#Distant Socializing

[summerwages]

strange streaks and the last known address of the moon...

[damianwaynerocks]

batfamily twitter au ft. long lost uncle gojo pt 2

[clotpolesonly]

ya know, we spend so much of the series in the POVs of 1) Ronan, who hates Declan, 2) Ronan's friends, who hate Declan because Ronan does and also routinely see Declan at his absolute worst when fighting with Ronan, and 3) Declan himself, who is a sopping wet miserable little man with self esteem issues and an incurable sense of alienation from others, that i genuinely forget most people like Declan more than Ronan

[echoes-of-courage]

👉👈 🥺 Hiiiiii I know I haven't really interacted with other links meet aus before but I really wanted to do something for @linked-maze. I'm pretty sure Artisan's design was partially influenced by their World, but aaaa all your designs are so skrunkly :))

this was labeled braid buddies in my folder

ignore the stupid dialogue, I couldn't come up with anything more coherent

[neostellarjpg]

i find big buff traditional hollywood celebrity alpha dave in a suit to be handsome like everyone else but i can't help but think of him as this scrawny eccentric socially awkward dude extremely dedicated to nothing except his abstract radical performance art. fans develop images of him but there's nothing of himself he deliberately puts out into the world besides his projects. no real friends, no lovers. fronts and fake personas galore. isn't trying to waste his time and emotion on people he'll lose anyway. that kinda thing

[jenthebug]

Husband: “We’re still on for hanging out with my coworkers downtown tomorrow, right?”

Me:

I do not remember agreeing to this!

I mean, I’ll go, I like hanging out with my husband, and the plan is Mexican food and margaritas, but WHAT AM I GONNA WEAR

Seriously, my wardrobe consists of uniforms, pajamas, and couch goblin loungewear (t-shirts, sweatpants, cargo sweats lol, scrub pants). I have a cool hoodie. I can wear that. I’m VERY hesitant to go to the thrift store and buy better pants because my waist is going to change shape in less than two months (aaaaaaaa).

I have some long skirts that might work. One of them might even look like some cool, intentional pattern mixing, especially if I wear my chonky work boots with it.

I got this.

I know my husband is proud of me and I don’t want to show up looking like a potato who just rolled out of bed (even though that will be the case). Also, the social anxiety is definitely doing its thing.

I’ll do an exfoliating mask and a scrubby bath tonight.

I wonder how many strangers will be there.

[wellhalesbells]

*coworkers chatting about a show they all watch*

One, turning to include me: You should definitely watch it!

Me, very tired, very half-attentive, muttering: If it were gay enough for me to be interested, tumblr would've told me about it already.

[fumifooms]

I should have touched on dark elves in my beauty standards post... Let me just slap this on here real quick. So as we went into there, beauty standards can show political dynamics and sort of reflects the politics of who get to be seen as human, who get to be seen as desirable and promoted within a society. So like, beauty is power right, in the sense that beauty standards are highly influenced by the ones in power, the ones who have the time & resources to look a certain way and the power to present that look as desirable to large groups. It’s complex and diverse but generally beauty standards are upheld by the elite, the influential.

By the former 'time & resources' thing I mean stuff like clothes, health, makeup or even cosmetic surgeries, or even simply the freedom to only go out in public when you look your best— Meanwhile the latter, the power to present that look as desirable to large groups, usually applies more to situations where it’s about a whole category of people like an ethnicity that was uplifted as the ideal. Not just in a political or economic dynamic, but discrimination on a systematic level without regard for individual appearance or action.

For example in the former, not all people who wear makeup are rich, and while makeup did historically help signal status, if you’re poor and wear nice makeup you can still touch some of that beneficial association with the beauty standards that makeup helps you attain. In the latter……. Well you get, "no, all elves are good! So the elves who do bad things must be something else!". Where, in trying to have uniform standards for a whole group, you kinda just get erased or othered if you don’t conform to expectations. The elves especially put effort into giving off this air of perfection, which they've successfully made tallmen populations believe. So, for those people, the answer that "But elves are inherently good and beautiful and perfect?" asks, isn't "well elves mustn't be inherently perfect", but instead is "there must be bad ones too, innately too." A similar phenomenon happens with the reverse too, where people will say there are "the good ones" within a group that's seen negatively.

"But Fumi, in this case the difference is purely linguistic and perceived, there’s no visual difference!" Yeah, and there being little visual distinction between two groups has never stopped people from being discriminated tbh. Different types of christians seeing each other as heathwbs for example, or the deep british vs irish hatred that has existed. A tidbit of history I find fascinating was the infamous use of "speak white" from english-speaking canadians against french-speaking canadians especially, because complicated history aside, last century as the business owners the anglophones had the power over the majoritarily francophone working class and a lot of political sway even though they were the minority in the Québec region. There’s a different cultural and ethnic identity there, and language was the most important difference between the two groups- and I suppose the most noticeable one.

The way we as social creatures and social groups categorize people and the groups they form is complex, interesting and very important to our society and the way we approach both the world and social interactions, and that's what leads to discrimination. We decide what’s important and then we decide it’s what people should be judged and distinguished by. Belonging to a group is a show of status, and can be a weaponized both ways, for and against. If you’re not worthy to be an elf, a "good" elf, then you’re not.

Interesting especially because looking at the elf portraits page there seems to be many different cultures within the elf race, so yes "good elf" vs "dark elf" is considered something like a race rather than an ethnicity or culture presumably. There's definitely a "main" elven culture since it seems pretty uniform whenever it's brought up in the adventurer's bible and the story, though, wether the differenr cultures form different communities in different places or live together as one nation. But maybe more treated like a mental illness since it’s acquired, or sometimes slang? It's not completely clear wether it's thought of as fully innate or something learned, a chosen moral failure like sin is, but with how they speak about it they do sound very essentialists, even Chilchuck seems to get a chill considering Marcille could be one. Quoting Kui's lore comic, "There are two kinds of elves, nice holy elves and evil elves bewitched by darkness". It’s just considered like an innate thing that separates them from the concept of elves... 🤔 But this sort of category being vague is often a feature and not a bug, because then they can be a boogeyman to bring up just whenever is convenient, that can fit whoever, like calling a kid a "fairy's child" for whatever behavior in the olden days, because if you don't precise a lot what a dark elf is then it can apply to whoever you see fit, and it doesn't need to be coherent or consistent. The sort of discrimination headspace that leads to the classic fascist "the enemy is both strong and weak" type rethoric.

"Dark elves" is interesting within Dunmeshi because it's about people trying to fully separate elves from the concept of bad and untrustworthy people, even though they look the same. "Elf" isn’t just a beauty standard, it is The ultimate ideal of perfection both in appearance and morality, and if something threatens that perception and reputation it has to get rationalized and compartmentalized. Those are coping mechanisms to avoid having your whole world view challenged or shattered. To tallmen who practically worship elves, it’s a huge deal!! To them that makes it make sense! Some elves are born good and some elves are born evil, simple as! No world view re-examination needed!

So for Marcille for example... It’s interesting because she has an outside view of elven society despite being elven herself. She was raised amongst tallmen, aka the people who idolize elves to this intense degree. It had to have affected her dynamics with others— not unlike the academy students, mostly gnomes and tallmen, who looked up to her as some natural-born genius, even though she did do research and study to get her skills and grades. It also had to affect her relationship with having a role model growing up (having none around except for her mother who pretty much renounced her elven culture, a novel series that sensationalizes and glamorizes elves), her dynamic with being elven itself, because even though she doesn't feel like she fully fits into it she's interested in elven culture, and she herself enforces the beauty standards around elves and acts elitist about it- as seen when tallmen actors playing Daltian Clan opera, when men are very masculine rather than very androgynous like with Laios, having long hair, having no facial or body hair. With this angle, all of this behavior of hers is very "internalized high standards that were my bible to follow growing up and so others must follow them too and these high standards must be worth upholding".

Considering everything, elves being looked up to as a role model in appearance and behavior, plus them having the reputation of being great at magic, and Marcille having grown up amongst mostly tallmen, we start understanding that there was IMMENSE pressure on Marcille to conform to that idea of an elf. She has a lot of pressure and a very high beauty & behavior compass to conform to. She also has an idealist and rigid sense of justice and morals, like how Namari is a heartless traitor for leaving instead of coming along to save Falin, and she needs people to believe she has noooo facial or body hair. She probably WAS afraid of being seen as a dark elf, aka fundamentally evil, for her dark magic research. You don't want to be a letdown, do you? You don't want to be the ugliest elf, do you? You don't want to be a dark elf, do you? You don't want to be one of the bad ones.

Shave your facial hair and deny you have any body hair. Take care of elven traditions like hair-braiding and have pride. Be the kind, smartest model student. Do magic by the book. Never do dark magic. Ah shit-

And so she hid the domain of her research, and so she hid being a half-elf.

[candyheartedchy]

I want to draw some stuff for my blosc self insert, but I have no idea what her backstory or dynamic with the characters are yet 😭

[comfortfrogblog]

so i went inactive here because life got busy as i finished high school, and then i started posting about autism on instagram in my senior year and just random things and i kind of amassed a huge following after a year and i learned so many things about myself and the world (some good and some bad) and i’ve grown a lot. but that’s over now because there is a lot of the world that is scary and bad and it’s hard to be vulnerable for that long in front of an audience and i frankly got sick of it and my body and mind became sick of it too. there were so many good people and i built a good comfy community of neurodivergents and such, but it’s still impossible to filter out the bad noise. then there was the fact that i was a young girl being pushed into the feeds of men aged 18-35, with only less than 9% of my audience being female, so that made it strange and parasocial with most of the people who were watching me. so in case you ever need anyone to tell you that blowing up on social media with your face is not as good a time as you may think, listen to me! i can tell you many stories that will make you very certain you do not want to post on big social media if you were not sure before!

so hey im back maybe and i may start comfyposting here again, or at least reblogging good stuff. there are still so many things in my inbox that i never got to answer, and even recent things—i’ve read them all. i apologize that i can’t answer at the moment or at all, but i see you. it’s still always a place you can dump thoughts and burdens, just to know someone sees it and is thinking of you, even for a minute.

here’s to tumblr’s beautiful anonymity. here’s to the comfort of being Social on Media without the horrible parts. i love tumblr so much. tumblr i love you

[calciumcryptid]

Watching Perfect 10 Liners is just me trying not to beam all my divorce kid trauma onto Faifa.

[daydream-the-demon]

im blocking you for anthonys sake

love, stanley

Stanley, no, I'm Anthony's friend.

[clearlightwired]

so insanely fucked up that people die of malaria

[juminies]

the way that most of the rfa do not see jumin as immediately caring has always taken me by surprise, because (to me at least) it's always been one of his most noticeable qualities. even outside of his good end or outside of his route all together he is caring down to the bone, and makes a pretty frequent effort to check in on people – especially when he's aware they might be under any sort of immediate personal stress. I think the problem lies in a combination of his low empathy and his tendency to overlook or misunderstand peoples' feelings/intentions when they aren't expressed to him directly. he's overly logical by nature (and he had to be in the environment he grew up in) and it can make him seem cruel to those who aren't used to his style of communication. however, it's particularly frustrating when you consider that everyone in the rfa is very aware that he strongly values honesty and straightforwardness. they tend to act as though he should just know to pick up on their implications, then call him inconsiderate when he doesn't, while making no effort to grasp that he just thinks and understands differently to them. and while I get where they're coming from in part, because jumin does navigate the world in a very different and possibly confusing way, there's no justification to constantly calling him an emotionless robot

[interruptingkau]

There's been a stuffed dinosaur sitting on our cricut machine at work waiting to be claimed by whoever left it for weeks and now we're just calling it Cricket, and my coworker asked if Cricket is a he or a she and I went "I feel Cricket could be a they" and he was like, obviously a little uncomfortable and said "I think Cricket's too young to know yet" and I had to stop myself from turning the workplace environment hostile

[bitegore]

ok this isnt meant to be a dig or anything but it's always really funny to me when people like just cracking 30 are like "omg you're in your early twenties, you're a babyyyyyy"

babe you're like barely 30, you're a baby too. You're a blink and a half older than me. I spend too much time around people over 50, the difference between 23 and 33 is a few years at a job and a little more distance from living in your parents' house but it's like, nothing. the gap closes every time you breathe and every time i move. the difference between you and me is like one-fifteenth the difference between you and my dad's friend Joe or whatever. don't worry you'll get to live more life too, but don't kid yourself.

and this is doubled when it's coming from a 25-year-old currently experiencing a crisis of age because they're soooo old, they're 25, the horror! You are twenty-five. We have an age difference of three years. Your concern over this is embarrassing for you and highly entertaining for me. But like don't kid yourself here. You are 25. You are a like a fucking baby to me.