#Also apparently they're fully conscious even though they look like babies

[nanamugu]

Not a fan of how inconsistent Dende's age is (I prefer him to be Gohan's age), However.... Omg look at baby Dende you guys😭😭😭

[sophieswundergarten]

I can't stop thinking about that Wing AU and Sticky plucking his feathers...

(Weird, angsty ramblings that might require some knowledge of bird anatomy to fully understand to follow)

(Basically, when birds grow feathers they start as "blood feathers" which are basically just little sacks of blood and growing cells. After this, they are "pin feathers", and the blood is all inside where it belongs, leaving the feather all rolled up and covered in this papery stuff that rubs off and leaves a fully grown feather. Also, Primaries are the big "pointer finger" feathers at the tip of the wings, Secondaries are the medium sized ones from the "wrist" joint to the "elbow", where they get smaller and are referred to as Tertiaries. That should be it :>)

Because, in real life, it's quite common in pet psittacines (Parrots: so, macaws, cockatoos, budgies, lovebirds, etc.) especially when they are stressed. And it can get out of control really fast and take a long time to train the bird out of even though it's very obviously hurting it.

And I just keep thinking about how young he was when he started being on TV. And for a while the fluffy little baby feathers were cute but an entertainment industry seeking engagement instead of connection demanded he grow up too fast.

And so the make-up/wardrobe department for any competition he was on started pulling some of the downy feathers. There weren't that many left at this point regardless, but they assured him it would make him seem more mature and appeal to a wider audience. And it would be fine, it wouldn't really hurt him, especially since he was growing in big feathers anyway.

So it went. With Sticky being so self-conscious and anxious anyway, he probably kept his wings tucked in tight behind him no matter what people thought about them.

He had never put that much consideration into how he looked, but now he can't stop thinking about it. He doesn't know why it's so important, but apparently it matters to people. He doesn't want it to matter. He doesn't want to be seen or recognised. He just wants to be left alone.

He starts fidgeting with the pin feathers that will one day unfurl into adult primaries, and even though he knows it's counter-intuitive because removing the casings will only free the feathers sooner, he can't help it. A few times he goes too far and starts picking at blood feathers, and even though the red coats his finger tips more often than he'd like, he still can't stop his hands from scratching and pulling and yanking as he grows more and more agitated.

And then he ran away

He ran and he couldn't keep his hands off his wings for more than a few minutes. Tugging and raking his fingers through the feathers in a futile attempt to calm down. The first couple of times, it's an accident.

The first couple of times he's so caught up in soundless panic and all he can hear is his own breathing, it's only later that he notices a small cluster of secondaries, close to his body and almost never seen with how rigidly he holds himself, are missing. Small pieces of the night sky littering the alleyway ground where he'd been hiding.

His wings are so dark in colour, not to mention unkempt after a few weeks hiding and running and flitting from place to place trying to find safety, that the other kids don't even notice anything wrong.

It isn't until a few days later, when they're all in the backyard attempting to practice their Morse Code, and Kate does something that startles him that they really see what kind of a state his wings are in.

Most birds, when scared or on edge, will carefully spread their wings. Maybe not a lot, but they are preparing to fly away or make themselves look bigger in hopes to scare off the threat. (I imagine Milligan having great big owl wings that he puffs up to try and guard the children when the Recruiters come after them in the maze)

But Sticky just draws them in closer to his body. When he is scared, which Constance would note is often, he holds his wings so tightly to his back that they seem half their size. This would be considered odd and in some ways handicapping himself or keeping him from being able to react properly.

But this time, as Kate wobbles unstably out of her cartwheel and lets out a shriek of laughter, landing on the ground right next to him, Sticky jumps. He starts off the bench he had been sitting on, hunching his shoulders and reflexively spreading his wings.

And instead of the fully extended mix of fully grown flight feathers and occasionally wayward piece of down the other kids have, Sticky's wings are a mess. They have a skeletal quality, with just enough plumage that when they are folded in it's hardly noticeable, but when they are extended it's clear there are significant gaps. The remaining feathers have the dull, stunted quality of someone who has been under an incredible amount of stress without nearly enough nutrients to fuel them, and indeed Sticky looks rather like a feral cat in that moment: Spooked and curling in on himself as if expecting a fight.

He quickly realises his overreaction, and then processes that the girls are staring at his wings (Reynie's eye did dart up, but quickly returned to looking at Sticky's face), so he jerks them back into a resting position. Though there's nothing particularly restful about how stiff his posture is, back ramrod straight and muscles so tight he's beginning to shake.

However, this is something that the others know he doesn't want to share yet. And he doesn't need to. Not until he's ready.

So, Kate grabs the flashlight from where it had fallen to the ground, a sheepish grin on her face as she apologises for scaring him.

Reynie suggests they all go inside, take a break and get something to eat before they begin again.

Constance glares at Sticky suspiciously, but right as she opens her mouth she seems to think better of her questions and simply shrugs.

And Sticky is grateful for his friends, grateful that he has these people who love him enough to trust him with his secrets, even though they don't know each other very well yet. So he follows them inside, and if Kate dumps a little bit more food on his plate, and Constance doesn't try to swipe his juice glass this time, and if that night (for the first time) Reynie shyly asks if the two of them could take turns preening each others' wings, when it's just the two of them alone in the room, Sticky thinks he might be able to trust them too.

[davyjoneslockr]

IF you want. maybe naramis child too. if you want

DON'T WORRY I DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT NARAMIS SON

He is a little dude and his name is Finn. As I have mentioned before. I wanted to name him the Italian word for fennel because there's a popular Sicilian dish that's a citrus salad with fennel. So it connects to both their food names (arancia/orange and mista/mixed salad). And I thought that'd be cute. But apparently that word is sometimes also a homophobic slur in Italy so. Sighs. He's Finn Mista-Ghirga. Close enough.

I'm torn between like. Trans dad Mista and he's born the old-fashioned way, or they see Giorno and Fugo use Gold Experience to create their daughter and they're like "Hey. Can you spawn in a kid for us too." Either way, Narancia is super excited, but a little anxious (he just wants to be the best parent he can for his kid, even if he didn't have a lot of good parental role models growing up), and Mista's straight-up ecstatic. Out of the Bucci Gang, he's the one I can see definitely wanting to be a dad, and the minute they even start talking about having a kid, he knows he's going to love them, whoever they are.

So Finn is born. Mista and Narancia are constantly at his side, and they're exhausted, and it's one of the happiest periods of their lives. Even though Finn can't see them yet, the Sex Pistols are already fretting over him, and Narancia will attach ribbons to Aerosmith's wings and (carefully) fly it around the house, which Finn thinks is the coolest thing ever. One night, they're sitting on the couch, Finn in Mista's arms, completely ignoring whatever's on TV to watch his sleeping face. He's half-conscious for a short moment (during which they freak out and turn off the TV and barely breathe in fear that they'll wake him up fully), and he just grasps one of their fingers in each little hand, and Mista and Narancia just look at each other, tears beading in their eyes, like. Oh my god. That's our kid. That's our son.

Mista sings him to sleep every night. Almost as soon as he can walk, he's trying to dance to the music playing constantly in their house, and Narancia will crouch down and grab his hands and just sway around with him, their combined laughter filling the room.

He takes after both his parents, so he's a very high-energy kid. He's constantly wanting to run around in the backyard, doing improv parkour in the living room, so on and so forth. Of course, he has a lot of playdates with the Fugio daughter, and his relentless energy, Viola's propensity for quiet scheming, and both of their impulsiveness makes them a nightmare to babysit. If they're together, they need to be on baby leashes or something. Otherwise, they'll find a five-second window where they're unsupervised, and suddenly all the Oreos have disappeared from the pantry, they're trying to knock down the ceiling fan, and something's on fire.

Then, one day, when he's just hit 10 or 11, he gets sick. Really sick.

Mista and Narancia catch on pretty quickly, because he's suddenly lethargic and uncharacteristically quiet. But they take him to the doctor, give him medicine, let him sleep as much as he needs to, but as the days go by, his condition only worsens, until he's in near-constant tears from the pain.

Mista gets extremely paranoid and thinks he's done something wrong. Finn wasn't born in April, or on the fourth of a month, but maybe there was a four of significance somewhere? Maybe he'd forgotten to give him lunch one day? Maybe he'd broken some rule he hadn't yet known about?

But Narancia's the one that proposes the idea - maybe he's a natural born stand user, and, moreover, he'd inherited it from Mista? After all, during the encounter that sent him to prison, there was something deflecting those bullets. Maybe he would have eventually awoken a stand power, even without the stand arrow?

This doesn't make him feel much less guilty, but it gives him hope, at least. He prays a lot, and they seek help from Fugo and Giorno (who had already dealt with this issue with Viola), and, one day, the illness is gone, and Finn has a stand.

His stand is called The Four Tops.

Mista is not thrilled.

It doesn't make him love his son any less, though. Instead, he just becomes very overprotective, worried that the number that had always haunted him had now moved on to curse his child. He teaches Finn how to use a gun and fight without his stand, so that he doesn't have to encounter the unlucky number four more than he has to. While Finn doesn't have an aversion to four on the same level as his dad, he's still a bit skittish about it, and takes a bit after his Uncle Fugo, in that he only uses his stand when necessary.

I'm still developing more lore for him, so one of these days, I'm planning on making a little profile post for him and Viola. They are bouncing around in my brain like a DVD screensaver rn.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Here's a shortlist of those who realized that I — a cis woman who'd identified as heterosexual for decades of life — was in fact actually bi, long before I realized it myself recently: my sister, all my friends, my boyfriend, and the TikTok algorithm.

On TikTok, the relationship between user and algorithm is uniquely (even sometimes uncannily) intimate. An app which seemingly contains as many multitudes of life experiences and niche communities as there are people in the world, we all start in the lowest common denominator of TikTok. Straight TikTok (as it's popularly dubbed) initially bombards your For You Page with the silly pet videos and viral teen dances that folks who don't use TikTok like to condescendingly reduce it to.

Quickly, though, TikTok begins reading your soul like some sort of divine digital oracle, prying open layers of your being never before known to your own conscious mind. The more you use it, the more tailored its content becomes to your deepest specificities, to the point where you get stuff that's so relatable that it can feel like a personal attack (in the best way) or (more dangerously) even a harmful trigger from lifelong traumas.

For example: I don't know what dark magic (read: privacy violations) immediately clued TikTok into the fact that I was half-Brazilian, but within days of first using it, Straight TikTok gave way to at first Portuguese-speaking then broader Latin TikTok. Feeling oddly seen (being white-passing and mostly American-raised, my Brazilian identity isn't often validated), I was liberal with the likes, knowing that engagement was the surefire way to go deeper down this identity-affirming corner of the social app.

TikTok made lots of assumptions from there, throwing me right down the boundless, beautiful, and oddest multiplicities of Alt TikTok, a counter to Straight TikTok's milquetoast mainstreamness.

Home to a wide spectrum of marginalized groups, I was giving out likes on my FYP like Oprah, smashing that heart button on every type of video: from TikTokers with disabilities, Black and Indigenous creators, political activists, body-stigma-busting fat women, and every glittering shade of the LGBTQ cornucopia. The faves were genuine, but also a way to support and help offset what I knew about the discriminatory biases in TikTok's algorithm.

My diverse range of likes started to get more specific by the minute, though. I wasn't just on general Black TikTok anymore, but Alt Cottagecore Middle-Class Black Girl TikTok (an actual label one creator gave her page's vibes). Then it was Queer Latina Roller Skating Girl TikTok, Women With Non-Hyperactive ADHD TikTok, and then a double whammy of Women Loving Women (WLW) TikTok alternating between beautiful lesbian couples and baby bisexuals.

Looking back at my history of likes, the transition from queer “ally” to “salivating simp” is almost imperceptible.

There was no one precise "aha" moment. I started getting "put a finger down" challenges that wouldn't reveal what you were putting a finger down for until the end. Then, 9-fingers deep (winkwink), I'd be congratulated for being 100% bisexual. Somewhere along the path of getting served multiple WLW Disney cosplays in a single day and even dom lesbian KinkTok roleplay — or whatever the fuck Bisexual Pirate TikTok is — deductive reasoning kind of spoke for itself.

But I will never forget the one video that was such a heat-seeking missile of a targeted attack that I was moved to finally text it to my group chat of WLW friends with a, "Wait, am I bi?" To which the overwhelming consensus was, "Magic 8 Ball says, 'Highly Likely.'"

Serendipitously posted during Pride Month, the video shows a girl shaking her head at the caption above her head, calling out confused and/or closeted queers who say shit like, "I think everyone is a LITTLE bisexual," to the tune of "Closer" by The Chainsmokers. When the lyrics land on the word "you," she points straight at the screen — at me — her finger and inquisitive look piercing my hopelessly bisexual soul like Cupid's goddamn arrow.

Oh no, the voice inside my head said, I have just been mercilessly perceived.

As someone who had, in fact, done feminist studies at a tiny liberal arts college with a gender gap of about 70 percent women, I'd of course dabbled. I've always been quick to bring up the Kinsey scale, to champion a true spectrum of sexuality, and to even declare (on multiple occasions) that I was, "straight, but would totally fuck that girl!"

Oh no, the voice inside my head returned, I've literally just been using extra words to say I was bi.

After consulting the expertise of my WLW friend group (whose mere existence, in retrospect, also should've clued me in on the flashing neon pink, purple, and blue flag of my raging bisexuality), I ran to my boyfriend to inform him of the "news."

"Yeah, baby, I know. We all know," he said kindly.

"How?!" I demanded.

Well for one, he pointed out, every time we came across a video of a hot girl while scrolling TikTok together, I'd without fail watch the whole way through, often more than once, regardless of content. (Apparently, straight girls do not tend to do this?) For another, I always breathlessly pointed out when we'd pass by a woman I found beautiful, often finding a way to send a compliment her way. ("I'm just a flirt!" I used to rationalize with a hand wave, "Obvs, I'm not actually sexually attracted to them!") Then, I guess, there were the TED Talk-like rants I'd subject him to about the thinly veiled queer relationship in Adventure Time between Princess Bubblegum and Marcelyne the Vampire Queen — which the cowards at Cartoon Network forced creators to keep as subtext!

And, well, when you lay it all out like that...

But my TikTok-fueled bisexual awakening might actually speak less to the omnipotence of the app's algorithm, and more to how heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

Sure, TikTok bombarded me with the thirst traps of my exact type of domineering masc lady queers, who reduced me to a puddle of drool I could no longer deny. But I also recalled a pivotal moment in college when I briefly questioned my heterosexuality, only to have a lesbian friend roll her eyes and chastise me for being one of those straight girls who leads Actual Queer Women on. I figured she must know better. So I never pursued any of my lady crushes in college, which meant I never experimented much sexually, which made me conclude that I couldn't call myself bisexual if I'd never had actual sex with a woman. I also didn't really enjoy lesbian porn much, though the fact that I'd often find myself fixating on the woman during heterosexual porn should've clued me into that probably coming more from how mainstream lesbian porn is designed for straight men.

The ubiquity of heterormativity, even when unwittingly perpetrated by members of the queer community, is such an effective self-sustaining cycle. Aside from being met with queer-gating (something I've since learned bi folks often experience), I had a hard time identifying my attraction to women as genuine attraction, simply because it felt different to how I was attracted to men.

Heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

So much of women's sexuality — of my sexuality — can feel defined by that carnivorous kind of validation you get from men. I met no societal resistance in fully embodying and exploring my desire for men, either (which, to be clear, was and is insatiable slut levels of wanting that peen.) But in retrospect, I wonder how many men I slept with not because I was truly attracted to them, but because I got off on how much they wanted me.

My attraction to women comes with a different texture of eroticism. With women (and bare with a baby bi, here), the attraction feels more shared, more mutual, more tender rather than possessive. It's no less raw or hot or all-consuming, don't get me wrong. But for me at least, it comes more from a place of equality rather than just power play. I love the way women seem to see right through me, to know me, without us really needing to say a word.

I am still, as it turns out, a sexual submissive through-and-through, regardless of what gender my would-be partner is. But, ignorantly and unknowingly, I'd been limiting my concept of who could embody dominant sexual personas to cis men. But when TikTok sent me down that glorious rabbit hole of masc women (who know exactly what they're doing, btw), I realized my attraction was not to men, but a certain type of masculinity. It didn't matter which body or genitalia that presentation came with.

There is something about TikTok that feels particularly suited to these journeys of sexual self-discovery and, in the case of women loving women, I don't think it's just the prescient algorithm. The short-form video format lends itself to lightning bolt-like jolts of soul-bearing nakedness, with the POV camera angles bucking conventions of the male gaze, which entrenches the language of film and TV in heterosexual male desire.

In fairness to me, I'm far from the only one who missed their inner gay for a long time — only to have her pop out like a queer jack-in-the-box throughout a near year-long quarantine that led many of us to join TikTok. There was the baby bi mom, and scores of others who no longer had to publicly perform their heterosexuality during lockdown — only to realize that, hey, maybe I'm not heterosexual at all?

Flooded with video after video affirming my suspicions, reflecting my exact experiences as they happened to others, the change in my sexual identity was so normalized on TikTok that I didn't even feel like I needed to formally "come out." I thought this safe home I'd found to foster my baby bisexuality online would extend into the real world.

But I was in for a rude awakening.

Testing out my bisexuality on other platforms, casually referring to it on Twitter, posting pictures of myself decked out in a rainbow skate outfit (which I bought before realizing I was queer), I received nothing but unquestioning support and validation. Eventually, I realized I should probably let some members of my family know before they learned through one of these posts, though.

Daunted by the idea of trying to tell my Latina Catholic mother and Swiss Army veteran father (who's had a crass running joke about me being a "lesbian" ever since I first declared myself a feminist at age 12), I chose the sibling closest to me. Seeing as how gender studies was one of her majors in college too, I thought it was a shoo-in. I sent an off-handed, joke-y but serious, "btw I'm bi now!" text, believing that's all that would be needed to receive the same nonchalant acceptance I found online.

It was not.

I didn't receive a response for two days. Hurt and panicked by what was potentially my first mild experience of homophobia, I called them out. They responded by insisting we need to have a phone call for such "serious" conversations. As I calmly tried to express my hurt on said call, I was told my text had been enough to make this sibling worry about my mental wellbeing. They said I should be more understanding of why it'd be hard for them to (and I'm paraphrasing) "think you were one way for twenty-eight years" before having to contend with me deciding I was now "something else."

But I wasn't "something else," I tried to explain, voice shaking. I hadn't knowingly been deceiving or hiding this part of me. I'd simply discovered a more appropriate label. But it was like we were speaking different languages. Other family members were more accepting, thankfully. There are many ways I'm exceptionally lucky, my IRL environment as supportive as Baby Bi TikTok. Namely, I'm in a loving relationship with a man who never once mistook any of it as a threat, instead giving me all the space in the world to understand this new facet of my sexuality.

I don't have it all figured out yet. But at least when someone asks if I listen to Girl in Red on social media, I know to answer with a resounding, "Yes," even though I've never listened to a single one of her songs. And for now, that's enough.

[danwhobrowses]

One Piece Chapter 1017 - Initial Thoughts

Back from another break but the fondness is the same

more One Piece is good One Piece and we were left on the cliffhanger 2 Tobi Roppo down, Sanji squaring to Queen, Yamato squaring to Kaido and Tama has the floor

Now let's see how we develop

Spoilers below and Support the Official Release

A Buggy cover page today, looking like something from Cubix...who's old enough to remember Cubix?

Tama has the stage, but she also has the stage fright. Queen having a go at her isn't helping either

Finally over to Jimbei and Who's Who is using his cat harem to pick away at Jimbei too

We also cut to Franky but he's not fighting Sasaki, being chased by grunt forces makes you wonder how that went down

Inu is being outnumbered too though, because Jack is a bitch

And all the grunts and gifters have come to fight the ones who turned on Queen for him not caring about their lives

Oda really highlighting the numbers advantage huh?

Encouraged by Nami and Usopp though, Tama makes the call, the Dango Gifters are on our side now

Momo's still got his heights problem, seems to imply that they didn't drop to land, they're still on Onigashima

Luffy though is just getting the water out of his lungs, still not physically conscious so we're not getting answers about what he did anytime soon

I dunno why but 'Briscola-san Why!?' tickled me

If he can't punch you the gorilla on his hand will!

The gifters are now evening the numbers for Jimbei, Inu and I'm guessing Franky

White-eye from CP0 is sensing the shift, while Tama's getting some much deserved hugs

Sanji stops Queen from attacking her though, Monster Trio all having protected the precious child

Sanji also doesn't like that Queen keeps calling him Judge's son, turns out they were in that science team, which is apparently called MADS, which also means that Queen worked with Vegapunk

Into the hybrid form now, but with some extra cyborg claws and a sword that appeared out of nowhere, Sanji ain't fussed

OH MY GOD TINY CHOPPER!

'Baby Gramps' is a weird name, I wonder if it has to do with the formality of Chopper's speech in these scanlations. Watch the WG only see this and up his bounty to like 200 because the pet can shri-TINY TINY CHOPPER! That's it, that's his new nickname, Tiny Tiny Chopper

They've got a drug for Cactus Zoro to take, he wants it even though it'll add to his pain later, they can recover when the fight's over

Though we should probably be worried what happens to Zoro's body after this, irreparable damage is not what we want from him

Back to Who's Who though, and his big sword is ...a tiny dagger

Huh, Blade Pistol, kinda like Shigan...

Then Soru and Rankakyu...this dude knows Rokushiki, he must've been Cipher Pol

Tekkai too, and now he's in his hybrid form

Ah, a rogue CP9 agent, busting out of prison too - must've been well away from Impel Down then

A rival to Lucci as well, that's high praise and explains why they both got Carnivorous Cat Zoans, wonder how things are now though since Lucci is CP0 and CP0 are dining with him

Fang Pistol now? What's next, the Rokuogan? But joking aside I do like that Rokushiki is coming back as relevant, it was such a big deal in Water 7 not fully explored outside of Geppo, I mean Tekkai got made redundant by armament Haki and nobody talks about Kami-e so it's nice to get a variant showcase

Turns out Who's Who was arrested 12 years ago from a mistake he made

Wait, WHAT!? He was guarding the Gomu Gomu no Mi!?

This changes things

For one, it means that the Gomu Gomu no Mi is a commodity for the World Government, something they wanted kept away from people. Part of me does worry that they're gonna make it some OP thing because I think a lot of Luffy's charm is the absurdity of his powers. I have faith in Oda to know that though, perhaps an enemy of theirs had it in the Void Century and there's the potential to inherit something from it - like how Sabo refers to his flames as Ace's will. Secondly though it means that Shanks stole it, Pre-Yonko Shanks stole this from a Government Ship which screwed over Who's Who, and went to Dawn Island where Luffy ate it. We have to ask ourselves what Shanks' original intentions for the fruit were much more intently now, you don't steal from CP9 just to make some booze cash. Who's Who may be someone we'll see beyond Wano because of this Shanks connection - I wonder how that encounter went during Marineford? - maybe via CP0, it also makes sense now how he could sniff out Drake's Deception (yes I know that's an Uncharted reference), but I still want Jimbei to kick his ass and steal his cat harem.

But I did like the more setup we have with Sanji vs Queen too, more to be told from MADS but I think the main thing to wonder is when Sanji opts to use the Raid Suit again. Tiny Tiny Chopper is a highlight, kinda means his new Rumble Balls have a Gear Third limitation on them, I wonder how long it does last. And Zoro getting back in the fight could imply a stand off with King - who has been very quiet along with Marco.

With Chopper tiny it means that he will probably not fight anymore, but the heroes still outnumber the villains in terms of named characters; Usopp hasn't had his fight, Apoo has just fell off the map with Drake, Neko has had a bit of Zoro-brain in his directions and Kawamatsu and Izo are probably just chilling wherever Marco is. We do need more enemies for them to get fights, Luffy's still needing time to undo all that drowning he did, also we kinda need a status report on Sasaki because it isn't really clear what happened between him and Franky, and where's Denjiro?

Thankfully there's no break this week but damn do the questions pile up