#like I'm sorry but

[dubiousculturalartifact]

'but eddie said he was straight'

if you gathered up 100 queer people who came out after age 30, and then asked them to leave if they had ever self-described themselves as 'straight' prior to coming out

you'd probably have an empty room

[saucerfulofsins]

Ngl at this point I'm going to need people to support their doomposting with actual and real evidence from the show that indicates that Buddie will not happen, because I can't find it.

[bulletbilltime]

The fact that Amberpricefield is relegated to being a non-canon ship is forever going to hurt me. I don't care that the canon literally makes it impossible! I want the lesbian throuple in my media NOW!

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Ppl who can't just enjoy an evil character, and think it's a moral failing if anyone else likes that character are exhausting, and I'm pretty sure slept through any lesson about literary understanding.

Yeah. I mean, it's fine not to enjoy evil characters, or any kind of character, for any reason! But... Yeah, while I don't love that trend of groups accusing each other of lacking media literacy because I feel like it often obscures the core disagreement and any difference of perspective people may bring to the table while both having genuinely interesting points to bring up, it does become pretty exhausting to be morally scrutinized about extremely tame opinions about extremely tame characters.

To me, liking Ganondorf is like... barely above liking Bowser in terms of moral despicability? Not to equate the two at all, as they are very different beasts, but we are talking about a videogame villain made to vaguely scare off children/give them a thrill about feeling like a hero. At the end of the day, this is the purpose Ganondorf serves in the story: being the fairytale evil king that you can defeat and still feel good about yourself (then Wind Waker arrived etc etc but even then, he served that purpose and extremely well even in Wind Waker).

But I don't want to underplay the weight of what I'm generally saying on this blog either and I don't want to hide behind "lol it's just a game for children" when it's an argument I hate to see deployed to undermine other people's feelings about the series. I do come at this character with loaded language and pretty heavy terms, and I'm not sure I would have gotten this kind of hostility if I had just twirled my hair like the rest of the (much more reasonable and less invested) internet, and kept some terms I have used (justifyingly so imho) out of my virtual mouth. It can provoke. It's meant to. I understand these feelings can take some strange shapes when they lash out undigested.

THAT BEING SAID.

Okay, sure. You want me to acknowledge the evil bad guy is evil? Okay! Let's do it, right now. Ganondorf commits atrocities. He does weirdly specific and horrible things to the gorons. He kills people and he kills half-gods. He is tyrannical. He is a conqueror and a warlord. He is a thief. He is self-obsessed and entitled. He beats up kids. He practices necromancy. He terrorizes his followers. He lies and manipulates. If you look closely he is even associated with, like.... the devil....? like maybe there's even "demon" somewhere in his title card?

Okay. Very bad. Evil. Horrible nasty man. Weird eyebrows. Arguably weird name. One star. Blocked and reported.

Okay.

...now what?

Like, what do we do from this point on? What did we learn? What did we ponder upon? What touched us, or moved us, or made us see the world in a slightly new light? Are we reassured? Do we sleep any easier at night?

I know it doesn't always have to be the point of art, to question everything constantly. You can go to art for reassurance and simplicity and easy, comforting thrills --and Zelda is great at doing this as a series, it's a huge part of why I love it. It feels safe, and that's such a nice thing to rely upon! And you can stop there!!! It's allowed!!!!!!

But if you go out of your way to shame people investing and questioning this piece of fiction they love in their own way because it threatens your moral safety and the simplicity of your relationship to that media (and/or the world at large)? That becomes a you problem my (gender neutral) guy, and by that I mean: you becoming a problem for others to deal with, regardless of Circumstances.

[dingoat]

The same I do for literally any book or article or blog post. I start reading it and if I decide it's good enough to read I keep reading it.

Another AO3 thing I’m curious about, how do yall decide if something is good enough to read? Usually I follow a rule of 1 kudos for every 10 hits. One because it’s easy math and two it’s yet to fail me. Thoughts? Do you just go for it and pray it’s good?

[teaboot]

Sometimes I think a lot about my mom's cat

My mom's cat is a common domestic shorthair we found on the side of the road as a kitten

Regular cat, not a maine coon or one of those massive breeds. His mom was smaller than a loaf of bread

But in a sort of a Clifford The Big Red Dog situation, he grew super fast, and really really big, and took a super long time to stop growing

Worried that she was overfeeding him, she eased back his portions, but he stayed a massive round baby

When he started having kidney problems, she took him to the vet.

The vet took a look at him and said, "holy fuck, what are you feeding him", checked the nutritional listings on his chow, and told her "Yeah, maybe he's reacting badly to the amount of grain in this, try a meatier diet"

So my mom wound up special-ordering this specific high-protein prescription cat food made of like. Kangaroo meat or some shit that cost like sixty bucks a bag

And, as typical act two in an episode of House, he somehow got worse on the fancy specialized stuff that was supposed to be Primo Athlete Olympic Feline Blend

Like. WAY worse. His guts were inflamed and his kidneys were shutting down and he was all sore and HE WAS STILL HUGE, just miserable and sad

So shetook him back to the vet, where they had to help him pee (he was apparently close to bursting and had some kind of blockage too) and went "Yeah no this is NOT normal and we don't know what's going on, we're gonna do some tests but in the meantime you should go back to what he was eating before, at least that wasn't actively killing him" so she did

And he still wasn't great, but he also improved

And so they take his blood and do an ultrasound and a couple g's later she gets a call back like "this is gonna sound crazy, but we want you to put him on a low-meat diet. Just the least amount of protein and iron and shit. We need you to find the grainiest, filler-iest dollar tree kibble available and give him some of that bad bad shit"

And my mother is a woman of science. So she did

And he GOT BETTER

His energy picked back up, inflammation went down, he started drinking normally again, got back to pissing like a fuckin champion

And so it turns out that out of all the random ass freeway bonus cats we possibly could have scooped out of a ditch, WE got the one-in-a-million freak of nature with a SPECIFIC genetic defect that means a paleo protein free range diet is essentially poison and he THRIVES on cheap ass garbage

Like. He medically NEEDS junk food

I dont really understand how that works, but i cant argue with results.

If we had four of him, they'd outweigh my mom. And he's FINE

Also blind, but that's unrelated

Im not using him as a symbol or a metaphor or anything. I just keep catching myself thinking about my mom's Big Fucking Cat

[bookwyrminspiration]

sometimes a theme recurs in your work without your permission. and sometimes it reaches a threshold where you're like. well now i think this is saying something about me against my will. don't know what though

[captainjonnitkessler]

Sometimes I wish we would start calling out the performative radicalism on this site for the poser bullshit it is. "Remember, it's always morally correct to kill a cop!" "Don't forget to firebomb your local government office!" "Wow, it sure would be a shame if these instructions on how to make a molotov cocktail got spread around!"

Okay. But you're not killing cops or firebombing government offices. You are posting on a dying microblogging website to a carefully-curated echo chamber that has radicalized itself into thinking that taking the absolute most extreme position on any subject is praxis but that anyone discussing the most practical way to effect actual change is your sworn enemy. You do not have the street cred OR the activist cred to be talking about killing cops, babe.

[spinostarz]

if i have to experience men only being nice to me or being my friend because they have a crush on me one more time i fear i will become an actual villain.

[riddlerosehearts]

animation being treated like a genre instead of a medium is something that actually makes me go insane. beauty and the beast is a romance. the emperor's new groove is a buddy comedy. big hero 6 is a superhero movie. moana is an adventure film. the lion king is a drama. treasure planet is sci-fi. if i was talking to someone who hadn't seen these movies before, and they weren't specifically interested in animation as a medium, then i wouldn't necessarily assume they'd enjoy all of these. and that's just disney movies! try telling an anime fan that fruits basket and fullmetal alchemist are the same genre and see how they react!

[beif0ngs]

THE BOY SAVIOR ⏱️ THE BOY WHO SHATTERED TIME

[legallybrunettedotcom]

doing shit alone will have people acting like you're the bravest human being who has ever existed. "omg I could never 😖" I'm eating. I'm going to the cinema. it's not a fucking papal conclave.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

You are allowed to exist alone in public btw. You're allowed to go to the movies alone and go out to eat alone and hang out in a park alone and go for a walk alone and whatever else. It isn't weird or creepy, it doesn't make you lonely or a loser or whatever. You are allowed to just exist as yourself.

[podcastwizard]

this will not be a bridgerton blog but for the foreseeable future i will not be thinking about anything other than bridgerton

(original post @romanceyourdemons)

[callonpeevesie]

I'm onto something I'm telling you

[egophiliac]

bring back zooterkins, the best 17th-century swear word

I don't normally do Just Characters Swearing, but. ...this kind of wrote itself and then wouldn't leave my head. it comes from both a piece of character-writing advice that has always stuck with me, and also my conviction that Leona is 1000% funnier as a character if his dialogue has to stay G-rated. let Kalim say fuck, but don't let Leona say bastard.

(I'm sorry)