#wanted to get that off my chest

[trapped-inside-the-vortex]

(TW: Mentions of SA)

Following my posts about Owen and John/Johnto, there is something I would like to put out there that I feel like is very important to say.

You can like ANY torchwood character/ship.

I saw a post on twtwt saying “all Owen fans agree with SA” no they don’t! You can like Owen and acknowledge his actions are bad and the same with John. The problem arises when you deny their actions, defend them or you attempt to justify them. That doesn’t just matter for these two characters, but any of them.

Every character in Torchwood is morally grey; none of them are good people. That is what is so great about the show. HOWEVER, if you cannot criticise these actions and try to pretend that they never happened for the sake of your “perfect character” because it removes what makes them so interesting.

I will never not like someone because of a fictional character they like or a ship they ship, however if they start actively defending an action such as literal SA then I won’t associate with them because that is disgusting. Realistically only a VERY small portion of Owen, John etc fans are like this.

Also a very small thing I want to add because while I’ve only seen this once or twice it made my blood boil. Yes TDOCJ was an AU and yes In the shadows was a hallucination. However you cannot say that to excuse Johns actions only to use those exact scenes to back up your “toxic yaoi” ship in cannon. SA isn’t fucking “Toxic ship! :3” it is a crime.

[ampharos-posts]

wet glop... :(

[noesa]

i think the thing that is specifically bothering me about the conversation about the new hbomberguy video ("live your life in a way so that hbomberguy doesn't tear into you for 3 hours", "hbomberguy has figured out how to death note someone through video essays", "oh new hbomberguy video [incredibly dense paragraphs of text] i now despise james somerton") is that it really feels like people aren't paying attention to what hbomberguy was actually saying. like, as much as he wanted to make people aware of the plagiarism issue, he also very explicitly did not like the fact that he might even remotely have a financial incentive to make those sorts of videos. and rather than the last video, which was a "get mad about this" call to action, hbomberguy spent this whole video sympathizing with the people who were directly out indirectly affected, and wanted the focus of people's attention to be on uplifting small queer creators

but also, negativity drives engagement so i guess it's to be expected.

[pokimoko]

I can't keep being fundamentally changed as a person by animated movies, it's just not sustainable.

[itistimetodisappear]

Yes we've all heard aroace people complain about the 'you haven't met the right person' line. But to the idiots citing this as the reason aroace people 'aren't oppressed’: No, micro aggressions aren't what's oppressing us.

I could talk about corrective rape, but I'm not going to because that's not what scares me the most. The worst thing about being aroace (aromantic, and asexual to a certain extent) is that society is set up for couples.

Being aromantic is a crushing economic disadvantage. As a couple, you can save more. As a legal couple, you can borrow more. This puts Mortgages out of reach for a lot of aromantics. Adopting too. Although aro people can adopt, you must have a similar income to a couple, which again, rules out a lot of aros. Don't forget Immigration, spousal visas will never be an option for us.

Being poor and aro means you're denied housing, family, international movement, basically anything that allos of a similar income would get. And anything you can get, you'll have to jump through many more hoops for. But we can't fix this by legalising aro marriage, like we did for the gays. Until our society's economic system is completely revolutionised, we'll be waiting.

It's impossible to compare oppression. You can't objectively say which minority group has it worse and I really mean that. But also I'd rather be called slurs and hated by Christians all fucking day.

[basslinegrave]

pin-up

b&w originals

[cryo-lily]

So idk if anyone is still waiting for me to post more solid/complete fics for Isadola & The Shir Legacy but I figured at least provide an update.

The one fic/wip I intend to be a jumping off point for it all is proving to be more of challenge than I intended. Not that it's a bad thing! It's helpping me try to improve my writing skills.

Between trying to fill in some gaps in Miraluka lore with fanon explanations for details on questions I've had is one thing. But another challenge is me trying to exactly nail down how to write emotions, and emoting for Isadola in the style I usually like to write.

I hope in the future once I finish it I can start sharing more content for my fav disaster miralukas.

[the-phantom-peach]

Meeting the Light Dragon ✨🐉

[tagged as spoilers!]

[angstflavoured]

shakes my hands above my head and paces around the room im so sick of everyone acting like ford is a dumb stupid idiot baby who was completely tricked by bill and did nothing wrong. yes he was lied to and bill was abusive, but theres so much more to everything that happened. ford was soooo incredibly willfully ignorant and pushed other important people in his life away, YES bc bill tricked him, but mostly because he wanted to be important. he was actively ignoring red flags from bill and hurting the people around him and was complicit in so much stuff bill did just because he wanted it to be true that bill picked him bc he was special. ford was the one who summoned him in the first place, but then bill just??? told him that he picked ford bc he was special which makes no sense and ford is smarter than that, but he didnt care bc wowwwww he picked me bc im so awesme and smarter and better than everyone!!! he was fucking HEAD OVER HEELLLSSS OBSESSED WITH BILL BTW THAT SHIT WAS NOT ONE SIDED!!! idk why everyone pretends it was. he was building shrines and worshiping him like a god. and never questioned him for a second????? like girl he is the most scientific, curious man in the world and he never once thought bill was lying. he let bill into his life and let him take it over sooo fucking quickly. and he didnt tell anyone bc "they would throw him in a loony bin" ?????? THATS OBVIOUSLY NOT WHY HE DIDNT TELL FIDDLEFORD. he was LYIIINNGG. They were building an interdimensional portal, fiddleford obviously wouldve believed ford and taken him seriously and kept a secret for him. he didnt tell fiddleford bc he was one of the only people in fords life who saw through his bullshit. hes nice, but he stands his ground. as soon as things got too hot, he left. and ford knew that if he told fiddleford about bill that he would immediately be like "dudddeee this is so fucking sketchy you need to research this guy theres obviously smthn else happening." if ford looked into the runes and the messages in the caves, hed probably deduce pretty damn quickly that bill was evil!! but he didnt bc hes selfish and self righteous and wanted to be a part of soemthing bigger than himself. thats literally all he ever wanted. I think the most interesting thing about TBOB is that it shows that it wasnt as black and white as it seemed and that ford wasnt the perfect victim. its shown in the show sooo much how fucked up his morals are. and im not saying this with malice, i fucking love ford and his character so much, i just think so many people act like billford was like a fucking domestic abuse situation where ford was just sad and pathetic and helpless. its so much more complicated than that. ford is not a super great guy and thats such an interesting part of his character. IDK.

[dancinghannigram]

flea-biting is a sign of companionship :) - thank u therexorcist for uploading the one video i havent been able to get out of my head since 2020 (X)

[fernsnailz]

sorry these kinds of comments have been really pissing me off recently lol

[corvidcall]

None Of You Know What Haiku Are

I'm going to preface this by saying that i am not an expert in ANY form of poetry, just an enthusiast. Also, this post is... really long. Too long? Definitely too long. Whoops! I love poetry.

If you ask most English-speaking people (or haiku-bot) what a haiku is, they would probably say that it's a form of poetry that has 3 lines, with 5, and then 7, and then 5 syllables in them. That's certainly what I was taught in school when we did our scant poetry unit, but since... idk elementary school when I learned that, I've learned that that's actually a pretty inaccurate definition of haiku. And I think that inaccurate definition is a big part of why most people (myself included until relatively recently!) think that haiku are kind of... dumb? unimpressive? simple and boring? I mean, if you can just put any words with the right number of syllables into 3 lines, what makes it special?

Well, let me get into why the 5-7-5 understanding of haiku is wrong, and also what makes haiku so special (with examples)!

First of all, Japanese doesn't have syllables! There's a few different names for what phonetic units actually make up the language- In Japanese, they're called "On" (音), which translates to "sound", although English-language linguists often call it a "mora" (μ), which (quoting from Wikipedia here) "is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable." (x) "Oh" is one syllable, and also one mora, whereas "Oi" has one syllable, but two moras. "Ba" has one mora, "Baa" has two moras, etc. In English, we would say that a haiku is made up of three lines, with 5-7-5 syllables in them, 17 syllables total. In Japanese, that would be 17 sounds.

For an example of the difference, the word "haiku", in English, has 2 syllables (hai-ku), but in Japanese, はいく has 3 sounds (ha-i-ku). "Christmas" has 2 syllables, but in Japanese, "クリスマス" (ku-ri-su-ma-su) is 5 sounds! that's a while line on its own! Sometimes the syllables are the same as the sounds ("sushi" is two syllables, and すし is two sounds), but sometimes they're very different.

In addition, words in Japanese are frequently longer than their English equivalents. For example, the word "cuckoo" in Japanese is "ほととぎす" (hototogisu).

Now, I'm sure you're all very impressed at how I can use an English to Japanese dictionary (thank you, my mother is proud), but what does any of this matter? So two languages are different. How does that impact our understanding of haiku?

Well, if you think about the fact that Japanese words are frequently longer than English words, AND that Japanese counts sounds and not syllables, you can see how, "based purely on a 17-syllable counting method, a poet writing in English could easily slip in enough words for two haiku in Japanese” (quote from Grit, Grace, and Gold: Haiku Celebrating the Sports of Summer by Kit Pancoast Nagamura). If you're writing a poem using 17 English syllables, you are writing significantly more content than is in an authentic Japanese haiku.

(Also not all Japanese haiku are 17 sounds at all. It's really more of a guideline.)

Focusing on the 5-7-5 form leads to ignoring other strategies/common conventions of haiku, which personally, I think are more interesting! Two of the big ones are kigo, a season word, and kireji, a cutting word.

Kigo are words/phrases/images associated with a particular season, like snow for winter, or cherry blossoms for spring. In Japan, they actually publish reference books of kigo called saijiki, which is basically like a dictionary or almanac of kigo, describing the meaning, providing a list of related words, and some haiku that use that kigo. Using a a particular kigo both grounds the haiku in a particular time, but also alludes to other haiku that have used the same one.

Kireji is a thing that doesn't easily translate to English, but it's almost like a spoken piece of punctuation, separating the haiku into two parts/images that resonate with and add depth to each other. Some examples of kireji would be "ya", "keri", and "kana." Here's kireji in action in one of the most famous haiku:

古池や　蛙飛び込む　水の音 (Furu ike ya　kawazu tobikomu　mizu no oto) (The old pond — A frog jumps in The sound of the water.)

You can see the kireji at the end of the first line- 古池や literally translates to "old pond ya". The "ya" doesn't have linguistic meaning, but it denotes the separation between the two focuses of the haiku. First, we are picturing a pond. It's old, mature. The water is still. And then there's a frog! It's spring and he's fresh and new to the world! He jumps into the pond and goes "splash"! Wowie! When I say "cutting word", instead of say, a knife cutting, I like to imagine a film cut. The camera shows the pond, and then it cuts to the frog who jumps in.

English doesn't really have a version of this, at least not one that's spoken, but in English language haiku, people will frequently use a dash or an ellipses to fill the same role.

Format aside, there are also some conventions of the actual content, too. They frequently focus on nature, and are generally use direct language without metaphor. They use concrete images without judgement or analysis, inviting the reader to step into their shoes and imagine how they'd feel in the situation. It's not about describing how you feel, so much as it's about describing what made you feel.

Now, let's put it all together, looking at a haiku written Yosa Buson around 1760 (translated by Harold G. Henderson)

The piercing chill I feel: my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom, under my heel

We've got our kigo with "the piercing chill." We read that, and we imagine it's probably winter. It's cold, and the kind of cold wind that cuts through you. There's our kireji- this translation uses a colon to differentiate our two images: the piercing chill, and the poet stepping on his dead wife's comb. There's no descriptions of what the poet is feeling, but you can imagine stepping into his shoes. You can imagine the pain he's experiencing in that moment on your own.

"But tumblr user corvidcall!" I hear you say, "All the examples you've used so far are Japanese haiku that have been translated! Are you implying that it's impossible for a good haiku to be written in English?" NO!!!!! I love English haiku! Here's a good example, which won first place in the 2000 Henderson haiku contest, sponsored by the Haiku Society of America:

meteor shower . . . a gentle wave wets our sandals

When you read this one, can you imagine being in the poet's place? Do you feel the surprise as the tide comes in? Do you feel the summer-ness of the moment? Haiku are about describing things with the senses, and how you take in the world around you. In a way, it's like the poet is only setting a scene, which you inhabit and fill with meaning based on your own experiences. You and I are imagining different beaches, different waves, different people that make up the "our" it mentioned.

"Do I HAVE to include all these things when I write haiku? If I include all these things, does that mean my haiku will be good?" I mean, I don't know. What colors make up a good painting? What scenes make up a good play? It's a creative medium, and nobody can really tell you you can't experiment with form. Certainly not me! But I think it's important to know what the conventions of the form are, so you can appreciate good examples of it, and so you can know what you're actually experimenting with. And I mean... I'm not the poetry cops. But if you're not interested in engaging with the actual conventions and limitations of the form, then why are you even using that form?

I'll leave you with one more English language haiku, which is probably my favorite haiku ever. It was written by Tom Bierovic, and won first place at the 2021 Haiku Society of America Haiku Awards

a year at most . . . we pretend to watch the hummingbirds

Sources: (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Further reading:

Forms in English Haiku by Keiko Imaoka Haiku: A Whole Lot More Than 5-7-5 by Jack How to Write a Bad Haiku by KrisL Haiku Are Not a Joke: A Plea from a Poet Who Has Had It Up to Here by Sandra Simpson Haiku Checklist by Katherine Raine

[celestialowlryx]

Soren + being the voice of reason

[alevens]

zolu is maybe one of the easiest ships i've ever liked. they're dating, except when they're not, they're best friends even when they're kissing and they're still captain and first mate when they aren't. they hold hands, they hug. they have sex. they don't.

Luffy can hold Zoro's katanas and Zoro can hold Luffy's strawhat and no one bats an eye. one says "You're so cool!" and the other says "You're strong" and it's just another way to say "I see you, this is why I follow you/this is why I trust you". it's not seeing each other for a long time and still knowing how the other's steps sound like against wood and sand. the captain runs and the first mate follows. it's always "Zoro and the others" and "Where's Luffy?"

if they're just friends, if they're something more, if they don't have a label for it, at its core, it's just about how they get each other. they understand how the other's mind works. however you view them, it doesn't erase they fact that they love each other in a way they don't love other people.

[zhukzubast]

...so about those preview costumes

[anantaru]

whenever i write smut for diluc i tend to forget to write the actual smut scenes because i always add too much descriptions of romance in the fics and how much he loves you, i just want to make it clear in my writing that his love has no bounds and how diluc loves you is very intense. listen, this man is such a passionate lover, he is blooming from how you allow him to love you until he feels how you become this beacon of hope to him. i just have to get my point across on this, he is so akin to mr. darcy from pride & prejudice, diluc is a good man, he is intelligent and kind to people, he protects them, he is wise too, funny in his own type of way. what else is that he would die for you. he would kill for you. he would conquer the world for you. diluc would do it all and look utterly handsome while doing it! case closed.