#accepting no arguments

[kings-highway]

hi i don’t know if you’ve seen this already but i saw it and immediately needed to show it to someone who would understand.

lowkey could possibly be warped into a soulmates tattoo au

look it too me a while to decide how to respond to this because I couldn't decide what joke I wanted to make but I eventually settled on making no jokes and writing this instead. and rest assured there were many jokes I wanted to make

---

The joke, Ushijima had come to learn, was relatively misogynistic. He had not been aware, when people had first laughed when they saw the messy, scribbling Miss Kitty faces over his wrists, that it was at the subject matter rather than the circumstances. He had apologized for the lack of professionalism, but in a world with shared skin, everyone was pretty forgiving of what someone might have drawn on. Especially someone who hadn't met his soulmate.

The rest of the team doesn't really try and explain it to him. Semi halfheartedly explains that seeing such a big guy covered in what is effectively a little girl's obsession is generally amusing to people - they're laughing at him for having to interact with the media at all. He, after all, is a big, strong man, and should not be around the cute little cartoon.

They make judgements on his soulmate. They call her Miss Kitty and make jabs about what kind of girl she is - she probably wears a lot of fluffy skirts, and cat-ear headbands, and pink and bows. He nods along with this, until he realizes that they are making fun of him - and his soulmate - again.

"Because it would be funny for someone like me to be with someone like that?" Ushijima tries, and Semi has to think about it for a moment before saying: "No, more like... it's cliche. A big, strong guy like you, volleyball superstar, falling for a cute little pastel chick in a short skirt? Well, it's just a little... you know."

Ushijima does not know.

The Miss Kitty obsession is weird, though. He tries to hide it not from shame or guilty - he can barely comprehend why it's funny in the first place - but because he wants to protect her. He thinks, maybe, if she is trying to connect with him over something that she likes, he does not want anyone mocking her for it. So he covers it up, as much as he can, when everyone else is around, just to be safe.

In the evenings, though, late at night, if he stays up that long, he can see it get rubbed off. It works quickly, the way they fade, so he can imagine the girl scrubbing at her arms until they're red, as if she's angry at them. He feels bad.

Maybe she is being made fun of. Maybe she is ashamed of her own interests - maybe she feels bad for him. He tries to make her feel better, by using a pen to carefully draw the cat's face on the inside of his wrist. What he gets back is a garbled, messy set of disconnected lines, and a question mark. That's what happens when someone tries to write words. Like a bad connection. But he knows what the poor girl is asking.

Where are you?

His care in disguising the marks are not infallible, however, and eventually they have to play on a live stage, he has to put on his volleyball uniform. He had tried to tell her - he'd drawn the little volleyball over and over on his wrist, drawing a little camera, trying to tell her that he would be visible to the whole world. He doesn't know how to tell her that they laugh at her, that they think she's stupid and immature and too feminine. That those are, apparently, bad qualities. It doesn't work, though. If anything, actually, they get even worse, almost as if she's daring the world to judge her.

He smiles at that - he cannot help it.

And he tries not to hear the whispers of his team. It's not so bad, actually - there are a handful of guys who haven't met their soulmates that have designs drawn up their arm, mostly hearts and other things - the four-leafed clover, a popular pictogram way of saying 'good luck' where words weren't allowed.

He knows the camera can pick up the weird little marks on his arm, he knows the announcers will be curious, and he knows, for sure, that there will be some kind of news article circulating in volleyball circuits about his cute little soulmate and her childish obsession. He hopes they are kind to her.

But staring or no, it doesn't affect his game. They manage to pull through with the win, and retreat to the locker room to cheer and celebrate and talk about going out for drinks. Ushijima agrees to go along, pulling on his street clothes and jacket and tucking the Miss Kitty marks safely away, but - there's a new one. He must not have noticed, in the heat of the game, that his soulmate had scrubbed clean a patch on her their skin, and replaced the Miss Kitty designs with a winking smiley face. That was new.

He hides it anyway, not wanting to deal with the gossip of his teammates, and hurries to follow them outside and take the short walk over to the bar that they liked.

"Ushijima Wakatoshi."

It's a voice he's never heard before. He turns, frowning, as he lets his eyes take in the tall, lanky, rather odd looking young man, lips curled in a self satisfied sneer, eyes heavy. He is... weird, Ushijima decides. He does not hold himself like most people do.

"Can I help you?"

"You are not an easy man to track down," he adds, before tugging up the sleeve of his own jacket, holding out his arm so that Ushijima could see the winking face on the inside of his wrist, the surrounding skin littered with fading Miss Kitty designs.

Oh.

Wait-

"You are not what people said you would be," Ushijima says, quickly, trying to reconcile the expectation that an obsession with Miss Kitty must surely equal a young, cute woman with a penchant for childish toys. This man was as tall as he was, and dressed down, rather lazily. Ushijima would not have guessed him to be his soulmate, based on that. "You're... you're the person who's obsessed with Miss Kitty? I assumed you'd be a woman."

"Ah," the man says, clicking his tongue. "Sorry about that one, yeah... How else was I supposed to find you? Everyone in the world is wandering around with hearts and clovers and pretty designs on their arms. I needed to make sure I could identify you, even from afar. And I like the stupid cat, sue me."

"I would not sue you over this," Ushijima replies, alarmed immediately.

"Wh-what? No! I just meant-" and his soulmate breaks into a cackling sort of laugh that Ushijima quite likes the sound of. He seems thoroughly caught off guard by his sincerity in the matter. He wanders closer still, and holds out his hand. "Tendou Satori," he says. "Thanks for giving me a warning about the volleyball game, wouldn't have thought to check sports coverage otherwise."

Ushijima reaches to take his hand. "Thank you for trying so hard to find me."

"Eh. Selfish reasons for doing that."

"I'm still grateful for it. I'm... on my way to meet up with my team, celebrate the victory... would you like to come? I have a feeling that they are all going to be very... very interested in meeting you."

"Oh? Well who am I to deny. Lead the way."

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

"you should wake up early to watch the sun rise!" is actually the dumbest possible way to guilt trip people into getting up early. hello, the sunset? exists too? every day even. and is equally gorgeous. and fits into many people's free time. you're awake, work's over and holyshit--THATSA SUNSET BABY!!!

[inkskinned]

i'm still trying to piece together the truth of it. when you left, you said: feel free to spin this narrative however you want. i have no idea if you were being cruel or if you just genuinely don't remember what you've done to me.

it's hard because i'd done so much of the work for you. i had seen the parts that flaked off, the rust underneath. i started separating you into two people - the one i loved, and the one who hurt me. i had this fantasy version of you - my partner - and then i had this stranger, a third person who would show up randomly to shatter me. i am deliriously glad i'm no longer with "the stranger". i miss the gentle (unreal?) "other" you terribly.

at first, i was so strict about my boundaries. i remember telling you to get the fuck out of my house if you were going to talk to me like that. by the end: i would justify your behavior for you, accepting even your mistreatment as "my fault" in the grand scheme. i look back on the person i was before you - smart, independent, confident - and i feel a strange sense of detachment. i don't even recognize me.

even in one of our last conversations, you said: if you want a partner that always talks warmly to you, find someone else. there was a time that a comment like that would have made me leave. and instead, somehow, i just placidly accepted that kind of thing. you were literally telling me that i wasn't allowed to have a reaction to your cruelty - and i just took it, because you'd so fully turned things around on me.

when people are faced with irrationality, a rational brain tries to make sense of it. this is the trap. they're lovely in the morning, gentle and blue-eyed and sweet. like nothing even happened, they breeze around the house and kiss you on the mouth. but at night; who is that? they snap almost randomly; flying into an impotent rage about just-about-anything. it just doesn't make sense. so the problem must be me, and my brain, and how i think.

the traumatized brain just wants peace. so maybe i'm misremembering. maybe you were just having a bad day. maybe it's actually me.

you eventually would fully turn on me and start implying that i am the bad actor in our relationship. that's what happens, right? that's literally in the playbook. you went to therapy for all of a month, told her a half-truth, co-opted therapyspeak. you figured out how to reframe your actions as "seeking peace." any time i stood my ground, i was "gaslighting." when i asked you to be more gentle, you said i was "tone policing." you said, randomly, i had emotionally manipulated you - i still have no idea what that's even specifically referring to. maybe my consistent requests for calmness and empathy?

and while i literally know better, and i'm sitting here, trained by you, thinking: wait, fuck. was i actually the person you made me out to be?

and the thing that scares me is that i literally do not know if you ever actually saw what you were doing to me. when you'd tell me how you remember arguments, you'd always summarize them in a way where you come off as gentle and easy: "i was trying to set an important boundary." what had actually happened was 15 minutes of you shouting at me i know you did something shady, just admit it already. eventually you'd say my reaction to your shouting (when i finally reacted, which usually happened around hour three) was inevitably "disappointing" and "another way i'm silencing your feelings."

how many times did i ask you - beg you - to just take accountability? looking back, i don't think i ever heard you say: you're right. the way i talked to you was wrong of me.

i am trying to tie together the two people into a full version of you in my head. yes, you made my coffee and made me laugh and spent hours on the phone with me. and yes - you would scream at me until i had to run away and hide behind something.

i wish i did have a narrative i could pull out and shape to my whim. i wish i did have some semblance of reality. instead i just stand here, strange and vibrating, wondering: what the fuck just happened?

[chrrywvea]

logan purrs when he's asleep. he purrs like a content little cat when he's smushed into wade's side, his whole adamantium weight pressing into wade who doesn't really mind because ✨️who in their right mind says no to wolvie cuddles✨️ (wade uses him as a weighted blanket anyway, who needs air pffffft he doesn't)

but HOLY MARVEL JESUS he has a silent freak out the first time he discovers logan purring in his sleep during one of their movie binges. (they have weekly movie nights fight me)

a healthy (not) bout of cuteness aggression happens that night and even though wade is a little confused both by the fact that logan actually fell asleep on him and that HE IS PURRING OH MY GOD- he doesn't fight it and even naps with him (the best sleep both of them have ever had considering lots of nights are full with nightmares and insomnia)

and the thing is- wade very carefully talks to some of the surviving xmen in their universe about it and they just go 🤔🤨❓️ because not one of them has ever seen or heard logan do this (i'd imagine maybe kayla or mariko, scott even - logan told him about them, but hey wade can't really ask them can he) and then wade REALIZES and it hits him SO hard. logan is comfortable with him. he's at ease and relaxed enough in his presence to allow himself to slip into his slightly more animalistic traits without having to fear any judgement or rejection. he. is. comfortable. and wade maybe cries a little (a lot) at that realisation, holding logan even tighter when it happens again - the older man slumped against him during one of their movie nights, sleeping tight and soft purrs vibrating deep from his chest

[mariacallous]

What sucks is that the US, due to the Build Back Better Plan (with legislation like the IRA and the IIJA and CHIPS and so forth) actually was re-establishing a really solid manufacturing and industrial sector and creating a lot of opportunities for new jobs to replace outdated industries and professions, particularly in rural and geographically diverse areas...only for it all to become totally fucked by Trump and the GOP and their bullshit.

We had a flourshing domestic manufacturing and industrial sector, in places that often got overlooked by policies and governments. And it's all being slaughtered.

[wombywoo]

winter ❄️⛄

[somewhereincairparavel]

'i hate jason grace because he thought he was worthy enough to compete with percy' I'm sorry have y'all SEEN jason. this man defeated a TITAN without weapons and his bare hands to the point the titan wanted to rise from the UNDERWORLD with the help of a GODDESS to seek vengeance over him. I think we can cut him slack for having some well deserved self respect bc I'd brag too wtf

[robbyykeene]

It’s just like. We have Robby, the kid who grew up with no one. Whose only friends were two adult men who used him and turned violent the second he pushed back. Who slept on the couch while his addict mother brought home strings of random, strange men over and over again. Whose dad was never there at all. Who got drunk for the first time in his life and was sexually assaulted. And then we have Tory, the girl who watched her dad hurt her mom. Who bragged about needing to fend off creepy men with a spiked bracelet. Whose landlord tried to extort her for sex at 16 years old. Who has been repeatedly sexualized throughout the show. These are the kids who become karate influencers—not because of their skills, not because of any victories or trophies, but because they kissed on live television and people want to objectify them. Because they’re good looking kids and sex sells. That’s their happy ending. Trapped forever in the cycles of violence and abuse that have consumed their entire childhoods. What the fuck.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Good Morning, World.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[burningcheese-merchant]

I think more ppl need to see this

Yeah for real lol. That's exactly what it is with him. Not to toot my own horn too much but I believe this post I made ages ago hits the nail on the head haha

"I'm bored" is... technically true. In a sense. Personally, I think it's a very simple and vague allusion to the real problem. That thin sheet of snow coating a massive, freezing cold iceberg. Just barely obscuring it from proper view.

imo it's been a bit disappointing seeing people take to extremes with Burning Spice's character. I've seen people either woobify him, downplay or excuse his actions by saying "he's not evil! He's hurting! He's depressed! He doesn't hate people, he's lashing out because he can't internalize his pain anymore!", or just demand he be put to death immediately on sight without trial. You can like a morally repulsive character and sympathize with their issues while also acknowledging that they're repulsive and need to face justice for their crimes. Burning Spice is one of my favorite characters, I love everything about him, he's sexy as fuck, I understand why he's the way he is, I'm still happy to see his ass beat because he's a piece of shit and he deserves it lol.

Not to throw shade at "simpler" villains ofc. I love me some assholes that are assholes just because they can be. Like Jack Horner in Puss in Boots 2. But Burning Spice isn't Jack Horner and he honestly shouldn't be. The deeper, sadder, more complex reasons governing his actions suit him better than just "I'm bored fuck this shit" and nothing else ykwim

and of course, he's still wrong. Burning Spice's view of the world is wrong. Does a book begin just to end? Does a song play just to finish in a few minutes' time? No. They begin so that we may read, listen, and enjoy. So that they may make us laugh, or have us shake our heads in disappointment, or tell us some hidden truth. Make our days and lives a little more interesting than they were before. Life is beautiful BECAUSE it is fleeting. Born, grow, wither, born, grow, wither. Yes, that's how it goes. But there's so much more to those things than just what we can gather from those three words. Every day is different. Though the sun rises every morning without fail, it's never quite the same color, is it? Always a bit of a different shade of yellow, orange, red, bleeding into the sky a little differently each time. There are so many things to see and do, games to play, people to meet and love and cherish. Maybe some of those things and those people won't be here someday but that doesn't mean their existence never meant anything. We are not born to die, we are born to live. We must die for those who are to live, and live for those who have died. Regardless, we must never lose sight of the intrinsic value of all that surrounds us. Burning Spice very much did. Underneath his bitterness and anger and (not unfounded, to be fair) lamentation for the unstoppable cycle of life and death is a deep-rooted selfishness and fundamental lack of understanding and appreciation for life and other people. In the face of despair, he gave in and chose evil. He was and is wrong for doing so, regardless of why he did it. He could've stepped down. He could've just admitted he didn't have what it took to be the Herald of Change. Hell, if he really hates being alive so much, he would've committed suicide a LONG time ago. But he never did any of that; instead he chose to inflict an equal or greater suffering on everything and everyone else, even the undeserving. And for that he MUST pay. And Golden Cheese, with her personality and her experiences and the wisdom she came to attain when faced with the exact same despair as Burning Spice, is exactly the right person to make him do that

[gingerswagfreckles]

Not really loving how my post about the left's love affair with eugenics and blood and soil ideology framed as "decolonization" got coopted into another "wait it's all Christianity??" "It always has been" post." Y'all are sticking your heads in the sand if you think this is a problem with "cultural Christianity." This is the exact same pattern we saw play out in the 1979 Iranian revolution and much of this ideology was coopted from the Nazis by the Soviets and reframed as progressive. This is not an issue with Western "cultural Christianity" and it would be great if Jumblr could stop engaging in the same "there's actually one secret root cause of every problem in the world and if we get rid of it we will have utopia" thing that antisemites have been using against Jews for 2000 years.

[camellcat]

I feel like bangel shippers attacking spuffy girlies r missing the age gap point.... it's not that either of them being like y'know 100+ to 200+ years older than her is the issue. whatever, right? show about vampires with a vamp love interest we all knew what we were signing up for. the issue is the fact that angel went after buffy when she was SIXTEEN!!!! and spike. didn't! and it's not like he was waiting for her, he just wasn't interested in that way. by the time spike fell in love with her buffy was still young, but we're talking twenty, twenty-one. adult to adult!

[glitter-stained]

Ngl it really peeves me when the debate about Jason's ethics regarding killing in the batfam mixes up the question of him being a moral character in regards to sticking to his own philosophy (aka compromising with what he thinks is right to salvage relationships, but also exploding trains to evade capture, killing random goons in a gang war, etc) and the question of him being a moral character in regards to whether his philosophy is right. And even with regards to his philosophy there is his philosophy on politics, crime control and harm reduction, and his ethical philosophy itself (utilitarianism, aka focusing on intended positive consequences of actions for the greater good rather than the action being fundamentally moral or immoral in itself). Those are different things. Those require different debates and should not be conflated together. I'm not even saying Jason is right! I think utilitarianism and deontology both suck and fail at providing sufficient guidelines for moral behaviour. ("Everybody still loses" like the nihilist clown says. The symbolism of that one scene is pretty cool on that regard.)

And I think some people at dc would very much like for you to make the connection that because Jason is harming civilians/killing unnamed goons, he is a bad person, and as such you don't need to examine the way his stance on moral philosophy (utilitarianism) opposes Batman's. But that's not right, they don't get to wiggle out of the fact that utilitarianism vs deontology is a complicated debate that has been going on for ages, that there is no clear-cut answer where Batman fundamentally comes out on top, they don't get to use the fact that Jason (in the era currently discussed) is a villain to saddle us with a false dichotomy of "well jason is wrong about stuff so batman has to be right" to avoid addressing the actual question. The traits of the people being tied on the tracks do not change the shape of the trolley problem. The traits of the person deciding to pull the lever do not change the shape of the trolley problem. It's still one lever, three people tied on one track, one on the other, do you pull the lever. That's it. Yes, bending the metaphor to address other questions (such as "who keeps tying people to the tracks" to question systemic violence or "how does my bias, my prejudice and empathy impact my decision to pull the lever depending on who is on the tracks") are interesting but that's not what the debate is about. If I wrote an essay about the trolley problem in high school and focused primarily on the nature of the people being tied on the tracks, I'd get a big fat zero with "off-topic" written in red all over my essay, so I'm not inclined to allow DC comics to get away with it.

[0alix0]

sorry i have personal hatred of the fact that dav took a dumb on literally any visual time consistency in architecture, clothes and thedas in general

DAO clearly painted Fereldan as a 13 century England. (it became a problem in DAI, where orlais looked a bit more modern, 17th century "Baroque"-ish in comparison)

but looking back at dav and we have:

investigators (any "investigations" back then went pretty much as we saw them with Hawke - a bunch of people stomping around looking for clues, listening to gossips and usually failing. that work was given to guards mostly, of course some locals could go and try to figure out everything themselves, but hiring a private investigator?? lmao)

elevators in Minrathous (i would've been fine with this one, if it was Archimedes' type of elevator, but that would include human (probably slave) labor, and we can't have that ☝)

Newspapers because do you have any idea how much time it took to make and publish anything in medieval times? I'm not even asking who these newspapers are for, cuz the majority of people in Tevinter (slaves, servants, workers) wouldn't be able to read. What the hell are you even writing about? You don't have good enough communication to make news??

cyan/magenta/purple/UNNATURALLY colored fabric, which back then could be acquired only by rich people, because the paint itself costed a lot (murex sea snail were used for purple fabric, for example, Cochineals for magenta)

general clothes style mismatch - just put harding, who's relatively fantasy looking next to steampunk-emmrich or noire-neve and observe the style clash.

and last but not the least:

a fucking piano, an instrument that was created in around 1700 (roughly the same time as steam engine and thermometer), is just starting there in a lighthouse and solas for some reason knows how to play it??

this is so jarringly inconsistent and just straight up stupid and i'm certain there's more stuff like this that my brain just blocked as a traumatic memory

[panakina]

I want to see jason and cass forced to work together in a long and messy run. Jason isn’t killing people but not because he believes it’s wrong, he’s bending his principles because the personal costs were too high. Cass will not, cannot bend, and damn the costs. Her reasons for it are laughably unconvincing to him. She has worked so so hard to have a life for herself. Jason is pretty clearly suicidal. The man who adopted each of them would be unrecognisable to the other. She’s held up as the golden standard, he’s the grim cautionary tale. She’s the superior combatant. He’s a jack of all trades. Neither one has any clue how to be normal.

They should despise each other and be forced to solve mysteries together.

[cervinae-canine]

also I don't know if anyone wants to hear this but minors can selfship with older characters. it is fine and normal. i have done that before and i bet that many others have done this as well. you are not a proshipper or a comshipper for doing so. if someone tries to say that, block them and do your own thing. please do not let other people tell you otherwise :D

Proship / Comship / RPF Do Not Interact or Repost Please !