#like this stuff is vital to the context of the story
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like that's what always drives me nuts more than anything re: thg movies/online discussions about them. katniss was brown! gale was brown! the poor people of district 12 were brown and indigenous coded while the ppl with a middle class background like peeta and katniss's mom were white and blonde. that context is vital to understanding the story and it's just completely gone in the movies
#gale and katniss hunting together was them trying to reconnect w indigenous practices that had been outlawed#d12 and d11 were racially segregated societiws#rue's district was racially segregated poor black people working for a white upper class and d12 was segregated poor indigenous ppl#katniss as a character cant be separated from her brownness#haymitch as a character changes when u consider he was also indigenous iirc#like this stuff is vital to the context of the story
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Or, a crash course in checking your sources. Because we've all seen some absolutely bullshit stuff spread around the internet, and Tumblr definitely isn't immune to it.
It can be hard to sort out the fact from the rumor from the propaganda when a story is actively developing, especially one that is fast-moving and has a lot of voices coming in from all sides, but it is vitally important that you check your sources before spreading a claim.
It's easier to verify or disprove a claim about something that's purported to have happened in the past, so, admittedly, checking stuff that's purported to be happening now is a messy, confusing process. All the more reason to err on the side of caution.
I am not a journalist or professional researcher or historian or anything like that, so this is all coming from a layman who does their best to be informed. If I get anything wrong, or anyone more qualified has something they want to add, please let me know in the notes.
Why should I check my sources?
Because you should care whether you're spreading propaganda or not.
Because sometimes in the heat of the moment, when emotions are running high, it's easy to be misled.
Because every time you spread misinformation to help your own cause, even - or especially! - if that cause is righteous, it becomes a ding on your credibility, and the credibility of your cause.
Because when you don't, a journalist loses their wings. Probably. Fact-check me on that.
How do I know when to check my sources?
If you don't recognize the source, check it.
If you hear a claim and think, "Wow, that is so cartoonishly evil," or, "That's so absurd I'd think it was far fetched if it was in a movie," or, "It's weird no mainstream outlets are reporting on this," check it.
Now, a claim sounding too bizarre or evil to be real doesn't always mean it isn't--I mean, half of what I hear about George Santos sounds like an SNL sketch and it always ends up true. But check it.
If the claim sounds like something a Nazi would want you to believe, check it.
If a claim is only being spread by one or two small sources, check it.
How do I check my sources?
The following sites are great resources for fact-checking.
PolitiFact. Ranks claims on a truth-o-meter and provides context for what's true, mostly true, kinda true, and made-up.
Media Bias/Fact Check: Publishes lists of fact checks from other credible sources, and ranks media outlets on their bias and trustworthiness.
Climate Feedback: Verifies claims about science, especially climate change.
Lead Stories: Verifies claims as they develop, especially stuff spreading on social media.
Here is a list of sources Media Bias/Fact Check considers to be the least biased.
What are some red flags to search for? / What are some questions I should ask myself?
Does the claim only come from a handful of small sources?
Do all those sources only cite each other?
It bears repeating: does this claim sound especially sensational or over-the-top? I know it sounds basic, but when you're furious at somebody (be it a person or a government or a system), it can be easy to believe every horrible thing you hear about them. But just because someone is awful doesn't mean every rumor about them doing awful things is true, and you still have a responsibility to keep your criticism accurate.
Who provides funding to the source? Do they work off of grants, reader donations and subscriptions, government backing, private donors? Do they not disclose their funding at all?
Has the source been caught spreading false info before? How long ago was this? Did they issue a correction in a timely manner? Was the journalist who spread the false claim fired or otherwise reprimanded? Does it seem like it was a mistake, or was there an agenda at play? Has the source taken steps to reestablish credibility?
Who benefits from me believing this?
Okay, I did all my fact-checking, and I'm really not sure if this claim is true or not.
Then don't share it.
If more information comes out and it turns out to be true, then go ahead.
But if there's doubt, don't share it.
Okay, sure, but the claim sounds like it could be true, and-
"Could be true" and "is true" are not the same.
Fine, but the person or government it's talking about has already done so many awful things, even if this specific rumor isn't true-
DON'T. SHARE. IT.
I am going to come to your house and bite you.
Further information.
How to fact-check like a pro.
The Psychology of Fact-Checking.
What is fact-checking?
Misinformation (YouTube video)
And there we go! If anyone has anything to add, go ahead, but I will be monitoring the comments and will be blocking any nonsense.
There's enough misinformation spread by bad actors in our current media landscape. Please don't make their job any easier.
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How do I sound and appear more intelligent and sophisticated? I've read books and stuff but how do I apply the knowledge in real life? How do I make my everyday vocabulary more sophisticated? Ik the general advice to read books and converse with people etc, but how do I actually apply it irl?
Hi love! Here are some of my suggestions/tips:
How do I sound and appear more intelligent and sophisticated?
Keep your language and explanations simple & concise
Speak slowly & deliberately: Take your time between sentences, and pause between your thoughts. Always think before you speak. Silences, while slightly awkward, are not always best avoided
Use the proper propositions when speaking: Avoid small grammar mistakes (know when to use less vs. fewer, I vs. me, graduated from an institution, etc.)
Articulate complex concepts into layman's terms: Break concepts down into different parts of the conceptual equation – chronically, from beginning to end or outcome to origin, simultaneously moving parts/micro-stories or situations; Use analogies (metaphors, mundane/real-life examples, or hypothetical situations) that require the same thought-process or methodology)
Apply conversational "show don't tell" when sharing a story: Describe the situation using the 5 senses to convey the implied meaning (e.g. "I could feel the pit in my stomach." vs. "I was nervous.")
Use subtle tonality to convey particularly emotional or significant points while speaking
I've read books and stuff but how do I apply the knowledge in real life?
Relate cultural references or learned concepts to add clever humor to everyday conversations
Create parallels and analogies to outside information to convey your understanding of what someone is saying, ask more thoughtful follow-up questions, or smoothly transition into a new conversation topic
How do I make my everyday vocabulary more sophisticated?
Use everyday/simple sentence structure and replace one simple word choice with another more sophisticated word that is equally apt to the message you're trying to convey
If you're ever confused about whether a particular synonym makes sense to use IRL, look at how it is used in the dictionary sentence examples and in other books/articles
Ik the general advice to read books and converse with people etc, but how do I actually apply it irl?
Reiterate a concise, simplified version of the other person's anecdotes to convey your understanding. Drive the conversation forward by asking specific follow-up questions based on one "part" of the idea or story
Use cultural parallels to convey your understanding of what the other person is saying (sounds like this TV show character, like a certain artist, historical/current event, etc.)
Leverage metaphors to connect the dots between the points you and your conversation partner are making. Make an insightful connection to break up the air time between their anecdote and contribution
Conversational word choice should be used to create vivid images in people's minds – to paint a picture of the concept, scene, emotions, or sensations one would engage with or experience if the person was living your conversation in the present moment
Learn how to use wit conversations – context and delivery are vital to its success and positive reception
Hope this helps xx
#communication skills#public speaking#conversation starters#social interaction#socializing#social skills#language skills#level up journey#emotional intelligence#high class#elegance#level up#femme fatale#dark femininity#dark feminine energy#it girl#high value woman#higher self#high value mindset#the feminine urge#female excellence#dream girl#queen energy#female power#girl advice#life skills#femmefatalevibe
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Don't Worry Feyre, Darling: the relationship anxiety to coersive control pipeline
CW: emotional abuse, reproductive abuse
Creds: licensed counselor with focus in addiction, trauma, and gay stuff; experience in group and family counseling, mandated DV clients, and abuse victim support.
Before the mob comes: I am not pro or anti Rhys, and I think his contradictions say much more about SJM than anything. I also believe it’s possible for a fandom to reclaim/rewrite a character who has been massacred by an author.
We’re going to begin at Rhys helping Feyre during an extremely dark place in both their lives. We’re going to end at him withholding vital medical information from her for the sake of “protecting her”. But first, some context.
Inside all of the (amazing) drama around the 2022 movie Don’t Worry, Darling , was a story that is pretty well worn at this point: men deciding they know what’s best for women and giving it to them whether they like it or not. In the movie, Florence Pugh’s Alice lives inside a computer simulation where she is the modern equivalent of a 50s housewife: dresses, calisthenics, martinis, “making a roast”. (She also gets eaten out by Harry Styles but that doesn’t seem to be an explicit part of the world’s design.) The problem? She doesn’t know she’s in the simulation. Harry Styles, in between all the cunnilingus, drugged her and put her in the program against her will. Yikes! Why!
The movie explains that he believed their life in the real world was miserable, and that he was saving her from that by giving her this perfect life. She should be grateful, if anything! What he doesn’t tell her, but that we see, is that Harry Styles also seems to struggle with a sense of inadequacy for not being able to provide. He is failing to live up to personal and cultural standards of manhood but, instead of dismantling those standards, he makes it his wife’s problem by kidnapping and brainwashing her consciousness. Hm. Interesting strategy. Let’s see how it works out for him.
With Rhysand, his motives in the beginning are more understandable - he initiates rescuing Feyre from the very real danger of Tamlin and her own mental decline. He feels justified breaking whatever magic law because of his own experiences being trapped and believing people should have a choice about where they go and who they are. He emphasizes over and over that these choices are Feyre’s and that she has freedom with him. We see through ACOMAF that helping her gives him a sense of purpose after the trauma UTM. His friends remark on how Feyre brought him back to life, never questioning and even encouraging this pattern.
But Rhys clearly has a lot of anxiety about his relationships and closeness in general. He mentions on several occasions that people around him tend to suffer because of him, and how afraid he is of doing that to Feyre. She is very receptive to this and puts effort into proving him wrong. He finds safety in the bubble of their relationship that probably feels pretty fucking good. The unfortunate side effect of this is that instead of processing and resolving his own anxiety, he directs it through Feyre and his love for her. Meanwhile, he keeps his anxious maneuvers behind the scenes, like not telling her about the bond, taking her to the Weaver, encouraging her to learn to read, to train. It may be genuinely helping her, but there’s also this sense of ‘I know what you need better than you do’. And again, nobody questions this.
We flirt with this tension at the beginning of ACOMAF when Rhys enforces their bargain from UTM. As the reader, at that point, we are supposed to believe this is cruel of him. He interrupts her wedding for fucks sake, throw your shoe at him girl! But over time we start to feel like it’s okay because Feyre secretly wanted it, it’s ultimately for her own good. Rhys is the most powerful High Lord in history, I’m sure he could’ve figured out a way to break the bargain, but he didn’t. In fact he engineered a situation where she'd be at his mercy. Why? Because Rhys was worried about Feyre, felt her deteriorating through the bond. Because of that, he felt justified in coming to collect. Personally, I have no opinion about whether crashing the wedding was the right or wrong thing to do. But it does set up, at least in the world of the book, that removing someone’s autonomy is okay if it’s for their own good, if the ends justify the means. In fact, that overstep ends up being the road to Feyre’s life in the NC and her love with Rhysand, a love that is so great she willingly tethers her very life to it. Even in ACOWAR we see how their relationship is a way he regulates his anxiety *cough*battlefield blowjob*cough*. He gets used to Feyre’s health and happiness being his source comfort and can continue to avoid dealing with his own shit internally.
In his seminal work Why Does He Do That?, Lundy Bancroft, a specialist in treatment of abuse perpetrators, debunks the various myths about what causes abuse and why it happens. His thesis is disarmingly simple: people abuse because they believe it’s justified. He says one of the signs of abuse escalation is “a growing attitude that he knows what is good for her better than she does”. Bancroft also notes that abuse is so hard to spot because “most abusive men don’t seem like abusers” (emphasis his) and that abusive men have periods of being charming, funny, even kind. Abusive men often don’t see themselves as such, because the strategy works for them - they feel good when they displace their emotional problems onto someone else.(1)
And then Feyre gets pregnant with a baby that could kill her. Besides the fact they really should have talked about this before trying for a baby given Rhys is mixed race (Cassian and Nesta too, but that’s a whole other post), Rhys claims a sense of ownership over his wife and child almost immediately. He’s constantly being described as smug and glowing with male pride. Even when he’s not smarmy, he’s consumed with his own ideas about protecting them and can’t hear the protests of others. We see his anxiety morph into more overt control in attempt to handle the situation. He believes he’s justified in keeping the danger from Feyre because he doesn’t want to stress her out. But that is not about Feyre, that’s about Rhys. HE is scared, HE is lost, and so he makes a decision on her behalf to lessen the burden he’s already carrying, whether he’s aware of it or not. He must keep her in a happy bubble else how is he supposed to go on.
Don’t Worry, Darling is at least critical of this ‘I know better’ motive even if the movie is stupid, and Harry Styles gets some frontier justice in the form of a whiskey glass to the back of the dome. But ACOSF condones Rhys’ actions and even insinuates our main character is deserving of death for calling him out. Bancroft writes that “part of how the abuser escapes confronting himself is by convincing you that you are the cause of his behavior”. He wouldn’t HAVE to do this if you just TRUSTED HIM.
But here’s what I think. I think Rhys has walked down a path of using his relationship to balance his internal conflict. Anxiety is a force in every relationship, but with Feyre he must maintain her beautiful life where she never worries in order to feel safe himself. I can have empathy for this, kind of - he’s suffered significant losses and it’s understandable he feels protective of those he loves. I think about celebrities with non-famous spouses, and how they avoid talking about them because they don’t want the scrutiny. I believe Rhys thinks he’s genuinely doing right by Feyre. But Rhys is so averse to his own anxiety that he can’t let himself trust anyone else to resolve it. He can’t let go of Feyre as his safe space and almost condemns her to die because of it.
And this is how, ultimately, Rhys traps himself. He tries to create a bubble where Feyre can never leave him, and ends up signing both their death warrants. I hope the world of fan fiction can redeem him, because I really don’t think Sarah can.
And yes, I know it’s faerie porn and it’s not that deep. But this is a series marketed toward an audience at risk of abuse and intimate partner violence. Bancroft lays out key points at the end of the book that feel particularly relevant to the larger conversation:
“Once we tear the cover of excuses, distortions, and manipulations off abusers, they suddenly find abuse much harder to get away with.
If Mothers Against Drunk Driving can change culture’s indifference to alcohol-related automotive deaths, we can change culture’s attitude toward partner abuse.
Everyone has a role to play in ending abuse.
If you are trying to assist an abused woman, get help and support yourself as well
All forms of chronic mistreatment in the world are interwoven. When we take one apart, all the rest start to unravel as well.”
Why Does He Do That? , Lundy Bancroft. https://ia800108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf
#acotar#acomaf#acosf#rhys critical#feysand is dysfunctional#don't kill me#intimate partner violence#why does he do that?#prythian university#sjm critical
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Diane, I am wondering something about writing and you are very wise and very kind.
For context, I've been seeing a therapist for a few months and just saw a psychiatrist Sunday night and they both used the phrase "dissociative daydreaming". It started when I was about 13 and I'm 28 now and it is getting in the way of my life. I'll be having a one-on-one conversation with someone alone in a quiet room and completely miss a few seconds of what they say, and I zone out a lot when eating at restaurants and it creeps people out. The psychiatrist says we are going to work on getting this under control in the next couple months.
The thing is, I like writing fiction and I do a lot of my imagining while I'm in this "zoned out" state. You know, that being a major part of dissociative daydreaming. So I'm wondering, sorry for assuming (assuming makes an ass out of you and me), but if you do not also dissociative daydream, or any other fiction writers here do, how do you think about your stories? Do you just sit down at your desk and say to yourself "I shall write a story now" without leaving your unoccupied body staring at a wall?
First of all: my apologies for having taken so long to get to this... my ask box is so piled up with overdue stuff right now. (sigh) And thanks for the nice words. I don't know about the "wise", and sometimes I screw up the "kind", but I do what I can with what I've got.
Anyway, re: "Do you just sit down at your desk and say to yourself 'I shall write a story now' without leaving your unoccupied body staring at a wall?"
...Yeah, pretty much. Here's how the story-building process usually goes for me.
First I outline. (As detailed here.) The outlining is for me the equivalent of drawing a blueprint, or doing the measure-twice work that comes before taking a saw to the materials you're going to use to build a bookshelf. For this part of the process, as I assemble the underlying framework of the story, I've found it vital to be as completely present, alert and aware as possible. This is where the order of physical action gets laid out, errors of reasoning get caught, blind alleys get erased from the blueprint, useless character transactions get identified and thrown away, and hunches / incomplete ideas get incorporated.
While assembling the outline, if I find my concentration drifting or somehow compromised, I stop work as quickly as possible and put it aside until I can find time to deal with it when I won't be distracted by other stuff. Much experience has taught me that if I get sloppy about this, I may well wind up being really annoyed about it later on... secondary to having missed something vital about character interactions, or screwed up some important sequence of physical action. The writing time lost in fixing careless errors of this kind infuriates me... so I take my time with the outlining.
It's after the framework of the story is in place that the vaguing-out stages of both writing and thinking about the writing come into play. Over many years I've found that the shower, in the morning, is one of the best places for this. Usually when I'm in active writing mode on a project, the first thing I'll do after waking up (while still in bed) will be to look over the writing done the previous day, and—if there's need—check the outline to see what I was planning to do next. Then I hit the showers.
That's where the ideas really start to flow while I'm unfocused: scene descriptions and action sequences in particular. I don't know what it is, but running water really seems to do it for me. (One time I was up at this place for a writing trip, and plotted about six novels one after the other, over a week. Those tubes in the picture dump a liter of hot water per second onto your head. Very, very effective for me.)
...I'm also absolutely horrified to have to admit that one of the very best places for me to be in order to have dialogue arrive is at the kitchen sink, doing dishes. Possibly because there are few other situations in my day to day life where I more desperately want to have my mind be somewhere else. Anywhere else. (But also: running water again...)
In between these two modes of composition lies a hybrid "full-spectrum" writing mode in which I can switch pretty much seamlessly from total immersion in the scene presently unfolding to a more analytical examination of what's going on: a constant realtime adjustment of format issues, timing, pacing, and a lot of other things. When in this mode I can vague out when necessary, inventing new stuff as needed or refining material that was already there, and then snap back into the mode where I'm keeping an eye on paragraph lengths or whether there are too many em-dashes popping up. :)
...Anyway, that''s how it goes for me. The usual caveat applies here: other people's (entirely successful!) processes will not necessarily look anything like this. ...Meanwhile, I absolutely wish you good results in your upcoming brainwork, and the better management of your own process.
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I think one of the big problems* in Ted Lasso is that Ted doesn't always understand/realize that his experiences aren't universal.
(*by problem I do not mean a criticism of the show or the writing, I mean it's a realistic character trait that causes well-meaning mistakes and conflict that makes the story richer)
Ted's a great guy with a lot of genuine empathy. He wants to help people because he cares about them (and because he has trauma-related guilt about not being able to help his dad). But he hasn't quite figured out yet that What Ted Needs is not always what everyone else needs.
Ted's arc in 3x11 was SO important to me. We know he represses a lot of stuff, especially about his dad. Ted Lasso, supreme overlord of pretending he is fine, saying "fuck you" to his mother, saying "you know what? no, I'm not fine," saying specifically "you fucked me up and yeah actually I do blame you," allowing himself to be angry? He's likely only recently even acknowledged to himself that he's mad at his mom, possibly even for the first time within the episode. This scene was vital for his growth. Ted needed to express and own that anger so that then he could let go of it and move forward. It's become a defining character trait that Ted Lasso forgives everyone except Ted Lasso. Forgiving his mother allows him to start down the path of forgiving himself, which is one of the things he needs the most.
This was necessary for Ted. Crucially, Jamie is not Ted.
Ted's relationship to his mom is not the same as Jamie's relationship to his dad. A parent who screws up and damages their child because they're a flawed human being who doesn't have all the answers is not the same as a parent who physically, verbally, emotionally, and sexually abuses their child in an intentionally malicious way for years. The advice Ted needed is not the same as the advice Jamie needs.
And Ted doesn't realize this, which I actually think is pretty in-character! He means well, he wants to help, he tells Jamie to forgive his dad because Ted forgiving his mom helped him and he's not the best at separating his needs from the needs of the people around him. He sees himself in Jamie, relates to him because they both have complex relationships with their fathers, and even though he knows that their situations are different he doesn't always realize he's treating them like they're the same. So in Ted's mind, the best way he can help Jamie is by giving him the advice Ted would have appreciated himself. And in this context, this is wrong!
Anyway, Ted is not a magical genie who always does the right thing, and I think this is interesting to look at from a character perspective because it's less frustrating than assuming the writers are just telling everyone to forgive abusers
#ted lasso#ted lasso spoilers#jamie tartt#cw abuse#cw csa#james tartt sr#dottie lasso#ted lasso meta
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AITA for pushing my disciple (17 M) off a cliff?
(CW: child abuse, murder mention, torture mention)
Okay, for a bit of context, I happen to vaguely know future events and people I haven't met yet due to a string of events that isn't worth getting into, but long story short, my disciple, B, was "destined" to be pushed off a certain cliff into a monster-filled ravine by his abusive master J (who I happen to have the same face as & took on his identity due to this "destiny" stuff when B was 14).
Let me be clear, I do NOT treat or think of B in the same way as J - he's like a son to me & I would have jumped down the cliff myself if I could - but if he didn't enter the Abyss at the bottom of the cliff, he wouldn't have received a weapon that is vital to his survival later in life & the proponent of this "destiny" (who I can't help but think enjoys seeing me suffer) would have killed me.
The thing is, B is scheduled to return from the Abyss in 5 years, and I don't know how to explain myself??? If I hadn't replaced J, B would have tortured him in (completely justified, btw) revenge for years of abuse. I never treated B like that, but I still think he might kill me for pushing him into the Abyss after 5 years of fighting to survive. I'm starting to think I should fake my death, but what do you guys think?
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i get your frustration, but that first soldier update will come out when it comes out and, frankly, my excitement for rebirth is overshadowing any anticipation i might’ve had for a first soldier update. the first soldier and ever crisis at large are a scam that just so happen to have a slightly interesting story wedged in between long stretches of bullshit. rebirth will give us the quality that ever crisis lacks. the first soldier was never going to be anything special.
I agree with most of this, at least with the part about EC being a scam. It is, and there's no mistaking that.
But with that said, FS is being penned by Nojima himself and provides incredibly vital insights and contexts to Sephiroth's character and development. Depending on your opinion of Sephiroth as a whole, you may or may not choose to disregard any information provided in the story. Sephiroth is my favorite FFVII character, therefore I personally find FS very important in analyzing him. I'm not going to pretend that there are sections of FS that, so far, haven't been complete filler. But the story really has begun to pick up and there's the sense it's building to something important. Chapter Five was surprisingly well written in giving us compelling and emotional character moments. Even the previous stuff before with Rosen posed some interesting perspectives and themes that the franchise hasn't tackled before. So I refuse to believe that the story itself isn't special. At the very least in making a case for shaping Sephiroth as an adult in the future.
I think First Soldier should have been its own released console game. The filler would have been nerfed in favor of full story development. It would have printed money all by itself. But with that said, mobile or no mobile, gatcha or no gatcha, FS is still an integral part of the timeline, whether we like it or not.
#asks#ffvii#ff7#final fantasy 7#ffvii first soldier#first soldier#ever crisis#ffvii ever crisis#ff7ec#sephiroth#sephcanons
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I never paid attention to Tucker Carlson before he was kicked off Fox, but I've been listening to the Knowledge Fight episodes on his Twitter show and it is just blowing me away how much worse he is then I ever could have imagined.
Again, I go back to this bubble theory stuff: I live in a particular political bubble and I avoid cable news like the plague that it is, so in my mind I had this image of Carlson as an, I don't know, George F. Will type. Like, I assumed that all his political opinions were bad and possibly some were evil, but also that, like, he had the ability to express a coherent viewpoint and that he tended to stay, like, mostly kind of on the right side of facts, if not from journalistic integrity then from a desire to look like a serious journalist and not get Fox News sued for hundreds of millions in libel.
But apparently not! Now that I'm hearing his twitter show I see no evidence of even those basic competencies.
In particular, he has this incredibly baffling habit, where like...
Okay, one of Alex Jones' moves is to just read a headline and then make up what the story behind the headline is. And if you read the article whose headline he quotes the story will be something totally different then Jones says, but you wouldn't know just from the out of context clips Jones reads.
Carlson has this bizarre habit of including enough context in his clips that you don't need anything else to know he's wrong.
Like, in episode 1 of his show [Quoted at 51:57 of Knowledge Fight podcast #816] he plays the following quote from Nikki Haley:
Haley: "A win for Ukraine is a win for all of us, and for them to sit there and say that this is a territorial dispute, that's just not the case, to say that we should stay neutral[sic]. It is in the best interest of America, it's in the best interest of our national security for Ukraine to win. We have to see this through, we have to finish it."
Here's how Tucker characterizes that statement:
Tucker: "See?! It's very easy to understand: it is vitally important for you to support Ukraine because it's necessary for Ukraine to be supported by you. Your support is mandatory until it's finished, whatever "it" is, and whatever that means. So shut up and support Ukraine, or else you're in trouble"
It's bizarre, like, that's just very clearly not what she said in the clip Tucker Carlson just played us. Like, I don't need to go find the full context of that clip, she just... didn't say anything at all like that in that clip.
And from the three Knowledge Fight eps I've listened to, that's not a fluke, it's a pretty common characteristic of how he chooses clips.
The feigned incomprehension is also bizarre, like, "it" is the war, that's pretty obvious.
He also seems totally incapable of putting together anything like a coherent point to a really truly mind-boggling degree.
I've been flabbergasted at his Twitter stuff. It's truly shocking.
The hosts of Knowledge Fight, Dan and Jordan, more than once have brought up, "Given Tucker's millions and millions of dollars and enormous Fox News audience, how is his Twitter thing this incredibly poorly made?" and these are guys who have spent hundreds of hours meticulously documenting Alex Jones and InfoWars!
It's truly shocking and, as an outsider, really tough to get your head around.
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What would a different form of magic be that isn't witchcraft? I know this is probably a dumb question but I'm honestly just trying to learn 😅
This is what bums me out about people insisting that it's okay and not harmful to call literally everything witchcraft!
It's erased an entire world of magic!
People! Literally! Don't! Know! Other! Stuff! Exists!
So let me tell you from the bottom of my heart, Anon: this is NOT a dumb question. This is a really important question, and not enough people ask it, and that's how we get to people tagging literally anything nonwhite and/or nonchristian as #baby witch #witch tips #witchblr #witchcraft 101.
Witchcraft has, until very recently, been a term to denote bad, harmful, or malicious magic. This is in contrast to good, helpful, or benevolent magic.
In a community, you can have a cunning person who practices good community-oriented magic, and you can have a witch who practices stealing delicious milk from the teats of cows.
This implies that it is more than likely the good cunning person and the bad witch were more or less practicing the same variety of bioregional folk magic, just to different ends.
In this context, witchcraft is any application of magic which is culturally subversive or harmful.
But there's so much more to the story!
In the mid 20th century, there was a witchcraft revival movement in England. Long story short, small groups of people worked to create a cohesive religious practice which they claimed was authentic British witchcraft. These practices are called Wicca and Traditional Witchcraft (2 separate things).
These practices were mostly ceremonial, involving elaborate rituals, magic wands, four elements, circle casting/compass laying, and so on.
These magical practices fueled and were fueled by an exploding culture shift in the western world and became so popular that they dominated perceptions of, and understandings of, what magic was.
Witch stopped being a person who used magic in bad ways, and started being a word for any person who uses magic.
Unfortunately, this is a problem, because now we have one word being used too many ways:
On one hand, witch is still a word that to many people denotes an evil or bad person who uses magic in evil or bad ways.
And, on the other hand, witch is now a word that refers to practitioners of a modern British magical tradition and its offshoots and variations, regardless of that person's maliciousness.
And, on the third hand, because Wicca had become so danged popular, witch has become a word that is applied to any person who practices magic, whether or not their practice is British and whether or not it is malicious.
The topic is further confused because witchcraft is so personal that one witch's witchcraft may look nothing like another witch's witchcraft.
What witchcraft is exists, and must be understood, contextually. In modern usage, a person claiming they practice witchcraft may mean any of the following (not a cohesive list):
"I am Wiccan."
"I practice magic derived from the British witchcraft revival period, but I am not specifically a Wiccan or follow any particular system."
"I practice magic which isn't derived from that British stuff, but I believe the title 'witch' best fits my practice."
"I practice magic that isn't witchcraft, but I call myself a witch as a term of convenience."
"I practice magic and I thought the word for that is 'witch', but if I put some thought into it I might realize I don't think that label suits me."
"I do not practice magic or Wicca but I enjoy nature and I pray to the moon."
With a word stretched so thin, outlining exactly what is and is not witchcraft can be a bit of a chore. However there are things which we can pretty safely say are just down right not witchcraft.
Before we go on, it's vital to mention that witchcraft is a term people get to choose, or reject, for themselves. So if someone from the following traditions is like, "nope, it's witchcraft to me," you should listen to them.
Anyway, here are some things that are not witchcraft:
Jewish mysticism (I've even seen posts about straight up Judaism, not even mysticism, just like, Judaism, being tagged as witchcraft)
Voodoo
Pow-wow
Folk magic
Chaos Magick
Santeria
Palo
Ancestor veneration
Praying to saints, angels, Mary, etc.
Faith healing (for example, as seen in Evangelicalism)
New Age
Spirit keeping
Worship of any nonchristian god or goddess
Heka
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hey ollie!! I’ve been seeing a few… mixed reviews for this last episode, and as someone that liked it, I wanted your opinion. I’ve been hearing a lot of people call this fight ‘clumsy’ and ‘railroading’ and ‘boring’, considering the only trigger to end the fight was one specific PC doing one specific thing, and making it feel like ‘imogen is the only PC that matters, regardless of her prior reluctance in giving into her powers’ (real take I saw here on tunglr dot com). I for one was expecting a TPK followed by a group-vision, so the fact that only two are dead so far is actually doing better than anticipated. thoughts? comments? concerns?
i have happily missed all of those kinds of comments & when i stumbled on one rather harsh criticism that drifted into my world i blocked that person. i don’t rly talk about stuff like this? im more of a “lurk in the shadows & throw my writing out” person. but i have seen some ice cold takes so yeah fuck it, i’ll talk abt my impression of the episode
i really really liked it
matt has a stupidly difficult job balancing encounters for SEVEN PLAYERS. i have three players at my table & i still struggle to give them a real challenge sometimes. in my opinion, he did both the set up & the encounter brilliantly.
first of all, he set up the mythology of otohan thull in the last eight episodes or so—everything the paragons call said about her in passing, the vibes of imogen’s dreams, the fact that she was somehow in the feywild, the fact that she’s working with daleth (who WE the audience know to be Very Powerful), what ashton told the party about her being a famed warrior—& made it concrete. there is a reason she’s a famed warrior, there’s a reason she’s the head of the paragons call, there’s a reason she lunged at imogen & imogen thought she died. otohan thull is a boss level character who has the ability to kill all of them. she is Supposed to be powerful, she was set up to be powerful not just to challenge the players but also narratively. it wouldn’t make sense in the context of the world & the aggressive, martial basuras if this person wasn’t stupidly scary & stupidly proficient at murder, yknow?
secondly, the encounter. a nail biter. this one made me think of - i know people have alluded to the stress of the first vecna fight but i was thinking about raishan because that one nearly made me break my teeth clenching my jaw as hard as i did. it’s a good episode to link to (because it fucks severely & keyleth is incredible) because it’s a one-against-everyone PLUS allies & it’s one of those episodes where everyone seems to drop & get back up & by the end two revivifies were used (one failed) & they had to res ritual someone after (for those of you who don’t know, when someone has been dead for longer than a minute, they have to use the resurrection spell instead of revivify & it’s a whole extended ritual & it’s amazing RP always).
if they had fought thull tomorrow, they could have won. today was already knocked by the FCG fight, imogen used a spell to try activate the feywild shard, laudna used hunger of the shadow, fearne used heat metal & she & FCG used some healing spells too. they’d already tapped into some of their spells & abilities & then again in the chaos of the attack on the call.
if they had doubled down & fought thull & had better initiatives (though the STORY it tells of thull going first, the assassin being quicker, the person who has fought wars being scrappier & quicker on the draw) they could maybe have won. matt was saying at the end that she looked “ragged-ish” & i agree with him when he points out they spent those first vital actions running away. they didn’t know when they started that she had legendary actions/reactions. they didn’t know that she could cross this battlefield in a bonus action if she wanted to.
when you think of an encounter, it’s never just about the stats—it’s about the story. especially when it comes to matt’s world, especially when it comes to these players who balance class skills with character choices. otohan thull came out alone to fight them—she’s arrogant, but not undeservedly so, as we find out. brennan lee mulligan said the scariest encounters are the ones in which you give your bad guys a goal to complete. in this encounter, the goal was imogen—to break her, change her, recruit her? dunno—&, like everything else about otohan thull, that had been Hinted at but couldn’t be confirmed until the fight.
im gonna join this with the third point
third, concerning the idea of a dream or vision: when each encounter is a fragment of story, what does it mean that the battlefield was otherwise empty? is it just otohan’s arrogance? or does it mean something that matt didn’t describe people scurrying out of the periphery of the fight, or anyone in the building imogen tried to escape from. does the sandstorm mean anything? it didn’t have a mechanical effect in this fight when it did in the previous encounter. was that just because it died down a little or does it hint toward it being a dream/vision as people have said?
personally, i think it was real & in the immediate aftermath i did say to a friend that a dream/vision would undercut the story for me. i don’t think that anymore. dreams have been such a point of visceral terror for imogen continuously through the campaign so far that i think it would be horrifying to realise that it was a dream, to have matt play around with the limits of a dream—which is SUCH a powerful thing in the fantasy genre to use dreams as exploration or invitation or corruption, to be in dreams that are on the cusp of prophecy, dreams that are a little too real—so if that’s what they end up doing i’m totally onboard. that being said, i don’t think it is. they’ve always been direct with deaths & that sort of thing & i think that it’s a very real moment that is supposed to emphasise how they are in over their heads. orym made a very nice speech about how they’re the only ones who know the threads of what is being done & that they have to stop it—and now this. eight hours later. they’re a little group (in world, at least) of squishy scrappy adventurers & they’re getting their narrative comeuppance for hubris, & a distinct lack of caution. hardly any health potions? a healer on the fritz? very little reconnaissance? no real allies? their attention divided between personal & everything else? i think it’s real, i think it’s very deadly, & i think like molly’s death it’s going to make for a more sombre & driven party. otohan’s goal for this encounter was imogen. narratively, the goal of this encounter (i suspect we will find in the coming months) was to be a hydraulic press & squash them into one party with one goal
fourth, main character imogen. this is bullshit straight up. i could leave it there but i’ll keep going bc i love women & i’ll take any chance to defend their right to take up space & tell their stories. laura makes the most awesome characters & frankly didn’t get Huge amounts of time dedicated solely to her story line in c1 & c2. it’s cool, it’s fine, she tells amazing stories in the time she gets & is a vital part of the story they’re all writing together, but as soon as we found out that purple-eyed, anime-haired, horse girl, night-terror, lightning-handed imogen was a thing i fell to my knees & wept in gratitude with the knowledge that laura was gonna get narratively whammied & whammied Hard by matthew mercer & his plot stick this campaign, as she well deserves.
do people complain about the briarwood arc? something that revolves entirely around percy’s backstory? or is it so beloved that they made a whole animated series about it? on a smaller scale—because of nott, the mighty nein left the empire & trekked into xhorhas; because of fjord, the mighty nein went & became pirates & explored sunken ruins, or went to uthodurn & nearly fought a dragon to make him a cool sword.
characters get their time to shine. it can’t always be about everyone all the time—matt gives a player a gift & the whole table comes together to react to that gift, following the player it was intended for. that’s the fun of storytelling together, that’s the fun of building characters & handing it over to your DM, the expectation that for a session, a couple of sessions, a small arc, you are the main character. your story matters. that’s what this is for imogen/laura—it’s at once a story beat for everyone, one of those pivotal moments where they realise they’re outmatched, but it’s also a turning point for imogen where we don’t know where she goes next. im sure that it also functions as a way for matt to introduce whatever lore he has about ruidis born up his sleeve for us.
hope this answered all your questions, i enjoyed ranting about it! i have just woken up so forgive me for any glaring errors
#cr spoilers#critical role spoilers#I���ll add a readmore when i get to my comp but hopefully the intro is long enough that it gets hit w the long post ray
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i swear yall are trying to turn me into the joker asdfghjkl all i said is that its bad to not give players context for the important plot points, which can ruin a plot i even called good
topaz quest was in... checks notes - *October* of prev year. also, neither "stonehearts" nor "cornerstones" were focus of that story,it was about her trying to enslave belobog. so no questions about space amazon doing slavery, i remembered THAT. there were no magical gems that give super powers there. if there was a throwaway line about them, i promise you most ppl are not gonna remember it after FIVE MONTHS
you cannot compare it to genshin, where in the very first archon quest we were told who fatui are, dealt with them even before signora, were explained who signora is by jean bc signora was pressuring her politically (matters bc gives pressure to main plot), then had signora appear on screen and steal venti's gnosis, which she right there in same scene mentioned as his divinity. the "harbringers want to steal gnosis" was very well dramatized in the first quest, so in liyue we already knew that childe will want to steal gnosis. you didn't need to remember any lore about tsaritsa or snezhnaya or delusions to get that. the main intrigue of the plot is "childe wants to get to morax corpse," why? to steal gnosis.
meanwhile, what was dramatized in hsr is that space amazon wants to enslave planets, which, again, we get it, not the "amazon execs have magical stones which give them super powers". when "stones" were brought up in penacony by ratio, it was in same convo as of "gift jewelry" being confiscated, so i personally thought its just bribes literally until the confrontation with christian ayato, when turned out its personal weapons. "aventurine wants to get his stones", why? - idk???? he's useless without moneys???
like when main intrigue of the plot "how will character get mcguffin back??", its vital for players to understand WHY character wants mcguffin
idk how to explain it in other words since i already said it in original reply, but most ppl dont read dictionaries for fun and "go read dictionary" is a very bad way to present information, both in artistic sense and in the sense that again, most ppl are not gonna do that. they have tutorials for a lot of useless stuff that 90% of ppl skip. this is not "could be smoother", this is "most ppl will just not know wtf is happening".
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how would the bros' royal lovers feel about their post-partum bodies? of course, we all know they'd find peach/peas to still be beautiful no matter what, but would there be a level of self-consciousness there? this is the most wholesome stuff and you're giving me fictional baby fever, too!
Anon, I am so glad you asked! (And welcome to the club! 🥳)
TW: Body dysmorphia and related topics
Peasley doesn’t care. He knows he’s hot shit, no matter what he looks like. He’d dramatically strip naked for Luigi and say some shit like “Behold! This is the body which grew and nurtured our child, divinity itself!” and Luigi would be like “Hell yeah :D ” If anything, Luigi might end up worrying about his own appearance, since he’s normally so well-groomed; he’d lament that his hair and mustache look untidy because he’s just too tired from late nights with the baby to put as much thought as normal into his appearance, and Peasley would assure him that he’s just as handsome now as always.
“I don’t look quite the same as I did this time last year either, you know,” says the guy who, objectively speaking, looks way worse for the wear, “yet I’m still the physical embodiment of perfection. You’re no different, my love.” Luigi is one of the few people Peasley thinks of more highly than himself; there’s very little room for bodily insecurity. 😂
Peach is another story. I headcanon that she has insecurities regarding her body image, though it’s less to do with maintaining a certain physique and more to do with wanting to be healthy and physically capable (y’know that long-ass fic I keep talking about that I’ve got in the works? That’ll be one of the topics it touches on!). She does get self-conscious about her body sometimes during pregnancy, but it’s easily rectified with love and reassurances! Postpartum… not so much.
For whatever reason, the last month of her pregnancy takes a lot out of her, more so than expected, and it takes a few months to really gain her strength and energy back. She spends several weeks more or less confined to her chambers because she’s so frail, and when she tries to go for walks to get some fresh air and exercise, she gets winded and has to go back inside in like half an hour’s time. And by Toadessa’s assessment, there’s nothing they can really do to expedite the healing process — she’s doing everything right and is perfectly healthy otherwise. Some people just take longer to bounce back, and that process is complicated by the energy and resources needed to care for a newborn. The best she can do is rest.
And her frustration with her slow healing process ends up manifesting as frustration with her body as a whole. Like most people postpartum, she’s dealing with extra weight and stretched and sagging skin, and that coupled with the exhaustion of a new parent makes her feel like she’s some sluggish, disgusting creature that’s loathsome to even look at. She keeps expecting to see some sign of it reflected in Mario’s face, a look of pity or maybe even disgust that confirms her suspicions.
It should go without saying that that never happens. Mario knows how she feels, because this has happened before in another context (enter my long-ass wip!), and he knows “You’re still beautiful and perfect and I love you and (respectfully) want you to suffocate me between your thighs” ain’t gonna cut it when she feels so intensely about her body. So what’s a guy to do? Well, he knows it’s less about her physique and more about her vitality, so he helps her in regaining it.
He finds energizing exercises that are postpartum friendly for her to try and then does them with her, or he’ll join her for her walks, or anything else that will naturally build her back up, because she’s much less apt to get discouraged and call it quits when he’s there. It doesn’t matter how much physical activity actually gets done or if they spend more time taking breaks than actually moving. He gets her laughing and talking and thinking about things other than how inadequate she feels, and he makes sure she only pushes herself as far as she can reasonably go, and by the time Peach willfully puts an end to their routines, she already feels a thousand times better. When she feeds and rocks their baby, she spends less time staring in disdain at her figure and questioning how well she can raise a child if she can’t even take care of herself and more time reveling in the joys of motherhood, feeling on top of the world once more, and it’s a welcome change for all involved.
But above all, Mario makes it clear that, whether she becomes the buffest MILF on the planet or whether she wakes up tomorrow and decides she’s perfectly happy with where she’s at right now, he’s going to think she’s beautiful. He doesn’t care what she looks like so long as she’s happy with herself.
“You think my stomach’s finally getting a little flatter?” she asks one night, contentedly flustered beneath his touch.
“I think you look more confident than you ever have,” he tells her.
“You’re dodging the question, Mario.”
“Nope!” He kisses the tip of her nose. “Just focusing on what really matters.”
With time, Peach comes to agree with his sentiment.
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I just started Shadowbringers, too. I thought I was prepared.
I was not in any way prepared.
there's something deeply unsettling about the atmosphere in shadowbringers and i can't put my finger on what it is. i'm interested in how they pulled it off from a game design perspective. maybe it's the different names. maybe it's that the crystarium is built in an architectural style that you haven't seen before. maybe the harsh, blown-out, yellow-white eternal daytime messes with the ingame day-night cycle that you've gotten used to. or maybe it's the music. "sands of amber" sounds like jesper kyd's work on hitman blood money, which was also a super surreal game.
the first is just similar enough to the source to lull the player into a false familiarity. you think you should be at home, but you're not. you don't know anyone except your friends, who are there but also not, and the crystal exarch, who you swear reminds you of That Guy From That Thing. fighting lightwardens should feel like the process of rooting out and defeating primals in your own world. but again, not quite. they're warped in a way that nothing on the source is warped, with traditionally-angelic features taken to grotesque extremes. i've got to hand them that: they've found a way to make light disturbing. tesleen was a surprise. i'm kind of impressed they Went There.
ARR, heavensward, and stormblood have clear mundane themes that give the player vital context for the metaphysical ones. i know i keep bringing it up, but it's why the story works for me. we understand the magic stuff with nidhogg's eyes is bad because we've seen the conflict among the ishgardian people. shadowbringers dropkicks the player into metaphysical bizarro world, and i just need to trust that the story will reorient me eventually. i like it best when it hearkens back to ffvi's world of ruin. eulmore in particular feels right at home in the world of ruin, good lord. my friends tell me there are some great character beats later, too, so i look forward to those. if FF is great at anything, it's memorable characters.
speaking of, it has been very funny to finally meet everyone's blorbo emet-selch. it was the same with estinien. ah, so this is who you've been shipping all this time!
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Author's commentary for latest chapter???🥺🥺🥺 I am very invested
Of course!
(I really need to start writing these in advance lol)
I talked previously how this chapter was an overall Pain In My Ass to write. Now that the chapter is out, you can now better see why. This chapter establishes how both the past and the present are going to have completely different tensions than what they have had previously. It was vital that I sold the reader on the new narrative tensions, and that task turned out to be more daunting than I thought.
A big issue for me was feeling like I could write something that could live up to the hype. Don't get me wrong-- I love that you guys are all really excited for new chapters and there is no way I would have even made it this far without your support. But I did start to freak out and believe that nothing I could write could live up to hype.
In the end, I ended up powering through it. I'm feeling better now that the chapter is done and (surprise) I didn't die. But it was a little rough for a while there.
All that being said, can you believe I spent the more time on the past than I did on the present? It's such a short part of the chapter, but I got really overwhelmed with making sure that I nailed this last moment between Link and the engineer, plus Lincoln's lecture.
Normally, when I get stuck, I would have switched over to the other plot line, but I was convinced I needed to write the past first so that I had the full context for Spirit and Warriors during their scenes in the present day. If I had admitted defeat at any time, this chapter probably would have been done like 3 weeks earlier.
Lincoln is the undisputed MVP of this chapter. He finally came in and did what I said he would do like 10 chapters ago. And he finally got to yell at Warriors too. King shit.
Remember how I said that I originally intended for Lincoln to be an atheist? You can see some of the remains of that idea in how he talks about Farore.
Originally, I wanted Spirit to have no dialogue during the past. That way, the tension to finally hear Spirit talk to Warriors again in the present would start building up in the past. I ended up abandoning this idea for the sake of that tiny moment where Spirit initially refuses to go with Lincoln.
I almost included Orlanda as a member of Lincoln's rescue squad, but cut her for the sake of realism; only Gaudin was necessary and she would probably be better needed on the front lines
I almost ended this chapter with a line that would mirror the opener for the present day plot ("The engineer was gone, and Link swore he would get him back" vs "Spirit was here, and Warriors thought he would throw up") but as cool as that would have been, I wanted to emphasize to the reader what the past was going to be about now that both the engineer and the child were gone: Link alone and spiraling.
With that said, on to the present day:
Shout out to my lack of desire to work the actual job I am paid to do-- many scenes in the present day were written when I was at work, with Warriors's confession to the rest of the gang being the key one. I actually wrote that as a script, which I might share some day
Speaking of which, I initially didn't plan to write out Warriors's exact speech. I was going to say that Warriors "told them everything" and then fade to black. I realized that was stupid when I remembered how important it's going to be later to realize that there are a lot of things Warriors left out.
Was the solution for the coded documents satisfying or extremely stupid? I don't even know, man. I think it was very clever of me, but I am also so, SO dense.
The documents and the Nephus world-building was going to be solved way earlier in the story (like, back at the citadel) but I kept pushing off the scene in favor of other stuff. This was the very last chance I had to cover this stuff before it became absolutely necessary info. Good job, me!
I mean, doing this now also 100% killed the pacing of the chapter, but what can I girl do?
God, okay. We got to talk Spirit and Time now.
We've only scratched the surface of Spirit's whole deal. Issues-With-A-Captial-I, like I said. So I'll refrain from talking too depth about him for now.
I will say that when I was trying to figure out what to do with older Spirit, the word I kept coming back to was "unpleasant." I really liked the idea of him going from this caring and sweet kid to just being unpleasant to be around. He's not necessarily a bad person, but you might not want to get coffee with him.
You might recall a little snippet I wrote a year ago where I accidentally tested out an older Spirit concept. You can see that even back then he was going to have a smoking vice.
Speaking of which, Spirit striking his match on the ceiling of his train has a silly origin. A while back I watched "The Quiet Man," which stars John Wayne. I can't recommend either movie or actor, but I was enthralled with the way Wayne's character would strike the matches for his cigarettes on anything around him: from the ceiling of his home to the bottoms of his boots. After watching it, I immediately knew that I was going to give Spirit that habit.
Spirit wears a turtleneck under his jumpsuit because every time I see the open chest on the canon design, I cringe at the OSHA violation.
Okay, let's talk Time.
I joked in the author's note that Time's relationship with Spirit was a reflection of my mommy issues. From the start, I wanted TIme to embody the role of a child who's source of suffering is their parent's suffering and the complicated emotions that arise from that.
How do I put this? You can sit there and look at all the facts about your mother. You can lay out her history and understand where she was coming from, how every reaction was a response to a trauma that far surpasses you. Every bad moment was never about you. So you sit there and say that you can forgive your mother as a person. But at the same time... she's not a person. She's your mother. And she failed you.
So yeah. Apply all that to a 30 year old man lol.
I tried my best to make it clear that Time didn't hate either Spirit or Warriors from the start, but either I wasn't clear enough or readers didn't acknowledge what Time was saying.
For example, in chapter 10 when Warriors confronts Time about knowing everything, Time said that he "couldn't hate" Warriors. A lot of readers took that as Time choosing to work with Warriors out of necessity. I meant for it to show that Time's feelings were more complicated than just black-and-white forgiveness and hate.
(I also purposefully wrote that "I can't hate you" line two years ago with the intention of it being echoed again during this argument. Nice to finally get that one off the plate).
Speaking of which, I remember getting a few readers saying how cute it was that the child was trying to take care of Link and the engineer in the past; and I was sitting there like "oh my god no. a child taking care of his parental figures is a source of trauma. don't say something you'll regret i beg you."
Back on topic-- I won't blame anyone if they think this revelation about Time came out of left field. There was more that I could have done to make his view a bit clearer before this chapter, but I also won't lie and say that I didn't intend to keep Time's specific views a little fuzzy before this moment.
That being said, I think some readers assumed that Time's view of the whole situation would be more objective. Which, no. He was a child back then. There is no way in hell he would be anywhere close to objective on what happened.
We'll dig deeper in Time as the story goes, but in conclusion, if you think this wasn't done well, you're probably right.
Also, I think it's worth mentioning that my plan on a thematic level was to get the reader comfortable with how they think about Warriors on a moral level at this point so that introducing Spirit and Time's problems can re-complicate and challenge your ideas.
I'll talk more about this later when we get more in Spirit's side of things, but generally whether you are pro- or anti-Warriors, how Time and Spirit dealt with what happened is meant to make any reader searching for an absolute answer to the moral questions very, VERY frustrated
(Whether I can pull that off as a writer is a different matter entirely, though)
Fun fact: I originally wanted Warriors to play a bigger role in the argument so that it would be a three way Spirit vs TIme vs Warriors fight. Then I realized that Warriors wouldn't say anything if it seemed like it would help force Spirit out.
There were a lot of tiny moments I wanted to do with Spirit being introduced to the rest of the Chain that involved his sensing shenanigans that I cut for space; rest assured that they will still happen.
God, I don't even know what to say about that ending scene without spoiling something. Let's just say that Spirit and Warriors are going to get soooooooooooo [redacted]
#i feel like i had something to say about wind but by lord i cannot remember it#head empty. no thoughts. very sleepy#lu ctb#me rambling#ask#linked universe#anonymous#fallenleafofmaple#ctb spoilers#ctb lore#ctb commentary#director's commentary#can't remember which tag is the correct one
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10 and 24 for the violence ask game!! i want the drama!!!!!
also your askbox name is so funny like are we supposed to submit guys xander might've fucked or what cause if so can we go cross-ip or is it just buffyverse people
asfgjkl my thought process was basically if anyone is coming into my ask box to talk about literally any guy my stance is that xander probably fucked him at some point. the cross-ip thing has potential tho who did you have in mind bc I personally think Xander could have the stupidest babies with Scott Pilgrim
10. worst part of fanon
There is this. version. of Buffy Summers that I see in fics. Mainly tbf ones not about her, usually mlm stuff bc that's what I'd be reading but I feel like pops up a lot in general where she's like. This judgmental bitch who looks down on everyone and could do with being brought down a peg or two. With a big vibe being that the Scoobies are all a bit sick of her attitude but no one's willing to call her out until the writer has somebody turn to her like Buffy shame on you, how could you fail to consider that Spike is sorry now and he's so hurt by your rejection of his five minute redemption, Buffy why do you always have to be so stubborn, Buffy why do you always see things in black and white. And just. Who IS this girl. Its like people base Buffy’s entire personality on the I Am The Law speech out of context, that she is undeniably fighting for good but just wants to kill everyone who steps out of line and has no capacity for forgiveness, her friends can't and shouldn't go to her with their problems bc she'll immediately judge them, and she always needs a rational word from Giles or Willow or somebody to reel her in and see someone else's perspective. It makes me unwell. Negatively.
24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse
literally any attempt to hold a character accountable for capital E Evil they commit, to explain why a ship is bad or why fans of that character are bad or whatever. Not saying people can't swear off a character who did something they can't stomach but more the idea that stuff like Angel eating Holtz's family or Anya's history of horrific punishments against guys she admits did Not all deserve it or yeah, even that a not-insignificant percentage of the cast have committed sexual assault should mean the characters should be written off. Obviously this comes up most in Spike vs Angel wars as a way to say which one is the worst when their body counts really truly do not matter on the character front. If Angel has killed like a thousand more people than Spike does that really mean fucking anything if Spike has still killed thousands of people. This is a 'verse where The Forces of Evil are very much like. A thing. Demons who kill people for no reason that we need to fight once a week exist. But hey what if one of them like Angel or Anya or Spike suddenly had to stop killing and get a job and try to maintain a friend group. That's what this shit is all ABOUT. Its FUN. And it vitally requires a cast full of people who have DONE HORRIBLE THINGS. We would have no story if they hadn't
Thanks for the ask 🤟
#im not satisfied with how i verbalised my thoughts on the morality thing but i tried#buffy summers#spike#angel#anya jenkins#buffy the vampire slayer#angel the series
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