#i have been thinkin about this a lot

[fortunesblade]

thinking about how Zahav was raised and the way he was almost always treated like a young boy on the ship and around the crew he grew up with. he was often just assumed to be a young boy because of how short they kept his hair, always running around with a extra layer of grime on him from working the lower parts of the ship or cleaning the deck, the way he acted. and of course as he grew he hit puberty, was tossed through physical changes, his figure was more feminine and he didn't understand his body anymore and truthfully most of the members on the ship weren't of much help. as the vessel he was raised on was predominantly male.

they started to treat him differently--- unfairly and make passing comments, he felt uncomfortable in his own skin and despised the way he started to be looked at. by just about everyone he came across. leading him to constantly trying to start fights and flaunt just how tough and brutal he could be ( because he learned from the best worst in that regard ) . and for awhile he dressed in clothing that hid his figure, kept his hair nearly shaved to his scalp, purposely left wounds unchecked to ensure they left a scar--- anything to make himself less appealing. that's also around the time Zahav actually got into scarring, rather than having himself tattooed. he began to feel more at ease in his body then. feeling as though the designs carved in his skin was the center of attention rather than himself. but getting to see the story that's told on his skin. he started to fully identify as a man around then as well, because that's what felt right. that's who he was and that man wasn't scared of a thing. but it took a new ship and crew to embrace himself. letting his hair grow back out fully, allowing himself to dress and stylize in manners that appealed to him. just a few years down that line Zahav finally had the procedure removing his breasts around 19 to 20. began taking substances that both stunted the biological functions of his body and started to lean him into another stage of development.

he was nearly the man he wanted to see in the mirror--- but his conflicted morality was standing in the way of that. but that's something to dive into at another time!

[royaltea000]

“A thousand generations serve to praise…”

[zooterscooter]

what are you like under that mask, i wonder

(id + in art text in alt- it looks a bit hard to read on mobile my bad)

[esaari]

[arcanegifs]

ahem ok my brainrot for caitlyn and vi has subsided its back to posting stuff other than them too lol

[krembearry]

on the topic of in mouthwashing, how much people are blaming curly... what would YOU have done? genuinely. how would you have handled it? what could you have done differently in the two days before jimmy acted out and crashed the ship?

my understanding of the relationship between those two is that they were friends. curly didn't know about what jimmy did. and then he finds out, and what do you do? you are the captain and you are in the most control that there can be about the situation. loyalty to your friend says cover for him, but he did something really terrible. loyalty to your crew says detain him, but how? what are you supposed to do with him? worst case scenario, do you kill him as soon as you find out? it was only two days before the crash. how fast could you process all of that information and act on it?

i get its a game, but i think its supposed to be this big thinkpiece on this scenario. i don't think the point is to shift the blame from jimmy to curly. i don't care that curly didn't do every single thing he possibly could've done in two days. i know i couldn't have. i would have felt trapped, and stuck, and overwhelmed. i would've had dinner that night with the crew and just been unable to wrap my head around the fact something terrible happened and i didn't know before this. i would've wanted to message my superiors for some sort of protocol, but the company is being dissolved. you are the final authority over four other living beings. genuinely, what the fuck do you even do?

the whole point is it's jimmy's fault. jimmy did it. jimmy is the one who should take some fucking responsibility. maybe curly didn't do the right things, but jimmy sure as FUCK did not.

[werewuffart]

Though part of me is gone... a trace of me lives on...!

[xxplastic-cubexx]

sending you the best wishes for 2025 (even tho there's still 4 hours to it for me lol) 🫶🏻

happy new year to everyone !!!!!! here's to hoping it's better than this one was :^)

[biohazard-inevitable]

Hair

They say that hair holds stories, that the style is what makes a man.

They say long locks make you a pansy and a real man should have it short lest they be mistaken for a girl.

Where I grew up, every man buzzed their hair down.

It was a shame for it to be long and shaggy, and mothers would fuss over you, insisting upon a haircut.

For girls, it was fine.

They could have hair as long as they wanted or as short as they needed, so long as it wasnt buzzed as short as a man’s.

Being anything else just wasn’t a thing round these parts where churches chimed every sunday, pastors clammoring around resturants and filling their quotas in a single lunch.

So I buzzed mine.

I tried as hard as I could to seem as manly as possible

To appear as bull of a brute as any cowboy should.

I wore all the boy things and had all the short boy hair.

My scalp was sensitive anyways, so I thought it didn’t bother me.

It was better shorter.

Wasnt it?

I still gazed and clammored about the anime boys I saw on screen or in Otome games though.

I gushed about how pretty they were with hair down their backs like a silken curtain, or whipping wild through the air like the mane of a lion.

Legolas was never deemed as not manly enough

Beither was Zen or inuyasha or the undertaker.

A crush, I supposed.

Because of course thats all it was.

I was a gay little boy with gay little crushes and my type was men with long, Beautiful hair.

Right?

My hair was a dull, discolored brown from the shimmering blonde it used to be, the blonde I remember from kindergarten.

I tried to return to that blonde with bleach.

My school didnt allow unnatural colors, so anything was better than that matted, oily brown.

Shaved short and as platinum as a ken doll, I should have been as man as ever.

4 years, I stayed like that, and while the short hair was easy to take care of, I felt as hideous as a pile of sludge.

It didnt matter if I was loved for my looks, I supposed.

Wouldn’t that be too vain of me?

Boys weren’t supposed to care about what they looked like, they werent supposed to coo and admire Beautiful hair or seethe in jealousy that their sister looked so much better and has such long, goregous hair.

It wasn’t until after high school that I began to explore.

Covid let me grow my hair out more, though I still trimmed the sides.

I let my bangs grow long and shaggy over my face, like a veil to hide me from the world.

Eventually I dyed it again, this time going with that green I had always wanted to try, the one I had seen on my favorite youtuber growing up, fluffy and emerald.

Still, for years more, I kept it short. Only allowing that fringe to hover over me as some sort of style.

Recently though, I’ve realized I want that hair that those anime men had.

I want that soft curtain rolling down my back like waves of an ebony river, flecks of mossy green dotting it like a miasma of toxin flowing through the oily black stream.

I want the hair like the ring girl

The people around me are foolish and prudent to think the length of ones hair makes you more or less of a man.

I know that now, and I’m glad I do.

I want to stop pretending not to like things

[shorthaltsjester]

being a huge fan of tlou but also like. thinking that certain stories are built for certain mediums. like the entire theme of tlou2 is grounded and fresh because it’s a railroad/story video game that still affords you mechanical choices in how you navigate the world. i just don’t have a lot of confidence that presenting that story in a tv show with the minimal adjustments that they did in s1 will be fulfilling or compelling in any comparable way. because with tlou1 some of the like. beauty of that story was simply that it was such an emotive story contained in the medium of video games. and some of that was retained just by hitting similar or expanded emotional beats in the show, like the episodes that expanded on the life of the characters and the realities of that world. but truly so much of tlou2 emotional depth and ‘why does this story matter’ rests in the fact that’s it’s your hands on the controller, continually choosing to go forward in the story and have hope that it will work out in your-as-ellie-or-abby-or-somehow-booth’s favour. and you simply cannot get that in a non-interactive medium like television. like i do think tlou2 is a good story but it’s a good story because of the investment required by the player to keep pressing buttons and keep returning and to feel the adrenaline like responses of high intensity moments and be jarringly shifted into backstories that only increase the frustration. in general i’ve been thinking a lot about cross-medium adaptation and on the one hand i am glad that season 1 makes the story of the last of us more accessible to people who wouldn’t pick up a video game but it’s also like. maybe instead we can destigmatize video games as this inaccessible and dangerous medium a bit more instead of just . implicitly agreeing . like no maybe your mom won’t pick up a video game controller and play the last of us . but maybe you can play the game in the living room. sometimes the mediums that stories are told in aren’t just important but are actually foundational parts of how the information of a story is conveyed and that’s not only okay but is fucking fantastic. we should be happy actually that there are so many ways to collect a bunch of themes and ideas and put them together and hold them out to someone else and say “won’t you consider this with me. won’t you feel these emotions and care about these characters with me.”

[bloo-the-dragon]

*holds nebula like hamborger* what am i to do with you.

[lynxfrost13]

Best feeling in the world: friend’s mom said a buzz cut would look good on me

[yinyuedijun]

i dunno if it'd get any interest but if I were convinced that it would I would totally make an ask game for hsr selfshippers/insert authors centered around like. the paths/kits/team comps for their insert characters. my meta-obsessed ass would just love it but LMDAOSKSJ idk if anyone else would !

[loderlied]

mmm essay about sally and kid gort in the tags (cw for child abuse, mentions of suicide, animal cruelty and a murder attempt. i always hope i don’t have to say this but just in case: i don’t excuse or condone any of her or gort’s behaviour at all.) this is literally not even touching upon everything i have to say because i hit the fucking tag limit lmao. NOBODY READ IT’S BAD BRAINSTORMING I JUST NEEDED TO GET IT OUT SOMEHOW

[wander-wren]

hey do you know what would be a sad as fuck fic concept

yknow that trope of aizawa adopting various students. and when it’s todoroki there’s always that extra little bit of conflict because of endeavor, the number one hero, we can’t prosecute him, yada yada yada.

but it always works out, because fanfiction!

but consider. a version where it doesn’t work out. where todoroki—or really it could be anyone, i suppose, but todoroki is who i’m thinking of—doesn’t get adopted. and has to go home. where he finally managed to speak up, to ask for help, and it didn’t work. maybe, maybe he gets pulled from UA entirely. and aizawa just tries and fails and despairs for two entire years, because all the willpower in the world won’t actually change the law.

then, in the middle of a january night, as aizawa is preparing for his very last term with the class todoroki used to belong to, there’s a knock at the door.

and todoroki shouto asks if there’s still a spare room for him.

[raiiny-bay]

he is the smuggest guy i know