#we argued a bit

[ewwww-what]

Nobody is as excited about the preview as I am. I have paragraphs.

[echo-s-land]

What it is like being a Nanami stan surrounded by Geto, Sukuna and Gojo stans

[brother-emperors]

listen. listen, there's a kind of intimacy in having a dedicated rivalry, okay. who else is going to know you like this!!! also it's funny

Ascanio Maria Sforza: la parabola politica di un cardinale-principe del Rinascimento, Marco Pellegrini

Julius II: The Warrior Pope, Christine Shaw

and on della rovere’s soldier comment:

Popes, Cardinals and War: The Military Church in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, D.S. Chambers

and finally! regarding the delightful Mess of political-family relationships, including the marriage comment (altho the montefeltro family that giovanni married into did have sforza family ties, since giovanna's mother was battista sforza, but this is about the more immediate alliance based relationship and della rovere's hand in the rejection of a milanese match for his brother. and. this is not even remotely a serious comic, but now I am once again thinking about insular all these families are. the fucking medicis are here too, if you go half a step to the left on della rovere's family tree)

Julius II: The Warrior Pope, Christine Shaw

Giulio II, Il papa del Rinascimento, Giulio Busi (Bianca Maria Visconti is Ascanio's mom. btw)

panel inserts of the cards they're playing with are all from the Visconti-Sforza tarot deck! (I used public domain scans/photos for the comic itself)

ko-fi!⭐ bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app

[daily-hanamura]

[godofsmallthings]

i wish i could take the time to parse through my taylor swift is/isn't a gay icon thoughts on here but i fear people on this website don't know how to behave

[roman-roy-apologist]

yeah ok i get it you don’t think transandrophobia exists but you do realize that it’s still bad to be shitty to transmascs right? you get that right?

[lunarharp]

:')

[mariocki]

Lalla Ward makes a brief appearance as Lady Augusta, intended bride to an ill-fated aristocrat, in A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Ash Tree (BBC, 1975)

[littleseasalt]

q!forever: *is literally forced on situations where the result would be the same for any other cubito*

people that don't watch his pov: naaah he did it cause he's crazy/easy to manipulate 😜😜😜

[yuridovewing]

Definitely a little controversial but tbh I'm a "Crowfeather would have been a bad dad to the three if he and Leafpool succeeded in running or if he knew about them" truther.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

endlessly captivated and fascinated by the way alex and miles talk about their personal/ creative relationship

[seagull-scribbles]

Well I’m not a vampire, but I feel like one…

messy request for @kito-oh-kito 💕 I feel better now, thank you

[jamietarttsdaddyissues]

Okay I’m going to say this and I’m going to say this once.

I do not like how the relationship with Jamie’s father was handled in season 3.

If they wanted to go the route of forgiveness they absolutely could have. If they wanted to go the route of his dad going to rehab they absolutely could have. Those are not inherently wrong or bad. It’s a show about forgiveness and I get that. It’s a comedy and Jamie is not the main character - I get that too.

My issue is this: the show went out of its way on multiple occasions to show just how violent and abusive James is. Just to give a few examples:

Repeated physical abuse

Repeated verbal abuse

Planning, funding, and likely pressuring the sexual abuse of his 14 year old son (a minor and below the age of consent in both The Netherlands and the UK regardless of the age of the girl in the red light district)

The willingness to beat Coach Beard (basically a stranger to him) with a metal pipe in a 3 to 1 fight in a back alley which could have realistically resulted in his death (and calling Beard “son” right before the final blow)

Jamie literally gave up his dream - a job as a professional footballer on a top hometown team - to leave the country on a trashy reality show just to get away from his father. The show traced a large portion of Jamie’s issues back to his relationship with his father. Not all of course - but that was a big theme of his growth and development.

So even if we entertain the notion that this stint in rehab was successful and James is sober - that’s great. That’s a storyline I wouldn’t mind hearing - IF we had the appropriate time to show it. But the thing is, we didn’t. This season was disjointed and rushed in many ways - and I’m not complaining - I still loved it. But if they’re going to tackle a topic this serious, they need to do it right. They need to be clear that alcohol was not the only problem James had and that sobriety does not absolve you of accountability. As important as it is to portray the message that all human beings can change, including addicts, it is equally as important to show the serious work that addicts in recovery put in to address the hurt that they caused through their addiction. It is not easy work to battle addiction and to mend relationships - sometimes part of recovery is accepting that you can’t mend things with everyone you’ve hurt and that is the right of the victim to decide how they feel.

We were shown none of this. What we got instead was:

A speech from Jamie’s mom about how he is still amazing despite his dad while still somehow crediting Jamie’s talent to his dad’s abuse

Ted telling Jamie to forgive his dad as he’s mid-panic about his safety and his dad’s location

Ted making a point to say the forgiveness was for Jamie’s sake, not for James - which was ALMOST good until they ruined it

Denbo and Bug suddenly supportive despite being just as violent as James in 2x09

James suddenly in rehab for 0.2 seconds

Jamie reaching out to his dad via text despite having no idea his dad is in rehab - something that is realistically compromising his physical and emotional safety

A quick clip of Jamie bonding with his father before the season/series ends for good

The reason I connected with Jamie so intensely from season 1 was the shared experience of abuse from my father. I want to be clear that I know I’m projecting - that’s what fandom is - and I in no way expected the show to end exactly as I wanted. However, this is what I would have liked to see as 1) an abuse survivor 2) a licensed therapist and 3) a person:

The message that you can heal without forgiving those who hurt you OR that you can forgive them and still not allow them back into your life (ESPECIALLY if it compromises your safety)

The message that sometimes people don’t change for the better and you can grieve that relationship while still fostering healthier ones elsewhere.

An emphasis on support systems and chosen family when someone doesn’t have the reality of a parent or partner getting better (we saw this with Bex seeking out Rebecca and Rupert’s assistant)

Instead of Man City suddenly cheering for Jamie, which felt insanely unrealistic, having the cheers of Richmond fans drown out the boos and verbal assaults of the Man City crowd - further emphasizing that despite the pain he has attached to Man City and his father, he has a home with Richmond.

So to wrap up this very long rant, I feel very disheartened by this part of the season. I still love Ted Lasso and always will - there were so many parts of this season I absolutely adored and wouldn’t trade for anything - but I feel that they dropped the ball on this one. Most people don’t get to repair relationships with abusive parents. Is it possible? Of course. Is it important to depict that it can happen? Absolutely. It’s a show about forgiveness. But they didn’t need to do it like this for Jamie’s storyline. They could have kept the speech about forgiving James for Jamie’s sake and deleted all of the rehab/texting afterwards. I still wouldn’t have been thrilled but it would have made more sense to me in context of the show. And it would have meant a lot more to me as someone who’s father is unlikely to ever stop being a risk to my safety.

This just felt bad. Jamie Tartt had one of the best arcs I’ve ever seen in media and he deserved better than that.

[bluejayblueskies]

on the one hand i really enjoy romantic john/arthur esp. in nuanced ways where it explores like. what does romantic love mean for john, who maybe hasn't experienced it before? what does a romantic relationship look like when the two people involved share one body? what are arthur's feelings about being with another man, and how does the time period he grew up in influence those feelings?

but on the other hand, the fact that canonically john and arthur aren't in a romantic relationship and won't be in the future is very important to me (and i know a lot of other people as well). a large part of it is of course that as an aromantic person, it's so refreshing to have the main pairing in a piece of media be both a) extremely close and intimate with each other, as well as loving one another and b) not involved romantically. body sharing aside, relationships like john and arthur's are rare in media, and it's really nice to know that it's going to stay that way and isn't going to 'take the next step' [derogatory] into a romantic relationship at some future date.

even from a non-aromantic perspective (because i'm not trying to say that either john or arthur are canonically aromantic, just that it's nice that i can headcanon them that way and it fits into the canon narrative), a platonic relationship (and esp. one between two men!) being the main focus of malevolent is a choice i'm really glad harlan made. i'm not going to delve too much into this because his explanation is better than mine, but essentially, two male characters being vulnerable with one another and putting their trust in one another while not being romantically involved is something i definitely think we could use more of in media as a whole.

finally, i wanted to talk about the 'and yet you love him' 'i suppose so' dialogue between arthur and the king in ep. 20. (i think about this exchange a lot y'all--one of the best moments of the podcast imo.) 'love' is such a romantically charged word, especially when used in situations similar to this in other pieces of media. for complete transparency, the very first time i heard this scene, i thought it was meant to be romantic love because that's the kind of weight i ascribed to 'love confessions' based on the precedent set by other media and by real life as well. (i consider this moment a love confession because it's the first time arthur uses that word to describe his feelings toward john, even if he himself doesn't actually say it--literally a confession of love.)

finding out that it wasn't was a 'huh, interesting' moment for me, because i just hadn't really seen anything like it before! there was no precedent! hearing a love confession used in a context like this, where arthur's love for john is narratively important and something that can be used against him but is also platonic, not romantic, just ... it blows me away every single time i relisten to this episode.

in conclusion: i love them <3

[petrichormore]

I think today’s encounter with Ron could be a hallucination but the only thing that makes me hesitate to agree is Ron’s info on the federation. Info that we as an audience know is probably accurate but that q!Bad would have no actual way of knowing. He can’t hallucinate new information. Also, said information was exactly what he didn’t want to hear. If he was hallucinating a fantasy world where he didn’t accidentally kill/eat Ron, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me for his brain to include made-up federation info that actively upsets him. If it was a scary, negative hallucination maybe - it wasn’t though. Buuuut you never know I suppose. Either way I’ll enjoy it.

[ohitsminuet]

PLS HELP ME WHAJT IS THIS TOMFUCKERY??????????? HELP ME PLS PLS PLSSS HELP TOIPAD EXPERT 😭

SPOILERS FOR INANIMATE INSANITY S2 AND MENTIONS OF ABUSE, INC*ST AND P*DOPHILIA BELOW.

Oh, boy, this'll be a long one.

Minuet isn't here to answer himself, but LMAOOOOO?????? Personally I wouldn't say anything Bug (@bugdatabase) hasn't said in this post.

https://www.tumblr.com/bugdatabase/740813373718118400/not-an-anon-calling-toipad-proship-as-an

But! If you want to go even further with the evidence: In this post, Justin himself says that “[He] always felt that PayJay (a ship with a character he voices) is a pretty cool ship).”

Besides, we (Minuet and I) both find it ridiculous to tell someone who is, under the transmitter's point of view, “uninformed” (someone who, under the point of view of someone who thinks it's a proship, likely doesn't know) to “get their senses together”. That's just plain rude. Even if it was a proship, there is a clear lack of tact in this ask, and articulating it differently could have made a different, likely more positive impact. Going “hey, this ship is problematic jsyk” is less aggressive, and in the case that the person /is/ in fact uninformed, can be taken more lightly and solved more amicably.

(But of course, Tumblr is not always amicable, is it?)

In the second post attached, Justin also says that we as a community should value our own sense of interpretation as long as it doesn't go completely against the canon of the show. Which it doesn't, because Toilet and MePad literally make up in canon! And they are shown to be friends after T&B! Even after MYOB, you've got to accept that if they aren't in good terms, MePad did everything he could to convince MePhone to let Toilet stay. Toilet is very compassionate, and even if they’re stuck in a strange desencuentro, he would definitely know this.

Yes, MePad not helping him definitely would leave a mark in their relationship, but that doesn't make the ship abusive or toxic in any way. They were stuck in the middle of a chain of unhealed generational trauma, but none of them are abusive. It's all a petty one-sided conflict for MePhone4’s attention. Toilet doesn't know how to react to being thrown aside, so he develops a strange unrequited rivalry towards MePad. The thing is though! They make up! They communicate their feelings to one another!

Is Toilet hateable under popular perspective? Probably. He's clumsy, loud, not very bright and made for you to either hate him or laugh at him. But that doesn't mean that he isn't a character worth analyzing. He deserves love, which he never receives, even after 14 episodes of dealing with what he deals with. I know it's silly to sympathize with a fictional toilet, but he really does deserve more development and closure for his arc, and as Minuet has expressed in the past, MePad (character) has what it takes to break the cycle and provide him with the affection that he needs. (We're guiding ourselves based off our own analyses of II S2 and canon itself, btw. Not any theories.)

Conclusion: Leave ToiPad and its shippers alone. It is not a problematic ship. Neither of them are abusive, Justin is not uncomfortable with ships of the characters they voice, and it is most definitely Not inc*stuous and/or p*dophilic.

- Nonne (🔪)