#idk does any of this make sense lol

[babsaros]

How did you know you were gay?

ah, couple reasons i guess. some that only became obvious with like 15 years of hindsight, and only after pulling myself out of the deep dark pit of compulsory heterosexuality.

like. classic symptoms of lesbianism include shamefully staring at the floor when you pass the women's underwear racks in the department store, even though you're not quite sure why you're uncomfortable. that sort of thing.

i have memories from early elementary school of accidentally glimpsing down a girl's shirt at recess and then bottling up that feeling and refusing to think about it. any time i had a crush on a boy, it was from an extremely idealized and safely non-actionable distance. the one time i did have a boyfriend, it was just my guy best friend from middle school, we dated for barely a school year before i ended it and the most physical intimacy i was ever comfortable with was holding his hand when we walked to class. i went to a different school's prom because a guy i was kind-of friends with asked me, and spent the whole night uncomfortably avoiding eye contact.

basically i started questioning my sexuality towards the end of high school, when i noticed myself getting like. jealous about my guy best friend's girlfriends?? like. i wanted to date them. i wanted to steal them from him lmao. i thought girls were pretty and soft and nice and cute and i was too afraid of being a predatory creep to do anything about it besides have far-fetched daydreams, but there was no heterosexual explanation. like, i hugged a girl i thought was pretty one time and it did things to my brain. that memory got locked in for life.

i identified as ace/pan early on, but again- compulsory heterosexuality. the idea of being with a guy romantically or sexually was never actually appealing. i had just been told that was what i was supposed to want my entire life, and the movies do a great job of selling that fantasy. but really i was just a lonely depressed helpless romantic teenager that wanted to be loved lol.

a large part of why i identified as asexual was because i was so sex-repulsed by the idea of penetration, honestly? (which i have since gotten over, but specifically Only with girls. the idea of having sex with a man still icks me out, and my preference is definitely femme-presenting ppl) a bit of it was probably also because i hadn't unpacked gender yet either. it made it very difficult to actually imagine myself having sex with anyone ever lol. this is gonna sound so cringe to say, but reading gay smut did awaken things in me.

in conclusion, tldr, i just like to think about tits and kissing women sometimes, idk. thanks for coming to my tedtalk.

[stealerofthe2ndbraincell]

There's an aspect of Original!Elias Bouchard that makes me so sad to think about in a weird kind of "meta" way.

And that's the fact that he has to be labelled as the "OG" not as Elias.

Technically speaking Elias has been dead for years. It's Jonah that's taken over - literally having his eyes removed and replacing them with his own and living as him (he even seemingly keeps his "old fashioned haircut" on Elias' hair).

And yet we as the audience don't often call that form of Jonah "JONAH". Instead it's Elias, cause he's been Elias for 4 series at this point.

"Elias started the apocalypse", "Elias beat that old man to death with a metal pipe" when it was never really Elias in the first place.

He's been so robbed of his own identity that not even death can spare him; all of Jonah's actions in his body are recognised as him.

(Btw this isn't me saying you can't call Jonah!Elias straight up Elias, I do that regularly ofc. I'm just being emo rn lol)

[sanasanakun]

People try too hard to make Curly an active participant in Jimmy's abuse. Isn't the whole point that he's passive in everything Jimmy does? Abuse occurs because he actively doesn't do anything? Not to call someone out or be mean, but I saw a post saying Anya's ID being in Curly's locker at the beginning shows that he intended to prevent Anya from filing an HR report and I disagree. I get where that interpretation is coming from, but I think it's a little uncharitable. I don't like being too kind to Curly because he's like...a morally mid dude at best lol But if we're going by the HR report interpretation, I would say it's more likely he requested Anya's ID in order to file an HR report on her behalf. After all, the only way to contact Pony (that we see) is in the cockpit, he's the Captain, and Pony Express sucks bad so I wouldn't put it past them to only allow the Captain to use the communication device thing. As we see before, Curly is the only one able to use tools around the ship that you would think other employees could use (ex. Swansea should be able to use the axe if he's the repair guy. Idk why they'd need an ax but that falls under manual labor which Swansea is designated for as the mechanic/fixer dude. But it has to go through Curly). I never got the vibe that Curly moved to actively protect Jimmy. He just lets things happen without say a word; Jimmy walks all over him, and by extension, the whole crew. I get why people would think that because he gives the whole "Hey Jimmy, we can get through this together, bud" spiel right before the crash. This part interests me a lot because there's so many ways to interpret Curly's intentions there. My interpretation is that Curly is on autopilot mode. The responses seem so stilted in comparison to Jimmy's. Like it's the kind of thing Curly's said before again and again and again when Jimmy's gotten in trouble. However, as others previously pointed out, I don't think Curly ever dealt with Jimmy doing something this irredeemable. He doesn't know how to respond, so he just goes for the default "You've gotten through tough situations before. Work through it one step at a time." Like the response is lame af lol I think he was in shock; he was scared (and just so I can say it one more time: he's super lame).

Anyway, this is way longer than I intended and I've said things a billion people have already stated. But uhhh tldr the whole point of Curly's character is he's passive; he never acts. He just watches. Making him an active participant in the abuse by taking actions to cover for Jimmy (like preventing Anya from filing an HR report) defeats the purpose of his character. He's a bystander.

[mohntilyet]

i’m having illario dellamorte thoughts. what if instead of knowingly betraying lucanis he did it like, unknowingly. idk how this would work but i’m intrigued by what it gives us. illario ‘i accidentally caused my cousin’s death & can never tell anyone’ dellamorte. genuinely grieving. blaming himself. does he take advantage of the year before lucanis comes back?? does caterina still ignore him the whole time?? how different is the canon plotline once rook shows up with lucanis post-rescue…..

anyways i would love your thoughts!!

95% of what i do with illario operates on the idea that he is frighteningly competent so you can see why the way the crows plotline plays out in the game might frustrate me. it’s also this reason why i don’t actually think too much about “illario got lucanis killed, but didn’t mean to do it”, because i like the idea that everything illario does in his life is planned to the second and that he’s too well trained to mess up this badly, if that makes sense. with that being said. 5% of my brain power does sometimes go towards “and what if he just sucked actually” and it was a theory i enjoyed before the game even released. so i have in fact been thinking about this anyway LOL . maybe he tries to honeypot zara, accidentally actually reveals lucanis’ next assassination job, and zara gets rid of him as a ‘gift’. illario is horrified and that gets even worse when lucanis’ body shows up, and he assumes this must be because he spurned zara by leaving her and not having the guts to seize power.

i think we could make his inferiority complex worse. illario’s worst fear confirmed: he is as worthless as his grandmother believes he is, botching something so badly that he accidentally sentences his cousin to death when what he wanted was lucanis just… out of the way for a bit (maybe while he kills caterina. LOL. i still think his resentment of caterina trumps his jealousy for lucanis though those two things are very intertwined its hard for him to differentiate them). so incapable that he got the only person who actually supports him killed, and now he’s dreading the idea of becoming first talon. he doesn’t want first talon without lucanis backing him, and now the only person left is caterina which is suffocating and makes him even unhappier. at least he hadn’t lived through her alone, and now through consequences of his own decisions, illario has no choice but to.

i think that would affect his plans for talon because of how horribly he’d fucked up, and tries to mask it because if he suddenly actually doesn’t want to be talon that would be a red flag for everyone. lucanis coming back would delight him (talon is within his sights again if lucanis comes back!) and freak him out. i think the plotline would actually be pretty similar because of this freak out, so he still shows up to zara’s fight to cover his tracks. lucanis can never know, caterina can never know, because what little faith they have in him will be lost. like he committed fratricide and didn’t even MEAN to😭 ...corpse whispering still happens, and zara is like “ohhh that coward. he can never finish what he started, can he?” + “elaborate.” + “i gave him what he most wanted in the world and instead of being grateful, he ran away.” so lucanis finds out about what happened but feels a mix of “illario, you idiot” + pity because turns out he didn’t even mean for it to happen, and keeps his secret for now, otherwise he’d probably have to kill him.

i also think not meaning to kill lucanis would sour his feelings towards the venatori, who are a reminder of how badly he failed, so the alliance wouldn’t happen. this does mean if the story goes on as it does in canon, he has to take desperate measures another way and kidnap caterina for some other reason but i can’t think of why….. maybe a thing where illario is like “ok. lucanis is distracted by the elven gods. this time i just have to kill nonna for real and then nothing is in my way” and recruits disgraced houses or houses that don’t like caterina to do so? not sure tbh but i don’t believe caterina made it so far without making enemies lol. this would happen post bloodbath + corpse whispering— lucanis leaves his cousin unchecked because while he knows illario didn’t mean for him to die, he has no idea how far he would go to have caterina dead. teia could find out about this and send word to foil the kidnapping and assassination attempt

so ‘murder of crows’ is still about saving caterina, the illario-lucanis fight still happens, but it’s a little more hesitant and lots of “why won’t you just let me kill her? i’m doing this for the both of us”. he’s had to live with being the un-favorite, but never would have thought lucanis would actually pick caterina if it came down to it. with all of his missteps here, i think the final decision (and i think it should be like this in canon anyway) would be to imprison illario or kill him. imprisoning him is just a lot of “i can’t kill illario as much as he couldn’t kill me”, vs killing him as is expected from him as talon, and what he knew he would have to do after finding out about illario's failures. unlike canon, where illario is actually meaning to kill him and can be seen as a 'good crow' despite the sloppiness, here he's like. just bad at everything. the allied traitor houses that went against caterina would also have to be imprisoned or killed. no happy ending at all here, and lucanis still becomes first talon. now that i’ve written it out this is actually probably the worst ending LOL

the above sticks a lot to what is canon to the game (plot points, choices, etc) and i didn’t go very far away from it so it's like canon 3 inches to the left. tho my thoughts on this are not fleshed out* because i think illario works better as an antagonist character that sets things in motion !! not necessarily the villain in a cain-abel story, but a character who opposes lucanis while still not wanting to hurt him. that kind of discipline where he finds a way to get what he wants (first talon) without compromising what he also cares for (family) is so much more fun for me than a man who apparently just loses it and decides to enact a bad plan to get rid of his cousin. if he waited 20+ years to become talon i think he’d be more careful when it came down to it. if i had my way illario would be playing insane 5d chess to rival solas (insert black sails “i once thought that to lead, to be liked was just as good as feared. and that may very well be true. but to be both liked and feared all at once, is an entirely different state of being.”)

[collieii]

a lil detail in trimax i like is how it shows meryl and wolfwood grappling with vash's inhumanity. wolfwood sees vash's power, what he's capable of, before he really gets to know who vash is as a person (they met for a lil on the bus ofc but that was pretty brief). he sees him blow a hole in the moon right after meeting him. of course he's heard rumors about vash, but then he sees him and knives up close and personal, sees the angel arm, and he can't believe vash is an ordinary man anymore. he's confused, shocked, and scared, because he barely understands what's happening. but he can clearly see that vash is dangerous and inhuman. so a lot of his arc is him struggling to reconcile his knowledge of that power with his relationship with vash. ultimately, he ends up with an understanding of who vash is, what he values, and he comes to share those values and beliefs. he learns to let himself trust and believe in vash, despite the implications of his powers.

and meryl, ofc, knows vash as a man and as a friend before she learns what he's capable of. then it isn't until the midvalley/hoppered arc that she's not only told explicitly by zazie what vash is, she sees it for herself in a pretty violent way when he loses control and goes bird mode (what do i call feathery vash lol). not only that but she's shown his memories of july, probably the most brutal and visceral expression of his power there is. that experience traumatizes her, but she makes an effort to overcome that instinctive fear of what vash is because she knows she can trust him, and that almost everything he does is for the good of humanity. and he deserves to be treated like a good person, a good friend, because he is one! he's not just his powers of biblical proportions. all this is to say i like how trimax lets us see two people who are close to vash come to terms with his plantness in different ways, because it's not something people can just shrug off, it's something they need to process.

[justficsiguess]

now that my long covid is back in full swing my thoughts keep coming back to yandere!John Wick speeding up the kidnapping process bc you get sick...

He tried to get to know you in a normal way, he promises! Or at least make it feel normal to you, he was stalking you, but you didn't need to know that. He was just a guy you "randomly" stumbled into at the cafe, the supermarket, the library... So you decide to exchange numbers because he's so pretty and charming!

You keep texting like normal while he's gone on what he says is a "business trip", but you neglect to tell him you're sick. Why would he need to know that, he's not even here, no need to worry him! But unfortunately when he gets back you're still not feeling better, maybe even worse, more fatigued/etc, so when he asks if you want to go on a date with him you have to decline. You'd love to go, but you can't, you can barely make it to the supermarket to buy groceries, and afterwards you need to lie down for a few hours....

So when you decline his offer of staying with him "until you feel better" (he has no intentions of ever letting you go) out of politeness, he breaks into your apartment and takes you anyways, you're clearly not in your right mind! You don't have to take care of yourself when he can do it for you!

After waking up in his house and getting through a long explanation of why you're here and how he's not letting you go, sorry, he wanted you to come here willingly (and he was so close to that happening), but he just couldn't wait any longer when you're suffering like this, he starts taking care of you. Carrying you around when you're too tired to move, making you walk around a bit so you're not just lying down motionless all the time (he might even go outside with you like this, it's not like you can run away... and his grip on you is so tight you couldn't get away anyways, I mean, he has to make sure you don't fall!), getting you expensive medicine that he heard might help, anything to get you to feel better! Isn't this better than being alone? You'll understand soon, you're just not used to being taken care of yet...

[what-is-it-to-be-pk-esque]

Ok I know I'm heavily biased here but like I kinda love that Astarion's romance is one of the few in this type of video game where you basically end up canonically unmarried and childfree in his "good" ending? Just travelling the world??

Like it's honestly the millennial dream lmfaoo cannot believe i chose what would undoubtedly be my favorite option, first try

[objectosexual]

I'm glad more of Tumblr is becoming more accepting of objectums + a lot of people are realizing that they're objectum themselves, but it really does feel like the current "in" thing right now so I hope this support for us continues even when people get tired of the eroticism of the machine

[butchdykecxck]

The weirdest part about being butch to me is that embracing my masculinity has made me 1000x more comfortable with my femininity. Like I've been strictly he/him since I was 16 and yet nowadays I almost wanna throw she/her back in there for funsies. Makeup used to make me super dysphoric and now I just miss a good smoky eye like I did when I was overperforming womanhood. Hell even my tits aren't as distressing as they used to be because like.....I'm butch. These are butch tits and that's different ok! I don't know how to explain it but like!! Does anyone hear me!

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Weird question, but you're the only Erik expert I know, and I can't be asked to go through my comics, so what kind of shoes does he wear when he's in civilian clothes?

Because I feel like he's too posh for trainers and not posh enough for captoes.

(I'm drawing a chibi of him and regrets are being had about not having put him in his suit T.T)

Erik Expert is a high honor im no where near close to having as of right now BUT i can still answer this question 😌 i think 😌

if you talkin Civilian Clothes as in Everyday Going Out clothes he's pretty 'formal' and neat about his style i'm pretty sure: think polos, dress shirts, turtlenecks, and the like, so it probably would be fitting he wears dress shoes (if not at least sleek leather ankle boots) more times than not actually

[breedingboy-jay]

Its so strange to carnally crave being fucked pregnant all the time, but not once experience baby fever, want kids or even like kids. Like I wanna be bred thoroughly and eventually become weighed down with a huge pregnant belly but I don't actually want to be a dad or deal with the kid after they're born at all. Its like........pregnancy fever, not baby fever.

[peacockrulz]

Funny stuff happens on twitter sometimes dkslfjsdlkf

[butchvamp]

i really like a lot of the banter in veilguard, it's one of the few times the companions can actually exchange some verbal jabs especially at the start of the game. i've said repeatedly that this game is lacking friction and i stand by that ☝️ i think the problem isn't that they all automatically get along, some of them don't at all in the beginning-- Davrin and Lucanis i think are the most obvious, and Taash and Emmrich as well-- but the thing is. Rook just speaks their therapy-speak to them and suddenly it's all fine. we don't see a lot of the friction in cutscenes or significant questlines, only in banter.

again there is Davrin and Lucanis of course who i do think are the most successful and organic relationship in the game. and that's because we actually get to see them go from being hostile to supporting and ultimately liking each other, and it feels born out of mutual respect rather than Rook forcing them to hold hands.

i like a lot of Bellara and Neve's banter as well, and they seem to spend a lot of time together at the start of the game when there's not that many people at the Lighthouse yet, and Neve consistently shows up for Bellara during her story. i also like Neve and Lucanis together, they're very cute. there are definitely friendly relationships that feel natural, but then there are moments like where Taash bulldozes over Bellara when discussing Mythal's and Solas's relationship, and Bellara isn't allowed to snap back at Taash for being disrespectful. she (+ elven Rook) are also never allowed to call out Harding for her racism, we either have to agree or just not acknowledge it and always be really really nice to Harding specifically.... and i think little moments of friction within actual main plot beats and significant cutscenes (like is done with Davrin and Lucanis) would have made a lot of the dynamics more interesting rather than just dancing around it and relegating it to banter or limited interactions you could ultimately miss if you don't have them constantly in your party/aren't constantly checking in at the Lighthouse. also companion approval should actually matter and they should be allowed to vocally disapprove of Rook's choices.

[wuffgang-ameowdeus-moozart]

I think one of the reasons that kaladin can deal with actively killing as a soldier but not with accidentally (passively) letting someone die as a surgeon is the sense of failure (plus of course the obvious protection aspect and the whole me-vs-them mentality he only really starts to question when Shin joins bridge four, and he starts interacting fairly regularly with a light-eyes he can genuinely respect). dalinar himself said that he "love(s) taking responsibility for things", which is especially clear in the way he still can't quite blame amaram for tien's demise (because he feels like this is his failure, too).

like we can see in the first book that the deaths of the people he swore to protect weigh on him not only because of the dying people per se, but also (and I would argue: especially) because of his FAILURE to keep them alive. he always makes this connection to himself, thinks of their demise in relation to HIS own person and HIS role and HIS failure (cue the whole "stormfather cursed me specifically" thing). like, besides tien and the bridgemen (who we know because they are active current characters), can we truly say much of anything about the people he failed to protect in the past? the only thing we really know is how HE feels about it and how it messed HIM up. but the people themselves??

kaladin just has insane main character syndrome, and everything happening to him (first dark-eyed to have the rank of a light-eyed, one of the only surgebinders, guy able to survive multiple fights with actual shardbearers, etc etc) do the opposite of helping him dissuade the notion. I feel like I lost the plot of my own post. Kal is honorable and a good guy and everything but he is also pretty self-centered? which I actually find really cool because many times people who do objectively good actions are still kind of demonized if they don't do it for the "right" reasons (aka purely 1000% selflessness), but Kal explicitly starts helping the bridgemen not because he actually cares about them but because he needs a reason to not commit suicide. and when he loses bridgemen (especially in the beginning where he barely knows them) he always immediately thinks back to the other people he FAILED to save. he isn't devastated because that person in particular died, he is upset because he is very bad at dealing with his own failures and also terrified that the wretch will use this to lure him back onto the ledge. i mean, he loathes failure so much he was resigned to never see his parents again (who he clearly loves a lot and who he knows would welcome him back with open arms; it's his own shame that he can't confront)

he helps people primarily to try to make up for the failures of the past, an attempt to dissuade the guilt and shame eating him alive 24/7 (which of course never works because guilt is a very unreasonable emotion and as long as he doesn't change his mindset and confronts his own beliefs about himself and the world it will never go away.)

"do the fire sprin create the flames or are they attracted by them?" of course syl was compelled to follow kaladin around. dude keeps actively (even if semi-unconsciously) putting himself into the same role and situation over and over again in the hopes that if he can only succeed one time it will somehow redeem him for his past failures. literally every single thing Kal does and thinks and believes is rooted in the fact that he blames himself for tien's demise. he needs to somehow redeem himself in order to be able to live with himself but at the same time he can never be redeemed because letting tien die is an unforgivable crime and yet he needs to make it up somehow because the wretch is always in the back of his mind and he's actually terrified of it but he is equally scared of actually somehow managing to get over this sense of guilt and failure because wouldn't forgiving himself mean he thinks tien is less important than his own stupid (and, in his mind, deserved) feelings?

that guy is so not over his brother's death it actually isn't funny anymore 💀 please get that dude some fucking therapy 😭😭

[tabellae-rex-in-sui]

I'm new to Sade so sorry if this is a stupid question, but was Sade gay? I'm currently reading Justine and noticed the passionate, semi-romantic descriptions of m/m sex, which contrast with the crude descriptions of f/m sex. I've not read all of Sade's books, but the ones I have read also feature characters who're mostly disinterested in women, who give off self-insert vibes (e.g. Dolmancé). Am I reading too much into it? IDK but I was wondering if you could shed some light.

Happy deathday to Sade!! lol

Really all that can be said with certainty is that he definitely wasn't straight lol. Like anyone who died before modern queer theory, Sade's sexuality can be difficult to label with today's terminology. He was certainly attracted to both men and women, so for simplicity's sake I just say he was bisexual. But really, who knows...

Characters that he uses as self-inserts like Dolmancé in PitB or Bressac in Justine are pretty exclusively attracted to men. Like you said, there's multiple times in his writing where characters will praise m/m sex and show blatant disgust towards sex with women. But if you look at Sade's life, there's only one known* male sex partner and many women. There's also several women Sade was in love with throughout his life, but there exists no letters of him professing love to any man. Could this be because male victims were less likely to go to the police, therefore less known to us? because women were easier to pursue in public? because even he felt the pressure of societal norms? because he kept relations with men better hidden? because any such letters or records were selectively destroyed by a relative? Who knows! It could be some, all, or none of these things. It's really up to the interpretation of the reader. The misogyny, philosophical extremism, and very culturally different ideas about sex add so many different variables to Sade's sexuality.

To add further confusion: gender and sexuality were much more correlated in Sade's writing (and seemingly in the time period in general, I mean look at the bisexual Lord Hervey being referred to as "the third sex"), male characters who get sodimized call it them "becoming women", women who put on strap-ons "become men", even women who get sodimized are masculinized: Saint-Ange says she wants to be a "Ganymede" to Dolmancé. So sodomy seemed inherently gay to Sade, regardless of the sexes involved or what roles they played. Whereas today, that's definitely not the case. Beauvoir follows along with the sexuality-gender correlation and suggests that Sade felt more feminine than masculine and his written contempt for female genitalia was a product of his own gender frustrations. From what I've read, most modern historians tend to avoid labeling Sade with anything other than "sodomite" and "libertine" only using "bisexual" and "homosexual" to label certain actions he performed like "homosexual sex" "bisexual orgy" etc. This is when the word queer is godsent.

Tldr; He's too 18th century libertine for modern labels. Colloquially, I default to calling him bi, but we'll never really know. Maybe he would have preferred gay due to his preferences/philosophies. Who knows. Safest bet is to just call him queer.

*Should go without saying but, there were obviously more. Latour is just the only named one with recorded proof.

[quaranmine]

On Wednesday before I gave my presentation I confessed to a new employee that I was worried it would be too long and she brightly told me her life hack was to just let AI rewrite things for her. She said I should put in all my talking points and ask ChatGPT to give me a five minute exactly presentation. I was like....how is the most polite possible way (since this is a new colleague I shouldn't get off on the wrong foot with) that I can express that I will Not be taking this advice. Ever. I told her that I didn't think we were allowed to use ChatGPT at this job (we most certainly are not, it is a nightmare for any type of protected information) and also that I prefer to write all of my own work. Despite my best efforts the last part of that was still passive aggressive, lol.

Something about being a writer makes it so that it's almost offensive to me for someone to suggest I use AI to do my work instead? Like, the day I reach the point where I let AI write something for me is the day y'all need to be checking me for brain damage because clearly I'm losing it