#Free & Equal

[inkskinned]

in internet posts it is easy to cut them out of your life. they are hurting you! they aren't listening to you!

they held your hair back. they lent you lipstick. they held your hand at the train station and got you home safe. they rounded on your bully, got loud, said get fucked, spitting-mad in your defense.

they also cut the hair off again. told you that you should really think twice before wearing something like that. took you for granted. took your insecurities and threw them in your face again.

you know logically it should be easy. all the internet advice comments always read it will feel better. like an equation - if a person is rotten, you just remove them. you pull the tooth that's hurting.

but it was never a big flare-up moment. you don't live in a sitcom. they never tried to take your boyfriend or steal from your apartment. they showed up to birthdays and they wrote songs about you and bring you water without you asking. once you found out they carry an emergency inhaler for you, even though you haven't had an asthma attack in years - just in case.

where is the line? people fuck up. sometimes they fuck up badly. sometimes people have raw personalities, like a powerline, and being around them is dangerous. addicting. sometimes they can't help themselves, but you know they're trying. sometimes they are just rough-around-the-edges. sometimes they don't even realize how they sounded when they said that. sometimes it's just - you've both loved each other for so long now, the way this thing hurts goes back to the root.

and that's the fucked up part. you have pushed your fingers against the sweetheart of memory. things these days are electric, tense, harrowing. they didn't used to be. there were a lot of good days in there. sometimes you want to just close your eyes and say can this be over yet? do we still need to be fighting?

doing that would give up any chance you get of getting an apology, but you don't always know that you need an apology, you love them. once they flaked on your birthday party. once they told you to get over it, people are always dying. they also let you crash on their couch for a week after the breakup, handfeeding you when you were so sad you couldn't eat. they are also judgmental about everything, occasionally react to banal statements with an attitude that is weird and fiery. they also love you like a lighthouse sometimes, so strong they cut the storm like lightning.

but the problem is that you might be storm. you might be the thing that needs breaking. what if you are two forces who are desperately, horribly drawn to each other, shaped by the other person's passions, and both good for each other and bad in equal measure.

what if you're both just people, and you're no saint neither.

just cut them off! swallowing the saltwater, you catch yourself in the mirror. you've been shaking more than usual. there's an ache in you that is oblique, loud, impossible to soothe. is this what it looks like? when life is "easier"?

your mouth will always have a hole, is the thing, if you remove the tooth.

[lass-us-slay]

So I read a prompt about how Wonder Woman found Danny in a trash can (don’t remember which one) and I was bored.

So I took that lil info and made it into an AU.

So basically, Danny get yeeted into this unknown universe and has no where to live. And no where to live means no money. No money means no food. No food means Danny can’t keep his human half sustained.

So what does he do?

Decides to not change into a human and live in a trash can.

Yes you heard that right, live in a trash can.

Because he’s a ghost, he doesn’t have to worry about the germs and stuff. But that doesn’t mean he lives in just any trash can! He lives in a clean one ☝️

AND he also decorated it with his name so other people know it’s his!

And so Danny has been here for a while now and realizes

Holy shit there’s hero’s here- you know what, why doesn’t he have hero’s back home?!

And being minorly annoyed jealous (but he’s never admitting that)he thought:

Well since there’s hero’s here already, guess I’m not needed.

.

.

.

Good. I’m tired af

And so Danny caries on his life, being content with his trash can and scaring whoever comes into his alley. It’s fun. Sure he sometimes needs to ugh overshadow people to feed his human side, but other than that.

It’s going great.

But Danny doesn’t realize that with Amity gone (or smth, you choose) which was his haunt, he slowly makes the trash can into his new haunt.

And slowly but surely, Danny’s beloved haunt trash can starts to become other worldly kinda.

Yk because of the ectoplasm.

So now Danny’s lovely trash can haunt has more space inside and- Hey Danny can actually sleep in it better!! And he got some company too!

In the form of blob ghosts.

Two actually.

They keep his trash can clean and help purifying some corrupted ectoplasm that he finds. Because for some reason this universe’s ectoplasm seems half way artificial and tastes a bit weird. Which is where the blob ghosts help out in.

Everything was great.

Danny was loving the trash can life style.

He has two blob ghosts friends. Which he named Sam and Tucker, and yea they couldn’t talk but that was fine.

He wasn’t lonely, he wasn’t. He had two very much talking friends like Sam and Tucker.

However one day two weirdly dressed people- oh they were hero’s.

Well anyway they found him, one woman stripper and one furry guy.

But it was on accident! He was just peaking out of his beloved haunt trash can, and they spotted him.

He stared, they stared back.

Then the woman stripper asked him questions, even when he said:

“Don’t mind me, have a nice day!”

But they just kept bother him and giving him weird looks and glances.

Which- rude.

Didn’t they see his mark on his haunt trash can? Obviously it means it’s his home, so they shouldn’t be bothering him still. He’s safe as can be.

Plus.

It’s not like he’s looking at them in suspicion and weirdness, I mean look at them! What kinda cheep knock off vampire fury mix and American stripper style clothing are those!

They should mind their own business!

———

Just a silly lil drawing of this lmao, don’t mind me.

[saddayfordemocracy]

How the Watermelon Became a Symbol of Palestinian Solidarity

The use of the watermelon as a Palestinian symbol is not new. It first emerged after the Six-day War in 1967, when Israel seized control of the West Bank and Gaza, and annexed East Jerusalem. At the time, the Israeli government made public displays of the Palestinian flag a criminal offense in Gaza and the West Bank. 

To circumvent the ban, Palestinians began using the watermelon because, when cut open, the fruit bears the national colors of the Palestinian flag—red, black, white, and green.  

The Israeli government didn't just crack down on the flag. Artist Sliman Mansour told The National in 2021 that Israeli officials in 1980 shut down an exhibition at 79 Gallery in Ramallah featuring his work and others, including Nabil Anani and Issam Badrl. “They told us that painting the Palestinian flag was forbidden, but also the colors were forbidden. So Issam said, ‘What if I were to make a flower of red, green, black and white?’, to which the officer replied angrily, ‘It will be confiscated. Even if you paint a watermelon, it will be confiscated,’” Mansour told the outlet.

Israel lifted the ban on the Palestinian flag in 1993, as part of the Oslo Accords, which entailed mutual recognition by Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization and were the first formal agreements to try to resolve the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The flag was accepted as representing the Palestinian Authority, which would administer Gaza and the West Bank.

In the wake of the accords, the New York Times nodded to the role of watermelon as a stand-in symbol during the flag ban. “In the Gaza Strip, where young men were once arrested for carrying sliced watermelons—thus displaying the red, black and green Palestinian colors—soldiers stand by, blasé, as processions march by waving the once-banned flag,” wrote Times journalist John Kifner.

In 2007, just after the Second Intifada, artist Khaled Hourani created The Story of the Watermelon for a book entitled Subjective Atlas of Palestine. In 2013, he isolated one print and named it The Colours of the Palestinian Flag, which has since been seen by people across the globe.

The use of the watermelon as a symbol resurged in 2021, following an Israeli court ruling that Palestinian families based in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem would be evicted from their homes to make way for settlers.

The watermelon symbol today:

In January, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave police the power to confiscate Palestinian flags. This was later followed by a June vote on a bill to ban people from displaying the flag at state-funded institutions, including universities. (The bill passed preliminary approval but the government later collapsed.)

In June, Zazim, an Arab-Israeli community organization, launched a campaign to protest against the ensuing arrests and confiscation of flags. Images of watermelons were plastered on to 16 taxis operating in Tel Aviv, with the accompanying text reading, “This is not a Palestinian flag.”

“Our message to the government is clear: we will always find a way to circumvent any absurd ban and we will not stop fighting for freedom of expression and democracy,” said Zazim director Raluca Ganea. 

Amal Saad, a Palestinian from Haifa who worked on the Zazim campaign, told Al-Jazeera they had a clear message: “If you want to stop us, we’ll find another way to express ourselves.”

Words courtesy of BY ARMANI SYED / TIME

[booasaur]

Venmo @ bcabolitioncollective

[Edit: don't donate anymore, they have enough, as per

]

Incidentally, they also suspended Ilhan Omar's daughter.

Edited on the morning of April 19th to no longer be rebloggable because of the venmo change above

[the-crooked-library]

does anyone else think about Spike and Giles looking at each other and seeing a personification of the most despised and vulnerable aspects of their own past or is it just me

[marzipanandminutiae]

as a woman who grew up with an emotionally abusive mother constantly telling me I needed to wear more makeup/more revealing clothing/date (boys) more/go out to "normal" parties more, I despise "she should be at the club"

god forbid some people- especially young women, who already have to deal with a thousand different behavioral standards from a thousand different directions -not have the same dreams and desires for their lives as you do for yours

fucking hell. the correct response to "women should stay at home and have kids and be submissive wives" prescriptivism was not MORE PRESCRIPTIVISM

(I also just saw a poll asking if people partied as teenagers, and OP responded that the answers were "killing them" because No was winning. like? why is everyone so personally invested in other people having a very specific kind of fun?)

[cloud-hymn]

Wei Wuxian constantly getting mischaracterized as being unintelligent in fanon is going to end up being my villain origin story

[starcurtain]

Hear me out. I know it's unlikely that Ratio would ever have been foolish enough to directly get taken in by a scam, but considering that we know:

One of the groups specifically tricked by Kakavasha before he joined the IPC was the Intelligentsia Guild

What he tricked them about was Tayzzyronth's Swarm remnants, the exact same thing we see Ratio investigating in his very first appearance in the game, and

The researchers were described as "extremely cautious"

I am surprised that "Ratio was at least somehow connected to the Intelligentsia Guild team fooled by Kakavasha before he was ever even a Stoneheart" isn't more popular with the Ratio and Aventurine fandom.

Like imagine being Dr. Ratio. You tell your colleagues, "This seems like a scam. Are you sure you should trust this 'local guide' you've made contact with? Tell me about him. A picture? Does this even look like an Egyhazan native to you? I won't save you fools from making idiotic decisions." (You end up having to clean up the aftermath of their idiotic decisions anyway. There is sand in places on your body you didn't even know existed before this. How mortifying for the Guild. For you, by association.)

Then, next thing you know, you get a mission briefing slid across your desk from your IPC connections. They want you to work with their new Stoneheart. You open the packet to see... that little bastard with the enthralling eyes who had your moronic colleagues scrambling in the dirt on a backwater planet for months. Apparently he's made a career out of fooling you your supposedly competent guildmates.

You run off to confront him. You never met him personally back then, but you deserve compensation for the idiocy you were subjected to nonetheless. He deserves to know how much of a pain in the ass he's been in your life already without ever having met your eyes--

He proceeds to shove a gun into your hands and tries to make you an accomplice to a suicide. Apparently, this is normal behavior for the man now called Aventurine. Somehow, it's supposed to prove to you that he is a sane and reliable individual.

Absolutely nothing in your life has been normal since Egyhazo.

You would like to have mundane problems, sometimes.

How do you keep ending up in this beautiful manic clever conman's orbit, and why, like binary stars, can you not escape the gravitational pull?

[bloghrexach]

💥 … #Boycott … here’s info!! —There’s something minimal you can do!! … 💥

@hrexach

[the-random-phan]

Ectoberhaunt Day 13

Isekai: Old Hero New World

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 68

Danny stares up up up at the being cooing down at him, a mass of eyes and tendrils and whatever else twisting in and out of portals, shattering to sand and reforming, buckling into a smaller shape and expanding in an ever moving form. This was not what he was expecting when Clockwork offered to introduce him to Chaos, but maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised. 

Bonus DPxDC crossover: Clockwork introduced his lil baby ghostling to his old friend Chaos so they can set up playdates between their two kids. Klarion and Teekl are now being spotted with a white-haired boy and a green puppy that can go giant and monstrous like Teekle, to Young Justice’s (And the league’s) concern

[esmeblaise]

Ironically both of them wear designer brand clothing but while Law puts time and money into his appearance Luffy just happens to be friends with wealthy influential people who he gets free clothes from

[saddayfordemocracy]

@letstalkpalestine has put the size of Gaza into perspective to show just how densely populated the area is.

[wield-the-mighty-pen]

Okay, but like, why did they have to do the Scooby-doo villain run?!?!

[ranchthoughts]

Happy marriage equality Thailand! 🌈

A few months ago, @colourme-feral came to me with the idea of cataloguing as many same-sex Thai QL proposals and weddings as we could. And today, to celebrate the bill passing the Senate (and the first post-bill-passing proposal and wedding), I'd like to share with you all our findings! Even though same-sex marriage has not been legal in Thailand until this year (hopefully things will be official in the fall), there have been quite a few same-sex proposals and weddings in Thai QLs throughout the years.

Big thank you to everyone who assisted on this project in some capacity (@airenyah, @bengiyo, @blmpff, @chickenstrangers, @dribs-and-drabbles, @nieves-de-sugui, @twig-tea, @waitmyturtles, @williamrikers) plus all the gif and fanvid makers whose work was instrumental in helping us double check everything (particular shout out to these gifsets by @apathetic-tortoise (1, 2) and this one by @gunsatthaphan).

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

We found 28 Thai QL shows which featured at least one same-sex proposal (the blue list below) and 15 Thai QL shows which featured at least one same-sex wedding (the green list below).

I was pretty strict with what counted as a proposal or a wedding for the purposes of this project. For example, characters who we know are married but whose wedding we don’t see aren’t counted (like Laws of Attraction’s Maya and Rose, or the unnamed Force and Book characters shown in a “Just Married” car in Vice Versa). There are many shows where there is a ring or someone gets down on one knee but the question is not exactly “popped” (Khun Chai, Star In My Mind Our Skyy 2, etc.), and there are even more shows characters talk at length about commitment and being together forever but there were no mentions of marriage or other details (like rings, etc.) that would specifically suggest it was a proposal (A Boss and a Babe, Ai Long Nhai, Be My Favourite, Cupid's Last Wish, Dark Blue Kiss, Something In My Room, Star in My Mind, Still 2gether, Until We Meet Again, 3 Will Be Free, etc.). Some of these moments might have been intended as a declaration of intent to marry by the characters and the show runners, but they weren’t conclusive enough to be included on this list. Furthermore, I think it’s interesting to see how many shows were, for lack of a better word, explicit in their discussion or portrayal of same-sex marriage (having the characters use the word marriage, showing weddings, etc.), despite being from a time before such a thing was legally possible. 

Note: I've listed the shows with the year they started airing for ease, even though some of them did finish airing in another year.

(see alt text for the full lists)

The Quick Facts

The first proposal and the first wedding in our data set both happened in Grey Rainbow episode 4, which aired on May 7, 2016. (though this is not exactly an auspicious wedding to start with, as those who know know)

12 shows featured at least one proposal and one wedding (Cherry Magic, GAP the Series, Grey Rainbow, Laws of Attraction, Love Syndrome 3, My Secret Love, Naughty Babe, Never Let Me Go, Tharntype Special: The Wedding Day, Two Worlds, Wedding Plan, and the Wedding Plan Special). 

4 shows feature two same-sex proposals (Cherry Magic, Love Syndrome 3, My Secret Love, and Two Worlds). All these shows also feature a same-sex wedding.

None of the shows in our sample had two same-sex weddings.

The Data Over Time

As you can see, generally same-sex proposals and weddings have become more common in Thai QLs over time, though of course there are more Thai Qls being produced now than in the earlier days.

Note: I'm only looking at shows which aired before the marriage equality bill passed the Senate, so the 2024 data does not include Wandee Goodday or OMG! Vampire. It will be interesting to see if and how the number of same-sex proposals and weddings in Thai QLs increases through 2024 and beyond now that it will become a legal reality.

It is also interesting to consider the production companies behind the shows in our sample. This sample includes 7 GMM shows and 5 Mandee/Domundi shows, plus 1-3 series each from other production companies like Idol Factory, MeMindY, Studio Wabi Sabi, Copy A Bangkok, Jinloe Media Work, TV Thunder, and M Flow Entertainment. In other words, GMM shows make up roughly 23% of the sample, Mandee/Domundi shows are another 16%, and other production companies comprise about 61% of the sample.

Main Couples vs Side Couples

There are 28 shows with proposals in the sample but 32 proposals, because four shows have two proposals each. 26 of these 32 proposals (81%) are between the main characters and 6 of them (19%) are between side characters.

Of the 15 weddings in the sample, 12 (80%) are between main couples and 3 (20%) are between side couples.

For interest's sake, I also broke this down for GMM and Mandee/Domundi. GMM has 7 proposals in 6 shows, with 5 main couples and 2 side couples popping the question; and 3 weddings (across 3 shows), in which 2 side couples and 1 main couple got married. Mandee/Domundi has 5 proposals in 4 shows, all between main couples, and 3 weddings (across 3 shows), also all featuring main couples.

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

And now here we are, after the bill has passed the Senate. Congratulations to the Thai queer community, and the happy couples Oyei and Cher from Wandee Goodday and Sen and Run from OMG! Vampire who are the first Thai QL couples to propose and to have a wedding (respectively) after Thailand's marriage equality bill passed the Senate! (The bill passed the Senate on June 18, 2024, and episode 8 of Wandee Goodday aired 4 days later on June 22, followed by episode 6 of OMG! Vampire on June 23.)

I can’t wait to see more same-sex engagements and weddings in Thai shows as we move forward.

[versasfanficwastedump]

oh, me? no i’m totally fine i was just thinking about Dick and Jason doing something ridiculously dangerous and when Bruce finds out, he hauls them back to the cave and gives them a furious/terrified/relieved, “Are you two stupid? You both could’ve been killed!” lecture and it made me tear up a little bit thinking about A Dad and His Boys