robin @iamnotarobin - Tumblr Blog

dont mind me just making a post to pin

hello, and welcome! i am (theoretically) a fanfic writer, but i almost never actually post about that! also i don’t check tumblr too often so don’t be alarmed if i take a day or so to get back if you message me.

this is my ao3 account! i’ve been writing fic since 2016; a lot of it has been under different names on different sites, but as of right now i am back on ao3!

update: due to ai scraping on ao3 i will be setting all of my finished fics to be available only to registered ao3 users, and i will do this for my unfinished fics as they end.

maryoliveoil

earhartsease

in case anyone is missing the sheer beauty of this french pun, in english it says "ominous" but broken up like a separated head and body - but in french "o minous" means "oh kitties"

peach-foxgloves

No one ever tell me anything bad about the person who runs this account.

the person who runs this account, Katie Gouldin, is an evolutionary biologist who has an EXCELLENT podcast called Creature Feature which compares and contrasts the weird behaviors of man and beast! she is super cute and funny too!

lavender-lily

oh thank GOD

andypantsx3

just want to add i love how much she hates elon

yeahokayillreblogthat

yeah okay ill reblog that

baddywronglegs

She is also credited by the Audubon society with coining the word “birb”

madlori

Also source for probably the best reaction image in history:

hometoursandotherstuff

cat-mermaid

HELL YES, look how scared they are at the public's reaction, this is amazing

headspace-hotel

yeah so here's the thing

It *is* "flatly inconsistent with stable democracy," but not in the way WaPo means. Basically these health insurance companies have squashed democratic ways of changing their predatory and loathsome practices. So this happens, and the public reacts this way, because they feel like United Healthcare and other companies have placed themselves above the democratic system and become too powerful to be held accountable by it.

Denying someone the life saving health care they need kills a person, as surely as a bullet does, but people who kill in this way are not considered murderers. But this is wrong, and the public knows it. A knife is no more or less moral of a murder weapon than a gun, which is no more or less moral of a murder weapon than paperwork. Whether you kill someone by pulling a trigger or making a phone call, whether with one big wound or a thousand tiny ones, you still caused someone's death.

Do I agree with murder? No. Am I willing to judge that any human being deserves death? No. Do I think it's absurd to expect widespread indignation and mourning at the death of one rich man when no indignation and no mourning was necessary to honor a thousand poor men killed by the decisions of rich men? Yes. Do I think it's absurd to expect people to condemn this one murderer of one rich man, while also expecting the many murderers of many poor men to be accepted, beloved, and shielded from justice? Yes.

Putting it in a simple metaphor, this guy helped carve a massive monolith that read "HUMAN LIVES HAVE NO VALUE OUTSIDE OF THEIR USE TO YOU. THIS IS THE SUPREME LAW." and now he's dead, shot dead like any common person, and someone is saying "This is so tragic and unacceptable! Human lives have value!" but everybody is distracted and a little put off by the, you know, the huge monolith.

adamnagaitis

Reblog if you’re hoping 1848 will be a fresh start

afloweroutofstone

This captures everything I love about being online

normal-horoscopes

This reminds me of the time that I asked if anyone had resources on the history of Shinto and while nobody had book recs, turns out an actual Temple Maiden followed me on Tumblr and was down to chat.

dovewithscales

Tumblr has a startling number of well informed insightful people with names that reference obscure hentai.

benjaminbadpennywho

People are downright interesting when they're not being duct taped into one box or another.

lotharbarbarian

The world is fucked when historians and linguists and mathematicians and artists of all kinds are forced to work jobs that suck the soul out of them because they didn’t get the right bit of paper from the right building or be born in the wrong place or something

seriously think about how many absolute geniuses spend their free time mastering some obscure realm of knowledge but have to mop up shit for 8 bucks an hour, or pick vegetables for a nickel

thelastmemeera

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

Stephen Jay Gould

ohnoitstbskyen

asking sincerely. do you see a romance between jayce and viktor? do you think they ended up being something romantic at the end?

With apologies I am going to only half talk about the thing you are asking me, since I have something else on my mind and you happened to hit the button that makes me vomit it into words.

Coming at this from an aromantic perspective, I obviously don't experience the state of absurd obsessive delusion that you bizarre romantic freaks fetishize so feverishly*, but I am often annoyed by the idea that friendship and romance are either opposites or mutually exclusive. From my perspective, the boundary between the two is at best thin, and more realistically not actually a boundary at all except by cultural construction.

*i am taking an excessively hostile, crass tone for my own amusement i do not mean this seriously please be normal at me, weird allo freaks

I won't get into my full feelings about the end of Arcane, but it seems perfectly plain to me that the script, the imagery and the animation presents Jayce and Viktor as two halves of a whole, not opposing forces but alike to yin and yang: opposites which each contain the other. And at the climax of the show, the greatest peril to life and peace in the narrative is resolved by these two men literally joining their bodies and souls together, and going into eternity holding one another for comfort and strength. They are quite literally soulmates, quite literally the most important people in one another's lives.

I don't think that that kind of intimate emotional connection between men must necessarily be either romantic or sexual - I am aromantic, and plenty of ace people exist, and there is nothing in our natures excluding us from intense connections of love with other people of any gender.

I also think it is willfully ignorant (and genuinely homophobic) to act as though these deep connections are mutually exclusive with sex and romance. As though if Viktor and Jayce fucked nasty and made out sloppy style, suddenly their intimacy is less pure or valid, or tainted somehow.

"If these two men who are emotionally close to one another also fuck or get romantically involved, then friendship is dead, murdered on the floor by a dick-shaped knife; vile sexuality corrupts and debases the true, pure and virtuous love of ✨friendship✨" <- This shit is homophobic at a baseline, queerphobic in general, and frankly as an aromantic man I find it pretty fucking insulting as well.

What, are my friendships with other men just inherently more pure and divine, more meaningful and true than a gay man's can ever be, because I will never suffer the vile temptation of adding romance to my affection? Is that how I should think of myself? And is an aroace man more pure than me still, the only source of TRUE male friendship that a man can ever experience, free from the pustulant corruption of sexuality and romantic desire?

You get this pathetic defensiveness (especially from men, but other genders aren't immune) wherein sex and sexuality and romance between men is perceived as a threat to men's right and ability to experience deep connection to each other. But the emotional castration of men comes not from people imagining sex and romance as a component of our relationships - it comes from people who insist that our emotional lives must be ruled by strict binaries. Sex and romance, OR ELSE friendship. Deep romantic connection OR ELSE deep platonic connection. Pick one and do not dare to imagine both, nor act as though the boundary between them is something that we built by cultural fiat, and which can be dismantled just the same.

And yes, yes, yes, I know there are cultural forces literally illuminati-style conspiring to systemically erase the entire existence of explicitly romantic, sexual male love from media, and I know that homophobic puritanism is on the rise and there are material concerns and a real necessity for explicit representation in fiction, yes I know. Everything is more complicated than a tumblr post can cover, I am not trying to Solve Rainbow Capitalism™ over here, I am trying to express frustration as an aromantic man that this stupid fucking binary keeps getting culturally reinforced by both my enemies and my well-meaning allies, when I think the binary is what's fucking killing us in the first place.

So anyway. My position is that Viktor and Jayce can be entirely aromantic no-homo friends, and they can fuck nasty in the throes of mutual need and obsession, and I refuse to entertain the idea that there is an irresolvable contradiction between those things. Each of those can contain the other, or become the other given time and circumstance.

What the imagery, storytelling and script of Arcane makes clear is that Viktor and Jayce love each other more than life itself. To say that that love must be shoved into the box of either "platonic" or "romantic" is to miss out on almost everything that is beautiful about love. It can be both and neither! It can be a secret third, ninth or fifteenth thing that they haven't invented a tag for on Ao3 yet.

They are giving each other whatever the spiritual mind-ghost equivalent of sloppy backshots are on the ethereal plain forever, they are the most romantic lovers in the cosmos, and they are also the most chaste and platonic life-partner friends you have ever seen, effortlessly intimate and unashamedly tender. They are men who love one another, in every way that love matters.

You can pick whichever interpretation brings you joy, and resonates with what your heart needs, the text of the show is eminently and explicity open to it, and anyone who says otherwise either failed to pay attention, or refused to pay attention on purpose.

actuallymagsdump

did i finish arcane or did arcane finish me

comicaurora

So uhh. If you feel like talking about it. As someone who lives in the US, how are you being kind to yourself on this upsetting morning <3

Checked in with my loved ones first and foremost.

It's interesting. The vibe I've been getting from my circle is very different from 2016. Much less… dread and horror at a realignment of the understanding of what can and can't happen here, now, in this place and day and age. More "fuck, guys. again? whatever. enjoy your consequences, maybe you'll manage to learn something this time."

Frustration and anger is not the most positive feeling, or even the most fair one to express, but it is a protective one. It hurts a lot less than most alternatives.

And it's quite a shift. It was earthshattering back then. How could this have been allowed to happen? Why couldn't it be stopped? Why couldn't we stop it? Why couldn't I stop it? Why couldn't everyone see what this meant? Why couldn't I make them understand? Did they really not care? What did that mean about humanity as a whole? Were we so thoughtless? How could anyone be trusted?

It seems… much less earthshattering to see it happen twice. Disappointing, sure. Frustrating. But nowhere near as devastating as the first time I saw it unfold. We already knew it could happen. I've already had time to digest the implications. Now I'm just freshly disappointed.

It also feels less indicative of Crushing Truths Of Reality this time. We've seen shit get bad. We've also seen shit get better from here! We know both outcomes are possible, even inevitable. We know hoping for a better future is always worthwhile. This isn't the apocalypse. It's an unremarkably bad turn of events brought on by unremarkably self-centered well-documented human impulses. It's utterly mundane in its unpleasantness. It doesn't need to be dignified with despair.

A democratic election, no matter the outcome or the side we're on, makes us all acutely aware of how outnumbered we are by people whose worldviews and priorities are demonstrably incomprehensible to us. And the first time you get outnumbered, it's a shock. Defeat is haunting. It didn't matter how badly you wanted it; by the very function of democracy, you do not have the power to override greater numbers. (insert electoral college caveat here)

The second time through, I find myself focusing on a different facet that has dramatically reduced the amount of spiralling I'm doing. I don't expect this to work for everyone, but for me specifically, it helped to crystallize a few thoughts:

You don't have the power to control anyone else. You don't. You can't share your worldview and your revelations with them. You can't make them think or understand anything. You can lay it all out for them, but you can't make them listen, and you can't make it click. A mentor can't make their student learn a lesson; that's why teaching is so complicated and hard. An active choice must be made by the person to enable themselves to understand, and they must put the pieces together in their own mind before it makes sense to them, and the pieces must have been presented in a way that makes sense to them in the first place. Lead a horse to water, can't make them drink.

These elections highlight a disconnect in what different groups of people care about; and no matter how clearly you explain yourself or how passionately you perform, caring cannot be forced on someone. Understanding and connection cannot be forced. You cannot make anything or anyone matter to someone. They have to choose to see how it matters in order to internalize it. If they choose not to, that is not your failing. You couldn't have made them do it by just Explaining Better. They are not your responsibility. They make their own choices. You can't reach inside their head and connect the dots for them.

I'm a storyteller. I make stories and put them out into the world. I hope people get something good out of them, but I have no control over what that something is. I want people to be thoughtful and kind and compassionate and hopeful and see themselves reflected in stranges, no matter their differences. I can craft stories that I hope encourage this. But that is the extent of my ability and the extent of my responsibility. I control no-one's actions but my own, and so while I am not having the best day, I am at least content that I am doing what I can, and I am not shattering myself against impossibilities trying to control the things I can't.

Sometimes, people make decisions that I think are really bad. I can't make that not happen. All I can do is try to make decisions that will result in things I think are good. Today, that means checking in on people, and not assigning too much dramatic narrative weight to an ultimately mundane set of unremarkable bad decisions outside of my control. We'll take life as it comes and help each other out when and how we can. Everything else is out of our hands.

obitofazbear

kurapika from a month ago i think

phantomrose96

Oh, what show did you say you like? Oh, that show? Sorry just, you know, like you know, right? Like you're not one of those fans, right? Haha I mean, I liked the show too, but you'd have to torture that out of me. You'd have to strap me to the rack and roll out all my joints before I'd admit to it. I say sorry out loud whenever I look it up on Ao3. You know I'm not one of those fans. You're not either, right?

What'd they do? Oh it was pretty bad. Basically there were too many teenage girls. They drew too many boys kissing. They all went to a convention and were really annoying there. Oh I don't mean that in a sexist way. There are teenage boys in the fandom who are annoying too. But it's mostly the teenage girls, you know? It's mostly about the too many drawings of boys kissing. It's cringe. You can't have that.

thoodleoo

>looking for a new retelling of ancient myth

>ask the reviewers if the book is classical reception or modern tropification

>they don't understand

>i pull out a diagram explaining the difference between what engages with ancient sources and depictions of the story and what relies on reduction of the story to its most marketable aspects

>they laugh and say "it's a good retelling"

>read the book

>its tropification

#not exactly an ancient myth #but this was exactly what happened when i read the dark descent of elizabeth frankenstein #it’s a good book #but i’m genuinely not convinced the author actually read the original frankenstein #and as a retelling it fails pretty spectacularly