I'm gonna be quite fucking frank right now.

All the anons, that are freaking the fuck out about buddie right now, need to take a fucking seat.

All anyone cares about right now is this massive moment for Buck and the bi/queer community. It's not about what relationship he's in and who he kissed. Buck discovering and exploring his attraction to men is about HIM, and this arc is about learning about a part of himself.

And looking beyond this arc? Buck being into men is the biggest step towards buddie canon we've ever had. The idea that it's the wrong move because it's the wrong man is ridiculous. I see people referring to the articles - well, the articles include Tim spelling out that Tommy is going to be around short term.

Open your eyes to what's in front of you and stop spamming people who are trying to have a good time.

using AI to make images and saying you're not harming anyone cause you're doing it for yourself and your own fun (and posting it) doesn't mean SHIT. you're still stealing from other creators and making things based on plagiarism no matter how much "you do it for yourself and your own fun". It's no excuse. Doing it for your own intentions doesn't magically make it okay. It's still stealing from others!!

@eleganthandsbearpasta-blog

I am not the one.

Do not fuck with me.

I. Am. Not. The. Fucking. One.

You're either a Zionist just made an account to report or troll pro Palestine blogs. Or your just a troll. Either way your worse than bottom feeders. They at least serve a purpose in the ecosystem.

Don't. Just don't.

fumkin scrimnle

I hate having the kind of mental illness that makes me stay up all night on my phone desperately chasing the dopamine. Is it insomnia? Yes. Is it severe executive dysfunction paired up with my escapist behaviors and desire to have quiet time alone where I'm not being perceived? Also yes. It is nearly 9am, somebody put me down. (To bed or to death, at this point I'll accept either.)

k ily but it’s getting late asf and i ride at dawn tomorrow to stab a fucker so gn !! ilysm !! <3

@cyanide-sodapop @feeble13 get some sleep too dawn is very early i think

Time for your regularly scheduled, "Killjoy Hour with Enya" because we're being a killjoy about Dawntrail (:

So first and foremost: fuck Square and the XIV team for taking this angle. We could've gone any direction and we're going with Colonizer The Adventure. They looked at what we did on the Steppe with Hien and went "let's do it again! :D"

Mandatory CW for racism as it pertains to the indigenous peoples of North America, Mesoamerica and South America, and discussion of the genocide enacted by Spain against Mesoamerica and South America.

(Sections and the first letter of each sentence have been bolded for ease of reading)

But to explain further: Square has a really awful track record with their take on Tural, the "New World", especially in their handling of the Mamoolj'aa that are in Eorzea. This has been an issue since ARR and has been frequently criticized due to their extremely anti-indigenous writing. The way they handle the Eorzean tribes (which have been known as "beast tribes" and "beastmen" for a good part of the past decade that XIV has been around, I Should Not have to explain to you why that's deeply problematic) is an issue in its own right, but I'll only touch on what we've seen of Tural in the game itself and why this doesn't bode well for Dawntrail.

Let's get the obvious one out of the way first, this fucking shit:

For those unaware, this is the New World set. It's a craftable gear set from Heavensward that players can wear as a goddamned costume. I shouldn't have to be saying this in 2023, but this set has caused a great deal of controversy because it's a bastardization of plains tribe regalia. Square never should have added it to the game, but here it is and players constantly wear it in further offensive glams.

The only instance of this set being used with NPCs is in the Blue Mage quests and what we see of the Whalaqee. Again, to those unaware: the ARR Blue Mage quests are an extremely racist storyline that plays into white savior narratives and more offensive caricatures. The only representatives that we get to interact with of the Whalaqee are a little boy in this outfit (who's also extremely pale), and two Mamoolj'aa who are the lackeys of Martyn, the job trainer for Blue Mage - a white man! Further, the magic is notably not from Eorzea and is instead a cultural practice of the Whalaqee that Martyn took and turned into profit, and he's who you're supposed to work for. You are - yet again - considered a master of the practice, and this is written in mind with a default white man in mind considering Meteor being the stand in for everything. There is in-game appropriation of cultural practices, clothing, and tools but it gets worse the further you go into them.

The main plot of the ARR quests is that the Whalaqee are dying from a plague brought toTural by Martyn and other researchers with the Arcanist's guild 🙃 There were two trips: one to study Blue Magic, and one where people from the first trip went back because they found ceruleum in the sacred lands of the Whalaqee and began drilling for it. But remember: you only get to meet the Whalaqee through the two Mamoolj'aa and the Whalaqee child. The fate of the tribe rests in an Eorzean's hands because they put the medicine behind a bet for the further profit of Ul'dah. Win the carnival and make the owner a bunch of money and you get the medicine; lose, and they go raid the place for ceruleum and wipe out the tribe. It's a deeply offensive storyline that turns past and ongoing horrors that indigenous peoples - especially those of North America and Mesoamerica - have faced and are still facing into some trivial goal for a questline for a joke job that's solved through the white savior trope.

Then, of course, there's how the Mamoolj'aa are generally treated. Like the other ARR tribes and anyone the game doesn't consider civilized, their dialogue is written in broken speech patterns to reflect "lower intelligence." They're one of the only ARR tribes (next to the Qiqirn, who only got that somewhat through the SHB Qitari quests) that haven't gotten any kind of humanizing that the others have seen over the years (and even then, that's only been recently). Throughout ARR-HVW storylines, they're portrayed as extremely aggressive, are often throwaway mercs for hire around La Noscea, and they have them use this "cultural dance" of theirs that's described as extremely suggestive and is frequently used to sexually harass the white women of Eorzea. They're also seen in the Wanderer's Palace (Hard) as "aggressive barbarian" types who enslaved the Tonberries, which were originally the Spoken of Nym (so y'know, predominantly white society that became malformed and gangrenous tonberries). And your job as the Warrior of Light is, naturally, to exterminate them. There's other stuff like the naming of abilities they use (frequent use of barbarian/barbaric, which in it of itself is problematic), the totems and standards that you're actively encouraged to destroy, the shaman stuff + the fact that again: they're the only ARR tribe that never got the same kind of humanizing lens that tribes like the Sylphs got early on, or like the Amalj'aa got only recently.

Dawntrail looks to be as if it might be that humanizing effort that began in Stormblood and was most prominent in 5.X (ARR-SHB tribe side quests don't count as it's side content, not MSQ), but of course there comes the problem: beyond them never treating the Mamoolj'aa with any respect in the content we already have, they've already framed 7.0 as you meddling in the rite of succession for this new area. An area that is ruled by a two-headed Mamoolj'aa that we have to help overthrow (which is not new, as a two-headed Mamoolj'aa was already shown in The Wanderer's Palace (Hard) - but that one was portrayed as brutish, unintelligent, and played into inbred stuff as...the final boss of the dungeon who gets a special end dungeon cutscene to showcase the Tonberries brutalizing his corpse). And again, this plot thread isn't new! We already helped Hien do that to the Steppe back in Stormblood! This is yet another instance of the game treating imperialism and colonization as a fun thing for you to get in on, especially since they're using the setting and the getting to the setting as a summer vacation.

The fact that they are framing Dawntrail as summer vacation-like is insidious. You are a party of fantasy Europeans sailing to fantasy Mesoamerica/South America to meddle in their governing process.

And let's quickly go over that: the fact Tural is the "New World" as you search for "a city of gold."

These names are rooted heavily in European colonization. The idea that Europe is the "civilized Old World" and that the Americas were the "uncivilized, waiting-to-be-conquered New World" is what drove the colonization of the region, especially in Mesoamerica and South America. The term "New World" is inseparable from white supremacist narratives about the colonizers that engaged with the peoples of the Americas. It's bad enough that XIV introduced Tural as "the New World" to begin with and populated it with a fantasy race that's characterized by violence, a lack of intelligence, and sexual harassment + a gross caricature of North American plains nations, but they have now made it into the destination for the Scions' "summer vacation adventure"? So that you can go do an imperialism there, too? They even framed it as some tropical paradise as if that's not an extension of how colonization of these regions is perpetuated today through the tourism industry.

The other term - city of gold - was a myth that was used as the excuse to ransack Mesoamerica and South America. You've definitely seen it, as that was the entire plot of Road to El Dorado. It was under this pretense that Spanish colonizers decimated indigenous populations in the search of glory and gold. The search for the "city of gold" in the "New World" was a mass genocide - enabled through widespread massacre, and a vicious plague that wiped out 80% of just the population in Mexico alone.

In Mexico, the pestilence reached the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, before its fall in 1521. Pathogens also reached Peru, inciting a civil war among the Incas. Both of these situations were extremely favorable for Spain. The plague—cocoliztli—was the most devastating post-conquest epidemic in large parts of Mexico, wiping out somewhere around 80 percent of the native population.

(from "How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics" by Richard Herzog on JSTOR)

This is not a subject to touch upon lightly in any respect. And for XIV to use it for their "fun adventure in a foreign land" is deeply inappropriate and frankly disgusting. But is anyone surprised? This is the same company that ignored the demands of the Saami council to remove the offensive Far Northern attire from the store.

What I'm disappointed the most about, however, is the number of fans chomping at the bit with angles about a tropical tourist destination, taking the summer vacation angle the devs are actively encouraging, and even stuff with pirates (do not get me started on how white pirates contributed to colonization of the Americas). As a friend put it very aptly: how do you see "new world," "city of gold," and a fleet of European ships sailing towards fantasy Mesoamerica and not get skeeved out at the prospect? This isn't something you should be excited about because they're having us role play imperialism Yet Again. But this time, it's all to the tune of "tropical summer vacation in a foreign land". And y'all are excited to join in?

I don't want the expansion to turn out this way. We barely have any information on this, I understand. But what I've laid out here is what the game has already done with regards to Tural's pre-7.0 depictions and what they've shown they want to continue perpetuating. If Dawntrail turns out to be somewhat decent (and it better be better handled than Thavnair and feature fewer white people populating the countries that are inspired by black and brown cultures), then fine. But as it stands, Square has not given us any reason to trust them in how they've handled their indigenous stories leading up to 7.0. This entire concept is rife with the potential to be extremely offensive and extremely racist, and the main takeaway most fans seem to have from this isn't that this is a gross depiction of indigenous cultures, but instead a fun summer vacation with the Scions?

Really?

Stupid fucking joke my sister made up and I wanna share with yall

what did Freddy Fazbear called his fangirls?

Whor whor whor-whor whor. Whor whor whor who-whore

This is a joke

I drew this on Animal Jam B)

my hands hurt now

It's strange for me to see how you and your friend track the comments of fans everywhere... They write sweet messages in the comments, and you make a scandal out of it. Why are you so worried about them?

I hope everything is fine with your eyesight?

In the comments they write creepy comments like “I would love to kiss Pelle so much 😍”

or like “Pelle is my Swedish flower🌺🌻🇸🇪”

It wouldn’t be so strange if such written comments were left by teenagers and not 30-year-old women. It is not normal. It's strange when ADULT people write this. They also write huge comments where they write about how much they hate Øystein because HE is to blame for the fact that Pelle is dead. They spread misinformation about them. They can even damn well ask Anders about it. So if you don’t bother such people, they can do something truly STRANGE AND CREEPY like Ezra.

its birthday now

im less excited than i thought i'd be but i still feel inclined to post smth ?? idk

fuck. im going to girls camp in 2 days. i fucking hate this. i fucking hate mormonism and i fucking hate being around those people

This is not a vent account yet I feel inclined to mention on here that my living situation is unsafe and it has been impeding my ability to be normal lately. Fuckboy lipbite. Actually whatever what am I saying.

‘are you tired of being tired’ yes im fucking tired now someone please sucker punch me so i can get a good nights rest

You ever just have that moment when you realize just how fucked everything is? Like you already know, but then the universe suddenly throws it all out there at once like its trying to summarize the lore for new viewers?

Well I just heard three commercials on the radio, back to back. While waiting to see if I will have food this month, and for someone else to check into a hospital. We're both staying with someone because we had nowhere else to go, until we get into housing. None of this is remotely unique or unusual.

The first commercial was talking about the Palestinians genocide, specifically firing on people desperately trying to get to supply trucks and murdering 100 people, depicting the story in very neutral terms because she had to, but heavily (but not too heavily) leaning into words such as 'Israel claims', and unable to fully suppress the disgust and venom in her tone when mentioning 30,000 deaths.

The second was about whether a former president has complete immunity to anything they ever did. This idea is actually being humored and taken seriously, from a guy trying to get back into office.

The last talking about him and Biden going to one of the most militarized borders between two countries not at war, with Biden talking about how trump is giving orders to sabotage the deal from out of office on their pet issue to make biden look bad, and how they just fucking did it. Took orders from a man deliberately and openly striving to destroy what little democracy remains and set up a dictatorship. Decided to throw away even their own shitty 'morals' in order to own the libs. These people are still in office, unchallenged. The other side will still happily commit genocide against everyone's wishes.

Next up is "We Didn't Start the Fire"

Why social media don't feel... social anymore?

I remember when you didn't had to have a huge account to get an interactions under the posts, not empty likes or bot comments but actual interaction wih other people, you could really feel like internet can connect you to anyone and brings people together but now everything feels so empty and comporate and just tiring...