#but it’s a metaphor

[confessions-of-a-doormat]

i used to be a crew member on a ship. i still miss it. i met amazing people, had lots of fun, and felt a part of something important.

over the past year the ship sailed through a ton of rocky waters, with some vicious sea monsters popping up in the storm. and though i was scared, i knew we could make it through. i trusted my crew, and i trusted my captain.

throughout it all we left the monsters alone, the sharks and the giant squid, and focused on keeping the boat afloat, moving forward on our journey.

one crew member said how we needed to fight the monsters attacking us. he was worried we would be broken by them. the captain stood firm. and so the crew member took some weapons, and left the crew to fight on his own. the passengers watched in shock.

the captain was furious. the fight might anger the monsters more. the crew were all mixed on the idea of fighting the monsters, and tensions became as high as the waters were rocky. we still all tried to stick together.

arguments broke out. the captain has a temper, we know that, we’ve seen it. we understand what stress does to him, and we’ve all had a rocky year. we begged him to take a break from captaining.

instead, he completely disappeared. we searched the ship, all the nooks and crannies but could not find him anywhere. we were worried for his life.

the next day he was there again. we were so relieved he was ok. he said he wanted to be captain again. we thought it wasn’t a good idea. the stress of it was getting to him. he said he was fine now, that the first mate could help him command the boat and passengers and take over when he could not control himself. we still did not think it was a good idea. another crew member jumped ship in response.

nevertheless, i am a hopeful person when it comes to those i love. and so if i saw it, i said i would believe it. the captain, first mate, and another crew member had a meeting about how to fight the sea monsters, and how to address the first crew member leaving.

i listened outside the door. i did not hear everything, but i heard the captain scream, and refuse to listen to the first mate, and then the crew member stormed out. the first mate told them to come back. they said they could not, and jumped ship.

the captain couldn’t control himself, or listen to the first mate. that was clear. he still refused to recognize his own faults - his temper, his response to those who left, the private things he was told that he made public to the crew. i knew he could be better, and maybe return to captain or crew some day, but he definitely needed time away from the stress, perhaps to be just a passenger. and yet, he stayed captain.

i didn’t know what to do. i loved him. i loved all of them. my crew was my family. and yet the ship no longer felt safe. i wrote the captain a letter and jumped ship, into the cold waters. i bid the passengers farewell, but i did not tell them why.

soon after, two other crew members jumped ship. they told me how the letter had angered the captain in a way that made them realize they could not stay either.

there is one other crew member. she does not know what to do, but she stays, for the ship. i still talk to her. the first mate may be upset with the captain’s actions, but is still loyal to him, and so they are leading the ship. i no longer talk to the captain, though i miss him and still love him through all the heartbreak.

he pretends everything is fine now. he does not understand we left not because of the stress, but his reaction to it and refusal to step down. the passengers get to hear his side of the story.

and i do not viciously attack him; i do not want to become a giant sea monster. but i wish the passengers could see us, the ex-crew, all of us, here in our little boat. i wish they would question what happened, and if there is more than one side to the story he weaves.

i love the crew, and i love the passengers. i wish the cracks in our team could be repaired, but i know some never will. i still hold out small hope, that one day the captain will realize his wrongs, do the work to be better, and apologize to all he hurt. but i cannot sit around waiting for a day that may or may not come.

[justgivemeabookplease]

Shrek 2, while a cinematic masterpiece, is also an interesting look at queerness and comp het.

Fiona is married so it's time to reunite with her parents. But instead of marrying a prince, she's married to an ogre. Not just that, but she's also an ogre. (Yes everyone knew she would sometimes be an ogre but that was when she was a child, she didn't know she would be an ogre for the rest of her life, and besides once she met the right prince she would stop being an ogre. She was supposed to stop being an ogre.)

But okay they're both ogres. We can still ask about when they'll have children because even if they're ogres they can still have kids, right? That's what married princes and princesses do so naturally that's what everyone does. Even if ogres might not be great parents (I've heard that ogres eat their young, is that something you people do?) it's still something that should be discussed.

And okay you can stay in Fiona's childhood bedroom filled with all the reminders that hey, everyone thought she was just a princess and princesses marry princes. Her toys left out from the last time she played with them. The prince slays the ogre. The princess offers a token of gratitude for slaying the ogre. Fiona wrote Mrs. Fiona Charming a million times in her diary because what else was she supposed to grow up to be?

And Harold you have to fix this, your country can't be ruled by ogres. You were unfit to rule when you were a frog but I changed you, I made you better, I made you a prince. You know how this works. Think of your daughter's safety.

Shrek goes to the Fairy Godmother and oh honey, ogres don't live happily ever after. It's just not done. It hasn't happened in all of fairy tale history. You have to change the both of you to be happy. You have to present as a prince and a princess. It will be better. You'll fit in better that way. You'll be accepted that way.

[aesethewitch]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[atissi]

i don't really like when people say dungeon meshi is accidentally good autistic representation, because while i understand not wanting to make conclusions without explicit confirmation from the author, there's always the weird assumption that non-western authors somehow don't know about things like neurodivergency/queerness/etc. (on top of the assumptions that east asian authors are somehow more naive or oblivious to "western" social issues).

given that dungeon meshi started being published in 2014, it's not really a "work belonging to its times"—it's as contemporary as any other media we discuss on this site, which means it should be fair to assume it engages with contemporary topics (and at the very least, you shouldn't say that the representation is accidental with so much confidence)

but anyways, the chapter "perfect communication" in ryoko kui's "terrarium in a drawer" is some of the most straightforward autistic representation I've seen, and from now on I'm going to assume that laios's character writing is absolutely intentional in that regard:

[spurgie-cousin]

This is such a good, succinct way of describing the illusion of choice many fundamentalist women and men have when it comes to life paths.

[cracklewink]

My Mane 6 Redesigns all together! I was going to post them separately but ended up finishing them all before I got around to it lol

[tanjir0se]

Disclaimer these are just a small sampling of some possible writer traits I’ve noticed either in myself or in fics I read. Also consider a rb for sample size !

[aphel1on]

nothinggg better than torturing an emotionally repressed character until every single trauma they've ever refused to process starts spilling uncontrollably out of the cracks. like a matryoshka doll situation of repressed trauma and baby you better believe i'm going in there with a hammer

[canonkiller]

but you can't keep holding on like this.

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[thelesbianthespianposts]

imagine: you get your memories back after years of amnesia to find out your whole species is dead and earth doesn’t exist anymore. that the only thing left of your culture is your weird ex and his busted honda civic that barely even works that he stole from the government when he was 13. And he’s been taking members of an alien species for trips in his honda civic and they’re all like “woah it’s so cool” and you get upset because it’s NOT COOL it’s a honda civic, the turn signals don’t even work “wow it can go up hills” yeah OF COURSE IT CAN GO UP HILLS EVERY CAR COULD DO THAT. but they’ve never seen a car before so everything it does is the coolest thing ever. And your ex’s only tool is a fucking screwdriver which is somehow also cool to this dumbass alien species even though it’s a fucking screwdriver so you just look like an idiot screaming about how none of this is even cool it’s actually really shitty but your whole planet is gone so you can’t even prove it but also you’ve had a constant drumming sounding in your head since you were 10 slowly driving you insane. I would become evil too.

[grinchwrapsupreme]

Saw a post about helping people that used the analogy of "if you see someone fall off a cruiseship and theres a life preserver ring on the wall next to you do you walk away or do you throw them the life preserver? Of course you throw them the life preserver." And i dont want to add to or tag the post with any sort of correction because its literally not the point at all but i am desperate to say that the first thing they teach you when you work on a cruise ship is that if someone falls overboard you Do Not Look Away

If theres a life preserver nearby but you have to turn your back to get it, tough luck. If theres someone nearby who can't hear you but you could run and get them, absolutely not. You see someone go overboard you point at them and never ever let them out of your sight because looking away even once could mean losing them forever, so you just have to trust that someone will hear you scream for help but you cant for any reason look away

And maybe that adds to the life preserver metaphor somehow but mostly i just need you to know if you spot someone in the water you point at them and you watch them close and you scream for help

[wombrion]

[cosmicvaca]

[nyancrimew]

the little known oppressed minority of "white guys who wrote some useful open source software two decades ago and successfully turned it into a profitable business who are now bitter and sad and too rich" is once again getting hit real hard today one like = 1 prayer

[maeamian]

Part of the reason that Republicans are so desperately acting like they will never lose again is because they are deeply terrified that this is their last real chance to win. The big orange dipshit came in and gutted the party of everyone who wasn't a loyalist, which left it full of nasty little gremlins who have gaping voids where charisma and human decency is supposed to go.

They still hold a lot of power, but if we stop them this year the next presidential election may not be the Most Important One Of Your Life™, that's not a guarantee or anything, but if they don't win here and now their future looks grim, this dipshit is the only guy they have left and he's extremely diminished and has his brains leaking out of his ears at this point. We can beat him into the ground.

So that's what we're gonna fucking do. We're gonna break these fucking fash. They will crash upon us and we're gonna break their fucking necks. When they come for us they will lose because they're fucking losers and we have each other's backs which is something they fundamentally are incapable of comprehending.