#no really ignore this

[babbelswoofominides]

I can't be the only one who's tired of the "Everything is Problematic™" culture that we're currently experiencing, right? I'm talking about the "call out" posts where people say shit like "if you still like Harry Potter you're a transphobic asshole and worse than JKR!". This over simplifications dilute the meaning of "transphobe", and the actual transphobes benefit from the loss of importance that this accusation carries.

People think they're being so intelligent when creating these ever-changing, pointless rules: "don't buy from Zara, or you support genocide!", "don't listen to Taylor Swift, or you endorse climate change!". I've heard it all. If it takes so little to be labeled as such a horrible person, people will dismiss the whole problem. How can they take you seriously if you say these things un-ironically? Also, it's uncanny how these radicalized """activists""" sometimes overlap beautifully with the far-right wing politics. Take anti-shippers who want to police fanfictions: their idea of "regulation" (censorship) aligns perfectly with the far-right bigots.

And if a problem is just mildly severe, to show you care about it you don't need to get Big Mad. There is a whole sea of annoyance in between silent acceptance and full blown rage (which is rarely productive if not directed wisely). I'm wary of performative rage over trivial matters, because it rings hollow, like the person is more interested in virtue signaling to their peers than actually doing something concrete about it. Even if it's a Big Problem, raging left and right can be powerful but short lived.

I think this is the problem with today's activism: short lived bursts of rage don't cover it. You need to work, work, work. Even silently, even with no social recognition. Activism shouldn't be a stage where you perform an angry speech, everyone claps and you're now Morally Sound. That's how far right wing nutters operate: get Big Mad about every thing (whether big or trivial), Perform your Anger, rinse and repeat. The difference is they probably know what they're doing, creating a climate of perennial anger. They know how to direct that anger to the vote. They make a mountain out of a mole hill so that it's easier to solve the made up problem, thus creating cohesiveness. Meanwhile, left wing "activists" making up new rules and moving the goal posts are just creating problems whose solution just furthers the divide. Finding enemies everywhere, inside and outside of our circles, is not useful*.

That's why this left-wing "activism" often morphs into a witch hunt: people feel powerless, so making up new rules to follow and hunting down the "infidels" gives them the illusion they're doing enough. Take the campaign against JKR: boycotting anything HP is not enough, the goal posts are moved every time. Now you're promoting transphobia if you partake in HP's fandom (almost no one talks about why JKR is fucking problematic anymore, so the "normies" will hear this kind of outlandish shit and dismiss the whole matter as internet pishposh).

Instead of keeping up the battle against the actual transphobes, which can feel frustrating because they seem untouchable, you settle on hounding anyone who doesn't adhere to the made up rules that become more and more strict. Or even worse: you don't accept someone's help against the terfs unless they adhere strictly to the made up rules.

Eerie how on one side they're ready to accept actual human violation rights, meanwhile the other side can't even accept that some people are against terfs but may still like HP, and so schism after schism happens. That's why left wing activists lack cohesiveness. They can't accept you're not a bad person or a terf if you think slightly different from them. No one collaborates with the other anymore.

HP is just one of the many examples that describe this mechanism. Apply this to all modern politics and you've got the root of the matter. ---

*Ironically, far-right wing nutters are more cohesive because they tolerate anyone in their group, they act like One Big Solid Unity against the rest of the world. That's why you'll see terfs shack up with nazis and misogynists, if it means they will get rid of trans people. Chilling to the bone, but their strategy is effective in keeping their ranks united, because at the moment they're only lashing outside, not inside. It'll of course be a harsh wake up call when the leopards eat their face lmao. Also, what I'm saying is not "tolerate Actual Bad People to win a battle", but: "get angry at the Actual Bad People, don't invent new enemies!" ---

I don't know how to end this, and it's not lost on me how complaining about complainers makes me a complainer too lmao, but sometimes a rant is just a rant and you need to vent.

[zoomingupthathilla]

dear brain, if you could kindly eff off.. thanks

[pangur-and-grim]

I updated the breeder on what's been happening, and she called Belphie out for being bald

[counting-stars-gayly]

I’m actually LOVING how Rick Riordan, and the other writers of the show, took his initial concept of a Percabeth rivalry fueled by that of their parents and kind of turned it on its head?

Now, instead of Annabeth being wary of Percy because he’s a son of Poseidon, he’s wary of her because she made a callous impression on him. They get off to a rocky start even before finding out who Percy’s father is, and when they finally do, Annabeth doesn’t care. Instead of them fighting because of who their parents are, they’re fighting over their own opposed worldviews.

Then, instead of them arguing over which of the gods is cooler and who was right in the story of Medusa, they realize that, just like Medusa, Annabeth is a victim of her mother and that, unlike Medusa, she is a far kinder and stronger person, unwilling to repeat the cycle of hurt. They realize that, like his father, Percy often acts without considering potential consequences and that, unlike his father, he is a far kinder and stronger person, willing to step up for someone he wronged and whom he cares about.

Instead of Percy and Annabeth’s rivalry being focused on that of their parents, it’s focused on who they are, themselves. But the path to friendship is still the same: a realization that they have each other’s backs, no matter what, because they’re not their parents after all.

[nessieartss]

Another sibling au featuring megumi (they finally met and sukuna already made yuuji cringed)

Also happy new year!

Part 1 | Part 3

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[provendermalkin]

there's not a lot you can count on in this world but one thing never changes

[colourmornings]

Quick note on Charles's speech for fic writers or anyone interested, really.

Charles uses tag questions, where he ends a sentence with a question, doesn't he? I see a lot of "innit" thrown at the end of sentences, which is right, sometimes.

There is unfortunately grammar. First off, if the main verb is negative, the tag will be positive, and vice versa.

When the main verbs in the sentence is a form of "be" or a modal verb (must, could, would, have, will, can, do etc), he's going to repeat that same form at the end of the sentence. An exception to this is a positive main verb of "I am" in which case the tag will be "aren't I?"

"[You're] Not going back to hell, are you?"

"I wouldn't wanna be dead with anyone else, would I?"

"No, we're not going anywhere, are we?"

"Well, I can't see where you're pointing to, can I?"

"We don't want a repeat of the infamous puppy debacle of '94, do we?"

He uses "innit" a lot less than people think, I think. It took me a while to find examples of him saying this, I ended up having to search a transcript. It follows the same rules as above, except the subject is always a thing, or the pronoun "it," and the main sentence is positive, so that the tag can be the negative "innit" (isn't it). *Edit* "innit" is not used as a question! It's mainly used to reinforce a talking point! (Thank you @elizabear). While the other tags are like rhetorical questions, this one is flat tonally and can end with a period, too.

"Boxing's a gentleman's sport, innit?"

"Magical void, innit?"

"That's the injustice we fight, innit?"

When the verb is not one of those above" he uses a form of "do."

"Well, that sounds a lot like you, doesn't it?"

"Wanna keep things professional, don't I?"

Charles also ends a lot of sentences with just the word "yeah."

"Psychic thing makes case work go a lot faster, yeah?"

I am usamerican, but I have a masters in Linguistics. People who actually use tag questions, though, please add on or correct me!

[jessiesjaded]

Losing my mind at seeing Twitter Discourse where a girl talks about being a waitress and how sometimes people don't acknowledge her or reply to her at all when she speaks to them and how it feels dehumanising and all the people in the replies are like UM. SOME OF US HAVE /SOCIAL ANXIETY/ You're literally an evil person for wishing people would treat you with bare minimum decency :/ like idk how to tell you this but if a waitress asks how your evening is while she's taking you to your seat in a restaurant and you're gonna pretend saying "Fine, thank you" is a horrific arduous task like. Maybe you're just a massive cunt? Maybe you're just an insufferable fuckwit?

[starmocha]

Love and Deepspace + Texting BF "I want a baby" meme

[clouvu]

Cooking up an older Clervie outfit design so I don't have to keep drawing her looking like her child self but Long

[geraldtheoceanman]

i am never making something with this much detail ever again

[crystallizsch]

do you shake the tweels to make them glow or do you crack them like a glowstick

thank you @comedydoctor18 😭

[pangur-and-grim]

Belphie has gone from chasing after Grim and leaping over her back like a show pony, to being suddenly quite shy and giving her (too much) space. so now it is part of my daily routine to hold him up and let her lick him all over his bald scalp, so that Belphie realizes she loves him

[sunderwight]

Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.

Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!

Binghe is not happy about this.

But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.

Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.

When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.

While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.

Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.

[zarla-s]

I posted the last page of Handplates a year ago on the 19th! It feels both like a lot of time has passed and none at all... sometimes it feels like an entirely different time in my life, and other times like it never left. It's complicated! It's always lingering in the back of my mind though, waiting for a stray idea for a side comic or something.

Anyway I figured a nice rainy view on the surface would be fun. Nothing like a rainy view! Got to use some rain brushes I picked up recently as well.

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