#ymmv of course

[mksolomon1]

The Bad Batch, Season 2, The Tipping Point

Hemlock speaks here of Omega, but his statement applies just as well to Emerie, who gazes at him as if he’s the light of her life.

There’s something creepy going on here.

[hmslusitania]

I love. An adaptation. That treats the characters and concepts as paramount. And the original plot as set dressing to be altered at will. Rather than holding The Plot as the most sacred aspect to bring forward and pulling a hatchet job on everything else to make it fit within the constraints of the new medium.

[thevikingwoman]

no, sorry, I've actually never disliked a character because of their fans

[starry-mist]

8, 11, 16, 18

Alright, for the “choose violence ask game” y’all are apparently going to ask me to think deep thoughts, so here goes:

8 - common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

This likely applies more to the Facebook fans than Tumblr, because Tumblr folks get it, but the idea that the title of the show means it’s all about Charlie and Rex. It is and always has been an ensemble, found family show.

11 - number of fandom-related words you've filtered

None. Perks of a small fandom, I guess?

16 - you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

The idea of Jesse and Karma as a couple.

18 - it’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

The relationship between Sarah and Rex. Seriously. It’s such a strong bond and I love them.

[mystybelle]

Outside of a context where we're studying the phenomena so we can better mitigate the effects of bigotry and eradicate them, it's better to speak to your crowd.

Call bigots, stupid cunts.

Speak their language.

When they're ready to learn, if ever, explain the details then. But it's okay to call them self centered assholes, or mean spirited cockwaffles right now.

You'll feel better for having let it out too.

GRADE SCHOOL SJWS stop using social justice language to explain shit to your conservative parents IT’S NOT GONNA GO THROUGH now all they have are some new words to make fun of. don’t tell your mom she’s being fatphobic tell her she’s being a dick

[writer-ish]

I don't know, I think the Sex slave interpretation fits. The MC is on auction in a supernatural Human Trafficking ring. They're about to be sold for whatever purposes and for M to make a joke about using the MCs body fits the idea of sex slave. Plus other people in the auctions audience instantly understand what M means when making the joke.

I mean, I get the joke. And the way I took it when I first read it worked for me (possessive "she's mine (if she'll have me)" levels of longing/desire), so I refuse to consider any other options now 😂 But if I do think about it a bit more, I don't know that I love it.

It just feels like M and your Detective should be past that kind of silly innuendo by now? And he should be more fearful/protective of the Detective and not making jokes in a completely sexual way in that moment.

To me, as a joke, it fell flat. If it's interpreted as earnest and … territorial(?) then maybe it works. But as an "ehh?? ehhhh???" elbow-jabbing insinuation - meh.

Thanks for your thoughts 🥰

[thenorthseasings]

+

[turtles-allthewaydown]

In the ongoing battle to draw something worthy of being the cover of a short book, I spent like 2+ hours today comparing two very slightly different reference screenshots, trying to pick which one to stick to and working myself into an anxiety spiral over picking The Right One.

Of course, there is no Right One. I know that. You know that. It is known. But my own perfectionism won't let me just pick one and say, "Good enough." No. It has to be Right. I will literally panic over making the Wrong Choice even when there is no wrong answer. 🙃

What finally calmed me down was deceptively simple: music. I put on a pump up playlist with songs that had been stuck in my head and I made myself get to work on one of the options, and when I looked up I'd started to make something like progress and wasn't nearly so anxious anymore!

The downside is the main song that worked for me was Imagine Dragons, which I am reliably informed is Bad and Cringe. Oh well.

[katie5000]

Ah, that's because professors at universities aren't really teachers - they're researchers who also happen to teach sometimes. And many of them aren't teaching because they want to, they're doing it because they have to - oftentimes the university in question will have stipulations in their contracts (or elsewhere) that they have to teach "x" number of classes in return for (or as part of) the university supporting their research.

I think with community colleges the emphasis is much more on teaching and learning - they serve a much broader base consisting of many different kinds of people with many different goals. It's not just for scholars who want to do research, and so the professors there tend to be much more engaged with their students.

Community college professors: this semester with all of you has been a great experience and a major example of dynamic exchanging of opinions. Exemplary work, everyone. Enjoy your well deserved summer break and feel free to reach out to me if you need absolutely anything in the future; letter of recommendation, shadowing, or even a simple question from future frameworks you’re studying. Thank you for such a great semester.

University professors: grades have been submitted. Get Outlook for iPhone

[archaeopter-ace]

So bradsmindbrain pointed this out in their most recent post, but since Ted has a son in the comics, does this make him a dilf? Discuss.

My immediate thought was ‘I’m too ace for this ask,’ lol, but I like receiving asks in good faith so I’m going to do my best to answer anyway. I will certainly get things wrong. And this probably isn’t the discussion you were hoping for, it's just where my mind went.

Plant sex is weird. So is animal sex, to be fair. We spent a week in EvoBio class talking about how weird it is that any organism has sex at all, because if you have good genes why would you risk combining them with inferior genes; wouldn’t you want to asexually clone yourself indefinitely? (The answer has to do with being responsive to changes in environmental conditions).

Sex feels pleasurable to encourage organisms to reproduce [citation needed]. This means that a lot of animals have courtship displays, or otherwise try to be attractive to members of the same species. Plants do not do this. Plants are not trying to attract other plants; they are trying to attract pollinators, species from a completely different phylum altogether. Unless they are wind-pollinated, in which case they just have to be willing to expose themselves. Or unless they engage in any number of asexual reproductive strategies available to plants.

Things plants are attracted to: sunlight, and an upwards direction (negative gravitropism). Does a plant feel pleasure in meeting this attraction? Quite possibly. Is that pleasure sexual in nature? Probably not.

I still remember the last question on my Botany exam: “What are two things you learned in this class that you will never forget?” and years later, I have not forgotten my answers: 1) that angiosperm reproduction is more complicated than you think. I correctly guessed that I would not remember exactly how it was complicated, but I do remember that there’s actually two generations of tissue inside every acorn. Like after the ovum is pollinated it sort of has sex with itself, copying genes and combining them again, so that the sapling that eventually grows is actually the grandchild of its parents. 2) Tomatoes, at least in the U.S., are legally vegetables, due to a 19th century Supreme Court ruling.

My point is, on the one hand, it is dubious that plants experience sexual gratification. On the other hand, plant monsters are fictional, and this is fandom, so truthfully the diversity of the plant kingdom can be co-opted to fulfill any and all kinks a person might have, and then some. (He’s got tentacles on his face, I know what that means.) Conclusion: Ted fucks, but it’s very weird, and probably psychic. 

But that wasn’t your question! Your question was whether or not he’s a dilf. And here, I don’t think he fits the profile. Because the way the mainstream uses milf and dilf are actually fundamentally different, imo. Milf has been around for a while, iirc it was definitely mainstream by the time Gilmore Girls used it in a commercial. But from what I’ve gathered from rom-coms, milfs are sexy despite being moms, rather than because of it. (*obviously there’s plenty of people who feel different, I’m just going with broad-strokes impressions, here, based on heterosexual rom-coms.)

Why a milf designation would be needed to describe an attractive woman comes, I think, from the fact that (again, according to movies), already having kids is a ‘red flag’ to bachelors looking for a partner. A milf is also likely to be an older woman, and there was data published (but not peer-reviewed, to my knowledge) by the OkCupid founder that found that while women were most attracted to men the same age as them, men of all ages found women in their early twenties most attractive (to be fair, men were most interested in women closer to their own age). So, statistically, older women are seen as less attractive by society. Hence a milf designation, to say that this woman is sexy despite her age.

For dilfs, the calculus is different. Women are already more likely to find older men attractive (again, apologies for the heteronormativity of this data. Gay men with daddy kinks are an important part of our queer community. Also older gay and bi and pan men in general, and nonbinary folk attracted to older men, etc. etc., I just don’t have the data. Quite possibly ‘dilf’ as a term is used almost exclusively by the queer community, in which case I’m just completely barking up the wrong tree. I just don’t know what I'm talking about). 

So what makes a dilf different from just any single man is fatherhood; sexy because he’s a dilf. Now, fatherhood could be sexy for kink reasons, or it could be that it’s used as an indication of being a caregiver, having a nurturing personality. Toxic masculinity says that men don’t actually enjoy taking care of kids; dilfs say otherwise. I think a really good example of this is the comparison of Hugh Jackman on two different magazine covers - in one, he’s Wolverine; shirtless, flexing, and scowling. On the women’s magazine cover, he’s smiling and wearing a sweater/jumper/pullover/idk what they call it in Australia. 

I could be waaaaaaaay off base. I’m not tapped into actual dilf discourse to know what people are actually talking about. But based on my guesses, Ted is not a dilf, because he’s an absentee father. Even when he was still present, he was emotionally absent. This isn't to say he's not a nurturing guy! Just that, if he is, it's not because of fatherhood. (*I've read a limited number of Man-Thing comics, I mostly know him from cameos and summaries, so I don't know how accurate my characterization is)

[eyeronmaus]

[mamawasatesttube]

not to be a bitch but like. i can never take "ohhhh kon is soOOoOoo sad about tim/ber uwaahhhh he's in love with tim but it's unrequited waaahhhh" angst seriously because like... i get it, the only thing you know about kon is that he's the other half of a popular m/m tim ship, but uh. rebirth kon is living an existential fucking nightmare. i think he's got way bigger fish to fry than whether the tim who only kind of remembers him at all is dating some other guy lmao

[rebecca-liz]

#kids crying in stores r usually crying bc theyre cold as fuck esp little babies

...huh. Huh. I think you're on to something here, because it would explain why I've had exactly two (2) supermarket meltdowns in three and a half child-years of parenting - until the kid is like 8, 9 months old I have them in a wrap carrier so they're close and warm, and by the time they're sat in the trolley they know what's up.

(one of the meltdowns was because the kid was in meltdown mode anyway but I wouldn't have the chance to get dinner before dinner otherwise)

i understand toddlers cuz if i was just born a couple years ago and someone tried to get me to understand and say words while i'm growing insane amounts of teeth very quickly and painfully i'd be having a temper tantrum on the floor of a department store too

[threebea]

Listen, Ray Park is Scottish, so I feel like somehow that needs to translate into Darth Maul being a half or quarter Stewjoni-Zabrak on his father's side since popular fanon is Stewjon is Space Scotland.

Consider: Stewjon isn't just a human planet and there is a very large zabrak population. Maybe former Dathomir male Zabrak that split from their community made a home there, or maybe that's where they originated from.

Does this change anything? No both Obi-Wan and Maul are raised Jedi and Sith respectively, and Maul, before Sidious showed up, was a Night Brother, but for fanfics I think it's a fun idea that could be expanded on.

Like they're distant cousins and they both are legally required to attend a funeral for reasons, or going into the stewjoni sithspawn aus, or they have an arranged marriage neither of them knew about between their families before they were even born. The first born Kenobi was to marry the second Oppress etc etc. YMMV.

[ladyofthenoodle]

the ladybug and black cat are the two most powerful miraculous because of the wish

the ladybug and black cat are the two most powerful miraculous because of the wish

when they say that they’re the most powerful miraculous in the show they’re not saying they’re the most effective in battle or that their holders are meant to be equals in every way, it’s about the wish. it’s about the power to combine them to change reality. so no the black cat holder doesn’t need to have an equal number of magic powers as the ladybug because that statement isn’t about the holders. and yes some of the other holders like the rabbit might have more effective powers than the holders of the ladybug and black cat. it’s not about that. it’s about the magic jewelry themselves.

[vaguely-concerned]

I listened to the first episode of vows and vengeance and... god. god forget waiting for veilguard, how the fuck am I going to survive the wait between each episode of this???? tl;dr: I loved it, I love dragon age, I love audio dramas, I love voice acting and music, I love thedas, I am IMMEDIATELY painfully invested. if nadia doesn't get her sweet fancy lad back whole and unharmed by the end of this I am killing everyone in tevinter and then myself.

more thoughts under the cut! not a lot of deep analysis just flailing and feelings today haha

I hadn't realized that elio would be a magister! idk if it was in any marketing beforehand, but if so I didn't pay enough attention to remember it lol. he sounds like he might be prime lucerni-material politically, so I'm a little sad we didn't get even a subtle dorian or maevaris easter egg in there, as far as I could tell, but hey, you can't have everything. (honestly unless BIG changes are upon us (which tbf they probably are) it might be just as well that this went down as it did, b/c I'm not sure how long elio would survive in the magisterium that we've heard tell of, he's quite -- either soft and shortsighted, or politically reckless, I think nadia was right there.)

I found nadia, elio and their dynamic very effectively introduced -- the fact that they haven't quite figured out how to be good to each other yet but so clearly both desperately want to be and are willing to work for that is a smart place to start the story. it makes it feel all the sadder if they never get the chance to work it all out, because I think they could have every chance to, given the time.

The voice actors for the central characters are all wonderful (orin's was. fine! doing a good enough job with a slightly more thankless role, let's call it that.) also so nice to hear people humming the tavern songs we heard in inquisition. god I love thedas I'm so glad we're getting to go right back in there soon

The episode was longer than I thought they would get, and it was all the better for it! I'm so happy it seems they'll get the space they need to tell this story, especially since nadia appears to be setting out on quite a continent-spanning odyssey here (I'm so sorry about your life nadia)

SOLAS solas solas! solas. solas!!!! he is such a BITCH and I love him so much. he is being aggressively himself and I didn't realize just how much I'd missed him. no one gets me frustrated quite like you baby you know better than this I KNOW you could know better than this why do you never learn a single thing I know you have the capacity somewhere in there. patron saint of endlessly fucking up. WHERE do you get off being condescending to nadia when all your ~*brilliant*~ plans backfire catastrophically on you every single time solas. yeah of course you're sorry, and you fucking better be, if she stabbed you I'd be sad but also like 'yeah I mean you had that one coming sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯' about it!!! what the fuck. come home please

such a weird feeling to have him be an ominous stranger on the road to elio and nadia while I was standing there with my arms crossed and my foot tapping irritably like 'oh so now he shows his face, there he is. my husband. my ex-husb -- my nemesis and poor little meo -- it's complicated alright. he's in the dog house, but the dog house he's in is still mine'. I do adore how unstoppably solas clearly wants to be a teacher, he works so hard to be mysterious and aloof but the lonely insufferable chatterbox knowitall jumps out at every turn.

neve trying and almost succeeding in freezing the whole bay I'm

like. okay then! much to think about

the only thing I'm not a big fan of is the characters calling out in-game spells in sort of a self-indulgent way, but hell if I know how else you'd communicate exactly what's going down magically in an audio format like this so y'know. very easily forgiven from my side honestly