“I am a grown man. You’re my child. I don’t need your help.” He’s 85. Had children late in life. I’m sitting here at his house today, instead of work, specifically so that I can help him. I love him. I want to be here for him. I am here for him. But I’m a girl. I’m his child. He doesn’t need my help. Grrrr.

I swear to god and the entire concept of pinky swearing that he actually looks at me and sees, My Child + Girl = “I’ll wait til your brother is here.”

One day we were out to breakfast at his favorite restaurant, where the main clientele are always his generation, people facing aging just like him. He looked at some of the other diners who needed help standing or seeing the menu, etc. This put him in an introspective, sharing mood. Rare, but happens every once in a great while. Looking melancholy, he told me that it’s hard for him when a female offers him help. It makes him feel like less of a man. I swear to god, I am embellishing nothing.

He’s 85. He can’t bear help from a female. It makes him feel like less of a man.

This kinda makes me want to post something on tumblr for the whole world to see that this shit actually happens in real life. Not just Feminist Studies courses.

why aren't there more mysteries that take place in nursing homes & retirement communities. i want to watch a group of deranged retirees-cum-amateur-detectives combine their powers of:

decades of life experience

boredom-fueled busybody shamelessness

access to the most gossipy next-door-neighbors in existence

"I am too old to be arrested and/or give a shit" attitude

and solve crimes. this should be an enormous subgenre.

The dynamic in Rise between the rest of the team and Leo is. so fucking funny. Because like you've got these three extremely talented individuals who all seem like perfectly reasonable people at first glance, right, but then if you squint hard enough you realize they're actually all batshit insane (affectionate) and the clown boy standing behind them is secretly their common sense.

Clown boy will occasionally put himself and the others in danger to Prove Himself or Prove Someone Wrong (see Minotaur Maze and the movie) but like otherwise... i think people forget Leo's overwhelmingly the voice of reason in most situations?

Raph, Mikey, and Donnie are all incredibly powerful boys with very specific skill sets. They are also, as a direct result of this, the WORST decision-makers on god's green earth lmao. When presented with a problem, Raph will smash, Donnie will blow shit up, and Mikey will razzmatazz. They will all run straight toward death with the same oblivious enthusiasm of a dog about to run straight into a screen door. None of them realize this and all of them think they are Extremely Good At Problem-Solving.

And the guy cursed with the common sense to realize this is literally the LAST person anyone would expect.

When you look closely, the entirety of Rise is actually a chronicle of Leo trying to find new and creative ways to keep this team of superpowered fools alive while simultaneously white-knuckling his Cool Fun Guy persona so the others don't realize he's secretly the Boring Responsible One. Haha, you know what would be Cool and Fun, guys? Not going after the Spine Breaking Bandit lol. Getting home before the sun goes up lol. Evacuating that civilian lol. Not telling the guy dangling me off a roof "you won't, no balls" lol.

The sacred struggle of every iteration of Leonardo is thanklessly wrangling the most trigger-happy siblings in the world, and Rise Leo has not escaped it. He just does an occasional shenanigan to avoid detection and his brothers fall for it every time.

Something about how physically small Ellie looks in this episode just makes it all so much more intense. How little she is curled next to Joel, how big the rifle looks when she holds it, the way David is able to pick her up so easily. The contrast in the size of their hands when he's telling her that she, a 14-year-old, is his only equal, and how tiny hers look when she wraps her arms around Joel; the way his coat reaches her knees when he drapes it over her. Every second the camera spends on her is forcing you to look at how young she is and it just makes it all so much more awful.

Not a day goes by where I do not think about the advent of medicine like PrEP and wonder just what the people - especially queer people - who passed from HIV/AIDs during the AIDs crisis would think

And then, I read this survivor's testimony and it just makes me emotional. I think this is the closest answer we have. HIV has changed, and we must always remember the people who didn't see that change before it happened.

Someone get this man a younger sibling that ISNT like. Twice his height.

more dreamling dad au bc thats just what i do now apparently i like lazy afternoon naps and so do our boys

HAPPY HOMESTUCK DAY EVERYONE!!! 413!!!

[ “SOMEBODY TOLD ME”]:

BREAKING MY BACK JUST TO KNOW YOUR NAME. SEVENTEEN TRACKS AND I’VE HAD IT WITH THIS GAME. A BREAKIN’ MY BACK JUST TO KNOW YOUR NAME—BUT HEAVEN AIN’T CLOSE IN A PLACE LIKE THIS.

— The Killers, Hot Fuss (2004)

Princess Rhaenyra’s insolence is wearing her stepmother’s patience thin. Queen Alicent is not ten years her senior, but even during her own sixteenth year, she cannot recall herself behaving so brazenly. She would never burst into courtly discussions in nothing but gilded armor and the underskirts of her riding leathers, awash in blood. (She would never be spotted in blood that was not her own, anyway. Alicent has never picked up a sword, not one that belonged to her.) Nevermind that Rhaenyra is attending to diplomatic affairs with bared teeth and scales, no—the crux of the matter is just that, her affairs. Rhaenyra is the Realm’s Delight, a beauty incomparable to any fair maiden, Alicent included. She indulges herself with appetite of a spoiled child, the confidence of man, and the pickings befitting only to her royal blood. Criston Cole. Daemon Targaryen. Harwin Strong. Laena Velaryon. She’s full of love, isn’t she? That selfish, foolish girl. What does Rhaenyra Targaryen know of love, of duty? She is a child in so many ways—she thinks killing makes her a man, thinks the throne is hers despite being a woman, thinks she can have her knight and her uncle and her protector and Laena Velaryon in one fail swoop. She’s wrong. She doesn’t know herself half as well as Alicent does. Alicent, who sees her for what she truly is, who wants to see all of her and more of her and none of her. Alicent has been stolen into the Keep by her own father—both of their fathers—but Rhaenyra is the key to this place, is the window to everything barred. Rhaenyra Targaryen has a dragon. Rhaenyra can fly.

That’s what Rhaenyra had promised her once, with her lips pulled back in a grin, exposing the white of her teeth like the violently radiant creature she was. “Perhaps when you grow tired of plotting against me, we shall ride on dragonback together,” she had said. The tease.

Alicent had yanked her into an empty corridor by the silk of her sleeve, ready to chastise her for her ill behavior. Conversing with the lords and ladies of the court at a feast was one thing, but chattering about her bloody encounters in battle over the pudding tureen were another. The lord at her elbow was going green. Alicent’s own face was likely red; her heart raced whenever Rhaenyra got like this. Alicent had never seen the battlefield—only seen battered men in dented armor and the slumps of corpses lined along dirt roads in the aftermath of war—but her own imagination terrified her like nothing else.

(Rhaenyra is better with a sword than half of the knights in Westeros, and more lovely than the lot. Her reign has not yet begun, but already the commoners flock to her—lured in by tales of her beauty and fine hair—and soldiers would follow her into battle. Alicent would not follow, but she would watch and bite her nails down to the quick.

She thinks of the figure Rhaenyra cuts in full armor, the heat in her gaze underneath the slots of her helmet. Alicent remembers the weight of her own hand in Rhaenyra’s—which was gloved—when the princess rode up to the spectators box and grasped it in her own, bringing Alicent’s knuckles to her lips. She thinks of Rhaenyra murdered in the sky, skewered with another man’s sword, plummeting to the ground, torn in half, streaking crimson across the clouds. Alicent would scream, or cry. She might laugh. She would throw herself from the window of her tower. Rhaenyra’s bloody exploits terrified Alicent for reasons she could not identify, and excited her for reasons she refused to.)

“I’d sooner be confined to the castle for the rest of my days than get on the back of that bloody lizard,” Alicent scoffed. Rhaenyra only tucked her hand over Alicent’s, where it was resting on her forearm. She flexed her fingers, moving to release her grip on the dark fabric, but Rhaenyra intertwined their fingers and held them fast.

“You’re confined already. You are already accustomed to such a thing. I know you. But—”

“But you forget yourself. You think you’re invulnerable, Rhaenyra. You don’t know who you are.” Alicent intends for it to be a sneer, but instead it comes out quietly, and too gentle for disdain. She can’t know. Rhaenyra is as trapped as she is, but they’re trapped together. They belong together. She belongs with Alicent.

“I am Rhaenyra Targaryen, Heir to the Iron Throne and all of Westeros. I am a dragonrider. I am—I am your daughter. In a way. Your sister, too. Your enemy. Your sword, your shield.”

“And what am I?” What else is left for me? Alicent wonders.

“My Queen. For now.” Rhaenyra cocks her head, and the gleam in her eyes burns like fire raining down. “When I am Queen, you will be my lady.”

miscellaneous danyal al ghul things

specifically about the danyal al ghul from my post/prompt here and i wanna get my misc. headcanons/thoughts on him (especially in his early stay with the fentons) out here before i make any other danyal al ghul aus

list under the cut because whoops this got longer than i expected. which really i should have expected

the Fentons are unaffiliated with the League, which was perfect for Danny faking his death.

he struggles with empathy. Empathy was not taught nor encouraged while he was with the League, so it's a skill that's been pretty stunted. At 15 he's better at empathizing with people, but he still struggles with it. He's pretty bad at reassuring/comforting people and usually acts as an emotional rubber duck for Sam and Tucker to vent to if need be. He sometimes offers blunt and sometimes mean opinions, especially if its about another person.

Sam and Tucker do not know he's an ex-assassin, they are however, pretty positive that he used to be part of an eco-fascist cult with a focus on martial arts?? They've been helping him tone down some of his more,,, extreme views on humanity ever since they caught wind of his more extreme ideologies.

He and Sam are still avid environmentalists and feed into each other quite a bit. They spend plenty of time at protests and pestering the school into more eco-friendly options.

Dash is not dead on the sole fact that Danny knew he had to lay low in Amity Park and killing someone was not, in fact, 'laying low'.

he did, however, traumatize him when Dash first tried to bully him. Safe to say, Danny is not bullied at school and neither are Sam and Tucker.

Danny didn't make any friends in his first year at Amity Park. He was surly, grumpy, standoffish, more stubborn than Sam, and pretty self-important about himself. Jazz was trying to teach him against these things, but she is a 12 year old unaffiliated with the League. Danny did not respect her nor listen to a word she said. It wasn't until like, year two that he finally started paying to mind what she was saying and slowly started to improve on himself

Sam approached him first, he rebuffed her quite harshly, and then Danny approached her sometime afterward when he overheard her talking about environmental rights. Sam completely ignored him though when he agreed with her, and Danny had to later learn that he needed to apologize for being rude to her when they first met. He did so eventually, and they started to talk more with Tucker and Sam.

Danny's a bit more reserved than he is in canon, although he steadily learns how to act as a regular teenager when he's out in public. He's a bit more friendlier at least, although when he's around Sam and Tucker he drops the act. He still has a somewhat formal way of talking, it's just become more casual after a lot of ribbing from Sam and Tucker. When he's angry or annoyed he starts talking poshly though.

His humor is relatively the same as in canon, if somehow dryer and more insulting at some points

Those rare moments where he gets really pissed usually ends up with him insulting someone in arabic or any of the other languages he picked up from the league. He is the go-to for Tucker's Spanish homework. (Tucker makes that mistake and learns that Danny is a very strict teacher)

while Danny doesn't view the Fentons as his parents, even five years after living with them, he does respect them to some amount. He respects them enough at least that when Vlad Masters comes sniffing around, he is suitably offended on both Maddie and Jack's behalf. And when he finds out Vlad was the one who tried to kill Jack and tried to tell him to renounce him as his father/parental guardian, danny threw a suitably sharp object at him and insulted him quite horrendously

Vlad still wants him as his kid. In fact perhaps even moreso after this.

Danny trains with Maddie to keep up with his training. It's not quite the same but it prevents him from getting completely rusty

Sam and Tucker know that Danny has a little brother, but nothing else beyond that other than Danny cares about him quite a lot and that he got his facial scar from keeping him safe.

Danny cares about Sam, Tucker, and Jazz quite a bit, but he struggles to convey it. Especially early on when he realized he cared about them and like instinct started being harsher to them and more critical of their actions. This resulted in quite a few arguments with Sam and Tucker and Jazz until he got sat down and told outright that the way he was treating them wasn't okay. It's a process he's still trying to unlearn even at 15. He has become kinder towards them as a result, and has begun looking for what they did right rather than what they did wrong.

He harbors a lot of guilt over how he treated Damian in the League, and its a pretty big conflict he has with himself since he's torn between telling himself it was for the best to make sure Damian survived the League, and feeling like crap over how harsh/critical of Damian he was and realizing that he probably could have come up with a better way of training him despite being a child himself at the time. Danny comes to the realization that more than anything, that he just wants to apologize.

His ghost form, specifically is outfit, is a combination of his hazmat suit and his uniform from the league, and he carries a sword with him. He also doesn't know how to react to Dani, honestly. Although it is fair to say that he figures out she's a clone instantly because of her whole 'I'm your third cousin once removed' thing and he freaks out. She spills the beans pretty quickly after that. And Danny is pretty skittish around her - or the equivalent of skittish. Her being younger than him kinda reminds him of Damian, so he's uncomfortable by her presence but learns to warm up to her.

I need people to understand how S&P (standards and practices) works in television and how much influence they have over what gets to stay IN an episode of a show and how the big time network execs are the ones holding the purse strings and making final decisions on a show's content, not the writers / showrunners / creatives involved.

So many creators have shared S&P notes over the years of the wild and nonsensical things networks wanted them to omit / change / forbid. Most famously on tumblr, I've seen it so many times, is the notes from Gravity Falls. But here's a post compiling a bunch of particularly bad ones from various networks too. Do you see the things they're asking to be changed / cut ?

Now imagine, anything you want to get into your show and actually air has to get through S&P and the network execs. A lot of creators have had to resort to underhanded methods. A lot of creators have had to relegate things to subtext and innuendo and scenes that are "open to interpretation" instead of explicit in meaning. Things have had to be coded and symbolized. And they're relying on their audience to be good readers, good at media literacy, to notice and get it. This stuff isn't the ramblings of conspiracy theorists, it's the true practices creatives have had to use to be able to tell diverse stories for ages. The Hays Code is pretty well known, it exists because of censorship. It was a way to symbolize certain things and get past censors.

Queercoding, in particular, has been used for ages in both visual media and literature do signal to queer audiences that yes, this character is one of us, but no, we can't be explicit about it because TPTB won't allow it. It's a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to those in the know. It's the deliberate use of certain queer imagery / clothing / mannerisms / phrases / references to other queer media / subtle glances and lingering touches. Things that offer plausible deniability and can be explained away or go unnoticed by straight audiences to get past those network censors. But that queer viewers WILL (hopefully) pick up on.

Because, unfortunately, still to this day, a lot of antiquated network execs don't think queer narratives are profitable. They don't think they'll appeal to general audiences, because that's what matters, whatever appeals to most of the audience demographic so they can keep watching and keep making the network more money. The networks don't care about telling good stories! Most of them are old white cishet business men, not creatives. They don't care about character arcs and what will make fans happy. They don't care about storytelling. What they care about is profit and they're basing their ideas of what's profitable on what they believe is the predominate target demographic, usually white cis heterosexual audiences.

So, imagine a show that started airing in the early 2000s. Imagine a show where the two main characters are based on two characters from a famous Beat Generation novel, where one of the characters is queer! based on a real like bisexual man! The creator is aware of this, most definitely. And sure, it's 2005, there's no way they were thinking of making that explicit about Dean in the text because it just wouldn't fly back then to have a main character be queer. But! it's made subtext. And there are nods to that queerness placed in the text. Things that are open to interpretation. Things that are drenched in metaphor (looking at you 1x06 Skin "I know I'm a freak" "maybe this thing was born human but was different...hated. Until he learned to become someone else.") Things that are blink-and-you-miss-it and left to plausible deniability (things like seemingly spending an hour in the men's bathroom, or always reacting a little vulnerable and awkward when you're clocked instead of laughing it off and making a homophobic joke abt it)

And then, years later there's a ship! It's popular and at first the writers aren't really seriously thinking about it but they'll throw the fans a bone here and there. Then, some writers do get on the destiel train and start actively writing scenes for them that are suggestive. And only a fraction of what they write actually makes it into the text. So many lines left on the cutting room floor: i love past you. i forgive you i love you. i lost cas and it damn near broke me. spread cas's ashes alone. of course i wanted you to stay. if cas were here. -- etc. Everything cut was not cut by the writers! Why would a writer write something to then sabotage their own story and cut it? No, these are things that didn't make it past the network. Somewhere a note was made maybe "too gay" or "don't feed the shippers" or simply "no destiel."

So, "no destiel." That's pretty clearly the message we got from the CW for years. "No destiel. Destiel will alienate our general audience. Two of our main characters being queer? And in a relationship? No way." So what can the pro-destiel creatives involved do, if the network is saying no? What can the writers do if most of their explicit destiel (or queer dean) lines / moments are getting cut? Relegate things to subtext. Make jokes that straight people can wave off but queer people can read into. Make costuming and set design choices that the hardcore fans who are already looking will notice while the general audience and the out-of-touch network execs won't blink and eye at (I'm looking at you Jerry and your lamps and disappearing second nightstands and your gay flamingo bar!)

And then, when the audience asks, "is destiel real? is this proof of destiel?" what can the creatives do but deny? Yes, it hurts, to be told "No no I don't know what you're talking about. There's no destiel in supernatural" a la "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" but! if the network said "no destiel!" and you and your creative team have been working to keep putting destiel in the subtext of the narrative in a way that will get past censors, you can't just go "Yes, actually, all that subtext and symbolism you're picking up, yea it's because destiel is actually in the narrative."

But, there's a BIG difference between actively putting queer themes and subtext into the narrative and then saying it's not there (but it is! and the audience sees it!) versus NOT putting any queer content into the text but SAYING it is there to entice queer fans to continue watching. The latter, is textbook queerbaiting. The former? Is not. The former is the tactics so many creatives have had to use for years, decades, centuries, to get past censorship and signal to those in the know that yea, characters like you are here, they exist in this story.

Were the spn writers perfect? No, absolutely not. And I don't think every instance of queer content was a secret signal. Some stuff, depending on the writer, might've been a period-typical gay joke. These writers are flawed. But it's no secret that there were pro-destiel writers in the writing room throughout the years, and that efforts were made to make it explicitly canon (the market research!)

So no, the writers weren't ever perfect or a homogeneous entity. But they definitely were fighting an uphill battle constantly for 15 yrs against S&P and network execs with antiquated ideas of what's profitable / appealing.

Spn even called out the networks before, on the show, using a silly example of complaints abt the lighting of the show and how dark the early seasons were. Brightening the later seasons wasn't a creative choice, but a network choice. And if the networks can complain abt and change something as trivial as the lighting of a show, they definitely are having a hand in influencing the content of the show, especially queer content.

Even in s15, (seasons fifteen!!!) Misha has said he worried Castiel's confession would not air. In 2020!!! And Jensen recorded that scene on his personal phone! Why? Sure, for the memories. But also, I do not doubt for a second that part of it was for insurance, should the scene mysteriously disappear completely. We've seen the finale script. We've seen the omitted omitted omitted scenes. We all saw how they hacked the confession scene to bits. The weird cuts and close-ups. That's not the writers doing. That's likely not even the editors (willingly). That's orders from on high. All of the fuckery we saw in s15 reeks of network interference. Writers are not trying to sabotage their own stories, believe me.

Anyways, TLDR: Networks have a lot more power than many think and they get final say in what makes it to air. And for years creative teams have had to find ways to get past network censorship if they want "banned" or "unapproved" "unprofitable" "unwanted" content to make it into the show. That means relying on techniques like symbolism, subtext, and queercoding, and then shutting up about it. Denying its there, saying it's all "open to interpretation" all while they continue to put that open to interpretation content into the show. And that's not queerbaiting, as frustrating as it might be for queer audiences to be told that what they're seeing isn't there, it's still not queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is a marketing technique to draw in queer fans by baiting them with the promise of queer content and then having no queer content in said media. But if you are picking up on queer themes / subtext / symbolism / coding that is in front of your face IN the text, that's not queerbaiting. It's there, covertly, for you, because someone higher up didn't want it to be there explicitly or at all.

"when strangers mistake me for his father i don't correct them" just break my goddamn heart why don't you. i love this and the rest of your art so so SO much and i'm dying to hear more of your thoughts on tintin and haddock's father-son/chaotic uncle-nephew dynamic, because it's one thing i wish had been developed further in canon, especially with tintin's move to marlinspike hall

Haddock and Tintin invented the found family trope! Their dynamic means so much to me, while my post canon series seems to be about Tintin and Chang's relationship it's actually more about Tintin and Haddock's found family bond and how it changes as Tintin grows older.

My thoughts on their dynamic are under the cut. It's Fathers' Day in the UK this Sunday, so happy Fathers' Day!

Haddock had a terrible childhood and has low self esteem, but values his ability as a sailor. Even that is shaken when his crew mutinies and kidnaps a teenager. As a result Haddock feels an enormous sense of guilt and responsibility for Tintin

He looks up to Tintin a lot, he inspires Haddock to always strive to be better!

He doesn't understand what Tintin sees in him but Tintin's positivity easily outshines any doubts about their friendship. Tintin brings that childlike wonder Haddock missed out on in his own childhood. Haddock goes out of his way to do stuff with Tintin he never got to do with his father, like going to the theatre or trips to the seaside.

Initially Tintin tolerates Haddock, but he proves himself with his sailing prowess in The Shooting Star. While Tintin is brave and proactive he's very introverted and closed off from people, having gained dangerous enemies at such a young age.

At first he's not used to having someone look out for him but grows to deeply appreciate Haddock. A colleague at work said Haddock is like that one middle aged guy you befriend at a job you got as a teenager and you become ride or die with through trauma bonding and I think he's exactly right!

Even though he's his best friend Tintin still keeps him at a distance. Haddock doesn't know his legal name or anything about his past. Tintin rarely opens up about personal problems out of fear of worrying him.

As Haddock has pinned so much of his self worth on Tintin, in my post canon series Haddock is forced to re-examine his friendship with him.

Haddock gets into a secret romantic relationship with Ramo Nash and gets some well earned down time from adventures, taking up painting as a hobby. It's the first time he's had time to find himself outside of being Tintin's adventuring companion, and realises he may have to make the painful decision between his best friend or staying true to himself. It's a decision he knew he had to make for a long time.

Haddock invites Chang to live in Marlinspike during his year as an exchange student in hopes he'll keep Tintin out of trouble. When Chang ends up joining in on the adventures instead Haddock is taken aback by how competent he is, and how seemingly effortlessly he is able to keep up with Tintin. Watching a younger fitter person does bring up some insecurities in him, but he later appreciates that this means he could sometimes take a break and let Chang go get shot at instead!

Tintin's tendency to keep his personal problems to himself drives a rift between them as he desperately tries to navigate coming to terms with being gay. Even though homosexuality was legal in Belgium at the time there's still a stigma, and Haddock and Tintin are terrified of losing each other's respect.

When Haddock finds out Tintin is also gay he is overjoyed, he vows to look out and to always be a safe haven for him. He grew up in fear and in the closet, so is determined to be the father figure he never had himself.

Haddock is very supportive of Tintin and Chang, but as Tintin grows closer to Chang and spends more time with him Haddock can't help but feel a little insecure. It's normal for parental figures to feel that way.

As Haddock grows older and less physically able to travel, Tintin worries if his deteriorating health is his fault. Haddock makes sure to nip this fear in the bud, and lets him know how proud he is of what they were able to do. As Haddock settles into retirement with Ramo, Tintin and Chang visit frequently to help take care of them.

Haddock never officially adopts Tintin despite everything, just in case the Haddock family curse still persists. Also "Tintin Haddock" is an absolutely awful sounding name.

Neither Haddock or Tintin can stand spiders. They get Nestor or Calculus to deal with that

imagine All of Tintin's Father Figures in a group chat in a modern AU, Haddock, Calculus, Skut, Mr Wang, Ramo Nash... The Council of Dads (Castafiore is in it too, she counts)

Could you explain your position on Shallura? Since Allura was established as a teenager when she started dating Lance and Shiro was very clearly an adult. I can understand the bi shiro headcannon but the shallura thing worries me

i am going to remind yall that i have been in this fandom since 2016. and in the early seasons, allura was not established as a teenager. in fact she was coded as older, as closer to shiro's age -- there was a specific divide between her and the younger paladins that she did not have with shiro. they made her younger (both explicitly and in mannerisms) as the show went on. and i do not give a fuck about voltron like...post s4 and i didn't even watch s7-8. so like. especially with older fics, im going to enjoy shallura.

TUVOKTOBER Day 2: Lunch Break [Interrupted]

The difference one and a half years can make

My first comic

My latest comic

It's been absolutely staggering to see the differences even though these panels have the same vibes.

I love arranging it's like YES YES THE OBJECTS ARE IN LOCATIONS