#I mean I'd say yes but that's me

[jacqcrisis]

i have no idea how to interpret this fall out boy music video as anything but two bedazzled cowboys trying to get over their very sad break up but goddamn if that isn't the only interpretation I have.

How else am I supposed to read the very interesting editing choice to have Jimmy Butler sing about how 'in another life you were my babe/in another life you were the sunshine' as the camera keeps cutting to Pete Wentz being a little cute sad man in his cowboy outfit with stereotypical black and white filter? What else am I supposed to think????

[skull-turtle]

for the LAST TIME, what does "having a crush" even mean

[marzipanandminutiae]

people really watch/read that scene in Emma where she talks to Mr. Knightley about how he can say whatever he wants because he's never been a dependent, and doesn't know what it's like to "have tempers to manage" and say "wow that's so sad that this adult woman has to walk on eggshells to keep the people who control her life- specifically, a man, her father -happy, and thus keep her place in the household"

and then turn around and insist that it's women's job to keep men from trying to violently take our human rights away, by just being ~sweet and kind~ to them at all times

[aquickstart]

ok sure i'll talk about farleigh start. i'll talk about his tragedy of never being enough as it were and then having to deal with fucking oliver. sure. disclaimer: it's about class (and race) and the horrible reality of the rich. the horrible reality of living as farleigh.

another disclaimer: i'm white! and poc definitely pick up on everything i'm talking about here as it is, and better. i was and am specifically interested in farleigh vs. oliver but it's impossible to examine without considering race. definitely let me know if anything abt this sucks!

farleigh and oliver are similar. it's annoying because every intruder that is not himself is annoying, partly because felix's attention swaying from farleigh is dangerous; there is always a threat of being discarded, even if no precedent existed. the potential is terrifying.

but you'd think he's seen this before, every summer (if venetia is telling the truth) or at least often enough to learn to recognize it fast, so he should know this will pass. part of it is i think still the deep anxiety, and i think he hated every boy that was there before, and it is sort of routine.

but definitely a huge factor in farleigh's annoyance is the fact that he's a biracial (black for cattons, that's all they see) man in a white rich household. he's alert and exhausted all the time. of course he's angry at oliver, regardless of whether he's the first to crash at saltburn for the summer or the fifty-first.

but the important thing is this.

farleigh is very jealous of and angry and pissed at oliver because farleigh sees all the similarities between them. outsider, in financial trouble, whatever it is, in need of cattons; and yet oliver is preferred. and farleigh seems to be the only one to really consider it. felix does not pick up on the hint when farleigh brings up the birthday party vs. his mother. felix's clumsy "different or... anything like that" is as much about race as it is about class, of course. the "we've done all that we can" bit is felix absolving himself of guilt because surely they had, surely the mysterious collective cattons that he's not really part of had tried all they could do. to him, farleigh is different from oliver, because farleigh has been helped. felix is rich and white and twofold uncomfortable with farleigh, even if he's nice about it, even if he genuinely enjoys his company; he doesn't look too close at farleigh because he feels too guilty to come too close. and farleigh can't do anything about it. he can't nice himself into it. the fucking tragedy of him is that he's never enough in the world of the ultra-rich white, even if (especially because!) he's born into it.

farleigh is very pissed at oliver because farleigh also sees all the differences between them. you know who can be nice poor white enough to fit in? fucking oliver. felix says "just be yourself, they'll love you" when oliver first moves in. farleigh was also probably told the same thing, and felix also probably believed that farleigh could just be himself, but even if the cattons were magically not racist at all (impossible), it wouldn't make a difference to farleigh. he would still self-censor, keep in check, be in dangerous waters (because racism is not just about the individual, but about the system). we see that he'd won himself leeway by years of trial and error by the way he speaks to the family, but it's still within the boundaries of acceptable, built by the cattons. he's part of them because they allow it, and farleigh is very, very aware.

the annoying thing is oliver can be himself. like, truly, genuinely, he can just be. and farleigh can't help but envy that.

as a side note, oliver is obviously jealous of farleigh in the beginning as well, because regardless of the reality of farleigh's situation, he was born into it, and hence, at least in oliver's mind, has his position solidified. oliver's whole thing is unquenchable thirst and hunger for whatever and everything the cattons have (including themselves!). he wishes to have been a catton from birth. to oliver, at first, there's nothing farleigh can really do to lose it. and until he figures out the cattons completely, he can't help but envy that.

but i think farleigh senses something different about oliver early on. at least on the level of the text, we have "you're almost passing [for] a real, human boy", which is so important because farleigh is the first to point out oliver's weirdness. the next to do so is venetia in the bath scene calling him a freak, but it's too late. farleigh is too early.

and i like to think he clocks oliver too early because he sees the jagged edges that he recognizes in himself. i think that one other thing that farleigh envies is oliver's freedom to let go. freedom to let go is very similar to freedom to be, but not quite the same.

to be is about perception: farleigh knows he cannot fall out of line, but would like to, and oliver does not have to worry about it at all (i mean, he does, because oliver also performs for felix, but farleigh doesn't know that).

to let go is about the self: farleigh is too scared to even want what oliver eventually does, to even consider the possibility. oliver can let himself want. oliver can let himself act. oliver just can do things and want things. i'm not sure farleigh can.

and so in this scene, when oliver's wants and actions have landed him nowhere with farleigh, felix, venetia, the cattons, of course farleigh gloats. he can let himself do that, because if the cattons are slowly discarding him, farleigh can allow himself this one small victory. he's relieved because despite the dangerous similarities, oliver is, thankfully, not really the same as farleigh, right?

but like. this movie is a love letter to all things gothic. oliver is a white man. he prevails. the brief performance that oliver put on did eventually end up more effective than farleigh's lifetime of constraint. my heart fucking breaks for him to be honest.

the issue that remains is the fact of farleigh's survival. i like to think that oliver came to respect him. oliver is smart, but farleigh is clever. he picks up on everything oliver does (to refer back to the karaoke scene, farleigh immediately retaliates in the cleverest way, in the moment), and he's the only one to do so consistently (venetia, again, for example, comes close, but too late; oliver doesn't like that, there's nothing to work with). hence, stay with me for a little longer, the paradox: farleigh survives because he was never enough for the cattons, but he is very worthy of oliver's attention. in his own freaky way, oliver wants him. look at that.

so. farleigh. farleigh might come back. he always comes back. and i think oliver wants to try harder next time.

[cryptiduni]

“white mourning.”

[alicepao13]

"But Odysseus' jetpack" The serious part of Epic the Musical and the one that is up for debate and criticism is the songs. Not the animations. I didn't think that needed explaining.

[takitori67]

Can you draw arjuna and junao with their outfits switched??🙏🏻

Sure!

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

I am unreasonably upset about the fact that I've been forced to accept that Gabriel was a Gerald.

For context, in An Inspector Calls, Gerald Croft is engaged to Sheila Birling when he meets a homeless, struggling Eva Smith in a bar, and essentially in return for a home and money he shows her affection (ahem), then gets rid of her once he no longer has a use for her. Now, obviously this isn't a direct translation, but the essentials are - a Gerald is a character who uses another character, in return for something they need, usually masking the fact that they're using them with affection and love.

And against my will I've had to accept that this is exactly what Gabriel does to Nathalie.

Did I want to think he had potential to be better? Did I think he genuinely cared for Nathalie?? Hell, did I just really really want somebody to care about Nathalie???

Probably all of the above but the point is: he's Gerald. And I cannot - I literally can't unsee it now. Their whole dynamic in S3 is like “oh boohoo I'm sorry I wish you didn't have to use the peacock Miraculous and kill yourself over it but uh I need to use your powers” “yeah no that's fine I'm all good”. Which, given the "Gerald" theorem, I'm assuming leads to the fact that what Nathalie needed, above all, was someone to care about her - and Gabriel came along, as Sheila Birling puts it, "like a fairytale prince", and was so caring and gentle and... Yeah. She fell for him. And. Yeah he genuinely did seem to care like twice. But so did Gerald. Gerald actually admits that he did care for Eva, just not the way that she cared for him, and, uh, not enough to not just dispose of her. So he discards her anyway when she stops being useful.

Leading me neatly to my point.

He starts using the peacock Miraculous the second it's fixed, the slimy bastard, HOWEVER. It runs way deeper than that. Assuming I'm right (which I almost DEFINITELY am), then Gabriel only needed Nathalie while she was useful. She didn't stop being useful in season three - she's still scheming for him, helping him with plan after plan. It's only partway through season 5 that she officially servers ties with him, and starts to actively hinder him.

Nathalie stops being useful when she fails as Safari. And I reckon that's when Gabriel and Tomoe decided she had to go.

(It's painfully, I-was-ugly-crying-over-it obvious in Conformation that Gabriel is fully prepared to let Nathalie die - in the original storyboard, her alliance was encouraging her to sleep, and he's very obviously prepared for this moment - I've made a separate post about it that I'll link if I can find it. However, onto the next bit)

With all of this, there's one thing that sticks out to me - Nathalie didn't see any of it until it was already too late. There could be many reasons for this. But you know who would have seen through it? Whose parents were all loving and perfect until she married the wrong man? Emilie. Emilie, who left behind those videos, which on the surface look innocent, but when you look deeper look like a (love confession???????) AHEM a warning. I reckon Emilie noticed what was going on and realised that Nathalie wouldn't see through Gabriel, so she left those videos addressed to Nathalie (not Gabriel, which surely they should have been - they were about him, after all - unless they were there...) as a warning. I don't think the videos were supposed to be about helping Gabriel, I think Emilie was warning Nathalie to get the fuck out of that house, and to take Adrien with her. Because Emilie knew it'd end like this.

Yes I'm still mad ok give me a break.

[bambirex]

I know there are all those videos of irl lawyers reacting to Ace Attorney and how it all comes down to "omg what if court was really like this??" but I can assure you that court is, many times, actually like this. Like you would not believe what goes down sometimes.

The things we have to sit through with a straight face. There might be no ghost-channeling or cross-examining parrots but the level of surrealism is pretty close most of the time.

[crossbackpoke-check]

Why I Am Not Coming In To Work Today [abridged], Jess Zimmerman

part one | part two

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Got any trans HCs for the amphibia trio? I love the many different interpretations I've seen from this fandom

I don't know about specific headcanons, I know I'm considering making Anne trans in RiAAU but I haven't decided yet.

In one hand: it would be interesting to think how she deals with her first periods because, well, amphibians don't have those, and Hop Pop assumes she's dying (she doesn't tell anyone else because she's so embarrassed). Not that he tells her that, but it really freaks him out. He thinks she has some sort of internal damage, and it's only after months of research that he finds out about some rare mammalian species, such as a few monkeys and rodents, that experience the same cycle Anne goes through. The whole point of this is that it makes Anne feel even more out-of-place. She doesn't remember her world or her parents, only that she came from "somewhere" (possibly another continent) full of people of her species, and she wonders if things would have been easier if she grew up with her biological family. I mean, surely this would be easier. It just serves as a reminder that she knows nothing about her species, not even its name, and she has no idea of how her biology works or what is good and bad for her or how long she'll live or what changes she'll go through.

.

BUT, on the other hand: Trans Anne. Let's start with the obvious: amphibians don't have penises or vaginas and they reproduce externally, meaning they like... release eggs and sperm in the water and they mix without the involvement of either parent, meaning no one knows what the cultural significance of a "penis" or a "vagina" tends to be in most human cultures. As a literaly 3yo, Anne probably didn't have an extensive understanding of s.ex and gender, and it wasn't like the clothes she showed up with told Hop Pop much. She just knew that, as time went on, she found herself relating more and more to the female frogs of Wartwood, and she almost subconsciously began to refer to herself as a girl. There wasn't any big coming out moment, more like a point in which, after months of ambiguity (this kid kept using different pronouns for herself) she just settled on some good ol' she/her and began picking somewhat girly clothes when Hop Pop took her to the market.

It's not like the concept of trans people doesn't exist in Amphibia, it's just that Anne didn't realize that was her situation until, at least, meeting Marcy, and noticing the differences between them. It's not like either of them had ever seen another human from up close, so they didn't know what to expect anyway. Anne's only encounters with Sasha beforehand had consisted on magical girl swordfighting in the sky and whatnot. Certainly not enough to discuss their unique biology, which is something Marcy is very excited to discuss, since she's never met anyone with her same "condition" before, and she wants to know everything, so she uses her as her little rat lab whenever she has the chance. Even then, since she also lacks all knowledge of human s.exual dimorphism and its cultural implications, she doesn't associate anything about either of their bodies to any specific gender that could possibly be asigned to anyone based on biological feautures. Since Sasha remembers the most from Earth, she's probably the only one who could maybe possibly remeber her mom or the kindergarden teacher saying something about "the difference between boys and girls", but by the point she's in speaking terms with Anne, and by the time she realizes their bodies are different, she doesn't really care.

That's not to say Anne doesn't experience dysphoria or that she never undergoes any kind of physical transition. It was probably around the time her voice started to change during puberty that she realized her case may be kinda unique: neither Marcy nor Sasha's voices have changed that much, she can tell even though she only sees Marcy in person like once every 3 years and all the words she exchanges with Sasha consist of death threats and insults. Plus, there's a clear difference between """male""" and """female""" voiced in frogs too. She doesn't want to sound like a man! She doesn't want to be anything like a man! Men are gross! Sorry Sprig, Hop Pop, but it's true. Men are icky icky yuck yuck and Anne is a girly girl. She doesn't want to turn into Stumpy! Or Buff Loggle! Oh, no, is that her future? She commits the triple mistake of 1) sending a letter to Marcy that same day, 2) knocking on Maddies' door promising her firstborn if she can save her from turning into Stumpy, and 3) she becomes obsessed researching mammalian biology in the archives. Bad decision. Bad bad. She's discovering things to feel dysphoric about she never even knew existed! Did you know mammalian mothers feed their offsprings with "milk" that comes from their "mammary glands"? Did Sasha and Marcy have those? She hates herself a little for checking out Marcy next time she sees her and she realizes that, indeed, in the past years she's grown a pair of those that Anne does NOT have. She notes that both she and Sasha are pretty much hairless. She used to think hair was a normal mammalian trait! That weasel that tries to eat the frogs every winter sure is covered in it!

Maddie shows up to her door with a bunch of new spells to try out, happy to have a willing subject. Most embarrassingly, Marcy starts doing her own research as soon as she gets Anne's letter and sends her all her discoveries, and now Anne feels mortified because Marcy knows about all the bad bad very bad changes she's going through (Marcy, for her part, is just fascinated by the nature of their "condition").

It takes a bit, but after a few very frenzied weeks, Anne comes to understad what's going on: her species had certain level of sexual dimorphism and she just happened to have been born with the supposed "sex" usually associated with "men" as a social category. When Hop Pop finds out, he burst into laughter. Oh, it was THAT all along! Anne made it sound so complicated, but it was just the same things he went through when he was younger, just the other way around ("Say what now Hop Pop?")! A few curses here and there and she won't have to worry about these so called "mammary glands" and "hair" anymore, though in the meantime, as Maddie perfects a human-friendly curse, she gets turned into all sort of different creatures. By the time it's done, she just wants to feel like... herself.

It's true that there are some things about her body that make her feel weird, like they don't quite fit in, but there are others she only worries about because she compared herself to Sasha and Marcy, which wasn't fair to anyone involved. Did she really want to fundamentally change parts of her body because of insecurities she developed last week over a book about lemurs? Then, a second set of fears come in: what will happen when she goes back to her place of origin? Because she does want to find her birth family. Will they recognize her, if they're looking for a boy? Will they think she's lying if she claims to be their daughter? If she changes only a few things but doesn't "go all the way", will people there think she's a freak? Will she ever be able to fit in with those of her species?

Does she really care so much about what other people think? She just wants to be herself. Some of the changes she's been going through are making her feel less like herself and more like she's being turned into a tax collector from Toad Tower. Those things have to go - her voice, for example. And she wants a more femenine silhouette (she may or may not show Maddie photos of young Mrs. Croaker as a reference). She wants a softer face. She's seeing her face changing in the mirror and she doesn't like it. She wants it to stay round and soft, not to grow hard and sharp or big and rough. She's not so sure she wants those "mammary glands". It's not like she ever thought about having kids, and the whole "breastfeeding" thing just seems gross, but after her research, and finding out she could have kids with, I don't know, maybe Marcy one day (a thought that makes her blush), she thinks it may be a good idea. She'll consider it. Maybe later. Her genitalia... well, she's used to what she has now. It already took her like 10 years to fully figure out what it was and how it worked and starting over with a whole new set just feels like too much work (also, the babies, the potential babies with Marcy). Frogs and toads have neither "penises" or "vaginas" so there's not a lot of information, and based on books about lemurs and her own empirical experience, comparing herself to other mammalian species isn't too useful. She'll leave it the way it is. She'll see if there's anything else she wants to change later, or if she wants to go back on something.

Marcy is surprised next time Anne visits Newtopia. In her letters, she described this strange transformation in excruciating detail, but seeing her in person now, holding her face in her hands, all she sees is the same Anne she's always loved.

A few more ideas:

HEADCANON: in Amphibia, two people of the same "s.ex" can reproduce through magic, which means there has to be a concious effort and intent. The external fertilization process there's no such thing as a pregnancy, and there's no such thing as s.ex. All reproduction is intentional, which means there's no need for abortion either. There are processes to destroy fertilized eggs and embryos, but they look completely different from human abortions.

Amphibians may perform acts resembling s.ex for pleasure or fun but they look different from human s.ex and have no relation to reproduction.

Andrias is the only person in Amphibia who knows enough about humans to know how they reproduce (a process he finds repulsive). He never tells Marcy, of course, though once she becomes queen, she finds his secret library and his hidden tomes on "alien biology", some of which talk about humans. He's also the only one who knows humans can have children on accident, and that Anne is the only human in Amphibia who could cause something like that to happen (he reads all of Marcy's correspondence). He knows his daughter is very close to this weird farm girl penpal of hers, and even though she's still a child, he worries for her future and the future of the crown. This new discovery could land the crown in the hands of a dynasty of aliens if he's not careful. Is it weird that he spends so much time worrying about his 12yo daughter getting pregnant from another 12yo? Yes, yes it is, but he already controls every aspect of her life, it's not like he's going to stop at her sexuality, future, real, or imaginary.

Man now that I wrote it all down, I think this option is more compelling than the first. Maybe I WILL go with this one.

[angelsdean]

ruthlessly deleting old 2021/2022 posts (not by me) from my dean studies tag like *click* un-incorporating that from my beliefs system! also the way SO many posts have me like ok uh-huh good aaand then say one completely wrong thing that loses me. it's so many posts.

[e-louise-bates]

I will admit that it never occurred to me that I would need to check the history book that claimed to be scholarly to see if it used references and footnotes, because how could a book be a scholarly work on history without such things, BUT NOW I KNOW BETTER.

[sysig]

Hazing (Patreon)

[jabeur]

Right, and the racism from other players is ALWAYS excused by fans. I didn't even know about that caroline photo until you brought it up, people just pretend it never happened. And Paula's photo a couple of days ago? She "apologised" and under her post there were HUNDREDS of replies from white people saying that "all was forgiven" "she didn't do anything wrong" and her acting like the victim under those replies. AND!! I was so confused this morning about WHY the crowd in Wuhan (one the most polite crowds ever) would boo Magda Linette, and look what I found on twitter https://x.com/snack_attacck/status/1843536512765288484?t=BawWaz85WH-KbgLd_8R-xA&s=19😭 like why is this shit so normalized, they bury these things so much nobody even knows about it, but god forbid a chinese woman was focused on herself during her game

of COURSE paula was acting like the victim once other white people started showering her with support and excuses for her behavior. rancid. god how hard can it be to know that we are not the ones who should accept or not her apology anyway???? are we asian? are we the ones affected by her racist behavior? no! so we need to just shut the fuck up. (i'm saying we as in me and other white people, obviously i don't know if you're white anon)

goddddd that linette thing is nasty 😭😭 i didn't know about this. bc yeah, these things are never talked about!!! usually these racist behaviors from players are brought up on twitter by someone and then if it spreads maybe people remember for 2 days and then go back to pretending nothing happened. but it's important to hold these players accountable so these shouldn't be things only discussed/shared on twitter by a few fans who care these should be widely known bc why are we letting racists get away with it so easily??

but, as you said, if a chinese woman is gasps focused on her own game as a tennis - notorious solitary sport - player.... unacceptable. bc obviously not smiling at your opponents is much worse than, say, disrespecting an entire culture or race. /s

[dye-it-rouge-et-noir]

"For particularly important things, it's always more reassuring to write them down like this." - Zhang Beihai

[ID in alt text]