I don't post on here a lot but I just wanted to let the few of you that follow me here that in the Helluva Boss fandom that I have currently removed all of my art and cosplay regarding Helluva Boss from here, Instagram, Bluesky, and I'm currently working on weeding it out of Twitter as well.
The fics are safe for now. If I choose to remove those, I will let you know in advance.
I don't want to get into the reasons here - but it isn't for lack of love and appreciation for the show and universe itself. It's entirely fandom related. I love the show, I plan to still watch and appreciate it. I'm still going to talk about it. But right now I'm just removing some of my contributions to the fandom itself. Potentially all of them. I'm not sure. It depends on how much time and energy I want to put into scrubbing myself from the fandom.
After a lot of thought, I will be removing my fanfiction from Ao3 on November 1st. If you are a fan of:
- The Stolitzer Universe fics
- For Royals and Rapscallions
- Whiskey in My Bloodstream
- On the Limit
- The Skin You Could Have
They will be deleted from Ao3 on 11/1/23. If I re-upload them later, then they will only be on my current account (greyscalemuse) with the pen name you all know already (vulgardarling). You are welcome to save them for your own personal archive. Please do not re-upload them or add to them yourself.
I don't post on here a lot but I just wanted to let the few of you that follow me here that in the Helluva Boss fandom that I have currently removed all of my art and cosplay regarding Helluva Boss from here, Instagram, Bluesky, and I'm currently working on weeding it out of Twitter as well.
The fics are safe for now. If I choose to remove those, I will let you know in advance.
I don't want to get into the reasons here - but it isn't for lack of love and appreciation for the show and universe itself. It's entirely fandom related. I love the show, I plan to still watch and appreciate it. I'm still going to talk about it. But right now I'm just removing some of my contributions to the fandom itself. Potentially all of them. I'm not sure. It depends on how much time and energy I want to put into scrubbing myself from the fandom.
After a lot of thought, I will be removing my fanfiction from Ao3 on November 1st. If you are a fan of:
- The Stolitzer Universe fics
- For Royals and Rapscallions
- Whiskey in My Bloodstream
- On the Limit
- The Skin You Could Have
They will be deleted from Ao3 on 11/1/23. If I re-upload them later, then they will only be on my current account (greyscalemuse) with the pen name you all know already (vulgardarling). You are welcome to save them for your own personal archive. Please do not re-upload them or add to them yourself.
I don't post on here a lot but I just wanted to let the few of you that follow me here that in the Helluva Boss fandom that I have currently removed all of my art and cosplay regarding Helluva Boss from here, Instagram, Bluesky, and I'm currently working on weeding it out of Twitter as well.
The fics are safe for now. If I choose to remove those, I will let you know in advance.
I don't want to get into the reasons here - but it isn't for lack of love and appreciation for the show and universe itself. It's entirely fandom related. I love the show, I plan to still watch and appreciate it. I'm still going to talk about it. But right now I'm just removing some of my contributions to the fandom itself. Potentially all of them. I'm not sure. It depends on how much time and energy I want to put into scrubbing myself from the fandom.
This post (”What Moffat Doesn’t Understand About Grief”) fascinated me, because the author talks about Moffat’s fear of consequences–how he’ll introduce world-shattering grief, or sacrifice, or hurt, or change, in his Doctor Who characters’ lives, and then never follow up on it. There are no apparent consequences.
That’s exactly what makes BBC Sherlock feel so unresolved. We kept waiting for the consequences to come home, and they never did. There are huge things and subtler ones unaddressed, things that should have changed them in meaningful ways: Sherlock being tortured. Mary shooting Sherlock. Sherlock nearly confessing his love on the tarmac. Sherlock overdosing on the plane, reading John’s blog. Mycroft begging John to take care of him. John attacking Sherlock after Mary’s death. John saying he wanted more than his marriage to Mary. John confronting Sherlock about his need for love. Mycroft lying to Sherlock about his sister.
The emotional stakes keep being upped, but there’s no closure. The things happen, there are tears or shouting, and then the story simply continues, without change, or growth, or discussion, or resolution. They end up in the exact same place as they began; 221B, two friends solving crimes and cleaning up after explosions, still more myth than men.
Emotional moments can’t be introduced just for the hell of it; they have to lead somewhere, mean something. Once I thought the authors had a plan. But now I think we’ll have to go on making our own meaning out of it all, through fanart and fic and meta and whatever means we have; for the sake of these characters’ sanity, and our own, and for some kind of truly happy ending.
Beautifully stated. So true. We got caught up in the characters and the authors sadly lack certain skills. It’s why Stephen Thompson should have stayed, he provided a different perspective.
I want to make this absolutely clear to kids: children didn't used to be stuck inside the house like you are today. There used to be public places you could hang out. It used to be fairly safe to walk around because trucks weren't designed to kill children. You didn't need a car to go anywhere so kids without a license weren't trapped. There weren't 24/7 cable news networks constantly scaring parents with anecdotes even as crime was at all time lows and the biggest danger comes from adults kids know not strangers.
It's easy to ignore old people talking about "the good ol' days" because a lot of the people saying that shit are racist assholes, but the way society treats kids today really is objectively worse than how kids used to be treated. You deserve better, and you should know that better things are possible. We just need to kill the suburbs and for-profit news.
Modern Sherlock Holmes but he’s a 27 year old, drinks energy drinks only, is astonishing polite and has no idea how the solar system works because it was never relevant to a case but can name every every person involved in making Super Mario Bros because he did need that for a case once.
Watson is continuously appalled about his eating habits and makes vague posts on Twitter that ends in threads like
Watson: “My roommate noticed only today that he can label his email inboxs but took apart his entire bloody laptop two weeks ago.”
Person: “This reminds me of the post about the roommate who couldn’t turn on the coffee machine but remembers like 500 numbers of pi”
Watson: “I’ll be delighted to inform you that this is the very same roommate.”
that supergirl lesbian kiss where the girls look like they are going to quit after that take is the polar opposite of the scene in brokeback where alma sees jack and ennis making out and heath ledger almost broke jake gyllenhaals nose
Having been in high school when Brokeback Mountain came out, I can tell you Heath and Jake took A LOT of heat for many of the scenes in it (including this one), because they WEREN’T all awkward and afraid to touch each other. They both went in with the attitude of “we’ve been hired to portray a relationship, and we’re going to do that.” I lost count of the number of times they were asked if it was weird/different to kiss another man. I think it was Jake who made the most confused face ever at the camera and kind of went “….no…..? A kiss is a kiss?” The speculation on their sexualities ran RAMPANT—at the same time that Heath started dating Michelle Williams (who played his wife, in the most positive-but-ironic turn of events ever). They literally were basically not allowed to say “queer people are people, and you don’t have to be queer to see that queer people can love and cherish each other emotionally and physically.” They did their best to do that, working against a mass media that was going “look, it’s a story about TWO MEN!! And they HAVE SEX!!! HOW FREAKY!!!”
So while I agree that in 2019 we should be aspiring to cast queer actors to play queer roles, please recognize that the fact we can aspire to that now is partly because of what two straight actors did fifteen years ago, when they decided they weren’t going to be afraid to risk breaking each other’s faces in a show of passion and longing.
#I’m happy that young queers are getting so much compared to my youth #but there’s such a lack of understanding at the same time #like you can tell they never grew up in a world where their first experience with queerness was a brutal violent murder
Lawrence v Texas, the lawsuit that overturned sodomy laws that made gay sex illegal, was in 2003.
The cast was set before SCOTUS made that ruling. The film was already being planned at a time when gay sex was a crime in more than a dozen US states.
They couldn’t “get queer actors to play queer roles” because the majority of queer actors were deeply closeted, because it was a crime in a lot of places, including all of Texas and Florida. Your movie has a scene at Disneyworld? Can’t have known queer actors or they could be arrested during filming.
I don’t know how to get across how different it is now.
A Different Reading of “You Will Be Okay” (Or at least how I’ve come to see it)
I think for the entire duration of my time here in the fandom, the general consensus is that Stolas’s lullaby to Octavia stands for his demise - be it just eventual or a literal apocalypse - it’s been overall seen as this prophetic song about when Stolas leaves Via forever and how she’ll be okay despite that.
The extended version of the lyrics have even fueled several theories that Stolas won’t make it out of the series alive and Octavia is some immensely powerful being that will overcome it all.
And that’s all well and good but over my repeated listening of the song, I’ve come to wonder - is that all there is?
To help make this make sense, let’s put the song back into the context of the episode that features it - Loo Loo Land.
Now I could go on about how this is still my favorite episode (because it is) and I think it’s probably the best episode that can stand on it’s own (because I do) and how it not only set the tone to what we would come to expect of the show itself but overall set the bar to what the show could fully deliver (because I think it does).
We can save that for another day.
Right now, we need to focus on one of the overall takeaways of Loo Loo Land - and that’s Octavia’s intense fear of Stolas abandoning her.
Because that’s what the big sticking point to their conversation actually is, isn’t it? It’s what ties the entire episode back to the nightmare she has at the beginning and I’d challenge that it’s ultimately what the entire episode is about. It’s not a huge reach, of course. It’s kind of right there, but let’s continue.
The entire episode, Octavia struggles with feeling out of place. The joyful home and family that was so expertly crafted for her (by Stolas) is in disarray, there is no more hiding the misery that is her parents’ marriage, and not only that but her perfect father, who was always her hero, is (in her eyes) the one who’s not just pulled back the curtain - but has fully torn it down and is currently about to burn it.
But what does “You Will Be Okay” have to do with Octavia’s fear of being abandoned?
Well - it’s Stolas’s perspective of the same sentiment.
What I’m saying is “You Will Be Okay” isn’t entirely about when Stolas meets his final end - it’s about when Octavia is grown up, no longer needs him and... has to leave him behind.
The apocalypse he describes, the way he sings about Octavia being this supernatural event in the extended version - it’s all about her becoming his very reason to continue existing, the only light in his life. She has become his everything.
But he knows that in time she will grow up. She will become her own person. It’s as inevitable as the end times and his own demise.
She won’t need him anymore.
His entire life and purpose as he knows it ends.
But he knows she’ll still be okay.
I know there is a lot of critics on Stolas’s character, specifically of him as a father in Loo Loo Land. And no, I’m not going to argue that taking your teenage daughter to a theme park she liked when she was a toddler is going to fix your problems. It was a very very bad idea.
But I would argue about Stolas being oblivious to how old Octavia actually is. I’m very certain that he has become increasingly aware of how old she is. And as his life is taking a path he’d long given up on in his mind (however messed up and rocky that path is going to get), along with Via getting closer to the age he assumed she would no longer need him...
Well, that goes back to what Loo Loo Land I think is supposed to be about.
It’s about figuring out family and adjusting and making room and making sure the people you care about don’t get left out as life changes.
Because Stolas knows he isn’t going to leave Via behind.
And in turn, he learns that she won’t leave him behind either.
