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ineffable-endearments · 3 years

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CW below for a discussion that relates to homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, acephobia, and related subjects. no specific stories, the themes just generally appear. i hope i didn't screw up and will fix it if i did.

so i was thinking about what makes Aziraphale and Crowley resonate as a queer love story, not just a "forbidden romance" (a trope that can be painfully cishet when it wants to be, which is often).

and i mean, obviously. there are a LOT of things. a lot. but something that didn't occur to me before is their relationship to each other relative to their sides.

at first, one would assume that they aren't supposed to be talking at all. this is probably true on a surface level. like, it's probably considered uncool to be caught chatting with The Enemy.

however, we do see that it's kind of normal for angels and demons to talk with a degree of civility. they don't trust each other deeply, that much is really obvious (Beelzebub says as much to Michael), and they do probably plan to kill each other eventually. at least, i think they genuinely believe that's how it's going to play out.

but! the front entrance to Heaven is in the same building as the front entrance to Hell! Aziraphale and Crowley literally walk into the building side by side! i know it's a funny joke, but Heaven and Hell aren't framed as stupid enough, by the end of the series, for that to be pure incompetence.

Michael has been in contact with Ligur for who-knows-how-long, feeding him information and presumably being fed information in return. Gabriel is entirely capable of speaking amicably with Beelzebub once it looks like their Plan isn't going through. and, of course, the Sides easily collaborate to punish Aziraphale and Crowley.

it's obviously normal for angels and demons to have a civil relationship of some sort.

a number of references are also made to the ways that the Sides are ultimately the same. Beelzebub and Gabriel are operating out of the same rulebook, after all; they both think the War is "written," they just differ on who's bound to win. to them, the most important thing is not even to thwart the other side on Earth - it's to get to the part where they're at war. they will absolutely collaborate with each other to reach that goal. they consider themselves part of the same Plan. consider even Crowley's thoughts in the book about how demons have "an unpopular job" but are "essential" to the running of the universe. they may be culturally different, but they all know they belong to the same society.

therefore, merely talking together is probably not strictly forbidden for Aziraphale and Crowley. even being sort of friendly probably isn't strictly forbidden. again, uncool? yeah. deadly? i doubt it, to be honest. heck, to their bosses' faces, they could use it as an excuse to spy on each other whether any actual spying got done.

what's the real problem? the thing everyone's upset about? it's not just that don't kill each other on sight. the real problem is that they prioritized each other. they got too intimate. their desires for a life together challenged the status quo, and even though they weren't the ones who were finally responsible for stopping the war altogether (that was Adam), they were blamed and sadistically punished for trying to preserve their relationship and their lives here on Earth instead of "growing up" and fulfilling their predetermined roles in Heaven and Hell.

in real life, society punishes people for prioritizing friendships in a way that most people assume is to be reserved only for romantic and sexual relationships. Heaven and Hell punish people for prioritizing friendship in a way that most people assume is to be reserved only for the glory of their cause.

and irl, when people are romantic or sexual (viewed as too intimate) with someone who is considered the "wrong gender," we punish them again for that. cisheteropatriarchal culture tends to expect men in particular to be not too intimate with each other and fuels a total hiding of emotion between them, although goodness knows women get pitted against each other and are expected to choose men over each other, too. also, the status quo does not know how to handle nonbinary people at all; the status quo gets angry if you even try to acknowledge that they exist. but if there was a widely-popular etiquette structure established for enbies, i'd be willing to bet it would also be a weird rivalry thing.

like, each gender sort of gets treated as "we all think the same in this gender, which is why we get along, but we don't like each other too much, because that would be gay."

"we're all looking to keep the Great Plan in motion, but we don't like each other too much, because then we wouldn't be on opposite sides."

basically, Aziraphale and Crowley read as a queer love story because their affection for each other and the lives they've created together challenges the traditional roles their shared society forces on them. it's a happy queer love story because not only do they manage to choose that affection over the status quo, they succeed and go on to enjoy themselves.

i'm a little nervous about posting this rant, because it's kind of saying, i guess, that Crowley and Aziraphale's queer relationship is characterized by their challenges to the status quo, and i don't think by any means that has to be true of all queer people. i mean, people can be quietly non-cishet, never let anyone know, never tell a soul, and they'd still not be cishet. and also, isn't the point that someday we'd get to a point where nobody has to deal with bigotry or even disrespect?

but at the same time, it is kind of impossible to look at the history and not see significant struggles, including ones that appear in stories over and over. i can't tell you how many posts i've seen on this site alone about how queer love and queer survival are themselves acts of resistance. and IMO, that's what Crowley and Aziraphale have.

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coffintownkids · 3 years

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Ch. 26 is done!

And it is a treasure trove for anyone looking for details on novel!NHS and his characterizations, as well as info on the Niè Sect’s cultivation in general. Here’s some choice bits for you. Long post ahead!

“When these Sect Leaders were alive, they would still be able to suppress the restlessness of the sabers they carried. But after the Sect Leaders died and there was no one to control them, they become weapons bent on murder.”

Wèi Wúxiàn raised his eyebrows, “That sounds close to Corrupt Cultivation.”

Niè Huáisāng rushed to say, “It’s not the same! Corrupt Cultivation is corrupt because it demands human lives. But our House’s sabers don’t require human lives. Instead they need resentful ghosts, spirits, or any of the evil creatures. They spend a lifetime beheading those things and if they’re not given those things to eliminate, they seek out trouble themselves and disturb our House’s peace. A Saber Spirit will only recognize one master and cannot serve anyone else. Us descendants are also unable to melt the sabers down. First, it would be disrespectful to our ancestors. Second, we’re not sure that melting them would even solve the problem.”

Wèi Wúxiàn’s evaluation was, “How arrogant.”

Niè Huáisāng said, “Absolutely. We followed the path trailblazed by our ancestors and sought to obtain immortality through the saber. Of course it’s arrogant.”

What I’ve translated as Corrupt Cultivation is written as 邪魔歪道. So let’s break this down a bit. We have 邪 (evil) 魔 (demon) 歪 (something twisted or that deviates) 道 (path/way). So basically something that goes against what’s considered the conventional or “healthy” way of doing things. Cultivation is supposed to improve the mind/body/spirit on the quest to immortality. So WWX is (understandably!) a bit taken aback, given his own history. This phrase is similar to the more common phrase 邪门歪道 that is used to convey dishonest practices/crooked tactics/etc. But, as NHS clarifies, this method isn’t meant to harm humans the way, say, WWX’s own demonic cultivation uses human spirits to resurrect human corpses.

Of course, NHS goes on to say his Sect’s solution was to bury the sabers with dead human bodies...

“Hánguāng-Jūn, let me explain! These corpses weren’t killed by our House! It took a great deal of effort to scrounge them up from all over the place and bring them there! It cost quite a bit of money to buy them. The sixth-generation Sect Leader said the Saber Spirits wanted to battle against evil beings, so they should be given an endless supply of evil beings to fight against. Corpses on the verge of turning got buried together in coffins with the sabers just as if they were the Saber Spirits’ funerary objects. The Saber Spirits would keep the corpses from transforming. Meanwhile, the corpses would help alleviate the violent impulses of the Saber Spirits. It maintained the status quo and they kept each other in check. Relying on this method brought peace to the generations that followed up until now.”

The interesting take away for me is we’re repeatedly told the Niè are in decline. Yet they’re apparently still pretty wealthy if they’re still using the corpse-buying scheme. Would love to know where the money comes from!

Otherwise, the Niè Sect of Qīnghé of today was basically on its last legs. If any more of their affairs got out, Niè Huáisāng would be condemned for all of history and would be unable to face his ancestors in the afterlife. It wasn’t surprising that he would rather be the personal laughing stock of the other Houses. He was also unwilling to work hard at cultivating and, moreover, it was too late for him to dare start on his journey of carrying the saber. If he had any success at cultivating, his temperament would become increasingly volatile and he would ultimately go mad and die violently like his brother and all his previous ancestors. After he died, his saber would still be haunting the world and leaving his entire House without a moment’s peace. Instead, it was better for him to just be a complete failure.

And so there was no solution. Since the first ancestor founded the House of Niè, this is how it has been until now. Should the descendants deny the path that their ancestors laid the foundation for? Each of the cultivation Houses had its own strengths. Just as the Lán Sect of Gūsū was skilled with music, the Niè Sect of Qīnghé had the ferocious and lethal strength of their Saber Spirits and that was the exact reason they were so remarkable. If they abandoned the teachings of their ancestors and started over from scratch by seeking a new way, they couldn’t know how many years that could take or if they would even succeed. So Niè Huáisāng didn’t dare go against the House of Niè by changing their way of cultivation. Therefore, the only thing he could do was be a good-for-nothing waste of a person.

If he wasn’t the Head of his House, he would spend his entire life just as he had when he had been in Cloud Recesses. All day long he would go swim in lakes and paint fans. He would catch fish with his hands and play with birds. It had certainly been more comfortable than what he was doing now. But since has old brother had already passed away, and despite not being as strong as he would like, all he could do was shoulder his clan’s burdens and limp his way forward.

Yikes. So yeah. Unlike The Untamed/CQL where NHS is nominally seen carrying a weapon around (despite never really using it), it seems like he actually never really learned to use the saber at all in the book. I know Fatal Journey hinted at that with the 刀 vs 心 choice, but it’s a neat distinction. And of course we’re all like “NHS always be knowing!” but it really hit me like a ton of bricks for some reason to read this. He knew the entire world was going to think poorly of him. His choices were “be a failure” or “go crazy and kill everyone and yourself” which still wouldn’t solve any of his family’s problems. And he’s really not mincing words when saying “good-for-nothing waste of a person.” It’s written as 脓包废物. 脓包 literally means a pustule or pus bag (*pukes*) and is used to describe someone that’s just totally worthless. 废物 means someone/something that a waste/complete rubbish.

I think, in the end, this may be part of why even getting rid of JGY ends up ringing hollow. (Though I’ll have to double-check when I get to that part of the novel to be sure.) At the end of the day, his family’s legacy still remains and isn’t actually solved at all. Funnily enough, I’m personally trying to work on a quasi post-canon fic and one of the storylines will be about NHS trying to find a workaround (but in true NHS fashion, no one actually knows this.) Said fic is over 70k in notes/outlines/half-written scenes but zero coherence so who knows if it will ever see the light of day!

#mdzs #ctk reads mdzs #mdzs translation #my translation #nie huaisang #i am liking him a lot more in the book #than i seem to remember from powering through the translation the first time

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softer-ua · 3 years

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in regards to what you pointed out a few posts ago, ngl one of my least favorite fandom things is when they make Kaminari the Har Har Stupid Joking ADHD Bi Playboy Who Is Never Serious Trope. like, he's very smart, 'worst in ___ area of a UA course' is very impressive and I don't remember if it even said that or just that he was studying with some other students, worried about his grades overall, calls himself stupid with implied insecurities about it, and didn't think he was very smart compared to the other people in the course. quirk overuse makes him loopy, incoherent, and think everything's funny. and yeah, he's a bit of a flirt and made a few perverted comments and actions that he clearly didn't think through that well. I'm pretty sure he's not ever stated to be bi in the manga because it was written by a coward, so I think people should think more about why they're associating and pairing together the idea of "hot flirty playboy who if legally able would sleep with everyone he meets" with emphasis or joke in the captions of whatever the content is on him being bi. I don't think this is inherently bad, even put together, but the execution feels kind of :/ and shallow. and I mainly just wish they'd pause to consider if there's any reason (subconscious or intentional) why one of those makes them think about the other, and at the very least lean back to see if they're blatantly making those traits centric around each other and tweak how they're showing them a little. Part of this is also because it's basically his fanon sexuality, but then they stick together "oh he's bi and everyone thinks that" and "he's made flirty or perverted comments and actions in canon at some point" and then mentally exaggerate and have this Canon Image of him as *waves hand at above* and I don't think that's happening consciously in most cases but. again. Cookiecutter Bi Party Playboy Who's Made a Date Offer to Everyone In The Building. not a flirty Person or a Playboy who is bi and flirts with more than one genders

I myself headcanon him as adhd and while the exact sexuality depends on my mood I think of/have him as bi in a lot of my content, but it's the same thing with why non adhd people see how he acts and label "adhd!" Especially about comprehension speed and derpy acting and intelligence and attention span jokes/tropes. Again, not bad in and of itself, but the specific parts of his behavior that make them think he's adhd, or that they start making jokes about or Ha Ha ADHD'ing, or that they think is why we project ADHD on him, (which they aren't necessarily wrong about, but like right in a really disrespectful look at how funny this is oh look squirrel way that's only funny when adhd people are doing it and it isn't all mocking like that) when they see other people calling him adhd, are the wrong ones, I think, and it shows in their characterization of him.

I'm not saying that any of those traits are bad in a character, but as a queer adhd girl with very high annual test scores and Gifted Kid Intelligence but extremely poor grades, focus, and brain damage (admittedly nothing like his, it was a longterm passive thing that mainly just made me have a Lot of Really Bad headaches, and closest thing it did to me was make me sluggish and emotional on bad days and also techincally have the potential kill my language bit if left untreated or the surgery messed up, which it didn't, and it won't be a problem again. but even after explaining that it wasn't cancer or any sort of tumor, and after seeing it do very little at all to affect my behavior outside of irritability and performance, because y'know, constant migraines, gone after the surgery but this was before that, Certain People I Was Vaguely Kind Of Acquaintances With started to treat my like I was a fragile glass thing going to to drop dead and revive myself speaking like a comic relief cartoon crazy person at any moment which was. patronizing.) I've since had surgery for, the way the fandom combines them into stereotypes and portrays them really just rubs me the wrong way- "Flirty Bi(tm) Playboy" "Har Har ADHD Can't Focus Or Get Things After They're Explained To Him, He's Still Confused And An Idiot" "Stupid Person With Brain Damage Who Can't Take Care Of Or Think For Themself And Acts Stupid And Funny For People To Laugh At" which tbh is super ableist even and especially when people irl do fit that description, and also reminds me of the Autistic Person Freaking Out And Being Dramatic sense of humor. And I know it's not helped by canon, because it done for comic relief and to limit his powers, but explored more I think it as a limitation could have been used way more interestingly than canon did and also call me biased but that quirk induced brain frying sounds at least as concerning as Izuku's quirk's backlash.

And it's a shame!! Because he's so much more interesting than that! Instead, the fandom gives me the Cookicutter Funny Bi ADHD Flirt Who's An Idiot and I am sad about it.

tbh it reminds me of what happened to percy jackson, esp with the ADHD Idiot Trope thing. which sucks because apparently it originated in the author making up stories around characters like his adhd and dyslexic kid inspired by Greek myths to tell him after running out of actual myths because it was his special interest and he wanted more. and then the series got kind of all over the place and the fandom processed that the adhd and dyslexic main character who does dumb things sometimes but is very combat smart and great at strategizing and leading gets bad grades and has trouble focusing and has, y'know, adhd, and made him the ADHD Idiot and erased his Gifted Kid girl friend's traits and ADHD and dyslexia into No Nonsense Calls Him an Idiot And Thinks He's Stupid And Has To Tell Him What To Do And Manage His Life For Him and honestly that just kind of sucks and it reminds me of what happened to fandom Kaminari. and now that I think of it people have jirou like that around him a lot too.

im fine with you answering this publicly if you want or have something to add but probably tag as ableism and maybe a biphobia mention content warning for people who don't have the energy to deal with thinking about those kinds of negative things rn because I kind of Went Off About It

I love this! Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and experiences 💚(and double thank you for tag suggestions)💚

I couldn’t agree more that a lot of fandom has messed up Kami’s character, which is why I’ve kinda been posting more about him cause he’s just stuck in my head.

I think a lot of fandoms have trouble with characters like this, people have a hard time with duality in characters and fast/fun posts are easier to make if you flatten a character down.

The did it to Kami, they did it to Percy, they did it to Ron Weasley, they do it to Thor, the list goes on. If being the Smart One ™️ isn’t your thing and you can be goofy than you get pigeonholed into the idiot trope.

I feel for Kami a lot(probably because I have adhd/brain damage too)

It sucks when you’re smart but it’s not the traditional, measurable kind of smart(even if by national comparison Kami technically is).

I got terrible grades growing up, and I pretty much got the absolute lowest gpa you can get and still graduate. But absolutely no one would have known if I didn’t tell them, because I’m not dumb.

(It’s okay if you are “dumb”, I love me a head empty just vibes friend. You’re 100% valid, stil worthy of joining discussions, and should be listened to and taken seriously. This just isn’t about that tho)

I joke sometimes that I’m clever and witty but not smart, because that’s exactly what it feels like.

I have lots of thoughts and ideas that I think I articulate pretty well, I am excellent at finding the humor in things and expressing it in a way that’s funny to others too, and there is almost zero problems I can’t find a work around. And the people in my life love it, and they love to use it.

But eventually everyone in my life finds out that I’m not smart. They see the way I have to pause to Google how to calculate a tip, that I don’t know the name of all 50 states or even where to find them on a map, or I legitimately just can not spell (if you ever see a post where it looks like I used a weird word choice it’s probably because I tried 4 times and autocorrect+Google couldn’t help me and voice to text wasn’t an option)

No one ever questions my intelligence until they find out about my adhd and/or catch me struggling with it. After the mask comes off it’s like they can’t even hear me anymore, nothing I say could be true or matter because I’m now just the goofy accident prone spacy girl. My family literally calls me Spacy

And ya know what sometimes I just let people think that because it’s easier, it’s easier than explaining that I’m dyslexic and that I didn’t have a single geography/history clas until 10th grade and shocker the capital of Iowa doesn’t come up much by then. And it’s easier for me to laugh off losing my keys again than dwell on the fact that sometimes it feels like I’m losing my marbles.

And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if after this post I get a lot more “fact checkers” and push back on anything else I post.(not talking about people who want to genuinely engage,y’all are always welcome, I’m talking those people who don’t wanna look it up themselves but no longer trust me to know what I’m talking about)

Kami is a sweet brilliant boy. He’s in a nationally high ranking school, he loves the weather channel, he’s careful about his quirk that could easily hurt his friends in combat, he has a very high emotional intelligence level, he wears dorky shirts with electricity puns on them, and he pays attention to his friends and remembers a lot of little things about them.

He wants to be a hero and he takes that seriously, and the series has tried time and time again to tell y’all that smiling and laughter are an important part of that. Kami excels at this part! So what if his history grades don’t rival the top of the class, the top 5 students would struggle hard to do what Kami does.

Iida can’t relax, Momos rather shy, Todo struggles with social cues, Midoriya is canonically not funny, and jfc where to even begin with Katsuki. I’m certain they’ll all grow up to be excellent heros in their own right, but none of them are going to bring the level of joy and camaraderie that Denki can. You can’t test that into someone.

Kami also just notices people differently and has any easy way of joining in with them, he doesn’t struggle approaching Katsuki or Shinso. Sure he doesn’t hit the the nail on the head the same way Deku does but he’s the only one who has the guts and skills to try. Also he’s not that kinda friend, he’s not looking to a save these guys but pal around with them

I think Kami 100% realizes what a special case and tough nut to crack Bakugo is, I don’t think he’s just careless or too dumb realize his life’s at stake or whatever.

I think he’s purposely testing Bakugos boundaries all while trying to not be a threat to Katsukis actual ego and calling Bakugo out when he needs it in a way that not to serious. Kami knows how to be just goofy enough that he’s approachable. He’s also keyed in that the way to Bakugo is through Deku, meanwhile everyone else is stuck believing the opposite.

Kami also realized how important music is to Jiro and saw an opportunity to let her display her skills and combin the two worlds she lives, and he wasn’t afraid to get some back lash from her for it.

Like Deku Kami isn’t afraid to be uncomfortable. You really can’t teach that level of social ease, you can teach the posture and feed people a couple of lines but it’ll never hit the same. Funny approachable people have spent a lifetime learning the craft, usually out of necessity.

It’s actually what gives me the biggest adhd vibes from him, because adhd is (speculated to be) a dopamine deficiency disorder. People with adhd are constantly trying to raise their dopamine levels, and that means looking for praise and reward and nothing makes the human brain light up faster than postative human connections.

Adhd children struggle a lot with connecting with peers and often find making people laugh a fast way into people’s circles and makes it more likely people will overlook being interrupted or spaced out on.

Also adhd people are pretty much forced by their own brain structures to be genuine in all they do, low dopamine levels make it very hard to do things you don’t enjoy because there no promise of dopamine from the activity and you don’t have enough to spare, plus impulsiveness makes it really hard to not show when you do or don’t enjoy something.

I agree that Kami is also painted as overly perverted at times, he’s a little flirty but in a fun casual way but it’s not the foundation of his personality and it’s really mellowed out over the course of the series.

And while I subscribe to the bi hc from his interactions with Jiro and Shinso, we should all be very mindful that we don’t lump these characteristics together. The are separate facets of his personality that are not dependent on each other in anyway.

Kami deserves all the respect and love, I can’t wait to see our electric king again 🖤⚡️🖤

#tw ableism #ableism #tw biphobia #biphobia #softy answers #I have a sorta sad one shot about Kami and his quirks effects #should i post it?

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masterthespianduchovny · 4 years

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It’s always fascinating when fans hate Mulder or Scully. I’m not talking about faving one over the other, but legit hating one of the characters.

It’s always been noteworthy for me because it’s usually Mulder who gets hated because he wasn’t sensitive enough or whatever. And there are 2-3 occasions where Mulder was a straight up ass, no questions asked, but overall, Mulder treats Scully better than anyone else in the series.

And this doesn’t mean he treats everyone like shit, but Mulder treats people based on how they react and treat him. Mulder is almost never an ass to anyone unless they disrespected him (or were in general) or were scammers/serial killers.

Mulder just doesn’t mistreat for an lol.

He’s quippy and witty, but it’s almost never malicious.

This is important when it comes to Scully. He KNOWS why she was assigned to him and he KNOWS her background. Mulder tests her, but he actually DOES his homework. And, interestingly enough, Mulder never gatekeeps. This is important to note because all of this happens when they FIRST meet. Mulder never tells Scully she’s not smart enough or well versed enough to be on the X-Files. He even respects Scully more when she calls him out about hiding shit.

While other law enforcement employees tried to coddle and look down on Scully because of her gender, Mulder treated her as his equal. Hell, at times, he thought she deserved better than to be assigned to him, despite him wanting her as a partner.

This is one of the reasons why their relationship was so solid. Scully was taken seriously and didn’t have to prove herself to Mulder, but the downside of his faith and confidence in her was Scully feeling she had to be strong around him all of the time. Unfortunately, Scully drew the wrong conclusion because Mulder wouldn’t have held it against her if she was vulnerable or “weak” at times. We see on a few occasions where Mulder says or indicates as much.

So, why is this important?

Because, when people shit on Mulder they are judging him only by his worst moments, which were rare and not a pattern of behavior. And that doesn’t mean that Scully couldn’t or shouldn't react to behaviors or situations she finds undesirable, but rather, we shouldn’t paint people by the worst moments, especially if we’re treating them as if they happened in a vacuum.

At the same time, it seems as if people want Mulder to behave like a boyfriend and not Scully’s partner or just a “real” person overall.

We make mistakes, we get blinded by certain things, sometimes we are in our feelings for one reason or another. But, Mulder isn’t allowed to have that by some. He must cater to Scully’s feelings even though Scully didn’t take it personally for the most part. And I know some would sum it up to the male writers, but overall, it doesn’t track for me. There are a few occasions where I’d agree, but even then, when you are so familiar and entwined with a person, things that would upset you with others doesn’t upset you with your person. They’re given more rope or you aren’t bothered by certain things because of the history and what you know, you know?

This is why the Diana situation was so egregious both within the world and as a viewer. Regardless of what happened between Mulder and Scully, Mulder trusted her word above all else AND didn’t doubt her on that level. I can understand people getting upset about THIS even if you just analyzed it from a character perspective when it came to Mulder and Scully’s relationship.

Conversely, there are people who think Scully is a bitch (which she can be at times and I mean that as a compliment. lol) or she's “too” skeptical.

And that’s annoying as fuck as well. Because it’s easy for Mulder to be right when he reads about every supernatural thing under the sun and blindly believes in it. Scully would be right too if she just believed anything Mulder told her.

But, part of the reason Scully is vital and what makes their partnership work is that Scully forces Mulder to whittle down his theories and “prove” them to her. Reminder: both of them have to write up reports stating that this bonkers shit happened. And part of the reason Mulder needs to whittle down his theories is to Scully knows what to look for and test if it comes to that. She is the science that helps validates Mulder’s work. If Scully believed this new case just because other cases happened, it would also kinda bias her.

The thing is: once Scully commits to one of Mulder’s theories, whether or not she believes it, she follows the theory to its natural conclusion. She has an idea of what to look for and what may be out of the ordinary (well, she’d notice this regardless). Scully may not believe going in, but she doesn't dispute facts. Most importantly, regardless of the pushback Scully gives to Mulder when they're alone, she is literally his biggest defender in their reports, when talking to their bosses, and generally everyone else.

To hate Scully or think she’s a bitch for this reason is absolutely absurd. I’m not saying that no one can dislike her (or Mulder), but it appears that some people want the characters to act in a way that appeases the other character than if it makes sense to them and their function in the show.

And I think that’s why “Field Trip” works so well: it has Mulder and Scully unpack their own professional feelings when it comes to each other. These are things we see they’re appreciative of one another down the line.

In another meta, I discussed how Mulder’s trauma influenced who he was pre the X-Files, but we see Scully’s personality and behavior evolve throughout the course of the show. Scully is a bitch because she’s been medically raped, deceived, and manipulated for fucking YEARS. Although she gradually changed over the years, the behavior that is etched into our mind is her post cancer characterization. Which MAKES SENSE. Scully was about to die and the origins of her cancer, the cure, and the other shit that was done to her was FUCKED UP. It was gross violation after gross violation.

She becomes more gradual and skeptical of people at this point, other than Mulder. There is a sort of new lease on life, but also a tragic realization: men are the true monsters and they must be stopped. I honestly don’t know how else people for Scully to be at that point in her life. She’s lost so much!

Mulder and Scully are two complicated people trying to navigate their own trauma as they solve cases and try to save the world. Of course their relationship is complex, layered, and flawed. Of course they don’t say all of the right things, make the right decisions, and sometimes fuck up.

Because unless one of them left the X-Files, the baggage they carry is the price to pay to be there.

Working on the X-Files is so much darker than people realize and maybe that’s why some are so quick to judge or hate characters: they haven’t unpacked just how fucked up and tragic it is to pay the price they did for staying.

#mulder #scully #the x-files #this shit is too complex to truly dig into right now

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metvmorqhoses · 4 years

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*nervous laughter because i liked if we were villains jsjsdh* but in all honesty, respect to you - i myself did not rlly study shakespeare in my youth because it wasn't covered in my curriculum, my old teachers did not want to teach it, and there's a huge anti-arts, anti-literature culture where i live, so i guess i don't have the same aptitude in terms of judging what's a good rendition or not.

my aim wasn’t to shame anyone’s tastes, really. everyone has their perception and preferences regarding art, especially when it comes to books. i don’t usually like to aimlessly react to things i don’t like, i find it the inclination of the mentally lost. if i don’t like something i try to forget all about and distance myself from it as soon as it’s humanly possible.

that being said, certain things done in art are at times hardly acceptable and that’s usually the only moment i take the liberty of expressing foul opinions, which have nothing or very little to do with personal taste, but are more a matter of, you know, universal decency - especially towards and amongst fellow artistis.

i discovered i didn’t like if we were villains probably at chapter two. i finished it only out of philosophical curiosity. i wanted to know why it was so popular while being not only seriously bad and lacking on a literary basis, but on a more serious level, straight exploitation of someone else’s art.

i get the fine line which tells apart inspiration and plagiarism is very thin, very personal and full of nuances. it’s always been. intertextuality was born with literature and while i don’t necessarily believe art is stealing, i get human beings with the same artistical sensibility feel in similar ways and feed off each other to fuel their creativity. i do myself. yet, i feel that line is growing thinner and thinner every single day, especially if profit is involved.

if we were villains is a book which has literally no raison d'être, artistical consistency or particular aim, if not the one to milk the trail of popularity the secret history has left behind itself for all it is worth. you cannot be brought to court for stealing a vibe or a style, but sure as hell you should be regarded badly for it. there is an elegant way to be inspired and a cheap, offensive one. this book falls in the latter category. it’s not even the great tribute to shakespeare it advertises itself to be (the author writes as much in an unconvincing closure letter to the novel). you cannot write something that has its 60% consisting in shakespeare’s words/characters/ideas for no particular reason if not to sound witty and knowledgeable (resulting wildly annoying), its 39% in a copy/paste mood/situation from another book which in yours makes virtually no sense and has no depth whatsoever and only adding an original 1% that wants to sound deep and dramatic but that, in the end, again doesn’t really make sense with what you have not written (no interesting story, no characterization, no reason for the characters actions if not some catchphrase here and there) - and call it a novel.

this is but a bad appropriation, that doesn’t even really hurt because of its inconsistency, it’s just puzzling. you don’t pay tribute to anyone with something like this, you just disrespect and cheapen true artists’ works for no particular reason (if not money). del rio doesn’t add anything special or valid to shakespeare or tartt amongst her plagiarism, not even that. she should have left them be and write her own thing.

i don’t believe a novel like this would have ever been published thirty years ago and i’m still astonished it was now. it makes me wonder what kind of respect we artists can aspire to have for our works and how little art is considered nowadays. shakespeare himself was used to have his work “used” by others (back then plagiarism wasn’t a thing and he himself used other people’s stories/ideas), but the aim behind it and, above all, the way others paid tribute “stealing” from each other, was artistical and high. everyone aimed at adding to something they loved and respected, not draining it with vainglory, lack of talent and greed. that’s what is missing today and what i cannot let pass without indignation.

#i hope you don't mind if i separated your asks but this turned out too long to keep with the other #the other reply is coming #if we were villains #tsh #books #lit #shakespeare #anon #one and one thousand stories lis told #about writers

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moontours · 4 years

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don’t get me started on wanda maximoff (go off queen i’m ready)

hehe WHEW ..... okay ill start with mcu wanda and then go into 616. i dont think it’s a surprise to literally anyone that i hate mcu wanda so very much like it’s not even a dislike or anything, i seriously hate her so much. i also despise elizabeth olsen and the way she blatantly disregards wanda’s comic history and just spews the dumbest bullshit abt her like saying she’s powerful for m-day and “blowing up the mutants” (thats not what happened) even though if u have ever picked up house of m, u would know that wanda was mentally unwell and committed mass destruction. like lets begin with how mcu wanda is whitewashed and how they put crosses in her room in civil war and how offensive that is. and the “comic accurate” costume in the wandavision show is such an insult considering how wanda’s suits always reflect her romani heritage and the mcu decided to turn it into like. a costume. it’s so disrespectful and offensive. and outside of that, mcu wanda has NEVER taken accountability for anything she’s done. she’s literally another one of the mcu’s token “powerful female characters” but actually has no proper development or anything (also can we just talk abt how mcu wanda is literally a jean grey knockoff like i have to laugh). but anyways, part of the reason why i hate mcu wanda so much is because she gets forgiven for all of the dumb shit she’s pulled so easily while 616 wanda is STILL atoning for her mistakes, despite 616 wanda is constantly actively trying to make up for what she did and mcu wanda never taking responsibility. house of m is just absolutely shitty writing and people take it as like....the definitive wanda characterization and for what?? the entire x-men community still hate her, hickman is writing her to be an actual villain and all bc of an event that she had no control over, which also happened 15 years ago. like no one holds jean destroying billions of lives against her bc she was the dark phoenix at the time but god forbid we forgive wanda for something she did while her mental health was horrible?? also the fact that she literally tried to give everyone their powers back too but no x writer ever seems to remember that for some reason. this got so long im SO sorry but in conclusion FUCK mcu wanda FUCK elizabeth olsen and love and appreciate wanda django maximoff

send me “don’t get me started on” + a random topic and i‘ll answer with a rant about it

#can i just say i am SO sorry for the length of this #like. beyond sorry #zee tag #long post #asks

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incarnateirony · 4 years

Text

I went off on a rant to a friend about things like Gamble Era, and miscellaneous idolized past authors, and you know what, fuck it. I'm going to say it out loud. And listen, listen this is NOT going to be my normal "Whatever you like :)" post like, this is literally an accumulation of horse shit I've seen talked about in any and all lanes for years that have been driving me fucking bananas for years. Don't just read this going HAHA I HATE GAMBLE TOO and then be shocked when I slap at inexplicably favorited authors in this fandom beyond that.

------

God how can anyone genuinely like Gamble, like, literally, legitimately and 1000%, not even about her killing Cas or whatever, what kind of pure trash TV do these people intake in mass that they think Gamble was good at her job I can not emphasize enough how cripplingly disappointing the shift from S4-5 to 6-7 was I know art is in the eye of the beholder or whatever but JESUS. FUCKING. CHRIST.

Fuck constructivist theory there's a point when things are just clearly trash Benefits S7 had: Just da bros uhhhh *flips through pages* Anything else? Are dick jokes art?

Her era was overrun by plot holes you could fly boeing jets through -- and I don’t mean shit like when fandom goddamn made up in their own damn head about an angelreaper retcon even though the reaper in the same episode they said was a retcon said the deadass opposite of what everybody fucking wound themselves up about, just deadass yawning voids -- it had unstable mechanics on previously established species shit, the villain plot was one giant monster of the week that tried desperately to go back to how they handled shit like Azazel as a threat but miserably failed, the monster had the dumbest weakness possible, the characters themselves were unstable in their characterizations and not even in that general "I don't like what the show is doing with them" but episode to episode Sam flipping from ripping Dean with laughter over gay jokes to woke-sounding sentiments

The cinematic style was gone and just vacant, it was neither the overexposed horror desaturated film nor the vivid fantasy of Carver, it just sat there like an unpolished lump

While later seasons also lost the classic rock vibe for budget reasons, that too disappeared in her era so we had no film energy, no story energy, no character energy, no villain energy, no structure energy, and we didn't even have the fucking cool tunez but we had dicks allergic to windex

It even lacked the elements that gave Kripke era value

Dusty americana died, all we had left was teenage girl fuckin emo sad boi drama And even that was miserably piss poor

I have never seen such a visionless fucking disaster successfully air an entire season on my fucking TV

I will never, EVER be able to outline what a fucking disappointment it was to go from S4-5 level show maturation into this negative embarrassment by season 7.

S6 Kripke was still around to some extent and that's the only reason I can deduce, S7 minded, there was any substance to it, even if her writing and editing crew at the time were a goddamn tire fire. And then people turn around and yell feminism if you criticise the giant fucking blazing slag heap that was her era and blame anyone and everyone but her and here you FUCKING go and she does half the shit all over again in the Magicians

(The friend replied: "The season only works in reverse, which is a crime on serialised TV (and just bad screenwriting)." )

That's just it though, it's like S7 we were suddenly back to fucking episodical TV like S1-2 because enough fuckbats yelled about Good Old Days. Only instead of ʷĤε𝕣є'𝓼 đα𝒹 or 𝐓Ħⓔ DεᗰＯᶰ 卄𝓐ｓ Ƥl𝓐𝓝Ş ℱⓞｒ Ⓜ𝔢 it was ħ𝔞ⓗａ 𝓓ＩＣ𝐤ᔕ 🍆

I mean fucking sure this show started targeting late teenage women but Kripke had started maturing it forward and then Gamble fucking rolls along and it's like she's writing for 13 year old boys suddenly

Well I say that's what she seemed to be writing for but at the time the marketing was gross objectification going LOOK PRETTY BOYS WITH GUNS and that was it, that was the substance of what they gave a shit about and apparently the kind of demographic they thought constituted the sum of the SPN audience which, go get fucked guys, seriously. No fucking wonder the ratings got gouged in half over the course of a year. And fandom yells BUT FRIDAY DEATH SLOT but go sit and spin, S6 was friday deathslot too but before Kripke disappeared as the last thread holding SOME kind of cohesive value in the piece together in S6, that went to shitfuckhell in a handbag at light speed. People migrated to SPN Fridays S6 just fine. They LEFT season 7 and then people plug their ears if they don’t like that. And Carver had to fight all S8 to get it back, /but succeeded, and then-some./

oh and lemme head off fandom dumbfuck argument #72 about “well Dabb’s ratings are lower than Gamble’s were so he sucks and ruined it worse” go take your fucking ass and google “national primetime ratings decline” and enjoy exploring the last fucking 70 years of TV history. Pointing out a show crashes within a year because of massive failure is not the same as people being intentionally fucking daft sods to the TV universe’s decline over the last decade so like, don’t. Don’t be that person. Because you’re still embarrassingly wrong.

(The friend replied: "That's why I don't get why people care about what the vocal minority have to say. They *already* got what they wanted. It crashed and burned. Nobody in their right mind in corporate world is gonna be like, let's try that again, let's throw more money into that burning pit That's just not happening. Gay angels or no, it just ain't." )

I mean that should have been obvious when 1. Carver brought back Cas and pretty much immediately promoted him to Regular 2. Misha then got promoted to lead credits in S12, no matter what circles of intentional, willful ignorance fandom argues about what the credits mean for petty piss fights

"LOL & MEANS HE'S LESS IMPORTANT" Shut the fuck up and sit down you basement dwelling shitlord, go watch the A-Team, tell me how Mr T is the least important character

Also unpopular fuckin opinion Robbie Thompson and Ben Edlund are not That Great. Compared to what they were SURROUNDED with they were exceptional but Berens and Yockey could run circles around them both. They just happened to give fandom shit they liked during dark times so it made them fun. Robbie Thompson and Ben Edlund are basically the baseline value of our current writing team on random names. Give me Robbie Thompson and give me Davy Perez and I see no fucking difference. People compare Edlund to Yockey because of certain shit he pulled off but like, no? If there WAS a comparison it’d be like, Meredith, and even then I can’t see any way Edlund is substantially better than Meredith but could list the other in reverse?

But if we're talking about being able to write pieces with more than 1 or 2 layers of impact I'm sorry, it's rose colored glasses that makes people idolize them

Like if people seriously objectively fucking sat and reviewed the methodology and substance of their past idol authors to the demonstratable level of the current crew where I am DEAD ASS HAVING DISCOURSE WITH THE EXEC PRODUCER ABOUT BAUDRILLARDIAN CONCEPTS AND DELILLO in the middle of a hypercomplex postmodern two-directional commentary piece on some scaffolding of sociopolitical representation commentary that SAILS past the level the ‘activists’ in this fandom think about, literally, what people like is Gay Shit They Got lobbed at them or shiny visuals. And you know what, whatever, sure, like what you like IDGAF but don't sit here like Thompson was some fucking Shakespeare. No, your fucking "meta" you -- you, in any lane, anyone, any ship, anywhere, ever -- wrote by COMPLETELY randomly associating whatever storyline you could staple on to try to pretend the text was doing what you want at the time -- is not the same as author intent and actual weight and merit to the cohesive structure of what they build.

YES YES I KNOW, Death of the Author, someone just popped that up in their head, like the ten thousand posts I've made over the last 209349 years addressing how people abusive the fuck out of the term and that's fine, interpret shit however you wanna make it do jumping jacks but don't sit here entering the time you attached Little Bo Peep as some sort of intrinsic value to Dean trying to find Sam in 1492 and act like that's some deep critical shit the authors thoughtfully laced into the piece, these are not the same fucking conversation.

Big hollow voids of statements doesn’t make a better author, it makes you bust your ass harder to actually give any sort of consequential meaning to the piece, and that has nothing to do with the quality of the author or text themselves, that has to do with your interpretation in a piece devoid of genuine thematic subtext so people desperately try to bobby pin some bullshit together. Which also is probably why this fandom can’t tell the difference between coding, interpretation, subtext, and text for their fucking life anymore.

Protip the entire goddamn writing room is pouring that gay shit in your cup that's been triple brewed above Robbie or Edlund’s pots and people are still complaining it isn't enough

Another point that drives me up a wall, "LAZARUS RISING IS THE BEST EPISODE EVER" okay like lmaooooo what the fuck are you smoking Was it impressive as fuck at the time yes it was. But again, fucking perspective. I literally went back and watched it like a month ago and I realized it was a fucking void of content compared to our modern writing, it just had one of the most impressive entrances, it DID have good directing (YES MANNERS WAS GOOD, NO DISRESPECT), and it introduced a character everybody loved. Dean was still a halfass caricature

You wanna know why everybody made that shit gay right away Because there was no fucking substance around it it was a wallpaper of a cool looking episode that was otherwise blank space to run around in on dialogue they should have thought to construct better if they didn't want it to be gay

And sure since then the author room has picked up the big gay ball and started actually turning it into some shit which, great, but this is yet again a matter of structure and intent versus throwing rotten pasta at the wall and seeing if the mold makes it stick. I don't care if you have a vegan recipe that converts the fucking mold on the pasta into a healthy sauce base that isn't what it was thrown at the wall like, and no amount of complimenting the original chef's moldy pasta means it was some tasty shit before you added 10,000 ingredients they never fucking thought about or at least a second chef came along and figure out what to do with the pile of goo.

Fandom would stop being this miserable fucking putrid stinkhole if people would collectively apply some goddamn perspective to the content they argue about before even bothering to engage with uwustiel/cest dot tumblr dot com in irrelevant argument #9238428934 they use to fence off whether they should enjoy the content or try to explore it for its value or not because there is NO. MORE. PERSPECTIVE.

YOU KNOW WHAT? IT’S FINE TO EVEN ADMIT YOU LIKED THINKY-FREE TV, THAT’S FINE, THAT’S YOUR RIGHT.

But don’t SIT here acting like a lot of these former train wrecks were “better authors” or somehow objectively “better content.” No like, you like not thinking about shit that much and staring at pretty boys or whatever, good on you, but you literally like, objectively, some of the shit I’ve seen go down is like genuinely trying to compare a toddler’s fridge art to a Vasarely and hold them both up in front of people who do art for a living. They ain’t gonna shit on the kid’s fridge art, but they’re gonna go “awwwww she’s gonna grow up to be a great artist!” before breaking down on Vasarely’s vector illusion shit, sorry, that’s just how it be. I’m sure the kid had some sort of vision to drawing the triangle over the square that kinda looks like a house but the hypercomplex thought processes simply aren’t there.

Just people STUCK in weird idolization of shit that is so far past irrelevant to the current piece in play and fighting to win arguments while trying to convince themselves they're right and secretly dreading how titanically failboat wrong they are ignoring the sound of the glacier having ripped through their hulls SEASONS ago. The ice water has already leaked onto the fucking DECK and people are still arguing about completely ridiculous shit or fancying things that were 1/10th of the value of the current content they're claiming isn't good or enough or valid compared to the shallow specters that birthed them out of old aeons.

Dead-ASS Kripke picked shit because it “sounded cool.” I’m sorry if there weren’t some model guys fandom wanted to hump everybody would be making fun of the fedora-tipping mindset that probably is where the fucking trenchcoat came from and may have debated giving Cas -- sorry, “CASS” because “COOL” -- katanas. But sure. Way, way deeper and more intricate than the Jungian intertextual post modern piece that’s so tightly knit it’s making fandom unwittingly comment on themselves.

I thought people grew out of that shit when they were like 16 unless they were incels

(My spidey senses detected someone unironically preparing to inform me about stealing borrowing the imagery from Constantine on reflex, because you know, that’s some peak intertext right there.)

Dead ASS that writing logic is that motherfucker that wanders into your freeform RP server with Spawn knockoff miasma chainsaw arms under his leather trenchcoat shooting twin Deagles with a vague story of wanting to face his demon overlord father that’s written like a looney tunes villain, in the middle of you cowriting with your lit-savvy friends trying to make a fun fantasy adaptation rendering fascism and corporate america and then he gets upset when nobody wants him to shit lightning -- /fight me/.

SERIOUSLY FOLKS. WANNA ENJOY THE SHOW AGAIN? GET SOME PERSPECTIVE. LET GO OF FETISHIZING WEIRD WARPED MEMORIES AND LINES OF ARGUMENT INSIDE YOUR OWN HEADS ISTG IT'LL HELP.

The day I find an argument that makes season 7 legit good TV rather than, at very best, “fun junk TV I had a cool ride on”, that does NOT involve evoking arguments distinctly born out of petty shipping culture arguments and/or (generally the same) attaching their own shit with a stapler to MAKE it have some sort of meaning at the time it was airing (rather than later showrunners making it add up to something), I’ll eat my fucking arm.

𝓯𝓾𝓬𝓴. Carver era had already gone through dramatic changes that deepend the scope of the show and even then, 15.09 Bobo’s The Trap held more ACTUAL commentary on this fandom than Thompson’s Fanfiction episode did as a supposed fandom-commentary episode much LESS 15.04 as an actual meta framed episode. Fanfiction was like 4 years behind and completely fucking unplugged, whereas the base of the show itself is more integrated now in these dynamics than any attempt at meta episodes back then were.

old days it took one goddamn episode of dreaming for people to 1. start talking about Freud and 2. pretend the whole everything after that was some Freudian masterpiece even when, if it were, it would have been an entire avalanche of dropped balls. But two seasons of direct citations and literal manifest avatar-bodies of Jungian psychology elements and it’s hard to pull more than a peep out of the fandom about it because they’re too busy yelling about tulpas or sirens from before most of the people around here hit puberty.

𝓕 𝓤 𝓒 𝓚

furthermore why does anyone that idolize season 7 for what they think fits their bill think season 15 is gonna end how they want when they’ve been taking the piss out of season 7 over and over and over and over again IN THE TEXT as being dumb as SHIT

𝕀ℕ 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔽𝕌ℂ𝕂𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝕋𝔼𝕏𝕋

WHY SET YOURSELF UP FOR DISAPPOINTMENT

TO WIN TEMPORARY ARGUMENTS? THAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY LOSING FROM START TO FINISH?

actually you know what

rolling back to the whole “empty/subtextless stuff making people bust their ass” seems to be what you miss. Saying, “I miss empty, shallow, shitty writing” doesn’t really sound as good though so we change “what I like” into “this is talentless trash” it postures better, but it seems to be the people who have objectively fucking refused core tenets the show has evolved over the last 7 years, most explicitly the last 3-4, and absolutely refused to soak them in the form they deliver in. And they’re mad. Because it isn’t hollow. They can’t run around in fucking blank space and plug absolute horse shit into the voids and then posture like they’re supreme in this noncommital wasteland. Because everything’s built out and structured in and loud as fuck and people are debating the actual installed and even dogmatically cited work of philosophers driving the ideology of the show now and they can’t get away from it, and/or actually have to pay attention to the whole show and think about it all as a picture instead of the parts they want, so it’s “bad.”

I just sensed like 50 readers shoving their foot into that shoe. Good.

Jesus christ I’m pretty sure that’s what it is in hindsight after yelling all of this. These characters can’t be used as sock puppets anymore that people can win bullshit arguments unless they literally delete the entire principle of the modern show -- and this goes for MULTIPLE lanes really, each in their own way -- so now it’s “bad.” And that’s just not how this works.

#supernatural #spn #rant #vent #mildew

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lloronala · 4 years

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THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

Fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK.

Are they underrated? YES / NO

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO / EH KINDA

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO / SUBJECTIVE

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL / DEPENDS

How strictly do you follow canon? — Honestly? I just follow canon, and it’s sorta rare for me to do that cause usually I do have something to pick with the canon plot/characters at times? But the film was just that good for me to just leave it be, and even when I have slight doubts about it---it’s going to be considered as nitpicking. So, yeh, this blog is just canon all around.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — lmao spice? she’ll just step on you, literally.

I? am a terrible seller when it comes to these things lmao, but I guess if you want a mom tm muse to look after you---then she’s your deal. But I think acquaintance-wise/platonic relationships, she’s great too as long as you’re not on her bad side. It’s just hard to get it, but once you do, man will she be loyal and caring to your muse (until you break it).

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). —

I wouldn’t say it doesn’t make her interesting, cause I think it gives her a lot more depth, but she can either be temperamental or closed off depending on who your muse is. I guess just keep that in mind if your muse is someone that can set that off???? Idk?????? She’s also stubborn and holds grudges so, yeh.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — Coco broke me and seeing this character on screen made me wanna explore her characterization? She has so many layers on her, and as an emotional antagonist, they handled her super well and I was really blown away by it! I also wanted to give her some attention considering how the franchise usually focuses on Ernesto, Héctor and Miguel (which there isn’t anything wrong with that!).

What keeps your inspiration going? — I like to write? And I think recently I’ve realized I like analyzing characters and what makes them interesting (it’s helping a lot with a few things I’m doing actually). She’s a great way for me to exercise that, and even if I’ve repeated things before via posts, I still like to ramble and explore her character regardless cause writing her also sorta comforts me ;v;

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO ( BOTH....? IDK )

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO ( in between????)

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO (depends???????)

Do you accept criticism about your portrayal? — I do! As long as it’s addressed properly without turning it into unnecessary drama whatsoever, I’m always open for it. This goes for ethnicity/culture as well, considering I’m not Mexican myself. It helps me learn, & I think it’s important for me to know when I’m writing a race/ethnicity that I’m not familiar with. I don’t want to come off as disrespectful, as that’s never my intent, so please always let me know when I’m depicting or writing something wrong!

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — ABSOLUTELY. As I’ve said before, I always love exploring her character and if there’s an opportunity given when I can write my heart out about it, then I’m always down.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — I mean? I’d love to hear the perspective about it, and I think it depends on said headcanon. If it’s based on history accuracy, then yes I will be open to it. However, if it’s something like personal preferences/etc, then....well, I’ll respect opinions as always, but unless there’s an issue with it, I’d like to keep my headcanons as it is if it doesn’t cause anyone trouble.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — I won’t take it personally? I mean, we all have opinions---right? I’m not here to really....please anyone, so if you don’t like my portrayal, then I completely understand. But please don’t rub it in my face as to why.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — Okay. So. I had an issue a long time ago when a stan of a character in the same movie came to talk to me on discord. I can actually....tell that they were diminishing Imelda’s character, considering they were borderline kinda being sexist towards her (because the character they stanned didn’t like her so...)? I kind of regret not taking a stand on it, cause usually I’m not here to look for drama (ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S JUST RP), but I won’t lie and say it bothered me in so many ways because they KNEW I wrote Imelda and liked her as a character, but they didn’t choose to respect that (I fondly remember them saying said character would make fun of her so bad and call her names....something along the lines of it and ugh. not a pleasant memory). And there was that one other incident too regarding Imelda’s character being hated on by another....so, I’ll just say this once:

If you have a problem with Imelda as a character, that’s fine. People can hate on character and that’s absolutely okay. I have characters I hate too, and while I do opinionate them from time to time, I don’t go out of my way to shove it in front of everyone’s faces and tell them they’re the absolute worst. Just please be aware of how you’re saying it, and if it bothers you that much---why are you even following me on this account?? lol But, yeah.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — YES. I make mistakes ALL the time, and while I do gloss over drafts/answers before posting them out, I’m bound to still make them. So please, it’d be helpful if y’all pointed it out once in a while ;v;/

Do you think you are easy going as a mun? — I try to? Like, this is a hobby for me, and I’m here to chill. As I’ve stated multiple times, I’m not here for drama and all that stuff, so.....I hope I come off that way? I really try to be laid back as possible, and while I might not respond fast/be too active, I’m always open to talk too (whether it’s just ooc or ic)! You guys are p great and I’m super blessed to follow/know some of you ;v;

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

Tagged by; gently taken from @hamadaxfighter Tagging; anyone!

#; ❁ I don’t know I’m still angry at you || ooc #since several have followed me on here #i thought this would be a good guideline?? hopefully?????

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fba-art · 5 years

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Just out of curiosity, why don’t you like young justice??

aight, so i knew i was gonna wait to respond to this ‘til i had some time to explain.

and i want to start out by saying that i don’t think Young Justice, as a property, is a bad show. in fact, i think it’s a show that had GREAT potential. i watched every new episode via livestream every saturday lol. and now, i’ll be honest when i say it’s been some time since i’ve rewatched it, and i’m always open to changing opinions. a few years back, i wanted to give it another, fresher perspective and dove in for a rewatch, but ultimately didn’t finish. i don’t remember my reasoning exactly, but i recall being disappointed.and it’s funny i received this ask this week, b/c my friend and i were planning on giving it another rewatch for shits and giggle after finals ( sober or not is tbd ).

but so, here’s where i stand on the show.

i started watching YJ when it was abt 5 episodes into s1. and i binged those first five and stick to my guns that holy SHIT 1-3 are bomb as FUCK. super strong start! Independence Day will never not get me SO HYPE and remind me why i fell in love with DC’s teenage heroes in the first place. it’s so… youthful. a fun conversation for another time.

and now, when i started watching YJ, it was like four months into my making my TT!Kid Flash rp blog, and two months after i’d gotten into reading comics; when i found out Wally was like a biG DC CHARACTER, NOT JUST AN OLD CARTOON ONE-SHOT, i went EVERYWHERE to get my hands on more about Wally West. ironically, the first purchase i ever made from a comic store was a silver age Teen Titans tale, issue #2 of TTY1, and two issues of the old Young Justice comics ( still some of my favorite comics to this day; more on that later ).TL;DRi saw a commercial for YJ, ft. my fave DC char and my fave comic title and went “HOSHIT”.

as the episodes pushed the show’s plot along, it was fun and explorative of a more intense side to the idea of a group of superteens in the DCU. and again, very TEENAGER-Y, which i say in the BEST of ways, considering that was the target audience as well. but, as part of that audience at the time, one of the things that had started to bother me was the character relationships. yeah, i was loving on most of the main cast at the time, but for the first half of the season, the team’s supposedly-close friendships were pushed to the backburner ( EXCEPT for KF and Rob’s, which was one of the only things that got me through the season ). the first season WAS about straining relationships. the social drama was palpable. you NEED conflict in your plots, and char-v-char is especially fun. but i remember feeling like there was little bonding. they were a group of acquaintances, learning to co-habitate the same space- not to say that they didn’t seem like friends, but there was a lack of balance between “teens being professionals in their field” and “teens being immature teens”. both were squeezed in, but both consistently felt forced.

which brings me to the next point: forcing relationships without developing them!i wasn’t sure why i was supposed to care about Roy, like. At all. the team always bringing up that they trained alongside him, grew with the guy, and then??? nada, except when the plot needed edgy tantrumy angst.then there was spitfire. i ship spitfire now, but the ENTIRETY of s1 i was SO FRUSTRATED, because all those two did was bicker. wally was pretty foul to artemis, who was also just plain mean to wally. and i say this with the two of them as my TOP FAVE CHARS.and don’t get me STARTED on the best char on the entire team, KALDUR’AHM!!!! who was shit on by EVERYONE– fandom and plot, alike. actually, i do recall in my last rewatch starting two tallies of everytime kaldur was DISRESPECTED and TREATED LIKE GARBAGE BY TEEN AND ADULT CHARS, versus everytime he was treated respectfully. this boy was BRUTALIZED through s1.m’gann and conner, too– a cute concept, but borderline cringey, even creepy, at times. i was rooting for supermartian. i was. but it was like the writers didn’t know how to write a slowburn. the idea was honestly better on paper than in execution.

the YJ spinoff comics filled in a lot of these gaps, i’ll admit. it explored the chars, their relationships, and their behavior in ways the show seemingly didn’t have time to do, and i LOVE the spinoff series. but i also firmly believe that you shouldn’t need a second media to fix the first. it’s capitalistic and no fun.

through the duration of the show, there were also issues such as the hiatuses. i don’t recall them coming with much warning at a time, nor sticking to much of a schedule. i don’t actually remember what they were for, either. but, before and after each of (three?? was it three?) hiatuses, the showrunners would introduce a new character during a new arc, give said character some liners or plot fodder, and do away with them for the rest of the season ( i.e Rocket, Zatanna, Garth and Tula, etc. ).

i have some other, nitpickier issues– why was wally That Way, why was clark Like That, how come bruce was the ENABLER the entire time, etc– but many can be argued as whether they affected the show as a whole or not.my actual biggest problem was the direction.the director.Greg Weisman.bc idk what the hell he was doing half the time, and i don’t think he knew, either. the writing wasn’t GREAT, but at least it was consistent. Weisman truly had a marketable property, a fan favorite, and one of CN’s best running shows at the time. but between the hiatuses, the writing’s faults, the insufficient character development, and a HUGE ego thanks to his fanbase, Weisman was unable to uphold the integrity of his show. there was both fan-pandering, AS WELL AS consciously going AGAINST fans’ wishes. there was that whole “Ask Greg”-thing, too, where he would get back to a fan once every blue moon and answer background questions about the show’s universe, which became a scene of hot debate. Greg Weisman became the JK Rowling of DC, and lost a lot of my respect with his lack of damage control, and impulse control.

then, with the very inception of the show– and i don’t actually know if i can blame weisman for this or not, but i wanna know who pitched it, otherwise– the show’s CONCEPT. why was Young Justice made with this particular cast of characters, cherrypicked through DC history, aged down or revamped or just cut-and-pasted where they didn’t fit? why was its concept, “COVERT TEAM OF ADOLESCENTS WITH SUPERPOWERS WORKING TOGETHER WITH LACK OF SUPERVISION”? why was the show called “Young Justice” when what they wanted was the TT v3 comics? WHY DID WE NEED TO TURN SUPERMAN INTO THE UNAVAILABLE-FATHER TROPE????? questions that will forever remain unanswered. that’s a lie, i can answer most of them, myself.but all in all, a show with great potential that failed in execution.

season 2, i actually enjoyed more than season 1– it felt like there was more of a handle on the story and cast, alike. did i approve of season 2 and what went down? debatable. but that’s a very subjective view. objectively, season 2 flowed better than season 1, but still didn’t follow through on subplots, nor resolved relationships or even characterization ( m’gann, girl what the fuck?? ). very little team bonding, save for, once again, two chars out of the whole team. again, another season of SO much potential, but one that fell short.

its pros, however– i really enjoyed the darker themes, getting darker as time went on. there was a lot of tragedy in s2, and different perspectives and walks of life to watch through different lenses. a much more diverse cast, and very different conflicts to tackle. i was impressed. i don’t think all the controversies were resolved, but i also wasn’t quite as upset that they weren’t; open-ended conflict is frustrating, but is a great lead-in to another season.

————which, for better or for worse, we weren’t supposed to have.i personally would’ve rather the show ended there, not quite on a high note ( are u fucking kidding me fjaoisdfjoaifio waLLY, this was during the n52, too ), but with a concrete END. of course there was more to explore, the world they’d built was a big one, but we didn’t need to.

i was literally just yesterday chatting w my sis, bc after school lets out, we wanna watch season 3. i really do. i’m upset that there is one, but i do wanna know what happens to my faves. and, on top of that, i’ve been meaning to do one BIG rewatch, anyways, to get me set up for s3. as a student of film, it’s a huge philosophy of mine to rewatch EVERYTHING and go in with the intent of giving it a fresh start and a clean slate– both medias i love, and medias i hate. it’s important to analyze pop culture critically, and even things that aren’t good can still be enjoyable.

for me, Young Justice wasn’t a phenomenal show to begin with, from its technological side to its creative team to its politics, and i stopped enjoying it pretty early on. but, that isn’t to say it didn’t accomplish GREAT things, and isn’t UN-enjoyable; it has its moments. also i would DIE for most of the cast, i fucking love the characters.

i don’t think anyone is wrong for liking Young Justice. i try to stay in the loop about it, and form new opinions based on whatever information is out there until i can get ahold of the source material. and, i do like aspects of the show. but ultimately, it just isn’t my cup of tea.

#Anonymous #LONG post under read more #rambley. sorry about that it's 1 AM

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traincat · 6 years

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i just found out about the gwen and norman babies and i’m just wondering what the fuck

“What the fuck” is a pretty accurate summary, but okay, so. Story time, because while this ask refers to the developments of a story called Sins Past (Amazing Spider-Man #509-#514), in which it was revealed that Gwen Stacy had twins fathered by Norman Osborn, to grasp the full story here we’ve got to go back to a little bit to before the death of Gwen Stacy.

In Amazing Spider-Man #93, after George Stacy’s death, his brother Arthur invites Gwen to come stay with his family in England. (This is notably where The Amazing Spider-Man 2 gets its “Gwen moving to England” storyline.) Peter had been planning to propose to her, but freezes up under the knowledge that Gwen blames Spider-Man for her father’s death:

Gwen takes it as a rejection, and leaves to go stay with her aunt and uncle in England. One thing I don’t think gets touched on enough with Gwen is that she’s very empathic, and good at picking up on all of Peter’s feelings and cues – it’s just that she doesn’t have the full context to interpret them. This also isn’t the first time Peter’s been in this situation; after he graduated high school, knowing that Ned Leeds had proposed to Betty Brant, Peter also had planned to propose to her, somewhat secure in the knowledge that Betty would’ve chosen him over Ned. (She would’ve, and in fact when Betty’s marriage to Ned began falling apart much later, she and Peter briefly engaged in an affair.) But when Betty says she could never love a man who was an adventurer, “a man who risks his life each day”, Peter realizes that as Spider-Man it wouldn’t be fair to propose to her and storms out.

(He notably did not take into consideration that he was a high school graduate with a freelance job who still lived with his aunt in the “to propose or not to propose” dilemma. Typical.)

Gwen would return to New York in Amazing Spider-Man #98 – a whole five issues later. Coincidentally, this also marked the return of the Green Goblin, Norman’s memories of Peter’s secret identity as Spider-Man having returned. The Green Goblin was briefly stopped when Peter used the sight of Harry – who was suffering from a drug overdose – to shock Norman out of the Green Goblin persona. With Norman once again unaware that his son’s best friend and roommate was Spider-Man, Harry on the mend, and Gwen back from England, everything was coming up Parker and, though no specific details had been ironed out, Peter and Gwen were set to marry. (I think it’s important to note with PeterGwen how serious they were, and that they were planning to get married.)

But, famously, that didn’t last – Norman did remember, during a particularly nasty overdose of Harry’s, and he kidnapped and killed Gwen in Amazing Spider-Man #121.

So with all that in mind, let’s talk Sins Past itself. This got long. More under the cut.

Alright, so, all that said and done – in Sins Past, the story is flipped on its head. In Amazing Spider-Man #509, Peter receives a letter from Gwen, allegedly written while she was in Paris, indicating that when she died she did so with some kind of secret. The letter arrives incomplete, the secret unrevealed.

Furthermore, two mysterious (and super-powered) shadowy figures are trying to kill Peter, but that’s just like, a Wednesday for him. Along the way, and with a stunning admission from Mary Jane, it’s revealed that the two shadowy would-be assassins are Gwen’s twin children, and that their father is Norman Osborn.

Yeah.

The twins – Sarah and Gabriel Stacy – are aging preternaturally fast because of the Goblin serum Norman had dosed himself with. They were also born after only seven months – but the infants weren’t premature. It’s revealed that that’s why Gwen left for Europe, not, in fact, to stay with her father’s family, but to secretly have her children.

Yeah.

The twins were brought up in France by Norman, kept isolated from the world, and raised as trained fighters who believed that Peter was their father, and that he had abandoned them and killed their mother. So now they’re here to kill him.

Yeah.

So we’ll pause here to take some questions.

1) “What? Why? What?”

So initially, writerJ. Michael Straczynski wanted Sarah and Gabriel to be Peter’s children with Gwen. This was nixed by Marvel, under the belief that having two adult children would age the character too much. I mean, they’re actually like, seven years old, but okay. Denying Peter the status of fatherhood because it would “age him” too much is a frustrating pattern in Spider-Man canon: Norman notably orchestrated the murder of Peter and MJ’s baby several years before. Instead of chucking the story out of the window altogether, which you know, would have been my first pick, it was reworked so that Norman was the father of Gwen’s children, because that was so much better than Peter discovering he had children with one of the people he loved most in the world. Comics are here to be a frustrating experience for everyone.

2) “So Gwen cheated on Peter?”

This is a frustrating take on the situation I’ve seen on more than one anti-Gwen post, painting Gwen as the villain of the piece for sleeping with Norman, instead of as a vulnerable young woman taken advantage of by the father of one of her best friends, a disturbingly realistic scenario before you ever even add in the fact that Norman is a literal supervillain. When Gwen recounts her one sexual encounter with Norman to Mary Jane, she herself seems confused about how and why she ended up in the situation. While I don’t think the intent was to have the encounter be out and out nonconsensual, there’s more than enough room to wonder.

This is a very emotional time for the cast of Spider-Man; George Stacy is dead. Gwen blames Spider-Man and Peter is dealing with that and the way he is dealing with it is making Gwen doubt his love for her. Both Harry and Norman are falling apart in very different ways. Sometimes, things happen and situations arise and there’s no planning involved; “naive young woman is seduced by the darkness inside of an older man” is a tired trope, but a prevalent one. In any event, even if Gwen did deliberately cheat on Peter (which, no matter how you read the issue of consent in Sins Past, is clearly not what Gwen describes to Mary Jane), she was taken advantage of by an older man in a position of power over her, and after she had his children he turned around, killed her, and raised and abused her children to believe that the man Gwen wanted to raise them had abandoned them and murdered Gwen. So there’s no version of events here in which Gwen Stacy is the bad guy, and using that argument to prop up one of Peter’s other love interests as a better person than her is a bad take. There are no “good people” here: these are fictional characters who have been handled by many different creators over the years. They cannot make their own choices.

3) “Wait, J. Michael Straczynski? Isn’t that the guy whose Spider-Man comics you’re always telling people to read?”

Haha yeah it sure is!! It can be rough recommending a whole run, because the longer they get, the greater the chance there is of there being that one story in there you reaaaaally don’t think is for everyone, which is Sins Past. And this is tough, because as much as I don’t think Sins Past should be in continuity, JMS’ amazing voices for both Peter and Mary Jane never falters.

There are a lot of different kinds of bad stories in mainstream superhero comics: bad plot, bad characterization; good plot, bad characterization; bad plot, good characterization – and those are just some of the possible bad story combinations. I think Sins Past is a bad plot that’s very disrespectful to a female character whose legacy was already her brutal death at the hands of a supervillain. Reframing that death so that, instead of merely being at the wrong place at the wrong time and paying the ultimate price, Norman purposefully hunted down Gwen before she could tell Peter about her twins, doesn’t help. As a fan of Gwen, I don’t like her part in this story and I personally don’t think it should exist (as the story it currently is, and I’ll touch on that later) in continuity. I think it should be explicitly retconned out in a way that brooks no argument. (JMS himself has said he wished to retcon it out, but wasn’t allowed.)

That being said, have I read this like eight times? You bet. I think the art is stunning, I think JMS’ is really an incredible talent when it comes to writing Peter, who can be, to put it simply, a difficult character to get. I find the PeterMJ scenes are beautiful, as are Peter’s melancholy-tinged memories of Gwen. Also, I love comic book garbage. Skrulls? Clones? Robots? A character’s long lost children, artificially aged to adulthood and back to kill their supposed father? Oh my God, that’s so stupid. I want twenty of it.

So my feelings here are really mixed. I don’t like the rewrite of Gwen’s history. I don’t like that this is in serious continuity (and I’ll touch on that in a moment). Additionally, I don’t think the timeline really works – I’ve never felt Gwen was abroad for quite that long, even with the sped up pregnancy, and when she does come back, there’s quite a lot of time for her to tell Peter, which was something Sins Past had made clear she’d intended to do. But whatever, retcons are retcons, they rarely if ever are perfect fits. I do like the characterization of Peter and Mary Jane, and I like it a lot. If I had to pick a story that in my own opinion perfectly highlights how Peter experiences every single strong emotion, it would be this one, which is unfortunate because, well, everything else about this. It is unfortunately totally believable to me that Norman would have slept with Gwen and then killed her, but tbh if I was picking a member of Peter’s social circle who would willingly sleep with Norman, it’d be Flash, who briefly worked for Norman and was quite enamored by him – before he waterboarded Flash with whiskey, strapped him into a semi-truck, and made him crash into Midtown High, landing him in a coma. Oh, and then, way later, also murdering him. Norman’s gonna Norman.

Like I said: mixed feelings.

3) “Wait, but is it in continuity when it’s almost never brought up again, and nobody, not Peter or Mary Jane or Norman, mentions it even when it would make sense to and also nobody wants this in continuity anymore?”

Hhhh yeah it unfortunately is, and I’ll outline why, because it would have been so easy to take it out of continuity. So Sins Past takes place shortly before One More Day, wherein Aunt May was shot following the events of Civil War, during which Peter had revealed his identity on national television and the Spider-Man cat was out of the bag. In One More Day, Peter’s offered a choice by Mephisto: his marriage for his aunt’s life. Ultimately, unable to live with himself if he says no, Peter agrees. The marriage (although notably not the long term committed relationship – in the altered timeline, Peter and Mary Jane were still together from the date of their wedding to just after Civil War) was erased from the timeline, Aunt May was saved, and Peter’s identity was once again hidden from the world and from many of the people who had already know, like Felicia Hardy, the Fantastic Four, and most notably from Aunt May. There were also some additional changes made: most notably, Harry Osborn, who died in Spectacular Spider-Man #200, the best issue of all time, was alive. Clearly, the changes to the narrative’s web, if you will, extended beyond the framework of just Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage. Like I said: basically nobody talks about this story. It shows up on lists of the worst comic book plots of all time all the time. The characters almost never bring up Gabriel or Sarah – there is a sequel story called Sins Remembered: Sarah’s Story (The Spectacular Spider-Man vol 2 issues #23-26), written by Samm Barnes, where Sarah sends for Peter’s help in Paris and he does his level best to be her dad.

But of course all is not as it seems blah blah. I won’t say it’s the worst comic I’ve ever read.

It would have been easy, then, to retcon Gabriel and Sarah out with Brand New Day, since nobody ever talks about them or wants this story to be in continuity, including its original writer. Right?

Wrong. In the American Son miniseries, which is post-Brand New Day, Gabriel Stacy makes a prominent reappearance, although Sarah’s whereabouts are unknown.

I’ll be honest: I personally don’t consider this series of events to be canon. I never mention or include it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s extra-canon material, not to be counted. But that’s just me personally as a reader. If I was asked whether or not this was actually canon, in that it was published and not retconned back out – the answer is yes, the twins exist in canon. Not my personal canon, but the actual canon.

But we could fix that.

4) “Well, Traincat,” said nobody, “how WOULD you fix Gabriel and Sarah Stacy so that the twins could be kept in continuity without everyone screaming?”

Great question, me! I would fix it with the greatest out Spider-Man storytelling has ever given us: clones. It’s very notable that Sarah looks exactly like Gwen…

Gabriel was specifically drawn with a strong resemblance to Peter. Look at that. The Osborn hair doesn’t spare people that way. The answer then, becomes simple: keep the story. Keep Gabriel and Sarah. But have them be revealed as two of the Jackal’s Peter and Gwen clones. It’s a better explanation for why Gabriel and Sarah would be adults than “the goblin serum did it”, and planting the twins, who could fully believe they were who they said they were with the use of artificial memories, in Peter’s path as a form of psychological torment fits with many of villains – presenting Spider-Man with the children of his lost love, fathered by one of his greatest enemies, as a form of torture. As for Mary Jane’s recount of when she found out, well – the same thing: implanted memories. There are more than enough characters on the Marvel landscape who are capable of that. It’d be pretty easy to pull off, since Marvel seems stubbornly set on keeping Gabriel and Sarah on the playing field, and honestly, it makes a lot more sense. Clones! (Let me pull it off, Marvel!!)

One final note: Sins Past outright alleges that Gwen and Peter never had sex, because Peter knows from the start in the story that they couldn’t be his children. To which I would like to say: lol yeah right.

So that’s (probably more than you wanted to know about) Sins Past!

#traincat talks comics #long post/#*replies

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years

Text

Michael in the Mainstream: The Last Jedi review

It has been a year since I first saw this, and it has given me plenty of time to sort out my thoughts on it. This film was very divisive in my mind, as it has been to filmgoers at large; no two people seem to have the same take on it. Alex of IHE liked it and thought it got better with each viewing; Schaffrillas Productions thinks the movie is really stupid and fails at what it set out to do; and Doug Walker, AKA the Nostalgia Critic, is somewhere in the middle, saying it has some of the best Star Wars has to offer as well as some of the worst. And that isn’t even getting into fan response, with the ever-hyperbolic Star Wars fandom screaming for ages about how this is an utter travesty of filmmaking, and how the whole movie should be retconned, and so on.

Frankly, such hyperbole should just be dismissed entirely out of hand. If you honestly think this film is the worst Star Wars film, or even an objectively bad film in general, you either have lived a very sheltered life or do not know a thing about films or filmmaking. Now, does that mean I think this is a GOOD film? Well… no. I think I most agree with Doug Walker on this; the film has a lot of great stuff, a lot of stuff done better than every other Star Wars movie; but for every great thing, there is an unbelievably awful thing too, balancing out the movie into being a literal divisive work, with half the film being a great Star Wars entry and the other half being a stream of idiocy, fluff, and filler. And the most baffling part is it isn’t even hard to tell which parts are good and which aren’t the awful parts stick out uncomfortably. Say what you will about something like Jar Jar, he at least seemed somewhat plausible within the universe of Star Wars. But the casino on Canto Bright, and the weird space horses? It just feels too weird, too whimsical, too Harry Potter-esque for Star Wars.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As far as story goes, we have this: Rey is off trying to convince the cranky hermit Luke Skywalker to train her, though this is easier said than done, as Luke seems rather content with milking alien walruses and just in general being a hermit to want to help her out. Meanwhile, the rebels are being chased down by the First Order, with Poe desperately trying to take command of the situation and his commanding officer not having any of it, which leads Poe to send Finn on a mission to find a way to sabotage the ships. This leads to Canto Bright as they search for a skilled hacker. Meanwhile, Rey is finding out she has a very interesting connection to Kylo Ren. There’s a lot going on this time in the galaxy far, far away, and it becomes unclear if things will come out on top for the rebels this time around.

So, let’s talk about what works first. The movie’s greatest strength is certainly the cinematography; this is hands down, indisputably, the best-looking Star Wars film to day. There are so many gorgeous, beautiful shots, so many scenes made better by the fantastic camera work. The presentation in this film is just top notch, and so much in this film is just a treat for the eyes. And the beauty isn’t just the shots, the actual lightsaber duels we get are easily some of the finest in the history of the franchise, with Rey and Kylo’s fight against the Praetorian Guards, as well as the final duel between Kylo and Luke on the salt field, moments like this deserve to be held up among the best in all of Star Wars history.

Then we have basically everything involving Luke, Rey, and Kylo Ren in this movie. The scenes revolving around these characters are the most engaging and interesting in the entire film. Luke especially is a fascinating character, Mark Hamill giving his all to the performance and showcasing the natural progression from a well-meaning but hotheaded young hero to a jaded, cynical hermit who has, like his master before him, put himself into self-imposed exile due to his failures. Rey and Kylo have an intriguing dynamic, and they get so much focus and development. A lot of the film focuses on Kylo, giving much-needed development, though unfortunately it does jettison a lot of what made him interesting in the precious film. Gone are his tantrums, struggle with the light side of the Force, and emulation of his grandfather… but in comes a performance from Adam Driver that I felt at some points emulated Javier Bardem’s from No Country for Old Men. Yes, Kylo Ren managed to be as terrifying and ruthless as Anton Chigurh.

But of course, there are a great deal of problems, namely anything in he film that doesn’t focus around the three aforementioned characters. Outside of the opening space battle, just about everything with the rebels is a tedious slog of a chase scene, with the First Order apparently never once considering speeding up a little bit to catch up with the rebel ships slowly running out of gas. Despite what some very sad, strange people on the internet might convince you, there’s no overtly political messaging in the dynamic between Poe and Holdo; the only thing there is just really poor writing, where two characters who should be smarter act ridiculously stupid for poorly defined reasons. It’s pretty telling when Leia, probably the only person in the rebellion with a cool head on her shoulders, gets taken out of commission for a large chunk of the film early on.

The film also wastes a lot of characters that were built up to be more important than they ended up being. Phasma is unceremoniously killed (or maybe not) after an extremely brief battle, to the point where reading this sentence will probably take more time than her appearance onscreen in this film. The hacker that Finn and his new partner rose find on Canto Bright, portrayed by Benicio Del Toro, seems like he might end up an interesting morally ambiguous figure, and up until his final appearance he offers some interesting characterization, but then he stabs Finn and Rose in the back and vanishes from the film. Still, neither of the previous examples are anything compared to what happened to Snoke, the mysterious evil emperor figure who corrupted Ben Solo into becoming Kylo Ren. Some have said they didn’t find Snoke interesting to begin with, and that his death wasn’t too bad of a move, but on the same token there is so little revealed about him despite the fact that he is integral to a major character’s backstory that he ends up feeling like a missed opportunity. The fact that he is played by Andy Serkis only compounds my irritation; why get such a fantastic actor to play a wasted character like this? I have much the same feeling towards the disrespectful usage of Max Von Sydow in The Force Awakens; pointlessly tossing great actors into minor, throwaway roles is utterly depressing when you think of what their talents could have added to the story.

But of course, I have saved the worst for last: Rose Tico and Canto Bright. He two go hand in hand, as Canto Bright is where Rose gets much of her screentime and development with Finn. Canto Bright is a very odd locale, featuring a shiny casino and weird alien horses. The whole tone of the place is far too whimsical and jarring for the film it’s in, and it ends up badly clashing with the other scenes. It also ends up hogging a lot of screentime from the far more interesting and intriguing plot with Rey and Luke. The biggest issue, though, is how pointless the entire venture ends up being, as after all they go through, they end up failing miserably, which leads to a lot of the issues in the film’s final third. The whole thing ends up just being a pointless diversion from the more interesting plot and comes off as a way to pad out the runtime with hamfisted morals and glurge.

And then we have Rose, who, in this film anyway, is probably the least likable character in any Star Wars film. She is utterly bland and uninteresting as a character, which is a shame as her sister, a character with limited screentime who only appears in the opening before dying, was far more interesting in the few minutes she was onscreen than Rose is in her entirety. The biggest problem with Rose is that she almost feels like a fan insert character, with how she gushes over Finn at first and gets to kiss him at the end despite the two having rather mediocre chemistry. Said kiss also comes after a moment where she ruins a moment that could have been an excellent culmination of Finn’s character arc and been a hugely subversive and expectation-defying moment, and then utters the most vomit-inducingly bad line in Star Wars history: "That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love." Nothing about this line works, makes sense, or does anything but make the viewer cringe hard. This is worse than Anakin’s comments about sand, worse than anything in the prequels really, and I don’t think this is hyperbolic in the slightest, since we have had over a decade and a lack of George Lucas involvement to fine-tune scripts and not deliver lines that sound like they belong in a Hallmark special.

Overall, the film absolutely fails to do what it sets out to do: deliver a subversive film that defies audience expectations. Nothing in the film really subverts or plays with audience expectations in a positive way; all of the big subversions come from characters acting as insanely stupid as possible, and they all come from a dull plotline that hogs the screentime from the far more intriguing plotline. The Rey/Luke/Kylo stuff in this movie is easily some of the best and most engaging Star Wars content to date, but it gets shoved aside far too often, and a lot of elements of it seem to be left hanging. Built up elements like Rey’s parents, Snoke, and Phasma are unceremoniously dropped in frankly insulting ways, and at the end of the movie everyone is basically at the spot they were at at the end of the first one.

And that, right there, is my true issue with the film: it all feels very pointless. The heroes accomplish next to nothing, and the overall effects on the franchise are utterly minor. This is a Star Wars film I could almost say you could skip when viewing them for how little it adds… but what little it does add is really good and essential. This is definitely a movie that home viewing will make better, since at home you can skip through the awful Canto Bright and rebel chase sequences to get to the good stuff. The lightspeed ram, the Praetorian duel, Luke and Kylo’s confrontation… all of that stuff is worth seeing.

Ultimately, the film is neither really good nor bad. It’s just a mixed bag that is not nearly as subversive or expectation-defying as a contemporary blockbuster film like Infinity War or even an older film like The Empire Strikes Back. What it does succeed at is delivering a visually stunning film with excellent character dynamics between the three big players. So, it is easy to see why the film is divisive, but it is impossible to see why people could possibly write the film off as the “Worst ever” or “a film so bad it should be retconned.” If you honestly believe this film is so utterly, irredeemably awful, I frankly don’t think your opinions on film are worth much. If you think the film isn’t so good but at least can find a few things to respect in it, well, I find that a far more respectable position than the blind, frothing-at-the-mouth hatred the film has gotten. It really doesn’t deserve it, though it also doesn’t deserve to be held up as the gold standard of Star Wars films either. It does contain some of the worst moments, if not exactly the absolute worst, in the history of the franchise, after all. But on the same token, it contains some of the absolute best, top ten or twenty best moments of the franchise as well. To write the film off or to praise it blindly as a masterpiece are equally foolhardy decisions.

The way this film wraps up leaves me wondering what could possibly be done for the next film; I have no idea where the series could possibly go, and it fills me with a sense of worry and of suspense. The future of Star Wars is uncertain, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned after being a lifelong fan of the franchise, it’s that Star Wars always finds a way to come out on top eventually.

#Michael in the Mainstream #Star Wars #The Last Jedi #Luke Skywalker #sci-fi #Disney #review #movie review

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chasethesun18 · 6 years

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I need some hope that Wyatt’s going to pull his head out of his arse soon. The writers are killing Wyatt for me. Wyatt’s my fave so I really resent that this triangle/Jessica’s characterization is coming at what feels like Wyatt’s expense. Wyatt’s been a grade A disrespectful douche to everyone but Jessica 2 eps in a row. There’s no conflict from him at all about his decisions. And there’s reckless and then there’s whatever Wyatt’s been re: Jessica the past 2 eps. Its hard to like him.

well anon, lucky for you you happened to come to the designated positive lyatt blogger around here. im always down for some positivity so let me give you some hope!! first off im gonna say you should definitely go look at @enchanted-keys latest post about defending wyatt. me and @modernlifehistorian add some stuff too and they speak much more eloquently than me about this ship so i will not even try to reword that lol. but i will just say, this is a ridiculously complicated situation and i truly think he is handling it as best as he can. i think we tend to forget (because hollywood loves to show us otherwise) but boys suck.😂 girls suck. we all kinda suck and relationships aren’t the romcoms we all wish they were. now dont get me wrong, im a sucker for a good, cheesy romance. give me all the perfect situations because that’s not real life and sometimes i just need a good fictional love story. but timeless isn’t that kind of show and they’re giving us something real. that means its gonna be messy, and a little sad, but ultimately i can see the parallels that are coming and i think its going to be really amazing

lastly, i would like to add that whether or not lyatt goes the way you want it to, i hope you dont give up on this show. im such a huge shipper but i dont tend to leave shows even when the ship is going downhill (exception is NCIS lol my fragile little heart just couldn’t handle it after cote). i dont know if you’ve ever watched Blindspot but i basically dont even ship the main ship anymore because its been so screwed up but the show itself is so good i keep watching it. i hope you can see this show for more than the ship drama! its literally amazing. it teaches such important history lessons and tells the stories of so many people who’s story deserves to be heard. there are other great relationships on the shows, great friendships, and great enemies. its adventurous, exciting, dramatic, heart warming, heart breaking, and everything in between. I haven’t trusted a group of writers/producers/actors in a long time as much as i trust this timeless crew. its definitely not my place to tell you what and what not to watch, but i really believe if you hang in there it’ll go up from here.

thanks for messaging me!!

#asks #defending timeless

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my-name-stitch · 6 years

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Do you think, vission would be fucking pissed off once he found out thanos killed wanda? Cuz like come on, in the movie they said that the mind stone was more of a power source to vission than anything (wich is why they were able to begin to remove it without distorting his data/memories whatever u want to call it), so its obvious that hes coming back in the second infinity war. Besides, wouldnt it just be AMAZING to see our little viz all in his rage mode. 😍 he'd be pissed man

I’m sorry I’m late - I don’t normally get asks and completely missed your message lol. I also kinda babble a lot when I’m excited, so this is gonna be 100% longer than you expected, I’m sorry.

But, yeah, if it is normal Vision we get back - he’s gonna be angry (at himself and Thanos - in a sort of… personal and impersonal way imo? Because Thanos didn’t kill-kill her, as in like he personally did it, but he’s responsible for it - and also because Thanos’ plan is just fucked up and disrespects life, which Vision said he’d protect/was on the side of). The only time the MCU has shown him angry was when Corvus threatened Wanda (when he said, ”Give us the stone and she lives,” or something? Vision had been kinda sluggish/out of it until then) - there are other arguable scenes, like he was probably angry at Rhodey at the airport in Civil War, but there’s no solid dialogue or visual (like if he’d scrunched up his face angrily) proof. Vision is a pretty neutral guy until IW imo (and that’s definitely tied into him not knowing he could be distracted in CW - my personal theory is he’s a mixture of naive and willfully ignorant about his emotions because everyone except Wanda had been insisting he’s a machine and can’t have emotions), and even then he’s still pretty subtle and still trying to hide his emotions in favor of helping others/putting others above himself (like, he started crying right before Wanda killed him, and I haven’t seen one (1) post about it! Boy was comforting her while he was sad and terrified and held on until the literal last second omg I love him so goddamn much).

So, I don’t think we’re gonna get a rage monster if we get angry Vis - something more along the lines of “quiet on the surface to hide the storm beneath” thing. I also don’t think that’s gonna be his only primary emotion - obviously he’ll be sad, but he’s also gonna feel like shit in general because he had her kill him (and it ended up being for nothing) plus he loves her and she’s gone (and he hasn’t experienced death before this, not on a personal level). He’s gonna be a bundle of serious emotions, and ngl we’re probably gonna have to rely on fanfic instead of canon to convey that because there’s gonna be a lot in A4 to cover (that is, IF we get normal Vision back - because White Vision is always an option, but they’d have to devote time to Vision, an established side character - and even with the changing of the guard from OG Avengers to New Avengers, he’s not a popular character. White Vision would need his own movie to be properly portrayed imo (unless they just want to slaughter his character like they did in the comics haha please don’t do this MCU I’m begging you), and I’m not sure they’d do that? This is quite literally the only thing holding me back from thinking 100% White Vision is coming in A4/beyond lol).

And yeah, the Mind Stone is his power source (quite literally, too, lol - that’s where he gets his super hero powers from. Sorry, bad joke), but it also doesn’t necessarily have to be his only one or the only thing giving him life/power (which is what Bruce pointed out). But ultimately, I think it’s needed to hold Vision together. Because you’re right - taking away the Mind Stone won’t affect his memory banks. It, however, might affect the way he processes it. Like, your computer remembers things in its memory that you save (ex. Word docs) and even things you don’t actively save yourself (ex. your web browser search history). But your computer has no emotional connection to those things - it just has the pure information, the zeroes and ones. Vision’s brain, since it is based off of an AI, probably operates similarly at a base level (storing things in binary), but he’s got all the emotional and tactile etc things tied to those memories like humans do (for example, you remember what you were feeling when you typed this ask, you can remember the feel of the keyboard on your fingertips, etc). Removing the Mind Stone might take away that connection he has to sentient life and revert him back to just an AI with a really neat body (aka what most people assume he is/the MCU version of White Vision… because I think White Vision in the comics is an asshole, but JARVIS at least has coding to be polite so they’d be a bit different in characterization). Vision was established as a life made from many different sources (Bruce brought them up, and Thor’s lightning might’ve also had something to do with it tbh because his lightning is magical, isn’t it?? If not, it sure as hell super-charged Vision’s body) working together, so take away one, yeah, you have the other bits… but you might also take away the special spark that made all of them to blend together and made Vision, Vision and made him sentient (and I’m not trying to say the Mind Stone is what made him sentient - I’m trying to say it might be the combination of everything. Just in case that wasn’t coming through because I know I can get carried away with explaining the “whys”).

But yeah lol. I also think he’s coming back in IW:2… just maybe not how we like/know him. If we do get normal Vision back, I’d 100% love to see him more emotive and upset/angry for Wanda’s death and think it’s amazing, too. Thanos better watch his back lol. He’s got a lot of angry/upset supers ready to kill him. Wow, this is long… I’m sorry. I kinda went off there. I’m also not trying to force my opinion on you, either, if that was coming across (since I don’t necessarily agree Vis is gonna be in rage mode) - and I’m sorry if it is. Also, thank you for this ask?? Idk it just made me happy you spent the time sending me it. (｡￫ˇ艸￩)

#hope you don't mind i didn't answer privately... even tho it's a bit late for that...#iw spoilers #mcu vision #marvel vision

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shadowtearling · 6 years

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Hey, can you explain what you like about Queen of the Tearling? I wanted to like it because I see a lot of people recommend it, but I tried to listen to the audiobook and DNFed pretty quickly. I think the final straw for me was a scene where she was worried about eating in front of the dangerous man she was attracted to against her better judgement because she didn't want him to think she was greedy or something

u opened a can of worms buddy

so i want to start by saying i understand that this book isn’t necessarily for everyone. i’ve seen/read/watched rant reviews on this book that details all the reasons why this book/series is shit. i’m like obsessed. And I get it, not everyone is going to love this as much as I do, tastes are different, and I’m literally out here devoting my entire life to this series (lol starting my own religion brb).

some reasoning for the hatred (though valid, ultimately wrong imh(umble)o):

Kelsea is a Bad character — didn’t like that she was impulsive & never thinks through her actions, stupid, vain but has low self-esteem (and I see a lot of complaints about the scenes where she compares herself to her mom, her hatred of her mom and how they think that Kelsea hates her mom for caring about her appearance), sheltered & doesn’t know anything

World Building is Bad — “how the fuck is this medieval with mentions of Harry Potter?!” “why didn’t they bring the fucking important things to the ‘New World’ so they don’t regress???” “what”

“it’s a slow book — “DNF bc nothing happens”

everyone seems to also be really angry this got called “Game of Thrones meets Hunger Games”

all the reasons i love this series (some a response to the above list):

KELSEA — she is my all time favorite character and probably half the reason why i’m so invested in this series.

she is so smart (book smart, i mean. i concede she ain’t the smartest on the streets and she’s not good at having a poker face (throne??) because man does she burn some bridges)

she’s full of heart (her motivations NEVER waver. it’s always always always about saving her kingdom from others and from itself. everything she does is for the good of her people)

and ultimately that leads to not-thought-out decisions that angers a lot of people

she is dedicated to her kingdom and WILL NOT COMPROMISE with anyone for a middle-of-the-road solution.

she’s plain (and canonically a darker-skinned character than her white counterparts, i think tan really) and has a lot of self-esteem issues. she thinks about her mom, how vain she was, and Kelsea’s hatred is best explained as that she doesn’t hate her mom for obsessing over her looks, she hates her mom for prioritizing that while the kingdom is in shambles. Kelsea also obsesses over her appearance (and i’m not saying there’s a good way to obsess one’s looks) BUT she doesn’t let that get in the way of her duties as queen. (i’m also not saying someone is above another for not being into their looks). kelsea is INSECURE and it’s great.

she’s 19!!!! of course she’s gonna think about these things. of course she’s gonna worry about how people see her. i was 19 once and i can tell you, i was definitely full of shit then (and even now lmao) but she learns! she listens to people (though she ignores Lazarus a lot lol) and strives to be better (person and Queen).

she doesn’t sacrifice her own morals for anything

she grows so much throughout the series i cry about it all the time

most important: she’s FLAWED. yeah she’s badass but ultimately she fucks up so many times

i love her because i saw myself in her, found myself and my beliefs reflected in her character.

World Building — A+ very interesting and wonderful

i think you definitely need to go into this series knowing what it’s trying to do to kind of explain what is going on with the world. it’s a futuristic regressed society.

the way the world gets explained is through various methods, all very effective.

i love the little paragraphs at the start of each chapter that give insight to the way things worked (little histories, biographies, quotes, etc.) a lot of them also help characterize Kelsea even further, explain her actions, contextualize.

we get bits and pieces of the world (not info-dumping to explain all at once) and it all gets expanded and explained more thoroughly (through memories and scenes) later in the series. the slow world building is part of the plot and essential to the build up.

the history gets explained in the end and everything circles back to the beginning.

this series is very much a delayed gratification situation, and so worth it in the end.

Slow Book — this is true and honestly it’s heavy on the politics (which I love) so if you’re not into slow books, you won’t be into this. to each their own. but i loved it so much. this is a book that kept me up until 7AM reading just to finish. it might be slow but it was intriguing because I was invested in Kelsea.

ok that last point is everyone else’s fault lmao do not blame the book. nothing good ever comes out from such comparisons anyway and in general that comparison specifically is so untrue.

Characters —they’re all interesting and Great, and their relationship to Kelsea is just *clenches fist* so damn good

Mace — fiercely loyal, father figure, badass, interesting history, super protective but also just gives Kelsea her space, such a dad, SECRETLY A SWEETIE

Pen — sweet, adorable, loyal, deserves the world, stupid, would do everything (including get fucked up drunk) for Kelsea; i also like to imagine he has a killer smile

the Red Queen — BAMF, also interesting history with very fucked up motivations, intriguing, and her storyline is definitely wild

the Fetch — mysterious and creepy, out there doing That

~~~~ ominous dude ~~~~ — can’t say much besides WOW dude this storyline is kinda wild and unexpected

all the other people who come into contact with Kelsea and literally have their lives changed like #same

Writing — I love it.

there’s perspective shifts pretty often that help give an overview of the world not just as Kelsea knows it but as it is. it also really helps to give life to the characters. it’s pretty balanced because everything is important to the story. you don’t read about this random peasant just because lol (there is kind of a random peasant)

There’s no all-consuming romance. Don’t get me wrong I love romance and I’m all about that angst. But I also love the lack of one in this because that’s really not where her priorities are. Sure there’s a little bit of pining (from more than one person to more than two people lmao???) but ultimately, for Kelsea, she doesn’t have time for that!

Found Family!!!!! — i’m a sucker for this trope

Kelsea and the Queen’s Guard???? FAMILY FAMILY FAMILY

there’s respect both ways. none of them disrespected Kelsea (i think there was maybe one instance but was remedied immediately) and Kelsea doesn’t think she’s above any of them. THEY WOULD DIE FOR HER (it’s kinda their job, but also out of free will) AND SHE FOR THEM (AND ME FOR ALL OF THEM)

Books — they’re important to Kelsea and she gives people the gift of reading!

Lastly (for now), it’s dreadful. Whenever I read the first two books, I was really fearing for the fate of the tearling (pun kinda intended) and I loved every minute of it. I love just how well desperation is portrayed in this series contrasted with the grim determination of the characters to succeed (read: Kelsea).

#jrksfgklja #so long #i might write my fucking thesis on this series lmfao #long post #the questions of the tearling #the queen of the tearling #tearling talks #octarine-ash

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