#yes!!! accept it!!

[the-crooked-library]

i think i've mentioned it before in passing but it still fucks me up how Orlok is a physical manifestation of every "wrong and sinful" desire that Ellen tries to repress, as well as the panic that is associated with them.

the first sexual urges of her puberty (he claims her "ever-eternally"). the desire to dominate her husband (he dominates Thomas at the castle, demanding the subservience she never could). her queerness (he drinks from Anna, long and deep, and destroys Harding's family). the desperate longing for companionship, regardless of how dark and abnormal she believes herself to be (he answers her call from miles away, crosses an ocean for her, wants her, wants her, wants her - but she cannot imagine being wanted without repercussions, and so he brings the plague with him, a punishment for the sin of receiving what she craves).

Ellen is a mess of crushing guilt. she only ever sees ugliness in herself and i think it's so compelling to see her being desired above all else - not despite, but because of that ugliness, y'know?..

[bellaciao-ciao-ciao]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Trapped in a vicious cycle of pining? Try gay sex! (More things to learn over at Tiger Tiger!)

[inkskinned]

even 2 years ago people still said autism with a whisper. it was also how people sometimes whisper lesbian, like they're afraid of uttering a slur. autistic was either an insult or it was something terrible, a horrible burden only select people endure. "select people" were usually 9 year old boys and skinny white men.

they are not hispanic young adults with a dog and a life and friends. i can make (sustained, calculated, painful) eye contact. with certain people, i don't even have to count how many seconds i am holding their vision - i can just look at them. i can wear clothes that bother me, i will just have a worse day than usual. i might cry about any changes to my schedule - but change is scary! this is normal!

when i was 16 it was OCD. i mean that was the thing everyone said. i totally have ocd. they would arrange 6 colors of gel pen in rainbow order (no worry for indigo feeling left out) and they'd be "so ocd" about it.

if you struggle with intrusive thoughts, be careful at this next paragraph, but. at 16 i developed a compulsion that involved self-harm. my ocd was convinced i was simply forgetting that i'd hurt someone terribly - a thought that persisted for no clear or delineated reason.

at some point i will probably write about how the idea of "morally pure thoughts" was hell for me and others with ocd, but this was the odd dichotomy for many of us: they liked our "aesthetic", but were genuinely repulsed by our lived experience. "intrusive thoughts" now means "cutting your hair in the sink" instead of talking yourself down from believing horrible things. "so ocd" is a label without any true understanding.

it's something i've talked about before - in multiplicity - but i firmly believe in the veracity and necessity of self-diagnosis. i think it saves lives and it saves tragedies from occurring. as someone raised in a house that wasn't safe, self-diagnosis was, for many years, the only viable option. 15 and honestly googling: am i depressed or are there demons affecting my behavior.

but it is not genuine self-diagnosis anymore, most of the time. it is a strange, blanched version of that whispered word autism. now certain traits are constantly seen as "autistic" - any passing intense interest. any flubbed social interaction. people say it while laughing - a touch of the 'tism.

and i like the acceptance! i do. i like that people are talking about it. i like that if i self-identify, more people speak up and say me too, bitch. but there is something-else quietly happening, the way it happened to OCD. the quirky, "fun" parts have been washed and sanitized and removed of all suffering. now it is just something that makes you "a little bit silly."

it took me 27 years on this planet before i learned to make friends. something about me just seems incredibly odd, i guess, some kind of radiation monitoring. someone once (in a way that was almost friendly) told me i am doing the right things, but in a way that's off-putting. i have scoured myself raw attempting to be charming.

someone on tiktok does a deep dive into their particular passion. the top comment says "what kind of autism is this lol". like we are a breed of animal. like it has no influence on our experience. like our life is a fresh breeze, an open meadow.

more often for me, life was a drowning.

[theribbajack]

"Now, the vow will be honoured, and my Lord brother's soul will return."

Radahn stans keep winning, but I personally am in Miyazaki's walls rn

[sogekii-heii]

the bride and the ugly ass groom

[buggachat]

legitimate question ....... why do people like to tell me all the reasons they don't like miraculous ladybug? i know i complain about the fact a lot, and i find myself on the defensive a lot, and i keep telling myself i'll stop and let it go, but it really is hard when people are always coming onto my posts, in my replies, in my comments, on my art and my fics and my text posts and anything i make, and telling me blatantly all the ways that they don't like the thing that i so blatantly find enjoyment in. "the show is bad". okay? good for you? why are you on my post about it? why don't you make your own? why are you telling me, specifically, this, on the art/fic/analysis i made that i assume you found by searching through the tag?

it's kind of a behavior that i legitimately don't understand. I'm a human being and I hate a lot of things, too. there are things i've loved at first and been disappointed by and have strong opinions about. there are things i like to complain about. so i'll complain about them to my friends or my family or my cat. but i have never, once, not even for a single moment, thought, "oh let me go into the tags of this media, find a positive post about it written by someone who's having fun with it, and make it that random stranger's problem". never once.

i just don't get it. i really don't get it. i sometimes worry that i come across like i'm heavily critical of people who just personally don't like the show, when really i'm just trying to defend my interests to the droves of strangers who are always coming specifically to me to tell me all the ways they hate the thing that makes me happy.

just.......... why? where does the urge come from? what do you get out of this?

[ominous-signs]

do you accept signs in other languages?

Official ominous sign

[stars-obsession-pit]

Danny got out.

Danyal al Ghul was created by the League of Assassins alongside his brother Damian.

Created, not born. Though they were both grown in the same lab, Danyal always felt the status quo. Damian was the heir, the real son, the one they cared about. Damian got to be a person, the one for whom human terms like “born” would fit.

Danyal was just the extra. The bodyguard to die in his brother’s place and a spare should he be lost.

And Danyal died.

Shed his old life like a snake’s skin and vanished into the bustle of a crowded city.

They would tell Damian it was a mission that went wrong. A failure, like Danyal always was.

But Danyal would call it his first real success.

Danny Fenton loves their new life.

Jack and Maddie, for all their unsafe work practices, care for them. That’s far more than their blood “family” in the League ever did.

Far more than they felt they deserved for the longest time.

So when their brother reached out, tried to reconnect as if they were normal siblings instead of born tools, is it any wonder they lashed out, told him to never come back?

Danny got out. Danyal is dead, one ghost Danny is happy to put down forever.

[lunewolf13]

It has come to Bruce's attention that Kon-El might be romantically interested in his son. So of course, he decides to investigate (subtly). Starting with...

Bruce: Tim.

Tim: Bruce.

The following silence lasts for ten seconds.

Bruce: How would you describe your relationship with Superboy?

Tim: Uh, pretty good?

Bruce: Pretty good? Can you be more specific? How does he interact with you?

Tim: I mean, he keeps sending me selfies in the weirdest places. One time, Kon sent one with a thumbs up while the background was clearly during a mission and our teammates were chucking basketballs at these weird alien plant vines. I was there too, so it makes even less sense. Like, why would he send me a selfie of where he is when I was like fifteen feet away?

After taking a moment to...digest what just came out of his kid's mouth, Bruce decides to investigate their relationship some other time.

More pressingly, he needs to know the details of this mission and why this is the first he's hearing of it.

Tim: Actually, Dick was there too. He was wrestling with a vine. And not like fighting wrestling, but arm wrestling. With a vine.

Bruce can't stop himself from asking: Did he win?

Tim: He did! I'll send you the video and you can hear the vine grunting and hissing while everyone was cheering Nightwing on!

Bruce: They were cheering him on, while throwing basketballs at the other vines?

Tim: Yep.

Bruce: And what were you doing during this?

Tim points to the video on his phone: Capturing the moment and giving orders at the same time. Don't worry, I can multitask.

Bruce: So you ordered them to throw basketballs at the vines.

Tim nods: Strategic distraction while we lead the alien plant vines to a trap.

Bruce: And why was Nightwing arm wrestling one particular vine?

Tim: To boost morale. Also, Kon double-dog dared him.

Bruce: Tim.

Tim: What?

Bruce just sighs.

[pinacoladamatata]

blink and you'll miss it moments around skyhold....

[spiderbitesandvampirevenom]

that anon yesterday really ground my gears so lets quickly review some historical facts:

1. white men get accused of rape, pedophilia, and incest, and more often than not escape any form of tangible consequence. this is especially true when their victims are people of color.

2. men of color get accused of rape, pedophilia, or incest, and get lynched before there's even a trial. these accusations often come from white women to escape consequences for sexually assaulting the man in question.

3. rape and pedophilia have been used as forms of colonial-imperial violence to enforce white supremacy by both white men and women who, shocker, almost always got off with any consequences. and yes, its an issue that is still incredibly, horrifyingly relevant today.

4. people of color have been systematically painted as sexual deviants, incestuous savages, rapists, and child predators by white society from the moment they met us, which was then used to justify hundreds of years of enslaving, torturing, raping, and murdering people of color across the globe.

so, to review and add it all together:

rape, pedophilia, incest, and other forms of sexual violence are, first and foremost, an extension of violence, NOT sexual desire. treating sexual violence as solely an expression of desire is a privilege of white heteropatriarchy. when people of color open admit to wanting to engage in acts of sexual violence, they get killed. when white people do it, they make a new porn category for it.

[feralforbeanix]

Manfred Von Karma did not burn Phoenix's letters to Miles.

Like, I'm not even saying this to defend Manfred's character (though the fanbase does get a little crazy with what he actually did and didn't do) I'm saying this because that's not canon. I'm not sure it was even possible in canon.

Phoenix didn't write letters to Germany. He didn't know Miles was in Germany, let alone Von Karma's address. He didn't even know who Von Karma was until Edgeworth told him about Manfred in Turnabout Goodbyes.

In the game canon, Miles just stopped showing up to school one day. All Phoenix seemed to know was that he transferred schools suddenly. He didn't know why or where to. Remember, Phoenix didn't even hear about DL-6 until Turnabout Sisters when Maya mentioned her family's involvement.

Even in the anime canon (I haven't watched the anime in a while so I might be off about this) where Phoenix and Miles get a chance to properly say goodbye, Phoenix still doesn't have a direct means of contacting him. His best way of doing so was dedicating a song through the radio using Signal Samurai codenames and hoping Miles would hear it.

Phoenix mentions trying to contact him several times when explaining their relationship to Maya, but this was after finding out Miles was this "Demon Attorney". Miles would have to be at least 20 at this point in time, living back in California with at least a few trials under his belt. With how young he reached success, it's not impossible Miles was living on his own at the time. Even if he wasn't, I doubt Manfred was going through this grown adult's mail.

No, what the game seems to be implying is that Miles ignored Phoenix. (Maya even says, "I guess he didn't want to hear from his old friends.") And I don't think this was out of hatred or anything, I think Miles just wanted to forget his past entirely because even the good memories of his childhood would be bittersweet at best.

And to be honest that makes it even more tragic to me. Why do we need Manfred to intercept their connection when Miles' trauma and guilt complex is already doing that?

I like to think Miles knew Phoenix would be asking questions if he ever responded to those initial attempts at contact. Questions he of course doesn't want to answer because they'd at best open old wounds or at worst risk his childhood friend finding out he might have committed patricide.

I also like to think he knew Phoenix of all people would stubbornly try to find the answers Miles wouldn't willingly give because he literally mentions Phoenix always being "single minded in his work" and "always seeing things through to the end". If anyone was going to press and bring those uncomfortable and painful memories out in the open for the sake of "helping him", it would be Phoenix Wright.

Why do we need Manfred to take away all that complexity and tragedy? That is such a waste!

[puppyudderly-dreamy]

ok for the record, the intersex argument for afab transfems is still baseless, when we are coercively or especially forcefully assigned a gender at birth we are subject to the forces of that assignment. it doesn't make me get treated like a cis woman because i had a period, i got treated like a weird "man" with something wrong with me, the same is true for any intersex person, how our conditions may show themselves don't actually change our cagab, which is the thing that matters for our society to identify deviants. we're placed into a category and if we perform that category we get to stay, if we don't we get put in the deviant box and excluded. afabs performing womanhood is EXACTLY what is wanted from them, even if they think they're "biologically male." and that's the crux of it really, being intersex is a biological condition, and because transness and gender is defined socially by our systems privileging certain genders and forceful reinforcement of the binary, it has very little to do with biology (ex why the trump order has bad biology in it, it's not about biology, it's about exterminating a social group not defined by actual biology). the assholes who argue for the case of the intersex afab transfem simply believe that there is something about transfems that can be biological, as in something biologically male. they always bring up theoreticals like "well what if they were assigned female and grew up with a body that went through male puberty" and like... you know what happens right? they get hrt, often forcefully. they are not trans they are being forced to be CIS women, and society won't demonize them for that. no one bats an eye when an afab takes estrogen, no doctor struggles to prescribe it to them, no one gets fanatical about how there's an evil cult giving them estrogen, no one calls them predators or baeddels or pedophiles. like i'm sorry but if you think an intersex argument has any validity you are boiling transness down to something biological, boiling the identities of intersex people down to be centered entirely around our conditions, and treating real trans women like a costume that can be put on and taken off for fun while we truly suffer under the weight of constant transmisogyny. you are a stooge and you invite only your own to join, either purposely or unwittingly letting them be fed vitriol and lies that align with supporting the patriarchy and continuing the real oppression of real trans women. biggest tell that the afab transfem isn't transfem: she and those who support her care nothing for her transfem sisters, disgraceful

[mondo994]

"We were both silent for a little, and then he looked at me with a direct, gentle gaze. His face in the reddish light was as soft, as vulnerable, as remote as the face of a woman who looks at you out of her thoughts and does not speak.

And I saw then again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in him: that he was a woman as well as a man. Any need to explain the sources of that fear vanished with the fear; what I was left with was, at last, acceptance of him as he was.

-The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

[queenharumiura]

2024 Akira Amano 'The Characters' Exhibition bonus 'Selfie-style' cards.

[ID: Official art of multiple characters from the manga and anime Katekyo Hitman Reborn.

They're all drawn as if taking a selfie, most of them smiling and/or doing a peace sign or another playful gesture with their hand.

Reborn, Colonnello, Viper and Fon are in their cursed forms, with Viper pulling their hood down, trying to hide more of their face.

Gokudera waves at us, with "Vongola Famiglia" written on his palm and the Vongola's emblem drawn on it too. Lambo is in his Ten Years Later version, Tsuna's shown both in his normal state and in Hyper Dying Will mode, Basil is in Hyper Dying Will mode too and Chrome's wearing cat ears.

Squalo and Xanxus are scowling. /End ID]

ID courtesy of @hopeswriting.