#it's hard to describe but in a lot of ways it's the thing i want most to do with my life

[redrosydiaz]

happy warm mouth wednesday friends 👄

walk with me and picture: a post bisexual awakening world — where either tommy doesn't exist or he and buck just kissed and that's it. nothing else. no relationship — but. post bisexual awakening buck, who is considering the fact that being bisexual means sleeping with men. and, he wants that, of course, but it's new to him, so, naturally, he gets in his head about it. and he's like well what if i'm bad at it? what if i don't know how to do it? what if i'm not good at giving blowjobs?

and, this, crucially, is the most upsetting part, because buck loves going down on people — on women. he prides himself on it. he's good at it, like, really good, AND it's just something he loves to do. like he could literally get off on just going down on a girl — not just because he's getting off on giving to his partner and making her feel good first, but also because he just genuinely enjoys the act itself. and so he's like well. it is fundamentally different with a man, it is something new i'll have to learn and — what if i'm bad at it? what if i don't like it?? i don't think i won't like it, but i don't know! and i won't know until i do it! but also i can't be like mid blowjob and realize i hate it!! that's terrible!! and so, in true buck nature, he is toootally spinning himself out about this.

and the thing is — he and eddie never really got detailed about their sex lives with each other. like, eddie would know that buck was sleeping with his girlfriends and buck would know that eddie was too, but outside of like the briefest of mentions of that they were never the sit down with a beer and describe in detail the play by play of the night type of guys. they never really talked about it, and they never really talked about why they never really talked about it either.

but. here buck is. talking about it. even if it is only hypothetically speaking here, but still. it's a lot more detail than eddie is used to. and he— well. buck is painting a picture. and eddie is— not lacking imagination. so he is picturing. and he is. getting hard about it. but eddie is trying so hard (hah) to be a Good Friend about this, and offer advice and keep buck from spiraling further. only— he opens his mouth and what ends up spilling out is "you can practice on me." and it. cuts buck's rambling and his pacing off completely. and he just stares back at eddie, blinking at him like he isn't so sure he heard him correctly. but, oh, he did. he did.

and so. yknow. Practice Blowjobs happen. and after the first time, naturally, it ends with eddie telling buck it was good, really good, but he trails off in a way that suggests there is a but (and, there isn't, not really, because buck WAS really good, actually. but eddie's brain is already two steps ahead trying to figure out a way to make it happen again.) and so buck goes "..... but?" and eddie goes "well. you know, you've got to keep practicing. to keep your skill up. it's like. it's like a muscle, y'know. you gotta keep using it so it doesn't deteriorate. and you don't want your um. blowjob muscle, so to speak, to to deteriorate." and buck is like "mhm mhm you're so right. absolutely. yes. yep. yeah" and eddie's like "welllll. if you ever need a practice buddy........" and buck is like "mhm mhm right. absolutely. yes. yep. yeah."

and OF COURSE it keeps happening.

and i am thinking by like the fourth or fifth time it happens maybe, eddie — in his brain — is like well. actually. what if. what if i wanted to try it. because like. buck makes it look fun. and y'know. it's always good to expand your repertoire. to learn new skills. you never know when you'll need them. mhm mhm. totally normal thought process here.

and so the next time, after they finish, buck sits back on his haunches and wipes his hand over his mouth (obscene) and looks up at eddie with those big eager eyes and he goes "so, how was it?" (because they have Kept Up the "this is for skill practice and improvement" thing) and this time eddie is like "well. it was good. but i was thinking. what if. what if i showed you. um. exactly what i like?" and bucks like "um?" and eddies like "yeah. yeah! i could. y'know. show you. exactly how i like it. so you know. for next time." and bucks like "show me?" — and like he thinks he knows what eddie is getting at here, but also, there's no way eddie is getting at what he thinks he is getting at. that's like. way too good to be true.

but it is. true. and eddie just nods and goes "yeah like. like." and he mimes a blowjob (because he is. a DORK. but also because this feels too precarious and he can't bring himself to actually say blowjob, out loud, in the context of himself. but not because he's scared or ashamed or confused or anything. but because he's just. excited about it. and that makes him nervous but like. in a good way)

and buck is like oh. oh. and then nearly swallows his tongue in his haste to agree like "oh yes yes uh huh sure absolutely that would be. i am a visual learner hah. you should— yes. you should yes. definitely."

and that is how eddie gets his practice in too.

and of course, they are not together yet and they think this is Totally Normal Boy Bestie Behavior — exchanging blowjobs for practice — and they are both catching feelings (or, becoming aware of the feelings they've already caught, really), and recognizing that this is a Dangerous situation, because it's just practice to the other, but it means something more now, to both of them, unknowingly to each other!!

[velvetvexations]

I've felt since about 2014 or so that a lot of the way we talk about privilege as a concept was a mistake.

One: while I fully understand the need to have an umbrella term for these things because they originate from the same place and sometimes overlap as more of a spectrum than discrete categories, it's a little bit confusing at best that we ALWAYS use the same term to describe advantages NO ONE should have, like the ability to buy your way into any college you want, AND the lack of DISADVANTAGES that no one should suffer, like being presumed dangerous just for walking down the street and potentially getting jumped or shot for it, AND the lack of daily annoyances that serve as a grating, constant reminder that you are Other, like "flesh tone" very conspicuously not even coming close to matching you or romance being presumed M/F by default everywhere. Yes, we need to talk about what all these things have in common, but we ALSO need to be able to talk about how they're different, and honestly, for the sake of outreach and ~optics~, I feel we've gotta be able to present the similarities and differences up front because I have met NO shortage of people who were super on board with trying to improve society somewhat but got really alienated from theory talk by the straight conflation of those categories, ESPECIALLY the latter two. Never mind the decision that the word for this should be something that most people first hear in the context of an extra hour of video games for good behavior or something along those lines.

Two: No category of privilege is granted universally to every member of a privileged group. Few if any men have all aspects of male privilege. In any lavender scare, NO ONE universally and automatically receives cishet privilege. It's even hard to find white people with all aspects of white privilege, and race as an oppressive class was INVENTED to make it easy to use visual markers to determine who's "in" and who's "out". It's also much easier to lose a lot of aspects of privilege than the language gives it credit for - sometimes, just NOT being enough of a bigot is enough to get you treated like a second class citizen.

Three: Every disprivileged group has some privilege over the next in some ways, AND is disprivileged under them in other ways, and the ways in which this manifests get REALLY chaotic once you start looking at the individual level rather than the group level because of the above. Treating "privilege" like a black and white thing that EVERYONE outside a specific highlighted group has makes futile attempts at "scorekeeping" and the bullshit infighting that comes with it almost inevitable. In fact, a lot of the time, the unshared aspects of closely related axes of oppression can intersect in ways that can't fully be dissected without also examining the axis that an exclusionist is trying to "beat" or disprove - for example, I'd go so far as to argue that because oppositional sexism runs so deep in society, every aspect of transandrophobia has a transmisogynistic flip side AND vice-versa; if we talked about privilege and gender in a way that DIDN'T make it so easy for people to think only one of the two can exist and naming the second is therefore a denial of the first, we'd probably be collectively a lot further along in dissecting both.

Four: Systems of privilege and disprivilege cannot be dismantled by treating the privileged as monsters; this only justifies and perpetuates the system by emphasizing the strength and power of the privileged vs. the hopeless, futile struggles of the oppressed, even when it DOESN'T result in "movements" where the oppressed fear losing their identity if they escape their oppression. In the very worst cases it ends up being every bit as classically bigoted as the ideas it calls out - note how many varieties of radfems arrive at a conclusion where they believe the SAME things about men and women as any manosphere redpill chud, they just think the power imbalance that privileges men is a BAD thing instead of a GOOD thing.

Every damned exclusionist cycle just makes me more and more sure of this. I feel like I've been screaming it into the void for over 10 years and yet no one but the teeny tiny choir has ever listened. At least I've seen more people starting to talk about point 1 specifically over this past year...?

Anon, I'll be honest, I love you but this is a bit too long and dense for me to process so I'm going to post this and put it in my #I just work here tag.

[magiturge]

What do you imagine Pasquale and Elliot sound like? Do you have any voice claims for them?

it's hard to pinpoint what they sound like, i don't have voice claims for them. if anything, i feel like if i wanted to find their voices come alive, i'd need to ask a va with a lot of specifications.

i have a really scattered way to describe what they sound like, so bear with me.

pasquale's voice is very low as a result of being turned into a big bunny folk, it has a rough grumble to it like being dragged through a path of gravel. it's raspy as well. his voice has a twinge to it that sounds like he's reading you something, like he's a narrator and in a way it beckons you to listen to what he's saying. it demands your attention, and you simply can't ignore it. you can let him speak but your softer raspy grumbling is there scratching at the back of your mind.

it's the underside of a fingernail, tracing a stripe up your neck into roots of your hair. it's a sensation that almost makes you nauseous, makes you feel guilty, it's gentle nails on the board. it's what running a sharp nail on your skin just enough to see white is like. his laugh is a muffled boom in the back of your head, it's ambience. his voice is grizzly but controlled, it's eloquent but not snobbish. he doesnt talk as much as he does in the comfort of the mafia hideout, in a way he's dripfeeding his voice to others.

his voice feels like running your hands, fingers spread through a thick lawn of soft and course fur with each lick of it scratching against the interdigit.

pasquale's voice is a raspy guilty pleasure.

the fun thing about his voice in the presence of elliot though is that as they grew closer, his pitch gets higher. he doesnt play into the intimidating, low growl to assert some position above elliot but below him. his pitch is higher, his tone is different, he's still playing into wanting attention but it's a different approach. in a sense, he's reaching for his old voice, before he was a big bunnyfolk. he wants elliot to hear him, significantly more chatty, more vocal.

it's not so much a guilty pleasure but a rare sight to behold.

-

elliot's voice is generic but unique, oxymoron. cartoonish, loose and goofy. his tone is always some level of energetic, friendly and polite. his voice is animated. you can feel his voice in your skin, in the way that with each wiggle and ripple of it, you could imagine the hand gestures and body language that follow or accompany it.

he has a tendency to have voice cracks when going off the polite, customer service path. it stumbles, it goes up in pitch it goes down, it rattles and wiggles. elliot croaks, he tends to hesitate a lot, using filler words like hmm, oh, ah! the way that elliot talks is honed to appeal to you, to give you his attention, to feel like he is listening to you. in a way, he is a professional at casual talk, he's a very people person.

voice being really animated, it can reach all time highs like when he screams. he laughs, he giggles quite a bit, his voice is fitting for the poster boy. he IS the mascot, he IS tailored to appeal to others.

..

pasquale's voice consistently bids for attention, elliot's voice is giving his utmost attention. in their own circumstances apart from each other, that is the positions they take but together it's flipped.

[sha-brytols]

oh god you know this was mostly just a "for fun" thought experiment but ok i'll try so fucking hard. going by the general footprint daa leaves behind regarding what a potential justvelanna would have looked like, i'd say it's... boothhh?

justice tells velanna that she needs to atone for what she did, and that the best way to do that is specifically to educate people. she can't go back, that's her burden, but she can prevent the same mistakes from being made over again. AND, given how velanna describes seranni and how compassionate and cheerful she was. i think. ironically. velanna would do exactly the same thing esther does LOL.

unlike justice though. velanna has a personal stake in all of this. a keeper that didn't trust her, a clan that rejected her, etc. and velanna's Very smart and Very stubborn. i dont know if justice's influence would be enough to completely curb that streak of prideful defiance that's been a hallmark of hers since she was a kid. honestly it might even feed into it, because justice is all about being steadfast and having the strength of conviction in your beliefs. so. that could lead to her being more aggressive towards her own mistakes and flaws. in which case she empathizes with merrill, and wants to see her succeed where velanna did not.

that being said i think velanna's just as interested in the eluvian (if not more?) than merrill is, and also has her own stake in the project, especially with the whole "spread the knowledge of the dalish to those who are ignorant of their history and culture" angle. that, to velanna, would be extremely important to her.

if we're going with the da2 justanders logic of "justice and velanna have become so close that their thoughts are now indistinguishable", then i'd say justvelanna would have a very complicated, mixed relationship to merrill's circumstances and decisions. i can see justice softening velanna's heart much like the merge does with anders, making velanna generally more patient and less snappish as a result (keyword: generally LOL she shares justanders' tendency to fly into righteous fury). with that i thiiiink, ultimately, velanna probably reluctantly accepts merrill's choices, but also vocally disagrees with them and tries to convince merrill to reconcile with her clan. if not for her own sake, then for the sake of the clan who would ultimately suffer from her absence, in the way that the dalish have always suffered from their history being lost to them. (yes very "yeah i know your family is abusive but they need your emotional labor, don't be selfish" LOL but. self-martyrdom is just a part of justanders and i can't see how it wouldn't apply to velanna, too)

regarding esther specifically, esther doesn't have the luxury of a second opinion that isn't just "fuck blood magic and fuck the mirror by extension" in da2, so i can actually see the influence of velanna's voice swaying esther in a way that probably prevents her from doing some of the shittier things she does to merrill. like if esther held the arulin'holm hostage just because marethari doesn't trust her first enough to make her own decisions, velanna would KILL HER LOL. so i think in essence merrill's relationship with esther would probably actually improve. a lot. because this version of esther is more socially aware than canon esther, who has ZERO clue the true scope of what merrill's been going through because she has no one to loudly and aggressively advocate for the dalish.

basically what i'm saying is velanna turns her into feminist junkrat but for elf racism

i miss velanna tails. i miss her a lot.

[the-sonic-crew]

"SAY NO MORE SIR!"

*grabs my leather bag and pulls out a comically long chain of handkerchiefs tied together and a lamp*

"erm one sec it's here somewhere....."

*my hand inside the bag starts glowing and a kitty of light with the gigachad face is in my arms in the simba™ pose*

"alas. Sonic you must bow before the ultimate kitty because you arent ultimate sry chat..😿😞"

"AHA NOW KITH!"

(YAYAYYAAYYAYAYAYYAYAYAYYSAYATAYYAYAYAYAYYAYAYAYAYAYAYYAYAYAYAYAAYATATATTAATATATTTATATTATATAYAYAYYAYAYAYAYAYY)

[shadow's inner monologue at that moment went something like this:

Ugh... the... kitty- NO, MUST RESIST- but... the kitty...- NO, SHADOW. IT'S NOT WORTH IT, YOU'LL DO SOMETHING YOU'LL REGRET WHEN YOU'RE OLDER. PEOPLE WILL COME UP TO YOU IN THE FUTURE, AND YOU WILL HAVE TO TELL THEM THAT YOU AND SONIC AREN'T IN A RELATIONSHIP, AND THEY WON'T STOP BOTHERING YOU. IT'S NOT WORTH IT- but the kitty... it's... all of it... the ultimate kitty.... -that does sound pretty cool but you CAN'T SHADOW. REPULSED, REMEMBER? YOU'LL DO IT AND THEN YOU'LL FEEL THAT ANXIOUS FEELING IN YOUR STOMACH THAT GROWS AND GROWS AND YOU JUST FEEL SO OVERWHELMED AND UNCOMFORTABLE AND OH GOD-]

I... I- I- I-

[Sonic gets up from where he's been bowing, expression morphing from a playful flirt to a worried, faltering grin. His eyes train, briefly, on Shadow's chest; it's started to rise and fall at a quicker pace, faster than he's ever seen it- even during all of their races and petty fights.]

Hey, are- are you feeling alright?

[He steps closer to Shadow, but Shadow's expression only morphs further into something closely resembling horror before masking itself quickly with anger.]

GET AWAY FROM ME. I JUST- I just want- ARGH!

[He backs into a 'corner' of the space, curling into a ball.]

You're all the same. You'll force me to do such a thing... when I...

... I think maybe that was a boundary we shouldn't have crossed. Sorry guys, no kisses for Shadow in the near future. Or, uh, judging by that reaction, probably ever. Sooooooo if you don't mind, I'll justttttttt... yep that cat's ours now OK BYE

[EXPLANATION IN THE TAGS -💀]

[fvckw4d]

The concept of queerbaiting annoys me. I was told that it refers to a work of fiction pretending to cater to a queer audience but then pulling back from it to avoid alienating homophobes, which is an incredibly specific thing. But a lot of people seem to think that it instead means "any time there's any gay subtex, metaphor, or ambiguity" or "whenever something from 1995-2012 was being a normal amount of homophobic for the era."

[writhe]

i want to be more open to anything and everything and i’m scared

[431989]

more resident alien posting. predictions... spoilers so beware

well. i'm upset that the shows going to have a difficult time having more serious scenes now. and that's probably what it's going to try and set itself up for.

i reaaaally would have loved to see this show do something ACTUALLY different and good. by different i mean in terms of writing and not necessarily drifting from source material. yes i'm still sour over last ep, but i wouldn't be AS sour if everyone on the show didn't treat harry and asta's relationship as "mother and child." and also if the show didn't take such a nose dive into the type of comedy it's putting out.

ALSO? IN A RECENT INTERVIEW? Sheridan going on to state that harry would lose his first """love""" (more like lust. awesome that a show trying to teach human emotion gets those two things mixed up) and then realize there's love everywhere or something? why does this feel like "weird" people are forever left to the role of outcasts. already fucked it up once i guess the guy's trying to fuck it up more. could've just left it at "he'll lose his first love, then he will have to reconcile with his feelings." but he had to drop in that last corny bit.

like. the show's source is already good. i don't understand all these decisions they're making to try and make it seem "unique." and now to get numbers back they're dumbing it way down. WHICH. BY DOING SO. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE YOUR DRAMA? like how am i supposed to take anything seriously in the show. i *could* in season 1 and parts of season 2, but now it's just whatever. it's too goofed up for me to care. and now people who love the goofy won't give two shits about whatever message you want to drop or plot you want to develop. i dont give a shit about the greys!!! i dont care what theyre doing!!!! who gives a fuck if theyll blow up the earth. none of the characters really care anymore either. oh well!!!

also, predictions kind of. i'm not trying to say this will be the be all end all but it certainly could be a turn the show takes. in one of the issues of the comic (suicide blonde i think), harry is investigating the "suicide" of a woman. by the end of the issue, he catches up with her ex-lover and ex-roommate. they were both ladies. and the girl who died had a drinking problem btw. and was constantly seeing boys. i'm all for gay couples on screen as a gay guy myself but it'll feel so cheap to pair darcy and asta together despite the way theyve been played on screen. maybe its doable. i don't know. but i genuinely could care less considering the overall tone of the show's drifted more towards a sitcom than anything else. i think the small handful of 40+ year old gay wine moms would probably love it, but the vast majority of viewers wont. either they'll hate it and say it's forced diversity (there's already people saying that about the gay couple on screen this past episode) or it'll be another nothing moment to a further nothing story. if anything it'd feel one step removed from tokenization, considering they see harry as a manchild. ableism! show's trying to seem fucking wholesome but they can't be bothered to care about their nd viewers. like "haha look we have a main gay couple!!! what do you *mean* our show has rampant ableist tropes, we have a gay couple!"

i'm just so bummed. the show's cornered itself into a sitcom so meaningful moments aren't a thing anymore. plus the comparison of harry to a child is really getting at me. like he's a grown man as a human, and hes a grown alien thing as an alien. it's such a big slap in the face to any person who cherished the witty and unique story telling of the first season... like.... i don't know.... people who would've been fans of the comic too? i have small gripes about the comic, but at least it takes itself more seriously. but the show runners haaate the people who read the comics. why? i dont know. well maybe i do know. probably seen as too nerdy and weird for their idea of the show's viewerbase. despite the fucking basis of the show being weird and nerdy.

they couldve done the darcy asta thing better if they do go down that road. i'm just saying i wouldn't be surprised. they already scared off everyone who would've cared for something like that, so i don't know how they'll manage to find an audience that cares. everything in s1 was so organic and felt real!!!!! now its just!!! nothing!!!!!!!!!!

im also thinking about the fact that after posting that one resident alien drawing i did, i've had to block tons of people because they're freaks. loud and proud conservatives. man this shit sucks.

[bunnyboy-juice]

its so fun to me that literally everywhere i exist i am inevitably associated with Cuteness and Joy

[altruistic-meme]

if you could... describe aftg in 5 words

oh this is not as easy a question to answer as it should be akfhsdkf bc like. i could describe its plot, or my thoughts on it as a fan, or how it makes me feel, or just make a joke, or or or and bc idk why you're asking it makes it harder :'))

but let's see...

plot: gay sports mafia found family.

fan: drama, familiarity, trauma, comedy, home

feelings: love, understanding, chaos, joy, comfort

joke: you know, i get it-

(as you can see, i couldn't pick which one to go with, so choose whichever 5 words you want lmao)

[mainfaggot]

the last time i felt emotionally fulfilled in a friendship was when i was 15, and before that when i was 13. im turning 21 next month

[i-will-physically-fight-you]

hiya just a small psa, first off--thank you for those who sent in writing asks, I'm going to answer them soon. also I am going to try and update Gibbous on Oct 12 (as a bday treat for myself) but if it doesnt happen, then I'll just post a small teaser on here of what I have so far of it. My mental health is still a work in progress, despite my post after Spoke No More (iykyk in terms of having a mental high followed by an immediate mental low haha) but if I go radio silent on this blog, it doesnt mean anything bad, it just means I need to take time to care for myself

[merkerlerspeaks]

Thinking about just in general gentle men again. I had a whole essay on like....why this is and my history with men being either harsh with me in the past or otherwise somehow distant but I decided I didn't wanna get into that on here right now.

I just appriciate gentle men. Gentle, kind, patient, non-judgemental, meek men. Or at least men who make efforts to be that way. It warms my heart any time I see a man act that way and straight up baffles me sometimes when they actually treat ME that way.

[teenagefeeling]

am i seriously starting to see jokes about asexuals on my dash again??? i chose the wrong time to accept myself.....

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...