#behold my eloquence

[universejunction]

I mentioned in my tags on the post below that I read Daine's stories - The Immortals by Tamora Pierce - before I read the Lioness quartet.

But it's even funnier than that. I read Wolf-Speaker (book 2) first.

It was on a display in the young-adult section of the library, and I was enthralled immediately. Was I confused? Definitely. Did I enjoy it anyway? Absolutely!

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A silent ghost who's polite enough to say 👻🏃‍♀️ before chasing the children

Not sure why this park thought the first two sign language words they needed to teach to kids were “Ghost” and “Run”

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Oh did @endreal tag "literally everyone with a face" for a selfie? I have a face! (it's even my face!)

Featuring the pretty new necklace I got for dancing in but like so much I've been wearing all the time.

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Ranma 1/2

A story of two teenagers, pushed together by their fathers, resistant to being forced to marry, but who actually care quite a lot about each other.

Set in a world where martial arts training can instill super-human abilities, and magic can curse people with radical transformations.

An examination of machismo, of performative masculinity; but also a subversion of it, as Ranma often finds escape from his rigid ideas of his gender by taking on his girl form.

A story with many suiters for our two protagonists, who rarely (if ever) actually give a shit about what the object of their affections want.

Their fathers do seem to care about these kids, but are so foolish that their care is bumbling, and their actions often do incredible harm.

At this point I might note that I'm only part-way through season 2. I've heard bits of what comes later, but most of my opinions so far are formed only from these earlier episodes.

Ranma prefers masculine he/him pronouns, but does sometimes accept or use feminine she/her pronouns in girl form, when it suits him/her.

Ranma 1/2 is not, at least so far, a story of a trans person; but it is very much a story examining themes of gender and body and transformation, so it inevitably appeals to trans people (of many sorts), and can be read as a trans story.

I personally hope to see more of Ranma accepting her girl-self, and ridding himself of his toxic masculine traits. I'm a trans woman; that's appealing to me.

I watched maybe about the first season of Ranma in my late teens, but I don't remember if I liked it or not. I was a deeply closeted trans girl at the time, so Ranma's curse was deeply appealing, but his machismo and insistence that he's a guy were repulsive.

I often feel that Akane and Ranma's resistance to their engagement is more about the forced engagement than about each other. They talk a lot about how they don't care for/about each other, but their actions demonstrate their care. But they're also ~16, so being told "here's your future spouse!" is obviously deeply uncomfortable.

I cling so hard to Akane and Ranma's initial interactions, before Ranma's secret is revealed; when Akane is happy to meet this girl, who had been threatened as a future husband to her or her sisters. She's frustrated by how easily Ranma defeats her, but also impressed and happy to make a friend. Ranma for her part seems to also enjoy becoming friends with Akane as a girl, even if we later learn how little respect he has for fighting girls; that doesn't come across in their first spar, rather she just seems to enjoy how skillful she is (she's incredible at dodging, to be fair).

It might be easy to lose sight of how skilled Akane is too, given the utterly ridiculous overpowered opponents the pair face. But against any normal opponent, Akane would wipe the floor with them. And she does, as demonstrated when she fights the hordes of guys at her school. While in his machismo Ranma often discounts Akane's skill, I think that skill is one of the things which impresses Ranma and keeps him interested in Akane.

[universejunction]

I always had mixed feelings about Mr. Tumnas (Narnia). I mean, I have mixed feelings about the whole series now that I've realized it's Christian allegory and I'm ex-Christian. But Mr. Tumnas was my favorite character ever.. for maybe 10 seconds before I realized this shirtless faun in a scarf was not, as I first assumed, a girl faun.

My expectations of debauchery were so much higher than what I got.

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Worst still: games with ads where I've completely muted the game's sounds, but the fucking ads think they're entitled to play sound (and pause or duck what I'm actually listening to)

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I have been going trough your 🏳️‍⚧️ tag and sending posts to my friend whos not been getting any trans positivity from where he usually internets and i wanted to thank you for tagging them because it made my job of full frontal appreciation assault very easy!

Sorry for your notifs tho

I'm so happy you found it helpful!

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An egg who joins the military because of drill instructors calling recruits "ladies". Is this anything?

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I've got half an hour left in To Shape A Dragon's Breath, and it's so good y'all. I got it from my library, but I'm gonna have to buy a copy. (I just gotta find where best to buy it). It's definitely going into my re-read pile. Here, have a Q&A 👇

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I was "un-schooled" so I was, in fact, expected to educate myself. Of course, I didn't write the books so the OP's point stands, but even skipping over that I got a shitty education.

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I came out as a trans woman to my new job. (I work remotely as a software engineer, started a new job Tuesday last week). Reception is very welcoming; I think it's gonna be okay.

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Reflection of a Broken Heart

Mornings after school drop-off I've been going to the local lake for morning stretches, dancing, whatever movement I can get myself to do.

A few times now I've brought a trash bag and gloves and picked up trash for several minutes first.

Today while doing so, I found this. I ended up leaving it where it is (there was plenty of other trash to fill my bag 💔), but I'm tempted to go back for it and find someone who could make an artistic repair.

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Happy pride, tumblr!

Every one of these is queer. And yeah maybe #5 illustration is questionably queer but a) yes Miles is, and b)

Yeah the fuck it is.

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Good time to check out what shows your library has to offer.

seeing people be like ‘I know it’s going to be hard to support the sag strike because movies and shows will stop coming out but-’ is so fucking funny like can I introduce you to a beautiful concept called the million billion movies and shows that already exist that you couldn’t even get through in a lifetime if you wanted. welcome to heaven <3

[qilingxiong]

四樓的天堂 | Heaven on the 4th Floor (2021)

One drama has crept into my life during the last days of 2024 to become my favourite one I've watched this year, and I barely know how to start talking about it. But let's give this a go anyways.

Heaven on the 4th Floor (四樓的天堂) is a Taiwanese drama starring Anthony Wong, Hsieh Ying-xuan, and Fandy Fan. I would call it mostly slice-of-life with some melodrama, as there's no strongly focused overarching plot. Rather, it follows a cast of characters and the struggles/hurdles in their lives they have to face, all of whom are helped/guided by the something all of them have in common— seeing a tuina masseuse named Tianyi (Anthony Wong).

I don't quite know how to describe the way this show develops, as everyone's arcs separate and overlap at different times, but I would say Heaven at its core is about healing. First and foremost about healing the relationship one has with their body and oneself, but also those with other people, with the past, and with the present-day world around someone. There's some interesting juxtaposition between the physical healing Tianyi can offer his clients, and the mental healing Hsieh Ying-xuan's psychologist character provides for her own, with a look at how one cannot do the work of the other. Some characters are recurring throughout the show, others you get to watch take a step forward in the span of one episode, but eventually, no one remains where they were at the beginning.

The character who has the most growth throughout all this, in my opinion, is Fandy Fan's Yuzhou, a young graffiti artist. It's by meeting Tianyi that he gradually manages to stop hiding from the past, but also start looking with hope toward a future, and find a way to be better in tune with himself, his body, and the art he creates.

Aside from healing, Heaven is also about loss, and how someone reckons with it. Past loss (the disappearance of one's loved ones, the yearning for something you never got to have), present/recent loss (the death of a family member, the ending of a relationship), and loss that inevitably lies ahead (the destruction of one's home and the fight to resist it, even if it's all in vain). Characters war with their grief and are forced to find ways to release and gradually accept it, and while my heart ached for different people at different points in time, it was beautiful to watch.

I cannot stress enough that with all this combined, Heaven is one of the most cathartic pieces of media I've ever seen. I cried an unexpected number of times, from the beginning of the show to the end, and it was never, ever in a bad way. The three leads especially did a truly incredible job bringing the viewer into their lives, taking them along for the emotional ride, and I wish all the actors had won awards for that (only one of them did, but she truly deserved it).

Production-wise, I also adore the quality of this show. It's somehow very soothing to watch, visually, and the accompanying soundtrack made me tear up several times. I had to shake myself out of a daze every time I took a break from watching; it both felt like I'd run a marathon, but also had been sitting still, head quiet, and had had someone tell me not to worry about anything else in the world for a while. (It also made me feel more physically present in my body. My shoulders haven't been un-tense in years, and I think thanks to Heaven I'm going to have to do something about that.)

In addition, this isn't the main focus of the show, but queerness is worked into it in wonderfully ordinary ways. There's more than one queer character and a trans character who show up in this, and one protagonist who is either heavily coded as or possibly explicitly aroace spectrum, depending on how much you read into it. Her arc ended up being one of my favourites; the show deals with her relationships lining up with aroace experiences in a way I haven't really seen onscreen before.

Overall, I'm absolutely going to rewatch Heaven in the future, when I feel that I need to return to that story. If you want a grounded, very character-driven show to get gently lost in for a while, this is it.

(Though admittedly, I know this drama definitely isn't going to be for everyone. It's a little bit sleepy-going, and not everyone is interested in or is braced to deal with the emotions of the story. Normally even I'm not, but here I am. However, if you're interested, here's the trailer for Heaven on the 4th Floor:

And I don't tend to do this, but I'm also going to toss out two tracks that sound how this show feels, to me: In My Breath Again from the soundtrack of After Yang, and 披星戴月的想你 by Accusefive. Sit with those for a while and see what you think, if it helps you decide whether to watch or not.)

Note: Unless you have Taiwanese Netflix, you're gonna have to jump on the pirate ship to find this show. However, as far as I'm aware there have never been English subtitles made for it on any site, so if you can't read the Traditional Chinese in the episode raws, then you may have to sit this one out for the time being.)

[crosaidi]

@thiefscant  inquired:  ❝  Not  exactly  the  fight  I  was  expecting  when  we  got  here.  At  least  we  got  the  job  done.  ❞  /  da:i  party  banter

A hand’s braced against the stone wall, the grit of it rough and grounding against his fingers a vicious wave of cramping nausea curls through his gut — it’s a valiant war he fights, but his will is mighty and he forces it to settle. " Fuck gettin’ the fuckin’ shit job done, I would have sooner got fucked by a fucking sword than fucking do that again. "

That’s hissed through his teeth, grousing, but the truth is that they got through that damned place on word alone, and he’s glad for it. Thisobold Thorm — his spine crawls again with it all, sour and grim, and he’ll be better able to respect it all once he has distance from everything that happened in that hells-damned tavern.

He spits off to the side, trying to rid himself of the foul taste in his mouth, and eyes them sideways; he hadn’t followed when they went to the back, wanting a minute to recover. Unfortunately, the outside is as grim as the inside in these cursed lands, but at least it doesn’t reek of undead. " What was back there, anyhow? "