#previously its been

[greatunstablemassofbloodandfoam]

Every week my brain chemistry gets permanently altered by a different mountain goats song

[thenxthird]

i started at my new job so that means they r also employed

full sketch page vvv

[kristoffs-lullaby]

Jealousy, Jealousy

[trauma-bot]

sin eater

[batwhim]

the landgraabs ༉‧₊ .ᐟ

[dxxtruction]

"Louis acting like a pimp to Armand" And what is a pimp exactly? Quickly. And, oh so sexual trauma survivors can't engage in kink now without it being all about that? Pet names? They can't be submissive anymore? Consensually? Sexually healthy? Be serious. I'd hardly say there's much power difference between them during all this anyway, except that Louis is freer than Armand and it's been putting a strain on their relationship. Louis wants more from Armand, and less of this 'being his past' for them both, and so helping Armand with this could fix that. It's healthy to want to help your partners get out of a rough patch?

I mean, the whole exchange was very clearly set up as a "I want to help you" after such a great moment of vulnerability Louis feels just how much Armand is desperate for it. Louis called Armand so they could work out a plan together.

And the bit with the umbrella was Louis' way of asking 'are you willing to listen to me?' and Armand said yes by unfolding it. Louis goes on and explains, Armand is allowed to argue against it, but Louis makes his point. And then he gives Armand a way to make his own choice in it too. Armand's already decided 'I want you, more than anything else in the world', but Louis still asks after if he's sure of his choice, and with a name, Arun, that is the one of his fullest agency, running the point home. Honoring the situation Armand calls Louis Maitre - as a way of being like 'I'll do as you've said then'. To make this work he's going to have to give Louis some of the control, yes. But it's the first time such a role is ever established, and it was his choice to do it. So so what if they do it in a very suggestive way? They can't like doing that? I think it's them having fun.

I struggle to find how Louis is being overly domineering here when really he's giving and offering Armand the most agency he's ever had. Same with finding it manipulative. The manipulation was more earlier in the episode I think, when he was stringing him along, giving mixed signals. He's no longer toying with him like that. Louis might be pushing Armand, leading him on to make a decision, but he doesn't mean bad by it.

But back to this pimp thing. I find it frankly offensive that this is where people are going with this. I get it, but to run with it being the case is, on many levels, wrong.

Louis told us episode 1 this was the only sustainable line of work to support his family and keep their standing, at the time. It was never his choice to be doing this either but his blackness allowed no other options. He did what he did so his family could stay in that house and maintain all their same comforts. It gave him privileges most black men didn't have at the time that he wanted to maintain and even have more of. Anyway, it doesn't and had never defined him the way 'being good at running things' had. And in that case he just likes having that kind of control where he can get it, which makes sense.

The world is what placed that kind of role onto him of what he was allowed to be able to run, not himself. And on that he actually treated the sex workers he employed well and respected them enough to give them more opportunity.** He recognizes they don't have much in the way of options either.

Louis employed sex workers, yes, but he didn't subject them to abuse, (like how Armand was)*. He didn't oversee things in a way that would go against their consent (see; episode 1 again)**. Sometimes a job is just a job. And Sex work is work.

Armand's particular past with sexual abuses may strike a particular cord with Louis, given all that, but the very last thing either is thinking is that Louis' pimping Armand out here. This is merely their decision as companions, and had nothing to do with adding another line in a laundry list of selling Armands body out to people at the command of someone else. Armand rescinds some of his control to Louis' wishes, because he wants him, and he trusts him, that's all.

If you aren't allowing Armand that choice, and are doubtful it's fully his, you're putting him right back in the box of being defined by his abuses. Putting him back into that space where he isn't given any agency over what he does. (Which is exactly opposite of what the intent of this scene is for)*.

*: (edit) added for clarity.

**: (strike through) numerous people are saying I'm misremembering these points so disregard it. (Thought he was siding with Bricks, it was the other way around). (Technically one aspect of those opportunities were for getting around the law). I don't have a perfect memory, it happens. Let's not get mad about it. Doesn't change much of the point which is that Louis, now, Louis then, was always considering more about the running things and for stated purposes. So I guess I'd say he may only have respected the SWers enough sometimes for what allowed him to do that, and there are moments he certainly expressed remorse over the fact, but he has a great deal higher respect for Armand that is genuine. It's incomparable. Please read my added notes in the tags, it should address most other concerns.

[anxiously-sidequesting]

how about you shut the fuck up Mr. Irresponsible

[moeblob]

WOW it's way later than I planned to just be finishing art but here we go! I did manage!

[sodapopprincess]

the title “weird girl” isn’t just for anyone it’s something u earn from neurotypical ppl at ur school when they’re trying to discreetly bully u

[illegalvampire]

software instability ^

[crimescrimson]

Ada Wong & Leon S. Kennedy: The History [ Resident Evil 4 (2023) ]

[alastair-1205]

May I suggest some of my own teams for this season:

Kinda in order of how much I actually wanna see them. More or less?

[birdsong-warriors]

Brick may seem to have a bit of a double standard here when it comes to labels, but they don't consider "halfhouser" (half housecat) to be a bad thing, much less an insult. But "half-cat" is too far into icky and demeaning and invalidating territory; they are very much not cool with that, and they're eager to call it out.

On another note: the escaped prisoner is Stonefur.

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Part 1: Friend and Family

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[little-red-fool]

Please tell me I’m not tripping but Higgs’ eye makeup in the new DS2 trailer looks very similar to the winged sun disc from Egyptian mythology which (correct me if I’m wrong) I think represents the soul, or sometimes the soul without physical form, as well as a connection to divinity.

Now I don’t know enough about Egyptian mythology to make links and assumptions and I could just be grasping at straws, but I know Death Stranding has a few links to Egyptian mythology, so does anyone with more knowledge on this subject than me have any ideas.

[peacockrulz]

Still thinking about them lkdsjfksd

[queen-mabs-revenge]

found 'the way' a really interesting piece of speculative fiction exploring the idea of anti-migrant xenophobic violence being turned inwards towards 'legitimate citizens' when interests of capital are threatened by struggle, but this sequence in the last episode def stood out to me as a neoluddite.

feels connected to this quote from dan mcquillan's 'resisting ai - an anti-fascist approach to artificial intelligence':

Bergson argued that if one accepts a ready- made problem in this way, "one might just as well say that all truth is already virtually known, that its model is patented in the administrative offices of the state, and that philosophy is a jig- saw puzzle where the problem is to construct with the pieces society gives us the design it is unwilling to show us." (Deleuze, 2002, cited in Coleman, 2008) In other words, however sophisticated or creative AI might seem to be, its modelling is stuck in abstractions drawn from the past, and so becomes a rearrangement of the way things have been rather than a reimagining of the way things could be. AI has, in effect, an inbuilt political commitment to the status quo, in particular to existing structures that embed specific relations of power. The absence of different concepts leaves out the possibility of conceiving that things could be arranged differently.