for a group with plenty of podcasting experience. But it was also my first time GMing for a group composed entirely of players of East Asian descent. This meant that in all three March of the Deads, I was able to make a lot of cultural in-jokes that would've either gone over the heads of another group or simply been inappropriate. These ranged from your typical weeaboo jokes (Ozark read dozens of issues of the world-renowned chapbook SHONEN LEAP while on the trip to Tian Xia) to pitting the party against NPCs who cussed at 'em in crappy Cantonese. This is the sort of thing that often happens when a group composed solely of people of color (or other marginalized folks) get together at the gaming table, and it's freeing, fun, and something that needs to happen more often for every POC who decides to run an RPG.

We started our little March of the Dead trilogy in June 2022, and now we've finished in June 2023. Because of unforseen factors, the Lost Omens: Tian Xia books that we worked on still aren't out yet. But despite delays caused by OGL debacles, I'm supremely glad that my co-workers and I got a chance to catapault off the back of a freelance writing assignment to play for a year. I can guarantee that everything this crew produced for those two Lost Omens books is going to knock the socks off of whoever reads it.

As for me, I'm putting Book of the Dead down for now, since inspiring a three-part FRANCHISE is more than enough usage for an RPG supplement. But who knows where the muse will strike next. Howl of the Wild, the next themed Pathfinder book that I was also lucky enough to work on, comes out in 2024, and I betcha there's enough material in that one too for a year's worth of goofy, high quality fun.

#pixel grotto #musings #pathfinder #pathfinder 2e #pf2e

[llycaons]

Section Seven: The Dumpster Fire

Drawn from my exposure to some weird shit on ao3 and contributions from mutuals, these are fics that are so bad I’m posting them for the sole purpose of mocking them and/or complaining about them. If you like bad fanfic and nonsensical characterizations, come and have a laugh.

The Simplest Way Forward by harriet_vane

summary: one of the most generic, unjust, and soulless fics I’ve ever read. lwj has zero personality, wwx is extremely bland, and wen yuan’s mom is presented as criminally neglectful. the sex scenes are rote, mechanical, and devoid of passion or intimacy, and I felt negative chemistry throughout the entire work. jsz was an aggressive, uncouth homophobe, and jyl was a perfect pure angel whose decision to marry him had me baffled. almost impressive gold stars: the way a-yuan was written was legitimately excellent. accurate to his developmental age and genuinely touching. his abandonment issues and concept of family actually made me cry. a strange and unforgettable work

KILF (Knits I’d Like To Fuck in) by ScarlettStorm

summary: the sequel to the reluctantly recommended “For a Good Time, Call” includes and enthusiastically explores of every single thing that was slightly weird about that fic. quick summary of the main conceit: lwj and wwx are in a relationship, and wwx gets cold easily, and lwj decides to start a project to keep him warm. sounds cute? seemed cute! started out fine. but like the og fic, the relationship was just so lifeless and devoid of passion or chemistry. every chapter just made it painfully obvious that these weren’t cql characters to the op, they were (white) toys to play with. everyone talks like they’re trying to get an A in therapy. wwx is genderfluid, which is ofc fine but he said he wanted to be a stay-at home wife? and then he’s referred to as a ‘femboy’? uh nhs wears yoga pants...I love gnc characters but wwx and nhs are treated as very feminine to a weird degree. jin zixuan is demisexual, I guess! wen qing is fucking jc! there’s nothing wrong with writing from what you know, but the characterizations were based off fucking...nothing from canon. it was infuriating and it felt so disrespectful to every single creative voice involved in canon and I hated reading it so much

there was no plot and the majority of the fic focused on their home decor activities, which was boring as fuck, and their elaborate sex scenes, which were sooooo drawn out and pointless even when they tried to be ~character work~ and the fic further explored wwx making an OnlyFans and lwj participating in the most gratuitously sexual and crass way possible, but in a way that I THINK it was supposed to be sexy and titillating? I can’t even fucking tell! I didn’t like reading it! of course I respect sex worlers but what WAS this! the romance writing truly did suck SO bad which is unfortunate because apparently the author is a romance writer? I had to take breaks multiple times because I getting genuinely upset and angry with it. who enjoys this? who enjoys this

highlighted excerpt:

“Nie Huaisang, nonbinary femme-leaning aromantic pansexual non-hierarchical polyamorous slut, at your service.”

- I’m embarrassed for the author

gold stars: the therapy talk may have been annoying but it did result in some heartfelt conversations and very satisfying depictions of wwx dealing with some shit and slowly recovering from it, which was kind of cool. like the previous fic in this series, it felt like the conversations led to actual progress and personal growth. also they fought in one of the scenes and I was so giddy because I thought they were about to break up, so it did give me that

Yunmeng Jiang loves their Sect Leader by Roselle_Storm

summary: this fic reads like a parody of those jc fans who refuse to think he’s ever done anything wrong. it’s short and funny and you can read the entire thing in a few minutes. the utter confidence of the author here. that the people of yunmeng know him intimately and love him. that he plays with war orphans and protects children. that he’s a tragic, self-sacrificing, self-loathing hero who is seen and recognized as such by his people. all this so completely at odds with his canon character and choices as to be enthralling

highlighted excerpt:

Yunmeng Jiang loves their Sect Leader and Jiang Cheng loves Yunmeng Jiang… but… no matter how hard they try; they cannot mend the broken heart of their beloved sect leader. They try and Jiang Cheng gives them all the love he has left but the pain on his heart is too deep for them to heal.

Jiang Cheng hurts every day. He hurts but he has to keep going. [...]

[Jin Ling] sees how Jiang Cheng plays with the children, the orphans of war. He takes care of their needs, and never neglects any of them.

- I CANNOT get over the 'plays with war orphans’ line for a character who openly advocated to abandon political prisoners, including a toddler, to mass murder. someone who has never played with a child once on screen and does not have a playful personality in the slightest. someone canonically deeply bitter and resentful and self-pitying and immature and emotionally volatile and aggressively violent. obsessed

gold stars: it made me laugh very hard

my age has never made me wise by idrilka

summary: in the first few chapters of this insultingly characterized and poorly written postcanon get-together, an absurdly oblivious and incompetent wwx almost dies due to being bizarrely passive and bad at cultivation during a night-hunt. he later hears that lwj is planning to get married, and falls into a deep depression over it, because he’s just realized he wants to be the one to marry him. jc gives wwx romantic advice like “YOU CAN’T GO WRONG WITH A COMB” yeah how did that work out for you, jc? also jc is The One Who Knows wwx somehow even though he tries to hide his true feelings, oh he can’t fool his bro! like ofc he can! that’s a huge part of their dynamic! wwx is also much more admiring and appreciative of jc here that is canon. also jc is really awful and emotionally manipulative and it’s just? not treated as an issue?? wwx never talks to him about it or set boundaries even though jc’s behavior makes him miserable?

as the miscommunication eventually starts to be sorted out in the most on-the-nose, unimaginative, boring way I could have imagined, I realized that lwj isn’t actually in this fic, it’s edward cullen from twilight. the excessive and yet generic declarations of love. the single-minded fixation on marriage. reluctance to have sex because they’re not married yet because he wants to adhere to some arbitarry social standard his fiance clearly doesn’t care about, the readiness to marry two extremely young people who are also cousins (not canon to twilight but he WOULD), the weird presumptuousness regarding his love interest, the emphasis on family almost to the exclusion of what his fiance is actually comfortable with, etc. I think the phrase ‘I intend to do right by you’ is lifted directly from the pages of eclipse. like…he’s obsessed with doing things the ‘right way’ I do think honoring wwx is important to him but I just think the way he’s going about it is extremely unimaginative, impersonal, and most importantly, driven by what he wants instead of what wwx expresses to him that HE wants. canon lwj is so attuned to and respectful of wwx’s desires, whims, and emotional state, and so ready to accommodate him, that his fixation on this plan, and his forging ahead with it just feels so bizarre and out of left field when wwx varies in his responses so much.

also lwj is way too concerned about what others think - in canon lwj hates that wwx is being judged, but he’s not going to scramble to accommodate others and uphold the social conventions to appease them. in his mind if they have a problem, THEY should be the ones accommodate WWX instead. this lwj is so concerned with doing the right thing in regards to wwx so that he’s accepted by the world, when in canon lwj thinks wwx should be able to do whatever he wants and the rest of the world needs to deal with it. like his entire character arc is about rejecting mainstream judgements and trusting/believing in wwx and their shared moral compass. so who IS this man

overall this plot is nonsensical, the dialogue is heavy-handed and uninteresting, the characterizations are a mess, and there’s weird undertones of feminizing wwx that I really dislike (he mentions not having a DOWRY which wasn’t even a thing in ancient china and there being no BRIDE PRICE which doesn’t coexist with dowries anyway!). I love purple prose, but everything is so plain and spoon-fed to us, it’s really not a well-written piece. and this lwj is so ooc and unpleasant and boring, and he talks way too much. also there’s jl/lsz dropped in casually as if wwx and lwj would be happy to marry two cousins together. this writer is a fucking idiot

gold stars: the letters between lwj and wwx are actually quite substantial and interesting, which is a rarity among these types of fics. and the final wedding chapter is really sweet and passionate and I liked it. everything in the middle tho. pass

Twin Heroes by RavenclawLoki

summary: a hilariously ooc reconciliation work. more absurd than offensive.has nearly every bad jc take under the sun. pretending that wwx and jc both have the same amount of mistakes to work on. saying that jc always believed/hoped wwx had survived the fall. jc mentioning how revolting lwj and wwx holding hands is every two seconds. wwx loyally defending jc’s parenting skills even tho he canonically knows that jc has serious issues in the way he raises jl. and other stuff, like having jl lock wwx and jc in a room together, and having lwj being okay to just stand outside it. because wwx and jc are young children who will get along if they’re forced to spend time together, I guess? no effort to respect either of their stated needs and preferences. of course not. they don’t need space or time or support or trust. just force them to spend time together! also there’s like, sibling telepathy that’s not explained? the writing is also quite juvenile and awkward

highlighted excerpts:

Lan Wangji may be in love with Wei Wuxian but could he not look at him like he was the best thing to ever happen to him?

- literally what are you saying. you are communicating nothing

“Wei Wuxian…”

“Jiang Cheng…”

“I don’t want to fight anymore!” Both yell out at the same time.

“Wait, really?” They say again at the same time.

- is this an american children’s show? are these characters 12 years old?

gold stars: sometimes it’s very funny in ways that MIGHT be intentional.

Drive the Wolves From My Door by InTheGreySpaces

summary: postcanon wwx, on his travels, runs into a pregnant teenager who’s been assaulted and takes her under his wing. due to some contrived, frustrating, drawn-out, and extremely nonsensical bits of miscommunication, lwj becomes convinced wwx is returning home with a wife and shuts himself away in his home so wwx, when he comes back to gusu, can’t even clear things up immediately. literally everyone knew the truth at one point but lwj was physically locked in his house. christ. like what happened to not jumping to conclusions and trusting wwx? you’re going to believe this on a vague message and the word of SECT LEADER YAO??

eventually things gets sorted out, but not before wwx magically takes on her pregnancy pains and they have to scramble to cure him of the spiritual attachment because…wwx going through the pain of childbirth would be so bad, but this teenager can do it just fine don’t worry about her. in the end wwx and lwj adopt the baby, which is cute, but then the young mother ends up marrying jc, which is not.

the oc baby is named "Aimi' which based on every source I could find, is a terrible fake Chinese name so this along with the dowry line makes it sound like the author did zero research

it’s incredibly misogynistic and callous to make a woman’s sexual assault a set dressing, and then co-opt a survivor’s story to center the men who save her. the disrespect of her as a person all throughout…jc was a man of almost 40 and she was a teenager when they met. she was used as a plot device the entire fic and in the end she’s rewarded to this asshole like a prize. wwx also treats her very poorly (lying to her, revealing info about her without her consent, distracting her so he can sneak off, etc.) while pretending to protect her. the misogyny isn’t ooc for any of them, but I hate that the writing goes along with it too. a struggle from start to finish

highlighted excerpt:

‘Once Jiang Cheng sets his mind to something, it is done thoroughly. He will treasure her as a jewel no doubt….She will keep Jiang Cheng in line, and he will shower her with every affection. She deserves it after everything she has endured.’

- why is it this woman’s job to keep him in line...she doesn’t have a particularly strong personality anyway, and no she does not deserve this?!

gold stars: uh. it’s nice when wx get a baby girl. I guess. and wwx being so very in love is cute. otherwise ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Everyanything by deliciousblizzardshark, lingeringdust

summary: to be fair I never finished this fic, but basically qin su kills herself out of grief/revenge like mxy did in canon, and wwx comes back in her body. but instead of qin su’s canon situation. she’s locked in a filthy shed with a baby by the time she does the sacrifice. so it’s basically genderbent mxy? the emphasis on wwx’s post-res body really weirded me out, going on about massive, leaking breasts and all, and the discomfort of…a period? maybe? I guess being in A Woman’s Body is just aches and pains and leaking from who knows here. also, wwx doesn’t know the word for vagina which is absurd enough to land it on this list even without the undertones of feminization.

highlighted excerpt:

“The baby has to be changed and fed,” Wei Wuxian said. Lan Wangji gave him a suspicious look.“We will fetch food for the child,” he said. Wei Wuxian blinked at him, then laughed nervously. “Ah, Hanguang-jun,” he said. “Babies this young don’t eat food. I have to feed him myself.” - lwj doesn’t know about breastfeeding. maybe not too unbelievable given the seperation of genders in his sect but that seems extreme gold stars: well I guess wwx is trans now so uh. there’s that

all that glitters by notinamillionyears

summary: ah, the infamous christian wwx fic. the author was projecting, I guess? so this is already a red flag for me in fan content - I know chinese christians exist of course, but I don't like to see wuxia characters reimagined like that this fic in particular goes to such lengths to give him long philosophical monologues about God and cathedrals that this character is entirely unrecognizable from canon wwx in literally every single way. wwx is a character from a chinese wuxia series, the folklore and worldbuilding of which draws heavily from taoism. furthermore, the worldviews of taoism and christianity are so fundamentally different that any change to these characters' underlying belief system will almost inevitably alter them as people in ways I am utterly uninterested in. and erasing the canon spiritualities and realities of these characters to replace them with christianity is also incredibly disrespectful and tone-deaf. nonsensical, insensitive, and poorly characterized as this is, it easily qualifies as one of the worst fics I’ve ever read. and none of his ramblings even make sense for his personality or apply to anything he goes through in canon. imo wwx is not wwx if he's christian. he's just not. and don't even get me started on 'catholic lwj' or fans trying to characterize the lan sect as catholic. not in this fic but the posts I have seen about it... also there’s some kind of creepy ageplay-related content but I genuinely find the christian thing worse. in the words of a beloved mutual: what are you, a missionary? highlighted excerpt: Lan Zhan swallows hard, then again, his beautiful Adam’s Apple bobbing like he’d eaten something he didn’t chew properly and it’s stuck in his throat. Is it called Adam’s Apple because it got stuck in Adam’s pharynx after he’d realized that he’d eaten the thing that would chuck him out of heaven? Are Adam’s Apples here to remind us that we have a sin embedded forever into our body, that it’s inescapable? - I think wwx has had enough to deal with in his life, without being forced to perceive himself and his life through the filter of christian sin. leave him alone gold stars: actually, the rest of the fic is pretty good on a technical level. I have no complaints about the plotless, atmospheric, meandering story. the broad emotional strokes of it - desperate, reflective and tragic - really did draw me in, the language evocative and rich. and there were some passages about wwx’s chronic pain that I felt were quite moving.

Taste of Heavenly Rush by Tomorrow (Sux2Succs)

summary: an extremely offputting and unpleasant roleplay fic, albeit with an interesting twist that retroactively legitimizes many previous interactions. the setup is that wwx, bored and neglected by his nameless husband, is approached by a sexy sexy rich stranger who buys him food and brings him up to his penthouse for sex. wwx gives his name as ‘xie lian’ and the stranger (obviously lwj) gives his as ‘hua cheng’. the thing is. wwx is still called wwx, but the narrative only calls lwj ‘hua cheng’, and he acts exactly like tgcf’s hua cheng does. so most of this reads as a pwp between hua cheng and wwx, which is deeply unappealing anyway but there are little moments where ‘hc’ comes on so strong and pushy it seems like he’s pressuring wwx into sex, hc is frequently possessive and presumptuous about someone he literally just met, or it implies wwx owes him for the food. gritted my teeth through this disaster until - it’s revealed about 3/4 of the way through that this was all an elaborately pre-planned roleplay, lwj IS the as-yet-nameless husband, and all the pushiness and possessiveness were in fact just kind of funny choices in a long playacting activity. but even as the atmosphere radically improves, the weirdness lingers. for most of the story, there’s almost nothing of the actual lwj shining through, and since their personalities are faked and then it’s so physical, it feels like there is nothing emotional or genuine between them. maybe this is all down to personal taste, but i just don’t like reading wx fics where they’re not acting like themselves on purpose. furthermore, the fact that lwj is just playing hc strips away what’s interesting and vulnerable and compelling not just about lwj but also about hc himself. the person in this fic is neither, just a caricature of an extremely rich and unrealistically sexy, confident Manly man with a dash of god worship. it felt like he walked right out of twilight (which I’ve read) or even fifty shades of gray. canon lwj can’t even lie and we’re supposed to believe he can keep up this level of roleplay? he’s just not a playful person. unless this is just really close to how the author treats him anyway which….1. ew and 2. ooc!! does the author really see every gay couple as the Tall Muscular Manly Rich Confident Top and the Shy Unsatisfied Feminine Emotionally Needy Giggly Vain Bottom????  finally, I understand that writing a wwx POV pre-reveal without letting the secret out must have been tricky, and they do pull off some fun and clever bits, but there are multiple scenes where wwx’s internal dialogue makes literally no sense when you know he knows it’s lwj, so the reveal is impossible to predict and feels less satisfying afterwards (or on a reread). wwx also references multiple times that it’s been a long time since he’s felt so sexy or that he’s had the thrill of being with someone so exciting, so that points to his life with lwj being boring or unfulfilling, which kind of sucks. lwj is a busy surgeon, and wwx is left taking care of their kid and apparently not getting his needs met, framed like he’s some unsatisfied housewife this is set in Shanghai, so I also found it weird that wwx described men multiple times as “Asian”, first of all that’s a huge variety of people, and second of all HE’S Asian and living in/from an Asian country so why would he mention that? and I can’t emphasize enough how goofy this shit was written. self-aware or no, it was bad. they described a dick as “a delectable flared mushroom’. they also embedded links to various expensive outfits, rooms, hot tubs, etc, which was supposed to set the scene I guess but it was both distracting and came off as desperate and over-compensating. wwx is canonically not the kind of person to care about grandious displays of nauseating wealth, something he actually mentions in the fic itself, but it doesn’t seem to matter, bc the author certainly thinks we should be impressed and that the characters are impressed as a matter of course. but he literally hates that shit in canon! highlighted excerpts (yeah, multiple) Out of nowhere, Wei Ying’s mouth becomes an oasis. ...

“Come here,” the naked god beckons.

... By the time they enter a bedroom, [he’s] is heedlessly bouncing on his cock, wantonly humping and grunting like a wild beast.

...

Thick black hair is sent tumbling down, ends reaching all the way to his shoulder blades — long enough now to cover his chocolate nips like Lady Godiva. and the big one As if Wei Ying didn’t feel outclassed enough, he doesn’t miss the sparkling diamond bezel around the black dial of his platinum Rolex. A watch like that would make Wei Ying’s hands look feminine in size while his hands make the watch itself look small. It suits him. this dynamic is all wrong, too. wwx never feels intimidated or outclassed by lwj’s wealth or physical appearance - he feels excited and challenged by lwj’s skills and looks. he enjoys finding someone who can reach his level, not the other way around. the fic that has him say ‘so what? there are like a crap ton of rich people in this world’ captured him so much better than this rag. it makes lwj looks like a tool and wwx shallow and ooc, and the forcing of wwx into a feminine role and lwj into a masculine one is genuinely homophobic gold stars: the reveal saved this work from being about two ooc pieces of shit- a sleazy, opportunistic rich douchebag who uses his wealth to pressure lonely guys at bars into sex, and a petulent tool who cheats on his affectionate yet busy husband with some sexy rando while his husband is off saving lives as a surgeon. where the author manages to make the double identity work both before and after the reveal, it’s a genuine treat. see this section: Wei Ying whispers, “Husband,” raising his chin a bit higher. But you knew that. - THIS is a fun little wink to readers who know the reveal, while acting in service of the game and characterizing both wwx and ‘hc’

you can find an actually decent fic about attempted wx rp on my rec page (And all the ways we meet (and meet again) by Aerlalaith), in Part One, Section III. and it’s far more awkward, silly, in-character, and charming in its failures than this one is

Therapy is a Performative Act by cinder1013

I ran into this one and thought it looked intriguing. it was entertaining, but. it's bad. it's ooc and embarrassing and the author has some really weird blind spots. this is ripped from the post I made about it

summary: no plot or real narrative, just a selection of standup. this is fine, it’s just that for the most part the standup is quite bad and unfunny. jc calls wwx a q****r (the noun, not an adjective. not insultingly, but he’s presumably cishet in this work so 😬). he then gets in a zinger about how oblivious wwx is. he also makes lwj laugh because he’s just so funny I guess. the fic is full of images of outdated memes and images of real-life actor wzc. 

this author REALLY hates jfm. I get that he wasn’t great but it seems like some bias to pretend that he was worse than myu, who was emotionally and physically abusive to all her children. here he is homophobic while she is not. myu comes to jc’s comedy nights to support him and jfm stopped talking to him completely after coming to half of one, which as my mutual mouse pointed out, is actually quite funny if you think about it like he disowned his cringefail son for being unfunny in public.  jc calls myu a bitch in public FOR HIS ROUTINE which almost made me faint. like she would murder him if he did that in canon. actually murder him. jyl throws soup at jfm. for being homophobic. jc heroically stands up for a poor harassed barista, gets her phone number, and then gets married to her. myu hugs jc’s wife in public. jc is now expecting a child with his wife?? what universe is this where jc gets bitches so easily and his mother is openly affectionate.

jc called wwx a ‘chaos gremlin’ like five times in part one. according to jc, wwx took all his halloween candy since it was his birthday which…okay I guess everyone’s ooc here. wwx dressed up as myu for halloween which is so ballsy I can’t believe myu didn’t actually murder him but in this setting it seems she’s cool with everything he does, she’s just….kind of mean? jc does an entire bit whining about how wwx only ever brought home cherry lollipops from the hospital, and not grape. this isn’t funny at all but ig it’s in character.

jc may be funny in the right circumstances, though I don’t think I could see him in such a vulnerable position as this and I think he would rather die than insult his mother in public in FRONT OF HER.

jc calls himself a peacock then has to clarify that his next bit about a peacock is referring to jzx and not himself, which seems like a convoluted and confusing way to write it. this bit is sooo long and boring oh my GOD. jc exclusively referring to wwx as ‘the gremlin’ 😭he keeps sidetracking his own story to tell off people he’s worried will photoshop him as a furry, which is really annoying. also jc tells the crowd ‘my kink is not your kink’ which implies he’s a proshipper in this one??? or something?? man I never trust that phrase

mainly this was a lot of secondhand embarrassment and muttering ‘oh they would not do that’ and ‘ough, that’s so ooc and annoying’

gold stars: the concept is inherently quite funny. also some of the heckling got a laugh out of me

And Time Is But a Paper Moon by sami                

summary: so I haven’t read this beyond the first few paragraphs, but my mutual gave me the details so I’m going to largely paraphrase from our discord convo about it

setup: wwx, decades postcanon, having lived a full and happy life with lwj, including children and grandchildren, sends himself back in time to redo his life from birth. he’s born with full sentience as an older man and complete memory of his past life. he does this because jc is unhappy

I dislike time travel fics in general, but especially so for wwx because while he has a lot of regrets, one of his greatest strengths as a person is to keep looking forward and find joy and home and family, whatever circumstances he’s in. imo it’s this powerful character trait of his that makes his first death so shocking and tragic, and a time-travel fix-it neatly misses this very important and thematically resonant aspect of about his character

there are fully 44 works in this popular series and I haven’t read any of them, so I’ll summarize my favorite points

-he never tells lwj about his past life

- jc apparently hasn’t done anything wrong and as soon as myu realizes wwx is going to marry out of the sect she becomes really chill. she also goes through all of wwx’s memories and then gives him and lwj sex advice based on it. treated as normal

- the lans are ‘cartoonishly evil’ and the author asserts that their forms are useless and should be discarded. I think the author had themself a little grudge

- wq married herself a feminist when she married jc because he let her keep her last name. just like every single other couple did in ancient china

- author got mad when they were corrected about cultural inaccuracies

- jzx kills jgs and nobody really cares despite patricide being the BIGGEST no-no

- ‘queerplatonic qingxicheng’ like WHAT

- some random straight couples: wen ning/qin su, jgy/madam mo, lqr/madame jin. very strange

- some direct quotes: “the only ppl who knew the full truth about wwxs previous life where all the women is his life, which had some weird gender vibes (i think madam yu might have even had some internal monologue about how ~men cant handle the truth).”

- “jcs whole misogynistic list of demands for his wife is waved away with oh its cause hes ace and is just describing his sister :)))”

in conclusion: the author is a racist idiot who’s way too into the Divine Feminine, or wheel of time-style gender essentialism or something. the idea of wwx giving up a hard-earned life of family and happiness for jc’s sake AGAIN is genuinely one of the most insulting and depressing things you could do to him after he’s started to learn to set boundaries, accept love, and process his trauma in a supportive environment

if he were to ever find himself in this situation, he would definitely be more focused on jyl and the wens being, you know, ALIVE, than jc getting what he wants

gold stars: yeah, right

I think this one wins actually. not having read it, I can’t say for certain, but this definitely sounds worse than KILF, my personal least favorite of the list. being so long, it has more opportunities to be fucking awful. I have decided It’s the crown jewel of my collection. if anyone has anything to add about it, let me know

this is it for the anti-rec list…for now. I’ll continue browsing my history to see if I can find anything else as bad as this. feel free to send in YOUR most hated cql/mdzs fanfic and why, and I’ll take a look! happy reading!

Back to Start

#ficblogging #fic recs #but not really #this is short and it may or may not be added onto #recs-7

[serpentstole]

Can I ask what's wrong with Michael W Ford's books? I never read them but I've seen often people recommending them, so I'm curious. Thank you and have a nice day.

Thanks for the question! Sorry if this gets a little long, TL;DR is at the bottom but I've broken down some more specific examples in point form.

I'll preface this by saying that if people get something worthwhile from Michael W Ford's books, that's their business and I'm happy for them. However, there's a few things about his writing and him as a person that I don't really love and struggle to get behind. Most of the specific textual examples I give are from the Bible of the Adversary specifically, as it's one of his more famous books and the only one I personally have had the mental fortitude to page through so far.

- I'm immediately leery of anyone who's often described as a "visionary" or "luminary" on websites selling or listing their books, especially when I've gotten the feeling that it's just that his books are accessible and plentiful. Even among fans of authors like E. A. "Become A Living God" Koetting, the general opinion seems to be that his books lack a lot of consistency and are a bit poorly written. Can confirm for the Bible of the Adversary, at least. There's some parts of that thing that could have used a once-over by an editor.

- I try very hard not to use what happened to the Greater Church of Lucifer/GCoL against him. Another member of the community that I do still (loosely, infrequently) interact with was also involved, and while I sincerely wish they'd both more deeply researched the man they were signing up to run a very public and scrutinized church with, I think his turning into a scam artist who publicly converted to Christianity was enough punishment there. Likewise, I'm a bit uncomfortable with his past involvement with the Order of Nine Angels/ONA/O9A given the fact that they're a pack of murder advocating nazis, but apparently he left when he discovered that fact, so I try to give him the benefit of the doubt that he truly did distance himself from them immediately upon learning of their beliefs, as I don't know when these things became more widely known. However, both of these fumbles alongside how he presents himself and his books just don't sit well with me, as the most generous interpretation is that he was twice-misled in some pretty dangerous and harmful ways by those that are damaging to the public perception of Luciferianism, but still likes to be some figurehead of the Luciferian community. People make mistakes, and people can be misled, and people can learn from past experiences, but his track record is a bit upsetting for a supposed authority.

- His work includes pieces and ideas from occultists or practices that I tend to avoid in my own practice and study, such as Thelema and Crowley's writing as a whole, inspiration taken from the Temple of Set/Setian magic, Qlipoth (because it wouldn't be a Luciferian grimoire without pilfered Jewish mysticism), and forms of Gnosticism that embrace the idea of God as an evil demiurge (which i explained my discomfort with in my previous post). I'm also not a huge fan of his "all magic comes from within" approach (and find it hard to reconcile with his frequent use of Luciferian deities/spirits and demons), nor that he'll talk about Cain's role in "Luciferian grimoires" without actually naming any... though given how similar a piece of Lilith themed artwork he's done looks to Andrew Chumbley's illustration, I assume he means the sort of books the Cultus Sabbati was writing. I wish I still had the Ford version saved or could remember which of his books it's from, the side by side comparison is painful but without it I risk looking like I'm making things up.

- Heavy, heavy use of Lilith, which I don't love for reasons I outlined before. She mostly seems to appear whenever spooky lustful sex magick is being discussed, which is great, that's great.

- He also uses the Wiccan wheel of the year sprinkled in among his more Luciferian focused holy days, which is just really funny to me. Why are we celebrating Beltane, Michael? Why are we celebrating Imbolg? (Page 69)

- He likes to use a lot of "black magic" and "vampyre magic" stuff which tends to feel very sensationalized and over the top to me. I've seen discussions of vampiric magic I found very interesting, but so far his hasn't been one of them.

- He sometimes seems to conflate Lucifer with Samael which I really truly dislike, though it's admittedly not the most baffling or out of left field take I've seen.

- Ford at times seems to either willfully misrepresent or misunderstand information he's passing along. For example, in the Bible of the Adversary he says that Cain's name comes from "...root ‘Kanah’ which means to possess. This by itself presents the antinomian nature of his essence, while instead of sacrificing his most bountiful items to the Lord, he kept them for himself." As I understand it, discussion surrounding Cain's name possibly coming from the Hebrew word קנה (kana) lean more into it being the word for to get or to obtain, referencing Eve's declaration after his conception that she'd gotten a man from the Lord. I'm all for alternate interpretations, but it feels like needless edgy-fying to fit the narrative he's trying to present. (Quote from Page 58)

- He'll say some absolutely bonkers shit like "Abel in some Luciferian Lore is considered a lower pre-form of Cain, thus the sacrifice was not literal" with zero citations or references. Like sir what the fuck does that mean, what Lore, please give us the lore please. (Footnote, Page 59)

- His interpretation of the Watchers and the Book of Enoch is so insultingly bad that I won't even relay it here, but if I see one more person claim that an angel, demon, or spirit they want to distance from Christianity or Judaism is actually a Babylonian god I'm going to go feral.

- As I've hinted at above, it feels like he'll just cherry pick and regurgitate for no real purpose. A few spirits from other texts like the Lesser Key and the Grimoire Verum get mentioned for... mostly the set of names, it seems like, he just kind of lists them out of context.

TL;DR, Michael W Ford feels (to me at least) like someone who has picked out the more appealing and edgy occult trivia and magic he could find from a wide range of sources, recontextualized the parts that didn't appeal to him until they fit his aesthetic and purposes, and presented them as a workable entry point to the Luciferian religion and its potential magical systems that is all flash no substance... and then could barely polish the flash. I don't like that he's many people's first exposure to the concept of theistic Luciferianism, and I don't like how authoritatively he presents his jumbled works as what the religion is truly about when it's so broad a label. Again, if there is something that someone finds useful within his books I am very happy for them, but I have struggled to find anything I could point to that make them worth the read... even for me to investigate further keep critiquing.

I honestly do not know why so people recommend them, unless it's just that they're easy to buy, reasonably inexpensive, and specifically have the Luciferian label on them. If that's truly the case, those people are being lazy and uncritical in a way that doesn't speak well to their apparent Luciferian ideals.

#asks #answer #luciferianism #theistic luciferianism #michael w ford #bible of the adversary

[ferret-not-microwave]

Les Amis Modern AU: What They Wish Others Believed About Them (Part 3).

[I kind of wrote this in response to some general trends in characterising the Amis. There are some stereotypes which I'm not quite comfortable with.

[Also, OMG I didn't think people would like these posts so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thaaaank you to all who gave the cutest hashtags, y'all are so encouraging!]

[Also, I'm sorry I just posted on R and Eponine today. :'(

Just have a lot on my mind. I'll write on JBM tomorrow, promise.]

Grantaire:

• He. Is. Not. Weak. Seriously, he could really do without those people who think he's a broken mess who loses absolutely every bit of self respect when he sees Enjolras. Just because Enj had shut him up with harsh words on like one occasion does not mean that he lets Enj or anyone walk all over him on a regular basis. He is NOT a doormat, not by a long shot.

• He could also REALLY do without those people with massive saviour complexes who swoop in to save him from the big, bad world. He accepts tons of help and love from the Amis, but will not accept any kind of pity service, damnit (and they know it). And it takes a lot of strength to plow through alcohol addiction to sobriety.

• He is pretty much a guardian angel in bars because of his history with addiction. He knows how much drink can a person take, and which drink they should avoid. With Bahorel, he hovers around the rest of them, snatching away glasses when the lightweights get too drunk, and replacing them with glasses of water. That he can box also comes handy. Sometimes. Heh.

• Not every point he says to oppose Enj is a cynical barb. And they don't always have screaming matches in the Musain. There have been many days of trading constructive criticism, because R has a lot of first-hand experience about the city. R usually knows the fine line between Enj getting combative and Enj getting hurt/frustrated, and has learnt not to say something so cynical that he crosses the line.

• Like everyone else, R is also learning. He is working on his prejudices, realises that some his past jokes were insensitive, sometimes even sexist or ableist, and actively corrects himself and others around him.

• Further, their relationship did not start with a dramatic makeout session mid-argument. Because both of them are on the way to being mature adults who know that aggressively displaying sexual tension is not the best way to start a relationship.

• It is not just Enj he's generally cynical to. He's cynical, that's it. And he does enjoy arguments with the others, where there's mutual exchange of knowledge, because he does not ever believe that the rest just parrot what Enj has to say. He has captured everyone's argument face in his sketchbook: Ferre waving his hands about, Courf's eyes widened mid-rant, Feuilly's eyes narrowed with a brief, brusque comment, Jehan's smiling like a cat who got the cream when their argument hits home, Bahorel thumping the desk in jovial agreement, Marius processing what he's hearing. He kinda likes Les Amis L'ABC too, not just the people there.

• While there are rough days when his self esteem runs sub-zero, there are days when he is super happy with himself. These are not exactly blink-and -miss either. The Amis cherishes his beaming smile when he defeats Ferre on Trivia Night, sings beautifully on Karaoke Night, paints an AMAZING picture of all the Amis in a protest and shows it off to all of them, cooks a meal which JBM raves about, and, on one memorable occasion, makes a V important point in a meeting that leaves Enj starry-eyed. There are things he hides from them because he's too shy and doubtful, but they are decreasing.

• There are days when he goes into a house-cleaning spree. Like the scrubbing tables-dusting-throwing out piles of trash-cleaning corners with q tips-kind of spree. Which leaves him so exhausted that he can't get out of bed the day after. So yeah, his place isn't always shabby.

Eponine:

• She is tough. She is blunt, and to the point. But she is not rude without reason, just to be edgy or something. And definitely doesn't throw around idle threats. Most of the Amis find her very pleasant, actually. She gives a small smile to everyone, cracks dry jokes, lobs scrunched-up balls of paper from across the room and fights with Courf for the caramel popcorn bucket. She doesn't yell to make a point, but speaks it aloud with a lazy drawl while fiddling with a rubber band ("Bull", she says, eloquently enough). To new people, she is just that shy and suspicious, so she doesn't really talk.

• The thing she wants the most is to feel safe. Hence she is often quiet, suspicious and moody. She feels really upset if people think she's horrible (or a "bitch", like she sometimes hears random people say about her) just because she cannot trust people enough to be all smiles and rainbows, even though she wants to be. She also feels really vulnerable, and is always scared that people wil leave her or hurt her once they know that she panics and cries a lot. She feels safe with the Amis, and many a times you'll find her as a sniffling burrito on someone's couch. THIS DOESN'T MEAN SHE'S WEAK, THIS MEANS SHE HAS A LOT OF SHIT GOING AND NEEDS RELEASE. -_-

• Her preference for dark clothes started because dark clothes seemed easier to maintain. She needed lesser amounts of detergent, and could stretch it out for longer before the inevitable laundry walk. She had actually asked Jehan for goth fashion tips to liven things up, and they had provided her optimal options (like dark lipstick). Still, she doesn't wear fishnets everyday, and just saves them for "special occasions".

• She is one of R's best friends. But no, she is not his personal babysitter. She doesn't go chasing everyone who she thinks has hurt him immediately, neither does she always haul him around when he's down in the dumps. She usually gives him sound advice, checks on him whenever she gets breaks between shifts, and if she cannot help, sends an Ami or two along.

• Her go-to way of showing disappointment in anyone is to send them a voice message stating exactly how they have fucked up (in an ice cold voice) and giving them the silent treatment until they fix things or apologize. Only once did she go nuclear on someone, no one wants to talk about it.

• Ep is a big sap. She does not really conceal her love of heart-shaped Valentine cards, pink roses and candles. Don't forget that she grew up in fair comfort tilll her preteen years, and she had exposure to much sappy media. While the Amis were surprised initially, she makes them take it in stride. She gets a strawberry cake every birthday, complete with pink balloons et al. (organised by Courf). She dreams of going to Disneyland.

• In the face of danger (men following her on the streets or something), her first response is flight, not fight. She knows that fighting can often make things worse, and cannot afford frequent trips to the ER. She can fight, though. She just doesn't want to until absolutely necessary, for self-preservation. She's brilliant at amateur first aid.

#les amis #les miserables #les mis #les miz #grantaire #eponine #modern au #both of them are sweet beans #love them both #ferret's freshly microwaved post

[wellhalesbells]

✨✨ TOP FIVES FOR 2020 ✨✨

2020 was, i think we can all agree, a massively chaotic year but i have never consumed as much media before in my life, so i thought others might benefit from my slothery uh, connoisseur.... ship?  yes, that.  below are the books, comics, shows, and movies that got me through!

B O O K S .

the starless sea, by erin morgenstern - i loooove this book because it loves me back.  it says: ‘oh, you’re a reader, well i have just the thing for you.’  it luxuriates in language and story and riddles and fairy tales and it feels like an entire library in a single tome.

they never learn, by layne fargo - oh fuuuuuck, this was satisfying.  i thought it might feel a little exploitative as it is very aware of the zeitgeist and likely would not exist without the #metoo movement but it never ever did.  this was a fucking ROMP, period.  reading about a woman getting away with murdering skeezy guy after rapey guy after shitty human just made me happier and happier.

moonflower murders, by anthony horowitz - this is the second in the susan ryeland series (and the first was hardcore good fun too) and really feels very classic mystery with the artful twist of catering to the literary community.  mainly because: susan isn’t a detective, she’s an editor and she gets drafted in this time because the clue to what happened to a missing woman is in a book she edited, if she can find it.  both of the books in this series have such an excellent coming together moment that is rare af to find.

the invisible life of addie larue, by v.e. schwab - the writing in this is just so good.  it has that feel to me where i just want to drop the book and open up my own page and let my fingers fly.  it’s that inspiring kind of writing that reminds you of all the things language can do.

crown of feathers/heart of flames, by nicki pau preto - aaahhh, this series is SO FREAKING GOOD!  why is there not more of a fandom for it, why???? it is so many of my favorite tropes all resting perfectly together to the point where you almost forget they’re tropes because they just so naturally evolved there.  ugh, it’s just.... it’s so heart-bursty good.

.... number 5, part 2?  raybearer, by jordan ifueko - this was just so original and i was invested af.  like, what a brilliant idea though and an even better execution??  i loved every character and am so looking forward to the next in the series so i can get to know them even better!!

honorable mentions (sh*t i still liked a whole heckuva lot): you/hidden bodies, by caroline kepnes // writers & lovers, by lily king // i’ll be gone in the dark, by michelle mcnamara // the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home, by joseph fink & jeffrey cranor // girl, serpent, thorn, by melissa bashardoust // a little life, by hanya yanagihara // the guinevere deception, by kiersten white // obsidio (and the entire illuminae series), by amie kaufman & jay kristoff // the bone houses, by emily lloyd-jones // house of salt and sorrows, by erin a. craig // we hunt the flame, by hafsah faizal // savage legion, by matt wallace // blacktop wasteland, by s.a. cosby // crier’s war, by nina varela // the empress of salt and fortune/when the tiger came down the mountain, by nghi vo // upright women wanted, by sarah gailey // the monster of elendhaven, by jennifer giesbrecht // a deadly education, by naomi novik // you let me in, by camilla bruce // when you ask me where i’m going, by jasmin kaur // the lights go out in lychford/last stand in lychford (and the entire lychford series), by paul cornell // the devil and the dark water, by stuart turton // serpent & dove, by shelby mahurin // one by one, by ruth ware // ruthless gods (this was SUCH an upshot from the first book - it’s worth sticking with if you’re on the fence), by emily a. duncan // cemetery boys, by aiden thomas // the inheritance games, by jennifer lynn barnes // the fortunate ones (2021 release), by ed tarkington

C O M I C S .

cosmoknights, by hannah templer - the art was gorgeous, the gayness was glorious, and just.... hot HOOOOOOOOT lady knights in space?!  a princess winning her own hand?  find something not to love in there, i dare you.

don’t go without me, by rosemary valero-o’connell - wow. wow wow wow wow wow.  the writing was stunning, so lyrical and atmospheric and deep, and rosemary has to be one of my favorite artists but even that managed to come as a beautiful surprise because it was just so freaking bold.

through the woods, by emily carroll - i loooove emily carroll, the convergence of spine-tingling horror and art that feeds into it, that is both visually and aesthetically pleasing, is hard to beat!  p.s. i also read beneath the dead oak tree from her this year and it was also a BANGER.

the impending blindness of billie scott, by zoe thorogood - zoe is someone that i just want to follow.  she’s just starting and i want to be there for every single step.  i love her art style and her ability to tell a story with it.

above the clouds, by melissa pagluica - this was so unique, and such a baller concept, as nearly half the entire book is conveyed only through the art and yet you’re never once lost, never once confused as to what any character is thinking or feeling.  it’s a story within a story and only one of those gets words though they both are chock full of emotion!

um.... number 5, part 2? crowded, by christopher sebela - everything about this series is fun af.  crowd-funded assassination and a hirable bodyguard who’s rated like an uber driver???  and the chemistry between the two mains is so great and gay!!

honorable mentions: monster and the beast, by renji // long exposure, by kam ‘mars’ heyward // fence, by c.s. pacat // invisible kingdom, by g. willow wilson // ms. marvel, by g. willow wilson // heathen, by natasha alterici // not drunk enough, by tess stone // giant days, by john allison // die, by kieron gillen // be prepared, by vera brosgol // ascender (sequel to descender, which is also great), by jeff lemire // the unbeatable squirrel girl, by ryan north // bang! bang! boom!, by melanie schoen // gideon falls, by jeff lemire // life of melody, by mari costa // cry wolf girl, by ariel slamet ries // the tea dragon society, by katie o’neill // ptsd, by guillaume singelin // heartstopper, by alice oseman // solutions and other problems, by allie brosh // finding home, by hari conner // the magic fish, by trung le nguyen // something is killing the children, by james tynion iv // the weight of them, by noelle stevenson // spill zone, by scott westerfeld // skyward, by joe henderson // miles morales, by saladin ahmed

F I L M S.

parasite, dir. bong joon ho - oh it was satisfying, oh it was suspenseful, oh i had to watch some of it through my fingers but i loooooooved it.  such a good story and so well made.

knives out, dir. rian johnson - okay, everything about this movie was amazing.  every single character was fun as hell and i could’ve watched an entire movie about each of them.  what a great fucking mystery!

blindspotting, dir. carlos lopez estrada -  this made my heart hurt so damn much.  what glorious writing, acting, and story!

portrait of a lady on fire, dir. celine sciamma - gooooorgeous cinematography, amazing chemistry, and such a soft, atmospheric film.

the farewell, dir. lulu wang - i cried and my heart felt so full and i love it so so much.

um.... number 5, part 2? someone great, dir. jennifer kaytin robinson - no part of me expected to love a netflix movie this much but it’s a love story that doesn’t get told that often??  the end of a relationship and the true love of friendship and i love these girls and i love jenny and nate’s broken relationship.

honorable mentions: eighth grade, dir. bo burnham // booksmart, dir. olivia wilde // midsommar, dir. ari aster // the curse of la llorona, dir. michael chaves // the secret life of pets 2, dirs. chris renaud & jonathan del val // jojo rabbit, dir. taika waititi // the invisible man, dir. leigh whannell // the favourite, dir. yorgos lanthimos // can you ever forgive me?, dir. marielle heller // troop zero, dirs. bert & bertie // ready or not, dirs. matt bettinelli-olpin & tyler gillett // brave, dirs. mark andrews & brenda chapman & steve purcell // the half of it, dir. alice wu // palm springs, dir. max barbakow // doctor sleep, dir. mike flanaghan // uncut gems, dirs. benny sadfie & josh sadfie // birds of prey, dir. cathy van // bloodshot, dir. dave wilson // the old guard, dir. gina prince-bythewood // enola holmes, dir. harry bradbeer // hocus pocus, dir. kenny ortega // always be my maybe, dir. nahnatchka khan // finding dory, dirs. andrew stanton & angus maclane // die hard, dir. john mctiernan

S H O W S .

black sails (2014) - this show, this shooooooooow.  i cannot, it just makes me want to cry with how good it is.  the characters, the EMOTIONS, the story, the plaaaaaan.  like, the creators clearly had a plan for every single step of this show and it was a gOOD, GOOD PLAN.

the untamed (2019) - truly, cheesy good fun with one of the best gay romances ever.  i love these characters and their relationships to each other and the way it glories in its own ridiculousness.

the righteous gemstones (2019) - one of the things that bothered me about my next choice (the ratio of female to male nudity) was so much more realistic in this one (i mean, we’ve all gotten five thousand dick pics and i know like three people?  so the fact that there is so rarely male nudity in shows when there are tits everywhere..... no, how does that even make a tiny bit of sense?).  this show was such great, wonderful, awful fun.  they’re not great people and the show is under no delusion about that and it’s GLORIOUS!

the witcher (2019) - this was just hella fun, i loved the characters and the fantasy elements.  i’m excited for the next season, it’s just entertaining swashbuckling through and through!

fargo (2014) - all of this was really very enjoyable with the through line being somebody fucks shit up and gets involved in something they really shouldn’t be involved in that’s going to swallow them whole.  season one and season three were my stand-out favorites but they were all so violent, clever, and vicious!

um.... number 5, part 2? central park (2020) - um..... so many of the hamilton actors in a muscial cartoon drawn and written by the bob’s burgers team? WHAT ABOUT THAT DOESN’T SOUND AMAZING?!  it was such a joy to hear daveed diggs and leslie odom jr.’s voices again!!

honorable mentions: schitt’s creek // the mandalorian // mr. robot // broadchurch // mindhunter // jack ryan // the good place // the end of the f***ing world // big little lies // elite // kidding // servant // letterkenny // curb your enthusiasm // i am not okay with this // ozark // buzzfeed unsolved: true crime/supernatural // you // runaways // dear white people // dickinson // brooklyn nine-nine // will & grace // 9-1-1 // dead to me // solar opposites // never have i ever // killing eve // what we do in the shadows // grace and frankie // avenue 5 // roswell, new mexico // the bold type // evil // tuca & bertie // impulse // the umbrella academy // watchmen // infinity train // corporate // search party // on becoming a god in central florida // a.p. bio // criminal: uk // the morning show // mythic quest // last week tonight // prodigal son // the great

#the starless sea #the invisible life of addie larue #the untamed #knives out #2020 favorites list!! #i tried to stick to shows i both started and finished in 2020 otherwise like schitt's creek and the good place would be in top five #same for comics #uh oh i've found the keyboard again

[ectonurites]

a very very genuine question: so its bad to repost art but no one says anything when people repost things from the source material/creator's sketches.....why?like sure everyone who likes it may recognize the style but there are plenty of fan artists i recognize immediately, new or old art, with or without. to me it just feels the same, like either dont repost art or people should be able to repost stuff, i dont see how they can work at the same time. and this isnt me saying people should be allowed to repost and all that bc i do understand the theory of why reposting hurts artists, just that the logic doesnt seem to fit once it extends to famous artists/creators. just bc its official and easily recognizable makes it okay? how does that work? again, there are plenty of fanartists who are easily recognizable and lose no money when people repost their work (bc they posted it for free) and from my own observation, it seems it just, somehow, makes them want to do art less (from what i have read from artists themselves). why do we not consider that when it comes to official creators? wouldnt they also feasibly be less motivated seeing their hard work plastered across the internet for free when thats the sole way they make their income? and its not a system where its solely sticking it to the man bc it hurts the artists income, as well. but if it makes them happy to see people enjoying and sharing their work with others, drawing interest, why isnt it the same with fan artists? people often repost art, not out of malice or intent to claim credit, but bc they enjoy it + want to share it, esp on social media where sharing isnt a feature (instagram, for example) again im not trying to justify reposting, just confused about the contradiction

First of all instagram does have a form of sharing posts- stories. Which yes they are temporary by default, but you can use the highlight feature to collect your favorite things you’ve shared from people right there on your own profile AND it links back to the original post and can permanently be on your profile as long as you keep it there. You can even label them and everything! But then moving on to answering more of your actual questions

To start: this is a very complicated thing. And I feel everyone trying to answer it might have slightly varied opinions. 

I personally see a pretty clear distinction between ‘Officially published/released’ works (like comic book [as like you’ve probably seen I frequently post comic panels] or other materials that may have been released in creator guides, official video game art, promotional art for things, etc etc) as opposed to like, personal work and fanart. Because with official works:

There’s usually a source to buy it and you should if you’re referencing it a ton (while I don’t own every comic I’ve ever read I do have a lot and if I did read something first through illegal means [because some comics are just straight up hard to find due to age/being out of print] and enjoyed it I try to seek out a physical copy after if possible)

There is a level of far wider recognition (I know you personally might find fanartists’ styles recognizable but like, things that are in mainstream media.. have just such a higher profile. it’s not really comparable) 

If you’re not supporting the official release you’re harming the big company that published it far more than the individual artist (like, the individual artist probably also wouldn’t appreciate it, because it can effect them for sure as well, but they’re not gonna be taking the brunt of the damage unless it was entirely self-published work, which I’d definitely categorize differently from what I’m mainly talking about here.)  

Often fanartists/professional artists who aren’t that well known, in addition to wanting to just create work for the sake of it, also want to build their own platform, to have an audience that they interact with. Or like, if they’re offering commissions, a bigger platform puts you in a position where people will actually see the art and want to commission you. When you say reposts of smaller artists’ fanart doesn’t ‘loose them money’ because they didn’t charge to post it, you’re missing the fact that it makes them loose out on proper linked-back-to-them exposure. Especially like, when a repost account on insta or something says ‘ah yes credit to [username] on tumblr’ the vast majority of people who see it aren’t going to then open up a whole different website and look for the artist. Some people might! but if there’s anything i’ve learned from working professionally in arts marketing it’s that people want things that are convenient and directly in front of them. Someone who wants to see more works because they liked one is significantly more likely to click on the username of someone who posted it rather than opening up a browser or a different app and searching a separate name put in the caption. 

Then honestly, I do feel weird about reposts of professional artists’ more personal works unless the artist has stated they’re fine with people reposting with credit. It should be about the comfort level of the artist. I think a lot of professional artists who aren’t in a position where they’re as worried about building a platform, because they already have one and might have professional connections/opportunities already lined up, might not really care about reposts especially on a website they don’t use. (Like tumblr. I’m coming at this mostly from a comics artist perspective here, but most professional artists I see are waaaay more active on twitter and instagram than tumblr) If it’s a website they don’t use, it’s not taking away from the platform they had been building there for themselves. And also, some artists really just don’t give a shit, which is their choice they can make with their work! But that’s not a universal thing. One artist being fine with their personal art being reposted =/= all artists being fine with it. 

In my own experience as a fanartist, when I see my art reposted without credit, especially when it’s art I’ve also already posted on the same platform... it’s definitely disheartening. Even worse is when the repost gets even more attention than my original post. (something that has happened to me multiple times!) Like, it can get so upsetting!  Because it lets me know that someone else was using my art to build their platform and I got exactly zero benefit out of it. Then when it’s reposted with credit it’s a little less annoying, but I still don’t... get much out of it. Especially if it’s an instagram repost and they credit my tumblr not my account on there, since insta captions don’t actually do links unless it’s to other insta accounts. Also with insta for example, I have a 'business’ account set up so I can look at and track popularity of my posts and see how they’re doing as something to keep in mind when considering posting times, etc etc. When other people repost my art there I have no control over it. That sucks a lot! Also, when I quite literally ask people not to repost my art (it is IN! MY! DESCRIPTION!) and they still do, it’s just straight up disrespectful. I asked for a boundary to be respected with my work and people have just completely ignored it. That doesn’t feel good at all.

But, conversely, I’m gonna talk about my more professional irl work for a sec. I’m a graphic designer, so I do things like posters, logos, etc, When I design a poster for a client that is meant to be advertising something, even if it’s got my own original illustration or something as part of it, I know my name isn’t necessarily going to be attached to it the same way as it is with my personal work. I get a credit line somewhere, but that’s in a fine print probably not even on the poster itself at all, but that’s like, part of what I signed up for. I already get paid separately, I am giving permission for my work to be out of my own hands in that way. Professional work for a client is often setup in some way similar to this. I don’t get mad when I walk down the street and see a poster I made up somewhere without it directly ‘linking’/referencing back to me (aside from maybe my signature if it had an illustration), in fact I go ‘OMG ITS THERE ugh wait i see one pixel is off oh noooooo” and then move on with my day. It’s just an entirely different situation because that kind of work has a different arrangement from the start, where you know it’s going to be put in a different type of circulation.

So yeah, my word isn’t god here, but I definitely see official releases as having a different set of permissions based on the fact that they are published in an entirely different situation. And I think reposts of personal art aren’t cool if the artist isn’t okay with them, no matter how big a platform they have. Other people probably approach this with a slightly different perspective, but that’s mine!

#sorry this is long #but also 🤷‍♂️ #Anonymous

[ella-se-vuelve-loca]

Chapter 19

Grand Masterlist

Series Masterlist

I’m sorry that this is posted a little late today! Lmao I’ve just been super busy with a lot of shit going on. I’ll keep trying to post up more chapters for y’all! I hope you guys enjoy chapter 19! I was gonna put the music video that Johann did of “Treat You Better” in this chapter, but I don’t want to give him more exposure and tag his shit in my story LMAO oops

Previous Chapter

~1 Week Later~

Joel’s P.O.V.

“Hola cncowners!” I smiled at my phone screen as more and more people started pouring in, watching my live stream. I had my laptop next to me playing some music while I waited a few moments, letting everyone get settled in. “How are you guys?” I asked and reached for my bottled water I had off to the side. I took a sip and started reading the comments of what everyone was saying.

“Uh I’m good. I’m just hanging out here in the hotel with Richard, but he’s currently FaceTiming Aaliyah right now.” I chuckled and switched the camera so it showed him holding his phone up to his face and smiling at his baby girl.

I turned the camera back to me and read the next following questions. “The rest of the boys are in their rooms probably sleeping or something, I don’t know.” I laughed. “I just wanted to check up on you guys and see how you’re doing.” I cleared my throat and continued reading the comments that popped up on my screen.

“Um.. ‘Mexico misses you! Please come back soon’. We miss you too! I love getting to travel and seeing new faces everywhere I go.” I smiled as more questions were being asked and I began answering them as much as I can. I turned my attention back to my laptop when a song ended and I looked for another video to play. “Hey, do you guys have any song recommendations? Any songs you wanna listen to?” I asked as I had looked back at my phone screen.

So many song titles came through and I waited until I kept seeing a repeat. I saw a few that told me to react to music videos and whatnot, but I played their songs and answered their questions while Richard was laughing at what his daughter was doing on the other line. “Okay you guys. I gotta head to bed really soon, so I’ll play one more song for you guys and then I’m off.” I smiled.

My good mood slowly went out the window as I saw Johann’s name pop up on my YouTube page with a new video that had been posted recently. I was going to scroll past it until I saw someone who looks very familiar on the cover. I sat there in shock, not quite sure if what I was seeing is true. “Uh actually.. I see something on here that caught my attention. I can stay for one more song after this one. Let me just..”

It’s peaked my curiosity though and I can’t help but wonder what he put out. I clicked on the video and was met with her beautiful face on my laptop screen. I felt my breath get stuck in the back of my throat for a few seconds as I heard Johann’s voice start singing to my girl..

“Huh…” It’s like all the butterflies in my stomach had just died watching his hands on her waist.. his face buried in her hair.. her smile. This doesn’t just mentally hurt, this physically hurts. “Treat You Better.. this is uh..” I cleared my throat and continued to watch Johann hold her close to him. I bit my lip and slowly brought my head down. I don’t know if I can continue watching this.

The way he looked at her made my blood boil and I wished that it was me instead of him. It’s been a few months, but I didn’t really think she would… I thought maybe we can… why does my heart hurt so much?

“Alrights, mamas, papá has to get going. I love you!” I looked up at Richard blow a kiss and say goodnight before turning his attention back to me, smiling. He placed his phone inside his front pocket and sat on the bed next to me. “What are you doing?” He asked as he looked at the video playing on my laptop. “I’m just.. I’m.. watching a music video and doing a live..”

He went silent for a few moments as he looked at who was on my screen. “Hey.. isn’t that – ”

“Yeah.” I cut him off and looked away from my laptop as Johann leaned down close to her face, indicating that there must’ve been a kiss at the end. I cleared my throat and exited out that video. “Okay uh.. one last song before I head to bed. How about we let Richard pick out what we listen to next, yeah?” I pushed my laptop closer to him as I looked down at the comments.

“Hola.” Rich spoke and waved at the camera as the cncowners greeted him. He typed in one of our songs and let it play for everyone to hear. I could feel him staring at me from the corner of my eye as I tried to not think about what I just saw. Richard pretty much took over as he started reading an answering questions they were asking as I got up and walked to the other side of the room.

“I’ll be right back. I’m gonna head to the bathroom real quick.” I spoke as I turned my back towards him and walked into the restroom, closing the door behind me. I’m just reminded of the fact that I can’t talk to her and now she’s in his arms. Then again, this could just be acting and nothing more, but it still doesn’t stop the hurt I feel in my chest. He’s rubbing this in my face, I know he is. Why else would he have picked her and sing that song?

I have to find a way to get the ball back in my court without damaging more relationships and my career that I’ve worked so hard to get where I am. Should I even attempt to fight for her back? I know you shouldn’t give up on people you love, but I don’t know if she loves me anymore. Is it worth the fight?

I walked out of the bathroom as I realized the song was just about finished. “Okay you guys.. it was nice getting to talk to you all, pero necesitamos dormir.” Richard spoke as he saw me walk back out of the bathroom and walk towards him. I put on a smile and waved goodbye. “Buenas noches.” I turned off the live and grabbed my phone, tossing it onto the bed carelessly without another thought.

“Bro – ”

“No.. you know what? This is what I get. I don’t deserve to feel the way I do because I did this. I just wish..” I bit my lip and shook my head, ripping open the blankets as I lied down. “I think I’m just gonna sleep on it…” I heard him sigh and walk around, but was shocked when he sat on the edge of my bed. “She’s moving on..” I softly spoke and brought the blanket close to my face. “With him..” He stayed silent for a few moments before speaking up.

“You still love her?” He asked. “What kind of question is that? Of course I do.” I spoke and gripped onto my blanket. “Do you want that second chance?” His eyebrows scrunched together as my body turned towards him. “Yeah..” I said, looking up at him. “Dude, what are you – ”

“Just answer the damn questions.”

“Why? What difference does it make?”

“’Cause I’m willing to help you pendejo, but only if it means that much to you. Now answer the fucking questions. Do you or do you not want that second chance?”

“Well of course I do!”

“You want to try again?”

“Yeah, but she won’t – ”

“Are you gonna give up on her?”

“No! No, I don’t want to. But Johann said – ” I sat up he kept going. “You want to be able to continue where you left off and grow together as a couple?” The tone of his voice grew a little louder as I became irritated and answered him back.

“Yes! Yes, okay!” I exclaimed and slowly brought my head down, angry at myself. “… But I can’t. I want.. I want to be able to do all of that and more without anything else getting in the way. I want to start over.” He slowly nodded and held up his hands as in question.

“Okay… so the question is, what are you gonna do about it and what do you need me to do to help you?”

~~

‘Why did the color drain from Joel’s face when he saw Johann’s new music video on his live a few days ago??’

‘Joel looked so sad at the end of his live recently :( are you okay bb? We love you! x’

‘Is anyone else gonna ignore the fact that Joel unfollowed Johann or…?’

‘Does that girl in Johann’s video mean anything to him or something? Was it the song he didn’t like? He looked so upset but didn’t say much about it’

‘I thought the video was good, I don’t know why he got quiet the way he did’

I shouldn’t have watched that during my live a few days ago ‘cause now the fans are asking why my mood changed right after. I haven’t addressed any of them and just continued like nothing happened.

“Alright, this song is fire because it’s telling your girl, or telling that one person ‘I don’t wanna keep fighting’, you know? ‘I don’t wanna keep bugging about things that happened before, let’s just start from zero. Get to know each other again.’” Richard spoke as the rest of us all sat around holding microphones in our hands, getting ready to perform.

“Well, we’re coming out with our new EP that we wrote like maybe 85% of it and we’re really really excited for the people to listen to it. Just going around and spreading our music and hopefully go around the country.” Chris smiled as he looked directly into the camera and cleared his throat. Now it’s time to introduce ourselves..

“Hola, soy Erick.”

“I’m Christopher.”

“I’m Joel.”

“I’m Richard.”

“Yo soy Zabdiel y nosotros somos – ”

“CNCO.”

“Y bueno este es nuestro más reciente sencillo, De Cero.” Zabdiel spoke as he started to strum his guitar. Music is a powerful weapon and can be used in any way you want. A love song to somebody? You got it. Breaking up and moving on? You’ll find one. Going out with friends and partying the night away? Pretty easy to find. Wanting to start over with someone you love? That’s promising..

“Niña, tanto tiempo

¿Qué estás haciendo?

¿Qué es de tu vida?

Dicen que estás sufriendo

Creo que tengo

Una salida”

I’m talking to her through the lyrics without mentioning her name. This is my apology and it’s the only way I can talk about it in public without Johann spilling the beans. I frowned as I brought the mic up to my lips, continuing the next verse.

“Cuando dejemos el orgullo

Y las barreras entre tú y yo

Soltamos lo malo

Nos inventamos un atardecer

Sin mente yo me entregaré

El pasado olvidamos”

I pictured her face and thought about her listening to us perform this song. I wonder if she would even listen to this and know that I’m sorry? I’m singing this for you, (Y/N)..

“Y de cero empezamos

Otro chance nos damos los dos

Mejor dejemos la estupidez (Oh)

Que el amor llega solo una vez

De cero empezamos

Otro chance nos damos tú y yo

Mejor dejemos la estupidez

Que el amor llega solo una vez”

I never thought I would relate so much to a song as I do now. I don’t want to give up on the possibility that we can make us work, but considering the way things are right now, I don’t think she’ll even give me the time of day.

Erick started to sing his next part as I thought about what I’ll do if she were to take me back. I’ll definitely work harder to make sure she feels loved and not a second choice ever again, that’s for damn sure. Have I even considered the possibility that she would just tell me to leave and never see her again? Yes.. yes, I’ve thought about that.

I heard Christopher’s voce start singing and knew my part was almost here. If I can’t have her, I at least want someone who will treat her like I should’ve done. Someone who will give her all the love she deserves and never make her second guess herself. Someone who will make time for her, make her happy and never break her heart. If it’s not me, it’s definitely not Johann. I need to know that she’ll be in good hands if I don’t get a second chance.

“Can we accept all of our differences

And put aside all of the pettiness

Just forget, no regret

I'll take you anywhere you wanna go

I got so much I want to show

Let's restart and we'll go far”

I guess I got so caught up with the cncowners shipping me with Emilia so much that I started to believe that there was something between us. I became nervous whenever I was around her and felt butterflies in my stomach, but nothing compared to the feeling I had whenever I was with (Y/N).

I never knew I could feel like this. Listen to my heart, (Y/N). Can you hear it sing? Please come back to me and forgive everything..

I can’t get that image out of my head. Johann’s hands resting on her waist… his lips just inches away from hers. She’s been seeing him more and more since I left and is getting comfortable around him. My mind became all discombobulated after that video and my heart literally ached at the thought of her falling for someone new.. someone like Johann.

Before I knew it, the song was over and we were free to get up and walk around. “Thank you for doing this for us. You guys were amazing!”

“Thank you for having us.” Richard smiled and shook hands with the video producer. I stood up and stretched, craning my neck back and forth. “We’ll have this video up soon and notify you guys when it’s posted.”

I zoned out the conversations around me as I thought about Richard’s words he said to me that night.

“What are you going to do about it?”

That’s a good question. A very good question indeed..

Next Chapter

~~

Wanna be tagged for future fics? 

@apla-o-eaytos-mou​ @pretendcnco​ @joelitos-baby​ @chellybear98​ @ericksmamita​ @littlestripmix​ @pizzaspirits​ @theweirdsideofstuff​ @cncoaddicted​ @prettymuch-cnco​ @guitargirl006 @cncoawo​ @ash-zahira​ @ashhemmingsstylesvelez​ @cncohhhhwoah @pimentelssmile​ @shordyfromdablock​ @h-bea92​ @xxxstormyninixxx​ @buttercup-chey​ @cncogirl18​ @urafakebetch​ @boundtobreakk

#cnco #cnco imagines #cnco imagine #cnco fic #joel pimentel #joel pimentel imagine #Joel Pimentel series #cnco angst #Joel Pimentel angst #mistakes were made #Joel Pimentel fic #joel fic #I HOPE THIS ISNT SHIT LMAOOOO

[whitehotharlots]

Liberal cruelty has consquences

This semester is winding down. As I am desperate to avoid grading student papers, I’ve spent the morning reading longish-form online articles. I just came across one that I feel very conflicted about. The online reaction to it as been troubling. So I don’t know if I have anything particularly coherent to say, but I’d like to talk about it.

The anonymously written piece is titled “What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt Right.”  It documents a young man’s journey from a garden variety, liberal-leaning goon to a frothing neo nazi mutant.

The piece is understandably sympathetic, seeing as it was written by the boy’s parent. The writer’s whiny and heavy handed tone caused me, and most of my e-pals, to dismiss it. If anything, the essay showcases an immense failure of parenting. If my child were to ask me to take him or her to a “Traditional American Culture” rally, I would slap the everloving shit of them. Lord knows how many times the kid’s parents had dropped the ball before it ever got to that point.

But then I re-read the start of the article, in which the parent identifies the trigger point for their son’s downward slide:

One morning during first period, a male friend of Sam’s mentioned a meme whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Sam laughed. A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of guilt.”

No one called me as this unfolded, even though Sam cried for about six hours straight as staff members parked him in vacant offices to keep him away from other students. When he stepped off the bus that afternoon and I asked why his eyes were so swollen, he informed me that he would probably be suspended, but possibly also expelled and arrested.

If Kafka were a middle-schooler today, this is the nightmare novel he would have written.

At a meeting two days later with my husband, Sam, and me, the administrator piled more accusations on top of the harassment charge—even implying, with undisguised hostility, that Sam and his friend were gay. He waved in front of us a statement from the girl at the table and insisted that Sam would need to defend himself against her claims if he wanted to prove his innocence. But the administrator refused to reveal the particulars of the complaint (he had also blacked out identifying details, FBI-style) and then hid the paperwork under a book. He declared that it was his primary duty, as a school official and as a father of daughters, to believe and to protect the girls under his care.

Eck… who edited this? It would have worked so much better without a fucking Kafka reference.

So, maybe it was the tone. I dunno. But most readers seem to regard this section as exaggerated, possibly fabricated.  The takeaway was “boo hoo, the nazi kid got punished for sexually harassing  a girl.” Heck: If a reader is truly dedicated to the #BelieveAllWomen mantra, then this description doesn’t warrant sympathy even if it’s entirely true. The kid said something that upset the girl. It wasn’t directed to her and it wasn’t about her. But still, he upset her, and she’s a girl, so he is bad and deserved whatever punishment was doled out to him.

And this got me thinking about my experiences in high school, as a student in the late 90s and a teacher in the mid-aughts. Administrators seemed to always be adopting some or other policy of harsh punishment for bad behavior: zero tolerance toward weapons, drugs, hats, disrespectful posture, electronic devices, swearing, Simpsons t-shirts, and mentally unhygenic reading materials. During dances and social gatherings, my middle school allowed students to bring in CDs from home. That was a decent policy, but anyone who attempted to play a “hip hop” track would receive an immediate suspension for “endorsing violence,” regardless of the track’s lyrical content. My high school adopted a firm anti-bullying policy, but once a boy came to school wearing a gothic dress as some kind of vague transgressive statement, and two separate male teachers called him a fag--out in the open, in front of everybody, as part of the official business of teaching.

Once, in 8th grade, two kids were caught taking over-the-counter caffeine pills. They didn’t get sick or anything; a girl saw them and she narced. They were arrested by the school resource officer, taken in a cop car to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped, and then summarily expelled, their young lives effectively ruined over 50 milligrams of a safe and legal stimulant. At an emergency assembly held the next day, the frog-faced principal croaked out a dire warning that the use of such drugs was strictly forbidden and we would all be subjected to the same fate, should we attempt to sneak in any No Doz. As he issued his stern warning, he slurped gluttonously from a 22-ounce mug of gas station coffee.

The point is, zero tolerance never really means zero tolerance. Rules are always--always, literally always, without exception in the whole of human history--enforced arbitrarily. Harsh policies rarely make anyone safer. They are employed instead to further humiliate and brutalize those who have already been rejected by the system. In my last two paragraphs, I cited the dumbest and most conspicuous examples of arbitrary cruelty that happened to pop into my head. This doesn’t cover the everyday, petty cruelties that teachers and administrators would exact upon kids they simply didn’t like. Without exception, these were the kids who were already marginalized: effeminate boys, masculine but unathletic girls, kids who dressed poorly, kids who spoke with accents, black kids, kids with learning disabilities or behavioral problems. These kids would be given detentions or even suspensions for minor infractions--looking away from the chalkboard, slouching, sneaking in candy, laughing at importune times, etc. It wasn’t the teacher’s fault, of course: zero tolerance and all that. But, strangely, the zero tolerance policies never seemed to apply to the popular, athletic, and/or well-connected kids. If Suzie Creamcheese was caught sneaking some Starburst during Algebra--well, she’s probably hungry, seeing as she works so hard. If Raul, Roofus, or Sheena were caught doing the same? God help them.

Some teachers were nicer than others, of course. Some were downright supportive. Others were simply evil. There was one, when I was in 7th grade, who was particularly repulsive and cruel--no kidding, his admiration of Rush Limbaugh was formative in my early-adopted hatred of American conservatives. He had matted red hair and teeth like a cracked picket fence and would wear a leather jacket out to lunch. Anyhow, he would prattle on about his hatred of kids who “Just. Refuse. To. Learn.” These kids were almost always black. Pure coincidence, I’m sure. He’d make a show of tossing them out of class--sometimes physically--for infractions as minor as getting an answer wrong when called upon. One time, a twitchy white kid who wore the same t-shirt every day called him out: It’s unfair, he said, that I’m getting thrown out of class for getting an answer wrong, when right before me another kid got several chances to respond.

The teacher turned beet red. He got on his knees and put his face two inches in front of the twitchy kid’s eyes. 

“I’m not throwing you out because you got the answer wrong,” he explained. “I’m throwing you out because you are you.”

Again, these are the conspicuous examples. The everyday stuff is harder to describe twenty-five years after it happened.  Most people were not brutalized and they didn’t have a single moment that ruined their life, but they were still exposed to a deeply unfair and cruel system, and such exposure naturally engenders feelings of betrayal, hopelessness, and anger.

Here’s my story--it’s particularly stupid. 9th grade. One day,  I walked into Spanish class, and the large woman who teaches in that classroom before my section grabbed me by the collar, physically lifted me out of my chair, and shoved her moist biscuit of a hand into my face. “What is this,” she demanded.

This was all very sudden. I could see nothing but her hand, which had a distinct fecal aroma.

“I don’t know,” I said.

She removed her hand. I looked down toward desk. She stood silently. I had no fucking idea what she was talking about.

“You’re gonna tell me what you did, right now, or I’m gonna double the detentions.”

I was still silent. Seriously, no idea what was going on. This enraged her. She began to count upward, starting at 3 detentions and stopping at 10, by which point tears were welling up and my face was flushed. I said I seriously did not know. She pointed to a small pentagram someone had engraved into the desktop. The desks, by the way, were movable. Anyone could have done it. She blamed me because she didn’t like me. I served 10 detentions and had to pay over a hundred dollars (a shitload of money for a 13-year-old) to get the desk refinished.

This isn't the end of the world, obviously. But it really, oddly broke me. Before, I had thought that so long as I did was I supposed to and didn’t break any rules, I’d be okay. Now I realized that was bullshit, that any vindictive cunt with a few ounces of power could punish me for any reason, at any time, and I wouldn’t be allowed to mount a defense. That’s the sort of thing that fucks with a kid’s head.  I mean, christ--it’s 23 years later and I’m still kinda pissed about it. I hope that woman is dead.

I regained a sense of control by stealing books from the woman’s classroom. A few times a week, I would grab a textbook when I came in, use it during class, and walk out with it. At the end of the school year, some friends and I burned them in a glorious bonfire along the banks of the Mississippi.

My response was petty and destructive, but I don’t feel any pengs of guilt or shame in remembering it. I had to do something to reassert agency, to feel like I had some control, and I managed to find a way to go about doing it that didn’t hurt anybody or get me into trouble. Regardless of the morality of my particular response, we can agree that kids are now much more surveilled than they were 20-odd years ago, and that minor mischief is now much more harshly criminalized. If a kid finds themself on the outs within their school, there’s really no way they can push back. Their only available avenue of asserting control over their lives is to wander into welcoming communities elsewhere…

One more anecdote then I’m done….

My sister was in high school during 9/11. The attacks were on a Tuesday, and the whole rest of the week was assemblies and talking circles and other such activities meant to assuage fear and gin up the hatred of the dirty brown bastards that done this. Two of my sister’s friends, older boys, were the sort of kids who read Howard Zinn and listened to Jello Biafra’s spoken word records. During one meeting, they expressed exasperation at a girl who was sobbing because she just, like, didn’t know why anyone would do that. The boys certainly didn’t approve of the attacks, but they tried to explain the whole concept of the US being an unhinged and murderous imperial power that had done much worse stuff all over the globe. The audience gasped. The boys were hauled into the principal’s office. They were charged with verbally assaulting the crying girl. One was suspended. The other expelled.

So, I dunno… go ahead. If you think due process is evil, that all victimhood claims are valid and should be taken at face value, and that kids of lesser social status should be demonized and made into criminals for upsetting members of the fair sex, then you do you. That’s fine if that’s what you believe. But please don’t be so naive as to think that the bulk of these newly criminalized behaviors are going to actually be malignant, or that the genuinely malignant behaviors of secure kids will be curbed in any way. Please respect yourself enough to realize that school admins aren’t magic sages with mature moral compasses--a plurality of them were business majors in college, for fuck’s sake. And most importantly, don’t be surprised if the kids you dismiss wind up doing some crazy or awful shit in response.

[shortsketches]

So, is Chuck in any way involved in Sherman's later life?

Short answer, yes. Long answer is like. An actual 1,235 word essay-ish thing if you wanna read through it.

Bear with me tho because everything I write tends to be a big work in progress and things are sorta fluid in terms of timelines because I’m not quite sure how some details fully play out or where they exactly go just yet, but this is the current gist of what I’m thinking about story-wise.

Just gonna say there’s a LOT of like. Lore here that I haven’t talked about on-blog that I feel is necessary for full context so… Three pages to answer a one sentence question ahaha…

I think where I wanna start this essay-thing is with establishing a couple things; so, for one, Sherman figured out how to reliably induce gag tolerance in other cogs. Second, Sherman essentially ended up having a following with cogs that also agreed with his general goal of dismantling cog society and putting in something more toony with an ultimate goal being the erasure of lines between toons and cogs, hoping to bridge the gap, bury the hatchet, and assimilate with toons. We’ll call this group the Partycrashers.

Big catch: the only way Sherman sees that happening was through actually planning to kill off the Chairman and the bosses, and Sherman being stubborn and vaguely myopic doesn’t necessarily have a solid plan on what they’re going to do once they essentially burn them to the ground. Chuck knows this and Chuck is generally warning Sherman that he really needs to think shit through, and Chuck would be Sherman’s better half if Sherman would listen, but he’s impatient so he sorta. Doesn’t. Chuck still bears with Sherman though on a shitty ride-or-die basis because the CFO wants Chuck dead for being in on and collaborating with Sherman’s Work(™). Chuck has nowhere to go and staying with Sherman is the only exit he sees and the plan, as poorly thought out as it is with ZERO fallbacks, is something Chuck sees as being the only real ticket at having some sort of future.

Anyways, Sherman, Chuck, and the Partycrashers pretty much storm a meeting the chairman was having with the bosses and manage to endgame all of them, and then surprise surprise, Sherman doesn’t know what to do and that’s a critical whoopsie as they burned one system to the ground with no new system to transition to, not that every cog would even want to go along with whatever Sherman, Chuck, and the Partycrashers would want to establish.

So, there’s this major divide between cogs that align with the Partycrashers and like… Tradcogs who are trying to re-establish Cog Nation as it was with the Partycrashers constantly trying to interfere and stall that. Everythings pretty broke. Sherman takes Chuck and the immediate group to establish a commune in the woods in a spot away from Acorn Acres that Sherman built a safehouse at and this is where Chuck and Sherman really kinda get tangled up.

A few more things that I think are necessary for context before getting to the actual answer

 1: Sherman’s plan on improving toon relations by making cogs capable of handling toon humor absolutely shriveled up and died because somewhere along the line, the tradcogs managed to yoink Sherman’s process for making gag-tolerant cogs and are now using that to make stronger, more dangerous cogs, and understandably toons can’t afford to risk trusting -any- cog now that they’re a stronger risk.

2: while the commune was established for protection because the Partycrashers couldn’t safely squat around what remains of Cog Nation, it’s actually a social experiment Sherman set up with a sorta political front. He really wants to see what cogs outside of a cog-like social environment would do because he’s just really interested in how toon or cog culture can influence development. The catch is a lot of the Partycrashers were cogs who lived as cogs, under cog society at one point or another so they aren’t really completely unbiased subjects as they already had exposure to cog culture from the start.

So, Sherman gets around this from pretty much stealing blank slate, factory fresh cogs, from the factory itself. (The Tradcogs still run the factory and the Partycrashers are kinda viewing that as a thing to try to take for themselves eventually cause really, power lies with whoever controls cog production.)

Sherman’s essentially putting a bunch of randos in a more toon-ish/toon-positive culture and seeing what they do, secretly keeping records on just about everything people in the commune do because -everything- is a study to Sherman.

3: The Partycrashers are very well aware things absolutely crumbled, and day by day they start to realize and accept Sherman was the problem and that he’s just. Generally kinda off. They were initially drawn to him because here was this dude coming in with sheer conviction, a certain kind of intensity, who promised something better. Everyone kinda got hustled, but Sherman didn’t really intend to accidentally lead people wrong because he genuinely believed in his stuff too.

So, with the Partycrashers realizing Sherman’s kinda wack, over time, they stop looking to him. A thing about the Partycrashers is that they’re generally kinda self-governing and self-policing; there isn’t really an elected official or some de facto absolute leader as much as there’s just a general Guy(™) that people turn to, and this is where Chuck really comes in.

The Partycrashers become uncomfortable with Sherman, however, they -are- comfortable with Chuck even though they’re in a relationship with each other. 

Over time, Chuck ends up becoming The Guy(™) and taking over everything Sherman was doing. This isn’t just because Chuck generally isn’t the one -making- the brokeass plans, he’s just generally a bit more relatable to a lot of the Partycrashers; Chuck was a cog’s-cog. He used to be able to green toons without a sweat, was a fast worker, ended up running his own independent counting firm within Cog Nation, and was kinda one of the CFO’s favorites before he got involved with Sherman. 

A lot of the original Partycrashers had ties to Coghood at some point or another and like Chuck, eventually came around to wanting to do something different.

Sherman on the other hand had essentially zero attachment to cog society, had no clue why cogs even really like doing cog things, which makes him a bit out of touch, especially because when he was “younger,” he had a thing for putting shit into black and white boxes. Cogs were the problem, which means toons are inherently more correct, which means toonhood is inherently better than coghood by default, no questions.

That line of thinking actually made Sherman and Chuck’s relationship really tense for a while before they burned Cog Nation 1 to the ground because Sherman loves Chuck, but has no idea why Chuck gave a shit about doing cog things even if they’re relatively benign. It’s not necessarily bad to do coggy things or to miss certain aspects of an old life if you’re not hurting toons, but Sherman failed to see that for the longest time, but all that shit is for another essay.

ANYWAYS. Chuck ends up being the new “leader” of the Partycrashers and Sherman backs down without any contest as he realizes he’s done more bad than good for a lot of people. Sherman’s happy for Chuck because Chuck is actually getting into being The Guy(™) and others like him a lot, but that doesn’t mean Sherman isn’t just a bit bitter. This isn’t just Jared from marketing who got the promotion you didn’t, Sherman and Chuck are engaged to each other.

Sherman ends up kinda withdrawing from like…. Everything for a while to figure himself out and be better for the people in his life, then somewhere along the way he ends up accidentally- making- toons, so now Sherman AND Chuck have two kids. Marriage happens. Sherman tends to be more like a stay-at-home-dad because Chuck’s busy a lot. The relationship is still a bit tense, but they do love each other, even though Sherman sucks, and at this point, they both know they’d go batshit trying to keep on without each other.

There’s a bunch of other things but this is about 1,300 words so I’m gonna cut off there, but yeah Chuck is still involved in Sherman’s life I promise.

#asks #lore #sorry if its silly for me to take that many words to answer one question hdfgdsf

[spacehologramcollection]

Request; The Kombat Krew and Pop Culture.

This is the fluff post for tonight. I am so tired, but I want to upload! This week has been really hard on me. But here we are. Some trash. A little NSFW in places, so to be sure. I’ve added a cut! 18+ under the cut.  GIFS do not belong to me. 

Kabal;

·         Vape nation represent. Kaballin. Got the spins? Ninja Mime 4 was bullshit!

·         Pop Culture is something he’s well versed in. He’s a fucking meme spouting shit lord. To be fair.

·         He’s seen Johnny’s movies. He invented the fucking drinking game for it. He’s fucking down to rip the shit out of them. Unless Tremor is about. Then he keeps his mouth shut.

·         If you like them, he will tease you about them. But not too much.

·         He doesn’t let on how much he’s into geek culture. Not to you straight away anyway. You kind of guess when you finally end up back at his apartment.

·         First time you go there, everything’s getting hot and heated, he’s got you up against the hallway wall. Before you stumble into the living room and see everything.

·         Neatest part of his apartment is his games and comic shelves.

·         He goes fucking red. Pretends its not his. He certainly doesn’t play WoW and troll people till 2 in the morning, in nothing but his underwear eating pizza. Those glasses aren’t his either.

·         He loves his geeky stuff. And hopes you’ll accept it.

·         When you start smiling and rifling through his collection, noting how its impressive, most impressive. He’ll start to smile and relax.

·         He explains his love for pop culture came from a need. He always wanted some of it growing up, but his family was poor. So, when he started earning money, he just bought everything his heart ever yearned for.

·         He’ll live for movie nights in as well. Like, bad movie night just consists of all of Johnny’s films. You both made a drinking game out of them, take a shot for every explosion that wasn’t needed, when there’s overacting, underacting, just some bullshittery. You both end up on your arse. Fucking slaughtered.

·         He loves music too. Like he loves indie music, but not the Smiths. He fucking cannot stand the smiths.

·         Oh yeah two words. Trashy Emo music. He knows the lyrics to ‘Check Yes Juliet’ and you cannot tell me otherwise.

·         Blurting out ‘Allstar’ whilst on a late-night drive. You trying not to laugh and also grabbing the wheel, as he does all the actions. You love it.

·         Reading comics in your pjs/underwear, laid out on his bed, at 2 Am in the morning. Discussing the latest theories, directions for the movies and debating who’s the best hero/ villain.

·         Is the type of dick to choose Rainbow Road on Mario Kart all the time.

·         Is actually good at the course.

·         Is loves vines as well. Whenever its time for him to tell a story, he will always start with some shit like, “There I was, BBQ Sauce on my tiddies”

·         Walking meme lord.

Sub Zero (Kuai Liang);

·         I’ve touched on this in his full smut fic but here we go.

·         He doesn’t have time to himself, and the rare time he gets, he does not wish to devote it to Popular Culture.

·         Kuai hasn’t had much exposure to popular culture, as he calls it. He will not refer to it as pop culture. I mean he calls movies, motion pictures in game. So yeah, the man is deprived.

·         The brief exposure has had, mainly stems from Johnny and Cassie. Cassie with her memes, snark and references. And the fact Johnny made him watch a few of his films.

·         That put him off pop culture for life… well sort of.

·         He does love reading fiction, so he has read Game of Thrones, The Witcher and Lord of The Rings. He loves fantasy. It allows him to be transported somewhere other than the temple.

·         Fiction was a crutch he used, though he won’t admit it’s a weakness. When he felt alone, isolated and just generally out of synch. He would read.

·         He claims its for relaxation purposes, because a good warrior is well rested and in the right mindset.

·         When he gets with you though, you’ll have to introduce him to stuff slowly. You don’t want to over-ride his system.

·         He ends up watching Lord of the Rings and he does enjoy it. Does not enjoy the Hobbit films though. He does love it.

·         He more loves watching a film, because you’ll always end up falling asleep on his chest. Your limbs tangled with his. And you looking so content.

·         He doesn’t get a lot of time to himself. But he does love to spend it with you. If you’re really into pop culture, then he will try and devote some time to it. He wants to share your interests after all.

·         Is an amazing Dungeon Master when it comes to sticking to the rules. He has a pretty decent campaign, but it takes him ages to craft it. His imagination has its limitations, because he’s trained it that way.

·         Comics and Games do not interest him overly. He’s not into them.

·         But he loves watching your eyes light up when you play/ talk about them. He loves the passion you have for them. It’s cute.

Scorpion (Hanzo Hasashi);

·         Like Kuai, the only exposure he’s ever had to pop culture is from Johnny, Cassie and Takeda. Takeda comes out with some absurd nonsense. Which leaves him staring at him. Shocked, confused and a little grumpy.

·         Johnny has made him watch some of his films, read screenplays and storyboards, in an attempt to turn the Shira Ryu into a fucking franchise.

·         All starring Grandmaster Grumpy face himself. But there’s a lot more nudity, can you fucking believe it, and there’s a mystical opossum that spreads wisdom.

·         Him and Kuai are very similar, in the fact they’ve both been put off it, but are willing to indulge in it. Because of you.

·         He’s more into movies. He actually would love some Inception, Shutter Island type bullshit. Complex plots that thrill. He wants to be kept occupied or he’ll get bored.

·         He’ll actually enjoy discussions at the end. What he liked, what he didn’t. What he thought he was stupid and if he’d watch it again or something similar.

·         Exploration into pop culture.

·         If you mention that a particular movies is your favourite, he cannot bring himself to say a bad word about it. So, he ends up growing to love it as much as you do.

·         He’ll love to joint read a book together. Then spend hours talking about it. Sleep often eludes him, so its nice that you’re awake with him.

·         Music is something he does enjoy, whilst he can see it as distracting, he also views it as a tool for relaxation. Just nothing too trashy. Do not expect him to serenade you with a rendition of ‘Tik Tok’ it’s not happening.

·         He prefers slower music, more chilled out, things to relax and unwind to.

·         He’ll on occasion, wrap his arms around your waist, holding you from behind. Before swaying gently to the music with you. Whispering sweet nothings in your ear. He loves it.

·         He’s not overly into Comics or videogames. BUT, he does have a soft spot for Star Wars. He doesn’t know why he likes it. But he loves him some Space-Bullshit. Happy the family drama isn’t about him. Loves it. Just don’t tell anyone yeah?

Raiden;

·         He’s very curious and willing to indulge in it. He knows of Popular Culture, he has seen many a Mortal enjoying it, using it as an escape mechanism. This is totally a dig at myself.

·         He’s never understood nor experienced it. But he is very curious, and his eyes are filled with wonder.

·         He’s read comics, played some games, watched some movies and read some fiction. He attributes all this exposure to you. You’ve really helped him explore it.

·         He loves to read comics however. He enjoys the art style, the worlds created and how much artistry goes into them.

·         He won’t admit the plots sometimes get him.

·         He loves to explore anything to do with Mortals and their customs. He thinks of it as educating himself.

·         He has seen some of Jonny’s movies, reluctantly. Once Johnny found out that you were introducing him to Pop Culture; he insisted on having some of his stuff in there.

·         Raiden is not impressed at all. He’s confused by Johnny’s films, he’ll sigh, and comment on how it explains a lot. It explains how one man can be such an idiot.

·         Imagine introducing Raiden to Mario Kart. He is so confused. You say its like driving a car, and he’s just like, what?

·         Once he gets the hang of it, he really gets into it. He’s fascinated and amazed at technology. He picks it up really quickly.

·         As far as music goes, he’s really open to listening to anything and everything. He would prefer more classical music. Anything that can help him relax.

Erron Black;

·         Before he went to Outworld, there wasn’t a lot in terms of Popular Culture. It was like 150 years ago.

·         So, when he finds out how much the world has changed, he has to admit he is very curious and is willing to explore it with you.

·         He would love to binge watch movies with you. Watching Westerns with him is always interesting. With him scoffing and pointing out inaccuracies or stating how fake their accents sound… even though they sound the exact same as his.

·         If you make a comment on Harrison Ford as Han, whilst watching Star Wars, he’ll raise an eyebrow and be smug. Because he knows damn well he has a resemblance to him. You cannot deny it. Do not @ me for this trash opinion.

·         ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in that outift’ Of course you wouldn’t Erron, of course you fucking wouldn’t.

·         Tremor loves Johnny’s movies, and when its his turn for movie night, he always puts one on. Nobody is going to argue with him. So yeah, he’s seen a fuck ton of his movies. Kabal is always bored on his phone. Tremor is really excited and pointing out his favirote bits. Kira is not present, she’s got a date, and the sausage fest that is the Black Dragon rec room, is not on her list of things to do. Kano is probably passed out in a puddle of his own Piss I don’t know.

·         So, when you suggest watching Ninja Mime, he shudders and shakes his head. He’d do anything for you, but not that. Until you reveal that there’s a drinking game for it. Then he’s down.

·         He would love playing Red Dead Redemption. He fucking loves it. Brings back some memories. He’s impressed by it so much he can overlook some of the inaccuracies.

·         Looks after his Horse in RDR. Because he actually misses having a horse.

#Mortal Kombat #Mortal Kombat x reader #Kabal #Scorpion #Sub Zero #Erron #Raiden #Kuai Liang #Hanzo Hasashi #Kabal x reader #Scorpion x reader #Sub Zero x reader #Erron Black x reader #Raiden x reader #Kuai Liang x reader #Hanzo Hasashi x reader #Mortal Kombat 11 #Mk #Mk 11 #Mortal Kombat 11 x reader #Mk x reader #mk 11 x reader

[dreadnought-dear-captain]

You Asked, I Told and Update

CW: Spoilers for Baghdad Waltz up to chapter 36 and some non-graphic discussion of childhood sexual abuse 

Hello!!!

Wow, I am so, so sorry for falling off the grid like that. I thought I was going to have WAY more time in October/November to work on the fic and work on fandom stuff in general, but my professional life threw me a huge right hook and I got completely sidetracked for weeks. So I’m off schedule a bit, in terms of having the next chapter. I’m sorry for the delay. 

I’m done with the full draft of Chapter 37 (about 23k - “short” but emotionally very dense) and am working through final revisions now. However, I also had to do an extensive amount of 9/11-related research for it, and part of that research has been reviewing oral histories of New Yorkers from the day of the attacks, and I came to the shocking realization that much of the prologue is historically inaccurate. Moreover, it’s shamefully inconsistent with the way that New Yorkers would respond to such an event. I’m embarrassed by how shoddy of a job I did with it.

Thus, I’m also going to be rewriting the prologue and including more accurate details, both historically and in terms of character dynamics. I mean, there’s no way Bucky could even live in Brooklyn and be a first responder at Ground Zero! All the bridges and tunnels were shut down. Shame on me. There will be ripple effects throughout the entire fic. Sigh. This is just round one of the massive amount of revisions I will be doing to the early chapters of the fic, which I wrote years ago now. I was going to wait to post both at the same time, but I don’t want to make you wait that long. I’ll just give you a notification when I finish the prologue revisions, and it’ll be like a little bonus chapter.

Anyway, here are some asks! Starting with a two-parter

First, thank you for the kind words. I’m glad you’re finding this fic moving. It’s definitely an emotional rollercoaster for these characters, and my hope (I guess?) is to have that be a parallel process for the readers. I think you hit the nail on the head that this relationship is exhausting. And you’re also right that not everyone would have the perseverance to keep coming back to it. It would be so much easier to amputate, pack up and go home. But once these characters get back into each other’s orbit, it’s very challenging for them to not keep crashing back into each other. It’s partially because they just love each other so much, but it’s also because they have an unhealthy relationship dynamic that sets them up for these toxic cycles. This will become especially apparent in the next chapter. They love each other, yes, but they also use each other to fill the gaping holes and insecurities they have within themselves. And they’re horrible communicators to boot. It’s a perfect storm. But at least they are going to try out some of this therapy crap maybe…?? We’ll see!

Along a similar line…

Thank you so much. That is so lovely of you to say, and I’m happy that I have your trust with this story. That said, I don’t know if it’s weakness if you’re not willing to run yourself through a miserable gauntlet of suffering the way Steve and Bucky are doing in this story. Would we call Rikki weak for drawing a boundary and stepping away from Bucky when his alcoholism was destroying their family? Some people used other words, but I’m not sure if weakness is the thing that might make someone walk away from a relationship like this. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you should keep slamming your face against the same wall until you’re black and blue. This is a highly dysfunctional couple, and these men have serious issues they are grappling with personally that make them ripe for this kind of relationship. Bucky is an open wound, crippled with shame, desperate to do anything to feel better. Steve has deep attachment injuries from his chronically ill mother and deadbeat dad, as well as major control issues, and he wants to latch on and fix and make right, and if he manages every variable just right, he really thinks he can do it. And then throw in a fuckton of PTSD and TBI and alcoholism and physical injuries on top of it. So no, I wouldn’t rush to judge yourself for not envisioning yourself gutting it out in this grim scenario. 

But I also think we can identify with at least one of these characters, and we can root for people who want to overcome the shit that life has thrown at them to be with the person they love. Because they really do love each other. There’s just so much noise that it’s hard to tease out the signal sometimes. 

Good call on Bucky being a notoriously unreliable narrator, and he’s someone who is likely to underreport his suffering. Aside from his war-related injuries and his psychological struggles, Bucky’s most symptomatic issues are his GI problems. He has both peptic and esophageal ulcers, which are slightly different creatures. Peptic (stomach) ulcers, in Bucky’s case, have been caused by H. pylori and exacerbated by smoking and drinking. The esophageal ulcer was most likely caused by an excess of stomach acid due to gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and, once again, exacerbated by drinking. Both of these have led to nausea, vomiting, lack of appetite, and weight loss. They have really emerged since Bucky got out of the military and pursued drinking with renewed vigor. Though he wouldn’t know it at the time because he doesn’t keep up with these things, his GERD is very possibly linked to acute, high dose exposure to the exceedingly toxic “dust” from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. It’s one of the most widespread chronic health ailments of those exposed, aside from lower respiratory problems.

And now for some heavy-ass questions from licketysplittt — see CW above.

Yes, I am going to talk more about the context of Bucky’s abuse for sure, so I won’t go into the depths here. But I will say now that you are absolutely right that he has complex feelings for his abuser. I think it would have been easy to write him as just being unidimensionally angry or ashamed, but I know that’s not the experience of everyone who has experienced sexual abuse. This is especially the case if the person who commits the abuse it is a family member or caretaker or friend or trusted religious figure or someone who’s not just a “stranger in the bushes” type. I wanted to try to capture that experience in this fic. Bucky has also been multiply victimized by multiple people over the course of his life, which adds to this complexity and creates an internal narrative for him. Like what does it mean that this keeps happening to him? This is also not an uncommon experience for people who have been abused as children. And there’s also the added piece of this that Bucky’s gay, right? So he’s got this very, very young sexuality that’s on the verge of blooming (your Disney sexuality perhaps, sitting close, holding hands, etc) and this older male is making sexual advances toward him, and so he might ask if this person “saw” something in him aside from his social isolation that made him choose him. These are certainly questions he’s tortured himself over. I will get more into all of this, I promise. 

Winnie and George undoubtedly knew that their kid wasn’t a very popular one. But perhaps they always knew that he was a kid who wasn’t destined to have many friends because he’s “sensitive” or however they would characterize him (I’m sure they had different ways of viewing him). And I think it’s important to take into account the type of household that Bucky was in and the way he would shape his behavior. George was this total wildcard — “Best Dad in the World” most days but a screaming, violent tyrant at these odd, unpredictable times that were fucking terrifying for everyone in his path. This is a house where it’s best just to shut up and create as few problems as you can, because you don’t want to be the one that dad is gonna flip his shit at. And so everyone is walking on eggshells and Bucky is going to get very good at lying about how bad things are. And oh! Jamie finally has a friend, how wonderful. There will be more details in upcoming chapters about how this all transpires, but I think the dynamics at home made it possible for a lot of this to happen. And you’re right that these were not the most skillful parents, and their marriage was very strained and stressful for everyone. And these fictional assholes also frustrate me! The emotional content can be hard to write. It’s one reason these past few chapters have taken me soooooo painfully long. 

Great questions! You are all so thoughtful and kind. Sorry again for getting so terribly sidetracked. I am going to keep plugging away at the chapter and at comments and asks. I’m optimistic that I will have the next chapter for you within the next two weeks. I am pleased with this chapter and hope you’ll like it. Thank you for being so patient!!! 

#YOU ASKED I TOLD #send me asks #baghdad waltz #you are the best

[glorious-blackout]

Summary of Junior Doctor Life - Second Block Complete:

As our hospital is attempting to return to something resembling normality, our surgical block is finally ending and I’m off to work on Endocrine for two months. Our rotations typically last four months, however as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic our little group of FY1s has spent six months in Surgery. It’s strange to look back on how much I was dreading this block at the beginning - if you’d told me in December that I’d be trapped on Surgery for so long I would probably have cried - but despite Surgery living by its own bizarre rules and the occasional horrific shift, I’m genuinely sad to be leaving and would have happily spent the remaining two months there if I had the chance. 

With all that said, here’s my final summary of life as a Surgical FY1:

As exciting as working in Surgery may sound, it should be noted that throughout my entire time there I spent a grand total of *one* day in an operating theatre. FY1s are sadly relegated to ward duties, while all the fun stuff happens elsewhere.

Abdominal Pain is now my forte. Between doing Gastro on my first block and a very extended Surgical Block, my knowledge has literally been watered down to gallstones, pancreatitis, appendicitis, gastritis (basically every -itis under the sun), rectal bleeding, groin abscesses, bowel obstruction, constipation, intra-abdominal infections, intra-abdominal cancers, bowel perforations, and a particularly horrific condition called bowel ischaemia. Anything beyond the abdomen feels like a rarity, so the prospect of going to a specialty which revolves around diabetes is slightly unnerving. It probably doesn’t help that the Surgeons’ approach to dealing with non-surgical issues is “Call the medics and they’ll fix it.” 😂

The news that we were returning to Medicine hit us fairly late, to the point where there hasn’t been much time to come to terms with it. One of my colleagues was so annoyed that he sent a very passive-aggressive email to our Programme Lead which basically boiled down to “I don’t see the point in us going to Medicine for only two months given how well we’ve settled in here.” He might have gotten away with it too, if his first block hadn’t been Paediatric Surgery. Apparently completing your first year as a junior doctor with ZERO training in a medical specialty isn’t recommended 😅

One of my colleagues is Northern Irish and has a habit of calling particularly adorable elderly patients ‘Wee Honeys’. My favourite Wee Honeys have included the lovely man who gave me a Kit-Kat because “You doctors work too hard” (hearing that he’d passed away broke my heart and I’ll always remember his small act of kindness), the lady who waved at us every time we passed by and smiled when we waved back, and the poor delirious 91-year-old lady who was the sweetest woman you’d ever meet during the day, but at night would wander the ward brandishing her walking stick threateningly, and was once caught writing ‘Help me’ on the window in lipstick (the poor dear was always very apologetic in the mornings, despite us telling her more than once that it wasn’t her fault). 

Many a Surgical night-shift has been spent mostly holed up in the Doctors’ Room binging shows on Netflix, but for some reason the last night of any set of shifts tends to be the point where shit hits the fan, as though you’re being punished for those hours you spent watching Derry Girls. This remained the case even on my very last shift in Surgery, as one patient decided to have episodes of chest pain and breathlessness every four hours while another had a rather alarming case of fast Atrial Fibrillation characterised by a resting heart-rate of 165 bpm. Not that I can complain; both cases were reasonably stress-free when you consider that my prior set of nights ended with an otherwise healthy man in his 50s dying suddenly as a complication of bowel obstruction. 

My last shift also provided another addition to my ever-growing list of ‘things patients have stuck up their bum’. This time it was a hair-clip. 

Wearing face-masks for a significant portion of a 12-hour shift has predictably left us all with rather terrible skin. Multiple breaks have consisted of us all moaning about it and comparing spots.

A strange observation I’ve noticed on our wards is that our COVID-19 positive patients tend to be asymptomatic individuals where the result was found incidentally on screening: we’ve even had an 85 year-old who had little more than a headache. Whereas patients you’d put money on having COVID-19 - the young, previously well individuals who suddenly have raging fevers and oxygen saturations in their boots - tend to test negative. Something else that’s happened once or twice is that we’ll have patients who deteriorate and become breathless who have signs ‘strongly suggestive of COVID-19′ on CT but have a negative swab... and for some reason we trust the swab result despite constantly being told that CT scanning is a far more sensitive marker while swabs have a high false negative rate.

It probably says a lot about how desensitised I’ve become to the risk of exposure that when I arrived at work to discover that the man I’d clerked in and taken several blood cultures from overnight because of his spiking temperatures was COVID-19 positive, my reaction was little more than a shrug and a “Well, guess that explains the fever”. Honestly by this point most of us are convinced that we’ve all had it and are swimming with antibodies.

One of the things I’m going to miss most are surgical discharge letters. So many of them can be summed up as “This gentleman came in for an elective surgery. He had the surgery. He is now well enough for home.” In comparison, medical patients are more likely to have had extended, complex hospital admissions resulting in a mountain of notes...which you then need to sum up in about 200 words.

As I’ve previously shared, my birthday fell in the middle of a set of night-shifts, which given that there’s nothing better to do these days I was actually okay with. This resulted in an interesting moment where I was chatting with a couple of nurses during our break and one of them unknowingly asked how old I was, at which point I checked the clock and realised that I had turned 24 five minutes earlier. Just before my shift ended I came back to the ward to find that those same nurses had made me a birthday card while I’d been away. Was it made out of plain cardboard with a coloured-in birthday message attached to it with sticky tape? Yes. Was it still the nicest birthday card I’ve ever received? Also yes. 

The most valuable takeaway from Surgery is that, as intimidating as it feels at first, you’re given a lot of independence as an FY1. In Medicine, seniors seem to be constantly available and there’s an expectation that you’ll discuss all of your management plans with someone before enacting them, but oftentimes in Surgery your seniors are off cutting someone open elsewhere. Towards the end, most unwell patients were reviewed by the juniors and only the juniors, unless they became so unwell that senior help was necessary. It’s amazing how much more confident I feel when I’m called to see a sick patient now. Even if I don’t know exactly what’s going on, I know enough to properly examine them and put an initial management plan in place, and I know where my limits lie and when to call for help. The fact that our group of FY1s became so tight-knit also helped; in Medicine you can feel like the baby of the group because there’s only 1-2 of you on the ward, but there were 8 of us on Surgery and we were always offering to help and learn from each other. That camaraderie made even the busiest, most stressful days feel somewhat manageable and I’m going to miss it immeasurably when I leave, as well as all the amazing nurses and additional staff on the wards. 

That said, if I ever have to do a seven-day Surgical Receiving week again I might actually quit and open that Abba-themed coffee-shop with my sister 😉 If there’s one upside from the COVID-19 situation in our hospital, the consultants seem to have decided that it actually makes more sense for *them* to take the GP calls and decide who to accept, rather than inexperienced FY1s who GPs can manipulate with the simple utterance of “could be appendicitis.” The fact that we’re almost back to normal and yet our ward capacity is actually manageable at the moment only reinforces this...

#junior doctor shenanigans #medicine #it's a shame I'd be hopeless with a scalpel otherwise these six months might actually have converted me to surgery :P #I did enjoy medicine when I worked there before but there's a certain freedom in Surgery that I'm really going to miss #ah well - here's to my last two months of FY1! #(what a terrifying thought) #rambling #long post #covid-19 mention

[alarawriting]

Inktober #26: Dark

My name’s Mike London, and I hunt vampires, and that’s why I don’t love the darkness anymore.

Yeah, I know, I know. At this point you’re probably thinking “do we really have time to unpack all that?”, but the thing you’re getting hung up on is vampires, because vampires aren’t real. How could creatures who are technically dead survive only on blood, and if they were running around turning people into vampires every time they drank blood, why isn’t the world overrun with vampires? How could anyone function if they burst into flames when exposed to sunlight, why wouldn’t they show up on mirrors, does that mean they don’t show up on cameras, so on and so forth.

Okay, so most of the myths are wrong. You can see a vampire in a mirror… unless the vampire is positioned to see into your eyes, or their reflection. Vampires are stronger than humans but not by much – you know about that hysterical strength “mom lifts car off child” thing humans can do in extreme circumstances? They can do it all the time, because their bodies are constantly resetting to a perfect state based on what they were like at the moment of undeath, plus their self-image, with bodies that are perfectly healed except for anything that’s part of the self-image, like a scar that they’ve grown to identify with or a piercing. They’re faster than most humans, but they still have human muscles, so we’re talking Usain Bolt, not the Flash, or even a cheetah. They do burst into flames when exposed to strong ultraviolet light, a condition I can kind of sympathize with myself. And they aren’t created when a vampire drinks your blood, but when you drink a vampire’s, when your own blood levels are very low. As soon as a person has more vampiric blood than human blood in their system, boom, vampire.

They have only one really magical superpower, aside from the fact that they’re alive when they shouldn’t be, and it explains all the others that humans believe they have. If they can look into your eyes, and hold your gaze, they can control your mind. Make you think they’re invisible, make you think they just exploded into a hundred bats, make you compelled to do what they say.

It doesn’t work on me, because I’m an albino. And that’s why, despite the fact that all I ever wanted was to write programs, I am stuck hunting vampires as a side hustle. I’m still physically weaker and slower than they are, and while I see better in the dark than you do, I don’t see as well as they do. In light without UV components, such as standard indoor lighting, my vision’s more impaired than theirs, and a lot more than yours. But they can’t mesmerize me, and frankly, your average vampire has gotten so used to being able to mesmerize humans, it’s crippling for them to run into a human where it doesn’t work.

You probably haven’t got the vaguest idea why being an albino protects me. Maybe you have some notion that albinos have weird superpowers, since frankly in fiction we almost always do. You probably don’t know exactly how my disabilities work – in movies and TV, albinos never get to play albinos, it’s always white men in makeup.

Albinos have bad vision. Lack of pigment in the retina when we’re developing gives us vision problems that can’t be corrected with glasses. It’s like we have fewer pixels to see the world than you do, so everything’s going to be fuzzy no matter how strong the prescription lenses are. And a side effect of bad vision from birth is something called rhythmatic nystagmus, where our eyes go back and forth like an old DVD using pan-and-scan to show a movie on old-school near-square CRT televisions. (Old technology’s a hobby of mine.) I don’t have any conscious control or even awareness of it; I couldn’t stop my eyes from moving like that if I tried, short of closing them. My brain does post-processing on the moving image to make it look to me like my eyes aren’t moving, combining multiple snapshots from different angles into a single image. It means my ability to see a moving object is crap even if it’s close enough that I should be able to see it otherwise, but in theory it lets me see more detail than I would otherwise.

The thing is, there’s a reason the legends all have the vampires going “Look into my eyes”. They need to be able to make and sustain eye contact, the kind where you stare into each other’s eyes, and they can’t do that with eyes that are moving constantly. It’s not that I can’t see their eyes, because for me things don’t look like they’re going back and forth while my eyes move. It’s that they can’t look into mine.

I found this out the hard way last year. I was working at a big financial company, and I was behind schedule on the software I was building for them, and they had security rules that didn’t allow me to work from home. The boss used to say not to stay after hours, but I figured this was the kind of thing bosses say to make the company sound friendly and accommodating but is actually a control freak thing intended to benefit the morning people, which I have never been one of. I can’t drive – the state won’t give me a license, with my eyes – and I have chronic insomnia and equally chronic problems with waking up in the morning, making it impossible for me to rideshare with any of my co-workers. So I generally have an intermittently employed friend of mine who shares my apartment drive me places, and this means I’m usually late to work. If I can’t stay late and I can’t bring work home, I fall behind on my projects. Also, I do my best work late at night when there are no distractions. So I was in the habit of going to the bathroom with all of my stuff around 5:30 and then coming out at 6 after my boss had left. I could sit on the toilet with my laptop and continue to work, answering emails and setting Outlook to send them at 8 am in the morning the next day to make it look like I work normal hours, and then when I came out I could get back to the serious programming work, because my boss wasn’t a programmer and had no idea how to check the timestamps of my build check-ins.

It turned out it wasn’t corporate bullcrap after all. It was vampires. Vampires would come into the building to hold meetings on some kind of irregular schedule that meant something to them. I’d been working late for almost two weeks when they showed up, mesmerized my housemate and nearly ate both of us, and I had to kill a few of them with the combination of a steak knife from the kitchen and the cheap bamboo chopsticks I have a few hundred of in my drawer because I’m always getting Chinese takeout for lunch. See, you can’t actually stab a chopstick into a vampire’s heart – it’s too fragile – but stabbing with a regular knife only takes them out of commission for the two minutes or so it takes them to heal. But if you then stick a wooden chopstick in the wound, it prevents them from regenerating, and bamboo is apparently wood for vampire-killing purposes.

Also, I had a black light in my laptop bag, suitable for detecting whether my cats have peed on my laptop bag before I take it to work because they’ve done it so many times I’ve gotten desensitized to the smell of cat pee, and while I don’t like looking at UV light – my eyes have zero protection from it, so it’s painful – it’s a lot worse for vampires, whose skin will burn from very tiny amounts of UV exposure and can actually set on fire. And it’s just astonishing how often vampires will stand there trying to mesmerize you while you walk up to them and stab them in the heart, because they just can’t comprehend “human who cannot be mesmerized”.

And now that I know vampires exist and that I’m immune to their most powerful weapon… well, shit. I’m kind of stuck. I don’t actually know any other albinos, or anyone else with rhythmic nystagmus, and for normal people, wearing the kind of dark glasses that make it so the vampires can’t see your eyes will completely prevent you from seeing anything in the kind of darkness vampires like. I’m the only one I know who can do this. And they don’t kill humans constantly – they don’t need to – but they spread disease (they can’t get blood-borne illnesses but they can sure carry them) and they tend to pick on weaker humans to begin with, people who have less resistance to the bad effects of losing a lot of blood, because if chronically ill people seem sick and lethargic everyone assumes it’s their illness and not vampires attacking them. They’re like humanoid rats, in other words. If you had a well-behaved pet one who never harmed humans and only drank from volunteers, that one would be fine. But the rest of them are vermin.

Now, the best time to kill vampires is during the day, when they’re sleeping. Vampires know this. You are not going to find them when they’re sleeping, and if you did, you’d have to fight your way through their security guards, who are human, and do not know they’re protecting vampires, and really don’t deserve to have to deal with people trying to kill them. Also, being security guards, they are better at mayhem than I am; I’m an IT guy. So, lucky me, I have to go after them at night, when they have all the advantages except one: they expect to be able to mesmerize me, and they can’t.

Nighttime used to be my time. No bright sun glaring in my face and giving me a sunburn. Everyone around me having such poor vision from it being dark that my bad eyesight isn’t a disadvantage anymore, and when it’s dark enough, my eyesight gets better than theirs because my eyes collect every single photon that hits them, no filters. I’d walk around at night, or crank up my stereo and write code until 4 am.

But every time it’s dark, now, I know: they’re out there. They’re hunting. Feeding. And if I don’t track them down and get rid of them, people might die.

And that’s why I can’t love the darkness anymore.

#inktober 2019 #mike london #albinism #actually accurate information about albinism

[bigskydreaming]

So, okay. The posts about how psychodrama and exposure therapy have been used effectively to treat PTSD. Sigh. Oh boy. Okay, see, because the thing is they’re not wrong, on a technical level. But they’ve been so completely stripped of context ie the specific HOW and in WHAT WAYS those are ACTUALLY deemed helpful rather than perpetuating self-harm - as to be quite misleading, IMO.

Disclaimer that I am not a licensed therapist, and I do not claim to be. I am just a survivor whose done a crapton of coping in various ways in my life, and researched just about every school of thought there is on these subjects, as well as interacted with a plethora of other survivors of all types in a variety of settings like support groups, one on one conversations, etc. Do with the following whatever you want. I’m not sourcing this because none of it stems from a singular source other than the accumulation of all the reading and talking with professionals and other survivors and own experiences and whatnot. Evaluate what I’ve put in this posts on its own merits, take away what seems worth following up on, even if just as a starting place for your own research, dismiss it entirely because of my lack of a PhD, whatever. Entirely up to you. I’m merely writing it down because its in my head either way. I’m happy to discuss what I have to say here, but I’m not gonna engage with potshots at my credibility that are largely focused on semantics or just my lack of credentials. I don’t have the time or the patience for that, so don’t be surprised if I just ignore that shit. Anyway. Moving on: 

There are many, many different types of trauma, and even trauma stemming from abuse or rape can be so different in so many key respects, that what is helpful for one person can absolutely be the exact opposite for another. This is why I generally stay away from “I write dark smut because its my coping mechanism” arguments - I have enough trouble getting people to argue my actual points when there’s barely any room for misinterpretation....I have a migraine already at the thought of how people will spin my stance on this out of context.

But the thing is....given the varying degrees and types and contexts and dynamics and effects different instances of abuse and rape have on individuals....I’ve never and I never will argue that there is zero validity to the idea that anyone has ever been helped to work through their traumas by writing certain things. There’s just no way I, or anyone, is qualified to make that claim. BUT, the flip side of that coin is it is equally unilaterally impossible AND IRRESPONSIBLE, IMO, to blithely trot out the idea that writing and reading dark fiction as a coping mechanism is universally harmless and most likely to result in positive growth rather than negative stagnation or even backsliding into more active states of trauma.

So take something like roleplaying and psychodrama as tools for helping a survivor deal with their trauma....absolutely there’s a place for that. BUT whether or not it will likely be to a person’s benefit and healing rather than counter-productively reinforcing negative mindsets or behaviors - depends almost ENTIRELY on WHAT a therapist’s aims are in using psychodrama as one of their tools. What explicitly they think it has to contribute towards a patient’s specific situation and issues.

Because the thing is, psychodrama is essentially a tool for INSIGHT. Nothing more, nothing less. It essentially has a patient roleplay either themselves in a recreation of a past traumatic event or time period, but in a controlled setting and with someone to guide them through it....or in other instances, has the patient roleplay themselves in the role of their abuser or attacker. 

Its ultimately a way of putting someone in their own shoes during a prior event, or the shoes of someone else present for it or involved in it....and viewing the event with fresh eyes, from new angles, given that they now have the distance and the awareness of its lack of ‘realness’ to focus not just on their fear or panic of the time, but going through the motions of the event while now able to spare attention and focus for what was happening OUTSIDE their tunnel-visioned panic of the time, or what might have been going through the heads of the other people involved.

So again, as a tool for insight and information gathering or paradigm-breaking, it has a wide range of potential applications. It absolutely can and does help a number of people heal in a number of ways. Using psychodrama and roleplaying recreations of past events and their aftermath can help someone understand why they reacted in certain ways, why they developed certain behaviors or tendencies in its aftermath or in their attempts to recover. It can be used to help demonstrate to a survivor that they’re being too hard on themselves, expose the lie of ‘if only I’d done this instead, everything could have gone differently’ that many survivors use to punish themselves. 

It can be used with survivors who are struggling to understand why and how someone could do this to them, or especially with survivors of abuse who worry about the possibility of becoming just like their abuser, continuing a cycle of abuse and harm because of how they’ve internalized what was done to them, or attempted to justify it over the years. 

Using these techniques and methodologies can help put a survivor in the driver’s seat of a recreation, essentially, have them roleplay their own attacker, with an impartial professional available to act as a soundingboard and fact checker for their own decision-making process throughout the recreation - ie periodically asking “now are you saying you’d do that next because its what YOU want to do in that role, or because its what you assume your abuser would want to do there?” And thus it can help reassure an abuse survivor that ultimately, they just don’t think the way their abuser likely did, and despite their fears, their thought processes do not lend themselves towards the chain of actions and reactions that would likely result in perpetrating certain abusive behaviors themselves.

HOWEVER.

The caveat that I pretty much never see in posts citing the use of these techniques in healing from trauma, is that for every potential application, there’s another instance or way in which these techniques have no value, and in fact can cause harm. For instance, not every survivor struggles with why someone would do to them what they did, what they must have been thinking to hurt them in this way. Some survivors have simply no desire to wonder what was going through their attacker’s head...it means nothing to them, and offers nothing to help them with what’s in their own heads. So as a tool for information gathering or discovering new angles to a past trauma, its meaningless at best.

Similarly, these kinds of ideas or techniques attempted without an experienced and impartial observer present for the recreations can do just as much harm as they have potential to help. For instance, if someone has struggled with self-blame ever since a traumatic event, convinced themselves that it might be their own fault, because they did or didn’t do certain things....these kinds of recreations and roleplaying present a very tricky tightrope to walk. 

If the survivor ISN’T able to fully make the distinction between their panic, adrenaline fueled thoughts and reactions of the time, and their own more capable and clinical view of the recreated scene due to the safety and comfort of their current danger-free environment...then its entirely possible, and likely, to come up with ideas or alternative actions or choices that theoretically could have allowed them to manipulate the situation towards a less traumatizing conclusion, or perhaps allowed them to avoid it happening at all. 

Thus, by coming to these ‘conclusions’ via the psychodrama role-playing, a survivor has actually given their brains MORE ammunition to use against them when thinking that its their own fault their trauma happened, because they did x instead of these now clearly defined alternative choices they’ve thought up....and failed to healthily internalize as things they could not reasonably expect themselves to have thought of at the time.

See what I mean?

Similarly, exposure therapy is....oof. Yikes. I have a lot of thoughts about its validity as a tool for helping with PTSD and associated trauma responses and aftermath. I’m perfectly aware that they’ve had enormous success with using virtual reality type programs to treat soldiers’ PTSD in a variety of ways.

The thing is though, prior to the viability of such technology, exposure therapy has almost unilaterally been used to treat ANXIETY disorders, specifically. Such as with people who experience various phobias.

Because....anxiety is largely irrational/instinctive in these types of things. They’re a person undergoing a panic response to varying degrees, in response to a threat or danger that’s largely imagined....based either on memories triggered by a similarity in their environs to the setting of a past trauma, or by hypothetical extrapolations off of various stimuli, or sometimes, just completely irrational lines of thinking.

So essentially, the varying applications of exposure therapy as a method of treatment for anxiety disorders specifically....is that by inducing an encounter with the root fear of the patient, but in a controlled environment where they’re in no possible danger, a therapist can theoretically enhance a patient’s awareness of the irrationality of their fears. They can empirically guide a patient through an understanding of how their mind is playing tricks on them and imagining or embellishing threats that objectively are not a possibility at the moment. And from there, help a patient build a mental toolbox of thoughts and thought processes they can pull out and use as tools when their anxieties threaten to overwhelm them...and they need a way to establish an anchor to objective reality and separate imagined threat from real surroundings....to detect and affirm when something is just their mind playing tricks on them again.

The problem here lies in the fact that this is largely only useful in helping ground people in the reality of things not usually being the threat or danger they imagine them to be. But what exposure therapy can NOT do, is ‘expose’ a survivor to a reconstruction of the conditions of their past trauma, or a ‘scene’ that plays out similarly to the way their trauma did....and reassure them there’s nothing to be afraid of there, because their fears and anxiety in the scene being recreated....WERE VERY MUCH REAL AND VALID.

Now, one possible use of exposure therapy in terms of singular event-born PTSD....is in helping survivors deal with specific TRIGGERS. Using exposure therapy techniques in controlled settings and with professionals to guide survivors through a session of this.....therapists can expose survivors to various stimuli-based triggers, and much as with phobias, a patient can be walked through a more objective awareness and understanding of the fact that although their triggers based on this specific trauma are completely understandable and valid....they are statistically unlikely to act as a forewarning or precursor to ANOTHER instance of their root trauma, and thus do not present a rational fear that a survivor needs the fight or flight response they’ve conditioned themselves to have upon experiencing these triggers. As with phobias, this allows patients to assemble a variety of tools to use to counter the psychological and physiological effects of encountering these specific triggers.

But this isn’t the same thing as treating the fears and anxieties born of worrying something like their trauma might ever happen again, period. Because those fears are categorically...with merit. Survivors are just as vulnerable to abuse and sexual assault as non-survivors, and statistically speaking are more likely to be prone to greater likelihoods of revictimization than non-survivors are of being victimized initially. For a variety of reasons. But basically...exposure therapy can’t help a survivor be reassured there’s nothing to be afraid of....when it can’t guarantee that. Nobody can.

Now, like I said, there’s been considerable success with treating the PTSD of soldiers with VR-based exposure therapy. But again, context is hugely important here. Because war is in and of itself, a viable setting. Soldiers who get PTSD as a result of battlefield trauma, and then go home....well, some of the most common symptoms in their case tend to be flashbacks and an inability to distinguish past from present...essentially, many often find themselves feeling like they’re right back there in the heat of battle where they were initially traumatized. 

So in their cases, in terms of THIS specific manifestation of PTSD....VR exposure therapy has a lot of merit, as using it, therapists can guide their patients back and forth between grounded, objective reality, and virtual reality environments that have been programmed to simulate the wartime environments their PTSD episodes transport them to. In doing so, therapists can help anchor their patients’ awareness in the reality that they are no longer in that wartime environment. That its not real, that future encounters with it are the product of artificial constructs their brains have produced. They can establish clear boundaries between real, and not real, and as described previously, help them assemble tools for objectively breaking down the false reality their PTSD creates for them in the future, break through to the present time and place underneath.

But see how this technique fundamentally can’t work to help anchor triggered survivors through PTSD episodes, more generally speaking, and not just in terms of coping with specific triggerings? A soldier can be made empirically aware that he is not experiencing his root trauma again here and now, because it relies on him being in that wartime environment, and empirically, he is no longer in that wartime environment. A rape survivor, in contrast, can not be made empirically aware they can’t be experiencing another rape or threat of another rape here and now....because there is no empirical proof that what happened once can’t and won’t happen in similar settings possessing the triggers they’re reacting to, or just in any future settings at all.

Which brings me to exposure therapy relying on recreations of past traumas via written fictional scenes.

In theory, all the ingredients are there. A controlled, safe environment - wherever the survivor reading or writing the scene is. The ability to end the scene whenever it gets to be too much - via simply putting down the story or stepping away from writing it. Everything needed to reassure a survivor, while experiencing a simulation of their trauma that might very well still feel viscerally real at times, due to how well or intensely its written....nevertheless, all the ingredients are here for the survivor to ultimately put the necessary distance between the recreation and themselves, and from that distance, more impartially observe that its not real, it can’t hurt them, their trauma is in the past and its behind them.

The problem here is that ironically, there’s TOO MUCH distance between survivors and the recreations. Because of the very nature of fiction as a medium.

See, the thing that can’t be stressed enough, is no matter how well or accurately or in as much detail as you recreate or simulate the environment and conditions of a rape or setting of an abusive event.....rape and abuse, at the end of the day, are not inherently about specific events, interactions, causes and effects.

Rape and abuse are DYNAMICS.

The trauma isn’t born of the physical acts being recreated. The trauma is born of the aggressor having taken something ephemeral from the victim, as well as the physical effects of their actions.

Basically, the problem with using fiction as a recreation of say, someone’s rape.....is that the essential, fundamental element of the rape that MAKES it a rape....is the sexual agency or autonomy the rapist strips their victim of, takes from them. Because rape ultimately isn’t about sex, its about power. Sex is merely the medium by which a rapist TAKES that power. But the crime, the heart of the trauma, the thing that makes it linger long past any physical injuries...is the rapist having used sex to exert power over their victim, make them feel lesser in that moment, and in recollections of that moment.

And this element CAN NOT EXIST in fiction. By virtue of them being fictional characters. They’re not real. There is no power for the fictional rapist to take from their fictional victim....ONLY THE SIMULATION OF IT.

Because when I said fictional recreations ironically have too much distance.....I meant because EVERY consumption of fictional scenes by their very nature....have a degree of distance between the reader or viewer and the fiction. There’s an implicit awareness of this EVERY TIME SOMEONE SITS DOWN TO WATCH TV OR READ A BOOK. These are little rituals we each have done too many times for them to NOT be ingrained on some primal, fundamental level, deep in our lizard brains where the knowledge and awareness that these things can NEVER hurt us, that we are ALWAYS in a safe and controlled environment wholly separate from the things that we might be afraid of.

There is a REASON that military vets treated this way use VR technology for their recreations. That the theory had to wait for the technology to catch up to it before it could be viable in specific respects at all. That its not enough to sit soldiers down in a room and just play war movies over and over until the therapist shuts off the TV and reestablishes the ‘real world.’

Because ultimately, we simply are not capable of willfully divorcing ourselves from reality and fully immersing in a fictional recreation that exists just on TV or on the page. There is always a part of us that remains firmly anchored in reality and cognizant of that...

And as a result, there is only so far we can ever project ourselves into a fictional recreation....which means ultimately, we always are going to hit a wall there. No matter how much we identify with one of the characters, project ourselves into their shoes, there is always a basic awareness that we are not them, and we are not facing the danger they are. 

Which means no matter HOW good or detailed or accurate or emotionally resonant the words on the page are, as they describe each moment of the interaction between aggressor and victim that seems to the reader or writer to otherwise be a perfect recreation of what happened to them....there is simply NO WAY to recreate the one explicitly essential element of that specific trauma....the taking of power, from the one character by the other. Because between the two fictional characters, there is no actual power dynamic, and no actual exchange of power taking place.

Only the APPEARANCE of it.

And as a result, a survivor might very well FEEL helped via this particular coping mechanism, with them handling exposure to such a recreation much better than they did the first handful of times. But is this actually healing, or could it just as easily be termed desensitization? Because the thing they’re taking in, internalizing is NOT a perfect transportation to the circumstances of their rape and the successful emergence out the other side with newfound awareness of having been safe from harm the whole time.

Without any way to even pretend that the dynamic being witnessed from a distance has actually resulted in a theft of agency rather than merely the appearance of it.....what’s left? What actually sits there, described so vividly on the page?

Sex.

Because just like rape isn’t really sex so much as its the taking or asserting of power VIA sex...the image or description of one person raping another without the actual taking or assertion of power....basically just looks a lot like sex.

Which incidentally, IMO, might have a fucking LOT to do with how fucking bad our society is at noting the difference between sex and rape, and the fact that they’re not interchangeable or one and the same. And why rape survivors so often face slut-shaming and victim-blaming and are accused of actually wanting it.

Because when you’ve been conditioned by a lifetime of fictional media consumption to equate rape with the sex you SEE or READ about, as being basically the entirety of it and the intangible elements of it just abstract to you.....its very easy to look at a survivor and see not someone who had something intangible but very much REAL stolen from them via sex....but just a person who had bad sex they didn’t like.

And THIS, more than anything else, is what I personally view as the greatest ramification of widespread rape fantasies and noncon fics in fandom: that there is ultimately a ceiling on how much it can help any or every survivor cope or heal from their trauma - even while acknowledging that there are surely some specific contexts or combinations of elements in some individuals’ traumas that allow for fictional recreations to still largely serve the function those survivors aim to get out of them - but again, in terms of a coping mechanism that’s universally applicable or viable for all survivors of all scenarios? 

Nuh uh. No way. There’s no possible chance of making that claim in all honesty, and without making that claim, even the argument of it being a successful coping mechanism for SOME survivors in some specific ways, does not validate the ease with which its trotted out as a truism for all survivors to take heed of and all nonsurvivors to respect.

But MEANWHILE, at the same time, an equally inevitable end result of these fics.....is the continued desensitization of readers en masse, to the reality of rape as a theft of something intangible, impossible to fully recreate or depict as an experience, except in reality or potentially, some day in virtual reality. 

It inevitably serves to perpetuate the unspoken and perhaps sometimes even unconscious view, that rape is ultimately just sex of a certain kind. And so more and more, it becomes viewed as something that has the capacity to titillate and arouse....the same as any other form of sex, obviously. Because why wouldn’t it....if ultimately, that’s all its treated as being? 

#rape cw #abuse cw