#(someone stop me I have an essay to write but instead I'm making posts on tumblr dot com)

[m4gp13]

hc that Al has a very long neck and lots of freckles, the combination of which has led to him being lovingly (and malevolently) referred to as a giraffe

[soft-girl-musings]

Cry (MK Spring Bingo #1)

Marc Spector x Reader

cross-posted to ao3

tags: panic/anxiety attacks, possibly inaccurate description of an emergency room visit (i don't remember the exact process i borrowed from my own experience bc i was sick… in the ER…), no use of y/n

wc: 1,356

fic summary: Three times Marc told you it was okay to cry, and one time you returned the favor.

A/N: Finally got around to writing something for someone besides jake lockley, bless. once again this is self-indulgent, but if anything hits home for you i'm glad <3 (based on Adam Melchor's "Cry" , which is the most marc-coded piece of music i've ever heard. in this essay i will)

_____________________

The first time came out of nowhere.

Nothing was wrong per se; no major injury or crisis had come up. All you knew was that you were frozen in the corner of your room, hot tears streaming down your face as your mind raced between a million different things.

“Sweetheart, have you seen my–” Marc��s request stopped the moment he saw you frozen in the darkened room, gripping the sleeves of your shirt as you bit your lip so hard you risked giving yourself another reason to cry.

“I just need a minute,” your voice came out trembling and heavy, as if too many syllables would cause the tears to fall with greater force. Not that you knew how to stop them, or how they even started.

Quick strides across the room brought Marc to your side. His warm hands wrapped around yours, cold and losing color from digging into your arms. 

Words were never his strong suit; Marc’s a man of few, usually letting his presence and actions suffice. So when faced with consoling you against some invisible threat, he could almost hear the sound of his own heart breaking in tandem with your staggered breath.

So he stood there. Until your fingers relaxed and entwined with his, he stood there until he could guide you to the floor. Arms wrapped around your shoulders, he cradled you as you continued to cry.

“This is so stupid,” you groaned as you wiped your face with your sleeve. “So fucking… ugh.”

“Hey,” he shushed you. “Not stupid. You’re feeling what you’re feeling.”

“But I don’t know why,” you choked out. It was hard enough being so distraught; not having a valid reason for it made everything hurt more.

“You don't have to justify it. Don't have to do anything but just… be here.” A hand to your temple eased your head against his chest. “I'm here, as long as you need me to be.”

This was all the permission you needed to let another rush of tears spill down your cheeks, soaking his shirt. He didn't mind.

___________________

The second time was in the emergency room.

You'd never struggled to catch your breath like this before; a common cold turned south and triggered long-dormant childhood asthma, making your lungs betray the rest of your body. Marc drove you to the ER when your hollow coughing didn't let up for the third day in a row. Head spinning and chest aflame, you were rushed to the back as soon as Marc told them you couldn't breathe.

“You've got to breathe steady, honey.”

“I'm trying,” you muttered around the medicated tube in your mouth. It had to be almost 3 in the morning; your body ached like crazy and you didn't catch a word of what the nurse told you to do with your medication. All you knew was that you were cold, exhausted, and grateful to have Marc there to time your breathing.

But even with his hand holding yours, you still felt tears pricking the corners of your eyes. Every inhalation brought medicine to your airways, but the ragged sensation resonated through your chest and made your body ache more.

“I'm so tired,” you finally said around the device. With that, your tears fell faster than you could swipe at them. Your frown pushed the device from your mouth, but you didn't care.

Marc sprang up, catching the equipment when your grip faltered. He said nothing; instead, he climbed onto the bed with you, leaning your back against his chest and taking your hand in his once more, bringing the medication back to your lips. You let him bear your weight, immediate relief washing over you as he took over keeping the device steady with one hand and gently dabbing a tissue at your cheek with the other. 

“Nothing wrong with a few tears, honey. Means you’re alive.”

When you finally went home, the fire in your lungs extinguished, he held you again until you fell asleep.

_____________________

“.....The movie just started.”

(The third time was on the living room couch.)

You had finally talked Marc into watching La La Land with you (with the promise of his getting to choose the next movie night film, of course). You were barely 30 seconds into the opening number when you'd started crying, eyes glued to the screen as dozens of up-and-comers danced and sang about their dreams to make it in the industry.

“They haven't said anything.”

“They're saying everything.”

“He's dancing on a car.”

“Because he's excited!”

“Why did they stop traffic to dance?”

You didn't hear the rest of his quips, too engrossed in the scene. The colors, the music, and the highly impractical interstate  choreography had a way of getting to you ever since you first saw this movie. Meanwhile, Marc sat with his arms crossed and eyebrows knit together as he tried to follow along.

When you noticed his body language, you reached for the remote and paused the movie. “Do you… want to watch something else?”

Marc's face fell when he realized this new batch of tears wasn’t because of the movie, but because of him. The thought of making your cry hit like a punch to the gut.

He took the remote from you, moving closer to your side. “Nice try, but you're not getting out of it that easily. I need your commentary if I'm gonna keep up.” He hit play and choked down every criticism as he saw your face light up, tears of joy brimming during the remaining 2 hours of the film.

The next morning, while making breakfast, you could have sworn you heard Marc humming Another Day of Sun under his breath.

_____________________

As you'd grown closer, you began to know Marc as your rock, your steady landing place when you had thoughts and feelings too big to deal with on your own. He never had to say much to be there for you. He kept you tethered and together, happy to be of service no matter how ugly your hardships felt. 

It was only a matter of time before you saw a crack in his foundation.

You got home late one night, a thunderstorm hot on your heels. You had shrugged off your coat and shoes, calling out to Marc to see if he was home. No response.

You checked each room diligently, until you found him sitting on the corner of the bed.

“Marc?” You asked softly, walking toward him. You knelt in front of him, and the sight of his face twisted into an unfamiliar expression, a steady stream of tears spilling from his reddened eyes, was more than you could bear.

The first time came out of nowhere.

“Can you give me your hands, Marc?” He complied, his breath short and his eyes fixed on the storm pelting the window with sheet after sheet of rain. His vision darted between drops of water and streaks of lightning. The room shook with the echoes of thunder as the worst of the storm hit.

“Hey,” you urged him. “Just be here. With me.” Your thumb traced his wrist as you tried to stay calm.  “Can you breathe with me, Marc?” You sat up on your knees. He nodded, slowly but surely matching the pace of your breath. 

You didn't know what was on his mind, only that it was racing. You couldn't tell what had him so worked up, only that his breath escaped him even as you counted to ten again, and again, unrelenting in your focus on him. You had no idea what made your rock, your anchor, cry like this.

Maybe he'd tell you later; maybe it'd remain a mystery. None of that mattered in the moment. All that mattered was the rhythm of your breath as the rain let up; the way his tears drenched your sleeves when you dabbed at his flushed cheeks; the steady thrum of his heart as his body relaxed beside yours. All that mattered was how, with your chest pressed to his back as you lay on top of the bedspread, he let you hold him for a change.

_____________________

event tags: @moonknight-events @spacecowboyhotch @juneknight

addtl tags: @mrs-lockley @lunar-ghoulie @shadystarlightgentlemen @casa-boiardi (lmk if you'd like to be added/taken off this wee tag list)

[hazbin-but-good]

another hazbin hotel rewrite/redesign?

yup! and i'm so serious about it that i made a whole blog for it. i'm a white queer ex-cath tran doing this as an art and writing exercise, so feedback from other creatives + jewish and/or racialized folks is especially welcome.

i'm putting this post and only this post in the main tags for visibility. also, not gonna link my main, but i do make my own original stuff, and i encourage fans and haters alike to do the same.

anyway, here's a mostly good-faith 1.7k-word essay on the original. i think it's pretty funny and brings up some less talked-about points. correct me on the facts, disagree with my opinions, and ask clarifying questions, but don't come at me with any piss-poor reading comprehension.

the hellaverse is garbage, and here's why

cw: strong language, stronger opinions, intersectional feminist critical discourse analysis

1. vivienne medrano, the person

medrano was born as a well-off white-passing latina (salvadoran-american) in bougieass frederick, maryland. while attending new york's top art school, she got popular on deviantart-tumblr-twitter by being a prolific multifandom fujoshi furry who's more into ornamental character design than storytelling. upon graduation, she leveraged her fanbase and industry connections to make the hazbin and helluva boss pilots, get helluva made for youtube, and get hazbin made for amazon prime.

like every woman online, she gets harassed for no good reason, and as a certified autist, i will defend her right to be dumb, weird, annoying, and bad with words. however, there are legit reasons to criticize her:

racism, misogyny, homophobia, fatphobia, some antisemitism, past transphobia, past ableism

shitty boss, bad friend

cowardly, vindictive, manipulative, thoughtless behavior

skeevy friends

sucks at taking criticism

in short, i think she desperately needs a PR person and someone to clean up her digital footprint.

2. medrano's art

incurious

inauthentic

noncommittal

creatively stagnant

overindulgent, and the indulgence isn't even fun

shallow and childish framed as complex and mature

bland and boring framed as shocking and subversive

to be clear, i'm at peace with the existence of suckass art like this; i just think the money, attention, and praise it gets are unearned and should go to more interesting works, of which there are infinite.

medrano's had the time, money, and social cache to grow as an artist, learn from the best, and take creative risks, but she hasn't. if she truly has nothing more to offer, she should let her collaborators take the wheel, but she doesn't do that either. instead, she keeps getting more and more resources to make the same baby bullshit, and that pisses me off. she could be the nicest person ever, and this fundamental arrogance would still make her art blow.

stop with the pointless guilt: liking medrano's work does not make you stupid or evil. however, if you stay in the kiddie pool of culture, if you refuse to engage with a diversity of art, if the hellaverse is your point of reference for anything media-related, you can't expect to have your opinions on art, media, or culture taken seriously. you have not earned a seat at the table. you gotta hit the books first.

i cannot emphasize enough how much incredible stuff is out there if you're willing to look further than what social media and streaming services put right in front of you. if you come away from this blog having learned about just one new artist or piece of art, i'll be a happy camper.

3. the hellaverse

a. empty and confused

hazbin and helluva's content and marketing has no clear target audience. the subjects are inappropiate for teens, but the execution is too childish for adults, and lemme tell you what i don't mean by that, first.

not inherently inappropriate for teens:

sex and sexuality

violence, including when it intersects with the above

politics and religion

not inherently childish:

animation (any style)

comedy

episodic writing and/or loose continuity

young characters

fun, happiness, optimism, the power of friendship, cuteness, tenderness, sincerity, etc.

what i mean is that these shows are literally about adult characters who fuck, smoke, drink, do drugs, go clubbing, work full-time, manage their own finances, and deal with stuff like bureaucracy, sexual violence, domestic abuse, marriage, divorce, late adoption, and family estrangement.

however, none of these "adult" things are given enough specificity to create drama or comedy. it's all too stock, vague, flat, weirdly sanitized, and thus utterly banal—pure aesthetics on top of bad saturday morning cartoons. it's exactly what i'd expect from a sheltered disney kid who needs to log off and get into their local gay scene ASAP so their only contact with things like poverty, policing, addiction, and sex work stops being facile movies and TV.

if the shows were aware of this and played with it, that could be amazing, but they're not. they give you the mickey mouse version of the world with a straight face and then play looney tunes sound effects to try to make you laugh and sad_violin.mp3 to try to make you cry. now that's funny.

b. old and tired

let's make like americans and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist. even within the confines of the USA, home of the hays code, the red scare, and reaganite propaganda, this neopuritan fascist state ruled by 1000 megachurches in a trenchcoat, the indie/underground animation scene has been doing crazier shit for decades. anti-war films in the 60's, bakshi movies in the 70's, the simpsons shorts and r-rated movies in the 80's, adult swim and MTV in the 90's, flash/newgrounds/youtube in the 00's, streaming in the 2010's—so what are we doing in the 2020's with this wet white rice drowned in expired ketchup? i feel crazy making this point because it's obvious if you've watched these things, but if you haven't, you're gonna be like "well, there's gotta be something new here". no! there isn't! in the words of jimmy "the scot" jordan, nothing, nothing, NOTHING!

c. ideological purgatory

actually, there is one thing in these shows i've never seen before: the presbysterianism. shout out some interesting or at least intentional presbysterian art in the comments, because the way these ideas are presented here is not compelling. it just makes the rainbow neoliberalism even more confusing and contradictory.

i guess the big presbysterian things are protestanism, calvinism, and, uh, big church government? presbysterians, get your shit together. get your brand down. catholics have BDSM and vampires, evangelicals have TV and corporatism; what do you have? celtic crosses? no wonder medrano has such uninspired ideas on divinity.

d. queer deficiency

when i look at a piece of art, i ask myself: "what does this give me that i can't get from the hunchback of notre dame (1996)?" if the answer is as limp as "uhh, gay people, i guess", i can probably look for my gay shit elsewhere and rewatch the hunchback of notre dame (1996) in the meantime.

but let's say that you have no standards. you've been waiting for ages for a show about gays by the gays for the gays, and by god you're gonna get it. this is it! here we go! time for some

generic twink obliteration

male sexuality as aggression and dominance displays

WLW (sex and chemistry not included)

a couple straight femdoms

and the stalest sex jokes known to man

...yeah, it's not very queer. and by "queer", i mean "questioning or subverting gender norms (including sexual roles) within a given cultural context regardless of creator identity and intent". i'm not a queer studies scholar so LMK if there's a more specific term for this, but whatever you call it, it's not in the hellaverse much.

there's not even any transness, literal or metaphorical, just ancient drag jokes. i guess the writers thought we would've been too controversial. so much for an indie animation studio that prides itself in the diversity of its staff both above and below the line, bakshi-style. i wonder how medrano, a bisexual woman, would've felt if told that a lesbian main couple in hazbin would be "too controversial".

4. spindlehorse and the vivziepop brand

spindlehorse toons underpays its overworked staff and keeps outsourcing more and more labor to even more overworked freelancers overseas to cut costs. a rainbow sweatshop is still a sweatshop, and just because these practices may be "industry standard" doesn't make them any more ethical.

the studio has also been repeatedly accused by current and former employees and contractors of creating a hostile and abusive workplace. AFAIK, it still has no dedicated HR person, and victims are too afraid of retaliation like blacklisting and online harassment to speak out.

this is exactly the stuff that unions exist to prevent. as i'm writing this, the IATSE (the parent union of TAG, which is the parent union of all US animation unions) is negotiating with entertainment industry executives for better working conditions, and if the execs fuck around like last year, it's strike time again. so watch this space, voice your support, and don't cross any picket lines.

i hope spindlehorse unionizes, but until then and for these reasons, i don't think you should give money to the company.

first of all, all content on amazon-owned platforms is ok to pirate, and all youtube ads are ok to block. everyone involved in making the episodes has (or should have) been paid upfront, so you're not taking the bread out of anyone's mouth.

next, let's look at the succulent offerings of the official vivziepop merch shop:

$10 pins and keychains

$15 sticker packs

$20 mugs and acrylic cutouts

$25 shirts

$30 metal cards (not even tarot)

$40 lounge pants

$50 mini backpacks

random $80 skateboard deck

forgive my latin americanness, but this is all stuff you can get made by a local metalsmith, print/sublimation shop, or just crafty people in your life. it's cheaper, customizable, and better for the environment to skip all the shipping and packaging. also, not painting your own skateboard is poser shit.

the hazbin website also has $15 pins, one $20 keychain, and $6 trading card packs. people are weird about trading cards, so if for some reason you wanna gamble for a mass-produced bit of cardboard, plastic, and tinfoil, at least bulk-order for all the vivziepoppers in your area so it's less of a huge waste. better yet, trace the designs and make infinite bootlegs.

at the end of the day, buying merch is not activism. your bulk order of trading cards will not save any wage slaves from getting evicted from their overpriced studio apartments. however, the shop links you to all the credited artists/designers, and more of your bucks will actually reach them if you buy their designs directly, then turn them into body pillows or life-sized bronze statues or whatever the fuck.

go through the credits of any episode of helluva or hazbin, and you'll find even more creatives you might wanna support. get jinkx monsoon's albums on CD. subscribe to actually good artist, animator, and composer gooseworx. lots of voice actors now have patreon, cameo, or self-hosted pages where you can write better lines for their characters and have them read it. these things may not look as shiny as Official Merch™, but we all need less plastic shit and more culture anyway.

[kanejbr3kker]

Okay I need to vent. This morning I saw this on my fyp:

(btw I'm choosing not to reblog the original post and instead just post screenshots because this is definitely a rant and since the creator and I clearly have different opinions, so I decided it's just better to leave them out of this)

Anyways, I saw this and I got pissed. Very very pissed. And so I spent 2 and a half hours writing a whole three page essay explaining everything wrong with this.

So here it is. (:

First of all, the Darkling does every single thing listed here for Nikolai, excluding cutting people’s fingers off, but he does commit mass murder, which I personally consider to be worse than cutting off someone’s fingers. 

Anyways, let’s first just address Nikolai’s reasons for doing each of these things and then the Darkling’s reasons for doing the same things.

Cutting the fingers off a man: Nikolai was a teenager who wanted to help his incredibly war torn country. He felt helpless, and even once he became a privateer, a lot of people still disrespected him because of his age, so he proved his ruthlessness by injuring one person, so he could help save his entire country. 

Usurping the throne: First of all, Nikolai was second in line to the throne, and after Vasily died, he would’ve been first. Also, the current king was an ignorant rapist who let the rest of the country go to waste to fuel his own luxuries. Nikolai wanted to rescue his country from war and a ruler that was doing nothing to stop hundreds of people (many of them kids) from dying in unnecessary battles.

Lying to Alina/hiding information from her: All Nikolai did was hide his identity from Alina to get her safely away from the Darkling who had just kidnapped her for the second time in less than a year. Kissed her without her consent: Okay, let’s just preface this by saying Malina was what got me hyperfixated on the Grishaverse, so seeing Nikolai kiss Alina did upset me, but he did it spread hope to the Ravkan villagers. They were also already spreading around a fake engagement, so while it was wrong, it wasn’t like he was trying to manipulate her. Nikolai was just trying to make their marriage more believable. (I’d also like to address a scene later in the book where Alina actually wants Nikolai to kiss her, and he says no, knowing that she just wants a distraction and isn’t really in love with him).

And now for why the Darkling did all the same things. 

Trying to usurp the throne: The Darkling hates the king, but not because he’s a terrible person, but because he’s ignorant and the Darkling knows he could be using the Fold to expand Ravka’s power. The Darkling usurps the throne so he can try and take over the country, not because he wants to save it.

Lying to Alina/hiding information from her: Unlike Nikolai, he wasn’t trying to protect her. The Darkling lied to Alina so she would believe that 1) he was in love with her and 2) he wanted to save Ravka. We know this isn’t true. When Nikolai lies, he does it to protect Alina, but when the Darkling lies he does it to manipulate her.

Kissed Alina without her consent: The Darkling tried to convince Alina he was in love with her so she would be easier to manipulate. Alina even says she doesn’t know how he feels about her, and that she doesn’t believe he loves her, but that she wants to be wanted by him. 

And now for everything else the Darkling does:

Mass murder: He destroyed an entire town just to prove a point. 

“Gifting” Genya to the Lantsovs, and then allowing her to be continually raped by them

for years. More than anything else, I feel like this proves just how terrible he is.

Killing his own mother: No explanation needed, that’s just awful.

Threatening to kill Mal to make sure Alina stays in line. He enslaved Alina. He put an unremovable collar around her neck that forced her to do whatever he wanted, and then promised to kill her boyfriend just in case that wasn’t enough.

Using kids as bargaining chips. Using grown people is bad enough, but kids. Sure, they’re Grisha, but they aren’t strong enough to fight back, especially after seeing their captor kill Ana Kuya, who helped care for them while they were in hiding. (Also just felt like adding that Nina was one of the students who he used as a bargaining chip. That’s honestly pretty unimportant, but if you needed another reason to hate him.)

Killing Alina’s mother figure: Again, he did this just to prove a point. He wanted to show Alina that he could hurt the people she cared about, and that was his only incentive.

So that the first 75% of my rant, but I also made the mistake of looking at the comments on that post and added a whole extra page responding to those.

Saying that the same thing can be applied to Kaz is so fucking disrespectful. Kaz is a traumatized teen. Is he violent? Yes. But he only hurts people who have hurt him, his friends, or other innocent people. Oomen nearly killed Inej, as well as the other crows, so Kaz hurt him because he cared about his friends and was mad that they were almost killed. When the Darkling kills people, it’s out of greed for power and the fact that he knows it’ll get a rise out of Alina.

And then this. Kaz calls Inej an investment because he values her. She said four words to him and chose to pay off her indenture. She ended up being not only an incredible spy, but an incredible friend as well. Kaz didn’t need to pay off her indenture, but he did because despite everything terrible that he does, he’s still a genuinely good person, and didn’t want to see a woman being exploited the way she was. An investment is something you value, which is why Kaz calls her one.

Also, Kaz makes a big point of Inej not belonging to anyone. He didn’t force her to get the Dregs tattoo, because he didn’t “want to be the one to mark her again.” He recognized that she was an independent person, and by not making her have the tattoo, he was giving her the freedom to leave Ketterdam when her indenture was paid off. Also, when Inej tells Kaz she wants to leave Ketterdam, he literally buys her a boat so she can leave. That’s not how you treat your property.

And as for the Darkling, he used Alina’s power to start a civil war. What he does is beyond redemption. The Darkling exploits and manipulates women. He abuses and assaults them to reach his own goals, most of which involve destroying the rest of the world so that Ravka stays in power. Comparing him to two kids who just do what they have to to survive is so disrespectful, and clearly you misunderstood the messages of the books if you think that Kaz and Nikolai are the same as the Darkling.

So that's my little anti-Darkling rant. I've already tortured my frienda with this, so if they didn't think I was insane before, they do now lol.

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

What Is and Isn't a Fish: an Essay and Guide by Fishyfishyfishtimes

A simplified list of the animals I discuss can be found here!

Hello folks! I created this post to have a kind of definitive essay/explanation of what is and isn't a "fish", starting with defining the term and going over animals that fit and don't fit the bill. As other fishblr artists, writers and educators must know too well, some people are confused about where this term begins and ends, mistaking other aquatic animals for fish. I have my fair share of arthropods and cnidarians as fish fact requests in my own askbox, heck, some years back a friend of mine asked me if clams were fish. The event that finally made me decide to write this was someone requesting that a fish-only account draw a crustacean, pondering to themselves if they count as fish.

I don't want to hold it against these people. It's impossible to know something when you've never been taught! So that's what I'm here to do, hopefully achieving a pretty correct and universal view ^^' If I make any mistakes please correct me. I'm learning all the same as everyone else is.

Definition of fish

Immediately, we run into a bit of a problem with the definition of fish. See, what the term "fish" means has fluctuated for centuries! For a long time, pretty much any animal that lived in water was a "fish" — I say "pretty much any" instead of "every" animal because for a long time sessile animals like sponges or corals were thought to be plants. This is why we have such remnants in our language like shellFISH, starFISH and jellyFISH, they lived in water so they were called such!

Occasionally these definitions would be changed for cultural convenience too. Many Christian churches take part in Lent, and in the Catholic church red and white meat is forbidden on Fridays and Ash Wednesday. In the Middle Ages, in my own country, Finland, this abstinence of red and white meat could last up to 140 days! To make fasting easier, many animals were labelled fish for convenience so they could be eaten as well. These newfound "fish" included seals, beavers and swans, pretty much just anything that was aquatic or semiaquatic in nature.

Nowadays just going off of looks or behaviour won't do, though. There has been much more of an effort to define fishes coherently based on their anatomy and phylogeny, which is great! Problem is, that's easier said than done: fishes are an extremely diverse group, and uh.. not really a single group, either. I'll show you:

As you can see from this heavily simplified phylogenic tree, fishes are not a singular group like, say, mammals are! The animals that we group under "fish" are actually a part of several distinct lineages of animals, some more closely related to us than each other. Heck, tetrapods, which include amphibians, reptiles*, and mammals, are fish themselves! Phylogenetically speaking. Our ancestors were lobe-finned fish, and, well, you never stop being the previous taxon even when you evolve into something else. If you try to exclude tetrapods, no such unified group as "fish" exists. Still, when discussing fish, we tend to want to avoid talking about every vertebrate ever and instead focus on the very specific aquatic ones we mean when we say "fish". This is why many definitions of the term "fish" still exclude tetrapods, even if we share a common fishy ancestor. "Fish" describes more of a lifeform than it does a clade, much like the term "worm"!

(*birds are reptiles! This could be a whole post in and of itself, but I'm not here to write about that. Someone else has most likely taken up the task!)

Hooray, it's definition time! As stated previously, fishes are an extremely diverse group of thousands of species, and what terms might apply to the Atlantic cod may not apply to the yellowfin tuna or giant mudskipper, let alone a Pacific lamprey! Encyclopedia.com defines a fish as "an ectothermic chordate that lives primarily in water and possesses a cranium*, gills that are useful virtually throughout life, and appendages (if present) in the form of fins". Encyclopedia Britannica notes that "the term fish is applied to a variety of vertebrates of several evolutionary lines", instead highlighting five classes. These five classes are left partly unspecified, but ones that are mentioned are jawless fish, cartilaginous fish and bony fish (which still includes tetrapods, however), and the two classes left can be assumed to be two classes of extinct fish. Wikipedia defines a fish as "an aquatic, craniate**, gill-bearing animal that lacks limbs with digits". Tim M. Berra, an academy professor and ichtyologist, defines fish as "poikilothermic***, aquatic chordate with appendages (when present) developed as fins, whose chief respiratory organs are gills and whose body is usually covered with scales".

(*cranium=upper part of the skull **craniate=an animal with a skull ***poikilothermic=an animal whose internal temperature varies considerably)

From these more or less detailed definitions we can gather many defining features for fish: a cranium-having chordate, primarily aquatic, gill-bearing and uses gills as their main respiratory organ, lacking any limbs with digits, instead having their limbs be in paired and unpaired fins when present. Most fish are also ectothermic, meaning their body temperature is determined by their environment, but some can heat up parts of their body or their entire body in the case of the opah. Most fish also have scales, but not all, just like how most fish are fully aquatic, but some like lungfish or mudskippers can spend considerable time out of the water. Such is the way of these magnificent and diverse animals!

Finally, with all this out of the way, we can get into...

What is a fish!

Here, I will be detailing animals that are fish! Well, at least the broadest strokes; there are more than 30 000 fish species and if I listed them all we'd be here all life. I shall instead go over the major classes and list, in short, some groups that belong in them.

Jawless fish (Superclass Cyclostomi)

Jawless fish are often a topic of debate, especially in matters of their relation to each other and to jawed vertebrates. Evidence seems to point to hagfish and lampreys being closest related to one another and to lampreys being more closely related to jawed vertebrates than to hagfish (which would make hagfish craniates but not vertebrates). In the phylogeny tree above I decided to portray hagfish and lampreys as a monophyletic group, as molecular studies and microRNA analysis seems to point to a monophylegic superclass. Please note that this could go either way, though.

Jawless fish is a group containing two extant fishes, hagfish (class Myxini) and lampreys (order Petromyzontiformes)! Jawless fish are more "primitive" than other groups, for example both lack true vertebrae and scales. Still, they both have craniums and gills and they are aquatic, and so they have earned their place among fish!

Cartilaginous fish (class Chondrichthyes)

Surprisingly, I've found that this group has a lot of confusion surrounding it. I have received many a request confirming if sharks are fish, or asking if I'd cover a shark "even if it's not a fish". So I'll say it now: good news, sharks are indeed fish! So are their cousins, rays, skates and chimaeras, also known as ghost sharks! All of these fish have a primarily cartilaginous skeleton, tooth-like dermal denticles and lack gill covers and a swim bladder. Out of all the sharks, I also want to highlight that the whale shark, despite its confusing name, is a shark and not a whale. So, it is a fish!

Ray-finned fish (class Actinopterygii)

Name any fish, and there's a 96% chance the species name you said belongs to a ray-finned fish. Unless, like, you really like sharks. But this isn't about them.

Ray-finned fish are the biggest group of fish and incredibly diverse! It has your seahorse, your pufferfish, your bass, your tuna, your anglerfish, your clownfish, your salmon, your sturgeon, your lanternfish, your perch, your oarfish, your gar, your sardine, your moray eel... and this is only a tiny, tiny fraction of the groups that belong to this class! Defining features of ray-finned fish are that they tend to have a swim bladder and a bony skeleton (some exceptions though. Sturgeons, for one, have evolved a cartilaginous skeleton but they're still ray-finned fish). The largest group of ray-fins, the teleosts, also have leptoid scales, which are thinner and more flexible and grow with growth rings.

I want to bring special attention to some members of the ray-finned fish which tend to have a lot of confusion surrounding them and their heritage: eels and seahorses. Many people think these two are not fish due to their strange anatomy, like lack of scales or (many) fins and their elongated bodies, and I wouldn't blame them! Seahorses belong to family Syngnathidae, which also includes seadragons and pipefish. Eels, meanwhile, make up the order Anguilliformes. All of these long friends of ours are fish!

Lobe-finned fish (clade Sarcopterygii)

I shall merely focus on the fishy fishy fish individuals of this class, which excludes tetrapods. Lobe-finned fish house the two extant species of coelacanths, and six extant species of lungfish! These fish are bony and their fins are placed at the tips of fleshy, lobelike stalks, resembling the limbs of tetrapods. It is thought that the common ancestor of coelacanths and lungfish and tetrapods had similar structures that then became the four limbs the members of our clade typically have. Coelacanths and lungfish are wonderful fishes and deserve a lot of love and respect, not only because they're our closest cousins but because they're unique and we have so much to learn about them!

So, these are the fishes! There are also extinct groups of fish, namely class Placodermi (armoured fish) and class Acanthodii (spiny "sharks"). I'm moreso an extant fish account however, and so I shall move onto...

What isn't a fish?

Now we get into the real meat of this post. Without further ado, here are some aquatic friends of ours that can be mixed up with fish very often!

Crustaceans (subphylum Crustacea)

Many of our hard-shelled many-legged friends belong here! Crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, isopods, triops, barnacles, copepods, you name it! Even though many crustaceans are aquatic or semiaquatic and have gills, you'll find that they're invertebrates that lack an internal skeleton (so no cranium, not even vertebrae)! We still love them though!

Mollusks (phylum Mollusca)

Creatures both soft and hard-shelled! Cephalopods like octopuses, squid, nautilus and cuttlefish, bivalves like clams, mussels, oysters or scallops, gastropods like sea slugs and snails and chitons go here! These friends of ours are also aquatic and have gills, some even have the suffix -fish (cephalopods used to be called inkfish, even!), but their lack of an endoskeleton is even more obvious than the crustaceans'. They're invertebrates, and therefore not fish!

Chelicerates (subphylum Chelicerata)

This group has many animals that are very hard to mistake for fish, namely spiders and scorpions, but horseshoe crabs and sea spiders are two groups of extant marine chelicerates! Both groups are aquatic, and horseshoe crabs have gills. However, they're both invertebrates, lacking a cranium or vertebrae. Other aquatic chelicerates exist, but they're usually very small, like water mites.

Cnidarians (phylum Cnidaria)

This phylum has the sessile corals and sea anemones and the usually more mobile jellyfish and siphonophores (includes the infamous Portugese man o' war!). I imagine corals and sea anemones are mistaken for fish less due to their sessile nature, but they're good to bring up nevertheless. None of these animals have a backbone, or, any bones really. They lack gills, they lack fins, they even lack the bilateral shape of fish. Jellyfish, despite the name, are indeed not fish! Some people suggest the name sea jellies be used for them instead, and I think it's much cuter.

Echinoderms (phylum Echinodermata)

Animals like starfish, sea urchins, brittle stars, sand dollars, sea cucumbers and feather stars go here. It seems that this pesky "-fish" -suffix is hard to shake off, as now we have the starfish. Once again, all of these slow-moving bottom-dwelling friends of ours are invertebrates, as they lack vertebrae or a cranium. Interestingly though, they are among our closest invertebrate relatives! So we ought to give them some props for that. I also want to mention that starfish can also be called sea stars, which ought to lessen confusion about their being too.

Comb jellies (phylum Ctenophora)

Comb jellies look a lot like jellyfish, but they belong in their own unique phylum! They have the same deal going on; they are invertebrates, they lack gills, they lack a cranium, they are simply aquatic.

Lancelets (subphylum Cephalocordata) and tunicates (subphylum Tunicata)

A double feature, because I wanted to save space didn't want these guys to be all alone! Lancelets and Tunicates, like sea squirts and salps, are chordates, which you can find in the phylogenic tree I drew all the way in the definitions section. They share many a feature with vertebrates, like a bilateral bodyplan, a notochord at some stage of life and a post-anal tail, but I'm afraid they're still not fish. They lack a cranium and their notochord does not develop into a vertebral column! Sorry friends, you tried. We can still hang out at the chordate convention.

Annelids (phylum Annelida)

The infamous bobbit worm, bone-eating worms, sea mice, giant tube worms, feather duster worms, spoon worms, bristleworms in general, leeches... many, many worms go here! Pretty self-explanatory: they are invertebrates, even when they live in water. They're extremely cool invertebrates too! I suggest taking a look at some of them, there's many interesting species.

Flatworms (phylum Platyhelminthes)

Flatworms are another very diverse group of worms, having many species both terrestrial and aquatic, however mostly I want to put attention into the free-swimming marine flatworms. They may swim beautifully (and fence with grace), but they are nevertheless invertebrates! Flatworms can live a variety of different lifestyles, from predators to parasites.

Amphibians (class Amphibia)

We've made it into vertebrates now! Amphibians include frogs, salamanders, and caecilians. While they have limbs with digits in their adulthood*, they can be easily confused for fish in their larval stages! This is no surprise, as they use gills to breathe underwater and tadpoles lack any limbs at all for a while. Many amphibians later transition into a terrestrial or semiaquatic way of life and lose their gills, not to mention gain their digit-having limbs.

(*excluding caecilians)

...Well, many amphibians do this, but not all. It's important to mention there are also species of aquatic salamanders which can bear great resemblance to fish with their elongated bodies! Amphiumas, which are sometimes mistakenly called "conger eels" (which is an actual species of fish), are aquatic salamanders with small residual limbs and both working gills and lungs. Giant salamanders and mudpuppies/waterdogs have lungs and gills as well, and lead an aquatic lifestyle — olms are close relatives of mudpuppies. Sirens, meanwhile, lack hind limbs and only have small front limbs, along with retaining their gills in adulthood. Among aquatic salamanders I also want to bring up one most often talked about species: the axolotl! They remain in their larval form, have external gills and lead an aquatic lifestyle. It can be hard to tell with aquatic salamanders sometimes, but these friends of ours are amphibians and not fish, even if they've rejected the land life.

Caecilians are a bit less known overall, but they can also cause a lot of confusion due to their long, limbless body. While most caecilians live underground, some are aquatic in nature, and can therefore be mistaken for fish! However, caecilians breathe via the use of their lungs and through the skin and don't have any gills at all.

Reptiles (class Reptilia)

Most commonly mistaken for fish in this group are sea snakes, sea kraits and water snakes, sea turtles, turtles, penguins, and other (semi)aquatic birds. Sea snakes and water snakes bear a very strong resemblance to eels, but they are indeed just snakes adapted to an aquatic or a semiaquatic lifestyle! The same goes for sea turtles, turtles overall, and penguins. They all need to breathe air and they lack fins, even if their flippers, webbed feet and built-in paddles may look like fins! They also have wholly different types of scales (or feathers!!) than what fish have, even if they share the feature. I assume that other aquatic reptiles, like the marine iguana and crocodilians are better read as reptiles thanks to their limbs with digits, but I want to give them a reptile shoutout anyway. They’re aquatic or semiaquatic, but they are air-breathers and fin-lackers all the same!

I also want to mention one specific extinct group of reptiles, ichtyosaurs! These marine reptiles were rather shark- or dolphin-like in appearance, which is actually a really good example of convergent evolution! Like all other reptiles, they also needed to breathe air and they had... erm... well, I'm not sure if I can call the bones in their flippers digits, but, that's what they used to be, so...? They were cool reptiles and among my favourites! There were many other aquatic reptiles too, but I will only mention just the ones now. A paleontology account would be better-suited to list you allll the marine reptiles.

Mammals (class Mammalia)

Our home class! Some of the aquatic friends we have in this class include whales like baleen and beaked whales, dolphins (orcas go here), porpoises, belugas, narwhals and sperm whales, pinnipeds like seals, sea lions, walruses, and sirenians like manatees, (occasionally known as sea cows) and dugongs! We also have some semiaquatic buddies like hippopotamids, otters, beavers and platypuses! Whales and pinnipeds especially often cause a lot of confusion due to their very streamlined, fishy appearance. They are, however, air breathers that feed their young with milk (some dolphin calves are even born with some hair), and their ancestors were land mammals! The same goes for pinnipeds and sirenians too. True seals, fur seals and sea lions still have fur even! Hippos, otters, beavers and platypuses are a bit more obvious as mammals with their fur and.. distinct air-breathing.. but I wanted to mention them anyway. Their adaptations to aquatic life are just one example of how fascinating evolution can be!

And here we are! A hopefully comprehensive list of fishes and non-fishes, beginning with the ever-shifting story of the term "fish", phylogeny, and why some animals are called fish when they really aren't. I hope you have found useful and interesting information in this post, and perhaps learned something new! I bid you a farewell! :D

[dragonroilz]

Hey there! I've come across your art ever since I got into Risk of Rain 2 (better late than never, I've been sleeping on this game for years, jesus), and I'm enamoured with it, to say the least. Is there any advice you could perhaps give for an aspiring artist?

you're getting an essay whether you like it or not.

tl;dr of it if you dont want to read

- learn how to take critique

- dont skip fundamentals

- tracing is okay*

- be mindful when drawing

- you wont see good results for a long time

ok firstly, glad you like my art! i try my best on pretty much everything i make so the compliment is greatly appreciated!!

secondly, you have NO clue how much i love yapping about how to draw. im not an expert on how-to-draw-ology but i like to think i know enough to help other people not swing in the dark when it comes to getting better.

learning how to take criticism is THE most important part. not getting butthurt or at least listening to peoples critiques when they mean well is critical to improvement because its specialized advice for you. you have no clue how many young and/or new artists have gotten mad at me for giving critique when they specifically asked me for it. if youre looking to improve you gotta bite that bullet. not all criticism is valid(dont listen to people who are just tryna make you upset), but good and valid criticism can come from anyone. dont unvalidate someone's critique just because theyre not an artist or "not as good" as you. try and get as much feedback as you can and move onto the next piece instead of fixing something to perfection. you will get obsessed in a very destructive way.

learning fundamentals is another step to getting better. that means actually learning perspective, hands, anatomy, and all of the other stuff people hate drawing. its like lifting weights. most people dont like it but if you want to get stronger you need to put in the time to do the painful stuff.

chris christodoulou(ror's composer) actually made a similar comment about the topic of improvement in his field that was along the lines of "if you want to write music, stop playing video games and read a book". he got a lot of shit for saying that but honestly its true.

you need to treat art as a discipline if you want to get better at it. draw as much as you can for as long as you can before it becomes a health hazard. when im not resting i tend to draw at least three hours a day, not counting the 3 to 6 hours additional hours a day i draw during college. obviously a beginner doesn't need to draw that much but drawing daily is a good start.

if you want resources on where to look for fundamentals, Sinixdesign and Ethan Becker were who I turned to for advice that is relevant to the industry. There's definitely others out there but I tend to do more self studying so i don't know the more recent stuff.

something that they'll bring up is that tracing isn't bad AS LONG AS YOU DONT POST IT AND CLAIM IT AS YOUR OWN. it's a good way to see how other people deal with stylization, but its absolutely not okay to post that stuff online. treat it like how traditional painters do master studies. its for your own education, not clout. and you shouldn't be drawing for clout anyway.

last but not least, draw what you love and you'll always love drawing. dont be afraid to hyperfixate and lose interest in things. it will help you continue your art journey. a lot of people in my art school have little to no motivation to draw outside of college because they have no interest in drawing outside of assigned work, which is not a great relationship to have with art if you want to pursue it in the long run. draw what you want to draw when the motivation hits you. if that motivation is risk of rain? draw it. if it's leg muscles then fuck yeah draw that too.

you can stick fundamental practice into your casual art by being mindful of what you are drawing. that can be done by asking questions about what's going on to further the progress of your art. its kind of hard to explain in text, but its basically just keeping in mind how your lines influence the piece.

in the beginning youre going to have ideas and none of them are going to translate to paper. its going to take years before anything will ever compare to whats in your brain and thats just the sucky part. ive been drawing seriously for about 5 or 6 years and theres still a ton of shit i do NOT wanna touch but i have to if i want to improve.

we're all sisyphus pushing that goddamn stupidass boulder and the only thing we can do is acknowledge how far we've come while still knowing that there's more work to be done. but thats kind of the shit that i live for.

[fanfics-and-bullshit]

I saw a post where someone gave there opinion on Mario ships, and I’m now doing that

Luigi/Bowser- This is my reason to breathe. It is a ship that has something for literally everyone and it has taken over my life. This blog is basically dedicated to it.

Mario/ Princess Peach- Love. They are cute, it gives husband worships wife energy. Peach is taller then Mario. I love it.

Luigi/ Princess Daisy- I prefer them as friends, but also have no problem with the this. If Bowser didn’t exist they would be my main for Luigi.

Luigi/Peasley- Honestly, I know nothing about Prince Peasley. But this ship isn't hurting anyone so go ahead.

Luigi/King Boo- I'm sure if I just read a fic, or looked at art or had someone give me an essay on them, I might fall for it, but for some reason I don't really have an opinion on it. But don't let me stop you from shipping them to your hearts content.

Luigi/Peach- I mean, you're not hurting anyone but that's really what your going with? Really? Okay I guess.

Mario/DK- I honestly thought that I would like fall head over heels for them. I thought that it would be a repeat of Bowuigi where it started as a joke but then I looked up the tag and it wasn't a joke anymore. I looked at the tag. I thought it was cool. I thought is was funny even. I even saw why people shipped them, and it was exactly the type of couple I usually ship. But for some reason, I don't like it as much as Mario/Peach. Maybe someday I'll be shoved into the Dk/Mario hole, but right now I'm just not. But I get why people like them, and I see no problem with you shipping them.

Daisy/Rosalina- I have drawn fanart of them. I have almost cried over the lack of content on them. I am currently working on a fanfic on them. I will probably write many more fics on them. I feel like you very rarely actually see WLW ships in fandoms, and I want to help bring them to light more.

Mario/Luigi- I am judging you. Heavily. I am sharpening a butter knife. When you see me with this knife and are like "You are really gonna kill me with that?" I'll say "No." and that's when the cannon i strategically placed right behind you while you were looking at the butter knife will start to go off. You'll jump away just in time for the cannonball to hit me instead. As you bask in the glow of your victory I will appear. The first me was a clone. I'm holding a gun. You beg for your life and I shoot, but I missed you entirely. You make fun of me but that's when the bullet bounces off metal and cuts a rope that drops a piano on you. I will then take the sharpened butter knife from my clone and have toast.

[mysteriouslybluepirate]

If I write a video essay on why S2 overall didn't work for me personally what bits should I add from fandom consensus (I'm posting this before I go to bed, I'm first breaking S2 down episode by episode, putting 'pins' in topics for after when I break down why I was disappointed, I'm already at Ep 3). I won't be discussing how Izzy's death impacted elder queers (I'm 21) or physically disabled people as it's not my place, but will be linking people's experiences. I also live in a rural Red state, I've been visibly closeted my whole life. I can't speak to finding a queer family the way Izzy did in S2.

I've already got:

Jenkins confirmed that this season was always going to be 8 episodes, so he bit off more than he could do and gave us a story as broad as an ocean with little depth.

Izzy's arc is centered on leaving Ed, only claiming to not want to be without Blackbeard, though neither character really WAS Blackbeard. Izzy suddenly becomes Ed's mentor.

How if you wanted Izzy to be tied to Ed and Blackbeard it could have been so easy to just portray Izzy as suicidal this entire season, and genuinely depressed, instead of having the time of his life.

The fact Izzy, Stede, and Ed rarely interact with the main crew. In the scenes, they are in they are framed as two separate groups. Making Ed feel like he was never brought back into the family, and Izzy as only having made friends with the heartbroken crew

Stede being shallow as fuck, ignoring Lucius' trauma, telling jim to 'hush' in ep 4 during the Ed apology scene (fuck him), telling Ed he shouldn't apologize in ep 8, the ONE TIME Ed apologizes to someone, looking at them and fully meaning it.

Ed stops trying to make peace with the crew after episode 5.

Lucius' line implying sexual assult, and Fang's line about what he did to Ed's unconscious body being the type of humor this show should have stayed away from.

Not confirming what the Olu/Jim/Archie/Zheng situation is IN CANON. Are they all together? Who knows??? I literally see it as Archie/Jim and Zheng/Olu where Jim and Olu are partnered? But the only confirmation of that is Olu called Jim Babe this season. Like????

Izzy's funeral being tearless, them making jokes atop a grave, and it is followed by a WEDDING. OH, and the ring being left there(I won't reference the leg, but will reference that some find it odd that THEY REMOVED HIS LEG, a part of his body, to use as a headstone)

IZZY'S DEATH NOT SERVICING ANY PLOT. It doesn't move the plot forward, it's thrown in for no reason.

Izzy's death set up. (IE. Two infamous pirates not checking a hostage. It's lazy and doesn't add to the plot)

The fact Izzy is fucking lying if he thought the crew loved Ed- like?.

The crew seriously thought Ed murdered Buttons, didn't they...

[pepcono]

Accidentally got lost in the sauce while writing a reply and ended up with a shoddy essay. So I've polished it up a bit and packaged it in more proper essay format.

Special thanks to @\Undeaddream for always reminding me that sometimes the people you disagree with most are those you respect most.

Consider the "egg"

Consider the "cis men" who state things like "I really want to be a woman, but I'm not trans"

Consider those who wish they were trans so that they could escape the torture of their body but believe that it's something that happens to other people.

Consider those who are suffering, but are unable to accept the possibility they're trans.

In other words, the egg.

Some would believe that what harm is caused by classifying and naming this person is inexcusable, "it makes people uncomfortable," "it enforces gender norms," they argue.

Their thoughts dwell on those who believe themselves miscategorised, or those insulted by the insinuation that some of their characteristics could be seen as trans.

But do they stop and consider the egg?

Do they consider how people mobilise the position "you shouldn't tell someone they could be trans"?

The anti-egg position, although often coming from well meaning thought process, could very well do more harm than good.

Speaking anecdotally, I saw a yt comment thread where someone said: "Idk wtf is wrong with me. I really relate to this [a song about hating masculine features of ones body and wanting to be a girl] but I'm not a cis woman nor a trans woman, I am 100% sure I am not trans! Idk, am I just a freak or what?" Now maybe you dear reader see that and take them at their word, but I see someone who's in the same position as I was. Wanting desperately to be feminine, to escape my "male" puberty but due to internalised misogyny and transphobia is unable to admit why, unable to accept the solution.

Maybe what they need to hear is "it is ok to be a woman", "its ok to be trans", "you're not a freak for wanting this"

Maybe what they need to hear is "you don't need to suffer"

Some people did point this out in the replies, but each was met with similar statements of "you should insinuate they're a trans woman, that's rude" Maybe you, the reader, agree with that statement, maybe you're even right. But I know how I would've interpreted it. I would have seen it as a statement that I shouldn't consider the possibility, it would further cement the idea that "real trans people just know, because here's all these trans people sneering at that idea I could be trans"

But honestly, I'll be the first to admit "egg" is not the best term for this (But that's a whole other thing). But I instead bring this up to highlight that anti-egg discourse doesn't really stack up to the hype. It kinda reinforces that "just knowing" misconception.

In some people's haste to protect gnc men from the travesty of being compared to trans women (or worse, mistaken for trans women!), they don't stop to consider the egg.

But maybe you dear reader, don't see that, maybe you don't see your own denial and self hatred in "cis men", maybe you don't see someone reflecting internalised transphobia and misogyny that you yourself had to overcome.

And that's ok, not everyone has had the same experiences, some (probably) never even had dysphoria, a lucky few might have even never had to deal with internalised transphobia.

But bloody hell if you can't even acknowledge that not all eggs are even GNC in your post critiquing the term. You might want to reevaluate how complete your understanding is.

(also as an aside, egg can apply to "cis women" but the OP I was replying to didn't acknowledge it and as I repeatedly state, what's key "egg" is relating one's own experiences to them, something I do better with "cis men" eggs than "cis women" eggs)

[readychilledwine]

Hey Liz! I've noticed you don't use MDNI for your smut. Can I ask why?

Warning - controversial opinions below cut and a long post

I have several reasons, but I want to start by saying that I respect everyone's opinions on this, and I hope that even if our opinions are different, we can discuss this like civilized humans.

To give you all some background:

I grew up in a fairly strict traditional midwest home. My parents held my purity to a very different standard than my brothers. My virtue was to be a gift to my future husband, and my body was to be a temple and treated with kindness and worship. We can get into my whole sexual awaking later, but I will tell you all, smut fanfics, lemons as they were once lovingly called, were part of my sexual education and how I learned my body was reacting normally as a teen. I lied about my age on fanfiction websites constantly because I have always preferred fanfiction smut over traditional porn. So, as someone who grew up in my background, let me first say, I can understand why a minor would make the choice to read on here instead of watching.

Anyways, to my reasonings:

1. The children I legally have responsibilities to and monitor are my daughter and occasionally my nephews and nieces when we are watching and caring for them. If my daughter came to me as a teen and said she found a smutty story online, we're going to discuss it and make a plan that best fits us regarding everything. As all parents should, from jump, when allowing children and teens access to the internet.

2. Legal ages are different everywhere. 18 to 19 is a good standard, but there are countries where teens as young as 16 are considered adults and countries where you are not considered an adult until 21. I ultimately am not creepy enough to stalk your page, ask where you live, figure out how old you are, and then look into majority laws in your country. That's how you end up on the registry.

3 - Putting MDNI will not stop a minor from reading my fics. They're going to do what they're going to do, and there are very few jurisdictions where I can legally be held liable for that due to the following reason:

4 - Nothing is preventing a minor from lying on their profile regarding their age. We've all done it. Let's be adults and admit that. As long as you are not actively sending "pornographic content" (which in itself is debatable as to what that means in different locations,) you normally cannot be held liable.

5 - Trying to message me is like pulling teeth from a bear right now, so I very rarely interact with people in my messages, and I am getting horrible regarding my comments (and I'm working on that, please know I see them and am always grateful.) The people I do actively message back, I do stalk you all a little (because i do love you and want to talk to you💕) and I do not actively send those people smut related things.

6 - video related porn is incredibly harmful to the young mind. That's coming from someone who has a sex positive lifestyle. Porn sets unrealistic expectations for teens and young adults regarding how sex should look, how it feels, and how it should sound. It's actually a huge topic of debate and discussion in the psychology and sex therapy world. I personally would rather have a teen read smut instead of watching porn. I could write an essay on this alone.

7 - Smut novels are also easy to purchase and access for teens. I do not see a difference in allowing in allowing a teen to read a smut novel versus smutty fanfiction. Again, AS LONG AS THE AUTHOR IS NOT DIRECTLY SENDING IT TO THEM.

8 - Using the "You are responsible for your own consumption" divider with my warnings and a cut is typically warning enough. By seeing that divider, seeing the warnings, and making the choice to open it and read any ways, the minor is now choosing to do something and accessing it by their own choice.

Is all of this to say I want minors actively interacting with my smut? Negative. Please don't.

I think it's very important to make sure you are marking it with something, but I do not think explicitly putting MDNI is going to do much more than just using the above divider.

Again, this post is NOT me saying minors should interact with my smut stuff or message me about it. Read in peace and don't tell me.

I'd like to leave you all with one of my favorites poems:

Fantastic Breasts and Where to Find Them by Brenna Twohy 💕

[spottheantisemitism]

Hit pieces

so like you know they guys who were 'NOOO Magneto can't be zionist😭"

One of them is Calina who used to reblog tikkunolamresistance claimed to go to every protest that she helped and Gazan family and they all happily celebrated Hannukah together even though many Gazans have religious trauma and would ABSOLUTELY NOT (Juju has a whole post about this)

Listen I've talked to palestineans, I'm more scared of white people but many Palestineans do not feel safe around Jews

I call bullshit on your saviourism and orientalism and you all celebrating hannukah (Hannukah too the most culturally christian holiday) happily when most Gazans can't even look at a Magen David. It's all too neat all too Norman Rockwell "can't we all get along". How did they fit in your house with your roomate? how did you feed them? Do they all smoke weed?

I mean he HAS (in X-men 2). So has Charles in the comics. So has Jean, she was even executed for it. That said this is a microaggression to make someone not enjoy the thing they like

Cope and seethe that others interpret him differently

Calina ignores basic comic history to suit her needs

seems blind to the irony of this statement when you do the same with literally all other Jews

Oh nOOO him wagging his finger at the ambassodor and telling her to do better means he wants Israel to be destroyed and stop it's wars. He was former Mossad he's telling her tactics are bad and the country is shit at keeping peace

"He's atheist so he sees through the lies of Israel and how they mistreated him" How anti theist of you. that's NOT what he says on panel. you're trotting out the "Israel mistreats holocaust survivors". In claremont's comics survivors are treated really well, sometimes comics don't match up with real life such as a boy has lazer beams or friendship can undo brainwashing.

"he lived their briefly" ah yes a few years is brief. He lived in Israel longer than he lived in Vinnistsya and his toddler daugther had time to be born and raised there before dying in a pogrom. Which WHY he moved to Israel

"he only lived there to track down nazis" NO CALINA, he lived because HE HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO. YOU REBLOGGED MY ESSAY ON THAT back when we were friends? don't you remember my talking points, old friend?

"Zionism isn't Judiasm" yes but his Judiasm is only ever spoken of in forms of his allegorical zionist

"I only blorbofy fictional war criminals" Honey you support TOR who suppurted ALL the terror orgs. You very much DO support real life war criminals

you even admit it.

while cannibal mostly writes porn so I thought it was "NOOO you put politics in my smut and actions comics" but Get this

he has a story about a Jewish character leaving to seek freedom in a town that's safe for Jews and Mutants alike in the wild west sounds like a "Put Israel in Alaska" story to me. Sir you 20K words of "zionism is fine if it displaces native americans instead of palestineans"

proof I didn't make this up:

last tag

you made this goy a Jew and had him go on an exodus but bitch about real life Jews? fuck off, hypocrite

nothing these two grifters can say should be taken at face value

[david-talks-sw]

Hey,

I saw your post in which you defended Mace Windu and it is such a good post. Thank you.

At the moment I debate with someone on twitter and it is super frustrating because they are saying Mace is a potential villain because he hates the Sith and wants to kill Anakin in episode I (even through he doesn't admit it).

I'm slightly shocked that someone thinks like this. Could you maybe help me to argue that Mace isn't a villain and a potential child killer?

Hey there!

I appreciate you asking me this, but honestly it looks to me like this is a debate you just won't "win" and you should quit while you're ahead.

Firstly, because those are two arguments so ridiculous and baseless that they have to either

be made in bad faith, AKA you're arguing with someone who's literally grasping at straws and making bullshit arguments for the sake of having the last tweet. In which case you can quit interacting with them because this is a victory in and of itself.

be made by someone completely insane and/or who has made their own headcanon about it. In which case, you might as well quit because there's no way you'll change this person's mind.

But, secondly, being pro-Jedi on Twitter is hell.

I'm not kidding, there's literally SO many people who think the point of the Prequels is the Jedi's failure that if you try to dispel the notion, a rain of (factually incorrect) anti-Jedi arguments falls floods your notifications, and it inevitably devolves into "this guy missed the point of the Prequels".

I'm training myself more and more to take a page out of the Jedi's book and just "let go" because the shit I see sometimes is just infuriating. Like this one, I saw last night:

Out of 154 collected quotes where George Lucas talks about the Jedi, their relationship with Anakin and their rules (namely the attachment one), he is only critical about them twice.

TWICE! OUT OF 154!

But I didn't reply to this.

I drafted the tweet, then deleted it because this is such a big subject that you're not gonna be able to dispel it with a single tweet (and fuck getting Twitter blue, are you crazy? but even if you did, you really think anyone will read your essay of a tweet?)

And also because last year, I got into an argument re: if Qui-Gon was a better master for Anakin than Obi-Wan (my opinion is "nope"). And I argued the hell out of my case. You know what I got in return?

Fucking nothing.

All I got was the people I was arguing against (who kept piling on on like the 5th tweet in a thread instead of reading everything from the beginning, which was messy in and of itself) just... stop replying.

At some point when you're in that deep, you think it'll inevitably end with your "opponent" going:

'well argued sir, you have completely changed my mind for I have now seen the truth; jolly good show'.

Instead all you get is... nothing. They stop replying.

You don't get the satisfaction of an admission of defeat and you don't wanna be the person spamming "WELL?! NOTHING TO SAY?!" because that's just pathetic.

So all you're left with is an hour of your life gone, WASTED proving "I know more about a fictional universe than you, Internet stranger".

My suggestion is: break the wheel, turn that outrage into creativity and instead of getting into debates with people whose minds you'll never change, write a fanfic/draw a comic/shoot a short film that will transfer the emotions you feel re: Windu to anyone witnessing it.

It's a much more productive approach than arguing with someone whose either grasping at straws or genuinely thinks MACE WANTED TO KILL A CHILD????!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[t00nyah]

Okay so what are your headcanons for why Wenda did what she did? Like, did she just go crazy? Did she have a reason to hurt the people she went after?

I want to know all the lore of your au >:3

THANK YOU FOR ASKING BECAUSE I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT WENDA FANDOM WILL ACTUALLY HATE ME FOR THIS I THINK!!! AND NORMAL PEOPLE WILL ALSO BUT NOT BECAUSE IT'S ALL WENDA BUT BECAUSE I HAVE A WEIRD APPROACH TO CHARACTERIZATION AND MY MORAL COMPASS WAS SWALLOWED BY THE SEA!!!

hi, ''after writing this essay'' t00nyah here, this might not make sense and be weird psychologically speaking, and might also break your brain if you try to understand my thought process, so sorry about that!

i CAN'T formulate what exactly it is i'm thinkig of, but in my head, wenda has always been a little off. she would take a candy from a baby(sky) and laugh about it. she's just not nice to be around sometimes. she has 'popular girl everyone adores but secretely hates her' archetype potential in my head i think. except this popular girl likely is annoyed by you breathing the same air as her to the point of hoping a car would ride over you as you speak to her. (obviously not directed at you)

but i'm also saying SOMETIMES. she's not always ACTING like that, she just has intrusive thoughts that slip out sometimes, she can be really fun too! but also sometimes her humor is too morbid for others.

i think BEFORE black sprunki incident she just had better control of it, but when she saw stuff going downhill she just took the chance to stop hiding what's going on in her mind and went really far, it's a bit of guilty pleasure for her (a bit because she doesn't feel that much guilt). so it's basically 'she kept having thoughts about hurting others, saw everyone getting hurt anyways and decided to join in'. it COULD be also related to black sprunki, i think the whole atmosphere got fucked up, but i do think that it just...always was in her head, just had to snap completely.

I THINK that those she targeted she did have a specific but incredibly petty grudge against though. it doesn't have to be understandable, it may be some VERY stupid irritation that she keeps transferring into disliking someone instead of seeing it for what it is. like you know for example seeing a couple kissing in public and wishing their heads would fucking explode in real time!! (haha probably not relatable to anyone else. haha.) so she's upset at pinki and oren, not with the fact that PDA just frustrate her. IT'S JUST AN EXAMPLE BTW. BUT IT'S THE CLOSEST I CAN COME UP WITH TO DESCRIBE WHAT I THINK IT COULD BE IN MY HEAD.

it's hard to formulate what i think like that because mostly i can IMAGINE how a character would act or respond to a situation in my head, but i can't generalized my impression about them, so this whole post feels a little off to me, but is probably the most accurate impression of wenda's character in my head. i'm probably making this a lot deeper than i should jhbksdfjkabfdas.

[happytaffeta]

Not going to reblog the post because I respect and agree with the op and I don't wanna write a fucking essay about my feelings on their post, but I finally stumbled across a photo of the calf and I haven't had a great afternoon, and i haven't had a great week. So uh. Here's your warning: Animal husbandry is important to me. I grew up in a rural area and I, and every kid I knew, and all my neighbors, kept various animals and a lot of them were livestock. I never kept cattle but I knew kids who did. I am going to be sad and angry below the cut, and I'm putting it below a cut because it's gonna be a bit long and maybe not super articulate, and definitely not always as kind as I maybe could be. I don't expect to change the minds of people who think that what's happening to that poor thing is okay. But I need to get some thoughts out.

I kept rabbits, goats, chickens. Mom had(still has) horses. we had cats and dogs and occasionally would capture reptiles and amphibians, look at them for a bit in a secure container, and then release them in a safer location where they wouldn't get hit by a tire or spotted as easily by the dog, or my kid brother(gentle, but young, so both clumsy and curious) or the rowdy neighbor boys(less gentle, just as young). You breed livestock, even on a small, 4-H kid, backyard scale, you end up on a first name basis with death. Wildlife happens. Sometimes there's a nasty outbreak of something and it hits half your flock. Sometimes there's stress from a hot summer day or general social group aggression. There are ways to avoid a lot of things but when you're a first time keeper of a given animal type trying to start a little show flock, or a nice little herd for your project book, no matter how much you read up first, there are things you learn by running up against the reaper. Some eggs never hatch. Some kids are stillborn. A first time mother gives birth on the wire instead of in the nest box. Now and then there's an invisible but fatal physical defect that kills a critter later. My first doe kid died a week and a half after I brought her home, heart defect. No one knew. She was weaned and everything, cause I didn't bring her home until after she was full time eating solid food.

This calf is not going to be okay, ever. This is a blue eyed white foal kind of situation, except those are pretty avoidable for the most part. You cannot save these babies, and trying only adds more pain to an inevitably early death. Trying makes you into the monster, it makes you be the one causing pain. This is an infant who is never going to be able to understand why the world consists of suffering, and there is no way for us to explain it, and there is no way to make it stop that is not death. This isn't a life to save. This is not someone who can consent to life-extending medical intervention. This is a creature who needs as gentle and quick a farewell as we have the power to give. Please don't do things like this. Please don't make us into monsters. Please, let the suffering baby beasties go.

[bettsfic]

Hi Beth! I’ve tried to get a couple essays/poems published in literary magazines, but it is always so painful to get rejected, and I’m wondering if it is even worth it to continue pursuing publication. Do people even read the stuff that comes out in literary magazines anymore? There are a few that I read occasionally, but honestly, it feels like a waste of time and emotional energy to read and submit to magazines that in the long term won’t really change anything for me.

Should I just keep writing and posting stuff to my own social media/blogs instead?

that's a great question! the answer depends on your goals.

if you want to get into an MFA program...

lit mag publishing is helpful but not necessary to get into a good program. moreover, part of what you'll be doing in the MFA is learning about publishing, so you'll be doing that work there anyway. the MFA is also for exploration, so if you don't really have your own aesthetic defined yet, it makes sense to wait and focus on your writing sample for your grad application.

if you want to become a creative writing professor...

hands down, if you want to be in academia, you need to be well published. submitting is more or less a part-time job. rack up those CV lines.

(for this you'll also need an MFA, so that's the first step regardless.)

if you want to get an agent and publish a book...

lit mag publications can be helpful when querying agents, and once you sign an agent, those publications will help them pitch your book to editors. it shows that you've been through a formal editorial process on a smaller scale before venturing to one on a bigger scale. in some ways, if it helps, you can see lit mag publishing as practice for book publishing.

if you want to be read...

write fanfic.

what i mean is, you're right, other than like The New Yorker and Granta and whatnot, lit mags don't tend to have a wide distribution. if you have a greater readership and more meaningful interaction on social media, then it makes sense to share your work with the audience you've already built.

however, if you get published in an online magazine, you can have the best of both worlds: it's a formal publication *and* your existing readership will have access to it. also, if you're publishing poetry, a lot of my poet friends screencap the poem from the publication and share it on social media. but i'm not a poet, so i'm not sure what exactly the etiquette there is.

if you want to make money...

hard stop, you won't make significant money publishing in lit mags. you could make significant money pitching articles to news outlets and regular magazines, though. a lot of writers make a career on that.

if you want to live the writing life...

what i mean by "the writing life" is the big picture of things. it's not about publishing, it's about everything. when you choose the writing life, you're choosing to put your writing above all other things (professionally, i mean. lots of writers have families and a social life).

the writing life is a gamut: you get an MFA, you maybe get a PhD, you teach, you publish, you edit, you apply to grants, you keep up your CV, you get some awards, you go to residencies, and so on. and once you get a book out, you get ARCs, you blurb, you mentor, you do readings, you go on book tours, you do interviews.

and if that's your goal, lit mag publishing becomes occasional but eternal. you're settled in for the long con and so you don't have to push so hard. for me anyway, i only submit when i come across a magazine i like. i spend most of my submission and rejection energy on residencies and grants.

i went to a talk by Mary Gaitskill once and someone asked her if publishing ever gets easier. she said that book publishing gets easier because you can become established and gain an audience, but lit mag publishing is always hard. she's one of the most lauded living American writers, and she said she still gets lit mag rejections.

if you've finished something you're proud of and want to find a home for it...

this is why most writers publish, i think. it's less about clout and prestige and whatever else, and more about putting your work on a shelf and being able to say, "this belongs somewhere that it can be seen and appreciated." i have a folder in my drive called "homeless stories" and it's full of pieces that i either tried to publish and gave up on, or stories that i didn't feel like sending out. i have probably 10x more original work that hasn't seen the light of day than work that has.

if you hate the idea of sitting on a story or a poem, then keep looking for a home for it.

if you want to avoid rejections...

there's no way to avoid rejections. they're inherent in any pursuit where your work has to go through a gate of approval. but i promise you, rejections are meaningless. your favorite author has received a thousand of them. a rejection means your work didn't suit the taste of the editor, and when you receive a rejection, it's helpful to remind yourself that their taste probably sucks. a rejection means your work met a slush reader who had a headache that day and wasn't reading closely enough. a rejection means a magazine got hundreds of submissions and maybe you made it to the longlist or the shortlist but you'll never know because not all mags tell you that. a rejection means that maybe one of the editors fought hard for your piece and lost.

handling rejection gets easier as you accumulate acceptances. every acceptance you get means some editor somewhere read your piece and vibed with it, and values the work you're doing.

in short:

stop submitting if you feel like you're not ready to publish, or

keep submitting if you're ready to and you're in it for the long con

and in closing, i'll tell you what every professor and mentor i've ever had has told me (and which i hated to hear): publishing will always be there for you. there's no hurry.

[sparky-is-spiders]

JON

Jon!! Jon my most beloved!!!!!!!!! He's so important to me and I love him so much. This one got long so putting it under a cut lol.

First impression:

Ok this is a fun one because of how I got into TMA and you're gonna get some Sparky Lore.

So. Through a convoluted series of events involving a warriors fan-comic, Voltron (the remake), and several video-essays, I stumbled my way into a TMA fanfic. It was a J//mart soulmate AU that I honestly really enjoyed despite having zero context for the entire rest of TMA, but my complete lack of knowledge meant I ended up w/ a very... skewed impression of Jon. I imagined him as like, a balding, middle-aged white guy with wisps of gray hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and jowls. In his 50s, maybe his 40s. No I don't know why. I also sort of thought Martin was the main character and Jon was a major supporting character in the podcast itself (I. Don't really know why??) despite the fic being entirely from Jon's perspective. Aaaaand then I scrolled the TMA tag on the author's tumblr account. Idk how I reacted to that though my memory fails me. All I know is I have now adopted the common fanon perception of Jon's appearance and also I have been made aware that he is, in fact, 28. I was right about the graying hair tho.

I can't remember how I felt about Jon at first, but probably I liked him.

Impression now:

I'm very normal about him.

Favorite moment:

Oh I'm supposed to just choose ONE????

Idk. The entirety of episode 81 (yes it's my favorite). Literally any of his snarky little comments. His interactions with Sasha. His interactions with Elias. Whenever he was rude to Martin. "Our Gerard." When he talked about hoping Jonah was good. When he was experiencing Horrible Agony. Everything.

Ok ok. But seriously. I don't know if it's my favorite but one scene that lives rent-free in my head is that one moment near the end of episode six, talking about the death of Harriet Lee, where he says "though obviously it’s a tragic loss of life, etcetera, etcetera." It's so small but I think about it all the time... just. Jon who struggles with empathy. With caring about other people. Going through the motions of it so obviously because he knows that he has to but also doesn't think it should matter... idk. Does that make sense?

It's basically this post, really.

(Maybe this is projection. It's not a condemnation I don't think any of these make you better or worse as a person.)

Idea for a story

Idea... singular? Oh boy. Ok. So I'm not sure I have a singular solitary idea for a fic that DOESN'T involve Jon.

Okok here's one I'll never write because it would involve Too Much Martin. I've talked about it before but I don't think I've ever given it a full deep-dive. It's also like 75% Pure Salt. Much of it was Rotated while listening to Arcade Fire's Ready to Start so I think you should listen to it while reading this if you want. Also it's a good song.

Anyway it's one of them "Somewhere Else is Jonah Magnus Times" AUs and also one of my (several) bitter "Jon dumps Martin for someone better" AUs. Mostly canon compliant except instead of Jon asking Martin to kill him in e200 Martin takes matters into his own hands. They're kinda stuck together because they're literally the only person the other one has in a new and strange world but there is SO much festering resentment oh my god. Lots of arguements and tense conversations that are theoretically about what they should do next but actually about what happened in e200.

Sometimes Jon considers ending the world himself. Just doing it all over again because then he can complete his initial plan to kill everyone and starve the fears. It's like an idle "what-if" but the more he thinks about it the more sense it makes. No matter what there's going to be another apocalypse. And another. And another. And another. And clearly, he can't trust anyone but himself to do what needs to be done and stop the fears for good.

(And goddammit those few moments as the pupil felt so right.)

(But this isn't about that. It isn't.)

The thought of putting someone else through what he went through is beyond soul-crushing, but there is one person who could, theoretically, deserve it. One person Jon knows would do the exact same, if given the chance.

Idk if Jon founds the institute or seeks out Jonah to join his, but either way Jon wants Jonah's help. He breaks things off with Martin (does NOT mention any of his plans) and goes off to insert himself into Jonah's life.

Jon and Jonah begin a strange, very intense relationship. Jon is sort of a mentor figure, trying to guide Jonah the way Jonah guided him (potentially Jon tries to make Jonah the Archivist??) where Jonah is constantly digging for Jon's secrets and Jon is constantly trying to keep his true plans under wraps. Also they start having an affair (obviously).

Martin is probably still in the background trying to stop Jon but he fails <3. I think Jon maybe kills him in a fun parallel to how this began. But maybe not idc.

Jon does succeed in getting Jonah to read the statement but the ending flip-flops based on how I'm feeling. Sometimes Jon does succeed and kill the fears, dooming this universe to save countless others, but I think a stronger ending would be Jon failing. Jonah learning of his plans and killing him and starting the whole cycle over again, with them transported to a new universe and trying for their own armageddons, with the implication that this is going to be an endless cycle playing exactly into the Web's plan over and over again.

Unpopular opinion

He wouldn't date Martin. They don't know each other, they don't like each other, in just about any other circumstances Jon wouldn't give him the fucking time of day. I don't care.

Favorite relationship

Currently in Jon//elias hell but Jon//sasha dual archivists makes so much Sense to me...

Favorite headcanon

Oooooh... tie between aro Jon and trans Jon. I don't buy any interpretation of Jon as cis honestly. Usually I default to transmasc (PROJECTION) but I think Jon has soooo much Transgender potential in every direction. Aro Jon just makes so much sense to me. Like it suits them so well. Aro Jon........