#WE WERE TECHNICALLY ENGAGED

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

wanna ask how you feel about the eridan bpd headcanon/theory(?? not sure what to call it!) you're so good at your character analysis and i'd love to see your outlook on it

Since I don't have a degree or any formal training in psychology, I feel deeply uncomfortable diagnosing characters. I've made an autism joke before but only because I'm on the spectrum. He's definitely traumatized and anxious, but I mean those as descriptors of his behavior rather than capital-D Diagnoses. I try to focus on those when I can - the cause and effect of cognition, self-image, and behavior - and those factors may very well match up with DSM criteria, but I try not to touch an actual diagnosis with a ten foot pole unless the author has explicitly stated that X character has Y condition.

[lameow-l]

so subtle genshin… soooo subtle

[pathetic-gamer]

I'm engaged 😤

[soshinee]

i really have loved being in japan in general so far but most of my students are so fucking mean to me 😭😭 like they’re just so so sooo mean they parrot and mock me when i call someone’s name and laugh when i talk in general and it’s like how am i supposed to curry their favor or gain their respect when they are openly making fun of me from the second i walk into their classroom for the first time💀

[mirai-desu]

As a huge friends to lovers enjoyer… it makes me so sad that the message of MSATD became don’t ever fall in love with your best friend or it will ruin your friendship 🥴

Like, they had William fall in love with Eliza too deeply too fast for the pacing that what RN/TPTB wanted (their apparent opinion, not mine obviously), despite the fact they are the ones who wrote that pacing. Like the call is coming from inside the house babes--

But then William felt like he had to leave the whole ass country because he couldn’t be around her anymore (and mind you, while he was still recovering from being shot and being in a coma!!!) because he felt like she didn’t return the same feelings at the same level as him, and that fucking sucks so much ugh

Like no matter “the why” this all happened, that’s the ultimate message and it’s horrible and hurts and I hate that they have perpetuated this.

Especially when you SHOULD be friends with your significant other, no matter at what point you fall in love.

And yes, Eliza's characterization ended up being all over the place thanks to shoddy writing, but she DID love him back, RN just refused to let her voice it, because she though that would ruin the show. HA.

And if they were going for something like "well sometimes it doesn't work out" ... if the show is about their bond and everything they've said before, then why just not make it actually tragic and kill him off then??? So what, they just don't fight for each other??? make it make sense

anyway it really doesn't matter which way you slice, it this whole thing still just sucks

[and I needed to get this rant out of my drafts because they are going to start S5 promo soon and I simply want nothing to do with it at all]

[ask-artsy-oncie]

So… first of all, love your art, it’s beautiful! Second, thoughts on Trolls Band Together?

I apologize if this upsets the swathe of new trolls followers I got recently, but I'm probably not going to watch it, and if I did I probably wouldn't enjoy it.

I know it's not well known Lore (TM) of mine, anymore, but I didn't think I'd like the first Trolls movie (I was dragged to go see it opening weekend) and it very pleasantly surprised me. I got really fixated and invested in it, but pretty much all official media that came out after the movie has mostly just disappointed me. The stuff I ended up liking the most about the first movie kinda fell to the wayside. So I really don't see myself enjoying this one.

It's nice that there's been a resurgence in the fandom and people are FINALLY discovering that the first movie really wasn't that bad. Sorry I'm not really participating it and my day in the sun has long since passed. I'm still pretty attached to the characters of the original film (and how they were characterized in the original film - and basically popular fanon headcanons that were born from the original film - as opposed to subsequent media) and have original comic ideas with those archetypes in mind (I wasn't kidding when I said I was planning a fleshed-out comic based on my werewolf Branch AU, but that's on the back-burner for now) but you're really not going to see me start attaching myself to all these new characters that were largely just shoehorned in. I'm sorry if they mean a lot to you but they don't really mean anything to me.

I am pretty sad that it sometimes feels like I got in - and burnt out - way too quickly given the resurgence. There are a lot of artists that I admire and respect that are just getting into the fandom and I would have loved to gush about trolls with them back in 2016-2019, in ways I'm not willing to, now. I also lament how much my skills as an artist have changed and how pretty much all of my fanwork for this very colorful franchise never really reached the coloring game I'm capable of, now (I'd definitely be willing to take trolls commissions, of course, because at this point I am pretty curious about what I could pull off, but I don't really have much drive to try, unprompted, at the moment). I dunno there's just something about it that really fills me with sadness. Like I got a LOT of attention in the trolls fandom back in the day, but it still feels like I've somehow missed my chance and that my timing was off because I can't get myself to like its sequel movies. I wish I could enjoy them, I'm sorry I don't.

That was super rambly and probably not what you wanted to hear, but I guess that's just how my thoughts spilled forth. I'm very glad to hear that you like my art. I want to keep drawing and improving and creating. If you'll stick around for that alone, that's more than I could ask for.

[xdarkabyssx]

Why couldn't jk Rowling just be a good fucking person??? I have all these Harry Potter decorations I saved up for YEARS for when I had a place of my own to decorate. They're so cool! But I just. Feel too fucked up about it to use them

Like she HAD to go and actively promote genocide against people like me

Like damn

[august--and-everything-after]

The concert was so fucking good

[sovaharbor]

quick nobodys on time to post out of context screenshots from my favorite sims file

[orcelito]

ok ykno what ive been thinking about how everyone can just automatically tell that shionne and dohalim are renan by just looking at them & it's like. how?? theyre just people ultimately. but maybe it's the way the dress, or MAYBE it's bc shionne has bright pink hair and dohalim has bright red hair. none of the dahnans we know have such bright hair colors (tho alphen's grey hair is kinda weird but he's just weird in general so lol)

literally so used to anime hair colors that it didnt register. but kisara, law, and rinwell all have pretty natural hair colors, So

[fazcinatingblog]

Why is there a random guy doing that shaka hand gesture, only in Hawaii amirite

[onyourstageleft]

take a computer science education alignment quiz (courtesy of one of my summer classes) and tell me which of these core values for teaching computer science you got

CS Visions Quiz

I thought about trying to make this a three poll post because it gives you your top three core values but realistically I need to go to bed so if you do end up taking the quiz, feel free to vote for which one out of your top three results you Most align with here and then tell me in the replies what your top three were

[renthony]

In Defense of Shitty Queer Art

Queer art has a long history of being censored and sidelined. In 1895, Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence in the author’s sodomy trials. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the American Hays Code prohibited depictions of queerness in film, defining it as “sex perversion.” In 2020, the book Steven Universe: End of an Era by Chris McDonnell confirmed that Rebecca Sugar’s insistence on including a sapphic wedding in the show is what triggered its cancellation by Cartoon Network. According to the American Library Association, of the top ten most challenged books in 2023, seven were targeted for their queer content. Across time, place, and medium, queer art has been ruthlessly targeted by censors and protesters, and at times it seems there might be no end in sight.

So why, then, are queer spaces so viciously critical of queer art?

Name any piece of moderately-well-known queer media, and you can find immense, vitriolic discourse surrounding it. Audiences debate whether queer media is good representation, bad representation, or whether it’s otherwise too problematic to engage with. Artists are picked apart under a microscope to make sure their morals are pure enough and their identities queer enough. Every minor fault—real or perceived—is compiled in discourse dossiers and spread around online. Lines are drawn, and callout posts are made against those who get too close to “problematic art.”

Modern examples abound, such as the TV show Steven Universe, the video game Dream Daddy, or the webcomic Boyfriends, but it’s far from a new phenomenon. In his book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, queer pop culture analyst Matt Baume writes about an example from the 1970s, where the ABC sitcom titled Soap was protested by homophobes and queer audiences alike—before a single episode of the show ever aired. Audiences didn’t wait to actually watch the show before passing judgment and writing protest letters.

After so many years starved for positive representation, it’s understandable for queer audiences to crave depictions where we’re treated well. It’s exhausting to only ever see the same tired gay tropes and subtext, and queer audiences deserve more. Yet the way to more, better, varied representation is not to insist on perfection. The pursuit of perfection is poison in art, and it’s no different when that art happens to be queer.

When the pool of queer art is so limited, it feels horrible when a piece of queer art doesn’t live up to expectations. Even if the representation is technically good, it’s disappointing to get excited for a queer story only for that story to underwhelm and frustrate you.

But the world needs that disappointing art. It needs mediocre art. It even needs the bad art. The world needs to reach a point where queer artists can fearlessly make a mess, because if queer artists can only strive for perfection, the less art they can make. They may eventually produce a masterpiece, but a single masterpiece is still a drop in the bucket compared to the oceans of censorship. The only way to drown out bigotry and offensive stereotypes created by bigots is to allow queer artists the ability to experiment, learn through making mistakes, and represent their queer truth even if it clashes with someone else’s.

If queer artists aren’t allowed to make garbage, we can never make those masterpieces everyone craves. If queer artists are terrified at all times that their art will be targeted both by bigots and their own queer communities, queer art cannot thrive.

Let queer artists make shitty art. Let allies to queer people try their hand at representation, even if they miss the mark. Let queer art be messy, and let the artists screw up without fear of overblown retribution.

It’s the only way we’ll ever get more queer art.

_

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[whereisthedamndaddymanual]

I am humble enough to realize there is a limit to what I think I am seeing but too dumb for pussy to give a shit.

[tadokorochann]

thinking about being Shouto’s girlfriend and slowly teaching him how to play video games in the UA dorms together during some downtime. Choosing something cute like Stardew Valley where you can play co-op. And asking him “hey, can we get married?” And for him to freeze for a second and then go “…I think we could. There are some technicalities to work out with my father and we may need to wait until our third year to get our license but we could definitely start our engagement and…” and he goes on and on about how he’d be happy to marry you but surprised you brought it up this soon, not that he minds because he loves you and is serious about you. Except he doesn’t realize you were talking about getting married in the game. Shouto took your words in their most literal sense, as he often does. So when you finally do correct him (after quite some time because he’s insistent on making sure he knows what kind of wedding decorations you’d like) he goes quiet, the tips of his ears turning completely red. But before he can begin to despair you give him a little kiss. Telling him that for now, you’d like to get married in the game, and focus on your relatively new relationship with him outside of it. But that, if he still feels the same way in a few years, you wouldn’t mind getting married in real life, too.

[kaijuposting]

"Saw traps for people with moral OCD" is a phrase that has embedded myself into my brain because, well, Saw traps for people with moral OCD are everywhere.

Stuff that basically amounts to...

"You have to listen to my opinions on [issue], or else you don't care about [issue]. (Constantly talks about how people like you are the absolute worst.)"

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me tear you down over things you can't control or you're a bad person."

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me vent to you whenever and however I want or else you're a bad person."

"If you enjoy X media/trope, you just hate Y people."

"Everyone knows that X thing is harmful/hateful; if you engaged in it, it's just because you were fine with perpetuating hate/harm."

"You should have just known better/should know this already!"

This thread over here talks about the inherent issues of putting this kind of stuff out there. The TL;DR is that it really only works on people who are mentally unwell and have poor boundaries, while just pissing off everyone else. It really doesn't matter if you're technically correct; you're still attacking people, and that means they're not wrong to block you.

I think that many of these Saw traps are created when people effectively write posts directed toward people who don't want to help, rather than the ones who do. Like, if you catch yourself writing an angry, shame-laden post, ask yourself: who are you writing it for and what are the odds you're going to change their minds? If your mental image is some smug fuck or angry reactionary, you're writing for the wrong person. Write for the person who's curious, who's willing to learn.

Also? Work on figuring out how to transmute negative feelings into positive, encouraging rhetoric. EG:

"Why is there no X positivity?" -> "Let's hear it for X!"

"No one cares about Y problem!" -> "Hey, we need more recognition of Y problem" or "I haven't seen many people talking about Y problem, so here's some info on what's up."

"If you don't reblog this, you don't care about [group]" -> "Please reblog this, it would mean a lot for us [group]."

And if you're really super duper frustrated and want to vent with a lot of nasty words and sentiments? Consider taking it to a private vent channel or a journal or somewhere that a stranger with moral OCD/scrupulosity isn't likely to run across it.

Remember, most people don't want to hurt anyone. More people are ignorant than malicious. People naturally want to do the right thing, so if you feel like you have to guilt them or shame them into it, there's probably a fundamental communication issue somewhere, or they simply lack the context to understand why what you're saying is so important.