#also not proofed a whole lot

[tenderpreyy]

​I’m thinking again about Astarions sexuality and how I've seen some people (to be fair, just a few) talk about it. Mainly, people pointing out his flamboyant behavior, and that us as players are learning more about his past male lovers than female ones and basically all these things for some people pointing to him being gay or at least not interested in women in the same way he is in men. And him only being a romance option regardless of gender, because, well, all companions are and he is therefore just "playersexual", only showing interest in female player characters because he has to, because of the game mechanics.

I think what really rubs me the wrong way about this topic is that it echoes the kind of things bi/pan people (speaking as a bisexual woman myself) find themselves dealing with irl. Whether through some form of internalized biphobia or from the outside through other people's comments. Of course this is about a fictional character so it’s not like he has any feelings that could be hurt. But when i see people tallying up how often he mentions men vs. how often he mentions women it really reminds me of a way of thinking I sometimes fall into in regards to my own sexuality. This is definitely just an internalized response and not something I actually believe when I truly think about it for a second, but I know these patterns of thought very well. Of observing my own behavior. How often do I find which gender attractive? Am I attracted "enough" to women? Do I talk about men's attractiveness too often? Is it the other way around? Am I only saying this woman is attractive to prove something to myself? I literally have a girlfriend and my attitude towards mine or other's sexual orientation is generally a huge big "whatever, I don't care". And I still have a passing thought like that from time to time.

So seeing people talk about a fictional character in this way really sends home how many people (whether consciously or unconsciously) see attraction as some sort of equation, you can solve, where in the end you get a result of either gay or straight.

[flesh-n-brain-rot]

Mick literally looks like the perfect makkinen baby. If mpreg was a thing, they'd be facing allegations.

[astarlightmonbebe]

“when you play go, you pursue your desires in silence. you seduce, and you fall. you strip each other bare. and if your partner doesn't reciprocate, then it's just a game of go.”

go as an overarching symbol throughout the glory, both figuratively as a representation of dongeun’s revenge, and also as a metaphor for class and relations (between her and the men in her life, i.e. yeojeong and doyeong).

on a relational level, go is a game of seduction. it’s a mental sword dance, so to speak. dongeun learns it with revenge in mind - she plans to catch the interest of doyeong, the husband of the girl who destroyed her life. she uses go to approach him - she seduces him the very first time he sees her play, so much that he can’t get her out of his head. she uses go to entice him; she wins before he even knows that he’s playing.

dongeun learns go for the purposes of ensnaring doyeong, but it’s yeojeong who first teaches her go at all. and it’s go that becomes a cornerstone of their burgeoning relationship as well. throughout the seasons, go helps both of them, as something that centers them, tethers them to current life. for yeojeong, his sessions mentoring dongeun in go were the only thing that created a schedule for him in his most turbulent time (after his father died, etc.). it becomes their mode of communication - he asks her to make a play so that he can know she came by. a silent way of saying i’m alive.

and then there’s dongeun approaching doyeong to play go, then them meeting again at the park he designed. yeojeong also approaches doyeong to play go, also purposefully - the man who taught dongeun vs the man she learned to play for. 

but for dongeun, go is never about the men so much as it is about herself. go becomes something she loves for what it is, a game that builds territories, a game where the enemy can be slowly and methodically destroyed as you take all their territories, like how she plans to take everything from yeonjin. it reminds her of the dreams of being an architect she had before she had to drop out of school from the bullying/assault.

doyeong says that one of his go teachers tells him that he was born holding the black stones. when dongeun plays with yeojeong for the first time, she says she has to start with the white stones, since she’s the beginner. that’s how they play, for months. when doyeong meets dongeun after finding out the beginnings of the truth, he says that this game is more difficult than the ones he’s played in the past (and she beats him, the first time they play prior to that meeting). 

the black stones represent the upper hand, the wealthy. it’s a class metaphor, especially when related to doyeong. yeojeong also starts out with the black stones, maybe because of wealth, maybe because he’s learned it for far longer. maybe because life was kinder to him. dongeun starts at the bottom, with the white stones, because she has nothing and knows nothing.

but when she places her first stones on the go board, she plays with the black.

[tavina-writes]

Hey, about the gui dao stuff. Is WWX, like, ruining all those corpses chances at reincarnating when he raises them from the dead?? Because that would in fact uh. be very bad.

Like, the autonomy re: dead people is already skeevy but if he’s also ruining their chances at a next life…

Well! Traditionally, the philosophy is that you can't reincarnate and will be doomed to wander the world as a hungry ghost never to enter the afterlife if you don't die and are buried with a "whole corpse."

This is why traditionally it's hard to get people to go for organ donation btw, it means you uhhhh you're giving up your ability to enter the afterlife. Since your organs are wandering around in someone else's body after you die, you will never be able to journey to the afterlife and onto the next and will end up a hungry resentful ghost etc etc.

(fun fact: imperial eunuchs kept their bits in a jar so they could be buried with those so they could reincarnate. This was so important to them because it concerned their next lives. That's how important this whole corpse thing was, and in some parts, still is!)

I assume that uh, if you know your corpse gets raised in necromancy and then you lose a hand in the war as a corpse etc you also uhhh do not get to go to the afterlife unless WWX came back to bury all those corpses and sort out whose limbs are whose. Which. Well I kinda doubt he was doing that and unless we get scenes or lines about him respectfully re-burying the bodies he raised uh, yeah those people are shit out of luck re: afterlife and the next life lmao.

(This is also why chopping up NMJ's fierce corpse was kinda bad btw.)

This is especially bad in a world where ghosts physically manifest and exist! Which! They do in MDZS!

[shannonsketches]

lays on the floor do you guys ever think about how in ResF Bulma falls for Vegeta's fake-out with Freeza and both she and Yamcha are worried about Vegeta's villain fake-out strategy in Champa and Beerus' mini tournament and how it's only been a couple of years since the Buu saga and how Vegeta straight up stopped using that strategy after that tournament

[fvckw4d]

The concept of queerbaiting annoys me. I was told that it refers to a work of fiction pretending to cater to a queer audience but then pulling back from it to avoid alienating homophobes, which is an incredibly specific thing. But a lot of people seem to think that it instead means "any time there's any gay subtex, metaphor, or ambiguity" or "whenever something from 1995-2012 was being a normal amount of homophobic for the era."

[fixated-on-something]

I have a theory, very unoriginal but I just want to yap

I feel like part of the reason Kady is such a nothing sandwich of a character is because she didn’t exist in the books.

(Loooong rant that’s kinda aimless but idc I want to talk)

(Hot take I know!!! I’m sure no one’s every thought of this one)

And I know that a lot of the characters are very different from their book counterparts in a lot of ways, but the groundwork was there! The idea of the character, the foundation, had already been written.

Whereas with Kady, I feel like they just threw her in and then… and then what? Sure she’s like, a “bad girl” character… with a… semi-angsty backstory? And sheee’s… dating Penny… and she hasssss mommy issuuues…??? But where do you even go from there? They literally throw her away for like a whole season just because, well, what is there to do with her?

She wasn’t even there for most major season 1 and early season 2 plot points! Then she’s kind of relevant in mid to late season 2, and then in season 3 she disappears again and when she returns her whole plot is centred around penny.

And THEN in season 4 I guess she’s doing… hedge stuff? Where they try to give her agency and make her #empowered but it’s just… weird

Because everyone else is dealing with a body hopping unkillable monster in Eliot’s body, and Kady just… fucks off??? I guess??? I mean she’s doing stuff with the library for a bit but like… why??? I get why she wants to fuck them over but also where did that come from

Like why is she not helping defeat the god monster. That seems like a pretty major issue that she should be more involved with.

I understand that her stuff with the library does ultimately help, but it really did feel like it was just a way to wedge her into the plot somehow. Also, we’re not even talking about season 5. Let’s not open that can of worms.

Idk I guess it just never really feels like… she’s part of the group? She kind of hangs out around the edges, and she’s close with Penny and Julia but other than that kind of just hangs around

Because… she WASNT IN THE BOOK!!! She didn’t exist!!! She wasn’t Julia’s hedge buddy, or Penny’s girlfriend, or anything! “Amanda Orloff” in the books, (who I’m guessing was her vague template??) is the first character to get killed. First beats encounter. She’s meant to be like, an example of “magic is dangerous”. That is her role.

Originally the group dynamic wasn’t WRITTEN to have her in it! So they were winging it.

Most of the other major character plot lines were based in something, but hers just kind of had to be pulled out of thin air- and it feels very strange

I found myself at several points in her story going “Why is she in this show?”

And it feels very, VERY jarring when she is then the person to… choose the song that is QUENTIN’S MEMORIAL?

They spoke like maybe twice. I feel like, I don’t know, ANYONE else in that group should’ve chosen

I love the Take On Me number though it’s literally my Roman Empire

All this to say, I have empathy for how hard it would be to wedge a new major character into an already very established group dynamic, but then… why did they do it…

[sonknuxadow]

sorry mild hater moment incoming but . idk what it is with s/onadow fans (not all of them. just a very loud subsection) specifically and making every little thing shadow does about s/onadow even if its the biggest reach imaginable and immediately going "omg s/onadow" every time hes confirmed to be in some upcoming thing . or being so obsessed with the ship and letting it warp their perceptions of things so much to the point where they act like every little thing is a hint from sega that theyre in love for real. and they cant admit that its not canon or that just because they choose to interpret certain things romantically doesnt mean that thats actually what sega/the writers intended even if theres an obvious non so/nadow explanation for it

before people take this the wrong way i dont hate the ship i dont think that its completely baseless or that everyone who likes it is wrong and annoying or anything . but some of you look like this if im being honest

[daddyplasmius]

this is let grief do its work, a fic (currently unedited rip) I started as a kind of sister fic to hand on my stupid heart, another fic I'd written earlier and uh. yeah. you guessed it. haven't finished. I'm working on this on the side, Flying Over the Pit of Death + its sister fic & my original novels being my main focuses right now. I will most likely continue lgdiw sometime in the future, it just isn't my main priority. Like all of my fics, this idea is free for anyone to take & run with. if/when I finish this fic, the edited version will go on ao3. For context: this is just a prologue of sorts, depicting vaguely what is happening on the human side of the Portal the month after the Accident. On Danny's side, he's been chillin' in the Ghost Zone, where he ended up after half-dying, believing he's fully dead (he's not) & only realized he's still alive after it was too late for him to tell everyone what happened cuz like, awkward & embarrassing lol. HOMSH takes place a year later, when things come to a head. I feel it's important to reiterate that, although Danny isn't actually dead, the characters think he is & act accordingly. okay author's infodump note complete, fic under a readmore

“when they first go, let yourself think every selfish, no-good, dirty, angry, filthy, horrible thought. let the waves of anger wash through you. let grief do its work.” ーCaitlyn Siehl; Grief Counseling

On the first day, Sam had thought that, maybe, Danny was just busyーtoo busy to answer their texts, and their calls, and everything else. But then Tucker called her. It was a horrible game of telephone at first. Danny’s parents told Jazz, who told Tucker, who told Sam, and that’s how the communication went for two days until she and Tuck had enough.

They went to FentonWorks, the big, ugly building on the corner of Mockingbird and Cedar, and were surprised to find no one home at all. Not even Jazz. And, for the first time since they’d known the Fentons, the doors were locked. And when they tried to talk to Jazz later, they would find that they’ve officially filed a police report.

ー

Danny Fenton is missing. The last time Sam talked to him she was making fun of him, for being too scared to go check out the Fentons’ new Ghost Portal. She knew he was freaked out by stuff like thatーby ghosts. Now she doesn’t know if she’ll ever see him again.

There’s just no way. He can’t be gone. She literally saw him on Saturday. His empty seat in homeroom on the first day of school is the thing that does it. There’s this gap in the desks where he should be, but he’s not. Like he’s already haunting her.

It makes her sick. Everythingーeverything in her head, everything she knows. Despite what Dash and his asshole friends say, Danny wouldn’t run away. And the longer a person is missing, the more likely it is that they’reー

Sam doesn’t wait for the bell. She leaves Tucker in homeroom, goes straight to the bathroom, and wipes her face down in the sink, water turning black. Suddenly, everything macabre, everything dark and creepyーit just disgusts her.

She goes home early. No one even says anything, not the school, not her parents, not Tucker. Alone in her room, Sam starts to shake. She sobs once, something seething just under her skin. She stalks over to the wall where most of her horror movie posters are taped and starts tearing them down, one by one.

ー

Danny Fenton has been missing for a week, and Tucker, staring at the sweater his best friend forgot at his house, laid across his computer chair, thinks he’s starting to feel it.

Opening his phone, he feels it again. Looking at his texts, he feels it again, and again, and again.

Saturday • 4:47 p.m. Danny Phantom: xD Danny Phantom: not playing tonight, ghost portal opening night 👻 Danny Phantom: can play tmrw tho Too Fine: hell ya txt u then Danny Phantom: 👍 Sunday • 10:20 a.m. Too Fine: yo still up 4 doomed Too Fine: dued Too Fine: dude* Too Fine: you there Sunday • 10:21 a.m. Too Fine: txt me when you wanna play Sunday • 11:58 a.m. Too Fine: you up?

Tucker lets his phone fall on his bed. He doesn’t bother checking in with Sam. She’s been out of school and ignoring him for the last three days. It’s almost been a week sinceー

He gets up and stumbles to his chair. He sits down, careful not to mess up Danny’s NASA hoodie. Tucker turns on his desktop, types in his password, checks his emails. He messes around for as long as he can before he literally cannot take it anymore. He just can’t ignore it.

God. His best friend is gone. Is he coming back? Is heー

It’s like something inside his chest cracks. Without thinking, he pulls the NASA hoodie into his lap, and then over his head. It’s been here too long. It still has that smell of ozone and copper on it, though.

Tucker leans back in his chair and stares at the wall.

ー

Danny was home. That’s the thing. The last time Jazz saw him, he was inside the house, and she never saw him leave. He must have, at some point. She has no idea why, or for what, but he must have. It’s the only rational explanation. Danny left. Something happened. He never came home.

She feels the panic rising, gripping her throat again. She puts the candle down on the bleachers. Wipes her face. Whoever is speaking to the crowd of students holding vigil is a mess of white noise in her ears. It doesn’t help. It should and it doesn’t. A lot of things are the opposite of what Jazz knowsーthought they are.

She almost wishes it had just happened at home, been a little less drawn out.

As soon as it pops into her head, she feels sick, disgusted at herself.

But no one goes missing this long and lives. A very small percentage do. And if it had been some accident in the lab, like she always feared would happen, at least they’d have a body to mourn. At least they would know.

ー

Sam’s parents pretend they aren’t happy. They have to look worried, grieving, because what would the neighbours think if they didn’t? She can see through it, unlike them. They always hated the Fentons. They always hated Danny. They always hated Sam’s fascination with the macabre.

Well. They got what they wanted.

It’s like he’s in everything. She isn’t even looking for him, and he’s still there, still everywhereー

Sam rubs her eyes on her sleeve before she can properly cry. There’s no body. He could still come back. A month is a lot, but he could stillーhe could show up. Someone could find him alive. He could be alive.

Her parents look at her from across the lavish, stupidly large, solid wood table. She should know what type of wood it is but it’s like the information is behind a fogbank. She can see the silhouette. She just can’t make it out. Mom places her cutlery down neatly, dabs her mouth with a cloth napkin, and clears her throat.

“Sammy-kins…” She starts, and the rage inside Sam bubbles up like lava bursting through rock. “There’s been… We…”

She looks to the side for help, from dad. He looks incredibly awkward for a moment before turning to Sam with an expression she hasn’t seen since grandpa died.

“Saman… Sam.” He says, simply, slowly, and the lava in Sam’s gut turns cold, and heavy. “They’ve found evidence that has given them reasons to believe that… your friend is gone.” He’s never spoken this softly. Ever. His voice is barely audible above the blood rushing in her ears. “They’ve called off the search.”

ー

Tucker didn’t expect nightmares. He wakes up and he panic-cries into his pillow and hopes to whatever god or deity is listening that ghosts in dreams aren’t real. He can’t explain the fear. Everything is incredibly normal, more normal than his dreams ever have been, and then Danny walks in.

He would give anything for this to happen, right now, in real life. He’s afraid, though. In his dreams, a sheer terror overcomes him. He can’t get away fast enough. He can still hear his own voice echoing in his head. “You’re dead! You’re dead!”

It’s a wrongness he can’t quite graspーor doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to be afraid of his best friend. Tucker wants him back so badly. But his brain knows the truth, even if Tuck is digging his heels in and refusing to budge.

Someone knocks on his door, and he tenses.

“Tucker, sweetie? It’s…” Mom takes a deep breath. “It’s time to go.”

He grits his teeth and shoves his face into his pillow so hard he can’t get air. He stays like this until he can’t. He gets up.

Tucker walks across the floor like a zombie, barely aware of what he’s even doing. He manages to put on the suit his mom put out for him yesterday, and goes downstairs. He refuses breakfast. The three of themーmom, dad, Tuckerーgo out to the car, and drive to his best friend’s funeral.

ー

Jazz stares at the closed casket. There’s a pair of police officers out of uniform, or maybe detectives, standing in the corner by the photo album laid out on a table looking haunted. Aunt Alicia, uncharacteristically wearing a plain, black dress, sits with mom and dad at the other side of the room. Jazz stares at the casket and she tries to imagine that it’s not empty. That it isn’t making her scream inside with the frustration of it all. Her baby brother is gone. They couldn’t even find him. And probably never will. Because that’s how these things end.

Tucker walks into the room. Dark bags circle his unfocused eyes. His parents are right behind him, his father’s hand on his shoulder. Tucker looks at the casket. He turns away, catching sight of Jazz, and when his parents break off to meet hers, Tucker walks over.

He picks at his sleeves. Says nothing. Jazz tries to pick at the grief counseling she knows she’s studied for fun, but finds herself falling short.

She doesn’t see Sam or Mr. and Mrs. Manson walk in, but suddenly they’re there as well, smiling tightly and giving their condolences to Jazz’s parents. Sam doesn’t walk over. She stands in a corner and stares at a wall with purpose.

Jazz breathes slowly, willing her heart to stop pounding. She counts the stages she can see in front of her.

Too much Acceptance, all from strangers who never even knew him personally. She glances at Dash Baxter, tugging on his tie and looking annoyed. She can feel Anger in her. But also Denial. Bargaining. Depression.

And somehow, Acceptance, too.

They’re not stages. She never really got that before. You feel them all at once, all the time, and they don’t go away. The intensity changes, turning from a background hum to bright bursts of emotion at any little reminder.

She looks at Tucker out of the corner of her eye. She wonders if he’s feeling that way too. Being bombarded by the stages of grief in a way no one prepared them for. Is this why mom and dad never let them get any pets? Besides Danny’s gerbil, which promptly disappeared before she could even get used to the rodent’s smell. What happened to it? Was it rehomed, or is its body still somewhere around the house, unfound, unlooked for?

The stages start over, skipping between Depression, Anger, Denial, the emotions falling over themselves. She wished the cops would leave.

Not soon enough, it’s over. The funeral home employees usher them out, the rooms and halls now empty. The drive home is simultaneously the longest and shortest ever. She stares up at the brick and all she wants to do is sleep. She heads inside intending to do just that.

She takes her shoes off at the door. Mom and dad take off their jacks and move to settle in the living room. Mom is holding a tissue to her eye. Jazz hesitates for just a moment.

Should she do something? She feels like she should do something, anything. She wants to suggest therapy. She’s afraid to open her mouth, though. Jazz can feel the blame on the back of her tongue, ready to spill out. That would be the worst thing for her to do, and she doesn’t know if she has the strength to hold it back, because for fucks sake, if they just watched their children, this wouldn’t have happened.

Jazz turns to the stairs and starts climbing them. She doesn’t get halfway before she’s blinded by drywall dust and knocked off her feet.

[averlym]

whshdfhfjf.,,,

[pa-pa-plasma]

kind of frustrating that people took "fat does not equal unhealthy" to mean "fat is not unhealthy." sometimes being obese IS unhealthy & excess fat can cause a lot of problems. ignoring health issues isn't progressive. real "oranges kill people with depression" moment

[boimgfrog]

trans women should b allowed 2 use whatever pronouns they want ESPECIALLY if they reveal fucking years of government and societal corruption targeting marginalized groups that include LITERAL CHILDREN. pls read up on everything maia revealed by leaking the no-fly list and for fucks sake thank it for its service

[eisthenameofme]

i wonder if there's the potential for a solution to the doxxing fucking over marginalized people specifically thing and/or the some people only being able/knowing where to engage with community online thing if we we were able to like. weaponize the relative lack of actual anonymity in the opposite direction.

like for one thing, instead of doxxing just resulting in problems from others in person, using that information to actively support the person instead, and for another for the other potentially more targeted use of the internet to find people to engage with in person (although that one you'd have to be even more careful about in case it worked in the opposite direction. I'm just thinking it would be nice to have something more structured/widespread than happening to find out your internet friends are in your local area, that could potentially be used to circumvent people not meeting in third spaces/other issues people have initially finding local community in person.)

It would be nice if instead of exclusively finding offline solutions/telling people how to be more careful we could also use what's often part of the problem to our advantage when it does happen. Like, having a way to address it that isn't only preventative.

[moongothic]

There's like a part of me that realizes that I've written so much Crocodad Meta that at this point I should probably just compile and condence it all into like a giant Propaganda Post

'Cause like. Sure it's all still on my blog, but few people are going to go digging through all the crap I've posted in the past few months for all the Crocodad Evidence, so just showing it all into a single post would make for like. IDK something I could use to make a compelling argument for why Crocodad could be real

(Also it would be more like, Crocodad evidence you might find on a more meta/narrative level, like on-going themes and Oda's story telling tropes/habits etc. Other people have already made posts that breakdown and analyze Marineford and compile all the subtle details+easter eggs etc so I wouldn't even go into any of that. I mean SURE I could regurgitate all that info too but it'd be easier to just link to someone else's post instead and save myself some time lol)

But also.

Do I really want to spend an obscene amount of time making that post. Do I really want to do that.

[emdotcom]

Tbh, can't believe I'm cutting ties with Fnaf before Batim.

[mae-i-scribble]

ruri dragon is a series yes. the author went into hiatus for two years and theyre finally out of hiatus! :D its very exciting

I had heard the author went into hiatus and just kinda assumed it would be one of those things that never got picked up again, but boy am I happy to be proven wrong. Immediately after finding out I went and read all the available chapters and they were lovely as expected. Super excited to keep up with it!! Cannot wait to see whatever batshit powers she gets XD That and I want to see her dad in a full color spread author please i am on my hands and knees