#not the topic here lol

[spiritedstars]

I know I've seen people talk about this but Eris's beast form? I feel like we should talk about it more. I can see him having a sexy dragon-like form.

[emjaydoubleyou]

this post is fearmongering. the results of this study are concerning and should definitely be a matter of public discussion, but this is certainly not the conclusion the researchers came to.

the point of the study was to assess the risks of exposure to toxic metals- something one of the co-authors notes are “ubiquitous” fwiw- via menstrual products. Their research confirmed that these metals are indeed present in tampons, but no further conclusions are drawn. it is possible the metal entered into the cotton from the soil, which is a well-known phenomenon; cotton is so good at lifting heavy metals that it has actually been suggested as a part of the solution for revitalizing polluted ground.

the authors conclude with an acknowledgement that the study should be repeated- their sample size was 60 tampons- and a suggestion that further testing ought to be done to indicate whether or not these metals can even leech out of the tampon in the first place, let alone whether or not such leeching could occur at levels deleterious to human health.

there is, in fact, a body of research- too small, for sure, but much larger than this single study- indicating that long-term proper tampon use has no observable negative impact on health. i am grateful and thrilled that more research is being done and i hope that this study is the first of many on this line of questioning, but i am really frustrated at this post and the response it got.

obviously, if this study alters your approach to menstrual health, more power to you. consumers should be informed-risk-takers, and menstrual health is double-obviously a very personal choice. but it definitely wasn't the researchers concluding that you ought to “avoid using tampons at all cost," only this tumblr user did. the lead author of the paper, in fact, specifically says that she hopes people do NOT panic about the results.

(the notes of the post were disappointing. people affirming that they knew they were right to be suspicious of tampons all along, or even recommending alternatives that actually have very little to no research regarding the safety of long-term use, etc. it’s a different conversation, but categorical distrust of tampons is old-school misogyny. you certainly shouldn't wear them if you don’t want to, but there is nothing inherently scary or wrong about them, and people who prefer them are not being reckless or crass.)

((if you're really worried about exposure to heavy metals, you may want to turn a critical eye to fast fashion, as an aside))

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[jade-of-mourning]

it's finally done, and it's probably the gooiest garbage i'll ever make.

credit to my new buddy @i-love-tdp-if-you-can-tell for doing almost all the characters' flat colors!! i am so so so infinitely thankful to them bc otherwise none of the other efforts of making this would have happened. between the lineart, backgrounds, shading, and touch-ups, these five pages have taken years off numerous braincells' lifespans, and without their help, may have annihilated my entire brain capacity.

if you like, please reblog! we put in a Lot of time and effort into this!

you would think that between last time (one other event) i tried comic-ing and now, i would've learned to not handwrite the text, but alas...

thank you for answering my plead for help, sky! and for managing to work around my design inconsistencies and sketchy lineart <3 ik you said you didn't need anything, but if you ever decide you want an art, hit me up any time :)

and to the tdp fandom, whoops… sorry for all the requests rotting in my inbox. it was a fun september and a fun six years of lurking, but alas i think i will be bailing for the moment. maybe you'll see me around.

[vaguely-concerned]

literally never am I getting over the unexpected and acknowledged throughline in this game that 'part of the reason lucanis is so good at what he does is, surprisingly, that he has a frankly remarkable capacity for empathy'. his instinct for it is so strong that it even kicks in looking at actual demons he's been culturally conditioned to think of as mindless monsters and lets him realize that they are just as innocent in the middle of this horror as every other prisoner, which is what helps him survive in there and reach an understanding (and even a warmth beneath it all!) with spite, when spite was at his most terrified and confused and needed him. it makes him an incredibly kind and devoted friend, and a terrifying enemy. shorn of most of the compassion that goes along with it in his private life, he uses it in his professional one as one more knife to kill with as easily as he does in SO gently and softly helping to untangle lace harding's people pleasing problems with her. so long as the three categories of people -- family, enemies, targets -- stay distinct and separate in his head, this seems to be working out swimmingly for him! (well. that's probably what he'd tell you at least lol it's certainly helped him survive and do his job I'll give him that.) the MOMENT the lines start to blur, he is fucked. this dude was compartmentalized to hell and back long before the ossuary.

(he shares the 'incredible insight into people and human nature -- as long as I don't have to interpersonally engage with and adapt to it on the spot. b/c then you'll see the biggest mess you could ever imagine' trait with merrill. which does make quite a bit of sense in that they're written by the same person and also in my estimation a not entirely dissimilar shade of autistic lol. also yet another tick on the 'lucanis - iron bull parallels' tally haha. 'ben-hassrath, kid. we can use anything.' what if your circumstances and upbringing forced you to turn some of the kindest fundamental instincts inside you into tools for violence and you only got to keep guarded scraps of it for yourself. what if you're so fucking scared it'll break bad inside you some day and turn you into a monster and you'll end up hurting the people you love. saddest freeze slash dissociative trauma response handshake meme duo To Me)

[taniatas]

[sandeewithtwoe]

Buddies!!!

UF papyrus belongs to Underfella

[pantsinperil]

hua cheng walking back his marriage proposal is not even a case of 'mission failed, you'll get em next time boss' it's him reloading checkpoint in the middle of a boss fight he was winning because thought he was losing

[incesthemes]

there is interesting johndean subtext and insinuations across kripke era, usually through an antagonist insinuating parent-child sexual violence in order to exert dominance over dean. this type of mockery exploits that ambiguous relationship between john and dean and reminds dean that he never had a normal relationship with his father, and that makes him gross and wrong. it doesn't actually matter in the end whether john was sexually abusive to dean. the core of their relationship was damning enough: dean was made to take the place of john's wife—to comfort john and raise sam—while simultaneously being his son. the codependent nature of their relationship implies the incest that underscores their dynamic. again, this is regardless of what literally occurred between dean and john because there is enough doubt toward the nature of their relationship that multiple antagonists can use it against them.

sonwife, brotherhusband—dean is stuck in a liminal space between family and lover and is unable to put his feet firmly on just one side and instead has to accept both together or abandon both together. he doesn't get to have a relationship with his family without it being simultaneously incestuous. he plays the role of wife to john and mother to sam as mary's replacement; he therefore becomes more than a son and transcends the boundaries of the familial into the incestuous. it's baked into the dynamic and he can't hope to escape the liminality in which he's stuck without abandoning his entire family altogether.

this ambiguous relationship is further acted out with sam, where people perceive them as lovers rather than brothers; where their mutual devotion trumps, neglects, and disallows any other close relationship outside each other; where their physical closeness is viewed through an unusually sexual lens despite no literal sex acts between them taking place on screen. once again dean is stuck in a liminal space, paralleling the ambiguous and uncertain relationship he had with john.

in the end, sex (and sexual violence) is just a symbol of this codependency and uncertainly incestuous dynamic. sex acts in kripke era end up being symbolic: misinterpretations of sam and dean's relationship; accusations of sexual violence; literal, on-screen sexual moments between the brothers and someone else. it's a literary device that highlights the incestuous themes of the show. dean hand-picks women for sam to fuck because it allows dean to be symbolically part of sam's sex life. henricksen accuses john of raping dean because it is a symbol of the unhealthy, codependent relationship dean had with his father. the samulet stays on during sex because sam is symbolically integral to dean's sexual gratification (seen too in the way both dean and cassie in 1.13 appear to kiss the amulet at least once in the dark room). sex is used to signify more than what's literally on the screen, and the connections between the literal sex acts and the blurred lines of dean's familial relationships allow for a reading of incest between both john and dean and sam and dean.

it never mattered whether johndean or samdean had a sexual relationship in the canon because that was never the point. the point is the liminality that permeates the narrative. sam, dean, and john all stand upon a threshold between acceptable and taboo. the point of it all is the doubt and anxiety, the are-they-aren't-they that is never answered. the absence of incest within the text invites the understanding that the incest was, in fact, always there.

[jinkamuraisqueen]

a few of you asked to see blushing jin so i'll share the king himself blushing<3 and a few others (but i was playing around with their expressions)

AAAAAAGGGGHHHHH LOOK AT HIM!! LOOK AT MY HUSBAND!!! HE'S SO SO CUTE SUFGUGSLUGLLHAS I LOVE HIM SO MUCHHHHH YOU DONT KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE HIM

bonus because i was doing this for a few friends in discord and might as well send them here for alan, rui, and haru's lovers~

[arcanegifs]

This is the last time I'm going to be annoying about this, I swear.

A few examples of that I, a gifmaker, personally love seeing under the tags:

Analysis of said scene, show, or character, especially the long ones going in depth that span like 1000 words

People saying how crisp the GIFs look and how nice the coloring is THANK YOU. ILY GUYS. That's always huge praise for me.

Reacting with how emotional you got with the scene. How painful and emotional or how touching a scene is.

People making funny jokes, memes, comments, etc.

Literally ppl horny posting LMAO. It's super funny to read and I love seeing all the unhinged comments.

Seeing how much you loved the show and its characters

Things I don't like seeing under the tags. And these are just two very specific things:

How much you hate the show, how much you think a scene is bad, how much you hate a character, the ship, the creators, etc. or how much you dont like this ship anymore, calling a ship horrible because ____ reasons. OKAY! I get it! But I don't want to see that. Make your own hate post on your own blog! You're free to have an opinion on how much you hate something. Just do it on your own blog.

Asking why I leave out certain scenes out, why I decided to gif this scene, or not gif more of these characters. Sometimes, I'm just exhausted. I can overlook things. You guys don't know how draining making gifs can get to me, especially the scenes that are really long. But I do it because I LOVE Arcane, the story, and the characters, and the particular scenes that I make gifs of. I have my own biases too. Of course I’m making them first. Please, just make them yourself instead of complaining under the tags of my edits. Yes, I can see them.

Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly appreciate everyone who supports and follows the blog. I want to make a million more HQ gifs of this amazing show, but sometimes, the very rare negativity can still get overwhelming, to the point where it demotivates you.

Arcane is extremely special to me because it's such a fantastic show, and that alone motivates me in trying to create more GIFs. Honestly, if it was any other fandom or show? I would've probably left already. Arcane is THAT great.

I know the block button is there. I use it too, but sometimes, the amount of effort and time you exert to create FOR FREE just isn’t worth it. And that’s why gifmakers and creators stop making things for fandom. It’s not fun anymore. It’s not worth it.

Some people think that making my style of GIFs is easy. Then great! Since you think so, then do it yourself and help create for the fandom too! I wholeheartedly encourage you to do it!

TLDR: Don't be rude on people's fanwork, especially when they are created FOR FREE. If you don’t like their fanwork, you can make them yourself.

[nvoc]

GENSHIN IMPACT ; natlan 01 - the night kingdom

[scourge-sympathiser]

SCOURGE SUNDAY 010/???

classic

[wickmitz]

every time i reread lackadaisy i become stronger about my conviction that fans are WAY too harsh on mitzi and misunderstand her completely. you go online and see people treating her like satan incarnate when she’s genuinely just a person who’s grieving and lost. her and mordecai are two sides of the same coin and it’s crazy that people are kinder to him ( when he kills people, brutally, all the time and without remorse ) but never to her … like the things i’ve seen people accuse her of is baffling enough to make me wonder if i’m genuinely misreading the text tbh. even her character sheet on the lackadaisy website says this :

cannot stress enough everything we’ve seen from mitzi and know about her, both in the past and present, proves she was a tender hearted sort of person. she is not ruthless or cruel naturally, and has to continuously decide to commit to the harsh edges she’s desperately trying to wear. she’s selfish, yes, and does have her own myriad of flaws -- but she’s hardly some manipulative mastermind with no warmth in her heart. and knowing this makes her arc and her scenes ache all the more for it tbh

[littlestar000]

Resting.

[sysconversationalist]

Tired:

- “Anti” vs “pro” endogenic (or any other “are these people valid” debates— validity means nothing, if someone’s here then they’re here).

- What can/can’t happen in someone’s own innerworld/headspace.

- How any type of system members (littles, introjects, persecutors, etc) are “supposed to be/act”.

- If CDDs need trauma to happen. (What are we fighting about with this?)

- Whatever the “main topic of the day/week” is in syscourse (because I’ve yet to see one that hasn’t already cycled through multiple times before).

Wired:

- Discussions about identity labels & how they fit into the system experience (terms for sexuality, gender, etc).

- Experiences with dissociation, derealization, and amnesia in CDDs.

- Grounding techniques & system discovery strategies.

- Co-morbid neurodivergencies and/or disorders often seen in systemhood (ASD, ADHD, OCD, etc).

- The link between attachment styles & dissociation, particularly CDDs (possibly other forms of systemhood as well).

- Ways the online system community can further learn to respectfully engage with one another and expand our understanding as a whole.

- System journaling/note taking tips.

- Stories from systems further along in their healing journey (those who have implemented functional multiplicity and/or have gone through final fusion, in particular).

- Comparing experiences in non-combative/competitive ways (talking about systemhood without trying to dictate the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to have said experiences).

- Really, almost anything other than what syscourse is right now.