#who can say

[msasterisk]

group pic at the halloween party!

#was this an elaborate excuse to draw tendi in a moopsy onesie #who can say #star trek #lower decks #my art #bradward boimler #samanthan rutherford #d'vana tendi #beckett mariner #t'lyn #didnt do any shading or color grading but i cant be bothered to spend more time on it so #halloween

[thebibliosphere]

Really not beating the femme fatale vampire allegations with my new author pics.

#maybe it's the batwing earrings #maybe it's the blood red sweater #maybe it's the cleavage #who can say

[sentate]

SENTATE - JANUARY 2023 COLLECTION

I discovered Ethel Cain towards the end of last year and for some reason she reminded me so much of my original vision of Cassandra Goth; so I decided to kick the year off by going back to my roots with a collection that echoes the original Sentate girl!

The collection features wadrobe essentials that clash comfort with an edgy attitude. A relaxed but unique take on classic items that can be styled to suit your sim’s individuality, whether casual or couture. Included in this set are 3 tops, 2 bottoms, 1 dress and 1 pair of boots plus an overlay for the leather belt.

The full collection will be public on the 27th of January.

DOWNLOAD - Free on Patreon

MORE DOWNLOADS  |  TERMS OF USE  |  LINK TREE

#ts4 #ts4cc #ts4mm #sentate #sims 4 #sims 4 cc #sims 4mm #maxis match #the sims 4 #the sims 4 cc #the sims 4 custom content #trying out a new layout again #will it stick #who can say

[ehghtyseven]

for me, I'm a bit more traditional so I don't like it to be too flashy... it helps if you like it.

#sidney crosby #pittsburgh penguins #I just think he looks beautiful in this video #but have never giffed it #also #I wish he would let his hair stay slightly longer like this now #anyway... #mine:gif #mine:sid #gif:s #sidney #penguins #team ccm #is he talking about his stick #or about the collar he hopes geno will present him with now they're bonded #who can say

[sonnetforbonnet]

Thinking about the "Stede crossed Ed's boundaries" discourse from Calypso's Birthday, and how it's mostly not true? I won't deny that Stede was attempting to initiate sex at a high stress and, by most parameters, inappropriate time. It probably didn't fall under the definition of "taking things slow," but that's also not a clear boundary. No one defined what taking things slow actually means; however, they *do* establish how that boundary should be respected.

Stede kisses Ed, Ed wants to take things slow. Stede holds Ed's hand, asks if it's okay. Ed confirms that it's okay. So the guidelines for taking things slow is this: things are okay if Ed says they're okay.

What does Stede do at the end of the episode? He pulls Ed into the room and pushes him against the wall. He silently waits for permission from Ed. Ed nods and confirms that it's okay.

No, it wasn't really a good time for all this, but I think Stede can be cut some slack after what had literally just happened. He still respected Ed's boundaries based on what happened when Ed first asked for the boundary to be instituted in the first place.

#our flag means death #our flag means gay #edward teach #ed teach #stede bonnet #gentlebeard #blackbonnet #ed x stede #ofmd s2 #calypso's birthday #taking things slow is a horribly vague boundary #but stede still adhered to the rules that were set up #perhaps stede took things slow when he was making sweet tender love to ed #or maybe he railed ed into the mattress #who can say

[lurkingshan]

On Boston and Brian Kinney

I’ve seen a lot of folks in the Only Friends tag recently making connections between the show and Queer as Folk, both US and UK versions, which makes sense because QaF is a clear reference for the show, both visually and thematically, and we know Jojo likes to reference western media in his work. One parallel folks are drawing is not tracking for me, however, so I am jumping in the wayback machine and putting on my old QaF stan hat to talk to y’all about Brian Kinney, and why Boston is actually nothing like him. Tagging @bengiyo and @neuroticbookworm who talked this through with me and also @slayerkitty because I saw you were contemplating this connection between the two characters.

So, first, why are people making this comparison? It really boils down to one thing: Brian and Boston are both sluts. That’s… pretty much it. They both like sex and prefer to have it with many different partners, and neither has much use for monogamy. But this is pretty much where their similarities end. 

So let’s remind ourselves who Brian Kinney is: a kind of fantasy of a hot, rich, self-actualized gay man with unmatched sexual prowess and a surface level flippancy masking a heart of gold. Brian is an adult man with a thriving career and money that he earned for himself after leaving his abusive and homophobic family (who would eventually explicitly reject him because of his sexuality). As a result, he is defiant in his commitment to live his life as loudly and queerly as possible—which includes a dedication to fucking and sucking, public sex, and a rejection of heteronormative constructs like monogamy.

Brian has a very clear moral code he lives by, even if it’s not one most can relate to. He decides to have a son with his (lesbian) best friend because part of him wants to believe in a better future and build a family of his own. He is extremely loyal to his found family even as he’s a jerk to their face most of the time, and he is always working behind the scenes to protect them even as he often hurts their feelings with his glib remarks and shitty behavior. Despite his disdain for monogamy, he never actually tries to destroy any of his friends’ happy relationships (in fact, he tries to sacrifice his own friendship with Michael to ensure he stays with his boyfriend).

Brian has a sense of responsibility to others and often takes on the blame for things he didn’t even do, which is why he takes baby gay Justin to Debbie and ensures he is cared for even as he tries to dissuade Justin from getting attached to him, and why he cares for Justin in the aftermath of his bashing. He cares deeply about his community, to the point where he pours his money into protecting the local gay scene, literally bankrupts himself to stop an anti-gay politician from winning an election, and gives up a dream job to stay put in Pittsburgh and help rebuild the community after a hate crime.

Brian is unflinchingly honest and he avoids making promises because once he does, he knows he will absolutely keep them—he takes his commitments seriously and he always does what he says he will. When he falls in love, he does not abandon his core values but he is willing to make some compromises. And he hides his better self and often wallows in self-destructive behavior because he feels deeply unworthy of love, which goes back to the intergenerational trauma he experienced as a child in an abusive home and the parental rejection he felt due to his sexuality. 

Boston, by contrast, is a character who feels more rooted in reality. He’s a pampered rich kid who is indulged in his hobbies and who already has a life plan laid out for him and paid for by his daddy. He likes to sleep around mostly because it’s fun, and because he knows his life here is temporary so he doesn’t see any point in getting attached to people. In stark contrast to Brian’s out and proud and fuck you if you have a problem with it brand of politics, he is still trying to hide who he is in service of his father’s political career, even if he’s pretty sloppy about it (see him fucking Top in a car with giant windows parked in the driveway at a house party).

Boston’s moral code is fungible and ever-changing to fit his circumstances—boy is a hypocrite (see his opinions about people filming and photographing him even as he does the same to others constantly). He has no loyalty and no qualms about hurting and betraying his friends, and actively tries to destroy their relationships for sport or as a means to get what he wants. He does not feel responsible for anyone and often lies and ducks accountability for the things he does. He does not care about his community at all, and in fact already has a NYC escape hatch in his back pocket for when he inevitably burns his bridges. He is not as honest as Brian and sends a lot of mixed messages to keep people guessing and on the hook.

Rather than hurting people by being brutally honest as Brian does, Boston plays psychological games and manipulates his friends and lovers, and he seems to take twisted pleasure in blowing up their happiness. We haven’t seen him make a promise or fall in love, and while there are some signs that he may have some sort of inferiority complex at play (with Mew in particular), his motives are not tied to any past trauma. Boston is just a messy bitch who loves chaos and doesn’t really care who gets hurt as long as he gets what he wants and stays entertained. Where Brian is literally a superhero to his loved ones, Boston is just a very flawed human being. 

But Shan, I hear you saying, I thought you liked Boston! I do, besties, I do. He’s a fantastic character and a very real kind of person many of us encounter in our 20s. Because that’s the thing: Boston is so young. He hasn’t developed any sense of responsibility to others or any understanding of the importance of queer community, and he has never had to take care of himself, which is perhaps the biggest difference between him and Brian. Brian has lived independently for more than a decade when we meet him in QaF, whereas Boston is a spoiled rich kid who has barely lived. Brian is a fully realized adult and his more nuanced characterization is a reflection of that; Boston is actually a pretty basic chaotic drama queen who will grow up eventually. 

TL;DR: Aside from being promiscuous, Boston has very little in common with Brian Kinney. He is more a reflection of a very real kind of person you will meet on the scene in queer communities than an homage to a larger than life fictional QaF character. And while OF is absolutely referencing some of the themes and values and stylistic flourishes of QaF, it is not making direct parallels to its characters. 

#did i write this mostly as an excuse to get brian kinney on this blog? #who can say #only friends the series #queer as folk #thai bl #ofts #only friends #ephemerality squad #shan shouts into the void

[triflesandparsnips]

Lot of takes going around the internets about certain "deaths" in the ofmd season finale, so, uh-- guess it's time for me to try and lose some followers on tumblr dot com with

Some Thoughts on Why I Am Not Particularly Bothered or Concerned about Izzy's Apparent "Death"

Laying the groundwork first...

1. Narratively speaking, Izzy's been a dead man walking since the start of the season. Babe shot himself and got a rebirth-- but he still definitely intended to die. Every minute he was still around was borrowed time.

Did he have to die? Maybe not. I know I could've written a version of the show where he didn't. But then that would be my show-- not theirs. I can't know exactly what themes, bugbears, bête noires, catharsis, or artistic Vibes are driving that writers' room, and until the credits run on the finale of the third season, none of the rest of us can either.

2. Izzy spent the season being in a liminal state-- and there's nothing in the story saying that he can't continue doing that. Izzy spent the season having one foot in one space, one hoof in the other, and himself halfway through the door, a chimera of mirrored things right up to his "death": pirate and ship, hard and soft, old ways and new, etc etc. But "the gravy basket" is a weird little liminal space between life and death, a place that both Ed and Buttons have found (and returned from) before. We don't know where Izzy "is" right now-- he could be there.

(tbh, I wonder how much poor feeling we'd be having about all this if we'd gotten a final tag of a blue-washed Izzy staring down at a bowl of soup while helplessly saying "but this isn't gravy, what the fu--")

3. I think there is an unfortunate belief that "it's not real unless you see the body" is a universal -- or perhaps inarguable -- "fact" of storytelling. But it's not. It's just a bit of narrative shorthand that got popular, and now we're too ready to fall into the trap of believing the inverse is true too-- that if there is a body, then there must therefore have been a "real" death.

This season has spent quite a lot of narrative time and effort telling us that its story is using a different model, with different shorthands; specifically, that magic is real, that there is at least some kind of existence after death, and that the dead can be resurrected.

And that brings me to the meat of why I'm not particularly bothered or concerned about what, at this stage of the story, could still very well be just a minor setback--

4. This whole show, and particularly this season, is a fairy tale. It's a story that works with fairy tale logic and tropes, and it's in conversation with other fairy tales too, ones that the OFMD audience is likely to know well enough to spot their narrative beats in action. So "Pinocchio" gets mentioned a lot? Cool-- the audience applies what is commonly known of that story to this one ("a real boy", the mirror-opposite being a puppet with no nose, etc), and finds some Cool Shit. Then they're primed to keep looking for fairy tales, even unnamed ones, in case there's another little nugget of reward-dopamine for finding a connection.

So the fact that we saw a mermaid? Suddenly, I personally am noticing "Little Mermaid" motifs all over the place. That Ed was in a "sleep like death" -- after fucking around with a spinning wheel -- until his prince came to wake him? Well fuck, man, that's Blackbeard playing "Sleeping Beauty" for us all.

And bringing it all back to a "dead" Izzy Hands... when I add up a "dead" body surrounded by a bunch of laborers mourning the person who nominally kept their living space nice AND who was wanted dead by an authority figure for the crime of being the "better" version of what that figure wanted to be...

...well fuck, idk about the rest of you, but to me that all adds up to Izzy's story being Snow fucking White. Waiting for someone to come pull the bullet poisoned apple from his body so he can live again.

5. This is a second season. Of three. And Izzy Hands is the writer's favorite chewtoy, so there is lots of time, space, and incentive to bring him back. If there's a third season, we have a pile of ways he could be brought back over the course of hours of literal viewing time and possibly months of in-narrative time. That's ages.

And the solutions don't have to be difficult! For instance, we still have canonical hallucinations from Stede-- that's one route. Or fuck it, we could have Izzy's (very solid-looking) ghost be the embodiment of their being haunted by the Sea, that would work too.

And even barring all that-- his grave is right there with our heroes. The ship is out there hunting down his murderer. Even if you're happy he's dead... bad news, friend. He's all over the third season landscape. (uh oh, it's GNU Izzy Hands)

But those are just a few options that leave his body rotting but his character still alive. I happen to think we could all dream a little bigger, darlings. For instance:

A. You cannot tell me that these writers, on this show, with these actors, would not absolutely go all in on a zombie-esque hand thrusting out of the dirt mere hours after burial. Look me in the eyes and tell me Con O'Neill wouldn't pull off an entire digging-out scene only to end with himself panting beside the hole, looking around, hearing Ed and Stede being weird in their haunted hut, and wearily say, "Are you fucking kidding me."

B. Don't like zombies? Want to stay closer to the Snow White vibe AND introduce a love interest for him? One hyphenated word: body-snatcher. Gotta dig those bodies up fresh for the Definitely Historically Accurate anatomists of the time! But oh, says this New Guy, this corpse is-- wow, it's weird that they buried him with a rose and really amazing makeup and a truly extraordinary number of whittled whales, plus what's with that horsey leg grave marker, this guy must've been fucking fascinating, man, I wish I could've met him-- --at which point Izzy's hand shoots out and chokes the guy half to death and the lads come tumbling out of the house and ta da, mission accomplished, Izzy resurrected in 5 minutes or less with his horsey leg conveniently beside him and an entire season for himself and everyone else to Deal With It, amazing, fantastic, no notes from me.

C. Come to think of it, there is genuinely a non-zero chance that the crew just. Fucked up the burial. I mean... even though I was just arguing why we shouldn't see it as Law, we didn't actually see the body. We saw a grave. What did they bury him in? Was it a box? Was it some canvas? Did they definitely pick up the right one when it was time to bury him? Or did they maybe carefully make him an ahistorical safety coffin just in case a cat demon came to bother him and his corpse wanted to make a fuss about it, y'know, very common, could happen to anyone, and Frenchie just so happens to have Blackbeard's old collar bell right here--

6. Here's the bottom line, imo: The only thing that would keep Izzy really actually dead and completely removed from the story is a lack of narrative time and space-- and we have plenty of both. Stories are like Lego. If you've got enough time and you're willing to play with pieces from a whole lotta different sets, it's not hard to put the same elements together in different ways to get new, exciting configurations. It's why I'm actually rubbish at predicting exact details of stuff-- there are a lot of ways something could go, there are infinite doors out of problems the narrative seems to throw at us, and no two people will come up with the same thing because we're all different.

That, to me, is one of the big ways I personally enjoy and engage with stories. And it's why I genuinely can't be fussed about Izzy's death, not when we're only two-thirds through the story as a whole; observing someone setup and then try and execute a complicated narrative trick is my jam.

But my way of engaging with all this is by no means the best or only way. How we all interact with art, and what speaks to us, is extremely personal. If how this season and Izzy's death went just didn't work for you, that's okay. I'm sorry it wasn't the story you wanted it to be. That blows.

I just know I can't say yet that it didn't work for me. I won't know until I can take in the entire picture, just as I can't judge a finished Lego set by the one piece I step on midway through construction. I can see different ways Izzy's death/rebirth could absolutely work, but will the writer manage it? I dunno.

But I'm willing to wait and see if the stupid puppet can pull it off.

#will it be the content or the length that causes the unfollows? #WHO CAN SAY #but every day is Unfollowing Amnesty Day #farewell and be free #our flag means death #our flag means death s2 spoilers #our flag means death seasons 3 rampant speculation #izzy hands #engaging with stories #and curating your own experience #(but for real - I had to stop myself at just the few possibilities I gave for a resurrection) #(real talk if you ask me for more I can just-- come up with more) #(it's my party trick) #(for very certain kinds of very nerdy parties)

[comradekatara]

VARRICK IS NOT SOKKA’S CHILD SUYIN IS NOT SOKKA’S CHILD THEY PROBABLY WISH THEY WERE SOKKA’S CHILDREN BUT THEY ARE NOT SOKKA’S CHILDREN SOKKA IS NOT A DEADBEAT DAAAAAAAAAD

#id in alt text #love that img #katara going apeshit <3 #varrick #suyin #sokka #see my posts abt this #i hate those theories #sokka would not fuck toph!!!!!!! that is his son!!!!!!! #and varrick probably does idolize sokka but i refuse to believe that is sokka’s kid #then again i refuse to believe that bumi is aang & katara’s kid so… #who knows. maybe they are responsible for their terrible evil spawn #who can say

[spooky-circuits]

@felsicveins more Cory because I really do love his design. Jackie has to sit on the counter to talk to him without straining her neck.

#trolls oc #trolls #trolls oc cory #are they watching JD and Floyd hide behind bruce? #who can say #maybe it was julien hanging around that prompted #the conversation #jackie

[violent138]

Unfortunately, I cannot get the image out of my head that very soon after its introduction in Gotham the Batsignal lamp becomes something that social media influencers frequently trespass/risk their lives to make content with.

#This is mostly due to the vague location it has in The Batman #I personally think the symbol makes much more sense on top of a police station or something #batman #Dc comics #Only in Gotham #Gotham #Or idk just a really high tower #Or maybe it moves now #Who can say

[superchat]

I got a question for you. What's heavier?

A kilogramme of steel?

Or a kilogramme of feathers?

#Who can say #Arknights #Tomimi #Provence

[incorrect-three-houses-quotes]

Edelgard: Well done, Shez.

Shez: All in the line of duty.

Edelgard: Naturally. Or I'll have you fired.

Shez: Wow, hey now!

#fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem three hopes #edelgard von hresvelg #shez #incorrect 3h quotes #is she for real #is she joking #who can say

[musicalchaos07]

St fanfic writers, I love all of you dearly but sometimes I need you to do the bare minimum wikipedia search on things that existed in the 80s

#I'm not asking for a jstor article #but dvds weren't a household thing until 2003 they certainly aren't in rural Indiana in the 80s #but maybe I'm too much of a historian and a hater #WHO CAN SAY #personal #stranger things

[jacuwi]

I haven't posted a selfie in nearly 2 years so here's a testament that I am, in fact, alive.

#my face #but alive and well? #who can say #also still very gay #gay #bear

[elwelle]

not the first time this has happened

(thank you incorrectjane-andthedragon for the quote inspiration!!)

#there's some more over there I might try to do too! #I found out I can listen to some of my readings and its great for drawing to so hopefully I can keep it up!! #also i think this is the first time I've ever drawn sir ivon and the mustache is weirdly intriguing. where do lips even go under those #who can say #jane and the dragon #jatd #gunther breech #sir ivon

[monroeknoxwrites]

silas stuck in a timeloop bubble, no memory of his previous selves. he arrives at canaan house over and over again. watches colum fall to his miscalculation over and over and over

only in his final moments does he experience the accumulative horror of these loops, his composure and convictions crumbling to a raw point of madness, his cavalier's name a bellow on his lips

then he's back in the shuttle. back with colum at his side

and it all begins again

#tlt spoilers #the locked tomb #eighthcest #silas octakiseron #colum asht #is this self flagellation or horrible accident? #who can say