#blog posts we like (a lot)

[inkskinned]

the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.

sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.

you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.

it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.

but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.

they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.

they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.

barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.

and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.

but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.

they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!

this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.

[fumifooms]

Omg guys he just genuinely likes bugs and mollusks and critters 😭💘💔 Forced to noble when he just wanna crouch and watch things skitter in the dirt…

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[fungi-maestro]

Happy tdov to fat trans people. 🏳️‍⚧️ Biggest thing that helped me as a trans kid was seeing older fat trans people. There were a lot of really irritating "advice" posts going around early in my time on the internet with a lot of misinformation in them, but one that I constantly saw (in addition to people claiming you should wear your pants rediculously low or only wear button ups) were posts saying you had to lose weight to transition. Can confidently confirm that is completely untrue. 👍

[stuckinapril]

how are you so in love with yourself...this is not me accusing you of narcissism or smth i genuinely am in awe of how much you seem to like yourself and be in love with yourself and I try so hard to be like you and do that too but i fail every single time...i really really want to know how I could be like this too because i know it is one of the biggest things stopping me from achieving happiness

Not sure if this is a ubiquitous experience, but for me personally affirmations can only go so far. There’s always been a direct correlation between me doing action-based things and my self-esteem increasing, so I try to keep my promises to myself (study at x time, work out at y time, just doing whatever I need to do even if I don’t have the motivation for it). Someone told me that self-esteem comes w doing esteemable things, and I’ve never forgotten that since. What someone thinks about me (including the gargoyle voice in my head lol) won’t faze me if I have tangible accomplishments under my belt I can refer back to on bad days

[3liza]

i have another pet tip, for all pets not just dogs: take them to the vet young and/or soon after you adopt them, BEFORE something is wrong with them. either book a basic wellness appt for checks (no shots or procedures) or just ask the vet if it's ok if you drop by with the pet either on leash or in a carrier and just get as far as the waiting room or outside the clinic if they're still doing COVID airlock protocols or busy. plan for this to take several hours. let the pet approach the vet office entrance and hear/see/smell the waiting room, windows into the room, the door, all the spots around the door, etc. engage positively with them if they're feeling interested, soothe them if they're nervous, and give high value treats if possible. maybe assign a super S tier treat JUST for the vet (bacon, shrimp, stinkiest cheese, whatever). feeding them can short circuit their anxiety loops (not all the time for every animal, but as a general guideline). even a single positive exposure to the vet office environment will help next time you bring them in. a treat jackpot for every time they act brave and explore further is a great technique

vet visits aren't just more pleasant when the pet is not freaking out, they're safer for the vet and safer for the pet, not just because animals injure themselves and humans when scared, but also because it's a lot harder to examine a panicky cat or aggressive dog. if your pet is sick and you bring it to the vet and the vet needs four techs just to restrain it to take a temperature, that vet is not going to be able to get a good observation of the symptoms. they won't be able to get a baseline blood pressure or heart rate. panic alone can kill small animals like rabbits and birds.

when you meet the nurse or tech or vet at an appointment, pass them some of the special treats and ask them to feed some to the animal if the animal is willing to take them and it doesn't interfere with the appointment. vets are usually able to spare a couple seconds to do this to make the visit easier and the next visit even easier. i did this for my dog and he thinks the vets are his best friends even though he's had multiple surgeries, vaccinations, exams where he was nervous or uncomfortable, etc.

not all animals can be acclimated to the vet but most can. in an emergency it can make a huge difference whether your pet is a behavior case when you bring them in to the office or not, which is not the vet's fault but a factor of animal behavior. you can plan for it and make it easier on yourself!

edit: buying a muzzle in your dog's size and getting him used to it is an even bigger bonus tip. vets will love you for this. even good dogs sometimes need a muzzle. pain and fear do weird things to animal behavior

[wonderholegifs]

Rhett & Link's Wonderhole

[charmac]

Which episodes have the best Dennis and Mac ship moments?

I wouldn't necessarily say Mac and Dennis have "ship moments" that you can pick and label as the "best" (other than what would make sense as scenes for compilations/edits?) and I'll defer to @psymachine's answer to a question similar to this: don't watch this show for Macdennis moments/episodes.

I can pretty confidently say that Mac and Dennis (and the show) will be lost on whomever decides to go at it through the lens of "best ship moments". Because what is considered a good "ship moment" for something as fucked as their relationship?

Mac is canonically admittedly in love with Dennis, so it's not hard to pull a ton of "ship moments" from his relentless pursuit: you have attempted kissing, erotic dreams, baby trapping, sex doll Dennis, room trapping...all stellar attempts on Mac's side and all important aspects for their relationship (Gets Romantic being one of my favourite episodes), but those moments are almost all, in the most blatant way to put it, sexual harassment. Sexual harassment of Dennis that was essentially born and grown from Dennis' conditioning of Mac's sex life in the seasons before: making and recording sex tapes for him, teaching him the best way to get sex is through carefully orchestrated systems and schemes made up of lies and deceit, that getting off has very little to do with a second (willing) participant.

Barring their individual personalities and mental illnesses, what ends up coming from Mac heavily relies on what comes from Dennis years before, and what is eventually ongoing between both of them (reaching batshit levels of sex chicken) exists among and within that all. IMO, placing any specific "best" on a moment for them as a ship is almost impossible without reference to everything before it (and an actual understanding of it all).

That being all said, what I would call the best ship moments for the two of them are what's hidden between and underneath the hard punches of their back and forth, the subtleties that are continually ongoing (mostly the ones that lead you to understand that Dennis is in it, even when Mac is on the offensive), this shit that's impossible to pin out of context:

The way Dennis gets even stupider when he's wrapped up in an idea with Mac (Timeshare, for example) and the way he attempts to cut off his outbursts when dealing with Mac's own stupidity (see Frank Retires) (and Recession is great for both of these). The fact that Dennis will push past his own grievances for little reason other than to make Mac happy (Suburbs) and the fact that at the end of it all, he's always going to end up going home with Mac (Divorced.. mm). (For all of this in one shot: Inflates)

And for Mac, in more recent events with Dennis on the offensive, when his ever desperate vie for Dennis' attention and affection is pushed back on in favour of being the Mac Dennis truly wants. The Mac Dennis fell in love with decades ago.

[ghostespresso]

staff logging on to tumblr dot com today

[myokk]

my angel…

[wonder-worker]

Thinking about Elizabeth Woodville as a gothic heroine is making me go insane. She entered the story by overturning existing social structures, provoking both ire and fascination. She married into a dynasty doomed to eat itself alive. She was repeatedly associated with the supernatural, both in terms of love and death. Her life was shaped entirely by uncanny repetitions - two marriages, two widowhoods, two depositions, two flights to sanctuary, two ultimate reclamations, all paralleling and ricocheting off each other. Her plight after 1483 exposed the true rot at the heart of the monarchy - the trappings of royalty pulled away to reveal nothing, a never-ending cycle of betrayal and war, the price of power being the (literal) blood of children. She lived past the end of her family name, she lived past the end of her myth. She ended her life in a deeply anomalous position, half-in and half-out of royal society. She was both a haunting tragedy and the ultimate survivor who was finally free.

[why-is-every-other-name-taken]

Being an extreme radfem/terf blog sounds miserable

[sparkles-rule-4eva]

If I see one more post trashing on the Sonic movies just because they're not like the games and because of the human characters I'm going to explode and then punt the sun itself into their faces

GUUUYYYSSSSS. THERE'S THIS MAGIC THING CALLED A MULTIVERSE. THE SONIC MOVIES ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THE GAMES, THEY ARE IN AN ENTIRELY SEPARATE UNIVERSE. YOU SHOULD NOT BE JUDGING THEM BASED ON HOW WELL THEY FOLLOW THE GAME CANON, BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THE GAMES. THE MOVIES AND THE GAMES CAN COEXIST AS SEPARATE UNIVERSES OF THE SAME CHARACTERS LIVING THEIR LIVES IN DIFFERENT WAYS, MKAY??

Once you accept this I can almost guarantee you'll be a much happier fan. I can testify. 😘

Sonic Wachowski ≠ Game!Sonic. Because they grew up in different environments and around different people in different circumstances, and that changed the way they turned out. I believe that if Wachowski grew up the same way Game! did, he would've turned out like Game! did. I also believe that if Game! grew up the same way Wachowski did, he would've turned out like Wachowski did. The core of this character is the same. In both the movies and the games, he's the fastest thing alive, he LOVES running, he loves his friends, he loves chili dogs, he loves living, and he will fight for what he believes is right. 💙

Just take into account the different worlds, the different lives, the different influences, and the fact that the movies are not trying to imitate the games (I thought this was obvious from day 1?) and it'll be a lot more fun in this fandom for you. In fact, you'll find you're a lot happier when you're actually taking time to love and appreciate the things you're interested in rather than just nitpicking about everything. 👌😜

And if you don't like the movies, you can kindly leave them be as well as all those of us who DO enjoy the movies. If you only like the games, stick to the games. 💙

[napping-sapphic]

i love sapphic people so much we’re all so beautiful and deserve so much love i love you i love you i love you

[anxiously-sidequesting]

I think I've already said this once before but I really wish there was a feature in Wizard101 where important events, lore, and dialogue in the game were documented somewhere so we can view them whenever we want. like unless we video record the events while it happens, take pictures, or just go through the whole entire fucking plot with another wizard character there's no way to ever revisit those moments and that SUCKS??????? like wizard101 has some of the best lore ive ever seen and I don't wanna have to level up my wizard all the way to level 100 just to see that iconic grandfather spider scene or grind through azteca just to find that one epic fourth wall breaking moment 💀 i want to revisit all the incredible and funny and weird shit we've all gone through Immediately. Like damn remodel the library so that it actually keeps records and dated films of the things we've gone through so it can actually be useful instead of it being Just A Building (rants about this for so long that even Jesus smacks His lips)

[lemonhemlock]

tried watching the new queen charlotte series but was immediately put off by the ridiculous anti-corset propaganda, so get ready for another rant.

first of all, this is the georgian era so what she's wearing are called /stays/ - corsets are a victorian invention. why do we still not know this in 2023 when period productions have remained consistently popular throughout the years? the concept of tighlacing (the goal being a reduction of the waist) is also victorian and was not the norm at all and v much an extreme practice. this understanding of history is so superficial, it's as if an alien were to open up People magazine and conclude that all human women resort to butt injections and lip fillers to stay with the fashion of the times. also, no, you cannot tighlace in stays to obtain a waist reduction because they are shaped like a funnel (picture 1 = long stays, 2 = short regency stays, 3 = corset)

charlotte goes on to complain about how dangerous whalebone is and that it might kill her if she makes the wrong move. what the actual fuck? whalebone was actually the very best material to use for this because it was sturdy yet flexible and allowed the /stays/ to completely and comfortably mold around a woman's unique body shape. one of the reasons why today it is v difficult to replicate the same effect in corsetry is because we do not have access to whalebone (killing whales is not cool for obvious reasons) so corset-makers have to resort to other materials like plastic or metal, which CAN break. whereas whalebone doesn't really break as easily. furthermore, stays/corsets were NEVER worn on bare skin, but with a chemise/shift underneath.

why did women in the past resort to this type of undergarment, you ask? well, apart from the fact that women need bust support, the stays also serve the purpose of allowing all the many skirts and petticoats to be placed comfortably onto the waist. you try piling on that much fabric around your bare waist and see how you like it and if you can even carry it all around without it cutting into your stomach.

clothes throughout human history did cater to the popular fashions of the time, yes, but they also reflected the technological limitations and there was thus a practical aspect to it. this is a time before elastic bands, before industrialization and fast fashion, clothes are v difficult to make, everything is done by hand, so a lot of care is put into preserving them, because they are /expensive/ and labour intensive. you don't want your fancy outergarments to get ruined so you wear a lot of undergarments to absorb your bodily fluids since those are easier to make and don't have to look "pretty", can be stained and patchy etc. again, why do you need so many layers in the first place? because this is a time before comfortable heating, with poorly isolated and drafty houses, and it's bloody cold otherwise.

the third reason why that monologue was so dumb is because CHARLOTTE is the reason regency court dress was so preposterous. long story short, in a few decades, the fashionable silhouette changes wildly from the late 1700s to the 1810s.

the regency waistline was much higher and the gowns were much more flowy and unstructured than the late georgian ones (what's commonly known as the empire waistline). the long stays of the late 1700s were now replaced with short stays that really were similar to modern bras. the scene in the first season of bridgerton where they squeeze penelope's sister into what looks like a pair of long stays (?) is bonkers bc no one would wear a waist-constricting boned undergarment under a regency dress. why would they? the natural waist is not even emphasized in any way. this is just another reason to peddle the women-were-oppressed-by-their-lingerie agenda. so if charlotte really hated long stays that much, regency would really have been her time to shine, right? wrong. the woman loved the fashions of her youth so much she forced everyone who came to court to still comply to them, which is why we get the absolutely atrocious regency court dresses - essentially a combination of the georgian style with side panniers, but with an empire waistline.

yeah, this is how daphne SHOULD have looked like when she was presented at court in front of charlotte. i can understand why the showrunners decided to just leave her in a regency silhouette because this is ugly af. but, anyway, queen charlotte is the last person on earth to be complaining about how uncomfortable stays are.

creative licence aside, the reason this pisses me off is because it is SUCH lazy storytelling. the show wants us to know charlotte is a spunky pseudo-feminist character so the easiest way to do that is to have her complain about the evil 'corset' trying to kill her. it is so profoundly ahistorical and does nothing to contribute to the conversation about women's true problems and true limitations during that time. instead of genuinely exploring social history and women's actual lived experiences, we are STILL, in the year of our lord 2023, diverting the discourse towards fabricated issues that never existed in the first place.

the reasons actresses complain about boned underwear in interviews are manifold. costume designers are very overworked, they have to produce clothes for hundreds of people in a very short time, so they simply do not have the time or resources to construct corsets/stays that fit the actresses like they are supposed to. in the past, these garments were made individually for every person and completely to their own requirements. they also make these actresses wear the boning on BARE skin to look extra sexy to the audience or to emphasize their oppression - that never happened, a shift was always worn underneath (hello dakota fanning scene in the alienist??).

moreover, they lace them up until they constrict their ribcages - these women are already super thin and their bodies cannot support more reduction - instead of relying on the historical practices of padding and illusion. nowadays, body parts are what's fashionable - that's why so many resort to fat transfers or breast implants or starving themselves to achieve a flat stomach. in the past, anyone of any size could have accomplished the fashionable silhouette because they had a wide array of accouterments to plop underneath their garments - panniers, bustles, hoop skirts, padding of any sort. it didn't matter how big your waist was, you just padded other areas until you achieved the desired shape. fat women wore corsets/stays, too. working women, who did a lot of physical labour, did the same. how were they able to perform all of their tasks if they were incapable of moving or breathing? even today, people wear medical corsets all the time.

TLDR the media's obsession with portraying modern women as so liberated because they wear bras instead of "patriarchal" underwear is so tedious.

EDIT: Some very basic chronological tadpoles to make this easier to place within historical context. "Georgian" is used to denote the 18th+ century when Great Britain was ruled by several kings named George, so roughly 1714-1830. Within this interval, we refer to the Regency period as encompassing the regency of Prince George, future King George IV, when his father George III was incapacitated by mental illness. The official political regency took place during 1811-1820, but culturally speaking, this was extended to roughly the end of the 18th century up to maybe 1830 or 1837. This is the time period of Napoleonic wars and Jane Austen novels, so all her heroines should normally wear Regency styles. Think "empire waistline" as in Imperial France and Napoleon. The Victorian era (and its corsets) follows throughout the rest of the 19th century. Queen Charlotte was a contemporary of Marie Antoinette's, so they should be dressed in similar fashions (robe à la française vs robe à la anglais).