#lightbulb discourse
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Based on a random line from chapter 3 of Hopelessly Devoted by @darkficsyouneveraskedfor
(It has nothing to do with the story but the lightbulb line made me lose it for some reason lol)
Also I realize this Edison vs a Tesla lightbulb drama is prob a myth and their real beef was the AC/DC current thing…😓
#comics and doodles#my creations are to the original author what the monster was to Dr. Frankenstein lmaoo#thomas edison#nikola tesla#lightbulb discourse
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re: fanfic as content…i think that’s why i feel so disconnected from it lol. Everything is fucking content and if you are not mass producing it/staying relevant/appealing to every single person then it’s pointless to engage in the art.
I wish a very die to the word content i hate it and i hate how much the internet has capitalized off this shit. Not everyone wants to be content creators. Some folks just want to make weird art and connect with others.
#the lightbulb has clicked#so tired of feeling like i must create stuff on here to stay relevant#like#it’s so draining lol#fanfic discourse
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Also the whole religion bit of fandom criticism is particularly strange, kinda from both ides of the debate imo. The idea that presenting the prime goods as actually evil and Asmodeus is secretly a good guy, wrongfully accused, is somehow an "establishment" stance, when the actual establishment vs anti-establishment stance is literally baked into the traditional dnd theology in the form of the alignment chart, where the explicitly aren't the same thing as good and evil, but rather co-aligned.
That said, I do find the fact that people default to blaming the "culturally christian atheists" as the once primarily vying against the prime gods being good. Atheism specifically is about not believing in divinity at all, not about the perceived mortality of any excising divinity. I really feel that it comes more from lazy media criticism, believing that the "subversion" inherently makes it more clever, occasional annoying reddit atheist aside. Anyway, sorry for dumping theses in your asks. :V
Nah, you're good anon! This is interesting stuff (and I like getting CR asks :D).
To be clear, the reason that I view the fandom debate as a discussion of establishment vs anti-establishment is that a lot of the "what if gods BAD" ideas are presented with a very Twitter-esque anti-authority burn-it-all-to-the-ground attitude; that is not to say that I actually think that's what the totality of the argument is, just that that tends to be the veneer. (And to be fair, some of my perspective on this is colored by Fire Emblem Three Houses discourse, where this is also usually framed around "the system" when it's usually for the reasons we're discussing, but I don't want the lines to get blurred here.)
So I think a lot of the reason why people making these claims with that attitude aren't engaging with alignment is because there are also gods who are chaotic good or neutral and lawful evil; I think a lot of the criticism of the gods is mostly just like, people being mad at Pelor and projecting that onto all of the pantheon. The notion of this actually, canonically being an establishment vs anti-establishment scenario falls apart because I don't think you can really make a decent case for why Sehanine or Avandra are more "establishment" than the guy who runs a wholeass death city built on rigid laws and power structures. I mean...why, because they're considered Good and Asmodeus is considered Evil? Yeah, that tends to happen when one side fights to preserve life and the other side rules over a plane dedicated to the torture and corruption of mortal souls.
That doesn't necessarily speak to whether or not the Exandrian pantheon playing the tropes straight is a good thing, I'm just saying it shouldn't have been a surprise when Calamity Part 4 dropped. We saw what the Nine Hells are like. We saw what Tharizdun did to Yasha and what its influence did to Cognouza. We been knew.
I think you're correct in that most of this ultimately comes from poor media criticism and wanting the subversion of expectations because it would be cool, but I think it's also because people don't want gods who were occasionally not accommodating to Blorbo Of The Month to be validated as "good". I tend to try to be as inclusive as I can to people who have suffered religious trauma, because I always want to respect and affirm that (especially as a religious person, but also because it's just the right thing to do), but I think it's also true that many people who propagate those ideas are not themselves sufferers of religious trauma but are willing to use that as a shield if it's available. And like, notwithstanding the fact that "the god you thought was good is actually bad" has been done often enough that it's no longer a subversion...guys, don't we have entire seasons of HBO's flagship show and half of a bloated cinematic universe to tell us why we shouldn't just subvert expectations for the hell of it?
And I'm not saying that needing everyone to immediately validate your blorbo and/or ship or else they are badwrongproblematic is a sign of emotional immaturity (it is), but I am saying that this attitude crops up most often in the same college kids whose idea of real activism begins and ends with "burn it all down".
#critical role#cr meta#cr discourse#asks#also stop being mean to pelor that's vex's lightbulb dad :(
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inanimate insanity fans love to say season two was better but you KNOW when it comes back they're going to complain and say it was worse and hate everything about it. there don't even need to be any stylistic or writing changes they'll hate it no matter what happens
#bobs burgers fans can be annoying but at least they can acknowledge when a newer episode is good 😭#personally yeah i prefer season 2 to season 3 for character and aesthetic reasons but season 3 isnt like BAD they're just different#different types of stories#and tbf like the first 70% of season 2 is inarguably worse than season 3 its just that the last 30% is so good#that people forget. as if SOAP wasnt eliminated as if TROPHY wasn't eliminated there would be riots in the street if that happened today#not to mention the s2ep11 discourse..... truly i cant imagine#i wasn't around when those episodes came out of course but they seem to be mostly well regarded#maybe lightbulb just makes everything better? question Mark?#txt
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One nerd's musing about Chinese religion and "respect"
-I try to stay away from fandom discourse, but, much like how you can smell the stench from a dumpster fire without walking into said dumpster fire, I've noticed something that seemed to come up a lot in western JTTW + adjacent fandoms: "respect Chinese religion".
-Usually as a reason for why you shouldn't ship a character, because of fucking course it's shipping discourse too.
-And my first reaction is "Man, you are taking Chinese religion too darn seriously, more than people who are born and raised in China."
-My second reaction is "I mean, most of us are atheist/agnostic by default anyways, with a good number of what I'd call 'atheist/agnostics with superstitions': people who said they were not religious, yet believed in Fengshui or divinations and burnt incense at temples for good luck."
-My third reaction: "But why do I get the feeling that when you mention 'Respect', you are thinking about something completely different?"
-Then I reread an essay from Anthony C. Yu, "Religion and Literature in China: The "Obscure Way" of Journey to the West", and the metaphorical lightbulb just lit up over my head.
(Everything below applies more to Daoism + associated folk religions, but by the time most classic Chinese vernacular novels were written, the blending of the three religions had become well and truly mainstream.)
(The conception of gods differs from dynasty to dynasty. What I'm describing here is mostly based on Ming and Qing ones; if you went back to Han or pre-Qin times, most of these would not apply.)
(I am one of the "atheist/agnostic by default" people. I just have an interest in this kind of stuff. I am also just one Chinese person, and an actual Daoist/Buddhist/Religion Studies researcher would probably have a lot more valuable information and perspective to offer when it comes to contemporary practices and worship. Like any people on the internet: take my words with a grain of salt.)
-Even in the past, when society was far less secularized, Chinese gods are not omniscient, perfect beings whose worship is a solemn, humorless affair. Some's worship are Serious Business, but that has more to do with the sort of gods they are and the patronage they enjoy, not godhood in and of itself.
-And even the ones that you are supposed to "treat seriously" are still very human. To use an analogy I've used plenty of times before: you respect and fear them in the same way you'd respect and fear an emperor's official, or the emperor himself, because if you don't, you are not gonna like the consequences.
-However, unlike Jesus, the emperor & his officials were capable of being temperamental, flawed, or an outright asshole, divine or not. Ideally, they wouldn't be, and if you were one of the "serious" believers——people who actually got an official permit, became ordained clergy, and went to live in a temple, you were unlikely to think of your gods in that manner.
-But it wasn't a complete, utter impossibility. The lower you go in the pantheon, the closer you get to popular religion, the less "serious" the gods and their worship become. By that, I mean general attitude, not sincerity of faith. You still shouldn't be rude to them, but, well, they are more likely to take a joke in stride, or participate in the "vulgar" pleasures of commoners because they weren't as bound to Confucian moral standards or religious disciplines.
-To stretch the same analogy further: you should still respect your village head, they could still give your ass a good spanking for being a disrespectful brat, but you were not obligated to get on your knees and kowtow to them like you would do in front of a provincial magistrate, the emperor's minister, or the emperor himself, nor did they have the power to chop your head off just because you were rude.
-On the other hand, the emperor would never visit a random peasant just to help them fix their broken plow or treat them to a nice meal, but your village head could, and your relationship would probably be warmer and a lot more personal as a result.
-Your respect for them was more likely to stem from the things they actually did for you and the village as a whole, instead of something owed to this distant, powerful authority you might never get to see in your lifetime, but could change its course with a single stroke of a brush.
-Now exchange "village head" for your run-of-the-mill Tudis and Chenghuangs and friendly neighborhood spirits (because yes, people worshipped yaoguais for the exact same reasons), emperor + his officials for the Celestial Bureaucracy, and you'd have a basic idea of how Chinese religions worked on the ground level.
-This is far from absolute: maybe your village head was a spiteful old bastard who loved bullying his juniors, maybe your regional magistrate was an honest, upright man who could enjoy a good drink and a good laugh, maybe the emperor was a lenient one and wouldn't chop your head off for petty offenses. But their general degree of power over you and the closeness of your relationships still apply.
-Complicating the matter further, some folk gods (like Wutong) were worshipped not because they brought blessings, but because they were the divine equivalent of gangsters running a protection racket: you basically bribed them with offerings so they'd leave you alone and not wreck your shit. Famous people who died violently and were posthumously deified often fell into this category——shockingly enough, Guan Yu used to be one such god!
-Yeah, kinda like how your average guy could become an official through the imperial examinations, so could humans become gods through posthumous worship, or cultivate themselves into immortals and Enlightened beings.
-Some immortals aren't qualified for, or interested in a position in the Celestial Bureaucracy——they are the equivalent of your hermits, your cloistered Daoist priests, your common literati who kept trying and failing the exams. But some do get a job offer and gladly take it.
-Anyways, back to my original point: that's why it's so absurd when people pull the "Respect Chinese Religion1!!1!" card and immediately follow up with "Would you do X to Jesus?"
-Um, there are a lot of things you can do with Chinese gods that I'm pretty sure you can't do with Jesus. Like worshipping him side by side with Buddha and Confucius (Lao Tzu). Or inviting him to possess you and drink copious amount of alcohol (Tang-ki mediums in SEA). Or genderbend him into a woman over the course of several centuries because folks just like that version of Jesus better (Guan Yin/Avalokitesvara).
-But most importantly, Chinese religions are kinda a "free market" where you could pick and choose between gods, based on their vicinity to you and how efficient they were at answering prayers. You respect them because they'll help you out, you aren't an asshole and know your manners, and pissing them off is a bad idea in general, not because they are some omnipotent, perfect beings who demand exclusive and total reverence.
-A lot of the worship was also, well, very "practical" and almost transactional in nature: leave offerings to Great Immortal Hu, and he doesn't steal your imperial seal while you aren't looking. Perform the rites right and meditate on a Thunder General's visage, and you can temporarily channel said deity's power. Get this talisman for your kids at Bixia Yuanjun's temple, and they'll be protected from smallpox.
-"Faith alone" or "Scripture alone" is seldom the reason people worship popular deities. Even the obsession with afterlife wasn't about the eternal destination of your soul, and more about reducing the potential duration of the prison sentence for you and your loved ones so you can move on faster and reincarnate into a better life.
-Also, there isn't a single "canon" of scriptures. Many popular gods don't show up in Daoist literature until much later. Daoist scriptures often came up with their own gigantic pantheons, full of gods no one had heard of prior to said book, or enjoyed no worship in temples whatsoever.
-In the same way famous dead people could become gods via worship, famous fictional characters could, too, become gods of folk religion——FSYY's pantheon was very influential on popular worship, but that doesn't mean you should take the novels as actual scriptures.
-Like, God-Demon novels are to orthodox Daoism/Buddhism what the Divine Comedy is to medieval Christian doctrines, except no priests had actually built a Church of Saint Beatrice, while Daoists did put FSYY characters into their temples. By their very nature, the worship that stemmed from these books is not on the same level of "seriousness" as, say, the Tiantai school of Buddhism and their veneration of the Lotus Sutra.
-At the risk of being guilty of the same insertion of Abrahamic religion where it doesn't belong: You don't cite Dante's Inferno in a theological debate, nor would any self-respecting pastor preach it to churchgoers on a Sunday.
-Similarly, you don't use JTTW or FSYY as your sole evidence for why something is "disrespectful to Chinese religion/tradition" when many practitioners of said religions won't treat them as anything more than fantasy novels.
-In fact, let's use Tripitaka as an example. The historical Xuanzang was an extraordinarily talented, faithful, and determined monk. In JTTW, he was a caricature of a Confucian scholar in a Buddhist kasaya and served the same narrative function as Princess Peach in a Mario game.
-Does the presence of satire alone make JTTW anti-Buddhist, or its religious allegories less poignant? I'd say no. Should you take it as seriously as actual Buddhist sutras, when the book didn't even take itself 100% seriously? Also no.
-To expand further on the idea of "seriousness": even outside of vernacular novels, practitioners are not beholden to a universal set of strict religious laws and taboos.
-Both Daoism and Buddhism had what we called "cloistered" and "non-cloistered" adherents; only the former needed to follow their religious laws and (usually) took a vow of celibacy.
-Certain paths of Daoist cultivation allow for alcohol and sexual activities (thanks @ruibaozha for the info), and some immortals, like Lv Dongbin, had a well-established "playboy" reputation in folklore.
-Though it was rarer for Buddhism and very misunderstood, esoteric variants of it did utilize sexual imageries and sex. And, again, most of the above would not apply if you weren't among the cloistered and ordained clergy.
-Furthermore, not even the worship of gods is mandatory! You could just be a Daoist who was really into internal alchemy, cultivating your body and mind in order to prolong your lifespan and, ideally, attain immortality.
-This idea of "respect" as…for a lack of better words, No Fun & R18 Stuff Allowed, you must treat all divinity with fearful reverence and put yourself completely at their mercy, is NOT the norm in Chinese religious traditions.
-There are different degrees and types of respect, and not every god is supposed to be treated like the Supreme Heavenly Emperor himself during an imperial ceremony; the gods are capable of cracking a joke, and so are we!
TL;DR: Religions are complicated, and you aren't respecting Chinese religions by acting like a stereotypical Puritan over popular Chinese deities and their fictional portrayals.
#chinese religion#chinese mythology#chinese folklore#fandom discourse#journey to the west#xiyouji#investiture of the gods#fengshen yanyi
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i cant be the only person in the ii fandom that actually DOES like and enjoy the show right ... 😭 i should be sleeping but i just wanna ramble for a sec here
i was on twitter (or x idc) cuz i got a notif for object show discourse yada yada kept scrolling and saw a post where someone was talking about how lightbulb is overrated, and then i saw someone reply smth like "do ii fans even actually like ii" or wtvr 💀
and now that i think of it... i dont think any ii fan ive met actually ENJOYS the show? like. idk
everyone has their preferences, which is probably why im defending it in the first place, but if ur just hyperfixating on a character FROM the show, is that.. actually liking the show itself? you grew an attachment to the character, not the show
maybe im just not seeing exactly why people dislike the show? because im terribly fixated on it and when i fixate on things its actually harder for me to see anything wrong with it unless its Blatanly Obvious (like svtfoe's ending. god.)
and for the plushies - i think they couldve been better. because God. theyre so awful and horrible looking but i still love them anyway
i think the another reason why im defending it is because i just cant understand anyone elses point of view (if its negative) on something that i like 😭 idk
id like to hear others' thoughts on it too just to get opinions, im trying to understand WHY ii fans ... dont like ii 💀 nothing against it because there may be valid points that im just not taking notice of but yeha anywya thanks for reading my silly rant
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Eye will say on this election night that being a resident of northern virginia and working in dc i have been walking on my knees thru glass during youngkin's tenure and i know i KNOWWWW Blirginia is real and possible but all my neighbors are terminally online posters who dont show up in off years. 2021 was such a lightbulb moment in terms of how useless these people really are. Literally so frustrating seeing NoVa refuse to come out SMH and now we have stupid crt discourse and m4l terror in public schools in loudoun
That's the thing about any Democratic-leaning state, whether solidly blue, swinging blue, or deep purple: if blue voters don't vote, the Republicans win. I have no idea why we have to agonizingly go through this process every two to four years and spend months begging people to exercise the minimum of their civic franchise against fascism..... but.
Anyway, we've had two good harbingers thus far with Beshear's win in Kentucky and abortion rights passing in Ohio, so now all eyes are on Virginia. Obviously it goes blue in presidential elections now, but it won't stay that way, or blue on the state level, if the Terminally Online can't be arsed. Which is the same thing everywhere, so yeah.
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Honestly unless a ship is actually incestuous(Yin x Yang or the cherries with eachother) or wrong I think that we should all just not have shipping discourse. Let's all hold hands in a circle and have valid opinions. You like Suitloon and I like Nickloon? Ok! You like Lightbrush and I prefer aroace Lightbulb? Ok!! You like OJ x Bomb and I like Payjay? Fun!!! They can even polycule.
No ships are canon guys.. have fun with it
–🧲
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Philosophies of Justice and Narrative Catharsis in Young Royals
Do you ever just have… conversations with yourself at 2 am?
Me: Wow. August did some bad shit. I want him to get therapy and help, but I also want him to face some kinda legal punishment.
Also me: Oh, self. You don’t trust cops or judges or prisons. The legal system would be way harsher on Simon about the drugs. Doesn’t that give you anxiety?
A third me, thousands of words in and possessed by a hyperfocus demon: Well fuck. We might be doing a meta about it. It’s okay, this can just be building blocks for our graduate school thesis on YA literature. Ahaha it’s fine.
The following meta looks at philosophies of justice, both retributive and restorative, as they appear in the worldbuilding Young Royals. This is a monster of a meta, like ~6500 words long, so be aware of that going in. Content note for discussion of all the usual crime topics in YR, as well as the injustices present in real world legal systems.
Intro: Shifting the Focus
Fandom loves discussing—and disagreeing about—the redemption arc. Who can blame us? As human beings, we’re wired to notice novelty, and redemption arcs involve a character experiencing some sort of dramatic transformation. This transformation could be gradually built up to for a series of chapters or seasons, or it could be sudden and jarring. It could involve one big dramatic gesture or a series of small changes. Whatever happens, fans end up debating what they see onscreen.
Now, I love a good discussion. I also love stories that poke beyond simple notions of good and evil, where characters are capable of change in multiple directions, And yet, as someone who has spent years in fandom, I increasingly find the discussion of redemption arcs unsatisfying and even boring. Everyone seems to have their own definition of what constitutes “enough” good deeds for a character’s redemption, and even their own opinions of who is worthy of redemption in the first place. It seems we can’t entirely agree on what the term means, and everyone gets bogged down in discourse.
At first, my dissatisfaction prompted me to ask what I considered a well-written redemption arc. Well, no, that’s not accurate. There was a little arrogant voice inside me telling me that I, the great bluedalahorse, who has devoted many hours of academic study to various literary texts and even made complicated spreadsheets to track ideas in my favorite books, could use my genius analytical skills to find out what a perfect redemption arc is supposed to look like and develop a formula for it. And then I stepped back and laughed at myself. Since when did good writing ever follow a formula? All the best writers know how and when to break the rules. Also, I am not as much of a genius as I think I am. I’m literally just hanging out here and overthinking my fictional faves like the rest of fandom.
A lightbulb moment switched on when I attended a workshop focused on restorative justice in schools, back in the summer of 2022. As I listened and processed the things I was learning, my storyteller brain kept poking me. Hey, it was saying to me. Heyyyy can we use restorative justice principles to write better character arcs? Particularly redemption arcs? I talked to my MFA adviser about this as we began to workshop ideas for a critical thesis in Young Adult literature. We started to explore the ways that restorative justice principles showed up in books like Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay and All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. I got a little further along in my theories, identifying techniques authors used to show characters confronting their privilege, unlearning old behaviors, and making amends for harm that they caused others. Still, something was missing. I just wasn’t getting where I wanted to with my analysis.
A few weeks ago I had a second lightbulb: what if we stop looking at justice in relationship to character arcs alone, and start looking at worldbuilding?
That clicked. Oh, boy, did it click! You really can’t talk about characters without understanding their world. Once I attended a panel on writing villains, and one of the panelists asserted that you can’t develop your villain as a character until you’ve developed your world. (Whether villains are outcasts hellbent on revenge, or oppressive tyrants at the top of their society, their world plays a role in shaping them.) Since what we call redemption arcs so often involves taking a character out of a villainous space and into a more heroic one, naturally worldbuilding has to be a factor in that kind of story. I also realized that the framing of the “redemption arc” frustrates me because on some level, it’s still tied to the Western Christian idea of individual salvation. I didn’t want to necessarily focus on what what one character does or doesn’t do individually without also focusing on that character’s relationship to other characters and their communities.
So I decided to experiment with shifting the focus of my thesis research. There were only two things left to do: come up with a framework for exploring my ideas, and test those questions out on Young Royals. Because it’s my favorite show, and it has a lot to say about justice. That said, a lot of what I say here and the methods I use could be applied to other shows as well. I’m curious to hear what it might have to say about your other favorite works of fiction!
The Framework
After some drafting during early morning bus commutes, I came up with three questions I wanted to explore when looking at Young Royals and other texts. These questions are:
What is the authorial philosophy of justice? What principles of justice are at play in how the author constructs the characters, world, and storylines?
How is justice enacted (or not) through the legal system(s) in this story’s setting? To what extent do the ideals of that legal system match up with its reality? To what extent should they?
What are the individual characters’ experiences of justice in their day to day life? What social norms do they end up creating in their smaller communities to enforce their ideas of justice?
What I like about this series of questions is that it allows a text to speak in multiple voices. There has been a lot of fandom discourse over the last ten years (and even longer, honestly, this shit goes back at least to Plato’s dialogues) about authorial intent and whether depiction equals endorsement and so on. I don’t think I’m going to end those debates today. Still, I do think it’s worth pointing out that a TV show or a book or a movie is able to tell a story and make a point in a different way than an essay or campaign speech does. You can have different characters own different parts of the truth. A particular setting can be positive for one character and negative for another. Fiction is really good at exploring paradoxes, contradictions, and tensions. I created these questions because they force me to tease out the tensions in a narrative and where there might be meaning in them.
Come on, Blue! you say. We know Young Royals has a lot of tension in it. When are you gonna start talking about your fandom? Okay. Fine. I’ll get to the sad teenagers now. Put on your school uniforms, everyone. We’re going to Hillerska!
No Good or Bad People, Only Good or Bad Actions
The title for this section comes from me paraphrasing Omar paraphrasing Lisa in an interview.
Two questions you may have about this section are: 1. What makes authorial philosophy (a term I am pretty sure I just made up for the purposes of this meta) different than authorial intent? 2. What’s the relationship between the author’s philosophy and their worldbuilding?
To answer question 1, I am defining authorial philosophy for the purposes of this meta as what the author intends + how effectively they convey that through their storytelling and craft. So like, authorial intent, but we’re also holding the author somewhat accountable for how their message comes across. Generally I read Lisa and the rest of the team as pretty intentional in how they craft their stories, and I can see how their ideas play out in practice, so I am more likely to give credence to authorial intent. I might not do that for other authors. As someone who reads heavily in the YA novel field, I’ve seen plenty of books with surface progressivism that end up being kinda reactionary when you scrape beneath that surface. Usually it’s a craft issue or the author not being intentional enogh. Young Royals, so far, has not been that kind of text.
As for question 2, authors can use their worldbuilding to reinforce their authorial philosophy, whether that’s through having characters in the story espouse said philosophy, or by using the story’s plot and character arcs to test their story, or by some combination of the two. Lisa is a writer who affords her characters a lot of grace, but I also see her as willing to test that grace and our her personal philosophy on trial. She’s very aware that ideals don’t always match up with reality, and those tensions are part of what she explores so well in her writing.
Now that we’ve addressed those questions, let’s address the authorial philosophy of Young Royal.
Young Royals stands out from other school dramas because it handles nuance so well. But how do Lisa and her team achieve that nuance? Part of it is the way their approach to characters resonates with the philosophy of restorative justice.
Restorative justice can be defined as “a system of criminal justice which focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large.” This website has some additional information about what restorative justice looks like in theory and practice. (Plenty of other websites do as well.) Restorative justice is really hard to pull of IRL, but philosophically it does ask us to think about the ways in which more retributive and punitive justice systems are failing people.
Now, before I get too far into my explanation, I don’t know if Lisa chose a restorative justice approach to her writing on purpose, or how much she’s read about the subject. But a lot of what she prioritizes as a writer lines up with certain RJ principles anyway. For example, RJ practitioners believe that every human being has worth and dignity, and that leaning too far into a retributive justice model (more on that in the next section) can be dehumanizing for both victims and offenders. In Lisa’s writing, each character is humanized, there are no characters who are caricatures. Everyone in Young Royals has their own reasons for behaving why they behave—even when they make choices that harm others. There aren’t excuses, but there are explanations.
Two other important ideas in RJ are accountability and dialogue. Season 2 of YR deals a lot with the question of accountability. Wilhelm’s positive growth is signaled by his willingness to be accountable for his actions; August’s more tragic arc is characterized by his baby steps toward accountability followed by his dramatic backflip away from it.
Regarding dialogue, Wilhelm’s growth is fostered by important and vulnerable conversations with others. Sometimes these conversations are with the people he harmed or impacted in a negative way. He and Felice have to talk their way through the weirdness of that kiss, while he and Simon have to talk about… well, everything. TBH they’re not done talking yet. But they’ve started, and that’s where the progress and catharsis is happening. Other times, Wilhelm’s conversations with other members of the Hillerska community—Nils and Boris come to mind—help him to see things in a new light and clarify his ideals. When we cheer on Wilhelm as he comes to better understand his privilege in the world and the weight that his actions have, we’ve been enlisted by Lisa to support restorative justice philosophy.
No one character represents Lisa’s philosophy entirely, because she’s so committed to all characters being fallible in their own ways, but I would say that of the main cast, the Eriksson siblings and Felice are the most likely to express different parts of restorative justice philosophy. All of them strive to look for people’s human side instead of relying on stereotypes. They want the people close to them to be accountable for their actions. They talk things through. They recognize the needs of multiple people in a situation. This doesn’t happen all the time, with every person, in every instance. They get distracted and led astray. There may be times where it would benefit them to get outside help and they don’t. Sometimes their efforts blow up in their face. But they’re trying, and I think Wilhelm has definitely joined them by the end of season 2.
So sure, all the characters in Young Royals might brush up against the principles of restorative justice, but they still “live in a society” as we may or may not still say on the internet. In order to understand more, let’s talk about the legal system as it’s presented in the show.
Call Your Lawyer Stepdad
As a writer, Lisa may believe in restorative justice principles, and this likely guides how she depicts the characters in her story. The legal systems she depicts in her work, however, are not restorative. What’s more, they are applied unequally based on the identity of the person who breaks laws or rules. Young Royals is very clear about the distinction between the ideals of the law and how the law actually gets enforced.
Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not a law student or someone who’s studied much comparative politics, so I can’t say for sure whether Sweden’s legal system leans more retributive or more rehabilitative. I also can’t say whether the ideals of its legal system match its reality, but I am making a safe guess that they don’t entirely. (Sweden, my ancestral homeland, I love kanelbullar and ABBA, but your current right wing government and your response to the COVID pandemic and your history of colonization, among other things, shows that you are just as capable of bullshit as any other nation. Forgive me if I approach your legal system with caution. If anyone from Sweden or another Nordic country has more info and can weigh in, feel free to weigh in.) It’s also worth mentioning my own preconceived notions here. I live in a country with a massive mass incarceration problem and a legal system that was specifically created to reinforce white supremacy, so my trust in law enforcement and courts and the like is… not high.
What I can say about the legal system in Young Royals is this: the writing of the show primarily focuses on the retributive aspects of the legal system. In a retributive justice system, those who break the law are criminals, and they are punished for their crimes. Punishment is seen as a way of deterring crime and keeping it from happening in the future.
We see the impact of a system like that when legal consequences motivate characters and the choices they make. Simon is afraid of getting caught and prosecuted for bringing drugs into school, while August fears being put on trial and imprisoned for leaking the video. What’s interesting to me, though, is that it isn’t just that both characters fear punishment. They also fear the stigma that comes with being publicly convicted of a crime. Simon doesn’t want to be stereotyped as the poor kid who comes into school and pushes drugs on the rich kids. He knows how dangerous drug addiction can be from witnessing his dad, and he brings the drugs into school out of financial desperation. August, meanwhile, wants to think of himself as an untouchable elite who is discreet about secrets, and probably (more sympathetically) also wants to think of himself as a relatively helpful guy who showed Wilhelm around school and took care of him the way Erik would have wanted. I think it’s very clever how Lisa had Simon and August each break the law in ways that betray their respective core values, because it brings this issue with a retributive justice system to light. Once someone has committed a crime, how do they move past that stigma and make themself into the sort of person who doesn’t do a crime again?
This leads to another issue with retributive justice. We often equate legality with morality subconsciously, but these two ideas are not the same thing. In August’s case, leaking the video is easy enough for us to label—it is both illegal because it is against the law and immoral because it violates Simon and Wilhelm’s right to sexual privacy. Simon bringing in his dad’s drugs—that’s against the law, sure. But is it immoral? Simon is up against a corrupt teacher who rewards students who can pay more with better grades. He needs to pay for tutoring if he want to succeed. He’s at a disadvantage because of his socioeconomic status, and he also probably hasn’t had time to process trauma around his dad’s addiction. From the point of view of a Hillerska parent, however, they’re just going to see Simon as a threat to their kid’s well-being.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Simon’s reasons for breaking the law are absolutely more sympathetic than August’s reasons. I cannot stress this enough. We see the way the system screws Simon over, and how it drives him to do what he does. Simon gets drugs to students who consent to take them, but when August films him and Wilhelm it’s without their consent. Moreover, August is complicit in Simon’s lawbreaking because he ends up being the guy who sells drugs on Simon’s behalf. (Jesus, August, sell a painting or something.) But who is the legal system in the YR universe more likely to give grace to? August. Who is it more likely to come down hard on? Simon. Simon does not have the wealth to afford a trial. He doesn’t have a lawyer stepdad on speed dial. He doesn’t have an in with the media like the royal family does, so he can’t control the public narrative of his life the same way that they can.
On a purely literal level, August dangling the threat of the pill bottle in front of everyone is the most textbook example of August being a little shit. On the thematic, level, however, this reminds us who the justice system really serves. It’s a caution against relying on the justice system—or at least relying on the justice system alone—for narrative catharsis in this story. Instead, we should be looking for narrative catharsis elsewhere. And, we should definitely be looking at more than one character arc if that is the case.
The Only Person You Can Truly Control Is Yourself
While season 2 includes the retributive justice of the legal system as part of its worldbuilding, we also see Wilhelm embody the philosophy of retributive justice through his actions. Wilhelm starts his arc in a place where he wants to punish August for what he’s done by taking away everything he cares about. He justifies this by pointing out the problems with the legal system—rich kids never actually face the consequences of their actions. While Wilhelm is correct to call that out, he ends up transforming himself into a more extreme agent of the retributive philosophy in order to pursue what he sees as justice.
Now, this is a writing gambit that could have failed spectacularly. We’ve all seen versions of the “if we are awful to our enemies, we’re just as bad as them” story that end up reinforcing an icky status quo. But that’s not exactly what happens in Young Royals. The first thing to notice is that Wilhelm’s approach works… initially. August has lost a lot at the beginning of season 2, part of it due to Wilhelm’s efforts, and that’s made him more willing to reflect and be vulnerable and listen to Sara when she tells him he can preserve his self-respect by turning himself in. I actually don’t think Sara’s being entirely naive when she points out that January August would have turned himself over. The problem is that as January August becomes February And March August and starts to gain new things to protect (an in with the palace, a new relationship with Sara) he becomes afraid of losing everything again, and starts to go back to his old ways.
The other thing to notice is that Wilhelm mostly acts alone. Felice is his confidant, but she’s not working alongside Wilhelm, suggesting they swap out August’s hair products with toothpaste. (I kinda wish she would have, though.) In spite of the fact that the video probably hurt Simon even more than it did Wilhelm (reminder: Wilhelm has access to a press team and hired security that let him walk away at first) Wilhelm doesn’t center Simon in the process of doling out punishment. He does it with the best of intentions—he doesn’t want Simon getting hurt—but that moment where Simon’s like “You did ALL THIS TO HIM when we could have reported him together???” Yeah. That’s extremely valid. And it hints at one of the central ideas of s2—yes, dealing with August is important, but priority number one for Wilhelm is Wilhelm taking accountability for his own actions (denying that it was him in the video) and making things right with Simon in that way. With that relationship restored (see what I did there? restorative justice?) they can lean on one another as they slay their next monster. At the end of the day, the person who Wilhelm has the most control over is himself. That’s why we end season 2 on him making the speech and publicly acknowledging his relationship with Simon, not with the arrival of cop cars at Hillerska.
Speaking of the choices Wilhelm decided to make, I invite Young Royals fans to consider how Wilhelm’s role as crown prince give his actions symbolic weight. The royal family may not have real lawmaking power, but they’re still supposed to represent Swedish values and traditions to the general public. If Wilhelm starts pursuing a kind of justice, then he’s making a statement about what justice looks like in Sweden whether he wants to or not. If he had shot August in the field, that would have been more than a murder—symbolically that would have been an execution, in a country that banned capital punishment in the 1970s. (Then again, Stella and Fredrika would probably be okay with that.)
I want to make one more point here as I transition into the next section. I don’t think Lisa is necessarily saying that August shouldn’t be punished or face consequences for his crime. But I do think she’s being very clear that a retributive justice philosophy is going to hit marginalized people without the resources to defend themselves—people like Simon—a lot harder. And that opens up the question of where we’re supposed to find catharsis. Can we really exhale at the image of jail cell doors clanging shut, knowing that this same legal system can come for Simon using the same tools? If Simon somehow manages to evade prosecution, can he ever really find relief? How long will that last? What’s to say the system won’t screw him over in other ways, and what’s to say that other rich kids won’t get away with what August did, or worse?
It would be one thing if a crime only harmed the individuals involved, but restorative justice philosophy reminds us that this harm also impacts communities and involves communities. So, without further ado, it’s time to zoom in and examine how justice plays out (or fails to) in the Hillerska community.
Snitches, Stitches, and Scapegoats
In the microcosm of Hillerska, students have organized their own justice system in miniature. Conformity gets rewarded, while open nonconformity gets ostracized. While there is some understanding among the students that individuals will deviate from heterosexual, traditionalist, rich kid norms, this deviation is generally only tolerated when students do it in secret. In this climate, Hillerska students do a lot of self-policing. Stella and Nils cover up their sexualities in ways that may not work for them long term. Felice frets about her physical appearance and how people will perceive her if she pursues boys a certain way. You get the picture.
Because of the pressure to maintain a pristine image of the school (gotta make those admissions brochures look sparkly clean!) the student body as a whole sweeps crime and “deviant” behavior under the rug by closing ranks and agreeing not to snitch on one another. The elite status of Hillerska students allows them to get away with a lot their public school peers would not. While gossip flourishes within Hillerska’s walls, woe betide anyone who lets it escape into the outer world.
On occasion, there are crimes that can’t be covered up, and it may be that more than one student is involved. We’ve seen what happens in this case. Hillerska students do not collectively assume responsibility, but instead agree upon a narrative about what happened and choose a scapegoat to pin the problem on. We see this most clearly in episode 1.5, when Alexander is found with the drugs that the Society used for their party. August suggests they pin the drugs on Simon, while Wilhelm breaks with tradition and says Alexander should take the fall, because Alexander can easily bounce back from an accusation like this. Sure enough, Alexander is back at Hillerska next season, far less innocent than before and far more likely to engage in political intrigue. Wilhelm’s considerations about how Alexander can more easily absorb the blame for the drugs are well thought out and in some ways compassionate—and we’re happy to cheer him on for defending Simon and to some extent we should. However, Wilhelm’s willingness to participate in the scapegoating system backfires on him nonetheless, and also entrenches him in one of the most toxic parts of Hillerska culture. He’s cut off one hydra head and two new ones have sprung up to take it’s place.
One obvious danger of scapegoating is that innocent people are often blamed for things they have nothing to do with. We’ve seen this negatively impact Simon on the rowing team and elsewhere. Vincent makes Simon the scapegoat for the rowing team’s loss in episode 2.3 and uses it as an excuse to bully him. Simon doesn’t get to sing his solo because people will recognize him from the video and that will affect the school’s image and the royal family’s image. Simon is innocent in these areas, but he’s being made to take on blame for situations that are a lot bigger than him. Of all the individual students at Hillerska, Simon’s probably getting the shortest end of the stick, and that’s directly related to the fact that he lacks privilege.
Feeding the Myths
There’s other ways to make people symbols of crime or deviance, however, that can damage the fabric of social groups in other ways. Since scapegoat isn’t quite the right term here, because it tends to presume innocence rather than superlative guilt, I’m going to borrow some season 2 language and refer to this as the Worst Person in the World Phenomenon. Now, this is where I’m going to go out on a limb a bit and ask a question the show might not engage with in season 3. They might do it. They might not. It may be beyond the scope of the story Lisa feels she is able to tell. I’m going to ask this question all the same:
If August faces public consequences and punishment for leaking the video, what impact will that actually have on the culture of Hillerska students? Will it prevent such a thing from ever happening again? Will it at least encourage self-reflection?
You could argue that a high profile case like August’s could deter his classmates from engaging in harmful behaviors. He may affect some students that way. I mean, what he did is Very Bad on the Bad scale. You might even call him… the Worst Person In The World. Who would want to be like the Worst Person In The World?
The flip side of the Worst Person In The World phenomenon is that can actually discourage people from taking responsibility and holding themselves accountable. Because gosh, what I did isn’t that bad. It’s not serial killer bad, or Vladimir Putin bad. Do we realistically believe that other students at Hillerska aren’t doing problematic things? That the rowing team has zero boys who will show a topless photo of their girlfriend (without her consent) to some of his bros while they chuckle over it? That some of the girl groups aren’t spreading wildly inappropriate and homophobic rumors about classmates that seriously damage reputations? That kids aren’t paying one another for test answers or putting pressure on one another to unsafely experiment with alcohol and drugs, even when students express boundaries and don’t want to? That kids don’t collectively work to bully teachers at times? And generally the kids aren’t getting in trouble because they’re the children of rich, elite parents, who will grow to be the rich people who run the systems and structures in society for the next generation.
Now, none of the Hillerska kids (that we know of) are doing bad things on the scale that August did when he leaked the video. This is important to stress. But it’s also important to stress that this “getting away with bad behavior” culture of Hillerska and rich people in general is part of what made August who he is. Are the other participants in that culture willing to reflect on that and actively work to change the culture in question?
Again, this does not mean that August shouldn’t face consequences or punishment, or that he shouldn’t go to prison and undergo some sort of rehabilitation. There are excellent reasons for him to face consequences. He did revenge porn FFS. But I think it’s worth acknowledging that the punishment of a very obvious, high profile offender can feed the myth that the legal system is finally working toward justice when in fact the system is continuing to perpetuate injustice. We can see how this works when only a few select predator men were convicted to placate the #MeToo movement, we can see how this works with corrupt cops when only a few who kill are ever convicted but most get away with it, and we can see how this works with political parties taking advantage of the fact that other political parties are, well, worse.
And yes, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, no ethical consumption under capitalism, etc etc. I think we can keep that in mind while also keeping in mind that we still bear a responsibility to Do The Work in whatever way we are able. This is wandering off of Young Royals a bit. But I’ve given a lot of thought to the way we point at glaringly bad examples of human behavior and say “at least I’m not that guy” while not really doing the reflective work about what we can do to be better and how we can change our culture and systems. This kind of rhetoric is what allows people, especially people like the Hillerska kids who are at the top of society and the peak of privilege, to sleep at night. And maybe they shouldn’t be sleeping so well.
I think a lot about how the scene with Sara warning August that Simon is going to call the police (which is about Sara giving August one more chance to embrace accountability) is followed by a scene of Henry showing up to his group project meeting with no work done. Henry might not have done his work on a literal level, but as a symbol, he’s doing a lot of work. Not only is Henry foreshadowing that August isn’t going to do the right thing and turn himself in, he’s also lampshading the broader culture of Hillerska itself. For all the fancy plaques about responsibility, the students use their privilege and power to avoid doing what’s right and keep the status quo going. This is who they are. This is what they are going to have to overcome to be ethical humans who make their world better.
Working for Catharsis and Healing (A personal opinion section)
I don’t make predictions. The idea of making predictions for season 3 is in fact pretty stressful for me. But what this intellectual exercise has opened up for me is a question of where I would find catharsis and healing in the narrative. It’s not in the sound of police sirens. Maybe that’s different for you. That’s okay. I think we can learn a lot from the discussion in question.
Let’s start with the obvious jerkface himself and the question of him facing punishment. I think it’s worth separating August from other people for a time, to prevent him from doing additional harm to others. If we’re going to call that prison, then sure, let’s call it that. But let’s unpack what that separation looks like. In order for Wilhelm and Simon (and Sara and Felice for that matter) to heal, they’re going to need to be away from him. They should not be the ones responsible for his rehabilitation. As a restorative justice nerd deep down (at least, mostly, but fictional teenagers are well within the broad spectrum of people I’ll offer grace to) I still think he deserves a chance to heal from at least his drug addiction and his eating disorder and his trauma over his dad’s suicide. I also think he needs to understand accountability and the impact his actions have on others, and needs to learn to act in ways that repair the harm he’s done and prevent future harm. This is what he owes the world. There’s not time enough for us to see that whole journey, but I feel like the writers could show us the first few steps.
I’ve seen some people try to argue that August can’t change because he didn’t respond enough to Sara treating him like a person. I can see their point, and I can see the show using the Sara subplot as a shorthand for the idea that August can’t change. Writers often have to use that kind of shorthand to make a point about a character. (The relationship between redemption arcs and romantic love is one of my ongoing problems with redemption arcs in fiction, just for the record.) The way I see it, though, Sara is just one neurodivergent girl with a family history of abuse experiencing her first romantic love. She’s not a team of trained mental health professionals and social workers and other help-minded adults who’ve studied up on how to de-program systemic nonsense. After all, we can accept that although Simon loves Wilhelm very much, Simon’s efforts alone weren’t enough to fully dislodge Wilhelm from his place of privilege. Wilhelm needed Boris and therapy, and a mom who made him go to therapy (Kristina often does more harm than good, but her making Wilhelm go to therapy is the broken clock being right twice a day), and Felice as a friend and confidant, and Nils as a different sort of confidant, and a literature teacher like Fröken Ramirez who’s assigning him books with queer representation. Wilhelm’s journey is still ongoing. Romantic love may be transformative, but individuals in love don’t change people on their own. Communities change people. I am an aromantic relationship anarchist and I will die on this hill.
Speaking of the Eriksson siblings, I want Sara and Simon to have a chance to repair their relationship and build it anew. This would be another point of catharsis for me. I’ve seen a lot of people saying “Sara needs to do xyz tasks…” like we’re in a confession booth and a certain number of Hail Marys will save the day, but step one is that Sara and Simon just need to start communicating again, and communicating honestly. I think it’s easy to point to August as being the root of their relationship struggles, but there were a lot of unspoken tensions between the Eriksson siblings long before he entered the chat. They would have had some other falling out even without Hillerska. Simon’s been led to believe he should parent his sister, and Sara’s been convinced she’s a burden to her brother forever. They both are still reeling from trauma related to their dad, and it may need that they need different things to heal from that. Even without all that, they’re both maturing and defining their values and exploring romance for the first time, and Sara’s getting friendships of her own without always tagging along with Simon and Rosh and Ayub. Simon and Sara are getting to the age where they may not always be the most important people in each other’s lives, and they need to learn to grow up without growing apart. That doesn’t always happen automatically; it takes self-reflection and commitment and listening. I don’t think we’ll ever be back to the innocent days of Sara teasing Simon about his fairy tale prince. But I do think they can move their relationship forward in a new direction, and bounce back stronger.
I also think both Eriksson siblings need to come to terms with the fact that they violated their own values. Sara didn’t do anything illegal, but she did do something that violated her own morals, and you can tell that she feels pretty awful about that when she’s alone on the bus and driving away from school in 2.6. As for Simon, I don’t know if he’s fully gotten a chance to sit with the fact that he violated his own values when he brought his dad’s drugs to school. Again, I don’t want Simon to have to go through legal trouble, or deal with the prison system. The legal system is stacked against Simon in ways that are not fair. But Simon values accountability, and Wilhelm basically rescued him from being held accountable in season 1. I imagine that’s caused cognitive dissonance for Simon he’s still sorting through. I wonder what that’s going to be like for him.
On Wilhelm’s end, I’d like him to continue growing in the ways he’s grown in season 2. He’s learned not to be a symbol of extreme retributive justice. What would it look like for him to model restorative justice practices instead? (Note: this doesn’t mean that he personally has to forgive August. That’s entirely up to Wilhelm.) How can he encourage his community to act differently?
For Felice—well, one of my few issues with season 2 was how they handled Felice, and how they made her ancillary to others’ arcs instead of having her own, but that’s a post for another time. All the same, I think Felice is learning to trust her instincts, push past her biases, and take a unique point of view on things. She’s able to look at the video and see the broken pixels rather than the scandalous gossip scene everyone’s talking about. She can sense Sara’s hiding a secret from her and knows Sara needs to talk. Even if the conversation they end up having is deeply upsetting for her, it brings truths to light that need to be shared. Felice doesn’t have every tool in the toolbox yet, but what she observes and how she interacts with people can be helpful in delivering justice.
I don’t have meta space to consider every parent and adult on the show and things they can do differently. But I expect in season 3 we’ll start to see some adults (I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll see all of them) consider the roles they play in perpetuating systems and cycles. At least, I hope so. It shouldn’t be all on the young people to achieve change in society.
As for the Hillerska culture, it needs to change too. It’s worth asking if a place like Hillerska should even exist. Every secondary Hillerska student is going to act a little bit differently in response to the events of the plot, and I don’t know if I’d buy it if the show tried to tell us the Hillerska culture changed overnight in a magical ripple of self-consciousness. We might see individual students taking baby steps toward responsibility and liberation here or there. We might just see status quo as usual. I think of all the threads in this story, this is the one I would be okay with seeing Lisa Ambjörn leave things unresolved or in a place of tension, as long as that tension feels intentionally placed. Because changing the world is hard, and not everything changes all at once.
Young Royals doesn’t have to tie up every loose end by the last episode of season 3, but I do think it’s already raised a lot of questions about the relationship between justice and storytelling and where we find catharsis in fiction and our own lives. These questions are worth us considering, even if the answers point toward all the work that still needs to be done for the future.
#young royals#young royals meta#my meta#simon eriksson#wilhelm young royals#august young royals#sara eriksson#felice ehrencrona#long post#holy crap this is long thank you if you read it
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dashboard simulator
👯 crows-on-a-log
guys im literally undergoing a crisis right now can anyone hear me
#my dad goin craaaaazy #he stole the lightbulbs out of my ezbake oven for the fifth time :( #vent post #delete later
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☠️ williamaftonshugepersonality 🔁
😶🌫️ boypenis Follow
MEDIA DASHBOARD SIMULATOR
😃 blogname-here
did yall see the new episode......... glopp sploinky was sooooooooooooo
#im normal about him! #<- blatant lies #media liveblog
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😼 discourse-haver Follow
i just dont see why we have to portray every male character in Media as female....... cant we just leave them male, as the creators intended? lol
🪴 rational-thinker
what world do you live in that people are being forced to hc male characters as female????
😼 discourse-haver Follow
youd understand if you were a fandom elder like me.......
🪴 rational-thinker
your blog is a month old
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😚 trustedmutual 🔁
👙 cup-size-tournament Follow
glopp sploinky propaganda:
he's literally just a cisgender man with 5 minutes of screentime
Woman McAwesome propaganda:
she has a canonical rack, she's a lead character, she's super buff and could crush you, she has an interesting arc and her emotional narrative factors into the main plot in impactful ways
#vote glopp sploinky!!!! #GLOPP SPLOINKY SWEEEEEP!!!!! #thats my husband! fuck woman mcawesome lol
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🖌 supercoolartist 🔁
🖌 supercoolartist
made a little doodle <3
if you dont reblog my art ill kill you btw <3
#self rb for the morning crowd #glopp sploinky x blorbo C #gloc fanart
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Based on your Likes!
😈 guy-you-have-blocked Follow
hey anyone want to hear the worst take of all time as shown through a low-effort meme that i stole from reddit?
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😚 trustedmutual 🔁
💝 fandomroyalty Follow
i would let woman mcawesome step on my face
💝 fandomroyalty Follow 🔁
10k woman mcawesome hornyposting
#happy woman mcawesome hornyposting wednesday
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#long post #dashboard simulator
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🍊 the-real-onceler
all im saying is that homestuck is actually a modern epic poem a la gilgamesh the oddesey the journey to the west etc. essay below the cut if you want me to cite my sources
Read More
#onceler essays #i literally wrote my thesis on this
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🤡 puns-are-for-losers
goncharov ebby deepy glup shitto blorbo old man yaoi vanilla extract post simulators tournaments tumblr live homestuck 2 barbenheimer. we didnt start the fire
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🦋 axels-random-blog 🔁
🌹 girluterus Follow
what if weevils had tumblr
👤 burrowing-for-goodies-deactivated-2024
guyssss i just found the juiciest tomato to chow down on.... hmu for my location in the garden
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🐛 evil-weevil
attention garden dwellers!! do not eat the fresh produce in the southwest corner of the garden!! the humans just sprayed insecticide on them, so if you eat them you will die!!!!
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wtf this is blatant misinfo..... my buddy @burrowing-for-goodies just ate some tomatoes from the southwest corner and hes fine. youre just hoarding bro its so obvious
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🪲 carapace-is-popping
hey ummm has anybody seen @burrowing-for-goodies recently? hes not responding to dms. im going to go look for him
🍃 random-bugg
op is your friend ok? what happened?
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hopital
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🔴 girluterus
what was that
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🔮 the-wizard-hatter
she fireball on my small enclosed space til i TPK
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💀 longdeadking
do you guys think post simulators have gone too far
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Do you think Ned is for or against Jonsa?
I would have been pro but jon is still a bastard and ned is a man of his times so do u think he would think it would be too low a match for his darling daughter?
Even if legitimized will ned accept jonsa?
(I thought about this after seeing the Jace x helaena discourse from hotd, I know Jace was pretending to be legit but still bastards are really prejudiced even in the North)
I think he would be against Jonsa solely by the fact that he would deem jonsa as incest even though technically in their world it isn't. Like if he saw Jon and Sansa kissing as kids, he will separate them and will consider such act as improper since he's raising them as brother and sister. They'd get a scolding as serious as Ned forbidding Ashara's name. I'm saying jonsa kissing cause I think kissing games are quite common in kids??? Like it's supposed to be harmless fun but Ned will take jonsa's seriously.
I think Ned never thought of Jon as a bastard cause he would know about RLJ marriage.
She had to wed Joffrey, they were betrothed, he was promised to her, she had even dreamed about it. It wasn't fair to take him away from her on account of whatever her father might have done.
A prince was promised to Sansa but he was taken away because of her father. He made him her brother.
This match with Joffrey was a terrible mistake. That boy is no Prince Aemon, you must believe me.
That boy isn't but someone else is. Ned may look back at thoughts like this and have a lightbulb moment. So Ned will be against Jonsa but he would accept it if he had no other choice and if the marriage will be for duty and love.
In some AU where Aerys weren't a Mad King and Rhaegar had lived, I don't see why Ned wouldn't allow his daughter to marry her cousin. He'd 100% be on board.
You know who would be on board for forbidden(although not actually) love shit? Benjen Stark. The same one who probably help his sister get an armor and later run away with Rhaegar. Or on second thought, he won't be cause he did his penance by going to the NW and he'll have learned his lesson.
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Just wanna say thank you for explain what pro-shipping is because I had zero clue and literally 99% of my dash is stuff that's anti pro-ship and all. Legit feeling like I had a lightbulb moment reading your post 💕
Glad it was helpful! For anyone just seeing this, here's the post.
I can definitely see it being confusing to determine the base issue between pro-shippers and antis. I can't count how many anti-shipping posts I've seen that define pro-shipping as "people who romanticize and normalize incest/pedophilia/rape/etc" and that's wildly untrue. Are there people who use the pro-ship label as an excuse to do that? Of course, it's not dissimilar to right-wing voters who misrepresent their politics to spread their ideas in left-wing circles. But that's the outliers, not the majority.
I think the key difference between pro-shippers and antis is overall behavior regarding what's labeled acceptable in an internet community. Example: I've seen a lot of antis post blocklists for pro-shippers, in which they cite "offending" content and link the account in question. I'm not okay with that, as it encourages harassment of those users. I've yet to see a pro-shipper do the same.
Pro-shipping is not pro-CP, pro-MAP, etc, nor is it a cult of "anything goes." It's a "live and let live" approach to fandom spaces, in which people who aren't harming real human beings or perpetuating actively harmful ideologies should be allowed to engage with media in peace, even when controversial content is involved. Pro-shipping isn't a defense of the ship, but the shipper, aka the real person behind the computer screen. Pro-shipping is defined by the ability to disagree with certain content and move on without bothering the person who posted it. It's fundamentally anti-cyberbullying.
To every concern antis raise, my question is, "but does that make it okay to harass other people on the internet?" Their silence on that is deafening.
I've also noticed that the same antis who define pro-shipping this way tend to be in favor of internet censorship, such as an underage/non-con content ban on Ao3. Being a radical left-wing anarchist, I vehemently disagree with about 98% of censorship efforts--the blanket exception being, "people shouldn't be allowed to spread political/health misinformation without at the very least a disclaimer or freely engage in hate speech that endangers minorities." Censorship is a common tool of fascism. In general, it's not good, as it silences beneficial exchange of contrasting viewpoints and maintains a rigid status quo.
Of course, this doesn't mean I can't be civil with antis. In fact, I welcome opinions that differ from my own when there's genuine, good-faith debate to be had. As a sociology major, I believe discourse has the potential to be a good thing. I don't see much value in "us vs. them" mentalities. Trouble is, these things turn into arguments very easily and next thing you know, you're turning off anons to save your mental health.
So yeah, regardless of what antis say, the vast majority of pro-shippers aren't out to get you. We're just against censorship, harassment, and cyberbullying.
#disclaimer of course that this is based in my experience and opinion. i'm not a fandom authority nor do i want to be.#pro ship#mirroredpaladin#logan answers#on fandom#on politics
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7 13 and 24 for the ask game
7) what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because of how the fandom acts about them?
Kinda Hard Because I'm Good at Seperating Fanon Shit From Canon But Way Back in 2017 I Didn't Like Lightbulb Because I Thought Every Lightbulb Kinnie Was Annoying and Now in 2023 I Also Hate Her for How She Is In Canon So She Counts
13) worst blorbofication
EASILY Airy What the FUUUUUCK ARE YOU DOING TO THIS MIDDLE AGED MAN!!!!
24) topic that brings up the most rancid discourse?
Not Really One That Applies to OSC Tumblr Because We're Chill But on OSC Twitter If You Criticize AE for Shitty Merch People Will Legit Try N Kill You
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sarcasm aside, this (blocking/being blocked by people who disagree with my interpretation of the book) is actually a source of frustration and sadness for me, like
i want to see that discourse because i want to understand the arguments that the antis are making, not only because i want to be able to tailor my counter-arguments to specific assertions, but also because a broken clock can be right twice a day. i’m not so entrenched in my jgy stanning that i can’t respect a good argument about another part of the book, another character dynamic, just because it comes from someone whose takes on jgy specifically are superficial at best, or rancid at worst.
like. we’re not gonna be buddies if you hate jgy and think he’s a monster, but if you say something insightful about wwx or wen ning or wen qing or nie huaisang (especially huaisang!!), i do actually want to see that?? if you say something that makes sense or piques my interest, i might still be galled that the interesting thing came from a jgy anti (because really, the nerve), but i will still end up sitting with that interesting thought. but now i can’t. because you blocked me! or i blocked you at your request.
i guess this is why i so rarely block anyone even when their jgy takes make me see red, because even if they are guaranteed to also see red nine times out of ten when i post something, there’s always the chance that i’ll write something about another part of the book that resonates with them, and vice versa. and it bums me out that those opportunities for lightbulb moments from unlikely sources are becoming fewer and fewer.
#salty peak sect 🧂#this is not intended as a dig at anyone who blocks to curate their space#i objectively enjoy arguments about my special interests more than like 95% of other people in my orbit#and this is partly why i was drawn to fandom when i was a teenager because look! a space where other people will get into it about#their special interests too!#i’m definitely not going to claim that these arguments were all in good faith or resolved themselves neatly because lmaoooo we were teens#but there was so much back and forth and back and forth that understanding the source material very deeply#from many different perspectives was unavoidable#i miss that
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Shipper Tag Game
Thank you for the tag @thesilversun ❤️
1. What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care about anymore? I'm trying to think back to what I was even into as a teen...I read and wrote bandfic around my early to mid teens, but I'm not naming the bands 😂 Beyond that, there was Buffy/Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sam/Gene from Life on Mars, Fraser/Ray K from Due South, Sirius/Lupin from Harry Potter. The only one of those I couldn't care less about anymore is the last one...the rest just make me feel nostalgic.
2. Which ship would you consider your first one? I can't even remember?? Probably something like Leia/Han in Star Wars, but I wouldn't have known to call it 'shipping' back then.
3. Your first fanfic was about which couple? It was a reader insert bandfic but I really don't want to talk about that lol.
4. Do you remember the first couple you saw fanart of? No clue at all.
5. Have you ever gotten into ship discourse? No. I avoid stuff I'm not into and don't get why everyone else can't just do the same.
6. Did you use to have any NOTP or have one currently? I used to be less open to multi-shipping involving the same characters when I was younger. Now, depending on characters/circumstances, I'm much more inclined to say throw them all in together and analyse the results lol.
Having said that, I hated what Sense8 did by inserting Dani into Lito's and Hernando's relationship. They could have done poly rep in literally any other way than how they did it, but what actually happened was just weird and creepy.
7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read? Carmen/Richie from The Bear. I wasn't even really into it when I first watched the show, but after re-watching with my husband, I needed to scratch an itch I didn't even know I had.
8. Currently, do you have any OTPs? I never used to really think I did, but now, after spending the past 3 years writing a longfic for Javier/Horacio from Narcos, they're always going to hold a very special and unique place in my heart ❤️
9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together? Not that I can think of, because in my mind, shipping is largely an entirely different thing to canon. It bears no relevance to the events of canon a lot of the time and fan fic means you can do whatever you want anyway. More often than not, my favourite ships tend to be non-canon, so I treat the two things separately in my brain.
10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting? Not dislike, no. More likely never really considered before until a lightbulb switches on in my brain (maybe during a re-watch or if something happens in a new episode) and suddenly, I'm interested.
11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, would've been considered normal but now you would be cancelled over? Don't think I'm important enough to be 'cancelled' lol, but I find shipping in general in fandom has become kind of vanilla and bland. People get really hung up on what is and isn't canon and miss the nuance of messy, complicated relationships and dynamics between characters. They stay away from a lot of rarer pairings and stick closely to the fandom-approved or actor-approved 'purer' ships. A lot of people say they want queer stories and characters, but when they're presented with actual queer sex and desire, the pearl clutching begins. I know this isn't true of all fandoms, but it's a pattern I've noticed over the last few years.
12. What is your favorite crack ship? Lalo/Howard from Better Call Saul.
13. What is the couple you read the most fanfics about? Probably McKirk from AOS Star Trek. I haven't read any for years, but there was a period about 10/11 years ago where I couldn't get enough of them. Stucky from the MCU is probably a close second...and most of that came in the form of fix-it fics after Endgame 😂
14. What do most of your ships usually have in common? Always carrying unresolved trauma, they're usually criminals, often violent/have killed people, always morally grey and they have a shared history with each other that goes back further than canon shows us.
15. What you absolutely hate in a ship? I can't stand love triangles where one party has to pick between two others when the obvious answer is either a) both or b) neither. Not a fan of big age gap relationships (unless they're non-humans and are hundreds/thousands of years old). Or when character A gives up everything for character B, but character B doesn't have to make an equivalent sacrifice (they need to be burning down the world for each other tbh, otherwise what's the point?). Or when the ship is presented as 'forbidden love' but there aren't actually any major obstacles in their way and it's mostly a lot of unnecessary melodrama. Love at first sight doesn't do anything for me either. Lust/obsession? Hell yeah. But I need more slowburn/history before the L word is thrown around.
No pressure tagging: @mariamariquinha, @thoroughlymodernminutia, @ejunkiet, @evilbunnyking and anyone else who wants to answer these!
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ok which batman comic made you go nope, i am a vertigo gal now
it wasn’t a specific comic actually! it was the keen lack of interest in wanting to find Batman stories. I remember feeling heavy fatigue keeping up with fandom discourse, endless batfam chat posts and Tuesday spoilers I couldn’t care less about. Whereas when I started Hellblazer I was inspired not only to read but to create! To be a part of the discussion! To buy and collect! It was like a lightbulb went off; by the time I started sandman I never wanted anything else
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