Image: a two-circle Venn diagram. TimKon circle: himbo squared, friends to lovers, friend group shenanigans. JayTim circle: family drama, thicc thighs save lives, enemies to allies to lovers. Overlap: Tim’s life is hard & he deserves some beefcake.
“Shen Yuan is careless about his appearance” is an understandable take, but I think it’s also inferior to what’s actually going on most of the time, which is more like:
Shen Yuan is in fact so preoccupied with appearances that he is extremely meticulous and diligent in keeping up his image, but he’s also utterly oblivious to how this factors into attraction (especially queer attraction) and he misses cultural context clues thanks to having transmigrated sometimes, with an end result that sometimes he is carefully and unwittingly making himself up like a thirst trap because he thinks that’s what a sophisticated and classy scholar ought to look like.
Bro running around in their world’s male fashion equivalent of a bodycon dress with cleavage AND sideboob and has the nerve to ask why every man he meets trips and falls 🤦🏽♀️
This made me realize Shen Qingiu (both) is basically like, what if a person whose chief familiarity with human librarians came from watching sexy librarian pornos tried to pretend to be a professional librarian and really wanted to dress to impress.
there is something to be said for going to zoos and aquariums on weekdays to avoid school-aged crowds but going to the aviary on a weekend is fun because going into big greenhouses and watching toddlers who just learned to walk encounter loose tropical animals taller than they are is part of the overall experience for me.
to me a three year old is just as much an entertaining and strange beast as an egret. and here they can interact directly. incredible.
listening to a macaw say “peekaboo” at a preschooler who takes it at face value that some birds must be completely fluent in English and no one has bothered to mention this before. unmatched
So my neighbor’s three-year-old saw Charlie for the first time last week.
I don’t see my neighbors often because they are Morning People ™ and both our households are acting like the pandemic is still on (it is), but yesterday I happened to be taking Charlie out for a walk when they were coming home from something, and the kid “Checkers” was dumbstruck.
Charlie isn’t a Big-big dog, but he is 60lbs and mostly leggy sighthound, so he is significantly taller than the average toddler. Since Checkers’ extended family is largely allergic to mammals, they do not see dogs at other people’s houses nor at daycare, so this was the fist time they’ve seen an animal larger than they are up close.
It is a beautiful thing to see a young human experience a sudden and profound shift in their worldview, and you get to witness parts of their brain being rewired in real time across their face. Confusion, then wonder as a fascinating new category of life opened before them. It is doubly wonderful that small children are rarely frightened of things unless they are taught to be, so, cautiously, Checkers approached Charlie, looking between us and making interrogative noises at me, as I was clearly his parent, and therefore responsible for introductions.
“This is Charlie!” I say. “He might or might not say hi back.”
Checkers considered the evidence before them: Charlie has a name shared with their playmates, their older sibling is largely nonverbal, and Charlie wears a chest harness with leash, again like some of their playmates, and came to the extremely reasonable conclusion that Charlie is a fellow Human Child, and introduced themselves appropriately:
“Hullo.” Said Checkers, stepping up to Charlie. “This is Bionicles.” they continued, holding up their plush giraffe toy, the appropriate way to introduce yourself and your friends/interests to a new peer at age 3.
Charlie has a vast preference of humans to other dogs, and of adults to children within humans, often ignoring or evading small children the way he does with dogs that annoy him. It makes sense- small children are not usually the ones with treats, and typically inept petters at best. But something about Bionicles the Giraffe intrigued him and he politely sniffed and listened to Checkers talk about (I’m not sure because I have Audio Processing Problems and Checkers doesn’t enunciate much) for a for about a minute, and I got to witness Checkers’ parents undergo a similar world-shift as they realized Checkers was addressing Charlie as a fellow human, and how that was entirely rational of them.
The confusion on the adult humans was so interesting that I failed to notice Charlie very delicately taking Bionicles The Giraffe from Checkers until he had taken two steps to give himself room, and then started to Death-Shake the toy, because Charlie ALSO loves plushies, just in a very destructive sense.
I am horrified. The parents are Horrified. Checkers is DELIGHTED, laughing as Charlie very expertly separated Bionicles’ head from the rest of the toy, and sat down in the grass to pull the fluff out.
I retrieved both pieces of the toy from Charlie, apologized profusely, took him home, and then came back to sew Bionicles’ head back on.
Yesterday I saw Checkers on all fours out in the front yard, trying to re-decapitate Bionicles with their teeth while their father looked on, resigned. We have arranged a future playdate between Charlie and Checkers, with a handful of dollar-store stuffed toys for them to destroy together.
I think it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Had an unexpected blood draw today and it took FOUR TRIES to get enough blood for the tests. I have had some issues before but never like that, holy smokes.
On the plus side, I got to try out the new Light Rail line after. So smooth compared to the bus. Thank you voters for approving additional choo choo.
I’m curious, so here’s a poll for queer jews. Non-jews don’t vote, but reblog for sample size and visibility please. Note that this is talking about average, it is expected some would be worse/better in various contexts, but try and think of this in terms of how they affect your life and in terms of which you are more concerned by and make a judgement call.
Queer Jews, on the whole, do you feel more threatened by queerphobia or antisemitism?
in my day to day life, in terms of personal safety, antisemitism, when I’m in Jewish spaces, tell strangers I’m Jewish, or wear anything that makes it clear I’m a Jew in public I think about my personal safety.
I live in a deeply blue city, which is a privilege, rainbow and other pride flags are common so when I wear something that publicly identify me as gay in most of my home town I don’t feel unsafe or think about it, now for sure the thought does cross my mind in some areas, and if I lived in a Republican heavy area that would be different.
however in terms of government discrimination, I have little fear at this time that the US Government will start attacking my rights as a Jew. I do fear that as part of funding freezes Jewish spaces won’t get the funding they need for security and that’ll make me less safe as a result, but thats a little different.
any ways with the Trump Admin launching an all out attack on trans people, pronouns, “woke”, “the LGBT agenda” etc and companies buckling under out of fear I do fear laws that will limit and restrict my personal freedom or take away hard won rights
so TLDR: I’m more worried about getting attacked or at least screamed at for being a Jew, but more worried about losing human rights for being gay.
their natural form of communication when unjoined is electrical, not a syllabic language or a sound-based language at all. at first i thought they might be given names by the trill who tend the symbiont pools once they’re ready for joining… but wouldn’t it be lovely if it were the first host?
i think a lot about how the first joining must be an incredible experience, unique from the others because the symbiont has no humanoid memories, nothing that would be familiar to the first host—and unlike with subsequent hosts, the symbiont also doesn’t know how to be joined yet. they’re learning the whole thing together, two sentient beings who are not like each other but are now inseparably part of each other.
and what else would the host’s first question be except who are you?
and the answer is unmistakable, but also untranslatable. i assume the symbiont has a sense of identity pre-joining, but they’ve never identified themselves aloud before. they only learn about spoken language after they’re joined.
maybe the naming is a rite of passage for the first host, proof that the joining is complete—that the host understands the true essence of the symbiont enough to give them a name, that the symbiont understands what that means enough to agree, and all together it’s a gift that will stay with the symbiont for centuries.
Min for short. "They" is a perfectly functional singular third person pronoun, and has been since the days of Chaucer. Do not repost my works to other websites. I am an adult, and write with an adult audience in mind. I tag for a handful of big triggers, some internet courtesy, and a LOT of archival purposes. The archival tags may not make sense to other people.
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