#us leeway for

[fratboykate]

I feel like Yelena in the stepmom AU! Cracks after a week because she misses her girls so much. And she tries calling only to find out Kate blocks her on everything and realizes that oh, she really fucking hurt Kate, and not only did she hurt Kate, but she hurt Ri, and it’s one thing to hurt Kate but to hurt Ri puts her on a whole nother type of shit list, but we also know this woman is determined and will even send a carrier pigeon if it means getting some morsel of acknowledgment from the woman she’s head over heels for. And I can see her sending letters every week and post cards and photos of her life in Russia because even though yeah she fucked up, Kate was still her best friend. And I can see Kate throwing away the first couple because she’s so mad but then when it’s late, and she’s had a couple glasses of wine and Tom has been sent home after doing his due diligence, she’ll read them and cry and curse Yelena and apart of her wants to unblock her and message her and tell Yelena that she misses her. But she doesn’t because she’s stubborn and hurt and angry, so instead she collects the letters and post cards and photos and sticks them in a drawer that she goes through late at night when she really misses her. And I feel like Ri “accidentally” discovers them. But because Ri is smarter then your average bear, she’s not about to let her mom know, so instead I can see her dropping hints about how much she misses Yelena and how much she wants to talk to her and how she wishes there was a way she could talk to Yelena before Kate finally relents, unblocks her and messages her. And of course you’ve got Tom who’s trynna to keep his family together and maybe he’s trying to get Kate knocked up again because he’s petty and just wants them back

Damn papi knows how to create that good drama! How does yelena come back from this?! How do they end up getting back together?!

---

Can we get Santa Papi back? She’s much nicer than that heartbreaking angsty mess you just dragged us by the hair through! I missed your writing but damn did I forget how much you make it hurt too. Guess we’re all a little S&M up at the ranch, huh? 😂 Could you please patch up our wounds a bit and share how Yelena wins Kate back? I can’t imagine Yelena’s return and apology tour going too smoothly. Does Ri forgive her easily or is our little menace a grudge holder?

---

Ooh it’s getting good!! What happens next?? We allowed a part 2?? I have so many questions

///

Kate chops vegetables for dinner while Ri sits on one of the tall breakfast stools, working on homework while humming a song.

A knock on the door. Kate knits her brow. She was surprised to have a visitor. She heads for the entrance and caresses Ri's cheek before placing a soft kiss on the crown of her head as she walks past her.

"Honey, that looks like chicken scratch. Start over."

"But mom..."

"Erase it and start over."

"UGH!"

Kate swings the door open and her older sister stands on the other side.

"You never come over unannounced unless someone died or...yeah, the only time you've ever come without calling was when Aunt Stevie choked on prawns, so who was it?"

Susan snickers.

"Can we talk?"

Susan glances towards the kitchen, where Ri sits. Kate understands and walks in that direction. Susan follows suit. When she enters, Ereka lights up.

"Suzu!"

"Hi baby bear! What are you working on?"

"My letters!"

"Those look AMAZING!"

"See, momma! My writing is good."

"Lying won't help her get better, dude."

"Honey, why don't you go into your room and finish this there?"

"I'm fine here, thank you."

"I posed it as a question out of courtesy, but it actually wasn't."

Kate tells her firmly.

"Living in this house is like living in a dictatorship."

"When you contribute to the bills, we can have a discussion about transitioning to a democracy."

Kate banters back instantly.

"SO UNFAIR. THIS HAS TO BE A VIOLATION OF MY HUMAN RIGHTS!"

Ereka exclaims dramatically as she hops off the stool and stomps to her room.

"I know. The utter torture of having to trace the alphabet in the comfort of your private bedroom. A crime."

"Are we sure she's five?"

Susan asks, chortling at the display between the two.

"I check her birth certificate regularly to make sure I'm not remembering wrong, but I guess she is."

"Then are you SURE she's Tom's?"

"Has crossed my mind too, but yes. Trust me. It's a mystery how that perfect little thing is something the two of us made...What is it? What do you want to talk to me about?"

After a concerningly long beat, Suze speaks.

"Your girlfriend called me."

"Far as I know I don't have a girlfriend."

"Apparently you blocked her on everything."

"Funny she would call you now, two months after the fact and not me before she fucking picked up and fucked off to the other side of the world."

Kate scoffs.

"She sounded pretty broken up."

"Good."

"She wants to talk to you."

"Tough fucking luck because I don't wanna talk to her. I want nothing to do with her. Nothing."

"Is that what you want me to tell her? That you don't want to hear what she has to say? That you're not at all curious about her reasons for leaving and if she's now trying to make it right? Because the Kate I know is much too curious for that and it would eat her up forever if that's what I told her but...if that's what you want me to do, I'll make the call right now."

"Tell her I said she can shove her excuses and explanations up her..."

[see-arcane]

God, this entry is really a master class in how to show the fallibility of a direct POV and how to tell the character in question is ludicrously oblivious.

The lethargy grows upon her, and though she seems strong and well, and is getting back some of her colour, Van Helsing and I are not satisfied. We talk of her often; we have not, however, said a word to the others. It would break poor Harker's heart—certainly his nerve—if he knew that we had even a suspicion on the subject. 

Jack. This man lived for two months with four active vampires. He knows. And he knows you know. He did not just magically un-learn all the facts and leave you and your idol alone on top of ‘Me, An Intellectual’ Mountain. 

Van Helsing examines, he tells me, her teeth very carefully, whilst she is in the hypnotic condition, for he says that so long as they do not begin to sharpen there is no active danger of a change in her. If this change should come, it would be necessary to take steps!... We both know what those steps would have to be, though we do not mention our thoughts to each other. 

Jonathan knows those steps too, Jack. He read about Lucy, Jack. He can tell when Mina is being Different, Jack. He knows what you and Abe are thinking of, Jack. 

We should neither of us shrink from the task—awful though it be to contemplate. "Euthanasia" is an excellent and a comforting word! I am grateful to whoever invented it.

Jonathan ‘Never Puts Down His Kukri Knife’ Harker is so glad you agree, Jack! Raise one hand against Mina and you’ll see just how into it he is.

It’s just...wow. Whether Stoker intended it or not, he perfectly encapsulated the ‘Would Never Make It to the End of a Horror Movie’ characterization. 

[epicfirestormer]

[ky-the-squiddy]

Every so often I come across people going on about 'queer is a bad word, I'm not a terf but we shouldn't use that word in community/academic/etc settings, don't call me queer' and just

Okay

You're not queer

I won't call you that, no one should call you that, and anyone that does is being an asshole regardless of their identity or minority status. It doesn't matter what reasoning you have behind not wanting to be labelled as queer, what trauma you may or may not have, what you've identified as in the past and present, and whether or not your preference just comes to not liking the vibe of the word for entirely inscrutible reasons. No one has any right to pry.

If you say you're not queer, then you're not queer, and that's okay.

It just also means that if I, a queer person, talk about the queer community, then I'm not referring to you. If an academic refers to queer history and queer texts written by queer people about other queer people, they're also not talking about you. If a corporation starts using 'queer' in their ads then they can eat shit because fuck 'em, they have no fucking right to use our words when they aren't and have never been one of us, but if a well-meaning ally uses 'queer' as a one-syllable shorthand for LGBTQIA+ in a verbal conversation, then there's no reason for you to get any more annoyed at them as you would if they used the word 'gay' instead.

You have every single right to be labelled or not labelled as you like, and I will stand behind you all the way. If someone is trying to shove 'queer' on you when you really don't want it? Then I will happily, metaphorically, deck them in the face for you. We are still family, whatever you choose to call yourself, and it's important that we stick together.

But

If you aren't queer, and you get frustrated when you see queer people talking about the queer community, take a deep breath, and consider:

They aren't talking about you

[stealingpotatoes]

On a scale of one to ten(one being "I will murder you if you even think of disrespecting canon" and ten being (little kid playing with his action figures") how much do you disregard Canon

probably a solid 3-5 depending what it is loll. I do edit (or fix) things if I think they don't work narratively or I rlly dont like it loll but if I go changing EVERYTHING it's like. what's the point of being in that fandom when you don't take any of the source material as real LOL

[f1-stuff]

Austin GP ‘22 // C² put their USA knowledge to the test

[art-leon]

testing out new markers...

reference by @adorkastock

[chirpsythismorning]

[alackofghosts]

sjfsjfh i keep staring at the sun bc i am so proud of it 🥹

[poetsii]

In yet another episode of "the witches can be morally grey and have possibly corrupt power but will gang up on anybody else trying to do the same" Bad vibes yall, bad vibes. 'good rp' or no, you don't steal loot, and you don't try to gaslight your friends.

[vaugarde]

im starting to crawl to poketubers again and im watching lumiose trainer zac’s ranking vid on the gym battles and im realizing once again that i have a veryyyy different definition of what makes a good battle vs other people’s definitions

[pynkhues]

Okay, feel free not to answer this but does it feel like the fandom has generally had a harsher/less sympathetic view of Kendall in a post-finale/S4 world or is that just me? I feel like I see a lot more takes that position Kendall as the sole or primary inheritor of Logan’s poison when all of the siblings have elements of Logan dripping through and they’ve all suffered from his abuse (as opposed to just certain siblings - which I see way more than I previously did). It might just be me, but does it seem like the views/commentary around the siblings has changed? (Please note I mean no shade to anyone, just generally super interested in how the fandom view of characters evolves over time/morphs with recency bias)

Hey! Sorry it took me a few days to get to this (I'm a little slow across the board these days), but yeah, I'd say that I agree with you. There tends to be this fixation in fandom on which sibling was abused the most or which is the most likely to be abusive in the future, when the reality is their experiences aren't numbers you can compare. You can't compare Roman maybe being hit more (which again, isn't something we actually even know), with the psychological abuse of Logan humiliating Kendall as a boy by making him compete with and then wait on one of the few relationships he has outside of the family.

These aren't things that are quantifiable, and similarly, the insidious ways that the golden trio behave in the final season (or throughout the show's run) aren't things that can be plugged into a pie graph to give a sense of which of the three of them is the 'worst'.

I do think Roman and Shiv in some ways feel more defensible in the final season for some because Roman does seem to accept his ousting while Shiv's narrative feels so doomed, but I think a lot of that comes down to the woobification of Roman by a vocal portion of the fandom and the very specific and gendered bleakness of Shiv's arc.

It doesn't help of course that there's a sense that if it weren't for Shiv, Kendall would've 'won', which I think is a false reading of the show in general. The show has worn all its opinions on its sleeve since season 1, and Kendall as a character isn't one who wins even when he does. He, in Roman's words in 3.01 after Kendall's arguably had the biggest win he does across the course of the show, self-destructs. I don't imagine had he become CEO it would've gone any differently.

I do think there's also this desire to see all three of the golden trio's acts in s3 in isolation - it's easier to end sympathetically with Roman because he broke at his father's funeral, when literally an episode earlier he was instating a fascist in one of the most powerful roles in the worlds. It's easier to end sympathetically with Shiv, who kills her brother and faces a broken end. It's harder to end sympathetically with Kendall, who alienates his family, threatens to take custody of his children off his wife, takes back a crucial truth and has to be forced out of a legacy he feels entitled to.

There's a sense of character death there, but no more than there is for Shiv or Roman, the former who has lost any ethical or moral core she may have ever had, and the latter who's lost any sense of purpose and destroyed a country in the process (even if in the end it was Kendall's choice, Mencken was always Roman's man).

To look at Kendall's actions in isolation though negates the particular insidious abuse Kendall faced in his life, and even in death. Kendall's alienation from his children takes on a far greater depth for instance when you consider it in the context of Roman echoing their father's words that they were never family to begin with, just as his terrible treatment of both Rava and Jess at his father's funeral takes on added weight when you consider the fact that he's not only grieving his father, but is feeling increasingly alone after his sister betrayed him and he's worried his brother's going to cut him out now that Mencken's president.

Does that make his behaviour okay? Of course not! But to view these moments in isolation paints them as inherently abusive instead of the long tail of abuse in a very lonely man who's only sense of self-worth is tied to the ghost of a dead man

The fandom's always been fickle with the characters though, so I imagine it'll come full circle. Don't forget at the start of the season a loud portion of the fandom was arguing Connor was the worst one because Kieran said he bought a person in an interview, haha.

[sukibenders]

Okay now listen, just bare with me, if I were stuck in the middle of the wilderness with a couple of others and saw one not only get possessed by a supernatural force that made her start speaking French and ram her head into the window BUT ALSO stab a bear, that coincidentally walks up to her, through the skull talking about said supernatural force has brought them a blessing, I would start believing her when she starts saying spooky shit.

[minglana]

i have to email my teacher bc i turned in a draft of a paper last week and were supposed to turn in the final draft on thursday but he hasnt responded w the corrections for the second draft. but at the same time i have to do something (write an email) for him to another man that i still havent done. so idk how to write the email saying all of that

[feral-radfem]

Oh my God I'm so surprised that super persistent but consistently flawed debater on Tumblr is actually a child. I never saw that coming.

Look, there's things that adults shouldn't say/ topics we shouldnt bring up around children and should be able to create spaces away from them. If I'm being completely honest, radical feminism almost entirely falls in this category of 18+ content. We are constantly talking about sexual violence and other extremely adult topics that aren't appropriate for developing minds to be constantly bombarded with. It's bad for your young minds and it's bad for the movements that you seem to think you care about.

If you want to be a child activist then volunteer for your local community, don't get in online spaces with adults. It's simply not safe for children and creates an unproductive environment for adults. Children will learn better skills and build more fulfilling relationships and achievement doing local community activism anyways.

If you're a minor you need to put that shit somewhere so that we can tell that we're talking to a literal baby. I really don't enjoy this increasing trend of purposely not telling people when y'all are minors because you think that it's going to make people dismiss you, when you having limited life experience is a legitimate limitation on your analysis. You're being deceptive because someone placed a social boundary that you don't want to respect. It's high key gross.

On the same note, different tune, I hope this serves that is a reminder that people can literally be lying, either outright or by omission, about everything they claim about themselves on here. We, people in general, have created the online culture where it's completely normal to lie about important identifying features about ourselves for social clout/elevation. While I know there are some of us that may not participate in this practice, I know plenty of radfems do. We've caught a few doing it red-handed and all they're doing is breeding distrust amongst us in these spaces.

Can y'all not just act like normal honest people?

[sketching-shark]

Sorry. Forget my ask about the Monkey King movie. It's not the best, and westernaised. I just talked about the animation. Sorry it was stupid ask that I sent (and also I didn't know that you saw it, sorry). So sorry.

asfgerwrefsd ANON it would be an act of vile hubris on my part to assume people regularly check my blog to see what I have and haven't answered, so seriously no need whatsoever for your to apologize, especially since there was nothing stupid or harmful at all about the ask you sent! And I'm aware enough about my tastes to know that I'm EXTREMELY picky when it comes to JTTW retellings, so retellings that work for other people will be ones I'll be a lot more harsh on (see for example my history of dunking on Chinese retellings that focus on a Sun Wukong romance). Plus I think it's a good, indeed vital part of criticism to know that you can recognize a story's flaws and still enjoy other elements of it. And as is besides agreeing with you that the fight scene animations were indeed pretty cool, of the Western retellings of Xiyouji I've seen this did feel like a bit of a step in a neat direction in terms of being up-front in giving its protagonists morally gray but understandable motives for doing what they do. The Monkey King's brutal honesty is something I love about his character in the og classic, and it was kind of neat to see a version of that in the Netflix film. So while we haven't yet gotten a western JTTW retelling where the writers respected the "intelligent" in "intelligent stone primate," and while there's always more that can be done to not westernize stories from other cultures, I'd say that Netflix's Monkey King is a pretty decent addition to the ever-growing library of JTTW retellings out there.