#and i get that. but frankly i don't care.

[gods-perfect-idiots]

Okay bear with me folks, I have some ~thoughts~ about the Vanessa/Wade relationship (or frankly lack thereof) in Deadpool & Wolverine. I should start by saying that I am analyzing this with the (likely erroneous) assumption that everything on screen is 100% intentional and mindfully written to deepen the characters and inform their arcs. For the record, I don't necessarily believe that's true - there is certainly room for mistakes, lazy writing, confusing plot elements, or in this case, sidelining a potentially strong and important character for nebulous reasons (I'm guessing scheduling conflicts + run time concerns + actor's strike complications but idk for sure). (Also thanks to @gossippool and @kendyroy for encouraging me to post my thoughts instead of just rambling in the tags in the first place, y'all are the realest)

Long rambly post below the cut fyi

Now, granted, it has been a while since I watched the original Deadpool so I am not as well-versed in their early relationship as I am in the handful of scenes Morena Baccarin has in dp3, but I do think it is pretty canon that Wade generally struggles to express his deeper worries and feelings (without filtering it heavily through crude humor, sex, and pop culture references of course), especially after the events of dp1 and the physical and mental damage he sustains, and Vanessa is frankly no exception despite how much he cares for her. The entire first movie hinges on the fact that he doesn't really believe she could love him in his post-Francis mangled state, which is pretty contrived imo given that the film has established already how bonded they are, and she doesn't strike me as being written to be so shallow as to reject him based on a physical deformity. I mean iirc she wanted to stick around through chemo despite him being literally riddled with inoperable cancer, so she clearly is in it for the long haul (at least in dp1), messiness and all.

Now, in dp2, obviously she is shot and killed early in the film, and Wade spends much of the rest of the film wallowing in his very profound grief, trauma, and guilt over losing her due directly to his violent lifestyle. He goes to prison, he basically gives up on life and seems very resigned to dying once he has the power suppressant collar on, even excited to do so so he can be reunited with her. She is mostly sidelined as a Fuzzy Dead Wife trope basically, but the important thing here is that he spends weeks if not months in the throes of despair over losing the love of his life just as they were trying to start a family, and trying to reach across the boundaries of death to be with her.

Now, my first couple times watching dp3 I was frustrated by the trite narrative presented in the interview scene towards the beginning - specifically Wade's whole "my girl is getting tired of my shtick and I need to show her I matter". It felt contrived and disingenuous, and I just brushed it off as iffy writing, a means to an end, but the more I reflect upon it the more I think it is based in an emotional reality that is just handled with a very light touch by the film in favor of fanservice and Poolverine content (NOT that I'm complaining in the slightest - I think this movie is a masterpiece in many ways, albeit a flawed one but that's beside the point here), which for the record I am not against because I think it lends it an air of realism. This is Wade's story after all, Vanessa is a part of it but it is ultimately about him and his journey.

Basically, I think the combination of what happened to him in dp1 (the brain damage, the trauma, the awareness of the fourth wall, etc) followed by the events of dp2 (Vanessa's death, his grief and the associated guilt and trauma of being the direct cause of her death) led to an unbridgeable emotional gap between the two of them that ultimately leads to their breakup.

It's important to note that I don't think Vanessa has any recollection of her own death, given that Wade goes back and saves her before she can take the bullet, and so of course she can never fully fathom what Wade went through grieving her and their life together and their potential family, for however long he spent between her death and bringing her back with Cable's device. She can try (and she clearly does in the one scene I'll talk about next) but I fear she accepts, maybe even in that scene, that she can never succeed. He is beyond her reach by this point, and vice versa, his experiences having fundamentally changed him.

The one scene we really see from their relationship between dp2 and dp3 is the one where Cassandra mind-gropes Wade in the Void and we see Vanessa struggling to reach Wade across this aforementioned gap - she wants him to open up, she wants him to share what he's going through, she wants him to be the person she initially fell in love with (not even selfishly - to her nothing has changed really, because to her no time has passed). But not only does he not understand what she's really asking for but he responds in such a way that makes me think he has unprocessed issues that are only tangentially related to what she's saying - ie the stuff about mattering, about asking her if she even wants to be with him, etc. And he's not the Wade Wilson she met back in dp1 anymore. He watched her die and grieved her and brought her back, believing it would make everything go back to normal and they could resume their life together as if nothing had changed, but he has been fundamentally changed in a way that she can't grasp, even if he WAS good at externally processing his trauma openly without the artifice of wry jokes. She didn't "come back wrong" - instead, she came back exactly the same as before, but HE'S different now. Not wrong, per se. But changed.

It's an interesting scene because it's obviously a memory, and a crucial one at that, but you can see how Wade is misunderstanding what she's saying, viewing it through the prism of his own lack of self-worth and his own hopelessness - he takes away that she thinks he doesn't matter (even though like he says she didn't actually say that, but I don't think Cassandra invented that wholecloth - I think she pulled it out of his psyche because that's what he believes deep down, hence why his fixation on mattering even though she never said those words exactly), he takes away that she doesn't want to be with him, that she thinks he's nothing. Which would be frustrating as an audience member to witness as a pretty simple misunderstanding which could potentially be solved with one conversation, but it feels believable to me that these two people who have shared a great love would be fundamentally separated by unimaginable, cosmic trauma, and the on conversation they would need to have to rectify the misunderstanding is one that is impossible for Wade to verbalize and equally impossible for Vanessa to conceive of. It was one thing when they had shared trauma like violence and SA in dp1, but what Wade has gone through in dp1 and dp2, humor aside, is unfathomably traumatic, brain-breakingly so even, and that's not even factoring in the possible mental illnesses he now struggles with (I've seen folks suggest schizophrenia, DID, depression, etc. but I won't get into armchair diagnosing a fictional character here - suffice it to say he is canonically unwell as a result of what has happened to him, and yes it manifests as quirky fourth wall breaks and cheeky one-liners, but within the universe of the movies he is undeniably profoundly mentally ill, and that includes this humorous alter ego he created to cope with his trauma).

I think off-screen Vanessa probably really tried to reach him, maybe for years (the six year gap implies to me that they didn't break up immediately, that they tried for a while to stay together), trying to get her Wade back, but that Wade is gone. He struggled to express that to her until eventually he started to feel rejected because he couldn't express his trauma or how much he has changed, because even he can't fully conceive of the gulf that has formed between them. The truth is, he WANTS to be that Wade again, for her and for himself, but that Wade died when she died. Or maybe he had already started dying when Francis got a hold of him in dp1.

Anyway, all this is to say, I think Morena Baccarin WAS criminally underutilized in dp2 and dp3, but I think there is a strong argument to be made for the believability of their breakup regardless. I think even relationships built on enormous love can crumble due to trauma, and what Wade suffers over these movies is mind-bogglingly enormous trauma. It's especially heartbreaking that he blames himself for their relationship ending, talks like she just got tired of him, thought he didn't matter, whatever. But it is a credit to him that he never seems to feel anger towards her about it. He doesn't seem to feel entitled to her, though he longs for her and what they had and what she represented (hope, love, a future, a family), but ultimately she becomes more of a symbol of what he lost when he gained his powers, because let's be super fr right now - even if they had succeeded in having a baby, not only would they have lived in fear of her or the kid getting killed, but ultimately Wade would likely outlive both of them even if they managed to die natural deaths. The moment he gained his powers he was already destined to lose her, which is heartbreaking because she was the only reason he opted for the treatment in the first place - so he could stay with her.

I think a big part of Deadpool & Wolverine is watching Wade continue to process his own motivations (vis-a-vis Vanessa but also his other friends) and how he does eventually let go of the idea of "mattering" in favor of just saving the people he cares about (*cough* and being saved right back *cough* by Wolvie, as the final line and shot implies). And in the process he finds someone new who cares about him, who thinks he matters, who tries to sacrifice himself for him and his friends after mere days of knowing him, who comes home with him at the end of the story, who breaks his own centuries-old patterns, who has also experienced unimaginable grief and trauma, who has struggled with wanting to die and being unable to, who not only matches his crazy but matches his FREAK and also not only won't die on him but CAN'T die on him - and more importantly cannot be randomly killed by a stray bullet.

Idk if any of this makes much sense but I do think if you read between the lines and consider the potency of trauma and grief, guilt and emotional damage at play here, Vanessa and Wade's off-screen breakup is actually pretty realistic, and really heart-breaking to boot.

You can tell she still cares about him in so many ways - she shows up for his birthday party, she shows up to his welcome home party at the end, she finds excuses for physical contact multiple times, her eyes get soft when she looks at him, but there is a distance there that Morena Baccarin does an incredible job of portraying. She cares about him deeply, she has mourned the loss of their potential life together, she has let him go and accepted that the Wade she fell in love with is gone, but she wants him in her life even though she's moving on because she realizes he's gone somewhere she can't follow (literally and figuratively). And she wants him to be happy which is why I fully believe she would immediately clock the Poolverine of it all and not-so-subtly encourage them to make it official.

Anyway. Poolverine forever. Nothing against Vanessa at all - I think she delivers a nuanced and beautiful performance, I think their relationship is sweet and heart-wrenching in large part due to her acting chops, especially given how little she is given to work with - but I think their relationship was sadly doomed from almost the very start, because Wade becomes this traumatized superhuman and Vanessa would always be at risk in his orbit, but also would always on the outside of his multiverse superhero experiences. I think it's weirdly beautiful, even if I am filling in a lot of gaps and giving the writers maybe undue credit.

Anyway... thoughts? Please DM me or write in the tags, I am feral about this movie and just want to talk about it with anyone haha. If you have further insight into these characters too I'd love to hear it - I am by no means an expert in these movies or characters!

[petermorwood]

This is - or more correctly these are - Garlic-Stuffed Chicken(s) for a Darthene "autumn table" as mentioned in "The Door Into Sunset". There's more in-world info, and an our-world recipe, at the link.

*****

What happened was this:

We'd taken some okay photos for the first iteration of this recipe, but since then we've got actual photography base- & back-boards, more props in the form of dishes, glasses, cutlery etc. and, TBH, better photography skills as well. :->

So when @dduane decided we should take a second run at the pictures, she went for the smaller roast chickenS (plural) as mentioned In The Text, rather than the single large one of last time. This was not only more accurate, but allowed for photos showing One Carved, One Untouched As Yet.

What with one thing and another, they were prepared and cooked quite late in the day. Neither of us felt like eating a roast chicken dinner just then, despite a scent, and judicious not-seen-by-the-camera samplings which indicated that These Were GOOD.

In any case the daylight of an overcast mid-September evening was already beginning to fail. We've got a pair of small, cheap photo LEDs, but haven't yet started to make proper use of them. TBH it's time to haul them out, plug them in and do a batch of practice shots. That way we don't have to rely on the natural light of which we'll be getting less and less between now and Spring.

*****

So the chickens were popped into the fridge until morning, then hauled out and left to come back up to room temp. They've have been great hot from the oven, but eaten cold didn't matter since that's how they'd have been presented In The Text.

(The Middle Kingdoms may have some way to keep foods hot - the Romans certainly did - but since that's not mentioned, we didn't worry.)

There was an additional benefit from their very long post-cooking rest: everything including the stuffing had stablised, so the chicken we carved sliced like bread and gave us this wonderful image.

The tracklement to the left is (are?) Sweet & Hot Pickled Orange Slices, as mentioned in the 90,000-word novella "The Librarian", currently in its final stages of completion, while the country-style bread is the same as was used for the stuffing, there to either chase gravy and juices, or be the base of an open-faced chicken sandwich.

*****

Idle thought. Is it really a sandwich if there's no top slice of bread and, since the Earldom of Sandwich is in England not the Middle Kingdoms, who cares? Far better to have another, this time with more garlic stuffing. You have to keep the vampires who are moving west on Ventura Boulevard at bay somehow...

This chicken is indeed excellent as part of a cold collation, but to confirm my notion of the night before I made a gravy from the pan juices, then reheated a generous slice of meat and stuffing by invocation of a small Wreaking through the mystic powers of our Molecular Agitation Cabinet.

In other words, I gave it about two minutes in the microwave.

It is, frankly, even better hot, because the scent of garlic is that much more pronounced. However, the stuffing fell apart. One minute a picturesque slab of variegated marble, the next a random disassembly of tasty chunks.

Carving one of these chickens hot from the oven might have a similar result, but no matter. IMO the multiplicity of absorbent surfaces are perfect for catching more gravy so, as usual, what's not a bug is a feature.

Or however they'd say it in Darthen.

[lumeha]

Guess what I've seen more takes I disagree on the internet but decided to make my own post about it because why not : )

But. Gods. I love the work they did on Felix recruitment out of house. Felix's recruitment out of house should be the gold standard of out of house recruitment. But the problem is that it works because Felix is, well, he's Felix.

Out of house recruitment has probably THE biggest impact on Felix. His character arc in AM VS his character arc in other route is completely different. And at the core of it is that Felix is a stubborn bastard who needs to have him pulled back from the ground so he can finally see the whole story. Something he does experience in AM ! Because, like, after all, after everything, AM is the route where Felix can finally see Dimitri fully, and seeing Dimitri fully is one of the things that lead Felix to accept some things about himself !

Things he will never learn or accept in other routes. Like the fact that, yeah, actually, taking the title of Shield from his father is something he can do in his own way, and that a lot of his feelings regarding chilvalry is directly linked to the fact that he doesn't want to see people get hurt for his or someone else's sake !

The contrast between his endings outside of AM, where he's a bitter lone wolf who doesn't let anyone get close, VS his endings in AM ? Fucking night and day. And it's all because out of house Felix is a prickly bastard who, yeah, during the officer's academy time, can and will think he can do better and be stronger if he goes into a different house, because he thinks he's chasing strength's for his own sake.

And it takes a lot for him to stop believing that.

It takes him having to face his own grief directly (over Glenn and over his father) and having to see Dimitri for who Dimitri is, not the idea he's building of who Dimitri is. Something he can't do if he's out of house. Because he's a prickly guy who is stubborn and doesn't want to see it. He doesn't want to. Because it fucking hurts. And he's not dealing with emotions well at all. Actually he's just not dealing with emotions at all, in a way, he's bottled that shit up and it explodes in anger and he's a mean bastard because he's just not dealing with it.

I think - one thing in AM that does change things a lot for him, in particular, is that he does search for Dimitri. He doesn't really admit it out loud but he does ? And it's a whole. Thing. About having to deal with who he thinks Dimitri is. and that he still loves him (we don't care which way here) even if he's been thinking that he's lost the Dimitri he's known as a child all this time.

He doesn't understand Dimitri's trauma, but frankly, he doesn't understand his own either, which is why his path in and out of house is so different. Because in one path, he gets to understand that. In the other ? He's still running away from it. And he's making sure he's never getting caught by it.

[alexandraisyes]

Alright chat I'll make you a deal. When I reach 1000 followers on any of my platforms I will commission Davis to voice act this segment from my Errors in Resentment fic, and get it animated.

His grin wavered back into a frown, “Don’t worry about it.” He muttered, turning back to the surface of the table. “I am worried about it!” Ruin shrilled, “Quite frankly, your behavior as of late has been extremely worrying!” He continued, uncrossing his arms to use his hands for emphasis. “You haven’t even touched any of your personal projects in a week, and you’ve made hardly any progress on Bloodmoon because you’ve been burying yourself inside of your own code! I’m allowed to worry!” Irritation bubbled up and spilled over, “Why? Because I’m not working on your shit anymore?” Eclipse fired back, sitting back to scowl up at Ruin. “That’s why you brought me back, right? To work on your shit?” “Well, yes, but that’s not why I’m worried!” “Then why?!” Eclipse asked voice strained near Sun levels of pitch. He threw his hands up in exasperation, “You treat me well, you aren’t violent to the point you cause harm, and I know you can be dangerous, but you haven’t tried to pull a fast one on me yet. I’ve seen how you treat that golden idiot and his damned brother, but you don’t dance circles around me. So why, Ruin? Why do you worry, why do you act like you care ?!” He seethed, half out of the chair by now, on more physically equal footing than he had been sitting, when Ruin was sitting on the table. “Oh I don’t know, maybe because I do ?!” Ruin yelled back, posture stiff, built-in claws fully extended. A defensive position, Eclipse’s HUD informed him, a fighting position. “Well, don’t! Don’t care, it’s not going to get you anywhere! I’m not going to change, I’m not going to become this hero you look up to Sun for!” Eclipse snarled, own claws flexing in response. Geared for a fight, he hadn’t had a fight in stars knew how long, maybe this is what he needed. Piss off Ruin so those damnable emotions would stop. “Quite frankly! I don’t want you to change!” Ruin shot back, “Have you ever once considered maybe I enjoy your company the way that it is? Or are you too blind by your own fucking insecurities that you can’t see outside of the box that is Eclipse?”

Lucky me I don't expect to hit 1k for a long while, I'm only at 400 as of writing this. So I've plenty of time to let this fester. (For those that don't know what EiR is it's basically my "Eclipse and Ruin are friends" AU that I made before we got copy Eclipse.)

[darkthanatos2]

Authors Note: possible spoilers? Idk

This is pure speculation and imagined. I don't know whats actually going to happen. Got ideas from Trailers and theories discussed with friends. Names and circumstances might be spoilers idk I talked to a lot of people for material.

Vi standing near the door way and watches cait interact with Maddie. How Maddie looks at her was the same way she looked at cait. Wow, caitlyn got over me pretty fast huh? She though.

“Oh Vi, I didn’t see you there, do you have an appointment?” maddie said, holding some important papers while cait was at her table looking down at a map to strategize a plan.

The fuck I need an appointment for, you stuck up bitch. “ No I don’t. I need to talk to cait. It important.”

Cait lift her head to look at vi, shock, concern, and relief? “Maddie, give us the room” Cait said.

“But Caitlyn we need to go over-“ maddie started to say but cait stred at her with a look of daggers. “Yes ma’am.” And she left.

Vi stepped out of her way as maddie was leaving .

“You sure move on quick” Vi said walking towards her. Trying to look unhurt from it but Cait knows she is.

“Vi… her and I aren’t –“

“Don’t you say it, cause frankly I don’t care” Lie

“Vi… I’m glad you are okay… I heard about the explosion and-“

“Oh so now you care?! Fuck Cait! You kiss me and later in the day screw me over, set me aside like I was trash. Made me feel like nothing!” Vi placed her hands on the table “Did you even care in the first place or were you using me to gain power”

That was the last straw. Cait got up and moved towards Vi, eyes not leaving hers. “One, I never used you for gain. Two, Maddie was a means to get my mind off you cause you are all I see. And Finally, don’t you ever fucking assume I never cared!” she shoves Vi hard “I WAS HURTING VI! And because I didn’t know how to grief I pushed away the most important thing I had in my life, YOU.”

Vi did not expect that. In her shock caitlyn continued .

“After I left, I went back you and weren’t there. In my anger I did things I wasn’t proud of… maddie just brushed the edge off… Everytime I was with her, I saw you…. I can’t even kiss her without seeing you. I had to put an end to it… it wasn’t right… what I did was unforgivable and –“ before she could finish, Vi crushed her lips to hers, biting on her lip hard enough to draw blood. Cait let out a moan and wrapped her arms around Vi’s neck.

All the pent up tension, frustration vi couldn’t relieve in the pits… this is what she ever wanted. She was angry. So fucking angry… but she couldn’t.. they parted their lips for air. Gasping Ciatlyn was shocked “ Wha- why?” tears sting her eyes “ You should hate me for what I had done to you…”

Vi looked into her eyes, but caitlyn tried to look away. Vi cupped her face, angling it to look nowhere else but her “ No… look at me. Look at me and only me” Vi lifted cait, her legs around Vi. Vi gently placed her on the table, unbuttoning her blouse. Cait moans into the kiss…heat" building at the core. Vi ripping her blouse open, bare.. vulnerable.

[thearomanticcactus]

Mad again about All Might's first interaction with Izu. I don't really have anything knew to add to the discussion, but I'll spell it out nonetheless

Frankly it seems dangerous how he used his quirk at the beginning? Like idc if Izu didn't get hurt, that seemed dangerous.

The fact he signed the notebook before he checked on the victim?

Revealing a national secret (his small form/wound) to some random child he doesn't know? (Say what you will about him having no other option, but I disagree. 1. We've seen him push past that "limit" time and again. 2. Since he cares so little about Izu's well-being anyway (see basically every other point I've made here) why not just fly away again basically as soon as he lands?)

Crushing a child's dream because of what, his own insecurities? (Ofc this one is mentioned most and for good reason. You can come up with as many excuses as you want, but it doesn't change the fact that in interviews and shit he says anyone can be a hero only to retract that as soon as someone "weak" asks.)

Not getting a victim medical assistance? Izu was fucking passed out (presumably from asphyxiation), he needs to go to the doctor. (Say what you want about his time limit, but by the point that Izu already knows about it, he really should just fucking walk the kid to the hospital.)

And finally of course, leaving a vulnerable child on a rooftop? (Say what you will about him not knowing how bad Izu has it (the suicide baiting), he literally just 1. saved him from a villain (I imagine that would leave someone rattled and not in the best headspace) and 2. crushed his dreams. Again you could mention his time limit, but that's a non-issue by that point because Izu already knows now.)

I have mixed feelings on All Might and you can say what you want about everything else he's done, but there is no argument that will convince me that he didn't completely fuck this interaction up.

[scuderia-hamilton]

listen i don't like Daniel, that's a fact, but what's been happening to him during the course of this weekend has been nothing but cruel, unfair and frankly, disrespectful (even if the rumours turn out to be false). i hate nothing more in this sport than teams just dropping drivers in the middle of the season, with little to no warning whatsoever, if they didn't perform to the expectations. these people made and are still making so many sacrifices to be able to be in this sport, they work so fucking hard and i just hate seeing it go to waste like that. it's simply not fair.

you can come up with the regular excuses of it being a cutthroat sport, them being rich, white, privileged men, Daniel performing poorly, i do not care. yes, he hasn't been performing the way the team expected him to do so, but at the end of the day, he's still human and no one deserves that kind of treatment. rbr has been fucking over their drivers left and right and i absolutely despise that more teams are starting to do the same.

sending him out there to give interviews and answer questions about his own future in the sport, when he doesn't even know what it will be, is honestly the lowest of the low. they know exactly how nasty and rude f1 media is and a team putting their own driver in that position is something that should not be normalized. seeing his post race interview made my heart ache for him, he was literally a second away from crying then and there.

just as i've been upset about Nyk De Vries and Logan Sargeant being dropped in the same way, i feel the same for Daniel. it's not about whether you like a driver or not, it's about the principle. this is their dream, the thing they've been working for since they were literal toddlers and seeing it ripped away from them, without even giving them a proper shot is just inhumanely cruel.

i know that Daniel has been around for a while and he got to live his dream, but i still think it's unfair. rbr has been promising him this and that since he replaced De Vries last summer, just to (allegedly) drop him the next season with six more races left. even if they really want to replace him, then let him finish this season. he deserves that much.

i'm excited about the possibility of Liam finally getting a real shot, don't get me wrong and if he really ends up replacing Daniel, i'm happy for him, but i would like him to come into the sport under different circumstances. i also think that hating the driver who replaces another one, is pointless and frankly, stupid. this is not their decision, they obviously take the opportunity, cause getting into f1 is nearly impossible.

this is basically just to say that maybe we should remember from time to time, that they're not just athletes, but real people with feelings and we should always stay kind and compassionate. i've already seen so many hate posts about him, which shouldn't surprise me, but it did. this fandom likes to just jump on a person who's an easy target at the moment or pick and choose who they don't like at that time and all hell breaks loose.

the same thing happened when there were rumours about Daniel replacing Checo and all of a sudden, everyone had an issue with Checo's performance, him as a person, his actions and everyone thought that he deserved to be replaced. you don't have to like all of them, but at least be consistent with your opinions and know where the line is. you can't be upset about one driver being replaced mid-season, then turn around and wish that to happen to a different driver. that's hypocritical.

[stairset]

Microdosing on having money by looking at virtual tours of apartments I can’t afford

[crimson-rain-smoked-flower]

I’m not trying to attack you, but do you know that proshipper means someone who supports and romanticizes pedophilia, incest, and abuse? Your reblog on that post seems to read that you think antis just hate on people for having ships they don’t like. But it’s completely different than that. Just looking on the proshipper side of Tumblr and the internet and you can see people happily shipping children and adults and making nsfw content of such things.

i appreciate that you're not being outright hostile, but i have to say, that on its own put you above basically every anti i've interacted with.

i understand where antis are coming from, i really do. there are a lot of things on the internet that make me deeply uncomfortable, including the minor/adult ships that you mention. i don't want to anything to do with those kinds of ships and i would be happiest if i never saw them again. which is why i'm proship.

nine times out of ten, if i see that kind of ship brought up on my dash, it's because i was following an anti without realizing it, and they brought it up unprompted and untagged, to talk about how bad it is that they exist. they are the ones putting that kind of content in front of my face and making it harder to avoid.

the thing about people who ship those ships is that they're generally very aware that not everyone wants to see that kind of content, and so they tag it. they make sideblogs to talk about it. they don't go out of their way to shove it in people's faces. that means i, and everyone else who doesn't like it, can avoid it.

what antis want is for it to not exist at all. they want the tags to be purged and blocked, and for anyone who uses those tags to have their accounts deleted. and sure, that might get rid of some of it, but do you know what would happen to the rest? it would stop being tagged. people who don't want to see it wouldn't have the tools to avoid it. this isn't just a hypothetical, that's what's happened any time a fan space has tried to do that.

that's not even getting into the rabbit hole of what should be banned and what shouldn't. obviously any content that depicts real children or real life abuse shouldn't exist and shouldn't be allowed to be posted, but basically any platform that people use already enforces those policies, and there's not much of a slippery slope to go down there. if it involves real living breathing people being abused, it's bad. end of discussion.

but the same can't be said for fiction. ask ten antis for a specific list of all the content that should be banned, and you'll get ten different answers. what about kink? what about roleplay? what about horror and murder and anything that involves fictional characters being graphically tortured? what about people using art to process terrible things that have happened to them? what about art that uses dark themes as a horror element? if you just want to ban anything questionable to anyone, that's the line of thinking that gets any mention of lgbt existence banned. and again, this isn't just a hypothetical, this has happened before, and that's generally where it leads.

i know, from personal experience, that antis do, in fact, send harassment to people just for shipping things they don't like. i've gotten accused of absolutely vile shit for shipping two fictional characters who were both consenting adults. i've seen ship wars turn into moral battlegrounds, over ships that an average person wouldn't bat an eye at.

the thing about "romanticization" is a whole other can of worms. the anti logic goes like this: if someone sees something (even if it's very obviously fictional) in a positive light enough times, they will start thinking it's okay in real life, and go on to hurt real people. the problem with that is that it's just. blatantly untrue.

if it were true every horror movie fan would be a serial killer, every person that studies dark media would be an unhinged psychopath, and everyone who is into ddlg would be a pedophile. but they're not. they just aren't. people have directed movies just as fucked up as the darkest shit on ao3, and are still capable of being normal human beings who know right from wrong in real life.

even if someone is that impressionable, scrubbing away the existence of every piece of questionable content isn't going to solve their problem, because they're still going to be vulnerable to con men, scams, and cultists. the only thing that would actually materially help someone like that is developing their own morals and critical thinking.

children are also more impressionable, and there's a lot of content that's not suitable for them, but that doesn't mean that content shouldn't exist. it just means that they should stick to spaces designed for them (which most social media sites, tumblr included, are not) or, if they're old enough to be responsible for their experience online, they, or a trusted adult in their lives, should block and filter out things that they aren't comfortable with.

which is what everyone on the internet should be doing. it's what i do, and it's made the internet a much more pleasant place to be. and it's why i sometimes worry for antis mental health, especially teenagers, because they're being told it's right and moral to seek out content that makes them uncomfortable and to engage with the people making it. and that's just. really bad. it's not good for the creators that they're harassing obviously, but it's also really bad for them! it's not healthy to seek out things that make you feel bad, and it's a terrible internet safety lesson to teach minors that it's okay for them to seek out and engage with people making adult content.

individual harassment and crusading is never going to succeed at removing dark content from the internet. it just isn't. at best you might get a small percentage of people who create that content to stop sharing it, at worst you're just going to make people stop tagging it, and either way, you're exposing yourself to things that make you feel bad, when you don't have to.

if you want to materially change the type of content you see, you can. the block button is your friend, use it liberally. same with content filtering and tag blocking.

[shuploc]

Ai art?

Are you fucking joking?

Sorry, no, it is not and I find it so disrespectful you would even think to ask that. I have not and will NEVER touch anything AI related ever in my life, I think it's so utterly pointless and destructive and it frankly makes me wanna kill myself.

So no, it is not and never will be, and you can safely hold that to me for the rest of my existence. I really hope this is the last time someone asks me this.

[qqueenofhades]

I’m thinking it’s more likely this was a legit attempt, but in comparison to the last attempt I think the evidence for it being staged is way stronger. It was on Trump’s own property aka a way more easily controlled environment, the guy was much further away than Crooks was and he never actually got any shots off so no one even got hurt, he survived long enough to be taken into police custody, and this is all happening less than a week after a very bad debate performance and an endorsement from a woman so influential we have the data to name an Effect after her. Like again I think it’s more likely a legit attempt but either way it’s still a nothing burger.

I mean, didn't Trump and Vance just tell us to "get over" gun violence and that it was a "fact of life" in between their busy schedule of inciting racist mobs on Springfield, Ohio?

Did something change between now and then when the MAGAs are suddenly so concerned with preventing white Republicans from having access to guns?

Weird.

[sybbi]

Oh, good. The people who can't read a linked article on a post they reblog, much less open a separate tab and look into something themselves, are gonna tell us what is and isn't legit

[mamawasatesttube]

bruce characterization is so hard because he really has been written all over the place. generally i try to think of him as a man who really does mean well, but whose drive for justice and unprocessed traumas can blind him to his shortcomings and lead to him inadvertently hurting his children. i also think that comics are a medium that doesn't usually lend itself well to character growth, because they to maintain a certain status quo to keep telling stories from, and so the bruce in my mind would honestly develop and learn from his mistakes a lot better than canon bruce actually does, because for someone who espouses the values he does, it makes no sense for him to completely stagnate, right. he's a puzzle you can put together in a lot of different ways and it's fascinating but also can be such a pain because of all the different books writing him in so many different ways, but characterizing him solely as an asshole is just boring and reductive imo...

...but all of that said i still think if martha kent ever found out how he talked to kon in sb94 #85 or in those issues of batgirl '00, she should be allowed to beat his ass with a pitchfork. yknow?

[winteriron-trash]

rdj the (whitewashed) electric boogaloo

This is a reminder to everyone who's excited about RDJ's casting as Doctor Doom that this casting is whitewashing. Victor Von Doom is a Romani character and has been a Romani character since his introduction in the 1960s. (Fantastic Four Annual #2 [1964]) Not only that, but his Roma identity and the persecution he and his family faced due to it is integral to his character, it is what forms his identity. (Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker) Even if on the off chance this casting is meant to not be Victor but instead be some variant of Tony or whomever else becoming Doctor Doom, it is damaging to the character to rob him of that important cultural background. Doctor Doom does not exist without that history. Fans have been pushing hard to cast Doom as a Romani actor for years, especially since the MCU has whitewashed other Romani characters. (Wanda, Pietro, etc) This casting is not a celebration moment, it's fucking heartbreaking that the MCU repeatedly ignores the important and nuanced cultural backstories of characters.

I know I can't change anybody's mind on whether or not you want to be excited about RDJ's return to the MCU. But I do think at the very least you should be mad that the MCU is baiting us all and destroying nuanced and interesting characters for the sake of self-referential easter eggs and nostalgia bait. Because that's what it is. Feel how you'd like to feel about RDJ's return, but personally, this is soul-sucking. I had such a deep love for the MCU as a teenager, it was obviously something incredibly formative to me, especially Tony Stark. This isn't recreating what I fell in love with the MCU for. This is turning a well-planned and artistic storyline of adaptations into cheap cash grabs and fan service. Because, I think we're past the point of being able to call the MCU an adaptation of anything. They can use existing characters' names and powers, but to say they're being properly adapted is laughable.

This is not an adaptation of Doctor Doom. This is RDJ the Electric Boogaloo because Marvel's fear of losing the interest of dedicated MCU fans overrides their willingness to tell stories that are genuine to the characters. I don't know what there is to be excited about that. The MCU has lost its authenticity and aside from a few projects, feels heartless. Every movie is a copy of a copy. This announcement isn't something celebratory, it feels like a death knell of a cinematic universe that's so desperate to cling to relevancy it's resorting to nostalgia for a character/actor who hasn't even been dead for a decade. We're not getting anything new, we're just rinsing and repeating the same song and dance.

I get it. I love Tony Stark, his death destroyed me and I to this day, rue the ending he got in Endgame. It misunderstood his arc and it robbed him of a satisfying conclusion. But the solution to that isn't dragging the corpse out of the grave five years later to whitewash an existing character with rich and interesting nuance, just to forcibly tie his existence in the MCU to Tony. Whether he is a variant or not. Why would you want someone else's fave's legacy to be destroyed simply so your fave's legacy can go on? Hell, if we were really all so hellbent on the return of RDJ and/or Tony to the MCU, we have the multiverse for a reason. There were other ways to do it that didn't whitewash and ruin someone else. This just. Isn't something to be happy about.

[uncanny-tranny]

Love (sarcasm) when people go, "we should normalize fatphobia LOL 🥺". Fatphobia is the norm, you just don't like that fatphobia has the possibility of people realizing that you aren't as decent or well-rounded of a person as others might have thought before. If it's such a problem that people don't like you for your disgust and hatred of others, then your only options are to either accept that or, better, work on your biases. That isn't the fault of others, and it's certainly not other people's responsibility to coddle your hang-ups with other people's existences.

[dreamonminecraft]

I hate sniff snifferish