#now people can filter

[marimbles]

if ive been at a restaurant cheerfully and enthusiastically waiting for the chicken parm to be served for like 5 hours, am I not allowed to be disappointed that it turned out to be salmon instead. sure salmon is really tasty to some people but what if I just don’t like salmon. why are they serving salmon in the chicken parm restaurant? “it’s such an interesting surprise that the chef brought out salmon! I can’t wait to see what’s for dess—” no. bring me my chicken parm .

anyway that’s how I feel in the miraculous ladybug fandom rn lol

[lunarblazes]

today martyn said that (in his canon) the watchers have been purposefully trying to keep grian from being boogey and he also said that grian, as a watcher, also feeds on the fear of the players. therefore it can be concluded that by depriving grian of the boogey curse the watchers are trying to starve him and keep down his power levels in this essay i will,

[ahollowgrave]

hey come here

reblog your own work. reblog it as much as you want. the dashboard is chronological (mostly) so you gotta put it back out there!! ok bye

[dopamining]

While I never expected a good game, I at least hoped that some of the remaining veterans on the writing team would make sure that the game stays consistent in terms of lore.

It's not hard, I said, as someone who keeps a wiki of their OCs and worldbuilding, so I don't contradict myself. It's not hard to give even incompetent gig writers you hire for the job a guideline. You've had over a decade to write it, of course!

WRONG.

On top of glaring incompetence in something as basic as keeping a logical flow in dialogues and scenes, somehow you manage to break your own canon every couple of minutes of spoken content?

How did any of this go through review? Was there even a review? Did anyone care to make this game at least consistent?

And at the same time, somehow, they managed to actively avoid adding new lore to the game. Everything that Veilguard reveals has already been foreshadowed or half-revealed in the prior games.

And the plotlines that DID have unresolved mysteries? The titans, the world outside of the effects of the veil? The elven uprising, the flocking of Dalish from all over Thedas to Solas' cause in Tresspasser? The hints of a war about to break between Tevinter and qunari? Briala's countermeasures in the eluvian guerilla warfare between the factions? The grandiose mystery that has been hinted at, with Morrigan's sisters, the ancient dragons, all being connected to the "blood of the earth" and the Titans, and the blight, AND qunari? The plotline hinting at the death of the archdemons somehow damaging the world irreconcilably and being something to be avoided? Enchantment? Kieran?

Damn it, even just the real and gruesome picture of Tevinter slavery and the existence of the Black Divine and Minrathos' policy of worshiping solely the maker and considering the worship of Andraste s heresy!

Off all these the only thing that hasn't been chucked out of the window and into abyss is a wheel of cheese.

Edit I: Oh and if you thought drug addiction of the Templars is still a theme in the game, don't worry, they forgot to write that in.

Edit II: I was wrong! They didn't forget to write it in. They deliberately wrote it out for the Northern Templar order and turned them into cops.

Edit III: After going through Codex entries, I would like to make mention that there IS a Codex that talks about the differences of worship between nations. However it does not change that the writing outside of the Codex entries is breaking that lore.

Additionally I made mention that they forgot about the outside world. Again, there is a Codex entry that mentions that lore, but it seems to be incomplete as it erroneously states that people have been turned back and there are wild stories circulating. People have in fact died in storms, and survivors that made it back were all driven insane. There is no mention of it. My speculation over the years was that the effect of the Veil is local and I was expecting THAT alongside the "veil measuring devices" and the Orb to play into the study of the Veil by the Inquisition remnants and other interested parties. Alas, this plays 0 role in the plot.

As does the mechanic of belief as a power source, in fact! You know, the one mechanic they hinted heavily as something that could easily change the nature of beings closely connected to the Fade? Remember the Avvar?

Or the Chasind? Hello? Does anyone remember the Chasind? (Who, I notice now after rereading the wiki page on them, are written in an archaic form of xenophobic stereotypes towards northern eastern europeans. Wow.)

[princeofcyberpunk]

hi motorcity fandom is this anything

i was not expecting the cartoon about teens with cars to genuinely change how i view the world

[vynnyal]

Turns out Sunlit Trail isn't quite done just yet, so after all that they just send you to a dead end 😂

[good-to-drive]

Abuse, Silence, And Why Kevin Can Fuck Himself

I recently finished watching Kevin Can Fuck Himself on Netflix, and, aside from being the most brutally honest portrayal of domestic abuse I have ever seen, I discovered a beautifully written examination of narrative as power and silence as abuse and how this manifests in our larger culture. 

Without going into too much detail, the show is filmed in two distinct styles that are interleaved throughout each episode to tell a cohesive story. Allison and Kevin’s relationship as seen by the rest of the world is told through a multi-cam, laugh-track sitcom that depicts a very typical “goofy husband, shrewish wife” mainstream comedy. Allison’s life through her own eyes is told through a single-cam drama/thriller about Allison planning to murder Kevin to escape his abuse. 

It’s an absolute masterclass in screenwriting, but more than that, every episode explores the difference between truth, fact, and reality, and how none of these things are quite as much or as little as story. But while the process of transforming the chaotic and plotless reality of life into a story is as involuntary and essential as breathing, misogyny and the degradation of women is just as ubiquitous in our society, and a story that exists at the expense of another person’s lived reality is a refutation of their humanity. 

It's also just a great show for anyone who likes to engage with history (or reality TV or true crime or “real life stories” in general), because while we have to tell ourselves stories about her own lives, we have to tell ourselves stories about other people as well. Eternal silence is narrative death, and the perpetual silence of an unspoken narrative is often the last death we can visit on someone whose story we’d rather ignore. 

I also pulled up some books – Lolita and Disgrace – that dealt with similar themes, but from the perspective of the abuser. And what strikes me the most is that, across three beautifully written stories about narrative and silence within a culture that normalizes abuse, Allison, who began her story within a state of narrative death, was the only point-of-view character who had any chance of surviving. 

One of the main themes of Kevin is that a compelling story is often a story that reinforces what we already believe or like to believe, and while the story may be factual and true it often also exists at the expense of someone's lived reality. The exact same series of events can be a silly joke or a harrowing tale of abuse depending on the lens through which we view it, but historically we've only been willing to see the multicam, laugh track, sitcom perspective on unbalanced relationships.

The alchemical process of turning a series of disjoint facts and experiences into a narrative creates something new and compelling, and erases much of what previously existed. In this way, it’s entirely irreversible. We spin our experiences into a very thin thread, a story we can tell ourselves that elicits something within us, something we need in order to live with the complex, uncertain, and unsatisfying reality of life. In think in many ways the thing we elicit in ourselves is truth. But truth is both more and less than fact, often more a reflection of our own beliefs and desires than the events of our lives. And in telling that truth we may never stray from the facts, but we almost by definition cannot give voice to another person’s reality.

There's a scene in season 2 of Kevin when Allison is hit by a door – a la the classic excuse – because of Kevin’s carelessness. And while he absolutely did not hit her, the way it's written is such an incredible allegory for how Kevin has curated their story and curated their friends' and family’s perceptions of their story such that even if she tells everyone the exact, unvarnished truth of what's happening to her and begs for help, they will only be capable of seeing the laugh-track, sitcom, “Kevin is a harmless goofball and his wife is a total shrew” perspective on the events of their lives. 

As so often happens with abuse, their friends and family saw Allison being hurt because of Kevin. But the alchemy of creating a narrative around Kevin and Allison is irreversible, and the series of events they witness can only be spun together to a joke, an accident, a silly, childish mistake. Allison’s reality, Allison’s pain and fear, is completely elided. Like a lost sound in the middle of a sentence, her experience goes silent, and their larger understanding of her relationship never has to change. And you feel so acutely how Allison lives her entire life in that silence. 

Storytelling is human, it’s essential, there’s no other way to engage with our own lives. And it’s not lying. It’s never lying to tell the truth. But it doesn’t reflect every reality, either, because another person’s reality can’t be reflected within our own narrative, because that’s what it means to be another person. To spin two different threads.

And because narrative is the essential process by which we understand our reality, denying someone their own narrative, or denying that this narrative be heard, is inherently abusive. To allow someone a voice is to give them humanity, and to suppress it is to strip that humanity away. 

Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee, follows the story of a professor, David, who rapes a student and then fails to protect his daughter, Lucy, from being raped by intruders in their home. He destroys his daughter’s life  – not through failing to protect her, but through twisting her rape into a story about why the rape of his student wasn’t wrong. The main theme of the book is generally considered to be exploitation, but Coetzee doesn’t deal with the exploitation of the rape. That’s too direct, too immediate, too easy for the reader to understand as misogynistic and wrong. Rather, Coetzee delves into “the innocuous-seeming use of another person to fill one's gentler emotional needs” (Ruden).

The rape is how we understand David as a fundamentally exploitative person, a person who denies others their humanity by converting them into a vessel for his own desires, who erases their voice in order to speak through them and give himself the things he needs. And that’s how we recognize that the way he absorbs and claims the stories of his daughter and his student is another kind of violation of their humanity. Another way of turning women into vessels for men’s pain and fear and need. 

What’s fascinating is that David's student finds her voice – files a complaint against him – and is eventually able to continue with her life. The woman he raped is less damaged by him than his own daughter, because she was the woman he couldn’t permanently silence. 

In Lolita, another brilliant novel about abuse, dehumanization, and storytelling, Humbert turns to the reader at the end and says, “Imagine us, reader, for we don’t really exist if you don’t.” 

It’s not that Humbert knew he was fictional, but that he knew everyone was fictional. Believed the entire world only truly existed in his own mind, because anything beyond that was irrelevant to his needs. He coped with the collapse of his ability to dehumanize Dolores (who he called Lolita) by demanding that his voice be resurrected. Demanding immortality. Demanding his narrative exist in another person’s world, and thereby be given the existence and humanity that Allison and Dolores and Lucy and David’s student were denied. 

Pushing his needs, finally, onto the reader, because we are the only person he has left, and a person like him can only exist through the use of another. In that way, Humbert was powerless. In that way, Kevin and David were powerless, too.

In Disgrace, David’s dream is to write an opera, and at the end of the book he realizes he’ll never finish his magnum opus. He’ll never be able to terminate the process of converting himself, his world, into a story. But he does learn to decenter himself in that narrative. And it’s when he loses all fear of death, and any conception of the self, that he gains the ability to give dogs – who he generally equates to women – a voice within his opera, his life’s work. 

It’s in death that we discover our true unimportance as human beings, that we learn to let go of vanity and our conception of the self entirely. And David had degraded women so thoroughly in order to justify how he used them to meet his own emotional needs that it was only in losing all value for his own life that he could gain the ability to see them as equal voices. To actually put those voices into his own life story. It's at the cost of himself that he allows other people to truly exist, in the death of the self that he finally allows the world to exist outside of himself. It’s almost a positive character arc. Almost.

When Kevin finally loses the ability to abuse Allison, he, like many abusers, loses all desire to live. His world was built on a structure of superiority and inferiority, on beings and vessels, on the inherent value of men and the inherent meaninglessness of women’s lives. The system on which he based his entire reality has been destroyed by Allison’s declaration of the self. And, if he was a being because she was a vessel, then in losing the ability to treat her as a vessel, to fully and completely dehumanize her, he has lost his own humanity. 

It may be perfectly summed up here: “Become major. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise, what is life for?” (Coetzee).

If you’re not to be a main character, if there indeed is no split between major and minor characters, between people and the paper dolls that populate their story, between living beings and the vessels into which they pour their need – what is life for?

Nothing. At least, not for people whose narrative must exist at the expense of another. 

And that’s why I say that only a narrator like Allison could survive this kind of story. Despite beginning her story trapped in eternal silence, her reality fully elided no matter how immediate and obvious it became, Allison was the only point-of-view character of any of these three stories who didn’t establish her power through the degradation of another. Who didn’t conceptualize the world via being and vessels. Whose narrative didn’t exist, by necessity, at the expense of another person’s humanity. Whose thread could exist in a larger tapestry without destroying her sense of self.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s not generally a likable character. She’s misogynistic, cruel, selfish, jealous, desperate, afraid, and in pain. Like anyone in an abusive relationship, she’s not at her best, and she’s often pushed to do things that are ugly and disturbing because she’s simply been pushed too far. 

But, for me, the power in her character is in how her last scene never felt like a final scene. Her story didn’t have to be killed, her conception of the self didn’t have to be killed, in order to reveal the brutal reality of stories twisting and intertwining without any inherently superior truth or narrative among them. Allison’s story was one of declaring herself. And that’s why it didn’t feel like it ended at the end. Instead, this felt like a beginning.

[belfry-ghost]

small crops of each wip

"but where's jason" go in there -> hades post

[puckpocketed]

So do you actually believe PLD is a good player or is that part of the bit?

The PLD Post

i spent a good 2 days giggling about this to friends. i cant tell if ur a curious caps fan, a person who knows me from my other teams, a disgruntled kings fan (i’ve mostly ruled this out because im pretty sure i know all of the active ones on here) or WHAT. but i’m laughing. the tone of this ask is hilarious and vaguely accusatory but i will take it in good faith and answer <3 tl;dr yes and no. he’s better than people think he is rn, but he’s likely never going to live up to the potential of his tools unless something . idk. recalibrates his entire being. who knows!

i was working on something longer and more complex but i thought about it for more than 5 seconds and i REFUSE to go hockey-bro mode and pull out the microstats and i don’t wanna make this into a full on PLD manifesto. so. caps girlies (gn) HERE are your adoption papers under the cut!

if you are looking at pierre luc dubois who is 6’4 + 220lb and thinking “Oh he’s a power forward” i have to inform you he is in fact THEEE smallest mouse to ever play hockey in the whole world and in all of history. he sips nectar out of a thimble and sleeps curled up in a match box and goes fishing in a boat made from nutshells and twigs . he’s big, but he sort of plays small.

this is not necessarily a bad thing — he relies on foot speed and skill over hitting.

he can throw hits but prefers to stick check. he leverages his big frame to guard the puck and to defend, and it makes him simultaneously VERY effective and very much what i like to call a Nexus Of Crime. he is either drawing ten thousand penalties because people have to do something to stop him from driving the net with speed OR he is taking ten thousand penalties because he gets eager in the corners.

PLUS he’s huge and refs do just assume he’s committing a crime when they can’t see what’s going on <3 hence, Nexus Of Crime! if there’s a penalty he’s probably involved LMAO

not a “dirty” player by any means. not physical unless he decides he wants to. and there is no violence inside of him unless he’s deeply horsebonded to his team <- IMPORTANT re; playoffs aspirations. you won’t see him put himself on the line simply for the love of the game, he HAS to be committed to the team.

to be committed to his team… i’m honestly not sure what that takes. i’d guess a combination of knowing his role on the ice and in the locker room (this was very unclear on lak) consistency of messaging from coaches (also seemed to be an issue on lak)

i know nothing about caps coaching or management or the team vibes but i’m sure you can fix him <3 i’m ready to fall in love and ride this team to the sunset

this failhorse will NOT shoot the puck and if he does it will be the saddest soggiest most pathetic shot you’ve ever seen. you will tear your hair out in chunks if you watch him expecting an elite goalscorer.

he’s a pass-first guy. likes to drop pass! likes to drive play from the middle but is also capable of getting pucks off the boards. he needs a finisher on his wing. i could pull up stats here, there are stats to be pulled up, but i know this in my HEART from watching dozens of kings games: he would have had 10-15 more points easily if he wasn’t stapled to the 3rd line and had better finishers. many times i watched him tee up a very good opportunity only for his guy to miss the net or fan or just get knocked off the puck

individually, he thrives in front of the net. his ass is fat and he’s about to use it to screen the goalie. hes good at catching loose pucks in the crease to send them home <3 see his performance at worlds. he scored basically all of his goals right up there!!

most media coverage/narratives will tell you his point production dropped off bc of effort (which is true) but even the MOST resentful kings watchers will say pld wasn’t given his best shot playing with inexperienced+fringe nhlers, being line shuffled the moment he got a bit comfortable, and also not getting ANY net front time on the lak pp. i factor this into all my judgements of his performance.

He’s def earned his diva rep LMAO!! this is personal opinion here but he seems like a sensitive and easily rattled little clam… like he will have a couple of bad shifts and if there’s nobody there to shake him out of it he’ll lose his grasp on the game and play like shit <3 a rolling joke on kingstwt was figuring out which PLD we were getting that game, and you could tell by his 5th if he was switched on or off!!

they hate him for this but EYE think this is nothing new for athletes and if he can consistently stay in the zone he’ll probably be pretty good. mental fortitude of a wet tissue my beloved….

moving onto the Vibes section!! he was always good humoured in media availability and didn’t shy away from scrums even when public opinion soured against him and critiques of both his hockey and his character had reached a fever pitch. i like this about him. he always gave authentic answers and tried his best to accomodate them, and never hid behind his captains.

he gets along quite well with teammates despite the narratives. no seriously!! some of the the kings had a hang out during off-season right before they went to worlds!! there’s bisexual lighting!!!!

there’s interviews from old jets teammates that are just like. “he used to turn up at my house with his dog and text IM HERE with no warning and that’s how we became friends” or “his obsession with euro soccer teams bewitched me”. he had control of the aux cord. he was a den mother and planned group gatherings. a genuine sweetheart to every teammate he’s ever had!!

I don’t think he’s some. idk. secret 100 point producing star 1C. but i truly believe with the right environment he’ll probably hit 60 points again.

thank you for your time if you made it this far and i hope to see you all in the trenches (caps lb) next season 👍

[bitedownme]

This meme haunted me for two weeks just so you know. Now it will haunt you all too!

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Do y'all think when Rangi was running around the estate, she had a literal rainbow flying behind her nyancat style? And that's how everyone could tell she was gay?

[blood-orange-juice]

You are all going to block me but I just realised that I do low-key ship Aether/Lumine.

Hear me out.

It's the plot of so many myths. The best known is, of course, Izanami and Izanagi's story (the whole reason why siblingcest is so popular in Japan. same level of cultural importance as the madonna/whore complex for Christians), but there are also Fu Xi and Nuwa, Sun and Moon gods of the Inuit mythology, a bunch of Greek gods, a bunch of Egyptian gods too iirc.

Old cultures that had god-kings (some dynasties in Egypt and, as we discovered recently, Ancient Ireland) considered marriages between siblings a norm for them specifically and something to be frowned upon or at least unusual for everyone else.

You can't convince me the twins were not god-rulers in some faraway world (they also found it so boring that they don't do it anymore. actually, I'll stand by this headcanon even without shipping them).

Celestial beings that already are one and the same in some sense. Twin stars.

The symbolism just does something to me.

I wish I could say this is not about boring human sex (they are interstellar eldritch beings anyway. merge your photons my funky little sibcons, as Ray says) but nope, I think their interactions can easily take the form of boring human sex too.

(it's just not the main thing they have going on)

I'll show myself out.

P.S. there's also a bonus: all Traveler ships are now threesomes

[extra-v1rgin]

This is probably the only thing I’ll say about the election.

1. It is NOT over yet. I am not saying Kamala will win. I hope she does. I hope as they count absentee and mail in votes things will change. I don’t know.

Get involved locally. Look up diy hrt. Connect with local trans communities, connect with those in your state. Donate to Palestinian funds NOW.

2. I hope we don’t start blaming each other. I do feel frustrated with people who voted 3rd party. Especially in swing states. This isn’t their fault though. When Kamala came in I felt a lot of hope but as things kept moving she started to shift her positions. She moved in a direction that was counter-intuitive to her goals. That is HER fault. Her job was to convince people to vote for her.

Of course I am also angry at those who voted for Trump. I feel heartbroken that his past and present behavior was not enough to deter voters. I think many voted out of fear about the future. I’m ok if others feel differently but personally I feel that lashing out only validates their fears. I don’t think you owe kindness to people who hate you, but I have seen how kindness can change people. This is not an invitation for trump supporters or the like to come onto my page. I don’t think social media is real life and I plan to mostly avoid/block here.

3. My dms are open always! If we have talked before, if we have never talked, if we don’t even follow each other. I hope everyone is ok.

[magicalgirlmindcrank]

I will say it's incredibly funny that everyone was asking Biden to resign from the race and the GOP was just completely unprepared for it to actually happen. Like the donors were saying he should drop out, Dem stronghold media was saying it, party leaders were saying it for like a month and change. They were so busy celebrating that they were going to go up against an unpopular genocidal shambling corpse that they didn't even do the most basic research on what if he dropped out or died.

[littencloud9]

yes i know if i wanna see more of [x] ship or [x] character that i should make it myself. i DO make it myself. but sometimes i just want other people to join me in my little sandpit and not shove THEIR thing into mine at any given opportunity is that SO BAD??

[peteytheparrot]

Ya’ll NEED to watch this video it explains all of the problems I had with Hazbin Hotel into words fr 😭😭😭😭