#like maybe they aren’t one dimensional characters?

[yanderemommabean]

Oh, oh, oh! Yandere virus, but it one day coming into school, the girls who normally bully you are acting strange. When you see them in the hallway, you are expected to be laughed at or shoves to the ground. However, you didn't expect to be shoved against the wall as they stare you down with a dangerous and lustful glint in their eye, telling you about all the plans they have in store for you. They force you to wear matching clothes and make sure everyone knows who you belong to and not to even try anything. Maybe you're forced to live in the house. Bonus if the other hold you down as the ring leader eats you out, as the others tell you how cute you are uwu

“Ah ah ah. You aren’t going anywhere” A voice chirps in your ear. You wince, sighing as the three surround you once again as class is dismissed and everyone heads to the dorms for the evening. Honestly, if you were perhaps a bit stronger, a bit less self conscious, you might spit in their faces and make a run for it. Sadly, you aren’t some badass (and admittedly, one dimensional) character and are frozen in place as they wait for the others to leave. 

They don't intervene. They know better. These young women have power, wealth, and beauty in their arsenal, and aren't afraid to use it to get what they want, and to silence anyone who complains. Phoebe, Sadie, and Naomi, all from powerful families who more or less run this college and the town. You don't doubt they paid the administrators and dean to get into this place, while you had to work hard and prove yourself. 

None of that matters at the moment. Currently, Phoebe was twirling her fingers in your hair like you two were close friends or even dating, smiling almost wickedly at you as her eyes, usually hazel, now with an odd pink ring, stare at you like you were some prey about to be eaten and devoured. Usually they just shove you around and make fun of your clothes, but today…Something's off. Very very off. 

“Isn’t she so cute you guys?” She says, sickly sweet, you want to say mocking but no, it's like there’s something more flirtatious with it. “Oh definitely, I just want to sink my teeth in her, you know? Make her whimper” Naomi adds on, hand to her cheek as she stares at you like one would a puppy being precious. Oh god hearing that made you think they were about to hurt you or humiliate you in some way. 

Sadie just sighs, not in your direction, looking over her shoulder to make sure the halls were clear, and once they were truly empty of everyone else, she made sure the grip on your wrists were tighter. “Listen up. We have some new rules set in place, and you, adorably obedient as you are, are going to follow them”. Oh wow. The audacity. Then again you never really put up a fight so, are they really wrong? What other choice did you have anyway? If they wanted to, they could make your family kicked out of town and their jobs nonexistent. It’s best to just grit your teeth as best you can. 

While you tried to listen, Phoebe made sure she got closer, her hand on you as well, but more exploring, sliding up and down your sleeve and trying to dip her fingers into the hem to feel your wrist, dragging them up and down softly as Sadie began to speak again. “You’re ours. Simple as that. No more avoiding the lobby when we’re there, no more trying to get little study dates away from the school library, no more trying to hide from us”. “I'm sorry what-” “Ah ah, she’s not finished cutie” Naomi says with a gentle touch slowly sliding to your waist, her cold fingertips acting like they wanted to slide under your shirt to feel the warmth of your skin, her brown eyes also having that odd pink ring in her iris. “Go on Sadie, she’ll be good and listen. She always is” 

You felt your cheeks grow impossibly hot, words failing you as all three of these girls began to more or less feel you up and tell you that…That you were theirs? Whatever that could mean? Sadie just sighs, more playful this time as she cups your cheek and makes you look at her, the same weird coloration in her eyes. “You’re ours. No more private study dates, no more drabby clothes, no more avoiding food when we’re in the commons or cafeteria, just a lot more rules and a lot more dress code for you. Tsk, I can’t tell if I want you in a skirt, or if I'd stab any bastard who’d look at you when you wear one. Maybe some cute pants? Ugh they’d still lay their eyes on you either way, makes me want to just call mom and have the banks foreclose their houses”. 

“Please Don’t-” “Ah ah, don’t even try it. You’re ours, if we want to punish people for looking at our puppy, we will” Phoebe comments, her fingers moving to hold your hand and give the top of it a gentle kiss. “Speaking of puppy” Naomi mentions, nodding her head towards the others, and before you can blink you’re turned over, face to the wall. You hear Sadie murmur something as she rummages through her bag for a moment, and you feel her hands slide around your throat before something clicks behind your head, and your eyes widen in horror.

“There we go! I made sure it wouldn’t be too tight, the guy who made it for me was such an artist about it, I love it! If he would’ve said no, you know I’d have his business ruined” She mentions casually, getting a few soft giggles in agreement. 

“Here sweetie! Have a look at how cute you are when you show that you belong to us” Naomi says, handing you her phone as a mirror. You feel weak and shaky as your fingers come up to touch the bright pastel pink leather, a metal heart in the center pressing against your throat. You reach around to feel the back and feel a harsh shock to your fingers, making you yelp. 

“Oh, sweetheart, don't try and take it off! It was so expensive but I got a cute one to work as a shock collar. Shower safe but anytime you take one, one or all of us will be with you, so you won't have to worry about taking it off yourself. We’ll talk more about the rules later in our dorm”. You shiver, unable to think of how to talk. What in the fuck could you even say? You just had a designer shock collar put on you by your bullies! Who are now acting like you were their chew toy or pet no less. “O-our dorm?”.

Phoebe nods, gently stroking your hair “Yeah, duh! How else will we keep a better eye on you? Cameras are fine and all but I prefer to make sure you’re warm with one of us sharing a bed with you. Plus, it’s easier to kiss you good morning faster”. “K-Kiss?!” You almost shriek, only for Naomi to softly hush you with a finger to your lips. “Now now, don’t get loud! We don’t need that just yet”. She pouts, hearing her phone going off and checking the time. “Well, we have to split for now, I have a dinner with mom and dad. You two take her to the dorm and tell me how she acts! Don't do anything more pretty please? We said we’d share her”. 

You don't get much out before Naomi heads off, Phoebe and Sadie gripping your arms a bit too firmly to lead you, talking back and forth like you weren’t making a practical death march down to their dorm room. 

Oh God what’s going to happen once that door is shut?

-Mommabean (Hiya! Sorry for lack of smut but I am proud I wrote this much at least lol. If you beans want i can do a part two! Wanted to try and flesh this out before anything too intense ya know? Anyway I hope you like! Lemme know if you do!)

#Poly yandere #yandere clique #yandere female #yandere virus #yandere virus au #yandere scenarios #yandere imagines #Female yandere #my ocs #Mommabean #yandere bully #yandere bullies #really #female reader

[eeldritchblast]

Ethel's Vicious Mockery Analysis

(Major thanks to Aloija for the Dialog Parser and Roksik for doing the parsing, from the Down by the River Discord Server!)

I love when Ethel uses vicious mockery in the game, because I feel like it gives insight into the character’s insecurities, you know? So let’s further dissect that mockery.

WYLL

“Oh, look! It's daddy's regret.”

“Fraud of the Frontiers!”

“Do you think losing that eye made you a hero?”

Wyll wants to be seen as a hero so badly… and I’m starting to think that has a little something to do with daddy issues. This “daddy’s regret” line from Ethel, matched with one of Wyll’s desires when confronted by the secret laboratory mirror being his father’s forgiveness, certainly says there is something unresolved there…

GALE

“I can smell what's under those bandages, wizard. You're all rot and ruin.”

“Come to greet death early? You'll be a lovely spectacle.”

“Who would be jealous of you, apprentice?”

The first two aren’t anything new—we’re already aware of Gale’s condition after all. But why would Ethel call him an apprentice? Is he lying about how great a wizard he once was? Or maybe it’s just because he’s lost all his powers, and she’s teasing him about that.

SHADOWHEART

“You're so far up Shar's cake you can't see straight.”

“Why would Shar love you when no one else does?”

“You're no complex puzzle. Just a sad little girl.”

These to me, at least, speak of an undiscussed bubbling crisis of faith Shadowheart may be undergoing. And I am very interested in the second line above. Shadowheart is the type of person to keep everyone at arm’s length, and yet at the same time, it seems from this, desperately wants to be loved? That matches up with her “she took me in when no one else would” answer when asked why she became a worshipper of Shar in the first place. So it seems to me, like Shadowheart experiencing compassion from another person, possibly for the first time in her memory, is leading her to question her faith in Shar.

LAE’ZEL

“A toad with a tadpole! How fitting.”

“Your people will never take you back - illithid scum.”

“Do you miss kissing Vlaakith's feet, gith?”

Lae’zel’s biggest desire is to become kith’rak – we know this. But more to that, I think her biggest desire is to be accepted and revered by her people. Ethel saying that she will never achieve this is probably Lae’zel’s greatest fear.

ASTARION

“Is there still rat stuck in your teeth, slave?”

“Deep down, you like being leashed, don't you?”

“You're one thirsty night away from betraying everyone.”

Okay, okay, okay… the first two? Ethel just being a top tier bitch. But the last one… The last one suggests that Astarion actually does have some care for his travelling companions, if he’s concerned about hurting them. I think that brings a lot out of his character, because it confirms he’s not just a one-dimensional jerk. The glimpses of his nice side are just as genuine.

KARLACH

“Let's pull your strings, infernal puppet.”

“Happy to sell everyone's soul but your own, aren't you?”

“When I'm done, even the Hells won't want you.”

We don’t know a lot about Karlach, because she isn’t available as a companion in Early Access. But what little we do know, adds up with what Ethel says here. We know she was caught up in the Blood War as essentially a slave to Zariel. And judging from this mockery, it seems that’s left her with questioning self-worth.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #wyll #gale #shadowheart #lae'zel #astarion #karlach #meta

[leverage-ot3]

okay I’ve seen a lot of posts about sterling just being crowley and. guys. the implications just hear me out 😭😭😭

bending lore slightly here BUT let’s say crowley’s body was once inhabited by a human and crowley is possessing the body (maybe he kills the initial inhabitant bc he doesn’t care)

but he still has the guy’s memories. he doesn’t bother keeping up appearances with his ‘ex wife’ because he is too busy building up his hell empire. BUT for some reason he can’t quite identify, he still feels something towards his ‘daughter’. he lets the divorce happen and doesn’t feel the need (or desire) to fight for custody, but he can never quite forget her, to cast her out of his mind for good

some hijinks ensue with the leverage team. it’s mostly because even a grind culture demon wants some off time every once in a while, and for him the insurance investigator stuff is more of a hobby. interacting with the leverage crew is very low stakes for him, and honestly, quite amusing. they aren’t on his level power-wise, but that ford character gives him the mental exercise he hasn’t experienced in, well, he can’t even remember

he can feel their frustration and anger when they learn he has become employed by interpol and feeds off it. it’s great, and relaxing in a way he is never able to achieve while conducting hell-related business

one year he gets wind that olivia is in a really bad situation associated with his ‘ex wife’s’ new husband. he’s selling vital hardware to terrorists, and while that might actually be the kind of chaos he would normally support or be entertained by as the king of hell, something feels wrong about letting olivia stay anywhere near that man

he calls upon the body’s adversaries. he wouldn’t admit it, even under duress, BUT he feels slightly fond of them. nate for the three dimensional chess they play, sophie for her ability to charm and disguise, parker for her chaos and slightly unsettling nature (it’s the autism swag and being bad with human interaction but he doesn’t know that lol), hardison for his unapologetic intelligence and eliot for his hardened violent past and take-no-shit persona (he’s fun to tease)

they perform exactly as he expected, right into his carefully crafted plan. and then olivia is under his care and things get more complicated. he keeps her FAR, FAR away from anything related to the supernatural (heh). no one can find out about her, ESPECIALLY not those imbecile hunter brothers (if for nothing else than the embarrassment in revealing he has a weak spot)

not sure how to work it into this post but I also want to add that somewhere along the way he develops feelings for nate and sophie. the frame up job is near and dear to my heart and you can’t convince me that isn’t fighting as flirting behavior. his interpol persona is more of a side hustle so to speak, but he finds it fun (relaxing, even) to fill that role. there aren’t any obligations of other demons, bothersome hunters, or anything like that. nate and sophie are low stakes, except, they aren’t, really. they make him feel things he can’t ever really remember feeling. his heart beats fast when sophie sat in his lap and cradled his face, his hands sweat when nate gives him that certain smug look. he’s exasperated by the way they can run circles around him like no one else has ever before. they annoy him and get under his skin in a way no one else can and it’s infuriating. but also not, at the same time. maybe he likes it

and then the long goodbye job happens

hear me out and suspend your belief here for a second, because I can’t remember if crowley supernaturally knows when ppl die/are dead or not.

so nate is in interpol custody and the interviewer is obviously out of her depth. (most people are, when it comes to nathan ford.) he walks in and pours the man a drink, but he’s fuming. somewhere along the way he came to care about the team. hell and suffering is literally in his (official) job description, but he can admit (only to himself) that he admires what they do. it’s not for him, not anything close to where his passions and interests lie, but he respects their drive and purpose. he is also aware enough to acknowledge that they are a family, a group of misfits that never belonged quite anywhere except to each other.

and nate fucking blew it up, ruined it, because his vice is being so obsessed with the end game that he is apparently willing to let his team, his family, the people that anchor him to reality, die because the ends supposedly justify the means.

not this time. not to sterling crowley

he is enraged. he can admit within the confines of his mind that he cares for nate, for sophie, even for the other three (though nate and sophie have somehow made it a hierarchy where they are more important to him. which he will dissect later in private. maybe.)

nate let them die, he let sophie die, and for what? the black book? hell below, crowley would have made things easier somehow, if he knew that this was where nate’s sights had lied. he would have prevented this somehow. he wants to have prevented this. he doesn’t want any of them dead and is too afraid to check and verify because that would make it real. the idea of sophie (or any of them) somehow making it to hell instead of heaven would probably break something in him he might not be able to repare fully.

he yells at nate- he’s angry. hellfire burning in his heart because everything is ruined. the deaths aside (however hard it is to set them aside in his mind), nate will not recover from this, not ever. this will be the start of the end, he is sure. a miserable, guilt-ridden existence where he drinks himself to death and nothing will save him. it plays out in crowley’s mind in a thousand different ways that are beyond painful to conceptualize, even in theory.

the story starts to unravel and there is a game afoot. a solemn, miserable, infuriating game because the con is still in session because parker is alive and in the building- which sets another fire alight in his chest. ‘parker even know you got hardison killed?’ he rages for her grief when she finds out. he knows it will double when she finds out eliot has perished, too, because he isn’t fucking blind.

but nate is a brilliant man, lest he forget too quickly. they are all alive, and somehow still the entire crew slips through his fingers. he’s not even angry (he never would have been- he doesn’t actually try too hard to catch them. it’s about the game, not the consequences). he lets them keep the black book because he’s fucking exhausted and honestly, they more than earned it.

‘now we’re even. tell sophie to drive carefully’. they will never be even, not really. crowley would never admit or agree that being human is the superior state of being, but that have made him feel human in a way he doesn’t actually mind. they keep him on his toes and match him in a way unique to them, they remind him that there are other things than the realm of hell. not necessarily bigger than hell, but maybe just as important in a different sense.

watching the van drive away, something inside him settles. when he walked into the interrogation room that day he thought this was the beginning of the end. it’s not the end at all, not an end to anything. it’s a continuation of their story. maybe, he thinks, a beginning to a new era in it

#before anyone says anything YES I KNOW HOW SPN LORE WORKS I WATCHED IT FOR MANY YEARS #I am just making this silly post for my own (and possibly your) amusement #I’m not digging too heavily into spn plot because I haven’t watched in forever and don’t trust my memory to make accurate commentary lol #also I know it’s probably layed but lied looked better somehow don’t worry about it #sorry this is so long I wasn’t sure where to break it to a read more bc all of it was too important to me 😭💀 #tell me in the comments if you’d prefer a read more and where you think it should go #I haven’t been into spn for years HOW DOES THIS AU HAVE SUCH A CHOKEHOLD OVER ME #eliot spencer #parker #alec hardison #leverage ot3 #parker x hardison x eliot #(background) #nate ford #sophie devereaux #jim sterling #nate x sophie #nate x sophie x sterling #crossovers #leverage x spn #leverage x supernatural #supernatural #crowley spn #crowley supernatural #crowley #leverage #mine #not even queueing this I need it posted immediately. instant gratification #pls like rb comment etc I need the validation #I ended up putting a read more for the long goodbye job

[artdolliewishes]

Something I’ve seen a few times before is the idea that, to contrast the NRC crew, the students of RSA have nice facades but are secretly condescending, arrogant, rude, etc. The reasoning for this is pretty solid: the students at NRC are villains with secret good sides, so the students of RSA should be heroes with secret bad sides.

But the problem with this - at least in my humble opinion - is that it’s just wrong in a major way.

There’s no doubt that the NRC students, especially the Dorm Leaders, are complex characters. They’re people who have been greatly hurt in some fundamental way and have thus developed a hardened exterior, shunning away that softer part of themself.

And after their respective chapters, each character is allowed to become better, make better choices, do nicer things, and just improve as people in general.

But let’s not kid ourselves, these characters are still fucking assholes.

When we finished Chapter 2, Leona rude and lazy nature didn’t instantly melt away to reveal that he was a sweetheart this entire time, he was still rude and lazy even if he was slowly improving. And the same goes for Azul’s scheming nature and Riddle’s strictness, etc; they aren’t as one dimensional as their facade would suggest, but it’s not like their bad attitude is skin deep.

So, why can’t the RSA students be genuinely kind if the NRC students are genuinely mean?

But on the other hand, it also doesn’t make sense for them to be one dimensional, non complex heroes who’ve never don’t anything wrong in their life. So I have a solution.

If the NRC students are arrogant little dickheads who have been hurt in the past in a way that shaped them into what they are now, then maybe the RSA students are genuinely kind people who have been crushed by the weight of expectations and the pressure to be “perfect.”

They can’t be rude, or selfish, or mean, or anything that would paint them as being less than the golden child the world expects them to be. They are good people at heart, but they’ve suppressed their “bad” side like how the NRC gang has suppressed their good side.

Anyways, these are just my thoughts.

#twisted wonderland #twst #royal sword academy #night raven college #twst rsa #twst nrc #twst analysis #twisted wonderland analysis #my rambles

[myarchiveforme]

it feels very significant and important that eaw continuously shows not only junho meeting youngwoo’s needs and respecting her boundaries, but also him communicating his own needs and boundaries and her meeting/respecting them. because if he wasn’t doing that, it wouldn’t be a fair relationship. like yes, she has specific needs and he has to be okay with making maybe more compromises in the relationship, but the writers aren’t shying away from having him be upfront about things that hurt him (running away from him, not considering them official in that preview) or reminding her that his feelings also matter (can you ask if I also want to hang up, how about we set a time to talk about whales bc I’d also like to talk to you about other things). it would be easy to make him a one dimensional character who does nothing but care for her and doesn’t address his own feelings, but that’s not really how people or relationships are. he’s not just blindly accepting things he wouldn’t accept in a relationship with an allistic person, he’s treating her as a whole person who can and should learn from her mistakes. it’s not just sympathy, as his friend so eloquently suggested, it’s a relationship with participation from both sides.

i’m not autistic, so i can’t speak to how the show represents the experience, but i can speak as someone with relationships with autistic people. being willing and able to communicate your own needs and boundaries while respecting those of the other person is such a huge part of any kind of relationship, and I think that showing that communication and not treating youngwoo’s character as too fragile, cold, or unemotional to comprehend someone else’s experience is really rare and important in representations of autism. maybe you do have to explain things you as an allistic person would usually assume to be evident in the subtext (it feels disrespectful to call me just to get what you want and then hang up, it hurts my feelings when you run away from me, it helps me when you tell me stories about your experiences), but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. you’re just helping them connect with you in the same way they help you connect with them, by describing what they’re feeling.

anyway. i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this show and no one to talk to them about. i’ll not write the full essay, but i feel like something this show is doing right is treating youngwoo’s character with enough respect to know that she is capable of being an active participant in her relationships.

#extraordinary attorney woo #wtf when did this post get a thousand notes #I forget that other people actually see my posts on this website and certainly did not check to see if anyone replied #so if any of you ever see this again thank u for reading and replying

[anbroids]

as homestuck gets older and becomes more and more of a period piece i think it’s really interesting to see how continuations and fanworks take different approaches to maintaining that or not.

and i don’t want to outright say one is superior to the other. i think if you can find ways to introduce aspects of more contemporary pop culture or politics or technology into homestuck as a framework and still make it an interesting intentional choice then that’s a big achievement and not something to be scoffed at just by virtue of it being divergent from homestuck proper.

i think in a lot of ways it can keep it fresh and add a layer of relatability to the fans that grew up on it. after all, i think hussie was intending to make (or perhaps just coincidentally happened to make) homestuck relatable to his particular demographic of young adults on the internet in the late 2000s / early 2010s. i think rereading homestuck in my 20s really solidified this to me that homestuck was not intended to be a story about kids for kids but rather a story for adults about childhood and growing up. it’s funny that it wasn’t more obvious to me back then, or maybe i did pick up on it but i just didn’t really think about it all that much? because it’s so obvious. there’s so much 80s and 90s kid nostalgia in it and the tropes that the characters portray were already outdated or at least didn’t even really exist like they used to by 2009. and in many ways the characters themselves outgrow their own tropes and then later acknowledge it in the work itself both as time progresses and the narrative develops into something more complex and the characters become increasingly multi-dimensional.

i guess it’s just an interesting question to me. is having content in a story that will indefinitely age the work a “good” or “bad” choice? and several years down the line, will we be able to tell what choices were intentionally made so that it would one day be reflective of the state of technology / political landscape / pop culture at the time?

artists who set out to make their work as timeless as possible do kind of miss out on the opportunity to be a time capsule later on. or just generally representative of the climate it was created in, which is something that i think a lot of us can both appreciate but also find pretty unsavory about homestuck proper (cough dancestors cough) but then can i really say i wish those unsavory parts of homestuck didn’t exist? idk. they aren’t fun to read but i like that they make me think critically about the flaws of that particular part of internet history.

politics aside i think the fact that there’s a homestuck panel that incorporates vine is so cool. because it sort of inadvertently swallowed up a piece of internet history that would come to disappear into its already massive time capsule of media and pop culture and hussie didn’t even know. it’s just cool to me idk.

at the same time i think younger artists and writers that really prioritize keeping homestuck grounded in its era of internet and even going so far as to honor the nostalgia of an older generation is something i really admire and appreciate. and this is something that is becoming more common as homestuck ages (and becomes more of a period piece etc etc). i often find myself at a crossroads between exploring contemporary elements in my work and trying to emulate homestuck’s original tone and time period for the sake of preserving that integrity. like man. i could go on about this for such a long time because i feel like it’s just a really interesting discussion to see what we weigh as a meaningful divergence and refreshing change from homestuck proper vs what compromises the (for lack of better phrasing lol) “feels like homestuck” factor.

i think the discussions about sexuality and gender identity towards the end of comic and then further in the epilogues is an obvious example of this. hussie didn’t necessarily shy away from nuances of gender and sexuality but he didn’t really address them outright with labels either for the majority of homestuck proper until the end when other writers got involved. in early act 6 dirk is explicitly stated as gay (insert disney diversity win meme blah blah blah) but the character himself, which i feel like is an interesting reflection of hussie and homestuck’s general feelings about the topic of identity and labels (if i may speculate lmao), considers the act of labeling his sexuality as sort of this out of date, irrelevant thing in the grand scheme of things. whether that be in reference to who he is or what’s going on in the comic or a more metanarrative choice of hussie’s. some people interpret this to be a kind of admission of shame or maybe dirk just being pretentious but i personally interpret this as hussie kind of just being like. i don’t really want to spend too much time Talking about characters being gay i just want them to exist in the story and Be Gay. similarly to how the trolls don’t have a concept of sexuality in the same way the human characters do. it gives hussie an opportunity to have characters do Objectively gay things, from the reader’s perspective, without having to spell out their relationships to their own sexualities by real societal standards in the work itself when he was clearly more interested and comfortable talking about the trolls’ relationships to their fictional societal ones. and i think as a writer i find that pretty fair. (and yeah yeah i know another aspect of dirk’s whole deal is that he’s from the future so of course he would say that / the trolls are from another planet and all of this is in comedic foil to john i am not a homosexual egbert as the protagonist but i digress. idk i’m really only speculating here and maybe projecting lol)

bc tbh i also kind of shudder at the thought of writing gay characters who are always expected to spell out their identities to the audience when i’d rather just have them Do Actual Gay Things. (using gay as an umbrella term for lgbt+ yada yada). personally i’d rather have a scene where a character binds their chest to reveal an aspect of their gender presentation rather than feel obligated to spell out their relationship to their identity in words and explicit labels and also describe exactly how they Feel About All That. not because i want to cop out on representation and have their identities be totally open to interpretation necessarily, but more-so because i think it becomes exhausting sometimes as a gay person myself to have to keep acknowledging a character’s State of Differentness as obviously as possible every time i put a gay person in a piece of art.

not that i don’t find narratives that exclusively or heavily talk about and center themselves around identity and being in a State of Differentness in very outright ways important. to me that’s something very different and meaningful in completely different ways that can’t be accurately compared here. there are plenty of homestuck fanworks that make discussions of gender and identity a large priority that i think are extremely meaningful and one of the biggest reasons why i came back to homestuck after all these years and still really love the community of artists and writers that engage with it in this way. i think it’s an extremely wonderful thing, especially because with the homestuck community so niche, it really feels like a group of people spreading art that is, by a large majority, by gay people and for gay people. but in narratives that are not specifically centered around that, or has not centered themselves about that previously (like homestuck several acts into the comic) i can totally see how it comes across as off-putting. i think sometimes there’s a slippery slope with bigger projects with a large audience where the existence of gay characters in the work start to read as teaching tools for non-[insert identity here] or virtue signaling. i.e. it stops feeling like media that the reader can identity with as a gay person and more like media that is trying to represent gayness “accurately and positively” for a straight reader (or perhaps a gay reader who is completely new to their identity and appreciate this kind of easy-to-swallow and comfortable introduction). i find that in cases like this, the “representation” more often than not falls into the pitfall of being extremely generalized and sterilized or even stereotypical. which is a whole conversation in itself. bc when an identity is always easy to digest and understand, it risks reducing this character to the identity itself. water is wet i guess lol. idk it’s just a tricky balance. but definitely something i think about a lot when i’m engaging with contemporary homestuck fanwork.

long aside but. all of this to say. i just find it interesting to see how homestuck, as a kind of specific multimedia form of art and storytelling online that seemed to set a new precedent for the webcomic format at large, has taken on a genre of its own like any piece of art does that is unique and off the beaten path in its execution. idk it just makes me think of art history in general. like it’s fascinating to me to see something like homestuck which was once very new and fresh to me become a piece of art that has aged enough to open discussion about approaching the framework of homestuck in either a traditional or contemporary way. as a continuation or a fanwork or an homage. i guess the only point i’m trying to make here is that i don’t think one is better than the other and there’s something i appreciate about both.

i feel like i’m kind of avoiding the elephant in the room here which is that there’s a lot of discussion going on right now about maintaining consistency with homestuck proper in the current continuation with homestuck2 and that’s sort of a whole other can of worms i don’t really want to get into. but i would like to acknowledge how interesting it is that these discussions really obviously highlight how fast memes get “stale” nowadays in the current state of social media and everything seems to exist in a perpetual state of blink-and-you-miss-it virality. i really sympathize with the homestuck2 team who i’m sure are feeling a huge amount of pressure to strike a balance between making something refreshing / relatable to the current homestuck audience and also maintaining the “feels like homestuck” factor. all the while attempting to fulfill as many reader wishes as possible within reason. (not to mention the standard of “reason” being extremely subjective) it’s not an easy thing to do and definitely a hugely different creative process than the one hussie went through during early homestuck days. each with their own complicated hoops to jump through in terms of Making Art People Will Engage With.

#don’t mind me just talking to myself #text

[comradekarin]

I do agree that people will hate Farleigh and then worship Felix because yk racism but let's not act like Farleigh wasn't an asshole. You're downplaying his actions just to make him look good but you should be arguing that asshole characters of colour are easily hated when compared to their white counterparts. You don't have to lie about "oh he's not even bad y'all are dramatic" because at the end of the day he's an asshole rich boy just like Felix just like everyone else.... 😐

Sorry it just annoys me because as a poor Black person who went to school with Farleighs it grinds my gears to see you and others downplay his bad behaviour because of the racism he is facing. You can acknowledge the racism without making him an angel. Racism towards even the worst people is wrong because there is no excuse for racism (I am not saying Farleigh is the worst person ever btw, he's the same brand of asshole like Felix and everyone else obviously. They're family lol.)

i mean you’re absolutely right. he was an asshole. he was a dick, just like the rest of them was. personally for me, that’s apart of the appeal of this character. when I said “farleign was not that bad lmao” I meant that in response to everyone who has this visceral disgust for the stuff he does and says but not for anyone else. if I gave off the impression of “he did absolutely nothing wrong”, well… my bad lmao. the posts I have made are more shitpost-y in nature anyway, but they still hold some merit. i feel like this post really encapsulates my intent.

as someone who is also black, it is harmful to have this notion that poc characters have to be perfect and can’t have character flaws. part of being a good character is having flaws and faults. however, it’s just weird seeing farleigh being held to a very different standard than the other characters who have done the same shit he did (or, have done worse). it’s even weirder pretending his character is meant to be one dimensional, or just this huge asshole, while simultaneously being able to see the complexities in the rest of the cattons/oliver. i’ve even seen people hate him for reasons that aren’t even true if they actually paid attention (i.e him stealing or even being completely at fault for what happened to felix). my posts were never supposed to give “you guys are racist for not liking farleign”. boring, maybe, but racist? nah. they were supposed to give “you guys may have biases to address if the reasons you hate farleign is something you can overlook in the rest of the white cast”.

feel free to ask me anything else though, anon. i’m always up for healthy convo :)

#hope this helped anon #farleigh start #saltburn #ask

[em-dash-press]

How to Pick a Point of View for Stories

Figuring out the point of view (POV) for your next story can seem daunting. It changes how you convey your plot and the emotional themes driving it. These are a few ways to narrow your options.

1. Consider the Pros and Cons of Each POV

There are absolutely pros and cons for different points of view. They accomplish different things for each story even if they feel vaguely the same at first. When you’ve got a story in mind, think of these factors to potentially pick a POV.

First-Person Pros and Cons

Pros

Your reader will have an intimate connection with your protagonist because they’ll read the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings in “real time.”

A specific emotional tension is possible the protagonist is narrating everything through their personal lens/biases and the reader doesn’t get inside any other character’s head to learn their actual motivations/emotions.

A super distinct narrative voice can pick up the pace for readers in the first 100 pages of a novel

Cons

You don’t get to jump between characters, which isn’t helpful if you’ve got a well-developed cast of characters you want to spend time with.

It’s easy to have a repetitive sentence structure due to phrasing like, “I said,” “I though,” “I want,” etc.

Readers don’t get to emotionally connect with other characters on the same intimate level, which may limit the themes you want to write about.

Third-Person Pros and Cons

3rd Person Omniscient POV Pros

The reader gets into each character’s mind, so there’s no bias in the narration.

You can jump between characters in a single scene, allowing a multi-dimensional view of the main plot’s journey or lesson.

You can switch characters to reveal more of your world to your reader, which is perfect for writers who do deep worldbuilding before they start writing.

3rd Person Omniscient POV Cons

Readers may struggle to form an allegiance to a character because there’s so many giving their points of view.

The hook for a story may come much later than normal if multiple characters need to be introduced through narration before the inciting incident.

If you’re writing a longer story, you’ll have to chart the primary plot line, then each character’s individual arcs to understand how they intersect and where you’ll jump POVs.

3rd Person Limited POV Pros

You get quality time with multiple characters.

You can create an unreliable narrator within a cast of characters that your reader gets equal time with.

The quality time with each character can make it more emotional when a character faces a challenge.

3rd Person Limited POV Cons

You’re forced to follow only one character’s perspective at a time. There’s no jumping between minds in a scene.

Each character will have a personal bias regarding whatever situation they’re in, so they’ll need individual goals and opinions too. You’ll need more character building before or during writing your story.

You’ll still need to chart each character’s arc to understand how it pushes the primary plot forward, what role each character plays, why they’re essential for the reader to spend time with, and how they’ll grow individually.

2. Think About What Matters Most For Your Story

What is the purpose of your story? What do you want to achieve with it or how do you want to practice your craft with it?

You could want to try out a story with multiple narrators. That boils your options down to 3rd person omniscient or limited. Easy!

Do you want to write a protagonist that your readers feel bonded with? That could mean your story happens in first-person POV. It could also work with 3rd person limited, depending on which character recurs most often.

Maybe you have a few characters in mind for a story but only one of them seems interesting enough to vocalize the story. Pick that character for your first-person POV. The other characters may be important, but if their voices aren’t distinct, your reader will just be bored when they’re narrating. 

3. Go With Your Gut

Ultimately, you have to go with your gut. Pick the POV that makes the most sense and write the story. You can always go back and rewrite it in another POV if it feels like the current one isn’t working for whatever reason.

Yes, it’s a pain to do that kind of rewriting, but it’s such a relief to know your themes/message/plot will come across the right way. It’s always possible to make that change, even if you finished a novel-length manuscript.

-----

The more practice you give yourself with the various points of view, the more comfortable you'll feel when picking one for your future stories. Even practicing with flash fiction will flex your creative muscles enough to help you learn when each POV is most useful for your work.

#points of view #writeblr #choosing a point of view #writing advice #writing tips #writers of tumblr #writing help #writing community #creative writing

[jamesunderwater]

1. Tell us why you like James Potter! I want a whole essay please and thank you!

"Why I Love Like James Potter" by jamesunderwater 1/27/24 

So, I think an important context for my feelings about James Potter is that (as you know) I am a fandom elder. Which means, I already had an extreme attachment to James Potter and his pals before we ever even got the Snape’s Worst Memory chapter. I just looked it up, and somehow I was only ten when OotP came out, so evidently I was massively in love with Sirius Black and obsessed with the Marauders before I hit double digits. (Jesus, no wonder they’re molded with my identity.) The point being – before he was anything else to me, James Potter was the man who bravely sacrificed himself for his family, whose core feature was defined by Sirius’s declaration that they “would have died rather than betray their friends.” He was the guy who figured out how to become an animagus just to be a supportive friend, and based on the few lines that the Marauders have through the Map in PoA, he was hilarious. And really, the fandom kinda just took that and ran with it. So by the time OotP came out and we got so much more information on him – and his dynamic with Lily (cue me sighing dreamily here) – James Potter was already a venerated figure in my mind. -- OMG I just had a buried memory pop up of the Harry Potter Trading Cards as well, which, I don’t think I had one / there was one for James, but there was one for Lily, where she was holding toadspawn?? Or something? and I was in love with her just based on her cute face and red hair and bright eyes, so obviously I’m gonna also be infatuated with the guy who got to marry her.

Okay I got a bit off the point. 

I guess reflecting on it, the way I fell in love with James as a character was very different than how I did for Sirius, and it’s in part due to Sirius being alive in the books, but also speaks to who James is, too. I fell in love with Sirius for who Sirius is, all by himself. I fell in love with James for who he is with other people. I loved the guy who would do anything for his friends. I loved the guy who had this magnetic dynamic with the fiery redhead. I loved the guy who was brilliant and loved by all, and didn’t think twice about sacrificing himself for his family. And I think that this has, for the most part, remained the core of why I love him. 

But of course, I’ve grown up a lot since then, and so have my feelings and opinions. 

– intermission to say I looked back at the ask and realized it only asks about why I like the character, which…somehow changes some of my answer, but we’re gonna try to roll them together – 

Okay, so why I both like and love James as a character now has a lot more to do with the nuances of him. I love that he isn’t perfect. He’s multi-dimensional, and I think his character is a great opportunity to investigate growing up. I think that progression is harder to see in some of the other characters (I have thoughts on why but they aren’t the point right now), but James is just this splendid example of how someone can be so fundamentally good, and also be a fucking kid. He’s messy and that doesn’t make him any less of a “hero” or a “good guy,” but not in your traditional anti-hero or villain arc kind of way. I dunno, maybe it’s in part because I relate to this feeling of not always being a “good person” growing up. I could be arrogant, and mean, and over-dramatic, and stubborn, but people still saw me as a good, likable person, and eventually I did grow out of a lot of the harsher aspects of those characteristics. I love that James gives permission for that, to inspect the dualities within people. 

And on a basic level, I think he was kind of the picture of everything I wanted to have and be. His physical looks / physique is what I’ve been drawn to in men, and eventually realized it’s what I wanted to look like myself; he has this found family that he’s built that is truly a family, this best friend who accepts him fully and he accepts fully and they’re attached at the hip; he becomes a person deserving of and complementary to a strong, independent, kind woman; and his kid is Harry Potter, who truly is one of my favorite characters of all time. So. 

I dunno, I feel like this isn’t as eloquent as I wanted it to be… I’d be very curious to hear other people’s thoughts added onto this (yours and others’!) because I know there’s so much more that I’m missing that other people would say. 

I got to nearly 850 words, though, so hopefully this essay is sufficient enough to earn me a B, at least.

[Submitting for Extra Credit: Photo of the frogspawn card from the Harry Potter Trading Card Game]

#james potter #hp #james potter meta #kinda xD #the marauders #fandom elder #jily #the post is here

[dinitride-art]

Why Byler Would Be a Failure of a Queerbait

Queerbaiting is used to draw in an audience and usually results in a strong fandom. It’s goal is to gather a larger audience, and the audience that would not want queer characters. What I’ve noticed about it, is that it usually is comprised to two straight characters who are good friends. They then sprinkle stuff into interviews outside the media from actors. Things like, maybe she likes her? I guess you’ll just have to find out in the next season! Or saying they could see it happening. Basically anything that would draw in people who want to see a queer pairing, but keeping a reasonable amount of doubt available to those who don’t want to see a queer pairing. Also fan service when the queer bait is being directed at an audience of mostly straight women shipping two male characters. It’s a marketing tactic.

Queer baiting does sometimes result in queer characters, but not the ones that they’re marketing. Or if it is the ones their marketing, they immediately die. The Queer baiting and bury your gays combo. See, supernatural. Having canon queer characters usually isn’t what is intended. They aren’t important to the plot, and can be easily disposed of once they’ve played their part. Their part being covering up any trace of queer bait with the argument that they actually have a queer character in their show. These characters, more often than not, are one dimensional side characters and aren’t there to stay. Main characters revealed as queer, can’t be more than one, and are only revealed at the last possible moment as not to lose the part of the audience not being queer baited.

Stranger Things has two characters that are canonically queer and are relevant to the plot. Robin on her own could be seen as potential queerbait, if byelr were at that time, popular enough to warrant baiting. The queer side character backtrack comes after pressure from a queer baited audience. Not before. Prior to season four, there were more people on tumblr who shipped Mike and El, than Mike and Will. On tumblr. In fact, there were so few byler shippers, that they were in a position where they could be targeted by Mike and El shippers with no consequences. In season three there would be no reason to even think about smoothing over anger from a baited fandom. There was no fandom to be baited. The audience being baited needs to actually be present for it to work.

With one queer character introduced there is no need for another. If Robin were a side character who died in season three then that might allow for another queer character to be introduced in season four. However, Robin is very much alive in season four. She’s not going anywhere and actually has a character arc discussing both her as a person, and her experience as a lesbian in the eighties in Hawkins. That’s pushing it for queer bait. It’s really pushing it.

Will Byers is in love with Mike Wheeler. That’s canon in season four. It’s been built up to since the beginning. If Stranger Things was baiting a queer audience, this would be a weird move. Considering that Byler shippers have never been worth noting before season four, and that Will’s the character that they built the foundation of the show off of, this is a terrible option for queerbaiting. Not because it wouldn’t draw a queer audience that wasn’t to see queer characters, but because it would push away the audience that doesn’t. That is a line that they cannot cross. Will Byers would be crossing that line, and then some. This character is not one that can be thrown away without consequence. He’s important and affects almost everything that happens. I have never seen a main character be queer, and have their story represented in a genuine manner. Never would it affect a central straight relationship. They wouldn’t dare lose a single member of a heteronormative audience.

Two queer characters that are this important are not queer bait. They are not a marketing tactic, they’re integral to the story. Their experiences are integral to the story. Robin Buckley was the first straightbait I have ever witnessed. She is a queer character who was a character first, and queer after the work was put in to make the audience see her as a person. This character is enough to say that Stranger Things represented a queer character well.

Will Byers says that Stranger Things is about queer people. He’s in love with another main character, and it’s affecting the plot. Will Byers being in love with Mike Wheeler is actively changing Mike and El’s relationship. It has been since the beginning.

You can’t queer bait an audience that isn’t there. You can’t bring in a queer character to cover your asses when no one’s accusing you of anything. This isn’t something I’ve ever seen before. Robin is introduced in preparation for Will. It’s the literally opposite of queer baiting. It’s creating a story with queer characters, about queer characters, and marketing it to a straight cisgender audience.

Queer baiting has never been done like this. Because this isn’t queer baiting. It doesn’t effectively function as queer baiting because there was no audience, and their largest audience is the one they’re testing. It is more of a problem to lose a straight audience than a queer one that barely exists.

Byler cannot be queer bait because that’s not how queer bait works. There are not two canon queer characters in a queer bait. Certainly not one of the characters the plot has been centred around since the beginning. And definitely not a character that they would lose members of their audience for writing him as gay.

Will Byers is in love with Mike Wheeler. Will’s relationship to Mike is still important to both of them even after the audience sees this. In fact, Will is affecting Mike’s decisions, and it’s stressed how much he cares for him. Mike and El’s relationship is in shambles and Will is the character they’ve chosen to get involved in that.

This doesn’t happen.

Will is in love with Mike, and he’s still someone who Mike cares about. There’s no distance put in their relationship. They actually spent an entire arc repairing and strengthening it.

Will Byers is in love with Mike Wheeler.

And he’s still alive. He’s still important. He’s still important to Mike.

I literally don’t know what to do with Mike and Will. Because it’s not queer bait. It doesn’t function as queer bait because queer bait is not an aspect of the story. It’s always marketing to an audience. Never an experience or a conversation or anything that’s significance goes further than saying there’s a queer character for the sake of having a queer character.

And it’s never a main character.

When your main character is queer, your story is queer.

They cannot use queer bait as a marketing tactic because they’ve already committed to writing a queer story. Their main audience is not queer. There’s no reason to queer bait a straight audience that doesn’t want queer characters in the first place. It doesn’t work like that. Queer baiting has never worked like this.

This isn’t queer bait. It never has been.

They’re going for it. They are actually going for it. And I can’t wait to see it.

#it just hit me #it’s always been about this #byler #stranger things #oh #I’m in this story #oh fuck #I’m gonna start crying

[faintingheroine]

“Emily Brontë is very aware of the social hierarchy even if she doesn’t criticize it and in my personal reading journey Nelly comes second after the butler in Oblomov as the best-drawn example of the servant class. Maybe the reader of today will find Nelly strange; but people like me who were a late witness of the “besleme” tradition (my note: the custom of adopting children - usually girls - as servants in Turkey) can attest to the genuineness of Nelly’s character. Actually Nelly is not a besleme, she works in exchange of wages, just like Oblomov’s butler; but her psychological and social position isn’t too different from a besleme’s. A butler or a maid is someone whose personal life is taken from them by the upper classes; they are bound to the family they serve, their superego is completely identified with their masters’. The master’s life is their life, his success is their success, his disaster is their disaster. Nelly doesn’t lay about in the little time she has for herself and devours the library of the estate; thus she speaks in a decent dialect and her smarts aren’t extinguished despite the oppression. Nelly - even if Emily Brontë doesn’t emphasize it - sometimes clearly, sometimes secretly hates her masters. She does voice the lack of affection she has for her master’s daughter Catherine multiple times in the text anyway. She links these to Catherine’s unlovable qualities, to her authoritativeness and her selfishness but she is never that against Heathcliff who is equally authoritative, selfish and even cruel but who is at a social position closer to her own. She sometimes criticizes him with a maternal feeling, that’s all. Heathcliff is a Gypsy child who is without anyone in the world and whose place of origin is uncertain and who is found by the patriarch of the family - meaning the father - and is adopted as a proof of his Christian goodness. In Heathcliff’s person, in addition to the classism - even if it is not emphasized - racial discrimination also enters the novel. The father doesn’t treat his wife and especially his son with Christian goodness at all; this situation causes the son to treat Heathcliff who is half adopted son and half farm servant cruelly. But the rebellious daughter of the house Catherine, a little to rebel against her brother, treats Heathcliff well but the real reason is that Heathcliff and Catherine’s souls are alike in a way that transcends the class and racial difference. They both are selfish children who pursue their own desires. The social and racial barriers that surround them will only strengthen their passion. (…)

Heathcliff isn’t satisfied with any revenge. Wuthering Heights showcases in Heathcliff’s character how hatred and vengefulness turn into a general hatred of life and a death wish. Revenge isn’t confined to one sphere; it is contagious and invasive; it is only a matter of a moment for bravery to turn into destructiveness. Heathcliff is of course a determined, valiant man. It has been a taboo for the bravery which the humanity terms a virtue to turn into the destructiveness it condemns because of the thinness and ambiguity of the line between the two. And this novel is maybe the first literary work to destroy this taboo. We can’t be disgusted with Heathcliff as readers, because his bravery and grief are genuine, he isn’t a one-dimensional “evil” man; he is a case who veered towards injustice when he is in the right, towards cruelty when he is the victim, towards destructiveness when he is valiant. (…)

Catherine’s daughter who is Heathcliff’s daughter-in-law and Catherine’s nephew who is the young man in the position of a male besleme next to Heathcliff will prove resilient and survive. When Heathcliff finally changes worlds these two youths will marry and own their properties. The lands go back to the real inheritors. As can be seen, even if Emily Brontë isn’t aware of financial intrigues she is aware of based on what a feudal civilization is built: The land is the basis. The plot of the novel is built on land ownership as well as on frustrated sexual desire. The two pillars, the two sources of life, sexuality and means of production!”

(From “Wutherings of the Subconscious and Wuthering Heights” by Erendiz Atasü)

Translated from Turkish by me

#wuthering heights #erendiz atasü

[interstellar-elf]

Sometimes I think about how the only nuanced and 3-dimensional version of Starscream who isn’t a backstabbing, cowardly jerk is Armada’s Starscream and how we’ve literally never had another series where Starscream was a tragic anti-hero who gets fed up with how abusive and petty Megatron is in the long run. 

Maybe it’s because it’s an anime or maybe because the later American series were more enamored of G1′s Starscream and didn’t feel like it should be changed or maybe the Transformer series aren’t being written by girls who wrote fanfic in the mid 00′s.

It just feels so weird that just for one series, Starscream was a better developed character than any of his former or later incarnations ever since.

#starscream #armada #transformers armada #armada starscream

[viccharine]

i will defend Snow White until I DIE 🍎

more commentary about my fav princess under the cut (including all the stuff about the live action):

(long post)

i dislike the girlboss-ification of Snow White as much as the next person but omg leave Rachel Zegler ALONE!!!!!!! ppl act like thinking Snow White was “boring and/or anti-feminist” was an unpopular opinion—literally EVERYONE and their mom HATED on Snow White but the MINUTE Rachel Zegler says the SAME THING everyone comes for her????? smells like misogyny. (not even mentioning the fact that maybe PR has something to do with what she’s saying??)

(also, people hating on Rachel Zegler for THE COLOR OF HER SKIN?????? blah blah blah “it’s snow WHITE!!! she has skin as white as SNOW!!”— i think we as a society can move on from the idea that a character’s defining characteristic is the color of her SKIN. it’s just as easy AND ACCURATE to interpret the “Snow White” thing as her being pure of heart/pure as SNOW in order to remove her skin color from being such an important part of her character. don’t act like everyone saying that Rachel Zegler can’t play Snow White because she’s “too tan” isn’t racist/colorist)

more about Snow White as a character: i think she is a wonderful character and not at all “anti-feminist” or boring!!! she’s just a girl!!! while her age isn’t mentioned in the movie, she’s referred to as “little princess” which obviously indicates that she’s pretty young—she’s a young girl who’s been abused for most of her life yet still manages to be kind and empathetic!!! sure, her primary dream is to meet her true love, but MOST YOUNG PEOPLE ALSO WANT THIS!!! there’s nothing wrong with wanting love or with being sweet and kind!! Snow White first and foremost survived abuse and several near-death experiences (INCLUDING TWO ASSASSINATIONS) and managed to come out kind-hearted! she’s silly and kind and a little naive but also optimistic and a romantic!!!!! leave her alone!!!!

and even saying that, sure she’s from 1937 and very stereotypical—so there’s nothing wrong with adding aspects to her character that make her more modern/three-dimensional! it’s ok guys, you can admit that the original Snow White is not necessarily the best representation of women while also acknowledging how game-changing her movie was AND how Snow White is a wonderful character!!

characters can be sweet, kind and gentle but still strong and independent!! they aren’t mutually exclusive!!

as one of the first feature length animated films, of course Snow White isn’t going to have a lot of dimension (NONE of the characters do), and that’s what remakes are for!! stop coming for Rachel Zegler for saying things that aren’t at all wrong. like omg, you guys are acting like she hates all women or something. i would love it if she became a leader and took control of her kingdom!! I would love it if she took more action against the evil queen!! that DOESN’T MEAN Snow White is no longer kind and gentle and pure. Rachel Zegler is NOT demonizing Snow White or changing her character!!! is it so hard to believe that a girl who is kind and gentle and a romantic ALSO wants to be a leader????

also, I think her and the prince are cute!!!! yes he is VERY one-dimensional, so i would love it if the live action Snow White expanded on the prince’s character like the live action “The Little Mermaid” did!! his age is NOT mentioned in the film, there’s no reason to claim that their relationship is predatory. he searched for MONTHS for her, and once he found her “dead” he cried and kissed her goodbye (which is how I personally interpret it!!!)

the kiss can just as easily be changed to a kiss on the cheek/forehead, or removed overall, and the story will still stay the same!! the prince’s love for Snow White is what saved her, and that can be conveyed in a way other than a kiss. for all intents and purposes, they are just two kids in love!!

the prince was not the one who saved her from her evil stepmother—snow white was the one who ran away and made a life for herself, the prince just woke her up and the VERY END of the movie, stop ignoring all of snow’s actions throughout the film for the one (1) thing the prince did at the end.

tldr; Snow White is dated but not necessarily anti-feminist, and Rachel Zegler is justified in how she talks about Snow White and doesn’t deserve all the hate she’s getting.

#snow white #live action snow white #disney princess #Snow White fanart #Disney princess fanart #fanart #digital art #leave my girl Snow White AND Rachel Zegler ALONE!!!!!!!! #defending them til i die #Snow White is wonderful you guys are just mean #Rachel Zegler #my credentials are that I watch Snow White (1937) very often #snow white (1937)

[yumedoca]

I want to write an in depth character analysis about Ataru’s entire character, but if I do, it’ll be as long as a frickin novel because this chad has so many depths to his character that even I can’t keep track of all his qualities. So I’ll write a short one. Usually I hate or just plain dislike the concept of perverts mainly because most of the modern day pervs are so one dimensional and perving is the only notable thing about their character (of course, not every perv is like that but most of them are). Ataru was the first character who showed me that the pervert (or any trope in general) can be amazing if written well. The fact that his perverted moments are actually funny because of how entertaining his moments and character is written like how he puts on a serious guise even though his intentions aren’t pure or just smoothly going with the flow while flirting (mainly with Sakura). Of course then there’s how his interactions with the ones around him and his daily behavior is entertaining as well, like with Mendo, Ten, Onsen mark, etc. Of course, then there’s his interactions and relationship with Lum which has him go from “I hate you!” to “*I… I… I don’t like you, what do you mean?” to “hmph, whatever!” to finally “you know exactly how I feel about you and that’s good enough ♥️ .” It has him learning to control and open up his feelings towards her as time goes on and it’s fantastic. Then there’s him going from a pathetic coward to a pretty cool dude, scenarios which used to scare him previously has shown not to scare him later on and he’s even been put on the brink of death while trying to save his woman. Then there’s his growing kindness, at first even though very kind, his intentions weren’t exactly 100% pure as shown in the cursed rain girl chapter where he dated her so he could build up a relationship with her and eventually properly date her later, even though he did it to cure her curse as well. What he did was nice, but he had a misleading motivation. Compare this later on when he went on a date with the ghost girl, he knows he’ll gain absolutely nothing from dating her since she’ll pass on to heaven once she’s satisfied, but he does it anyways because he felt sorry for the poor girl and his kindness just shines through, he even went to visit her grave later on to pay her respects. So yes, Ataru’s may be a pervert and selfish jerk most of the time, but he gets punished for his actions and that side of him feels like a desperate mask to conceal his nicer side. I think the reason he hides that side is so he doesn’t get taken advantage of by others, but also maybe it’s because he isn’t sure of himself. Which is probably why he only shows that side when the time calls for it.

#urusei yatsura #urusei yatsura manga #ataru #ataru moroboshi #atalum #my analysis #I know I said this will be a short analysis #but in my defense compared to a novel this is short #there’s tons more I want to speak about this guy but I’ll keep it for another day #Ataru’s probably one of my favorite characters in all of fiction because of how welll he’s written #Props to Takahashi for writing him #Ataru may be an idiot but he’s our (Ataru fans) idiot

[folkloriansolitairian]

so here’s the thing about the red white and royal blue movie

PSA BEFORE WE BEGIN!!! I AM NOT HATING! i did like the movie, this is not me hating on it or casey mcquinston, any of the actors, producers, writers, etc. i personally think that casey is an insanely talented writer, and the actors did a phenomenal job bringing this story to life. i am simply sharing my opinion and what i would change about it! also i like to complain it is my natural instinct. now that that’s out of the way here we go

honestly i think they could have done better and we could have gotten a lot more. sososo much was left out from the books and i was honestly just disappointed by how much they changed or straight up removed entirely. we were ROBBED of the following:

• JUNE I MISS HERRR WHERE IS SHE WAAAAH

• alex’s parents being divorced and how that effected him as a person and helped him grow into the person he is

• alex’s self discovery in his sexuality

• liam and rafael luna and how they both also helped alex in discovering his bisexuality (who the fuck is miguel) (did not like that he was already bi, his path of self discovery throughout the book is really relatable and good rep imo but idk)

• the iconic cornettos scene (i know they filmed it it was is the fucking trailers WHERE DID IT GO)

• bea’s 🍃 scandal/‘powder princess’ and how much that contributes to her development and depth as a character

• BEAS FATTY FUCKING CAT WHAT IS HIS NAME I MISS HIM

• the physical presence of the emails and how vulnerable alex and henry are with each other in them and how much they reveal about not just the 2 of them but other characters too like bea and the rest of henry’s family (they just has voiceovers which i thought was kind of weird, maybe just me)

• henry talking to the cancer patient about at at wars and that whole adorable thing

• seeing alex storming the palace to talk to henry (he just appeared?? smh anyways)

• most of alexs persepective of the emails getting leaked

• the ENTIRE fake dating arc with alex/nora and henry/june (i think? read the book a while ago don’t fully remember)

• alex’s whole dilemma and eventual decision to go to NYU law

• ZAHRA AND SHAANS ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP BASICALLY!! (why weren’t they engaged)

• the historical love letters henry and alex quoted in their emails to each other

• most of the plot with the richards campaign (mostly to do with the fact that there is NO LUNA)

• overall a lot of the buildup/enemies to lovers aspect of alex and henry’s relationship

there’s probably so much more that i’m forgetting but THE POINT IS there were so many important little details from the book that was left out in the movie that i would have loved to see and it’s honestly just disappointing that we didn’t get those. it felt like they basically got rid of everything that didn’t have to do with alex and henry’s relationship which just made the movie feel very one dimensional and bland to me. the whole film just felt overall really lacking of what made me love the book so much in the first place.

now i am going to be a tad bit hateful when i say the pacing of this film is HORRENDOUS. it was so fast paced and really just did not flow at all like the he book did. a great example of this i think would be the bar scene. when i read that in the book, it felt like a really long and detailed scene, but in the movie it’s a short maybe 60 second long montage which honestly just does not do such an eventful moment from the book justice.

to be entirely honest i feel like the book would have done a lot more justice if it had gotten a tv show adaptation instead of a film. unfortunately movies have a time limit, and amazon made them cut the originally 3+ hour film down to 2 hours or less. with tv shows on the other hand, they can make multiple shorter episodes, resulting in a longer total running time, therefore giving much more time for the smaller details (listed above) that aren’t detrimental enough to the plot to keep in a limited 2 hour long maximum film, but important enough to be kept in a, for example, 8 episode long tv series, 30-45 mins per episode. it doesn’t make sense to me why it wasn’t a tv show in the first place, since it is produced by prime video, whose most popular thing rn is the summer i turned pretty, which is LITERALLY A BOOK TO TV SHOW ADAPTATION!!!!!

to put it simply, it is impossible to fit 10 hours worth of words into a 2 hour long movie, so i understand why they had to remove so many details, but as a diehard book fan it is still disappointing to not see little things like that portrayed on the big screen.

i think that the moral of the story is that books should never be made into movies and instead always be made into tv shows and we deserve the 3 hour uncut version and amazon hates gay people

thank you for coming to my ted talk

#red white and royal blue #alex claremont diaz #prince henry of wales #red white and royal blue movie #rwrb #rwrb spoilers #rwrb on prime #prince henry rwrb #rwrb film #rwrb book #june claremont diaz #tragic little gay men #lgbt books #history huh #ellen claremont #rwrb alex #rwrb henry #movie opinions #lgbtq #bisexual #taylor zakhar perez #nicholas galitzine

[shallowseeker]

how do you feel about repressed dean?

I've been sitting on this one, and I've been a little scared of it, to be honest. I really hope it's not anger-bait. So, why not answer it in the middle of the night, when few will see it?

Here goes: I love just about anything that's complex, you know? I think if I had to pick, I'd say I'm more a fan of consciously suppressed Dean than unconsciously repressed Dean, at least when it comes to emotions.

//

(Of the two, I actually view Cas as the more repressed one, not always privy to the three-dimensionality and multifaceted depth of his own motivations. -> "I always wondered, ever since I took that burden, that curse, I wondered what it could be? What my true happiness could even look like."

And The Empty knows who Cas loves, sure, but does Cas really, really know the extent of what that means at that point? I don't know. Did Cas allow himself to fantasize, or did he shut it down and sublimate it so hard into The Mission that it lives only in the repressed shadow-world of The Empty?

Cas can certainly read others and is, I think, actually more emotionally intuitive than characters like Sam, but his own emotions? He brutally trained to repress them to the point the Angelic company line is, “We’re heartless. We feel nothing.”)

//

Anyway, I really adore when Dean knows what's going on and is actively choosing his whole sublimation and transference approach, whatever that approach happens to be.

As a default, I view him as emotionally intuitive. That said, we have seen him unconsciously repress his own memories of Cas rejecting him in Purgatory, so you can certainly build things around Dean and repression! (It seems like the rejection was the big issue there, more than even losing Cas. -> "We were there! It was like you just gave up!")

And I know it's not exactly popular but:

I think you can make a well-argued case for a deeply closeted Dean who doesn't act on his less “acceptable” urges. Like, he was The Good Son, you know? It's completely logical for me to see a reading where Dean has Queer Relationships that he knows have implications and yet keeps them juuuuuust peripheral enough that he doesn't act on them in a way that he thinks counts, which for argument's sake can be not acting on them physically or just…sublimating them into Rhonda Hurley type scenarios. Or he just gets himself into situations where he triangulates.

Dean tends to get stereotyped in a hypersexual manner, so I think assumptions are made, but they don’t have to be made, and we don’t have to conclude the same thing. I mean, there are stories where I find a less-sexual-than-expected Dean fascinating. I mean, clearly, he’s flustered around men like Aaron Bass. He gets flustered too when Cas tells him over the phone in Prophet & Loss that, “It’s so good to hear from you.” I can roll with it. Perhaps it really comes down to which parts of his puffed up performance you believe, and some ppl believe waaay less of it.

//

Anyway, overall, it’s just fine as a reading. I'm not here to read the text just one way! I hope I don't come off that way…because I enjoy things that aren’t my “Main.” Some of my all-time favorite fics approach Dean in unusual ways, and it's delicious and painful and all the things that keep you riveted for days.

Some of them even challenge me and change my mind.

//

I read one where Dean sunders himself from his own desires and act strategically-manipulatively as a way to prop up the desires of others in order to get at the security he craves, and I absolutely love that! That Dean might suppress his own needs to obtain a goal with regards to someone else's continued presence/security/etc? Mind-bogglingly awesome in my book! Dean’s shadow self is demonic; he can read others’ needs and maneuver desires! Maybe sometimes getting past others’ desires and all the way down to his own can be like rupturing a boil! I’m here for it!

//

In some stories, Dean is the emotionally forthright heart/Tinman, but suppressed insomuch that he doesn't take that final physical step unless he's being steered by someone else's desires, which can be argued beautifully, I think. On the other hand, Dean is certainly courageous in trying to communicate his feelings as early as season 8. (But arguably, he’s not as clear about it as he thinks!)

//

And what of Cas being forward? Cas uses grand gestures a lot, and he prefers to hide behind a Noble Cause but when he Gets It, he Gets It. He’s more firmly explicit about it, because Cas can be up-front to the point of bluntness. (His words were grand, too, a pretty grand gesture, all on its own.) Cas is certainly a courageous/Cowardly Lion in season 15, once he finally wakes up to What's Going On.

Overall, Cas is remarkably brave, even when he thinks he's not. He lives in the fear and is culturally outside of his comfort zone 99% of the time, and 9 times out of 10 he will do something regardless of how foolish he may look.

//

The thing is, people go through things and they get psychologically wounded and they have periods where their mental health thresholds plummet, so really, depending on the context, people can act in unusual or unexpected ways and it totally works!

What i’m trying to say, Repressed Dean enjoyers, is that I support you.

#performing dean #dean #regarding dean #i get the impression you’re a repressed dean writer or enjoyer #so i hope this helps you feel comfy here #i talk too much #you didn’t even ask about cas #oops #i have had character development on all sorts of diff things