#ic relevant

[the-expatriate]

((A VERY NICE FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT PARI LEGIT DANCES LIKE THIS.))

[If the link doesn't work, search for mannequin head dances to Boys by Britney Spears.]

[uruwashi-no-nightingale]

update was literally devastating

[fandom-trash-goblin]

IN DEFENSE OF RHAENA TARGARYEN, DAUGHTER OF AENYS I

Molly McCully Brown, from Places I've Taken my Body: Essays // Portrait Of A Young Beauty by Moritz Stifter // Fire & Blood, Jaehaerys and Alysanne - Their Triumphs and Tragedies.

lyanna stark || elia martell || sansa stark || arya stark || alicent hightower || jaehaera targaryen || cersei lannister || myrcella baratheon || joanna lannister || aemma arryn || catelyn stark || sansa stark (2) || margaery tyrell || rhaena targaryen, daughter of aenys i || arianne martell || aerea targaryen || obara sand || nymeria sand

[blueberryspyder]

Listening to Rusty Quill Gaming holiday episodes has me like

I’ve gotten into some niche shit before, but this? This is a bit much even for me

[13eyond13]

Ever just stop and think about anime!Matt for a sec. Like what even was that lol. I don't think he is ever officially introduced as a character, nor his presence ever explained. His name is not even mentioned by anybody until he's already dead, and he doesn't even get to do any of the handful of things he did in the manga onscreen to help out. From what I remember he literally just sits by Mello silently playing a video game, drives a car dramatically for a few seconds, then promptly gets turned into swiss cheese and dies in a completely slapstick Looney Tunes way. Absolute icon of a guy tbh

[writeouswriter]

Girl, help, the book authors are trying too hard to be "hip" with the fleeting "teen lingo" and trends again, immediately dating their works before they're even released

[fromtheseventhhell]

Renly had seemed anxious to know if the girl reminded him of anyone, and when Ned had no answer but a shrug, he had seemed disappointed. The maid was Loras Tyrell's sister Margaery, he'd confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna. "No," Ned had told him, bemused. (Eddard VI, AGOT)

This is literally people in fandom trying to make shallow connections between Lyanna and [X character] and presenting them as equally important as parallels drawn directly in the text. In fact, this coming after Ned tells Arya she reminds him of Lyanna (in looks and behavior) feels like George cementing the importance of their likeness. Other characters might have passing similarities to Lyanna, but Arya's parallels are much more meaningful than that and are being highlighted for a reason.

[mrmallard]

Also just as a PS, when I made my post about the Kendrick/Drake beef last week, like five or six people jumped on it to accuse Kendrick Lamar of being antisemitic for calling Drake a colonizer - because Drake is half-Jewish, he's apparently been very clear about his Jewish roots and he's the most prominent Jewish rapper in the game, and Kendrick calling him a colonizer is him denying Jewish people from yet another avenue of culture that they exist in and which they deserve to have a place in via the use of antisemitic dogwhistling.

And I couldn't bring myself to poke at the wound and stretch it into an argument, because frankly I just wanted to revel in the way that Drake himself was getting battered during the beef due to his years of rampant misogyny and general dickishness. I've said it before and I'll say it again; I don't like Drake, and I haven't liked Drake for the past ten years for his lacking musical output and general shittiness as a person. His culture and roots have nothing to do with that - and honest to god, I had no idea he had Jewish heritage until these charges came up. My investment in hating Drake is that he's just generally a massive dickhead who represents himself very poorly, as as long as I've seen him in the public eye, that's exactly how he's carried himself as a person.

But what I will say to that specific charge of antisemitism against Kendrick is that the bars about Drake being a colonizer are a direct reference to insults Drake made about the music that Kendrick makes, and him saying that Kendrick's activism is performative (Always rappin' like you 'bout to get the slaves freed / You just actin' like an activist, it's make-believe / Don't even go back to your hood and plant no money trees). Everything Kendrick says is a direct refutation of this argument brought forward by Drake.

Side-stepping the fact that the lattermost accusation has been debunked, Kendrick responded in Not Like Us by intentionally going into a brief discussion about Atlanta's role in the slave trade - playing into Drake's criticism that he raps about slavery and makes music with the intention of making a socially conscious point - and making a point of saying that a handful of people profited off of the townspeople to make their money selling human beings - all to jump into a criticism of Drake's presence in the Atlanta rap game, flying in from Toronto and acting as a figurehead of the scene who got the co-sign from half a dozen other rappers - the "townspeople" in this analogy - to legitimise himself and appear authentic enough to run the scene and benefit from his image.

Kendrick calls Drake a colonizer in the sense that he is an outsider to the Atlanta scene who - loosely paraphrased from the actual song - got the co-sign from Future when he wasn't cutting it by himself, who got the lingo from Lil Baby, who generally got by from being hyped up by - and legitimised from - the aggrandization from other rappers like 21 Savage, Quavo, Young Thug and 2 Chainz who claimed him as an Atlanta native.

Drake being a colonizer in the context of the song is steeped in so many relevant factors to the songs preceding Not Like Us, to factors in Drake's career and his place in the rap game, that ANYBODY LISTENING TO THE SONGS and paying attention to the words could piece together the point of Kendrick's criticism of Drake as a colonizer.

And people decided that it must have been an antisemitic slur at the height of people's criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestine, because he's calling a man with Jewish heritage a colonizer. Throwing out all that context to go "actually Kendrick Lamar is trying to dogwhistle to bigots and other antisemites to reject Drake on the basis of his Jewish heritage".

When the charges against Drake are:

Being a sexual predator

Enabling child abusers and sexual predators in his immediate sphere of influence

Being a misogynist

Engaging in the trafficking and exploitation of women

Being a culture vulture who moved to a new place, picked up the culture and lingo and whose character in the rap game is performative and inauthentic while he pushes out other rappers coming up in the same scene by throwing his weight around

But that last point became boiled down to "calling a Jewish man 'colonizer' is an intentional antisemitic dogwhistle by Kendrick to discredit a Jewish man in the rap scene based on his heritage", instead of the CLEARLY DOCUMENTED REASONS KENDRICK WAS COMPARING DRAKE'S BEHAVIOR TO COLONIZATION. Instead of seeing the jab as a CLEAR RESPONSE to Drake criticizing Kendrick's music and activism as Kendrick "rapping like he's about to free the slaves", and explicitly criticizing Drake's personal actions over the course of his entire career in the music industry.

And I think of that whenever I see a post that's asking people to consider a whole world outside of the current pop scene, addressing people who are commenting on the Kendrick/Drake beef as people who talk non-stop about Taylor Swift being a Secret Queer Icon and about how they think Harry Styles is actually wearing a toupee. Trying to get through to people who don't actually care or know anything about what's happening or what's being said about the situation, except to go "slay 💅💅💅💅💅 #whitegirlwednesdays" or whatever the fuck. Because if I ran into people who didn't give a donkey's dick about the context behind Kendrick criticizing Drake's actions in the rap game and choosing to characterise Kendrick as a bigot and antisemite for his criticisms, I can't fucking IMAGINE how badly it's going in other corners of the internet.

[askshinyglaceon]

What do you mean by ‘the Cycle’?

Oh… Geez. Okay. You’re honestly better off reading a book than asking me, but.

If you’ve heard of “the circle of life”, that’s essentially what it means.

Everything in this world lives and dies and lives again, and the different ‘phases of life’ are named after the four seasons.

There’s spirits, like Shaymin and Xerneas, that are more obvious and direct manifestations of those concepts— but everyone is a part of it. Temporary and always moving.

We like to put a lot of emphasis on all that. I know that other dimensions have entire pantheons of gods, with Arceus being the Creator, but our Arceus is The Cycle.

Not… a physical deity, but everything that is. And everything— everyone— is Arceus. So… I’m Arceus, this grass is Arceus, a Magikarp is Arceus; all of the Cycle is Arceus, and Arceus is all of us.

Our world is something divine experiencing existence in a million different forms all at once. Rather than, say, an architect that built a city and all its people. Or something.

This is getting away from me— Just imagine that Arceus is a giant tree, and spirits like myself and Ho-oh are its branches, and everything else is the… leaves…? Sure. And the tree blossoms, and turns green, and loses its leaves, which feed the roots, and so on for eternity.

Sheesh. I’ve said ‘Arceus’ way too much. Anyway, that’s the abstract answer.

It’s also the catch-all term for all of the major factions that sprung up around the different phases and spirits in the Cycle. Most people here (as in, This Universe) align themselves with one of them. They’re like covens, if you care about Witch and Wizard politics.

Each “court” is like… The ‘state of being’ for each phase in the Cycle; a rest. Beginnings, Middles, Endings, Renewal. Central Court encompasses Everything.

And each “gate” is meant to be the transition between two phases; the action. Birth, Life, Death, Spirit.

So… If that made any sense at all, congratulations. You pass. It’s way too late for any of this, frankly— Yawn.

[the-expatriate]

Don't mind Pari, she's just playing this.

[ride-thedragon]

NETTLES DISCOURSE.

I didn't think there were so many active opinions on Nettles, so now I'm curious. There is a dynamic between teams when it comes to this, so I'm gonna ask.

[ask-meowscarada]

Blackjack: "...Hey, Char. D-do you have a minute?"

One explanation later...

Blackjack: “I don’t—I don’t—I don’t know what a crush is supposed to feel like. I’ve never had a crush on anyone before.”

Charade: “Never ever?”

Blackjack: “Never ever. I-I’ve never even been in any kind of relationship. Obviously you have, though. What… What’s it like?”

Charade: “Hmm… For me, when I like somebody, the next step is finding out if we’re… este, how’s it called… Compatible! Compatible. I’d like to have a long-term girlfriend eventually, so for me, dating someone is about making sure we agree on important things, and communicating well.”

Blackjack: “Tricky’s parents should’ve done that.”

Charade: “It’s okay to want something casual too, though! Let me ask you this: can you picture you and Tricky being together for a really long time? How would you feel if he started dating someone else?”

Blackjack: “That—that’s the thing. We’ve been through everything together. I really can’t imagine a future without him. But… You know? I don’t feel jealous or anything, thinking about him dating someone else. If anything, I’d be happy for him, if it worked out!”

Blackjack: “I’ve tried asking myself. Could I see us getting married? Raising a kid together? Sharing a bed? But there are a lot of couples who don’t do any of those things, so, that’s not a reliable way of knowing…”

Blackjack: “…Hey, Char. Is it alright if I ask you something personal?"

Charade: “Do it.”

Blackjack: “When you and Riddle were dating… What made you realize you weren’t "into" him?”

Charade: “Hm. So what happened was—when I was in training, my superiors would tell me, that I was going to find a man and that we should have kids. Gross, right?”

Charade: “When I met Riddle, we became friends very quickly. And I think... We thought we were supposed to be dating, because we thought that’s what boys and girls do when they like each other.”

Charade: “And! He was really fun to be with! He still is. I love his ideas, and hearing about how he sees the world. He did make me really happy.”

Charade: “But eventually, I started feeling… like there was something missing. Like I should have been feeling something that wasn’t there. We never even kissed, because I thought I would only want to after being together for a while... But it never happened.”

Charade: “Much later on, when I met my first girlfriend, I finally felt all those things that I didn’t with Riddle. I do love him; he’s my best friend. And our relationship is still important! Important relationships don’t always have to be romantic.”

Blackjack: “N-no, of course not. And I appreciate you telling me all that."

Charade: “Always! You’re my best friend, too, you know.”

Blackjack: “Going back a moment, here… What did you mean when you said you felt like something was missing?”

Charade: “I don’t know if I could explain it better. You should try asking someone who is asexual.”

Blackjack: “Asexual? …I-I’ve—somehow, I’ve never heard that term.”

Charade: “Well! Now you know where to start.”

[kamirui-archive]

this is about where i'm getting to be emotionally i won't lie to you all!

[spark-circuit]

so for those wondering if that cake book template for the Club Penguin character actually works...

I can confirm it does! With spectacular results!!! I'm sure Gary would be pleased to know, haha 👍

(tagging @halloweenscarf since they were curious to know! ^^)

[pixiecactus]

do you even know that i'm willing to break down any door, bleed on every floor just to get to you?

[kaialone]

Thinking about the fact that A.B.A's creator (I wanna call him Dr. Paracelsus to differentiate him from key Paracelsus) could very well still be alive out there somewhere, cause he wasn't said to have been killed, he was just taken by a military organization (?!) for his skills-

And while I don't think they ever confirmed a connection, it feels like almost too obvious that he'd be in some way tied to the creation of Frasco II, given that it's called Frasco II

I need to know more