#debatable actually but there you go

[galvanizedfriend]

Fic Update: We'll Always Have New Orleans [3/15]

Summary: Caroline wakes up in a world where everything looks exactly the same, only nothing really is. For starters, she's no longer a vampire, and no one else in Mystic Falls has ever heard of witches, vampires or werewolves - no one except for Klaus, who woke up just as human and twice as angry about it. Their search for answers and a way out takes them all the way to New Orleans, and Caroline could never anticipate how much this crazy fake world was about to alter her reality forever.

[Canon!AU. Set right after TVD 4x18.]

--

When Caroline goes to sleep that night, she dreams like she hasn't in a very long time. In her dream, she's at school, and so is everyone she knows - her mom, Elena, Stefan, Damon, Tyler, Bonnie, Matt. Even Klaus. They're all staring at her as though they're being held in suspense, expressions wrought with anticipation as they wait for her to do something, say something. It's huge and meaningful, possibly life-changing, and it depends entirely on what she will do next, but Caroline has no idea what they expect from her. She feels suffocated under the weight of their stares. She doesn't want to let them down, but she already gives them everything she's got, her absolute best, all the time. Isn't it enough? Something breaks. It all becomes too much. If she stands there for one more second, she will burst into flames, and so she starts running as fast as she can. She doesn't know where she's going, but that hardly matters. She just has to get away. Far from the people, the stares, the expectations she can never meet. She runs until her lungs are screaming for air, until her muscles cramp up, until her heart feels as though it's about to beat itself out of her chest. Still, she doesn't stop. Caroline keeps going, pushing past all of her limits, until she hits water. A lake, to be more precise. Its surface is dark and absolutely still, so big she can't see the other side. Caroline doesn't think, she just walks in, cold water swallowing her like a thousand needles piercing her skin. Still it doesn't deter her; she just starts swimming, legs prompting her forward while her arms break through the ice cold ahead of her with as much determination as she can muster. She doesn't know why, but she knows in her guts that her life depends on this, hinges precariously on the perfect coordination of her movements and the sheer strength of her will. She has to keep going. She swims for a long time, what feels like hours, barely breaking the surface to breathe. When she can no longer remember why she started running in the first place, what she was running from, her mind a perfect blank space, Caroline stops. There's no sign of land ahead of her, and when she looks back, she sees nothing. Mystic Falls is gone. She's all alone in the middle of an infinite lake, a harsh grey sky above her. No sound, no movement. Time itself seems extinguished. That's when exhaustion finally creeps in, all at once. Caroline doesn't resist. She closes her eyes, a shuddering breath escaping her lips, and lets go. Her body begins to sink, heavy, heavy, heavy, down into the endless depths of the lake, but she's not scared. For once, she's completely at peace. Her chest is light as a plume. It's over, she thinks. Finally. And then she wakes up.

[Read the full chapter here]

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Well, it's been a minute! Sorry for the delay, I have nothing to say in my defense except life sucks and I can't write. Hope you enjoy the update!

[raconteur-wanpi]

Collection of deeply unfunny Vinsmoke family memes to distract myself. I think I'm loosing my sense of sanity. Sorry.

[doomdoomofdoom]

Kamala Harris does want "transgender surgery on illegal aliens that are in prison", btw.

So since Trumpists are getting mad enough about the jokes to actually cite their sources, I thought I'd put the source out into my left extremist commie faggot echo chamber, too.

The claim originates from an ACLU questionnaire she filled out for her 2020 presidential candidacy, specifically this section:

She wasn't given a new questionnaire for 2024, and has stated that while her policy on some things may have changed, her values had not. (This most likely means she moved more to the center to appease larger demographics and cut corners to reach compromises. The basic politician stuff.)

It boils down to this: If you're in prison, whether for "illegal" immigration or other crimes, you rely on the state to provide you with necessary amenities, like food and health care. Her argument isn't "hell yeah everyone in prison should get sex changes for free". It's "gender affirming surgery is a necessary medical procedure. If you are in the states care while this becomes necessary, the state should provide it." If you're outraged by your tax money being used on this, consider the massive amount of people being incarcerated in for-profit prisons, on your dime. Then ask yourself if maybe a prison reform might be in order.

Worth noting: In 2015, while Attorney General, Kamala Harris actually argued against providing gender-affirming surgery to an incarcerated trans woman, claiming that HRT and psychotherapy were sufficiently covering her medical needs. She has since obviously changed her stance and assumed responsibility. (I would like to take this moment to remind my fellow left extremist commie faggots that "willingness to learn and rethink your views" is infinitely more valuable than "perfect from the start and unwilling to listen to anyone")

Also found in the source: This image of Kamala Harris participating in the 2019 San Francisco Pride Parade, wearing what I believe to be a sequin rainbow embroidered denim jacket.

I encourage you to read the provided CNN article and the answers to the ACLU questionnaire, as they give great insight into her values.

TLDR: Based.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 3: Enveloping Feelings.

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 4)

[screamingfrenchfries]

anyways i cant belive ford CANONICALLY was in a Love Triangle with fiddleford and....... ironically.... a Triangle

[egophiliac]

the lovers, reversed

(aka I'm still freaking out about Jou)

[cosmicredcadet]

"This fandom is so queer friendly!" This fandom literally hates, bisexual, trans, nonbinary, and aspec people but ok.

[mearchy]

I really love Jaster Mereel, the most “fine then I’ll do it myself” guy of all time. Like, after he killed his corrupt superior UHC style and got exiled for it he could’ve been on that vigilante shit. And he did come back ready for a fight- but not with a battalion, or another assassination. With a fucking entire new system of living and governing contained in a codex he wrote himself, based on ancient laws he wanted to resurrect. By all accounts he wasn’t even in academia or government before that moment, he was a cop. And the best part is he fucking managed to create a majorly consequential schism in Mandalorian society purely on the strength of having actually really good ideas in that big-ass academic magnum opus he spite-wrote. That’s some Protestant reformation shit!!!! I wonder if someone said to him during his sentencing like “you can’t just make up your own laws because you disagree with the ones we have” and he said oh word?? Insane, I love him.

[lazylittledragon]

what do you mean youre technically a detransitioner cause of terf bullshit?

it's a v long story but i detransitioned for a couple of years when i was 16/17, for multiple reasons but mostly because i fell into the blaire white/kalvin garrah chamber of "you have to be This way to be trans otherwise you're not real".

i was already Deeply insecure about myself and my 'passing' and i was led to believe that i couldn't want to wear makeup or skirts, and i couldn't choose not to have bottom surgery, and i couldn't do anything but bind for 12+ hours a day to the point that my ribcage is still misshapen. basically i thought that if i wasn't suffering enough doing 'feminine' things, i couldn't really be trans, so i should just go back to being a girl and suck it up.

the terf bullshit is because i'd seen a lot of terfs/detransitioners talking about the 'dangers' of testosterone and how it would turn me into a horrible ugly evil monster and how there was nothing worse than wanting to be a man. which combined with 'you need to fully medically transition to be valid at all' creates some very dangerous and upsetting feelings to cope with.

it also came from trying really hard to put myself in a little box before i realised that my sexuality/gender are very fluid and it's FINE for me not to have a label and just do whatever i want. when i was 19 or so i went back to using they/them (and eventually he/him) and changed my name again because even though i like doing 'feminine' things, i don't want to be seen as a woman.

tldr: i was conditioned by transphobic/terf rhetorics to think that i was being trans the 'wrong' way so i couldn't be trans at all, so i believed i must actually be a girl if i still wanted to do 'feminine' things. nowadays i am a transmasc who does feminine things because i don't give two shits about what any transmed prick thinks of me anymore.

[celtrist]

Controversial opinion: Vox's design sucks

...

Because he should be wearing a NORMAL TIE. not a BOWTIE. It would:

Add to his businessman persona

Give a place for that wifi symbol to go that isn't awkward

Be a good opposing design to Alastor's bowtie

Potentially give the idea he's moved away (or attempting to) from Alastor. Especially if they had it that Vox USED to wear a bowtie.

Also, we joke about it but seriously, why does everyone have a bowtie when it doesn't make sense for some characters like Husk--

I rest my case your honors.

...

Rebuttle:

Vox having the bowtie could signify him latching onto his past with Alastor and not being able to move on

[cecoeur]

How do you sleep at night? No one to hide behind Betrayed every alibi you had You had every chance to make amends instead you got drunk on bitterness And you still claim that you're innocent, it's sad

[another-day]

“there is still time”

so i finally watched i saw the tv glow

the last panel is the only panel with an actual quote from the movie in this, and a very impactful one at that, please watch it if you can it is phenomenal!!!

[mizzyislost]

apparently theres some rain world fandom discourse going around?? thats crazy anyways heres my gourmand and artificer as one of my favorite pieces of sonic fanart (its the last one)

[muffinlance]

Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???

Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:

Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.

"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.

None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.

An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:

I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it

I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.

Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”

TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.

[meteortrails]

law and luffy are just like. what if I saw you at the peak of your miracle working competence, and then the literal next time I saw you it was at your most isolated and broken. and what if that moment of seeing you alone and grieving and terrified was the moment where I decided you were someone worth keeping, someone who I personally cared about and wanted around. how does that not make you wanna lose your fucking mind.

and then the other thing on top of that which always gets me is the way that you can just so clearly see that neither of them has any idea how to fit this relationship into any preexisting context - Luffy calls him part of his crew, but law is the captain of his own crew and would clearly die before giving that up; law calls them allies but it is glaringly obvious that they care about each other in a way that goes beyond that. of course Luffy is generally a lot less bothered about this than law, who routinely wants to put his own head through a wall about it, but it’s just such a fun layer to their dynamic I think.

[wyvernity]

sss day my favorite national holiday WOOOOHHHH

bonus