#and everyone enabling this

[zoi-no-miko]

What the actual _fuck_

And the worst part is, when this tanks the “studios” will say “oh no one cares about Jewish stories” instead of taking a good hard look at how fucked up this is. FUCK.

[vicariousresearcher]

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

Johnny has been in a coma for 2 years 5 months, and 18 days. Who just barely survived long enough to get medical attention after Makarov. Who has become a part of the slim statistic of people who’ve survived a gunshot wound to the head. Whose brain scans show limited activity and such little chance of waking up.

But when his family gets asked if they’re ready to let him go his Ma shakes her head.

“God will take him when he’s ready.”

It’s not common that young guys get put in long-term care facilities like yours. Most of the time it’s older folks whose families can’t let them go and are using pensions to pay the rent costs.

At the start, his room is full of visitors. Big family. Very religious you’ve learned. A boy's bible is set alongside flowers.

Between the swathes of dark hair and bright blue eyes are a couple of other individuals. Quiet but polite.

“Teammates.” The dark-skinned man offers with a strained smile when you give him a curious look. “Military.”

It’s not long till his room quiets down. Visits becoming fewer. His family who was already a little detached from their son you concluded. Between the secretive work and deployments that kept him from home for months.

The team came by when they could though. Enough for you to learn their names and details about your resident.

You glean little things about him here and there. Find the sketchbook with his name on it left by the one named Simon. See the tattoo on his forearm obscured the thick curtain of arm hair. Listen politely to the questionable stories told by Gaz that always left Laswell's head shaking.

Quite the man Soap was is. No one’s given you an explanation on that nickname yet but the military guys that come in always call him by it.

You do what you can to keep him comfortable. Trimming his hair, changing out the gospel music for an audiobook every once in a while, talking to him whenever you’re in the room.

Well more so talking at him. Venting frustrations and complaints in hushed words so no one walking by hears you. Talking about your lazy coworkers, the overly loud upstairs neighbours in your apartment, and how you had to sit through another family dinner alone because your boyfriend made some excuse to not come again.

It’s easy to just talk when you’re in the room with him. Feels less like you’re going insane because you can reason that you’re talking for *his sake.* Not yours. Because what if he can hear you yknow?

……

You’ve just transferred him back over after changing his bed sheets, crouched and folding the linen under the mattress while you talk about your plans for this coming Christmas. How you’re excited for that one chocolate pop up shop that always comes to your mall-

You just about shit yourself when you stand back up and look to the head of the bed and see two slits of blue through his tan eyelids. Dark brown brows pinched in just slightly to create a crease between them.

……

A blinding white light accompanying a splitting headache was what he saw first. Eyelids sticky against his corneas. Weight of a thousand sins holding his muscles paralyzed and unable to flinch away.

Then the light flickered and he saw you.

Frizzy hair curling a fluorescent halo over your head. A swinging, unblinking eye glinting off of your chest.

Johnny who tells his weepy-eyed mother that it’s okay, he had the voice of an angel guiding him the whole time. That’s what brought him back.

[mintaikk]

"Vox can do better than Val!" This is Vox when Velvette told him that his little boy toy tore apart her model NO THE FUCK HE CANNOT

[seekingskywhales]

Apparently I’m not done drawing Amanda lol

[levemetal]

Ye old Shen twins au where they both become peak lords EXCEPT. Instead of making them twin peak lords or something, we pretend the evidence that the beast peak does likely not exist is lies, and Shen Yuan gets to become peak lord of the beast peak. Why? Because he would LOVE IT there. It's his territory. He gets to be unapologetically nerdy about beasts 24/7 and make it everyone's problem.

As he should.

And bonus! He can snatch LBH at the disciple hole digging. Plot solved! (Assuming the system wouldn't you know. Pull system stuff and force LBH to end up on Qing Jing or some shit.)

And everyone lived happily ever after or some bullshit idk. I reread the 79 extras as well as the TLJ & ZZL ones let me have fluffy AU thoughts goddamnit, my heart has been irreparably damaged-

[roach-works]

one thing i would really like my fellow americans to do this christmas season is to look at the way the israeli people are practicing judaism, at the way they're conflating an ancient worldwide religion with a national mandate to secure land and power by the most remorselessly violent means possible. i want christians to look at the judaism of israeli nationalists, the self-serving hypocrisy of it, the arrogance, the hideous cost in human lives, the blithe dismissal of any other perspective of what their national religion might mean to any other people in the entire rest of the world.

and i want american christians to look, with those same eyes, at what this country has done with the teachings of jesus christ.

and i want you guys to fucking internalize that the separation of church and state is a fundamental necessity for free people everywhere and quite possibly one of the most important civil rights a country can provide its people.

because the merging of church and state results, almost immediately, in the deadly corruption of both.

[sacreblugh]

the Fallout: New Vegas (2010) experience

[canine-economy]

On Swansea’s (often understated) role in Mouthwashing

I say this as a big swansea fan but I don’t rlly understand why ppl are acting like he’s not also complicit in what happened to Anya? AUs where “Anya tells Swansea” and he jumps to violently defend her don’t make sense to me because canonically she does tell him, as he admits to Jimmy. But swansea represents another way of interacting with the capitalist heteropatriarchy that ALSO harms victims: holistic jadedness and resignation.

Swansea is across the board unkind to the Tulpar crew. We can’t forget that he calls anya a “so-called nurse”

and says this to Jimmy, which (if unintentionally) reiterates Jimmy’s own warped perception of Anya’s usefulness and competence. This allows Jimmy to feel justified in his imagination of the nurse’s inferiority. Swansea’s clear lack of respect for Jimmy does less to hurt Jimmy than his lack of respect for Anya harms Anya, because at the end of the day, Swansea’s attitude is contextualized by the violent culture it exists in and he does nothing to reconcile with that when Jimmy becomes the captain. His resignation can thus be weaponized even by Jimmy, a man who Swansea disrespects but whose power he doesn’t try to meaningfully jeopardize, because his across-the-board disdain punches people already marginalized by the environment twice as hard as it does those with power.

Swansea doesn’t position himself as an ally, he positions himself as willfully uninvolved in everything, an observer to the shitshow ride to hell. Just because he dislikes Jimmy doesn’t mean he aligns with Anya. He makes it clear that he’s not on her side, either. After a life of doing what he felt was expected of him, Swansea on the Tulpar looks out for Swansea and Swansea’s comfort. In trying to situate himself outside of the politics of it all as an older white man, he simply allows them to play out. The toxic culture keeps existing, playing out in the microcosm that is this freighter, and Swansea in all his experience recognizes that shit has hit the fan and elects to coast through it, even explicitly numbing himself to it by breaking his sobriety. It is, of course, hard to force yourself to be sober—to see clearly. But had Swansea forced himself to get involved sooner, he might have set a precedent for Daisuke to recognize Jimmy’s abuse, which could have saved Daisuke’s life as well as created a safe space for Anya. But Swansea’s inaction forces both victims to confront an abuser on their own, unable to reap benefits from his privilege and experience.

Jimmy is clearly intimidated by swansea in a way he is not by Anya, Daisuke, or a post-crash Curly (Swansea, for example, physically manifests as an aggressor in Jimmy’s “responsibility sequences”, and Jimmy ties Swansea up to avoid what he sees as the real possibility of pushback that he doesn’t conceive of Anya being able to do). Swansea has a power he does not act on or with until it is far, far too late. In fact, he acknowledges in his final monologue that he was dissatisfied with the discomfort with opening his eyes and living an exemplary “good man”s life. The best days of his life are ones in which he’s belligerently drunk—days in which he didn’t have to hold himself accountable. He regrets the life he spent performing for higher-ups and we watch him reject it by scorning Captain Jimmy, but he also doesn’t want to be held responsible for helping other people when it’s their turn to endure the expectations and violence from similar (if not the same) higher powers. Tragically, he possesses the hindsight to recognize that how he acted on the Tulpar consequently wasn’t what Daisuke needed out of a role model, leading to Daisuke becoming a victim. His hands-off approach to emotional engagement with his young male intern (another symptom of patriarchal gender norms) may have been to avoid Daisuke turning out miserable and jaded like himself, but it doesn’t actually indicate to an already-confused Daisuke what the dangers of that attitude are. Swansea never admits his own shortcomings in a tangible way which, had they come from a man with experience and prestige like himself, may have shifted that culture that failed Anya. She comes to him with the story not because he has situated himself as any earnest friend, but likely out of desperation on a ship Jimmy now controls.

When we allow “the machine” (Swansea’s own words) to beat us down to the point that we don’t find it productive to challenge unjust power dynamics, we become complicit. I think too many people get hung up on his disdain for Jimmy and Jimmy’s fear of Swansea as a marker of allyship with Anya, but the truth is that Swansea. Is a bad ally. He’s hardly one at all. His long stint in the demanding capitalist environment molded a perfectly complicit result out of him, as it aspires to do, even if Swansea bitterly recognizes that. Jimmy’s overt violence from a position of power is a different and much more brutal approach to abuse enabled by people who have been left too tired and bitter to care that he does it. A man who could’ve intimidated and even threatened Jimmy is too resigned to try until there is literally nobody but himself left to fight for, which is an attitude carefully cultivated among the lower rungs of hierarchies to keep the top safe. Swansea in particular seems very unhappy with the capitalistic, patriarchal expectations laid out for him as a father, husband, and laborer. This becomes particularly resonant when you realize the symbolism of his role as mechanic: a job that can be deeply unpersonal, tasked with keeping the ship (the machine, if you will) itself going while other roles are more focused on managing the humans inside of it (e.g. nurse, captain). His decision to just stop trying and spare himself the grief instead of questioning why those expectations exist and how they would hurt the others onboard only delays him being directly targeted by Jimmy and doesn’t interrupt the latter’s violence.

Not a single man in mouthwashing is innocent in Anya’s victimhood. This is a statement tentatively uninclusive of Daisuke, because I think the game very deliberately positions him outside of manhood through his youth and thus struggling with the concept of “fitting in” to the patriarchy. Curly, Jimmy, and Swansea all represent different failures that ultimately perpetuate Anya’s suffering and force her to defend herself and finally take her life into her own hands. A holistic analysis of rape culture in MW necessarily engages with all three of them. Only not being a friend and ally to rapists and other male abusers isn’t enough, and Swansea proves it.

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.

[post-it-notes7]

Please tell me this will be a happy ending

dearest anon, only time will tell

[funny-friends]

i love to post my silly little drawings on the world wide web

[burnthatbridge]

BUDDIE SHIP STATS [inspiration] + [template by @marissources]

[allthe-lights-inthe-sky]

Felt like I might need these in the future so I made them! Free to use, no permission needed!

[moomanmilken]

they collectively share a singular braincell. anyways, this is my entry to the House md fandom or something. I've been binge watching it and my brain is EXPLODING.

[manako-no-yami]

harvey: what do u mean it's weird to have a picture of my associate on my bedside table, it's not weird, it's like having a picture of my dog mike: woof

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Very bold to fucking say 'we' when no one in the UK stands with Israel and if anything, has been protesting for a free Palestine and to stop the government supporting Israel via weapons and money.