yknow what, in hindsight I’m really grateful that when I took a course on the history of colonialism in Southeast Asia, the teacher drilled the exact geography of Indonesia into our collective heads before he even got to like the impacts of Dutch existence in Indonesia and the stages of it.
Like, now that I’m looking at the global focus on colonialism right, and its depictions in art in post-colonial societies and the construction of race and other identity categories within said societies, it’s actually really useful to have that basic understanding that most colonial societies were kind of cobbled together for ease of governance and do not have a monolithic understanding of the impacts of colonialism? Like, esp now that it’s Back with Lizzie’s death right like, it’s really really useful to have that understanding of how exactly colonial administration and military ventures went about grouping wildly disparate communities under the same categories for ease of governance and the economic impacts of colonialism.
And I’m just thinking about it because yes, it makes so much sense when you think about the different islands and the problems with governance today right and the ways the colonial powers continued to exert influence over their ex-colonies (and the way their methods of knowledge production and control remained) but you have to understand, first of all, where all the islands are and that geological basis forms a very good understanding of how people understand language and community and society at all.
ngl it does really annoy me when everyone accepts “ace people don't have sex” as the baseline assumption instead of ace people just not experiencing sexual attraction.
you can still have sex but be driven by different reasons, like to me it is a kind of affection and way to hang out with people that is influenced by the relationship we have with each other. i can think people are pretty to look at with or without their clothes without sexual attraction in the mix.
when i see something full of ppl assuming ace people don't have sex i always want to jump on it and be annoying like MEEEE I'M ACE PEOPLE WHO HAS SEX, WE EXIST WE EXIST STOP ASSUMING WE DON'T THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO STRAIGHT UP WILL NOT DATE OR BE INTERESTED IN ACE PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THIS MISCONCEPTION AND WE E X I S T.
stop!!!! assuming ace people do not have sex!!!!!!!! if you don't know then ask if it's appropriate!!!!!!!!!!! stop thinking about it in a binary you either do or don't have sex kind of way!!!!!! this is fundamentally off!!!!!!!!!!!! if you are ace you do not have sexual ATTRACTION!!!!!!!!!!!
as to how we feel about and handle sex, that varies person to person but sex favorable aces are a lot more common than you'd think. hell, figuring out I'm ace was the hardest thing to figure out about myself because all i ever saw people talk about was whether you have sex or not. I'm sure there's a lot more people who haven't figured it out for this same reason, and let me tell you it's hard to know you're missing a whole ass type of attraction when you've never experienced it before and didn't know it was missing to begin with!!
ace is not synonymous with sexless. aces who don't have sex don't speak for me, and y'all gotta stop letting them be the only face of the community. there are More Of Us, it is All Of Us.
accepting that baseline at face value leaves you uninformed and it's frustrating to see this over and over again. challenge yourself to do better and try understanding ace people more.
I think getting railed by Mac would give Dennis a new perspective that doesn’t change who he is and is consistent with his characterisation... Just a thought tho.
something i enjoy about wincest is that i can just take it for granted. like yeah those brothers are fucking, they've always been fucking, and they'll keep fucking until god himself cuts off their dicks
there's a lot of ships in the world that require subtext and imagination but samdean is definitely not one of them
spencer/reader + southern gothic aesthetic
"I'm just a child, but I'm not above violence
My mama raised me better than that..."
the mosquitoes and frogs sing their discordant symphony above the rustling oak leaves and Spanish moss that drape over branches like abandoned wedding veils. you push your toes on the damp floorboards and the rocking chair tilts backward, and your stomach lurches as you sway forward. the old book on your lap with yellowed pages and a musty scent lays open like a vivisected hare. a gnat lands on the corner of the page and you try to flick it away. you accidentally killed it and your brows furrow softly.
the hinges on the screen door squeak and you break your monotonous rhythm, the rocking chair sway cut short.
"garcia says we're lucky we have cell service," spencer says, with his hands in his pockets, before his eyes flick to your lap, "what're you reading?"
"mm." you nod. "nice of the chief to let us use his house." you close the book and self-consciously wipe the title with your hand (the one that killed the gnat). "did you know that franz kafka didn't want bugs on the cover of his book?"
"you're reading 'the metamorphosis'," he guesses.
"it's a comfort read," you say, shrugging, your toes pushing the floorboards again.
spencer slowly sits in the rocking chair beside you and you silently return to the symphonies of the moist, summer night. at least - you do until spencer starts talking about his interpretation of the novel and you listen, your eyes focused on the harsh, slice of darkness where the porch light doesn't reach.
standing on the corner of the street with a sign that says “ask me about how i think a vast majority of plastic surgeries can be considered gender affirming procedures” and on the back it says “trans people getting the surgery doesn’t make it trans surgery”
underrated thing about wang baoxiang is how utterly pathetic he is. intentionally provokes his brother every time they interact because having esen be mad at him for something he did on purpose is easier than being vulnerable and then is like how could esen think i hate him :(( goes around rolling his eyes at all these Idiots who don't consider the Needs of the Common Folk and then gets grossed out whenever a servant dares to speak to him. constantly thinking about Hot Men Exercising and how much they all want to fuck each other probably. hasn't emotionally matured past the age of fifteen (he is twenty-three). thinks of himself as a Character instead of a person so much that he gets surprised whenever the things he did for their narrative significance have actual real consequences. while being quite literally haunted by a specter of his own guilt is like hm what could this mean. well time to not sleep for another 36 hours. kills people and then throws up about it and then goes off to kill more people because surely this is the one that will fix everything right. wants to be punished for what he's done because it's the closest he can get to admitting he feels remorse. looks for his brother everywhere but only ever finds himself.
which of course culminates with him stalking miserably through the hallways looking for someone to be mad at because there needs to be someone else responsible for making his life suck but there isn't anymore because no one has power over him anymore. and he can't go back but tries to convince himself that he doesn't want to because he also needs to see himself as being In Control of Everything That's Ever Happened to Him. he wanted it all along and he likes it here actually. and he won fratricide chicken and got himself tortured and tried to show mercy and did every evil dishonorable thing and now he just has to live with it all forever. loser!!!!
So, first off, this is not an attempt to kink shame (dubcon and noncon are great!) but I do keep seeing a thing in fics (I do NOT see this irl in kink spaces nearly as often) where like. A character will interrupt the flow of the scene to check consent
And I don't mean in an "are we still green?" Or "what's your color?" kind of way, but I mean. The author has tagged the fic and indicated via prose and/or author notes that they are doing their Due Diligence to make sure this fic is Righteously Consensual from top to bottom, No Question About It
And a character will ask for full sexual consent either directly or indirectly or renegotiate the boundaries of the kinks being practiced AFTER the sex acts have already begun.
Here's the thing: horny brain isn't great at making decisions! irl in kink spaces, there's often a lot of emphasis on negotiating BEFORE the scene begins, perhaps even with a space between negotiation and the scene if it's with a new/unfamiliar partner (maybe it's a few minutes while things are set up, maybe the partners negotiate a day or more in advance! It depends!), and not changing the parameters of the scene after someone is already horny or god forbid already in subspace.
Again, these are perfectly fine rules to break in fiction, when the author is aware of it (most characters are not going to be fully familiar with safe, sane, consensual practices and the traffic light system, nor would we want them to be!) but I'm increasingly finding fics where the author DOESN'T seem aware, which takes a normal fic (in-character, with reasonable but perhaps even somewhat dubious practices, which the author isn't emphasizing or preaching about) into Red Flag Territory (a character, OOC, yanking me out of the scene to behave like a PSA about consent instead of conforming to the horny tone of the scene, and perpetuating unsafe practices anyway)
If you are writing a master manipulator or someone who wants to have a gotcha, you totally said it was okay on a character they are trying to bone (which is well in the realm of non/dubcon) that's fine! This PSA is not aimed at you. But if you are trying to write someone who Cares Strongly About Consent, then perhaps be more aware of when is an appropriate time to escalate the situation (sexually speaking) or ask for consent!
Tress scratched the best itch for me, I’ve been craving a good fairy tale and it was just perfect. I kept slipping so hard into the fairy tale aspects that I kept getting caught by surprise whenever a cosmere thing stopped beating around the bush and revealed itself, actually. While I’m sure that wasn’t fully the intention, it was a really fun way to read some brandermansanderman coming fresh off of sunlit man and how intensely locked in I was with the Connections. Genuinely Tress is such a fun little romp. I love girls who sail in fucked up seas and this is a genre I want more of please thank you.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I absolutely love the recs you've given (you've introduced me to tomione, and I love it!) and I was wondering if it's possible to give you some recs in return? There are some books and fics that definitely have dramione / got vibes, and I was wondering if I could share them with you!
So glad you've enjoyed them! Feel free to rec me anything you want. I've read most of the classic recs in terms of fic and adjacent content (Cruel Prince et al), but I'll try anything that's well-written. My tastes run towards weird and/or audaciously creative stuff, and I can forgive a lot of weaknesses in plot on the grounds of (1) ambition or (2) character work. My turnoffs are instalove, protagonists who can't fail, and most Y/A (I'm not a hater, I swear, I just need characters who can say "fuck" when their leg gets chopped off.)
I'm also a fan of weird and fucked-up dynamics.(Wuthering Heights was my favorite book for a while, and as a teenager I wrote an AU in which the book ends on a long sex scene where Heathcliff fucks Cathy's ghost and then immediately gets murdered by Catherine 2.) Obviously, I am very normal.
sequel to this ramble cause the way james talks bout the reduced cherik scenes throughout the xmen films in this video is making me want to kill people. 'we'll always have paris darling' what if we all blew up.
Okay someone who knows more about dnd than I do help me sort out princess tutu rpg classes. My thoughts so far:
Tbh I could see Duck as either a bard or a cleric. Bard for nonviolent approaches to conflict and a dance focus. That said I could totally see her as a cleric, she’d make a natural fit as the healer of the party and princess tutu could be her deity.
Ok so Fakir has to multiclass in like the most inefficient way right? Starts as a low hp high dps melee fighter and eventually makes the transition to a magic user class (warlock perhaps?? Wizard of some sort?). It’s kind of funny to imagine him as guy who desperately needs a high wis/int but keeps dumping all his stats into strength out of sheer stubbornness. I mean he doesn’t HAVE to switch classes but I think it makes the most sense, he starts in a class that he’s really not suited for and has to transition to what’s best for him even if he’s not happy about it.
Mytho is a natural fit for a paladin tank (though I’d listen to an argument for cleric). He’s throwing himself in the way to protect all the members of the party with no regards to his own safety. Probably dies a lot.
Rue I’m most undecided on. I could see her as a magic using class like Druid (preferred form is a crow) or warlock (makes a pact with the Raven) or even a bard who uses her persuasion to start drama. In a totally different direction, I could also see her as a rogue just to balance out the party; she’s clever, resourceful, nimble, etc.
PLS GIVE ME YOUR THOUGHTS IVE BEEN ARGUING WITH MYSELF ABOUT THIS FOR AGES
on the topic of kevin smoking weed…what do you think his first time was like. do you think he got scared or do you think it completely mellowed him out for once?
HE GOT SCARED 🏃🏽🏃🏽🏃🏽🏃🏽🏃🏽 i think kevins first time smoking weed was in the nest because they were college aged after all and breaking the master’s rules is survival at one point or another. i don’t think riko was involved (imagine that) and that made kevin’s paranoia skyrocket, so when he does smoke he gets really afraid and anxious and it’s a total vibe killer. i can see kevin and jean smoking in the nest and immediately fucking like rabbits about it though
his Second time he does mellow out. the second time is with the monsters and andrew’s close supervision so when kevin does smoke he is well fed and hydrated and lying comfortably which makes the experience much better even if their weed is considerably cheaper. i dont think he does much then!!! nothing besides giggling at the ceiling and lying his head on andrew’s or nicky’s laps. for some reason i can see him trying to teach the monsters japanese nursery rhymes and accidentally making them all have children’s songs stuck in their heads for weeks
the REAL deal is when neil joins them though. neil’s overall anti drug behavior is very quickly put to test by a high as balls kevin day performing every increasingly ridiculous exy trick neil can come up with on court. an eye opener experience for neil