#there is so much more to discuss

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

News spreads fast.

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[spiltcandycoatedpunkblood]

i think what's interesting in Scanners is that not only do they have separate political and social themes analogised by the sci-fi horror/thriller elements of psychic abilities (that also roundly inform each other) but that it can be readily described in a whole as a theme from throughout history of victims of natural disasters and scientific experiments heavily influenced and interfered with by human negligence, incompetence and mainly corruption for monetary gain, understanding and power and an often complete disregard for ethics and human lives (simply reduced to statistics to demonstrate the effects of something) with the liberal use of the phrase 'the ends justify the means'.

in turn, through no fault of their own, are left with the fallout and with no way to hold the people accountable mainly due to power, influence and money that dramatically and negatively impacted their entire lives, have to live with these consequences. with the implicit analogy of mental illness and neurodivergence in the film, they can end up ostracised, marginalised and pathologised, roundly discarded by society and forgotten about. they can be exploited for other people's gain, put through an inevitable pipeline of being either the trash at the bottom of the heap of society, or experimental guinea pigs that can be weaponised quite literally in the physical sense (the fact that it especially takes place in the early 80s where the Cold War was not yet over, and the main institution featured, Consec, being a business that specialises in security and weaponry, anxious over being able to continue a Scanner program as the numbers dwindle, thanks to a rogue scanner taking them out who turns out to be the villainous Revok, who has spent most of his life being taken advantage of by the medical field and his own father and despises the treatment dealt out to him for who he is to the point of developing a superiority complex and a need for a scanner supremacy - these people are not referred in a way that marks them as human to others; more subjects to be manipulated than anything else) or in a metaphorical, emotional sense; that having been left in the dark and cold for so long that, instead of being helped, are pointed to as being a threat to be dealt with, even from the very beginning such as where Vale, homeless at that current stage, is regarded by an older woman as simply disgusting just for existing and surviving on the fringes of society (Revok in another way, effectively becomes a political enemy to be dispatched where his father, a doctor, in a cold, business-like manner, sends his own equally exploited and sadly far more naive brother to deal with him in a way that he conveys as ridding evil from the world, of which we later discover, was actually to destroy a 'problem' he created himself as if scanners were not human, but simply political issues to unite against for the so-called 'common good' as well as good in terms of successful business ventures).

it is helped that it alludes to the very real drug scandal of the 50s where thalidomide, a morning sickness drug, resulted in physical deformities of the children of these pregnant mothers. the fictional drug, ephemerol, resulting in psychic mutations in the unborn children clearly reflects that, as instead of the scanners' abilities being usually portrayed as supernatural, it exemplifies itself as a form of social commentary, however explicit, by portraying it as a medical condition that is the product of ambiguously ethical scientific experimentation. which in turn gives as the very real pathologisation, stigmatisation and institutionalisation of mentally ill and neurodivergent people, where they are hidden away and sidelined and not treated as human and not given the due course to be recognised as such, being seen as 'dirty secrets' and not the product of very real societal exploitation instead so the people responsible for such exploitation do not have to be held accountable for their actions. this is then put on these exploited individuals, who are forced to deal with the stigma of not only having something they cannot control, but are blamed for the lack of social mores and proper treatment that is in then turn denied to them, on the basis of whether they deserve to have them or not.

Revok, is, of course, the villain. in the simple sense. it would be completely absurd to suggest that he is 100% sympathetic here. but the nuances lie in the themes demonstrated here - that him and his brother, the protagonist Vale, are products of a scientific experiment out of their own father's interest as a doctor and psycho-pharmacist, before being abandoned and dehumanised in different ways by society itself. it is a failure of a society who also then doesn't help these vulnerable people and only considers them trash or subjects or guinea pigs, being seen as freaks of nature as if they existed for people's fascination and entertainment in a circus, leading down a pipeline for them to be scapegoated and exploited for corporate and military purposes of which they have little choice to escape, forever feeling alien in a world that resoundingly rejects them for exactly who they are and are deliberately made ignorant of whose responsibility they were to begin with.

Revok and Vale are victims of a scientific atrocity amongst hundreds of others thrown to the wind and left to deal with the fallout, with no surprise as to why one of them is completely and utterly stunted emotionally and mentally where he is far easier to control, and one of them was institutionalised and regarded as nothing but an irritation to be hidden away from society and so developed an intense hatred and superiority complex that he'd rather see the entire world burn for his own benefit. it is more a tragedy, perhaps an inevitable one, that continues to be relevant as ever that victims of scientific experimentation and disasters are left with no ability to find accountability for those that did this to them and suffer down the generations, being powerless to enact actual change so in the end, this doesn't happen again.

[turtleblogatlast]

I think a lot about Leo standing up for his brothers in the things that really matter to them.

Like- Leo is the one who immediately pushes Mikey and Donnie into finding Raph the second it’s clear that their oldest brother is missing because he knows Raph can’t handle being separated like that.

Leo is the one who stands up for Mikey when Mikey wants to go on a solo mission, actively vouching for him and being the one to convince Raph into letting Mikey go, because being independent and proving himself just as capable of standing on his own two feet as everyone else means so much to Mikey.

And Leo defends Donnie’s honor in particular when his brothers’ intelligence is insulted because Leo is well aware of how important Donnie’s smarts are to him - and how important having those smarts valued and acknowledged is as well.

All this goes right into just how well Leo knows his brothers. For as much as he’ll tease or fight with them, he knows them, and he loves them.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 301

Ellie, during one of her stints of what do I do with my life right now, decides to, with the help of her Original Dad-Person (Look he’s aging and she’s not and it gets less questions the older he gets if he says daughter instead of sister with how the Fentons are getting older too) creates a Boo-Tube channel. No, not a Youtube channel, those are stuck to a single dimension.

Bootube on the other hand? Due to being through the Realms (and wow is Tucker getting so much income from creating it) is interdimensional. Which is so cool honestly. And she doesn’t know what to do at first, and honestly there’s already so many travel blogs that she kind of just… decided to do something that she wished someone had done for her and her brothers and Danny when she was new to the world. 

So she creates the channel CAAW: Clone Awareness, Accommodations, and Welfare. They had to learn things through trial and error, but maybe she can help someone out there learn how to find their own selves, or even help someone not melt. 

[crimeronan]

i've seen a couple people in the notes of this very good post about fictional polyamory by @thebibliosphere say things along the lines of "oh, i've been doing it wrong :(" or "how do i know if i did this right??" or "i should probably give up and start over, i wrote this badly :(" and. no!!!!

(i AM seeing far MORE people say "oh, this clarified and helped me so much, i think i know how to fix issues i've been having with my own story" which. YES!!!!)

listen. if you're a monogamous person who's writing a polyamorous relationship, and you've been focusing mainly on The Triad and All Three Together All The Time as the endgame, that's literally fine. that's a perfectly acceptable and strong starting point for your plotting, imo. you do not need to give up on a story that you've started like this.

but the things discussed in the post Can and Should improve your execution!

you can keep the same plot beats and overall relationship arc 100%. polyamorous relationships are infinite in their formations, every one is unique. "basically a monogamous romance but with three people" Does exist, as a relationship type. you're not hashtag Misrepresenting (TM) poly people with it

BUT i do think it will help to read up on some poly people talking about how their relationships Differ from monogamous ones.

so i have outlined some basic important concepts about polyamory.

MORE IMPORTANTLY though, i've broken down some questions that you can answer throughout the writing process to strengthen your individual dyad relationships, your individual characterization, & your characters' individual feelings/experiences. this is a writing resource have fun

future kitkat butting in to say i spent over two hours writing this and it definitely needs a readmore. it is also NOT comprehensive. but everything should be pretty simple to follow! feel free to reblog if you find it helpful yourself or just want to reward me for how gotdan long this took KSLDKFJKDL.

i've grabbed quick links for a couple of the important concepts, some have SEO pitches in them but the info largely seems to be good. (if i missed anything Egregiously Gross on these sites i should be able to update the links with better ones later, since they're under the readmore.)

sidenote: this is NOT meant to be overwhelming, despite the length. if you can't read all of this, that's Okay. you do not need to give up on your writing.

here we go:

compersion!

compersion is a BIG thing in a lot of polyamorous relationships. it's joy derived from seeing two (or more) of your partners happy together, or joy derived from seeing your partner happy with someone else.

compersion is really important as a concept because it highlights that every individual relationship within a polycule is different -- and that that's a GOOD thing. it's sort of the inverse of jealousy.

by the "inverse of jealousy," i mean that instead of feeling left out and upset and possessive, you feel happy/joyous/content.

i can use personal experience as an example: it's a Relief for me when my partners receive joy/support/sex/romance/etc that i can't (or prefer not to) give them. and i love seeing my partners make each other laugh and be silly together.

it's 100% okay for a poly triad not to be together 100% of the time, it doesn't mean that the third member is being left out or not treated equally when two people do things alone together.

(i have individual dates with my partners all the time! PLUS larger 3-and-4-person date nights.)

if the third member DOES feel jealous or left out, then the polycule can have a conversation to figure out what needs/wants aren't being met, and solve that. this happens semi-regularly in my polycule, as it will happen in any relationship (including monogamous ones)! it's just part of being an adult, sometimes you have to talk about feelings.

metamours!

a metamour is someone who is dating your partner, but ISN'T dating you. this may not be relevant for people writing closed three-person romantic sexual triads, but it's a super helpful term to know.

the linked article also lists different types of metamour relationships with some fun phrasing i hadn't heard before. the tl;dr is: sometimes you'll be domestic cohabitation friends, sometimes you'll be buddies with your own friendship, sometimes you might not interact much outside of parties, every relationship is different.

there's no one-size-fits-all requirement for metamour relationships. sometimes polyamorous people will end up dating their metamour after a while (has happened to me), sometimes polyamorous people will break up with one partner for normal life reasons, but remain friendly metamours.

the goal of polyamory is NOT for EVERYONE to fall in love. it is 100% okay if this happens in your story, it happens in real life too! but it is also 100% okay for characters to be metamours without ever becoming "more than friends."

(sidenote: try to kill any internalized "more than" that you have when it comes to friendship. friends are just as important and special and vital as partners.)

of course there are a million ways for messiness to occur with metamours within a complex polycule, exactly like with close-knit platonic friend groups. however this post is not about that! there's enough "here's how polyamory can go wrong" stuff out there already, so i'm focusing on the positives here :)

open versus closed polyamorous relationships!

i'm struggling to find an online article that reflects my experience without directly contradicting at least SOME stuff. so i'll give a quick rundown

google has a bunch of conflicting definitions of open relationships and whether open relationships are different from polyamory. the general consensus seems to be that an open relationship prioritizes one partnership (often a marriage), but that each partner can have extraneous flings or long-term commitments (most often sexual in nature).

this is not typically how i use the term wrt polyamory. the poly concept is pretty simple. a closed polyamorous relationship is one with boundaries like a monogamous one. there are multiple partners in the polycule, but they are not interested in having anybody new join said polycule.

an open polyamorous relationship tends to be more flexible -- it just means that IF someone in the polycule develops mutual feelings for a new person, it's fine for them to become part of said polycule if they want to! the relationship/person is open to newcomers.

some groups will need to negotiate this all together, others will just go "haha, you kids have fun." just depends on the individuals!

with open AND closed polyamorous relationships, the most important thing is making sure that there's respectful communication and that everyone is on the same page. but there's no one-size-fits-all way to do that.

i wish i could give you guys a prescriptive "You Must Do It This Way" guide, but that's.... basically the opposite of what polyamory is about, HAHA.

feelings for multiple people!

i was gonna tack this on to the previous section but decided it warranted its own lil bit.

a defining feature (....i'm told?) of monogamous relationships is that a monogamous person only has feelings for One individual at a time. they only want a relationship with one individual at a time. or, if they DO have feelings for multiple people simultaneously, they're still only comfortable dating one person at a time & being exclusive with that one person.

this is perfectly fine!

the poly experience is generally different from this. but once again..... polyamorous people all have different individual perspectives on this.

for me, i have never been able to draw hard boxes around romantic vs sexual vs platonic relationships, & i love many people at once. my personal polycule lacks many strict definitions beyond "these are my chosen people, i want to forge a life with them indefinitely, whatever shape that life takes"

some poly people feel explicit romantic or sexual attraction to multiple people at once, some poly people feel almost no romantic or sexual attraction at all. i'd say that MOST poly people feel different things for different partners, which is not a bad thing!

some poly people are even monogamous-leaning -- they have just chosen one romantic partner who is themselves part of a larger polycule. (so this monogamous-leaning person has at least one metamour!)

or alternatively, they might have one romantic partner AND a qpr, or other ways of defining relationships. (this is a factor in my own polycule!)

i made this its own point because if you're writing a straightforward triad, this is unlikely to come up in the story itself -- but it's worth thinking about how your characters develop/handle feelings outside of their partnerships.

like, is this sort of a soulmateship, 'these are the only ones for me' type deal? in which they won't fall in love with anyone else, and can be fairly certain of that?

that's pretty close to typical monogamous standards but you Can make it work. just be thoughtful with it

alternatively, can you see any of these characters falling in love Again after the happily-ever-after? and how would the triad approach it, if so? what would they all need to talk about beforehand, and what feelings would everybody have about the situation?

it's worth considering these questions even if the hypothetical will never feature in your actual canon, because knowing the answers to these questions will help you understand all of the individuals & their relationship(s) MUCH better.

i've been typing this for nearly two hours and there's a lot more i COULD say because... there's just a lot to say. i'll close out with some quick questions that you can ask yourself when developing the dyad dynamics within your triad

first, take a page and create a separate section for each individual dyad. then answer these questions for every pair:

how does each pair act when alone?

how do they act differently alone compared to when they're with their third partner?

are there any elements of this dyad (romantic, sexual, financial, domestic, etc) that these two people DON'T have with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

are there any boundaries or hard limits within this dyad that aren't shared with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

partner 3 goes out of town alone for a few weeks. what are the remaining two doing in their absence?

(doesn't have to be anything special, it's just to get a sense of how the two interact on a day-by-day basis without the third there)

what is something that each partner in the dyad admires about the other -- that they DON'T necessarily see in the third partner?

what problem do These Two Specifically need to solve in the story before their relationship will work?

how is that problem DIFFERENT from the problems being solved within the other two dyads?

doing this for ALL THREE dyads is VITAL imo. that way, you develop complex and nuanced and different relationships that all have unique dynamics.

those questions should be enough to get you started, i hope

then After you've charted the differences in relationships, you can start to jot down similarities in the overarching triad. what does one person admire in Both of their partners? what are activities that all three like to do together? what are boundaries or discussions that all three share?

but the main goal is to figure out how to Differentiate each relationship!

a polycule is only as strong as the individual relationships within it. if two people are struggling with their own relationship, adding a third person won't fix that.

(UNLESS the third person is the catalyst for those two to, like, Actually Communicate And Work Their Shit Out. i just mean that the old adage of "maybe if we just add a third-" works about as well to fix a miserable non-communicative marriage as, uh, "maybe if we have a baby-")

AND FINALLY.

if you're not sure whether your poly romance reads organically to poly people, you can hire a sensitivity reader with poly experience. if you can't afford that, you can read up on polyamorous resources like a glossary of terms & articles actually written by poly people. (and stories written by poly people!)

you can also just.... ask poly people questions, if they're open to it. i like talking about polyamory and my own relationships so you're welcome to send asks if u want, i just can't guarantee i'll answer bc my energy levels fluctuate a lot and i don't always have time.

polyamorous people are in an uphill battle for positive representation right now & so the LAST thing i want to see is authors giving up on their stories bc they're worried about getting things Wrong. well-meaning and positive stories that treat this kind of love as normal, healthy, & aspirational are So So So Needed. even if you guys end up with some funky-feeling details.

seriously, if you're monogamous then you probably don't have a full idea of Just How Nasty a lot of people can get about polyamory. i wish it DIDN'T mean so much for you guys to want to write nice stories about us, but it does mean a lot. and it means a lot that you want to do it WELL.

in conclusion. this is not a prescriptive guide, it's just a way to raise questions. and also, you all are doing FINE.

[sunonwaxyleaves]

I feel like we, as a community, do not talk enough about the fact that Louis held onto Lestat’s card that he gave him when they first met FOR OVER 100 YEARS!!!!!!!!

[mobius-m-mobius]

#so unserious 😂💖

[ruporas]

i’ll find you again in every universe. let us be a little more honest, let us have a little more time.

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[adamsrcnan]

It's official. I have finished The Sunshine Court. I have so many things to say and yet have no idea what to possibly say. It was perfect. It was absolutely perfect and heartbreaking and gut wrenching and an insane emotional roller coaster and everything i could possibly have asked for from Nora. Like she really truly delivered and i'm so fucking INSANELY grateful she has shared this story with us after all these years. We do not deserve her.

[be-it-so]

My life is an endless cycle

[samipekoe]

You just made me connect so many dots. Ranma was yuri all along. . . . That's why it's compelled me all these years. . . . Thank you for your service.

ranma may look overwhelmingly straight at first but you just need the eyes To See

[hello-eeveev]

you wanna know what’s so funny is that we’re all like “omg Essek could NOT shut up about Caleb 🥺💕” but like. he absolutely can.

the only times Essek brought up Caleb unprompted/without relevance to the discussion at hand were gesundheit and nighttime sendings lol. of the four uses of the phrase “my partner,” one is an off-handed mention as part of a clarification (“I have not been following the Assembly’s threads; that was more my partner’s purview.”) and the last three all happen in the span of four minutes before Essek exits the episode.

the problem is that within those last four minutes, Essek hit us with

1) showing off a zemnian phrase he learned from Caleb,

2) “he is kind. and he is smart. and he is so strong,” said with such conviction and pride and love that I don’t think I’ll ever recover, and

3) leaving the crafting party to chat with Caleb before bed

which was just. a lot. it was so much and it was so good. so much concentrated shadowgast in those four minutes

this whole ship is built on layered conversations and implications and skirting the obvious (with the exception of the last two minutes of m9 reunited) so to give us four whole minutes of Essek boasting about Caleb, praising Caleb, wanting to go talk to Caleb was particularly potent

thank you Matt Mercer for my life 💕

[turtleblogatlast]

No but like every time I think about Splinter and what he had to go through just to keep the boys alive, my heart hurts for him so badly. Is he perfect? No not at all, but none of them are and by god does he love his sons.

The fact that all of them are alive, and grew to thrive despite the circumstances surrounding them is a testament of how much Splinter loves his boys. He raised four babies following the most traumatic time of his life, all alone with nothing but the sewers to house them (to hide them.) I feel like he’s not given the credit he deserves for all he’s done.

And I get that it’s easy to hold up his flaws and faults when it comes to parenting, I myself like looking into them because flawed characters are super interesting and said flaws make them more realistic and engaging, but he tries, and again, so many others would have given up on the boys or failed along the way but Splinter didn’t.

He’s their father, for all his faults he did his damndest to make sure they survived.

[anonymouscheeses]

.

*inhales deeply*

.

..

...

....

.....

Do you think they call eachother pookie? 🤯

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Response to your reblog before I peace out.

The argument of the immorality of abortion is built on the assumption that life inherently has value. Lives do not have any inherent value, because they are the result of millions of years of naturally occurring processes. These natural processes do not have any inherent moral value; attempting to assign one would involve invoking some sort of "god" that exists beyond the material, observable, provable world we live in, rather than some logical, clear, and distinct notion such as the one attempted to be shown. For these reasons, abortion is morally neutral.

On that note, the morality and legality of abortion are thereby a human notion, with a logically valid -though not logically sound- argument in either direction. The argument presented says that "no human life should be purposefully ended by another human being. Because that's murder." In short, they believe that murder is necessarily and inherently immoral. That's all it is though, a belief: There is no wholly logical ground to stand on with regards to murder being universally bad in all scenarios, because of its' moral neutrality as I proved above. In other words, the morality and legality of aborting a fetus is wholly subjective.

"Do you actually have an issue with my argument that a fetus is a human being with the right to life, and ending their life is murder[?]"

Yes I do. A fetus is not survivable beyond the confines of the womb for quite some time; in fact, not until right before the fetus is due to become a baby and be born, that ever-reliable 8 month mark after insemination. As such, considering the fetus is unable to survive without constant connection to the pregnant person, it stands to reason that this is an extension of their body at this point, rather than a separate entity. If one intended to claim it still was at the stages before a fetus can survive independently, then consider this implication: Parasites rely on being attached to living beings in order to survive. This includes humans. Therefore, following the earlier claim that "a fetus is a human being with the right to life, and ending their life is murder," a parasite attached to a human is also a human being with the right to life, and ending their life is murder. Therefore, it is more reasonable to claim that for most of the pregnancy cycle, a fetus is not a separate entity from the pregnant person, and by extension, "ending its' life" is not murder.

"Babies are people, too, and have the same right to life as an adult."

This is true! Because babies are not fetuses.

Just thought you would want to read this, because anti-choice rhetoric can be very harmful in shutting down the agency of pregnant people and their ability to dictate their own lives. Knowing the direction that restrictions of this kind have gone in the past, those restrictions will not stop after the illegalization of abortion. Please consider who this harms and who this helps before spreading closed-minded rhetoric of that kind.

Either morality (God-given or otherwise, because there are many secular arguments against abortion) exists or it doesn't. There is a line in the sand or there is not. If you truly intend to argue that lives have no inherent value beyond what we assign them, then not only are the two of us operating in completely irreconcilable ethical frameworks, but yours collapses under its own weight; harm, agency, all these things mattering hinges on the idea that humans and (to a lesser extent) other forms of life have inherent worth, inherent dignity, that causing the former and undermining the latter are wrong in and of themselves.

If there is no objective standard on which to hang our arguments, then everything becomes subjective; all that matters is what we value on a social and individual level. And if that's the case, why would I ever bother to value the opinions of you, a stranger on the internet, over my own? It would be unfair and wrong of me not to consider other positions, to try to see things from another person's point of view, but why should I care about fairness or rightness?

Equating an embryo or fetus to a parasite is fallacious and incorrect. Ignoring that by the scientific definition parasites have to be a different species from the host, and that a pregnancy is a two-way street that also provides benefits for the mother, embryos and fetuses are simply living out the natural development cycle that literally every other human being on the planet has gone through. The biological principles at play in parasitism and human reproduction are fundamentally different.

I could keep going. I could match your arguments with my own about how anti-life rhetoric is a slippery slope to eugenics, about how I could just as easily twist your arguments around to make social parasites out of the elderly and disabled; but in this case it's pointless, because I can't even get you to sit down and agree upon simple principles like "human lives have value" and "murder is bad" or even "there is such a thing as objective morality."