#alien-ally

[stormyoceans]

i've abandoned anonymity

but this scene is also gonna happen right. HOW DO WE PLAN TO RECOVER?

HI FRIEND HELLO SORRY FOR THE LATE REPLY BUT I NEEDED AT LEAST 3 DAYS TO RECOVER FROM EPISODE 5 BEFORE EVEN STARTING TO CONTEMPLATE WHAT AWAITS US IN EPISODE 6 BECAUSE BOY OH BOY WE’RE GONNA BE IN FOR A RIDE SO WE ALL BETTER BUCKLE UP

the way they’re gonna go from outright flirting with each other and being absolutely fond smitten delighted idiot fools in love ready to finally go on an actual dinner date to pain suffering torment agony anguish sadness despair?????

AND I HAVE A HUNCH ON WHO’S TO BLAME FOR THIS [GETS SLIPPER READY] (i don’t wanna reveal too much because while it’s not exactly a spoiler, since it’s a hint from the bts pictures that were shared during filming, i still don’t wanna ruin anyone’s fun)

but then again i’ve been moving like a clown all this time thinking this was gonna be episode 11 WHEN IT’S ACTUALLY EPISODE 6 (INSANITY) so. i could definitely be reading this wrong ;;;;;;;; that picture does seems to be pretty heavy and gloomy and sad BUT WHAT IF IT'S JUST VERY DECEPTIVE AND WE'RE GETTING A CONFESSION INSTEAD

THE POINT IS. IM AFRAID NO AMOUNT OF THERAPY IS GONNA HELP US RECOVER FROM THIS EPISODE OR THIS SHOW IN GENERAL WE SIMPLY HAVE TO ACCEPT OUR FATE

[aro-culture-is]

Attraction-less aro culture is finding people attractive in a non-attraction way all the time. What can you do, sometimes people just being is so pleasing to the senses, nothing to do with me though.

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[daftpatience]

previews of what's to come next week :)

[daenerystemper]

to be honest if i was daenerys during season eight episode one & sansa bitterly snipped "and may i ask how are we meant to feed the greatest army the world has ever seen? while i ensured our stores lasted through winter, i did not account for dothraki, unsullied and two full grown dragons. what do dragons eat anyway?" i would have said "lol nothing i guess," given the order for my troops to turn around & march back to dragonstone & let the north deal with whatever they had coming.

[natjennie]

would anyone who doesn't watch fantasy high care to explain what's going on here.

[lostryu]

i need gay rights because literally not a single self-proclaimed cis/het 'ally' understands the alienating experience that comes with being the only gay person in the workplace.

i am a gnc butch lesbian. i use he/him pronouns. when i came out to my manager regarding my pronouns (i had been an open lesbian since the moment of my hire), she told me that she supported me, but she could not enforce or ask our clients to use the correct pronouns for me. she told me it was something i would have to learn to deal with. she never uses the correct pronouns for me unless a person from a different department (who also happens to be LGBT+) is present. she is our HR in addition to manager.

none of my coworkers in my department ever remember to use my pronouns. if i remind them, they go over the top with the "im sorry's" and the "im still learning" and "you know i try my hardest's!" and "i swear im not homophobic!", it has been over 6 months since i came out. if i say nothing, they continue to use she/her (unless that other lgbt+ person from the other department is present, then they miraculously get it right).

sometimes they call me 'girl'. they always flounder and correct to "man-boy-uh youknowwhatimeanright". they laugh it off. they never bother to ask what terms i am comfortable with, or if i even cared in the first place. they don't care about my gender, they never bother to ask. somehow the subject gets changed every time i try to tell them, or set a boundary.

once in a while in a slow shift, the conversation will hop to our dating lives. somehow, it always jumps to how men suck and how dating a woman must be so much easier. they wish they could be gay and not straight. every time, they'll stare at me expectantly, like i am an animal at the zoo. no matter what i say, positive or negative, i must be lying. i cannot be that happy in my relationship, or if i have any issues, they must be minor. if i say 'why don't you try dating a girl then' to their remarks, they'll laugh, say something like "there is no way i possibly could" with that special tone of disguised disgust.

i am a prop, at work. they tell me about how much they love their kids. how they could bring anyone home and they wouldn't care. "they could be black, brown, or purple," they'll say "it could be a woman or a man! I support gay rights!" Then they will talk about how hungry they are, and how they will be going to Chick Fil a for the 4th time this week. 'as a treat'. it is thursday. they talk about going to Hobby Lobby again for christmas decorations, or another sale. sometimes i think i can taste blood.

its june. they talk about the pride parade and how excited they are to see the queens and their 'funny costumes'. they talk about how fun it is to go and watch, how they like the free things the corporations hand out. they don't want to bring their younger kids though. they're not old enough. they do not know that the first pride was a riot. they do not know what happened during the AIDS crisis, how many died. they don't really care when i try to tell them, they'd rather focus on the fun parts of the parade. the spectacle.

i wear a pronoun pin, to make it easier. still somehow no one can get my pronouns right. a client notices it. commends me for "being brave" and "coming out." she never uses my correct pronouns. i stopped wearing the pin after the 11th person asked me if my name on my name tag was my real one, and after the 45th person went out of their way to use incorrect pronouns every sentence. my manager, the HR, did not care.

i need gay rights, but somehow everything got resolved when they allowed us to marry in 2015. to our allies, the work is done. somehow i am left more alone than when we started.

[rawliverandcigarettes]

honestly, re: my last reblog, but it's so funny to me how unbearably annoying humans in mass effect are, like you guys!!!!! calm down!!! you JUST arrived!!! maybe take in your surroundings for 5 seconds before declaring you should be treated like the most special princesses of all and have all the advantages ever without any drawback and be recognized as the supreme leaders who have all the clarity and drive and righteousness to solve everything and be the victims of everyone's envy and meanness and the ultimate heroes who will save everyone in spite of themselves...... 😔😔😔

[uncanny-tranny]

I think what might actually help the families of trans loved ones is to actually engage with where the trans person is at - especially if the family isn't quite understanding yet. When I came out, I was completely alone in figuring out my manhood. I had peers and I had exposed myself to so many trans people who explored gender, and while it was amazing, it isn't quite the same at times. I grieve quietly, sometimes, about all the missed opportunities that might have just made it easier for my family to have seen how utterly happy I was. It took them a very long time to actually notice that I was happy, especially once I got on testosterone. I'm lucky that they saw that happiness eventually, and slowly accepted it. My manhood is completely detached from their influence, both to my relief and chagrin. It's sad to me that I learned to shave from a kind online stranger, somebody who didn't even have a father and yet, I do. I have a father. I grieve at the loss of a potential shared experience. I grieve about the pain I went through when I was in that stage of transition, especially because it was raw and vulnerable. I grieve that many trans people today are traversing the path I had to, because it's sometimes lonely (even when you do have other forms of support).

It's hard to know that I will never have gotten my sense of being from my family. In many ways, it has severed a lot of connection with them because there were so many times that I was begging them to see happiness when they were focused on the idea that I was almost in a state of purgatory - flesh which felt warm but held no familiarity to them. I don't harbor ill-will toward them, I hope I don't leave the impression that I despise them. I understand what they felt, even if I can't conceptualize it myself. However, it's a raw wound in my heart, and I don't want to leave anybody else feeling that way, either.

[stimboardz4kidz]

theme: howial relationship, with themes of glow in the dark!!

requested by: no one, but made as a gift for kc!!

before reblogging/liking, please read my dni!

[🛸] [🛸] [🛸]

[💙] [🩷] [💙]

[⭐] [⭐] [⭐]

[acourtoffeyandfables]

God bless Brennan Lee Mulligan and his readiness to play all sexualities

[bagheerita]

Stargate Atlantis: "The Seer"

[fancyfade]

I always see general claims that dick had to be emotional support to Bruce as robin, but I don't think that's actually something we see in comics published while dicks robin? (As opposed to flashback comics that are published post nightwing ing).

Anyway it's a super boring take on their dynamic imo. Just like I like how aquaman evolved from super good natured silver age dude to edgy 90s loser (affectionate), I think that recharacterizing dick and Bruce's batman and robin dynamic to fit later comic edginess or angst is boring. It's much more interesting if we see Bruce change over time rather than always being the same from day 1

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is:

you know how people turn gooey around their s/o?? Urgh disgursting shat😣

.

[anim-ttrpgs]

A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club Showcase #2: Mothership

As some of you may know—and if you don’t, here is a post about it—A.N.I.M. runs a TTRPG book club where the whole club votes on, read, and play indie and indie-ish TTRPGs, then discuss them like a book club, with the ultimate goal of exposing people to new games and supporting smaller TTRPG developers. After each game, we do a “showcase” where quotes are compiled and posted for posterity along with a link to the game’s store page or wherever else you’re supposed to get it. Here is what the book club had to say about the second RPG to win a vote: Mothership by Tuesday Knight Games! Mothership was a game I had been looking forward to playing for a long time and I'm very glad to have gotten to play a one-shot with it. Mothership is for-sure an "OSR" game--relatively short rulebook, just enough rules and mechanics to get you by for exactly the genre it is supposed to emulate, fast and easy character creation, and a high chance for careless player-characters to die badly. If you like the Aliens franchise, you'll love Mothership.

Here is what the TTRPG Book Club generally had to say about Mothership by Tuesday Knight Games:

You can pick up a copy of Mothership here.

And hey, if you're a creator who wants to get their game out there in front of people, join our book club and nominate it!

Playing Mothership here led directly to 9 sales!

If you’re an independant TTRPG developer, come hop in, you can nominate your own game, and having a creator in the discussion is always a plus! Reminder, you can join the discord server from the invite link on our website or right here.

Just a reminder also that A.N.I.M.'s own first big project, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is launching on Kickstarter in April 2024!

Here is a preview of the Kickstarter page!

If you would like to pick up a prerelease copy of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy along with three adventure modules, two short stories, and a novella, head over to our Patreon page!

If you want to try it before you decide to spend any money, head to our website to download the free demo of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy!

[yarnnerdally]

In the midst of a giant galactic war: "Well, don't forget to come up for air. And not just because all these people need you. Because *I* need you."

[lord-squiggletits]

Thinking about IDW Optimus again and the fandom's aversion to even acknowledging he exists bc he's a cop or whatever and like. Most of the time people literally just replace him in fic with some white bread knockoff archivist/librarian, not even bothering to keep in IDW OP's personality (which just bolsters my theory that the problem isn't him being a cop the problem is that he's too multifaceted but I digress).

And it's annoying because you could totally write IDW Optimus as not a cop while still keeping his canon personality. You just have to realize that the reason IDW OP became a cop in the first place is because his formative experiences when he was young shaped him to basically have two priorities: 1. To help people and 2. To do it by being on the ground actively doing something about the bad things happening to people.

IDW OP would not be a fucking librarian or archivist because even though those are noble pursuits that can help people and change the world, and Optimus is educated/smart enough for the profession, he wouldn't be satisfied just teaching people or spreading information about activism or social-historical studies or whatever. He's a mech of action: he needs to be doing things right now, in front of him, to people he sees/interacts with in his own eyes, improving society with concrete actions rather than indirect action or abstract inspiration.

So basically the alternate job ideas I can think of for IDW Optimus are something like being a firefighter (or any first responder really) or even whatever the equivalent would be to international charity organizations, those ones that send volunteers across the world to do stuff like build housing/infrastructure or distribute food or whatnot. I mean I can't imagine that the equivalents to these things would be exactly the same in IDW Cybertron, so you'd have to get a little creative with it, but these are just some ideas of jobs that would fit IDW Optimus' personality while still filling the niche of "not a cop" for people who are just that opposed to it.

Though I think the revulsion against coptimus is annoying in general tbh because IDW is already a continuity that rejects the idea of easily defined good/evil people or groups. It feels like people really want Optimus to be a good person in a very sanitized and academically approved way, so he has to be nice and squeaky clean but also like, a perfect leftist who knows theory and holds the most progressive opinions on every single issue....

There is no room for the idea that good people join bad institutions, there's no room for the idea that the reason people think cops are good guys who help people is bc of the government propaganda everything is saturated with. Hell there's even later issues of the Optimus Prime series by John Barber where Optimus like, MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES, is shown in flashbacks grappling with the fact that he as a cop/Zeta's regime that he works for might not actually be improving society like they say they are, and dealing with the fact that he feels more like a lesser evil compared to the Decepticons (perhaps not "lesser" at all).

It's like there's this idea in fandom of like, fictional media and opinions on media having to strictly adhere to progressive ideals at all times. So people just go "cops bad, this character is a cop, therefore they suck" without being willing to engage with the idea of like. IDW OP is born wanting to fight injustice and protect people -> a good way to protect people is to fight the people who are hurting them and committing crimes -> surely following the law is a reliable moral code to guide him in this -> becomes a cop because he's been indoctrinated into a society (much like our own) where he was told that the state/the law exist to protect the people and being a cop means you get to fight bad guys that hurt people. There's really so many interesting concepts there that could be (and CANONICALLY IS) explored about how good, well-intentioned people can be led to harmful actions simply because they have been fed the idea that the things they're doing are good/helpful/noble. Which is especially important for a character like Optimus, I think, who has a cultural icon status as The Irrefutable and Perfect Good, so it's really important actually to use IDW Optimus as an example of how even the most noble people you know have held problematic beliefs or done bad things at some point in their life. You know, because no one is born perfect and ideologically pure, and in fact society is constructed in exactly a manner to make people drink the kool-aid and believe that the systems designed to hurt them/others are just a normal, if flawed, society.

I mean the writing in IDW literally has Optimus deal directly and indirectly with the harm he's done as a cop and how people don't/didn't trust him because of that. I don't know what the fuck else this fandom wants if the source material literally saying "OP realizes that cops suck and he hurt people and earned their disdain by doing the things he did" doesn't stop them from going EW cop bastard sucks and is the worst Optimus. Like the narrative barely stops short of outright saying ACAB and Optimus himself would agree with this sentiment.

At that point, the collective fandom beef with IDW OP isn't because he's a cop and the narrative didn't do enough to condemn that. The problem is literally just that people don't read and don't care

TLDR: Consider the fact that good people can do bad things sometimes especially when living from birth in a corrupt society that thoroughly disguises its vices/oppressive structures as completely normal parts of existence