THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS NEW ALBUM CLEMENCY: A BRIEF REVIEW

General overview: Is this a concept album or a few similar ideas put in the same album? I don't know. If you ignore a majority of the songs, it does seem to follow a general idea of an alcoholic man stealing the liberty bell and having to do time. And yes, the rumors are true, sometimes they will accidentally mail you sand instead of a CD. They'll apologize and send you another CD for free.

SONGS

No Way Wayne: song about having beef with a guy named Wayne, who is an asshole, apparently. "Wayne Wayne go away" they sing at one point.

Silver Mixing Bowl: Sung by John Flansburgh, this song Might Be about capitalism. It features back up vocals from an industrial mixing bowl

The Fumedor: Eek! In this song, you take the perspective of a cockroach dying from cockroach spray. It is a 6 minute long harrowing tale.

Please Mourn Me: You've died prematurely and left your wife behind. What do you fear more: her moving on or her forgetting about you?

Chartreuse Goose: I don't know what to make of this one. In an interview, Flansburgh said , "We got inspiration after staying in a cheap motel. Mold in the beds, the walls, maybe even the tap water and food. The tap water was black. So, They Might Be Giants first ever mold poisoning song!" While this is a nice story, John Linnell said that the idea for the song came from reading the back of a cereal box.

(She was a) Hamburger Lady: People seem to like this song more than Charteuse Goose and I have no idea why. A combination of "Hamburger Lady" and "(She was a) Hotel Detective" it has a strange feel to it, almost more nauseating than the original Hamburger Lady. This one should have stayed in the vault!

Marble Run: Remember that weird kid who ate marbles in preschool? That may have been famous musican John Linnell! In this song, John sings about the fun of eating marbles. This song was almost included in Why?

Confabulation: Did I remember that right? This song is about not remembering things right due to severe alcoholism. Maybe you stole the liberty bell.

Her Beautiful Clanging: In Philadelphia PA, a crazed man falls in love with the Liberty Bell and tries to steal it. He succeeds and they have a beautiful honeymoon.

The Metal Clanging: A song that segues from the prevous, our liberty bell stealing protagonist is now in jail. This is the shortest song on the album, being about 1:02. A harmonica plays sadly. Was it really worth it?

Inclement Trial: The final track, our old crusty hero is trying to win the trial by representing himself, the judge and jury parts sung by Flansburgh. Unfortunately, I don't know how the song ends because the CD skips too much to understand it because a couple grains of sand had scratched up the CD. This is apparently a common problem and I am yet to find a full version uploaded on the internet. In other news, apparently David Byrne was supposed to sing as the judge and jury but backed out because they insisted he play the harmonica.

AUSTRALIAN BONUS TRACK

Horses (cover): Did they just go through the "most disturbing songs" post and pick out songs to do? Why'd they even pick "Horses", it's mostly sound effects. Hearing Linnell slurp water is something I didn't want to hear.

yeah sorry about springing in like this,  i was gonna dm you or message but i dont really want to be known since this is super awkward 

But some while ago i receeived this rly weird message about you in my inbox and idk what to think of it.. i debated but i feel like you should know somebody out there is saying stuff like this about you. i normally dont believe stuff like this to begin with cuz it seems really outlandish in the first place but i dont know 

u dont actually have to explain anything or post this honestly. 

 -----------

Lol.Wow.I'm just laughing because of how ludicrous this is actually. 

But for a quick debunk that I know I don't owe anyone but I have time to kill:

1. This is the only blog I have. I don't have any alternative accounts. @dana-chan325 is my only other blog. And the reason I stopped using it is because around my birthday last year, I got completely locked out of my account, and was forced to change my password. The email associated with the account is my college email, and as a graduate, I don't have access to it. So I was perma-locked out of that account forever. And I don't believe I've ever reblogged zadr on it, aside from maybe jokes about it, or them holding hands. Same here.

2. As far as supporting Zadr goes, it's cute. I read it when it's there. The fandom is so oversaturated with it, it's easier to just casually like it. I have no beef with zadr and I've read a few several fics on the ship, but I more prefer zadf. I'm also extremely selective and picky about it. And I typically don't reblog anything past the boys holding hands or hugging. Maybe a kiss, but if it's a @bamsara brand kiss. (chomping dib's face off)  Although I have stated several times on my blog that my all-time favorite IZ fic of all time is a zadr fic.

 Also... I wonder if that person even sees my blog.

I'm an Avid shipper of Zim's Computer and Professor Membrane. (arguably, the only male adults with a lot of screentime in the show.) 

I just reblogged fanart of them that @i-like-pink-lolzz made me for my birthday.

 Because Zim's Computer and Professor Membrane are just totally Zim and Dib in costumes right? loooooool 

3. "She dated a pedophile"

This I have to fucking laugh my ass off.

I've only dated two people in MY LIFE (and swiped left on dating apps over a schmillion times)And I haven't dated since 2013.

That's over eight years ago

so if they grew up to be pedophiles, I don't freaking know. I lost all contact with them after we broke up XD

 The first guy I dated was majoring in childhood education, and the other guy was a scumbag who cheated on me with my sister.

So if any one of them turned out to be a pedo hope it's guy number two and he's in jail XD Cus fuck him honestly. 

4. Additionally, to debunk me being a pedo... I work as a one-on-one children's Aid at an Elementary School. Working with Kindergarteners and extremely young children. I've also worked at a High School as a one-on-one with Autistic Teens and Teens with developmental or anger issues. I don't take pedo accusations lightly, and I feel the internet has to stop throwing that term around just to describe people they don't like.

5.  "A Zadr Discord server."I don't own a discord server myself.

But I am an avid member of the Moo-Ping 10 Discord Server. But I am not a moderator or an owner of it. 

The server is ship neutral and ship safe. People do draw Zadr there, but there is also, Brainbrane, ZaTr, ZaGr, and PraR and PaZRr as well as many others.

The server is all-inclusive and non-discriminatory towards ships. A lot of minors are on it, but just as many adults are on it as well. It's a PG-13 server and it's a place where people won't feel judged for just wanting to see their favorite fictional characters kiss. Anyways, I hope that clears that up.

And weirdly, thanks for sharing that with me.

I have seasonal and chronic depression that hits me pretty hard around this time of year. But this actually cheered me up so much. It gave me a good laugh, and made me realize how awesome I am compared to someone who would go around spreading baseless rumors like this. But it weirdly made me happy, and made me feel a lot better about myself. So thanks.

But yeah, that anon just hates me I guess.

OBSESSIVE TEACHINGS - DARK!TOM HIDDLESTON

CHAPTER SIX: PICKUP TRUCK THOUGHTS

SUMMARY: Lynn takes a moment of solitude to put things into perspective, all thanks to a friend’s truck and some clouds. WORD COUNT: 2.8k NOTE: Not me falling of the face of the internet for a couple months. Whoops! WARNINGS: dark!tom hiddleston, teacher!tom hiddleston

OBSESSIVE TEACHINGS MASTERLIST

"YOU REALIZE IT'S A SERIOUS problem at this point, right?"

"At least it's not crack."

The two familiar voices catch both mine and Gabe's attention. With the doors open, legs sprawled out wherever they're comfy, and some early 2000s alternative music jamming from the speakers, we genuinely look like high school delinquents. All we're missing is a cigarette hanging from our lips.

My back aches as I pry my upper half to sit up straight, a chorus of popping following my movement. I brightly grin at River and Ellie and my feet reach the black pavement. It appears Ellie just rolled her eyes at River's sassy remark. I begin to ask what they were talking about before I notice something being shoved back in the boy's backpack: his new Obi-Wan Kenobi lightsaber. Part of me isn't surprised, but the other half is wondering what reason he has to carry it around at school. Regardless of the reason, we all have our quirks: it took me until the eighth grade to leave my replica of Harry Potter's wand at home.

Geeky things, I guess?

I can only guess what River was telling Ellie when it comes to his devotion to Star Wars. There isn't an existing number to count how often River and I find ourselves on the topic of space battles and the Skywalkers.

"What's up, friendos?" I ask as they draw closer. A sudden chilly breeze lifts my hair and bumps along my skin. It's almost a frustrating sensation, it being the middle of August. It looks like I'm the only one who feels it, as my teeth are the only ones that chatter. Since my arms are tightly holding each other, I barely have time to react to Ellie's next reaction.

Ellie drags her feet dramatically until she goes limp in my arms. "I wanna go home and sleep."

I stumble back at the weight added, wriggling my arms to hold her steady. The last thing I need on the first day of school is a concussion. "Christ— well maybe if you get off, we can take you home."

River piles his backpack into the back of Gabe's truck, the loud thump startling Ellie, and looks at us with a confused stare. "Weren't– Weren't we supposed to hang out today?"

The girl in my arms rises to her feet, groaning. "Shit, I forgot. My mom said she wants me back home after school as soon as possible. You know, groundings and all."

"Next time, don't get into an accident." Gabe sends her a smirk.

Ellie narrows her eyes and mocks his response, crossing her arms and leaning on one leg. A small chortle parts my lips as I lean up against the truck next to River. After her bickering, Ellie continues. "Go get ice cream or something in my memory. I just have to get back before I'm killed, which should be any day now."

"I call your funeral playlist," I reply. Looking up while my fingers stroke my chin comically, I add, "A ton of 80s pop with a dash of Gaga?"

Booping my nose, Ellie smiles. "You know me too well."

We all file into Gabe's small truck— well, almost all of us. Since the truck is a three-seater and police like to patrol this area, there is always a sacrifice who gets to claim the back of the car. This time, it happens to be me. Once I was lying flat on my back, a blue tarp was pulled over my body, coming right above my nose. Oh, the perks of old, short pick-up trucks roaming a town with endless police...

Sliding open the window, Gabe's voice calls out. "You good back there?"

"Yeah, I'm fucking peachy," I reply.

There's the sound of laughter before the engine kicks on. At that moment, my paranoia starts to kick in, starting with my heart beating fast in my chest and palms getting sweaty. Not once have any of us gotten caught, but I can't help but think the day we are, it's my ass going to jail. I've never bothered to look at the laws relating to seat belts in other states, but here, the law is highly enforced. Not only would I get fined and definitely put into a cell, but I have no doubt Gabe would endure the same fate.

Nice way to put yourself in one of these states, I chastise myself.

I almost groan, but I can't be sure if I'll cause one of the friends up front to worry. So, I exhale and inhale rhythmically like I was taught. Looking straight ahead, all I can see are blue skies and puffy white clouds. Occasionally, a tree or two will enter the scenery. I'm barely blinking as I try to put shapes to the clouds, some more impossible than others. Despite having an imaginative mind, the figures aren't creating a picture for me to follow.

I like to remember how easy it was as a child to create something out of nothing. An empty napkin roll wasn't just cardboard; it was a telescope that needed color. Our dolls weren't acting on our behalf; they were doing it themselves and showing us their lives. Every cloud wasn't just a random array of water droplets but rather, a visual story to be told. I want to know what causes all of us to lose that form of innocence. Ways of thinking like pessimism or optimism, that's easy: once too many shitty things start to happen more than the good, one is likely to form a biased view or vice versa. But, why do we stop playing with imaginary friends? Or act out intense battles on the playground? Even the smallest blip of innocence, like cloud-watching, becomes warped.

Sometimes, it's easy to pick out that moment in our own lives where we find ourselves becoming grown-ups and leaving childhood behind, but the shitty part is that it isn't just me or Ellie, River, or Gabe who go through trials. It's not just the kid who loses a parent or the girl who was taken advantage of. Everyone has their wars. And in the end, we lose, becoming a part of the system that inflicts these damages.

These damages I speak of tear us apart. They mold us into shapes beyond recognition. No longer a funny shape or a distorted animal in the sky, but dark, heavy, and so close to bursting. And when we finally let go, after all the waiting and rolling, we seem to explode, leaking and oozing our pain, our torment, us. And when it's over? What's left? I guess there are two options: remain on the ground to seep into further nothingness, or rise once more, only to break again, again, and again. But life is such torment and full of trials, is it not?

Funny how staring at a cloud can put life into perspective.

My brain is overrun by these thoughts that I don't even realize Gabe's truck is rolling to a stop. I finally take notice when car doors swing open then shut.

"Wake up, sleeping beauty," River says leaning over the side of the truck to get a look at me.

Rolling my eyes with a grin, I swat at his shoulder, which misses as he recoils. "Shut up, loser." I sit up, tossing the tarp to the side as I move to stand. River smirks and offers his hands to help me down. Without hesitation I take them, swinging one leg over the side and the other following before I made a short leap to the ground. Because neither of us apparently can avoid embarrassment, we're both holding each other's hands after I land. A rosy blush spreads across his entire face— no doubt mine as well— before I take the initiative to lean backwards, focusing on Ellie who crawls from the side door.

"Speaking of losers," Gabe sighs. I can't help but feel the reddening in my cheeks, assuming this asshole is talking about River and me, but I notice he's looking at Ellie, now swinging her backpack around one shoulder in her driveway.

She notices that all of us are looking, causing her to freeze. "Why does everyone hate me today?"

I smile bringing her into a goofy hug. "We just miss you. Don't get into any more accidents, please?"

"Yeah, yeah," she snorts, hugging me back to the best of her ability, considering I have her arms pinned down at an odd angle. "Alright, leave my driveway before I actually get you guys killed."

Gabe, River, and I say our goodbyes before filing into the white truck, heading God-knows-where as a worn-down engine sparks to life. Looking over at River, who sits to my right in the passenger seat, I send him a glare that he doesn't see since his eyes are focused on what lies beyond the window— or lack thereof.

While his hair barely covers his neck, mine flows down to my mid-back, meaning having windows rolled all the way down and speeding down a highway won't lead to the best outcomes for my hair. But I can't complain too much: River's hair going crazy in the wind is both cute and a bit funny. A small smile graces my features before a thin lock of hair enters my lips.

Glancing over at the driver, I notice how only locks of hair toward the ends move slowly despite the windows rolled all the way down, as if the strands are wearing a shield against the wind. I wonder how Gabriel keeps his hair so still before making the dumbfounding realization that he wears that beanie 24/7 and who knows how long he goes without washing his perfect hair. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen the boy without the hat. I guarantee no one would recognize him without it.

"So, where are we heading?" Gabriel asks when we reach the stoplight before entering the populated part of town.

I exhale, leaning my head on the headrest of the seat. "Well, I for one could go for something frozen. Maybe a burger, too."

"Didn't you just eat lunch?" River asks, humorously smiling in my direction.

"And had coffee literally less than an hour ago," Gabe adds.

Sending a blank look to River (whose smile widens) then over to Gabe, his eyes never leaving the stretch of road ahead of him (at least one person in the group can do that), I huff, my eyes shutting closed and I bring my shoulders up into a shrug. "I don't know what you both have against me and my food and drink consumption, but you better knock it off."

There's a small hum of laughter to my right, sending a slight shiver down my neck. "If we left you alone for a week, there's no telling how much you'd put in your system," River tells me as if I don't know that already.

"Yeah, yeah. Alright, Bob and Jillian, I don't need you to berate me."

══════════════════

Twenty minutes later, the three of us find ourselves outside a burger joint. In one hand, I have a burger waiting to be devoured and in the other is a frozen strawberry lemonade. Nothing says summer like this combination. We're sitting the parking lot eating our meals, more specifically in the back of the truck. From my phone, I have a playlist plainly called "Chill" playing from the nearly-blown speakers.

"I never thought food could taste so good," I moan as the burger slides down my throat.

"You're acting like you haven't eaten in a week."

Sending Gabe an eye-roll, I reply, "It might as well have been."

There's a moment of silence before River brings up a topic not discussed in a couple weeks. "Do you guys wanna come over and jam for a bit sometime this week? We haven't done anything in a while."

One summer a few years back, the trio of us learned we can play different instruments. I have been playing the guitar and drums since I was younger, thanks to a musically gifted grandfather. Gabe and River both had a knack for guitar too, though Gabe had more experience with the bass guitar and River had some training with piano. While our jam sessions are nothing too serious, as none of us want to be in a band or write our own songs, it's become a fun and stress-reducing way to hang out when silence would otherwise fill the atmosphere. The last time, we figured out how to play the theme songs of our favorite movies using a ukulele and bongos. It was something I didn't need to hear, but I'm glad I did.

I nod my head. "Yeah, we can this weekend if we aren't being drowned in homework by that point."

Gabe also agrees with a nod, his mouth full of fries. "It's a maybe from me: Mom might need to borrow the truck since hers is wearing down."

River turns his dark brown eyes over to me, capturing an embarrassing scene as lettuce pokes between my stuffed lips. Great. "Well, I guess I can hang out with you if someone can't show."

While I playfully punch his arm, I send a look over to Gabe who hides a smirk in his straw. He catches me looking as River goes on about one of his classes. Sending me a wink, I narrow my eyes knowingly: his mom just got a brand new truck. Mr. Matchmaker goes back to this food, making a statement on how hot River's finance teacher is, causing the boy to make a very uncomfortable face.

Despite the long talks we shared in the back of Gabe's truck, I find myself zoning out hardcore once again. I can't figure out why exactly my mind had wondered, but I do know where. My thoughts go back to Trinity's face, remembering how she would sit next to me against the side of the truck the very few times she decided to make time for my friends. There's a ghost of warmth in my palm like fingers squeezing when the short snippet of a memory expels from deep inside my mind. I don't know why I thought of it. It just appeared, causing a droplet of woe to fill my gut.

Like my friends have told me before, I need to let this go. There's no use in holding on to something, or rather someone who isn't coming back, especially someone who was never good for me in the first place. Glancing up, I spy on River munching and talking with Gabe. A blush covers my cheeks when I remember how utterly embarrassing it was when I broke down in front of him over a stupid girl. He told me there are worse things to worry about.

"Like climate change?" I asked, sniffling into a pillow. I hope he washed it after that encounter. Hell, he needed to lysol everything down after my mopey ass walked through the place.

River smiled warmly at me, pulling me into a giant bear hug. Sometimes, I want to ask for one of those hugs again. "I was going to say people who like pineapple on pizza, but climate change is also a concern."

I remember crying not a second later, but that was due to the thought of polar bears facing extinction.

Contrary to knowing how wonderful my three best friends are, I'm also aware that there are certain things I can't share. I don't want to overbear them with my problems that should have been solved months ago. The fact that I'm still getting small flashbacks and thoughts of her is pathetic, and I'm aware of that fact. On the other hand, it isn't like my group of friends will give up and leave if I spill my guts, right? I shouldn't be scared of expression my thoughts, feelings, and emotions to my closest friends. And yet, here I sit, undecided on what to do.

Christ, do I need to get my priorities straight.

When my eyes break away from their trance, all I see is Gabe and River entering a heated discussion, about what I'm not sure. With my thoughts still in a bit of limbo, I'm shocked back to reality when they both leap from either side of the vehicle, rushing to pull items from their bags.

Under any other normal circumstance, it would be concerning to see two dudes arguing one moment then reaching into their bags the next. I'm willing to bet the next logical calculation for a stranger would have been to get away, fearing the queue for guns or knives. But I know these losers. Even if they are fighting or wanting to kill each other, there is only one way they can settle their differences.

"Soon, you will see the way of the Jedi," River exclaims while thrashing his blue lightsaber through the air.

"Shut the fuck up, you nerd!" Gabe flicks out a red lightsaber, taunting the other.

"Oh, my God," I say with no emotion in my tone, watching as red and blue shamelessly slash at each other in battery-produced light in a burger joint parking lot.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

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this is kind of a Hot Take (and rlly long) so don't feel pressured to post this

also no one cancel thedreadvampy over posting this ask if she does these are my beliefs and not necessarily hers kthx

I'm honestly really uncertain why people are so militant about aphobia on this site. like obviously aphobes are Not Nice People and it's good to be against their shitty beliefs. But I've been on this site for ~5 years and I have never, in my memory, seen an aphobe (with the few exception of like. literal nazis but their main label isn't aphobe). I have seen a lot of people who were then harassed/cancelled being called aphobes in addition to a lot of other things like (homophobic, racist, abusive, etc) but as far as I bothered to figure out, the label of aphobe came from one specific phrase they used or one post they reblogged (though I can't be bothered to Deep Research so I genuinely don't know on this one).

(I have seen casual acephobia in my own personal life. however, that is not Tumblr.)

I have seen scores of posts along the lines of "aphobes are bad" "aphobes dni" etc etc.

Maybe it's just who I follow, but it seems like there's a lot more anti-aphobe sentiment than aphobes. Which is good! It's the goal! However, I think it's possible that that anti-aphobe sentiment has not become "look how few aphobes there are! yay!" it's "there are hidden aphobes all around us and you have to interrogate everyone to know who to ostracize"

You're a fairly popular figure in the mechs/tma fandoms and the thing about Tumblr is that it hates popular figures. And more than that, you're visible, so a) people will see if you answer a bunch of questions about ace things, and b) you exist in everyone's brains more than little blogs.

to be clear. to be absolutely crystal 100% clear: I am not saying that people got together and went "let's interrogate all the popular blogs so we can pretend theyre acephobic and have fun bullying people," I'm saying it's possible that what was once a positive emotion, "we don't tolerate intolerant people" has possibly, in some people, morphed into a fear that intolerant people are hiding all around them. And frankly, that fear can be understandable (not right, not kind, but understandable), especially if they face hate irl and their only outlet for emotion is tumblr. shit, Tumblr is one of my emotional outlets.

I don't think it's bad to engage with these people in good faith, or to answer questions, but I think it's possible that some of them are coming from the "intolerant people are hiding all around us and must be ferreted out" kind of perspective instead of a "hey I wanna check that this person isn't an intolerant asshole before following/supporting them" or "I want to engage with a person who may be ignorant" (I'm not attempting to imply that you're ignorant). Im not saying "not answer their questions" this is just, like, my opinion. I'm not making a lot of actionable statements here.

that's my whole Hot Take, hopefully I made some kind of sense, I just honestly feel kind of mad on your behalf that you have to go thru an interrogation to be Not Tumblr Cancelled. If people were generally having a nuanced discussion then that would be fine but you've already stated several times that ace/aspec people are valid and deserve love and respect etc etc. which as an aspec person makes me feel that your blog is safe for me, and I don't feel the need to play 20 Questions Are You Sure You Aren't An Aphobe

I don't know how much of this I entirely agree with and I refuse to think

(not about this. just in general. today I refuse to think)

my main response to this is:

a) I think my confusion is I have less than 1500 followers I think I always assumed the You Are Now A Public Figure People Have Opinions On mark had to be higher than that but this appears to have been a totally incorrect assumption

b) I don't feel like. a threat of Cancellation except inasmuch as I don't want Kofi to eventually get any kind of kickback if I turn out to be or people understand me to be a shitty person. I didn't ask for a platform or do anything to deserve it, if I get distressed it's largely just that I don't want to be a shitty person! and I have a whole thing about. I don't ever feel secure in my ability to say I'm NOT being shitty so like if enough people start saying AH RUTH THEDREADVAMPY IS A GARBAGE PERSON I definitely do stay wondering if they're right even if I think my position is morally defensible. like I'm very easy to get into a spiral of I think that's highly defensible but maybe I'm just in denial/trying to cover my ass/self-justifying so I can avoid accountability/etc. like this is a thing and it's why I'm very uncomfortable with absolutism, a lot of my family in my experience have a phenomenal capacity for denial and for rewriting reality into something they Fully Believe despite all the evidence, and so I'm really conscious of the possibility that I'm doing that and I wouldn't. know about it. it's a really really powerful subconscious force and that's been like. a big fear point for me my whole life. that I could be being a cunt and be obviously being a cunt and be so deep in denial that it just doesn't register at all. this is like. the thing I fear most. So I DO want people to tell me if I'm being a dick because the only way I can 100% know I'm not just in denial is if I can trust people to call me in, but I really, really, really struggle with when people say I'm being a dick and I disagree, not because they're harassing me necessarily but just because it really sends me into a spiral of doubting my own ability to be sure about like, anything. at all. it's a whole unreality thing which is, uh, it's MINE to deal with, it's not something I would want to put on other people, but it very much does affect my responses and I didn't mean to write this but hey, no therapy last week and it shows.

oh also c) on reflection I don't agree that there's very little aphobia on Tumblr (although as I've said I'm not ace or aro so my opinion should hold little weight) but I do think that there's a lack of give and take, not just in aphobia stuff but also in general, in these kinds of conversations, like sometimes yeah people are actively hateful but I don't think there's any room for misunderstanding, poor phrasing, or questioning, and I understand that that's coming from a really genuine place of pain and devaluation of aro/ace experiences but I also think people jump straight to assuming active malice very fast, and often explicitly consider "actively not stating an opinion" to be an offence on the level of "actively staying a harmful opinion," which I think is unhelpful. like. we learn by listening, there are times in my life where I would have been lying at the time to agree unconditionally with something like "I think we should believe survivors" (I was a 2000s teen who hung out with 4channers) but I also was conscious of the harm that it would do to publicly debate from the perspective that No We Shouldn't Believe Survivors, so you know I waited and I listened and I thought about it and ultimately I came to a position I could say with my chest. but like. The online social more that you Have to have an opinion and I Have to hear it to prove that you have the Right opinion is. uncomfortable to me to say the least. I don't think it gives you much room to learn and improve, especially given that everything on the internet is permanent and often treated as if it forever reflects your current beliefs. like I have changed my opinions So Much since I was 16 and if someone went back through a tag on my blog to Prove My Bad Opinions they could paint pretty much any picture they wanted with 12 years of changing opinions.

anyway yeah like. no I don't fully agree with this ask but I appreciate the alternate perspective. I also did not mean to write another wall of text I'm just very much In A Brain Hole today and sometimes words Just Happen.

okay now im curious

why is lance a dick?

in canon? he is for a fact a dick. at the very basic, cause he doesn't take no for no, is misogynistic, objectifying even. he's a lowkey bully who belittles people around him to make himself feel better.

the fact that the poor handling of the show lead to him never having his arc leaves him at that too lol

1.but here's the thing, i love him for this. because as a man, it's hard to look past ur privilege, and it's human for people to be that way if they grow in an environment which doesn't let them grow out of this and see what they are doing is wrong.

((in my headcanons, i think his cultural background could come into play too. i say this as a poc, some of the things that people(liberals) with education/internet privilege forget is that not all countries/people have the europe/usa/canada "2 wings being presented equally" thingy and public debates and discussions between them. media brainwashing is real in bloc/medium/low economic countries and some of these ideologies of patriarchy and ignorance are much deeply embedded in the cultures. it's harder to break those barriers. ))

i have been reading about cuba, i will in summer properly uk, but from what i know and have heard, it's conservative and communist and the society is closer to what i know. if we hc lance growing up in that environment, it would take a lot to not be an ignorant asshole.

(before calling me racist(shut up) -this is ofc NOT to say that lance's hispanic family cant be leftist and loving and supportive and accepting and smart. homophobes/sexists can be found anywhere. woke parents or those who love no matter what can be found anywhere. remember i said in MY HEADCANONS a place where i make the story. i chose the pessimistic side. i have flowery hcs with a nice loving fam too and they are all valid.)

2.we all deal with our insecurities differently, and while it doesn't excuse the assholery, it explains it. it's the typical gay bully basically. ((in my headcanons the big poc family/culture plays into his upbringing and lack of empathy and the root of insecurity too.))

(i just wanna put this out here, before dont attacking me for justifying assholery, know that i said it's not excusable. but shit happens, people do shit and i personally lean towards redemptions that's my shit. i get it if u r angry, if these types of redemption talks hurt u because of ur personal real experiences. i get it. i am someone who lived in delhi her whole life i know how it is to have unwanted men stalk u and touch u in streets. i wasn't ur TM likable girl ever either, so i have and do experience instances of bullying. i just still have a different perspective. and that's okay. i am not invalidating you, or asking u to forgive anyone.)

one of the reasons why i hate that they fucked up the show due to idk the production bts shit that happened is this. they had started to show his arc which i think was the original plan, his insecurities, his desperation for validation.... and him growing but they fucked up and then just picked on random instances of his vulnerability and him being a dick and then him being made fun of and never connected the dots.

i think his arc of him learning would have been beautiful. especially with how lance is. we know lance is loving, and determined to maintain his relationships. we know he is caring. we know how welcoming he is. if he was corrected, his empath would have taken over and he would have immediately started working on himself. he would easily WILLING to deal with his insecurities, and his behaviors.

infact uk i just rebloged ur lance is gay hc and said his "subconscious tendency to make dick moves constantly" suits that, cause it's human for gay guys to sometimes be internally homophobic because of the society and the environment we live in, even more for people who are not well educated on these topics and that probability can increase by where u come from a non white/conservative place. his constant denial and lying to himself may make him do shit like subconsciously pretend to pine over a girl and then break said girl's heart. it's his fault for "trying to make himself straight" some people will argue, but it's human! it happens! and we mess shit up and hurt people, but we grow too many times. that's what i was trying to say.

I remember - recently enough to be a vivid memory but much longer than I’d think - I remember a time when the Internet was a place where we all collectively laughed at “those assholes who get mad over nothing”. You know, the self-centered pricks with no perspective, whether it was about politics, friendships, fandom, you name it; the people that had some kind of Problem and just wouldn’t shut up about it until you made them. 

I was never one to go after people, to seek out insecure folks on the internet for thrills - doing that just makes you the asshole, after all! - but seeing those people throw a fit only to get mocked into obscurity always came with a sense of morbid satisfaction. It was cathartic to encounter a bad actor, someone whose only motivation was to control or overpower others, and to collectively disarm them and put them to the side. 

As you get older, you get better at spotting these people. You start to learn their playbooks, the tactics they’ll use, the words they’ll hide behind, desperate to get you to take them seriously. And you learn how to twist these deceptions inside-out and to reveal their true natures. This was, I feel, the true artform of trolling - a sort of emotional judo, taking someone’s incoming self-righteous ego and deftly flipping it on them, demonstrating the futility of that ego, forcing them to choose between embarrassing themselves further or publicly admitting defeat. Some tried to use this power only in self-defense; others, blinded to its true potential and its dangers, used it to entertain themselves, and gave the rest of us a bad name. But that was fine. That was the way of things, sometimes; it didn’t need to bother us.

But it’s been a good few years since the golden age. Things have changed. On the one hand, “trolls” have regressed. What was once an elegant, if also crude, form of verbal combat has now just turned into outright violence. Social media has turned small communities into huge shouting matches, and it’s become so incredibly easy to just ignore voices that don’t agree with you... which is sometimes good, and often very bad. The old ways have lost refinement; there’s rarely any need for a one-to-one argument, so trolling has lost its purpose, and the cultural identity of the internet has been reduced to its hateful vocal few and a bunch of people who either don’t know better, or are too desperate to belong, or both.

On the other, though, trolling served a very important purpose online: it was a social trial by fire. If you wanted to make friends on the internet, you needed to learn how to engage with other people, and if you didn’t learn quickly, you’d be ripped apart - forced to find a new community, or at the very least, to start over with a new name (and hope you aren’t seen through). With the old arts being lost to the sands of time, it’s become easier and easier to simply assert your presence online, refuse to acknowledge your own interpersonal flaws, and to just... be here, because no one can tell you no. 

There are so many people I’ve encountered on tumblr that would be bullied out of their communities entirely about a decade or so ago - not because they’re weak, not because their communities are cruel, but because they themselves are assholes. Because we had quickly realized that the only sure way to deal with an idiot is to openly humiliate them, no tip-toeing, no sugarcoating. Because you were entitled to no one’s attention - no one was obligated to host you or to tolerate your bad manners. You could do anything you wanted on the internet... but so could everyone else. If you weren’t the sort of person other people liked having around, then you would find yourself alone, and you would either learn... or you wouldn’t. 

Things are different now, but I don’t think it’s as different as it seems. Culturally, sure, we’re a bit different. A lot of us, even the younger ones, are more responsible. We’ve learned a lot as an online culture, and grown more tolerant. And a lot of us want to put the warring behind us; it was petty and childish and we’d like to be remembered as better than that, or at the very least just to be left alone. And I think that’s all well and good. But I don’t think these people by themselves have dissolved the Internet-as-a-crucible. I think it’s largely the way sites are designed now. Online communities used to be user-driven, which meant that even large sites were run by people whose primary focus was building and serving that community; it was in their best interests, as hosts, to enforce a certain amount of order, and to curate people who weren’t willing to play by the rules, for one reason or another. 

But then Web 2.0 happened, and now all that really matters is that people are talking. It doesn’t matter what they’re talking about, or whether two people in a conversation are even talking about the same thing, or why those two people are talking to each other in the first place; all that matters is getting as many people talking as possible, as often as possible, and it turns out that contriving conflict and making resolution difficult makes conversation happen a lot. 

We - or at least I - like to call the old days of the internet the “Wild West”, in that we were self-governing, that there was no sense of law and order except the rules we agreed to abide by on our own. But the Internet back then was so civil by comparison. Nowadays it really is “everyone for themselves”. If some asshole comes into your tag and starts spreading hate, what options do you even have? There’s no moderators or administrators to turn to, to say “hey, this person’s making our experience miserable, please remove them”; god forbid you try to actually report them to Tumblr, as if Tumblr gives a shit. Your only form of collective action is having everybody block that person, and that’s the best you’ve got - hoping that they can’t find anybody else to harass, and feeling powerless to actually... y’know... stop them from being an asshole. Maybe, just maybe, if you’re brave, you can try to help other people understand what’s going on... 

...But it’s so easy to misunderstand or misinterpret a wayward message, especially on Web 2.0 sites that are designed to remove you from context as much as possible. Even this post, as I read it with older and wiser eyes, has its flaws. What’s the difference between “trolling” and “hazing”? Where’s the line supposed to be drawn? Ironically, because we have to fend for ourselves so openly now, we’re so acutely aware of how the vulnerable can be affected when people aren’t careful. Depending on how old a person is, a scolding and mocking tone may be exactly appropriate, or completely uncalled for; depending on their background it maybe proper to rip into them for a misleading or unrealistic portrayal of a group’s struggle, or it might turn out you’re the asshole for policing someone’s way of coping. And even if you are in the right, what happens when the other person cries foul, finds or fabricates some kind of offense you’ve made, and passes it around to bystanders with no other stakes in the conversation? Now what? Do you just decide you don’t care what the general public thinks? It’s much harder than it used to be to just ignore people, after all. The only way you can protect yourself is not to play, but you can’t call it a winning move. There are no winning moves anymore.

It’s just so funny to me to look at all of the snobbish, entitled white adults in American society - and worldwide, I’m sure - and to draw connections between them, and the bratty upstart children on the internet that, anymore, we’re powerless to do anything about and just have to ignore and hope they grow up. Because they probably won’t. They will probably grow up to be the assholes we’re seeing on TV, protesting masks during a pandemic, demanding other people take them seriously, without a trace of self-awareness. Just a good few years ago, just for a little while, we as an online society were empowered to deal with those people; we couldn’t fix them, but we could prevent them from harming us, and a lot of the time we could even reform them and help them grow.

And then the big money came along and Capitalized the internet, and wouldn’t you know it, those people have gone back to being protected and enabled by the system.

(1/3)HELLO! It's me, Anon who loves you again(lol). But you can call me Zera since I feel like we are going to interact more now (if u want to of course). But Damn, I just went back to finally read your response and I agree so much with what you say. I have an entire essay to write back and this shitty ask will not let me express myself lmao. Anyway, those past few days I felt so shitty just because of how degratory people can be on the internet because they think they are anonymous.

(2/3)Tumblr at this point is so…f*ucked. Constant slandering denigration, muckraking and aspersions. Some people try to negate the toxic and keep it alive but this platform is a breeding place for mob mentality. I’ve seen so many people bullied out of the place just for having a differing opinion. And so many people being all woke trying to “spill tea”, “expose” real people. They tarnish people’s feelings and reputations all behind their safe anonymous cocoon.

(3/3) And they justify this abuse/slander with “I am allowed to express my opinions so gtfo if you don’t agree bitch”. They play the victim when people tell them that opinions do not mean denigrating real people for bullshit reasons with no real proof. At this point sweetie, I am just ranting. Sorry if I am bothering you with those negative thoughts but I felt so shitty those past few days and you are pratically the only one I can get behind in this hellhole tumblr shit. Also, I am writing out-

(Last Part) As I was TRYING TO SAY before the limit bullshit cut me off, I am writing out a response to your previous response to my previous ask. It’s way too long already so I will either need to send you through dm or cut it out into pieces after I have fully written everything out. Thankkk you so much for talking to me despite me being so sudden with you. I appreciate you so much and I hope you are taking care out there (both physically AND mentally). Also, loving those art reblogs

Hello Zera and nice to meet you by your name (or nickname, it’s cute anyway~) and I’m glad you like my fanart reblogs.

I am sorry that you are feeling shitty…it’s frustrating, to say the least, to see people hide behind anonymous and slander blogs, names, real people who are behind them, for an opinion, a taste, whatever. I find irritating even the words/expressions they use, maybe because as a non native English speaker I saw them for the first time used in this bad context so they are only associated to tumblr fake woke idiots and their ‘that’s the tea’ shit. And it’s ironic that they can talk shit about people however they want but when people do the same to them they justify with not only the reasons I listen in my last reply but also with this thing you mentioned, that they are allowed to express their opinion…like, what about the person they slandered? oh but they are not ‘valid’ (I hate this word too) because their opinion is wrong. Says them, ofc. Then ofc they start playing the victim because poor kids, everyone is a bully to them.

It’s ok to rant, I understand your feeling well and I’d like to tell you that if you ‘stop paying attention’ to this it will be ok, but I do fall into the frustration & irritation pit too sometimes. But it happens less often, cause I channeled my fandom time and interested on positive stuff instead and so I want to stay. I don’t want to be preachy or belittle this problem because I know how hard it is (and you can see in my blog that I struggled with these problems directly too, both from dumbasses like those you describe, and from a different kind of creep lol, and even in my other fandom there is slandering and calling out and horrible things), but recently even more, all this coronavirus lockdown (my country is in quarantine since more than a month now) and something horrible that happened to the person I love, made me reconsider certain things. At least for me, at least for now, their importance is dulled down now…Even more than before where I was already detached from fandom dramas.

And since I can see things from a detached perspective I might try ‘suggesting’ something to not let this shit get to you…because life is a b*tch and you can’t allow yourself to suffer for f*ckers who don’t even show themselves, hiding behind an anonymous, or running a shitty blog where they just shit on people, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t engage in fandom discussion (or, like they call it, ‘discourse’, another word I hate) anyway, and I recommend everyone to not engage in anything with those f*ckers. Not because you (not just you Zera but you guys in general) are scared of them but because what they want is attention, and receiving replies, reblogs, attacks, everything, is what they want. blocking them, even making fun of them like they do to others, is ok, cause it’s repaying them with their same treatment. But cut communication. Block people, everyone. These idiots, their friends, those who put likes on their shit, those who put likes on their shit but also to your stuff because they can’t pick a side and maybe they’re good people who don’t think much about these things. Block every single person who irritates you even just a little, and everyone around them. Unfollow people, but mostly block them. The fanarts I post now has little notes compared to the ones I had in the past when I posted them, because I blocked everyone who annoys me, everyone whose opinions annoy me, everyone who starts shit even though I don’t want to speak to them, like every SN/SI/canon stans and puritans and more. I unfollowed friends who followed one of those fake woke b*tches, who reblogged their stuff I didn’t want to see, and made them unfollow me. Marie Kondo my a** lol

And make it clear, so that those who’ll see these people shitting on someone who clearly said they blocked them, will realize who’s bullying who. Maybe it won’t change anything in the short period but in the long run it will, because these assholes have their same behavioral pattern, being overt or even more, covert narcissistic b*tches in need of attention, so if their target ignores them they’ll move to another, in the same ‘area’.

The temptation to check their blogs and see if they attack you, your friends, or what they do in order to protect yourself is strong, but it won’t help getting over this. I know it’s hard and I fell into this a lot, but we all should use fandoms in a positive way to get distracted when we feel like shit because of fandoms…like looking at fanarts, fanfiction or using some private chat group that you know it’s a safe space, even though I read that a dischord chat became moralistic hell unexpectedly, for some the people who joined.

Anyway, sometimes we (and I include myself) fall into this ‘addiction’ where we consider fandom things so important, and we neglect real life people and things…and negative shit like bullying, slandering and all this makes us feel horribly and it’s not different from real life bullying. Sometimes it’s even worse because we join a fandom as a distraction, an escape route sometimes for real life problems, and instead we end up feeling like shit because of it. But, as someone who spent a whole year trying to expose a very bad person who did bad things to me online, and as a person who was slandered many times and always fought back, I can say that letting this affect our real life is bad. Because real life is even harder and we don’t need more weights on our shoulders. And if something like illness or death get close to your circle of people, you realize how all this is pointless, how these f*ckers have no purpose in their pathetic lives other than making others feel bad, and how we can and must fight back everything, but not let it get inside our heads and hearts, where we must keep things we like, our fave characters, ships, dynamics, kinks, people, whatever.

Because, and really everything I say I tried and try on myself first, there will come a time where you’ll look back at this and you’ll realize you might have missed something more important in your life, real or online it doesn’t matter, both are important…Life, I was saying, sometimes is cruel in big and small ways, taking something or someone away from you when you least expect it, making it hard to do the things you like because some a**holes decides it’s wrong, online and offline (like, try feeding crows in my area and see how much hate you can get, and being hated for something so harmless is really horrible, and it’s like the real life representation of online shit imo) is too short to worry about shitty blogs run by shitty people or shitty anons~

I really hope you’re feeling better Zera, and if you celebrate Easter I wish you a happy one!

oh im sorry Ais i wrote like 4000 words on my notes and it would be hard to spit it all.. i could message you? but i understand you not wanting that and if you say it is better to for me to discuss it here i will.

Sure! I apologize in advance if I’m a bit slow to reply at times - for whatever reason, in the last few years especially, I get emotionally and physically drained a lot faster than I used to be when being online. I suppose it’s in part a reaction to everything with “Sonny” and all that - the internet used to be my safe place, where I found communities that I finally felt a sense of belonging in, and where I had some of my best friends who I talked to endlessly to work through different things. Where a person I thought of as a brother was there, and where I got to work on projects that helped me destress from everyday life and were just generally fun to write. Then all that stuff happened, and because my default way of dealing with things as as avoidant as Boyd, it’s kind of one of those things where I find it easier to just not exist online for long stretches of time.

I only say all of that to say ahead of time that if I do reply in spurts, or I talk a shit ton at once then disappear for a long time, then start talking again - it’s genuinely not me trying to be an asshole. It’s just the way I seem to regulate my internal energy. It’s gotten better now that I’m monitoring my vitamin levels and etc but I still never know when my mental health is going to tank out of nowhere and I just kind of walk away until I can deal with things again. 

But I also am totally happy to talk things through! Also, I’m interested in hearing your concerns so I can see things from your perspective and so I can see what my thought process is on the topics. I’m writing/editing my solo LGBTQIA+ sci-fi/fantasy series and it’s always good to get feedback to see if concerns that arose from past projects are something to keep in mind for future ones. No story will ever be perfect; I kind of think that’s impossible. But I’m always looking for ways to improve, and if ICoS is a series that is upsetting to you but you like the aspect of some parts of it, if you want to let me know what it was that upset you, then whether or not I can answer things related to ICoS itself, it at least gives me something to think about in future writings. It doesn’t mean I will follow everything you say, since it might turn out we just happen to have different ways of viewing the world, but that’s totally fine if so. I can at the very least listen, and in listening it might affect future stories.

Anyway, you can DM me here if you’d like, or if you want you can email me. I’m at [email protected]. Email sometimes is better because it’s easier to track conversations, but also sometimes I get overachieving in my emails and disappear for months at a time when I get into really in depth conversations, because I want to give it the attention and energy it deserves and sometimes it takes me a long time to regain that. Oh also I’m on discord. Would that work better? You can find me at Ais #3293. Is that how I share my name with you? God, I still suck so hard at discord istg... Like, do you need the little emojis I use too?? I have no fucking clue. Technically I’m ais 💀👻🌈 #3293. I think. Good lord, how can I be so bad at a thing I’ve been on for awhile?? ugh. But that’s probably another good place for a longer conversation; honestly, that might be the best, but truly - whatever works for you!

Also, seriously, I hope the energy/mental health part of this doesn’t seem like I’m trying to guilt-trip or anything ridiculous like that. I just know myself well enough to know that it’s inevitable that I will be super chatty for awhile, then I will go dead-ass silent, and then I will talk again. I imagine that can feel really off-putting to other people and maybe they think that means I suddenly hate them or something but I don’t. And that makes me feel really bad because I’m genuinely not trying to hurt anyone with that behavior, it’s just how I have learned to live my life so I can give the proper amount of attention and energy to people and topics that deserve it without completely stripping myself of so much energy I slide into depression. So I like to give that as a forewarning so you don’t have to have any stress should that happen.

Anyway feel free to contact me wherever! 

And PS: if other people want they can find/add me on discord or whatever too, or if somehow you didn’t have my email address there it is. I’ve shared it a lot over the years but maybe newer people don’t have it.

That Anon certainly has no business calling them selfish, but I’ve never understood pulling all your content as a reaction to these kinds of things. Future work, sure, I’m not going to miss anything I’ve never used. But with existing stuff that was previously publicly available, you feel rather helpless. A majority of users respect TOUs and appreciate the modders work, there is a positive relationship there and you’d hope that still counts. But all it takes is 1 asshole to ruin it. It’s a shame.

First off thanks for being civil and polite with your anon message it is much appreciated :)  All the below is stuff I have come across and in no way do I speak for all modders. I can barely speak for myself somedays lol. I am going to assume you are not a modder just from your post if this isn’t true then I apologize.

I will agree for the most part there is a positive relationship between modders and users but you would be amazed by the amount of people I see using my mods who have never taken the time to comment or endorse my mods. I spent hours making that mod that they will enjoy for hours and they didn’t even take a few seconds to say thanks and endorse it. I try to respond to every comment I get on the Nexus (sometimes notifications do not always work) as it is one of the few times we get to interact with the users. It can feel like a very one sided relationship and how are we to know that they appreciate it when they don’t take the time to say it? (for an example one of my older mods has 11,920 downloads, but only 24 comments from users and 396 endorsements) Even a simple thanks for sharing! Awesome work :) Love it! can go a long way in making a modder know you appreciate their work I am not asking you to kiss my butt to the sun and back. 

Until you put yourself into that modder’s shoes I do not think you can understand what this really feels like. In the past I have hidden mods as it is a knee jerk reaction to everything that is going on. It is the quickest and easiest way for a modder to control their mods. Which is completely fair as a creator it is our right to control our creations. 

You have to remember that modders are real people with real feelings. They put their time, heart and soul into these mods and when someone disrespects their decision or their mods it is like a knife to the heart. I know that seems dramatic but we spend hours working on and tweaking these mods they become important to us especially if we make them with a specific character in mind that is special to us.  

You have no idea what that modder is dealing with in their real life, life has a tendency of kicking you down and then continuing to kick you when you are still down. If hiding their mods allows them a bit of respite from all the crap and stress in their life then it is a smart decision otherwise you get burnt out really quick. I have been there and it isn’t pretty. A person’s mental health is much more important then any mod every made. This is supposed to be a fun hobby not a crappy part time job but with time it starts to feel like work and instead of being a stress relief it becomes a source of stress.

You are just seeing this one instance but it isn’t just 1 asshole a modder is dealing with. You haven’t had to deal with getting rude, disrespectful comments from users. You haven’t had to deal with people being nice/friendly to you just to get them to make you a specific mod, then ditch you or say rude shit about you in the future. You haven’t had your work stolen or reused in other mods without permission. You haven’t had anon hate sent to you just because they don’t agree with a mod you made or have people talk behind your back about a mod you made. You haven’t had to deal with people comparing your work to others and telling you that the other modder’s work is far superior to yours. You haven’t spent hours troubleshooting something that has nothing to do with your mod but you are getting blamed for it. You haven’t had to deal with people harassing you over if you are going to share a mod and if you are when is it going to be released. You haven’t had to deal with people requesting changes to make it fit their character. You haven’t had people complain that your images are not good enough to show off your mod and that they won’t try it until you post more images. You haven’t had youtubers steal your images and use them as click bait for their videos. You haven’t had your free work stolen then “edited” a bit then put behind a paywall by another modder. All these things add up and you become tired, jaded and hesitant to release anything. We are just human we can only take so much. So to you it looks like 1 asshole but it’s much more then that, it is a bunch of little things add up until we get to a tipping point and we can’t take anymore. Everyone always says you need to grow a thicker skin on the internet but sometimes it feels like you have to become bulletproof in order to come out unscathed. 

If you love a mod that much and feel helpless when it is removed then treat it like a limited collector’s edition when you download it and keep a backup or multiple backups. I myself tend to hoard mods, I buy external HDD’s and store tons of mods on them. I have them on multiple drives now as I had a shelf incident (my cat broke the shelf and all my hdd’s fall off and died, RIP). Some of my all time fav’s I have even saved digital copies of just to be safe. Or you can try your hand at modding I can point you to some free programs and some great tutorials to get you started. Many modders myself included are willing to help and share their knowledge. 

I agree it is a shame when a modder feels like their only choice is to hide a mod. It is not an easy decision to make as you can see you face backlash and hate for doing it. This is a huge reason why modders just disappear and I don’t blame them. I feel like doing it all the time, the older I get the less time & patience I have to put up with it all.

Hope this helps explain a bit more from a modder’s perspective. I do get your point of views and before I started modding myself I felt the same but now that I am on the other side of the fence I understand. 

I appreciate you taking the time to send this message and then talking the time to read my novel of answer.

Happy Modding! 

Kala

Is it right for fandom to frame the conflict as Catelyn's feelings versus Jon's safety? A child's safety is of course a priority, so framing it this means we can't consider what Catelyn is going through at all because what kind of monsters would prioritise an adult's feelings over a child's safety?

No, because framing every conflict as either/or and everyone picks a side is an unproductive conversation with no resolution or gain in understanding.  Some people in the fandom need to chill the fuck out.  Let’s remember that as much as we love Jon, he’s not a real person.  There are no actual abused children at stake here.  We can afford to take a step back and look at all the factors in play. Catelyn just doesn’t go around being terrible to everyone.  She isn’t a naturally cruel person.  Jon is her one sore spot that makes her irrationally paranoid.  Of course there is nothing right or okay about that; however, there are more complicated reasons for that than just the fact that he’s a bastard and she has a bastard prejudice. Understanding why something happened the way it did is not a failure of priorities or an attempt to justify Catelyn behavior toward Jon.  We can expand our scope to include:  

the pressure of fucked up social norms that places a humiliating neon flashing sign over Ned’s infidelity and teaches people to view Jon as having corruption in his “black blood.”

Ned’s overreactive mishandling of Catelyn’s initial attempt to be understanding about the whole thing.  How the patriarchy allows him to get away with this and how Catelyn is obligated to submit to her husband even when he’s wronging her.  This is a crucial event because Catelyn didn’t start out being irrationally paranoid about Jon.  Shocked and disconcerted, yes, but she tried to deal with the situation in a mature, sensitive way, open to being understanding about his reasons so she could at least move forward with the air clear.  Ned’s violent shutdown was where those seeds of fervent resentment toward Jon personally really sown.        

Ned using his authority to thereafter make Jon’s mother a taboo subject and a crime for which the penalty is catching the lord’s wrath.  So Catelyn wasn’t the only one creating a climate of tension and suspicion around Jon. 

Ned’s enforced silence keeping everyone in a state of confusion, misunderstanding, and shame that leads BOTH Jon and Catelyn to fill in the blanks with their most fearful assumptions.  That’s another thing too. Ned’s refusal to tell Jon anything about his mother is psychological abuse.  It fills Jon with a deep sense of shame and guilt about his existence because he believes he is the embodiment of the ONE stain on Ned Stark’s unimpeachable honor.

Ned’s failure to use his authority to intervene on Jon’s behalf so that he is treated with basic human decency and respect by Catelyn.

That the intentions behind Ned’s continued lying and withholding of information are not entirely noble or for Jon’s greater good, especially as years go by.  Ned, being a flawed human, doesn’t want to have that hard conversation where he has to confess to his beloved wife that he lied to her, put her through a hell that made her feel like she was never going to measure up to this other woman, and face her potentially relationship-ending anger and hurt.  It makes him look like a complete asshole, so his continued silence and avoidance is a way to control Catelyn’s perception of him and the truth.  Same goes for Jon. 

And all those things feed into the dynamic between Catelyn and Jon because as I stated before Catelyn and Ned’s marital history is intrinsically related to that dynamic.  There’s a lot to tease apart, and I don’t believe they can be treated as entirely separate issues.  Finding empathy for certain aspects of Catelyn’s position and perspective does not mean anyone is taking any empathy away from Jon or wrongly prioritizing Catelyn’s feelings at the expense of Jon’s safety.  Empathy is not a finite resource that must be allocated to a single, totally innocent party.  As a fandom, it would be nice if we just took it as a given that most of us are decent people that are aware that all forms of child abuse are wrong and that we do hold abusers 100% accountable for their decision to abuse.  I mean, unless we’re dealing with some fruitcake that states explicitly that Catelyn was justified in treating Jon that way.  But that opinion isn’t the norm and can be simply ignored as stupid.  So while Catelyn is 100% responsible for her decision to abuse Jon, we can still acknowledge how she arrived at harboring these intense anxieties about him that are motivating her actions.  Because Catelyn is not normally a cruel, unempathetic, or irrational person.  We established she can be very level-headed, calm, and understanding most of the time.  She massively fails in this one specific area and we should want to know why.  And it isn’t fair to hold Ned, the other adult character who had a direct hand in the situation, to a significantly lower threshold of responsibility.  They deserve an equal measure of criticism as well as understanding.        

The subject of child abuse is very triggering, and of course, our empathy goes out to Jon first and foremost.  As it should.  He did absolutely nothing wrong.  None of this is his fault.  I take it as a given that most people who question extending any empathy and understanding at all to Catelyn are coming at it from a well-meaning place.  Child abuse in real life is appalling, and our gut reaction is to paint the abuser as an inhuman monster who isn’t worthy of any consideration.  I certainly don’t shed any tears for those people, and I have called DCF on some rotten parents before.  But again, Jon is not a real person in need of immediate protection by real people.  His abuse is fictional and there are no real stakes here.  We can take our time to get at what Martin is trying to say with fundamentally good and decent characters who may sometimes betray their own nature by acting terrible for horrible reasons.  Seeking to understand a complicated issue like the tragic dynamics at WF is not akin to abuse apologism if it is handled with temperance and careful consideration.  We can still prioritize how we spread around our sympathies.  Prioritizing does not mean the top concern makes all other concerns irrelevant or invalid.  I do believe most people want to look at the characters fairly and want to have their first-reading assumptions challenged or expanded upon.   

What can escalate into nasty behavior and have a real negative impact on people is when some fans accuse other fans as being monstrous for empathizing with a character that they don’t like.  This is not coming from a well-meaning place and it happens way too damn often when they’ve spent too much time deep diving into the fandom without coming up for air.  Publically calling into question a fandom member’s morality is an attempt to discredit them and the conversation if it smells suspiciously of nuance and humanizing A Bad Person.  Framing any conflict as either/or or black and white means you have to pick and side and you are defined by that choice.  Sometimes people do this simply out of ignorance, limited perspective, and the desire to be viewed as a good person.  We’re unfortunately in an age where people (especially young people) are under pressure to project a spotlessly good and woke online persona because if you fuck up even a tiny bit, strangers on the internet are gonna come for your blood.  That’s where things can take a very ironic turn where they become the morality police, interrogating and browbeating other people so they show the world what side they are on.  Over fictional characters ffs!  If you find yourself turning blue in the face over something, it might be time to come up for air.  Just sayin.                        

What does "git gud" mean? I understand the concept of practice, but there seems to be a considerable cultural component.

...okay, so... right. Dark Souls came out at a time when most big-budget RPGs  were not... particularly hard. If I’m remembering right, this was the time when God of War and its clones were really really really big, and God of War is more of a flashy beat-em-up than a proper action RPG.   It was the same year that Skyrim came out, to put it into perspective.

A lot of gamers who liked RPGs were thus looking for more of a challenge. They wanted something with a lot more crunch- something where you had to really work to succeed, and not just get the timing on a bunch of Quicktime events right. Something where you had to work to progress the story, rather than having a bunch of very earnest NPCs shuttle you through a guided tour of the world. 

Enter Dark Souls. 

Dark Souls was the sequel to Demons’ Souls, a game that had sold really well in Japan, but didn’t in the US- it was enough of a hit, though, that it got a cult following. You had a couple handfuls of really really dedicated fans who spread the word that DEMONS’ SOULS IS GOOD, YOU SHOULD PLAY IT, so by the time Dark Souls came out, a lot of people were pretty excited. An RPG that you can really sink your teeth into? That has that cronch that’s been missing from RPGs for years now? Bring it on!

 The trouble was, though, a lot of people came to Dark Souls for the first time with their expectations of RPGs set a lot lower than your average hardcore Demons’ Souls fan. Like, a loooooot lower. They’d gotten into RPGs pretty recently and didn’t remember punishingly difficult old-school stuff; they expected most RPGs to be on-rails and flashy, because that was the only kind of RPG they’d ever played. 

So you’d get these people coming into Dark Souls forums saying things like “The enemies in [a place you’re Not Supposed To Be] are too hard, how do I beat them?” or “the game didn’t tell me where to go next, I’m totally lost”. And there are a lot of kind, helpful people in the Dark Souls community, who would tell them where to go. But there were also a lot of elitist fuckwits who’d like to make fun of noobs who had no idea what they were doing, and there were a lot of noob-y fuckwits who would want the game to immediately explain everything to them, completely missing the point. 

So people started saying ‘git gud’ to mean one of two things: 

1. "you're whining that the game won’t explain everything to you after you've had it patiently explained to you six times that the game doesn’t tell you anything. to enjoy dark souls, you need to explore and take risks and die a lot. you refuse to engage with the game at all and want someone to hand the secret of success to you. there’s no secret. git gud or stop asking." 

 2. "i'm an asshole and i can't understand why anyone would have trouble with things that I find easy. if you have any kind of problem with Dark Souls- even if it’s something that is punishingly unfair or completely unexplained- then you’re a whiny babyman and you need to git gud."

...And to be fair, there’s a lot of overlap. Sometimes people will have problems with something “everyone knows”, and they don’t deserve to be laughed at. And on the flip side of that, even the nicest person will eventually snap if enough people are dicks to them. And wayyyy back in the early days of Dark Souls (TM) there were a lot of people who didn’t get the point of the game being assholes. 

The thing is that there’s enough assholes in the ~souls community~ that if you’re outside it, you’ve probably only ever seen it used in the second way (as a ~funny internet own from afar~). So it really just does look like “stop whining and get good at the game”.��

But you’re right, there is some context there. 

It Can Definitely Happen Here

Or: Internment by Samira Ahmed!

This will be a likely be a short review for the following reasons:

I’m lazy.

I only just finished the book

I had the ARC for months and only just got to it, see #1.

No one reads this, this blog is literally just me screaming into the black void that is the internet letting it know that I exist.

The book is out today and, once again, I have missed the point of an “advanced review.” Advanced meaning “in advance of the publication date.” Meaning “probably not the day the damn book comes out.”

Note: It has come to my attention that the book actually comes out on March 19, 2019. So...I actually got this review done on time. Ha. Aha. Ahahahahahahahaha.

Also, this book takes on a whole new meaning after the recent terrorist attack in New Zealand. I went back and reread some scenes and cried even more than I did already.

And now back to my regularly scheduled review.

Layla Amin is a regular American teenager. Only the America she lives in is under the control of a bunch of racist pieces of shit. Ahmed never gives names to these assholes in power - you can guess - but they don’t even really need names. It’s depressingly easy to imagine just who these people are. Anyway, the people in power are doing whatever they want. So they’ve declared all Muslims enemies of the state. Because of course they would. 

Unfortunately, Layla comes from a Desi family who are Muslim. They’re not super religious or anything, but that doesn’t matter. Rather than checking the “no religion” box on the census, the Amins refused to hide who they are, so they put down that they are Muslim. And now the Administration is using that data to round up all Muslim Americans and put them in internment camps.

Sound familiar? Yeah, because we’ve totally done it before. The Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII might feel like distant history, but it seriously wasn’t that long ago. Like, for serious serious not that long ago. 77 years is not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. People who were in those internment camps are still around. Like American Treasure and Mr. Sulu, George Takei who was just a kid when he was interred, first in Rohwer, Arkansas then at Tule Lake in California. As you can imagine, the internment camps for Japanese Americans were put in places that were less than hospitable. Like the middle of the desert. Because humanity can really be the worst sometimes.

Anyway, back to Layla. One night she breaks the nation-wide curfew to go and see her boyfriend, David, as teens are wont to do. Soon after she gets home, though, men with guns show up at her house and give her and her parents 10 minutes to pack up what they need. They’re taken to L.A. where they’re put on a train then put onto buses to a camp called Mobius somewhere outside Independence, California. Just a hop, skip and a jump from Manzanar! So...the desert. And no, this Mobius isn’t anything like the famous Möbius strip, either. This is a cross between a FEMA camp like you’d see after a natural disaster combined with a prison camp. Sure, they have food, water, and adequate shelter. It’s still a goddamn prison camp, though, run by the sadistic Director, whose actual name is never given but you can really picture who this guy looks like. Layla’s parents are, naturally, terrified by the whole situation and just want to keep their heads down and survive. Not Layla, though. She is going to resist, goddamn it! Plus, there’s a guard who is totally on her side. Or is he?

So, Internment - overall I thought the book was OK, but then again, I’m pretty biased towards stories that feature magic and dragons and steampunk. 15-minutes-into-the-future dystopias are less my thing at the moment. Probably because we live in one, but still. The writing was good, especially the descriptions of the yucky dusty desert. I’m a Pacific Northwesterner to my core - give me rain and trees, not desert. Let’s just ignore the fact that a huge portion of my home state is desert. I did like how Ahmed didn’t condemn Layla’s parents for wanting to keep their heads down and endure. Lots of YA novels tend to dismiss or ignore the fears and worries of parents in favor of the teen perspective, so it was nice to see a YA novel that acknowledges the parents’ fears. The main villain, the Director, was a mite cartoonish - but then again, if you watch Sophie Scholl: Die letzten Tage and think the Nazis in that movie are cartoonish, just remember they used actual court transcripts of Sophie Scholl’s trial for that movie. Evil can be pretty cartoony - doesn’t make it less scary. 

However, my favorite part of the whole book is Laya’s friend Ayesha. Ayesha is the best. Why? Because she loves Star Wars and also Riz Ahmed. Because, seriously, how can you not love both Star Wars and Riz Ahmed. I mean, come on:

He’s just so damn gorgeous.

I mean, come on, just look at him.

How much more proof do you need? Because I can look at gifs of Riz Ahmed all day.

Seriously, and yes this is an unpopular opinion alert, but Rogue One might just be my favorite Star Wars movie because I loved all the characters so much and every time I watch it I bawl my eyes out. I seriously wish Rogue One could’ve been a 10-part miniseries so we could’ve gotten to know the characters better. Like Cassian and K2-SO. And Bodhi - I want to know everything about his life and what he’s been up to. The novelization of the movie only offers so much! And I definitely could use a whole trilogy of Baze and Chirrut’s adventures.

Seriously, what were those two up to the whole time? How did they meet? How long have they been adventuring together? What was their life like before the Empire? What were they up to back when they were Guardians of the Whills? What kind of mischief did Chirrut get up to that Baze had to rescue him from? THIS IS INFORMATION THAT I NEED.

The tie-in novels only tell us so much, damn it! Though Rebel Rising was quite good (fuck yeah, Beth Revis!). Why can’t all of the Rogue One crew get spin-off novels? There were a few comics featuring the origin story of Cassian and K2, but I need a whole epic YA novel of their adventures. And Bodhi’s. And Baze and Chirrut’s. All they got was a middle grade novel. It wasn’t even an origin story! It was still good, though. I just want more. MORE, DAMN IT.

Huh, I knew I said this was going to be short review of Samira Ahmed’s Internment, but instead I got into a major Star Wars/Riz Ahmed spiral, there. Sometimes I just can’t help myself. I’ve gotta look at some more Riz Ahmed gifs.

God, he’s gorgeous.

RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone looking for some scary “it could definitely happen here” YA fiction.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Racists.

RATING: 3.5/5

RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019. So. Uh. Today.  Actually, it comes out March 19, 2019. For some reason I got the two dates confused. So I was actually a week ahead here? I...I made a deadline? What...what is this feeling....is it...accomplishment of some sort?

Nah, this is a tumblr blog for wasting time, not an accomplishment.

RIZ AHMED:

Hey All, 

So yeah I’ve been neglecting this blog big time since the season finale and I want to give an explanation. Which is more for my own benefit than anyone elses actually since sometimes writing things down can really help even if you don’t think anyone is gonna read it...

I’ve been running this blog for two and a half years now. Before this blog, I had never involved myself in online fandom or even internet communities in general. I just didn’t do that kind of thing because I didn’t even know about it. I have thoroughly enjoyed the majority of the time spent here. I have enjoyed building online friendships and getting to know this community - a community I have always seen as being honest and friendly and full of bloggers I respect and would hope also respect me. 

Because I am relatively new to online fandom, I guess I have also been extremely naive. When I first started this blog I didn’t do it because I wanted to validate my own opinion of this show, I didn’t do it because I wanted to be a big blogger with lots of followers and posts that gained a lot of notes either. None of that stuff has ever really bothered me too much, I’m not looking for fandom fame here, never have. At first I wasn’t really even seeking out friendships to bleed over into my real life - I was depressed and a bit of a hermit at the time so any idea of making friends outside of the online space just wasn’t on the agenda. My whole reason for joining fandom was because I had previously spent around a year lurking on certain meta writers blogs reading their stuff and thinking “wow” and “I want to interact with these people because this is all awesome”. I wanted to share my opinion and bounce ideas off of those bloggers who I respected and thought were funny and intelligent and kind people. I wanted to get to know them and discuss the show with them.

That was all I ever wanted. End of story. No fame, no massive following myself. No viral posts. Just communication with people I respected.

I got that. For a long time. I still have in a lot of ways. Along the line, I also somehow found myself meeting up with some of these people in real life, and getting closer to them, to the point that now some of them are people I consider my best friends. Others I may have only met for the first time recently, whose blogs I have followed since the beginning, and who I hope I will continue to meet and remain friends with for the foreseeable future - because they are awesome too.

I don’t regret those friendships for one second. But what I do regret is the mess caused by getting close to people who you also interact with in fandom. Because with fandom comes the wank, and when that wank then bleeds into your real life, it really fucks you up. 

So this is where I have been, not just for the past few weeks since I have been MIA, but in fact for around 3 months now. Mentally and emotionally exhausted because of drama that started in fandom that bled over into my real life, and has caused me more emotional upset and heartache than falling out with a former “best friend” a few years back ever did. It is actually shocking how much this former fandom drama has effected me, so much so, that even the people closest to me, who are aware of all the details, probably still don’t know just how much this has fucked with my head and caused me to regress into a shell. It’s really fucking bad and has been effecting my life in more ways than one. 

I don’t think people realise how much all this shit affects us. It was easier when I could separate it. Fandom in one box, real life in a different box. Use each one to escape the other. For the past 3 months there has been no fucking escape for me.

Why am I telling you all this? I guess because I feel like it could help others who are overwhelmed by fandom, by being in a community where it is possible for anyone to suddenly find themselves with a huge following and influence others. It's so fucking easy for that kind of thing to go to people's heads, and there are people in this community who will abuse that and use their status and power to abuse people and generally be shitty human beings because no matter what they do there will be others who will support them and think the sun shines out their ass.

Anyway. I'm not here to talk specifics. I did consider it, but I won't. Though some people in this fandom have really hurt me, I know they will never truly apologise for their actions, or even admit to being responsible. They don’t give a shit about me and in some cases barely know who I am. Doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt me and fuck up my life for a period of time. Others have sat at the side lines and watched as I slowly lost myself to all this shit and instead of being a friend and give me the support I desperately needed, have been complicit in the wank, and let themselves be influenced by the very assholes who started this crap.

Regardless, I wanted this post to be a lesson to those newer to fandom, perhaps there are people out there who have been in a position where they have been hurt by supposed "big name fans" and also get sick in their stomachs when people continue to sing their praises, and can't avoid those people no matter what they do since Tumblr doesn't give us the ability to truly avoid other bloggers even with block and blacklist available. That is my situation now. I cannot continue enjoying this community whilst I am constantly having to be reminded of what I have gone through over the past few months, and because of that, before I come back properly, I need to drastically curate my dash, utilise the unfollow, block and blacklist options, and I suppose carve myself out a new space. A fresh start perhaps. I am still so terribly disappointing in everything. I used to adore our corner of fandom, but it has become so fucking toxic if I don’t try to shelter myself from it I’ll never heal, and I don’t yet want to leave completely.

Nevertheless, I shall persist, because believe it or not, this show we all love still brings me joy, and I want to talk about it again, to my hearts content, with people I care about in this space. But I will be extra careful in future about those who try to connect with me. I have learned my lessons, and I am done. Shitty behaviour online won’t be taken lightly, and I won’t have any hesitation calling people out for it in future.

So here are some lessons I have learned and try to remind myself of every day when dealing with fandom:

If you have been hurt by something, no matter how small, your emotions are valid and you deserve a sincere apology.

People who are truly your friends will stand by you. Those who don't stand by you are not worth your time.

Emotional manipulation is cruel. Don't let people do it. Don't let anyone invalidate your pain by making a situation about them.

Especially when you are then forced into impossible choices.

Especially when your feelings are ignored and you are put in situations that make you extremely uncomfortable.

Just because someone has a big following and comes across sweet and nice online doesn't mean they are. We all have online personas. A lot of people are fake. Take them off their pedestals before you watch them fall off.

Don't believe nasty rumours about people, but understand that blindly singing people's praises is just as bad. No one is fucking perfect no matter how much people may try to portray perfection.

Learn the difference between someone who genuinely wants your friendship and people who want to use you for online validation and popularity. This is important.

Even the smartest people can be emotionally manipulated. it’s not a flaw. It’s a product of someone elses cruelty. It’s not an insult for someone to try to tell you this either. It just means they care about you. 

If you are ever made to feel like your feeling don’t matter, or that you should get over your feelings, get those who tell you that out of your life.  Your feelings matter. You matter. You matter a hell of a lot more than the people who would try to deny you.

Social Justice issues are important, but social justice cannot be an excuse for nasty behaviour. Be wary of those that use social justice as a front for treating people badly. 

Be fucking kind to each other. Treat people with respect, and you will have their respect in return.

Lastly, I want to say that I know I’m not perfect. I can sometimes be pretty fucking horrible, especially when I’m feeling hurt and emotionally vulnerable. I have written the above lessons for me and that last point? To be kind to each other? I need to remind myself of that. To be kind to people I don’t agree with, even if those people attack me. Even if those people have caused me severe emotional stress. Sometimes I fail at being kind. Sometimes I am gonna hurt people including myself. I am sorry for that. I truly am. I do try to recognise my own flaws here and try to be sincere in my message.  I have been so stressed and I just can’t deal anymore. I’m not a bad person, but I know that some of you will read this post and seriously disapprove of it. Perhaps you feel it wasn’t necessary for me to post such a public message. Or that I am just trying to cause unnecessary drama (I’m really not). Or that I want attention (I don’t). I expect people to unfollow me because of this, and I’m okay with that. You do what you have to do. 

From my perspective I HAD to get it all down. I had to pour it all out of me like drawing poison from a wound. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. It’s been eating me alive. It was the only way I could bring myself to get back onto here because this place used to be my passion. I want my passion back.

What I don’t want is anyone asking me to tell them specifics. I want to put everything behind me and start afresh now. I need to rid myself of that negativity and just focus on the good stuff, on the stuff I came here for to begin with. I’ve got a lot going on in my real life separate to fandom drama and I want this to be my escape from that once again, I need this to be a happy place once more and will do whatever necessary to find that happy place.

I’m sorry guys, I know this was super long and prob super confusing for some people to read. I guess just know that I’m gonna try to be back and much more positive and happy than I was before now that this shit is behind me. I’m gonna keep this blog a happy place, ignore and block any sources of wank and negativity, and only post fun stuff about the show going forward. (Aside from the standard show related wank that may crop up here every now and again thanks to Bucklemming) If you are still with me after this long emotional essay, I hope you’ll still be with me going forward, and god knows I could use some actual real friends right now. 

Thanks for reading.

:)

Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master: A Legend

I'm not dead! Sorry for the long break, and sorry in advance for the fact that this post isn't quite up to my usual wordy standard; I've spent the last several months suffering from massive writer's block on almost every project I have on the go, including a novel, the next chapter of My Tauriel, and several blog posts.

Anyway, to get on with the show, I thought what The Last Jedi did with Luke Skywalker was one of the coolest and gutsiest things in it.

Bring it.

Spoilers for Star Wars through The Last Jedi and Lord of the Rings.

Now, I opened in that unnecessarily confrontational way because I've seen criticism of how this movie handled Luke from all over the place and all directions. And to an extent I get that, like I kind of get a lot of the criticism of this movie. I would, however, just like to get one small thing out of the way, and that's the comment I've seen all over the place that "they made Luke evil to make Kylo Ren good." And... no?

I think where this comes from is a feeling that because we see Luke do - or start to do - something unequivocally morally wrong, namely murder his student and nephew in his sleep, that must mean that the movie is telling us that Luke turned evil after we last saw him in the original trilogy. The main narrative beneficiary of such a change would be Ren, since this means that not only is the person telling us how he went bad unreliable, but he himself pushed Ren over the edge. It's not Ren's fault; his mentor betrayed him and so he fell from grace as a reaction to that. Luke is actually evil - the sort of man who would murder a helpless boy who trusted him - and Ren is his innocent victim.

Well, that only really holds up if you subscribe to the belief that if someone does or thinks one wrong thing they're irredeemably evil and that anyone who's been victimised is automatically good. And to be honest, I shouldn't be surprised this is a thing; it seems to be a really common belief on the internet.

But this was part of why I admired this story beat so much: it goes square against that narrative. What Luke did was wrong. Nobody denies that, even him. Right then in the moment he realised that he should not murder a defenceless boy just because of his own fears of what that boy might grow to do, and he accepts that what happened next was a consequence of his actions. Meanwhile, while Ren was right to be frightened and defend himself in the moment, and it's entirely reasonable that he drew his own lightsaber, force-pulled the roof down on Luke, left him for dead, and fled into the night, you know what wasn't a reasonable thing to do? Burn down the school and massacre the other students.

Luke did a bad thing, acknowledged it as bad, and accepted the personal consequences, including the lasting guilt. That doesn't make him evil, it makes him human. Ren reacted in an entirely understandable way up to the point where he went way too far and continued his trend of, when presented with multiple choices, always taking the evil one.

Ren: Gee, I've captured a teenage scavenger who has information I need. Shall I put her in a secure but comfy cell, apologise for scaring her, and offer her money and a ride home to Jakku in exchange for the information, or shall I tie her up, threaten her and her friends, and mind-rape her?

Also, while I'm defending Luke, you get points for realising that what you're about to do is awful before you do it. They say that the first thought you have is what you've been conditioned to think and the second is what you actually think.

Anyway, that probably would have been a nice segue over from the last post where I talked about the presentation of good and evil in these movies, but I did want to explicitly call out that one piece of criticism because it actually irritates me more than is rational. They did something complex and interesting! Stop discouraging them!

OK, so I mentioned that I can see why people are upset about this, and the next one I'm going to address is one that I actually kind of sympathise with, as well as being the reason I chose this specific quote as the title of this blog post: the presentation of Luke as a disillusioned old man who has failed to live up to his own legend.

I thought long and hard to come up with a hypothetical Tolkien example so I could empathise on this one, because Star Wars wasn't a big part of my childhood or anything, so maybe that's why I find it easy to say "Oh, neat, they're doing a cool new twist on an archetypical character" when everyone else in the cinema is saying "WTF have you done to Luke?" Eventually I came up with the option of "What if some asshole came along and made a sequel to Lord of the Rings in which we see that power corrupts and all the bad aspects of medieval kingship (and there are a lot of those) have started manifesting in Aragorn?" and concluded that yeah, I'd be pissed and that would actually be less upsetting than this must be because at least I'd have the comfort that such a sequel would be terrible fanfic, not actual canon. This is Star Wars canon now.

So yeah, I get why people are upset, but hear me and my outsider's perspective out.

For one thing, this is another difference between that hypothetical Lord of the Rings example and The Last Jedi: the problem isn't with Luke except that he couldn't live up to the legend that had grown up around his name and his position as the last of the Jedi and founder of a new Jedi order. And that's an awesome take.

A couple of things about me: first, I'm actually really interested in the question of what happens after these classic stories end. Now, that doesn't always mean that I want to find out - I don't feel the need to actually see Cinderella struggle to adjust to her new life as a princess in combination with the potential political awkwardness caused by the fact that the heir to the throne clearly suffers from face-blindness, and that's why I cannot believe Disney made two sequels (though I hear Cinderella 3 is way better than it has any right to be) - but it's always an interesting question. That's especially true of bigger and more complicated stories with world-shaking consequences like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings: it is kind of interesting to wonder how, after the happy/bittersweet ending, things fell apart. Because that's what things do.

To continue down this rabbit-hole - I promise I'll surface with a point in a moment - this was something Tolkien really got and which you can only really appreciate if you read all his Middle-Earth work: The Silmarillion, The Hobbit (supplemented by The Unfinished Tales), and The Lord of the Rings, in that order: things fall apart. Every time there's a victory, something is lost and it's only a temporary reprieve because evil always rises again. It may be smaller, but so are the forces of Good. Tolkien actually did start work on a sequel to Lord of the Rings in which we see evil returning during the reign of Aragorn's son Eldarion, not really because Eldarion was a crappy king or anything but just because that's what evil does.

The Last Jedi hits a similar note: Just because the Empire was defeated, evil isn't banished from the galaxy. And just as in that unfinished sequel, it's not because the heroes of the previous stories did anything wrong, it's just that this isn't as simple as it looks and winning one big battle and killing one guy doesn't solve all the problems. Eventually the situation will deteriorate again.

That's even more true where the heroes involved don't necessarily know how to pick up the pieces of the evil empire they destroyed, by the way. The galaxy was pretty lucky to have Leia on hand.

The second relevant thing I find interesting is myth-making: how people tell themselves stories about what's happening around them, and how that affects their behaviour and expectations. This is something that happens all the time, sometimes because someone is deliberately creating a myth around an event, group, or person, sometimes because a story has been heard, mis-remembered, and repeated so many times that it's lost some details and gained others, sometimes because people desperately want to believe in something. And it's honestly pretty fascinating. It's been great fun watching the discussion around Hamilton, for example, and how it seems to have changed views of the founding fathers because it presents a new myth in the form of a history play with awesome music.

Watching modern myth-making in the form of polemic and conspiracy theory is also a little bit terrifying, but that's a whole other topic.

Humans love to tell themselves and each other stories, and you can bet stories spread far and wide about Luke after the Empire fell. Even Rey, having grown up in this crappy backwater town on Jakku, seems to have knowledge and expectations of Luke and the Jedi. Doesn't it make all kinds of sense that those stories became myths and that they grew and changed in the years between the fall of the Empire and Luke taking some students and setting up a Jedi school, painting Luke as a larger-than-life hero who could do anything?

Personal anecdote time: when Obama was elected in 2008, I was at university in the States (now you can all guess my age :P). I watched the results coming in on the TV in our dorm lounge, and when the election was called for Obama the place went wild. We spilled out into the road, I could hear the celebrations from other dorms half a mile away, even I went running down the length of the building screaming and wearing an American flag as a cape. But once I'd calmed down a bit I looked around at the Bacchic levels of celebration and said to one of my friends "He'll be remembered as a failure." Naturally, she looked at me like I'd grown at least five heads, so I elaborated, "Everyone's built him up to be the Second Coming. He can't live up to this. Nobody can." I bring this up because that's what I remember when I look at Luke in The Last Jedi: everyone had such high hopes and expectations of him, a legend had built up around his name, he'd become a figure of myth, but at the end of the day he was just a man. He couldn't live up to that. Nobody could.

That acknowledgment of the effects of myth-making around great people and events isn't something I see very often in film, and it ties into what I was saying about seeing what happens after the words "The End". What stories do the people in the world tell themselves about the hero? How does that affect everyone's view of him? How does it affect his view of himself?

That last is also why I find Luke's characterisation in Last Jedi very believable. It makes total sense to me that after this massive failure, which also cost the lives of his students and might have driven his nephew to the dark side, he has withdrawn and become embittered. Again, I come back to the line I used to title this post; the way Hamill delivers it really sums that up.

By the way, good grief did my estimation for all the actors in this film go up.

Anyway, that also feels like a subversion of tropes, which was something this movie did in spades and I love it. I'm having trouble thinking of another of these epic fantasy stories where the hero tracks down the mentor who will turn them into a great warrior or whatever and finds someone so disillusioned. Rey's not having to persuade Luke she's worthy or anything (side-note: I especially enjoy that he never gets weird about the fact that a girl is so strong with the force. It wouldn't make a lot of sense - I mean, he knows Leia - but it was still nice not to have a a subplot where she has to prove she's worthy despite the ~*~terrible handicap~*~ of a second X chromosome), she's having to persuade him that just coming back into the fight at all is worth doing. She's not having to persuade him to train her but to train anyone, and his refusal actually does make sense. I mean, look what happened last time he got himself a crazy-powerful young student. Clearly he can't do this and it might not even be a good idea for anyone to do this.

Now, again, not very familiar with the original movies, this might actually be the exact route they took with Obi-wan and/or Yoda, but I don't remember ever seeing it before and something that distinctive is something I'm sure I would have noticed seeing for a second time. If I'm way off the mark here, though, I can only apologise.

One more comment, and then I'll close. I also really enjoyed Luke's relationship with Ren. This is kind of bringing me back to where I started, but it was still interesting to see how the break with Ren has affected Luke as well as how it's affected Ren. I like watching the emotional consequences play out, as well as how his previous failures have affected Luke's later relationship with Rey and view of himself. Also, that last fight was amazing. It did a great job of developing Ren's character in how he reacted to the sight of Luke and also the emptiness he seemed to feel when after all that Luke wasn't really there. For me, the way Ren reacted after that fight really did cement my view that this is not about Ren defending himself any more, no matter what his initial reaction might have been when he woke up to find Luke standing over him with a lightsaber; it's now about revenge. It kind of shone a new light on Ren, which was in itself interesting to me.

Anyway, I liked Luke in the original trilogy. I liked his enthusiasm, his intelligence, his determination, and his compassion (why did nobody tell me about him redeeming Darth Vader with the power of love?). However, that just meant that I enjoyed all the more seeing how he's been developed here. That Luke was still there, minus some enthusiasm and plus some world-weary cynicism that makes perfect sense given what's happened in the interim. I liked him as a character, I liked what he added to the story, and overall I think his presentation was one of the gutsiest things in this movie.

In summary: Luke good. Film good. Don't @ me.

If you enjoy my blog, you might also enjoy my novel: Bladedancer's Heirs. You can also find me on Goodreads!

I've had these thoughts going for a while, and I finally decided to put them to paper. Or, digital paper. You know. Typing. Voltron shipping is difficult to discuss for a lot of reasons (fear of harassment, doxxing, death threats, you name it). But I'm going to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot.

Something that gets my skin crawling is when people supplement ATLA names for things in VLD, aka "space Sokka" or "alien Ty Lee". It's something that legitimately bothers me as a creator, that folks will only forever see this staff for creating one successful IP. I don't do it often with TV, where it's more prevalent in children's shows (Butch Hartman, anyone?), and I try to do it less often with film (though directors do tend to have their own aesthetic and narrative style that carry from film to film). 

One thing I will say that is the same though? The ship wars. The ship wars from ATLA and Korra are not actually all that different from the ship wars in Voltron, and I'll discuss my experiences with both.

Oh, you. You thought this would be like a fake essay meme? Nah.

To start with, let's get some actual facts out of the way.

Joaquim dos Santos was a storyboardist for ATLA's season 2, and director on season 3. Lauren Montgomery also came on as a storyboardist during season 3. For the Legend of Korra, its sequel series, Joaquim returned as a director and Lauren returned as storyboardist and supervising producer.

Legend of Korra was animated as a collaborative part between Nickelodeon animation; Studio Mir, a studio in Korea; and Studio Pierrot, a studio in Japan (fun note: Korra is Studio Pierrot's only outsourced animation credit! Otherwise they seem to function strictly for Japanese animation and have done some of my favorite works).

Joaquim, Lauren, and Studio Mir (and some staff, Ki Hyun Ryu for example) stepped up and wanted to do an updated Voltron adaptation/remake. They've been successfully partnered with DreamWorks and Netflix starting production in 2014 to its successful 6th season to date (summer 2018, for potential future readers).

"What does all this have to do with ship wars?"

Well... Kind of everything, to be perfectly honest.

My experience with ATLA came a little late. When it started airing in 2005, I was already in my second semester of college. I was just-turned-17, a theatre major (for my scholarship), having to take at least 32 credits to keep my grant, and working part time while also being an art student. (Advice: Don't do that to yourself. Make better, healthier choices than I did.) So I didn't get much free time to sit and watch tv. I think of that first season, I saw maybe 5 episodes. I did manage to catch the first episode when it aired, and enjoyed it! I didn't catch much of season 2 at all ("Secret Tunnel" was the only episode that I can remember of that season I caught). By the time season 3 was airing, I'd already left college and had made the first of many cross-country moves by myself. And while I didn't have cable TV where I was, I had the internet. And I had a lot of friends who lived and breathed ATLA, and subsequently its shipping culture.

I wasn't new to shipping then (come talk to me about how riled I get with the Magic Knight Rayearth anime or Sailor Moon sometime), but the level of passion in the ATLA shipping culture threw me back a bit. LiveJournal and AIM chatrooms were the place to be at that time, and I saw so much hate thrown back and forth between two specific ships: Aang/Katara and Zuko/Katara. I saw arguments, I saw some mild hate campaigns, I saw harrassment, I saw pedophilia accusations toward Aang/Katara shippers, I saw accusations that fans were "baited" for Zuko/Katara by the production staff.

This type of thing kept me from ever watching ATLA until several years later on my own when a lot of it died down. And looking at it from an older, more critical eye? It was clear to me from episode one that Aang/Katara was going to be the ship if romance were to happen. I honestly to this day don't give much care for any ships in ALTA (except Sokka/Suki those sweet summer kids), but by film language alone, I could tell. "How, Jack? How could you tell from episode one?" Because it's a very common thing in both film and television (and now video games as it progresses more into a serious storytelling medium) to have a soft lingering shot of a character's face from another's POV.

Namely, these two specific shots:

Katara being the first person Aang sees when he's rescued from the ice and wakes up. That shot alone pretty much told me "oh if there's romance, it'll be these two". I'm begging you, go back and watch some of your favorite long-series romance and pick out when this happens to any canon couple. It's very common! Film studies, it's fun, and I highly encourage folks to get into it.

So what does this have to do with VLD?

Besides some of the same staff, a lot of people have gone into VLD expecting it to be another ATLA or Korra. They came in with expectations, some that are just not being met anymore. Not much has actually changed since ATLA ship wars: I still see harassment, death threats, accusations of pedophilia. The only thing that has changed is our means of communication and how shippers put it to use, and the climate of the internet itself.

While folks on the internet have always rallied for social change, in recent years it's become more and more prevalent. The only way to safely consume a media is to make sure it has no problematic elements whatsoever, otherwise you're a hypocrite. The only safe way to be a fan of a celebrity is to make sure they've never said anything that can be construed as problematic, or you're a hypocrite who stands for the very things they believe is an issue. Nowadays, with the rise of internet being weighed down with the struggles of real life people all over the world, actions certain governments are taking that make everything seem bleak, a lot of younger folks feel the need to couch their fandom experience in purity politics. If they aren't consuming the purest media, then they're as bad as oppressors (nevermind which oppressors, or what their own personal life experience is or isn't).

What I'm saying is: the reactions, harassment, threats, the salt channels, and overall arguments of shipping for VLD are the same as they were for ATLA. The difference is how it's presented. With ATLA, it was fan entitlement through and through, interpreting some scenes to mean something, then upset when it doesn't pan out the way they had predicted. With VLD, it's still the same fan entitlement and unhappy shouting when the show doesn't follow expectations, but now with the pretense of morality.

One other factor that's changed over the years is the public connection between studio staff and fans. Before, it was maybe possible to see or speak with staff at a convention or press meeting, but you would otherwise send fanmail to the studio. Nowadays, everyone's plugged right into most social media networks together with no one to filter harassment before it gets to the staff's eyes. With that ability, the rise of attendance in large conventions, and the animation industry having more information available about its process and upcoming seasons, fan entitlement has only grown and a lot of the more vocal fans feel the series is theirs rather than a story someone is sharing with them in a visual medium.  

The reasons behind ship wars 10 years ago are the same as they are now, just dressed up in a new outfit in an attempt to be more legitimate than "I don't like that ship".

What I'm getting at ultimately is this: your ship hate isn't new, dressing it up as morality isn't profound, and literally nothing excuses harassment or death threats sent to other fans or production staff. Thanks for coming to my ted talk from an older fandom person's perspective.

*Disclaimer: In no way am I saying someone is or isn’t allowed to ship a thing. Ship it! Ship what you want! Just don’t be an asshole about it to other people, y’know? 

submission: To the SJW anon

After reading your lengthier post, I really wanted to respond. I’ve been there and wanted to offer some advice. (To DW: hopefully it’s okay to submit this via you! Thank you for being a place where people can discuss stuff like this.) DW is right about your viewpoint on men. You’re not wrong for feeling like that, because cheating is shitty behaviour and no one wants to be cheated on or even to face the prospect of being cheated on. Definitely not. However, it’s important to get a good perspective, to connect with reality and know that even though you feel this way and it’s definitely understandable, it’s not a universal truth, you know? I don’t know what to say to you that will help you with that. I struggle a lot with trusting men, but it helps me to remind myself there are good people out there too, that the world is more complex than just my own perception of it, and I have full control over who I hang out with. Therapy also helped a LOT. So explore your options and see what might help you. Struggling despite being good: I hear that. Oh yeah. I see two parts to what you said: 1) seeing others succeed despite being ‘bad’, and 2) struggling despite behaving in line with your principles. Regarding 1) what others do is not your problem and has no reflection on you. It’s monumentally frustrating to see other people behaving badly and not receive consequences, but the reality is that you cannot control them. They are different people who aren’t living by what you think is correct, and you aren’t seeing the full extent of their lives anyway. You don’t see the full picture - do you know for sure they aren’t suffering consequences for their actions? Famous people keep the really shitty consequences hidden, and for good reason. Their lives are theirs and not yours. How is comparing their success/lives to yours helping you? This may sound harsh, but imo you have to stop caring. Other people will always do shitty things - the world is full of asshole people doing asshole things, and there is nothing you can do to stop that. Taking on that burden of caring about it is the path to madness. It is not bad to wipe your hands of people you’ve never met and will never meet. It really isn’t. (Reminder that the world is also full of kind, wonderful people doing wonderful things, and that’s really where attention should go, if you’re going to care about what other people do.) Regarding 2) life is a struggle, and operates independently of morals and virtue. I’m still wrestling with the idea that despite my best efforts, my life isn’t perfect, and probably never will be. I’m not sure where this expectation came from, tbh, that life will somehow be better if I behave well (religion?). It got better once I outlined what I actually cared about and put efforts towards those things. I found, actually, it can help to let go of certain 'good’ ideas - if you do it, you’ll see the sky doesn’t fall in and it doesn’t actually affect that much. If that doesn’t sound helpful, maybe better advice would be to step back and understand what you can actually affect and change. It is very difficult to behave in line with your principles when everyone around you is acting differently - so be very clear on what those principles are, and where you draw lines with them. Choose what you care about and focus on those. Like DW said, you as an individual cannot change everything. You can’t change Hollywood, your country, or the world. Figure out what you can do that makes a difference that matters to you, and do that instead. When you’re doing something that makes sense to YOU, then the rewards are there and are immediate. You’re not waiting for someone to recognise what you’re doing and rewarding you for it, you’re making yourself happy by doing what you actually want and feel is right. (The prodigal son tale is a bullshit story, but a better take on it would be that if the first son actually wanted to be there with his dad doing the right thing, then he would’ve been happy the entire time because he was doing what he wanted and what he felt was right - it would have been its own reward. That’s probably a very Stoic take on it though lol). I will also say that a lot of the discourse around inequality and injustice that I see online is American-centric. You said you’re from another country. I am not American either and certain nuances bug the hell out of me - just because things are a certain way in the USA doesn’t mean it’s exactly the same in other places. To give a deliberately vague example: racism is a universal concept and reality, but it manifests differently in other countries. Certain things have happened in the US that haven’t happened in other places (and certain things have happened in other countries that don’t happen in the US), so I sometimes find it irritating when Americans word things as though their experiences of certain issues like racism are universally true and apply all around the world. I’m not trying to diminish their issues at all - there’s a lot of shit going on and it needs to be addressed and discussed. (By them.) It’s important to recognise what concepts and issues are actually relevant and helpful to you and your life. Judging your country by American standards and inequality discourse just may not be that helpful in some situations. I don’t know if that’s what you’ve been doing, or if that’s your situation, but I wanted to make that point just in case. You sound like an intelligent and considerate person. Like DW said, you also sound like you have compassion overload. It’s very true that you can’t take care of other people and other things if you don’t look after yourself. No one is perfect. There are great people who have done extraordinary things for humanity, yet have been horrible in other parts of their lives - especially when viewed through the lens of time. Does that outweigh the benefits they’ve brought? It’s up to you to decide. No one can ever be perfect - and that includes you. It’s okay if you fuck up sometimes, because we all do. Sometimes we don’t act in line with our principles because life just doesn’t allow it. Shit happens. Priorities shift and change. What’s considered morally right nowadays will be different in twenty years’ time. It’s up to you to do decide what’s important to you. Don’t let others make that decision for you. My advice (like you haven’t had enough unsolicited advice in this post, right?!?!) is to step back and process things. Connect with yourself and maybe try therapy. Figure out what works for you and keep that in mind as you use the internet and go through your day. Being compassionate with yourself is paramount - and it’s not bad or selfish to put yourself first, it’s essential in this online environment. Putting yourself first also =/= being an uncaring asshole. Far from it. You can care about yourself

and

others. Balance is key to everything.

DW: Thank you for your perspective!