@discordantwords Tagged Me To Post A Passage I’m Especially Proud Of. Thank You!

This might be a weird idea but

What if Sans’s telescope prank wasn’t only a prank, but also a test?

Normally, the kind of prank where you trick someone into getting a mark on their face is a stealth one. The embarrassment is through them not realising the mark and going on with their lives until someone else decides to tell them, or they look in a mirror eventually. They also realise they were the ones who participated, unknowingly, in getting a silly mark.

In this scenario, everyone basically yells SANS and tries to call him on it, resulting in him joking about a refund. But there’s no way Frisk would know about the eye blotch. The normal run of the joke would be for Frisk to obliviously carry on until they find a mirror somewhere. Instead, most people confront Sans immediately.

Maybe he was testing to see if we, the player, really were there. Frisk could’ve turned on him and called him on the prank… despite having no way to know they’ve got a pink eye. That’s what WE know. We outed our existence to Sans.

let's talk about the way we talk about sigma

and i’m not just saying this because i’m a hater or because i find the woobification of characters annoying (although i am, and i do, but that’s neither here nor there) but i AM saying it cuz it’s no longer mildly annoying so much as it is just hurtful and exhausting due to the casual ableism it perpetuates. whether it’s consciously or not, it’s there and i’m pointing it out cuz a lot of people probably don’t even realize what they’re saying (i hope) so i wanna spell it out crystal clear.

*granted, these are sentiments i’ve seen far more often on twitter or tiktok than on here (and i know complaining about stupid takes on either site is like going to the beach and getting mad about all the sand, but bear with me) but it’s ABSOLUTELY something that i see a lot on here too and i'm starting to get incredibly fed up with it all. someone's gotta fuckin say it.

im going to put the majority of this under a readmore because i've got a lot to say on the topic but here's the long and short of it:

you guys have GOT to stop acting like sigma is a poor little helpless confused manipulated innocent little uwu baby. like, for real. stop saying that shit. stop lamenting about “waahhh poor science granpa doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening around himmm 🥺🥺🥺”. stop acting like he’s being held captive or abused by talon despite evidence to the contrary so you can make your little “uwu i can’t wait for overwatch to save him and Fix Him uwuwuw” posts. and for the love of all that’s holy, if i see one more person say or imply that he was better off when he was being forcibly institutionalized than he is now working for talon, i’m going to start fucking attacking people with my teeth like a chimpanzee.

it's incredibly fucking weird and alienating for literally anyone who experiences even a fraction of the things yall are pointing out as proof of his incompetence. and before any of you hit me with the "oh it's not that deep 🙄" im gonna tell you right now that i dont care and im going to be mad about it anyway cuz its my party and i can post whatever i want.

ANYWAY!!

to continue my point, not only is it weird and infantilizing and demeaning and belittling to those of us who deal with literally any of the myriad of things going on with him that i’ve seen people point to as proof that he ‘needs to be fixed’ — memory lapses, time loss, dissociation, auditory hallucinations, disordered thought, just straight up being autistic, hyperfocus and/or complete lack of focus, panic attacks or meltdowns, i cannot overstate how many of the ‘weird’ things he does are just autistic traits so i’m gonna say it a second time for good measure — and those are all just things that i personally have in common with him (which is part of the reason i’m as mad about this as i am to make this post, but i digress).

to single out these things, all of which are completely reasonable for someone who is autistic, who is traumatized, who suffered through a prolonged period of forced confinement, and/or who has literal brain damage, and NONE of which are nearly as tragic and doomed as people are making them out to be, that’s all bad enough on its own!

but to point out these traits and then turn around and use them to color every single interaction he has with another character, every single thing he says, and tie it back to his traaaagic broken mind and how he’s clearly losing his grip on reality just feels… insanely othering in a way that’s really exhausting.

like, for fucks sake, a solid 80% of his character interactions could be lifted near verbatim from conversations i’ve had in real life with my friends, family, coworkers, you name it, all of which were friendly and usually in jest — hell, 9/10 times when i let out a random non sequitur or lose my train of thought or forget what i’m doing, nobody even bats a fucking eye! they sure as hell don't accuse whoever i’m talking to of abusing me because they expressed mild annoyance at my bad joke.

i’ve genuinely seen someone get all worked up and construe his one interaction with sombra where he comments on her tendency to disappear and reappear in odd places as evidence that he’s got dementia and is slipping away from reality altogether… and not, yknow, a nod to her fucking cloaking ability and translocator and the fact that she uses both very frequently just for the hell of it. that one still fucking baffles me i'm sorry. if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i'd honestly think it was a joke. like. cmon now

another thing that makes it even worse is that most of this is also just…. not even grounded in canon. if this was the way blizz was writing him, it’d be one thing. it would still be shitty and ableist, but blizzard handling their oooh spooky scary mentally ill character badly is about as surprising as the sun rising every morning. i can't say i wouldn't still be upset to see people continuing to perpetuate it, but i wouldn't be AS mad, i guess.

but SO. MANY. of the popular takes on his character are either never concretely stated or outright contradicted by his ingame dialogue and interactions and it drives me insane!!! idk WHERE y’all are getting this shit but so many people are reaching so hard to make him a tragic sad uwuwuw glass bones and paper skin pathetic little meow meow that they’re going out of their way to misinterpret source material so they can shout from the rooftops about how sad and pathetic and unaware they think people like me must be.

i keep seeing people talk about how he probably has no idea that talon is a terrorist group, that he doesn’t know what talon IS, or that he doesn’t even know that he WORKS for talon, and it’s starting to go from mildly annoying to infuriating. this shit has literally no basis in canon aside from conjecture based on the fact that he’s Known to be mentally ill!! i don't see even half as many people getting this all up in arms about widow, who we KNOW FOR A FACT was literally kidnapped and experimented on and brainwashed by talon. like. that's her WHOLE THING. meanwhile sig literally just works there and people are clamoring for ovw to come """""rescue"""""" him as if hes like, a lab animal or something instead of a grown man who happens to not be particularly bothered by the fact that he works for talon.

this is something that's addressed in game MULTIPLE TIMES - he’d far prefer to watch an ant crawl on the ceiling than listen to s76 trying to ‘talk sense into him’, not because he can’t hear him or anything either, it’s pretty clear from his tone and cadence that he’s actively choosing to ignore him. when baptiste points out the fact that he’s fully capable of leaving talon if he wanted to, he doesn’t deny it or act confused or like that’s a strange thing to say, he just seems a little bemused that someone would think he WANTS to leave. yeah, he sure could— but why would he bother?

he's not "totally unaware of what he's doing" in the fucking slightest - hell, i'd argue that his new map-exclusive lines and interactions prove that he's MORE grounded now than he was in ovw1. yes, he gets a little confused on occasion when he can't quite remember the last time he's been somewhere. (memory lapses are just kind of like that. i had several while writing this post, in fact! it just fucking happens sometimes. it's really not the end of the world. frustrating, yeah, but i promise you we can manage just fine).

i guess the question i'm asking is: is it really all that difficult for to fathom that he might just... WANT to be there? that he might just straight up not care what talon is up to, so long as he's able to keep doing his research as he sees fit??

and for the record, before anyone takes this and runs with it and we lose the plot of this post, i am NOT SAYING that the very idea of wanting him to leave talon is #problematic or anything. i dont care, really. do whatever you want. what i do care about is just like.... being mindful about what we're saying and WHY we're saying it. it's reaching a point where people are somehow managing to look at the ass backwards already ableist as hell decisions blizz has already made with him and decided "hey, i bet i can find a way to make that even worse!"

lurien’s butler being the embodiment of a ‘cowardly husk’ in their end really does set the precedent for how you’re meant to interpret lurien himself imo

Little something with Doug’s voice. Audio from “Man Without a Plan” by Marc Laidlaw.

A Case for Reed Richards’ Asexuality: Aphobia and Amatonormativity in Marvel and its Fandom

I have been thinking quite a lot about how fandom’s rampant aphobia factors into Reed hate, probably because I recently discovered that a Marvel artist had vilified Reed in the past over on Twitter by claiming that he is an asshole who thinks of his wife as “just a friend,” as though it somehow would make his love for her less valuable or important if he did. So I’m going to talk about the ways in which Reed has been coded as ace within Fantastic Four canon, and how he is troublingly framed as strange, abnormal, and Other both by official FF canon and fandom over this ace-coding. To be clear, Reed has never been explicitly called ace in canon, but there are moments where it’s been made abundantly clear that he does not experience sexual attraction and that he is fairly ambivalent about sex. 

It does bear pointing out that Reed DOES love his wife romantically—if you’ve ever read FF comics, that much is fairly obvious:

I love you, Susan. You bring light…and life…and joy…and meaning to my days. Now and forever.

Marvel Knights 4 #21

But the fact that he doesn’t behave like a stereotypical heterosexual man—in possession of a high libido, sexually aggressive, obsessed with sex, constantly sexualizing and hitting on and competing over women the way Ben and Johnny do, etc.—means that, in many people’s eyes, Reed’s love for his wife is somehow lacking and not really love. Personally, I think it factors quite a lot into people’s arguments that Reed is “abusive” for “neglecting” his wife, which he simply is and does not do in canon. The implication is that it’s because of his lack of sexual attraction and low sex drive – Reed “owes” Sue sex because he’s her husband, the thinking goes, and his failure to provide it consistently means that he is failing in his husbandly duties. The aphobic notion that aces are abusive to their allo partners because they “withhold” sex is, unfortunately, old and familiar, and it is coercive and, worst of all, encourages rape. Unfortunately, it’s not an interpretation of Reed’s behavior that hasn’t been encouraged in official FF media – take, for instance, this exchange:

Just think of the technological marvels that ancient spaceport might hold, darling!

[sighs] I can see a bikini doesn’t stand a chance with you.

Fantastic Four: The Animated Series: Ep 2x12: The Sentry Sinister

Discussion of aphobia below the cut.

더 보기

The Pre-Undertale Timeline 

[ View at Full Size ]

A visual compilation of the events before Undertale based on research from @nochocolate​. Special thanks to the mods of NoChocolate for all the help and proofreading! 

Not every event is captured on this timeline, but the main chronological order of events and the rare, specific mentions of dates are included. In order to be as objective as possible, theories and speculation have been omitted. All data has been taken at face value (including possible hyperbole, such as Bratty claiming they’ve been underground for “millennia”).

Source content and in-depth analysis:

[ Undertale takes place in less than a day ] [ How long has Flowey existed? ] [ The Undertale Timeline ] [ Mettaton Added Last Week ]

(Kindly do not delete the comments above.)

idk what ricks daemon would be but i feel like their relationship would be really volatile cus ricks got a pretty self-destructive personality also pretty sure mortys daemon hasnt settled yet (but itd be cool if it was usually a guinnea pig cus that kinda works with the whole being used in mad science experiments thing)

ah definitely! i can see their dynamic as being very unbalanced though.. i feel like rick’s dæmon would be pretty ruthlessly cruel to him (”jeez rick why did you fuck that up!” when he makes a mistake; ”hey remember that time you fucked up!” when he’s trying to relax–probably one of the reasons he drinks so much is to sedate her & get her to shut up)

meanwhile he’d be kind of affectionately grumpy towards her, but idolize her too? because she’s this purely intellectual being who ultimately doesn’t have to take any responsibilities for her actions, just perch on his shoulder and theorize & scheme, and i think he’d envy her detachment and kind of put his own wisdom & knowledge on a pedestal you know?

also he gets a raven because.. i enjoy obvious mythology cliches, and like..

“Odin, the father of all humans and gods, though in human form, was imperfect by himself. As a separate entity he lacked depth perception and he was apparently also uninformed and forgetful. But his weaknesses were compensated by his ravens, Hugin (mind) and Munin (memory) who were part of him. As a god, Odin was the ethereal part—he only drank wine and spoke only in poetry.” -x

(also a guinea pig for morty omg–me and janin were thinking some kind of sad little rodent too? janin says a rat, but also i like the idea of a hamster, because hamsters look so harmless, but they seem like they are secretly bloodthirsty..)

drops my briefcase 💼 oh no my sillies!!

Okay, we all are sure that Pepa and Bruno drifted apart after her wedding day, but just imagine Bruno already feeling somewhat distant from his sister.

Like, he’s just started getting blamed for his visions. And he really needs to let all his strange emotions out, but his mom is off the table because she would HATE how he feels and lecture him about it. Julieta, though kind and loving, wouldn’t really understand. So that leaves Pepa.

But who is he to bring up a bad gift to Pepa? Who is Bruno to complain about his gift when he can just… turn it off. Pepa’s gift literally manifests clouds over her head and ruins days, crops, and clothing. Sure it’s still beneficial to the community, but he can tell that it makes Pepa stressed out.

And then after he tries to get her to calm down she blames him for making her gift act up. She claims that she hates him, and shuns him. Now the only person who could understand… is gone.

Their relationship is so tragic, and I love it.

its very nice hc

Otto canonically makes really bad jokes. So he would definitely love dad jokes. Like you know these videos where people film themselves telling their mom a bad joke and then you just hear the dad laughing about it like it's the best joke they've heard in years? That's Otto. Norman would be the confused mom. Also Norman is the kind of old person who'd just try to imitate teenage slang in order to relate with today's youth.