#we are going to add us to things

[blakbonnet]

my queers in christ we must fight homogeneity in fandom; it's evil and the death of creativity and a brain killer, we do not want to be smooth uniform identical shiny rocks, reading the same characterisations over and over again, we do not want to reiterate the same takes or the same fics, we want the creepiest weirdos coming up with shit so fantastical that it becomes fantastic, that is the point of it all

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji goes to Lotus Pier (No relation to the AU of the same name)

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[harbingersecho]

are we the sins we have committed? are we the things we have endured? [...] who are we?

[ref]

[avalencias]

I don’t know what to do—I have to trust someone—I don’t know who to trust

massive, massive props to aabria for this episode (here at this point and after!!)…to all of them really, but it was about here that I was driving yesterday morning and had to frantically try to hold the image in my head for the rest of my commute. I only kind of succeeded but it is what is. wow. what an episode

[akkivee]

they've been potentially changing a lot with the shadow manga, but since maria's final words to shadow were how she loves him and amy's conversation with shadow in the joypolis collab was about how he is loved, i like to think sonic team is still hinting at amy's ability to touch his heart lol

[thelassoway]

Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso Seasons 1-3 » T-shirts

[tainebot01]

I would like to officially welcome Eustace Winner to the "My Name Is A Cruel Joke My Paternal Figure Played On Me" club

[Image Description: A digital drawing of Eustace Winner from Ace Attorney and Hunter from The Owl House in a handshake, against a purple background. Both are looking towards the camera as if they are taking a picture and both have a look of concern on their faces. Eustace’s expression is significantly more distressed than Hunter’s. End Description]

[py6oto]

christmas tales

2023.12.11

[starrysharks]

google "how to write a character who is known within her universe for having no filter and swearing a lot (especially in the face of authority) without having it read like i graduated from vivziepop school of writing"

[uncomfortably-bowing]

there's so much utena discourse around certain aesthetic signatures of the show (in particular, scenes and shots like the sword pulls, the transformations and outfits, etc.) and, like, surface-level discussions over whether these things are "Actually Beautiful" or "Actually Bad."

and i totally get it, especially with regards to some scenes---like the ways in which people have taken the ending scene of episode 33 and turned into weird pastel-pretty aesthetic boards lmao----but i do feel like a lot of the discussion is over-simplistic, and disconnected from the actual framing and themes of the series

utena and anthy's world is full of beauty. it is also full of horror and pain. there is often no clear delineation between the two, and we are forced (quite generously!) to recognize both sides of this.

the sword pulls oftentimes carry feelings of manipulation, hurt, subservience. anthy summoning the sword drives in the repetitive, obedient actions she is forced to repeat time and time again for others as the rose bride. in the black rose arc, they're violent and terrifying. in the third arc, they're stand-ins of the dysfunctions the characters have with the person drawing them, the ways in which their emotions are being twisted and ignored.

and yet! they're beautiful.

they're incredibly intimate moments, in which the two characters---who, generally speaking, are either emotionally or physically estranged from one another---cradle or hold one another, pull out a culmination of that person's essence, as a heavenly light frames the two of them together. the first time anthy does it to utena, it is out of genuine fear for her, her voice quivering with fear as she tries to do anything to help her! it's love! it's an act of beautiful love!

when pressed on how it felt to have their sword drawn, the duelists are flustered---they can't say it was just painful, because it was more than just painful. the screams of the black rose arc turn into something more quiet, ethereal, pretty---and yet still uneasy, unsettling.

a similar conversation can be had about utena and anthy's outfits. they're symbols of their roles as duelist and rose bride, and for anthy in particular it's an outfit emblematic of her status as a static, never-moving prize to be won. the outfits are as ugly as the entire dueling system, and yet---while recognizing this---the show doesn't stray away from associating the dress and the duels with delightful, beautiful imagery. the rose imagery in general is very beautiful and striking, even at some of the more dark moments!

there is an aesthetically pleasing contrast between anthy's dress and utena's uniform---one that goes back ages in terms of our understandings of gender and social status. why is that beauty there? well, for a lot of reasons! one is definitely making us question what we think of as beautiful, particularly in the contexts of gender roles and society (why did we have that gut impulse to see anthy in that dress as beautiful to begin with?) but, for the sake of this post, i think the most satisfying answer is because horror and beauty are usually intertwined in our actual lives.

so much of the show is dedicated to both finding beauty in horrifying situations and seeing how beautiful things are oftentimes pretty horrifying. anthy and utena's relationship is beautiful, but grows out of abuse, sexism, queerphobia, and hurt.

when utena and anthy dance in front of everyone at the ball, how do we interpret that? well, our first instinct is as a beautiful scene of budding love and care between the two of them; our second instinct (especially after watching the show) is that it's another example of the way in which they've both been boxed into these roles of prince and bride---and all as hundreds of eyes are staring at them. when does the line between gender as choice and performance begin, and when does it become oppressive gender roles? when does anthy's performance as the meek rose bride become her real self? when do the two's relationship become loving, and when do they stop hurting each other? when do the ugly things at ohtori become beautiful, and when do all of the beautiful things become ugly?

and there's not really one point, always, although sometimes there are---and sometimes there's multiple points, and sometimes there was no transformation at all, and sometimes things never stopped oscillating between good and bad, ugly and beautiful, scary and hopeful.

and like, even beyond the really radical ways this impacts the queer and feminist readings of the show, i just think that's also very nice. so much of utena is built on recognizing the beauty in the world. the main characters live in a shitty world while leading shitty lives. and they find beauty in it still.

(i will here also add here at the end that when the show wants to make a very clear definitive statement on one of its aesthetics being basically entirely bad with no beauty behind it, it's very frank in its framing. see: any shot with utena in a dress or her girl's uniform)

[chirpsythismorning]

Just remembered that Will sat on the icebox in the van for the 30 hr ride back to Hawkins

[blueskittlesart]

atla live action generally sucks for all the reasons everyone is saying it sucks and i am in no way a live action remake promoter but one thing i will say. they Get the fire siblings. they understand.

[57sfinest]

calling harry a “can opener” was SUCH a good play for so many reasons i think about it every day.

in the context of his work, it makes him a tool. as many people have pointed out, including martin luiga, part of the hdb tragedy is that he simply cannot leave the force, and his superiors know that and are using it to their advantage. no matter what happens, even if harry hated every nanosecond of every bit of the work and wanted to leave, he can’t and won’t leave. they can leverage anything they want against him and then reel him back in with a facade of kindness when they “allow” him to keep his job, as long as he does what they want him to. the 41st knows he has this inexplicable talent with people and they use him for it. he’s a cop: that talent can be used in so many awful ways, to push so many different agendas. and they won’t even be his own. a can opener has no particular desire to open a can, aside from maybe the satisfaction of fulfilling a purpose. a can opener has no agency, it’s just a tool for someone else to use to get what they want. and he’s learned to be okay with being used as long as it means he gets to stay. his complacency with this system makes him guilty even if he’s also being harmed by it.

but in the context of his personal life you kind of... flip it. the people around him are going to be opened up whether they want to be or not, and it’s terrible for his relationships. it’s shown that the questions, the prying- the can-opening- it’s become inextricable from who he is as a person. it’s like he doesn’t know how else to communicate, except it’s hardly communication when you’re just ripping people open. he’s invasive as all hell, although whether he means to be is debatable. he’s the kind of person that wants to take things apart to see what makes them tick. he dissects people, but really that’s too delicate of a word for what he does; if he doesn’t get what he wants right up front, he’ll abandon all subtlety and go for brute force. if he can’t get your screws loose he’ll just smash you on the ground and pick through your pieces until he’s satisfied, and if what he did to you isn’t fixable? oh well, there are other cans to open. 

and he’ll use it for personal gain: we already know he is (was?) manipulative. once he knows how you operate, he knows how to make you keep him. he can yell or he can cry; he can threaten you or he can threaten himself; he can be completely suffocating or he can withdraw completely; he can be an incorrigible liar or brutally honest; he can present himself as a threat or a joke or a talent. he’s a chimera- that’s why he’s got this inexplicable magnetism, even when people know they shouldn’t like or trust him. fidelity of character means nothing to him. he’ll be whatever he needs to be as long as it gets him what he wants. the can-opening is just his way in.

[abirddogmoment]

I love seeing Rory run in the field!! Bird dog doing bird dog things!! You said in the tags you had different training and priorities with her vs Mav re: offleash running like that. What kinds of things did you do differently with Rory to be comfortable having her offleash at a distance with reliable recall?

I was writing a whole novel but really it boils down to this chart. Under the cut because it's (vertically) long.

In short, it's just as much about what I didn't do with Maverick as what I did do with Aurora.

(Edited to add: I am extremely fortunate to live in the prairies where the kind of visibility I need is easy to find. Use my experience to inspire your own training if you like, but don't use it as a recipe. I have my own goals and my own priorities and those are likely different than yours.)

Maverick:

🔵 Supremely confident from day 1

🔵 Came home in August (extremely good and exciting time for outdoor adventures)

🔵 Prioritized specific sports behaviours over foundational building blocks like engagement and cooperation

🔵 Learned bad habits from my older dog at the time (prey drive > recall)

🔵 Was indiscriminately prey driven. If it moved, he wanted to kill it.

🔵 I phased out treats too fast and didn't want to use an ecollar or long line

🔵 I focused on "social media dog behaviours" (think like walking extremely close to me on trails) and got frustrated when we couldn't meet these rather than meeting my dog where he was at. This created a lot of frustration in our dog adventures.

🔵 I practiced recalls constantly when I didn't have to, making them a tedious behaviour for him. I would recall him 20-50 times a hike for everything from "you're too far away from me" to "I want to take a photo".

Aurora

🟣 Came to me a little insecure and looked to me for reassurance

🟣 Came home in December (a cold and relatively boring time for outdoor adventures)

🟣 I prioritized engagement, cooperation, and name recognition from day 1

🟣 Practiced good habits by walking offleash in the snow either alone or with Pike (amazing recall)

🟣 Is extremely birdy, but is very very focused. She easily calls off deer or people/dogs in the distance because she mostly cares about birds.

🟣 Literally always gets offered a high value snack for recalling or voluntary check ins (I will never phase this out, I will carry chunks of cheese on offleash walks for the rest of her life)

🟣 I never practice recalls if I don't need them. This one is hard to explain, but once Rory understood that long whistle = come back as fast as you can, I don't whistle unless I really need to. I recall her an average of 0-3 times per hike (*based on visibility or wildlife*) and trust her to make good decisions otherwise. I keep my eyeballs on her 100% of the time and choose areas with good visibility, but I don't recall her just for being far away.

🟣 I limit hikes where I have to nag her often (think, in the woods where I dont have a great line of sight and have to remind her to stay close to me) to a few times a month or less so she doesn't start getting frustrated about it.

🟣 I trust the training I put into her and choose to run her in areas with (relatively) reduced risk if she makes the "wrong" choice. I don't nitpick everything she does and I let her make her own choices, within reason.

🟣 I have an interrupter cue to ask her to stop doing something before I call her back (if she's digging a hole and I want her to move on, I use "Rory, enough! Here!") instead of whistling at her.

🟣 I don't force her attention on check ins. If she runs back to me and doesn't want a snack and wants to run straight back out, I let her run back out.

🟣 I have anticipatory cues for the end of a walk so I don't have to recall her when we get to the end of the field.

I want to say that it's nerve wracking to watch my dog sprint at full speed hundreds of yards away from me. I have to fight the impulse to recall her just because she's far away. It's an exercise in trust because I'm always worried about her going over the horizon, or running into a wildlife, or falling into a hole, but it's an important thing to work on if you have a dog that needs that trust to thrive.

Mav and I were a good team, but I never fully trusted him outdoors. I always had my finger on the ecollar buttons ready for him to do an evil and need to be vibrated. It was exhilarating to watch him in the field, but it wasn't really fun or relaxing.

Rory and I built a much stronger foundation of trust (I personally never would have been able to do this if I had more than one dog). She doesn't know any tricks yet, but I'm super confident in her recall and ability to take direction in the field, even when she's sprinting as fast as possible.

[anendoandfriendo]

Us seeing anyone use the word straight in place of the word non-queer: quck how do you feel about transhet people?

You probably assumed binary transhets, what if they say they are transhet because they're an obscure xenogender without much of a chance of finding someone using that label so all attraction is straight to that individual?

Also how do you feel about the split attraction model and how do you feel about acespec and arospec folks?

[aroaceleovaldez]

one thing running @riordanverse-ship-polls has gotten me thinking about is that the fandom should bring back a lot of old ships that got dropped. Just to mix things up and add some more variety into the fandom again. The community used to have a lot of really interesting and really varied ships but now most of the stuff you see is canon and maybe a couple of leftover things from that time or some rarepairs and that's it (and a lot of weird aggression towards people who diverge from canon ships at all). Half the major characters don't even have prominent alternative ships to canon these days. Like, did you know Hazel/Piper used to be a decently popular ship? When was the last time you saw Hazel/Piper stuff? Probably never if you're a newer fan.

anyways we could really stand to have more variety. together we can bring back variety. the fandom needs to get weirder again. like cmon we've got some new characters let's thing of some new combos.