The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

you're afraid of heights. the person you love most holds your hand at the zenith. she dies for you. she comes back for you. she gives into her hunger the minute you aren't there. she lies to you. she says, "imagine how high you could fly without me". you're afraid of heights

I’ve talked about this before but imagine what it’s like for someone in a country/place where eliot is Top Most Wanted and then your tech guy finds a breakout star baseball player on their visual scanner that looks EXACTLY like spencer. but…there’s no way that’s him, right???

and then the next year it happens again but this time it’s some one hit wonder country singer kenneth crane that has like 78 tween-run fangirl blogs dedicated to him. you see a grainy video of him being chased by a horde of screaming teenage girls and ??? no way Eliot Last Thing You’ll Ever See Spencer is a country singer star just. signing pictures of his face right…?

a few months later your intern shows you footage of an eliot lookalike who is in san lorenzo talking about how there is dog fighting in the presidential palace and you just. sigh. because of course. a scant few days later the political geography of the country changes drastically and damien moreau is imprisoned. …interesting

and then a year of silence goes by. he still shows up as blips on the radar but he must have a good hacker working for him because his tracks on the internet are expertly erased.

every time you ask through interagency channels some random interpol guy talks in (condescending?) riddles at you and it also somehow feels like he’s threatening you

and then your friend who recently got into foreign hockey teams sends you a dropyourgloves video of someone called jacques the bear. you immediately get a headache (and watch some more videos because even you can admit this guy is a good hockey player)

and you know he’s a Bad Guy but it’s been admittedly a bit entertaining seeing what claim to fame he will come upon next. and his most recent actions over the few years make you wonder.

a few months later your phone pings because multiple heads of state evacuated from DC. the reason? eliot spencer was in town. you hear two days later a bioterrorist was taken down by… the report was redacted. your hacker tells you spencer and two teammates were behind the successful operation. which, huh.

not even a full year later it is released that spencer is dead and… you don’t know how to feel.

Wild and revolutionary concept: maybe don't treat converts like trash just because they're converts? And also don't ask someone if they're a convert in a public setting?

literally a cry for help

the way jawbone was immediately ready for a honeypot mission to get a look at jace stardiamond’s chest. icon

Artists creating specifically to sell and trading off (some of) their own style to do it, activists begging for attention and shares and media coverage because they aren't being paid enough attention, UNWRA desperate for donations, the percentage of people who don't mask in 2024 compared to deaths and disabilities, ppl who need to be convinced to vote with principles that save lives and that genocide is unacceptable, how a living wage or UBI is believed to be "unrealistic" despite the trillions in shareholder investment accounts.

....I'm starting to think Mainstream People™ fucking suck, ngl. In fact, dare I say that Mainstream People are the biggest obstacle to progress now.

Malcolm X said it was the white liberal as did a lot of other revolutionaries and thinkers.

I, however, think anyone who can hold their own comfort over someone else's suffering is the problem.

Why are the rest of us constantly begging and shouting and changing ourselves and our bodies in an effort to make them care about us? To make them see us? To give us rights? To bless us with the support needed to make a living?

Same shit, different generations. And idk about y'all, but I would love to be the last generations who ever had to hate themselves to survive.

no thoughts head empty the oppressive stagnancy of legacy in ever after high dragging me round the block yet again

it's such a shame that we get so little explanation about the actual mechanics of destiny, which is the entire premise of the show, bc it's so juicy. like what power does destiny hold when you rip away milton's lies and centuries of assumptions and traditions. esp bc despite raven signing herself as the evil queen in the real storybook of legends, when the snow white fairytale actually happens in dragon games she's playing one of the seven dwarves and her mother has reprised her role. like how much of that was because of the characters' actions and how much was destiny pulling on old, familiar threads. keeps me up at night.

a lot of this is probably just like, plot holes and writer hot potato but i like making it that deep, that's half of the fun. my personal interpretation is that fate is a wild thing that desires repetition and they developed the system of fairytale legacy bloodlines to keep those repetitions predictable and contained, instead of wreaking havoc whenever and wherever they please. 

which lends itself to some really juicy exploration of how legacy is a duty as much as it is a privilege, and how to be a princess or a witch or a hero or a dragon is to be the same thing in the end: the lamb destiny slaughters on the altar to sate the ever-ravenous narrative. to keep the flock safe. keep the unknown that prowls beyond the beaten path at bay. because if a there is always a mother who will be cruel, or a maiden who will fall into a sleep like death, or a child who will become a bird, isn’t it better to know who, and how, and when? isn’t better if it’s you, who has known your whole life that you must be eaten, be poisoned, be stripped of your humanity, rather than anybody else, who wasn’t raised to see it as an honour instead of a great and terrible injustice?

Some highlights from a tense but still very Winterkov-y scene (Patreon)

Vasco and Machete are absolutely adorable, your style is so lovely and you draw the softest beds I’ve ever seen in any art ever

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Hey. Listen. II fandom. Look at me RIGHT NOW.

Just because you hate a character, that won't mean that you can ignore their growth and arcs, and deny that they had any of those in the story, or actually changed in the end. You are allowed to not like a character, but denying that they did get better/denying their arc is bullshit, and ultimately not really getting that the point of the story is changing to be better, or losing yourself in your own misery. ESPECIALLY with characters that thought that what they were doing was okay because of UNDERSTANDABLE REASONS and got to understand that they were wrong, and wanted to fix that.

AND ALSO.

Just because you like a character, it doesn't mean that their actions are immediately justified/or that they were just misunderstood, they still did do all of that shit and portraying them as innocent or well intentionated, and missing the whole point of a character in the process, doesn't help either. MUCH LESS when the character in question was fully aware of what they were doing too, saying that "they didn't mean it" or anything is not getting the point

Go big or go home.

genuinely don't understand people who gripe about someone getting into dunmesh for m/m pairings as opposed to f/f when none of them are even close to being the main point of the series

one really interesting thing about the Sui siblings is that their sibling age order isn’t so much about biological age but more about when they first managed to separate themselves from Sui and therefore how comfortable they are in their own individual identity (i’m far from the first person to point out that the Sui siblings are basically the opposite of the seaborne/We Many) - Shuo, the oldest brother is so secure in himself that he’s able to create a whole identity entirely separate from Sui, which is how we get Chongyue The Very Human Guy. Ling is able to defeat the Sui Xiang in invitation to wine with ease simply because she sees it as a shadow of herself, as opposed to Nian who sees the siblings as shadows and dreams of Sui. Dusk, the second youngest of the siblings, is so scared of the existential threat that is Sui that she has hid herself in her paintings and refused to sleep for centuries just to hide from it

… which makes me really want to meet the 12th brother (the cook) because if that is where Dusk, the 11th’s head is at i cannot imagine he’s having a good time either

Love being able to write. I can do whatever i want. I can make Ryuji interact w Lala-chan and u literally cant stop me.

thinking about how akio sees his younger self in utena and wondering if there's any fondness there. doesn't change the horror of what he does to her obviously but i do wonder

(Context: im thinking abt my post canon au, i explained on my ao3, u dont even have to read it just know its there)

Mizu revealing her being a woman to taigen AFTER he confesses his feelings to mizu AFTER being bested during their duel once again is literally so fucking personal to me. Jesus fuck... FUCK. Like. How overwhelmingly loved she must feel. How SEEN. Truly for once n not just but loved and wanted!!! Its so personal to me. Just. Taigen, losing, n then immediately leaning in for a kiss. Mizu is lost cuz what?? Why?? N taigen just. Confesses, but hes holding back cuz mizus reaction was not great and he doesn't wanna ruin the friendship they've formed these past months, they've grown so close so fast n its scary but so exciting n so right but if mizu doesnt want this then nothing is happening n its ok he has a CHOICE. Like. FUCK!! N then mizu telling taigen to wait and that night she reveals it. And its just sooo fucking intimate. Its so soft. And maybe taigen is confused but one look at how small mizu is making herself, like shielding herself from him. Like he gets it. The danger of it all. And its his promise to protect her if she ever needs to that does her in cuz. SHE HAS A CHOICE. TO BE PROTECTED OR NOT. THATS SO IMPORTANT TO HER. Yes, she can protect herself. Yes, it feels good to be protected. Yknow??

Mizu revealing her being a woman to akemi totally by accident AFTER they just had an argument abt women's choices in society AFTER mizu accidentally took one (1) big sip of sake, n then deciding fuck it im gonna win this argument, guess what akemi. And that's how akemi finds out. N Mizu thinks akemi is going to hate her, n she does for a bit in silence, but mostly shes just hurt? For herself AND for Mizu. Cause she understands, so suddenly, so intimately, how hard being a woman is and how mizu has had to hide as a man to survive (not even for plot reasons that we know, mizu being mixed AND a woman? Death sentence). And she just hurts. And they thought they'd always have this weird rift between them but they cry and they let it out (for Mizu, for the first time in YEARS) and its just. Its so emotional n so important and so personal and intimate. Its maybe winter all over again, a year has passed since theyd seen each other in kyoto, so much has changed and yet not rly and. They've grown but in different ways. Akemi, in taking life by the reins n being assertive and strong and so dangerously intelligent like shes always been but now, now its crucial to be that. And Mizu in realizing that she truly, truly wants to be loved so badly but to be loved is to be vulnerable and thats what scares her the most, to be weak; but ure only strong if u can be weak too, and thats what she learns. And i think this is where they really get deep into their feelings. Before it was a crush, an annoying one. Now? Oh bby theyre down bad. Yes they are.