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extraordinarilyextreme · 8 months

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devotion not as worship. but as recognition. as "i want to stand with you, and beside you." as learning. as understanding. as "i want to know you." as "i am making the choice to get to know you." as persistence. as care. as "you are knowable." as "you are lovable." devotion not as idolatry. but devotion as mortality. as a reflection. "you and i, together. equals. partners." devotion as accompaniment. devotion as humanity.

#fanghua #mysterious lotus casebook #cdrama ramblings #im doing great yall i am i am i am #not a vase to be admired or appreciated from afar #not an object to be kept or sought after #not a god to long for and chase #you are human and a whole person #i am willing to be a human and whole person with you #with you #WITH YOU #BESIDE YOU

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bixels · 10 days

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This Twitter MLP human redesign drama is a mess, leave me the fuck out of it.

#saw people posting my designs to put down other artists' designs saying that i'm the “correct way” of doing things #don't do that #i don't give a SHIT if people are redesigning these HORSES to be fat or “”“ugly”“” people they're all valid #this whole thing is so dumb just say “i don't like the art style” and move on #“hey op i spent 4 hours of time and effort to redraw your shitty redesign and show you how it's really done” you're fucking weird #you know that right? dedicating that much time to cash in on a hate trend when you could be creating something unique and original with lov #your insistence that human redesigns need to be attractive and symmetrical and anything deviating that is woke psy-op brainwashing #is fucking weird. saw an entire tweet reposting my designs listing off how i “got it right.” bullet point: “looks like real people”#the black fat pinkie design with braces that went viral looks more like a real person than any of my designs you asshole #or maybe you spent too much time in high school bullying people who look like that to notice #personal #delete later #do not use my art to belittle artists who've done nothing wrong this legit made me really angry today

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citrus-soda · 10 months

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What if you found out that aliens had set foot on earth, multiple times in fact, but instead of establishing first contact or anything they just made ants steal batteries and coke cans for them. You go outside and find one commanding a small army to take down a chihuahua. That’s pikmin.

#pikmin 4 #pikmin #im on the fence about pik4’s new setting. I personally like the lonely feel of the wilderness from the previous games?#but at the same time the urban setting is pretty cute. and the idea of humans just having been alive this whole time is so funny #im thinking it’s probably going to be a ‘theyre long gone but their buildings still remain’ situation but can you IMAGINE??#if they really were still around my god #do the humans know about olimar? the drake crew? the rescue corps??#do the humans know about the pikmin?#do children like to play with pikmin - have them build tiny cities out of twigs and pebbles?#can I gently feed the pikmin bread crumbs. I want to. I want to hold them and love them.#citrussodatalks

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uncanny-tranny · 3 months

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"haha, are you an art gay, a science gay, or a math gay"

Actually, I find the division between art, science, and math to be a very nebulous idea and useless when you actually interact with the universe. The more you learn about the world, the more you surround yourself with art and science and math, and you'll never be able to see it any other way and it will be beautiful. When I take your hand, it won't be the science of our atoms closing the distance between us that we will experience, but the math of our fingers interlocking and the art of our bodies that we will experience. You are math and you are science and you are art, and nothing will make you any lesser💛

#positivity #the planets are singing right now. are you listening?#if you can't experience the art of science and the science of art then i think you're missing out #the more i intentionally try to learn the more i love art and sfience and the world 💛#i was always more of a humanities person but i've grown restless and taking up science??????? holy shit??????#i was in class the other day and a very simple concept finally clicked in a fundamental way and i think that's why i'm alive actually #i think i know how michaelangelo felt when he painted the creation of adam #this is why i really encourage y'all to look up on youtube some free lectures because some of them are so amazing #like i watched a lecture about elements and it's still fucking me up when i think about it #this is also why i despise the whole 'modern art isn't really art; it takes no skill 😡' thing people like to do #please sit down and paint one of the installments of Who's Afraid of Red Yellow and Blue #i've learned to appreciate that installment and art series as of late and i think it's nice art #i love this stupid fucking world 👾

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novelconcepts · 5 months

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In watching more interviews with Liv about Van and the escalation of Van's pragmatism to such dark degrees, I find myself genuinely baffled that anyone could ever think Van the bad guy. I mean, I'm perplexed at finding ANY of these girls The Bad Guy. The bad guy is the situation. It's being lost. It's freezing. It's starving. It's being scraped down to the barest bone of being alive. They make choices that might be snippy, or cruel, or hard-headed, sure--Shauna refusing to just hash it out with Jackie; Jackie being too stubborn to come inside; Taissa refusing to discuss her situation plainly; etc--but by the time we reach the end of season 2, it doesn't even matter. Petty bullshit doesn't matter. Jealousy doesn't matter. Those things are still going to be present and complicated, because--for all their choices, for all the distancing they're trying to do--these kids ARE still human beings. But it isn't the point.

The point is survival. Plain, simple, straightforward. Van's pragmatism is survival. It is the difference between living another day with blood on your teeth or dying pretty. It is the difference between fighting forward through the fire and the snow and the hell of it all, and laying down to die. Van knowing, in watching the ritual violence of Shauna beating Lottie nearly the death, that they will be killing and eating one another soon. Van coming up with the cards for the hunt. Van not blinking when the moment comes, Van choosing a weapon that doubles as a tool to bring the body back, Van refusing to apologize for staying alive--it's not evil. It's not Bad Guy behavior. It's purely about survival, because there is nothing else left to her--or to any of them. They can play the pretty little Sweet Angel Girl game and die, or they can get dirty, bloody, horrific and fight. Van chooses the fight. Van chooses to fight for herself, for her lover, for her team, even knowing not everyone is going to make it out...because the alternate path there is that no one makes it out. Van knew the baby wouldn't live. Van knows the rest of them won't, either. Not unless they start making the hard choices.

And, honestly, the fact that Van sees this narrative coming. Comes up with this plan. Brings out the cards. To me, that is the opposite of Bad Behavior. That is as close to justice as anyone can find in the wilderness. If someone else came up with an idea, maybe it would have come down to voting--but that would have had such a human element to it, with bitterness or hostility or whatever ultimately petty shit always comes of humans selecting who to Other. The cards don't leave room for that. It isn't fair, because the situation isn't fair, because Man vs. Nature isn't fair, but it's as close to a just system as they could possibly find. It's the kindest solution to an unwinnable game. Not to bring it back to American Gods again, but all I can think is "it's easy, there's a trick to it: you do it, or you die." Van gave them that.

#yellowjackets #yj meta #van palmer #i simply cannot ever accept people blindly hating ANY of the girls for their actions at the end of S2 #because by that point it's not about personality flaws or errors of judgement or teenage bullshit #it's survival. it's literally do or die.#be mad at the stuff they did the first few weeks out there. THAT was in their control.#but by the end of S2 it's 'do i want to live? cool. then this is the next step. there IS nothing else. we are eating belts.'#every once in a while on instagram or somewhere i see a hot take like 'oh this whole thing is THIS girl's fault'#and it's like no no. no--apart from misty busting the black box--NOTHING these girls do will change the fact of their situation #they might make it worse or make it more palatable but in the end #it's the purity of man vs. nature as a story #and any of them getting darker. more logical. more pragmatic. just means they're putting another day breathing first.#the human element of it comes in with the faith and the ritual and the acceptance of violence--but the violence was coming either way #'this place cannot be argued with. and that is how we survive: by giving into that.' exactly. liv hewson you genius. exactly.

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purplegori · 1 year

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malevolent is wild because the two main characters are literally Everything all at once. they're a queerplatonic relationship. they're romantically married. they've been thrice divorced. they're constantly learning about each other. they barely know each other at all. they argue every fucking minute. they have an undying loyalty to each other. like i'm SAYING man it just never ends

#malevolent podcast #malevolent #arthur lester #john malevolent #gave up trying to retype my tag rant here's the short version (you got lucky today)#me when being human sometimes means being so many things all at once youd think you contradict yourself but no actually #thats a human thing. a person thing #the privilege and the curse of not knowing what you are now because there's still more that you can be #but maybe that's part of it! maybe you're SUPPOSED to be like that? because sometimes progress isn't knowing what you are #it's knowinf what you want to be #and that's a whole thing itself; it's a wholeass thing to figure out but in the meantime maybe.#maybe you ARE something. and that is: you are doing your best. and you are being better #and maybe that's what john and arthur are yknow maybe that's their thing too

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twinstxrs · 3 months

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the gorgug-porter conversation is interesting to me because like. yea for the overwhelming majority of the conversation porter’s being shitty & trying to fit gorgug into a box that gorgug just does not fit into by trying to make gorgug’s relationship with his rage more focused on the aggression aspect of it. but then there’s also this specific thing that brennan brought up again in the ap, which is that gorgug’s relationship with his rage is wholly “this is a tool i use to protect my friends.” which isn’t a bad thing! but that’s his Whole relationship with it, & gorgug seems to place next to no value on his rage in relationship to himself. which is problematic, because it’s first & foremost his rage.

being raised in a household with a sort of toxic positivity largely meant that, whether or not it was his parents’ intention, gorgug internalized the message that more traditionally “negative” emotions such as anger are the wrong response to something. part of the reason he prioritizes his artificing is probably because it’s “fixing” things. in comparison to being a barbarian, which gorgug associates with “breaking” things. good vs. bad behavior, in his eyes.

it’s a totally unacceptable bar to measure a 16 y/o by, but i do think part of porter’s reasoning for not letting gorgug multiclass is him recognizing that gorgug generally does not value anger as a valid emotional response to something, at the very least for himself. & that directly conflicts with what being a barbarian is, because whether you like it or not, that rage is what fuels you. but again, barring a kid from pursuing something they deeply care about in part (not entirely, porter has a lot of more bullshit reasons) because of their fundamental values & world outlook is crazy.

so yes, 98% of porter’s reasoning is pretty shitty, immature, rife with a toxic view that there’s only one proper way to access rage, & generally not a good thing to do as a teacher, but also within that reasoning is the 2% of ‘there is a fundamental part of yourself that you only value if you can use it to take care of other people & you need to accept that as something that can take care of you, too.’ but that’s something to discuss with a therapist or a guidance counselor, not something that should hugely impact gorgug’s academic future.

#gorgug thistlespring #fantasy high #dimension 20 #fhjy #fhjy spoilers #btw these r just my personal opinions u r 100% free to disagree #gorgug & his rage interest me so deeply because of how deeply that rage existing seems to be against gorgug’s own will #like mechanically classes are choices & you can switch stuff around any time. but gorgug as a barbarian always felt like an unwilling choice #like that 14 y/o kid did not want to have rage. & that really interests me.#i’ve seen people before be like ‘what if gorgug dropped barbarian & went full srtificer’ but i feel like that simply can’t happen??#mechanically yea sure but it always felt like a core part of gorgug that the rage will always be there & it’s a matter of how you channel it #idk. dnd classes narratively being treated as ‘you can not lose this part of you’ even though you technically can #gorgug could be lvl 19 artificer & he’d still have 1 level of barbarian. because that is part of who he is.#btw i don’t think porter truly cares about gorgug valuing his rage only as a way to be a human shield #i think porter just sees that as ‘wrong’ but like. not as in ‘you need to take care of yourself’ & more ‘you aren’t conforming’#he thinks it’s wrong for the wrong reasons. the nastier ‘this is how you should be’ reasons #ppl being like ‘we r being too hard on porter. it’s an 150% courseload gorgug will be overwhelmed’ i think r missing the point bc like.#that is 100% a valid reason to not approve gorgug for multiclassing! but that’s also 100% not the reason porter rejected him.#that whole interaction was basically porter shoving his percieved version of conformity down gorgug’s throat. was v neurodivergent kid coded #no hate to anyone saying that last point btw these r all just opinions #thinking about last ep wilma & digby being like ‘you’re a great barbarian. you’re so great at it. but look at what you made!!!’ like.#they would never mean it like that. but when you only understand half of your son he is going to prioritize the half you do.

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liesmyth · 6 months

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would you be able to give examples/explain more about how race only impacts gideon in the tlt-universe? not being facetious or condescending, genuinely asking. thank you!

Hi anon! If you mean my tags to this post, I wrote

#earth conception of race doesn't impact any character in the series except the canonically brown main antagonist

By which I mean my Worstie and main antagonist of the series, John Gaius (PhD).

I don’t think TLT as a series engages with race in any especially meaningful ways. It’s set in a post-Earth society with entirely different social norms, and there’s no concept of race and ethnicity within the population of the Nine Houses. Physical descriptions of the characters are scarce to say the least, and they rarely spell out the kind of features that suggest specific racial connotations, because the POV characters don’t seem to think it’s something worth remarking upon. iirc, it takes until halfway through HtN for the narrative to confirm that Harrow has brown skin.

[See also Tamsyn’s GtN characters description post. It quotes passages from the book, and you can see how minimal the descriptions are, and she repeats several times that her characters’ appearances are up to the readers’ interpretations. It just doesn’t seem to be a big concern of hers]

Then there’s John, who grew up in twenty-first-century New Zealand and IS explicitly Māori in a way that absolutely impacted his character arc. It's not A major theme of his Nona chapters, but it’s there if you read between the lines. The boarding school he went to, which IRL had a high percentage of low-income Māori students on scholarship. The depth of his climate anxiety, his uncompromising “Nobody left behind” stance before the cryo project was halted, and his fervent hatred of ‘the trillionaires’ afterwards... these are all informed to some extent by his background as an indigenous man imo, and so was the global reaction to his developing powers. The “We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we?” the way his initial attempts at publications are all flat-out ignored by the scientific community and dismissed as culty gimmicky faith healing until he leans into it.

John being Māori is just one of the many pieces of his backstory, and far from the most impactful to what eventually went down, but my point remains that he is the ONLY character in TLT whose racial background 1) affects his story arc and 2) is relatable to the audience. Everyone else is ten thousand years removed from Earth, and I’m just not very interested in using racial identifiers when exploring these characters and their dynamics, because the characters themselves don’t care and neither does the narrative.

#on a more hashtag meta level #John is why I’m personally uneasy about any analysis of the series that tries to interpret TLT through racial allegory lenses #especially when it’s weaponised for discourse purposes #You can write meta about John’s war crimes without comparing him to white imperialism #Or you can go ahead and do that anyway but I highkey disagree that it’s a fitting metaphor or in any way deliberate on Tamsyn’s part #and I think the implications are unfortunate to say the least #That said I AM extremely interested in the ways John relates to the culture he left behind #and why he made the choices he did when it came the moment to reshape humanity’s cultural consciousness after the Resurrection #but that’s on a character level!#I don’t think we can apply twenty-first-century social / identity labels to the series as a whole #especially a series where the author says 'I imagine X character as Y but it doesn't raelly matter'#and it doesn't influence the canon directly in any way #SORRY THIS IS LONG!#anonymous #ask #ejg #tlt thoughts #elle tlt posting #tlt

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lolathepeacocklord · 6 days

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goodness gracious lola speedpaint !!!!!!!!!! in the real !!!!! ive been on a real kick drawing lately (or at least have been trying to) and ive gghuyuughgughtguthgutghtugdhudhgjdhgsjdf become really autismed about these messed up creatures from tee eff ayyyyyy animated 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰im almost at season 2 gang im going to become even more grotesquely into these beasts very soon !!!!!! heart emoji !!!!!!

#i love fixating on one transformer and then every single human character !!!!!!!!! <3333333 #the humans in tfa are genuinely so splendid and like full of personality and flavor you really dont get them like this anymore #i love how unique their bodies look and how they act like whats their whole gig !!!!!!!! whatre they doing !!!!!!#i need more cartoons to make their characters fucked up and insane again pleeeeezzzzz get yourself a british man wearing leggings.....#i promise it will sell so well...... <3333 i prommyyyyyyyy #my art #speedpaint #transformers #maccadam #transformers animated #tfa #angry archer #tfa angry archer #aaron a archer #not joking drawing these guys i feel like are really helping me draw more like. diverse character designs its so epic #I LOVE SHAPES I LOVE ANGLES I LOVE IT I LOVE DRAWING WEEEEEE !!!!!!

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snekdood · 1 year

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There are genuinely people online that instead of actually bringing people to the left, at this point, would prefer that anyone who was previously not on the left but who tries to be *stays* outside of the left, because i guess its just easier to comprehend when the world is put into little shitty boxes you labeled for them instead of actually thinking for once and having the nuance to understand them. Like thats wild to me that theres people who would prefer you not be on the left or not try to be. Yall GENUINELY do not care about advocating for your side politically in any capacity. Its LITERALLY just a clique you've found yourself in. And theres nothing progressive about that or being exclusive, wtf do you think this shit is, a night club? Grow the fuck up, honestly.

#A whole lot easier to consistently point and laugh at the same person than to ever encourage them to change i guess #yall are weak #Yall wont get us anywhere and actively hurt progressive causes #And the worst part is most of the ppl like this are on tumblr and a lot of the people on tumblr absolutely suck as human beings #and never want to do anything about it either partially because they think theyre above any form of therapy 🙄#Idk. maybe its a comfort thing. Like things have to be exactly how they remembered them the day before or else they'll idk lose their mind #Like some of yall would prefer the world stays black and white and thats sad #Lets be honest. What it really is is you dont want to have to feel any potential guilt for treating someone as if theyre just #discardable trash when they werent.#Bc ur just oooohhh soooo perfeccctttt and it just fucks with your self perception when someone even inadvertently suggests #you did something wrong lmao.#yall wont survive in this world

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itmightrain · 7 months

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The killing gas in Burrow's End reminded me so much of a 1993 movie called Once Upon a Forest where a truck containing hazardous chemicals crashes near a forest and the fumes make the baby animal characters who live there sick and they have to go on a quest to find a cure. The scenes where you watch the slow, inexorable movement of the poisonous air into the forest towards the animal characters who didn't and couldn't understand what was happening was so so horrifying to me as a child

#burrows end #dimension 20 #burrow's end #also there was a screen where one character got caught in a human trap #and he usually wore glasses and a shirt but he'd somehow lost them when getting into the trap #and then a human in a haz mat suit lifted up the trap and looked at him #and suddenly he was an animal #you know what i mean? he was a little person the whole movie talking and wearing clothes and suddenly thrust into this human context he was #an animal #it was such a wild perception change and so well done #burrows end spoilers

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monster-inside-of-your-head · 7 months

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Looking up fanart for Adventure Time for the first time was like "did you know? Everyone is trans" and I was like "yeah ok"

#simon petrikov #fionna campbell #fionna the human #cake the cat #fionna and cake #quo's art #quo's colors #trying out simplified stuff #its fun to draw circles #try it yourself #I think cake has some case because she was a cat before #and cats do not care about gender #so her whole finding herself as a person can also be about gender why not lol #fionna is fun because that would mean finn is trans to and you can make jokes about deadnames or something #and simon is really funny because vibes

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carlyraejepsans · 18 days

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for real WHERE does the idea that [utdr humans] are nongendered so that "you can project on them" come from. their literal character arcs are about NOT being a blank slate to be filled in by the audience

i think i understand the assumption on some level for undertale, because there is a very intentional effort to make you identify with the "player character" in order to make your choices feel like your own (the beating heart of undertale's metanarrative lies in giving you an alternative path to violence against its enemies after all, and whether you're still willing to persue it for your own selfish reasons. YOUR agency is crucial).

of course, the cardinal plot twist of the main ending sweeps the rug from under your feet on that in every way, and frisk's individuality becomes, in turn, a tool to further UT's OTHER main theme: completionism as a form of diegetic violence within the story. replaying the game would steal frisk's life and happy ending from them for our own perverse sentimentality, emotionally forcing our hand away from the reset button.

i think their neutrality absolutely aids in that immersion. but also, there's this weird attitude by (mostly) cis fans where it being functional within the story makes it... somehow "editable" and "up to the player" as well? which is gross and shows their ass on how they approach gender neutrality in general lol.

but also like. there's plenty of neutral, non PCharacters in undertale and deltarune. even when undertale was just an earthbound fangame and the player immersion metanarrative was completely absent, toby still described frisk as a "young, androgynous person". sometimes characters are just neutral by design. it's not that hard to understand lol.

anyone who makes this argument for kris deltarune is braindead. nothing else to say about it.

#this is a very difficult topic to discuss imo because on Some level I don't completely disagree with people who make that argument for chara #in SPIRIT. if not in action. like my point still stands characters can just Be neutral. and if that level of customization had been intended #well Pokemon's been doing the ''are you a boy or a girl'' shtick for ages. no reason why that couldn't have been included as well #but i do feel that we're supposed to identify with chara within the story. not as in chara is us but as in we are chara #and i think someone playing the game without outside interferences and (wrongly) coming to the conclusion that chara IS literally #themselves in the story. and thus call them by their own name (the one they likely inputted at the start) and pronouns #will be someone who grasped undertale's metanarrative more than someone who went in already spoiled on the NM route who thinks of chara #(and on some level frisk as well) as completely separate from us with independent wills and personhoods at any time #who treats them as nonbinary. even if their approach is more ''appropriate'' to a gender neutral person #systematic error vs manually changing every measure to fit what you already think is going to be the correct result. ykwim?#of course this opens a whole new parentheses while discussing the game outside of your personal experience #because even if you DO see chara as a self insert then they are a self insert for EVERYONE. women men genderqueer people #i don't call chara ''biscia'' even though that's what i named the fallen human in my playthrough. neither do i use they because i also do #if you're describing the character/story objectively in how they are executed then you're going to talk about them neutrally #because you ain't the only sunovabitch who played the darn game sonny #so like. either way you turn it. even in the most self insert reading you'd STILL logically use they/them so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ git gud #answered asks

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uncanny-tranny · 9 months

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You lose the plot when discussing and fighting for minorities when you buy into the specific brand of (specifically christianity) "suffering is Divine, and the more you Suffer, the More Divine you are."

Suffering is suffering is suffering - when you choose to ignore a marginalized group's suffering because they are not suffering enough or are not "good victims," you have lost the plot.

#politics #i've seen this a lot in some trans spaces and it's kind of scary #because honestly the whole 'suffering is divine actually' is pretty victim blame-y and it expects victims or whatever to carry that burden.#...if suffering is divine then is it not sacrilege to refuse that suffering? surely if you're suffering you are either...#...Deserving of suffering or you are Chosen for something Higher Than Yourself and are therefore a sacrificial lamb (not a person)...#...like do you see how that is inherently dehumanizing to have your SUFFERING be sympathetic but not you as a HUMAN BEING #like i need to stress that all you are doing is essentially fetishizing that somebody is suffering...#...and that you deem yourself high enough if an authority to Judge that suffering...#...and if it isn't good enough or they aren't being a Good Victim about it then they are shit out of luck in term of your help...#...i use the impersonal 'you' here but i need to highlight *why* this line of thinking is (imo) actively dangerous..

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carnivalcarriondiscarded · 5 months

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cough hack wheeze who wants a teeny tiny fantasy au snippet with uhhhh laughingstock Tension. it's like... half a scene! unedited & out of context As Is Tradition

~

“Nothin’ much. I think I’ll poke around nearby towns, shake down some travelers - see what falls into my paws.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Barn,” Howdy says. He sweeps aggressively, spreading dirt more than gathering it into the usual neat piles. “Who knows if those ne'er-do-wells are still roaming around the woods - if you and Ed couldn’t take them, what makes you think you could alone? Or- or! What if you stumble across those cultists? I hate to think of you stuck in an ambush with no help coming, knowing fully well that-”

A large paw slips the broom out of his grip and sets it to the side, and Howdy stammers to a stop as Barnaby crowds him against the bar with a soft, “Howdy.”

Howdy swallows hard, bracketed on each side by strong blue arms. The look Barnaby fixes him with dries up his well of words and bristles his fuzz. Howdy’s heart hammers against his ribs. He can feel Barnaby’s body heat, and it’s lighting his blood on fire.

“I’m not gonna be reckless, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Barnaby says. He barely needs to speak louder than a whisper for Howdy to hear him loud and clear. He smells like sweet smoke. “The other day was a one time deal, cross my heart. But, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll take someone with me. I’m sure Jules is itchin’ to get outta town.”

“What would really make me feel better is if you stay,” Howdy blurts, just barely reining in the with me. He tenses, knowing that he’s toeing a dangerous line. One wrong word, and he’ll make the unspoken spoken - but the stress drains out of him as Barn’s eyes go soft. Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. Of course there’s no reason to worry, not about this, not with him. There never has been.

“You know I can’t do that,” Barnaby murmurs. “Not yet.”

Howdy doesn’t need to say that he knows. Not for the first time and with any luck, not for the last, it clicks in his mind that they’re on the same page - he doesn’t need to be a telepath to understand the thoughts behind Barnaby’s dark eyes.

Barnaby says it anyway. “I gotta get him back. I can’t… there’s no room for anythin’ else right now.”

Howdy sighs through his nose and slumps against the counter digging into the small of his back. He nods and adjusts the lapels of Barnaby’s vest. His fingers ghost over soft blue, and Barnaby doesn’t flinch at the contact. If anything, he leans the barest millimeter into it. His gaze burns into Howdy’s, even if they aren’t meeting at the moment, but it isn’t a bad feeling. Quite the opposite, actually.

“Well,” Howdy says in a low voice, “if you find a good lead, send for the rest of us. I’ll be there as fast as my four legs can scamper.”

Barnaby smirks. “Even if you need to take a boat?”

“Even so, Barn.”

The smirk slides into something that isn’t a frown, but isn’t a smile. It’s too soft for a grimace, but too intense for simple recognition. Barnaby seems to sway forward, and Howdy is sorely tempted to meet him halfway.

But Barnaby’s claw taps the counter, and he pulls away before anyone’s mind can be made up. Howdy’s hands slip from his lapels, brushing against fur as they fall and knuckles skimming over the smooth, fresh scar cutting across Barnaby’s belly.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Barnaby says, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He squeezes Howdy’s shoulder and then his back is turned, and he’s leaving. All Howdy can do is watch.

And call out after him, “Your table will be open and waiting for you.”

Barnaby pauses in the doorway and looks over his shoulder at Howdy, and his grin is so full of affection that Howdy may just burst.

“With a free pint?” he asks.

“Hey now, don’t push your luck pal.”

Barnaby bursts out laughing, and Howdy can hear it even after the door thuds closed.