#bad faith smears are not
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IN RECENT WEEKS, as Palestinians rose up in their homeland, in the wider Middle East, and around the world, you probably heard the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In cities across the globe, protesters responded to the pending expulsions of Palestinian residents from their homes in Jerusalem, Israeli attacks on holy sites, and the bombardment of Gaza. If you watched or attended any of these protests, you likely saw the slogan printed on a sign, or heard it drifting over the crowd.
You may also have heard claims that this slogan is antisemitic or even genocidal. On May 19th, for example, the New Yorker Union was widely attacked for tweeting, “Solidarity with Palestinians from the river to the sea who went on a 24-hour strike yesterday for dignity and liberation.” Whether in earnest ignorance or in bad faith, critics of the river-to-the-sea formulation argued that the union, and others who used the slogan last month, were implicitly calling for not only dismantling the State of Israel, but cleansing the entire region—from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, an area encompassing the West Bank, Gaza, and all of Israel within its internationally recognized pre-1967 borders—of its Jewish population. (Unfortunately, the union backed down in the face of these smears.)
Like many Palestinians, I’ve long used this phrase. About a decade ago, Peter Beinart started a blog at The Daily Beast called “Open Zion” aimed at bringing together a range of perspectives on Israel/Palestine. He invited me to participate regularly, and at first I was hesitant, given the name. Would a project called “Open Zion” really be open to arguments that challenged the tenets of Zionism? I agreed to participate on the condition that I could write what I wanted and that my column could be called “From the River to the Sea.” As I explained to Peter, I wasn’t concerned with Israel’s identity crisis over whether it could be both Jewish and democratic; I was concerned that Palestinians were being denied basic rights throughout their homeland. My column, “From the River to the Sea,” would be focused on the unity of the Palestinian experience and how all Palestinians faced a shared struggle with Zionism regardless of where they lived.
Today, I believe the conversation has increasingly shifted in this direction. This is due in part to a general intellectual and moral awakening—in media, in academia, in activist spaces, and even among certain elected officials—on the subject of Israel/Palestine, but also because of the increasingly horrific realities on the ground. More than ever before, people around the world are accepting that the problem goes well beyond the occupation of the West Bank, and that discrimination against Palestinians occurs on both sides of the Green Line.
The recent Palestinian uprising foreshadowed a future struggle in which the Green Line is unimportant if existent at all, because across the country, Palestinians mobilized collectively on a large scale under their national banner. The phrase “from the river to the sea” captures this future as no other can, because it encompasses the entire space in which Palestinian rights are denied. It is in this space that Palestinians seek to live freely. It is across this space—and across the political and geographic divisions that Israeli rule has imposed—that Palestinians must unite to create change. It is this space that Palestinians call home, regardless of what anyone else calls it.
“From the river to the sea” is a rejoinder to the fragmentation of Palestinian land and people by Israeli occupation and discrimination. Palestinians have been divided in a myriad of ways by Israeli policy. There are Palestinian refugees denied repatriation because of discriminatory Israeli laws. There are Palestinians denied equal rights living within Israel’s internationally recognized territory as second-class citizens. There are Palestinians living with no citizenship rights under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank. There are Palestinians in legal limbo in occupied Jerusalem and facing expulsion. There are Palestinians in Gaza living under an Israeli siege. All of them suffer from a range of policies in a singular system of discrimination and apartheid—a system that can only be challenged by their unified opposition. All of them have a right to live freely in the land from the river to the sea.
But it is precisely because Zionist settler colonialism has benefitted from and pursued Palestinian fragmentation that it seeks to mischaracterize and destroy inclusive and unifying rhetorical frameworks. For example, journalist Marc Lamont Hill was attacked and ultimately removed from his position at CNN for calling for Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea.” After all, it is far easier to dominate a divided people fighting different battles on different fronts than it is to dominate one people united in a single battle for the same universal rights.
Since Zionists struggle to make a persuasive argument against freedom, justice, and equality for all people throughout the land, they seek instead to attack the message and messenger. When Palestinians proclaim “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” many Zionists argue that this is a Palestinian call for genocide. But as historian Maha Nassar has noted, there has never been an “official Palestinian position calling for the forced removal of Jews from Palestine.” The links between this phrase and eliminationism might be the product of “an Israeli media campaign following the 1967 war that claimed Palestinians wished to ‘throw Jews into the sea.’” Jewish groups such as the American Jewish Committee also claim that the slogan is antisemitic because it has been taken up by militant groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Hamas. But as Nassar writes, the phrase predates these uses, and has its origins as “part of a larger call to see a secular democratic state established in all of historic Palestine.”
The claim that the phrase “from the river to the sea” carries a genocidal intent relies not on the historical record, but rather on racism and Islamophobia. These Palestinians, the logic goes, cannot be trusted—even if they are calling for equality, their real intention is extermination. In order to justify unending violence against Palestinians, this logic seeks to caricature us as irrational savages hell-bent on killing Jews. Nor does the attempt to link Palestinians to eliminationism stop at the deliberate mischaracterization of this slogan; rather, it is deployed in many other contexts. In 2015, for instance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu engaged in Holocaust revisionism by stating that it was really a Palestinian, not Hitler, who inspired the final solution. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, actually had to remind the Israeli Prime Minister that it was the Germans who were responsible for the Holocaust. Raising the constant specter of eliminationism has political utility for Zionists; in such a threatening environment, perpetual abuses of Palestinians can be rationalized.
This twisted logic is not only reserved for Palestinians. Marginalized groups are often accused of not being trustworthy and of having deep-seated ulterior motives aimed at destroying society. Jews should know this trope well, as it has long been a central feature of antisemitism. In fact, the worst antisemitic attack in American history was carried out in recent years by a murderer who attacked a synagogue because he thought Jews were destroying white Christian-dominated society by bringing in brown immigrants under the guise of humanitarianism.
Fundamentally, such arguments disregard what Palestinians are calling for when they use the phrase in question: a state in which Palestinians can live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominated by others nor dominating them. When we call for a free Palestine from the river to the sea, it is precisely the existing system of domination that we seek to end.
(article dated June 11th, 2021)
#'from the river to the sea' is no more a call for jewish genocide#than 'black lives matter' is a call for white genocide#we say 'black lives matter' because historically and currently#policy makers and cops have made it clear that black lives do NOT matter to them#we say 'from the river to the sea palestine will be free' bc under historical and current israeli policies#palestine is NOT free#this isn't difficult to understand if you aren't TRYING to obfuscate the issue of palestinian liberation from oppression#ok maybe you've just heard off-hand that this is a call to genocide and swallowed it without much thought#that's fair#ignorance is forgivable#bad faith smears are not#and if you're reading this then now you know#free palestine#ceasefire now#current events#politics
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I have, a genuine question for you. Do you acknowledge the racism in the original AYTD or at least know about it? Like how MsKingBean uses slurs and racist stereotypes?
hey, so, i'm a bit apprehensive about answering this because...it doesn't feel like a very geniune question to me, if i'm being honest. "do you acknowledge x thing" is a question that is inherently set up so that i'm meant to answer "yes, i acknowledge that x thing is true," because the alternative is saying "no, i don't acknowledge that x thing is true," which is already framing this interaction as if to disagree with you would be a kind of failure on my part to do some due diligence of engaging critically with a text. and the fact that you say mskingbean89 used slurs in atyd shows me that you haven't even engaged with the text, because that simply...isn't true.
if what you're referring to when you say "slurs" is the anti-romani stereotypes--this is coming from an extra chapter in the bootleg tapes focusing on greyback, where there is a slur used to describe his living situation + he + his family were portrayed as nomadic irish people in a way that was insensitive. people who read that chapter and then went back to the canon story with that characterization in mind rightfully pointed out that it was fucked-up. mskingbean89 addressed those criticisms by adding this note to the beginning of that bootleg chapter:
personally, i think this was a good way to take accountability + acknowledge the mistakes she made with that portrayal. she was a human being who made an ignorant mistake, which then just happened to get absolutely blasted to millions of people--she did not have sensitivity readers or editors looking over her fanfiction, because she did not write it expecting it to reach the level of popularity that it has. to be honest, i am not really sure how she could have better acknowledged her mistake, aside from just....not having made it in the first place. she explains her intentions without acting as though that intent cancels out harm, owns up to the fact that the stereotyping was harmful regardless of intention, and provides resources to learn while also committing to be more mindful + educate herself moving forward. honestly, that's exactly the response i would hope to see from someone who makes a mistake like this one.
i agree with you that people reading atyd should acknowledge + understand the racism regarding romani stereotypes stemming from that bootleg chapter, which is why i think it's great that there is a note literally built into the beginning of that chapter acknowledging it! but i feel as though there's been this like...game of telephone happening online when it comes to atyd, where there are now people who have never even read the story talking about things that quite literally do not appear in the base text itself. i've also seen people acting as though mkb herself did not address these issues when they were raised to her, which is just...patently false.
and so what i'm wondering here is what you're looking for from me when you ask a question like "do you acknowledge the racism in atyd." anyone who actually reads the texts has to acknowledge the racism in that bootleg chapter, because mkb puts that acknowledgment front and center at the beginning. and also like...in the part of the fandom i'm in, in the conversations i've listened to or taken part of regarding atyd, people have acknowledged the issues with that bootleg chapter and the ways it reflects back on the main story. so what do you mean by "acknowledge" when so many people, including mkb herself, have already... acknowledged it? what action are you calling for, and who are you calling for it from?
because like. if what u actually want to say here is that atyd is Irredeemably Problematic and we should all like....shun it? universally agree that it's Bad? then it's just like. it is up to each individual reading the story to decide whether that specific portrayal of greyback in the bootleg chapters is something that ruins the story completely for them or whether they still think the story as a whole holds worth. personally, i feel like i can acknowledge that there are issues with mkb's portrayal of greyback and i need to be mindful of that when reading the story so as not to internalize harmful stereotypes while still finding atyd to be a masterpiece that really beautifully deals with a lot of nuanced issues regarding class and disability and systems of power. this is just part of thinking critically when you read; many famous and beloved works of fiction contain the biases of their authors or have mistakes or issues in the way they portray things that are a product of ignorance. and i know everyone reading marauders fanfiction should understand this, because if u genuinely think that a character being negatively stereotyped means u should throw the entire work in the trash, then none of u would be touching harry potter fanfiction with a five foot pole in the first place.
so, anon - if you have actually read atyd, and there are issues with racism that you have found that i am unaware of, and not just telephone-game twitter posts of people taking shit out of context that you're accepting as truth without bothering to engage with the work yourself--if you want to have a real conversation about it, i would invite you to come to me as an actual person and not an anonymous ghost in my inbox. my dms are open, but when it comes to talking about serious issues, i tend to find it more genuine if the person coming to me actually cares enough and believes in what they're saying enough to say it as themself. and if you haven't read atyd and are just parroting things you've heard other people say online then i would invite you to actually sit down and read the work and form your own opinions on it before getting back to me. i know that might sound harsh, but honestly i'm just completely fed-up at this point with all the bad-faith takes and misinformation that i've seen people spreading about atyd just because they think it's cool to dislike a popular thing.
#mkb is literally a human being who never intended for her story to get as popular as it has#i think the people who villainize her for likes on their twitter posts seem to forget that#and i'm not going to take part in some sort of smear campaign being run by people who brag about not even having read the story#i'm happy to acknowledge issues i find in a work. but i typically do that privately. in conversations with other people who have read it#because as i have said a million times there is never a reason for publicly shitting on fics regardless of how popular they get#it's not like mkb is profiting in any way from her story. in fact she has literally had to deal with awful harassment#and most of the 'critiques' i see about atyd are either bad-faith criticism or things that literally are not true. so!!#here's ur acknowledgment anon but if what ur looking for is for me to condemn mkb....sorry but that's not happening#i love atyd and think it's an amazing work of fiction. and i think mkb did a beautiful job exploring + portraying#many nuanced + sensitive issues. if u read the work and feel differently that's fine!#but that doesn't change the fact that it's fanfic....and that u should address any problems u have with it with fic etiquette in mind#ask#ranting and raving
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not proshipper not anti but a secret third thing (person who has a career in the media and, through covering legislative politics, has watched "associating with problematic fiction or entertainment is an indicator of moral degeneracy" rapidly become a mainstream GOP position that they are encoding in legislation to target the queer community under the guise of protecting children, thus coming to the conclusion that positioning the "can people enjoy things that would be immoral IRL in their fiction" debate as a proship v anti fandom debate is akin to pretending that "should we have the death penalty" is a discussion that only matters in Death Note discourse — the extent and manner to which fiction affects reality is an issue that is immediately relevant to today's US politics, and to summarize my opinions on the matter in fandom terms would be to diminish the ways this debate is affecting america Right The Fuck Now. and i have stopped taking "this person is bad for shipping the wrong anime thing and being horny about it" in any sort of good faith ever since I saw it literally used as part of a GOP smear campaign against a transgender state legislator in an attempt to defend the right from backlash after they used their supermajority in the Montana house to prevent her from speaking on the floor. Anyway I think everyone on this site, especially Americans, could benefit from ceasing to think in proship v anti vocabulary and instead developing coherent political positions on the nature of fiction that do not directly align with current fascist political tactics)
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”Oh if we didn’t have xenogenders/GNC trans people/neopronouns/MOGAI/etc etc etc then transphobes would respect us.” Untrue. Most transphobes are so insanely vitriolic that you could be the most standard, decent, agreeable trans person, and they would still hate you.
I’m a fairly basic trans man, online and off. I tone my gender down even more for work. I have short hair, facial hair, I wear pretty standard non-fitted pants and t shirts with some manner of compressive undergarment underneath, and I go by my fairly basic, common masc name. The only difference between me and my cis coworkers is that I openly engage in good-faith discussions about my being transgender when brought up, and I have a “he/him” pronoun pin I like to wear.
I have one coworker who I’m well aware has never gendered me correctly. I have assumed it was an intentional, bad-faith decision (because of other, unrelated-to-me conversations he has had with coworkers), but I’ve never really cared enough to bring it up to him. I figured, “if this is intentional, that’s his issue. I’m not interested in trying to change his mind.” I’ve reached a point in my transition to where I don’t really care that much if some random person doesn’t respect me or my gender, because I don’t need every stranger’s approval to be happy with myself.
With all that being said, I’ve treated him the same as I have every other coworker. I’ve been civil, I’ve been agreeable, I’ve still been friendly to him and haven’t gone around the workplace intending to smear his name. (Yes, I have discussed his behavior to those close to me who have asked, but I’ve kept it very private and said that as long as he doesn’t say anything outwardly malicious, I don’t really care about his behavior.) He has been outwardly friendly to me, too, telling me about his past careers, showing me pictures of his family, we’ve talked about our hobbies and other things we enjoy.
Still, after all of this, he has given up the ghost and decided to gossip about me negatively to coworkers. I won’t go into detail about what I’ve been told he said, but it was all explicitly transphobic and pretty aggressive. I’ve never gone out of my way to make him mad, relating to my gender or not, so it’s a little out of nowhere. I’m not particularly surprised by this, but I’m more surprised that he would be bold enough to say everything out loud when working for a company that has explicit protections for trans people in place. He was reported fairly quickly, without me ever knowing what occurred. The only reason I found out about everything is because I overheard a manager discussing it with a concerned coworker from my department.
So, if you take anything away from this, let it be that no amount of friendliness, gender-conformity, or civilness with stop a transphobe from taking their transphobia out on you, and it’s not your fault or any other trans person’s fault. Don’t victim blame trans people who become the subject of someone’s transphobic hate, because a transphobe is dedicated to harming trans people regardless of whether they blend in with cis people or not. Don’t use a transphobe’s needlessly malicious behavior as a reason to harass other trans, GNC, nonbinary, or otherwise gender diverse people.
#trans#transgender#transmasculine#trans pride#transgender pride#transgender man#lgbt#lgbtq#lgbtq+#lgbt+#lgbtqia#lgbtqia+#nic speaks#mogai#fixed typos and made it broader
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Conservatives have lost academic institutions and can only get them back through coordinated bad faith attacks using propaganda, distortion, and manipulation.
Chris Rufo said the quiet part out loud.
This is not about CRT and DEI. They are just the tools for the smear campaign. Conservatives are about whiteness and white superiority.
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Pls I want a sub Enmu x dom reader fic so bad⁉️ no one writes for him‼️
yes. . . sure. hes so pretty and unusual. let me know if i mistag anything again! sorry about my last post !
amab sub enmu x dom amab higher-moon demon reader!
^^these are just rambles as usual.. i'll probably keep one of these ideas as a draft and make a short fic of it buddy! sorry for any mistakes!
cw;; exhibition., fucking in public literally.., masturbation, blowjobs?! hints of petplay, calling enmu ur faithful dog, hints of nipple play + blood play i think! murder/cannibalism!
you had a cloaking ability of sorts. something that you often abused, the only downside is that your brightly colored eyes engraved with "higher moon" were on display.. you didnt mind at all, really - in your eyes, your body looking opaque as well as enmu - a lower moon demon who seemed to take a liking to you-! the idea is him sucking yr dick and tonguing your balls as passengers leave and board the train in front of you,,,
something about his freakish ways made you all giddy inside. it made you all the more haughty. lurking around his territory obviously struck him curious, and of course, he probably knew about your likeness toward him... but maybe he didn't. he striked you as a bit of a love-struck moronㅡso faithful to muzan, but so eager to hollow his mouth around your cock in the forest behind the train station. he was almost annoying.
ㅡ"that's my good boy..." humming to him softly as his head lays in-between your fleshy thighs. cock soft in his eager mouth, so careful not to bite your dick off - joking about doing so, but he would never actually go through with it, silly! petting his soft treads, carefully putting it to the side...
enmu, someone who looked up to you, wanted to be you - or with you, looking up at you with those huge matnles etched with his lower moon 1 rank... so pretty! you make sure to tell him that - he often prides himself in looking so pretty! "... you are my good boy, right? my good boy?... hmm?" ever so slightly tightening your grip on his hair, watching in admiration as drool dribbles passed his chin. he couldn't answer you... mouth stuffed full with yr thick, soft cock. hissing softly as his teeth graze - "yess.." his mouth hand hisses. ew freak... you jest, tonguing his hand out at an awkward angle.. "y-your... yours.. good boy." what was with that slurring? what's his problem?
[ also,,, feel like he would be bratty,, like " you dont compare to lord kibutsuji, but you'll do just fine." trying to take control of you,, a higher moon, and be the dominant one but fails miserably.. ]
,,, jerking him off in one of the empty traincarts,, him sitting on ur lap and pinching his nipple with ur free hand while tugging at his veiny ass dick,,,. yeeaahh!!!
dragging him to your territory... "its ours now!" gleefully informing him, ignoring the way he trembled and blushed as you dragged him around, parading around so... forwardly! sharing an offering... offering him the corpse of a young man. so happily tearing into it, watching as crimson smears all on his face before really getting messy with it! rubbing the blood all over his chest and him letting you suck/lick it off. yeeeaaahh!
beautiful. hrnmmm..
#kny =͟͟͞͞★#enmu x male reader#subbot enmu....#x male reader#male reader#top male reader#x top male reader#dom male reader#x dom male reader#kny x male reader#amab enmu#amab reader!
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Writing Exposition (Or Turning a Textbook into a Story)
Exposition concerns every facet of your work from character descriptions, backstories, and relationships, to world history, geography, religions/faiths/superstitions, politics, and current events. Whenever the author takes an aside to say “Joe, Bob’s second cousin, said ‘hello’,” the exposition is establishing that Joe is Bob’s cousin.
So shaming a story for its poor handling of exposition is like shaming a movie for bad visual effects. Yes, some of it is probably bad, but I guarantee that you did not notice every single VFX shot in the movie, and you weren’t supposed to.
Most examples of bad exposition occur when the following happens:
Informed Character A exposits to Informed Character B and tacks on “as you know” with full sincerity
Random Important Detail gets dropped in conversation that does not fit the tone or direction of conversation
Character suddenly monologues about The Thing unprompted
Convenient Breaking News Alerts
Character, out-of-character, begins monologuing about The Thing even when prompted
The pacing screeches to a halt so the Exposition Train can thunder past
Exposition exists to give information, and in order for a reader to understand a story, not all of it can or should be agonized over making perfect. Settings have to be established. Character names and relationships have to be understood. “Telling” over “showing” is, in my opinion, perfectly fine when the “showing” would take more lines, effort, and priority over a single inconsequential sentence. Heck, sometimes the “telling” is better than the “showing”. The trick to understanding when, how, and to what degree to give exposition is making it motivated.
What is motivated exposition?
See this post about character descriptions and the plight of the cliche “mirror” trope for unmotivated exposition.
Motivating your exposition means giving it a reason to exist where it does, prompted by the story you’re telling. Citing the “mirror” trope: I can have my character wake up and describe themselves to you, but in doing so, that rarely tells the audience anything more than just what to picture as they read. Or, I can have my character description spread out as those details become relevant. They’re describing their hair color and texture as it begins to irritate or distract them, telling us both what it looks like, and what our character thinks of it, and a little bit about their personality in how they treat it.
I can open the first chapter with a long-winded editorial about the long lost king destined to unite the shattered kingdoms, or I can wait until the tale becomes important to my characters to tell.
I can spin tapestries about politics before you’ve even met your hero, or I can wait until those politics begin to cause the hero problems and then invite the hero to talk about why those politics cause problems.
See this post about pacing and ensuring your scenes always do at least two things at once. Motivated exposition takes bland information’s singular purpose (to inform) and gives it flavor in coloring the personalities of the characters who give and receive it.
When to give exposition
Caveat: Not all front-loaded exposition is poorly-handled. Everyone loves the Star Wars title crawls because they’re a part of the episodic movie experience. Whether it’s a cheap way to deliver information is irrelevant.
Most prologues exist to front-load exposition and, because I love using Lord of the Rings as my shining example in every post, the trilogy opens with a lengthy speedrun of the main villain, some of the important pieces on the chessboard, the importance of the ring, the smeared reputation Aragorn must live up to and repair, and an idea of the stakes should the heroes lose. Not only is it a prologue, it’s a narrated prologue. There’s an impressive amount of information given in not a lot of time.
Last Airbender begins every single episode with a reminder about the 100 year war and the aggression of the Fire Nation and the purpose of the avatar.
With that said, prologues and title crawls are their own tangle of weeds.
As I said above, exposition should be given when the story gives it reason to exist. Don’t talk about the politics until you have a scene where discussing politics is relevant.
If you need to establish your cool, unique magic system, wait until you have a character using that magic and give it in little chewable bites. That character likely isn’t using every trick in the book right then and there. If they wrote Last Airbender as a novel and started explaining the other three bending styles the second Katara levitated some water, it would read sloppy and slog.
Or, leave the exposition as a mystery to be told later. Make your audience crave the hero’s backstory, piecing together little hints throughout the narrative until just the right moment comes along where your hero would realistically start spilling the beans about themselves. Have other characters frustrated at the lack of information. Have other characters missassume and be wrong about the information they think they know.
Have your characters crave knowledge about their world as much as your audience does.
How to give exposition
Exposition can be given three ways: Via the narrator, via dialogue, or via images or texts observed by the narrator (think news broadcasts or the front page of the paper, books, letters, videos, diary pages).
No matter which avenue you give exposition through, the less random it is, the less “hand of the author” the audience sees. Characters given a lucky break by a convenient breaking news alert is a mini deus ex machina —- the heroes do not earn their victory, it’s just given to them. They are not active in the plot making decisions, they are being railroaded by information as it falls into place before them.
Narrated exposition
The narrator’s internal monologue will interrupt the story to explain whatever needs explaining in that moment. The difference between it reading like a textbook and reading like a story is whether or not this information is important to the narrator.
Meaning, what does my hero feel about this new information? Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games exposits the entire book because she’s alone for a fair chunk of it with no one to talk to, and she’s no stranger to the politics and history of her world. And yet, she has such strong feelings about everything she says that it doesn’t feel like she’s just giving information for the sake of informing. Everything she says and how she says it reflects on her personality and how she views her world.
Dialogue exposition
When Katniss is clueless about the tribute parade process and all the nuances of Capital life, how she asks about this information and how Effie, Cinna, and Haymich tell her also speaks to their personalities and biases about what they’re saying. In essence: Their exposition is in-character, and, thus, services their characters.
This is the complete opposite of when two informed characters exposit to each other information both already know for the sake of the audience because the author has no other way to give said information. A prime example is the hero happening to overhear two minions discussing The Plan dropping lines like “as you know” (which makes it worse every time).
The only time “as you know” works is when it’s in character. As in, the villain expositing to their minion they think is stupid and the minion reacting to that assumption appropriately. Or, the heroes are gathered to discuss The Plan and the leader of the meeting goes “as you know” because that happens in the real world. Bonus points if some characters are irritated by the redundant recap.
Exposition via dialogue also opens the door for lies, half-truths, and characters simply being wrong or blinded by their biases. Or, characters simply being ignorant of the world they live in. In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is like 3,000 years old and has been all over Middle Earth. It doesn’t break the plot to have Gandalf exposit because he would realistically have witnessed or have deep knowledge about historical events and politics. Aragorn, too, is 87, and has ranged all over the place. He’s the future king and thus had better know his history and politics. Aragorn expositing makes sense.
Say what you will about Last Jedi but it has a prime example of nuanced exposition: Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker have incredibly different perspectives on if/how Luke attempted murder on his nephew. There’s 3 sides to every story and the audience is never shown the truth. Had this been given in the title crawl, it would have lost much of its potency.
Dialogue also nurtures the relationships between the characters talking. Telling stories brings people together. If a character is sharing their backstory, why are they telling the narrator, and what does this mean to them as they tell it? If a soldier is sharing his grizzled leader’s backstory around a campfire, how does his relationship with his leader impact how he tells that story, what language he uses, how he sounds, the expressions on his face?
Third party exposition
Information given from an object can be incredibly hit or miss, depending on how hard the heroes worked to obtain it, and whether or not the object in question is meaningful to the heroes.
In the Assassin's Creed games, you abandon the gameplay in whatever historical era you're playing in to watch cutscene after cutscene of exposition (specifically referencing the Ezio Trilogy) by characters no one cares about, giving information that no one cares about, when we'd all rather just keep playing the game.
You can literally have a character read from a textbook, logbook, or daily minutes. What matters is how that info reads, and how the character responds to it. Is the information prejudiced or saturated with bigoted language? Is the mere existence of it where it is horrifying?
In the Mines of Moria (Lord of the Rings) Gimli learns that all his kin have been murdered by goblins once he sees their corpses all impaled with goblin arrows. Later, he finds his dead cousin’s crypt containing a dead dwarf cradling a book that tells of the downfall of Moria. The log entry isn’t finished, and the penmanship rapidly degrades as the dwarf writing it likely dies from his wounds, ending with the ominous, “We cannot get out, we cannot get out, they are coming.”
Had Gandalf warned Gimli ahead of time that all the dwarves were dead, or had they never found the crypt or figured out the owners of the arrows and simply were told “oh yeah we’re about to be attacked by goblins, I suspect they’re the reason Moria is a ghost town” that would have lost all emotional impact, and character development for Gimli.
This doesn’t have to be just objects, get creative! Have the hero watch a parody retelling of the Big Event. Have someone tell it like a ghost story around a campfire. Have it be a crazed rant all across live TV that no one takes seriously. Have six different characters remember it differently and all argue over who’s right. Have someone tell it poorly, thinking it “just a stupid rumor”.
When to withhold exposition
Satisfaction is the death of desire and sometimes uncovering the details of an enticing tidbit of information ruins whatever the audience had imagined to fill in the blanks. In terms of “showing” vs “telling” concerning worldbuilding, deciding whether to have a character speak about the information, or actually writing the scene they’re referring to, is entirely dependant on the story you’re telling.
If you are going to write a flashback, or describe a video of the event, that flashback and video has to be *packed* with as much information as you can cram in there as artfully as you can. Flashbacks and dream sequences take up space and entire scenes and settings need establishing so the audience isn’t floating in the ether trying to follow along. Which tends to mean that the meat of the flashback is barely half of the words you’re now forced to read.
Decide how important it is that the audience sees the incident as it happened, versus told in the aftermath through the biases and flawed memory of another character.
Sometimes the fewest amount of words pack the biggest punch. You can have a shattered soldier describe the battle of which they’re the last survivor in gory detail, or you can have them simply say “it was hell” and let the oomph hit in their expression, how their voice cracks, how vacant their eyes look. The injuries they sustained, the traumas visible in how they hold themselves. At that point, the audience can imagine whatever hell they want. At that point, what you are "showing" (the emotional and physical toll taken on the speaker) is likely way more important than the battle itself.
Concerning pacing — no matter how hard you worked on designing your politics and royal lineages and fantasy geography, odds are if that information isn’t important to your characters, it isn’t important to your readers. It’s not motivated.
I love trivia and fantasy maps as much as everyone else, but I like them on the wikis and next to the table of contents, not interrupting an engaging story.
And, give your audience credit where credit is due. How many fan theories stand on the basis of a few scant lines of narration or zoomed-in snippets of background characters (R+L=J anyone?) and pieces of costume? The mystery is what makes it fun, and I just watched the criminally disappointing second adaptation of the Lightning Thief completely robbed of that mystery every chance they had.
—
In short, the amount of exposition isn’t what makes it well or poorly handled, it’s how and when it’s delivered. Inception is my favorite sci-fi movie and the entire script is exposition, but the way it’s given is entertaining. Motivating your details to exist for a reason, to be given exactly when the time is right and not a moment before, is the spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down.
Make it timely
Make it relevant
Make it important to the cast
Make it earned by the cast
Make it entertaining
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So I am a bit ashamed given modern day politics to admit that I'm left leaning at all. Even if I'm a just Left of Center Libertarian.
But the reason why is because of the fact that a huge swath of the left has an issue when it comes to words. Specifically changing the meaning of words until they mean next to nothing at all.
What do I mean by this? Well let's consider, what words have been made to mean nothing by the left:
Gender
Sex
Abortion
Genocide
Nazi
Man
Woman
Child
Family
Capitalism
Communism
Socialism
Fascism
Racism
Sexism
Etc
The list goes on and on and on.
Nazi more or less now means, "I don't like you and you don't agree with me thus forth I will bestow this label on you so as to smear you publicly"
Gender used to mean sex and now it both does and does not mean sex and even is now used to mean "Identity" with that was never what it meant.
Genocide is SUPPOSED to mean the intentional removal of a group of people through killing them or breeding them out by sterilization or intentional delusion of their bloodline. (Example of this is the raping of Uyghur Muslim women by Han chinese men and the sterilization of the Uyghur Muslim men by chemical castration or actual castration). Now it just means, "People dying in war is genocide. People not being allowed to chemically castrate themselves is genocide. People being allowed to eat meat is genocide". IE: It means nothing at all.
And then there's my favorite phrase from the left.
"This is a threat to our Democracy" which actually translates to: This is a threat to the power of Democrats therefore we need to smear and slander anyone pushing whatever is being pushed currently. And we will use weasel words normies use in order to scare them away from whatever this thing being pushed is".
First and foremost, we DO NOT live in a Democracy. We live in a Constitutional Republic. Secondly, when people want power as BADLY as Dems and will lie, cheat, steal, and smear to get there, you should be concerned. I mean for god sake, people consider a very TINY riot at the capital with 99.99% of people unarmed completely, while we also know feds were in the crowd, an "Insurrection"; But then will not consider fire bombing the security office outside the White House, the pushing down of the WH fence, and the burning of a historical church across the street, and the injuring and killing of several Guards and Police the same thing.
So basically, it's a "If we are in power, everything we do, no matter what it is, is fine and reasonable. If you are in power anything we do to try to remove you from power is fine and reasonable.", situation.
That's why I don't like most of the left. Because they think they are gods. Their "Moral" is correct even when it never stops changing. Look at their defense of slavery in the middle east all because, "Those poor oppressed Arabs". I'm sorry but what?! SO slavery is FINE so long as it's non white doing it? That's what I'm hearing right? And sadly a lot of the time it's "YES! That is what you are hearing". If time has taught me anything it's that most of the left is a brainwashed, uneducated cult. They believe EVERYTHING outside of their cult views as evil and thus forth need to lie about it to make everyone else NOT involved or not informed also have the same resentment towards the people they hate.
And it was the last straw when I saw post after post after post of leftists excusing rape. And then people like Hasan Piker calling Kids, "Colonizers" while in the breath before talking about violent removal of people is fine if they are colonizers.
No leftists. You need to understand something very clearly. The "Right" you view as so bad and evil are consistent in most of their morals. But you view everything in bad faith. Thus can't see past your own bias long enough to realize the actual evil ones are you.
And understand. I'm not calling EVERYONE on the left evil. But if you worship the left, you probably are evil. Even if you believe you are doing "The right thing" that doesn't mean you are. And it's about time you realized that.
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Priest!Baizhu | Drabble+ Hc
tw: lowkey manipulative baizhu?? creampie, masturbation, semi-public sex, very religious themes, m!reader, dubcon?? idk, if i forgot anythin please inform me!!
wc: 0.7k
a/n: i do apologize for not postin that much!! i have a lot going on 𖦹 ´ ᯅ ` 𖦹 , writers block is kickin my ass.. i do have fics in the works!! m tryna to make everything more pleasin to the eye, i will try to make a masterlist soon ^^ please enjoy my work.♡
nsfw under the cut~
Priest!Baizhu; who kindly welcomed you to the church with open arms, always inviting you to his sermons to listen to him preach the words of archon. Seeming so kind, a humble smile always on his face while preaching at the stand, welcoming others into the church. Soft voice filling the room as he spoke, sending heat down to the deepest parts of you.. Utterly mesmerizing, the way his soft eyes scanned over the room, pushing up his glasses when the slide down the slope of his nose. His eyes ended up being on you at the end of the day.
Priest!Baizhu; who listens to every single time you avow your deep urges, whispering in shame of the sinful thoughts that constantly flooded your mind when you thought of him. How shameful you are, giving into the hands of sin,, you never notice how his eyes darken as he listens, Priest baizhu is a mysterious man they say..
Priest!Baizhu; who can’t help but laugh at how cute you are, trusting him with all the little things you’ve told him behind the confessional walls. How much you yearned for a certain mans touch against your untouched skin, to ruin the only true form of purity you had.
Priest!Baizhu; who pops a boner whenever you sob and beg archons to forgive you and your misbehaviors. Maybe he should feel bad,, clearly your faith was a big part of living, but god the tears flowing down the apples of your cheeks make him want to ruin you. Wiping your tears with his thumbs, whispering prayers whilst rubbing your back softly,, telling you everything will be okay when he’s there. That he’ll gracefully listen to any of the problems you may have,, hushing your hiccuping sobs. he hopes you don’t notice the tent in his pants
Priest!Baizhu; who ends up touching himself after speaking to you, lightly rubbing his glands with his fingertips, smearing thick beads of pre over his length. Baizhu obviously knows how perverted he is, thinking of ruining you, rutting his hips against his clasped palm. Sticky white covering his thin fingers, he sighs and takes off his glasses. A light layer of sweat over his forehead, you’ve clouded his mind for weeks.
Priest!Baizhu; who (sometimes) when he’s feeling risky will tread his hands down his pants while listening to your voice in the confessional, shallowly stroking his shaft trying to keep in his breathy groans. Nearly coming in his pants when your voice is laced with shame. A small part of him wishes you’d hear him, hear him pleasing himself at the sound of your soft voice.
Priest!Baizhu; who always tells you that ‘Theres nothing wrong with such urges ’ whispering in your ears, his hands brushing against your thighs gently pushing them apart.. just enough for your eyes to meet his, a smile painted against his pretty pink lips
was his smile always this unsettling?
Priest!Baizhu; who ends up fucking you in the the confessional booth, ripping off your modest attire, defiling you in public, shushing you when you get too loud reciting the words from the holy book in his hand. Ripping away the only form of purity you had, taking your virginity as retribution for your sins. Baizhu’s thumbs pressed harder into your hips, he can barely keep in the groans that bless his lips. Committing such sacrilege in the house of the lord above, turned him on in such a way.
‘It’s the only way you’ll be forgiven’
Priest!Baizhu; who comforts you when his cocks aggressively enter and leave your sex, shushing your tears and promising that you’ll be reborn pure after he blows his load into you. His words singing false promises into your ears, its oddly comforting.. the feeling of being so full in his warm embrace,,
Priest!Baizhu; who thinks about making you worship him instead, shouldn’t you be begging him to save you? Maybe he hasn’t fucked the greedful lust out of your system yet.. Every session ends up with you bent over while Baizhu has his way with you, pleading of archon to pardon your transgressions of their word.
‘Oh my love.. you’ll earn your forgiveness soon my dear..’ he kisses the corner of your lips gently.
‘Just keep being a good boy for me..’
Priest!Baizhu; who fills you full with his seed, telling you that the ones above forgive you for your sins,, petting your hair and pressing you against his chest.
Priest!baizhu; who can’t wait for next Sunday to come to redo it all again..
@nanqmies © 2023
please do not translate, steal or repost my work.
reblogs and feedback appreciated!
#genshin baizhu#06.1.23#baizhu x male reader#baizhu#baizhu x reader#nanqmies#genshin#genshin smut#genshin headcanons#genshin impact#baizhu genshin impact#baizhu gi#genshin x y/n#genshin x male reader
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I just saw someone take your “people who play stardew valley should be sent to the forever gulag” joke as evidence that you genuinely believe that and just
People will just twist themselves into the most ridiculous bad faith interpretations jus for smear a trans woman
now yknow i understand that it can be hard to read tone and context and nuance on the internet but these are the tags on that joke
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Ok so now that I've spent some time thinking about the whole "Chuuya was never a vampire" twist, I... still don't like it. For many reasons.
Here's my explanation; if you want to read it, please do. I strive to be fair. I want to wait for the manga release before making a verdict on whether it's bad writing or not, and I also want to see the start of next arc to see where they're going with all this.
If you don't want to read it, and you're having fun with the twist (it is funny. I will admit that much), then skip this and keep having fun! I don't want to ruin anyone's enjoyment.
First of all. It makes no sense. There are things that just do not add up. There was never an indication this was a possibility.
Bro. Did you put on costume makeup for the texture under your eyes? Did it wash off after nearly getting drowned and you had to frantically reapply it behind Fyodor's back and that's why we couldn't see your face for several chapters. Did you take it off again for your dramatic reveal here at the end? I demand smeared undereye makeup Chuuya in the manga when it releases hbfsdjhbfv
Ok this was more a joke. But here's what really irks me.
From what I can recall, this is. True. He needs to have made contact to manipulate gravity. It's also re-established in this very arc.
Great. So how the fuck did he slow the elevator? He was with Fyodor in a separate room! This makes no sense. Did he leave to stop the elevator and Fyodor was like "oh chill. ok come back soon"??? What?!
Here's another thing I want to address:
@ticklinglady I had this same question. However, on thinking on it again, I do have an answer that makes sense - they had to buy time for Sigma to use his ability on Fyodor, to gain knowledge on him about what he knows, and what his ability is. <-I feel confident in saying this is going to be important later. Sigma will still have a role to play and we will find out more about Fyodor!
Alright. Moving on to the themes, and why this also doesn't work (at least for me).
The theme in this arc is very much to do with the contrast between trust vs control. This is Fyodor's failing when it came to Dazai, and it is established very early on as the major contrast between them, in the Sky Casino arc. The vampires, though it seemed silly and random, fit nicely into that theming. And the conclusion, where Dazai showed extreme faith in Sigma and the Agency members (and what an interesting contrast that is; to have someone show faith in ordinary humans when his foil is a man who has faith in god but not humanity), that fits into that theming also. Ok, so this was an extension of that right? Showing faith in Chuuya, as always.
Yeah, no. I want to direct your attention back to this here.
This line is the one that had everyone going "oh man skk is going to fuck you up for that". I made an entire analysis back when this chapter first came out about the themes that we saw, and Fyodor's utter devaluing of the effectiveness of people beyond just their skills and abilities (it's here, if you're curious). This is why I suspected that, since Dazai and Fyodor are intellectually matched, it would have to be Sigma and Chuuya to catch Fyodor off guard - because he only values what people can do, not who they are.
Well, we got a little with Sigma, before Fyodor took control of the situation again. (Rip buddy.) Sigma's tenacity and unwillingness to fall for Fyodor's manipulating him away from helping the Agency was based off his personal choice and free will. He managed to shoot him! Fyodor was reduced to a cheap trick to get close enough to stab him! There was a certain level of payoff.
But Chuuya? I want you to think for a second. What did he actually do? Not a single part of this was Chuuya's idea. It was Mori's - he was at the very least sent undercover under orders, if not sent to Meursault under orders. He didn't even glue his own fangs in apparently. Now let's go over what he did. Why was it so necessary that it be Chuuya there? Well, obviously because gravity manipulation was needed to slow the elevator and the bullet. Oh... hm. So. His ability. Was what was needed, huh?
But it was necessary for it to be Chuuya because of the bond between him and Dazai, right? Oh. Wait. So, Chuuya's personality and goals don't matter - only his ability to read Dazai.
This twist makes it so Chuuya as a person doesn't actually throw a wrench into Fyodor's plans at all. All that matters is that he is Mori's executive and Dazai's partner. I guess he was "utilized" after all. I thought, with his characterization in Fifteen and Stormbringer, that we were moving away from this characterization of Chuuya only by his bond with Dazai. Do you want to scream.
You might be saying, okay, but at the very least it showed the depths of Double Black's bond! ...did it? Not really, at least not to me. The only impressive part of any of this was Mori's preparedness. This was barely an skk plan. It was a Mori plan. Double Black placing their lives in each other's hands is a Tuesday for them. This is nothing we didn't already know. And truthfully, it goes nowhere near the level of sheer trust we saw in Dead Apple. Mori sent Chuuya in sure, but it was only after everything settled down that he realized that Mori suspected Dazai would need help. Before that point, it seemed everyone thought Dazai was dead except Chuuya. Chuuya chose to jump out of that plane. Chuuya chose to risk his life. It showcased his personality, his free agency, and the level of trust they had far, far better. And it was emotionally satisfying! Dazai was extremely grateful that his trust paid off! Chuuya was somewhat conscious during Corruption, enough to weaken his own punch and shout Dazai's name! Dazai prevented Chuuya from having his ability be separated from him by the fog! They are an unbeatable team... but they were still left exhausted, and had to rely only on each other. How does what happened in this latest episode compare to that in a way that makes me believe they've actually outmaneuvered Fyodor?
Listen. I'll take twists that don't really have a great build up if they further the themes or character development, or it just makes for good drama. There's an interesting pay off, at least, so I say "okay, okay. Could've been done better, but I'll let it slide for the intrigue." But here? Nothing. It was boring. Are you bored.
Anime watchers were probably more fine with it. Maybe it was a little disappointing, but oh well. But manga readers have been having this plot dragged out for years. A lot of said fans (including myself) were excited to see Chuuya become main series relevant and receive present day development - and it seemed like we were going to get that with the recent publication of not one, but two Chuuya backstory novels, and the drama of this arc pitting Dazai and Chuuya against each other. Instead, this did absolutely nothing of interest for his character. Why was he even here?
Which brings me to the last point, which is the characterization.
Going back and re-reading this entire arc now, it becomes one big stage performance. Ok, fine, it's a little funny. But now there's hardly anything of value to these interactions. The only ones that actually matter are Fyodor and Sigma, and Fyodor and Nikolai. All that buildup to drama between Double Black, to another incredible display of trust, to something shifting and changing from the status quo... all that build up, and nothing has changed for Chuuya, or for Double Black. The show of trust wasn't even that dramatic really. Are you bored still.
This also weakens Fyodor's character to me. Fyodor witnessed their incredible show of trust in Dead Apple. I assumed he was prepared for skk-typical bullshittery, you know, being a genius on par if not greater than Dazai. You're telling me he was so overconfident he completely missed that Chuuya wasn't a vampire? Really? Fyodor really had nothing in place that would verify whether the vampires were actually under control? He wasn't constantly checking for a plan? It really was just red eyes and fangs, and he thought that was fine? That's it? Ok.
Truthfully, I was kind of :| about several of the preceding twists in the Meursault arc, particularly the dagger Fyodor pulled out when he started acting to Sigma, and the door railing being preemptively crushed by Chuuya before the drowning started. The dagger was actually ornate in the manga, which raised several questions - it couldn't have come from a guard. It made me think there was more to that interaction than just Fyodor pretends to have a split personality and that there was actually something to that knife. Well, it was made to be a regular knife in the anime, so I guess theorizing across those lines are dashed.
What bothered me the most though was the crumpling of the rail to stop the door from completely closing. There was no indication of this in the manga. None. No one could've predicted that - because it's stupid. The water filled so fast it couldn't get out of the crack in the door, even though it was huge??? Dazai was in the control room - you're telling me that there was no security camera focused on the door??? You know, where you would position a security camera??? It was dumb to me, but I was willing to roll my eyes and move on because I was expecting a good payoff to all this, and well, it was funny.
But now, the whole arc is one extended joke skk were playing on Fyodor. And you're telling me that's how our major antagonist goes out? Our major antagonist of several arcs? Be for fucking real.
And depending on when Dazai figured it out, it may even cheapen earlier scenes. If he found out after the elevator slowed like people have been theorizing, I could accept that. That's fine. But I need people to recall: in the actual episode he states "it was all an act".
Is Dazai probably lying to save face? Sure. But as of this moment we actually have no evidence it wasn't an act from the beginning. Remember that Ango was communicating the whole time with Dazai. Remember that Mori was involved and helped Tanizaki and Kenji get to safety. It's entirely possible it was all premeditated.
One last suggestion: the plan name was "Good-bye" as suggested earlier. This means that even if Dazai didn't know from the beginning, he knew by the time of his speech to Chuuya as he was drowning.
This means that his whole scheme with Sigma was not an extremely dangerous, life-risking play on his part at all (@daz4i has gone to explain why this sacrificialism isn't good for a suicidal character, which I recommend reading, but nonetheless it was still notable characterization for Dazai). And what about this?
Even his own flashbacks and memories were, what? A lie? A performance? For whom? Not for Fyodor, that's for sure.
For us. The readers. For the people who are invested in these two and their dynamic. For the people who wanted development between them, because there are actually issues there that have not been resolved. People wanted Dazai to show real concern. Chuuya is still bitter, even if Dazai thinks everything is fine and the same since he left. There was a tease that we're going to get how Chuuya felt when Dazai left the Mafia at some point in the future. People were making angsty art and writing and getting really excited because all the prior interactions had appeared to be set up for the payoff of this drama.
We get an introduction in the dungeon. We reveal their partnership and fearsome reputation during the Lovecraft fight. They perform flawlessly in Dead Apple. Throughout all this, they need no communication. They read each other and respond in tandem, always... but there's still an underlying tension in the way they do not talk to each other. I, and many others, had thought the prison escape arc was the breaking point for some development, since their prior appearances were all meant to establish them as a team, and this arc dealt heavily with the breaking of established things.
But no. Deus ex skk is perfect. They have no issues or flaws. Do you want to scream again.
Anyways. I recognize I'm probably just very disappointed right now and by tomorrow, I probably won't care anymore and will just roll with it. I think I was extra disappointed because while I tempered my expectations for, say, Yosano and Kyouka's involvement (sigh...), I fully expected skk would be handled well, being the fandom faves and where the money is at, so I guess I took the disappointment that much harder.
However, I'm eager to see how the manga tackles the ending, and if we will get any extra cues or better pacing there that may make me not quite so bitter. If it's any consolation, I do think we'll be getting Chuuya focus at some point in a future arc, and while I do think Fyodor is dead, I doubt he will have stopped haunting the narrative. He'll be back in some capacity. I'm pretty certain he's still the mastermind.
And I'm curious about the next arc and what's happening there. Maybe some things will be revealed later that will help smooth out the flaws here.
#storyrambles#listen by tomorrow i'll probably be totally chill and whatever about it#i just needed to get this out#bsd#bsd season 5#bsd spoilers#bsd negativity
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heyyyy bonefallll!!! So uhm. Wind released. And if you read it, what do you think of it?
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I started ASC off with a lot of excitement. I had known to not get my hopes up, but for the first time in a long time, I felt like they actually had something meaningful to say about the problems in Clan society. For once, it felt fresh.
A conflict based on a murder mystery and a power struggle, political radicalization within another Clan with anti-Clanswapper bigotry turning violent, and the reluctant heir of a legacy sprawling several generations. Like a dark echo of TPB, implying the root issues had never been truly addressed by Darkest Hour. The Clans still have a terrible ruling system. The culture is still bigoted. Firestar failed to destroy the obsession with legacy-- he just founded a new bloodline.
And even if it wasn't THAT deep, it was at least a grounded plot that was based in the characters more than faith in StarClan. If Nightheart's arc about legacy fell apart, I'd still enjoy watching him struggle, lose people, grow, and find his purpose. Or seeing Splashtail juggle the power he'd managed to snatch and was just not smart enough to hold onto. Or the cool fights that would surely result from an invasion of RiverClan.
Wind tossed it. It was already having a downturn in the previous book, but this is a book that seems so afraid of having interesting conflict that it spends 75% of its time debating if something interesting should happen, and 25% of its time barking, "EVIL HEATHENS WHO HATE GOD WILL DESTROY OUR SOCIETY!!"
I can't get over how awful Splashtail's "descent" is. He's having a dumbass atheist stoner debate with Podlight when they go to the Moonpool, musing that maybe you have to eat 9 mice to get 9 lives, and then 2 appearances later he's foaming at the mouth with a dictator speech and kills harelight no miss.
They even seem to have tried to replicate Stonefur's execution but badly. It's jarring. Splashtail had a big dictator speech, killed the beloved deputy suddenly, and the whole camp looks Super Scared and Upset so that you know it's the Evil Leader and not a systemic problem.
His "TALENT FOR MANIPULATION" is saying he heard Curlfeather murmur evil plans in her sleep and (apropos of nothing) accusing her teenage daughter of "getting the wrong idea" about his adult romantic interest in her. I keep coming back to this because the ENTIRE book's plot is based on this successfully smearing Frostpaw's reputation.
you may be tired of hearing it, but I'm definitely more tired than you because I had to read and analyze an ENTIRE BOOK founded on it.
The plot is endlessly arguing over if they can trust Frostpaw or not, gathering "evidence" to this end, while Sunbeam and Nightheart's POVs uselessly languish in ThunderClan doing mentoring stuff.
Im SO sick of being forced to sit in thunderclan while more interesting things happen offscreen. stop adding MORE cats to ThunderClan, you already have Stormcloud and you do NOTHING with him why are they also getting WAFFLEPAW
Everyone's praising the fact that the book can remember previous entries, but actually, I'm going to drop a hot take; It's actually bad if they CAN obviously reference old material, and then it doesn't influence the actions the characters take. They namedrop Nightstar several times and then come up with excuses for why they still need to sit around and do nothing!!
THAT'S WORSE, ACTUALLY.
SCALDING TAKE, I'd RATHER see the cats have the memories of goldfish if the alternative is "We remember Nightstar! We're simply going to purposefully disregard Nightstar, because the plot needs to happen"
They also muse that maybe Splashtail's evilness is making all the RiverClan cats act evil, and they'll go back to normal once he's removed. This has been implied before, but never so blatantly stated.
But most of all, I can't stop going back to "Godless Heathen Bloodlust." What a fucking joke. For a shining minute it looked like we were going to have interesting villains, but no, they really are just coming out and saying that lacking faith is an indicator of a moral failing. What makes Splashtail so uniquely bad and scary is that he "disrespects the ancestors" (hey podlight. what if eating 9 magic mice gives you 9 lives? woah dude look at this. the bugle chips look like claws. lol haha) and hates love and peace and won't even let Jesus guide him.
The scenes with Frostpaw and her allies are the only parts of this book worth reading. Shadowsight, tigerHeartstar. Clinging to Whistlepaw like she's a life preserver. save me windclan
#asc spoilers#warrior cats analysis#So uh.#my thought is that it is Bad.#I did not Enjoy it#I can FIX IT#I WILL FIX IT#I CAN MAKE THIS WORK BUT JESUS CATS.
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Fallin’ For His Darlin’
(Gator Tillman x Female Reader)
Word count: 1,062
Pairings: Gator Tillman x Fem!Reader
Warnings: Language, mentions of trauma, wounds, pain, anxiety, and depression, vaginal sex, fluff, hurt/comfort, vaginal fingering, kind of dark!Gator, kind of soft/anxious too, etc.
A/N: So inspired tonight, listened to some mood music, feeling that fall vibe, haha! Hope y’all enjoy? I’m pretty happy with this one! And I can’t wait to see our boy in action 😭 P.S, forgive my shitty graphic making, I’m not good at that!
You’re not sure what time it is. Maybe midnight? You aren’t positive, because when his headlights find your garage door, floating in through your window like his own personal spotlight, his tires skid across the gravel of your lane, his car door heavily thudding closed, his boots crunching heavily over rough ground, signaling him closer… closer — time ceases to matter much. You’re meeting him eagerly over the threshold, his back slammed against the beat up wood, boots falling beside your sneakers on the entryway rug. Nothing can find you here, can harm you here, and what has lifelong permission to touch you, it’s always-only… him.
He smells as good as always. Spicy cologne and cigarettes, powdered sugar from the donuts he’d eaten for dinner (you are always on him to eat more), leftovers from your shared favorite diner — Angelica’s, still pressed into his crisp black t-shirt, as if he’d forgotten a napkin. His hair is usually in its less than pristine condition by the time he arrives at yours in the night hours. Doesn’t matter anyways, not with how you end up carrying on in front of your old fireplace (Gator’s a fan of your new cream rug, intricate floral patterns woven into it, loved by owners before, thrifted, and now yours), or on your couch. You’d never really gone to your bed, learning how those times nearly caused lines to be crossed, one ending with Gator falling asleep on your naked breasts, (the calmest he’s been in years, and you just watching him as the sun came up and cast a glow on his youthful head. he was lost, broken, beaten down).
Sticking to this, here in your living room, it’s safer, saner. But it’s not what you want. However, you’ll have him whichever way he offers. He’s Gator and you’re his sweet darlin’.
~*~
Your legs fall open, one wrapped up in his camouflage pant clad thighs. His fingers press deeper inside of you, thumb circling your curls, smearing the cream around in them, watching how it bubbles. You’re kissing him again, lips so soft on his chest, fingernails scraping through the thick tufts that rest on his chest, occasionally flicking his gold and silver chain overlays. You’d gotten him the gold pendant, something he could wear, a symbol for faith that Gator could attach his own meaning to, not having to wear because it meant what his father wanted it to. But it was safe enough that Roy wouldn’t question its meaning.
Your lips find that patch of skin by his left nipple, sucking it between your lips, before you bite down. Gator throbs in his pants, his spare hand squeezing your neck’s nape. Despite his fascination, he’s still a million miles away. “Why do you let me do this to you?”
It’s a default question, an answer you both know already. Why you let him love you like this, it’s so simple…
“These hands, what I do with them before I come here. I’m bad. And I could hurt you, you know?” He adds a little pressure that travels up your scalp in electric prickles.
You spread yourself wider for him, a third finger stretching you in a welcomed, boundary pushing burn. Your eyes meet the midnight murk that’s woven over his mossy pupils like a blanket to mask, face leaving that cove of his chest. Your finger reaches to rub along his lower lip, his tongue licking out to taste skin.
“You wouldn’t, Gator. You won’t...” Is your answer. As if you believe it more than you believe in any god or higher power.
He’s pushing, as he often does…
“And if I do?”
“Then I’d let you.” It’s plain and simple, your fingers leaving his mouth to wrap around his wrist and correct him to a deeper rhythm. This is not enough tonight. More. Fuck, you want him to swallow you whole, capture you, trap, and hurt you in the ways you welcome — how he can, ever so softly, but painfully blissful, like a fire to your fingertips, flames licking the skin, enough to sting, but never to take away in harm.
He’s fully hard, swollen, and he’s turning towards you, forcing you to him by your nape. Your noses bump into a brushing nudge, his hand leaving your cunt and pressing wet, calloused fingers to your jaw as he brings you into his mouth. He’s so warm, plush, his stubble has a scratching effect. He tastes like sweet sugar and Marlboros. He’s been smoking menthol, you note — what he switches to in the colder seasons.
He’s panting his next declaration over your mouth in a fragile concentration. “Would you let me put it inside of you, darlin’?”
Your thighs tighten together, pussy clicking noisily. You’ve never had penetrative sex with him yet, something so close for two childhood friends. But you’re ready to leap if he is, reaching for his hand on your jaw and squeezing over his knuckles. “What do you think I’ve been waiting for, Gator?”
~*~
Approaching Autumn glides in on the cool September rain of Sunday, leaves and earth filling your room with the harsh scent of two bodies connecting. Your blush curtains blow against the chipped, open window frames. Your nipples have hardened from the cool air, from dragging repeatedly across Gator’s chest hair, his necklaces dipping into your collar bones and the valley of your tits. He’s got your legs held around his waist, your hands pulling in his hair to mess it up, his nose finding yours, foreheads sticking with perspiration. The box of condoms lay abandoned at your bedside, a gamble in you, of which Gator is only ever willing to trust.
Your eyes tighten and close, his size making you feel as if you’ve never been touched or fucked before in your lifetime. Everything aches, everything is too much, all at once.
“Should I stop? You hurtin’?” He’s speaking to you in a way that makes tears gather in your lash line. He brushes them away with a rough thumb, then a trigger finger, almost immediately.
His hands let your legs drop to take your fingers in his own, directing one to his shoulder and the other around his waist. “Hold onto me?”
“I’ll never stop.” And you’re surging in for a kiss.
The rain hasn’t stopped when the sun begins to come up the next morning. And your boy sleeps soundly on your chest, uncaring. And that funny thing called time? Well, it still ceases to exist.
// Eat me paragraph //
#kristenwrites#my work#my writing#I’m so proud of this one 😭#the vibes I’m vibing with rn#and the artist I listened to writing this#gator tillman#gator tillman fic#gator tillman fanfic#gator tillman fanfiction#gator tillman fluff#gator tillman angst#gator tillman smut#gator tillman x reader#gator tillman x you#gator tillman blurb#gator tillman drabble#gator tillman x y/n#gator tillman x fem!reader#gator tillman x female reader#fargo s5#fargo season 5#fargo fanfiction#fargo fanfic#fargo fic#fargo
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I saw the video of people chanting at Sydney. I saw Shani Louk. I saw Naama Levy. I saw Noa Argamani. I saw an Israeli boy being pushed around and taunted "Say Ima! Say Ima!". I saw the Bibas family. I saw photos of burned bodies and shot up cars. I saw people fleeing from the Nova festival and I saw the bodies of the 260 people that were shot there. I saw the interview with a girl whose grandmother was murdered and her murder recorded and published on social media by Hamas. I saw a kindergarten floor smeared in red. I saw terrorists throwing grenades into a bomb shelter where people were hiding. I saw a group of friends hiding in a public toilet on the beach, one video recorded from one of their phones, the other - from the soldier who found their bodies. I saw Twitter explode with celebrations. I saw people call it resistance. I saw victims being called hipsters. I saw student groups blame the victims instead of the people responsible. There is never, ever a justification for such atrocities and I never, ever tried to justify the bombings the way you people bent over backwards trying to justify Hamas.
So you can throw scary article headlines at me from newspapers that had shown bias before all you want. You can tell me how it's all AI, how "those darn jews are lying again". You can cite the UN, who still haven't kicked Russia out and who had Iran chair human rights, whose organization UNRWA has been keeping Palestinians as refugees, employing terrorists in their schools, programming children to become future sacrifices and weapons, and whose teacher had held a hostage captive. You can tell me that reports of rape come from "unreliable sources" even as UN hears testimonies about October 7th and after we had already seen videos, taken by Hamas themselves, on the day that it had happened. You can try to tell me how the slogans I say are antisemitic and that other jews say are antisemitic are not antisemitic (because jews apparently can't define antisemitism according to you). You can try to tell me that we're the problem when support of Hamas' actions exceeds 50% in Gaza and 70% in the West Bank (in no small part thanks to the decades of radicalization facilitated by UNRWA and Iran proxies). You can tell me all of that — truth is, I don't much care for your opinion if you say all these things because all of it is verifiably a load of nonsense. I'm not going to engage with you. I'm not going to believe you aren't acting in bad faith. I'm not going to give you a platform. I'm not going to gather up all the evidence that we all saw and that is still in public access, because I know you've most likely seen all of it already and decided not to believe it, to lie about it, to obfuscate. And I'm not heartless to broadcast suffering again and again just to debunk your lies.
I saw what happened the day it happened and I saw your immediate reaction to it. And that was more than enough.
#you may be so chronically online as to post photos and videos of dead bodies but I'm not#you may be so chronically online as to justify violence if it's against someone you don't like#but I'm not#leftist antisemitism#antisemitism
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Saw your comment: "We're not all thirsty mommies, nor 12, nor bitter bitches. I'd love to see and hear more about what is beneath that mask, not beneath that shirt." Sam has done that before. He wrote an entire book about his journey but the book is called bullshit and he a liar. He's written well-thought out articles and forewords to books. He speaks intelligently and passionately and knowledgably about his liquors and the process of getting to market, and is called a shill. His work with Prickly Thistle is expensive and taking peoples' money, even when it helped this woman-owned mill immensely. It goes on and on. Today he's been accused of hypocrisy for a plastic cup, thirst trapping to change a conversation and using his social media as a PR tool to fool gullible women. Some may want to see beneath the mask but when he's shown what he is willing to you get the above.
Dear Hypocrisy Anon,
Thank you for your thoughts. I have read your long comment very carefully and let's say I agree with about 85% of it. The itching point is, of course, the book: Waypoints is a good ghostwritten memoir I have commented at length, with a more benevolent view than most of those who found it took some substantial liberty with what they (and I, for that matter) think it's the current state of play in SC Land. Note I am not saying the truth: that's only for Them to know, not for us. So dismissing it and calling everything a lie is a bit of a stretch. It's just a memoir, to be followed by other projects, other books. And who knows, another memoir, later on, where he could correct the course again at his convenience. He's only 43. Give the man some credit.
Trouble is, the world is a vast and diverse place. It's not just this fractured fandom. If he wants to remain relevant beyond OL, he needs, in my humble opinion, two things: a) to score a big role in a big budget production, which would improve his notoriety and help him reach a different public and b) curate his personal image a bit more and get out of this midlife crisis fake character he's peddling around. The only people who find it interesting are the thirsty mommies in *urv's crowd and that's, uhm... a bit irrelevant, in the big scheme of things.
So, no more political blunders, please and thank you. Shut the hell up and play Switzerland on complicated and divisive society issues which can get one in boiled water for a comma. Carefully picked and curated CSR projects, he'd ideally be more actively involved in. And yes, maybe a bit more transparency on the so many great things he does, like that partnership with the Edinburgh's Youth Theatre he didn't even mention himself or include in his stories (no doubt, out of a very British and endearing sense of modesty). And always remember: when faced with something beautiful and fragile, like that story, people will try their best to smear it and break it. I am not bitter, just realistic.
Same goes for your conclusion: I am sure many would like to see more of what is beneath that mask. It's too bad that a bunch of bitter, nasty, clueless, but also very noisy women occupy a bigger part of the stage than they should.
But have faith, Anon. For the moment, all of this is nothing what a good PR, not the clowns he obviously hired, can't fix with relative ease. Trust me. I've seen way worse. And remember, always remember what dear Wilde (God, I love that soul!) said: 'every saint has a past and every sinner has a future'.
You just gave me an idea for a future post and for this, I thank you, Anon. But for now, I have to catch up on a thing or two, rather than determine the morality of a plastic glass. I hope this long answer helps somewhat. Thank you for dropping by: it was a pleasure reading your musings.
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xiyao Pacific Rim au?
Hell yes. I have been thinking about this for about 3 years, but never wrote any of it. I just opened a doc and jotted down this snippet for you! Hopefully someday I can turn this into a whole fic.
I give you 500 words of stranded/traumatized Jaeger pilot Lan Xichen in post-apocalyptic Yunping:
~*~
“Meng Yao… what are you doing?"
“The Kaiju won’t wait for us to run,” Meng Yao replies without taking his eyes off his work, “according to my scanner it is only 160 minutes out, unless it changes course.” The scanner in question looks like it was salvaged from parts, but it is beeping in a very believable, alarming manner. “We cannot evacuate the town in time, and we are unlikely to save ourselves even if we start running very, very fast. We must fight back.” He dives back elbows-deep in the cockpit with feverish focus, ripping and soldering cords like he knows what each of them does. Lan Xichen is once again overtaken by awe and instinctual faith in this small, brilliant human being.
When Lan Xichen had washed ashore near the refugee encampment, banged up and near-catatonic from the loss of his brother, he had never imagined someone with Jaeger training would be hiding in these backwater ruins. His savior was one Meng Yao of Yunping, a wiry young man in ripped overalls, with too many tools hanging off his belt and too-hard eyes in a gentle round face. As it turned out, his clever mind could rival Lan Xichen’s own AI navigator - he’d taken only a few days to assess the damage to his Jaeger and write up a repair plan.
Twin Jade was stretched out on the beach, looking like a sleeping giant half-covered in brine. She was not in a bad state overall, save for the smashed cockpit - but she was down one co-pilot, so Lan Xichen had given up on resurrecting her altogether. Meng Yao had not.
While Lan Xichen consumed himself with worries over Wangji’s fate and his lack of communications, his savior worked day and night to get both pilot and Jaeger back to some semblance of functionality. (Lan Xichen paused to chuckle over the mental comparison of hot soup for himself and scrapyard parts for Twin Jade, both sourced by Meng Yao with unfailing efficiency).
“The repairs are only temporary," Meng Yao's voice brings him back to the present emergency. "But I can essentially jumpstart her for long enough to keep it running in emergency mode for a couple of hours. I’ll need you to do most of the fighting while I keep an eye on the systems.”
“You want to pilot with me?” Lan Xichen’s eyes widen.
“Well, you can’t pilot by yourself, can you?” Meng Yao chuckled nervously, without looking back from the console. “And even if you could, your leg is broken.”
“Drifting can be very dangerous if you have never…”
“I have trained before,” Meng Yao interrupts him. “I can pilot, Lan Xichen. I can,” he swears, pushing his bangs out of his eyes frantically. “I know I am asking a lot, but–”
“I trust you,” Lan Xichen says unthinkingly, reaching out to wipe a smear of grease from his cheek. “I only… wish to apologize for what you may see in the drift.”
Meng Yao only laughs, shaking his head. His eyes are avoidant. “Likewise.”
Neither of them paused to doubt whether they'd be compatible. That much was a given.
Lan Xichen enters the repaired cockpit, leaning all of his weight on Meng Yao. He plugs in with slightly-shaking hands.
It is terrifying to let Meng Yao see all of what you are. But he is scared, too. He is, you realize, more afraid than you are. As if his secrets could be any worse than the monstrosity inside yourself. You smile at him with all the warmth you can muster, smiling past the fears in your head. You suddenly want to see him more than anything.
#pacific rim AU#xiyao#xiyao in yunping#lan xichen#jin guangyao#meng yao#in which I make meng yao the specialest boy ever as usual#of course wangji is fine btw#it is canon#shiome fic#xiyao drabbles
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