#(no we're not)

[pretend-i-don-t-exist]

OK SO STROKE OF INSPIRATION

author!sy. can you see it. can you feel me

author!sy who has written some of the best novels known to media, who is gradually approaching global levels of fame. he just has the best world-building and plots! his characters are fully fleshed out and have backstories of their own that make it so difficult to hate any of them, because you can just understand where they're coming from, but they also did some very bad things, y'know?

except... all of his novels are tagged as danmei.

sy just doesn't understand why. he wasn't writing with these characters being together (in fact, he's sworn off romance in writing his novels, bc he thinks they make everything complicated) but somehow,,, his readers think the characters are together? why are his novels tagged as danmei?

so he goes down the rabbit hole and reads gay fanfiction to understand. it's not like he's gay, this is a just very author thing to do! you just want to understand what your readers think and what they want, right?

cue gay panic. he's stubbornly holding on. he fails. so he announces that he's taking a break (to maybe find out what the hell is going with him) and starts to read other novels.

enter pidw. sy absolutely loves the first few chapters. they were so good and the world-building looks so complex! then everything went to shit. he yells at airplane in the comments. he roasts the novel so hard it came out of the oven burnt from the outside in.

airplane only responds with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ secretly, he's loving this new reader who had a history of critiquing novels very harshly, and creating theories that sometimes keeps the fandom alive through dying times

they chat privately, sometimes. there's a convention or smth, and both sy and sqh are invited. sy tells airplane that he's going to find him and yell at him irl. that, of course, happens but not after sqh finds out that /peerless cucumber/, pidw's no. 1 hater, is also the one of the world's top danmei writers.

sqh is like ??? a pretty boy is walking up to him angrily and is that-- oh no, oh no, oh no that is sqh's type

idk where i'm going with this but when they transmigrate sy absolutely writes xianxia versions of his novels and sqh finds out and now they have a competitive write off where they try to find who on earth is the better writer (sqh, now that he's not financially restricted, thinks he can do better than pidw) (sy, now able to shove his issues so far down they crawled out of the other side of the earth, thinks he can do better in general)

anyway svsss becomes less tragic bc sy and sqh are too busy writing gay ass novels to follow the plot, and liu mingyan absolutely writes fanfiction of their novels

[leejungjaes]

...and if you look to your left you'll see the symbrock fandom in various stages of never-ending grief and fury...

[sternutaries]

What I love most about aftg is just how you get into it, hatelove the whole thing because wow that was some damage but it's sooo good, then you immediately start to obsess over it and with time passing it just. gets. worse.

Anyways, welcome to the rabbit hole, we're all perfectly fine.

[pollywiltse]

god help me i can't believe i'm about to defend benedict arnold but actually irl Peggy does seem to have been pretty in love with him even though everyone including Flexner wants to believe she wasn't. (Actually my big reason for believing this is Flexner insisting she wasn't but then turning around and quoting, for example, someone refuting stories about her having affairs by saying that "her uncommon affection for the general renders [them] very improbable". I do think she thought he was kind of incompetent in business though.)

Also like I know everyone is like "bUt hE wAs sO mUcH oLdEr tHaN hEr hOw cOuLd sHe pOsSiBlY hAvE bEeN iNtO hIm", but I remember when I was in junior and senior year of high school, everyone in my class had a giant crush on the tiny acting teacher with a ponytail who was also in his late thirties (who actually come to think of it might have played Benedict Arnold one of the years I was in his class). So it's not actually that weird for an 18-year-old to be attracted to a short guy in his late 30s. (It would have been skeevy if he had ever reciprocated, but he was happily married so that never happened.)

Also I know Arnold had a nasty temper and the meme is that he also treated his wives badly, but actually the impression I keep getting from Flexner is that he was desperately worried about making them happy (and the first one really wasn't having it).

[selamat-linting]

this might just be me growing up in a super conservative region (58% prabowo voters SWEEP) but im really frustrated over how aimless queer rights organizing seems to be in indonesia. like, i appreciate ppl who make alternative schools, shelters, halfway homes, and advocate for free health insurance and financial assistance aids because its a resources that most of us should have had by the law but doesnt because community stigma. but there must something to be done outside of that.

three years ago, a woman died from a lynch mob. with the way the political climate were going, i was hoping our issues will start to be considered in mainstream conciousness. there were a few memorials, and i thought that girl i dont know would be a reminder for other ppl to fight harder. activist groups and queer rights NGO's were making zoom calls, meet-ups, i sat in one of the online meetings and turns out the org is linked to a broader international movement with actual funding. it really seems like something.

but three years later they are still making the same zoom meetings, basic instagram posts about transitioning positivity (but no mention of diy hrt), movie recs filled with disney slop, the same listless meetups with no material gain to show for it. the incremental fight for queer rights by all means, is a failure. there are no effort to link back our struggle with other forms of oppression. we are not represented by anyone in the government, there are no laws codified to protect us, even the media is growing increasingly hostile to us. and fyi another trans girl died recently from a hate crime and all she get is a few memorial instagram posts. five years ago this should incite online outrage at least. we are circling down the drain and all of those community resources will slowly gets overburdened with diminished funding and more and more trans people gets abandoned by society.

and dont get me started on how those community resources and events seem to exist only in java. not to be resentful but its like kalimantan, papua, sulawesi, and all the surrounding regions are just there to be java's cellar and pantry. and they expect us to be just as developed politically and intellectually.

[god-sent-gender-bent]

Are we surprised the "pregnant 8 year olds should carry to term" and "12 year old in a hoodie is a grown man" party thinks a 5 year old brown child is an adult?

https://x.com/trtworld/status/1785959608168731091

[kiwi]

anybody else feel that being human is like being a long-time syndicated cartoon character watching the world get more complex while your own design stays the same until youre incongruous with the reality around you??

[jellogram]

On my first day in Germany I got to my hotel and I couldn't get the lights to turn on. And I was like "Eh, fuck it, I'll just take a shower in the dark." And then the shower wouldn't get hot. I waited and waited and it stayed ice cold.

So I go down to the front desk and I'm like "My lights won't turn on and my shower won't get hot" so they send this guy up with me. We get into the room and I flick the switch and nothing happens so I'm like "See?"

And he goes "You must put your card in the slot."

"I... what? I have to put my room card in the light switch?"

"Of course!"

Now I have been in many hotels in the US and never encountered this concept, but apparently it was something most of their guests already knew. So I'm looking like a fool at this point. I feel like an idiot. The dude is fully grinning at me. I put the card in the slot and voila, the light turns on.

Then he's like "Ok, let's see if the shower works. You know you must wait for the hot water?" and I just know he's thinking I'm an idiot who also can't use a shower. This stupid American can't wait for the hot water! She can't even use a light switch or a shower!

And I guess he was distracted by these thoughts of my stupidity, because this dude fully stepped into the shower. In his nice dress shirt and slacks. He just. Gets into the shower.

And turns it on.

Have you ever seen a playing field get leveled instantaneously

[hussyknee]

If I tell you this is a horror dance number it still won't prepare you. That last move was so terrifying even the judge was like "Let go! Let go!" If you told me they're actually possessed I'd believe you.

The music is a remix of the song Mere Dholna from the Bollywood movie Bhool Bhulaiyya, a remake of the classic Malayalam horror-comedy Manichitrathazhu. It's about a young bride that seemingly becomes possessed of Manjulika, a dancer of the ancient royal court whose tragic death has turned her into a vengeful spirit, one who evokes the wrath of the goddess Durga Kali. In the iconic scene that is repeated across remakes, the groom and his family discover his bride dancing in the dead of night in a manic, disassociative fugue, wearing a moth-eaten dancer's costume and a face smeared in kohl, ash and vermilion. She's hallucinating that she's Manjulika dancing carefree for the court with her lover. The upbeat music is deliberately incongruous with the pathos and creepiness of the scene in reality, especially as it crescendos in the bride's head to the moment when the king decapitates Manjulika's beloved in a fit of jealous rage.

This specific number is by the all-male troupe B Unique, performed for the Indian reality talent contest Hunabaarz. It's a modern fusion based on Bharatnatyam that turns up the creep factor by 200% and is basically a showcase of contortionism and synchronicity. One of the most perfectly choreographed and executed dances I have ever seen. Truly incredible!

The group is still taking their work across the world's talent shows. And yes, that guy is hypermobile enough to do that with his neck. XD

[tawnysoup]

Found my fav Slay the Princess route recently. Dragon my beloved. Your horrifying beak mouth was an impossible-to-refuse lip syncing challenge 💖

Shoutouts to @blacktabbygames for making such a cool game!

[victusinveritas]

All of these are by @mattxiv on Instagram.

Here's to all the shockingly single bachelor uncles or the two very close friends who just happened to be girls and are only living together until one of them finds a man (they lived together for forty two years).

[vaspider]

[riacte]

not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing [what would happen between earth and the moon if the earth stopped spinning as illustrated by xkcd randall munroe]

[holographings]

they got me. they fucking got me. jayvik nation hello