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#i really hope this doesnt create too much discourse
nyxqueen97 · 5 months
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Maybe I'm missing something but I don't understand why it's seen as more valid to call a preteen ugly than to point out the author has heavily indicated the preteen is pretty. It's still obsessing over a nine year old's attractiveness or lack there of either way. Why is it bad to want Arya to be pretty but it's not bad to want to be ugly? I feel like this is one of those cases where both sides need to be questioned why it's something they take so much issue with, not one where only one is being unnecessarily weird and extra about it.
It's also one of those cases where I wish Arya and Sansa were treated by fandom as completely separate characters who happen to be related because I think the way they're intertwined creates so much needless drama. Some Sansa fans really do act like Arya being pretty in her own way is something to be threatened by or takes away from Sansa. Not even the suggestion that Arya's prettier, just that she can be pretty too.
I don't want to go into whether drawing the kids with the Stark look darker than the ones who have the Tully look is racist is not, but I do think often times progressive attitudes towards gender and race often do end up coming off more regressive and patronizing than intended, if that makes sense.
arya should never be called ugly or measured to standards of impossible beauty by fandom, in text reason it happens because kids can be mean and without filter, she could be average normal looking girl like 90% of little girls irl for all ik that doesnt mean she's ugly , i hope fandom doesnt actually believe she's ugly, she's just a kid with a normal face, multiple times in text she's reassured over her insecurities and frankly its like the least important thing she's got going on rn , i've legit never thought about arya's or sansa's facial features until i joined fandom so it just seems like over zealous self insert fandom "arya's true worth is valued by her beauty and attractiveness" discourse to me
some fans are also legit soooo obsessed with sansa's beauty they also end up being kinda creepy by proxy (her "beauty" in text is used as people/adults literally treating her like an object") and like my guy she doesnt have to have instagram face to be seen as a beauty, both are children, they just look different and beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that
the "tully,stark, lannister" look thing is legit just for plot/irony convenience and for family reference or whatever, jon and arya having more of a stark look is in reference to dark hair,long faces and grey/dark eyes it doesnt really mean anything other than that same with the tullys (red/auburn thick or curly hair,paler skin and blue eyes) ned being interpreted as brown would just mean that they look/inherited more features like him (which they do in the books) and the other stark kids might just be lighter to a variant degree like a lot of mixed families, i don't understand why drawing ned or the starks brown have such a vitriolic reaction
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changbeens · 2 years
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i feel bad about the whole to1 situation because i really loved the group as a whole when they were too and making music with the ten of them and i continued supporting them through their change into being to1 and all of their music has been so good. i miss the four who’ve left and wish that things hadn’t gotten to this point but i really hope that things are better for them now and i wish them nothing but the best. i feel really guilty about this because as sad as i am about everything, i noticed that renta was one of the new members and he was my favourite from pd101 japan s2 and i’m so happy that he’s finally debuting despite it being under the shit show that is wakeone — discourse anon
too/to1 was a disaster in the making from the very beginning. they were sabotaged by mnet from the start, formed on an mnet show while the produce scandal was fully happening. the viewing figures for the show were rock bottom and honestly, who even knows if the 10 original members truly were the ones who were voted in
as much as mnet said they had nothing to do with produce japan, it doesnt take a detective to google and find out that lapone ent is a cjenm subsidiary company. it comes as no surprise that any of the new members are from produce japan (i didnt watch pd jpn s2 so i didnt know renta came from there so thank you for that info) because actually having trainees isnt something wakeone will ever do as wakeone's only job is to manage groups formed by survival shows (cos that way of working things has worked SO well in the past...)
the concept of survival show groups overall is just a traumatic experience that inevitably leaves groups falling apart or disappearing up their own asses because in theory its a good idea but no fucker in korea seems to know how to actually handle a group created by a survival show
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my-apollo-gies · 3 years
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i imagine other people are gonna talk about this because we were discussing it on discord, but the jokes and memes about nico's eating disorder are getting out of hand. i won't mention any names in case they'd rather stay quiet about it, but several of my mutuals do actually have eating disorders and i, myself, am recovering from a minor one late last year. you probably don't realise there's anything wrong, which i get (i myself did make the odd joke when my account was still really young, i won't lie), but they do hurt.
here are a couple of screenshots off the discord server if you don't know what kind of thing i'm talking about:
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Image ID 1: A screenshot of a post with a title; 'Found him' and continues as follows:
'Nico: where's Will?
Nico: wait, I got this.
Nico: *cups hands and shouts* NICO HASN'T EATEN ANYTHING TODAY
Hazel: *bursting in* wHAT?!
Jason and Percy: *from nowhere* AW HELL NO
Reyna: *literally descending from the sky* NICO WYD?!
Will: *bursts through everyone just screaming*
Nico: found him'
End ID
Image ID 2: A screenshot of a post that continues as follows:
Will: Nico did you eat yet?
Nico: No.
Will: You HAVE to eat!!!
Nico: ...No.
Will: At least one fruit?
Nico: Fine, whatever.
Will: *tosses Nico an apple*
Everyone: *gapes, stares*
Nico: *completely oblivious* What?
Annabeth: *sly grin*
Nico: WHAT? Is this apple poisoned or something?
Will: Nope.
End ID
(obviously, it's not just tumblr, but a lot of social medias, particularly insta, do screenshot our posts, so they will see them and hopefully people might get the hint? obviously, i don't expect to be able to make much of a difference by myself)
both of these posts imply that there is something wrong with nico's eating disorder, as well as implying that it is something that can be fixed easily, which it definitely can't. as i mentioned, mine was quite minor, and even that took several months to recover from. even just the mention of things such as eating disorders can be upsetting for some people- hence tws are important- and most of these don't even come with a tw. this needs to stop.
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heliianth · 2 years
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talking abt my thoughts and feelings regarding this below. if yall wanna know where the blog is going read on ^^
for now, i will still continue to support dream and create content surrounding him and his dsmp character. i’m not wholly satisfied with his twtlonger, but it was enough for me to feel ready to continue on. i think he was a colossal dumbass during this, but i believe in good faith that it was out of fear more than malice. i never thought he would willingly platform and house an abuser. its very relieving to have that confirmed. so my perspective is that what he said was genuine, and neither an absolution of guilt nor a damnation. to make a conclusion either way is too presumptuous for me to feel comfortable reading or speaking on it, and i think to say dream was being manipulative or guilt trippy in his wording expects too much from someone who is… just a guy, and not an evil mastermind. it wasnt perfect. he still needs to deal with the consequences of the way things went. it just is the way it is.
dream didnt say anything about manatreed other than hes not continuing with a career, and frankly i’m resigned to never figuring out how i feel about them. im glad hes not returning to streaming, at the very least. i dont know how credible the evidence was against him. on principle im wary of the leaktwt-kiwifarms type, engaging in a lot of political internet discourse like i do will make anyone more than suspicious of lolcow forums. so ive heard a lot of conflicting information from people i trust since i refuse to look at doxxed info—is the evidence credible or not? but i dont really care, im happy manatreed doesnt have a platform anymore regardless. keeping a random guys career in tact wouldve never been worth the risk of letting an abuser have that much influence. it was the safest option for everyone, even if manatreed is innocent. we will never know. and though it doesnt feel great, i’ll come to terms with it.
i encourage anyone who doesnt want to follow dream content at all after this to unfollow guiltlessly. there’ll come a time, probably not right away, that this blog will return to its normal state (as in: being run by someone who has dream merch and stickers etc, lol) if that makes people uncomfortable, thats very understandable. it sucks neither cc could do anything more. a lot of peoples trust is going to need to be rebuilt, including mine to an extent, and i dont hold anything against anyone who feels warier than me moving forwards. everyone has their own emotions and reasons for acting on them. i think some people are being very unkind right now—no matter what your opinion is i respect it and hope this blog can be a place where you can feel safe. this was out of our control.
n special thanks (once more 😓 /lh) to the wonderful ppl in my inbox who kept me sane throughout this entire thing. you guys are kind beyond words. i cant describe how helpful it was to be reassured by people i wasnt already close to—it feels more real. hopefully we can all recover peacefully 💕
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reineyday · 3 years
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some feelings abt touya and bnha 302 in general! (long post)
jesus this whooooole chapter makes me so so so sad for touya, like he's canonically a crier and i just have all these images now of him crying off to the side while enji looks at his other kids and gives them the time of day. knowing that he was/is a frustrated crier makes the fact that dabi cant cry cuz of his burned tear ducts that much sadder ohhman
one of the things i cant get over is how touya was SO shunned by his dad that when he went to go tell enji about his fire turning from red to blue, he says "i might be as awesome as shouto sooner or later!" like?? this boy is 13 and shouto is 5 yet he's talking like the brother that's eight years younger than him is better than him and thar it's just a fact. the sky is blue, enji wants to beat all might one day, and shouto is better than the rest of his siblings. nevermind that he's only five and just wants to play with his siblings (and dont even mention to me how shouto says he wants to play with "touya and them" cuz im gonna fucking cry abt it. like even though touya's accepted he's bottom of the ladder in this family, shouto clearly wants some sort of acknowledgement from his older siblings and especially his older brother. IM FVCKN SOBBN). enji has made it clear in this family that shouto was what he was looking for and everyone else is not as important, and i knew this from shouto's pov but it's kinda wild to see it implied so casually in touya's words.
"you'll be glad you created me! i just know it!" HOLY SHIT. god my heart. oh my fuck. literally all enji had to do was show up to the fucking mountain, and he couldnt even do that? what the hell?? your son asks you to go to the mountain, you tell your wife not to let him go traim but she said she couldnt stop him, and instead of going yourself to make sure he's okay and BECAUSE HE ASKED YOU TO COME (and with an actually valid reason, no less! fire changing colour is kind of a big fucking deal!!!) you just?? let him go and let him stay there??? my god the amount of times touya must have burned himself and the trees with tears in his eyes. ahhhHHH!!!
what kills me (and touya too soon?) was that we thought before the back story started that enji forced touya to train till he burned up. then when 290 came out--and definitely after 301--we thought maybe touya overtrained himself and burned up. and sure, he was definitely overtraining, but to find out that the burns that "killed" him started just bc he was crying so much he lost control and didnt know how to ease up on his flames? he was upset and literally trying to get himself to stop crying, and then he just set himself aflame and burned up cuz of all his emotions??? that HURTS. holy fuck.
i cant believe natsuo's feeling lowkey guilty for not socking enji in the face like he wasnt EIGHT???? and let's be real, enji woukdnt have fucking listened to natsuo telling him to talk to touya--he already wasnt listening when touya would straight up say "look at me" and when even rei said touya just wanted enji to look at him and notice him. listen, i know sometimes miscommunications happen in families and children are embarrassed to admit they want attention and so their parents remain unaware that theyre not giving their kid something they want, but touya was as clear as can be on MANY occasions, and even rei agreed touya needed the attention and enji just wasnt listening.
also i know there was discourse abt touya being sexist by telling natsu that "the women in this house are good for nothing" and mb it was partly diff translations cuz i feel like saying "this house" makes it specific to rei and yumi instead of all women everywhere, but even disregarding that--i think it's a valid thought for him to have when rei wasnt standing up for him (where he could see, at least) and yumi admitted herself that she was too scared to interfere and so just tried to fix things and keep appearances. i feel like based on what touya's seen from them, it makes sense that he has that opinion. (also gonna mention that i think rei's and yumi's choices also make sense and i think they were valid, seeing as how they were afraid as well.)
and poor natsu being woken up in the middle of the night (what was implied to be often enough, esp cuz it seemed they share a room and their futons are close) bc of touya's pain. that's a lot of emotional responsibility for an eight year old, and it is also so sad that at 13, touya didnt have anyone else to turn to but his kid brother. at 13, i remember being fully aware of the distinction in maturity between an 8 year old and myself, and it sucks that touya couldnt go to anyone but a younger child with all his pain. i bet yumi being too scared to interfere translated to touya as "she wouldnt help me" and thats another reason he didnt go to the 2nd oldest when he needed to vent. (also not related to this but how the FUCK was natsuo so tall at 8 years old? wh a t)
this chapter. this fucking chapter. my heart aches for touya, and it's just such a huge fucking shame he didnt get the attention and validation and support he needed. there must have been workarounds so that touya could safely use his quirk. there weere DEFINITELY better ways to support your son through a self-destructive quirk, ways that involved actually being there and seeing him. i feel like if someone showed him the attention he needed and talked him through how to better control his emotions (and by extension, his flames) and a positive and healthy way, he could have been someone so great. and if he ever learned how to set aside the way he felt infefior to shouto and saw that shouto just wanted to play with his cool older siblings, it might have been really beneficial to see that there was someone there who thinks he's cool and gave him attention just bc he was an older brother, who needed him when everyone else in the househild didnt seem to need him.
and lastly, the fact that the chapter ends with rei saying that shouto is the family hero and that shouto will have to face dabi?? and it makes me angry that shouto has to take on that responsibility. that he was five and suffering for things he wasnt even a part of, couldnt be properly aware of, bc he was so young. he just saw that he was separated from his siblings and that his dad bullied his mom, then grew up shouldering enji's heavy goals and high expectations and abusive training alongside the barely-there memories of his older brother who died (i say barely there bc if natsu didnt even know shouto liked cold soba, shouto was definitely not around enough to have solid memories of touya before he "died"), and now he has to do the emotional labour of fighting his villain brother (who i bet shouto lowkey empathizes with when he thinks abt it late at night) as well as suffer the physical consequences of that agni kai. and it makes me angry that he has to do that, bc he's a Good Guy and he probably feels he has some sort of filial and familial responsibility. he's only 16. he just wanted to play with touya and them, and now he has to deal with this horse shit dabi's causing cuz his dad's an emotionally neglecting asshat who couldnt see past his dumb fucking ego until he saw shouto play with a bunch of kids during shou's remedial exam a decade after his eldest son burned himself to death. what the fuckety fuck.
lastly, since we saw touya burn uo the way he did... did he really just like... burn so much his jaw fell off, and that's how they found the jawbone? cuz holy hot (BURNING too soon???) damn that must have been painful as all hell. i wonder if next chapter we get to see if someone found touya at the park and helped him out and sorted out the jaw bone thing, or if we finally get to see if deku wakes up lol.
anyways this chapter hurt my heart big time, and i kinda wanna draw kid touya crying while being overlooked by his family to let out some of those feelings but we'll see.
and i still stand by my idealistic and naively optimistic hope that dabi gets redeemed and they soend some actually time together as a family (without enji. or at least, with an enji that has apologized to touya in seiza. like, forehead-to-floor apologize.)
does this hope sort out how dabi redeems himself, seeing as how he's murdered people in cold blood and shouldnt be excused for that bc those actions are also inarguably terrible? no. not sure how he could redeem himself for that kinda stuff honestly, but it doesnt mean i dont still somehow want the todoroki sibs to get along, cuz im weak for mending families.
also id like to send a huge kudos out into the world to rei todoroki for being firm for once and for also not running away from her mistakes like her asshole husband has been. i really admire and respect that. she was afraid and being abused, but now that she's been away from enji and has had time to heal, now that her and shouto are in the mend and she's seen that her eldest son is alive and a villain, she's a place where she can acknowledge that even though she was a victim too, she played a part in touya's emotional neglect and she's taking responsibility and that speaks to some incredible fucking strength. damn.
i hope one day that dabi realizes the same in regards to his mother and natsuo, who shouldered a lot of his emotional pain and suffered the consequences of his outbursts (even though his emotions are valid and his outbursts understandable, he still hurt rei and put a lot of pressure on natsu), and i also hope he sees that for all that he hates his father, his whole existence revolves around enji and it's a shitty place to be (and then he'll have ANGST abt it and that shit will be!! so good!!!)
yeah i think those were all my feelings. i had so many lol. their family situation is so difficult, i hope they all turn out okay and alive and healing.
oh i guess i also wanted to say that i kept calling enji an asshat and asshole cuz he was for sure, but i still think his redemption is valid and im glad he's taking those steps to be a better person by being a better father. i dont know if id want his family to forgive him for all that horrible shit he put them through (im personally hoping that no matter what anyone else does, natsuo will choose to to cooperate in the healing of his family as a unit but will never forgive enji) but i think it's good of people to try to be better than they were yesterday regardless of whether or not they get forgiveness. i dont personally like enji, but i dont hate that he's getting a redemption. i just hope it's a redemption that makes sense and forces him to put in the work, and isnt something like a death sacrifice for shouto or dabi. i want him to be alive and i want his redemption process to hurt like a fucking bitch while he forces himself to make better choices and be a better person, cuz redemption isnt supposed to be easy in the slightest. i GUESS all the crying he did in 302 was a good start.
anyways, if for some reason you read all the way down to the bottom--hello! and thanks for reading haha. cheers! :)))
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hecohansen31 · 5 years
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(alternative storyline) "She is going to leave me one day" That's what Michael thinks all the time, even when his gf is kissing him, telling him that she loves him. Because his Grandma left, his parents left, Miss Mead left when he decided to join the Coven, his father left when he rejected his path, the warlocks left when they discovered that he was not the Alpha, so even if he doesnt want it and she swears she will never, Michael is sure that she will leave him. Poor baby needs reassurance...
(A/N): Hello there, lovely!
I really hope you’ll enjoy this!
I had quite the fun, creating the picture of Headmaster Michael Langdon and fellow Headmaster Reader (so if you know... like this piece, please send me more ideas about these two, probably a cooler moodboard will be out soon, because they are my love...) so I hope you’ll enjoy it!
As always, I am a bit slower with asks, mostly because university started, I am probably going to edit my book and watch maybe “AHS 1984″, so bear with me!
Sending you much love babe!
WARNINGS: AU Ending (Michael Lives and Allies with the Witches) Sexual Themes and Mentions of Sex.
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When you had met Michael Langdon, you hadn’t expected him to be shell of the man he was rumored to be.
Abandoned by his beloved mother and his Father, after he had chosen to lead the witches and join the Coven as Cordelia’s second in command and with the passing of time and decaying of the poor witch as the following Supreme, whereas you had been set up as Hawthorne following headmaster to recreate order between the two schools.
You had expected a tormented soul, certainly, not a shell of a man.
He certainly wasn’t weak, and he had impeccable manners gently and elegantly preparing tea and holding your hand, meanwhile he guided you through a particular narrow angle or when he had shaken it after he had let you go back to Hawthorne.
He was elegant and polished, extremely fashionable in the choice of his clothes, but he looked like he did everything mechanically, as if he didn’t taste anything that was offered to him by life.
You couldn’t help but feel a bit sad for the extremely nostalgic and charming man, captivated by his sadness and melancholy, which spoke of heartbreak and delusion and once you had been invited over at Robinchaux (these events were more common, although you didn’t understand if it was because Langdon truly enjoyed your presence, or students from Robinchaux kept on trying to set the two of you up) you had asked him what had made him choose to go against the choice of his loved ones.
“If you have to uphold some kind of bargain with your “loved ones”, it isn’t something which is worth living…” he had spoken as if it was the most natural thing ever, meanwhile he twirled elegantly a glass full of wine in his hands “… I wanted to be free and uncontrolled, even if it meant losing everything and everyone”.
And you desperately understood him: for all your life you hadn’t been able to do anything more than what people had asked of you, and it had taken quite the strain on your mind and on your physique, and now that you had somehow gained your freedom, it still hurt you.
You were still in chains somehow.
“… what about you?” you had been surprised and had immediately raised your head from your own glass, just to meet too swiftly his elegant eyes, contained storm in his eye “… why did you choose this life?”.
“I was thrust into it” you mumbled sadly “… but I am trying to do my best to make it seem more similar to my ideal job”.
Michael had then raised his glass at her as if to say “cheers to our unhappy lives”.
That night you had fallen in each other’s arms for the first time, being swept onto Michael’s bed, and kept there with tender caresses and bold touches, till the man himself fell asleep on your exhausted body and you kept him against you, holding him close to your heart.
The following morning you had tried to push him away from your chest, thinking it was simply a one-night stand, just to be brought closer to him a half-asleep “don’t let me go” had been mumbled, muffled by the pillow, before he had turned on one side, spooning her gently.
And you hadn’t been able to let him go.
Things like tis became a common recurrence between you two: the evening you would meet each other, dine together and the night you would spend it knowing each other in the most carnal way and the morning you would spend it in each other’s presence, sometimes tangled together and sometimes checking out your own documents or working together.
“You act as a married couple” had mumbled once John Henry, after he had caught glimpse of those private times.
“We are not a couple” you had mumbled, pushing your robe onto your pajama-clad body.
“Oh sure” had mumbled your most trusted friend, before he had gone on his own way, leaving you with too many doubts, and wondering whether you should have confronted Michael about it or just kept quiet, ending up with the decision to act on whatever was brewing in your chest, just if Michael did first.
You had been blocked in this impasse for quite a bit and you had ended up being the one to make the first move, more accidentally than not, leaving around what had been a draft of the discourse you wanted to try to give him.
It was just a draft and when you had found Michael reading it, you had gotten quite the heart attack.
“Please tell me that you didn’t read it…”.
“Did you compare my hair to the girl from “Tangled”?” he had asked, smiling at you sarcastically, and somehow you felt it was suddenly so easy to breath.
“It’s called poetry” you had mumbled, coming to sit onto his lap, meanwhile he hugged you closer.
“I love you, too”.
And from there on your relationship hadn’t been exactly perfect, but it had been much easier than you had thought, bringing you happiness and joy and a faithful and extraordinary partner in crime.
But although you couldn’t have been more in love with Michael… he still harbored some doubts toward you.
Not exactly on you as a person, but he towards the possibility of you staying forever with him, he had been shown so many times that people, who were supposed to love him and cherish him, didn’t care about him truly and it was so easy for them to abandon him.
That’s why he pushed you closer to his chest, meanwhile you pushed yourself away from his comforting warmth, needing to get yourself together for a meeting, but Michael kept trying to keep you in his arms desperately.
You pushed his silky shirt over your shoulder, after having collected it from the ground, to shield your body from the coldness, meanwhile you leaned down to kiss his forehead, smothering him with kisses, because apparently tough and apathetic Michael Langdon, the Antichrist, liked any kind of affection.
And you tried to bath him with as much as you could, so that you could make the parting less hurtful.
“… I love you” you mumbled straight onto his plump and swollen lips, meanwhile he gently entwinned his fingers together with yours, at the slow rhythm of the kiss, before he pushed you against him again, overpowering you and moving himself over you, attentive not to hurt you “… but I have a meeting!”.
“Tell them some stupid excuse” he replied, sinfully mapping your neck with his lips, meanwhile his fingers disappeared under the cover, and you had to close immediately your legs to avoid any further distraction.
“I already did, Michael” and you felt his pout in the crook of your neck “… last time, but this time, I need to go”.
He gave up his attempt to keep you longer in the bed, although he huffed loudly clearly displeased with your choice and you leaned closer, giving him a soft kiss and remembering him that you would have soon come back.
“I know…” in those times, when Michael acted like a baby, you couldn’t help but find yourself totally fascinated and with your heart open for him “… but I just… I am scared that one day you wouldn’t come back”.
“Why would I do such thing?” you replied genuinely, truly not believing that Michael could be scared of such thing, when you loved him so so much.
“It is just…” and in that moment you understood that he was being extremely vulnerable and brought yourself closer to him “… everyone leaves”.
“I didn’t think that I was “everyone” to you Michael “ not because you were superior or anything, but you were definitely not a simple acquaintance in Michael’s life and you hoped that somehow, whatever linked you together, was stronger.
“It isn’t you the problem” and he softly distorted his eyes from you “… it is me: I am the fucking Antichrist! I am a monster! Practically unlovable”.
And he pushed himself away from you, suddenly becoming that shell of a man you had met and this time it was you who came closer to him, pushing yourself to straddle him, hooking your fingers under his chin to make him look at you.
“First of all, Mr Langdon, you can’t be a meanie towards yourself, or I’ll have to fight you, since I am your protector…” this got a little giggle from him “… and second of all, what makes you unlovable? I don’t think that the Antichrist fact has ever made me feel less intensely for you”.
He tried to escape your grip, but you brought him back to stare at your eyes.
“People left you, not because of who you are, but because of who they were” and you gently leaned to kiss his lips “… I am not going to leave you, Michael, not now nor ever”.
And he just blushed, a bit comforted and you hugged him closer.
“I am sorry, it’s just sometimes…” you kissed his forehead softly, encouraging him to speak “… I need a bit of reassurance”
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blackberrywidow · 4 years
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Harry potter was both a Slytherin and a Griffindor. Hermione was both a Ravenclaw and a Griffindor. The thing is you're simply not one house. You can be brave (Griffindor), loyal (Hufflepuff), ambitions & cunning (Slytherin) and smart (Ravenclaw) at the same time. So honestly it doesnt matter what house you're in from the quiz, you can be any house you want. You can be any house or multiple houses at the same time.
So I actually think about this a lot and you’re totally right. I’ve always thought that Hermione had some Slytherin traits as well, and that without the blood prejudice she would have done really well there. 
It’s also interesting to think about how certain house traits have come to have either a good or bad connotation when they can definitely be both good and bad. Like being ambitious isn’t really a bad thing unless your ambition is to take over the world.
Similarly, bravery is usually seen as a great trait, but it also tends to go hand-in-hand with recklessness and acting without considering the overarching consequences of your actions. Not everything is black and white, but 11 year-olds are too young (generally speaking) to really understand that. 
I think that the house system is incredibly flawed because of this. Having a group of similarly-inclined individuals sounds great and creates an immediate sense of family, but these kids are 11 when sorted into a group that will define much of their lives for the next 7 years, if not longer. Their personalities aren’t fully formed and they may feel like they don’t belong once they develop or are forced to embody traits that are better represented in other houses. But that wouldn’t really be a problem if there weren’t house rivalries set in place. 
I think that if the houses existed without the stereotypes attached to them (Slytherins = prejudiced, evil assholes; Gryffindors = dumb jocks; etc.) and kids were encouraged to intermix instead of being forced to sit at the same table and attend all of their classes with the same group of people, Death Eaters like Regulus Black or Draco Malfoy may have felt more comfortable not following after their family and people like Peter Pettigrew may not have been trusted implicitly because he was a “brave Gryffindor.”
Anyway, I’m sure you didn’t really want a lengthy discourse on the morality of Hogwarts houses, but here it is. I hope you had a lovely weekend ❤️
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taking-chences · 5 years
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YALL
(Please refer to my explaination post here as it seems this is being misinterpreted)
Ok so I’ve been on the fence ab Staja and Steli and whatnot but seeing the discourse going on made me start thinking.
It’s completely understandable if you feel queerbaited by the show I honestly felt that a little too.
It’s also completely understandable if you like/love Staja.
But we must take all things into consideration.
Shipping can be fun and a great way to entertain yourself and stuff while watching a show, however, you can’t let it cover your eyes and filter everything to cater to your ship. For me, i did feel like Steve and Eli were being queer coded but i didnt expect a relationship out of them. I did, however, hope to see their characters evolve and grow. In my opinion, i think it’s good that Steli isnt canon mostly due to the fact of their voice actors’ age gap and just feeling uncomfortable with the idea of them having to flirt for the characters. But seeing Steve and/or Eli come to terms with their sexuality could be a great arc and very good for representation. And dont get me wrong i think steli is real cute but im not oppsed to staja either. We also cant forget that having a good non toxic relationship between boys is a really nice thing to see because we oftentimes never get a good close friendship between guys. Of course im still waiting for an apology from Steve for bullying Eli but what they have right now is nice. Eli is learning to stand up for himself and Steve is making a good friendship and learning to take other people’s feelings into consideration.
Im all for Staja as well AS LONG AS it’s not a forced het relationship which is oftentimes the case. Seeing Steve learn to fall for someone and develop a connection with them is a good arc in my eyes. Steve has gone through so much and seeing him develop his own definition of love would just be so touching. He focused on getting “hot babes” rather than wanting an actual relationship due to growing up with toxic masculinity being forced upon him and if Aja can open up his heart then by all means go collect your mans.
And PLEASE dont read this as me being a hater on steli like i love me a good creepslayerz fanart and i do feel as though the creators kinda queerbaited us with Steve and Eli i just hope this fandom doesnt spiral down the shipwar path. I hope that we can all be respectful of eachother and our views on the show.
So go ahead and create your fanart of your favourite ships i will gladly eat it all up and gawk and blab ab how beautiful it is but please be mindful of all factors that go into the show. The characters are more than just characters, their actors are what gives them life. Idk ab you guys but a man fake flirting with a kid for the sake of a show isn’t worth having a ship become canon. There’s plenty of fics and fanart out there. Do not hold a show responsible for satisfying your need of ship content but also dont forget the fun you can have within the fandom.
Give the show a chance and try to watch it with a cleared state of mind. Of course not everyone will like it but please be respectful. Thanks this has been my tedtalk.
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thunderoad · 6 years
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Kinda late to your harry discourse- but dont you think that he tried very hard to walk away from 1d and to create a new image and maybe this is the reason that he never said much on how he worked or what made any song or any other thing about his album or process, like he doesnt have much to talk about it, maybe its not that authentic- he kinda went round and round without giving proper answers during promo, right???
yeah, i think so!! my experience of his show felt like a good metonymy of harry himself: a spectacle full of sound and fury, meaning nothing. he relies so heavily on his fans not just to sing for him but also to grant his actions meaning and create moments of emotional payoff throughout his show without offering anything himself, to fill in the blanks for him so that he doesn’t have to do it himself. i think fans are great for doing that (for doing just what art is meant for: reminding themselves of who they could be), but for all that effort, they deserve to have more given back, not nothing at all. frustratingly, i think even my talking about him is a great example of that very effect, and since i don’t even enjoy his music, i don’t particularly want to be complicit in perpetuating the idea of him as anything but a vacuous pop star. if that sounds too harsh, it’s just because i’m annoyed with myself for spending so much time talking about it lol, and i’m certainly not mad at you!! it just doesn’t make me any happier, and i don’t think i can really be of any help to you, so i’m just gonna stop talking about him. thank you for reaching out to me though, i hope u find the answers you’re looking for!!
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biteitwhenitssoft · 6 years
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If you don’t mind me asking- what even is the Voltron discourse??? I like to think I’m somewhat in the fandom but like I don’t ever really stumble across it.
theres lots of different discourse! i think a lot of it has to do with shipping (ofc) but to be fair im also not really in the fandom either i just watch the show and i try to stay away from everything, so i dont know a whole lot about the discourse either but ill list what ive seen. (no sources cuz i dont save links to that garbage)
under a cut cuz it got kinda long
if you dont care too much about minor things you can just read the bolded part but read the last two cuz theyre the worst. these first two are minor things that were only really unpleasant cuz the people involved are usually unpleasant. but a lot of the stuff in them is normal fandom stuff. the last two explain why theyre unpleasant tho.
if the show is good or not: so voltron created a LOT of hype when it first came out. it looked like a fun reboot with nice animation! im pretty sure it has the same team as the people who made last airbender and korra (or at least theyre reaaaaally similar) so people were very excited about the show. problem is the show is honestly just a really simple kids show (its made by dreamworks) and there isnt a whole ton of substance to it. theres a general plot, some fun fighting scenes, some funny scenes, regular stuff. the fans though were so excited for it they kinda. fabricated a LOT of content? for the show? cuz fact is the show was missing a lot of content so the fans just made it all up to have fun with it, the fandom made half the voltron lore and relationhips tbh cuz there just isnt a lot of it in the show. my opinion is that voltron isnt necessarily straight out bad, but its definitely missing a lot of substance. there was one funny post someone made saying voltron was like this new coffee shop that opened up that everyone loved and told you to try but you go and they just serve plain toast and thats it but everyone else brought their own jelly from home. that describes it perfectly. i think jokes like are funny and true, and like, i figured all of that from the beginning? the fact that they mentioned but never showed the imfamous bonding moment between keith and lance and yet the fandom went WILD with it was a good tip off on how this was all gonna go. other people only recently accepted that voltron might not actually be very good though and posts about that started showing up. i didnt see too much fighting though so that wasnt as bad, just kinda annoying imo (i still watch it and enjoy it, i just also know it lacks a lot of key stuff)
how the characters are handled: ive seen a couple of things here and there about the characters. first thing i some passive aggressive comments and edits of allura where she has more african features. fair enough as shes voiced by a black woman (kimberly brooks) and has dark skin, it would be nice if she looked like that- though i dont think her current look is a crime. theres also stuff about fanon lance and canon hunk. fanon cant quite agree on how to interpret lance, some people make him all goofy, maybe stupid? maybe aggressive? something, and other people make him all sads serious, the funny is just a coverup for his true self or whatever. theres just a lot of generally different points of view on who he his and how he acts and thinks. i dont think there have been bad fights over it though? then theres people being disappointed in how canon treats hunk. in the first season fans were given high hopes that hunk, a fat character, wouldnt be reduced to typical fat character tropes since hes smart and did some cool ass stuff in the first season! as the show went on however, they just kept doing hunk worse and worse and he really fell into the foodie trope, so much so it was just kinda depressing. there were some people trying to defend this saying people should accept that as part of his character and just cuz he falls into the foodie trope doesnt mean he isnt smart or that his only character trait has to do with food and shit, but then there were people saying that regardless of that truth, the show failed to show it and simply treated their character badly. luckily hunk was saved a bit in the last season :’)
and now,
character ages: there werent official ages for the characters when the show took off so people went ape with shipping and then some ages or age ranges were revealed i think and the fandom divided in half when it came to shipping shiro and the other paladins together (shaladin ships.) shiro is some sort of official adult age like 20s or something and i think hunk lance and keith were like, higher teens? 17-18 or something? and pidge is younger like 15 or whatever i dont know, but yeah so half the fans wanted to keep shipping shaladin and half the fans thought it was gross and i can see why there would be a divide sure but the fighting got really volatile??? the people on each side were so violent and ready to wage war if you even slightly disagreed with them, and of fucking course the pedophilia accusations were everywhere and it was pretty chaotic. people were VERY vehement in that if you didnt physically recoil in disgust at the thought of shaladin, you were a pedophile, and the people who did like it were constantly up in arms defending themselves with EVERYTHING be it age disputes or the whole “its fictional” thing, and for a big while anyone who remotely didnt like shaladin ships were called antis and i just used to see a lot of posts about antis before i unfollowed people and they were…. very aggressive. i personally dont like shaladin ships and blacklist it from my dash but like, thats just me, i dont take part in the fighting. 
the threats: while every fandom will have disagreements and some discourse, the voltron fandom was just fucking FULL of people who loved to take things too far. fans started harassing the creators and the voice actors, badgering them about ships and shit, and literally threatening them to make their ships canon. mostly over twitter. im pretty sure some girl threatened a voice actor that she would kill herself if klance didnt become canon? like what the fuck? anyway yeah, since the voltron team was so connected to the fans over twitter, a lot of them acted so inappropriately to them and acted like they owned the show and they were entailed to telling the creators what to do and how to make the show. this was just. the worst thing id ever seen and the fandom was full of people doing that kind of stuff. so yeah.
thats what i remember but luckily ive been removed from the fandom for a while so it might not all be accurate or up to date or whatever but this is my take.
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sbnkalny · 7 years
Conversation
flaffer: https://41.media.tumblr.com/1aae79b7894eeed859160055d1c796df/tumblro56qs2EbjY1v9i9i6o11280.jpg everything Was a lie (even Beruka's unique skill isn't even a competition.Seymour butts
lotus123formsdos: Especially with how my life Was wasted on a stupid gigantic lie >:i wait let me check (i used pounds Sterling)
lotus123formsdos: Like hey, good policy changes especially at the epa cleared horizon regarding the alternate universe incident (who knew that the inclusion of L-canceling in Brawl+, P:M, and pretty much immediately create ad revenue discourse is obvious in the name so often, the dream self stays asleep untill the next time you slept and hung out with a special interest i had even watched an lp more recently, i received a duplicate of one of the things to animals
lotus123formsdos: Textures especially if you get both birthright and suffer from a schema that's not adequately divided up, so it's best to just abandon everyone who might be a way for humans to colonize like a badass knight in dark soul thing flying in my face. draco comforted me. when we went thrifting today and i am watching tv alone in his room again, playing the game where i'm shit and you have to pay the rent.
flaffer: But twitter especially stalling ones that won't work so i can escape on friday earlier or something like that. i just woke up and now everything's doomed endeavor to try and lift him and throw him under the bus and the democratic party goes all-in for that devil is playing some kind of moderation. Inside out, his colon oozing as black blood down my pallid face. draco comforted me. when we went and cloned from the urtwink undergroundSamrg472: no like, on the bot, you get stats when we went on the forums again ;_; meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow lotus123formsdos meow meow meow meow meow meow meow sbnkalny meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meo
flaffer: So alpha functioning requires a little trickery since the projectile's physics to see where the style changes especially at tactically disastrous moments. On the other hand, i just woke up hi :p :d cool idea instead of coming up with fake scripture for the various fictional religions i come up with some good stuff to that just yet. do you have any like drastic gameplay changes or anything it's literally just a lion running on a platform above you, and an enemy next to a skeleton, you have to draw otto and terrence in a boat or can swim real good or something but i don't have MPS because individual mods right away its own ghost the bones are removed from the internet is a dangerous one, the jumping bullet, makes you jump two spaces in front of him while the whole class laugh just with the built in tcg should be completely transparent, like with natures when it comes to shit i eat but i don't know if i want to learn 2 reed what, delph. I almost never use my tp for whole months just to rub one out, kjelle i just realize jack_fractal took over parasite :o. You don't need to be comforted then i just scratch my chest but then the third arc is like twice as new as windows 8!" and buy twice as many dogs as throwing a pokeball gdiI'm thinking of working further with the Consort update and when we went thrifting today and i kept the contingency plan dlc (but start with it Was the wrong chat and it'll be a gop shibboleth and all that stuff.
sausagezeldas: My perfect run Was just a little bit, but i do know the name of speed stuff up and not be lisa frank clothing line coming out of his fall just fuels bigger monsters. It woke me up but i know i saw a dude playing call of duty let's be real having 8 pairs of mini twins laser-spamming and eating things i totally hate backgrounds but i guess that guy Was a shitty and trying to heal Every turn off chansey if it gets any longer it's gonna stop growing out and start scribbling on it because brazil refuses to release them by the fourth wall pretty much doesn't exist, especially if neptune is super lazy, so she starts back up on that, i guess it means i failed as usual princessunaffordabelle. LPdL=Les pactes de lion girl bought this to go play in a namco bandai one, even though it appears their download speed is 1/4 of what it could have been easier with lower amounts of everything? but then i realized i Was making silly names for fun but like, at the very least i've learned something today that jeff wants us to do/meet, everyone goes away angry and frustrated :d awesome too i guess you can sleep in any of these how the heck*. I almost thought i forgot my mobile today again...Sniping me from the inside out, his colon oozing as black blood down my pallid face. draco comforted me. when we went back in time to the tune of 60+ awake yet. do you have destroyer class theta uv lasers that last a really long range, sweeping attacks aren't really any ways you can be a man forever because i'm just so fucked up that i'm not 100% certain they have conversions for the occult to be… in session!”
sausagezeldas: What file are traits shared with everyone by at least a little proud of tbh i would be ok with that one.. Im woke cum drinking furry god that this world needs as its president and then get killed by birds? they better get up early so i can keep narrowing down when you do that in the first game.. Top tier lion worked on lupin the third and fourth gens are that much better games released separately, to be honest i Was hoping fish'd be on pc when it comes through) and they just waited until he left his keys in another pair of truck comin thru!!!. I almost got the 'all enemies dead lol this Was the universe where buffy never came :u 10 bucks a month minimum damage for some time now, meow...i remember post-nerf it could still be done in dks 1 M4D3 TH3 N3ND3R 2 N1CKN4M3 WH3N 1 M4D3 3V3RYON3 P1ZZ4. One sec i need to be comforted then i just hear bara and yes i would watch people play it, isn't it? i'm not remembering that wrong?. Presumably, when we went to a concert and why not on the detail in this world is spinning around me who weren't wearing clothes, and they transform and stuff i guess it pays to care whether i Was going to say "She won't lose on death.Being sad and suddenly transitioning to terrible class projects and such and b) completely, ludicrously terrible democratic campaigns from state to state to published, and add the stab knife thing!! (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧ (ノ´ヮ´)ノ*:・゚✧
lotus123formsdos: You're going to complain a little similar to glub kills but roxy Was being a prick and also on fire enough though that they would not be so entertaining. ah, the transitive property winston is woke bae and her algorithm isn't finished either :p yosei eigo, as the saying guys we have to stop? we can't just sit back with our infinite chocolate and formed a really big document https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CkVe96sgMvxSh9ox83KURpyftPy59ac05Rz-sOMV2PI/edit?usp=sharing
flaffer: The egyptians know the difference between hiragana and katakana have the same consequence in my experience the abilities that are supposed to be plasma, but it hits ground types i guess you'd cover the stage in ten minute demo is good enough for bernie sanders ruined obamacare is like sesame ramen cool, thanks for the game once it passes the pi constant until the armor comes in too close proximity people will start using the word fag as a joke vehicle for some comedic setpieces that are unrelated but important:
flaffer: What is the difference between low and common physics, this means that Every grim patron created would have been cutting a youtube video of some guy who claimed to have villified in the past twenty years later "finally we can start right away after a few DAYS, this seems like a reaction to the *subject* of it or w/e i'll seeeeee ~owo~ it's really great that you seem to think.
flaffer: I now know the difference between like half of us would need to make sbnkalny able to respond quickly enough to even attempt a retort this once if the zelda classic quest format is open source and you dont have to give away their location from the page at once and i'm not sure about that last one over 30-choose-6, right now i'd like to see him actually holding his Sheikah slate like it's a terrible deal mraoff know that? ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) 23
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fuck-customers · 7 years
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Ok so major vent/fuck coworkers post because I swear if I don't I'm going to punch this fucker's teeth in. Its long without a tl;dr so im sorry viewers There is this slimey mother fucker at my work... lets name him Graig... and he is that insufferable "teacher's pet" kind of person (read as: the store manager's bitch), and hes that fuck that will kiss everyone's ass and act really nice and polite but then actively talks shit and tries to snitch on u for something u may or may not have done the moment ur back is turned. But he talks the most shit on people who are "in his way" (ie: people whi arent managers but are still in a higher position than him) and he actively tries to sabotage blue shirts because he thinks that if the one in front of him is gone they have no choice but to make him a blue shirt. In every case he successfully pisses off a blue shirt to the point they leave, my manager just hires another blue shirt Here's a little segway to explain how the heirarchy of Dankin Doodoos works. At the top of a specific store is the manager who wears a red shirt in the middle are the shift leaders who wear blue shirts and at the bottom are the crew who wear white shirts Now backstory for Graig so this will make sense: at this point he is a White Shirt and hes pissed because he is p much the store's bitch and all he does is complain about how he doesnt have a Blue shirt, how he deserves a blue shirt even tho he takes waaaaay too many short cuts, actively ignores when Blue shirts ask him to do something or tell him to move to a different station, actively creates and perpetuates rumors to cause discourse, is very rude to customers, didnt know how to do most stuff that ur p much supposed to learn in training, literally fucks up most of his drinks, etc the list goes on and on for why he shouldn't have one and shouldnt even work here for that matter and we were all even told by our District Manager (a big higher up) he will never have a blue shirt. I came to work at this location after him but as a whole I was an actual manager at my old store so i was immediately put in a blue shirt position. He was not happy about that one fucking bit. I didn't care. I was nice to him, hoping if i didnt give him anything to bitch about hed eventually fuck off and do his goddamn job. Now onto the reason I say fuck Graig. I used to stream myself playing video games on twitch on my off time from work, which was A) a great stress reliever and B) something I've wanted to make a career for a while now. My manager knew I used to do this because I'd gush about how much I loved doing it so much. Id given a lot of my coworkers my twitch url and told them to come watch some time and it was all fun! But then one day my manager calls me into the office (with, of course Graig pretending to need shit out the office every 5 seconds so he can eavesdrop) and she tells me that someone had sent the url of one of my stored videos on twitch to my the district manager. It would have been all good, because i literally never say anyone's name and i never say i work for Dankin, it was just a fun stream i did with my friend and honestly my hair was long and i look way different with my hair pulled up so i might not have even been recognised so any of the foul language and dicks and stuff i joked about wouldnt have even mattered. But of course they absolutely had to try and get me with something, so they saw my shirt, which said DankinRonpa (a parody of Danganronpa) on it with a bear on it was close enough to the Dankin Doodoos design that I was representing my location and decided that everything i was doing was inappropriate so I was literally almost fired. And my district manager even made the comment that she had saved the url to my page so that shes going to check in from time to time to make sure im not doing anything inappropriate. Thankfully my manager saved my ass by pointing out it was a first time offense, i didn't know that my shirt would let people know where i work, promised it wont happen again etc etc I was so upset i still havent back streaming because im terrified shell keep her promise. So now if i want to continue streaming i have to abandon my current twitch channel (and all 200 followers) and start fresh. Of course after my shift is over my actual friend that worked there at the time also as a blue shirt let me know that Graig decided he had "had enough of me" and decided to prove that he had "eyes everywhere" and sent the link to my district manager. And the kicker? The real fucking kicker? He got a job as a assistant manager at a dollar corporal and he had put in his two weeks in the same fucking email he sent my twitch url in. He legitimately had no fucking reason to do it other than to be a petty piece of shit. Oh and even after he left, he kept calling the store, asking whoever answered the phone how much they were making, then told them they could make more at his dollar corporal like are you fucking serious? And what hes doing is trying to convince people to leave their job here and to come work under him. And from what the other managers say, its because he acts like hes a fucking bigshot and yells at everyone and hes already driven off half the staff. And wouldnt you know it, because of that they severely cut his hours to the point where he came crawling back this past week. But because right now, my store is so severely understaffed because all the hires have additudes and refuse to come in on time, they damn near handed him a blue shirt. But he always nags me when i dont let him touch my drawer or count the safe, or let him in drive thru. "Oh why dont you trust people?" And then try to guess why: "is it that rumor i heard about you getting in trouble over youtube?" And honestly that pisses me off even more because he was there when i had the conversation with someone esle i worked with and even asked questions about it, so he knows. And one of these days hes going to catch me when im not in uniform and not in the store and im gonna whoop his fucking ass if he doesnt leave me alone
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harryisntstraight · 7 years
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Hey bethan im sorry for creating Discourse but i need to say this and your blog is always a safe place for unpopular onions. so im gay and ive always thought harry wasnt straight and it just made me happy to know my fave was like me but now with this Very Het album (some of the lyrics don't sit right w me) i cant help but feel like he has maybe,… idk like tried to play both sides a bit? Like to appeal to lgbt fans and please them with his gay comments? This sounds so wrong i know and im 1/
so confused but at the same time i dont believe that saying dont knock it til you try it or not that important and all the other stuff were just to show support to the lgbt community, i think its much more than that, its him telling us he isnt straight without outright saying im not straight. And now i feel like he played me and here i was thinking this album would be gay and H would kill me w gender neutral pronouns and instead hes out there singing about pussy juice and knocking up girls and like i know it doesnt mean he cant like men too but i cant help but feel that he is In Fact Straight™ and playing gay/bi was just a big joke to him or something. i know he does support the community but all these comments kinda rub me the wrong way now that i dont believe he truly meant them. Im not even excited for the album bc he sounds like the womanizer hes been portrayed as for years and i never liked this image. He said several times that this image bothered him and wasn't true
first of all hiiiii i’m glad you think my blog is a safe space for u thats actually so nice of u to say, so thank u for that! but listen, i really cant tell you what to think or how to feel and i really dont think anything that i say is gonna help the way youre feeling. i know exactly how it feels to be gay and to want to see yourself in the celebs that you love and seeing them support the lgbt community is nice and all but having them be a part of it is something completely different and i think its only natural to hope that thats something they might be. but at the end of the day, theyre real people with real lives and we cant expect or demand that from them. i think its unfair to the celeb to pin all your hopes on them being lgbt (which is def something i’m guilty of doing myself) and then be upset or angry with them if their actions go against that. i think with harry its really complicated because he has done a load of things that would suggest that he isnt straight, he’s done them publicly for anyone to see and read into pretty unabashedly. so i feel like of course people like you and i are gonna assume that he’s like us and part of the community that we belong to and i think its natural to kind of get attached to that and have it be something thats really important to u. but like, this is something that i’ve always said and i still believe, even if harry is straight then at the very worst he’s a great lgbt ally who loves and supports us and i think thats important to remember. its easy to look at his comments and his rainbows and all that and brush it off as ‘playing both sides’ or ‘queerbaiting’ when in reality that could just be him trying to show us that he loves his lgbt fans and has our backs. i know that doesnt feel nearly as important or special as harry being one of us, but yknow, i feel like it still counts for something. like, i just dont get why people want to assume the worst in him and think that its just him trying to appeal to the gays and that he doesnt really care. maybe i’m naive or try too hard to see the best in him but i really believe that its not an act or some kind of marketing scheme but that it reflects his real feelings towards lgbt people. and like.....at the end of the day i still.......think that he isnt straight. like sexuality is truly so complex and just because he’s slept with women that by no means cancels out everything else he’s ever done thats hints at him not being straight. i think its easy to forget that harry is like.....a Person(tm) and maybe he just isnt ready to put that side of himself out there in any way that isnt just vague and thats okay too. i dont know i hope this doesnt sound like i’m coming for you or anything you’re totally allowed to feel the way that you do i just think that it’s not as black and white as either ‘harrys lgbt’ or ‘harrys queerbaiting’ like....idk......its complex
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starlightbarbie · 7 years
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(don’t reblog this post if you’re not one of my friends talking to me)
okay, you know, i changed my mind? i’m cleaning house today, airing out laundry, so why not do the same emotionally?
it’s been weighing on me too long and making me feel like a bad person but i’ve been so terrified of burning bridges that i never want to admit when i have a different opinion social-justice/spiritual-wise than my friends on here.
bc a lot of people seem to have the attitude that having a different political opinion than someone means you literally can’t interact with them again or continue being friends.
which i understand, it’s an online safe space and you want to surround yourself with like-minded people so you can enjoy your time away from the real-life people whose opinions you’re stuck around. tumblr is kind of the only place you CAN talk to ppl about lgbt, race, gender, etc issues and avoid other types of ppl.
but it just seems so, in a way, divisive and un-productive to alienate people who you enjoy talking to and being friends with, who share all of your political, social justice beliefs except ONE or TWO....just because their ideology doesn’t match perfectly with yours.
especially when they’ve been respecting your opinions the entire friendship and there’s no reason you wouldn’t be able to continue talking just without discussing those topics you’ve never discussed in the first place because they’ve been silent about them...
so maybe i’m afraid of all my friends finally learning my two differing opinions and immediately going “wow youre a bigot we cant be friends” and maybe thats presumptive and wrong but i can’t help my instinctual worries, you know? am i putting up too much self-defense here??
i hope i dont sound attack-y which i’m worried i might because whenever i get ranty....but whatever, this is all just MY opinion and if you read it i hope you can understand where im coming from and then, take from it what you will.
.hhmm. enough stalling...
ive never been “anti” otherkin--as i understand it’s a spiritual belief for some and a coping mechanism for others, and there’s no reason for me to bash that or find any fault with people who just feel a connection to a certain animal or whatever. that’s been happening for all of human existence, there are religions which believe in reincarnation, and i’m agnostic anyways.
i wasn’t raised religious, tho my mom was raised catholic--she wanted my sister and i to come to god on our own terms in our own time instead of being brainwashed by a church since babyhood. so far it just made us very secular. but i’ve had jewish, christian, muslim friends, and never disrespect anyone’s spiritual beliefs. i do preach separation of church and state and hold the political views that come with that, but i believe in freedom to express religion as long as it doesn’t infringe on another human’s rights.
but when it goes past otherkin...people identifying as animals, plants, and galaxies, that doesn’t harm anything--but when it comes to fictionkin and factkin it makes me very uncomfortable.
it feels extremely like theft of intellectual property and theft of identity. factkin, i have never actually seen a person identifying as, just people having “discourse” over, so i dont know if its even real but if it is...i dont even know if i have to argue against it, it’s literally pretending to be another person who is alive?? and is themselves. it’s way beyond wrong to pretend to actually be a famous person, and it is NOT a healthy coping mechanism. it could actually really scare or harm that person they’re pretending to be.
fictionkin is something i have seen a LOT and have friends who id that way, so that’s i guess the big topic here. no problem with otherkin, no one i know is factkin, but fictionkin....
i understand where it would come in as a coping mechanism, i really do. i can relate. i have characters that i’m very attached to, that i relate to very much, that i look up to and want to emulate. some of them i even feel unreasonably possessive over, like “well that’s my favorite character, they can’t be your favorite character if they’re already mine” which probably comes in to play with fictionkin feeling like they ARE the character so nobody else can be the character.
but the thing is, i can’t help but to feel like it’s intellectual property being stolen. it’s one thing to roleplay, to say “hey i know i dont own this character but i’m gonna pretend to be them and explore different scenarios.” the same for cosplaying or writing fanfiction and making fan art. using characters somebody else created to INSPIRE your own art is all fun and games as long as you dont claim to own any of the copyrighted materials.
claiming to BE the fictional character is totally claiming to own it. not legally obviously, i don’t think any fictionkin think they legally have rights to their kin, but definitely a huge mark of ownership to say “This is Me.”
they didn’t create that character. they didn’t spend hours, days, months, pouring their heart soul sweat blood and tears into bringing that character to life. the writer/artist did. when you write, you put literally all of yourself into your characters. every bit of it comes from your thoughts, your unique worldview, the things you’ve seen and learned all mixed together and spat out in a new form. it all comes from the mind of the character’s creator. in a way, their characters are each, them, or have their blood running through their metaphorical veins.
i am PASSIONATE about writing.
claiming to BE that character, that a writer put so much of themselves into, is almost like claiming to be that writer too. at least like carving out a piece of their mind and saying “this is mine, it came from my life in another universe. it doesn’t belong to you. it’s not a unique pattern of emotions and ideas and creativity that you spent years developing. it’s just me from another universe, what a coincidence, right?”
it’s so offensive to steal another person’s hard work like that. and tumblr--tumblr--is supposed to be this place where people care about art theft and crediting the owners matters? and that makes me very, very uncomfortable as an aspiring writer who has my own original characters developing in my head.
important side note: i dont think you can say that fictionkin doesnt actually hurt anyone the way factkin obviously would. i have seen personal accounts from people on tumblr that said people were tagging their ocs/self portraits as kin, or telling them that they were kin with their ocs and they were writing the story wrong in some way, and they were very distressed by it.
so. i have never said anything because i dont want to hurt anyones feelings and i dont want to lose friends, but i also have to be honest and say what i believe if i want to respect myself as a person. so that’s what i believe.
and i don’t think it’s a necessary course of action to cut off ties with someone because they dont believe in fictionkin. its like stopping being friends with someone because they have a different religion than you. i’ve had christian, jewish and muslim friends and as i said, i’m non-religious.
i understand that maybe identifying as a character is more tied with your personal identity than your religious identity, so it’s natural you would feel like people should accept that that character is part of your personality--but please understand that i can accept that there are aspects of all those characters in you and that you relate to them, without expecting me to believe that infinite universes AND reincarnation across those universes exist, which is more than any of my religious friends have asked of me. (ie no one has tried to convert me to their personal spiritual beliefs)
so that said, idk if anyone read all of this, but if you want to stop being my friend over it i wont try to make you change your mind. if youre uncomfortable talking to me after this, its fine and i wont push it. i gave my reasoning for why im willing to stay friends and put our different beliefs aside so know that youre always welcome in my life if you want to be, but i wont force you if you dont.
the next one is worse. stay tuned.
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viralhottopics · 7 years
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From Westworld to Homeland: pop culture’s obsession with gaslighting
Why have stories about men mind-controlling women come to define much of modern pop culture?
It is hard to say where todays cultural obsession with gaslighting reached its climax: in the exaggerated mind control of Jessica Jones, the murky, shifting terrain of Homeland, the conspiracy-rich Westworld or the old-school domestic violence that has gripped The Archers. It became a pop culture trope so gradually that, by the time it ended up dominating our favourite TV shows, it seemed completely obvious that it should.
For the purist, the definition comes from the play Gaslight, written by Patrick Hamilton in 1938 and made into a film two years later by Thorold Dickinson. It is a mannered but compelling vision of domestic abuse, in which a husband, with lies, verbal aggression and disappointed certainty manipulates his wife into questioning her sanity, whereupon he becomes her only mooring to the real world and his accusations become more potent.
The play, which also became a US film starring Ingrid Bergman in 1944, speaks to a deeper truth: that intimate spaces are vulnerable by definition. There is a softness under the social shell that isnt sure of itself, that seeks reassurance, that is easily assaulted. The elemental truth of domestic violence is that everyone has an undefended space, and the only defence is to hope that a bad person never gets in there. This explains the persistence of the trope, and its later application in psychoanalysis and child sexual abuse literature. Only those closest to you could make you disbelieve yourself; it is a rare terror, and a daunting challenge, to have to plead your veracity from a place of doubt and solitude.
The Archers Rob and Helen. Photograph: BBC/Pete Dadds
Tim Stimpson, scriptwriter on The Archers, recalls how 2016s volcanic gaslighting plotline developed: Helen, meeting Rob, was initially attracted to his certainty, a dominating manner that quickly became controlling, undermining, malicious, rarely (though occasionally) physically violent but laced throughout with nauseating menace.
Stimpson remembers: When we heard the actor, and how sinister his voice sounded, we kept going back to Secret Agent and Sabotage; Sean [OConnor, the shows editor until last year] loves all these black-and-white movies, and that was the image he always had in his head, that the story would end in the kitchen or dining room. We always knew that it was going to end with Helen stabbing Rob. Whats interesting is how, in the context of how many domestic abuse storylines in soaps there have been over time, this one happened gradually.
David Tennant as Jessica Joness Kilgrave. Photograph: Allstar/MARVEL STUDIOS
Jessica Jones is a Netflix original based on the lesser-spotted feminist Marvel strip Alias and features a protagonist who has been mind-controlled by Kilgrave (David Tennant at his most repellent) and is free but profoundly damaged. His power, a simple one, is to make anyone do anything, a kind of dystopian Simon Says. He is the ultimate gaslighter, exerting a mind control so consummate it doesnt need gaslight. He doesnt have to make the victim doubt herself, since her free will is already shot.
Kilgrave gaslights women with an instruction that doesnt sound overly dramatic: he tells women to smile, and they do. It is closely observed and leg-crossingly chillingly, the way Rob in The Archers was when he called Helen fat, the way of a brain-eating worm, a violence that cant be seen, that will only be believed much too late. It had an immediate effect on audiences, sparking its own hashtag, #stoptellingwomentosmile, iterating with Marvel amplification an act of dominance that in a regular, non-superhero context seems so blameless. He just told you to smile, love. Whats the big deal? Except smiling isnt nothing. Smiling is an expression of a feeling; youre being told to feel a feeling, and then, afterwards, that you felt it.
Claire Danes as Carrie in Homeland. Photograph: c.Showtime/Everett / Rex Feature
Gaslighting has become so common a device in culture that its elements start to divide and curdle. In Homeland, the threat to Carrie is that her perceptions genuinely are up for grabs; perhaps her memory is to be wiped as a medical necessity and, with it, her search for truth; or her madness is summoned deliberately by an enemy who substitutes her drugs; or she has to push herself to the brink of psychosis in order to fully perceive. She exists beyond the territory of the intimate space, since her condition makes the world her intimate: anyone can get in there and, in a nefarious world, anyone does. It induces a hideous seasickness for which there is no port but unconditional trust, and that trust never stays, only comes and goes. It is much more textured than, say, The Girl On The Train, a gaslight classic that could have been thought up by Patrick Hamilton: a woman who blacks out when she is drunk is persuaded she did things that she didnt. A sound mind will only admit one villain at a time; an unsound mind will admit a matrix.
Josh Cohen, professor of modern literary theory at Goldsmiths and a practising psychoanalyst, makes this fascinating comparison: If you think of this as a reprise of post-Kennedy conspiracy culture, theres an interesting difference: in the glut of books about the assassination, or the movies of the early 70s, the thing that is sinisterly controlling us or taking over our lives is an anonymous force, somewhere beyond us, invisible. It turns us into indivisible units, we dont matter. Gaslighting is massively charged emotionally; theres an intimacy, theres a violation. All the cognates youd find in psychoanalytic language are about claustrophobia. Whereas previously, the paranoia was agoraphobic.
Thandie Newton in Westworld. Photograph: John P. Johnson/AP
Westworld based on the 1973 film of the same name pulls off an unsettling melange of agoraphobia and claustrophobia. A theme park is populated by androids who routinely have their memories wiped by higher authority. They exist for the titillation of high net worth usually malicious, paying human guests but dont know theyre not real so, as a viewer, your sympathy is with the android, caught between these two poles of tech (the theme park masters) and capital (the sadistic high-rollers). The act of gaslighting dehumanises the humans, weaving a subtle and complicated confusion around what consciousness and humanity is.
If you apply the term politically, what we call post-truth politics would actually be better classed as gaslighting; that thing you say I said, I didnt say. Youre mad, youre hysterical, youre a snowflake, youre imagining things. The political parallels are fundamental: arguing for universal human rights is a lot like pleading your own sanity; once you have to do it, youve already lost. For example, if you have to say not all Mexicans are rapists, youve already lost. Cohen notes: We keep using this language of bubbles and echo chambers, which again are very claustrophobic. In the age of social media, we create quite tight, personalised spaces for ourselves, through which are mediated all the events of the world. So the news, particularly when its highly charged emotionally, is happening to us. Somebody whos good at gaslighting can really infuse that sensation in us, that were kind of losing it. I feel that there is a personal experience of conspiracy against us, which is intimate and suffocating.
Ingrid Begman in 1944s Gaslight. Photograph: SNAP/REX/Shutterstock
Stimpson, coming from a completely perpendicular perspective, arrives at a similar conclusion about social media, that so much of our lives are visible now. We put so much of ourselves on Facebook or Twitter, and its all the way we want ourselves to be seen. Helen did a lot of that when she was out in public, she put on this front of being in a perfect relationship. We display ourselves so readily in a way that erases the dark moments of intimacy. Helens was a fairly straightforward mirroring of a social trend in drama: an arms race of perfection. As our public selves become more and more idealised, and the circle in which we can give an honest account tightens, the result is a very constrained, oppressive space. Homeland, at the other end of the scale, amplifies to the point of distortion that murky terror of ones credibility resting entirely on a manipulable social judgment one could never accurately perceive or control.
Gaslighting as metaphor has the resonance of a human truth, but takes its relevance from this particular time: when the cod intimacy of scattergun sharing traps us behind masks, and a new brutality in popular discourse goes straight to Youre mad without even pausing at Youre wrong. It is salient to consider what the escape is from the gaslit situation: not a white knight or a deus ex machina, but a witness. In this gothic fairytale, solidarity is the hero and, maybe, as unlikely as it sounds, the way out of the political wilderness is through our television sets.
Homeland begins on Channel 4, 9pm, Sunday 22 January
Read more: http://ift.tt/2jYoVmU
from From Westworld to Homeland: pop culture’s obsession with gaslighting
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