#and to spark a discussion

[notsobravetoaster]

While I agree they should've told us, I'm not surprised at all that they didn't. You're supposed to build anticipation not kill it so why mention something your product doesn't have after all. But since the game is out, now would be a good time to do it

Ok I wanted to do it for quite some time now

Those are all I could think about/saw people throw around. I could easily talk more in depth about each one, so if you're not sure what I mean, don't hesitate to ask. I can't add more answers, so if u have other theories or believe it's multiple reasons, feel free to share them in the tags 👇👇

Reblogs for a bigger sample size will be appreciated 🙏

[fleabagdiaz]

boat show remains awesome btw. john stamos had two boyfriends + autobrewery syndrome and a gay couple ate so many yams they almost died and the one straight couple on the boat birthed a giant premature baby to bob the drag queen performing I’m coming out. and they’re literally doing a slow burn will-they/won’t-they throuple.

[stopper-my-heart]

Just look at Charlie's brain overloading from trying to cope with Nick being visibly romantically affectionate in front of people they know for the first time while also trying to pay attention to literally anything else

- and Nick realising and enjoying it.

Bonus: When Charlie gives up and gets lost in returning the adoring gaze, it makes Nick want to kiss him (lip staring intensifies)

Bonus bonus:

Charlie's brain

[spark-circuit]

(said in Wise's voice) "Maybe it was a mistake letting Anby borrow our subscription password for that movie..."

[sportsthoughts]

Day 54 of offseason gifs - In The Room S04E05

[arithmonym]

necro-cav pairs on tandem bikes. thank you for your consideration 🙏

[crownedwille]

I don't know if it needs to be said but I'm gonna say it anyway - you guys do know there's nothing wrong with making Wille the top and Simon mainly the bottom in sexual scenarios, right? And that making them verse or Wille bottom has nothing to do with making them more equal and you don't need to do that as like a way to balance out their class/power differences outside, right?

And topping or bottoming are not synonyms for being dominant or submissive. And when I say they have no drawn out power dynamics in their intimate scenes that means there are no real dom/sub dynamics involved but that doesn't mean you can't have a bottom or a top because that's not the same.

Of course you can write or read whatever you want and just have a personal preference but you don't have to try and read into their scenes for proof they are versatile and oh so equal and purposefully search for clues that make Simon not the bottom because it would be degrading if he is...? Like what are you trying to prove - that Simon is also strong and 'manly' and it can't be implied that he exclusively is the bottom and likes getting fucked bc that would be disrespecting him? Isn't that kind of the exact mindset trap you're trying not to fall into?

I just want to emphasise this in case people think this - you're not taking Simon's power and agency away from him if you're making him bottom.

To sum it up, wilmon have no pronounced dom/sub dynamic and they can both surrender to the other in different ways but I do believe there is a certain position preference and it's okay if Wille is more the top (that's just my conclusion from watching/analysing their intimate scenes) and no it doesn't mean they can't ever switch bc it's not that deep but I still think canon tells us a different story than what some people desperately want to make it out to be and whatever they get up to in their sex life has nothing to do with being more or less equal or healthy outside of it.

[aroaceleovaldez]

Something something Jason feeling like he doesn't quite fit as "Greek" or "Roman" as a metaphor for bisexuality, particularly the semi-canonical bi-coding in his half of experiences during the Cupid scene and how Favonius and Cupid speak to him in parallel to the scenes confirming Nico is gay.

Something something the camps as metaphors for traditionally acceptable forms of relationships and Nico living as a rogue outside of them, rejecting expectation (ergo in himself representing a metaphor of queer identity and living outside of boxes and defined/usually hetero-allonormative/binary ideas of what love/relationships should look like) versus Jason struggling with the expectation to conform to a label and even discussing with Nico both of them remaining at CHB together.

Something something the inverse of Jason shifting away from the camps after he breaks up with Piper, feeling lost and unable to find a place between the camps as he begins to explore his queer identity properly for the first time versus Nico only remaining at CHB because he has entered a relationship. In this essay I will-

[anticanonhearts]

told my friend about christian linke calling viktor asexual. rightfully, they replied, "but... you can tell, his eyes, he has so much... desire."

i've seen other posts similar to this, so it was interesting they had the same reaction, but i really like that word in particular.

desire.

[every-kakashi]

[velociraptorsaurusrex]

forgive me if this exact posts exists somewhere already I feel like it certainly could. but the thing about dtamhd is that the fantasy of removing the heart is not actually “violent.” he removes a man’s heart but does it with no great force; the man does not die or even react; there is a stillness and peace and even gentleness to that scene. I just do not believe Dennis engages with this fantasy on the level of “violence.”

by the same token Dennis does not see remaking & strictly controlling & criticizing the self as “violent” — he sees these things through a clinical lens, with a sense of cold necessity, and even with that gentleness — it’s what needs to be done, and it’s a kindness to do it. he additionally does not truly have a “beauty is pain/suffering” mindset because he perceives the control, restriction, & criticality, again, not as violence — but in this case a more neutral type of “effort.” he believes successfully performing this “effort” begets the “reward” of beauty/perfection.

in conclusion I ultimately do not believe dtamhd serves as definite evidence that Dennis relishes in the fantasy of or materially desires violence, because in his mind it is not “violence” the way we perceive it.

[gingermintpepper]

There is a distressing amount of Achilles content on my dashboard this morning. Universe, tumblr gods, friends of the state and those abandoned by it, please explain this to me.

[deoidesign]

something that makes me sad is when people tell me the healthy communication in my writing is "unrealistic."

like guys this is how me and my partner talk with eachother... I'm writing from personal experience...

[mephistopheleswasrobbed]

I've noticed something in the general discussions around Bromance on multiple platforms lately that really rubs me the wrong way. Why do we keep defaulting bromance characters who are otherwise NOT shown to be in a romantic/sexual relationship with anyone, or even those that are shown in some sort of connection with another person of a different gender but who ultimately don't end the story in a heterosexual relationship, characters who NEVER make any definitive statement regarding their sexuality, as heterosexual?

Why are the only options in our discussions BL(/GL) or everyone is heterosexual ? (And really this goes further than just bromance. I've also seen this happen with stories that have no romantic storylines at all.)

Having a deep and meaningful but platonic connection with a friend of the same gender doesn't disqualify one from queerness, right?

This is probably related to the general tendency that unfortunately still exists in both media and the real world of treating people as straight unless proven otherwise. But that feels especially weird to me in spaces where the possibility of queerness should be on people's minds? Idk this has been bugging me.

[misscammiedawn]

"Your mind makes it real"

So I was watching the new Folding Ideas video on meme stock and how a cult formed around a number of ideologies regarding financial systems and short selling.

I like watching videos like this. Dan Olsen does a number of good videos on different online conspiracies such as Flat Earth and NFTs and then you have HBomb doing the same thing with anything from Colecovision to the war on christmas and alt right grifts.

And whenever I research these sociological trends I become uncomfortably aware of the fact that I exist within one of these little closed circles. (Well, more than one given the communities and support groups around psychology and mental health, but I'm here to talk about Kink today)

Hypnosis, especially within our community, is entirely held up by a series of beliefs with an internal language that creates a massive divide between those in the know and those out of the know and it literally only works because we believe it works.

In many ways what we do is as much sociology as it is psychology.

And I kind of that it's okay for that to be true so long as we all occasionally remind ourselves of that fact and never abuse the power we each possess as authors of that shared narrative, because much like under hypnosis our hypnotees are suggestible and need to have care in what we provide to their open mind, educators within the community have an eager and open audience that stretches further than we know and regardless of intent, our beliefs and teachings will become their facts and reality as surely as had we have programmed a hypnotee to believe them as they wake on the count of 1--2--3!

Okay. Let me break this up a little.

Does this mean I think hypnosis is fake and we're all just going along with it?

One of my partners and I have had conversations about subjectivity in both hypnosis and mental health spaces before and we hate that one of the most approachable quotes comes from an author that leaves a bad taste in our mouths.

"Of course it's all happening in your head [...] why on Earth should that mean it's not real?"

One of the big differences between the online erotic hypnosis community and the NGH (National Guild of Hypnotists) who rue our existence is that we do not require legitimacy to function when they themselves exist in a half-truth state where when receiving both of my certifications it was impressed that we needed to perform an uneasy dance of providing services without practicing medicine because hypnotherapy is not licensed psychology in the same was that chiropractors are not performing medicine.

Within *certain portions* of hypnokink we are perfectly okay with the idea of being wrong and of sharing ideas.

Wiseguy said it best in his class "The best induction is the one that works" and what works works because it is effective in that moment between that particular hypnotist and that particular hypnotee.

Likewise, the more educated a person becomes, the more effective hypnosis becomes. Understanding trance is a tool to achieve it faster. Even a cold hypnotee who is being introduced for the first time receives an education via pre-talk which we tend to believe is more important than the induction itself.

You know what I mean when I talk about pretalk, right?

"We all go in and out of hypnosis multiple times a day" "Highway hypnosis" "Flow state"

These are all real and observable things and we can view hypnosis impacting a mind on an EEG.

Hell even Oh No Ross and Carrie (a podcast where they join insular communities with intent to learn if they are cults/grifts) did an episode on hypnosis and conceded that the principals of suggestibility, hypnotic state and conditioning are all just... how the brain works... and that you can't really dive into fact/fiction when it's essentially telling a person to do something and they either do it or they don't.

It's not mind control. It's suggestion and even within our circles we all agree that mind control is a fantasy.

So I guess... it's as real as we all agree it to be.

The issue is that group agreement of all the little elements is held up by The Community as a whole and... maybe we should talk about the vulnerabilities at play there.

What do I mean when I talk about insular communities?

Recently I read a REALLY good line on a quote on Twitter that speaks to what I mean here:

And this is what I mean when I talk about belief systems inside and outside of the community. It's a good post as I firmly agree with what it communicates.

The Online Hypnosis Community is a term with no specific borders. In my reality it's the orbit that happens to take place around those who are known, trusted and teach at the primary US erotic hypnosis convention circuit.

However I know that in reality the online hypnosis community contains multiple pools and factions that I either strictly ignore, such as ones surrounding dangerous figures like NeuralNets and Nimja or ones I am not close to, like local kink scenes for cities across the world including those where English is not a first language or mlm communities where I do not really have a place, to niche pockets such as the furry hypnosis community, dronekink and even the tiny little subniches such as Empty Spaces and HDG which have splintered off into entire little separate universes with their own language and core beliefs.

For the most part this is a beautiful thing. What I'm describing is no less a divide between interests as being a member of the "Video game horror" scene and not visiting the niches of Indie Game Horror, Japanese Horror, creepypasta mods and such.

Every community has pockets like this.

But the more specific and tight a community becomes, the more "insular" it is. Language and widely held beliefs begin to gather in tighter pressurized windows. One need only look at how brainwashing and conditioning are viewed collectively in darker corners to see the difference and this is to make nothing of things like political and social beliefs in certain corners.

In those dark corners "You can't be hypnotized to do anything you don't want to do" is an essential lie WITHIN their insular community so that they can maintain a degree of plausible deniability and power over their people.

So what's your point?

That is the question, isn't it?

I guess the answer to that is... "always question what you believe, why you believe it and don't assume everyone around you does or should think the same thing."

When discussing red flags in the community on Discord and Twitter with other educators, I've always said the biggest red flag an educator can have is teaching that there is believing they have all the answers.

ALL OF US are working in this space from a belief system. An organic and living one which is impacted by our interactions with the kink, with one another and with the world around us.

No one individual in our community holds all the answers. Not me, not the authors of the manuals that we push, not Richard Nongard, Milton Erickson.

It also means we need not be defensive about our hobby and beliefs. Many will never accept what we do as actually having any basis in reality and that's okay. We're making spaces for play and some will just see us as overactive roleplayers who are tricking ourselves into believing things and to that I always say:

"You're dang right we are. That's the point."

It's not magic. It's not hard science. It's just belief, confidence and a willing to play along.

I could bust out the EKG studies or describe the altered states of consciousness and I will ALWAYS preach how suggestible a person is in and out of hypnosis and the dangers of what we do because those dangers are real and present. But at the end of the day, I want to take a moment and evaluate "what if I'm wrong?"

And the correct answer to that is "will I or someone else be hurt by my ignorance or misaction" and act accordingly.

But that's me. That's my belief system and I am aware of the fact that what we do is entirely built upon our belief that it works and that we are being safe and sane and fun.

That doesn't make me right. That doesn't mean I didn't learn some bad lessons.

It just means I want to keep doing better and I trust that the people around me are all doing the same. With hope of growing. Learning more about individuals and the community as a whole and trying to make this place better.

Because... if I stand in front of a room and teach a class that carries some bad ideas. They'll take seed.

And let me tell you something...

This community is FULL of bad ideas

I've been here since the early days. I was there when Warp My Mind and Wendi.com were the two sites that popped up when you went searching for files. I was there during the implosion of Inraptured and the transphobic meltdown of Isabella Valentine. I have witnessed hypnocon board after hypnocon board fall apart. I've seen scandals and dramas and chaos.

I was there when Bimbopolitic was outed as a CIA plant for fucks sake. Please don't ask follow-up questions. My head is still spinning from that saga of events.

and that inevitably means I have internalized some dumb shit in my day. I've been unlearning it as much as I can over the past 5-6 years. But it's there.

Likewise a lot of the books I read and grew up on are based on the beliefs of less than wonderful human beings. Milton Erickson is no rolemodel, but damned if his theories aren't worth looking at.

This is one thing I respect about sleepingirl's NLP Book. The conceit was to study what PUA instructors taught and see what could actually be used from an objective standpoint. Actually interrogate the beliefs of NLP from a "I don't know anything" standpoint.

If I have any point in my whole ramble of a post it's that. Approach learning things with the curiosity of someone who is willing to learn and doesn't know any better but with the wariness of someone who has been burned too many times and knows that there's bad actors all over and everything needs to be turned over a few times to examine.

At the end of the day I just want a safe community full of positive ideas and if there's one thing I've learned about hypnosis it is this "positive associations stick, negative suggestions are harder to ground"

Both in the good way and the bad. Unlearning things is hard.

Let's just be aware that we're all playing in the same sandbox. Share our tools and try to build something beautiful.

and never stop asking "...am I sure about this?"

*Shrug* Or don't. It's just a suggestion <3

[kylermalloy]

Attack on Titan is a layered, multifaceted story that deals with many, many ideas—prejudice, propaganda, power, love, truth…I could go on. But more than anything, it’s about war. Attack on Titan is a war story. In that sense, it’s no surprise at the number of scenes that utilize fight, either as a concept, action, or just the word itself. It’s a story about fighting.

Or is it?

(It is. But it’s not about the fight. I’ll get there.)

The pivotal moment of the story occurs in season 3, when our characters go from fighting a war they don’t understand to fighting a war they do. The war itself hasn’t changed, nor the world, but now they know what they’re up against. But I’m not here to talk about that pivot—I’m here to talk about the narrative choice that was made a few episodes before that, and the thematic importance of that choice.

I’m here to talk about Midnight Sun.

The choice between Armin and Erwin has long since been a topic of debate amongst AOT fans. Whether it was the right choice, how happy or unhappy it made viewers, why exactly the choice was made, and so on and so forth. I’ve always found it to be a very simple yet effective piece of storytelling—one that walks a very fine line of displaying a core story theme and honoring the characters involved.

Interestingly, Levi, who’s historically a follower and not a leader, is the one to make this very important narrative choice. It was carefully designed, too—everything he’s witnessed so far in this season has led to this moment, and this very important decision he’ll make.

Now of course, as with everything, there’s a Watsonian and a Doylist reason for this decision to bring Armin back and not Erwin. Levi’s role in the choice is primarily a Watsonian one—he was one of the closest characters to Erwin, and he was the one to see Erwin struggle in his last moments before the charge.

Levi outright tells us his thought process after he makes the choice. After Erwin had let go of his dream, his struggle, which was as much a burden to him as a drive to continue forward, Levi thought it cruel to being him back into the world just because humanity needed a devil. It’s a human decision, and Levi made it for someone he cared deeply for.

But from a Doylist perspective, there’s a thematic reason as to why Armin was chosen and not Erwin. Obviously Levi, as a character in the story, is not thinking of what Erwin’s and Armin’s respective dreams are narratively representative of. Levi, in making his choice, didn’t so much as pick Armin as he didn’t pick Erwin. He was letting Erwin go, and he wasn’t thinking about what that would do to the story.

But I am!

Levi has been witness to both Erwin’s and Armin’s dreams, and he’s smart enough to place those dreams within the context of the war they’re fighting.

He asked Erwin explicitly what he would do when his dream was fulfilled—once they got to the basement in Shiganshina and learned the truth of the world. Erwin said he didn’t know.

Conversely, when Armin talked with his friends about after the war, he spoke of the sea. Of exploration beyond the walls, of seeing the wonders he’d only been able to read about. Unlike Erwin, he knew exactly what he would do when the fighting ended.

Now, does this mean to imply Erwin would’ve been useless after reaching the basement? Of course not. Had he survived, he would have continued to lead. But thematically, his purpose in the narrative was to drive the fight forward at any cost. We see this over and over—from the first expedition outside Wall Rose to his last charge against the Beast Titan. That’s what he represents, and that’s what his dream led to.

Armin’s dream, though, extends beyond the fight. He only cares about winning the war in that it will allow him the chance to explore and experience the wonders of the world.

Choosing Armin over Erwin, thematically, represents AOT’s fundamental view on war and fighting. The drive to win is not nearly as important as hope for the future. For after the fight is over.

Armin has always found solace and hope in things other than the war that has defined his and his friends’ lives. He dreams of the ocean. He worships his friends. He lives, as he tells Zeke in the final final final season, for the small moments with them. “Maybe I was born to race Eren and Mikasa up that hill.” That would be enough for him, even without his grand dream of the sea.

I genuinely think this choice is the closest thing AOT has to a thesis statement. This story shows us a plethora of messy situations to which there is no clear-cut solution. It displays a huge range of perspectives and philosophies without telling us what is good and what is bad. (Although it does, very specifically, tell us that genocide is bad, Eren!)

This choice in Midnight Sun, though, is more than a choice between two characters for survival. It speaks to what is most valuable in a world that seems to always be trying to kill you.

What good is winning the war if you don’t have something to hope for beyond that?

In other words, there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.