#and i wanted to post about this because i think this conversation is important and unlearning these expectations is also important

[julymusings]

Jason Todd x Single Mom!Reader

I've been plagued for many months now by the idea of jason todd x young single mom!reader. I literally made this blog this morning just to post this

this is so LONG try as i might to shorten it i've been itching to get all this out of me so enjoy this word vomit i might just make a full fic if i'm feeling extra frisky

You got pregnant in college, and now you’re fresh out of grad school moving to a new city with your 3 year old daughter

You got a job at Wayne Enterprises, leading an important new project. You and your colleagues are invited to the latest Wayne Gala, hosted at the billionaire’s own manor. All these years as a young mother and a student, you hadn’t any experience with such extravagance-- how could you say no?

the party lowkey sucks because it's all old rich people so you sneak out to a balcony where you find a young man drinking whiskey and texting on his phone.

he introduces himself as jason, and his hand is rough and calloused when you shake it, but it's warm and sends a tingle up your arm. (😏)

You chat about your work, he complains about the stuffiness of a life at Wayne Enterprises and you laugh when he warns you to get out while you can (he's joking, of course. not because he thinks it's worth staying but because if you leave he'd never be able to hear that adorable laugh again)

when you go off on a tangent about how excited you are for your project, he's not even listening anymore. the sheer passion that lights up your face has his mind going fuzzy and a full orchestra playing in the background

you're pulled back in before he can get your number :( he's so mopey all weekend he doesn't even have it in him to retaliate when damian makes fun of him for having pink pony club as his top song for this month :(

when you get home your email is flooded with warnings from other parents at your daughter's daycare about a lice scare?? okay, you think, she's definitely not going on monday, you can just bring her to work with you, right? what's the worst that could happen?

the following monday he just happens to show up at the office (He can't just stop by to say hi to his brother who he loves?) (tim calls security almost immediately)

you're not at your cubicle (in a meeting, your desk neighbor informs him) so he mills about the floor like a lost puppy just waiting for you to show up so he can "accidentally" run into you

the woman at the front desk has a chair pulled up next to hers where this little girl with pigtails is sitting, trying to console her as tears stream down her face

jason springs into action, kneeling in front of her chair to ask what's wrong

she just sniffles and holds up her stuffed animal, an elephant whose button eye has popped out, the woman watching her trying to get her to hand it over so she can sew it back on but she wont let go

he goes full grey's anatomy, fussing over the toy like it's in mortal peril and complimenting her for being so brave before gently asking if he can try to fix it

she lets him take it and he uses the woman's travel sewing kit to stitch it back on

she's ecstatic, leaping forward into his arms to give him a big hug

but now she won't let him leave because no he has to have a conversation with the elephant first and introduce himself and give it post-surgery care instructions and listen to it talk about how much she it wants a puppy and he feels like such an idiot talking to that thing but anything to make this little girl smile

she pulls a little picture book from the backpack hung on the back of her chair and asks him to read with her and he can't just say no!

so he plops down on the tile floor and starts reading out loud and even though she's standing next to him craning her neck to see the pictures he's a head taller than her

when you finish your meeting and head back to the front desk to thank gretchen for watching your kid the sight you see makes your heart absolutely melt

jason and your daughter are sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor of Wayne Enterprises as he reads to her, and he's pulling out all the stops, he's doing voices, sound effects, and she's giggling so hard she can't sit up straight

but then they both finally notice you

"mommy!" she yells, running to you and wrapping herself around your leg

you're surprised to see him, but definitely not disappointed, and if what you just walked in on indicated anything, it was that you wanted, nay, needed this man

so now you're flushed and hopeful, mind running with possibilities of why he's here; could it be? he couldn't stop thinking about you either? he came all the way to ask you out?

but jason is also surprised, astounded even, by the miniature carbon copy clinging to your leg saying something about scooby snacks

he's freaking out on the inside

through a tight-lipped greeting he excuses himself with what he hopes is a neutral demeanor (spoiler alert: it's not) and goes home to think

and you obviously know exactly what that was about, one doesn't go through pregnancy at 19 without becoming well-acquainted with the whole catalogue of surprised/judgy reactions

of course you're a mess because the early/mid 20s dating scene is hard enough as it is but with a toddler? forget it, might as well just give up now

you go home to call your best friend and get drunk over face time while she assures you that men aint shit and offers to put a curse on him (you consider it, but how are you supposed to get a lock of his hair?)

he's up all night hating himself for being such an asshole and trying to come up with a scenario in which this works, in which he can have you in his life and also a child and be the red hood because he can't stop thinking about you

so then he just says fuck it and the next morning he shows up at your office with flowers and a puppy stuffed animal and finally asks you out

[blackcherryflower]

Man, I don't even post opinions about shows and movies like The Bear, but this really pissed me off! I like Matty Matheson, and I was watching some interviews about his new book and at one point he says that Syd has no formal training... excuse!... no formal training!!! What do you mean!!!

Here's the link for who wants to see the whole thing

He implies that she only worked at UPS!? 3 seasons and that's the impression he has of her?! Did he forgot about that?:

I hope they didn't erase her story and that Matty, even though he's a nice guy, doesn't have any part in writing the show. This is the second time I've seen him talking about the characters (I think it was with Drew Barrymore that he said that the idea for the Faks to go talk to Claire at the hospital was his)... I thought this last season was pretty bad for Syd's character development (and the second one too, to be honest). I like her and I feel like there's a lot of cool stuff to know about her but they don't show it (and now with this, maybe they've even forgotten or left it aside). It seems like they don't give us a chance to get to know her and see her grow on her own, her story is always very connected to Carmy, but according to everyone on the show they won't be a couple...but they also don't know how to be friends...or business partners, they live on crumbs, few conversations and unspoken words. While he lives his life, her character is stuck in this limbo without being able to develop, without having important scenes (especially after they changed Ayo to lead actress in the 2nd season for the awards, I thought they would write scenes that would help her. It is not strange to expect more from the main characters right?! Richie had it! We know a lot about him!) I also saw an interview with Joanna Calo (Director, Writer and Producer in the show) where she said that the idea of ​​locking Carmy in the freezer was just to give Syd a chance to shine and run the kitchen, but in the end, the way they filmed and edited, angles and everything, it seemed like it was all about Rich, and the audience understood that he was the one who saved the day, right?! like, come on! nobody saw it coming?

Anyway, just a rant because I realy like Ayo and I had hope for her character in the 2nd season and we only got hints about her life...so there was that hope for the 3rd...and nothing...and now this. It is frustrating, ngl!

[fateunwritten-if]

As I sit down to write this post, I find myself overwhelmed with emotions. I’m a Black Haitian woman living in America, and with the recent news of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election, I feel sick and full of fear that I can not hide.

Politics has never been my main focus of my blog; I usually try to keep this space for sharing my work. However, the current political state is so deeply important that I simply cannot ignore it. The implications of Trump’s presidency goes beyond politics—they touch on the lives of everyday people, especially those of us in marginalized communities.

With Trump back in power, I am scared about the regression we will face as a nation. The fear of being devalued, marginalized, or outright targeted because of my identity is heavy to carry. I worry about the policies that could emerge, policies that may take away hard-fought rights and protections for people of color, immigrants, and those who don’t fit the narrow definition of who is deemed “American.”

I think about the impact on my family, friends, and the countless other people who share similar backgrounds. The anxiety that accompanies living in a society where our worth is questioned is exhausting.

I want to encourage everyone to engage in meaningful conversations about our future. So that hopefully next time we as a nation can make the right choice.

[notmeowse]

Solavellan ending and why I hate it

Major Veilguard endgame spoilers under the cut.

I beat the game two days ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about that ending. I'm not going to get into the rest of the game's flaws. They've been covered at length. But all of those issues aside, the one perfect, untouchable thing I thought I had left as the game drew to a close was the Solavellan ending. After all, Trick wrote the original Solavellan romance and the incredible continuation of it in Trespasser. As lead writer, they were directly responsible for making it happen. I thought we had this in the bag.

So on one hand, my favorite Dragon Age romance finally reunited and disintegrated off into the sunset.

On the other hand, he did not choose her.

This is what ruined it for me. I know a lot of people have issues with her sacrificing her life to join him in the Fade, but that was really a secondary issue for me.

What was the point of their entire relationship if, in the end, when it REALLY counted, he was never going to choose Lavellan over tearing down the Veil? Why did it take Mythal, who he actually killed in the last game in order to take her power, to convince him? Where's the romance in that?

This literally just turned into the story of Lavellan and the elven god who did not love her enough.

Okay, yes, the gamified reason it takes Mythal to convince him is because Lavellan was tacked onto an existing avenue of dealing with Solas rather than being given her own separate option, right? At the end of the game you have the choice to either fight him, trick him, or (if the Mythal-related criteria is met) invoke the essence of Mythal contained in the statue. No Bring Out The Big Guns, Lavellan option.

In my opinion, she should have been the fourth option, only available to players that have an Inquisitor that romanced Solas and encouraged Lavellan to reunite with him mid-game. It would have required about as much effort to do this as it did to have him turn her down once again (which, I maintain defeats the entire purpose of the story being told here). That would have been the absolute easiest fix to this fucking mess.

I understand why Lavellan wasn't counted among his regrets and therefore wasn't in the Lighthouse murals (because he doesn't actually regret falling in love with her) and I acknowledge that getting real closure from Mythal is important to Solas's story, and that it did have its place in that ending scene. Whether she was a lover or a mother to him isn't really the issue here -- it's the fact that she holds sway over him where Lavellan apparently does not. Despite the fact that, again, he killed Mythal in the previous game, despite the fact that he couldn't bring himself to kill the Inquisitor for the anchor, despite the fact that Lavellan was the one single thing in the world that made him really want to walk away from his plans.

(Why wasn't the "I release you from my service" a conversation had between him and Flemythal back in Inquisition? And why is that essence of Flemythal (who now exists in Morrigan) suddenly so chill and pro-Veil? Do we not remember the reckoning that will shake the very heavens? The She was betrayed as I was betrayed, as the world was betrayed? I will see her avenged? No payoff? None? There's so much wrong and bad writing to unpack there, but this is still a Solavellan post.)

Back to him wanting to turn away from his grand plan. The fundamental difference between Mythal and Lavellan, in my opinion, is the way each of them saw him. Mythal asked him to change for her, to leave the Fade, to commit atrocities with her out of love and service. Lavellan only ever loved him as a man, never once asking him to change for her, never asking him to be anything other than himself. In the time they were together, he was able to be the person he wanted to be. It took a very specific set of circumstances and a very specific person that had to fall into place for that romance to happen, which is arguably what made her so special, and what made their time together even more so. It followed, especially with what we know now, that he would want to drop his grand plan to be with her.

In comes Veilguard, which introduced a parallel between Solas/Mythal and Solavellan. In the second memory, we discover that Mythal never once chose Solas over her duty to elvhenan (even when he begged her to lay it down and run away with him) and dragged him along with her to commit unspeakable atrocities (in her words, she broke him). Solas (at that point in the game, when we were witnessing the memories) had yet to choose Lavellan over his crusade, but quite literally loved her too much to bring her along with him. He would not let her do that to herself, he would not do to her what Mythal did to him.

Here's where I feel like I'm losing my mind, because I thought the point of that mural was to foreshadow him eventually choosing Lavellan, as he is very much not Mythal, and is very much looking for a reason to lay it down, to be proven wrong. I also thought the blurb in the Inquisitor character creation menu (who did you romance) was foreshadowing it, as well as the mid-game choice Rook can make to encourage her to reunite with him and change his heart.

So why didn't it happen? I can only assume because they didn't actually want to have any of our choices carry over, let alone the Solavellan option (which they should have realized from the start was a bad call and also fucking impossible to manage given that the game is a direct sequel to Inquisition). The fact that Lavellan is tacked onto an already existing scene rather than being given her own is evidence of this. However, even if she had to be tacked onto the Mythal scene and not given her own, a simple reordering of the events would have fixed the fucking ending. So it could have gone two (very easily manageable and not too much extra) ways:

Remove the part where he turns her down. Remove the entire thing. Morrimythal could have flown up to him before the Inquisitor even arrived on scene, we could have had our statue moment, and just when he thinks he's going to be all alone behind the Veil, Lavellan shows up, they reunite, and she goes with him. (Easiest way for Bioware to fix it imo)

Lav acts as the ace up our sleeve, a fourth option (and a second option to make him lay it down) instead of using the statue to redeem him. Mythal releases him from her service AFTER he chooses Lavellan, thereby releasing him from his guilt over her. I prefer this one. It should have been this. They could have walked away, they could have tied themselves to the Veil, either way works.

Now, I am among those that think the Veil should have come down, which would have rendered this entire thing moot, had it happened. But since Bioware is dead-set on maintaining the status quo in Thedas, it should have been this instead.

In writing this I wonder if I've been completely delusional over their relationship, but going by the reactions to this ending, it seems that what we got was not at all expected.

[effervescentdragon]

a propos max's comment about having the wrong passport and the discourse about racism the other day;

okay so i didnt wanna answer these anons before because i didnt have the energy or the will to do it, i was having too much fun traipsing around munich, and i also didnt wanna keep dragging the outrage towards the blog of a person who started thag bcs some of yall are too comfortable being mean to people for any percieved slight and i didnt want to expose them to that but there are some things i wanna say.

my problem with the whole thing was that the commonly accepted and constantly reinforced idea of racism is very us-centric and does not apply to europe. as humpty dumpty once said, words only mean what i want them to mean and same word will be used in different socio-political-cultural contexts for different things, given that participants in the conversation are assumed to have the same background contextual knowledge as to why those words are used thusly. my issue stemmed from the fact that for usamericans, racism as they perceive and experience it trumps everything, and they are guilty of dismissing and mocking the very real existence of something we in europe like to call xenophobia, which all of those labeled immigrants have experienced. i believe it is laughable and deserving of mockery to come onto an european person's post and americasplain that actually no, white people dont experience discrimination. it comes feom an erroneous belief of what a "white person" is, relying on purely the colour of someone's skin. for example, in the early 20th century, irish immigrants were considered non-white in the us. race as such is a complicated construct, and definitions change through time, just like language does. you do everyone a disservice if you refuse to accept that the baseline of discrimination is power imbalance, and this power imbalance may come from many different origins and is dependent on the lens you're looking at it through. it can be class, nationality, ethnicity, race (in whichever way it's meant), sexuality, religion, gender, etc.

one of the things you learn as a linguistic student is that you have to be aware of the context of utterances at all times and that it does you no good to assume that your lived experience is important or impactful in any way to someone who is speaking and is not you. any generalisation or playing "me is woe-est" will only have you ridiculed (or blocked), because nobody takes kindly to their own experiences being invalidated or being told that there is only one way (of experiencing something, in this case opression) or the highway. developing critical thinking skills and the ability to listen to other people's experiences is crucial if you want to interact with the world as a whole. not everything is about you.

[sharpth1ng]

Ive already posted this in my server, so you may see it twice, but In case you don't see it there im posting it here too.

Im assuming most of you have seen the news about the us election. Honestly im feeling nothing less than devastated, and i would assume Americans are feeling ten times worse. Im so fucking sorry to you all, and I know that doesn't help at all. I feel angry, hopeless, and sad as fuck, and i dont know how to comfort anyone or advocate for the hope i think we deserve.

What I can do is remind you all who you come from.

Women, queer people, disabled people, indigenous people, black people, new immigrants- anyone who experiences marginalization- we have been through this before. Many times. So many lives have been unjustly lost and our rights have been trampled on over and over, and we shouldnt have to be dealing with any of that still in 2024. It feels insane that im even having to write this post right now.

But even with that crushing history, repeating itself over and over, we haven't been silenced. If anything we've gotten louder. We've been having mainstream conversations about oppression and liberation in the past few years that were completely undiscussed when I was a kid. The vocal support for trans people alone, even with the rise of transphobia, is unprecedented.

None of this is meant to tell you that it's alright, or that it's not that bad, because it is that bad. But what I'm telling you is that its been this bad before, only this time we're louder than we ever have been before and we'll be louder still next time. There are more of us than there ever have been before, and if they couldn't take us all out when there were fewer of us they wont manage it this time.

There were drag shows happening in gay bars when it was still illegal to be gay at all. There were Natives preserving language and knowledge out of residential schools, and black people inventing whole new types of art and resistance while they were still being actively enslaved, and those are just a few examples. The point is that we dont stop, we never have. We will keep making art, finding love, and joy, being fucking loud and fighting for each other.

It's ok to hurt, to be angry and scared. Let yourself feel all of those things because its the only rational response to this.

But don't let it shut you down. Your history is one of resilience, survival, and compassion. We're so much more than the oppression we face and we always have been.

Reach out to the people you love and tell them you fucking love them. Make plans to see them. Gather with your community and organize to support each other, find ways to protect each other, and above all else don't stop looking for joy. Don't stop making art. Don't stop showing compassion.

Solidarity is the most important thing we have right now, so don't give up on it.

I don't know how to close this message really, but i want to repeat I'm not telling you to have hope, I'm not telling you it's not so bad. What I am telling you is that you're stronger than you think. You come from strength, you come from people who faced odd that seemed insurmountable so that you could be here today.

If they couldn't take us out before they wont succeed now. We're only going to get louder, angrier and stronger. And when the tide swings back in the other direction, like it always has in the past, they better be fucking grateful that most of us will be fighting for equality instead of revenge.

[lettucedloophole]

Okay, so like, when people say "AMAB people are male socialized growing up," they're saying that generally speaking AMAB people are sorted into the Boy category and have Boy expectations placed upon them. Sometimes individuals may feel that they were socialized the opposite way instead for any number of reasons, and some feel they got a mix of both, or some other thing. Either way, "male socialization" and "female socialization" - the expectation to be a Boy and a Girl - is still a thing that exists. When I was not allowed to play with girl's toys as a kid, that was male socialization. It sucked! It wasn't good! It didn't make me a boy or program me to be a rapist like TERFs say it did, but it's a thing that happened, and that happened to others.

You bring up not classifying things by intent. I would personally argue, just speaking for myself, that's the more important thing for describing these phenomena, but even if we are focusing on what was absorbed, many trans wo/men grow up do end up repressing these parts of themselves and only rediscover them later, or are aware it sucks but tries to find space for themselves in the Boy category. That's still a significant segment of the transfem population that went through the same process the OP was describing where Boyism was internalized. And no one, other than TERFs, is saying that if a trans woman did internalize Boyism, that makes her evil, because my side of this discourse does not generally believe that Boy=Evil in the first place. Trans men can openly talk about many of them forced themselves to act like women because of the extreme demands placed upon them to do so because "woman" is not seen as The Oppressor, whereas if I'm like "I wanted to play with Barbies as a kid but I wasn't allowed to so I got real into the brands I had access to" I'm apparently sucking up to TERFs.

Again, not everyone experiences socialization the same way, individual experiences are important and you may feel you never once went through anything like that, but "male socialization" is a phrase for when that does happen, although also again, I personally prefer to use the socialization label for the expectations themselves more, and that's much more expansive.

i get what you're saying about socialization, the issue isn't that what you mean by male socialization hasn't been explained enough, it's an issue of if that's the most appropriate way to describe that process. regardless of the intent of some people, what i believe is a minority, i think when most people say trans women are male socialized they mean it in the terfy way, including trans people. i understand that one guy was trying to not seem that way, but still furthered a narrow view of trans women's upbringings. perhaps his posts would've been better if he left out the part that implied trans women as a whole don't experience female socialization pretransition (and had he not... kinda just flipped out on katra). most of what i was expressing was a disagreement on how the conversation was taking place, though i touched on my own skepticism of this amab=male socialization classification in my questions

i don't think you're sucking up to terfs, but i do think it was weird that you defended that guy and misrepresented what katra was saying and act like transmisogyny is not a prevalent issue in tme trans ppl. like in this ask where you say only terfs believe these things, respectfully i do not believe that is true...

i agree though that transfems who internalized that Boyism and tried to live within it, didn't know they were transfem or whatever til much later on are valid. you could describe me as a female-socialized transmasc nb who didn't have any early experience of transness or gnc-ity, so i'm not coming for anyone based on that.

as for what i think on socialization specifically, i'm unsure of the usefulness of your definition of male socialization when most people disagree with what socialization means, and i'm not reallyy convinced that there's an objective definition of male or female socialization historically you can fall back on to say how other people define it (like katra) is wrong. i think changing the name of male socialization as you define it to amab socialization would provide a bit of clarity for people who misinterpret the term and solve some of the issues people (fairly) have with it. more than that though, i wish my smart mutual had not deleted her post where she talked about their issues with gendered socialization being described in such binary terms because i think this conversation opened me up to the pitfalls of relying on binaries to discuss complex social processes. it lacks specificity and different people internalize different things, so it may be worth considering that male/female socialization are not as useful as terms as something like gendered socialization, patriarchal socialization, and cisnormative socialization, for example.

one conundrum that has also made me think this is that when a trans woman does something like sexual harrassment that's associated with being male, it's described as being because of male socialization (not by you but other ppl). but if a cis woman does the same, what is it then? she's still not considered "male socialized" but she was socialized under patriarchy (& often has other privileges but this isn't about that) like that trans woman, which was likely a factor in that behaviour. that's to say... i think talking about socialization as binary like this can fail to account for how gendered socialization can manifest in different ways. the cis woman was socialized to accept sexual harassment rather than distribute it, but (apart from her other privileges) she internalized gender in an unexpected manner.

another reason is that, it seems to me that people don't talk about other groups quite the same way. i haven't seen as many discussions of black or white socialization as i have racial socialization. i wonder if other fields have maybe already found out the pitfalls of binary specificity, or perhaps the difficulty is specific to gender.

[twopoppies]

https://www.tumblr.com/twopoppies/766240499903381504/httpswwwtumblrcomtwopoppies76623978351104819

For sure Harry invited her.. he wanted her to see most important part of his life live, because one wouldn’t get watching that on a digital device.. it feels superficial.. when he said “Do you see it now? addressing his therapist” it felt like they had conversations where his therapist asked him why he does certain things in a certain way and looks like he mentioned about how they’re all worth doing because it allows him to do his most favourite thing.. she also seemed like very a sensible person.. i don’t think i’ve ever seen her doing shit like posting photos with ‘styles 30’ shirt because it reaches more people except one video she spoken about him..

Absolutely. That "Now do you understand?" comment was huge.

Also, have you actually seen her talk about him? Or am I misunderstanding your comment?

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.

This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.

This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.

But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.

I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.

I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.

I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.

I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.

[commsroom]

something really gets to me about eiffel and hera talking to themselves while addressing each other - in am i alone now? and the watchtower in particular. i can't say this to you, but you're still the person i want to tell it to. i know there's no way you can hear me, but if you can...

eiffel talks to himself a lot, and he is very used to being alone with no one paying much attention to the things he says, so i'm not sure he ever realized exactly how much until he was on the hephaestus. in the early days of the mission, i imagine hera responded to a lot of eiffel's asides and sort of embarrassed them both. and then that sort of... shifted. their relationship shifted, they got comfortable being around each other, and eiffel's conversations with himself started including hera, too. i like the idea of that as an establishing moment: that, at some point, there was a first time eiffel said something in an empty room, and hera was so used to him talking to himself that she didn't realize it was meant for her, and he asked her, "hera? are you there?"

i imagine hera still talked to eiffel, too, when they all thought he was dead. with each day increasingly longer and more difficult, that she would vent her frustrations to the empty comms room the same way he would've encouraged her to when he was there. she can't talk to anyone the way she can talk to him, and they just... keep talking to each other, even when they can't. they are so much a part of each other, the voice of encouragement and comfort in each other's heads. for so long, all they can really do for each other is talk, and they maintain that connection even in absence. they ask each other "are you there?" like reaching for each other's hands in the dark.

[maeamian]

I understand why that person from the country of Georgia is mad that people aren't getting it right, but also the only part of their post that actually points out it is talking about the country rather than state is the flag that they use, they say "The place I live" which could be either, they talk about the legislature being lethally transphobic which could be either.

I can understand why the particular double name can cause a lot of frustration especially when you're trying to talk about something serious, but sometimes when there's communication problems between you and an audience they are partially your fault.

[movietonight]

While there are things to criticise mash for and those conversations are important to have some of what I read can be explained very easily by reminding yourself

It was a TV show

On a budget

From years ago

From America

Written by a variety of human writers

Who used characters and plots to tell stories

Within a certain number of minutes

[aho-dapa]

This fandom is honestly...

Like, there is something to be said about fandoms in general and how they've changed as a whole generally but

There's also something about how the acotar fandom is especially toxic like

The idea that a post is surprised a murder hasn't happened yet and I found myself agreeing??? Is honestly telling

Like, also. A massive part of this is shipping and maybe it's because I have my corner of this fandom, but even then shipping the "wrong" thing in general has become something I honestly have to take in consideration when thinking of my mental health and if I can personally be prepared for any backlash??

This fandom at large doesn't feel safe and that's majorly concerning tbh

Maybe instead of saying shippers as a group are doing harm, we should just disavow harmful actions in general and not be complicit in it idk???

[andragoras-in-vanity]

im convinced that people who actually want to live in cities and dont see the environmental and emotional trauma their inflicting on themselves by enabling those places to continue to grow have just the most severe brain damage

[bogunicorn]

i'm not a world politics expert by any means but it kinda feels like if you know that hamas' violence against civilians is unacceptable and horrific and needs to be stopped, it should be a quick mental jump from that to admitting that israel "fighting back" by doing worse to palestinian civilians is also unacceptable and horrific and needs to be stopped.

genocide is always wrong, violence against civilians is always wrong. but doing this "israel is fighting back against hamas, that's why it's okay that they're cracking down on gaza" song and dance is a disgusting reaction. if you can understand that american imperialism is wrong and often nurtures the very terrorists the US was supposedly there to stop by visiting horrors upon the civilians of the countries it invades and radicalizing them, then you also fundamentally understand why israel is responsible for hamas.

no reblogs and shit on this one, i'm not opening the floor for debate on whether or not it's proportional "retribution" to commit genocide, you can just block me. i have no delusions that this will meaningfully help anyone or anything, i just won't be considered a "safe" person for zionists.

[theghostofashton]

.