#it’s a METAPHOR

[sthilarions]

Edwin and Charles out here thinking they’re in Narnia meanwhile the closet door’s so thin Crystal can hear them from outside

[madlovve]

The ducks are a metaphor for Polyamory.

I could write an essay but I won’t. Just go back and listen to the way Max and Tristan talk about the ducks. They are both working through their serious hang ups… with the ducks… BUT ITS NOT ABOUT THE DUCKS.

[sparrow-the-tired-lesbian]

Sometimes it’s easier to write songs for a character than it is for yourself because you’re afraid of who you are and the monsters that live in your mind

[a-moth-to-the-light]

the kid/teen who’s an “old soul” and “so mature for your age!!” to age-regressed adult pipeline

[elliebyrrdwrites]

Painfully, it’s like picking at a splinter that is just a little too under the skin. I am tweezing and picking, but all I’m getting are drops of blood. I might as well just slice off a piece of skin, as long as the splinter comes out with it.

[buddiebuckley-diaz]

Buck finally got to go back to ~his~ couch. And he was so comfortable on that couch he fell asleep the second he sat down.

[littledead-ridinghood]

Happy New Years to those who celebrate!

[book-glory]

Me, stuffing my mouth full of bees

[flock-of-cassowaries]

As a Canadian, one of the many baffling and frustrating things about American culture is its failure to embrace the self-evidently superior technology of the 110-volt electric kettle.

Not only are they more energy- and time-efficient than their archaic stovetop counterparts; they are also very affordable, and all but the very cheapest models come with a built-in auto-shutoff.

It activates with the soft click of gentle kitchen-appliance judgement.

I have come up with a better metaphor than “you can’t pour from an empty cup” for burnout. You can’t boil an empty kettle. Pouring from an empty cup just gets you nowhere. Trying to boil an empty kettle can ruin the kettle, the stove, and burn down your house if you keep trying it.

[justgivemeabookplease]

Shrek 2, while a cinematic masterpiece, is also an interesting look at queerness and comp het.

Fiona is married so it's time to reunite with her parents. But instead of marrying a prince, she's married to an ogre. Not just that, but she's also an ogre. (Yes everyone knew she would sometimes be an ogre but that was when she was a child, she didn't know she would be an ogre for the rest of her life, and besides once she met the right prince she would stop being an ogre. She was supposed to stop being an ogre.)

But okay they're both ogres. We can still ask about when they'll have children because even if they're ogres they can still have kids, right? That's what married princes and princesses do so naturally that's what everyone does. Even if ogres might not be great parents (I've heard that ogres eat their young, is that something you people do?) it's still something that should be discussed.

And okay you can stay in Fiona's childhood bedroom filled with all the reminders that hey, everyone thought she was just a princess and princesses marry princes. Her toys left out from the last time she played with them. The prince slays the ogre. The princess offers a token of gratitude for slaying the ogre. Fiona wrote Mrs. Fiona Charming a million times in her diary because what else was she supposed to grow up to be?

And Harold you have to fix this, your country can't be ruled by ogres. You were unfit to rule when you were a frog but I changed you, I made you better, I made you a prince. You know how this works. Think of your daughter's safety.

Shrek goes to the Fairy Godmother and oh honey, ogres don't live happily ever after. It's just not done. It hasn't happened in all of fairy tale history. You have to change the both of you to be happy. You have to present as a prince and a princess. It will be better. You'll fit in better that way. You'll be accepted that way.

[aphel1on]

nothinggg better than torturing an emotionally repressed character until every single trauma they've ever refused to process starts spilling uncontrollably out of the cracks. like a matryoshka doll situation of repressed trauma and baby you better believe i'm going in there with a hammer

[aesethewitch]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[gd-dollopole]

but also i have so many questions. your post made me think about it BUT I ACTUALLY DISLIKE TRAVEL BACK AU FANFICTIONS. hear me out: why the *beep* would someone want to do everything ALL OVER AGAIN?! i mean, the fics are good if merthur disguise themselves, do something in the past to change their lives for the better and then go back to the present, without altering their lives, but feeling better because their past is better, even if arthur has died or whatever, you know? (yes i’m thinking about the film back to the future). i don’t know. okay, yes, merlin loves arthur and arthur loves merlin BUT WHO WANTS TO LIVE EVERYTHING AGAIN?! not me☝🏻😭

but i love this idea. i feel the only thing arthur missed was the ginarmous bed back in camelot, although he needs the heater and hates that he used to walk barefoot around his and merlin’s house and now he freezes his feet each time he walks on the floor made of stones.

and who would miss the bandits?! i need to count how many times merthur has been attacked by bandits.

I saw a wonderful post with 1500 yo merlin that time travel back to Camelot & he hates the fact that there is no coffee, no plumbing,...

But

Hear me out.

Merlin and post return Arthur that BOTH came back to Camelot but it's Arthur that HATES it

Arthur that lived for 30 years in the modern world & got used to it (but at the same time not totally because Merlin is an old man and his home look a lot like your grandpa's home if your grandpa was 1500 yo if you see what I mean. )

Arthur that simply can not live without his morning coffee and simply hates the fact that Merlin doesn't need it (the peak of being a warlock)

Arthur that got used to live in a magical house that was 100% rats-free (except for that two 150 years old pet rats that Merlin keeps, don't ask him. Arthur stopped asking questions about sorcerer and their familiars when Merlin's Owl began to speak. It's rats free where it matter aka NOT in his (their) bed) AND kind of half alive magical house (what do you mean he has to GET UP and ASK to someone to get his warm bath?!)

Arthur that lived his best life with 0 responsibility (except one or two magical quest here and there & the need to feed merlin's (their but Arthur has a dad-getting-a-pet-he-didn't-want behaviour about it) dragons) with his immortal bf/husband/he-is-half-of-my-soul-as-the-poets-say and now has to share his home with other people AND with assholes, spies, assassin's,... Lurking everywhere

Arthur that now understand why Merlin hates it so much when someone think he is a 20 something years old and why he never left the house without his old man/60 years old appearance

Basically Arthur at first being like "it's so nostalgic :D" then "Merlin, I don't care what you do, I want our home back😩... What do you mean we CAN'T!?! I CAN'T LIVE LIKE THIS?!? "

(this post is somewhat a fellow-up from Merlin actually living for 1500+ years and kind of merlin not looking 20 years old because he is old)

[shabbiestshackinthewest]

It’s about doing it as dumb as possible

It’s about getting away with it

It’s about beating skyrim with only illusion magic role playing as teller from penn and teller

[atissi]

i don't really like when people say dungeon meshi is accidentally good autistic representation, because while i understand not wanting to make conclusions without explicit confirmation from the author, there's always the weird assumption that non-western authors somehow don't know about things like neurodivergency/queerness/etc. (on top of the assumptions that east asian authors are somehow more naive or oblivious to "western" social issues).

given that dungeon meshi started being published in 2014, it's not really a "work belonging to its times"—it's as contemporary as any other media we discuss on this site, which means it should be fair to assume it engages with contemporary topics (and at the very least, you shouldn't say that the representation is accidental with so much confidence)

but anyways, the chapter "perfect communication" in ryoko kui's "terrarium in a drawer" is some of the most straightforward autistic representation I've seen, and from now on I'm going to assume that laios's character writing is absolutely intentional in that regard:

[spurgie-cousin]

This is such a good, succinct way of describing the illusion of choice many fundamentalist women and men have when it comes to life paths.