#just like fucking always.

[bi4bisamjess]

God not to restate the obvious but supernatural’s ending was such bogus bullshit that it makes my head explode. Just. The Winchester brothers have experienced death. They’ve escaped it too many times for it to have any weight or meaning. Why should Dean stay dead? There’s no real reason. What makes this time stick other than the end of the narrative?

The Winchester brothers have experienced death. They’ve had plenty of grief and tragedy. There is no narrative. God is dead. Why not have them live? Why not have them be happy?

[ottosbigtop]

I think we as a society should bring back brotps. I think we should be weirder about characters being friends the same way people are weird about ships. Make those two characters who interacted once or twice besties. Make it difficult for them to get rid of each other even if they want to. Go nuts

[inkskinned]

she's singing in another room and my dog is asleep at my feet. my grandma asked me why i haven't found a man yet and i laughed. oh, you know. i like my house clean.

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would know someone for only 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.

it's worth it for this moment, i think. my lover is still humming the same song she's been singing for four days straight and i don't want to kill her for it. her guitar is beside my bed. her toothbrush is in my bathroom. in a few moments i will make us lunch. we are lucky enough to have found each other. it is lucky enough to be in love.

[beepboopappreciation]

Is this anything

[lotus-pear]

charm stat at debonair ‼️‼️

[crows-home]

part of my nimona viewing experience. idk why but i got super emotional in the first five minutes.

ID by @peachygos

[ID: A comic juxtaposing screenshots from Nimona 2023 and drawings of a person watching the movie. The first screenshot is Ambrosius's introduction; he grins at the camera as the news anchors introduce him, his name in big print on the screen. The person watching thinks with a bored expression, "Ah. Ok. This guy is gonna be the jackass. Typical golden-boy stuck-up prince that thinks he's better than the underdog. I see where this is going.

The next screenshot is of Ambrosius and Ballister on the platform above the arena, Ambrosius doing his news anchor bit and saying, "Aaand will Ballister be broody on the biggest day of his life?" Ballister laughs at his antics. The person watching now has a small smile, as they think, "Huh! Aw, they're actually nice to each other and are friends! I wasn't expecting that, that's nice-"

The third and final screenshot is a shot from behind of Ballister leaning his head on Ambrosius's shoulder. The caption reads "the knighting ceremony is just moments away." The person watching now has a touched, soft expression, like they're holding back tears. They think "OH." as a partially transparent doodle behind them bends over crying and blubbering, with another doodle showing their heart shot through with an arrow. /end ID]

[ash-and-starlight]

humble contribution

[brainrotcharacters]

the easy grip on the knife. the leg over the seat. the hand over the other seat. the sassy "come get it" move. you know the bitch is smiling behind that mask even as he said the line.

[collgeruledzebra]

the thing about trying to recommend fiction podcasts to someone who isn't familiar with them is that not only are so so many genres represented but also the level of production can fall anywhere from "basically an audiobook" to "major motion picture minus the pictures"

[trickstersaint]

i want to introduce you all to a project that is very close to my heart... or lack of one. anyway. for anyone who has ever wanted to play a poem. i'd like you to meet aromanticism

(link opens itch.io - she'll run on html in your browser! please be nice to her!)

[juney-blues]

when you're part of a group with structural power over another goup, you really do gotta just learn to say "i am not exempt from 'fuck 'em' when relevant" whenever someone expresses frustration with you or people like you.

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[bingsoo-jung]

my funny controversial veilguard opinion is that while i get why people are saying the 'sexy lof' armor is orientalist and i do think there's a convo to be had there... that armor is also based off of actual clothes people historically wore in southeast asia. like this

is absolutely based off of these

and while these are stylised forms of the outfit it's not because of the skin being shown. the women wearing shirts underneath are not wearing it as thai people wore tabengman historically. because historically we didn't really wear a lot of shirts, shirts were not legally mandated clothes until the 1940s. my thai grandmother is older than that. in fact a lot of asia didn't get around to stigmatizing and sexualizing breasts until the 1800s or later (like you can find photos of korean women in the 1900s with their breasts out and that was fine and normal culturally). the reason these are stylized though is bc they're made of silk and they're wearing brocades. most people would've worn this in plain fabric without gold brocades bc silk and gold are expensive.

and, to be clear, a lot of both the LoF and qunari armors and fashion is based off of historical southeast asian fashion. isabella is straight up wearing a hmong necklace.

the qunari ropes are also almost certainly based off of muay boran kard chuek which is this old way of binding your hands with hemp ropes in thailand for boxing. you can also see that in qunari concept art they've drawn them with intricate knots that are very chinese in origin, they're wearing armor in rattans weaved patterns. (i'll also point out that it was explicitly said in the past that people from east tevinter, which is closer to seheron, look like dorian, and dorian's va is half indo-fijian and half malay. that man belongs to the south pacific.)

and yes, we could have a whole conversation about specifically choosing to look at these armors instead of other southeast asian armors. but i think a lot of people think the armor is based off of western fantasies of belly dancer costumes... which while may have played a part, it's also very clear to me that the devs have used a lot of southeast asian inspiration for seheron, rivain, and part of tevinter.

[hugs-and-stabbies]

The self-awareness on this guy 😞 someone pls send him an "are you bi?" quiz STAT

[philsmeatylegss]

If I were Dan and Phil I would never hard launch because it’s so embarrassing that we were right. Like what do you mean you were so in love a bunch of thirteen year old’s clocked it? I would never give that satisfaction.

[giantkillerjack]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

Plain-text version:

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

P.S. Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.