#this is actually very educational

[darlingrxby]

i can feel sex and the city altering my brain chemistry as i watch it

[rollercoasterwords]

universities will be like “please write a 1000-word essay telling us why you value diversity equity & inclusion & how you will contribute to these core values of our institution” & then the next page is like “thanks! our application fee is $150 🥰🥰”

[ignitesthestxrs]

there's something about the way people talk about john gaius (incl the way the author writes him) that is like. so absent of any connection to te ao māori that it's really discomforting. like even in posts that acknowledge him as not being white, they still talk about him like a white, american leftist guy in a way that makes it clear people just AREN'T perceiving him as a māori man from aotearoa.

and it's just really serves to hammer home how powerful and pervasive whiteness and american hegemony is. because TLT is probably the single most Kiwi series in years to explode on the global stage, and all the things i find fraught about it as a pākehā woman reading a series by a pākehā author are illegible to a greater fandom of americans discoursing about whether or not memes are a valid way of portraying queer love.

idk the part of my brain that lights up every time i see a capital Z printed somewhere because of the New Zealand Mentioned??? instinct will always be proud of these books and muir. but i find myself caught in this midpoint of excitement and validation over my culture finding a place on the global stage, frustration at how kiwi humour and means of conveying emotion is misinterpreted or declared facile by an international audience, frustrated also by how that international audience runs the characters in this book through a filter of american whiteness before it bothers to interpret them, and ESPECIALLY frustrated by how muir has done a pretty middling job of portraying te ao māori and the māoriness of her characters, but tht conversation doesn't circulate in the same way* because a big part of the audience doesn't even realise the conversation is there to be had.

which is not to say that muir has done a huge glaring racism that non-kiwis haven't noticed or anything, but rather that there are very definitely things that she has done well, things that she has done poorly, things that she didn't think about in the first book that she has tacked on or expanded upon in the later books, that are all worthy of discussion and critique that can't happen when the popular posts that float past my dash are about how this indigenous man is 'guy who won't shut up about having gone to oxford'

*to be clear here, i'm not saying these conversations have never happened, just that in terms of like, ambient posts that float round my very dykey dash, the discussions and meta that circulate on this the lesbian social media, are overwhelmingly stripped of any connection to aotearoa in general, let alone te ao māori in specific. and because of the nature of american internet hegemony this just,,,isn't noticed, because how does a fish know it's in the ocean u know? i have seen discussions along these lines come up, and it's there if i specifically go looking for it, but it's not present in the bulk of tlt content that has its own circulatory life and i jut find that grim and a part of why the fandom is difficult to engage with.

[certifiedsexed]

Hi! Quick question

Sorry if this is invasive or weird, but sometimes I see you say that you can't reblog posts because the image isn't described and you can't see it. Do you use a screen reader?

I'm not sure how screen readers work or what kinds of them there are, but I've heard that sometimes they can have trouble reading certain things.

Are there anythings things that would be a problem for yours to read, like italics or colored text? Or does it understand those?

I just want to make sure I don't send asks that you won't be able to read!

Hello!

I don't find this weird or invasive at all, I think it's quite kind. I don't use a screenreader because my computer's kind of on the verge of dying and can barely handle me using it as is.

So, I make do without one, which generally means avoiding posts without descriptions because I often can't make out things or the effort I'd have to put into making them out would take awhile and put me in extreme pain.

Despite this, I occasionally try to figure out undescribed posts. Things that make that especially difficult or impossible are colored text, small text, lots of text, detailed images and super vibrant colors. (All of which are amazingly frequent on Tumblr. T_T)

(Actually, shout out to @mythicalcoolkid because he describes posts for me sometimes and I appreciate it so, so much.)

This doesn't mean that if you send me an ask containing any of those that I won't try to answer it, it just means it may take me forever.

But if you describe any images like that (or just any images in general), it guarantees I can at least read your message.

Thank you so much btw, this is a very considerate ask and I appreciate it. <33

[sneepity-snoop-snorpity-sneep]

I gotta blabber for a sec about how much I appreciate how unique and SO not-simple of an antagonist Olrox is.

like he's introduced as the Vampire Who Kills Richter's Mom, and it was a straight-up murder. Like he fully sought her out, she was in the process of sending her kid overseas most likely because she knew he was coming - even before we fully get Olrox's side of the context, we can tell that shit was personal. Right down to the vivid green eyes, he's giving weirdly chill disney villain vibes. But the entire rest of the show? He's the dude in the bad guy car of the villain train just sitting and judging (OH is he judging) every other person there.

Olrox tracking down and killing Julia Belmont is the most confrontational we ever see him get. Every other scene he's in? He's watching, assessing, sometimes philosophizing, and eventually pulling his own chess moves, but fighting? Rarely! And the additional context of his character makes him even more fascinating!!

Olrox is really one of the only vampires in both Castlevania and C: Nocturne that seems to hold onto a connection to a human's life - even after he's no longer one. He reminisces to Mizrak about being a human during the fall of the Aztec Empire, he chooses to spend his time more like a human than any vamp since Lisa sent Dracula traveling like a human way back when.

Homeboy crossed the Atlantic by fucking ship, at a time when the trip took literal weeks and weeks and he can't even leave his quarters except at nighttime (granted, idk if he *has* a faster way to cross the ocean but it kinda seems like he'd do the ship trip anyways) he chooses to rent a room at an inn instead of staying at the chateau (and boink a cute human in said room, cough cough), and really seems to avoid other vampires - although I'm not sure if that's cuz he just doesn't vibe with 'em in general, or because he really doesn't vibe with the current hot vampire philosophy of the century, which seems to be very heavy-handled colonialism + elitism

I kinda wouldn't be surprised if it's both honestly - given that the only other vampire we meet besides him who spent time in the americas/new world was a literal plantation owning slaver (and unless I misremember, Annette says there were multiple vampires among the rich in St. Domingue), it seems pretty likely to me that whoever turned him was probably a vamp who had a direct hand in the downfall of his nation - coming to the New World specifically for conquest and to seize resources seems like it would be hella appealing for vampires. It would make a LOT of sense for Olrox's standoffish behavior around the other vamps to go back to him having been turned by someone very similar to them, who was probably not just an enemy to him, but part of this massive wave of destructive change in his human life.

like he really gives an impression of actively disliking and withdrawing from every other villain's motivation in this show - and it makes a lot of sense if my speculating is even a little bit close. The vampire's goals in Nocturne would be very nearly the same thing that drove the fall of the Aztec Empire - desire for power and control, justified by some """""natural order"""" hierarchy which really just boils down to 'we want all of this and we're going to indulge in making up a dramatic jerk-off reason why we're entitled to it, since you can't stop us taking it anyways and we've got time'

Dude seems to make little effort to be vampire-like - we rarely see him revel in his power like many other vampires do, as well as seeing him nonchalantly rubbing elbows with humans. He speaks fondly of a man he loved, who he fell for while said guy was still human, TO the other human he is currently crushing on! And I do mean crush, like he doesn't react to or treat Mizrak like a plaything, almost every time we get an Olrox lore-drop it's because he's talking to Mizrak sincerely about things that matter to him. He LIKE-likes this human, to the point of jumping directly into a fight to whisk Le Crush to safety in front of a vampire so powerful he won't directly oppose her! Absolutely fascinating behavior all around.

MAN but I want to see some flashbacks from this guy - as far as we know, vampirism is completely an Old World thing - Europe, Asia, Africa, every other vampire we've seen in both Castlevania shows has been from these continents. Were there even any vamps there at all before europeans landed on the shores of the americas???? I mean, I've heard of one of the old religions in mesoamerica having a suspiciously vampirelike god, but how would that connect to Olrox getting vampirized as a 30ish Aztec man?

MAN OH MAN but I am looking forward to seeing what Olrox gets up to in s2 -I'm burning to know if he's gonna survive the series or not, because despite him being the first villain we meet in Nocturne and doing a deed that usually gets villains the 'karmic death' ending, overall he's not really being written like a bad guy the audience wants to see go down. especially since he's not actually in opposition to our protagonists and has a vested interest in keeping one of Team Good Guys newer members alive. My guess is he's either going to get a similar ending to Isaac, a villain that we root for who actually catches a break and doesn't die, ooorrrrrrrr he's gonna get a Highly Tragic sort of death

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Completely normal out of context and out of character clips

[antisocialsharky]

Losing yourself in Deceit and Dishonesty

Everyone lies.

Sure, many of them won't admit to it and many don't think they do, but they're usually wrong. Everyone who has uttered a compliment they didn't mean, who has pretended to have plans, or who has answered the question, as to whether they're okay, with yes despite not being okay, has lied.

Funnily enough such small lies are encouraged in todays society. You're not supposed to tell everyone, who asks you how you are, about all of the things that are currently going on. You're not supposed to say yes to something, that someone else is only asking out of politeness. You're supposed to pretend everythings fine and that you don't want whatever is offered.

Additionally, people are also rather alright with some of the lies, that advertisements and corporations tell them. Its nearly as if lying isn't always wrong, but actually part of the "good tone" in certain situations.

Theres a threshold of course, at which these more socially accepted lies, cross into less socially accepted ones and may also be linked to "bigger" instances overall.

Even here, most people will be guilty of lying, being a bit deceitful or simply having bent the truth at some point. Theres a lot of reasons for it, that actually make sense, such as: wanting to evade punishment, wanting to fit in, wanting to meet your needs, wanting to avoid hurting someone, wanting to escape a situation, etc.

Especially people who have a history of having been subjected to trauma tend to use lying/dishonesty and deceit as methods of meeting their needs and survival. In some instances, this happens so frequently, that it becomes a problem.

If you have to lie on the fly and adjust situations in order to escape punishment, or in order to meet your needs, you may be in danger of losing yourself in the process.

If you had to pretend to be interested in something in order to fit in, or because it was expected and you do it long enough, you may forget whether you even enjoyed it in the first place.

If you lie about your favorite artists, your favorite color, your favorite animal, your dream job, your dream home or your dream vacation often enough, you may forget what actually were your favorites.

If you are forced to show dislike towards something you actually liked, that may cause genuine feelings of dislike sure, but after some time you may ask yourself: Is this my dislike, or was it caused by someone else? And you may not remember.

While hobbies and favorites can be rediscovered more easily (tho also not in all cases), the same often cannot be said for more complex opinions and emotions.

If you lied about your stance on certain matters often enough and adopted certain beliefs, you may at some point realize that you have no idea where you stand, or whether you truly understood the issue at all.

If you had to lie about experiencing certain emotions, you may subconciously supress them and either do not remember whether you ever felt them, or not know how to feel them again.

The more frequent your dishonesty and deceit is, the harder it will be for you to disentangle who you pretend to be, from who you are. The younger you start, the harder it will be to rediscover who you were, or if that person even exists anymore.

Its cruel really, when you stand there in a chaos of masks that you put on in order to fit in to that one group, fit into that one relationship, avoid a punishment with one person, receive some praise from the next...etc.

And then when you're alone you dig and dig trough layers and layers of faces and masks and you scream, because you don't know where YOU are. You don't know where your face is. You can't recognize it anymore, or maybe you never knew what it was to begin with.

But hey its fine, as long as you can craft another mask right? Maybe that one will fit, maybe it can be your new face...or at least until you need a different one.

Are you your masks? Are your masks you? When did it start? When will it end? Will you ever stop lying, will you ever stop deceiving, will you ever just...stop? You don't know.

Because the truth is, you probably never learned how to get by without it. No one ever taught you how to be yourself, instead of bending yourself backwards to fit into what other people want you to be and what you have to be in order to survive till now. Maybe you don't even realize it anymore, that you're doing it. Its cruel really, cus who are you supposed to ask?

Can you ask your friends to please remember who you were when they started talking to you, just to have to admit that you were lying and pretending the whole time?

Can you ask your parents to tell you what they remember from when you were still a kid, just to have them get upset with you if you do a 180 and change completely?

Can you really admit to having build all your relationships on lies and deceit? Probably not without losing them. And will you be able to build new ones without running into the same issue?

Its so goddamn easy to say "just stop lying" / "just stop being deceitful", but its not really that easy, is it?

Its not that easy, if your once intricate web of lies is now a ball of fucked up yarn with a thousand knots and chewed trough strings.

Its not that easy, if lying is all you know. If being someone else is all you've ever done, if you're not even sure if there is a YOU to begin with.

Its not that easy to stop, if stopping has never been an option before, if you have no idea HOW to stop...and what you're supposed to do instead.

Judging people for never being honest, is easy.

Demonising acts of deceit & dishonesty, is easy.

Claiming that theres never a good reason to lie, is easy.

Saying that people can just stop, is easy.

Actually doing it, after you lost yourself and have no idea what stopping looks like, or how you can fit in/meet your needs/etc. without it? Hard. Really fucking hard.

Having your entire identity, or a big part of it, be based on ever changing aspects, is exhausting. At some point you simply can't keep up anymore and you stand there, bouncing back and forth between identities and beliefs and likes and dislikes and really wish you could just cry, delete everything and start with a blank slate instead of having to basically be a different person depending on who you're around & what you encounter.

Finding yourself after years/decades of not being yourself is a challenging task. You try to pick and choose what feels right, what makes sense and what you understand. You try to remember who you used to be and piece it together.

While theres simultaneously still a world out there, where people believe theres "right" and "wrong" opinions and correct likes and dislikes and try to convince you of their side, while you're just sat there like "uh idek what color really is my favorite can I get a break please???"

So what I am trying to say is: please be careful if you tend to lie a lot and please be patient with people who change their identity/beliefs a lot and contradict themselves all the time! They're on a journey of figuring themselves out still and usually its not an attack on you, or something you NEED to take personally.

first posted on my instagram account (same @)

[kirkwallguy]

okay final post. i think part of the reason why i hated taash's story so much is i DID find it relatable, they remind me a lot of myself at sixteen: coming out as a teenager and being extra sensitive to anyone who doesn't immediately understand you and lashing out at your well-meaning but uninformed parents is pretty common. shathann dying before this is resolved and taash realising they were needlessly cruel out of fear of rejection COULD have been heartbreaking and an actual good way of pushing the regret theme, but this isn't what happens lol. taash acting the way they do could be fine, i like it when a character has flaws and an exploration of how messy coming out as trans is would be an interesting subversion of how fucking boring coming out stories become when you reach a certain age, but the fact that rook can't really tell them to cut it out and the fact that they have literally no reflection or regret beyond "i wish my mum and i had had more time together but at least she didn't misgender me as she died 👍🏻" makes it feel as though the writers actually think them treating their mum the way they do is somehow satisfying or good, because the game's narratives feel like they were spat out of an ai trained solely on reddit aita posts. and that isn't even getting into the multicultural angle which needs a whole essay by itself and i've already annoyed myself too much for one morning.

[siriusllly]

libraries are so punk rock i love them

like, public spaces with readily available resources for the common welfare- absolutely amazing and incredibly important

truly the biggest fuck you to capitalism and facism it’s honestly beautiful

(go support your local library, especially if you live in the US, even just by checking out a book, it’s that easy)

[basedonconjecture]

professor: you are very insightful and display strong critical thinking and analysis skills with sophisticated understanding of the text and its theoretical implications

me: smashing dolls together in my head and scheming up new ways to make them cry kith

[fenrichaita]

Thinking about how like in so many discussions about how psychiatric diagnoses are understood by literal mental health professionals, you hear how so many of them are working from outdated ideas about "X'. And X is just, like, almost every mental health diagnosis.

Like. Do you think there may be a pattern here

[sieglinde-freud]

oh im obsessed with this actually… who ever wrote this one i am kissing u on the forehead and hugging you real tight… inigo is such a loverboy im kkkhhhhhhijnsdnfng

[messrsrarchives]

I’m curious to know how you feel about all the he/him lesbian debates online? Because I have gotten into a couple online myself and I personally do not understand why people care so much about other people’s labels 😭😭

Anyways yes just wanted to hear your thoughts (I said I don’t understand why people care and then proceed to ask anonymously about it mhm okay go me 👍)

i think people need to get out and touch grass. maybe learn some queer history. focus on their own lives etc etc. idk. i think people care too much about labels too. like they're not rigid and they're helpful, yes! but i am Tired of all the boxes, yk? humans aren't meant to be slipped into neat boxes, how boring.

even if you don't understand,,,, that's okay! either listen and get educated or,,, be quiet because this whole "that makes no sense and doesnt fit what i think" is the same mindset used against she/her lesbians. and like,,, the entire LGBTQIA+ community i fear.

queer discourse is so incredibly Tiring. they hate all of us, stop fighting and group together. i promise you the individual labels aren't an issue, it's just people exploring themselves 🙂↕️ those are my thoughts

[prismbearer]

Do you think the idea of severance came from Harmony's own desire to be free of the grief and ties to the labor they endured at that Factory?

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

First meetings

Setting: Modern day Korra, everyone pulled out of their timelines.

Korra: So I was wondering. What was everyone's first time contacting their past self like! Wan: Oh this is gonna be good. Kyoshi and Yangchen: *grimacing* Kuruk, looking at Kyoshi nervously: Uhhhh sure. Aang: Sure I'm down! Let's go in order! Korra first! Korra: What?! Oh ok! So like, I thought I lost almost all of my bending, and then at my lowest point you came in and helped get my bending back Aang! Aang: Oh sweet! Korra: Hell yeah, really came in clutch! Aang: Ok I'm next. Roku's animal guide told me where to go meet him, so we had to sneak into the Fire Nation to talk to him. Got a bit dicey, but he gave us some incredible advice that we needed! Roku: Awesome! Glad I could help-wait what do you mean "Sneak into the Fire Naiton?" Aang: Don't worry about it. It's your turn! Roku: Oh um, so like. Sozin and I were in the middle of a cave in, partially caused by me. I thought I was dead, and thought my role was to just be a placeholder Avatar. But Kyoshi gave me a pep talk that amounted to "It's not your fault. Quit bringing yourself down, and look within you to harness the power you need." And she was right. Kyoshi, trying to be positive but sounding dejected: Wow, I was right about one thing for once..... Roku: Ummm, what was your experience like Kyoshi? Kyoshi: ................... Kuruk: Haha c'mon, I wasn't that bad- Kyoshi: I can't really say the first time amounted to much, it was choppy. Subsequent attempts left me paralyzed with seizures. Kuruk: ....O_O Huh? Kyoshi: It's because I didn't want to touch you with a ten foot poll. I was able to reach you eventually- Kuruk: Oh that's good! How- Kyoshi: By drowning myself. Everyone: ...............................dude. Kuruk: Did you really have to do that- Kyoshi: I was desperate. It was either I attempt to contact you that way, or I was gonna die and beat your ass on the other side. Either way was a win in my book. Kuruk: ................................did.....did I do something wrong- Kyoshi, grimacing in physical pain: No.....just.....just leave it, ok? Wan: What was it like for you Kuruk? Kuruk: It....it was.... normal? Wan: Oh well.....that's....nice? Korra: Ok well....Yangchen? Your turn! Yangchen: Do I really have to? Korra: Yes. Yangchen: I don't really remember. Korra: What do you mean- Yangchen: Korra, it was probably one of my many dissociative episodes, usually happened when I slept. Spirits knows when I first contacted Szeto. Tbh I was probably 5 years old and unconscious living out one of his memories. Like I did with most of my past lives. Korra: Holy shit. Yangchen: It got so bad that me and the nuns had to develop techniques for when I wake up so I could feel.....grounded again. Wan: Ok, but like why are all the girls' like.....all traumatic. Raava, get us a girlie that's not suffering. TT0TT

[sandinmybed]

can i be fr for a minute?? sending abuse to people online for holding different views than you is not activism and in fact actively hurts your cause. most people are not extreme in their viewpoints, you can give them a new perspective if you're willing to spend some time explaining shit. if someone is saying something you disagree with and you rush in there to condescend to them and call them disgusting and subhuman and dont even TRY to explain calmly why their views are harmful, they're going to shut you out instantly and double down on their views.

most people are simply genuinely ignorant to the issues they're talking about - they just pick their views up from the news and the world around them and express opinions because that's what every person does. if you run in there and tell them they're scum for it, what then? if someone does that to you, are you going to think "maybe i should do some research" or are you going to think "this person is an asshole, im blocking them." a lot of you think you're activists and then refuse to do any kind of actual WORK to support your cause.