#don't come at me lmao

[putuponpercy]

Seeing people outside the UK not knowing what something being "mint" means SNDJSJD

[iwrite-sinsandtragedies]

posting this bit of the ramble separately from this post (just to keep it a neutral reference) but, I will say, the greatest drawback to Baxter's DLC - and Dereks by extension, I expect - so far is that, even a fully romantically invested Cove just... shuts off??? the moment the other romance is turned on.

rant below, btw:

Like, my MC has had strong feelings ever since day one for a Mr. Cove Holden and I have absolutely nurtured those feelings in Cove just as strongly so that it was very mutual and pretty well known by both them and everyone around them by the time that Baxter actually showed up. So, to see that all just get deleted flat out from the characters like bleach on the brain - It was just, I don't know.. Disappointing?

And I mean, as much as it hurts me personally, I do understand that most people still find polyamory pretty cringe and avoid it - and though I don't agree with that mindset at all purely because it's so non-inclusive to who I am, I'm still not very surprised when I don't find it in the media I ingest either. It's just a sad acknowledgement that I'm always left being aware of.

But like, to straight up just not acknowledge previous romantic feelings in the face of a new relationship at all just feels so entirely fake to me. Like, it broke my immersion completely on several occasions because characters just start acting like they haven't been talking about the obvious feelings you two have for each other for the past several years. The fact that you can't even have an open dialogue of "Oh, what about Cove?" with anyone else is just very ridiculous to me.

Cove also straight up just doesn't have any strong reactions to you anymore and, though I could suspend belief on anyone else having that switch because they were just keeping quiet about shit to try and be polite, I straight up just cannot believe Cove-I feel everything-Holden could just stop blushing or crushing or loving you like that when you are actively still very touchy and very loving towards him at every chance you get. Especially not if you still choose to flirt with him - that 'laughing it off' behavior can only possibly work if you were previously just friends, it does not work when you both clearly have feelings for each other. There should be something there, is what I'm saying, for the sake of immersion if nothing else.

Anyways, this is getting long, lmao.

Suffice to say that I'm not at all surprised I don't get to be poly (even in such an otherwise inclusive game) I'm used to that, which is really a sad thing to say but, there it is. I am, however, pretty goddamned miffed that there was no dialogue or follow up or anything to make the transition between 'Clearly Romancing Cove' to 'Clearly Romancing Baxter' a more realistic and organic experience. That history should not just outright be deleted. If they could make it that Derek still seems to have some feelings for you in Cove's whole romance route, then Cove should also be given that too. Otherwise, it just kind of leaves an unhappy taste in my mouth, y'know?

[lemon-zesttt]

"Oh, how I love white Christmas (❁´◡`❁)" I say, full of delusion. Sweating my ass off in a country that doesn't even snow

[lil-cherubb]

Its just you

maybe its just me but this seems rude maybe

[deep-space-lines]

IT'S FINALLY FUCKING DONE. I'M FINALLY FREE

UNTIL FRAUD COMES OUT

Tumblr shrinks it down pretty bad so please. please. I am begging you. look at the full sized image and zoom in. This art piece made my friends worried for my mental health I need someone to witness the amount of detail and effort I put into this

also the original sketch under the cut bc I think comparing them is really funny

[kimmkitsuragi]

oh my fucking god i don't have any clothesssss

[anotherlikeyou]

Ah shit, here we go again

[lazylittledragon]

ok someone please correct me if i'm wrong but am i weird for thinking those 'audiobooks don't count as reading' posts are ableist as fuck????

[merrigel]

I want it back = I drag its dead weight forward

[sophsun1]

+ bonus:

Clipboard Buck™️ vs. The 118

[anghraine]

It's always been intriguing to me that, even when Elizabeth hates Darcy and thinks he's genuinely a monstrous, predatory human being, she does not ever perceive him as sexually predatory. In fact, literally no one in the novel suggests or believes he is sexually dangerous at any point. There's not the slightest hint of that as a factor in the rumors surrounding him, even though eighteenth-century fiction writers very often linked masculine villainy to a possibility of sexual predation in the subtext or just text*. Austen herself does this over and over when it comes to the true villains of her novels.

Even as a supposed villain, though, Darcy is broadly understood to be predatory and callous towards men who are weaker than him in status, power, and personality—with no real hint of sexual threat about it at all (certainly none towards women). Darcy's "villainy" is overwhelmingly about abusing his socioeconomic power over other men, like Wickham and Bingley. This can have secondhand effects on women's lives, but as collateral damage. Nobody thinks he's targeting women.

In addition, Elizabeth's interpretations of Darcy in the first half of the book tend to involve associating him with relatively prestigious women by contrast to the men in his life (he's seen as extremely dissimilar from his male friends and, as a villain, from his father). So Elizabeth understands Darcy-as-villain not in terms of the popular, often very sexualized images of masculine villainy at the time, but in terms of rich women she personally despises like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (and even Georgiana Darcy; Elizabeth assumes a lot about Georgiana in service of her hatred of Darcy before ever meeting her).

The only people in Elizabeth's own community who side with Darcy at this time are, interestingly, both women, and likely the highest-status unmarried women in her community: Charlotte Lucas and Jane Bennet. Both have some temperamental affinities with Darcy, and while it's not clear if he recognizes this, he quietly approves of them without even knowing they've been sticking up for him behind the scenes.

This concept of Darcy-as-villain is not just Elizabeth's, either. Darcy is never seen by anyone as a sexual threat no matter how "bad" he's supposed to be. No one is concerned about any danger he might pose to their daughters or sisters. Kitty is afraid of him, but because she's easily intimidated rather than any sense of actual peril. Even another man, Mr Bennet, seems genuinely surprised to discover late in the novel that Darcy experiences attraction to anything other than his own ego.

I was thinking about this because of how often the concept of Darcy as an anti-hero before Elizabeth "fixes him" seems caught up in a hypermasculine, sexually dangerous, bad boy image of him that even people who actively hate him in the novel never subscribe to or remotely imply. Wickham doesn't suggest anything of the kind, Elizabeth doesn't, the various gossips of Meryton don't, Mr Bennet and the Gardiners don't, nobody does. If anything, he's perceived as cold and sexless.

Wickham in particular defines Darcy's villainy in opposition to the patriarchal ideal his father represented. Wickham's version of their history works to link Darcy to Lady Anne, Lady Catherine (primarily), and Georgiana rather than any kind of masculine sexuality. This version of Darcy is a villain who colludes with unsympathetic high-status women to harm men of less power than themselves, but villain!Darcy poses no direct threat to women of any kind.

It's always seemed to me that there's a very strong tendency among fans and academics to frame Darcy as this ultra-gendered figure with some kind of sexual menace going on, textually or subtextually. He's so often understood entirely in terms of masculinity and sexual desire, with his flaws closely tied to both (whether those flaws are his real ones, exaggerated, or entirely manufactured). Yet that doesn't seem to be his vibe to other characters in the story. There's a level at which he does not register to other characters as highly masculine in his affiliations, highly sexual, or in general as at all unsafe** to be around, even when they think he's a monster. And I kind of feel like this makes the revelations of his actual decency all along and his full-on heroism later easier to accept in the end.

------------

*The incompetently awful villain(?) in Sanditon, for instance, imagines himself another Lovelace (a reference to the famous rapist-villain of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa). Evelina's sheltered education and lack of protectors makes her vulnerable to sexual exploitation in Frances Burney's Evelina, though she ultimately manages to avoid it. There's frequently an element of sexual predation in Gothic novels even of very different kinds (e.g. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis's The Monk both lean into this, in their wildly dissimilar styles). William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams, a book mostly about the destructive evils of class hierarchies and landowning classes specifically, depicts the mutual obsession of the genteel villain Falkland and working class hero Caleb in notoriously homoerotic terms (Godwin himself added a preface in 1832 saying, "Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes ... Caleb Williams was the wife"). This list could go on for a very long time.

**Darcy is also not usually perceived by other characters as a particularly sexual, highly masculine person in a safe way, either, even once his true character is known. Elizabeth emphasizes the resilience of Darcy's love for her more than the passionate intensity they both evidently feel; in the later book, she does sometimes makes assumptions about his true feelings or intentions based on his gender, but these assumptions are pretty much invariably shown to be wrong. In general the cast is completely oblivious to the attraction he does feel; even Charlotte, who wonders about something in that quarter, ends up doubting her own suspicions and wonders if he's just very absent-minded.

The novel emphasizes that he is physically attractive, but it goes to pains to distinguish this from Wickham's sex appeal or the charisma of a Bingley or Fitzwilliam. Mr Bennet (as mentioned above) seems to have assumed Darcy is functionally asexual, insofar as he has a concept of that. Most of the fandom-beloved moments in which Darcy is framed as highly sexual, or where he himself is sexualized for the audience, are very significantly changed in adaptation or just invented altogether for the adaptations they appear in. Darcy watching Elizabeth after his bath in the 1995 is invented for that version, him snapping at Elizabeth in their debates out of UST is a persistent change from his smiling banter with her in the book, the fencing to purge his feelings is invented, the pond swim/wet shirt is invented. In the 2005 P&P, the instant reaction to Elizabeth is invented, the hand flex of repressed passion is invented, the Netherfield Ball dance as anything but an exercise in mutual frustration is invented, the near-kiss after the proposal in invented, etc. And in those as well, he's never presented as sexually predatory, not even as a "villain."

[kuromi-hoemie]

ngl it does really annoy me when everyone accepts “ace people don't have sex” as the baseline assumption instead of ace people just not experiencing sexual attraction.

you can still have sex but be driven by different reasons, like to me it is a kind of affection and way to hang out with people that is influenced by the relationship we have with each other. i can think people are pretty to look at with or without their clothes without sexual attraction in the mix.

when i see something full of ppl assuming ace people don't have sex i always want to jump on it and be annoying like MEEEE I'M ACE PEOPLE WHO HAS SEX, WE EXIST WE EXIST STOP ASSUMING WE DON'T THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO STRAIGHT UP WILL NOT DATE OR BE INTERESTED IN ACE PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THIS MISCONCEPTION AND WE E X I S T.

stop!!!! assuming ace people do not have sex!!!!!!!! if you don't know then ask if it's appropriate!!!!!!!!!!! stop thinking about it in a binary you either do or don't have sex kind of way!!!!!! this is fundamentally off!!!!!!!!!!!! if you are ace you do not have sexual ATTRACTION!!!!!!!!!!!

as to how we feel about and handle sex, that varies person to person but sex favorable aces are a lot more common than you'd think. hell, figuring out I'm ace was the hardest thing to figure out about myself because all i ever saw people talk about was whether you have sex or not. I'm sure there's a lot more people who haven't figured it out for this same reason, and let me tell you it's hard to know you're missing a whole ass type of attraction when you've never experienced it before and didn't know it was missing to begin with!!

ace is not synonymous with sexless. aces who don't have sex don't speak for me, and y'all gotta stop letting them be the only face of the community. there are More Of Us, it is All Of Us.

accepting that baseline at face value leaves you uninformed and it's frustrating to see this over and over again. challenge yourself to do better and try understanding ace people more.

[chatnia-starlight]

a little addition to bakery enemies au part 184 from @buggachat I put the dialog to let y'all know where I imagined it'd go!

If you haven't already, go check her comic now!

ID: [Adrien blushing a bit is leaning over giving Marinette a kiss on the cheek making her blush profusely while she looks shocked. Adrien has a speech bubble over him saying "you're amazing".] End of ID

[tubbytarchia]

Shhh he's pining

[mumblers-lobby]

My little Pony x Good Omens cuz both are really silly <3

[arty-tardigrade]

I feel like Max needs a break from the Camp Campbell chaos every now and then just so he doesn't go completely insane.