Sometimes I really do forget these kids are thirteen.
CG: YOU ARE RIGHT TO BE DISGUSTED, IT'S MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE CAN SAY FOR THEMSELVES.
CG: REALLY, CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER. […]
CG: CONGRATULATIONS, IN ADDITION TO, JUST MAYBE, AN APOLOGY. […]
GG: no forget it, im not apologizing that is BULLSHIT […]
CG: […] I DIDN'T ACTUALLY SPECIFY TO WHOM AN APOLOGY WAS IN ORDER. [...]
GG: are you saying you want to apologize
CG: I GUESS
We’ve never seen Karkat sincerely apologize for his shit before.
Jade might not be in a position to appreciate it, but this is a moment of genuine personal growth for him, and I'm honestly kind of proud of the little goober.
CG: I HAVE BEEN TALKING TO YOU FROM THE FUTURE, AND I KNOW YOU DON'T COTTON TO MY PCG/FCG STUPIDITY.
CG: BUT SEE, YOU DON'T KNOW THAT YOU KNOW THAT YET.
CG: OR MORE SPECIFICALLY, YOU DON'T KNOW THAT I KNOW THAT YOU KNOW THAT YET.
CG: SO I'M KIND OF PULLING A FAST ONE HERE.
Wait, this is a little confusing. So he's saying that Jade is going to be annoyed by the Past Karkat nonsense, but she hasn't been annoyed by it yet.
Specifically, she's not yet aware that Karkat knows it annoys her.
However, she made her feelings on the matter abundantly clear in their previous conversation. She's fully aware that Karkat's aware that she hates this Trollian shit.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting it? The phrasing is deliberately confusing, so I'm only 90% sure I've got the right end of the stick here.
CG: I REALLY DON'T KNOW WHY I TROLLED YOU LIKE THAT SO PERSISTENTLY
CG: FOR SOME REASON DEEP DOWN I JUST KNEW THAT I HAD TO
CG: EVEN IF IT MEANT DIGGING MYSELF INTO A HUGE HOLE WITH YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE THAT WOULD BE HARD TO CLIMB OUT OF […]
CG: I, PRESENT KARKAT, IN THE CURRENT MOMENT, APOLOGIZE ON BEHALF OF MY STUPID PAST SELF, WHO IS ACTUALLY ME.
CG: THE GUY TALKING RIGHT NOW.
CG: LIKE, THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE GUYS, OK? […]
GG: ok karkat, that sounds pretty sincere to me
And that, I believe, is a wrap on Project Trolling.
There's no more antagonism left in any of the trolls - or at least, they're no longer antagonizing the kids specifically because of the Mistake. Instead, they simply treat them with the same belligerence as their Alternian compatriots - and if that's not camaraderie, I don't know what is.
Project Trolling is dead. It's finally transitioned, truly and completely, into Project Friendship - my favourite emotion of all.
Yes <3
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Would the sparkling vampires have been reacted to differently if written by a better author? Possibly
I feel like the main reason (imo) for why the sparkling is hated on so much though is that the reveal of it just feels so ridiculous. Like edward claiming he’s a monster or whatever and then proceeds to reveal his shimmery 6 pack is….unconvincing at best
og tags on this post for anyone who hasn't seen it
Excellent question anon. If you think about it there are a lot of silly things we associate with vampires.
Exhibit A: the classic widow's peak black hair and dramatic cape
look at it with fresh eyes and imagine seeing this for the first time, goofy. silly even. but this style of vampire was iconized by Bella Ligosi's performance as Dracula in Dracula 1931 which is of course very good and a staple in vampire cannon as well as just culture in general. It's good and it's old which lends it an air of authority. whereas Twilight is new(ish) and bad so it's artistic changes and creative choices are fighting an uphill battle already, add in the fact that Vampires Sparkling is a little ridiculous and you can see why so many people dismiss Twilight's vampires outright.
This post is so long continued under the cut
Now I am a Twilight fan and I think Twilight is very bad in a lot of ways, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Twilight however is a fascinating case study in cultural knowledge and mythos. Stephanie Meyer informally did very little research about Vampire Cannon, if you can call it that, before writing Twilight (link to an interview where she mentions it) so instead of being carefully constructed world-building based on hard rules and strict internal logic, the vampires are kind of loosely defined shadows based on the broadest understanding of what a vampire is. They're dead, they drink blood, they don't go out in sunlight. Some other popular vampire staples go addressed but dismissed as myth (garlic and having no reflection) but then things like The vampires in Twilight don't have fangs and have weird additional supper powers sometimes go just completely taken for granted and not really expanded upon in a satisfying way.
This style of world-building and magic system has a tendency to chafe against readers who have a more in-depth context for vampires and Meyre's more simplistic writing style makes the text come off as juvenile and perhaps a little dumb.
All this to say the sparkling vampires are not handled super well. It is a very large jump from what most readers would expect to see from a vampire story and it is handled inconsistently at best in the text itself. Meyer describes the vampires in the sun both as A beautiful glittering like that of a diamond, and a reflection of light so intense that it looks like the vampire is being burned alive in the sun.
these two conflicting descriptions coupled with the again simplistic and juvenile writing style makes it seem more like a mistake you should roll your eyes at rather than an intentional complexity to read into. I'd argue that Bella sees this inhumanity as beautiful and alluring while Edward sees it as a curse and a reminder of his monstrous nature and therefore disgusting. That being said I don't fault anyone for not wanting to read that deeply into the vampire glittering and instead see it as the author trying to have her cake and eat it too, something Meyers does frequently throughout even just the first Twilight novel.
Not even to mention the movies.
Exhibit B: this is the skin of a killer Bella.
This is prima facie hilarious and stupid. the juxtaposition of the soft glittering effect and the chiming sound in this scene coupled with the seemingly unwarranted disgust is so fucking funny. which is not the tone this scene is going for. it's supposed to be tense, it comes off as corny instead.
Then there is the hate mob that dominated Twilight discourse when it first came out. I will not get into how much of that hate was warranted, what I'm interested in is how much of a cultural impact it had. There was, at least in the beginning, a large group of people who hated Twilight and would hate anything that came from it simply because it came from Twilight. These people grabbed onto the sparkly vampire thing and made it what it is today, these people were never going to be won over by any artistic liberty no matter what.
So to answer your question, I think that if a writer with a more in-depth understanding of vampires and a clearer vision of the magic system wrote Twilight with a more mature tone and more time given to expanding on just the vampire's powers and limitations, and the movies followed these hypothetical books more closely AND if there was never an anti-Twilight coultral movement. then yeah maybe Vampires sparkling wouldn't be seen as the dumbest shit ever.
thank you for coming to my Twilight Ted talk.
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Kendrick doesn't just hate Drake as a person. He hates the very idea of Drake.
Hip-Hop is rooted in revolution. In defiance. These are the songs of an oppressed group of people, and decades upon decades people have hated it. Accused of being meaningless and invalid. Media outlets took steps to belittle hip-hop and make sure it isn't recognized as an art form and as a means to fight back.
2Pac spoke of wealth disparity and inequality. Tupac was literally a member of a communist organization when he was younger and never stopped speaking against capitalism.
Lauryn Hill spoke of the struggles a woman faces. Not just women, but black women. Salt-N-Peppa. Queen Latifah. MISSY FUCKING ELLIOT.
N.W.A made sure people knew about police brutality and violence against the Black community.
And now, in this day and age, we're also experiencing an explosion of Queer Hip-Hop. Lil Nas X is at the forefront of this. Lil Uzi Vert came out as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, even when they knew that a lot of their fans would never use it or even respect them for it. Auntie Diaries, a song about a young man who grew up in a transphobic environment and bought into those beliefs, but could never fully do it because his Uncle loved him so much and taught him a lot of life lessons, and that wisdom translated to him accepting his cousin as a woman as well.
Drake is none of that.
He's the perfect representation of what people think hip-hop is. Flexing. Posturing. Objectifying women. A fucker so insecure he bought 2Pac's ring just to feel like he's part of the black community. Rejected by Rihanna publicly. Tried to groom Millie Bobby Brown. Kissed and inappropriately touched an underage girl during his concert. His songs have inspired so many young boys to treat girls like shit. His belief that the amount of rings and chains and cars he has is the true meaning of success.
Additional Edit: This is my fault. If this post gains more views, then it would be remiss of me not to add to this. It was my fault to begin with, not stating this beforehand because while I did know, I got lost in celebrating Hip-Hop in a place that doesn't usually do so, and rightfully so.
2Pac did fight for wealth equality and better social living for the black community. He also has a long, long history of battery, domestic abuse, and sexual harassment against women. Specifically against women of color. He made a song to celebrate his own mother, but outright refused to give the same show of respect to other women in his life. His hypocritical nature was brushed off in later decades, just the way I did now.
N.W.A is the same. Sexual assault charges, violence—they spoke of Police reform, but refuses to give the same treatment back towards the women in their lives.
50 cent refuses to backtrack on any of his misogynistic lyrics.
Modern rappers of today, such as the dead XXXtentacion. 6ix9ine. Kodak Black.
I do love Hip-Hop. I love rap. And the music itself has always been anti-authoritarian at its core, because those are its roots. And I was happy that circles that did not normally know of it or enjoy it were getting into it, even for one thing like this rap feud.
Lil Nas X, Little Simz, Childish Gambino, Missy Elliot, Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill—rappers who have at the very least consistently tried to put their money where their mouth is. Who have tried to act in accordance to what they rap and write and sing for.
@shehungthemoon @ohsugarsims finnthehumanmp3 were the ones who rightfully clarified in the comments. I know an apology won't correct my hypocrisy or my stupidity. I should have added all of this before making this post, but I wanted so badly to celebrate a genre of music but failed to do my due diligence in showing a better, holistic view of it. If anyone felt triggered, offended, troubled, frustrated or any other intense negative emotions surrounding this, please do block me. I'm sorry.
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