#i'm starting to understand the appeal

[elizaellwrites]

I don't do mood boards often, but I'm reaallly happy with Amber's today, so I might just start doing more of them.

[slothfuljeremiah]

call me sus the way im venting

[galadriel-blue]

If the last episode of trop season 2 turns me into a Saurondriel shipper I will make a public apology. I'm not kidding-

[flufflecat]

Got to stolen century in my relisten and started tearing up at work because of magnus carving the duck. Just me in the back room, crying over the dish sink for normal reasons.

[heresiae]

bought my first pokemon game. at 39. for my gameboy pocket.

how much late is not better than never? ^^'

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

Me, when Sebastian joins my party for the first time: Okay, this time I'm not going to forget about you, Sebastian. I'm going to make an effort to use you a lot this playthrough so I can better understand you.

Also me, immediately forgetting about Sebastian while finishing Act 2 and making it halfway through Act 3 before I finally notice his Faith quest: ......................Oh. Right. My bad.

[gomacave]

S*fikura.......

[marshmellowtea]

i do headcanon him as a cis man but i do also want to impregnate him

[amrv-5]

seeing all this fellow travelers content… feeling Intrigued… Looking Respectfully……. can i ask what it is & would you recommend?

HELLO!!!!! Okay yes I would recommend, I thought it was a great watch, I enjoyed myself! I have more thoughts on it but I'll save 'em cause spoilers--generally: It follows a number of queer relationships / characters over the course of the Lavender Scare through the 1980s. Its primary focus is the relationship between Hawkins, a WWII vet and midlevel govt. bureaucrat; and Tim, a congressional staffer fresh out of college. They meet during the height of the Lavender Scare and begin a fraught romance as they struggle with their own careers in DC, political complicity, and identities personal and public. The show covers about 30 years of their lives together (and apart). Go into it expecting solid performances (incredible Jonathan Bailey vehicle, at the very least) and (imo) fun if slightly uneven structuring, but also know (I don't want to sell it as Fun Gay Love Story!) by virtue of time period and what it's most interested in, story spends most of its runtime trying to show how national attitudes and even seemingly very localized political machinations impacted the lives of queer and especially queer Black people.

[lunar-years]

same anon; i was imagining it as a surprise for keeley! she's maybe been having a rough week or two work wise, and jamie and roy want to do something nice for her. jamie has the guy that did the wonder kid/roy kunt jerseys on speed dial.

absolutely terrific, no notes

[forcedhesitation]

After my last post I decided to sit down and rank all the possible companion pairs. here is the tierlist, should you wish to fill it out yourself.

This is a "ship" chart, but it's important to clarify that I am interested in how the dynamic works overall, not just romantically. I am very invested in how the stories of different characters overlap, and how they could mesh together to change both people involved. so the more interesting I find an individual character, the more likely they are to be higher in the chart.

How interesting I find characters also usually translates to my desire (or lack thereof) to draw them. So my likeliness to draw a pairing is the scale I used to describe each tier, rather than a nebulous "S," "B", or "F." This way, I feel it is better understood exactly why each pair is placed where it is.

Once again, sorry to those who enjoy miss SH. I do not hate her, I just do not find her to be an especially compelling character. I like the voice acting for her, but I don't care for her design, and I feel any element of her story is simply better explored in those of other characters.

*Special Exception 1: I have to split this pair off specifically, because I've thoroughly disparaged it in the past, based on erroneous judgments of halsin's character. when I first played the game, I locked myself out of a lot of Act 2 dialogue with him, which meant I missed the parts of his character that I do find interesting. I will say, it does still deeply bother me how much of his character revolves around sating the sexual desire players might have for him. I also hate that, as far as I'm aware, he can only acknowledge the player's relationship with astarion in the context of having sex. But after spending an entire campaign playing the game correctly, trying to learn as much about halsin as I could, and thus romancing him, so that I could properly judge him, I have grown attached to my rewritten version of him. so I'm not so much fond of the star/halsin pair as it is in game, as I am of that dynamic in the context of corydalis' campaign.

*Special Exception 2: after what happened with halsin, I feel it would be unfair to judge how interesting I might find minthara's relationship with most of the other companions, given that I've not yet had the opportunity to recruit her. despite this, I can safely say that I have no interest in whatever would likely play out between her any of the men, bar gale. gale is the exception because I've seen snippets of dialogue between them. I do not necessarily think they'd work together romantically, but again, it's more that the potential dynamic between them is interesting to me, regardless of the type of relationship they have. also, I do not categorise all other minthy x male companion pairs as bad because I am of the belief that she is not bisexual. I have faith that this game would make an effort to show us that she was a different identity, were she, because it already does a great job of affirming every other companion's bisexuality outside their potential relationship to the player. what I do not have faith in, however, is that minthy has as beautifully written a story as lae'zel does, where she learns to abandon the cruel and bigoted beliefs her society indoctrinated her to have. not when origin companions like wyll & karlach still lack material, and not when halsin's writing is as inconsistent as it is. I do not think that either halsin or minthy have, or will ever have, fully fleshed out narratives.

if you've interesting commentary about a particular pairing that you like, that you feel I might benefit from reading, do feel free to share it! even if I dislike a pairing, I am usually willing to read someone's thoughts about why they do find it interesting, granted it's not like...something utterly foul. I just ask you keep any commentary you choose to share to companion/companion pairs or companion/companion pairs in the context of polyamory with a tav/durge. NPC romance is another conversation.

[brothersonahotelbed]

love remembering the times i said i hated the queue function and will never use it, then cut to me adding 20 items to my queue

[arolesbianism]

Was going to do some oni file digging but got too distracted playing the actual video game. Anyways look at her <3

[subway-to-puppydom]

I want to be told that I'm doing good. To be held through each needle prick, every euphoric day and every day of dysphoria.

I want to get more marks littering my stomach from each injection. I want it to look like a sea of stars, dotting the path of where I'm headed.

I know I want this. I know you want to see me happy, and I do too! It's just... scary. To finally be here, starting T. I love it, I love how it's making me feel, I want to continue it for as long as I'm able.

[atthecenterofeverything]

nothing surprising in a book on the militarization of the USamerican police force that takes the time to announce in the first two pages that it is not “anti-cop” but it’s really interesting how in “rise of the warrior cop” balko recounts a case from 1757 of a man who shot a sherif who entered his house without a warrant, and was then acquitted because the sherif had not identified himself and so there was no way of knowing he was not a trespasser. balko draws a parallel with modern SWAT teams entering people’s houses in the middle of the night: “the announcement requirement under English law was not a formality, as it has become in police raids carried out today.” though he mentions the origins of the terms “castle doctrine”, at no point does he question other forces that might be at play where a man in the modern united states would have all his dogs shot in front of him by a SWAT team after they found some pot but an 18th century english man could get away with shooting, out of lack of a better term, a representative of “law enforcement”. the spectre of responding with physical violence to home intrusion (to your personal property) is a common fascist fantasy. there is nothing whatsoever contradictory, or symbolic of a cultural shift here: the castle doctrine obviously does not apply, and is not meant to apply, in cases of brown and black people being terrorized by the united states, and would have not applied in equivalent circumstances in 18th century england either

[epickiya722]

I know what I'm about to say has probably been said before and I don't mean to offend anybody.

I mean this genuinely from the good of my heart...

Some of you, take a break from the shipping goggles once in a while. Take them off, put them in a box and set them to the side somewhere.

And I don't mean this with just the ships you like and I also mean this with the ships you don't.

I feel like some of you aren't really seeing the characters. Some of you just ship characters because "they look good together".

"But it's fun!"

It can't be, but it's not as fun when you're the same person who later goes "this character sucks, I don't understand this, I know the character better than the writer".

Do you or you just boxed them into a mold of your standards?

How can you ship characters and not understand them and the canon story at least a little bit? Especially in this day when some writers are being brave enough to break out the usual norms.

I have my ships, too, but how fun can it be when I don't get the characters I'm shipping? I don't have to be an expert, you don't have to be an expert. But don't have an one-view of that character as just shipping material.

If all you consume is shipping fics and art, you're going to not have a true view of the canon story and its characters and when you do get around to seeing the canon?

"This sucks! It's not like the fics at all!"

The fics come from canon, not the other way around.

It sucks because you programmed your brain into thinking of these characters as fan on. And fanon can be worse than canon.

Take off all that shipping gear. No, take off that fanon gear and for once dive into the canon source material.