#“a gay person's straight ship is the most powerful thing in the universe”

[cerise-on-top]

Got any Farah, Valeria, & Laswell hcs? Anything, really- I'm dying for my girls 🤲🤲🤲

Hello! Yeah, I was able to come up with a few! I already wrote a few for Valeria here! Somehow, I forgot to put them in my masterlist, though, which I have since fixed! Thank you for making me aware of this, though :-) These are general Headcanons, though, since I had an easier time coming up with those and because you didn't specify, I hope that's okay!

Valeria, Farah and Laswell HCs

Valeria: She’s always had quite the temper, even when she was young. While she may not have been spoiled to hell and back as a child, she usually got what she wanted, as long as it wasn’t something extraordinarily big, her parents always took care of her like that. Valeria loved her mother, they got along very well with each other, and she also took after her, having inherited her personality for the most part. Her father was a bit calmer than the two of them, but that didn’t mean they didn’t get along either. Whereas her mother would encourage her to do most things, her father would try to talk sense into her if it was a bad idea. She often sulked because of it, which is why she didn’t like her father as much as her mother, but as she got older she realized he meant well. Sometimes she still thinks about his advice, but the both of them died a long time ago, so most things they’ve told her are a distant memory by now. Valeria may be successful with what she’s doing and doesn’t like being told what to do, but sometimes she does wish she could still eat some sweets with her parents like she used to.

Joining the military actually wasn’t her first choice of career. She tried many places, but no one would take her, so she opted for the military, which welcomed her with open arms. She got paid. Not well, but she received the money, which was important since her parents couldn’t leave her with too much. They didn’t have very much either, so there wasn’t much to be inherited. Because she’s a woman, a few creeps tried to harass her, but she had none of it and beat all three of them up herself and on her own. Ever since that incident she wasn’t a big fan of the military either, but no other place would take her. However, it showed just how capable she was and earned her a lot of respect. A few other men would try to make advances towards her, but she shot them down every time. However, whenever another female soldier would jokingly flirt with her, that’s when she’d give it her all, making it her goal to fluster her beyond all hell. She’s spent a few evenings and nights with a few female soldiers, but was always willing to rip a male soldier’s dick off if he was being too friendly with her. During her time as a soldier she also realized that she preferred women.

She didn’t always hate Alejandro, actually. Back in the day, they got along very well. He was a man, yes, but he had enough respect for her. It wasn’t a given, even if it should have been, but she appreciated it. Whenever they sparred he gave it his all as well and never looked down on her. In his eyes, the two of them were equals and it showed. Valeria could appreciate that. She liked him, she spent a night with him but realized she hated that sort of stuff with men. He was the final realization for her that Valeria does not like men. It didn’t make her hate him at first, though. Only when he insisted on the two of them being a thing did she develop some form of disdain for him. Once she told him that she could never feel the same way, he stopped. However, he also started treating her a bit differently since he was in love with her. As he rose in ranks, he was a bit harsher on her than the other soldiers, usually dissatisfied with anything she did. He didn’t even notice that, but Valeria did. Therefore he became just another scum to her.

Farah: Before her town got attacked, she actually had a pretty happy childhood. She was sweet and kind as a kid, she got along well with her parents and her brother and she had a few close friends. Farah loved going outside to play, sometimes even inviting her parents to make potions with her in a bucket filled with water, sand and rocks. Her parents were always afraid of the Russians invading and tried to keep their children safe regardless of what happened, but in the end they were unable to. It hit Farah pretty hard, she loved her parents. Even now she misses them dearly since they always took such good care of her and her brother. At least she still had her brother. Farah knew she was the younger one out of the two of them, so she likely should have been the one to be protected, but once her town got attacked she became determined to make sure her brother would stay with her. Drastic times called for drastic measures, so she actually has killed people just so her brother could stay alive. It was around that time that other people realized how she was a very caring person still and could be trusted. Slowly, through that realization, she was able to gather a small force that could help her.

Farah is a pretty good leader. The people she works with adore her because, under that rough exterior, she’s still a good person. All her brothers and sisters know she can be trusted with just about anything. She rarely ever says no upon hearing a request of one of her people, knowing fully well what it’s like to need something. As she’s been through a lot herself, she always has an open ear for her brothers and sisters. While there’s not always time to listen to everyone’s concerns, if she does have time she’ll listen to you intently. Farah knows a lot more about her people than she lets on, that ranges from how the latest battle has gone to how her sister’s family is doing. She’s never one to turn down someone in need, always offering food and shelter. I know she may seem stern, because she has to be in order to be a good leader, but deep down she’s still the same kind girl that she’s always been. Her people would give up just about anything for her, and they do. One day, Farah dreams, Urzikstan will be free, it will be safe and it will prosper, its people won’t have anything to fear anymore. Trade will continue, the people will be happy and she can finally lay down her weary head and rest for a bit. But until then, she swore she’ll fight and fight until everything is finally over.

She’s never actually been in love. When she had the chance to develop a crush she was too young. Now that she’s older she doesn’t have time for anything lovey dovey in the slightest. Alex was the first person she ever developed a crush on. He may have seemed like an enemy at first, but it quickly enough became evident that that couldn’t be further from the truth. He was a good man, someone who could be trusted no matter what. He was loyal to a fault as well, which Farah could appreciate. However, she never told him, swallowing her feelings down instead no matter how intense they became. Yet, she sort of did always look forward to his small gestures of affection. Alex is a physically affectionate guy, so he’d sometimes pat her shoulder, put a hand on her shoulder or gently bump her arm to show he liked her. Farah is severely touch starved, so it made for a good combination. One time, he asked if she would like a hug, to which she said yes. To this day, Farah thinks about that hug since it was the first one she had received in seven or eight years. It may not have seemed like she was swayed at the time, but she was very content afterwards.

Laswell: Laswell’s parents didn’t really care too much for her. Don’t get me wrong, they provided for her physical needs, but they barely looked after her in any other regard, thinking she was happy because she had everything she could ever need. Laswell may have been strong because of it, even then, but she did wish her parents had cared more about other things as well, such as how she was doing emotionally. There were quite a few things that hurt her during her childhood, but she barely had anyone who would support her during her rough times. Her parents only ever wanted to see her happy and content, but barely made any effort to actually keep her as such. Laswell knew fairly early on that she was a lesbian and did come out to her parents, but that’s all that happened. It was never discussed again afterwards, even if her father would sometimes say that she would “find the right guy eventually” while talking to other people. Laswell has called him out on it numerous times, but he always made it about him and how he was the victim for saying something that made his daughter uncomfortable. Laswell didn’t stay in contact with her parents for very long once she moved out.

Even back when she was a child, Laswell knew she wanted to do something more exciting than be a hairdresser, waitress or cook. She wanted to do something with plenty of action, but at the same time she wanted to study and go to university. And thus she combined her wishes and started going to university at first. Afterwards, sometime in her twenties, she started to work for the CIA. She wasn’t treated with very much respect there at first, being a woman working there and all. But she didn’t let that disrespect get her down. In fact, on the outside, she stayed professional, but on the inside she took mental notes on who treated her badly and who didn’t. It soon enough became evident that Laswell knew what she was doing, even if her master’s degree should have been proof enough that there was some intelligence in that noggin of hers. However, soon enough she was transferred. In fact, she was transferred many times before she became a station chief, but it only showed just how competent she was in her field. Laswell has since saved thousands of lives and is proud of it. To her, such a thing is her calling and she wants to continue doing so for as long as she can, all the dangers be damned.

Laswell adores her wife. In fact, “Laswell” isn’t her original last name, she took that of her wife. At first they played with the idea of combining their names, but Laswell wanted fairly little to do with her parents at that point. Plus she wanted to show her father that she never “found the right guy”. So her being named Laswell is purely out of spite. While she may not be at home all the time, or very often, for that matter, she makes sure to bring her wife a gift every time she comes home. It can be something small, such as a souvenir she found while she was abroad, or it could be something along the lines of a golden ring that unfolds into an astronomical sphere. She needs to pamper her wife like that and make sure she knows Laswell loves her to the moon and back. Money isn’t an issue for her, she gets paid very well. Even if the biggest reward for her doing what she does is seeing her wife smile. Every time she sees her give her a big smile she’s reminded of why she does what she does, and that’s the most wonderful thing for her. Even so, not many people know about Laswell’s wife, only a select few do. It’s a safety measure since she knows people will target her. Although she’s a diplomatic kind of person, if anyone ever were to hurt her wife, then that person can be certain they’ll never walk freely among the sunlight again.

#cod #valeria garza #farah karim #kate laswell #if it was up to me I'd make Valeria and Laswell lesbians. and so I did because this is my blog #and because I wanna kiss them and cook them a nice and healthy meal that reminds them of me! I can't cook to save my life but I'll learn ho #Farah is into Alex so she isn't a lesbian in my book! #“a gay person's straight ship is the most powerful thing in the universe” #you can't tell me Alex wouldn't treat Farah right though! she deserves a guy like him who's hopelessly in love with her #sometimes I think about a poly relationship with the two of them because I love both of these characters dearly #just think about it: being hugged by two strong people at once! what's not to love about this concept? #cooking them a meal and receiving a kiss from the both of them oh god please someone wife me up already #Alex would get all three of you something cute and matching! like plushies! #he'd get a nice dog plushie. Farah gets a cat plushie. you get a plushie of an animal that reminds you of him that's still cute! #like a small bunny or a small birdie! #and just so you know both of them are good at hugging! they're both really strong and good at making you feel protected! #man I love Farah and Alex! they're such good characters! Alex was the first character I truly liked when watching MW1 #I was so sad to see he wasn't in mw2 but!!! he's in MW3!!! My boy is back in business! #can I also just mention that you can play as Farah in MW3? isn't that also just so cool? again I squealed! #I squealed every time at the cafe I stayed at when I saw you could play as one of the girls! good thinking activision!

[jenlrossman]

So I've been thinking about Miles O'Brien and how he was basically the same in the regular universe and the mirror universe

Why did they do that? They even had another character mention it

Could this be why he is the most important man in Starfleet history? Not because he did anything important himself, necessarily, but just by existing as some sort of… dimensional constant, what if he helped someone figure out like, the Grand Unified Theory of how the universes work?

Because we know from Strange New Worlds, there are other dimensions aside from the regular one and the mirror one. There's an entire dimension where everything is musical theater

What if, in every permutation of the multiverse, the one constant is Miles Edward O'Brien?

Just an ordinary guy, blue-collar worker, good dad with the occasional traumatic experience. He doesn't rise to power, he isn't evil, he doesn't sing more than the average person

He isn't a villain, but he doesn't think of himself as a hero either. He doesn't go off and do amazing things every day, and he doesn't want to. He's gay but not really and only for a couple dudes, the same way he is straight but only for one or two women

He's just that guy you can rely on to fix the ship and occasionally do something heroic but mostly he just wants to have a drink with his friends, do a little homoerotic LARPing, not get killed or tortured, and go home to his family

In. Every. Universe.

He is what everyone thought the Higgs boson would be

Miles O'Brien is our God particle that explains the universes

#Star Trek #Miles O'Brien #My literary analysis

[straightbaittournament]

only the option with the LEAST votes will be eliminated. propaganda under the cut (and more always welcome!):

chrissie cunningham and eddie munson:

Had the CUTEST SCENE IN THE ENTIRE SHOW where they flirted and he tried to sell her drugs but then SHE GOT MURDERED and it was tragic

ava silva and michael salvius:

They have some amusingly straightbaity scenes where Michael initially appears to be interested in Ava (meeting her in a bar, asking questions about her, pursuing her to get her to do things with him and inviting her to kick ass with him) but almost all of these scenes are explicitly for plot reasons or end up displaying the closeness of Ava and Beatrice (and Beatrice’s jealousy over Ava seemingly being interested in a man) instead. Michael and Ava develop a strong close relationship that feels more sibling-esque by the end of season 2 and also Michael straight up dies at the end of season 2 as well.

nina zenik and matthias helvar:

[MAJOR SPOILER] If they were truly straight Matthias wouldn’t have died (submitter also stated that nina is revealed to be bi/pan)

oscar francois de jarjayes and andre grenadier:

Oscar was afab but her father gave her a boy's name and raised her as a boy (by 18th century standards) because sexism and he had 5 daughters and decided she was going to be a son because they were a noble family and he wanted a son to become a high ranking military official because they're rich so they can just do that. Oscar joins the army and becomes Marie-Antoinette's personal guard. Her and childhood best friend Andre are very close through out the series (he supports her throughout the many scandals that she has to deal with because she works for the royal family) and at the end of the series it is revealed that they are in love, but they are both killed in the war before they can actually get together. The dying before they can be together might fall into the buried straights category but they relationship also has really queer energy because throughout the series it becomes apparent that Oscar usually Does Not Vibe with only the gender she assigned at birth. She sometimes refers to herself as a woman, sometimes refers to herself as a man, but her attitude is usually basically 'I'm a man, I'm a woman, I'm both, I'm neither, stop asking'. So I think they should count as straightbait because we find out that Oscar is nonbinary and Andre loves her no matter what her gender is (and then they die before they can get together).

jason grace and piper mclean:

So. Hera/Juno put a bunch of fake memories in Piper’s head of a months long relationship with Jason. However plot and stuff happens and they end up dating for real. Except no they didn’t. In the next series Apollo goes to them to ask for help and finds out they’ve broken up. Then there was a death prophecy that for once was actually fulfilled (RIP Jason). Finally at the end of ToA Piper was seen kissing a girl and your choice how to interpret that. Got together because a goddess shipped them. Broke up because they realised they were gay.

abbie mills and ichabod crane:

They both start out as main characters, working together since ep. 1. Next three seasons follow the regular m/f protagonist duo pattern: they need each other's help, there's chemistry going on, there are heartwrenching scenes and dramatic sacrifices, they learn they can only truly rely on each other - so the next step is to let them be together, right? Wrong. The next step is to let lt. Mills make a final sacrifice, which on top of killing the pairing insults her as a character - suddenly from the POV protagonist she started as she's demoted to secondary character who always was just there to be the main guy's support. There are some feelings acknowledged, but no confessions or promises exchanged during the final fleeting reunion. Three-seasons-worth of build-up and then she dies.

valkyrie and thor:

Like a lot of ships with a white man and a woman of color, their chemistry and history get shunted to the side by racist writers and fans who refuse to acknowledge them as anything other than friends.

buffy summers and spike:

Buffy's a vampire slayer and Spike's a vampire. Enemies to Lovers. Absolutely not intended by creators, creators treated it like a joke at first, then some of the writers/producers actively hated it even throughout their canon relationship, they don't technically get together in the end, also he dies (kind of. he's brought back in another show. and the comics. it's complicated). Very queercoded relationship despite being m/f - desire, euphoria, shame, slowburn, keeping it a secret, doesn't think anyone else will understand or accept them, wanting to change for the better.

peggy carter and daniel sousa:

She’s the best secret agent, he’s a hot as hell disabled war vet They get together, but also don’t because apparently Steve Rogers is a homewrecker Peggy moved on after losing Steve, got together with the amazing Daniel Sousa, and then got broken up because the Russos didn’t want Steve to be seen as being gay for Bucky

entrapta and hordak:

Heavily heavily heavily hinted/slow burn

good luck everybody! now go vote!

#singles tournament round 3 #stranger things #warrior nun #six of crows #grishaverse #the rose of versailles #lady oscar and la rose de versailles #heroes of olympus #hoo #pjo hoo toa #sleepy hollow #sleepy hollow fox #sleepy hollow series #sleepy hollow tv series #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #thor #buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #agent carter #she-ra and the princesses of power #spop #poll #polls #poll tournament

[sonic-candy]

♥︎♥︎♥︎ Kawashimo and Yamanoue ♥︎♥︎♥︎

♦︎♦︎♦︎ Miri and Jetter Mars ♦︎♦︎♦︎

Oooh this was HUGE, but I finally got it done. Tumblr’s crappy search and tagging did not make it easy to find the headcanons I made a while ago, so sorry for the long wait!

Also I never finished the Anime (I know how it ends tho) and flipped through the manga. Spoilers ahoy!

Kawashimo

Sexuality Headcanon: Hard to say as he made Miri so you claim gay/bi or he wanted a kid without adoption/marriage, so you can add Ace/Demi to that possibility as well. I'll go with straight.

Gender Headcanon: Cis male

A ship I have with said character: I guess with Yamanore but we don't see them interact that often to really convince that could be a couple.

A BROTP I have with said character: Again, Yamanore.

A NOTP I have with said character: Any villain characters. Also goes without saying but no underage or (pseudo-) incest!

A random headcanon: He's created the Kokoro equivalent in this universe and installed it in Mars, so he mentally grows up and becomes more heroic.

General Opinion over said character: He seems like a Ochanomizu clone and not much of his own character IMO. While I don't hate him, I don't find him interesting.

Yamanoue

Sexuality Headcanon: Unlike Tenma who was married with a kid, there's no mention of his familyHe does have this traditional masculine-like attitude so he can be straight or in the closet. He could also be ace/demi.

Gender Headcanon: Cis male

A ship I have with said character: Kawashimo being the only person he seem to respect.

A BROTP I have with said character: Kawashimo, again. Maybe he'll get along with (better)Miri after the series ends.

A NOTP I have with said character: Any villain characters. Also goes without saying but no underage or (pseudo-) incest!

A random headcanon: Like Tenma, he’s on the Autism scale too.

Bonus: I gave him the first name of ’Okuran’. Okura is the name of an ancient Japanese poet, Yamanoue No Okura, and the Japanese name of the Okra plant that his sideburns resemble.

General Opinion over said character: If Tenma was more of a hot head and an jingoistic then you’ll get this guy. Despite that, he never abandoned Mars purposefully and even tried to hash things out with him before he was supposedly killed off but was actually captured. Him and Mars had great chemistry together and I wish he appeared in a few more episodes with him.

(Jetter) Mars

Sexuality Headcanon: He had a crush on a robot girl and an alien like girl so either straight or Bi. Gender Headcanon: Cis male

A ship I have with said character: The alien girl was cute, basically genderbent version of Bem for Astro Boy. The robot girl was a teenager so that wouldn't work out.

A BROTP I have with said character: Other than Miri and Melchi I can't say.

A NOTP I have with said character: Any villain characters. Also goes without saying but no (pseudo-) incest!

A random headcanon:

General Opinion over said character: He's basically a genderbent Uran with Astro's powers who slowly becomes a caring and more considerate hero like Astro but a bit more playful.

Miri

Sexuality Headcanon: She's pretty accepting so really It can be anything.

Gender Headcanon: Cis woman

A ship I have with said character: None, she's pretty much in the background sadly.

A BROTP I have with said character: Mars and Melchi.

A NOTP I have with said character: Any villain characters. Also goes without saying but no underage or (pseudo-) incest!

A random headcanon:

General Opinion over said character: Like most woman in Astro Boy, she gets pushed to side and never really had her chance to shine. She has the ability to fix machine by simply touching them yet that was only used in the first episode. It’s doubtful but should we ever get a Reboot (After we get an AB one but who knows when that’ll be..) I’ll love to see her a bit more fleshed out rather be the ‘Generic nice girl’.

#jetter mars #dr yamanoure #dr kawashimo #Miri kawashimo #Mars Yamanoure #jetter mars headcanons #god it toook forer #how the next time I try one of thes things will go smoother

[theblackinnkeeper]

Actually y'know what, I could ask the same question of you folks. Why do you anti-Komahina people so often seem to ship Mikan with Nagito? I know you put Komamiki on your Valentines post, and I've seen it pushed by a bunch of other users that routinely shit on Nagito. It is one of the most jarring fucking things I've seen in this fandom. You think that Komahina is too toxic. That Nagito is just too horrible a person for Hajime to have any kind of healthy relationship with him...Yet you think that somehow Mikan of all people is mentally equipped to handle him? And vice versa for Nagito?

I actually know someone whose a big fan of the ship and is only mildly into Komahina, and y'know what? They're one of the first people who would tell you that "Komamiki is a healthier alternative to Komahina" is a phrase you cannot possibly say with a straight face. Since one of the most fascinating things about the ship is BECAUSE of how likely it is that a relationship between the two could get ugly and toxic. With a healthy Komamiki being something that would require working through a whole lot more baggage than Nagito and Hajime could ever have.

Just the nurse/patient thing alone has a ton of red flags. Mikan canonically has a disturbing desire to have total power and control over her patients, even before being brainwashed. Unless a story has that side of her character addressed and has her come to terms with how messed it up is, any potential relationship between her and Nagito is just a nightmare waiting to happen. A lot of the character's misery comes from a lack of autonomy over his life, and having a partner take pleasure in asserting control over him as his illnesses worsen would be fucking horrifying.

...Or is that the entire point? Seriously, is this like an in-joke among people who hate on Nagito? Wanting the character to be miserable, and pushing a ship that offers that possibility under a pretense of fairness to the character? Because there are a number of other solid alternative ships for the character to Komahina. Now I know your Mr. "I'm not homophobic, I just don't like same sex ships", so I realize pointing to stuff like Nagito x Yasuke, Nagito x Makoto, or Nagito x Fuyuhiko is a lost cause. But there's some other decent f/m alternatives. Nagito x Chiaki and Nagito x Mahiru are both fine. Even Nagito x Sonia or Nagito x Ibuki can be kind of fun. Hell you could ship him with a female OC, or just say he shouldn't be in any kind of relationship at all. But instead you point to the Nagito ship that has one of the highest probabilities of turning into a toxic dumpster fire out of any potential options among the SDR2 cast as the "healthy alternative".

I’d rather not answer the komamiki stuff since it has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make but just for it

I don’t hate nagito because he’s gay or that he gets in the way of my ship nor do I call any of his scenes with hajime gay pandering

I hate him because he gets on my nerves gets to have a good future that’s doesn’t even feel earned while both chiaki’s are dead and the fact that’s his ambiguity does more harm to his character for me than good

And the facts that his fans try to make him out to be this lonely misunderstood guy and ignoring his own red flags as a character

Namely his dangerous obsession with hope and the Lengths he is willing to go for it and who he is willing to sacrifice (even those he cares for)

Now this ask had nothing to do with the post you’re trying to respond to or the point I was trying to make so don’t send anything like this to me again

(Side note this isn’t universal for everyone who isn’t on board with komahina there are other I know who ship him with other people or oc’s I just had someone respond to me regarding something like this now why don’t you learn from the same

#answers

[kulaiyin]

(content: world 2 main story quest, world 2 city exploration, simulated universe world 5)

i feel like i sang many praises about xianzhou luofu’s environment already but the fact that it’s a ship and you can see so far below and it’s just clouds... i really love it, it feels very liminal. same chills as nagazora... (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ) 

this entry is heavy on world 2 content! if i were to give vague hints regarding what it covers... maybe from “diting” to “fu xuan”? 

onwards! 

AYO ITS THE SEVEN SWORDS VN GANG

YOOOOOOOOO ABYSS FLOWER?! (looks like it still has those powers over life and death...!)

OTTO-- i mean luocha-- IS SO CHILL HERE! i haven’t gone through the seven swords VN very closely but as far as i’m concerned, the personality checks out. really enjoying the parallels on how they meet

it’s also really cool that they’re previewing future character kits in the story! first kafka and silver wolf, and now luocha. i hope they keep this up!

already loving sushang’s countrygirl character... 

i just want to point out that this npc is actualy the npc from bailu’s character stories!!! i can’t believe she’s an actual npc in the overworld?! it makes the world seem so fleshed out!

for those who don’t know and want to know, i remembered reading that bailu once treated an incredibly young vidyadhara girl who kept undergoing the molting/reborn process every couple of weeks. i originally visualized it as an infant who kept reverting back to a newborn state (which was honestly scary) so it was a nice shock seeing her as a full grown woman here!

most of all, i never expected jinyu to be a romantic/heartbreaker! it’s such a surprising but understandable direction for her character to go in. grrr i love this worldbuilding... this is why i love talking to npcs 😤     

really love that they acknowledged the gay lions

i thought these two npcs were arguing at first but they’re a manzai/funny man straight man double act!!!! i immediately support 🙌

THIS IS SO PRECIOUS GYAAAAAA WHO KEEPS PUTTING ADORABLE DOGS IN THIS GAME-- 💞💥💥💥

this kid sounds like he got isekaied straight out of a chinese legend, it’s so funny... why does this kid have so much lore?! 

xianzhou luofu grows their ships?! HUH?!

IT LOOKS.... SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

ONLY ONE AVAILABLE...? NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

how dare they keep making banger environments for a place barely anyone will pass through (i really enjoyed the npc in this area by the way. vidyadhara species continues to be really intriguing)

huh... 😨

the dialogue options are so funny

... I GOT ARRESTED FROM THAT ALKFJLAJDLAWHJDOHANJKANCBABN I DIDN’T KNOW THAT COULD HAPPEN 😂😂😂

but... they got a police station here?! i went through the entire city and never noticed any building i could enter... there’s a lot of read-able material here so this can’t be a one-time thing, right? (unless you can get arrested multiple times...)

oop--

it’s straight up an area i haven’t even unlocked in the story GYAAAAAA

it looks so metropolitan... i guess i could explore but i’m intimidated about exploring a map i haven’t unlocked 😂 i don’t want to break some events, so i teleported outta there!

the proof...

BY THE WAY, LOOK AT THE DESCRIPTION... 

HUA?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? 

MARSHAL HUA??!?!?!?!

IF... IF THIS IS FU HUA... I’LL SAVE FOR YOU 🤧🤧🤧💖💗💓💞💝💖 WAIT FOR ME!!!!!!

AY SHE HAS A GUN NOOOO SHE KEPT TARGETING BAILU TOO

THAT’S A CHILD MA’AM!!!!

HOLY F FU XUAN IS SO COOL 😳😳😳

i remember seeing this screenshot a long time ago when they did a dev talk or a preview of the next closed beta testing... she still has that elegant air about her! this is truly the battle of those who see the future... 

after this, i got formally introduced to that new city area from before! (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧ glad to finally roam the streets... a free man...

this is so funny... 

big fan of this npc who is crushing on his homie and doesn’t know it... i support you... 

why they kiss me... 😳

this is THE absolute most busted simulated universe random event 🤯🤯🤯 i’m not going to spoil too much on what it does but... basically i was thinking “if i don’t beat world 5 with this, i have severe skill issue”

thank you... i’ll remember your name, ruan mei... (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

so yeah spoiler alert... she gave me ALL THE ABUNDANCE BLESSINGS... yes, the SAME aeon i just unlocked... GODLY OCCURENCE!!!

we are STACKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (look at the buffs)

i rolled over the world 5 boss but regrettably forgot to take a screenshot... i think you can see my blessings in the enhancement screen screenshot anyway

i am a ruan mei believer...  💪💪💪

i think it’s also highly implied that the woman in the geniuses’ repose lightcone next to herta and screwllum is her and she has a lovely design... I’LL SAVE FOR YOU TOO

i ran into the punklorde mentality curio, and i wonder if this is just like how silver wolf’s weakness implant works! 

very excited to see... i’ll be pulling for her next! (/≧▽≦)/ i hope everyone else rolling for her gets her early! 

(at the time of writing, silver wolf’s trailer and extra information came out and uuuuh i might be obsessed with the found family dynamic that the stellaron hunters have... I WANT SILVER WOLF 💥)

#hsrdiary

[musclesandhammering]

Every Single Issue I Have With S*lki (It’s Not Just The Selfcest)

Here goes. I threatened to post this a few days ago and never did, but I just saw a s*lki stan Twitter account claim that Loki caring about Sylvie more than the whole multiverse was a Good And Romantic thing and it pushed me over the fucking edge, so now you all have to read this. I’ve divided it into categories cause there’s just THAT much.

OOC Bullshit

• First and foremost, no amount of mental gymnastics you do will ever make me believe that this specific Loki- the one that just invaded New York, that just came off a year of Thanos Torture, that just got done being influenced by the sceptre, that was literally in the middle of a crisis already, and then on top of that went through all the trauma of Ep 1- would even be worried about a romantic relationship. That would be the furthest thing from his mind. Go back and watch how he acted in Avengers- you think that guy would abandon his previous mission to become a snivelling simp for a girl he’d just met 3 days prior? Yeah, there’s no universe in which that makes sense.

• “It’s very in character for Loki to fall in love with himself lololol-“ NO, it’s literally not. Out of all the characters in the mcu, I don’t think I can think of anyone that genuinely hates themselves more than Loki. He even referred to all his other male variants as “monsters” and said meeting them was “a nightmare” in this series. He’s got so much self-loathing, plus the fact that he genuinely thinks himself to be an evil backstabbing scourge- so there’s no evidence at all suggesting that he would ever develop a fondness for, or even be inclined to trust, another version of himself, after only knowing them for 3 days.

• Building on that, the whole concept of Loki falling in love with a version of himself just feeds into the annoying ass misconception that he’s a narcissist. No matter which way you stack it, he’s not. If you’re referring to NPD, he doesn’t fit the criteria, and if you’re saying “narcissist” just as a slang term meaning “selfish and arrogant”, that still doesn’t accurately describe him. But when creators like Waldron and Herron do things like having him fall in love with himself, it makes it so much easier for casual viewers to think that he is.

Shitty LGBT Rep

• It’s kinda sus that Loki’s are allegedly genderfluid and yet the only female-presenting variant we see (and apparently the only female-presenting variant there is, cause the male Loki’s all seemed unfamiliar with the concept) is treated as some kind of mind-bogglingly special paradox. Also very sus that, out of all the Loki variants, the one our Loki falls in love with just so happens to be the only female one. What a coincidence.

• The fact that the creators of the show went around bragging about Loki’s bisexuality and Marvel purposefully (lbr) allowed stories about Loki possibly having a male love interest to circulate, specifically enticing queer viewers to watch the show (you know, the definition of queerbaiting), and then instead of having a male love interest (Loki was the first queer main character, so it was the perfect opportunity) they gave us *gestures to this dumpster fire* this… it’s just a middle finger to LGBT fans. The fact that they would rather have this relationship with all its myriad of problems than have a gay relationship is just……. Very telling.

• While him being with a woman obviously doesn’t refute his bisexuality, the fact that they showed/talked about him being interested in 3 different women (flight attendant, Sylvie, Sif) and never even hinted at him being attracted to a man, definitely makes it seem like they were trying to cover up his bisexuality to smooth things over with the more homophobic viewers. You know? It’s like “I know you’re pissed that we sorta confirmed Loki as bi, so we promise we’ll never mention it again! Or even hint at it! As a matter of fact, we’ll give him lots of female lovies and make him seem as straight as possible! That’ll take your mind off of that horrible crumb of queer rep, right? Please please please keep giving us your money!!!”

• Aside from all the other issues, at its core, the biggest reason why I think I’m so irritated with s*lki is that it took one of the most interesting, complex, and diverse characters in cinema atm and squished him into a tired ass unnecessary heteronormative subplot…. Like literally every. single. other. protagonist. ever. Loki is such a unique character, and it’s so so so incredibly disappointing that they stuck him into that same boring cookie cutter romance that happens to every other character in every other movie I’ve ever seen. It’s a disservice, and it’s honestly just not compelling or entertaining at all.

Thematic Issues Galore

• His arc didn’t need a romance. With anyone. It was unnecessary and it didn’t make sense plot-wise. In fact, one of the reasons he was my fav prior to this was because he was the only big-name mcu character whose story wasn’t muddied-up by a romance that didn’t need to be there. So much for that.

• He wasn’t emotionally ready for a romantic relationship with anyone. Hell, just a genuine friendship would’ve been pushing it for him at this point. He was in such a bad state that any relationship he got into would’ve been toxic and unhealthy for both him and the other person, and it doesn’t make sense why the writers would want to put him in one when there were so many cons and essentially no pros (other than “Uwu aren’t they cute together”).

• Sylvie’s character in general was unnecessary and Loki’s character was robbed just by her being there. The whole show became about her post-Ep 2. They spent most of the time giving her backstory, building her up, telling us how awesome she is, trying to convince us to like her, etc when what they really needed to be doing was building Loki up- cause I gotta say, if I had to describe TVA!Loki in a few words, they would be Flat, Boring, and Weak.

• The romance overtakes the plot. They spend time portraying their supposed connection that could’ve been spent adding depth and complexity to literally any of the characters. They make the big Nexus Event them giving each other googly eyes on Lamentis when it could’ve been so many other way more profound things that speak to the fundamental nature of Loki’s. They have the climax of the finale be “oh no she betrayed him to kill He Who Remains” when it could’ve been something way more compelling (Loki having a moral crisis over whether or not to kill HWR, Loki contemplating the state of the multiverse and weighing the pros and cons of freedom vs order, Loki looking into some What If situations and getting emotional about what could’ve been regarding his family, Loki realising the gravity of HWR’s offer and finally coming to terms with how important he is to the universal cycle, etc etc). The entire plot suffered in favour of a romance that half of us didn’t even want.

• It essentially reduced all of Loki’s potential character growth down to “He did it for his crush.” He seemed to at least have some motivations of his own in Ep 1-2 (feeble as they were) but after Sylvie showed up in Ep 3, literally every action he took was just him being a simp for her. Why did he lie in the interrogation? To try to protect Sylvie. Why did he fight the minutemen and Timekeepers? To survive kinda, but mostly cause it was important to Sylvie. Why did he get pruned? Cause he got distracted trying to confess his crush to Sylvie. Why did he try to get out of The Void? Cause he thought Sylvie needed him. Why did he stay in The Void? Cause Sylvie was staying. Why did he try to enchant Alioth? Cause Sylvie told him to. Why did the multiverse get cracked open, leading to an infinite number of Kangs waging war on all of existence? Cause Loki didn’t wanna hurt Sylvie in their fight at the Citadel and then get distracted by her kissing him. It’s uninteresting and honestly pretty embarrassing.

• Throughout their “relationship arc” the writers do their absolute damndest to convince us that we should like Sylvie more than Loki. And you know what? It’s the most hypocritical shit I’ve ever seen. They preach and preach about how Sylvie’s life has been so difficult/we should feel bad for her/she had it so bad/poor poor sylvie/she had it SO much worse than pampered prince Loki…. But then they never even touch on any of Loki’s trauma of hardships (the ones that have been ignored for literally 3 movies now). They frame Sylvie as a good person and a Freedom Fighter after she spent literal decades/centuries mass-murdering brainwashed TVA agents and showing exactly zero remorse for it….. but then they make it their mission to constantly remind us that Loki is a terrible person and constantly put him in situations where he’s forced to acknowledge his wrongdoings/show remorse/admit to how “evil” he is for being a mass murderer for like 2 years. They show him on-screen having a wider range of powers than her, and perpetuate his whole shtick of being a “master manipulator” or whatever….. But then they make Sylvie “the brawn” more competent, intelligent, and physically capable than him. Tell me how it’s a good thing for a ship to be so narratively biased toward one character.

Missed Opportunities

• If they absolutely had to have a romance subplot, then they could’ve paired Loki with one of the characters that have already been established OR one of the characters that were a big part of the whole TVA storyline anyway. It would’ve been so interesting if they’d revealed that Loki had a history with some of the players from previous films (Sif and Fandral both come to mind). It also would’ve been really interesting if they’d given Loki a love interest that actually had some allegiance to the TVA as a whole (Mobius maybe, but not necessarily. It also could’ve been Renslayer or B-15). Hell, imo it would’ve been cool if they’d followed through with that “See you again someday” line that he said to the flight attendant in Ep 1. ALL of these characters have way more chemistry with him than Sylvie, and they were also already relevant to the plot without wasting half the show to give background info on them.

• If they absolutely had to have a hetero-presenting love story involving an enchantress-type figure, then there’s a whole Enchantress (Amora) that was actually Loki’s love interest in the comics. Plus, fans have been screaming for Amora to appear in the mcu for years. Plus, Tom literally pitched an Amora/Loki storyline way back in 2012-13. Also, Lorelei (another enchantress) is also one of Loki’s love interests in the comics, and she already exists in the mcu (she was on Agents of SHIELD). There were several different established characters for them to choose from. Creating a whole knew amalgamation of a character and going with the “she’s a Loki variant” storyline was just completely unnecessary and made no sense.

• They completely robbed us of a Chaos Twins dynamic. Had they handled Sylvie better and not forced her and Loki to smooch, the two of them could’ve had a really really complex and interesting sibling relationship. Loki could’ve stepped into Thor’s shoes and sort of used that new role to gain some self importance, and Sylvie could’ve finally had somebody to look out for her/teach her magic/be there for her. It would’ve been very aesthetically pleasing, the vibes would’ve been out of this world, it would’ve been way more profound than this bs, and frankly it would’ve been much more entertaining to watch.

• Loki’s relationship (read: obsession) with Sylvie completely overshadows all Loki’s other relationships in the show. Loki and Mobius were literally the focal point of the series in Ep 1-2, but after Sylvie showed up in Ep 3, they barely had any interactions with each other, and Mobius pretty much faded to the background entirely. Loki had the beginnings of a pretty interesting antagonistic relationship with Renslayer (with her wanting him pruned, then arguing with Mobius that he couldn’t be trusted), but after Sylvie showed up the dynamic shifted to focus on the history between her and Ravonna. Loki and B-15 started off very badly and openly disliked each other throughout Ep 1-2, and then in the end of Ep 2, Loki showed a little bit of concern for her when she was possessed, hinting that they might be inching toward a reconciliation- especially considering how obvious it was that Loki was gonna uncover the TVA’s sins eventually. There was so much potential for him to be the one to give her her memories back and convince her to change sides, but no, of course that honor went to Sylvie. In fact, after Sylvie showed up, Loki and B-15 never even spoke to each other again.

Various S*lki Fails

• If they were trying to convince us that this affection was mutual, they completely failed. There’s nothing I’ve seen that even hints at Sylvie feeling the same way about Loki that he does about her. At most, I’d say she has a slight endearment to him. She finds him likeable and she’s grudgingly fond of him, but she definitely isn’t in love with the guy. Maybe she thinks he’s cute and hopes that he gets out of this mess alright, but her mission obviously comes before him- whereas, it’s been confirmed multiple times that Loki cares about her above anything else. She doesn’t trust him, she looks at him like he’s an incompetent fool half the time, she shows little to no reaction during most of his confession moments, and she kissed him as a means to distract him so that she could get him out of her way. Look, all I’m saying is, when you get into a relationship where one of you is way more invested than the other, it never ends well.

• This goes without saying for a lot of us, but the selfcest is just straight up odd and cringey. If you’re cool with that sort of thing, fine! People can ship what they want! But don’t pretend it’s not at least a little bit uncomfortable. Yes, I know they’re not technically siblings so it’s not technically incest, and they’re also not technically the exact same person, but they’re similar enough that it makes things weird. And yes I know selfcest can’t happen in real life, so there’s no way to judge it morally, but neither can most of the other stuff that happens in these shows/movies (the Snap, Loki destroying jotunheim, superhero with powers being held accountable, mind control) and yet we still find ways to judge their morality, because they all mirror real-world events. (The snap= genocide; Loki destroying Jotunheim= bombing other countries; superhero accountability= weapons accountability; mind control= grooming and coercion). And lbr the closest real-world mirror to two versions of the same person (who may or may not share DNA, family, backgrounds, physical and emotion characteristics) being romantically involved with one another is incest. And you can be ok with that if you want- that’s your prerogative- but don’t get pissy just cause a lot of us are squicked out by it.

• The whole mirror metaphor (learning self love via each other) thing just fell completely flat. First of all, having Loki learn to love himself by looking at someone who mirrors him did not, in any way shape or form, require them to be romantically involved. But they were. Of course. Secondly, the creators have contradicted themselves so many times on whether Loki and Sylvie are the same or not, that it doesn’t even really register to the viewer that the mirroring thing was what they were going for. Finally, Loki and Sylvie are shown to have so little in common- and to have only the most bare minimum of similarities personality-wise- that it doesn’t even make sense that Loki would “learn to love himself through loving her”. Like? They’re nothing alike. So how would he make the connection that he himself is actually pretty cool, based on her alone? There’s virtually nothing in her that reflects him.

• I know the objective of the entire show was to convince us of how awesome and unique Sylvie is, but honestly her relationship with Loki just did the opposite. A hallmark of a Mary Sue is having her constantly upstage the male lead, and then having him instantly fall madly in love with her anyway. And that’s.. exactly what happened here. Everything they’re doing to try to force her character to be more stan-able is really just forcing her to look more like their self-insert OC. Which is exactly what she is. It would’ve been so much more satisfying if she didn’t have to try so hard to look cool, if they didn’t have to try so hard to make her backstory tear-inducing, if they didn’t have to turn our protagonist into a snivelling simp just to prove how incredible she supposedly is. Very much #GirlBoss energy and we all know how performative and cheap that is.

• The entire thing was too rushed, there was too little build-up, and it was nowhere near believable. As stated above, it’s ridiculously unlikely that Loki would canonically even be interested in Sylvie, and this show did nothing to explain why he was. He just suddenly was. There was nothing they showed us as viewers that would justify a guy as closed-off and preoccupied as Loki falling head-over-heels for a girl he just met. Their was no explanation, no big revelation, no reasoning, it just… kinda happened. And I’m also severely skeptical of any love story that has the characters go in this deep after only 3 45-minute episodes of exposition.

I’m sure there’s other stuff, so if anyone thinks of anything, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to add it. Tagging @janetsnakehole02 @raifenlf @natures-marvel and @brightredsunset800 for expressing interest. This is all your faults.

#antisylki #loki meta #kinda #loki series critical #loki series negativity #anti loki x sylvie #anti loki series #anti sylvie #frosty bby #loki deserved better #I don’t even like TVA!Loki tho so I guess it doesn’t matter with him lmao #tva loki #loki laufeyson

[fruitless-nonsense]

Okay, so I didn’t actually think anyone would care what I had to say. I just saw a post that riled me up and I wrote that to let off some steam. That being said, to everyone who liked my post or just read it thank you from the bottom of my heart. Seriously it means so much to me that there are people who notice what I have to say. That being said, I want to do more of these cause I have a lot of opinions that aren’t widespread, and I’d like to start with a post gushing about a certain character that receives too much hate. However, seeing as this isn’t a rant out of agitation this might take a bit longer to get out. With that long introduction out of the way... Cami O’Connell!

As I said, Cami is my favorite female character in the whole of the tvdverse (Bonnie is a close second). The reason why I want to start with her instead of Bonnie or my favorite character (Marcel) is because while both were royally screwed with by the writers, there are plenty of fans online who sing their praises (as they deserve). However, when it comes to Cami the consensus online is either hatred or indifference by a vast majority of the fans (that being said there are still a good amount of people who do love her I’m not saying there aren’t, but they are in the minority). This is something I never quite understood, but I’m gonna try my best educated guess on it.

I suppose before I go any further, I have a confession to make. The way I watched both tvd and to was not a straight line. Several years ago, I decided to finally watch tvd and started with the first two season (which I really liked), then a youtuber dropped a video analyzing the pilot for to and the premise hooked me immediately so I started the first season and kept watching until finishing the third, then I decided to go back and watch tvd seasons three and four, then got bored so I switched back to finish to, and finally after a few months declared I wanted to finish what I started and slogged through the second half of tvd. Why is this relevant? Well I just wanted to inform y’all as this might’ve led to my different perspectives on many things in both shows, and it hopefully can somewhat explain my reasoning

Going back to Cami, why is she my favorite female? A multitude of reasons. Firstly, I love how different she is from other female characters we’ve seen. Characters like Elena, Bonnie, and Caroline are fun in their own right, with bubbly personalities and childish innocence. This makes sense because they’re teenagers! Even Elena’s angst comes off more like young naivety than a wayward soul. I’m not knocking this characterization, it makes sense that a show aimed at teenagers would have teenage girls as it’s main cast. Where am I going with this? Cami might be the most mature character we’ve seen in this universe that actually has a pretty big part in the cast. What I mean is that shows like this paint maturity on women as being motherly or a stick in the mud, but Cami is neither. She’s still fun and loose, but with an aura of restraint and intelligence that needs to be accumulated over time. She’s not even that old! My guesstimation puts her at 23 cause we know she’s graduated college with a degree in psychology and was already working at Rousseau’s in the pilot (you mean to tell me you don’t just get your dream job right out of college, you have to work some dead end jobs first? YA lied to me!). I don’t know how quite to describe it beyond that, Cami just feels like a real person to me, and that makes me invested in her life even more.

Secondly, is her personality beyond her intelligence. I love how empathetic and kind she is! In the span of three seasons, she had helped almost everyone in the show while never sticking her feet into the main drama. That’s another thing, she knows when something’s over her head and will step out when she can, when something is pushing her, she fights back. I love that despite how kind hearted she is, she’s not a pushover. If there’s something she doesn’t like, she will attest. She may be nice, but get on her bad side and her sass will cut you like a knife. Considering she’s only a human against these witches, vampires, and originals you would call this unrealistic, but it works because unlike most people on the show, she’s smart. I know I just said beyond her intelligence, but I just want to gush about how fun it is watching Cami get out of trouble on her own by using nothing but her brain (I just think it’s neat). Characters this complex are not usually reserved for women on the cw, which leads into my final reason.

I love how much agency Cami has throughout her run on the show! Like, her story isn’t stapled to Klaus, she does so much without him even being there. In tvd, I can’t think of a single storyline Elena had that wasn’t tied to one or both of the Salvatore brothers, Bonnie is constantly being abused by the writers, Caroline is forcibly impregnated, Hayley starts off with her own goals before being tied to Jackson and later Elijah, Davina also starts off with her own ambitions before also being shackled to her love interest to resurrecting Kol being her only storyline in season three. I’m sure there are more, but these are just ones off the top of my head. While this makes me wish she had her own storyline, I acknowledge she is a supporting character (which begs the question of why none of the women in the main cast get this luxury but I digress).

This has been very long, and we’re just getting to complaints. Unlike complaints about the ship, I have yet to find an argument about why Cami sucks that isn’t factually incorrect, so if you have one please share. The first complaint I hear is that Cami is a copy of Caroline (I’ll give y’all that have seen the show a second to stop laughing at the statement). I’ve already explained why Caroline and Cami are two very different characters (hint: one is bubble and energetic and one is calm and mature), I know they’re both blonde, nice, empathetic, and have names that start with c, but try paying attention to what you’re watching then maybe you’ll have a better grasp on it. Secondly is that Cami’s only purpose is being Klaus’ love interest. Like I stated, there’s a lot Cami does where Klaus isn’t even present, unless you’re saying everyone Cami has had a story with was a love interest (So Davina, Josh, Hayley, Elijah, Marcel cerca season two onward, Vincent, Lucien, that detective guy, and her uncle Kieran), in that case I think y’all are onto something with Cami being a Mary Sue cause she getting all the action (note the sarcasm)! That’s another thing, people say Cami’s a Mary Sue cause almost everyone loves her and she has basically no flaws. First of all, I don’t believe Mary Sue to be a character problem but a story problem, and above all an excuse to neuter powerful women lest they make fragile men uncomfortable. Second of all, we see Cami form these relationships in real time through her actions not by her existence. Third of all (not that she needs them to be a good character since other favs don’t), Cami has her stubbornness that eventually got her killed and the fact that strength wise she is the weakest character in the show by her being human.

Are you catching on to some of what I’m saying? Most of these complaints aren’t even true, yet it’s all we hear. My first inclination was to blame this hatred on klaroline shippers who were bitter that their ship could no longer sail, but then I saw posts of people who claimed not to ship them and still hated Cami because she was “just a love interest.” Which leads into the other problem with haters: the hypocrisy. Reasons people hate Cami are elements in other characters that these same people love. Never mind the fact that some of these complaints don’t even apply to her like the love interest thing. To use something that isn’t a lie, people will hate on Cami for sleeping with Marcel in season one when Marcel is Klaus’ son, meanwhile y’all seem to forget Elena not only dated but cheated on Stefan with Damon in the finale of tvd season two (spoiler: she kissed him on his deathbed while her boyfriend and his brother was searching for a way to save him, which doesn’t even go into all their kisses in season three) and furthermore shipping Marcel with Rebekah who would be his aunt (I know some people who ship them acknowledge this but damn). I also know these people jumped at the chance to attack Cami for stealing the white oak stake in season three and ignoring what she was going through meanwhile will wave past everything Elena, Damon, and Caroline did when they had their humanity turned off as “they were going through a lot” (disclaimer: no hate to either of those girls, they were understandably in much pain, just wanna expose the hypocrisy). This all made me reevaluate the reasoning as more than just shippers being bitter, this seemed much more malicious to just be that.

After a lot of thought, my only conclusion I can come to is sexism. Cami is a very different female character than what we’re used to, she’s strong willed, opinionated, smarter than the men, and more mature. I guess fans weren’t ready for a character like that so assumed it was bad or just wrote her off as too different, but that’s giving the benefit of the doubt. To be honest, I still don’t know why she was so hated and continues to be ignored by fans, but maybe it’s time we start asking that question. It’s time we appreciate characters like this so maybe we can have more of them on the cw. It’s time to give Camille O’Connell and Leah Pipes the respect they deserve!

(P.S - Can someone far more talented than me please put out some Cami x reader content? I’m starved of my girl and Leah is too pretty for my gay brain to function!)

#camille o'connell #cami o'connell #gender hypocrisy #i love when women #anti Mary Sue rhetoric #women in media #women on the cw #anti tvd and to writers #the vampire diaries #the originals #anti delena #just a bit #anti klaroline #bonnie bennett deserves better #marcel gerard deserves betters #cami o’connell deserves better #anti haylijah #anti kolvina #implied #klamille #referenced a bit

[felixs-hell-scape]

Is Pride Month❤💙💚💛💜😃

You know what that means?🙂

SHARE YOUR HEADCANONS FOR GAY LITTLE CATO AND TRANS/BISEXUAL AVOCATO AND OTHERS NOW!!! 🔫😃

Please?😁

I already made a post about this, but I’m taking this as permission to talk more.

Gary (Bisexual/female preference Trans man)

When Gary sees John Goodspeed (Episode 8 of Season 1), John says the line; “I never would have seen the MAN you would have grown up to be.” John emphasises the man part.

When Gary was about 5 or 6 years old, he went up to his dad and told him that he doesn’t like being a girl. From that day forward, John referred to his child as his son and called him Gary.

Gary never learned much about sexualities or gender identity. He just knew he was a man and that he liked both men and women. (Until he got put on the ship with HUE for five years and got to have in-depth conversations about it).

Avocato (Bisexual/male preference cisgender man)

Because of all the war on Ventreixan, Avocato never really had time to sit down and question his sexuality.

Once Avocato was demoted from general and started as a bounty hunter, he had more of an opportunity to start figuring himself out.

Avocato raised Little Cato in a very positive LGBTQ+ household. Avocato thought he raised his son like that because he wanted his son to be respectful, but all along it was because he was Bi and didn’t want his son to hate him for it.

Little Cato (Non-binary or Gender Non conforming Pansexual)

Little Cato came out to Avocato in the most awkward way possible. Something like; “Well, I like every gender but I don’t like gender. I mean, I could date and love someone no matter their gender, but I don’t like gender for myself.” Avocato would have been so damn confused.

Little Cato radiates such ‘Fxck your social construct!’ energy.

I can imagine someone trying to pick of Little Cato by saying he’s gay and his response would be: “I’m pan, so that means I’ll screw you, your mum and your dad.”

Quinn (Heterosexual Trans woman)

Quinn’s mother and sister seemed to have some despise toward her so my guess is that (despite them ultimately being accepting) there is a little bit of transphobia there

Imagine: Quinn and Gary are having some alone time. They turn to each other and say in time “I have something I need to tell you.” Gary insists that Quinn goes first. She nervously says that she is trans and Gary can’t help but laugh. She’s mad for a moment before he finally calms down and says “That’s what I was going to tell you!”

Quinn prides herself on being a strong, independent who can kicks ass and takes names.

Tribore (heterosexual?)

Its canon that man’s only loves himself so this is complicated

He is a massive ally to all genders and sexualities

Likes woman when he is a man likes men when he is a woman.

Fox (Aromantic Asexual)

Fox loves all life in the universe. He thinks that all life is precious and should be protected. But that doesn’t mean he ever wants to be in a relationship.

The only love Fox has ever felt has been platonic love and the sibling love he has for his sister.

Fox has a crisis about what he’s attracted every like six months

Ash (She/They Lesbian)

She was into Little Cato for a while but slowly came to the realisation that she’s a lesbian.

Fox is her biggest supporter. But maybe a little too supportive? Like, Ash’s eyes linger on a woman for a little bit too long and Fox offers to ask the girl out for Ash.

Ash had always struggled with things like her gender identity. Fox and Little Cato noticed this and sat down with her one day (with HUE) to start figuring out pronouns.

Clarence (Pansexual)

Dude, it’s canon that this man would screw anything.

Because of Clarence’s own sexuality, he was very accepting of Ash when she came out. But he doesn’t quite understand Fox’s sexuality.

I don’t believe Clarence would have ever labelled himself (he’d also have no clue what pansexual is). He just likes what he likes.

Sherly (Heterosexual, biromantic)

She strikes me as the sort of person who would have had a lesbian relationship in college or high school.

While ultimately be heterosexual, she would be fine with having a relationship with a woman (she’d just never get into bed with them).

Sherly and Gary bond over being bi.

Lord Commander (Super Straight)

Only assholes identify as super straight

Super straight joke aside, he strikes me as an asexual homoromantic being who only gets a hard-on for power.

Jack definitely had a crush on John. Can’t change my mind on that.

#final space #gary goodspeed #avocato #little cato #quinn airgon #quinn ergon #tribore menendez #ash graven #final space fox #sheryl goodspeed #lord commander #trans pride #lgbt #nonbinary #asexual #gaypride #bisexaul #pansexual

[oceanics]

Sydrian would be more powerful if they were lesbians

I've actually given this a lot of thought! Most of the main pairings in VA and Bloodlines have this ~thing~ in which it's supposed to be inappropriate or taboo for them to be together. Whether it's because they are two guardians who would not prioritize their jobs if they date (romitri), or because it's one moroi and one dhampir (sonya/mikhail, jeddie), or (the horror!) a human (alchemist) with a moroi... there's always societal pressure or outright prejudice telling them no, they should not date. In its extreme, Sydney gets physically and psychologically tortured as a consecuence of her "inappropriate" "taboo" relationship.

And yet, every last relationship is between two straight white people (with the exception of Rose, who imo is not white). At least The Fiery Heart introduces a lesbian couple, even if they are barely-there secondary characters.

The books go hard for "forbidden" romance, but while that works in-universe, if you're reading this as a person of color or an LGBT person you might just... get a bit understandably frustrated. Making Romitri an explicitly, univocally interracial couple is a step in the right direction.

Making Sydrian a lesbian couple, on the other hand... It's kind of a double-edged sword. The message it would convey would have more impact than the original story, yes. However... Do we really need yet another gay story in which the characters need to keep their dating secret or else suffer violence? A gay story in which their communities are completely against them and only feel revulsion when they think of the couple? Do we need to see a lesbian get kidnapped and shipped away by her extremely religious family to be tortured because they think she commited a great sin against her kind? Don't forget that Sydney gets completely isolated from her family and the people she grew up with. I'm not sure I want to add homophobia to this.

All in all, and framing this around Sydney, who suffers the most consequences from her relationship... Her story is about being a cult survivor. Played right, that can already have a very powerful impact, whether she's straight or not.

#sydrian #romitri #vampire academy #bloodlines #answered #anonymous #raphaella rightfully calls sydney's reeducation a conversion therapy plot... do we need to see a lesbian go through that?

[justgottafinishthischapter]

Writing Romance: Opposites Attract

One of the most widespread among romantic tropes is opposites attract, and with good reason. When a couple are opposites, they’re meant to be one of a few things to each other: 1. An inverse reflection of each other. 2. Compliment each other 3. Cover each other’s shortcomings

In a sense, a good Opposites Attract serves to turn two incomplete people into one solid force. If they’re a battle couple, they’ll tend to fight very well together, often balancing force and finesse, melee and ranged, or physical and magical abilities. If the show or book has a lot of time dedicated to foils and character moments, they are more likely to be the ones that each other lean on, since their opposing characters makes them interesting to react off one another. Their roles, story arcs, and backstories tend to run opposite or parallel to one another depending on the series. If one character’s arc is to mature and become more responsible, likely their partner’s arc might be to learn to loosen up and have fun, learn to trust people, or to face a trauma in their past that made them so mature at a young age.

In terms of design, opposites attract partners tend to be inverse in color schemes. Light and dark hair or eyes, warm and cool color schemes, clashing or complimentary fashion styles, etc. The degree in opposition also varies. Some opposites attract look very similar with only a slight difference, indicating that something small is what set them on different paths in life but are otherwise very similar, almost as two sides of the same coin. Other couples are stark contrasts with virtually nothing in common to really emphasize their differences so that they can better make each other whole, as shown very literally through the character of Garnet in Steven Universe. 

Femme and Butch

While typically, you’re mostly going to see this in femmeslash/yuri pairings, this dynamic is actually fairly universal. This divide focuses on a pairing where each couple reflects the values of masculinity and femininity. Although mostly used as lesbian terms, a femme and butch pairing can also be gay or heterosexual. A fashion-loving twink who cries during romantic movies dating a jock who likes sports and drinks beer is still an example of Femme and Butch. Heterosexual is rather obvious, but can also be inversed, with a tough, assertive woman partnered with a sweet, sensitive man, such as Calhoun and Felix in Wreck-It Ralph. A Femme and Butch pairing doesn’t need to check off every box on this list of traits, but these traits tend to be common in these types of relationships.

Brains and Brawn

Also known as Jock and Nerd, this romantic dynamic prioritizes the usefulness of both intelligence and brute strength. Another variation is Book Smarts vs Street Smarts. The Brains will be good at doing research, organizing, and will tend to fight more strategically while the Brawn is primarily going to be good at fighting and likely protecting the Brains from serious harm. Princess and Bodyguard is another possible example of this dynamic, albeit a little less directly.

Hot and Cold

Hot or Warm characters tend to be friendly, outgoing, upbeat, loudmouthed, temperamental, boisterous, and battle-ready. Cold or Cool personalities tend to be shy, calm, quiet, logical, reserved, serious, and emotionally withdrawn. However, while these extreme opposites of hot-head and cold-shoulder balance each other out, it’s worth discussing same heat relationships. Kiribaku is an example of a Hot/Warm relationship, as Bakugou Katsuki is an angry little spitfire with an aggressive streak, while Kirishima Eijirou is a happy-go-lucky sweetheart with a good attitude. This is sort of the same concept, just that both boys are on the warm side of the spectrum, with Kirishima being the cooler counter to Bakugou’s temperamental hot-head. This also works inversely, as the ship Tododeku is a Cold/Cool relationship. Midoriya is a shy, but upbeat young man who tends not to draw too much attention to himself, while Todoroki is stoic, logical, and a bit dense socially. In this case, Midoriya is Cool while Todoriki is Cold, with Midoriya serving as the “Hot” aspect of their relationship as the more friendly and outgoing of the two.  

Light and Shadow

This archetype is often used as a “opposite sides of the same coin” format, where the characters serve as foils to one another. In Teen Titans, Raven’s powers are dark and demonic, while Starfire’s are bright and extraterrestrial. Both girls get their powers from their emotions, but where Starfire revels in her emotions to make her powerful, Raven must suppress her emotions to retain control of her powers. As the only two girls, they stick out as the obvious foils of the group. Many times, when this trope appears, it’s in the form of Classic Paragon Hero vs Cynical Anti-Hero. Superman and Batman are a great example. Superman is a boyscout token good guy, while Batman is a brooding loner. One is the hope for justice and goodness to always triumph while the other acknowledges that people are flawed, and maybe not everyone deserves to be saved. Naruto is interesting because he has two dark reflections. The first is Sasuke. While Naruto is the golden-haired idealist who befriends villains almost as often as Steven Universe, Sasuke is a dark counter consumed by a thirst for vengeance and the power to exact it. Naruto’s other dark counter however is Gaara. Both are Jinchuriki, but whereas Naruto eventually found friends and love in his fellow genin, Gaara was very much still alone when he met Naruto, reflecting what Naruto could have become without that love and support in this life.

Protagonist and Rival

Another case of “two sides of the same coin”, most anime protagonists and their rival tend to either have very similar backstories, very similar motivations, or very similar personalities, if not some combination of the three. Both Naruto and Sasuke were abandoned in the world at a young age with the Hokage looking out for them from afar. Naruto started off having nobody, and was always reaching out hoping to connect with anyone. Meanwhile, Sasuke started with a family and lost it, and decided to keep everyone at arm’s length and isolate himself further. Rin Okumura and Ryuji Suguro are practically the same person. Both lost their families and homes due to Satan, both are strong-willed loudmouthed tough guys with a knack for leadership, and both share the goal of killing Satan. Natsu Dragneel is immature and battle-ready, but while Grey Fullbuster at least pretends to be above it, he’ll jump into a fight with Natsu practically unprompted. The main appeal of the anime protagonist and his rival is that they push each other to succeed, often coming from very similar roots, but where they end up is entirely up to the effort they put in and the path they choose to take. They both refuse to lose to each other, and that propells them to constantly want to out-do each other.

Sweet and Sour

My best friend and I are polar opposites in this sense. When we met, she was far too trusting, submissive, and far too forgiving. Meanwhile, I was a lot more cynical, mean-spirited, and unfortunately, a little more closed-minded than I’d like to admit. After five years of friendship, my friend is far more assertive, has a lot more confidence in herself, is a lot better at handling criticism, and rather than just submitting in an argument, she now has the nerve to get in someone’s face and make her point heard. Because of her, I’ve become less stand-offish, more patient and polite, less of a control freak, more aware of valuing other people’s emotions, and more tolerant of a group I hadn’t realized I’d been intolerant toward. We saw the world in such distinctly different ways that we have managed to rub off on each other, and now we’re both such stronger and more complete people for having known each other.

Serious and Goofball

A classic comedy duo, the comedian and the straight man. The Goofball character tends to be immature, a knucklehead, a jokester, and comes off as a bit inexperienced. Meanwhile, the Serious character tends to be mature, responsible, disciplined, but comes off as a bit aloof. The Goofball reminds the Serious character to have a little fun every once in a while, while the Serious character reins in the Goofball before they hurt themselves or somebody else.

Hero and Sidekick

The hero has their act together and the sidekick is just doing their best. This happens a lot in Action movies where the handsome tough guy and the hapless damsel (who he kidnaps a little too often for my liking) is just kind of along for the ride. The two live in entirely different worlds. Sometimes this comes in the variant of Starlet and Manager where one in the relationship takes center stage while the other is content to help them run their life, promote their career, and help them. Another variation is Superstar and Random Extra, wherein one person leads a very visible life in the public eye being adored by millions of fans while their partner works 9-5 in an office dealing with insurance claims. Although they coe from very different worlds and lead very different lives, that doesn’t mean they still haven’t found love in an unlikely place. Often, the reason the hero or big shot loves this random nobody is because they fell in love with them before they ever became famous, or they didn’t know/care who the celebrity was and just liked them as a person without interest in using their celebrity to climb the social ladder.

Loud and Quiet

She’s quirky, outgoing, bubbly, energetic, and talkative. Too talkative. She never shuts up. He’s quiet, simple, down-to-earth, and calm. Too Calm. He never gets excited. This pairing works to push and pull each other until they’ve harmonized. The Quiet one will be pulled out of their shell and learn to be more open and talkative, while the Loud one will learn to think before they act. This couple is divided along lines of Introversion and Extroversion, and together can navigate the anxiety-triggering unease of a social gathering, and finding joy and pleasure in just enjoying each other’s company without needing to fill the silence with pointless chatter.

To be fair, many Opposites Attract couples will fit into more than one of these archetypes, and there’s probably more I didn’t list. But if you’re wanting to create a couple that balances each other out, I hope you find this helpful to you in your writing.

#writing #writeblr #shipping #ships #writing relationships #writing romance #love story #shippers #shipper #ship #how to write #how to write a ship #opposites attract #red and blue #writing couples #couples #couple dynaics #ship dynamics #relationship dynamics #love is love

[lassieposting]

Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.

What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying. 

Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.

tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.

Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.

But we also had:

SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.

Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.

China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.

The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.

Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.

It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.

Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.

"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:

Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)

Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)

Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)

Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)

China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)

Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)

If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.

Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.

MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:

ADHD: Skulduggery

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile

Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB

Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two

Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie

Autism: Clarabelle

Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.

TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.

Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...

Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss

Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas.  There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.

And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:

1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.

Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.

GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.

So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.

There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."

And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”

Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.

So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.

The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.

The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.

Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".

Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.

(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)

Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.

#skulduggery pleasant #sp meta #derek landy hate blog #Anon #fire message #anti valitsa #anti val #anti phase two tbh #phase two fans will not enjoy this post

[experiment-000]

My Top 10 Ships of 2020

It's been a weird year but I've seen other people doing this. Plus this year I've been way more into gen fics (love a bit of found family especially in clone wars and marvel) than anything shippy. So I genuinely don't know what imma put on here aside from two ships for sure. Sorry this post is super long idk how to do the below the cut thing and I've had this app for 5 years...

10) Viktor Nikiforov and Yuuri Katsuki - Yuri!!! On Ice

It was a real toss up between this, supercorp, kanera and wolfstar cos they're all very integral ships to my fan heart but this son because of the Yuri on Ice fandom's rebirth this year. I've never stopped shipping this, never stopped reading fanfic of them for any extended period of time, they're still my most bookmarked ship on ao3 (although I think now star wars - all media types may have overtaken them for fandom). They were one of the first things I watched where the queer ship I loved became canon and I can't wait for the film (and hopefully someday a season 2). Heck I even made my mum watch Yuri on Ice with me so I think that says it all.

9) Edelgard Von Hresvelg and female Byleth - Fire Emblem: Three Houses

My first fire emblem game was fates when I was like 14 (and finally gay awake lol). I was so disappointed that I had to be with a guy character because the only female option was kinda creepy and also I wouldn't get the character of kana. So when three houses came out I was so happy because finally there were beautiful incredible female characters my female byleth could romance (I'm so sorry mlm you deserved so much more than you got). I got the game as soon as it came out (had to search a lot of shops let me tell you) and started on black eagles. I was actually kinda disappointed back in 2019. I didn't like the explore the monastery bit (still find it kinda tedious) and the battle mechanics weren't quite the same as fates (no pairing up?! Aka my main battle technique for protecting the weaker units). So I got like 20 hours in and put it down. Came back to it in lockdown and finally finished it! I'm so proud of myself I virtually never finish games. And I fully fell in love with the useless lesbian edelgard in the process. When I started back playing in 2020 I was like eh I wish I'd picked a different character to romance (like shes an emperor that's morally very shady) but then the romance stuff started with edelgard and I fell the heck in love.

8) Cory Matthews and Shawn Hunter (and Topanga Lawrence) - Boy Meets World

Disney+ was released in the UK this year and I finally got the opportunity to watch boy meets world in its best quality (aka not on YouTube). I watched it back when I was like 12 or 13 and it's such a nostalgic show for me. Watching it again I still absolutely adore it (and my bi ass was low-key crushing on Shawn especially in chick like me - I'm 18 btw and I got so scared for a sec but rider strong was 18 when chick like me came out so it's fine woah). And of course now I see the possibilities of the beautiful Cory and Shawn relationship like they were so bromance it was basically romance and throw in topanga it's the perfect ot3 (but I'm also fine with just Cory and Shawn or just Cory and Topanga). Read some good fanfic for them this year. My favourite was one about Shawn stealing makeup and stuff and exploring gender (need more fics like this I'm biiii).

7) Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes - Marvel Cinematic Universe

I rewatched all the MCU films this year too. And got really into Peter parker whump and irondad. Plus my eternal obsession with identity and relationship reveals of course led me from Spiderman identity reveals (and found family cuteness) to stucky coming out. Especially when it involves the internet and social media. Not my favourite ship but it's been significant to my year due to the sheer amount of marvel stuff I've read.

6) Satine Kryze and Obi Wan Kenobi - Star Wars

I rewatched clone wars in prep for season 7 and wow Satine's death was sad and sudden. She first appeared in S2 E13 I think and just the sheer sexual tension of their bickering. "The sarcasm of a soldier. The delusion of a dreamer." Just ugnnhhh my bi ass can't take much more of this. And Anakin just sipping his wine in the background grinning. And I fully believe korkie is a Kenobi.

5) Commander Cody and Obi Wan Kenobi - Star Wars

I am very much an Obi wan multishipper. I don't really have a favourite but I fully believe he was with satine and Quinlan in his life. I don't think be would've actually done anything with Cody because of the whole superior officer thing. And this probably isn't even my favourite Obi wan ship - that honour probably goes to quinobi or obitine. However the most popular ships in the fandom are codywan, quiobi and obikin. No offence to anyone who ships these they're just personally not to my taste, but I can't stand quiobi, and obikin I find only slightly more tolerable and I think that's just because there's so much obikin content so if I like the concept of a fic that happens to be obikin I'll read it. I'm just not a fan of the mentor/student relationships. So I generally favoured the codywan fics when there was shipping involved meaning I read a lot of them this year. Needed that nice fix it content post season 7.

4) Zuko and Katara - Avatar: the Last Airbender

Again I am a multishipper I have nothing against zukka it's cute. But I'm a zutara shipper first and foremost because when I first watched avatar I was like 13 and denying my gayness and gayness in general so I shipped the straight things and the straight things only. Most of these ships I stopped shipping - dramione, spuffy, some my little pony ones which we don't talk about. Zutara stayed. (I have nothing against any of the things I used to ship I just stopped shipping them so much/shipped new things more). I've continuously shipped zutara since I first watched avatar even if I didn't necessarily spend that much time on it it has always been here as one of my favourite ships. It has such good fanfic I swear including my favourite ever fanfic from any fandom - love thy enemy. Plus like the black games (reread this for the millionth time this year), a delicate subterfuge (which I read for the first time this year and damn it's so good) and so many more. With the avatar resurgence this year I haven't actually rewatched avatar aside from my normal random episode every now and then when I feel like it. But there's been a lot of avatar on my dash from people I follow getting into it and people I followed for avatar returning so naturally I returned to the fandom and read quite a lot of fanfic. I also read just a lot of avatar gen fics which were great at the whole found family thing I've been so obsessed with this year.

3) Catra and Adora - She Ra and the Princesses of Power

Catradora is canon! They kissed! What more is there to say. Arguably they should've been top but I never shipped them that much since I was always very much a multishipper when it came to she ra so yes I was very happy it became canon because we actually won for once but also I've never read much fanfic for them etc. But they are very much a dynamic I love and watching she ra all again in prep for season 5 I really enjoyed the build up of their relationship. The other two only go above because Buffy is my favourite show ever and damn there's some good fuffy fanfic and Aphra and Tolvan is both fresh in my mind and star wars owns me. Would love some catradora fic recs btw if anyone has them tho.

2) Buffy Summers and Faith Lehane - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I didn't realise it was last year that I got super into them but according to my ao3 bookmarks it was lol. 2020 I swear it's lasted an eternity. I got into them about a month before lockdown (which feels like another lifetime). I've loved Buffy since I first watched it when I was 13. It's arguably still my favourite TV show. I've been through a lot of ships for Buffy - bangel to spuffy and now fuffy. I still think angel and her were a beautiful ship back in season 2 and especially in the angel episode I will remember you. But faith and Buffy had so much chemistry in season 3 - she would've been a fresh start for Buffy and the amount of fix it fics I read I swear. My favourite has to be one where they met in LA during Anne and how that changed everything feat Buffy's internal homophobia.

1) Cheili Lona Aphra and Magna Tolvan - Star Wars

I read Darth Vader (2015) and Doctor Aphra (2016) for the first time at the end of 2020 (got a comic subscription which has served me very well already I've nearly finished the star wars canon comics). Just to see canon queer ladies in star wars was so magical for me as a queer lady. I didn't think star wars would be so overt yet as to have a queer kiss in canon (even if it's in the comics) and especially not with the main character of arguably their main comic series. Now we just gotta hope that we'll get it in live action someday soon. They weren't the ship I consumed the most content of in 2020 but they were the highlight of my 2020 because star wars did that and I finally found out about it

Honourable mentions: Vivian and Elle - Legally Blonde, Candace and Vanessa - Phineas and Ferb, Stevie and Alex - Wizards of Waverly Place, Xander and Spike - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I actually don't ship this but damn some authors are good - this was the ship that made me realise I don't need to like a ship if the author is good enough to write it well), Eli Vanto and Mitth'raw'nuruodo - Star Wars (started reading the books last year but finished this year and only started with fanfic this year), Villanelle and Eve - Killing Eve, Kanan and Hera - Star Wars, Barriss and Ahsoka - Star Wars, Remus and Sirius - Harry Potter, Kara and Lena - Supergirl (let's hope this becomes canon next year!) (Those last four are ones I've shipped forever some of my og ships but nothing particularly big has happened for me this year with them so)

I got Disney+ this year so rewatched a fair few things from my youth and though hey my obsession with that character may have been a little gay.

#fuffy #chelli lona aphra #aphra x tolvan #magna tolvan #zutara #top ten ships 2020 #very star wars lol #victuuri #edelgard x byleth #codywan #catradora #obitine #stucky #shory #shorypanga #idk what their ot3 name is #boy meets world #hmu if you like any of the more obscure of these #or vibe with my reasonings #top ships 2020 #and if anyone wants any fic recs for any of these ships just ask

[strangertheory]

Why do you think some fandoms are most likely to be heteronormative than others? There are plenty of fandoms in which the queer headcanons/ships are the most popular ones, but when it comes to some fandoms like ST the heteronormativity is really strong, like people denying Will being gay despite it being obvious and of course the fact that a lot of people overlook the chemistry between Mike and Will in favor of Mileven

I think the creators of Stranger Things are intentionally writing a story that on many levels involves characters discovering things about themselves that they weren't aware of before and learning how to reject society's expectations of them. Because the story is being written so that we as the audience are witnessing this process alongside the characters and from their own perspectives the hidden and repressed truths in these characters lives are not made evident to fans from the very start. I believe that those revelations, whatever they might end up being, are part of the story itself. But for there to be revelations, there must also be secrets.

The surface of the story is crafted to be, at first glance, not especially unconventional. But I believe that the writers of Stranger Things want to take us all on a journey that turns our expectations upside-down and in order to do that they can't show their hand too early on. In order to surprise fans with future plot twists the writers must first set the stage in a way that on the surface seems conventional and predictable until they decide to subvert our expectations and reveal something new about the characters and the universe that they are creating.

Stories which have more obvious queer representation and culture from the very start are often not hiding their intentions as much because their storytelling and marketing goals are different. While we do indeed have many popular series these days with overt and decently-written queer representation, the catch is that for marketing purposes those stories are (very rarely) setting out to truly surprise people when the characters are revealed to be lgbtqa+. Yes, some fans were allegedly still surprised that Adora and Catra got a very open and canonical queer romantic arc in She Ra Princesses of Power, but the series itself was not subtle in its marketing or subtle in the context of its creation. It aimed to have widespread and universal appeal and offered a well-written story with loveable characters that I believe anyone should relate to, but not a single person I know chose to watch that series and went "I expect all the characters in this colorful rebooted cartoon fantasy story created by a queer creator to be straight."

Stranger Things, as a story that is constructed to not only explore "strange things" but also subvert viewers’ expectations cannot achieve those goals by showing its hand from the start. And because of that, there will surely be people watching the series who might end up believing that they were "tricked" into following a story that they had hoped would conform to their preconceived expectations about the world and the way that they believe stories and characters "are supposed to be." But I genuinely see the Stranger Things narrative as being a multilayered, mysterious, metaphorical, emotional, and oftentimes intentionally subversive and "sneaky" story. But the trade-off is that there will always be people that either do not see those hidden layers in these types of stories or angrily reject them because of the cognitive dissonance that they feel when confronted with ideas they are uncomfortable with.

In short: I think Stranger Things is planning on subverting viewer expectations and surprising us with a lot of plot twists that include characters realizing that they are lgbtqa+, but since the writers cannot succeed at surprising viewers without some misdirection there are (unfortunately) plenty of fans that are still sitting very comfortably in their narrow-minded perceptions of certain characters since the story is not over yet and much still remains to be explored and revealed.

#subverting expectations #stranger things #stranger things theory #stranger things analysis #heteronormativity #cisheteronormativity #stranger things is queer #byler

[frankendeers]

Kylux and the Queer Literary Tradition

So, I have seen a lot of people talk about Kylux in terms of queer fetishisation or even labelling it a “crack ship”.

The discourse has somehow made Kylux out to be this straight-girl fantasy where two men are simply shipped because they are white and handsome. Such an unfavourable interpretation completely takes away from many Kyluxers being queer and/or poc themselves as well as shaming straight people for seeing queer potential where it’s not canonically stated to be. Since the comic came out, there has been much elation because it finally “confirms” some of the things that appeal to Kyluxers, therefore justifying the ship. I don’t think, however, that Kylux has ever been anything but rather conventional in its queer subtext. Kylux falls in line with a long tradition of homoerotic aggression between two men. I will try to put this into words as eloquently as I can.

First, let’s talk about how Kylo Ren/Ben Solo and Armitage Hux are queer coded on their own before moving on to their relationship.

Armitage Hux is almost comically queer coded. The act of feminising a villain to subtly convey to the audience that he is gay and therefore “morally reprehensible” has been a practice since the Hays code era (in some respects even before that -as the Victorian Age marks the beginning of our modern understanding of gender and subsequently, its subversion). He is seen to be physically weak, petty, moving and snarling and “bitching” in a way society would stereotypically ascribe to women.

His British Accent, at least from an American point of view, already marks his sexuality as ambiguous. This is not helped by the fact that he speaks in an abnormally posh way, alienating himself from the common people.Hereby, the movies draw a well-established line between decadence/queer and pragmatic/heteronormative.

In the “Aftermath” trilogy Brendol Hux states his son to be “weak willed” and “thin as a slip of paper and just as useless”, robbing him of his masculinity – no matter how ridiculous of an endeavour this is when talking about a four-year old boy. Hux is very early on criticised for not fitting into a socially expected form of manhood. This is especially evident when one compares him to his resistance rival, Poe Dameron. Now, Dameron has his own set of queer coding, but he is shown to be what is commonly viewed as “acceptably queer”. He is masculine, trained and proactive. When he ridicules Hux at the beginning of The Last Jedi, there is this juxtaposition of the helpless, feminine villain and the dashing, superior male hero. Hux is supposed to be judged as vain and arrogant while Poe takes risks and although reckless, is somehow to be admired. Further, Hux is constantly abused. He is thrown into walls letting out high pitched screams, runs away in the face of danger (as seen in the recent comic) and is pushed around by his own subordinates. His strength lies in being cunning and calculated, not stereotypically masculine virtues.

Hux’s destructive powers, his monstrosity so to speak, also follow a long-standing tradition of queer villainization. Harry Benshoff’s The Monster and The Homosexual articulates this as follows:

“[...] repressed by society, these socio-political and psychosexual Others are displaced (as in a nightmare) onto monstrous signifiers, in which form they return to wreak havoc […]” (Benshoff 65).

And what other, than a socio-political Other, is Armitage Hux - the Starkiller?

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, too, is touched by the mark of queerness. It is no coincidence that despite his raw power and muscular physique, Kylo Ren has not been adopted by hegemonic masculinity in the same way Han Solo has, for example. When the logical is traditionally seen as masculine, the realms of pure and unfiltered emotionality is feminine. And Kylo Ren is unrestrained in his vulnerability, his tears, his pain – People make fun of the dramatic ways he gives words to his feelings precisely because it is regarded as weak, as whiny, as “womanly”. His long curly hair, full lips and dress-like costume only strengthens this impression. Kylo Ren is an amalgam of masculine aggression and feminine expressiveness. Some of his outbursts even remind of the pseudo-illness of hysteria. The gendered lines are blurred and unclear in Kylo Ren, diffusing any efforts to appease the binary. Benshoff describes this as a form of queer existence which does not only constitute itself in opposition to what is considered normal but “ultimately opposed the binary definitions and prescriptions of a patriarchal heterosexism” (Benshoff 63).

Both are not easily categorised. They are patched up by multiple, gendered signifyers. Kylo Ren’s masculine body in contrast to his femininized fashion. Hux’s slender body with his stiff and masculinised military get-up. Hux’s toxic tendency to avoid showing his emotions while also being shown as weak, womanly, cowardly. Kylo Ren is an excellent warrior, yet simultaneously being prone to emotional outbursts. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s famous work Monster Theory (Seven Theses) elaborates upon this further, while acknowledging that queer figures are most commonly depicted as the monstrous Other:

“The refusal to participate in the classificatory “order of things” is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration.” (Cohen 6).

Nonetheless, many queer people feel empowered by these figures. Lee Edelman theorises in his polemic No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive about the nature of queerness as a force of cultural resistance. According to Edelman, the queer must always refuse societal expectations of a perpetual future and embrace the death drive instead. In this sense, queerness stands in direct opposition to futurity as it negates any meaning in sexual reproduction and marriage (cp. Edelman 13). When Hux destroys planets, when Kylo Ren proposes to burn it all down “The Empire, your Parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi”, they are not merely killing the past. They are also negating the worth of categories that make up future and present alike. They are resisting the heteronormative values of production.

Now that we have the puzzle pieces that illustrate how Hux and Kylo are queer figures in on themselves, it might be interesting to examine how they work together.

In her text “Epistemology of the Closet”, Eve Sedgwick talks about a common gothic trope where two men are caught in a feud full of mutual hatred. In this case, both men are mirror images of one another, making them especially vulnerable to the other’s advances: "[…] a male hero is in a close, usually murderous relation to another male figure, in some respects his 'double', to whom he seems to be mentally transparent."

Kylo and Hux are very clearly mirrors of one another. Aside from the gendered oppositions I have already illustrated, they are each other’s double in every sense of the word. Born on opposite ends of an age-old war. Both caught in complicated relationship with their fathers whom both have killed out of opposite motivations (loving them too much vs. hating them with a passion). They represent the opposite ends in the binaries for logic vs. spirituality, restraint vs. wildness, control vs. sensuality, technology vs. nature etc.

This shot from The Last Jedi shows both of them mirroring each other visually, henceforth strengthening this impression.

They are "mentally transparent" to each other, because they are different sides of the same coin which Snoke tossed around to his whims. Even their aggression takes on erotic forms. It is hard to deny the homoerotic implications in choking another men to make him submit, forcing him onto his knees. The breaching of personal spaces and looming over each other, the obsessive need to prove one’s own worth to the male other with which one is engaged in a homosocial bond:

“The projective mutual accusation of two mirror-image men, drawn together in a bond that renders desire indistinguishable from prédation, is the typifying gesture of paranoid knowledge.” (Sedgwick 100).

And through all of this, I have not even talked about the collaborative potential between the two of them. Their instinct to protect one another despite insiting the opposite. How both of them could overcome their trauma by engaging with the other, who suffered so similarly under family obligation and Snoke’s abuse.

Works Cited:

Benshoff, Harry: “The Monster and the Homosexual.” In: Harry Benshoff (ed. and introd.)/Sean Griffin (ed. and introd.): Queer Cinema, the Film Reader. New York: Routledge 2004. Pp. 63-74.

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)." Jeffrey Jerome (ed. and preface) Cohen: Monster Theory: Reading Culture (1996): 3-25.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. ,2004. Print.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick. Epistemology Of the Closet. Berkeley, Calif. :University of California Press, 2008.

#Kylux #Armitage Hux #Kylo Ren #Ben Solo #General Hux #Hux #Benarmie #Kylux meta #sw #sw meta #sw analysis #tfa #tlj #long post #long text #hux comic #huxlo

[abanomath]

DC’s Tone Deafness

So I don’t really like ranting or being negative, but DC Universe recently released an article to celebrate pride month about the Top 5 canon and non-canon LGBTQA+ relationships in Young Justice.

And the tone deafness is just off the charts. Like most of the world, I’m not American so I needed someone to screen-cap the actual article for me. I’m going to organize my thoughts and go down below.

General

For one, its pretty obvious the writer didn’t look at the source material. This article sounds like it was written by someone filled in on the basics and told to write a good PR article for DC.

There are a lot of little details in the story, such as when the writer claims that they “showcased even more LGBTQA+ protagonists in season 3″ implying they had previously, which they hadn’t. One character was implied to be bisexual in the comics, never on screen, but more on that below. Season 3 was the first LGBTQA+ rep for the show.

Also its always a bit tone deaf when in an article celebrating LGBTQA+ and diversity in your show, that you have a list of 5 “ships”, of which only ONE is actually a couple in canon. Not only did they need to resort to non-canon ones, they included people that can’t be called a “ship” or couple.

1. Kaldur/Wyynde

This is the only actual LGBTQA+ couple on the list that is canon in the show, and I liked them. But I can’t deny that Kaldur who was a main cast member for the past two season’s had a vastly reduced role (compared to straight cis white characters like Dick and Conner). He was basically written out of the first half of the season, and then his relationship was really present for 1.5 - 2 episodes max. This in a season that was marked with excessive attention given to heterosexual relationships (like seriously, basically every character was in some form of relationship on-screen). The one healthy LGBTQA relationship got less attention than Black Lightning and Dr. Jace’s romance, something that ultimately went nowhere, Dick/Barbara, even Megan/Conner when Megan was also essentially written out of the season.

2. Marie Logan and Rita Farr

They really dug deep for this “ship”. Ironically, they start this by talking about the scene in Young Justice #25, when Queen B’s powers work on Garfield’s mother. This was the first implication her being bisexual. And of course, she also dies in this scene, so starting off with a “Bury your gays” trope where Marie’s queerness literally got her killed and orphaned her son.

There isn’t much more to say about this ship, because it literally doesn’t exist. The shipping community for this is so small you have to go digging deep into tags to find even hints of it. The article even basically says this, posing the ship as a question. As being interesting. (Does it count as Bury Your Gays when both woman are dead before their relationship is even hinted at?)

In other words this article about celebrating LGBTQA ships literally had to try and CREATE A SHIP to reach 5 ships. Despite the fact there are plenty of LGBTQ fanon ships (Birdflash being the most prominent one left off the list). It really hits at the thing I said above, this is a “write us a good PR article with the barest amount of effort put into it” situation.

3. Harper Row and Halo

Oh boy don’t get me started on this. There are so many problems with how they did Halo this season, she is basically tone deaf personified. (For the purpose of this rant, I’ll be using the “she” pronouns for Halo, because I have no choice but to assume they are her preference, unless the show purposely spent the entire season mis-gendering her, but I don’t think her characterization really supports that she prefers “her/she”).

I’ve had a problem with Halo from the start, because she is basically an attempt for the writers to shallowly include representation without having to actually deal with it. She is Muslim representation, but not actually Muslim (as she confirms on the show). She wears the Hijab because she feels like it. She is genderqueer, but they never once talk about her pronouns. She refers to herself as “not feeling like a boy or a girl” and constantly refers to herself in the third person, but everyone uses “she/her” pronouns without asking her. They even have a scene where she informs them she is genderqueer, and its never brought up again without asking any actual follow up questions or awareness. They also infantalize and treat her as a little girl.

Additionally, she falls into one of my greatest pet peeves - she is genderqueer but for fantasy-scifi reasons. For those that follow genderqueer or transgender characters in media, this is a very common trope. Essentially, the trope is when someones gender identity is caused by/determined from otherworldly experiences.

This trope bugs me because it completely undermines the point of representation. Representation in media is supposed to show the audience that these are natural human experiences and that people like this exist and are normal. But the trope ensures that the experiences are not normal human experiences.

(and don’t even get me started on the fact that this show has made New Genesis tech gendered before, with Sphere. And even gender the bioship in the same season they pull this for Halo).

Lastly, she also falls within the “promiscuous bisexual” trope, with the very kiss this article praises as THE FIRST LGBT KISS ON SCREEN for the show. This is a problematic trope that DC seems to love. Basically, this scene has Halo cheating on her boyfriend with another young classmate, engaging in two kisses with her.

Now I’m not going to say that all LGBTQA+ relationships need to be wholesome one true loves. Problematic behaviour like Halo and Harper’s is a story telling tool. But the fact that the LGBTQA+ was told going into the season there would be LGBT rep so they should watch, and this was the first rep we got 18 episodes into the season? It felt a bit like a slap in the face. They could’ve had her break up with Brion beforehand, or any number of different ways that would even keep the scene in tact.

And the relationship doesn’t really go anywhere anyways. Harper doesn’t really remain part of the season going forward, Halo and her boyfriend continue their relationship after it was revealed until the end of the season.

This is ultimately my problem with Halo. There are a few tropes that basically are summed up as “writers put all their diversity into one character” which is basically what Halo is. Each of these qualities, from faith to gender identity to sexual orientation could’ve been a fleshed out character arc (oh! I forgot to mention she also falls into the “My gender identity isn’t cis, so my sexual orientation is also bi/pan/gay” trope). Instead all the diverse qualities of Halo are addressed shallowly as the show-runners pat themselves on the back.

4. Bluepulse

I’ve ranted a lot so I’m not going to go crazy on this point. You can probably find tons of posts about the drama between Bluepulse Shippers and the show, which again makes their inclusion kind of tone-deaf. Bluepulse shippers have been called disgusting by the fandom for the three year age gap, an age gap that was never confirmed on screen and you had to go digging in Greg’s personal message board to know (resulting in many people shipping them not knowing their ages at all).

In addition, the showrunners made it clear they did not like this ship over the several years the show has been off the air. And in Season 3 they give Jaime a girlfriend….who is a lesbian in the comics. Now Traci and Jaime did date in the comics before she came out, and this is another Earth. But when the sole purpose of their relationship being on screen was to tell the audience that bluepulse wasn’t happening, choosing a lesbian character to play the cis straight girlfriend is a bit of a slap in the face. again.

5. Bart Allen and Eduardo

Queerbaiting, nuff said.

For those not in the know, Ed is a character introduced as a runaway in Season 2, but he doesn’t really interact with Bart until mid-season 3. There is an episode where a group of heroes go to a carnival, and Ed and Bart appear to be on a date. They are in a group with all couples, except for Virgil. Virgil laments being the only person there without a significant other, implying that Bart and Ed are together. Additionally, Bart and Ed do everything that the other couples do together. It was pretty heavy-handed that the couples were there on dates.

And fans liked this! Even if Bluepulse wasn’t happening, Bart may still be bisexual or gay. This was made worse by Greg retweeting and liking Ed/Bart content, and not giving a straight answer on whether they were dating.

Which obviously, creates the expectation among LGBTQA+ fans that they will get together. They don’t. And later at a convention, one of the main writers (not Greg) said something like “its funny how the fans see relationships between characters differently from our intent” when asked a question about them. Essentially confirming that yeah, they didn’t have any actual content for them planned anyway. Though they did have an addendum that they may build on the fan reception/view of the relationship in the future (basically saying, maybe they’ll be canon).

As much as I’d like to be optimistic that they actually will get together and we’ll get a LGBTQ relationship that is in the spotlight for once, I’m not. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on this point.

And that was my TEDtalk about how tone-deaf DC patting themselves on the back for LGBTQA+ content in Young Justice is. Especially when other animated shows do so much better with fewer episodes and screen time.

#morning repost #Young Justice #DC Universe #DC Animation #Bart Allen #Impulse #Kid Flash #Jaime Reyes #Blue Beetle #Bluepulse #Eduardo Dorado Jr. #el dorado #zetapulse #halo #harper row #halo/harper row #Jaime Reyes/Bart Allen #Eduardo/Bart Allen #Edbarto #Kaldur #Kaldur/Wyynde #Wyynde #Aqualad #Aquaman #Earth-16 #Marie Logan #Rita Farr