#and they have very specific contexts

[egophiliac]

crossing my fingers and wishing upon every star that chapter 10 finally brings us the tweel cards 🤞🤞

[euphietea]

I'm about to be very autistic about words here and yap so I'll put my mini-essay under a cut

The more romantic definition for it that I have is that despite everything, you will give this person your love. You love them for them and nothing else. It's not transactional and thus you don't need to 'prove' you are a worthy lover. If someone loves you for you, what you provide is yourself and what your partner provides is themself. To me, this is just love.

The 'unconditional' part I am conflicted on how to interpret. Does it mean staying with a friend or lover or family member no matter what? Even if it crosses you boundaries? Even if there is no room for change? Or does it mean you still care for that person for who they are at their core even if you go separate ways? I'm not quite sure.

To me, love should be conditional but not as a bargaining chip (ie. should not be "i will love you if you do/are/act like x, y, z"). If someone treats you in ways you do not like, you can still love them and try to solve that issue. However, if the issue persists or there is no care to you, your boundaries, or to your wellbeing, then it is alright to separate. You can still love someone for who they are and recognize they aren't healthy to be around. Does this make it conditional, then?

I think the main separating point, and perhaps point of trauma for myself, is that I've only heard of 'unconditional love' from the stand point of ill-intent within tangible relationships. It is used as an excuse to not take accountability. "If you love me unconditionally, you'll stay with me" or "If you love me unconditionally, then why do I need to change?"

If I love someone, why does that mean I should put up with them treating me poorly? I can love someone and not tolerate their actions or wish to leave them. If they view love as sticking together through it all, then yes my love is conditional. But to me, unconditional love is an appreciation for the person at their core and accepting their vices, but understanding that their faults are not compatible with me or tolerable.

'Unconditional' is the emotional and mental aspect to it, not the tangible connected relationship between two people. It can be one sided. You don't need to be in a tangible/contactable relationship of any degree (familial, platonic, romantic, etc) to accept a person wholly.

i have a question for everyone: what—to you—does unconditional love mean and/or look like?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Quest Continues...

(part 1- part 2)

[demigod-shenanigans]

Thinking about ambrosia not working for Jason Grace in Blood of Olympus because he hasn’t figured out where he belongs and who he wants to be yet. Thinking about him figuring it out, and, before anything else he decides to be, him stating that his home is wherever Piper and Leo are.

Thinking about him taking ambrosia after the Gaia fight, not sure if it will even work. Thinking maybe it’ll be a mix of his favorite foods from CHB and Camp Jupiter, or maybe that it’ll switch.

Thinking about Jason, utterly devastated about what happened to Leo, taking ambrosia for the first time in ages, and it does work, but instead of tasting like any of the foods from either camp it tastes like the tacos Leo made for them on that first mission in the sewer.

[prolibytherium]

Just in general I think trying to look to pre-late modern period history for validation of LGBT+ identities is an absolutely useless venture. Every single underlying human experience defined through the lens and framework of LGBT identity has always existed, but it's impossible to pin down Exactly who and what a figure might have been if they existed in this contemporary context and decided to self identify via these labels.

It's also a wildly reductive lens that flattens the complexity and variety of how sex and gender has been constructed across time in different cultures, how sexual norms have varied, etc. This is not a constructive approach to learn about history and you're never going to be able to fit historical figures neatly into little identity categories.

[hydrachea]

Explorers of Sky is a good game.

[fluentisonus]

[its-wabby-stuff]

Mikey Goes To Oz

<Time spent: 49 hours 17 minutes>

When Mikey takes some time away from a loud family squabble he accidentally ends up getting “flushed” down the sewers. This winds up sending him to the colorful land of Oz where he meets a good witch, a wicked witch, a brainless scarecrow, a heartless Tinman, a cowardess lion, and a powerful wizard, all disguised behind very familiar faces.

A canon adjacent spin off set before the season one finale but after they discover Splinter is Lou Jitsu

I wanted to fit each of the boys into their “you’ve had this all along” category. Leo isn’t brainless, in fact he’s pretty clever with a street smart, people reading ability on par with Donnie’s intelligence. Donnie isn’t heartless, he just has a tough time expressing his feelings. They are complex and unalgorithic but he can get just as excited or sad or angry as anyone, as much as he may deny it. Raph isn’t a coward, but being brave sometimes means admitting you’re scared and that you maybe don’t have all the answers. You dont have to be strong all the time and you don’t have to do it by yourself.

In the movie Dorothy’s journey home is also a representation of her running away. The important thing was to remember there were people who cared about her. Mikey is experiencing a similar phenomenon, wanting the escape the bad vibes in the lair. His “you’ve had it all along” is interesting because it is an object, since the Ruby kneepads could’ve taken him home the whole time. And sometimes getting home means going on a journey only to realize you never left.

I put April as Glinda because Glinda appears as a defender of the weak, and I see April in a similar light. Always willing to help and beat someone up if it is so required. Splinter as The Wizard of Oz represents Splinters own willingness to hide behind different personas, his running from the past and the pulling back of the curtain for Mikey in timeline. The Wizard grows through the movie, albeit quickly, and ends up leaving Oz to go home leaving his legacy with the scarecrow, the Tinman, and the lion. In this case the passing of the baton to his sons.

Meanwhile Draxum as the wicked witch felt much more how Mikey sees Draxum at this time in the show, mostly just an antagonistic force who wants something from them. Fun fact: I imagine throughout this dream, Draxum is uninterested in being the wicked witch but is pressed into it via plot. Hence his disinterest in being “melted.”

Additional characters not pictured: Big Mama as the Wicked Witch of the East (those were her Ruby kneepads!!) and Todd as the Mayor of Munchkin Land. If you can think of more, feel free to leave them in the comments or tags.

[pbnmj]

i deserve a spider-woman nepal..... miles doesn't have to be the only teen spider with a terrible bisexual mentor (enter my own sketches of the world's most annoying spiderperson, who i fling towards pavitr, complete with a design that's subject to change)

[necrotic-nephilim]

If you want to be bothered. Maybe this for dick and Bruce???

i ALWAYS want to be bothered these are always the highlight of my day tbh you're a delight for letting me just yap <3

Dick. For the canon isn't real square I am Specifically talking about the Tom Taylor Nightwing run. Usually I ignore bad runs but given this one is ongoing (though about to end THANK GOD and get replaced by Dan Watters who i have high hopes for since i adored his Sword of Azrael (2022) run but i digress) so I counted it. Especially since it's so debated if that run is bad or not, for some reason. I'm a 90s Nightwing truther. I love Dick so dearly and tbh recently I've been more enamored with him the more I read his Discowing era, I didn't used to be as big of a Dick stan as I am these days.

Bruce. Honestly where do you even start with Bruce. I want to fist fight him and also patch him up. He got me into comics and superheroes as a whole but I roll my eyes whenever he shows up in a story. He's a bastard and usually not a good father but also complex and should be dissected under a magnifying glass. I love him dearly. He's also just the worst. I think that's why I love him. I'm always a fan of unabashedly Complicated Asshole Bruce who's generally not always the best person, particularly not to the Batfamily and that being the driving force of his relationships with them, especially in shipping.

And for bonus points, Tim. Because know above all else, I'm a Tim Drake kinnie /deg. He's been my number one for a decade and I've yet to uproot him from my brain. He's literally the Worst half the time and I love him for it. And the canon isn't real refers to Tim Drake: Robin because... that sure was a comic. And that's about all I can say about it. Pre-Flashpoint Tim I miss you so dearly. I think it's fun that I want to put him in a blender and drink the juice but also want Nothing Ever to happen to him.

[sirlancenotalot]

the fact that people still use the "no one would talk to a friend that way" "no one would grieve for someone like that if it was just platonic" etc arguments to prove a ship is canon is so annoying to me. yes i get it, we got queerbaited hard but where does it say that romance has to be higher than a friendship or no one said friends couldn't also be lovers or vice versa....? i normally say "popular media tropes that usually are for romance" when i talk about fiction but pulling a blanket statement like "NO ONE talks to a friend that way" is so invalidating to so much of our queer experiences. the beauty of queer friendship literally lies in the emotional fulfilment we get from our friends in a way that i don't normally see in cishet friendships for whatever reasons. so idk it's just been bothering me to see these kinds of posts every now and then. "you wouldn't do [x] for your friends" i would actually. i would sell my soul for them. i would kill for them and kill myself for them. i would do anything for my friends that i would do for a partner. the "proof" for a ship doesn't have to be by invalidating their friendship. also like aren't most of the ships so powerful when they're also each other's closest friends? do y'all not think of your partners as your best friends?

[wheelie-sick]

the dinner I made last night was so good I actually braved eating leftovers and they had rice

[prolibytherium]

There's a LOT of things people do wrong when constructing fantasy beliefs in pantheons of gods, but one of the more specific is having only one god related to fertility and it kind of being just a horny sex thing.

Like you'll have one in the entire bunch whose sphere is listed as fertility and it's basically like Yeah this is the sex one. She's always depicted naked (but not TOO naked because censorship and/or the writer's own skittishness). She's going to have the exact body type epitomized in contemporary western beauty standards and there's usually no chance in hell that she's gonna be fat (unless MAYBE they're referencing 'venus' figurines). Her thing is fertility, which means having sex and making babies. Might be a goddess of beauty or love or marriage too, because these are kinda sex things, but that's probably it. And yeah that sort of thing is virtually nonexistent in real life.

Like the concept of fertility is so fundamentally important to the function of most societies in human history in ways that it is just Not in industrialized imperial core countries. Most people are getting food from stores, and not having to worry about harvesting crops or breeding livestock or foraging for food or having enough animals to hunt, so fertility only really comes up as a concern if you're trying to have kids (and there is certainly societal pressure to have children, but your wellbeing and survival is rarely going to Depend on it). And I think writing only from that perspective and not even trying to learn about WHY fertility is so conceptually important is why you see this trend.

There's no absolute universal statement about how people believe in gods but it's broadly accurate that systems with many deities will Usually have more than one deity associated with fertility, and these associations will certainly include human reproduction but also the fertility of livestock/hunted animals, plants, the land itself.

Some fertility deities may also be heavily associated with seasonal changes or environmental factors that agriculture or foraging is dependent on (spring/summer/fall, seasonal rains, seasonal flooding, rain itself, sunlight, good soil, rivers, wetlands, etc). Some certainly might be related to love, marriage, sex, and beauty, but that's VERY RARELY going to be the sole way the concept of fertility is embodied. And they'll often will have other associations not directly about fertility, or related to fertility in culturally specific ways.

[justafriendofxanders]

it is a little bit wild that by virtue of ats s5 being the last canon tv installment of the buffyverse, spike and angel's arcs culminate in... each other. like spike isn't allowed to rest after his sacrifice because the network needs to pull more viewers his new hero status has to be put to the test against angel. angel can't comfortably rest on his laurels as the vampire with the soul because spike is there. their arcs with buffy shape them into the people they eventually become, but canon deliberately leaves the future of those relationships ambiguous! ats is where they go to figure out how to lead lives without buffy but with the other vampire-with-a-soul in them. and i don't even mean this in the way where spike/angel is somehow more meaningful or romantically endgame than their other relationships, i just mean like... those two old dudes are never gonna escape each other, for better or for worse. like there's literally a whole prophecy to that effect. wild stuff.

[spliqi]

higuchi thoughts of the day: as much as i love the idea of her having some devastatingly destructive ability… her having a healing/support ability would explain so much of her character. like. her high ranking in the mafia despite (as far as we know) not being extraordinarily strong. her assignment to akutagawa + his resentment of her + her being so overprotective of him. the irl author’s connection to mori and yosano. dw about it

[tangledinink]

Out of curiosity, do you think your Gemini fan kids could exist in the shows canon universe? Marsh and Lake are seriously so adorable I’ve low key accepted as Donnie’s kids in the shows future canon. Also how does the krang apocalypse play out in the Gemini AU? Is it prevented or is there maybe Gemini bad timeline?

Gosh, I dunno-- I guess I don't see why not! :3c I hadn't ever thought about it too much, but there really isn't a ton of reason that they couldn't, assuming Donnie and Sorrel still meet!

Also, there are Kraang in the Gemiverse! I haven't exactly sorted out all the details yet, but what I do know is that there's no good future/bad future... there's just one timeline! The Kraang do invade and Gems and Co. do kick it in the Apocalyptic Warzone for a while... but the whole fam survives and they do eventually win the war!!! (because anything else made me too sad ; w ; and I realized at some point that it's my au so i can just do whatever I want :D yay)