cringetober day 13: creepypasta !!! my old evil sona :)

currently imagining a freaky friday dpxdc crossover in which one of the batkids gets kidnapped by cultists whose plan is to give the ghost king a physical anchor in this world by offering a sacrifice for the king to inhabit. however, given that danny is not fully dead, the moment the spell completes the aforementioned batkid gasps awake in a small blue bedroom with NASA posters and glow in the dark stars, and danny wakes up on the cold concrete floor of a warehouse amidst groveling cultists

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

two hours later edit: you're allowed to reblog this! sorry about the confusion

Rewatching succession it really is wild to see Kendall and Shiv convince themselves over and over again that they can "fix ATN/Waystar from the inside" only to completely abandon their morals the minute it gives them a strategic advantage.

When they're on the outside it's an endless diatribe about how evil and rotten the company is to its core, but the second they get the slightest whiff of power they suddenly decide the problems are actually really manageable and that with the right leadership it could be a force for good, and like...the saddest part is that they genuinely seem to believe that.

every american who has ever called light yagami a republican needs to do like one (1) google search about japanese politics. just one. read a wikipedia article even! on hands and knees BEGGING y’all to understand that death note is a JAPANESE story about a JAPANESE guy whose social values and political beliefs are informed by the fact that he is JAPANESE and in JAPAN (which is not the USA or Europe)

I'm not sure how many people truly recognize this, but the United States is only truly prepared for war, both in our land and on land foreign to us. We aren't equipped to help our citizens when all of our energy goes toward hypermilitarization and state-enfored violence. Frankly, as long as we have war mongering, the people will never be prioritized. If there is no war, it will be manufactured.

HE FINALLY KILLED KAISHIN???

★  —  jason robertson for after hours; november 4, 2023 (x)

what's it like being part of arguably the greatest draft class of all time – greatest dallas draft class of all time – with oettinger and heiskanen? so the stars took heiskanen and oettinger in the first round, you in the second round, so it was a very productive draft. is that lost on you, that class? no, I mean, it's, it's — it's truly a special moment, I mean, we always see it, uh, and think about it when it's ever brought up, how special it is. you know, you don't find a franchise goalie, a franchise d-man, and a player … a forward like me in, uh, one round very often. so, um, very — you look back on it now and uh, we hit all of the spots, and six years later we're all pretty, uh … producing, and being big parts of this team. and hopefully and ideally we're gonna be big parts through these, uh — our carers.

i knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me x

all hate to tiktok for taking 'having a space to more openly and actively talk about different cultures' to mean 'cultures are NOT to be shared and we must be vigilantly defensive of our cultures for fear of appropriation, a word that can be applied to any multicultural interaction'. like of course cultural appropriation is a very real problem but ive seen with the access to global multicultural conversation that tiktok provides it's made people TERRIFIED to even interact with cultures other than their own for fear of 'doing it wrong'. like at some point you have to acknowledge that in the real world of the great outdoors, the majority of people are eager to SHARE their cultures. yes there are ignorant questions and biases but also... how do you think those things get unlearnt? i dont understand how deciding that multiculturalism is an elephant in the room instead of a normal thing that should just be talked about and lived with is supposed to benefit anyone? and kids on tiktok are CONVINCED that it's a time bomb of a conversation to have and therefore must be avoided at all costs but like. people generally LOVE their home and their culture and are PROUD of it and want to share it. how have we made it so that showing genuine interest and a desire to understand something so integral to a person's identity is now feared and borderline demonised?

Knuckles with flower crown?

i am a firm believer in knuckles and amy siblingisms :] they hang out on angel island and knux shares what he’s learned about his culture w her

caller / receiver

in regards to your previous post i really hate how fucking europeans are so racist and then when they need black players to score their goals suddenly they loooove diversity but as soon as a black player doesn't 'perform' as expected it's back to racism i hate it i HATE THEM

LITERALLY!!! i saw a video when england lost that was joking about newspaper offices writing headlines and he said "remember, you cant spell blame without BAME" and its sooooo true. like black people or other poc will score and its like "OMG YES WIN FOR THE COUNTRY 😍" but one of them misses a shot and suddenly its "should we have stricter immigration laws?" like be fucking serious...

Sorry guys, rant incoming. I considered deleting this but I put too much effort in.

"girlboss" "girl dinner" "girl math" "boy math" "gen z are making fun of us for wearing x" "here's how to dress like gen z:" "girlies" "girl's night" "boy's night" "me and the boys" "90s kid"

"I don't feel like an adult" "I'm 34 and I can tell you, I still don't feel like an adult either." "My parents seemed like real adults when they were my age." "I still feel like a teenager."

Maybe you'd feel more like an adult if you started calling yourself one. Maybe you'd feel more like an adult if you stopped trying to dress like a teenager. Maybe you should move your bed out from the wall and get a wallet. Maybe find a calendar app that works for you.

You are an adult. Even if you live with your parents. Even if you do part-time shift work at minimum wage. Even if you haven't graduated college. Even if you are single. These are adult things to do. Because you are doing them. And you are an adult. Start treating yourself like an adult. Fake it 'till you make it if you have to.

In other, writing-related, news:

That trend on TikTok of 20-40 something women authors (and writers yet to be published) promoting their books like,

"Omg! I can't believe I've sold X number of copies!! I never thought I would!" "Ahhhh imagine publishing your book and all your dreams come true and now you get to meet famous authors and work with big names in the industry!!" "Would you read a book where [proceeds to list a bunch of oversaturated tropes that tell me nothing about the actual plot]?"

It reeks of infantilization. If you didn't believe anyone would want to read your book, why should I? You made it on the NYT bestseller list! Stop acting like a mega-fan who got to meet a celebrity. You are their peer! "Would you read a book--" What if I wouldn't? Why does it matter to you what I think of your book? And for the love of god stop hiding behind tropes you know are already popular. "Here is my book: This is what it is about." Have some goddamn confidence.

It is fine to mention in passing "this idea was really far-fetched so I didn't know if it would appeal" or "I was struggling with self-esteem when I wrote this". It's fine to fan a little bit. It's fine to discuss the tropes in your book. But why are you building your brand as an author off of your inferiority complex? You are using your poor self-esteem as a marketing tactic to seem "humble" and "relatable" but it's coming across as unprofessional and desperate for reassurance. You are an adult. You are competent. The more you act like it the more you will believe it.

And of course, I haven't seen a man promote his book this way...

On another note, do any of the 20-40 something women writers who do "write with me" videos on TikTok actually enjoy writing or are they just doing it for the aesthetic?

They all have gorgeous minimalism writing spaces full of white and pink and a macbook beneath a window. Their makeup is done and they are conventionally pretty to start with. But their entire video is just them talking about how little progress they made, how many pages they deleted, how often they got distracted, how frustrated they are. And like, yeah. We all have those days. But what about the good lines you can't wait to share? The days when the words just flow? The cool stuff you learned while researching? Why don't you ever make videos about that?

Is this some other attempt to seem "relatable" by only talking about the "bad" side of writing? Because again, it's coming across as lacking confidence at best and, at worst, that you don't actually know how to write. And that is not the brand you want as an author.

Again, its always women. Why must women market their self-esteem issues in order to sell their art? Why must we be perpetually awestruck children (girlies, book girls) in over our heads?

just saw somebody comparing manifest destiny & the american imperial project to what china's been doing in the south china sea and it's just like. i don't think you understand what manifest destiny and the 90%+ eradication of american indigenous populations post-contact and ongoing genocide means because what china is doing in southeast asia rn is uh. not that. you can say a lot of stuff about it but it's definitely not that lmao

Wouldn't it just be delicious if in season 2 the show went out of its way to confirm Ed's literacy, like showing him casually doing captain things like looking at ship manifests or checking ledgers or whatever? I think that could be hilarious.

I'm already an Ed Can Read truther because beyond the likelihood that a captain would need to be able to read maps and charts and the like, the set for his cabin on his original ship included scrolls, and at the party we see him look at the dinner place card while sitting in the right place.

Also historically, it really wasn't that uncommon to be able to read but not write! So him signing with an X doesn't disprove that to me. It would be even funnier if later on we learned that he knew how to write properly too, or even had a lovely running hand that rivaled Lucius? I would just eat that up with a spoon.