#and if you're one reading this? you too

[insipid-drivel]

Sigh. Another day of firing potential OBGYNs for preferring to save my uterus instead of my life.

[petricorah]

scenes i loved from Real Enough to Get Me Through by @marriedzukka <333 [ids in alt]

[symbolishplant]

forumheads

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Danse Macabre

[Commission]

[biblically-accurate-dca]

substitute

[beanghostprincess]

A bit tired of people complaining about Sanji's principle of "not hitting women" being misogynistic when it has been clearly stated multiple times that he does not choose it and it's heavily tied to his trauma and admiration for his dad and respect for women and definitely not from seeing women as somehow weaker than him

[uncanny-tranny]

Another bonus to learning a fiber art is being able to speak to others in a Lovecraftian language that nobody else understands...

...and also being able to read things like THIS:

[iaxsl]

like you're telling me that dragon actually does care about luffy and would watch him whenever he passed by????? and the reason why he left luffy is so that he doesn't get caught up in his fights or be used as a weakness against dragon?????? LUFFY GREW UP WITHOUT A FATHER BECAUSE DRAGON DIDN'T WANT TO PUT HIS ONLY SON IN DANGER????

[rubberduckyrye]

Okay in all seriousness. There's something that I REALLY want to talk about as an open discussion with the fandom, but. This is not going to be a very nice thing to hear/talk about.

It's about how Gonta is treated by the fandom.

As a fan of all the V3 characters now, and as someone who has always been a fan of Gonta, and as someone who has many mental disabilities and two diagnosed neurodivergancies... I'm tired of playing nice about it.

You all need to stop being ableist towards Gonta.

I've mentioned in the past that I don't like shitting on personal interpretations. I don't like saying something is or is not canon because narration is just a big web of text that you try to decipher with your own personal biases, experiences, and thoughts. That's why two literary analysts analyzing the same text with the same literary criticism rules can come to wildly different conclusions--why people develop different headcanons from the same canonical information.

But one of the things that challenged my integrity is just how many people view Gonta as this innocent, naive, ignorant, baby boy who can do no harm/never has a complicated/dirty/violent/sexual thought in his life ever.

This incredibly ableist interpretation of the character bothered me for, well, obvious reasons (See: It's fucking ableist, need I say more?) but I never challenged it as harshly as I am now because to be frank, it's not my place to tell people how to HC a character. It still isn't. But I've pretty much given up on my integrity on the subject and have decided to go all in on discussing why this interpretation of Gonta is just. Really bad.

First of all, not to promote my own analyses here or anything, but I think this analysis I did of Gonta explains a LOT in regards to the ableism the cast gives him in canon. I also think that this subtle ableism is why the fandom is so bad with Gonta's characterization in headcanons and fanfic--because they've seen how the cast treats him, and they think it's normal. They don't see the microaggressions, they don't see the subtle ableism in the cast--they just see this big giant idiot who speaks like Tarzan in the English version (which... I don't actually know why people assume Tarzan (Thinking of Disney's version) is stupid. Like as a boy he had to reinvent the spear with no one to guide him on how to do it. He was able to strategize and outsmart "civilized" men in the final showdown. Still I digress) and don't see the literal genius behind his social awkwardness.

There is also another very important point I'm going to make in addition to this, and it's going to be very uncomfortable to Gonta fans who insist he's nothing but a sweet baby who only has pure thoughts. Especially to the fans who insist he "can't be sexual" or think it's weird to ship him with his peers.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but... Gonta blatantly has sexual desire and gets horny right in canon.

This is further clarified here:

It wasn't a matter of Gonta didn't want to touch her because touching someone in their underwear was inappropriate, or being flustered because she was in her underwear which is inappropriate...

It was literally a "weird feeling" that made him unable to approach her or touch her. A "weird feeling" that Miu makes pretty obvious as to what it was--sexual arousal.

He literally was sexually attracted to and felt sexual arousal from looking at Miu in her underwear. He had sexual feelings and thoughts about Miu. Why?

Because Gonta is a young man.

Gonta is a brilliant, talented young man who has normal human thoughts for someone his age--sexual desires, upsetting thoughts, complicated thoughts, ectect. He is not a child, he is not mentally stunted (I've been informed that people have literally said this on Ao3 for the NSFW Gonta fics, please for the love of god stop that)

I think the reason why Gonta fans typically want to keep him as a "pure baby child who can do no wrong" is because treating him like the young adult that he is makes it harder for them to justify Chapter 4. Every time I've seen a Gonta fan that hates Kokichi, it's always followed by the sentiment of "Kokichi manipulated and abused Gonta into killing Miu, so it's all Kokichi's fault." They're afraid of nuance and liking a character with the grey morality of genuinely thinking Mercy Killing the cast is a viable option, because it challenges their own morals about the character they adore.

To those people who read this and are upset: You can and should like Gonta! Gonta is a magnificent character who showcases the subtle way microaggressions can manifest and hurt people, he's a good-hearted person and a literal genius, he cares deeply for his friends and loves everyone with upmost sincerity.

But.

You need to re-evaluate your stance on Gonta if you think he's a stupid, naive fool who Kokichi manipulated. You need to re-evaluate why you think those thoughts, why you think Gonta being shipped with anyone is "Kinda weird" or "has weird consent problems" or "give you the ick." You have to challenge yourself and ask yourself uncomfortable questions in regards to why you treat Gonta like a child when canon has proven otherwise, why you think he cannot have violent or sexual thoughts, why he can't think mercy killing his class is the only way to save them.

This isn't an attack on you--but understand that these specific takes on Gonta? They are ableist in nature. They belittle and dismiss him, they treat him like a child, an idiot who can't think for himself--and you have to come to terms with the fact that Gonta is a far more complex character with complicated thoughts and feelings who is a young adult. Not a child. A young adult.

So again, ask yourself this: Why are you treating this young adult like he's a toddler?

[jontaro-kun]

That one time a pose study (looking at art of pretty women and telling myself I was being productive) turned into Portia

[thestarswhim]

So this tweet made a real good point and got me thinking about this scene:

As mentioned in their tweet, "you don't 'beg for mercy' for a job," and here he sounds so scared and desperate, like he's had to do this A LOT before with the directors and it's so... sad.

(more under the cut)

Before he finds out the truth about Eden, he believed they saved him from his former life and gave him new opportunities to continue his dreams, but do you think having to needlessly beg to keep your position as literally being the face of Eden out of fear you'll be replaced and thrown right back out to your old life is a so called dream come true?

Eden even made a trailer for a movie about his life to fame, showing how everyone was rejecting him as a person, which they definitely made it more simplified like I KNOW he was getting way worse treatment than what was shown.

My main point is that despite believing in Eden's motives (before knowing the truth), he still wasn't truly happy deep down. He was STILL getting rejected and slandered by society, and he knew that deep down, so it's not surprising how the possibility of him losing his job made him have a whole breakdown and do the things he did to try and cope.

He quite literally has no one to lean to and hasn't had anyone since showing up to Eden besides the directors (because he probably believed they were treating him fairly and with respect), but... yeah.

He wanted to make a difference, to give hope to hybrids, and he thought he was doing just that. Despite the way the directors and everyone thought of him, despite how alone he felt, he still thought he was achieving his dreams and sharing that onto others

and yet... he was being used this entire time. None of it was true, all the hard work and the things he went through was for nothing.

Everything that Eden has done, and he was the face of it all... it's just devastating.

[rainbow-squirrels-7]

And three! Smiles go for miles!

(split under the cut for better viewing!)

[coquelicoq]

if you're wondering what the big deal is about the louis-philippe sentence in les misérables, it is, in the original french, 760 words long. the subject of the sentence doesn't appear until 95% of the way through, at word #711; the main verb is word #712. the sentence contains 91 commas and 49 semicolons and is almost entirely a list of laudatory adjectival phrases describing the erstwhile king of france. this is perhaps especially notable because les mis is, shall we say, not known for being particularly gung-ho about the monarchy.

this sentence copied and pasted into Word takes up more than one page single-spaced. in the 1800-page folio classique edition, it is fully two and a half of those 1800 pages. that means that les mis is 0.14% this single sentence. more of les mis is made up of this sentence than earth's atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide (0.04%). if the page count of les mis stayed the same but every sentence was the length of this one, les mis would consist of only 720 sentences total.

incidentally, guess who named hugo a peer of france 17 years before the publication of les mis?

[the-magpie-archives]

People will really say "Jonathan Sims is a good guy!" or "Jonathan Sims is a bad person!" as if a prominent message of his character arc wasn't that no matter who you are, what you do, or how you behave your actions can cause harm or good without intention, and baselessly assigning morals to people who aren't deliberately causing harm is pointless because our view of them is more about how they affect us than how they actually are.

For better or worse, everyone is just a person. We're all both not at fault and entirely to blame.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I haven't read these books at all, but your art is so fun and cute that I like seeing your comics a lot regardless. Fantastic Silly Little Guy energy.

Thank you for enjoying my silly little guys and my comics B*)

[cobaltfluff]

so i started playing persona 4

where are the QoL features