Thank you, shark. Much obliged, shark.

Ups! Moral obligation reblog bait also sucks and will not appear here unless it’s funny or very heartwarming

I want you to imagine receiving a big hug from a dragongirl. Your face is going to be squished between her boobs. She is strong and will be squeezing you almost painfully into her with her arms.

It's important you dont forget that her fat tail is going to wrap around both of you and hold you even closer

You will feel her wings also wrap around you, enclosing you completely.

did you imagine it? was it nice?

The thing that’s always missing from the “women didn’t fight for the right to work they were already working they fought to get paid” is that many women also very much wanted to work.

Women wanted to be lawyers and engineers and chemists. They wanted to use their brains in challenging and interesting ways. They wanted to get the satisfaction from solving problems and inventing new shit and getting attention for it.

I know not everyone is born with intellectual curiosity or drive or determination but some people are and many of those people are women.

Literally.

So...I had this one idea in my head

oh the irony XD looks like it's cannon now jdnfisndk

SU: a character appreciation

I’ve been thinking about Steven as a character lately and have been looking back at some of my own behavior and cringing. I had a period last year where I acted like I hated Steven and sprouted some very Lily Orchard esque takes about him and the show. In retrospect, I was projecting a lot of my anger towards people like the Vote Blue No Matter Who crowd who use the show to trash on leftists and equate Marxist revolution with the Christian rapture. I kind of made him my punching bag for the smol bean Zionist crowd and have accepted I was wrong. Yet in recent months I have gained a newfound appreciation of his character especially when coming to terms with my own self hatred, gender and concerns about the direction the world is heading in and want to talk about what he means to me.

The things a lot of people hate about Steven’s character are actually what I’ve grown to love about him. I think a lot of people wanted him to be a generic self insert male protagonist and were disappointed when he wasn’t. By the end of Future, he has everything a person could want yet didn’t get it by becoming a traditionally masculine power fantasy which a lot of insecure dudebros and manchildren abhor. That plays into when people complain about him not being like x fictional character that they prefer and I want to use one of those characters as an example.

I used to be a huge Ben 10 fan and Ben Tennyson stan. If you look on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube etc, a lot of Ben 10 fanboys really hate SU and I fell into that mindset for several months. A lot of Ben 10 fanboys go on about how Ben’s so much better because he beats up bad guys and doesn’t cry like Steven as well as sh*tting on the lore of SU. My opinions on the characters have changed significantly and I am much more a fan of Steven than Ben. I think a lot of those Ben 10 fanboys are hyped on childhood nostalgia and are edgelords who think violence and retribution is the way to solve problems. Yet they always go silent or make excuses when comparisons with the Diamond redemption and the Highbreed from Alien Force come up where they insist Ben’s better because he’s not a wimp like Steven.

I think a lot the hate Steven gets does stem from a reactionary thought process. Fanboys who make memes like that are uncomfortable with any sort of gender non conformity and want Steven to be more superficially masculine like their favorite self insert action heroes such as Ben, Zak Saturday, Generator Rex, Ash Ketchum etc. Regardless of your opinion on the Diamond redemption, the message of SU rubs people the wrong way for the same reason irl restorative justice frightens people as it means having to accept that even those who have done terrible things are capable of change and that if they aren’t causing harm anymore, is death or imprisonment really what’s needed? We’re raised in a society built on a prison industrial complex, harsh retribution and carceral violence as the solution to problems which SU asks us to step back and ask if this is really the right way to approach issues.

Getting back to the point about Steven and his masculinity, the fact that he’s not a male power fantasy does turn people away. He doesn’t want to be famous or all powerful. He just wants peace and love on the planet earth. Compared to Ben whose romantic life is a train wreck, Steven has a healthy and wholesome relationship with Connie and he isn’t constantly reset to his season 1 personality. Boys are raised to view violence as the answer and to demand affection from women and Steven not being that self insert shonen harem protagonist turns them off. I don’t hate Ben and even joked about him being an egg once. I think it’s reductive when people churn out video after video about him being the worst boyfriend ever but some Ben 10 fans do kind of give off a big transandrobro vibe with how they prop up the more traditionally masculine boy who turns into a dinosaur man to be a space cop over the pacifist who cries, prefers nonviolent solutions and is comfortable with exploring femininity.

Something that attracts me to Steven’s character is that he’s the opposite of what young boys are raised to be. He doesn’t subscribe to a might makes right philosophy and is never expected to “man up”. Hell, the one time he acted that way, he killed someone ie Jasper in Future. I could say that I often felt like i couldn’t cry and had to just be tough. People would tell me I’d become a conservative as I got older and act as if my beliefs were just a phase. Steven subverts all that by being a soft bleeding heart who doesn’t let the world destroy what he believes in and is rewarded for his compassion and kindness.

I connect with Steven on a deeper level because he’s a bit more layered than just a generic self insert character. He’s kind of an Omelas kid who puts everyone else’s happiness before his needs which is detrimental for his emotional state in Future. This feels very in tune with the transfem experience of constantly being expected to prioritize and please everyone else’s feelings while not being allowed to express frustration at risk of being made the problem. Steven is an interesting character because he can be read as both a transmasc and transfem yet the subversive aspects of his relationship with femininity add substance to the latter readings.

I’ve been thinking about Steven’s character and the show with how it relates to the state of the world. Boys and young men are dangerously becoming more reactionary, misogynistic and hateful while joining the manosphere and falling for people like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate. Right wing Christian influencers like Matt Walsh, Charlie Kirk and Allie Beth Stuckey are teaching people to be cruel and vile while treating empathy and “wokeness” as sinful and weak. In these times we need more characters like him to reach the youth when grifters, religious leaders and the president are encouraging the most repulsive and reactionary kind of thinking by filling schools with manosphere, PragerU and TPUSA propaganda. People rejected the concepts Steven tried to teach and look where we are now.

SU’s approach to restorative justice still rings true today when we’re at a time of despair and apathy. Liberals who twist ideas like “don’t fight hate with hate” and are always quick to condemn radical politics never want to understand what has driven us to this point. The climate crisis is getting worse, attacks on queer rights, immigrants and hate crimes are more emboldened than ever, the genocide in Gaza has left people in a state of apathy, the economy and ability to make a living are at an all time low and there’s the Epstein Files that are being covered up while celebrities, business leaders and politicians including the president of United States are all complicit. It makes sense why people are falling into despair and are being radicalized yet it sucks to see SU be dragged and treated as a product of Obama era liberalism when it was far more radical in many respects.

Meanwhile the opposition party is more concerned with finger wagging at and vote shaming people who were fed up with their candidates that barely offered any meaningful change or real solutions and denying culpability in said genocide. At this point, it’s understandable why a lot of people have decided the only real way to make change is mob violence, vigilantism and violent retribution since those who committed these crimes and encourage hate continue to get away with it with no remorse or accountability. Yet SU’s ideas about radical empathy, self love and rehabilitation can still mean something. What attracts me stories like SU is that we have to ask ourselves is this the direction we want the world to go in? How do we not lose faith in humanity and create a better more just world upon seeing the ugliest sides of it? How do we create a system built on radical love instead of harsh retribution while also making sure those who have done these vile acts are never able to harm anyone again? There aren’t easy solutions yet I’m deeply concerned about the reactionary mindset many are adopting and worry about the future.

For all the ways Steven is seen as weak and too much of a pushover, he’s much more radical than given credit for. He’s an example of someone whose worldview is built on love rather than hate and who feels like the necessary answer to the reactionary trash young men are choosing to watch. SU inspires me because it encourages us to ask if retributive violence will truly be a worthy solution. Same thing with TPN and Emma. Its message about loving yourself sticks with me as does Evangelion’s. How much better of a world could we be if we accepted ourselves instead of living in fear and self hatred? It’s easy to just want to fall into apathy and despair at a world that punches you down yet ideas about rehabilitation over carceral violence, radical acceptance and genuine kindness are worth fighting for.

Here are some characters I’ve grown to love or appreciate because of Steven because they are similar in some way when related to concepts like hope despite the odds, loving yourself or healing from trauma and having compassion for oneself:

im not finishing these fr

but heres amedot stuff i havent posted them tg inna while

I love how in some bloodymary aus the Eridians find Simon stranded on a moon and decide to take him home to their human Grace.

It makes me think that the Eridians are just out there kidnapping humans that wander to close.

Like Rocky brought home this really cool space blob and now they need more. Who cares if the new space blob is extra leaky and didn't actually choose to come here! Earth is to far away to send him back and their pet friend Grace needs a new human friend! It's perfect! And if one human wandered to close, maybe another will too! We can get more space blobs!

this was supposed to be a shitpost about interacting with other tbd-themed blogs, but i got lost along the way .

the paris catacombs are 1000x more fucked up than i imagined

did you know the cops once found a fully functioning movie theater with a well-stocked bar inside the catacombs and they when they tried to go back later to formally investigate it was completely emptied out save for a note that read "don't search for us"

Underground french cinema

my little bro is part of the catacombs community and yeah, it's basically a fully autonomous society! enough that when my bro goes in on a friday night, they don't come out until monday for work- sometimes longer if they took days off.

some of the rooms have fully stocked pantries with cooking equipment, some have movies like the one described above, some have books you're allowed to just take but people always put back- every day people bring things from the outside. artists often set up galleries there. there are rooms with mattresses and hammocks set up for people to sleep. one of the room is just a place where people leave shoes for the fun of it.

this is Known, it's not a secret by any means. the catacombs are as big as paris itself, and people live there just as people live above. it's wonderful when you think about it.

A little update! My little bro is now my little sister. Please don't misgender her :)

...well, I can't not use this free inspiration

Sonas are Nyxophoros (dressed as Dark Cacao) and Tim (dressed as Mysic Flour)

They belong to @lendubsofficial and @fishymom-art

(the undercut is literally just me writing out my thoughts and such relating to why it took so long so if you want to skip feel free)

OH MY GOD????? THIS IS SO SICK, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! Completely unexpected and very much appreciated!!!

"Shattered"

Remember, kids! It's okay to blackmail your colleague into apologising for things that hurt you! (IT'S A JOKE!!!!)

Anyway, YIPPEE!

panels from the gifs under the cut

Your mamas been so worried

“we shouldn’t be holding indie creators to the same standards as bigger media“ i agree on principle but like this only seems to ever come up when the indie creator in question is being racist for some mysterious reason. So

idgaf if youre transgender stop saying the n word

Good evening! Have a chapter of

FIC UPDATE: Act 2 Chapter 23 (Mind Wipe AU)

Song of the update: Bring Me to Life by Evanescence

Enjoy!!

Art by @emositecc :3

im getting way too invested in this comic. anyway here's the mini comic from before this scene \/

First - Previous - Next

buncha close ups down here \/

YAAAAYY I LOVE WHEN PEOPLE DRAW “FATE OF COOKIEKIND” COSTUMES AND THIS IS SO SWEET!