#rant ////

[drizzeltheraincat]

Authors: Write your fic. If you like how it came out, share it. If you want people to find it, tag it. Thank you for cooking.

Readers: read the tags. Use filters. If you like a fic, comment and let the author know. If you don't like a fic, move on. If it wasn't tagged properly, or if you have criticism but you still enjoyed it, mention it in your comment. Thank you for eating.

Remember, people do this for a hobby. You get all levels of writer. Not everyone can nor should write Shakespeare.

Fan fic is a potluck Sometimes you get fine dining, sometimes you get bananas cut in half. Occasionally you get a strange omelet abomination labeled "souffle". Assuming it's not a troll, all of it was made with love.

You don't have to read it all, you don't have to give it all likes (or whatever your site's equivalent is) but don't go into someone's comment section and be nasty.

At some point "fanfic can be as good as professional writing" became "fanfic should be as good as professional writing" and that's caused major damage to fandom spaces.

[r0bee]

Arcane did not feature a scene of a butch lesbian main character eating out the woman she's been in love with from the night they met just for some people to turn around and say it's less gay than an mlm ship that's interpretive. THOSE LESBIANS FUCKED IN A JAIL CELL IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR PUT SOME FUCKING RESPECT ON LESBIANS FOR ONCE.

[terrifiedtrinket]

TW. YAPPING!!!!! and i think i say cum once or twice probablie

TGE TROLLS WOULD NOT SMELL GOOD !!!!!

i feel like at most they smell neutral??? or however tf bugs smell

but especially like while and before they play the game?? at the very least they dont smell traditionally nice.

they dont smell like flowrrs and nice things

ESPECIALLY NEPETA!!!! SHE SMELLS LIKE DEAD THINGS MOST OF THE TIME!! SHE STINKS OF ANIMAL AND BLOOD AND SWEAT AND SHE DOESNT SHOWER SHE LIVES IN A CAVE

like no hate to the person who said she would smell like sour candy but like….. why?

i feel like if the troll blood castes were scented, olive blood would have a more natural scent and they wouldn’t be sweet

AND EVEN THEM SHES STILL STINKY!!!!!

the meowrails stink. i love them. but they stink.

equius smells like BO and motor oil and nepeta probably smells like cat piss.

ALSOOOSODOSOSOSO i feel like it’s really weird when people imply or headcanon that the trolls have flavored cum?? like tht feels weird

i feel like even if they did it probably wouldnt be human flavors like chocolate

i dont even wanna think about what i think their cum would taste like tho so im not even gonna try to form an opinion. you do u mann(or do the homestuck trolls ig bc clearly thats ur thing)

UH

i mean clearly not all of their smells are unbearable because clearly the humans dont mind it too much(or at least dont say anything) but also a lot of the biggest offenders are dead so

gamzee smells like drugs. and. dead trolls.

he’s the only i can maybe see smelling sweet because of all the faygo

ik if they were humans they would stink too

like vriska would lie about taking showers i just know it. vriska would drench herself body spray and claim she showered.

trolls wouldn’t smell sweet at the very least

they come from murder land

they don’t smell like vanilla dream

[noagskryf]

Why are mathematicians* so USELESS at simple arithmetic? You're telling me I possess knowledge that would get me hailed as a lord 2000 years ago, but if I had two bags of wheat in one hand and three in the other, I would say there's six bags? What the fuck

*it's me, I'm mathematicians

[justmejpg]

You can take 1:18 of your time to hear a raw live reaction of an arcane fan at 9:52am on November 23rd watching arcane season two act three☺️

HEAVY SPOILERS

Thank you for your time.

-JustMe.jpg

[femtguy]

cis gay men calling me a mutilated woman and saying i'm only trans to try and 'convert them' to be straight.

like are you really that arrogant? you think i underwent surgery, hormones, social ostracization, hate crimes, all to convert your ugly ass to become straight?

this faggot on faggot crime has got to fucking stop. they're not gonna pick you. you will forever be the dirty faggot to them and i will forever be the freak tranny to them.

if you are upset that you are attracted to me and then find out i have a cunt, that's YOUR problem, holy fuck. but i promise you, if you call trans men mutilated women, trannies, homophobic straight girls, or anything of the kind. WE WILL NOT WANT TO FUCK YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE. we are not so thirsty for cock that we'll settle for a transphobic piece of shit.

[indecisiveavocado]

things jews do not want:

to celebrate christmas

to be christian

that overly cheerful "happy holidays" after promoting christmas stuff, and the token hanukkah thing, since halloween and then the company being like "yeah we're so inclusive!"

stuff goyim think we want, generally speaking (as long as it relates to judaism)

things jews do want:

the antisemites to all just shut up because it's so goddamn tiring having integral parts of you questioned and attacked every damn day and it wears you out, slowly, quietly, and it's frustrating and exhausting and there's always new ones to block

Goys have this tendency to imagine that Jews (especially Jewish children) yearn for Christmas. That there's a gaping hole in our hearts that only Christmas spirit can fill and we deny ourselves of it. THIS ISNT TRUE AND IT'S A TYPE OF FETISHIZATION. LIFE ISNT A HALLMARK MOVIE. Jews and others that don't celebrate Christmas live fulfilling, happy, rich lives that wouldn't be improved by tinsel.

[nocturnowlette]

how do i tell someone that i understood everything they were going to tell me 3 words into their first sentence and i'm slowly ripping my hair out waiting for them to finish without making them angry at me

[mikurinkuwu]

reblogging my art and saying you like it but not the ship isnt the compliment you think it is btw

[kitthefoxkin]

tw// discussion of zoophilia, politics, the palestinian genocide, bullying + harassment, doxxing, and overall ranting/venting

my biggest issue with the packer situation is that it literally doesn't matter. it's become such an issue in the furry/nonhuman community and it DOES NOT MATTER. i typically hate the argument of "others have it worse" because you can be upset at multiple things at the same time, but this? it's literally such a nonissue. cyrus is getting his school and city doxxed because of this and it is NOT THAT SERIOUS. people are spreading misinfo that he's a grown man selling s3x toys to minors, that he's a zoophile, that barks a predator, and he's literally just a guy. he's 17 years old. not to mention he wasn't even selling the customizable packers to anyone under 18, which is the whole problem in the first place. this is just such a nonissue. we're about to have a convicted felon and sexual predator as a president, there's an ethnic genocide in gaza, trans people are being systemically illegalized in the US, and we're worried about a guy making furred packers online? seriously? we have MUCH bigger things to worry about than this guys, come in. what about the actual zoos in this community?? or the predators that prey on young alterhumans? focus on the people that are actually dangerous rather than something so minor and unimportant

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

I love (sarcastically) how the implication is that anyone over 21 must instantly stop having any hobbies that aren't 'adult' and stop trying to relate to younger people. It is especially bad, because some of us have jobs such as artists, musicians or writers that still keep us at 'young' hobbies.

And, hey, some of us are autistic and that means our interests might just naturally skew younger. Reading thoughts like the screencaps above makes me think the people saying this want 1950s back again. All that entails. I do wonder what people saying this will do when they hit 28? Do they assume they don't live that long??

'all age gaps problematic' people are so wild. "what can a 19 year old and a 28 year even have in common??? what do they talk about??" BITCH THEIR HOBBIES???????

[silcobrainrot]

***SPOILERS FOR THE FINALE DO NOT READ UNTIL YOUVE WATCHED***

I know TBSkyen has told us to sit with it for a while before deciding how we feel about the ending but I’m sorry I don’t think any amount of sitting with it is going to make me okay with them killing Jinx. The way she died wasn’t satisfying, the sacrifice meant almost nothing, and all the effort of those around her to keep her alive ended up going nowhere. Isha ends up being completely pointless because she’s only a plot device not a proper character and Jinx dies anyway. I don’t see how this was a satisfying conclusion to her narrative arc and character arc, I just don’t. Any supplemental material that makes it so she’s still alive in the games doesn’t matter to me because in the Arcane canon she is dead. To anyone not playing the games she is dead.

It’s making it hard for me to even want to rewatch it or enjoy what else was there because I’m just. I’m so goddamn fucking tired of seeing mentally ill characters have to die to lift the burden of their existence from others. Vi was so well adjusted and happy after. No mourning. No funeral/end of life rights. Her death was sudden and contrived just for some extra shock value. It didn’t feel like a tragic death, like out of a tragedy, bc this season wasn’t structured like a tragedy the way the first season felt. Her death didn’t feel inevitable and I’m furious because out of everyone. Out of EVERYONE. She deserved to live through this. She deserved to come out the other side of all her pain and suffering. She deserved to walk away from it all. But she didn’t. Because Borderlines are evil people and people with DID are evil and the only way they can redeem themselves is to die. The only happy ending is with them dead. The other two characters who showed suicidal ideation are also functionally dead. Whether or not they’re literally dead, the story’s over, they’re as good as dead.

Dont even get me started on how in her last moments she doesn’t see Isha or Silco (the two characters we SEE HER have a genuine familial bond with), only Vander (whom she has two sequences with in s1, the longer of which had no dialogue and was still less than a minute). She burned down The Last Drop—which she associated with Silco more than Vander now—to break the cycle of violence by killing the last connection to her past, she’s finally free, and then she fucking. Dies. Anyway.

God I want to enjoy what we did get but I just. I’m so tired of the end of my story always being that I have to die so other people can live.

[offtorivendell]

Elain, Gwyn and a possible January birthday...

I can't believe it's the end of the Year of our Cauldron 2024 and this argument has resurfaced, but here we go I guess.

Thank you @shitwillnotbegiven for working though this with me!

Firstly, I really want people to know that none of this even matters; the interview in which Steph asked SJM if Azriel's person could have her birthday happened after ACOSF was sent* to be published. So whatever couple was built up was already set in the text. It's a complete non issue. Secondly, SJM has fudged up the numbers before; I am pretty sure that someone did the maths and, according to canon, Eris would have only been around 8yo when he left Mor at Autumn's border! These things happen, and SJM has said she's not a numbers person (no shame).

* Correction: ACOSF was not yet published, but it would have been at the printers and/or being shipped out. Thank you @valentiinexo.

Thirdly, assuming SJM honours the promise to begin with, even if the birthday request predated ACOSF being sent to the printers, it's still a non issue because both Elain and Gwyn could have been born in January. I don't know why people are saying Elain was born over the summer, besides wanting to reassure themselves that she won't end up with Az.

But let's have a look.

Elain

Nesta said that Elain was "barely thirteen" at the ball when the heiress bullied her for whatever reason.

“She wouldn’t have gone into much detail about it,” Elain said. “Nesta was only fourteen at the last ball we went to before—well, before we were poor …” Elain shook her head. “Another young heiress was at the ball, and she positively hated me. She was several years older, and I’d never done anything to provoke her hatred, but I think …” “She was jealous of your beauty,” Amren said, an amused smile on her red lips. Elain blushed. “Perhaps.” It was definitely that. Even though Elain would have been barely thirteen at the time. “Well, Nesta saw how she treated me, her casual cruelties and snubs, and bided her time. Waited until that ball, when a handsome duke from the continent was there to find a bride. His family had run out of money, which was why he’d deigned to come over at all—to nab a rich bride to refill their estate’s coffers. Nesta knew the heiress had her sights set on him. The girl had bragged about it to all of us in the powder room at every ball for weeks leading up to it. - ACOSF, chapter 44

Nesta herself was only "fourteen," born in the spring.

Cassian held her gaze as he stalked for her, then reached out an arm— And plucked the cerulean-and-cream scarf Elain had given her for her birthday this spring off the hook on the wall. He gripped it in his fist, dangling it like a strangled snake as he brushed past her. - ACOSF, chapter 1

As the map and seasons of Prythian both coincide with the map and seasons of the UK and Ireland/the northern hemisphere in general (besides the four seasonal courts), and it should be safe to assume that the ball happened during the social season, then we can extrapolate from most online sources, which suggest that would have begun when British parliament returned after closing for the winter.

Per Wikipedia:

The Season coincided with the sitting of parliament; it began some time after Christmas and ran until midsummer, roughly late June. Some sources say it began at Parliament's Easter session break. The social season played a role in the political life of the country: the members of the two Houses of Parliament were almost all participants in the season, as all Peers sitting in the House of Lords were by definition nobility, and many if not most Members of the House of Commons were gentry. But the Season also provided an opportunity for the children of marriageable age of the nobility and gentry to be launched into society.

Feyre confirmed as much in ACOTAR, because she arrived back in the human lands after the "socialite season" had ended and it was getting into summer. Elain was even wearing summer appropriate attire and was flushed - maybe from the heat as much as her excitement?

Summer—in the weeks that I’d been painting and dining with Tamlin and wandering the court lands at his side, summer had come. Did my family still truly believe me to be visiting some long-lost aunt? What were they doing with themselves? - ACOTAR, chapter 25

I glanced sidelong at her. My sister was beaming, content—prettier than I’d ever seen her, even in her simple muslin gardening dress. Her cheeks were flushed beneath her large, floppy hat. “I think—I think I’d like to see the continent,” I said. And it was true, I realized. There was so much of the world that I hadn’t seen, hadn’t ever thought about visiting. Hadn’t ever been able to dream of visiting. “I’m surprised you’re so eager to go next spring,” I said. “Isn’t that right in the middle of the season?” The socialite season, which had ended a few weeks ago, apparently, full of parties and balls and luncheons and gossip, gossip, gossip. Elain had told me all about it at dinner the night before, hardly noticing that it was an effort for me to get down my food. - ACOTAR, chapter 29

The following afternoon, bleary-eyed and quiet, we all gathered at the lunch table. I thanked my sister and father for the party, and dodged my father’s inquiries regarding whether any of his friends’ sons had caught my eye. The summer heat had arrived, and I propped my chin on a fist as I fanned myself. I’d slept fitfully in the heat last night. It was never too hot or too cold at Tamlin’s estate. - ACOTAR, chapter 31

Spring is "right in the middle of" Prythian's social season. Winter > spring (tulip season) > summer. Feyre gives us this information.

All of this is to say that it is absolutely possible for Elain to be born in January and be "barely thirteen" years of age in the late winter/early spring of the same year "weeks" later, when Nesta got revenge for her at the ball. And Nesta, who was "only fourteen" at the time, could have been nearing her fifteenth birthday. "Two under two" is a common saying for a reason, and I suspect the "only" was not to suggest that Nesta had recently turned fourteen (though two in one year is definitely possible), but that she was too young for marriage in her father's/family's opinion, and the entire situation was ludicrous.

Perhaps the wooden rose was actually a birthday gift for Elain from Papa Archeron?

She plucked another figurine from the mantel: a rose carved from a dark sort of wood. She held it in her palm, its solid weight surprising, and traced a finger over one of the petals. “He made this one for Elain. Since it was winter and she missed the flowers.” - ACOSF, chapter 55

Gwyn

If Gwyn and Catrin were conceived on Calanmai, which is the first of May, and faerie pregnancies last ten months - this is of course assuming that their half-nymph mother would have expected the same duration of her pregnancy as a high fae like Feyre - then yes, a pregnancy with a due date of May plus ten months (it's impossible to count from her last missed period as we know at least the high fae only have two cycles a year, so the conception date will have to do) could end with a set of twins born in January.

Gwyn went on, “My mother was unwanted by either of their people. She could not dwell in the rivers of the Spring Court, but was too untamed to endure the confinement of the forest house of Autumn. So she was given in her childhood to the temple at Sangravah, where she was raised. She partook in the Great Rite when she was of age, and I, we—my sister and I, I mean—were the result of that sacred union with a male stranger. She never found out who he was, for the magic chose him that night, and no one ever showed up to ask about twin girls. We were raised in the temple as well. I never left its grounds until … until I came here.” - ACOSF, chapter 29

Around half of twin pregnancies make it to term, and 90% are born after 32 weeks (per google), so even with the extrapolation between human data and the barely existent faerie pregnancy "lore" I think that a January birthdate for Gwyn and Catrin is not a risky guess. I also think it's much more exciting to refer to pregnancy "lore" than data, so can we all get that going? 😂

So yeah, there you have it. Both Elain and Gwyn could have been born in January. Though again, it was a request made after ACOSF was finished. This argument doesn't "benefit" either side, and to suggest that it eliminates either Elain or Gwyn is disingenuous. Why does it keep popping up?

[existennialmemes]

Nothing feels real. You had to have noticed. Everything is a hollow distraction painted over the Horrors raging beneath.

You wave to your neighbor. They smile at you. It does not reach their eyes. They resume shoveling soft, biodegradable plant matter into plastic bags. Because the leaves "look tacky."

You commute thirty minutes to work in a metal cage propelled by small explosions. Stopping once to fill it with dissolved dinosaurs. And to fill yourself with the state sanctioned stimulant.

A normal morning.

Unfathomable suffering goes on, far away from you. "Better there than here" you think. Unfathomable suffering goes on, right outside your doorway. You politely avert your gaze.

It doesn't have to be this way. It's not supposed to be this way. This planet has the resources for the entire globe to thrive. They are being mishandled by .01% of our population.

We can have a better world.

[rubynautilus]

Behold, because I had a certified Ruby Brain Blast™ and let the vervose demon take over. Click at your own risk.

Love is this visceral thing that's inside all of us and it manifests in as many ways as there are human beings. Our most brilliant minds can't even define what's inside our noggings. Does anyone here think that they can define love? 'Cuz the best I got is "The relationship that one has with what makes them happy." and I know that's not right, because I know that we also love the things that hurt us. There is much, much more to it and we are not gonna answer this riddle. Regardless of how certain anybody sounds about it and how hard they try to push it on others.

Whatever Jayce and Viktor have is 100% pure unadultered love. But the only way I know this is because of how much it has moved us all. How deeply it has shaken our cores. And yet we can't agree and NOT squabble about what it is that it means and we're letting this obsession with the specifics to create a hundred different divides. And at this point I think that we have to ask us if this is worth it. Maybe the time of thinking this is over. Now we've got to allow ourselves and others just FEEL this. Our feelings dont have to be their feelings, but I sure would like to share a blanket and some cookies with more people. Don't we all appreciate the comfort of emotional support?

Now, get ready folks because I'm about to pull out one of my corniest moves: parroting a quote and try to capture a fraction of it's original rawness.

"I thought I could bring an end to the world's suffering. But when every equation was solved all that remained were fields of dreamless solitude. There is no prize to perfection. Only an end to pursuit."

What I mean with this is that, like good 'ole Viktor, we're letting the pain inflicted on us by the evils of the world take over the wheel. Thankfully none of us has access to experimental eldritch technology, so let us enjoy the diversity of the human experience. Why not coexist when we do have the privilege to choose?

asking sincerely. do you see a romance between jayce and viktor? do you think they ended up being something romantic at the end?

With apologies I am going to only half talk about the thing you are asking me, since I have something else on my mind and you happened to hit the button that makes me vomit it into words.

Coming at this from an aromantic perspective, I obviously don't experience the state of absurd obsessive delusion that you bizarre romantic freaks fetishize so feverishly*, but I am often annoyed by the idea that friendship and romance are either opposites or mutually exclusive. From my perspective, the boundary between the two is at best thin, and more realistically not actually a boundary at all except by cultural construction.

*i am taking an excessively hostile, crass tone for my own amusement i do not mean this seriously please be normal at me, weird allo freaks

I won't get into my full feelings about the end of Arcane, but it seems perfectly plain to me that the script, the imagery and the animation presents Jayce and Viktor as two halves of a whole, not opposing forces but alike to yin and yang: opposites which each contain the other. And at the climax of the show, the greatest peril to life and peace in the narrative is resolved by these two men literally joining their bodies and souls together, and going into eternity holding one another for comfort and strength. They are quite literally soulmates, quite literally the most important people in one another's lives.

I don't think that that kind of intimate emotional connection between men must necessarily be either romantic or sexual - I am aromantic, and plenty of ace people exist, and there is nothing in our natures excluding us from intense connections of love with other people of any gender.

I also think it is willfully ignorant (and genuinely homophobic) to act as though these deep connections are mutually exclusive with sex and romance. As though if Viktor and Jayce fucked nasty and made out sloppy style, suddenly their intimacy is less pure or valid, or tainted somehow.

"If these two men who are emotionally close to one another also fuck or get romantically involved, then friendship is dead, murdered on the floor by a dick-shaped knife; vile sexuality corrupts and debases the true, pure and virtuous love of ✨friendship✨" <- This shit is homophobic at a baseline, queerphobic in general, and frankly as an aromantic man I find it pretty fucking insulting as well.

What, are my friendships with other men just inherently more pure and divine, more meaningful and true than a gay man's can ever be, because I will never suffer the vile temptation of adding romance to my affection? Is that how I should think of myself? And is an aroace man more pure than me still, the only source of TRUE male friendship that a man can ever experience, free from the pustulant corruption of sexuality and romantic desire?

You get this pathetic defensiveness (especially from men, but other genders aren't immune) wherein sex and sexuality and romance between men is perceived as a threat to men's right and ability to experience deep connection to each other. But the emotional castration of men comes not from people imagining sex and romance as a component of our relationships - it comes from people who insist that our emotional lives must be ruled by strict binaries. Sex and romance, OR ELSE friendship. Deep romantic connection OR ELSE deep platonic connection. Pick one and do not dare to imagine both, nor act as though the boundary between them is something that we built by cultural fiat, and which can be dismantled just the same.

And yes, yes, yes, I know there are cultural forces literally illuminati-style conspiring to systemically erase the entire existence of explicitly romantic, sexual male love from media, and I know that homophobic puritanism is on the rise and there are material concerns and a real necessity for explicit representation in fiction, yes I know. Everything is more complicated than a tumblr post can cover, I am not trying to Solve Rainbow Capitalism™ over here, I am trying to express frustration as an aromantic man that this stupid fucking binary keeps getting culturally reinforced by both my enemies and my well-meaning allies, when I think the binary is what's fucking killing us in the first place.

So anyway. My position is that Viktor and Jayce can be entirely aromantic no-homo friends, and they can fuck nasty in the throes of mutual need and obsession, and I refuse to entertain the idea that there is an irresolvable contradiction between those things. Each of those can contain the other, or become the other given time and circumstance.

What the imagery, storytelling and script of Arcane makes clear is that Viktor and Jayce love each other more than life itself. To say that that love must be shoved into the box of either "platonic" or "romantic" is to miss out on almost everything that is beautiful about love. It can be both and neither! It can be a secret third, ninth or fifteenth thing that they haven't invented a tag for on Ao3 yet.

They are giving each other whatever the spiritual mind-ghost equivalent of sloppy backshots are on the ethereal plain forever, they are the most romantic lovers in the cosmos, and they are also the most chaste and platonic life-partner friends you have ever seen, effortlessly intimate and unashamedly tender. They are men who love one another, in every way that love matters.

You can pick whichever interpretation brings you joy, and resonates with what your heart needs, the text of the show is eminently and explicity open to it, and anyone who says otherwise either failed to pay attention, or refused to pay attention on purpose.