#I can get very wordy

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

A gentle reminder that attitudes towards familial forgiveness have strong cultural elements.

I kinda understand your intention in this text post but can you please elaborate...

Sure Anon! Thanks for asking.

I think it's really important to try and be aware of cultural differences when consuming media that is from a different background than your own.

In particular there is a deep history of colonialism and superiority from Western countries, and it's important to be aware of our biases when engaging with other cultures (I am an American, so absolutely include myself in this).

I was definitely oversimplifying with my comment, but I've noticed a trend when it comes to commentary around family dynamics in Eastern media, particularly when significant harm has been done by a family member, and they are forgiven within the text of the show.

There tends to be criticism of the forgiveness, that it was too easy, that the person who did wrong did not suffer enough, complaints that it doesn't change what the person did, and even questioning about why the show is even spending time on family issues when it could be focused on something else.

To be clear, I'm not saying you can't disagree with how something is handled. We are all allowed to feel how we feel.

But I think it's important for all of us, when watching a show that is from a different culture, to take a few moments and consider why something is happening. Why would this show spend time like this? Why might Yak repairing his relationship with both his father and brother be important to his relationship with Dee? What might this mean for them not just as a couple, but as two people building a family?

I just think it's worth having some openness to what ideas are being explored - even if in the end, it would not be the choices you would personally make.

This was probably more elaboration than you wanted or needed Anon! But I get very passionate about how much more we gain from curiosity than judgement.

It's also been on my mind a lot, because of My Stand In, and how many people were horrified that Joe helped Tong. They want to see Tong suffer. Which, fair. But as much as I'd like to see Tong receive an epic punishment, I'm not holding my breath. And if he doesn't, it doesn't make the show wrong. It's just a different perspective.

[despair-tv]

INTRO TV

Hello hello! Welcome to my blog! Let's get some things outta the way–

My pronouns? He/they

My main blog? @ikeytv

My age? Adult

I made an entire sideblog for danganronpa cuz I was embarrassed lol

BYF

I block:

Terfs/radfems

Anyone who ships incest/pedo

I hope you understand.

If you read all this, have a nice day! 🌸💜

[urfavesarequadranted]

adaman and irida from pokemon legends arceus are kismeses!

Adaman and Irida from Pokemon Legends: Arceus are kismeses!

[kaseyskat]

hi it's nyx here once again to talk about lark vs henry and what that meant for sparrow because i swear every episode that shows even a Little bit of sparrow's actual personality is controversial.

"nyx what do you mean by this" well it's a very blatant fact that sparrow does not get much nuance in the fandom: this is especially prevalent when examining hero's conversation with normal where she explicitly calls out lark and rebecca alongside sparrow and yet sparrow is solely blamed. because of this, every time we do see sparrow be his genuine self in the show - from talking to scary and shielding her from violence to taking charge of grant and lark and wanting to help the teens to the most recent episode's case of him not believing in animal captivity - i've noticed people quickly jumping on him for being hypocritical but nobody asking why he would be hypocritical, or why he's made choices that clearly do not reflect his actual beliefs.

so let's talk about that, shall we?

i know i've talked about this before but it bears repeating: sparrow is complacent. he has consistently made decisions that go against his own beliefs, bottling up his actual thoughts on the matter in order to "keep the peace". we know this, this is a canon fact, he said as much about lark and rebecca's affair!

why does he do this? well to me, what makes the most logical sense is that this stems all the way to lark and henry's conflict. if the rogue card is only predicting anger and not enforcing it, that means there is more to lark's anger than just what happened with walter. part of that is his fear of being unable to protect the people he cares about, being helpless in situations where he could've done something, yes, but i do believe there's another root cause to his anger, one that would fuel him for decades: sparrow.

...well, more specifically, how henry changed sparrow.

we know that lark wasn't the happiest about the lovewolf split. after the lord of chaos arc, sparrow starts very slowly developing a separate personality, enough so that he and lark aren't necessarily the same kid, one unit, the same person twice. sparrow tried to teach lark his new philosophy, it was ultimately rejected. lark doesn't understand it! but he loves sparrow regardless. that disappointment, that resentment of how sparrow had changed... it goes back to henry, to henry giving sparrow that speech and reinforcing those beliefs!

we also know that originally, sparrow didn't want to pick a side. he wanted them both to get along! to reconcile! and we know that lark didn't tell him about what he saw on the throne, which has me believing that there were, perhaps, other things that lark didn't tell sparrow in crucial moments: such as his decision to release the doodler, since we really don't know if sparrow knew. sparrow would've been happy to reconcile the two, and it makes sense if this was something he didn't know but something that shakes his perspective: aka, what happens if lark doesn't confide in him. to get lark back on his side, he has to be on lark's side irrevocably, which means abandoning his peacekeeping and mediation to choose lark wholeheartedly.

so by the time the ep23 flashback happens... sparrow has lost that bit of personality he had started to form in s1. he's lark's other half again, helping him with plans, sharing his ideas. he has... you could say, lost his confidence in being a lovewolf, because despite his best efforts, it only brought more strife to his family and he doesn't want to lose lark. we know this! he doesn't want to lose lark!

and then, they find out the prophecy, that one of the twins will have a kid who will save the world. think about everything we know about lark, how stubbornly persistent he was on fixing things Himself since he puts the weight of the world on his shoulders alone. lark doesn't blame sparrow or henry, he only blames himself. would he jump at having a family to fix his mistakes? no.

but sparrow would.

so sparrow takes that burden from him. sparrow has hero when he is twenty, and lark gets to be the cool uncle who helps around the house and hero blames both twins equally so we know they did this together. sparrow doesn't want to lose lark again, he doesn't want to be himself, he adapts to rebecca's views because it's easier than admitting that maybe he shares some of the same- definitely makes him marrying a vegan centrist make sense, right? he can use rebecca as a scapegoat and it Works. his own personality gets shafted in favor of being the same man twice with lark, he bottles everything up, he disapproves but never says as much.

and he fucked up with hero. clearly, he knows that. hero has a regular life now at a private school with a job and an internship and she's a massive dweeb and i don't think any one of you could look me in the eye and say that lark approved that. it was sparrow's decision! and we know what lark thinks about sparrow's parenting: i need every one of yall who truly believes that lark would be a better father to normal to go and relisten to normal's introduction scene in ep1 and then to the end of ep24 again where lark explicitly tells normal that being the mascot is a waste of his time when he could be learning "actually useful" skills (like hunting and survival- and yall still think sparrow was the one having hero kill deer?) and that he's too soft-hearted and naive and that is sparrow's fault for being too nice. normal would not be the same kid if lark was raising him and that is NOT a good thing lmao

all of this to say. i am so tired of people understanding lark's nuance and understanding grant's nuance and understanding the s1 dads and their nuance and how their trauma fucked up their relationships with their kids and yet sparrow is the one yall bash every other week repeatedly without ever wondering like. huh. maybe it is strange that his actions now don't hold up against his actions in the past. maybe there's something else going on that is consistent with literally every other aspect of his character. it is so tiring to go into his tag and see the same things over and over and over again repeated on loop every time we see sparrow's actual personality slip out beyond him perpetuating the "same man twice" persona. he's nuanced! they're all nuanced! and that's a good thing!

sparrow's biggest issues are his complacency, the way he upholds decisions that might not really be the best decisions because it's easier. his love for lark and his desire to fix things clouds his judgement and yeah, that means he goes against his own morals frequently; or at least, he did. so far in the season though, with how he's treated normal being in the line of fire and getting into his mess, he's definitely already realized this and is putting in the work to ensure that normal doesn't go through what hero did- something that lark is not doing. sparrow's also been the best towards the other teens consistently, the most willing to listen and change his perspective (as demonstrated again in ep24- really i just think people need to relisten to ep24!) and he's definitely not the best dad but that can be said not just about all the kiddads but also about literally every dad in this podcast, because that's what this podcast is about. thank you for reading and i hope i don't have to make this post again in a few weeks <3

[deus-ex-mona]

✨noping out✨ of an awkward situation li k e

[catboygirljoker]

continued episodes in the blake finally plays kingdomhearts 3 saga. y'all know who i ended up getting attached to but truly truly i thought it was gonna be axel for a while there. and hes so fucking cute in this game. all his mannerisms and expressions. how he moves and stammers when he gets embarrassed. how he acts with kairi, with ventus, with saïx. hes such a fucking good and endearing character. theres a very good reason hes the bitch with the nendoroid and the tshirts

[thornshadowwolf]

Actually you know what this has been happening a lot lately so I'm gonna make a post about it:

This is my personal blog and I like to complain about things including minor annoyances. Most of those vent posts I make about trivial matters are not big deals and you don't need to worry about me holding onto the apparent seething rage I'm expressing for the rest of my life or whatever. They're just little "letting off steam in the moment" posts and half of them are more made out of wry amusement than anything. I'm not actually trying to make a big deal out of it.

[fictionadventurer]

According to the app, I've got fifteen minutes left in The Heir of Redclyffe, but I don't want it to be over.

[fatelcved]

@starpoacher gets a lil something bc what was supposed to be an interrupted kiss turned into chiyo getting emotional and baring her heart to seth <3

she's cross with him. he's protected her time and again from-- from whatever it is exactly that he does on the side. and she's grateful, more than she can possibly say in a manner that doesn't feel cheesy or insincere. but she's mad, too. she's mad that seth doesn't lean on her more, that she's in the dark, a little mad that he kept it all a secret in the first place. chiyo hates secrets, as hypocritical of her that is.

yet she can't really blame him for any of it, can she? it isn't fair of her, she knows. it's for her own good that she doesn't know much; how can he lean on her if he can't talk about what he's going through? she's just a wrench that was haphazardly thrown into the well-oiled machine of his life. she was never supposed to be involved even this much. she was supposed to go on with her life as normal. she was supposed to swallow her nostalgia for what was and what could have been, let seth continue to be someone she remembered fondly. she was supposed to let him go. that would have been easier. for both of them.

he needs to go. the restaurant will open soon, and chiyo is well aware of how busy it'll be before long. there isn't time for a drawn out argument or the frustration aglow in seth's eyes. still, chiyo stops him from leaving his office, rushing to stand in front of the door and tripping in her haste. seth saves her from a nasty fall, hands steadying her; chiyo's chest feels tight.

she hates this feeling.

" i'm not going anywhere, y'know? " she says. she's thankful she doesn't sound choked up. stubborn brown eyes meet amber, and they soften, lose some of their earlier sharpness. her hands reach for seth's, gentle but firm, intentional. " i'm not going to go anywhere. i don't care about what you're hiding -- i just care about you. i need you to know that. "

[cjgladback]

For the first time in a long while, I got to go to a white elephant gift exchange this December! We had a low price ceiling and my practically wins out over any practical joke sensibilities every time, so on the designated shopping day I left my local overstock store with a nice chopstick set, some fancy (not at all mess-free) popcorn, and a dream.

When I was growing up, my mom was an intrepid homeschooling parent who loved event planning, valued cultural exploration, and had married into a Japanese family. Multiple times - sometimes in the setting of a multicultural fair, at least once as a kind of class party (with celebratory takeout at the end) - she faced teaching large groups of children how to use chopsticks quickly and with as little cost and cleanup as possible.

Her answer was popcorn! It's edible, so you get the full motion down, and lightweight but large enough for less coordinated sticks to pinch. It has tons of nubbins to grab and widely varied shapes to experiment with. Specifically, we used air-popped kernels, without oil or toppings, so when it gets overzealously crushed or bounces away and gets missed by a broom, it's basically biodegradable styrofoam.

What I'm saying is, this is my mom's fault. Other than the choice to draw so many hands in one afternoon on the same day as the party, while also baking a snack. That's all me. This primer was delivered in the format of a tiny booklet (if you look up an "eight page zine" that's also a method I learned from my mom, to turn single-sided misprints into notepads), with fewer jokes and tips than I'd have liked because I simply did not have time to transcribe a hashi rest fold or hairstyle. But reformatted (for Mastodon) it looks fairly respectable.

Lengthy image descriptions and full poster format under the cut.

[ID: A title page reads "How to Use Chopsticks" in all caps. The words "without too much mess" are between two straight, orange lines, which start with round points at the left, evoking chopsticks, and end in flared shapes of a silhouetted splash on the right. Below the lower line are the words "by CJ Gladback." All the text is in black, the background is white but appears light orange due to a repeating geometric watermark pattern of CJ's logo in orange overlaid on the whole image; her handle on most sites is included once on each of the following spreads: @cjgladback​

Next is the first spread of four illustrations with their instructions. On the left half of page are two line drawings of a right hand holding one and then two chopsticks, with the text, "The first stick rests on the side of your ring finger's nail and the flesh between your thumb and index finger. Your middle finger's pad holds it securely while it can slide against your thumb as your hand changes posture in use. The second stick is held between the knuckle of your thumb and the middle section of your index finger. This is the one you move to change angles; it may touch but doesn't really rest on the middle finger's tip." In orange, two arrows indicate the rest points for the first stick while small hashes emanate from the points pressed on the middle and ring fingertips and under the thumb's joint holding the top stick. On the right upper quadrant of the page is the text "Hold them close to parallel to scoop." A hand holds two sticks poked into a bowl of rice between the viewer and the palm; a series of parallel orange lines emphasize the space between the sticks. The remaining quadrant's text reads, "Press with your index finger to pinch firmly." This hand is holding an indistinct rounded shape in its chopsticks, with an orange arrow indicating the rotation of the index finger's tip to press the top stick's point toward the bottom's.

Next is the final spread of the pamphlet. The upper right text reads, "Practice with something medium sized and low mess like (air-popped) popcorn." A single piece of popcorn is held in disembodied chopsticks above a full popcorn bowl, with several kernels fallen to the surface below it. Text below reads, "Pick up your dishes to bring close to your mouth to scoop the harder to grab foods." An implied tilted bowl of food (fried rice or porridge with diced pieces) protrudes off the page, covering only the lower left corner. Close-up chopsticks have their points buried in the food and their lines fade out toward the right. The final black text, underlined by two orange chopstick shapes, reads, "but most of all, do what feels comfortable and eat well!" In orange in the lower right corner, the parenthetical "(and maybe knit a scarf)" is followed by a small orange drawing of a steaming bowl of noodles and sliced egg with a noodle line trailing toward two upward angled sticks with loopy hashes indicating knit fabric hanging from them.

The final image is the full booklet in its web format, with the three previous images from this post stacked vertically. Some orange lines have been added between what were pages in the print booklet, to aid reading flow. /end ID]

[amtrak12]

Ooo, I just calculated up all of my projected posting dates for my fic for the rest of this year and the midpoint is going to get posted on my birthday! :O

Well, now I can’t change my posting schedule. That chapter *has* to stay on my birthday. It’s the time travel reveal!

[batsplat]

y'know on almost every metric agassi/sampras was a considerably more amicable rivalry than casey/valentino, but then again you do have to say only one of those rivalries involves one guy being so pissed off at the other guy he fired a ball at his head AFTER they had both retired. and it's not casey/valentino!!

[virginwithasthma]

I stopped reading Death In Venice cuz it's a little bit too verbose for me at this point in my life. I understand the individual words but I find that I have to focus quite a bit to make sense of them all together and it's way too much effort.

I need relatively easy reads cuz I'm just trying to complete my reading goal for the year. Can't be spending so much time on one book.

[the-bi-space-ace]

This ask game was going around like SO LONG AGO and I forgot about it but I found it in me drafts lol :]

3. (What’s something you learned about yourself as a writer?)

26. (If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?)

Hi! Lol I do that sometimes too. I'm excited for these questions!

3. (What's something you learned about yourself as a writer?)

I write better when I write without judgment. I used to pour painstakingly over my fics and weed out anything that could be ‘too much’ or ‘weird’. When I did that I ended up with pieces I half loved. Things I wanted to add to but didn’t because I didn’t want it to be ‘too complicated’ and I was too afraid to be too vulnerable or project too much. This year has really helped me stop second guessing if I should add that detail or if it’s too close to home or if people don’t like or get it. I’m always going to hope people like what I write but I’m more in love with my own writing when it is exactly what I want and not pieces of what I want. I’ve stopped judging myself as much (I’m my own worst critic) and things have been so much more fun. I’ve learned that writing comes easy when I don’t judge the page before it is written. If I overthink it doesn’t get written and it sits in my WIP folder. I’m here to have fun and I think a lot of what I’ve written really shows that which is something I’m proud of.

Also that I like the pain almost as much as the soft stuff. I like the fluff to feel so earned it’s like a warm hug. Like it’s something the character has been waiting so long for they really just have to accept it is something they deserve. And there’s bound to be a lot of suffering before that happens but the payoff when a character has been in pain for so long and they finally get to be safe and taken care of???? That is something I will always love.

26. (If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?)

Honestly. It wasn’t even something I have on Ao3 yet. It’s actually when I officially finished outlining the third fic in the Calling Me Home series (which now has a name - The World Tumbles Down). I’ve been planning this fic since before the second one was posted and I wasn’t ever going to commit to a third story if I wasn’t 10000% sure of my plot. I was so frustrated towards the middle of Keep These Shadows Out that I was genuinely convinced the third fic was a mess that couldn’t be fixed. One day my partner and I spent almost four hours re-outlining the third fic and it finally came together and felt like a complete story instead of a loose idea on a page. It felt like the right way to end it. It felt like I’d finally filled in the gaps and given it the attention it deserved. That was such a relief for me that I still think about it when I’m overwhelmed. It was very rewarding to feel like I could wrap it all up well and not feel like it would fall flat. The notes for that story expand every time I write (and it’s looooooong rn) but getting that outline done and having it really hit the mark never fails to make me feel proud. Really gets me. I’m genuinely so excited to share it in a few months (and am working on packing just… as much fluff as possible into it. Let’s face it. These characters deserve it after everything I’ve put them through.)

[cescalr]

I LOVE HOW YOU TAG PARAGRAPHS THEYRE FUN TO READ!! /gen

Thank you!!! I love to ramble!!!

[rubys-domain]

so uh... my alt's kazuha is lvl 80 now. and i don't feel like fighting the maguu kenki another 10 fucking times. i'm not sure what else i could do though. there's a lot of world quests that still need doing as well as the sumeru archon quest. but i don't feel like doing any of that rn...

honestly i just want to keep playing on main. even if it's just world quests. i'm way more motivated to do world quests on main for some reason