"She told me Gabe had left mysteriously—disappeared off the face of the planet, in fact. She'd reported him missing to the police, but she had a funny feeling they would never find him." (drawn while recording the first episode of the monster donut podcast!)
Negative parasocial relationships are still parasocial relationships.
Taking an array of possible ideas, thoughts, works, lyrics, tweets or whatever separated sometimes by years or decades and trying to string together a morally concrete condemnation feels very strange to me.
"This celebrity who I have never met and you have never met is a bad person." Maybe, I don't know. I don't have the data on every random person who happens to have a degree of fame to weigh their life's positive and negative outputs. I don't have the wholistic information to make an informed judgement about their entire moral value, and neither do most people trying to tell you they do.
I don't see why I would be expected to make a judgement on a whole person, that is a lot of work.
I'll stick to smaller things like...disagreeing with actions, thinking that certain behaviours can be harmful. Maybe that sounds lazy, but at least it feels honest. I don't want to cut down the tall poppies with you just because I don't know them.
Even if it wasn't harmful to the tall poppy, it sure as hell doesn't sound like it would be healthy to my own psyche to excuse fairly intense parasocial relationships so long as they are focused on criticism and anger.
Charlie putting the padlock on the bridge for him and Tao was actually one of my favourite scenes of the season. The way this scene shows the importance of friendship and puts platonic relationships on the same level as romantic ones is so fucking refreshing to me. Taking such an inherently romantic action and just making it not romantic in the slightest but about Charlie's love for his best friend that is equally important to the love he has for his boyfriend is so beautiful and important to me.
Heartstopper obviously does put a huge focus on different queer romantic relationships but I absolutely adore the way the second season portrays queer friendships and doesn't make them seem less worth than the romantic ones.
"Here we go! It's all about these runes. They form some kind of math-y, magic-y gateway. To the realm of heebie-jeebies. And this… Turns it on. So… here goes."
Thinking abt how so many characters in media who canonically state that they don't like people touching them constantly have their boundaries broken and are forced into hugs by other characters and every single time they are shown to be upset it's supposed to be a flaw that they need to overcome until they just are forced to accept/like it.
some practice doodles for my next post - simplifying characters do not come easy 😭🫠 and yes I'm an advocate for 💜soft grunge/ goth/ graceful goddess/ disney princess 💜 Raven and everything in between because shoving her into one category is lazy.
thinking of the damsel route where the princess turns into an anime girl. thinking about how the mere act of questioning her autonomy made her lose it. because viewing her as brainless made her so. because our perceptions shape who she is, and by not believing her simple want we are not believing her existence as an original person. thinking about how she's a person until we decide she's not being "person enough"