calicotomcat

[calicotomcat]

[calicotomcat]

Piece of Asian media: *has a title that's obviously not in English*

Fan Translators: hmm taking into account the intention of the original and the rules of both languages, plus the tone of the story, the best title would probably be something like Adherent of the Blade of Duality, but probably an official translation would want to shorten it to Blade of Duality, or perhaps Double-Edged Sword to borrow a popular turn of phrase that also fits thematically--

Official English Translators: Master of Double-Penetration

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the AKC official instagram account saw my stupid joke post and sent me a free dog breed encyclopedia (very neat and cool its a FAT book) and ive been reading through it..... there are at least 3 seperate breed profiles claiming that they are, in fact, the dogs seen in egyptian hieroglyphs.

Which i love because most of these dog breeds were recognized in like the 1950s.

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I've seen a lot of people say "wow there are so many biomes even though it's such a tiny island!!" on my post about aotearoa's ecology. so I have a few images to share:

it's pretty hefty!!!! tourists frequently plan to walk the entirety of both main islands in one to three weeks. if you walked for 7 hours every single day at a good pace it would take you four entire months. to hike the entire length of both islands. one way.

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Also very frustrating as a show producer in certain cultural arts when you are trying to advertise tge show and people feel like they're not allowed to come because theyre not from the culture.

Please come to the drag show even if youre cishet.

Please come to the bellydance showcase even if youre not Middle Eastern.

Please come to the Asian Festival if youre not Asian.

Please dance at the drum circle if youre not African.

If the event is being publicly advertised, you're invited. We want you to come if you intend to come respectfully. If you are asking 'am I allowed,' youre probably bot gonna be disrespectful. Please fill the seats. Cultural events have trouble with attendance sometimes because people who would be curious to go get shy about it. Please go to things that are curious to you. Your presence is not a burden.

I have yet to be kicked out of anything (unless you count the bathroom at a gas station that one time.)

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We need to put sex back into children's entertainment

That got your attention. I welcome the pearl-clutching in the notes.

I'm serious, though. The movies we watched as kids had way more sex in them than you remember. Not explicitly, but they had no problem alluding to and implying sex. The Incredibles had a full-on sex montage and a suspected adultery subplot. The Road to El Dorado had a woman proposition a man for casual sex onscreen and fuck him just out of frame. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas directly referenced prostitution. So did The Hunchback of Notre Dame on top of having a creepy sexual predator for a villain who unambiguously sings about his lust for the leading lady. We all knew Simba and Nala fucked at the end of that one song in The Lion King. Batman: The Animated Series had Harley Quinn dress in lingerie and beg the Joker for sex.

This was mainstream children's media by major studios. None of this was controversial or seen as "grooming." Sex was just a normal thing to tastefully imply because it's a normal part of life. Having two characters discretely fuck offscreen was no different from having a villain fall to his death so you can't see the gore. They obviously wouldn't show it in a children's movie, but everyone who knows what sex or violence is can infer what happened.

I think the fact that this even shocks us is very telling of how insanely prudish and reactionary we have become regarding anything remotely sexual coming anywhere near kids. It used to be perfectly acceptable to do this in children's media, but the current groomer panic has really set us back decades.

I can only think of a handful of recent exceptions to this. The She-Ra remake elegantly pulled off a running gag where a character fucks robots, and Kpop Demon Hunters did not shy away from depicting sexual desire through exaggerated cartoony visuals. Hopefully, the breakout success of the latter sets a precedent for future projects.

We need to get more normal about sex and that means, among other things, letting Disney characters fuck again.

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The thing about aggressive age-verification procedures is that they're a sign of a low-trust society. It's the sign of a society that expects people to be lying a lot. That's not a good thing for a society to be, even absent other factors.

I've spent the past few months living in Austria, and one of the things that has really impressed me about this country is how much it... trusts me. Transit works via the honour system. Nobody tries to card me when I buy beer. When I explained my usual prescription to my doctor here, she didn't try to persuade me I wanted something else instead. You can buy a vibrator from a vending machine.

And it all just works. The transit system is well-funded, the ERs are not full of dead drunk teens (it's hard to do too much damage to yourself with the weak-ass beer here, especially if comparatively few people drive), and nobody seems particularly fussed about it. This is the safest, cleanest, and happiest city I've ever seen. I live in what is broadly considered to be the worst part of town, and it's miles more pleasant than the nice parts of some North American cities I've lived in.

Nothing destroys trust more than enforcement. And if you have enough trust, you don't need enforcement. Isn't that better?

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Maybe this was just how my family did things growing up but when I was a kid and we saw a lady with chin hairs or a small chest or large feet or a broad shoulders we’d say “it’s rude and mean to pick apart someone’s appearance” and mind our own damn business.

Apart from being reductive, transphobic, and anti-woman, all this “transvestigating” nonsense is just plain bad manners, and I think we should say that more

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If ancient Greeks found out that sometimes in the future people confuse them with Romans they’d probably stab someone about it and then put the knife on trial for murder

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is this ship popular because it’s legitimately compelling or is it popular because it’s the easiest to decontextualize and write college roommate AUs about?

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i feel like something that's missing from some people's understanding of kink fiction and fantasy is, like... in fiction and fantasy, everything is in-scene.

when real people do kink in real life, you gotta do all that good out-of-scene stuff like discuss boundaries, set limits and expectations, check in with each other, do aftercare, et cetera et cetera et cetera... but in fiction, everything can be in-scene!

the people in that fanfic don't exist any more than, like, the make-believe sexy football star and make-believe sexy cheerleader in a couple's roleplay exist. that couple doesn't need to get into character and then pretend to be a sexy football star having an important consent conversation with a sexy cheerleader, because that's a conversation that's already happened out-of-scene and out-of-character. (i mean, if you're into in-character negotiations, chase your bliss.) when they're in that scene, they can just pretend to be a sexy football star having sex with a sexy cheerleader. that's okay.

so like. when fiction does kink in a way that would be unsafe or harmful irl... just keep in mind that you're not watching actual people neglecting check-ins or ignoring their set contract or genuinely harming each other. you're watching a scene without the behind-the-scenes bits, and that's okay.

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I saw some weird ass conspiracy video thing today of like 'we were never meant to have access to yeast, that was cultivated in a lab and it harms us' bullshit and I was like well first off there's no such thing as 'meant to' and second of all um? the long history of acquiring yeast from beer foam stretching so far back ??????

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Further, some authors may never even find out the lawsuit is happening. The court's suggested notification scheme "would require class claimants to themselves notify other potential rightsholders," groups said, overlooking the fact that it cost Google $34.5 million "to set up a 'Books Rights Registry' to identify owners for payouts under the proposed settlement" in one of the largest cases involving book authors prior to the AI avalanche of lawsuits.

If you're an author, please use this database to see if you could qualify for that sweet GenAI lawsuit money.

I have never ever ever in my life asked someone to blaze my posts.

But if you want to throw me some pennies blaze this. I want ALL OF THE AUTHORS to know that they have the opportunities to get some sweet sweet GenAI lawsuit money.

Like to charge. Reblog to cast that Anthropic will have to pay out the ass.

-fae

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There's a definite gradient of the fantastical in "character who isn't into [kink] but is inexplicably constantly having [kink]-related stuff happen to them" erotica. Piss barely requires departing from realism at all, rope bondage takes some work, and by the time you get to electrostimulation, all bets are off.

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There was a character in a book I read once who was described as "handsomely fat" and that phrase is stuck in my brain forever. The author really was like "no shut up, they're charismatic, they're good-looking, they're handsomely fat. not just handsome AND fat; them being fat is directly contributing to their good looks. you agree." and they were RIGHT