yavin42

[yavin42]

The fact that Karlach calls herself “momma K” and the fact that when she finds that little hopscotch drawing in the blighted village, she sings the little song and the fact that she has a favorite teddy bear and the fact that any time one of the companions is faced with an impossible choice or adversity, her first reaction is to protect and defend - it just makes me love her more. If you recruit her before Wyll, she immediately forgives him and asks you to let him stay despite him having hunted her for so long. She’s so kind, she’s so fun and she loves with everything she has despite having her heart literally and metaphorically ripped from her chest by someone she cared for. She tells you she loves you, even if you don’t romance her. I fucking love this character and I think about her all the time - about how it’s so easy to be bad and angry and hardened and, while she is very angry, she doesn’t let that stop her from being good or doing what’s right. They didn’t break her, Karlach is indestructible because of the very thing that was stolen from her - her gigantic fucking heart. She’s also incredibly wise and insightful - hearing her opinions on anything never disappoints. She is proof that “good” characters will always be compelling and I love her.

[yavin42]

I’m using ao3 the way god intended: via 36 open semi-abandoned tabs on my phone at 2 AM the night before work

[yavin42]

every chapter of dungeon meshi

#started after the dnd session tonight and am 8 episodes in now and it’s almost 2am and next week is gonna be so stressful #why do i do this? #anyway dungeon meshi is a delight #dungeon meshi

[yavin42]

this is exactly how it feels to get depressive moods at 4pm on a wednesday

[yavin42]

i don’t make the rules AT ALL, but if you mostly spend time in Gay People Spaces then you know about 28 ppl who look like this 

#fuck man i look like this fr #i also know at least 27 queer people who also fit this description #op you are so right #but did you have to say it?

[yavin42]

there used to be james flint on tv

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talking to people while holding a beverage is awesome because you don't have to know what to do with your hands and when you don't know what to do with your face you can just take a sip

[yavin42]

pov youre a terminal that keeps acting up when the chief and second officer are on shift

[yavin42]

something i think a lot of able bodied people dont understand is that being chronically ill affects your emotions. constantly being exhausted and feeling bad is going to make you sad or depressed or angry or jealous. constantly being in pain is going to affect your mental health. never feeling "good" is obviously going to affect the way you act.

[yavin42]

i think the thing about intracommunity conflict over who can 'claim' certain queer figures from the ancient world (e.g., was sappho a lesbian or bisexual, was iphis a lesbian or a trans man) is that it basically never tells us anything interesting or new about the ancient material and only ever becomes an opportunity for ppl to show their worst, most vitriolic assumptions about the experiences of other queer people today.

i think this happens bc often these inquiries come from a place of wanting to see one's own identity and experience reflected exactly back in ancient material, which i don't think is harmful on it's own, although it's often a little boring because it limits our field of vision for seeing how ancient gender and sexuality could be queer in ways that don't immediately register to us -- when norms around gender and sexuality are different (which they unarguably were in many, many ways), the experiences that fall outside of those norms are also different. but this way of approaching queer history gets really nasty when it couples with a view of contemporary gender and sexuality that is, well, bogged down by any number of issues: an excessive attachment to identity as ontology ("this category terminology reflects perfectly who everybody is inherently inside"); a perception of privilege and oppression as zero-sum (aka the pokemon typing theory of structural violence); a watered down understanding of what intersectionality means (thinking only about individuals who occupy multiple marginalized positionalities rather than considering how multiple marginalizations overlap or are linked).

all of this has no effect on sappho (dead) or iphis (fictional), but it does have an effect on the queer people today who get caught in the crosshairs when ancient figures are used as cudgels and mouthpieces to lend historical authority to contemporary disputes. when really it seems like the most historiographically responsible answer to "was [ancient figure] a [queer interpretation a] or [queer interpretation b]" is "yes. and no. and original historical context matters. and the way that figure has been interpreted outside of their original historical context also matters. and that original historical context usually can't be completely reconstructed. and also we don't need the certainty of complete reconstruction to draw connections. and also ancient queerness looks a lot different than we expect. and also modern queerness looks a lot different than we expect."

#this #the whole concept of queerness as a concrete (even if changeable) identity category is - on a (western) societal level - relatively new #and on a personal level almost impossible as well as sort of pointless to reconstruct #and while it is understandable to look for identification and a queer link to the past as op has so eloquently put is reductive

[yavin42]

highly specific dhalgren meme for my audience of 1 (me)

#i’m almost finished with dhalgren and i’m so obsessed with what it does about consciousness and relative personhood

[yavin42]

spiders have got to figure out contracting I need to be able to call my local spiders union and be like "hey can you send a guy out for a few days the fruit flies are back" and then pay it in spider currency. I'll learn the conversion rates. I'll be generous with my rounding. please.

[yavin42]

t shirt that says I PUT A NORMAL AMOUNT OF THOUGHT INTO STUFF

#just got my new tattoo of a tiger’s head that’s cut open to reveal a maze with no exit and yest it is so fucking cool #some good art for the clinical overthinkers

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no offense but some of y'all should really consume more weird media ok some of y'all are ready to clutch your pearls at the mere sight of the slightest offbeat concept in speculative fiction and this can't go on

[yavin42]

the idealized version of my tomorrow self will fix this

[yavin42]

[yavin42]

cousin of the mimic, the gimmick, a monster that looks like a treasure chest but when you open it, it ropes you into doing an improv comedy bit