#but i might just risk it all ….

[lloydfrontera]

the webcomic can have one (1) funny "earnest moment interrupted by comedy" joke. as a treat. but also because it is so in character for them ajkshdjkas

yes they will say the most earnest shit to each other and then immediately try to cringe out of their own bodies. they are best friends but they would rather jump out of a window before admitting it. they are incredibly devoted and grateful to one another but you could not water board that out of either of them.

the only thing that can get either of them to admit how much they care for each other is if the other is in life threatening danger and not a second before aakjshdks

[bumblingbabooshka]

Thinking about marriage/women's rights on Vulcan Some may think that T'Pring not being allowed to divorce Spock was because he was going through the pon farr but if she were allowed to divorce him at all she probably would have done that a long time ago, confirmed by T'Pol when she's speaking with Koss, who isn't suffering from the pon farr. She says that he can choose another mate (without invoking a fight it seems: note the difference between a 'mate' and a 'challenger') and after he makes it clear that nothing she says will change his mind about marrying her, she finally threatens to declare a kal-if-fee. It's clear that Vulcan women cannot divorce/refuse to marry a man they've been betrothed to under any circumstances if A) He himself doesn't consent to ending their marriage or B) She doesn't have someone else waiting in the wings to be given to in his stead. Though, if the challenger she selects fails to win the fight, she'll have to marry her betrothed anyway unless (again) he decides he doesn't want her after the challenge. That seems like an incredibly unfair system, heavily biased towards men. SNW is an alternate universe in many obvious respects but most egregiously in that T'Pring has a lot of non-canonical agency over her relationship with Spock. It's interesting to me that Vulcan society has women in many positions of power and treats women as equal to men from what I've seen despite these laws. We don't really see Vulcans exhibiting a misogynistic attitude towards women in general but in TOS (perhaps because of its general writing style but it's still interesting to note) both Sarek and Spock take on patriarchal attitudes specifically regarding wives. Amanda says that 'of course' Sarek commands her because "he is a Vulcan and I am his wife." It's worthwhile in my eyes to note that she specifies 'wife' instead of attributing this attitude to women as a whole. Again, with TOS' writing style it wouldn't be out of place for her to say "he is a man and I am a woman." Spock, while in a pon farr induced irritation, states that it's "undignified for a woman to play servant to a man that isn't hers" - again implying that there's something specific about being a Wife in Vulcan society which is different from being a woman in general and demands subservience to a husband. This could perhaps stem from the extreme sense of ownership that Vulcan law has permitted men to have over women. A woman legally cannot point blank refuse marriage. There is no option which guarantees she won't have to marry her betrothed other than death. When T'Pau speaks of T'Pring she refers to her as being 'property' and Stonn, before being interrupted, states he's made 'the ancient claim' - we don't know what this is because he gets cut off but it's obvious they're both using the language of Vulcan law. Men are permitted true freedom to choose. If a woman wants to choose someone else to be with there is no option available to her other than the kal-if-fee which might result in the death of the one she wants to be with. And, if her lover fails, her husband can still just decide he wants to marry her and she'll be forced to. T'Pring gives two scenarios: One where Spock 'frees' her and one where he doesn't - it's still ultimately his decision which is clear when he ends the conversation with "Stonn, she is yours." This again isn't just because of the pon farr as T'Pol also goes through this. Koss can choose another mate and when the option is talked about there's no implication that this would result in any sort of fight (both by the casualness of its mention and by the fact that there's no formal word for it unlike the kal-if-fee.) Also, the fact that Koss does eventually grant T'Pol a divorce and it's all fine means that T'Pol isn't lawfully required to have another man waiting if her HUSBAND doesn't want her. It's ONLY required if SHE doesn't want her husband. Tradition must take precedence over individual desire UNLESS!!! You're a man. Then it's fine. Like, your parents might not be happy but legally you're golden.

[little-pondhead]

The Curse Of Hope

_

Danny is in another universe. He had a reason, but he doesn’t remember anymore. He can only stare, horrified and disgusted, at the sickest city spirit he’s ever seen. Shivering and swaying with every step, core exposed, and ectoplasm leaking from wounds that are decades old. A ratty blanket was thrown over their shoulders, barely hiding the spirit’s pale grey skin and protruding black bones.

The spirit didn’t even sense him until he reached out to touch its wispy shoulders. The spirit flinched, clutching at the dozens of trinkets hanging from their neck and tucking in on themselves like they were expecting a blow.

“Oh, shit,” He swore, floating back a few feet, hands in the air, to show he meant no harm. “I’m sorry. I promise, I’m not here to steal from you.” The spirit shivered again and rolled a pearl necklace in between their fingers. A nervous habit. “Uh, I like that pocket watch? It’s very nice.”

That got their attention. They peeked at Danny, and he saw that more tattered cloth was covering their eyes, blending in with the stringy hair that reached the ground. Their blanket fluttered weakly, revealing hundreds of thousands of tiny marks etched into their skin. Scars, really. Scars that wrote out curse after curse onto the spirit’s very being. They burned with evil intent, and even reached inside the spirit’s body and wrapped around their core.

Occasionally, blinding specks of color raced across their body, temporarily erasing the writing, but it always returned quickly. He watched, a little detached, as one particular line rewrote itself across their rough forearm, drawing fresh ectoplasm like someone was writing it with a thin knife.

“Are you…alright?” Danny stuttered. A stupid question.

The spirit cocked its head. He couldn’t see their eyes, but he felt their burning gaze as they pondered the question.

“The pain of others becomes mine own.” They rasped. “The lights of the city dim as rotten wealth clogs mine veins. Magicks long forgotten have eaten mine skins, pulled mine cloak, and darkened mine skies. Helios has refused to grace mine doorstep, and the seasons of the Earth have revoked their kindness.”

Danny held his breath. It felt like he was the one with the exposed core, not the spirit.

The spirit shivered once more. “Tell mine soul, little lamb. How could this Forsaken City know peace, when it was long since ripped from mine hands?”

Shit, he needed Frostbite. And maybe Clockwork. Now.

-Or-

Danny meets the spirit of Gotham City. The villains and rogues that have plagued the city for decades are literal curses that are taking quite the toll on Gotham, and honestly, Danny isn’t sure how much longer they can hold out. The heroes seem to be doing some help, and are probably the reason Gotham made it this far, but the poor city needs help from the Realms if they want to get better.

Luckily, Danny can provide that help.

But only if he could get Gotham to leave their city behind. Because recovery is going to take a very long time.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Seeing as the Gerudo turned on Ganon, he might not have been that much better of a ruler.

First of all, we literally have no idea, because the only ancient Gerudo that we actually get to interact with is Ganondorf himself, and he has nothing to say about his own people. The ancient Gerudo sage doesn't count btw, she doesn't have a name, we never even see her face, and she has literally nothing to say except repeating the exact same dialogue as the sages for the other races. The narrative does not treat the ancient sages as people; they are four completely interchangable weapons that are owned by the royal family.

And secondly, I don't care how Ganon ruled them; the Gerudo only get one man every century, if their king sucks, they've obviously got their own system of government to fall back on. I have no idea what kind of authority the sages had among their own people, but honestly I'd say if the four of them were in charge of their respective people, then they were just puppet rulers appointed by Rauru, given that all four of them happily agreed that to sell their entire race into servitude the second Zelda asked them. Say what you will about Ganondorf, but I fucking know that if he was told the Gerudo people existed for the sole purpose of serving the glory of Hyrule, he'd drop kick Zelda into the fucking sun.

And don't get me started on the implications of the cultural differences we see between the independent Gerudo and the annexed Gerudo. The background Gerudo characters all have their own models, and we can clearly see that the ones siding with Ganon have their own unique looks - for example, the amazing lady with the mohawk that summons the molduga swarm in that one flashback. And men are never mentioned in these flashbacks at all, which implies that the Gerudo genuinely didn't care about settling down. Ganon even speaks derisively about marriage, implying that it's very rare for Gerudo women to make serious romantic commitments with men. It implies that their culture is more along the same line as their portrayal in OOT - they are a closed culture. Men trying to force their way into their areas are arrested, and mocked for being entitled dumbasses. Outsiders are only welcome if they can prove that they respect the Gerudo as people, and aren't just there to try and pick up chicks. It's never outright said, but OOT also makes it pretty clear that the Gerudo women just aren't interested in marrying outsiders - close relationships occur with other Gerudo, Hylian men are only considered useful for making babies.

Meanwhile the Gerudo we see serving Hyrule are all trying to measure up to Hylian beauty standards, and appeal to their men. Their one goal in life is to meet a man and get married. Men are welcome in their lands, and only kept out of the town itself... and even then, there's a small army of guys trying to force their way into the town anyways, which is brushed off as just haha, boys will be boys. No men allowed isn't even about independence, it's just a silly romantic tradition.

Of course this is just a fictional culture in a game world, but it's still really fucking uncomfortable that the 'evil' Gerudo are the ones that have independence, both politically and socially, and display a unique culture that refuses to tolerate disrespect from outsiders. Meanwhile the 'good' Gerudo are the ones that canonically exist to serve a kingdom where 95% of the population is light skinned (even setting aside the unfortunate implications, just saying one race exists to serve a different one is super fucked up), they have classes on how to be more appealing to Hylian's, and their entire social structure is built around finding a Hylian man to marry, making them all inherently dependent on the goodwill of outsiders. Even their biggest value of 'women only' is treated as a joke; men trying to trespass in BOTW are just shoved back out the door, letting them keep trying all day if they want. The crowds of men plotting to force their way in are laughed off as a joke. Nobody cares that there's a guy running laps around their city walls and trying to trick women into being alone with him. I mean for fucks sake, in TOTK we find that the creepy guy trying to lure women away has taken advantage of a massive disaster to get into the town, and he's still there once things return to normal. You can't kick him out, or alert anyone to his presence. And the Gerudo just tolerate Hylians blatantly ignoring their boundaries. For fucks sake, TOTK even reveals that the seven legendary heroines they've been revering the whole time were actually completely useless and unable to achieve anything... because they needed the eighth hero, a Hylian man to teach them basic tactics and do all the heavy lifting.

TOTK does not respect the Gerudo people in the slightest. It doesn't respect anyone who isn't Hylian or Zonai.

...This got a little off track, but the point I'm trying to make is, no, I don't consider the Gerudo turning on Ganon to mean anything. The entire game does not feel like the real story of what happened, it feels like the propaganda version of history meant to make Hyrule look as good as possible. I genuinely cannot believe that we're being told the real story about the Imprisoning War, because none of it feels real, and we don't get to know any details that might have made Hyrule look even slightly imperfect. We're told that Ganondorf is evil because he hates Hyrule, and he hates Hyrule because he's evil. The Gerudo people followed Ganondorf and saw him as a hero of their people, then suddenly he was their worst enemy. Hyrule is a perfect kingdom that has strong, equal alliances with the other races, but also all of the non-Hylian races exist for the sole purpose of serving Hyrule, and their leaders are expected to swear eternal loyalty and submission to the Hylian royal family. King Rauru and Queen Sonia united all of the races in peace and equality, which is why they're sitting on the world's supply of magical nuclear missiles, and every member of the Hylian royal family is allowed to walk around wearing them as cute accessories, but everyone else only gets them at the last second, and they all need to outright swear to only use that power to benefit Rauru and his descendants.

There's just so many fucked up contradictions, and so many hints of something more nuanced going on... but the story refuses to acknowledge any of it, and just keeps aggressively pushing the narrative that Hyrule is the ultimate good and couldn't possibly do anything wrong. I don't even believe that Ganon was a bad king honestly; we never hear why his people stopped following him. We also never even see if the Gerudo people turned on him at all; all we know is the ancient Gerudo sage wanted him dead, and given that she also happily sold her people into slavery, she's not exactly the most trustworthy source of information. All we know is that Ganondorf was a hero to his people, only one of his citizens is ever shown having an issue with him (and her motives are never explained), and then he lost the war and was sealed away, leaving his people open to be conquered by Zelda and annexed into Hyrule. By the time we see any Gerudo actually opposing Ganon (apart from the ancient sage), it's been ten thousand years since the war, and all anyone knows is the Hylian version of the story.

[daemon-is-perfectly-unhinged]

Daemon: Where are the twins?

Viserys: Oh, they went out.

Daemon: ...but they're grounded.

Viserys:

Viserys: Are they not allowed to go out when they're grounded?

[leverage-ot3]

my drafts finally ran out and I’ve been too exhausted to go through like 2k worth of drafts to tag so apologies abt break in posting

urgent question: if you have any tips about recognizing undercover cops and ICE agents please write below. I never thought my very liberal state would come to this but I live in an area with a very high level of immigrants + multiple municipalities are basically de facto sanctuary cities since they have extra protections written into local law

I work at a healthcare facility that sees high numbers of new americans (with varying ‘legal’ statuses). there are reports from individuals within the local spanish speaking whatsapp channels that ICE is stopping people on their way to our healthcare facility. I can’t disclose too much without revealing highly identifying information about who I am and where I work, but higher management is not handling this good enough. everyone in my department (social work) is outraged and will do whatever it takes to protect the people we serve regardless of management. they deny it’s happening because it wasn’t happening when they went outside to look but that doesn’t mean shit- they’re 100% making rounds and patrolling. we are likely going to start taking walks during our limited breaks around the neighborhood to keep lookout. I’d much rather have a patient do telehealth or reschedule, or have them wait in my office an extra 20 minutes instead of possibly getting stopped by undercover agents. with the recent executive orders healthcare facilities aren’t even respected as sensitive locations discouraged from being raided anymore.

so yeah. any tips on spotting any undercover cops/ICE would be swell. funnily enough I have been thinking a lot about that one thing eliot said about undercover law enforcement and shoes. I’ve also been researching that already + rights and what to tell patients + everything else I can think of BUT thought I’d float it out here as well

stay safe, everyone in the US and outside. you are cared for, loved, important. you matter and deserve to be treated with humility and respect. look after each other

[cementcornfield]

Offseason Thoughts!!

ok i know a lot of people are dreading this offseason because it’s going to be Long it’s going to be Dramatic, but honestly i’m so here for it. like lowkey i love this time of year because really it’s the time for completely unbridled optimism in a lot of ways. if we do A, B, and C, who’s to say that that doesn’t fix the team and we win the super bowl next year? you literally can’t know for sure that it WON’T work!! (i didn’t say it was a time for realism, i said optimism, perhaps delusionally so 🥲) 

plus i’m just genuinely interested in all the roster building stuff. figuring out contracts and how those might work, free agency, the draft and everything that those things entail - love it! all about it! so if you’re a sicko like me who IS into all of this (and i completely understand if you aren’t because it WILL be exhausting) i thought i’d make a little overview about the things we’ll be dealing with over the next several months. 

Here is a list of all the internal free agents we are going to have to make decisions on, along with their expected cost and the likelihood of us keeping them

^Here is our expected cap space for the next few years (taking into account expected cuts like Rankins, Hubbard, and Cappa) plus some extra commentary.

as you can see, we have MORE than enough cash and cap space to be very aggressive this offseason. will we be? it’s certainly not in our reputation to do so, but they HAVE been making baby steps over the last few years to catch up to the modern nfl. the most recent example of which is firing coaches like lou before their contracts are up! very uncharacteristic of the brown family. and i think this reflects rumblings you hear on twitter that the organization is frankly embarrassed at how this season went (rightfully so). so i think you can expect they will do SOME things to reflect this urgency, even if it’s not as much as we’d like them to do. 

the biggest decisions to be made: what do we do about tee?? what do we do about trey?? and then of course extending ja’marr, which i don’t think is a decision at all for anyone, but they’ve gotta decide how to do it to make both sides as happy as possible, when they struggled with that right up to the first game last season 😭

Tee: obviously if you’ve been following this blog you know i want to keep tee. i think we can pull it off and i think it will be beneficial to the team long term. but there is an argument to be made regarding his durability/injuries and whether the resources we’d spend on him would be better spent elsewhere like on fixing our historically bad defense. however, to that i say that we’re actually already one of the biggest spenders in terms of cap space on defense, and it didn’t help at all lmao. once we get rid of people like sheldon rankins and sam hubbard, who are definitely no longer worth the value of their contracts, we will free up a significant portion of the cap and use it to find better value free agents that can help us. the strategy going from overpaying for bad players to paying average amounts for average players. because with a top 5 offense like we had this year, we truly only need an average defense, unlike the HISTORICALLY bad one we had this year!

(now a caveat to this is if the bengals would actually show they’re willing to go all out and spend BIG on the BEST defensive free agents, then perhaps that’s worth more than keeping tee. but the only thing with that is that i just don’t believe the bengals would do it either way. even in 21 when we fixed our whole defense with free agency, we still did it by acquiring a bunch of smaller name value free agents, who ended up performing far above what the market thought they would. and i imagine that will be the strategy by the FO whether we keep tee or not.) 

you can also say that a large part of our FO’s failure the last few seasons has been that we aren’t keeping our Known Talents. we drafted and developed jessie bates into a star, and then we let him go because we thought we could easily replace his value for cheaper in FA and the draft….and three years later safety is still a huge hole on our roster. DJ Reader is another example of a key player for our team that we thought we could replace and we failed dramatically. looking at tee, who is the replacement we have in line? jermaine?? for SO MANY reasons that is no longer a viable plan lmao. Someone in FA? this is a weak FA class. so we’d let tee walk and then probably end up overpaying for a lesser talent? what’s the point of that? okay maybe we draft a WR high to replace tee? well i’m hearing that it’s also not a great WR draft. and to expect a first year rookie to come in and offer even half of what tee does is also not a super sound strategy! (not to mention we’d have to spend a high draft pick that should probably be used on defense!) 

tag tee? maybe! but i don’t think it’s as likely as extending him at this point. the second tag will be expensive (i think over 25k? maybe 26k) and that takes up a big chunk of our cap space if that’s what we’re worried about. plus it will piss off tee, to be tagged twice and not given the benefit of being able to get a long term deal? with his injury history especially? players hate that shit. i think it’s more beneficial for both parties to just do an extension at that point if we want to keep him. you can spread the cap hit out easier for the team, and tee won’t have to worry about his long term security as much. 

ANYWAY this got long, honestly tee should have just been his own post lmao. but this situation is deifnitely the most interesting to me and seeing how it goes will be FASCINATING. 

Trey: he requested a trade last offseason because he knows that his current contract is significantly less than he deserves for the value he offers (and that was BEFORE he got first team all pro and led the entire nfl in sacks this season, oh god 🥲) we have him under contract, but would he be willing to play under it? or would he retire like he threatened to? i’m honestly not sure, and i hope it doesn’t come to us finding out. we need to keep our star players happy, which means we need to figure something out here. do we extend him? he just turned 30, which the FO always frowns upon when it comes to extensions lol BUT he also just had his best year? i don’t think even our idiotic FO could say that just because his age starts with a 3 now means he’ll be washed next season or even the season after. what i’m seeing on twitter is that he’s expected to get at least one more deal of 2-3 years. and looking at the age of elite edge guys in the league, i think that that’s fair! and if you ask me, completely and totally worth it to keep trey. i mean jesus, who do we even have on defense if we lose him?? i think this one is a no-brainer, we’ve gotta offer him an extension for more money and i think he’d still be willing to take a reasonable deal to stay. 

Ja’Marr: oh my god. i’m still filled with SO MUCH RAGE when i think back to how CLOSE we were to getting him signed last offseason. we were RIGHT THERE. all the rumors were saying it was basically a done deal!! all the numbers and years were agreed upon!!! but our cheap-ass FO couldn’t just get over themselves and structure the guarantees to match how most deals are done in the rest of the league!! they showed they’re willing to do a modern structure for Joe, they need to show they’re willing to do it with the rest of our stars. especially our first team all pro triple crown winning stars!! jesus christ!!!

the only thing that offers me some comfort is that ja’marr is still on the same path, contract-wise, as Justin Jefferson. they also couldn’t get over the hump before his fourth year even when both parties wanted to, and he ended up signing a massive contract in june the next year. i’m hoping that we can accomplish the same on a similar timeline because oh my god i do not need all the drama of ja’marr missing training camp again! and when you look at all the other WRs up for an extension this offseason (garrett wilson probably the only one who even comes slightly close to ja’marr’s level), i think it’s fair to say that ja’marr is setting the market whenever he signs. then like with justin’s last year, the other WRs will all sign slightly below. so i’m hoping hoping hoping that there’s no motivation on either side to drag this out. but of course, we’ll see!! 

and then we’ve gotta think about the lesser free agents like Mike G, Mike H, BJ, Germaine…i have no idea what we do with them. i’d like to retain Mike G…..the three defensive vets i dunno! they’re good locker room leaders…mostly? they’re still solid if not losing a step. should we bring them back for reasonable vet deals? probably?? can we find better value in FA?? i’m honestly not sure. like you don’t want to lose these guys but it’s also hard to say that we should keep them at all costs when you look at the defensive performance last year. i just don’t know here. i’d hope we keep at least one of them? BJ maybe being the most important in my eyes? 

there’s so much more to talk about honestly but i’ll stop yapping for now! what do you guys think we should do?? i’d love to hear your thoughts! 

[skunkes]

can i ask why ur getting the surgery? /gen curious /no hate

i am getting a bi(lateral)salp(ingectomy) bc i never want to be pregnant or be a parent!

Even if i do change my mind later about the parent thing (not super likely but things can change, sure) theres noooo shortage of single parents lmao

And even if I never End Up In The Circumstance(s) Where I COULD Become Pregnant in my life, I'd want the peace of mind anyway...

I've always felt disgusted that this is something my body is capable of. I want it to be MY body and not a site and vessel for potential tragedy in any direction. And I want it to be something permanent and not dependent on access to services/medicines or even laws!!! Dis is a gender affirming surgery for me honestly...

[damthosefandoms]

the thing is I have no idea how to put it into words but dally loves about as hard as soda does. just in a very different, very specific kind of way. soda loves everyone at first glance until it’s proven a mistake and dally loves only a few specific people so much it kills him.

[eastbluecrewed]

things you can't get back

aka i've been waiting so patiently to see kidd get his ass beat by shanks (affectionate)

[clay-pidgeon]

virtue ref! holds up peace sign does the catgirl head tilt and falls dead to the floor

[itsnobodysproblem]

Most Sherlock Holmes adaptations I've seen tend to place their Final Problem towards the mid point of the series (or even a bit earlier) - it's also in my opinion the best way of going about it, so you have time enough for the characters to adjust after the reunion but they know each other well enough for the events of Fina to be devastating.

Sherlock & Co is done with 20 of the adventures. How many are there? Fifty-something? Almost sixty? Let's say we'll be entering mid-point territory after the 25th story.

So let's pretend for a moment that we have 5 more stories until The Final Problem. Ok.

Estimating an adventure at 3 episodes each, that would mean little over 3 months - maybe 3 and a half? Starting, of course, from the end of Sign of Four, which will be somewhere in December.

So let's say 3, maybe 4 months into 2025. That would be, what? Late march, early april?

Early april?

John having to tell the listeners that Sherlock is dead, in early april?

Quick calendar search reveals what I was praying it would - the 1st of april will be on a Tuesday next year.

So what I'm saying

What I'm saying is Sherlock &Co has the opportunity to do the funniest fucking thing

[thedreadvampy]

sometimes I forget that my experience has been. um. not 'your experiences are not universal' vibes but more like 'your experiences are EXTREMELY atypical'

[king-candybug-backup]

I'm noticing an uptick in comments complaining that most of the current WIR fandom content is Turbo instead of the other characters and, like... you guys know you can search other characters by their specific tags, right??? Or exclude Turbo from search results by temporarily blacklisting him in your filtered tags?

Idk, it's just weird to me to be discouraging towards people making fandom content just because it's not the specific content you want to see, like, it's ok to want to see other content, but complaining about how other people aren't catering to your tastes enough instead of just making the content you want to see yourself is kinda bad vibes, y'know?? (And that's not to say that I think those comments are intended out of malice of course, I really don't think they are, I just wanted to point out that it can come off as a little entitled, as well as discouraging towards people who just want to draw Turbo, which is something that should be fine if that's what they want to do. Fandom should be fun for everybody, and there's lots of tools available to curate your experience with it!)

[moeblob]

Rey, who is in my very biased opinion, one of the funniest "girls" I have because she's just a guy, truly. Like Rey is just short for Reynold because he was recruited by a a goddess to help the hero she selected and the hero is conveniently Reynold's younger brother. So he agrees to help under the condition that the goddess gives him a female body for the other world. She's like "really odd flex but whatever" and gives him a female form and he's like "you know. I can't really blame anyone but myself for not specifying 'please don't turn me into a Lisa Frank personification'."

[puppppppppy]

man