#someone with some culture

[inkskinned]

she's singing in another room and my dog is asleep at my feet. my grandma asked me why i haven't found a man yet and i laughed. oh, you know. i like my house clean.

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would know someone for only 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.

it's worth it for this moment, i think. my lover is still humming the same song she's been singing for four days straight and i don't want to kill her for it. her guitar is beside my bed. her toothbrush is in my bathroom. in a few moments i will make us lunch. we are lucky enough to have found each other. it is lucky enough to be in love.

[charmwasjess]

I’ll never quite get over just how integrated kids are into daily Jedi life and the implications of that.

Dooku’s Temple "job" for years seems to have been “teaching lightsaber preschool.” Sifo-Dyas, the guy with the scary doom visions? Oh yeah, they have him working with infants, bringing babies to the Temple as a Seeker. Jocasta Nu is constantly depicted interacting with the younger generation of Jedi, teaching, helping, or mentoring. In TCW, she knows all the Padawans on sight. 

There’s just something really ordinary and charming to me about this. Sure, Dooku is a terrifying 2m of spider limbs in a robe, but he’s still going down on one sinister knee to check out the little crying kid who got a finger crunched by one of those wooden training swords. How many of the TCW-era Jedi were once babies who played with Sifo-Dyas’s hair loopies or cuddled on his chest as he pointed his T-6 back toward the Temple after another successful Seeking mission? (Space is, after all, cold. 🥺) You just know Jocasta is in very reluctant possession of knowledge of every single teen Padawan drama, crush, or breakup. She tries to stay out of it, but she’s broken up fights and pulled particulars into her office for tea and a gentle lecture on the inherent self-destructiveness of gossip. 

And these are not “just some” Jedi - they are all combat trained, politically important, at the top of their rank and even each sit on the Council at some point in their lives. The Jedi Order really went “super powerful space wizards with laser swords, yeah, but they should also all definitely know how to change a diaper." 

[bingsoo-jung]

my funny controversial veilguard opinion is that while i get why people are saying the 'sexy lof' armor is orientalist and i do think there's a convo to be had there... that armor is also based off of actual clothes people historically wore in southeast asia. like this

is absolutely based off of these

and while these are stylised forms of the outfit it's not because of the skin being shown. the women wearing shirts underneath are not wearing it as thai people wore tabengman historically. because historically we didn't really wear a lot of shirts, shirts were not legally mandated clothes until the 1940s. my thai grandmother is older than that. in fact a lot of asia didn't get around to stigmatizing and sexualizing breasts until the 1800s or later (like you can find photos of korean women in the 1900s with their breasts out and that was fine and normal culturally). the reason these are stylized though is bc they're made of silk and they're wearing brocades. most people would've worn this in plain fabric without gold brocades bc silk and gold are expensive.

and, to be clear, a lot of both the LoF and qunari armors and fashion is based off of historical southeast asian fashion. isabella is straight up wearing a hmong necklace.

the qunari ropes are also almost certainly based off of muay boran kard chuek which is this old way of binding your hands with hemp ropes in thailand for boxing. you can also see that in qunari concept art they've drawn them with intricate knots that are very chinese in origin, they're wearing armor in rattans weaved patterns. (i'll also point out that it was explicitly said in the past that people from east tevinter, which is closer to seheron, look like dorian, and dorian's va is half indo-fijian and half malay. that man belongs to the south pacific.)

and yes, we could have a whole conversation about specifically choosing to look at these armors instead of other southeast asian armors. but i think a lot of people think the armor is based off of western fantasies of belly dancer costumes... which while may have played a part, it's also very clear to me that the devs have used a lot of southeast asian inspiration for seheron, rivain, and part of tevinter.

[vaguely-concerned]

the strength it must have taken for illario to not immediately go full 'lmao since when have you even had a kiss hello lucanis' sibling violence mode during the café talk. inspirational. rook and lucanis really were doing all that right in front of his salad huh

[frownyalfred]

Jason finally giving into affection re: Bruce but he does it Mandalorian style. which is to say he headbutts Bruce so hard he breaks his nose and then presses their foreheads together while Bruce bleeds everywhere. somehow this is cathartic for them both.

[the-blue-wraith]

One thing that I find ironic about Taash's story is that their story is about finding out they're non-binary, yet when it comes to their culture we're going to force them to choose a binary choice of culture.

There should be an option that Rook will encourage Taash to embrace both bc why not? For example I'm Filipino-Chinese, just bc I was born and raised here in the Philippines doesn't mean I'll abandon my Chinese side and only embrace one culture. That scene doesn't feel natural to me.

[luthienne]

anyway literally everyone is going through something all the time!!! everyone is wounded!!! everyone is human & no one makes it out of this life unscathed!! maybe try approaching people in good faith instead of always defaulting to the worst possible interpretations of each other

[avelera]

It's interesting writing Jayce and Viktor's speech patterns because most people don't say each other's names all that often in face to face conversation but they say each other's names all the time so I have to actually break some of my instincts to write their dialogue more naturalistically in order to make them sound like themselves

[nashvillethotchicken]

A lot of people in the iwtv Fandom regurgitate antiblack talking points particularly wrt Louis being femme/effeminate/gnc and it's genuinely so disgusting like no, Louis is not making his partners engage in domestic labor when they participate in the businesses and investments they are partial owners of. No, Louis is not being the patriarch of rue royale when lestat leaves the house after beating Louis within an inch of his life. No Louis is not "masculine for his culture" especially when compared to other black men in the same time period. People will actively ignore canon to make Louis into this hypermasculine black brute and Lestatr or armand into these shrinking violets that are oppressed by Louis when he's not that at all. The only times he's ever acted even close to that stereotype is to assimilate into a white supremacist society that expected that of him in order for him to earn a living and to please Armand, which causes him great distress and visibly worsens his mental health to the point of Louis lashing out at Claudia and being so entirely numb that he self harms. Louis is not this hypermasculine black brute and a lot of people try to make him into one bc of unconscious bias surrounding black people (black people have been stereotyped as hypermasculine, angry, overly violent and sexual deviants since the 1700s) or to absolve their non black favs of the actual patriarchal and oppressive violence they enact on Louis and Claudia or a combination of the two. It's disgusting, do better

[s0fter-sin]

mermay idea

mers keep their faces covered as a way to indicate social status and familiarity. warriors have intricate masks, handcrafted when they win their first battle and the more detailed a mask is, the more accomplished the wearer is. they're rarely shed and are only taken off for their closest kin and mates

warrior bull shark mer!soap seeing human!ghost, seeing his skull mask and immediately knowing he's a high ranking warrior; one to be feared going off the numerous scars covering his body

an ideal and worthy mate, so long as he can prove his prowess

so he follows him as he's deployed on a mission near the ocean and is smitten when he sees how ruthless and capable he is; bathing himself in his enemies blood. he keeps his distance, not wanting to tempt fate but ghost spies the tip of his fin cutting through the water

and he's nothing if not an opportunist; kicking the bodies off the pier to the waiting jaws below

but soap? all he sees is the first step in a courting ritual

and he has to come up with something truly brilliant to match such a glorious offering

on ghost's part, it's been difficult getting people to understand the depths of his dependence on his mask. price thinks it's something to overcome, gaz and other soldiers just think it's an accessory to help with intimidation

the few partners he's tried to have thought he was someone to "fix"; nothing more than an object, a notch on their belt to prove how "good" of a partner they were to put in so much work to make him better. it always leaves him feeling violated, more so than if they'd just taken his mask off outright. one night stands were hardly worth it either; scratching a physical itch but falling so short of the intimacy and connection he craves that he feels worse off than he'd started

when he finally meets the mer that's been hunting him across the country, sees the bright red mask so artfully hewn and attached to his face?

it's like looking at a reflection of himself

he might have finally found the understanding he's been searching for

[reginamillls]

sometimes you just need to be honest with yourself and admit that your blorbo probably would have different music taste than yourself

[c1trvswurld]

STOP babying and objectifying Daisuke

STOP making anya a perpetual forever doting victim

STOP making swansea this hotheaded gaurd dog

STOP babying and objectifying and being ableist to curly and removing autonomy

STOP ignoring the complex themes of jimmys character just to mischaracterize and to dunk on your idea of him and, therefore, ignoring the themes of the story

Stop ignoring the complexities of their characters please and thank you

[antiadvil]

Hey so I just watched PJ’s side channel video about how he and Sophie got stuck in traffic trying to deliver something to Dan and Phil. Great video, super funny. No one warned me that when PJ and Sophie realized they’d have to stay in London, Dan and Phil booked them a hotel?? There are at LEAST three bedrooms in their house what kind of rich person bullshit is that??

[ink-the-artist]

holy shit I did NOT realize how popular my "I will remove my teeth, for I want to remain kind despite my anger" quote is. I just googled it for fun to see what would come up, a bunch of people are quoting it not knowing who its from, an artist called Kuma made an album titled that, so bizzare

[dreamyintersexouppy]

all the tme intersex people i used to know suddenly jumping on the newest transmisogynistic bandwagon and immediately spewing all the same “ur just overreacting, you call everything transmisogyny, stop being hysterical!!!” bullshit really puts into perspective how the intersex community on here gained any traction to begin with, y’all are not immune to pulling the same bullshit perisex people do and you’re calling the intersex transfems arguing against you perisex??? just to let afabs pretend to be us so you have that idealized quiet trans woman again, like i’m sorry but this is a strawman on par with “white trans woman” nothing has changed and at some point you need to realize that your conception of what these terms mean just doesn’t reflect their actual rhetorical use in real conversations about queerness

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 68

Danny stares up up up at the being cooing down at him, a mass of eyes and tendrils and whatever else twisting in and out of portals, shattering to sand and reforming, buckling into a smaller shape and expanding in an ever moving form. This was not what he was expecting when Clockwork offered to introduce him to Chaos, but maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised. 

Bonus DPxDC crossover: Clockwork introduced his lil baby ghostling to his old friend Chaos so they can set up playdates between their two kids. Klarion and Teekl are now being spotted with a white-haired boy and a green puppy that can go giant and monstrous like Teekle, to Young Justice’s (And the league’s) concern