When you encounter the gaze of the Other, you meet not a seeing eye but a blind one. The gaze is not clear or penetrating, not filled with knowledge or recognition; it is clouded over and turned back on itself, absorbed in its own enjoyment. The horrible truth … is that the gaze does not see you. … You are on your own; the gaze of the Other is not confirming, it will not validate you.
—Joan Copjec
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Joan Copjec, Read My Desire
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it really does bother me how no one can seem to answer the question “what even is romantic attraction, really.” like some people are like “it’s who you wanna kiss and cuddle <3” and I’m like ok well kisses and cuddles can be either sexual or platonic depending on context. “It’s who you feel passion/desire/arousal for” well that just sounds like sexual attraction which you can have without even knowing somebody so I fail to see how that’s romantic. “It’s who you want to go on dates with” I go on dates with friends all the time plus “date” is a social construct anyway there’s really no innate difference between a date and hanging out. “it’s who you have deep feelings for” great news for you that can be literally any type of relationship. my friend told me she defined it as “who you wanna give roses to” and I’m like do u hear urself??? like the more I talk to people the more I’m convinced romance and romantic attraction is an elaborate socially fabricated illusion that has no real defining characteristics. and like there’s nothing Wrong with it being a constuct but why people are so attached to defending the supremacy of it is something I cannot for the life of me figure out
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family portrait :D young sam and sybil are behaving themselves and vimes is throwing a hissy fit because they tried to make him wear the helmet
[id: a digital painting of three people sitting for a portrait in a domestic interior. young sam is standing with his hands behind his back and beaming proudly. vimes is standing behind him with his hand on his shoulder, wearing a shiny military uniform and a surly expression. sybil is sitting on the right with an arm around young sam, smiling at the viewer. a plumed helmet is sitting on a table on the left. end id.]
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Ranking the DR kids based on how well they'd handle getting time-traveled to the beginning of the OG series:
Euphrasia - she lives in the Cloud Kingdom and has been with the Writers of Destiny long enough to have at least a functional understanding of everything that's happened and is supposed to happen. She would also be willing and capable of ensuring the original timeline remains preserved to the best of her ability. Any errors she makes are minor and get quickly resolved.
Arin - is a massive nerd with a near encyclopedic knowledge of the ninjas' pasts, but even he doesn't know everything. He'd probably drop a bunch of lore/spoilers purely on accident and feel really anxious/awkward about it afterwards. This does not stop him from accidentally dropping spoilers in the future, though. As excited as he is to be trained by Master Wu himself, seeing Lloyd as a twerpy little brat is more than a little disturbing and he's not sure he likes this. At one point he realizes his parents are still alive/present in this point in time and has an emotional crisis about whether or not to visit them. Eventually decides that if he can use his knowledge to fix the past and perhaps prevent all sorts of bad things from ever happening, then he should go for it. But he's also constantly second-guessing himself and questioning what changes will "fix" the past and what changes will absolutely destroy everything.
Sora - only kind of pays attention to Arin's ninja fan rants, and also isn't Ninjagian and therefore has no basis of understanding for their history, so she has a very incomplete understanding of things. Why does Zane look human? She is having so much stress over whether or not she can preserve the original timeline because she really loves her life as it is now, and is scared that if she changes too much then everything she currently has will be torn from her. But if she doesn't know how things originally happened, how can she make sure she's not changing too much? Needless to say Sora would have such a bad time and is seriously regretting not paying more attention to Arin.
Wyldfyre - I don't even need to explain this one. You all know exactly what would happen.
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