#it's not your job to confront them

[cynicaldesire]

Almost all of the coverage I've seen regarding Polin has been centered around how Colin Learned to See Penelope and how She fell first, He went completely unhinged. All the nice, good, positive things about friends-to-lovers and two people falling in love.

But one thing I haven't seen discussed is Penelope's actions between hearing that he would never court her and his apology.

She thinks after he goes out of his way to save her from her cousin's fake ruby mines and dances with her and "You're special to me, I'll always look out for you" that Colin must've finally come to see her as a romantic option. But then, when confronted by some toxic dudes about their relationship, Colin is like Ew, no, never in your wildest fantasies.

She's been in love with this boy for years at this point and this is the final nail that he, and by extension the rest of the Ton, will never see her as anything other than a joke. She has no respect, she is not viewed as a romantic option, her and her family are a joke. And it was Colin that said it.

This is her final straw. She's hurt and so she hurts him. Either on purpose or in an attempt to protect herself. She never says whether she read his letters, we only hear that she never responded. He said to her before that she is a constant in his life, that she would never forsake him, and she does just that. Because he did it first (without knowing). She withholds her friendship and affection because he doesn't want to court her.

Sounds a lot like a certain subset of men. Men who befriend women and are nice with the expectation of sex. (I don't truly believe this, but it was brought to my attention in this way.)

She withholds her letters, the one thing that he looks forward to on those trips, because he unknowingly hurt her. Cutting him off from her affection is what causes him to realize some measure of his feelings for her, so it ends up working in her favor, but it's still an abusive move.

It does help her find the strength to finally confront him about his behavior last season, which is the communication they needed to move forward. But it is in her anger and giving up that she is able to find the strength to even remotely touch on her feelings for him, and his feelings for her.

[stabbyfoxandrew]

oh my god my parents almost fell for a facebook scam.

someone they know posted that they were selling a car and my parents asked me to help them send a down payment over paypal.

thank GOD they asked me instead of just trying to do it themselves.

[wellthatschaotic]

coworker (derogatory)

[thevalleyisjolly]

I am nothing if not a backseat writer and I find it somewhat repetitive to continuously defeat the villain through "They were so afraid of my reputation that they just turned and ran" so I'm choosing to believe that the real reason the Vashta Nerada let the Doctor pull off his plan is because they recognized that the planet was about to self-destruct, taking them along with it, and the Doctor was the person best able to prevent that outcome. They weighed letting all the people go as an acceptable one-time price; they could of course renege on the agreement and just eat everyone after they popped back out, but they couldn't guarantee that CAL wouldn't 1) start downloading people again the second anything went wrong, or 2) go into self-destruct mode again. Losing a one-time meal of 4000 odd people is better than losing your life and your planet altogether.

[gh0stgr1nder]

natm fandom doesnt talk abt larry enough in this essay i w

[godsfavoritescientist]

*collapses on the floor and starts having visions (new fic ideas)*

[darkwood-sleddog]

Not dog-related, but I wanted to slide into your ask box to thank you so much for your work during/related to voting and elections - its so important and needed, always (but I feel especially now). AND in the middle of a pandemic too, among everything else! I & so many others appreciate what you and so many other poll workers & election officials do to ensure voting access. Wish there was any other way I could support than a virtual hug <3 (also when did Slash become a whole adult!!)

Aww this is such a sweet message! The pandemic certainly threw things through a loop for us, but overall I feel the fact it has increased the number of elections where we mail absentee ballots to all active registered voters is a huge win for accessibility at the polls (VT is already a state where you can request an absentee for literally any reason, but voter turnout massively increases when ballots are mailed to everybody).

The biggest hurdle election workers and clerks face right now is a certain demographic of people being increasingly toxic and antagonistic to our faces, to the point of being threatening. Like I should not have to think about how i can probably lock myself in my vault if things go in a dangerous direction, yet I do. Also when people of any demographic get upset that double checking or recounts are taking a long time and blame election workers for this or imply there's something nefarious happening because it's taking time. It's really important that things are done correctly and surprise surprise that takes time!

I know it probably sounds like the bare minimum, but the best thing you can do for election workers is be polite, read the directions on your ballot (both mail in and in person) carefully, do not wear political clothing or pins to the polls, do not take a picture of your ballot, get your "I VOTED" sticker (and maybe a 'future voter' one for any kiddos in your life), and do not needlessly stick around the polling place chatting with people (not that we don't want to chat, we're just busy and we're required to be politically neutral at the polls.)

[hobisexually]

long winded rant in the tags coming that’s partly about weight but in a very unfiltered sad way so if that triggers you do Not read on

[howtobeamagicalgirl]

My boss sent an all-caps message to the work group chat reminding everyone that there would be a mandatory staff meeting first thing in the morning, and that topics discussed might spark "high emotions," and that if anyone leaves feeling "some type of way" they should be professional and go see her about it

You're in your late 40s and are responsible for an entire childcare center. If you can't find a way to address sensitive topics in a sensitive manner, maybe you shouldn't have a managerial job.

[scatmaan]

i think the worst thing id encounter is bc i dont smile or show a lot of emotion in general is that it would always unnerve my bosses and they'd either A. get a complex over it(usually if they were younger) or B. use it against other employees(aka, make ME do the write ups)

[romeoandromeo]

.

[spindashes]

Tom is definitely emblematic of what I really dislike about the Sonic movies as an adaptation. Specifically who he is and how he relates to Sonic.

Like, no sugarcoating it, him being a cop fucking sucks. I know this. You know this. And that alone would be enough to hate the character, but there’s more to it for me.

Because its how that aspect of his character relates to Sonic. Because Sonic wants to be like him, he is Sonic’s mentor, he is one of the main “good guys.” As a cop.

Being cozy with cops is… antithetical to Sonic as a character to me. Not to say you can’t change parts of a character for an adaptation, but its one of the core things I enjoy about Sonic as a character. He is anti authority, he lives by his own rules and hates oppression. Having his role model be an enforcer or authority and oppression does away with that part of his character and makes him into a bit of a milquetoast superhero.

Do not get me wrong: Sonic is a hero. He’s a heroic person who helps people. But not in the way, not in the way they’re doing where they’re fitting him into a mold for an MCU esque character, y’know?

[nyttedryst]

You had one job.

It's to deliver Kento's lunch without being seen by him or talk with him since your ass thinks it's much convenient rather than arguing again. After all you turn silent whenever in front of a confrontation which Kento would always do like the mature man he is.

You had one job.

Literary one job, so why are you on his office's couch writhing with his head in between your thighs and a couple of bullet vibrators he managed to tape on your sensitive nipples

"still not gonna talk ha? Stubborn brat."

He muffled, sloppily sucking onto your clit that makes your back arched and your hips bucking up to his face practically humping his tongue. You huffed throwing your head back as you bit onto your fingers when he paused in the middle of you being on the edge. Completely denying you of your climax for the nth time, your cunt desperately clenching around nothing.

Kento is not the type of man to be physically affectionate in public, that's just not him but apparently he's the type to secretly fuck you on his office in the middle of the day the moment he saw how one of his employee eyed you down with that sundress.

"Nami- wait- Can't-" you can barely form coherent words when a knock on the door interrupted. Loud squelching remaining echoing through the room.

"oh so now you wanna talk? Too late doll. Come in." You push the edge of your sundress down, covering his head which causes him to chuckle. His hand sneakily grabs another bullet vibrator which he entered in your soaked walls. Your mind although fogged up from the ecstasy managed to glance as the door opened, his secretary shock and flustered immediately turn back.

"I said come in." With hesitation, his secretary entered, their gaze avoiding yours. Kento keeps his pace on your clit, together with the vibrations of the toys attached to you bringing you to pure ecstasy. You're crying, whimpering as you grip his hair pulling it which he didn't really care about, you just taste so divine..so addictive to think this is all his.

"sir- I uhh have gathered the papers that need your signature..I..have also contacted Mr. Yue from the.. Acnoba company and they agreed on testing and improving our new product with their help they wish to have a meeting with you tomorrow should I add it to your schedule?" His secretary's words blurred in with your noises, he so professionally pulled away keeping his thumb on your clit. His gaze never wavered from your poor quivering body, hungrily taking in the sight that intoxicates his mind.

"leave the papers on my desk, add the meeting with Mr. Yue to my schedule. Inform them that I am looking forward to collaborating with Acnoba and exploring the possibilities of improving our new product-" His words got cut off as you let out a whine when he swiftly took out the bullet vibrator from your cunt to your clit. His digits replace the toy relishing in on how you deliciously spasm around it relentlessly hitting that spot that makes your eyes roll back.

"also prepare the contract for the collaboration of the- oh." He turned silent as you arched your back hiding your face as you squirt all over him. From his fingers to his face... A second of silence passed, his secretary not being able to handle the situation excuse themselves.

"mmm, bad move doll."

[ghelgheli]

In contrast with professional drag queens, who were only playing at being women onstage, [Esther] Newton learned that the very bottom of the gay social hierarchy was the province of street queens. In almost total contrast to professional queens, street queens were "the underclass of the gay world." Although they embraced effeminacy, too, they did so in the wrong place and for the wrong reason: in public and outside of professional work. As a result, Newton explained, the street queens "are never off stage. Their way of life is collective, illegal, and immediate." Because they didn't get paid to be feminine and were locked out of even the most menial of nightlife jobs, Newton observed that their lives were perceived to revolve around "confrontation, prostitution, and drug 'highs'." Even in a gay underworld where everyone was marked as deviant, it was the sincere street queens who tried to live as women who were punished most for what was celebrated-and paid-as an act onstage. When stage queens lost their jobs, they were often socially excluded like trans women. Newton explained that when she returned to Kansas City one night during her fieldwork, she learned that two poor queens she had met had recently lost their jobs as impersonators. Since then, they had become "indistinguishable from street fairies," growing out their hair long and wearing makeup in public-even "passing" as girls in certain situations," in addition to earning a reputation for taking pills. They were now treated harshly by everyone in the local scene. Most people wouldn't even speak to them in public. Professional drag queens who didn't live as women still had to avoid being seen as too "transy" in their style and demeanor. One professional queen that Newton interviewed explained why: it was dangerous to be transy because it reinforced the stigma of effeminacy without the safety of being onstage. "I think what you do in your bed is your business," he told Newton, echoing a middle-class understanding of gay privacy, "[but] what you do on the street is everybody's business."

The first street queen who appears in Mother Camp is named Lola, a young Black trans girl who is "becoming a woman,' as they say'." Newton met Lola at her dingy Kansas City apartment, where she lived with Tiger, a young gay man, and Godiva, a somewhat more respectable queen. What made Godiva more respectable than Lola wasn't just a lack of hormonal transition. It was that Godiva could work as a female impersonator because she wasn't trying to sincerely live as a woman. Lola, on the other hand, was permanently out of work because being Black and trans made her unhireable, including in female impersonation. When Newton entered their apartment, which had virtually no furniture, she found Lola lying on "a rumpled-up mattress on the floor" and entertaining three "very rough-looking young men." These kinds of apartments, wrote Newton, "are not 'homes.' They are places to come in off the street." The extremely poor trans women who lived as street queens, like Lola, "literally live outside the law," Newton explained. Violence and assault were their everyday experiences, drugs were omnipresent, and sex work was about the only work they could do. Even if they didn't have "homes," street queens "do live in the police system."

As a result of being policed and ostracized by their own gay peers, Newton felt that street queens were "dedicated to "staying out of it" as a way of life. "From their perspective, all of respectable society seems square, distant, and hypocritical. From their 'place' at the very bottom of the moral and status structure, they are in a strategic position to experience the numerous discrepancies between the ideals of American culture and the realities." Yet, however withdrawn or strung out they were perceived to be, the street queens were hardly afraid to act. On the contrary, they were regarded by many as the bravest and most combative in the gay world. In the summer of 1966, street queens in San Francisco fought back at Compton's Cafeteria, an all-night venue popular with sex workers and other poor gay people. After management had called the police on a table that was hanging out for hours ordering nothing but coffee, an officer grabbed the arm of one street queen. As the historian Susan Stryker recounts, that queen threw her coffee in the police officer's face, "and a melee erupted." As the queens led the patrons in throwing everything on their tables at the cops-who called for backup-a full-blown riot erupted onto the street. The queens beat the police with their purses "and kicked them with their high-heeled shoes." A similar incident was documented in 1959, when drag queens fought back against the police at Cooper's Donuts in Los Angeles by throwing donuts-and punches. How many more, unrecorded, times street queens fought back is anyone's guess. The most famous event came in 1969, when street queens led the Stonewall rebellion in New York City. Newton shares in Mother Camp that she wasn't surprised to learn it was the street queens who carried Stonewall. "Street fairies," she wrote, "have nothing to lose."

Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny

[taylor-titmouse]

hey i want to talk about how you should be promoting your work as an erotic author/illustrator

i'm writing this up because the marketing aspect of my work as an erotic author/illustrator is a science to me, and also because i'm the guy who gets unreasonably annoyed when i see other creators not properly advertising their work. you presumably want to make money off your work. this post will be written under the assumption you want to make money off your work but are doing a bad job at it. it will be very confrontational. if you read this and feel attacked you're right and i am attacking you.

this is geared toward selling erotic comics/writing/books/art as products. i will probably write more than one post about this subject so if i didn't touch on something you want to know more about, comment/send me an ask and i'll keep it in mind for the next one.

i will start with my first and least specific but most important point:

DON'T GET FUCKING CUTE

hi are you paying attention. i'm gripping you by the sides of your face. do not get fucking cute with what you are trying to sell. you are not a big enough property to get cute, nobody LIKES it when big properties get cute, and you are selling porn. you have to own this. you have to be up front about this. don't be tongue in cheek, don't be all teehee i wonder what this could be~, don't be secretive. you are selling a product. you have to fucking act like it. you are an adult selling pornography to other adults. i am GRIPPING your HEAD you NEED to understand this.

and to be clear when i say 'cute' i mean coy. i don't mean cutesy, as in the aesthetic. you can be as hello kitty pastel ten emojis a post uwu as you like when you're building your audience and generating hype. but when you start trying to sell, don't be vague, don't be sarcastic, don't mislabel your work as a joke and assume everyone is on it. because they're not.

you must always assume 75% of the people seeing the thing you are advertising have no fucking idea who you are. and that includes a huge chunk of the people who already follow you. they do not know who you are or what you've been working on for two months or why they should care about it. they just got here. somebody just reposted it. they are seeing it for the first time. most people are only looking at social media for a tiny chunk of their day. they are not keeping up with you. you cannot get cute about what you are trying to sell because nobody knows what it is until you tell them.

okay are you still with me. we are going to talk about clarity now.

YOU GOTTA TELL ME WHAT IT IS

good lord the amount of times i have gone to buy somebody's comic or book and had no idea what's actually in it or what it's about. who are the characters? why should i care about them? what do they do in it? what is the premise of this thing you want me to spend $5 on? why would you not tell me? i'm shaking you again. please i have to know what i'm buying i only have so much money to spend on porn.

porn, arguably more than any other genre, relies on knowing exactly what is in it. you do not want to surprise your readers with a kink they were unaware of! and on the flip side, you do not want to miss out on your target audience! if your book contains a hot spider babe laying eggs in an elf, you have to say so. not just so people who don't want to read about eggs know it isn't for them, but so the people who are egg crazy can see that and go "oh fuck YES i love EGGS here is my $5 and an extra $2 tip for catering to me specifically". a contents/features list is as much an advertisement as it is a warning!

as for re: who the characters are and why should i care, i'm sorry but you need to learn how to write sales copy. you have to write blurbs. you have to get good at the shit that goes on the back of a book. we all hate it but we have to do it. i want to know who the characters are and what the context is. i, personally, am not interested in contemporary stories as much as fantasy and historical. please tell me what genre this porn exists in so i know if it aesthetically appeals to me. pull some books off your shelves and see how they do it. hell man go look at mine.

while you're there, note that every single book of mine has a sample of what's in it. this feels like such a no-brainer to me but again! the amount of times i have gone to buy somebody's work and they don't show me what their work looks like! you gotta give me the first page or two! just enough that i know if i like the way your writing sounds, or the way you draw your comics! i don't know you! i am not going to trust that you're good at what you do just based on a cover. the cover is to get me to this step, it is not the only step. you have to show me that you're worth spending my money on!

to put it less cynically, you want to catch my interest. you want me to go 'oh i want to see more of this', you want me to go 'ahh i want to know where this goes!' you need to get me invested and craving more. earn my $5!!!

YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT EASY TO GIVE YOU MONEY

hey go look at your bio right now. go look at your pinned post. do you have a link to your patreon there? do you have a link to your itchio/gumroad/whatever? do i have to click more than once to get to the places you want me to go to give you money? why? why are you making me click twice? have we learned nothing from every website making you click an extra time when they make some stupid UI update and how much it pisses us off? i have already given up, i have forgotten you, i am not giving you my $5 today. put your links in the easiest places to get to them.

god literally as i was writing this post i went to go find somebody's itchio to see how they described their work and it was not anywhere on their profile. grabbing you and shaking you PUT THE LINK WHERE I CAN FIND IT. don't make it hard! make it easy! i am a dickhead sitting on the toilet scrolling, saw your post, and was interested enough to read further. but you made me go to your bio to find your linktree and oops i have already gone back to my timeline to look at the boobies in the next post. stop wasting precious bio space on DNIs and put your fuckin links there!!!

this is more for the twitter people, but: just put the link in the damn post. just say the word commission. just say it's for patreon. "wuh wuh the algorithm" it is not the damn algorithm it's that everybody hates advertising and nobody wants to retweet ads. putting slashes in the words doesn't do anything and you look like a fool. i have posted so much art that says it's 'a commission for ___" and it did exactly as good as any other art despite having the word commission in it. and by doing the slashes you just made it impossible for anybody to search your account for your commission information (which should be at the VERY LEAST in a post under your pinned tweet if you're not actively posting about them being open).

okay that went on a tangent i'm going to back to the point of putting the link in the tweet. put it in the first post. not in the first reply. don't tell them to go to your bio. put it in the post people are actually going to share. it's fine to put more information in the thread but people are only ever going to share the first post. so put the link there. you have to make it easy. putting links in tweets can hurt you algorithmically, even in the replies. so you're better off having it in the post that actually gets seen and shared. i don't want to open the tweet and scroll to get to your sales page where i ASSUME you will have put all the information anyway. put it in the tweet that just got retweeted by itself onto my dash!

also you have to share it a ton of times. i repost my shit every few hours when i'm trying to push a new product. as i said before people are not 24/7 looking at their timelines. they missed it the first time. they missed it the second time. they didn't get paid yet that week but they were after the eighth time and you reminded them again so they finally bought it. that i will still get sales every time i repost a book ad weeks after release says there are always people who missed it, or who only just showed up.

abandon your pride and shill. shills pay their bills. anyone who gets annoyed about it isn't giving you money in the first place. don't worry about looking like a sell out. don't apologize for plugging your own work. post about it often, post about it in different ways. post about it. post about it. you are not going to make money if people don't know you have something to sell them. if you want to make a career out of it, you need to act like it.

I DON'T HAVE A FOURTH POINT

kisses your forehead. i'm sorry for yelling at you. i've been making and publishing and selling adult art for the past two-three years and have got myself to the point where it pays my rent, and i got there by paying attention to what does and does not work.

please do your best to make money. i want you to make money.

as i said above i plan to write more posts on this subject, such as cover design, how to actually write sales copy, and best practices with running a patreon, but if there's things you would want to hear more about leave a comment or send an ask! i will probably be less aggressive on future topics. these are just things that have grinded my gears for a grip.

[sassy-cass-16]

look man. look

essek saying "bren" out loud, claiming a position on caleb's side as the mouthpiece of his regards to astrid, did something to me. i can't tell if it opened a wound or punched me or gave me a hug. all i know is that i am feeling so many emotions right now

more under the cut because i'm about to get rambly:

"bren aldric ermendrud" is a separate character from caleb widogast. he's a young boy learning how to make magic. he's a deeply traumatized and indoctrinated teenager. he's the boy who curled up with astrid and eadwulf in a freezing tower for warmth all night.

essek never met bren. he met caleb and he's never known him as anyone else. if i'm remembering correctly, caleb never even said the name "bren" to him during the campaign, and neither did any of the nein.

essek knows caleb widogast. he knows the man who held up the object of his worst crime and then kissed him in the bowels of a ship and made a floor of infinite stars for them to walk through together. he knows the person who healed over bren's wounds—thinly, but enough. he knows the man that the boy has become.

astrid knows bren. she barely knows who caleb is. she still calls him bren after hearing him referred to as caleb repeatedly. she can't know him as the man he is, she only knows the boy. there's some of bren in caleb, but there is no caleb in bren.

essek saying "bren sends his regards" is him gauging astrid's reaction, on one level—if she freaks out, which she did, she's in opposition to caleb's cause and thus a threat. on another level, it's essek delivering a very different subtextual message from caleb: "the boy who loved you is giving you one final warning."

because essek is a threat to astrid. their last meaningful interaction was slinging spells at each other in the blooming grove. and that's funny in a "current boyfriend vs ex girlfriend exclusively fight each other" kind of way, but it's also deeply tied to caleb's recurring theme of transformation. "bren sends his regards" also means "i have healed enough to love enough for someone else to know this name and use it with my consent. and this someone else is your enemy. what does that make you think i've become?"

it also does a fantastic job of communicating subtle offscreen discussions that have happened over the years since the end of c2. we don't have the details of when or how caleb told essek his birth name, but we know that he did, and we know from all of c2 that the name bren occupies a place of immense emotional weight for caleb. it functions similarly to a deadname in terms of who uses it and for what purpose. trent exclusively calls caleb bren to wound him and place himself in a position of power. astrid calls him bren to remind both him and herself of who they used to be—same with eadwulf, though obviously he's not here.

the first time we hear essek say "bren" is on caleb's behalf and confronting one of the narrative representations of caleb's trauma. it's four words that manage to communicate "i, your enemy on a hundred levels, can speak for both the man i love and the boy who loved you, because i know him in his entirety."

astrid knows bren and essek knows caleb, but only essek can speak for both. because at some point, caleb gave bren to essek. and we know this from four words. four IMPROVISED words.

god. this moment is just so fucking good