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tuiyla · 2 years

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What is it you like about Santana’s friendship with Kurt?

I have a favourite scenes post but for this I actually wanna give a more profound answer than just listing their cute scenes, especially because I don't think Glee did right by them in that their full potential wasn't explored. At all. Hummelberry and Pezberry took priority in New York and though the former is understandable and I go feral over the latter, I just think we could have had more. Here's why and here's what I like about them.

When approaching a friendship or any sort of dynamic between two or more characters, I often try to think of what they have in common, thematically, where they work as foils, how they can strengthen each other's stories and characters. And I think Kurt and Santana, both of whom have emerged as extremely popular fan favourites and arguably two of the most beloved characters even today, 7 years after Glee ended, are both so strong individually that that alone makes me yearn for a fusion, a crossroad where these two powerful stories meet. And they do! Compared to many many other New Directions friendships they actually already get a fair amount in canon, and that of course is part of why I like them. Simply put, I like their interactions and the way their individual connection balances out the Kurtcheltana dynamic. But what I see in them goes beyond New York and goes beyond what the show has given us, though it is rooted in what we're given.

Kurt and Santana are far from being two sides of the same coin (though they both parallel Dave, for example, in delicious ways) but there's something about their similarities yet the ways in which they're wildly different. They're both gay, of course, but make no mistake a baseline wlw-mlm solidarity isn't why I think the friendship they have is so fascinating. I think what elevates that is the fact that being queer is so... inalienable in both their stories.

Kurt is an underdog, one of the show’s most quintessential ones and that’s mainly because of a combo of a homophobic society and his sexuality/the way he expresses himself. He goes through hell and remains kind and brave, and crucially he’s not afraid to be himself. He comes out in episode four and after that he’s unapologetically himself even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. And yes he does have an unhealthy coping mechanism or too and does still put up a front like the rest of us but he’s true to himself.

Santana starts out on top, as Queen Bee Quinn’s second and a hot cheerleader who can make out with her best friend and still be popular - even be popular because of that. She’s loud and quite obnoxious and sure looks like she has it all, but underneath it all she’s crippling under the misery of not being true to herself and being absolutely terrified of being seen for who she actually is. She also doesn’t have a Burt; her parents do turn out to be supportive but a crucial parental figure in her life, Abuela, does not.

And that’s not to say one has it worse than the other, hell no. And even though they make a good case study for how different gay and lesbian journeys can be, it’s not even about that. It’s about Kurt and Santana as characters going through a similar struggle in vastly different ways and finding a point of connection in that. A connection that’s unique to them, despite other queer characters also being on the show. And a connection in their personalities, too, because there Kurt and Santana also show fascinating similarities yet important differences.

Kurt has an inherent kindness, despite his occasional superiority complex that is so so important for Santana to learn from, as someone who’d really rather not admit that she isn’t such a bitch after all. But Santana has that street smart element, that eye for sketchiness and more grounded look on life as well as a vastly different perspective that Kurt can learn from. They also have a good level of mutual respect, most of the time, and can have both banter and admiration that doesn’t go to extremes like it does with Pezberry for example. They’re a fairly balanced duo where Kurt doesn’t take Santana’s shit but she doesn’t stand for his, either. Keeping it real but keeping it fun.

I also would have loved loved if Glee explored them more not just in NYC but while at McKinley. It’s a shame they didn’t get to interact more in season 2 because the Kurt-Dave-Santana storyline leading up to Prom Queen is fascinating and one of the show’s best. Kurt, upon getting the truth from Karofsky about Santana’s plans, is more impressed than horrified. “Her Lady Macbethian ways,” he says. Kurt appreciating Santana’s twisted and self-serving plan for its convolutedness and also, no matter what its intention, good results, is a fun view for him to have of her. They have that shared manipulative streak in different ways that affords the mutual respect and makes for fun interactions.

Ngl I kinda got lost in my thoughts there but... Kurtana. I like their friendship because it feels like worlds colliding but there’s no crash because it actually goes quite smoothly. Their slight cynicism but good hearts, the way Kurt is one of the few people to really see the good in Santana, but also the ways in which they call each other out. The first time I heard Kurtcheltana would eventually live together in NY was when I was watching season 1 and I was like, no way. How would Kurt and Santana work? They served such different purposes in the story, seemed rather incompatible. But going into season 4 I was looking forward to it, because by then I could see that they’re actually a pair who can find common ground relatively smoothly. And it’s not without its troubles, and I think a conflict between the two can sting really hard (cough cough 6x03, not that we wanna remember that). But like, overall? They just work, and they’re glorious. And I wish we had so much more, whether that’s casually watching TV together or helping each other through hardships they and only they have a unique understanding of.

#going out to my kurtana peeps #kurtana #glee asks #glee friendships #anon #santana asks #kurt hummel #santana lopez #i think i wanted to say much more but my brain short circuited halfway through #apologies #ask about kurtana again in 3-5 business days

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miladysatsuki · 3 years

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ok my post about talking about 3.0+1.0 kawoshin & kaworus development got a few likes so I’m going to ramble under the cut about mostly kawoshin & kaworu but actually about all of the pilots & the whole movie.

SPOILER WARNING FOR EVANGELION 3.0+1.0 also out of context spoilers for pmmm in the second to last paragraph I’m just comparing the two

So, first of all I’m going to say some general movie thoughts: I liked the movie, I know there are some polarizing opinions. I agree that Asuka and Mari both deserved more development and attention. However Asukas “confession” at the EoE mirrored scene really did not feel romantic to me like it felt very much just accepting that like no I do actually care about you Shinji despite always pushing you away I do want well for you and always have, but I didn’t know how to deal with that truth and my own pain at the same time. Asuka is not tsundere, she does not have romantic feelings for Shinji and never has. I will die on this hill. She may have wanted him to want her to validate herself but, thats a different can of worms.

Mari and Shinji running off together at the end, OBVIOUSLY the implication is they’re together but I feel like they intentionally left it a bit ambiguous for people who didn’t need/want to see Shinji in a romantic relationship. Like they easily could have shown her pregnant or kissing him or something and that would have been very blatant. I think the fact that she is the one who came up to him at the end instead of Asuka Rei or Kaworu is mostly fan service with a dash of letting the other three have room to be their own people separate of Shinji. Rei and Kaworu have never been their own person without their entire worlds revolving around Shinji and I think the visual of the two of them talking together at the end but still on the other side of the train station was a good way of showing like they are still relevant to Shinjis life but they get to explore their own worlds too. Obviously same goes for Asuka because she is the other side of the same coin with Shinji, she deserves to be her own person too. I also like to pretend after running off the train platform together they go to the other side & meet up with the others :)

ANYWAYS MORE ABOUT KAWORU SPECIFICALLY

I think its really interesting that almost every popular fan theory about him got confirmed in this new movie, even ones that had barely any basis in previous movies, and that they also dismissed the main popular homophobic opinion of “he was just using Shinji”. He truly wanted Shinji to be happy, because he wanted that to be enough to make himself happy. & I genuinely think he was aware and fully willing to keep living the loop for Shinji infinitely but Shinji recognizing the loop existing and acknowledging all that Kaworu had done for him already was also extremely releasing. Probably freed him from something he didn’t even know was trapping him at all. Kaji and Kaworus father/son moment was really sweet as well considering Kaworu is his own parents and has never known any kind of family.

I also have read some online takes that Rei and Kaworu are meant to be “together” at the end? but I really dont think standing next to one another constitutes a romantic relationship LOL. They’re definitely still/always siblings in my book. I also would like to think all the pilots kept their memories from the rebuild timeline, Kaworu keeping them from every timeline & Shinji having a blurry understanding of the existence of multiple timelines but not every detail.

I wonder if this implies Kaworu and Rei are fully human, I’m not sure how that works. Maybe he still is Tabris but angels pose no threat without evas anymore so he can just live amongst them like anyone else.

I also wanted to say like PMMM is another one of my dearest animes and something about Shinji pulling the Goddoka card to rewrite the universe without evas (without witches) but Yui facing the burden for him is so sweet. I can’t see it going any better way. Unit 01 obviously was taking as much damage for Shinji all along and her being able to be his final release from that pain is just, I don’t know how it could do any other way. I also don’t think I could handle it if it was exactly the same as PMMM and no one remembered Shinji. Shinji my beautiful baby boy who represents hope for humanity?? Completely forgotten?? thats too much even for me 😩 also this is a side note: I am absolutely in no way a Gendo apologist but I really appreciated him getting his loose ends tied off too, for Shinjis sake mostly. I don’t think Evangelion could have ended without Shinji gaining understanding for his father. Shinji understanding his father is another important aspect of Shinji representing humanity. It probably also allowed him to heal a little from Kaworu being “just like my father” like yeah, we all are, a little bit he’s also just a guy just like you. Gendo is the absolute tail-end of the spectrum of losing your hope and your humanity. The visual of Shinji using the lance of hope and Gendo using despair is obvi a very classic anime trope but I still liked it. Gendo losing Yui and letting it destroy him and Shinji losing Kaworu but using that to move forward and grow and keep Kaworu alive in spirit (also in real life but he didn’t know that at that point obvi). Chefs kiss.

anyways Shinji and Kaworu get a house together and live happily ever after :) idk I haven’t thought much about how they would live on post movie but I feel like the whole group would all be good friends + Toji and fam + Kensuke too of course. I could do a whole nother post about Toji and Kensuke 😫 I have so many feelings for evangelion lmk if u wanna hear LOL

#kawoshin #kaworu nagisa #evangelion 3.0+1.0 #neon genesis evangelion #nge #mmmm…. I always feel like a fraud using tags properly #anywhooo just some brain worms about the new eva movie #dni if you disagree LOL #also ari don’t read this Ill kill u if u get spoilers before we watch together #zeev no

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alien-baby-boy · 3 years

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For a long time I had few questions in my head ...

1. Do you prefer lawlight in : before yotsuba arc, in yotsuba arc, after yotsuba arc

2. Whats better ?

- Lawlight when Light is normal Light (just like in yotsuba arc)

- Lawlight when Light knows that he is Kira

3. What will Yagami Family think when they will figure out that their TopOneTheBestSonUnderTheSun is dating that one autistic fucked up bottom biotch called L? (sry I have to wrote that xD)

I'm sorry for spreading myself out so much, but I rly love you're headcanons and I want to know what you think about that.

Good morning/afternoon/evening/night idk when will you answer :DD

thank you!! that is so sweet & i'm glad you like them! i love talking to you guys & it's awesome when i see a user like a bunch of my things! it's afternoon here, so good afternoon to you as well :)

1. Do you prefer lawlight in: before yotsuba arc, in yotsuba arc, or after yotsuba arc?

i personally read a lot of aus, but pre-yotsuba is my favourite, especially when they're just getting to know each other & Light frantically changes his plans to recruit L instead of killing him

it's honestly not that hard to convince L to commit war crimes, as long as they have fun & don't have to reveal themselves

Light gives L Misa's old death note (which she gave up to live a happy life but retained her memories of it) so L could do his killing & researching criminals with Kira from the comfort of their (shared) bed

2. What's better? Lawlight when Light is normal or Lawlight when he knows that he's Kira?

Kira!Light by just a hair

i really like the idea of Light bringing L over to Kira's side & i feel like a lot of their tension that ultimately brought them closer was from them being two sides of the same coin. Kira & L, world's best serial killer & world's best detectives. i think L joining Kira could be really nice & fluffy, if done right.

3. What will the Yagami family think?

their reactions are ,,,varied. i don't personally headcannon L as autistic, but he definitely has some sort of mental illness. i agree that L is a fucked up bottom bitch, though.

i've actually answered this before, so i might repeat some points :)

Soichiro is not homophobic, but, really, Light? you chose him? why not a nice young officer or fellow university student? if he knows who L really is, at first he's worried that L took advantage, but Light is quick to reassure that's not the case & if anything, he was the one taking advantage of L. either way, Soichiro sees how happy L makes Light & how they already have a million inside jokes and approves after a few weeks

Sachiko has never seen Light look at any of his "girlfriends" like that and remembering how her relationship with Soichiro started so she thinks it's fate. they both get the talk from her & they're both mortified. it's Light's third time getting the talk, but L's first.

Sayu immediately loves L & thinks he's so cool since he wears eyeliner (aka his dark circles), he's foreign, and L will answer her taboo questions or let her play dress up with him & L has taught her a few new tricks on how to hide minor things from her parents. honestly, Sayu was jealous at first that some random teenager was going to take Light away & steal all his time, but that never happened. L was always polite & nice & didn't demand attention from Light 24/7

so, they all eventually warmed up to the relationship after seeing how happy L made Light & the fact Light finally found his equal.

that's all the headcannons i have right now, but i'll be here if you want to hear more later! (especially spicy headcannons lol)

#death note #ask response #headcannons #l lawliet #light yagami #lawlight #Yagami household #bottom L #boyfriends in love #kira #kira wins au #(i have tags for that; i'll add them later if i can find them)

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badass-at-fandoming · 3 years

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My Favorite Betrayal: Sevastian of the Winter

As one of the starter love interests for Lovestruck's popular Reigning Passions series, Sevastian of the Winter is a tumblr favorite. When I finally got around to reading his route, I enjoyed the stunning art and intricate writing--but this one moment really knocked me off my feet. I gotta post about it. Major spoilers ahoy.

One of the major themes in Sevastian's route is betrayal (which works so well in conversation with the theme of duty in Amara's route. The two routes are truly two sides of the same coin. But that's another post). From the plot to the art, betrayal, and its consequences, are everywhere. The decapitated statue in the Winter Quarter. Sevastian's nickname as "The Betrayer Prince." Heck, the Mark of the Betrayer Sevastian receives is mirrored on MC's sword-esque wedding dress.

[[Image ID 1, Sevastian pulls back his shirt to reveal a gleaming blue sword tattoo. The text reads, "Lines of twisting flame trace the shape of a stylized sword."]]

[[Image ID 2, MC and Sevastian stand side-by-side in their wedding clothes. MC's white dress has an incredibly deep and narrow neckline, with silver chain keeping it in the shape of sword. MC says, "Today marks the beginning of our life together."]]

As the plot goes on, Sevastian betrays, or contemplates betraying, various people and causes. Under the Silver Dagger persona, Sevastian betrays the other nobles by stealing their wealth. He betrays Lyris' trust and friendship by not talking to him after the wing debacle. He thinks about betraying his morals by murdering his father. You get the picture.

But there's one that stood out to me by a mile. It's this scene in s5:

[[Image ID 3, With weeping willows and fireflies behind them, Sevastian and MC stand distressed. MC has hold of Sevastian's forearm, while he leans slightly away from her. They both have anguished expressions on their faces]]

Let's re-orient. MC figures out she's the lost heir to Altadellys' throne. Lord Ubel, Sevastian's father, is salty about it, and MC and Sevastian flee his wrath and the capitol city. They hook up with the rebels, who oppose Ubel because he's an uber-rich dillweed. Led by General Nisse, the rebels task MC and Sevastian to convince the neighboring nation of Rovdyr to send troops and supplies. Our duo is on their way, but an ally betrays them. The situation devolves into a fight. A poisoned blade stabs Sevastian. Only MC's great-grandmother Edera pulling Sevastian into the hidden land of Fortrylle saves him. In this land infused with magical energy, time "stops" for Sevastian, and there's time to find the antidote for his ailment. Which is great, except the rebel cause is pressed for time. They need those Rovdyr allies. As illustrated in the above CG, Sevastian has the brilliant plan of leaving Fortrylle, letting himself die, and thereby forcing MC to get on with her royal future.

And I saw red.

My reaction was as searing as it was visceral. As a queer person, it's a very special experience to feel seen and represented in a work, but this was the first time I felt seen and absolutely hated it. This time, Sevastian was betraying MC and all they had fought for to be together. By throwing away his life, he was throwing all the choices MC had made to be with him right back in her face.

Part of the strength of my reaction stemmed from the fact that I had the 1980s AIDS epidemic on the brain. I'd recently watched Netflix's Circus of Books documentary. In it, a monogamous cishet couple recalled the epidemic and how it affected their lives and bookstore, which was a gay hot spot. Overnight, it seemed, their employees and customers started dying. They added hospital runs to their weekly errands. They called homophobic parents to inform them of their son's death.

And here, in the distorted mirror of fiction, was another queer man dying. No, not dying, but killing himself, so his partner "didn't have to suffer." So they "wouldn't be held back." So she could "move on" with her life and her queenly destiny. I'd heard those reasons before. I spiraled into the hundreds of stories of queer people killing themselves so their straight-passing partner could integrate into the heteronormative; into what others wanted them to be. The parallels drove me mad. Like these other deaths, his suicide felt so needless. Sevastian went on and on about how the rebels needed their queen, their rallying point.

The real kicker is: they don't. Like, no gamer wants to hear that their character is unnecessary to the story, but it's true in this case. MC and Sevastian don't bring anything particularly special to the rebel cause. They don't know military strategy or secret supply routes or a hitherto unknown access point to Altadellys. We learn later that Captain Amara and Queen Safir are around. With Amara's long history of service and Safir being the literal lost queen, they lend an equal, if not greater, sense of legitimacy to the revolt, and are excellent rallying points. Even securing Rovdyr forces don't require MC: General Nisse makes a war treaty with them on her own in Amara's route. The most MC and Sevastian contribute is Ubel's stolen funds. But once those are handed over, they're superfluous.

Just to nail this point home, MC has repeatedly said she doesn't have any particular inclination to be queen. It's more that the other options are terrible. Any destiny to be queen, any ultimate desire to wear the crown, is all in Sevastian's head. He's ignoring what she most wants, which is him, alive and by her side and loving her. I wanted to throttle him. In the midst of sickness and death, they had a chance to live in peace.

So, my God, was I impressed by this writing. For the low, low price of $0, I was absolutely knocked on my ass. Shit's GOOD, bro. I had to gush about it. Thank goodness the next scene gave us an affirming cuddle as a breather.

[[Image ID 4, MC and Sevastian stand close together in a grove of weeping willows. MC's eyes are closed. The text reads, "I lean into his chest as he curls his arms around me, half wishing I could crawl under his shirt and hide there."]]

This post is mega-long and has not real point besides LOOK AT THIS PRETTY, but ya know. Binge read Reigning Passions and you'll see what I mean. Thanks for reading!

#lovestruck #reigning passions #sevastian of the winter #homophobia #suicide #sickness #death #injury #well this got dark fast lol #circus of books #text post #everything's fine

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artemispanthar · 4 years

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I brought that up because ive seen people say that Mabel and dipper should not have been siblings, but romantic partners since they apparently didn't have the so called sibling dynamic. :') like, please chill. Siblings that get along are not a myth. Then they try saying Hirsh didn't really have a sister. Yeah ok, I guess his twin sister is imaginary then.

Ah yeah, people will distort anything to make it fit their pre-established frame of reference. Like, people without good sibling relationships (and who often have been conditioned to believe sibling relationship are naturally contentious due to the general culture around it) will have trouble interpreting a loving relationship between siblings as a sibling relationship, particularly that of a brother and sister (and especially tweens and teens). Often, people can accept friendly sisters, they can accept friendly brothers, but a brother and sister pair? Impossible!

So a loving relationship between a brother and sister will get interpreted as romantic because the only frame of reference people have for a loving relationship between a boy and a girl is a romantic one. When we see or experience something, our brains trawl our memory archives to compare it to, which helps us understand what we’re looking at. Without any examples of loving brother-sister pairs, all the loving behavior can get misinterpreted as romantic, because they’ve only seen that behavior between a boy and a girl in a romantic context

This is the same mechanism which causes people (who aren’t just outright homophobic) to interpret romantic relationships between two characters of the same sex as siblings, best friends, or parental. Because they lack a frame of reference for a romantic relationship between same-sex people, their brains default to the loving relationships they’re familiar with and they have a hard time understanding it outside of that context (this is particularly true for children’s media, where sex cannot be used as a narrative shortcut to demonstrate romantic intimacy).

They’re opposite conclusions but they’re really just two sides of the same coin.

This is why we need more loving siblings, platonic male/female pairs, and explicitly romantic same-sex couples in media (especially media for children). We need more frames of references for people to help expand their minds and understand relationships outside of what they may have personally encountered.

#artie talks #incest mention #as someone with four siblings and also as someone with a twin #I can tell you Dipper and Mabel absolutely have a sibling relationship #Anonymous

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thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 3 years

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okay but i mUST know. what..... i mean how did you start shipping grima and eomer??? am i missing something bookcanon-wise? like..... could you explain it to me?? I'm definitely intrigued!

oh lord - I started shipping them maybe ten years ago? It was something I stumbled upon, there was a fanfic on Livejournal that I read and it was them and I thought: Huh, I like the dynamic.

So no, you aren’t missing anything book!canon-wise.

Grima does have his sarcastic moments which we were robbed of in the film. Including him sassing Treebeard.

Because LOTR is ultimately a comedy.

Eomer is more somber in the movies and less hot-headed/prone to acting before thinking than he is in the books. We were also robbed of the time Saruman called Eomer a serpent, which is something I enjoy reading into as I like to imagine there is a bit of a cunning streak beneath Eomer’s bonhomie.

But the two of them interacting? There is nothing “on screen” in the book, but clearly they did. Aside from Eomer threatening Grima’s life in the king’s hall for, presumably, treason & looking-at-Eowyn reasons (which is why he was under quasi-house arrest when Gandalf et al showed up), they would have interacted. Like, it would make absolutely no sense if they never talked to each other/didn’t know one another.

Grima is a member of the King’s Household (he's taken an oath to Theoden and fulfills an adviser role, which makes him most likely a household member. It would be weird if he wasn’t) and Eomer grew up in Theoden’s household after his parents died.

We don’t know how long Grima has been working for Theoden, but I always assumed it was for a fair while. Well before the Treason Years, if only based on the line from Gandalf: “This here, is a snake. To slay it [Grima] would be just. But it was not always as it is now. Once it was a man, and it did you service in its fashion.”

So, they would have known each other, interacted, worked together in some capacity. Eomer as Third Marshal would have had dealings with his uncle’s main adviser, just out of necessity to make sure there’s coordinated approaches in tithing, maintaining winter rations, defense of the borders, road maintenance etc. All those day to day workings of a geographically disparate kingdom.

Anyway - as for why I ship them? tl;dr: I like the opposite-attract dynamic; couples-who-bicker is a favourite trope; angst!potential!high!; fun things to explore in terms of leadership/kingship/how do you make a decision when there is no moral choice to be made? All options for X situation are terrible. Make your bed and lie in it./Necessary Man + Honourable Man = hnnnngyes/People finding their way in from the cold is beautiful/I just Really Love Redemption Ok??

I like the dynamic - I am a sucker for The Mean Cold One Falls In Love With The Sunshine One. Also, if we run with Eomer being a little more sly than people assume he is, there is a lot of possibility there with the two of them snaking around one another.

(Grima: I thought I was the only gay snake in the village.)

Grima is a favourite character and I never was into Grima/Eowyn, personally. They’re too similar (two sides of the same coin), so it’s not really my cup of tea. I love dynamic, drastic opposites. Also, I almost never write/engage with straight pairings in fandom. Ever. Because I can’t write straight people. Everyone is bi/queer/something when I write them. (Side-characters are an exception; but main people? Never straight)

Enemies-to-grumblegrumble-to-lovers is the Best Trope; followed closely by we-must-continue-to-pretend-to-be-enemies-for-reputation-reasons.

Court! Politics! Are! Fun! Grima and Eomer as a team is such a ruthless combo and all of Rohan should tremble. Like actually though, great power couple potential.

Angst potential is high! But with catharsis, because this is LOTR after all.

Grima’s subversion of gender is something that speaks to me on a spiritual level. Much of it is born from the classic “evil=effeminate” equation that consciously, or subconsciously, appears in fiction for misogyny/homophobic/etc. reasons. But, it’s present in the text and I am always drawn to those characters and enjoy smashing them together with their polar opposite.

The above is further complicated by Rohan’s hyper-masculine militarized idealization of manliness and what is expected of men in terms of behaviour; occupation; relationships with each other and with women; socialization etc.

Trauma is born from relationships, and it is through relationships that we heal trauma. This isn’t to say that you can “fix” or “heal”or “save” a person, because you can’t. That’s not how things work. But relationships are still integral to healing. Particularly, having safe, healthy ones help give a person the space they need to work through their things and come out the other side.

I love the journey of someone who is on the bad-guy side switching over to the good side but they still remain an ugly person in many ways. Goodness doesn’t require niceness. Grima is a nasty person, but I like the idea of him being a mean piece of work who is has learned to be like I GUESS I WILL MAKE THE MORAL CHOICE FUCK IT FINE. UGH.

Eomer learning kingship, especially in the shadow of Theodred’s death and Aragorn’s Straight-From-A-Fairy-Tale kingship, has buckets of potential. So, adding to that, Grima/Eomer makes for an excellent opportunity to explore power, what it means to lead, what it means to be a real-human-king and not the ideal that is stitched into tapestries and sung about in mead halls.

Related to the above: questions of what it means to be the Necessary Man who makes the Necessary But Often Brutal Decisions are fun to explore, and again, this dynamic really lends itself to it. More so, if you run with Eomer having a bit of a snakish streak in him that he is aware of - take your pick on if he is trying to suppress it; work with it; run with it; ignore it lalala je suis Honourable(tm).

Additionally, the idea of love of country and desire to ensure survival becoming warped into something evil? I live for it. Then finding a way back to the light? Sign me up.

Sorry for the long reply! Again, tl;dr: I like the opposite-attract dynamic; couples-who-bicker is a favourite trope; angst!potential!high!; fun things to explore in terms of leadership/kingship/how do you make a decision when there is no moral choice to be made? All options for X situation are terrible. Make your bed and lie in it./Necessary Man + Honourable Man = hnnnngyes/People finding their way in from the cold is beautiful/I just Really Love Redemption Ok??

Much of what I like about them is bound up in what I like about Grima and his character and the potential that he had to exemplify the idea that it is a kind act, a loving act, that can change the world. Frodo offered his hand, offered forgiveness, offered safety and peace and Grima was going to take it (and all that comes with that, including relearning goodness). But then Tolkien killed him off. What a sad ending.

Anyway - not sure if this makes sense or is helpful as a response!

#LOTR #lord of the rings #Eomer #grima wormtonge #griomer #grima x eomer #ask #reply #anon

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sevynspeakstothesky · 3 years

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In rebuttal to Buckbreaking(2021) By Sevyn Sky Selby Wednesday June 9, 2021

If you have not seen Buckbreaking, a document by Tariq Nasheed, here is a breakdown: Black men, including Rizza Islam and Joe Brown, sitting around giving what they preserve to be a historical take on the history of homosexuality in the black community. They bestow not only brutality but genius on the white race as being the source of all alt sexuality and identity. They are in fact ignorant and forgetting that many of us, like myself are native to the Americas where Two Spirit people were and are to this day revered. The term Two Spirit is the Native American all-encompassing term for LGBTQ individuals where white Americans coined the term bisexuality from. White people are not the creator of non cis identities or non-straight sexuality. The men in this documentary give them way too much credit. However, the film makes some points like black people, especially black men where on the receiving end of anal rape and degradation for centuries.

Very violently, the disdain for the LGBT community is spit out in this docuseries. To that I ask, were the commentors sons or daughters either feminine or masculine presenting and self-proclaimed as gay or trans what would you do? I think I know the answer. They would beat and mentally, emotionally abuse their children into submission. If that did not work, would they kick them out in the street. A tale too many of us are familiar with. How are we as black LGBT people being punished for what they claim as a white created problem? Homo same relationships and gender role reversals were well documented before slavery and often as black people we equate the beginning of our history as slavery forgetting the richness of our rule and ancestry. In the documentary same sex relations and trans people are linked to pedophilia but people failed to realize the pedophiles are in everyday life, in parents, in men, women, pasters, uncles, aunts, strangers, friends and more times than often not committed acts by trusted authority figures. But calling Two Spirt people abusers because we choose not to acknowledge their sexualities and identities as valid is an easy scapegoat for ignoring these facts. We also forget that for every child failed in anyway the culprit is 9.9/10 times the fault of a cisgender and proclaimed straight parent.

What the documentary gets right is that white people are depraved and that conjunction with Christianity and so-called organized religion, a once great two spirited community became demonized. What I see is a group of black men oppressing a subgroup of black people by comparing them to their white counterparts. How can a divide be inclusive? If they had done their studies, they might find that the racial divide is just as big amongst gays. Or that black LGBT folks suffer from homelessness and poverty at way more alarming rates than their Caucasian counter parts. In black and brown communities, sexually fluid and gender non-conforming youth are thrown out as soon as they are no longer controllable in the worst-case scenario. This leaves them subject to real predators and pedophiles on the streets and often forced into prostitution rather than being abused and not being able to live their truth under a roof by their own parents. This is what the youth are experiencing. It is not fair to hold black people to a higher and harsher standard than the actual culprit of crimes against humanity, the white male and by extension the white woman.

If black and brown gay men and transwomen are the victims of mental manipulation, feminization and ritual abuse as the film suggest, how does the attack on us make the situation better? Why do we have to further stand the abuse from our own community by what was done and is still being done today. Why is so easy for us to oppress our own and not see ourselves in ourselves or our youth?

A whole community is suffering mentally and emotionally because they are not being able to express themselves or believed when they tell you who they are and their stance. And when we believe them, they are demonized. We are contributing to this detrimental atmosphere of systemic and mental slavery where our children cannot grow. This is the remanent of slavery we should be worried about and what these men could have used their platform to bring awareness to. Again, let’s not forget, the conditions we find ourselves in today stem from the failures of cisgender, straight parents. The foster system is filled by them, the gay community is thrown out by them and mental abuse is perpetuated by them. While there are historic points made, we have more important things to worry about, like better ways of parenting and letting our children express themselves.

An important conversation being had today is Dwayne wade and his daughter Zaya Wade who is accepted and thriving. I commend Wade and Gabrielle Unions parenting. I’m interested to see the growth of a young trans person who is allowed to flourish. We need more voices like Dwayne Wade and less like rapper Boosie who has been labeled as transphobic and homophobic in his career. In light of the Zaya Wade news, Boosie proclaiming to Zaya’s father in a social media video, “don’t cut off his parts man,’ misgendering and referring to the genitals of a 13-year-old Zaya. Boosie has also been called out for not only referencing a minors private but also suspected homo same comments and an obsession with the male phallus on serial occasions. Boosie is a voice of a generation of ignorant misinformed melaninated people who choose to subjugate those under the umbrella of LGBTQ+. His and other voices like his are the ones people want to flock to instead of the Wades of the world because we have been so indoctrinated with a sense of self oppression. Think of all the children and adults who have suffered mentally anguish due to these views and religion. A great example being Donnie McClurkin who just this year has said how unhappy he is and proclaimed himself as asexual because of conflicting feeling within himself.

We cannot continue to allow hate pieces like Buckbreaking to be made where a whole community is likened to child abusers when people like Boosie are praised. We cannot allow people like Rizza Islam, who loves and idolizes Prince and Michael Jackson, both men who were on the extreme feminine side of the spectrum, then turn around a exclaim how much of a sin gay people are. This documentary stunk of gender inferiority, patriarchy, and perpetuated slave mindset. The melanated Two Spirit and LGBT community is here, always has been and always will be. A goal of ours as melanated people must be to remember who the real divider and manipulator is and unifying to fight that energy and not creating schisms and oppressing parts of our own body.

#buckbreaking #2021 #tariq nasheed #rizzaislam #slavery #lgbtq #lgbt history #lgbt pride #gay #trans women #transgender #pride month #pride 2021 #antiblackness #rape

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wormstacheangel · 4 years

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Breakup Over Insecurities

Dean has never been happier than he is now with his long time boyfriend, Castiel. Then Cas pops the question and Dean decides to fuck everything up.

Read it on [AO3]

Dean stood by his car watching Cas's family help Cas pack stuff into boxes. Dean was hoping that by the time he came home they would all be gone but that wasn't the case. Now Dean had to fight the urge to yell at everyone to put it all back. To scream at Cas, beg him, to make it work but he knew this was for the best. Cas wanted a life with him. One with wedding rings, a house, and little munchkins running around them. Dean knew that already, he knew all along that it was Cas's end goal. He always wanted to be a father with a big family like his own.

But Dean, as much as he wanted the same thing, he was scared.

It has been 5 years since he found Cas, tucked away in the back of the library with papers scattered all over him and glasses falling off the edge of his nose. It was so easy to fall in love with that deep chuckled laugh and nose crinkled smile. Every day felt like time was speeding up or slowing down just for them and Dean knew that Cas was the one for him on their third date.

Now the love of his life was leaving him for good. No more fights or discussions over this. No more waiting. No more relationship.

They have been fighting for over a week because Dean has said no to Cas's proposal.

"I like what we have now? Why do we have to change that?"

"I like what we have too, Dean, but I want more! I want to be married to you!"

"I just-" Dean couldn't look at Cas as his own heart was breaking. "I can't."

Cas left that night. It was the first time Dean has slept alone in a bed over the course of their relationship and he didn't get a wink of sleep. Cas didn't stay the night for a whole week. Every time he would come over they only ever ended up fighting.

"Are you embarrassed of me?"

"No!" Dean quickly said wanting to pull Cas into a tight embrace but fought the urge since Cas has already told him not to touch him. "Sweetheart, that's not it."

"Then why, Dean? Why won't you marry me? Why won't you tell your family about me? My family loves you. My friends love you. Why is our family here not enough for you? Why am I not enough for you?"

"Cas," Dean scrubbed his face with his hand as he tried to figure out what to say. "My dad-"

"Don't give me that excuse, Dean! I know your Dad is a homophobic asshole but why do we have to, why do you have to, live up to his standards? Your mother will still love you! Sam will still love you! I will still love you!"

But Dean couldn't move past it. His father's words echoed in his brain, getting louder with every passing day that Cas was away.

Now he lost him.

Dean couldn't stand there anymore. Instead, he got back in his car and drove the two-hour drive to visit his little brother.

He must have looked as tired and defeated as he felt because the flash of concern that appeared on Sam's face as soon as he saw Dean was obvious.

"Dude, what the hell happened to you? You look...awful."

"Nice seeing you too, Sammy."

"Oh, sorry, I was just surprised is all. What are you doing here? Where's Cas?"

"Gone." Dean pushes pass Sam and walks into his apartment, headed to the fridge for a beer.

"Gone? What do you mean gone?" Sam closes the door behind him and stalks after Dean for answers. "What did you do?"

Dean pops the cap off the beer and glared at his brother as he answered. "Nothing! He left because he wanted too." Then took a swig of the cheap beer wishing for something stronger but Sam doesn't keep any good stuff in his place.

Sam crosses his arms over his chest. "I doubt that. Dean, what happened?"

Sam looked at him with those big eyes of his and Dean thought, what the heck? Cas is gone so might as well come out and say it.

"He-he um," Nope it was too hard. He can't. He can't have his little brother look at him in disgust and disappointment. He can't risk losing his boyfriend and brother all in one night. So Dean shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you, Sam!"

"Did you two break up or something?" Sam said it so casually that it made Dean almost spit out his beer but he ended up choking on it instead. The bubbles going up to his nose as he coughed. Sam took a step towards him, ready to pat his back, but Dean took a step away from him as he held his hands up to stop his brother.

"Break up?" He finally coughed out when he had enough air.

Sam only nodded, eyebrows scrunching together, as he frowned at Dean. "Or did you two just fight? I didn't think you guys fought much. You guys seemed like two sides of the same coin." He playfully added with a twitch of a smile.

"Sam, what the hell are you talking about? Cas and I aren't-" Dean tried his usual annoyed defense but Sam only looked at him with one eyebrow raised. As if saying 'really dean?' So Dean just sighed in defeat. "When the hell did you find out?"

"Five years ago."

"F-five- Sam! you knew the whole time?"

"Of course, I did! You're an idiot! Do you think I wouldn't notice my dumbass brother falling in love right in front of me? It was always 'Cas said this.' 'Cas did that.' If I wasn't so happy for you I would have punched you."

"This whole time I could have talked to you about...Then why didn't you tell me?"

"I was waiting for you to tell me!"

"And you don't...You don't think it's bad?"

"Bad? What that you like guys? No, of course not, Dean! Is that why you never told me? You think I wouldn't like it?"

"I was scared you would look at me differently. Act like-"

"Like Dad?" Dean only gave a stiff nod in response. "When have I ever agreed with anything Dad said? Dean, you're my big brother, and I support you no matter who you love. Plus, I like Cas."

"Yeah," Dean felt the lump in his throat as he put the beer down on the counter cause he'll be damn if he came out to his little brother and cry in front of him in the span of five minutes. "I liked him too."

"Are you going to tell me what happened?"

So Dean does and he only got yelled at, again, for being a dumbass.

"You can't let Dad fuck with your life all the time, Dean! I know he's hurt you but you got move on from it or you're really gonna end up losing your one chance of happiness!"

"It's not that easy, Sam!"

"Stop making it difficult then! Care about your own damn self for once, Dean, and stop caring about what others think of you!"

"Cas is already gone anyway. So what's the point in standing up to Dad now!"

"Cause you know Cas isn't really gone, Dean. What he wants, you can still give him that. You can still do that for him. For both of you."

Dean thought it over for just a second, all he really needed is to picture Cas's laughing face, for him to nod in agreement. He looked back at his brother as he whispered, "Come with me?"

So Dean drove down to his parent's house with his brother by his side.

Mom opened the door, and just like Sam, the happy smile turned into concern.

"Mom? Dad? I need to talk to you both." Dean finally said as he sat his parents down on the couch. Sam stood behind the couch with a comforting smile and gives Dean the thumbs up to continue.

So he did. He got everything off his chest.

There was a lot of yelling. A lot more crying. Followed by more yelling and Dean having to stop Sam from landing a punch on his Dad. All in all, it ended much better than Dean thought. Dad only kicked them out of the house and told them not to show their faces to him again.

Dean expected to feel anything but relieved but it was such an overwhelming feeling that when Dean got back in the car with his brother he just started to laugh or cry he wasn’t sure which one but the load off his back was gone. His dad's voice was gone. He was free from him.

When Dean got his head to focus again he drove straight home, hoping Cas would still be there.

And there in the steps of their rented shared place sat Cas, with one last box by his side but nobody else was there.

Cas got up as soon as Dean parked and he looked angry, annoyed, but then confused when he saw Sam getting out of the passenger seat. The words Cas probably wanted to yell out at Dean were swallowed down and replaced with, "Sam? What are you doing here?"

Sam shrugged with a big grin on his face. "Dean dragged me out here for some reason."

"Dean?" Cas looked annoyed because he thought Sam didn't know about them so he can't act like a mad boyfriend in front of him. "What's going-?"

Cas didn't have time to finish his sentence as Dean closed the distance between them and pressed their lips together into a hard kiss. Cas was shocked by his action that he pulled away quickly, not taking a step back, but looked at Dean with wide eyes. "D-Dean?"

His eyes rested on Sam as if to remind him that he was there but Sam only chuckled.

"He knows already, Sweetheart."

"He does? You-you told him?"

"No, he already knew apparently but he made me see how stupid I have been. Hiding you away instead of showing you off."

"Dean but your father-"

"Screw him!" Dean cheerfully said. "He told me I was dead to him and I'm just gonna return the favor. Now he won't get a chance to meet his grandkids."

"Grandkids!"

"I mean if you still want to have some!"

"I-I do." Cas blushing cheeks and growing smile

"Then let's have a whole band of kids."

Cas chuckled and nodded. "Sounds like a good plan."

"Cas, can you ask me again? I want to change my answer. A do-over so ask me again. Please."

Cas eyes soften up as he reached to take Dean’s hand, taking a step forward, as he looked back at Dean with a little hesitation but with all the love in the world. "Dean, will you marry me?"

"Yes." Dean answered just as Cas finished, making him laugh and it made Dean’s stomach flip. He couldn’t imagine living his life without him. “Yes. Yes. Fuck yes, I’ll marry you.”

#Destiel #Deancas #Dean Winchester #Castiel #Cas #Dean #Supernatural #SPN #A More Profound OTP #established relationship #destiel fanfic #destiel ficlet #fic #fanfic #My Writing

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littlemicrocosims · 5 years

Text

need to vent about chocolate real quick

okay so some of you may know that I used to work for choccywoccydoodah (if you’ve heard of it, great, if you haven’t, i’m also not surprised). Choccy just went out of business and I just need to vent because all the news coverage (the few bbc articles etc there are anyway) are making me SO ANGRY so if you want chocolatey behind the scenes drama and what it was ACTUALLY like to be employed by christine taylor READ ON

The entire news coverage for this business going into administration is solely ‘oh what a shame this awesome creative business is gone! noone could have predicted it! such a shock we all loved it!” lIKE NO FUCK OFF IF YOU SPOKE TO A SINGLE PERSON THAT WORKED THERE YOU WOULD KNOW THAT THIS IS NOT A SURPRISE AT ALL. This has been coming for YEARS. This company has been driven into the ground by Christine Taylor and if you ever watched the TV show i’m sure you have a little understanding as to why that is.

When I worked at the company (for about a year between 2016 - 2017), I was told many things by the owners. It’s a million dollar company, she said. It’s international. We make MAGIC. And yes, to an extent, they did make magic. The two Christine’s founded the company in Brighton in 1994 and carved a niche for themselves. They made amazing cakes for amazing people and I was so, so thrilled to be a part of it. The TV show had already ceased filming by this point, of course, and whilst the show was still running in some countries (the company was inexplicably popular in the Netherlands, I came to realise) the popularity of the show within the UK was something akin to marmite... Either you love it, or... well, you’ve never heard of it. I always knew the company and its running was unconventional - no safety training for the amount of physical labour you had to do, an incredibly stressful work environment, always expected to work unpaid overtime, the list goes on - but I loved it anyway. My manager was an amazing woman (and still is!) and I was keen to learn and master what I could. This is when the cracks started to show. Christine and Christine would make plans - we want to promote you, but we can’t promote anyone unless they’ve worked here over a year, we want to open a third store, we’re going to launch a side business, here’s a range of more affordable cakes that we are going to sell - but somehow, nothing ever followed through. They could barely afford to run two shops (one in brighton, one in central london, where i worked), let alone even CONSIDER opening a third. Their marketing relied solely on the now outdated television show and they refused to upgrade with the times. They weren’t without help - younger members of the team had plenty of suggestions and contributions but they were never recognised or accepted. I managed to convince them to invest in snapchat geo-filters (as all customers did in the shop was record and take photos). Not a huge step, but a small one in the right direction. This was once they actually ALLOWED people to film - for months part of my job was telling people to put their phones away! Why make edible art if you can’t even share it!? Their social media ‘team’ consisted of some guy who used to bake the cakes and got promoted to Christine’s PA. He could barely even spell, let alone maintain a facebook, an instagram, a youtube... To put it bluntly, they knew fuck all about promoting their own company and got complacent in how successful they had once been.

To compensate for this, the company began raising prices. The impractical “chunky bars” rose in price in the time I was at the company from £12.99 to £14.99, while cakes for 10 servings jumped from £35.99 to £40+. Commissions that staff had got and were promised for another quarter for bespoke cake consultations disappeared with no warning. They began outsourcing more and more chocolate, reducing the cocoa content of the chocolate they DID create, and staff began leaving. I thought the high turnover was normal. If you’ve watched the show, you know that Dave made all the magic happen. Well, people like Dave started leaving. Once the two Christines decided they didn’t like a member of staff, they would quietly sit and gather evidence of the smallest infractions until they had enough to fire you or play hardball until you quit before they could pull the trigger. I saw this happen to many, many members of staff in my time there. Luckily, they always seemed to like me, but I have a feeling that if I’d stayed any longer the same would have happened to me. It happened to their own son, who they demoted from operations manager in favour of the london store manager. He got no say in this. They never gave the new operations manager the payrise for her promotion for the year plus that she held the position (until closing) and they regularly expected her to work 6/7 day weeks as they refused to replace staff that were leaving. She was expected to continue to manage the london branch as well as manager the operations for the entire company. She HAD to work these hours just to make sure there was a senior member of staff in the building. This was around the time I decided the stress and constant crying when I finished my shift every night was too much, and I made the very hard decision to leave despite not having anything else lined up. I was in a fortunate position of living with my parents and having a safety net. Not everyone else had that.

Since I left the company, things only deteriorated further. The Carnaby Street store (just off oxford circus, in central london) was deemed too expensive to rent, and they moved to covent garden, to a location my former manager oh-so affectionately refers to as “crack alley”. It was unsafe and I’ve been told that staff closing up in the evenings would regularly have to ask for backup as they would feel at risk within the store. The size of the team started to dwindle (the whole company was 50+ strong over both stores and the studios when I was there, it was 20-30 when it shut and the london store alone had 6/7 members of staff). More members of staff left without replacements. Then the inevitable happened - Dave reduced his hours, with an intention to leave, leaving very few people in the studio able to actually make the cakes (which were often dry and poorly made as it was, people regularly found bits of plastic in the cafe cakes and the cafes never even got what they ordered in the first place). Being incredibly secretive about her processes, Christine had staff sign an NDA to know the ‘secret formula’ for the modelling chocolate. Like it’s a goddamn krabby patty. So when Dave began to move away and the other staff from the studio moved on as well, instead of training anyone new to make the cakes, Chris decided she would just... price people out of them. She’d long since abandoned any premise of making affordable versions of her cakes for weddings and raised the minimum price of a bespoke design from £450 to £2,500!!!! The one thing her company was well known for and she priced everyone out of it. Just because she’s made a few cakes for celebrities (I helped design one for Jack Whitehall while I was there, but other big names include Tinie Tempah, Johnny Depp, Kylie Minogue, Boy George, the Game of Thrones launch party....) she arrogantly believed that her entire clientele could afford this, when actually her entire clientele was children who loved the show and their hard working families. These people simply cannot afford £50 for a 10 portion cake, or £30 for a slice of cake and a drink in a cafe. £5 for an outsourced chocolate coin! £20 for a bar of chocolate! She was out of touch, and arrogant, and stubborn. Other companies do it better and cheaper and she refused to ever acknowledge her competition, let alone follow through on any plans to be better.

The staff who were made redundant were barely even informed. No notice. They were told they had to vacate the building and haven’t even been paid for their last week of work, while the Brighton store continued trading for nearly a week. Because the company hadn’t gone into administration yet, they aren’t even able to claim redundancy from the government. Couples who have paid an eye watering amount of money for bespoke wedding cakes are being left up shit creek without a paddle while Christine retires to her bloody house in france to lick her wounds.

Other thoughts:

- Doggymoggydoodah was a shit idea, and poorly executed. - I’ve never met such a homophobic lesbian. She forced the manager to leave the building so she could drill her about her sex life without the repercussions of having these conversations inside the building because she knew she could get done for it if she did. - She’s a bully, plain and simple - the youtube channel posted a video YESTERDAY. who the fuck is posting on there? there’s been no action in 6 months and NOW IS THE TIME TO TELL ME HOW TO CUT ONE OF YOUR CAKES? - my old assistant manager literally robbed the company of several thousand pounds because she knew that christine couldn’t be bothered to get her security cameras fixed :) they couldn’t even get the proof to fire/charge her and had to settle for bullying her out of the company - christine would make us tell customers that we melted down display pieces to reduce waste but actually we just broke them down with a hammer and threw them in the bin. enjoy looking at that luxury easter egg knowing i literally stomped on it so it would fit in a binbag - that glitter on the cakes is not edible. it’s just non-toxic. - the chocolate they use for the modelling tastes vile. - the london stores had biiiiig rat/mice problems. We had to kill them ourselves! We trapped them in glue traps and stamped on them! I GOT PAID FOR THAT! - the brighton store was filthy and gross behind the scenes! If you’ve ever eaten in that cafe then I am sorry but the staff there didn’t like to clean :) - that whole burlesque vibe isn’t child friendly, stop trying to combine the two, a cartoon drawing of your naked ass doesn’t belong in a cookery book you narcissistic twat!! - your chocolate is impractical and horrific to actually try and eat. there. I said it. it tasted good though. until you discontinued all my favs :(

THIS IS NOT A SURPRISE. THIS IS NOT A SHOCK. THIS BUSINESS HAS BEEN POORLY RUN AND UNABLE TO ADAPT FROM THE GET GO. Please don’t keep feeding this woman’s ego. She needs a sharp dose of reality and to face up to all the staff that she has let down. I was lucky to get out when I did but I know single mothers, people trying to afford to live in london who are now completely screwed over and out of a job. People who have given their lives to this dysfunctional company. I begged them to leave because I felt like this was going to happen but they were too loyal and devoted, and wanted it to turn around. My former boss is owed nearly £5k that she’s never going to get, and all those customers who put deposits down or heaven forbid paid the full balance on their cakes are without refunds AND cakes! Just please stop idolising Christine Taylor and look at the situation before you say how shocking and sad it is.

Yes, this company was magical. But that ended a long time ago.

#choccywoccydoodah #real talk #personal #delete later #text post

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cryptidvoidz · 6 years

Text

Keep Them Safe: Chapter Six

Based on @whatwashernameagain‘s fic: Keep Him Safe

Warnings: Cussing, of course, maybe some feels if y'all are allergic, homophobic comments, more insults, more feels. If there's anything you feel the need to be tagged, lemme know!

Chapter One

Tag List: @himrachel @whatwashernameagain

Summary: It's been a few days, but Redmond has already memorized his job by heart, and the regulars (which is partly thanks to Patton), so he's surprised to see a regular break from his routine, and the state he's in.

Oliver? Well he's just been dealing with feels and the persistent calling of the Megabitch.

It's already been three- no, four- days since Redmond started working at the Pat-isserie, and he had already come to memorize the schedule of regulars, the way things were done, and noted things that he should bring up to Patton about working on, or adding. His first day introduced him to some of the most frequent regulars to populate the cafe; the whole precinct. Specifically, he had been introduced to Detective Sanders and Detective Prince, who both eyed him with caution. Redmond couldn't say he blamed the two of them. He had, after all, been hired on the spot, and he had heard about the break in caused by a local gang.

His phone lit up with a text from his brother, Rhys. They were twins, but they looked nothing alike. Swiping his phone, he saw that his family was planning a get together, and grimaced. His parents were pretty strict when he was a kid, and expected great things from all of them. If they were to find out he had completed medical school, and hadn't pursued a career... No, he thought, shaking his head, I opened up my own business and maintained it for four years. They have to be proud of that.

Redmond was a middle child in a family of seven. Going in order of oldest to youngest, it went Robin, Regina, himself, Rhys, and little Rosie. Him and Rhys were the only boys, and so naturally, he knew things such as sewing and cooking. Helpful talents, he admitted, especially when you went to college and couldn't afford much. Another text made his phone nearly buzz off of the counter, causing him to snatch it up.

Gina: HEEEEEY LITTLE BRO~ YOU COMING TO THE FAMILY GATHERING? Red: Perhaps. What's in it for me? Gina: FREE FOOD AND YOU GET TO BE BLESSED BY MY PRESENCE OF COURSE~ Red: Oh? Then I think I'll pass. Gina: OH SHUT UP. BESIDES, MA AND PA WANT TO MEET THIS MYSTERY MAN YOU'VE BEEN SEEING. YOU REFUSED TO BRING HIM LAST TIME.

Oh no... They didn't know about his breakup. And why did she keep using all caps? It's unbearable.

Red: Oh, uh... About that. Gina: GREAT, WE'LL SEE YOU TWO THERE! :D Red: ... Gina... Gina: I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE WHO CAPTURED MY BROTHER'S HEART

The man threw his phone back down on the counter in frustration and redid his ponytail. Regina was an overly optimistic woman, but was also very... blind to things. It's better to give up now, and just show up, alone, like he had done last year. For a moment, he wondered if Danny would want to come, and then remembered who Danny's father was, which only soured his mood even more.

Part of him just wanted to forgive the damn redhead, but he was too stubborn. He knew twelve years was way too long to hold a grudge. Perhaps he should, at the very least, attempt to get along with his former friend, even if it's just for Danny. Just Danny, not for any other reason, he thought quickly.

His thinking was cut off by the jingle of the door opening, and lo and behold, speak of the devil. The detective didn't even glance at him as he flopped on the couch, scrubbing at his face aggressively. Too aggressively, Redmond observed, pursing his lips. While he still held a grudge, he knew those signs all to well. If he had to assume, his new customer had just gotten off of the phone with his mother.

Hurriedly, the barista made a cup of chamomile tea, gagging ever so slightly at the amount of sugar, and grabbed a blueberry muffin. His favorite. Setting both the tea and muffin on the table next to the punk, he shoved the others feet off of the couch and sat down stiffly next to him. Redmond sighed, speaking before he could consider just ignoring the crying mess next to him.

"What did she want?" His voice wavered a little and sounded rough, but knew he had Oliver's attention when he had looked up in shock and confusion. Redmond tried again. "Your mother, you just got off the phone with her, right? What did the Megabitch want this time?" A nickname that Redmond had coined after watching the movie Drop Dead Fred, sure, but it fit her all the same.

A slight huff left Oliver, the corners of his mouth twitching up as he made one of his hands into a flattened "O" shape and smacked it against his other palm twice. Redmond's eyebrows knitted together as his eyes narrowed. Money. Of course she wanted money. Oliver added, "How did you know it was her?"

The ginger glanced over at the smaller man next to him. "We were best friends for sixteen years, Oliver, I know the signs," he stated nonchalantly. "What else did she want? I know you, and I know that woman who likes to call herself a mother."

Oliver looked down and spelled out a few letters, instantly causing Redmond to growl. "No. Absolutely not. If you EVER let that bitch near your kid, I swear to all the gods that I'll never forgive you." His outburst caused the detective to recoil noticeably, and he took a deep breath to calm himself, shifting so he was facing Oliver. "Look, you may have done some terrible shit in the past, stuff that I'm still working past-" the detective hung his head "-but Danny? I love that energetic little shit, okay? He's an adorable, smart, gifted kid, and I don't want him to be tainted by Satan herself. Danny is the reason I'm even willing to work things out with you. God, why do you even keep in contact with your mom? You know she's toxic!"

"Satan wishes he could be that evil..." the gestures said, and Redmond's look hardened.

"Stop avoiding the question, Oliver Frey."

Oliver fidgeted. His fingers picked at the cuff of his worn out jeans, and finally, Redmond had had enough. Snatching the other's phone away, he swiftly unlocked the phone and scrolled through the message history. His dark blue eyes widened in horror at the things she had said, most of which blamed Oliver for losing "the only one who would ever care for" him, going on about he was going to hell for liking men, and going on about how much his wife had been a slut. It made his blood boil. He knew Anna Watson. He knew about the arranged marriage between her and his best friend. How dare this woman paint that sweet angel in such a horrible like that? He continued reading, before finally turning off the screen.

One glimpse at Oliver showed that the detective had curled in on himself, and Redmond looked at him. Like, really looked at him. The man's hair was even more disheveled than usual, his clothes looked rumpled, and even his eyes seemed duller. And then Redmond's eyes were drawn to the bandaged hand, his only thought wondering if that was his fault.

Making a split decision, he scooted closer and wraps his arms around the other's shoulders, the physical contact feeling foreign to him. He felt Oliver stiffen next to him, and he briefly wondered if he had gone too far, but then Oliver melted into his touch, fresh tears spilling over his cheeks as Redmond held him close, his thumb rubbing slow circles on his arm, and running a hesitant hand through the wild red hair.

Redmond had no idea how long they sat like that, but he had only noticed Oliver had fallen asleep when Patton walked in, followed by the loud noise that was Roman Prince, and a softer voice that sounded like scolding. The small detective just shifted closer, burying his face into the crook of Redmond's neck, sighing softly. He didn't even wake up when Roman and Patton simultaneously squealed. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Detective Sanders, Logan was his name, right?, pulling out his phone and snapping a photo.

It was then that Redmond realized Oliver hadn't said those things out of hate, he had said them to protect him, and the guilt weighed heavily. He could only imagine how Oliver felt after he had been treated with such coldness from the barista, and Redmond vowed to fix things. Not just for Danny anymore, but for himself as well.

The long haired man yawned, pulling the detective closer in the process. They were basically cuddling at this point, but Redmond didn't mind. Soon, Dexter was shaking him awake. When had he fallen asleep? His mind could barely make an coherent thoughts, but he knew in the back of his mind he had been moved. His side suddenly felt cold, and he made a disgruntled noise, eyes still heavy from sleep. How long had he been asleep?

A chuckle made him blink. Oliver sat in front of him, hair sticking out in places, holding a hand out to the sleepy barista. He didn't need to sign anything for Redmond to get the message. They were going to get him home. Red and blue blurred in his vision, and took Oliver's hand, standing and almost immediately slumping over onto the pink and gray clad detective. "Home with you..." he mumbled. He hadn't noticed how touch-starved he was.

Oliver tensed at his words, before smiling a little and nodding. Dexter said something, but he was too tired to understand what he was saying. He could only pay attention to how the ground suddenly disappeared, and the arms around him. They weren't the same as the arms from earlier, and he pouted. Dexter's chest rumbled with a deep laughter as he carried the tired barista out of the door.

He felt soft sheets around him. Had he fallen back asleep? Mm, that warmth was back again, making Redmond feel fuzzy and content. He wrapped his arms around the warmth happily, making a noise of relaxation as he drifted back to sleep.

Oliver felt his former friend's body curl around his as he fell back asleep, leaving Oliver to think about the events that had transpired. It was clear that Redmond loved Danny, and was willing to work through things with the detective because of that. It had utterly shocked both him and Dexter when the barista insisted on going home with him, and how quick he was to keep in physical contact with him. The train of thought brought him back to the faint bruises he had noticed on his wrists when Oliver first saw him after twelve years. Exactly how bad was his last relationship? Shaking his head, he turned his attention back to the man who was cuddled up to him.

Reaching around, Oliver gently tugged the hair tye out of Redmond's hair, smiling as the warm orange hair fell, framing his face. His breathing had evened out, and in that moment, Oliver realized he'd never seen the other like this and became entranced. He soaked in every detail, even the little scar beneath his left eye, Oliver vaguely wondering where he had gotten that, and lightly ran his hands through the pumpkin colored locks, and when Redmond sighed happily and snuggled even closer, the detective realized once again how much he actually loved the man next to him and finally let a small smile grace his lips.

Tugging the blanket over them, he removed his glasses and curled into the taller male's arms, finally content.

#keep them safe #keep him safe fanfic #sanders sides #redsworld #oliver frey #redmond drop #logan sanders #roman sanders #angst #tw homophobia #oof #fluff at the end #just cuddles rn #no romance yet #suffer with me

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soc3300-lifeart · 4 years

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“Two Sides, One Coin” - Afrah Rasheed, 12/15/2019. Acrylic on canvas.

Click on the pictures for a better resolution.

This is the painting for the first interview I conducted with Maria. Maria is a 20 year old woman (she/her/hers) who moved to the Midwest from Puerto Rico when she was 12 years old. She currently lives with her younger sister, two parents, and some extended family, all who play a significant role in her life.

This painting embodies what she has taken from both her Puerto Rican culture and the Midwestern culture she is living in now. The two sides reflects these different cultures, and the one coin is her life.

She discusses her Puerto Rican heritage first. She describes that the strong emphasis on personal space in the U.S. was initially jarring to her, as “Especially between different genders, our standard greeting is to kiss on the cheek, and in America it’s considered, not to say taboo, but it isn’t standard.”

The grandmother figure is present because of the matriarch role that is often present in Latin American households. Here are some quotes Maria stated when it came to shaping her life and her gender identity:

I think in Latin America there’s more of a drastic gender division than in white America. The family household is more of a woman’s domain, like very matriarchal. That’s sort of what was expected of me, since I am the oldest daughter, and that’s how the matriarch role is passed on, from eldest daughter to eldest daughter. Like my great-grandmother…it’s weird to think about how my mom was a matriarch, or more like a matriarch in training. In my mom’s side of my family, we always had my great-grandmother, and everything revolved around her approval, and she was the center of my family. Then that role was passed on to my mom. Then we moved here and that shook the dynamic…then my great-grandmother died…and we have more family that moved here and now my mom is very much the matriarch of the family. I don’t know, I feel like that’s just something that is expected of me eventually…it’s less of a serving role than in white America, where the mother in Latin America is less providing and more establishing. The father is still the breadwinner, he’s supposed to be masculine or whatever, but the mother is very much the center and the strength of the family, essentially.

Gender role was…violence and aggression is not a female expectation, so that got me in a lot of [trouble]. I’ll be talking to my mom sometimes and she would say it was so embarrassing, walking to the principal’s office, and how I was the only girl being reprimanded over behavioral issues. That’s…again I was way too young to recognize gender expectations, but in hindsight…well not in hindsight but now talking to my mom…I realize that was not expected of me, being a girl…I couldn’t be aggressive or violent. My issues were cracked down on…because people are of the mindset of “raising girls is so much harder than raising boys”, when it’s not. What ends up happening is that they (society) is more lenient on boys and they don’t sort their issues out as much. That’s what I see with my baby cousin, who is being raised by a whole commune, and now we are seeing the repercussions of what happens when you don’t raise a boy right. There are a lot of issues where my mom talks about how… there are a lot of issues that they haven’t focused on or corrected because he’s a boy, and boys are expected to be immature, violent, aggressive, insensitive…and they don’t correct those. I am a girl. When I did half of those behaviors, that was something they cracked down on, and they did that to me because that was not what they expected of me, and because he’s a boy, those behaviors are seen as normal.

Ugh, I think my parents are embodiments of what a woman and man in Puerto Rican culture should be. My dad maybe less so…as much as I hate him, ha! I don’t really hate him, but as much as I am angry at him all the time, there are things that I applaud. I feel like he’s a guy who doesn’t know what toxic masculinity is because other people realize he’s breaking toxic masculinity when he talks about how much he loves his wife. He refuses to talk [bad] about my mom, no matter what they say about their own wives, because she’s his best friend. My parents always get stressed out when they’re apart...And my mom, she likes to say she’s a tomboy, and I think that has a little internal misogyny in it. She’s still…family is her focus and she’s like small, beautiful, very intelligent, very reasonable…not reasonable…She’s trusting. She always seems to know what to do. My family thinks of her as someone who knows what to do, they trust her, if they have problems they go to her. Again she fell into the matriarch role, which is Woman™ in Puerto Rico. So my parents fit very much into their gender roles.

Maria was also open when talking about her discovering her bisexuality and exploring her gender identity.

Not really, but I have definitely questioned my sexuality. But in terms of gender…no. I was a huge homophobe, and as I got closer to my friend group…seeing them being very open about their sexuality, and these are female, women, that are attracted to women, and they would talk about what that’s like and what they’ve felt…and it took me a couple years to reevaluate myself and to realize that I’m not entirely heterosexual. It was a reoccurring joke that I was questioning my heterosexuality for the longest time until I embraced being bisexual.

Again, grew up a woman, assigned female at birth, expected female for the rest of my life, and the heterosexual expectation of me…I would say “hindered” in the sense that my parents are not the people who could consider non-heterosexuality “viable”, or even consider the possibility... knowing that my parents might not embrace that fact…I feel like I was scared for a long time. I was terrified, that bisexuality resonated with me and as I got older, I realized my attraction is not exclusive to men. My parents still don’t know. They still think I’m straight. And I don’t want to think about what might happen if they realize I’m not.

--------

Much of her gender identity was shaped by the matriarch role she observed and that she was expected to grow into, and viewing her parents who strongly embodied Puerto Rican gender roles. It was also largely influenced by her close friendships with other bisexual and lesbian women, and trans friends. Lastly, she encouraged others to educated themselves on LGBT+ issues.

Friends and social media, for sure. The social media I’m limited to is Tumblr, which is very much a left-wing platform, especially the people I surround myself with, who are all very left-minded..It’s opened my eyes. It’s just not memes and laughs, it’s very often issues that are brought up and its very serious stuff and my friends are very much in the same community. It’s stuff that makes me introspect. My friends are very involved in the LGBT community, very passionate about gender identity, gender studies, LGBTQ+ rights. You know if you’re surrounding yourself with these people all the time, it makes you think. It makes you realize stuff. In terms of other people learning, it’s finding the right community. I know there are resources on many campuses. In my college, there’s the gender and sexuality center and that’s the LGBT community.

This post was published 12/22/2019.

#1 #Interview #Maria

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knightofbalance-13 · 7 years

Text

I Didn’t

http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/163454403646/so-kob-how-exactly-did-you-debunk-my-claim

1. That was not the argument at hand in the OP: The argument was whetehr or not the shows you listed where better than RWBY.

And 2. I actually did compare RWBY to them. And I even pointed this out the last time you tried this and said how it was an example that RWBY stands up even to professional shows.

But, guess it’s easier to fight a strawman huh?

Primarily out of curiosity. To see if they still held up even after all these years, and to see how they compare to RWBY. IMPO, they are BETTER. Oh wait, that’s an opinion that makes RWBY seem mediocre in comparison, no WONDER you think that all I do is bash RWBY despite the fact that I want to love the show. It makes SO Much SENSE NOW.

No, you were talking in a very affirmative and factual way in the OP, meaning you were claiming yourself to be right. (https://knightofbalance-13.tumblr.com/post/162855264440/yes-yes-it-was)

And I realized that the show, Beast Wars, one of the very FIRST 3D Animated shows ever aired, is better than RWBY.

So no, you were not saying an opinion, you were trying to pass off an opinion as fact. As you are still doing now. And half of your argument is strawmaning me for pointing this out by twisting the facts: if you are so right, you wouldn’t need to do this.

1. So, if Cinder is supposed to be hated, why are we shown her having regrets about things? Why are we shown her to be in pain? These are things that are done to give us a reason to sympathize with a villain, but we have yet to actually be SHOWN or even TOLD what her reasons are for wanting power. She’s supposed to be sympathetic in those scenes in Vol 4, but earlier she acts like a villain who is aware that she’s evil, and is okay with that. Also, the Joker is a force of nature, no villain can top him. But Rampage utterly DEMOLISHES Cinder in the ‘motive’ department.

because she was give n some humanity, some flaws, to make her less two dimensional. By this logic, because the Joker has a tragic backstory, we are meant to feel sorry for him when that is clearly not the case.

And here’s a problem I stated in the argument: Beast Wars is finished. RWBy is not. In the future, we could very well get more information on Cinder’s motives. You can’t make judgements like these until you have all the facts: And yet you are making broad strokes about RWBY.

No...The Joker is not a “Force Of Nature” villain: Darkseid is an example of that type of villain. The Joker is the “Insane, tricky, unpredictable, chaotic trickster” type of villain. This is a problem you have here: You cannot tell the difference between two types of characters. It’s like saying Shinji Ikari is a better protagonist than Goku: they are not compatible. In fact: That in and of itself is a problem here. Rampage was built t be the “Tragic insane” character whereas Cinder is the “power hungry manipulator” villain: they are not compatible thus the argument comes down to who you like subjectively better and in an argument, that means jack shit.

And another thing: You STILL don’t explain jackshit abut your side: How does rampage crush Cinder in motive? Why does he? You can’t just claim these things as fact.

2. Beast Wars IS better. For starters, the writers NEVER withheld valuable information, and they never relied on forced humor. Not to mention the fact that the characters are fleshed out, and get more than one episode in the limelight.

Okay, so first you say that you are stating your opinion and now you are repeating what you said earlier but as fact...Dudeblade, you can’t even go a paragraph without contradicting yourself.

Okay...So? How is that bad? How is not withholding information bad in RWBY or Best Wars? in fact: How do you know withholding info wouldn’t make Beast Wars better or not make RWBY better? No explanation? FIne, your argument is invalid.

How is the humor forced or not forced? What is the tone of Beats Wars and how does it ? Any examples? No? Then I claim bias against RWBY again.

And RWBY isn’t finished: Stop making jumps in logic just to suit your narrative.

3. This is because RW/BY has a cultish following of fans who refuse to see the bad in the show. Like you. You claim that RT isn’t homophobic when they literally repeated the same unfunny “fag” joke in Camp Camp TWICE! And this is just proving my point. “If it’s professionally made, but has a lower rating on IMDb, then we can compare it to RW/BY“ - That’s you. “If it was professionally made, but has a higher rating than RW/BY, then it isn’t fair to compare the two.” - That’s also you.

And I can claim that Beast Wars has a cultist following fueled by Nostalgia and it’d hold the same weight as yours: none at all. because neither of us provide any evidence. In fact, I can say that you are biased against RWBY and then as proof point out all points in which you ignore aspects of RWBY (such as being incomplete, different types of villians and how the shows are structured) or never give examples (humor, motives, characters as well as action, vocals, audio and animation) in this very post in order to declare Beats Wars better.

I can also point out the fact that you call Camp Camp unfunny but admit to watching South Park and the SImpsons were they made those exact same jokes.

And no, I am not. As we will see latter down the line, I actually compare RWBY to higher rated shows. You are the only one who refuses to acknowledge RWBY as being professional until you can say that it is worse than something else.

Here, let me do it right now. Jimmy is the smart kid who feels like an outcast because of his intillect - Something that people can relate to because they can feel like an outcast for simply being BETTER than others at something. Carl is the kid with the medical conditions and weird obsession, which everyone has. Sheen is the guy who hero worships a fictional character, much like how you worship miles and Kerry. Cindy is the girl who is jealous that her title of “The Smartest” was toppled, and Libby has an obsession over music - something that EVERYONE has, or at least KNOWS a person who is.

Except that I don’t feel like an outcast because of my intellect, in fact, it wasn’t because I had something over other people but rather I LACKED something from them. So Jimmy would seem pretentious and entitled to me. Not everyone has a weird obsession and definitely doesn’t have medical conditions. And you missed the ACTUAL chance to be right and say “Kamina or Simon The Digger”, two characters I heavily look up to. Instead, you bring up an attack on me that makes you look like an ass.

Cindy just comes off as a brat to me because I LIKE it when someone is smarter than me: it allows me to see what I am doing wrong and improve. And Libby’s obsession with music is literally the only thing I can relate to.

See the problem Dudeblade? Not everyone THINKS your way, not everyone AGREES with you: In fact, most people don’t.

Going off of your point: I can say the same to the characters in RWBy. Everyone has been like Ruby at some point, blissfully believing in a good world. A lot of people have parental problems like Weiss (like you), a lot of people can relate to trying to fight against the world while trying to NOT become like their enemy and a lot of people can relate to Yang’s depression (as I have and I know you have.) Even if you bring up my previous point: That just means the two shows go after different things.

But if you insist on this, let me ask you: Name a trait of Jimmy’s that isn’t smart or condescending. Name a trait of Carl’s beside sick and weird. Name a trait of Sheen’s beyond stupidity and obsession. Because I can with RWBY: Ruby’s issues with dealing with the world not being what she thought it was, her eagerness to make friends and her guilt about putting people around her in danger. Weiss has her overcoming her racism, learning to put aside her grievances with Ruby to work with her and become her best friend and her admiration of her sister Winter. Blake has her cowardice, her martyr complex, her issues with Adam as well as her inability to let people help her. yang has her maturity, her depression and overcoming it, her good nature, her relationship with Ruby and her father, her duality with her mother and her tendency to be harsh towards those she cares about. You do not give an example of how they are better characters beyond being relateable which RWBY has as well.

Oh hey, look! MORE proof that IMDB ratings are all that matter. Despite the fact that you claim that LoK has an unfair advantage when it has a higher rating.

1. Because they are factual and the only place RWBY shares a page with all the examples.

And 2. I pointed out the exact same advantages that the other three had as well:

And unlike Beast Wars which is a part of an existing franchise, complete and had more professional backing: RWBY didn’t and still doesn’t. Again, while this is amazing of Beast Wars, RWBY is still factually rated higher so your opinion doesn’t hold much weight.

And this while being completed and backed by a popular network whereas, again, RWBY is NOT. SO even with all those advantages, RWBY still beats it out.

And it aired on Cartoon Network and is complete. So your statement fails.

I bring them up in BOTH sides of the coin: You only argue them when they have the higher ratings.

More proof that you only care about ratings when it comes to comparisons.

Contradicted when I demanded that you explain why it was better right BEFORE that as well as the fact that I bring up this right at the end:

And the only one I really fond impressive is Beast Wars. Storm hawks and Jimmy Neutron are both utterly crushed by RWBY in teh ratings, who doesn’t have network backing, isn’t a part of an existing franchise and isn’t complete so it can still go up.

And again: ratings are factual. You cannot make them up nor can you fake them. They are a factual way of quantifying a series' quality. You have yet to disprove that.

YOU SEE! You just proved my point. You just said that the other shows don’t matter because they got crushed by ratings, but when it’s RWBY that’s getting crushed, then it’s unfair because they had “network backing.” NEWS FLASH! - LoK got SCREWED OVER by the network. Your argument is ALREADY contradicted by actual facts.

Except that these exact points you bring up were brought up with the previous three when they had lower ratings: You are only now arguing them because you have a chance at twisting the facts.

And how was LOK screwed over? Because it got so low ratings that Nickolodean pulled it off the air? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/TheLegendOfKorra) Wouldn’t a show getting pulled or canceled be a sign of it being bad normally unless proven otherwise, which is not the case here? Especially since TLA never did?

Again, because people like YOU keep claiming that it’s “unfair” to compare RWBY to things like LoK or SU. RWBY has the advantage of not having to deal with censors, and being able to go back to fix things they are aware would make fans confused, but they don’t take advantage of it. Which is a problem considering that you seem to ignore the fact that other shows have to deal with censors, and don’t have the luxury of being able to hire TFS or Funimation VA for one-shot characters. when SU uses a guest star, it’s for a character that is special, and is likely to return. RWBY? - “Oh hey! Let’s hire TFS voice actors for these characters” “Great, which ones?” “These guys.” “But, they’ll only be there for one episode…And they hardly have any lines.” “Exactly! We’ll get the recognition of USING TFS actors to voice characters,and NOT have to worry about paying them so much” - That? That was the (probable) thought process that went into the idea of using TFS actors. Though, it’s also my cynicism talking as well.

I claim it is unfair...then proceed to compare them to RWBY with the same standards that I did with the previous three while you refuse to argue ratings until they are higher than RWBY’s? And...so what about censors? Stuff that the censors deal with nowadays don't concern the quality of a show: Lesbians and black people do not make a good show. They are inconsequential to a show’s quality.

And that’s true...only Tara Strong, one of the most iconic voices in the business.

And a constant compliant with RWBY has always been the voice acting: So wouldn’t hiring more professional actors fix the problem? So attempting to fix a problem is bad now?

And you just admitted to having bias being prevalent in your argument: Why should anyone take what you say here seriously?

Much like how RWBY isn’t even noteworthy enough to get a review by the Nostalgia Critic despite LoK and SU doing so. And considering that you used the words “mostly just using Smash Bros brawl for acting” when you conveniently ignore the stolen assets that RWBY uses, I’m guessing you don’t even know the story at all.

... Nostalgia critic doesn’t review cartoons anymore, especially such recent ones. That's Doug Walker and those are Vlogs, personal opinion. Not factual reviews.

And that “assest stealing” has been disproven (https://lovenotefromcoco.tumblr.com/post/155633293739/slashmaiddeviantartcomartrwby-wtf-645284611). A RWBY fan would know this.

Here’s another thing: Just because RWBY is the first American-made anime DOESN’T automatically excuse any of the mistakes that it constantly makes. I know that’s a hard concept for you, but I can do this about Beast Wars and the mistakes that it made despite being one of the first 3D animated shows to ever air.

Okay...never said it did: You were just trying to devalue the accomplishments of RWBY so I showed accomplishments you couldn’t devalue.

Ahem; Tigerhawk got killed off too early, we never got to explore a whole lot on Megatron’s dragon mode, Blackarachnia whines about not being trusted too much despite having a lot more bad blood with the other Maximals, they used TIME TRAVEL as part of the plot, and Rampage’s caring nature wasn’t explored that much.

And yet you claim it to be better than RWBY when I see many of the same mistakes you claim RWBY has done in here. And when I did this in the past, you still called me a fanboy so why should this be different for you?

There, I just listed off some of the things in Beast Wars that were mistakes/irritating. But unlike RWBY, these are just mine, whereas most of the gripes about RWBY are shared by most of the rwde tag.

And are these shared by most of the RWBY tag on Tumblr, let alone circles that do not include Tumblr? Are they shared by the critics of RWBY or that one jackass FMF? No, so by your own logic, you are still wrong here.

Grow the fuck up kob. RWBY isn’t “Magically exempt from criticism” like you say. Neither are miles, Kerry, Grey, and the rest of crwby. They have to be held accountable for their bullshit excuses and mistakes, or they’ll only receive praise from the likes of you and the rest of the cultish fndm. Meaning that they’ll keep making the same mistakes over. And over. And over.

Funny you say that: I did in fact criticize RT in my Volume 4 review (https://team-crtq.tumblr.com/post/162758524659/volume-4-review). I’m not the one lying, attacking people, being hypocritical, calling someone racist in the tags for no reason other than Ad Hominin and attacking people. I’ m not the one who refuses to say anything but one side of a conversation, refuse to do the same for other shows and then calls everyone who disagrees with them a “cult.” That’s just you.

You failed in the very title of your post so I don’t know what you were expecting.

#rwde bullshit #dudeblade

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evilelitest2 · 7 years

Text

100 Days of Trump, Day 38: Why Are You So Angry?

Welcome back to 100 Days of Trump, where I try to recommend 100 works to help us understand WTF happened in 2016, and it should be increasingly obvious that I don’t actually plan these things out in advance because today’s recommendation is actually a little bit behind all things considered. I was hoping to move past the psychological state and into the “The system itself which makes all of this possible” state, but I remembered this video series and I want to talk about it, so Innuendo Studios. Its a video game channel that mostly talks about Indie Games and while all of that stuff is very cool and I recommend you check it out, I want to focus on his six part series on Gamergate called “Why are you so angry?”

youtube

Now I’ve said it before and I will say it again, to understand Trump you need to understand Gamergate and if it wasn’t for Gamergate, I honestly don’t think Trump would have gotten elected, within this bubble of internet gaming insanity we see the core of both Trump’s popularity, and the way he was able to win. And there is a lot to say about Gamergate, and a lot of it was covered in my earlier series talking about Assassins, or Taxi Driver, or The Wall, or Breaking Bad, or Pan’s Labyrinth, or, Protagonist, or Rope, and above all the Social Network, all talking about the misdirected rage and optimistic nihilism that characterizes the Gamergate and by extension Trumpkin crowd (and really they are the same people). So what does Innuendo Studios have to say which the earlier works don’t already say? Well, in his Why Are You So Angry series focuses on a specific sub set of the reactionary hate mob, not the guys who lead it, but the guys who serve as support for those who do, which he coins “Angry Jack”

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Now I think it is important to understand that this video series isn’t actually summing up the whole movement, and the Angry Jack is just one small part of a larger WTF puzzle, so don’t take this video series as rite and go “OH well, I understands Gamergate/Trump Perfectly” not all of his supporters are Angry Jacks and Angry Jack are just one part of a larger system. But when it comes to this particular subject, he is unto something. The Ian Danskin posits that a core point of these movements is less malice than a form of ethical laziness, that sloth is the core sin of a lot of these reactionaries. People like things to be simple and things to be self serving, its human, and when outside information challenges stuff, it is easier to double down than think critically. To use a non political example, people who don’t drink at parties, I don’t drink by choice and a friend of mine doesn’t drink because it makes her head hurt, and a third friend doesn’t drink hard Liquor. When ever we are at a party, despite having very different reasons for not drinking (and one of us actually liking alcohol) a lot of strangers will react really hostilely to any of use refusing a drink equally, and the ones who drink the most react the strongest. Because they are assuming judgement to what is actually just personal preference. I don’t drink because I dislike drinking, I don’t subscribe a moral value to it, but people who meet me seem to preemptively make me into some sort of prohibition era strawman, and it is doubly absurd for my friends whose choice comes from a place of ‘I don’t want head aches” and “I like this alcohol but not that alcohol”. Because the people who get so pissy are terrified of judging themselves, so they try to create environments where nobody might do so.

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Now this video series isn’t perfect, I do think his understanding of Christianity is ironically quite muddled and his belief of where this all stems from is frankly....dumb and juvenile, but look past that stuff and focus on his larger point, and you see why this is useful, a lot of this reactionary stuff is coming out of a sort of defense of one’s internal state of ignorance, that these people think they have found the loophole to living a morally good life without doing any work for it. Just don’t notice whenever bad things happens, look away and pretend the problem doesn’t exist. And the progressive movement is challenging that, it is effectively acknowledging problems that everybody knows exist. And in order to make everybody more comfortable with the situation, they lash out to create an environment where people don’t have to think about these complicated issues. Again, most people are lazy, cowardly, and stupid, and prefer it that way, anything that would make them not want to behave like that is legitimately scary if your goal in life is to be selfish and never have to be judged for it. Even for the less debased, there is the question of difficulty, and people want simple solutions to problems even if those don’t exist. I wish I lived in a world where parents didn’t sexually assault children, or if it happened it was done by creepy immediately evil people who I could call the police to instantly handle without any difficulties. But I don’t live in that world, I live in a world where it is extremely common and there aren’t obvious solutions. A lot of people prefer a fantasy of the first than the reality of the second. And this is why so many (but not all) reactionaries are weirdly positive towards the Civil Rights movements and the early feminist movements, because in their mind that was “When the bad thing ended”.

Small note, I don’t like how Ian uses the term sociopath, and I think it is very silly, but move on, focus on the larger point.

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And this is why we need to understand the relationship between Angry Jack and the more open and direct reactionaries, because if you have encountered these people online, you notice that unlike the most dire hard Alt Rightists, they don’t openly say the white nationalist/MRA/homophobic rhetoric, they insist it isn’t there. They tune Trump out when he says some things, and tune in for others, and when they interact with Neo Nazis, they pretend they can’t see the obvious racist elements because they don’t want to confront the reality that they are allied with them. A lot of these vocal harassers online are internally terrified of confronting who they are or what they have become, and if they were ever in a circumstance where they could calm the fuck down, would be horrified by the people they call their allies. But they don’t want to face that, so they ignore it. This is what Fox News and other groups like that do for these people, they give them an out. Remember after that refugee child drowned and everybody briefly pretended they gave a shit about refugees and the Right’s hypocrisy on the subject of human rights was coming to the forefront? And then Fox turned it into a Refugee vs. Vet, when both groups are fucked over by their very policies? It isn’t suppose to make any sense, its suppose to be a life raft for the people who don’t want to think hard about the fact they are abandoning children to die. Or how about when Milo got caught advocating for the sexual abuse of children, and the Right’s response was to bring up Roman Polanski as a “left wing child rapist”, nvm the fact that the left has been attacking Polanski for decades now particularly feminist circles. Its a way to not think about the type of people they are allied with, for the average supporter think about this as an “US vs. THEM” argument rather than “Holy fuck, the guy I listened to thinks children should be raped...maybe all of the other things people said of him might be equally true....maybe this whole being cruel for the sake of humor thing is bullshit maybe the other side has a legitimate....oh wait, if I condemn Milo then THEY WIN and fuck THOSE PEOPLE (jews)” So they march behind actual nazis, and as Hannah Arendt noted, once this all blows over, they will be out there saying they had nothing to do with it and that the Nazis tricked/forced them into participating in these crimes.

For the record, I would divide Gamergate into more than two groups, rather Nine see here for my thoughts.

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What separates the Angry Jack from the Nihilist MRA people we see in Assassins and Breaking Bad is that Angry Jack really needs to see itself as morally correct and most importantly, normal. They might use rebel rhetoric but they don’t see themselves that way, they identify themselves as just a dude, and really want to believe that feminism is nothing more than a few thousand rich college students or that the only white people who think racism is a problem are a couple dozen people who have been white guilt-ed into being puppets for the Black Panthers, they want to be the default, and are upset by the notion of having to accept a larger world. This is why the fact Clinton won the popular vote is so upsetting to these people, because they really want to believe that they are most of the country, that they are normal and are driving abnormal out of their larger political community, the alternative scares the shit out of them. And so much of this comes from my old enemy, simplistic easy morality, something which the left sadly has trouble with as well. Because the way we depict morality in so much of our fiction makes this mindset more powerful, it encourages the thought process that is so useful to the right. Because if our villains in works are nothing more than evil for its own sake, then we don’t have to think complexly about them, we don’t have to assume that their evil comes from a place and there are simple solutions to complicated problems. And the left should avoid this mentality as well.

Also how much of this battle is a fight for vindication, that these reactionaries are furious that society at large doesn’t respect them and doesn’t take their opinions seriously, and so they are screaming loud and more intensely out of the hope they will finally be recognized and respected for who they are...except that they aren’t because they are crazy. This is why Trump supporters are so angry at the media, because they won, they managed to get the most powerful job in the world, and yet people are still calling Trump and by extension them horrible people....because they are. And that is why they want to get ride of the Media, because they hope that they can create a reality where nobody criticizes their ideals, which ironically always makes it worse.

Finally since Tumblr only allows 5 videos per post, here is part 6, where Ian talks about how to deal with these problems This comes off as a tad naive today but it still applies, and this is why it is so important to try to keep people around you from buying into simplistic narrative, particularly because seemingly innocuous nonsense always gets co-opted by bigots and turn into a recruiting tool for the Alt Right. That is why these guys are so horrified by the notion of progressive politics making people happy, they find the notion that bioware games have gay relationships terrifying because the moment they acknowledge that is good, they start to validate the progressive arguments and they don’t want to go down that road. Hey, has anybody had something they need to do but they keep putting it off, and you can kinda live with that until a friend says “Hey weren’t you suppose to turn into those papers?” and you find yourself getting suddenly mad at them? Its that, because they don’t want to face the shitty part of the world, and if left alone, they will concoct a little alternate reality where they don’t have too, but they can’t do it if people keep poking the bubble. Remember, so much of this reactionary bullshit is coming from an emotional place of insecurity and is kinda pitiable if it wasn't for how many people they are hurting, and even as the left condemns and opposes them, we need to understand them, because otherwise we won’t be able to defeat them. And for all of their talk of how tough they are, they are remarkably thin skinned. But this is the most important thing, keep up the fight and keep attacking their arguments and proving them wrong, because while it doesn’t seem like you get any results, every time you do that, particularly when you conduct yourself in a more civil, mature, and above all intellectually honest way than your opponent, you keep a pupil form of an Angry Jack from joining up. They don’t say anything, they don’t comment and say “Thanks dude, your take down of that MRA made me reconsider my life choices’ instead they take that comment and it sticks with them later in life, and it makes it that much harder for them to make a pact with Neo-Nazis. And this is important, Gamergate and Trump seem inevitable now, but this is what matters,it took a lot of work for these movements to get started, /POL/ had been trying to get a Gamergate Going for at least three years before this one took off, and the Alt Right have been trying to get a trump going since the 1930s, it takes tremendous amount of effort to craft the sort of narrative to make this double think possible, and it took decades of work for them to make it this far. And if the left hadn’t gone with Hillary Clinton, it wouldn’t have worked, by choosing somebody as bad as Clinton, it provided them with the psychological tools they needed to rationalize supporting Trump, which wont’ be true if we go with somebody with less of a dark past. “They go high, we go low” actually does work, its just that Clinton didn’t go high, she stayed in the middle. And the more pressure we keep up on them, the more their movement frays. They seem powerful now, but this current state of affairs is on a very weak wedge, and it can come crashing down on them in an instant. The only way they can keep this up is if we either give up, or support morally debased responses to them.

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