#discuss the case

[dinosaurwithablog]

Perry Mason and Lt. Tragg take a cigarette break together to discuss the case. I love how dark the early seasons of this show were. Great contrast!!

[arkangelo-7]

I think the scariest part about Batman is the loyalty he inspires. Like this motherfucker has an army of children who might at any given time hate his guts, but are still 100% willing to throw hands for him if Bruce needs them to. And then there’s the Justice League, who also at any given time might hate his guts or find him insanely irritating and/or weird, but will also fall in line and listen to his plans if the need arises. And that’s like the most intense form of power someone can wield—voluntary obedience from people physically more capable than them.

[valtsv]

[egophiliac]

So I was doing some math, and I THINK Skully is almost as tall as Malleus without his horns

I think the main reference to his height is Epel being surprised they're the same age because he's taller than Sebek, yes? which I find interesting, considering Jade and Malleus -- two of the tallest guys in the main cast -- are also there. and, since I've never been one to not think waaaay too much about the absolute stupidest minutiae about fictional characters, I see two possibilities:

one is that Epel is extremely good at eyeballing heights (I actually do feel like he could be? like. I'd believe he can estimate someone's height fairly accurately by calculating based on the life stages of an apple tree, or how many apples tall they are, or something else apple-related like that.) and Scully does, perhaps, fall into that narrow margin between Sebek and Jade in height.

OR two, out of the three certified Tall Guys there, Sebek is Epel's main frame of reference because he's the only one he's had any real interaction with for, let's be fair, pretty obvious reasons.

SO in conclusion, we still have no concrete answers and will probably have to wait until next year when we get his card profile, alas alas. 😔

[jesncin]

Happy Pride! Now that Lunar Boy (our middle grade graphic novel) is out, we wanted to share our thought process behind queer vocabulary in media. The constant censorship, imposed western biases on queer culture, and what it means to introduce queer vocabulary to a young audience.

Check out Lunar Boy wherever american graphic novels are sold, or check it out at a library!

[lucabyte]

Different standards

[pillowspace]

hello. i am. perhaps 👉👈 interested in that au art with the verry sleepy looking sif. would you. maybe be open to sharing what its about?

Sleepy Sif <3 sure, I sorta just made it up on the spot after I had already finished sketching, but it kinda stuck with me. Here's extra dialogue that I was going to draw, but I got tired:

Basically, it's an AU where Siffrin never left the island north of Vauguard. The people there are like ghosts, going through routines while never processing much of anything, while the country itself is like a hazy dreamscape you can't quite focus on without it all falling apart. Loop serves as an anchor, keeping Siffrin the most coherent out of anyone on the island, though Siffrin is still forgetful and, as you said, sleepy.

I know that Siffrin's king, but I can't decide what they were previously. If he lived a normal life and Loop just went "you're the closest to a person out of anyone here, why shouldn't we live in luxury?" Or if he was already a prince before the island stopped existing. Either sounds interesting. Regardless, it's not like Siffrin would remember though.

Isabeau ends up on the island due to some incident with a boat and a storm I suppose, no one can really choose to go there on purpose. Maybe the others also came along, Isabeau just hasn't found them on the island yet.

Since the island is being held to reality with flimsy tape and Siffrin's been entirely alone outside of Loop's company and villages of unseeing eyes, Siffrin unconsciously sways the island into being inescapable, dreading when they'll leave while still trying to be supportive. Since Siffrin seems to have such a fierce but melancholy bond to their home, no one's really gathered the will to ask if he wants to go with them yet.

That's the general idea! I also like to imagine different colours come and go on the island, but red's always there. Sometimes the grass is grey, sometimes the grass is green. Etc.

[sunonwaxyleaves]

I feel like we, as a community, do not talk enough about the fact that Louis held onto Lestat’s card that he gave him when they first met FOR OVER 100 YEARS!!!!!!!!

[lala-blahblah]

I get why people headcanon that Trucy would call Edgeworth "Uncle Miles" because it represents how close he is to Nick and Trucy and how he's basically part of the family etc. HOWEVER I cannot help but imagine the shock and horror of passersby who hear Trucy call one man "uncle" and one "daddy" as they watch Nick and Miles interact lovingly in public and come to the conclusion that Nick is openly cheating on his spouse with his spouse's brother.

[mifink]

henry jekyll 🤝 victor frankenstein

fucking around and finding out

[urfavoritemistake]

this post digging at billford shippers as Stupid Media Illiterate Abuse Fetishizers is even funnier now after the recent mslb podcast where alex hirsch himself flat out says "what kind of intimacy is that, to let someone into your brain?"

it's almost like the same action, from the same person, can be intimate in some circumstances and become a violation. the cruel betrayal of that trust and intimacy is the tragedy. instead of the straightforward "everything ford felt for bill was completely coerced and he never enjoyed any of it and never has any complicated feelings like many real abuse survivors do", it's much sadder imo if beyond the manipulation and violence, there was an inkling of true desire.

this does not cancel out the fact that his consent and bodily autonomy were violated! a consent that cannot be revoked is not consent. "but he liked some of it" is not a defense, that's the exact excuse bill gives.

yeah, a lot of billford stuff does focus on the "honeymoon" era. but i think it's generally with the understanding that we all know what bill is really doing and what happens after. it's dramatic irony, it's lingering on the calm before the storm because it was so ephemeral and fleeting. wouldn't it be nice if we could stay in the period of ignorant bliss, where trust was freely given, before intimacy turned to violation? sure, it was built on a lie, but wouldn't it be nice?

[anbaisai]

I... I thought we'd never meet again...!

Happy belated birthday Sheep!! @natsukishinomiyaswife

Thank you for always being such a great friend and creating such incredible pieces of writing, you are truly a blessing to the Twisted Wonderland fandom 🩷💚🩷 (and just from myself, you've been feeding me such great Jamimayu content I don't even have the words to express how grateful I am 🥹)

The art is based on your Treydia AU (with @/cheerleaderman’s outfit design for Lydia) and although I know Lydia goes back to her own world in the end, I can still hope for a reunion between them one day, right? This is a world of magic after all, surely some rules can be changed...

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[merrybandofmurderers]

it's actually kinda driving me insane seeing ppl talk about "the north and the south" as if they're wildly different places of equal standing. like. you DO realize that The North is just tevinter? it is literally Just tevinter (and seheron and par vollen which we dont see). the southern chantry in fact takes up the MAJORITY of thedas

the free marches (where we spent da2, where the inquisitor was from) borders both antiva and nevarra, and nevarra shares a border with ORLAIS; yeah they have the whole lich kingdom thing going on, but they still have to pay lipservice to the southern chantry. the anderfels is described as being the MOST devout nation. rivain has always been where the southern chantry's hold was weakest, but they've still suffered THREE exalted marches, and only a year before inquisition their circle was annulled becuz it was discovered they allowed their mages to leave

it is fucking ridiculous to act like it WOULDNT MATTER who was made divine. it's fucking ridiculous to act like we've travelled to one of thedas's stupid moons. "the circles are different in The North" the circles are different in TEVINTER. it is literally just tevinter. when you talk about The North, you mean tevinter, becuz honestly par vollen and seheron are an entirely separate thing, and rivain is the only country that exists more in-between, but they are STILL claimed by the southern chantry. circles still exist across antiva, the anderfels, and even nevarra. ITS JUST TEVINTER

[lgbtlunaverse]

Most annoying NMJ or JC take is when someone that dislikes them is like "oh you're a fan of him? *scoff* Well obviously you've only seen cql, where he was super watered down. In the novel he's a dislikable asshole and that's the objectively superior canon I'm working from instead of your woobified fanfic." Meanwhile your main canon is novel canon and you genuinely find novel Jiang Cheng and Nie Mingjue complex sympathetic characters.