#it’s not perfectly identical

[inkskinned]

before you know about women, you hear that you do not need to love the man, just that you need to love him through his manhood. which is to say you have seen the future painted in lamb's blood over your eyes - how your mother shoots you a look about your father's inability to cook right. how your aunt holds her wineglass and says i'm gonna kill em. men, right! how your best friend bickers with her boyfriend, how she says i can't help it. i come back to him.

you learn: men are gonna cheat. men aren't going to listen when you're talking, because you're nagging. men think emotions are stupid. they think your life is vapid and your hobbies are embarrassing. men will slam things, but that's because men are allowed to be angry. if you get loud, you're hysterical. if a man gets loud - well, men are animals, men are dogs, men can't control their hands or their eyes or their bodies. they're going to make a snide comment about you in the locker room, about your body, about how you're so fucking annoying. you're going to give him kids, and he will give you the money for the kids, and you're going to be running the house 24/7 - but he gets to relax after a long day, because his job is stressful. the man is on stage, and is a comedian, and says "women!"

and you are supposed to love that. you are supposed to love men through how horrible they are to you - because that's what women do. that's what good women do. wife material. your father even told you once - it'll make sense when you're older. it was like staring down a very lonely tunnel.

it feels like something's caught in your throat, but it's all you know, so. it's okay that you see sex as a necessary tool, a sort of okay-enough ritual to keep him happy, even though he doesn't seem to care about happiness as-applied-to you. it is relationship upkeep. it is kissing him and smiling even though he didn't brush his teeth. it is getting on your knees and looking up and holding back a sigh because he barely holds you as you panic through the night. it's not like the sex is bad and you do like feeling wanted. and besides! he's a man! like... they're another species. you'll never be able to actually communicate, right. he isn't listening.

you just don't get it. you don't feel that sense of i'm gonna climb him like a tree. mostly it just feels fucking exhausting. you play the part perfectly. you smile and nod and are "effortlessly" charming. and it's fine! it's alright! you even love him, if you're looking. you could have good life, and a good family, and perfectly happy.

in the late night you google: am i broken. you google i'm not attracted to my husband. you google i get turned on by books but not by him. you google how to get better in bed.

the first time he yells at you, it almost feels like blankness. like - of course this is happening. this is always how it was going to end up. men get angry, and they yell, and you sit there in silence.

you mention it to your friend - just the once - while you're drunk. she shrugs and says it's like that with me too, i just try to forget and move on. men are always gonna hear what they want to. pick your battles and say sorry even though he's in the wrong. you play solitaire online for a month. you go to your therapist appointment and preach about how you're both so in love.

after all, you have a future to want. nobody lied about it - how many instagram posts say marriage is hard. say real love takes work. say we fight like cats and dogs but the best part is that we always make up. how many of your friends say happy anniversary to the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. if you really loved him - loved yourself too - you'd accept that men are just different from you.

the first time she kisses you, it's on a dare at a party. something large and terrifying whips through your body. you wake up sweating from dreams where her mouth is encrusted with pearls and you pick them off one by one with your teeth. fuck. you sit at the computer and your almost-finished game of sim city. you think about your potential perfect life and your potential future family. you google am i gay quiz with your little hands shaking.

you delete each letter slowly. you don't need to love him. you just need to keep going.

[pkmn-lillie]

oh my god i should put my truth into the world

Captain Marvel has been a member of the Justice League for over a decade, joining shortly after his debut.

Billy Batson was chosen as Champion of Magic at age 9.

By all appearances, Billy is currently age 11.

When a person is chosen as the Champion, the effects of such a strong concentration of magic kinda fucks with their aging. With an adult, there's not really that big of a deal; some people look younger than they are due to genetics.

Unfortunately, it is much more noticeable when the Champion is a child.

Billy isn't an eternal child, or anything, he's still going to grow up. His aging just stopped while his body adapted to being the anchor to all of magic. So now he's a middle school aged kid, with a twin sister who just turned 21.

[svnflowermoon]

btw please block me if you feel the need to gatekeep the queer community. cishet aspecs ARE valid and they ARE queer. the "they don't experience discrimination" argument is possibly the most stupid thing i have ever heard because aspecs experience insane levels discrimination and people are extremely dismissive of them. we our more than our suffering. our community is not yours to gatekeep it isn't fair to invalidate people's queer identities just because you can't fit them in your stupid little box of specific labels.

[flaskoflethe]

I think the most significant metaphor in I Saw the TV Glow, if only in my interpretation, was the fucking inhaler. It's the device that gives enough temporary relief from the suffocation of being buried alive and not even knowing something's wrong, not by temporarily making it not wrong but by making you not notice that specific problem. It's still there, you're still suffocating and crushed under the ground dying alone and with your actual self torn out of you, while the fake version of you huffs the inhaler again and again with growing despair because it never addressed the problem, you were just told it would fix what was wrong

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Something something about the cursed mummy working at a rodeo and the connection to lassos and wrangling bulls and foreshadowing. Something something about buck wearing a moustache when he dresses up as billy boils which connects things to Eddie.

How rodeos are connected to Texas in the general psyche. The idea that Eddie needs to go and wrangle with his bull in the next episode - Helena.

That she has been constantly trying to Buck him off but he needs to hold on in order to break the curse she has been on his life - the play on Buck being a massive support to Eddie - that gives him the strength to stay on and win the fight and pen the bull.

That he needs to break free of that curse in order to transform into his true self and how the werewolf is a representation of that happening and also a foreshadowing for the shaving off of the stache

[robotwhoscreams]

This is hyperspecific but one of my favorite accidental tropes is a thing I've taken to calling 'occam's trans twin'.

It's very specifically about media that has a set of clearly identical twins except for the fact one is a woman and one is a man. In theory, yeah, there might be some weird worldbuilding or magic shenanigans or whatever that would allow for a set of identical twins of different genders, but it's just simpler to assume one is trans instead of bending over backwards assuming nonexistent authorial intent otherwise.

Extra funny points when it pulls the sister trope, the 'schrodinger's trans twin' in which both twins have the same amount of trans vibes that, until proven in canon, they could both potentially be the trans one. They both are the trans one and not the trans one at the same time.

[sirenium]

You're allowed to like being trans.

You're allowed to hate being trans.

You're allowed to not feel strongly about your trans identity.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Oh God I was really hoping the backstory that was leaked for Billy was fake... just heard about the new episode and it turns out it wasn't. why would they choose this over adoption or reincarnation-

It's bad! I really feel like the M C U goes out of its way to interpret these characters in bad faith and come up with the worst possible versions of their stories. I've said this before, but everything about Wanda's origins and the nature of her power seems designed to make her an objectively worse person who is more directly responsible for causing harm than her comics counterpart, but is also weirdly set on punishing her for existing and having trauma. She's simultaneously more doomed by the narrative, and infinitely less deserving of redemption.

With Billy, they took a situation that, while complex and, at times, difficult to parse, is ultimately miraculous and joyful, and they made it just.... incredibly grim. There is no real distinction between Billy Maximoff and Billy Kaplan in the comics-- they're the same person, given a second chance at life and the great fortune to reconnect with his original family, in a way that doesn't invalidate or erase the second. And, again, I want to emphasize that when YA and CC were written, Wanda had Jewish heritage, so I don't think there needs to be any awkwardness in the transfer between the Maximoff and Kaplan families, and the text never does anything to imply that Billy's cultural upbringing is any less valid, or any less central to his character after his origins are revealed.

Here, they created a false dichotomy between the two characters, killed one them off, and made the other into a body-snatcher. That is so much darker, and so much more tragic for the Kaplans-- and it creates uncomfortable questions about their relationship, and Billy's identity, that I don't think can ever be neatly resolved. I will say that, thus far, I don't think the show explicitly disavows "William's" heritage, or writes off Billy's relationship with the Kaplans, the way some people are reporting. He doesn't actually remember his life before the switch, so it's not a total takeover, and at points, the episode seems to imply that he's somehow both, and neither-- a new gestalt.

But I don't trust these writers to execute that concept with integrity, or even consistency. In WV and MoM, Wanda's motives, sense of self, and relationship to her powers repeatedly change at the drop of a dime, and we're seeing the same thing, here, with the abrupt change that takes place when Billy reveals his identity. The shift in personality, escalation of power, and the vague implication that he's been masterminding this whole excursion makes no sense with the established timeline-- this is all happening within 24 hours of him even learning that Wanda had kids, let alone that he might be one of them, not to mention hearing about both Agatha the Witches Road for the first time. And up until that point, he really was just an earnest kid. The heel-turn feels silly and juvenile, and the needle drop at the end of episode #5 underscores that a little too perfectly-- his "bad guy" act is just as ill-fitting and unsubstantiated as the Eilish's edgy, wannabe-thug aesthetics.

Obviously, the most important issue here is not the quality of writing, but where this character falls into the spectrum of whitewashing and erasure. The fact that Locke is not Jewish but, before the switch, is playing a Jewish character-- and, specifically trespassing on prayer and religious ceremonies-- is a problem. I've seen a lot of different opinions expressed by a lot of different people within the community about who can or can't play Jewish characters, but I think we can all agree that this is worth criticizing, especially given the larger context of repeated erasure and historical distortion against Jewish and Roma people in this franchise.

But I also want to emphasize that, because of what was done to Wanda, and the franchise's insistence on conducting blatant anti-Romani racism, there was never going to be a truly authentic or acceptable version of this character. Now matter how they cast the role, a significant part of his background had already been erased, and he was already saddled with significant racist baggage. I am very, very tired of white people and Young Avengers fans overlooking that fact.

[greglow03]

Meet the Beckory Twins!!❤️💛

Here they are! The Beckory Twins!❤️💛 Louis and Ethan are my take on Gregory's and Tony's children. The two are from my AU Fic "A Leaf On The Horizon", but am planning to use them in other AU's too!

Hope you like the kiddos! ^^

They are adopted, but have traits based off of both Gregory and Tony.

[edgarallennope]

i will genuinely welcome and cherish a hundred annoying straight girls who quote drag race at me and a hundred straight partners of bisexuals over ONE gatekeeping terminally online queer person telling people who can and can't be at pride.

[toddtakefive]

thinking about todd and his resolve toward… not quite isolation, but being alone in a room full of people again. he goes along to the study room to sit on his own and do his homework, he sits at the poets table and follows along with what’s being said while keeping quiet, he goes to the meetings at all but doesn’t necessarily contribute (in fact, if you watch him when cameron is telling the story ‘from camp in sixth grade’, you can see that he recognizes it before any of the other poets but doesn’t voice it until they all have). he’s not alone, necessarily, if you want to get technical about it, he’s just lonely, and he’s generally okay with that. he doesn’t have friends and that’s fine, he doesn’t participate in class and that’s fine, he doesn’t have a relationship with his family and that’s fine—he could live without any real connection and he’d have been, more or less, fine.

the thing about when he says “i can take care of myself just fine!” is that he isn’t really wrong, you can infer that he’s been doing it his entire life anyway, it’s that ‘taking care of yourself’ isn’t the same thing as really living or being happy. todd’s an introvert, certainly, and even as he gets closer to the group he defaults to sitting quietly in the background, but he’s also denying himself community out of fear not introversion. todd isn’t friendless because he’s an introvert, although that definitely plays a part, he’s friendless because he pushes anyone that might want his company away. if anyone has every wanted for his attention in the first place. (neil’s unwavering interest in him is unique (even when it comes to the rest of the poets, who are fine with todd coming along and joining the group, but aren’t really hellbent on him being there in the beginning) and his refusal to accept it is a direct result of being so lonely growing up.)

there’s obviously something to be said about the implications of his parents neglect, and the more than likely fact that he grew up friendless, and how those both play a part in in him being so skilled at dodging social interaction/being so avoidant of it, but by the time we see him in the movie he’s all but accepted his fate as being alone his entire life. he’s already accepted being the family disappointment, and he’s already accepted he’ll never amount to anything, and he obviously doesn’t like it, but he’d have managed living with that knowledge without the confirmation that it was all wrong. would he have been miserable? almost certainly. but he’d have managed. he’d done it for that long already, anyhow.

[real-reulbbr-band]

“Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer don’t even look exactly alike how can their owners not tell them apart”

The implication in the lyrics was that by the time the owners got to the scene of the crime the deed was done and they couldn’t tell which cat had done it. The whole point is that they can’t tell the cats are collaborating and that enables them to succeed again and again. Them looking similar is a bonus.

“Or after supper one of the girls suddenly missed her Woolworth pearls

Then the family would say, "It's that horrible cat!

It was Mungojerrie or Rumpelteazer!"

And most of the time they left it at that”

Even later, the family and cook are only notified about Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer’s actions after the fact. They didn’t see anything happening.

“When the family assembled for Sunday dinner

Their minds made up that they wouldn't get thinner on

Argentine joint, potatoes and greens

Then the cook would appear from behind the scenes

And say in a voice that was broken with sorrow

"I'm afraid you must wait and have dinner tomorrow

The joint has gone from the oven like that!”

“Then the family would say, "It's that horrible cat! It was Mungojerrie or Rumpelteazer!" And most of the time they left it at that.”

The song even ends by stating the family can hear the destruction they’ve caused but haven’t seen anything. And so they can only discuss who it could’ve been and move on.

I think this also answers another common question I see which is “why do Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer’s owners keep them?”

“It’s that horrible cat!” Cat, as in one cat. Not two. They think only one of them did it and don’t want to get rid of both their cats if one is “innocent”. So they keep them both and ponder on.

[bumblingbabooshka]

When you love you love whole, with all you have, with teeth. It runs in the blood. The whole planet is stained with it - love in the extreme. Love boiled down to a hard, sharp rock which can be used to bash in the head of your enemy. You can watch the blood run and regret it. You can gather it up and boil it again. [Patreon | Commissions]

[aerithisms]

SLURPING this tweet about the "just see me" scene in deep breath. the way eleven and twelve both refer to themselves in the third person, because even though they are begging clara to understand they're still the same person even they still view each other as someone else. they both are the same person and they aren't.

[shadow-and-purgatory]

im sure the chief advisors never had their portraits painted because that would be too obvious but i do like the hilarious mental image of just. a wall of 36 identical evil men

[camgoloud]

award for most devil’s sacrament moment of the year goes without a doubt to this morning when my coworker (delivering presentation) (screen projected onto wall in front of me and god and everyone) opened a new tab in google chrome and in the number one spot among the collection of icons for frequently visited websites was. the ao3 logo