#i have an actual number of problems with this movie

[lupinqs]

hi hi hi!!!!!!! with the end of take me to church right around the corner, i want y’all to vote on which upcoming series you’d like to see first. imma be honest my favorite is the second one but i have so much lore for all of them that it would be easy for me to write any!!! vote pls!!!!

WNBA Paige x Upper East Side Princess OC:

paige plays for the liberty; she’s in her rookie season

oc is in her last year of college at columbia—her parents are very rich (like billionaire type rich) and she’s grown up on the upper east side

enemies to lovers hella because oc is a bitch lowkey and paige def matches that energy towards oc

despite being so young, oc also already has a fiancé that she’s kinda been expected to end up with her whole life because he’s a family friend and the son of another rich millionaire/billionaire but they’re more just friends if anything

oc’s finacé’s parents are huge funders towards NY sports (including the liberty) which is kinda why oc and paige see each other a lot

oc’s parents def don’t approve so angst there too

oc is also an ex basketball player who was forced out of the sport at a young age despite being talented and paige kinda helps her get back into the sport and start loving it again because at the beginning oc HATES basketball

very reminiscent of gossip girl

UCONN Paige x Teammate OC:

paige is in her junior year, oc a freshman (only a year and a half age gap yall don’t be weird)

oc was the number-one recruit in her class coming into college just like paige was so she’s got a lotta pressure on her

paige and oc are roommates

oc tore her ACL her junior year of high school so when paige tears her, oc is there for her because she’s been in that position before—paige and oc have had a lot of similar experiences which makes them really understand each other

paige really channels her inner coach p into oc because oc is gonna have to have a huge role in this season due to paige’s absence and then even more so with azzi’s injury

oc also has had a bf for like ever and i’m saying she’s been in love with this boy since she was a kid because they lived next door to each other—that type of thing. so oc has never even really thought about being gay or liking girls because she’s always been so infatuated with that boy but when she and him start having problems because he’s at a different college and when paige starts comforting her through that and she and paige start spending more time with each other, oc starts… realizing lots of things about herself and her feelings

lots of self-discovery

end goal is for paige to basically coach and encourage oc and team to a natty

WNBA Paige x Ex-Bestfriend Actress OC:

paige plays for the sparks; she’s in her rookie year

oc is a well-known and successful actress

paige and oc were childhood best friends (yes ik i just did this with tmtc) and had a hella homoerotic friendship that ends up falling apart paige’s first year of college after …. certain events

oc is more open about her sexuality but paige has always been very overthinking about it and has severe internalized homophobia which helps lead to the crumbling of their friendship before

oc has been really really successful these past few years in the acting industry; her first movie came out in paige’s sophomore year of college which was sort of a wake up call for her then because she hadn’t even known that her best friend was actually legit in acting now

paige’s junior year college is when she realizes that yeah, she is gay and she was in love with oc basically her whole childhood but she’s ruined it and she doesn’t even think she has a chance anymore

paige is completely chill and confident within herself and her sexuality by her senior year of college

anyways in the present oc and paige meet again at some after party in la and it’s so weird for paige because oc seems so confident and at ease and she’s with all these famous people now but she used to be so shy and reserved

cameron brink and oc’s best friend are good friends and since paige and oc’s closest friends in la are good friends, they start running into each other a lot more

lots of angst fs and learning the new versions of each other vs remembering the ones they grew up with

[rabnerd28]

Venom 3: 0/10, Eddie Brock did not get pregnant

[nostalgia-tblr]

one problem with getting into Fiction Franchises like, oh let's say the MCU, long after they started is that 1) there are things that refer back to things I don't know about and 2) i don't know what i don't know about, and in a way that latter is more of a problem at least for me.

i managed an episode of wandavision and was left thinking "this seems like it's good, but i have no clue what's going on here so it's not going to work for me is it?" and i am reliably told it's supposed to be Mysterious Mindfuckery but i, a noob, was unable to work out without external clarification what i wasn't supposed to know. if you see what i mean.

i notice the mcu movies (at least as it progresses?) don't have numbers on them, and we know when they're direct sequels because there's a subtitle. and if you come at these later you need to get a chart to work out whether you should watch thor: ragnarok before or after thor: the dark world. which is easily done if i am determined to get things in the right order, but any effort is too much for someone.

so while i am willing to consider the idea that the later mcu films/shows are just Less Good than the early ones (personally Doubt so far but I'm not opposed to the idea) it's very easy inside a fandom to lose sight of what your thing looks like to the casuals who make up most of an audience, and frankly the mcu is currently Very Large and confusing.

who are all these Mrs/Captain/Miss/etc Marvel ladies and which of them have already been in films I might or might not have seen? how many ant men are there prior to this one? am i supposed to know who the baddy in this or that film is? which of these side-characters are from something else?

doesn't-seem-related-but-it-is: i was surprised to discover that the general mcu fandom view of the loki series was not that it was some sort of AU situation that could be thought of an entirely separate from the main series of films. because that was pretty much why it was the one to hook me, i think - it explained the relevant backstory with clips and yet also this is a different loki so if i don't want to go and watch however many films he was in i don't have to. i would expect him to be to some extent "out of character" because it carefully explained to me that this is not really the same character as that identical guy with the same name who was in some number of films. there's a woman one and an alligator one but don't worry they're all from AUs anyway.

[starlene]

Having a chat about the Barbie movie with @neroushalvaus helped me to put something that bothers me about the movie to words.

At the end of the movie, when Barbie becomes a human, we see her dressed in beige, sensible clothing. Symbolically, she has grown up into a woman – and as a woman, she no longer wears the bright, pink, girly clothing she used to wear earlier.

Meanwhile, in our reality, women come to watch this movie all dolled up in their best pinks and glitters – a movie that ends with Barbie, a world-famous emblem of femininity, leaving neon pink behind her and choosing to wear muted colours instead.

Somehow, in this regard, I feel like the real-life response to the movie is more uplifting than the movie itself. In real life, adult women are celebrating the movie by wearing girly clothing, and they’re feeling happy and confident while doing so. If bright, girlish aesthetic makes you feel good, growing up doesn’t mean you have to leave it behind.

The costume design makes sense for Barbie’s character arc, sure, but on a symbolic level... I don’t really like what it says about the relationship between girlish/hyper-feminine aesthetic and adulthood, and I guess it just makes me a little bit sad how that part of the story and the real-life response to the movie clash.

[fingertipsmp3]

I’m gonna be honest I have no idea what Lana is singing most of the time. Whenever I don’t understand a word she sings, my brain just replaces it with a random noise. And in fact I assume she just made a noise in place of a word

[suguann]

He has a feeling that the new girl running the front desk at the gym is going to be a problem—a distraction disguised in a gym uniform polo and khaki pants.

It starts with you smiling too brightly as he walks in one morning, all teeth and that little twinkle in your eye that feels like trouble when you scan his membership card.

“Good morning, Mr. Riley.” 

“It’s just Simon,” he tells you as he takes his card off the counter. 

The following day, it’s the same, except Johnny is there to make it worse.

He nudges Simon with his elbow. “She’s kinda pretty, huh?”

“Say it any louder, and she’ll hear you, mate,” he grumbles.

Simon’s not blind; of course, he knows you’re pretty, but he doesn’t have time to commit to anything outside of work—even if you smile at him like you’re happy to see him and how he’ll think about it later: on missions, at his desk, during morning runs. His head is nothing short of woven webs with thoughts of you stuck in the middle.

Honestly, it’s that you—

(You try to make small talk with him every morning, and Simon is starting to think it’s just for him because on the days he doesn’t come alone, you merely scan his card and go back to reading the open paperback book on the desk.)

It’s weird because it’s almost like you—

(He bumps into you at the supermarket and makes a dumb joke about carrots that makes you laugh. It makes him a little tongue-tied and awkward afterward because he realizes he hasn’t talked to a woman outside of only wanting a quick fuck in a really long time, but more importantly, he wants to hear it again. 

Instead, he tosses potatoes in his cart and walks away.)

He tells himself it means nothing, or not how Simon wants it to.

You’re just…he’s not even sure; acquaintances? Maybe more than that, but less than friends. Somewhere in that odd in-between phase where he only knows bits and pieces but not the whole picture.

Sometimes, he wishes—

(Simon doesn’t know what he’s doing the first time he invites you to meet the guys from work on a night out. He’s dated around a few times and had his fair share of hook-ups, but this isn’t like that. His palms are sweaty, more than usual, and no amount of wiping them on the thighs of his jeans keeps them dry.

Then you walk into the bar in a dress that’s probably too light for early spring in London—even though he stares appreciatively at the long expanse of your legs as you walk up to the table—and he wishes he wasn’t introducing you as his friend.)

But you—

(A new development happens after you slip him your phone number on one of the gym’s business cards—it’s weird that we don’t have each other’s numbers, so message me sometime or whatever—and he messages you ‘hey’ right before he leaves for a mission a few days later. 

It slowly shifts and changes over time.

You start sending him texts in the morning. Never an actual good morning text, but of the dogs you take on walks, the sunrise, the new flower box in your window. Somehow, it’s better.)

You really are—

(His house feels too hot, and he’s distracted from the movie by how close you are, how your leg drapes over his under the blanket, fingers fisting into his sweater at his stomach that clenches. An ache that grows, throbbing, spreading from his abdomen to his groin.

It feels monumental—something more than the gentle touch to the elbow to squeeze by each other in his entryway earlier or giving you his jacket that night at the bar—a tilt of the axis that makes the messy pieces fall neatly into place. 

He must be staring because you glance up at him, smiling, and the sound from the TV turns into white noise in the background.

“Can I…would you—fucking hell,” Simon runs a hand through his hair. “Can I kiss you?”

When your lips press against his, and his hands are pulling you onto his lap, where you settle hotly against his dick tenting in his jeans, he wonders why neither of you has done this before. Just kissing—him licking the seam of your mouth, and you panting his name.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” you mumble, lips brushing his.

“Me too,” and he fists his hand into the hair at your nape and pulls you back to his mouth.)

“I knew you’d be trouble,” he tells you one day, glaring at the bloke further down the bar who tried making a swipe at your ass before Simon showed up, towering over his shoulder with your fruity cocktail in hand.

“Oh, yeah?” you giggle, leaning into his side.

“Yeah,” the corners of his mouth quirk, though he hides it when he presses a kiss against your temple. “A real pain in my ass, love.”

“But yours.”

This time, he does smile. “Yes, but mine.”

Masterlist

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I was not tagged by @mademoiseli, but I shall still do this fun tag game;)

favourite colour: orange

currently reading: The Angel the Series books "Bruja" and "Stranger to the Sun."

last movie in theatres: "The Batman."

last series: I assume this means last new TV series that I watched? And that was "The Chosen." Oh! For newest video game series--which I think is the newest series of anything I've gotten into lately--that's "Five Nights at Freddy's."

craving: Chinese food.

tea or coffee: Coffee.

currently working on: A SoKai manip, SoKai amvs for SoKai week (or trying to, if Sony Vegas will cooperate with me)... I also need to start a RokuShi amv for RokuShi Day--since that's closer than SoKai Week is--but I need to think of a song to use for them first.

Tagging anyone who would like to do this!

[fluffykitteninabox]

That's not just a musical trope my friend. That's the start of theatre.

In ancient Greek theatre the chorus (χορός) which means dance, were a group of actors who worked as a collective.

The chorus originally came from the ritual circle dances. According to the story, the first dancer exited the circle and started to converse with the other dancers. And the back and forth dialogue is the start of storytelling and theatre.

They wear matching costumes and masks. They are rarely individual characters, and if they are that's in comedy only, not in tragedies.

They're supposed to represent the common opinion of the people/the audience. In comedy their role is more active, while in tragedy they're more like an audience surrogate that mostly passively observes the struggle between two main characters.

At first the chorus started at 12 members, but Sophocles brought that up to 15. The comedy chorus in Aristophanes' plays has 24 members.

They also kind of break the fourth wall in a way, because they often address the audience when they sing.

It's really not a coincidence that the first photo there is the muses from Disney's adaptation of the Heracles myth. As much as I hate it as an adaptation, it really represents exactly what the chorus is supposed to be in a play.

I'm not giving too much credit to Disney though. Judging by the rest of their choices for the movie, they probably only chose the muses for this purely because they're more easily recognisable as figures.

And they're not even nine! I understand that they probably couldn't put a 24 member chorus in a Disney movie (I mean we greeks don't even stick to the numbers in modern adaptations either) but I don't think having all nine muses there instead of just five would have been that much more difficult.

Good musical trope: omniscient narrators with matching outfits and great harmonies

[hussyknee]

Wonder how far I can prod libs into finishing their full thought bubble behind all this "harm reduction" "genocide is a single issue" "you don't care about marginalized people in the US" "dyou want fascism WITH genocide???" screeching.

Okay, class, say it with me: "I don't want to live in a third world country like the ones we keep destroying."

Because you know. The countries your war criminal leaders keep bombing and starving and destabilising and leeching dry? We don't have trans or gay rights or women's rights or disability benefits or environmental or labour protections. No one would want to live in our countries obviously. You'd kill yourselves before you had to live like we do. Sure, we're only like this because you keep us trapped in poverty and violence and we still have full, happy lives worth living despite it but that's because we're used to it! We don't know any better! Not like you! You know what you deserve and you shouldn't have to lose anything as a consequence of your own political choices! Your government is supposed to happen to other people! Not you! So like, yeah, it's bad that the poors are being massacred wholesale or whatever, but like. That doesn't mean you gotta die with them, y'know? And by "death" you don't mean actual genocide like what's happening over here but "death" as in "having to live like we do".

The trolley problem metaphor is so goddamn attractive to you because you see yourself outside the tracks, objectively assessing the situation and making the "tough" "moral" choice for the collective good. It's imperialist horseshit. You don't have a democracy and it's not a trolley. What you have is an imperial death machine running on an apartheid system that decides who gets fed to it and who gets fed by it. That's your "two tracks"— the colonized and the colonizer, the core and the periphery, the white and the coloured. "Harm reduction"? Have you counted how many fucking millions in and around the world your death machine eats to keep how many of you "safe"? But our losses are a foregone conclusion, a matter of course, a regrettable necessity. The only variable is yours.

Every political choice in 200 years of your settler colony has been "genocide AND". "Genocide AND women's rights". "Genocide AND workers rights". "Genocide AND fascism". "Genocide AND democracy". The difference is that for the first time in your history you're now watching it livestreamed to the entire world in real time 24/7, exactly as your colony is about to capsize under the weight of its own bloodlust. A sea change from when your parents threw parties watching bombs dropping on Baghdad and then spent twenty years watching movies about sad it made the soldiers.

How do you count the victims when we are numbers and you are people? You scream about trans rights in the US while Palestinian trans children don't have the right to reach puberty. OSHA for you but Congolese children have to die in mines. Reproductive rights for the US while Sudanese women are raped in millions. Yes, but it's always been "genocide AND" no matter what, right? Do we want to sabotage the party that has never fucking cared about us and don't now even with half their own country screaming at them on the off-chance they might possibly maybe one day do?? Why are we acting so mad like it's YOUR fault that you're fighting for your quality of life over our corpses?? Do we want YOU to lose your rights over it??

Yes, actually. We do. We want you to have a taste of the reality that generations on generations of your illegal illegitimate white supremacist occupation has inflicted on us just so your worthless hide can sit there and call our genocides a single fucking issue. And let's be real: that's what you're so fucking afraid of.

[thydungeongal]

I can't imagine what life must be like for you. You wake up every day shitting and pissing yourself with rage because somewhere in the world there are people playing D&D and even worse, playing it WRONG. You don't have to play it with them or even hear about them doing it but the fact that they exist and there's no way for you to stop them will cause you endless torment for the rest of their life. "

Stop homebrewing!!!!" you scream through tears, "Don't you understand that there are other games?" But they do not respond because they do understand, but they know you are mentally incapable of understanding that people who heavily homebrew their games do so because the act of homebrewing a game is the fun they are after. You are doing the equivalent of yelling at someone who plays modded Skyrim because don't they know that Pathologic exists? But they do know Pathologic exists. They do not want to play Pathologic. They want to play modded Skyrim. Because modding the game IS the fun they are having. For them, the modding is the game. And going to play a different game instead would not be the experience they are looking for.

You do not and will never understand that for the majority of the D&D playing population, it is primarily a social activity. A way for them to kick back and hang out and have fun with their friends. The idea that they would factor in the opinions of some random loser on the internet is absurd. You are going up to a group of guys who get together and shoot hoops every friday after work and screaming "NO!!! YOU'RE NOT FOLLOWING THE OFFICIAL NBA RULEBOOK! YOU'RE NOT EVEN KEEPING SCORE!!! TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! AND WHY DON'T YOU PLAY HOCKEY INSTEAD!!!" But they do not care. This is a recreational activity to bond with people that they care about, and you are such an unlikable little creep that you will never know what that's like.

"I'm just trying to get them to engage with the art form!" you lie, "Only playing one game is like only reading one book or only watching one movie!" Except that the average number of ttrpgs that the average person has played is still 0, and even when you count all people who have ever played D&D, the vast majority are people who played a couple of games and then never got back to it. You're acting like this is some massive moral social disease that needs to be cured to solve the anti-intellectualism problem in society as opposed to being the niche hobby of a small portion of the population.

"I just want to show people how great other games are," you lie, because if you actually did want that you would spend your time talking about your favorite games and what makes them great instead of spending all your free time insulting D&D players for the fact that they don't already play these games. I love so many TTRPGS and there are so many others that I would love to get to play, but I can't talk to people about them because so many D&D players first exposure to other game is people like you screaming at them that "EVERYONE WHO PLAYS D&D INSTEAD OF MY GAME IS A FUCKING MORON IDIOT FASCIST WHO SHOULD BE SHOT" and it immediately turns them off from wanting to try those games.

Like maybe if more of you spend your time talking about how cool your last game was, posting session diaries online, discussing your favorite mechanical interactions, posting actual play podcasts or youtube videos, that would entice people to want to try, but in order to do that you would have to understand what having fun playing a game feels like, and you fundamentally don't.

You are the worst thing to happen to the hobby you're actively sabotaging people from wanting to try new games. Honestly Hasbro should be paying you for doing their work for them, making it look like if people leave D&D to try other systems they'll be surrounded by people who scream at and insult them nonstop.

At this point D&D is popular because it is popular. If I want to play D&D, I know I can find a group. If I dig harder, I know I can find one of the other big names (call of cthulhu, vampire the masquerade, pathfinder, MAYBE shadowrun) but finding a full table of people who are all interested in playing a more obscure game (and not even super obscure, even stuff like monster of the week or blades in the dark), and specifically who all want to play the SAME more obscure game? That's really challenging and you strike out a lot, and the fact is hat people get into this hobby because they actually want to fucking play game, not sit around imagining what it would be like to play and then argue with people on the internet.

And the funniest part of all this bullshit is that it literally does not effect you in the slightest. Those five friends hanging out after a hard week of work roleplaying about kissing elves in their basement half a world away are not going to break into your house and make you play D&D and play it their way. It shouldn't upset you but it does, because you are an unhappy person and rather than acknowledge that and deal with it you would rather put the blame for how you feel on some random people you have never met and will never meet, so you spend all your time on the internet frothing at the mouth with rage, trying as hard as you can to make everyone else as miserable as you are.

But it doesn't work, because those people aren't reading your posts. They are having fun kissing elves in the dungeon, blissfully unaware of what some miserable, unpleasant assholes on the internet think about it. They are having fun with their favorite hobby and you are not, and a hobby will never be defined by the 1% of people who spend all their time complaining that the other 99% are doing it wrong, it's defined by what the 99% of people involved are actually doing, and that's what makes you mad and that's what makes you such a fucking worthless loser.

Your mistake is assuming that when I write about RPGs, even critically, that I'm having a bad time, but I actually enjoy the intellectual exercise of thinking about the things I enjoy critically. You should try it too! :)

Also I'm very glad that you've really nailed down on my ideology of "everyone who plays D&D instead of my game is an idiot fascist who must be shot," a thing I am always saying and am in fact famous for saying.

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

Nobody asked me for my opinion on the controversy that dropped today when the Sonic Movie cast pay rate was revealed, which is fair ig since I try to stay positive on this blog. But in case you're wondering, yeah as a certified AFAB™ I'm pissed, but not really specifically at the Sonic crew. Actor pay rates are usually negotiated between agents and the production companies so just like all the other problems with the Sonic movies, this is most likely an issue with Paramount and their patented dumbfuckery. Disclaimer that obviously it could very well be a Sonic crew issue as well, obviously I don't know the inner workings of the entire film production.

Also, if you're mad about this: please be mad about the pay gap that has been going on as long as Hollywood has been alive. This isn't a problem unique to the SCU. I know the phrase "pay gap" is thrown around a whole lot but do you guys actually know how big an issue it is?

Recent percentages are that male and female actors have "a wage difference of about 25 percent," with an estimated difference of $1-2million between star-power men and star-power women.[x][x] Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone said she made $500k to Michael Douglas's $14mil– and when she was asked to be lead in a film being made in ~2022, the lead male, who was "new", was going to be paid $8-9mil, with her salary still at $500k. Last December, Biggest Monopoly In The World Disney was sued by 9,000 women over their pay gap.

This article is from 2019 but brings up some big fucking pay gaps between leads– for instance, Gillian Anderson was offered half of what David Duchovny was for the X-Files reboot as one of the two main fucking characters, Amanda Seyfried has disclosed she made 10% of what her male co-star made on an undisclosed film, Natalie Portman made 1/3 of the salary of Ashton Kutcher in No Strings Attached, and Ellen Pompeo, the titular character of Grey's Anatomy, was paid less than the actor playing her love interest, Patrick Dempsey. In fact, Dempsey was being paid almost double what she was.

However, BIG issue with the 2019 article: it only focuses on what White actors are being paid. Research shows that Black actresses make 57 cents to every dollar white actors make on a good day. Viola Davis, one of the most popular and talented actresses of our generation, has said that black women "get probably a tenth of what a Caucasian woman gets. And I'm number one on the call sheet." Octavia Spencer had to collaborate with Jessica Chastain to make sure they both got paid the same amount of money on a film they both worked on, and revealed that her new salary increased 500% afterwards.

At the end of last year, while promo-ing The Color Purple, Taraji P. Henson broke into tears while talking about how little she's being paid when compared to her white and male contemporaries. And when she talked about the gap, I find it so fucking frustrating that the general audience response was to immediately blame the only Black female producer on the film. I have a million gripes with Oprah Winfrey but TCP cast has said that she herself managed to fix a lot of the problems on set and was nothing but supportive to them. Oh, and there were a lot of problems on set, including a lack of food and dressing space for the main actors. And this is all from celebrity women. Just think about how Hollywood is treating women who don't have the star power to speak up.

Of course this isn't even a problem solo to Hollywood, let alone Paramount, let alone just one movie. And honestly it was probably really sad that when I saw the pay rate for the Sonic 3 cast, I wasn't even surprised, because I've seen worse on bigger projects.

[doberbutts]

The problem with the concept that there are trans men who don’t have male privilege is that it seems to imply that there are trans women who DO have it, which is a concept that is widely agreed to be unequivocally transmisogynistic. Any rebuttal for this?

My rebuttal is; I know trans women who have lived in my house and sat on my couch and watched movies and played videogames with me who have told me to my face that they did receive male privilege on a similar incredibly conditional, individual, and situational basis similar to how I am describing for trans men, how it relied on the closet and total stealth, and very aware they had to be of the line they were toeing, and how much worse they are treated now that they are out and transitioning, and how afraid they are to say it because of rabid people online who are looking for any excuse whatsoever to hurt them when they deal with that enough in their everyday lives.

I am forever reminded of this older interview (mid-90s early 2000s I think) of transgender Japanese citizens and this one person who was probably what we would call a trans woman. And, like my butch friend, was trapped in a situation in which there was absolutely zero room to breathe. They were amab, married to a woman with multiple children, working as a businessman to support the family. They said how they always felt like a woman on the inside, and how they knew that could never be a reality for them, so they didn't see much point in pursuing anything because it would break their family apart. The only thing they could do was make various cute needlework girly things during their daily commute to and from work. They had some cover story for their wife that they were buying them from a shop for their daughters or something.

Do you think that this person, who is perceived by everyone around them to be a cis man for several decades, does not benefit from male privilege in any way despite probably not actually being a man? Do you understand what I'm talking about when I say that this is a topic that needs to be discussed with far more delicacy and nuance than "man privilege woman not privilege"?

Do you think that all of the accounts of trans women out there saying "when I came out and started identifying as and passing for a woman, people suddenly started treating me much worse" and "I frequently have to boymode because otherwise my life is too dangerous" aren't discussions of exactly what I'm talking about?

Privilege is a tricky, complicated thing. It's also something bigoted society bestows upon you, and not a moral critique of your own existence. TERFs and MRAs both have poisoned the well, but that's not a reason to completely disregard the much-needed grace that has to be had during these conversations.

Personally I think any trans person's experience with "male privilege" is shakey at best and entirely contingent on a wide number of factors that you can't just point at their gender and say yes or no. I think it's way more complicated than that. And I don't think anyone is lesser for having or not having it, either. Gender is a morally neutral thing. Gender presentation is a morally neutral thing. It is okay to exist. It's okay to have a complicated existence.

[steddietogo]

Eddie can’t sleep with all the snoring. He should’ve taken Steve’s guest room when he had the chance but Eddie apparently is an affectionate drunk. He didn’t protest when Steve and Robin lead him to Steve’s bedroom and the three had just collapsed onto the bed together.

Now Steve is snoring like a fucking chainsaw. How can he be expected to sleep in these conditions? Hey, at least Eddie’s found one thing he finds undesirable in Steve. It was beginning to be too much— the constant barrage of butterflies in his stomach whenever Steve did completely normal, swoon worthy things. But Steve snoring like a faulty boat motor? No butterflies. Problem solved.

But Eddie’s still mad that he can’t sleep. He flops around angrily to glare at Steve’s slumbering form and— the dude is on his back, wide awake and blinking up at the ceiling. Now Steve’s back to being stupid perfect and that just makes Eddie more mad.

“What the fuck,” he whisper-shouts in the dark. Steve, fucking glowing in the eerie blue-tinted light spilling in through the window, just turns to him and shrugs.

Eddie props himself up on his elbows and peers over him at Robin— who is twisted up in a blanket, dead to the world and making enough noise to scare away a wild demogorgan probably.

“Does this happen often?” He asks Steve.

“Only when she’s drunk, and you don’t need to whisper, no way you can wake her up now,”

“Oh,” Eddie flops back down on his stomach making a mournful noise. “Goodbye sleep, you will be missed,” Steve turns to Eddie, curling up onto his side until his face was so close to Eddie’s that their noses almost touch.

“I can think of other ways to pass time,” Steve practically purrs. Eddie barely hears him past the blood roaring in his ears.

“L-like what?” He tries and fails to keep his own voice steady. If Steve making eyes at him from a distance are dangerous then those eyes in this proximity are deadly. Eddie discreetly pinches himself to keep him from doing something stupid. Like closing the gap between their lips.

“Like—” Steve pulls himself up and, holyfuckingshit, plants a knee on either side of Eddie’s hips. Eddie doesn’t have an exact number for the times his dream had started exactly like this. Steve on his hands and knees, hovering over Eddie.

This is happening. Is this happening? With Robin right there beside them? Actually Eddie doesn’t care about that part but is it happening?

Then Steve moves again, gets off Eddie and slides off the bed like he didn’t nearly just send the man into cardiac arrest. “We could go watch a movie?” The fucker smirks at him like he knows exactly what he just did to Eddie. Get it together, Munson.

Eddie ends up following Steve downstairs like a love sick puppy anyways. Even lets him pick a cheesy musical to watch. When Eddie finally starts to drift off to slumberland, he feels a strong pair of arms pulling him into a warm chest. And the last thing Eddie thinks of before fully succumbing to sleep is that maybe he might have a chance with Steve after all.

[tangibletechnomancy]

The reason I took interest in AI as an art medium is that I've always been interested in experimenting with novel and unconventional art media - I started incorporating power tools into a lot of my physical processes younger than most people were even allowed to breathe near them, and I took to digital art like a duck to water when it was the big, relatively new, controversial thing too, so really this just seems like the logical next step. More than that, it's exciting - it's not every day that we just invent an entirely new never-before-seen art medium! I have always been one to go fucking wild for that shit.

Which is, ironically, a huge part of why I almost reflexively recoil at how it's used in the corporate world: because the world of business, particularly the entertainment industry, has what often seems like less than zero interest in appreciating it as a novel medium.

And I often wonder how much less that would be the case - and, by extension, how much less vitriolic the discussion around it would be, and how many fewer well-meaning people would be falling for reactionary mythologies about where exactly the problems lie - if it hadn't reached the point of...at least an illusion of commercial viability, at exactly the moment it did.

See, the groundwork was laid in 2020, back during covid lockdowns, when we saw a massive spike in people relying on TV, games, books, movies, etc. to compensate for the lack of outdoor, physical, social entertainment. This was, seemingly, wonderful for the whole industry - but under late-stage capitalism, it was as much of a curse as it was a gift. When industries are run by people whose sole brain process is "line-go-up", tiny factors like "we're not going to be in lockdown forever" don't matter. CEOs got dollar signs in their eyes. Shareholders demanded not only perpetual growth, but perpetual growth at this rate or better. Even though everyone with an ounce of common sense was screaming "this is an aberration, this is not sustainable" - it didn't matter. The business bros refused to believe it. This was their new normal, they were determined to prove -

And they, predictably, failed to prove it.

So now the business bros are in a pickle. They're beholden to the shareholders to do everything within their power to maintain the infinite growth they promised, in a world with finite resources. In fact, by precedent, they're beholden to this by law. Fiduciary duty has been interpreted in court to mean that, given the choice between offering a better product and ensuring maximum returns for shareholders, the latter MUST be a higher priority; reinvesting too much in the business instead of trying to make the share value increase as much as possible, as fast as possible, can result in a lawsuit - that a board member or CEO can lose, and have lost before - because it's not acting in the best interest of shareholders. If that unsustainable explosive growth was promised forever, all the more so.

And now, 2-3-4 years on, that impossibility hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of these media company CEOs. The market is fully saturated; the number of new potential customers left to onboard is negligible. Some companies began trying to "solve" this "problem" by violating consumer privacy and charging per household member, which (also predictably) backfired because those of us who live in reality and not statsland were not exactly thrilled about the concept of being told we couldn't watch TV with our own families. Shareholders are getting antsy, because their (however predictably impossible) infinite lockdown-level profits...aren't coming, and someone's gotta make up for that, right? So they had already started enshittifying, making excuses for layoffs, for cutting employee pay, for duty creep, for increasing crunch, for lean-staffing, for tightening turnarounds-

And that was when we got the first iterations of AI image generation that were actually somewhat useful for things like rapid first drafts, moodboards, and conceptualizing.

Lo! A savior! It might as well have been the digital messiah to the business bros, and their eyes turned back into dollar signs. More than that, they were being promised that this...both was, and wasn't art at the same time. It was good enough for their final product, or if not it would be within a year or two, but it required no skill whatsoever to make! Soon, you could fire ALL your creatives and just have Susan from accounting write your scripts and make your concept art with all the effort that it takes to get lunch from a Star Trek replicator!

This is every bit as much bullshit as the promise of infinite lockdown-level growth, of course, but with shareholders clamoring for the money they were recklessly promised, executives are looking for anything, even the slightest glimmer of a new possibility, that just might work as a life raft from this sinking ship.

So where are we now? Well, we're exiting the "fucking around" phase and entering "finding out". According to anecdotes I've read, companies are, allegedly, already hiring prompt engineers (or "prompters" - can't give them a job title that implies there's skill or thought involved, now can we, that just might imply they deserve enough money to survive!)...and most of them not only lack the skill to manually post-process their works, but don't even know how (or perhaps aren't given access) to fully use the software they specialize in, being blissfully unaware of (or perhaps not able/allowed to use) features such as inpainting or img2img. It has been observed many times that LLMs are being used to flood once-reputable information outlets with hallucinated garbage. I can verify - as can nearly everyone who was online in the aftermath of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Dashcon Experience - that the results are often outright comically bad.

To anyone who was paying attention to anything other than please-line-go-up-faster-please-line-go-please (or buying so heavily into reactionary mythologies about why AI can be dangerous in industry that they bought the tech companies' false promises too and just thought it was a bad thing), this was entirely predictable. Unfortunately for everyone in the blast radius, common sense has never been an executive's strong suit when so much money is on the line.

Much like CGI before it, what we have here is a whole new medium that is seldom being treated as a new medium with its own unique strengths, but more often being used as a replacement for more expensive labor, no matter how bad the result may be - nor, for that matter, how unjust it may be that the labor is so much cheaper.

And it's all because of timing. It's all because it came about in the perfect moment to look like a life raft in a moment of late-stage capitalist panic. Any port in a storm, after all - even if that port is a non-Euclidean labyrinth of soggy, rotten botshit garbage.

Any port in a storm, right? ...right?

All images generated using Simple Stable, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[d4yl1ghts]

stuck

mark sloan x shy, fem!reader

summary: you and mark get to know each other when you get stuck in an elevator

A/N- i feel like he would love star wars (not as much as bailey tho)? but this gives me such katniss and peeta vibes

-

You read the files that Doctor Shepherd had given you to take a look through because he thought his new patient may have some sort of problem with their heart and cardiology was your specialty. You were currently in the elevator, heading up to find an empty room to study your new case when the elevator suddenly came to a halt. Confusedly you glanced around and noticed Mark Sloan, the world’s number one man-whore was the only other person there.

He glanced up from his papers and made eye contact with you. “What happened?”, he questioned with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. This was the first time you’d heard him so nervous. “I think the elevator just broke.”, you sighed as the realisation just set in once you said it out loud. He huffed to himself. “Hopefully they’ll be able to fix it soon, I have a surgery in an hour.”, he stated, checking the time on his watch.

“Might as well get comfortable.”, he added as he fixed himself on the floor and placed his files beside him. You copied his actions and sat opposite him. “So, what case have you got there?”, he asked you, striking conversation. “Oh, just a new case Derek wanted me to check up on. What about you?”, you awkwardly asked as your cheeks blazed. “Just some boring charts of burn victims, I have to reconstruct their faces, arms and legs.”, he said. “Oh, lovely.”, you replied sarcastically.

You stared at the wall of the lift and zoned out into your own thoughts. It must have been around five minutes of silence before Mark started speaking again: “If we’re gonna be here for a while then we may as well get to know each other.”, he said, looking into your eyes. It wasn’t a bad idea, there was nothing else you could really do.

“Tell me three random facts about yourself. I’ll go first: I used to live in New York (I’m sure you’ve heard about that), my middle name is Everett and I love the Star Wars movies.”

“Uhm… this is actually hard to think about, hold on.”, you said, embarrassed. He chuckled slightly. “Okay, I hate posh restaurants, I also love the Star Wars movies and I have a pet cat named Jack.”

“Cool, why do you hate posh restaurants though?”, he questioned as he turned to you with amusement in his eyes. “They’re just so intimidating and I just generally don’t like the vibe of the, do you know what I mean? Also, they’re so overpriced like you could find some cosy place that sells nicer food for way cheaper.”, you said passionately. You did not like posh restaurants at all. “I get what you’re coming from to be honest. I always preferred a cute and little cafe opposed to a fancy restaurant.”, he reasoned.

“If I ever ask you out on a date, I guess I’ll know where to take you.”, he flirted which left your cheeks on fire, well that’s what it felt like anyway. “I’m not surprised everyone calls you a man-whore.”, you said as you ignored what he previously said. “That’s not my proudest nickname.”, he responded. “I want to change my nickname, I don’t want to be known as that anymore. I don’t want loads of hook-ups and flings, I want a real relationship.”

He gazed at you. “I swear we’re having a whole confession session here. Oh my God, it rhymed.”, he laughed to himself. You laughed along with him, he was pretty funny and cute. If you looked past his reputation, he was a nice guy.

After another fifteen minutes of talking and joking, firefighters had arrived and gotten the two of you out of the elevator. “Hey, Y/N, do you wanna hang out one day? Not in an elevator, of course.”, he asked you, almost anxiously as he awaited a response. “Yeah, I’d love to.”

“I promise I won’t take you to a posh restaurant.”, he added as he walked away and charmingly smirked at you. You laughed to yourself and waved him off. “We can work out a date.”

[forcemeanakin]

Right where you left me.

•WARNINGS: Angst. Situationship. May trigger people with abandonment issues or that have intimacy problems. Not technically cheating, but it may be triggering. Anakin's a douche bag.

Pairing: au!Anakin Skywalker x you!reader.

Summary: Anakin decides to pursue things outside of your relationship, breaking your heart in the process.

Word count: 1.7k.

A/N: NOT PROOFREAD, english is my second language, so please be gentle. If there are any mistakes, pls let me know in private so I can correct them, thanks :) Also I have a serious issue between differentiating “in” and “on” situations, so bare with me lmao.

☽⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯✳⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯✺⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯✳⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯☾

You ran into the coffee shop, in a hurry, which is a normal state for you and your continuous tardiness. “Fuck.” You muttered under your breath as you forced the door open with unnecessary strength. 

Anakin must’ve been waiting for half an hour now. 

On your tippy toes, you scanned the room, looking for the golden curls to stand out from a booth. 

Bingo. 

Trying to hide your excitement, you rushed to the table where your -relatively- new thing was waiting for you. You cursed your bag for making so much noise and told yourself off for packing so much shit. Maybe there was no need to bring all the stuff with you, but you couldn’t help yourself in your excitement to show Anakin all of the activities you had planned for you two and the remaining part of the summer. 

“Hey.” You whispered loud enough for him to listen to you, but your shortness of breath didn’t go unnoticed by him. He gave you a toothless smile as you sat down in front of him. “I’m sorry I’m late, I was at work and my manager-” You didn’t finish the sentence, instead, your face let him know everything he needed.

“Don’t sweat. I haven’t waited long. Five minutes to be exact.” He checked his phone carelessly. 

Oh. 

“Training ran long?” You hoped.

“Oh, no, just ran a little late.” He shrugged his shoulders. Like it was of no importance. 

At least you felt ashamed for being late. He didn’t seem to carry the same guilt.

Sometimes Anakin did this thing that stung your heart a little. His number one priority had always been him. And when you agreed to try things with him, you knew that was implied in the contract. Part of you had been hoping that you were going to be the reason that changed. 

So far, you had failed in your mission. 

“Oh, right.” You tried to fake a smile. 

“And how’s life outside of work, baby?” 

And just like that, your heart felt a little lighter and spark returned to your face. Especially when he reached out to hold your hand and play with your fingers. Especially when he used that nickname that you loved and you hadn’t heard in a while from his lips.

“It’s fine. My summer classes are always boring.” You rolled your eyes, chuckling at the end because he knew how much you hated to take extra courses. 

“I told you to give yourself some time off in the summer.” He raised his eyebrow.

“I know, I know…” You huffed. “Actually, I’ve been working on that.” You smiled, turning to your bag and taking some of the things you packed. 

Tickets for one of your favorite movies, that he insisted he wanted to watch with you. It made you smile so hard when he had proposed that plan, given that he was aware how much that franchise meant to you. 

You also took out some coins for the local fair, the one you two had walked by and promised to do that as your next date. 

The brand new control for your gaming console you had just bought to join him in video games because he said he wanted to share that without you. He seemed pretty excited to do that as an activity together and he even listed all of the games you might like. 

And right when you were about to take the keys of your summer house out, to hint him that you were ready to take the next step in your relationship, he stopped you. 

Anything intimate always made you nervous, even when you two were in the middle of it. It was a very vulnerable space for you and Anakin was your first in many things. It was normal for you to still be adapting to it. 

But you wanted to try. For you.

For him.

As a more experienced person than you, Anakin had needs. Needs that you sometimes failed to meet. That even though he was patient, you could feel how your lack of confidence sometimes bugged him. Not in an explicit manner, just… the occasional huff when he tried something experimental in bed or when you started to psych yourself out of the make out session. 

Any other person would have already left, but Anakin was your friend first and he was well aware of your uptight personality way before the two of you agreed to be friends with benefits. He knew what he was getting into and he was actually glad to help you experiment with that part of yourself you normally hid.

So your demonstration of being an organized and planning psycho was nothing new to him.

“Hey, hey…” He slowed you down, barely gazing the things on the table and fixing his eyes on yours. “Before you get started, I wanted to talk to you.”

His serious tone alerted you. But you weren’t surprised. Something inside of you had been alerting you all weekend. You thought it was your well-known anxiety. However, this felt unusual. Like his habitual ghosting and lack of response for the past few days meant different things this time.

“Sure.” You took a deep breath, trying to make it not so obvious. “Go ahead.” You nodded with a little smile trying to appear serene. 

“So, sorry for not replying to your texts this weekend. I was out in nature, thinking and connecting, you know?” He tilted his head, his eyes looking for some compassion out of you.

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” You rushed the words when the silence dipped between you two, part of it your fault because you were too worried with your sinking heart. 

You could understand a little impromptu retreat, you only wished it wasn’t right after you did some pretty intimate stuff back at your house. That last day you two crossed more boundaries than ever before. And even though you highly enjoyed it, his absence after that had you feeling nauseous, making you overthink and regret your decision of not giving him your virginity right in that opportunity. Maybe he would have shown more interest if you would have-

“So…Uhm… I think we should stop hanging out.” 

Your heart was down by your feet when he pronounced those words. You tried with all your soul to control your trembling hands that lied in between his palms so he didn’t notice how he was ripping you apart. Your irregular breath threatened to put you on blast but you managed to keep it on the low. 

“It’s not about you, seriously. I love hanging out with you and spending time with you, among other stuff.” He chuckled lightly, but instead of following his action, you released the breath you were holding. “But I’ve been talking to this girl and I just want to make sure that everything is working out with her. Emotionally.”

The sting in your eyes only grew bigger as you realized how embarrassing and heart shattering this moment was for you. Your cheeks felt hot and tight, something you tried hard to disguise with a breezy exterior. 

Like a flash, you remembered the day both of you talked about the rules of your agreement. You kicked yourself mentally when you reminisced of the moment where both of you agreed to let the other one know if they wanted to pursue something with someone else. You had said yes, in the expectation that his constant checking in on you and daily talks was enough proof of interest. Meaning that he would not be looking outside of your “situationship” .

And you agreed, because that was your case. You were interested enough. 

“You let me know if you want to see another guy, okay?”

You could almost laugh at such stupid idea. Didn’t he know?

“I think it’s better if we stop talking, so I can figure out things with her.” He scrunched his nose, like he was running out of words.

But how many words do you actually need to let someone know you don’t want them? He didn’t need much more. You’ve gotten the message. 

“It’s nothing definitive, but yeah… Let me know if you have any questions.” He gave you a side smile, still fidgeting with your frozen-in-place fingers. 

That took you out of the slow motion trance you were in. 

“Y-yeah, okay.” You took your hands out of his quickly, blinking quickly into realization. You started to rush everything back in your purse, screaming the word “Stupid!” over and over again in your head while you carried on with a calm expression. “Do not worry about me. No questions on my part. Thanks for letting me know.”

I guess.

“Totally agree with not talking anymore.” You finally stopped for a second after pushing all of the items on your tote bag. He seemed to be analyzing your expression in search of any sign of real approval, because your shy and cold body language wasn’t reassuring him. So you put on your bravest face and forced a smile. “I hope everything turns out great with her.” 

Speaking those words felt like hot iron was passing through your throat. 

He gave you an honest smile and got up, taking his jacket with him. “Thank you. And thanks for understanding.”

You stayed frozen in place, your purse on your lap with your hands clutching it so hard you could feel your nails through the fabric. You limited yourself to nodding quietly and letting the side of your mouth curve slightly up. 

“I’m sorry I can’t stay-” He began explaining his sudden escape. 

“Don’t be. Don’t worry about me. ” You dismissed. “I’ll just stay and have lunch.” You took the menu and fixed your gaze on the listed items, anything that wouldn’t be his eyes. 

He excused himself off the table politely, leaving you all alone and speechless. You glued your eyes to his back until he exited through the door, begging silently that he would turn around and say something else. Something that would pull you back into his life.

It seemed like that wasn’t his plan.

“I know I shouldn’t look for you for sexual stuff, but can I contact you for friend stuff?”

The text arrived that Saturday at 1am, 5 days later, erasing any progress you had done. 

The day of his usual drunken nights. 

Right around the time he used to get bored and there wasn't anything left to smoke. 

Exactly at the time he would always contact you. 

And you?

You were still at the restaurant. Unable to move.

Every day since that day. 

Right where he left you.