#Fuck you quite frankly

[oldbutchdaniel]

ever since i was a little girl i knew i wanted to speculate about the sexual and romantic undertones of celebrities’ professional relationships

[toytulini]

listen im ace and im pro kink at pride and whatever, but the way some of yall are wording your posts in response to the backlash against it is uh. really taking me back to the ace shitcourse era.

yall know theres nothing wrong with being a "virgin", right? that its not inherently shameful to have not had sex, to never have sex, even if youre not ace, even if you do want to have sex someday, like, its fine that you haven't had sex?

maybe if your problem is that theyre trying to police your behavior and shame you for expressing your sexuality, you can say that? instead of resorting to "haha stupid virgin gets no bitches" like my god. do you not hear how fucking regressive that attitude is? i know, i know, youre "joking".

get a better joke

[gentlenotes-moved]

hi. does talking to your friends feel like a chore? does expressing affection to your loved ones scare the shit out of you? does the mere reality that people love you and want to be connected to you feel like a burden? you just might feel like you're putting on a performance! i mean, it's not like you really know who you are, right? after all, you're only doing what you've always known: hoping to find yourself through the reflection of others; hoping to gain love through convenience.

this act you play, it's tiring, isn't it? performing by the script that you've learned—well, the script you think will work. it's not like anything written is very original; everything written is stroked with the dark ink of your past, and penned by what other people seem to think is okay. you haven't really written anything yourself. whenever you do, it just feels like something goes wrong, perhaps you've hurt many people by trying to do so (including yourself).

so you play by this heavily edited script, and works! they like you, and you really like them. okay, so... now what? the script has ended; the play is over. alright, so know you think, well, they don't like me. they only like this script, this script i haven't even put myself into. this script only really contains the shards of other people, and is glued together with my faults and fears.

at this point, it feels like you're only reflecting whatever energy they're giving out to you. if they say they love you, you say it back. if they love the feeling of the autumn wind and the color brown, it's everything to you. they fill the husk of you with all of themselves to the point where you overflow. hey—hey. do you know who you are anymore?

your heart of gold is surrounded by many mirrors; you might have placed them there yourself, or maybe not. but you get to a point where this act and this echoing becomes exhausting. it's all you do, and it's really all you've ever known. it's not really others that feel like a burden, but yourself. you take your mirror and reflect, reflect, reflect. you try to turn it on yourself; you see nothing but your shadow, placed right behind where you should be.

look at me. i'm holding your hands and looking into your exhausted, yearning eyes. this hatred you feel for yourself, this rage... this feeling isn't shared by your friends or loved ones. i don't know how long you haven't known yourself, and i know you feel like you should want and need and love and hate certain things. these "shoulds" came from a place of abusive and trauma, and if it didn't come from other people, it probably came from yourself. so, please be gentle on yourself.

one day the brick walls you guard yourself with and the mirrors you use to reflect, they won't cause you harm anymore. it won't all go away all at once, but with time, you'll find yourself. it all won't feel so difficult, and things won't feel so scary. i love you, alright?

[artemis-pendragon]

My emotional praise kink is dormant right up until people start being nice to me in AO3 comments and then it is in fact all over

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[maeamian]

Becoming deeply radicalized against the idea of crewed Mars missions, y'know how the Rovers keep sending back better and better data what if instead of that we made an even bigger one and devoted nearly 90% of its capacity to holding a guy in a bubble on top of it instead of sending back useful data, but wait! They'll eliminate like a half hour of latency and also almost certainly contaminate the landing site and possibly the entire planet, so it's not all downside.

[uncanny-tranny]

Whenever people say something along the lines of "hormones are useless if [reason]!" I just think about what testosterone has done just to my mental well-being. If testosterone had done nothing to my physical appearance or the way my body functions, I would still take it because there is so much more to it than if somebody looks or "functions" a certain way. Do you know what it's like to truly fucking smile - without outside stimulus? Do you know how fucking soul-wrenching the realization that I can smile now was? Because I have gone my entire life until these past few years, being unable to smile without outside stimulus and it destroyed me.

The idea that hormones are useless after a certain age, or for a certain "type" of appearance, or for people who are outside of the "standard" is, to my mind, no less than a psy-op. So if you are worried that hormones aren't "right" for you because you were told you were "too far gone," I am so sorry. Take the hormones if you still want to see how it helps you or how it changes you. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

[eliotquillon]

after watching 4 whole seasons in less than 2 weeks i think house md is maybe the perfect example of why we need to bring back 20+ episode seasons. like yeah sure there's a very clear formula but: there's time to add sub-arcs! motifs! weird experimental episodes! the season finales actually feel like season finales because there's enough episodes in the rest of the season for the characters to have chances to breathe without sacrificing the momentum or wasting time. it actually feels like there's a passage of time happening without the need for explicit mid-season time skips or exposition dumps because, guess what, the season is long enough that time actually IS passing. when characters change their hair or visibly start to age it feels normal because again: time is actually passing in-universe. i yearn for the days when television actually felt like its own distinct thing!!!!!!! i also yearn for lisa cuddy but that's not the point here.

[quynhorlose]

okay so.

i have seen a pattern lately and i am not gonna let it slide. i know that fancasts in general are a way bigger debate than they should be in this fandom, and i’ve loved the spike in diversity between them thats come up recently! i genuinely don’t care about fancasts or have any real faces in mind when i picture these characters, but if you like to, good on you.

here is where i have been very frustrated lately: some of y’all seem to really struggle understand that asian ethnicities are not interchangeable. its become a really popular (and very lovely!) hc to picture sirius and regulus as asian. i love to see it! but i have seen people throw together a korean and a vietnamese person and go: “ta-da! sirius and regulus!” i have seen them defend their choices to asian people by saying some variation of “it doesn’t matter” “they look similar enough” or even just straight-up “well, they’re both asian” and like. it makes my fucking blood boil.

it’s one thing if it’s an honest mistake. it is entirely another if an asian person calls you on it and you decide that it truly doesn’t matter to you.

i could get into the harm that the cross-race effect has, but really i just need to say that perpetuating the idea that all asians look the same is inherently problematic. if you are the kind of person to declare that you see no difference or that there is no difference between different asian ethnicities: you are promoting a long-standing racist ideology and i’m sick and fucking tired of seeing it.

i (again) genuinely do not care about fancasts. picture whenever you’d like as whomever you’d like! but the moment that you cross the line into “whatever they’re both close enough”, that is where i will take issue with it. if that’s an idea that you carry with you outside of fandom spaces: THAT is what the problem is.

japanese people, vietnamese people, chinese, korean, philippine, desi, north south east west fucking ALL OF US have deep and rich cultural backgrounds and distinct features that differentiate us and make us all beautifully unique.

it matters to people. it matters in characters. in the media. in life in general. don’t fucking erase that because you can’t differentiate. do not knowingly and willingly erase us.

either take the time to learn and recognize that or stay in your fucking lane.

[dennisboobs]

i think im preaching to the choir with this one but i am. really fucking mad. anyone who's on here and sunnytwt i am BEGGING you to stop being fucking weird. you can in fact. not do the same shit that these idiots are doing. it's ok.

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[toytulini]

who is in charge of all the stupid arbitrary changes to every fucking app and website for no fucking reason have you never heard of "if it aint broke, dont fix it"?

i swear to god every app website service etc is just slamming the randomizer button on features every week and hoping it unlocks a market changing innovation instead of like. waiting to make sure the change is actually innovative before forcing it upon everyone

[livingasaghost]

i bought into the :/ vibes of captive prince as well because for a long time i didn't care to look beyond what everyone else was saying about it and frankly i wasn't interested in reading the books but when i see readers saying we shouldn't read captive prince because it glorifies slavery and non-con while the same readers praise colleen hoover and fourth wing and the after series and every shitty dark romance mafia book... i am not saying captive prince is the greatest book series ever and i definitely was uncomfortable with parts of it (because i am definitely not as intellectual as others who read and analysed it) but there's so much worse books out there that get praised A Lot (and especially on booktok) and yeah idk where i am going with this sorry atsjdkf

SAY THAT!!!! like listen i get it, if you're into dark problematic shit kudos, because i looooove me some fucked up books but if you are pointing fingers while ALSO reading a different brand of problematic shit....maybe you're the problem! i feel like people who read books like captive prince or aftg are usually the first ones to analyze how fucked up they are, to think critically and engage with the darker parts of those series whereas a lot of colleen hoover stans on booktok just gloss over the abuse and toxicity because it's all about romance? (or supposedly about romance) like sure captive prince is a love story in the end, and aftg is kind of about a love story in its own way, but i think both of those stories are first and foremost about overcoming abuse and healing from trauma and learning how to trust other people in the wake of all that. the romance is just a wonderful addition to some complex series that allow you the space to exist in the gray areas of human nature.

[to-shards-you-say]

does anyone actually get into cosmere without spoilers nowadays? or were all of us peons goaded into reading by being asked "wanna find out what happens to the universe when sixteen people kill god and each take a piece for themselves"?

[sudriantraveler]

Rheneas' Return

I’ve been thinking about Rheneas’ return to the Skarloey Railway after his overhaul, and there is a lot to talk about.

First of all, for those who don’t know or maybe just need a reminder, in the RWS Rheneas left the Skarloey Railway for a major overhaul in 1952, having just barely kept the railway running through its darkest hour as its sole working engine since Skarloey was sidelined in 1945.

He was then away from Sodor for 9 years, before finally returning home in 1961.

And he was probably in for a bit of a shock when he returned, because a lot happened in those 9 years.

First of all, the Skarloey Railway was in the middle of a crisis when Rheneas left. Only one engine is operable barely, the track is falling apart, revenue is low to non-existent, and about 90% of the work needed to keep things functioning day-to-day is being done by just two guys.

When Rheneas returns, it's like a completely new railway. Passengers are plentiful, there are new engines and coaches, the railways workforce has grown significantly, and the track actually feels good to run over instead of delivering a sensation of being repeatedly punched in the frames.

The thing is, Rheneas is still on some level probably going to be operating in crisis mode, because that’s all he’s known since about the beginning of the 1930s.

He insists on taking much more work than the other engines. Partly because he enjoy his work and is extremely happy to be home again, but mainly because he’s been having nightmares for the last few years about returning to nothing, and the fact that the railway still exists let alone that it’s actually thriving, is something which he’s having to constantly remind himself is not just a dream.

Then there’s all of the new stuff.

Before Rheneas left it was just him, Skarloey, the four old coaches and the one guard’s van, the numerous trucks, and a modestly sized workforce who Rheneas knew all of the names of. That was it since the railway began in 1865, the only exception being during WW2 when the war department briefly came in with a few of their own engines.

Now though, there are four new engines, several new coaches, and someone’s coming to light Rheneas’ fire in the morning who isn’t Mr. Hugh (keep in mind that in Rheneas' previous experience this usually meant the regular firelighter had either retired or died).

Also apparently the old slate quarry has been entirely taken over by the military and is now completely off limits, and there’s a big metal fence and a bunch of scary looking signs at the entrance, and frankly the whole situation up there just makes Rheneas feel really uneasy.

Needless to say, it takes something of an adjustment period for Rheneas to get used to everything.

I particularly want to talk about Rheneas early dynamic with the new engines, one in particular. You’ll know who when I get there.

To start with, Rheneas at least saw Sir Handel and Peter Sam before he left, so he at least knows they’re on the railway before he returns.

The thing is, his first impression of them was probably the same as Skarloey’s: Peter Sam is excitable and maybe a bit too overeager for his own good, and Sir Handel is bad tempered and takes his anger out on everything around him.

Rheneas probably breathed a sigh of relief when he saw they hadn’t burned the place down in his absence.

After Rheneas returns from overhaul he adjusts to the two former Mid Sodor engines well enough.

Sir Handel is still bad tempered, but he also still does his work regardless of how much he grumbles about it. Plus Peter Sam keeps insisting that Sir Handel does indeed mean well and is just having a hard time adjusting, and given the occasional details the two of them just casually drop about life on the Mid Sodor, Skarloey and Rheneas are inclined to give both of them plenty of time to adjust.

Peter Sam is still very energetic but Rheneas also sees that he’s clearly a hard worker, and the fact that the coaches adore him also helps to make him look pretty good in Rheneas’ eyes.

Rheneas immediately takes a liking to Rusty for much the same reason Skarloey did. They’re hardworking, kind, and their work repairing and maintaining the line makes them seem to the two old engines like an angel sent down by Lady herself.

I fully believe that after years of nothing but bent rails and rotted sleepers, running over an actually good permanent way for the first time after overhaul must have felt like a religious experience to Skarloey and Rheneas.

And then there’s Duncan.

Duncan, as he will happily admit himself, is a plain blunt engine who will rock and roll, and who speaks as he finds.

Sure, he means well, and he’ll pull just about anything… But Rheneas hears the story of him stopping on the viaduct, and is immediately wary of Duncan.

It doesn’t help that, having had the serious responsibility of being the only working engine on the line for an extended period of time, Rheneas has a bit of complex about doing everything himself and see’s anything that happens on the railway as, at least partially, his responsibility.

So Duncan just fully blowing off his responsibility to his passengers and stopping in the middle of the line, something which Rheneas did only once and very much against his best efforts, just feels like a personal insult to Rheneas.

It doesn’t quite register with him that Skarloey has already given Duncan the whole lecture on why that was stupid and how passengers are important.

And Duncan has improved since then. He acknowledges the importance of looking after his passengers and knows to at least keep his complaints out of earshot of them.

The thing is, Duncan is still a plain blunt engine, and passenger etiquette does not come naturally to him. But he’s trying, and quite frankly some of the passengers' complaints just seem ridiculous to him. So what if he rocks and rolls a bit? That's just how he is, and he still gets them to the station on time… usually.

But when Rheneas hears Duncan one night in the shed complaining about a particularly rough journey where there were significant delays and the passengers were really pushing his limits, Rheneas decides that Duncan still hasn’t learned their ways.

Rheneas may also be having a bit of a crisis of questioning just how much the railway still needs him with all of the new engines who are also there now. And what better way to reassure himself that he's still needed than to position himself as a mentor figure.

Duncan, for his part, does in fact respect Rheneas since Skarloey told him how he had saved the railway, and he wants to get along with the guy…

But that becomes increasingly difficult to do when Duncan keep having moments where he’s shunting the yard, minding his own business and doing a pretty alright job… and then he look towards the sheds and see Rheneas watching him like a hawk, looking for any sign that he’s about to mess up somehow.

And on the occasions that Duncan does mess up, however slight, Rheneas is very quick to give his input on what he did wrong and how the whole situation could have been avoided.

Skarloey may be stern, but he at least acknowledges that Duncan is trying his best, and gives him credit when he does well. He at least gives Duncan the respect of treating him like a capable engine.

So Duncan gets along fine with Skarloey… But Rheneas?

Respect him and his efforts to keep the railway running… Sure.

Actually get along with him… Not so much.

This pretty much sums up the dynamic between the two of them.

Until one day…

Duncan is taking the morning train, and one passenger in particular is just being a complete pain in the ass. It’s not just Duncan who’s fed up with him by the time they leave the station, this guy is getting on everyone’s nerves.

But Duncan puts forward his best effort, and maintains his professionalism.

But the guy keeps being a jerk throughout the entire run up the line. Anything goes slightly wrong, and he’s making his grievances known.

Duncan is glad when he doesn’t see him on the platform when he begins the journey back down the line, the man having decided to hike one of the various trails around Skarloey Lake.

When he gets back to Crovan’s Gate, Duncan immediately rolls off to the sheds and starts venting to whoever will listen about the angry passenger.

And right on cue, Rheneas begins his lecture.

Duncan, by this point, has been having a really bad day, and is quite frankly beyond his normal limits. So he just says “Alright then… You know how to deal with passengers, you take the afternoon train”.

So Rheneas does, and all goes well on the up journey. But then he finds Duncan’s passenger at the top station, who is apparently furious that Duncan’s train didn’t wait for him as he went wandering around the lake.

Rheneas tries to point out, very calmly, that there are schedules posted very clearly at every station building, but the man doesn’t listen.

Ok… This is fine.

Rheneas has dealt with his fair share of difficult passengers before, all of them with grace. He can handle this one.

But the journey back down the line doesn’t go smoothly, and all the while the angry passenger is becoming more and more unbearable.

And then, between Glennock and Cros-ny-Cuirn, Rheneas derails.

It wasn’t a particularly bad derailment, and it wasn’t his fault. Just a bad joint in the rails which Rusty and Mr Hugh hadn’t had the chance to fix on their last maintenance run, and which had been worsened by the last few times a train had run over it.

Naturally, the angry passenger is complaining more than ever now, and Rheneas is feeling rather defeated.

It’s Duncan who comes to rescue the train, and Rheneas is surprised but very grateful for the fact that he doesn’t say anything as Rheneas is leavered back onto the rails.

It’s a pretty speedy rerailing too.

Duncan is coupled on infront and the two engines double-head the train the rest of the way home. They get there with no further issues, and most of the passengers are just happy the derailment was sorted out quickly and efficiently, and that they were still able to catch the connecting train.

All except one.

The angry passenger is now just being insulting. Everyone is tired and unhappy, and now they still have to deal with him ranting about what a bad railway this is.

And then Duncan just snaps.

Rheneas never thought he would be happy to hear someone cursing out a passenger…

But Duncan’s tirade in Rheneas’, his own, and the railways defense, is just about the most cathartic thing he’s ever experienced.

Duncan only fully stops after the Thin Controller gets involved, denies the passenger a refund, and watches him storm off out of the station to catch a bus (he had spent so long arguing he had missed the connecting train).

After that, and with one final uttering of good riddance, the two engines shunt the coaches away and go to the sheds for a well deserved rest.

Rheneas see’s Duncan in a new light after that. He still often disagrees with his more grumpy and blunt approach, but he’s finally giving Duncan some space to make mistakes without needless criticism.

Rheneas still insists on the importance of passengers, and treats all of them with respect and high regard…

But he and Duncan have come to an agreement that some of them are just nuisances.

[pennamepersona]

parsing astarion approval/disapproval rly is a tangled minefield of:

loves to lie + thinks it's funny

genuinely a selfish person

literally had the empathy tortured out of him