Beefing with random Jews excitedly posting their Hanukkah prep and celebration photos in their notes and replies does absolutely nothing to help raise awareness or show support for Palestine, but I've already scrolled by it substantially more than I expected. This is the EXACT kind of shit Israel is going to be counting on this holiday season to rally the idea that pro-Palestinian support = antisemitism (which they already do relentlessly anyway). Don't fucking do their job for them by actually being antisemitic. It was established forever ago that not only are people not their governments, period, but in an adjacent vein, Jews are not Israel. Let people have a happy Hanukkah without harassment, especially the ones who've already been fighting for the Palestinian cause this entire time.

to add to the whole proud faggot thing: i rmbr at age 15 me and my friend (both newly out) would say faggot all the time until a teacher told us off and my friend (v cocky) said actually miss i can reclaim it to which the teacher was like ...its still a swear word ur still not allowed to use it like its not that deep. and that was a sort of revelation like 'oh yeah this word obvs holds meaning and whatever but at the end of the day us reclaiming it isnt revolutionary its just two kids who got their hands on a new curse word to use' & ever since then i try to figure out whoevers using faggot in a useful or meaningful way vs whoever is just excited to use a forbidden word. n i think for a lot of ppl its the latter

So for context, I saw a post where someone had left a comment with Israel apologia, and someone else responded by screenshotting their blog, which has a cutesy Tumblr aesthetic, and added a screenshot of another post about what it called "Smol bean Zionism." I noticed the blogger's bio also said "proud faggot," so I tagged the post:

"Are we ready to admit the 'proud faggot' is not contradictory to the smol beanification but part and parcel to it?"

I see sentiments on Tumblr that "I call myself a faggot to scare the tenderqueers," but I think the cute harmless approach and the edgy approach are two sides of the same coin. Molly Rose on substack writes about how she as a Black woman could never get away with "tenderqueer" behavior. She writes: "As far as I can tell, the hallmark of a true tenderqueer is an unwavering avoidance of responsibility or culpability at all costs, paired with the use of social justice and personal advocacy language to ensure that lack of accountability." The real problem with this type then is not that they're too sensitive, but that their sensitivity is a tool by which they act like they could never be in the wrong. So we see a soft type and an edgy type, but both wear their victimhood on their sleeve to feign superiority and avoid any kind of interpersonal conflict. The former will invoke queerness or neurodivergence to guilt trip you, and the latter will act above it all and treat you like you're stupid for even caring. It's "enough discourse, we should be making out with tongue" when trans women try to talk about transmisogyny, etc.

With all these discussions of the "tenderqueer," It's easy to forget that "queer" was that transgressive word said to connote political radicalism, or rather, speak political radicalism into existence just by uttering that very word. And while I have heard people prop up "fag" and it's equivalents as the solution when the former has been watered down, they are not getting to the root of the problem. If the problem is that some have turned the supposed magical powers of a word into a political dead end, the solution is not to go find other magical words to replace it. I am aware and respectful of the fact that to some, these words really are a political statement, or a symbolic gesture that they're not afraid or have moved beyond past wounds. Any word is what you make it. But to get back to your point, yeah, some people have that same teenager's mentality of getting their hands on a new curse word. And it does not automatically make them meaningfully transgressive or even interesting.

Aziraphale and Forgiveness, Pt. 2: The Source of Salvation

This series is now complete! Here's where you can find the other parts.

Part 1 here. Part 3 here. Part 4 here.

(This post ended up being way longer than I intended, oopsie! And no fun GIFs to break it up this time. Hope you like reading lots of words!)

So why would Aziraphale, an angel who has not fallen despite bending/breaking the rules many times, have so much emotional baggage around the topic of forgiveness?

Some disclaimers:

Disclaimer 1: I've seen enough of tumblr already to know that "does Aziraphale really have religious trauma?/how much does it motivate his actions?" is the subject of Discourse around these parts. I don't want to have that argument here. Aziraphale's experience with Heaven has strong parallels to my personal religious history, and those specific parallels are what I'm here to talk about.

Disclaimer 2: I am not a bible scholar or religious historian, if I mention specific church doctrines or bible verses it's only to illustrate the experience of growing up in my church. My actual biblical/theological accuracy may be sloppy.

Disclaimer 3: I haven't read Good Omens the book. I know there are differences, but I'm not addressing them. All my thoughts are about show!Aziraphale and show!Heaven only.

Okay. Here goes.

The next point I want to make is that Aziraphale has spent his life inside a system that has weaponized the concept of forgiveness. Because Heaven, in the Good Omens universe, operates a lot like a particular flavor of toxic Christianity that I happen to be very familiar with.

In the version of Christianity I was raised with:

Your only purpose is to serve God's will. Our own needs, wants, goals, etc, were all understood to be secondary to that purpose.

The specter of eternal punishment is always present. Like any self-respecting Evangelical church, we believed that if you weren't "saved" before you died, you would go to Hell and be punished forever. How do you make sure you're saved? Well...

The rules are not clear or consistent, so you're always left guessing. We were a Protestant denomination, so a foundational doctrine was "sola scriptura." (We weren't fancy enough for the Latin, though, we just called ourselves "bible-based.") The basic idea is that the bible is the word of God, it's infallible, and it's the only authority we need to follow. But the bible is a cobbling-together of texts written thousands of years ago, that have been translated multiple times. It's not self-evident to a modern reader what any given passage means. It contains internal contradictions all over the place. So...the bible is the only authority we need to follow, but it's confusing and needs interpretation. Enter pastors and other church leaders to help us interpret. Only...they each have their own pre-existing biases and preferred scholarly interpretations, so even within the same church, different pastors might have different ideas about things.

So, to summarize: Follow what the bible says! Don't understand what it's telling you? Ask your pastor! Different pastors give different answers? Ugh, you're thinking about this too hard. Go pray about it or something. Just figure it out.

New ideas and experiences are, at best, begrudgingly tolerated. Because doing God's will is your only purpose, remember? And the Bible (and your pastor) are the source of the only wisdom you need to fulfill the only purpose you have. So really, you don't need anything outside what the church has to offer you and it's all a distraction anyway. (...okay, if you really must, here's a watered-down, church-approved version of the thing, now shut up.)

This isn't just the church being a buzzkill. It keeps you dependent on them and ignorant of the outside world to whatever extent they monitor and censor outside influences. My church was not even that extreme about this, relatively speaking, but it was still enough to profoundly impact me and leave me confused and floundering in the larger world after I left.

No matter how hard you try to measure up, you're ultimately at God's mercy. So you spend your life trying to follow a bunch of confusing, opaque rules in the hopes that you can be "saved" and avoid eternal punishment. But here's kicker: none of it truly matters anyway, because we were also taught that everyone falls short in the end and that the only real salvation comes from God forgiving you for your sins. All you really have to do to be saved is accept his free gift of forgiveness...by...believing the right things in the right way and praying the right prayers about it. And then spending the rest of your life still trying to follow all the convoluted rules, because doing so is proof that you were sincere...in your acceptance of God's forgiveness...which you accepted by following even more instructions regarding what to believe and how to pray to ensure that you were accepting it correctly.

How do you know if you've done any of this right? You never can, truly, until you die and find out. Because God's not actually talking to anyone. So in the end, no matter what you do, you end up in the same place: at the mercy of God, who decides whether you're forgiven or not.

If you're thinking that sounds like an incredibly confusing and exhausting way to grow up, you are correct! It also has a lot of parallels in Good Omens.

If you are an angel working for Heaven in the world of Good Omens:

Your only purpose is to serve God's will. This one is obvious. If you're an angel, it's literally the only thing you were created for.

The specter of eternal punishment is always present. The eternal punishment that can happen to an angel is falling. We know it's a punishment, because we know Crowley's fall was painful and because we can see that Hell is a miserable environment for the demons. This isn't The Good Place, where demons gleefully sit around eating snacks in conference rooms and brainstorming new fun ways to torture humans. Hell in Good Omens sucks for everyone there. And we can assume falling is meant to be permanent, because if it wasn't Crowley and Aziraphale wouldn't have been so gobsmacked by the Metatron's offer to restore Crowley to angelic status. Because there's no precedent for that. Crowley himself says that being a demon has automatically rendered him unforgivable. As far as anyone in this universe knows, "fallen" is a permanent state.

So how does an angel avoid eternal punishment? How do angels make sure they don't fall? Well...

The rules are not clear or consistent, so you're always left guessing. Was falling a one-and-done mass exile of everyone who rebelled, right after the war? The way both Heaven and Hell talk about the fall and the "casting out" of the demons would seem to suggest so. But fear of falling is obviously ever-present among the angels, so they clearly don't know for sure one way or the other. And what would cause an angel who wasn't part of the original rebellion to fall? Aziraphale thought he would fall for lying about Job's children. The archangels threatened Aziraphale with falling for "consorting" with Crowley in S1. Gabriel expected to fall for saying no to Armageddon the Sequel in S2. But none of those falls actually happened. Clearly even the angels in the highest positions of authority don't know exactly what the rules are about falling. And who decides who falls? Gabriel says the demons were "cast out" after the war, but who did the casting out? Did God handle that directly? Was it the Metatron? Did the transformation just sort of...happen, leaving everyone unsure about the details? And what about present day? The Metatron said that Gabriel would have his memory wiped instead of falling, but does that mean the Metatron gets to decide if an angel falls, or was he covering for the fact that he doesn't know how it works either?

We, the viewers, don't know the answers to any of these questions. But it's fairly clear that the angels also don't know.

New ideas and experiences are, at best, begrudgingly tolerated. The angels know little to nothing about the world or humanity and are disdainful or outright suspicious of earthly experiences. In the case of the ones who have never been sent to Earth, this makes sense, although it begs the question of why there are so many angels who have never once been sent to Earth, the planet that is supposed to be central to the Great Plan.

It's obviously, at its core, about control and keeping the angels ignorant of anything that would broaden their perspective. But listen to how the angels themselves talk about it. When Gabriel sees Aziraphale eating sushi, he asks, "Why do you consume that? You're an angel." (Subtext: You don't need to eat, so what's the purpose of indulging in this experience?) When Aziraphale suggests he try the food himself, Gabriel starts talking about sullying the temple of his body or whatever. (Subtext: It's not technically forbidden but it would be a deviation from my function as an angel so I'm suspicious of it.) And look at Aziraphale himself. He lives on Earth for many hundreds of years before he can be persuaded to even try human food, and Crowley has to work at convincing him it's okay. He seems to know it's not forbidden but he's deeply distrustful of it anyway. (I have a theory that a holdover of this mindset is why he's so set in his ways, behind the times, and still more ignorant of humans that you'd expect in the present day, but this post is already too long.) The attitude cultivated among the angels is These things are not meant for us, we don't need them, and they are a distraction from our higher purpose, so it's better if we don't.

No matter how hard you try to measure up, you're ultimately at God's mercy. So, if you're an angel, you're meant to be doing God's will, and if you fail badly enough you can be punished forever by falling. But the rules are unclear, the way falling works is unclear, in most cases you're kept ignorant of everything but the bare minimum you need to know to do your job, God isn't talking to anyone, and the (seemingly) officially appointed Voice of God is also pretty remote and mysterious most of the time.

So the only time you'll ever know for certain that you've crossed the line is once you've already crossed it, when it's too late to do anything about it. At that point, the only thing that could save you from falling would be if God just...decided to be merciful, to grant you a pardon (i.e. to forgive you) and not do the casting out thing.

Believe it or not, I had to work really hard to keep this as short as it is. If you've read this far, I salute you. Now, what's the point?

Aziraphale and the other angels are part of a system where they understand very little, they have no real power, the stakes are eternal, and their only hope of escaping endless punishment if they fail is the possibility that God will decide to show mercy and forgive them.

Yes, in the real world this is all just bullshit spread by religious leaders to scare and confuse and manipulate people into compliance and in the world of Good Omens it's actually real. But the emotional impact of feeling that confused and powerless and at the mercy of a higher authority is going to be the same. Of course Aziraphale has some Big Feelings about the subject of forgiveness. Of course it's one of his favorite things. It's not just a nice thing you do for people. It's powerful enough to rescue someone from eternal punishment when nothing else can. Powerful enough to wield as a devastating weapon by withholding it. It's a tool of control in Heaven, but it's also the source of salvation.

I was going to segue from here into what I think the specifics of Aziraphale's mindset are, but it took me so many more words than I expected just to lay out the parallels between GO Heaven and (my experience of) real-world toxic Christianity so I'm gonna stop here. Next time I'm going to dig into what I think is happening in Aziraphale's head when he forgives Crowley, and also when he does things like shelter Jimbriel (a very forgiving action, even if the words "I forgive you" don't accompany it).

no cause the last anón is so right. I scrapped a 50k byler fic because I actually got worried people might call me weird or a freak like they do others. I was on twitter when the whole fiasco went down and it pissed me off but if you even tried to speak there were so many accounts saying you were “speaking over minors” and calling you a predator/pedophile. So many of my moots deactivated bc of the hate- they eventually started attacking people for their ages alone saying it was weird that 20 year olds theorized and talked about byler. Literally word for word “you’re a freak if you’re 20 and read byler fics. Why are you fantasizing about two little 14 year old boys making out” if they would take a step back and think that maybe people are so interested in this relationship is bc they see their younger selves in these two characters then maybe they wouldn’t say such stupid shit. Anyway sorry for ranting I just have been fuming since that whole thing happened. I just wish they would take a step back and stop and think about why they see a kiss between two boys written and immediately shout creep.

oh no, anon! i'm so sorry to hear about your fic & your experience. i hope you feel comfortable enough to post it one day, if you still want to. 🥺 and don't ever apologize for expressing yourself!

not to be a cunt, but i am a cunt, so, ahem. from the bottom of my heart... fuck them kids. 🫶 i literally do not give a single shit about any of the ""discourse"" they inflict on us all. "speaking over minors" why are you even speaking to begin with, huh? 🤨 why are you buzzing into an adult's space and picking a fight when a) literally no one fucking asked you to, and b) you're just going to cry "waaaaah but i'm a minorrr :(" as if you're somehow the victim in this situation after they dare to defend themselves against your serious and unsupported allegations? be normal or piss the fuck off and do your homework.

and why do people take them seriously? disregarding the fact that anyone of any age can be a shipper & the awful homophobia laced in such rhetoric...

this is the internet. no one owes you shit & the wild web will never, ever cater to you. you need to curate your own space and protect yourself. this is, like.. basic shit. like, bare-fucking-bones basic shit. it's not anyone else's responsibility but your own. they taught me that in school, my parents told me that, and also i have a functioning brain that can come to that conclusion, too. people need to stop pretending like what these people are asking for—which is your silence and your shame—is reasonable. it's not. content gets tagged, there are multiple extensions to blacklist any tags you don't like, some of it gets put behind a privacy wall, block buttons exist, many websites have filtering options, and so on and so forth. there are multiple measures people can take to both find things and avoid them. and a lot of the time, content is something you have to seek out yourself. so, if you don't like it, why did you click on it? why spend any time on it when you could've just backspaced? how is your ineptitude anyone else's problem?

also, people need to stop throwing the words pedophilia, pedophile, and predator around. you're being an insensitive jackass when you do that. someone writing about two fictional characters is not abusive scum of the fucking earth. you're watering those acts down and showcasing your ignorance for the world to see when you throw their names around carelessly. a child predator does awful, sinister, repulsive things to real life people who did not deserve that. someone writing a first kiss or practice kissing fic is not anywhere near that and i'm tired of people pretending like this is an okay thing to say or even think. just shut the fuck up and stop saying those words if you don't actually understand the gravity of what they mean.

another thing: a lot of these people aren't just kids. grown folk fall for the same shitty rhetoric, too. it's all just groupthink and herd mentality. no one wants to get attacked so they just repeat the same shit without thinking about it beyond "protecting" themselves (which is senseless as well because conditional acceptance is not true acceptance, but i digress). this fandom would be in a much better place if people were willing to stand their ground and defend their friends when this stuff happens. it gets worse and worse if you just turn a blind eye to it and fall in line. we're all waking up and finally seeing the consequences of that now.

of course, this doesn't really apply to when you're getting attacked by hundreds of people. that's... just shitty and hard and demoralizing. i'm not victim-blaming, because no one wants to be on the receiving end of that and i know that you can't control what others do.

my argument is that it gets to that point because the fandom as a whole just lets it slide by never holding the right people accountable for their actions. they allow the needless bullying to happen. they allow the rhetoric to get crazier and crazier. they allow people to get fucking crucified for shit that isn't even remotely inappropriate. they reblog posts they don't believe in because they don't want to be the odd one out and get accused of something by someone with more followers than them. it's just... we, as a whole, need to support each other more and put our foot down when shit like that starts happening.

it isn't normal. it isn't okay. it hasn't ever been okay.

like... i KNOW that you KNOW that it isn't weird for them to kiss, for people to want them to kiss, or for people to make them kiss in their creations. i KNOW that you KNOW that it isn't weird for anyone of any age to enjoy a love story of any kind. we know these things. some of us just pretend like we don't online for whatever fucking reason. and i don't get it! i don't get why they would do that and willingly allow this place to become worse for it. you don't get anything good out of that.

also, a lot of those people are being trolls. they get a kick out of attacking people as a group, because that's the only time they feel brave and the only way they get attention in life. they don't think before they say things, because they don't see you as a human being—you're just pixels on a greasy screen. they use catchy social justice lingo to make what they're saying sound like something you should support, but at the end of the day, they're literally just gussying up the same right-wing shit we've been subjected to for ages. it's regressive rhetoric that's clear to see once you've allowed yourself to see it.

like, i agree with you. i do. you're absolutely, undoubtedly right in what you say, but... i just can't bring myself to argue that, because it's in response to what was a senseless attack to begin with. and we shouldn't need to defend ourselves and our communities against what isn't true.

homophobia, bullying, and trolling are irrational, illogical pursuits and i can't stand the idea of treating them with any ounce of seriousness in this context. to apologize would be to accept their absurdity and validate their accusations—accusations we know in our heart of hearts to be incorrect and baseless. and i won't ever do that! i won't give them that satisfaction and i wish others wouldn't either.

they keep doing this, because they haven't met any opposition yet, because we keep acting like we have any reason at all to feel shame for wanting stories about people like us, about something as basic and universal as love and connection. they don't care about our reasons. they don't care about our defense of ourselves. it's not ever about us. this is their cry for attention, good or bad, at our expense and they need to be starved out already.

like.. this is just unsustainable. it's mind-boggling and i remember kicking and screaming about it months ago in what felt like an empty room. and look at where we are now! we're already at the point where you can't win in any kind of way no matter what you do. you can't age them up, you can't leave them as they are, you can't ship them if you're older than eighteen, you can't write AUs, you can't write canon compliance, you can't write canon divergence, you can't make them kiss, you can't make them anything more than friends but you also can't make them not-friends, etc etc. we've officially been shoved into the "fuck it, we ball" stage, because this is a pissy fandom and you are never going to please everyone so you may as well just do whatever the fuck you want.

i sound soooooooo unbearably preachy in this response lol, but like... literally... all we have is each other! we all love byler and we're all here to have fun and find like-minded people. we can't keep acting like this in-fighting lunacy is reasonable and just a difference of opinion, or like it's based in any kind of sense at all. we know that it's okay to ship byler at any age. we know that it's okay to have fun and enjoy ourselves. these people want to make us feel bad. they want to silence us. why let them and give them that satisfaction? why is what they want more important than us and our happiness? i hate the idea of anyone ever feeling any kind of shame or fear over something as innocent as this. i hate the idea of them winning by getting into any of our heads like that. i just hate it.

now, this last bit is specifically for you, anon, but it goes for everyone else, too: please, please, please, i am holding your hand in both of mine and begging you to not let anyone take away the things that you love and bring you joy or your wonderful creations that you've put so much of yourself into. i promise you that there will always be people who will see you, understand you, and cherish what you have to offer, and they are the ones that matter most (after you of course hehe). we all have to find our people and just go crazy together and block out everything else. that's the only way to get through this without getting burnt out. 💛💙

what were the biggest differences btwn the book + the movie and did you feel like there were parts the movie did better than the book + vice versa 😋

girl from the summer i turned pretty tiktok sound voice oh my gosh i love this question!!!!!! ok. obviously the MAJOR difference between the novel and the film are the like. tenses with which the story is presented. and by that i mean the book is very past tense and reflective where the movie is very present tense and focused on the ephemeral moment. which is SO AWESOME btw. literally genius choice for adapting. many are not brave enough to do such a thing but thank god luca guadagnino was of our world would look very different. could you imagine if that movie came out and we had to read all that discourse for a movie that was also BAD? like i’m always saying this but at least no matter what we can always look back on that horrible era for being online and think well at least the movie wasn’t bad. but it could have been Very Very bad. can i drop a horrible piece of trivia on you all. actually i don’t know if we’re ready for that nevermind. anyway we move on. so the initial idea for the film was to have a narrator and i cannot even express how glad i am they didn’t do that. i think it makes the performances so much better that they did it all without the crutch of narration. which is not to say narration is always bad but in a lot of book to movie adaptations it really is a crutch and it sucks a lot of the time and it would have sucked a lot here so i’m glad the movie took the approach it did. like. in a book you can get into the protagonist’s mind a bit easier than with a movie but i think the movie makes it easy by really grounding the story in the moment. it’s summer and the world is beautiful and people are hard to connect with and it’s scorching outside but water is suddenly the best thing you’ve ever tasted in your life!! it’s a good movie guys trust me i wouldn’t lie to you. and i don’t even like armie hammer (me and my 12 year long beef i will never let go of. i don’t even know what’s happened with the man recently i know there was some kind of Cancellation or whatever but i don’t even care. he was cancelled to ME already before his career ever even meant anything). who narrated the audiobook which i listened to btw. so we’re all aware of the direness of the situation and just how forgiving and saintly i am. he unfortunately did kinda slay the audiobook it must be said. as much as it pains me to say.

as for other differences. a huge one to me is that in the book when elio cums in that peach oliver literally eats it. the movie was LAME AS FUCK for only having him joke about eating it. literally make him put that thing in his mouth i’m not kidding. another one is how the movie did part three and four, essentially cutting a lot of it for the sake of keeping the story present which we already talked about. but also there was just a lot of crap that happened in those sections that was boring and i liked that the movie was just like yeah they went to rome <3 like real say less! and the goodbye scene in the movie was also muchhh better for the movie i feel… i understand why the book didn’t get into it, because it was meant to feel like they weren’t actually saying goodbye and felt they would in many ways always be with each other if only in memory or whatever. but i liked the finality of it in the movie being this whole Event and he has to call his mom to pick him up from the train station bringing you back down to the crushing reality that he’s still only 17 and despite getting to like play grown up for the summer with oliver he literally still has to go back to high school in a month and he’s sad and he wants to call his mom to take him home… like that was crazy stuff wowie… i love it when timothee chalamet cries in a car. you guys should watch hot summer nights. it’s a terrible movie <3 i digress.

ANOTHER change i wanna talk about is that frankly the movie never gave misogyny vibes to me with how it treated the women in the story. where the book. well i said this earlier but. i don’t think andré cared about any of those women he wrote. elio’s mother in the book is so nothing and i loved how the film made her more of an active participant in both her son’s life and her own marriage. like she’s not perfect and she was never the weirdly omniscient figure her husband is but she’s presented in the film as very loving and kind and real where the book i swear literally forgets she exists. and then there’s marzia, elio’s sort of girlfriend sort of friend. it’s complicated. it’s not like he ever cheated on her that would imply they had an exclusive relationship understanding that was literally never real. that being said her involvement in the book was like. purely sexual and it was odd. now. this is a book about sex in many ways that must be acknowledged like. elio is like. incredibly horny the entire time and he’s so fucking annoying about it and i love him dearly. but marzia is reduced to a Female Body in a way oliver is never quite reduced to a Male Body and it comes off strange. like oh my god elio we get it you’re bisexual shut UP people like you are why people are biphobic jesus christ. that was a joke but also so real. marzia’s involvement in the movie is a lot more like. she’s a person with her own inner life. which i love naturally because it literally makes a narrative more interesting and juicy when the side characters are also human beings. not all men understand this.

my FAVORITE change from book to movie however. the “is it better to speak or to die” scene…. here’s the rundown. there’s a book elio reads about a princess and a knight who are friends but also in love, and she asks him “is it better to speak or to die?” wondering if he would rather die in peace and honor before getting to experience the love story they could share, or speak the truth and face consequences but finally have it known that he loves her and maybe get to experience even a brief moment of being truly known and loved. you guys all get it. you must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known to get the rewards of being loved!! anyway so elio reads this book and then talks about it with oliver as a subtle reference to what’s between them as friends with the potential to be more. this is like an act one scene btw i should have clarified that earlier but you understand. anyway in the book it’s just that elio reads this book and tells oliver about it and then they spend the day together inching towards Talking About The Implications before they finally get into it. in the movie the book is read TO elio by his mother, which functionally changes nothing about the plot but EYE like way more because we get elio saying to her “i’d never have the courage to ask such a question” and then we cut to him trying to ask it but skirting around it and using the pretense of just making conversation about a book… also i think the movie’s way of doing that whole deal goes harder because we actually get to see oliver react to it. where the book is very elio focused the movie can have a lingering shot on oliver’s face as he reacts to what elio says from ten feet behind him… it’s my favorite part in the movie genuinely but it was kinda lame in the book… if it had been shot in a way that lent itself to the timeless video it would have been in the timeless video but alas :( like that scene is the whole reason they made it into the timeless video for real…. like IS it better to speak or to die!!??? let’s get into it!!!

something i liked about the book though that’s not in the movie is the inclusion of this character who’s like a little girl that lives near them. and she has like cancer or some horrible illness sorry to her i do not remember but she was friends with oliver, and frankly it made him in the beginning so much easier to forgive for the way he acts there. to be fair this was intentional she’s literally written to personify his redeeming qualities in the midst of elio’s hatred in the earlier stages. where the movie didn’t need her because film has the ability to show things a book can’t. but i liked having her hanging around :) her bailey the sisterhood of the traveling pants realness!

i probably have more to say but these are the big things i’m thinking of right now and this is already so long wow. i literally TOLD y’all i was gonna have boatloads of shit to talk about !!!

Diana and Clark for the character bingo (bc you said they were on your mind)

I mean, they were on my mind but I have the attention span of a *remembers goldfish can actually remember things for months* me.

Anyway, on it boss 🫡

Clark

People in the 30's were so right to get attached to him I really love him. I relate to his feeling of alienation and his self consciousness a lot which has led to some. Projecting. A lot of people are wrong about him (by virtue of being so popular) but not enough to tick the everyone is wrong about them box.

Of course there's the "Superman should be dark" Zack Synder crowd and whatever the fuck Injustice is but there's also people who make him too clean and perfect or overemphasise his niceness IMO. My view of him probably comes from reading older comics (especially golden age) where he's a bit rougher and I like that side of him. Like his original tagline was "Champion of the Oppressed" he forced a war profiteer to enlist to teach him a lesson, he trapped a mining company owner (and his party guests) in a mine so he would make his mines safer, he tore down a slum to force the government to rebuild it with better materials all within his first few issues in Action Comics. And this characterization wasn't entirely in those early issues, like later on in DC presents #28 where he fucking. Gives Mongul (unfortunate name)* a brain hemorrhage (it was the only way he could think of to defeat him). Or in The Death of Superman where he kills Doomsday without umming and ahhing over whether or not it's sentient. He's like Diana in that he won't kill most of the time and tries to understand others but he's not a hardline "no kill" guy.

*Elaborating on that but giving a character who is both a villain and has yellowy coloured skin a name that's one letter off of a real Asian ethnicity is uhh... unfortunate ignorance at best and purposefully racist at worst. Mongul. Mongol. They're not even pronounced differently.

*Abrupt segue* Anyway, back to Superman. His meaner and more overtly leftist side frequently gets watered down so he gets characterised as a "hug it out" liberal. I won't say this is a mischaracterisation because there's no one Superman, but it's not my fave.

There's also a lot of discourse about who the real guy is. Is he Kal, Clark or Superman? So you get the shitty take in Kill Bill that calls Clark Kent his critique of humanity (what?) or the Byrne take where Kal doesn't matter.

In my view, he's all of it. He grew up an anomaly, worried he could crush his peers without a thought, constantly having to control himself. Of course he's clumsy because he's spending so much time reigning in 99% of his power, he doesn't have brainspace to think about minutiae. Of course he's anxious because one wrong move could kill somebody. When he's Superman a lot of his brainspace gets freed up because he doesn't have to hide so he's more confident. His heritage does matter because all immigrants, or even descendants of them like me, feel a connection with their heritage, and for someone who never got to know it in the way he should have, he feels a longing for it.

He idealises Krypton and is forced to recon with the flawed reality of it later when he talks to Kara about what it was actually like, which I found a bit relatable because I would idealise Ireland as a child and only really took the rose coloured glasses off later on (which sounds stupid but I was a child and it was really easy to feel like Ireland would be more of a home for me when I didn't fit in in England and my Irish mother accepted me. I extrapolated).

None of it is fake, which is out of line with golden age Clark being non-confrontational and making himself small as part of his disguise, but I don't treat any era as gospel. So yeah, I have a lot of autistic feelings about him.

Umm. I didn't intend for this to be so long I just got rambling about various Clark thoughts that have been buried somewhere in my head for a while.

Diana

She may not be your fave of all time but she's still going in the blorbo by proxy category because you're a fan. On to my actual thoughts about her.

A lot of my feelings about her are mired in my thoughts on her treatment as the only female member of the trinity and how the amazons are treated/written in general rather than solely being about her because in a lot of ways she's symbolic of DC's treatment of women.

WRT the trinity, she's the only member without a secondary title (she used to have Sensation Comics a long time ago) and her potentially much more interesting dynamic with Clark is shoved aside in favour if Clark + Batman. The trinity really feels like it's BATMAN!!! Superman also! and uh *checks smudged handwriting* Wobner Woman.

WRT her she's frequently sexualised, almost always written by privileged men, her supporting characters get nothing (the first non-Diana wonderfam related ongoing was Wonder Girl in 2021 and only lasted 7 issues), her lore gets retconned with much less hastle than Batman or Superman's and her series numbering keeps getting rebooted*

*This may seem like a petty complaint but I've noticed that characters who get rebooted numbering are often ones who while popular enough to get consistent ongoings, don't get a lot of faith from DC so they use the new number 1's as a gimmick to garner interest.

But to focus solely on her as a character, I feel similarly to you about liking her in a chill way. She feels less relatable to me than Clark but she's very cool still. I like her optimism, her strong sense of justice, general badassery and also that she's willing to cross that line and kill under certain circumstances. Her diplomatic bent really makes her unique among heroes too.

I need to read more of her absolutely.

---

But yeah, the reason I was thinking about them was because I was (and am) annoyed that Clark and Bruce are pushed as the dynamic when Clark and Diana make much more sense.

They're both outsiders (in different ways) with incredible power who base their justice around harm reduction and have a sense of optimism about the world and the ability to do better. Both make a point of being compassionate, considerate and diplomatic. Bruce's justice is rooted in his trauma and a desire to protect others from experiencing that and he's more pessimistic. He's not particularly considerate or good at communicating, he can be quite self centered and he's obscenely wealthy, which I think would put him at odds with Clark and his values. (Yeah, yeah, Bruce donates to charity but he's still a billionaire so it's clearly not enough, and while Clark may not be straight up commie, I do think he'd agree that being a billionaire is too much).

The reason Bruce and Clark are pushed so much is because they're DC's most famous characters but Diana isn't too far behind and she makes more sense as Clark's closest friend on the League but DC hates women and loves Batman so it's Batman and Superman: World's Finest forever and ever.

Thanks for asking!

hi! we’re from @kipandkandicore and we’re hoping to make a public google doc listing posts and other testimonies by asian, buddhist, and/or tibetan individuals that explain how tulpamancy language is racist/cultural appropriation.

would it be alright if we used your post in our document? this one in particular:

https://www.tumblr.com/system-of-a-feather/721593982920065024/for-the-record-the-reason-we-are-staunchly

although if you have any other posts discussing the problems with tulpamancy terminology we’d be happy to include them as well!

thank you very much!

Yeah I don't mind, I would also probably say this post best describes my more general and not-trigger driven thoughts on it as well and this is a more raw hurt-charged vent about it. Both are true and both I stand with, but they are the two sides of the topic.

You can also throw this post too because I'll do a VERY basic TLDR main points of my thoughts on the matter here as well that ties the two very long posts about it down since we are a little more nuanced than we state as just "anti-tulpa" cause Syscourse and nuance is like mixing water and oil.

Priority Points:

White people do not have the right to speak over AAPI on AAPI topics - if they wish to say they are listening to "actual tibetian buddhists" they need to listen to more than just one person on a single reddit and they need to not use said one person as a token pass

"Western Tulpamancy" is heavily based in a sensationalization of Eastern Cultures and beliefs and inherently has a shit ton of Eastern Mysticism baked into its very foundations

"Western Tulpamancers" frequently cite it's "history being based in Tibetian Buddhists practices" like its an ornament

People defending the usage of the term just chronically present heavy disregard for the voices of people's lived experiences on how their rhetoric specifically in the discourse is regularly used against AAPI

It has literally nothing to do with the original idea that is underlying Buddhism and it's honestly a huge bastardification of it

Buddhist individuals - especially when branched upon the different variants of Buddhism, but even within the Tibetian Buddhist crowd - will have differing opinions on this topic and you can't base your entire argument off of cherry picking a single person who agrees; that said, Buddhists that are okay with it are completely fair and valid with their opinion on that and they should be given space; but again, one person saying OK doesn't mean its not doing harm to another

I'll stop dancing around it @/sophieinwonderland and their loyal fan afaik (which is not much cause I only look at their profile rarely when someone links me their bad tulpa takes) @/cambriancrew just straight up do not care about AAPI and white knight about people of Tibet while calling all Chinese people CCP and shit which is just really fucked up and racist in its own; I do think there would be more room for discussion on this term if they just shut the fuck up and/or admitted their intentional or at least internalized racism

Important Nuance but Less Priority Points - Summary take home points of the two long posts:

The problem with the term "Tulpa" and those that can use it is not inherently a racial issue. Buddhism is a very open practice and anyone can partake in it - that being said I can't speak on Tibetian Buddhism as I have heard some people say it is closed and I am not in that practice enough to say. But again, Buddhism generally isn't a "born into it" or "you have to be of this group" philosophy / spirituality and so people who talk about "white people" in terms of Tulpa-discourse are technically wrong if the SOLE topic here is about tulpas and Buddhism. There are many white buddhists and people who were raised deeply in buddhist culture (tibetian, zen, or any other form) and I am of the opinion that those white buddhists who GENUINELY interact with the Buddhist culture can have a valid opinion towards this topic as they are likely approaching the topic with a much more genuine-non-sensationalized view. Because again, Buddhists that are okay with it, I respect and support their opinion and their right to voice said opinion - I simply do not agree with it and stand by my stance as well. Tulpa-discourse is a discourse that - in my opinion - should be left within the Buddhist community, not the system / plural / syscourse community.

While it is wrong to say "white people" in topics SPECIFICALLY about Tulpa and Buddhism, it is not wrong at all to bring it up in terms of racism, cultural appropriation, orientalism, Asian mysticism, and AAPI-hate which are all things inherent in the discussion of the history and foundations of "Western Tulpas". There are two different main points to be discussed in "anti-tulpa" discourse and while they are connected, one is about the spirituality specifically and the other is about the overarching ways white and western people interact with asian and eastern cultures.

Because of this being a two prong discourse and topic, you will get massively different energies from me and willingness to talk to opposing views depending on if you are asking my opinion as an asian individual or as a Buddhist.

As an Asian, I HATE it and its overall just a disgusting a peak manifestation of how white people sensationalize, mysticize, and turn Asian culture into an aesthetic, ornament, and *magical* thing to power psuedo-intellectualism, enlightmenet, and "culture".

As a Buddhist, I dislike it as it is a bastardization and a disrespectful interpretation of a concept; that said I don't have as heavy of a strong hate as - as a Buddhist myself - it is a "small issue" and not something worth the energy and negativity that it takes to commentate on it; that said we have mixed and complicated feelings on "letting it go" because to do so would be to enable a long standing history of westerner's treating eastern cultures as an aesthetic and ornament which in my perspective is a source of great suffering and hurt to many people and on a moralistic level, while it would be better for me to let it go, I also think it would be wrong to ignore it and leave it for the next person. Regardless, our main take on this as a Buddhist is that we dislike it - the effort of which and intensity varies from part to part.

George's long legs anon 👕 here with the most difficult question of all time. But it must be settled once and for all! The discourse is:

Would Charles be a catboy or a puppy sub?

This man has been called every animal on the planet. Kangaroo, mouse, lobster, calamar. But the classic dichotomy stands. A case could be made for either, though, it’s so fucking hard to decide.

He’s sensitive to water/cold like a cat.

A kitty would also clean its whiskers like he 'paws' at his beard. Just saying.

The zoomies: Felines are fast.

And a bit grumpy/mad, plus introverted, sometimes.

His car as an enclosed space mimicks a box. Cats adore boxes.

Loving. Cats are selective with affection.

Charles being a big chaotic klutz also counts as kitten behavior, although that’s also points for puppy.

They call him what? Monegato! He is baby, he is gato.

meanwhile: 

Sharl has perfect puppy eyes. Hands down. His pretty please game is immense.

Social and loyal like a pup, loving attention, needing comfort when upset.

Doesn't seem to ever sleep (cats doze all the time).

You could say he does the blep pretty well like a cat but it's more like, sticking his tongue out wide. Dog mannerism.

Charles is loud! And moves around a lot. Neeeds to go in circles.

Loves treats and rewards :)

Like a dog, he cowers sometimes with a slouch, checks all directions, and is so bouncy when he jumps and walks.

Which direction does he tend towards more? He'd probably say puppy sub > kitty sub 100% because he prefers all things canine, but is that all there is to it? Everyone feel free to weigh in. This probably needs a poll or something. I'm going crazy.

You know what? I have no idea either and I think you're right we do need a poll. I'm gonna make my arguments for both and then at the bottom of this post will be a poll so that we can finally decide on an answer.

CATBOY:

I think Charles is a cat boy in the way that he approaches people? He'll be kind to everyone of course, will never turn down a fan asking for a picture. But when it comes to who sits next to him, who touches him, who can be in his space, he's like a cat with it?

He doesn't like people coming to him and sitting closer without prompt, doesn't like when people assume they can have a hug or even a handshake. Yet he will regularly go over to people and ask for those things. He doesn't want someone to sit by him unprompted, but he'll go himself and basically sit in their lap.

Except for you of course. You are his person. He feels nothing but love and happiness whenever you sit with him. And you can do for more than just shake his hand or ask for a hug. But he's also catlike in that regard too, because only you can touch him like that. Anyone else and he'll practically hiss at them. ESPECIALLY if that other person's attempted affection could be seen as more than platonic. He will scratch someone's eyes out if they try to kiss his cheek. Because no!! No no no not even as friends!! No no!

Also yes he's sensitive to water and cold. He requires coats and treats and LOTS of nose kisses for him to go out in the cold.

PUPPY SUB:

He's loud and he's SO needy. He'll whine and cry if you don't give him enough attention. And he's also so messy? Not in outside of scenes, but when scening? He's SO messy. He drools and cries and makes puddles when he cums and grips you so tight that you end up with scratches and bruises.

He also craves praise so much. He just wants to be your good boy. He truly just wants to make you happy, and he gets so happy when he can follow your instructions and know that he's been good for you.

And also, he LOVES being with you? He has no concept of personal space with you, well he does, but your personal space is his personal space. He does not know what alone time is either. He considers alone time to be with you, because why would he ever want to be without you?

He also sometimes gets nervous energy like a puppy would, ends up running around until you tease him and calm him down. Oh and he's a nibbler. He just goes nom nom on any and all available skin. You have a hand in front of him? CHOMP.

Alright with all that in mind... Charles?

Incorrect quotes now with my MC's because nobody can stop me.

TW: swearing, mild nsfw jokes

Hunter: You know Julian, because of pregnant people the average number of skeletons inside a person is never one

Julian: what the f-

valdemar: no, let them speak

~~~

Asra: your future self is watching you through your memor-

Julian: not if I drink enough alcohol. Take that you prying creep!

~~~

Asra: for some reason people are scared of staring into the vast depths of the ocean that is actually only a few miles deep. Yet find comfort staring into the endless abyss that is the sky above us

Kyle: that's because gravity doesn't drag you into the abyss

The Magician: not yet :)

Kyle: And what the fuck does that mean?

~~~

Bluebell: someone has drunk more alcohol than anyone else in the world and they don't even know it.

Lucio: of course I know him, he's me

~~~

Asra: what is C for?

Hunter dressed up as cookie monster: C4 is a fucking explosive

Asra: No, what is, C, for?

Hunter:... C is for Cock

Asra: what's your costume?

Hunter: cookie monster

~~~

Hunter holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me- tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit!

Mushroom: can you feel your heat burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. You cannot kill me in a way that matters

Hunter cocks gun tears streaming down their face: I'M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU

Julian: hey, Hunter, what the fuck does this mean?

Hunter: decay exists as an extant form of life

Julian: That's a- that's a terrifying answer, have a nice day

~~~

Hunter: I love cheating, if you don't cheat what the hell is wrong with you?

Nadia: have you ever been cheated on?

Hunter: Oh shit, I forgot some people are in relationships. To clarify I love to violate academic integrity on exams

~~~

Bluebell: top hats imply the existence of a bottom hat

Kyle: cat ears

Hunter: why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?

~~~

Kyle: how to start discourse. 'insert favorite person' is a 'insert favorite Hogwarts house'

Hunter: Julian is a power-bottom and not enough people talk about it

Kyle: I don't think that sentence starts discourse so much as ends any conversation before it even starts

~~~

Hunter: nature documentary but the narration is just weird enough to make you question it

Bluebell: Some fish can walk out of water, so remember that next time

Kyle: you might think your safe, but horses are omnivores

~~~

Hunter: standing up and blacking out for a few seconds is just transitioning from a cutscene to the actual gameplay

Julian: you need to eat some salt is what that means

~~~

Hunter: the cis are all like 'but won't children be confused' but every interaction I've ever had with a child who didn't know what to call me has gone verbatim like this

"why are you wearing a dress"

"because I can"

"Okay. Do you like animals?"

Bluebell: kids are very busy and have got much more important things to think about, such as their favorite animals

~~~

Hunter: okay, brain, don't freak out, but we've come across a minor inconvenience

Hunter's brain already dousing itself in gasoline: that's unfortunate

~~~

Kyle with ADHD, ASD and mild dyspraxia/Dislexia: I'll stop making jokes about mental illness, when mental illness stops making a joke out of me *laugh slowly turns into pained chuckle*

~~~

Kyle: isn't it crazy how depending on your mental state you can either spill a glass of water and be like 'HAHAHA OOPS CLUMBSY ME' or spill a glass or water and be like 'MY LIFE IS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE, I DESTORY EVERYTHING I TOUCH, NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE ME AND MY WET FUCKING FLOOR'

~~~

Kyle: It's Halloween let's do something REALLY SCARY

Hunter: we could go to bed early and be alone with our thoughts

~~~

Kyle when trying to force themselves to learn something they have no care about nor interest in;

~~~

Hunter: why do I feel terrible?

hunter's body: coffee is not a meal, eat a vegetable, sleep, PLEASE!!!

Hunter: guess I'll never know

Hunter's body screaming internally: Oh my god!!!

~~~

Kyle: checking the clock before starting something*

Kyle's ADHD: well it's 9:14 which might as well be 9:30 and that's basically 10 which is almost 11 and I have to be in bed by 11 so I don't have time to start anything

~~~

Kyle: everyone is so much taller than me, I get to be picked up so often, just whenever I want! I just have to ask and it's GREAT! Now if only I could actually see where I was going through this stupid crowd.

Portia: I will make them pay for the way I was treated. The streets will run red with the blood of those who mocked me. All shall perish before the rage of the opressed. My vengeance draws near-

neverflownwithme asked: “He’s been in the black earth now for thousands of years.”

past transmissions || { always accepting }

{ @neverflownwithme​ }

It begins with a chill upon the air, howling down into the South from the Far North. It begins with the sudden fall of snow in the middle of an eternal summer.

The Citadel has kept record of the years since the last winter.

It has been some eight thousand years before, a fading cold that had slowly retreated beyond the borders of the North and on towards the Edge of the World. Spring had bloomed with winter’s banishment. And, then, summer had come upon the kingdoms to rule with no opposition. Generations have passed since such a time, the residents of the Sunset Kingdoms knowing nothing but the warmth of summer and all of its bounty.

When the first chill upon the air comes, slipping across the kingdoms like a wave swelling up onto a sandy shore, it is viewed as a curiosity, something near mythical. The clouds begin to gray, then, and the air seems to become colder by the day. When the first flurries of snow begin to dust over the lands, though, the curiosity that had first colored the shift in weather begins to sour to fear.

Those flurries give way to howling blizzards soon enough. Crops and livestock freeze to death out in the fields. As famine sets in, discourse begins to rise among the small folk and the high lords of the kingdoms. Rebellions spark, first within the borders of individual kingdoms and then beyond them.

Six moon turns pass, the bitter cold and the snows from the Far North showing no sign of lessening. At the edge of the Sunset Kingdoms, high upon the Wall, the Black Brothers soon find themselves overrun by an enemy that was long thought dead. The enemy takes them during the black hours of night, unleashing upon them before they even realize they are among them.

The Night’s Watch perishes, lost in a sea of ice and death. The Wall cracks as the last one falls, crashing down in bitter ruin with a thundering so loud that it is heard across the kingdoms all the way to Dorne.

Across the Narrow Sea, among the ruins of the Bay of Dragons, something more echoes the Wall’s destruction. Out of the mists, the thundering of hooves is heard, followed by the crack of leathern wings and the roar of a great beast returned to life.

~oOo~

Even in Dorne, the cold has come. Yet, the snows have yet to fall. The clouds are dark, though, and they threaten to burst at any moment. 

A dragoness, full grown and fearsome, appears in the night upon the shores of the desert kingdom a mere two days after the Wall shatters and falls. There have been no dragons in the world since before the eternal summer, the creatures disappearing as the snows faded away. They have fallen to myth and legend, as much a fairytale as the Valyrian Dragonlords that had once been whispered to have commanded them.

And yet, one of the fabled beasts alights among the fragrant orange trees, glistening pools, and pink marbles halls of the Water Gardens, black as night with burning scarlet eyes and a roar that can be heard all the way to Oldtown.

Upon the sands, Dothraki screamers emerge from the tides, a war cry going up among the thundering of hooves along the shore.

From the black beast’s back, a young woman swings down onto the marbled pathways that meander through the gardens. Her hair is bright in the darkness, silver-gold strands turned near white in the light of the moon overhead, and her eyes bright violet.

Her Dothraki screamers call her Khaleesi, the name shouted as their curved blades clash and sing in time with the dragoness’ roar.

Kivio Darilaros is another name granted to the woman, the moniker whispered from behind the cover of a red lacquered mask by a Shadowbinder from the dark land of Asshai.

“She is the Princess That Was Promised. A champion of R’hllor,” the masked woman whispers to the youngest Viper Prince the evening after the black beast appears among the walls of the Water Gardens, form half hidden among the shadows of the palace. “She shall return the darkness from whence it came and unify these broken lands.”

Khaleesi. Kivio Darilaros. Princess That Was Promised.

The woman responds to them all, though Khaleesi most of all.

As her forces sail north, though, Dothraki screamers and Dornish shields intermingling among the ships that now ferry them towards the approaching darkness, another name is spoken on the wind. The Viper Prince hears it over the waves of the sea and the howling of the wind snapping through the sails of the ships, hears it in answer to his own questioning and curiosity.

“What do you call your dragon, Khaleesi?” the Prince questions late one evening, his voice swept up on the breeze as the hull of their ship rises and falls upon the swelling seas.

“Daenerys,” the woman whispers to him, her eyes and hair shining in the darkness when she turns to look at him. “My name is Daenerys,” she corrects. There is a hint of a smile curling along the edges of her mouth. “Her name,” she begins, violet eyes turning up to where a great shadow soars above them, “is Balerion.”

~oOo~

Their enemy sets in upon them among the barren landscape just south of the Northern seat. Already, Winterfell has been lost. The Northmen are fleeing for White Harbor, for the Neck, for anyplace that can grant them sanctuary from the coming onslaught.

For a time, Daenerys and Balerion prove successful in their campaign. The dead cannot withstand the might of the dragoness and the Dothraki screamers that tear through the enemy’s ranks, the black blades of their Valyrian steel arakhs making quick work of any who stand before them.

The snows and the wind begin to ebb, briefly halts to a blissful silence. But, then, the thundering of battle ranks sounds in the quiet. The wind begins to stir. And, then, it howls. From the darkness, their enemy emerges once again, washing over the ranks of the living like a never ending flood.

Across the Sunset Kingdoms and across the Narrow Sea, there comes another echo. From the depths of the Smoking Sea, there comes the crack of wings upon the air, the resounding clang of spear and shield, and a second roar that seems to rattle the very foundations of the earth.

~oOo~

Harrenhal is a monstrosity of twisted and ruined towers. Ruined or not, its immense size offers those that have fled south from their advancing enemy sanctuary. The winds still howl, cutting about the castle’s towers in a raging tempest.

The howling of the wind and the bitter cold pales in comparison to what awaits Daenerys and all those that have fled south with her within the Great Hall of the castle upon their arrival.

Out among the courtyards, battalions of Unsullied stand in rank, their black armor and shields a stark contrast against the bright snow. Inside the castle, though, lies the most shocking discovery. Curled about the castle’s throne, a second dragoness lies in wait for those that have come to Harrenhal. Silver scaled with molten golden eyes, the beast makes even Harrenhal’s grand Great Hall seem small. The woman who is seated on the castle’s throne seems all the smaller in the dragoness’ great shadow.

It is Daenerys who breaks from the throngs of soldiers and civilians to approach the dragoness. It is Daenerys who opens her arms to the woman upon the throne when she nears her.

“Helaena,” she speaks, smiling for the first time since her journey upon the ship with the Viper Prince as she wraps her sister up in her arms.

~oOo~

There is a Red Priestess named Melisandre among Helaena’s ranks. She’s calls Helaena Elenei, a bridge between the skies and the depths. She is a last defender, one meant to come before the end of times. A champion of the Merling King and the Moon Mother, her ranks differ vastly from those that had risen from the depths with Daenerys.

Daenerys’ Dothraki screamers were a sword. Helaena’s Unsullied were a shield. Two complimentary forces. Two forces meant to hold the line and defend the realm of the living.

“You know what will happen should we fail.”

The words are whispered late one evening, whispered from one sister to another in Harrenhal’s Great Hall. There are others there with them. The Viper Prince that Helaena sees Daenerys sharing scarcely hidden glances with. The Wolf King that had held the dead from crossing the Neck until aid had arrived. The Kraken Queen and the Redwyne King whose ships had ferried civilians down from White Harbor when the city had become overrun with their enemy. The Roses and the Falcon Queen that had given them shields and food when there had been none for them among the ruined Riverlands.

Still, Helaena whispers the words all the same and she watches the haunted look that passes into Daenerys’ violet eyes with them.

“What will happen?” It is the Wolf King’s voice that breaks through the silence that follows Helaena’s words.

“We’ve another sister,” Daenerys answers, never turning her gaze to the man she now speaks to.

“One with a dragon?” the Redwyne King asks. “Call for her, then. Another dragon will be all the better with what we’re facing.”

Helaena shakes her head as the other talks, turning so that she can regard those in the room with her and her sister. Her pale gold hair is darker among the shadows and in the flickering of the firelight, the sapphire blue of her eyes all the deeper.

“Our sister is different,” Helaena tells them, her voice careful. She and Daenerys love their sister dearly, yet she was born with a far different purpose than their own. “She is not a defender. She is a destroyer, a harbinger of death and rebirth.”

The words seem to hang about them like a curtain, the silence that follows tense with trepidation.

“If we cannot stop the Night King and the Others, she will awaken. And, if she does, she will annihilate the world so that it may begin again from the ashes,” Daenerys says.

“The Night King?” It’s the Wolf King’s voice that follows Daenerys’ own. “The Night King is near legend. He’s been in the black earth now for thousands of years.” Little had been spoken of him since his death, not since the Watch took back control of the Wall and cast the Night King and his Corpse Queen from power.

“As have we, Your Grace,” Helaena reminds. “It is no mere happenstance that brought us here. We only awaken when the Night King does. We awaken when the Great Other calls on his own champion.”

~oOo~

Helaena’s Unsullied do as they have always done. They shield the living and hold the line when the dead descend upon them.

Daenerys’ Dothraki screamers do as they have always done, cutting down their enemies at their Khaleesi’s command.

Balerion and Meraxes prove to be the greatest aid. Though Daenerys had made easy work of the dead up among the wilds of the North, having Helaena and Meraxes to aid her and Balerion makes all the difference. It is always different when the two of them are together. There is always an extra bit of power that is lacking when they are separated.

Still, for all their strength and for all their might, the dead overwhelm them in a matter of days. Harrenhal becomes overrun, crumbling under the sheer ferocity of their enemy.

It is when they’re retreating, making for Saltpans along the Bay of Crabs, that Helaena and Daenerys spy their enemy in full. Positioned at the back of the undead ranks, astride their own mounts, they see the Night King’s generals.

Though there is no sign of the Night King himself, the sisters know that he shall not be far behind.

~oOo~

Dragonstone is a fortress that the Valyrian’s crafted eons ago, well protected by old magic and the ancient gods of the Old Empire. It will serve as a safe haven for them as they consider their next plan of action.

Their forces have dwindled so since Daenerys awakened. Still, there is a flickering hope that they may prevail in their campaign. There is still hope that they can save the innocents of this world, that they can beat back the darkness so that this world may heal in place of being subjected to burning.

It takes time for their ships to maneuver through the waters, the seas now filled with ice. As they pass Maidenpool, Helaena spies the glowing blue eyes of their enemy watching them. By the number of them, she doubts there are any survivors among the trading port. Their enemy is only growing stronger.

And they are running out of time.

~oOo~

Among the Doom stricken ruins of Valyria, a final echo sounds. A third snap of leathern wings is heard, louder than any that have come before it. Hooves beat loudly against the earth, sword and shield clattering as a final war cry goes up into the darkness. Last, there comes a roar, one that threatens to shatter the world asunder.

~oOo~

Their ships are passing Wickenden when there comes a snap and a roar so loud it feels as though the world may well be breaking in two. The noise rouses those from below the ship’s deck, drawing them out into the cold just as the sky brightens with a crimson glow. In the distance, a second roar sounds, one so loud it may as well be above them. Balerion and Meraxes answer it, their calls stretching out in the darkness.

“What is that?” the Kraken Queen asks, her hand rising to shield her eyes from the crimson light above them.

The clouds briefly dissipate, revealing the source of light in all its glory. There, high in the sky, is the red comet known as the Dragon’s Tail, the herald of doom and destruction.

“It is the Dragon’s Tail,” Helaena tells them, a chill working its way down her spine as she stares up at the flaming comet. “The herald of Azor Ahai.”

“Azor Ahai?” the Kraken Queen echoes, looking not to Helaena, but to Daenerys instead. There is a look of dread upon the young woman’s face.

“Our sister has awakened.”

~oOo~

Though the seas this far south have yet to form ice as those farther north have, the voyage is a treacherous one in its final stages. Storms have long been fierce when nearing the island of Dragonstone, the lingering effects of the Valyrian magic that had forged the island stronghold.

Helaena and Daenerys suspect something more in the violent storms, though. It echoes with their sister’s presence, in the ire that is no doubt present within her at being woken.

Though the eldest of the three, their sister takes no joy in what gifts she has been blessed with. There is little love for a harbinger of death, even one who allows life to begin again from the ashes. Were their sister given the choice, they know that she would choose to never awaken, to never be forced to deal the final blow that ends all life so that it may start again.

Helaena does not envy her sister’s power, would never wish to possess such a thing. For all the life that her sister is capable of granting, it comes only after experiencing the utter agony of snuffing it out. She loves her sister dearly, loves her as dearly as she loves Daenerys. Yet, she wishes her sister’s power did not haunt her in the manner that Helaena knows that it does. She wishes it did not steal pieces of her sister away each time she is forced to use it.

She wishes the Lion of Night and the Maiden-Made-of-Light had chosen another to shoulder such a burden.

The Dragon’s Tail remains bright in the sky, burning crimson even as the dawn breaks over the horizon in the east. Dragonstone is bathed in the shadow of the Dragonmont as the sisters walk the twisting paths up to the fortress from the docks below, Balerion and Meraxes flying high above the castle. They can only hope that their ships will survive the storm that is raging about the island where they have been anchored out among the depths.

Should they lose them, there will be no escape from the island for those that have travelled with them.

The Stone Drum echoes with the resounding thunder that booms over head. Helaena is the first to notice the lingering scent that surrounds them as the pass into the fortress, is the first to notice the scent of ash, ginger, and orange floating heavily upon the air. Daenerys notices it only a moment after, her hand reaching to touch at Helaena’s wrist as they move for the heavy red doors that will grant them entrance to the Great Hall.

Darkness greets them when the doors are pushed open. For a moment, all that can be heard is the rumbling of thunder above them and the crashing of the sea against the cliffs below them. Then, there comes the low growl of a woken dragoness and a pair of emerald eyes appear among the shadows.

A sudden flash of light fills the room, the torches among the walls lighting one by one until the room was illuminated in the gentle glow of them.

The dragoness lies curled about Dragonstone’s throne, her golden body massive even in the cavernous hall. Vhagar has grown in size since the last time she awakened. She rivals Balerion’s size now. Perhaps, she is even bigger.

A Red Priestess stands at the base of the throne, her hands at her middle and her own eyes watchful of those trudging into the Great Hall.

“Laira.” It is Helaena who speaks first, stepping farther into the Great Hall. Her sister has yet to speak, yet to even move. She sits upon Dragonstone’s throne, sword resting across her lap, eyes ever watchful.

“Laira,” Daenerys echoes. Laira is a stark contrast to her and Helaena. Olive skinned where she and Helaena are fair. Silver haired where she and Helaena are platinum and pale gold. Tall where she and Helaena are smaller. Her eyes differ most, though. They are dark amethyst compared to Daenerys’ own bright violet and Helaena’s sapphire blue.

It takes only a glance to know all that is whirling through their sister’s mind. Both Helaena and Daenerys know there is a war brewing within her that she dare not speak of aloud. They know that she is considering what will have to be done and what that will mean for the realm of the living.

“The darkness has risen,” the Red Priestess at the base of the throne speaks, her dark hair and green eyes shining in the torchlight. “So comes Azor Ahai to make the world anew.”

{ @truetargaryen & @fullrangeofemotions & @thequeenmaker & @xcoatlicuex & @hisvipereyes & @viperparamour & @nolongerhispawn & @shewhoisironborn & @adornishviper & @anunfailingkindness & @ialwayswasthebest & @iveneverbeenagoodgirl & @aladyofwinterfell & @therosesofhighgarden & @arisiarrxb & @alionessroars & @zaldrizo & @fairytalesandstars & @queeniolande & @yrracynrxl & @scaleddoe & @scraniknatu }

Pro-tip: Before implying someone is brushing something off as terf rhetoric, maybe check first if terfs have admitted publicly that it is indeed terf rhetoric used as a gateway to their ideology.

Another pro-tip: Maybe don't do terfs' dirty work for them.

Another another pro-tip: Queer isn't any more of a slur than gay is. Would you rather straight people just go back to calling us sodomites?

Watering down transmisogyny is dangerous, and results in people overlooking the very real and very tangible violence express transphobes and their allies constantly enact upon trans women. I don't think discourse over people not wanting to be called queer, and whether the world's even politically useful anymore, is remotely on the same level.

As for the word itself, I don't think it's all that useful anymore. It lacks the same radical punch it once had, as the establishment has been encouraged, year after year, to use it as their term of choice. David Halperin wrote about this all the way back in 2003, where he talks about how the academic embrace of queer (one that we can see presaging the broader cultural use of it, regionally, later) was so easy because it culls away the uncomfortable words in the earlier 'gay and lesbian studies' (the name of the time, contemporary departments like Yale's have added bisexual and transgender to the mix) to make something more palatable to a general audience. All it really means now is 'liberal', and they eat it up. Sure, they support LGBT people in theory, but wouldn't it just be easier to foster a field of study that abstracts the divisions between LGBT / cishet people to such a degree that they can divest themselves of privilege through queering themselves?

It was a radical reaction to perceived gay assimilation at the time, but I don't think there's anything radical about it nowadays.

Also, nitpick, I think that the phrase 'queer and trans' sounds dumb as hell, and emblematic of the issues with just how loose the word is. If you have to say 'and trans', because queer doesn't make it obvious enough that you also mean trans people, then queer isn't doing it's job of talking about the community as a whole. LGBT, so long as you're ready, willing, and able to make the small leap of saying "yeah, B just stands in for Bisexuals, Pansexuals, etc", tells you everything you need to know. Trans people, and anyone not exclusively into the opposite binary gender. Unlike queer, LGBT actually communicates a concrete idea, as grounded through the letters in its acronym.

TL;DR I don't use queer because I think the contemporary politics of the term are milquetoast, I've been called it pejoratively and don't like it lol, and I don't think it's actually useful as a descriptor. When talking about this community I don't mean "cishet kinksters who think they're progressive," so I say LGBT instead of queer.

In regards to clone.shipping on this blog

These disclaimers were originally found on my rules and muses about docs, I’ve moved them to here for the sake of organization. This post will be linked on the aforementioned docs.

First and foremost I don’t want to see or engage with any kind of discourse about clonecest/cloneshipping (IDC how you choose to name it), and I won’t associate myself with people who claim to not be okay with it (e.g.: If you claim you don’t support/like it, etc.). I hear you guys, I will fully respect that, and I won’t follow first.

If you can’t be a mature person to handle the fact I’m writing something you don’t like, then you will be blocked. I refuse to deal with people’s temper tantrums. No, it’s not racist/incestuous/abusive/etc., enough already. Just say you don’t like it, and move on with your day. Stop watering down those words meanings, in an attempt to one-up in an online discussions.

Blacklist the tag cloneshipping cw. I won’t reblog any art/edits of it, and any kind of interaction/aesthetic/musings of that nature will be tagged as such so people can filter it out.

@ clone roleplayers: Rest assured, that’s not at all the only thing that I’m looking for out of interacting with. If that’s a deal breaker for you, then block or unfollow me (no hard feelings! Curate your own experience.). Otherwise, if you haven’t already stated it in your rules then tell me. whether or not you’re comfortable with it in the case we plot. So I don’t end up making you uncomfortable by suggesting it, without knowing your stance on it.

For my muses’ lore/BG: I don't interpret the clones to be literal brothers (most clones don’t even see each other as a family in the majority of cases). As such whenever they call each other by brothers, it is being done in a "brothers-in-arms" way. Which is a common thing in the military, meant to express their closeness.

I tend to lean towards the old/Legends take for my clones. I disagree with fanons, and strongly oppose Disney’s sanitized canon that try to paint them as just one literal big family. Despite that, I’m still not opposed to interacting with others that do that. Obviously, I will never force my interpretation upon anyone, so be the judge on whether or not you’ll be able to work with that.

If you follow me, then I’m hoping and counting on the fact that you’ve read my disclaimers.

Please, give this a like to LMK you’ve read this!

The Desert Island Test

I cannot overstate how much damage I think is being done to LGBT discourse with the pervasive argument, which has almost attained the status of assumed entry-level knowledge, that gender is a social construct.

So let me break down why I think it's not.

To gauge whether a given aspect of our lives is a social construct, I like to apply what I call the Desert Island Test. That is, if you take a person, put them on a desert island which is conveniently bountiful enough to satisfy their immediate non-social needs like food, water, and shelter, and then you give them the thing in question, is that thing still real or does it require a kind of social pressure to be what it is?

A hammer is easy. Give a hammer to someone on a deserted island and it still does all the things a hammer can do.

Money is a great example of a thing that looks real, has a material aspect, but is nothing more than a social construct. The most important function of money - the value - is determined by society, by polite agreement between large groups of people that currency is measured in dot and this note that says it's worth ten dots is absolutely telling the truth. Take away the society and you are left only with some extremely fancy pieces of plastic which, fundamentally, aren't worth more than any other pieces of plastic you might have lying around.

You can go through plenty of inventions and concepts this way. Law and justice are social constructs. Morality is not. Race is a social construct; having dark skin and genetic traits of other kinds that are genealogically traceable to particular geographically distinct tribes of humanity is not. War, famine, pestilence and death are all real. Professionalism, academic qualifications, class structure and fashion are all socially constructed.

What about gender then? Take a person, put them on a desert island, and give them a gender. Do they still meaningfully have it?

To make this easier to conceptualise, let's try it with a trans person. Do they still have the gender they did in society?

The answer to this question has severe implications for the existence of trans people, and I don't think anyone who's put gender forward as a social construct has ever really thought about them, even while claiming to be pro-trans. The question is essentially asking, if you remove a trans person from society, are they still trans?

It seems obvious to me that the answer would be "yes", but that means gender isn't a social construct! And if gender is a social construct, then it seems equally obvious that all the people telling trans people "you're not really [gender], you're just confused/faking it" are correct!

It's interesting because a lot of what I see about gender being a social construct is based around rhetoric like "men can wear dresses" and telling people to "be a man/man up". And that's true, that is all fake! But what you have here is gender roles, which are a set of expectations for how each gender should act and behave, and which are definitely a social construct. Gender itself, however, is plainly not, because trans people exist, and their existence is not determined by societal convention.

While I'm here, let me try it with sexuality. Sexuality is not a social construct, and it's not especially fluid either. It's a little bit like archaeology, which is also real. You can't change what is there, and at most you can remain ignorant of the full extent of it, perhaps discovering more aspects to it than you originally thought given enough time or exploration. And though it's not especially advisable, if you really really want to you can bury it again.

Probably Not The Final Draft

I didn’t even know if I wanted to write this but I can never escape this shit, and it just shows how addicted I am to the discourse as life just passes me by and hoping eventually I am no longer here. The more I wake up to the world being orchestrated to destruct and we continue to sports entertain ourselves into a more fascist world, I don’t know if people know they are brainwashed, or if they are willingly being brainwashed, but this notion of stuff being done transparently on the surface is not supposed to be obvious so there is pushback from people online or alt media that is just as much establishment like rhetoric, especially the aesthetic. People will counter the far right wing shit to some extent, but I still feel the biggest mistake people on the left do is not get conspiratorial about shit to weaponize against the right, because even if a few items on the right wing list turn out to be true, that is all they need to dominate and the only thing I see is constant needs for debate and then it ends up some prominent “left” figures will start easing their way into the right wing mindset, they will common ground that always leads with the person having to be fair to people who don’t ever want to play fair. We insist on having this aesthetic that matches the past when the game is 100 times more advanced. More and more all I am seeing is more people just further themselves into becoming characters for comedic banter nonstop, the sports entertainment personalities take precedent over the systemic issue, even when the systemic issue becomes the focus, it then reduces to shitty debates between other sports entertainers who know it will just be talking in circles with people who are willing to organize a movement where it looks like they are the ones fighting back against the oppressive system, even though they want to normalize their own shitty version. It works out perfect when the right wing trajectory system, much like wrestling bookers, have their world champions out there and purposefully fucking up and we still have to look at it with “America’s dumbest criminal” aesthetic. Sorry, I realize I am not credible enough to give my thoughts on politics through a wrestling lens, but these people have made it so fucking obvious. It is funny because the political crowd, some of them will scoff at wrestling being talked about, but they actually partake and enjoy sports entertainment shit despite looking down at people who watch wrestling. So if the world is supposed to implode, it means that nothing will get done that will really change from a president or prime minister’s “decisions” and then the watered down MSM will limit narratives and not push back when it is a democrat in office but there is pushback, because the shit that is online is just as much the MSM as the MSM is, you notice until the discredited MSM starts hawking points that someone like a Jimmy Dore says then all of a sudden, the shitty MSM is now telling the truth. Ultimately the right wing trajectory system will have their true face of what they have wanted. Again, everything I am saying are just my theories and I don’t have the back up sources for what I am spewing from the top of my head. I know I am not considered the smartest, plus my aesthetic is shit and as shit as my aesthetic is, I still somehow can see where the future is going more so than other political commentators. The MSM will tell overall truths, but that to me are just self preservation truths so in the history books, they can say people warned of what is to come, but in current times, we have lived through so much fucking lies from the US Empire, that no one takes their word on anything seriously unless you happen to be a “whistleblower” that post left and right wing people will amplify. People really think that calling the MSM shit in this current day has any real stock when it has gone to the next level. Suddenly the “independent” media could never have dark money funding it or anything. It used to be so easy to follow the news a bit more because I knew MSM would not tell us everything and then I could refer to supposed independent people who were explaining the propaganda, while then covering up for other government’s propaganda, and then each side gets defensive if you don’t buy their side 100 percent. I don’t know I have seen way too much shit play out where something is bullshit, someone did something problematic etc, and it feels like the intent is not to root for anyone. It doesn’t feel like there is hope. People want to be indoctrinated into the far right, and your hope is that there will be people on the left who can counter, but it turns out people will find a way to start generalizing everyone on the left about coming off as off putting, when the system by design has been there to fuck with people, it has been right wing policies and they are not only getting away with it, but they are winning the culture wars online and dominating and all I ever hear from other “progressive” gate keepers is to be civil and win with ideas, but when shit heads limit what the narratives are, how the fuck are you gonna beat these people when we can’t even expand the narratives. We have to pretend that shit that leaks out online is somehow something the system never wants us to know. It is like how the modern wrestling discourse is, people really think they can only enjoy WWE if the narrative is that WWE didn’t plan for this person to get over. I don’t get this notion to dumb down how smart these people are. It doesn’t mean you have to kiss their ass, but it is perverse because there are permitted sports entertainer accounts that think by naming off stuff on the surface as the big own, when they are helping create the same propaganda with a newer face.

I know I have stated this shit before and I am probably remixing it but I don’t keep track of shit I say word for word all the fucking time and it just feels with more normalized propaganda happening where the right and the neoliberals are making it more difficult for regular people to function in this world, that how can anyone sleep at night thinking that advocating for abduction of trans children or taking away womens rights, trying to erase a racist history while still getting to kill more minorities with impunity and have a bunch of other boring uncharismatic shit heads justify it while filling your head with more trauma porn while people are cheering on the killers, how can anyone think advocating for that kind of side is the normal and just position while screaming how people on the left have gone too far when normally most of the time the examples of the “left” going too far is normally some sensationalist shit that everyone defines by it. We can’t even have an honest look at what society was in the past, and we generalize it in the current form thinking we are better when we are normalizing other racism and ignorance in the process. Like back in the 2000’s, in the midst of all the real edge lord shit, there was a lot of normalized racism and ignorance in general that was normalized with the entertainment consumed, and people don’t want to admit it, but our entertainment and the attitudes reflected upon it have helped brainwash us a little, but back then we didn’t think we were being ignorant or racist etc, because our definition for racism was over the top racism of people not wanting to hang out with other people who were different from them, but in the late 90’s and 2000’s, we hung out with all kinds of minority groups and we somehow thought we were better than the 50’s but we were really fucking ignorant and now in the 2010’s we have looked back and generalized people and things back then when the same system were the ones pushing that kind of shit to be normalized, and now we think in our current aesthetic that we are better than what was the past. We are not. We are always susceptible to propaganda, like when someone becomes a “truth teller” about one stand out racist incident like a Hulk Hogan etc, we think people are telling the truth and they will finally call out the entire system, but people get credit for that and then allow more normalized shit to go down but I can’t call that out because people called out an obvious problematic person one time. It is like how people think that pointing out the hypocrisy in shit really has value, listen these people on the right don’t give a shit if they are hypocrites, and it used to stand out in the 2010’s to point it out but now in our current world, like you think republicans who want child marriage legalized are gonna give a shit if you constantly do nonstop material on their hypocrisy, it is time to find another fucking tactic, because it is not gonna work. It is like whatever side of the fence you want to be on, you will justify being on that side. I am supposed to be hyped up for obvious sports entertainment with George Santos getting in all sorts of legal trouble and still being allowed to fucking be in office, don’t judge me for not knowing the political rules of what is promoted when literally no one in this fucking system is playing by it, but I guess Jamaal Bowman partaking in sports entertainment with Marjorie Taylor Green, which would be the equivalent of a backstage sports entertainment segment that seems over the top to start a feud, then afterwards they then cut their “pro wrestling” promos with MTG lying about being called a white supremacist and how she felt intimidated and she throws a bunch of racist dogwhistles, then Bowman gets to retort and I fuck with his message of what he said, but he is not operating by the same rules that other people from his community face, like if something were to happen to Bowman, it wouldn’t be some random act of occurrence, it would be more dangerous because it would be mafia permitted, but public figures have to make their situation relatable in the exact same way that other people will go through shit. But it becomes political sports entertainment, it becomes the obvious racist shit that we are gonna call out, while normalizing 50 other racist shit. We know MTG is a shitty hypocrite, there is a long list of her harassing people and doing more sports entertainment.

I didn’t want to make this a long blog but I don't know what I am trying to get across. Sometimes I just want to write and wherever I end up going, I end up going because I am trying to refrain from covering the CM Punk shit because I am so annoyed with the nonstop discourse around that, so that is why I am trying to keep it strictly about the overall view I have of where the system is going. If I had any fucking will power I would stop watching this art form though because it is getting a lot worse with the propped up discourse and the gas lighting but then we have to protect the image of someone who needs the discourse centered around them at the detriment of everyone else, even with his planned cancelation, because now people are focusing on his past comments from his 2005 RF Shoot interviews where him and Colt go over what they did to one woman they were training with, hurting her on purpose and justifying it because she didn’t want to learn, and none of the accounts who are literally calling out everyone who didn’t say everything about the Vince accusations, have said anything about this, and maybe Punk/Colt have changed hence why people let this slide, maybe it represents that in the mid 2000’s how much of an ignorant society we lived in where something that Punk/Colt did was not seen as a big deal because those were the attitudes, hell I bet that you shoot interview is what made Vince/Triple H like Punk to any extent. Punk has always been an internet marketing tool, we view the internet as keeping it real but the reason it has so much cache is because it helped propped up entertainers make it to the next level, so Punk in my personal opinion, is in the position of now controlling his negative and positive narrative, so they clearly want this old story out there because maybe it will reflect on who he is now and he will turn heel in real life. When you start off on the internet, they know what your trajectory is gonna be. But maybe at his core he actually does give a shit about women and supports them genuinely, but now we are gonna correlate his past with whatever is revealed in the present since people plan their cancelations before it happens and that justifies why they will be seen as bad guys, but it makes sense because back in the day when people online knew which chicks he had sex with and was in relationships with, we all thought it was fucking cool, but once I realized the probabilities of people in the industry fucking everyone anyways because it is a mafia and open relationship kind of place where they use the relationships as relatable ones with regular people, so now that you think about it, he was such a marketing tool for the internet they had to promote online who he fucked so people would think he is cool. And this is the guy talking about everyone having parasocial relationships and how no one knows him or anyone, he finally does it when his fanbase and other people’s fan bases have run amok online, you literally have the conversation centering around you, you and others have probably given incentive to paid online accounts to take away from the product because they couldn’t wait 8 months until you come back when you are coming back, the entire “They pulled him from the press release” was part of the marketing and he might not show up right away but he will eventually show up again. But people will get on their high horse about “Well CM Punk is simply more entertaining than the product” No you shit heads made the product a lot more shitty with the focus on this fucking guy who will end up coming back anyways, and even if he goes somewhere else, it is still gonna be an online work to me. They sacrificed programming to facilitate this stupid worked shoot shit and people associated have helped dumb shit down so people who are probably paid by the company or Punk online are people who then come up with the solutions that didn’t need to be there because proper booking could’ve fucking happened. And people who are outraged by Punk’s past comments, are you mad about them because you genuinely give a shit about “Bikini girl” or is someone’s trauma being put out there so you can fucking facilitate a feud between CM Punk vs Bryan fucking Alvarez. Sorry it is completely and utter shit, then we have to hear from Brian fucking Last because now we made Cornette a cliche old head character who needs to be involved. The media circus online when shit like this happens, it can’t just be a simple news day, it has to be conflicting reports from different people and people online then get mad, the wrestlers themselves prod the fanbase and then other members of the fanbase are given incentive to help destroy someone’s mentality. But people who suddenly care now about this past interview, you people have overlooked Vince’s bullshit, and the other countless of systemic abuse in these industries and you don’t want to hear about them unless it fits in with your entertainment, and I am no fucking better. If I had any dignity, I would stop watching any of this entertainment shit. But I just hate how people pretend there is a not an overall industry problem and there is never any nuance to the conversation. Nothing will truly change, I didn’t even want to cover it because it is pointless but then I give in and talk about it, but it is like I am just ready for them to get this work out of the way. I really want to hold off on watching the new show or wrestling altogether. I don’t give a shit that Ace Steel is hired or not hired, can’t wait for CM Punk’s cheerleaders turn on Ace once he and Punk fall out and people use the same material they have been using at Colt. But the discourse gets out of control. And the funny part is, because the political shit is making its way into the industries and institutions, you are gonna see some of these political commentators at some point seep into the world of wrestling, the political discourse is all sports entertainment anyway. No one wants to admit it though, they will admit but in a limited way but I can literally break down the system watching wrestling, it is what helps me see how I perceive the world to operate. I am not saying I am right, but it would’ve been easier to boycott the entertainment maybe back then because now it is impossible.

There are people who need me to keep watching despite them suppressing me and keeping under their thumb and people getting comfortable disrespecting me, but it is so much investment for me to be invested into this shit for some reason hence why there are people who are incentivized to wow me to make me feel a little better but it never goes anywhere, and I have been put through the ringer from these people who are in the entertainment and political world for far too long. And the fucked up part of it is I have been through so much spiritual wars that it doesn’t count within “reality” and I still have to deal with people being given incentive in my life to annoy me because that is how industry people get at me since they can’t physically attack me, they can’t attack me on the surface personally when I am online because that would mean admitting that they give a fuck what I say when I am not supposed to be relevant, in fact I have seen messages from people who have admitted when people say shit they don’t like they can organize their engagement to be suppressed and I find it funny that so much effort is done to push me out of the way but then still insist they need me around but unless I have cosigns from other people who want to do Howard Stern like bullshit, because the name of the game is always gonna be chaos in the cogs’ lives nonstop. There is literally nothing that makes me happy on this earth. I wish I could go back in time and change my need to be entertained and be entrenched with the entertainment world because I think it has rotted my brain. And now I am stuck in this world I don’t want to be in with constant sports entertainment that is gonna fuck with our lives. It is not fun being here on this planet and I feel like the longer I am alive, I will have to give into this shit to cross over to the right leaning side and I don’t want to do that, because it feels like everyone is susceptible to it and eventually everyone throws on an NWO shirt, and I don’t want to. I don’t have hope for this world. I feel I wasted so much time, there is nothing for me to look forward to because everything will constantly get fucking worse, and it is amazing because it has gotten bad and you think it can’t get any worse, but they surprise me even more. I am sure I will come back with another blog that is a better draft than the previous one etc because I am writing this really late/early and I am all over the map. Again not one of my best ones, I don’t have all the answers, I can admit that but I feel the ones who do, could organize better shit to go down to prevent the horrible shit from happening. I feel useless on this planet. Why am I needed here? This is just me thinking out loud, I am not trying to say I am gonna kill myself. Which is hilarious people will tell me not to do that but then they will proceed to be the reasons why I would want go down that path in my fucked up head (By the way I left my computer alone for a bit to get something to eat, I come back down, and the place where it says “they will proceed to be the reasons why” the trolls added in all caps “WHY I WANT TO KILL” and I swear I didn’t write that down, but this is more ways to show they can access my shit and do what they want, because it will scare me but I know they are gonna eventually come for me, and the only vindication I will have will take place after I am gone from this planet, but even me leaving my laptop alone for a bit, they will show their true colors. Like me, writing a blog is threatening to you people, like it isn’t good enough, you have used people to isolate me from seeing people for the last decade, you have sent nonstop cogs to come and disrupt my process and make me feel more suicidal, they have suppressed me for so fucking long, but me writing a shitty half ass blog for the sake of it, that no one will talk about, that is so bothersome to you people, you would literally put in caps “I WANT TO KILL” I am trying to seriously think if I wa half asleep and I just wrote in caps because I left it on, but I am pretty sure I didn’t. It doesn’t matter, it just makes me look worse and not the people who would do that kind of shit, and now it is making me not want to write anymore for the time being.

The Emerald Marsh

All the abundant vegetation in this Starter Zone shines an emerald green. Very sparkly. A little... too sparkly. The waters are sparkly too, despite their murkiness, and are full of oversized lily pads strong enough for players to stand on.

The Emerald Marsh is well known for an abundance of pale pink Will o’ Wisps, able to lead Adventurers to both treasure and ruin - depending on their luck. Their prevalence speaks to the large Fey and larger Dryad presence in the Marsh, which is home to the (yet unexplored) Great Willow Tree!

Speaking of treasure, the Marsh is full of it! It’s estimated that thousands of items - and perhaps even towns - can be found in the mud. They don’t seem easy to find, requiring wisp guides and hours of work to unearth.

It's worth noting the minor internet discourse over the name of this Zone - apparently the "marsh" in Emerald Marsh is a bit of a misnomer. The ecologist gamers claim it's actually a swamp, and some insist on calling it the "Emerald Swamp" despite the official, in-game name.

Why start here?

The Emerald Marsh is a good place to begin your Palette Quest journey if you're interested in treasure hunting, exploring ruins, or getting a headstart on finding a boat to explore the Sea. It also boasts some of the most diverse and detailed plant life of all the known Zones, making it a fun place for people that enjoy gardening.

The local Starter Town, Verde, is the smallest of the Starter Towns. Most of the reasons people have for visiting the Marsh involve leaving town to go treasure hunting, so Adventurer retention isn't high. This can be good for those who want to settle down somewhere without a lot of players, but also means that Verde doesn't cater to us as much as places like Goldenlock.

The Marsh is also not a great place to go for grand-scale exploration. It's bordered by the Mountains to the West, the Sea to the East, and the River to the South. Basically, the only way to go to any other Zone is to cross the River into the Fields and spread out from there. If discovery is your main goal, you're better off literally anywhere else.

This is where my group of idiots(/pos) decided to start! They liked the idea of Lily pads and frog people - which they found on session one. That's why my blog is currently Marsh themed! I'll change it to match the Zone they're in as time goes on.

Jesus Christ I'm just. Pissed. Angry cripple coming through

All of this cripplepunk discourse is making me so upset. Like, holy shit -- no, mental health problems are not the same as physical health problems. And I don't mean that in a way that waters down how much mental health problems fucking suck! I'm dealing with both! I get it! But they don't suck in the same ways and I'm not being evil by saying that they should each be able to have their own spaces!

Listen, I *get* that sometimes mental health stuff can take a physical toll! I know that anxiety can cause cardiac problems and PTSD can sometimes give you chronic pain and so on and so forth. And as far as I'm concerned, if your disabilities are primarily mental but overlap in a way that makes them physical too (like what I mentioned earlier, or gastrointestinal issues, or tremors that make it so you can't hold things) then sure, fuck, whatever! Cripplepunk is for people with invisible physical disabilities too and as long as you're experiencing an *invisible physical disability* then even if it's based in your mental disabilities they count. But this isn't a mental health focused space and was never meant to be. Cripplepunk was created by physically disabled people, for physically disabled people, for us to be able to find community with other people who experience shitty body stuff like us. And if you experience shitty body stuff that's fine, come and join us, but don't be shocked if everyone is so busy talking about dislocations and incontinence and chronic pain and how to use mobility aids properly to properly connect with you on your depression or dissociative disorder. There are other spaces for that, where you can talk to people with other mental health problems and get support and community and tips on coping with shit, and I know this because I'm in them! Neuropunk and madpunk fuck severely and they're wonderful places to get what you're looking for!

But if you're dealing with shitty mental health and disabilities of the mental sort, and don't have much in the way of debilitating physical symptoms because of them -- why the hell do you want to call yourself a slur so bad? There's nothing wrong with being able bodied. We're not trying to make a cool kids only club that your functional organs or usable limbs are somehow not good enough for. We just want a space where we can be loudly, unashamedly physically disabled and not have to worry about able bodied folks butting in. I'm autistic and enjoy many autism-only spaces free from allistics talking over us, am I being ableist for requesting that, say, a allistic depressed person not join that autistic-only space? No, because it's for autistic folks! The allistic person wouldn't get any of the support they need there, and might talk over the autistic people in the process without meaning to. Or if I created a discord for psychotic folks (which I am, before anyone yells at me) then would I be unreasonable to turn someone away who didn't experience any psychotic symptoms at all? Absolutely not! Why is it so unreasonable to create a community for ourselves where we can talk about our own bodies and experiences?

This isn't the oppression olympics. This isn't us meanie cripples barring poor mentally ill abled folks from the single scrap of community they otherwise could have had. This isn't us evil gimps saying that we have it sooo much worse than you, all the time forever, and mental health problems are nothing in comparison to what we go through. This isn't even us saying that you can't have solidarity and community with us even under the wider umbrella of disability as a whole! This is just us, saying that our experiences can be vastly different, and it's not unreasonable to want to have our own space to talk about things that you might not experience.