#idk I'm rambling

[auspicioustidings]

Johnny likes to pick a random little coffee shop in whatever place the mission takes them and sit for hours sketching the people around him. Something about it is a ritual for him, settles him in this new place and reminds him that this is what he fights for, the freedom of people to go get themselves a fancy coffee after a hard day if that's what makes them happy.

The day he sees you his sketchbook has pages of you. He usually moves quickly between people and he didn't even realise that he wasn't until he gets back to base and Ghost has a look at his sketches as he always does.

"Fancy a tea tomorrow then?" he asks.

They go but it was a longshot, you're not there. They visit again a few times when they can, hope you'll walk in. Gaz and Price keep an eye out too once they see the sketches.

They don't know you but you become so familiar to them. They've never met you but their allies all know your face. You are just a regular person going about your day never knowing that sometimes you are what is keeping a soldier on another continent going. You criticise your appearance in the mirror unaware that you've become somewhat of a mythic creature, a divine thing, a good luck charm across special forces and PMCs and rebel groups. Your face that you are trying to learn to love has been replicated so many times on the pages of those who have fallen in love with it.

And maybe you never ever find out, or maybe one day you're watching a news piece showing barracks and see your face up on the wall. The reporter asks the man if that's his partner back home. He smiles softly and says he wishes that were the case, but it's just a person he saw in a coffee shop years ago that he has never been able to forget.

[pass-me-the-dilfs]

Reading Lou Sullivan's diaries as a gay trans man makes me feel so seen.

Like I view my gender as "gay man". I don't relate my gender to that of a straight man, and I definitely don't relate it to any form of womanhood or nonbinary-ness. And for so long it was scary and embarrassing and confusing. I felt like I was fetishizing gay men or trying to wiggle myself into some club.

But Lou feels the same way! The utter desperation he feels trying to be seen as a man and to be included in the gay male community is so fucking RELATABLE. And I cannot overstate how happy I am that he was seen as a gay man and was desired by other gay men, it gives me so much fucking hope.

[bringbackmaes14]

There's something so funny to me whenever I see Trans!Logan Howlett headcanons in fics or fanart. Don't get me wrong, as a gnc person, I love the headcanon, I'm not saying it's silly (derogatory) but I keep trying to wrap my head around how it would work.

Because he has a regenerative healing factor. Could he have even had top surgery or would his tits have just kept regenerating? I've literally been trying to wrap my brain around this question for like four days since I saw a fanart of Logan with top surgery scars and I was like "but he doesn't scar????" Can someone with more creative braincells help me figure out how this would work????

[if-we-are-free-tell-me-why]

every time I hear someone say "oh you have to listen to Dear Evan Hansen it has such good mental health representation" I cry in Next to Normal

[dotsunflowers]

thinking more about disability in severance, and Bassam Sidiki's article about s1 now that we are at the midpoint of s2

Sidiki writes about the severance procedure as a process of capacitation — "If memory or nostalgia is a form of disability that capitalism both produces and shuns, then Mark’s traumatic memory of his dying wife is a problem that must be rectified [...] The home itself is a liability—nay, a disability—of capitalism"

in s2 we see how this analysis also applies to dylan, who's outie has various obligations and pressures beyond work (a relationship with his wife, caretaker of his children, needing to be able to secure health insurance for his family) and has had trouble maintaing employment. one aspect of the severance procedure for him is a capacitation — these pressure are removed, and he excels at his job in MDR

historical legal definitions of disability were defined by level of capacity for work — Sidiki notes that in US "Social Security law, “disabled” refers to someone who cannot engage inwork activity due to medical reasons" and that historically, "Because disabled bodies are not as exploitable to capitalism as nondisabled ones, they are shunned, segregated, and isolated from the workforce."

by attempting to remove disability, then, Lumon is attempting to make non-disabled workers that are exploitable in practically every way. they don't entirely succeed in this, though, as we see in season 1.

disability still finds a way in. the environment itself is disabling (see helly s1, esp. eps 4 & 5). outie!irving's disruptive tactic is to disable his innie by making it so he experiences overwhelming fatigue, so innie!irving can't help but sleep on the job. as soon as Lumon makes one slip and lets the outie/home world in (dylan ep 6), dylan can't think of anything else. he has been discapacitated.

and this is how the seeds of a rebellion (the OTC) are sown.

and so all of them have now gotten glimpses of their outside worlds.

and so (tl;dr) that's what i'm thinking about, in season 2. now that innie!irving has been killed. now that all of them have experienced the outside world, puncturing holes in lumon's capacitation experiments. now that all of them are dealing with various new traumas.

now that outie!mark has fully decided to mess with the system — and in order to do so, now finds himself with a live-in brain surgeon and pillbox full of daily meds.

yes there is plenty to say about a season touted as the adolescent season, touted as featuring not just romance but love triangles and quadrangles and shapes we've never seen on tv before.

but is this also the season of letting disability/disabling factors in? of our bodies are not meant for this system? if individualism won't save us? if we need to try and understand interdependence and precarity and entropy rather than lean away from it?

[kazbrekkerfast]

has anyone written a tangled wesper au becuase I friend just showed me a post about it and I have gone feral

like wylan is so tangled coded he can do music and sing and draw and is locked away by a gaslighting ass bitch and just wants to leave and escape his tower and then this hot flirty thief arrives and helps him escape they are literally perfect omg

[hypertranced]

it sucks being an arcane fan and seeing people misunderstand marcus's character as a whole. in my eyes his scenes with his daughter are less to make us feel bad for him and are more for us to simply understand why he's still doing the shit he's doing. say whatever you want but if I had to do shady corrupted ass dealings to keep my family safe I probably would out of sheer terror, so while I fully think marcus dug his grave I can understand why he couldnt just rebel against silco. marcus as a character reminds me of the simple human fact that everyone wants to change the world but most ppl arent actually willing to sacrifice what they have to do it.

[virginreprise]

plans for an american trilogy…it’s coming together !!

[ranseur]

fyi at least half of the "stay at home girlfriend" posts are satire so it's much less of a Thing than it seems - the sincere tradwife-type content tends to be more focused on how They Personally Prefer to spend time with their children etc. (so focusing on the them Wanting the Traditional Life vs. Not wanting to work etc.), it's more insidious

interesting! let me know if there's some deep dive i can look into this topic more- based on what you're saying there's more to it than initial impressions imply mostly I'm curious that you've brought up disconnecting them philosophically from tradwives when, for sure, I had the impression that tradwives and sah-gfs were similar in their outspoken willingness to discard certain women's rights. though, I can see how they differ in other ways. if one group is more likely to isolate and homeschool their kids and feed them raw milk (if that's what you were implying when you said 'how They Personally Prefer), while the other group 'just' wants an unlimited credit card. cause i was wondering why it was that one group keeps calling themselves 'girlfriends' rather than 'wives'. i guess it would make sense if they're saying they don't care about making a family like trad wives tend to fwiw though, since I don't know much, i think what you're saying is fair: to be cautious of how these groups are different, and especially which ones are more likely to stem from a broader political motivation. though, concerning the post itself which was more just about the sah-gfs, i thought it brought up an important discussion about 'eroticizing gender inequality'. even if by comparison, sah-gfs may not be as large or insidious as tradwives, i think it's still something worth talking about.

but i could change my mind about anything i said above. definitely feel free to send me some links for further reading

[angeygirl]

William becoming Dave is the in-universe(?) equivalent to springtrap becoming scraptrap

Like you look between spring and scrap and are like 'what a downgrade' well that's officer burke in Ch 12 looking at Dave

You all know I like Dave and William equally but I just mean appearance wise they (william and spring) start off and broad and intimidating and then get all scraggy and ugly

All of these characters are the same person

[a-panacake]

i think some part of my brain is always thinking about The Answer. i feel like this song captures such a sense of dread, and it's beautiful. Maybe it's because he says he's 19 and i'm gonna be 19 soon. it's the sound of his voice when he says his frist "i don't know" or maybe it's cause it's George Salazar singing and i'll listen to whatever that man sings.

[valkerymillenia]

A few days ago I saw these TikToks with interviews about AO3 fanfiction and one of the questions was "what is the one thing that makes you click out of a fic immediately?" and there were a lot of classic valid answers but I couldn't come up with an answer myself until just now.

You see, yeah, there's some things I don't enjoy that much (like, for example, reader x character fics, first person narration, OC x character, certain untagged triggers, consistent and abundant grammar/spelling mistakes, etc) but it doesn't make me completely give up on a fic that caught my eye, I'll usually give the author a chance and read a bit before I decide to back out or not.

But I just remembered one thing that immediately makes me back out, it's just that it's rare enough that the answer that occur me to me until now.

It's when something in the fic gives away very glaring that the author is either a bigot or that they are very much a minor.

Of course, the latter isn't a problem in gen fics but in the others? 😬😬😬

Example: I remember once I started reading a mature fic for my rare pair and suddenly the author is describing the 30 year old character as "mature and wise, with greying/salt-and-pepper hair and wrinkles around the eyes" and I just... I had to pause and close my eyes because what??

I tried to keep reading but then the author kept making this 30 year old into a almost retiree or middle-aged, past-their-prime, put-together, all-knowing daddy figure (to the super mature and totally grown up and responsible 18 year old) and I just had to give up and back away.

I remember I was 33 when I read that fic and the way the author spoke about the 30yo character just made me so uncomfortable because it was so clearly the point of view of a kid.

Similar things happen I read fic that starts getting religiously preachy/pro-life, or has racist racebends, white savior complexes, or poor concealed misogyny.

[epavirees]

last year i didn't even care about music that much like i vividly remember when i got my spotify wrapped and the whole list was full of songs i did not recognize because i had only listened to music while drunk, offering my devices to everyone going like "yeah just put anything on the queue" and that list of unfamiliar songs made me go "yeah okay i guess i'll try listening to more music next year"

and you can be damn sure i would've never predicted i would nine months later be clinically obsessed with a slovenian indie rock band and an estonian rapper and some guy from vantaa

[azariahstarcaster]

SPOILERS FOR TOTAL DRAMA ISLAND 2023 SEASON 2 AHEAD

I have no idea if this is a hot take or not, but why, for so many people, does "nice character + competitive nature + athletic/good at challenges = no personality"? Like, am I the only one who is confused/annoyed by this? Maybe I'm just biased, but characters who are strong competitors without constantly being horrible to literally everyone around them are honestly really great to me?

I'm talking mainly about characters along the lines of Priya and Zoey (and I guess Sky, too), but I'd also kinda throw Nichelle in there as of her showing in the 2nd season of the revival. She didn't get to show as much of her sass and fire until she was set to go home, sadly, but I genuinely don't get how people could see how suddenly intensely competitive she'd gotten and how that was very clearly fueled by hurt, anger and spite towards Hollywood for abandoning her, and then claim she didn't have a personality in this season specifically. She definitely could have showed more, and I think she deserves it after putting in so much work between seasons too improve herself, but what we have from her already shows quite a lot, even if it's kinda subtle.

Focusing specifically on Nichelle will honestly send me on an unrelated rant, though, so I'll cut myself off here. But I hope I made some kind of sense here.

[dash-n-step]

In general, the MCU has had a "street-level" problem that they've tried tackling with the TV shows but ultimately get bogged down by the fact that everything has to be "cinematic" and lead towards escalation in stakes that comics or longer shows are allowed to sit on for a bit. Jessica Jones is allowed to have a few cases where she's helping someone find a lost pet or dealing with a fatphobic speedster joke (seriously what was up with that) while balancing her main personal threat of that purple guy, Luke Cage's main antagonists was gang violence and dealing with racism, while reenforcing his relationship with the "little guys" while doing so, but the shorter you make these shows the more they end up dealing with bigger threats to justify their cost and existence.

You can spend an issue or two of Spider-Man comics on a random problem that anybody could have or trying to stop a bank robbery, or randomly fucking off to vegas and accidentally coming across the sinister five, while not progressing too much in his personal "plot", but each mcu film has to do something grand otherwise what's the point of paying for a ticket?

Ms Marvel is an interesting case because, comic wise, she's taken to space and introduced to the Inhumans pretty quickly, but her comic is also filled with issues tackling her family life and her villains end up being people threatening her School or fucking Bird Thomas Edison. Her show, meanwhile, expands everything, down from a local party where her powers manifest to a whole convention glorifying the MCU. Her exploring her heritage and real-world applicable history was good, and very in touch with what ger comics are about, but even that somehow turned interdimensional and was partly just to explain her new powers.

Street level is often attributed by the power level of threats and people affected, but I feel like it's also about just how often we can check in in a hero without it being a big deal. If the MCU had more shorts or something (harder to do since you need sets and the actors and etc while a comic can dedicate a few panels or an anthology to just fucking around), it'd help humanize and familiarize these characters, but the medium of live action or insisting to only fet certain people to play characters hinders that

[dreamedfyre-a]

but also still going on about that gifset. while i don't handle helaena's prophetic abilities as they are portrayed in the show, she has her dreams still. in a scenario like the one scene where she's distressed about it and alicent reaches out to soothe her, in a way that's affectionate but also dismissive, her reaction would be quite in line with how it's shown there. being dismissive only makes her irritable, no matter how well-meaning the other person is trying to be (honestly i'd say that's worse; being blatantly dismissive is easier to deal with than someone who doesn't take her seriously but doesn't do it plainly); and if she's irritable or angry, don't try to touch her. she will push you away, doesn't matter if you're trying to be affectionate in reaching out. insisting on it will only make her answer more aggressively. physical touch is never the way to soothe her if she's irritated. it'll only make it worse.

in most neutral but uncomfortable situations, she learned to endure it. in the scene with alicent and younger helaena, she visibly tenses when her mother touches her arm, but she doesn't push her away. over time she learned to disguise even that tension (which doesn't mean her discomfort diminished, only that she learned to hide it). i imagine it was particularly stressed she could not, in fact, flinch when other lords and ladies touched her in appropriate manners. i'm also sure if viserys ever had a girl dad instead of rhaenyra dad moment, it did not go well if he tried to be physically affectionate. girlie would in fact avoid him.

she isn't averse to touch always. she does enjoy and welcomes it in many cases. helaena is often physically affectionate with those she loves; she will hold her babies close, hold their hands as they walk, give them kisses, play with their hair. she will find comfort in holding her mother's hand, or having her do her hair. she will walk with her brothers (any of them), arms entwined. she'll gladly run her fingers through the hair of someone she loves, caress their face, or hold their hand, or play with their fingers. she likes being kissed and enjoys much more than that too. but she is rather sensitive. she enjoys touch, but it can be overwhelming.

when it comes to safety and comfort, touch is her primary source of comfort. when she reaches for aemond's or ser criston's arms, or when she reaches out for her mother's hand, it's because she is comforted by having them near. if someone makes her feel safe, she wants them close, especially when the source of distress is fear.

and she does enjoy it when the people who love her are affectionate too. holding hands, forehead kisses, hugs and a lot more can be greatly appreciated. there are levels to it (outside of those closest to her, she won't be receptive; even then, she's more affectionate with some than others).