#i feel there's an argument

[eidolons-stuff]

Ajax: *nervous* "um- ok... so- uhh"

Xavier: *watches with second hand embarrassment*

Enid: *thinking about the moment with Wednesday in the infirmary*

Ajax: *trying to get himself together* "so..."

Xavier: *speaks matter-of-factly* "Enid. My boy Ajax here likes you"

Ajax: "That"

Enid: *snaps out of her daydreaming* "what?"

[unsung-idiot]

don't show him modern technology; it won't end well

bonus under the cut:

[dathen]

JONATHAN ARCHIVIST IS NOT STUPID SQUAD I WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU

[stonelions]

i was thinking the other day how we tend to draw cas and dean (correctly tbh) like

but in doing so we are betraying another fundamental dynamic of theirs which is more like,

[arttsuka]

People need to stop blaming 'parasocial relationships' when it's revealed to the public that a famous person has done something controversial (or even a crime) and the public is upset. 'I can't believe xxx did that!' doesn't always mean that the person who said it has a parasocial relationship with xxx. Usually it's just our faith in humanity, we want to believe that everyone has some basic human decency (especially someone we might admire) and it's only natural to be disappointed when we learn they're a bad person.

[heritageposts]

I was looking at some of Bashar Murad's old music videos (he's a queer Palestinian artist), and....

7th of August, 2021...

[separatist-apologist]

Genuinely, and I mean this kindly, but learning to recognize bait and not engaging with it will change your fandom experience.

[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????

[zillychu]

I've seen a couple people saying they're jumping ship for [other big socmed] after the AI announcement here, but like. Guys. Friends. You do realize all the other sites have been silently working with big AI companies for a while now. Bluesky has not implemented any acknowledgement or protection, and the CEO worked with crypto for years. They're just not broadcasting it or giving you an option to help remove your work from automatic scraping. Cohost has implemented similar levels of prevention compared to Tumblr.

I greatly prefer the transparency and the tiny bit of protection, no matter how flimsy. Tumblr is pretty awful, but it's still better than everything else so far. Which sucks but until we burn down the plutocracy, this isn't gonna be escapable.

(Also, no Tumblr did not quietly sneak this in. They literally announced it before implementing.)

And my thoughts on the CEO being... himself.

[vaguely-concerned]

My two cents on how much of Mind!Varric is Rook’s mind trying to fill the blank space and how much is Solas actively talking through a convenient blood magic paper doll of the mind: I think it's a mix of both, a truly collaborative psychosocial horrorshow if you would, but waaaay more towards the second. It feels too directed and tactical at times to be anything else. Rook's mind is willing to go along with the denial phase as far as it can fucking carry them to not have to face the grief and regret and does its part in papering over details that don’t make any sense, the way brains will strive to create coherent meaning even out of deeply confusing input, but to my understanding it's a collaborateur in how that plays out, not the instigator or control center. Solas is using it as a path to agency and to gather insight into Rook as a person unguarded as he can't count on in his own guise. (That stoic option that leads to him being like 'oh I see you're cautiously denying me access to your inner life. well. at least you still have Varric to talk to. y'know as an outlet :)'. You absolute BITCH Solas! That alone convinced me that he HAS to have an active hand in it on some level.)

My guess is that it takes considerable effort on Solas’ part to make Mind!Varric do anything more involved or complicated than seeming to sit up in bed and give casual commentary, and that’s why he keeps having eerie five minute shallow pep talks with you before he announces he conveniently needs a nap aaanyway good luck kid you got this haha. When he’s just spouting NPC lines from his bedrest, I’m ready to believe that could be Rook’s mind being allowed to improv lines for him more freely because it’s less about Solas trying to get something out of them or working an angle and more ‘Still here! Still totally alive and fine and the mentor figure you know and love and trust :) don’t even worry about it! Thankfully there is no war in Ba Sing Sei, as we all know’ upkeep work lol. Rook’s mind is allowed to set the tone of Varric, the outlines, but not always the content. 

AND, on a (beautifully fucked up) character psychology level, I feel like Solas is indulging in actually getting to be the good supportive mentor figure to Rook with one hand to assuage the guilt he feels about what he's done -- and what he's going to do -- to them with the other. Same internal logic as he uses in Trespasser about the Qun. ‘Almost everyone is going to die from the course of action I’m doggedly pursuing eventually. But at least I can make their last years happier and freer and kinder than they would have been otherwise. and that kind of makes up for it right. a little bit. doesn't it. doesn't that make it better at least. I need that to make it better)'. Did I really take your beloved mentor and friend from you if you don’t know yet that I did? Some philosophers would argue not really! So it’s probably almost ok actually. Isn’t it even a little noble that I’m taking all this grief and guilt on myself and shielding you for now. With undertones that I’m not sure he would realize himself (and might be mortified by if he did) that he is so incredibly lonely, and even a dishonest and indirect emotional connection is more than nothing when you’re that desperate. In this setup he gets idk. Both the control he craves so incredibly badly in relationships and over himself, and the scraps, the fading afterimages, of intimacy and warmth and companionship, even second hand. The one thing Solas and Rook agree on deep deep down is that they really wish Varric weren't gone. They're handshake memeing this in the saddest and most creepy way possible.

I think an important element too is that Solas needs Rook and their team to *succeed* —  up to a certain point. He needs someone to hold the two other elven mean girls off until he can get out of here. Ideally, in a perfect world, even do all the hard work of killing them so he can swoop in at the end and do his thing when both sides are exhausted and out of resources to stop him, and then Bob’s your uncle! Same logic as he was using with Corypheus, and after that worked out so well, too! King of choosing to never learn from a single solitary mistake he’s ever made even though i fully believe he could have the capacity to Fen’Harel <3 The underlying idea isn’t flawed, you see, it was just unforeseen circumstances getting in the way. This time for sure it’ll all work out the way I cleverly imagined it in my head beforehand. Cue By Talos this can’t be happening etc. in the form of a statue almost crushing him like a bug. 

So he's providing guidance and forging Rook into a leader from two angles: one Rook might not trust, and one they probably will. Shaping them into what he needs slowly and carefully. He’s helping you hone your team into their most effective state, as he might have done with his own agents back in the day, setting up his chess pieces even if he has to squint through two glimpsed realities to do it haha. Pincer maneuver of an insidious stealth mentor you never asked for. Also… at one point mind Varric gives you a whole little monologue about how Solas' problem is that he’s always seen his interpersonal connections as flaws and see where it’s landed him, all alone and the worst part? it hasn’t even worked. it’s all been for nothing he’s back where he began with nothing to show for it but his mistakes. Like...that has such strong 'uh okay happy to play your therapist from two rooms away here what the fuck kind of traumadump is this' energy to me, I’m not sure Rook like. Thinks that much about Solas as a private person. So much of Solas' self-loathing and futile insights into his own flaws seem to shine through in Mind!Varric's dialogue all the time — I just can't believe that there's no guiding hand behind it as it were. 

Most of all. I feel like people underestimate the degree to which Solas is incredibly funny. As in, he has a very consistent and recognizable sense of humour. It’s one of my very favourite things about him. We must remember — it is crucial that we always keep in mind — Orlesian accent and wig Solas from May The Dread Wolf Take You (my beloved, the explanation for why I love this dude even with the. All of the everything else. No one does it quite like him). He is not at all above doing things or adding little flourishes for his own obscure amusement, in fact that seems to me to be one of his most consistent traits. The Randy Dowager Quarterly comment Varric has? The ‘Maybe this is the Dread Wolf’s revenge. Forcing us to house sit for him’ thing? To Me this is 100% Solas amusing himself in his boring Fade jail surrounded by the screaming hellscape of all his regrets. Source: it came to me as divine revelation through pure vibes trust me bro 

If nothing else I find it much more narratively interesting personally if the connection between Rook and Solas really is that defenselessly intimate and entwined (and so unbalanced!), and the sense of violation and invasion and betrayal afterwards consequently all the more nauseatingly intense. Even if you kept him at arm’s length in the open, he’s been under your skin the whole time, looking around, gathering what he needs to destroy you, wearing the face of a friend. Regretfully, probably, but choosing to do it every step of the way anyway. (Sound familiar, Inquisitor? Solas doesn’t have that many tricks when you actually look at it, he keeps returning to old tried and true ones like a dog with a bone haha.) Maybe he even genuinely meant some of it as mercy, which only makes it so much worse. It makes his sin against his own core principles of autonomy and the freedom of all beings in mind, spirit and body so much more juicily grave if it’s something he pursues actively and consistently, rather than it half-falling into his lap as a happy accident mainly orchestrated by Rook’s own subconscious. Solas, too, is at his very lowest point, the closest to giving in and becoming his own antithesis fully that he’s ever been, and it makes the choice of whether you still reach out your hand to him one last time or not all the more impactful and difficult.

[prlssprfctn]

Today I am thinking about Jason, who is fresh out of his coffin, catatonic and non-verbal. His mind is in a haze and in a constant terror most of the time, and when it isn't - when he manages to ground himself, to stop imagining Joker's laughter and the phantom screech of the crowbar - he can't bring himself to speak, because there is... smoke in his lungs. A fucking soot. Rare sounds and words that escape his mouth sound like a painful, inhuman shriek.

He vividly remembers screaming his lungs out in the coffin, though, as he woke up to realise that he was buried six feet under, locked away from the rest of the world. So, maybe it was the last drop - a last attempt to use his voice.

His next tries are too painful. And when his desperate cry for Bruce - for someone to call his dad - is getting ignored, pushed aside, Jason doesn't even want to try any more. What use it would be? No one listens to him anyway.

He is as good as dead.

Oh.

He is dead.

[qqueenofhades]

“U.S. President Joe Biden issued a memorandum on Thursday requiring allies who receive military aid from the U.S. to provide ‘credible and reliable written assurances’ of their adherence to international law including international human rights law,” the Times of Israel reported. Israel will need to supply written assurances within 45 days or risk loss of aid. The report added, “The memo did not mention specific countries who would be held up to the new standard, but came amid increasing calls in the U.S. to condition aid to Israel due to concerns over its military operations in Gaza which were triggered by the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 253.” No one should underestimate the impact of the decision. The Associated Press explained, “Democratic senators on Friday called Biden’s directive — meant to bring breadth, oversight, deadlines and teeth to efforts to ensure foreign governments don’t use U.S. military aid against civilians — historic.”

[.......]

Biden also pressed on with intense one-on-one diplomacy. After his comment on Thursday evening that Israel had been “over the top” in Gaza, Biden engaged with Netanyahu on Sunday in a 45-minute conversation — unusually long by most diplomatic standards (and even more so given that no time had to be spent on translation with English-fluent Netanyahu). According to the White House readout, Biden insisted Israel make “credible” arrangements to protect civilians before launching a widely criticized military plan for Rafah, where civilian casualties could mount. He also pressed Netanyahu again to increase humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. Biden’s patient approach with Netanyahu over months has gradually transformed into a private and public pressure campaign. A Biden official told The Post that the leaders had “a pretty detailed back and forth on that.”

-- Biden delivers tough love, takes historic step: Conditioning aid to Israel

Meanwhile Trump?

Trump has said he would implement travel bans on people from certain countries or with certain ideologies, expanding on a policy upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018. Trump previewed some parts of the world that could be subjected to a renewed travel ban in a mid-October speech, pledging to restrict people from the Gaza Strip, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and "anywhere else that threatens our security." During the speech, Trump focused on the conflict in Gaza, saying he would bar the entry of immigrants who support the Islamist militant group Hamas and send deportation officers to pro-Hamas protests.

Also: Trump vows to expand Muslim ban and bar Gaza refugees if he wins presidency

Really, really not sure how much clearer I can make it here for y'all, but sure. Something something Trump's actually a better choice on this issue/overall (sarcasm).

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

different POV of this comic

x

[puppyudderly-dreamy]

ok for the record, the intersex argument for afab transfems is still baseless, when we are coercively or especially forcefully assigned a gender at birth we are subject to the forces of that assignment. it doesn't make me get treated like a cis woman because i had a period, i got treated like a weird "man" with something wrong with me, the same is true for any intersex person, how our conditions may show themselves don't actually change our cagab, which is the thing that matters for our society to identify deviants. we're placed into a category and if we perform that category we get to stay, if we don't we get put in the deviant box and excluded. afabs performing womanhood is EXACTLY what is wanted from them, even if they think they're "biologically male." and that's the crux of it really, being intersex is a biological condition, and because transness and gender is defined socially by our systems privileging certain genders and forceful reinforcement of the binary, it has very little to do with biology (ex why the trump order has bad biology in it, it's not about biology, it's about exterminating a social group not defined by actual biology). the assholes who argue for the case of the intersex afab transfem simply believe that there is something about transfems that can be biological, as in something biologically male. they always bring up theoreticals like "well what if they were assigned female and grew up with a body that went through male puberty" and like... you know what happens right? they get hrt, often forcefully. they are not trans they are being forced to be CIS women, and society won't demonize them for that. no one bats an eye when an afab takes estrogen, no doctor struggles to prescribe it to them, no one gets fanatical about how there's an evil cult giving them estrogen, no one calls them predators or baeddels or pedophiles. like i'm sorry but if you think an intersex argument has any validity you are boiling transness down to something biological, boiling the identities of intersex people down to be centered entirely around our conditions, and treating real trans women like a costume that can be put on and taken off for fun while we truly suffer under the weight of constant transmisogyny. you are a stooge and you invite only your own to join, either purposely or unwittingly letting them be fed vitriol and lies that align with supporting the patriarchy and continuing the real oppression of real trans women. biggest tell that the afab transfem isn't transfem: she and those who support her care nothing for her transfem sisters, disgraceful

[bixels]

tarpit site.

[buggachat]

honestly just in general it's very exhausting to try to analyze media that is literally meant to be analyzed, only for the replies to be filled with people arguing not against your analysis, but against the premise that the media can be analyzed at all.

i don't even know what to say about it without starting to really betray my frustration, so i'll just settle with— just don't engage with analysis posts? I'm serious. if you're typing a response to a media analysis post, reread what you've written and ask yourself "is this comment/response against the very concept of analyzing the media at all?" and if the answer is yes then delete it all and go sit in the shame corner. throw your curtains away if you want to so bad and stop telling me that I'm not allowed to hum and haw at the fact mine are blue