#but assuming people do go through the world like that

[backofthebookshelf]

It's not a controversial take necessarily -- it's just that the particular environment of AO3, where you can see how many times your fic was loaded in a browser window and where the little heart button has a different meaning than it does on every other social media site, is uniquely bad for the human brain.

For the VAST majority of history, both the history of making art generally and the history of writing fanfiction in particular, you did not get to know how many people gave your work a cursory once-over, or how many people checked your book out from the library and never read it, or how many people overheard a line of poetry and thought "huh, neat" and never did anything else. These interactions were, as they should be, completely anonymous and uncountable. Even in the pre-AO3 days of fanfiction, there was an understanding that page hit counters were kind of crap (for one thing, they would count you every time you loaded the page, and you had to load the page to check the counter, so that was incentive not to look at it that much).

Even in other artistic contexts where you do now have page hit counters on everything, they're contextualized through marketing research, not consumed as a raw value. Marketing talks about conversion rate, which is the % of people who saw something who then went on to do the thing you wanted them to do - for a business that's probably buy the thing, for a nonprofit it might be donate or sign up for a volunteer session, for a fanfiction writer it's leave a comment. At work I work with multiple major companies you have definitely heard of who spend half a million dollars and 1-3 full time employees every year on something that increases their conversion rate by 1-2%. They do this because the conversion rate on our emails is 5%, which is INSANELY high.

And yes, leaving a comment doesn't cost money, but it does cost time and energy. Writers overestimate how easy it is for people to write comments--my coworkers are out here using chatgpt to write boilerplate work emails, I can't imagine ANY of them ever leaving a comment on a work of art they enjoyed. Verbally, yes--and "in a friend discord is much closer to verbally than in a comment form--but in writing? Absolutely not.

As for kudos, I can't help but think that the "likes don't do anything, you have to reblog" culture of social media like twitter and tumblr affects that too (and yes, by the latter days of twitter I was seeing people saying that on there, because the algorithm was so broken). Kudos is essentially a like button, and like the like button on twitter that used to be a favorite button before they changed it and some people never stopped treating it like one, it has meanings for people you'll never understand. "It's just a click!" It is a symbol with vague connotations but no specific universally agreed upon meaning; it tells you how many people clicked on that button, and that's all.

So yes, actually, I guess I am saying that as a writer, you are supposed to assume that many more people liked your fic than you will ever hear from or even know about. And that's a good thing! You have the chance to touch someone's life even though they have no idea who you are and don't think of you as a person so much as a semi-mythical figure called "the author". And that's part of the magic, to me, of creating things. You pour yourself into a thing and then you set it loose into the world and you hope it means to someone else as much as it meant to you. Sometimes, very rarely, someone will tell you so, and that's amazing, I'm not going to pretend it's not, but you have to have enough faith in yourself to believe it happens whether you hear about it or not.

I really don't understand how "without getting kudos or comments a fanfiction author is going to assume that people who clicked their fic didn't like it" became a controversial take.

I don't know why some people think an author should imagine, or guess that people who click their fic enjoyed it it when nobody is telling them that.

If you're re-reading a fic constantly, or leaving it up in your tab so that it re-loads every day for a hundred days the author is not going to know that unless you tell them. They'd love to hear it. It would make their day.

And if you don't tell them you liked their fic, there's no reason for them to assume you did.

[fadelbison]

Now that you mentioned it please the first thing I thought when I saw First as Kant was that they would push him into a straight series especially with him previously being in multiple het shows. I at least saw 2 reactors thinking c4c was het show before khao was introduced. But First with all his new antics is definitely helping their cp to become more popular too especially in the thai side. They are both good actors and they have pretty good role selection and already having a stable fandom would do them wonders in the industry

I would say even three years ago pushing First into straight roles when he looks like this:

was not only going to be GMMs playbook but also their moral imperative. Because this was the pipeline they shoved every BL actor that could into. Gain a following using BL get funneled into straight shows now to get legitimacy as an actor. Three years ago, if First wasn't being shoved into this pipeline I'd say something was very very wrong the way it clearly was with Earth.

And well everything is in flux isn't it? GMMTV 2025 is an unprecedentedly queer roster for GMMTV in addition to a sharp increase in shows now marketed towards young working adults rather than youth. That pipeline no longer even makes sense for them.

GMMTV now has a whole roster of well established actors which I don't think they really thought was going to happen for them back in 2016 when SOTUS was released 😅 and especially not when Singto peaced out then did a bunch of critically acclaimed shows as though to highlight how vapid the creative direction within GMMTV was.

They've also made a great many missteps with branded pairings. The GMMTV three pillars (or four wtv your world view is) was a hot mess. TayNew couldn't hack it, Singto left, Krist vehemently doing straight shows to not let the CP thing give him a mental breakdown (again) and Bright and Win were mA they certainly were, weren't they? These pillars stayed pillars I think through the sheer willpower of Offgun Fun Night and Jennie Panhan's unparalleled ability to pretend nothing is amiss 🤣

GMMTV appears to be trying to hone in more and more on what makes their actors already popular rather than box them into things and make costly mistakes like they even recently did with OhmNanon and PerthChimon where they let Chimon take all that pressure of being Perth's new beau without ever considering the fact that Chimon had 0 interests in playing The Woman.

They've seemed to have taken all pressure off their actors in 2025 and I am curious to see if that trend will continue. Nanon wants a straight script? We squeeze one out for him. SkyNani undecided on being a CP? Great they get to play dark soulmates which good for them giving skynani a parameter to work with that can go from literally barely just gay to just so gay depending on the weather conditions.

C4C is going to strengthen FKs Japanese fanbase for sure, while I am assuming they are expecting the western one to remain largely unaffected. The Thai market I don't understand. First can sure as hell pass as straight now but so could Force and Book the last however many years and delightfully neither of them has given a rats ass about it, even when Bright and Win left, the straight BL boy niche once vacated was actually never filled.

In fact, the pillars are now back and supremely active but they are just extremely gay about it. Somehow TayNew were like this is going to be on our terms and their terms were a romance coded bromance and a polycule with off gun, Krist who everyone believed would NOT enjoy fanservice now has more boyfriends than ever before. I love that gay people can't be normal about anything.

There's a straight passing BL actor vacuum in GMMTV sure - does skynani not convince you that the market LOVES this genre of BL actor? And it's coincided with a point where GMMTVs artistic direction is in fact moving towards slightly older audiences. Suddenly, everything that made First second fiddle in the het shows of his youth, sets him apart as a lead NOW: he's a sweet and goofy guy aka The Ideal Husband.

I am just really curious to see over this next year whether First will make any attempts to fill the straight BL actor niche and how desperately (sponsor money) GMM will try to make him do so. The 70: 30 split agreement between FK was specifically designed to deal with this scenario, I am locked and loaded to see it finally tested.

[sodacowboy]

watched the new jordan theresa video and it got me thinking about how people perceive me in public

[poorshadowspaintedqueens]

I have spent my life studying premodern European literature.

Let's start there. You cannot study premodern Europe without grappling with the fact that you're going to end up reading things that are absolutely horrifying from a modern perspective. This goes double if you're from a marginalized group, triple if you had to learn the actual meaning of the word "intersectional" to define how you fit into the world.

There are works of art (books, films, music, visual art) that I love--and I do mean love, as in baked into my very soul and being--that were created by people who, if they met me on the street, would spit in my face at best and possibly do far worse. I have studied these books, learned them through and through, taught them to other people as things I love. But I will never be able to unsee or ignore the fact that the author would have seen me, a fellow human being, as subhuman.

This requires time and patience. It requires sitting with yourself, with what you love, and understanding that just because you love it, that doesn't make it perfect or right. Human beings are flawed, and so is our art. To deny that is to deny everything that went into that art.

Nor is it as simple as throwing up one's hands and yelling about Barthes and the death of the author. Because art (of any sort) is not produced in a vacuum, nor should is be treated as such. You cannot properly understand any artwork without understanding its context.

And, let's be clear: Terrible people can produce beautiful art. Richard Wagner was a piece of shit trashfire, but Isoldes Liebestod is hard-wired to make me cry.* Perhaps more relevantly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Joss Whedon were foundational to my understanding of media and to my own writing style. I still see fragments in my writing to this day. Does that make me a bad person for having been influenced by a bad person? I like to think not. But I'm also willing to look back on Buffy with fresh eyes and see the flaws alongside those things I still love about it.

In a sense, it really is about perspective. And maybe the problem with so many of these viral posts is that they're being blasted out before anyone has taken the time to think about them. It took me a long time--not to mention 4 years of graduate school and 10+ of teaching--to get to where I am now. We shouldn't expect everyone to immediately figure out how to read critically, and it's not fair to dogpile people for things they haven't learned yet. But this goes both ways--if you like a thing, and somebody points out a problematic aspect of the thing, maybe stop assuming they're wrong and consider you might not know as much as you think you know.

* The fact that Jessye Norman sings it so divinely would probably also make Wagner really mad.

Of course, it borders on stating the obvious to point out that all the people in the notes of that one txttletale post going "actually no, conservatives ARE incapable of making good art because good art requires empathy/compassion/kindness/understanding other people's perspectives/[insert vaguely good-sounding virtue that conservatives supposedly lack here]" are just mentally doing the whole "every media i like is secretly leftist" thing.

But digging down further and on a less obvious note, I think the reason WHY so many liberals and vibes-based leftists are constantly doing the "every media I like is secretly leftist" thing is because they don't actually fundamentally disagree that much with the basic assumptions about the world that support conservative ideologies, they just dislike when they manifest in the form of explicit bigotry.

So when those assumptions are baked into a piece of art (especially a piece of art that is *good*) in the form of undertones instead of explicit bigotry they just come off as The Way The World Is and completely fail to register as conservative to them.

[banished-away]

artemis and dahlia are so good. the contrast between the supposed hero drizzt always keeping her at an arm's lenght, preferring the "soft look" she puts on to please him where she acts and looks softer and covers her tattoos and scars, knowing she had a painful past but not bothering to ask or look into it because it would shake his morals and he would rather pretend to not know than to actually confront it or even help dahlia through it. meanwhile the supposedly cold killer artemis with just a few looks saw the pain in her, let her have the kill against herzgo because he realized it was important to her even if he had just as good reasons and he didnt know dahlia's yet, and when they were alone he let dahlia be vulnerable to him, asked her about her pain, and when she was not comfortable to speak about it he just stayed near her and comforted her

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

thinking about superheroes unfortunately

[fussystreetlight]

Imo, I think part of the problem with antis is that, since most of them are young, they haven't experienced a lot of things so they have a limited pool to draw comparisons from.

We like comparing what we're currently experiencing or about to experience to past experiences.

Is this game similar to other games we enjoyed? Does this show have the same tropes as a show we disliked? Does this moment in this book remind us of something that happened to us?

We like comparisons. They help us quickly find things we like or help us not waste our time by trying things we're probably not going to like or they help us get more invested into a show.

But antis, because they haven't been alive long, haven't seen many shows so they're very limited in their comparisons.

For example, someone I know irl who sadly leans anti-ish plays a certain new and popular farming sim. Farming sims don't have specific "ages" for their characters, but when they have romance systems, all the potential marriage partners are adults, that's a implicit given that really shouldn't need to be said. But when she saw one of the characters she told me that she wasn't going to go for him because he reminded her of a teenager and she didn't want that teenage drama. Because he reminded her of a Fruits Basket character. I haven't played this game yet, but when I looked at his profile, I couldn't see what she saw. I haven't seen FB but I have played and read a lot of farming sims and romances, including some set in high school. This character is just the typical grumpy blacksmith(/animal rancher) that's common in these types of games. Being grumpy isn't inherently a "teen" thing. And he's competitive, but that's typical in a lot romantic comedies where the two leads work at opposing companies or the, usually male lead, is in a high position at the company the female just got a job at, or when the two leads are exes. He's also apparently bad with his feelings. But that's any brooding male lead or male leads in general in older romance novels, like Mr. Darcy. None of his traits scream teenager to me. But that's where her mind went to because she needed to compare him to another character but she doesn't have that many to choose from. And a "teen" character was the closest fit she could get.

Another similar game has a character that antis love to scream is a child. She had a debilitating illness for most of her life until the player character cures her. As a result of not being able to go outside much, she's a little naive (though I hate how anties think naivety is a trait only kids can have) and still gets tutored by another character even after she's cured. She's also the only child of wealthy parents, so you could see how she could be a little sheltered. None of this makes her not an adult. Even in the official artwork she looks like a young adult, a college student, at the youngest. She looks older than the actual "kids" in the game, and is definitely more emotionally mature than them. She just hasn't been able to experience much because of her chronic illness. But just because she's not a super mature business woman who knows everything there is and because she doesn't act the same as this other character her "age" (he's an older brother who works on a farm and has to do a lot of the work himself because his father has a disability, his sister is too young to be able to help much, and his mother has to attend to a shop. People who've had different lives have different personalities also shouldn't be surprising) she's a child to antis. If anything, she reminds me of the female love interest in those old adventure novels for men. The young and "pure" women who have been "trapped" in their stuffy homes who need the manly men protagonists to "free" them and show them the world you know?

Again, we all like making comparisons. It's just that, for antis, they don't have many things to compare to. They haven't had the time or opportunity to do much so their world view is kinda limited. So when they see these characters, they compare them to real people instead of understanding that they're an amalgamation of tropes and character archetypes that have been done again and again no matter how realistic they might look.

I just feel like it's beneficial for people to try a variety of genres. Not that you can't have a preference that you stick with, but just occasionally find something outside of your circle you think looks interesting. Even if you don't like it at least you'll learn what doesn't work for you. And when you encounter something new you'll have a bigger variety to compare it to and won't need to go for the thought that makes other people look like terrible people. Cause speaking from personal experience, that gets draining after a while, and has led to a few health problems. Honestly imo being an anti sounds so unhealthy for your mental and physical health.

[cyborg-alchemist]

Being trans fucking rules for a lot of reasons.

So, to preface, I don't exactly have the standard accepted gender narrative of 'I was always a woman, born in the wrong body.' I was born a baby in a baby's body. From there, I transitioned into a kind of genderqueer kid, to definitely a boy, to a teenage boy that sometimes wore feminine clothing to piss of my school, to a fuck gender is fake and I don't want one, to transfem. All of those were me, more or less. I spent a solid 10 years being a grown ass man, and decided that I've seen about as much as I care to, and I didn't want to die wondering if I'd be happier as the version of myself that decided to do it.

Now I get to see what it's like to be on both sides of the hormonal experience, at least, to some degree. I never realized, as a man, how much the world felt through feminine skin. It's like my entire body was wrapped in callous, and I'm feeling with my bare skin for the first time. This is fantastic with soft clothes, clean sheets, and cuddles. The first time I did a load of dishes after getting my new skin, I nearly scrubbed my fingers off, trying to remove the feeling that there was dish grease inside my skin. I'm 30 now, and going through a second puberty, and it feels like I'm getting to rediscover the world through new hands.

It's emotionally different, too. As a man, I was plagued by these little flashes of frustration when something felt restrictive, bursting up faster than I could react to, and then gone moments later. I'm pretty sure this is where teenage boys get a reputation for punching drywall. Now, many of my more angry emotions have a slow release that I could never get before. I never used to be able to maintain a space between incandescent rage and empty stillness, but now I have a warm smoulder that I can nurse into action all day. I feel like my emotions are both smoothed out, but also more expressive now. I'm feeling in far more analogue signals, instead of something that felt far more binary before. I don't know how many of these feelings are "this is your brain on e" and how much is "This is your brain with that missing piece" but my transmasc friends have described the reverse experiences on their end. Testosterone, on average, made them both feel stronger, and express it less. But now I've been able to see all of that spectrum of experience.

In short, the act of crossing over is giving me so much perspective that I only vaguely suspected I was missing. I'm getting more life in my life.

And when I try to describe this to my cis woman friends, they don't seem to quite get it. Sometimes it feels like they simply don't realize how big a deal it is, and sometimes it's like trying to describe a cool drink of water to a fish. Most people can't describe what it's like to be them, because they haven't been anything else. Well, I HAVE been someone else, pretty recently, in fact. Every moment, I know what it's like to be me, because this time last year, I was a pretty different me.

On a more physical level, I think being transfem is the only way to have the configuration of body parts that I want without some big surgery, assuming a binary sex starting point. So there's that. I'm enjoying the second puberty, and I'm even, in some cases, enjoying that it is the second one. I'm planning on undoing some of the harrier results of the first, and I might want to train some out of the voice, but even cis folks don't get everything out of puberty that they want.

Like, sure, being trans in this time and place is A Lot, but that's "I don't like sharing a country with those assholes" not "I don't like being trans." The actual internal experience has been fantastic.

Trans people only

[autixel]

DCC OC that calls the viewers "chat"

[tojbnuy]

boyfriend!toji who doesn’t know why but he feels this weird jealousy everytime he sees you meet your friends and greet them all with a big hug. you never did that with him. you relationship was still fairly new to the both of you, but you kissed you fucked you even held hands sometimes when walking around. but, what toji was now realizing, was that he wanted a hug. well, he wanted a hug from You. not a casual little hug, a hug. holding each other. he didn’t know how to broach the subject without sounding needy and like the complete opposite of how he usually acts. he had never cared about this kinda stuff with other people, he’d never experienced it growing up and he thought he could live without it. until you. until you showed him that wanting to be held was normal. he’d been thinking about it for a while until one night, as the two of you got ready for bed it simply slipped out.

‘how come you don’t hug me?’

immediately you stopped plaiting your hair and turned to him with a shocked look.

‘what?’

‘how come you don’t hug me? like when you see your friends or you say bye you hug them. you don’t hug me.’

as soon as he said it he felt stupid. a grown man like him, older than you and he was sat here asking for a fucking hug. what if you turned the question around and said ‘well you don’t hug me’ what would he say? that i’ve never done that before sorry i don’t know how? his thoughts came to a stop when he felt a small hand grab his own larger one.

‘i- toji im so sorry. i’m sorry i didn’t think that was something you wanted.’

fuck now he’s made you feel bad.

‘nah doll you don’t have to say sorry, its nothing let’s just go to bed’

‘no toji please. let’s talk about it.’

you lifted the blanket and made your way over to his side of the bed so you could sit face to face. everything about you was so soft, so kind. such a complete contrast to himself. he was panicking, he didn’t do stuff like this, never talked about stuff like this.

‘honestly toji, i really just thought you weren’t a touchy person. i’m sorry for just assuming especially considering everything you’ve been through,’

‘no please doll. i wasn’t trying to blame you for anything. i just’

his palms were actually sweating, but your face. god your darling sweet face, looking at him like he hung up the stars in sky. like every word out of his mouth meant the world to you. you would wait for him to get the words out no matter how long he took.

‘i don’t know to be honest. you’re right i’m not a touchy person i’ve never really hugged anyone. but i want that. with you. and im sorry, i should be the one to initiate it i just didn’t really know how doll.’ his voice was so quiet, just a rough whisper.

he looked up to stare into your glassy eyes when you leaned in and kissed him. a small whisper of a kiss.

‘can i hug you?’ you said with your lips pressed against his.

he knew you knew he would prefer not to dwell on it.

and then he wrapped his arms around your back so tightly like he was showing the universe just how bad he needed you. he pulled you into his lap and let his cheek fall to your shoulder. he felt your arms wrap around his neck and you fingers stroking the hairs at his nape.

neither of you spoke, you simply sat and held each other and made a silent promise to maintain the closeness from today onwards.

‘thank you for telling me toji. you big baby.’

‘yeah that’s enough. time for bed.’

your giggle was music to his ears.

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

a character's self-deprication being what keeps them from being in a relationship can be really good but mostly when the self deprication is 1. justified and 2. only no longer an issue because their significant other is Into whatever they're angsting about

[songofsunset]

My friend I have BEEN to Texas!!!! Have you SEEN your bluebells???? They are stunning!!!!!!!!

It was long enough ago that I don't have any pictures to include like I did of Ohio, but have you ever smelled the desert after rain? That does not exist in Florida!!! That is a smell I haven't smelled for a decade and I can barely remember it, but it is so unique and lovely.

Your sky is enormous and your clouds are beautiful, and again, I know bluebells are like, the generic flower of Texas, but that's because they genuinely ARE that cool!!! Ain't nothing quite like them!!!!!

[unabletonotlovesatoru]

nanami kento and his certified yapper of a girlfriend, whom he loves very dearly <33

nanami has perfected the art of the “hm.” it’s his go-to response when you’re on one of your enthusiastic tangents. but don’t be fooled—there are different versions of his “hm.” there’s the supportive hm (when he agrees with you), the tired but still listening hm (when he’s too drained to fully engage but doesn’t want to ignore you), and the you’re absolutely ridiculous but I love you hm (his most common one).

he may seem like he zones out, but he retains the important things. you could talk for ten minutes straight about which nail color you should get, and he won’t remember a word. but if you offhandedly mention that you really love those matcha cookies from that one bakery, guess what’s waiting for you the next day?

he’s the only person who can actually get you to shut up—for a moment. whether it’s pulling you into a sudden kiss, placing a warm hand over your mouth, or just giving you that look, he has his ways. you’ll still continue after the interruption, though. always.

sometimes he just lets you talk because he enjoys how animated you get. you’re waving your hands, switching between different tones, going off on dramatic tangents—he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t cute. sometimes he just sits back and watches you, letting the sound of your voice fill the space around him. and you’re so absorbed in your own storytelling that you completely miss his lovesick gaze and his warm smile.

he has definitely fallen asleep to the sound of your voice. you don’t even take offense anymore. it happens often enough that you’ve just accepted your voice as a lullaby for him. sometimes, he’ll wake up to you continuing your story, completely unbothered by the fact that he passed out halfway through.

when he’s in a bad mood, you’re the only person who can make him laugh. sometimes, all it takes is a well-timed, ridiculous comment. other times, it’s just your sheer determination to get a reaction out of him. if he tries to stay grumpy, you’ll narrate his emotions out loud, complete with a fake dramatic voice: “behold! the great and brooding nanami kento, burdened by the weight of existence. will he ever smile again? will he ever—oh wait! there it is! a smirk! ladies and gentlemen, we got him.”

he gets oddly worried when you’re quiet. if you go more than twenty minutes without saying something, he immediately assumes something’s wrong. “are you okay?” “yes, why?” “you’re quiet.” “…so?” “so, it’s suspicious.” if you get quiet for too long, he’ll gently nudge you. not because he doesn’t enjoy silence, but because he knows something might be wrong. “what’s on your mind?” he’ll ask, and when you start rambling again, he knows things are back to normal.

he absolutely refuses to take you grocery shopping anymore. the last time he did, you spent fifteen minutes analyzing which brand of rice was superior, picked up random items purely because they “had cute packaging,” and got distracted by the tiny honey jars again. now, he just goes alone and comes back with everything he knows you like. (or he relents to your endless begging and tells you to not give promises you won’t be able to keep— like you sticking to his side and not prolonging the trip.)

he loves your voice, even if he pretends it exhausts him. he may act like you talk too much (which, to be fair, you do), but if you ever go away for a few days, or if he has a long, quiet work trip, he finds himself missing the constant sound of your chatter. the first thing he does when he comes back? sit down and listen to you ramble about everything he missed.

he’ll never admit it, but he secretly finds your endless talking comforting. it makes the world feel less heavy. it reminds him that, no matter how chaotic things get, you’ll always be right there, filling the silence with something only you would say.

he’s developed a high tolerance for your rapid-fire conversation shifts. most people would struggle to keep up, but nanami has learned to expect the unexpected. you could be talking about your dinner plans one second and then suddenly ask, “do you think sharks are self-aware?” without missing a beat. he doesn’t even flinch anymore—just calmly responds, “if they were, they’d probably be very concerned about their reputation.”

he has a hidden soft spot for your random facts. sure, he’ll sigh when you start a sentence with, “did you know—” but deep down, he’s actually listening. later, he’ll casually use one of your weird facts in conversation, and when you catch him, he’ll just adjust his tie like it never happened.

he’s learned to predict the exact moment you’ll start talking during movies. without fail, right when an important scene starts, you will have a thought. every time. and somehow, nanami just knows when it’s coming. he’ll pause the movie right before you open your mouth, giving you an expectant look. “go ahead.” and you’ll happily share your insight before he presses play again.

nanami secretly finds your over-explaining adorable. sometimes, you’ll start explaining something completely unnecessary—like why a certain restaurant’s menu design is superior to another’s—and he’ll just watch you, arms crossed, pretending to be unimpressed. but inside? he thinks it’s the cutest thing in the world.

he loves when you talk about your day, even if it’s just the small stuff. you could spend twenty minutes telling him about how the barista at the café made your drink slightly different than usual, and he’ll still sit there, listening, occasionally nodding and asking questions. because no matter what you’re talking about, it’s you, and that’s enough.

he will not—under any circumstances—let gojo encourage you. if gojo hypes you up for talking even more, nanami is done. he’ll literally drag you away before you and gojo can start bouncing off each other with endless nonsense.

he may sigh, roll his eyes, and pretend to be exhausted by your constant talking, but if anyone else ever told you to “be quiet,” they’d get a very cold stare from nanami. no one—no one—gets to dull your spark except for him, and even he doesn’t really mean it.

[ghostreblogging]

Ngl this is a short one.

So Danny comes to Gotham. Down on his luck. But lo and behold, he still has access to the kingly vaults! He doesn't have to worry about money!!! He can just buy a small apartment and live out his miserable little life In luxury!

But then he is stopped on a horrible and a dark stump in his plan. How in the 7 hells is he gonna explain it to the IRS ??????

Money laundering????

Can't he just say he found a mysterious big pile of gold and be done with it?

No, Danny . How are you gonna explain the fact that you keep finding mysterious little gold files to the tax man . Jazz says emphatically through a video call . Which is a multi dimensional cuz I can't explain why sam wont just give him the money. And btw the just assume that the vaults has a magic function to give the money to him in the local currency.

Sso from that day onwards Gotham had a new little cafe in a quiet little nook. The prices are super cheap. And it by far has the best fudge in all of Gotham. If you exclude Alfred's.

The gothamites love it. It's a favorite college hangout. Everyone is pretty sure the cafe is a front. Everyone is 100% sure of it. But in this economy who the hell cares. At least it's not nfts.

People can actually benefit from this because we can get like a whole breakfast for like 4 dollars ( an au where like Danny's 2000s world is like super cheap compared to the modern Gotham city and nobody taught the poor boy common prices of this world. Danny's thinking like how do I keep accidentally going into these rich people stores with their ridiculous prices, Ughh guess I'll have to buy this I don't want to go farther) and the quality is good too. The scrawny little twink owner sure as hell does not know much about ingredients prices or did the bare minimum study of business.

Anyway when the bats came sniffing (the scrunkly little guy was innocent blame Fenton luck) and we'll tried to interrogate the owner people actually chained themselves to the front like the worlds most confused save the trees activists.

[fozmeadows]

there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

Years ago now, I remember seeing the rape prevention advice so frequently given to young women - things like dressing sensibly, not going out late, never being alone, always watching your drink - reframed as meaning, essentially, "make sure he rapes the other girl." This struck a powerful chord with me, because it cuts right to the heart of the matter: that telling someone how to lower their own chances of victimhood doesn't stop perpetrators from existing. Instead, it treats the existence of perpetrators as a foregone conclusion, such that the only thing anyone can do is try, by their own actions, to be a less appealing or more difficult victim.

And the thing is, ever since the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, I've kept on thinking about how, in this day and age, CEOs of big companies often have an equal or greater impact on the day to day lives of regular people than our elected officials, and yet we have almost no legal way to redress any grievances against them - even when their actions, as in the case of Thompson's stewardship of UHC, arguably see them perpetrating manslaughter at scale through tactics like claims denial. That this is a real, recurring thing that happens makes the American healthcare insurance industry a particularly pernicious example, but it's far from being the only one. Because the original premise of the free market - the idea that we effectively "vote" for or against businesses with our dollars, thereby causing them to sink or swim on their individual merits - is utterly broken, and has been for decades, assuming it was ever true at all. In this age of megacorporations and global supply chains, the vast majority of people are dependent on corporations for necessities such as gas, electricity, internet access, water, food, housing and medical care, which means the consumer base is, to all intents and purposes, a captive market. We might not have to buy a specific brand, but we have to buy a brand, and as businesses are constantly competing with one another to bring in profits, not just for the company and its workers, but for C-suites and shareholders - profits that increasingly come at the expense of workers and consumers alike - the greediest, most inhumane corporations set the financial yardstick against which all others are then, of necessity, measured. Which means that, while businesses are not obliged to be greedy and inhumane in order to exist, overwhelmingly, they become greedy and humane in order to compete, because capitalism encourages it, and because there are precious few legal restrictions to stop them from doing so. At the same time, a handful of megacorporations own so many market-dominating brands that, without both significant personal wealth and the time and resources to find viable alternatives, it's all but impossible to avoid them, while the ubiquity of the global supply chain means that, even if you can keep track of which company owns which brand, it's much, much harder to establish which suppliers provide the components that are used in the products bearing their labels. Consider, for instance, how many mainstream American brands are functionally run on sweatshop labour in other parts of the world: places where these big corporations have outsourced their workforce to skirt the already minimal labour and wage protections they'd be obliged to adhere to in the US, all to produce (say) electronics whose elevated sticker price passes a profit on to the company, but without resulting in higher wages for either the sweatshop workers overseas or the American employees selling the products in branded US stores.

When basically every major electronics corporation is engaged in similar business practices, there is no "vote" our money can bring that causes the industry itself to be better regulated - and as wealthy, powerful lobbyists from these industries continue to pay exorbitant sums of money to politicians to keep government regulation at a minimum, even our actual votes can do little to effect any sort of change. But even in those rare instances where new regulations are passed, for multinational corporations, laws passed in one country overwhelmingly don't prevent them from acting abusively overseas, exploiting more desperate populations and cash-poor governments to the same greedy, inhumane ends. And where the ultimate legal penalty for proven transgressions is, more often than not, a fine - which is to say, a fee; which is to say, an amount which, while astronomical by the standards of regular people, still frequently costs the company less than the profits earned through their unethical practices, and which is paid from corporate coffers rather than the bank accounts of the CEOs who made the decisions - big corporations are, in essence, free to act as badly as they can afford to; which is to say, very. Contrary to the promise of the free market, therefore, we as consumers cannot meaningfully "vote" with our dollars in a way that causes "good" businesses to rise to the top, because everything is too interconnected. Our choices under global capitalism are meaningless, because there is no other system we can financially support that stands in opposition to it, and while there are still small businesses and companies who try to operate ethically, both their comparative smallness and their interdependent reliance on the global supply chain means that, even if we feel better about our choices, we're not exerting any meaningful pressure on the system we're trying to change. Which means that, under the free market, trying to be an ethical consumer is functionally equivalent to a young woman dressing modestly, not going out alone and minding her drink at parties in order to avoid being raped. We're not preventing corporate predation or sending a message to corporate predators: we're just making sure they screw other worker, the other consumer, the other guy.

All of which is to say: while I'd prefer not to live in a world where shooting someone dead in the street is considered a valid means of redressing grievances, what the murder of Brian Thompson has shown is that, if you provide no meaningful recourse for justice against abusive, exploitative members of the 1%, then violence done to those people will have the feel of justice, because it fills the void left by the lack of consequences for their actions. It's the same reason why people had little sympathy for the jackass OceanGate CEO who killed himself in his imploding sub, or anyone whose yacht has been attacked by orcas - it's just intensified here, because where the OceanGate CEO was felled by hubris and the yachts were random casualties, whoever killed Thomspon did so deliberately, because of what he did. It was direct action against a man whose policies very arguably constituted manslaughter at scale; a crime which ought to be a crime, but which has, to date, been permitted under the law. And if the law wouldn't stop him, can anyone be surprised that someone might act outside the law in retaliation - or that regular people would cheer for them when they did?

[inkskinned]

i love finding out how big this world is. my girlfriend has only visited boston a handful of times, but i grew up here. i told her we'd be going to do the tourist traps in salem, and she said - which salem?

to be fair to her, there are a lot of other states that have a town named "salem." and i think there's some evidence that the witch trials actually happened in what is now called Danvers. but the thing is - she thought "salem" was like, a made-up thing. there wasn't actually a salem, massachusetts - like there isn't a gotham city.

they don't talk about it that much where she grew up, is the thing! and this made me laugh. a week ago she was talking about her hometown and said something akin to "well the museum's kinda like the one in richmond," and i had to explain i still had no frame of reference for what the hell this museum was like.

i love finding out what knowledge i take for granted. i used to live with 5 other women. 3 of them were from south korea. they had to take, like, a solid fifteen minutes to explain their birthday system to my gay math-blind ass, laughing as they did.

that same month, our roommate from denmark taught me the danish word for wreath by accident - she'd been talking about decorations, used krans, and i'd been able to figure it out through context. i just picked it up and kept talking. our entire house used krans as the word. she came home and slammed the door one evening, mock-angry, shouting: you motherfuckers! it's a - a wreath!

and how often do you use certain words, anyway! i am cuban, so i was raised with certain spanish words sort of sprinkled in there; but never how you'd think. in middle school i asked someone to pass me the recogedor - in a completely american accent, like i was speaking english. i hadn't registered it as a spanish word. i mean, how often in school do you actually use the word "dustpan" - i'd only ever heard it in the context of cleaning my house.

there are places that you grew up that you, just, like, know. that you assume everyone knows. there are things and people and "common knowledge" that you have that, just, like. doesn't exist for me. i don't know what you call your public transportation system, but in boston we call it "the T". our train cards are called charlie cards because of a song where a father accidentally abandons his family, which was written because our system of transportation. in boston, most people would snort and say everyone knows that, kid.

i think you and i should go on a long walk - it's getting dark early these days and we need any sun we can manage. tell me about the first time you saw snow. tell me about the stuff everyone knows about your home. tell me about the cities "everyone's been to," about the food "everyone's already tried." who knows. maybe it will feel nice to you - watching someone learn about it for the very first time.