#or at least understand what i mean

[marshmellowtea]

hey, sorry, i did read ur bio but im..... unclear what u mean specifically by "anti anti" and "pro ship/pro fiction"? sorry, the terms get thrown around a lot and its made me unclear what ppl mean when they use them since its used in such drastically different contexts. sorry to bother

it's alright, you're not bothering me. i was honestly kind of expecting an ask like this after making that post. i hope, anon, before you respond (if you respond) you hear me out for the whole post.

i'm gonna put this under a cut since i rambled, sorry. warning for some discussion of abuse

first off, i wanna say that while writing this response feels very weird and kind of nerve-wracking, this isn't information i've been trying to hide. i, perhaps foolishly, tend to assume that people who follow me have at least read my bio, even if they choose not to read my about page, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that this is just......not the case? and it's becoming a bit frustrating to inevitably receive backlash from people following me about views i've been open about having from the get-go, hence the vent post. sorry about that, though, there's better ways of handling that frustration, i know.

secondly, i'm pro ship as in......pro ship. all ships, no matter how tasteless, controversial, or disgusting i or anyone else might find them. i'm pro fiction in the same sense, but just in regards to fiction as a whole, both in and out of fandom. while i never fully identified as an anti, i definitely used to have views closer to that mindset, and i can confidently say that they have caused me a lot of harm in the long run. also, while i fully take accountability for the things i've said during those years, i also feel like in some sense i was enabled to be cruel to others while i was a part of that group. never full on hate campaigns, sure, but i've definitely said some nasty stuff to people, and i regret ever doing it, and i especially feel regret for ever feeling justified in doing it. it also bothers me that there were other anti-minded people in my circles who encouraged me, even, and assured me i was doing the right thing when i fucking wasn't.

while i don't think i can explain all of my reasons for my beliefs in this post alone—that would make this thing way longer than it already is—i want to mention that i don't disagree with the notion that fiction can have an affect on our reality, i just think it's more nuanced than a one-to-one correlation of "reading about [thing]=think [thing] is now good", and i also think since fandom is, well, fandom, people tend to overexaggerate its influence on people. if you've ever read a fic or watched a tv show and thought that they handled a certain subject poorly, or recognized that a certain trope they used was bigoted, or anything of that sort, then, well, congrats! you know exactly what i mean. fiction can certainly influence people's views, but i think it's more of a lack of education (sex education, education on the lived experiences of minorities, etc) that's the problem, rather than the fiction on its own.

i also HEAVILY dislike this notion that fiction causes or enables people to abuse—in the case of the former, that's taking responsibility from the abuser because it implies that fiction "made" them do it when it was really their choice to be cruel, and in the case of the latter, i really think it's the aforementioned lack of education and the lack of systems we have in place to support victims/challenge authority that's more of an issue. sure, fiction can absolutely be used to groom people for abuse, but so can candy, or sports, or money, or one on one time, a whole bunch of things are all potential tools and unfortunately, we can't ban everything that could potentially be used to harm someone. and besides, that's overlooking that properly tagged fic (i'm. very pro content warnings in addition to being anti censorship just to be clear) can actually help people realize they're being abused when they see their situations being reflected on the page in front of them that's clearly labeled as abuse.

those aren't my only reasons of course, but this is getting long already, so thank you for sticking with me if you've gotten to the end. if you're uncomfortable with me because of this, i understand, i just ask that you either quietly unfollow or block me, because i'm not afraid to report people for harassment. if you have any good-faith follow up questions, i'm free to answer those as well, i really don't mind.

[pbnmj]

it’s important to me that peter and co always have their bank accounts in the negatives . like it is fundamental that spider-man is broke

[lotus-pear]

whatever happens, please don’t break

[cannibalistic-deer]

It baffles me that I've seen people say "Alastor is canonically sex and touch repulsed" as a reason people "shouldn't" be shipping Alastor sexually/romantically.

Why assume that the sex repulsion applies to every relationship in his life, permanently? Some aces are sex favorable, or may develop more favorable feelings for specific people, even if otherwise repulsed.

And the same applies to touch repulsion. That's such a weak argument. Alastor canonically, and very clearly, is okay with or possibly even enjoys touch in specific situations. He does seem to be touch repulsed in general, but again, there are specific people it doesn't apply to. (Rosie is the best example, since with anyone else it is more brief, but Rosie touches him, and is the one initiating that, frequently.)

All types of attraction, or comfort levels with different manners of affection, are fluid. This isn't ever an excuse to invalidate real people who are telling you their identities, but it does mean that assumptions really can't be made about what a person would or wouldn't do.

And this type of thinking is what really leads to invalidating real people, because even if you think "being asexual means never having sexual attraction," and then an ace person shares that they think they might have experienced sexual attraction at some point but still identify as ace... then you have to be open to that. You cannot put sexualities in boxes. This applies to all sexualities.

I'm a fictive of Alastor myself, and I am sex repulsed, so I understand the discomfort, but I also understand that people are not harming any real, living person by making fanworks where Alastor is having sex. It also doesn't mean they're inherently rejecting his asexuality.

If people want to ignore Alastor being aroace completely, that's different. Alastor is canonically aroace (or asexual at minimum), and he always will be. But jumping to conclusions about what people think because you're too naive and stubborn to understand that sexuality and attraction doesn't fit into tidy little boxes is harmful and is a way of thinking that must be changed.

This became longer than intended because I was mostly thinking about the "Alastor is touch repulsed to everyone!" claims some people make, which are frankly incompatible with canon. But the rest of this post is also true.

[beanghostprincess]

I did not just see somebody on TikTok rating OP ships and saying they don't like Zolu because it's often portrayed with Zoro being dominant and Luffy being infantilized. I do not know what Zolu content you're seeing, bestie, but I have never once in my life consumed Zolu in another way that isn't Zoro on his knees for Luffy, either ready to worship him or suck his dick religiously.

[800db-cloud]

i’ve been informed that i should post this comic that i made in 2 seconds

[captainjonnitkessler]

I think I've identified the reason I get so worked up about anarchism in relation to labor rights and safety in particular.

Three years ago I watched my coworker almost die when a piece of machinery we were moving unsafely fell on him. It missed his head by an inch and snapped his leg in half instead. It took months of recovery and multiple surgeries for him to walk again and he will be disabled for the rest of his life. And it didn't happen because of Capitalism or profit motive or because our evil bosses were forcing us to work unsafely. It happened because he'd done similar things a hundred times before and it had always been fine, and because I didn't know enough to clock just how dangerous what we were doing was, and just because of some plain shitty luck. Mentally it fucked me up for months in ways I didn't recognize until well after the fact.

And the thing is, almost every construction worker can tell you about the time they saw a fatal or near-fatal accident. An apprentice younger than me had a heart attack and was out of work for over a year after shocking himself on a live circuit. The woman who runs our apprenticeship program has a husband who had his arm blown off in an arc flash incident. One of my teachers had a coworker die after getting hung up on a live circuit and he wasn't found until the end of the day.

Construction is one of the single most dangerous industries to work in, and I believe this is why rates of drug and alcohol abuse and suicide are sky-high in the industry. I think many construction workers are low-key traumatized by knowing constantly that they could die or be permanently disabled due to a very simple mistake or oversight. It is simply inherently unsafe when you are working with live electricity, power tools, heights, thousands of pounds of machinery, cranes, etc. And so yes, I do believe that safety protocols and the ability to enforce them are absolutely necessary to preventing a massive amount of death. The number of worker deaths in the US has been slashed by 60% since OSHA was instated.

And so to get online and have someone who has never set foot on a jobsite in their life condescendingly explain to me that actually, we don't need OSHA or the ability to enforce safety standards because in a perfect world everyone will just suddenly start working perfectly safely, and I'm just too stupid or brainwashed to realize that The Real Villain Is Capitalism, and if we just get rid of that it will somehow also get rid of the inherent safety issues involved in the entire construction industry - well it turns out it pisses me off a little bit!

[navree]

"rhaenys could have ended the war by dracarysing all the greens right there" yes because a distant relation to the throne deciding to barbecue an anointed and publicly positively hailed king and his entire family who is well loved within the city and in multiple other parts of the country for the sake of the succession of a far-away princess no one was ever on board with who hasn't been seen by the populace in literal years, her psycho husband, her three obvious bastards, and two toddlers from the psycho husband would go over super well with westeros and especially in king's landing where scores of the still-cheering population were killed for no reason by that same dragon who would do the barbecuing, because when targaryens act unilaterally without thinking of how the people would react there's never any problem, which is why the storming of the dragonpit and robert's rebellion were actually just collective delusions dreamed up by readers who hate rhaenyra and not key parts of the story and house targaryen's history that directly contributed to their demise and are intrinsic to the plot

truly team black stans are made up of only the most genius and media literate amongst us

[scintillyyy]

i am once again banishing the idea that bruce was never affectionate with tim/was mean to him/was a cold, distant mentor to him. begone.

[saeraas]

they kept reigen out of the pathetic man tournament because they knew he was overqualified for that one

[voilaammayi]

Sherlock Holmes at any given moment:

[kicktwine]

WE FOUND IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE FOUND THE LINK

[shiikiyun]

I think something i don't often see in discussions about Futa's character is how, if you really take a second, he's kind of a people pleaser

He isn't so in a way like what Mikoto got going on, he does want to be around people of the same interests as him, and you wouldn't think he'd care about anything but authenticity if you stayed with the way he behaves on milgram. It is only when you think about him -in- those social circles he manages to get into that you can see him tweaking lol

I think the closest to see this that we have in milgram itself is that one interaction with Kotoko in which she attempts to debate how prisons respect human rights. Any other time he expressed his opinion/stance on things he was aggressive and maybe condescending to the rest because they disagreed with him, but the second someone agreed? Whole demeanor changed. Suddenly he didn't have much to say anymore and he just parroted Kotoko's words back at her. Why. If he has such a strong personality and mindset, why was someone validating his point enough to shut down his otherwise very firm attitude?

Futa doesn't go as far as to manufacture his every word for it to cause a positive reaction on others from the get go, but he does seek validation all the same. He braces himself for rejection by being loud and obnoxious and harsh until he sees a positive reaction and then is when he does a complete 180 to keep the other person in that place of validation. He is simultaneously completely bad at it though, but I never said he was good at people pleasing. Which connects back to what i've said before about his inability to fit in. Even when he thinks he's doing it right and he sees himself getting validation by people he cares about (in the case of his crime, by mimicking his friendgroup's method of "bringing justice" by calling out someone online, that same friendgroup following along and reinforcing the idea that he was doing it right), he ultimately fails anyway and loses it all over again.

In the end, he's just extremely socially awkward and anxious. It isn't in his nature to reach anyone else's expectations even if he genuinely wants to, so he'll either do what he can within his parameters (mold himself for his friendgroup of people he deems similar to him) or he'll avoid trying altogether because he knows he'll fail (what we see in milgram!)

It also shows how his yearn for a support system (t2 qna + mu's birthday timeline convo) isn't particularly new from his current circumstances, or why the only person he could think of when asked who he would want to see right now was his mom (who left so long ago he barely remembers her). He has just never truly had people that genuinely cared for him no matter what he tried to do to make himself likeable.

[mossfeathers]

literally cant wait for bigb etho and bdubs to team next life series they will be called the b team despite etho's complete lack of a b in the name (he joined the team 5 minutes too late and didnt get a say in what it was called) and it'll be the best team that the life series has ever created (source: trust me i was told in multiple multiple dreams)

[mieczyhale]

WATCHED THE TRAILER FOR S4 OF UMBRELLA ACADEMY AND UHHH WELL LETS SEE

Hargreeves Home for Wayward BOYS?

Viktor the bartender???

Ben what did you DO

Diego looks like he's cosplaying as Gomez Addams

KLAUS

They all look so fucking tired and Done sldflksd love that they're basically all comfy looking and then you have Five

listen. Listen. i LIKE klaus's hair in the trailer. i've wanted short haired klaus back since we lost him after the war. is it as good as his s1 hair?? no. but it's not as bad as the s2 short wig or the cult leader hair so god fucking bless

"we're back we're back we're back everyone get out of the way we're back" "FIRST MISSION BACK" THIS MADE ME SO HYPE

i'm sorry was that viktor beating someone up??!

the use of the final countdown was a little silly but then again this is the A Little Silly show so it works

LOVED the use of Hargreeves dialogue from the flashback in s1e1. bringing it full circle, baby!!!

DANCE SCENE. CANNOT have a season without one

did they just get weapons from a fast food place???

five finally gets a hug, which i love, but it being lila and he's clearly comforting her?? okay. not what i wanted for him but whatever

SANTA???!!!

the umbrella tattoo is back!!

klaus not having his palm tattoos makes me sad. bitch we are supposed to MATCH

AND YOU GET AN EXTRA HOUR IN THE BALL PIT

very quick glimpse of something that looks like it came from a marvel movie. not idea what's happening there but it's gonna be cool. i think. maybe.

BENTACLES

AUGUST 8TH?? OH I AM SO NOT EMOTIONALLY PREPARED AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE

still tentatively excited for the final season but definitely a little more excited and a little less tentative. i don't want to get my hopes too high tho. i think one reason i loved s3 so much is because i went in with such low expectations after being so disappointed by s2 and i don't want the end of this show to be another s2. it HAS to go well or i'm not going to be well

[emry-stars-art]

they're judging you