#but anyway what am i trying to say

[mishkakagehishka]

Also i'm sadly still on a hetaoni kick

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[welcometogrouchland]

(ID in alt) you guys even fuck w/ the flash on here???

[consultingfujoshi]

some thoughts wrt the two established "romances" in severance so far (burt/irving and helly/mark) inspired by @figmentof who pointed out how irving had to find out mark and helly kissed from the corporate video in s2 e1 and how he must have felt seeing his co-workers' love affair like portrayed like that, and how it ties into the queer narrative at play here which uses workplace dynamics and policies as very clear analogues for real-life prejudice against queer couples. I mean, just look at this:

it's not just documented, but celebrated. used as propaganda for how the conditions on the severance floor have improved. proof that the severed workers are happy. and how even though he is unaware of the sociopolitical meaning of all this, lumon is very not-subtly telling him that what he had with burt is inherently lower and less valuable than this.

irving doesn't even know homophobia exists and yet he is still affected by it, it still seeps into every corner of the way his and burt's romance progresses. burt is positioned as an unacceptable love interest from the jump. irv is actively discouraged at every turn from pursuing it. their friendship is viewed with disgust and apprehension from their coworkers. burt working in a different department that's hated by MDR. dylan himself not being homophobic in the sense he opposes their relationship because they're both men but his attempts to keep them apart still has a parallel sort of prejudice behind it and still ultimately has the same effect as if it WERE driven by homophobia. irving is made to feel perverse for wanting contact with burt. he's told this is for his own good.

and then, just as they manage to overcome that immediate resistance from their peers and escape to a place where they can explore this blossoming romance on their own terms, burt retires. for all it matters to irv, he's dead. and then irving is given the option to live the rest of his life with grief that will never heal, or kill himself too, because there is no reality where they get to be together. that's just the way things are. of course they wouldn't get to be together. he was unreasonable and childish for ever hoping that could happen. this is just the way it goes for innies. he's told to get ahold of himself and not make a scene.

but the thing is, the standards are not the same for all. a heterosexual romance gets upheld as the shining example of success and fulfilment for the severed employees, whilst a homosexual romance is ridiculed and invalidated, and written off as something that was simply never meant to be. and even more importantly to irving, a heterosexual romance is APPROVED OF by lumon, and by extension, by kier. irv held back from allowing himself to even call his and burt's relationship a romance, because his god had told him it was wrong, he followed the handbook, thinking this was what kier wanted, and then finding out after suffering the worst heartbreak imaginable because of it, that this WASN'T EVEN TRUE. it's simply just that someone like HIM doesn't get to have something like this. his love is not the kind of love god wants. he does not approve of irv's love. cynical and manipulative though that approval may be (even within the context of the corporate video, the helly/mark romance is only being celebrated to further the narrative that lumon care for their workers, but the point still remains that it was THEIR romance specifically used to suit this end), when your entire life has been in pursuit of that approval, it must be devastating to learn it was never on the cards for you.

he and burt even used the fact kier met and fell in love with his wife in the same circumstances as them to justify this to each other - and they were RIGHT, god does approve of falling in love with your coworkers - this simply just doesn't apply to them specifically. and if irving needed any more proof that he no longer has a place at lumon, that he's better off not existing at all than existing with this pain that cannot be remedied, pain that won't even be acknowledged for what it is, a symptom of a sickness which plagues the entire severance system, pain that he is simply expected to choke down and get over - this is that proof.

and that's the POINT. they're TELLING us that this is unjust, and there's a double standard. they're using the ways the innies experience romance and the difference in lumon's reaction (lumon being the collective of all the management we've seen, lumon as a singular entity) to burt/irving vs helly/mark to comment on how queer people are not afforded the same level of respect or validation IN REAL LIFE, for their attachments, their love, their pain, their suffering. it is NOT just incidental that irving's romance is with a man. it would not WORK if his love interest was a woman. the POINT is that they are both men and how that puts them at a disadvantage, even if they aren't aware of the prejudices of the outside world, even if they don't TECHNICALLY apply on the severance floor, there are very clear analogues which still end up oppressing them in equivalent ways that they would be suffering if this were a normal workplace in the outside world.

it genuinely sickens me to my stomach that even in a world so divorced from reality and the sensibilities of regular society, a queer couple is still made to suffer and feel inferior in a way that perfectly mirrors their real-life counterparts. how they will never, EVER be allowed to exist in a world where their love could thrive freely and uninhibited - they never get to taste the joy our world has to offer people like them, but they are still somehow subjected to all the pain it has to offer them regardless. it's such horrifically devastating writing. it makes my skin crawl. I can't stop thinking about it

[bacchuschucklefuck]

while teen while goblin while aroace while injured while doing your best

[mossy-aro]

ultimately i think my insistence on aro positivity honestly is as much a political stance as a personal one.

when i say aro positivity is crucial and that i dislike doomer-ist posts that express sentiments like 'I hate being aro so much I wish I was dead instead’ it's not because I don’t think there can and should be a space for negativity and acknowledging self-hate, or the many ways being aromantic can really suck sometimes. i find that to be very important!

that being said. there is smth here about how self-hate posts are sometimes just arophobia that we inflict on ourselves. and when we put that out into the ether it (intentionally or not) can become arophobia that we inflict on other members of the community. i think there absolutely needs to be a place for negativity and the expression of anger and frustration and self loathing even - these are all good things to talk about because these are things that we experience. that being said, it can also be genuinely upsetting and triggering to people to have what is essentially arophobia shown to them and then have that be validated by other aspec people. your personal thoughts can affect your wider community on a level you may not anticipate. and i understand it i truly do! it took me so long to be able to recover from accepting being aroace - it threw my entire world off kilter and made me question everything about my place in the world.

but my insistence on aro joy and positivity is because ultimately i do believe that building is at the core essence of it all. that ultimately discussions and the purpose of community should be about construction, not destruction. and this is both a personal and a political stance. talking about how much you hate yourself and cultivating online discussions/spaces where negativity about aspec identity is the main and only theme is destructive - if that’s where we let the conversation end. these thoughts can and should be used as a vehicle to look for a path forward!

joy and positivity create a space where the focus can become on forging a path forward, on construction, on community building instead of tearing ourselves and others down with negative thoughts. it’s not productive or healthy when it stops at a place of negativity - it becomes actively destructive to the essence of community.

and i do think that this is especially poignant considering the fact that being any kind of queer, but especially aromantic (and/or asexual) means forging a path for yourself and making your own happiness where there is no obvious way forward. our communities exist mostly online (right now, anyway), there is little recognition of our existence in the real world, the effects of amatonormativity are both pervasive and actively dehumanising, and there are legal, economic and social structures in place actively making our lives more difficult. yes that all sucks! it’s good to acknowledge that. we need to in order to change it. but more importantly, that’s not the end. we are still here and our happiness, our future is for us to determine. even if we can’t change the laws or society, loving yourself and understanding aromanticism as a political identity (as well as personal), as a radical worldview, and as a protest against amatonormativity is essential for both community and personal well being. the personal is political.

tldr. i guess my point is that as a community, we should focus on building, improving, and nurturing ourselves and each other (construction) as opposed to destruction. we should recognise aromanticism and asexuality as political identities as well as personal ones and rely on community and self-love in the absence of anything else as a form of protest and political power. destruction (the recognition of everything that is wrong) is essential as a starting point - but where do we go from there? we rebuild.

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 131

Okay, so first of all Dan would like to say it’s not his fault. Ellie was the one to bring some unknown object into the speeder and Jazz was the one driving. Or had Sam been driving- didn’t matter! It wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t the one shooting at them, he wasn’t the one to break whatever, he was not the one to open a stupid portal, and so it wasn’t his fault! 

So why is he now like, five years old, and why is the speeder crashed in some sort of corn field. Why is everyone- except for Jazz whose now like six- also like three at most?! And- oh fuck the door just opened and… okay that’s a kid. Like, nine at most. 

A kid and an adult, who he hadn’t noticed at first so again, it’s not his fault if he hissed at them and tried to hide his not-siblings behind him. It’s also not fair they’re apparently stuck to ghost speak for who knows how long, but at least they can understand the people. 

“Martha, get some blankets, it’s happened again!” 

[crazy-ache]

I think often about how in ACOTAR Book 1, Lucien Vanserra was ready to lay down his life for this human girl, Feyre Archeron. Again and again, he stuck his neck out there for her Under the Mountain and throughout the trials. While I do think it is a reflection of his loyalty to friends, his courage against the evil of Amarantha, and his honor for doing what is right…

I also think it was because of Tamlin. Because Lucien didn’t want the one friend who took him in after his darkest day—who helped save him from his family’s wrath and gave him a Court and a home—to watch the girl he loved be butchered cruelly because of who she was in relation to those in power. He didn’t want Tamlin to experience what he did with Jesminda.

The lesser fae and the mortal girl. Everything he did was for them.

For his friend with the stone heart to not break, just as his once did.

[ender1821]

im a child of divorce

[egophiliac]

Did peepaw come home?!

HE DID! :D! luckily it only took me three ten-pulls; I think my past experience of being so thoroughly denied a Fairy Gala Ortho made me more worried than I should have been. may the gacha blessings pay forward to everyone else! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

so far this is hands-down the funniest Lilia card, because he'll say something all edgy and badass in that deeper ~General Vanrouge~ tone and then follow it up immediately with one of the non-card-specific cutesy Lilia lines, and it gets me every time

[shepherds-of-haven]

wish it was cool and acceptable to write fanfiction of your own work, especially before the original work is actually done 😂

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

thinking about how mulder loves to get scully a gift, usually terribly heartfelt, even if disguised as something flippant:

the superbowl vhs tape he brings her when she wakes up from her coma in one breath (and her deadpan "i knew there was a reason to live")

tickets for a football game to watch together in irresistible

bringing her flowers to the hospital in memento mori (he lies, saying he stole them from a guy with broken legs to make her laugh)

the birthday keychain in tempus fugit (and when she finds a meaning to it, he claims "i just thought it was a pretty cool keychain")

that is a man who is always thinking about her.

[tsuchinokoroyale]

Happy new years… let’s stay hydrated together ✨

[altschmerzes]

the hostility that so many people have towards aromantic/aroace character interpretations is... telling.

[ganondoodle]

got this reblog on one of my posts were i talked about being anxious about the future of the zelda series after totk and-

i even went back and unblocked them just to check my own post and check twice what they meant exactly- but i still dont know how they got to these conclusions

i never said i 'want a good uwu ganondorf' (bc that would mean hes aligned with hyrule bc thats how goodness works!!!!11!1!!!), i also dont think of any of the zeldas as 'whores' (seriously, where did that come from?? neither me nor the addition of someone agreeing with me said anything like that??? did they think bc the addition called tloz misogynistic means we think zelda is a whore????? huh???)

its also funny how they say they want zelda to stay a simple fairytale rather than have 'people like me' bc .. one point i talked about in the og post was how the evil arab thing VS good white people media likes to do so much is so normalized here that its simply seen as a simple harmless fairytale trope instead of a big underlying issue in general media and the writers might not even realize it (which is worse) bc the most 'generic' appeal is to people who dont think of it as a problem in the first place, because it is so normalized

(huh, i wonder about what kind of person that part was about .. hmmmm)

(ALSO funny they mention princess hilda as nuanced villain ... like ... wow they are so nuanced about purple haired people!!- like guess why we want a nuanced/less badly/less flat written ganondorf and what he, in particular, has not in common with other villains! its not his hair color! .... or was that point supposed to mean .. look we have one female character that is a villain, its not misogynistic! idk honestly)

(and the classic, "you just call it this/dont like it bc its not what you wanted !!!!!!!2!"1!112!!")

also funny how its 'never gonna be progressive enough' like asking for the franchise to maybe put a little more thought and nuance into their white divine right vs evil desert man simulator instead of making it worse is already asking too much

(i dont know what the last point has to do with anything??)

(also yes totk is racist, like most if not all of the franchise and a alot of other media as well, shocker- you can still like it though, i and plenty of other people are still fans of it, we just wish they did a little more with their stuff and maybe not make the racism problem WORSE)

(also yes the hyrule monarchy is also evil :))) )

(and also not so secretly so either :)) )