#and some things were contradictory

[tweedlebean]

Made that Sri Lankan egg curry from the Tik Tok. I have some complaints about how the recipe was written but it looks/smells pretty good!

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

We should talk more about the fact Jason got swarmed and attacked by a mob as Robin, like??? Hello. He had to be left there because the mob was too violent with Batman near. He had to be taken to the hospital.

Look at those injuries!!

The next time we see him he's forcing himself out of bed and putting on the Robin costume thinking "I've gotta do what I can to help, even if it kills me!"

The next next time we see him he has walked into yet another violent mob

I cannot stop thinking about this story and the effects it probably had on him honestly. Do you think it's made him nervous in crowds, do you think it made him trust others just that bit less. How long do you think he was being attacked before he was found, the scene had cleared. "I've gotta do what I can to help, even if it kills me!",,,,

Just the concept itself! I don't know about you guys but being attacked and grabbed and trampled into unconsciousness sounds absolutely terrifying! Did he black out, still getting hit, thinking he was going to die? Knowing he couldn't defend himself as his injuries to took their toll? At their complete mercy?

1986-87 Legends, issue #2 (the attack), #3 (the hospital), #5 (getting up), #6 (defending heros from another forming mob)

2010 DC Universe: Legacies, issue #6 (flashback panel to Legends moment)

[copepods]

i love suns and pebbles canon dynamic in my head its kind of weird and fucked up and i wish more people depicted it as that (tag ramble incoming)

[uncanny-tranny]

Part of me wants to empathize with the cishet man who is afraid to even appear gay. I think what the cishet man often fears by being seen as queer in dress, in mannerism, in taste, in speech, is that he fears his manhood will be stripped away, his humanity questioned. It's uncomfortable to think. It's uncomfortable to feel, and when you often don't face that for who you are, it feels even more biting. It feels like you have been stripped of a comfort you have had for decades, for your whole life, in one fell swoop.

It's certainly rooted in queerphobia, sure, but as a trans man? I would be lying by omission if I pretended like my own manhood wasn't questioned daily because of who I am, if I pretended like I haven't face violence for my manhood. I would be lying if I pretended like it's perfectly safe every time when people suspect I am queer (not even trans, but "just" queer).

[storywestistrash]

i am actually so tired of the way westerners treat eastern europeans

[deservedgrace]

i try to be quiet about this and just let people enjoy things but holy shit i wish people weren't so evangelical about astrology. and part of what makes it so frustrating is that it's something i want to like and have put effort into trying to like it because it's honestly really interesting to me as a concept. i'm not the most knowledgeable about it, but i know more than a layperson knows about it.

i call it evangelical because i see so many parallels between the way some people interact with astrology and evangelical christianity. the big ones are, if it doesn't make sense or work out for you it's because of a flaw within yourself, never the system (you have to read the bible in this way, with this context, with this interpretation, you have to pray to god to open your heart, did you actually read with an open heart? -> you have to look at your rising sign, you have to check if you have any stelliums, you have to have an accurate birth time, are you sure it's accurate? have you actually seen your birth certificate?), overly identifying with things as an excuse not to take accountability or grow (i'm just a sinner & i'll always be a sinner -> i'm toxic bc i'm a gemini tee hee), and a refusal to accept that they might be wrong or that it might not work out for everybody (everybody outside the church is evil and led by satan -> "that's such a capricorn thing to do!" "i lied about my sign i'm a libra" "oh my god that's such a libra thing to do with your indecisiveness!").

and obviously, they're different levels of harm and impact how widespread it is within communities, which is partially why i try to just shut up about it. but fuckin hell, some of y'all make it really difficult lmao.

[cent-scratchnsniff]

More sketchy employee profile images. Mostly made to be able to replace the picrew I had in the template I made since I can draw. I did end up just putting it as back and white though but the color is just nice to have. I'm STILL trying to tweak the template since it is very finicky and there is an example of what it looks down below if you're interested. It is a lot. It will happen. I am just not the quickest

There are typos and inconsistencies I missed but in general it should be fine...

[deerlisteners]

thinking abt how felix derides the blind loyalty & chivalry of dedue & ingrid but his loyalty is so integral to his character that if he defects from the faerghan army he becomes basically aimless and gets generally worse endings…. how he admits that he’s become exactly what he couldn’t bear to see in dimitri…………….. & thinking abt how he refuses to entertain the idea of the dead having any bearing on reality to dimitri & ingrid but then when dimitri dies in non-AM routes felix is always thinking abt him (“could i have saved him? could i have stopped him?” + wanting to avenge him etc.)…….. & thinking abt how he acts all standoffish & like he doesn’t care but he painstakingly adapts his fighting style to complement those of his friends to keep them safe…….. what CAN’T he do

[thedreadvampy]

sorry I'm on one now. Narnia is one of my Big Rant triggers.

but like. I would be lying if I said I didn't love Narnia

(everything except the Horse and His Boy, which a) even as a tiny kid made me uncomfortable with how fucking racist it is (literally there is ONE. ONE. character of colour who isn't evil, selfish, greedy and violent. even when you're 5 and white and don't really understand racism it's like. sorry there are just no nice people in this whole country? and every Narnian is lovely?) and b) is just fucking DULL partly bc of the 2 dimensional racist caricatures populating the world)

but I can't pretend for a second that it isn't specifically built around a Christian theology that's explicitly racist, hierarchical, supremacist, colonialist and The Bits I Like Least Of Anglicanism

and my FAVOURITE books in the series (except the Silver Chair which tbh is WAY less theological and way more mythology-nerd) are the first and last, which are by far the most explicitly Christian. even more so than TLTWATW.

and I can just about stand by the Magician's Nephew bc it's mostly just a mix of Christian creation myth and CS Lewis's sci fi interests in the esoteric and multiverses and it honestly feels fine. but my all time favourite most iconic Narnia book is The Last Battle and I just. cannot. justify it for a second from a political or philosophical standpoint.

it's got it all bc it's the book where Lewis is like ok hold up let me lay out explicitly what my theology is. and what he thinks it's important to say is:

Almost all Muslims are bad and evil

They worship Satan by doing Bad Evil Deeds to please him

There are a couple of Good Muslims who do good deeds. they need to be brought to the light, understand that the voice calling them to do good deeds is the Christian god, and they too can achieve the kingdom of heaven

Some people will use Christianity as a mask for exploitation and mistreatment. They are bad and their faith is false (ok fine)

...and they're doing that because they're CONSPIRING WITH THE EVIL MUSLIMS TO OPPRESS GOOD CHRISTIANS

...and THAT'S THE ONLY REASON ANYONE WOULD TELL YOU THAT GOD AND ALLAH ARE DIFFERENT NAMES FOR THE SAME GOD. because they're either conning you or because they've been misled and can't really think for themselves.

DID I MENTION. THAT MUSLIMS ARE EVIL AND TRYING TO BRING DOWN CHRISTIANS.

and other than the GOD AREN'T MUSLIMS JUST THE WORST of it all, he also goes back over to more fully explain several points he's made throughout the series, such as:

white Christian public school kids are the god ordained leaders of the world and attempts to think otherwise are heretical

god places people where they need to be to serve his purpose

free will is largely an illusion - your only choice is faith or chaos, and as a godly person your actions are preordained

the problem is though. he's kind of a really good character writer? and in The Last Battle he pulls out most of his best classics (hi Reepicheep! hi Frank! hi Jill!) and gives us a whole wealth of really fun new characters (Tirian and Jewel, Emeth, Puzzle, Shift, Griffle and Ginger are all just SO FUN) and it's such a solid adventure. for me it's hands down the most FUN Narnia to read and an effective and affecting end to the series.

but like. god its unjustifiably fucked philosophy is baked into every single character and event. it's so hard to ignore. it's my favourite book in the series. it's the book that makes me angriest. it's everything right with Narnia and everything wrong with Narnia. I like it cause it asks me to engage critically with Lewis' philosophy and I hate it cause it requires me to engage critically with Lewis' philosophy.

in conclusion, Narnia is a land of contrasts. also occasionally brownface.

[fu-si-un]

i think that christianity (as presented in the text of the gospels, anyway) and i have irreconcilable differences after all. there are pieces that still resonate with me and maybe always will. but there are also pieces that are jarringly wrong to me. & i have no logical way of separating out the bad pieces from who jesus may have been and what he represents within christianity, when the gospels represent many of those pieces as things that he said.

[commanderfreddy]

i never remember to explain shit anymore i just vaguepost and expect people to catch up but i finally have good news, we've made a lot of progress with my parents' estate (they both ran their own businesses and you know those images of nightmare cable management? well imagine that with bank accounts) and i actually have money now - im taking a trip to Aotearoa NZ with my mate Jules next week (dark sky reserve! lotr filming locations! snow! FOOD!) and then in august i will be moving to nyc to pursue a 2 year masters degree in library science with a focus on rare materials archival studies!! shits happening in my life!! im not just sitting in my house doing nothing all day!! and like i said i have money!! if you're taking commissions lmk bc while im focused on my getaway for the next few weeks i wanna support my friends and their art and when i get back i wanna throw u cash to draw my ocs!!

[burinazar]

recently i've switched back to browsing the twitter feed of my old main acct since i had the impression the accts i followed there were more serious/political and would have more gaza info. and weirdly that isn't true? for some reason currently the feed on my fandom account (which has become my main at this point) has a lot more?....but what they *do* have on the old one's feed is tons of gender discourse stuff that make me feel stressed and bad

[pyreshe]

truly wild how many of us were gaslit into believing the world-building in h*rry p*tter was good.

[lord-squiggletits]

Ahhhhh I really didn't imagine it, I still dislike Barber's way of writing Orion/Optimus just as much as I did on the first reading and all it took was rereading a few screencaps from one specific scene.

Literally I don't know which part annoys me more: Jetfire existing in the background solely to go "ORION PAX FUCKING SUCKS AND IS A HYPOCRITE", Orion being written like an edgy asshole who hates everyone, or Soundwave talking like an unhinged terrorist and the narrative expecting me to see Orion as the hypocrite for using violence to arrest terrorists.

Soundwave is seriously like "You have no proof we assassinated the Senate, but if we did assassinate the Senate it would've been justified, but also totally trust us bro, just because we could've hypothetically murdered the entire reigning government doesn't mean that we're violent bro come on just bc we assassinated-- I mean could have hypothetically had the means and cause to kill like a hundred people doesn't mean we were gonna kill anyone else, come on bro why are you calling us violent just bc we think some murder is okay" while Jetfire is in the background like "WOW ORION I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE WILLING TO BE VIOLENT IN RESPONSE TO OTHER PEOPLE BEING VIOLENT. YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR OWN SIDE'S FLAWS EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE LITERALLY DOING AN INVESTIGATION TO DECIDE WHETHER ONE OF YOUR COPS COMMITTED AN UNJUSTIFIED KILLING OR NOT. YOU HAVE DONE LITERALLY NOTHING TO TRY AND FIGHT THE CORRUPTION IN SOCIETY." (Jetfire had no way of knowing about OP and crew fighting the Senate's schemes in Shadowplay and Elegant Chaos, but as a reader it's very frustrating seeing Orion getting lambasted as never having done anything to fight society's corruption when he literally did, and by the time he was even working for Zeta Megatron was already evil and had the whole Senate assassinated.)

Like ughhhh oh my god I could have maybe enjoyed this story under a better writer but as it's written it's some "yet you participate in society, curious" levels of political commentary where at least one character seemingly only exists in the scene to shit on OP (something that happens a lot in Barber's works, like with Pyra Magna and Slide) and where OP is framed as a hypocritical asshole for a reaction that's very understandable given the context.

And also it's weird because Barber wants so badly for you to read Orion as some sort of hypocrite for being against terrorist activities but being willing to employ violence himself to arrest terrorists, yet... it turns out the big twist of the story is that the Decepticons WERE smuggling weapons and Soundwave DID lie to Orion (even if it was unintentionally), thus vindicating Orion's entire distrustful attitude? Like, it seems as if it was supposed to be an ACAB story showing how evil the police are for killing people and how Orion (as a cop) is evil for being a cop that uses violence on behalf of the state. Except uh. Then Barber wrote a plot where the Decepticons literally were smuggling weapons all along (and this is alongside lore from Megatron: Origin where we as the readers know for a fact the Decepticons/Starscream killed the Senate) so.... Like, it just seems to me that if Barber wanted to write an ACAB story about how the state monopoly on violence is bad, he probably shouldn't have written the Decepticons as actually being terrorists who literally did lie about smuggling weapons?

I feel like a better way to write an ACAB/anti-state-monopoly-on-violence would've been to like, explore the way that states take advantage of catastrophe/using scapegoat political movements to gather more power to themselves and justify removing citizens' rights with "it's an emergency, we're taking away your freedoms to protect everyone." Like, maybe Zeta passes some law saying that officers can search citizens without a warrant, which he justifies with the fact that Decepticon terrorism is so rampant that officers need immediate permission to conduct raids/searches. Except this is obviously a problem because people have a right to privacy, and probably the cops are super overzealous and end up arresting innocent people without cause (like idk, maybe just being friends with someone who is sympathetic to the Decepticons gets someone landed in jail? Maybe Jetfire gets arrested bc he's critical of the state and has hung out with Decepticon sympathizers before). So then Orion has an actual "are we the baddies?" moment where he wants to stop the bad people, but he realizes that his side are infringing on people's citizens and justifying police brutality for the sake of a nebulous "greater good," and that even though he and his cops were given greater power to supposedly "protect citizens," in practice they're actually doing great harm to citizens by invading their privacy, creating a surveillance state, and imprisoning people without just cause? Basically "we were given this power to stop terrorists from hurting civilians, but now we're hurting civilians too so are we actually doing any good?" Because that way Orion and his cops would ACTUALLY be in the wrong and their state monopoly on violence would be an actually widespread institutional thing where they're clearly being allowed to do bad things just because they're cops. Not just Orion investigating one singular police killing.

But with the story written as "Orion suspected the Decepticons of murdering the Senate (he's correct about this) but still investigated one of his officers to see if he committed a wrongful murder (literally him paying attention to his own side's wrongdoings, Jetfire), and it turns out the Decepticons WERE smuggling weapons and doing terrorism (Orion was correct about this)" it's just.......... like, Orion may not be morally correct, but his hunches/investigations about the suspected criminal activity were literally correct. AND HE WAS WILLING TO DO THIS INVESTIGATION IN THE FIRST PLACE. But for some reason he's still framed as if he's an asshole for this? Even though this is a point in the pre-war lore where Megatron won't back down from violence and has lost his way from his original pure intentions, so it's not like Orion can just go "let's put down our weapons and be friends and mutually trust each other to not stab each other in the back."

It just feels as if Barber's intentions to write an ACAB story where Orion is framed as being too judgmental and quick to be violent don't line up with the actual events of the story. The story is desperately trying to call Orion a hypocrite, but he really just seems as if he's reacting understandably to the events that are happening around him, so there's a real dissonance here where I don't understand why the ACAB story had the cops be right about the Decepticons committing terrorism, and I'm also supposed to see Orion as an asshole for correctly not trusting the Decepticons???

[little-klng]

Contradicting identities absolutely bangs btw. Sexual, romantic, and gender identities all bang in every combination even when they're contradicting. I think it's supremely cool when someone has a sexual and romantic identity that are opposites and a gender that doesn't match and then different pronouns on top of that. Shout out to conflicting queers and queers using their own slurs as identities

[beesarthur]

ok friends, how do i make my way into the one career i was born to (continuity checker for a long-running tv show)???