#tldr: i liked it but it had its problems

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[u5an5]

Am I the only one that every time I get myself into new fandom I just sigh, knowing fully well that I just got next 20+ x reader, y/n, x Oc!whateverthefuck or just any form of self insert tags to blacklist?

[a-gaime]

Every time I see bull red son an angel (me) loses it's wings (gets mildly annoyed)

[gaytangle]

gonna be real u guys lanolin Is mean and thats okay !!! I've seen a ton of people pretending that she's not mean and saying that she isnt to defend her bc I guess people on Twitter are being weird about it but . she IS mean. like that's a part of her character. and the character is allowed to Be Mean. it's very obviously intentionally written and people are allowed to like Or dislike her because of that.

It's pretty clear to me with Lanolin's interactions with Tangle and how the both of them reacted this issue that this is going to eventually reach a tipping point and maybe she'll get some character development out of it. Lanolin is intentionally being written as being needlessly harsh towards her friends so I think it's a safe bet that people are Supposed to feel off about that aspect of her character and I feel like acting like she can do no wrong or is "just a little blunt" is hugely mischaracterizing her. Let Her Be Mean. I promise you can still like her.

And when the time comes in the story where she has some sort of intervention about how she's treating people or tangle or some other character blows up at her or something I don't want any of y'all to act surprised or like she didn't have that coming bc if you are then I'm not sure we've been reading the same comic

[featureenvyproductions]

"Why does everything need to be Gay now it's so shallow to make men attracted to each other when they could be Pure Platonic Friends -"

oops sorry I can't hear you over the sound of me Doing What I Want Forever because I have been watching movies, TV, and animation since the 80s and have watched enough shallow heterosexual romances that would have been stronger as mlm-wlw solidarity friendships to fill the space between stars in a galaxy

[midwestblue]

I think (as much as I annoyingly complain and whine about not having a partner) being single this long has been good for me. I'm learning a lot about myself and I'm learning why I was a shit person, and through finding the root of the problem I can kind of... start to heal. I can be nicer to myself so I can grow and get better. Because TBH.. being mean and cruel to yourself doesn't make you become a better person. It just makes you believe that thats what you /are,/ and thats what you /always will be,/ as opposed to realizing that you are a product of your circumstances but that does not mean you can't get better and become a better person. Accepting help and trying to get better so you can eventually love yourself – even if no one else does – is the greatest and loveliest thing you can do for yourself. You deserve that love, you exist and you live and you feel and that is a truly beautiful gift.

[magnetoapologist]

love when ppl emphasize that nicky and joe only make it LOOK easy- bc its not and theyve had over 900 years of practice being a pair

[angryborzois]

okay i need to like stop panicking every fucking time i cant sleep by a certain time

[helliixns]

@thenextchapterbegins replied to your post:

It needs to happen however im bog fear that will never happen and they’ continue to just paint blitz as the sole factor

Unfortunately yeeahhh

[disteal]

I only ask cause you usually seem to be pretty up to date on the goings on of this site, but what the HELL is going on with tumblr's CEO? Why are they having a meltdown responding to asks? What's the trans misogyny accusation about? Why is tumblr apparently being run by children?

Thanks in advance.

This is kind of a long story so this is sort of TLDR for brevity but there’s more going on here.

Some context if you weren’t aware; Tumblr has been accused multiple times by its userbase for fostering TERF staff members and covering for them when making transphobic moderation calls. Things like; an overeagerness to ban trans women for posting nudes despite not addressing nazis or bots for years, or protection of notable TERF users who flagrantly break TOS by organising hate campaigns. The users who collected evidence of this became huge targets for these “””alleged””” TERF mods and users and were basically hunted online for sport. Up until recently the “terf mods” take was considered a bit of a conspiracy theory by some who assumed it was more likely to be an automation problem mixed with transphobic reports.

This week: tumblr user predstrogen was recently permabanned (for a second time) following a mass reporting by TERFs. This, obviously, pissed a lot of people off, and a fairly routine “the fuck haven’t you banned the nazis yet??” ask was sent to photomatt, the CEO.

Photomatt, INSANELY, replied, misgendering her multiple times and defending his decision to personally smack down the ban hammer by citing predstrogens nudes, but by his own admission the far more heinous crime was this absolutely ridiculous post;

Matt has also contacted the FBI over this stupid shit despite predstrogen not living in the US.

Lastly, during this very public announcement on the kangaroo court hearing, matty drops this absolute nuclear bomb about Tumblr having some internal drama when they’d discovered an external contractor was A) a transphobe wielding mod authority to be transphobic B) criminally selling moderation (likely to TERFs).

Despite this obviously being on the record somewhere, this is clearly news to fucking everyone including myself.

It’s also worth noting that predstrogen has not been the only recent ban; several black people and black transfems have been instabanned after directly asking matt for accountability (the user i’ve seen specifically named was @rulerofpurple and his partner)

So, naturally, people are fucking furious they spent years getting gaslit by staff, who had been assuring us of their even-handedness, but surprise!!! Trans women WERE being uniquely targeted, and even worse, likely targeted by the people who they could never seem to deplatform despite constant death threats and doxxing!! And despite all this assurance that Tumblrs internals are now perfectly free of transmisogyny and racism, it’s pretty obvious to just about everyone that Tumblr staff are chomping at the bit to ban trans women.

[sluglore]

Some Thoughts on Karma, the Natural Journey of Ascension, and Why the Ancients/Benefactors were Kind of Wrong

I'd like to address the community-wide misconception that you can only gain karma through "shedding your urges" when both in game and within the text of the game, we see this isn't true! the whole "shedding urges in order to ascend" stuff was only really a thing before the void fluid revolution, as Moon states in the bright red farm arrays pearl. The discovery of void fluid entirely trivialized needing to completely shed your urges by providing a much more natural method of ascension, and we see this play out within Rain World's story and gameplay.

In-game, we gain karma by directly engaging with our urges, whether it be sustaining our hunger, holding treasured items close or just survival in itself. From the beginning we are deeply ensnared within the struggles of living, "caught in the net" as the ancients/benefactors say. However, over the course of our gameplay, (I'm using survivor as a baseline, since their campaign illustrates the core of this) as we learn and grow and become more knowledged, living becomes easier, the struggle is not as harsh as it was before, and surely but slowly we die less and less as time goes on.

Simultaneously, this is reflected in our karma, as by dying less, we now hold higher karma more frequently. This coincides with the natural gameplay loop of rain world; the more we explore and learn new things, the more we grow and learn about the world and our place within it, we tread further and further away from the struggles of life, and become closer to enlightenment.

Ascension is the natural culmination of this journey of enlightenment, the next step on the path beyond. It's not inherently the right or wrong choice to make, its a step into the unknown, in search of something greater, of answers to our own existence, true spiritual self-fulfillment. This is how the ancients/benefactors saw it, but you could say they still got parts of it pretty wrong...

This is treading more into personal headcanon territory now, so bear with me, but I believe the issue lies within the great problem that the ancients built the iterators to solve. They wanted to find a means of evicting all life, material, the entire world from the cycles entirely, eliminating the personal struggle tied to ascension, taking away the choice and the journey that are so unbelievably crucial to it. This is also why I personally believe that a solution to the great problem doesn't or can't exist, as it would go against the fabric of their universe, from which the cycles are built upon. (LTTM describes the group behind this ideology as "triangulators"; they believed a solution was dangerous and had to be inferred rather than solved)

Ironically, in their desire to become effortless, by creating the iterators to make living easier, and to detach themselves from the struggles of the cycles, (just as we do within our own journey to ascension as the slugcat) this could also only be achieved through massive effort, so they even weren't truly "effortless" in the end, as nothing can be. Of course though, the few echoes in-game demonstrate that same ideology slipping through. Those ancients/benefactors became echoes because they hadn't experienced the personal journey paramount to ascension, or maybe they just didn't want to leave, but regardless, they weren't able to let go of their place in the universe and move on, and thus, they stayed behind.

TLDR: The ancients/benefactors were wrong about ascension because as a society they didn't fully recognize how important personal struggle, journey, and choice is for ascension, and sought to remove that struggle entirely.

[lordgrimoire]

So, an Idea, or AU I had regarding the good ol DPxDC.

I’m not sure what sort of disaster Amity’s ghost problem would be classified as, but think of what would happen if the local EMS (Emergency Services like Fire Departments, Law Enforcement, Emergency Medical, etc.) pretty much started jumping over the Mayor from the get-go? What if hard proof of these hijinx, for a brief time, were able to get out of Amity?

Well the Governor would probably have someone take a look, and once nonsense is confirmed (especially of its weird nonsense that looks a little to close to supers) they send in the National Guard, at first to keep an eye on the situation.

Then comes the Ghost Investigation Ward, and things go from moderately worrying to “WTF” real quick. And things start looking less Small Town USA and more Stalins Town USSR, at the height of Stalins Purges.

Admittedly it’s not immediate, and during the time between being put on “Indefinite Alert” and actually being relived this unit (I’m thinking a Battalion Sized force so about 1,200 soldiers/guardsmen total) ends up befriending the locals, and much to the Mayor, and GIWs, frustration, Phantom, as well as Red Huntress.

This leads to a standoff, the GIW can really only do what they want because of the Governments permission for them to do so, but engaging National Guard, who had not been federalized, may cause an issue or two. So they bring up the issue with someone who they think will back them up, their new boss Lex Luthor.

Now Lex isn’t a fool, but he figures out how the Justice League isn’t being called is due to a jammer the GIW set up and figures he can take a look around incognito like, or more accurately get trusted members of The Goonion, who he had Federally given approval to, to go take a look around.

When Alex gets the full story, and not just the GIWs original story but also updated info from the Doctors Fenton, who are now VERY worried, because they were wrong about Ghosts in more ways than they originally thought they may have been. Suffice to say, when Lex manages to get a copy of "The History of The Infinite Realms" and finds that Krypton's Afterlife is GONE, as in they did something similar to what the GIW is planning, he starts hitting the "Abort" Button with fury. Only to be told "Too late we're underway, we're going through a tunnel, what? What?" And now Lex decides Enough is Enough. Lex does two things, first he sends the GO order for the National Guard Battalion in Amity Park, then he starts trying to get a hold of the Justice League because "Listen I know you dislike me but I am willing to drop it all if you HELP WITH THIS BS THAT I JUST INHERITED!" Meanwhile back in Amity Things go from 0 to 100 faster than an Flash, that being the National Guard heard "GO" and immediatly started blasting. The Townfolks: Confused The Ghosts: Confused Team Phantom: Confused and Afraid The Ghost Hunters who are now studying Ghost Culture and the like: Very Confused and sorta getting Arrested. The GIW: Full of Bullet Holes, Screaming, and On Fire Meanwhile, The National Guard are waiting around two hours later with Phantom for any "Federal" News to come through: So the New President decided the Anti-Ecto Acts are BS, unfortunately they haven't been overturned yet so we're all most likely going to be marked as traitors. Mind if we hide out somewhere our bosses can't find us? Also the Justice League never actually knew any of the BS we've been going through, GIW Had some Jammer set up.

Phantom, Tired of all the damage and killing the GIW has caused in Amity Park: I'll try, but I'm not sure how much good it will do if the League shows up.

TLDR: Amity Park during it's entire run has a Battalion of US National Guard camped out in the outskirts/abandoned parts of town and they figure out most of the situation regarding Phantom not being the Villain Mayor Masters and the GIW Claim him to be. Following this logic they turned around and at the first opportunity attacked the GIW and pushed them out of Amity Park.

[lunarblossomyuehua]

oh god this was a mistake

Oh my god why did my manager think I was good to be assistant manager I totally walked into this by just nodding along when asked if I could supervise for a week while he's gone but TF I'm so stressed god have mercy on me I was not built for this

[oatmealdoodles]

My messy thoughts on the new episode

(spoilers for Ghostf**kers)

tldr I LOVED this one the animation saw POPING OFF the writing was great, it was well paced, everything. I just wanted to ramble so here i am talking to no one:

Ok right off the bat i had to pause this like 7 times in the first five minutes because the beginning of this is just packed with insane jokes, glass to see they havent forgotten about being a comedy show

It’s so sad to see Blitzo in this state, especially that it’s been over a month. Like look at this guy he is GOING THROUGH IT.

also this was uncalled for how can you do me like this?

ok like my one problem i don’t like this little Scooby-doo reference with old people. I just skipped it and lost nothing, i don’t know why this is here.

the fight between Blitzo and Millie in the vents was also really well done im so glad Millie is putting up boundaries on dealing with everybody elses Bullshit.

I also don’t hear anyone talking about this but Vivinie Williams (Millie’s VA) did so well in this. Like all the voice acting in this show is peak but I’ve only really heard praise for Brendon and Bryce. Their argument here specifically, the fury in her voice was so well done, bravo.

JESUS CHRIST THEY DID NOT NEED TO GO THIS HARD this scene has been stuck in my head for the past two days, Brandon killed it in he recording booth, the animation is also just so VICERAL. Also the way the fire starts from his hands because he blames himself for it, like Viv went too far with this one. That was not ok.

Bitzo’s panic attack was also done so well. Little detail but i love that when Blitzo screams “Don’t touch me!”, Millie respects this and doesnt, instead comforting him with words. They only touch when he’s calm and ready. Love that.

Bro i was NOT expecting a flashback on how Millie met Blitz, also Millies design slays so hard

the way I gasped.

I also didn’t realize how much I needed an episode focusing on these twos friendship until now. Like FINALLY a Millie episode that doesn’t suck!

Little thing i realized but notice how Blitzo doesn’t make a sex joke at this. Blitzo. Not making a provocative joke. Really just goes to show how UNCOMFORTABLE and SCARED he is. I physically recoil every time I see this it’s gross

Those flashback scenes were also just so brutal. Like chaining his horns so he’s FORCED to watch is so psychotic I can’t.

its kinda sad that Blitzo’s whole motivation for doing this is to distract himself from his feelings, when that’s what he’s literally forced to confront by Ronaldo.

Love a possession story. I can really appreciate how Millie does not believe Ronaldo for a second, she knows that Blitzo would never think that of her and she trusts him enough to be confident in it. Nice subversion, you go girl.

This was so needlessly brutal and funny, they really went all out with this one

Yeah I think that’s all I wanted to day, just again i loved this one and it was definantly worth the multiple-month wait. Though my Hyperfixation has mostly died im hopeful that it will resurrect soon. We’ll have to wait and see.

[doberbutts]

I was typing a big long thing about the changes I've experienced in a year on testosterone and how it's affected me and all that and then tumblr ate it and I really don't feel like retyping that whole thing but I am kinda salty about it so tldr:

Starting testosterone has been the best thing for my health that I've done. Ever. Better than getting a service dog. Better than restructuring my life to cater to my disabilities. Better than any procedure or medication or otherwise that I've tried. Simply rubbing a pack of gel on my arm once a day has done more for me than anything else.

When I went to my endo to start T, I went with a suspicion that I am intersex. She confirmed it via blood test and told me that with my variation I could try two different things: estrogen to control my high levels of natural androgens, or testosterone to lower my estrogen further and make it stop arguing with my androgens about whether I'm supposed to be a boy or a girl, as it's that argument that was causing a significant portion of my health problems. Estrogen has been tried in the past and only made things worse. She told me it was my choice, and only I could choose my path forward, as I knew my body the best.

When TERFs have a fit about gender affirming care, they usually leave out people like me, or they brush my story aside by saying that I'm just an anomaly, or they claim for me and my demographic that we don't want to be part of this discussion. But I don't fit their definition of a woman- I have a testicle, and my natural testosterone was within normal range on the low end for a cisgender, perisex man, and enough male sexual partners have commented on what's in my pants to tell me that it's far from the picturesque womanly pussy, especially considering I can- and have- use it to penetrate with the help of devices designed for cis men who are a little lacking in length.

When TERFs have a fit about gender affirming care, they scaremonger about side effects and changes. But, I was already hairy. I was already growing facial hair. I already had atrophied- and by 30 to the point that it's not really possible to fix without significant medical intervention. I was already infertile. I already had an adam's apple and a deep voice. I already had belly fat and blood pressure problems. My menstrual cycle was already hellish and had interfered with my school and work schedules. A popped ovarian cyst sent me to the ER.

I'd tried no treatment. I'd tried estrogen-based solutions. These not only did not work but actively made things worse. I was fainting at school. I was calling out of work. I couldn't drive without my service dog. I couldn't go out and have fun with my friends. I spent days at a time laying in bed in too much pain to move.

TERFs say, gender affirming care turns you into a forever patient.

I already was one of those. I almost died when I was a baby strictly because of lack of access to care that accepts children who are born who are both and also neither from the womb, before anyone has a chance to develop a personality or understand the difference between a boy and a girl.

Testosterone has turned me into a "once every 3 months" patient instead of a "twice a month minimum" patient. I pay less than $15/month for my prescription and it's mailed to my house in three-month increments. Stopping my wildly irregular and incredibly painful menstrual cycle has increased my quality of life so much. My body doesn't ache for no reason anymore. I don't faint anymore. I can go out and do things and not be punished for it for days on end by fevers and chills and vertigo.

Don't let a handful of transphobic assholes scare you. If this is your way forward, then live your life to its fullest.

My only regret is that I didn't have the chance to do this sooner.

[l3irdl3rain]

Come on, we all know you've gotten attached to The Flat One. I feel trying to argue against her eventual adoption is just gonna make it feel more silly when she does join the fray.

since you all think you're so funny (lighthearted) i suppose i should explain the situation. TLDR: I am planning on keeping The Flat One. It will be a few weeks before she is ready to be separated from her mother so I'm going to foster them all at my house for the time being. In the week we've had her she's continued to put on weight and she feels like maybe her chest is already starting to round out a little.

I'm going to talk more about her medical issues under the cut. I shared an article about FCKS and other thoracic deformities. If you're interested in that here's a link. Please remember I am not a veterinarian so my own explanation may get things wrong.

We did take some radiographs and it definitely appears to just be flat chested kitten syndrome (FCKS) and not pectus excavatum (PE). This sounds like it's the better case scenario, as PE often requires a surgical fix. FCKS on the other hand often resolves itself (if it doesn't end up being fatal). She does have a spinal deformity that is common in kittens with FCKS.

The Flat One is about 5 weeks old, generally if a kitten with FCKS can make it past the 3 week mark that means it will be okay. She's also survived without any veterinary intervention or any specialized care from her previous owner.

That doesn't mean there isn't still risk of something going wrong. Because her chest is so flat it can cause respiratory problems. When she plays hard with her siblings her respiration rate is much higher than that of a normal kitten's. If it gets bad at times she may need medications.

With some time her chest should naturally start to round out on its own. Recovery can take a long time, but usually by the time they're 4-6 months their chest has rounded out to almost normal. On the other hand, her spinal deformity is there to stay.

Even with how attached I've let myself get I probably could have let her go once she was old enough to be away from her mom. However, it's unlikely she'll be "normal" when her siblings are ready to go. We could potentially try to adopt her out anyways and just explain her issues to people. Or we could continue to hang on to her until she is more normal at the 4-6 month mark. I might not be too attached yet, but I definitely would be at that point.

Also, I have the benefit of having so many people who have been so generous in helping myself and my cats. And if this comes down to needing a surgical fix I've already got the funds from Persephone's gofundme.