#no cringe here

[cetuscorvus]

16+ for kissing but probably 18+ for implied ending

So... I've been waiting for male!MC emote reel on YT for quite some time and when it was published I was busy BUT

Now I present to you this piece. No AI generation, only in-game dialogue parts/character sounds compilation and some ambience.

Let's give boys some love too. So far I haven't seen even gender neutral sound stuff.

[reasonsforhope]

Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."

Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.

These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!

Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!

Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.

So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.

[greykolla-art]

“I’m a SHARK-” said Alastor the deer demon, “because it’s a good metaphor!’

(NO I will not do a part 2!💕)

[la-pheacienne]

I'm reading the lord of the rings and I'm once again amazed at how... good most characters are. Like, they are genuinely good people. They are a bunch of kindhearted, gracious, caring people, coming together under adverse circumstances and trying to figure things out and find a solution and support each other through it all. Like Frodo and Sam meet Faramir and Faramir is a bit suspicious at first and kind of implies Frodo may be a spy, and then when he hears his story and he's like Frodo, I pressed you so hard at first. Forgive me! It was unwise in such an hour and place. And this blows.my.mind. He wasn't even particularly mean or threatening to him in the beginning, he's just such a kind, considerate man, recognizing the kindness and honesty of another man. And they're all like that. Even Gollum starts slowly changing (for a short while) when he encounters Frodo because that's the thing about kindness and humility and grace, they are contagious. They transform people, even a creature like Gollum cannot be immune to that. Like, you may consider all this simple and basic and I get it but, hear me out. It is quite rare to see that in modern media and it is also pretty difficult to pull off in a way that is not corny and simplistic. It is mind blowing that you actually don't have to present the entire palette of human cruelty and vice in order to tell a compelling story, contrary to popular belief. Lotr does the exact opposite, and it is just beautiful and it warms my heart. Especially taking into consideration tolkien's pretty grim growing-up experience, him being a double orphan without a home, raised between an orphanage and a priest and having no family apart from his brother and then the war and then he almost dies and then he's poor as hell and then a second war and it all makes sense somehow. He writes to his wife who is also an orphan two days before the marriage "the next few years will bring us joy and content and love and sweetness such as could not be if we hadn't first been two homeless children and had found one another after long waiting" and, yes, yes! The love and sweetness just radiate from his work, the entire lotr series is a little radiant bubble of hope and love and grace that he imagined in his head to deal with a dismal reality and then he just gave that to the world, and isn't that what imagination and art is all about after all?

[notemaker]

In which Lucifer starts getting comfortable, forgets social boundaries, and Alastor kind of does so too. Nifty takes 1 interaction and makes it a whole plot.

[snarkspawn]

this is so dumb and cheesy I'm sorry lmao happy valentine's day! 💖

[lemoneste]

He knows

[washiinmachiine]

has this been done

[confettay]

rewatching G1 again and I’m obsessed with this scene where they just show multiple angles of starscream sulking for like 20 seconds with absolutely no dialogue from him at all

[skywalker-swift]

btw I’ve mentioned this on here before but I had a really shitty ex boyfriend. while I was in the relationship, I would write poems about him being my lifeline, the thing that kept me floating, he brought color to my world and I would praise him for giving me the tiniest of kindnesses. But there was a lot of red flags and bad shit he did to me and things he put me through, that honestly I couldn’t admit and realize until I went to therapy. A lot of those poems have been changed in my head, the meaning of them changed, and I even wrote poems changing the meaning of the earlier poems. The good was good. The bad was worse. I know that now. I’m older now. It’s brighter now.

If I can do that for myself on a private level, why can’t Taylor do it publicly? Why can’t she do this for herself? She wrote him into her world, let her write him out if she needs too. She’s older now. Let her do the same.

[hg-aneh]

Bonus?:

Cringe culture is dead, post catboy ineffables

[vurelly]

sometimes i do not want to consume a media and justify my liking it by making it known that im aware of it's faults and loving it despite, sometimes i just want to love things wholly and unapologetically because it made me feel something and even if it was a little fucked up it did nothing to reduce the amount of love i held for it

im aware it's not perfect, but let me love it like it is, if only because it makes me happy

[mewniemoon]

Sequel to this. Cat dad time

[unwri-ten]

Being a cult leader or is it being a babysitter for adult children

[brother-emperors]

DO NOT BE AFRAID

this is combining Ovid's Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can't stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.

I have. thoughts. about Paris. he's almost got this Troilos parallel in my mind, that the event that defines him in detail exists in a lost narrative that we don't have (the Cypria), but everyone else knew. the event that defines Troilos is his death (murdered, butchered by Achilles, the violence of which haunts everything after. Achilles, child killer, you can't escape that!), and the event that defines Paris is the Judgement. what's a lost text but a kind of grave!!

idk I don't think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it's like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.

Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika

and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.

The Excidium Troie + Ovid's Heroides:

Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman

Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)

a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go 😬 but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.

The Divine Twins in Early Greek Poetry, Corolla Torontonensis

Iliad 24 and the Judgement of Paris, C.J. Mackie

Elegy and Epic and the Recognition of Paris: Ovid "Heroides" 16, Elizabeth Forbis Mazurek

Ennian Influence in "Heroides" 16 and 17, Howard Jacobson

Paris/Alexandros in the "Iliad", I. J. F. de Jong