#i care less and less about losing people by the day... i don't derive much happiness from feeling loved by other people anymore

[charmtale]

the benefit of someone treating you like shit is that it can push you to realize what you really want out of life. i think we're here to experience so many people and places and things and more than anything, joy. i don't think we exist here on this giant earth to curl up in one not-too-horrible corner with not-too-horrible people and live our lives exactly how we think they want us to so that we can stay 'secure'. at least i'm not

[trivalentlinks]

🔥 - i'd like to order an unpopular opinion on leverage, please!

Sorry for the very, very late answer, but to make up for it, have two unpopular opinions:

The first one's a bit of a cop-out. I think it's the less popular opinion, but probably because most don't care that much either way:

I head-canon that Damien Moreau is actually a banker/financier, ie, his primary source of income is actually derivatives investments and market prediction, and all the buying countries, arms deals and other such clandestine activities is just to give markets slight pushes in the direction he wants. (I've previous talked about this here (my last reblog addition))

This opinion seems "unpopular" in that the more common reading is that he's a mob boss who just calls himself a 'banker' to make himself sound cooler than he actually is. Which I think is a totally valid reading, consistent with what we are shown in canon! Like, he's all about image, and it's totally believable that the entire financier/banker persona is just that.

One reason I prefer the actually-a-banker reading is, as I described in the other post, because I like the parallel with team leverage and their "alternative revenue stream". This is also why I like to head-canon that when Eliot and Moreau were starting out (after Eliot met Toby and left the PMCs with his newfound conscience), before things got bad, they actually did good--only destabilizing horrible, abusive dictatorships, using their alternative revenue stream to help people. The parallels are just so compelling to me this way.

Another reason I prefer the actually-a-banker reading is that it's more relatable to me. I know people who work as financiers (hedge fund/high frequency trading/crypto firm founders or high-level quants etc).

None of them (that I know of) would actually do illegal things to manipulate prices, but it sometimes seems like if they were a little less risk-averse, a little less ethical, who knows? And when they tell me about the people they know, people they describe as "if you took a person's stats and dialled 'ethics' all the way down to zero"... These friends think anyone too stupid to see through a cryptocurrency white paper deserves to lose their life's savings. So when they say someone has ethics dialled to zero, well. You don't wanna know.

On the other hand, I don't know anyone who's anywhere close to being a mob boss.

-

Here's a more genuinely unpopular opinion, in that I think most people believe the opposite, and actually do care:

I really like Jimmy Ford. I find the character very relatable and very compelling. I feel like a lot of people in the fandom just write him off as a bad father, but I don't think that's fair.

I talked a lot about this here (skip past the "..." paragraph; above that were my old early thoughts about Moreau, before I reformulated them to be my current thoughts)

As I mentioned there, I see in Jimmy Ford every parent who didn't understand their kid, but loved them, and as Jimmy said to Nate, that's more important.

Every parent who grew up at a different time, in another country, in a harder, less forgiving world, who wants to ensure their kid can survive that old environment, without realizing that that isn't the kid's world anymore, that their kid is actually thriving in this new world, the one their parents sacrificed to raise them in

Every parent who flipped out when their son decided to major in sociology instead of computer engineering, because they could never have made a living with a degree like that

(but he's going to do more than make a living with that degree; he's going to make a difference)

Every parent who constantly monitors their daughter to ensure she waits for marriage, because in the old country she would have been shunned or worse if she didn't

(but she's not there right? her parents worked and sacrificed and bled to bring her up in this more forgiving world)

Every parent who sits next to their kid for hours a day until they get their daily hour of piano practice done (and yells at them until they do every day, disturbing their neighbour, who's just trying to focus on doing her research and grading her students' papers, not that this is personal or anything), because the parent managed to survive and to move to this country by working relentlessly at everything they did and can't imagine a world where a 7-year-old is allowed to play and to find their own interests

(but they will, maybe not then, but one day, years down the line, they may even end up liking music)

Maybe it's that I'm a kid of immigrants who knows a lot of kids of immigrants, but I think I'm more forgiving of people who raised their children in a culture different from their own and struggled to adjust to that.

[vidavalor]

Sam's introversion and Tony's funeral SamBucky headcanon

I think there might be enough in the canon to go with the idea that Sam is an introvert. For people reading this who might think that being an introvert means being shy and therefore Sam can't be one, a super-short clarification: Introverts aren't all shy and they don't all dislike people. Many are actually very highly sensitive, empathetic people (like Sam) who care very deeply about others and the world. The difference between an introvert and an extrovert is related to from where they derive energy. Extroverts thrive on social interaction-- being with other people gives them extra energy. Introverts are the opposite of that. They like being with people but can't do it forever as it takes a lot of their energy, leaving them tired. They need more time alone to recharge after social interactions. Halfway between this are the ambiverts, who are a bit of both. (I'd classify Bucky as an ambivert.)

Sam leaves a party at like 9:30 in Age of Ultron and is seen needing to take a break alone as the cookout wrapped up in TFATWS. That and his general sense of having fewer but deeper friendships and being a quieter, private person really lend themselves to the idea that he's introverted. (Another reason why becoming Captain America with that elevated profile is a very stressful decision for him.) Introverts, by and large, do best in social settings where they either pretty much know everybody and so there's less stress (why Sam was more comfortable at the cookout than, say, the Avengers party) or where they're in smaller groups or one-on-one, where social interactions become less draining. Where I'm going with this is that Tony Stark's funeral would have been kind of a nightmare scenario for Sam if Bucky wasn't there.

The two people in the group that Sam knows the best and is the most comfortable with would have been Steve and Rhodey but both of them were very close to Tony and would have been spending more time in the family group with Pepper and things during the funeral than with Sam. Wanda has a tendency to drift between Sam and Clint and is closer to Clint. Sam has met basically everyone at the funeral and can make small talk and all that but he probably realized ahead of time that he was going to wind up feeling on his own there while the other little Avenger mini-families all kind of did their own thing. This, after just returning from being dead for five years and after losing another friend in Natasha, whose absence he'd really feel in this setting. I think Sam looked at this upcoming social interaction like all introverts do and he felt he definitely needed to go to be supportive of Steve and respectful to Tony's memory but he was dreading it and nervous.

This is how Bucky ended up going to the funeral.

I think that, originally, Bucky had no plans to go and literally everyone was fine with that. While everyone is nice enough to him and doesn't exactly blame him for killing Tony's parents and everyone would have said it was fine for him to go to the funeral, I'm sure that if he hadn't, no one would have been exactly heartbroken. It also probably wasn't going to be the easiest thing for Steve. So, how did Bucky end up at this thing?

The funeral took place a few days after the battle and, if Bucky had been planning on going, I think he would have figured out a suit, as he'd be looking to ruffle the fewest feathers possible and it's the more respectful option but, like others have pointed out a lot since Endgame, it seems like he was a last minute addition to the funeral. What changed his mind? Sam.

Bucky had thought Sam would be fine because he knows the people there. Bucky knows Sam and Rhodey are friends and Steve was going and while he's very aware of Sam's introversion, he didn't foresee a problem at the funeral over it. When Sam was seeming nervous the morning of, though? Bucky, who hadn't really interacted with this group as a whole that much and so hadn't realized the dynamics meant that Sam was feeling like he was going to feel alone at this thing, saw Sam nervous and offered to go with him.

Sam tried to say no, Bucky didn't have to put himself through that for him but Bucky went anyway because he could tell Sam was uncomfortable and he'd do anything for Sam, even spend the afternoon looking at the doe-eyed moppet whose grandparents she'll never know because he murdered them, if it gives Sam someone to hit the sandwich buffet with.

They hang with Wanda a bit. Bucky barely knows her but they have a soft spot for one another. Bucky owes her a life debt from Civil War and Wanda sees Bucky as like her-- someone whose actions kind of fucked everything up so badly that entire movies were made around how bad they were lol. Wanda's closer to Clint, though, and mostly Sam and Bucky were on their own that afternoon and if Sam didn't love Bucky before that (he did), he sure as hell fell all over again at the man willing to drop everything and go through something difficult and painful for him to keep Sam from being alone.

[mutatismutandisx]

Shadow and Bone (Netflix Series Review)

No Spoilers!!!

"Be careful of powerful men" - Genya Safin

Welcome to the Grishaverse!

Shadow and Bone is Netflix's big gamble for young adult fiction mega-success, the kind we haven't seen since Jennifer Lawrence volunteered as tribute almost a decade ago, adapting Leigh Bardugo's popular Grishaverse novels (her debut trilogy Shadow and Bone and serving as a prequel for the Six of Crows duology), anchored by an incredibly diverse cast (mostly newcomers) and a huge production budget, showrunner Eric Heisserer, alongside Bardugo who serves as an executive producer, aim for Hunger Games and Harry Potter level phenomenon with their own fantasy epic.

To Heisserer's credit, he manages a great adaptation of Bardugo's novels, even if he falls prey to the same story tropes that made Bardugo's debut novels seem so derivative, Heisserer brings the Grishaverse to life in a (mostly) successful run of 8 episodes, and even if his grand tour of Ravka isn't the most organized or well planned, most viewers will still fall in love with this world.

Heisserer's boldest creative choice, and biggest deviation from the novels, is the introduction of Kaz Brekker and his Crows, Jesper and Inej, in this opening chapter to the story, characters that did not appear in Bardugo's original Shadow and Bone trilogy. Creatively and business-wise, his decision is an obvious one, Bardugo's Shadow and Bone novels, while a solid debut, are the typical young adult fodder that is bombarded to consumers every year, a largely derivative yet charming "chosen one" story that teens and tweens eat up every year and then mostly forget about when the next one comes around (less Percy Jacson and more Divergent if you will), truth be told Bardugo's Grishaverse only became a phenomenon after the release of her superb Six of Crows duology, featuring Bardugo's very own Suicide Squad, a ragtag group of crimials performing incredible, mind-bending heists in the tough streets of a fictional Amsterdam (and beyond!), all anchored by what is (to this day) Bardugo's best creation: Kaz Brekker, a Batman-meets-The Riddler machiavelic genius with a flair for theatrics, Six of Crows and it's follow-up Crooked Kingdom are surely the main reason Netflix even greenlit this series to begin with. And just like in the books, Brekker and his Crows provide a much needed bolt of manic energy to an otherwise very by-the-numbers storyline. Not to discredit Bardugo's talent as a writer, but her skills had simply not been honed at the time of her 2012 debut, a shortcoming that Bardugo would fix later on, in her follow up novels, through ambition and sheer force of will.

And yet, Heisserer stays extremely faithful to the books, whether it's to Bardugo's best ideas or her least creative ones, he adapts it all, while attempting to add his own flair into the mix (with varying results), take our main protagonist for example, Alina Starkov, to those unfamiliar with the novels, Alina is the Katniss Everdeen of this story, a mostly ordinary young woman who, by a struck of destiny, finds herself thrust into the spotlight in the hero/savior-of-her-people role (a most unflattering one might I add), and thus becomes an unwilling symbol to a cause she hardly understands, saddled with all the responsabilities and power that comes with the job, and with the inevitable political players and adversaries that may take advantage of her power for their own gain ("Be careful of powerful men" one of Alina's confidants warns her in episode 5). And did I mention she happens to find herself in the middle of a love triangle? Indeed Bardugo's original novel isn't the most creative, and yet Heisserer doesn't have much to offer as a way to reinvent the character, the best he can come up with is changing Alina's ethnicity (originally caucasian) to that of the fictional Shu Han people (read: China), and yet, nothing is really done with the change, it just sits there, (similarly to Alina everytime a background character hurls xenophobic abuse at her), it's not explored and hardly touched upon, which begs the question why introduce the change in the first place? While I commend the showrunners for casting a female lead of asian descent on a blockbuster property such as this, I would remind them that true diversity is more than simply ethnic tokenism. Perhaps there will be a bigger payoff for the creative change in future seasons (if we get them, season 2 has not been greenlit), doubtfull but I'll remain optimistic.

Tokenism aside, the diversity of the cast truly is commendable, and as expected with a young adult property, it's a very young and very attractive cast, on the one hand it's understandable, they need to appeal to their core demographic, on the other hand they commit themselves to one of the most glaring faults in Bardugo's Grishaverse series, Ravka doesn't seem to have soldiers, politicians or grisha over the age of 25, it seems like a huge oversight on part of a country (and Leigh Bardugo) to have the entire power of the government and the military reside upon a group of teenagers, but be that as it may, most of the cast, while young, is very talented, even if their characters aren't fully developed, they do their best with what they are given, some of the standouts are Jessie Mei Li as Alina, Mei Li is saddled with a character and plot that's as derivative as they come, and yet she finds nuances in her perfomance that are lovely to watch, she brings a sense of joy and determination to Alina that lesser actors couldn't even imagine much less portray, all that helps her stand out from most, if not all, the crowd of chosen one characters that have come before her, and even tho Mei Li doesn't reach Jennifer Lawrence levels with her performance, she certainly surpasses the Kristen Stewarts and Shailene Woodleys that have come before.

Ben Barnes is a surprise as General Kirigan, at first glance you might think him miscast (too young, too pretty to be believed as a stone cold, battle hardened general) and yet he still manages to make the character his own, a possessive, demanding, controlling, master manipulator who always seems to have the upper hand, Barnes is blessed with a tight script and he never misses a beat giving a subtle and nuanced performance. And then there is Kit Young as Jesper Fahey, sharpshooter, playboy, criminal with a heart of gold, Young is a revelation, he is as good in his role as Robert Downey Jr. is as Tony Stark, and that's all you need to know, Young was simply born to play Jesper, anchored by a strong script, he steals every scene he is in and far overshadows his fellow Crows. And as for the other Crows, Freddy Carter acts his heart out as Kaz Brekker, committing to a very physical performance, from scowl to limp, he embodies Brekker visually, but after the first 2 episodes you get the feeling the writers simply don't know what to do with his character, losing the spotlight to other actors blessed with better material, never did I think Kaz Brekker would be overshadowed by one of his fellow Crows, yet here we are. Carter's talent still shines through and his perpetual, omnipresent scowl as Brekker is a beauty to behold, even if his limping is somewhat inconsistent, which makes me hopeful he will improve when given more to do, still it's a shame to have the master strategist/evil genius Bruce Wayne replaced by a lowly con artist and not a very successful one at that. As for Amita Suman, while perfectly cast as Inej Ghafa, her character is severely underwritten, from her past work in The Menagerie, to her faith, to her interactions with Brekker, it's all done in the broadest of strokes, Suman isn't given much to do and therefore doesn't have the opportunity to excel as The Wraith.

You can feel the writers straining for time between developing this world and the large cast of characters they have to work with, inevitably some characters fall of the wayside, through none of the actors' fault. Daisy Head as Genya Safin is all untapped potential, even more underwritten here than she is in the books, which make later revelations about her character (the color of her kefta and shifting allegiances) barely register, hopefully they correct that going forward. Sujaya Dasgupta is another victim of a weak script and little screen time, Dasgupta is simply miscast as the powerful, acerbic, steely-eyed Zoya Nazyalensky, long gone is the regal, no nonsense, silver-tongued Grisha general, in Dasgupta's hands Zoya is just a watered down Grisha version of a Mean Girl, faltering every scene with the exception of one moment, as she makes her way through party goers at the Little Palace and she corrects Inej's ethnicity to a bystander, (her one good line reading in the entire show) "She's Suli", she declares, with all the strenght and defiance that's sorely missing from the rest of her performance, moving forward let's hope a stronger script can lift her performace off the ground, because right now all the wind is gone from this Squaller's wings. And as for Malyen Oretsev played by Archie Renaux, he is the Gale Hawthorne of this story, the undignified love interest, and Renaux is as boring in his role as Liam Hemsworth was in his.

Lastly, Danielle Galligan as Nina Zenik and Calahan Skogman as Matthias Helvar, are equally terrible in their performances, from their accents to their interactions, none of it rings true, and it's particularly jarring when juxtaposed with the talent portrayed by the rest of the cast, we spent way too much time with Nina and Matthias, for absolutely no payoff to their story (yet! Fans will recognize them as 2 future members of Brekker's murder of Crows), but their little side adventure is so disconnected with the events of the main plot that I can't help but feel their story was better reserved for another time, hopefully with some better actors playing the roles. A lovely moment of playfulness between Nina and Matthias while they tread along in a barren, snowy hill, is the only glimpse of hope for Galligan's and Skogman's performances, maybe there is talent to be tapped but it certainly wasn't in display this time around.

The Grishaverse is simply too large and complex, so understandably Heisserer and his writers room have a lot on their plate, but while the character work is largely uneven, his world building is quite solid, based on the impressive foundation Bardugo set out for them, the showrunners are able to bring the world of Ravka to life, the costume design is stunning, from soldiers to Grishas, to royals and diplomats, the costume department does a fabulous job with every piece and every character, one of the high points in the series.

The VFX team also does a lot of the heavy lifting for Heisserer's world building efforts, realizing the different power sets of all the Grisha in a fantastical manner while still maintaining a realistic quality to them, ("you'll believe a man can fly"), but even with a huge production budget, Heisserer strains with this world-spanning adventure, so even though the set and production design is mostly impressive, some sets simply fall out of range for the show's budget, case in point, both Ravka's Royal Palace and the Little Palace are not fully realized, viewers are given a single outside shot of the Royal Palace (and from very far away at that) and the throne room is only visited once, and as for the Little Palace, it's stripped from many of the books most sprawling details, the training grounds, the Grisha school, the fabrikators workshop, the dining room, the palace's towers, all falling victim to obvious budget restrains. Not to mention both palaces are devoid of the classic Russian influences that permeate Ravka's world.

But Heisserer's skills for world building show the most limitations on the lore of the Grishaverse, the three Orders of the Grisha are never properly explained, with Fabrikators getting next to none screen time, Heisserer is never capable to establish a clear view of the world these characters inhabit, most viewers will be very confused about Ravka's shifting borders, the civil war tensions between East and West, and the adversary foreign nations (an inclusion of a map in the opening credits of every episode would have gone a long way), the sociopolitical elements that Bardugo has infused in her books are decidedly complex and the show doesn't do them justice, unfortunately. Perhaps most glaring is the very clear disagreements on what a Ravkan's diction and accent should be, since every actor has their own interpretation of it, an oversight that I hope is fixed in future seasons.

As the few completely negative points of the show, alongside Galligan and Skogman, the sound mixing is terrible (you will need subtitles to watch this show) and the cutaway flahbacks are quite sloppy.

To conclude, Shadow and Bone is a lovingly crafted, beautifully realized, world building adventure, it has a couple of missteps along the way (like all adventures do), but the final product is strong enough to overcome some of its creative faux pas, with a solid script and anchored by a (mostly) talented cast, Shadow and Bone doesn't reach Catching Fire levels of greatness but it far outpaces the rest of the young adult fantasy competition.

[trans-advice]

NSFW warning, just a heads-up. Hey, I'm uncertain about being trans and interactions with my downstairs bits, both sexually and non-sexually. I have a penis, and an abnormally large one at that. I'm in a weird situation with that because I don't mind it for dysphoria reasons, but kinda mind it because it gets in the way of everyday life (have to place my hands carefully when walking, randomly getting hard often causes it to poke out of my pants, and general worries about being judged, etc) (1/4)

The thing is, I actually kinda like my penis. I wouldn't want to have any sort of bottom surgery (magically having a vagina added would be nice, but surgery is a bit too much of a hassle and I can't find anything about whether that would necessitate using scrotal tissue, which would be a downside). I'm also somewhat worried about what effect estrogen will have on erections. Sorry if that's answered somewhere in your blog, my parents have things blocked even though I'm basically legal adult (2/4)

There's one more thing I'd like to ask for advice on. So I watch porn, and one of the things that really gets me going is being able to see myself in that situation. The problem with that is that that involves body parts being the same as my ideal body parts, which tends to be stuff with trans women that's targeted heavily at chasers. Is there anything I can do to stop feeling both like a chaser and like the object of a fetish? (don't direct me to other material because I'm 17 so legality) (3/4)

One last thing, I really want to wear leggings but that has some obvious problems. Is there such a thing as leggings that will be accommodating of and not show a penis? Like I said before I'm abnormally large so it'd probably have to be designed for that, google searches have yielded only manly man stuff and leggings with dicks on them, which is not exactly what I was looking for. (4/4)

---

I think you would benefit from wearing a gaffe. It's technically a garment of clothing used for tucking, but it doesn't require as much work that tucking usually requires. There are some diy videos online where you convert underwear into gaffes, and there are readymade ones too.

I don't know about leggings quite honestly. I would try getting a gaffe first & then trying on clothes from there.

As for the porn, and having lived thru a testosterone puberty, a parent of mine who also went thru testosterone puberty recommended only watching tame stuff when starting out due to the problem of Desensitization. So based on that, images are superior to video for purposes of preserving your sensitivity.

That being said, I would recommend also staying away from the porn for awhile & make your own fantasies with your own imagination.

The reason why is because when you get disturbed by plotlines or imagery or whatever in various media items, it is traumatic & it's getting your brain accustomed to rape basically because you're engaging in stuff you don't, didn't, and aren't going to consent to viewing. Don't settle for being raped as a viewer! Use your imagination instead.

Also please wait til you're 18 or older. As an adult I can tell you that such content hits different when you're like the actors could be your age or younger. Like it quickly loses it's glamour when you're able to look at it like a job. Like yeah, alienation of workers is a common experience (sex workers are workers), but you also become aware of how these aren't so much goals & more like media that's written. If you're younger than that then you might think 18 is an age with magical liberation via adulthood or such, but it's not. Like in USA multigenerational households where multiple generations are adults are very common now with the economy, especially for "adults" 18-29. The poverty & exploitation is commonplace to the point where it's a whole genre of political thought in USA these days. Basically adulthood has less to do with age & more to do with money & power, and that contradiction of ways to define adulthood becomes apparent much more clearly when you're at least the age of the adult actors/models you're viewing. So please wait until you're an adult to view such material, at least to age 18.

As for the body horror, while I don't want to get into all my cisheterosexist harassment trauma regarding my own sexuality & my own gender identity, basically my gender identity turned out to be more fundamental than how I was framing my sexuality as something in a cisgender body. You accepting that you are indeed trans will probably save you a lot of toil.

To give you some input about other women's relationships to phallus size, there was literally an ask recently day talking about clitoris lengthening & enlargement, and one of the sources i linked for that was about cis women wanting to grow their clitoris. Therefore, you not caring to change your phallus size isn't wrong because when you have enough people you're bound to not be the only one.

While female physiology has more problems than just phallus size, you can interpolate equivalents by learning how the anatomical parts of sex organs develop prenatally before being made male or woman around week 19. Some other examples are that labia & scrotum derive from the same part. With males there are 2 meatuses that usually fuse into one. Learning about human development like this can actually be quite healing & I suspect it will help you deal with your body.

Also I want to mention that there are cis women who top. Usually they use a device called a strap-on for that purpose. I suspect that information will be helpful to you.

You're 17 right now, so it makes sense that you'd be hesitant to do medical intervention. Regardless of your age, it's your body, and it should be your choice, therefore your decision on that matter is valid.

Regarding vaginoplasty surgeries that build a vagina, while scrotum skin is preferred for constructing labia (due to durability), the surgeon can also take a skin graft from somewhere else on your body. It will vary from surgeon to surgeon. Also for those surgeries, you have to be careful about penile hair growing back & it is a lot of work with dilation afterwards etc, so you are correct about vaginoplasty being a hassle.

There's also orichetomies testes removal surgeries to consider. They are less hassle, about the same recovery as a vasectomy but also irreversible like the vaginoplasties are. Also all of these surgeries will probably require HRT. If I remember correctly though, if you get an orichetomy, then you can use either feminizing or masculinizing HRT, while the other surgeries require feminizing HRT. While this might be helpful for dealing with supply chain problems, it should be noted that anytime you go off hormones or change what hormones you're on, it can create bodily & mental discomfort/irritability. You're basically starting a different puberty everytime you stop & go.

Good Luck, Peace & Love,

Eve