🩷 happy Valentine's Problematic Rabbit day

sorry i havent been online i listened to one of my narrative playlists and ended up stuck down a fl Seeking plotline rabbit hole on the wiki. walked out there no longer normal, covered in wounds and wax and betrayal etc. don't talk to me about it. tag ramble

Paul Atreides is sooooo T.E. Lawrence coded

Happy 10th birthday to The Song Ever

genuinely disgusted at mp100 fandom atm, probably going to take a break for a while in general

emotional support group for autistics who got called condescending and rude as kids just for responding to things directly and still not knowing how they were being mean

Curious question, Tobio/Astro looks not that much like Tenma besides eye color and hair color (in most adaptations Tobio has black hair), think Tobio is supposed to resemble his mother more?

Probably! Im not that well versed in other iterations but 03 Tobio could definitely take after Hoshie more.

I have my own little au ive been working on and for me i kinda split it down the middle.

for Hoshie:

(its not shown lol) but Tobio has light brown hair, green eyes, and freckles from her! (ig her smile too haha)

Tenma:

when his hair gets longer it starts to look like Tenmas, ik Hoshie also has a bit of a nose but he would have grown into a Tenma nose if he had gotten a chance. Also, even at his young age, he picked up on alot of Tenmas mannerisms.

In the end, yeah, definitely taking after Hoshie!

the boys

god... family are so frustrating sometimes lol...

Operation: Romeo and Juliet

Letter from Dr. Rosa Blackbourne to Site Director █████ ████: SCP-1811 has become increasingly erratic and uncooperative in the days following Incident 1811-3. It's only a matter of time before he causes a Site-wide containment breach we can't return from. I urge you, Site Director, to please reconsider my team's proposal. For all our sakes.

(click here to read it)

ive inherited a copy of lolita from my parents (i.e. i stole it from the library in our basement and started treating it like its mine) with the 1989 vintage international cover and i think its actually not that bad. better than the 50th anniversary one with the lips anyway imo (which is the cover for the library ebook vers ive checked out).

like i think any cover that incorporates the "only convincing love story of our generation" quote anywhere kind of sucks on principle, and the fact that it features a photo of a girl at all really goes against nabakovs instructions, but compared to other covers that break those two rules, the haziness of the photo creates a really evocative atmosphere i feel matches the book more or less.

Do you think fandom can be sexist towards female characters?

I see the Jegulus fandom wanting to write Lily completely out of the picture and wolfstar people generally hate Tonks.

oof. i have…a very rambly, very long answer to this bc i don’t think it’s a simple yes/no so i’ll put this under a cut for people to skip if they wanna, yeah?

so, straight off the bat, im not a fan of using pejorative labels for writers in general but particularly for fanfic authors. for one, we don’t know who’s writing behind the screen + what their motivations/inspirations/intentions are. two, everyone writes for a different reason. perhaps someone is venting, or projecting, or using it as a therapeutic release; often it’s lifted straight out of their own life. so i try not to judge the text in front of me based on stuff like that. (this leeway could also be because i used to read a lot of bashing fics where the majority of them are women, i think, and often with the flimsiest, most irrelevant reasons that are straight out of the Sexism Handbook of Traditional Patriarchy too so maybe i just started rationalising it for myself? idk)

second, i think it’s pretty well known that the majority of fandom is some combination of women/queer/neurodivergent/POC etc etc. so applying the lens of ‘critiquing mainstream media produced by cishet men’ doesn’t…really work here, i don’t think. the way we would analyse sexism in say, marvel or disney won’t (shouldn’t?) be the same as how we do it for fandom imo.

that being said, it’s still entirely possible for certain ‘problematic’ tropes/ideas to be prolific, right? this is where the sexism u mentioned comes in. i prefer to use symptomatic language here so saying ‘xyz has sexist/x-phobic elements’ instead of an absolute ‘the work/author is sexist/x-phobic’ because i don’t think the latter is either useful or accurate. when it comes to this, there’s one really important thing i look for here. is the author aware of what they’re writing? (which is a whole other issue tbh, complete w why i feel more comfortable around darkfic authors but let’s not go there rn lol) because a lot of the authors who write out lily or tonks in these ships do so knowingly bc it’s the only way for their plot to exist/evolve. sure, you can have an amicable resolution but will it provide the conflict u need? will it make for good entertainment? will it lead to 3D characters?

stories often need an antagonist and is it unfortunate that women often end up filling the role? sure. absolutely. i’d argue that one of the reasons we have so many mlm ships compared to wlw is because of mainstream media giving us better written men more often than not. and i think it’s totally fine to feel angry/frustrated/upset about that, especially when it carries over into fandom which is supposed to be a fun, inclusive, safe space. i get really frustrated at a lot of wolfstar discourse that entirely ignores the possibility of bisexuality. the vehement insistence that that a certain character can’t be with a woman bc they’re queer, for example, rubs me the wrong way and i think what you’re mentioning is something similar too. but, i always stop myself from assuming malicious intent on the author/fic’s part bc just because they write/believe something in fiction doesn’t make it true, ykno? and i can always step back and go look for something else that’s more to my liking.

and i think every creator would have something like this in their works tbh. i certainly do. i know for a fact that the way i’ve written lily in shovel talk and the patronus fic isn’t exactly favourable to her—even though i’ve tried to be neutral, she has definitely come out looking worse than the others and i admit that that’s on me. i wanted a certain dynamic & characterisation for james & sirius and this was the way to achieve it. people are allowed to dislike that. but they must also acknowledge that i’m allowed to write her that way.

i think, more often than not, we end up looking at this in simplistic binaries. ‘i like this -> good -> allowed to exist’ or ‘i don’t like this -> bad -> shouldn’t exist.’ i’m…not a fan of that. my opinion is we should advocate for more mindfulness within our writing but allowing writers to craft their stories the way they want (bc ultimately fic is supposed to simple and fun and not something you agonise over). and this is all interlinked, right? because the moment we say ‘ok. this might be portraying women in an icky manner, i don’t like it but the author can do that bc it’s a piece of fiction’ then u open the gates for more responsible reading & writing. authors would feel comfortable tagging their works with this, they can discuss it openly w/o being worried about reproach or ‘being cancelled’ and readers can make a more informed decision. but if you go in guns blazing with ‘ugh this fandom is so sexist, look at how it’s treating its women’ then you’ve pretty much killed all possibility for dialogue and improvement and that’s not helping anyone.

this kind of also ties in with my previous point about having differing standards for mainstream vs niche mediums of art. fanfiction authors are often, ironically enough, held to higher standards than published/paid creators which is interesting bc u can argue that their work doesn’t even have the kind of social impact that mainstream media does.

anyway. i’ve gone off on enough tangents here lol but i think i’ll end it with this: yes, women definitely come off worse in certain spaces, especially when they have to compete with mlm ships but i think that’s a conscious decision that authors take within the bounds of the material they have. as long as they are conscious of the fact/acknowledge it, i think likening it to sexism isn’t fair because u can’t have a story without plot devices, uncomfortable as they might be. if you see a pattern in someone’s stories of women being constantly shunted aside negatively, then i think u can take note of it and avoid it. maybe have a conversation with the author if they’re willing to talk about their creative choices. i feel like that’s the most u can do when it comes to online writing where u have no idea who’s on the other side of the screen.

I started exploring my first chasm for the robbie quest and whewww. Really just getting started here huh

does anybody else have that thing that if you like sb or have a little crush (this is a crush on men exclusive thing for me) you try to dress like them + mirror them? i believe it’s stemming from the time in school when i tried to fit in with the guys but they were still in their ‘ew girls’ phase and i wanted to hang with them and be seen as equal so i dressed and behaved like a boy.. and like that’s long gone (is it?) but i still have that impulse to dress extremely masc whenever im liking a guy and i think it’s got to do with this wanting be recognised as like..on their level? sth like i saw him and went oh he looks cool and me wanting others to have the same reaction towards me? which is stupid bc like i do identify as a woman and i want to be recognised as one esp in the case of a crush...but like...idk ive been trying to figure this out since forever,,is this A Thing??

i feel so empty inside

that post i made on my writeblr about how there's this one story i have out with a mag that i want rejected because i have a story i think suits the mag better.....live cam footage of me receiving the rejection email on my rainy evening walk

Me literally 3 days into the semester: do I really need a second degree. Am I actually passionate about urban planning and want a career in it or can I be happy working a "regular job" amd save myself the extra thousands of dollars of tuition. Or am I just overwhelmed.

will I ever actually be passionate about a career? It seems that as soon as something becomes work I lose my interest in it. Will I be better off getting any office job and using my money to pursue my passions outside of work?

I thought going back to school would be good, I'd be busy and have stuff to do etc but now the idea of going through years more of schooling seems incredibly daunting (and expensive). And I'm wondering if it's really worth it.

I wonder if I made the decision to go back to school simply because I was afraid of coming home from spain with no job or work prospects in line and felt that I absolutely needed something to do when I got back.