#more than I could ever do

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[ruporas]

need to exist in your warmth (id in alt)

[becuzmdsaidineededpersonality]

I don't know. I think it's a little disingenuous to portray conversations and frustrations from lesbians and sapphic women as just "petty infighting" and that these arguments are meant to breed "frustration and resentment".

Amazon Prime has removed several queer women from their adaptations while the queer men are still included.

21/30 of the canceled queer shows between 2020-2022 were about lesbians, sapphic women and/or WLW. (And this isn't even all of them...)

It's also been pretty well known that outside of a few exceptions of adaptational shows and films, shows and movies that focus on lesbians, sapphic women and/or WLW tend to get far less advertising and less diversity in the types of advertising that are given. I think a really good example of this is how much and how many different advertising methods were used for the adaptation of Red, White, & Royal Blue (a one-time summer film that is now getting a sequel that has nothing to do with the original source material) and A League of Their Own (a show with multiple episodes that was originally slated to have more than one season before the creators were ultimately screwed over by Amazon and it was cancelled after one season)

Don't even have to do a deep analysis. Just count the number of videos on Amazon's youtube channels RWRB has in comparison to ALOTO.

We're not mad and bringing this up because we think there is "too much gay man rep" because this is a pointless argument and a stupid one because what does that even mean and why would these standards of "too much" not apply to all the straight male characters out there? Also, I am pretty sure Asian gay men and Black gay men and Arab gay man and trans gay men and so forth and so on do not feel there is "tons of gay rep for them!"

We're also not mad and bringing this up because "certain content with your identity blowing up but it doesn't feel representative of you, isn't a genre you like, or is made by straight people / those not of your identity."

Now, are there people on places like twitter who will never be happy with any kind of lesbian, sapphic, and/or WLW representation in any storyline and literally are unable to accept the concept that "no, not every single storyline with a lesbian and/or sapphic character is going to align with your experiences" and will say things like "there has literally never been lesbians in (insert genre here) and when someone provides them with examples, they get defensive and shift the goal post because "well that genre is stupid and so and so ain't even a real lesbian so it doesn't count"? Sure, but should they really get to be discussed with any sort of validity when there are genuine points to be made about systemic discrimination and underfunding and undervaluing of lesbian, sapphic, and/or WLW representation in comparison to gay, achillean, and/or MLM representation...and when these arguments and evidence and discussions come up, it just gets brushed away and not taken seriously and literally nothing is done about it?

In fact, a lot of the canceled shows I am defending and talking about I don't even like because they are...well...not my thing.

And one of the problem shows mentioned, the Invincible adaptation, I actually enjoy for the most part. But as another fellow gender media studies researcher who is way smarter and better than me said, it's both possible, and even necessary, to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects, and blatantly straight washing a lesbian character and a lesbian couple is a huge problem and I can and should speak out about this. And I will!

Now, I do agree with the overall message of this post. Consume media outside of your own genres to see more rep you want to see. The real issue is there not being enough representation in general. Yes, yes, yes. All good and correct things.

But it is beyond frustrating when every time this conversation comes up and lesbians like me point out the lesbaphobia and sexism against storylines revolving around lesbians, sapphic women, & WLW in many different facets that ultimately cause real world effects...I can't stand this framing because it ignores the larger picture and allows this stuff to be considered normal and expected.

Also, in what world is there more WLW representation than MLM representation in animated shows?

In kids shows, sure. But adding in adult animation?

Harley Quinn, Hazbin Hotel, Tuca and Birdie, and Arcane are four shows out of hundreds that tend to be male dominated and focus primarily on male storylines. Also, they suffer from the "later season sapphic trope" (with the exception of Hazbin) which while not an issue in and of itself, should be included in this conversation. No, not every person is going to like every single one and not every single one is going to be the "gold standard" when it comes to gay male rep...but if we are talking a pure numbers game...it's probably not even going to be close.

And speaking of adult animation, I often use Q-Force as an example of subtle lesbophobia presented in lesbian representation. The main gay male couples get tons of sex scenes, get to tell sex jokes...while the two main lesbian couples can't go past holding hands and a quick kiss (maybe, I don't even think they kissed but just to be sure) If you ever want to see some of the stuff I am talking about, watch that show and you will see. (now it is still a legit fun show too and I like it but again...the whole "it's both possible, and even necessary, to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects")

I think a way better example to point to would be AAA studio video games because while m-spec and bisexual characters outnumber all LGBT representation in AAA studio video games, removing them from the equation and not including NPCs and putting the lesbian and gay male representation of protagonists side by side, this may be one of the few media categories where lesbian rep outnumbers gay male rep, and that is an issue and should be discussed.

But maybe I am wrong and there is a whole list of lesbian and/or sapphic characters in adult animated shows I am missing...this is more of the anecdotal part of the rant rather than the "here's proof this is happening" so take this with a grain of salt."

I see a lot of fighting online when it comes to gay rep. With extreme people on either sides but at the end of the day the real issue is we just don’t have enough lgbt rep. Plain and simple.

Some mediums / age demographics tend to lean a little more in one direction then the other, so if you only consume one you can feel like you are missing out (ie : there being more wlw content in animated shows and there being more mlm content in YA books)

And it leads to a lot of yelling online. People saying gay men get too much rep, people saying lesbians get too much rep. People wanting to see themselves in a medium they often consume and either getting straight content or content about lgbt not like them.

Or certain content with your identity blowing up but it doesn’t feel representative of you, isn’t a genre you like, or is made by straight people / those not of your identity.

It can lead to feelings of frustration, anger, resentment and being left behind. And I see it also leads to soooooo much infighting. When at the end of the day there just isn’t enough gay content.

It’s something that has to be sought out, even if it’s easier now then ever and we have access to stuff old and new. It’s still not enough.

[aethersea]

I do think Blazing Saddles handled its one depiction of native americans very poorly, and the full extent of its representation of chinese workers on the railroad is they were literally just there. not even one single speaking line. unclear if this is worse or better than the redface.

it's fucking phenomenal at lampooning antiblack racism though. extremely blatant, extremely funny satire, which is constantly and loudly saying "racism is the philosophy of the terminally stupid at best and morally depraved at worst, and we should all be pointing and laughing at them 24/7"

plus the main character is a heroic black man who has to navigate a whole lot of bullshit but is constantly smirking at the extraordinarily stupid racists and inviting the audience into the joke. the one heroic white character is a guy who was suicidally depressed until he met the protagonist and they just instantly became buds, and he's firmly in a supporting role the whole time and happy to be there. the protagonist saves the day with the help of his black friends from the railroad, and uses the position of power he was given to uplift not only those friends, but all the railroad workers of other minorities too, in an explicit show of solidarity.

anyone saying "Blazing Saddles is racist" had better be talking about its treatment of non-black minorities. it had better not be such superficial takes as "oh but they say the n-word all the time" or "they have nazis and the kkk in there!" because goddamn if that's the full extent of your critique I very seriously suggest you read up on media analysis. there is too much going over your head, you need to learn to recognize satire.

[courfee]

17 December 1975 / 15 May 1976

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 331

Demon twins? Demon twins. 

Damian? Good at the assassin side of things, at least for a four year old, but Danyal? He’s okay, but he’s far better at things like poisons and bookkeeping. Which is honestly? Okay. They’re the League of Shadows, and sure a majority of the members are assassins, but it’s definitely not all there are. So? Danyal starts getting medical training. 

Not to say that either of the boys don’t know their fair share of violence and healing- it’s just better to let them play to their strengths. One doesn’t keep a league over centuries if they just have one type of warrior, or even just warriors. A variety is needed. 

So one gets trained more towards the business side of things. Damian may be better at wielding the weapons and killing- even if neither have had their first kill quite yet- but Danyal shows far more proficiency at acting, at masking who he is and gathering information. 

Damian, when he’s first sent to their Father, doesn’t mention his twin. Not because he’s jealous or hates him or anything like that. You just don’t talk about someone in an undercover mission in the League, and it’s not something he realizes isn’t a rule everywhere. 

Needless to say, the Bats have more than a mild freakout the first time Damian mentions a twin who will be coming to the manor now that his mission is over. 

[the-chattering-tower]

I'm losing my mind over the 100 mil dragon having finally happened

Like. I wasn't around for it but Holy Shit. If you're not into IDs I need you to understand how special this is. We went up a digit. All IDs are 9-digit now

For us to see an event like this again there would need to be another 900 million dragons born, which is an absolutely mind-boggling number and also completely out of the reasonable lifespan of any website

This Is It. Some of you were here early enough to see the rollover from 7-digits to 8-digits, or even 6-digits to 7-digits and so on and so forth. Most of us weren't. But you were here for the dawn of 9-digits and you will never see something like this occur ever again for as long as Flight Rising exists

Just. Holy shit man. We're all hatching 9-digits now and this is just gonna be Normal

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for an incredible 500 days of love and support. I offer you: answers to questions that no one has asked.

(As always, more can be found in the tags <3)

[vaguely-concerned]

huh. you know something I just consciously put together for the first time about caterina and lucanis' relationship is that through the game we get to hear them talk about each other a lot, but we get very few chances to hear them speak with each other at any length at all. contrast it with other companions whose storylines have elements of 'believed lost/long time no see relative returns!' like bellara and davrin, where we get to see both of them have several pretty in-depth conversations with cyrian and eldrin. hell I think even rook talks with varric longer in the regret prison scene than we ever get to see lucanis and caterina interact directly.

(and when we do see them interact, it's mostly one-sided -- it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, caterina who is doing most of the talking and giving all the orders, as he ruefully observes is her wont after murder of crows. including jumpscaring him with 'you're first talon now btw' and the shocked pikachu face in five acts he goes through in response lmao. perhaps it's more accurate to say that she talks at him and he reacts, than that they talk to each other much.)

it has such an interesting effect too, because in deliberately denying us direct insight or experience and only having this mosaic of description from each of them to go on, as well as forcing us to pay attention to the negative space of what is carefully not said, it's evocative along the same principle that you never actually show the monster in a horror film. if you've read the wigmaker job you have a clearer image of the more uh. worrying elements at play here going in, but there is something fascinatingly insidious and naturalistic in the way it's 'hushed up' in the game itself. she has his complete loyalty both as a member of her house and, more importantly, that of an abused child to a parent figure. he readily admits several times that she's a difficult person to live with, an even more difficult person to be loved by ("even for me. and I was her favourite")... but never once does he actively blame her nor truly conceptualize that he has every right to do so (that he can be angry with her and still love her, because whether he should or not he unavoidably does), or that she might have acted differently than she did, that she made a choice every time to hurt him. even affectionately he speaks of her as a force of nature, an act of god -- something that can't be reasoned or pleaded with or resisted, something you can only hope to navigate with as little pain as possible and pray to survive. let yourself get carried away by the riptide, resisting it will only make it worse. you don't compromise with a hurricane, you just try to find the best shelter you can and cross your fingers while you wait for it to pass and be calm again.

love is that hurricane. you do whatever she asks. you earn her continued affection day by day by never letting her down. you only want the things she tells you it's okay to want and cut everything else away preemptively. ("A wyvern tooth dagger?? I loved wyverns as a boy --Caterina would never let me have one of these, though." and as we have all wept and gnashed our teeth over, it never even OCCURS to him that he's a like thirty-five year old adult man who can buy himself any dagger he wants at any time. she said he couldn't have one. so he'll never have one. that's just how it works. and maybe if Illario could just accept that and find his peace with it like I have, this whole thing wouldn't be so difficult. oh lucanis.)

such is the price -- and the cost -- of being loved by her, it's a loan on which the interest will never stop piling up. you have to keep paying it down in perfection every day if you want to keep it. who got the worse deal there: the grandson who has abandoned everything else in life to live up to that and mostly succeeded, until the day he's so burned out and broken it threatens to no longer be an option, or the grandson who can never seem to scrape together enough worth in her eyes no matter how he begs, borrows or steals it, how he hustles and plays dirty?

one of the worst things that can happen to anyone is to be loved by a selfish god. another one of the worst things that can ever happen to anyone is to not be loved by a selfish god. (hope that helps, boys!) even in betraying everything else, Illario can't bring himself to hurt his grandmother, because that would defeat the whole point. who would he defiantly be proving himself worthy to, without her. in love, devotion, submission, hatred, frustration, bitterness, everything is defined in relation to her, you can spot the gravitational force of it through how the dellamorte family move through time and space. she -- her love and regard and attention -- is still the sun both of their worlds orbit around, even as adults. the game might never tell you outright 'she used to beat and starve them growing up. for their own good you see, so they'd be strong (and broken down enough for her to build them up again however she wanted but I'm sure that's incidental)', but if you know even a little bit about how these dynamics can work the writing is on the wall everywhere you look and all the more unsettling for it.

follow lucanis' freeze-logic and fraught interpersonal catch 22 irreconcilable mixed emotions problems back far enough, looong before the ossuary entered the picture, and you start to see caterina's ghost around every fucking corner. she is so proud of him. (well, she would be. she made him. she forged exactly the knife she needed and it rests willingly, devotedly, in her hands, it would return to her every time because it doesn't know love as anything but to be a knife. his tama never taught him how to be anything else. his biggest fear with her is that she won't even want him back, the way he is now.) to the best ability of her soul, whatever parts of it survived a lifetime of crow politics and 'five children, eight grandchildren, only Illario and me left now', I think she really does loves him. he certainly loves her, with all the sincerity and artless desperation of a child, of the little boy he was once. and what she's done to him (and to illario, for all his shitty gremlin scar-ass antics lol) is awful. the harm is real, and the love is real, and trying to find a way for these two truths to exist in the same space is driving all three of them their own individualized forms of insane. you know. the way only family can and so often does lol.

through implications and short glimpses and having to put the pieces together yourself, you can have the feeling that there is very genuine mutual love and attachment in this relationship... and that beneath that there is something so profoundly wrong. and the sneaking '...oh shit it gets worse the longer I think about it' horror of that is more effective for me at least than the stark in-your-face presentation of the facts of the matter could have been. the love is here. the love is here. it only ever makes it worse.

[the-muppet-joker]

How are you?

I am doing the best I can given the circumstances! (Horse dead, scammed thousands, got bald)

[egophiliac]

redesigning my headcanon for Sebek's parents, based on important new information (SCALES)

(you can't see it but they're both wearing crocs)

[inkskinned]

the problem is that being single is seen as the consolidation prize, and not the natural neutral state of being-a-person. at the end of the movie or the book or the poetry, there is a person waiting for you at the altar, and they love you. if the play is a comedy, everyone gets married. the metaphor is about how you are not-whole. the metaphor is about how everyone is going to be happily-ever-after. the metaphor is that romantic love is the most important resource on the planet, not just all-love. all-love is not a thing, that is a disappointment. the treasure is not the friends we made along the way. the treasure is the girl you landed.

the metaphor is that you cannot be alone, that means you are broken. are you getting over someone? that is acceptable, you can be getting over someone, but not for long. you must be single because you would rather not be single. you must be single and looking to not-be-single. you must want to date, eventually.

friendship and community are never seen as being equal-to or even-better than romantic connection. that person is your one! you need to find them. you need to hunt through the sand particles until you can shift out some kind of gem. this is regardless to your own experience of the beach and the sun. you need to be somewhere with someone.

if you are taking this time alone to heal, that is so sad. everyone gives you this little pitying look. the understanding is that you are not actually happier than you were before you were single. it is seen as a sort of pity - oh, you are choosing yourself, making yourself the priority? - that isn't quite right. you must mean that you are making yourself ready for the right person. you are just laying the bed better this time. open up your heart. you'll find them, we promise!

what do you mean you're really-truly genuinely-very happy? you are probably misremembering what it was like to be in a relationship. and besides, once you meet your person, that time will look grey and bland and wasted. your person is the only way for you to see in color. so what if you have taken this time - for the first time in your entire life - to actually-for-real do the fucking work. you can be proud of yourself, sure. but the way we need to know that you got better is that you get a partner. you're healed enough for the next bad part!

people don't choose to be single, they just say they're choosing to be single - they actually mean "nobody wants to date me." it doesn't matter how many people you have gently rejected or how many times you've talked it over carefully in therapy. what matters is that you are single, and by all accounts - that means you are something worth our pity. your successes and life all seem pale in the sunlight. sure, you have done amazing things and finally found your way in life. what matters is that there wasn't a person in the room with you while you did it.

you want to tell them - that's the whole thing. i didn't know how to be alone in the room. i didn't know how to handle the silence. every moment was so sharp, and i kept choosing the wrong way to close the door. i have spent my entire life in the empty well, living in the ricochet of someone else's cruelty. for once i have built myself a ladder. for once everything i taste is all mine, every bite of sunshine and laughter. i have learned how to sleep out in the open with my memories. recently, they have started to purr.

your father rolls his eyes. listen. this isn't about you. i just want a grandchild in my future.

[varilien]

you know me, in the way that matters most.

[itspileofgoodthings]

one of the things that continues to strike me on reread is how much the character of Darcy, and Austen through him, finds Mr. Bennet dead. And how much Elizabeth, in growing and changing and discarding her past blindness, has to move past her way of seeing her father and thus of seeing reality, because the two are connected! Darcy’s letter exposes her father’s flaws to Elizabeth in a way she’d never been able to see before. Most especially the way his laziness and neglect of his own gifts have hurt his family and that ultimately he doesn’t. care. Not enough to change. It literally says that she comes home from Hunsford and tries to laugh at her sisters’ and mother’s folly (the way she used to; the way her father has taught her to by example for her whole life) and she can’t anymore! It sticks in her throat. She is grieved by the failures that she sees in him, all the more so because she IS his favorite and she loves him! And the thing about Mr. Bennet is he never changes. The Lydia/wickham situation exposes to him sharply his own conduct and the consequences and he feels it! Because he is neither stupid nor unfeeling. But he, like everyone, has free will. And he chooses not to change when the opportunity presents itself. He even jokes about how quickly his feeling bad will pass and how soon everything will go back to normal, to his laziness and his selfishness. He is set in his ways and he serves as a contrast to Elizabeth’s personal journey because he embodies a version of a person she could have become and was in danger of becoming if her only goal at all times was to laugh at and judge people from the sidelines.

[utilitycaster]

I think the two most obvious foils for Ludinus Da'leth across all of Critical Role are Essek and Keyleth, which is both fascinating given how different those two characters are from each other (Essek being a foil in terms of isolation, single-mindedness, harm in the name of ambition, knowledge, and other such wizard themes; Keyleth being a foil in terms of people who have lost something at a young age to the gods and bear resentment for it, political leadership, belief that the world belongs to mortalkind, and longevity) but also it's extremely funny that they both are the partners of Liam's character.

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

one morning you cling to satoru’s back and sleepily plead for him not to leave for work and he feels closer to killing the higher ups than ever before