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studying ancient history will have you thinking stuff like The 18th century was basically yesterday

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Fucking obsessed with linguistics and etymology in fantasy. Like, what are we as English speakers willing to accept as “in universe” language when so much of our speach is borrowed from other languages or derives from a very specific use (sports, military, pop culture, etc).

Are you willing to accept a character in a medieval fantasy universe describing something as “absolute bedlam” when you, the educated reader know that “bedlam” refers to a specific, historic London mental hospital?

Are you willing to accept characters in the same universe having a “tete a tete” when this tacitly implies the existence of the French or French equivalent language?

Anyway, this is all to say that I was reading a Lord of the Rings fanfiction earlier and the author used the term “Shanghaied”

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snape stans are like “snape only bullied children because he was abused :(“ and sirius stans are like “sirius was abused as a child but he bullied snape for completely unrelated reason: he was born a cunt!”

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The vibes he brings to the function? Pestilence and ruin.

Saw a photo of a pigmy seahorse for the first time and it looks like the personification of illness

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No wonder American life expectancy is so low. Nobody has a pension worth committing fraud for

i feel kinda silly for not guessing how much of this is just pension fraud lmao

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I hate texting. Come live with me.

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while being depressing, this is also sort of fascinating to me bc there’s something so…inauthentic here. what i mean is that if you saw something like this back in say 2001 (which you probably wouldn’t, at least for carl’s jr. but i digress) it would seem tacky but in a “sex sells” sort of way.

seeing this in 2025, it’s clearly purely a political statement and you can tell partially bc the image itself is so oddly sexless. it’s like there’s more titillation in the prospect of “owning the libs” than in the image of the scantily clad blonde white woman itself.

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When it comes to Rome’s military history, I find its defeats are so much more amusing than its triumphs. You have this empire that thinks it is so technologically and culturally advanced and it’s slowly stretching itself thinner and thinner. And they were writing accounts that were like “We conquered and subjugated most of those BARBARIAN Celtic fucks but we HAVE TO put the Caledonians behind TWO WALLS because they won’t stop attacking us. They are all redheaded and LITERALLY BLUE. They are FREAKY AS FUCK. We’re scared shitless.”

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i want to personally thank etc for being there for me when i don't feel like listing more things

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we need an official moratorium on the two-sentence aside where the characters pause to let the reader know that they're doing Safe Sane and Consensual Kink Don't Worry before they can get back to it

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You can go to the club at 18 not everyone is American

the only club on earth is in detroit and everyone is there

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i've been reading a lot of het romance in the past year (here distinguished from m/f as a whole because i want to speak specifically to how straight people write*) and i really, really need straight romance authors to read how gay people talk about the people they're attracted to and learn from it.

(*which doesn't mean i think 'they're both bisexual' inherently makes an m/f couple more interesting but that's another post)

there's this way of writing that like, is very clearly making sure the characters actually Like each other and Enjoy Being In Each Other's Company which is fantastic i do love that. But, there's a real training wheels set of tropes to writing attraction between these leads that always highlights the same features (i don't have to enumerate the fixation on men having broad shoulders we're all familiar) without any sense of specificity. i do not care about this man being generic brand hot, i wanna know what insanely granular detail only our heroine has noticed that shuts off her higher brain functions.

now i appreciate that i, as a lesbian, am not the target demographic of het romance--but i also know that my mom (a certified 100% heterosexual) has been complaining about the protagonists of romance novels being generic brand hot for years. even As A Dyke, if you write with enough particularities about what your heroine is into about this man i should be able to see what she sees

specificity is the key to eroticism!!! straight authors need to be writing their characters like horny posts about alfred molina and i'm NOT kidding

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there are two equally brainrotted yet diametrically opposed takes i’ve seen to many times. one is “why would anyone write an allegory for racism/ableism/oppression/sexism/homophobia when they could write about the real thing.” the other is “why would anyone want to portray, for entertainment, the harsh realities that real people actually suffer.” and the answer to both of these things is “you are too stupid to live.”

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J. R. R. Tolkien: no, my books aren't about the war I experienced. It's just a story

J. R. R. Tolkien's works: you cannot go home, war ends entire bloodlines, you are mourning the death of your brother alone, you dug into the earth and permanently scored the land, you cannot explain what you have been through, you cannot go home, "that wound will never fully heal. He will carry it the rest of his life", leaving the women behind does not save them, the young die first, you cannot go home, the parent will bury their child, you have lost the wives and you will never connect with them again, "how shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate?", you are not the same, you cannot go home, you can never go home, your father will only side with those he sees as worthy bloodlines and you cannot change his mind, it is more meaningful Not to kill, sometimes your sacrifice accomplishes nothing, you cannot go home

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the world is a mess but at least we still have cunnilingus and spicy curry

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notice how everyone is horny today