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howtofightwrite · 7 months

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Was reading through your torture tag and noticed a lot of stuff that was being said seemed to contradict things that were said on the scripttorture blog... do you have any suggestions on how to clear things up? Im not sure which things to trust

And you're asking us, because they've posted once in the last two years?

I'll admit, I have a fairly low opinion of them, and that's not directly their fault. For years, one of their fans, would regularly send some pretty incendiary asks our way. In fact, some of the less hostile ones were answered, and may be the posts you were looking at. Understandably, the ones simply accusing us of being torture apologists, demanding we redirect all our asks to their blog, or insisted that we should sit down and shut up, did not make the cut. With that in mind, please understand, I'm not going to go digging through their blog to refresh my memory, so some of this might be slightly skewed by the aforementioned deranged fan.

Look for the blog that does not constantly contradict or misrepresent their authoritative sources. Which is to say, if you actually pay attention to Shane O'Mara's work, it's basically what we've been saying all along.

If you're unfamiliar, O'Mara is a Neurologist who was (last I time I checked) working at Trinity College Dublin. He published a, frankly fascinating piece, called, Why Torture Doesn't Work, in which, he set about trying to answer why torture is an ineffective tool for intelligence gathering. O'Mara also had the misfortune of being the only expert who said anything close to the perspective Scripttorture wanted on torture.

An open secret about torture is that it is completely worthless for getting accurate information. This has been widely understood for centuries, if not millennia. O'Mara's question was, “why?”

It turns out, that the neurochemical trauma associated with torture, seriously interferes with your ability to accurately access information. For example: If you're being tortured, you can't tell your torturer where you planted the ticking bomb, because your brain literally can't access those memories.

Torture is evil. Yeah. No shit.

And, this is where ScriptTorture stops. “Torture is bad,” and Jack Bauer is an incredibly unrealistic fantasy, end of story.

Except, this is not the end of this.

Now, generally speaking, I don't blame anyone who wants to get off the ride here. Torture is an unpleasant subject, and wanting to stop at, “oh, it's evil,” is entirely reasonable... unless you want to write on the subject, or if you do political analysis and need to understand why people break out the torture implements.

More than that, this is where my academic background in political science actually comes into play. I'm not saying this as an Eagle Scout who had a couple overly enthusiastic hand to hand instructors when I was a kid. This is (part of) what I studied in college, and I have kept an eye on it since then.

If torture didn't work, you wouldn't see state-sponsored torture pop up repeatedly throughout history. It would not be one of the favorite tools of dictators and despots. However, because it does, and it is, simply saying, “it doesn't work,” isn't instructive or meaningful because it's clearly untrue. Someone is finding value in this, so it becomes important to understand what they are doing, and why they are doing it.

When you torture someone, the information they provide is basically madlibs of whatever leaked through their brain. They want the pain and stress to stop, and they'll say anything they can to make that happen. That often takes the form of what they think their torturer wants to hear. O'Mara's research does explain why they don't simply cough up the truth.

So, why do it?

Torture is a very labor intensive process. You (as an individual) can't, realistically, torture multiple victims at a time, and it is a very drawn out process. Some elements can be automated, your torturer doesn't need to be present at every moment, but they're going to spend hours, if not days, working on one victim. Worse, this is actually a technical profession. It's not like you can just pull in anyone off the street and get the results you want. (Though, technically, this doesn't seem to be as true, however, amateurs do have a shocking capacity to screw up torture. So, the point remains valid.)

The value of torture has almost nothing to do with the victim. It's about the message it sends to everyone else.

Torture is about mass coercion of the population. When you are the state (meaning, the government), and you torture someone, you are telling your citizens that you are willing to do the same to them, if they oppose you.

State-sponsored torture is specifically a tool to suppress political engagement. It is, quite literally, state-sponsored, domestic terrorism.

This even holds true in cases where the state employs torture to extract confessions from criminal suspects. The message sent into the general population is that dissent of any kind will not be tolerated, and that the state has the willingness and power to turn these tools on you if you draw their ire.

I get that this is outside of ScriptTorture's area of expertise, and in fairness, I probably would not have studied this with any intensity, if I hadn't taken multiple classes on revolutionary theory.

Torture from private organizations (which is to say, organized crime, and religious institutions, though cults and some other groups might fit this description as well), follows roughly similar patterns. These tend to do the same things, discouraging dissent, and establishing the organization as having power over the population (or community.) (The technical term would be to “establish capacity.” Which is to say, the organization's capacity to enforce its will. The same term applies to states, though in those cases, the state's capacity is often overestimated by its population. It's only when it starts to falter, for example through military defeats or serious civil unrest, that they really need the capacity boosting part of this equation.)

Zealotry or stupidity can create situations where you have a torturer (or, more likely, someone in a position of power ordering the torture) who believes that it is effectively compelling the truth from the victim. This (or amateurs) can easily lead into a distinct problem, which is that all of this has diminishing returns. Torture one person, and you send a loud, clear message. Torture ten, and all you've added to it is that you're willing to keep going. However, as you start stacking up the victims, you do start sending a new message to your enemies, that being, you're going to get to them sooner or later so it's in their best interest to respond now, mobilize and retaliate proactively, before you get to them. This means that a state which leans heavily on torture can easily instigate the civil unrest that exposes their limited capacity leading to a political death spiral. Alternately, if the state does have the capacity to put down the resulting unrest, it further reinforces their position (which does happen with depressing frequency in the real world.)

You're also going to create new enemies in the friends, family, and loved ones, of the people you tortured. This means that any organization that relies on extensive use of torture will, eventually, start tying a noose around its own neck. (Granted, there are a lot of social dynamics that I'm skimming over here, so it's not exactly as simple as “if the state tortures lots of people, it will result in increasing unrest.”)

If you want a partial citation for the above, you can (ironically) find it in a podcast interview with Shane O'Mara, when he explained why torture has been employed repeatedly through history. (Specifically I think it was episode 15 of Your Welcome, by Michael Malice. Though, I'm not 100% sure off hand.) Though that doesn't cover some of the more in depth elements I just discussed. Some of this is coming from a textbook on revolutionary theory I can't locate (it disappeared in a move a few years back.) Though that was more interested in the general structure of a state destabilizing into internecine conflict. Ironically, my preferred citation on torture, Fear up Harsh by Tony Lagouranis is mostly uninformative in this case, because his experiences were on the ground, rather than from a structural understanding of what his job was really doing. However, he does illustrate my comment about amateurs making even more of a mess, both through personal experiences with a few, and also through the eventual trajectory of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

But of course, torture is evil... again, no shit. Was that really a question? And, I'm apparently a torture apologist for having a structural understanding of why evil people do evil things. Cool. Evil people don't do evil things because they're evil, they do them because they gain some tangible benefit from those acts, and they do not care about the consequences to anyone else. If you ask someone, “why do people do this?” and their answer is, “it's simple; they're evil,” that person is lying. They may be lying to themselves, but they are lying to you.

Why do people use torture? It's a lot more complicated, and unpleasant, than you'd expect at a simple overview.

-Starke

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#writing reference #writing advice #writing tips #starke answers #torture

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jahiera · 9 months

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How To Know If Your Evil Vampire Boygirlfriend Really Likes You (a meta on Astarion's manipulations of Tav deeper into the romance.)

Okay, this was supposed to be a response to this ask right here, and it got so long I decided to just put it in its own thing for slightly easier reading. Thank you again to the asker for giving me an excuse to go off the rails talking about THE BOY. This also got long enough that it needs. Subheadings. And it is [checks notes] 3.6k words long. If you're interested in skipping the act 2 Scene Breakdown and going straight for the character analysis of Act 3 specifically, you can jump to the uhhh 3. Yeah He's Manipulative (Trauma Edition) subheading.

Prefacing that this is just my personal interpretation of Astarion here, the game leaves several moments ambiguous on purpose & I'd be super intrigued to hear what anyone else thinks is going on in this rancid little lad's head. This became more of a process of breaking down what I think he's doing in each scene than anything else, so I hope it's interesting to... you? reader? Since it's a bit long-winded and a lot of speculation and interpretation on my part for his wild ass behavior.

(Also, I haven't played far enough with an ascended Astarion to properly break down the differences between both--he'll have his own playthrough for sure but since I haven't gone far enough in that path, all of this is with no-ritual Astarion in mind) (I also don't have screenshots for everything but hopefully that's alright. just trust me bro.)

Fair warning, I didn't proof-read this & I moved paragraphs around so if it sounds incoherent that's a feature not a bug. Now. Let's get into the EVIDENCE.

1. but did he mean the kisses????

So, before the hug scene, the game leaves us a bit of room to interpret the progression of the relationship. I kind of wish we had one extra scene to sort of solidify his growing feelings in the in-between period of his "I'm just sleeping with you to secure my safety here," era (pre-confession as we'll call it) and his "oh shit I actually kind of care about you," era (post-confession, pre-ritual), but I understand why it wasn't included. Game mechanics & cost aside, the space between these two periods is left entirely up to player interpretation, & has lots of room for HC up to each individual player & Tav.

To address the easiest examples the asker gave, the repeatable kiss dialogues are all ones I'm going to mark under "sincere." Mostly because those are all post-confession, and after Astarion has acknowledged to himself (& the player) that he doesn't want to do anything sexual, but presumably kissing is fine (given that he's enthusiastic about the kisses & will shut down sex/intimacy acts otherwise.)

There's not really a logic to him being slinky here, and I didn't interpret any of his post-kiss repeated dialogues as insincere, much more so playful or coy or cheeky. The voice acting is subtle here, but I found it to be much more playful than his annoying little, for lack of a better word, purring "hello, beautiful" etc etc in act 1 / early act 2. Also, all these dialogues stay the same after the ritual happens, and your romance has been solidified in the grave scene, where he wholly says:

"I feel safe with you. Seen. And whatever the future holds for me, I don't want to lose that."

^ Not a lie. So I think we can mark off those particular dialogue as sincere.

In act 2, there aren't really a lot of places for Astarion to actually get into his manipulative tendencies. He overtly needs your aid with Yurgir (Repeat after me: thank you for helping me. It was very kind.) so he doesn't really manipulate you at... all...? in my opinion? Act 2 shows you his most sincere moment yet in the confession/hug scene. He is not lying. He is more honest in those moments than he has been in the entire game, and it shows in his wording, his body language. He's uncertain of himself, maybe. He doesn't know what to make of the situation yet. He says as much to Tav when you ask him "What are we?" and he says:

"I don't know. But isn't it nice? Not to know. You're not a victim. Not a target. Not just one night it's better to forget. But then... whatever in the world could you be?"

He has no reason to say that without sincerity. He could say you're his specialest babygirl if he wanted to keep up the lie. And other than helping him with Raphael, there's really not a moment where Astarion has an opportunity to manipulate you....

EXCEPT.

EXCEPT. For this moment in particular. which is one of my FAVORITE Astarion ones because it is gloriously bitchy.

2. what if we took over a cult, babe.

Context first: I played a paladin of devotion, rough around the edges but fairly good-aligned Tav. She was a bit of a jerk but she saved people for free, and I adhered to her dialogue roleplay hard, choosing the "destroy the Absolute" dialogues at every turn. I don't have a save for this scene sadly otherwise I'd replay it and compare/contrast answers like a pepe silvia meme, so I'm only able to break this scene down from that particular lens.

Secondary context: This scene is important because it highlights Astarion's manipulative routine while still with a Tav he's very fond of (exceptional approval in this scene) and the way he lays it out is necessary to understand the moments later where he tries to manipulate Tav again, since it has components of the same themes, ideas, and tendencies that go on.

So, Astarion will hit you with this hot take early-ish on.

"You know. I feel a connection between us. Like we're two souls walking the same path (...)" Astarion establishes emotional connection, and a foundation of similarity/commonality/shareed interest. This is pretty standard fare for him. He does the same thing a lot early in act one, where he's almost CONSTANTLY asking you to "trust him," (when you really should not.)

"You might be a little naive in the ways of the world, but I see promise in you. Ambition." - He kind of snidely reveals what he actually thinks--you're a bit naive, you "have a big heart,"--he's hoping that his emotional cloying and little comment and connection with Tav will be enough to sway them over to what he wants to do, and they'll give him what he wants because We're So Similar, See?

"So I was thinking, what would be the right thing do when we get to Moonrise Towers?" - He wields his language carefully. The right thing to do. That's a language he thinks Tav speaks. An interest in doing the Right Thing; so, he adjusts accordingly. He wants to do the right thing too, you see, and the right thing conveniently lines up with what he actually wants, which is real power. Astarion confesses he's not a details guy, yada yada, then--

"If we can take that control from them, imagine the power we'd wield." <- He lets slip what he's actually interested in. Astarion generally can't keep a charade up for too long. His real thoughts always come through, and he reveals his hand in conversations often, but usually in offhanded ways and, well--he's never made a secret really of where his actual interests lie. His attempts at currying your favor and persuading you (and you can really feel the persuasion here) are prettyyyyy overt, but still, he's trying anyways.

"I'm just saying there's an opportunity here. If we can control the tadpoles, we can keep ourselves safe and liberate the world from this evil." <- He brings the conversation back around to what's more neutral than Absolute Power -- keeping ourselves safe. He uses the We and Us language a lot when he wants to convince other people of anything, really. "We're all such good, trusting friends!" he'll say, lying through his FUCKING teeth. His manipulations here are like.... pretty clear, but he still gets an A for effort for trying to align himself with Tav & Tav's perceived goals & see if he can wriggle in his own in the process, put "become god-cult-leader" up as a Reasonable and Rational thing to Want to achieve.

The actual question here: does he care about Tav at this point? Up for interpretation, but I'm going to say yes with... the caveat that I don't think he's fully acknowledged it to himself, and I don't think it's love here. It is high approval though. I do think he cares about Tav, I do think he's including Tav in longer-term goals, he's depending on Tav at this point as an ally he can count on, and he's starting to get chipped away at.

I don't even really think it's a lie that he on some level would like to see Tav safe, and takes their wellbeing into account. He's been with them long enough to worry over their safety to some extent, and to at least partially lump it in with his own (in my opinion). Is that love? I don't think so. "We can finally be safe," is a reoccurring theme in the other scene I'm going to break down in just a second. And it's interesting for a lot of reasons.

And furthermore: you can care about someone and still be manipulative toward them. That's a core thing going on here, I think, with Astarion.

3. Yeah He's Manipulative (Trauma Edition).

"Is Astarion Manipulating Me In Act 3? " YES. A little bit. And here's why it's INTERESTING.

So, the confession scene in act two has already happened. Astarion has confessed some of his big mushy feelings to you. He likes you. You've slammed the "can I kiss you?" dialogue 100 times already because you're really super normal about the vampire twink. He doesn't know what to make of his caring about Tav yet. See: his "what are we??" dialogue.

MOVING ON. Astarion is also, a manipulative little shit, and he will NOT change his ways just because he likes you a lot and giggles when you give him a little kissy kiss.

Astarion is deeply, deeply traumatized, and his trauma has in his own words makes him act out the same cycles of behavior that he did prior to escaping Cazador. In its most obvious format, one of those behaviors was seducing Tav because that was the kind of behavior he knew, and it was the only thing he could think of to secure his own safety. By act 2, he's somewhat aware of the cycle, but--

Traumatic behaviors, like anything relating to surviving abuse & getting out of it, come and go in waves. You'll likely not find a survivor of abuse who doesn't revert back to coping mechanisms at times, especially in moments or episodes of heightened stress, or being put back into the old environment again. ->

Astarion going back to Baldur's Gate--and specifically with killing cazador in mind--is him going back to that same place where traumatic events occurred... almost constantly. Thus, he goes back to his old behaviors. Not to the exact same level, but it is there.

Safety. THIS is a word that comes back a lot with Astarion, it is one of his most reoccurring (if not the most) themes. He wants to feel safe. He associates power with safety, because the safest person in the world--as in, literally safe, not "safe for other people"--in his mind, is Cazador, who is powerful enough to repel any threats to himself & what he owns, has, possesses, and keeps.

Astarion is still, at his core, no matter what, self-serving. He will do what's best for himself first and foremost in almost every circumstance you put him in. Or at least, he will want to--if Tav or someone else stands in his way, and he sticks it out, it'll be begrudgingly. That's a fundamental aspect of his character & to try and do away with it makes no sense.

And in case it got lost, I'll reiterate that I do think Astarion's actual feelings for Tav at this stage are entirely genuine, & deeply felt. It shows, and it's obvious. He's just got several layers of behavior going on in the process.

"But I thought astarion liked me??? why would he consciously choose to manipulate me??" The thing is, once again, you can like someone and still try to manipulate them, pull on their heartstrings, or quite frankly guilt trip them into helping you kill like, a lot of fucking people so you can become godlord supreme emperor of mortals and vampire kind.

Let's get into the second scene I want to break down. Keeping all of what we've established above about how Astarion goes about establishing connection & togetherness & the idea of shared safety to sway Tav over to his side.

So let's set up one thing for sure. It's pretty obvious, everyone gets this scene, but let's set it up anyways.

"What's a handful of the wretch's servants? IF they're anything like me when I was enslaved, they'll all be begging for death anyways." <- apathy toward others, generally motivated by self-interest, lack of empathy for others' plights, a callousness that is fairly unrepetant. He's fairly sure this is what he wants, and--

"After two hundred years of pure shit, I think I deserve something better." Again, Astarion tells us exactly what he's thinking. And what he believes. And he's not wrong! He does deserve something better than what he had before. Or, at least, he doesn't deserve the level of cruelty he endured at Cazador's hands. However.

And then he follows it up with, "I know you do [care]. It matters to me too. I want to be able to protect you too." <- finally, we come back around to the reoccurring theme he'll use to sway Tav over to his side. He sees the soft point of Tav in the conversation--they care about him--and he needles that in; they care about him, he cares about them, they should help him complete the ritual for it, it's what's best for everyone. Except for the 7000 spawn, but. You know.

NEXT IMPORTANT SCENE. let's take a look at the scene that follows after you confront his fellow vampire spawn in the tavern.

I'm keeping the full screencap so I can keep his shifty little look in here. It's not the best format, I wish I'd kept videos, the body language & voice acting adds a lot to this moment, but. Neil you're so good at balancing Astarion's careful shiftiness, his gleeful/vindictive revelry at being so close to his end goal & confronting his siblings without flinching, his coy little pleading, and his near desperate watchfulness. He needs Tav. He cares about Tav, yes, but he needs Tav to help him.

Astarion is, again, fairly callous about the deaths of his brethren. You have to remind him time & again to maybe empathize with their suffering & similarity to him. But each time he reverts back to, "their lives" serving a greater purpose.

Astarion then follows that up with "But we're a team. If I become all powerful, then we become all-powerful." <- I think he genuinely does think of himself & Tav as a team, and as a good one at that. More than anything, Tav is the first person Astarion, in his own words, feels he truly cares for. They've killed a few gods chosens together, Tav has given him respect, patience, care. He feels fairly assured of their presence & kindness at this point. And assurance tends to breed............. let's call it, taking for granted?

I believe he's trying to again emotionally bid for their help & loyalty as much as gauge if they're still with him, as he does by going -> "We are a team after all. You're still with me?" Once again, the easiest way to secure aid is through emotional connections; someone's attraction to you, or better yet, their care for your well-being, are easy strings to pull on to try and entice someone to do what you want them to do. It's not necessarily maliciously intended, but it is a kind of manipulation.

"But Astarion just genuinely wants to know you're on his side!" Yes. And he also really wants you to help him with the ritual. ANY arguments against the idea that he's benignly trying to manipulate Tav's feelings, I'm just gonna put up this screencap right here, one of the last times he bids for Tav's affection & loyalty in this, in this particular conversation:

Look at his stupid pouty face and his "You want what's best for me, surely?" and oh god the voice acting. We're smacked right in the face with Act 1 Astarion's slinky, whiny little "truuuuust me it'll just be a taste I promise <3333" voice. That PURE "I'm trying so hard to connive my way into your good will because I REALLY want this." voice.

His strength is your strength. And he will pleading face emoji his way through getting you over to his side if he needs to. It's honestly so funny, how the writing plays out, because SEVERAL times you can choose to fully fall for it, "yes of course I want whats best for you / want you to be safe / feel good" and every time, he's like "I know I know <333 and I want YOU to feel safe too <3333" and I don't even think that's a lie! I don't think it's a LIE, I just think it's the same pattern of manipulative behavior he's exhibited time and again even when he cares for you.

Astarion is still Astarion. He is very willing to kill, lie, and cheat his way through just about anything to protect himself, & all of that makes PERFECT sense for him. And if you're not on board with his plans, of course he will use every tool at his disposal to get you on board. It is, after all, what's best for both you and him. His power is your power.

4. "I'm doing this for you too." He said, lying. Or genuinely believing that but lying to himself too and executing it in the weirdest way imaginable.

So, this is probably my favorite interaction in the entire Astarion romance. Love the grave scene. Love the horny evil vampire turning. But this moment in particular is fucking brilliant, because it illustrates the dilemma here perfectly.

Astarion outright tells us exactly why he is the way he is, and why he cares for Tav while being able to be so cruel and callous about others. "No one ever looked out for me [...] you're the only one." Tav is exceptional--as in, THE EXCEPTION to the rule--because they cared for him in a way no one else ever has. He has ZERO reason to even bother lifting a finger for anyone else besides himself, because in his mind, none of them ever bothered to help him, why should he bother with them. But TAV. Tav he can make promises too.

On some level, I do kind of believe him when he says things like "I'm doing this for you too." -- As in, I believe that he believes that he's taken Tav into account here as well. I do think he genuinely thinks they'll be an even more magnificent duo of glorious bastards together once he's God Vampire Emperor Of Eternity. And on some level, he's probably right. They do take over the world together in some endings, so. Good for them.

However, do I think he's primarily motivated by anything but himself? No. Tav also benefitting from his mega vampire powers is just a bonus in a laundry list of reasons why Astarion wants to ascend at this point in the game. Why Astarion is willing to pull out every guilt-trippy, pleading face to get Tav to help him, if they show even a hint of reluctance. More than anything: Astarion is a survivor, and a survivor of severe abuse that pretty quickly explain why he is the way he is. Does that excuse what he does in the aftermath of that abuse, when it comes to harming other people? Not really. But it explains it pretty clearly.

Because Astarion is back where he came from, he's immediately thrust back into the cycles of behavior that both traumatized him & were what he had to do. The pattern of behavior, coping mechanisms, rooted in traumatic cycles, that he has done time and time and time again that has successfully gotten him, not what he wants, but what he needs to survive. Does his manipulation of Tav here mean he doesn't care? Not at all. It's just that he needs this work. He needs his allies to help him make it work, and he's willing to pull out every stop to see Cazador dead and himself with enough power to never feel so helpless or vulnerable again.

Astarion can love you & still be himself. He will never stop being a bit bitchy, a bit conniving, extremely focused on self-preservation at all costs. He might not seek out active maliciousness, but even in act 3 after the ritual, he still approves of generally being a sneaky bastard, taking short cuts, taking easy ways out. And none of this is necessarily... a problem? It isn't ""moral"", sure, but it's not really a problem. In some endings, he can pursue ""better"" paths, but his general deceivery and typical behavior aren't going away. Feature, not a bug. How each Tav feels about his ... fairly obvious deep romance manipulations is up to each player though, and that is what's interesting for each playthrough.

There are five more essays to write in here. There's the Astarion after the ritual, who agrees that fine, killing 7000 people is wrong. And there's the Astarion after the ascension, who is now fully entrenched in the idea that Power Is Everything, and all that means for him afterward, and his visceral, intense, obsessive controlling dynamic with Tav where they descend into Chaotic Vampire Evil Marriage. And there's Astarion and Tav together finally, honestly, openly, with the heart-wrenching intimacy of the grave scene. And this is almost 4000 words so I'm shutting the fuck up here.

So. I will end this by saying I'm peeling him like an onion rn I'm obsessed with him. He's gods horrible princess and he's never going to die.

#astarion #bg3 #bg3 meta #the fact that I'm sitting here like 'okay but I'm not even taking into account...'#Astarion.. you vainglorious hilarious evil twink. Why are you so complicated. I'm obsessed with you.#if this flops we don't talk about it okay....#also I'm not sure but if you need a tone disclaimer my jokes/insults/teasing is all complimentary. unfortunately #I love him deeply. and want to put him in a bag of rice and shake him really hard.#bg3 spoilers

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pudding-parade · 8 days

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Sorry, but I have to get political on all your asses, at least those of you who live in the US. It will be a one-time thing on this subject, the only thing that I will say here about the election before it happens. And yeah, I'm going to say this on a blog devoted to a stupid video game. Why? Because I know that I have younger American people who follow me here, and if y'all are like some of the younger people I've talked to in real life and online in other venues, I have concerns. So I'm going to say all this as an old-ass, progressive American. Because if I can wake up one apathetic mind out there, it will be worth it. And if you're pissed at me for making a single political post at this important juncture, then fuck off and unfollow me or send me nasty messages or whatever you want to do. I don't care. And I'm not cutting this, either.

My dear followers: Donald Trump cannot -- CANNOT -- become president again.

Late last night, Trump posted on his Truth Social account a video containing language and images reminiscent of the World War era. It was about his fantasies of what America would be like, should he win the general election in about five months. It contained suspicious imagery and phrases like "creating a unified Reich." Does that sort of language sound familiar? Especially when combined with his rhetoric about immigrants being "vermin" that "poison the blood of our country?" Ring any bells? I'm sure it does for any German folks who might read this.

Trump's post was only taken down about 12 hours later, after backlash over it, and then Trump claimed that a "low level staffer" posted it, not him. Which is either a lie OR he was lying when he said previously that only he and his campaign's communications director have or will ever have access to that account. If you want more info about this, here's a short video from Jesse Dollemore, an independent commentator:

youtube

This election isn't about liberal/progressive vs. conservative. It truly doesn't matter what your personal ideology is because this election is about saving democracy. This is about preserving your freedoms, because we won't be able to do anything about any other issue, whatever our individual ideologies and pet issues are, if our basic freedoms upon which this country was founded -- freedom of speech and to protest, freedom of (and from) religion, freedom of the press -- are chipped away until they are gone. Because that's what autocrats do. They want freedom only for themselves, and Donald Trump and his cronies and hangers-on are all autocrat wannabes.

And if you -- Yes, you, even if you're sitting in the middle of blood-red state -- don't vote for Joe Biden, you will be doing your part to hand the autocrats what they want, because a non-vote or a vote for anyone other than Biden is in fact a vote for Trump and autocracy. Similarly, you must also vote for Democrats for all other positions, local, state, and federal so that America's overt flirtation with autocracy that's been going on since at least the 1990s might finally end once and for all.

Yes, yes, I know: "But Genocide Joe!" Think about it: Do you seriously think that Trump, who licks Netanyahu's asshole because he sees him as the kind of "strong man" that Trump wants to be, is going to help Gaza? Or that he'll go against Putin and continue aid to Ukraine? Because if you think that he will do either of those things, I have several bridges I'd like to sell you. No, Trump is going to "put America first." He says it all the time, and what he means by that is that he will do nothing except whatever it takes to keep himself and his cronies in power while also isolating America by severing ties to our allies. Gaza will be given to Netanyahu just as Ukraine will be given to Putin, should Trump win, and he won't give a shit. In the end, Biden (and Harris, should she have to take over) will listen and help Gaza, maybe not as much as we'd like because the Middle East situation is complicated and there are no simple solutions, but a Biden-led government will certainly help more than another Trumpian government would. And Biden will definitely continue to aid Ukraine, because that situation isn't complicated at all.

And in the end, it's not really about Ukraine and Gaza, though they are of course important. It's about us. Should Trump get into the White House again, he will surround himself with people who want America to be a plutocratic and authoritarian autocracy, very similar to Putin's Russia. This is not hyperbole. This is fact. A vote for Trump -- either actual or de facto by fucking around with not voting or voting for a third party because you think it's a "protest" -- is a vote to end democracy, plain and simple, which might very well mean that you'll never be able to protest again another day.

How bad could Trump be, you ask? Who cares who is president? Well, have a look at Project 2025. It's a 900-page "playbook" for the next "conservative" administration. (In quotes because there is nothing "conservative" about these people, including Trump and his cronies; they are radicals.) It is nothing less than a plan to destroy the federal government, the Constitution, and the freedoms that it enshrines and protects, which means the end of democracy. They published a similar tome before Reagan was elected, and once he was in, Reagan followed through with a lot of it. I have no doubt that Trump would, too, given that his "Agenda 47" platform is basically the same. Here is an article that summarizes Project 2025 and details some of its directives. And here is an article from Time Magazine, of all things, where the writer of it interviewed Trump about his vision for America, should he win. The first line of the article is, "Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice." You can read the transcripts of the interviews, too, so you can rest assured that the interviewer isn't being hyperbolic.

It ain't good, folks. Part of this extreme-right agenda is ridiculously expanding the power of the executive branch so that it would no longer be checked and balanced by Congress and the Supreme Court, which effectively turns the presidency into a dictatorship. And if Biden does not win, at least some of this bullshit will come to pass, especially because Trump already has the Supreme Court in his pocket. And he'll be able to appoint more young, far-right lunatics to that, too, should he win.

I'll repeat that Trump CANNOT win. I'll be the first to say that, as a pretty extreme (but also pragmatic) progressive, I'm not Biden's biggest fan, for various reasons. He is way farther right than I am, though he has been far more progressive-friendly than I expected and he has gotten some very good things done. But even if he wasn't and hadn't, he will preserve democracy and because of that, I will be voting for him without hesitation. I won't even have to hold my nose. Trump and his cronies in Congress and the Supreme Court will destroy democracy if you -- Yes, YOU! -- let them. And if you let them by deciding not to vote or doing some sort of lame "protest" vote, especially if you live in that handful of states where every presidential vote matters, you will have no one to blame but yourself and others like you. People being apathetic or doing "protest" votes is what got us Trump the first time around.

For fuck's sake, do the right thing.

#non sims #us politics #sorry not sorry #Youtube

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icarusxxrising · 9 months

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// long ramble TLDR just me discussing how I found my politics at the beginning

When I was a baby leftist the final push for me into anarchism wasn't when I learned what anarchy actually was, it was 1 event leading to a culmination of recognizing one of the biggest problems in social and economic systems was people having power over each other.

When I first got into leftism there was nothing on Anarchism when I tried to lookup "beginner leftist books". It was The Communist Manifesto, State and Revolution, The ABCs of Socialism, etc. Nothing about Anarchism though.

I tried to connect to Communism through reading and content creators but it couldn't stick for me. Not to say I'm not a communist now but my communism is different, and more inherent to my Anarchism. A lot of communist creators I watched talk were very intelligent on the system and helped me realize some positives, but they never could talk about the negatives of past communist ideologies.

When people addressed genuinely negative things that communist regimes did, like their treatment of disabled people or the genocide campaigns, they responded with facts about literacy rates going up. Obviously something like literacy rates going up IS a positive that should be addressed, but they could never just say "Yeah that was fucked up, we don't condone that bullshit, here's how we are going to stop that from happening". (Hell a ton of communists idolize and have pfps of some of the dudes that did horrible shit).

Even if I disagree I'll respect a communist who will say "These regimes did xyz fucked up shit, We can do better and learn from this fucked up shit tho", and I have met some that do that, but I couldn't click into the communism being fed to me because it once again felt like blind worship and just redoing the past rather than striving for something that would fit our modern society.

Ironically the first time I thought "Power corrupts people always" was when I found out TST founders were gross and Fascistic. I was getting into Satanism and was excited by the idea of TST fighting for religious freedoms within the system (lib moment), and how they were gay friendly and had posts about respecting lgbt ppl unlike COS who just said summarized "who cares what you feel about them as long as no one tells you you can't do that :)".

But when I found out about Queer Satanic and actually dove into the history of TST it was kinda this Camel Straw moment. I was angry I had supported a shitty organization and I was angry that something that could be good was controlled by shitty people who could just do fuck all bc they had power. It made me realize that as long as there was a person in power over others that there would be problems. It made me think of my childhood and how when parents have complete authority over their children it causes harm more often than not just by the nature of Exploitation that comes with holding power.

I didn't know what Anarchism was yet or that it was a real leftist ideology, I just thought it meant Chaos and Warmonger, but I took the steps into it without knowing just from the realization I had.

When I did find out about Anarchism it clicked for me. A style of communism and workers unions that won't hold power over individuals. And then I just began to learn more and it makes sense for me. It doesn't matter how many times other people told me it was unrealistic, my brain can conceive Anarchism better than systems that call for few people to hold power over entire populations.

Too be fair, I've always had anarchistic tendencies growing up, but once I found it the pieces just fell into place.

* This isn't for debating if you come into my comments with some USSR bullshit I'll just tell you to walk somewhere dangerous and block you *

#leftist #anarchy #leftism #anarchism #anarchist #socialism #socialist #communist #communism #theory #satanism #tst #queer satanic

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a-very-tired-jew · 2 months

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Dropout has an Antisemitism Problem - Part Something

I was going through the Dropout discord because I recall members of the Palestine channel saying Israel doesn't care about the hostages, the hostages were treated well, etc, etc...

I came across an exchange that I had missed due to the rapid nature of Discord messages and...well I'll let you read.

Fig. 1. User compares antisemitism to systemic racism and says it can't exist in Palestine due to power dynamics. Other blogs on here have talked about how antisemites view Jews as holding power and therefore can't be discriminated against. This is my first time seeing it in this type of comparison, which tells us a lot about the user and how they view things. The fact that they think bigotry and discrimination only happens within a power dynamic tells us that they know very little about what they're talking about, and are using progressive activist jargon to hide their ignorance. Systemic racism refers to the structures within a society that give an unfair advantage to one group over and another and/or harm a group based upon ethnicity or race. You can have systemic racism and good ole fashion racism, they are not exclusive. However, the way in which this is framed makes it seem like the user thinks of racism as only an institutional issue and, thusly, antisemitism as well. Which belies the issue that antisemitism informs a lot of Hamas's intent towards Israel and the global Jewish diaspora.

The leaps in logic are such a weird thought experiment of Olympic proportions. If Jews were to live in Gaza, hypothetically, they would likely be subjected to antisemitism due to Hamas being the government, because it would be systemic. However, because there are no Jews in Gaza, and the Jews live in Israel, there is therefore no antisemitism in Gaza (or Palestine in general)... Quite a few leaps, denials, omissions, and outright cognitive dissonance on display there. This specific individual is a goy whom I have referred to in other posts that has routinely defended Hamas's actions and posts daily Al Jazeera updates, so we know where they stand. In all my other posts they are the one to call in mods to kick people out for questioning their narrative. In fact, this particular excerpt comes from a larger exchange where Jews within the channel are discussing Hamas's antisemitic charter, intent, and subsequent actions because another goy user had questions. A mod was called in to address this particular user's actions in telling Jews that antisemitism can't exist because it's only systemic, and the Jews told them that as a goy they can't define what is antisemitic. Well...this user is part of the core group of the channel and has been allowed to stay, whereas Jews have been kicked for lesser reasons. And yeah...they're still there as of March 2024 and routinely posting their AJ updates. Good job Dropout Palestine channel for making sure your Pro-Pal movement doesn't have antisemites in it. Doing a great job /s

#jumblr #leftist antisemitism #antisemitism #dropout tv #activism

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nanaosaki3940 · 8 months

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Some Keisuke Baji Facts (Not headcanons)...

I got into the Tokyo Revengers fandom right after watching the 1st season of the anime and from there I started reading the manga until I got caught up with it. Now, I'm up-to-date with everything related to Tokrev, even the spin-off manga as well...

Now, I have an issue with how people interpret Baji's character and how they portray him in fanfics or headcanon posts. I know you can have your own headcanons, but there's also a thing called facts or being canonically accurate. Most people interpret Baji as:

Keisuke Baji is an idiot, a literal moron.

Keisuke Baji is reckless, restless, always causing havoc, always seeking fun and adventure; in short, an energetic thrill seeker/troublemaker.

Well, that's far from what people think about Baji...

Baji's NOT an idiot

You can't call Baji an idiot just because he isn't academically smart or doesn't get passing grades in school. Sure, he's stupid when it comes to his studies, but other than that, he's really smart and highly intellectual in every other aspect. Moreover, Chifuyu's the one who's a moron here. In many fanfics and headcanon posts, I saw people writing about how dumb Baji is and how smart Chifuyu is and then talking about how Chifuyu guides/helps Baji to understand things or solve problems. And I'm like huh?!?! Have you not read the spin-off manga yet??? (Btw, the spin-off manga is CANON since it's been made under Ken Wakui sensei's supervision and he's heavily involved with the project...)

The whole manga is about what a big dumbass Chifuyu is and how smart, intellectual, and level-headed Baji is. Heck, Chifuyu's so stupid that this is what Baji has to say about him -

So, yeah...

CHIFUYU is the moron here, NOT Baji.

Also...

Baji's NOT an adrenaline junkie

I'm not gonna share pictures for that as proof. Instead, I'll just add the links to the sites where you can read the spin-off manga. I'll say it again - Baji's NOT some reckless, restless dude who loves causing havoc/chaos any time and every time he feels like it (unlike Hanma, Smiley, or anyone batshit crazy we know from this series). Throughout the story, Baji is shown to be quite mature and sensible as a person and also as a leader. He's more responsible, wiser, and more rational than everyone around him. Sure he gets very energetic and excited when fighting other delinquents, but other than that, he's just a simple guy going on with his everyday life. I understand why people think of him like that since this is literally what wiki tells us -

But he's more than just that...

Instead in the spin-off, Baji is portrayed as a calm, collected, and composed individual in each and every scene he appears, while Chifuyu and Ryusei are the ones shown to be more chaotic in nature who love getting into trouble at every opportunity they get. Also, Baji doesn't speak too much and always observes things around him quietly from the sideline, meaning unlike others, he's pretty observant. He's never once shown to be causing problems for others, but rather, he's the one solving the issues that others cause around him, meaning he's a dependable and attentive person (just like Draken). Not only is he calm and composed, but he also immediately figures out any situation in front of him and then confidently gives orders to the others; just reading the spin-off manga will make you realize how effective Baji is as a leader/1st division captain. And, in that episode (season 1, episode 14) where Mikey tells Takemichi that Baji punches people for no apparent reason, yeah, there's actually a reason why Baji does that and such a thing happened only ONCE in his lifetime (Go read chapter 9 of the spin-off manga and you'll also understand why Baji did that). Also, this is Mikey we're talking about; do you really think he'll give us the correct info? He just dropped that info without any context, and no wonder why Takemichi went like "WTF?" after hearing that about Baji... Anyway, Baji's more like Draken in a way, so to speak, and that's why he and Draken get along really well.

No wonder Baji's spending his birthday afternoon with Draken instead of spending it with Mikey or Chifuyu...

So, in short, Baji is:

Not some rowdy, adrenaline junkie like Hanma or Smiley.

An attentive, compassionate, and dependable leader.

Confident while giving out his orders.

A calm, composed, and observant individual.

Very smart and highly intellectual.

Cautious and doesn't cause trouble to others.

Actually one of the most mature ones in the group besides Draken and Mitsuya.

Baji loves fun and adventure from time to time, sure, but he's NOT an idiotic troublemaker.

Links to the spin-off manga -

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moonyinpisces · 2 months

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re: your last post, i would really love to get this ask answered but i can understand if you don't (and i definitely do not expect this to be answered publicly), but is there a post that i can read in which you've explained your "love and sex are connected" stance? i ask because i'm so curious to read your thoughts about it, coming from someone who agrees with that thought, i'm just curious about the specifics of what do you mean when you say that (for example: does that mean that by definition asexual love is platonic and not romantic? is there space for asexuality or aromanticism in this idea? i think that love and sex are connected and that there still are people who are asexual and can have partnerships, so that's why i was curious about more details on that).

sorry for bothering you and thank you in advance if you answer my question 🩷

you're totally fine! i hope it's cool i answered it publicly, i think it's a topic that a lot of people shy away from. luckily, i have little to no self preservation. i'll just re-explain my stance here 👇

i think just inherently, if we call a piece of media a love story it implies sex. this is a fact no matter how deep you worm your way into internet culture and try to convince yourself otherwise. now that doesn't mean sex is going to happen, or even be mentioned--that has to do with the rating/presentation of the media, not the media itself (one time almost a year ago i mentioned this same topic and someone specifically cited the little mermaid as ace rep. and i was like in the sequel they... literally have a child? and then the person blocked me lol)

now can love be platonic? absolutely. can people have love for others and not want to fuck them? yeah, i would say a majority of love experienced globally is the platonic/familial sort lol. but a love story is only platonic if it's designated as platonic, meaning that at its root, the implication is sex. if i want to divorce sex from the romance, i have to explicitly define it as such. meaning if we call, for example, good omens a love story, that implies sex and sexual attraction unless the canon ever explicitly tells us differently. a love story includes sex unless it can prove it doesn't, that's just... the nature of being a human being living in a human society lol

and i think that's a scary concept to people who have labeled themselves as sex-repulsed without digging into WHY they feel that way in the first place. but i think further than that people are too bogged down in connecting their identities with fiction to the point that the work becomes divorced from fiction, so you have huge swathes of people claiming characters as whatever they want external to the canon in order to feel secure in their own identity. fascinating subject, too dense to get into in a tumblr ask haha

i think at the crux of it what i need people to understand is characters are not real people, they do not have aspects deeper than what we're shown in the canon. characters are simply functions of the plot. like take two characters in a love story. sure, if these WERE real people, TECHNICALLY someone could say "they can have sex and actively want to have sex and be attracted to each other and still be asexual!" which. uh, sure, but if a mouse said that about a kia sorento, etc etc. like that potential reading has so little bearing on the story that i know it's just pulled out of someone's ass so they can manufacture deeper meaning and "representation" out of the media they consume because they're not getting that representation elsewhere. which sucks! but! just because something COULD be canon doesn't mean it IS canon and in our current climate of media illiteracy, that's the unfortunate trend to how people are choosing to consume media. self-first rather than story-first, internal vs external, individual vs collective. you can go on and on.

and of course. of course. you can negate ALL of this by just telling me it's not that serious and media is consumed in the preferred method of the consumer, that's what it's meant for. i am fully self-aware i come at this like i have two english degrees. and for that fact, rest assured i will always be deeply deeply uncool

#hope that helped explain a bit about what i mean #at the end of the day i think words have meaning that that has made me public enemy number one #ask box

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hkkingofshades · 3 months

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Tumblr's new policy, and updates going forward

Yeah, I bet we all saw this coming, huh.

So, given tungl dot hell(tm)'s new deal with midjourney, I think pretty much all artists on tumblr are, well, not having a great time. Like deviantart, tumblr has provided a way to opt out from having your blog content scraped, but like deviantart, it's a little unclear what has already been shared before the opt-out went into place, and how much they'll actually work to stop machine trawlers from trawling opted-out blogs.

I'll put the tl;dr up front:

King of Shades will not be leaving Tumblr, but due to the new policy, I won't be posting full pages here anymore.

There's no point in taking down all the pages I've already posted. Deleting them from my page won't delete subsequent reblogs, and there's a pretty high chance that tumblr has already scraped them. (haveibeentrained.com seems to think I haven't been yet, at least. I don't think I really have a big enough following for that to happen, although I don't want to jinx it...) But I certainly won't be posting the full-size pages here anymore.

Instead, I think I'll go the Trying Human route and post a little preview of the update (possibly heavily watermarked; my computer can't run glaze/nightshade, unfortunately), so you guys will still get notifications, but you'll have to visit the ComicFury main website in order to read it. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience (although I will say that I think it's a much better reading experience over there)!

Speaking of which:

I have never and will never ask for any kind of compensation (other than your wonderful feedback, which I've just been absolutely blown away by) for doing this. Even putting legality aside, that's not why I'm here! However, if you've enjoyed this comic, ever thought that you might be willing to tip me on ko-fi if I had one, or even just want to continue having an internet that isn't entirely a corporate wasteland, I ask that you consider donating to ComicFury instead.

ComicFury is a relic of the old, good internet: it's been around for at least 15 years, and it's all hosted and managed by one guy (Kyo). Aside from his team of volunteer moderators, everything on this website is done by one person with a passion for supporting artists. I've chatted with him a little, and he's a great dude! Most of his operating costs are paid for out of pocket, and the site is currently hurting a little bit because it doesn't run ads, it doesn't have subscriptions or paywalled content, it doesn't have any corporate interference or monetization of any kind outside of his Patreon. And—perhaps most relevantly for this post:

I will cut right to the chase, we have decided not to allow AI-art based webcomics on the site. [...] As for our reasoning, there are obviously ethical concerns regarding the source images of most commonly used AI image generators (namely them just being scraped off the internet without anyones permission). But even beyond that, another concern is that due to the extremely low effort involved, webcomics of this nature could just over time completely drown out in numbers art by passionate people who put a lot of time into it , which would be a real shame. So we asked ourselves what would be better for the community, and we agreed that banning it would probably be the better thing overall.

—Kyo has been quite firm that he will not allow AI art to be posted to or scraped from any ComicFury domain. While this isn't a protection against huge web trawls or people putting someone's art in individually—there's not a lot anyone can do about that yet, even with tools like glaze and nightshade—it's a little peace of mind that the art posted there won't abruptly be sold en masse to the highest bidder.

The Patreon starts at $2/month, and Kyo has said that he doesn't mind people pledging for a short time and then dipping if they can't afford an ongoing subscription. If and only if this is something you can afford, and you want to continue seeing independent webcomics including King of Shades, please consider donating!

The Patreon is here. There's not much in the way of reward tiers, especially if you're not a member, but I posit that the real reward is being able to read free webcomics done by real humans as labors of love, without being advertised to or sold as the product. And also maybe the friends we made along the way. Or something.

Once again, there is no pressure, and no shame if you're not willing or able to give money. But if you've ever thought you might be willing to tip me for what I do, consider passing it along to the guy who makes it possible instead.

Thank you for your time!

P.S. Page 64 is coming, I promise! Recent developments kind of kneecapped my motivation for making online art 🙃

#info #long post

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bananamarshmallowz · 5 months

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I'm here to talk about Destiel...

The internet is a very funny place.

If you're in need of a good laugh, go to your favorite series, show, films what have you and ask what are you unpopular opinions with _said show_.

I have watched dozens of shows and always think I might be the only one, post that and see what happens.

I am a shipper but I normally don't talk or boast about what/who I ship, it's not relevant and it can be weird. I don't ship actors/real humans, that's crossing lines. Characters however, yes. Anyway, I have to bring up this one. One comment said "Destiel shouldn't have happened." Okay, I get that, people can get weird about it. Then they go on to say how every shipper claws and digs for stuff that isn't there.

And again, I'm not saying some people don't dig but not all gay/LGBTQ+ representation is completely shown in media. Mentioned maybe here and there, sure. But there's endless cis-straight-relationship romance movies, romance themes and what have you. Some series make really bad portrayals and give gay people a bad rap because they're the only representation. And don't get me wrong, sometimes we do dig and claw because we feel what they portray, or at least we think so. But sometimes we don't need to dig.

That same thread added the random siren or even the policeman from yellow fever had more chemistry than Dean and Cas ever have. - Him looking at the soldier's ass in Time After Time while walking in the store. Yes, those were weird scenes, why were they even shown? Great question, I don't know I'm just here. - And as for they have no chemistry... They won best chemistry award for TV... It doesn't get better than that.

This is more of a rant than I want but this is certainly one of my favorite shows. And I feel the need to say what's on my mind because I know I can't afford therapy, so this is the next best thing.

Oh yeah before I start this, I have read numerous comments accusing all the actors of horrendous things... - Firstly, they all have kids, and wives and love their kids so much. I don't think they would do anything to jeopardize that. So stop making up messed up shit. - Secondly, I don't want to believe other people make other people uncomfortable for fun, but some people do. But considering that they acted for more than 8 years together, I'm pretty sure working with people that are cool for that long, they all had a strong bond. And all the times that Jensen looks uncomfortable whenever Misha goes into or talks about Destiel, it's because technically they're not even allowed to say anything about the show regarding shipping characters because anything could've been true, it could've not been. If every actor were able to spoil their movie, we'd be out of movies but we aren't. And Jensen is a rather shy individual, funny enough. At the beginning of Supernatural he was 27, and Jared was 23. When Misha joined when he was 34. They were and still are wholesome and great people. Regardless, All of them would pull pranks and stuff on the show, they're friends, not some messed up whatever someone said, I'm blown away that people would even imply some things. You can look up any video of everyone being close with one another from hugs to dancing, to singing to whatever. So don't say "read the room" when they're just being themselves, I shift a lot when in public, does that mean I'm constantly uncomfortable? No. - THIRDLY, they were all lowkey scared of certain parts of supernatural, in 2017 they did an interview with Entertainment Weekly {this one} and said what the scariest episodes or concepts were at the time for them. Jared's was changelings, shapeshifters, demons possessing people, things that could be real but possibly something posing as someone but something's off. Jensen's was people doing really messed up things and that it was the most realistic thing that could actually happen. Humans being psycho. And vintage dolls, lmao, same. And Misha said that everything could give him nightmares. He's so soft, any of it could give him nightmares. These guys are human. Not some terrible against religion people, they play on a show. Pure human. Just like everyone else.

ANYWAY, I think we all know the infamous eye sex scenes LMAO... if you haven't heard of them... {here's 10 minutes of them staring at each other} and that's not even all the seasons

They always look each other up and down and just stare at each other.

Above, Dean says "Cas, we talked about this. Personal space." and then Cas backs off. He doesn't know why, he just knows it makes Dean uncomfortable, so to make him more comfortable, he takes a few steps back. But Cas isn't aware of how complicated humans are. Personal space are just words, angels shouldn't care what humans have to say. They're so primal and they need more than just basic shelter and foods, they need the whole pyramid of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. He doesn't understand this until he goes through it himself, but we're getting slightly off topic. Sure, them continuing to stare could be just a funny little thing at the start... no. It still happens up to the last episodes.

This is the musical episode, Fanfiction, Season 10, Episode 5. Destiel, Samstiel and the most dreaded Sam/Dean are mentioned... They're brothers. As someone with siblings... gross.

"You can't spell subtext without S-E-X." Then Jensen gave this look to the camera, I think this is on behalf of many of the people on the show.

Below, they end a scene after talking but it's about 15 seconds of them just staring at each other then it ends. Personally, I'm not a big fan of eye contact, and try to make at least 5 or maybe 2 seconds of contact in between interacting with someone, anything more than 10 is past uncomfortable... I don't stare at anyone this long. Legit the scene is so long lmao

I don't remember the context on this but I just don't like eye contact. Both their eyes are gorgeous but I don't stare like this, especially with any of my siblings. When they have a hard time I hug them if they want a hug, talk to them, but I don't make eye contact like that.

I have never looked at my friends like this, not my best friends, certainly not my siblings. Someone I had a crush on, possibly.

Next, they are going in as Texas Rangers and Dean explains how to get Cas into character. "Yeah. Look, just act like you're from Tombstone, okay?" "The city?" "With Kurt Russell? I made you watch it." "Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The one with the guns and tuberculosis." [in a deep cowboy voice] "I'm your Huckleberry." [gulps] "Yeah, exactly.-"

I don't have anything other than I like that scene and how Cas says, "I'm your Huckleberry" :D

(SPOILERS AHEAD Whoops lol)

When Cas dies Dean tries to pray to God even though he swore off praying to God. One of the lines is "We've lost everything." Mary's gone, correct but everyone else is alive, except Cas. They still had the Bunker, Baby, Jack. Cas and Mary died (she fell through and there was no way to know she was alive.) But considering that Sam is still alive, the guy Dean has fought tooth and nail to save all these years, is standing by him, ready to fight what may come. But Cas is dead... Dean obliterates his hand from punching on a bathroom door. It's frankly the most punches he's made in a single scene I think and even then, God doesn't answer him so he begins to mourn. It creeps in that his friend is gone.

When Cas is being burned, at first it peers to Jack who sees the man who is supposed to be his father, not blood father but someone who promised to look out for him, someone he doesn't even know, he feels the loss but he's just been born and he never really met Cas.

Then we roll to Sam, he's lost a dear friend and is sad. He's wanting to cry and fidget and be sad.

THEN we roll to Dean. His face is drained of all emotion. He has lost his best friend. His dear companion and looks like he lost it all despite his brother being right next to him. He can't even move.

Now I would be sad if one of my brothers died but sadly I don't have that much of a connection with them as Dean and Cas have. And thankfully I haven't yet experienced one of my brothers pass on.

But I have lost a few lovers, and that... That is the face I have felt. When everything else feels irrelevant. You don't care about anything. You can't care about anything. You are numb.

And this all brings us to the finale.

Death is on her way, has them by their hearts, well Dean's in fact. They run/slowly walk over to Basement Storage Room 7B and Cas wards the room, slowing down Death on the other side.

This is the exact moment before he loses Cas for the last time. (I'm copying from the script on the Supernatural wiki, don't hate me, I watched it over and over too, and I've shortened Cas's monologue because I don't want to relive that heartbreak again lmao) But basically Cas realizes this is it, this is the happiest he has been. Everyone was alive and well, he has Dean alone at last. The last exchange they had was this: "You changed me, Dean." "Why does this sound like a goodbye? "Because it is." - "I love you."

"Don't do this, Cas." - "Cas..." "Goodbye, Dean." "What?"

Cas pushes Dean out of the way and gets taken by the Empty.

He has to process all these years of interactions with this awkward little man with sensible shoes in less than five minutes and it all crumbles.

Castiel is gone. And he's not coming back.

Sam keeps trying to call Dean but he's just getting Dean's voicemail and Dean isn't answering. He simply can't.

A few episodes later, Dean fucking dies. Just how he said he would, to a monster, like any other job. It felt rushed and I didn't like it.

But how they ended it could've been so much worse.

Dean makes it to heaven, expecting just memory lane, but Bobby's there and says Jack remade heaven new, everyone's together in heaven where they belong. He offers him a beer and tells him how different heaven is and how it's so much better.

Dean's sold, but it's missing something.

This is directly after Bobby tells Dean that Cas helped Jack rebuild heaven.

After that, he takes a drive as he waits out Sam's life. He meets Sam on the bridge and that's the end.

For years, Dean didn't have an obvious love interest, here and there a fling maybe but nothing romantic. All the soft scenes were pretty much between him and Cas.

Their bond isn't brotherly, it's very best friend-ish but lovers can be friends too.

And that's my review on Destiel and why it's a thing it's 4 am and I haven't slept well the past two days so what to do other than write about destiel

ok bye :]

#supernatural #destiel #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #jensen ackles #misha collins #jared padalecki #rant/idk #fuck it #im so tired oml

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according2thelore · 2 months

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oh IIII want a lesson in angst and torture!!!! me me me!!!!

seriously though that last ask was amazing and I love ESdean’s voice in it so much he’s perfect. and i think we would all be thrilled to read anything you wrote!!!

HAHAHA, well, ask and ye shall receive, anon!

this is in reference to one of my last posts, about LS!Sam&Dean setting up ES!Sam&Dean to see them kiss, and kickstart the conversation about...y'know. what's going on here? i originally misread the first anon's ask as "what if ES!Sam&LS!Dean walked in on LS!Sam&ES!Dean kissing"--a total switcharoo. full of angst and torture, as mentioned here. i wrote the whole thing and was about to click post, but re-read the prompt and kicked myself in the shins.

i don't consider this canon to the ES/LS verse i've written (can there be such a thing as "canon" when we're kickin' it like this, team?) i mention a little lower in this post why i think it wouldn't go down like this, but let's get into it!

i present: four men punching a wall and throwing up

it's been coming for a while. they all know it has.

the gestures between LS!Sam and ES!Dean have gotten more frequent as time has gone on--LS!Sam's hand on ES!Dean's back, ES!Dean watching LS!Sam with rapturous eyes as he explains one thing or another.

no one mentions it, but they've all caught the looks. ES!Dean will tap on the wheel of the jeep that LS!Dean let them borrow (and of which he reinstalled the spark plugs in a frenzy) and sing along to music, too young and happy to be self-conscious, and LS!Sam will watch him like he hung each individual star with the express intention of making sure LS!Sam likes them.

ES!Dean will moan while taking a bite of pie at the diner up the road, and LS!Sam will have to suddenly and urgently use the bathroom, leaving ES!Sam shifting awkwardly at the table and LS!Dean trying not to slam his head through the window.

all this to say, it's not a surprise to anyone except ES!Dean when it happens.

and it's only a surprise to him, because he doesn't mean to do it.

they're out at the store, the first time it happens. ES!Dean's trying to convince LS!Sam to buy cereal that's literally just mini chocolate chip cookies.

"c'mon, sammy!" dean cajoles, "it'll start your day off with a smile."

LS!Sam rolls his eyes and puts the cereal back, high up enough on the shelf that dean can't even reach it. dean balks, because this is the first time that this has happened to him, ever.

"yeah, well i want you around past age fifty, so we're buying the fibre one." sam shakes the bland box at him with a sarcastic smile. "you and your healthy heart will have to deal."

dean watches him put the box in the cart, and dean just...kisses him.

dean immediately starts apologizing, a steady stream of Oh My Fucking God, I'm So Fucking Sorry Sam, Please Don't Tell the Others. I'm So Sorry. You're So Pretty, Sammy. All the Damn Time. I Can't Stop Looking At You. I Know I'm Not Your Dean, I Never Should Have. I Mean--Shit--I'm Your Brother--!

and LS!Sam shuts him up by kissing his dumbass again. ES!Dean squeaks. genuinely squeaks. the kiss is chaste and over in the time it takes to inhale.

"you are my dean." LS!Sam says, rolling his eyes. "come on, eggs are next." and strolls right away, leaving dean gasping for air in his wake.

dean is hooked. he's fucking addicted.

LS!Sam doesn't even count it. the real first one, in his opinion, is the one in the kitchen.

ES!Dean is standing over the stove, stirring something with an intense set to his jaw. LS!Sam comes up behind him, and they talk for a few minutes about nothing in particular, about how their days have been, about what LS!Dean&ES!Sam have been up to. sam finally asks what he's making, leaning against the kitchen counter.

"mac and cheese," dean replies, looking a little nervous. "i--i can't stop worrying about" he gestures vaguely, frustrated pull in his brow. "your-past-my-future. but...y'know. i used to make you this when you were small." dean looks like he's going to implode with embarrassment. "we share this past. so. whatever."

LS!Sam grabs him on either side of his face, callused palms on freckled cheeks, and pulls him up into a kiss. dean melts against him immediately, kissing him frantically bc he thinks this is the last chance he'll get.

it's slow and hot and filthy, and sam's stubble burns dean's skin. it's been a long time since dean's kissed a man, and the fact that this man is sammysammysammysammy has dean shaking and grabbing at sam with big, desperate hands.

every kiss they trade after the fact, sam can't help but press down on the scar on his palm. it's been a while since he's needed it, but this feels too unreal: the ability to kiss a dean with a sharp tongue and adoring eyes and so much enthusiasm for life that sam could get high off of it.

he spent decades lusting after this man, loving this man, that being able to love more than one version of him is almost too much to bear.

dean might notice the hand, but he doesn't comment on it. he's learned the hard way that some things about LS!Sam are inaccessible--they were created to be that way.

nothing too much changes the way they interact except the want is so much sharper, now.

"goodnight, sammy," ES!Dean always says, leaning forward into LS!Sam's chest, hands at his sides, almost like he's afraid of being caught out for doing it. he noses against sam's collarbone, barely there, before swaying away again.

sam then crawls into LS!Dean's bed, and kisses him hard. "i love you so fucking much" he wants to say--and maybe he does--and LS!Dean rolls his eyes and kisses him back and calls him a girl. but sam has tears in his eyes, so dean just tucks him under his arm and they go to sleep like that.

"did mini me prance through a field of flowers? or sneeze like a kitten?" dean mutters into the nape of sam's neck, but sam just turns over so he can tuck his nose under dean's jaw.

("he loves me" sam maybe says, completely overwhelmed, and maybe dean scoffs and says "fucking duh. he's me.")

he's addicted. they're both addicted.

and while ES!Sam&LS!Dean have their suspicions, they don't know anything for certain. how would you even bring that up? especially for a ES!Sam&Dean that haven't had that conversation yet?

in my head, i'm hoping that ES!Sam&Dean have that conversation (led by much cajoling and almost entrapment by LS!Sam&Dean) before LS!Sam&ES!Dean start anything. a frantic kiss that LS!Sam pulls away from, telling him to talk about it with ES!Sam because ES!Sam&Dean's relationship is too important to LS!Sam for him to jeopardize it.

but, if LS!Sam&ES!Dean do start something, i think it would get out of hand.

and if LS!Dean&ES!Sam do find out, it's damning.

ES!Dean leans over and kisses LS!Sam on the couch, and LS!Sam pulls him into his lap, slow. "i'm not a fuckin' girl," ES!Dean says, trying to hop off of him, but LS!Sam's hands almost cover his entire waist, and Dean forgets what he was going to say when LS!Sam kisses him.

"what the fuck" from the doorway. the words are hollow. toneless.

ES!Sam is standing there, framed by the light from the hallway. he's shell-shocked, taking in ES!Dean half-crawled into LS!Sam's lap, their mussed hair, their swollen lips.

"what's wrong?" an urgent voice, and LS!Dean is standing behind him.

silence. for a long, impossible second.

they start talking all at once.

No No No Sammy It's Not--I'm Not--He's--

and ES!Sam is a fucking inferno, because this is all wrong, it's so wrong.

"he was mine!" ES!Sam screams, and LS!Sam pales. "we've been trapped here! you're disgusting--i--i can't believe you would--" his voice cracks, hard, and he turns around a leaves without another word.

LS!Dean doesn't say anything. but i imagine that it's almost as bad for him as it is for ES!Sam. because here sam is, being undeniably attracted and compelled towards this young, fresh, unscarred version of him. even though he gets it more than ES!Sam--because, Hell, he can't look away from ES!Sam either--that boy is so damn possessive that it's practically torture.

he leaves without a word.

ES!Dean has a full-tilt meltdown. he thinks the 'you're disgusting' is for him, and he can't look at himself, he can't look at LS!Sam, he's pacing the room looking like his world is falling apart.

"he's right," LS!Sam says, looking forlorn, and ES!Dean is three seconds away from blowing his own brains out. "he should've been the one to kiss you first."

and ES!Dean lets out a bitter, hard laugh, like "he doesn't fucking want me, sam. don't bullshit me."

but LS!Sam begs ES!Dean to talk this out with ES!Sam, running fingers over his jaw and his pushing him away gently with a hand in the middle of his chest.

i think that because these boys can never talk for shit (and LS!Sam is talking a big game like he and LS!Dean communicate at all), it would take them a second to make up.

i think that it would be a lot of avoidance, and a lot of ES!Sam sleeping in different rooms.

(in my head, i imagine that the ES!boys were given a room together with two double beds, at first bc they don't trust their surroundings and then bc they're just used to it)

ES!Dean is all levels of kicked-puppy injured, and ES!Sam is still just so furious and heartbroken because he was betrayed by TWO people here: his own older self, for swooping in and changing his relationship with his brother whether he was ready for that or not and also by ES!Dean, who will officially try to fuck everyone in the world except for ES!Sam.

he's capable of wanting sam, but not this sam, not you. you're the broken one here, the wrong one.

~~~

thank you for this ask, anon! i was (as mentioned previously) committing shin violence on myself for writing almost 1.6k words of the wrong prompt.

i hope you enjoy it! and EEE thank you for the ES!Dean voice comment, that makes me so happy to hear!

have a lovely day, anon, and i hope this lesson in angst and torture was better than an intro to engineering course, at the very least.

-lizzy

#ask box #lizzy answers #ES/LS verse #anon <3

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front-facing-pokemon · 3 months

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Type null is my best fucking friend. Its a sweet little angel puppy baby sweet thing the size of a horse and i love it so much. Sniffles. I want to feed it tasty treat from the palm of my hand

i've been seeing this sentiment from a lot of folks. honestly i can see it now, after everyone's talked about it like this—it really is just a weird fucked up dog thing that loves to eat floppy disks. and honestly, aren't we all?

take some more asks now i cast curse of asks

???

that's two asks excited for dhelmise now..! not a pokémon i imagined a lot of people would enjoy but holy shit have i been proven wrong so many times by now

y. yeah. you're kinda right. i should probably be a little more positive about pokémon. i always end up looking back on my commentary when pokémon get posted and being like "wtf was i so negative for" and i think it's because i queue these guys up so early in the morning. literally it's one of the first things i do during the day and i guess that lends itself to me being generally pissy and not wanting to do anything. bc i just woke up syndrome. i hope that's it and that i'm not just a generally negative individual

Babies:

now. i have to let you guys know that before you see this next ask, it is perhaps one of the most unfortunate things that anyone has ever said in my ask box. ok? like genuinely i'm giving you a disclaimer here. it is gross and if you believe it will change how you feel about pyukumuku. that's a genuine disclaimer and warning. i wish i could put this under a second cut, but here

this really sucks. the concept of this sucks. i have to HOPE that this is not true and that this isn't what tpc was going for or whoever designed this. lemme just google this real quick to see if it's EVEN true

okay now that i've done a bit of reading, i have to provide a solid HUH??? their intestines are CONNECTED to the anus how the mother fuck do you expect me to believe they're BLASTING their intestines out of their ass. for what purpose??? why would they do that?? i can see on wikipedia that they breathe through their anus, and fine, whatever, but it doesn't say anything about them just casting intestine beam on the nearest predator. i'm going to choose to believe that this is just a rumor about pyukumuku and leave it at that

#not pkmn #seriously don't read that last ask if you don't want something very grody #if you're reading these tags before clicking the readmore #there's other asks in there but the one at the bottom is not a pleasant reading experience #nose ratings

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indigochromatic · 27 days

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Ok ok, system experiences: weird forms of amnesia edition

Alright, like the alterhuman folks have all been saying today, lemme try to actually write some of this personal experiences stuff instead of only reblogging posts about how it'd be a great thing to do, lol Bit of rambling about one of the few forms of amnesia/(amnesia-adjacent-thing? idk) that we experience, and don't hear other systems describe as much.

So, as a system, we don't (as far as we know) have a lot of amnesia, especially not amnesia around events or blackouts between switches. We do have different emotions and perspectives about stuff, and different degrees of emotional attachment to different memories and concepts, but most of the time we have access to the same memories, and can tell who's front-POV any individual memory was from when either of us recalls it.

We did get a bit of a reminder today that we do actually experience some form of narrative/episodic amnesia...kind of? We don't hear it talked about a lot, so hey, I'll talk about it, and I'd love to know if anyone reading this recognizes it (either from their own experiences, or if they happen to know some kind of official term for it or something). Essentially, it's like...temporary, stress-induced memory shutdowns? Kind of like how when we're having a really out-of-it day, we can just mentally afk and miss 50%-80% of what someone says when they're trying to have a conversation with us, except it'll extend beyond just immediate short-term recall and make it hard to access practically anything from the whole week/month/etc. A key thing about the experience for us is that it doesn't feel like...a "blackout", and (as far as we've been able to tell from getting better memory access back later) it's not centered around specific extra-upsetting events or anything, it's more like...really, really bad internet connection while trying to search our brain for answers to stuff. "What did we do this past week? idk, it was normal stuff, though. How are we feeling, I know intellectually it was kind of a rough week? idk pretty chill probably :)"

Also, we can kinda start getting recall back if we're prompted about specific details and stuff, but too much trying-to-remember effort (especially in situations where we're being called on to do emotional work, like therapy sessions) can also turn into a headache--like, oh yeah, here's the memory, but if we get more than "a sentence or two into the first paragraph" of recalling it, we'll get a nice little dissociation headache and suddenly something else seems way more interesting to think about.

Anyways, thought that might be a useful experience for other folks to compare notes on? It doesn't feel from the inside like amnesia in the "traditional" sense, really, not only because it's in transient episodes but also because we still have the strong sense that the memories are actually there and that there's no lost time or anything Really Bad that's been redacted. It's also it's pretty overtly obvious that it's protective mechanism due to stress/mental overload, even though it's not deliberate, and not under conscious control. In that way, it feels like a pretty apt comparison to say that it's like we're having a speech shutdown episode, except for about memory instead of talking out loud--we didn't lose the memories, the mental filing cabinet drawer just got stuck; we didn't lose our verbal processing, we just can't get the words to happen out loud right now.

If we had to guess, just from how it feels body-wise, the mechanism is probably similar to what happens in catatonia? Also--forgot to mention this earlier, but if we keep getting pressed about stuff, either externally or from pushing ourselves internally, it'll almost always end up triggering a switch (usually to me, which is exactly what happened earlier today in family therapy, lmao). Do I remember the week better than L does, when that happens? Hm. Kinda? The catatonia-like "mentally underwater" feeling goes away for sure, and it's more like...I can get to the bare minimum content information more easily, (like the bullet points info awareness), without getting lost in the fog about it--but I still don't have really any better recall of the narrative stuff. That's my current theory, idk, could be wrong. Anyone else know what I'm describing? Lmk!

#system stuff #system experiences #pluralgang #plural system #S.txt #idk what other tags should I put here?

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benjinoff13 · 1 year

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CATWS through a blackhill lens

part 1: Fury’s “death”

before i get into this is just wanna say that these are just my headcanons, when i have a non canon ship i like to find a way to ship them that allows me to still enjoy the canon story meaning i often find a way around the story that we get, this means that with blackhill i have to find a way around nat and steve, nat and bruce, but most importantly, the undeniable tension between nat and maria in catws, if you don’t like blackhill or disagree with this that’s fine, just don’t read

in my headcanon nat and maria get together during their shield days, maybe even before we first meet nat in iron man 2, i believe they're going strong during avengers and their relationship is tested during catws which i will discuss in these posts

there's a lot happening in catws and blackhill wise i think it's by far the most interesting movie, i'll be discussing several scenes but this post is about fury's "death"

when the scene where fury is in surgery starts we see nat and steve looking into the operating room (i won't be discussing how weird it is that they can do that), steve is already there and nat joins him in the room, on the left we can see maria on the phone

pretty soon maria joins nat and steve, she looks into the operating room for a second, the three of them briefly discuss what happened which leads to my favorite canon blackhill moment, nat guesses the bullets that were used to shoot fury are soviet made and maria confirms this by simply saying "yeah", now this doesn't sound like anything interesting but i recommend ya’ll to rewatch this scene cause the way she says it is just so so soft, with the way she says this one simple word maria is trying to say "i'm here for you, i know this is hard, this isn't your fault, you did everything you could, it's gonna be okay, i love you" because she can't say those actual words, she cant hold nat's hand and hug her an let her fall apart against her, neither of them want that, both because there's other people there and because nat isn't ready to feel her feelings like that just yet, she doesn't want to accept this and she doesn't want to acknowledge her grief, maria knows this

maria also knows better than anyone what fury meant to nat, he was (is) the closest thing nat had to a father and at this point he’s one of the very few people that know about her relationship with maria, maria knows losing fury would mean losing a family member, knowing what it means to nat and also losing someone very important herself we can tell that maria is extremely emotional, i have to say that to me it isn't clear whether maria knows fury's death is fake at this point but considering her reaction i don't think she knows, maria is a good liar but nobody can act that well

after the doctors call time of death steve walks away (it's important to note there are still a few people standing behind maria and nat, at no point are they alone during this scene), we get these two shots of just maria and nat that i am absolutely in love with, the first is of both of them still looking into the o.r. we can tell both of them are absolutely distraught, as i said before fury meant a lot to them both as individuals and to their relationship, nat is absolutely speechless which doesn't happen often and our “hardass hill" has a red nose from stress and crying, if you rewatch the scene you can even see maria’s lip quivering

in the second shot we see maria leaning against the windowsill in front of them, i interpret this is her offering her hand in case nat wants to take it, you can see her left hand is at shoulder width while the right hand reaches towards nat, she would never take nat's hand in front of coworkers without asking and she also wants to give nat space which we will later learn she needs a lot, but she wants to offer that comfort to natasha regardless, maria taps her finger a few times to draw nat’s attention to her hand and to tell her she can hold it if she needs to, after a few second natasha still doens't take maria's hand, it’s too much, too soft, there’s too many people there, she simply can’t

in the next scene we see nat saying goodbye to fury with steve standing in the back, again it start with the two of them and then maria enters the scene, she tells steve that she needs to take fury's body, by saying this she implies she wants steve to tell nat it's time, we don't know if maria and nat talked in between these scenes but i don't think they did, i believe their relationship started to slip after new york and fury's "death" was the final drop, there's so much strain on their relationship and they're both going through so much that at this point they're feeling more distant from each other than they have in years, natasha shuts herself off and puts her walls back up that maria spent years breaking down, they're scared that if they talk about what's going on they'll either break down and lose sight of the mission or lose each other, so they don't talk at all

again we see maria more emotional than we have ever seen or will ever see her, after a few second steve goes to get nat

and then this last shot i'll talk about is also the most heartbreaking to me, i can't imagine how heartwrenching is must be for maria to not be able to comfort nat in this situation and have to see someone else try to do this, deep down she wants to wrap nat in her arms and let both nat and herself break down but neither of them have time for that so instead she watches the love of her life lose one of the most important people to her and be comforted by her new friend that they barely know, first she looks at them, then she simply can't bare it anymore and looks away, she can't look at fury's body, she can't look at natasha's heartbroken expression and she can't look at steve standing in the spot she should be in, so she looks away

finally nat walks away and maria can't resist, she glances towards nat, she has to look at her, one second of eye contact will tell her enough, will nat leave forever or will she come back to her, will she feel her feelings or will she focus too much on the mission and self destruct, will she dissapear or will she break her old pattern, nat doesn't look up, so maria never finds out what she needs to know, and more importantly, she doesn't get to look into nat's eyes which is the only thing that could bring her the slightest bit of comfort and ease

part 2: the bunker scene (coming soon)

part 3: nat and steve (coming soon)

part 4: snippets (coming soon)

#this is a bit of a mess #i’m sorry #i tried to put into words what i think and feel during these scenes but it’s HARD #anyway let me know what you guys thinj #blackhill #natasha romanoff #maria hill #black widow #mcu #marvel #captain america: the winter soldier #catws

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