Job Search

asking sincerely. do you see a romance between jayce and viktor? do you think they ended up being something romantic at the end?

With apologies I am going to only half talk about the thing you are asking me, since I have something else on my mind and you happened to hit the button that makes me vomit it into words.

Coming at this from an aromantic perspective, I obviously don't experience the state of absurd obsessive delusion that you bizarre romantic freaks fetishize so feverishly*, but I am often annoyed by the idea that friendship and romance are either opposites or mutually exclusive. From my perspective, the boundary between the two is at best thin, and more realistically not actually a boundary at all except by cultural construction.

*i am taking an excessively hostile, crass tone for my own amusement i do not mean this seriously please be normal at me, weird allo freaks

I won't get into my full feelings about the end of Arcane, but it seems perfectly plain to me that the script, the imagery and the animation presents Jayce and Viktor as two halves of a whole, not opposing forces but alike to yin and yang: opposites which each contain the other. And at the climax of the show, the greatest peril to life and peace in the narrative is resolved by these two men literally joining their bodies and souls together, and going into eternity holding one another for comfort and strength. They are quite literally soulmates, quite literally the most important people in one another's lives.

I don't think that that kind of intimate emotional connection between men must necessarily be either romantic or sexual - I am aromantic, and plenty of ace people exist, and there is nothing in our natures excluding us from intense connections of love with other people of any gender.

I also think it is willfully ignorant (and genuinely homophobic) to act as though these deep connections are mutually exclusive with sex and romance. As though if Viktor and Jayce fucked nasty and made out sloppy style, suddenly their intimacy is less pure or valid, or tainted somehow.

"If these two men who are emotionally close to one another also fuck or get romantically involved, then friendship is dead, murdered on the floor by a dick-shaped knife; vile sexuality corrupts and debases the true, pure and virtuous love of ✨friendship✨" <- This shit is homophobic at a baseline, queerphobic in general, and frankly as an aromantic man I find it pretty fucking insulting as well.

What, are my friendships with other men just inherently more pure and divine, more meaningful and true than a gay man's can ever be, because I will never suffer the vile temptation of adding romance to my affection? Is that how I should think of myself? And is an aroace man more pure than me still, the only source of TRUE male friendship that a man can ever experience, free from the pustulant corruption of sexuality and romantic desire?

You get this pathetic defensiveness (especially from men, but other genders aren't immune) wherein sex and sexuality and romance between men is perceived as a threat to men's right and ability to experience deep connection to each other. But the emotional castration of men comes not from people imagining sex and romance as a component of our relationships - it comes from people who insist that our emotional lives must be ruled by strict binaries. Sex and romance, OR ELSE friendship. Deep romantic connection OR ELSE deep platonic connection. Pick one and do not dare to imagine both, nor act as though the boundary between them is something that we built by cultural fiat, and which can be dismantled just the same.

And yes, yes, yes, I know there are cultural forces literally illuminati-style conspiring to systemically erase the entire existence of explicitly romantic, sexual male love from media, and I know that homophobic puritanism is on the rise and there are material concerns and a real necessity for explicit representation in fiction, yes I know. Everything is more complicated than a tumblr post can cover, I am not trying to Solve Rainbow Capitalism™ over here, I am trying to express frustration as an aromantic man that this stupid fucking binary keeps getting culturally reinforced by both my enemies and my well-meaning allies, when I think the binary is what's fucking killing us in the first place.

So anyway. My position is that Viktor and Jayce can be entirely aromantic no-homo friends, and they can fuck nasty in the throes of mutual need and obsession, and I refuse to entertain the idea that there is an irresolvable contradiction between those things. Each of those can contain the other, or become the other given time and circumstance.

What the imagery, storytelling and script of Arcane makes clear is that Viktor and Jayce love each other more than life itself. To say that that love must be shoved into the box of either "platonic" or "romantic" is to miss out on almost everything that is beautiful about love. It can be both and neither! It can be a secret third, ninth or fifteenth thing that they haven't invented a tag for on Ao3 yet.

They are giving each other whatever the spiritual mind-ghost equivalent of sloppy backshots are on the ethereal plain forever, they are the most romantic lovers in the cosmos, and they are also the most chaste and platonic life-partner friends you have ever seen, effortlessly intimate and unashamedly tender. They are men who love one another, in every way that love matters.

You can pick whichever interpretation brings you joy, and resonates with what your heart needs, the text of the show is eminently and explicity open to it, and anyone who says otherwise either failed to pay attention, or refused to pay attention on purpose.

@ship-bracket FYI: I have more about my OCs here! (I did not post more because of pressure so much as this helped me overcome the feeling of “but it’s cringe”)

S9 Round 1*

More than foils

cw: soulless character, identity confusion

They’re narrative foils, they’re alternate selves, and they’re intergenerational BFFs. A lost her soul long ago in an attempt to stop being overly emotional, and is now cold and heartless, having convinced herself that she’s better off without her irrational emotions. A is logical, efficient, and solitary, having lost her need for connection and the joy she used to find in life. Then she meets an adolescent version of herself, B, whose soul and emotions are intact, and has to reconsider everything. In some ways the two are polar opposites, yet in others they’re exactly alike. B is lively, caring, fun-loving, and always overreacting. Both of them are brilliant yet reckless, searching for new knowledge without regard for safety or sanity.

B tries to steer A towards morally better choices, knowing that she’s the only one A will listen to, and she grows to admire A despite her flaws, eventually coming to love her like family. A has become selfish and uncaring towards others, but to her, B is not “others,” but the soulful, complete version of herself. A considers herself no longer capable of love, but B becomes everything to her, valued above even her own life. They form a sort of symbiotic relationship, with A acting as a mentor, guardian, and voice of reason to B, and B acting as A’s heart and soul and conscience. In many ways, they catalyze each other’s character development… but they also enable each other’s craziness.

Birdsong

cw: murder mention

She's a woman who exists beyond normal boundaries of time & space, who's somehow both a ghost and the reincarnation of her own great-uncle. He's the detective investigating her murder, and was somehow destined to help her long before he ever knew she existed. They've never met while alive, but they both can't stop haunting each other all the same.

The detective and the ghost keep circling each other throughout time loops and dreams, where both of them seem eternally trapped in the same series of rooms. The woman might be trying to guide the detective to the right path, or she might be a vengeful corrupted soul keeping him stuck forever. The detective might be stumbling closer to a way for both of them to escape, with the ghost ascending past her current status -- or he might somehow be her murderer, thanks to the time loop they've both entered. Neither of them seem to have the answers yet, but there is the lingering possibility that the only way for them to move past their current state is to become a part of the very environment they can't leave.

*Ship does not have to be romantic.

This is a little drawing I did in order to stick it to my laptop because I don’t have enough stickers as many stickers as I want :)

After I stuck it to my laptop, it tore, so I decided to fix it and make it look intentional. It’s a Shade from Hollow Knight- I love these funky little blobs of void

Thank you @printerpenguin for voting for Oakie :)

i don't think people take me too serious when i say i'm legally blind. Like, guys I am legally never allowed to drive, I need assistance with a lot of stuff because I can't see. People both irl and online tend to be like "oh but you're not THAT BAD OFF" it's not a thing of whether my eyes are "that bad off" it doesn't matter, they're still blind. i still use magnifying and screen readers. i'm learning braille because my eyes are getting progressively worse and I'd like to be able to still read.

I may not be totally blind, but that's the thing, a lot of blind people AREN'T Totally blind. Blindness is a spectrum. and i don't think a lot of people realize that. And I'm just as valid in my blindness as someone on the spectrum with better eyesight than me, or someone with worse.

(This is OK to reblog. I hope that sighted people who might read this really get it into their heads that blindness is a spectrum...)

photos for you @darkraincore

Anyway if you see this you have to reblog and tag with a delight from ur day -- even the littlest thing counts

Fantasy concept: a world in which dinosaurs survived and coexist with humans, but only some of the smaller ones 

they’re mostly harmless to people (although some of the more predatory ones might occasionally eat a small pet) so people feed them and keep them as pets 

Some of them are smarter than dogs and cats and can use simple tools 

People tend to underestimate the commitment it takes to have a pet dinosaur 

In cities you sometimes find them scavenging roadkill and eating out of dumpsters 

Dinosaur meat is very much a thing, you can get dinosaur nuggets at the grocery store made with actual dinosaur 

There are also some traditions that use them as working animals for hunting, kinda like hunting dogs

There are a lot of dinosaur enthusiasts who go looking for dinosaurs and keep track of the species they’ve seen as a hobby 

Anybody living somewhere other than a big city probably wakes up to dinosaur calls in the morning 

In temperate areas you get big migrations with the changing seasons, a draw for the dinosaur enthusiasts 

Like any other wildlife, at least some species can be a nuisance, people might like seeing dinosaurs roaming around their suburban neighborhood until they start pooping on everything and nesting in the garage 

But they help keep the descendants of those giant Carboniferous bugs from getting out of hand 

Second art post thanks to @nervoussaladbard ‘s Oakie appreciation!

Sharing this to help them out

Please read and reblog

Hey I'm Hollow. I'm a disabled trans/nonbinary young adult. I need help and mostly have no way to get it so I'm asking you all to please help me get my foot in the door so 2023 can be the year things get better. My health isn't very good and for me to qualify for assistance they want doctor proof so I have to pay out of pocket to see a doctor for now. I am also a month behind on my rent due to my inability to have a job and need help catching up. I will have help covering things soon I just need to catch up first. This amount covers the bear minimum to pay my overdue bills so I'm safe and housed and to get me in to see a doctor so I can get moving towards government help.

We've made a paypal pool and here's my ko-fi if you want to help but the pool is no longer open. We appreciate any help we can get. Sharing helps out a ton. Thank you to anyone and everyone who spares us the thought.

paypal.com

Medical and Rent!

My health isn't very good and for me to qualify for assistance they want doctor proof so I have to pay out of pocket to see a doctor for now

Cute cat doodle :)

Thank you @theoptimistictabby435 for supporting Oakie!

Edit: vote for Oakie here (link back to my original post so I can thank people who vote): https://www.tumblr.com/spectruminterests/713686350203863040/vote-for-oakie-suny-mascot-madness?source=share