The Snow Maiden

[excarabu]

Kanto pokedex completed! Look at how bouncy they are haha

Also, check @eevee ‘s work, putting this guys into an actual rom! 

[n1n10do3snt]

[excarabu]

[dionnesims]

You’re a Joke, Don’t You Know?

Yesterday I went to a bar with a few of my friends and their co-workers who I had just met that night. It was a good time…had a few drinks, talked, played darts. Then this white woman, one of their co-workers, turned to me with three black darts in her hand (completely sober I should add) and said, “I took all of the black ones, is that okay? Or do you want them?”

Everyone around me (white people, just for clarity) made those sounds that translate to “yiiiiiiikes,” and chuckled uncomfortably. No one flat out told her that wasn’t okay. I looked down at my wrist, mimicking checking the time, and said, “Oh wow, we’ve known each other for fifteen minutes and you feel comfortable making a joke like that to me?” She laughed and said, “That’s just who I am!” I don’t think that woman is a bad person. In fact, I think she actually represents most white people I meet. Which is why I’m telling this story: sometimes I’m not sure white people believe black people when we say that we deal with racism and micro-aggression every. single. day. Those little “jokes” you guys make that single us out based on our race? They aren’t funny. They never were funny. You need to stop.

The best part (and by best I mean worst) is that we never know when micro-aggressions (the most common form of racism) are gonna happen during our day-to-day, just that they will. For black people, there is always a level of caution we have to put up when we meet a new white person, because there’s a good chance they aren’t used to being around people of color, and therefore are ignorant as to what is and isn’t racist (this is because, as with what happened to me, white people suck at straight up telling other white people not to be shitty). Every white person we meet might be looking for the first opportunity of the night to make a “joke” that points out that we are Not Like Them. And by god, when they find it, they’re gonna take it! It’s like an X-Men ability where they can make a racist joke out of anything.

For those who don’t get it: the joke is me. The only black person in a room full of white people. The black person who dares to exist comfortably with her white friends, is the joke. The black person who seems, in that moment, completely unaware that she is a joke…is the joke.

A non-white person who doesn’t know their place, who isn’t constantly bringing attention to/apologizing for their Otherness, is a punchline.

I want y'all to know that this isn’t easy. “This” meaning “being a black person who wants to get along with others but also doesn’t find the fact that she’s black to be a punchline.” I’ve spent the last 23 years figuring out how to effectively shame a white person for saying inappropriate things while: 1) not making the room uncomfortable, 2) not making whoever made the joke uncomfortable, 3) not becoming an Angry Black Person Who Can’t Take A Joke, 4) trying not to let my feelings be hurt. It’s a juggling act that requires tact, a calm demeanor, a sharp sense of humor, and a smile that says, “I could destroy you but I’m choosing not to.” Every black person knows what I’m talking about. But it’s the fact that we’re expected to keep sitting and smiling after instances like these that boils my blood. We’re supposed to shirk all human emotion or reaction for the benefit of white comfort, even after no concern has been shown for our own comfort.

Listen up. If you make a joke about a person of color in front of me, I will be the first motherfucker in the room to tell you to shut up and apologize. And then you, white friend reading this, need to be the second motherfucker in the room to tell them to get their head out of the 1950s because it’s 2016 and no one has the time for that. Maybe you’ve all gotten used to hearing jokes being made about black people to the point where they just feel like uncomfortable-but-socially-acceptable things, but I’m here to tell you that they actually aren’t okay. And you need to shut it down, even if there aren’t any black people around to be hurt by it. ESPECIALLY then.

Don’t sit and laugh at things that aren’t funny for the sake of white comfort (i.e. your own and your friends’). Start taking your friends of color’s feelings into consideration, because I promise you, they’ve spent their whole lives having their feelings disregarded. 

I am not your punchline.

[sansalayned]

Beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.

Eddard Stark remembering his sister Lyanna (for @jonsnows)

[ingu]

[saeratargaryen]

This is my favorite Sansa Stark tho

“Septa, will Lord Beric spike Ser Gregor’s head on his own gate or bring it back here for the king?” She and Jeyne Poole had been arguing over that last night.

Lord Janos had been no more than commander of the City Watch before Joffrey had raised him to Harrenhal and the council. I hope [Morros Slynt] falls and shames himself, she thought bitterly. I hope Ser Balon kills him.

When she heard that the Imp had sent Lord Slynt to the Wall, she had forgotten herself and said, “I hope the Others get him.” The king had not been pleased.

Sansa watched the girl suspiciously. Had she seen the note? Had she put it under the pillow? It did not seem likely; she seemed a stupid girl, not one you’d want delivering secret notes, but Sansa did not know her.

No it won’t, you stupid man, Sansa thought, but she drank the dreamwine anyway, and slept.

“Let him.” When Sansa had first beheld the Great Sept with its marble walls and seven crystal towers, she’d thought it was the most beautiful building in the world, but that had been before Joffrey beheaded her father on its steps. “I want it burned.”

He had never sounded more like a stupid little boy. Sansa touched her lips to the metal, thinking that she would kiss any number of swords sooner than Joffrey.

But when the septon climbed on high and called upon the gods to protect and defend their true and noble king, Sansa got to her feet. The aisles were jammed with people. She had to shoulder through while the septon called upon the Smith to lend strength to Joffrey’s sword and shield, the Warrior to give him courage, the Father to defend him in his need. Let his sword break and his shield shatter, Sansa thought coldly as she shoved out through the doors, let his courage fail him and every man desert him.

“It’s very lovely,” Sansa said, thinking, It is a ship I need, not a net for my hair.

“The damned thing’s as tall as I am,” Tyrion muttered in a low voice. “Half a chalice and Joff will be falling down drunk.” Good, she thought. Perhaps he’ll break his neck.

They made a tall tower together, kneeling side by side to roll it smooth, and when they’d raised it Sansa stuck her fingers through the top, grabbed a handful of snow, and flung it full in his face.

Around the walls the hosts of Lords Declarant were stirring, emerging from their tents like ants from an anthill. If only they were truly ants, she thought, we could step on them and crush them.

I’d like to give you a hundred spankings and five slaps. You would not dare behave like this if Petyr were here. The little lord had a good healthy fear of his stepfather. Alayne forced a smile.

“Kind?” The older girl gave a laugh. “How boring that would be. I aspire to be wicked. You must tell me all your secrets on the ride down. May I call you Alayne?” “If you wish, my lady.” But you’ll get no secrets from me.

She turned to Mya Stone. “You almost fell.” “You’re mistaken. I never fall.” Mya’s hair had tumbled across her cheek, hiding one eye. “Almost, I said. I saw you. Weren’t you afraid?”

“I would do the same if she were my daughter,” said the last knight, a short, wiry man with a wry smile, pointed nose, and bristly orange hair. “Particularly around louts like us.” Alayne laughed. “Are you louts?” she said, teasing. “Why, I took the three of you for gallant knights.”

[fuckyeahkensugimori-blog]

[timeaway]

What the fuck are people doing when they’re in the shower for 30 minutes

[podencos]

Dissociating

[bombing]

girlfriend: why don’t you take off that battle armor and slip into something a bit more…..comfortable

me: i am most comfortable when i am impervious to most physical forms of attack

[ladofletters]

Guillermo Del Toro posted this

[ecokitti]

“Yeah, you don’t love people in hopes of a reward, Dad. You love them unconditionally.”

[paperbeatsscissors]

yr good friends

[horsegirlshenanigans]

[mjalti]

men: *decided women weren’t allowed attend schools, study sciences, or have access to higher education* men: well if women are so smart then how come there aren’t many contributions from women in history huh

[blue--green]

and even though men refused women education, they still made important scientific discoveries:

science chicks

historical heroines

scientific women of tumblr

league of remarkable women in science

important women in human history

women in science

women rock science

women of colour who rocked science and changed the world

it’s true women were denied education, and then mocked for not making contributions.  but we did make contributions - don’t let that be taken from us - don’t let it be erased. 

[queenofattolia]

This disconnect doesn’t just have to do with female characters, either. I’m reminded of that Tumblr post that compares two magazine covers featuring Hugh Jackman: a men’s magazine on which he appears bulging-veined, huge-muscled, and sort of terrifying and weird, and a women’s magazine on which he appears as a slim, athletic guy smiling and wearing a sweater. Anyone who reads comics is familiar with this weirdness: comics heroes are often depicted as nightmarishly hyper-muscled, enormous man-mountains. (Interestingly, this trend grew more and more exaggerated as women became more and more nominally liberated– that is, as they should have been more and more able to communicate what they wanted, including what they wanted from men.) Hyper-masculinity is almost always framed in terms of being attractive– to women or, for gay men, to other men– and sometimes even talked about in the same breath as “the female gaze.” Yet, as that Tumblr post points out, while “the female gaze” is attracted by things like a naked, sweaty Chris Evans or Idris Elba, it’s also attracted by things like: men smiling in sweaters, men crying (DON’T LIE TUMBLR), barefoot fragile Sebastian Stan in the rain on Political Animals, men holding babies, men speaking foreign languages, Mark Ruffalo, and a whole bunch of weird stuff on Ao3 that I don’t even wanna get into. And that’s just “the female gaze as it pertains to men.“

But think about whether men would agree that this is what women find attractive in men. Imagine a men’s magazine that offers tips on being attractive to women that include: looking fragile, being a bumbling scientist, acting like a helpless meatball, expressing affection to tiny children, blushing, being intensely interested in gorgeous clothes, etc, etc. This is hard to imagine. In fact, these are characteristics that are typically characterized as not ideal for men, because they are coded as feminine. Yet they’re also not only traits that are commonly attractive to women, but are generally accepted as commonly attractive to women, if one looks at “women’s” entertainment (romantic comedies, chick lit, anything in which Hugh Grant appears).

What I’m getting at is that there is a division between what attracts women and what men accept/permit as attracting women. Men are engaged in a constant enforcement of heteronormativity, a policing of women’s desire and their own accession to it. What women want is subordinate to what men decide that women want, and the latter is then culturally broadcast as the ideological “what women want” that becomes accepted.

This is true also in the case of female characters. What do women want in female characters? Well, I mean, a lot of us just want female characters for the love of God. But specifically: some of the most popular current female characters in comics/MCU fandom are: Natasha Romanoff, in a movie (Cap 2) where she only briefly appeared in a sexy bodysuit and instead spent most of her time wearing jeans and a hoodie, wisecracking, having a complex narrative about salvation, and hacking computers, not to mention the down-to-earth Phil Noto comics depiction, who even (GASP) sometimes wears a ponytail; Peggy Carter, a 1940s secret agent with little patience for men; Kamala Khan, a teenage Pakistani-American girl who writes fan fiction and wears a modest homemade costume; Darcy Lewis, who’s full-figured, socially awkward, and not a superhero; the lady scientists of the MCU (Jane Foster, Maya Hansen, Betty Ross)… I could go on.

But what do men apparently believe that women want in female characters? Well, going by Joss Whedon: superheroines who wear catsuits, beat up men, are secretly very vulnerable, and are sexually threatened, fragile and unstable girl-women with superpowers beyond their control… oh, wait. That’s it. Expanding beyond Whedon, the most common characteristics tend to be: aggressively sexy, sexually threatened, beats up bad men but is secretly vulnerable. I discussed already one potential reason this is attractive to men (see my previous post); my issue here is: this is not what women want, but it is what men believe that women want, because it is what they have been told by other men that women want.

Once again, what women want is ignored (or, more accurately, invisibilized– in that men deny or are oblivious to its existence) in favor of the ideological construct of “what women want,” which is determined and enforced by men. Men genuinely believe that they know what women want, and are earnest in their attempts to explain “what women want” to women. They are deeply confused, because of course they know what women want! Right? They are unable to see that they are selling a version of “what women want” is essentially “what it would be attractive to men for women to want.”

[blacksails2017]

Jessica Jones + text posts