#it's just that this is kind of becoming the same social dynamic of real life

[nekropsii]

im thinking about the relationship between kankri and porrim because its just so fucking WEIRD like theyre obviously important to eachother or care about eachother to some extent but we dont really know why?? like they dont seem to get along very well

she patronizes him constantly (which is VERY loaded considering they lived on fucking beforus) and ignores his boundaries (calling him patronizing nicknames he doesnt like, wiping his face while he tried to push her off) and he constantly makes insensitive bitchy bigoted comments that go against all of her values and make her angry

and theres not the same dynamic dolorosa and signless had where she raised him like theyre the same age so why do they even talk to eachother?? what is their relationship?? like were they childhood friends or something?? itd make sense if they were both a little different as kids and therefore got along better but then why do they still talk to eachother when they really dont now ITS SO WEIRD

It's... Complicated. They go way back, as far as I can tell.

The way I see it, they do not have a "Mother and Son" relationship- I find that most who assert this often place far too much maturity onto Porrim, who is literally 19 years old. It's more like an Adoptive/Found Sibling relationship between someone with a severe case of Eldest Daughter Syndrome and the social conditioning of a higher-end Midblood on Beforus, and someone with a chronic case of Only Child and the social conditioning of a Mutant Lime on Beforus. The relationship makes more sense to me when you view it this way. It's just... A fraught sibling relationship, formed under societal pressures we can't even fathom. Porrim Maryam, trained by society to cull those beneath her, trying hard not to, and for the most succeeding outside of someone very close to her, and Kankri Vantas, culled and isolated his whole life, becoming a total suck-up to the deeply misogynistic, ableist, hemoloyal culling system as both a method of self defense and as a wielding of the only weapon he really knows. It was used against him all the time, and it works, doesn't it? If sucking up to Able-Bodied Male Highbloods and ridiculing everyone beneath that golden standard is the best way to ensure safety, then he's gonna do it. He's essentially a lifelong voter for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

Ultimately, I think what keeps Porrim by his side is that... I think she believes in him. It's like watching yourself lose your sibling to the Alt-Right Pipeline. I think she thinks he doesn't actually believe most of what he's saying, and that this is all deeply reflexive. She's smart enough to recognize the real systemic issues at play here, and that he's essentially caught in chains between 5 different machines that all want him dead. And she's right. When you actually read the shit Kankri's saying, it becomes almost immediately apparent that he's spouting bullshit, and that he absolutely knows this. I think what keeps Kankri by her side is that he knows she cares about him. There isn't any denying it. She might infringe on boundaries, or be generally annoying to him, and keeps doing that frustrating little thing called seeing through his and everyone else's bullshit and calling them out on it- not just including but especially his- but she cares. I think he knows that at the end of all things what he'd have left is her. Is this to say that if you got Kankri to grow a spine and genuinely believe in things that aren't spoonfeedings of the latest Conservative Highblood Talking Point/Psy-Op, he'd be a good person? Hell no. No way. He has a raging savior complex and is way too eager to throw other people under the bus and insult/ridicule them to their faces. He's an asshole. Just completely slimy.

But, again, sibling relationships know no bounds. This kind of dynamic just feels so... Realistic to me. The way their relationship is so strained but still so strong and ongoing just feels so human. I don't know. This is pretty meandering, I just think about them a lot.

#homestuck #homestuck analysis #homestuck meta #alpha trolls #beforan trolls #porrim maryam #kankri vantas #porrim.pdf #kankri.pdf #nekro.pdf #nekro.sms

[taikanyohou]

no bc. like. the eighth sense is getting EVERYTHING right.

it's compelling. like. you feel like you KNOW where the storyline is going, what's going to happen next, and then BHAM! NO! something entirely different happens. its never boring. and it makes the wait for the next episode jittery and anxious and it leaves you on tenterhooks BUT THAT'S THE POINT! its meant to leave you guessing. its got this "impending sense of doom" vibe to it that i referred to in a previous post, but that describes the current vibe of jaewon and jihyun's relationship and the atmosphere surrounding it: its thrilling.

characters can breathe!!! and we can breathe with them! jaewon and jihyun are allowed to have scenes where its just them alone, immersed in a hobby that THEY like, and you're there with them! they get to have scenes with so many other people that aren't just with each other. they get to form real relationships with their boss, their therapist, their new and old friends. and each relationship and dynamic brings something new, each dynamic formed between jaewon or jihyun and the people around them is made to allow a certain type of conversation to be had for jaewon and jihyun that they can't really have with someone who isn't that character, for example jihyun can only really openly speak to his boss in the same way jaewon can to yoonwon or his therapist. jihyun can't talk in that same manner to anyone else, nor can jaewon. at the same time, it also soooo BEAUTIFULLY illustrates how performative we can become in certain relationships and situations and around certain people, and how unhealthy and detrimental that can be for us - look at jaewon and taehyung, who are meant to be best friends, but are anything but it.

its such a QUEER show. it takes the small little scenes you'd normally see in a white western heterosexual movie, like the two love interests linking their pinky fingers together to then clasping each other's hands and smiling shyly to the side, to sitting opposite one another on a train and just gazing and gazing and gazing at one another, to calling a taxi after your not-a-date-but-its-so-a-date to go home in and the taxi is literally stood right there waiting but you can't let each other go ..... its taken all those cliche scenes and made them feel so ... new and fresh and vibrant and so so QUEER and any queer person watching the show FEELS those butterflies in their stomach.

oh to see a main character who is asian and queer actually GO TO therapy, and imply that jaewon has been going for 10 whole years to therapy. to have his mental illness be given a name (depression!), to have him talk about his issues so openly!!, to discuss what the struggles of being in your mid-twenties feel like!! to see him talk about how burdensome he finds it being "nice" to everyone and wearing a mask all the time and ultimately his therapist telling him straight that, "in fact, in life, you don't need to be loved by everyone." or when jihyun's boss stood up for him and fought eunji over how she treated him bc she KNOWS jihyun would never bc he isnt a confrontational person, but jihyun's boss did not stand for it, and how she continues to just give him the correct life advice as and when he needs it.

the romance. the chemistry. the way jaewon and jihyun pull you into their bubble. the way you feel the excitement and joy and apprehension and tension and heartache and disappointment between the two of them. YOU feel it. and thats all down to the way the show has been shot and the muuuuusic (oh my god the muuuuusic) and the way the camera is used. it makes it feel personal. in first person. not you watching them, but rather, you BEING them. the way you can FEEL how nervous and anxious jihyun gets when he is in ANY kind of social situation. how you can FEEL the quiet anger and the exhaustion from being so performative and the lack of patience in jaewon like a ticking timebomb when he's around taehyung. you do, you just FEEL it.

anyway. the eighth sense might just be (who am i kidding, it already is) on its way to claim the title for the best bl of 2023, and its only april.

#THIS SHOW HAS ME BY THE THROAT I AM. I DONT KNOW WHAT TO SAY. IM JUST SO HAPPY IT CAME INTO MY LIFE. #the eighth sense #faiza talks

[klanced]

katie your lawyer au tags have me on my knees I never thought guys in suits doing stuff would seem interesting but wow…wow. your mind

Thank u Anon this AU is incredibly indulgent for me.......... ok time 4 more world-building.

I think @heynhay's original idea of Keith & Lance working together at the same firm is best. For both plot reasons but also for my own morale LOL

So everyone works at a fairly large private firm that splits its practice and has some of its associates doing profit-driven law (i.e. corporate or finance) which subsidizes the public interest/service work that the other associates do.

The firm is like "Altea & Daibazaal LLP" or something. Yes I am implying that the firm was started by Alfor and Zarkon. Yes I am implying that Allura and Lotor are nepo babies.

I know I originally said that Keith and Lance were law school rivals but I've changed my mind... (RIP to the law school rivalry dynamics

Instead I'm making it so that Keith and Lance are the same age but Lance has been practicing longer because he went straight into law school after college. Whereas Keith started working after college and got like a Master's degree in Social Work or something before deciding on law school at 26. (I just think Keith is the kind of person who goes to law school later in life.)

Okay onto the specific Klance dynamics... Keith and Lance are both pushing 30 and are also literally lawyers so they are professional and serious about their work... But there is wiggle room for them to still be rivals :p

Lance and Keith are both junior associates at the firm. Lance has seniority because he's been at the firm longer but he's still a year or so away from formally becoming a senior associate.

Lance really, REALLY wants to make partner and he sees Keith as his biggest threat/rival because Keith is Shiro's little brother, and Shiro recently made partner at the firm, so Lance thinks Keith might be a nepo hire. Also some of the senior associates recently left the firm so now Lance is stuck showing Keith the ropes and he's lowkey super bitter about it.

Basically TLDR Lance starts off Not Liking Keith at all for various real or imagined reasons and begins a work rivalry with him. Keith doesn't actually GAF about making partner because he's only planning on working at the firm for a few years to help pay off his student loans, but Lance doesn't know that. However, Keith is a naturally very competitive person, and he also likes having Lance's attention, so Keith immediately goes all in on the rivalry.

Lance, internally: "This Fucking Guy."

Keith, internally: "I am so good at flirting."

The first few months are rough between them. However both are also incredibly productive in their work.

The romcom part of the AU kicks in once the two of them have to start working together on a huge high stakes civil case and they're both like wow.... *twirls hair* he's so competent.............. <3

Anyway misc. things:

TBH I have no idea what kind of law Keith and Lance might private practice... I'm also really torn on what Shiro, Allura, and Hunk would practice hdjsksdhedf

Pidge is hired on a fellowship for either environmental law or data security/privacy law.

Coran does employment law.

Keith went into law school planning on going into public interest/not-for-profit legal aid and swore he would never, ever do corporate law but then he saw his student loans and was like. Hm. Okay maybe some Biglaw is okay. And that's how he ended up at the firm.

Keith:

#lawyer au #voltron #klance #keith #lance #otp: we are a good team #ask #anonymous #katiecanons #the thing is is that like. i want to write them as public interest lawyers soooo bad because that's what i plan on doing. #but the reality is that public interest work is incredibly stressful and depressing and time-consuming #and i genuinely cannot imagine klance having the time/energy to start a relationship if they were both doing civil legal aid #like ngl. i am feeling very discouraged after my first month of law school. i feel very disillusioned by the whole process and the field. #hopefully it's just because i'm stressed and burned out right now and things will become more manageable soon #anyway sorry for not elaborating more on the plot of the au but i have SO much reading left to do

[summercreolefanfictioner]

People talk a lot about chemistry or dynamic between characters. This character has best chemistry with that character. It leads to assumptions that good chemistry is the highest rank in character's relationship, the most qualified one even if they're platonic or not romanticized. How do you think the importance of this 'chemistry'?

is this about jigokuraku?? idk but let's just say this is jigokuraku hehe (since the only fandom I've talked abt this topic on is jigokuraku cause there will always be an endless battle between gabiyui vs gabisagi out there)

for me, chemistry plays a lot in a character's relationship, may it be romance, friendship, battle partnership (like when they duel the same enemy together), work, etc etc. but for me, even if two characters have an insane amount of chemistry together, it doesn't mean they're going to be good romantic partners or what not bcos that's not how romantic relationships work (even in real life)

remember, chemistry is just one thing. however, having your own character development while being invested in that romantic development is another thing. plus, many factors can ruin a character's romantic chemistry with another character (e.g. social status, difference in goals, beliefs, romantic interests)

you might think gabimaru and sagiri can easily be together but there are so many reasons the ship ain't happening aside from the fact that they don't have feelings for one another. remember, gabimaru's end goal after the island does not align with sagiri's ultimate goal in life.

and if gabimaru was uhhh let's say to marry sagiri, he would have to give up everything he had before and be a part of the asaemon and that involves killing again and like what the manga and anime emphasize, gabimaru doesn't want to kill for a living anymore. and our girl sagiri is a samurai and she kills people for a living. ya think that kind of marriage will work? no. besides marrying sagiri would mean gabimaru abandoning yui and there is no freaking way gabimaru will abandon his wife for a girl he just met for a few days the same way sagiri will not marry a man just bcos that is what she is supposed to do as a woman during their time period.

so yeah, gabimaru and sagiri both have tons of chemistry as friends and as executioner-criminal duo. but other than that, their romantic chemistry is like little to none.

(tbh people who kept on saying sagiri should be gabimaru's wife are disregarding her goal to become a samurai just like how the other characters looked down on her. sagiri doesn't want to become anyone's wife; she wants to become a samurai worthy of her clan and soon become the clan head)

#jigokuraku #hell's paradise #yamada asaemon sagiri #sagiri #gabimaru #gabimaru the hollow #yui jigokuraku #yui hell's paradise #gabiyui #gabiyui for life #gabimaru x yui #gabimaru and yui #gabimaru's wife

[markiafc]

curiously and politely paging @fancifulpurposelesslovely to ask about summer sons thoughts, if that's okay!

in particular, the andrew/sam power dynamic + what that means for their relationship post-canon, because i think we both picked up on the same undertones in the text but came to different interpretations. and i'm just intrigued to poke more at your take and hear more about it.

on my end, the baseline of it is, i think andrew's passiveness and his over-reliance on a second party to act as his lighthouse is present throughout the events of the book. he expresses this desire explicitly and implicitly, to be owned, leashed, and led. and i've always seen it as a result of trauma more than anything else, relating to the cavern and therefore to eddie as well. i often think andrew's arc is about many things, but one of the top things is that he's learning to be a real boy. instead of being half a human being, living only a small portion of personhood. the way he was after the cavern and early on in the book.

i think there's andrew grows a lot throughout and comes into his own; the eddie/andrew relationship feels like it is hardcore bdsm-coded but for two boys who don't know anything and they're just kids thrust into this dynamic to cope, and even eddie seems to become miserable and burdened by having to carry andrew through life. it feels like to me he really did want that space away from andrew. he really wanted to have a world, a time with things he forged in nashville just for himself, albeit temporarily. the cavern is this thing that forced them both into this shape and they never got the help to learn another way of being, no matter how miserable it made them amidst the intimacy and love.

and the story is, to me, andrew slowly expanding his horizons, unearthing parts of himself and his life that he had been cut off from, and finally getting a feel for who he really is, a complete andrew blur. he discovers and accesses his sexuality for the first time, both sexual sensibilities and his sex drive. and unlike with eddie, he lets himself engage with his agency as a human being; he breaks into a whole new world through sam, and finds that he's able to have a different kind of dynamic with him, finds that he can grasp at his anger and annoyance at being ordered around and act on it. theres no need to make himself do what sam wants just because sam wants it, and he feels comfortable delivering a rejection. ("i'm not your bitch so tell him yourself.")

the cavern stunted him as a person and eddie too, and there's a throughline there about overlooked childhood trauma. especially for male queer victims in a suburban setting, already expected to be social and sexually active with women and drug-using.

character arc-wise, and mostly centering andrew blur, i've always thought he would outgrow the heavily codependent dynamic he had with eddie, where his primary role in life was to act as eddie's right hand man of sorts, everything eddie wants eddie gets, and andrew blur exists to provide a personal service to eddie fulton. hobbies, academics, careers, relationships, every sector of his life he has developed not for himself but in devotion of someone else. someone he was forced to become metaphorical bride to at 12.

post-canon, after andrew's matured and come into his own, i imagine he can bring these new parts of himself into the relationship with sam, things he never had with eddie. and it would be different, something straying further from bdsm dynamics.

and this got real long, but i'm curious because i feel like you know more about the bdsm side of things better than i do. and my own is pretty rudimentary, so andrew never struck me as someone who is submissive and enjoys it.

this is not to say sam/andrew don't have those vibes, they soo do, andrew/eddie were 10000% like that in practice, and andrew definitely has the submissive markers. though to me, he embodied that role, developed those traits and lived that life with eddie due do a unique set of traumatic circumstance.

so, no hate or judgement, i just wanted to share and wanted to hear more about this book. especially from a different perspective, when i feel like we both did read the same book and saw the same things. i'm more than happy to trade takes.

open invitation to talk about this book and the andrew/sam power dynamics, basically!

#summer sons <3 #me is mark #ive no idea if this is cool to do or not #lemme know if it's not #idm taking this down 👍 #/is struggling to pare myself down to just the big points

[catgirlforeskin]

I am the Essentialism anon.

Sorry, I am kind of afraid of making statements with anon off because I don't want to deal with controversy.

Firstly, yes, it was inspired by a post like "You say that I am a transphobe for saying that femboys and trans women are basically the same, but you are wrong! Transphobes say that your biological sex is what matters, not their gender identity. I say that neither sex nor gender are real, none of it matters, so being femboy or trans woman is not different! I am not a TERF, I am very progressive!"

Now to stupid philosophical talk.

Part of my inspiration came from the addition, but yeah, it was like this.

It's an absolutely cruel idea, at least from my perspective and experience. Aside from its inability to describe emergence of gender dysphoria, it basically excludes closeted trans people from "really" being their gender on the basis of not being socially treated as one. They do say that it doesn't matter because none of it is real, but like, there are other people who are recognized as being their gender. You can't solipsism away from it, and this framework offers nothing else. If you live as your CASAB then you participate in society as your CASAB, by their ideas. I hope that they are not stupid enough to openly say it, but if the only way to make your conception of "gender is what societal dynamics you are placed in" is to not apply it to trans people then your conception is just transphobic.

Moving on to gender essentialism. In its practical usage gender essentialism means attributing certain qualities to certain gender. Qualities that are attributed are usually based on existing conceptions of femininity and masculinity, that are based on current iteration of patriarchal system. You can pick different set of qualities, obviously, but it will not make more sense. In this regard, I think that its correct to say that gender as defined as set of qualities is socially constructed, and usually with obvious purposes.

Now, that's the reason that I am on anon, but in any other way it doesn't add up with my experience.

I don't attribute any innate qualities to gender, but I do consider gender an innate quality itself, with no additional conditions or qualities. An eidos, if you will.

A good comparison is electric charge. Its polarity and ammount influence the movement of the charged object, but it doesn't define it. The movement is defined by interaction between the particle, the electric field, and other particles. Particles with same charge can still behave absolutely differently.

The innate gender of person influences their actions through lifetime, but it doesn't define them - the set of material conditions, culture, and gendered social dynamics do. Still, it says nothing about their personality, and people with same gender can otherwise have nothing in common, and their life stories may be absolutely opposite.

Continuing the electric analogy (I literally invented it for this ask so it's raw and has a lot of unfortunate implications, but that's the only comprehensible comparison I have), the constructed gender roles and gendered societal dynamics are like magnets that move people into their socially constructed roles, and patriarchy is the set of those magnets and wires, created to power whatever machine it is currently manifested as.

While laws and material conditions are definitely what patriarchy is based on today, I think that it's daemonic effectiveness and persistence and some other qualities can't be described without analysing the ways culture and society can influence human behaviour far beyound what should be called rationality.

It is probably becoming too complicated, unfortunately.

It probably sounds weird and nonsensical, but I think that it's the only way I can properly explain my experience. My desire to be a woman was born out of pure being, it certainly wasn't born out of being treated as one in my childhood, or out of desire to be treated as one by society. Nobody realistically would think that being treated as a woman by society is desirable, especially considering that I am a lesbian and low-key gnc (which dispels the other explanation of transness). And yet it certainly is desirable for me. Not because I like it better, but because manifesting myself and actualising my gender is that important, I don't think that anybody here needs to hear it.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that the only not inherently essentialist (wow what a combination of words) conception of what makes someone belong to any gender that I was presented with was the thing about "that's how you fit in society and your experience of it". And it sucked hard and overall messed me up a lot. I said that realistically nobody would like to be treated the way women are treated, and yet that's exactly what I wanted. The experience of the most cruelest kinds of misogyny is oftentimes presented as "what makes women women", which is a no nuance radfem take, you are right, but it was more or less accepted as being the "treated" in question by my surroundings, so obviously the fact that I was (almost) never catcalled or told to do traditionally feminine labour at school or whatever in fact gave me a lot of dysphoria (and low-key guilt, to be honest), because if this experience is what defines being a woman, then what am I? And it all started long before I cracked, so it did involve things beyound just societal conditioning or whatever.

You may say that I took it to extremes, and you are right, healthy psyche is not something I possess, but the same goes to seemingly less traumatic parts of what socially constructed female gender entails. Trying to make yourself into acceptable image of a woman is certainly the experience any girl has, and even more so if she is trans. But treating this image as what does it mean to socially function as a woman definitely did a damage to me. It's one thing to get into popular media that you hate but consume to fit in or being docile the way "proper" women are and the whole other one is developing the fucking comphet.

At least now I do have the cis woman ammount of gendered trauma, you stupid girl.

I don't, like, accuse anyone who says that gender is just socially constructed of my suffering, it's just that after dealing with this bulshit and patriarchy I feel everything bad about everything even remotely like this.

(I am better now but what happened over years can't be forgotten)

None of it matters because I am what I am and so is everyone else. I am not "a man becoming a woman", I am just innately a woman placed in circumstances that are antithetical to my being, and even the proper societal definition of a woman is unfitting and traumatic, it is and it always was the experience of a woman, however weird and rare.

Just a charged particle that has to go against the current, and even then she doesn't have the designated place, even though the magnets forced her to go there.

None of it would make sense otherwise.

Sorry for incomprehensibly venting about my stupid life and strange ideas in your inbox. Feel free to call me a mysticist and a charlatan and anything you like.

A lot of that makes sense to me, yeah

To your initial point about the people who say trans women are just femboys because gender/sex aren’t real, I think most of these people do still believe in and enforce a sex binary, whether they realize it or not. The posts usually boil down to grouping trans women with femboys/traps/whatever and against cis women/tme lesbians, and the only reason to do this is if you believe in sex essentialism.

It reminds me a lot of the people who say “sexuality isn’t real, we’re all just bi to some degree heehee XP” but for gender. It’s never meaningful abolitionism, it’s just trying to deconstruct someone else’s identity and say “umm actually mine is the only real, natural one”

A lot of people also just outright don’t understand what something being a social construct means, which is why we get these stupid takes about gender. How gender is constructed in our society is political, it’s the main means of enforcing patriarchy, but like, taking that to say that gender isn’t real at all is a bit silly. It would define trans people out of existence

Also saying gender isn’t a thing to enforce a sex binary is the basis for a certain hate group everyone here loves to talk about, I’m sure that isn’t a coincidence

#asks

[plasmasimagination]

Hi there! I recently stumbled upon your account and I must say that this is what I was looking for for quite some time. I am interested by your matching up event and was wondering if you're still up for it?

Fandom: Honkai Star Rail (and/or) Genshin Impact

Preference: women

Characters I would NOT like to be paired up with: men

(I am pretty much gay)

I am a cisgender woman, she/her pronouns. ENTJ, Virgo sun, Libra moon, Scorpio rising.

I am androgynous-looking, can easily be mistaken for a dude. My voice is deep and had a slight rasp to it. When it comes to clothes I present soft masc. I am 6', very athletic (as it is a big part of my life to stay active). I have brown eyes and wavy hair that is styled in a short wolfcut with a middle part and curtain bangs. No tattoos, but when I have the money I will get covered in designs.

I perceive myself as a calm and collected person who is more on the quiet and observing side. Which, close ones always tell me, makes me appear intimidating and judging (Scorpio rising). I like to keep my social circle small and trustworthy because I have trust issues. But around my friends I am friendly and always there to help out with the teenage dramas. I would say my top traits are sarcasm, assertiveness, loyalty, and adaptiveness. (Being an ENTJ and Virgo sun say enough about me, but I am softened up by my Libra moon.)

I am a very artsy person, but also very sporty. I am passionate about a lot of things (playing the guitar, drawing, writing, reading, acting, playing soccer, volleyball, training calisthenics, martial arts...) but in this short lifetime I had to choose one, and it is drawing - more specifically, becoming an Architect.

I've never been even close to catching feelings for someone. I've had barely any crushes, none of them real, none of them celebrities, just successful/badass/dangerous/mean women from fiction. I guess that puts me somewhere on the Asexuality spectrum, most likely Demisexual. I want to use my teenage years to work towards building a secure career for myself so that I could eventually spoil and take care of someone who deserves it.

I don't have much preference for looks, despite the fact that I am attracted to femininity, not necessarily someone stereotypically girly, but fem. For me, I need someone who will be able to match my energy and challenge me with playful banter and deep, meaningful talks. Someone who has a strong and unapologetic personality, (I am a sucker for mean fems), but knows when to stop and take a step back.

[Thank you, even if this doesn't get attention, which I completely understand. I will love to see your future works and posts!]

HEYYY DARLING ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡ IM SO FLATTERED HIHI (*ˊᗜˋ*)

Anyways as for your matchup....hmhmhm...

Your match is....

.

.

.

KAFKA

OKAY OKAY let's be honest this was to be expected!

Scary looking girlfriend X equally as scary looking girlfriend (both can beat your ass)

I like the power couple dynamic here.

Plus I think she fits your type pretty well hmhm...

Kafka would be quite interested in your hobbies, she isn't very vocal about it but sometimes she just sits in the same room when you're doing something (drawing/playing guitar/writing etc...) and she'll just discreetly pay attention to it.

She also will kind of tease you about it, telling silverwolf and blade how good you are at your hobbies, and she'll intentionally do it in front of you

Chaining it to the one above-She likes showing you off, not only your hobbies...just you in general

She will also vibe with your attitude and find it amusing and definitely match it just as strong.

Also I think that kafka would also have equally trouble to completely warm up to you, yeah shes confident and flirty with people but I dont think she trusts people as easily,but when you guys spend more time together she would actually become quite fond of you

YAE MIKO

Honestly this is a pretty good pair, love it Picasso

I don't think miko is as outgoing and challenging as kafka, but she's there

It's just that miko is a bit more how do I put this ..dominant? Controlive? I know it sounds bad to put her up against kafka but I have a feeling miko is more on the serious dominant side while kafka is more playful, especially with their darling

Though yae miko is quite the person to talk to in moments of need, she's a good listener and gives good advice, she could simply talk&listen with you for hours on end

She, similar to kafka, would definitely match your vibe, just a bit more reserved type of sarcasm for example.

She's sly with it, just how fox's are eh?

Miko would take it slow to become closer to you, as she can guess you're having trouble fully trusting her, and she would definitely be less teasing at the beginning when you guys first met than when you're in an established relationship

#genshin fluff #genshin imagines #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact scenarios #genshin impact x reader #genshin headcanons #honkai star rail #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #honkai x reader #honkai headcanons #honkai star rail x female reader #honkai star rail x you #honkai star rail x gender neutral reader #hsr x gn reader #hsr x y/n #hsr x you #hsr x male reader #hsr x gender neutral reader #kafka x y/n #kafka x you #kafka x reader #kafka hsr #hsr kafka #honkai star rail kafka #kafka honkai star rail #genshin women x reader #genshin women #yae miko x reader #yae miko x you

[toffeacademia]

Just a little rant on Llorumi

I feel like the controversy and arguments on llorumi have died down now (or maybe i'm just a social recluse who knows) but anyways, though people say that the ship is problematic and toxic and abusive etc., i truly think that the two of them as characters have incredible compelling parallels.

As Harumi said, they are truly "kindred spirits" because both are essentially two sides of the same coin. Let me explain:

Both have experienced a loss of parent(s) - Harumi her parents and Lloyd his father (who's been a more active parental figure in his life compared to Misako let's be real).

Both know how it feels to be abandoned, though this one is complicated one - from what I gather, Harumi feels as she was abandoned by her heroes, because they failed to save her parents (I'll go through this in further detail below) while Lloyd was left in a boarding school by his mother.

Both have been thrust into high standard titles and thus, hold lots of responsibilty on their shoulders. - Lloyd being the Green Ninja and Harumi becoming Princess of Ninjago.

However, the one thing that sets them apart is the way that they percieve these life experiences.

For example, Lloyd grieved that he had to banish his own father and he felt his father's absence for a few seasons but he moved on in a way, yet he still loved his father, up until, well, you know. Harumi on the other hand, while she did grieve, she was overcome with the rage of "betrayal" and she held onto this rage, leading her to desire revenge. Lloyd could've taken the same route as well, he could've exact revenge on Chen, since it was Chen's war that lead to Garmadon deciding to sacrifice himself.

Crystalized and March of Oni does a great job of conveying Lloyd's anger, because while both of them hold onto their anger for a while, Lloyd doesn't lash out and ressurect one of Ninjago's most well known villains in an attempt to "save" the city. While obviously everyone has different opinions on Lloyd's arc in Crystalized, it makes sense that Lloyd's anger is what they decide to put focus on. Dude's literally having to work with his technically-evil dad, and has to fight his ex-gf again and kind of relive certain bits of trauma. On top of that, he has to tap into a darker side of his heritage, while trying to prevent himself from becoming his father (his overall fear). I'll rant about Crystalized in another post.

Anyways, returning back to topic, the dynamic and parallels between the two of them is what makes their scene in Game of Masks (Harumi's reveal episode) so compelling and thrilling, not just because Lloyd is going through the worst kind of heartbreak (my poor boi :(( ) but also because on a deeper level, these two are the literal representation of like calls to like.

Yes I made a Shadow and Bone reference in a Ninjago post - fight me.

Another example is the fact that both found a home of some sorts, yet while Lloyd found a family that built and raised him to be a hero, Harumi was taken into a family that has strict and heavy traditions, and its obvious from the way that Harumi doesn't consider the Emperor and Empress her parents that she hates them, so she is raised under a negative perspective and thus, turns to her revenge plans as a sort of method to treat her grief and pain.

However, it isnt healthy for either of them in their current stages of character development (post-Crystalized) to be in a romantic relationship. Harumi's short "redemption" isnt enough for them to canonically be in a relationship. Both need immense therapy and they have to confront their issues if either even want to be in a relationship together. If writers plan on putting them together, I would hope that they first confront the issues and history these two have, and then slowly build their relationship.

Or even, they don't need a relationship to heal. All I ask is that writers give them both the healing they deserve.

But that doesnt mean that people should be attacked for shipping them. A ship is just a ship, canon or not.

Still, I admire the parallels in the writing of both their backstories and the fact that both have a certain "love" for Garmadon (in my opinion, Harumi has an obsession but that's a discussion for another time).

It is quite funny though, that their sort of relationship is a kind of lovers to enemies to...allies? Honestly idk, but I love that the Ninjago writers gave us these kinds of parallels in characters. But these two greenies are not the only ones! The amount I could write on parallels in Ninjago...oof.

(Also, I'm not tagging this as a ship post, but idm if anyone reblogs this as the ship).

#ninjago #ninjago lloyd #ninjago harumi #lloyd ninjago #ninjago rants #idk why i felt the need to write this today #but here u go anyways

[brandwhorestarscream]

Idea for Amnesiac!Shockwave: he was a warframe who didn’t want to serve his designated function and instead wanted to become a scientist, so he used his size-changing powers to appear as an altmode that was deemed “appropriate” to have such a job and ended up interning at the Autobot Ministry of Science. However, upon finding out the Ministry of Science’s more unethical projects, he was horrified and attempted to share the horrors of what they had done to the rest of Cybertron, only for both his plans and true altmode to found out by the Autobot High Command, who subjected him to empurata as punishment for his “treason”, spreading of “malicious slander”, and refusing to serve his function, alongside shadowplay so that he would be incapable of telling anybot what he had discovered.

Amnesiac!Shockwave is a huge dork, very emotional and socially awkward but very earnest and passionate about both equality between frametypes and his line of work (Basically, you know Milo Thatch from Atlantis: The Lost Empire? That’s him full stop.), at least assuming that the shadowplay isn’t in effect here. If it is, however, he still displays that persona but as a form of masking to try his best to retain a sense of normalcy and hide the fact that something is “wrong” with him. (To potentially make it even more angsty, given how Animated!Shockwave has been shown to be kind of sassy with a dark sense of humor, perhaps the shadowplay was botched and left him incapable of feeling positive emotions/genuine happiness that isn’t derived from another’s misfortune or just unable to feel love and empathy.)

He also ends up forging a close bond with Bumblebee and acts as an older brother to him, similar to his dynamic with him in his Longarm disguise except 100% genuine. Whether Bee feels the same or is deeply uncomfortable by it depends on what point in the series he loses his memories and whether or not Bee knows the truth about Longarm yet.

(Oh, and he’s still devoted to Megatron, just in more of a ‘squealing fanboy’ sense. The dude’s super upset he can’t find his copy of Towards Peace anywhere because if he did he would be BEGGING on his servos and knees for Megs to sign it.)

We have almost exactly the same ideas about amnesiac Shockwave XD I originally didn't include him cuz he's not part of the earth cast, but I can delve into it real quick

Amnesiac Shockwave in TFA is reverted back to a young, idealistic, and incredibly passionate mech. Shockwave is the most curious person you've ever met, always humming and hawing and investigating anything he can get his hands on. He's overflowing with energy 24/7, a whirlwind of emotions, constantly bouncing from one topic to another at the drop of a hat. He always has like a minimum of three projects going on at once, and the fastest way to get his attention is to offer a kernel of knowledge he doesn't yet have access to

He's so eager and overly friendly he's honestly A Lot to deal with. He talks a mile a minute (not super speed enhanced speech like Blurr, but rather a sort of autistic/ADHD rambling infodump) and will follow around anyone that will listen. As a born war frame and stuck on the southern half of the planet he didn't naturally have access to higher education or even of-quality information a lot of the time, so when he was young he may or may not have spent time teaching himself how to hack and manuever around firewalls on the internet just so he could read and learn.

Big agree on him using his ability to shapeshift to infiltrate the north and go to school--he wanted nothing more than to learn. Science is his greatest love and he always pushes for more, more, more!

But, enough backstory. With him stranded on earth with no memories, he's just an overly-excited neurodivergent science student that is over the moon to be on an organic planet. Think of all the things to study! Carbon based life forms, evolution on micro and macro levels, a functioning water cycle, weather patterns, polar vertices, planetary rotations, everything you could imagine! He's never been so excited! Starry eyed and full of joy, it's tangible even tho he doesn't have a face anymore

Since TFA Shockwave is considerably more expressive and sassy than, say, his Aligned iteration, I hc him to either have not been shadowplayed, or having a very minor case. So his mental state is still pretty stable, but the changes to his body... they definitely come as a shock. The usefulness of his hands has been severely cut down, only 3 barely-dexterous claws instead of fully articulated fingers and a thumb is a huge blow. Not to mention his face--he doesn't even look like a person anymore, and it's the cause of much despair. Yeah, he can shapeshift, but it's not the same. This could also open the door to the earth team being introduced to what empurata is, another horror of the autobots' past that has been erased for the sake of making them look good. State-funded mutilation of citizens isn't exactly a good look, after all

#amnesiac Starscream au #but now with the other cons #should i start taggjng this as just. amnesiac decepticons? #shockwave #amnesiac cons au

[hed-romancer]

Idk if this is weird to hop in ur ask box and say but I genuinely loved your mp100 comic so much rly enjoyed the ‘day in the life’ feel it had like you managed to capture the tone of the original manga so perfectly

awww thank you so much!!!! you're getting an info dump about it now:D

i'm still very surprised multiple people like my comic tbh. i'll read comments saying "i like your art style" and think "what art style? i just can't draw". pure luck it kinda looks like the manga. my only real goal with the art of it is to make it so that people know what's going on in each panel (but also i'm not too confident in my ability to do that, so image descriptions!)

i'm also reasonably certain a lot of the people who see one part of the comic don't see the other parts. not really sure if there's something i can do to help that or if that's just how social media works???

the comic isn't finished either! i do actually have kind of a goal for it???? (disclaimer, i don't think i've ever started writing a multichapter fanfic and then also finished writing it)

so the premise is that everything is the same as canon, mob has his same powers as canon, but teruki is just a little bit stronger. so when they fight, and teru knocks mob into ???%, he's also able to contain the explosion.

this basically leaves mob, who's been terrified of his emotions/powers for years now, with someone he knows for a fact can contain them. and teru, who has been fighting off a child-esper kidnapping organization on his own, with another child esper who's weaker than him. teru, who's been holding on to this idea that he's the strongest ever because that's what makes him feel safer, with further evidence that he is in fact the strongest ever.

it's an interesting premise! (slightly inspired by this fic, in which mob ends up at teru's school and teru's his glorious unredeemed self towards him.) (side note, teru has such an interesting redemption arc! usually we see a character do bad things, then we get the rationalization why they do them, then they realize they're wrong, then they start doing better. we don't start to piece together why teru does what he does until quite a while after he realizes he's wrong and starts to change!)

anyway. i think the hardest part of writing this comic is that i have an end goal (teru gets friends and family and isn't quite so scared and relaxes a bit), but i'm not really sure how to get there. i think a lot of it will just end up being slice-of-life teru and shigeo becoming friends while in this strange dynamic.

i also really think that having shigeo (and also reigen) be weaker than teru gives a very unique opportunity to show teru that people who love you don't have to be stronger than you to want to and try to and maybe succeed in protecting you.

thanks for the ask!!!! i'm not gonna apologize for the rambling bc i'm just not gonna this time!

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 #hanazawa teruki #mp100 strength swap au

[gravitycoil]

DO U HAVE anymore hcs for bill .. or ellis or any other survivor u feel like talking about tbh i enjoy hearing yer l4d thoughts :D

(This is my second time rewriting this because when I went to post it, it CRASHED FOR SOME REASON AND I LITERALLY SCREAMED)

I do have many... many thoughts about everyone.

In my mind Bill does not wear that ugly ass boot outfit after realizing the military and government screwed them over. He loves the group like a family and doesn't hate anyone even if he seems mean and sour towards Francis although he does think he is a giant dumbass but loves him nonetheless. Francis' dumbassery kind of gives Bill humanity because he can't believe someone like Francis has made it this far yet he's glad he has and he can smile about that. His dynamic with Zoey is hardcore Father-Daughter/Grandpa-Granddaughter and he loves her so much despite none of them really revealing how much they mean to one another and Zoey especially curses herself because she never got to tell him how much he meant to her when he died. When he did die, I like to think he turned maybe an hour later after the whole generator shit he didn't turn into an SI but if he did I feel like he would turn into a smoker or tank which, I think tank fits more and is more fuck you to his character cause it's all like. Die to 3 tanks, become one in the process which I should mention that I think yes you can be immune but once you die and your immune system and shit are dead you can still turn. When the group sees that he turned and has to shoot him themselves Zoey has to step away cause she can't bare to look at him like that and physically cannot pull that trigger. I like to think when Bill was alive he taught Zoey like literally everything he knows to her. Every little survivalist thing he knows was passed onto her like making animal traps, reading animal tracks, fishing, how to properly fire and hold different guns, aim training and all everything else. He loves Zoey so much as if she was his own Daughter/Granddaughter. He believes Louis is the only other like-minded one in the group his positive attitude and hopefulness is enough to make Zoey happy which in return makes him happy. I do think Bill is very sensitive/emotional yet bottles every emotion he can but I feel like he has many restless nights thinking about if the group were ever to get hurt or even so much as if they died and these scenarios play in his head over and over and it's enough to make him cry even if it's a little. He doesn't fear death but he does believe that if it were to claim him that it should just claim him instead of linger and draw out his demise. Which is why he was open to sacrificing himself he already lived his life, the others haven't especially Zoey. He wants them to have a chance at a normal life, one that isn't filled with the dead. He wants them to have a life.

Ellis is so autism and adhd to me. He sees nick as a brother even if nick doesn't view him as the same he would still take a bullet for him even after every mean thing he has said to him. Ellis is not stupid or anything like that. He's really bad at social cues and just everywhere at once. He is very warmhearted, hopeful, and caring which some will see as being naive especially in a situation like this. Rochelle sees him as a younger brother and is very protective over him, nick slowly gets protective over him to in a brotherly way. Coach is the only one that tries to teach him cues and tries to give him a better sense of judgement and is extremely patient with him. Every single story he has told of him and Keith are all real and not exaggerated they just have gotten into really insane shit. I like to think they have matching tattoos I imagine it's either fish related or car related. They were both mechanics and made all sorts of shit. I also think that Ellis never had a dad and was only raised by his mom and he still believes that Keith and his mom is out there somewhere amongst the hell. If he were to ever see them dead/turned... hmm... well... :( he'd be broken.

#post #ask #anonymous #l4d #l4d2 #hcs #TY FOR WANTING TO HEAR MY l4D THOUGHTS HEHEHE #im so normal can you tell

[zevranunderstander]

whenever i get a terf on my blog i read their blog and their mutuals' blogs before blocking all of them, like, mostly because i'm a hater, but also because i find it kind of interesting why certain people think certain bigoted things, and terfs are so fascinating to me because they live in this echo chamber that makes them forget how reality works and operates on a larger scale. like they have this small bubble and only ever talk to other terfs, and they feel like they are the only people alive talking about feminism and lesbian rights? and people attacking them thus are always attacking *women* like, the person attacking them is always assumed to be trans or a man, and so the other person is always by definition incorrect and hateful and evil.

like for them, they are this small in-group of the last sane and rational people working against some ubiquitous evil that is trying to eradicate them and get them to "like men" or whatever and they don't really understand the criticism that misandry isn't helping feminism because we are just alienating everyone and that their views on how men in general act are completely unreasonable and theyre so insanely obsessed with this idea that men are inherently evil and manipulative, but even when normal regular feminists try to criticise them, they think all other women are "complicit" in trying to make men the superior overlords of the world and whatnot

and obviously since to them women are these magical, spiritual creatures with divine powers and men are born evil, they think gender is inherently binary, and trans men to them are women who bow a knee to masculinity and trans women are inherently evil men trying to get into the only safe space women have left out of malice. and they do this thing where they only ever view the most fringe opinions that some people hold and try to paint them as these universal talking points they are arguing against. "some people regret having a gender reaffirming surgery" becomes "gender reassignment surgery is predatory, and deeply harmful and ruin your life and basically everyone who ever did it regrets it (because to them, like i said, transness isn't "real"), and "after being really nasty about trans people, a terf got hate mail" becomes "all trans people want to violently assault and murder us and people are cheering them on", and "one trans person somewhere said something that's actually kind of troubling and weird" becomes "all trans people are a monolith and they all think exactly what this one person said"

and like, they are acting exactly like this one genre of racist white people who think that one black person somewhere voicing that they, personally, hate all white people, and feel immediately incredibly threatened and claim that this is proof that "reverse racism" exists, but instead, terfs are convinced that a tiny sexual minority which is constantly being pushed down and ridiculed and questioned for their sanity and has their rights stripped and who gets murdered in hate crimes is somehow *their* oppressor

and its easy to say stuff like "i hate terfs" and whatnot, and they will continue to view this as an attack on womanhood and not as the same thing as someone saying "i hate racists", because they think their hateful ideology and gender essentialism are some inherent facts about the world, but like. genuinely, if you're a terf, or whatever you call yourself, you need to understand that you are not the oppressed group. you are ridiculing a minority that already has it worse enough, and you think you are doing this to liberate women, but I need you to understand that women and men are not innately and uncompromisingly different, and a lot of women who cling to movements like this probably actually had a pretty bad experience with a man, and the patriarchy and the oppression and sexual exploitation of women are real concerns, but you are projecting a social dynamic that makes men more likely to be violent oppressors out to be something that is in a gender's nature, when that is just clearly not the case and such a deeply reductive lens to view people through

#myposts

[nikosasaki]

since dani is a heartless bitch (lovingly) what is her dynamic with the scooby gang and also our main character marieeee

sdfgh you get it!!! also side note love 'scooby gang' i feel in my heart that that's exactly what Dani would call them too

let's start with Marie bc i love you two girls who literally can't help but antagonize each other. it's literally like putting two anti-social cats in a room together they're just both on opposite sides of the room hissing at each other dfgh it isn't until Dani sees Marie's powers in action against Sam that she's like. wow. ur kind of a freak and i deeply respect that. they grow respectful of each other pretty fast but a real friendship doesn't bloom until way later (probably season 2) things between Emma and Dani are a bit more difficult. Emma is obsessed with Dani for the sheer reason that she's one of the top achieving students as well as a huge influencer, so when it comes out that Emma has an eating disorder and she accidentally runs into Dani she's like 'oh sorry hi you're very cool i can't do this right now' and Dani just goes 'oh hey, you're that anorexic girl' which. as you might imagine. sends Emma into a full-blown meltdown. she cries right on Dani's shoulder (there's only one thing that grosses Dani out more than emotions and that's snot, so top-tier interaction) and afterwards Dani gives her world's worst but most effective pep-talk that boils down to 'fuck everyone else', which really helps Emma in that moment, despite the Dani-ness of it all. there are a lot of moments where Dani almost accidentally sticks up for Emma and Emma is like are we friends?? and Dani just goes no we absolutely fucking are not. but they are. secretly. Dani and Andre are cordial at best, especially because the two of them are keeping each other's secret. Andre finds out about Dani and Luke on accident and attempts to hold it over Dani's head, but she immediately shuts him down by letting him know she knows about Cate. they're at a stalemate of sorts, both on different sides of the same blackmail coin. in their case it's absolutely Andre who hates Dani and Dani who truly does not think about Andre much at all. so. on the topic of Cate. oh man. these two have a ton of history together, dating all the way back to the very first day at uni when both of them thought they would be best friends. they hung out a lot in those first few months until Cate started dating Luke and Dani started playing second fiddle hard. in the interest of now allowing herself to be shoved aside she instead started a huge blowout fight with Cate and they've hated each other ever since. it's a relationship i would like to eventually see healed but we'll see where the show goes when it comes to Cate. just know that i would love to see them be friends again some day. finally, Jordan. there's a good reason that Jordan was the other love interest choice for Dani and that's because they see Dani in a way that she really doesn't like to be seen. their interactions pre-show are few and far between because Dani really early on figured that Jordan wasn't into her and she doesn't really see a point in interacting with them after that, but the two of them grow a little closer as Jordan and Marie become an item. Dani, for all her inability to be nice, can see that they're an item from a mile away and she can also see that Jordan is freaking out about it. if Dani knows one thing it's romantic relationships, so she has a sit-down with Jordan about it in which Jordan actually receives some good advice. when Jordan afterwards jokes that Dani might actually have a heart after all, Dani jokes back that if Jordan tells anyone she'll kill them. the two of them start developing a friendly teasing dynamic that turns out to be exactly the sort of friendship that Dani's been needing in her life, and it's really good.

#asks #anon #thank u for the ask!! sorry for the word vomit sdfgh #ch: dani

[knowlesian]

i will actually finish my short ode to the s1 finale when i’ve gotten any sleep. for now: why the four good place leads actually voltron together to create one perfect human!!!!

(aka: why the good place makes the argument pobody’s nerfect, there’s a lot of ways to be smart, and we need everybody crushing it in their own lane together to overturn the system instead of trying to go it alone or assume people who don’t see the world the same way we do don’t have anything to offer us.)

chidi's the most obvious one, and the kind of intelligent we find easiest to acknowledge: he fucking loves books. like eleanor says, he’s the smart one. this is a source of so very many hilarious jokes, but on a characterization level everything we know about chidi says this is instinct for him. he honed himself over the years, sure, but the kind of intelligence it takes to sort through and synthesize a bunch of theoretical information and come up with his own take on it all is driven deep right into his nerdy lil’ soul. the books helped and expanded what he’s already got and thanks to one very hilarious/sad childhood misunderstanding he has decided they are literally the answer to everything. 

eleanor's got the next kind of intelligence we more or less respect. jj bittenbinder would call it street smarts. eleanor might not know who died and left aristotle in charge of ethics, but she can read the troubling undercurrents of a room and cut through all the bullshit to what’s really going on. people like eleanor instinctively leave the party right before the cops arrive. her childhood and life spent forced to emotionally fend for herself turned her into a knowing when things are about to turn and getting out first nightmare human, but like chidi this is part of who she is. this is why she’s the one who figures out they’re in the bad place almost every single time; something’s not right here, and she can feel it.

tahani's the next level down, and a little harder to spot: it’s social intelligence. not necessarily social skills, but tahani can look at a room and understand the dynamic and what it needs in a way that is somewhat like eleanor’s way of knowing where all the exits are, but not quite. tahani is good at reading and inserting herself in a social flow, cruise director style. the rules of social flow she learned living in Weird Rich People Land mask some of this early on, but the whole hostess gag covers a real truth: it’s fucking hard to plan and then throw a good party, let alone one that stays good.

jason is our last one. he’s the wise fool archetype, but done in a way i like better than the standard set-up of just pulling out random facts we find surprising a total dumbass knows; jason’s emotional intelligence is off the fucking charts. he understands undercurrents like ‘when you’re nice to someone and they’re not nice to you, something’s not right’ and ‘janet should be treated with reverence’. it’s why he’s the one who knows they should have caught that magic panda and used her powers! (the visual payout of the panda joke later is truly one of the funniest jokes on the whole show.) he’s the kindest person in maybe the universe, and he’s the only one other than eleanor who ever figures out they’re in the bad place, also because he just feels it.

the way the team grows once they find each other is about becoming the best version of themselves, but it’s also about pointing out even the best version of ourself lacks skills the best version of somebody else finds instinctive and easy to understand. they end up needing all those skillsets to find their way to the (fucking amazing) series finale; take a single one of them out of the mix entirely, none of it would have worked at all.

(there’s also a lot of fun overlap between the four, too; chidi and tahani’s skills are about Speaking Fluent Bullshit, eleanor and jason’s about cutting through it. tahani and eleanor share the social situations angle, and jason’s kindness overlaps with chidi’s intense desire to be ethical, & etc.)

#the good place #ugh i love this shooooooooow #i love that whole 'we're all two characters' thing and i am chidi and jason ngl

[itspileofgoodthings]

Season 1 and 2 Steve Harrington Meta

(nothing new to see here, just working through my own thoughts—better late than never!)

Thinking about the way Steve’s season 1 and 2 journey is about being kicked out of the nest of popularity, so to speak, by the choices he makes. he wants better than just holding on to his center-stage popularity and in looking for and pursuing that something better he loses his place and his status with such matter-of-fact ordinariness. And it’s shockingly good. In my Steve Harrington Blindness Era (the reason I’m writing about season 2 so much later) I only sort of half-watched his season 2 arc with Dustin and the kids and everybody seemed to love it so much (and it annoyed me so much that they did lol) and I sort of let that “Steve is the Mom Friend!” excitement and rhetoric cloud how actually rich and deep and funny and unsentimental and TRUTHFUL that arc is. Steve is suddenly stuck with all these kids but not as a main player anymore. Dustin likes him but Dustin’s also like “I’m the one in charge in this relationship” it’s absolutely not a hero-worship thing. And they end up having a great push and pull dynamic where Steve is not just bossed around but my point is—he goes from being King Steve to … backup. To doing the more thankless parts of being an adult, a babysitter. He has to keep them safe without any particular personally compelling reason to do so. He doesn’t know any of them personally, none of them are his siblings’ friends, they’re just his (currently not speaking to him, doesn’t love him) girlfriend’s brother’s gang and socially speaking none of them really care about who he is, it’s THEIR show (ha) and they run it! And if he’s going to be part of this group he has to take a thorough backseat. That would be a blow to any high school kid’s ego—a fragile thing—because it’s just the absolute shattering of the whole social world order that IS their entire life. And Steve is very funny and iconic in that role with his hands on his hips and his dish towel over his shoulder calling them all little shitheads. But all the excitement generated by that is fan furor that doesn’t extend to the inside of the show. In the actual world of the show nobody really cares. The kids don’t really listen to him or respect him; they don’t pay attention to him. He gets beat up by Billy in defense of those kids and instead of that being acknowledged as the heroic act that that is things keep happening, it’s kind of lost in the shuffle, and then he discovers that his girlfriend has actually left him. The hits just don’t stop coming.

And it’s a playing out of what happens at the end of season 1 but this time without the happy ending for him. This time that choice to fall off the path of popularity for the sake of something else, to let himself be socially de-centered because of the choices that he makes and swept up into a role that isn’t his by temperament or established status, leads to nothing except bruises and being left out in the cold. The choice he makes to go back into the Byers’ house at the end of season 1 is so important and beautiful, a real turning point where he cements his leaving of Tommy and Carol and Status so that he can help be part of the real action of the story. But the real consequences of that choice don’t set in until season 2. In choosing to care about people more than his own popularity, in choosing to de-center himself for love, he becomes vulnerable. He becomes Nancy’s in a way he wasn’t before; because now he no longer has his power and status and Pack of Friends as his context and support and backup, to keep him company when she’s gone. It’s just her. And season 2 plays out that fragility to the bitter ending. Nancy has a lot going on internally and externally; the relationship is not her focus and quickly becomes not her priority. She isn’t happy, she’s struggling, she’s in pain and she also just doesn’t want him anymore. She hasn’t made the same step towards him he’s made towards her. And I’m not debating right now whether she’s right or wrong about that but the point is—she withdraws from him and Steve is left with nothing. In season 2 he is faced with the same choice, walk into danger or away from it, help or run and hide, but this time there isn’t anyone or anything that he personally, specifically, cares about on the other side of that. He has to step up for goodness’s sake alone for a bunch of kids, again, he doesn’t really know against literal monsters. And there’s no context that helps make that choice easier, that draws on already established social bonds or family love etc. He has to choose on his own very quickly what kind of person he’s going to be and he’s going to have to be that person without expecting any kind of reward for it. And he gets no reward! There is no sitting on the couch with Nancy in his Christmas sweater ending for him. Everything crashes down on him with astonishing brutality and once the evil is defeated and the gate closed that doesn’t actually change much for him personally. Steve doesn’t go to the Snow Ball dance even the way the other kids his age do, even just to help; he has no place there anymore. Even the show is not paying attention to his fall from grace that much because he isn’t the center.

And the point of all of this is that it’s so beautiful the way he responds to these new circumstances created in many ways by his choices. Because he makes the best of it! He isn’t bitter. He lets Nancy go, he doesn’t command the kids’ worship (not that he would have succeeded but he could have tried and most kids in his position would have) and is a real friend to Dustin by helping him with his older kid advice and tips and support and also by letting Dustin run the show. By not letting his ego get in the way and trying to overpower Dustin with his older kid powers. He doesn’t even hate Jonathan. He is fallen completely out of the only social sphere he’s ever had, he’s alone in a very real and very new and very scary way, he has no power, little support, no appreciation. And he just takes what he has and makes the best of it. And it’s Character-defining, character-creating. The best and most surprising journey.

#stranger things #steve harrington #anyway I know we’re all past celebrating this season 2 moment. But I missed it at the time #Basically Steve’s journey is the cs lewis quote about how to love is to be vulnerable. #and to be open to the suffering it causes #Steve Suffers a lot as a result of love #and he lets it change him. can’t wait to watch season 4 #this is badly written sorry it’s 4 am I know I repeat myself a lot #My meta glory days are over but I still have to write it #in my own learning how to not live in the center/choose to be good despite the social rewards for it era t b h #(doing it much less graciously and generously than he does though)

[palukoo]

92 !

the bride wore red (1937), which i'll say isn't like crazy notable to me but that could have something to do with the fact that i watched uh 16 movies that week and 3 that day. that said, it was fun!

it was pretty standard 1930s joan crawford, in that it was like rags to riches social climbing partially via contrived romance. it's kind of funny though because this rich guy just like has a disagreement with a friend bc he's like class isn't actually like anything to do with virtue or value or whatever, a rich person and a poor person are the same except money. so to prove his point, without telling anyone else, he gives a broke bar singer a bunch of money and a week reservation at a fancy hotel. again that's not that weird it's like kind of pygmalion except for the part that he does literally nothing to help her, train her, etc, beyond the actual money and room. she gets some help learning like "class" from the hotel staff (so, i guess maybe pretty woman is a better comparison potentially, only in this she's actively lying to rich boy instead of like at his request), including a maid there who is an old friend of hers (who is the only one she tells about the whole thing). basically she just charms this rich group of people, especially a young rich guy who she decides she should marry except he's engaged. meanwhile she falls in love with (and is fallen in love with by) the humble town mailman (played by her at the time real life husband franchot tone. in a shocking turn of events he's not the rich asshole love interest of hers in this movie. bitches who have seen too many joan crawford movies know what i'm talking about). it's just classic should she be with the rich guy or the guy she loves, and also how long can she conceal that this is all a ruse? like overall it's fine they all find out she's lying and she ends up with the mailman

it is kind of interesting to see how the dynamic between her and the mailman and her and her maid friend change as she becomes more integrated with the high society people and also more anxious about losing it all, because she gets really snappy/bitchy to them but also can only actually feel comfortable around them. also like they do also call her on it in a way that they wouldn't with like actual upper class people. old movies are like. all about rich people lol and like kind of classist but they talk a lot more about class than modern movies which is interesting. there's like a thing where old movies will say something that reads as like a critique (like, for example, in paid 1930 they are very explicit about the fact that the legal system is biased and made to benefit the rich) but they don't actually critique it they're just like yeah this is a thing that is true (and always will be and always has been-- in other contexts it just is gender essentialism lol)

i have to shout it out though for being directed by dorothy arzner, and also for having a fun little mini monologue that i literally wrote down while watching it because i was like i just like this and it's so silver springs fleetwood mac. here let me find it. while she's trying to get rich boy but he's like i'm engaged, she says:

"But I want you to love me. I want you to marry her and I want my love to haunt you. To make you lie awake at night. To burn your heart. To make you sick with pain. I want you to think of me and ache for me. I want to never see you again."

#asks #answered #callixton #thank you for the ask!! #the bride wore red #joan crawford #old hollywood #i will say. just. as a note. if you send me one of thses asks (please do!!) #you have about a one in three chance of the movie having either bette or joan. so. #i gotta start making my posts more readable these sentences are so fucking long and parenthetical and whatnot. #but thats just how i think talk write post etc. sorry