#but like. idk. i feel like this is really just coming from people who don't..... understand how kink works?

[velvetvexations]

Just saw a hot take that boils down to "women generally do traditional female gender role stuff specifically because they are afraid of the men in their lives, this goes extra for trans women". Which like. I get where they're coming from, but it's a take that I feel circles back around into misogyny by refusing to acknowledge that some women do "traditional female gender role" stuff by choice and not by coercion. Like my mother and grandmother were staunch feminists who both take pride in their ability to cook and take care of a family and host people because those are skills that they have practiced and worked on. And those skills aren't even gender locked, my mother has been teaching my younger brothers to cook and now they also take pride in having that skill. Also I don't know about y'all but in my personal experience every time I have done something like clean or cook out of fear of negative consequences, that turned out to be an explicitly abusive situation, and while I know abuse is common I refuse to believe it is the only potential ending point for women, cis and trans alike. Idk it just seems like a very sad take on the world, and I don't really like it because like I said it refuses to leave room for choice and agency and pride in these skills, it refuses to leave space for the lived reality of me and my family

it also way downplays the extent to which women are brainwashed and abused by their mothers and the other women into being Good Women lol like hey it's a patriarchy but a lot of women are complicit in a very active way so a lot of times the patriarchy itself is a distant passive thing

This goes extra when you add the trans element. I'd have to see the actual post to fully comment on it but trans women should recognize that to whatever extent they consider "men" their enemy they should feel the exact same way about cis women. I'm not saying I personally think either cis men or cis women are The Enemy, but like, if you're going to make a big deal about how much trans women have to fear from Men, then yeah, you need to extend that to cis women, who may not directly hate crime us with their own two hands but are more often than not EXTREMELY ENTHUSIASTIC about fucking us up. There are cis women who fought for decades for things like abortion rights only to immediately toss lighter fluid all over everything they worked so hard for because conservatives who proudly admit to wanting The Handmaid's Tale IRL promised they'd keep trans children from playing volleyball with their friends. Cis men may physically assault us more often, but how often is it because a White woman screamed about there being a man in the women's bathroom?

Again, I'd have to actually see the post for myself to be sure, but when I read "women (...) afraid of men are their lives, this goes extra for trans women" it feels like the issue with people just wanting their oppression to be 1:1 with how it works for cis women lol. And if it's making a point about how trans women should fear trans men? Oh, golly, that would be fucking brainless and pathetic.

[heal-the-ashes]

I feel like Hershel and Desmond would both be afraid of themselves.

If they stop and look at themselves. If they realize what they're doing came from years of pain. Would it all lead to a question of "Who else am I going to hurt?" "How many people have I unintentionally hurt because I never realized what I was really doing?" "How many things of my life have I missed because of this?" "How many things do I—or will I—regret?"

I feel like Layton self-sacrifices to a fault. That others get hurt trying to protect him. That he unknowingly drags other people through pain to get to where he thinks he needs to go. To solve every mystery there is. To get rid of his pain from outside sources, he needs to make as much of it himself under the titles "Determination" and "Amazing at solving things" and "Helping others" because then, how could those things ever hurt him? How could they ever be seen as pain? They're not like his (other) traumas. They don't cause pain at all. Not to mention what he thinks about danger. Danger? What danger? There's no danger here. Just people who are willing to hurt others to get what they want—Which is very sad and shows their pain and he'd very much like to help them in any way possible, if possible. If they show that they don't want to be helped, then it's better to leave them be.

But then again, nothing can ever be someone's fault other than his around him. I think he goes over betrayals thinking, "There must have been something I could have done." or "There must've been something I did." or "If I learn from this, I can make sure it never happens again." or... ... I think he has a hard time accepting that things really aren't his fault / there's really nothing he can do about some situations. Actually, when it comes time for Unwound Future and the whole Evil Layton arc... The only time in which he actually raises his voice is at himself. Is at the version of him that betrayed all of the morals in which he's held onto for so long. But a part of me thinks that, if he knew things were actually his fault, he'd have a problem with that, too... I mean, look at how he reacts to him getting puzzle answers incorrect in CV. In CV. In the 4th game of experience that he's had with puzzles. And a movie. With all that experience and he gets something wrong... he's disappointed in himself. Going back to the UF/LF thing... "I demand an explanation!!" I don't think I'll ever forget that line. I think, from his journal... We know he was trying to think of reasons why he would do something like this. Idk. I'm. Thoughts are not thinking anymore. Um. Wow I really lost my thought process. I was also gonna talk about Desmond. But I guess that's not happening at the moment.

[jubshead]

In my opinion <- strongly for ME

When it comes to Agatha All Along seems like people lose the plot & content about it as it goes, idk why but

1) Agatha is a Villain- she doesn't need redemption she's aware of herself & acknowledges her doings ( like wanda says " you do it you become the hero , I do it I become the enemy)

Agatha doesn't have to atone to what she's done or will continue to do ,does she feel bad hmm 🤪

So she's a serial killer - most those witches deserved it if you ask me, her salem coven completely did for wanting to put a child on trial because they were scared of her powers

"You don't see it holding me back " & it shouldn't hold her back she's a cunty witch no one forced anyone to follow her in her scheme she's a great con artist 🥵 I'd willing volunteer for you AGATHA HARKNESS 😏

Now I'm not saying her grief is an excuse, & that it's ohkay what she's done with her & Nicky's song but isn't a lil evil enjoyable😈 don't always have to be good doesn't mean you're always right

Like the ballad where all that's wrong is right & all that's bad is good!

² ) Agatha & Rio's love IS NOT toxic. What makes it toxic that rio gives & Agatha takes? If you think in depth their love is dynamic! Agatha is a person who time & time again is wronged by close & acquainted people of course she'd close herself from hurt when that's everyone's intentions without giving her a chance it's not her fault that people misunderstands & here comes Rio our amazing entity who knows how to show compassion because no ever will this is something Agatha deserves & Rio is literally the best example being that homo sapien feel the same way about death so who's best to understand Agatha than Rio herself & show & give Agatha what no one has? Their love makes sense & is precious because death can be seen to never be loved & here comes Agatha someone that's put off by people whom in their eyes seem like she's not capable of ever loving, yearns to want & give it & is giving it to death the best way she possibly knows how to, so who's to say their love is toxic?

3)Agatha is a Villain! That's what's perfect about her it's what makes her likeable

She is not evil( yes she is 😏🤭) , just misunderstood, not given a chance . She can still do & is doing the things even if she was good

] a daughter, a mother, a mentor ! Being a Villain doesn't stop her for being the things she was gifted with as Rio sees her for what she masks with - you just have to look through the disguise as well cause in time you'll see notice & you see if you pay close attention she isn't hiding as one would say you just aren't taking the time to notice because she's good at what she does best DECEPTION!

1 and 3) Yes, I agree! Agatha is a villain and she shouldn’t have a redemption arc! She doesn’t want to change and she won’t (tbh I prefer her as immoral lmao)

I think redemption arcs are usually very forced, just bc someone regrets their doing it doesn’t change what they did. She can have better actions, but being a villain isn’t really about what you do in the present, is about the way people view you and she’ll always be a villain in someone’s perspective, there’s no way for her to run from that title anymore.

People have the need for their favorite characters to be liked by everyone, have a moral high ground or something like that, but making her greedy and egoistic (in my opinion) gives her a bigger depth than “oh she always does what’s right”. Who the fucks only do what’s right?

I don’t agree that all of the witches she killed deserved, the only ones I know that deserved were her previous coven!

2) Agatha and Rio have a VERY complicated relationship.

Would I say it’s toxic? No, I wouldn’t!

Are they toxic people? Yes, they are!

I think they basically match each others freak to the point their toxicity doesn’t become toxic lol

And I also think that they have true feelings for each other, they can fight, they can argue, they can hurt, but when it comes to the important stuff they will take things seriously! Just like Rio did when she defended Agatha from her mother.

[dawsonscreekwasalwaysbad]

one thing about cultural christianity that i don't see talked about enough is that i think it's something a lot of jews can also fall victim to. especially if you live in an area where there aren't a lot of other jews and so you don't have easy access to resources like hebrew school and synagogue and jewish centers. but also even if you do. i'm jewish, i grew up jewish, both my parents are jewish and so are their parents and so were their parents, plus i grew up and still live in a highly jewish area, where schools took off for the high holidays. most of my peers went to hebrew school, and seventh grade was universally considered bar mitzvah season. and i took those things for granted. as a kid i chose not to go to hebrew school, not to get bat mitzvahed, and so much of what i know now about judaism—about jewish culture, jewish traditions, jewish holidays, jewish values, jewish beliefs—i only learned from being on tumblr.

when i was younger, like five or six, i asked my mom what happens after you die, and she said that your soul goes to heaven. and so for years i thought heaven and hell were universal beliefs. i didn't learn that jews don't believe in heaven or hell until my late teens. and in hindsight i can see why my mom told me that—you don't really want to scare a little kid by telling them that when you die you're just dead. but still.

and i grew up celebrating christmas. not in the sense that my family would go to chinese restaurants and see a movie in theaters, but in the sense that we put up a tree and raced downstairs first thing in the morning to open presents under the tree and gather with our extended family and eat christmas ham. still, there are a lot of christmas traditions we don't partake in, like stockings and caroling and elf on the shelf. the other day i had a friend come over and i showed her how many jewish ornaments were on my christmas tree—we have a star of david, a rabbi bear, and our tree topper is a dreidel—and she said something about it being a nice intersection of cultures. and it felt weird to hear her say that. i don't blame her for it, i know she meant well, but it would make more sense for someone to say that about someone with one jewish parent and one christian parent. and like i said, both my parents are jews. christianity doesn't intersect with my jewish culture, it invades it. maybe it was sort of a wake up call for me: you can decorate a christmas tree as jewishly as you like, but at the end of the day it's still a christmas tree. and so whenever i explain to people that i didn't have a bat mitzvah or that i celebrate christmas, it makes me feel like a bad jew.

i don't mean to imply that celebrating christmas makes you less jewish, or that you should be ashamed of yourself if you do. i just feel that way about myself. it's sort of that mentality of "everyone's valid except me," how there are things you say about yourself that you would never ever say about a friend. personally i would love to stop celebrating christmas, but i don't think i'll ever be able to, because even if/when i move out, my family will keep inviting me home for the holidays. and they have every right to. my family loves christmas, they love celebrating it, and i can't force them to stop. that's their choice. this holiday sparks joy for them, but for me it just sparks frustration and fatigue. and i don't want to ruin it for them, but i do want them to understand why i'm tired of celebrating an extremely hegemonic holiday.

idk if i'm articulating this well. i'm not really involved in the "discourse" around cultural christianity to begin with, but whenever i see it talked about it's usually in reference to atheists who used to be christian. but it's a lot more pervasive than that and i don't see that acknowledged very often.

[deoidesign]

One of my first digital pieces (2010) versus one of my recent ones (2024)

We all start somewhere!

[varpusvaras]

I know some people aren't fans of really domestic jayroy, but for me it's getting even more desirable, especially because of what happens in Gotham War.

Because I know nothing more ironically comical than Jason being actually very capable of just living a normal domestic life, and it's purely because the people he is living that life with are people who are not constantly antagonizing him.

[shepscapades]

shep I was talking to my brother about dbhc xisuma as one does and mentioned that ask about not being able to puzzle xisuma's face together mentally and my brother joked that the reason you put the spoiler bars and such on his face is cause you cant draw his whole face yet 😂

anyway I might have talked his ear off about dbhc idk tho lmao

LMAOO NOOOO!!! MY SECRET FINALLY IS OUT!!! /silly

[crownedwille]

.

[kenzan-kiwami]

everybody claims to be a kashiwagi enjoyer but the only time anyone ever talks about him is to say he's the hottest piece of meat in the series

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Thank god Sasha was confirmed bisexual, otherwise people would hc her as lesbian solely and exclusively because she's kind of a bitch.

[dickheadcanons]

This is just a little thing, but I just can't get behind characterizations of Jason that talk about him thinking that "Robin makes me magic" was proof that he was like, this sweet little kid.

For one thing, the Jason Todd who says that is pre-crisis. The Jason Todd who says that was being written as Dick, just a little more reckless and inexperienced. For another, Jason said that for exactly the same reason all Robins say shit; to justify disobeying Bruce lol.

The line isn't the cute wish-fulfillment of a poor kid from the Narrows. It's evidence of a circus acrobat's belief in his own invincibility, offered as proof that he is tougher than Bruce thinks he is.

The pages in question, from Batman #385:

[commsroom]

to me, the question of whether hera would want a body is first and foremost a question of autonomy and ability. she has an internal self-image, i think it's meaningful that the most pivotal moments in her character arc take place in spaces where she can be perceived the way she perceives herself and interact with others in a (relatively) equal and physical capacity, and that's worth considering. but i don't think it's about how she looks, or even who she is - and i think she's the same person either way; she's equally human without a body, and having a body wouldn't make her lived experience as an AI magically disappear - so much as it's about how she would want to live.

like most things with hera, i'm looking at this through a dual lens of disability and transness, both perspectives from which the body - and particularly disconnect from the body - is a concern. the body as the mechanism by which she's able to interact with the world; understanding her physical isolation as a product of her disability, the body as a disability aid. the body as it relates to disability, in constant negotiation. the body as an expression of medical transition, of self-determination, of choice. as a statement of how she wants to be seen, how she wants to navigate the world, and at the same time reckoning with the inevitable gap between an idealized self-image and a lived reality, especially after a long time spent believing that self-image could never be visible to anyone else.

it's critical to me that it should never imply hera's disability is 'fixed' by having a body, only that it enables her to interact with the world in ways she otherwise couldn't. her fears about returning to earth are about safety and ability; the form she exists in dictates the life she's allowed to lead and has allowed people to invade her privacy and make choices for her. dysphoria and disability both contribute to disembodiment - in an increasingly digitized world, the type of alienation that feels like your life can only exist in a virtual space... maybe there's something about the concept of AI embodiment, in particular as it relates to hera, that appeals to me because of what it challenges about what makes a 'real woman.' when it's about perception, about how others see her and how she might observe / be impacted by how she's treated differently, even subconsciously. it's about feeling more present in her life and interfacing with the world. but it's not in itself a becoming; it doesn't change how she's been shaped by her history or who she is as a person.

i think it comes back to the 'big picture' as a central antagonistic force in wolf 359, and how - in that context, in this story - it adds a weight to this hypothetical choice. hera is everywhere, and she's never really anywhere. she's got access to more knowledge than most people could imagine, but it's all theoretical or highly situational; she doesn't have the same life experiences as her peers. she has the capacity to understand that 'big picture' better than most people, but whatever greater portion of the universe she understands is nothing next to infinity and meaningless without connection and context. it's interesting to me that hera is one of the most self-focused and introspective people on the show. her loyalties and decisions are absolute, personal, emotionally driven. she's lonely; she always feels physically away from the others. she misremembers herself sitting at the table with the rest of the crew. she imagines what the ocean is like. there's nothing to say that hera having a body is the only solution for that, but i like what it represents, and i honestly believe it'd make her happier than the alternatives. if there's something to a symbolically narrowed focus that allows for a more solid sense of self... that maybe the way to make something of such a big, big universe is to find a tiny portion of it that's yours and hold onto it tight.

[asklesbianonceler]

I have not posted any of my analysis to reddit yet and I think I might just post it and ghost it. I've already spent too much time looking at other people's threads on there to feel any way good about interacting with folks.

I already went in an added the "I know you're going to bring this up let me save you the time" section which is exclusively touching on the frequent topics of:

"well what about the fingerprint nostrum and finger mimics? He is clearly just a crackpot"

And

"it's definitely some weird elaborate sacrifice to Metyr thing"

[that-was-anticlimactic]

i think it's about time that we acknowledge that, no, that character would Not change their name in a groupchat! especially not to that. and, no, that character would not change everyone else's names! especially not to that.

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

one thing i really deeply wish is that i'd had access as a kid to the plural community and information that are more easily available today, instead of my first experience with plural community which both took it seriously and was nonjudgmental having been 10's era tul/pa.info lmao

[deoidesign]

Can you make a tutorial on how you world build and make ocs? I can't seem to make any people in my brain, but then when I try to come up with environments jobs, beliefs and little details to slowly come up with someone, I think: well I don't really know how people have influenced the world- it's a weird loop

To be honest, I don't think I can! Writing is an extremely personal process. The way I write is directly related to how I process things, what I find important in stories, years of my own analysis of my and other's writing, etc... The way you write will be unique to you, as well. But I can explain how I personally think of it.

The short answer:

Write. Write anything and everything, it's a tool to explore your ideas. Analyze your own writing, and write more. Then, as you discover which ideas you want to develop, write more to explore them more. You won't know what you want otherwise!

The long answer:

I think this kind of loop is common. It's easy to feel like everything needs to be done "at once," because our job as writers is to make elements logically fit with each other for our readers. But as you've discovered, developing multiple elements simultaneously isn't really possible, or at least is extremely difficult.

Personally, when I think of writing, I break it into three major elements; characters, world, and plot. As much as possible every scene explores one or more of these, and as much as possible these three things tie back into what I personally consider most important: theme.

Everything I do is in service of the themes I want to present. Without them my events feel aimless. It can take a while to discover them, but they're the core of my work. You will have to discover what you feel is the core of yours. Analyzing other media helps with this too.

Concepts in your brain exist in a state of infinite potential. But when you start writing you have to start making choices, which removes potential as you move forward... But you have to move forward anyways. If there's ideas you want to explore later, you can always explore them later.

What this ends up meaning, to answer your question, is that I don't think of my characters as "people in my brain" or my worlds as something people have influenced... Not at their core, at least. They are tools that I use to represent specific ideas. Obviously they're also my blorbos, but mostly they're serving a specific narrative purpose.

So above all else... Write. Write, and discover what you're writing about, and then start over and write with that in mind. Keep doing this. But you have to write!