#and he got my number

[teethpaste]

Wow ok it’s actually so crazy seeing someone who is “normal” (no substance abuse, good relationship with family, steady job, friendly, not ran thru lmao) and consistent (makes plans with me, I don’t have any doubt he likes me) .. this is a first for me. I really only date avoidant or love bomber men. I’m still seeing the guy from Charley Crockett. We don’t text a lot, he shows up, he’s told me he likes me, we have fun in person, I met his friends. We kind of had a check in where we were like OK we both like eachother but not in a spot to put labels on it - we didn’t say if we weren’t seeing other people. Just agreed we’re really enjoying our time and taking it slow. That we’ll check in again if we’re still doing this in a few months. I’ve been in two LTR (5 years and 3.5 years) and his longest is 6 months. When I asked him about it he just said he’s never dated anyone he could see a relationship with - until now. It’s the first time I’ve ever had this convo with a man and it was mutually brought up out of genuine interest from both parties, not insecurity, and I don’t feel like his answers were lies. We were both just being honest. That we do like eachother and it’s genuine but we’re still seeing what we want - but not in a bad way.

And for the first time ever this convo didn’t freak me out. I’m actually okay taking it slow, bc he hasn’t given me a reason to think otherwise (… yet, I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop). Normally I’m pushing the “what are we doing” convo (if we’ve been “dating” not just having sex) bc the man has me STRESSED out and I know he’s seeing other people and his love bombing / bread crumbing keeps me hooked. Makes me feel like I’m not good enough and if I could just get them to choose me, it would make me feel whole (this is false I know). So to have this convo with CC guy .. and genuinely feel okay and be like cool can’t wait to keep knowing you and figuring this out feels so weird. I do have a mental block about entering a monogamous defined relationship w/ him though bc I do NOT want kids and he seems undecided. But that’s something I’ll revisit if we’re still doing this in November.

It’s also so insane to be seeing someone where the relationship isn’t based around sex. Like we actually hang out. I am very out of my element. I think I am honestly also just used to seeing men that frankly don’t respect me. Or I choose men that I immediately see they have 10,000 red flags so it gives me a false sense of control bc I’m like “cool I could never be in a relationship with you but I could fuck you so now I’m in a safe zone where my feelings aren’t involved”. And sex with CC isn’t what I normally am used to but I think it’s bc he respects me??? Lmao. Like I’m used to starting with crazy sex and building the relationship backwards. Not starting with dating and then building the sexual relationship.

We went on another date last week and I brought up that sometimes I can’t read him bc I’m a physical touch person and he doesn’t initiate and he was like “oh my god I’m physical touch too, I’m just not trying to be too forward or disrespectful bc I’m getting to know you” and I was like 💀 damn am I the problem.

Anyways; TLDR, seeing someone nice, consistent, not a love bomber for the first time ever. I’m out of my element bc it’s not triggering my dopamine receptors by love bombing and yanking attention away. My nervous system feels very regulated. I don’t have to send his texts to a panel of judges to interpret. He’s just nice and I like him. I’ve been avoiding posting this too thinking it may jinx me but. What’s meant for me won’t pass me by, I guess.

[egophiliac]

time for skeleman

with the lack of any other info yet, all I can focus on are those Charles Lloyd-looking sunglasses. they are absolutely sending me. I feel like we're gonna fall through a tree or whatever and this stitched-up boney gentleman is gonna pop out from behind a gravestone and start serenading us with some smooth jazz on the saxophone.

or should I say...the saxoBONE???????

[ricksanchezbignaturals]

silverv may not technically be "canon" but in actuality they are realer than all these other mfs

[raticalshoez]

Professional Coward

[cayliecoltrane]

quick lil ETHOwO redraw

[cenvast]

"Toshiro Is Sexist," "Toshiro Owns Slaves": What's Really Going on With This Guy?

I've seen a lot of debate on whether or not Toshiro is problematic because he's a slave owner or because he's sexist in the context of his crush on Falin. While I do want to examine his relationship to Falin, I'd like to take a few steps back and unpack his upbringing first. We'll dive into the gender and class dynamics he was raised with and how it impacts his behavior in the main storyline.

Like all people, Toshiro is shaped by the environment he grew up in. Toshitsugu, Toshiro's father and the head of the Nakamoto clan, is the most impactful model of authority and manhood in his life. Toshiro does recognize some of his father's flaws and tries to avoid replicating them. But whether or not he emulates or subverts his father's behavior, Toshitsugu is often the starting point for Toshiro's treatment of others, particularly marginalized people.

The Nakamoto clan exists under a patriarchal hierarchy with Toshitsugu at the top. As noted by @fumifooms in their Nakamoto household post, his wife has more authority than Maizuru. She's able to ban Maizuru from parts of their residence, but despite disliking his infidelity, she can't divorce him or stop him from cheating on her. Their marriage is not an equal partnership.

On an interpersonal level, Toshitsugu and Maizuru also have a fraught relationship. While she does seem to care for him, she's often frustrated by his thoughtless behavior.

For example, he drunkenly buys Izutsumi for her — without considering how she'll have to raise this child — and invades her room in the middle of the night. When he cryptically says, "It's all my fault," she replies, "I can think of a lot of things that are your fault." She calls him an "idiot" and "believes that [Toshiro] will grow up to be a better clan leader than his father," implying that she takes issue with Toshitsugu's leadership.

Because Maizuru and Toshitsugu are described as being "in an intimate relationship" and "seem[ing] to be lovers," Maizuru appears to be a consensual participant. Still, this doesn't negate the large power imbalance between them as a male noble clan leader and his female retainer. This imbalance introduces an insidious undertone to Maizuru's frustration with Toshitsugu. Like Toshiro's mother, Maizuru doesn't have the agency to do as she pleases in their relationship; he has the ultimate authority. For instance, she doesn't seem to want to raise Izutsumi, but she has to anyway.

While Maizuru's role as Toshitsugu's mistress is significant, she's also the Nakamoto clan's teacher and Toshiro's primary maternal figure. She cares deeply for Toshiro: tailing him, feeding him, and taking responsibility even for his actions as an adult. While it might seem sweet that she cares for him like a son at first, Maizuru was notably fifteen years old at the time of his birth. In the extra comic below, he's six years old and has already been in her care for some time. Even if we're being generous and assuming that she didn't start raising him until he was six, she was still only twenty-one at the time she was parenting her boss/lover's child with another woman.

Maizuru's roles as mistress and maternal figure, in addition to her role as retainer, demonstrate the intersection between gendered and class oppression in the Nakamoto household. Despite her original role being a retainer trained in espionage, Toshitsugu presses her into performing gendered labor for him and eventually, Toshiro. She's expected to be Toshitsugu's lover, perform emotional labor for him as his confidant, care for his child, and carry out domestic tasks like cooking. She says, "Even during missions, I was often dragged into the kitchen." If she was a male servant, I doubt she would have been expected to perform these additional tasks. She can't avoid these tasks either, stating that her "own feelings don't factor into it."

Toshitsugu disregards his wife's and Maizuru's desires and emotions to serve his own interests. Because he has societal power over them as a nobleman and in Maizuru's case, her master, neither woman can escape their position in the household hierarchy.

As a result, Toshiro grew up within a structure where men and male nobility, in particular, wield the most societal power. The hierarchical nature of his household and society discourages everyone, including him as a clan leader's eldest son, from questioning and disrupting the existing hierarchy.

The other Nakamoto household members also internalize its sexist, classist power dynamics.

For example, Hien expects that she and Toshiro will replicate the uneven dynamics of the previous generation, regardless of her personal feelings. She sees her and Toshiro's relationship as paralleling Maizuru and Toshitsugu's relationship; she is the closest woman to Toshiro and his retainer, so she's shocked when Toshiro doesn't attempt to begin an intimate relationship with her. Notably, she doesn't have actual feelings for him. Her expectations are centered around the household's precedent of placing emotional, sexual, domestic, and child-rearing labor onto the female servants without any regard for their personal desires.

Hien also probably knows that her position in the household will improve if she is Toshiro's lover because she's seen it improve Maizuru's position. However, the fact that being the future clan leader's lover is the closest proximity she, as a female servant, has to power further reveals the gendered, class-based oppression she and the other women live under.

It's important to note that the Nakamoto clan bought Benichidori, Izutsumi, and Inutade as slaves, so they have less power and agency than Maizuru and Hien. The clan further dehumanizes Izutsumi and Inutade as demi-humans; their enslavement contains an additional layer of racialization.

Toshiro isn't oblivious to the gendered, class, and racial power dynamics of his household. He tries to distance himself from participating in its exploitative power structure. He walls himself off from Hien, who he's known since childhood, to avoid replicating his father's behavior and making his servant into his lover. He disapproves of his father's enslavement of Izutsumi and Inutade, and he lets Izutsumi go when she runs away in the Dungeon.

But does any of this absolve him of his complicity in his household's sexist, classist power dynamics and racialized slavery?

The short answer is absolutely not.

Despite his distaste for his father's exploitation of his servants and slaves, Toshiro still uses them. He refers to his party as "his retainers," and he has them fight and perform domestic tasks for him. You could argue that Toshiro doesn't like to and thus, doesn't regularly use his servants and slaves. In the context of him asking his retainers to help him rescue Falin, Maizuru says, "The only time he ever made any sort of personal request was for this task." But it shouldn't matter whether exploitation is a regular occurrence or not for it to be considered harmful. Toshiro asking Maizuru to cook him a meal still constitutes asking his female servant to perform gendered labor for him. He's also very accustomed to her grooming and dressing him.

Maizuru sees feeding, washing, and even advising Toshiro romantically as fulfilling Toshitsugu's orders to care for his son. They aren't fulfilling a "personal request." But just because her labor has been deemed expected and thereby devalued doesn't mean that it isn't labor or that she isn't performing it.

Maizuru's dynamic with Toshiro is also complicated by her role as his maternal figure. She loves him and wants to take care of him, and she doesn't have a choice in the matter. During Toshiro's childhood, the onus was on Toshitsugu to cease exploiting his lover and release her from servitude, but Toshiro is now an adult man. Seeing as how Maizuru defers to his wishes and calls him "Young Master," they still have a power imbalance that he's passively maintaining. Ideally, he would not ask anything of her until he has the authority to release her from servitude.

Throughout the story, Toshiro acts as if he has no agency and quietly disapproving of his father's actions absolves him of his participation in maintaining oppressive dynamics. While his father still ranks higher than him, he's essentially his father's heir. He has much more power than Maizuru, the highest-ranked servant. At the very least, he could leave his slave-owning household.

Unfortunately, his refusal to confront injustice is consistent with his character's major flaw: he does not express his opinions, desires, or needs. While this character trait obviously hurts his friendships, it also furthers his complicity in the injustices his household runs on.

Toshiro's relationship with eating food — the prevailing metaphor of the series — also parallels his relationship with confronting injustice. Maizuru mentions that he was a sickly child, so the act of eating may have been physically uncomfortable for him. As an adult, his refusal to eat crops up during his rescue attempt of Falin. Denying himself food might have been punishment for not accomplishing important tasks like rescuing Falin and/or a way to maintain control over something in his life when he felt like he'd lost control over the rest of it, again in the context of losing Falin. (Note: I suggest reading this post on Toshiro's disordered eating by @malaierba.)

But he cannot and does not avoid consuming food forever.

Similarly, Toshiro keeps his distance from his retainers and tries not to use them until the Falin situation occurs. His efforts to avoid exploiting his retainers amount to inaction — things he doesn't ask of them or do to them. But his inaction does nothing to dismantle the existing hierarchy that places his retainers under his authority, denies them agency, and often marginalizes them as not only servants or slaves but as women, and he ends up using them as servants and slaves anyways.

Returning to the narrative's themes of consumption, Toshiro cannot avoid eating just as he cannot avoid perpetuating the exploitative system of his household. The Nakamoto clan consumes the labor and personhood of those lower in the hierarchy. The retainers' labor as spies and domestic servants is the foundation of the clan's existence. Thus, the clan consumes their labor to sustain itself.

Within this hierarchy, the retainers' personhood is also consumed and erased. As Izutsumi describes, they are given different names and stripped of their agency to reject orders or leave. Maizuru and Hien also say their feelings are irrelevant in the context of Toshitsugu's and Toshiro's wants and needs. Both women are expected to comply with whatever is most beneficial and comfortable for the noblemen. Clearly, despite Toshiro's detachment from his household's functions, these social structures remain in place and harm the women under him.

Although we know the Nakamoto clan has male retainers, the choice to highlight the female retainers seems intentional. We're asked to interrogate how not only being a servant or a slave in a noble household impacts a person's life and agency, but how being a woman intersects with being a member of some of the lowest social classes.

Toshiro only distances himself from his father's behaviors of infidelity and exploitation so long as it doesn't take Toshiro out of his comfort zone. He doesn't free his slaves. He's far too comfortable with his female retainers performing domestic labor for him, and he barely acknowledges their efforts; they're shocked when he thanks them for helping him save Falin. He hasn't unpacked his sexist (or classist or racist) biases because he perpetuates his household's oppressive hierarchy throughout the narrative. Considering all of this, he inevitably brings this baggage to his interactions with Falin.

Falin is presumably one of the first women he's had extended contact with that isn't his relative or his family's servant. Because of his trauma surrounding his father and Maizuru sleeping together, he understandably falls for a woman as disconnected as possible from his father and his clan. He seems to genuinely like Falin, respects her boundaries, and graciously accepts her rejection. His behavior towards her is overall kind and unproblematic.

But if Falin had gone with him, she would've likely been devalued and sidelined like the other women of the Nakamoto household. No matter how much he loves Falin, simply loving her cannot replace the difficult work of unlearning his sexism. Love, of course, can and should be accompanied by that work, but by the close of the narrative, we gain little indication that Toshiro acknowledges or seeks to end his part in exploiting and devaluing women and other marginalized people.

A spark of hope does exist. Toshiro expressing his feelings to Laios and Falin suggests that his time away from home has encouraged him to speak up more. Breaking his habit of avoidance may be the first step towards acknowledging his complicity in systems of injustice and moving towards dismantling them.

Special thanks to my very smart friend @atialeague for bringing up Toshitsugu's relationship with Maizuru and the replication of dynamics of consumption and class! <3

[laurrelise]

still not done talking about the fact that aidan gallagher got cast to play one of the most plot-important characters in an adult superhero show among a cast of grown, professional actors at the age of 13, fresh off of a nickelodeon children’s show and managed to deliver one of the most layered, memorable performances and become the favorite of most people who watched it

[sergle]

Having a STUPID TIME trying to accomplish the very basic task of re-filling my prescription bc my bitch doctor is apparently completely off the grid

[ricky-mortis]

I heard that Corey Dorris sang Show Stopping Number at Innit- so I present: Corey!Hidgens

[heartscrypt]

we'll get em next time guys

[avalencias]

I don’t know what to do—I have to trust someone—I don’t know who to trust

massive, massive props to aabria for this episode (here at this point and after!!)…to all of them really, but it was about here that I was driving yesterday morning and had to frantically try to hold the image in my head for the rest of my commute. I only kind of succeeded but it is what is. wow. what an episode

[sunnysunsins]

They escaped into modern au. But since Quiet still looks the same (as in, a gigantic shadow creature), Princess has to be the one to look for a job. He still accompanies her though, after shapeshifting into a normal-ish crow.

(Also yes, she says her name is Princess Princess, and then just nods as everyone points out it's weird)

[hannibal-the-bimbo-cannibal]

The way I would [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacte-

[3-aem]

universal healthcare is not broken and anyone trying to convince you it is is delusional and a dckrider for big health insurance. yes there are wait times but waiting for care is Not the same as being denied care.

in america your physician prescribes care and an insurer can still cuck you out of it because someone across the continent who has never met you can say: doesn’t seem medically necessary. Leaving you to handle a bill that is wildly inflated by the same insurers that just denied you.

let me drill it through your head you can pay thousands a year in premiums and still end up sick and financially burdened for years by One incident. no insurance company is Avoiding going broke by denying claims. theyre doing it to profit off your misfortune and your illness. Because healthcare fundamentally does not cost the amount that they claim it to be.

[batsyheere]

When thinking on timelines with DC and Danny Phantom, I always figure Dick Grayson and Danny Fenton being around the same age makes sense. Like, that 90-2000s tech and culture, the formation of the Justice League and the Meta Acts? It would make sense to have a time period with no basis for such things when it concerns Danny not reaching out to other heroes or for the Anti-Ecto Acts being slipped into law. And it wouldn't be weird for Batman not to hear about all the ghostly happening of Amity Park when he would primarily be focused on Gotham (and somewhat the League).

It feels like a good set up for Danny being a great mentor for others based off his own struggles as a teen vigilante with no preparation or proper support. He can finally reach out to other heroes, lend his own experiences and power to a fight even if he does decide to start retiring from the vigilante scene.

Then you have Dick Grayson trying to strike out on his own, form his own identity, and I feel like Danny would be weirdly intuitive? He immediately clocks Dick as a teen vigilante and is just there for him in the ways he always wished someone had been for him.

[artkaninchenbau]

You know what day it— Daisuke?! Happy 24th Anniversary Zero Two! [Redraw 2020 / Appmon] [2021 / Tamers] [2022 / Frontier] [2023 / V-Tamer]