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#there is fucking more to life than anti aging
tomurakii · 2 days
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I kind of hate all the comparisons between kipperlily and like. Those fuckass "affirmative action fucks me over I wish I was [minority] so it would be easier" people because none of that. Is what she said. She said the bad kids already had more experience with adventuring before they got to augefort and it meant they had an advantage. Which is true. Yeah Riz was lower-class but his mum was a COP. Riz, Kristen and Fig had parents who were heroes (Sandra-Lynn is an active ranger, Kristen's parents are paladins, Sklonda is a rogue), Adaine's family was super rich and politically influential, Fabian had both. Gorgug's the only one who wasn't actively at an advantage [IN THE CONTEXT OF HAVING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT HEROISM] and she didn't have shit to say about him. Kipperlily was the first person in her family to try heroism, the bad kids are largely legacy admissions.
Additionally to the people comparing it to the "anti-affirmative action" crowd: do you know what affirmative action is. The bad kids didn't receive special consideration on their admissions to aguefort or scholarships or additional financial support or extended assessment times or anything. How could she be mad about affirmative action if none of these people received affirmative action. What they DID have was knowledge about their classes that started much earlier than high school, which is what Kipperlily said in her file that she thought grading should be adjusted for because she did not have that.
To me it's less like affirmative action and more like augefort is like an IQ test. They pretend that it's fair and objective, but you can be taught how to do those things from a younger age, and if your parents took the time to teach you pattern recognition and shit then you'll do better on an IQ test than someone who wasn't trained for it and everyone will act like that makes you innately smarter when it doesn't. It just means someone taught you how to do that earlier.
Barring Gorgug, every one of the bad kids had access to information about heroism and their class at a younger age than Kipperlily did, which primed them for success in their classes. Every one of them got additional information about mysteries from their families (and even direct battle-tactics training from Bill), Riz especially with getting classified info out of his mum. Kipperlily does not have hero relatives. She's the first in her family line to attend a hero school. She knew nothing about it before her first day, meanwhile Kristen was already the chosen of Helio, Adaine had already been attending the best wizard school in the country, Fabian had already spent his whole life training with his father, and Riz was already involved in solving mysteries using info and tactics he got from his parents.
They aren't necessarily "privileged" (except Fabian and Adaine), but Kipperlily didn't say they were, she said that in the specific context of attending a hero school they had a prior-knowledge advantage. Saying they didn't is like comparing the grades of a kid who's academic career started with preschool with a kid who didn't attend until middle school and acting like one of them wasn't better prepared.
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rofax · 9 months
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I took a piece of art from my journal like, 2 years ago, and re-did it digitally bc it has been feeling ESPECIALLY POIGNANT LATELY.
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saviourkingslut · 1 year
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finally finished s2 of the alienist... uhmm why was this season abt everyone BUT the alienist. hello. daniel brühl turn on your location i just want to talk
#WHERE was laszlo#literally they only gave him a bunch of scenes with lara pulver so they could?? send him off to europe at the end???? huh#he barely did anything at all the entire series. even for the case he was barely there to offer assistance#i get wanting to do a little more for sara's character but now it was HER show more than his#and no offence. but im watching the alienist. for the alienist.#my sister and i were SO disappointed by the last ep too#john marrying a woman he doesn't truly love just so he can? have a child?#laszlo fucking off to europe and leaving his whole ass institute behind?? WITH THE PATIENTS HE CARES ABT???#sara ending up in that classic 'strong independent women don't need a man they can be successful without them' hashtags feminism#as if wanting to be in a relationship with someone. makes you anti feminist or something.#society has progressed past the need for the independent strong women trope#where are the women in loving relationships with men who agree with them and their views and who wholly support them#women don't need to be alone/unhappy in their love life to be feminist characters. please.#i can't believe i dropped s2 ages ago and then finished it bc of daniel brühl and he's actually barely in it at all. incredible#if he's not in a possible follow up season i am not watching it. again it's called the alienist and that's what i am here for#curry rambles#ALSO WHY DID THEY KILL MARCUS?? that was totally unnecessary esp in a last ep like that.#cheap effort to get the audience emotionally involved#AND SPLITTING UP THE MAIN THREE CHARACTERS?? if you want your series to succeed. NEVER split up the#found fam at the end#is2g nothing kills my goodwill for a piece of media faster#the alienist
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kamaluhkhan · 4 months
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anti-curse
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pairing: percy jackson x daughter of apollo!reader
summary: whether he knew it or not, percy jackson made the world a better, brighter place — and you intend to protect him, no matter what path the fates leads you down. fuck prophetic dreams. the future wasn't written in stone.
warnings/disclaimers: mentions of typical demigod things (battles, weapons, etc.); this is set during the heroes of olympus series so roughly follows that plot + features the seven demigods; mainly inspired by book!percy (dark hair, sea green eyes) bc that's the one i fell in love w growing up; characters are aged up from the book (reader + percy are meant to be 21-22 y/o) bc i imagine there was more time between prophecies/series....anyways, please enjoy <3
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when you first met percy jackson, he almost shot you through the chest with an arrow.
given that apollo is your godly parent, you often found yourself at the archery field, which happened to be one of the first stops on percy’s tour of camp half-blood. after that first mishap, your other half-siblings were, understandably, too scared to let percy try again — frankly chiron seemed a bit hesitant as well — and you could sense that percy felt disheartened. so, you flashed the boy a reassuring smile before giving him a few pointers and a second chance. when he smiled back at you, you felt a fluttering in your stomach that told you percy jackson would be more than a little important in your life.
archery still wasn't percy's strong suit, but your gut feeling turned out to be true. you and percy had dealt with a lot since then — a handful of quests, several prophecies, more than a few near-death experiences, a titan war, and, maybe worst of all, high school. you couldn't imagine getting through any of it without him by your side, and you knew the feeling was mutual.
so, you were entirely anticipating that percy would be hurt by your announcement during dinner. 
“no way that’s happening.” percy laughs, as if he can’t believe you’d suggest something as ridiculous as not having him accompany you on your quest. he remains unfazed, takes a sip of his electric blue coke before gesturing to the empty seat next to him. “come on, sunshine. have something to eat.”
the nickname sends your heart into a frenzy as you sit next to him. you and percy had never been anything other than friends, but sometimes....sometimes you look at his dangerous ocean eyes and wind-swept dark hair and it makes you blush. sometimes you consider the way his laughter fills you with warmth and his smile holds a thousand memories, the way he teases and winks at you and you decide that he makes your world so much brighter. sometimes you remember how sarcastic and thoughtful and loyal and reckless he is, his heart of gold and unpredictability of the sea. and you start to think that maybe possibly you'd fallen in love with your best friend.
that was not the issue at hand, though. you summon your favourite food and drink, but don't particularly feel like having either. percy returns to his conversation with hazel about how the two of you would drive up to montauk after you finally got your license, any time either of you needed to escape your reality, even just for a night. you'd sit on the beach, stargazing and roasting stale marshmallows and wishing to stay there forever. hazel seems to think that sounds like a nice escape, and percy promises that once the eight of you fulfill this prophecy, you'll all go to the beach house together, which makes hazel break out into a grin.
you can't help but smile at percy who loves his friends, who has loved you for so long. that feeling is quickly replaced by a pang in your chest that reminds you what's at stake. from the corner of your eye, you notice annabeth across from you, who looks at you like you’re a puzzle she can’t quite solve. you're trying to hide it, but if anyone can read you better than percy, it's annabeth. she knows something is weighing on your mind. you briefly lock eyes with jason, who you had gone to earlier for help, from the other side of the room, where he sits between piper and frank. 
if you weren’t so distracted, you would have been able to enjoy dinner. the eight of you — all demigods of the current great prophecy — hadn’t been all together in a while, and it was nice to share a meal aboard the argo ii despite the reality of why you’d all been traveling together. leo had equipped the ship with magic plates and cups, and with the lively jokes and stories filling the air, you could almost imagine it was an ordinary summer evening at camp. you could almost forget that tomorrow, you had to go on a quest to rescue apollo and artemis from python, a monster so powerful your father barely defeated him thousands of years ago. you could almost ignore the impending war with gaea and the giants, and the doomed fate of the world if you were to fail. the one thing you could no longer ignore, however, is the gut feeling you have about the fate of the boy sitting next to you if your quest is to unfold the way you had first planned it. 
you clear your throat, an attempt to interrupt the group's conversations. 
“i was serious earlier,” you declare. “you’re not coming with me, percy. jason is.”
the smile percy had on his face fades. his eyes are filled with concern and disbelief, as he glances at you. “i – i don’t understand.”
"percy,” jason jumps in carefully, aware that he’s treading through dangerous waters like you had warned him. “y/n and i were strategizing earlier and it seems to make the most sense, given our powers combined." 
percy shakes his head. “but — but you can’t just make last minute changes. we’ve already got everything set. right, valdez?”
leo shrugs, swallowing a mouthful of chicken before responding. “i don’t know, man. i’m no expert in quests, but it seems like i’m not the one who should be deciding this.” leo looks at you, and you nod gratefully.
you've been on edge since last night, and to calm your nerves you fiddle with the gold chain around your neck. it was a gift from your father: a necklace with a music note charm that can transform into an electric guitar or a bow and quiver. thankfully, you hadn't had to need both at the same time.
“it's up to me. and i want leo and jason to come with me.”
“then i’ll come too,” percy's voice remains calm, but insistant.
“isn’t there that thing about quests usually being done in threes?”
“that is true, piper,” percy agrees. he tilts his head towards you, like he's calling on you to remember. "exceptions have been made, though. like that one time with zoe." that had been years ago, when demigods from camp half-blood and hunters of artemis joined forces. five had been sent out on a quest, but only three came back. you shiver at the thought.
"or my quest through the labyrinth," annabeth recalls.
"but won't that also change our other plans, though?" hazel asks.
"not necessarily," you pipe in, your voice more assertive. "if jason and percy just switch. no harm done."
"we're not interchangeable," percy grumbles.
"hera sure seemed to think so!" leo searches the room for positive responses to his joke, but the most he gets is a half-hearted laugh from frank. "too soon?"
you take a deep breath. "it's not a big deal, really."
"it kind of is," percy counters. "you've never gone on a quest without me."
"you've gone on quests without me," you point out.
"that's...that's different."
"why? because i'm so weak that i need the son of the sea god to protect me at all times?"
you're giving percy the coldest stare you ever have. he hesitates to hold your gaze.
"you know that's not what i meant," he sighs.
"then what did you mean?"
percy looks at you, his eyes and tone softer. “look, sunshine, let's just stick with the plan, alright? we can just —”
“gods, you never listen, do you?" you finally snap. "you're not coming! i don’t want you there, percy!”
percy stares at you, stunned. you look around the table, and everyone looks back at you, wide-eyed. they weren’t used to this side of you, your sudden outburst not fitting in with your usually sunny disposition. 
“well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” leo jokes in an attempt to lighten the mood, with less than ideal results.
“you saw something in your dreams, didn’t you?” annabeth realizes. 
her conclusion makes you freeze.
demigod dreams are always significant, carrying vivid images of monsters, messages from friends or enemies. some children of apollo like you had visions of the future — pseudo prophecies that are supposedly set to unfold given the path you’re on. technically, you weren’t supposed to share your visions, something about messing with fate or destiny, but that didn’t mean you had to accept the way things were. 
what you saw in your dreams last night, what might happen to percy, made your blood run cold.
you would defy all the laws of the universe and divine rules if it meant you could protect him. so fuck the path the fates are attempting to lead you down, and fuck prophetic dreams. you refuse to let percy die. no matter how frustrated you’re acting towards him in this moment, you know he would still do the same for you.
you figure that the future isn't written in stone, right?
either way, you're willing to challenge destiny for percy jackson.
without answering annabeth, you get up from the table and take a deep breath, carefully avoiding percy’s gaze. 
“i go with leo and jason, or i go alone.” your voice is steady, fighting the heavy beating of your heart and tears caught in your throat. “either way, i leave in the morning.” you exit the mess hall before anyone — before percy — can protest.
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transmascissues · 2 months
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it's silly but the biggest reason why im not into t yet is bc im so afraid of losing my hair. do you have any solutions/tips for it?
first of all, i don’t think it’s silly — it’s natural to be worried when hair loss is talked about by so many people as like…one of the worst results of aging for men. listening to my dad talk about how much he hates balding definitely did not make me feel particularly good about the knowledge that i may very well be joining him someday. i’m not saying the fear is right, because i don’t think hair loss is something awful that we should avoid at all costs, but it’s an understandable fear given the beauty standards we’re working with, and it’s one that a lot of us (myself included) feel.
one thing that’s helped me is just…paying more attention to the guys that i interact with on a daily basis. i’ve learned two things from it: 1) hair loss is super fucking common. i’d say it’s much harder to find an adult man who isn’t balding at all than it is to find one who’s completely bald. and 2) if you forget everything you’ve been told about how bad hair loss is, you’ll realize that quite frankly, every single one of those guys looks totally fucking fine. it doesn’t ruin their appearance and make them ugly, it looks totally natural and isn’t really even something you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. we put so much weight on it but it’s really just not that big of a deal. i’ll hear my parents talk shit about men in my family who are losing their hair when i didn’t even notice a difference last time i saw them. it’s one of those things (like so many other appearance-related things) that you really only notice at all because you’ve been taught that you’re supposed to care about it.
this isn’t something i’ve done personally, but if you really want to desensitize yourself to the idea of it, embrace the time-honored queer tradition of just shaving your whole damn head! find out what you’d look like without hair, find out how you feel about it and what you can do that makes you feel good about your appearance without hair, test the waters while it’s still a temporary change and not something permanent. that way, it won’t feel like this big scary unknown, and you’ll actually have a frame of reference for your feelings about how you look without hair rather than accepting the societal assumption that you’ll inevitably hate it. if you don’t want to actually shave your head, you could also just fuck around with bald filters or photoshop and see what happens.
oh, and if you’re attracted to men, keep an eye out for guys who are bald or balding and also hot as fuck. in my experience, there’s no insecurity or potential future insecurity that being gay for other men hasn’t helped me with. just off the top of my head, i can think of a couple actors who i think are absolutely fucking gorgeous who have helped me get over my fears about losing my hair. despite what our anti-aging-obsessed world might want you to think, there is no such thing as a physical feature that automatically makes someone less attractive, and while making attractiveness less of a priority in your life is good, it can’t hurt to also give yourself some proof that actually, you might lose your hair and look hot as hell doing it.
basically, entertain the possibility that it won’t be a bad thing at all! whether that’s just because it turns out to be a neutral thing for you or because you end up actually liking it, it’s not an inherently bad thing. i’ve ended up liking a lot of things that were “supposed to” be bad effects of t — i love the weight i’ve gained and the new shape it gives my body, i get a lot of gender euphoria from the fact that my acne is now on parts of my face that i saw a lot of guys in high school get it and i’m not complaining about the scars i get from it either because i’ve always liked the added texture that acne scars give my skin, and so on. i think there’s a lot of joy to be had in the changes we’re taught to fear, once we look past that conditioning and actually explore how we feel about it.
but if it’s something you really don’t want and you just want to improve your chances of not having to deal with it, it’s not like there’s nothing you can do! products like finasteride (oral) and minoxidil (usually topical but i think there might also be oral versions) are pretty commonly used among trans guys, for the purpose of avoiding hair loss and for other reasons, and there are plenty of other anti-hair loss products out there (though i don’t know how effective any one of them might be). if it’s a big enough deal for you, you can just decide that you’ll go off of t if/when you start noticing signs of it, since no longer having higher t levels would stop the process in its tracks. and if you don’t find prevention options that work for you so it ends up happening, you can always explore different hair styles (judging by the pattern of hair loss i see in my family, i suspect that keeping my hair long would make it less obvious if i started losing mine), find your preferred method of covering it when you don’t feel good about it (personally i love a good beanie generally and would probably wear them a lot more if i didn’t have hair to worry about because my main complaint is the way they press my hair onto my neck), or just shave it all off if you don’t like the look of the partial balding but don’t mind a shaved head. the point being — you have options!
at the end of the day, whether you go on t or not, you’re going to see your body change as you age in ways that aren’t always going to be attractive to others or aesthetically pleasing to you. that’s just the reality of having a body. even if you never went on t, you’d get older and you might see your hair thin out even if you don’t bald, you’ll see your skin start to wrinkle and sag in places that used to be smooth, your metabolism might slow or your body fat might start to gather in new places; hell, you might lose your hair for a totally different reason and end up in the same place but without the benefits of having been on t that whole time. life is full of bodily changes like that. transphobes will fearmonger about the permanent changes of testosterone all day long but the truth is, there is no escaping permanent bodily changes. whether or not you go on t, your body now isn’t the same as it will be in 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years, just like it isn’t the same as it was at any point in your life before now. our bodies are never supposed to stop growing and aging and changing throughout our lives. there’s no guaranteeing that we’ll love every single change our bodies go through, but that’s okay! there are so many things in life that are more important than the way our bodies look. even if you go on t and lose your hair and don’t like how it looks, your life won’t be ruined; plenty of other things will bring you joy and more than make up for the insecurities.
just think about the gender euphoria and relief from dysphoria that t could give you. would losing your hair be bad enough to outweigh all of that? or is it just the pressure of a society that decided balding is bad that’s making you fear one single change despite how much joy you could have if you let that fear go? only you can decide if going on t is worth the potential downsides for you, but i suspect that for most of us, the benefits of going on t far outweigh the possibility of side effects like hair loss happening down the line.
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godsandvillains-if · 10 months
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Gods and Villains is a superhero/horror story set in a dystopian future where Earth is filled to the brim with crime and corruption—a.k.a MCU meets The Boys.
Warning! injury to major characters, gore, body horror, trauma and PTSD, amnesia, death, and sexual content. Rated +18. More specific content warnings will be provided at the start of each chapter.
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You take control of a powerful metahuman, an otherwise ordinary human on the outside but who has the meta-gene, a potent mutation deep engraved in their DNA, which gives them superhuman abilities. This next step in human evolution comes with a setback, however, for the curse of madness seems to follow their every step. It lurks in the shadows, patiently waiting for the opportunity to strike—many metahumans fall prey to its alluring promises. 
With a dark and traumatic past filled with untold horrors and inhuman experiments, you are rescued from the clutches of crazy terrorists by a team of heroes that might lend you all the tools you need for redemption or complete self-annihilation. 
As the only metahuman with the ability to wield the powerful Chaos Magic, your very blood holds the answers to unlocking the secrets behind the control of time and space, but it has the drawback of being almost completely volatile. 
Who can you trust to keep you safe other than yourself? Trust no one, and maybe you can get out of this literal hell alive.
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Play as male, female, or non-gender specific, along with transgender choices;
Romance one of seven characters, and if your heart is big enough fall in love with two of them. There's three possible poly routes available: Archon and Stardom, Archon and Mars, Paladin and Wildcat;
Customize your appearance, personality and powers;
Struggle against the shackles of madness trying to take hold of your psyche;
Battle a multitude of villains or become one yourself;
Uncover the secrets behind the meta-gene and your abilities;
Help the public fall in love with superheroes or forever destroy that chance;
In total there are seven romance options, each with their own personality, and dark secrets for you to uncover. You can read more about them below:
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The villain, or anti-hero, whatever you want to call them, Mars is an enigmatic figure; the very concept of life seems to hold no value to them. A trail of bodies follows wherever they go, and on the news, they are regarded as the biggest menace of the century. They will have the unique ability to sway your loyalty. Beware, their sweet words and promises may drip with honey, but they also drip with the blood of their victims.​
Trope: Forbidden love, emotional scars, blood-play
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Zev/Zena Hammer
The oldest of the bunch and not a metahuman per se. Hammer acts as the spokesperson for the team, mitigating the often tenuous relationship between humans and the so-called "mutants". As a retired police detective they've learned firsthand how rotten the world can be for the innocent, and they've vowed to protect them at any cost. Their analytical and communication skills will go hand in hand when dealing with various crimes, just as their implants.
Trope: Widow/widower, age gap, don't-call-me-daddy/mommy
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Adam/Ada Armstrong
The current leader of the Alliance Team. Headstrong and dauntless, they are regarded as the strongest metahuman in modern times and the most enigmatic of them all, whose past is shrouded in mystery and unknown even to their closest friends. On the outside, they might seem apathetic and unconcerned with human suffering, but their true feelings are hidden beneath layers of deep trauma. Superhuman strength and invulnerability are their greatest assets when fighting villains.
Trope: Nobody thinks it will work, love/hate, fucking-your-boss
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Edward/Evelyn Osborne
The former leader of the Alliance Team and Archon's best friend. On the surface, they are the stereotypical showboat: cocky, greedy, and egoistical. Stardom does whatever they can to gain attention, fame, and riches. For them, the best feeling in the world is an adoring fan and a beautiful person fawning over their heroics. The meta-gene gives them a genius-level intellect, which in turn is used to develop several pieces of equipment that are employed by themselves and the team during fights.​
Trope: Billionaire, belated love epiphany, good-people-have-good-sex
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Johnny/Johnnie
If Archon's past is shrouded in mystery, Paladin's is drowned in it. For all you know, their name is not even Johnny/Johnnie but an alias of their choosing. They are known to be the silent loner type and are somewhat socially withdrawn from other members of the team, only speaking when called upon to do so. Behind their silver mask, they harbor more than a few inner demons, and together with their superhuman weapon and combat proficiency, they fight for the innocent.​
Trope: Secret identity, oblivious to love, weapon-fetishization
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Pedro/Pilar Flores
The youngest of the team, considered by many a lighthearted jokester without any real talent beyond their obvious powers—which set them apart from every human that walks the earth. With their metahuman status so evident for everyone to see, hiding just didn't seem like an option, so they chose the next best alternative. Known to be playful, energetic, and often immature, they are responsible for balancing the team's more serious side, and when someone can take the form of any living being on Earth, the repertoire of pranks is endless.​
Trope: Beauty and the Beast, broken in some way, begging
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Doctor Malik/Malika Aziz
The renowned Doctor Aziz, a famed archaeologist and considered to be the most powerful sorcerer, or magic user, in the world. They wear several enchanted artifacts that, in turn, accentuate their already tremendous knowledge of the mystical forces. With an extremely strong moral compass and kind demeanor, they will show themselves to be the best teacher you could ask for, but why do they seem to be everywhere you look?
Trope: Time travel, twin siblings or clones?, teacher-student
LINKS
DEMO ✶ PATREON ✶ KO-FI
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olderthannetfic · 1 year
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Something that frustrates me about the Harry Potter conversation is a lot of people missing the point behind the motivation to boycott it. They seem weirdly focused on the content of HP when it's actually... not that bad? It's not perfect, in fact a lot of aspects are pretty fucking problematic and worthy of discussion, but not uniquely so by the standards of the fantasy genre. Yes, I know the goblins are clearly drawing on anti-semitic tropes. Yes, the house elf situation is fucked. Yes, lots of not-like-other-girls-style misogyny. Yes, Cho Chang was a fucking disaster of racism. I KNOW THIS ALREADY! I'm not an idiot and Harry Potter fans were talking about this for far longer than JKR has been a TERF. But I'm also a fan of the Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age and the Witcher and a shitton of isekai anime and tons of other fantasy medias which are so much worse. Harry Potter is only moderately problematic by the standards of most popular fantasy media, especially for the mainstream standards of the time period it was written. Worthy of criticism, but not dropping it entirely. And actually reading HP and looking back at JKR's behaviour at the time, much of it seems largely unintentional, just that JKR drew on a lot of fantasy tropes that she didn't properly examine as well as her own unexamined biases and she had some flawed understandings of progressivism that were fair for its day but don't fly now, but doesn't seem malicious. The actual authorial intent at least seems to be pretty progressive at least, even if the execution wasn't the best. And sure, it's not a masterwork but there's a reason it connected to so many people, even if a lot of it was luck and timing. We don't have to ignore that and doing so feels dishonest.
I'm just so annoyed when people try to shit on the contents because they're missing the point and confuse the actual problem in a way that weakens their argument. I don't give Harry Potter money anymore because JKR crossed some lines for me in real life, totally separate from Harry Potter as a piece of media, and I don't want to fund her bullshit because she is so influential it is hurting people. The content of her books is utterly irrelevant to this decision. She could have penned a goddamn magnum opus and it wouldn't have mattered. So I'm sick of people bringing up books that are "better" or ragging on the contents of Harry Potter because none of that is the point and never was the point and it comes across as just taking advantage of a shitty situations to dunk on a popular thing or those who enjoyed it. Yeah, it was a mediocre fantasy series. But it hit the right emotional escapist buttons in a lot of kids even if it had the moral nuance and depth of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles anti-drug PSA. Having to drop it sucked for a lot of people because it can't be replaced and yelling about how bad the writing was doesn't change that because it never was about quality. JKR's TERF transformation was in many ways a betrayal of JKR's intended audience considering how the text preached acceptance and love and starred an abused, unwanted child getting to go to magic school where he's special. Pretending Harry Potter should be dropped because its content has issues obscures the actual problem of a raging transphobic having money and influence and that not everything created by bad people is poor quality so boycotts might require giving up access to things you actually like or are valuable and that's not always an easy decision to make.
JKR was a probably decent person with fairly liberal politics when she wrote Harry Potter. The books, while imperfect, are not more horrible or full of problems a dozen other popular fantasy properties. JKR become a TERF later in life and while she may have had ingrained transphobia prior to this when she wrote Harry Potter, that is not the same as the virulent hate-movement she's part of now and we should recognize how easy it is for people to get drawn into hate-movements. Any argument to boycott should be about how she's using her money and influence to affect real life laws and attitudes unless you want to try and get people to also drop half the fantasy genre.
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knifeturtlelives · 6 months
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I think what really gets to me about the depiction of love on the show is that it's not a trade-off: it's not fantasy vs. the mundane, more complicated reality. It's both.
Ed and Stede's relationship is a love story for the ages--a sweeping, larger than life fantasy of adventure and romance. A love that changes and transforms both of them. And it's a complicated human relationship between two pretty fucked up people who met later in life, each thinking they were broken, and who now have to do the hard work of coming together, messing up, and trying again.
It's not a story of anti-climax or losing your rose-tinted glasses; of the real thing being smaller but more meaningful or authentic than the fantasy. It's a story about what happens when the fantasy is real--when you wake up and find yourself suddenly inside the love story you'd given up on, but never quite managed to stop wanting. You got your fairytale. And...you're still you. You still have all the same flaws, same bruises. The same ugly bits, and the same soft bits. Wherever you go, there you are. So now you have to navigate the fairytale with all of that baggage still strapped to your back.
I just...I think that's so achingly beautiful. And I'm so grateful this love story exists.
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They killed our Jesus: A Lament for Generation Jones
Two things happened in 1980 that would ensure the iron grip of the fascist state would (first slowly, then quickly), tighten on the entirety of the nation's populace from that moment forward: Ronald fucking Reagan was installed as president, and a CIA-psyop'd Christian Nationalist shot and killed John Lennon.
Those two things are connected.
First let's look at exactly who "Generation Jones" encompasses, and specific moments in the generational timeline that defined our future. The wiki page is actually quite good. Here's an excerpt that really hits it on the head:
"The name "Generation Jones" has several connotations, including a large anonymous generation, a "keeping up with the Joneses" competitiveness and the slang word "jones" or "jonesing", meaning a yearning or craving.[17][18][19] Pontell suggests that Jonesers inherited an optimistic outlook as children in the 1960s, but were then confronted with a different reality as they entered the workforce during Reaganomics and the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, which ushered in a long period of mass unemployment. Mortgage interest rates increased to above 12 percent in the mid-eighties,[20] making it virtually impossible to buy a house on a single income. De-industrialization arrived in full force in the mid-late 1970s and 1980s; wages would be stagnant for decades, and 401Ks replaced pensions, leaving them with a certain abiding "jonesing" quality for the more prosperous days of the past.
Generation Jones is noted for coming of age after a huge swath of their older brothers and sisters in the earlier portion of the Baby Boomer population had; thus, many note that there was a paucity of resources and privileges available to them that were seemingly abundant to older Boomers. Therefore, there is a certain level of bitterness and "jonesing" for the level of doting and affluence granted to older Boomers but denied to them.[21]"
That sets the stage, for the most part. I was four when JFK was shot on TV. I was a wide-eyed, open-eared five year old when The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan and The Supremes were on the radio. I was ten when we landed on the moon, and I wanted to be a hippie at Woodstock at eleven. "Basketball Jones" came out when I was 12...I jonesed for a telescope because SPACE and got one from that great maker of fine telescopes, KMart.
Generationally, we jonesed to be ten years older, so we could have had all the cool shit THEY had. They had The Beatles, and we had the solo Beatles, they had Hendrix, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, and we had the fucking BeeGees and disco. It's like we, as a generation, were fated to live The K-Mart Knockoff of Life, instead of the bright, shiny Brand Name One all our older brothers and sisters got.
MUSIC and SCIENCE were EVERYTHING to us as kids/teens...the Eshittification Of Music truly began in 1973, and proceeded through SynthPop Hell in the '80s. Rock and Roll heroes became hairdos with guitars. The rock heroes of the '60s were getting married and having kids and baking bread. AM Radio ceased to be something you listened to for music...it began to replace music with strident, screaming hate voices that would eventually engulf all of AM Radio 24/7/365.
We were continually thwarted most of the way from our young adulthood on, blatantly from the moments in 1980 that the vile Ronald Reagan and the core operatives of evil for the next 50 years took over, and then the moment of what I call "Our Generational Wounding", the murder of John Lennon.
Back in '66, John had inflamed all the grandpas of todays magats by saying (truthfully) that with teens, The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Beatle hate became a Very Big Thing in Bumfuck South Texas. Record burnings, merchandise burnings, book burnings, all were commonplace. A very palpable, and very specifically "Anti-Beatle" hate got instilled in a lot of kids/teens at that point, so anything to do with the Beatles was taboo for "good people" (read Southern Baptists) to like.
That, of course, made me love them that much more, and to follow their paths from their breakup forward with 'bated breath, buying every 45 they put out, trying to save pennies up to buy their albums.
John was the radical hippie, the one who wanted peace, the one with the weirdo wife, the one who held a "Bed-In" for peace. In a very fundamental-to-our-generation way, John Lennon was OUR "Jesus".
Richard Nixon (president from '68 to '74) HATED him.
In 1971, there was a true mass consciousness that incorporated us along with our older siblings, a musical mass consciousness. I became aware of many things in 1969, specifically fall of '69, so I was experiencing all this in real-time, as it happened. When the news that The Beatles officially broke up came across the AM radiowaves in May of '70, it was A. Very. Big. Deal. Everyone watched everything they did from that point on with GREAT interest.
George put out "My Sweet Lord" and "What Is Life" (first record I ever bought), John put out "Instant Karma", "Mother", then "Power To The People", then "Imagine". Ringo put out "It Don't Come Easy", and Paul & Linda had "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey". EVERYBODY was a "post-breakup Beatle critic", panning Paul's very first solo 45 "Another Day", "Uncle Albert" was the followup. This band called Badfinger that sounded suspiciously like The Beatles appeared on American radio, and would make 1972 one of the final "Golden Years" of AM Rock Radio.
In 1970 we heard about this Elton John guy, by the end of '72, I was playing as many of his songs on the piano as I could figure out. My favorite album was (still is) "Madman Across The Water". When "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" came out in '73, a very noticeable shift was occuring.
Pop became much less political. It softened. It mellowed. It grew its hair long and lived in the country, learned how to grow potatoes and play the mandolin, making Country Rock the one lasting "legacy" of our sad sub-generation. By the time I graduated HS in May of '77, it was all there was on the radio, besides....disco. Oof.
One of my first TV memories was JFK getting shot. That was the Generational Wounding of our older brothers and sisters. When Mark Chapman (a Christian nationalist who changed the words of "Imagine" to "Imagine there's no John Lennon") shot John in December of 1980, it was the 2 in the 1-2 PUNCH done to our OUR generation. The first, of course, being the installing of Reagan and the evil Evangelical influence beginning in earnest.
It also began the buildup of the "Holy War" radical right, and an utter denial and clampdown of "hippie", of "counterculture" in general began, ensuring that John's vision of world peace would never come true, at least not on their watch. They had, effectively, killed OUR Jesus, along with our chances of the kind of security our older sibs got in spades. It also marked the unholy marriage of the evangelicals and the republican apparatus.
When Reagan got elected by virtue of the vile Newt Gingrich's 'Southern Strategy', a clampdown in earnest on the very SPIRITUAL EXISTENCE of our generation's incredible want and need, our collective JONESING for world peace began. Richard Nixon had planted the seeds. Nixon hated John Lennon with a passion. After Reagan was elected, I firmly believe Chapman was "activated" and they killed John as a Christmas present to Nixon.
It was after that, when the dream of a scientific future began to die, as well. When we were in high school, SCIENCE WAS EVERYTHING, so we wanted to be some kind of scientist "when we grew up".
I dealt with four years of college, majored in Biology, and in early 1981 realized my dream of being a Forest Ranger in Yosemite or some other national park somewhere, living in a cabin, giving talks to visitors about the biology aspects of the park....all that went POOF, almost instantaneously. My degree would get me nowhere, so I left before the end of that year and started working in record stores.
I was effectively the Cusack character in the movie about record stores, but it led to a dead end. Record stores weren't all that glamorous, and yes, the pay was dogshit. I tried working in record stores for the love of the music, while trying to BE a musician in a town FILLED OVER FLOWING with musicians, but that was quickly shat on by the beginning shrieks of late-stage capitalism.
It was like working in the record stores was my trying to keep holding onto the dream, our generation's dream...John's dream of world peace (along with my dream of being a working musician) died a pitiful death by the end of 1986.
What followed was nothing but a series of Jobs I Hated, and the beginnings of the true Jonesing for the life we'd been promised, because we didn't get the raises, the pensions, the house, the car, boat and camper, none of that shit for us. A life of being a low-paid, no-insurance drub, destined to be a life-long renter, unless a financial miracle happens.
So when people ask why we (as a generation) hate Ronald Reagan so much, let's just say I'm with Bugs on this one.
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battyratzz · 1 month
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here's Thatchers Reference sheet. he's my interpretation of 'WTFuture tom' Even tho him and RA tom are not related at all and are two separate characters
Thatcher is Fredrik's second in command and head scientist/inventor of the Anti-Red Army
also His boots are heeled :) he's 6'7 and a half with them on
(and yes he was lowkey inspired off of Zim)
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Some lore drop
this is about How Thatcher got his modifications. It was definitely before Fredrik got his new body
(btw Fredrik had his army before he got killed the first time so even before he got his new body he was still Anti-Red) Thatcher already was well insane actually he was more insane than Fredrik before he got his new body so surprisingly Fredrik was the 'normal' one out of the 2 of them before the body transfer which is funny. anyway Thatcher has a tendancy to experiment on himself and add modifications to himself to make him stronger and shit (it fucked with his brain as well if you can't tell lmao) surprisingly they all turn out well, but when he wanted to make a serum to basically give him eternal youth as in he can't age anymore, which it did work! but now he can't live without that pack that he has attached to his back for long periods of time so now he has to deal with that for the rest of his life, again this was waaaayyyyy before RA Tord was created
Speaking of his relationship with RA tord, he was basically the one who was in charge of raising him, he basically took the place of being his 'father figure' while Fredrik was too busy doing his own thing and shit so RA tord has a close familial relationship with Thatcher. RA tord felt betrayed that Thatcher sided with Fredrik before he ran away from the base to get away from the awful, corrupted government system Fredrik created. Thatcher still cares greatly for RA tord and hopes that he's okay and safe despite everything but he only keeps that to himself due to his position he has no choice but to stay silent and side with Fredrik, plus they have a lot of history together. its a complicated situation.
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jisungsdaydreamer · 11 months
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Anti-Romantic | TEASER | CHAPTER 3 OUT NOW!!
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«GENERAL M.LIST» · «NAVIGATION» · «TALK TO ME» · «SERIES MASTERLIST»
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Pairing: Hyunjin x Fem!reader Genre: non idol au, fluff, smut, romcom, drama, opposites attract Warnings: swearing, explicit sexual content, dysfunctional relationships, taboo couples/relationship therapist and patient dynamic
P.S. ♡ If you like my work, please consider giving me feedback in the form of reblogs, comments, and asks! ♡
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As the most beloved dating coach in the sunny state of California, Hyunjin has dealt with all kinds of nightmares— from real desperate housewives and their indifferent husbands to toxic shotgun marriages doomed to fail— and he’s fixed them all. Dubbed the “Love Doctor,” Hyunjin has a PhD in both sociology and broken hearts. Every single day for Hyunjin ends the same: yet another flashy career success and to celebrate, sliding on his rose-tinted glasses and sipping on pink champagne, his perpetual poison.
That was all before you, of course.
For your entire life, you’ve been unlucky in love. From your endless unrequited high school crushes to your situationship who turned out to be gay, love has just never been in the cards for you. It’s all changed you from a hopeless romantic into a pessimist who doesn’t believe in true love. You now make fun of every couple you see, religiously watch wedding fails on Youtube, and absolutely hate romantic comedies. 
But no amount of lackluster girls’ nights or hours thrown into your crappy job can fill the hole in your heart. You’re absolutely lonely. In one last attempt to give love a chance, you ditch your Tinder dates and decide to turn to L.A.’s famous “Love Doctor,” this hotshot relationship therapist all of your friends rave about. 
Barrelling into Dr. Hwang’s office like a cyclone, you bring along your signature stormy attitude and want a remedy to your emotional dry spell, even though you still believe in your heart that counseling won’t work for you. You don’t expect, however, your new intimacy expert to be hotter than hell, definitely not a middle-aged woman ready to lecture you about putting out.
No, Dr. Hwang is more like the Grandmaster of love, the amorous warlock of the West Coast, and with the way he silently strips you with his bedroom eyes the moment you walk in, perhaps even the sex scholar of the Valley. As he slowly disarms your defenses, you do your best not to let him know of your inappropriate fantasies about him. But even worse than your impossibly vivid wet dreams, you’re falling in love with your fucking therapist. Or Hyunjin, as he so charmingly commands you to call him. 
And you try to keep your feelings for him at bay, you really do. But Hyunjin just doesn’t give up, relentlessly tugging at your mind and heart and taking up every quantum of your life. Because after all, the Love Doctor loves a good challenge.
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«GENERAL M.LIST» · «NAVIGATION» · «TALK TO ME»
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TAGLIST @army-stay-noel, @hwangjuhong, @chizumiyoshi
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📢 ©jisungsdaydreamer 2023 | All rights reserved. I do not condone translations or transfers of my work onto other platforms such as Wattpad, AO3, etc. Tumblr is my only platform. Acts of plagiarism are strictly prohibited.
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mariacallous · 4 months
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‘I don’t like it when a comedian just spouts his own political views and relies on the audience agreeing with him to get a round of applause,’ announces Ricky Gervais in his new Netflix Special Armageddon. For 60-minutes Gervais, clad in his usual black t-shirt and jeans get-up, tells jokes about dwarfs, gay people, ‘disabled creatures’, African babies with AIDs, Chinese people eating dogs, people pretending to be asylum seekers, people pretending to have ADHD, students taking micky mouse degrees, Greta Thunberg, homeless people (‘fucking horrible’) and the fragile and narcissistic ‘woke’ youth. Which is to say that Gervais just spouts his own political views and relies on the audience agreeing with him to get a round of applause.
Gervais’s portrayal of David Brent in mockumentary The Office (2002) was a work of comic genius. Brent, a hapless white-collar middle manager who desperately wants to be popular, cuts a pathetic but ultimately sympathetic figure. The viewer didn’t so much hate Brent as feel sorry for him; he was an uncalibrated fool but a well meaning one, hence the happy ending written for him in the Christmas Specials that brought the curtain down on the story in 2003. Gervais foolishly resurrected Brent in 2016 for a feature length spin-off, Life on the Road (2016), this time without the grounding influence of his original co-writer on The Office Stephen Merchant. All of a sudden the charm had gone out of the franchise and Brent had morphed into something genuinely tragic and repulsive, trucking in boring jokes about gays and fat people.
Expressing any form of reservation or note of disapproval about anti-woke comedy nowadays is to get oneself marked down as an invertebrate. For those of us who possess a strong enough constitution to sit through jokes that poke fun at the shibboleths of political correctness - provided they are actually funny - retorts like this don’t hold much water. But I’ve come to realise that such humour is increasingly sustained by a section of the audience being reliably ‘offended’ by it and kicking off. How else to keep the lucrative conceit going which says that rich middle aged white men telling rollicking jokes about asylum seekers are heroic truth-tellers saying the unsayable? These days Gervais’s adoring fanbase seem more enthusiastic at the prospect of upsetting their political opponents than about the material itself. And who could blame them: most of the jokes in Armageddon are hackneyed and stale - ‘Doctor, Doctor, I keep thinking I’m a pair of curtains’; ‘You are then’. Heady stuff that is indeed guaranteed to ‘annoy all the right people’.
Netflix describes Armageddon as ‘controversial takes on political correctness and oversensitivity in a taboo-busting comedy special about the end of humanity’. Yet those on the receiving end of Gervais’s barbs are hardly considered off limits by the wider culture: illegal immigrants, the homeless and transgender people are all regularly subjected to invective from government politicians and Britain’s overwhelmingly right-wing media. By all means make an off-colour joke about those groups if you wish: I’m a big boy and I know how to use the remote control. But you won’t convince me that publicly flogging these tabloid bête noires makes one a gutsy truth teller. It’s true that a disability charity condemned Armageddon before it was released on Christmas Day for a joke Gervais makes about terminally ill children. But it’s also true that Gervais is still on Netflix telling the joke, which perhaps gives a good indication of just how risqué this style of humour really is.
One of the biggest cheers from the audience during Gervais’s performance in Armageddon erupts in response to a fatuous joke about mobs pulling down statues originally put up to honour slave traders - another example of woke hypocrisy apparently. ‘He was a slave trader, pull down the fucking statue.’ ‘He built the hospital, should we pull that down too?’ ‘No, leave the hospital’. It’s certainly true that wealthy people have historically (and not just historically) tried to launder their reputations through philanthropy (and on this note Gervais enjoys boasting about how wealthy he is and how much money he donates to animals, who he prefers to humans). But you needn’t take a course in critical race theory to recognise that those who became uncontrollably rich from the slave trade might have set aside some of their tainted money for similar ends. ‘Pride and vanity have built more hospitals than all the virtues together,’ wrote the Dutch physician Bernard de Mandeville in The Fable of the Bees, his eighteenth century polemic against philanthropic hypocrisy.
It isn’t for me to tell a comedian who the ‘correct’ target of his humour ought to be - comedy is subjective after all. But then Gervais’s current shtick is of a piece with right-wing populism more generally, characterised as it is by a servility to the very power it ostensibly rails against. I’m no more required to accept Gervais’s assessment of himself as a brave heretic saying the unsayable than I am obliged to join in with the hysterical blue pencil-wielding critics who really do want to see him cancelled. As to who is currently coming out on top, Armageddon is apparently the highest grossing single stand-up performance ever, bringing in £1,410,000 for a recent show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Cancel culture indeed.
At one time conservatives and reactionaries would doggedly stand athwart history yelling Stop. Nowadays they need constant reassurance that they are still the plucky countercultural underdogs they imagined themselves to be in the halcyon days of their youth. Which is understandable I suppose. Nobody wants to be the angry young man whose waistband has inexorably expanded along with his list of blimpish grievances. ‘I think I am woke, but I think that word has changed,’ says Gervais. In other words it’s not him, it’s us. ‘No-one likes a white middle aged man anymore,’ laments Gervais at another point in the show. I’ve heard that one before too.
I used to enjoy Ricky Gervais but when I think of him today I always imagine some braying face demanding to know how ‘triggered’ I am by something puerile he’s said. This ‘type’ is seemingly ubiquitous at the moment: everything is geared toward getting a rise out of the libs and sticking it to the man in a way that doesn’t threaten one’s status as a servant of power (am I still allowed to say “man”? hehe - you get the gist).
The role of humour according to Gervais is ‘to laugh at bad shit to get us through it’. Which isn’t a terrible definition, though I suppose it depends on what one considers the ‘bad shit’ to be. I found much of the material in Armageddon indistinguishable from the endless bleating we hear in some quarters about the country going to the dawgs because of foreigners and queers and the young with their trendy ailments and political correctness et cetera. I can’t say I feel hysterical or offended by jokes about that stuff - soporific is more the word that springs to mind. Perhaps I should just be grateful that Gervais didn’t make an ‘Orange man bad’ joke. Maybe he’s saving those gags for his next Netflix Special when Donald Trump is President of the United States again. Important to laugh at the truly bad shit first though right.
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runabout-river · 3 months
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Thoughts on JJK chapter 249 (Spoilers)
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We start with a flashback to how Yuta's suprise attack against Kenjaku truly ended
Sth that Toji had already foreseen happens when the manipulated curses of Geto's CT come out in droves when Kenjaku loses control
I'm sceptical of that explanation though. It looks more like Kenjaku intentionally released all cursed spirits to create a distraction. We see that in the fact that Kenjaku still controls the curses afterwards.
This distraction is mainly used to add a new rule to the CG. There is also the possibility that Kenjaku had the time to do sth else while Yuta's focus was somewhere else. For now, it looks like Kenjaku has died though.
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(I'm really expecting some Takaba/Kenjaku friendship fics, also "this millennia" is only 18 years.)
Visually and otherwise interesting here, is that Tengen was turned into an embryo while in a womb-like construct inside Kenjaku's "body". Tengen is a 1500 year-old once-woman who had turned her body's aging back twice. Now she had been turned against her will into a pre-birth creature, who was than swallowed by a 1000 year-old man.
(Sukuna is a seahorse, confirmed)
Even if it turns out that Kenjaku had been a man in his original body, he's still the most female cis man in shonen outside of One Piece characters. Also, it's Megumi who's caught between all these fossils and their procreation shenanigans. Let's if some of that stays with him.
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Yuta has some second thoughts about their plan and how they split up. At the end he plainly states that he mainly wanted to kill Kenjaku himself but the current fight is what it is, and he has to deal with that.
In close combat, Yuta can hold his own and even lands a hit on Bellymouth. Sukuna's CE energy output recovers though and so does the danger of his DE. That's when Yuta activates his own, sth he couldn't do while fighting his three-way battle.
True Love reminds me of Hifune (Soul Eater) and his way of fighting with dozens of swords thrown around. Sukuna's DE is stronger so Yuta has an additional and unknown time limit on his hands.
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Sukuna knows Hollow Wicker Basket, the anti-domain technique we saw Reggy use. For him it actually has a purpose because unlike Megumi's DE, Yuta's has a sure-hit. Sukuna has four hands though.
Yuta's DE works like this apparently: his copied CT are represented in the form of swords. He can activate the CT once to attack his opponent, afterwards the sword disintegrates. I don't remember Thin Ice Breaker from another sorcerer though.
3 questions:
Does the cursed technique through the sword attack have to be completely in the form of the original CT? Or can Yuta change it enough to make e.g. CE blast attacks?
Will the copied CT get erased from Yuta's memory once the sword disintegrates?
Are the copied CTs split into their different applications? Like one sword for Blue and one sword for Red?
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For the second time in a row in the last two chapters, Megumi gets name-dropped again. Add Yuji into the Domain with his punches having the effect of separating soul and body and it looks like a Megumi moment is on the horizon. What that will look like is anyone's guess though.
Yuji is not to be fucked with. What Sukuna says on the other hand, makes me think that Yuji still puts his life into roles that others give him. His cog mentality is still present.
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ofbreathandflame · 9 months
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will delete later but imma gonna rant bc i can and yall be sending me these things knowing im gonna snap but HEY i guess ill take over hate.💀
you know, when we said that cassian was abusive in acosf, and that his behavior was not only unromantic, but very much parallel to the way tamlin treated feyre in maf -- we were met with contention. it was ‘cassian is the best bat boy!” “how can you hate cassian” and “you guys always find problems” 
but if when the conversation becomes something like nessian >>> feysand or cassian >>> rhysand then suddenly all of the red flags that cassian showed in sf and even in acowar become apparent. then you guys can point out the problems in the hike, how cassian treated nesta horribly, wasn’t attentive. how cassian sexualized her body, and used her body, how he wouldn’t even give nesta sugar even though she was literally suffering through something adjacent to an eating disorder, where she wasn’t eating or practicing self-hygiene. now you see how he doesn’t tell nesta that she is loved, how he calls her out of her name, how he repeatedly disrespects her boundaries.
it is abuse. say it with me: a b u s e. 
it was easy for y’all to blame the 25 y/o and not the 530+ y/o who personally saw himself in charge of her mental health journey, against her wishes, locked in her in the house with him, and then made sexual comments about her while continually isolating every part of her life, and having her do things on behalf of the court and the library with no money. 
and then y’all argued that more responsibility should be placed on nesta and not the immortal man who literally put himself in charge of every aspect of her life. that nesta somehow deserved that bc she was difficult. that argument is deranged. i don’t give a shit how ‘difficult’ nesta was,’ she is still the victim. that you guys believe other wise belies a fundamental understanding of abuse and domestic violence 
and it wasn’t like writing a 2000+ words of textual evidence, scene by scene parallels was enough -- nah. all we have to do is realign the conversation a character v. character debate and suddenly it becomes very clear. 
and as i said, i always fucking knew y’all saw the problems, even when y’all called them ridiculous. but if the conversation was removed of y’all hate for nesta and recontextualized as a feysand v. nessian argument all of a sudden you guys can see the abuse. its absolutely disgusting. 
and even then, the acknowledgement of these issues is only because you want to laugh at nesta for being in that abusive predicament. because of course these issues only matters when your trying to prove a tit-for-tat point about what batboy is better. cassian was abusive. the hike was one of the most disgusting act of abuse in that book.
and this matters bc literally we watched a man -- a famous actor -- sue the woman who he abused, and then have the whole world argue that she deserved the abuse because she was a difficult woman. we saw her sa be mocked, her trauma dubbed ‘not realistic enough bc thats not how real victims act, we saw people fandomize a grown real life man (a HASBEEN) and it has now set a trend where abusers are suing their victims arguing the SAME argument, it matters. we watched as  RAPE threats were suddenly ‘okay’ bc the victim was ‘difficult’ that the 20 something y/o somehow how more power and money than the the man twice her age, with triple the funds. 
 y’all are absolutely disgusting and i will NEVER take any of u anti nesta people seriously like y’all are nasty people. 
y’all tried. 
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Note
As a African American I always ponder why Asians are often so successful in America. A lot of these people or their parents escaped horrific conditions from their former countries. I recall one Indian saying that her father was taught to hide his religion items in public as a child so he wouldn’t get beaten to death. That some early middle age persecution shit right there. But I realize why.
Most Asians aren’t raised on self pity, learn helpless, and victim complex.
In my community, people love to cling onto slavery, Jim Crow laws, etc to our bad situation. Yeah the government did/ still do terrible shit to black Americans (fuck the FBI) but let not ignore the anti intellectual elephant in the room.
Yes Asians have their own set of issues. But I realize most wasn’t raised on the “Oh woe is me!” mindset so they often break the narrative that minorities can’t succeed with the system treating us like mentally challenged kids.
Yep, pretty much this. Many Asian cultures are, sometimes detrimentally, extremely focused on working hard, excelling, and not bringing shame on yourself or your family. Black American culture is...not, sadly. No one wants to say it, but nothing is going to improve for American blacks, especially urban American blacks, until they have a massive culture shift. And to be fair, it's not all their fault. There has been a systemic attack on the black family from multiple sides since the 60s, from within and without. Somewhere along the way they were convinced that the values blacks and whites used to share--family, hard work, pride in accomplishments, etc--were "white people" things and not for blacks. And that couldn't be further from the truth.
Every single person who thinks that they can't succeed because of the color of their skin is just as capable of success and improving their lives as any white person. I'm not special because of my skin. My advantages in life came because my parents, who both grew up dirt poor in abusive families, btw, worked hard and improved their situations so that I'd have a better launching point than they did. Fuck, that used to be the American Dream. Giving your kids a better life than the one you had. Now, that's called privilege and it's something dirty. Kids are seen as a burden instead of a legacy. Family is seen as a crutch instead of the whole point. Society is fucking ass backwards when it comes to values. And sadly some groups of people have lost more of those values than maybe some other groups have. The solution isn't--is never, can never be--to tear down the ones who did the right thing and succeeded. The solution is to follow their example.
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olderthannetfic · 9 months
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I have a question. I’m new to the discourse around fanfiction & censorship, so I was curious about what the general consensus regarding fic about underaged characters in live action media was. Underage is my biggest squick, but I feel pretty neutral about how people write/draw smut of cartoon characters, as they barely register as human for me. Characters played by actual child actors though… I guess I’m just wondering what’s going through the heads of people who write that stuff? Or minor rpf for that matter. What is appealing about it? I’m willing suspend my disbelief & accept that they don’t actually want to abuse kids, but like, what is fulfilling about that fantasy? I’m not in favor of censorship or arresting anyone over a fictional story, but I just can’t wrap my head around it.
--
That's quite a failure of imagination there, anon.
Other people are not you, and they don't necessarily have this squick. That's the main answer.
From people who don't try to problematize this, there isn't really any discourse. Fiction is fiction.
Cartoon characters register as people to plenty of viewers. (And moron antis think cartoon characters count just as much as live action ones when it comes to screaming about problematicness.) Actors playing teenagers are often in their 20s. Coming of age novels dealing with sexuality have been normal all over the world since forever.
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But let's start with some low hanging fruit:
If you're 17 years + 364 days, you're below the age of consent lots of places. Do you, anon, honestly think it's weird to be into someone one day before their 18th birthday but not the day after? What if you live somewhere where the age of consent is 16? Is it still weird to be into 17-year-olds from places where the age of consent is 18?
Most people remember being teenagers. They may feel nostalgic. They may want to imagine the nice teenage experiences they never got to have.
Lots of fic writers are currently teenagers. Not as many as ageist online spaces think, but still quite a lot. Is it weirder for a 15-year-old to have a crush on a 15-year-old than a 40-year-old?
"They looked 18, Your Honor" is a weak-ass excuse for fucking underage people in real life, but that's not the same as finding characters on your tv hot. Not only are the actors usually above 18 because filming underage actors is a fucking nightmare logistically due to work constraints, but a lot of younger actors are often made up in ways that make them look like they could be way older. People also vary widely in how they look at various ages.
If you can accept that lust exists and is valid, you can accept that lots of people will see some teen and think they're hot. There isn't some specific categorical difference in how all teenagers look and how all 20-somethings look.
Doing something about it in real life and doing something about it in fiction are different.
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Now, as for "child actors", that term is used for a wide variety of ages, but let's assume you mean Stranger Things wank, like most people moaning about underage actor RPF do, so we're talking about tweens who genuinely do look pretty young to grown-ass adults.
The first thing I have to ask you is why the fuck you would imagine that writers identify with some adult fucking these kids? It's far, far more likely that they identify with the characters themselves or the actors.
Why would they identify with them? It could be anything from working through their own trauma at a similar age to just liking the vibe of a character because of how the show is written.
Lots of people's brains barf out dark scenarios 24/7 without them ever having experienced any major trauma and without it meaning anything much. Some people channel that into fiction.
If you are a boring person who has both a vanilla brain and no imagination, this might seem surprising to you, but it shouldn't.
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Moreover, your ask implies that underage fic is highly sexual or maybe coercive or something, but you haven't actually stated that. Are we talking about rapefic of 5-year-olds or about someone writing the Stranger Things characters holding hands?
Are you just not sexual at all, anon? Personally, I went from zero to MEGA HORNY at thirteen and a half. It was like a switch flipped. Sure, I wasn't getting any action because I was a zit-covered and socially incompetent 13-year-old, but I was definitely interested.
It's not strange that an artist or author of whatever sort would explore puberty in their art. It's not strange that they'd remember their own sexual awakening or that this awakening would be long before age 18.
It's also not strange if people write super dark shit about small children because it being extreme and taboo and horrible is often the point of art.
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You're "willing to suspend disbelief"? How magnanimous! How generous!
Seriously, anon?!
The way you've phrased this question makes it sound like you have a brain the size of a walnut.
Would you ask such a stupid question in such an offensively loaded manner about all the coming of age novels that are considered Great Literature™? Would you ask why YA exists?
And if you wouldn't, why is it that amateur writing by women and sexual minorities makes you nervous when mainstream-approved things don't?
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