#is this a valid comparison

[privateolives]

This is probably because I grew up watching 24/7 animal planet, but what finally made the allo/aplatonic thing click for me were the nature's of big cats.

Lions are powerful, regal creatures who are uniquely adapted to pack life. They need these connections to live a healthy life; A lonely lion is a miserable creature indeed.

Jaguars are solitary, beautiful creatures who live happily solitary. They prowl their lush world with self-sufficient majesty. A jaguar is not lonely without a pack. In fact, forcing jaguars to share space with others they do not enjoy is just as damaging as forcing a lion to live alone.

A lion may choose to head out on it's own for the most part, but in the end must return to the pack to thrive. A jaguar can choose to trust and enjoy the company of others, but they never feel the need to form a pack.

Is a jaguar selfish for this? A psychopath, a narcissist or any other such horrid assumptions? Is it a less moral creature than a lion, who seeks others like it to thrive?

Is a lion pathetic, or needy, or selfish for wanting community? For requiring contact with others like they require water? For their inherent need to string complicated webs of relationships that may seem silly or dramatic to others?

Of course not. These are ridiculous questions to even ask.

They are simply lions and jaguars.

In fact, is a jaguar that chooses to spend time with you not as magical as a lion's love? For a creature that needs no bond to thrive to still enjoy your presence enough to share it a time? Is a lion who can prowl the night alone not impressive in its strength and resilience? Is it not awe-inspiring in its ability to conquer a life it was never wired for and reign still?

Are they not both beautiful and awe-inspiring in their own ways, without being wrong?

Alloplatonics. Aplatonics. Are we not both special and beautiful in both our bonds and self-confident happiness equal, in each our ways? Is there not unique beauty in lifelong bonded packs and magical encounters that need no perpetuity to carry life forward?

Are we not but lions and jaguars? Neither wrong, neither selfish, but just different and beautiful creatures in each our ways?

That's how I've come to see it, anyway.

#lgbt #aspec #lgbtqa+ #asexual #aromantic #aroace #loveless #aplatonic #alloplatonic #animals #I woke up at like 3 in themmorning to write this so I apologise for weird wording #I'm not awake enough to go hunting for the videos but if you want to see more about the equal majesty and difference in cats bonding #I suggest looking up Kevin Richardson's work with lions and panthers #I love animals. I hope I didn’t come off as degrading to anyone by using them as comparison #I can assure you the association only carries the deepest respect from me. #anyway all the aro discourse floating about made me think of this issue again #and how explaining allo/a-platonic needs has been a difficult task in the past #you're all valid no matter your labels or shapes or spots or manes #remember that when an orientation you don't understand comes to the lgbtable your job isn't to test them #it's to make room

[fromtheseventhhell]

"Sansa = Ned 2.0 and Arya = Catelyn 2.0" is one of those takes where you can just tell people are more attached to the aesthetic than anything. "The Stark girls are most like the parent they look least like" sounds good on paper and people run with the idea, regardless of how it actually fits into the story. A majority of the justification relies on misinterpreting all of their characters + a healthy dose of fanon. What gets me is that this is the same fandom that insists that Lyanna, only compared to Arya in the text, is equal parts Arya and Sansa but Ned and Catelyn, two fully fleshed-out and complex characters, have to be more like one girl or the other? There's just nothing in the story to justify being so adamant about these comparisons. Arya and Sansa have parallels with both of their parents but at the end of the day, they are unique characters with their own stories. I'll never understand why people want to flatten these complex characters down to their most basic tropes and fit them into restrictive boxes just for a "poetical~" comparison.

#arya stark #sansa stark #catelyn stark #ned stark #house stark #asoiaf #BORING YAWNING SLOPPY #notice how these takes never come with actual evidence from the books to make direct comparisons from the text? #/ned is a gentle quiet poitican/ and he physically attacks someone + constantly shows his frustration and voicing his opinions #our first introduction to him is him executing a man and we know he's done so several times that year #he says that his toddler son needs to grow up and stop being afraid of a giant wolf cause /winter is coming/ and Northern life is hard 😭 #/Cat is a feral wild woman/ and her chapters are full of her holding her tongue and trying to mediate situations #people literally switch their characterizations cause the second a woman shows emotion she's /feral/ #and a man can be the most wild unhinged character ever and still be /kind/ and /gentle/ #like yeah fanon sansa is fanon ned 2.0 and fanon arya is fanon cat 2.0 but their actual characters are more complex then that #the only valid /2.0/ comparison is between Lyanna and Arya but somehow she gets split between Arya and Sansa 🥴 #my hourly frustration at this fandom not caring about the story and only being here for /the vibes~/ #like Ned hates Tourneys and protests one as a waste of resources while Sansa is planning a Tourney and using resources while winter #is arriving and smallfolk are going hungry...but she's Ned 2.0? Where? How? Huh? #And yeah Ned deals with politics in KL but that's relatively a small aspect of his character #and even him constantly speaking his mind and challenging Robert directly is the exact opposite of Sansa's approach 😭 #/courtesy is a Lady's armor/ vs. /I'm gonna tell Robert he's an idiot right to his face/ oh yeah totes the same #Arya is the character following his advice and guidance for a reason just saying #like if Sansa was doing the same I could see it but she..isn't? Her approach is much closer to Catelyn's than Ned's #I don't understand why people have all of the sudden decided that the Sansa/Cat parallels are shallow when they're #very similar characters and Sansa's current plot actually revolves around that fact #obviously they're not exactly alike but no two characters are or even meant to be...their comparisons are still very valid #tired of being expected to accept an idea just because enough people repeat it

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

mermista, after seeing her entire kingdom being destroyed and conquered by the horde: angsty teenager moping around in a bathtub eating ice cream as if she just got stood up by her date

micah after losing his wife and daughter, and being forced to survive in isolation for literal YEARS in a deadly island: awkward goofy dad who just wants to reconnect with his daughter, no trauma whatsoever

catra after facing one (1) small inconvenience: 17 mental breakdowns, 30 different outfit changes, nukes a city because she deserves it as a little treat

#this isn't meant to be a comparison of trauma btw #all of their trauma is valid but apparently the writers don't think so #spop critical #spop salt #spop criticism #spop discourse #spop #she ra #anti spop

[slythereen]

nooo anon about the booing you’re so unfortunately right :( the only thing keeping me skeptical about the charles to rbr thing is that charles likes to be loved, and the tifosi loves him (worships him even). i think if he moved to rbr that… wouldn’t be the case. i think he’d go from f1’s most generally well liked driver (out of the drivers that people usually have opinions on) to potentially a villain real fast. it makes me sooo upset!!!

i sort of agree with you, but... only sort of. i don't think charles is that much of a people pleaser. yes, he's really sweet and nice and genuine and everyone who meets him adores him, but he's also very unapologetically ruthless about his ambitions. he's been far nicer to ferrari than ferrari deserves... but he's now openly said if it doesn't work, he's going to have to leave so that he can win.

because he wants to win. p2 is first loser, pole isn't enough, he's so competitive he used to smash xbox controllers like a heathen and tried to drown max. there was that one story about how he refused to talk to his mechanic/engineer(?) for a week after not giving him the tyres he wanted or whatever it was. he still goes deadly silent and pissed on radio when he doesn't get what he wants. he also loves the tifosi very, very much and will always have a strong connection to them and would hate to lose their love/support, i agree, but i think that's more so about their shared bond and how much he appreciates them than about charles innately wanting to be liked.

i also do really think he'd take a lot of their support with him. maybe they'd still be tifosi and loyal to ferrari first, but it would be a ferrari+charles sort of love.

#i actually dont know how tifosi reacted to seb leaving #was he booed? #obviously seb was not as worshipped and adored as charles is #not at ferrari anyway #so i think that's probably not even a valid comparison #but if seb wasnt boo'd i really doubt charles would be #paddock politics #charles leclerc #*oracles #lestappen gate 2023 #rbr charles #ummm this is also about ferrari so #well actually not enough for the civil war tag

[neutral-towards-mindmaps]

the 3-step laura bailey dnd romance strategy:

step 1: create a character that's impossible not to fall in love with

step 2: find a player who has deemed their character inherently unromanceable

step 3: profit

#critical role #cr spoilers #its either about loving a character that sees themself as traumatized beyond lovability #or tormenting your husband who wants nothing to do with dnd romance #both are valid #i actually don't know about step 1 i don't think laura makes all her characters that charming on purpose #i think she's just like that #and yes i do get a nickel every time i come on tumblr dot com and draw comparisons between the 3 cr campaigns

[hylasregilla]

It does drive me crazy the way people insist that Jack Stauber's songs are vibes-only random nonsense that's not meant to be interpreted, while at the same time desperately digging for deeper narratives in anything Niel Cicerega makes. Despite both artists directly stating differently.

#cabinet man is literally about a guy climbing into an arcade machine just cause #but peppermint is not literally about peppermints #jack stauber #niel cicierega #they're not that similar but their audiences overlap a lot so i think it's a valid comparison

[heytetsu]

kuroko’s basketball is one of my favorite animes. ive been watching it since my freshmen year. and still plan on doing it through college. it’s just the best: I don’t know. I’d forever admit that it’s not like the greatest anime, of course not, and people complain it’s unrealistic .. but like yeah of course it is. 😭

and also it’s inconsistent— which yeah that’s true. ive read around that people don’t like kuroko? but i adore him and relate to him. I struggle with the feeling of invisibility. I felt unseen through my freshmen year. and then in my junior year. like j was hardly there.

now I’m a senior, and it feels like I’ve grown. I’ve become seen and made a mark on people— even if it’s mainly my teachers.

I didn’t feel like my presence was felt and that no one would notice a thing about me. but I’m a pain in the ass and my determination is wild.

I didn’t really care for friends during my junior year and focused so much on my schooo work. people just know me for how much I study and my grades. which ykw, fine. valid. bc I put in a lot of effort into school bc academic validation. I’m not the type to slack off.

I had my own Kuroko moment, with him getting back up off the bench during the rakuzan match and not giving up. but mine was in a more academic setting.

Aka ap physics. my personal hell 😍. A class where I didn’t understand a thing; where I felt like I was gonna fail and ruin my gpa. and that j was gonna fail the ap exam, therefore making me waste money bc man that shit is expensive.

but then thinbd changed. we took a mock exam for one of our final tests and yours truly got a 4. miraculously amirite. I worked my ass off.

and I didn’t give up even when I got burnt out. I always have one class I struggle with. and physics was my rakuzan. and me, me of all people managed to pass with a four.

when that surely seemed shocking because I was definitely not one of the smartest at all. but hey I defeated my own rakuzan.

#knb #kuroko’s basketball #insight #knb analysis #analysis on my own things #comparison #kuroko tetsuya #me ranting about ap physics #ranting #letting my feelings out #very healthily #( kinda.) #me relating to kuroko #academic validation #reflection

[detectivehole]

every time someone gets cosmetic surgery to "fix" a dorsal hump an angel not only loses its wings but gets flayed alive to boot

#the normalization of cosmetic rhinoplasty is a scourge upon society #mine #'wahaa what if i WANTED it what if it made me feel better?' well good! im glad it worked out for you- but that doesnt make this insidious #industry good or the beauty standards behind it valid. WHY did it make you feel better huh? what was quantifiably wrong with your nose #before? it was 'ugly?' by whos standards? and why? to what is it held in comparison too and where did THAT 'baseline' come from? #and and and im Selfish too i think big and interesting noses are hot. lmao

[3gremlins]

i think it's kinda funny that folks are saying gale reminds them of alistair b/c my first thought with him was snarky anders and thus i was both attracted to him and had alarm bells going off...

...meanwhile astarion is giving both fenris AND anders vibes so i was probably lost before i even got started

#tbf they are all their own sorts of characters and it's probably unfair to compare them but i've been thinking about it #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #dragon age #text post #musings #it's always so interesting how everyone has different reactions/associations to the same characters tho #i prob dislike the alistair comparison b/c i dislike alistair's romance for the most part #whereas i'm sure there's lots of people who dislike anders more and don't see the same vibes #whatever your interpretation is is fine and valid tho it's just sort of fascinating

[gayofthefae]

Notes: this is all the Duffers’ fault aka this whole idea was inspired by the line used in the Stranger Things diegetic soundtrack “even as I wander, I’m keeping you in sight” implying a level of self awareness during Mike’s relationship with El or even some awareness before based on the use of keeping as something to maintain from some implied “before”.

Thinking about bi Mike saying when he developed romantic feelings for El he realized that he had had them before.

And now that I’ve said it out loud, thinking about the complexities of Mike realizing that what he had felt/been feeling for Will was romantic because of the romantic feelings he was developing for someone else.

And then being in mourning so obviously he’s not just gonna jump tracks back to Will again as if nothing happened and then he’s torn. For the year and a half since. 

Thinking about Mike acknowledging his feelings for Will at the same moment he acknowledged his feelings for El and this fascinating idea of one not being able to exist without the other. THINKING ABOUT MIKE REJECTING THE IDEA OF HAVING FEELINGS FOR EL BECAUSE IF THAT’S WHAT ROMANTIC FEELINGS FEEL LIKE THEN THAT MEANS THAT-

oh i am thinking thoughts

and then I put a bunch more in the tags so I’m not reformatting them but here

#whether it's like THE answer that the duffer's are providing or have planned or not i just think it fits into the puzzle in such an interest#ing but aligned way i'd never thought of before#it explains his hesitancy to admit his feelings despite being insecure about not having had a crush yet#it explains his projection and seeming torn#it explains his focus on el as the second/more recent person he developed feelings for and trying to equate that to being a separate instanc#e from will#like because he started having feelings for her second that means that his feelings for will should end soon and he will transition to el#he realizes he's had feelings for will but he tries his best to treat it as: i learned some hard to swallow information about myself. that i#HAD feelings for Will#but it isn't that#and then it bleeds into the retroactive repression theory and the compartmentalization of yeah i had a crush on him no biggie though because#i don't anymore so it doesn't even really matter actually so idk why we're even talking about this really#he's using his self awareness as an excuse to equate it to being past he held off acknowledging 1/2 of his hand in hand feelings he knew he#as torn but tried to focus on el even though he was still emotionally pulled to will and that pull overrode the commitment to singular roman#tic focus in the instances that he realized it was negatively impacting will. because not losing Will will always be more important to him#than whatever shit he's dealing with in his own head. it's like that threat of losing people grounds him. reminds him of the consequences of#his actions and the ripple of his repression and he snaps back into acting on his emotions of getting Will back and he'll deal with the#emotional and romantic repurcussions of that later but it's the instinctual priority

Oh my god also the SHED SCENE as it plays into this whole idea? This a very exciting new avenue to explore. Okay, Mike going through the grief without El but still having those feelings for Will and that same applicable instinct to save and help and comfort him overriding the idea of socially “right” or acceptable and just acting on his feelings and something about the way that scene is shot and the way everyone turns around to face them and how he isn’t sitting in the place everyone sits when they talk to Will and how it was impulsive. impromptu. Nobody expected him to talk in that moment. It was just Joyce there. He stepped up to help and maybe he wasn’t even sure he was gonna tell that story. Maybe it was a conscious choice or maybe it just fell out of his mouth, I honestly don’t know. But thinking about that same prioritization instinctively that he’s shown to disregard social ideas to focus on El and actually allow himself to pay needed attention to Will as well (not saying social pressures is all that makes him pay attention to El just that it does influence his lack of focus on Will) coming up in the original supernatural context.

Thinking about how El showing up made Mike feel better after Will was dancing with that girl. But how Will’s presence and comfort made Mike feel better after El “died”. And how it’s always been this exchange that we knew about but his self-aware feelings never had to actually be addressed until season 3 because he was mourning but she was also dead supposedly so at the very least he no longer had to decipher between or prioritize those feelings until she came back. And then her coming back was a good thing but then they were both there and he had to face that El’s presence hadn’t erased his feelings for Will. Maybe he thought that his feelings, like their presence, would be mutually exclusive. Because even if he had feelings for Will in season 2, it was in El’s absence. So maybe he felt fine in the idea that that was the nature of their existence. And then he was comforted well El showed up - distracted from Will and that girl. Thus, again, telling him that they could exist separately. 

Even when the summer came he wasn’t actually struggling to balance them that much. He had both of them - maybe a bit more focus on El just in his routine tardiness but besides that pretty balanced. He maintained the relationship he always had with Will because there’s no harm in that, right? And likely hoped that because he was in a romantic relationship with El and not in one with Will that that would even the scales and he would get over this thing with Will as long as he didn’t reinforce the romantic aspect and it would be fine but then shit hit the fan and we’ve already been over that a million times including in this post so. If I think of more, I’ll make more edits. :) Excited about this new perspective. I love when things just    fit  !

#stranger things #SOMETHING SOMETHING BI PEOPLE AND POINTS OF COMPARISON FOR SAME-SEX ATTRACTION #bi mike wheeler #byler #bi mike confession inclusive of references to his attraction to el as confirmation that that is a point of comparison for him and validation #of his bisexuality #mike wheeler #byler confession #mike sexuality analysis #i LOVE this one #mike wheeler sexuality analysis #music #byler predictions

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Everyone shut up I just realized why the depiction of rowing in boys in the boat feels weirdly familiar and now I'm embarrassed it reminds me of floorcraft when I led in competitive ballroom dancing

#I left for valid interpersonal reasons but sometimes I miss leading sometimes I miss dancing I miss the improvised floorcraft!!! #and yes it is nothing like it which is why I'm embarrassed it's a stupid comparison

[flying-potato2]

promoting one of my fav artists on here cus why not go give them a listen especially if you like trumpets

#jhariah #music #go listen theyre really good its great stuff #i would offer another artist as a point of comparison but i really dont know #ive heard them described as like early will wood but i cant attest to the validity of that claim so #Youtube

[forevercloudnine]

Bruce purposefully calls Edward the same demeaning term his father used in order to aggravate him dot jpeg

#the batman 2004 #one bad day #edward nygma #edward tierney #bruce wayne #riddlebat #to ME. #anyway badnewbie pointed this out independently of me while we were discussing the comic so i HAD to post it #was unsure if i was being ridiculous with the comparison but i've been validated so now i simply cannot be stopped #genuinely having the time of my life thinking about and discussing this comic #the fact that there's going to be SEVEN MORE... unreal

[holdingachilles]

researching greek mythology is fun cause sometimes you'll stumble across a myth like "Pasiphaë cursed her husband Minos to have dick scorpions that kept killing his mistresses cause she was pissed off at him" or "Dionysus invented the dildo and also gay people" and you just have to go "okay"

#greek mythology #in Pasiphaë's defense if that was post-minotaur she is entirely valid #that seems like a small price to pay in comparison for everything that went down with the minotaur #i also find it funny that Pasiphaë is specifically immune to the scorpions by virtue of being the daughter of a god and nymph #like yeah no she's fine she's semi-immortal at least. no ill effects to her from cursing her husband with scorpions and etc

[invincibleweasel]

Actually, as a matter of fact. Jaune Arc being part of the majority as a cishet white man is a very important and valid reason to criticise him.

#remembered that one post where a former rwde poster asked why rwde disliked jaune so much #but cried in the tags that him being white and male wasn’t a valid reason #as if there isn’t a massive disparity in how non-white and female characters are treated by the narrative in comparison #rwby #rwde #jaune arc

[overheard-at-camp-half-blood]

Also, I swear that I don’t hate everyone who has a critique of the show, but most of the critiques are extremely nitpicky.

Also at this point if everything you say about the show is negative, then stop watching.

#percy jackson #annabeth chase #I’m mainly tired of the movie comparisons #there are so many valid criticisms #but you guys think this show is doomed to be like the movies because of a few small changes