#(I think we'd talked about ending it there?)

[theroundbartable]

Little story time anecdote.

So, I have this friend. He's married now, deeply romantic... But he wasn't out for romance with everyone when we were younger. He had friendship plus relationships and everything. And he was very open about those, even those he cut off because the other end suddenly wanted the romance part as well. He's not aro, but the situation has aromantic undertones to it, I think.

Introducing me, aroace, sexually traumatized. I wasn't always good with jokes about sex. People often liked to get too close too quickly. My boundaries had been disrespected by strangers, friends and family alike. Still are at times. So whenever I talked to experienced people, people to who sex was a daily thing, a thing they would question you about whenever you met, I kept feeling pressured, awkward, insecure. I used to have to compromise in order to keep those friendships.

This guy, who's reputation wasn't even that great in our friend group (when he was in serious relationships, he'd disappear), came on to me once as well.

But the way he did it was perhaps the only time I've ever felt okay with it. Even when my fiancé makes jokes about it (she's aego), I often feel out of the loop.

Because it was casual, indirect ("I wouldn't mind if we'd end up in bed") it was a mere suggestion and as soon as I said no, he moved on and didn't bother me with it again. He wasn't offended, wasn't angry, didn't make awkward jokes even when I was. He treated it as a compliment and went on as normal.

I always have to fight for my 'no'. I always feel the need to justify myself.

He didn't ask for an explanation. He didn't patronize me. He treated the entire situation as the decision it was and he respected mine as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

It was not normal to me.

I think it isn't normal for most women either. His is the kind of behavior about sex I want normalized in my life. Both about sex and about romance. It was the most comfortable I've ever felt with someone who considered me attractive and who I still feel save with when we're alone.

No more: are you a lesbian? Why not come with me? Maybe another drink will change your mind.

It's a decision.

Only yes means yes. And you don't owe them justification for your no.

by the way, if you're weird about aromantic heterosexual cisgender men, i kill you. if that man wants a purely sexual relationship with a woman and communicates that with her, and she agrees, hell yes. good for them. you have no right to be a bitch about that. that's frankly none of your god damn business. he's not "emotionally abusive" for wanting a specific type of relationship. you're being stupid and weird. and weirdly misogynistic, by assuming that women are inherently these helpless victims that have no agency or autonomy.

you're literally being the "the myth of consensual sex" meme when you talk shit about cishet aro men in purely sexual relationships with women.

[evelynpr]

Might be a hot take as a bkdk and tgck truther here, but I find izuocha endlessly fascinating, beautiful, but also tearfully tragic.

I see their love for each other as something representative of their innocence and naivety when they only knew so little about who they were, and what was to come.

I think the main barrier of their relationship is that its rooted in how they see each other very idealistically, specifically that they're attached to the image of their Best Heroic Selves, and not the deeply selfish, destructive, freaky, and egotistical parts of them. To each other, they need to keep fulfilling that image or else that same person they looked up to would almost die in front of them, and that would be too cruel. Although that hero is still there, that same person they looked up to is not the same now because of...well...everything.

Izuku had barely even talked to girls when he first met her. She was Izuku's first ever real friend (Sorry Kats, everyone and him knows he was terrible), so he saved her in that entrance exam even if it was so dangerous. She gave a new meaning to his derogatory nickname just by being a friend that believed in him. After that, she saved him several more times (Blackwhip and Megaphone are the biggest samples iirc). It makes perfect sense that she is Deku's hero.

Ochako hardly knew what it meant to be a hero when she first got into UA. Just by reaching out to some kid tripping, she made a new friend who would then save her in that exam, then save him again in return. This boy then became someone who was always working so hard to save everyone in trouble, and she realized she wanted to be just like him too. "I want to save people"

But...Deku changes. The weight of One for All is on his shoulders and he needs someone to carry this burden with him. He continues to want to save other people at the expense of himself, still not letting his true selfishness and ego ever show- and it only grows more and more unbearable.

Then...Ochako fell in love with Himiko. Truly, relentlessly, selfishly and devotedly in love with a girl who then dies giving her blood to her- the greatest expression of love Himiko could ever give.

Not that they can't love each other because of this happening (and...so many other things oh god), I'm honestly not sure how to explain it- But them ending up together after losing that innocence and naivety? After Ochako will forever grieve the girl who showed her love in its most beautiful and ugly form? After Izuku changed so fundamentally as a person that the butterflies of a nice girl talking to you doesn't exist anymore? After that simple image of being a hero and being in love has completely changed for them both?

Even so, I believe they still love each other. There is no label I know of that can properly describe them though. They are each other's image of being a hero when it comes to saving people. Aside from Shoto, no one else can grasp the grief of the person you tried to save dying in your hands. They would no doubt try to cope with these losses together, and just try to get better together...but so much has changed. They've changed. The world changed. What are they now? Who are they now?

"What happened...to us?"

[spark-circuit]

recorded some Netzach announcer lines real quick before going to sleep. Netzie buddy i completely understand and agree that everything's really shitty every second but like........ team morale is dipping fast.

[wizard-of-interesting-failure]

No you know what I'm gonna take a second here. [Highly unhinged rant at the fundamental injustice, inefficiency, and sheer bloody-minded stupidity of current social technology below the cut]

Absolute horse piss. God, even setting aside how she deserved better from everyone around her and had the same right to a fully accepted authentic life as everyone else, imagine what she could have done if she was supported instead of being treated like this. If she wasn't fired from her job, ejected from her support network, and didn't have to constantly advocate for herself and people like her to be treated like human beings (which was brave and good work worthy of being honored but should never have been necessary in the first place, like rescuing people from a building that collapsed because it was built like shit)

Like okay I don't talk about this that often but I'm a kidney transplant recipient and I think a lot about how the field (like every other avenue of human endeavour) has been crippled by short-sighted bigotry. STEM fields are still hugely male-dominated (sidebar STEM is not the be all and end all creatives y'all super valid and important and your work is foundational to the functioning of STEM and human endeavour and quality of life as a whole; this is just the example that highlights the point for me personally) and it's like. If we didn't push literally everyone except cishet white guys well off enough to afford tertiary education away from everything in the area, would I just have an artificial kidney by now? Who knows?? I'm probably never fucking going to because stupid nonsense.

It's the same shit. And don't get me wrong, the individual human tragedy of unnecessary hardships on the part of this (and every) trans woman (and so many other groups besides) is morally horrible and an indictment of culture as a whole. But we'd probably have fucking blade runner robots or quantum computers or working fusion reactors or Actual Cool AI Instead Of The Current Horseshit by this point! Or a real Mars colony instead of some blowhard yammering on about it while he inflicts suffering on untold millions! Or God knows what else!

And don't even get me started on lack of opportunity for almost everybody in the world. It's like that quote about all the potential einsteins who were born and died impoverished without ever even touching a science textbook.

Like you wanna know why we're struggling so much? Population increase is supposed to mean more hands and minds on every problem but it doesn't because...ugh! Imagine if we cared about global poverty. Imagine how many more lives free of hunger. Imagine how many more people thinking about how to solve everything that needs solving.

I just. The morality is bad enough. It's a great evil by itself. But the sheer fucking gall of dressing it up behind progress and hard decisions. Do you have any idea how much "progress" this costs us? What a good investment humanity would be if we pulled our heads out of our asses for two seconds? What you, personally, have lost because the person who would have given it to you lived and died in preventable despair?

Again, I have to emphasise. People are worthy without contributing huge individual achievements to the arc of history. Society is a collective and everything everyone does adds to the weave and adds up to what we as a whole achieve, there's no real separating out of "this person did this thing" when they were supported by the entire collective of humanity past and present, and even if there was achievement is not the sole benchmark by which life is measured. A better life for everyone is the point, and the idea of "if I don't think you're contributing then you don't deserve anything" is a big part of how we got here in the first place.

There is no culling of the "unproductive". They are the ones who need this most of all. Every life matters, every life (yes, even that one) is a roll of the dice for a miracle of insight (not just in STEM; it all fucking matters and it always has), every life is its own purpose, every life is worthy, to save one life is to save all of mankind, to enrich one life is to enrich all of mankind, to be a life that is enriched is to be enriched on behalf of all of mankind, and none of these facts depend upon any others. There's a mind in there! A self-perceiving miracle of reality! Of course it's precious beyond measure regardless of context, you dipshit!

We can celebrate great advances and exceptional performances without ignoring that we, as a whole, made these things possible too. And we can recognise that these things are valuable because of what they do for everyone, and that the more everyone there is the more valuable they are, and that in order for making life better for the worse off to matter the worse off themselves must matter, and that every life is worthy and every soul is sacred and the people using Lynn's technology to help with their disabilities or live hidden from those who wish them harm or resist the forces I'm talking about here are why the technology is a force for good in the first place.

But I weep for the fact that we have squandered almost all human potential across all of history in short-sighted power-seeking and arbitrary outgroup punishments, and everyone everywhere has suffered for it. Yes, even the stupid billionaires; they'd probably live longer if they hadn't stepped on the people who would have discovered the cure for whatever ends up killing them. Today's average well-off human knows riches that would be the envy of the kings of old, and the average human if none of this was a problem would know riches that would be the envy of the oligarchs of today.

Lives being lived in ways that diminish other lives are ideally changed minimally so that they no longer do (this is the maximisation of collective freedom) and consigned to any other fate only with great sorrow. Even if it is right to do so, I do not believe it is ever righteous. Even if it is not regrettable that it was done in the present, it is regrettable that the past produced a present that required it, and a future that does better should ever be sought.

Just...fucking stupid. That we're so willing impoverish ourselves so that some other people we don't like for no reason can be impoverished more. That the only thing keeping us from Star Trek (not just the spaceships but everything else too) is petty fucking spite (and physics but who knows what backdoor bullshit we could find to work around that).

That Lynn Conway's life, extraordinary and laudable as it was, was made smaller by this rank fucking idiocy. I do not aim to diminish her work by considering what it could have been. I aim to diminish the age she was forced to live in.

Rest in peace, Lynn. You deserved unfathomably, infinitely fucking better, and we are all richer for what you managed to pull off in spite of it all.

[badn3w]

In all honestly, my ideal ending for iasip is a simple one. The gang would play Chardee Macdennis one last time, bringing back a beloved concept with lots of references to the show brought up in the trivia portion. It'd be fun and light. It'd give us one last glimpse into these characters' dynamics, playing a game they invented in their 20s now in their 50s. Still a gang, still together, in the bar of Paddy's on a slow day, passing the time with a game they invented out of boredom.

Maybe they'd invite some old friends to form new teams. Maybe we'd see Cricket, the Lawyer, the Waitress, the Waiter, the McPoyles, Artemis, Ponderosa, and Gail the Snail all join in on the fun. Surprisingly, everyone shows, probably because they have nothing better to do. Maybe Frank and Pondy would form a team. The Waitress, Artemis, and Gail would group up, bringing the Fridge-It Bitches back. Maybe we would finally learn the Waitress' name. We'd get to see each member of the gang at their best, deranged, manipulative, and evil as always. Charlie would probably fail a task because the Waitress made him nervous. Cricket would join forces with the McPoyles because they're the only ones not disgusted by Cricket. Their group would be really good at the pain and endurance portion. The Lawyer and the Waiter would form a team, bonding over the years of strife the gang had caused them. They would grow very frustrated at not understanding the rules of the game. They're the only group that is normal enough to find the whole thing preposterous, but for some reason they see it through.

The episode would wrap with Mac and Charlie finally beating Dennis and Dee after losing to them for 30 years. We'd close on the pair stomping on Dennis and Dee's dolls, victorious at last. Dennis and Dee would be sore losers, complaining that Mac and Charlie must have cheated. Frank would be celebrating with Mac and Charlie, telling them he was proud of them. Mac and Charlie would realize that perhaps Frank really had become a father figure to them. They would allow Frank to smash Dennis and Dee's dolls with them and Frank would be over the moon. We would pan out, through the front door of Paddy's, still able to hear the gang rejoicing and bickering, only now from a distance. The last thing we would see is Paddy's sign, old and decrepit as ever, never to change, as the gang's arguing begins to fade out, transitioning into the final end credit theme.

[ebitenpura]

lana's conversation with eight after 5 years had to be the most jarring thing bc most outlanders would be shell shocked or upset they lost that much time. eight just compartmentalized it all and went mmhm. no I don't have any more questions. this is my life now I guess /empty blank stare

[ratsplendor]

so this post was on my dash last night and i woke up still thinking about it. bc i really do feel like we get a lot of internalized homophobia!Wilson, due to the very comphet of it all, but i think there's some really interesting angles you can play with from this perspective, too. & of course end up with some major angst lol.

so. i kind of ended up going on a long ass ramble here. i've stuck it under a readmore for those who're just scrolling. thanks for putting up with me lol

the main thing i'm thinking about is like...the huge, Stacy-left-me-shaped chip on his shoulder. because how many straight guys do you know who have made their breakup this massive personality trait/let it take the blame for their behavior for years afterwards? i know so many! "wife left me, i joined the NRA" type shit.

in this situation you're describing, i think the breakup is a huge part of how this plays out. because: 1. any feelings he has for men after that are just because she fucked him up so bad. and 2. yes, he's upset she left, why wouldn't he be? he certainly wasn't relieved, secretly, that she pulled the trigger, that she gave him an excuse to push her away. he certainly wasn't tired of pretending, especially given his new condition, which makes it harder to mask. that would be crazy.

so he latches on to this post-breakup, miss-her-but-resent-her pattern of behavior because it's an easy cover for whatever else he's feeling, on two separate fronts. and then she comes back. he finds out Wilson is trying to keep them apart and for a split second, he hopes it's because Wilson's jealous, and he hates that he feels that so much that he throws himself back into manic Stacy-mode again, to the point of being party to her marriage nearly breaking up. a guy who breaks up his ex's marriage is definitely straight! right??

i think a lot of the time we get House being portrayed as the one who's settled with himself because he has this air of hedonism about him, and he enjoys being the contrarian/making people uncomfortable, and doesn't appear to care what other people think. but of course, we see that's especially untrue where his father is concerned. in a world where nothing was off limits to House, we'd expect to see him weaponizing the abuse as part of the way he makes people uncomfortable, right? instead, he's so quiet about it that even Wilson doesn't know well enough to not make him go to the funeral. it's a product of a time when certain things belonged behind closed doors. so there are some things that are off limits to House. joking about being gay is one thing, it gets a rise out of people, but he doesn't allow himself the real thing because 1. he's not gay and 2. it's so bound up in the complexity of the first few decades of his life. which he doesn't talk about, not even to make people squirm. most young people start to contend with their sexuality while still living at home...on base housing, where it felt like there were eyes everywhere, and with a father like John House. then, like you said, came the AIDS crisis, and how many tirades do you think John probably went off on? with his son, the doctor, on the phone with him? the voice that told him how to be a man is asking if he's really gonna treat those fags or not. what do you do?

i'll end this by saying, as a kid who grew up with base brats of several types, i've always found it really interesting + sorely underexplored that House is referred to so often just by surname. i know it's a thing among medical folk, too, but undoubtedly, when his father's buddies came around, they were calling him House. hell, i knew kids whose mothers called their fathers by surname. i've always found this interesting because if House didn't choose it, if it's something that just happened organically during med school, did it hurt at first? and if he did choose it, in this case, would it be because it felt like being a man? his father, the model he had for "real" masculinity growing up--would taking up his name in his early adulthood feel like a shortcut to a male ideal that he was so desperately struggling to align with?

thinking about internalised homophobia House. I normally headcanon him as openly bi (but maybe repressed or in denial about being in love with Wilson), but I like the idea of his suggestive gay comments being a cover because he's so far in denial and gay jokes are a way of being like "haha isn't it so ridiculous and subversive to suggest I'm gay? I'm doing this for the shock value because I'm obviously straight", in the same way straight guys think gay jokes are the funniest thing in the world

his homophobic military dad and becoming independent and coming of age in the 1980s and only hearing about gay people during the AIDS crisis left him with some fucked up ideas and attitudes about gay people (and himself. and what it means to be a man)

if Wilson ever tries to confess feelings for House (or if they fall into each other on a drunken night), House would absolutely withdraw, run away, push Wilson away because House isn't gay

House then dating a woman to prove to Wilson (and everyone. and himself) that he's normal and straight

eventually, if he and Wilson start seeing each other, House would rationalise it as "technically homosexual, but not like those other gays". maybe he'd also withdraw in public where anyone could see them, and try to suppress the emotional side of things ("this is just physical, don't be a fag about it")

meanwhile, Wilson is desperately trying to be okay with the scraps of affection he gets from House, but it's killing him. he's not doing well. after pining over House for so long (knowingly? unknowingly? you decide), he didn't think it would feel like this. but maybe this is the best he deserves

[lee-blogs]

Still packing stuff and now i'm looking for a box for this.

My dad and i made it a few years ago for halloween, probably 2015/16 if i'm remembering right. It's made from a lays can, a wipes container from his work, and paper maché. I don't remember what the wires and front metal bits are from, but the middle actually lights up! It has one of those long battery-powered emergancy lights in it and some colored tissue paper

[queensparklekitten]

I think I just guaranteed queen of nothing by the crane wives a place in my spotify wrapped tonight because of time princess

[sunliights]

"you don't think longing is a feeling?" mitzi's head tilts, genuinely curious about that. she can remember all the times she spend eyeing aurora longingly whilst she was also trying to work and how poorly that went for her. "not to toss all of my life stories on you but i was in a bit of a similar thing. my girlfriend, before she was my girlfriend, used to sit down there," she nods towards the other end of the bar, "and she'd drink and we'd talk... and sometimes we'd go home together. it was nice, you know? casual... until it wasn't. i basically just decided we were dating one day. she had her hesitancies but we're making it work. all this to say — i would've been pulling my hair out if i didn't decide i wanted something different and actively made the change. it sounds to me like something is gonna give eventually if you're getting all twisted up about it now so you can either be the guy who makes the decision, which there's nothing wrong with duh, or you can figure it out with her. can't ignore it forever, though."

a proud little smile finds its way onto his lips, soon to be covered up by the rim of his glass via another sip. didn't think that she would have much of a rebuttal to that, after all. "i don't know that talking at this stage will help. we're at a point where it could go either way and the agreement was that it would just be for fun, no feelings. i don't even know if i have feelings. there's a..." his hand lifts off the table, only to crimp a bit at the spot over where his heart should be, "longing. don't get me wrong, i enjoy sneaking around with her. it's most of the fun about it. but then i see her from across the room and she's looking breathtaking and i can't... do anything about it. i didn't think not being able to hold someone's hand would be this debilitating."

[nyan-bynary]

I kinda disagree with humanising characters to the point of going "this thing happening in the story would not be what they want" bc that's not a real guy they don't really want anything. like yea I don't think a character like gojo would WANT to live in a world where he's no longer the strongest but I think that breaking his character down and building him back up like that would've been an interesting move? it certainly would fit him thematically, finally allowing him to move on in a way he never could have and all

[persefoneshalott]

Cobra kai s2 is just Johnny making a short speech that explains nothing, everyone doing the doubt face and Johnny somehow believing he got to change everyone's mind.

[kxllerblond]

and if i said this mfer was my super late game clark development inspo??? what then huh

[yaoicrack]

soo snork mimimi u wouldn't get it

[the-physicality]

.

[the-acid-pear]

One of the most beautiful things Deltarune story has is the fact that you cannot remove its tragedy, because it's thru that very same that hope and love is born. You cannot change the past but you can take what you learnt and thru it build a brighter future.