#I'm off the nonsense

[aethersea]

I do think Blazing Saddles handled its one depiction of native americans very poorly, and the full extent of its representation of chinese workers on the railroad is they were literally just there. not even one single speaking line. unclear if this is worse or better than the redface.

it's fucking phenomenal at lampooning antiblack racism though. extremely blatant, extremely funny satire, which is constantly and loudly saying "racism is the philosophy of the terminally stupid at best and morally depraved at worst, and we should all be pointing and laughing at them 24/7"

plus the main character is a heroic black man who has to navigate a whole lot of bullshit but is constantly smirking at the extraordinarily stupid racists and inviting the audience into the joke. the one heroic white character is a guy who was suicidally depressed until he met the protagonist and they just instantly became buds, and he's firmly in a supporting role the whole time and happy to be there. the protagonist saves the day with the help of his black friends from the railroad, and uses the position of power he was given to uplift not only those friends, but all the railroad workers of other minorities too, in an explicit show of solidarity.

anyone saying "Blazing Saddles is racist" had better be talking about its treatment of non-black minorities. it had better not be such superficial takes as "oh but they say the n-word all the time" or "they have nazis and the kkk in there!" because goddamn if that's the full extent of your critique I very seriously suggest you read up on media analysis. there is too much going over your head, you need to learn to recognize satire.

[gamebunny-advance]

Oh.

Nintendo out there just casually (kinda) confirming the "descended from humans" and "the wraiths are involved in all of the spaceship crashes" theories.

(source)

Okay, they're not really "confirmations" but more like they're officially addressing the different theories that people have about the true nature of PNF-404 and are telling you to keep on speculating on your own time.

Take these translations with a grain of salt since they're machine translations.

[anneapocalypse]

I'm just gonna say it, the idea that Dragon Age has this big history of "playersexual" love interests I think is largely BS. It's a term somebody came up with that probably seemed like a good idea at the time, and devs and gaming news outlets have been parroting it mindlessly every since.

If "playersexual" means that an NPC's orientation is only toward the player character or changes based on the player character, and therefore they can't be said to have a distinct sexuality, that is just... demonstrably not true for most of the relevant characters in Dragon Age.

Leliana is not playersexual. She has a past relationship with a woman. There's a whole DLC about it.

Zevran is not playersexual. He tells you in dialogue that he's interested in men and women.

Isabela is not playersexual. She mentions past involvement with men and women, and will have a relationship with Fenris if not romanced by Hawke.

Fenris is not playersexual. See above about the relationship with Isabela.

Anders is not playersexual. In Awakening he mentions liking pretty girls, and he has a past relationship with a man. Not everyone may get the latter dialogue in the game (and it's fair to question that writing choice), but it's also in World of Thedas; it's canon even if you didn't hear it in your game.

The Iron Bull is not playersexual. He can have a relationship with Dorian if not romanced.

Josephine is not playersexual. She has a brief hint of a relationship with Blackwall, even though it doesn't last.

The player character's gender has no effect on any of these relationships canonically happening.

The only love interest you could maybe make a case for (simply because we have no other canon relationships to point to) is Merrill, and her lack of experience is largely alluded to being a result of her being sheltered as the Keeper's apprentice, rather than her having no interest.

While not all of these characters will outright tell you they're attracted to the same gender if not romanced, they all canonically have romantic or sexual interests of some kind outside the player character and none of those change based on the player character's gender, only (sometimes) on whether they are in a romance with the player character. My point here isn't that there's no room for queer identity to be made more explicit, but that their sexualities explicitly do not revolve only around the player character.

And if that's not the definition of "playersexual" then okay, what is it?

Do NPCs literally have to be having a threesome onscreen, visible in every single playthrough no matter what, for us to accept that they have a sexuality that isn't contingent on the player character? Alistair or Sebastian's availability as a romance to female PCs only is generally considered sufficient evidence that they're canonically straight (whatever else fans may headcanon or desire). It's possible to have Sera in your game without ever talking to her about her sexuality, but she's still canonically a lesbian. So exactly what standards for "canon bisexuality" or "canon pansexuality" are we falling short of here? And why is it only for bi/pan characters that the bar is set so high?

These games actually go to considerable lengths to show us that its characters have lives and personalities and preferences apart from the player character. Why is it never enough? Why are we so resistant to just calling these characters pansexual and bisexual? What do we gain from that refusal? And what do we lose?

[fromtheseventhhell]

I love how people are only ever interested in defending Arya's right to be weird-looking. It's never defending her intelligence from people who claim she's incapable of thinking for herself, highlighting her importance to the plot and refusing to see her as just a prop, acknowledging how much of her story gets stolen and given to other characters, talking about her trauma or how often it gets erased and overlooked, seeing her as more than just an attack dog/bodyguard, etc. Nope. It's just a "why can't people let Arya be ugly/unconventional looking? :(" post every other week because people are, for whatever reason, obsessed with how Arya is visually perceived. One of the most misinterpreted characters yet the issue is only ever with her being portrayed as "too pretty" or the wrong "type" of pretty. This fandom will entirely rewrite a character's motivations, values, and role in the story to the point that they consider references to canon "hate" but! The true injustice to canon is we acknowledge that she is described as pretty several times. Arya simply existing as her pretty, important, and non-conforming self is too complex and confusing for people to comprehend 😔.

[tossawary]

The "Star Wars" prequel trilogy films do not do a good job of clearly establishing and clearly explaining "attachments" within the Jedi Order (What is their definition of "attachment"? What are their traditions versus official rules surrounding the different relationships one might have with outsiders? What are the traditional consequences in each the cases where the "attachment" is considered a problem? What does it mean exactly to leave the Jedi Order?) and this confusion has caused many fandom arguments over whether or not this Jedi Order "rule" is inappropriate when few people can agree on what the rule is exactly, even as various additional materials (shows, comics, books, games) have tried to answer some of these questions for us.

This lack of clarity in the films specifically (and across various other installments) is going to keep causing fandom arguments forever, probably, especially when everyone is bringing their own interpretations and opinions to the party! But something that is absolutely not helping this dust cloud fight over Jedi Order political policy and traditional religious practices, in my opinion, is that both of Anakin's attachments are obviously extreme edge cases here! They're not typical!

Like, with Shmi Skywalker, the main issue here is NOT actually "Should Jedi be able to maintain contact with their families at all?" The problem is intentionally colored by the fact that a woman has been left in unstable SLAVERY on a dangerous planet, and it's perfectly reasonable for her traumatized child to fear for her life!

Thus the "attachments" conversation from this angle tends to devolve into heated arguments about how the Jedi Order as an organization's complicated ties to the increasingly corrupt Republic (a bloated, non-transparent "democracy" which apparently contains a variety of monarchies!) both permits them to do good on some planets and actively prevents them from doing good on others. The institutions are failing the individuals all over the place in this story. Which is, you know, part of the overall point of the prequels; the traditional ideals of this one particular religious order don't really mesh well with these various machines of politics, war, and capital stretching across a galaxy! In fact, they're actively in conflict! Palpatine is preying on this and laughing the whole time!

And on the other hand as an extreme case, Anakin's relationship with Padmé as presented in the films kind of gets treated as "Should Jedi be allowed to love romantically at all?" when Anakin is trying to have everything at once by having a secret marriage with a SENATOR without leaving the Order. If the Jedi Order is trying (struggling) to maintain some sort of separate and neutral position as peacekeepers within the Republic, then, uh, yeah, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they might at least have rules against their members being (legally?) bound in any fashion to Republic politicians or other similarly significant figures.

If the space paparazzi got a shot of Anakin and Padmé smooching, then it would be a SCANDAL. Regardless of what the actual rules on marriage might be within the Jedi Order generally, it's not unreasonable that to Anakin specifically the Jedi Council might be like, "Congrats on your marriage, but you cannot be a member and representative of our Order and the Senator's trophy husband at the same time. You have to pick one."

[f0x-meets-w0lf]

one of my pals and i got to talking (again) about an evil rodansey au that we've built and revisited over the years... which then veered into "what about adam licking the nightwash off of ronan's face" and now we are here

[daisynik7]

eyepatches are sexy, I repeat, EYE PATCHES ARE SEXY

exhibit 1:

exhibit 2:

exhibit 3:

exhibit 4 (!!!!!):

thanks for coming to my TED talk (again) :)

[sleepinglionhearts]

Happy Halloween! I done got married! 🎉🎉🎉🎃

And since it's Halloween and we made the decision rather suddenly, we decided not to change costumes to formal wear, but instead dressed up as.... Franky and Robin from One Piece!

A big thank you as well to @housedyke for officiating!!

I'll always treasure this exciting, silly, living-room Halloween wedding. ❤️ and I can't wait to celebrate the first anniversary next year!!!

[stergeon]

spending some more time chewing on the concept of byleth and edelgard constantly writing each other letters—both while one of them is off traveling and also when they're both at home and seeing each other every day. there's one on the emperor's desk in her study; one in byleth's storage locker in the barracks; one left on a pillow or slipped into a pocket or tucked into a book the other is reading.

the emperor is interrupted during a big meeting by a page delivering a "most crucial missive from the commander." she unseals it in front of everyone and it's a crude drawing of a smiley face that says "hello i love you"

edelgard would write these excessively verbose things, very heavy on the poetry and flowery language. there are a couple paragraphs of updates and then page after page after page of "i love you"s and "i miss you"s communicated in ten thousand different and increasingly grandiloquent ways. byleth has learned to bring a dictionary along on her trips so she can decode all the sesquipedalian nightmare terms edelgard uses to tell her she's pretty. most letters start and end with an implied threat that if anyone other than byleth reads it or finds out how soft the emperor is, there will be hell to pay, but it doesn't stop her from proceeding to go ham on the romantic sappiness.

meanwhile byleth's letters are. pretty straight and to the point. she's keeping her posted about the weather, about this dog that she met, about a cool tree she saw, and transcribing direct quotes and best wishes from their friends. but she also includes little mementos she picked up or shiny things she found (she's like a crow with pretty rocks, shells, and baubles), and presses flowers that she thinks edelgard will like, and attempts to sketch things she wishes edelgard got to see with her. it's painfully obvious that byleth will never have an artistic career, but edelgard adores every single drawing all the same.

(hubert made a suggestion to have the emperor and her adviser use different seals or envelopes for their personal and official correspondence. this was accepted as reasonable. several months later, edelgard found out he made the suggestion after the third instance in which he'd been doing his secretarial duties and responding to the emperor's mail, only to find the message from the emperor's adviser did not, in fact, contain the woman's latest report on the situation in fhirdiad or fodlan's locket, but a rather lurid list of her intentions for the emperor upon returning home to enbarr. one contained a diagram. hubert did not examine it.)

edelgard, who hoards every paper she's ever had reason to touch and who has a (frankly, pathological) filing system for everything in her life, has a special container for byleth's letters that is under lock and key. byleth, who lived out of a rucksack for most of her life and constantly had to consider carry weight when vetting her few belongings, doesn't really know how to... have... things. she struggled with toting around all this paper for a while, but couldn't bear to toss out even the simplest "meet me at 4pm for the council meeting" message. she had to make peace with the concept of using a drawer for something like long-term storage and frequently checks to make sure they're all still there.

both of them keep their favorite ones in the back of their respective journals and act like they're not so extremely, terminally soft on each other.

[samanthamulder]

THE X-FILES (1993-2018)

SEASON FIVE — What do you hope to find? I mean, in the end.

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[mewvore]

You could do an alt-preg piece of content with any body part and I'd probably eat it up

heres some pregnant balls, enjoy

[necrotic-nephilim]

in lieu of having posted any writing/headcanons/asks in the past few days because i have been *so* busy and unable to do anything fandom-related which is terrible and evil, i have a poll out of morbid curiosity and self-indulgence. i've been meaning to ramble here about how i feel about DC's lack fo Deaf representation and which Batfam members i would personally make Deaf, but i am mildly curious about the larger opinion and now i will subject you all to the question, i would love to hear thoughts/opinions/headcanons on any specific choices. (would love d/Deaf/HoH opinions esp but i'm mostly expecting this to reach the hearing crowd, so opinions from hearing ppl are ones i'm very curious about. if you've never given it thought before you are going to now or else /lh)

[starlyte-writes]

Okay, I have a theoretical dsmp story idea in my head but idk if it's too far out there/confusing/complicated so I'm curious what do y'all think:

Basic concept (which it's hard to explain but hear me out) is that all of the characters of the dsmp are transported to a massive arena by XD. Each of them wakes up in a separate room, and when they do, they find they're not alone but are accompanied by a stranger who seems to vaguely/strongly recognize them. It's revealed that XD has selected one person from Earth that closest matches the personality of each dsmp member to become a team that will compete in a series of challenges broadcasted to the whole world.

To put it even more simply: each character is paired with a dsmp nerd that matches their energy whether they like it or not and I have an excuse to make a crazy Hunger Games-esque competition while simultaneously analyzing what makes every dsmp character unique.

Does this sound cool or do I sound absolutely insane (pls feel free to ask me questions or throw out suggestions this is a very rough idea as of rn)

[writterings]

hate when therapists get suspicious when you're well educated on mental health and/or are self aware. sir i live here. of course i'm going to be able to articulate myself well about my mental illness. that does not mean im making it up.

[sensitiveheartless]

your art makes me wanna overcome my issues and just start creating as well after decades of not being able to. anw, just wanted to say you're an inspiration to me < 3

Aaaa I support!! <3<3<3 I'm really glad I've been able to inspire you! At least in my opinion, creating stuff is always valuable — Art art been very therapeutic for me :0 When I was younger I had a lot of trouble getting myself started on making stuff, and I was very on and off with it, especially during more tempestuous times. It's been about...seven or eight years now since I decided to start drawing every day, and admittedly some days all I have time/energy for is stuff like this:

But to me it still counts! Even though most of the stuff I draw in my sketchbook never becomes a finished piece, and it's all very messy, it still helps my brain to create it. Even when I just end up making a page of vaguely dinosaur-like creatures and weird little beasts like these ones from recently lol

Anyway! That was a bit of a ramble, but most importantly: If you do decide to create again, I wish you the best of luck, anon! <3<3<3