#it's not vital to understanding it

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Expertise can't help you here.

[casscainmainly]

God this panel kinda drives me crazy. From Batman & the Outsiders #17, Shiva asks Duke about his suit, whether it was his choice. And how does Duke respond? He... doesn't. He parrots what is clearly something Bruce said to him, but never clarifies whether it was 'his choice' at all. Because both him and Shiva know it wasn't. And he acknowledges that his suit, with all the Batty-ness (ears, symbol), was specifically designed to make him like Batman.

Then Shiva suggests dark red, which is what Duke wore in We Are Robin and has connotations to Robin as a whole. Duke's reaction - can we let it go? - can be read in many ways, but to me it suggests Shiva's words hit home. He does miss the Robin colours. Becoming the Signal wasn't his choice, but becoming Robin was.

(And throughout this run, Shiva says both Cass and Duke are being held back by Bruce. With Cass this is a clear allusion to being Orphan over Batgirl, so it's not farfetched to read this conversation as being about how Duke was denied Robin to become Signal).

Duke-as-Signal is a symbol of 'people like Batman', but Duke-as-Robin was a symbol of youth, of community, of diversity and of choice. He was a Robin formed without Batman. I know there's no going back, but having Bruce choose the name, the suit, and the time of day that Duke goes out makes the Signal such a fraught identity. I love the yellow, the suit, and the daytime aspect, but I just wish they were Duke's choices, not Bruce's.

[heymacy]

IAN GALLAGHER + his journey with bipolar disorder

╰┈➤ “At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of." - Carrie Fisher

[royalarchivist]

Quackity: These past days I've been in many calls, and I'm not done yet. I've spoken to a lot of people and creators. I've read your comments and I'm well aware of what needs to be done to carry out this project. I want to tell you all, beforehand, that for me the team's well-being is fundamental. I'm very involved in this topic to sort it out and I want to make that very clear. I want to tell you something... I want to tell you all that the administrative staff responsible for so much harm to the project has been fired. Specifically, those who made decisions without my permission, affecting the administrative and financial area of the project. Consequently, after this, I was in charge of doing a financial analysis that's carrying out for the QSMP.

Guys, to be really honest, it was not going to last. Therefore, I've had to make deep drastic structural changes that have lead me to reduce the performance of the server down to the most essential, and this is in order to ensure the well being of everyone involved in it. Having said this, I want to give a very important update: I want to let you all know that the QSMP will have to slow down temporarily. This is to ensure this new structure adapts to the project, because it's a restructuring that's taking place. I'm letting you know, and I reiterate, there are no voluntary positions inside the QSMP.

At the moment, there will not be any more individual update accounts of all 5 existing languages in the project. In any case, during this transition, there's going to be a temporal absence of all Eggs and NPCs. I know these are difficult changes, and I repeat, it's temporary until we adjust to these new conditions that will improve the performance of this new structure that's being made from scratch, both in the administrative and financial part. I'd like to reintegrate people fro the QSMP as time goes by if a financial viability can be found for the project Taking advantage of this update to tell you guys that within the changes of the server as it is, creators will have full control of their lore and stories. The team will not intervene in the way that it was being done. Moreover, efforts will be made to change the competitive dynamics inside the game so as to ease up the game style for the creators. Like I'm saying, all of these changes, and more, are being carrying out to have the project as best as possible, and they're being done little by little. This is a whole new structure that will ensure the best continuity and experience for the creators, the community and the team behind.

Guys, I want to make very clear that this is restructuring process, and again, it's not a fast one. The server being open does not mean everything's perfect, I understand that very well. Conversations will keep taking place, communication will continue and the constant improvement of the project as well. I ask, please, for everyone's patience and understanding regarding all changes. Please do wait for official announcements since a lot of incomplete and incorrect information is being spread. I want to tell you all something- if you don't trust in these changes or have many doubts about it, and don't want to consume any more of the project's content, I understand 100%. I have a personal commitment with the QSMP and I will work until it functions in the way it is supposed to do.

Lastly, I want to let you know that it was being worked on for months on finalizing the integration of Korean creators to the QSMP. For that reason, tomorrow we will be welcoming the new Korean creators of the QSMP, of course, taking into account all the changes I've just mentioned. I hope you can give the new Korean members warm welcome to the project. And as you know, their schedules are earlier. For everyone who would like to watch, they will be joining at 11am Mexico time and at 9am US time. Basically, I wanted to give that update regarding everything that's being done within the project. Again, thank you for your patience and understanding- these are necessary changes and I'm glad they're being done now. And many more things will keep being adjusted.

via @QuackitySubs

[mumblesplash]

he's not even that light impulse is just really strong

[blueberry-bubbles130]

Something I forgot to add in the main part of the theory is how the individual characters personalities affect the theory. It's not essential to understanding the theory bit I do think it's important.

So throughout the movie Queen Genevieve doesn't seem very open as a person. Like she doesn't talk that much about anything outside work relating to ruling the kingdom. And if she's not talking about the kingdom, she's not talking about anything. (Of course this is mostly due to time constraints and her not being a main character, but we're using it for the theory as it works well as evidence)

Now Genevieve does have the conversation at the end with Annaliese, where Annaliese tells her about Julian. But even then Genevieve does talk about the kingdom again. And when the wedding scene occurs, she doesn't even say anything, apart from trying to say "I do". This suggests that Genevieve as a person mostly keeps to herself and is more introverted, only really showing her true emotions when she or someone she cares about is distressed, or in danger. Evidence of this is shown in the wedding scene between her and Preminger, because again she doesn't verbalize her own thoughts on the situatuon, but she does show some emotion. She seems confused, upset and in distress.

This aspect of Genevieve's character is quite common and you see this a lot when she is included within fanfiction of Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper, her being more introverted and not expressing how she feels about the situations she's apart of.

This is really important when discussing Genevieve's relationships with both Preminger and Annaliese. As if we look at the rest of the theory, it could be implied that Genevieve was more introverted anyway as a person, and it just became far worse when Preminger killed her husband and began to manipulate her to be dependent on him for decision making. As well as this Genevieve doesn't seem to have anyone to truly talk to throughout the movie, apart from Preminger when he is there. This differs from Annaliese as she has Julian to express emotions with, Julian has Annaliese and Preminger has Nick and Nack to tell ideas to.

This leads me to believe that after the King's murder, Preminger's manipulation of Genevieve made her and Annaliese more distant, and while it doesn't drive a wedge between them, like Rowena tries to do with Randolph and his daughters, it does make them more distant from each other. This also means that after the King's death, the only person Genevieve had around to talk to was Preminger, and she probably wouldn't think twice about what she tells him. This leads to Preminger knowing what would upset and make Genevieve feel better, then creating a cycle in which a problem is created for Genevieve, she then expresses her feelings to Preminger, Preminger then "solving" the problem by making Genevieve just agree with him, and then him holding more power of her.

When we also include Preminger's dislike of Annaliese, and Annaliese's eventual or constant (i don't really know what Annaliese truly thinks of Preminger, please tell me) distrust of Preminger, Genevieve is essentially stuck in the middle with no one to really turn to, leading to her more closed off state.

This makes Preminger's manipulation of Genevieve a whole lot easier, and after Preminger's defeat Genevieve would presumably be completely devastated by the revalation that the man she had put so much trust into was stealing the gold, tried to kill her child, tried to marry her child and then forced her into marriage in an attempt to become king.

This is all without mentioning what Preminger would have done to her if they had gotten married and he had become king, Annaliese and Julian presumably still surviving the cave-in but just not making it to the wedding in time. I think there's a few options here.

Option 1 being that he kills her as well straight after the wedding.

Option 2 being he keeps her around and when the kingdom inevitably revolts against them due to Preminger's shitty decisions he escapes and leaving Genevieve behind on purpose to satisfy the angry mob.

Option 3 being that he keeps her around and keeps manipulating and pretty much abusing her until she's a shell of her former self and he's in total control. Until Annaliese and Julian presumably return and have him arrested for his crimes (because let's be honest there is no way Preminger is going to even remotely treat Genevieve well in a marriage, as he's just horrible and so egotistical)

So yeah, that's what else I could think of.

So I've been reading a few of the Barbie Princess and the Pauper essays that are floating around the internet (mostly Tumblr) and I've got a theory that Preminger killed the King, before the movie takes place.

First of all I'd like to give a lot of credit and a big thank you to @rin-the-shadow for their brilliant analysis of the timeline of the movie that helped me massively in figuring out when Preminger would have killed the king for the theory. Since the ages of the characters are not stated anywhere, or even implied, within the movie itself. So there's not a lot to work with in terms of timing. 

I'd also like to thank my two close friends who helped me come up with this theory. 

So first for a bit of a background, in the movie the King isn't mentioned at all, and we only see him once at the beginning of the movie, which is in the prologue. From this evidence, it's incredibly safe to say he is dead by the time the movie takes place. Now If we look at Rin's analysis and the evidence they use from the movie, they state Preminger comes into the role of Queen Genevieve's advisor when Annaliese is around 6 years old.

From here the timeline becomes messy, as we don't know when Julian becomes the tutor to Annaliese. I'm assuming that he becomes her tutor at least 3-5 years before the movie begins. This is a bit clearer if we again look at Rin's analysis, in which they theorise about the difference in time between Julian and Preminger's arrival at the palace: as they state with more movie evidence in which Julian can remember living in the village. As well as this Annaliese and Julian are really close at the beginning of the movie, which shows they've gotten to know each other really well. So I think that Julian is a bit older than Annaliese, not by much though, so I'm going to say he's about 2 years older than Annaliese.

This leaves about 5-6 years maximum for Preminger to get rid of any evidence he may still have lying around from him murdering the King, from him coming to the castle to Julian's arrival at the palace.

So for the theory itself, I think that Preminger murdered the King a year or two into his role as the Royal Advisor. Now you may be asking why Preminger would kill the King?

That's because I think the King was incredibly close to discovering Preminger's plan to steal the gold, so he decides to murder him in order to truly get rid of him, and keep his plan secret. This is because the King was probably the smartest out of him and Genevieve at the time, therefore the King would question Preminger more. And lets be real for a moment he probably realised that Preminger is clearly evil. While Annaliese would be about 7 or 8 according to the timeline, so she'd be too young at the time and less of a concern to Preminger. 

Now by doing this, Preminger in fact gets a few things out of murdering the king. The main one being that he can keep his plan secret much longer, allowing him a greater chance at succeeding. The second thing he gets out of this, is now an increase of power through Queen Genevieve.

Throughout the movie, it's shown that Preminger has Queen Genevieve completely under his thumb, a massive example being when he proposes to her (we'll be coming back to this piece of evidence later). And from this we can assume that for a while before the start of the movie, Preminger was essentially making the decisions for the Kingdom while manipulating Genevieve into agreeing with him. Or making it look like she's the one truly making the decisions.  (Because as much as I love Genevieve, it's clearly shown, at best she's completely dependent upon Preminger, and at worst dumb on her own)

Once Preminger kills the King this leaves grieving Annaliese and a vulnerable Queen Genevieve. She's now a widow, with a kingdom and a child to not only look after, but make sure she's an experienced heir to the throne. On top of that she's going to be grieving and that's going to make things a lot harder for her. 

This is where Preminger's manipulation of Queen Genevieve truly begins. Through her grief Preminger can manipulate her by making it seem like he's helping her work through her grief, while also making it seem like he's the answer to her problems of taking care of the kingdom. As a result this increases the power and wealth Preminger holds, whilst making Queen Genevieve completely dependent on him over time. 

This leaves the timeline looking like this: 

.Genevieve and the King become a couple

.Annaliese is born

.Preminger is hired as the Royal Advisor when Annaliese is about 6

.The King is murdered by Preminger when Annaliese is about 7 or 8

.Julian is hired 

.The events of the movie happen

All that is left now is to figure out how the King was murdered. Now if you've seen the movie or have seen a review, you know that when he has to, Preminger is 100% willing to murder people. This is shown when he tries to murder Annaliese and Julian by causing a cave-in, within the Royal Mine. Which happens because Julian and Annaliese are smart enough to realise that Preminger is evil. And by this point murder is Preminger's only option to secure his plan. 

The evidence is also important, as it reinforces how experienced Preminger is when it comes to manipulating Genevieve, because the next two scenes are when Preminger exposes Erika and then the proposal scene. The proposal scene shows how he uses Genevieve's own grief against her, to marry her in order to become king (and completely disregarding any emotions she may have about this situation). It not only shows that he has total power over her, since she doesn't even make a verbal response she just turns around and holds her hand out for the ring to be placed on her finger. It also shows that he is very used to doing this and knows that in this situation all he has to do is present himself as the solution to her problem. But this time he's gotten so desperate and thinks that he's won so he doesn't even bother hiding his evil intent from Genevieve. As by this point he's managed to figuratively and literally back her into a corner where he is her only option. 

Going back to how Preminger murdered the King, he has a few options for how he can do it. 

He can make it look like an accident or natural causes

He can make it look like someone else murdered him

Not care at all how it looks and get rid of the evidence later

Again from looking at the movie, when he tries to murder Annaliese and Julian by collapsing the mine, he at least tries to make it look somewhat like an accident (at least I think he does, please correct me if I'm wrong). So I'm more inclined to go with option 1 for his method. We also have to remember that the movie is set loosley somewhere in the 16th century. So there's more ways to get away with a crime, and it's before Julian arrives at the palace, meaning Preminger has less to worry about when he commits the murder. 

Preminger also seems like the type to not have much physical involvement in a murder, that is yet again shown in the mine collapse scene. So I'm going to say that Preminger most likely poisoned the king. 

This is because poison was widely available at the time, with apothecaries selling poisons as some poisons had functions apart from murder. This means that he can easily get it and get more if he ever needs to. 

So to summarise the theory, Preminger murders the King because he's coming too close to discovering Preminger's plan to gain power and chooses to kill him by poison. This leaves Genevieve vulnerable to Preminger's manipulation that while not making him just yet, gives him a bigger increase of power while pushing his plan further along. Then the events of the movie occur that force him to change his plans and in turn bring about Preminger's downfall and defeat. 

So that's it! Sorry this got a bit long. 

Thanks for listening to my rambles. 

[valtsv]

i really will never forget or forgive the tma fanon consignment of the entire concept of avatars to the hellish fires of the 'perfect victim/irredeemable abuser' dichotomy. i cannot even begin to understand how you could listen to five seasons of the podcast about how living and working within corrupt systems and institutions will lead you to face difficult, sometimes even seemingly impossible, choices where there are no good outcomes, no conclusions where everyone gets a happy ending and nobody has to suffer for it, but nonetheless both those choices and the consequences of those choices still matter, in fact if anything they matter even more in a world like that, and ultimately no one is exempt from having to make decisions that will affect them and the people around them and seriously consider those consequences, and come away from that thinking 'okay so these are the Good Guys Who Did Nothing Wrong Ever and these are the Bad Guys Who Ruined Everything And If We Just Get Rid Of All These Bad People Everything Will Be Okay.'

[genderkoolaid]

i think trans-affirming cisfeminism's problem is that it views trans people as a way of analyzing cis gender relations, so trans women are going from the status of cis men to cis women, & trans men vice-versa. there is no appreciation for "trans" as its own status, because that would require viewing transphobia as something the patriarchy does on purpose instead of like. something it trips into on its quest to oppress cis women exclusively. and this is also why by and large feminism (including trans feminists) has fucked sucked at talking about NB/GQ people's experiences without binarizing them

[cherubchoirs]

the first and lowest sphere of paradise manifests the inconstant in faith, just as the moon is inconstant in its phases.

[morelikebaldursgay]

Every time I struggle to understand how Gale is so arrogant and so low-self esteem at the same time I just think back to myself in middle school. Like yes his character is well-developed and multidimensional but also it is fundamentally neurodivergent mentally ill gifted kid who thinks they are so much better and smarter than everyone and everything would work better if they were in charge but also thinks that they are the worst person alive.

[transsongtaewon]

I don't think Yoohyun is agender I think he's gender apathetic. No he doesn't have a gender and no he doesn't really care. He's a guy by virtue of people calling him that so he just goes with it because it's not like he cares.

One time he walks in on Yerim doing her e-shot and asks her what she's doing and she says "I'm trans? You didn't know that???" and he say "no what do you mean"

And Yerim sits there for a second and contemplates if she wants to Explain Trans to Yoohyun of all people but they literally live together so maybe he should get the basics so she says "you know, because when I was born they said I was a boy but I'm actually a girl?"

And Yoohyun is like "what"

And Yerim is like "cause I feel like a girl"

And Yoohyun is like "what does that even mean"

And Yerim in her endless grace tries to explain "you know how when you were born they thought you're a boy and you feel good as a boy and if everyone suddenly started calling you a girl and treating you like a woman you'd feel really bad"

To which Yoohyun says "no, not really, why would I care what other people call me"

And then they stare at each other for a few seconds and Yerim decides that explaining "non-binary" or even "agender" to Yoohyun sounds like the stuff of nightmares so she just doesn't cause he seems happy enough as is anyway.

(also if she pursued this to the end they may get to a point where Yoohyun realises he's not actually Yoojin's younger brother so he couldn't call him hyung anymore and she thinks if that happened Yoohyun would probably spontaneously implode)

[t-u-i-t-c]

"You'll triumph someday, as long as you never yield. I'll take you on any time." "You never fail to piss me off, Geats."

[technovillain]

[asthedeathoflight]

It has always really rubbed me the wrong way how people wave away any harm Louis has done to Armand over the course of their relationship because Armand is older and stronger than him. To be clear im not arguing that their relationship can or should be viewed as "Louis is the abuser and Armand is the victim" but people act like Armand cannot ever be on the receiving end of any mistreatment from Louis just bc hes stronger than him. Like essentially your argument is that nobody can ever be abused by someone who they could take in a fight. Which is crazy. Thats the most surface level shallow understanding of the dynamics of abuse ever and yet i see it EVERYWHERE in this fandom. "Armand is 500 years old! He can fly!" Yeah and lifting weights famously makes you immune to domestic violence. Abuse, whether physically violent or not, is largely psychological. It's almost never going to be a matter of the abuser just being physically stronger than the victim. The end conclusion of this logic is that everything fucked up Louis ever did to Armand is Armand's fault, actually, because he should have just vampire powered his way out of the situation, which is literally textbook victim blaming. Can we please have a teensy bit of critical thinking here.

[birbnest]

I've figured it out, why I'm always a bit thrown about people defending Blitz this episode. Like don't get me wrong Stolas has not been perfect and has to grapple with his classism/etc. But like, in my head, I've always gone, 'but that isn't the point of this episode/fight/current conflict' but didn't really have the words to explain. But now I do.

Because, the whole point of apology tour (and everything that built to it) is that even if Stolas was a perfect boyfriend, even if they didn't have the complicated power dynamic and Stolas being really demeaning, etc, none of it matters because it would always have ended the same. Blitz would always set fire to the relationship the moment he confessed his love, it's what he did with Verosika after all. It's what he's implied to have done with more than half the people at the party.

Stolas could have been perfect, and nothing truly would have changed. Blitz right now is incapable of letting someone love him without lashing out. The whole prince thing is just a convenient excuse to yell and scream about, it's not actually the point. Like don't get me wrong, there's truth to it, but Blitz is weaponizing it to shove Stolas away. If he didn't have that, he would find something else to use against him.

I love Blitz, but he's a terrible person. His trauma only explains his actions but doesn't justify them. Apology Tour is the episode that finally shoved in his face his fuck-ups in all their glory, and gave him the wake-up call to finally do something about them.

[buffyspeak]

It's funny… I mean, even though I grew up here, I feel like a total outsider.