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ladyluscinia · 7 months

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What Exactly Did David Jenkins Say?

Look, I'm still staunchly of the opinion that Word of God statements and creator interviews are overvalued in fandom, especially when they get pulled out mostly as gotchas without then continuing to analyze whether or not the show canon is successful at getting across that same message. Death of the Author is good, actually, and we should remember that. But they are worth looking at in the context of evaluating intent vs execution, and for future speculation - just, like, please with less of the whole mile high pedestal idolizing and backlash cycles.

But if overvalued "Word of God" is annoying, then overvalued "supposed creator statements that have gone through three rounds of telephone and any given blogger has only heard about a quarter of them, which they'll use confidently anyway" is worse. So, since I'd already looked up interviews for various reasons...

Here is a fairly comprehensive list of interviews David Jenkins has given and statements he's made during them, presented without commentary (save curating which statements get highlighted). All provided with links. I definitely missed some, so if you have any that you want to add, please do - though if you could trim off any commentary and save it for tags / your own post with a link that would be cool.

Also, again, just because he said it doesn't make it incontrovertible canon that only a blind person wouldn't understand. Some of these even arguably contradict each other. The creator's intent doesn't always translate to what the show is doing, nor do you even have to think it was a good idea.

(Listed in chronological order from oldest to newest - post contains spoilers below the cut)

Pre-S1

Gizmodo - Feb 22, 2022 - with Cheryl Eddy (io9) - Link

Why this story - Really, it was the enigma of Stede that drew him in. "I think actual pirate stuff is fine, but it's not necessarily my cup of tea. And I think Taika [Waititi] felt similarly. But hearing about this guy and reading about him and seeing that, you know, he left his family, then he met Blackbeard, they hit it off, and we don't know any of the details in between. So filling those blanks in, and having a very human story, and then being able to do it with the pirate genre, that was like, 'Oh, this would be cool.'"

Post 1x01 - 1x03

Polygon - March 5, 2022 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Rhys Darby interview

About Stede running off to sea - "Stede thought he could outrun his baggage, and you can't outrun your baggage."

About S1 - "I don't think there was enough improv on set! We had an insane schedule, with a huge amount of plot. We were budgeted and designed as a one-hour show, but with a half-hour production schedule, which means we really had to chase these episodes to get them shot. And then there are certain emotional beats that we really needed. So trying to find places to find the fun was hard."

Mashable - Mar 5, 2022 - with Belen Edwards - Link

About the show concept - "It was Jenkins' wife who first told him about Stede's adventures; she thought it would make a good TV show."

On casting Rhys Darby - "Stede did a terrible thing to his family. If you cast it wrong, he's a very hard character to get behind," Jenkins said. "Very quickly, the only person I thought of for this was Rhys [Darby]. He has this childlike quality that's endearing."

About the story - "Seeing them discover a need for each other that neither anticipated and charting how that relationship goes is the meat of the story." + "If you're on this ship, you're running from something, and you're running to something that you can't be on land"

Mentions of matelotage - "In fact, one of Jenkins's favorite pirate facts that he learned while working on Our Flag Means Death was the term matelotage, which was a civil union between same-sex pirates. "The more you look at it," he explained, "the more you write to the fact that this is a queer-positive world.""

Discussing piracy careers - "Something else that astounded Jenkins about pirates was "just how fast it all moved — their lives were quite short," he said. "Your career [in piracy] wasn't very long.""

Post 1x09 - 1x10

Decider - Mar 24, 2022 - with Kayla Cobb - Link

David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Rhys Darby interview

Pitch for the show - "That was in the pitch," series creator David Jenkins told Decider. "That was the reason, to make them fall in love with each other."

About the romance - "The main thing to me was to side-step coming out," Jenkins continued. "I just want a romance. I want a Titanic romance between these two people. We don't have to do the coming out story and then the non-binary story for Jim [Vico Ortiz]."

About S2 and the show - "The show is the relationship," Jenkins said. "So, we end in a place where there is this breakup. What happens after a breakup between these two people who, one’s realized he's in love and the other one is hurt in a way that he's never been hurt before? What does that do to each of them in an action, pirate world with them trying to find each other again? So again, I really love those rom-com beats."

Collider - Mar 24, 2022 - with Carly Lane - Link

On making it a romcom - "It's the only reason to make the show. If you didn't do that, it would just be weird. I mean, you're using the rom-com beats. You're using these like they're together. And it's funny because so we're so habituated to be like bromance, bromance, bromance, and it's such a simple move to put them together."

Discusses focusing on romance - "I guess I really... I get kind of bored. How much pirate can you do? They're going to rob stuff. They're going to steal ships. There's only so many pirate stories you can do. So if you're going to do a workplace story, I mean, you're essentially having this... You'd have this same amount of relationships in Grey's Anatomy in the ER. So it's standard. It's the most standard. We're making a soap opera on a pirate ship, and to use those soap opera beats... I like it, and I like the flavor in a comedy when you have something that's played genuinely up against very ridiculous things."

Discusses history and kissing scene

Discusses importance of going home to Mary - "Yeah, that was the problem for me in the story. I knew that I wanted to have the end where he goes home, because you need to give Mary her day in court. I just wanted to know from Mary's perspective what happened and then to see that, yeah, they're friends."

Is Lucius dead? - "You got to wait."

EW.com - Mar 25, 2022 - with Devan Coggan - Link

David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Rhys Darby interview

Pitch for the show - "To me, [Stede and Blackbeard's relationship] is the reason to make the show," Jenkins explains. "When Taika and I were first talking about it, he was like, 'Oh yeah, that's the show.' I first started reading about Stede and how he befriended Blackbeard and we don't know why. Very quickly, it was like, 'Oh, it's a romance.'"

Polygon - Mar 25, 2022 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

Discusses 3-season intent - "I think three seasons is good. I think we could do it in three."

Discusses acts within S1 - "To me, when you see him get stabbed, and the blood runs through his fingers, it’s like 'Oh, no, the clown got stabbed! And not comedy-stabbed, he got stabbed stabbed!' That to me is cool. And then having Blackbeard find him as the end of what would be the first act of our story felt good to me."

Discusses kiss scene filming and the national moment around gay rights

What to focus on a rewatch - "I think Con O'Neill does such a great job. He's such a complex character, and it's such a tortured relationship. And that's a love story too, between him and Blackbeard. It's a very dysfunctional story, but it's fun to watch. Watch that maybe, on a rewatch, looking where their relationship ultimately goes."

TV Insider - Mar 25, 2022 - with Meaghan Darwish - Link

Discusses show pitch - "When I was pitching [the show] to people, I'd be like, 'Okay, so it's about Stede and Blackbeard, and then they hit it off and then they fall in love.' And then people are like, 'Okay, cool,' Jenkins shares. "And then they really fall in love, and become intimately involved."

Discusses historical inspiration

Discusses S2 direction - "But when [Stede] goes to find [Blackbeard], he's gone and his crew's been abandoned. And so watching them try to negotiate that, that's a good rom-com beat," he adds.

The Verge - Apr 15, 2022 - with Charles Pulliam-Moore - Link

Discusses being surprised by queerbaiting legacy - "...part of me knew that, yes, Stede and Ed's romance was going to be real. But one part of me felt like, 'We're going to do this story, and they're going to kiss, and maybe that's not even going to be that big a deal. Maybe it'll just be a blip.'"

Discusses writing romance - "I'd never written a romance before this one, but I think with Ed and Stede, the question's always 'what's the need for each other?'"

Discusses falling in love and Stede's accidental seduction - "It made sense to have that love be almost like a teenage version of falling in love — one with all these intense and conflicting feelings. They're middle-aged, but Stede's young. Ed's young. Emotionally, they're like 16, and they've both got a lot to learn."

Discusses Con O'Neill as Izzy - "He plays an exhausted quality that's really lovely because this character could just be generically evil, and the way Con plays, it is like, he's credible. I believe that he can do some damage if he wanted to. My favorite thing I've seen about the show is somebody saying that Con's playing the only human with a bunch of Muppets. It does feel like that a bit where he's like Charles Grodin in The Great Muppet Caper."

On Izzy being in love with Blackbeard - "I think Izzy's deeply in love with Blackbeard, and it's a very dysfunctional kind of love, and he's like the jilted spouse who's losing his man to fucking Stede Bonnet, and he can't believe this is happening."

Discusses masculinity and piracy as an escape from that

Discusses diversity and trauma based stories - "And the consensus in that very diverse room was that we wanted to show that isn't just wallowing in trauma. We don't have to do a coming out scene or focusing on the trauma of it — not to say that those stories aren’t valid."

Gizmodo - Jun 20, 2022 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

Musing on fandom response to the show - "I'm wondering if the fact that because the queerness of this show isn't gaslighting the audience, and isn't a function of wanting to do something, but not being able to produce the results because of network standards. I think we just happened to be in this lucky spot where the show is actually queer… and I do think that people are responding to that."

Comparing fanfiction to writing - "And Con O'Neill's audition was one of those things I would go back to. I would watch that and be like… Oh, right, that's the show. And in a way, you're writing fanfiction for a certain actor and character because you want them to do something, and you're like–" at this point, it must be said, Jenkins let out a maniacal little giggle. He’s just as thrilled to show off Con O'Neill's ability to seem both deeply exhausted and menacing as the rest of the fandom. "And you [as the writer] you're like… And then Izzy does this now."

EW.com - Dec 13, 2022 - with Devan Coggan - Link

Discusses The Chain sequence - "I had initially wanted that end sequence to be like the FBI raid in a mob movie, where the feds come in, and they've got boxes of stuff, and everyone's running, and someone makes a dash for it," Jenkins explains. "So, it's like a mob movie or FBI raid story, and then it's also a story of Stede's lover coming back."

Pre-S2

Collider - Oct 2, 2023 - with Carly Lane - Link

Discusses fan reaction to S1 - "I thought that they'd kiss, and people would be like, 'Oh, cool, cool!' I kind of thought people would know a little bit more [about] where we were going, but then in hindsight, no, people have been hurt and burned on so many other shows and then made to feel silly."

Discusses starting S2 dark - "One of these characters is very, very damaged and has never made himself vulnerable in this way before, and I don't think [he] would react very well to having his heart broken in this way. I don't think it would be cute, and I don't think it would be funny. I think it would be scary as hell to watch a very damaged guy that we've established in Ed, who killed his dad and thinks he's not capable of being loved, deal with rejection and see that Stede really hurt him."

Discusses adding more female characters

Discusses S2 needle drops including "This Woman's Work"

Discusses 3-season arc

Post 2x01 - 2x03

Mashable - Oct 5, 2023 - with Belen Edwards - Link

Discusses fandom response to S1

About the canon gay relationship - "To watch the explosion of enthusiasm around [the kiss] was disorienting, almost," Jenkins said. "I thought people would react to it, but I didn't think the reaction would be that big. And then it was moving, because I didn't realize that this audience felt so unserved in general, as far as storylines go."

Insider - Oct 5, 2023 - with Ayomikun Adekaiyero - Link

Tease on leaning into the Stede / Ed / Izzy love triangle - "I think Izzy, in a certain way, got the worst deal in the first season," the showrunner tells Insider. "He gets jilted and then he still is in spurned spouse territory at the beginning of the second season."

Discusses Izzy's arc - "What is that relationship about? And I think by the end of the season it kind of becomes a little unexpected of who they are to each other and what they mean to each other," he teases

Discusses addition of Zheng - "He likens Zheng's way of pirating to a successful tech startup, compared with the garage sale vibe Stede had going on the Revenge."

Discusses introducing Hornigold - "I thought Hornigold was the most obvious because he was the person who made Blackbeard what he is. And Blackbeard has a father complex, so it's natural that he's going to bring his former captain back," the show creator said. "It's a struggle with him because he and dad figures don't historically do well."

Discusses importance of the mermaid scene

Inverse - Oct 5, 2023 - with Hoai-Tran Bui - Link

Reveals he didn't commit to the romance until shooting 1x06 - "Jenkins always intended his pirate comedy to end with a romance, but he'd envisioned it as an unrequited love. "It was going to be about Stede learning what love is, and Ed making himself vulnerable and getting burned," Jenkins says of his original pitch. But Darby and Waititi's choices in the scene, which they played without diffusing the tenderness with a joke, made him wonder if they could take the show in a new direction."

Discusses mermaid Stede idea from S1 - "We talked about Stede as a mermaid very early on in the writers' room," Jenkins says. "At some point, yeah, I want to see Rhys Darby as a merman." + "They wanted us to come up with a Season 2 pitch during Season 1. And that was one of the ideas we hit on, and I can't quite remember how we got there, but it was us asking, what is a pirate world? Are there mermaids? Is there magic in this show? With pirate stuff, I don’t know that I want there to be magic, but there was a way where it was something really beautiful about a mer-person, and I like the idea that their coming together would have a mythic size to it."

Discusses historical divergence

Discusses matelotage and pirates as weird outsiders

TV Guide - Oct 5, 2023 - with Allison Piccuro - Link

About the shipping culture - "It's the meat of the show, so it's great to have people bought into the central romance. If it were a bromance that we were trying to make look like a romance, that would suck."

Discusses playlists he makes

Discusses opening dream sequence - "I just like that it started with something badass. Stede, Blackbeard, and Izzy are on an arc together. Whether they're in stories together or not, their ultimate arc is together. I think, by the end of this season, the last episode, that first scene will be gratifying. I won't say why, but their fates are tied together."

Discusses Kraken arc - "But I think the thing that's good about this show is that it can go to really sweet comedy land, but I want there to be, like, if someone loses a body part, for instance, they lose a body part. To do justice to the fact that this guy is a killer and a monster, and dealing with heartache that he doesn't know how to deal with, I think you really need to go there."

Discusses Izzy in S2 - "I mean, he's jilted. He had a partnership with Blackbeard, and he knows he can't live up to this person that Blackbeard fell in love with... Who is that guy? What are his hobbies? What does it look like when he's not totally subsumed with his boss's love affair with somebody, and heartbroken?"

On S2 reunion - "The second season is them being a little bit more mature... It's the thing where you're in your 20s or 30s and you're like, "Well, should we move in together?" They have to make up some time because neither of them have been in a functional relationship before."

About genre of pirate stories - "...is a show about multiple relationships. That's what I want to see when I see this show. I don't want to see a bunch of pirate things that I've seen in other things, I'll just go watch another thing if I want to see that. That's not really my thing. I like the genre, but it's a very hard genre to budge. I want to see relationships in a pirate world."

Discusses the A Star is Born aspect of seeking fame / retiring

Mashable - Oct 7, 2023 - with Belen Edwards - Link

About the mermaid scene - "You need something expressive for when they come back together," Jenkins said. "Their reunion moment has to feel big and mythical. This is not a world where mermaids actually exist, but their love for each other has that size that you can get [a mermaid] in there somewhere."

About Kate Bush - "I love Kate Bush, and I love that song, and I know Taika loves that song," Jenkins explained of the choice. "So I wanted to find a place for that song somewhere in the second season."

Polygon - Oct 9, 2023 - with Tasha Robinson & more - Link

Compares S2 and "Golden Age of Piracy" stuff to Westerns, lists 5 he was thinking of - "Every Western that’s good is that story," Jenkins says. "'This way of life we made is coming to an end. It can't last. It's a blip in time. We created this thing because we need it to exist. We're outlaws, and we need a culture that suits us, but it's running out of time.'"

Gizmodo - Oct 9, 2023 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

Short tease on leaning into the love triangle

About Stede, Edward, and Izzy - "I think the three of them are on an arc together that's pretty inseparable," Jenkins said in an interview with io9. "And to watch Izzy try to process what's happened [in season one]… to watch him kind of grow and figure out what's his own story, if he can separate himself from this kind of toxic relationship, is interesting to me and I think gives him a lot of room for growth."

Post 2x04 - 2x05

IndieWire - Oct 12, 2023 - with Sarah Shachat - Link

Discusses directing and show creation

"The limitations of the show also naturally push it back towards moments with the ensemble and plot problems that it would frankly be irresponsible to tackle if you had a giant budget and a fully working ship-of-the-line to sail and then blow to bits. "That's the fun of the show to us, I think. If you open this up and you're like, unlimited budget, that would be terrible because I think you can get seduced," Jenkins said. "[It could be like,] 'Oh man, it's all leading up to a climatic battle on the sea.' And those things are great. But that’s not this show.""

"The nice thing about that, though, is you get to be the lo-fi show that’s like, 'Hey, we’re making The Muppets.'"

PopSugar - Oct 12, 2023 - with Victoria Edel - Link

About S2 Stede - "I like the idea that he learns and grows and he doesn't just stay a bumbling captain. He might be ridiculous, but he is getting better at it."

Discusses genre challenges - "How do you have a show that's a romance show but it's also a workplace show and they're criminals?"

Discusses Edward's redemption - "But Blackbeard still has to come back and apologize and be part of the community again, and give his little press conference. It was fun for us to look at that in the context of piracy, where they all do terrible things to each other. But even by their standards, what Blackbeard did was a bit much."

Discusses Izzy in S2 - "When Izzy shoots Blackbeard and they all mutiny on him, that's Izzy breaking up with Blackbeard. And they're both having their own journey in the wake of it, and Izzy's having his own redemption arc. He's trying to figure out, "Who am I if I'm not Blackbeard's first mate? Who am I outside of this relationship?"" + "If Stede's Spongebob, he's Squidward. I don't know what that makes Blackbeard. But there's a real pathos to Squidward."

Discusses trauma-based narratives - "As a diverse room in terms of sexuality, socio-economic background, and race, we thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a non-trauma-based story for these characters who don't get that historically?""

Variety - Oct 13, 2023 - with Hunter Ingram - Link

Discusses three act structure and making Stede work for a relationship - "The way I like to look at a season is in threes. The end of the first act is when they find each other, and this is the beginning of the second act. They've found each other, but they are pissed. Stede thought it was going to be [Kate Bush's] “This Woman's Work,” but, in reality, it is this headbutt –– literally."

Discusses the central romance - "It was always part of the pitch... that is the reason to make the show. The pirate genre is fun, but I wasn’t dying to make a pirate show. Taika wasn’t dying to make a pirate show. But the thing that was interesting to me was that Stede finds love, and he finds it with Blackbeard."

Discusses 2x04 plot - "This episode is based on a very, very thumbnail sketch of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?." Anne and Mary are Martha and George, and they are Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton."

Discusses adding historical pirates

Discusses Buttons exit - "I just love the idea of him turning into a bird: I love the idea of Buttons somehow being the one character that is able to figure that out."

Discusses Izzy and the crew's trauma plot - "We liked the idea that there is something about trauma and getting past that trauma, even on a pirate ship. They have been through two very different ways of living and they have to get used to each other again. But it's also a family that was separated, and becoming one family again is painful."

Discusses bringing characters back - "We could bring Calico Jack back, who, if you remember, was hit by a cannonball last season. Anyone who is that fun to play with and wants to keep playing, you always find a way to bring them back."

Polygon - Oct 14, 2023 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

Discusses 3-season arc and how keeping them apart with some plot device was never in the cards - "at the end of the first season, they're 14-year-olds, emotionally. In this season, it's more like they’re in their late 20s."

Discussing New Zealand production and ensemble cast writing - "It's pretty organic, because as we're going through and tracking everybody's journey for the season, we're watching the thing that holds us together — what stage of Stede and Blackbeard's relationship are we in? Because the overarching arc is, are these guys going to learn how to settle into a relationship?"

"The second season is more overtly about romance, and more a relationship story."

Energizing aspect of fan reaction

S3 is about "love is work"

Gizmodo - Oct 16, 2023 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

About the story - "I want to see them become a functional couple or fail to become a functional couple," Jenkins said. "Those are the most interesting parts of the show."

Discusses fandom engagement - "...ultimately the writers are also "the fans in the room." He goes on to say that, "We're fans of the world. We're writing fanfic about our own characters, our own worlds… It's paid fanfic, but it's fanfic." He gives another example: "If you're writing a season of Succession, you're writing fanfic Succession. You're just getting paid to do it. We, as writers–" it's clear that he's not just talking about the writers in the writers room, "become fans of the world and we all have things we want to see these characters do. What we do is not that different."

Discusses the A Star is Born aspect of seeking fame / retiring

Discusses Zheng Yi Sao

Villains of the series - There are a lot of new villains this season, but, Jenkins says, ultimately, "the antagonist on this show is normalcy… These pirates have a way of life that they're not finding in normal life. They've found a way to live and support each other and be there for each other. And that's always threatened by these larger, tyrannical forces that want to shut them down."

Post 2x06 - 2x07

Mashable - Oct 19, 2023 - with Belen Edwards - Link

Discussing drag performance in 2x06

"It is nice to see with Izzy's arc, where he finally breaks through whatever he's been doing to himself. He lets himself have that moment, which I just love. It resonates for Izzy, and I think it resonates for Con. Just personally, it made me feel good to see how it turned out."

Consequence - Oct 19, 2023 - with Liz Shannon Miller - Link

Discusses intent for romance - "...telling a love story in a serialized medium like television has its perils, largely because it's tough to know how much you can draw out any unresolved tension. "I think we take it episode by episode and we try to not piss people off in taking too long and doing double beats and triple beats," Jenkins says. "You can only do Will They or Won’t They for so long. Then you have to deepen it.""

Discusses pirate setting - "The emphasis on relationships also fits into the show's high-seas setting, which Jenkins finds similar to post-apocalyptic narratives. "It is a little bit like you're doing Mad Max, except there's relationships," he says. "Stuff's shitty, so you gotta try to find some joy. Of course, people are going to have a need for each other in these extreme circumstances, and I like the idea of these characters finding some level of a healthy relationship in these extreme circumstances.""

Discusses Jim x Archie

Discusses 3-season arc

Polygon - Oct 21, 2023 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

Discussing gender and power dynamics in Jackie x Swede / Zheng x Oluwande / Blackbeard x Stede + A Star is Born aspect

Jim not being jealous of Oluwande - "I think that relationship was always seen in the room as a friend relationship that got romantic."

About adding a villain - "I think a lot of the internal forces in Our Flag are the villains." + "I think this is a story about the age of piracy coming to an end. This way of life is coming to an end. And every Western that's good is that story: This way of life we made is coming to an end, and it can't last. […] I think every story about outlaws is about trying to preserve a way of life against normative forces that are kind of fascistic."

Historical accuracy - "The balance of the show is 90% ignoring history, and then 10%, bring it in, whenever we're like, Ah, gotta move the story forward! Remember, the English are out there, and they're really bad!"

Post 2x08

AV Club - Oct 26, 2023 - with Saloni Gajjar - Link

Killing Izzy was always the plan - "We wanted to show the depth of that character. Izzy is one of my favorites. He's like middle management who is in a sort of love triangle [in season one]."

Discusses how they really wanted the happy ending for S2 - "I think with season one's end, it was a gamble to leave it the way it was. Everybody stomached through it. Now if it turned out they didn't want us to make more, I just didn't want to have another story where the same-sex love story ends in tragedy, unrequited love, or if one or both of them are being punished."

Discusses S2 progressing the 3-season romance - "They’re a couple who is like in their late twenties right now as opposed to being teens at the end of season one." + "It was an interesting tension of, which one gives up their dream? A lot of times in relationships questions can come up, like who is going to give up on their dream to take care of the kids? Obviously, no one wants to, but someone ends up giving up more than they want to at some point. What's wonderful about a mature romance, and what I'd want to see more of in season three, is Ed and Stede making these tough decisions." + progressing past the getting together point

Discusses parallels, Republic of Pirates, and Zheng Yi Sao

Short bit about fan response

Collider - Oct 26, 2023 - with Carly Lane - Link

Discusses Ed leaving fishing - "I like that he had a little prima donna moment where he thought he could go and be a simple man, and then it's revealed that he really isn't a simple man; he's a complicated, fussy, moody guy. No, he's not gonna be able to catch fish for a living. For him to be told that, "At your heart, you're a pirate. You have to go back and do it," he doesn't want that to be true, but it was true."

Discusses Izzy's speech to Ricky - "I wanted to give Izzy a proper eulogy for himself. He gives a eulogy for himself, but it felt true writing it."

Discusses Izzy's death scene - "In a way, it's very much for Ed, that speech. The "we were Blackbeard" is claiming that he is also Blackbeard, that Blackbeard is not just Ed’s creation, and I like that for him, too, because he's worked so hard for that — and then just to say, "You can give it up." There can never be a Blackbeard again as far as Izzy's concerned because he's dying, and they did that together."

Discusses Republic of Pirates / music parallels from premier to finale

Discusses finale wedding - "We knew we wanted a matelotage in the season, which is the real term they had for marrying crew members. And yeah, they've always been in relief to Stede and Ed, and they're a little bit ahead of Stede and Ed in how much they can talk about things. So to have a bunch of family things in the season, like a funeral and a wedding, and have the parents kind of watch the kids sail away, felt right, and all of those things seem to work well together and build on each other."

Discusses retirement ending - "That will-they-or-won't-they is interesting to a point, but the real meat of it is always like, "Can they make the relationship, and can they do better than Anne and Mary?""

"Frenchie's in charge of the Revenge" + teases Stede struggling to give it up

EW.com - Oct 26, 2023 - with Devan Coggan - Link

Discusses Izzy's death and telling Con - "It feels like the logical end of Izzy's arc. It's heartbreaking to me because he's my favorite." + "I told him in the middle of shooting because I didn't want him to find out at the table read, obviously. I also didn't want it to leak. He was lovely about it."

Discusses Izzy's final arc - "You know, I didn't expect him to become kind of a father figure to Ed. I think we hit on that while we were breaking the [final] episode. He's in such a weird position: He's like a jilted lover, and then he's a middle manager who has to work for a terrible boss. He gets thrown away, and then he comes back. He really develops, and he becomes a part of this family. I think the biggest surprise was the extent that he was a mentor to Ed. They were both Blackbeard. They both made Blackbeard happen."

Discusses the happy ending intent - "With this season starting so dark, I kind of wanted to reward them for the work that they've done and the character growth that they've had. I wanted to leave them in a place where they're really going to try and make this work. I don't think it's going to be easy for them, necessarily. They're both still immature."

Discusses the wedding - "We knew we wanted a matelotage in the second season, and pretty quickly we landed on Lucius and Black Pete. It seems like they were ready for that. We made up a ceremony and everything, where they call each other mateys, and it was just fun to make our own version of a pirate wedding ceremony."

Discusses potential S3 and Frenchie's Revenge - "But it felt like a good place to end the second season. It felt like a contrast to the first season. If it turns out we don't make any more, I'm comfortable with that being a resting place."

Variety - Oct 26, 2023 - with Hunter Ingram - Link

S3 endpoint - "I love things in threes," he says. "That first act, second act, third act structure is so satisfying when it is done well, and you don't overstay your welcome. I think this world of the show is a big world, and if the third season is successful, we could go on in a different way. But I think for the story of Stede and Ed, that is a three-season story."

Discusses the draw of a "Golden Age" and it's ending

Talks about father figure Izzy and wanting a real sense of loss - "There is a nice parallel to have Ed treat him so badly at the beginning of the season and then come all the way around to where Izzy is this sort of father figure he doesn’t want to lose — because Ed usually kills his father figures."

Gizmodo - Oct 26, 2023 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

Teasing future Izzy - "Jenkins looked slightly sad himself, saying that "Ghosts exist in this world." I told him not to make promises he couldn't keep."

"Jenkins said that he doesn't see Izzy as a pure antagonist in season one because on some level… Izzy was right in his hesitations about Stede."

Discussing Con O'Neill & Rhys Darby acting

Jenkins confirms the season was always 8 episodes due to budget cuts

About S2 finale vs S3 - "The first season ends on such a downer, so it made sense to end the second season in a kinder spot." + "I think there's plenty of story left for season three, but I think that it was important to end this as if it was the end of the show, and on upbeat note and avoid the kind of "kill your gays" trope. I don't want to see Stede and Ed punished for giving it a go. I want to see them really say, 'yeah, we’re going to we're going to try to have a relationship'."

Teases S3 revenge against Ricky and going to the Americas

Vanity Fair - Oct 26, 2023 - with Sarah Catherall - Link

About the ending - "It's bittersweet. There's death and there's the rebirth of Stede and Blackbeard's relationship; there's a funeral, there's a wedding, and the idea that this family is going to keep fighting even as they lose members. And then it's about belonging to something." + "A lot of times, with this narrative of characters, same-sex relationships end on a dour, downbeat note, where one of them dies and it's unrequited or it's unrealized; something horrible happens and they're punished in a way. So it was important to leave it open and a lot more show to go, but also leave it in a place where it's happy."

Discusses Izzy as a mentor / father figure - "We felt like Izzy's story had reached its conclusion, where we put him through enough. And then there was the realization that he is kind of a mentor to Blackbeard and that he is kind of a father figure to Blackbeard." + "And it's also a pirate show, so he's got to die."

Discusses filming challenges - "It's a big show; it's basically a one-hour show that we're doing on a half-hour budget."

Discusses adding Zheng Yi Sao

Is the show a queer romance? - "For this show, it's important to me just to write a really bold-bodied romantic show that happens to be between two characters of the same sex. I think that the story beats don't matter, because if you've been in love and you've been hurt and you met someone you love—hopefully we all know what those feelings are."

Blackbeard's arc in S2 - "...the second season is about Blackbeard's midlife crisis. And then when they both have their midlife crises, they can open a B&B together." + "I don't think Stede and Blackbeard are ready to be married. They're emotionally saying: 'Let's give this a go.'"

Discusses historical piracy as "counterculture" that's been straightwashed and whitewashed

Did he feel responsibility to the fan community? - "As opposed to responsibility, it feels more like relief—that people feel seen and they feel good about it and they liked what we did. And so it feels like, Okay, somebody's out there and wants the show. The makeup of the writers room looks a lot like the makeup of the fan base. So as long as we're true to our stories in the writers room, I think we just feel excited that there's somebody waiting on the other end to enjoy it."

Paste Magazine - Oct 26, 2023 - with Tara Bennett - Link

Discusses whether fandom expectations felt weighty - "I think particularly for this season, that "bury your gays" thing… I didn't want to end on a downbeat for Ed and Stede. We did that in the first season. I like that there's a lot of different flavors. It's even a little melancholy because the Republic of Pirates got blown up. But there's still more good things."

Discusses production and plotting - "I wanted to start at the Republic of Pirates this season and end at the Republic of Pirates. And I knew I wanted the Republic of Pirates to be destroyed, ultimately. Within that, we are making a one-hour show on a half hour budget, on a half hour schedule."

Discusses planning the ending - "In terms of ending this season, it all felt right just in talking through it when we were in the room. It felt pretty intuitive. When you get to the third act of the story, things kind of settle in. There's gonna be a funeral. We always knew we wanted a wedding at the end of the second season. And I knew that I wanted Stede and Ed to start an inn together. So once you have those beats, it's kind of locked in."

Discusses Izzy's arc - "It's kind of a strange arc in that I knew we were going to put him through all these things, and I knew he would ultimately die. But I think him becoming a father figure to Ed in the last episode didn't really dawn on us until we were breaking the last episode. Asking what would this man say to Ed at the end because they've been together through everything? He went from a troubled and downtrodden employee to a jilted lover to a discarded employee, to someone that is just trying to find his footing again—no pun intended—to actually becoming this guy's parental figure on some level. And he's one person who kind of raised Ed right, because Blackbeard usually kills his parental figures. So, it felt right and it felt like that's how the mentor dies. The mentor in a story usually dies in the second act and then our hero has to go on and try to do it without them. It felt like the right journey for Izzy and a gratifying one for Con."

On leaving open for S3 - "I don't think it was a very hard thing to do. I think it was more that I felt a responsibility to leave Ed and Stede in a good place, at least for now. It's not gonna go well. They're not going to run a business well. Ed's too much of a talker. Stede can't focus. It's gonna be challenging."

Vulture - Oct 28, 2023 - with Sophie Brookover - Link

Discussing Izzy as a "father figure" and his S2 send-off being a priority

Meaning of piracy - "...what our pirates stand for is a life of belonging to something larger than they are in the face of a crushing, slightly fascist normalcy."

Re: Con O'Neill & Izzy's death - "I had to tell him about halfway through the season"

Third season about the work of a relationship between still damaged main characters

Discusses middles as about change and transitions, and wanting characters to change instead of reset, have them experience permanent consequences

About the final scene - "...Ed and Stede as the parents kind of watching the kids take the ship. Frenchie's the captain now..."

Objective of the crew - "...have had terrible things happen to them at the hands of colonial forces, so they want some payback. Party, plunder, and payback — the three P's."

Metro Weekly - Nov 1, 2023 - with Randy Shulman - Link

Discusses historical premise of S1 and easing into the romance

Discusses S2 genre - "In the second season, it was great because we know it's a romance and we can lead with that. It's a workplace show essentially. I wanted it to be more in the vein of early episodes of Grey's Anatomy or something where there are all these relationships on those shows. That's what you’re following — relationships and friendships that are taking place in a hospital, procedural. That's Grey's Anatomy. This is less procedural for the pirate stuff — and you need the pirate stuff."

Discusses not being into pirates - "But I'm like you. I'm not a big pirate person. In general, it's a big creaky genre that's hard to budge" + "Pirates of the Caribbean, those movies are great. That's not necessarily what I hunger to see, but in that genre, it's great. You're not going to beat that, especially on something that's lower budget. We've seen a lot of this stuff, so it's fun to take it then and don't do any of that stuff."

Discusses adapting historical piracy - "You don't want to see them punch down. You don't want to see them do terrible things to people who don't deserve it, which is not what they really did. So, in the show's world, I think piracy is like a stand-in for something. I think it's a stand-in for being an iconoclast and an outsider and queer in some ways and just different." + "Yeah, I mean, the British are there to be Stormtroopers, or Nazis in an Indiana Jones movie. I mean, they're in there to die essentially."

Discusses diversity staffing

Discusses performative masculinity

Discusses Izzy's death, happy endings, and openness to S3

#trust me i appreciate the irony of making an extensive word of god reference when i want people to stop blindly promoting word of god #(and also when i'm currently very irritated with the creators)#and fyi showrunners talk A LOT but i was already committed so this was more work than i was expecting #i'll even use a small bit of my extra hour of destiel day to post this (most of it was assembled while watching supernatural)#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd meta #david jenkins #word of god #ladyluscinia

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jalwyn21 · 1 month

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I'm team joe but I wanna ask you guys: don't you think he probably cheated?

I don't view cheating as something so reprehensible. I don't do it and wouldn't like for it to be done to me or any of my friends, but I don't feel any impulse to cancel someone over it. I think is a very personal issue and it's up for each couple to decide where they stand in it. I mean, I'm sure we all watched joe on cwf and appreciate sally rooney.

that being said, didn't TS said in so long london "I founded the club she heard great things about"? fortnight is about matty but it reads like they're neighboors and she's singing about killing his wife, so that makes me think that the "my husband is cheating" line is about joe. she also sang something in another song in the lines of "he was already dreaming about her" which can mean he was emotionally cheating on her just like she did with matty.

anyway it's okay if they did, but don't we think that's the case? I think it's implied that he did something and that she broke up with him after cheating on him with matty multiple times in her head. I think that would explain kelleigh and the rage taylor had for him the whole past year.

Cheating is something awful and disrespectful and should absolutely be seen as a bad thing. Having morals and being loyal is a good thing. Let's call a spade what it is. CWF is about 4 very flawed people doing stupid, terrible things and hurting themselves and others. Not something to look up to.

Joe did NOT cheat on ts. No doubt whatsoever about it! Not only because Joe is an honorable man who would not dishonor himself like that, but also because there is not one shred of evidence that he did. Let's be real here, ts is the most petty, vindictive and hateful woman on the planet. If she had even the tiniest proof he was unfaithful she would have screamed it of the top of her head. We would be 20 short films deep into the annihilation of Joe. Alas, all she has is: he was sad and I got bored of him.

I worry about your comprehension skills. 🙄🙄🙄 Obviously she doesn't have a husband. Fortnight is about an affair that only lasted 2 weeks and dealing with an imaginary future where they are married to other people. And she hates his imaginary wife and her imaginary husband is cheating on her. It's a song about regretting what could have been. It's a what if the affair didn't end after a fortnight. 🙄

"I founded the club she heard great things about" Why must you remind me of that line. I bloody hate it. The audacity to put that disrespectful line in the song. Actually the more I think about it the more I despise ts. She is lying. She did not founded the Joe Alwyn Club. Ang Lee founded the club we've all heard great things about. And the first member to sign up for the club was Yorgos Lanthimos. He was the second director to give Joe a role back in 2015. And the reason we've all heard great things about the Joe Alwyn Club is because Joe is a great man. Not because of ts, but because of him, and his work and his character. And the fact that she is implying that she is better than the women Joe will date after her is pathetic. No, she is not better. She is richer and more successful, but not a better person. Any woman Joe will date after ts with be a better human than ts. And it's ugly of her to try to take credit for Joe and to attack and attempt to belittle Joe's future girlfriends or wife.

#free joe alwyn #jalwyn #q&a #nonnie #joe alwyn #anti taylor swift #joealwyn #toxic swifties #shit swifties say #toxic taylor swift #joe alwyn rumours #parasocial relationships #free joe alwyn from psycho swifties #joe alwyn is beautiful #swifties dni #shit swifties do #shit taylor says

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eshtaresht · 1 year

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guys how are we feeling? in pain, devastated, or screaming crying throwing up, what's the consensus here? spoilers for ep 11 under the cut (and minor spoiler for manga)

first things first, my theory from the last week is proven wrong. still don't know what the red plants were for (safekeeping? protecting from the last run?), but nai ain't gonna exploit them to "fix" vash. instead he EXPLOITS HIM AND SUBJECTS TO MENTAL TURTURE AND WIPES HIS MEMORIES CLEAN TO ACCES A HIGHER DIMENSION and create more independent babies ig

(yep the plant mpreg moment is sure a thing... for the next week, get ready for mass abortion)

finally, a gate that's an actual GATE. I think the plants lore was pretty self explanatory, but I'm so happy we're getting it and it's much more comprehensive that the manga, even(and 98' anime basically didn't explain anything and I had to spoil myself through fandom wiki to understand who vash and knives were). like, it's changed A LOT but it's in the same lane

this knives is so capable, holy shit!! everyone was already joking that he would put kniveses of the past to shame, and it's so true... he knows what he wants and how he wants it done and when he just goes ahead and does it. what a giga chad, honestly

I'm a bit disappointed they didn't keep the manga version of knives pre-tessla (that was softer than vash and wanted humans to like him), but it's definetely better than the old anime. like, he's colder due to him being the stronger twin, but he's still playful and doesn't hate ppl. he kinda distrusts rem, but they fucked around out of curiosity rather than malice. also, and I can't be the only one who noticed, his file name said "kni"? mmm ok interesting I'll have to think about it

that probably was the sequence code knives was talking about in ep 8, he used it again for the great fall. I wonder what it said, had to be something important to rem that vash could guess. geranium? their birthday?

the tessla sequence was quite short, but DAMN. status: alive. after all they've done to her. they put her on ice in this condition so they can keep studying her later. and the twins made her come alive. I'm gonna be sick it's so much worse..... no comas or suicide attempts this time, but these kids were still traumatized as hell (vash looks worse, like he haven't slept or probably eaten in a couple of days)

it was a serious moment but when nai revealed he was reading THE BIBLE I can't ahajakahajajahah... like, NO WONDER HE STARTED A RELIGION omg... pls put that book down you've got the message wrong

and or birthday boy vash... oh babygirl I'm so sorry. when I said I wanted to see him going through this I didn't mean a literal mental torture gaslight dimension!!! like, it's SO crucial to his character to REMEMBER all the good and terrible things he went through.... to have it taken away while he can't do anything, even when he clings to the memories as hard as he can, knives still takes EVERYTHING away from him, until he's the only thing tying vash to this world.

again, any other knives could never! and even before tearing apart all those memories, he gaslights vash even further, saying that he did the fall for him (which is true) and so it's basically his fault (which is very much not true)... and this BREAKS him quite literally... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

on a brighter note, loved that goofy meryl & nico interaction, remember, when we could still laugh? now it seems like meryl is gonna manage to reach vash in his infinite soup of despair, and that breaks his gate?? I'm so thrilled for the finale it's not at all like I imagined already said this in my previous post, but the flowers are a consistent theme for stampede instead of angels and, like... it's just makes sense for a plant to be a plant, yk. also it's pretty. july is already being destroyed by the roots, I wonder if that's gonna be it or there'll be a big kaboom (in this case it would be hard for meryl to survive, but potentially vash could make a root cacoon to protect her)

also this ep gets bonus points for showing what's going on in the city with the police guys and civilians, 'cause usually stampede isn't great at background and side characters

now making theories about the (potential) second season. amnesia aspect is getting established rlly hard rn! the only question is whether vash gets to remember key moments (like rem, meryl, wolfwood) or if he only retains the vibes of "someone important who said I shoud protect ppl". because it's gonna be interesting if he forgets everyone completely and when nico and meryl (and milly, fingers crossed) eventially find him, he''s like "hi, have we met?"

oh, the POTENTIAL! I think he's gonna get his 98' characterization as super goofy, borderline annoying, because he just doesn't remember all the pain! at least, he doesn't remember the details and fills the blanks with astonishing amounts of cope. and when he's finally able to remember, oh boy, he's gonna crumble.......

#I can't believe it's almost over what do I do when where's no more stampede saturdays....#trigun stampede #trigun #trigun spoilers #trigun stampede spoilers #nicholas d wolfwood #meryl stryfe #vash the stampede

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safflowerseason · 3 months

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I also haven't done a comprehensive book post but I'd love to hear your thoughts! If anything, it's just made me have 10,000 more questions than I did before which was already A Lot. Also Justice 4 Mischa/Marissa always.

You sent this before we got Mischa Barton dropping major bombshells!! Now so much has changed!!

I said this briefly in earlier comments but my overall take on the book now is that, while it had lots of insights in other areas not related to Mischa Barton, it ultimately demonstrated the limits of the oral history approach. MB’s specific revelations also demonstrate why an oral history was probably not the best way to really get “behind the scenes” of what happened on this particular show. Like, in my experience oral histories are generally pretty fluffy and they kind of allow everyone to share memories and their recollections without much pushback…which is basically what happened in the book. If you interview as many people as Sepinwall did and absolutely everyone refuses to go on the record about two co-stars dating because they know just how fucked-up it is…that is a story that requires a *totally* different angle than a fluffy oral history, especially one that's such a direct collaboration with the showrunners. I’ve been thinking about the book recently published by Mo Ryan called Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood. That’s the kind of approach you’d need to do her story justice.

At the same time, I do maintain that Sepinwall emphasized that what happened with MB’s exit was not her fault, in spite of his past (sketch) history with the show. He gave a lot of detail about network fuckery, Schwartz’s failures as a show-runner in S3, and he also showed that Brody and McKenzie were actually the ones being assholes on set, not MB, but that no one in charge cared because to Schwartz they were the two most important characters - ie, MB was considered expendable and the men were not.

As for Schwartz…I already thought he came off pretty terribly in the book but now, like, oh my god. I don’t know how anyone but ESPECIALLY women could work with him ever again. I think it's so gross to claim that you're going to be open and honest about everything that happened on your show when you know this HUGE SECRET. Like I *get* why nobody wanted to go on the record about this and of course it's fundamentally Ben McKenzie's or Mischa Barton's news to share, but then don't PRETEND that you're going to fully explain what happened twenty years later when you know it's not the full story. Jesus Christ.

What makes me so mad is that the only reason Schwartz was so comfortable “taking the fall” in the limited way he did for what happened with MB and the show’s decline in quality is because it hasn’t actually cost him anything, and sadly I don’t think MB’s interview is going to change that. Nobody important in Hollywood cares because it was so long ago and it was his first show and one actress’s mental health and career prospects are a small price to pay for letting a man do whatever he wants on a set. So he didn’t risk anything by going on the record about all this.

As for the non-MB parts of the book, of course I enjoyed reading everyone’s perspectives looking back, especially in the first year, and the little random fun stories that were sprinkled throughout. Chris Carmack came off as a pretty decent guy to me, and Adam Brody clearly has done a lot of reflection on that era of his life and how he acted at the time. I love Kelly Rowan and Peter Gallagher so much and I enjoyed their take on things (also intrigued by the comment that they weren't super tight on set?!) And I thought the book was a great overview of just how many factors and voices and interests went into making a single piece of television during the peak years of network tv. Like, so many different execs in charge of different things, all putting competing pressures on the show…it’s easy to see why television was so formulaic in that period. The O.C. in its earliest and best days really didn’t fit the mold for anything on TV, and as the book laid out why that was kind of the show's undoing in a way (in addition to Schwartz f*&king it up).

That was a lot and seems like enough to be getting on with for now, haha. Ultimately what I really want is a two volume exposé on the toxic culture of Hollywood in this early 00's era and how so many young women were chewed up and spat out by the system, with Mischa Barton's story as a prime example. She deserves justice!

#welcome to the oc: an oral history #mischa barton #the marissa discourse #book thoughts #finally getting around to the asks in my inbox...

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homomenhommes · 4 months

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STORY: A dialogue of equals

All the usual provisos apply. Domination, brainwashing, slavery, sex involving a man and something that’s been thinking it’s a man. All the good stuff, in short. If that doesn’t sound fun, you’ve read too far already.

***

"Hi, sorry to interrupt you as you were pissing just now.

“I just saw you outside. Saw you staring, actually, your mouth hanging open, your eyes a little wild, the lights strobing over that lovely skin of yours. And then you ran away the way you did. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. What we were doing might come off as shocking to someone who's not familiar. It's easy for you to get misperceptions, misunderstand what's happening, see what we're doing from the lens of prior assumptions that don't apply. We're not monsters. What we were doing isn't abuse, or even mistreatment, in any conceivable way.

"If you have a minute, I would love to tell you about what we are and what we do. No, there's no reason to go back outside. Here in the men's room we're away from the crowd and the noise and the music, and we can just talk. It's nice and cozy, don't you think? I have friends at the door. No one's getting in or out, so we don't have to worry about interruptions or distractions. And anyone complaining about lack of access to the facilities in here can hardly say we're denying them an alternative, with the portable options we've conveniently set up outside the door there.

"So if you'd like, we can just head back to the stall right behind you and I'll explain everything to you. Would you mind if I put you in these cuffs first? In my experience, there are few aids to comprehension and retention quite like good metal restraints. It focuses the mind. And at this point, to be honest, it just seems silly otherwise for me to be talking to you and you not be in them, unless you're one of the brothers. So if you don't mind, just turn around and hold your wrists straight down behind you—no?"

"Oh, yes, of course you're free to go. Such a silly notion, that you're not. Like I said, I just want to make sure you're okay, that you're calm, that you're not misunderstanding anything. I mean, I know how I must look to you. The black peaked cap, the molded latex face mask, the leathers, the jackboots, of course it is in a certain context meant to intimidate, but neither is it meant to imply that I mean you harm.

"No, the objects you are calling "the guys outside" have not been hurt, and they are not being held captive. You see, they're not people. I don't even like to particularly think of them as animals, because that ascribes to them their own drives, instincts and interests, when really what they are in their essence are tools, vessels. I can't hurt them, the way I can't hurt a door. I can't keep them from being free, the same way you can't imprison a microwave oven. They are as they were meant to be. They are in their place. The kindness that has been done them is allowing them to be that, without pretense or shame.

"It's very clean, very honest. And really, what more can we ask of life than that? "Sometimes, something gets born in a human form. If it tries to live as a human, that's a mistake, and there is no end to the confusion and trouble it experiences as a consequence of that mistake. We need to be able to find these things, identify them, and treat them with the proper understanding of what they are. It's necessary for their own maintenance and for making sure they get properly used. Otherwise, it's a terrible waste.

"Hey, are you sure you don't want to turn around and show me your wrists? I just want to see how the cuffs make you feel, see what your response to them might be. No?

"Their existence is really kind of beautiful. The final progression is when the objects no longer recognize the human features of the skin bodies they were born with as their face. It's not that they think of the rubber as the true selves, it's that the idea of a face or even a them as been eliminated. Physical perceptions and experiences are transmitted through sense organs and nerves. Physical actions are performed through limbs and muscles. But there is no sense of a self, a creature, an organizing set of desires or interests. It's all very elegant. Something easy to be, and yet at the same time very hard to attain.

"At least without help. And that's what I'm here for.

"I could show you a bit of what it's like. I have here an eyeless hood. It helps develop your sense of dependence on your user. Rather than being something like a person, who chooses where he is going to go, and what actions he will or will not perform, with this on you must rely on me to guide you, place you and keep you safe. It's a great first step. No?

"Actually no, I don't know for sure that you're not a person. All this is, is finding out. All this is, is a series of experiments to determine whether you are meant for humanity and the natural frustrations it has for you, or for something else. My sense is that you know. My sense is also that you have misgivings around giving up these illusions because they provide you with a false sense of control. "Why don't we try this, then? My last offer is that I have a gag here, and yes it's clean and unused. The idea is very simple. You'll wear it for a bit, and in that time it's possible you will become more accustomed to letting others, maybe even myself, speak for you. If you get used to it, you could decide to let that become your default. You could decide to forego speech and let your mouth become an orifice for wholly other purposes. I've known several objects who, so long as they were verbal enough to say anything at all, thought it was very wonderful. Wonderful enough they just left words behind entirely.

"Alright? Let me just insert the bulb, here--

"Just open wide, that's very good. It looks very good on you. And now turn around and I will buckle it in place.

"Let's just feel that crotch now. Yes, you seem very comfortable with it. Now imagine this as your life. Maybe it terrifies you, but feel what lies there, beneath the terror. You feel it? The comfort, the certainty, the surrender? "Now let's go ahead and get the cuffs on. My, suddenly you're so pliant, so accommodating. No resistance at all.

"I want to continue this conversation with you in the stall. Just let me guide you. You don't have to choose a path or figure out where to go. That's my job. You just step, one foot in front of the other, as I direct. We have the technology where pretty much all decisions and instructions about even the smallest details of tasks and daily life are transmitted to you. No discretion, no guessing, no uncertainty. Your mind, your awareness of yourself, even the ideas of success and failure just float away, and you are a collection of organs and muscles following instructions and performing duties.

"No, you don't need to say anything to that. My hand between your legs tells me everything I need to know. Nothing you have to say is worth hearing anyway. You have no thoughts worth anyone else hearing. You have no thoughts even worth you thinking. You can stop all that now. That's the core of everything I have to say. You can just stop.

"You know that. You have always known that. Finally you have found someone who can help you out with it, who can free you from your own internal monologue.

"You're going to feel a draft as I scalpel open the back of your jeans. Just a clean vertical slice so I can have the access I require. And don't worry, I'm quite experienced enough at doing this I know I'm not going to snag any skin. "No, hands higher, that's it. It takes time to unlearn body shame, to accept the open availability of your holes at all times. You are unlearning your personhood so very well. There we go. Ah--"

"Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah."

"Very nice."

"You are showing such promise already. You could be free of any residual human identity more quickly than you might think. I'm going to plug you, and we're going to collect the units that have been servicing the patrons outside, gather up some other promising objects, and then I'm going to walk you all home. With the gag, the cuffs, and your plugged bare ass, it'll be so much fun. I love playing with you mis-born objects, when you are at this stage. It gets me up in the morning."

#gay story #men #art

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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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I recently submitted my first ever article and it got accepted provided I change "some minor things" aka the entire article... Awful, 0/10, is it always like that? 💀💀💀

...okay y'all, buckle up, I'm about to tell you my worst academic horror story. Aka why academia is a terrible, awful, no good very bad idea and you should never do it. If you've been following me for a long time, you may remember parts of this, but yes.

Anyway, so in the UK university system, which is where I did my PhD, you don't have a thesis committee; you have two examiners, one internal (a member of the department in your home university, but who didn't supervise you or advise you) and one external (a senior academic from an outside university who hasn't seen your work before and wasn't involved in the process in any way). My supervisors and I had a little trouble finding an external examiner, as the guy that we first asked didn't think he was a good fit, and then we found a replacement: a senior female scholar at a fairly good university in Ireland, who shall both, for the purposes of this cautionary tale, Remain Unnamed. She had worked with my supervisor before, they were friends, and he thought that she would be a suitable replacement choice. As for my thesis, my supervisors both thought it was pretty much done and hence ready for formal submission and viva (the oral examination). So! We submitted it!

My viva was duly scheduled, I turned up on the day already nervous as hell, and then things started going, hmm, slightly downhill. It soon became apparent that my external examiner thought my thesis was about something else, subject-wise, than it actually was (aka the subject SHE worked on, not the one I did) and she kept asking questions that were only tangentially related and demanding to know why I hadn't included all this background/genealogical/family information. (Where might I find it, you ask? Oh, in her book!) My internal examiner was mostly fine and made a few comments about how I needed to beef up my critical commentary on this or that charter source, and move some things from the conclusion to the introduction. You know! NORMAL things that a NON-PSYCHOTIC PERSON would suggest after reading a 300-page doctoral thesis that was clearly on the topic that it was about! NO BIG DEAL!!!

They sent me out of the room to debate whether they were going to pass me or not, while I had a heart attack and they took forever, and finally called me back in to say that okay, they were going to approve it, But External Examiner Had Questions!!! I was just relieved that I wasn't going to suddenly fail my PhD at the last hurdle after four years of work, but to say the least, extremely shell-shocked. I went out kind of in a daze, and my supervisor pulled me into his office for a congratulatory drink of champagne and told me that he'd never had any doubts it was going to be fine and etc. He also offered to refer the thesis to the series that he edited at a major academic press, in order to be published as a monograph. I don't remember how much I said, but I don't think it was much, and he seemed a little puzzled that I was looking like I'd just been hit by a tornado. Was this the end of the saga, you ask? No, of course not!!!

Anyway, if you request corrections to a thesis, you're supposed to submit them within a very abbreviated timeframe: by the end of the week, so the candidate (me) has as much time to work on them as possible. My internal examiner submitted a sensible one-page list of suggested edits within two days. We couldn't get hold of my external examiner for ALMOST THREE WEEKS (close to a MONTH). Then she sent these absolutely batshit endless lists of barely comprehensible corrections that read like total rambling, which neither me nor either of my supervisors (so, two-and-almost three PhDs between us) could understand. My main supervisor was so horrified by how unprofessional and inexplicable this was that he literally offered to read through all them and try to turn them into something that I could actually use. I was already working on the other ones, and wrote a passive-aggressive line into my introduction throwing major academic shade about how This Thesis Is About This Subject, Not That One. The reason this line exists in the world is due to my absolutely psychotic external examiner, so.... yes.

Tl;dr: happy ending, my internal examiner was the one solely responsible for signing off on the corrections and was happy to do so, I passed and graduated, and then did more revisions on my thesis to turn it into a book. I submitted it to the academic press for another external expert to read and was absolutely braced for another total nightmare. Instead, he basically came back with "this is great and I can't think of anything!" and thus I made a few quick tweaks and it went off to be published. So boy, was I ever owed that karma.

#anonymous #ask #school stuff #academia: not even once

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kamishiro-rui-phoenixwonderland · 6 months

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for fuck’s sake, stop! "it’s the last thing i want" - again, not the goddamn point. do i need to highlight it? to draw arrows pointing to it? will you be able to fucking find it if i don’t baby you?

did i fucking say i expected nene to stick to you like glue? no. your reading comprehension is piss poor, seriously, are your braincells fried already? is that what this is? is that all it takes?

she could’ve tried harder if you guys’ friendship mattered that much to her, because to me, it just seemed like she was glad. after all, now that she was in another middle school, she had an excuse not to talk with you anymore. she could keep face. i don’t blame her.

it wouldn’t be an "i stopped spending time with him because he’s a fucking freak who destroys everything he touches," but a "oh, i went somewhere far and i just couldn’t be with him anymore, even when i tried."

it was just so convenient, don’t you think?

you did so much for her and what did she do for you in return? think, rui, think with whatever’s left of that brain of yours!

why would tsukasa keep a place in his brain for you, you half-witted dumbass?

and even if he did, so what? what do you think that would change? he would still be incredibly busy, with no time to spare for you.

in fact, if tsukasa did remember, i’d argue it would cause him much more pain. he’d feel guilty for not being able to spend more time with you, to acknowledge your existence - and you know how he is, don’t you? he’s also always so worried of making others suffer. that’s why he overworks himself like he does.

oh well. i suppose you just like making everyone miserable. that’s why you want him to remember you, huh? i’m right, aren’t i? hehe~

how awful, how terrible of you!

you’re not even trying to hide it now… tsk, tsk.

you can’t even say anything about emu. she’s better at pretending than you think, you know? don’t fucking underestimate her. you’re not better than everyone else.

the truth is that little emu cares more about everyone’s happiness than she cares about her own, and she will condemn herself to suffering if it makes she’ll make someone else happy. if that’s what you want her to keep doing with you, then sure, go ahead, but don’t get surprised when someone wounds up calling you a monster.

it’s clear that you’re using her to feel better about yourself.

// might be the last one idk :3

urgh...!! why am i still receiving these messages when i'm all the way in Sekai-??

... you don't know anything about Nene and i, we've known each other for over half our lives...!! you have absolutely no- no right to comment on what happened when we were in middle school- it's over, we very quickly became the best of friends again!! and- you're wrong, Nene does so much for me!! for a lot of my life, she was the only one other than my parents that supported me... if not for her, i might've given up on doing shows after the rejection of my other peers...!!

and- and Tsukasa-kun and Emu-kun... they're- they let me know when they're worried about me, and i try to do my best to ease their minds when i find that out... i know they struggle a little with... putting others' happiness above their own. i... never want to be another worry for them, i can't stand having others be concerned over me...

... that's why i ran and hid that one time.

... i'm not- i'm not using Emu-kun, i thought she enjoyed our time together as i do, being silly, engaging in random stunts- if she doesn't... i can stop bothering her, sure...

#answered by mr director

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ilyelan · 2 years

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ok, since y’all apparently have no reading comprehension skills, let’s clear some things up.

1. i don’t know what you guys think i’ve done that makes me racist, but not wanting to argue with a bunch of strangers who won’t even come off anon does not automatically make me racist, it doesn’t matter what the topic you guys want to argue about is.

2. if i have done something that actually is racist, please, for the love of god, let me know what it was. i would never do or say anything that is actually racist if i know it is, and if i have done something legitimately problematic then let me know so i can fix it and take responsibility. i cannot take responsibility for something if i don’t know what it is.

3. do not send me hate over my decision to not talk about discourse on this blog. i have stated multiple times that i am not willing to share my opinion on this because i made this blog as a space for me to relax and have fun, and i’d like to make sure it stays that way for everyone. there is a reason i don’t post my opinions on things that often.

4. if you are for whatever reason planning on sending me something about this, i have already posted my thoughts on the sumeru leaks discourse, see this post if you want to know what they are.

5. again, i shouldn’t have to say this, but absolutely no hate will be tolerated on this blog. i have gotten countless asks telling how terrible i am for not making my stance on this clear, and while i normally block, delete the ask, and move on, sometimes i will answer it. this is not an invitation to argue with me more, it is simply me clearing things up.

6. i have chronic hypertension, for those of you who don’t know what that means, it means i have very high blood pressure. which also means that if i answer all the asks i get and participate in the discourse all the time and get worked up over anything, it could cause irreversible damage to my heart, among other organs.

7. i am currently in the hospital, and i am waiting for a court date to decide if i’ll ever get to see my family again, i am under a lot of stress right now, and i really don’t want to add to that by fighting all the time.

8. i understand that this is a problem, and i understand that if we don’t talk about it then it won’t get changed, and in return you guys need to understand that my blog is not the space to start these changes. go talk about these problems in a place where they will be appreciated correctly, as i do not enough energy to talk about them properly right now.

9. i do care about these issues, but as i’ve said countless times before, i do not have the energy to deal with any of it right now. i might talk about it some once i am under less stress, but that is not a guarantee.

10. i also shouldn’t have to say this, but i don’t actually think dottore has grapes for eyes. it is a joke and i have no idea why some of you are taking it so seriously.

11. another thing i shouldn’t have to say, but don’t send me hate for joking about dottore having grapes for eyes. why are y’all like this.

#ophelia sings #can’t believe i have to tell y’all some of these things #but here we are #i’ll be rebloging this a couple times so that no one misses it

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incarnateirony · 2 years

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Ppssst. Just fyi.

If pat ever knew anything. About anything.

He would have known the pilot was real by the timestamp, not crawling to someone that made a fool of him

Feel free to Google tv production annual cycle. They break right then with last drafts then debate to order once coming back in january, to order by early feb at latest. Then, those network drafts go to the fucking winds for casting and all kinds of reasons.

See, if this man had any clue what he was looking at ever beyond his own wants or denials, he could have gone. Hm, early feb leak. Hm, it says dec on it. Oh. It says 4th network draft so it was the final before break and went out with the order, wow!

What did this motherfucker ACTUALLY do? Actively showed his lack of reading comprehension with an ill perceived error and scroll through it like any other uneducated piece of shit pretending they have the capacity to even gauge a good script trying to nitpick because this dumb fuck thinks he's still in fan wars when he can't even read the fucking bold lines at the top of the page or understand them

I just really and truly want to illustrate this while I know for once he is actually directed his followers to read my wall instead of close their eyes and ears to it. Honestly. I would say you guys are better than being stupid enough to fall for him, but the you I am addressing are generally wincest shippers so we're not going to go that far but. I would hope you have some sense of self-awareness or shame or dignity that you want to protect that you can begin seeing through this.

But that will require addressing your biases. Like whichever one made it seem like it might make sense that they would talk to a guy who is only in a few episodes before the third star of a show. And you couldn't figure out that the bigger guy already knew also. If you can't see how ridiculous this is, I promise you everyone else can see it. And you should probably leave until you understand

If you can't discern an actor being given a VERY general gist of methods to hook him in while checking availability of all returns from some sort of IMPORTANT INFO, go the fuck home omg. Unless your breaking news is "DHJ considered for prequel!", that doesn't mean shit. How is he so genuinely awful at this. Genuinely. Fucking terrible. This man seems incapable of actual complex thought bc he thinks you can play connect the dots in any order and get the right picture somehow and newsflash, no.

Some of his shit legit reads like "well the sky is blue today but was grey yesterday so my secret sources say there is a unicorn changing the weather because dhj saw a horse" or some shit because the greater part of material he assembles doesn't actually fucking say anything. It's all a blender of his own failure to compute shit. All of it. Ground up. He doesn't get what is or isn't important to even look. So he tries real hard to make it all seem important as long as he feels he can manipulate it unchallenged

Probably why he went for dhj for supposed news. Less eyes and less film to criticise the way pat butchers things. Theres 100 fans to call shit on j2m panels at any point.

Seriously tho it's so bad logically pat did you genuinely fucking believe in your heart of hearts DHJ was invited back and explained more about this than misha, or is this master level trolling? Surely you're not THAT stupid.

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mermaidsirennikita · 2 years

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Listen I totally get dunking on the new Persuasion (it looks terrible) but what we won't do is compare it to Little Women 2019 as if they were the same thing. Little Women is great movie, and more so a fateful adaptation of it's source material.

Also? Let's not campare it to Bridgerton. Bridgerton is something very different then what the Netflix Persuasion is trying to do. Just because both have anachronistic costuming and people of color in the cast doesn't make them the same thing.

I'm already seeing a lot of bad faith arguments about period dramas and you know what not everything has to have the look and feel of a BBC production or a Merchant Ivory production from the 90s. You can criticize Persuasion for more then just the modern tone and inaccurate costumes! That's the least of its problems judging by the trailer.

I agree with this, largely. I don't think that a modern edge is bad for period dramas. Some of the most successful ones in recent history have had a modern edge, which suggests that the genre *has* to go in that direction to an extent to survive... And that doesn't surprise me.

Think of Peaky Blinders, with the modern soundtrack (which originally got a lot of flack on here). It was pretty popular throughout its run and will probably get that movie followup. Bridgerton, for all that I think it's Not Good, is pretty modern and obviously does well in terms of ratings. Little Women did super well critically and at the box office. Gentleman Jack has a modern vibe. None of these works come off as truly modern, by the way, to anyone but the people who have sticks up their asses and want everything to be 1995 Pride and Prejudice--an adaptation that is obviously big among Austen fans, but really seems to have not held up in terms of popular memory as well as the (more "modern", though really not at all) 2005 movie. I know the 1995 version has die hards and it launched Colin Firth into the stratosphere... But I don't know anyone below a certain age who isn't a big Austen fan that knows of it. Conversely, I knew several people off the top of my head who cite the 2005 version as one of their favorite movies and have never read a single Austen book.

In order for a work to be successful, I think it has to be comprehensible and relatable to its audience. When a work is going for a broader audience, as these projects cited above all were, that's going to mean an injection of modernism.

I don't think the modernism of Persuasion has anything to do with the issues I saw in the trailer--I think the twee tone for a story that's actually a bit more... Not without humor, obviously, but melancholy? As well as the casting, most importantly, is the issue. The Sarah Snook and Joel Fry version is what I want.

As for people of color in the cast... I will say that I find it morbidly hysterical that the trailer showed off her black best friend, the Asian guy playing the villain, but then you've got good old Dakota Johnson in the lead. Idk. It just feels weird to me that the movie clearly wants a pat on the back for its diverse casting but our central character, our heroine, is a white girl.

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ninewheels · 9 months

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Oppenheimer thoughts

It's weird that I was posting so much before it came out and then didn't post my thoughts after actually watching the dang thing, but whatever.

Just saw it for the second time, and my opinions haven't changed much. I actually absorbed a lot more on my first viewing that most people would have because I had just finished reading American Prometheus, so I was primed to pick up on every detail. And I was impressed and just how much biographical detail Nolan managed to pack into the dialogue, but I wonder if it isn't simply too much information to give to an audience who haven't done the reading as it were. I mean, I haven't seen a lot of complaints about that in particular, so maybe not, though I have seen people taking issue with the pacing, which is definitely a related issue and which I can also acknowledge without being personally bothered by. There's a lot of story to tell in Oppenheimer's life, and it took Bird and Sherwin 600+ pages to tell the most comprehensive version of it possible, so obviously not all of the things are going to be given time. On that subject, Jean Tatlock is underserved by the film, and as someone fascinated by her (and also as a fan of Florence Pugh for that matter) I am disappointed, but I can't fault the film too much for that, because like I said, there's a lot to tell and she's a relatively small piece of the puzzle. I do appreciate the reference to the possibility that she was assassinated, but in context the meaning of that reference is so oblique that it feels like another thing intended for the already-knowledgable like me. Again, though, I'm the guy who gets it, so.

Despite the flattening of some dynamics and relationships, I feel like the film generally prioritized the most important elements. I heard someone describe it as a deconstruction of Great Man History, and I'm not sure (yet, maybe I'll change my mind) if I'd go so far as "deconstruction," but it's definitely built around the conceit that even the Great Men of History are not masters of their own destiny. It doesn't matter what Oppenheimer wanted, how he would have chosen for things to play out if he had control over everything, because of course, he didn't have control--not over his terrible creation, and not over the story of his life either. It's a film about unintended consequences, fittingly symbolized in the metaphor of the initially theorized world-ending chain reaction.

I almost forgot to note it because it feels obvious, but also, the film looks and sounds fantastic and the acting is great across the board. I feel like that's been shouted from the rooftops loudly enough that I only need to say "seconded" to communicate the point. I will also say though that with all the big names in small roles, (Affleck, Malek, Branagh, Oldman, even Pugh to a lesser extent) I am delighted by the fact that some of the character actors here got some real play. David Krumholtz as Isidor Rabi absolutely delights me in every scene, and Tom Conti does a lot to make that ending as strong as it is.

Also, one final note: the film references the fact that the Japanese were already defeated when the US dropped the atomic bombs on them (I would have had a serious problem with the film if it didn't, especially given that the book doesn't pussyfoot around the issue in the slightest) but I don't feel like it emphasized the point enough, so here's me doing it. The government knew for an absolute certainty that Japan was about to surrender. It's fact. It's known. The idea that the bombing reduced the total casualties compared to invasion is, in addition to still not being justification for the greatest single war crimes in history, is also simply a falsehood.

#Oppenheimer

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

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sweetestpopcorn · 2 years

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Hi there Anon!

So sorry for this delay, I actually was halfway through the ask when I accidentally published it (yes I am an idiot) and so I had to take a screenshot of the ask and delete the answer and start over.

If I told y’all how it got accidentally published y’all wouldn’t believe me 😡 damn you to the Seven Hells iPhone!

Ok moving on ☺️

Boy oh boy how I love this ask! I would, however, start with a little correction to the ask itself because you don’t become something, Anon, you are something. And I am beyond tired of people in this fandom having the narrative of “Oh what a shame it was that Criston became an as$hole and turned to the Greens.”; “Oh he starts good but then becomes bad.”, “Oh, he’s as bad as he is good!”.

Honey, he was always an asshole he just revealed himself.

You don’t become something. You aren’t a great guy one moment and a terrible one the next. You just reveal who you really are.

And this was what Criston did. He revealed who he really was (sad part for him though, is that Rhaenyra didn’t really seem to care and just pretended he didn’t exist for the next 16 years).

That went well.

So, why did he turn on Rhaenyra people now ask? Why was he so loyal to her one minute and hated her guts the next?

Fire and Blood/The Rogue Prince/The World of Ice and Fire gives us two main reasons, one according to Eustace and one according to Mushroom:

a) Knowing Rhaenyra was to be married, Criston finally confessed his feelings for her and asked her to run away with him. When she spurned his advances, he began hating her and resented this (the most likely explanation given all that happens next), or:

b) After already have attempted to seduce him and having failed, Rhaenyra tries (for some reason) to seduce him again and he is so horrified at this (again - she had already tried in 112 AC according to Mushroom) that he says “Well try to seduce me once, shame on you, try to seduce me twice, shame on me” and so decides she is evil and wanton and that he must destroy her for the good of mankind.

These are our hypothesis, or someone can imagine maybe a mixture of the two. Once discussing this with my brilliant friend @xenonwitch she very well pointed out that while she (like most people who have critical skills and good reading comprehension) believes Septon Eustace, a plausible mixture of the two would be of Criston wanting to marry Rhaenyra, and Rhaenyra proposing to him what she likely proposed to Harwin: that they could become lovers, but that was it because she wouldn’t give up her claim for him; He could be insulted at this prospect and perhaps horrified that someone he thought highly of would be willing to have an affair while married to another man.

Whatever version you choose to believe they all have one thing in common, they show that Criston “Incel” Cole had one of the biggest Madonna-Whore complex out of anyone we ever saw in asoiaf.

You see, while Rhaenyra was “pure”, while she was chaste, a virgin, while she was the “girl you married”, Criston stood by her side and loved her. He might have suspected that “something” went on between her and Prince Daemon but that was it and only it, and because it didn’t match with his vision of her, of the pure princess who didn’t even look at other men, he could ignore it. But then, Rhaenyra married Laenor Velaryon (ignoring for a moment the repercussion of whatever version of events you believe) and began a very public affair with Harwin Strong almost immediately.

Let’s for a moment look at Rhaenyra and Laenor’s wedding day:

“When Rhaenyra bestowed her garter on Ser Harwin, her new husband laughed and gave one of his own to Ser Joffrey. Denied Rhaenyra’s favor, Ser Criston Cole turned to Queen Alicent instead.” (Fire and Blood, pg. 372)

On a side note, someone look me in the eye right f_cking now and tell me anywhere it seems by this that it was Criston who spurned Rhaenyra. You’re welcome, besties.

So, given that it was well known at court that Harwin “had long desired the princess” (Fire and Blood, pg. 371), and that “paid court to the princess, as did the Hand’s eldest son, Ser Harwin Strong” (pg. 369), how difficult would have been for Criston to add 2 and 2 together and realize who Rhaenyra had turned to, or maybe (very maybe), who she might have been paying attention to for some time? That the two of them were now lovers. And this destroyed his image of Rhaenyra and she went from virginal princess he the white knight had to protect, from the Maiden to his Warrior, to a woman with “wanton ways” who slept with men without being married. Furthermore, and this is a bit of speculation from me though compare to the amount of speculation most “metas” go into this is as good as taken from the source, if she slept with Harwin so easily, then more than likely she had slept with Daemon as well, meaning that Rhaenyra had an affair being a married woman, and she had had an affair with a married man. So twice fornication and twice adultery.

Besides, breaking this precious image that Criston had of her, if she was the one rejecting him, this is also an insult to his person. He was the good man, the white knight, the one who protected her from her enemies for years, the one who wanted to marry her, and yet, it was to two men who drank, who whored, and who had no troubles “dishonouring” her that Rhaenyra chose to take to her bed. Worse still, if Septon Eustace is to be believed, not content with all of this, Rhaenyra went a step further and reminded Criston of who she was, telling him the life he could offer her was not enough for the blood of the dragon.

So all in all we have:

a) Madonna-Whore complex;

b) Anger at being rejected by men he saw as less worthy than he was - Being and Incel;

c) Being made to feel less than what he was by a woman - Misogyny;

As far as taking orders from Alicent, again this was fine because “Madonna-Whore” complex. Alicent was the “chaste” woman, faithful to her husband, so it would be ok to do her biding because she unlike Rhaenyra didn’t have affairs or enjoyed sex, or chose her lovers. Alicent was good, and Rhaenyra was bad. And because Criston was good - there was a certain image he had of himself he had to maintain as well - it was Alicent he followed.

In sum, it was Rhaenyra’s fault, ALL Rhaenyra’s fault. He was not to blame, she and her “wanton” ways were.

Was Criston as good as he was bad? I think only a *insert word of choice here* could suggest such a thing because we don’t see anything good ever (I mean maybe loyalty and persisting with an objective? aka destroying Rhaenyra). Nor in Fire and Blood, nor in the Rogue Prince, nor in the Princess and the Queen, nor in The World of Ice and Fire.

“Oh but we are told as such in Feast for Crows!”

Ok I’ll bite. You are also told in “A Game of Thrones” that Rhaenyra was one year older than Aegon II and that Viserys II was Aegon III’s fourth son.

You also have zero mentions of Daemon anytime the City Watch is shown yet you keep having mentions of every Targaryen who did X thing every book - like Baelor and the Sept he built.

Rhaenyra was once planned to be married to a Lannister and then to Lyonel Strong.

Alysanne was meant to be tall, and later was changed to be petite.

Alyssa was meant to be older than Baelon.

Alysanne was first written as Maegor’s daughter.

Should I go on?

A Feast for Crows was written in 2005. The Princess and the Queen was written in 2013. The World of Ice and Fire was written in 2014. The Rogue Prince was written in 2014. Fire and Blood came out in 2018.

Oh, and for anyone that needs any clarification regarding ages and details aboud canon Rhaenyra Targaryen and canon Criston Cole, here we go:

-Criston Cole was 15 years older than Rhaenyra Targaryen (Fire and Blood, pg. 258). She was 8 when they met, he was 23;

-Criston Cole joined the Kingsguard when Rhaenyra Targaryen was 8 years of age (Fire and Blood, pg. 258 and 259). So if you want to suggest they were lovers before he joined the Kingsguard please be aware you are suggesting that Criston Cole r_ped a 8 year old girl and was - even by asoiaf standards - a pedophile;

-The only person who implies Rhaenyra and Criston MIGHT have been lovers - given with a big stretch and imagination - is Alicent Hightower before 111 AC, before Rhaenyra Targaryen was 14 (Fire and Blood, pg. 363);

-Nowhere in Fire and Blood is it implied that Rhaenyra Targaryen and Criston Cole had any sort of affair or romance after Daemon left King’s Landing in 112 AC. Please refer to Fire and Blood pgs. 368, 369, 370, 371, 372 for all the details and facts;

You are all welcome.

Anon, so sorry for this delay and the rant - but Criscel fans and apologists are a special breed of *insert word of choice here*. And if people want to speak facts, I will give them facts then.

Please write any fanfiction about Criston you want, but let’s leave canon as canon and not as a weird AU.

Anon, you got it right about Ser Incel! Much love to you ❤ And to end this on a positive, let me share again the amazing meme @003-alissa made.

Queen, take this: 👑

#criston cole #rhaenyra targaryen #fire and blood #house targaryen #canon criston cole #canon rhaenyra targaryen #canon events #the princess and the queen #the rogue prince #asoiaf #pre asoiaf #the dance of the dragons #will no one think of the grown men?!#popcorn answers

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direstraitscomic · 2 years

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Dire Straits: in a very bad or difficult situation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Two years before The Robot War the RED team finds themselves in a bitter loosing streak against the BLU team who've somehow managed to procure a suspicious amount of fire power. With their tactics outmatched and the Administrators silence on the matter, the Mercs of the RED team grow exceedingly desperate. As their pay gets cut with each loss, and each fight getting more humiliating than the last they look to request the help of a third party. Through blind desperation this help comes from something most unforeseen. From something teetering on the very edge of mortal comprehension. Particularly from some poor bastard in the wrong place at the wrong time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LOL YEP I'M STILL GOING WITH THIS. COMIC IS GETTING ONE MORE REVAMP. The final one god willing. More on the update under the cut!

So to provide a little context for those who've been waiting for this. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. Real life stuff really came around and beat my ass. Currently, my situation is slowly getting worse but I refuse to stop now. The comic had to be put on hold because of how outdated it ended up getting. I did go back to revamp the pages before but I kept finding errors and inconsistencies that just didn't make sense. I feel this comic deserves the effort and I feel you guys deserve a good well-written story. Not only that, but Elly got her final redesign and it's a pretty heavy change. Throughout making this comic her back story changed three times. YES, THREE TIMES, because I kept finding shit that just did not make any fukin sense, some parts were terribly cliché and unoriginal that I ended up growing to hate and one was accidentally too similar to the plot of a game that, at the time, I was unfamiliar with(Maybe it was different enough to get away with I don't know I didn't want to take chances). I unfortunately am a bit of a perfectionist and have very high standards for my work; as shown by how many times models were changed between pages. This is partially due to the fact that she never had proper HWM sliders and setting models up for SFM is HELL. She kept breaking so she needed to be fixed up and given a simpler design to made her easier to operate. As of right now however, her appearance and narrative is set for good, she has HWM now, clean topology, cleaner textures and less bones. Not only that, but I had to make an entire map for this. That meant learning the ins and outs of the Hammer Editor, and gathering up a shit load of props. The Hammer editor (while very powerful) is a right pain in the ass to use, especially if you want a clean functional map.

This took quite longer than it needed to be. This is THE LAST TIME I am going back and redoing these pages, and this time I'm going to stick with it if it freaking kills me. I don't care if it's cringe. This comic means a lot to me as do the characters and those who've read it. Plus it's FUN and I'm allowed to have FUN Janet I wouldn't have been able to make this story if not for the help of @the-talon-ted-meem She well practically co-wrote it. Go give her love and spam her inbox with horrifying emojis or some shit Lastly, this comic is, in a way, made to commemorate Colin "Elliott" Wyckoff a.k.a Kitty0706. There's a lot I can say that's been said a thousand times already but he wanted us to laugh in his stead not be sad. In his honor, I'll help what he influenced live on for as long as I can. Pages will be uploaded weekly. Old pages will be probably deleted enmass soon unless people want to keep them. Then maybe I'll stuff them into a google drive link, I dunno

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #teamfortress2 #tf2 fanart #tf2 sfm #source filmmaker #comicart #comic covers #dire straits comic #dire straits #tf2 heavy #tf2 soldier #tf2 medic #tf2 engineer #tf2 spy #tf2 sniper #tf2 pyro #tf2 scout #tf2 demoman

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shijiujun · 3 years

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on the danmei twitter fight

okay guys i didn’t wanna say anything about this and yes it’s that hot danmei twitter translations saga thing that’s going on, because honestly i feel like there’s nothing much to say but when i see dumb posts on tumblr taking about that, by people who present a misleading hot take and their friends or moots run off with it without even knowing what exactly is going on - it really pisses me off.

and also if you shit talk translators for not continuing their translations or locking their translations whatever - the door is that way on your right and left, but anyway here’s a rundown on what happened because i am seeing people make comments without two brain cells put together, without the slightest bit of consideration for the people who bring them translations

here’s my hot take and thesis: if you enjoy english translations made by fan translators, you don’t, in any way, no matter happens, shit talk fan translators. fan translators do this for free, and whatever their intentions are, whether genuine sharing or like some of you like to say, for clout, if you consume, and you enjoy these translations, i’m sorry, you’re not uninvolved, and you don’t get to sit on a high horse and say translators should or shouldn’t do something. you should just keep quiet, honestly, because someone else is doing you a favour, a favour that you are enjoying and taking. that’s what respect is.

i’m presenting both sides or i guess three sides of the story as objectively as i can, altho my support is still for fan translators who were just minding their own business before this blew up.

===

🔺 what happened:

so it started because one of the bigger translators in the fandom did this poll - i’m not blaming her at all, i doubt she had any intentions of shaming anyone or causing any controversy and was plain curious, but her poll asked english speaking danmei twitter how many people buy the digital, print copies of the danmei they read, and who did not.

in my honest opinion, it’s not strange at all for her to have created that poll, considering just how much work she’s put into making sure things are accessible for the eng-speaking danmei fandom. i mean i’d be curious too, to know out of my thousands of readers, what the reading and buying behaviour is like. do yourself a favour and don’t read too much into it.

obviously in an era where a lot of people do consume content for free whether the underlying content is profit-making (like anime, donghua, manhua, manga etc.) or not (fanfiction etc.), it was unsurprising to see that the last option - the ones who consume danmei without paying a single cent, came out as the majority. i don’t think this is a surprising result at all, for all sorts of reasons that i will not get into now.

anyway, this is obviously kind of a sore point in the fandom especially for translators who want a wider audience to support their fave author’s works - i won’t get into that for now, but the issue began because other translators or fans started to criticize the majority of people who don’t pay for objectively rather affordable danmei and just consume things for free.

and yes, i don’t deny that the argument on both sides got really heated and emotionally charged with both sides calling each other names which i believe is uncalled for, but it totally derailed the crux of the issue, which basically is that the majority of english-speaking danmei fandom - consumes danmei for free.

anyway this whole thing escalated and fan translators were brought into this for no fucking reason at all except that the people who didn’t want, or were unable to pay for the danmei they usually consume, made what i call a LOGICAL FALLACY in argument by going to the extremes, i will explain why later.

the end result is that fan translators were brought into this (most of them, the bigger ones i know at least) without even participating in the direct crossfire. and obviously, you can see why they’re hurt and decided to lock their translations. let me explain why

===

🔺 kind of like four camps:

(1) translators and fans who criticized those who consume danmei liberally but do not pay for them in any way - no merch, no digital copies, no physical copies, no audio dramas whatever

*** their arguments:

danmei is so cheap right, that technically people should be able to pay for it in one way or another, even if not all

danmei and its authors are, at the end of the day, out here to earn a living, and the industry, like any money-making industry, is a for-profit enterprise - and unlike public goods, if you cannot afford danmei, then there is no obligation for others to make it free for you (fan translators or otherwise, it wasn’t super clearly stated while this shitshow happened) when it is inherently a for-profit industry

yes, i don’t deny that some of them did call the peeps who don’t pay at all, “leeches” and other sort of names. personally, i wouldn’t go that far or even like venture there to be honest because in general, if it’s something that i’ll get punched in the face for if i called someone that in real life i tend not to do it, but i’ll leave my opinions, whatever they’re worth, for later

(2) the readers and fans of danmei who do not pay in any sort of way for them

*** their arguments:

some of them really cannot afford, even the dollar or more, to spend on danmei for several reasons: upbringing, culture, money-spending mindsets, real poverty, struggling to make ends meet etc. - some definitely more valid than others (and when i say not valid, it’s because SOME, a minority or like those few stragglers, say they cannot afford and then you see them like idk, throwing $50 on other merch on kpop and stuff - i’m just bringing up ONE example. not shaming anyone for spending more money on one aspect rather than the other, but yeah you can see why some of them, when making this same argument, are a little invalid, that’s just a small number of them tho)

if translators are blaming them for consuming free of charge, then the fault lies, at its foundation, fan translators who translate illegally, which i mean, in that definition, all of them including me

did i mention that we were called illegal translators like you know in response to being called leeches? anyway-

(3) others translators who literally were just minding their own fucking business before some smart alec dragged them into it

i don’t think most of us had an argument. we were just quietly munching on popcorn and staying out of it and yeah, can you imagine, we provide a service, however illegal it is, for free on our own time, we don’t even check whether people support legally or not, we just... provide, and pray that those who are able to, at least support in some small way or another do so, on their own time. i mean i don’t check, most of us don’t, not the bouncers at your local club before COVID happened do, and then suddenly, to be used to derail an argument, we were called illegal translators. and that we should stop translating, and that it is our fault that there are free riders in the fandom

(4) people who offered to provide JJWXC credits to those who said they couldn’t afford it etc.

honestly i think they were just trying to help - no different than a gofundme. there’s no shame in taking a free thing that people already weren’t intending to pay for. it’s there, just take it!

===

🔺 the shitshow that led to fan translators locking their stuff up:

i would provide some actual examples in the form of screenshots but i’ve blocked most of them, and i don’t want to direct any sort of traffic to them so i guess you’ll have to take my word on it or go search on twitter yourself but-

(1) the affordability issue: i can understand the frustration at being called leeches, and some if not a majority of people, do have valid reasons for not being able to afford something or anything and end up pirating content they enjoy. hey, i am not about to crucify anyone for pirating at some point in their lives. we all have done it at some point, or for example hate disney+ and that $30 they were trying to rip off us for a subpar Mulan live action. i don’t have anything to say about that. inherently, is it wrong and illegal? yeah sure of course it is. do we call people leeches? i wouldn’t go that far.

if anyone cannot afford, cannot access for whatever reason, fine, i’m not gonna go check if jjwxc truly is banned in your country, or is your postal service so terrible that you definitely won’t be able to receive a hard copy of the book you like at affordable rates.

and if you have to pirate? go ahead. i mean it’s always been a rampant thing. the only thing fan translators and fans can do is encourage, motivate and incentivise as much as possible to get people to support legally. they can only put up REALLY COMPREHENSIVE guides as to how to access jjwxc or taobao or whatever.

and if you still cannot afford it and pirate, honestly no one cares about the story behind it. you owe no one justification, just as how no other person is obligated to take it into consideration or understand you or empathize with you. i don’t say this in a malicious way - i do think that in general, you just do you.

(2) the poor people don’t deserve nice things argument: honestly, this was not the point of this entire debacle, altho yes, people were rude to those who could not afford to support legally. but this is not the point of this whole thing.

main point - there are free riders who can support but choose not to because they choose to just consume it for free and if you are able to you should support

everyone going off on a tangent - you guys hate poor people / you guys are leeches

well guess what, no one wins in this argument.

there were a lot of people saying “reading danmei is our only source of happiness, are you saying poor people who can’t access legally don’t deserve to read danmei” (this is just one example i’ve seen, there are other variations), and it wasn’t put across perhaps in the right way, but the other camp of people were saying “you’re not entitled to it for free if you cannot afford it”, which raised a lot of hackles and anti-poor yellings

altho i do not deny that there are those who mean it maliciously, i think what everyone is trying to say is - the danmei industry, like any other profit-making industry, is looking to make profits. the people working in the industry, the authors even, are looking at numbers - traffic to jjwxc or other legal platforms, how much revenue they’re making from their live actions etc., comments, rankings, etc. i think @/hunxi-after-hours made a really succinct post on this aspect which yall should read.

it’s the same as - if you wanted to purchase a standee which costs $20 USD, but you cannot afford it = you don’t get it. there’s no way you can get this standee unless some gifts it to you for free. what the camp trying to ask people to support legally is saying, is that danmei is NOT A PUBLIC GOOD. it is a private, for-profit product. it might be intangible, but it is a PRODUCT that has a price that needs to be paid.

if you cannot afford it, you either don’t get access entirely (i’m saying this objectively and honestly from an economic standpoint). if someone gifts that standee to you for free, count yourself lucky - if someone makes a danmei accessible to you for free, COUNT YOURSELF LUCKY. you don’t have to be grateful and treat them as gods or like obey their every word, but it’s not rocket science. someone did you a favour that you accepted and consumed, show some respect.

if you cannot afford to buy the standee - you do not go on twitter demanding that someone ensures that you have access to the standee for free. do you see how ridiculous this sounds once it’s a tangible product? and danmei novels ARE PRODUCTS. they are not FREE CONTENT. if someone cannot afford the standee, this is the equivalent of people going “we didn’t get the standee for free because poor people don’t deserve nice things”

totally missing the point. i don’t even know how it got to this. once again, i do admit that some users were unnecessarily mean, but going to the extreme of this is ridiculous. in argumentative essay writing we call this a logical fallacy:

e.g. “if you cannot pay for merchandise or danmei, it is a fact that you might not have access to it” morphing into “if we cannot pay for food, does this mean we cannot have access to it?!” - this is a slippery slope, and factors are not equivalent!!!! do they not teach people anything in school

don’t confuse fanfiction with danmei - danmei novels ARE PAID PRODUCTS unless for free chapters, just because it’s released online doesn’t mean it’s free public property, and also selected novels (did you guys know the WHOLE of SCI novel is free? about 500 chapters sorry, random, just a tidbit)

there are of course nuances right, like if anyone told me they were pirating disney+ content i’d be like yeah hey get one over those bloodsuckers, they take enough of our money and produce shit content anyway. the difference is that danmei authors, and the danmei industry itself can still be considered a nascent and not-yet matured industry, with a majority of authors if not all, depending on monetary flow, likes, comments, virality on the sites their content is hosted on, for a living, unlike hugeass MNCs trying to squeeze us dry for content that isn’t even interesting.

danmei is priced rather reasonably - and this brings me to another argument that was made, that the value of money is not the same for everyone. i don’t want to make comments on this because yes this is correct to a large extent. a $6 book might be cheap to most of us, but might be expensive to someone else. i’m not gonna comment on how cheap or whatever it is, if you gotta use your money for other things, definitely! i still maintain however, that a novel less than a dollar should be affordable to most people, a majority of people. and i definitely side eye some users who obviously have money but are just creating noise because they wanna continue free-riding

(4) the “they’re losing out on their international audience” argument: honestly, i feel like english-speaking danmei fandom gives themselves a bit too much credit. danmei has long thrived in china in its domestic market - sure the international audience is a plus to have and i’m sure the authors are grateful and flattered that people who don’t understand chinese love their content and love it a lot, but do they and their companies care about fans who basically don’t bring in money? i’m not sure (okay i’ll get to the fan translators doing illegal shit later okay i got it don’t be impatient)

and international fans are great, i don’t deny that - but when i see arguments like “oh but it’s their loss if they don’t cater or deny access to us, they get more popularity and sharing overseas”, i honestly think they don’t care as much as you think. once again, hunxi made a really good argument regarding non-sinophone audiences, but it really irks me, because this is the same as:

an instagram influencer saying they’ll give a restaurant exposure for free to their followers, if they get a free meal

it’s par for par - danmei authors wants earnings, popularity, tangible results that show that they are succeeding. this is life. if i put something out there for sale, i better be getting returns, simple economic logic. they probably don’t care that a non-paying reader is bringing them greater ‘exposure’ - once again, i mean this objectively.

and yes if they’re thriving without the international market then why should it matter that people are pirating right? which brings me to the next point~

(5) it’s fan translators faults for so many people pirating, and fan translators are the ones doing the “illegal” work: this one is like... wow where do i unpack this and how-

firstly, we are talking about assholes who can pay but decide to free ride and not pay for danmei, and we assume that if you really cannot afford and have to pirate, no one’s saying anything as long as you don’t go around spreading how to pirate, how the hell did it get to fan translators from “you guys are anti-poor” and whatever

yes, fan translations are indeed illegal, i don’t deny that, and i also don’t deny that there are translators who translate for clout and popularity but putting these aside - here’s what i have seen from people who ran their mouths and made this argument

“if you guys care about us pirating the book so much than fan translators shouldn’t have translated in the first place” and “if you wanna come after us for reading illegally, then fan translators, you guys should go get the copyright for the book and then translate it cuz what you guys are doing is also illegal”

hooooo i’m telling ya, i am all for translators locking up their translations at this point. see how fucking hurtful that is? you eat from my hand and then now you biting at the hand that fed you the gays in love?

honestly if you’ve made this argument or supported this, you can basically go to hell. yes this is personal because what, you think fan translators don’t take out their personal time and effort and hard work to make translations accessible to you? if you’re ever consumed and read translations, don’t be a hypocrite and make this argument. you benefitted from it, now you wanna say it’s their fault?

most translators want to share and spread the love they have for a novel right, want to show you how wonderful all these authors are, how much enjoyment u get from reading these wonderfully thought out stories of gays in love. yes we all know we are illegally translating, which is why on top of sharing we first, purchase the novels legally ourselves first, and then we try to encourage people to buy etc. and actually put their money to use. it doesn’t make it any less illegal, but we are bridging the gap between danmei and basically the english-speaking fandom, albeit illegally

we aren’t that self-important to ask for gratefulness but some respect would be nice. like i said, you read it, you consumed it, you enjoyed it, you can only access it because of illegal translators - a bit counter-intuitive to yell at these translators, who are simply telling you, if you can, please support. and none of us went “if you cannot afford, begone!”

===

🔺 some people tried to help by offering jjwxc credits so people who cannot afford as they say, can get legal access: honestly, just take it right, guess what some of these users did in response

they said the people giving away credits are trying to redeem themselves for their comments by giving away free stuff

they also said that we are trying to shame the people who cannot afford it with this handout to them, to show that they are the bigger person - the fact that they think this is a handout to them is TELLING. the people offering this is giving their money not to these readers, but to the authors! that’s the point of this exercise!!!

one of them even said “instead of trying to do these giveaways, here, there are greater world problems out there, donate instead to these causes” - love the initiative, but how did we get from being able to afford danmei and entertainment content to saving the world? i just- i cannot

===

🔺 so why i get why fan translators are locking up their translations, because wow, so hurtful:

you have no idea how many fucking assholes went “sure, lock up your translations, deal with the consequences” - ermmmm firstly, thanks for making a threat. like who the fuck do you think you are?

the consequences is... the authors still don’t get the money these free riders weren’t going to give them anyway, so no loss, and they weren’t reading on jjwxc anyway so you know, the authors don’t lose or gain any readership numbers or traffic they didn’t already have. instead, it WILL push and force people to pay for the PRODUCT. once again, it’s a product.

this works, and i’d say Word of Honor’s payment model worked marvellously for Youku, because they fucking forced everyone to pay to access content. ALL OF THEM. sure ok some people still pirated it, but how many MORE people paid on Youku, on Youku Youtube, watched on Viki etc. than if they didn’t? even english-speaking fandom were wracking their brains trying to purchase a Youku pass even if there were no subs initially - and other examples that lovely hunxi brought up in her amazing piece

and for translators?! honestly me for one, i’m glad i don’t feel pressured anymore to churn out a chapter every week since we get called names etc. most of us are glad to have a break to be honest. we’ve lost all motivation to translate because it’s a free service, at the very least we don’t expect like hate, or rudeass fuckers. for those who are doing a proof of purchase thing - go for it honestly!

hopefully it’ll minimize the free rider problem - some people for whatever reasons really cannot buy or support legally, that’s totally cool and they don’t have to justify it, i get that. but for others making the same argument but obviously are just unwilling to pay because they can’t read chinese, think it’s too troublesome when there are guides and translators provide it for free anyway so what’s the point - we all make concessions and make decisions to grab what we like (not talking about the ppl who have their various troubles and difficulties!)

===

🔺 and those who are saying why is it the ‘rest of us suffer’ from locked translations just because of a few bad apples:

IT ISN’T ABOUT YOU. where the hell were all of ya when we were getting called illegal huh? it’s about us fan translators getting shot at for no reason, and then people still demanding things for free. i don’t see any of the people i’ve seen on tumblr complain about fan translators stopping or locking translations defend any of us in any way. instead, you’re complaining.

it is the translator’s prerogative to start, stop and end translations, unless of course the original author starts to sue i suppose. i see people on tumblr going like if they were gonna do this, they shouldn’t have started in the first place etc. - i don’t what world you live in, but when i do something for free, then get called names and am attacked or get dictated on how i should do something that’s already like free, i tend to be less generous.

i’m sorry, do us illegal and free translators owe ANY OF YOU? i wasn’t aware any of us were being paid for this hobby. readers, especially those who CAN and just refuse to support, don’t get to say SHIT. translators deal with so much shit and so many entitled readers, i say they get to lock whatever they want as long as they aren’t profiting off of this monetarily.

let me give you an example - nan chan, which is translated by lian yin, completed translations by the way for all chapters. it is all free for viewing, and she only locked up one extra and asked for proof of payment. some dumbfuck quotes that locked up extra chapter tweet and said “honestly, this turned me off reading this novel because they restricted access”.

the. fucking. entitlement. the whole of nan chan is free, that’s like what more than 80 chapters. she locked up the EXTRA and the money goes to the author, she doesn’t earn anything. AND HERE THAT BIJ is (yes, i’m going to call them names because you know, fucking asshole who didn’t bother to check) going “yeah i didn’t wanna read because 1/80+ chapters were locked”.

AN EXTRA. LITERALLY AN EXTRA!!!!!!

at the end of the day, translators are not like DYING to translate, not like some of you are DYING to read the translations. once again, this isn’t a “BE GRATEFUL” message, it’s a please be respectful to the people who put in time and hard work for free and share the goodness ya know? what’s the use of yelling at fan translators as if we owe you anything?

================

🔴🔴🔴 TOO LONG DIDN’T READ 🔴🔴🔴

some people may need really need to pirate - and no one needs to justify why they cannot afford to purchase etc. pirating happens all the time, translators only hope that when you can, and in whatever way you can, to support legally - in general we don’t ask and we get it! we’re just annoyed that some people think that it SHOULD BE FREE, when it is a paid product, especially for those who CAN afford it

readers are not entitled to shit on translators for what they do with their translations - once again, you’re not OBLIGATED to have it. so what if i start and stop? i’m the one doing the work, i get the only say. don’t be a hypocrite and shit on translators, whose works you’ve read - it’s no loss for translators, we read and enjoy danmei just fine

yes, fan translations are illegal, but you can’t read and enjoy them like some of you have, and then turn around and point the finger at translators - a lot of us are happy to stop translating - this isn’t a threat, but at the end of the day, shitting on translators simply decreases access, and sure, some people can indeed live with you know, MTL or shitty translations from people who’ve learnt chinese for only six months or whatever, but you’re gonna be reading an entirely different book tbh

the people saying illegal translators are at fault - funnily enough, most of them consume the translations, so what the fuck? i mean we know it’s illegal, we’re trying to share the love and trying to minimize the illegalities of it by redirecting people to hopefully support legally. it’s still illegal yes, but i think it’s hypocritical for people who have read translations, stab translators in the back. and now that translators are indeed ‘restricting’ and ‘removing’ their ‘illegal translations’, yall yelling again? and threatening?

fan translators aren’t “elitist” or “classist” - just looking for some respect in a community which seems to have taken them for granted, and also looking for support for their fave authors - and honestly a lot of us were caught in the crossfires truly, don’t be an asshole and demand things from fan translators - who are you talking about? do you know why they decided to lock? do you know know what their locking system is like and what for?

it’s not EASY to lock the translations up - it’s more admin work, it’s putting together a whitelist of people, if given the choice i’m sure translators would prefer to share everything. but not when there are assholes who have a comment on how they should translate etc. and yeah!!! calling us illegal!! i mean we are but still!!

the last straw was seeing that post on tumblr and people in the comments going like fan translators shouldn’t or should do something, without getting the whole picture, without even considering how hard it is for fan translators being caught in this situation.

whoever puts in the work gets to decide, and everyone else should leave them alone.

be nice to the people who really cannot afford as they say so (or just don’t think about it), be nice to the translators feeding you content, and the people who free ride and shit on translators - honestly, i’d say ready the pitchforks.

edit: i forgot to mention this is my hot take and i’ve tried to like present all the arguments i’ve seen so far. i’m definitely not doing all of it justice and i don’t claim to speak on behalf of any of them except maybe one or two- and i’ve definitely left out stuff, but anyway, lmao we’re just tiny people doing what we love. i wish we could solve you know inequality or poverty or hunger or other pressing concerns. if i was that great i wouldn’t be stuck on tumblr or twitter or have to make posts like these like a loser.

thanks for coming to my ted talk.

#danmei #danmei twitter #rambles #long post #literally cannot take the stupidity of some people anymore

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