#his allyship

[laughingcatwrites]

As a reminder that good exists out there, a coworker recently confessed to me that he found out his child is questioning their identity (kid's gender redacted for this post). The kid is keeping it from him, so he can't say anything to them or show that he knows, but he's doing his best to get mentally prepared and educated so that he'll be ready whenever his kid does feel comfortable enough come to him.

For context, this guy is a big, bulky middle aged dude who loves sports and typical outdoor "manly" activities. As his coworker and friend, I know he's a kind and sweet teddy bear of a person, but his kid probably views him as a stern, authoritarian figure, the way most teenagers view their parents. His family lives in a conservative area, so I'm sure between that, their dad's looks and interests, and the fact that their dad is a Figure of Authority, the kid is worried that they won't be accepted.

But you know what? When he found out about his kid, the first thing he did was reach out to his closest queer friend and ask for resources for parents of questioning children. His biggest fears are that his kid will be bullied or discriminated against and won't feel comfortable enough to be themself. His second action was to find himself a mentor in another parent who went the same situation (kid coming out in a conservative town). The other person is preparing him for some of the struggles his kid may face and the fights he may need to take on as a parent to make sure his kid is safe and treated well.

Something I want to emphasize for people focused on language as the primary method of allyship is that when we spoke, he used some outdated terms and thoughts about gender and sexuality. That does not make him bad. These were the terms and thinking used about questioning teenagers when he was growing up and he never needed to learn more current ones. But now that he does have that need, he's throwing himself in head first because that's his kid and he's darn well going to make sure that his kid feels welcomed and has a safe place to be themselves even if they never come out to him.

[avelera]

Just realized that the reason Jayce puts a hand in front of Viktor in the Council room in S1 after Jinx steals the Hexcrystal is because Jayce is planning to take the ENTIRE fall for Hextech becoming a risk and he’s trying to keep Viktor out of it/make sure Viktor stays quiet and less noticeable so the Councilors won’t turn any of their wrath on him as well and I just… 🥺

[tonydaddingham]

[wormtime123]

thinking hard. about last life grian saying about etho “he has no loyalty to you, he’s just immediately teamed up with the next guy that’s come along. if he loved you why didn’t he give you a life" and secret life etho saying about grian “he had to move on with his life, what was he supposed to do, mourn the whole time?" both projecting their own reasonings for ‘abandoning’ certain alliances when they turned south. these two being teamed and staying loyal until the end. can anyone hear me

[unganseylike]

thought of the day: the way that everyone forgets noah and yet will be forever influenced by his presence in their lives is kinda appropriate for TRC as a coming of age story. do any of us truly, consciously know each person, event, or place that shaped us into the people we are today? though our consciousness forgets, their memory is inseparable from the way we go about life.

[laurenttheninth]

i have been a tommy-is-abby’s-tommy truther from the start idc about “ooh well why wouldn’t she know anyone at the 118” or “oooh why wouldn’t she have mentioned her ex was also a firefighter” idgaf it would be so fucking funny and im manifesting that this is one of the bucktommy hurdles let us all join hands in prayer 🙏🏻

[swan2swan]

Arguably the Most Powerful Trio in the Jurassic franchise.

[bucklikethedollar]

all the critiques of the “male presenting” bit in the star beast are valid and true (patronizing, kind of bioessentialist, etc) however i think we’ve been ignoring the funniest part of the whole thing which is like. he was a woman like three hours ago. you don’t need to give him a lecture about What Women Are Like. he knows. and even when he was a woman he still bottled shit up so your argument is moot anyway

[shedontlovehuhself]

Every now and then I remember this.

[ollierachnid]

making a ghostbusters oc/pseudo self-insert who just straight up sucks

[ct-multifandom]

If I met award-winning murder mystery author Stuart Turton (the 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, the devil and the dark water, the last murder at the end of the world) in person, I would gift him a copy of the zero escape trilogy the way Matpat gave the pope undertale

[georgebbwbush]

upon reflection i think twin peaks does in fact have the worst good trans rep in history and not the best bad trans rep in history

[edwardsissyhandsthtdanceslikeabb]

Blink Twice is an encapsulation of dubiousness to me, not only in the thinking it inspires, but in the layers you’re left grappling with, and then the inferences one has to resonate with after that.

and nothing evidences that more than the intangible nature of the disturbing angle to me, as its muddied in the layers of complication and nuance that lurk beneath. i mean the movie itself paints over the tragedies with cynicism, is entirely dedicated to weaponizing intuition and comfort against you.

i’d never read it as disturbed, and it too, never lets you mourn in turn. bc its insane at its inception, warped by frida’s fanatical infatuation with slater, bordering preying, a reverence for one's kill. and lures us with psychedelic, sugary visuals, with the indulgence – on food, luxury, substances. on billionaire brainrot fodder, perpetuating their power, craving proximity. inviting it into our homes, our heads. the movie *wants* you, most of all, to understand frida’s hunger. and its that thirst i most resonate with, not for a lack of empathy, or even technical prowess, but the basal intrigue it cemented in me instead.

bc it’s a movie that’s nearly primal for me. it scents cycles and desensitization, roles and autonomy, a self-infliction of decay, and disorients you before you’re allowed a proper lungful. there are only questions. shifts. a russian doll of detail and poison, and the inviolability that invoked, ironically only ever paralyzed my thinking, serving creative rot, over any epiphanies or nuance i could hope to be enlightened to.

the animalistic cruelty of desire is not there to be contextualized, but understood. felt. a relationship as inextricable as frida and slater’s. with slater likely parasitizing her algorithm, wielding his techbro power to further entrap her. like how we routinely indulge in the same. you rewind the movie, and pick out signs of danger, slater snickering at frida praising her memory, the supposed water he drinks and its snake-venom hue, the recurring jingling of a necklace, and like frida, have the fantasy demystified, wonder how there was *ever* an illusion of safety.

so watching an analysis video which posits that slater smokes the venom, that he indulges all suffering except his own, just as frida remembers the doctor’s blinks of warning, while burying the suffering they foresee, that they have seen, is watching frida emulate slater, and slater her.

it’s the movie’s thesis statement: there is no healing, there is no forgiveness, only embrace, only numbness, apathy. and when a stray tear glistens on slater’s face, he mourns not for the men, for paternalistic, patriarchal dominance, but for his friend. the only one he claims. he mourns their intimacy, their unity — grieves the good time™. a good time unattainable within trauma, within memory.

yet this pleasure, love, are perverted into captivity, and all i ended up thinking of was: “i love you means you’re never ever, ever getting rid of me.” that slater thinks he knows best, thinks he’s doing good by unburdening her, yet scars her all the same.

as bodies are made immaterial to him, dispossessed of sanctity or autonomy and so their desecration harmless. as slater makes frida a conduit for physical harm while lavishing her emotionally, and yet also exploiting their bond, feeding on their closeness for the labor of love and pain it provides. bc the one thing he needs, the one thing he cannot sacrifice, is her closeness, her intimacy, as it validates his ethos of forgetfulness, reflects it back at him. thusly, frida is reduced to a vessel of experience just as he was, just as he reduces himself to, oversaturated in good times™.

good times masquerading as truth, which slater exposes a latent contempt for, as he emasculates the remaining boy for his cowardice, his complacency, despite his glaringly disoriented, unaware state. regardless of any violation he too may have suffered, when we’d seen him scooting away from another man on the ground, enfeebled and vulnerated. in spite of slater’s aggrievement by his own lapses in memory, his own embracing of that which violated him, and violated also, those he cares abt. but slater is relieved of any loneliness by this flagelattory camaraderie, of the perpetual loss of significance, when frida remains a fixture in his suffering, when she constantly violates her boundaries too.

and we too strain our boundaries, test our empathy with the narratives we are inclined to accept. frida the girlboss or frida the fallen angel? akin to the tests slater sets for her, handing her clarity just to see what she dares remember. the good time™, the willing participant, the indulged, or the languished? seeing if she’s really forgiven, or rather, forgotten instead, drawn to indulgence despite how its hurt her. when she endangers jess in turn, desperate to feel valued, to *feel* power — in it all, is the powerstruggle.

and yet, also a relationship, as jess protects frida despite it all, and frida wakes up to the deception bc of her love for jess. while the island, the staff, embrace frida as if she has always been, will find her way around just as she will find a way to enlightenment, handed venom as if it were benign, as if the island itself wanted her freed. pests, predators, turned to salvation, just as poison becomes a cure. the cure. and when the island has been said to be the garden of eden, enlightenment is truly then, the original sin. the genesis of awareness.

and thusly, frida reclaims power by hurting him, fed his own poison. frida now the snake, frida refusing to leave the island still. denied healing, alienated from it, and so stuck still. bound. bound too, as we watched them enjoy every intimacy except the physical, sharing the pain and trauma they’d been subjected to with a nearly ironic a-sexuality, transcendent of it. with slater seeing her as his best friend. exempt from death and equally so from release.

and that twisted, appropriative bond, the repurposing of trauma, and so feeling a sick sense of ownership over it, love for it, are equally present in frida keeping him from death.

her newfound, bleach white luxury, the disappearing stains and panopticon of elitism, are not horrific until they are, and you either embrace it, or you let it hurt. and frida, red rabbit running, red rabbit caught in slater’s sick, trivializing game, already likened to livestock by her name, decided to become the hunter instead. made high on the chase.

unlike slater who provides and subjects experiences onto others, now there is frida who takes and caters experiences for herself. all congratulatory. all good.

thusly, the movie is the trip, it’s delusion and entanglement and the self-eating snake, and trying to sterilize that is as futile as it is sacrilegious.

[ahalliance]

beginning the qetoiles narrative playlist with undertale’s “hopes and dreams”, a very powerful and uplifting music, and later down the line having a melancholic song with the lyrics “all of your dreams / swallowed in the heat of the sun” is perhaps me cooking tbh….

[ysabelmystic]

Yesterday I was having a conversation with my coworker about cars and I said “when my Kia kicks the bucket, I’ll probably lean into the stereotype and get a Subaru”.

Him: hmm wait…What stereotype is that?

Me: Doug, I’m a lesbian.

And he straight up went

And then high-fived me.

This is now the funniest coming-out that has ever happened to me

[liberaetor]

actually my favorite au ever is son of mafia lord lando calrissian .... finn inherits his fathers empire and rules over it solely through charm and wit (rey is his feral right hand who takes care of the dirty work for him) ..... who writes rey i need this bad