#sometimes you need an outside perspective

[sapphicfandompirate]

Actually, if anyone is interested, there is a youtube channel where a married couple reads AITA (and other reddit posts) together, and even when they disagree, they always say they can see their partner's points or where they're coming from, i do think it's a great exercise

i think before you marry someone, you should sit down and go through the AITA subreddit with them and see what their take on those situations is

[weirdleeenough]

Genius, Drabble

Love looks different for eveyone.

Especially the ones with big brains and bigger destinies.

It might even look a little frightening.

Intelligence, Observation, Third-Person (Shikaku's Perspective), Childhood Friends to Lovers, Protective Parent, Shikamaru is Too Smart for his Own Good.

Nara Shikamaru / You

Nara's were smart.

It was pre-determimed.

Like red hair for Uzumaki's, or eyes without pupils in Hyuuga's.

They'd be born brilliant, and a little quieter, and a lot sleepier. Naturally, Shikaku Nara had these expectations for his own son.

His son wasn't a fussy baby. As soon as Yoshino placed his little behind to bed, he was out like a light. He ate whatever he was given, liked playing in the grass, chewed on his toys and then some. But sometimes, Shikaku thinks his baby pretends to sleep. He'd notice it the first time, when a toy had fallen out of the crib. Casually, Shikaku had bent over to pick it up, and met the wide beaming eyes of his son.

Shikamaru would stare. Breathe a certain way, lay a certain way. He was an actor, but even then it didn't alarm Shikaku.

Nara's were smart.

If his son turned out to be a cut above the rest, who could deny his genetic destiny?

So when his son got old enough to play outside with others, he'd allow it. Because his son's pretense was a way of being kind. 'Don't be frightened, I'm normal,' it was his way of saying that.

His son went out to play. He befriended a giddy Choji, and they did whatever kids that age do at the park. Yes, all was well. Until one evening, his son came to him holding the hand of a doe-eyed little girl.

Her face was round, cheeks soft enough to melt right off the bone. She laughed like thunder, said her name and then hugged his son goodbye. After she was gone, Shikamaru stared at him expectantly. Like he wanted his opinion.

At the time, he'd made some offhanded comment of approval.

He didn't really understand tiny Shikamaru's intentions until ten years later. When he'd made a habit of bringing her over regularly. He'd sleep clinging onto her, play shogi only with her most days. Smile only when she was around.

It was even more startling because at times, it felt like he was pretending around you too. Like if his passing touches were accidental. The way he spoke, the words he used. Like he was approaching loving you with a strategy.

And that became the moment of realisation for Shikaku Nara.

Where he'd pulled you aside awkwardly with a careful smile, a warning ready. 'Be careful,' he'd wanted to say. But you'd looked at him, big round eyes,

"It's okay. I know."

That was it.

That was all he needed to know about his little genius and the girl he'd chosen to fall in love with.

[queenielacy]

Yeah Sami isn’t family and that’s exactly why he can see through the bullshit.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Spiritual seekers need one another as mirrors. A member of the Hopi nation once asked me about our holy days. I was telling him about Passover, our celebration of freedom, and Sukkot, our Feast of Tabernacles, and how they fit in with the cycles of the year. "I think I get it," he said finally. "You people don't want to be in slavery. And you want to pass this on to your children. But when you tell your kids on Passover, 'We have to go away from here; we can't stay here because it will cost us our freedom,' your kids will say, 'Yeah, but what are we going to eat?' So you teach them how to bake bread on stones, how to roast a lamb if you are hungry, how to find dandelion greens, and so on. When the kids ask, 'But where will we stay?' you show them how to build a lean-to, so they will have somewhere to live." An Indian perspective on the mitzvot to eat the Passover lamb with matzot and bitter herbs and to build a sukkah on Sukkot gave me a completely different insight into my own traditions.

-Jewish with Feeling, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. 2005, p. 198-199

[tizzyizzy]

Izzy-Misunderstanding Ed-Apologist: Ugh, I hate it when people ignore all of a character's flaws and demonize their victims.

Normal Person: Oh man, I hate that. What's this about?

IMEA: So there's this character called Izzy, and he's constantly abusing Ed, but people keep taking Ed's actions out of context and blaming Ed.

NP: What did Ed do?

IMEA: He forced Izzy to eat his own toe, well, toes, but—

NP: WHAT

IMEA: No, let me finish! I was saying he only didn't it because Izzy threatened to kill him if he wasn't a tough pirate.

NP: I...I guess that makes sense if they're pirates. He didn't have a lot of other options.

IMEA: It was such a messed up scene. Izzy said he should have let the English kill him, Ed had better watch his step, and that he'd only serve Blackbeard.

NP: So this Blackbeard guy was Izzy's boss?

IMEA: Ed's Blackbeard. Well, Izzy FORCES him to be Blackbeard.

NP: Ed's...Izzy's boss? Why didn't he just fire the guy?

IMEA: Izzy might have come back and hurt him!

NP: Well, I guess it's better than killing him? Feed Izzy his own toe so he's so scared he never comes back to hurt him.

IMEA: Oh Izzy's still there.

NP: Wait, he's keeping this guy around? Like, in the brig?

IMEA: Izzy is Ed's first mate.

NP: ...Ed was so scared of this guy he forced him to eat his own toes to keep him at bay, but he still acts as second in command?

IMEA: He had no other choice! Remember, Izzy threatened to kill him!

NP: Okay, so why didn't Ed kill him?

IMEA: Ed doesn't kill. Except for the time with the fire and when he steered the ship into a storm and killed most of his crew and everyone he killed in S2.

NP: Couldn't he have the crew kill Izzy?

IMEA: It's Izzy's fault his relationship with the crew is so bad! Izzy made him fell so unsafe that poor Ed went on a brutal, murderous rampage across the ocean, driving his crew to the brink. And then Izzy, who was ultimately responsible, had the gall to whine about the atmosphere on the ship and the crew being stretched thin, like it wasn't all his fault.

NP:...

IMEA: Frankly I think Ed feeding him his own toes and shooting his leg off was reclaiming his agency.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Hey. There's something here to me about how Tuvok had not one but two traumatic memories which were repressed for years [one is not technically a "real" memory but his reactions to it WERE real and his body/mind treated it as real and thus I'm counting it as two traumatic memories], we're told that Vulcans react incredibly poorly to repressed memories or in fact any discrepancies between the conscious vs unconscious mind, and then later Tuvok is revealed to have an emerging condition which causes neurological degeneration. + The fact that it's repeatedly stated that for Vulcans, contact with trusted people's minds are crucial, actually medically necessary, to deal with all manner of things from traumatic events to medical disorders and how Tuvok has no one he can go to for that kind of support or treatment except for Janeway and in the end not even she can help him with certain things since it has to be a Vulcan.

[moomeecore]

im actually really good at admitting when i dont know things its just that people keep talking to me about things that i know a lot about and am objectively correct on

[loverofwhump216]

Presenting the first of its kind (I looked, it's the first on AO3) a Hell's Belles and Cafae Latte Crossover.

Title: Therapy and Scones

Characters: Cyrus, Sharkie, Nicole, Penny, and Jennifer "JC" Charles

Rating: T for Teens and Up for mentions of violence and mild language

Summary: Cyrus takes a trip down to Hell to deliver some coffee and baked goods to the people of the Hellp Desk. While there, he opens up about his latest brush with death. Set after Cyrus's Kidnapping, but before Sharkie's Reincarnation

This story would not exist without the help of @mysteriouspegasus. It was their wonderful idea of putting Sharkie and Cyrus together that brought the story to life. I just acted as a tool.

If you read this story please be sure to thank her in the comments as well. Her name is TallyCharming on AO3

[dancefloors]

Taylor needs a songwriting partner who will compose something for her to write lyrics to because when she does it on her own or with Jack, it is boring, but when Aaron does it, suddenly there is so much more texture to the song, and Taylor can focus on her lyrics. When that happens, we get folklore and the last 15 songs of this album.

She needs many more collaborators as controversial as that is to say. I know in this legacy she's built she's the creator, the curator, the judge, jury, and executioner but lord. open the window and let the circulation in this stuffy room. the Aaron tracks are so beautifully heartwrenching and allow for texture and color and breathing space like you said but even then I find some of her melodies lacking. wondering if this would be better as a The National song. when she worked with Max Martin and Nathan Chapman you got that with those beautifully layered vocals and melodies she can't quite recreate to this day on her Taylor's Versions. Her Liz Rose songs, the original ATW.. so punchy so succinct so cutting. She's beyond creative and capable but the muddyness and uncertainty that plagues her projects is washed away when she examines herself from above for a second. Let someone else cook I beg. Even a fucking side dish.

[incendiorum]

I wish I could put you all in my head for like 5 minutes so you can absorb all of my thoughts and feelings on iovita's gender and then I could pull you back out and we could both nod and shake hands

[sleepii-moth]

ive been taking a bit of a break from digital art since i sort of lost all my juice and its been a while since ive been able to do a lot of tactile art stuff and its all fine and good like i reorganized my whole desk so all my different art supplies are within better reach of me but because my art desk is right next to my computer desk i cant really see my monitor when im at my art desk ive been having this issue where i dont really want to go draw when im watching things on my computer but as soon as i stop watching things i immediately want to draw, and what i mean to say is ive been having this issue where i do things like stay up until 3am watching adventure time on my pc and then going and getting halfway ready for bed before getting distracted and sitting down at my art desk and then proceeding to draw betty for an hour straight in complete silence

[dickparty666]

once again mentioning that the next thing this character talks about is eating lunch and the she goes "nevermind! c:" (nuance in tags)

girl what's wrong? are you experiencing the sylvia plath fig tree in your head again?

[insanechayne]

~ ~ ~

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Controversial opinion among Dune book fans maybe, but I loved the changes they made to Chani's character. Making her a fedaykin who is already an experienced fighter before Paul arrives was a brilliant choice. Dune Part Two is a war movie, and this puts her at the center of the action, side by side with Paul, and gives her a much more active role than she has in the book.

We got a hint of where things were going in the beginning of Dune Part One. The first thing we ever know about movie Chani is that she's a fighter. She serves as a voice for the Fremen, telling us the story of their struggle from her point of view. I wrote here about the difference this change makes compared to other adaptations of Dune, what a perspective shift it is to have the world of Arrakis introduced not by an outsider, describing it as a dangerous but valuable colonial prize, but by one of its native inhabitants, who tells us before all else that it's beautiful, her home that she's fighting to liberate. I am so, so glad that the second movie followed up on this characterization.

I never found Chani and Paul's love story in the book particularly convincing, because why would this woman, who already has a prominent and respected place in Fremen society, even give the time of day to her deposed would-be colonizer, let alone fall in love and have children with him? Without a compelling reason for Chani to love Paul, she ends up feeling like a prize to be won, and "indigenous culture personified as a woman to be wooed (or conquered) by the colonizing man" is a trope we've seen and don't need to repeat.

But as soon as you tell me it's a barricade romance I get it. Cool cool cool, I know exactly what this relationship is now and it makes sense. Movie Chani doesn't respect or even particularly like Paul when she first meets him, and she doesn't think he's the fulfillment of any prophecy. She comes to respect him, and eventually love him, through his actions. He's brave--sometimes recklessly so. He fights well. He's willing to stick his neck out on the front lines with the other Fremen fighters. He can (after a little help) hack surviving in the harsh desert environment. He's not too proud to learn from others. He seems to genuinely want to be her equal in a common political struggle. All these qualities make sense as things she values.

Fighting side by side as equals is just about the only way I can see movie Chani falling for Paul. And it fits perfectly with the film's pattern of reversals that Paul's capacity for violence would initially be one of the things Chani likes about him, only for her to be repelled later when she sees what he becomes.

And as for Paul, well, he's had people deferring to him his entire life. Someone who doesn't take any shit from him is probably refreshing. He seems to like people (Duncan, Gurney) who challenge him and engage in a little friendly teasing--and aren't afraid to go a few rounds in the sparring ring.

It's easy to speedrun a romance when you're spending all your time together in mortal danger fighting for a shared political cause. Especially if you then start winning in a war your people have been fighting for decades. Are you kidding me? That is the perfect environment for intense battle camaraderie to turn into romantic love, and lust.

It makes sense that this version of Chani never believes Paul is any kind of messiah. Of course a character like movie Chani wouldn't believe in or trust some outside savior to liberate them. She's been working to liberate her own people for years. The more Paul invokes the messianic myth, the more he starts sounding once again like someone who plans to rule over them, and the more uncomfortable Chani becomes. In this way she becomes a foil to Jessica, the two of them representing the choices Paul is pulled between. It's a great way of externalizing the political and philosophical debates that often happen within characters' heads in the book.

And of course this version of Chani would leave Paul at the end of the film. It's not just the personal, emotional betrayal--although that stings. What common cause does she have with someone who just declared himself emperor and is sending her own people off in a war of conquest against others? Given the important role she plays in Dune Messiah, I am super curious to see how they get her back into the story, but girl was so valid for being willing to just gtfo. Given that she has the last shot of the whole movie, I'm sure she'll be back somehow, and I can't wait to see what they do with her character in any future installments.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

re: Somerton

Not for nothing, but I think we should remember that James Somerton's fans and subscribers are normal people, just like you. They are people who received his output in good faith, and extended to him a normal amount of grace and benefit of the doubt, which he took advantage of.

I don't think it's helpful to respond to the exposé on Somerton with sentiments along the lines of "wow, how could anyone ever think THIS GUY'S videos were any good, ha ha ha, how did he ever get subscribers?" because 1) you have the substantial benefit of hindsight and a disengaged outsider perspective, and 2) it's a rhetoric that creates a divide between you (refined, savvy, smart, sophisticated) and Somerton's audience (gullible, unrefined, easily taken advantage of, terrible taste), which is a false divide, with a false sense of security.

Somerton's success happened because he stole good writing. He found interesting, insightful, in-depth work done by other people, applied the one skill he actually has which is marketing, and re-packaged it as his own. He targeted a market which is starving for the exact kind of writing he was stealing, and pushed his audience to disengage from sources that conflicted with him.

Hbomberguy makes this point in his exposé video: good queer writing is hard to find and incredibly easy to lose. The writers Somerton stole from were often poor or precarious, writing freelance work for small circles under shitty conditions, without the means or the reach or the privileges necessary to find bigger markets. And, as Hbomb demonstrated, when people did discover Somerton's plagiarism, he used his substantial audience to hound them away and dissuade anyone else from trying to hold him accountable.

He stole queer writing by marginalized people, about experiences and perspectives that people are desperate to hear more about, and even if his delivery and aesthetics were naff, his words resonated with people because the original writers who actually wrote them poured their goddamn hearts and souls into it.

Somerton also maintained a consistent narrative of persecution and marginalization about himself. He took the plain truth, which is that queer people and perspectives are discriminated against, and worked that into a story about himself as a lone, brave truth-teller, daring to voice an authentic queer perspective, constantly beset by bigots and adversaries who sought to tear him down. As @aranock, who works with some of the people he targeted, writes in this post, Somerton weaponized whatever casual bias and bigotry he could find in his audience to reinforce his me vs them narrative (usually misogyny and various forms of transphobia), which is what grifters do. They find a vulnerable thread in a community and pull on it. And while you may not have the particular vulnerability that he exploited, you do have vulnerabilities, and they can be exploited too.

People felt compelled to support him, even if his work was sometimes shoddy, because he presented himself as a vulnerable, marginalized person in need of help, he pulled on that vulnerable thread.

Again, he has a degree in marketing, and just like propaganda, nobody is immune to marketing.

YouTube as a system is set up to push for more, constantly more. More content, more videos, more output, more more more more, and part of Somerton and Illuminaughty's success was their ability to push out large amounts of content to the hungry algorithm, even if it was of inferior quality. The algorithm rewarded their volume of output with more eyeballs and attention, and therefore more opportunities to find people who were vulnerable to their grift.

It is a system which quite literally rewards the exact kind of plagiarism that they do, because watch-time and engagement are easily measurable metrics for a corporation, and academic rigor is not. There is pressure to deliver, and a lot of rewards to gain from cutting corners to do it.

Somerton and Illuminaughty and Internet Historian are extreme and very obvious cases, so blatant that you can make a four hour video essay exposing what they've done, but the vast majority of this kind of plagiarism isn't going to be obvious - sometimes it might not even be obvious to the people who are doing it. Casual plagiarism is endemic to the modern internet, and most people don't get educated on what the exact boundaries are between proper sourcing and quoting vs plagiarizing. We had an entire course module at my university aimed at teaching students the exact differences and definitions, and people still made good faith mistakes in their essays and papers that they had to learn to correct during their education.

All of this to say: it is extremely easy in hindsight to call Somerton's work shitty and shoddy, his aesthetics flat and uninspired, and to imagine that as a sophisticated person with good taste and critical faculties, you would never be taken in by this kind of grifter. It is extremely easy to distance yourself from the people he preyed on, and imagine that you will never have to worry about your fave doing your dirty like that.

But part of the point of Hbomberguy's video is that plagiarism is extremely easy to get away with, and often difficult for the average person to spot and call out, and with the rise of AI tools blurring the lines even further, it is not going to get any easier.

So I think we should resist the temptation to think of Somerton's audience as people with bad taste and poor faculties. We should resist the temptation to distance ourselves from the perfectly normal people he preyed on. Many times in your life, a modestly clever man with a marketing degree has fooled you too.

On a personal note, by the same token, I am resisting the temptation to assume that I am too good to be vulnerable to the systemic pressures that produced Somerton and Illuminaughty. No, I've never made a video by word-for-word reciting someone else's work, but I know for a fact that I could do a better job of double-checking my work and citing my sources. I feel the exact same pressure to get a video out as fast as possible, I have the exact same rewards dangled in front of me by YouTube as a platform, and I can't pretend it doesn't affect my work. To me, Hbomb's video felt like a wake-up call to do better.

[gossippool]

hi welcome back to leanne rewatches deadpool & wolverine and goes insane about every single detail in this movie. in this edition: how logan's clothes reflect the trajectory of his character

1. the suit—inside

so we start off with the scene in the bar where logan appears to be wearing what we're used to seeing him wear. flannels, leather jackets. his outfit and even the setting is not at all unfamiliar for him. but, as we later find out, he was wearing the suit underneath all those layers the whole time.

during his talk with laura, he reveals that he wears the suit to remember those he'd lost, and as a reminder of what he'd done. he's had the suit on permanently for god knows how long, hidden under his clothes. at this point he bears the suit like a cross, suffering in silence under the guise of normalcy, yet sacrificing what's left of his identity by reducing himself to what the suit represents; by taking all the jabs and nasty looks people throw at him that he thinks he's too deserving of to combat.

2. the suit—outside

after wade pulls him out, he has the suit on display for quite a while. on one hand, it shows the fight that's in him now as a contrast to his passivity in his own world. on the other hand, it's also a sort of vulnerability: what that suit stands for and by extension what he himself is is now laid bare to the world. out in the open for people to question. maybe that fight that's in him now stems precisely from this vulnerability.

this vulnerability is both good and bad for him: it causes him to lash out at the questions from wade that he's not ready to answer. it also leads him to open up to laura and finally speak about what happened—who knows if he's ever said any of it out loud before. fun! even with just the suit, we're already seeing some development.

and THIS is where it gets interesting.

3. the white shirt—his mind

the first time we truly see him without the suit is when cassandra nova looks into his mind. i've been going back and forth on whether this is logan's own manifestation of himself or if it's cassandra's, and i still don't know. i think the distinction does matter, but in the end what it conveys is the same.

firstly, another layer of vulnerability again. he's already on his knees for cassandra, submissive—now in his mind he's also stripped as bare as he can be (i think we all know white shirts can sometimes leave little to the imagination). cassandra looks at him and says "you're hiding ... from all the ones you let down." how interesting is that?? if we go all the way back to the first scene, he hides his suit under normal clothes. and he hides this version of him in his mind even further underneath all of that.

secondly and as an extension of that point, white symbolises purity. cleanliness. even a promise of new beginnings. let's tackle this from the two possible perspectives.

if this is logan's manifestation of himself, it would be so intriguing that this is how he appears. maybe it means that despite it all, there's some good in him. maybe it means that deep, deep down, past all the shame and the guilt and the grief, there's still a part of his mind where he can just be.

on the other hand, the white could also symbolise a second chance—like i said, a promise of new beginnings. i made a post about this scene here, but the basic point is that cassandra is offering him something that no one else may ever be able to offer him. a chance to fully be himself, to silence the voices. the white is such a stunning visual representation of what she is saying logan could be if he stays with her. which makes it even more poignant that he doesn't.

4. the time ripper

after this scene, he's in the suit again, necessarily. but then! BUT THEN!!!!! the time ripper!!! y'all need to understand the significance of this scene in all its nuances FR! here you can look at his abs again:

but the thing is we know by now what the suit represents. all his failures, all his guilt, his inability to let go of his past. it represents him. isn't it just so fitting that it's at this point where he saves the fucking world that the suit breaks away. it breaks away from him. he's free. this not the same as him just taking it off, because with it breaking into pieces he literally cannot wear it anymore. this is not just a hugh jackman body appreciation, this is logan finally moving on. this is him realising that he is not a failure, that he is not his failures, that he has something else to live for.

5. him

and oh my god, we finally make it to the extremely satisfying ending. after all of that, we finally come full circle. he's in his normal clothes again, the wife beater and the flannel, except this time without anything underneath. he's no longer defined by that one incident, defined by his mistakes and the people he let down. he is just him.