can i be real the thought of someone having a platonic crush on me freaks me out more than the thought of someone having a romantic crush on me

I don’t even go here but your replies to deepdragons were so needlessly hostile.

“If you found it so disrespectful then why didn’t you block me?” This is childish and hypocritical. If you found their take so bad, why did you go out of your way to go to their blog, find the post, and then argue with them? Why didn’t YOU block them first so you wouldn’t have to see their takes? Why do people need to block you, to actively prevent you from interacting with them entirely, for you to not be rude to them?

People will have shitty takes and you will not agree with every post you see — that’s the nature of fandom. You can’t control how other people post or think and that’s annoying, I get it, but YOU can control how you interact with others. The way you were speaking to that person was so needlessly rude and hostile. Is that how you speak to people in real life? I’m so curious as to what your goal was in talking to them like that. Surely it wasn’t to convince any one of anything. Who would want to agree with someone being so dickish and annoying about something as inconsequential as the politics of elven aging? So, what was all of that for? Did that make you happy or have you just riled yourself up? Do you feel like you accomplished something by speaking to someone like that?

I really hate when people tear others apart for being wrong about fandom things. If you were wrong about something, do you think you would appreciate someone talking to you in the way you spoke to deepdragons? Or would you rather they approach you with respect and understanding? Golden rule and all that, yeah?

You did not have to seek them out and you did not have to engage with them. Next time, either speak to others with respect or just make your own goddamn post. Not everything needs to be a debate.

I also find it funny how you were coming at them for not being faithful for the lore or whatever and then, when someone with more textual evidence than you rebutted your statements and called for you to back up your claims, you were like “I can’t be expected to cite all of my claims like an academic paper!!” Fucking lol. The onus of proof lies only with the people you disagree with, huh?

Have you seen the original post? I'm guessing not because then you'd know that my reply pretty much mirrored the exact condescending tone used by the OP. I also didn't "go out of my way" to do anything. I've said so before and I'll repeat it again: I got an error while reblogging the OG post, went to check the person's blog for what's up with that and the first thing I saw was them calling people stupid for pointing out that They're Not Correct. I already had the post written at that point and I simply copied it from one tab to another. This is the internet, you post something publicly people can and will interact with it unless you stop them. I didn't block the OP because at the time I did not give a shit if they interacted with me or not, I was just setting straight misinfo I see regurgitated over and over again to the point I'm sick of it. Because of the attitude they displayed I was actually fully expecting to get blocked straight away myself.

I'm not actually a dick unless someone annoys me into it. Because sometimes people get annoyed and they're rude, that's just how people work. But I guess you know that? Since you're annoyed at me and wrote a whole essay trying to make me feel bad?

And just to finish this off.. none of my statements were rebutted. I got lore dumped on and half of it wasn't even interpreted correctly from the linked books. Yes, I don't need to cite like it's an academic paper because all the goddamn info needed was already in my first post. Astarion was not a child because he was a grown ass man with a government job. There's no basis for "Ascended Vampires can't love" because Larian homebrews their vampires so the written lore doesn't apply. That's literally it. People on this site just can't fucking read.

12 & 19?

the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

I am not going to talk about Irish Mythology I am NOT going to talk about Irish Mythology I am NOT going to talk about Irish Mythology.

Alright, so, Lord Capulet. Especially Lord Capulet as portrayed by Oka Kojiro.

Let's get this out of the way: Lord Capulet, in any adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, is a dick by the end. I have very little sympathy for any interpretation of the text that puts the onus of the sympathy, in his last scene with Juliet, on him instead of her. What he threatens her with is horrific and it would have been SEEN as horrific by a 16th century audience, we're not playing the "man of his time" card. That being said, I also think that people often remove or smooth out the nuances of his character, especially as a way of making other characters look better -- I don't believe he's abusive to Tybalt OR Juliet, for example, I don't believe that he's exceptionally homophobic, and, honestly, in the Shakespearean text, adaptations aside. I don't even think that he married Lady Capulet when she was exceptionally young and he was exceptionally old (imo, I think that Richard Hosley makes a good argument for her being older in the article "How Many Children Had Lady Capulet" -- She might be in her mid-forties or fifties to her husband's sixties, but I don't believe that she's a trophy wife *in* the Shakespeare even if other adaptations go that route) etc. etc.

He's in deep with the feud, so he can't be truly moderate, but he isn't BAD -- he nearly gets into it with Lord Montague in Act 1, scene 1 (highlighting the intensity of the feud), but then, in his other appearances, he appears to be fairly moderate -- he doesn't WANT Paris to marry Juliet at the moment (in the scene IMMEDIATELY following 1.1, so it functions as a great way of highlighting the duality of the character), he doesn't want Tybalt to cause a stir at the party and even admits that Romeo is "a virtuous and well-governed youth." If we believe Robert Watson's argumentation in "Lord Capulet's Lost Compromise: A Tragic Emendation and the Binary Dynamics of Romeo and Juliet", which I mostly *do*, with a couple of caveats, Lord Capulet even originally had the line, "Not Romeo, Prince, he was Mercutio’s friend. / His fault concludes but what the law should end, / The life of Tybalt", with that line only later being attributed to Montague by later editors (later editors removing the nuance from Romeo and Juliet? Imagine that.) By the time of That confrontation with Juliet, he's gone downhill -- he isn't the only character in the play to do so, see: Romeo's entire trajectory from wanting peace and staying away from the feud to becoming a part of the cycle of violence himself, but he's the only one whose character we judge uniformly for those later developments instead of recognizing it as a development. He isn't a monster, he isn't a villain -- he's a man who does a monstrous thing at his lowest point. Tybalt is dead, the feud is back on, and his daughter is refusing a match that could make everything better. I'm not saying that he was right or that a contemporary audience would see him as right, but I'm saying that I think we're supposed to read his earlier refusal to marry her to Paris and his later insistence on it as a DELIBERATE choice on Shakespeare's part, and a tragic one.

In the 2018 Toho production of Romeo and Juliet, we see Lord Capulet in the general style of the stage musical -- we know he has multiple lovers, that he married Lady Capulet for her beauty and then grew tired of her, that it was a thoroughly loveless marriage. The Capulets are bankrupt, something that he's personally ashamed of, but that is clearly well known enough that Paris openly talks about it (even as Lord C tries to shut him up.) We learn that Juliet isn't even his biological daughter. (Which makes certain things that he does, like not allow her to have a cell phone, make a certain amount of sense.) He defends entertaining Paris' to Tybalt, arguing that he's trying to give him something to inherit.

While also trying to keep Tybalt from murdering Paris on the spot.

When Tybalt dies, Lady Capulet is the one, as per normal, to spur him onto seeking vengeance, taunting him with the reality that Tybalt's been the defender of the family while he's been gambling and sleeping around.

Then comes "Demain". And there are some FASCINATING acting and staging choices being made here.

Starting with the fact that you have Lord and Lady Capulet, in mourning for Tybalt (and, on a broader level, the Capulet family's future) against Juliet's pink nightgown (having had her wedding night with Romeo, with all the promise of a new life). In this production, they know that she's married to Romeo, which I know is controversial, but imo, it adds an additional sense of urgency to WHY they want to marry her off to Paris that quickly -- they're trying to bury her first marriage, especially since Romeo (1) killed Tybalt and (2) is in exile. Does it make them less defensible? Possibly, but it gives me something to dig my teeth into. This is the first time in the musical that we see them as a united front, and it's for this. But first, you have Juliet looking to her mother, THEN to her father, who gives this nod as if to say "I agree with her" and THAT'S when Juliet's face falls. But the fact that she thought she could go to her father in the FIRST PLACE to change the decision indicates, imo, a much more complex dynamic than we usually get in RetJ adaptations.

Like with the Takarazuka production, Lord Capulet then hits Juliet when she says, absolutely, she will NOT do it...and from the way that he, Lady Capulet, and Juliet react, this is something GENUINELY shocking, as Juliet runs off and declares that neither one of them is her real parent. Lady Capulet walks away as well....and Lord Capulet briefly considers running after Juliet before holding himself back, leading to Avoir une Fille.

He admits, to a backdrop composed of pictures of Juliet, that he figured out when Juliet was a year old, that she wasn't his daughter, and he was ready to kill her in the cradle, but then she smiled at him and he decided that she was his daughter in every way that mattered and that he loved her as much as any biological child of his. It's a wonderful moment where he's admitting to something horrific, that's framed as horrific, but there's this sense of humanity to it, as we really see him past being comic relief or a slightly gruff, out of touch older man clinging to past luxuries. He loves Juliet more than his pride, more than his family honor, and he's terrified that, when he's gone, she won't have anything, and so he's going to force her to do this as a way of securing a future for her. It doesn't mean that his actions are RIGHT, but it means that we get to see why he makes them, we get to see his most redeemable traits put there right up against his worst traits.

In the finale, we again see him and Lady C as a united front, again due to grief, with her urging him to go up to Lord Montague, the two of them shake hands, with Escalus fully prepared to put them in the "this is our get along shirt"....

And Lord C is the one to reach over and hug him.

He and Lady C appear as a united front for the rest of the finale, including accepting a candle from Benvolio. Their relationship appears to, finally, be mended, possibly even becoming a true partnership for the first time in their married life, but it comes at the loss of their only child.

I just think, in general, that Oka Kojiro did a wonderful job injecting Lord C with some genuine warmth -- he isn't perfect, he isn't justified, but he's human. By the end of the musical, he is severely broken, and you understand how he made every single decision that got him to that point. The Toho RetJ in general has a lot of great character moments, and it's a pity that people often seem to underrate it or dismiss it (if I have to hear one more person judge it purely off of the costumes without doing anything deeper....), possibly because of the language issues, because imo it's the best of all the RetJ productions for characterization and character development, but Lord C in particular stands out as an example of an ACTOR going above and beyond in a role, with Oka Kojiro imo being severely, severely underrated as far as Toho actors go. When you give the man the chance to emote, he is a powerhouse. 10/10, best Lord Capulet, really captures a lot of nuances that most actors don't get.

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

Honestly? I've been in the villainfucking trenches long enough that there is very little that I actually, GENUINELY hate myself for. Raphael BG3 is slightly more trash than I'm used to, but also...it's fine? I was a Kylo Ren/Reylo girl back in 2015, I have seen discourse and consumed trash before it was even cool. I was surprised that one of my Tavs had chemistry with Astarion, since I've been very vocally critical of aspects of Astarion's character, but...it's fine? It's HER arc? I have a lot of M/F ships, including some that are unpopular because they're seen as getting in the way of a "better" ship, but I don't really care? I've written a 700 word Crimson Peak Incest Threesome fic, we cannot go back from that point. The worst thing I can think of is that I think that Gwydion/Gilfaethwy is narratively compelling, but clearly the author of the Four Branches ALSO thought so, since it's literally canon. I like garbage media, but we've known that for years. I adore Frank Wildhorn musicals (and often think that Frank's been unfairly treated), but that's also...something we've known for ages. Unpopular adaptations? Romanticizing the unromanceable? The dangerous? The disturbed? Kitsch? I'm a Floridian, kitsch is in my blood.

Anyway, moral of the story is that I'm very much at a point where I don't think I have much in the way of *internal* issues, even if I do have my dark nights of the soul re:, for example, whether I'm Actually Bi.

I tend to keep abuse and heavy angst and weirder themes out of anything I write, because I don’t wanna make people uncomfortable, but ur whole entire thing has just been so inspiring, that I made an entire little cast of guys to so just that with.

I’m just staring down at these genderqueer little shits like, you guys are gonna have so much fucking trauma. I’m gonna project so hard onto these neurodivergent fucks. Some of them are gonna be such dicks, but that’s okay, because this is a story about recovery and processing shit and fuck anybody who doesn’t vibe with it, because this is for me!

i also dont wanna make people uncomfortable so i try to like, trigger tag properly or whatever. but honestly like,,, this is the kinda shit i needed when i was younger. and its nice, and i like finding people who relate through this kinda art so like. i try to remember that the onus is NOT on me to make sure everyone is comfortable with what i do.

If your answer to "Source?" is "you could just Google it, idiot, so I don't have to tell you" you can suck my dick. It doesn't matter if I agree with your statement or if I know the proof exists ; if you could post about it you could Google it: the one making the claim is the one with the burden of proof.

You're on the "wow! everyone else is such an idiot for not having media literacy!" site and perpetuating a habit of just Saying Things without evidence, expecting your readers to take your word for it.

Of course I'm not saying that every tumblr post must be fully sourced and written like an essay. I don't think saying "I don't have the time or ability to provide the source in this time, and I'm accepting of the fact that you might not believe me because of that" on [tumblr] is much of an issue. What I'm taking issue with is this habit of putting blame on someone for asking an appropriate, in fact encouraged question. (Special bonus: a genuine question, perhaps a request for help finding or understanding the information you brought up. You are rude!)

This obviously applies to stuff like crediting artists, by the way. Not even mentioning the genuinely idiotic but all too common "Source: Google Images", some art reposters will say "I don't see why you're asking me to give you the source, you could look it up yourself". This is exactly how you speedrun losing the source material to time. Assuming that you haven't tried to reverse image search an artwork before, let me tell you what it looks like: it looks like finding 50 reposts on Pinterest, 5 on Amino, 2 on Twitter, 1 on Facebook, with none of them being the original.

If you're making an substantiated claim, if you're posting art that isn't yours, the onus is on you to present that information or visual appropriately. Welcome to social interaction.

Neopets Classic: What Happened?

Hey all! Some of y’all have definitely heard the rumblings of issues regarding racism/antisemitism/other forms of descrimination with the neoclone site neopetsclassic.com  I’ve posted about it a few times and I always get anons asking me to go into detail about what happened or to “prove” my claims. I never respond bc 1. I find it incredibly weird to put the onus of proof on someone who has been directly affected by that violence and 2. It’s impossible to tell who is actually concerned vs. who just wants to see the drama. That being said my lovely friend has compiled her experiences with the site and the admin team and asked me to share them on Tumblr. I apologize it’s all screenshots atm, but I will try to get the actual text for folx who rely on screen readers! For now I’ll say don’t support neopets classic (npc) don’t support people who are willingly apart of this racist team. I know some of them are on tumblr, one recently deleted but I’m sure he’ll be back at some point. If you’re looking for a good neo-clone I recommend Moderneopets, Virtupets, or Grundo’s Cafe all of which have very unique approaches to the classic neo experience and all of which have cut ties with the owner of Neopets Classic because he’s a dick. Read Ayesha’s write up below!

Lowkey hate race swapping sometimes. Now hear me out!

I don't mind when people race swap chatacters I just hate it when changing their race would totally change the entire story or have a lot of implications to the story.

I don't mind when fictional charcater race are changed but I hate it when they change a characters race who are suppose to be a certain race for a reason. When they chnage those types of characters a lot of time it changes the narrative of the story and their actions.

Same with historical show or documentaries. If this real life figure was another than they were we would have completely different story on our hands. Like please open a history book.

Listen, when it comes to fictional characters "racebending" means nothing to me unless it's whitewashing (Titans casting a white actor to play Dick Grayson and the MCU casting a white actress to play Wanda Maximoff when they are both literally canonically Romani both ethnically and culturally is my villain origin story) because fiction is fiction, and honestly you can tweak a story to make a character's journey adapt to the new inclusion of them being a member of a minority class so long as you're talented enough. Most writers aren't, and that's why a lot of "oh we made X character a POC in this adaptation" moves tend to ring hollow, but it is possible.

But I have a genuine bone to pick when it's about history.

For one, it's just such a lazy move. "Oh we made Bess of Hardwick Chinese!" fantastic but you do know that Chinese people existed in the late 16th century right? Like, China was a country with a lot of people in it and a thriving culture and way of life and plenty of influential people living there. Why aren't we telling stories about a Chinese woman living in that time period, it's not like that period of Chinese history was dull or as if no one ever mattered or nothing ever happened there. Like, for God's sake, it's just a way of showing that you aren't actually interested in learning about other parts of the world, or decentering Western history, specifically European history, as the only history worth learning about, you just want brownie points for being diverse without actually putting in the work to learn about the vibrant world that existed outside of Europe for the vast majority of human history, aka doing anything to actually explore different non-Western narratives and how the world moved outside of the European bubble.

For two, like you said, a lot of the time "racebending" doesn't really include attempts to accommodate how the history would change. Bridgerton is a wish fulfillment fantasy show so I don't often care about how it deals with history (even tho I do think the Charlotte was black theory is complete bunk and I refuse to engage with people who think it's real) but its whole "and now England is desegregated" thing falls very flat when you remember how involved England was in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, how reliant it was on slave labor, how invested it was in capturing and buying and selling slaves, including the royals. It puts a lot of onus on characters that they've made POC without doing any of the work, and oftentimes deals in a lot of harmful stereotypes. This was seen most egregiously in the 2021 Anne Boleyn show that cast Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne. @duchessofferia discussed this much better than I will, but relying on the same old lazy tropes that have defined Anne Boleyn with a black woman playing her turned into genuinely harmful racial representation. Having Anne be sexually aggressive and domineering and harsh in her mannerisms, especially when compared to Jane Seymour, isn't new, but having a black woman be looming over a small white woman and being sexually aggressive with her feeds into harmful stereotypes about black women and their femininity, and by having George Boleyn also be black, painting him as a sexual deviant and adding a plot where he abandons his responsibilities as a father turns him into the "absent black baby daddy" trope that still does a lot of harm to black men today. Not to mention, changing George Boleyn's race but keeping the rumor about Jane Boleyn lying on the stand to incriminate him turns a "wife turns against her husband for unknown reasons" story into a "white woman accuses a black man of sexual inpropriety that his society would frown on for the purpose of getting him executed by the state" story, which has a long and incredibly dark history in the United States (it's basically the Scottsboro Boys but Renaissance now). I mean, it's basically my primary issue with Hamilton, that the show really wants to capitalize on the whole "America then as told by America now" thing without delving into what it means to have literal slaveowners portrayed by black men and to have the character of Thomas fucking Jefferson call Sally Hemmings by a pet name in that show without any introspection into the fact that she wasn't his girlfriend but, you know, a woman he full on owned and repeatedly raped. It's all surface level and generally causes a lot more problems by refusing to alter the history to deal with these new changes, because it's history and you can't really alter it without creating a host of problems.

With Cleopatra specifically, I mentioned it before but the Ptolemies were total fuckups and literal colonizers in and of themselves, and turning them from a Macedonian dynasty into actual people of color for some kind of narrative (like there aren't any other important women of color in history, or even that time period) while not attempting to even examine the history of that dynasty and that queen in particular doesn't sit right. Like, congratulations, you've now created a story where a woman of color's most important contributions in life were her relationships with white men who held significantly more power than her and over her country, and fucked up to such a degree that her country wouldn't even be considered its own country until the 1950s. How absolutely groundbreaking. Next you're gonna tell me it's subversive to paint Livia Drusilla as a scheming, conniving bitch who manipulated everyone around her, instead of a sexist and tired trope that exists only to demonize one of the few women of actual importance in Augustan Rome because she was half a decade older than her husband and was able to keep her own power after he died. It's not just a lack of intellectual curiosity or good storytelling, but a fundamental misunderstanding of why people want to see stories about people of color, and how Hollywood itself thinks so little of their audience that they think we'll be content with a simple coat of "hey this person's a minority now!" paint over a subject without any attempt to really look into things or understand why the world works the way it does or how these people shaped their lives or the lives of those around them, never mind the new messages you're sending now with these changes.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. There's a lot that can fuck up with historical representation in media, and representation of people of color in media in general can always be so incredibly fucked that giving people anything is oftentimes a win in and of itself. But I honestly think that focusing on the same Euro-centric stories and just switching around Pantone skin swatches to do the bare minimum is lazy and insulting. You want me to care about historical stories about people of color? Great, give me historical stories about actual people of color. Let me hear more about ethnic Egyptians, about their lives and their culture and how they influenced history, not ahistorical trash that causes more trouble than its worth and certainly isn't doing anything new or interesting with the subject.

I was curious about your thoughts on the WGA Strike. Not how it’ll affect shows but the chances of the writers succeeding on getting the studios to budge on their ridiculous demands.

ooooooooooof tough question I don't think anyone has a real authoritative answer on, but here's what I see:

Right now we're at the end of Prime TV, with all networks drastically cutting back both time slots and general scripted orders in the remaining slots, leaning into reality and adjacent due to cost to create and basically slowly putting the onus of Choice Genre Pieces on streamers trying to make themselves stand out while balancing their subscription revenue.

I have no good way to say this, but Not All Writers Are Created Equal. Hell, even Sera Gamble punched herself in the dick with the exact convo me and my wife had when she realized her cousin was the former supernatural showrunner. Like. Sera??? Gamble?????? From Supernatural??? okay that's fine nobody remembers her so even her cousin don't, that tracks. ...I say as I drop a package labeled Gamble in the mail. Yeah somehow i stapled my soul to this show I don't have the energy to be surprised at a connection like that anymore.

The WGA is natively going to put its foot down in the name of All Writers, such as trying to prevent the use of AI to replace them. However, there Simply Will Not Be Enough Jobs For All Writers After This, AI agreement or not. The head of Paramount is already flagrantly bluffing about internationals, pre-recorded, sports, reality, et al to bluff for investors minding the season. For at least the next month or so expect everything to stay in stasis with nobody moving an inch. Don't expect to hear ANYTHING sounding like even the START of negotiations until end of month/start of June. By then all these networks and studios will have done their press breakfasts and upfronts and whatever else and will start quietly bending once they've sold advertisers on it.

Both sides will probably have to concede something eventually. During S3 we had a writer's strike around the digital conversion mandate and THAT marketing crash, but streaming wasn't as wide yet, AI wasn't as advanced, and so on. The writers actually had true leverage in that situation. But right now, The Rules Are Chaos, it is the art of roll the dice, Fuck Around And Find Out What Is Replaceable Right Now.

i ought to write about this at length, but my awful high school never made us read any classical novels with any mind for analysis. I remember reading excerpts of a Merchant of Venice at 14, a modern translation of Hamlet at 17, Of Mice and Men at 16... Catcher in the Rye at 13 and the Outsiders at maybe 12? The other books we read were, in no particular order, the boy in the striped pajamas, the notoriously fabricated Go Ask Alice, Divergent, the Maze Runner, the Hunger Games, the Breadwinner (which they were teaching to a grade 8 class after I had already read it for school in SIXTH GRADE)... In each and every case, these books, especially the classics, were not given any historical context, to the point where I don't think that the English teachers were very sure what exactly was so special about something as simple as the Outsiders or Catcher in the Rye, leaving us high and dry, unable to make connections and just eating up YA slop.

All this to say, I honestly think that people who grew up being forced to read classical literature to not know how good they've had it, how much I wish I had grown up in an environment where someone had the nerve to ask "why are the curtains blue?" And yes, absolutely I could have picked up Brave New World or 1984 when I was 16 and enjoyed it, but I think discussing literature in guided groups is a net positive for someone's development, definitely more than.... writing chapter summaries of what Beatrice or Katniss did in whatever book on a Q-card. I remember my grade 11 teacher would come in and put on the divergent movie for 2 weeks straight. Obviously there is an onus on me to have done more for myself, and im making up for it in spades now, but it doesn't change the fact that I find myself jealous of the learning environments other people had access to, even if it was garbage. Fuck the callouts, I would have had winston smith kin drama if I read that book in high school.

It makes me feel extremely juvenile to love books like BNW and 1984 so much because kids are essentially already "over it" but so many times it feels like having these books prescribed to you as a young person is maybe not a privilege but such a stark difference from the complete ignorance i grew up in. No one encouraged you to read classic literature. no one encouraged you to read, period. i am envious of people who were permitted an environment with which they had some freedom to exercise their critical thinking skills in some capacity.

Has no one else ever gone to a shitty high school where they don't care about literature or history or like anything that makes life worth living? It's so dry and isolating and awful.

There's also the idea that maybe i wouldn't have understood the basics of these books to begin with if i had read them in high school bc i had no context and I was pretty stupid, or at least not confident in my takes. so i guess in that respect i should be glad i had the opportunity to read these books now that im older. But i remain, i'm jealous of the formative experiences lost. I'll just be on Aldous's dick as a 30 yr old.

Shiv and Gerri and Generational Takes on Misogyny

I wrote up a comment on Reddit and was pretty proud of it, so I thought I'd share it here as well. Partially under the cut to protect your dash from length!

It's interesting to watch both Shiv and Gerri deal with corporate misogyny because, although they come at it from different generational perspectives, their sense of other women vs themselves is very similar. Gerri came up in an era where female sexuality wasn't as widely acknowledged or discussed, particularly in corporate. Being "one of the boys" in the office was encouraged. It's reflected a lot in her clothing, which, even when colorful, is very conservative and neat (hair styled, no bare legs or arms). Gerri avoids "mess" altogether and, when we meet her, has managed to erase almost all traces of sex and sexuality from her office persona. It's telling that they were easily able to switch her character from a man to a woman.

Shiv, on the other hand, has come up in a time when weaponized femininity has been applied to office environments, and women have been encouraged to be more feminine and flirtatious in presentation. There's this idea that a smart woman can wield her sexuality to her advantage at her job without the "mess" backfiring on her, and we see that with Shiv and Nate. We see it less at WR because Shiv is trying to play daddy's little girl, but even so, if you compare what Shiv and Gerri wear in that confrontation at the end of 3x08, it's like night and day. Shiv consciously participates where Gerri tries not to tread at all.

At the end of the day, though, both attitudes are similar in that they put the onus on the woman to avoid sexual harassment from men. In a way, Shiv makes it harder for herself because she actually participates in the game thinking that she can win when she can't. Gerri doesn't participate, however, in not participating I think she managed to delude herself into thinking that she wasn't even in the game, which wasn't true (thanks, Roman). Because this is a truth about rape culture (US culture) - women have no say in whether they're in the game or not, and participating or not participating doesn't guarantee safety. Women, no matter their prestige or degrees, are still objects to be used and then discarded sexually, and no matter if they participate or don't, they are always blamed for whatever befalls them because of a man's attention (even an impotent man, like Roman).

It kills me so much that one dick pic annihilated 30 years of succesful legal counsel. In 30 seconds Gerri went from being the most loyal to a bag of piss. And Shiv was an accomplice because she isn't able to see the similarities in their positions yet (ironically, since I think you can see a little of Gerri's influence in her). Much like the women on the cruises (who flaunted their sexuality in front of men) were "those women" to Gerri, poor old un-hip fuddy-duddy Gerri (who is unable to weaponize her sexuality properly) is one of "those women" for Shiv. And as for Shiv...I wonder whether she'll end up being one of "those women" for Jess (or a Gil intern).

Additionally, I'm curious about whether there's something similar going on with Willa and Marcia (different generations of women seeing their role differently). Idk, I've got more to say on this topic but that may be a different meta for a different day.

Hello, I am a straight male and I saw that in your bio that you are a lesbian and that you are open to asks so I wanted to ask you this question.

As a lesbian, What are some things that straight males can do to make sure that you don't feel uncomfortable. I like having conversations with many different people, but I don't want to make the other person feel tense if I can help it.

hi! i know you're asking this in good faith, and i really appreciate the thoughtfulness that's going into it! so i'm going to tell you straight up — a good place to start is by not asking questions like this.

i can't speak for all lesbians, of course, but as a group, we already feel othered on a daily basis, by both society at large and within the LGBTQ community itself. as good as the intention may be, trying to single out what might make a lesbian uncomfortable in an interaction actually toes the line of further othering lesbians, because a question like that puts the onus on the lesbian to have to explain themselves and their existence, which is something people from any marginalized group are forced to do constantly — and honestly, it just gets exhausting when it piles up.

lesbians are people, and just want to be treated like people — with respect, etc. literally, just... don't be a dick, and you're fine.

that being said, as for me, personally, if you have any questions about experiences as a lesbian from my own perspective (barring anything too invasive, of course), i'm happy to answer them! i definitely just don't want to speak for all lesbians, and i wanted to caution you against that kind of question, since it can add to the burdens that members of marginalized groups have to face just to get through the day 💙

The idea that relationships in fiction have to portrayed as “good and moral” is so absurd. I don’t think Dick and Barbara are toxic, but I do think that they are a match that I don’t care too much about reading. Their relationship conflicts are less interesting than other conflicts between other relationships and their confessions for one another are just bland. Because this is comics and characters are not making their own choices, it is up to writers to be the ones who are making creative decisions and when it comes to these two you can tell the well is dry. I’ve come to be more open about the Jason and Barbara pairing, but not really as a last resort pairing or “well I guess if she has to date someone then make it Jason” way. I would be open to seeing them having a relationship where they can love each other enough while bearing witness to what the other has become. Both these character being prickly and honest with each other but also not feeling as judged because they both make messed up decisions. But DC fandoms and especially Batfamily fandoms are so against change that it is no wonder that there continues to be so much racism and other problems that DC continues to have when so many writers and fans are still clinging to writing and dynamics that no longer exist or are outdated.

I AM SO SORRY I AM JUST NOW SEEING THIS! Please forgive ♥♥ If you want to come off anon so I can apologise properly you can xD

I do agree that relationships in fiction don't have to always be portrayed as "good and moral," however you don't put oil and water together and call it a match. If a relationship is supposed to be good and moral, it should be portrayed as such. If a relationship is supposed to be a rollercoaster with negative energy, it should be portrayed as such. You don't portray a good and moral relationship as one that is a rollercoaster with negative energy and vice versa. For me, this part is about context.

I don't read their content because I am not fond of them, but lately I do find myself speaking up more about it largely because it's the current plot in Nightwing and it keeps popping up. I dont think there is really anything else worth talking about with Nightwing right now. And I do blame TT for that because he specifically forced a Batgirl and Nightwing run on us lol. The well is dry AF for Nightwing in general. Imma need him to get some new and interesting content ASAP.

I love how you interpret Jason and Babs. I understand Nightwing and Red Hood fans are destined to be at war for all eternity, but we do need to start putting more respect on Jason's name. lol he is not taking Dick's sloppy seconds nor he is a last resort. He has just as much right as Dick to date around. If a genuine connection happens with Jason, what is the issue with that? Don't we want Dick, Babs, Jason, Bruce, ect ect to be happy? If Jason and Babs are happy, why ruin it? And before someone says 'Dick and Babs are happy," yes Dick and Babs are happy. But the difference is that there are more times Dick and Babs were not happy together vs times that they were. And Dick and Babs were both perfectly happy with other people before being torn apart from them and pushed together. The difference is that Jason and Babs don't have that history. Writers literally have a clean slate with Jason Babs as a couple to work with.

I think fans are more open to change than most realise. I think it just depends on how the type of change is and how it's implemented. I think the onus here is more on the writers refusing to live outside their nostalgia and forcing everyone to relive their favorite periods over and over again. Tom Taylor really had a chance to do something unique and different with Dick, but what does he do? He did the same thing that Dixon, Grayson and Seeley did with Dick. DC is going downhill fast and the only thing that will save it is likely a hard reboot with A LOT of new original content.

And lastly, Dick should be with someone outside the Batfam not in it. Same for Babs and Jason.

I see a lot of dialogue about how to live with people who are assholes or jerks in some way, and the call to action is always something like "we as a society need to learn to deal with people who make us angry." Which is true! That's an important skill to learn.

And maybe it's because of who these discussions are addressing (i.e. people who aren't assholes), but when we talk about learning conflict resolution and dealing with people who are a pain in the ass, I always see the onus of responsibility on the ones dealing with those people. It's always "learn to get along," in the context of "people are going to be a jerk to you and you need to get along with them anyways." It's never "learn to not be a fucking asshole."

Like I've noticed this is a greater societal pattern, even in things like childcare. We always expect the people who aren't the aggressors to be the bigger person and resolve it. How many times were you, as a child, expected to treat another child fairly when they were treating you unfairly, and the adults in the situation never did anything to make the other kid do the same? And like, yeah, that definitely is a really good ability to have and sometimes you have no other choice but to use it!

But also we never really encourage the person who's being a jerk to learn how not to be a jerk. We never punish the assholes (and by punish, what I mean here is enforcing social pressures, like not giving assholes what they want when they're being belligerent). And if the person on the other end of someone's assholery responds in a way that isn't ideal, like they snap back or behave rashly, then we kind of tend to condemn that person rather than the one who put them in that situation in the first place.

Maybe it's because when someone behaves like that, we figure they're too much of a goner to want to change how they treat others, or at the very least they're not going to listen to us at this moment. And that's certainly true sometimes. But I really think there isn't enough societal pressure to just like, not be a fucking dick. There's not enough resources out there about how to be a nicer, better person. We don't try to teach the bullies how to treat other people better, we punish their victims for fighting back instead.

I dunno, it's just a greater pattern I've noticed since I was a kid, and it's kind of applicable to nearly every social situation. It's always "learn to deal with them" rather than "let's teach people to be more patient, more compassionate, and kinder."

...Well. Saw a post, JZX defence blog mode activated.

Like... JZX was not being awful to JYL, what? There's no evidence to suggest he ever even really talked to her, or that she talked to him! There's no history of him being cruel that led to JFM breaking off the engagement, JFM broke off the engagement because he realized just how much JZX didn't want to marry her and sympathized with someone who was in the same position he was in as a young man when he was forced to marry YZY. JYL isn't the victim here! She is happy to watch passively as a man who wants nothing to do with her is forced to marry her because she's decided she's in love with him despite not actually knowing him! Seriously, if their genders were swapped no one would think JZX is the bad guy here! Comparing the situation to her parents, JYL isn't JFM; she's (a more passive) YZY, happy to force the man she "loves" to marry her even if he has less than no desire to do so.

Like... yes. JZX says JYL has nothing going for her as a wife. But a) that's common knowledge and b) he only says that because WWX and JC are trying to force him to lie and pretend to be super happy about the forced marriage he's found himself part of! People really do forget that he initially just says the "who's the prettiest girl" discussion is childish and refuses to take part on those grounds; it's JC and WWX who force him to comment on JYL. His initial comment passed no judgment on JYL either way, he was simply playing the sect heir too mature for such childish nonsense! Oh, how evil, he wouldn't lie through his teeth and claim the woman who canonically has pretty much nothing going for her except for being Vaguely Nice is the best fiancee ever. And he does call her out for "stealing credit", but like... he had no reason to believe that it really was her soup based on just her word...? Frankly it says a lot about the amount of effort she's put into getting to know him (and yes, the onus is on her to make friends and not him, because again he wants nothing to do with her and so it would be bullshit to expect him to put in the effort once he's no longer being forced to marry her against his will) that his immediate thought is "No, she's lying and stealing credit from this lower class woman because she's sure that no one will call her on it". This is JZX being... a bit of an idiot who should've looked harder, yes, but also showing how he's different from most of his generation because he doesn't immediately take JYL's side over the servant's with no evidence beyond their respective word! He doesn't take the noblewoman's word as more valuable than the servant's, and while he cocks it up a bit... this is JZX being a good person.

And those are the only two incidents we know of where JZX even comes close to being a dick to JYL. One of them wasn't his fault (come on, we can't expect a fifteen, sixteen year old to fake being over the moon about the marriage he's being forced into; at that age I'm impressed he tried to avoid discussing it instead of complaining about her right away!), and the other was a genuine mistake! Like, can people please stop acting like JZX not pretending to be happy about the marriage he was being forced into with a woman who didn't know him but was obsessed with him makes him a bad person?

I'm not even a Sylki shipper but antis really be reaching with the "It's incest."

It's selfcest, first of all. I ship Lokius as fuck and I will die on that sweet sweet Lokius hill, but the entire onus behind Sylki is literally "Yo dude would you fuck your clone? Or like, you from an alternate universe?" Literally the lukewarmest take.

Second, ship and let ship, come on now. Don't try and moralize to me about our fictional bitches from your soap box. It's a TV show and liking a ship isn't advocating for the demoralization of society at large, it's two fictional dicks kissing.

And lastly, literally Loki Fandom has been shipping Loki with Loki since Thor (2011). You really be out here doing the Alt Rights work for them and bringing purity culture wherever you go. Sad.

Beauyasha Week Day Four: Soulmate AU

"What's with your compass?"

Yasha paused and glanced at Mollymauk behind her, frowning. He laughed and reached towards her, taking her hand and moving it up for her to see. She had only known him for a week or so but she had quickly (and surprisingly) gotten used to how tactile he was. On the back of her hand was a familiar sight, a gray compass which supposedly pointed towards her soulmate. Only one half of the soulmate pair had the compass, putting the onus on Yasha to find and approach her, which she didn't intend to do. It had never meant much to Yasha. Her tribe mostly ignored them. They were so insulated that most people never met their soulmate and so people got married to whoever the leaders of the tribe assigned them. Well, except for Yasha, but that was a different story.

Molly had different reasons for not caring about his, a gray compass on his sternum. He mostly made a joke of them, pointing out when they moved and sarcastically wondering what their soulmates were up to.

Yasha's now was moving erratically, pointing to the left. She frowned and twisted her hand this way and that. She had never seen it move this much.

"Oh," she muttered.

Molly snickered. "She must be close by. Let's see if we can find her."

Yasha sighed. "Molly…"

He held up his hands placatingly. "I'm just curious about it, is all. You don't even gotta talk to her." When she still hesitated, he grinned and started gently leading her in the direction her compass was pointing. "You're not even a little curious about the person that the universe thinks is your perfect partner?"

She was actually. Just a little curious. Her love with Zuala was just as real as any soulmate could be and she wouldn't trade what they'd had for anything but part of her had always been curious. She sighed and allowed Molly to lead her forward with a hand on the small of her back. "Just… Just a short look. Then we meet back up with the circus."

He laughed gleefully. "Wonderful! I think she's just around this block."

The streets of Zadash were empty this time of night, save for them and the other degenerates. They passed a drunken man serenading a dark window, begging to be let inside and promising "She meant nothing to me" in a mournful wail, but otherwise the city was theirs.

They rounded the corner, following the insistent twitching of the compass, until they came upon what seemed to be a library. It was a looming four story building made of dark brick, shaped like an 'H' with a manicured courtyard and locked gate in the front.

Molly frowned and took Yasha’s hand again. "It's pointing inside. Shame." He stood on his tip toes and tried to pull himself up to look in the window but there was no movement beyond the glass. "How disappointing. Oh well. Shall we head back?"

Yasha didn't move right away. She tried to see more through the dark window and looked down at her hand, pointing directly ahead. Why did she feel… sad? She didn't even really want to meet this person and yet…

Her compass started spinning. She blinked and waited for it to stop but it kept spinning faster as if her soulmate were everywhere at once.

"Uhh…" she muttered, and Molly followed her glance, barking a laugh as he watched it go. 

"Dearest, I think your soulmate is broken."

Yasha watched it for just a moment longer, then she glanced upwards just in time to see a body step out of the third floor window directly above her and start hurtling down towards her head.

Instinctively, she held out her arms and the person landed easily in her embrace. She held her bridal style as she tried to understand what the fuck had just happened.

"Oh, fuck!" the woman exclaimed, reaching up to brush her long, dark hair out of her face. Yasha was… bewildered. She was beautiful in a way that Yasha didn't have the words for, soft features but a hard look in her eyes. She was dressed in an all black monk's robe but she was barefoot. "Shit, sorry. I didn't see you there." She was younger than Yasha, probably very early twenties.

"Beauregard!" someone exclaimed and both Yasha and the young woman glanced up at the man leaning out of the window. "Get back here at once!"

The woman laughed and threw herself out of Yasha's arms, landing like a cat on her feet. She took off running down the street, throwing a middle finger up over her shoulder. "Eat dicks, Zeenoth!"

Yasha watched her disappear into the night, blocking out the yelling and pleading of the man in the window, then looked down at the compass on her hand.

It was pointing directly at the young woman's retreating back. 

Molly rested his cheek on her arm and took her by the wrist, looking at the compass and then at the shape vanishing into the darkness. 

"Hmm," he hummed thoughtfully, sounding far too amused. "She's perfect for you. You're screwed." He just cackled at the scathing look she gave him and started leading her back towards the tent.