#don't get me wrong i don't think those two things are mutually exclusive but i see all these videos of mothers (it's always the mothers btw
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no my mom didn't teach me how to properly take care of my wavy hair but she did teach me that my worth was based on so much more than how i looked and honestly i feel like that's fine <3
#i literally can't blame her bc that woman has the most low maintenance pin straight hair u have ever seen#don't get me wrong i don't think those two things are mutually exclusive but i see all these videos of mothers (it's always the mothers btw#spending hours learning how to curly girl method & diffuse their daughter's hair#and it's sooo lovely and wonderful but i can't help but hope that they're also spending the same amount of time letting their daughters#be loud and wild and messy and nerdy and just like. having a childhood without needing to spend all this time focusing on how they look#(also this isn't about black americans who have experienced so much specific hair-related discrimination & oppression bc i think there is#just so much more complexity there. i'm just talking about my own experience having kind of frizzy hair as a kid/teen)#anyway i hope this makes sense#vi is typing...
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Mother's Day
Summary: Jack has a very important, surprise gift to give you on a special holiday for your inaugural celebrations together
Paring: Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader (Fluff)
WC: 1.4k
Whenever he can, Aaron leaves work early to get Jack. Thankfully, with Strauss's return, he's not still stuck doing two jobs, so he finishes his work in time to get Jack from school. You also love when he has days like that because it means he'll cook something delicious and homemade, maybe even dessert if Jack has anything to say about it.
Jack gets into the car like any other day, but what he says isn't the typical comment about his day or request for an afternoon activity. "Did you know it's Mother's Day this weekend?" Jack asks.
Aaron's heart clenches in his chest. Mother's Days, birthdays, Christmases, and the anniversary of Haley's death are all especially hard days for Jack, and Aaron tries his best to support his son. "Do you want to talk about mom?" He asks softly as he drives. Since Jack doesn't remember a lot of it, Aaron fills in the blanks and answers the questions.
"No, I might want to talk to her tonight, but I want to get a present," Jack explains.
Aaron frowns a little but accepts it. "We can do that. What do you want to get her?"
Jack's thinking face looks like his dad's, something you were the first to point out to Aaron. "I don't know." He admits. "You always get roses for Y/n so maybe I can get her flowers?"
That really throws Aaron, and it rapidly occurs to him that he and Jack aren't talking about the same person. "You want to get a present for Y/n?" He clarifies.
Jack shifts uncomfortably in his car seat, clearly nervous at his father's reaction. "I'm sorry. Is that wrong?"
Aaron can't shake his head fast enough. "No. No, of course not, buddy." He assures his son, reaching back with one hand to touch the boy's foot for extra reassurance. "I think she'd really like that. What made you think you want to get something for her?" He tries to ask it in a non-judgemental, casual tone.
"Well, in class, we were all talking about what we love about our moms, and a lot of the things that my friends were talking about are things that Y/n does for me." He explains, and Aaron feels his heart clench in the best way that time while he bites down a wide smile. "Mom is still my mom, and I'm not forgetting how she used to do those things for me, but Y/n is there for me too."
Aaron notices what he's emphasizing, and he's immensely proud of Jack for being able to express those feelings, understanding that appreciating his mom and recognizing your role in his life aren't mutually exclusive.
Then he's thinking about you as he absorbs the confession. And how lucky he is to have you. You have been a constant source of support and love, a beacon of hope and stability in the wake of their family tragedy, never anything but good to them. He feels so much joy and a tiny bit of sadness. He knows Haley would have loved you and appreciated how much you care for Jack, but he wishes she was there to see it.
He's choked up as he goes to speak. "Jack, that's very sweet of you, and I think, no, I know, Y/n feels the same way about you. She thinks you're the most amazing kid ever."
Jack smiles softly. "She does? Really?"
Aaron can't nod fast enough. "Yes, she always tells me how great she thinks you are."
"So we can get her a gift for her?" Jack confirms, looking hopeful.
"Absolutely." Aaron agrees, taking a right turn to the mall rather than a left to their home. "Whatever you want."
~
It's been such a long week of work and Saturday mornings are Jack's soccer games, so as soon as your Saturday movie night is over, you're fast asleep next to Aaron.
Like usual, he stirs beside you first on Sunday morning, but when you go to get up with him, he softly whispers for you to go back to sleep and that's very easy to do.
When you next wake up, the sun is creeping through the blinds at a different angle, signaling that you slept in for longer than you usually would.
There's a soft knock at the bedroom door before you can properly wake up and get out of bed, and you softly call out for who you expect to be Jack to come in.
You're right in your guess that it's Jack, who quickly jumps up onto the bed with you, followed by his father who has a breakfast tray with a big vase of flowers on it accompanying a delicious-looking plate of French toast.
"Wow, you've both been busy this morning." You mumble sleepily as you sit up to hug Jack who's jumping into your arms.
"Happy Mother's Day!" He cheers joyfully, and you're taken off guard by the greeting, completely shocked.
Your eyes dart to Aaron's to make sure you heard Jack correctly, and his wide smile confirms you have. He's looking between you both with so much love and tenderness, his heart so full it feels like it's bursting.
Your eyes fill with tears as you realize the enormity of what he's just said. "Thank you, Jack." You squeeze him even tighter in a hug, not wanting him to slip away from this perfect moment.
He pulls back and smiles at you before turning back to his dad. "Can we give it to her?" He asks.
"Sure, bud." Aaron agrees, setting the tray down over the top of your legs. He sits near the foot of the bed while Jack snuggles into your side.
Jack reaches forward to pick up the little box next to the breakfast. "Here." He hands it to you. "Happy Mother's Day. Thank you for caring so much about me."
You kiss his forehead, holding him tighter to his side as you gladly accept his thoughtful and unexpected gift. "You're very welcome. I love you, Jackers."
Whatever he has for you has to be jewelry from the small, flat shape of the box and the designer jewelry stamp. You open it up, and your heart melts more, if it were possible. What's inside is a gorgeous gold bracelet with a flat, circular charm, engraved with the letter J.
Jack touches it as your finger does. "It's a J for Jack."
You nod so you don't start crying too much. You're so overwhelmed by gratitude and happiness that you can't help but let one tear slip out.
"Thank you." You finally get the words out. "It's perfect and I love it so much. I'm going to wear it every day, so you're always with me."
Jack's grinning a proud grin, clearly proud of himself for picking it out. Aaron had told him how much you would love it, but seeing it confirms it for him. "I think it'll look beautiful on you." He tells you adorably.
You chuckle a little. "You're a sweet talker just like your dad, you know?"
Aaron laughs next to you, but Jack's confused at what your compliment means, and his attention is drawn elsewhere. "Daddy and I made French toast for me as well. Oh, and I got you flowers."
It's a gorgeous bunch of flowers, beautiful colors, and lovely smells. "Thank you so much. Both of you." You repeat to them, making sure they're feeling the reciprocated love you're feeling.
"You're welcome," Jack says politely.
Aaron leans over to kiss your forehead. "I love you." He whispers.
You whisper it back before looking back at your breakfast plate. "There's a lot of French toast here, so I might need some help eating it." You say suspiciously, looking between Jack and Aaron.
Jack's eyes light up like he's been waiting for you to offer him some of it, and you can't blame him, it looks and smells like restaurant quality and you know breakfast foods are Aaron's strong suit cooking-wise.
"I am kind of hungry." Jack agrees, smirking at you softly.
"Eat up then, bud." You say, offering him the first spoonful. "We've got lots of fun stuff to do today."
#aaron hotchner#aaron hotchner x reader#criminal minds#aaron hotchner x you#aaron hotchner x y/n#aaron hotchner fanfiction#aaron hotchner fluff#aaron hotchner fic#aaron hotch hotchner#aaron hotchner imagine#aaron hotchner one shot#criminal minds oneshot#criminal minds fic#criminal minds family
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Mother's Day
Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader
Summary: Jack has a very important, surprise gift to give you on a special holiday for your inaugural celebrations together
Paring: Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader (Fluff)
WC: 1.4k
Whenever he can, Aaron leaves work early to get Jack. Thankfully, with Strauss's return, he's not still stuck doing two jobs, so he finishes his work in time to get Jack from school. You also love when he has days like that because it means he'll cook something delicious and homemade, maybe even dessert if Jack has anything to say about it.
Jack gets into the car like any other day, but what he says isn't the typical comment about his day or request for an afternoon activity. "Did you know it's Mother's Day this weekend?" Jack asks.
Aaron's heart clenches in his chest. Mother's Days, birthdays, Christmases, and the anniversary of Haley's death are all especially hard days for Jack, and Aaron tries his best to support his son. "Do you want to talk about mom?" He asks softly as he drives. Since Jack doesn't remember a lot of it, Aaron fills in the blanks and answers the questions.
"No, I might want to talk to her tonight, but I want to get a present," Jack explains.
Aaron frowns a little but accepts it. "We can do that. What do you want to get her?"
Jack's thinking face looks like his dad's, something you were the first to point out to Aaron. "I don't know." He admits. "You always get roses for Y/n so maybe I can get her flowers?"
That really throws Aaron, and it rapidly occurs to him that he and Jack aren't talking about the same person. "You want to get a present for Y/n?" He clarifies.
Jack shifts uncomfortably in his car seat, clearly nervous at his father's reaction. "I'm sorry. Is that wrong?"
Aaron can't shake his head fast enough. "No. No, of course not, buddy." He assures his son, reaching back with one hand to touch the boy's foot for extra reassurance. "I think she'd really like that. What made you think you want to get something for her?" He tries to ask it in a non-judgemental, casual tone.
"Well, in class, we were all talking about what we love about our moms, and a lot of the things that my friends were talking about are things that Y/n does for me." He explains, and Aaron feels his heart clench in the best way that time while he bites down a wide smile. "Mom is still my mom, and I'm not forgetting how she used to do those things for me, but Y/n is there for me too."
Aaron notices what he's emphasizing, and he's immensely proud of Jack for being able to express those feelings, understanding that appreciating his mom and recognizing your role in his life aren't mutually exclusive.
Then he's thinking about you as he absorbs the confession. And how lucky he is to have you. You have been a constant source of support and love, a beacon of hope and stability in the wake of their family tragedy, never anything but good to them. He feels so much joy and a tiny bit of sadness. He knows Haley would have loved you and appreciated how much you care for Jack, but he wishes she was there to see it.
He's choked up as he goes to speak. "Jack, that's very sweet of you, and I think, no, I know, Y/n feels the same way about you. She thinks you're the most amazing kid ever."
Jack smiles softly. "She does? Really?"
Aaron can't nod fast enough. "Yes, she always tells me how great she thinks you are."
"So we can get her a gift for her?" Jack confirms, looking hopeful.
"Absolutely." Aaron agrees, taking a right turn to the mall rather than a left to their home. "Whatever you want."
~
It's been such a long week of work and Saturday mornings are Jack's soccer games, so as soon as your Saturday movie night is over, you're fast asleep next to Aaron.
Like usual, he stirs beside you first on Sunday morning, but when you go to get up with him, he softly whispers for you to go back to sleep and that's very easy to do.
When you next wake up, the sun is creeping through the blinds at a different angle, signaling that you slept in for longer than you usually would.
There's a soft knock at the bedroom door before you can properly wake up and get out of bed, and you softly call out for who you expect to be Jack to come in.
You're right in your guess that it's Jack, who quickly jumps up onto the bed with you, followed by his father who has a breakfast tray with a big vase of flowers on it accompanying a delicious-looking plate of French toast.
"Wow, you've both been busy this morning." You mumble sleepily as you sit up to hug Jack who's jumping into your arms.
"Happy Mother's Day!" He cheers joyfully, and you're taken off guard by the greeting, completely shocked.
Your eyes dart to Aaron's to make sure you heard Jack correctly, and his wide smile confirms you have. He's looking between you both with so much love and tenderness, his heart so full it feels like it's bursting.
Your eyes fill with tears as you realize the enormity of what he's just said. "Thank you, Jack." You squeeze him even tighter in a hug, not wanting him to slip away from this perfect moment.
He pulls back and smiles at you before turning back to his dad. "Can we give it to her?" He asks.
"Sure, bud." Aaron agrees, setting the tray down over the top of your legs. He sits near the foot of the bed while Jack snuggles into your side.
Jack reaches forward to pick up the little box next to the breakfast. "Here." He hands it to you. "Happy Mother's Day. Thank you for caring so much about me."
You kiss his forehead, holding him tighter to his side as you gladly accept his thoughtful and unexpected gift. "You're very welcome. I love you, Jackers."
Whatever he has for you has to be jewelry from the small, flat shape of the box and the designer jewelry stamp. You open it up, and your heart melts more, if it were possible. What's inside is a gorgeous gold bracelet with a flat, circular charm, engraved with the letter J.
Jack touches it as your finger does. "It's a J for Jack."
You nod so you don't start crying too much. You're so overwhelmed by gratitude and happiness that you can't help but let one tear slip out.
"Thank you." You finally get the words out. "It's perfect and I love it so much. I'm going to wear it every day, so you're always with me."
Jack's grinning a proud grin, clearly proud of himself for picking it out. Aaron had told him how much you would love it, but seeing it confirms it for him. "I think it'll look beautiful on you." He tells you adorably.
You chuckle a little. "You're a sweet talker just like your dad, you know?"
Aaron laughs next to you, but Jack's confused at what your compliment means, and his attention is drawn elsewhere. "Daddy and I made French toast for me as well. Oh, and I got you flowers."
It's a gorgeous bunch of flowers, beautiful colors, and lovely smells. "Thank you so much. Both of you." You repeat to them, making sure they're feeling the reciprocated love you're feeling.
"You're welcome," Jack says politely.
Aaron leans over to kiss your forehead. "I love you." He whispers.
You whisper it back before looking back at your breakfast plate. "There's a lot of French toast here, so I might need some help eating it." You say suspiciously, looking between Jack and Aaron.
Jack's eyes light up like he's been waiting for you to offer him some of it, and you can't blame him, it looks and smells like restaurant quality and you know breakfast foods are Aaron's strong suit cooking-wise.
"I am kind of hungry." Jack agrees, smirking at you softly.
"Eat up then, bud." You say, offering him the first spoonful. "We've got lots of fun stuff to do today."
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Undead Unluck ch.183 thoughts
[Rip Has Two Hands]
(Contents: polyamorous gushing, thematic analysis, Latla analysis)
WHOO!!! THANK YOU, TOZUKA!!!
Being in a polyamorous relationship, it means so much to me and my family to see a scene like this. My wife runs a blog dedicated to polyamory in manga (@polyamanga), and so often potential triads or quads or whatever else will dissolve right at the end because of any number of excuses, like one character realizing that they see the love interest as like their mom, or something, or a harem protagonist insisting that polyamory is morally wrong even though he's too spineless to actually make a choice. It's endlessly frustrating, and even a lot of series that are centered around polyamory still miss the mark in certain ways. Kanojo mo Kanojo, for example, has every single character decrying the act of two-timing consistently despite the fact that that's the lifestyle that they agreed to live! Even the main dude calls himself a scumbag constantly, like he's a monster for actually being honest with his girlfriend and continuing to do something she, again, agreed to!
I don't know what Tozuka plans to do with this relationship, whether it's going to get a lot of focus or if it's going to mostly be a background detail or what, but just getting to see a character actively decide to enter a polyamorous relationship and be met with love and acceptance for that decision is extremely refreshing and exciting. I do hope we get to see them actually acting like a triad and that it doesn't devolve into jealous bickering, but from what we've seen of this group, the bickering that does happen is likely going to be mostly playful. More than anything, though, I hope that we get some more detailed characterization for Leila, as one of the major complaints I've seen is that she's just been generically smiley and supportive, not unlike Ichico in Nico's flashback
But what's wrong with that? Two different characters acted in a similar way in a similar situation, asking for their partner to be happy in the event of their impending death? That's not lazy writing, that's theming! Undead Unluck is about finding happiness through sorrow! Would Fuuko's parents have wanted her to kill herself after she found out that she was responsible for their death? No, they would have wanted her to be happy! Did Isshin's dad want her to lose faith in herself after her armor failed to protect him from a UMA? No, he wanted her to know that she had saved the rest of the village!
While plenty of characters enforce despair on themselves, no one in Undead Unluck deliberately enforces despair on anyone else except for God and the UMA, who represent that very despair. "I have to atone for what I did/this is my cross to bear/I deserve this." Those are all self-imposed rules! And if there's one thing Undead Unluck has taught us, it's that rules are meant to be broken!!! If a rule doesn't benefit or protect those it restricts, then it's just a tool that someone else is using to control them!
And that's exactly what we're told here, too. Society tells us that we have to pick one partner, even if it means someone's happiness has to be lost, but why? What purpose does it serve to compromise on what would make us happy? Sure, if one partner would be unhappy with that outcome, then it may not be worth pursuing, but Latla's objection isn't that she'd be unhappy, it's that other people will judge them for their choice
"Why do you always worry about me?! Why won't you just leave me be?" Latla has already decided that she doesn't get her happy ending because she wants Leila to get hers. She thinks that their happiness is mutually exclusive, so she resigned herself to finding happiness in Leila's happiness. But that's a fallacy. They aren't mutually exclusive, they can have their cake and eat it too, and they'll be happier for it because neither of them needs to think that they've deprived the other of their happiness. Do you think Rip and Leila would be satisfied knowing that Latla was hurting? That she was crying behind a tree while they kissed? That she was slowly backing away and would eventually be gone from their lives if they didn't literally drag her back?
Latla chastised Rip in both this and the previous loop for going out on his own and leaving her behind, but in her own way, Latla was doing the exact same thing. Rip was literally distant, but Latla was emotionally distant, refusing to allow herself to indulge in the happiness that would otherwise be lost to her sister. If she and Rip hadn't held each other at arm's length in the previous loop, how differently would their lives have gone? How happy could they have been? Better question, was happiness even possible for them at the time without Leila? Were they being disrespectful of Leila's wishes, or was the hole too great for them to fill on their own?
Nico couldn't fill the Ichico-shaped hole in his heart with Mico, even though that's what Ichico wanted, for fear that doing so would erase what little was left of her in his heart. Perhaps it was hopeless from the beginning that Rip and Latla would be able to move on without Leila, much like Rip and Leila wouldn't be able to smile knowing that Latla was crying
Undead Unluck is about joy and freedom, and its cast finds joy in living freely. Fuuko fell into despair because she couldn't touch anyone, but found joy when she met someone she could touch freely. Juiz was trapped in a never-ending cycle of loss, but found joy when she met someone who she trusted could break the cycle. Rip and Latla fell apart when they lost Leila, but now can laugh and smile without reservation or guilt because they can be with her forevermore without anyone telling them they can't. And who are we to tell them they can't be happy after everything they've been through?
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I have already seen my fair share of
"Barbie is great because it teaches girls they can be hyperfeminine and pink and glittery etc. etc. and still be empowered. Barbiecore!! It has nothing to do with pleasing men. Men hate the movie, see?
Also, it's not bad if girls are taught to "have fun" with make-up from an early age on."
And I just get so tired. I wish people would understand the effects and the role of femininity (even the version that "supposedly does not revolve around men and is hated by them") in our larger cultural context and how femininity is part of a gendered hierarchy.
It does not exist in a vacuum and cannot be divorced from the damaging history of femininity's social function as a reinforcement of sexism, patriarchal dynamics and gendered hierarchies.
It doesn't just go away because of a fun movie.
Don't get me wrong. Barbie is a good movie and I am not saying it has no value or doesn't also teach women many good things.
But two things can be true at the same time.
Barbie can reinforce good messages (women can have great careers, STEM jobs, be successful, call out sexual harassment etc.) while also reinforcing harmful messages with regard to other cultural facets such as beauty standards, make-up culture and the alienation of women's natural faces (and this being pushed onto young girls too), fear of aging, having to embody a set of pleasing "aesthetics", wearing clothing/looks that can be unpractical restricting and demand lots of self-monitoring (increasing a woman's cognitive load because part of her attention always has to check whether her skirt didn't go up too high to prevent flashing her underwear, whether her make-up smudged, whether her hair is in place etc.) and spending lots of time, money and resources on beauty and fashion-related products and practices.
Those things ARE harmful femininity. And only because you think a subset of men don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't reinforce and teach these basic concepts of women being valued immensely for their decorative appearance.
(Also, more on that whole "men don't like these aesthetics" down belove because I think this claim also needs to be looked at with more nuance.)
These messages are not mutually exclusive. The same piece of media can absolutely provide very good commentary on one topic while giving bad commentary on another.
"But pink is just a color and there is nothing wrong with glitter."
I agree! But Barbie's aesthetics are the full package of femininity.
Because it is not just about glitter or about pink. Barbie's default isn't running around in pink sweatpants with a glittery oversized hoodie and purple crocs with messy hair and no make-up. Or some funny fantasy clown make-up.
Barbie generally looks conventionally stunning.
She wears carefully selected, perfectly designed beautiful and feminine outfits, styled through and through from head to toe.
And even if there is some ironic twist somewhere in the movie, its entire advertisment and PR are very explicitly focused on those hyperfeminine aesthetics.
Her event and PR outfits referencing iconic Barbie looks and the hyperfeminine aesthetics in trailers and promotional material to grab people's attention are a core part of their campaign.
That is also socialization. It still presents these things as attractive and desirable, as it reinforces that people should find these things appealing and direct their attention towards them.
I am aware that the movie also comments on body odor or cellulite.
I know it has moments like America Ferrera's monologue and I appreciate these things but this doesn't erase the rest of the aesthetic narrative of the movie, which does want you to enjoy and have fun with those pink hyperfeminine aesthetics. It is part of your viewing pleasure.
Despite the good points it makes it simultaneously also wants you to be positively and genuinely entertained by the aesthetics.
When it comes to this, the movie has an "eat your cake and have it too" mentality because they want to (rightfully) criticize some damaging expectations superimposed on women by feminine gender roles, i.e., femininity. But they clearly also want to keep others. They think some of them are not actually harmful but fun, empowering, even though a thorough look at the femininity they promote as worth keeping will uncover that they still have disadvantaging effects on women and keep crucial parts of the patriarchal hierarchy intact.
And in some regards their messages are even contradictory. Because on the one hand they do want to criticize unrealistic beauty standards (see Gloria's monologue) but at the same time even "self-centered" femininity, wanting to look good, feminine, pretty "for yourself", expressing your "identity" with a certain type of feminine fashion, still has the aforementioned mental and material effects (altered relationships with our bare faces because of make-up, even if your "eyeliner that is so sharp that it can kill a man, is for yourself and yourself alone", spending lots of time and money on restrictive clothing and make-up products, placing a significant amount of value on your looks, constantly monitoring your outward appearance).
As women we have learned to lie to ourselves and live with this cognitive paradox constantly.
"We don't need to shave. But we do it because we "want to", because even though "we don't have to" for some reasons we all collectively still think it is unattractive and unfeminine. But hey we "choose" to shave so it's different!
Aging is totally fine! Women are allowed to age! But at the same time we invest lots of time and money in anti-aging products and routines but this time under the guise of self-care. We don't have to of course. We are perfectly fine with wrinkles! It's just an (odd, collective) "personal" preference that the majority of women would still rather look youthful forever. But this time it's different! It's a choice!"
Materially we are doing the exact same thing that we are conditioned to do by patriarchal norms but thanks to the rhetoric of positive femininity, choice and personal preference we do not need to actually change our behaviour. We can let the words, the impressive-sounding monologues, do "the work for us" to absolve us, while our actions remain the same.
At the end of the day, the movie doesn't really deconstruct the entire cage of femininity, its roots, and all the aspects that harm women. Instead they reframe and rename some of the same things as a celebration of positive femininity.
But simply keeping something damaging in place and renaming it doesn't remove its negative material effects.
It just serves as a dazzling, soothing paint job to distract you and make you feel better about liking it, even if it doesn't serve you.
Hence, it's clear that the movie wants you to think that these aesthetics themselves are or can be, on some level, still fun and good.
(Again, that doesn't mean that it doesn't also promote good messages at other moments.)
And the public reception proves it. Otherwise we wouldn't have those aforementioned takes on how "Barbiecore is empowering because it doesn't revolve around men and "women-centered" hyperfemininity is good."
(Though it has to be noted that whereas pink and glitter are inherently neutral, they have been assigned certain meanings, hence when they are used they do serve as social signifiers and messengers for certain ideas. They are like a condensed proxy or short-form of femininity that quickly and efficently evoke certain gendered ideas in the viewer just by having them look at it.
I think sub-cultures are a good example: Goth and emo fashion for women is not considered attractive by many average people, including average men. And I am pretty sure most goths and emos would tell you they wear this kind of fashion for themselves, to express themselves and not to fulfill any gendered (mainstream!) expectations.
But. Within these scenes there are very often STILL very distinct differences in the type of fashion men and women wear. And oddly enough they often align more with traditional gender expectations than they like to admit (even the higher degree of androgynity in male fashion in those scenes doesn't undo those dynamics - the sexualization and pornification of women in those scenes is very prominent).
Funny. One might wonder why this is the case.
So you still have feminine, pretty, sexy, lady-like goth and emo girls who might not appeal to the general public's taste. But within the scene they very much appeal to that scene-related male gaze.
So the basics of femininity are still taught and lived.
And in addition, if for some reason a woman were to change her style and leave those scenes she might let go of her specific fashion sense but she will most likely take the basic teachings of femininity with her: that there lies immense value in her being decorative (for men).
I honestly think many women are in denial about the fact that yes, even their "self-centered" femininity benefits men as it consolidates certain tranditional gendered roles. And I also think that women are often taught to lie themselves (amongst others by liberal feminism) with regard to how much they actually appreciate men's positive attention and feedback (and I don't blame them for wanting those things, that's how we are socialized, even on purely platonic levels. As a lesbian even I notice how much I often value and unconsciously want positive (platonic or professional) feedback from men in particular. We as a society value men's opinions and attention deeply.)
Coming back to Barbie I think all of this can be applied as well.
First, just as with non-mainstream femininity in alternative scenes "Barbiecore" still teaches the same basic concepts of decorative femininity, encouraging many of the aforementioned damaging behaviours connected to femininity (money, time, resources, cognitive load, value of external attractiveness/appeal), even if women believe they do it for themselves.
And if a woman moves on from pink, glittery Barbiecore to another type of feminine fashion these fundamental values will probably remain with her. At best they have not been challenged by Barbiecore, at worst they have been reinforced, but this time under the pretense of "self-love", self-care or focusing on one's self, ostensibly not serving the male gaze.
Second, it is naive to believe that no man finds Margot Robbie's Barbie and her looks attractive in the movie (just like there are enough men who think unconventional, i.e., non-mainstream, displays of femininity like gothic/emo etc. are attractive).
Given Margot Robbie's attractiveness and the fact that beyond the pink color palette, Barbie's feminine fashion itself is not really "outrageous" (vs. some scene clothing) I wouldn't be surprised if the number of men who are attracted to her movie character is actually higher than the "men hate barbiecore" idea wants to make one believe. They may say they don't but in my opinion it's an act to save face and demonstrate ostensible superiority, just like when they call beautiful women "mid". (Also as we know men are very well willing to fuck what they hate; it's just another display of "dominance").
I am actually very convinced that there is a significant amount of men who would totally dig the very same looks she is sporting if her behavior was different.
I believe they hate her despite her good looks because her personality does not align with their gendered expectations of what a woman should be.
So out of spite, as a punishment, they call her and her aesthetics ugly and childish - because they know beauty is one of the things women are primarily valued for in our society, hence it's an effective target to attack.
If she kept the look but acted like a 50s house wive I'm pretty sure many men would openly say how they are attracted to her (and objectify her).
And even if a portion of men may find the focus on pink genuinely childish they can still like the overall femininity the look reinforces. If you kept the same outfit but changed the colors and removed the glitter it would still be the same basic type of femininity. So with regard to fundamental gendered concepts nothing is really challenged here.
So yes, I genuinely think men hating on "girly" femininity is a lot more aligned with the "Margot Robbie is mid" defense.
They are very clearly attracted to her but they try to paint themselves as not interested, as above that, to display their "superior status and power" over her, because they hate her as a person now. (Or use it as an attempted power play to make girls insecure and - as another post said it perfectly - withold beauty from women because women are taught it's their social currency; so if even women like Margot Robbie are relegated to "mid" they feel self-conscious and weak and will try to win the men's favor to receive their approval - and thus be granted some of that withheld beauty.)
In essence, I really don't buy that men don't actually benefit from "women-centered hyperfemininity" and that it is the looks that don't appeal to them as a class (obviously individual tastes vary).
I am not saying that everything that received the label "feminine" is inherently bad. Compassion and empathy come to mind of course and in an ideal world we might also have separated the harmless parts of the aesthetics (cute fabric patterns like flowers etc., soft but also relaxing and practical cothing) from the harmful practices that reinforce regressive gendered ideas and also lead to increased cognitive load, self-image issues (esp. regarding our bare faces), spending lots of time, money and resources on these things etc.
But we do not live in this ideal world.
We need to treat femininity as the thing that it is in the real world right now. It already has a meaning and this meaning won't be deconstructed by elevating all of it and saying that the harmful parts are actually empowering, too, which is what is happening with those celebrations of barbiecore and pink hyperfemininity.
Your celebration of femininity does not occur in a vacuum.
You cannot pretend the social context in which you do this simply doesn't exist because it spoils your fun and pretend it doesn't actually have any unfavourable consequences for women.
It does.
Gender is a hierarchy, in which femininity is an active tool to place women below men.
That is the reality we need to deconstruct.
-----
A little extra that just came to my mind:
The gothic lolita scene used to have (and perhaps still has) the same kind of rhetoric, too: "We do it for ourselves. Not to appeal to the male gaze. Men don't like this kind of fashion anyway." But a) this is clearly…not true. Gothic lolita, including the non-revealing styles (which make up most of the styles actually), is still popular and fetishized by certain groups of men, precisely because of its (distinct interpretation of) feminine appeal. And b) it still ingrains many core believes of classic femininity into women that transcend the fashion style and reflect accepted and desired ideas about feminine gender roles in broader society.
So the mindset of "doing something that is in line with our sexist society's expectations "for yourself", hence it's different and does not reinforce the same sexist ideals" that women often adapt is a common, recurrent cognitive strategy to justify these preferences to ourselves and others.
Barbiecore is therefore not unique and suddenly above reproach. On the contrary. It perfectly fits a commonly found pattern.
#barbie#radfem#radical feminism#femininity#beauty#Again I'm not saying the movie is bad or has no value.#Not at all#I'm just done with the “feminity is super great actually” takes#my post
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Yo, what do you think about jasper, her arc and character as a whole?
(Also your explanation of pearl was so good I loved it)
oooo good question!
jasper, imo, is a very good portrayal of an abuser. she's so realistic, dude. she isn't evil, mustache twirling. she's a person who's abusive and THATS what makes her relationship with lazuli gutwrenching. because it's something you'd see in real life. it's not black and white. it's two deeply fucked up and traumatized people hurting each other. it's not good vs evil. it's two people who are horrible for each other.
jasper is just. extremely realistic to me. she's someone who hurts people around her to make them stay, to make them look at her and admit that she's strong. she needs constant external validation because nothing fills that void in her life of someone treating her better. she hurts everyone and then is crushed by them leaving. she's so interesting because she NEEDS people near her but shes the one shoving them out. she's the one constantly hurting them and they leave to get away from being mistreated. it's. she has so much pressure and experiences so much constant mistreatment and she's convinced it's what makes her strong, it's what makes her special. to admit she's hurting would be to be weak. she convinces herself anyone leaving is a sign of weakness. it's not because of *her*, it's not because what she's like is bad. because admitting how she treats people is wrong is admitting how SHE was treated is wrong. and she can't do that. she can't handle reevaluating her entire identity being the next battle and the next fight and how much pain she can take. she can't let herself even consider changing, because that means admitting she was miserable. and only a weak gem would hate how they're supposed to be.
she's a victim and an abuser, those things aren't mutually exclusive and I wish people wouldn't act like they were. she was hurt so fucking badly, and she also hurt so many people so fucking badly.
her "everyone I fuse with leaves me" was haunting, man. it's, again, a very accurate depiction of an abuser who was caught in the cycle. you want to grab her and shake her and say, stop you're hurting yourself you're ruining your own life. but she refuses to see it and she refuses to get better and it. hurts to watch.
I see her as a cautionary tale. nobody can force you to change. YOU have to look at yourself and ask if you're the problem. YOU have to look at how you treat others before you scream that they left you. YOU have to look at your life and ask, is this what I want?
she's a cautionary tale and works well as one.
there is one thing I don't really like and that's how her being shattered was handled? her being shattered completely and then some how brought back was. Cheap, ngl. although her reaction to being shattered was. fucking terrifying. obviously from stevens point of view but also it's just so fucking telling about her mental state. she romanticized being shattered. she romanticized the thought of dying gloriously in battle. she respected steven for shattering her. it's just. fucking *horrifying.* did she WANT to be shattered? holy shit, is jasper suicidal ? the implications are. Awful. I don't want her to be around the others because she keeps hurting them but at the same time I'm going "someone fucking HELP her!" but she doesn't WANT help and it's. it's fucking hard to watch. she's so set on her own destruction and it's physically painful. she can't get better until *she* decides she wants to. that's the only way her pains going to stop.
I also don't like the way steven shattered her. I wish it was portrayed more how his thoughts of shattering white was. his anger, his trauma towards her, his hatred of how much pain she gave him and the fact he's just supposed to be FINE with it now. shattering jasper, though it told us a lot about her, ultimately felt repetitive? because I mean, we already get steven's urge to shatter white. and it's handled a little better. maybe steven going too far and severely damaging jaspers gem and her still being impressed to make the audience go "jasper wtf are you good" and "OH SHIT STEVEN" at the same time, while also adding more weight to his anger at white diamond,, I dunno, this is my scattered ramblings.
I get why some people wanted a redemption arc for jasper. I don't think there was enough time to make a satisfying one. I do think she could potentially heal still, but she HAS to realize it herself. everyone keeps trying to give her tools to heal, she refuses to take them. she has to start working on herself. I'm not against a jasper redemption whatsoever, hell I think if done right it could be good.
a thing I do want to say though, FUCK the idea of her getting back with lapis. they are *horrible* for each other. and I mean this both ways. both of them hurt and traumatized each other. lapis was miserable with her and *jasper was too.* they both can heal but they need to do that completely separately thank you very much.
confession, I have an OC named jasper so I was VERY confused by this ask at first. was about to write a five page essay on him. oops 😭 I have to refer to this jasper as jasper (gem) with my friends. which is also hard considering a nickname for jasper (OC) IS gem. and ironically in the steven universe au me and one friend are working on, jasper (oc) is a pearl, not a jasper, and it's. Yeah! we are so good at this.
hope you enjoyed my scrambled ramblings ksgdldjdk. sorry for disjointedness this isn't like a professional meta or anything it's just me rambling about a cool show.
(ask me things!)
#jasper steven universe#steven universe jasper#su jasper#jasper su#steven universe spoilers#su spoilers#su#steven universe#suicide cw#cw suicide#suicide tw#tw suicide
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So I'm transmasc and want to sort of share my experience ig? So fellow trans people get a bigger picture or whatever.
First off, I know I'm transmasc. 100%, not a doubt in my mind. I don't think I know half of who I am personality wise, but I do know this for sure.
Secondly, I have (almost) no dysphoria. I have no problems with my face or voice or chest or even genitalia. I am okay using stereotypical feminine words to refer to my body. My boobs don't feel right, but its a part of me and I'm okay with that.
Its important to me that people understand I am a man with a vagina. And I am totally okay with that. I am a man with boobs who enjoys wearing makeup and skirts on occasion, I am a man who likes traditionally feminine hobbies like sewing and knitting. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Of course, I'm not trying to pull attention away from my trans brothers, sisters, and siblings who experience dysphoria. I have friends who genuinely will not survive if they don't get the gender affirming treatment they need, SOON. But I don't want fellow trans folks believing dysphoria is a necessary part of being trans, that if you don't have dysphoria you must be cis.
When I was little, I'm not sure how old but before puberty, I remember thinking how great it would be to be a boy. How happy I would be. But then I thought "but I don't like sports, and I like dresses. So I must be a girl."
Spoiler alert, I was not. But you do not need to find your body disgusting to be trans. You don't need to like wearing gendered clothes or doing stereotypical gendered things to be that gender. I was born with a vagina, and I was born a boy. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, and I don't want people to be held back from figuring themselves out because of expectations.
Obviously, you don't need to figure anything out! There is no reason to. As long as you are happy with how you are referred to, then all the rest of it can get thrown to the wind. Live laugh love and all that jazz.
But hey! I've said my piece, I'll get down from my soapbox now. Good luck to all my friends, trans, cis, and those who aren't quite sure what they are. Its okay, whatever you are. Its all okay, and people don't say that enough.
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so i have this story i've been "writing" since before the pandemic (lol) where Anakin just keeps getting fatter and fatter with essentially no limit, and 50-60k words in, it's to the point where he's basically stuck on the upper floor of the house, and i am genuinely conflicted on whether i want to extract him or not.
on the one hand, i think accessibility and accommodations are super sexy, and the reader being willing to fight to maintain some of his autonomy is really endearing...
...but on the other hand, i also adore the notion of anakin not WANTING any of his independence back. i love that he's happy to be fed and washed and walked around at his caregiver's leisure; i love that he doesn't care what happened in the news yesterday, or whether it's raining outside. because at the end of the day, the hottest part of him being so dependent is the trust he's placing in you by doing so.
a story about helping him recover from an injury might be nice, and it's heartening to give him palliative care... but there's something about knowing that he's going to be existing for a long time in a state of utter helplessness where "recovery" isn't necessarily the goal that just drives me wild for him.
because i guess whether i like it or not, his brokenness is integral to who he is... and truthfully i hate changing him, even in the interest of giving him a happy ending... so why should those two things be mutually exclusive?
i think i'm probably going to move him to a main floor, partly because I am excited to write about reader having to hire a private contractor to break down the wall and hoist him out ... but in doing so i don't think i want to give him too much more mobility or autonomy than he already has, if only because he doesn't want it.
actually maybe it'll even make him anxious, and then you can pop a few nuggies into him to make him feel better — promising him that, no, you don't expect him to take care of himself just because he can; that room to move doesn't mean you expect him to move.
people have expected too much from poor ani his whole life, starting with his mom tbh... and part of me wanting him essentially fused to his bed is absolutely a desire to absolve him of those expectations.
like, no anakin, you don't have to save the world. it's great if you want to and i'll help you do it if it'll make you happy, but you're also just a person, and i'll still love you even if you never want to do a single thing for anyone else ever again — your disillusionment is part of who you are too, after all, and even if i'm a bad person for wanting to indulge it, is it really so wrong that i can't imagine you without it..?
because maybe my baby doesn't need to be fixed. maybe all he needs (all he wants) is cake and love and more cake and bacon fat.
#fat anakin thoughts#anakin x me#encouraging myself to write#ooh a platonic feeder would be interesting to give him wouldn't it#i live in my head
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Hi hi I stumbled across ur tags in that one tumblr post about atoms and I loved ur response!! I also had a question related 2 it. My knowledge of chemistry and atoms is very surface level (dropped out of my environmental sciences major after 2 years lol) so forgive me if this sounds a lil silly. But I thought atoms could touch? Like when they form bonds their electron clouds can overlap right? The cloud is part of the atom so they are touching I would think, even if the nuclei wouldn’t be. Or are those models inaccurate and the electron clouds don’t actually overlap, is that just a simplification for diagram purposes when teaching bonds? Ik you said we don’t know for certain about anything! Atoms are crazy weird but I was curious what the accepted opinion is on this! Ty u seem very very cool
Great questions, my background's mostly coming from the physics side of things and is a little rusty, but I've got enough mutuals who will yell at me in the replies if I get anything seriously wrong here.
That said, generally when physicists tell you 'things don't actually touch' what they mean is a) roughly speaking the 'surface' of all normal things are made of that electron cloud you're talking about, b) when things 'touch' those electrons get (obviously) very close to each other but still have a distance between them, because c) the Pauli Exclusion Principle, one of the basic underlying things that defines basically all of chemistry says that multiple electrons can't be in the same quantum state. This is all, more or less indisputable fact as proven by the fact that chemistry works and can make extremely accurate predictions about how chemicals will form, something that they could not do without this understanding of the electron as an elementary particle
But! You're also right that a covalent bond does represent an overlap of electron! The distinction between these things is twofold, first, when you, for instance, stand on the floor, the molecules in your shoes aren't bonding to the floor, they're reasonably well bonded to each other, but generally you're not creating new chemical bonds every time you stomp your feet, at least not to any significant degree. Instead what happens is that the electron clouds at both edges get very close to each other and go 'someone's already in here' by sending a blast of photons at each other, although here I have to note that the photons are what's called 'virtual photons' in that they're more mathematical conveniences than anything that gets out further than the local interactions, you couldn't see them because they're absorbed almost as soon as they're emitted to the extent that they have any reality, which they definitely kinda do in that they have observable effects on space when it's either very empty or very small.
The other distinction is that a covalent bond, the sort you're thinking is two atoms sharing one electron, in that case I think it's pretty reasonable to say that the two atoms are, for pretty much all purposes, touching at that point, since they can not be separated without the expenditure of energy to break that bond. The case that scientists are generally talking about when they bust out this Fun Fact at parties is when two electrons try to get near each other at the edge of a shoe and the ground rather than when two atoms bond, so you're right about the thing you're thinking of, but the scientists making this observation are also right about what they're discussing, I think OP of that post made it with the understanding that people would recognize it as being this argument rather than one about bonds, but it requires having been exposed to it before to do that, which not everyone has done! Hope this cleared things up and feel free to tag on any follow ups
#The reason you can feel it is because those photons pushing back at each other exert a real force#Which has all the standard impacts you think of as touch#and indeed for pretty much anything but pedants doing this sort of party trick is touch#I think Richard Feynman's ghost might kill me for this explanation of QED but also it's basically right#It's just skipping over all the important math that makes it actually work rather than just the neat ideas that might or might not#were it not for the tests and the math showing that in fact it does
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UWMA Soft D/s Moments Ep 10-11
For other episode, check out my master list here.
The show starts with Korn and In dancing/hugging in their apartment. To me, Korn already has a sense of loss. In knows something is wrong but doesn't know how to ask. Because we all know how Korn doesn't communicate well. Honestly, though, this moment feels like Korn has already decided his course of action and is just soaking up memories.
We have a cute moment with Dean and Pharm on Pharm's bed. That's about the brattiest I've ever seen Pharm be to Dean 🤣🤣🤣There were a few moments in there that were for sure Dom. The wanting to drive Pharm and him telling Pharm to take a shower first.
Moving on to the kitchen sink. Dean oversteps Pharm's boundaries. Pharm stood up for himself. This is 100% valid. Subs have boundaries, and submissive doesn't equal not being able to stand up for themselves. It just means they don't want to have control. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
WinTeam time. Team can't sleep, so he heads to Win's apartment. Win asks what he is doing here but immediately nods when Team asks to stay. Team being the brat, he is antagonizes Win by taking up the whole bed. Does not listen to Win when he is told to move. Yet Win is not pushy because he wants to punish Team. Which he does. Team was antagonizing a response out of Win but doesn't know what to do with him now that he has him. He panics and pushes Win away. Team tries to put up a dominant front and hasn't really figured out how to lower it. It really doesn't bother Win, though. When Team needs to be submissive, he is. Like him asking Win to take him to see the lights. It wasn't, "Let's go see the lights." or "I'm taking you to see the lights." He said, "Win, can you take me to see the lights?" Then he asks Win if he can hug him to sleep. See the submission there.
We start the series off in episode 11 with Korn being late. I like the true apologies. We are starting to see a softening in Korn that is much needed. Him considering someone other than himself. In kisses Korn's check and while Korn is concerned about being seen. He doesn't come off as harsh as he normally does.
I really love the part next to the car when Dean just holds out a hand. Pharm tries to play clueless, but when Dean says "keys," he hands them over. Then Dean tells him good boy. Using that praise kink as a reward.
Now we are at the same spot that Korn and In were. Dean makes sure that they are there before the shops are closed. Dean kisses Pharm this time and he could give a fuck less who sees them.
Okay, so why is going and seeing the lights so important if he isn't even paying attention. It's something couples do. Now, by this point, they are already a couple, but Team is still nervous about that. He needs constant reassurance. Win taking him to see the lights reassures him they are a couple. Win immediately recognizes this and gets a "mistletoe." He tells this story to Team, and Team is immediately like, where do we get mistletoe. I'm so down for this long-lasting relationship. And so we get the broccoli.
In ties a red ribbon around Korn's wrist. Notice that when In goes to take Korn's wrist, Korn just goes with it. He trusts In now in a way he didn't before. He didn't even think to question it until he saw the red thread and wanted to know what's going on. He is immediately concerned about the bad omen and goes back into the harsher Korn from before. He quickly softens in the face of In. Though he thumps him, he still assures him that he will be with him forever. Now I know what you're thinking. Luta, didn't you say last time that Korn planned on doing something bad. I do. In the flashbacks, there are times when see Korn is strong in his relationship and then times when he falters under the stress and the belief that he has no way out.
We quickly see what I mean in the part. In Pharm's dream. Then Dean and Pharm meet up. With Dean immediately recognizing there was something wrong and when he realizes he can't do much to help. He moves to distracting Pharm. Which works to cheer him up.
I love the bedroom scene. I love how Pharm is more confident but you can watch it and see that, Dean has the control. The way Pharm tells him to stop and Dean just over rides, "No." Then we get to Dean asking Pharm if he is hungry. Pharm immediately jumps up and apologizes. My husband does this. Dean tells him that he is going to take care of him this time. This is considered providing care. So basically it's a way to show their appreciation. Some subs never want this and then there are subs who need to know on occasion that they are valued. Or the Dom themselves might need to do this. It just depends on the guidelines of that individual relationship.
So that's it. Hope you guys enjoyed it! 💜💜💜 This is dedicated to @darkrose82 @thegildedacorn @thequeenofsastiel @bengiyo @dayummmdorisss @tabbygray @tleighblack @amos-reviews-main
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Hey there - I'm Lila!
If you're seeing this, it could mean any of the following: you're already a mutual, you like Ninjago, you really like Ninjago's infamous (ha!) sixth season Skybound, or you know me from something else entirely. Or it's none of those and you've just taken a super wrong turn. No matter what - I'm glad you're here!
Join me under the cut for a more detailed look at my account, or just venture off on your own - the choice is yours.
WHO I AM & WHERE TO FIND ME
You can call me Lila! I've been around the Ninjago fandom since 2011 under a whole bunch of different names and accounts, with all the bizarre stories and memories to show for it. Now, though, you can find me under one of two handles: @cboffshore (here and on Twitter, where I'm not as active as I used to be) or OffshoreWriter over on AO3.
My title as Skybound Analysis PhD holder was born from a joke (initially given to me when I overanalyzed Skybound's color scheme and then Flintlocke's development in a Discord server) but grew into, well, not a joke; I take Skybound about as seriously as someone can take a toy commercial cartoon. Through all of my years in the Ninjago fandom, I've never seen a season as misunderstood and contentious as Skybound. Unfortunately, I happen to like it a lot for what it is, and I'm willing to defend it very hard (but don't get me wrong, I know it's got flaws! I'm not completely nuts!). Read this ask for a detailed overview of my position on Skybound analysis.
Outside of Ninjago overanalysis, I'm into a few other things: crocheting, the occasional piece of digital art, music (special faves include I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME, Fall Out Boy, and My Chemical Romance), and Bionicle (but only on a casual "wow cool vibes and killer writing" basis because that timeline does NOT make sense to me.).
SOME STUFF I DO
The best way to get into my work is just to explore all the nooks and crannies of my blog, but for those of you in a rush, here are links to some of my favorite projects:
On Sea, Sunlight, and Sky, aka OSSAS, is what I'd consider the crown jewel of my AO3 catalog: a Nya-centric series diving into her experience during the last few episodes of Skybound. Updated every December until I decide to lay her to rest (which, by the looks of it, will be the 2024 installment), this is my longest-term project that exemplifies how I approach Skybound as a season. If you only check out one corner of my work, make it OSSAS. You can find all things OSSAS under #ossas tag here on my blog (newcomers beware of spoilers!)
Yours To Keep: Rethinking Skybound Through Fashion is an older project of mine that blends fashion design and Nadakhan character analysis. As in, I drew a trio of banger outfits and then wrote essays about what all their details meant. Trust me on this, it's a cool one! (This is a holdover from when my fandom involvement was almost exclusively Ninjago character analysis-based couture fashion art... you can thank Giles Panton for that.)
Sorrow is All The Rage: An Analysis of Sexual Assault in Jay-Centric Skybound Fanfiction is a two (technically, three) part essay detailing my attempts to come to terms with the (frankly rather concerning) trend of gratuitous SA inclusion in a surprising swath of popular Skybound fanfiction. (Spoiler alert: I still think it's weird as hell and I haven't come to terms with it... but I have gotten way better at using the block button to keep it out of my line of sight.) The link in the title will take you to part one; part two is linked at the end, and part three's mini update is lurking somewhere in those tags. Please note: this essay is not an attack, or a condemnation, although it may come across that way at times. This was written largely as a vent piece about an issue that has disturbed me deeply and affected how I go about interpreting Skybound, and that definitely impacted my tone. If you'd like to reference this for any reason, or if you have any questions, please shoot me an ask or DM.
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I don't understand why some of y'all don't get that R loves T genuinely and doesn't mind her association with him, she's only uncomfortable when said association is used against her bf and her relationship. She said it on tape, she had the most fun during TBOSAS and T is her favorite male lead thus far... she's only liking a few lightheaded posts about HER FRIEND, sharing pictures with HER FRIEND, and liking snowbaird stuff, like c'mon TBOSAS was her project too, she can talk the movie as much as she wants
And before y'all call me R or say im one of her associates, I gotta say im one of her fans who doesn't care about J and I absolutely understand why people are turned off by him. I personally think R could so much better, I didn't like his lack of action when R was going through the hate train...on top of the dodgy age gap. But empathizing with R, I would also be annoyed too if people were creating fantasies around my platonic friend
Does she need to be less on the internet? Yes. Should she stop giving haters the time of her day? Also yes. It is kind of annoying tbh but that's who she is, she'll always be on the internet like a good 'ole Gen Z , but I can't be mad at her for expressing her feelings. We gotta accept now R sees T only as her friend (at least for right know she does) It doesn't mean their connection is any less important. R always hypes up and talks about her friends... haven't y'all see how she talks about Faist?
That’s the issue. There’s many people out there who don’t ship zeglyth and hate J. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Anons had admitted they can’t express their criticism of R/J’s relationship anywhere except for on this blog even though they don’t support zeglyth. I think it’s weird that people say we only hate J because of zeglyth instead of talking about the real problem with their relationship. It’s heavy deflection.
No one here has denied that zeglyth is a friendship (rn). Here’s the thing celebs, not just R, don’t understand: once you put something on the internet, you can’t control the narrative of how the public views it.
I have no problem with R being chronically online but if she’s going to be actively in her own fandom, she has to accept the good, bad and the ugly parts of it. No one likes being perceived or misunderstood but that’s online culture. Not saying it’s right or wrong but that’s the truth.
Also I don’t think R has a problem with the zeglyth ship itself (romantic shipping or not because she was fine pre-Feb), she has more of an issue with people not liking her bf (which is associated with the zeglyth ship unfairly. Many people hate the boar, not just us lol). That’s what her whole meltdown was about in Feb. Ironically, she’s the reason why people started looking into her and J’s relationship.

If she never tweeted this, her relationship wouldn’t have blown up online. People had no idea who J was at the time and started digging when she called him 29. So again, her being chronically online started people seeing the truth about their relationship. And we thank her for tweeting this lol
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Thoughts on Gekijouban Okekon Revival!
I finished watching the Gekijouban Orchestra Revival concert, the second Gekijouban Orchestra from earlier this year! This time, no one was sick, so the whole 9 of them could be there, and Wagamama Highway was performed for the first time live on stage with both singers present! (Teru was sick with covid for the 2022 concert, so Ayasa sang it alone)
I was absolutely blown away by this concert. Not only was the orchestra simply OUTSTANDING, and not only did KKGM sing amazingly, the stage lighting and overall choreography and direction was super great. Oh, how I would have loved to be in that theater. The bd editing team also really tried their hardest and some of the cuts where amazing, especially during the revue songs when they would merge the two singers into one frame so you could see them both looking at each other. Oh it really got me. The choreography and the little bits of acting where also so good. One of my favourite things was that the singers would enter and leave the stage frequently, since almost all have long instrumental sections throughout. It gives the music the center stage and not the singers, and I think that's great for this type of concert!
Now, as much as I was excited for Wagamama Highway live, and don't get me wrong it WAS AMAZING (Teru especially was giving one of her best performances I think I've seen her do), the stand-out performances for me were:
wi(l)d-screen baroque; just, absolute insanity going on there, I don't know what she did that morning but Moepii woke up rested, well-fed, gave her frog a lil kissie before going into work and just absolutely demolished that song. I think for the okekons there's a huge amount of pressure on her because wsb is not only the first revue song, it's also a solo performance, and that must be crazy to stand alone on a stage with a huge orchestra going off behind you, and singing such an intense song. But she served. And I was so happy.
Medal Suzdal Panic; I love love love this song (for obvious reasons) but I do think it gets overlooked a bit sometimes. And holy shit I did not expect this live version to go that hard but on god it did. Especially Haruki's performance here was incredible; she was on her A game the whole concert but I have noticed that Haruki's singing has gotten exponentially better over the last couple of years. She was powerful, sweet, scary, and belted those high notes with a confidence that blew me away. Like damn. Okay. Now that's a Mahiru to be scared of.
And lastly, the performance that really took me out was Yakusoku Tower, sung by everyone. It was a slower version too and I do have to admit I got a lil teary-eyed. I mean, this song has been a fandom fave for years AND for good reason, but this rendition here might be my favourite ever. Just, wow. Just wow. Insane. Amazing. Loved every second of it.
My favourite Gekijouban song, Super Star Spectacle, was also so so so so so good but it always is and you guys know that Mimoyo harmony is my favourite, and they delivered as usual. So many #Moyoslay moments. I'm really always in awe of how she can keep Karen's character voice and still have these really powerful moments (not that the two are mutually exclusive, but sometimes being restricted to a character voice does prevent you from really going there) but the balance this time was so good. Or maybe she just got even better at singing. Anyway. I ramble. Momoyo remains my favourite singer of the cast and that is that.
All in all, it was such a good concert; all 3 orchestra concerts so far have been outstanding and I'm super excited for Starry Session coming up soon!!!
#mono-loguing#okekons i love you i love you every day.#also did not mention but of course the mykr was crazy. mahonee just going wild and doing the WILDEST interpretations of some of her lines#and like okay Go Off. and she did. and i was laughing. i love you guys
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budget mobile rules/about
Aventurine belongs to the Honkai Star Rail universe. More specifically:
A senior manager in the IPC Strategic Investment Department and one of the Ten Stonehearts.
As far as personality goes:
He is not a nice person. While he seems rather laid back and as if nothing could ever bother him, he will talk down on you, use you for his own advantage, sell you out if he thinks the offer is good enough. He will manipulate and use you to his whims. His constant smile and ability to wrap words around makes it almost impossible to discern his true feeling. Truthfully, he might not be able to ID them himself. He can be nice and he will be if he thinks it will help him win you over.
But if you want more about how he is, you will have to look up the Information tag (and the one on the old blog).
A very short breakdown on rules:
he won't know who you are unless you are (for now) Topaz. If you want him to, you can mention it before (that does exclude OCs that are a integral part of the IPC, obviously he should've heard of those before). He might have heard of you if you're known to the IPC however.
I can decide what he does by myself, thank you
I'm not big on ships, mostly because I don't wanna hurt myself or others; and he's likely never gonna be what you want him to become
I'm terrified of people and therefore hate dms with a passion, mostly because I can only get myself to concentrate on talking to two people at a time
no nsfw here, it's all over there
if you have a problem with trans folks you canfucking leave and get hit by a car for all I care
general tumblr rp lingo:
I am not mutuals exclusive
I will have favourites, it's a human thing to do
I'm a fan of OCs, so come at me
you can always bother him via askbox
it would be awesome if you could cut your posts. You don't have to but if you don't it's unlikely I will follow back because I only have so much space on my dashboard and if I come back from work I'd rather not scroll through 98 posts on the same thread.
I don't mind duplicates - really I wanna see him mess with other versions of himself
in the spirit of favourites I'll probably find mains, those will be the people meant if any muse is ever mentioned in a thread. That's not first come, first served.
I'm very low activity. I will likely reblog one or two memes every day but answers will likely have to wait until the weekend.
The writer:
I'm not a good person even though people that know me will disagree
I agonize over everything I say and then it still comes out wrong
for someone usually rping muses with people skills I am AWFUL at it
I'm overthinking everything, I get anxious about anything and I wish any of my muses would just share a tiny bit of their fucking ego bc I sure could use it
You can call my Skully (Skullbert)
I'm 30+ years, from europe and a guy.
and verses!
encased in amber light ( verse I; everything star rail) which is everything pre-penacony (as in everything up until 2.0 and actually checking into the hotel)
swarm disaster; muse edition (star rail but the characters keep multiplying) ; anything from 'the characters found tumblr and use it' to general meeting multiple versions of the same character goes here
the emergency plan; depending on how the penacony storyline goes on, Ven fakes his death and hides out in Belobog from then on (though with Boothill's description I might have hopes that my suspicions are wrong)
everything else
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dude the misogyny in pl is so bad. like just off the top of my head there's like twice the amount of plot-relavent women/girls who are dead (sophia, claire (x2), melina, rachel, aurora, des's wife, des's daughter) to the plot-relavent men who are dead (augustus, duke herzen, evan barde) like. they really took the girls behind the shed and put them down to further the men's characters 😭😭😭
it really fucking sucks like. fandom is Not Immune to Misogyny either but at least the people I've encountered over here believe the female characters deserved better (at least Flora if no one else)
(spoilers for: plvpw, lmj, lbmr, azran legacy, and miracle mask under the cut)
and there are a lot of different types of misogyny in the games too -- it isn't just the amount of female characters that are fridged (though I will say: Newton Belduke gets added to the count of male characters, and while both Mrs. Belduke and Mrs. Cantabella are dead, neither of them really fit the bill for fridging, since they're barely relevant beyond "this is how Eve and Espella exist", which is a Different misogynist trope but not fridging...) it's also:
the mishandling of Flora in DB and UF, who was shafted out of a character arc
characters like Espella and Aurora, which while prominent don't have much going for them in terms of characterization since they're more "mystery" than "character" -- you can read my essay about that here
and the fact that characters like them exist shows that PL knows they had issues with female characters and rather than actually Fixing The Problem they were like "oh! we'll just give female characters more screen time! this will fix everything!"
there's these two NPCs in Diabolical Box you interact with on the Molentary Express. they're named Steve and Mitzi. they're husband and wife. Steve has about double the amount of lines as Mitzi, despite the fact that you interact with both simultaneously. this was the example that made me want to graph the amount of lines female characters have versus the amount male characters had
why was Katrielle's game almost marketed as "Lady Layton" I know it's to give her a fancy title like Professor but like. Changing it to Layton's Mystery Journey was the right move imo, Lady Layton sounds like it's "puzzles: girl edition"
Diane Makepeace should have been the final villain of Mystery Room actually. She should have gotten to take in how completely wrong she was about Alfendi and watched her conceptions of the case crumble. It doesn't even necessarily have to be a redemption arc. She doesn't have to express remorse about killing those at least five other people. (And yes I acknowledge the racist tones of the whole "Mariana Etista" thing, these are not mutually exclusive)
this is localization specific but according to a couple friends of mine who are collaborating on a comparison between the EU-US-JP versions of Last Specter/Spectre's Call Emmy's character is very different in the US version, she speaks a lot more passively in the US version compared to the EU version which uh. Yikes
Katia's family history being mansplained by Layton since it's the "mystery" of DB
just like. they never acknowledge Hoogland's deal? like the women that were ""sacrificed to the dragonlord"" were running away from loveless marriages, sure, but why did those marriages exist to begin with? and now we (the protagonists) have taken away that escape route for women trapped in (probably) abusive relationships because the dragonlord was a lie and azran tech was causing the wind. sure we might have fixed the natural disasters but we sure didn't fix the other problems!
(I think the crossover does slightly better here by not portraying becoming a Shade as an escape for women but as kind of an empty existence, but witch burnings are always gonna be a little :/)
the general lack of female antagonists. Darklaw and Diane go a good ways towards filling that but Diane dying is :/ and while I'm fine with Darklaw being not the "final boss" because she’s also an Ace Attorney Prosecutor they just don't like girlbosses. women can be evil too
Marina Triton deserved better than what she got she is actually kind of a BAMF (going undercover in a cult that kidnapped her for years, hello??) but the ONLY reason she couldn't rescue Luke and Layton earlier was because Katrielle needed to be there in a Doyalist sense, which makes Marina knowing how to get them out of the cryochambers even weirder because if she KNEW why couldn't she have freed them EARLIER
Angela and Flora (in DB) being replaced by a male villain for a lot of their screentime (Angela was replaced by Descole after the first present-day conversation, so in all subsequent present-day scenes she’s Not There. Despite Flora being replaced by Don Paolo fairly early on in DB she actually speaks the third-most lines out of the female characters in that game...and I took out all the DP lines for that count)
but yeah the fridging is a problem, even one that persists into LMJ -- a major part of Ernest/Miles's motivations are that his mother died 🙃
#professor layton#meta#answered ask#minecraftlesbianmode#ok let's cover my spoiler tag bases#pl spoilers#lmj spoilers#lbmr spoilers#azran legacy spoilers#plvpw spoilers#miracle mask spoilers#GOD i forgot to mention the whole 'everyone was in love with angela actually' thing#they do parallel randall and claire but they can't commit to it by having the characters be in love with him#because that would mean either canon queerness or more prominent female characters#*sigh*#BTW if you ever want to talk to me abt the let women be evil agenda i'm always down to talk about the pl female characters being antags
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Character Discourse
So character discourse on Tumblr can get heated. We all have favourite characters for many reasons whether it be for nostalgia, some kind of relatability etc. But what I find most annoying is when people try to invalidate someone's opinion of a character because that person likes an antagonist of that character or your interpretation of a canon event does not match theirs or something like that.
For example, I love Draco. He is the reason why I got into Harry Potter in the first place. However, I don't like the golden trio. Not because of their bad relationship with Draco but other factors such as how their bad acts are downplayed in the story. My feelings for Draco and the golden trio are ALMOST mutually exclusive. It's annoying how my feelings about the trio may be minimized or ridiculed because I am a 'Draco stan' so of course I don't like the trio because they are meanies to poor baby Draco (sarcasm). If I want to criticize Hermione, I have to criticize Draco too even though my post has nothing to do with Draco. I have had Hermione fans/stans use my love for Draco against me when they have no good argument against aspects of Hermione's horrid character. As much as I like Draco, I am ok seeing people make valid critiques of him. Like calling Hermione mudblood or mocking Ron for his socioeconomic status. If I say anything in defence of Draco, it is mainly to point out double standards. For example, if Draco should be criticized for calling Hermione mudblood, we should hold Hermione to the same standard when she calls Firenze a horse. Or when Minerva, Hagrid and the Weasleys use 'muggle' as a slur.
I have made a few posts about Goku and Vegeta as dads. Just because you hold an opinion about something, you get accused of not watching the show or being a brain-dead stan. I have realized that people have different filters when they watch something. But it's frustrating when those filters that are outlined for why you may see things a certain way are totally ignored. For example, someone may love Hercule Satan for his heroic acts and believe it outweighs whatever wrongs he did. But as much as I find his character entertaining, I will never fully like him because of his lies and the implications of his fraud for the next generation of martial artists like Videl. Two different opinions because someone may focus on what's on screen vs someone who may like to think about worldbuilding and cause & effect. I have stated multiple times why Goku rubs me the wrong way as a dad post Cell games based on what I see in canon DBZ. And until something else clicks for me when rewatching clips for nostalgia, I doubt I will ever feel differently. And fans of Goku don't exactly lessen the sour feelings either. Making accusations that I get all my opinions from Youtubers like I can't examine things for myself like a grown woman. I love Goku as a MC and I like his journey to be the best in the universe. My only tiny gripe is SOME of his interactions with his family.
In summary, character discourse can be annoying and sometimes it is just a waste of time. If someone does not agree with me, I just move on. Greet 2024 with a new lease on life and hope I can be more Christian-like in my interactions online.
#draco malfoy#character discourse#tumblr discourse#hercule satan#son goku#harry potter series#dbz#dragon ball z#anti golden trio#new year 2024#hermione granger
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Last Seen Blogs
gorehoundclown
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Interesting things
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catney
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