#something has gone very wrong

[snailchimera]

Like prideandprejudiceandknuckles said in the comments, her gender wasn't confirmed until very recently, and the English wiki used to refer to her with he/him pronouns. This doesn't actually mean anything in terms of official lore, but does mean her most recent lore drop mirrored a celebrity coming out in the subsequent wiki editing and other fan-run stuff, which is kind of delightful to me.

Was anyone gonna tell me Splatoon has a trans woman violinist who's a Betta fish or was I supposed to read that on the wiki myself

[lastoneout]

Needless to say, looking up recipes to help with my autoimmune issues is going FANTASTIC and totally NOT making me want to commit arson

[084392]

what a nice looking group of kids i hope nothing messed up happens to them,

[cirrus-grey]

These do not sound like the same worlds.

[deoidesign]

.

[rxttenfish]

oh shit right i forgor to say

chin tilting down for merfolk = dominant

chin tilting up for merfolk = submissive

of course this is speaking in the very VERY general body language terms of dominant vs submissive, and is more about how threatening or aggressive they might be in any given situation. generally head lowered is also dominant as well, and head turning back/away is submissive, but head lifted can be either submissive or dominant based off of the chin position.

mostly its about showing the gills and the soft spot of their neck underneath their jaws. this is an incredibly delicate area on merfolk not just for the gills and fins (which, again, glorified lung tissue), but also because this area is very lightly scaled, making it easier to harm than nearly every other part of their body.

if a merfolk tilts their chin up, theyre exposing that bit of anatomy, thus implying either trust towards whoever theyre making this gesture towards that they will not hurt them, or going "please dont hurt me, im not being threatening to you, i will do what you ask if you dont hurt me". it can also be seen as polite to do for certain positions and roles like mirandas, implying that you arent going to try and threaten her and her position by showing that youre already on your back foot. it can also be done between merfolk who are extremely close to each other, including touching each others throats, as a gesture of trust and love and knowledge that the other wont hurt them (going back to the mutual sort of belonging that defines a lot of merfolk relationships, an "i am yours and you are mine" that goes in both directions. an "i am submissive to you and you are submissive to me" kinda thing). but merfolk might also tilt their chin up towards pups or younger merfolk that are around, both making a submissive gesture towards them and proving that they arent going to hurt them, something which is highly approved of as a means of getting the parents involved to relax and know that said merfolk isnt going to try and hurt the pups.

if a merfolk tilts their chin down, theyre covering that spot and making it harder to access without putting yourself at risk of getting bitten by them first. it can be a gesture of fear and stress, sort of as a bracing for impact and making sure they arent exposing any soft places on their body, but it can also be a very aggressive gesture, implying that theyre willing to fight for whatever they stand for in that moment, and that they do not plan to make it easy for anyone else. lowering their head is seen as very dominant and aggressive for this reason, especially because it has the context of already aiming for the soft places on the other merfolk's body, and with a flare of their fins it can be some of the most intense and directly confrontational poses merfolk can take with other merfolk. lifting their head but lowering their chin can imply confidence, a total awareness of themselves so certain that they arent even afraid that the other party might try something — while lifting their head and lifting their chin exposes as much of their neck and gills as possible, making it an incredibly submissive and fearful gesture.

turning their heads away is also seen as more submissive, but is usually done with tilting their chin down. in this case, it means moreso along the lines of "you are stressing me out, im giving you a chance to leave while you can". it also puts them in a better position to turn away and flee if they need to (they swim facing the direction of their head), so it also indicates a want to leave or a separation between them, sometimes intentionally built up as a wall. other stress indications like tightly closed eyes, intensely focused eyes, fins flattened back against the neck, jaw held open, lips pulled tight, "panting" even moreso provide red flags that the other party needs to back up or provide space or else there might be consequences. when theyre on land, merfolk will also pull their tail between themselves and the other party, also helping to build up that wall and separation, to try and build space between them and the other person.

[quarks-pussy]

So I know we here at Startrekfandom love that "came back wrong but from the pov of the wrong" thing and apply it to many different characters and canon situations and I am far from trying to complain about it (I'm "came out wrong" trope myself so I was always gonna obsess over it) but having recently watched a very important episode (you'll know which one) for the first time I think there's a character who hits both tropes mentioned but llike, intertwined, opposite and subverted, and whom I wanna talk about.

Julian Bashir.

From his parents' pov he's "came out wrong but we got him help and he came back better" while from his own pov it's "came out 'insufficient', was destroyed for it, came back wrong and only later slowly came to terms with his new self tho never the process (justifiably so)" and it's heartbreaking because in a way, he's right! Jules Bashir died! His parents had an intellectually disabled child and decided to eugenics him! Julian is not the person he used to be and while I do love the person he is now, that doesn't bring back who he was! Part of me wishes we could've gotten to see Jules at least once and part of me hopes we never do because my heart would shatter.

This isn't a good comparison but nonetheless one I can't help drawing: it's giving similar vibes to anti-vaxxers. "I'd rather risk having a child who is dead than one who's autistic". Obviously this doesn't map over since Julian is still autistic and the procedure his parents subjected him to specifically targeted his intellectual disability and if any folks with id wanna comment on this I definitely recommend you listen to them over me, but it's a similarity I, as an autistic who has encountered anti-vaxxers again and again, can't help but point out. "Give me a normal child or give them death."

This may have been written about already but there needs to be stories about teenage Julian (after finding out and rediscovering who he was) practicing some good ol' recognition of the self through media. I need to hear about how he would encounter a story about someone who came back wrong (I'm gonna assume there's plenty of "wrong" pov stories floating around by the 24th century) and absolutely weep. I need to see Julian mourning Jules, taking years and years to process his feelings, experiencing guilt about how he, the imposter, didn't deserve to live Jules' life.

Came back wrong from the returned's pov but it wasn't an accident. It was done to you deliberately by the people who claim to love you. And now you are here, piloting the corpse of your predecessor.

Jules Bashir is dead. Long live Julian Bashir.

[asexualsimonsnow]

A few people in the tags on my Agatha romance plot line poll are voicing the same sorts of thoughts I had. I did not like her romance plot line because she had all these lines in the two previous books that, to me and many others, were implying her aromanticism. To have a chapter from her POV where she expresses feeling broken due to a suspected inability to feel that type of attraction only to later have this “resolved” by her finding the right person was extremely frustrating and disappointing.

Even beyond an aro reading of the character, it’s disappointing to see her coupled up at the end of the third book. So much of the first book was about subverting the expectations that come from these types of stories. One of these expectations seemed to me to be not just that the chosen one gets the perfect girl, but that all the characters are neatly coupled up by the end and have romance as a part of their story. In the first book not only is Agatha not with Simon, the chosen one, her supposed destiny, she’s not interested in coupling up and fulfilling that expectation placed on her by the world in which she lives and by the type of story she inhabits, at all. It feels like backtracking on her character growth to watch a romance play out for her in the third book.

[puhpandas]

sometimes I miss when Gregory was just a homeless kid

[bioswear]

Not to be some conspiracy theorist liberal hippie piece of shit but like… anyone else feeling like something is Off about the election tho

And before anyone who doesn’t have online media literacy goes “so yOu DoNt care that people JjuSt lost their rights” no I do bc I’m one of those people (proud triple minority), and I hate Trump and the American ChristoFascist plague that’s sweeping the nation and the deep rooted misogyny that American men hold for women and minorities. I very much care I’m also just coping lmao

But also something is wayyyyy too quiet about this election

[forestgreenlesbian]

.

[queer-cosette]

oh my god okay I was in Wetherspoons on Saturday night (cheap pre-drinks) and there was a bunch of guys a few tables away with. uh. one of them wearing a dog collar with a chain attached to it that another guy was tugging and occasionally yanking. like fully visible to everyone in the room, nothing covert about it. okay. and then the guy in the collar got up and took it off and gave it to another guy at the table. switched seats so the other guy could have his turn at being yanked around by the neck. just full on public leash play. and the thing is, like, whatever, y'know? if this had been in a nightclub or a regular bar I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. I of all people can't point fingers when it comes to that particular kink. But. BUT. In a Wetherspoons bro?! A WETHERSPOONS?! You were doing this in fucking WETHERSPOONS?!

[starbylers]

That ring is a very small thing, but I feel like if that was a tiny Byler detail we wouldn’t think of it as meaningless. It could very well be that El just kept it on because she still loves him as a person and it’s sentimental to her, or that it’s not made important enough to symbolise anything storywise and was just a nice gift, but regardless I don’t think a post time skip break up is an impossibility. I understand why it might seem worrying or tedious but I think we have to remember that Mlvn has a track record of like…not ending things even when it’s demonstrated to them repeatedly why they don’t work together? I mean it starts with the lying & drama of s3 that they both forget about without addressing after El says ‘I love you’. It continues in s4 with El lying to Mike, their awful poorly communicated argument & Mike’s insecurities that he discussed with Will instead of El, which were again all unaddressed between Mlvn and painted over by Mike this time being the one to say ‘I love you’.

Mike ended s4 by basically regressing in his conformity arc. Maybe this is because I don’t think Mike consciously lied (at least not completely, I think he sensed something didn’t feel right) in the monologue, but where we left his arc in s4…the guy was fighting for his life to hold onto straightness and not lose El. El who also regressed in her independence arc when she relied on Mike to give her power (and ended up losing). Will also regressed, in deciding to lie to Mike instead of speak his truth. I know it might seem to us like ‘they are so clearly over what reason is there for them to stay together?’ but I think it’s possible we are further ahead in that realisation than the characters themselves. Them still being together is definitely tiring because we all know they are not going to work out, and we want to get to the part of the story we’ve been waiting for (aka Byler) as soon as possible. But that sense of inevitability/it being over to us doesn’t necessarily mean the characters themselves have reached their breaking point yet. We also know the painting plot is essentially the Benverly poem plot from IT, and Bev doesn’t find out that Ben wrote it until part 2 literally 27 years later lol.

There are so many paths they could take. Maybe they get into a Karen/Ted-esque dynamic where they’re just staying together and going through the motions. Maybe they fight, even more and worse than before. Maybe it has to get worse before they finally break it off and become friends, and then it gets better. Maybe they’re on-off during the skip. Maybe during that time Mike and Will get extremely close, closer than they’ve ever been. Maybe things between them start to feel like what Mike isn’t feeling with El, and that’s how he knows he has to end it. Maybe Will even dates someone else during the skip or temporarily ‘gets over’ Mike so it’s not like he’s spending years just pining. Maybe Mike and Will drift again, and then post skip they are brought back together and Mike gets hit with all the feelings he’s been missing and realises he needs to leave El. Or maybe he leaves her and the Will realisation comes after. Maybe it’s less clear cut than that. We have no clue. I think it has potential to be done well though.

For all we know they could literally break up as early as episode 2/3 right after the skip, which gives plenty of time for single Mike Byler build up. Remember we also don’t know the time span of the entire season.

I mean it could still be a pre-skip break up who knows, I just think it’s a possibility we should be somewhat prepared for and open to. I don’t think it should be written off entirely as either bad writing or it meaning Byler can’t/won’t happen. I’m personally going into s5 with no expectations except complete confidence in Byler being the endgame :)

[isogenderskitty]

if you cant engage in fandom without shipping anything you should really take a long look at yourself and maybe learn to free yourself from this amatonormativity

this just in: local biromantic is a bad person for enjoying romance

bestie i’m not telling you how to engage with fandoms. go make a post celebrating ella being canonically single and i’ll reblog it enthusiastically if i see it. i’m literally just sitting in a corner playing barbies. and if you really hate that this much the block button is free and easy to use.

[hyperfixation-symposium]

I’ve been really curious about q!Fit for a while now, and I’m glad people are starting to take notice of the strange things around him because I’ve been thinking about them a lot recently. 

Obviously the ominous leaving messages are the primary thing people have noticed. They’ve happened for a bit but most of the characters are just like, “oh Fit is just a silly guy! Just a little goober!” without looking father into them. They caught my interest from the moment they started because, well, q!Fit really doesn’t seem to mess around in that sort of way. Don’t get me wrong, he is definetly a silly guy, but he seems to lean into it mostly with the people he trusts. 

But then I noticed some really odd conisidences. Fit coming on at weird times for only a couple minutes or so, simmilar to what the streamers tend to do before they start streaming. But Fit doesn’t start streaming, and I never see him on anyone’s stream in these periods. It’s like he was preparing for something. 

The thing that stuck out to me the most recently was after Pomme’s nightmare. At a completely random time, without warning or context, immedietly after a code attack, Fit joins the server. He isn’t streaming, and he comes to ask what happened quite quickly. There is no way that his character would have any idea that things were happening, nor would he have any reason to be around. 

What brought Fit to the server at that moment? Or any of the other breif times he’s on for such a short period of time? He acts absolutley normal around everyone, but then leaves the strangest leaving messages. But everyone plays it off, that’s just Fit! He’s just a having fun!

There’s something about it that just doesn’t sit right with me. There’s something wrong with q!Fit and I don’t think his character is contiously aware of it. Instead of taking the warning signs seriously people have ignored them - and I think that’s going to blow up in their faces.

[alackofghosts]

i bought the new laptop for dt specs so i wasn't super worried, but the things xiv does to the fans of this thing. i don't understand