#it's a framework problem

[sapphicdalliances]

My friends always tease me for defending murder when I say this but I genuinely think it's relevant that the setting (both the world at large and the specific period of conflict much of the story covers) of MDZS has a much higher baseline of violence than our own. Purposeful combat (with intent to kill or injure), corporal punishment, and killing of others are all more normalised to the characters than to us in the 21st century

Which is just to say that JGY's various crimes really should be interpreted within the framework of how his world worked, and in essence killing his commander is not equivalent in severity to killing his assistant branch manager would be in a modern AU

Which is to say, I honestly don't believe JGY would really consider murder to be an option in any regular old modern AU? Like both from a logistical and a moral perspective

[loriache]

honestly i'm kind of interested in the idea of laios in an arranged marriage. because obviously straight-up inherited monarchies are ...bad, to say the least! but it's what the characters are familiar with (even laios' father's extremely local, extremely minor leadership role is inherited, presumably through the male line). and it isn't just about what they think the best way to run melini is; in terms of ensuring that the other longed-lived nations respect melini's continued sovereignty, having it passed down in a manner that's close enough to their own ways for them to understand it and respect it is important. And it seems like most of the other nations have leadership through inheritance - thought that isn't confirmed for certain except with the elves.

Also, a marriage carries the potential to establish foreign allies - something melini is certainly lacking. A marriage could come with resources they'll badly need, treaties of mutual defence, money, legitimacy and political capital... not that these things can't be worked around, but if laios isn't strongly opposed, there are a lot of advantages! and i don't think he would be, because that's the framework for marriage (conferring practical advantages, building intracommunity relationships and providing a partner to do important work that he can't do) that he had grown up with. he isn't exactly a romantic and I doubt he's holding out for any sort of relationship of that nature.

Like, I don't think it's impossible that they would go with this path, because it's the most obvious and it carries a lot of advantages and it's what almost all the decision-making characters would consider normal and not objectionable. and it could be so interesting.

I think Laios would have major hangups if expected (i.e., by Marcille) to establish a genuine, romantic interest in a woman. Whether because of his sexual or romantic orientation, or just his own deep-seated trauma about rejection and being inherently disgusting and scary. And I think he'd hate the idea of having kids, too, and be very frightened of being like his father. But I don't think he'd refuse on that basis; he could cope with a marriage contract, with clearly laid-out expectations and responsibilities. And when it came to having a kid, I think he'd be reluctant to express that he doesn't want to do it, because he isn't naive and he understood when he agreed to be king it would carry responsibilities like this. It's clear from his nightmare that he already felt pressure from his parents to have children, probably magnified by the fact his father has got a position, responsibilities and wealth to pass on. Obviously he isn't a perfect martyr, so he might struggle when it comes to actually going through with it - but I don't think he'd actually, outright refuse. I think he might do it even though he doesn't want to, and I think that could be really messy in a way that appeals to me.

I don't know, there's something about negotiating these kinds of complicated situations that's interesting to me. and i love a platonic marriage. If they find a woman who has an interest in education, for example, and can work with marcille on setting up schools and universities. she'd ideally be politically savvy enough to be an able partner to laios: even though kabru can and would continue to do a lot of that, there are different spheres that a queen and a prime minister can work within!

how would their relationship work? maybe she finds laios' perspective on the world, and his frankness, unexpectedly liberating after an extremely controlled, cloistered upbringing. maybe she had a rebellious phase, has magic, or something else which makes her a relatively unpopular candidate for marriage - even as melini grows in power, i doubt that they'd be getting offers for the cream of the crop in terms of perceived value on the marriage market, because laios' relationship is a bit too ambivalent/monstrous for that, and melini too new. maybe she's a widow! an older woman, wouldn't that be cool - though they'd want her young enough that she could definitely still have kids.

certainly i think he'd be happy for her to pursue other relationships, though ideally in a manner that couldn't produce illegitimate kids. with other relationships in play, that's even more interesting. like, both kabru and toshiro have complicated emotions relating to infidelity. i think kabru would actually find it quite cathartic to be in the kind of high-status environment that rejected his mother for perceived infidelity, pursuing an affair that all parties consent to, though he'd likely be incredibly aware of the public image - since "image" is what he was rejected for. toshiro... i just really really love the way he'd feel about being the "other woman" in laios' marriage, considering his feelings about his father and maizuru. especially given how much closer he is to maizuru than his mother, being in her position...! his emotions would be so complex, it's incredibly tasty. i bet he'd make a bunch of assumptions about how laios' wife feels about it and be totally wrong, and that's so interesting. also, i think laios' wife should fuck marcille (she and falin have an open relationship).

[lunar-years]

This is not a genuine interview where he shares his genuine thoughts. His job is controlled by a network that profits at least 50% from Republicans, and who are receiving a sitting president at their biggest game. If you think they haven't controlled talk over DT because of how it affects the sport then you aren't living in reality. He can't just say what he wants, he's not a random person ln tumblr. There's a reason even Taylor mainly ignored him in her endorsement of Harris, it's just bot worth it and it doesn't pluck him out of the white house.

If you think there wasn’t a better way for Travis to answer that question that wouldn’t have involved saying it was both “awesome” and an “honor” as well as spouting that America is the best country in the world, I’m sorry but you are the one not living in reality. As just one example of a better response, this is how Jalen Hurts, QB of the Eagles, answered a very similar question:

But maybe it’s only in the Chiefs contract that they’ve got to praise the presidency! 🤪 lmao.

[bunnyboy-juice]

i recently stopped focusing on defining relationships as Romantic & start viewing romance as an Expression of Intimacy (bc there are plenty of romantic things i do within my "Platonic" relationships, there are plenty of romantic things i do - that are explicitly romantic - in relationships Not defined by the romance but by other facets) and my life has Significantly improved as has the love i express & experience among my lovers

[hungwy]

i think whats most impressive about zizek is how his strong sense of aesthetic direction which just magnetically aligns anything he reads to a form which can be synthesized or critiqued by his views

[thanatologie]

honestly (i say, piggybacking off of @fatedvoyage's post) the fact that so many ships i've had through the years have started as a joke says some...interesting things about me, i guess.

buckytony wasn't a joke, necessarily, but i lost the steering wheel to the bus on that one pretty early on and it's been a [mumbled number of years] since that whole thing even started and they are, by far, my favorite, top tier ship for tony. i love them and their stupid inside jokes and their stupid little domestic life and their stupid little adventures.

a friend and i had a ship for tony and maccready (yes, that maccready) that started out as me testing a romance mod on a tony fo4 playthrough that led to several unfortunate ingame events (you ever try to romance a companion and get turned down because buddy-) that i got laughed at about until we weren't laughing anymore because it was like you know what and still has a special place in my heart umpteen years later just because it existed and was some juicy characterization digging and a...slightly unorthodox take on romance in the irradiated world.

emmrich and zevran, i...i honestly don't have any excuse for that one, i hate that it literally started out as me bullying dean about taking that old man to pound town on a playthrough and he picked zevran and now i hate myself for how much i kind of love?? them??? like i am legitimately mad about it. this was supposed to be for giggles to make fun of dean about, i wasn't supposed to sit here and rotate them in seriousness.

anyway, trip down memory lane to the gazebo we're standing in today listening to zevran's bad pick up lines aside, that's the thing, right. like the ships i still look back on most fondly (like maccready's rper no longer writes on tumblr, for example) or that i hold closest to my heart have a common element of like...we were joking until we weren't? or we tossed out the script (such as in buckytony's case) because the inmates were running the asylum, anyway, you know what i mean?

i do not, under any circumstances, set out to ship just to ship, it's just not my thing, but man when the blorbos click, or they click unexpectedly, that's just. 👌😩 there's a couple here that are starting to veer into that territory and i'm sitting here nose pressed to the window like SICKOS_yes_HAHA_YES.jpg over it all.

sometimes your blorbo points at the idiot blorbo you were making fun of and says that one, and you're stuck with those bad decisions until you gaslight yourself into looking at them as warm fuzzies, is what i'm saying.

[sendmyresignation]

every time someone mentions the way music-related algorithms work in the best interests of major labels pushing their artists for their own gain and therefore are often embedded with bias and cut off new avenues of discovery everyone comes out of the woodwork to mention "well, anecdotally to my specific circumstance, I've discovered (5) new artists with sub-one thousand regular listeners completely detached from any information or scene or cohesive idea of taste on my weekly currated playlists so therefore algorithms actually work amazing" like what are you talking about. can we be serious please.

[h4bit]

read on practice. reading on contradiction. am really enjoying that it's mostly a matter of giving me vocabulary to talk about what i've been doing and how i've been analyzing the world and a confirmation that it's useful and productive and pointed. yeah (they're right) it's BEEN latent

[incomingalbatross]

and ANOTHER thing about Athelas--

Okay so he's a trained killer with inborn healing powers. Very fun dissonance in itself. But the thing is, it's established a couple times that inborn magical gifts show up when fae reach their equivalent of age ten. By the time he reached that age (right around the time his lord was finally born) he'd already spent half of his extended childhood being forced to get very good at killing.

Did they know healing powers ran in his bloodline and was that one of the reasons he was picked for Steward training? Did magic in general run in his family and were they just getting luck of the draw on what his powers might turn out to be? Or was it a complete surprise?

In ANY case. How much closer to the brink did it push this child when he suddenly developed healing magic after all the years of being forced into mortal combat and mercy killings? I'm assuming closer if the form of his magic came as a surprise, but it can't have been good for his mental health no matter what.

[guiltyidealist]

It should be a criminal offense if an insurance company is responsible for a delay in a policyholder's necessary health care.

Withholding prescribed treatments, even for just a day, can be anywhere from inconvenient to catastrophic for the victim. Medical providers may not withhold necessary treatment from any patient on any grounds, as it is their duty to provide it-- it should be justly illegal for any "middle man" to interfere with a medical provider's legal and ethical obligation to treat a patient.

Severity of the charge and its legal consequences should depend upon the scope of the offense (length of delay) and its consequences to the victim (impact on the person).

The testimonies of the victim, the pharmacy, and the medical provider who prescribed the treatment should be key considerations for the determination. Additional important testimony should come from the victim's other medical providers, housemates, family, educators/mentors, colleagues/coworkers, or employers.

The charge should become criminal record for the company. The company (perhaps the agent's office) should be fined per day delayed.

Some taxation can be applied; just to pay off the folks who do the filing, advocacy, testimony, processing. A hefty majority of the fine should be compensation owed to the victim.

If delays became a criminal charge on companies' records, then companies would have a strong motive to terminate agents who aren't performing with punctuality. It would become their best financial interest to invest only in timely agents who would, in turn, gain a best interest to invest only in timely subordinates.

I posit that insurance delays would wane significantly, resulting in more timely delivery of treatments to policyholders, and many people's qualities of life would improve drastically for it.

[unopenablebox]

unfortunately sometimes it really is a relief to discover an online forum full of bitter obsessive people who have been driven nuts by completely different problems than the ones i'm having

[lgbtlunaverse]

Everytime I see that "fandom is worse now because all the POPULAR KIDS got into it" post or any of the bajillion similar ones I die a little on the inside. You all sound like a 34 year old white cishet self identified gamer scoffing about how "all these girls pretend to like anime when IN MY TIME they would have bullied me for being a nerd" before he goes on to watch 4 more videos from a youtuber who participated in gamergate.

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

I will say I think one way in which ChatGPT can be useful is social media marketing for artists who would rather spend their valuable time writing or painting than pounding their heads against the wall just to extract one (1) idea for a viral reel.

[magpiemalarkey]

retrOCtober time again! This is The Emissary, another oc from my superhero 'verse. He's a shapeshifting alien with telekinesis, but role-wise, is kinda the superman expy? His design and concept, are, for some reason, the result of me jotting "space mummy" in the corner of my sketchbook. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ghoulhusband]

i’m obviously incredibly biased but i do think it’s kinda more interesting if the courier isn’t mad that benny shot them. for whatever reason! but especially if they come from similar backgrounds where it’s like “well it was respectful. he clearly didn’t want to kill me specifically it was business. and he basically threw me a funeral while i was still alive” and then their bigger issue is figuring out what to do now that they’re not dead. do they get revenge out of principle, do they try to solve the mystery of it all, do they hunt him down just to ask him to apologize, do they get roped into it by victor, or just general events? idk i obviously understand the revenge angle is very motivating, i just think a courier who doesn’t hate benny is really interesting and fun to play with. and not just because he’s my favorite guy and i could never hold it against him

[aropride]

starting to think the bpd realization is actually gonna stick this time. but granted i also said that in july and a few weeks ago was again thinking to myself "ok what if i dont actually have it and". but thats a much faster turnaround too