#I am not superior to these people you know like not at all

[rarebird22]

Soooo your post really inspired me and I made a thing. I think this reprise would fit between defying gravity and thank goodness: after Elphie escapes the Emerald City, she can finally stop to ponder everything that happened that crazy day and what led up to it. Hope you like it!

(BTW op's tags were: #and don't get me started on how actually elphie gets basically everything she wished for in that song through glinda #at the oz dust when finally no one thinks she's strange #standing hand in hand in the emerald city)

"Galinda and I"

Did that really just happen?

Have I actually understood?

That odd girl I loathed, who once was a foe

Is now a friend who gave me what I deserved

Helped me make good

So I'll make good

When I met Galinda

She showed me my worth

Once I met Galinda

Changed some views I've held since, since birth

She may not seem to have much wisdom

But by my looks she came un-blinded

Did you think my best friend is dumb?

Or like Munchkins so small-minded? No!

We learned to see the me that I truly am

A girl on whom Oz can rely

And my new life began

Galinda and I

When we were at the Ozdust

My whole life was changed

Cause we danced at the Ozdust

And no one called us strange

Though friends may be quick to leave me

Though I may be abhorred

And the Wizard he decived me

But by Galinda, I'm adored

And these gifts and these powers I have inside

Finally at last I know why

We'll save Oz hand in hand

Galinda and I

I know that you said to me "Elphie dear,

a girl who is so superior,

People don't care about what's inside;

Only see the exterior"

You may be right, though I disagree,

So you stayed back while I flew out free

I hope it's all right by you

I promise we'll make it through

Of course I know that you're you while I'm me

I know that you will get by

Still, think what we could be:

Galinda and I

Yes think what we could be:

Galinda and-

Unlimited...

(And of course I would switch over into the defying gravity refrain of Unlimited here because why try to improve perfection?)

Anyways, it's late in my time zone and I'm going to bed. If anyone wants to add on with more lyrics for the end of "Galinda and I" feel free

thinking about how the best case scenario that elphaba can imagine in the wizard and i is that finally someone will come along who will be able to change everything about her. even in her wildest dreams, she views that as her best option.

and then.

along comes galinda. who - after spending an entire night attempting to give her a makeover - settles on: ‘actually, you’re perfect just the way you are. i wouldn’t change a thing. except maybe to tuck a little piece of myself in with you, just there.’

and i just think that’s neat.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Since you mentioned this in an earlier ask, what is your take on feminist Leona? I see people saying things like "consent king" "he drinks his respect women juice" and "leona kingscholar says men ain't shit" but I think those are mainly jokes but I've also seen a lot of for example Leona x reader fanfics where he's a lot nicer to femme Yuus than masc ones. I don't play the game so I don't know how much of a feminist he really is, could you clarify and give your own insights? Ty Miss Raven!!!!!!!

[Referencing this post!]

Admittedly, I am guilty of having made “consent king” jokes but that’s mainly because I think consent + respecting others’ autonomy is very sexy important and it’s slightly funny to have a 185 cm muscular anime cat boy championing the concept. However, I try to avoid making jokes which would imply Leona puts down his own gender or thinks lesser of them because 1) canon doesn't indicate this and 2) it can be hurtful to non-femme Twst fans. Yes, most of the fandom is women--but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make this fandom space welcoming for masculine or nonbinary Twst fans.

Let's delve into a brief history of where feminist!Leona comes from! After that, I'll discuss my own thoughts and feelings about it.

The idea first came into prominence because of an exchange that occurs in Cater's School Uniform vignette. In it, Cater is trying to convince Leona to join him for a party that he's throwing for Rosaria, one of the talking paintings at NRC. At first, Leona refuses--but he quickly changes his tune once Cater mentions Rosaria is a "she/her". Leona states, "Portrait or not, I respect ladies and Rosaria is a lady." Cater then whispers to Kalim (who is shocked that Leona suddenly agreed to come along), "Leona's kingdom is all about being respectful to ladies."

It should be noted that Leona says something slightly different in JP: “Even if it’s a portrait, a woman is a woman.” JP does not have the “I respect ladies” portion; “I respect ladies” was added to EN, which may have further amplified the interpretation that he is a feminist.

Now, as we learn from that vignette, the Sunset Savanna has a culture of "respecting women". In Leona's Ceremonial Robes vignette, he elaborates that, “[Beastwomen are] already way stronger than [beastmen]." Furthermore, Ruggie states in one of his Chats that “Girls have both the grit and the camaraderie to triumph when the goin’ gets tough.” Then, in events like Tamashina Mina and late in book 7, we are told that many of the royal guards are women who volunteer for the positions and it's common for them to have learned martial arts from a young age. From this dialogue, we can glean that the women of Leona's home country are physically strong, strong-willed, and honorable.

With that being said, I think certain interpretations of Leona's "feminism" (a term not actually used by official materials; this is a fandom take) definitely take it a step too far by either assuming Leona treats woman as a special class and/or he dislikes men. Both of those interpretations (if serious and not said as a joke) are owed to a fundamental misunderstanding of what "feminism" is. Feminism is "the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women." Feminism is NOT misandry (a hatred of men), and nor is it female chauvinism (the belief that women are superior to men)... unless, of course, you're talking about very radicalized forms of thinking. The basic concept of feminism doesn't involve man hate or putting women on a pedestal.

Leona, whom we know to be arrogant and unwilling to obey others' orders, appears to be more willing to listen to and carry out tasks if there's a woman involved. I already mentioned the case with Rosaria the painting (which proves that his "respecting women" thing extends beyond just beastwomen from his home country). In his Ceremonial Robes, he also grumpily puts on the aforementioned robes and takes a picture of himself in it upon the request of his sister-in-law. But--and this should be stressed--he's not exactly jumping for joy or eager to do so. Instead, Leona cites that "Goin’ against [beastwomen] only brings more trouble.” This indicates annoyance at having to carry out this chore, and gives the impression that Leona's only complying because not doing so would only overcomplicate things for him. He's not an idiot--he knows when to make a strategic retreat if it's going to save him time and effort in the long run. (For example, he immediately surrenders to the Ferrymen in book 6 rather than continue to put up a fight.)

I should note that, like in the earlier definition of feminism I shared, Leona does not simply bend the knee to every single woman. In the first Halloween event, he was still capable of scaring off the Magicam Monsters (some of which have distinctly female voices) without any qualms. He was still fully able to express anger and upset when Eliza, the Ghost Bride, smacked him. "You've got a lot of nerve turnin' me down over some nonsense!" He's also not above tricking the Fairy Queen and her entourage to steal back the special magestone from NRC.

This shows us that Leona doesn't just... "respect women" indiscriminately. If someone is going to be rude and selfish to him, he's going to respond as is appropriate. He's not going to turn a blind eye because of the offending party's gender.

In terms of Yuu interactions (assuming Yuu can be any gender), Leona acts pretty aggressive towards them in their first meeting. Even though it's clearly an accident and Yuu didn't realize they stepped on his tail, Leona is annoyed by the act and them walking away without apologizing or stopping to acknowledge him. He also makes it known that Yuu is magicless, and thus has no way of defending themselves from him. And you know what this man does? He says, "Well, can't say it'd be much fun to hurt someone so helpless. Still gonna do it, though." AND HE THREATENS TO TAKE A TOOTH. His wording, "No one gets to stomp on my tail and just walk away without payin' the price" + him still deciding to attack Yuu desite knowing they are weak/cannot fight back, implies to me that he may have still reacted this way regardless of Yuu's gender. (Key word: MAY. We don't know if this is the truth or not, I am leaving this up to your interpretation.)

Notably, there is a light change between EN and JP versions for Yuu's dialogue choices in response to Leona's threat. The EN dialogue options are far more humorous, but the JP options clearly convey fear (ie Leona is being serious about his threat of bodily harm). The top option is like noises of surprise, like "Eh, eh, eh!!"; the bottom option is along the lines of, "What, I'm going to be hit/beaten!"

There are, in fact, multiple instances where Leona acts callous towards Yuu. He refuses to let Yuu stay in Savanaclaw unless they earn their keep by beating up some mobs. He constantly degrades them by calling them and others he considers weak "herbivore". He has to be goaded into helping us or taking us along on trips instead of automatically caving. It could be argued that he would be more agreeable or polite if fem!Yuu was in these scenarios. And who knows, that might be the case--but again, I don't think he would be egregiously kind. I would like to point out a more direct example of a Leona-fem!Yuu interaction. Leona has interacted with a female Yuu before: Yuuka Hirasaka, our main character for the Episode of Savanaclaw manga. There's some debate over whether or not the NRC students know that Yuuka is a girl since the topic is never mentioned once, but I assume that they are aware because: 1) Yuuka makes no effort to hide her figure or chest; she even wears her blazer open, and 2) she has no motivation to hide her gender; she is capable of defending herself if needed and has a nonchalant personality. Proceeding with the assumption that Yuuka being a girl is a known fact, Leona does not treat her any differently than any other student.

Yuuka seems to experience the same tail-stepping scene as is depicted in game, although we don't see the aftermath of it/if Leona gives her the same threat.

The more telling scene for Yuuka, however, comes when she and her friends arrive in Savanaclaw to investigate. They are confronted by a bunch of mobs that start to pick a fight with them. Like in the game, Leona intervenes (ie he doesn't stop the fight just because Yuuka is a woman) and has them duke it out in a game of spelldrive/magift instead.

And you know what? Leona doesn't hold back just because he's playing against a woman. In fact, he kicks Yuuka's ass and then some. Then he stands over her and tells her to get back up, to keep playing. Leona isn't cutting Yuuka any slack whatsoever. He treats Yuuka the same as the boys she's playing with.

This brings me to my final prominent example of Leona interacting with a woman, which I think best exemplifies what my interpretation of Leona's "feminism" is. In the JP server's 2024 Halloween event Lost in the Book with Nightmare Before Christmas, Sally indicates that she plans on making a meal using the plants from around the cemetery. Leona is at first displeased by this, but then agrees to help her catch snakes, rats, lizards, etc. as meat for the meal. This leads into a conversation about how sad Sally's home life is, which earns her sympathy from the other NRC students. Jade, Riddle, and Epel are shocked at the cruelty that Sally faces. Jade volunteers to take the doctor out for Sally, and Epel even tries to convince Leona to help him rough up Dr. Finkelstein. But Leona just smirks and tells them Sally's not in any need of their "help"; isn't she the one who slipped the doctor a "drink"? Riddle scolds him for this "ungentlemanly" behavior and Epel refuses to believe that the "kind Sally" would do something like use poison. Leona was able to smell the deadly nightshade on her and deduce that Sally slipped some to her guardian and then slipped out on her own. She's not a damsel in distress--she's resourceful. Sally used her brains and not brute force to rescue herself from a bad situation. (We know that this would deeply resonate with Leona because he has been struggling his entire life to have his own merits recognized.) Leona praises Sally for her cunning and goes so far as to offer her his arm and tell her that he's looking forward to this evening's dinner.

In this situation, could it not be said that Jade, Riddle, and Epel were the ones assuming Sally is weak that Leona was the one who saw her true worth? I'm of course not accusing anyone here of being sexist. Society socializes us to see women as the "fairer sex" in need of protection and aid--but isn't Leona being more equitable by not underestimating Sally because of her gender?

That brings me to my conclusion. Leona respects women, no doubt about that. However, that's NOT a blanket statement. He clearly knows how to separate who is worthy of his respect and who isn't, and then he acts accordingly. Yes, he is polite, slightly softer, and more willing to listen to women he knows (his sister-in-law), women who haven't offended him/are just existing (Rosaria), and woman who have demonstrated their own strengths to him (Sally). He doesn’t become a completely different character just to bend to the whims of women. Those who have acted in ways to earn his ire, woman or not, will be treated as such (Magicam Monsters, Eliza, even Yuu when they/she enters his territory and/or steps on his tail). At the same time, I don't believe he thinks that women are delicate flowers that need special treatment (as we see with how he handles Sally + the Yuus and, more specifically, Yuuka). If anything, the women from his home country have demonstrated that they can be strong and self-sufficient. Why would he feel the need to go out of his way to be extremely lenient with the women he is around?

Lastly, nothing in official materials implies Leona treats men significantly worse than women. If he seems exceedingly rude to men, it’s most likely the result of the main cast (the characters Leona most often interacts with) being guys. If we were to compare how he treats his peers and how he treats women who have irritated him, I would say the behavior isn’t that different.

I know that was a long post but 😅 Hopefully I was able to articulate my thoughts well enough… May you find it helpful in forming your own opinion, Anon!

[1shadowhole]

Since it's once again the 24th, here comes the annual reminder from me that Kingdom Come AKA the so called BBC MERLIN'S Canonical Season 6 is actually anything but canon and was made by fans.

BBC Merlin doesn't have a Season 6

And every year people tell me "I don't think that anyone actually believes that Kingdom Come is canon" and every year I cry because no, no a lot of people do. Maybe not on Tumblr but everywhere else you always see comment threads that go a little something like this:

"omg the ending was so sad why did the writers do that?😭😭"

"don't worry! The writers actually wrote the script for Season 6 that later got cancelled, but it's online you can read it!!"

"I DIDN'T KNOW THAT THANK YOU SO MUCH"

Ahhhhhhhh

And I also make these posts for all the new, wonderful fans that don't know the whole story, who may stumble upon the Kingdom Come blog and read "the canonical ending of the show" or whatever lie the people who made it wrote and believe it to be the case. Because why wouldn't you? It's says it is! BUT IT ISN'T!!

Why am I so pressed about it?

I mean I ain't going to lie the main reason is because I don't like it and think it is a great example of character assassination and disregard of what the original show wanted to share with the finale.

But I mean there are many fanfics (and kingdom come IS a fanfic) that I think are just as bad if not worse. Why don't I also complain about them? Because it isn't my place! I can criticise some tropes but you'll never see me directly attacking a specific fic by name! It's a story someone made for free just because they like writing.

But since these creators clearly believe that their work is somehow superior and has more value than other fics, I will treat it as such! And if you wanted it to be canon so bad I will criticise it like I do with the actual show. And trust me, as much as I adore BBC Merlin I am not blind to its flaws, and I am very critical about them on here.

So yeah. I think it sucks that a lot of fans believe that's the actual ending! Even if you liked it (and so didn't think that the show ended horribly with all its morals squashed) I don't think it's right that you fell for a lie. I had conversations with people who loved it and think of it as their personal season 6 while knowing it isn't canon. And that's wonderful! But you should know the truth.

So let me repeat this one last time

BBC Merlin has no canonical season 6

I feel like I was a lot harsher and aggressive this time around. I think it's because I lost a close family member just this month, and with Christmas so close my nerves are frayed.

But my goal is to make so many of these posts that when you look Kingdom Come up you find them before the actual blog lol. So anyone reading will know not to trust what the blog says.

And to make it clear. Hidden in their posts they do say it is fanmade. But you have to look for it, and if you just want to read you won't see it.

Plus the way they make it sound, the script they sent to BBC (btw... DON'T SEND YOUR FICS TO WRITERS FFS) was actually accepted lmao. And the only issue was the actors didn't want to come back.

Sure babe, sure. That's how shows work.

Damn I'm so salty today.

Again I wouldn't talk about other fics this way, I swear.

Now go read And like the cycle of the year we begin again. Or the Change Trilogy. Both very different, but very long and amazing possible Season 6s

[somecosmic-typashit]

|Normalise actually motivating shifters who struggle with their minds|

I'm actually sick of some of these "harsh motivations" on social medias, because a lot of them are straight up nothing else but insults and shameful words. It only does the opposite instead of motivation, because some of them doesn't even give context or explaining.

You don't need to scold them now srs, like the fuck? Harsh motivation can only be truth, there's no need for degrading words, only truth itself can hurt enough already. That's what harsh motivation is. Some people are still stuck on misinformations and just don't know or understand everything about shifting yet. There's nothing wrong with that, because they're still expanding their knowledge and changing their beliefs. We've all been there, and even us are still learning about new things everyday and we're still letting go of everything that doesn't do us any good anymore. Have some understanding towards those who are still growing.

You can't call someone stupid and say "It's all your fault you're experiencing what you don't want now! You choosed this life here before entering this vessel!" It does not make you look superior or cool, you just sound like a deranged maniac and nothing more than lunatic. While there's some truth to example I gave and I can see the reason why would someone say that to someone, you should still explain the reason why you said that and maybe give an example to support it, because it also didn't made any sense to me when I heard it for first time and first thing that popped on my mind was "Why the fuck would anybody choose this kind of life? I'm not that dumb." Because I wasn't deeply educated in shifting, spirituality, manifestation, void state/pure awareness and ego back then. I still thought this is my original/first reality and that I'm here against my own will, overall I still had a limiting mindset.

Instead of directly spitting in someone's face with this kind of "harsh motivation", why can't you say something like: "Both positive and negative assumptions are delusional thoughts that shape your own reality if you're convinced in them. One isn't more delusional than the other and one isn't more true than the other because they're both form of assumptions without any proof. And law of assumption proposes that our beliefs and expectations influence the world around us that can be both negative and positive." Simple as that.

For example, Iused to think like: "I feel like shit everyday for years straight, this is getting worse everyday and I won't get to nowhere. I'll fall apart completely in the future." Did I continue feeling like shit with that mindset? Yes I did. Why did I felt like shit? Because I kept beating my own ass up with constant self hatred and I kept listening to everyone else around me who are clearly trying to make me feel worse for their own self satisfaction and I believed their own beliefs because I let the fear eat me and I thought everyone else is better than me.

So, when I realized I'm miserable because I kept adding the fuel to misery, I cutted off that kind of mindset. Because others assumptions about me don't defy who I truly am and what I'll become actually, since they don't even know me personally, they can't decide for me either who I'll be and that's only version of me from their perspective/imagination. Did I stop feeling like shit everyday after thinking like this instead? Yes I did. Everyone creates reality for their own selves with their beliefs and views, someone's personal truth isn't ours unless we believe that it's true in the first place.

The reason everything is now the way it is, is because of patterns from our past experiences/lives which we didn't change before shifting in this place. That's why they seem familiar/repetitive, that's why you already know things without reading or hearing confirmation for them, that's why you recognise someone you just met from somewhere you don't even remember, it's all from past experiences. The reason we don't remember none of them is because we aren't tied to one reality/temporary life and we're supposed to explore our imagination and all infinite possibilities. We can't shift permanently to other reality with memories from previous ones because it doesn't match or align with the new reality, at least not if they're drastically different.

You don't need to suffocate people from this community with toxic positivity or insult them. Don't even try to motivate or teach others something if you won't even tell them what they actually need. No you don't need to motivate or teach anybody it's not your job, nobody said you should do it, but if you want to do it and choosed to, do it properly at least. I'm not telling you to baby them or cuddle them, just stop being a dick and get to the straight point.

[atwoodsfemalefantasy]

this is lowkey...what am i even saying, HIGHKEY, rape culture.

they're saying women fight a lot and are always wrong, and sex is how they apologize. let's unpack that.

A) women fight a lot is typical women are emotional, women are dramatic, hysterical, sensitive, etc etc etc

let's not forget that most times women argue with men, it's for legitimate reasons, like the man's being shitty or abusive or misogynistic.

B) they're wrong. because the men are always right according to these people. obviously

C) sex is how they apologize.

that's when we get to real rape culture. sex should not be your apology for fighting. that's toxic from the start. then we add on the fact that these women are probably "fighting" for real legitimate reasons, but-we all know men- have been worn down until they give in. then they have to "apologize" for standing up for themselves. soooo that "apology sex" is most likely the women being subservient, manipulative against the woman, and actually a lot of times straight up rape.

women are always wrong and they apologize with sex. is what they're saying. that's basic "men are superior, we're right, and you do what we say". they're saying "no matter what you're arguing, we have the power, and we're right, and we get to win and get sex as a reward IN A WAY THATS DEROGATORY FOR YOU"

it's men "winning". it's women "losing" and having sex with the man being their punishment.

i know yall are gonna call me crazy, but like no. i'm right here.

this is rape culture

How to delete someone else’s post because what are we even talking about!!!!!!!!!!

[sailorsleepymoon]

insane how people can give heartfelt and logical reasoning as to why you should donate to Palestinians and give resources and how tos and show like just how disturbing the conditions people are living in are and get crickets and then a YouTuber can just auction a bunch of shit he already owns and raise almost 20k in a few hours

[normystical]

ATTENTION ALL ALASTOR SHIPPERS: 

uniromantic 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. PROCEED

[medinaquirin]

The utter blind hypocrisy of people criticizing Dems for trying to court too far Right while gleefully upholding the Right's obsession with moral purity and making the "right" people suffer.

[hermanoga]

I mean I know not everybody is aware of (😭pls pls read the queer bard) Shakespeare's sonnets being famous/infamous for its homoerotic celebration of love, but like, Link Click itself is a very Intertexually rich piece of media. If allusions from canonical authors appear, I think we should not ignore the cultural codes, which in this case talks about a larger literary and socio-intellectual tradition of homoerotic 'Platonic' love.

(My English lit major ass can't resist this time, so I am gonna discuss a few things now)

'Platonic' love ain't Platonic at all

Don't worry you didn't read it wrong. The long semantic evolution of this word has given rise to a word which has acquired a completely different connotation. Many times, it is weaponized to deliberately alleviate queer bondings. But the etymological history of this word locates itself into the Classical tradition of male male homoerotic tradition, the most famous example being a Socratic Dialogue by Plato called The Symposium . The word 'Platonic' comes from the philosopher Plato. It's a long dialogue which explores the themes of love and eroticism along with its ethical, philosophical and social necessities. There are people in the dialogue who talk about some idealised version of non-sexual love but Plato's view (which comes in the resolution of the Socratic Dialogue) is that love is a very erotic, intimate bond that occurs between two male.

I will not go deep into the debate between Socrates and Diotima which revolves around this question : which kind of love is superior? Love between men and women or between two men?

The larger implication is what we are looking for : which kind of love gives you immortality

Socrates suggests that the love between two 'equal' individuals who are intellectually on the same level, their kind of mutual and reciprocal love creates immortal art, which ensures the immortality of the lovers.

Shakespeare and the homoerotic tradition in the Renaissance period

Shakespeare following the Classical tradition Renaissance period adopted writes his 'Young man' sonnets; love, time, immortality are the central themes.

In this sequence of sonnets, there are Time sonnets. Shakespeare has this overarching obsession and anxiety with the concept of time which culminate in sonnet 64 :

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate:

That time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have which it fears to lose.

If this is not Lu Guang...

About the sonnets specifically and explicitly mentioned in Link Click (In the promotional video of Surprising Click where Liu Xiao is seen reading those four sonnets specifically), here is the Twitter link below you can read :

it's @luguangbread on twitter. Please read it, they wrote beautifully.

Now there is a bonus.

Another famous treatise on friendship (homoerotic, intimate) the tradition of male-male love is Laelius de Amicitia (or On Friendship). Even though Amicitia is not explicitly featured, Cicero's words do feature in the visual codes of 'The Eye'

pasting the Twitter link again, if you are interested, consider giving it a read

@centofu and @XinRuixxAG translated those Latin phrases.

Talking about 'friendship', it also has a very very interesting semantic background, across cultures. Asia has its own linguistic Ars Erotica (as Michel Foucault identifies the traditions of China, India and Japan to have this form of traditional eroticism. On the contrary, Western values modelled upon Victorian notions of Scientia Sexualis deliberately problematizes erotic encounters, restraining them within medico-legal binary categories - HoMoSeXuALiTy and hEtErOsExUaLiTY ~ History of Sexuality) which DOES NOT draw a clear division between friendship and erotic relationships. The South Asian cultural and linguistic background I come from, accommodate this queer-blurring of erotic friendships. In old folk songs, the soulmates/unrequited lovers/lovers in exile are addressed as 'friends'. Remember the name of Edward Carpenter's seminal book, Ioläus : Anthology of friendship.

(my god) I accidentally wrote a short discourse on 'friendship' and its queer connotation? BWAHAHAHA

Why am I telling you all this?

it's again @centofu with their genius mind finding and decoding the cipher Haoling so meticulously provided us with 'The Eye'. On a side note, the amount of intellectual discussion and god level deduction this fandom engages with to decode the significance of each minute detail make me very happy. I am very proud to be a part of this fandom. A show like Link Click deserves this level of dedication!

Anyway,

the cipher appears in a book Lu Guang was holding before the camera pans to the 'dead wife' montage of Cheng Xiaoshi. (Btw please please please read the original twitter threads, share among your friends and fellow shippers)

Now it's clear as broad daylight that the speaker is Lu Guang and the 'friend' is Cheng Xiaoshi. Haoling could have provided these lines in modern English but no, he deliberately uses the Renaissance English (the English Shakespeare used), so we have to look at the terms with their contemporary connotation, not the modern one. After all that discussion on friendship, I hope you understand how poignantly queer and melancholic those lines are. It also echoes Shakespearean themes.

The young man/muse reading the sonnets and realising how deeply and agonisingly the poet speaker loves him? Trying to save him from 'Time's fell hand'? The poet speaker not caring about himself at all and wanting all his love to celebrate the fair youth's beauty for eternity? Come here Cheng Xiaoshi, we have to talk.

Cheng Xiaoshi, why r u reading Shakespearean sonnets about lust, misogyny, acrimony and ostensibly homoeroticism? No reason. Just curious.

[steelthroat]

I'd always thought I preferred the messiest, most chaotic and fucked up people but with a grain of wil and spark that makes them do something over passive people that do nothing wrong, that don't care about anything but themselves and that never help...

AND I WAS RIGHT

People who are willing to try, that give a shit, that MEAN IT when they try to do something, smuah smuah come here here’s your smooches smuah.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Everytime I face a new character limit on a website that didn't have them before/used to have really long ones... AUGHHhhh the modern social media world was not made for people like me (lovers of details, rambling, elaboration, thorough explanation, and nuance)

[shepherds-of-haven]

Hi!! The dashboard unfucker is honestly a godsend. It's like the update never happened. You need tampermonkey to use it but it's so easy to get the dashboard unfucker to work.

GASP. YOU ARE RIGHT! I just tried it and it was like magic 😭 Bless you for confirming this for me!!!

[redvelvetwishtree]

Lmao you guys cannot "antisemitism" your way out of this anymore, that's old tactics which don't work anymore.

Can you also prepare a word for what's happening in Palestine? It's so enraging I can't put into words my anger and upset anymore.

[meteorherd]

if i am being completely honest so many of yall are not helping fight against anti-intellectualism in the slightest while still supposedly claiming to do so, like....i figured it would be common sense that being condescending about how you're more cultured than those Other Terminally Online Idiots is not the best idea (bold choice of words too considering that you care enough to BE condescending on the internet in the first place, like at least acknowledge that we are all terminally online to some extent on here lol).

it's the same idea of how simply quoting some three-sentence social justice take you see online to someone irl isn't going to make them change their mind, and it's not always gonna be because they're just stubborn and you're inherently smarter. it's because you're being condescending without having anything substantial to back it up!!! common sense here, man!! the same idea of isolating your viewpoint of what True Intellectualism is isn't gonna do shit in the end.

i desperately wish more conversations around anti-intellectualism focused more on accessibility and didn't treat ableism solely as some strawman argument that the "cringe 30 year old fandom moms" use, because yes! there ARE gonna be people like that! and they are so, SO annoying! but for every person who is intentionally oblivious and stubborn like that, there ARE people who get alienated by the intellectualist rhetoric that's gotten magnified over the past few years because disabilities DO genuinely get in the way of learning. like, at the end of it all...just have a little compassion when it comes to the topic i guess.

[the-casbah-way]

the best writing advice i can give you is to ignore all of those people who insist there are a bunch of rules you need to follow in order to be a Good Writer, or are so painfully terrified of doing anything that has been done before or could be deemed cliched that they end up shoving themselves into a tiny box they’ve invented that completely restricts them creatively and stunts any kind of genuine growth they might get to experience as a writer. i ignore the rules of grammar fucking constantly if i think it serves the tone of my narrative better, because i think a sentence that’s ‘too long’ and doesn’t have enough punctuation is a GOOD thing if you want to illustrate a frantic or stressed person’s mindset. i WILL write the most stereotypical cheesy ending to a story because sometimes it just makes the most sense to do that because of the themes and conflicts im working with and im not going to force myself NOT to do it just because it’s ‘predictable’ or someone else did it before me (guess what everything has been done already and doing something that has literally never been done before is not actually what originality is). stop scaring yourself away from exploring and finding your own unique writing style just because someone is telling you you need to obsess over and memorise a load of non existent rules that people often just throw around to make themselves sound intelligent (it’s not working. you are dumb)

[lith-myathar]

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