#because boy i did not expect that at all

[hella1975]

it's been pointed out on here before that a lot of terf arguments are actually rooted in sexist idealology that feminists fought and died to unnormalise decades ago and that's its own kettle of fish but one thing i also find very frustrating about this so called 'radical' feminism is that it's so... defeatist? like the moment you categorically label an entire section of society as Bad and Inherently Evil then there's also the implication that nothing can be done about it, and it completely takes all accountability away. saying all men are evil is just another way of saying boys will be boys. he raped her because he's a man. he hit her because he's a man. he didn't listen because he's a man - it's almost offensively oversimplified. there's no point trying to fix this issue in society because men are just Like That, okay! so now what? it's not like they're going anywhere, so you just accept that 50% of the population are evil and will forever treat you terribly and there's nothing to be done about it bc they're biologically predisposed to it? like is that fr the argument here? you're soooo radical for that

[techutones]

[seilon]

certainly feeling some things about the fact that simon. bullied edwin, yes, because he clocked him being gay. but not out out of hatred for him because of it. instead it was because he thought edwin was cute and felt sad and confused by edwin not paying attention to him. because simon is also gay. that is some beautiful and tragic storytelling and such a good way to come back around and give edwin some amount of closure on that chapter of his life wow

[swiftcast-selene]

auraugust - maritime

there was no respite on the deck - always things to do, work to be done, and the swaying made him ill. below deck was... well, not much better, but at least without that blinding sun, he could think - most of the time.

[toasts-httyd-hyperfixation]

Important Reminder

He small

[00fairylights00]

I hope this will be a healing message...... I keep thinking of making a high-humanity P laugh really hard 🥹 like doing or saying something he thinks is SO hilarious that he is literally on the floor, gasping for breath, unable to speak because he is genuinely dying with laughter.

Prolly would take some real tame shit to make him laugh like that too. Like a funny drawing.

I will keel over and die but in a happy, positive way. If you would allow me to add onto this though I’d like to think the higher the humanity the more his body reacts to touch, I think he’d be ticklish!

His head is in your lap, the usual resting place for him on sunny afternoons like this. The heat makes everyone sleepy and with Krat no longer under eminent threat P can finally just laze around and relax to his heart’s content.

The light turns his hair a chocolate brown as you run your fingers through it slowly, stopping every now and again to scratch at his scalp which earns you a happy hum and a beautiful, closed eye smile. Your other hand rests on the warm skin of his chest, visible through the opening in his shirt.

You can feel the steady beat of his heart under your palm, and the hand of his legion arm is laying on top of your own, squeezing every now and again to tell you that he’s not asleep, he promises he won’t fall asleep, he’s a liar but he’s happy and you don’t mind and he knows you don’t mind.

The heat is turning your mind syrupy but not enough that you don’t notice him flinch ever so slightly when the hand in his hair brushes against the length of his neck, his eyebrows furrow for only a moment but the idea is already in your head.

You only wish to test your theory.

As gently as you can you brush your fingers against his neck again, this time with far more intention. P jerks up, trying to escape your hold but you’re already one step ahead, having braced your arm across his front to trap him against you.

A beautiful sound falls from him, you can feel it through his back as much as you can hear it, he’s laughing! 

A proper, joyful, bordering on hysterical laugh. The sound was higher pitched than his talking voice, but was still rich and warm. You come to realise that this is the loudest he’s ever been, you don’t think you’ve ever heard P raise his voice. It’s nice to see him let loose, smiling big, broad and unabashedly.

With everything over and the state of his humanity clear, watching him navigate the ways he was taken advantage of was a careful thing. He’d become well acquainted with being angry and with being sad, so the moments when you could have him rolling on the floor, losing his mind over something silly was a blessing in every sense of the word.

You pushed him forward, the two of you wrestling against your bedsheets until you came out victorious. You sat straddled atop his stomach, digging your fingers into his neck as he squirmed and pleaded for mercy,

“Stop stop, I can’t breathe,” he laughed, throwing his head back and then pulling his chin toward his chest in hopes of trapping your hands.

You continued your assault of feather light touches, poking and prodding at other areas you thought might also be ticklish.

His chest, his armpits, his sides. It was the prod to his stomach that made him yell suddenly and almost throw you off of him entirely, as you tried to recover your balance he swept your wrists between one hand, breathing heavily as he tried to calm down.

“What… was that?” He asked breathlessly, smiling up at you dazedly.

“Tickling,” you hummed, also catching your breath.

“I thought I was gonna die,” he groaned dramatically, “do it again.”

“Catch your breath first,” you instructed, breaking your hands free of his grasp gently, “it’s nice to see you laughing, you deserve to be happy.”

His eyebrows turned upward as he soaked in your earnestness, a quiet thank you said with his eyes. His hands brushed against your outer thighs, you squirmed with a giggle and a mischievous smile took over his face.

“No,” you warned, “Pino don’t!”

He dug his fingers into your sides, copying your movements and making you squeal, he’d always been a quick learner.

[supermaks]

Kit do you not rep Charles anymore 😭

Of course I do he’s prime I just need a break from his team and that fucking dog

[acidicpenumbra]

two "ultimate" level douchebags

[shannonsketches]

Disregard that last post, OP's definitely mad that Bulla is treated like a toddler and Trunks is treated like a teenager askljda

[licorishh]

OH YEAH ALSO finally watched the FNAF movie with the coolest person on Earth, 11/10 movie, Mike looked ready to curl up into a fetal position on the floor and burst into tears at all moments, he is so me, would watch again

[pynkhues]

I'm really sorry you and your sister are dealing with that

(no pressure to publish this, not that there should ever be pressure to publish an ask if you don't want to, of course, but just wanted to say I hope you're doing okay)

Ah, thank you, anon, it's okay. It's been a while now (court moves slooow), but we're getting hopefully close to the end. She filed in Family Court December 2022, and we've had about five interim hearings with final trial (finally) scheduled over four days next month, so fingers crossed! But yeah, it's been A Time. He's financially and emotionally abusive against my sister, and both those things as well as medically negligent against their children (who are only six and eight and both have special needs), so it's been....rough. To say the least.

But on a lighter note, have one of my new favourite photos I took of my nephews at the jellyfish enclosure at the aquarium last month!

[faaun]

ok let's catch up quickly

[transvaltrans]

Looking back on the books I read this year, and was reminded of just how much Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief- absolutely frustrated and disappointed me. Spoilers ahead.

To some degree, this was going to happen; the whole series has been heavily hyped up to me, it's hard for any book to live up to such lavish yet vague praise. But, you know, I actually got through most of the book without being distracted by my own expectations. It was tense, and spare- it felt like every word mattered and hinted at an underlying truth. I love when books withhold from the reader, and nudge at you to consider what might be left unsaid. And I was so, so satisfied when my predictions paid off (totally called Gen palming the stone rather than losing it).

The worldbuilding was interesting and unique, I enjoyed that the author wasn't committed to a super specific and our-world-accurate timeframe for technology, and I found the characters compelling and variable. I always enjoy travel stories, nevermind stories about thieves.

Which is exactly why I was so annoyed by the ending.

Again: I love twists. I love being able to predict them, and I love being surprised. I did not feel like any of the twists in The Thief were unearned; it's a well-composed book, with plenty of foreshadowing.

However, one of the twists, despite being foreshadowed, absolutely blindsided me- because I would not have considered it as a possibility, due to undermining exactly what had me so excited to read The Thief in the first place. Fantasy literature sometimes shies away from politics, into pure escapism and fluff. Even some of my favorite fantasy books are pretty hollow when it comes to their fundamental beliefs, and shy away from challenging the status quo- unless it's to restore old glory (cough The Old Kingdom series).

But I can almost always count on stories about rogues, and thieves, and con artists, to at least bring up the issue of class. These characters so often come from disenfranchised backgrounds, from the poor and displaced. They're street rats and gutter scum, who have clawed their way up from the bottom, and never forget where they came from- can never forget, from the way others treat them. Theft is subversive; there's a reason we won't let go of Robin Hood, but even more self-motivated thieves often have something to say about the unfairness of wealth distribution. Stories about thieves almost always have something to say about the relationship between the wealthy and the poor.

So, yeah, I was really fucking annoyed at the reveal that Eugenides was actually the Queen's cousin. That pretending to be from a lower class background was so insufferable to him; that of course he's only so educated and knowledgeable because he's a noblemen, that it was so hard for him to pretend to be stupid and crass like a peasant. That the reason he was so pissed about being disrespected by his captors wasn't because they beat him and imprisoned him and insulted him constantly, that they treated him as less than human because he was poor and a criminal, a tool for their own use and disposal- but because he was one of them, and it injured his pride- his noble pride, not his human pride- to be treated like that. Like he wasn't one of them, and deserving of their respect.

Fuck, I hate it so much. It immediately took away my favorite parts of the book- the tension between Gen and the magus's companions, the weight of the magus having been a commoner once, the way Gen constantly stuck by himself and refused to just accept his shitty treatment- the way every monarch treated him as a means to an end. I thought there would be more tension in Gen having conflicted feelings of resentment and camraderie with the magus- I thought it would pay off with either some of them acting in his interest for once, and/or some of them rejecting their freindship and leaning back into that class difference between them.

I'm not opposed to Gen having been working for the mountain kingdom the whole time! But there are so many other ways to do that- I was suspecting that someone was holding his family hostage in some way. It's easy to imagine a story where Gen is a lower-class thief, who was also being used by his own country's royalty.

But, making Eugenides a nobleman is a subversion of the classic trope- which means it's clever and interesting. Uugh. It just exhausted me, and- disappointed me. I loved so much of this book, and it had been a while since I'd read a good low-fantasy story about thieves. It was suspenseful, with rich descriptions, and interesting character dynamics. I thought I was getting something like Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge, or The Goblin Wood by Hillary Bell- not necessarily stories about thieves, but stories about the underestimated and undervalued, peasant con artists and hedgewitches. But with more of the tension and bite of your average dnd rogue getting up to stupid shit (my go-to class since I was a kid).

I totally understand why people love this book. There is a lot I really admire within it. But man, I don't think I can get over how much that final twist- not just rejected my original interpretation of the story. That's fine, plenty of good science fiction or horror does that. But that it specifically rejects the character and story type of the lower class thief. The very name of the series, The Queen's Thief, had me expecting a story about that seeming contradiction; about the power imbalance, and a constant game of cunning, of maintaining autonomy despite being bound to a royal power. And I expect there will be some of that, in the later books; it just loses a lot of its appeal, when it turns out Gen himself is a nobleman, who was doing a favor for his cousin, the queen.

I liked that the book ended with more insight into the mountainous kingdom, and Gen's feeling of belonging and pride to a cultural group everyone else had been deriding- but that didn't have to be accomplished by him being related to the nobility of that country. None of this had to be accomplished through Gen being a nobleman; it just felt like a 'gotcha' subversion, taking away, rather than adding more.

[seenthisepisode]

woah truly nothing fucks you up like family

[blood-orange-juice]

interesting but i do agree with the other reblog, in my opinion it’s more likely hoyo would make childe fight us based on tsaritsa’s orders than us turning on him ourselves. for me, I don’t see it as romantic(?) well we’ve seen how we’re probably the only ones childe trusts outside of his family (telling us about his abyss story since it was also mentioned he would never tell this to just anyone) but we know how extremely loyal and devoted he is to the tsaritsa(with how he carried out the whole releasing a monster to liyue thing even tho he himself said he was reluctant and didn’t like involving the weak/helpless). he’d probably be like “dont take it personal comrade, think of it as a rematch.” also maybe in natlan we will find out more about the tsaritsa’s goal and maybe it’s something the traveler cant agree on. but i dont know, that’s just what I think🥲

The problem is... It's the most obvious thing to do and so far Hoyo have avoided obvious things.

Would be a nice subversion of expectations if they end up doing the obvious thing exactly once, of course.

In other words, he's a bit too pathetic to be tragic in this way.

And also there's Skirk's prophecy about overturning the world, so he can't die before that is addressed.

[theidiotabides]

Would really love to hear about the angsty marcotobias fic if you're interested in sharing. 👀

Oh gosh, I feel like I'd have to actually write it for it to make sense because like 80% of it is subtext, but here's some rambling in that general direction.

I'm chiefly interested in the ways in which Marco & Tobias are actually incredibly similar -- their senses of humor, their attractions, their complete direspect for authority, and most importantly how they both lowkey hate themselves but insist on survival anyway, largely out of spite -- but how they treat their similarity as, like, a cautionary tale rather than the basis for a healthy connection that it could be.

Like, Tobias disappearing into the woods and giving up on everybody is exactly the kind of behavior that Marco finds incredibly triggering, having lived through it with his dad. Marco would never walk away from his remaining loved ones like that, especially in the post-war world where he's charged himself with being the public face of the Animorphs because somebody has to. But there is absolutely a part of him that wants to give up and disappear; ya boi is tired.

Meanwhile, I think Tobias sees Marco's devotion to Jake and refusal to abandon him even after how Rachel died (which Tobias blames Jake for) as a version of the hero worship complex Tobias used to have about Jake -- like, I think Tobias sees Marco as being too devoted to Jake to see "the truth" about him, and he pities that in Marco. But at the same time, Tobias envies Marco's close personal connections, and I think on some level he knows that the only way to get to that place would be to work through his anger at Jake to get to his anger at Rachel, and he just can't bring himself to do that. It's easier to stay mad.

And then there's the question of Rachel herself, whom they were both deeply invested in trying to keep alive at the end of the war. Like, we see this explicitly from Tobias, with his "just be Rachel" and constant emotional check-ins with her, but I don't think Marco gets enough credit for his active role in keeping her literally alive. Dude bodily removed her from battles, at risk to his own life, and I just refuse to believe that's not something Marco & Tobias talked about, given how much time they spent together in Ax's scoop during that period of time between Marco's fake death & the move to the valley. Rachel is both a mutual love and a mutual failure for them (and that level of mutual devotion to a third person gives my polyamorous ass A Lot of Feelings).

Basically I think there's a lot of respect and love between Tobias and Marco, but they can't get to it because it would require each of them to deal with Rachel-related guilt and confront parts of themselves that they don't want to acknowledge.

...so I want to get them high on Marco's fancy penthouse balcony and make them kiss about it