#—; that’s what most people do lol

[the-woman-upstairs]

Really fucked up that, when they’re young, Patrick and Art are SO tactile with each other, so comfortable sharing the same space. Art lets Patrick touch him and move him and physically overwhelm him and easily acquiesces to it, if not outright enjoys it.

Then in the present, they’ve been so far out of each other’s orbit for so long, held such animosity that when they have their moment alone in the sauna, Art physically recoils from Patrick’s close proximity! It’s so painful to watch because even as Patrick’s goading him, it’s so obvious he wants to be able to get back into Art’s space. But Art has erected all these walls around himself, he refuses to give Patrick an inch or even admit to missing how close they used to be!

AND THEN we see Art and Tashi later and he wants her to hold him, to be gentle with him, and just TOUCH him. Like, he does miss that kind of close physical contact! He either doesn’t know how to ask for it or is uncomfortable being that openly vulnerable. Worth noting that he pretty much always defers to Tashi in regard to initiating physical intimacy (with their first kiss, though he does state his desire, SHE has to be the one to make the first move). And it seems pretty obvious that Tashi herself isn’t comfortable providing that intimacy, whereas Patrick actively seeks to provide it (the hug/forehead kiss after their win together in the early years, dragging the stool closer to him).

Art has tried very hard to act like he doesn’t need physical affection and even though his discipline and devotion to Tashi has made him a stronger tennis player, it’s made him a hollow person, which, in turn, has kept him from becoming a GREAT tennis player.

All of this, of course, is why the ending hits so damn hard.

[sysig]

Ah, childhood memories (Patreon)

[tomurakii]

I like bloodweave. Okay. But I DON'T like the version of them in fanfic where Astarion is a dick and Gale is like. Whining and pleading for him to be emotionally vulnerable (or just. Nice to him) prior to the relationship being established. Because that is just not accurate. Gale needs the player to express interest in him during his weave-teaching scene before he even considers hitting on them properly. Gale is entirely resigned to his fate and needs someone else to pull him away from it. Gale only starts being sweet and romantic and devoted after you accept his love confession and give him hope for the future. Gale says fuck all and then slinks away to cry privately if you break up with him.

Like he isn't chasing after people lmao. He isn't dropping to his knees and crying about anything much less this dickhead he met a week ago. He is overwhelmingly passive about literally everything personal to him up to and including his own death (provided there are no casualties/there is a good reason) until after the player expresses that they care about him. Astarion is not doing that in any of these fics.

Like Gale is friendly and a dork and doesn't wanna get murdered but he fully has a suicide plan. He thought the artefacts would help him survive but he didn't believe he'd ever truly live again. If Gale confessed and Astarion said/did like one (1) mean thing afterward Gale's romance is closed off forever. He's wandering into the forest to cry. He's killing himself immediately. His fragile ego and self worth can't take it. You have to understand that when we joke about him being pathetic it's not bc he's like. Sopping wet and chasing people down and begging for a scrap of attention. It's because he craves affection but would literally rather die than ask or even hope for it until someone else forces that hope back into his serotonin-deficient tadpole brain.

[capricioussun]

2am post jumpscare

[systememergency]

Every time I find myself wanting to tell someone close to me I have DID I always get caught up on the fact that the majority of people don't experience this and wouldn't understand it intrinsically. It makes me feel like there's a huge communication barrier that I can't truly encapsulate, because the concept that people don't have alters is hard for me to understand. The fact people don't function in life like this and wouldn't get it how I get it makes me so hesitant to tell people what's going on. It feels so natural for me that it's actively difficult to explain. It would be like trying to explain breathing to someone who doesn't breathe

[1960z]

how people go about interpreting dr bashir I presume? really frustrates me sometimes ngl especially the “jules bashir died” scene.

like that whole scene is about julian revealing the depth of how deeply his augmentations fractured his sense of identity and who he is - which feeds into the themes of the whole episode surrounding how disability and then by extension disabled people are often viewed as a problem to be solved and because of that are often denied the ability to have fulfilling lives because the able bodied people around them don’t believe that they can.

but… idk, when the fandom talks about it there’s always seems to be a push to read a trans allegory into it that I don’t think is really there? I keep mulling over this post in my mind and when I initially reblogged it I didn’t really want to talk about this because the post is about how stories about racism can be hijacked by white people to be made about their own transness and it felt like as a white person, using that post to complain about ableism would be missing the point. but it really helped me articulate in my mind why the trans reading of this episode feels off to me because the same general principle seems to apply and that is taking a story trying to discuss a specific type of marginalisation and putting a trans reading above it because you can relate more to it personally.

“jules bashir died in that hospital because you couldn't live with the shame of having a son who didn't measure up!” this scene is the culmination of julian expressing his pain about what was done to him as a disabled child by his parents due to how they viewed his disability. but often when I see it being discussed, people aren’t really interested in talking about that. instead supplanting it with a trans reading instead which, in my opinion is an allegory that doesn’t even really work when you think about what’s going on in the broader context of the scene.

julian didn’t stop going by jules because he came to the conclusion on his own that the identity didn’t suit him similar to the way a trans person questions or rejects the gender they were assigned at birth, he stopped going by jules because he felt like the identity attached to that name was taken from him because of what his parents did. it’s not julian affirming who he wants to be it’s grieving over who he can’t be and to me at least, it’s honestly kind of harrowing.

and as an aside: when people read transness into a story about parents who change their child’s body and mind at a very young age without consent, which is literally a narrative projected onto trans people by transphobes to justify the curtailing of trans rights, that also doesn’t sit well with me. I think people latch onto this reading because of the idea of “killing a name” but again in the context of the whole episode the trans reading really doesn’t feel appropriate.

I think it’s okay for people to have trans headcanons about julian of course or literally any character they want to really, but I think saying that specific episode codes him as trans isn’t all that great honestly.

[hearts4pearlescentmoon]

Something I did for art class

[hussyknee]

I'm really not a villain enjoyer. I love anti-heroes and anti-villains. But I can't see fictional evil separate from real evil. As in not that enjoying dark fiction means you condone it, but that all fiction holds up some kind of mirror to the world as it is. Killing innocent people doesn't make you an iconic lesbian girlboss it just makes you part of the mundane and stultifying black rot of the universe.

"But characters struggling with honour and goodness and the egoism of being good are so boring." Cool well some of us actually struggle with that stuff on the daily because being a good person is complicated and harder than being an edgelord.

Sure you can use fiction to explore the darkness of human nature and learn empathy, but the world doesn't actually suffer from a deficit of empathy for powerful and privileged people who do heinous stuff. You could literally kill a thousand babies in broad daylight and they'll find a way to blame your childhood trauma for it as long as you're white, cisgender, abled and attractive, and you'll be their poor little meow meow by the end of the week. Don't act like you're advocating for Quasimodo when you're just making Elon Musk hot, smart and gay.

[niinnyu]

Here's why I think the Gojo bait is not great writing and why you should maybe think so too (Spoilers till jjk 260).

We've spent the last few chapter consistently establishing a few things about our protagonist (Yuuji) and our antagonist(Sukuna).

1. Yuuji's father's soul is a reincarnation of Sukuna's twin: This instantly creates a connection between Sukuna and Yuuji.

As if you needed one outside of Sukuna's constant mockery of his former vessel's lack of "competance", and that most of yuuji's biggest losses can be attributed to Sukuna, building his wrath brick by brick. But surely adds to it all.

2. Yuuji feels incredibly lonely right now: Anyone he's created any sort of meaningful (?) Bond with outside of just 'hey you're an ally I can fight alongside with' is currently either dead or greatly incapacitated.

3. Also ofc the absolute damage that Yuuji has started incurring on sukuna. Damage that the slew of sorcerors before him couldn't. Forget about everyone teaching him abou love, Yuuji will show him Burning Rage.

This while also having hinted at Yuuji being possibly strong enough to do so on his own. He can go head to head with the King Of Curses with or without the help of his fellow sorcerors once he is able to harness this power.

Anything that was Gojo vs Sukuna feels absolutely irrelevant with the build up that Gege themself has been creating through the past few chapters.

Gojo's form right at the end of the chapter undercuts the pacing completely. Readers are more interested in those last 2 panels of Gojo which are completely removed from and rather jarring to the buildup between Yuuji and Sukuna. Fan interest in Gojo isn't their fault because that's what the chapter makes you focus on.

The only way I see this continue the buildup is if this is somehow Yuuji's doing or done with his knowledge, in which case it'd have been better to end the chapter by showing that Yuuji is aware of it and has an ace up his sleeve, bringing it back to the 2 relevent characters, and for people to stew in what Yuuji could be up to for a week.

But no matter what Gojo's visage there means, Yuuji in this moment has been so greatly undermined, not by his lack of strength, not by Sukuna outright demeaning him, but by the writing itself. By Gege.

And oh, how Yuuji deserves better.

[imflyingfish]

New base progress! I've added a ton of flower fields and some more trees! Further terraforming, garages and vineyards to come but I wanted to break it up a little bit more.

If u have any suggestions let me know :]

[thelaurenshippen]

open ai made a little post about how they chose their chatbot voices and two things stood out to me:

a) I am genuinely pleased and surprised that the voices come from specific real people that they hired and paid, rather than being built off of all of the data open ai has scraped. the voice for siri did one job for one company 20 years ago and now she is literally everywhere without ever being compensated by apple or even acknowledged as the voice. there's simply no way she was paid enough in that original job. whereas, open ai says "each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products." this could mean literally anything (what market rate are we going above? does continue mean they get residuals or get paid for doing more sessions?) but, christ, at least the actors are doing it with full knowledge of what their voices are being used for and can decide for themselves if the compensation is enough

b) the post talks about working with "award-winning casting directors" to get the voices. first of all, yay for paying casting directors! we love to see it. but they also say the CDs received over 400 submissions in a week and they state that like a big number and it's just...not at all. and look, without knowing the intricacies of the casting process, it's hard to know what approach the CDs took - it's very possible they were selective from the jump and 400 is a lot from the pool they were tapping. 400 would be a lot if you were going to the agencies directly and asking for names, but there's just no way in hell open ai went after big stars for this. so it would've been a pool of unknowns. in which case, 400 is laughably small. even if you're not using the big casting sites like actorsaccess, I've worked on projects with CDs and their own internal systems where we've gotten over 100 submissions for a single role. I've posted roles on casting sites and received literally thousands of submissions in just a few days

look, I have a very limited perspective on this - I am not a casting director (imo, one of the most important and undervalued jobs in hollywood) and I, in fact, hate the process of casting with a passion. but 400 just seemed like such a tiny pool to pull from and, idk, it heartens me! it's heartening to think that there's very little interest from actors and agents to be doing this kind of stuff. and absolutely no shade to the actors who did--I want actors to get their bag however they want as long as it's, like, safe sane and consensual, you know? but there's something encouraging about thinking that open ai hired some big casting agency to get their foot into the voice acting door and people didn't come running

[soracities]

People are wild lol rap does actually take a certain level of skill to both perform and understand, it takes five seconds of research to see that theres decent lyricism going on there. Lots of rappers are actually great at english, they dont all know the official terms for the things they practice but rapping is like a form of poetry really.

ofc there are subgenres that i personally do not like such as mumble rap (a conversation for another time i digress) but if you take for example kendrick's latest diss tracks to drake, its something that has to literally be studied and broken down by a bunch of people lol and once you break it down and understand the refrences you see that its not just a bunch of words and a beat. of course white people will think something they dont understand is ghetto trash what else is new lol they're the kings of ostricizing and devaluing what they dont understand. They did it to jazz they did it to metal and alternative music and they do it to rap.

At the end of the day, culture is a thing that will be understood by those who are meant to understand it. You dont have to like rap to acknowledge that its an art, but calling it trash and refusing to see it from any point of view but your own speaks for itself.

And for the record, im not a rap fan lol its a genre i hardly listen to in fact, but what i am is an artist, and i can acknowledge art when i see it.

i'll be honest, i don't think lack of understanding is solely what comes into it, if at all. the genres that get the most aggressive pushback are also ones that threaten a cultural hegdemony in their respective societies (white, male, christian etc) and that's not a coincidence. rap gets the worst of this and ultimately i don't think it has ever boiled down to not knowing what GOAT means and a lot more to do with overt and tacit hostility towards black people making outspoken art on their own terms in a deeply racist society.

but otherwise i completely agree with you! the lyrical complexity, rhyming schemes and dexterity at play in a good rap song is second to none and you could absolutely teach a literature class on it. it is as much a poetic medium as anything else while also encompassing its own deeply layered, complex and distinct sensibilities--just like, literally, every other art form on earth! to pretend otherwise is just ludicrous at this point.

[puppetmaster13u]

Thinkin' of WOF Au for DC, but like, it's a Gothamite and Fawcett thing. (And Amity Park if crossover)

Like those are the most magical areas in the world, even if Gotham is cursed as fuck. An unspoken secret of sorts that while they present themselves as human to outsiders, they are all Very Much Not.

Which means hilariously in the league, when everyone expects Batman to be suspicious and short with the new guy- even made bets on it- they are then shooketh when both visibly relax and start talking. And half the shared complaints don't make sense!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now Gotham technically has no Queen, nor does Fawcett, but Batman and Captain Marvel are the closest things. Not in the traditional sense of back when they were in separate tribes (& maybe from a different dimension but shh that was millennia ago) but in the sense of, they're the ones patrolling and protecting the cities along with calling the shots in disasters.

Which does sort of change the dynamic they both have in their city. If one of them calls to arms, the city would follow them. They could declare war, and their cities (begrudgingly in Gotham's underbelly's case of strongest is in charge) would follow. And while Billy is oblivious, both Marvel-the-not-hivemind and Batman are. They know they have to be very careful.

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I'm sure we all want Nightwing Bruce but no. Bruce, like both his mother and father and father's father and so on before him, is actually an Icewing. The Waynes however, have a case of melanism running in their bloodline. Thomas Wayne? Only his quills and part of his back were darker, but Bruce? Practically pitch black scales that shadow his eyes.

Now Alfred on the other hand, is a Nightwing. No special powers there, though you would hear many a child protest with how he seems to know everything.

Commissioner Gordon is a Mudwing, big stocky and very tired, which translates to his human disguise as a large trenchcoat. He finds this very amusing. Barbara similarly, is half Mudwing. Her mother was a Hivewing, making her a hybrid between both. Which does ironically mean that Batgirl does in fact have insectoid wings. Though that does ponder the question on if they'd all go by their original vigilante names.

Dick is a Silkwing. Wingless as he watches his parents fall and unable to do anything despite this place supposedly being safe for beings like them. He grows into his own, and his wings, when they come in, are dark Gotham colors through and through, with the deep blue of the sky he's come to crave.

Jason is a hybrid between a Mudwing and a Skywing. He's also an animus- not that he knew that. He doesn't find out until he's dying, telling himself to not die, to get back to Gotham, to his dad, his family- And then he wakes up in his Coffin, alive.

Now Cass, raised to be the perfect killer, is also a hybrid, just one between a Nightwing and a Rainwing, egg set out under the moon. Which succeeds, partially. She can't straight up read minds, but combined with her talent in reading body language on both human and inhuman bodies, it's a near thing.

Tim is a Seawing, borderline abandoned by his parents who seek treasures and more wealth as he's trapped back in a city where the water is dark and poisoned. But he's Gothamite, through and through, and he adapts. Scales darker than the original blues he was born with, and glow shifting to that sickly white of the Gotham's Bats.

Now Steph, is a full-blooded Rainwing, and can in fact change her scales, but can mostly be found in purples and golds. Though for a short time she was in another set of colors, thought dead before she slithered out of the shadows older and wiser than before.

Damian is his father's son, but he's also an Al-Ghul. The not-quite dragonet is half Icewing, and half Sandwing. And struggled to adjust at first, to a place so different from his first home where the only other dragons were blood related. But like any Wayne before him, he adjusts, and he adapts.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Billy wasn't a Beetlewing originally, and perhaps he would have hesitated if he'd known it would change him, would change his body and the last thing he had of his parents. But his friends, his Team and new family help. And he can pass as a Silkwing like their sort-of foster mother. All six of them can do so now, even if the others look more like hybrids themselves thanks to not being the Champion. They might not be, but they're his family. And that's enough.

[apollo-zero-one]

Everybody talking about how lucky PC players are to get to play 1.6 but I've seen no one mention that aaaallll the mods don't work now and it's the first time some of us have played unmodded in years, I forgot how hard the beginning of a new save is 💀

Also hey if you can and want to, I bet your favorite mod creators would love some donations as they work on updating compatibility! I know that's what I'm doing today!

[blujayonthewing]

[elfsyellowflowerzart]

take two of yesterdays little doodle, using the ref this time