#onlooking

[mumblingsage]

I'm wondering if, as a society who cares about vulnerable people, we could stop saying "traumatize" when we truly mean "upset"?

I am sick of hearing sad books or movies "traumatize" their readers. I simply do not believe that happens. A traumatic experience might be adjacent to books (I have vivid memories of books I was reading around certain experiences and even how the contents of those books affected my processing of the experiences). But it's not caused by the book. And, y'know. The weather is Christofascist Censorship Attempts outside.

Meanwhile from the other side I continue to be surprised at just how badly people fail to understand trauma and traumatic experiences in general. Watering down the term isn't helping. Find other hyperbole to express that The Bridge to Terebithia gutted you, chewed on your heartstrings, and made you cry your first pair of contact lenses right out of your preteen eyes.

(ETA here although it's impossible to edit reblogs: over the months since this post really took off, there has been valuable discussion in the comments. I stand by the passion with which I wrote this post and with the general message, but not all the exact wording. I talk more about the way I'd re-write this post in a response here, replying to an addition that added a ton of useful context [other additions touched on similar themes, but that person had it all together in one reblog]. With that said, I am muting this post.)

[astrowarr]

after watching several povs, there's something so striking about the way mumbo died.

he dies at home, first of all, which is notable in its own right because so much of his time was spent running about, usually in pursuit of kills. he dies with grian, too— to a thing grian created, no less, but it isn't actually grian's fault for once.

mumbo dies in that tall tower and when lightning strikes, from all across the server, everyone looks. their eyes land on that tower, and everyone is watching. even in grian's perspective, you can see everyone at renwood mound, lined up and staring. those at the bamlands looked on too.

they didn't see mumbo die, but they saw grian's grief. grian, who, throughout this season, has seemed cruel and untouchable to those outside of his circle due to his involvement with and knowledge of the wild cards. they watch grian immediately crumble under the weight of mumbo's death; several of them even explicitly comment, "look at grian, he's grieving, he's in mourning."

i like to think that, until that moment, grian was almost god-like in their minds; now, though, he's the quintessential concept of humanity. grief can be religious if you do it right, after all. even beyond the grian aspect though, isn't this just the most despairing omen of what's to come?

i mean, there's something about this image of a man fallen from grace, crying out as he holds the mangled corpse of his friend in the home they made together, high in the sky, on display for all the world to bear witness to. and the world did bear witness, be it with pity, horror, joy... it doesn't matter, because they saw.

the canary curse has been broken, but this was a fittingly foreboding, tone-setting image that did a stunning job filling its shoes

[lorenzlund]

'Einige Männer sammeln Frauen wie andere Leute Briefmarken'

Warum die Karowinger und andere sehr bedeutsame alte Geschlechter Europas allesamt aussterben mussten geradezu! (5)

'Alter Engel' (Es handelte sich erkennbar um ein bereits sehr altes traditionell deutsches Lokal. Dennoch muessen auch hier die Besitzer vor geraumer Zeit gewechelt haben.)

'Hier ist die Helmpolizei. Helme aufsetzen!!' (In Deutschland galt schon mal eine Helmpflicht. Betroffen davon waren fruehere Soldaten der Wehrmacht.) Auch mit speziellem Helm ist man fuer andere sehr viel leichter in der Straße wiedererkennbar. Und er kann sogar anderen unser Signal senden, befand er sich vielleicht vorübergehend nicht in unseren Händen, gelangten anderen an ihn heran, oder hat man ihn sich so schon gekauft, er verriete anderen dann unseren genauen Standort! Diese Helmpflicht gilt auch für Jugendliche und Kinder, also nicht nur fuer Erwachsene!

[happypeachsludgeflower]

A related idea to my last post, but if Shang Qinghua was there when the ritual happened and the ritual latched onto Shang Qinghua and his system as well, I can’t stop imagining a situation where Shang Qinghua actually is a god (he did create the universe after all), but the ritual didn’t latch onto him because he was being suppressed by the system and now the systems trapped and his power is unleashed for the first time in his life and he’s gleefully hacking the system glitch to rewrite the system code.

After the system begins glitching, maybe he pokes it in shock and curiosity and realizes he can touch it now and it’s moldable and he’s able to reshape a bit of it into a keyboard that he can start recoding the system from. And rewriting the universe is literally just rewriting the system code (either recoding it is just rewriting since the world was birthed from pidw—a written novel, or airplane knew coding in his last life).

First thing Qinghua does is disable the system from ever being able to control them again. Second thing he does is make the ritual non existent.

[lurkinginnernarrator]

svsss au: Qing Jing peak holds live drawing classes, Shen Yuan gets suckered into being the model.

Cue: SY artfully laid out, lounging like a tragically melancholic rich lady, lighting and pose just right, and various peak lords looking for him for various reasons and just entering the class and stopping, on the threshold, buffering.

In the background of course are various disciples crying because this is the third time they've redone Shizun's hand and the lighting still isn't right

[crabboytahomaru]

i knew haolin would come in clutch

[that-mystic-knight]

My piece for the QiJiu Zine

[i-like-forcefem]

Dumb submissions blog idea: Is-this-a-girl?

But when you submit a guy it always says “not yet”

[lobotomy-lady]

irl friend & I went to a korean spa yesterday where nudity is required to use the baths & I was so fucking nervous at first bc my body dysmorphia is bad but eventually I was able to overcome & I am so proud of myself . but later we were talking & she was like "yeah I saw on google reviews that this place kicked a trans woman out of the women's baths bc she was pre-op, that sucks" & meanwhile inwardly I'm like lol good

[virgobingo]

gojo would tell geto something like this with a completely straight face

and geto would just go haha while blushing madly

and then they'd just carry on with their day

[rudhirared]

(Okay, I'm sharing that here too)

Happy Birthday, Seikca (@seikcadaikea)! ✨

[cherrytea556]

I just know the lgb will be up in arms and come at me with their pitch-knife forks if i tell them that i would genuinely be more accepted as a lesbian than as an aroace

[convoloutedinjoke]

If Harry’s tragedy is that he can’t go on like this but he has to, Kim’s tragedy is that he doesn’t have to go on like this but he will.

[cokicito]

Tw: suggestive content

Sebaciel is one of those couples that have an insane amount of sexual tension but don't actually have a lot of sex. They turn the most banal things into a sultry little game. Ciel would ask Sebastian to sit in front of him while he eats the oysters, and even though nothing is actually happening, they both get horny as hell. The eye contact, the way Ciel pokes his tongue out, the slow, deliberate swallow, a tiny, barely audible little moan at the taste- Sebastian is barely hanging on by a thread. They're so depraved that Ciel orders Sebastian to tack up a horse, but then has to take five because he cannot handle Bare Forearms.

[littlepawz]

Finally, a photographic proof that Rudolf truly was not allowed to join in any reindeer games

[newyorkthegoldenage]

New Yorkers love to peer through holes in the walls surrounding construction sites to watch the activity inside. In 1959 some contractor that was putting up a new office building came up with the idea of not only enlarging the holes, but providing 15 phones giving a running account of the work through a recorded message.

Photo: Everett on Demand