#truly felt seen

[shorthaltsjester]

ashton truly is like. student very enthused to get involved in the class discussion. unfortunately they did the reading while high and only have a few sparse notes to help them through and they read “gods & death . something happening there. the everlight exists. melora rips wizard throat with teeth. the gods know EVERYTHING. the gods know NOTHING. gods will kill mortals for knowing things about them. apples?” and there are no page numbers written to help them with context. this does not stop them — to the great horror of everyone else in the lecture hall — from speaking the most during group discussion

[lilacpaperbird]

and if I say that the whole "sam thinks he's better than dean because he went to college and thinks he's sooo smart" criticism is 0% based on canon material and instead it's 60% based on fanfics and tumblr posts relying purely on headcanons, and 40% a projection of their own academic inferiority complexes... then what?

[3liza]

i can't tell yet if Look Outside is going to blow up in an irritating way like Mouthwashing did, but if you're planning to play/watch it, but you get overexposure aggression like I do, I would probably give it a shot now rather than wait. it has a lot of elements that could potentially turn it into a really obnoxious fandom which is going to spoil/taint the text for you, and I don't have a good sense yet of which way the wind is blowing.

i don't know why I like it so much. normally you would have to make me watch a jrpg/rpgmaker with a gun to my head. I'm still sorting through my thoughts on it. the art style reminds me so much of Larry Gonick's work, just genuinely classic cartooning in the academic sense

[posi-pan]

for anyone who has ever seen someone claim pansexual was coined on social media by teenagers in the early 2000s, the 2010s, and even in the past few years, and believed it or wondered if it’s true, or known it’s not true and been annoyed by the misinformation, this article is for you!

after listing out all of the claims i’ve seen, i succinctly debunk them by laying out a brief overview of pansexual’s history dating back to the 1960s, both as a term generally indicating universal appeal/inclusion and a term indicating sexual freedom/attraction to all genders. i include a look at pansexual’s use specifically within queer spaces, with a focus on bisexual spaces, as well.

i also touch briefly on omnisexual and polysexual existing in similar contexts to pansexual dating back to the 1960s. and finally, i discuss a little bit about how when, where, and by whom a label is created doesn’t determine the validity or usefulness of it, because these claims come with the implication that new labels, labels created by kids, and labels originating on social media aren’t legit forms of queer expression and identification.

happy pan week! 🥰💗💛💙

[demonslayedher]

Rengoku-san was so, so close to cutting off Akaza's head, yet Akaza still felt more terror about dawn.

[everytaylorswiftsongisaboutcats]

[rhymaes]

another genius element of mxtx protagonists is how one of the love interest always toes the line of potential victimhood Just enough to make you concerned while reading & then you see their interactions with the other love interest & it's like! oh! they're both fucking freaks! i get it now

[baselicoc]

A small spider-man 2099 reading guide

Just watched atsv and wondering where to start getting into Miguel O’Hara? Hate trying to figure out comic timelines? Well hopefully this guide can help a little bit. Please note its far from a definitive guide and could probably use some work but I'm hoping it helps someone out! Also not including spider-verse appearances or those in most other comics, because we could be here forever listing every comic appearance and this is meant to be a quick guide Miguel's original appearance was in Amazing Spider-Man #365, but that was more of a preview than anything else. I've split it pre-2000's and post-2000's, but listen to me if you have to pick one comic to read out of all of this make it the original 1992 run. You basically cannot go wrong with just reading 1992. A few have been marked with asterisks because you really don't have to read them but it felt wrong to not include them on the list.

Pre 2000's

Spider-man 2099 (1992): Literally Required Reading. Keep in mind that the last two issues had different writers and are kinda disregarded by just about everyone. Issue #16 starts the crossover event Fall of The Hammer, a mini-guide to which I've included below. The Special and Annual take place in between issues but it's easiest to just read them last.

Spider-Man 2099 Meets Spider-Man (1995): It's short, it's sweet, give it a read.

*2099: World of Tomorrow (1996): At the time this was meant to close off all the 2099 plots, theres lots of other 2099 characters in here but a fair bit of Mig.

*2099: Manifest Destiny (1998): Further closure to the 2099 world, again lots of other characters but still a solid read. Basically waves away the last two issues of sm2099 (1992) in a slightly hilarious way and worth reading just for that.

Fall of the Hammer crossover mini-guide:

Spider-man 2099 (1992) #16

Ravage 2099 #15

X-men 2099 #5

Doom 2099 (1993) #14

Punisher 2099 (1993) #13

Post 2000's

*Superior Spider-man (2013) issues #16-19: Largely set up but its cool too

Spider-man 2099 (2014): You can read this without the Superior Spider-man setup but depending on your prior comic reading experience you may be a bit confused. If you're a seasoned reader and used to taking weird comic shifts in stride due to missing some random issues of a completely different comic you'll be fine

Spider-man 2099 (2015): Solid run, I don't have much to say about it honestly

Marvel's 2099 (2019 event): you are better off looking up a separate guide for this one it is not my ballpark

[twinstxrs]

the gorgug-porter conversation is interesting to me because like. yea for the overwhelming majority of the conversation porter’s being shitty & trying to fit gorgug into a box that gorgug just does not fit into by trying to make gorgug’s relationship with his rage more focused on the aggression aspect of it. but then there’s also this specific thing that brennan brought up again in the ap, which is that gorgug’s relationship with his rage is wholly “this is a tool i use to protect my friends.” which isn’t a bad thing! but that’s his Whole relationship with it, & gorgug seems to place next to no value on his rage in relationship to himself. which is problematic, because it’s first & foremost his rage.

being raised in a household with a sort of toxic positivity largely meant that, whether or not it was his parents’ intention, gorgug internalized the message that more traditionally “negative” emotions such as anger are the wrong response to something. part of the reason he prioritizes his artificing is probably because it’s “fixing” things. in comparison to being a barbarian, which gorgug associates with “breaking” things. good vs. bad behavior, in his eyes.

it’s a totally unacceptable bar to measure a 16 y/o by, but i do think part of porter’s reasoning for not letting gorgug multiclass is him recognizing that gorgug generally does not value anger as a valid emotional response to something, at the very least for himself. & that directly conflicts with what being a barbarian is, because whether you like it or not, that rage is what fuels you. but again, barring a kid from pursuing something they deeply care about in part (not entirely, porter has a lot of more bullshit reasons) because of their fundamental values & world outlook is crazy.

so yes, 98% of porter’s reasoning is pretty shitty, immature, rife with a toxic view that there’s only one proper way to access rage, & generally not a good thing to do as a teacher, but also within that reasoning is the 2% of ‘there is a fundamental part of yourself that you only value if you can use it to take care of other people & you need to accept that as something that can take care of you, too.’ but that’s something to discuss with a therapist or a guidance counselor, not something that should hugely impact gorgug’s academic future.

[loveselenade]

As a general rule, I self-impose on myself to make sure to do some readings before I open my mouth on here. But I just watched Mizu5, and it's both such a massively sobering experience and such a careful, well-crafted event, I have to write this.

Way before I even felt interested in getting through niigo's story, I knew that Mizuki got outed. I had been wondering this whole time why pick this narrative path, not out of a belief it shouldn't be portrayed, but trying to understand why have the climax of her long, taxing journey to try to trust her friends be co-opted by something so deeply violating. The answers are quite interesting.

Mizuki's conflict to come out to niigo gets introduced right on her first event---out of her belief that to belong in the group long-term, she needs to come out. It's not an entirely incorrect assesment, since she can't share her full interiority without talking about her subjectivity and opression as a trans girl. But it's also moored to her deep fears of her relationships tanking due either rejection or getting othered as a result of her coming out. We see her constantly ping-pong between deeply contradictory stances,her desire to trust and love niigo and her fears. We see her deeply-rooted avoidance coping and rumminating that land her in further isolation and hurt her deeply. Her arc then seems to be framed as a story of self-actualization where Mizuki will come out the other end a more well-rounded person, having trusted Ena (and niigo).

This is the narrative Mizuki herself tells herself. Since Ena took a step forward and maturely showed her patience and kidness, Mizuki has to repay in kind. Because she's always been a "coward", she's stagnate and has never resolved any of her problems. If she wants to be welcomed, keep up with, be of any use to niigo, she needs to step up and learn what she doesn't know, "what lies ahead of just running away". And so, her fifth event starts from this framing to self-growth as progressive and cumulative. She admires the bravery Mafuyu showed when facing her Father, so now she has to step up and not be left behind.

We follow her through the first half of the event as she psychs herself up and remembers the wisdom nuggets we've accrued so far: 1. that in order to live, she has to take that decision and advance wherever her heart and agency will be protected, 2. that she will always have an ally on her side, and 3. that she can allow herslef to imagine a hopeful, positive outcome from taking a risk. She's deadly terrified, but she's making an effort to face her prolems and this is good™ for her. We reach the midpoint as niigo fool around through the school festival. It's a hearwarming showing of their friendship full of fond memories. Once we reach her escape room, we get to see how much they pay attention to her words, how much they remember of her quirks, how much they understand how she thinks. How much they love her, to put it simply. It reassures her to take the next step, despite her nerve-wracking guilt and anxiety. It's all looking up now, we are building to thelong-awaited resolution of this plot thread. And then, the entire train gets derailed in seemingly random, inconsequential ways. And the jarring tone shift comes in part seveth, with the lack of bgm, the frankly boring, yet obscene, boy talk from the randos. Why crash Mizuki's big moment through no-ones that don't even get sprites?

But the truth is that Mizuki never had an ounce of control neither in the decision of coming out nor the timing of it. From her very second event, she's faced with the truth that either she tells them herself or she runs the risk of losing complete control over her own narrative via increasingly intermingling social circles, increasing outings, the pass of time itself. The longer she spends with them, the higher is the risk that the decision will be taken away from her hands. Ena's promise and the fact they're all shut-ins allows Mizuki to stall, but it was always a march towards the inexorable. She doesn't even get a chance to choose the time, as it comes from Ena's completely random whims over whether to attend the fest or not. In the end, a can of seasonings seals Mizuki's fate. While at school, her lack of control gets heightened: she can't control who calls to her or approaches them (luckily, it was just An and Akito), she can't control who's going to be at the reception of her class' event (luckily, it was just Tōya), she can't control who catches sight of her and seeks for her help, who goes to the rooftop, who approaches Ena. She can't even control the final answer of her locked room, despite being the space where she is the safest to conduct her narrative.

She blames herself for getting outed, for not having been braver, for not having said it sooner, for not being able to face Ena. As if navigating the violence she's subjected to were just a matter of her being clever, brave and fast enough to read every social situation correctly, respond correctly, act correctly.

The tonal, jarring, tonal shift reframes her whole narrative away from her personal choice to come out and how that specific event would go, her supposed "responsibility" to be truthful and trust niigo, how clever or brave she was. This was never about her quality of character or her personal growth, whether she could be brave or wise enough, but about a world that has always been bent on destroying her, regardless of how much she tries to bootsrap her way out of being deeply violated.

The other thing is that. Mizuki has always framed whether she can be together with niigo long term as a matter of whether she herself can trust them not to other her through the facade of tolerance. But a far more decisive factor has always been whether niigo would be able to navigate the violence Mizuki faces. Not even because they could get hit by proxy but because being able to fully welcome and hold her heart was going always going to involve understanding how precarious her position is, understanding how she's been utterly alienated and othered her whole life and how this affects how she relates to others. Because she's going to have to keep facing this oppression, no matter how much she tries to outsmart it. And if they couldn't help her navigate it, help her heal her heart, then it was doomed... And I think mizu5 really does raise that question by showing Ena be totally out of her depth. Can she even raise to the occassion? Can she work through her clownish cis cluelessnes, can she get past her biases, can she show Mizuki niigo truly is a safe space?

[the---hermit]

You know when you watch movies set in the past or fantasy movies, and when you get the epic pre-battle scenes you inevitably ask yourself why do they need all those drummers and stuff when all those men playing could be given a sword or something and be added to the troops? I am currently visiting a medieval festival and I just heard an exibition of war drums and I feel like I could run a half marathon. The drummers make so much sense.

[kittykatninja321]

I can’t get into 90% of “Dark (Character X)” fics because I find that it usually means that the character in question is behaving less like themselves and more like a stereotypical evil seme/mustache twirling villain and often just being used as a prop to whump on Character Y. But every once in I do come across that 10% that feels real and beautiful and true and makes me go “while I don’t think that they would do something that fucked up if they did that’s exactly how they would do it”

[likemonstersinlove]

I wanna personally thank Rogue from doctor who for giving us important and, frankly, lacking representation: dnd people who cannot improvise for their lives

[vaguely-concerned]

few things bring me as much joy as my rook's expressive capacity for sudden withering disdain. (he's looking at illario here, of course lmao.) he's so hey i'm just a little guy...🥺 coded most of the time and then someone says something dumb enough that the mask cracks for a moment and every line of him says 'that is the stupidest fucking thing anyone has ever said to me and I'm aggrieved to even have had to hear it'. rye is mostly very kind but there IS a bastard lurking in his head waiting to be let out as well. not just solas but solas too I suppose. two bastards in rye ingellvar's head they keep each other company and are trying to strangle each other as we speak 😌.

(vs. him looking over at lucanis a moment later during the same line delivery. since lucanis was actively into viago once I cannot imagine that getting to watch rye crack and be kind of mean to people who've earned it when too sorely tried is like. entirely without allure to him fhskjadf. witnessing illario pulling the old ingratiating 'rooook reason with him would you~ I'm the cousin with the charisma stats' routine and This being rook's response probably opened some as of yet ill-understood '...I think I hauve covid' corners of lucanis' soul. tfw your buddy has your back so completely (dawning erotic implications))

[godsopenwound]

hearing someone asking you casually but in a truly genuine way as well if you are okay is honestly heartbreaking

[corvus-frugilegus]

Sometimes a character is your favourite because you spend a saturday night at home alone inventing a new recipe and being very fussy about cheese and this is a great night. The Character would get it.