#as we all know there are three genders

[phoenixcatch7]

Petition: Sephiroth doesn't have a father.

Half of his dna? Lucrecia

The other half? Jenova

None of this Hojo vs Vincent argument I humbly propose we get far more symbolic mileage out of a corrupted version of an immaculate conception via Jenova as the 'angelic' presence.

Mad science IVF, essentially.

This lasted about ten seconds as a crack theory but now I think I'm actually going to add that to my belief system

Like Jenova is generally given female pronouns and called 'mother' but we do need to remember it's an alien megafauna virus (often referred to with 'it' pronouns in multiple translations of the original game, including the original Japanese). Its cells do not work like human animal cells. It's entirely feasible that it was used in place of a father donor, and would explain why sephiroth has such strong Jenova characteristics (white hair, slit eyes) where Angeal and Genesis don't (and also just. The rest of him. Where you'd put the genes for halos I don't know).

Sephiroth does have huge issues, just, in general, but his real weak point was his mummy issues where he'd been primed by hojo and that was where Jenova squarely hit. And it's generally agreed no matter which side of the 'sephiroth is in control/a puppet' spectrum you fall on that she was preying on him in nibelheim.

And also, just in final fantasy in general, there is a LOT of religious symbolism and icons (as is fairly typical of rpg games of that type. Just look at the Persona or Shin megami tensei series!). The summons, the church, etc. Sephiroth, aka the paths of sephiroth, is taken from what Wikipedia calls 'esoteric Jewish mysticism' and describes, I quote, 'channels of divine creative life force or consciousness through which the unknowable divine essence is revealed to mankind' or 'the ten structural forces of nature'. No guesses for how that tied into Project S' original intent to re-establish the extinct cetra and lead shinra to the promised land of infinite totally-not-afterlife-compost mako.

And I'm sure there's been plenty of essays done on the meanings and themes in ff7 (not that I can find them under all the sephiroth character analysis) but sephiroth very clearly went the demi urge route where he should have been a saviour and guide so why not throw in some immaculate conception as well?

Disclaimer: this tumblr user does not think of IVF as corrupted mad science nor do they think children born of it are any less human, we're talking about Hojo's experiments with Jenova on an unborn child here.

This would also mean that any 'Jenova is not your mother!' dramatic reveal could be followed up with 'she's your dad!' which is hilarious and we know Sephiroth's opinions on father figures.

[utilitycaster]

[keelanrosa]

started reading the cass review because i'm apparently just Like That and i want everybody crowing about how this proves sooooo much about how terfs are right and trans people are wrong to like. take a scientific literacy class or something. or even just read the occasional study besides the one you're currently trying to prove a point with. not even necessarily pro-trans studies just learn how to know what studies actually found as opposed to what people trying to spoonfeed you an agenda claim they found.

to use just one infuriating example:

Several studies from that period (Green et al., 1987; Zucker, 1985) suggested that in a minority (approximately 15%) of pre-pubertal children presenting with gender incongruence, this persisted into adulthood. The majority of these children became same-sex attracted, cisgender adults. These early studies were criticised on the basis that not all the children had a formal diagnosis of gender incongruence or gender dysphoria, but a review of the literature (Ristori & Steensma, 2016) noted that later studies (Drummond et al., 2008; Steensma & Cohen-Kettenis, 2015; Wallien et al., 2008) also found persistence rates of 10-33% in cohorts who had met formal diagnostic criteria at initial assessment, and had longer follow-up periods.

if you recognize the names Zucker and Steensma you are probably already going feral but tldr:

There are… many problems with Zucker's studies, "not all children had a formal diagnosis" is so far down the list this is literally the first i've heard of it. The closest i usually hear is the old DSM criteria for gender identity disorder was totally different from the current DSM criteria for gender dysphoria and/or how most people currently define "transgender"; notably it did not require the patient to identify as a different gender and overall better fits what we currently call "gender-non-comforming". Whether the kids had a formal diagnosis of "maybe trans, maybe just has different hobbies than expected, but either way their parents want them back in their neat little societal boxes" is absolutely not the main issue. This would be a problem even if Zucker was pro-trans (spoiler: He Is Not, and people who are immediately suspicious of pro-trans studies because "they're probably funded by big pharma or someone else who profits from transitioning" should apply at least a little of that suspicion to the guy who made a living running a conversion clinic); sometimes "formal" criteria change as we learn more about what's common, what's uncommon, what's uncommon but irrelevant, etc, and when the criteria changes drastically enough it doesn't make sense to pretend the old studies perfectly apply to the new criteria. If you found a study defining "sex" specifically and exclusively as penetration with a dick which says gay men have as much sex as straight men but lesbians don't, it's not necessarily wrong as far as it goes but if THAT'S your prime citation for "gay men have more sex than lesbians", especially if you keep trying to apply it in contexts which obviously use a broader definition, there are gonna be a lot of people disagreeing with you and it won't be because they're stubbornly unscientific.

Also Zucker is pro conversion therapy. Yes, pro converting trans people to cis people, but also pro converting gay people to straight people. That doesn't necessarily affect his results, i just find it funny how many people enthusiastically support his findings as evidence transitioning is… basically anti-gay conversion therapy? (even though plenty of trans people transition to gay? including T4T people so even the "that's actually just how straight people try to get with gay people" rationale for gay trans people is incredibly weak? and also HRT has a relatively low but non-zero chance of changing sexual orientation so it wouldn't even be reliable as a means of "becoming straight"? but a guy who couldn't reliably tell the difference between a tomboy and a trans boy figured out the former is more common than the latter + in one whole country where being trans is legal but being gay is not, sometimes cis gay people transition, so OBVIOUSLY that means sexism and homophobia are the driving factors even in countries with significant transphobia. or something.) anyway i hope zucker knows and hates how many gay people and allies are using his own study to trash-talk any attempts to be Less Gay. ideally nobody would take his nonsense seriously at all but it doesn't seem we'll be spared from that any time soon so i will take my schadenfreude where i can.

Steensma's studies have the exact same problem re: irrelevant criteria so "well someone ELSE had the same results!" is not exactly convincing. This is not "oh trans people are refusing to pay attention to these studies because they disagree with them regardless of scientific rigor", it's "one biased guy using outdated criteria found exactly the numbers everyone would expect based on that criteria, i can't imagine why trans people are treating those numbers as relevant to the past criteria but not present definitions, let's find a SECOND guy using outdated criteria. Why do people keep saying the outdated criteria is not relevant to the current state of trans healthcare. Don't we all know it's quantity over quality with scientific studies. (Please don't ask what the quantity of studies disagreeing with me is.)"

Steensma also counted patients as 'not persisting as transgender' if they ghosted him on follow-up which counted for a third of his study's "detransitioners" and a fifth of the total subjects and. look. i'm not saying none of them detransitioned, or assuming they all didn't would be notably more accurate, but i think we can safely treat twenty percent of subjects as a bit high for making a default assumption, especially when some of them might have simply not been interested in a study on whether or not they still know who they are. Fuck knows i've seen pro-trans studies which didn't make assumptions about the people who didn't respond still get prodded by anti-trans people insisting "the number of people claiming they don't regret transitioning can't possibly be so high, some of the people who responded must have been lying. (Scientific rigor means thinking studies which disagree with me are wrong even if the only explanation is the subjects lying and studies which agree with me are right even if we need to make assumptions about a lot of subjects to get there.)"

and this is not new information. not the issues with zucker, not the issues with steensma, not any of the issues because this is not a new study, it's a review of older studies, which in itself doesn't mean "bad" or "useless" -- sometimes that allows connecting some previously-unconnected dots -- but the idea this is going to absolutely blow apart the Woke Media, vindicate Rowling and Lineham, and "save" ""gay"" children from """being forcibly transed""" is bullshit. At most it'll get dragged around and eagerly cited by all the people looking for anything vaguely scientific-sounding to justify their beliefs, and maybe even people who only read headlines and sound bites will buy it, but the people who really believe it will be people who already agreed with all its "findings" and have already been dragging around the existing studies and are just excited to have a shiny new citation for it.

the response from people who've been really reading research on transgender people all along is going to be more along the lines of "……yeah. yeah, i already knew about that. do you need a three-page essay on why i don't think it means what you think it means? because i don't have time for that homework right now but maybe i can pencil it in for next semester if you haven't learned how to check your own sources by then."

[sugarcoatednightshade]

Tired of seeing fic on ao3 claiming to be based off dune the book series when it’s very obvious that the writer has only seen dune the movie(s).

Yes, it matters. Yes, these are very different works. You’re probably doing this for visibility; I don’t care. Archive Of Our Own is a fucking archive, stop labeling your works with a tag you know is factually incorrect. It makes it impossible for me to filter for fics I want to read.

[pocketramblr]

I always found it slightly awkward how media makes siblings or people who see each other as siblings call each other brother/sister all the time as in real life you almost never see people do that with their own siblings (maybe someone out there like that)

In the case of Arkham Shadows I see why they did though because Bruce quite literally tells Harvey he loves him and Harvey says it back. Can't have the audience think Batman is in love with the DA.

They had Bruce pay for his college, pay for his campaign, pay for his surgery, pay for his therapy and had Harvey have him as his best man at his wedding. Wow..... Sugar baby Harvey is real.....

The calling sibling title thing is less common in English than in some other languages for sure- me and a couple of my siblings do it on occasion, but it's for a bit then. More common is when I call one of my close family friends "my sister" or "my nephew" when talking about them to someone else because it's faster and easier to say that than to say "my friend who I've known since she was born and lived with for a few years and consider a little sister" or "child of a close family friend who considers me an aunt" to someone who doesn't know them. Which is a lot of words to say that if they wanted to fully sell me on the brothers thing they should have either had a different bit or should have referred to the other as "my brother" when talking to an unrelated character instead.

But "oh no we have to make Bruce not look gay" has been a problem DC has struggled with more than once for many decades and it basically never works so I guess at least they didn't try to solve it this time by having Bruce pick a lady love over Harvey or cutting the holding hands thing

Because I saw that scrapbook! I know Harvey has been Bruce's sugar baby since he was ten years old! But we can't have Bruce take Harvey's hand and call him the love of his life because ok technically that's Gotham but also because gay. And we can't have Bruce take Harvey's hand and call him his best friend because they're not ten anymore and somehow that seems gay also. So brothers it is, I guess. Even if I think my brothers would bite my finger if I ever tried to pay for everything for them on that scale, guess it's different at billionaire levels

[nugsanart09-works]

A Flower, graveborne, Fallen from the sheer of hail, chased springtime beyond

Other (basic) variations below:

The more accurate version in accordance with the original source:

Beneath them layers of cloth is a cutie patootie, a skrunkly if you will

[widevibratobitch]

Since we're both as unwell about him as we are I consider you to be someone who knows a fair amount and what do you genuinely think the real James Fitzjames would feel if he saw the Terror's depiction of him? (As in watching the whole show)

HUH good question. first of all i think he'd be a little discombobulated by the very experience of watching a tv show but personally i choose to believe he'd at least be happy he was made into one of the main characters?? and that so many cool and sexy insane people are obsessed with him now <3

having said that. as much as i love show!fitzjames they did nerf him down A LOT. they robbed him of the joyous whimsy that was such a characteristic trait of the real jokester supreme fitzjames (show!fitzjames also has little to no relationship with his irl lieutenant buddies which. sad.)

we also know now that. most probably. he was actually fully english so i can only imagine he'd be Not Pleased about the cairn scene to say it lightly lmao imagine you and your adoptive family making significant efforts throughout your whole life to disguise the fact of your illegitimate birth and then 150 years later some people make a high rating show where they babygirlify you not only spill your secret to the millions of people watching (or secrets, plural, and make you call yourself a fake as a cherry on top lol) but they also get it wrong and make it Even Worse (from a victorian englishman's perspective) like stop guys he's already dead lmfao

having said that. he would have loved the britannia costume and the your nails are a terror line. i know he would.

[crimeronan]

STRONGLY considering injecting amity into the princess luz AU bc i know Exactly where she'd fit but the problem is that if i do that then i KNOW i'll fall down a fucked-up hyperfixation rabbit hole that only interests like six people at best. bc the amity-luz-hunter dynamic remains my kryptonite. i'm diseased about it. oooooh god oooh my god. oh my god. i have. Thoughts.

[nexus-nebulae]

playing spirit tracks for the first time bc phantom hourglass was literally our first ever zelda game (and the only one we actually knew existed until we were like 17???) and!!!! LINEBECK MY BOY

[akascow]

man yellowjackets would be so much better if it didnt keep cutting back to the present day

[chemicalarospec]

One time when I was in 5th grade I wore a nice dress just because I wanted to and someone asked me if it was picture day and I never wore a skirt or dress again for three whole years. (They weren't teasing to be clear, they were just confused I think.) I still rarely wear skirts or dresses -- for one, putting on tights is more work than pants, but for a very long time I had a fear of being seen as "trying too hard" or something, which I still have but not so much towards skirts, those are less remarkable now. I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say by sharing this story but it's very formative for me.

[nervocat]

I want to present masc so bad but with my parents and family as a whole it's near impossible rn

[icewindandboringhorror]

I still very loathe the Media Trope of ‘’cold genius man doesn’t feel emotions and never has relationships... UNTIL.. one random relatively bland Preddy Woman comes along and warps his entire personality and ability to think, his heart has grown and his seeming asexuality has evaporated, he is now Normal :)” or whatever like... AS a walking generic hermit archetype myself.. we would NOT act like that .... just let people be detached weirdos in peace, you cowards .. OR, don’t bother to write one in the first place if you find us too boring to exist realistically in our natural state lol.. pathetic 

[justagaycryptid]

Just saw the fnaf movie and I am literally so glad that my favorite stupid fucking bastard was in the movie and we got a springlock failure scene like was the movie the greatest no but I got exactly what I wanted so goddamn it I'm gonna be happy about it

[boyfrillish]

I finished chapter 10 and I am not okay! And it's the middle of the night and I have to stop there!

Game: hey, you're going to face some consecutive battles now, are you sure you want to proceed Me: hmmm let's go in right now, what could possibly go wrong

(What went wrong is that Stuff Happens and first Alcryst and then Alear break my heart with their voices)

[lionblaze03-2]

Happy four year adoptiversary to my handsome little boy Montgomery Montgomery Python!!!

Got him august 11th 2019 in lieu of my 16th birthday three days later. I’m turning 20 now. I cannot BELIEVE I’ve had this stupid little rascal for four entire years it does NOT feel like it. Hobbies include hiding in my computer, staring at nothing, and trying to escape his glass prison in the dark. I love him