#there are exceptions to every rule

[allastoredeer]

tbh I don't think Alastor doesn't condone violence against women. I think he doesn't condone violence against women who aren't doing anything wrong. So yes, if a woman is minding her own business and some guy goes to harass her, Alastor might get involved. But if she's being a witch I don't think Alastor would care or have any problem snacking on her. He did laugh maniacally while killing Exorcists, and those are all women

He also killed Overlords who are woman, so we know he does.

But I like to think that Alastor has a soft spot for them, especially considering most of his closest friends/companions are women, and he just seems to get along with them better than men.

Obviously, they're in Hell, so it's not like the women there are all innocent bystanders, but I still think Alastor doesn't condone senseless violence against them. I think he'd prefer not to, but like with the Exorcists and the Overlords, he will.

I imagine he's way quicker to be violent with men, though. No hesitation. No questions asked. Straight for the jugular.

[stumbling-towards-the-light]

Free Folk & Their Adaptive Strategy

Adaptive strategy was a term first coined in 1974 by anthropologist Yehudi Cohen to describe a society's means of economic production. Cohen also further postulated that certain means of economic production adopted by a society also led said society to adopt certain social features, by which I mean shared political organization, and similar ways of choosing leadership, if they had any.

Now, in most anthropological circles, it's generally agreed there are five adaptive strategies to be linked to five types of political organization. This is a general pattern across a majority of human societies, but not a written-in-stone rule; some societies do not land in these neat, categorized boxes. However, this is a fictional culture, so for the sake of mine and the dear reader's sanity, we are going to assume the Free Folk fall into these categories.

It is largely implied that the Free Folk's main adaptive strategy is foraging, employing “traditional” hunter-gatherer means of survival. Now we see some Free Folk use pastoralist means of survival, with mentions of sheepfolds and pigstys found in various Free Folk villages, as well as a mention of a reindeer herding, however, baseline the Free Folk are foragers. Usually, in forager societies, the main type of political organization are bands, relatively small groups of people all tied together by some form of kinship. This seems to be supported in the text itself, where Jon refers to Rattleshirts’ group as a “band” several times.

This type of society does not lend itself well to permanent homes, usually moving seasonally in accordance with where herds of wild animals have moved. The idea of private property is virtually nonexistent. However, there are reports of forager societies all coming together in one place, usually when there is a surplus of food. This occasion is usually treated like a holiday, with lots of celebrating, dancing, singing, and trading being done.

Leadership: Fascinatingly enough, forager leadership structure is usually based around who can give the most, rather than who is the strongest or the toughest. This is due to the tendency of forager societies to develop social mores involving hospitality and shared social responsibility. 

Social Values: We already know the Free Folk hold proper hospitality to be absolutely sacred, with even Crastor, the worst of the worst, following it like gospel. (He is not the one to break hospitality during the Night’s Watch coup, after all.) The shared social responsibility part is simply an expansion of this core idea. If you can’t even take care of your own, why should your hospitality, your word be trusted? Societies like this one, also will ostracize any hoarders who take more than they need. We see this pattern with Crastor, with every other Free Folk we meet despising him. Granted, this is probably due to his practice of marrying his daughters, but he is also the only Free Folk to have a designated “keep”, where his family lives, with it’s own pigsty and sheepfold. Every other pigsty and/or sheepfold we see north of the Wall, appears to be shared. Some of that disgust could also be due to his hoarding tendencies.  

Gender Roles: White there is the traditional idea of men doing the hunting and fishing and women doing the majority of the foraging, these roles are not set in stone by any means. Again, this is supported by the text, where both men and women are raiders and accepted leaders of their groups. This is even supported in the Free Folks’ concept of marriage, which doesn’t seem to be set in stone. They do have a concept of one man and one woman being tied together, but it doesn;t seem that the two are bound by marriage; there is no expectation of fidelity for either party, or at least there are no social consequences for sleeping with someone who isn’t your spouse. This kind of openness is usually found in societies that give their women a lot more freedom.

Religion: Due to their heavy reliance on the land, almost all foraging societies are animistic, worshiping the spirits found in and around nature, rather than a specific, titled entity. Again seen in the Free Folk, who worship the Old Gods, nameless spirits inhabiting the world around them. 

Inheritance Customs: As there is no concept of private property, there is no concept of someone inheriting that private property. Further support the Free Folks’ lax gender roles. When there is nothing to inherit, why should there be a huge fuss over whose child is whose child? Why should a husband need to control who his wife sleeps with, when he has nothing to pass down? 

Descent Customs: Forager societies are often bilineal, children are considered to be descended from both parents and thus kin to both parents’ extended families. This is a way to ensure that there will always be someone to rely on in hard times. I see no reason why the Free Folk would not adopt a similar strategy. 

This is just some of the things, affected by the Free Folks’ larger adaptive strategy, there are probably a hundred more different ways this idea could be expressed. But anyway, let me know what you think!

[unpopularly-opinionated]

TIL I am in fact a cliche gay who definitely would not mind if my stepdad's friend came upstairs for a little something something during the party at our house. 💀

[draconicshinx]

Every time people try to use bioessentialism to back up homophobic and transphobic takes I'm just like. You don't actually know anything about biology do you

[itsbansheebitch]

Diagnosis is expensive, peer review is free

It's funny to me how doctors can get diagnosis SO WRONG sometimes. Like dude, I don't care if you're self diagnosed, you know yourself best and I'd rather you get peer reviewed (have your friends give you a stamp of approval) than a doctor diagnosis.

I'm diagnosed with several things that should have been diagnosed with YEARS ago. You know what my (autistic) friend said when I told her I was getting diagnosed for ADHD? She said "oh really, I thought you were autistic when we first met." Autism and ADHD have a lot of overlap (and you can have both) so it's not surprise she thought something similar.

In Conclusion: Doctor Diagnosis < Peer Review

[ghost-bxrd]

Let’s amp up the “Jason says ow and the batfam thinks he must be gravely injured” headcanon.

Jason calls Bruce or Dick for fun and says nothing but “goodbye” before hanging up (maybe it’s a dare by Roy who TOTALLY suspects the reaction Jay is gonna get).

Ten minutes late the entire Justice League is scouring Gotham, on the hunt for Jason.

[tha-star]

Batman: I will repeat myself, since it seems that you do not understand. No metahuman in my city.

Green Lantern (Jordan): So what is THIS?

Two kids flying around Batman, laughing, humming "grandpa, grandpa~", and playing with the "ears" in Batman's uniform.

The older one looks like Conner and Tim, the younger is like Jon and Damian.

Batman: Two exceptions.

[rainofthestorm]

We've seen so many people, whether they're trans or plural or both and more... have the worry or fear that presents as maybe I'm faking it, maybe this isn't me, actually.

And I wanna say, before I get into it? The number of people who have that thought and are right? Nonexistent. I've never seen it happen. I'm sure it's a possibility, an edge case, but I've never seen it myself, and we talk to lots of queer and plural folks.

And we've thought about that fear, that worry a lot. After much thought, we've kinda rewritten that one for ourselves. Because firstly, we noticed that the "I feel like I'm faking it" feeling is practically identical for being plural as it is for being trans. They're the same feeling. I'm certain they're likely similar or the same for most queer and likely many neurodivergent folks.

We thought about it some and we've mostly come to the conclusion that... it's not really a doubt, exactly.

It seems, to us, to be a specific presentation of the feeling of being unsafe, insecure, and a worry that you won't be accepted as you are. Because someone not accepting your identity is someone not accepting you as a person (or people, heh), and that's quite a scary possibility.

Which... is valid, it can be scary, absolutely. But it's also something that can be addressed in that form: what can you (or others around you) do to help you feel safe and accepted?

[lover-of-mine]

Remember how I made the big framing in buddie conversations meta and then another one when the gym stills came out that comes down to how conversations about Buck, Buck is sitting down.

About Eddie, both of them are sitting down.

About Chris, they are sitting on the same surface

But when they are on the same level and standing up, the conversation tends to be about their relationship with each other.

I know it looks pretty obvious that this is them talking about their relationship, but following patterns on the show, this is them talking about their relationship.

And I'm also interested in what camera angles we are going to get on this scene, because the tsunami for instance they are facing each other but they make a point that for parts of the scene we can see both of their faces, not just them speaking and reacting to each other like in the grocery store for example. I am so curious.

[amtrak12]

After a conversation with a friend about this weird trend of fic readers who only want epic length fics (and also what seems to be a massive misunderstanding between parties on terms and their definitions), I went searching for the fandom sources I cut my teeth on. I don't have much bookmarked from those days anymore, but googling got me to this fiction length/terminology breakdown from a Livejournal blog. (Which also has good fandom definitions for other terms like A/N and fanon too, so if you're super new to fandom, go check that out.)

The definitions come from the publishing world (hence the page counts), but fandom and fanfic has always borrowed heavily from official publishing terminology. Flash fiction (aka, anything less than 1k words) is called a 'ficlet' within fandom. We call everything else a fic until it reaches the novella mark -- which may start at 20k words but as synecdochic breaks down on their Dreamwidth blog, there's a lot of overlap between short stories and novella word counts. Because, when you're not constrained by physical page counts, the real dividing line between short stories and novellas are the number of plots and themes you're using. (Seriously, go read their meta on this topic. It's fantastic!) Either way, once you're hitting tens of thousands of words, you're in longfic territory. And then if your fic is even longer than that -- 100k+ like shown in the screenshot above -- it's called an epic fic.

And these terms, longfic and epic, are important because they're used to differentiate these stories from the average fic. Because, at least in the 2000s up until the 2020s, the most common fic lengths you ran into were between 1k-20k words. "Fic" made the reader assume only a few thousand words at most. It's only when you changed the term to drabble or ficlet or longfic that they would realize 'oh this is going to be shorter or longer than normal'.

I don't really understand why that baseline assumption has changed amongst the newer demographics (and maybe amongst some long-running fandom members too?). I've seen a lot of theories and 'tiktokification' complaints, but I honestly don't know what's true. And I don't want to start a fight or even try to change anyone's minds if they are dead set against reading short story length fics. You can do what you want!

Just maybe shift your attitude about it a little bit? Remember that it's a personal preference the same way tropes are, and that one story length isn't better than another. Just like tropes, each story length serves its purpose. Some stories are best told in 1-2k words. Some are best told as 100 word drabbles -- or even a single sentence! And then, yes, some stories do need to be 100k+ in order to be told properly.

But that's not every story. And it shouldn't be expected of fic writers to pad a 1500 word plot into some sprawling epic just because they left it on a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger is probably the point of that fic! Short stories are an entirely separate art form to novels and as such are able to cover different topics than novels can or cover the same topics differently. And that's what makes them special!!

And look at that word count breakdown by genre! That's mainstream publishing standards! Now, go back up there to the definition of a novel and notice that the average published novel is 80k words long.

Let me repeat that:

The average length of a published novel is 80,000 words long.

Could a novel go longer? Sure! And if you're dipping into adult sci-fi or fantasy, absolutely it will be longer! But does your fic need to be longer than the average novel in order to be good? In order for you to feel satisfied when you finish reading it? Why does the length of the fic matter more to you than the content?

idk just some rambling food for thought, but I guess too long, don't read:

~✨~ Every story length is valid ~✨~

It just depends on the plot you have and the structure you want to use to tell it.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[creativesparkz]

i finally actually watched hazbin hotel and had the worst experience of my entire life so i redesigned the only good character

[steelthroat]

People on my server love me i just know it. They get to see this:

Tfa Lugnut, cartoon g1 Shockwave and idw1 Tarn have to deal with the same level of "malessere"

Lugnut, however, contrary to Shockwave and Tarn is not maidenless.

[sunshine-zenith]

AU where in between leaving the (near) perfect world and making it back home, Ekko visits a few other universes. He doesn’t stay as long in them as he does the first one, doesn’t let himself linger over lost loved ones and possibilities, but he does notice a trend, something he doesn’t dare name until he finds a world that breaks it

He’s left lying in the dirt, mask cracked down the middle leaving his face exposed, staring up at both Vi and Jinx. Both of them have pinkish-eyes and unhealthily pale skin, a clear sign of Shimmer, and when they drag him half unconscious to their base, he watches in horror as they both great Silco warmly. Jinx gives him an exaggerated side hug, flopping against him with a laugh, and Vi rolls her eyes but doesn’t shrug off his hand when he squeezes her shoulder. He listens to the sisters bicker and make jokes that he can never even come close to understanding, watches as Silco, perhaps still thinking him unconscious, even gives them a half smile before telling them to tie him up somewhere and to get ready for dinner

He realizes that, as casual and confident as she is in his universe, this Vi is happier and more relaxed than he’s ever seen her. He can’t help but notice that while she still has bags under her eyes, eyes that still flint around the room towards things he can’t see or hear, this Jinx smiles and laughs like the Powder he knew as a child. He has no idea what could’ve happened to make Vi join Silco (she makes comments about Vander being a coward when she sees he’s awake, face twisted with disgust as she points to their left eyes — the side of his face that Silco has scars, Ekko realizes — and he knows that if he makes one more comment to defend him she’ll punch him hard enough he’ll never wake up, information on the Firelights be damned), but it’s clear that what he’s looking at is, as fucked up and blood soaked as it is, a loving family

He and this Jinx were still friends at one point, and she still holds affection for him, even reluctantly. It’s probably the main reason he’s just being tied up and interrogated with threats instead of actually being killed. She makes sure to be gentle as she ties his hands behind his back. He wonders if this Ekko has to fight his own beating heart every time he looks at her. She tells him she’s happy, that while she still wholeheartedly thinks of herself as a curse, a fuckup, she’s still the luckiest Jinx out there, and hey, he thinks, she might actually be right

When he escapes, he overhears Silco speaking to a couple Enforcers. He’s clearly got them in his back pocket, holding all the power here, and Ekko isn’t surprised in the slightest to see the Enforcers being bought out, but then he watches as Silco dismisses one — a man a decade or so older than him, who leaves with clenched fists and an ashamed look on his face — but has the other stay. She turns, and Ekko realizes she’s the girl his Vi had with her.

Silco tells Caitlyn to treat his precious Violet to a nice dinner, reminding her that if she truly loves Vi she needs to prove it to him. He makes it clear that while Vi has blood on her hands, she won’t need to worry about bruising her knuckles if Caitlyn hurts her. After all, he won’t let anyone get away with breaking his daughter’s heart.

Ekko leaves this universe, swallowing down anger because no matter what, it seems none of them can be completely happy without strings attached. Vi and Jinx are murderers here, addicted to something that only exacerbates their mental health issues and could eventually kill them, and he knows this Ekko will have to eventually kill them all, the last remaining people from his family, or let them kill the Undercity out of pride, but this Vi clearly hasn’t lost her remaining childhood to being locked up in Stillwater, this Jinx has safely rails in her makeshift lab, and how can he not feel his heart crack a little more knowing this might be the only world where the sisters get to grow up together

[galwaygirl83]

Luke isn’t a hugger and he doesn’t take selfies, except when… 🥹

[hayleblackburn]

see I like the IDEA of a “what if Kaider didn’t go canon at the end of Cress/Winter” AU but I simply cannot suspend my disbelief enough to read one in its entirety. they were simply too obsessed with each other!! Kai was imagining cute scenarios with Cinder to fall asleep to at 2:30 and saying on live television that he wanted to see her in prison at 14:30. Cinder was on a spaceship trying to plan a coupe/convincing herself she’s glamouring the rampion to be invisible and realistically should have no time to think about a cute boy she met, but she simply cannot help herself!! It took Kai all of 10 MINUTES to process the fact that he’d been kidnapped on his wedding day by the lost princess of Luna before he was making out with her. How am I supposed to pretend that meant nothing. Come on now.