#while lacking any actual thought on the ties of fiction/reality | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

esther-dot · 6 months

Note

why do ppl keep saying sandor was sansa’s sexual awakening? it’s so weirrrrrd

This is something I'm aware of, but I hadn't read the theories, so I found a couple, and I'm gonna share some quotes and links so you can read the full metas if you want, but with the understanding that y'all are gonna come and bitch in my inbox, and not try to argue with any shippers about this, ok? ok!

Decide if this is something you actually want to expose yourself to or not, anon. 🙃

So, here's one of the earliest places I see that statement (2014) in a reblog to a post:

My point is, Sandor is intricately tied with her sexual awakening (for lack of a better word) in a way that Petyr is not. Petyr is actively trying to be a part of that, which can qualify as sexual abuse, whereas Sansa herself is associating, at least on a subconscious level, Sandor with these various instances I mentioned above. (link)

And I'm guessing it's an evolution of this post/others like it from 2013:

That said, Milady has to declare that, speaking as a clinician with knowledge of real life mismemory cases, GRRM’s depiction is messy and makes bloody little sense! Sansa’s mismemory doesn’t resemble a mismemory as much as it resembles a sexual fantasy. And Milady would go even further and contend that GRRM has taken an utterly typical and comprehensible teenage first sexual fantasising and passed it off as mismemory for narrative purposes. [...] There are dozens of distinct variations of this experiment, and all of them show the extent of human memory’s fallibility and unreliability, nothing else. But bear in mind that for a mismemory to be considered as such, it has to come out of the mental realm into the realm of reality, otherwise it’s fantasising, pure and simple. Thus, as far as Sansa’s imaginary kiss remains in her thoughts, it’s only her imagination at work. We cannot say yet if GRRM will decide that it will develop into a permanent mismemory or will be dispelled either by herself or Clegane, but we do know that the developing of her sexuality that started with it hasn’t finished yet, and her fantasy has already started to disconnect from the Blackwater, moving on to another stage where sexual dreams take place, dreams that have the purpose of rehearsing attachment-related scenarios during sleep, to process affective and mental content from daytime life, and that, were this not fictional, should be already explicit at this point. (This post is simply too long and technical for me to relay it all so I will share the link if you are morbidly curious--but again, I'm trusting y'all. Let's keep our feelings in-house!)

Here is another long meta from 2016:

I do not in any way negate Sansa being attracted to men and boys in aGoT before this erotic fantasy of aSoS. Infatuations, puppy love, a crush, admiration, limerence and love can befall elementary school aged children. Children can experience chemistry and attraction. I do not deny that Sansa is subconsciously sexually drawn to a man, such as Sandor, before this Loras daydream. What I do point out is that there is a marked alteration from the (prepubescent) romantic fantasies of Sansa in aGoT to those of an explicit erotic nature in aSoS. Her menarche at the end of aCoK was the physical evidence of adolescence, while the Loras fantasy is the mental evidence of it. And it is very peculiar that it happens for the first time, right in the middle of that particular song, on which GRRM puts that much emphasis by writing it in capital letters. It suggests a link between Sansa hearing the song to the sexual maturation of Sansa to a new level, literary or effectively. Definitely most interesting though is that lo and behold, in Sansa II, just one chapter later, we first learn of Sansa’s invented unkiss about Sandor, exactly like we learn a chapter after Dany being kissed by a bear to have re-awakened sexual desires. [...] Fundamentally, both Loras’ kiss and Sandor’s Unkiss are fantastical in nature here. The maiden Sansa is not exposed to an actual kiss from either a knight or a bear yet (unlike Dany). It is one of song only. The immense difference is that with Loras she is conscious of it being imagined, while Sandor’s kiss is a false memory she believes has actually occurred. [...] The bear-maiden song’s appearance heralds Sansa’s sexual maturation into that of the erotic fantasy, which is set not long after her menarche, most likely around her ovulation time, and therefore is reminiscint of the masculine maturation where the first ejaculation archetypically coincides with an erotic wet dream. (link)

I'm not sure the year for this, but it's from the "Pawn to Player" (fandom famous) essays:

Sex: Sandor is in between a menstrual pain and her first period. I have a hard time thinking this is a coincidence. With the events and dreams that come later, this is symbolic of Sandor’s part in Sansa’s sexual awakening. In this case, he is literally in the middle of it. [...] Sex: Where do I even begin? Well, let’s start by location. It takes place not only in Sansa’s room, but on her bed. The bloody cloak is another obvious symbol. A bloody sheet is often a sign of girl losing her virginity. A cloak works just as well. In a slightly disturbing example, after the song, Sandor’s tears are described as wetness that was not blood. I’ll just walk away from that double entendre. [...] But more importantly, she doesn’t seem to feel like a victim. She adds in the unkiss and later has erotic dreams about him. (link)

So, you get the idea. I believe it was sansxn shippers who originated/popularized a more sympathetic reading of Sansa and the idea that she would learn from LF and become a political player—something people still won’t accept—hence that “pawn to player” thing, so I appreciate that, although the direction they went with that is just, not one I can agree with. They also have very sympathetic readings of the Hound which means we get a twisted version of “the unkiss” and that made some reinterpret the assault? And then all of Sansa memories of it? I find it an easier thing to conclude that Sansa can’t quite accept that the man who at point saved her intended to rape her, so she remembers something far more manageable, (the unkiss), but they, sometimes in an effort to give her agency, say imagining she was kissed is a sign that Sansa wanted the Hound to kiss her. The problem with that is that this quickly becomes victim blaming, and I’ve had Sansxns in my inbox in the past arguing the Hound didn’t intend to rape Sansa and didn’t assault her—so apparently, it also leads to full fledged denial of what was happening in that scene.

If you imagine the Hound as a misunderstood hero, rather than a violent man who brags about killing women and children, their interpretation is easier to understand. But that ignores that there is a reason Sansa is frightened by him, and it isn’t merely his appearance, it’s because he is dangerous. Back in AGOT he rode down a little boy and murdered him, remorselessly. I actually argue that the Sansa under the Hound's cloak is a callback to that, it is a damning indictment of him, not romantic, so again, we just interpret the ideas behind their interactions very differently (link). In that post, I also point out, she thinks positively of Tyrion and LF too, not because she's in love with them, because this poor girl has been surrounded by enemies for so long that their moments of intervening on her behalf are all she has to cling to. Anyway, what seemed to be the refrain was the significance of “the unkiss” and that it means actually, Sansa is attracted to the Hound instead of him just being a perv who traumatized her/threatened her life repeatedly. So, apparently, that’s what they mean by calling him her “sexual awakening.”

#dot chat #anti sansan #anti the hound

20 notes · View notes

popatochisssp · 3 years

Note

Are any of the new guys ok with being child free? (I keep having to explain to my fam how I'm NOT EVER going to have kids) And I'd like some solidarity from fictional skeletons.

Broadly speaking, I think all of them would be okay with that! In general, all the boys’ idea of the future is uncertain and something they need to work out with their s/o, so that informs the perspective a lot.

I truly don’t think ‘no kids’ or ‘yes kids’ would be an explicit deal-breaker for any of them, but in terms of where their thoughts naturally fall about the topic:

Pre-discussion/negotiation, it’s probably a no: Sky (Underswap Sans), Paps (Underswap Papyrus), Mal (Swapfell Sans), Rus (Swapfell Papyrus), Ash (Undergloom Sans), Brick (Horrorfell Sans), Merc (Horrorswap Sans), Pitch (Horrorswapfell Sans)

Genuinely neutral or undecided: Sans (Undertale), Pyre (Underfell Papyrus), Papy (Horrortale Papyrus), King (Horrorfell Papyrus), Ell (Horrorswap Papyrus), Sunny (Gastertale Sans), Aster (Gastertale Papyrus)

Pre-discussion/negotiation, it’s probably a yes: Papyrus (Undertale), Jasper (Underfell Sans), Slate (Horrortale Sans), Yrus (Undergloom Papyrus), Nemo (Horrorswapfell Papyrus)

But like I said... they’re flexible, because your relationship and the future they want to have with you doesn’t work without... well, you!

If you’re a ‘definitely no kids’ person and you see your skeleton in the ‘yes’ category, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed-- it just means a couple conversations about it to convey your thoughts...and depending on the level of gungho for having kids he is (most aren’t married to it), maybe agreeing to a compromise where you adopt an animal or two and be dog/cat/iguana/whatever-the-hell parents.

Same goes for a ‘yes i want kids’ person who sees their skeleton of choice in the ‘no’ section, that’s just where they are before talking it all out with you. Some time and a few conversations to understand where everybody’s coming from and how to move forward, they’re willing to negotiate.

Kids or no kids, neither is a deal-breaker, it’s all fine and you can work it out together!

Y’know what, while I’m at it, here’s just the basic thought processes of all of them, just to give a little peek into their skulls on the matter...

Sans (Undertale): Kids are fun, doesn’t have any particularly strong desire to have one of his own, but he raised his kid brother for awhile and he knows it’s something he can do, if it’s what you want.

Papyrus (Undertale): Kids are great and he’d be a great parent, he just knows it! You’d be a great parent, too! ...But if that’s not what you want to do, then that’s okay. There’s plenty of other great things for you to do together in life!

Sky (Underswap Sans): Kids are wonderful, but raising his little brother solo after their dad disappeared... That was hard and he definitely wasn’t ready for the responsibility. It was a humbling experience and he refuses to commit to having kids of his own until he’s sure it’s something he sincerely, passionately wants.

Paps (Underswap Papyrus): Feels awkward around kids, as a rule, and also kind of thinks of himself as a (mostly contained, at least) disaster of a skeleton. Is he ready for the responsibility of being in charge of a brand new being’s growth and development??? Not sure! Not sure at all!

Jasper (Underfell Sans): He likes kids alright... thinks about maybe having some of his own someday, the idea of a family is nice, in his head... but he definitely isn’t sure about the reality. Worries about if he’d be a good enough parent, or if his kids (if he were to have them) would resent him or just not like him. It’s a nice idea, but nothing’s set in stone for him.

Pyre (Underfell Papyrus): Honestly never thought about it. Part of him fully expected to die Underground in some battle or other, or excepting that, he wouldn’t find a partner who’d want to be with him long-term, much less long enough that he could make a family with them. He’s not...explicitly opposed to it, but he also hasn’t given it a lot of thought at all. He’ll need time to sort out his feelings, whatever his partner’s opinions on potential kids are.

Mal (Swapfell Sans): Terrified, petrified to have kids of his own. Being around them is...fine, but... He’s got a lot of issues tied up with his...parent... and having to be a pseudo-parent to his own brother at a very young age, it’s made him worry about repeating patterns and failing, hurting, damaging, or otherwise doing his own children a disservice, if he were to have them-- even as a grown and well-situated adult. If kids are something his partner really wants, they’ve got those insecurities to talk about with him for sure.

Rus (Swapfell Papyrus): He’s actually really good with kids, he relates to them well and always just talks to them like people, so of course they love him. But having his own... That, he’s not sure about. He’s definitely a little bit of a disaster, and still working on a lot of Adult Life Skills, and the thought of being in charge of a whole entire brand new person is more than a little scary. Not sure if he’s ready for that step--or if he’ll ever be!

Slate (Horrortale Sans): Loves kids, and loves the idea of a big family. He’s had more than enough death, life is very appealing to him and a full house honestly sounds wonderful. ...But he does have some memory issues, a dash of narcolepsy, and some hard, dissociative days that make him worry he might not be a very good parent. He’d do his best to do right by his kids if he ends up having them, of course he would, but if that’s just not in the cards for him, that wouldn’t be the end of the world. He’s the one who’d definitely want to bring in some furbabies if two-legged babies aren’t on the table, and he’d still be a very, very happy man!

Papy (Horrortale Papyrus): He likes kids, but doesn’t have many strong feelings on having his own. He’d be alright either way his partner wanted to go-- as long as the two of them are together and safe and happy, he’s got everything he needs.

Ash (Undergloom Sans): Kids are fun, but honestly...oof. He’s got a chronic fatigue thing going on and keeping up with a kid for more than an hour or two at a time... he’s not sure he could hack it. Maybe he could, but that’s really something to think about before just diving in, y’know?

Yrus (Undergloom Papyrus): Very good with children! They’re so curious and bright and he loves that about them! He’s got a lot of nurturing, caretaker tendencies built right into his personality, so he’s a natural at looking after and corralling them. He’s easily flustered and moves slow in his romantic relationships, though, so there’s a long timeline before the ‘should we have kids’ talk is even on the table, plenty of chances to share thoughts and work out a gameplan, whether that’s yea or nay. If yea, wonderful! If nay, he’d probably be just as happy babysitting friends’ kids and being Cool Uncle Papyrus as having any of his own.

Brick (Horrorfell Sans): It’s... a nice thought. But he definitely doesn’t trust himself enough to feel totally comfortable having kids of his own. He barely trusts himself in Polite Society some days, and he’d just be too worried about not being in control and hurting or scaring a little one, especially a little one of his own. He doesn’t think he’d ever be able to forgive himself if he made his own kid afraid of him. Plus memory issues, nightmares, (depending on his fluency at the time) a language barrier... So ‘no kids’ is...probably preferable, but if it’s something you really want... maybe start with an animal or two first? The ol’ practice-baby pet, see how it goes kinda deal, and move forward from there.

King (Horrorfell Papyrus): Like his counterpart, never really thought about it much...but when he does, he decides he could go either way on it. If you’re not interested in kids, fine, that’s more time for just the two of you. If you are, well... he was literally a monarch that ruled over all of monsterkind, for a time--surely, he could manage to be a passingly decent parent, with you as his partner in the endeavor. He’ll take his cues from you as to whether it’s a yes or a no.

Merc (Horrorswap Sans): His feelings haven’t really changed from pre-Famine. In fact, he’s probably more hesitant now, after so viscerally confronting the consequences of his own hasty decisions and having to face his own fallibility the way he did. The thought of being responsible for a whole small life is very nerve-wracking--especially if said proposed life is to be biologically his, because he really doesn’t know what the DT in his system (pre or post-integration) will pass on to theoretical next-of-kin, if anything at all. Maybe not a ‘never,’ but not a vigorous, enthusiastic ‘yes’ either, lots to think about...and maybe tests to run...

Ell (Horrorswap Papyrus): A couple years ago, he’d have been a little more in the ‘no’ camp, but now... He’s been through a lot. He’s struggling sometimes still, at least emotionally, but he made it, so y’know... maybe he’s capable of handling more than he thought he was. Still not a solid ‘yes’--he’s aware of his lack of filter and its tendency to cause hurt feelings, and he does like his peace and quiet, which kids are very much not conducive to, as a rule, so he’d have to put in some work and make some sacrifices-- but he’s no longer wholly a ‘no’ either. Depending on your own thoughts, there’s plenty of room to negotiate.

Pitch (Horrorswapfell Sans): Kids are fine, he can handle them well enough, and even the thought of having his own doesn’t stress him out so much as it once did--he’s changed a lot, and been through a lot, taking a second crack at parenthood from a new perspective wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world--but he’s also not particularly interested in it. He likes his leisure time and his luxuries, and much as he’s sure he could find room in that to accommodate a child...he doesn’t see much of a reason to. He could be convinced, if it’s something that you really want, but he’d also stay childfree without a second thought to the matter.

Nemo (Horrorswapfell Papyrus): Good with kids, like his counterpart, but also a little more capable and confident in himself and his ability to get things done. So... having a kid might be a little intimidating for him, but he generally feels like he could probably figure it out... and a kid might be a nice outlet for some of his caretaking urges, and extra motivation to keep fighting his phobia, to make sure their childhood is good and doesn’t suffer from them having a dad who’s scared to go outside. He definitely likes the idea of someone to look after and to be better for, but if that’s not for you, he wouldn’t force the issue. Would maybe want a furbaby though, instead, probably special needs that not everybody could/would be able to take care of (like Dizzy!) to fill that niche.

Sunny (Gastertale Sans): Kids are really cool and fun to hang out with--crazy little people, no filter, just running around, saying things, living life--they’re awesome, but he’s not totally sold on the idea of having his own. He does a lot of aimless life-living himself, and he feels like maybe that’s not the best thing for a kid. He doesn’t really have a career, he does things without a lot of planning, he goes places spontaneously, and... maybe that’s fun and exciting for a kid to be raised around, or maybe it’s unstable and harmful. He’s not really sure which and he probably doesn’t want to bring a kid into the mix until he knows. With a partner who’s a ‘yes’ on children and can help him co-parent and all that, sure, he’d probably be willing to give it a go. With one who’s a ‘no,’ that’s fine too, it’s a nonissue!

Aster (Gastertale Papyrus): A little weird and stiff around kids, never totally sure how he’s supposed to talk to them or what he’s meant to say (especially when it comes to those things you’re supposed to lie to kids about, he’s very bad at that!!!), but he has nothing against children in general. As far as the idea of having his own... Well, if his partner wants to have kids, it wouldn’t be a no-- he’d just have to do a lot of research on the subject first, to feel more comfortable and to hopefully prepare, mentally, as much as one can ever prepare for this. After that, he’d be open to discuss and negotiate the matter with his partner from there, to sort out the logistics. With a partner who doesn’t want kids, though, he’d almost certainly never even bring it up on his own and honestly probably thinks of ‘childfree’ as the expected default rather than something quirky, nontraditional, or a deal-breaker.

171 notes · View notes

firelxdykatara · 4 years

Note

If you think their stories lacked empathy do you think Hama and Jet were redeemable? I don't hate Iroh or Azula or Zuko tbc, I'm just hearing a lot of people say it's unfair that people from the fire nation got to change when the people the Fire Nation hurt weren't.

My answer to the question of ‘could this character be redeemable’ is almost always going to be ‘yes’, unless the character in question is the literal embodiment of all evil or something. Galactus? Probably not redeemable, he’s a massive planet eater with no real conscious thought except, well, eating planets.

Can be redeemed is not the same as should be redeemed, though, and it also isn’t the same as ‘with the way this story has been constructed and executed thus far, I think a redemption would make sense’. Sometimes, the hero just has to kill the villain, or at least put them down/imprison/otherwise depower them to keep them from being a threat. (I’d argue that Ozai could not have reasonably been redeemed, given the story that was set up, and also that he wasn’t actually sufficiently depowered, and that even if Aang wasn’t gonna kill him, he should have been brought before a tribunal and executed for crimes against the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes, and that leaving him alive indefinitely is the reason the New Ozai Society was able to gain traction, because his political power was not intrinsically tied to his bending, but that’s another rant altogether.) And, typically, if there is a villain getting redeemed, there needs to be a Bigger Bad who gets put down in their stead. (Zhao was this for book 1 Zuko. Palpatine was this for Vader. Etc.)

The reason I say that just about any villain you could name (barring, again, eldritch abominations or The Literal Embodiment of Evil) is redeemable is because redemption, when boiled down to its bare essentials, is simply this: the choice to do and be better.

Every sentient being is capable of making this choice, and so that possibility exists for every fictional sentient being, too--whether or not it would make sense for their character is entirely dependent on the surrounding narrative, and also their overall character arc. There is no real ‘point of no return’ for the ability to make this choice--however, there usually is such a point for the audience’s ability to believe they reasonably would make that choice. The farther down the path of villainy the character has gone--the more harm they’ve caused, the more people they’ve killed, the more evil they’ve done--the harder it will be to accept that they would ever actually decide to change.

This can be offset, of course, by giving the villain a sympathetic backstory and reasons for their actions--cool motive, still murder will usually apply, but if you write it well enough, you can believably chronicle the villain’s journey to the side of good. Some of your audience may not think it’s enough--for some people, any villain redemption for someone who did anything worse than say some mean things to another character is ‘villain apologism’ and not to be tolerated--but if the narrative scaffolding surrounding a given villain is sturdy enough, a majority of readers/viewers will accept it.

(As a side-note, a villain redeeming themselves is not--or should not be--reliant on the people they’ve hurt forgiving them. That can also be included, of course, but just as it’s entirely in character for some villains that they just would never make the choice to be better people, it’s in character for some heroes that they cannot forgive someone once they’ve done enough harm. Everyone has a breaking point, and if you’re going to go the ‘everyone forgives and welcomes them to the hero group’ route, that will need to be set up and constructed believably as well.)

Now that I’ve rambled for ages about redemption itself, I come to the actual point of your ask: yes, I do believe Hama and (especially) Jet were redeemable, and I do believe the fact that a man complicit in war and genocide for decades was allowed, by the narrative, to choose to be a good person and do good in the world, while characters who were victims of the war helmed by that man’s family were not granted the same dignity of that potential choice.

If either Hama or Jet had their stories end differently--if Jet had been allowed to heal on his own terms, without being brainwashed into being Nice and then killed off and only referenced once in the rest of the show via an off-hand joke about his casual demise, or if there had been a line or two at the end of The Puppetmaster where Katara expressed regret for what Hama had become and perhaps hope for being able to return for her, after the war, and get her the help she desperately needed (rather than appearing content to leave her languishing in the Fire Nation prison that was the source of her trauma), then it may not have seemed so much like the narrative was saying ‘victims of trauma who do not react in appropriately pacifistic ways will be punished for their anger’. But because both of them were treated so cavalierly at the end of their respective arcs/episodes, it leaves some unfortunate implications, particularly when contrasted with Iroh’s pre-series redemption, and the way so many fans call for Azula to be redeemed because ‘she’s a traumatized 14-year-old girl’ without extending the same to the traumatized 16-year-old boy who was basically murdered on-screen.

Jet was no worse, in terms of his character and his crimes, than Azula--little miss ‘I’m gonna suggest Daddy burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground’ does not have any moral superiority to lord over anyone. Hama was no worse than Iroh, when you consider the deaths he was responsible for as a wartime general with decades of military service under his belt, nevermind the siege of Ba Sing Se that was nearly two years long. If they both could believably be redeemed--if, as Azula stans so frequently claim, she deserved a redemption arc after everything she went through--then so could Jet and Hama. And the fact that the latter did not get that treatment, but instead were figuratively (and literally, really) left to rot by the narrative, while it could be seen as a consequence of the realities of war, still has unfortunate implications when you consider the way the characters who had ‘appropriate’ responses to trauma left by the war were treated.

#atla #jet #hama #iroh #azula #atla meta #on villains and redemption #asked #Anonymous

246 notes · View notes

autumnblogs · 3 years

Text

Aside Glance: The Palpable Absence of the Dubiously Canonical

So you might have noticed throughout my writings that I have at the same time avoided directly talking about any of the expanded universe material while also occasionally alluding to it just enough to make it noticeable. At least, probably.

So to nobody’s surprise, let me say;

I don’t like the Homestuck Epilogues.

Before I dig into why, I wanna dig out what I think I actually do like about the Homestuck Epilogues. CW: for mentions of suicide, sexual violence, fascism, genocide, etc. Spoiler Warning for the Homestuck Epilogues, although if you haven’t read them by now, good; don’t. Keep reading for my thoughts on the Epilogues.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues say quite loudly and clearly that Fascism Is Terrible, and that Neo-Liberals are often Discount Fascists at best in terms of the material effects they have on the world that we have to share with them. They can often end up being interchangeable, and events can cause someone with a temperament predisposed toward Neo-liberalism down the path of bloody reactionary sentiment the way it did with Jane.

Homestuck has always been a pretty soundly anti-authoritarian work, and pretty aggressively contemporary work, so it makes sense that Homestuck^2 would reflect an internet culture rabidly obsessing about the politics of the Trump-Era United States, cast its villains as parallels to the Trump Administration, the grody religious movements it catered to, and the hyper-rich dingalings who benefited from it.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues develop the theme of criticizing the author and continues to call attention to its narrators, this time by explicitly casting them as villainous, and morally ambiguous/incomprehensible respectively. A central idea in Homestuck is the relationship between Author, Audience, and Characters, and the blending of the lines between them.

I like that it calls attention not just to the idea that a story’s narrator is an agent themselves, but also to the reality that the narrator may not have the best interests of either their readers, or their characters in mind. I like that the authorial powers of these characters are represented as overtly dangerous and evil when they are addressed at all.

I also like that the Homestuck Epilogues are rather brutally honest about the fact that sometimes, the people that you grew up with - your close friends - grow apart from you, and turn into kind of bad people. I’ve watched that happen in real time, and have had to stop hanging out with people because they just kind of... turned evil. That’s something that needs to be discussed more in fiction, and more honestly than the usual way. When the most visible example of like, someone you knew and loved turning into a bad person is like, Anakin Skywalker, maybe the world needs more stories about that.

So good, that’s what we’ve got for things I think were good to say. Well done.

What don’t I like about the Homestuck Epilogues?

In a word, I think, they are cruel. Relentlessly cruel. Even actively malicious.

Homestuck has, of course, always been rather mean-spirited and adversarial, pretty much since page one. And really, so has Andrew’s writing in general, since the days when he ran the site Team Special Olympics. His humor walks a fine line between and outrageous and genuinely offensive, as he dares you to say, “That’s fucked up!” so he can respond “it was just a joke, where’s your sense of humor?”

But the Epilogues transcend the usual sardonic envelope-pushing we can usually count on Andrew for, and instead opt to sink their teeth into the readers in an assault on the senses, and on the sensibilities. Reading the Epilogues is a brutal experience to endure emotionally, and in a lot of places, morally offensive.

And they are this way practically from the first page; our very first impression of the Homestuck Epilogues is a content warning that presents itself in such a way as to be almost unmistakably parodic. The stylization as an AO3 work, particularly in the context of Homestuck, where these sorts of overzealous content warning pages are associated with preachy jerks like Kankri, it comes across as a direct challenge to the viewer, and by a challenge, I really mean an attack. It is a mean-spirited joke at the expense of people who have a desire to curate their media experience - and then the authors have the gall to say that the one of the goals of the Epilogues is to challenge people to curate their media more.

Every time a character could conceivably make a bad decision, or become a more ill-conceived version of themselves, they somehow manage it, which becomes all the more unbearable because of the identification of character and audience that has been the case throughout all of Homestuck. If Homestuck introduces us to this entire cast and says, this is you, the Epilogues seem to follow up with and there is nothing good about you. Jade Harley somehow transforms into a grotesque caricature of a trans-woman, a girl who is sexually incontinent and predatory in a way that is directly tied to her having a dog penis - a state of being which the text variously slut-shames her for in Meat, or alternatively uses to blame her for ruining Dave and Karkat’s relationship in Candy.

John Egbert is severely depressed and dysfunctional, and this leads him either to go off and kill Lord English to chase the thrill of adventure and his own sense of purpose (in direct opposition to the all-but-explicitly-stated takeaway from Homestuck which Dave gives us, that the better option is to just leave the story alone altogether - explicitly the worst decision he could make according to the rules of Homestuck) or descend into decades of nihilistic solipsism while the world disintegrates around him.

Dirk’s worst natures take over him and transform him into a person who can only conceivably be satisfied either by becoming an arch-villain, or by murdering himself.

The Epilogues are aggressively cruel to Jake English, choosing to double down on the lack of emotional resolution he suffered from at the end of Homestuck, and squarely placing the blame for his own misery on his own shoulders, in a way which is pretty hard to read around, which is part and parcel of the general malice which Homestuck has historically treated mentally ill characters with. Nearly all the kids in Homestuck have suffered incomprehensible levels of mental and physical abuse, and the text expects them to simply overcome it sheerly by force of will. Sure, Jake is miserable but it’s his own fault, the text seems to say; if he’d just get his act together, like Dave, maybe he could get on with his life without being mind-broken by Dirk, or raped and whipped by Jane.

This isn’t even to delve into the flagship reveal of Homestuck 2, that Rose and Jade in the Candy Timeline have not only had a daughter of their own (without telling Kanaya), but that furthermore they have replicated their own trauma in her. Rose and Jade’s daughter has grown up completely emotionally alone, in the care of her Moms’ archenemy.

The point in all of this is not that the Epilogues have made everyone behave out of character or anything like that - I think it’s clear after a re-read especially that all of this is a conceivable direction that these characters could have taken. Rather, the Epilogues reliably choose to believe the worst of the characters of Homestuck in terms of their writing decisions. Everyone always makes the worst decision that they could make, or at the very least, nearly the worst. And because of the identification of reader and character, we can’t help but take away from that a sense that this is what the authors think of us as well.

And in case it wasn’t stated explicitly enough, a running theme throughout the Epilogues is that all this conflict and badness taking place is, to some extent or another, because we the audience are looking at it. As Andrew stated in relation to the Epilogues, there’s a kind of Happily Ever After possibility bubble around the characters that intrinsically collapses into conflict the moment we observe the events again - in other words, by participating in a story, we the audience members are somehow complicit in the characters’ suffering. Yet not all stories must be driven by conflict - and who triumphs and who fails in that conflict says a lot about what a story has to say about real life.

The Epilogues engage in a kind of voyeuristic cruelty, a kind of pessimism and cynicism, a kind of relentless ugliness that I have seldom seen, and to what end? The whole thing seems to me an attack on the audience.

Aside from general, abstracted claims toward authorial intent (which I think is there), I also want to say that, I can’t emotionally engage with the Epilogues, for a personal reason; as somebody who has struggled with almost daily suicidal ideation for most of my adult life, the way that the Epilogues deal with that subject goes from troubling to malicious and hostile in its treatment of Dirk’s suicide.

And staying personal, while I haven’t had to deal with some of the other sensitive topics that the Epilogues handle recklessly, handle them recklessly they do - Jake is serially raped by Jane, and in a way that he serves as a vehicle to move the plot forward, rather than with any kind of compassion for Jake’s condition. The possibility that Tavros Crocker might be being molested by Gamzee is brought up flippantly in one scene and played off as a joke.

The Homestuck Epilogues play at maturity through handling dark themes and sensitive topics, and reveal a profound immaturity in their authors because of the ways in which they are cruelly, insensitively handled over and over again.

I guess I’ll close with the least egregious thing. The Homestuck Epilogues just aren’t funny. Even at its bleakest, Homestuck has always been funny. In their relentless pursuit of cruelty, and the shared misery of their audience and characters, the Homestuck Epilogues forgo even this most basic element of Homestuck, which Andrew has always described as being basically a comedy.

Anyway; I will not be doing a thorough analysis of the Epilogues. I hate them too much and they suck.

#The Homestuck Epilogues #rape mention #suicide mention #fascism

16 notes · View notes

spoppersonality · 4 years

Text

How MBTI & Enneagram affect character relatability

I have a theory, and I’m going to illustrate it with the help of Adora and Shadow Weaver. I also have a personal story there.

Fun fact:

I share an MBTI type with Shadow Weaver (INFJ)

and an Enneagram type with Adora (Social 9w1).

(Not going to go into more specific subtypes right now.)

What makes this interesting to me, is how I am, in this case, pretty much a perfect example of how people tend to relate to fictional characters with similar Enneagrams, rather than similar MBTI types. My “evidence” is anecdotal of course, but I have noticed a pattern there. I think this tendency is at least one of the reasons behind some interesting phenomena in fandom and might set some light to questions like why some characterizations are more popular in fanfiction than others. (Such as why people write characters like Keith, Sasuke, Zuko and Catra as artsy emos.) But I digress. (Might get into that another time, though.)

I had watched SPOP about three times before it even crossed my mind that Shadow Weaver shared a personality type with me. While it was apparent to me the first time around, that I shared a personality type with Adora. So, why? Because one is a hero, and one is a villain, and I would rather identify with the hero?

That seems like a nice and clean answer, but I don’t think it’s quite that simple.

I think it has more to do with how I, and I think most people, relate to fiction from an emotional point of view. We tend to watch and read stories for emotional reasons, more than intellectual ones. Not that intellectual reasons don’t play a part, just that the driving force is often emotional. We’re looking to connect emotionally with the characters, otherwise we would be watching a documentary or reading a science book instead. At least that’s how it works for me, and in my experience, a lot of other people.

MBTI is about cognition, while Enneagram is about motivation. Sometimes I like to distinguish MBTI as your “intellectual type” and Enneagram as your “emotional type”. At least from that angle, it makes perfect sense, that we would relate to a character with a similar emotional type: a similar Enneagram, when we are immersed in something with our emotions.

And this is true of MBTI “thinkers” and “feelers” alike. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen INTPs claim Sherlock Holmes simply MUST be an INTP because they relate to him. When I first got into MBTI, I was guilty of that too. I thought every character I emotionally related to, was an INFJ. LOL, NOPE. I just didn’t know anything about Enneagram. After getting into that, I can easily see that the characters I most relate to, tend to have a very similar Enneagram type to mine.

Actually, it was the fact that I related to Adora so much that made me especially blind to the possibility that I might relate to Shadow Weaver in any way. That’s why I find this personal example so juicy. It’s because in the emotional dynamic between Adora and Shadow Weaver, I related to Adora a 100% and then some. I’ve had my Shadow Weavers, and reacted to them in a way a Social 9w1 will. We are people pleasers because we lack a solid sense of self, and we do exactly as we are told to avoid conflict, separation and loss (our worst fear).

In the worst case scenario, we believe we need to constantly excuse our very existence.

(Like seriously, it can get ridiculous. When I was around ten, if I was at a friend’s house, I didn’t have it in myself to ask for a glass of water if I was thirsty. Even when it was offered to me without asking, I found it hard to accept, because I had done nothing to pay for that water. Even though I live in a country with the best access to clean water in the world, so one glass of water costs practically nothing.)

Given all that, it makes sense that I wouldn’t even consider relating to Shadow Weaver, because to me she very much represents everything toxic that I experienced as a child and needed to unlearn in adulthood.

But after taking a step back from that emotional angle, it’s pretty easy for me to see that cognitively speaking, I’m not Adora, who is an ESTJ. I’m pretty much the polar opposite. Which is Shadow Weaver, as weird as it feels to me.

As INFJs, we are very good at understanding another person’s psychological make up. We easily take anyone’s point of view and use that to influence the people around us. We don’t naturally gravitate towards the spotlight or a leadership role, we are at our most effective in one-on-one communication.

Obviously, Shadow Weaver uses all this to manipulate and abuse people, to get her way and her narcissistic supply. I use it to help my friends see their problems more accurately, and themselves in an encouraging light. (And to write fiction!) Shadow Weaver uses it to cause conflict between people by distorting their view of reality, I use it to ease conflict by an attempt to bring more clarity.

But that doesn’t mean we are not both INFJs, because we definitely are. Upon a closer look, I find many things about Shadow Weaver relatable.

She’s definitely an introvert driven by her internal vision, her idea of power, and she’s thinking leaps ahead, like she does the moment she sees Adora as a baby. (Ni) She’s a great communicator, but it’s more of a means to an end to her than it is a passion. (Fe) It seems like the very concept of power interests her more than what practical things she can do with it (Ti).

And her vision is SO MUCH BIGGER than her abilities. That’s exactly how I’ve felt my whole life, because inferior Se will do that to you. You don’t see the step-by-step approach to your GRAND VISION even though you can see the end result so clearly in your head that you swear you can touch it. Your insight can be so accurate that you can (deliberately, or accidentally) make people think you’re connected to some mystical higher power even though you’re mostly just full of sh*t (=ideas, abstractions).

It’s like, your whole life, you’ve been working towards one goal, one vision, that is just on the other side of a river, but you CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW to get across. If you could JUST do that, then on the other side ALL your dreams would come true, everything you’ve worked for, for your entire life would COME TOGETHER in pure AWESOMENESS because you’ve been thinking, and planning and fantasizing and putting all of your mental energy into it, and just aching to get across that river. And then, a f*cking ESTP (Catra) shows up, farts a bridge, gets to the other side, and once they’re there, they have NO. CLUE. WHAT. THE F*CK. THEY. ARE. EVEN. DOING. THERE.

I’m getting carried away.

Emotionally, or, motivationally speaking I don’t relate to Shadow Weaver. Like, at all. I couldn’t care less about having power over other people. I can’t bear the thought of hurting another person. (I still cry at night sometimes because I once called my brother’s helmet “stupid” as a child, when he was annoying me.) I don’t need to be the most powerful or put others down in order to feel whole. The idea of hindering someone’s growth into their happiest and truest self is horrifying to me.

But still, my brain works similarly to hers. I’m full of ideas that are connected to the same big vision I’ve had my entire life, but getting there efficiently enough requires a lot more brain work and trial and error from me than some other types.

Emotionally speaking I relate to Adora so much. I get anxious if I’m not constantly doing something “useful”. I feel responsible for other people’s happiness. I feel tremendous guilt every time I have to say “no” to someone in order to rest and take care of myself. I feel like a failure when I’m not able to fix someone’s problem. I feel obligated to sacrifice myself because I “can”. When I was voted the least desirable girl in my class, I was just relieved it wasn’t anyone else, because I knew my friends would have shattered if it were them. (Hint: it wasn’t because I had better self-esteem. It was because my self-esteem wasn’t a concern for me in the first place.)

And yet, I’m also nothing like Adora when it comes to cognitive make up. It would be interesting to dive deep into why the ESTJ 9 combination is totally fascinating for me, but this post is too long for that already.

My point is:

1) In terms of relatability in fiction, Enneagram might play a bigger role than MBTI.

2) Sometimes people get into heated arguments about a character’s type because they can only see a character they relate to, as their own type, and that’s intellectually dishonest. (As a personality junkie, I care.)

3) It’s OKAY to relate to a character with a different MBTI from you. MBTI is not everything. Enneagram is not everything either. There might be another reason.

4) Sometimes people seem to feel like they need to be like their favourite character in EVERY way, to justify their experience of relating to that character. Well, you don’t. Having the same cognitive type doesn’t automatically lead to the same motivational type, or the same life experiences, or the same relationship style or the same neurotype, or anything else. These can all be different, and your experience is valid no matter where the relatability comes from.

5) If you relate to a character, there’s a reason for it, and you’ll get the most out of it, if you try to discover that reason as honestly as possible and not automatically assume it must be your MBTI (or something else). Those four letters are not the most important thing about anyone, so you don’t need those to “claim” a character to your side of things.

6) You have no obligation to emotionally relate to a character with the same type as yours. I can assure you my feelings towards Shadow Weaver did not become any warmer after discovering we shared an MBTI type, and that’s okay too.

#spop mbti #spop enneagram #adora #shadow weaver #infj #type 9 #pictures from comics by me

37 notes · View notes

gaawachan · 3 years

Text

https://twitter.com/tendertiefling/status/1416442250507214849

Had a good rant dump w tendertiefling, thought I’d post it here so I could find it again later.

So much of cr lore is just colonialism.

A lot of colonialism that is never unpacked or reflected on.

To the CR cast, setting depth seems to equate to good cops bad cops and State-enabled abuse stopping at the one directly committing it.

I think the thing that's most annoying to me is that a lot of the unchallenged racism in CR is rooted in D&D history, but the colonialism? The colonialism was ALL Matt, and particularly with respect to Xhorhas it seems like he used it as a clumsy attempt to "fix" the D&D racism (wtf), and while the situation is certainly more interesting than standard D&D lore, the problem is that the cast completely failed to engage with the subject matter.

Oh, goblins are treated like beasts in the empire and that coupled with magical forces causes them to conform to expectations but they're just normal people in other nations? So did anyone ever bother to challenge Veth's racism? No. Oh, the Empire is literally a totalitarian state- in-lore Blumenthal is a medieval surveillance dystopia! But let's just take out Trent, not dissolve his position, and become a teacher, and... "serve the empire" by flailing impotently against the corruption.

And Xhorhas? Xhorhas is the poster child of the belief that colonialism can be done non-violently. Destroying the cultures of the local peoples by holding a mcguffin over their heads and saying "we'll purge the curse of Bane from you if you convert and join our dynasty" It's like when Christian converters go to a place and say "We'll give you food if you read the Bible."

And ALL of it would have been okay... if the cast had bothered to engage with any of it, but they didn't!

>>> exactly, all of this. the problem is not that that those things are there in the universe (though i do have my problems with the way matt did the goblin lore. "they're not an inherently evil race, they just have a curse that makes them so" is not exactly the non-racist lore upgrade that mm thinks it is), because i feel like there's a message to be taken from those themes in fiction, it's why they're included in the first place. to raise questions. but it falls flat when you add them to the story and do nothing with it, especially when these incredibly complex issues are simplified for the sake of brevity. beyond that, fantasy peppered with colonialism and fantasy racism that don't condemn and/or unpack them does make me think that creators simply cannot imagine a world where those things are not part of the human experience, especially white and western creators. and how unimaginative of us, really.

>>>>

One of the most interesting thing about Mercer's setting is the existence of the dranassar, something that was never mentioned in either campaign and was barely mentioned in EGtW (they didn't even get a playable race entry). Whyyyyyyy? One of the most interesting things about Exandria that has yet to be explored are the intersectional layers of the setting, and the dranassar are are great way to do that, but they feel almost like an afterthought. It's so frustrating to see the cast dodge delving hardcore into the setting because "it's boring." No. You know what's boring? Watching cowards pussyfoot around actually fixing systemic problems in the setting and failing to properly resolve many of the most important conflicts in the story. It's galling to viewers who have been victims of abuse, racism, and colonialism.

I don't understand how people can be so subsumed in neoliberal simpery (for lack of a better term) that they can't be bothered to actually address terrible systemic injustices... in a fictional setting. You have the power to bend reality to your will, and you're not going to use it to actually fix things? That's not "character growth." That's avoiding responsibility. If you have the power to fix things, USE IT. I think this, more than any other reason, is why I hated how Caleb's story ended. It didn't make ANY sense to me.

I have said (and I believe) that it is NOT Caleb's responsibility as a victim to mop up the mess of his abusers and the government that enabled his abuse... but he WANTS to! and then he gets an ending like that?! What kind of message does that send? It's nothing short of gross. It ends up being unsatisfying both for people who truly wanted peace for Caleb AND for people who wanted the Empire to change, and people can point at the pandemic all they want to deflect blame from the cast, but... how do I put this?

This is going to sound terrible but I think that this is both Matt and Liam's fault. I do not think that Matt sufficiently displayed to the cast just how vile the Dwendalian State is (he tied Trent to too much of its evil). And then there is Astrid. *sigh* The first Astrid scene in Rexxentrum was the worst thing to happen to Caleb's character. He gently challenges her, but if you pay attention to Caleb from that point on? it's like he semi-adopts her attitude. Like LIAM agrees with her. I find it incredibly disturbing. Like Caleb thinks all the oppression and all the abuse the the people of the Empire endure is worth it... as long as it's not coming down directly on the heads of children anymore. It's an echo of the conditioning Caleb went through that just a single scene with Astrid could affect him like that, and I find it so, so gross.

It's one of multiple reasons why Caleb's ending doesn't feel like growth. It feels like surrender. It feels like despair.

#critical role #critrole #critical role spoilers #critrole spoilers #caleb widogast #astrid beck #colonialism #fantasy racism #just argh #no i'm not over it #i'm very sad

3 notes · View notes

angels-heap · 4 years

Note

Okay hello I feel like you are Wise and Know things... it’s kind of hard to explain but is it wrong to just... Enjoy Things? With all the HL pisscourse going around it’s making me nervous about liking things like TF2 and missing something critical and huge in the media I consume and being labelled as a bad person for doing that. ESPECIALLY for liking characters like GLaDOS or Wheatley from Portal. I want to just Enjoy Things but there’s guilt tied to not being critical about every single detail

Thanks for reaching out, friend, and I’m so sorry to hear the current nonsense has you feeling this way. I have a hunch you’re not alone, and although I don’t claim to have all the answers here, I hope hearing my thoughts on this helps alleviate some of that guilt. This got long and I’m not putting it under a cut because it’s important.

The short answer to your question is no; it is not wrong to just enjoy things. You don’t have to constantly examine all your favorite media under a microscope and incessantly highlight or dwell on its faults to be a good person or a good consumer of media, and here are a few reasons why:

(CW for brief mentions of all the squicky/potentially triggering things that tend to come up in ship discourse conversations.)

1. It is virtually impossible to find a truly unproblematic piece of media.

And that’s okay! Media is both created and consumed by people, and people are notoriously imperfect and complex. Sometimes creators choose to explore dark or taboo themes that are always going to squick some people out, no matter how well (or poorly) they’re handled. Sometimes content creators are actually terrible people who deliberately try to perpetuate their messed-up ideas through media. Sometimes creators’ deeply internalized prejudices seep into a work in a way they may not even consciously realize. Sometimes consumers’ experiences or prejudices color the way they perceive a piece of media and may lead them to a very different interpretation than what the creators intended.

Point is, there are a lot of shades of gray here. We should always strive to do better as creators and consumers, but the goalposts for “perfection” are always moving.

There’s almost always going to be something about your favorite media—no matter how benign it is—that rubs some people the wrong way, or (perhaps unintentionally) perpetuates harmful stereotypes, or starts out okay but doesn’t age well down the line. Period. That’s an uncomfortable truth that we all have to sit with. But don’t despair, because…

2. It is still okay to engage with and enjoy media that you know is problematic. Even if it’s really problematic. For real. I promise. The media you consume does not determine your worth as a person.

Since you specifically mentioned Valve games, I’ll start out by clarifying that (as of July 2020), Valve games and their fandoms are pretty benign overall. Perhaps in the future, more of the humor will start to age poorly, or Valve will make some extremely questionable design choices with their next game, or Gabe Newell will be outed as a prolific serial killer, or whatever, but for now, there’s really nothing about Valve games that should make the average person go, “holy shit, you’re into that?!” when you bring them up in polite company. (And anyone who insinuates otherwise re: Half Life shipping discourse is either very confused about the definition of certain words or is maliciously trying to stir up controversy.)

That said, everyone has a different threshold for what they do and don’t want to see in media, and those boundaries are totally valid! But it is absolutely possible to enjoy even notably problematic media (e.g., Game of Thrones, the new Star Wars sequels, old movies where the directors were huge assholes to the female cast members, etc.) without being a bad person or a bad social justice activist. Instead of rambling about that at length, I’m going to link you to this excellent blog post on the subject.

The big takeaway here is that you can love a piece of media while also acknowledging its faults. In fact, I’d argue that a key part of loving something is being able to think critically about it and trying to hold its creators to a higher standard whenever possible. However, that doesn’t mean you have to be constantly analyzing it or prefacing every single public acknowledgment of your love for it with an “I know this is problematic and I swear, I just like it for XYZ” disclaimer, because…

3. Tumblr’s black-and-white thinking about media consumption is not healthy, “normal,” or (usually) present to the same degree in other virtual or real-world spaces.

I think most of the people on Tumblr who seem to be on a constant (and ultimately futile; see point 1) quest to find the One True Unproblematic Media have good intentions. I really do. And I applaud them for actively trying to understand and un-learn their own biases while becoming critical consumers of media.

Unfortunately, for a bunch of complicated reasons I still don’t totally understand and won’t get into here, some online communities tend to take these things to such an extreme that, in their quest to create a safe and/or inclusive environment, they actually end up creating an even more hostile one. To reference the recent drama again, nowhere is that more apparent than with “pro-ship” vs. “anti-ship” discourse.

Basically, “pro-shippers” believe that fiction is entirely separate from reality and therefore, “problematic” content (up to and including p*dophilia, inc*st, noncon, etc.) has just as much of a right to exist as any other content; this makes some sense on a purely intellectual level, but in the real world, obviously things are much more complicated than that. “Anti-shippers,” on the other hand, claim to be specifically against the aforementioned Big Three Bad Things in theory, but in practice, they’re basically the fandom purity police; they strive to criticize and shut down any media or fandom activity that could be even remotely construed as problematic, because they seem to have a (perhaps well-intentioned but ultimately misguided) perception that discussing anything “bad” in fiction will glorify/condone/promote it in real life and that all creators of “bad” fiction are inherently malicious. Often, they’re willing to twist definitions and jump through some very strange hoops to justify why something is “bad.”

The truth lies somewhere between those two extremes; fiction absolutely can (and does) impact reality, but not in such a clear-cut cause-and-effect way. People can see or read about dark/complicated/problematic things without condoning or enjoying them in real life, and conversely, people can dislike even relatively benign things without having to have an extreme, profound reason for feeling that way. People can also enjoy “bad” media while being fully conscious of what’s wrong with it and taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t negatively influence them, or they may lack the knowledge/context to understand why something is “bad” at first and change how they engage (or don’t engage) as they learn. There’s a lot more nuance to this issue than Tumblr is willing to acknowledge, and as a result, a lot of innocent people who just want to enjoy things in peace get sucked into some truly absurd drama that can be really hard to deal with. And that sucks. A lot.

So, TL;DR: Almost all media is at least a little problematic, but that’s okay, because the media you like does not determine whether or not you’re a good person. (And especially if your primary interests are Valve games... you’re good, mate. Seriously.)

The fact that you’re even asking me this question shows me that you’re being a thoughtful, responsible consumer of media, and that’s all anyone can reasonably ask of you without being a gigantic hypocrite—because whether they’ll admit it or not, everybody who’s perpetuating this discourse both on and offline likes something “problematic.” It’s impossible not to, unless you live under a rock and consume exactly zero media. Take care, and try not to let the discourse get to you! Go forth and enjoy things! (As always, my inbox is open for follow-up questions.)

ETA: Here’s another excellent tumblr post on this topic! And another one!

#asks #anon #fandom #ship discourse #sorry it took me so long to respond to this #I'm sure I left things out but here are some thoughts to get you started #long post

51 notes · View notes

fauxpromises · 3 years

Text

Random musings about Talking Heads & Kuja

Been getting back to writing again and felt like it would be kind of fun to write down my thoughts on the artist and album that inspired some of my thematic ideas for my fic. Though realistically this is more of a general character analysis re Kuja than anything specific to my writing, lol.

Analysis below the cut!

Part of why I was inspired to write is, well, Kuja is one of my favorite characters in fiction and I feel that a lot of his most important themes and characterization go almost completely unexamined. Specifically, I notice fandom tends to focus on his characterization prior to his big change in trajectory. That trajectory results in his constructed persona being pretty much completely destroyed, and in the wake of that, I see his post-arc persona being much more muted and lacking in a solid foundation of identity. No longer the excessively theatrical, outgoing identity that he created in order to convince himself that he was unique and important (neither of which his origin would lead him to actually believe).

And that’s exactly why I relate Talking Heads, and more specifically Remain in Light to him as a character. It’s an album with the central theme of identity conflict, at times in a very abstract way, that I feel fits him as a character so entirely well. The actual style of music has either a chaotic, rapid “racing thoughts” tempo to it, or a subdued sound that nonetheless has feeling of looming dread to it. Sometimes they feel rather casual, but in a superficial way. But the theme is pretty consistent across the track list. Even the title “Remain in Light” and the album cover is meant to convey that something is being obscured and is attempting to come into visibility.

The narrative voice as performed by David Byrne is also extremely fitting. He’s good at conveying a personality that is eccentric and at times seemingly detached from the human experience. He makes quirky, coy observations and tends to muse on the state of humanity or others in ways that almost seem as if he excludes himself from that lot. You could call it somewhat dissociative, while still portraying a lucid train of thought; there’s often a difference in the degree of intelligence the narrator shows in his observations, and his ability to understand the emotions that they yield.

Of the songs on Remain in Light, I believe the ones that most relate to the identity disturbance theme are “Once in a Lifetime”, “Seen and Not Seen”, and the big one for me, “Crosseyed & Painless”. I give a shoutout to “The Great Curve” because it kind of informed the romance dynamic, which, while not supposed to be foremost to the character study, represent something Kuja as a character has almost no interaction with in his canon context (outside of Dissidia anyway) - a tangible connection with another person. That track really complements the theme of delusion that the album insinuates, as it’s a sort of fanciful love song describing an idealized, lofty portayal of a woman. It’s abstract and nonspecific, barely a love song in the conventional sense, but I like the idea that someone who is themself conflicted or deluded about their own identity would struggle to see others as they really are.

Anyway, “Once in a Lifetime” is probably one of the best known TH songs. It’s an almost comedic take on an existential crisis, the narrator reflecting on his uncertainty of the nature of reality to the point of questioning the basic objects he interacts with in his day-to-day (like his wife and his car). “Seen and Not Seen” is a much more obscure track that is an extended metaphor. The narration describes a man who is able to change his physical appearance at will, trying to make it match that of idealized others (like celebrities) or changing it to better suit his perception of himself. It’s a representation of how people shape their personalities and identities, and how they can err in doing so.

But really, I’d say “Crosseyed & Painless” is the song that really, to me, is Kuja’s character arc in a nutshell. I really love the live version from Stop Making Sense specifically for the extended and stylized intro. It starts with a really calm and casual instrumental and guitar line, which gradually (and disconcertingly) transitions into a really fast tempo and guitar which reminds me way too much of “Dark Messenger”. It’s pretty clearly a musical depiction of a descent into insanity as something rather incremental, but ultimately landing with force. It’s definitely something that has to be heard to be understood.

Lyrically, the narrator describes a feeling of identity confusion. Due to an unspecified cause, he feels like he is caught between an assumed identity and a true identity, pretty well explained in the first verse (Lost my shape, trying to act casual). It’s a cause of great distress as evidenced by the third line, “I might end up in the hospital”. And beyond that, the phrase “I feel like an accident” indicates something has occurred that is inevitable.

After the narrator explains his own predicament, to me it seems he turned his skepticism to the reality of everything else rather than admit that the delusion and conflict is within himself. It’s rather clever. He speaks at length about facts, as in the second verse: (I'm ready to leave, I push the fact in front of me/Facts lost, facts are never what they seem to be). Facts are something unavoidable and true by definition, but he focuses his attention on both lamenting their immovability and still trying to rationalize that he can alter them. There’s also talk of doubt, which I expect is related to the aforementioned conflict with facts - despite the denial of them, doubt always voices itself. The chorus in its various versions reaffirm this with the statement “the feeling returns whenever we close our eyes”.

The prominent refrain, however, is the “I’m still waiting” repetition. An annotation on the song on Genius.com sums up the meaning behind it very well:

“What I love about this refrain is that it seems to reconfirm a desire for facts or some kind of master signifier that will give order and meaning to the world, despite the song’s overall critique of facts. The repetition of “still waiting” ties in nicely with the line in the bridge that “Facts cut a hole in us.” This reminds me of what Jacques Lacan calls objet petit a – the object-cause of desire that our desires forever circle around without obtaining.”

If you care to give any of these songs a listen, I’d recommend the album version for all but “Crosseyed & Painless” which has a significantly better version in my opinion on the live album. There used to be an incredibly amazing downmix of the whole album on Youtube but it has since vanished, very unfortunately.

#kuja #talking heads #wow those tags sure are on opposite ends #my fic

6 notes · View notes

buckysmischief · 4 years

Text

what’s up danger? - 1

sunflower, part 1

Peter Parker x reader

Word Count: 1.6k

Warnings: language, sexual innuendos

AN: @perpetually-tuned-out helped me write a piece of this & it’s bolded, Amanda you’re amazing & I cannot thank you enough!

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

🕷🕸

Peter’s POV

Peter was watching TV alone in his apartment one day and got back-to-back phone calls from Fury and Tony about a new villain they wanted to recruit. The problem was that no one knew where she was currently due to her ability to change reality, which is why they needed Peter. After the whole ordeal with Mysterio, Peter and Tony began working on a piece of tech that would detect any false realities.

Once arriving at the SHIELD NY office, Peter was welcomed by Maria and escorted to the debriefing room where Fury and Tony were waiting. On the table was a new Spider-Man suit, which meant Tony had added new tech that he would be needing for his mission.

“So, kid, do you remember a thing called the reality stone?” Peter was well into his 20s but Tony has never stopped calling him ‘kid’, which he was fine with. As long as it came from Tony, from anyone else felt like an insult.

“Um yeah, sort of. The stones were destroyed by Thanos after the snap though, weren’t they?” puzzled Peter, “Is something happening? Is he back? Do we-”

“Woah there, slow down.” Tony interrupted, “Back in 2013 the stone, or Aether, was in London. There was this thing called the Convergence happening, I’m not getting into it right now so ask Thor if you’re curious. Basically, as a young girl YN YLN, was in London in 2013 on a class trip, got caught up in an anomaly, and she absorbed the powers of the aether.”

“Like Jane?”

“No. We’re not sure why, all we know is that she uses it how Thanos did.”

“Back to the point,” Fury interjects, “It’s damn near impossible to catch a person who can alter reality, so Tony updated the tracking abilities in your suit.”

“I ran tests on all the stones when we had them, good thing too or we never would have had the technology to find her.” Tony boasts. “Took some time to figure out, though. We need you to test it out, see if you can find her when the radar detects a location.”

Peter nods, taking in all the new information presented to him. “Okay, but why me? Not that I’m complaining, I just don’t understand why I’m her assigned Avenger.”

“It’s simple,” Maria starts, “Beck did something similar and, once you finally figured it out, you handled the situation extremely well.”

“She’s also your neighbor,” Fury laughs, “we call her Rem.”

Peter was shocked. His quiet, shy, and probably overly nervous neighbor was a villain? They had been neighbors for two years, how did he not notice? Did she know that he’s Spider-Man? Well, at least he knew her name now.

“Okay, what do you want me to do?”

“Try and recruit her.”

Your POV

For the past year Spider-Man has been on your ass every move you made, and not because you lived right beside him. After the first two times he found you attempting to rob a bank, you figured he must have found a way to track your powers. You had to stop using your powers at home, which wasn’t a huge deal. The last thing you needed was Peter Parker invading your personal life.

It wasn’t hard to find out who he was, the fact that his girlfriend was always yelling “Why can’t you just stop being Spider-Man?” helped a lot. They fought a lot, actually. It was none of your business, so you weren’t worried about why, but you did know she wanted him to retire the suit.

“Oh Spidey, still comin’ back I see. You don’t have a girlfriend to keep you busy?” he hadn’t even made himself known yet, but you knew he was there.

“Not really, we broke up. Again. We’ve kinda been in the cycle of.. Wait, stop distracting me!” webs flew from his suit and entangled your hands.

“C’mon Spidey, you know how I feel about being tied up.” you say with a smirk.

“Yeah, but something tells me you like it.” Peter smirked under his mask, “Otherwise you wouldn’t have made it so easy.”

Peter had slowly been getting closer, and you were suddenly pressed against the wall. And if the eyes on his mask were anything to go by, he was squinting. It’s like this is a different Spider-Man. Usually if you get a little flirty, he would get flustered, flirt back a little, but you always got away before he got to your hands. However, this time, the lack of witty banter had thrown you off, this time he was really flirting. Peter had noticed the slight twitch of your eyes as he considered his next few words.

“I could just make this the easiest job and have you suspended from the air, but something tells me you’ll beg me to tighten the restraints.” Your pupils dilate at his crude comment and your natural instinct was to lash out with your hands.

As your arms buckled and fists clenched in the webbing Peter realized that he’d mobilized your strongest asset. Until you could free yourself, you were trapped under Spider-Man’s gaze.

“So Remmy,” how you loathed that nickname, “why are you in the weapons vault, at SHIELD of all places?”

“Heard some rumors Cap had extra shields, got bored and thought I’d have a look.” While that was true, you failed to mention what one would go for if any existed.

Peter scoffed, “Come on Rem, just meet with him once. You don’t have to be a thief forev-”

“I am not meeting Nick Fury or Tony Stark.”

Peter closed the remaining distance between you and removed the webbing from your hands, holding them in his. He bent down and whispered in your ear, “Then stay for me.”

You don’t know when your feelings for Peter, and Spider-Man, changed. It started out as a typical hero-villian dynamic, but slowly you developed something for the masked hero.

“I’ll think about it.” one moment you are kissing his cheek, and the next he is watching you disappear behind a door that never existed before.

What the hell was that? So what Peter and his girlfriend broke up, that’s not anything new. You could count on one hand the amount of time she’s slammed the door at 2 in the morning after Peter had come back from patrolling the city just this month. Flirting wasn’t anything new, just a way to try and distract the other. No, you had just never had Peter, Spider-Man, act on his flirtations.

You walked out of the door you created and immediately blended in with foot traffic, deciding that you were going to pick up Chinese food and head home for the night.

You should have went with Italian. Of course Peter would be there. He was putting his card back in his wallet when he spotted you. “Yn? Hey, Peter. I mean I’m Peter, we’re neighbors.”

Never in the three years of living next to this man have you two ever said more than a, “Hey, they put your mail in my box again by mistake” to each other. What the hell had possessed both of his identities to change things? “Yeah. I mean, I know who you are.”

“You going home after this? We could walk together, if that’s fine with you I mean.” he was nervous. Not even an hour ago he had you pinned against a wall and now he’s suddenly shy?

You thought about your next words, and the fact that you weren’t supposed to know he was single. “And how would your girlfriend feel about that?”

“MJ? She left, again. I told her to not come back anymore, it’s a long story. Not important anymore. But it’s fine if you don’t want to!”

You really should say no, “No, I want to! I mean, why not, ya know?”

After paying for your food the two of you walk back to Peter’s apartment, he had just bought a new TV and suggested movie with dinner. As the night went on you both gravitated toward each other, your legs had ended up stretched out across his lap while his hand was gripping your thigh.

It was odd, knowing how he spends half of his life and then learning how he spends his other. Your favorite was finding the fiction in the story of his real life. He didn’t develop tech for Tony Stark, he developed teach with Tony Stark. He tested it. You also found out that he was a giant nerd and a total sweetheart.

But after all you learned about Peter that night, he didn’t tell you that you were apart of the reason MJ left.

It started out with him coming home hurt after fighting a random bank robber, a bullet grazed his shoulder and he acted like it was nothing. That’s when MJ started asking Peter to stay in the lab more and out of the field, but Peter couldn’t do that.

Then you became his mission. MJ noticed how obsessed he was with catching you and showing you the perks of being a hero. Every night he found you he came home and it was all he could talk about. “MJ I know she’s technically a villain-”

“-she is literally a villain-”

“-but you should have seen the way she changed everything. We were in Central Park and suddenly we were inside an abandoned building, it was amazing!”

No, Peter wasn’t going to mention that. He just wanted to do this. They could figure out her being a professional thief, and him being a fucking Avenger later. Right?

🕷🕸

Permanent tags: @sociallyeneptbarnes @valkyriesryde @buckysdumbmetalarm @rogvewitch @infj-slytherclaw @whimsicalatbest @readeity @nea90sweetie @aestheticrelated @pinknerdpanda @justabitoverobsessed @imsoft-barnes @actualdpshuri @goalexis123 @https-bucky @stuckyandsciencebros @moli1497 @agentpeggybarnesfanfics @justmebeingtheweirdmeiam @screaming-fridge @geeksareunique @rhymesmenagerie @brokenthelovely @ivoryhazlewood @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog @mushyjellybeans @sebbbystaaan @rayche776 @buggy-blogs @estillion14 @perpetually-tuned-out @stuckonjbbarnes @sandyclaws

Series tags: @stateoflovinged

#peter parker x reader #Peter Parker x villain reader #peter parker imagine #Tony stark #nick fury #Maria hill #mj #Michelle jones #reader insert #marvel #mcu fanfic #whats up danger?

238 notes · View notes

narrators-journal · 3 years

Text

Witchly’s Bio

I’ve been having ZERO idea what to write for my original works, but here’s my fursona’s, Witchly’s, bio. Sorry for such a sporadic posting schedule lol.

BASIC INFORMATION

Name: Witchly

Nickname(s): None as of yet, unless you count her boss calling her dear when she flirts

Age: She is 19 years old

Gender/Sex: She was born and identifies as female

Sexuality: Witchly doesn't actually know what her sexuality is completely. She's a toonophile primarily and crushes on both male and female characters as well as a few real people through out her life, but in real sexual encounters it's difficult for her to completely feel in the moment and easily get off, so she doesn't know if she's ace, demi, bi, or whatever else. So she mostly just sticks to calling herself bi in some way.

Date of Birth: October 31st

Ethnicity/Species: Witchly is a cat-demon hybrid

Occupation/Job: She works as a maid for a very well off family of snow leopard-demon hybrids.

World/Universe: Witchly lives in a world of anthropomorphic animals very similar to our own with similar trends, fandoms, and whatever else. The biggest changes from ours is the fact that predatory creatures like tigers, wolves, and birds of prey are commonly seen as a societal upper crust. While they aren't all wealthy, the general population seems to have higher expectations for those who are predator anthros. Other than them, there are shapeshifting demons of sorts that aren't uncommon.

APPEARANCE

Height: She is 5'5 at most,

Weight: 125 pounds

Body Type: she's pretty average, not too curvy, not too formless, just pretty normal.

Fur: She's a black, short-furred cat

Eye Color: She has gold colored eyed

Hair Style: Witchly has long black hair she usually wears in a bun Tattoos/Piercings/Scars?: she sometimes is drawn with scars on her stomach Dress: Commonly, she wears baggy shirts or sweaters and pajama pants when she's not on the clock. When she does work, she wears a knee-length french maid uniform. The uniform is likely because her boss is notorious for enjoying that aesthetic.

Accessories: She wears a thick collar around her neck sometimes, just in general liking chokers most of the time

ATTITUDE

Personality: Witchly's personality is rather fluid, but in general she can be described as sarcastic, mean, even bitchy, flirty, and asocial. In public or around general friends she's quiet and tries not to talk too much, just follows those friends around and vibes. Around close friends she's still rather quiet unless prompted in a group, but when alone with only her friend, she can become sarcastic, self-deprecating, and begin to ramble more than she would around others. When alone though, she usually isolates herself and doesn't open up, even to her family. She's sensitive, being very bad at hiding her anger sometimes and no matter who she's around she can sometimes become viciously mean to those who piss her off, even passive-aggressively violent. Aside from that, Witchly's generally really flirty or lewd despite being as asocial as she is. The only real shift that happens outside of her friend group happens around more assertive people. In that type of situation, she can become very obedient to downright submissive to the point of codependence and relying on said person for comfort and guidance in social situations if the circumstances are right

Likes: She enjoys fictional characters, demons, angels, other occult or monstrous things, art, writing, being left alone most of the time, and Soda. More than that, she enjoys routines like going to school provides, animalistic instincts intrigue her greatly, as does the way animals are so capable of inflicting damage, but decide not to under some circumstances. On a more intimate level, she enjoys making sexual jokes, thinking dirty thoughts, and writing smutty stories. She especially enjoys thinking of certain things that might very well be kinks or fetishes like being dominated, wearing collars, being chased, being bred, bitten, and tied up. She is very much a sub who enjoys being controlled, even though she also has a rather bratty side. Of course, that's all speculated within her own mind, she more-so enjoys the thought than she might the reality.

Dislikes: Witchly fucking HATES change in her routine. She's most comfortable in a structured, scheduled life in a job that gives her direct orders. Outside of that schedule or routine, she hates going outside when not needed. She also rabidly despises chicken, will not eat it unless it's from specific fast food chains she trusts to make the chicken right. Witchly irrationally hates touching paper with damp hands, chewy, squelchy foods like fat, some gummies, and anything else that feels slimy and rubbery on her tongue, and generally being belittled of course. Despite her taste for dominance, she doesn't like a complete lack of control or powerless feeling, as with any good bdsm, there has to be a balance and a limit where the control stops and she's allowed to say no during intercourse.

Greatest Fear/Phobia: If Witchly had to claim any sort of phobia, she'd go with agoraphobia and a lack of control. She's also found that she fears or highly distrusts men more than she does women. Another fear is financial instability. RELATIONSHIPS

Friends: Witchly has had a few friends, but most of them have grown apart as she grew older.

Best friend: She has a single best friend who she's very caring towards and tries her best to learn how to act in public from, that way she's less awkward. Along with that, they're the only person Witchly has truly opened up to.

Significant Other/Crush: Witchly has a big fat crush on her boss, a rather wealthy snow leopard-ess. It may not be completely healthy, as she knows her boss has a lot of control over her due to giving her room and board as well as food in exchange for her work. They don't have a blatantly sexual relationship, but her boss does enjoy flirting and feeding into her liking for being dominated and controlled.

Pets: She owns a male calico she's named beefaroni

LIFE

Strengths: She's not super capable, but she at least has the forethought to realize that. That's why she sought out a job that provided her a place to live and food that paid pretty fairly while still being manageable for her. Aside from that, she's rather good at art, and isn't bad at writing either. To her closest friend, she can also be a good voice of reason, able to provide some logic on some topics when needed so long as her words are taken with a grain of salt.

Weaknesses: Witchly has severe low self-esteem with admittedly codependent behaviors and an absolute shit ton of anxiety towards the world in general. She's also somewhat socially inept, super awkward and can either be very talkative and seemingly rude, or very closed off and cold after any perceived annoyance or hostility from the others. She cleans, but doesn't know how to cook and struggles with independence in general.

Hobbies: She loves to draw and write smut and feels she's pretty good at it.

Habits: She has a bad habit of taking over conversations when she gets to rambling. She also has horrible sleeping habits and eating habits. She generally just has horrible personal habits from her mental health, but she's trying her best. Other than that, she has a habit of rocking back and forth when in thought, or shaking her hands when excited.

Health: Witchly struggles with depression, anxiety, and her boss believes she's autistic. Other than that, her health has ups and downs, mostly because of her bad habits encouraged by her mental issues. She has yet to get therapy but her boss and best friend is trying to encourage her to get help and likely medicated to help.

Bio template: CriticalCritiques

#oc bio #bio #character #fursona #furry #anthro

3 notes · View notes

littlebabycrybtch · 3 years

Text

bro..... im sooo tired of ppl being whiny freaks about ppl liking fictional shit ‘~too much~’. like bitches are literally fully convinced if you prefer acting out certain ideas in fiction but not irl, thats not your normal preferential boundaries but rather your brain is a mental illness BOMB and you need to be fucking hospitalized for being imaginative and having autonomy. like yall if its not taboo or smth shut uuuuhp man you’re not ‘concerned for their health’ or w/e you’re fully just tryna get away with being a nihilistic asshole who lacks sympathetic reasoning skills. listen to me. fiction is valuable. the thoughts we have on it are important. the personal lack of value you happen to put on a media is next to worthless. its not a fuckin waste of time dude, creators are people, who live in the real world, they experience it and have ideas through it and about it, they form and tweak their ideas while still definitely existing in the real world, and then put that back into the world with a new angle and new perspective, to share with other people definitely encountering it in , you guessed it , the real world. thats not disconnected. its not nothing. these things do not magically appear from fairytale land, they are created. stories mean smth, people tell them for a reason, its ok to feel smth for any story, why would we even tell them if not with the intention to impact others emotionally somehow i mean??? fiction does not Just affect reality, it is valuable to real life society, it is a functioning thriving part OF reality.

humans have told stories since the dawn of our existence. it is literally all but an inherent species trait for us to imagine things, its tied to each and every one of us, and to reject ‘fantasy’ as smth worthless to human life is frankly just fuckin wrong and weird of you. bitch we are Supposed to get outside the box, the fandom ppl you cringe your pants over arent thinking abt fake shit too much, you guys very often just arent exercising abstract thought and imagination enough, which actually hurts your ability to engage with it critically in all the ways its meant to be. if you dont see the value in fiction its because you put in no effort to form the analysis skills. in other words, you idiots dont get the hype bc you’re too stupid to get how you're supposed to compare a book to the real world it came from. ‘uu but cmon not everythings valuable what about [tumblr designated cringe media]-’ 1. ok! somehow you havent come to this conclusion yourself yet but thats not real, whatever ppl get to enjoy is not all abt you, your bias means less than dirt to others outside of hivemind social medias, you can keep it to yourself, ppl shouldnt care about it bc it means nothing outside of ur own space, its literally funny to me that you’re so elitist you want me to cater my interests to you, Your Standard Of Quality Isnt Universal, 2. ranking the values of fiction is the waste of time here, if you compare mlp to pride and prejudice ill dissect your teeth, different emotional impacts from tragic to funny to Just A Vibe are all able to be assessed as ‘valuable to somebody else so leave well enough alone’ if you dont have 2010+ funnyman brainrot disease that makes you incapable of reflecting on anything you can find a way to joke abt first.

i mean seriously like. whenever randos start engaging with medias you ppl dont like or in ways you dont get, the strawmans yall make up to get to be cringe culture vultures abt such benign shit, and almost Always at the expense of neurodivergent people with a deeply rooted undertone of extreme ableism might i add..... its just so selfish. u have a brain ok, you’re manipulative but we both know you dont Actually think ppl automatically default to being a waifu obsessed incel rotting away at their basement computer, stagnating their social skills and straying further and further from reality with each passing day, a poor disturbed wretch that you just HAVE to save from themselves, all bc they say they. prefer fictional porn or w/e to having sex irl. buddy thats not a big deal, theyre normal, just different from you. theyre fine, you’re just uncomfortable. as a functioning adult you’re gonna have to try and recognize that sometimes that feelings gonna be 100% on you, and you cant always just lie abt the validity of it to make ppl feel obligated into agreeing with you. this is gonna be one fragment of their personhood and your self obsessed brain imploding over how unrelatable that is doesnt fucking matter, grow up bitch like. how detached do you have to be to think thats so unstable or morally wrong.... its just a completely inconsequential preferential decision that only affects them and isnt a wrong choice at all cuz nobody has to get their dick wet if they dont wanna for any reason ever and thats gotta be that tbh.... and it kills me cuz they still inherently experience the real world and are capable of thinking abt it critically,,, even tho they... masturbate to drawings or w/e the fuck ppl think is unhealthy ???? like? imagination is just fun we dont need to moderate it anymore than we moderate other fun activities i mean lol ksdjfsd this is the DEFINITION of ‘just vibing’ no one FUCKING cares and it deosnt fucking matter the way you desperately try to make ppl think it does just so u get to be loud abt ur shortcomings as a decent understanding person.

‘uuuuuu im sorry but thats unhealthy :///’ you sound like a goddamn maniac dude stories are not unhealthy having feelings abt them is not unhealthy thinking some anime bitch that was DRAWN TO BE HOT , IS HOT, is not UNHEALTHY and you clowns arent convincing anybody you ‘care’ abt that concept anyways !! im losign my mind here skdlsdfsd medias are literally DESIGNED TO DO THIS TO PEOPLE... WE’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL THINGS FOR IT.... IT IS WHAT MAKES THE ART WE’VE TAKEN PART IN FOR CENTURIES, “ART”.... ITS JUST... HAVING IDEAS AND EXPERIENCING IMAGINATION..... whats wildly unhealthy actually is yalls toxic obsession with ‘harsh truth’ and validating your stupid ass cwinge feewings to the point where everything that gives your underdeveloped selfish ass hives has to be a matter of health and morals and whats ‘best’ for everyone. u dont know that shit!!!! ur a petty brat and im not ur mommy ok i wont baby you so u dont feel like the shitty whiny person you are, you need to grow and do better and think outside urself already, dont put the responsibility of making u feel right for judging somebodies benign hobbies on me. i wont bc its wrong and unnecessary. you’re not a savior no ones falling for that lmao you’re just a bitch girl xoxo get over it shit truly does not matter. let them write nsfw self insert fics instead of banging !!

to make it real do yall really not Get that basic consent kinda doesnt just mean ‘no when im not in the mood at the time’ but it means ‘no if i just dont fuckin feel like having sex ever for literally any reason at all bc i choose what i do’ and pressuring them, even with what your warped brain translates as the best of intentions, is inherently disgusting? especially with the ‘i know how to help you’ attitude like......... ohhh die soonly ew lmao! lay off this nasty shit already please it doesnt matter! stop trying to make it matter!! its not hurting you or them you stupid tumblr phd ass!! and like again yeah some media shits just truly gross but tbr now its like even That kind of shit, the Real social issues caused by Actually problematic media that ppl should discuss Genuinely without ulterior motives, is being used more and more rampantly as just a stepping stone to get to the needless mockery of other harmless things in the media they want an excuse to bag on.......... like a bitch cant just be grown and talk about problems at face value without getting a bully jab in. smhhhhh you all fuckin suck please just stop talking already. so anyways yeah being attracted to fictional characters instead of real people or w/e IS funny, funny how many boyfriends they have when u have none xoxo theyre having fun and you can die sad abt it they get to die 5 times in an angsty fantasy fic and be brought back with mouth to mouth by fuckin kakashi every time and then they go get lunch irl while ur updating tinder bitch ... different fucking strokes ig !

#long post//#i would like one free ticket to pop off please. thank you #can i cash it in immediately if you dont mind

5 notes · View notes

aijee · 3 years

Text

IDOTSC BTS #5: All tied up with no strings attached

A pretty valid question to pose: Why haven’t WW and J fallen in love with each other? They seem to exhibit emotional compatibility and even greater physical chemistry. I’m sure WW has definitely wondered such a question, whether legitimately or as a passing thought. Since I couldn’t really get into it in the story, here are my thoughts regarding that.

Spoiler alert: it’s not just drama for the sake of drama. Who knew!

Here’s one thing I’ve realized in this current pandemic era, during which anxiety, stress, and concerns about the future have reached an all-time high. I find myself engaging more and more in things I objectively like—writing, watching certain Youtube channels, playing video games, other creative endeavors that may even include friends—to the point that I feel like I’m suffocating in them sometimes. I try to smother the pain with pleasure, which doesn’t exactly fix anything that’s actually inside. They simply help hide the noise. Even then, excessive pleasure can make me more tired. Why do I do it?

First, I don’t like settling, even for objectively inconsequential things. Going at 100% all the time can yield great results, but inevitably leads to burnout. Maybe that’s why I’m so tired all the time.

Second, I have a theory that is sort of analogous to gate control theory: the idea that, if you’re in pain, adding a source of non-painful input inhibits transmission of that first pain to your brain. Imagine getting a cut on your finger and then sucking on it, putting pressure on that finger to not only clean the blood but to also suppress the pain. Or you’ve accidentally stubbed your toe on the coffee table and you start rubbing the skin to dissipate the feeling. I wonder if this theory applies to psychological pain.

For WW, engaging in this seemingly inconsequential, non-painful no-strings experience helps numb the pain of his career. Vice versa goes for J; inequality in Asian entertainment, especially regarding unfair treatment of non-Koreans in Korean entertainment, has long been a historical issue in the industry (e.g. oldies will remember Super Junior M, and even EXO’s earlier eras are still pretty recent). WW’s and J’s relationship is a means to ultimately selfish ends. Deep down, I think they both know that any chance of “real romance” has been fully tarnished by this yearning for internal contentment through the guise of companionship, one founded on mutual struggle in life and work—and seeming understanding thereof.

TL;DR: It’s a relationship where the parties involved know how to scratch each other’s itches because they have similar wounds, but wounds aren’t healed by scratching them. It just feels good.

For those with little experience in relationships, I understand that the idea of FWB can be very foreign and/or simplistic. “It’s just sex.” I myself don’t have experience in it. I see sex as intimate and requiring of great trust (I didn’t even know sex could be casual until university). But I’ve been reflecting on one particular past relationship and realized that, though not FWB, was pretty much the same. It was in high school. In what felt like a relationship where I was respected, I actually felt desirable and admired in a way that fed a young ego desperate for the validation I lacked. I gave this other person gifts, time, attention, all the bullet points for being a good partner on paper—but in my heart and soul, it was all for my emotional satiation.

In the end, I don’t think I truly liked this person, just the sugary words and reassurances they gave me, but never the body or aspirations that came with them. I liked the idea of this person, but not the person themselves. And, my god, that’s the type of shit you hear all the time in try-hard indie love songs from VSCO teens and young artists brandishing their ukuleles and unnecessary vocal trills. But it’s so damn true. The imagination is a dangerously powerful thing. (n=1, take it with a grain of salt.)

I’ve spent the last few months grappling with how fucking MESSY life and relationships really are. For so long, I’d subscribed to picture-perfect ideals of family, friends, significant others. Unconditional love doesn’t leave room for hurt—right? This grand ambition of love that I’ve written about, read about, and consumed has been challenged so many times and it’s only recently that I’m realizing it. Perhaps I wrote about unconditional love so much because I thought I felt like lacked it, or, really, what I imagined it to be. Perhaps it was inevitable that I’d eventually challenge these “fantasies” I dreamt of. Perhaps that’s why we also write so much damn fiction about it, because their reality is questionable.

But rounding back to the story, as for WW and J, I fully anticipate genuine feelings seeping in once in a while; they’re only human. But at the end of the day, as the characters that they are with the goals and lives they have, they wouldn’t have worked out romantically in the end.

Originally written on February 11, 2021

#aijeepost #idotsc bts #a longer bts than usual I think #may or may not be posting in anticipation of the next chapter 👀

2 notes · View notes

an-avid-reader · 4 years

Photo

The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas

my rating: 5/5 stars

On the night of a party gone wrong in Garden Heights, or “the hood”, Starr and her childhood best friend, Khalil, drive away only to be stopped by a white police officer. Khalil, unarmed, gets shot right in front of Starr’s eyes. Alas, Starr’s worlds—Garden Heights and Williamson, a predominantly white prep school—collide as word of Khalil’s death spreads and she is the only witness. Will Starr be able to bring justice to Khalil via riot and protests, or will he be remembered as a drug dealer and a thug?

"Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black"

Link to Goodreads || Spoiler-free review

A few things to check out:

Dear White People (Netflix)

When They See Us (Netflix)

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Book)

A list of places to donate to / one YT video if you’re unable to donate

Here’s a post that is much more comprehensive

let me know if any of the links don’t work, I will update them :)

There’s a reason why this book has quite a few awards on the front—this book covers what some may consider a “taboo” topic aka racism, but it’s an issue. I’m writing this review slightly earlier than before I’m posting it, but right now the current news is about George Floyd’s death, which is arguably more brutal than what happened in this book, but the fact that some police officers still think race has something to do with one’s intentions is outrageous and disgusting. Even in Canada, there have been instances of racism across history (spoiler: Canada isn’t a ‘saint nation’, even though the population is very diverse).

For these reasons, I think this book, while it is triggering, I think it should be fit into the curriculum for students to read so that they may be educated on racism, and how it can literally kill others, as well as to try and dismantle the systematic racism that is imposed on us from a young age. I can never sit here and tell you that I can experience what Starr went through (or what any POC—black or otherwise—has ever been through), I can only educate myself and emphasize with what’s been said/done to you—please call me out if I’ve said something that may be offensive and feel free to correct me if I’ve said anything wrong.

Alright now on with the book review! This book is so raw and powerful, Thomas does a great job of describing the scenes and the emotions Starr goes through during each scene. We get to see how she feels about dating a white boy while being black herself, how her neighbourhood is beautiful despite it being described as the hood, we also get to see how Starr’s demeanor completely changes while she’s at school vs when she’s visiting her family. While Thomas’ writing may be simple, she does a great job of capturing those moments and the emotions tied within the scene.

As we get to see Starr becoming a witness and taking legal action, I wasn’t sure where the story was headed. Would Khalil get justice and would the cop go to jail? How would Starr’s mental health be affected? Will her family be okay? (Don’t you just love it when there’s so much more conflict in the story that needs to be resolved and yet there are only 2 chapters left) Etc. etc. The thing about The Hate U Give is that there are multiple story lines, which help to drive the story forwards. Those plotlines didn’t feel out of place or forced—everything seemed to progress at a reasonable pace.

I feel like one of the key parts of this story are the characters and their dynamics to the story. The most obvious being between Starr and her family. Although Starr has her own secrets that she keeps from her dad (*cough cough* Chris *cough cough*), I feel like they still have a strong bond, especially as the story went on and her dad, Maverick, stood behind Starr, even when things went south. (I could also 100% relate to Starr bickering with her brothers—even her half-brother). Then there’s Chris, which I kinda feel weird about him...which I feel like it’s a spoiler so I’ll talk about it under the cut. Overall, I’m glad that while he doesn’t understand what Starr has been through, he doesn’t judge her—he listens to her story and he also stays by Starr’s side at all times. I appreciate that Thomas didn’t put too much focus on the romance, otherwise I think it would’ve detracted from the main message. Finally, there are Starr friends. Even though we only got to know Khalil for a bit at the beginning, I like that Starr’s friendship with him was sprinkled throughout the story, even if it was in subtle ways. You could tell that, while their friendship may have fallen apart, Starr really cared for him and he was at the forefront of her mind. We also get to see Maya and Haliey’s friendship with Starr...and I can’t talk much about that without spoilers :/ let’s just say...it was interesting…

While I can’t exactly relate to Starr on an emotional/traumatic/life experience level, I love that we are both Harry Potter fans and she runs a Tumblr (which idk why but I’m always taken aback when books have Tumblrs?? Yet here we are). I appreciate that she tries to see the best in people, until they prove her wrong (or give her a reason to not like them). I think Starr is a strong role model in the sense that she stands up for herself and is determined to get justice, although she’s not cocky about it. It’s quite the opposite, she doubts herself—I just remember that there were so many parts where she blamed herself for not recalling every single detail of the incident or not putting emphasis on the type of person Khalil was to avoid him getting stereotyped. Starr also questioned her relationship with Chris, albeit she seemed a bit naive at some points. Because of Starr’s strong personality and her core values, the message of The Hate U Give is so much stronger, hence why I feel like everyone should read this novel.

Finally, I learned a lot from this novel. Regardless of the fact that this is a fictional book, it is very much based on the realities of Black people and the hardships they must endure on a daily basis. To be honest, I feel so dumb for not even realizing that the title spells out THUG and runs parallel with Tupac’s meaning of THUG LIFE. Mind you, now when I look at the cover, it’s all I see. I also didn’t realize that Black kids and teens are taught how to act around the police—all to be avoided to get arrested, shot, or killed—which is frankly, messed up. Thomas also takes the time to address the names she used, intentionally to give another layer of the book, which I feel that it is based on reality. I can definitely see why this book has received so many awards—and if this book were implemented in schools, it would allow the discussion on racism to be opened and it would also allow kids to see that not all authors are white, old men (looking at you, Shakespeare, which tbh the only good play I read was Macbeth).

I wanted to thank you for reading my review; if you’ve read this book, I’d love to know your thoughts. Below the cut, I have a spoiler section that I wanted to include (which I might add in future reviews, idk though).

Please stay safe and healthy,

~ Cassandra / an-avid-reader

THE REMAINDER OF THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Okay, I’m not going to lie, but I thought that no one knew about Chris; didn’t Starr mention within the first few chapters that she can’t introduce him to her family because she’s afraid of what they’ll say/judge her for dating a white boy? But then, it turns out it’s just her dad that doesn’t know about him??? Idk if my memory is really that bad or if it’s such a slim detail (maybe it actually is an inconsistency o.O). But anyways, I love how Maverick was just playing with him (and making it clear that Chris would be in big trouble if he hurt Starr). I’m also not sure if he has a fetish for Black women (which Starr also pointed that out)—which I don’t know how to feel about that. I know some people have a thing for people of colour (Asians are commonly a fetish too, for example) but then some guys also have a thing for super short girls? Um yeah. I’ll probably leave it at that.

I’m not sure if it was just me, but I deadass thought Seven was going to be a gangbanger. He was sooooo suspicious anytime King was mentioned (which I get King is with Seven’s biological mom, but still I can’t be the only one who was suspicious, right?). I have to give him props though for putting his sisters’ needs before his own and for also listening to Iesha’s point of view. This man doesn’t give on people easily, and that’s a nice change.

The last thing I wanted to include in this spoiler section is Haliey. I just— wtf man. She perfectly embodies the issue and idk she gave me such Karen vibes. It’s so frustrating that she just accepted the newspaper’s article story at face value—I don’t even think she even took the time to listen to the other point of view. I’m so glad that Starr punched her in the face, even though that resulted in her getting in trouble. And it’s not even towards just Starr that she was racist! When Maya opened up about Haliey’s comments, I was pretty infuriated. I think Haliey’s comments came from a place of ignorance or a lack of education, but it just bothered me that she just brushed it off. Smh “it was just a joke” or “get over it” *rolls eyes* Just apologize, Haliey, and educate yourself, please. Actually, maybe she could take lessons from Mr. Warren, their english teacher because he was lowkey a G. I was pleased to see he was a teacher (who are often seen as role models) that actually gave a crap about Starr and what she was going through. I guess we just need to be more attentive to what people have to say and be more empathetic when they’re hurt.

#just one more ~ queue #book review #the hate u give #angie thomas #blm #black awareness #booklr #reading #read #favourite

31 notes · View notes

pyschopathnextdoor · 4 years

Text

the fall. the weeknd.

maybe a couple weeks ago. i was on the fifth loop of trilogy of the day; or week; or month? i didn't really knew. what i knew was that it was the fifth consecutive. i wanted to figure the big picture; the ultimate story. it didn't even felt like fifth. i didn't even knew from when i was listening. the music was all i could see, hear, believe, follow. it was night time, around four; i don't remember i was sleeping or still listening; i had these moods/blackouts where i had no concept of time; it was one of them. all i remember is the fall playing.

i found myself in a dark room; but a mirror in front of me. i was sitting on a chair facing the mirror. beside me was a littlle table with some plastic bags and a phone. i looked around. nothing but darkness and a faint reflection in the mirror. i picked up my phone. the screen showed:

14 november; 11:59 pm.

it dawned. i looked at the reflection, he smiled back. it was him. the same version of myself from the dreams. still in the oversized t shirt and ripped jeans; eyes red as wine, smiled wicked as the joker. he smiled at me and the words "this is it; are you ready?" rang my head. this was it. the moment i had believed to be the perfect.

i picked up one of the plastic bags, it was ecstacy. i had read that a kid around sixteen could od with around five hundred mg of consumption. but looking at the number of pills, i was sure it was way more than a five hundred.

the perfect moment. i always stumbled across it. "is today a good day to die?" was the first line of all the bright places. i was already familiar with the notion of present never being or atleast felt, perfect. it's always the perception of the moment after it is passed which affects. so rather than a trigger, i decided i have to pick up the date and the way. so that atleast i go out the way i want. i looked him, looking at me with a strange look, waiting for me act or something. before i could think of any aftereffect or something, the clock struck twelve.

my phone started blowing up, the reason of me knowing it was twelve. i pondered. friend, friends; family, people. there would sure be repercussions. there sure would be disappointed; which won't be anything new but still. there would be shock. but there will be peace; the phone constantly ringing wasn't helping. i decided to skip the formalities and popped the first pill. it didnt felt anything in particular. i felt something pulling me, the thought of how my mum and would react. the only reaction, i honestly was worried about. i didn't cared about friends or aquaintances. as the foreplay, id already tried to build up to this moment. did everything i could so that death rather seemed an escape.

the effects started kicking in. i felt an uprising of happiness. the dark room didn't felt dark. no reason, but i felt free. i felt like i was on the top of the world. in the moment's rush, i popped up the rest of the pills in one go. i chocked but somehow engulfed. the show was on. the stage was set and the acts were done. now what was left was the inevitable result. every happy memory of mine came to life. even though i knew i was in a room barred with light and hope, i wasn't. i started reminiscing my most cherished moments; newest first. the day i realised i had a circle i didn't deserved. the days i went out with them; sometimes didn't fit, but i liked the feeling, the birthdays and the finite eight nine times i convened. i remembered the result day of my boards, the day i won a relay, the day my friends became my best friends, the last glimpse of her, the wierd saddening yet exciting sensation of my first confession, the times i spent playing cricket, the times i spent in my seventh and eighth grade; id die to relive, the first glance of her; the actual fall and finally, the only instance i remembered of my dad praising me; the result of grade one; where i topped all four sections.

i was busy trying to think of stuff, not having a clue what to think at the same time. i started feeling claustrophobic; as if my lungs were shrinking. i started sweating. but it didn't mattered; all i could see was my mom smiling from the back with my dad standing near the teacher talking. i was overwhelmed with the overwhelming euphoria. i was content. i felt complete. i felt like id got everything and didn't needed anything more. i just wanted to laugh at the top of my lungs for the rest of the life and still my happiness won't end. the smiling proud faces revolved around me and i was the happiest i had ever been; and i heard something. "that was the last time."

the me in the mirror looking me dead in the eyes and said it aloud and kept on repeating it. my ears rang, "last time" was all i could hear, but thier faces were all i saw. i felt like a failure. never after that moment was i able to make them feel that way, or better; myself that way. i was sweating excessively; my hands were shaking like someone tied them to a tree in a thunderstorm. even the dimmest of light making the reflection visible stung my eyes. i sat on the chair; staring right back into his eyes. "i did it, you'll be no more; we won't be no more." all i had to do was wait. wait until the system broke down; until the eternal peace was achieved. the world started shrinking, and the ringing "last time" turned into echoes. it was approaching.

i realised i was staring in a mirror. i looked around and it was my room. what was i doing? what just happened? i looked at myself and it dawned, the lack of sleep may not affect me; but sure do affect my brain. the last three or four months passed in a blur. some moments felt like they were stretched infinitely, while some weeks passed seeming it was only a day. id go to sleep one day and wake up a couple days later, while sometimes for multiple days, won't even consider sleeping. sometimes i felt like i was on the top of the world, could do anything; dreamed for a future not even worth dreaming, while at the same wanting to end it. was still confused? was this my first hallucination? or a dream? no sense of reality or the fiction. all i heard was "the peak ain't reached but the peak is all i feel." XO stayed with me.

#the weeknd #legend of the fall #the romantics #end of the world #abel makkonen tesfaye #abelxo #abel #abel tesfaye #thursday #house of balloons #echoes of silence #afterhours #blinding lights #beauty behind the madness #king of the fall #dark acadamia aesthetic #dark academia #light academia #light aesthetic

11 notes · View notes

blog-sliverofjade · 4 years

Text

Hearth Fires 5: Waking Up

Pairing: Remi Denier x OFC

Summary: Lorel Maddox just wants to live as a human, run her bakery in peace, and forget. Unfortunately, the alpha of the local leopard pack has very different ideas.

Remi Denier doesn’t know what to make of the female Changeling who wants nothing to do with him or the RainFire pack. He does know that he has a driving need to protect her. Even if it’s from herself.

While they’re embroiled in a battle of wills, there’s a war brewing on the horizon. The outside threat could not only destroy everything they hold dear, but tear apart the fragile new bonds of the Trinity Accord, plunging the world into bloodshed to rival the Territorial Wars of centuries past.

Word count: 2363

Content warning for canonical fantasy racism. When I started writing this, I hadn’t realized that fantasy racism can be problematic. I based it on real world examples so it’s a weird mix of actual peoples’ experiences atop a fictional shifter race.

As you read, try to remember that these aren’t instances I dreamed up in my head, they came from authentic occurrences in the US. The excerpt before the second part? Taken from flyers posted in 2019. This is reality for actual, living, breathing people to this day.

Hearth Fires Masterlist

Beta read by the stupendous pandabearer

Remi’s cat crouched in preparation to battle with the strange predator in sheep’s clothing in their midst; pinpricks in his bottom lip were a sure sign that his teeth were more feline than human at the moment, and his claws itched to unsheath. How could he have been so blind? He needed to eliminate the threat before anyone could question his leadership, a lethal strike to prove his dominance.

That thought wasn’t him. It was an echo of another alpha from another time and brought him out of the homicidal haze with a cold splash of dread. He had to shove the memories and the associated sick feeling in his gut into a box in order to concentrate on the situation at hand.

Holding himself with a predator’s stillness, he studied his prey. Whenever one of his packmates was unduly intimidated by someone, outsider or not, he and the pack kept a close eye on that individual. He didn’t haul off and rip their throat out. He could hardly bring her down in front of their youngest in the middle of what was meant to be a celebration. Such casual exposure to violence could damage young psyches, as well he knew. Yet, it was all he could do not to charge over there and tear the ocelot away from the little family. Unlike that other alpha, he couldn’t act upon suspicion alone.

The baby hunter had no compunctions about cuddling up to Lorelei, something she would never have done if Lorelei was even close to going rogue. Moreover, several cubs surrounded her now, curious about the visitor. Their youngest, hunter or otherwise, were some of the best judges of character and the best litmus test when it came to the health of a pack. It was when the adults didn’t pay attention that problems arose.

“He’s different.”

“Oh sweetie, of course he is. He lost his mate. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

He shook off the echoes of the past like his cat shook off water and shoved them back in the box.

The music had switched from general background party music to a dance mix, which made overhearing their conversation difficult even with his superior hearing. Moving closer, he stopped at one of the tables of food so he could eavesdrop without being noticed. Staring at the ocelot would only put her on her guard.

Lorelei didn’t appear on the verge of a rampage; rather, she seemed overwhelmed. Then again, who wouldn’t be when surrounded by the cubs who were peppering her with questions? His tension eased a fraction when he saw that none of them appeared scared of her.

“Just you and your nana and papa?” Remi couldn’t help a small smile at Jasper’s wide-eyed incredulity. Most of their little ones had grown up in packs or in extended family units at the very least. Such a small family without ties to dozens of “aunties” and “uncles,” as well as numerous friends of all ages, was an unthinkable concept to them.

The interrogation wandered into what type of cat she was since she smelled different and, to his knowledge, none of them had met an ocelot. They were much smaller than leopards and the children would probably be delighted at having a grown-up playmate their own size. She was actually rather good with them once she relaxed, and he wondered how she’d handle being swamped by them when they were the same size. He grinned at the thought of little cats ending up in a wrestling pile and the knot in his chest eased.

Elias waded through the throng to speak to Lorelei. What came out of his mouth must not have been his usual bullshit because she didn’t slap him. He seemed downright courteous, which was unnatural and creeping Remi out more than a bit. Lorelei only nodded to him after Tien gave her an encouraging smile.

The senior soldier pulled Lorelei to join the growing cluster of dancers. While she was willing, it was painfully obvious that she was far from comfortable in her own skin, moving stiffly and keeping her head on a swivel to look for anyone staring. Elias, picking up on her discomfort, shifted to hide her much smaller body with his own. In thanks, she smiled up at him and shifted slightly closer.

His cat wanted to be the one to crack open her prickly exterior and unravel the mystery of her. The only problem was after seeing her interactions with the pack, Remi seemed to be the only one she wanted to swipe a claw at.

The rancid emotions he had stuffed down sprang back with a vengeance, sending irrational jealousy spiking through him. For some reason, she brought out his inner psychopath, all the dark urges and instincts that he kept chained within. Very few knew about them, and he intended to keep it that way.

With a sigh, he rubbed at his temples to ease his pounding headache. If only he could place the blame on the recent circulation of human supremacy rhetoric, but that would merely be an excuse for his own lack of control. He told himself that things would be better once she was pack since he disliked having an unprotected submissive female in his territory, which was true, especially with the possibility of active anti-Changeling groups in the area.

He felt scraped raw on the inside. It had been a while since he’d been this spun up in his head and he needed to get that sucker back on straight. This was a time for joy, not the shadows haunting him.

“Leaving already?” Lark asked from behind him. She had managed to sneak up on him, which was a sure sign that he was off his game.

“If you feel the need to babysit, go chase after the cubs,” he growled over his shoulder.

“I’m doing my job.” She let his temper roll off her. “Need someone to run with?” He shook his head. He’d prefer a good fight, but in this mood he was likely to shred even a sentinel. “Remember you have to be back in time to help judge the costume contest.”

An affirmative grunt. Pack bonds were important, especially in such a young pack, but he had to vent this before his attitude began to affect everyone else.

WAKE UP HUMANS!

Our children deserve a future free of Changeling violence. These animals come into our communities with their drugs and violence, lowering property values, living off welfare, and preying on hard-working humans. In the name of “political correctness,” we the taxpayers are prevented from standing up to these parasites.

DON’T BE DELUDED BY A “BRIGHT NEW FUTURE”

We need to change the country’s liberal policies that are eroding our values. It’s alright to be human and we need to stop being ashamed of it. Changelings want us afraid and divided to prevent us from having a group identity. We have been the victims of the other races for too long. They try to divide us, take away our rights, and plan to eliminate us because they fear us.

STOP CONTRIBUTING TO HUMAN GENOCIDE!!! KEEP THE HUMAN RACE PURE!!!

-Excerpt from letters sent to residents of Sevier County, Tennessee September 2083

Lorel hummed and swayed along to music while she piped bright pink rosettes onto the rows of cupcakes in front of her. The radio was set to the show of the DJ from the party, a pretty human packmember by the name of Aoife. Country wasn’t her typical choice of genre, but it reminded her of dancing at the party. She hardly knew anything about Elias, and therefore had no feelings about him one way or the other, yet she couldn’t get the other night out of her mind; not that she was dreaming of the soldier or anything.

She had been completely dumbfounded; no one had ever asked her to dance. Well, not since that horrible prom night in high school, anyway. While she’d doubted that the leopard would try to pull what her teenaged date had, she had looked to Tien and gotten reassurance. She barely knew the other woman but trusted that Tien wouldn’t knowingly put her in danger.

It had been a long time since anyone other than her aunt had touched her, and far longer since she’d had any physical contact of a non-platonic nature. Elias had made it clear that he found her interesting and attractive, which she could have chalked up to the promiscuous nature of Changelings. But he had also been respectful of her boundaries even though it was obvious that her limits were far more stringent than that of a Changeling’s, and possibly those of many humans.

She kept her distance not just because she didn’t want them to assume she was easy, or that she was going to join the pack, but because it simply felt too good and not even in a sexual way. At first, Elias’ touch was nearly painful, like her skin was so focused in its need that every sensation was heightened ten-fold to absorb everything at once. Startled by the sensitivity, she had been about to retreat when the song ended, but the ache of the loss had her saying ‘yes” to the next person who approached.

The sun had set and red, yellow, orange, and white fairy lights strung between the trees had lit up. At that point, she’d called it a night with the excuse that she had to work in the morning; while that was true, she had worried that she’d be tempted to go exploring the woods in animal form. Even if they’d allowed her, she couldn’t permit the cat to take over.

Tien had approached her with arms wide in expectation of a hug. Unsure of what to do, Lorel did her best impression of a statue as the other woman’s arms had folded around her. It wasn’t a brief embrace, either. It was strong and warm and all-encompassing. Maternal. And she soaked it up like rain after a drought, her skin still starving even after all the dancing. Although her aunt had lavished affection on her before going travelling, as if she’d tried to compensate for the lack over the years, there was a quality among the Changelings that felt like she was finally coming home.

Lorel had let herself relax into the hug and had, had to force herself to pull away, fussing with her clothes to keep from reaching out to the other woman again. Her cat’s tail had lashed in irritation at the denial, but didn’t act out in any other way, thankfully.

At the sound of the door opening, she set the bag of frosting down and headed out front while wiping her hands on a clean, damp cloth. A woman looked at something on her phone as she approached the counter.

“Good morning,” Lorel greeted her. The customer held up a finger while she tapped something into her phone. Lore’s customer service smile grew strained while she waited. When she finally looked up, her scent soured before Lorel could offer a sample of berry crumble cake.

“Where’s Nora?” she demanded.

That was a question she’d heard far too many times, but this time the edge to it had her ocelot’s upper lip curling away from her teeth.

“My aunt’s currently on a beach enjoying her retirement.” The mask wavered as Lorel fought against mirroring the sneer of her cat.

“Is there someone else who can help me?” she frowned.

Okay, that was a new one.

“Just me, I’m afraid,” shrugged Lorel. “Is there a problem?”

“Don’t snap at me.” Lorel swore that the other woman was two seconds away from clutching her pearls, if she’d worn any. “I just want to know when someone else will be in to serve me.”

What in the name of all that was good and holy?

“Ma’am, I’m the owner,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Right,” she rolled her eyes, then muttered, “I just don’t know where this country is headed. Animals like you taking jobs from good people.”

In an instant, her cat went from unamused disdain to homicidal rage. Lorel throttled it back, but her eyes flashed yellow-green if the sudden ashen hue underneath the woman’s spray-on tan was any indication.

“Ma’am, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Lorel didn’t bother with the fake smile this time.

“How dare you!” Her colour returned, going straight to red. “I’m going to sue for intimidation.” Her shrill voice grew louder and louder until Lorel’s ears protested the abuse. She stormed out, entering a code into her phone.

She released the breath she’d been holding only to inhale a lungful of perfume strong enough to make her eyes water. Her ocelot wanted to hunt her down like a rabbit, but she convinced it that the meat was bad. She propped open the door to air out the store and the obnoxious woman stood in front of the yarn shop next door. Still on the phone, she turned and the blood drained from her face when she saw Lorel.

“Oh my god, she’s following me!” she shrieked.

Lorel rolled her eyes and decided she’d go put her irritation to good use by kneading dough for cinnamon buns. As much fun as decorating cupcakes for a little girl’s birthday party was, that required a steady hand and hers were shaking with unexpressed anger.

The butcher’s block was barely floured when the sounds of sirens pierced her eardrums. She dusted off her hands and returned to the front to find four cops standing there, each with a hand on a weapon. Blinking, she froze mid-brush. I probably shouldn’t offer them doughnuts, she thought.

“Good afternoon, officers. Would you like to try the berry crumble?” She gestured to the silver tray with the samples and bit back a laugh at their bewildered expressions. Evidently, they’d expected to find her frothing at the mouth from the way the blonde was still carrying on outside to a fifth cop. They probably hadn’t anticipated a woman who more resembled a librarian than a murderous beast.

8 notes · View notes