Daring ocelot forges pact

Fandom old. D2 Hunter main. Lifelong progressive Democrat trying to figure shit out as our Great Experiment staggers like a drunken reactionary about to trip and fall into a hellmouth. Trying to be an ally. Hoping to write again one day. 💙

[splattynatty1984]

Since 2012, I have defended Natasha Romanoff from people (mostly men) who believed she had no place on the Avengers. I am still doing that in 2026. I will continue to do that as long as I live, because Natasha Romanoff kept that fucking team together for as long as she could and I will not let Marvel’s fucking up her character take away from that.

Natasha Romanoff outsmarted THE god of mischief in Avengers (2012). She was a SHIELD agent among super soldiers and gods, and SHE was the one to find out Loki’s plan.

Natasha Romanoff silently suffered in Age of Ultron (though not the only one to do so), ended up captured BY Ultron, and made it out fucking alive! Do you understand how much that took? The MCU never confirmed she is enhanced in any way (in the comics, she has the serum, and I do believe she’s enhanced in MCU but we were just not explicitly told), and she survived the battle in Sokovia.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Civil War both show Natasha’s skill and ability VERY clearly. Keeping up in a fight with Bucky is NOT easy. The Winter Soldier is crazy fucking strong—the dude has a metal arm—and she did it! In fact, we learned that she survived an encounter with him years ago. In Civil War, she played both sides and fought the people she saw as her family. She is the reason y’all’s favorites made it out, btw, because it was her “betraying” Tony that helped Steve and Bucky escape that airport. Kept Black Panther back as best as she could, dealt with the fallout.

And people point out that she ran at Thanos with a taser. Yes, she did. SHE RAN AT THANOS WITH A FUCKING TASER!! She knew she had a chance of not leaving that battlefield alive. Probably expected it. She grabbed what she had and she ran towards her opponent.

And then she gave her life—and I am a believer that she was truly thinking her sacrifice left the world better off—so that Thanos could be stopped in the end. And what did she get? A little lakeside acknowledgment, a tattoo on Thor’s back, and references later by characters Marvel is actively or will fuck up (Yelena, please be careful). And then we learn that those stupid stones are paperweights in other universes! She gave her life for a paperweight because she knew it would save HER universe.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention her own movie. Her own movie that Marvel took years to make. I love that movie. Say what you will about the third act (Covid fucked with the CGI and stuff), but that movie was amazing and the intro was one of the best I’ve ever seen. She deserved more than that. She deserved for Marvel to show her character and develop her, to be put in the spotlight. She deserved for her story to be told, and I think it was, but there was so much more that could’ve been shown. Natasha truly suffered so much, yet she never let it take away from the sacrifices she made and the battles she gave herself to for the greater good.

If Natasha Romanoff doesn’t fit the bill of what makes an Avenger, if she doesn’t have the strength to be one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, then none of them do.

Put respect on her fucking name.

[hourlycatphotos]

[remanence-of-love]

[screebyy]

Feeling A Way About Destiny And The Games Industry And Art

I've been trying to put into words how the final update of Destiny makes me feel since it was announced. I haven't been able to appreciate it the way I used to since the second round of layoffs after TFS. Every story beat that didn't land or every mission that felt a bit tedious made me wonder - what could this have been if they had kept the whole team? What would have happened if they had been given the time and resources to make something great?

I love this universe, and the characters that hundreds of developers have poured their hearts into creating. But the American games industry feels hostile towards the kind of work that made the Destiny universe feel so special to me - lore entries don't make money, cutscenes are too expensive, every line of dialogue is another budget expense that yields no return on investment in the eyes of the stakeholders. I saw the same thing happening in the game I was working on, where budgets were reduced over and over again, forcing my team to work harder and harder to try and meet a level of quality that was simply unobtainable without sufficient time and money. We spent months scrambling to find solutions to budget cuts, only to be told the budget was being cut yet again, and again, and again. Finally we were told the game was going to be shut down - and the hundreds of people working on the team, including myself, would be laid off. There was no consideration for the success of our final update, or the thousands of people who loved our game and played every single day - years of investment both from developers and players was reduced to a number on a spreadsheet, and someone who makes more than all our salaries combined decided that the number wasn't big enough.

All this to say, the news of Destiny's final update hit very close to home for me, and brought up a lot of grief I've spent the last six months trying to process. I know firsthand how angry the devs must be, and how scared, and how bitter - what could they have done better? What could have prevented this? There may be design decisions you can point towards, misplaced focus on crossovers and cosmetics, but ultimately the decision to end Destiny came from the top, from a number on a spreadsheet that someone decided wasn't big enough, and wasn't interested in trying to fix.

The games industry is feeling increasingly hopeless, with shockingly few jobs being fought over by thousands of laid off devs. Something like 30% of the American games industry has been laid off within the past few years - many have been laid off, fought their way into a new job, uprooted their families and sold their homes to move to a new city, only to be laid off again a few months later. Within my circle, there's been a lot of speculation about what the end of Destiny means for Bungie, especially since Marathon isn't taking off in the way they had hoped. Bungie, for all its faults, will always be the reason I fell in love with games - an industry without Destiny, and potentially without Bungie, is nauseating to think about.

There's so much I have to thank Destiny for. It gave me something to look forward to during an exceptionally difficult time in my life. I got back into Destiny shortly before I started thinking about my gender, and transitioning is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It caused me to lose my partner of many years, caused a rift between my family, and forced me to look in the mirror and really acknowledge how unhappy I was for the first time in my life. People have written before about how a lot of themes in Destiny strike a particular chord with the trans community, and I don't think it's surprising that exploring the lore and writing about my favorite characters became a safe space for me while the rest of my life seemed to be falling apart at my own hands. The game inspired a creativity in me that I had been suppressing for years, and the community here gave me a glimmer of confidence that there was something I was doing that people liked. Because of Destiny, I became a much better artist, I took on creative projects I never would have dreamed of, and I allowed myself to wonder for the first time what I wanted my life to look like rather than just mindlessly doing what I thought I was supposed to do. My whole life, I've made myself believe that any creative work is just a silly, self-indulgent hobby, something to keep secret from the people around me. This weekend, I'm going to be selling art for the first time in my life, and I don't think I ever would have made it to that point without the joy this community and this game have brought me.

This is a long and rambling message with no real point, but I guess what I'm trying to say is: life is scary, the world is scary, and I'm somehow the happiest I've ever been. I love Destiny, and I love you all - thank you for going on this journey with me.

[snartaholic]

officially 10 years since we lost this absolute icon.

i grieve him every day.

[anonymous-sibyl]

My rewatch got to this point today. You're crying.

[high-warlock-of-brooklyn]

One of the major ways Elementary stands out from other Holmes adaptations to me is how they wrote Watson. Like it would've been so easy to write her like any other Watson, brilliant, yes, undoubtedly, but forever attached to Sherlock. Watson is there because Sherlock wills it so, because Sherlock needs a rock and because Sherlock Holmes is a man forever in need of a partner. Usually.

But they broke that. They said this is Dr Joan Watson, and she is incandescent and ruthless. She's a surgeon and there's an episode where Sherlock says surgeons have a healthy dose of god complex and you think sure buddy and then Joan threatens Moriarty in the middle of a restaurant and you go, huh. She learns to pick pockets and watches out of boredom. She changed careers over and over again till she found the one that fit. She became a detective and could and would absolutely kill a man and vouch for someone killing a man because it's Sherlock and she loves him very much. She's a partner, in the very literal sense. She kept track of murders as a teenager. She enchanted the most dangerous woman on the planet and EARNED her protection. She's a cancer survivor. She threatens gangs and online hacker conglomerates in free time. She's a mother. She's half of two people who love each other very much. She moved across oceans for him and she would do it again.

[finnglas]

There’s an episode of Sesame Street (on Netflix! you can watch it easily!) where Elmo attends a toy-swap, where you offer up old toys you don’t play with anymore and receive someone else’s toys that are new to you. Cute!

But Elmo, after cheerfully surrendering his old toys, sees that the children who swapped toys with him are playing with his toys “wrong”! They’re imagining entirely different make believe scenarios! They’re pretending the football is a dinosaur egg instead of a rocket ship! Aaahhhhh!!!! And this is so distressing to poor Elmo that he does the unthinkable: He does swapsies-backsies and takes all his toys back!

This being Sesame Street, he learns that you can’t control how other people play pretend, but you can join in if you want to! And if you don’t want to, that’s ok, you can just play pretend your own way by yourself or with someone else who wants to play that way too. You can still be friends with people who play pretend differently than you (and aren’t being mean/harmful/etc, do not bad-faith-read this 🤨).

Anyway this is a post about fandom.

[echeveriia]

i’m starting a collection

[echeveriia]

the collection grows!!!!!

[echeveriia]

[questcult]

Don’t forget this one.

[stua]

The beauty of the wood, the curves, the way light interacts with the design, Petal table is light and sculptural. Created by Jesus Gasca & Jon Gasca. STUA, Slow Design. PETAL: www.stua.com/design/petal

La belleza de la madera, las curvas, la forma en que la luz interactúa con el diseño... La mesa Petal es ligera y escultural. Creada por Jesús Gasca y Jon Gasca. STUA, Nuevos Clásicos. PETAL: www.stua.com/es/design/petal

[thombalan]

[sludgebones]

[two tumblr soldiers bleeding out on the internet frontlines]

“heh… remember strawbebby…. And ranibow spramkle… always made me laugh”

“Don’t talk like that man. We’re gonna get out of here i prommy.” [mortar fire sails overhead and land nearby] “christ its like a childrens hospital out there”

[through shallow breaths] “I always loved…… the color of the sky…………”

End scene

[animatejournal]

The Pink Phink | Director: Friz Freleng | Studio: DePatie–Freleng Enterprises | United States, 1964

[tiny-imaginaries]

I love the music.

[zillah975]

The Pink Panther cartoons are a genuine treasure.

[natalieironside]

If u want to write a story about a character that’s just you but hotter with a dark twisted backstory and magical powers and a pet falcon or something, I think u should just go ahead and do that. Who’s gonna stop you? The government?? Fuck the police.

[charlon-lumi]

What if someone barges in, points at said character and scream, “Mary Sue!”

[natalieironside]

Tell them to come back with a warrant

[charlon-lumi]

This post came across my dash again and now I am having an absolute blast with self insert hotter me that gets the girls and guys everywhere.

[natalieironside]

This is the Way

[natalieironside]

#everyday i remember i can write whateveer i want#and then get too embarrassed to do it😕#one day.. 

[jld-az]

[v8roadworrier]

need a permission slip? have a permission slip

[identitty-dickruption]

like I think it is good and important to be able to criticise porn and erotica for the relationship to the political environment/context of creation etc, but I think that’s not too different from criticising any other art on these grounds. how is the erotica speaking to conventions of the genre? what is the author trying to tell you in what they hold up as attractive? what might the author be saying that they’re not necessarily aware that they’re saying? how does the narrative relate to other dominant cultural narratives? these are all valuable questions to ask and can be answered in nuanced ways that do not involve kink-shaming & do not involve calling people degenerate perverts. yknow.

[identitty-dickruption]

something I read the other day had a storyline that involved a woman being kidnapped by foreign “disgusting perverts” (<- not supposed to be sexy) so that she could then be rescued by an army general (<- sexy) who had to fuck her as part of the rescue. now it’s no bother to me if someone else gets their rocks off to that, power to them. that said, we can criticise the framing of Woman Ending Up In Sex Trafficking Requires An Army Man To Fuck Her To Safety in the same way we would criticise similar framing in non-erotic contexts. how is this serving the image of the benevolent military? how is it feeding into the white woman’s fear of the other? what is being held up as ‘perverted’ in its juxtaposition to ‘sexy’? etc etc. this was bad erotica but it was also pro-military propaganda and that does mean something

[andhumanslovedstories]

Tried to take a cute photo of Scurvy curled up next to me, sleeping so cute with her paw over her face, but my phone slipped out of my hand, directly onto her little face, and frankly it’s amazing she’s still willing to be in bed with me at all

[andhumanslovedstories]

These photos are not nearly as cute as the ones that I never took, but at no point while taking them did I bump this sleeping angel’s little noggin. It’s about ethics in art.

[only-cat-memes]

[wordweaverlynn]

She’s doing the kitty paddle!

[hourlycatphotos]