but what motivates scart? that's right: the nut

genshin impact, pokémon, panic! at the disco and whatever stupid stuff I can find

[paverics]

“my father is a boy and my mother is a girl so i’m mixed” is the funniest possible response to someone asking your gender and it came from 6’5 Viking footballer and notable weird little guy Erling Haaland on a Snapchat

[paverics]

comedians can only dream of writing something this funny

[taylor-titmouse]

i wrote this post over on bluesky today and, after receiving a few of the predictable "but what if i Want to write badly" responses you get to any opinion that can be taken as prescriptivist writing advice, i thought i'd talk more about what i'm getting at.

basically, it's an issue of suspension of disbelief. there are a lot of things in fantasy and historical writing that we're willing to look past. dragons, potatoes, the divine right of kings. we are able to suspend our disbelief that a monarch could be anything but a despicable tyrant if the story we're being told is convincing enough, or plays to our comforting worldviews about nobility and Great Man theory. we can also suspend it if we straight up didn't know that europe didn't have potatoes pre-columbian exchange. basically--it means it doesn't bother you that these elements aren't perfectly realistic. fiction is not required to be realistic. clue's in the name.

but there are some things we just can't ignore. some things hit us as out of place for the setting we've been presented, or the world as we understand it. it pulls us out of the story by reminding us, in that moment, that we are reading a constructed narrative made of a series of choices by an author. and for whatever reason, they made a Wrong choice, like plucking the wrong guitar string.

bdsm safety protocols are the classic example, since a majority of people that encounter this sort of thing often enough to identify it online are reading fanfic and romance. things like a red light/green light system appearing in a chinese fantasy world where cars have not been invented, or cowboys intuiting the concept of a safeword while having spit-lubed anal sex in the desert. absurdisms that break suspension of disbelief, because who is teaching these cowboys the principles of consent. nobody.

now, we've beaten the dead horse of 'don't write like you're afraid of a callout post' a million times when it comes to including bdsm best practices in writing. you are allowed to write whatever you want forever, and if what you want to write is perfectly safe, negotiated sex between two adults who would have never received sexual education and probably thought a woman's uterus wandered in the body depending on the temperature, you are free to do that. i'll think your writing is bad, but you don't have to care what i think. you don't have to care about the people who'd get upset at cowboys doing unnegotiated "lasso tricks" either.

anyway, i'm getting off track. the actual point of the post above was that i see this same kind of thing with modern terminology for queer concepts in completely incongruous settings, and it pulls me out just as bad as any cowboy therapyspeak. i simply do not believe the local dirt farmer who binds his chest and changed his name from helen to troy would call himself "trans". i do not believe the wizard who has no time or interest in sex would call himself "asexual". and 1800s english dandies would not be calling themselves "gay" unless they were in a holiday mood.

that doesn't mean they couldn't understand those concepts, but it's not the language they would use to express them, because they would not have it. you see this with discussion of actual literal history--we technically cannot call historical figures "gay" or "transgender" with 100% confidence, even when their behavior lined up very closely with our modern idea of those concepts, because those people did not have our modern idea of those concepts. would they have identified that way, if a time traveler taught it to them? possibly! but we can't know that. they might like "transsexual" better, even if it's no longer in vogue.

and much like nobody is teaching cowboys the concept of aftercare, nobody is teaching our dirt farmer troy the word "trans", which is itself a shortening of several words that have come in and out of fashion as recently as the last century. troy would be calling himself something else, if he even has a word for what he is.

and that's where you, the author, have a Choice. there's plenty of reasons to default to the modern term--you're writing for a modern audience, you want to be clear about your representation, you're afraid of getting yelled at for getting something wrong--but i think it's the wrong move in any serious writing. because what you're losing by doing that is an opportunity to get creative and actually say something with the character, rather than tick a box.

troy might describe himself as a man trapped in a woman's body, because that is how he experiences it, and that experience informs his character. or he might think of himself as a man who just has breasts, because he's always been a man and has been treated as a man, and he's never had to examine it. or he might call himself a "rock", because he lives with dwarves and that's the dwarven word for masculine-presenting.

or he can just say he's "trans", and you don't explore what it means to the character in the world he lives in, while also implying somebody sat this boy down on a stump in the dirt fields and said the word "transgender" to him, and then said it often enough he shortened it to "trans". while living on his dirt farm. where he would never have seen a pineapple.

i am more interested in a troy who doesn't have a perfectly modern understanding of what he is and what he wants, because that's where a story lives. i don't read to see my understanding of things perfectly mirrored back to me, i read to experience something different. i want to read about the guy who calls himself a slur because it's the only language for himself he has, and what that means to him. i want to read about the guy who never calls himself a man, but understands implicitly that he's something different. i want to read about messy, complicated people who don't know shit from fuck. it'll absorb me a hell of a lot more.

anyway.

this is all opinion and i am just one guy so you're allowed to disagree with me. i just won't be interested in your work if you do. and that's only a loss if you make it one.

[trashcangimmick]

[artemisinfurs-deactivated1986426]

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture.”

— Joan Didion, Why I Write (via troykelleher3)

[valtsv]

"why do you keep calling things you find beautiful, inexplicable, and unsettling angels" i'm just doing what british wartime radar technicians did first

[valtsv]

it was birds btw

[valtsv]

↑ angel

[batmanisagatewaydrug-deactivate]

just once I want to see a good post critiquing makeup culture that doesn’t turn out to be made by some janky radfem blog

oh hey!! I’m not a janky radfem I can do it myself!

makeup culture is wack and normalizes a ludicrously high bar as the bare minimum women can do. I saw a “lazy"makeup tutorial the other day that listed 22 separate goddamn products. you’re supposed to buy and know how to use 22 different things on your face just for the privilege of being considered lazy and that’s uuuuuuh what’s the word? bullshit.

Really, five products could work, even 3. Just frame the face, eyes, lips, and you’re done.

0 products also works great

because I’m gonna be real here, the idea that 22 products is a minimum sucks but it’s really upsetting that any amount of makeup is the bare minimum at all

I would really just suggest some powder foundation, concealer, mascara and lipgloss/lipstick, or tbh just mascara works too, but that’s up to you

I’m sorry if I didn’t express this clearly enough in the original post but I’m not really looking for more concise makeup regiments. my intention was to point out how it’s Bad that makeup is considered a bare minimum at all, regardless of individual feelings on the matter

no face should be “required” to have “a minimum” of makeup. makeup has no health benefits and does nothing but fill the pockets of companies that prey on women and our insecurities.

makeup should not be seen as hygiene because it isnt. get that shit out of your head.

this post: makeup culture is ridiculous and 22 products should not be considered a minimum requirement for someones face. no one should have to do that

the notes: so like……. what youre saying is……. we need to make the minimum about 5 or 6 instead… i gotcha

Really the only makeup you need is eyeliner but that’s just my personal opinion

okay

where did we lose you

why are people like this

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

#nobody survived this post

[official-graveyard-posts]

Official graveyard post

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

stop telling people I’m dead

[watchmakermori]

count binface winning against farage is the only way we can restore this world to the good timeline

[watchmakermori]

another thing that pisses me off about the live action atla is that I can tell azula's actress has it in her to pull off the role. she does manage to channel the right manner and voice.

but she's totally fucked over by the shite writing. they made her a girlfailure when she's supposed to have gifted kid syndrome. I genuinely don't understand why they are making her and zuko go through the same narrative arc when the original tragedy of azula was that she was the FAVOURITE CHILD of the WORLD'S MOST EVIL MAN

[watchmakermori]

it does make me lose my mind just how much worse the writing is in the live action avatar compared to the original cartoon.

just comparing the moment where aang realises that toph is supposed to be his earthbending teacher. In the cartoon:

Katara: How did she do that? Aang: She waited and listened.

In the live action:

Aang (unprompted): She's doing it. Waiting and listening. Just like Bumi said.

And I'm just like oh MY GOD how can you adapt this material and not see how much worse this is. you don't need to fucking remind us that bumi said it. you don't need to spell it out. the audience are not stupid and the interaction with bumi happened one episode ago. it happened THREE episodes ago in the cartoon and they didn't need to remind us.

there are many elements of the live action show that were doomed to fail from the start, but the terrible quality of the line-by-line dialogue is still completely baffling, especially when they lift direct lines but make them WORSE. stop spelling out every minute detail and having no trust in your audience to infer things. I am hitting you with hammers until you understand this

[watchmakermori]

there is no better feeling on earth than people complimenting clothes you made yourself. coworker asked if my skirt was from Joe Browns earlier and I will be riding that high for days

[tamamita]

[swan2swan]

Where's that tweet about how American chants are "let's go [team name] and some other country (Irish?) fans are "I've made up a song about the other team's drinking problem to the tune of London Bridge Is Falling Down one two three"?

[luimnigh]

[ladydevoir]

[aforest2006remaster]

concept

a beaded curtain, but instead of beads they’re worms on strings

[aforest2006remaster]

you know… these guys

[fanotastic]

Hi op I hope this satisfies your needs.

[citrineghost]

Needs more worms

I wanna make one of these that is like a literal curtain of worms

No clear strings available to get caught and tangle, I want them nose to ass like some kind of horrible human centipede of worms, covering my doorway

[lonevarg]

@fanotastic more worms

[fanotastic]

Aw fuck. Nothing makes you assholes happy.

[fanotastic]

Fuck you guys.

[fanotastic]

[fanotastic]

My fellow fuckers, I present you-

384

[fanotastic]

Happy Pride Month

The worm curtain is GAY

[vamptits]

why is it so hot. why is it so hot. I am being punished.

[vamptits]

I'm having my first 24/7 dom/sub relationship with the entirety of the fucking sun

[talesfromthecrypts]

“They said they wanted a vampire relationship with no age gap”

“No age gap??!?!?”

“And no non-con elements”

“NO NON CON?”

“And no coercion or otherwise manipulative behaviors”

“Joe they want a vampire with NOTHING”

[regal-bones]

Holy ground

[regal-bones]

guys I went back to recreate this and. It’s gone.

Pour one out for butt dyke house

[kiisaes]

everyone eat more vegetables NOW!!! and mention the last vegetable you ate in the tags so we're all on the buddy system. I'll start: bok choy