#that should be a warning sign??

[sociallyawkwardjustice]

Man I’m always up for ace/aro head canons and it’s awesome when writers actually intentionally portray a character as ace/aro - BUT.

When a major film has an otherwise obvious hetero couple miraculously not hook up, this is always my first question:

Is it an interracial couple?

Because here’s the thing; head canons are one thing, racist bigoted studio intent is another…

A lot of the time platonic hetero relationships in media just ~happen~ to be interracial. I’m not saying those characters NOT hooking up is by default racist. I’m just saying, what’s the more likely intent by the actual creators/producer/studios?

Sometimes I see glib praise of this kind of characterization without the slightest consideration that maybe, just maybe, certain platonic hetero dynamics in fiction are racially motivated and should be judged as such, instead of welcomed warmly as supposed ace representation?

It’s just giving too much credit to an inherently, systemically problematic industry, y’know?

Pacific Rim was cute, but would the leads have not kissed if they were both white? A big international blockbuster NOT bringing the main characters together romantically does have precedent - providing of course that those characters are not the same race. Friggin’ Star Wars, literally Finn at first shows interest in Rey but who actually gets to have a nauseating semi-romance with her? Main white guy Kylo-Ren. Also female character of color Rose shows up with the apparent sole purpose of falling in love with Finn…

At least the Pelican Brief starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington was made in like, the 90’s! That movie infamously had obvious chemistry between the mains, but for ~~some reason~~ their relationship remained a bit ambiguous.

Again - I am 100% PRO platonic hetero bros and ace/aro representation in media! But I’m always skeptical when the supposed examples are almost ALL interracial dynamics in high profile blockbusters.

TLDR; let’s not call rather obvious racist dynamics positive representation for ace/aro/platonic relationships…

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[glittergroovy]

[courfeyrec]

picture of dorian gray but dorian and basil are brothers and it's modern.

phantom of the opera but it's a ya version with franchise potential.

wuthering heights but it's margot robbie and jacob elordi.

[vlarelythere]

Danny is learning that there’s always a bigger fish

[lotus-pear]

finally started p5 royal ‼️‼️‼️‼️

expect some royal trio art soon they are my dearly beloveds (minus akechi i hope he dies in this reality too)

[gentrychild]

Gentry, I low key be shipping AFO and Kurogiri in Anyone. How much to make them canon? Or at least to imply they're a thing.

I... Well... I... Listen. While I will admit this would be one hell of an explanation as to why Kurogiri is taking AFO's side instead of Izuku's, Kurogiri is still one of the most responsible members of the group and while he has made a lot of bad decisions in his life (seriously, a lot of bad and dumb decisions), he has his limits.

Kurogiri is the man who has been AFO's taxi service AND bartender since he was 16. He saw all the petty and dumb things that motivated AFO to go from point 1 to point B quickly. He has heard AFO's unfiltered opinions on too many things, including his little brother. And that's before meeting Yami, because let's be serious, anyone getting with AFO also get Izuku in the deal, no matter how much Izuku disagrees with it.

Kurogiri simply doesn't have so little self worth and urge to self destruct to hook up with a yandere nuke who holds grudges like it's an Olympic sport and who will smother anything he loves until they die, unless said something has a quirk about as strong as AFO himself and is willing to murder him.

[20dollarlolita]

Something that I've used to judge my health, in more ways than one, is what I call the need-to-pee test.

When I'm sitting, wasting time, and I need to pee, healthy me will just get up and go to the bathroom. That's normal behavior.

Sometimes, however, elements of my health will make that very basic task difficult. When you recognize that you need to pee, but you have to have an internal conversation with The Vampire of Despair about if you needing to pee is a failure and a judgement on your worth as a human being, you need to reach out to someone about your mental health. Being too depressed to get up and go pee is a sign that something in your mental health is very wrong. It's a sign that it's "bad enough" to really need some help.

When you recognize that you need to pee, but you don't want to get up because your body will be in pain, that's a sign that your pain is "bad enough" where you should do something about it. If you've been sitting around your house telling yourself that shit's fine, but you also procrastinate on the basic duty of going to take a pee because doing that simple task is going to cause you so much pain that it's not worth the comfort you get from not needing to pee, your body is fucked, and shit's not fine.

Getting up and going to pee is a thing that should not take effort or be unpleasant. Having difficult getting up and going to the bathroom often means that your problem is actually pretty bad. If you've been ignoring the problem, it's a very good sign that you should stop ignoring the problem.

Needing to pee but not being able to get up and go pee because the cat is sitting on you, however, is normal operating procedure. How dare you move the cat for something as selfish as your basic bodily functions. You metabolized and you didn't even get permission? The cat does not approve.

[do-deca-dangit]

I'm so excited for tpot 15. I hope basketball does something in it because I HATED that she came back from being kidnapped and forced to sign a dubious contract while being taunted by a powerful being that saw herself in her, and is the same powerful being that basketball has been trying to figure out and warn people about, only for her to not even bring it up to anyone even after appearing in thin air in front of everyone like. Did nobody ask her where she was? Hello? You guys were LOOKING FOR HER

[ersatzist]

a fun idea in sweetpea is that a serial killer's worst nightmare is a person who has a crush on them, because they're going to be naturally observant of everything they're doing and more likely to notice slip-ups

[mikalilys]

Me when there’s a character that has so many secrets, like something happens and they just don’t tell anyone. The type of character that lies all the time, the type of character who’s answers are always vague. The “you can ask but I can’t promise I won’t lie to you” type characters. The characters that lie like second nature, without even realising it. The ones who give out secrets and stories like gifts, the ones who never get mad at being lied to because they understand.

[cementcornfield]

Offseason Thoughts!!

ok i know a lot of people are dreading this offseason because it’s going to be Long it’s going to be Dramatic, but honestly i’m so here for it. like lowkey i love this time of year because really it’s the time for completely unbridled optimism in a lot of ways. if we do A, B, and C, who’s to say that that doesn’t fix the team and we win the super bowl next year? you literally can’t know for sure that it WON’T work!! (i didn’t say it was a time for realism, i said optimism, perhaps delusionally so 🥲) 

plus i’m just genuinely interested in all the roster building stuff. figuring out contracts and how those might work, free agency, the draft and everything that those things entail - love it! all about it! so if you’re a sicko like me who IS into all of this (and i completely understand if you aren’t because it WILL be exhausting) i thought i’d make a little overview about the things we’ll be dealing with over the next several months. 

Here is a list of all the internal free agents we are going to have to make decisions on, along with their expected cost and the likelihood of us keeping them

^Here is our expected cap space for the next few years (taking into account expected cuts like Rankins, Hubbard, and Cappa) plus some extra commentary.

as you can see, we have MORE than enough cash and cap space to be very aggressive this offseason. will we be? it’s certainly not in our reputation to do so, but they HAVE been making baby steps over the last few years to catch up to the modern nfl. the most recent example of which is firing coaches like lou before their contracts are up! very uncharacteristic of the brown family. and i think this reflects rumblings you hear on twitter that the organization is frankly embarrassed at how this season went (rightfully so). so i think you can expect they will do SOME things to reflect this urgency, even if it’s not as much as we’d like them to do. 

the biggest decisions to be made: what do we do about tee?? what do we do about trey?? and then of course extending ja’marr, which i don’t think is a decision at all for anyone, but they’ve gotta decide how to do it to make both sides as happy as possible, when they struggled with that right up to the first game last season 😭

Tee: obviously if you’ve been following this blog you know i want to keep tee. i think we can pull it off and i think it will be beneficial to the team long term. but there is an argument to be made regarding his durability/injuries and whether the resources we’d spend on him would be better spent elsewhere like on fixing our historically bad defense. however, to that i say that we’re actually already one of the biggest spenders in terms of cap space on defense, and it didn’t help at all lmao. once we get rid of people like sheldon rankins and sam hubbard, who are definitely no longer worth the value of their contracts, we will free up a significant portion of the cap and use it to find better value free agents that can help us. the strategy going from overpaying for bad players to paying average amounts for average players. because with a top 5 offense like we had this year, we truly only need an average defense, unlike the HISTORICALLY bad one we had this year!

(now a caveat to this is if the bengals would actually show they’re willing to go all out and spend BIG on the BEST defensive free agents, then perhaps that’s worth more than keeping tee. but the only thing with that is that i just don’t believe the bengals would do it either way. even in 21 when we fixed our whole defense with free agency, we still did it by acquiring a bunch of smaller name value free agents, who ended up performing far above what the market thought they would. and i imagine that will be the strategy by the FO whether we keep tee or not.) 

you can also say that a large part of our FO’s failure the last few seasons has been that we aren’t keeping our Known Talents. we drafted and developed jessie bates into a star, and then we let him go because we thought we could easily replace his value for cheaper in FA and the draft….and three years later safety is still a huge hole on our roster. DJ Reader is another example of a key player for our team that we thought we could replace and we failed dramatically. looking at tee, who is the replacement we have in line? jermaine?? for SO MANY reasons that is no longer a viable plan lmao. Someone in FA? this is a weak FA class. so we’d let tee walk and then probably end up overpaying for a lesser talent? what’s the point of that? okay maybe we draft a WR high to replace tee? well i’m hearing that it’s also not a great WR draft. and to expect a first year rookie to come in and offer even half of what tee does is also not a super sound strategy! (not to mention we’d have to spend a high draft pick that should probably be used on defense!) 

tag tee? maybe! but i don’t think it’s as likely as extending him at this point. the second tag will be expensive (i think over 25k? maybe 26k) and that takes up a big chunk of our cap space if that’s what we’re worried about. plus it will piss off tee, to be tagged twice and not given the benefit of being able to get a long term deal? with his injury history especially? players hate that shit. i think it’s more beneficial for both parties to just do an extension at that point if we want to keep him. you can spread the cap hit out easier for the team, and tee won’t have to worry about his long term security as much. 

ANYWAY this got long, honestly tee should have just been his own post lmao. but this situation is deifnitely the most interesting to me and seeing how it goes will be FASCINATING. 

Trey: he requested a trade last offseason because he knows that his current contract is significantly less than he deserves for the value he offers (and that was BEFORE he got first team all pro and led the entire nfl in sacks this season, oh god 🥲) we have him under contract, but would he be willing to play under it? or would he retire like he threatened to? i’m honestly not sure, and i hope it doesn’t come to us finding out. we need to keep our star players happy, which means we need to figure something out here. do we extend him? he just turned 30, which the FO always frowns upon when it comes to extensions lol BUT he also just had his best year? i don’t think even our idiotic FO could say that just because his age starts with a 3 now means he’ll be washed next season or even the season after. what i’m seeing on twitter is that he’s expected to get at least one more deal of 2-3 years. and looking at the age of elite edge guys in the league, i think that that’s fair! and if you ask me, completely and totally worth it to keep trey. i mean jesus, who do we even have on defense if we lose him?? i think this one is a no-brainer, we’ve gotta offer him an extension for more money and i think he’d still be willing to take a reasonable deal to stay. 

Ja’Marr: oh my god. i’m still filled with SO MUCH RAGE when i think back to how CLOSE we were to getting him signed last offseason. we were RIGHT THERE. all the rumors were saying it was basically a done deal!! all the numbers and years were agreed upon!!! but our cheap-ass FO couldn’t just get over themselves and structure the guarantees to match how most deals are done in the rest of the league!! they showed they’re willing to do a modern structure for Joe, they need to show they’re willing to do it with the rest of our stars. especially our first team all pro triple crown winning stars!! jesus christ!!!

the only thing that offers me some comfort is that ja’marr is still on the same path, contract-wise, as Justin Jefferson. they also couldn’t get over the hump before his fourth year even when both parties wanted to, and he ended up signing a massive contract in june the next year. i’m hoping that we can accomplish the same on a similar timeline because oh my god i do not need all the drama of ja’marr missing training camp again! and when you look at all the other WRs up for an extension this offseason (garrett wilson probably the only one who even comes slightly close to ja’marr’s level), i think it’s fair to say that ja’marr is setting the market whenever he signs. then like with justin’s last year, the other WRs will all sign slightly below. so i’m hoping hoping hoping that there’s no motivation on either side to drag this out. but of course, we’ll see!! 

and then we’ve gotta think about the lesser free agents like Mike G, Mike H, BJ, Germaine…i have no idea what we do with them. i’d like to retain Mike G…..the three defensive vets i dunno! they’re good locker room leaders…mostly? they’re still solid if not losing a step. should we bring them back for reasonable vet deals? probably?? can we find better value in FA?? i’m honestly not sure. like you don’t want to lose these guys but it’s also hard to say that we should keep them at all costs when you look at the defensive performance last year. i just don’t know here. i’d hope we keep at least one of them? BJ maybe being the most important in my eyes? 

there’s so much more to talk about honestly but i’ll stop yapping for now! what do you guys think we should do?? i’d love to hear your thoughts! 

[itissadbutitsmy-artblog]

it's as done as im going to make it tbh. inconsistent, not perfect, but done :)

i'd say "sorry about this" but if i found a silly three minute wizards city fan animatic id lose my mind so im not sorry in the least

[ayamos]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Man About Town Magazine (@_manabouttownuk)

[nattousan]

I officially start as an apprentice at a tattoo shop today!! Yippee!!

i've been drawin on myself and others since I was a kid so i guess this was only natural! I'm very excited and also Very terrified!

I can't help but think about the election coming up and how drastically different my future looks depending on who wins. Nobody's gonna want to get tattoos when they can't afford to live in the even Worse hypercapitalist hellscape trump would turn this country into should he get reelected.

How could i escape a potentially dictatorial country when I've been apprenticing and all my savings are gone? What would happen if he succeeds in banning my existence as a trans man and i'm forced to detransition in the eyes of the law? I really don't see anything being sacred when it comes to human rights for this monster and until we know once and for all that he's out, I will not be able to relax.

Alls I can do right now is make sure i VOTE. That's the one thing that will save us. Vote blue. Vote for the future and our potential to improve things under an imperfect but not outright fascist government. Overwhelm the numbers to where there can be no argument as to who won.

please. make sure to vote.

[mistykaru]

i got stuff from the csp asset store and i wanted to play with it so this is a mess but i did have fun and i kinda dig the vibes