#also as you can see there is an overlap between my fashion regardless of the headspace im in teehee

[t00thpasteface]

Hiiiii₍⁠₍⁠◞⁠(⁠ ⁠•⁠௰⁠•⁠ ⁠)⁠◟⁠₎⁠₎

Could you explain the hipster Vs fandom war. I've been on here for like four years and I never knew that existed lol and btw I really really love your art and you are one my biggest inspos for how I imagine and draw my Clark.

i'm not sure i can explain it in a way that makes sense, and certainly not in a way that makes you say "i understand why this was such a big deal", but gl'bgolyb knows i can try.

first, let me take you on a sensory experience... picture in your mind the following things... skinny jeans... nerd glasses... a weirdly dapper fashion sense in a time where everything is baggy and neon... boom, you have 2010-2014 online tumblr hipster culture. and also 70s elvis costello, oddly enough.

although admittedly i don't know his stance on pumpkin spice lattes.

anyway. now that that's burned into your brain, consider a significant population of this exact type of person that has already been well-established on this microblogging platform around the turn of the decade. tumblr doesn't really have an app yet because smartphones haven't taken over everyone's life yet, and online fandom culture is still largely dominated by deviantart as the main "fandom hub". most people, myself included, are getting their main meme fixes from facebook (which your parents were not yet on) or the icanhazcheezburger image-aggregator network. THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED WHEN THE FANDOM NATION ATTACKED.

somehow, a huge crowd of people who considered their favorite books/movies/games to be core personality traits began to set up shop on this fair slate-blue isle. i number myself among this crowd, having been lured here by google-image-searching for miscellaneous fanart in 2011. the "old guard" largely belongs to, and continuously attracts new bloggers within, a burgeoning subculture that 100% defines itself by bucking popular trends and social expectations... whether or not this is actually accomplished by purchasing beverages from starbucks and putting old film filters on every photo, i cannot say.

you may be seeing an issue already arising: hey, if the hipsters hate everything that's popular and gatekeep all their interests, and the fandom bloggers are obsessed with extremely popular franchises and are hell-bent making them even more popular, isn't that going to cause a little friction?

well, yes. it caused a fuck ton of friction. a division arose early on between "the fandom side of tumblr" and "the hipster side of tumblr." some people, like myself, played both sides. others abstained from the rigid dichotomy and considered themselves to be on another "side," like the science side of tumblr, known for explaining relatively straightforward STEM concepts in large essays that began with something like "listen up fuckers."

ahhh, unfriendable. such a narrow little window in time where cheezburger sites and facebook had equal sway in the online zeitgeist.

interestingly, as someone who trawled a LOT of aesthetic tags, the most popular of which was simply #aesthetic (it was shockingly consistent in there), i never actually saw hipster bloggers complaining about fandom bloggers. it was always the other way around, with fandom bloggers bragging about how much they're freaking out the squares to get cool points with other fandom bloggers, all while never actually engaging with the hipster bloggers because their tags rarely overlapped.

hi, marge! we're freaking out the hipsters!

regardless of whether there was any material reality to it, or if it was simply a Minitrue level of entirely fictional warfare, this concept entrenched itself into the fandom bloggers, likely as a way to still feel "edgy" and unique while, again, obsessing over extremely popular and mainstream things like doctor who, pokemon, avatar the last airbender, the brand-new mcu, and other decidedly non-counterculture media. even with things it felt like no one irl had heard of, like hetalia and homestuck, those were online juggernauts nonetheless, the former of which had dominated deviantart for years and the latter of which prompted hotels and convention centers across the world to implement very strict rules about unsealed body paint. people treated fandoms like they were some sort of exclusive country club with membership fees and a dress code. and dunking on hipsters became an entire genre of Fake Internet Story, which were already pervasive on this website.

what's the point of being in a clique if there's no outgroup to flex on? #swag

this whole phenomenon ran concurrently, even symbiotically, with other tumblrisms like "tumblr university" and those horrendous "not like other girls" memes...

which means, of course, it was absolutely dead in the fucking water once DashCon happened in 2014. i don't need to tell you what happened at DashCon (there's a million essays and videos about it if you're one of today's lucky ten thousand who's never heard of it), but all across the fandom side of tumblr, it felt like finding out your parents lied about santa claus. turns out the fandoms you're in don't actually say anything about who you are as a person, a bunch of tumblrinas can't just will a fully functional micronation into existence just by wearing tacky merchandise in a public venue, and magic probably isn't real.

i wish i had some grand way to end this story, but really the moral is the same as it ever was: online drama is eternal, inescapable, and completely fucking worthless. if you only post to get mad at shit, especially if you're just making up a guy to get mad at, cut that out. touch grass. look at images of cats. i don't remember any of the enemies i made from this era, but i fondly remember all the friends, and i'm richer for making those positive connections. that's all for today's episode of Tumblr History with Toothpaste Face... remember to tip your waitress and stay minty.

#also fellow Clark Enjoyer rest assured i'm going to draw him for his birthday later this month!!!! my beloved big blue boy scout... #shebbz shoutz #shebbz editz #tumblr #tumblr history #tumblr culture #ask

[aiyexayen]

Ship ask: Xie-wang/Wen Kexing

1. What made you ship it?

this moment. just this. i don't typically give an excess amount of thought to shipping on my first watchthrough of something, especially something i'm so captivated by. but this moment popped on my screen and i was like "HELLO?!"

i'm still entirely lukewarm about the necessity of the scene but i am all here for over the top unnecessary dramatic tension between these two murder babies villains.

2. What are your favourite things about the ship?

the contrast between the things they don't have in common and the things they do.

they're both orphans, they were both raised to be killers, they're both very good at what they do, they both desperately need to be genuinely loved and both have the capacity for intense and terrifying and consuming devotion. they're both leaders in their own right.

but for one, their lives were so different. wen kexing grew up in hell, with no one to take care of him--he had no one to really rely on, even luo-yi. we know about the beatings and we can guess about more. xie'er ostensibly grew up in luxury, with servants and his yifu. with the way he reacts to yifu slapping him, it feels likely that's never happened before. but it's also like--whew, is that a fucked up relationship. manipulative and horrifying. two entirely different types of fucked up, one because of isolation and one because of, well, zhao jing. which puts all their hard and sharp and soft edges in different places, all their hurts in a different order, all their expectations for relationships and concepts of self and their needs.

they both have style, education, an appreciation for refinement and fashion and such. xie'er's grew out of having been raised around luxury and his deep and abiding desire to simply be furen, i swear, and to be seen and accepted and enough and Pleasing. and kexing's grew from obsessively learning about the outside world, about other kinds of people and life and plunging himself into these constructs of importance that had no bearing on any of his lived experience but creating a self that fit into them regardless because he needed something.

and in spite of xie'er growing up more pampered and with access to more people, i think wen kexing has the advantage of him when it comes to caring for someone else. he had a-xiang, after all, and part of the point was that they kept each other human even in a place of ghosts. i think xie'er still has a bit of a journey ahead of him where that's concerned. wen kexing did, too, when he came out of gui gu, but i think he had the advantage.

their motives/purpose also differ considerably in a lot of ways. wen kexing has been consumed with revenge his whole life, with his own plans--and xie'er with his yifu's plans. xie'er has always deferred to yifu, while kexing made a point of becoming gui gu guzhu so he would not be accountable to anyone. they have kind of opposite journeys they need to take where that's concerned. xie'er needed to figure out how to value himself outside of zhao jing, how to see himself as a complete person, how to figure out what he wanted out of his life and where his own ambitions would take him and what kind of leader he was without a leash. kexing needed to figure out how to rely on someone, how to see himself as a human at all, how to accept what he actually wanted out of life and allow himself to have it, even to the point of learning a different kind of leadership as a partner and a subordinate.

these things could lead to such an interesting ship dynamic. it could be chaos and fire and explosions or it could be soft. thinking about where in their stories do they meet, what struggles are they currently having and how do they clash or overlap? in what ways can they help each other or hurt each other? xie'er could be expecting yifu and instead he gets someone who is so straightforward when he's mean and genuine when he's soft and who doesn't hide his sarcasm behind sweet lies or turn any moment of concern or care into a subtle transaction. kexing could, to his complete bafflement, experience the full weight of someone's obsessive jealous devotion. they could make each other so much worse. we just don't know.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

i don't know any opinions about this ship at all. that seems to be a general thing with me. my opinion is that they should kiss.

#wen kexing #xie'er #word of honor #my meta #shipping meme

[maxwell-grant]

Jumping off from my previous question/suggestion, might I please ask if there are any superheroes you think would make fine Pulp Villains and any Supervillains you think would make convincing Pulp Heroes?

I'm gonna go ahead and remark that I'd personally suggest to anyone who's trying to create pulp characters inspired by superheroes (which would be probably about 90% of you who may want to do that sort of thing) to flip the script around a little. As in, don't try to create pulp analogues to the Justice League/Avengers upfront, but play around with some of the lesser-known icons and filter those through your idea of what “pulp” means (which is gonna be quite different than my own or anyone else’s). 

I’m not gonna really mention characters I’ve already talked about before like Vandal Savage or Namor, instead I’ll pick new ones and see what can be highlighted about them.

Regarding “Superheroes who could make fine/convincing Pulp Villains”, even though he’s a character I've read basically nothing on, Martian Manhunter definitely leaped out to me as an obvious option. He’s a Sci-Fi Superman who takes the first half of the name to an extreme that borders on comical, except he’s not a square-jawed white man, he’s a 1.000 year old green alien from Mars with shapeshifting powers who can look as monstrous as the artist desires. He’s the product of an advanced civilization and genetic modification, and on top of the Flying Brick powerset and shapeshifting, he also has incredibly powerful and extensive telepathic abilities, he can become invisible, phaze through matter, use telekinesis and other weird abilities. A lot of pulp stories closer to sci-fi were based around the idea of taking one of these abilities and extrapolating horrific consequences for them, and J’onn has those by the dozens. He also has an extremely mundane weakness that would allow him to be beaten by Macready with a blowtorch if that’s where the story ended.

He was also a law enforcement officer from Mars who became a police detective and it’s even right there in his name, and again, I have never read anything he’s in (I should probably pick the Orlando mini), I know he’s for all intents and purposes a generally nice man who tends to job a lot in crossovers and cartoons, but the idea of taking all those great vast and horrifying alien powers, combining all of them into a single character who also happens to be the last survivor of a doomed planet (and one who actually lived through it’s collapse), and then making that character a former cop trying to resume his work on Earth? 

That is a Pulp Supervillain begging to happen, and a particularly horrifying one at that. And hey, speaking of The Thing-

Now, Plastic Man’s potential for horror has already been explored quite a bit in some of the darker DC continuities like Injustice and DCeased, and it’s quite funny seeing a lot of these turn Plastic Man into The Thing because there were quite a handful of Wold Newton pages that ran with the idea that Macready from the original story was Doc Savage, and that the secret chemicals that Eel O’Brian was hit by that gave him his powers were actually samples of The Thing contained in one of Savage’s labs. Regardless, the idea of a former street crook suddenly gaining bizarre shapeshifting abilities that allow him to reign terror on his gangster associates could make for a great premise as a pulp crime story that veers into horror as the gangsters gradually figure out what is Eel O’Brian’s deal, and then the story can take a more tragic turn.

The thing about Jack Cole’s Plastic Man that modern takes on the character neglect is that, while Plas was a lively roguish anti-hero (arguably the first of it’s kind in comics), he’s still for intents and purposes “the straight man” (HA, right, Plastic Man being “straight”). He’s the relatively sane hero who plays off Woozy’s wackier misadventures and the imaginative madness that Jack Cole paints his adventures with, and it makes for an interesting contrast considering Plastic Man is already a weird character, having to ramp up the strangeness of the world around him so that he still remains the sane man. There are ways to twist this into something quite horrifying, even tragic for Plastic Man as he either struggles to maintain coherency, or embraces the shifting chaos the world’s spiraling into for better or worse (and definitely for the worse towards those on the receiving end of his vengeance, or even his humor).

Now, onto the flipside, regarding Supervillains that could become Pulp Heroes -

Normally I’d not mention the Batman villains here, because I already have a lot to talk about in regards to them as is, they comprise some of my favorite comic characters, but I pretty much have to make an exception for Two-Face in this topic, as not only a pretty obvious option but one with even case studies to prove it, as not only do we have The Black Bat, a 1930s costumed pulp hero with an identical origin story and several other conceptual overlaps with Batman, as well as The Whisperer, a young hotshot police commissioner who dresses up as a disfigured vigilante to kill criminals without consequence (and who’s somehow less of a maniacal asshole in his secret identity than in his regular one), but it turns out that there actually was a 1910s pulp hero called The Two-Faced Man:

Crewe was created by “Varick Vanardy,” the pseudonym of Frederic van Rensselaer Dey (Nick Carter, Doctor Quartz), and appeared in three short stories and two novels and short story collections from 1914 to 1919, beginning with “That Man Crew” (The Cavalier, Jan. 24, 1914). 

Crewe is “The Two-Faced Man.” 

He is in his forties and has gray hair and a “sharply cut and handsome profile—until one caught a view of the other side of his face and saw the almost hideous blemish that nearly covered it, and which graduated in corrugated irregularity from a delicate pink to repulsive purple.” 

Crewe is two-faced in another way. Crewe is a saloon owner in below Washington Square. But he has another identity: Birge Moreau, portraitist and socialite hanger-on. Crewe uses both his identities to solve crimes as an amateur detective.

The only person to know about both of Crewe’s identities is a police inspector who is also Crewe’s friend and who Crewe helps in pressing cases - The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heores by Jess Nevins

And speaking of obvious picks for Supervillains turned Pulp Heroes,

Assuming I even need to make a case for Kraven the Hunter other than just presenting this cropped panel from Squirrel Girl and in particular the art painted on the Kra-Van, or even just telling you to read Squirrel Girl and it’s take on “The Unhuntable Sergei” (I had no idea most of the people saying “Kraven’s arc in Squirrel Girl is as good if not better than Kraven’s Last Hunt” weren’t actually joking in the slightest and I speak as someone who has Kraven among their absolute favorite Marvel characters, it had no right being that good), I’m going to quote the brilliant Rogue’s Review from The Mindless Ones that lays down in painstaking detail why Kraven could make a killer protagonist in that horrifically over-the-top pulp fashion

One thing that strikes me writing this, is how well Kraven could hold his own comic. There’s always room for a book spotlighting a ruthless, hardcore, gentleman bastard, and Kraven’s raison d’etre makes him supremely versatile, so well suited to any genre, any environment. It’s odd that more writers haven’t jumped on the fact that in a universe where off-world travel is possible – indeed, common – a hunter like Kraven would have a field day. 

I can just imagine the opening scene – herds of weird cthuloid bat creatures grazing in the gloomy green nitrogen fields, bathed in lethal, bone splintering fog, when, suddenly, LIGHT! from above and an unholy bellowing: “CTHGRGN fthgrgnARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHGN!”

They look up in fear and then they start to run – ploughing into and over each other, tentacles flailing, as from the space-ship’s docking bay Kraven silently plummets, barely dressed for the cold, a glowing knife smothered in elder signs jammed between his teeth. 

You should have seen him one night previous, sipping alien tokay around the Captain’s table with the other guests, discussing the morning’s hunt; and the way he insulted the Skrull dignitary by forgetting himself and accidentally sporting his favourite piece of formal wear: his boiling unstable dinner-jacket of many colours, fashioned from the hide of one of the Ambassador’s super kinsmen.

Whoops!

Midway through Kraven explaining how the best way to irreparably damage a symbiote is to wait until its bonded with you and then seriously maim yourself, the Skrull decided it might be a good idea to simmer down, while his beautiful Inhuman lover hung on every word.

The deeper I get into this the more convinced I am that the MU’s hunter-killer extraordinaire wouldn’t limit himself to bloody planet Earth. And neither would he limit himself to this dimension, or universe or timeline. The guy’d be just as at home leaping, sword raised, onto the back of a T-Rex in the Savage Land, as he would be ploughing through werewolves in the graveyards of Arkham or tracking a howling Demon across Mephistopheles’ realm. 

He’d work perfectly in all these environments because he has a damn good reason to be casting a bloody swathe through them: wherever there’s big game, you’ll find Kraven.

The next choice I guess is an oddball, but not that much of an oddball if you know already what is my main frame of reference towards Marvel

I don’t think people appreciate enough that the main reason Shuma-Gorath has anything resembling a fanbase has nothing whatsoever to do with the comics he was in, but entirely because, when Capcom designers had a list of Marvel characters to pick from to work on Marvel Super Heroes, they took a look at the diet Cthulhu and went “gimme THAT one”, and then went all-in in giving the alien squid monster a funky personality along with a great stage and music and animations and all that great fighting game character stuff, and now he’s maybe the most popular Dr Strange villain along with Dormammu and Mordo, despite having ZERO film appearences or major showings in comic sagas.

Capcom's designers redefined Shuma-Gorath from a nebulous cosmic evil into a comically smug cartoon bastard who can rant about devouring all dimensions and souls horrifically while also cracking poses and zingers like “How do you expect to win a fight with only two arms?” and having dinners with Dhalsim or hosting Japanese game shows in his endings, and it kills me that none of this ever made it’s way into any depictions of the character outside of MvC. 

So that’s kinda what I’d go with. I’d take Capcom’s Shuma-Gorath, depower him a bit obviously from his canonical power, and run with the premise of his MvC3 ending where he decides that, well, if he's the unlikely savior of this pathetic planet and these wretched human dogs like him so much, and he’s clearly having a much better time here among them than he ever had drifting among the stars cealessly consuming life, then maybe he can take a break from all that eldritch business and keep up hosting the Super Monster Awesome Hour and maybe fight whatever PITIFUL villains think can take HIS planet. I mean, he’ll probably still end up destroying the planet by the end, but why not give this hero business a try?

Just until he gets his full powers back of course. 

I mean you can’t deny he DOES look pretty good in that bowtie, surely The Great Shuma-Gorath wouldn’t be so unmerciful as to deny these vile wastes of flesh something good to look at in their brief and miserable lives.

#replies tag #marvel comics #marvel #dc comics #dc #pulp heroes #pulp villains #martian manhunter #plastic man #kraven the hunter #two-face #shuma-gorath #marvel vs capcom

[my-writings-and-musings]

Same anon thank you for answering my question! I was wondering if you could do headcanons for MTMTE Rung, Megatron, Rodimus, Minimus, and Swerve with an Artisic human reader that just sees the good and creative artist side of everything? From books to pictures to even their own bot? Like they can just look at their bot and go out on a whole rant on how beautiful their optics are from the color to their expression. if that’s too many characters you can take any one, I don’t mind! Thank you and have a good day ❤️

You're welcome! I'm always open for clarification, so feel free to ask questions about whatever you'd like if you're unsure on anything. I took a little liberty with this one, but I've got all the requested bots because darn it all these beautiful mechs deserve recognition!

Rung

·He discovers your artistic inclination thanks to years of experience reading personalities and emotions at a glance, but he wasn't prepared for the depth of your conviction in seeing the world through a creative lens, which he learned upon speaking to you about your process as an artist. This surprise grows as he sees you sketching around the ship, your exuberance for the inherent beauty in everything coming through in every conversation you share.

·When he praises some of your sketches on a quiet day in his office and is compelled to ask how you developed your style, he's fascinated by your explanation, and his spark is warmed by how beautifully you describe the world around you and credit it for inspiring you. He's visibly shocked when your list of current subjects and muses includes him specifically, and you can't help but chuckle at the usually calm bot looking so absolutely flustered. There's no way for him to hide any of that feeling when he requests a bit of clarification; there's hundreds of bots on board, what about him could possibly stand out?

·You're happy to elaborate on your process to a bot who so regularly underestimates his worth and lay out why he in particular piques your interest. The warmth and goodness of his being is such a rare and beautiful thing, you explain, but also so rarely appreciated that it drives you to try and capture that essence in a manner one can see. How could you not? Such compassion and empathy and forgiveness should be remembered! You've also seen that he's capable of accepting any genuine apology, and to have that level of mercy after so much war is beautiful, enough that you have to try and show it.

·To say he's touched is an understatement of unfathomable proportions. Removing his lenses to clear optics blurred with tears, he doesn't even know how to begin processing your praise of his character when you add that his physical self hardly fails to encourage you either. His glasses nearly slip from his hands when he hears you say that. You continue quite easily; the kindness in his optics and the sweetness of his smile, combined with his genuinely handsome profile, simply inspire you to start sketching.

·He's touched, but you have to understand, he is NOT accustomed to this level of praise. Between the near tears and the blushing he has to politely excuse himself to recover from this absolute tsunami of emotions, but being flustered and melted at once is enough to have him smiling through a little blush all day long. While he tries to take a little bit of your mindset into his everyday life going forward, he gets a bit dazed every time he sees a sketch of yours that includes his face, as that level of artistic devotion being dedicated to him is more than he'll ever be able to process. Not that he minds...

Megatron

·Being more familiar with the written word, he enjoys the arts but has little experience with those who create them, and time has not been on his side in regards to learning more. Thus, you're one of the first artistically inclined individuals he's been able to discuss the topic with, which he was motivated to do after catching a glimpse of your work. He could swear some of your sketches bear a resemblance to him, but he says nothing on the matter and is certain his optics are tricking him.

·Your talk of technique quickly surprises him by shifting to inspiration, which to you is the primary driving force of your work, as it influences how you go about conveying the subject matter. Eager to share what you mean, you explain that anything can have beauty worthy of capturing if you just take the time to look at it right. Even the most mundane or seemingly unappealing things can be remarkable if you know their story, and you want to convey that energy as wordlessly as possible.

·A little overwhelmed but quite impressed by your manner of reasoning, he rather jokingly asks if even beings like himself could ever inspire you, or perhaps another artist with your mindset. He's caught off gaurd like never before when you, quite enthusiastically, reply that he most certainly can and does! To keep his composure he recalls portraits of his likeness being commissioned to inspire his soldiers, but never believing these fell under the category of art so much as they did propaganda. They often depicted him quite... violently as well.

·Having never seen these pieces, you reply that your own experience is tied more to how you see him now, and you flip through your sketchbook to demonstrate. As close to your level as can be, he's speechless while you explain what you wanted to capture about him in each sketch, whether it's a quick study or a detailed project; and that's how safe he makes you feel. Hearing himself referred to as a protector cuts straight through his powerful armor.

·You depict him looking almost... gentle? Hearing you describe the his immense size as a source of comfort and his strength as a tool of keeping peace processes about as clearly to him as a foreign language, but he nods along and keeps the conversation going until his duties call him away. Though he says nothing of it, he volunteers himself for more of the physically demanding work around the ship. His body's purpose had always been decided for him, but you've reminded him he has the only true say in its use, and that everything really is a matter of perspective. Perhaps he'll take up sketching once this is all over.

Rodimus

·He's certainly always had an appreciation for visual appeal, even if his idea of beauty doesn't often overlap with what most would consider artistically valuable. This and his natural alertness makes him quick to notice you often sketch about the ship, frequently when he's present, but at first he leaves you alone to work in peace. Having a hobby on this crew is beyond valuable, and he doesn't want to distract you from a passion... That is, until he decides on one especially slow day to just ask you what you like to doodle about.

·You can tell he wants to be a little nosy, if only because he's naturally a curious bot about these things, but you're more than happy to share regardless. There's a lot due to the ample downtime on the quest, and he has to squint so he can properly scan the many sketches on the human sized paper. He happily recognizes friends, locales about the ship, even earth things he knows about... but he's not ready when he finds a picture of himself.

·While he remains outwardly playful, teasing you with how he'd pose if you only asked, he's internally flattered that you took the time to draw him. More specifically, he's touched by the way you drew him. The sketches and portraits portray him as a calm but amicable leader, standing tall and serving as a guide to those around him, a true "father to his men" kind of bot... it's everything he wants to be, but is quite certain he's not. He's barely able to keep up his smooth persona when he asks about your process.

·You explain that you find inspiration in everything, but he's been your chosen subject lately for a lot of reasons. It's no secret he's handsome, but you see something more when you look at him, and you did everything you could to show it here; there's a real leader in him. Maybe some bots don't see it under all the bluster and sarcasm, but you see how much he cares for every bot on his crew. He wants to be the best for all of them, and even if he struggles at times, that effort is beautiful to you.

·It takes everything in him to bite back some very embarrassing tears, and the crack in his voice doesn't help him hide the emotion, though he covers that up with unconvincing coughs and claims something got in his optic. From then on he seems to stand a little taller and find his assigned duties a little easier to bear, but you absolutely notice how he poses in what he believes to be heroic fashion whenever your sketchbook comes out. Inspired by his enthusiasm, you invite him to model more officially, and the crew is just happy to see him so enthusiastic.

Minimus

·Being as observant as he is, your consistent appraisal of your surroundings is not something he'd ever miss, but your frequent sketching in the most random places does leave him absolutely mystified. Every time he sees you there's artistic supplies on your person, but he can't find anything that appears to be worthy of putting to paper, so what could you be drawing? He respects your privacy too much, and feels too silly about his curiosity, to interpret and ask you for an explanation.

·Thus it's with some small eagerness that he finds one of your sketchbooks after it's been misplaced, and he sees the perfect opportunity to slip in a question. For the sake of handling something so tiny, he approaches without his armor, offering the lost item back with barely concealed pride at your delight to have it returned. In the moment of truth he nearly falters, but does indeed manage to ask what you draw around the ship. He leaves out the fact that he's observed you whenever you draw in his presence.

·The question has an answer only he seems to think isn't obvious; him! You spend time together frequently, and while everything is fair game for sketching, he's a very regular subject for you. Whether he's wearing the Magnus armor or not, you explain that the commanding aura he radiates is something you can't help but find beautiful. That word choice baffles him enough that he has to interrupt; beautiful? Commanding? Even without his armor?? You're delighted to assure him that you absolutely mean that.

·Hearing you describe the details of your reasoning, like the quiet dignity of his stance or the calm intelligence of his red optics, touches his spark in ways he wasn't expecting. He's calm and speaks softly as he keeps the conversation going, asking questions about your various works and listening attentively when you answer, processing your view of the universe as being packed with beauty in all the places people don't think to look.

·Any bot that sees him during the remainder of the day absolutely notices the change to his entire demeanor; namely that he's smiling a soft and barely perceptible smile. It's not long after he requests a few sketches from you to keep in his office, whether they're of him or not, and he has them framed in places of honor. He doesn't tell you, but you figure it out, that one particular drawing of him you gift for his sake is kept securely stored in a compartment by his spark.

Swerve

·Many bots may see him being a tad bit on the shallow side when it comes to the arts, but our beloved barkeep has his own unique appreciation for creativity and all the ways it can be visually expressed, and you recognize it not long after meeting him. As his bar is a frequent hangout for everyone, you find it to be a fantastic place to sit and sketch, as the variety of bots makes it quite easy to have your choice of subjects even if you have to sit on a table. Obviously Swerve notices and asks you what you're drawing when traffic slows one evening.

·You're happy to show him your work and he's always eager to hear what everyone is up to, so he starts asking questions about your art in general. How long have you been an artist? What's it like suddenly having a whole ship of aliens to sketch? Why draw here all the time? At that query you light up brilliantly, and he's delighted by your enthusiasm as you describe all the incredible sights the bar has to offer.

·You list some of your favorite things to draw, like the many friend groups on the ship that gather here, the brilliant colors of the glowing vats of enjex, and him smiling and rushing with orders through it all. That last one gets a flash of surprise from behind his visor, which is quickly overtaken by exuberant delight; you've been drawing him?! He babbles out a surge of confusing statements that you're eventually able to interpret as a request to see, just one he's too bashful to say directly.

·Happily obliging, you're touched by how he smiles at every little sketch, and feel compelled to explain that he's a big part of why you love drawing here. You try to see beauty in everything, even what often gets overlooked, and there's so very much of that here. The bar is one of those places that everyone knows is special, but you know he's the reason they love it like they do, and that his enthusiasm and hard work hold it all together. You find that inspiring, and actually quite beautiful. It doesn't hurt that his brilliant smile is always a treat to sketch.

·Trying to play it cool and totally failing, he doesn't quite hide that he's near to tears when he asks if you'd like to hang some of your work up in the bar, or maybe have a little corner for yourself to draw from. He just doesn't want you getting squished while you sketch, is all! And having a better vantage point is ideal for someone so small! When you accept, he gives you your own human sized accommodations not too far from the heart of the bar, and every so often when you sketch he'll glance up at you absolutely beaming.

#transformers #more than meets the eye #mtmte #idw #lost light #maccadam #tf #rung #megatron #minimus ambus #rodimus #swerve #self insert #human reader #requests #anon #my writing #transformers headcanon #my asks

[your-ace-cousin-clover]

Sure @surenado .

This is the explanation of my ideal Met Gala Outfit for Americana.

So that's the basic sketch.

Let me take you layer by layer.

Part 1 : Head.

So I'd like it to be an imitation of the Statue of Liberty's headpiece, an American Icon. But I'd like it to be as gimmicky or plasticky as possible, sort of representative of the commodification of American's ideas that become a souvenir, rather than a valued ideal of the nation. Also emphasise on our importance of symbols for values of history and country.

Part 2: Torso

So it's gonna be a cotton button up either barcodes printed all over (like the one on left) or shopping bills overlapping each other, whichever is better to press upon the idea and behaviour of consume, consume, and consume.

The choker should be red in colour with blue and white stars on it to be reminiscent of the flag. It being around the throat sort of presses on the person's neck, giving the idea of how blind patriotism can shut down critique, but at the same time, it is the same country which gives you the right to speak. A balance between slight choking and letting you speak.

And I lovee Cl's hanbok inspired denim gown? I feel like it would be a wonderful addition as well, because denim, duh. Very American. But even more than that there is something very alluring about such a coarse fabric being gracefully draped like a more luxurious and high end fabric like silk.

And the belt is a simple brown leather belt. Stuff you'd see usually workers wear, like a good, sturdy belt.

Part 3: Lower Half

So first layer is straight cut blue jeans. Very American and very simple.

Now, on top of that, I'd like a layer of mesh / tulle wrapped around the jeans loosely. I want it to decked with brand symbols and bejewelled as well. It's going to be very impractical and over the top, but I want to get the idea out about how branded stuff is essentially stupid? You're just paying for the brand, something when taken away leaves a generic piece of clothing behind. Again with the idea of how we're interested in symbols.

And finally Docs, now this is interesting cause Doc aren't American. But I'd like to focus on the aesthetics that we adopt regardless of whether we follow the lifestyle or now. In this case, Doc were shoes made primarily for workers, cause they're supposed to be hardy and last for a long time. But currently, you'll mostly see people wear them for the aesthetic of the shoe itself contrary to its true purpose. Stuff like cottagecore and dark academia is simply the romanticisation of aesthetic over the purpose which is farming or academics.

Part 4 : Cape

And finally, I want a cape with the "I shop therefore I am" by Barbara Krueger. For me, this quote stands to present how our inherent worth lies in our consumption. It's kind of tied to economics as well, you have a get a job to spend, you're given unemployment benefits so you can spend. Everything for us is centered around buying and spending ultimately tying our value to it. Capitalism essentially reduces us to spending machines and it becomes the only symbol of our consciousness.

So yeah, that's it. It's probably not very fashionable. But dude, it's so much better than black tuxes.

#Met Gala #Lmao I got very intense over this haha #shitposting #fashion #Apart from Elliot Page no one is valid to wear black tuxes #mine

[bigskydreaming]

Height discourse confuses me so much, because I, a 4'9 21-year-old Asian perceives anyone taller as tall. But reading international posts saying 5'6 is small makes me double-take, like, "Wut?"

LOL, ahh yes, the infamous “How Tall IS Dick Grayson Actually” discourse. I feel you. And I can definitely see how it would be bemusing as hell given your perspective, lmao.

And I mean, its definitely up there on the list of “Things I Can’t Believe There’s Actually Discourse About” buuuuuut I’m not really judging because I know damn well there’s a fuckton of shit I’ve Discoursed about on pretty much everyone else’s “Things I Can’t Believe There’s Actually Discourse About” list. 

*Shrugs* But I also do get why it exists, if you scratch beneath the surface - as is often true of a lot of seemingly inane discourses. Its not really about height so much as it is about the why’s of writers specifying certain heights for him, and stereotypes associated with height.

On the one hand, you’ve got the fans who look at writers who make a point of writing Dick as particularly short, or the shortest of the Batfam once all of them are adults, and think: this is because of fandom’s fixation with writing Dick as effeminate or the least ‘manly’ of the Batfam, and thus I dislike it and do not trust this writer’s take on him.

Then on the other hand, you have the fans who look at objections like this and think: this is because of bullshit fostered by the toxic masculinity and sexism that’s so present in society, even women can be guilty of perpetuating the idea that there’s anything TO object about there, that a man being effeminate or less ‘manly’ than his brothers is some kind of insult or slight against him in the first place.

But then go back to the first hand.....

And on the one hand, of those fans, you’ve got the fans that don’t actually think there’s anything insulting about a man being effeminate or less manly themselves, but given that the bullshit fostered by the toxic masculinity and sexism in society is so everpresent, even women can be guilty of perpetuating the idea that ‘shorter = weaker’ etc, etc.......its not him being written as short that’s objectionable to them, its what they believe the writer is implying by making that distinction that they’re objecting to, like that it reads to them as though its being used as a smokescreen to create associations in readers’ minds, with the idea of him being weaker or softer or whatever the fuck compared to his brothers, without those writers actually having to SAY what they’re getting at there and spell it out. Plausible deniability kinda thing.

And then on the other hand, you have those fans who object to writing Dick as short because they actually DO buy into that bullshit and they ARE simply objecting to the idea itself because of toxic masculinity and sexism and etc etc.

But then go back to the original second hand.....

And on the one hand THERE, you have the fans whose responses to people objecting about writing Dick as short are based on exactly what they say they are......pointing out that its only objectionable if its viewed as insulting and the only reasons its viewed as insulting are toxic masculinity and sexism which they’re calling out as being perpetuated here.

And on the other hand there, you have those fans who DO buy into the associations between ‘shorter = weaker’ and actually ARE writing things that way with the intent of hoping to form that association in the minds of any readers who similarly buy into those lines of thought or are susceptible to it......and are simply using ‘arent you the REAL misogynist here for thinking shorter equals more feminine which equals weaker or frail or whatever’ arguments that are simply typical flipping the script tactics and hiding behind buzzwords they don’t actually believe in themselves but know are effective in getting people to back down, etc, etc. The plausible deniability thing.

And I’ve been out of hands here for awhile now, obviously, but you get what I mean. Round and round and round it goes, with the true point always hidden juuuuuuust beneath the surface, and more than a little tedious to have all unpacked and catalogued like here, which is a major factor in why so many people rarely dig beneath the surface of a seemingly inane discourse to get at what people are REALLY arguing about but nobody wants to ‘lose ground on’ by being the first to admit to.

As for me, again, this really isn’t a dicourse that I spend much time on because I’d rather cut straight to the point of an argument in general, and this isn’t an discourse that’s particularly amenable to people doing that, obviously. 

And also, I honestly just don’t care that much. LOL. Yeah, I often read works where Dick is singled out as being distinctively shorter and feel an author is trying to ‘imply’ something and its the implications of that which are the source of any ‘Not Good, Scoob’ feelings rather than because I agree with what’s trying to be implied. But y’know......when an author IS playing that game and they actually do buy into toxic and sexist stereotypes.....I mean, there’s literally always other indications of this in their work, giving them away all over the place. So there’s honestly never really a time when his height itself is actually what that hinges upon, y’know?

So my big takeaway from all of this is: headcanon and write Dick as whatever damn height you feel like and if you want to imply something about him just fucking say it directly and if you want to accuse someone of something just fucking call it out directly.

*points to the above unpacking of this particular discourse and how fucking tedious and unnecessary so much of it is and all just because people won’t just say what they actually came to say or lay claim to what they actually said*

ANYWAY.

Personally, regardless of how Dick is written in a fic, I will always headcanon him as somewhere between 5′10″ and 6′1″ for reasons that are entirely irrelevant and meaningless to anyone but me, pretty much. LOL.

In my head, Dick obviously has to be that height because he’s walked a runway as a model before. That’s it. That’s the whole reason my mind automatically goes to that span when picturing him or reading something about him.

(As most people who have followed me for a bit know, I spent a number of years working in the TV industry. There were a couple years there where I did a little bit of print modeling too, nothing major at all, but enough to know that the fashion industry has a Very Definitive Thing about male runway models and height: If you are a male runway model, you are between 5′10″ and 6′1″. If you are not between 5′10″ and 6′1″, you are not a male runway model and you never will be. Its a Thing. And not one the industry is shy about. 

Because of the fact that the fashion industry is mostly centered around women models with name recognition, and very few men who model have star power specifically in terms of modeling, rather than because of crossover/overlap with acting, there’s a major difference in how designers tend to approach designing for models. Most designers designing runway looks for women do so with specific models already in mind. Most designers designing runway looks for men do so without specific models in mind because there simply aren’t enough male models with the kind of branding/name recognition that does a designer any good. 

So designers literally JUST design runway looks for men in that height range, and anyone outside that range would require tailoring that could feasibly throw off an entire runway look. So they just don’t do it, to the point that an agent or manager sending them someone outside that height range to consider for a job means that agent’s not getting called back, because they just gave themselves away as a clear amateur by not knowing better.

Of course, keep in mind that my experiences with modeling are based on the industry re: ten years ago, so it could be that things have changed in this regard since. But that was the status quo then.)

So yeah. Dick Grayson walked a runway for Cheyenne Freemont, thus in my mind he’s obviously between 5′10″ and 6′1″ lolol, because any up and coming designer trying to make a name for herself would absolutely know better than to send out someone shorter than that and still think anyone in the industry would take her seriously.

LOL. I told you it was inane. But in my defense, plenty of people headcanon that Dick HAS to be small because he’s a gymnast, and uh.....that is not how that works. Anyone can be an amazing gymnast, its just that smaller body types lend themselves to gymnastics better than bigger, bulkier bodies. And thus the competition oriented gymnastics SPORT heavily favors cultivating and training gymnasts on the smaller side, because coaches and endorsers are looking for literally any advantage possible.

(Being shorter means you have a lower center of gravity which is a help when balancing, or stabilizing yourself. Its easier for a shorter gymnast to keep their balance or to stick a landing. But it doesn’t become impossible just because someone’s hit six feet tall. It HELPS to be shorter. It doesn’t determine whether or not you can do a trick at all, much like being short and having a lower center of gravity by no means GUARANTEES you have good balance.)

And of course, though Dick excels at a ton of gymnastics, he is not and never has been a gymnast per se....he’s an acrobat. From a family of acrobats. Who have been doing this as a family business generationally, thus.....why would they have future height requirements when training their son in the family business? And being from a family of acrobats doesn’t ensure you’re going to be short, if your family members are not already short to begin with. Evolution does not give a fuck about future employment opportunities when selecting which gene sequences to flip on while in utero.

The correlation is ‘most gymnasts who excel at gymnastics feats are small,’ not ‘to excel at gymastic feats, you must be small.’

I am absolutely and completely just rambling now and have been for awhile so I’m gonna go beat up my insomnia until it caves and lets me go the fuck to sleep.

[whitehotharlots]

Reading recommendation (and a brief meditation on the utility of Frank Wilderson)

I’ve read an awful lot of self-styled “afropessimistic” theory. I’ve been wanting to write about it for some time. But there are significant hurdles. First off, I’d need to read a lot more if I wanted to engage with it in a scholarly sense, and reading it is a very painful chore. The effort required would necessitate a greater reward than the mild serotonin boost of a successful blog post, yet attaching my own name and affiliation to any critique would open me up to vicious reprisal, mostly from people who have not read any of the works being discussed.  I mean, come on... Look at the term: afropessimism. It can hardly be uttered aloud among the uninitiated, you have to explain that you’re not trying to dismiss an intellectual movement, that this is what these writers actually call themselves.

Long story short, I highly recommend this new piece from the LA Review of Books: “On Afropessimism,” by Jesse McCarthy. It’s a longform review of a new book by the man who coined the term, Frank Wilderson, titled simply Afropessimism.

I didn't come to Wilderson until long after reading Frantz Fannon, Derrick Bell, and Cornell West. These are all relatively fatalistic theorists who regard being black (or "blackness") as necessarily existing in a state of alterity, one that was perhaps inalterable, but they nonetheless did not regard themselves as fundamentally inhuman. Nor did they argue that reform is impossible (hence the “pessimism”) and that therefore inaction was the only viable approach to praxis. I've never read Orlando Patterson (the other foundational theorist cited in the by McCarthy), but this passage resonates strongly

Racial exceptionalism, political immutability, “antiblackness” as structural antagonism, and abjection in the form of “social death”: each of these concepts predates Afropessimism, and as I see it, together they form its foundation. Indeed, it is the synthesis of all of these ideas into one purportedly coherent worldview that I take to be the innovation of Afropessimism. I have deliberately chosen the writers, scholars, and thinkers cited above, however, precisely because they do not come to the same conclusions as Wilderson. Several could be said to be strongly opposed; even Derrick Bell (whom Wilderson might have suggested as a predecessor but does not cite in Afropessimism) ultimately counsels in his book’s epilogue that we move “beyond despair” and calls on us to “fashion a philosophy that both matches the unique dangers we face and enables us to recognize in those dangers opportunities for committed living and humane service.” Part of my point here is that those who disagree with the Afropessimist worldview cannot be simply dismissed as “soft” or naïve. Nor should anyone infer that simply because one critiques the Afropessimist synthesis, one cannot also hold strong views in agreement about any number of more specific points of analysis.

This has been one of the more striking aspects of the afropessimism becoming ascendant in mainstream anti-racism (aside from the fact that it's only rarely acknowledged as the intellectual base of the movement)--the belief that even people who take an aggressively dim view of race relations can still be dismissed as naive, or even as actively white supremacist, simply for suggesting that some degree of reform is desirable.

The description of Wilderson's work contained within McCarthy’s review gives us a glimpse into how such dismissal became normalized: a combination of utter self-assuredness and the ability to assert complete moral parallels between acts and situations that few sane people, prior to 2017, would have considered equivalent:

For many of us, such a leap is neither ethical nor comprehensible. But for Wilderson the portability and paradoxical fungibility of slavery fits perfectly with his interest in film and his Lacanian and Fanonian readings of it. How else to explain passages in Afropessimism in which incidents involving a terrible white roommate situation he and his girlfriend find themselves in circa 1979 are, for Wilderson, obviously comparable to Steve McQueen’s 2013 film, 12 Years a Slave, which was based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 slave narrative. This is not a jest, but a sustained and intensely explored analogy, in which the whipping of Patsey (played by Lupita Nyong’o in the film), descriptions of the cool sadism of Mary Epps (the slaveowner’s wife) from Northrup’s 1853 narrative, and Wilderson’s troubles with a batty white roommate all share the same stage. We are asked to imagine them as coequal and even coeval psychological theaters of cruelty, whose mise-en-scène simply involves different props. The plantation is everywhere and all the time. It is ontological, which means that it attaches trans-historically to all Black persons regardless of their social position.

How far does this go? In his academic monograph on film studies, Red, White & Black (2010), Wilderson forthrightly asserts that Black academics are not subalterns in the academy but “Slaves of their colleagues.” Is being talked down to in the faculty lounge really the same as being whipped at the post, or slinging rock on the corner, or being placed in solitary on Rikers Island as a juvenile? Is working at Merrill Lynch in New York as a Black woman really the same as working shifts as a Black gay man in a McDonald’s in Alabama? Is it ethical or desirable to confound all of these into a tortuous equivalency while telling those who propose to fight at your side to shut up because you don’t like the analogies they are using to connect themselves with your suffering?

For a long while I've been trying to argue that what we now regard as wokeness, at least in its present and culturally dominant state, has borrowed its means of comportment--if not its fundamental worldview--from afropessimism. This combination of hectoring paranoia and cocksure self-righteousness is now the norm in liberal spaces, even (maybe especially) among people who have no rational claim to especial victimhood.

Key to this is Wilderson’s assertion that blackness is not only an inescapable reality structuring all human existence, but that as such, it means that black people are fundamentally inhuman. Not just an exempted or subaltern class: a different conceptual entity altogether:

It is fair to ask of a [critical] “lens” whether it actually sharpens our view and, if so, to perform demonstrations of clarity? A major problem for Afropessimism is that its claim to revealing the underlying structural truth seems to repeatedly require abandoning any significant contact with historical reality. With social categories like class, gender, and material facts made irrelevant, the theoretical work is forced to concentrate itself in rhetorical aphorisms that seem to be slouching their way toward slogans. “The antagonist of the worker is the capitalist. The antagonist of the Native is the settler. But the antagonist of the Black is the Human being,” Wilderson tells us. The problem with this, apart from its faux-syllogistic form, is that human identities are not fixed and rigid boxes, but dynamic rings of change that merge and overlap. The Black Americans involved in the colonization scheme of Liberia in the 19th century were both Black (formerly enslaved on US plantations) and also settlers. Obviously, there are Black capitalists just as there are Black workers. Is there a double-jeopardy principle for antagonisms or some calculus by which they can be selectively negated?

Regarding oneself as inhuman means that you simply cannot win, even while you're winning. It means, also, that you get to exempt yourself from the rules of human interaction that are otherwise universal. Your statements and beliefs cannot be subject to any means of adjudication, since by your own self-understanding you will never be validated, which means in a bizarre turn of logic that your validity is inevitable. Your immorality is always assumed, which means your morality can never be put into question. Nothing you do or say can ever be considered bad or incorrect, because you believe yourself to have been exempted from such abstractions, that the only possible judge of yourself is therefore yourself. This is a tremendously inviting mode of comportment to both paranoid neurotics and mediocre intellects, which goes a long way in explaining how it became so popular so quickly. 

[in-tua-deep]

While genetically the Boy and Five are the same there has to be an aspect of nature vs nurture. So how do the two differ? Does the Boy want his own name and not simply a gender or does he want a name to symbolize becoming part of a family? Do the two of them react to situations differently? I love this AU so much and I need more!

(for more commission boy au/clone five au check out the previous posts on it one, two, three, four, five)

oh absolutely they’re as different as they are similar - even identical twins raised together are different people, after all! And that’s identical genes (like Five and Boy share) and similar upbringings ;3c

they’re both traumatized in very different ways (with overlapping similarities, like both of them don’t trust strangers/adults they don’t know as they’re both used to adults only wanting to use them/cause them pain)

Five is fucked up about the apocalypse. Fucked. Up. He still has minor meltdowns over what if the apocalypse happens today despite them having stopped it. Probability maps are scrawled across the walls in whatever was closest at hand when Five’s brain went into meltdown mode

The Boy doesn’t use math as a crutch like Five does (or as a way of keeping his mind busy, or as a self soothing habit, or anything else) because he wasn’t allowed to write on,, pretty much anything. He had to give verbal reports. After Five’s whole “hide my equations and plans from the commission by writing them in secret in a book” thing, they didn’t trust the Boy with any kind of planning materials. The only reason he knows how to write is because he pretty much taught himself, tracing letters with his fingers in the dust or on steam covered mirrors tbh

(his handwriting is. atrocious. borderline illegible. he really struggles writing with a pen or pencil but can fingerpaint letters/numbers just find. it’s a work in progress and on god five is going to get his little clone as fast as five himself is at writing shit on walls)

the Boy is still a little math prodigy but he’s only done enormous mental equations, which he is very good at!! but it’s definitely limited him (so he wasn’t capable of doing the complex time equations that Five figured out)

The Boy and Five present their nerves about new situations very differently - the Boy goes small and quiet and anxious whereas Five deals with it by going on the aggressive and yelling. This is because the Boy is way more afraid of punishment/rejection than Five is and is more unsure of his position in the family and his default is “obey, do what they say regardless of how you feel just power through it or face the consequences”. 

Meanwhile Five’s default was ‘rebel, yell, bring attention to himself because if the spotlight was on him then it was off his siblings’ which is depressing in its own way. The Boy didn’t have siblings to protect, he was alone. Five himself probably wouldn’t have drawn attention to himself if there wasn’t anyone to protect, but there was and he did. He bristles like an offended cat and yells

(but tbh, Five doesn’t actually expect anyone to actually listen to him. both him and the boy learned a long, long time ago that their opinions didn’t matter to the adults, that they might as well not be saying anything at all. The Boy went quiet. Five got louder.)

The Boy is definitely more willing to embrace childish things than Five is, because Five feels he has to protect his reputation and prove that he isn’t a kid 

and if there’s some residual trauma there of children vs. adults where Five is fairly convinced that status as an adult offers him some measure of protection against people like Reginald and the Handler, there’s always that. But Five is also probably more willing to be one of “the children” if that means the Boy isn’t alone as the only child because Five’s “protect” instincts overpower his “self preservation” instincts tbh

the Boy is really enthusiastic about things when he thinks he allowed to be (so basically when he’s around Five bc he sees Five as an ally - though he’s getting better around the other siblings without five as a buffer)

his favorite movie is lilo and stitch no you can’t change my mind. it’s the movie he plays constantly as a comfort thing that he never gets tried of. If this was in the era of VHS he would have worn out the tape. Why??? because the boy points at the screen and is like “!! i’m an experiment as well!” and then watches this little blue alien find a family for himself and he’s like “it me!”

…does that make Five the Lilo in this?? possibly. Allison says that it’s more like the Boy is Lilo and Five is Stitch considering Five is the chaos gremlin between the two of them but whatever

(“This is my family. I found it, all by myself. It’s little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.”)

I keep wanting to say the Boy is more skittish than Five but that’s?? not quite true? they’re both skittish and don’t trust easily and cling to the idea of family but in different ways idk like the end goal is the same but they take very different paths to it u know what i mean?

i think the Boy probably does eventually get a different name. Maybe not a name-name since the Boy’s idea of what a name is?? is kind of skewed? like his fav character is Stitch and his brother is Five and he was raised by someone names the Handler like this kid was never gonna have a normal name let’s be real

honestly he probably ends up stuck with something like. Kiddo. Because i HIGHLY doubt the family actually calls him ‘boy’ and in absence of an actual name to call him by end up with nicknames and to differentiate him from Five “Old Man” Hargreeves they probably call him kid and kiddo

i’m thinking about differences and similarities between them again hmm

Five is definitely more assertive?? Five can read the Boy really well (and vice versa) and tends to act as the Boy’s spokesperson when the Boy isn’t comfortable or something. Usually it’s just Five cutting in abruptly like “back off idiot he wants a ham and cheese sandwich not whatever the fuck that is”

the Boy is more likely to approach an issue with violence whereas Five tends to swear and yell and threaten as a first step. Where’s that one meme?? the Boy is “stabs without warning” and Five is “warns (loudly) before stabbing” 

the Boy is arguably more deadly than Five since he’s been trained in assassination since basically infancy where Five was taught to be a hero which are arguably very different skillsets (the Boy was never taught about minimizing casualties or saving anyone rip) BUT Five is more experienced and has arguably more creativity than the Boy. 

Five is a lot more playful in his fighting because he was because when he was little, fighting was playing. That’s how Five and the other umbrella academy kids bonded - by beating the tar out of one another and outdoing each other. They showed off for each other. The Boy is more straight forward because to him, fighting is a job to get over with as soon as possible

ironically it’s five who has to teach the boy to play, and not the other way around. Jump Tag is a favorite between the two where they just zoom through the house trying to catch each other - Five is a lot better at jumping than the Boy since the Boy wasn’t permitted outside of missions and training, but he’s catching up quick (after all, Five did take a brief 45 year hiatus because his powers burned too many calories in the apocalypse, but it’s a bit like riding a bike in that he never forgot)

even so Five is NOT the person to teach others to play because his childhood was messed up as all fuck

so it’s probably claire that really teaches them how to play

Claire is a well adjusted kid whose confidence, unlike Five’s, is not faked. She has adults she knows, loves, and relies upon. She has healthy relationships with peers. She goes to public school and knows and is friendly with a lot of different people. 

So this like, 8-year-old walks in and meets her two skittish emotionally immature uncles (cousin? depends on if they consider the boy to be five’s brother or son) who don’t know fuck all about anything and is like “ah yes. i am your big sister now. i am in charge here.”

and while Five at least rails against the “big sister” charge, neither of them really protest Claire taking charge?? they’re both very willing to follow along behind her tbh neither of them are leadership material and they both know it. they’re probably both very protective of her

if claire is ever bullied god help whoever chose to pick on her bc Five is absolutely willing to maul a middleschooler and the Boy would be right behind him

well i mean. Five is a follower but he’s a little bitch about it, you know? like he’s willing to go with whatever but also if it’s a dumb idea then fuck you. So he’s confrontational with his siblings but if they were ever like “okay then five you take charge” he would be like “oh no. nuh uh. i’m not taking responsibility over all you idiots my blood pressure would go through the ROOF.”

Five loudly declares that Claire is way more sensible and sane than any of the rest of his family so she’s the only one he’ll take real orders from.

(and then Grace walks in and Five will absolutely listen to her as well and not just because the Boy is lowkey scared of Grace and Five is trying to set a good example - as much as he’s capable of setting a good example)

i feel like i’ve talked about their different issues with food, where Five hoards, is food aggressive, and will eat everything whereas the Boy is used to bland nutrition bars and sludge with everything he needs for the day so his issues are more him not knowing what the fuck anything is, being iffy about any strong tasting foods/spices, struggling with eating outside of allotted food times/getting his own food 

there’s a whole post about their differences in nightmares/how they deal with those floating out there somewhere

their fashion sense definitely differs in their own ways? The Boy accepts anything he’s given with no questions and has no style of his own where Five tends towards what Klaus calls “hobo chic” in that he discards clothes he deems not useful to survival. You won’t catch Five in ripped jeans or tight pants that restrict mobility (though admittedly tight restrictive clothing would make the Boy uncomfortable as well but he’ll wear what he’s given with no questions)

both boys struggle with capitalism in that there’s Way Too Many Options for things that are dumb. It’s really overwhelming for them both when they’re sent to the store for like, toothpaste and have to enter an aisle with a bajillion different options for one (1) whole thing

OH the Boy doesn’t shoplift. Five frequently shoplifts because his idea of possessions are “it’s in my hand or in my claimed space/room/etc. it’s mine” regardless of the passage of money whereas the Boy’s idea of possessions is “nothing belongs to me ever” and they’re still working on both of those things

they’re both kind of wary around animals because neither are used to them or know what to expect from them. Mr. Pennycrumb is a therapy dog and no one can convince me otherwise and both boys are instantly smitten with him (but they’re still kind of iffy around like. big dogs that bark. or horses. fuck horses they’re scary motherfuckers.)

the Boy doesn’t like bugs very much after living in the very sterile Commission science rooms but Five will literally pop a wolf spider in his mouth for a snack so yEAH they both have. very different perspectives on that. The Boy is absolutely horrified and the first time he witnesses this hides behind Klaus for half a day because what the FUCK FIVE while Five is unapologetic

they protect each other and support each other and figure things out together bless

it’s secretly a very wholesome au behind the horror of the commission cloning five and training a small child to be a murder machine

#Ask Me #anonymous #the commission boy au #tua au #tua #the umbrella academy #far tua long #long post #five hargreeves #number five #klaus hargreeves #they're similar in some ways #wildly different in others #it's a journey lmao #claire hargreeves #tua claire #claire is the boss and the boys respect that

[hyumjim]

hold up hold up! Now u FOLX might think ur simply decrying homophobia @ large when u rb something that says something really basic like “um homophobia against gay men is still a thing and lets not be horrible to gay men on purpose” but it only takes a bit of scrolling to find the op INEVITABLY saying something like the above and accidentally revealing to us all that they dont really believe lesbians r oppressed on the axis of homophobia, or that homophobia + misogyny are axes of oppression that overlap in any meaningful way...

also the way they specify that “cis lesbians” are oppressed because they are “not available to men” (as others have pointed out, no women-- scratch that, no person is ‘available to men’ by virtue of their sexuality) makes as little sense as it does to say “I hate cis gay men.” what is the function of “cis” in these sentences, by the way? what meaning does it add or take away? are trans lesbians available to men in this person’s estimation, or anyway do they not face the same kind of oppression that cis lesbians do? What about trans men, do they not perpetuate misogyny? What about transmisogyny, can’t they perpetrate that? Transmisogyny against trans lesbians, in fact....?

this whole discussion, however, stems from simple disagreement over who should get to make blanket statements like, “I hate cis gay men.” To be frank, I see the most harmful and vicious enactments of homophobia within the lesbian community usually coming from terf bloggers et al, who are very very hateful of not just trans women but anybody who is “appropriating femininity” etc in their estimation. In this sense, I do think it is important to be aware of how feminist critique can be and often is leveraged against gay men and to make sure that our own critiques don’t lean this way. I’m disappointed to say that in my experience there is a slippery slope, for example, from “men wearing pink for a fashion editorial shouldn’t be lauded as revolutionary” to simple reactionary pushback and even hate speech against men-- or anyone who is publicly perceived as a man-- presenting as gender nonconforming. 

I think that relations between gay men and lesbians are more complicated than anyone in this discussion is really making space for. ultimately I think it is pointless to try and arbitrate who is “ALLOWED” to make what sort of statements, however. Everybody is just going to go on saying whatever they’d like regardless of whether you or I approve of it. In the end, I try to generally avoid making statements such as “I hate men” in most cases, although I may often feel that way. Because:

1. I don’t think this is politically helpful, or even psychologically helpful for myself to vent in that way. I don’t think it accomplishes anything for me or anyone else

2. I always ask myself if the statement would change if I didn’t include “cis” or “gay” or “white.” If I am talking about all men then certainly I should just say men. Say it with me: I hate men! There really is no need to specify a group within “men,” anyone with a brain can figure out what you are talking about.

3. And perhaps this is the most important thing:

[olderthannetfic]

It’s International Fanworks Day and also the 30th and final post in this series. If you follow my tumblr, you know that my true fandom isn’t buddy cops or Highlander or any of those things. No, my true fandom is...

WANK

No matter which bitchy piece of fujo-course nonsense you’re looking at on tumblr, no matter which debate about WNGWJLEO or women in slash or fanfiction vs. media you're reblogging, your grandma was having that fight in a zine somewhere in 1985 and at Escapade in the 90s.

Here’s a vid review from 2002:

"History Repeating," [...] was an Amanda vid. In-fucking-credible. Who knew? Who knew I could like Amanda? Who knew there were fresh HL clips I hadn't seen a thousand times before in HL vids? (Of course, as someone pointed out, she had her own spin-off.) This rocked--sharp, fast cutting and pretty, pretty shots, with a hot bisexy vibe running through it. And, you know, people like to say that there's all this self-hating misogyny in fans--you know, that women hate shows about women, hate women characters breaking up the OTP, etc. But when you see a femme-centric vid like this bring down the house, you really have to wonder. Is it misogyny, really, or is just that we usually see a bunch of crap representations of women in media and resist them?

So on the theme of There Is Nothing New Under The Sun, here is a selection of past Escapade panels on gender, representation, and problematicness:

1993 - Anti-Feminism in Slash Fandom (Or, how 'it was never this good with a woman' syndrome... where are the women, and why do we care?)

1995 - Why Lesbians Read Slash - (What's the attraction? Why do they care? Why do they write it?)

1996 - Character Bisexuality: Convenient fiction or character trait? (Is this a good compromise between "We're not gay, we just love each other" and "I was gay all along and just faking it with women"? Or is this too easy? Special mention for the stereotypical bisexual villian who's evil, sexy, and can come on to everyone.)

1996 - Female Heroes: Female Empowerment, or male power in women's bodies? (Give a woman a gun and make her really tough. Wow, cool! yes, or no? Are we celebrating women, or are we merely putting breasts on male action heroes? Heroines under discussion may include (but not be limited to) Sara Connor, Ripley, Vasquez, Thelma & Louise.)

1997 - Gender Astigmatism (The Gender Continuum: in what we read, in what we write, and what we are, there is always a connection with a point on the gender continuum. How do our definitions of "feminine" and "masculine" influence our creativity? Where do bisexual characters fit in? (besides there, you dirty-minded person!)

1998 - Xena: Does Girl-Slash Get Us Going? (Xena is the first show with a feminine couple to be really popular. What kind of slash fans are interested? Does gender orientation matter? Or do slash fans love slashy couples regardless of their gender? Can m/m fans be 'converted' to f/f fans?)

1998 - Bastards & the Women Who Love Them (When Methos says, "you live to serve me," any normal '90s woman says, "I don't think so!... or does she? A happy contemplation on the virtues of handsome thugs.)

1998 - Slash: a Continuation of Women's Writing, led by Constance Penley (In case you didn't know, in her recent book NASA/TREK (yes, the slash is intentional), she addressed slash as a continuum of women's writing, combining women's romance, and the male quest romance. Join her for a discussion of slash -- where it was, where it is, where it might be going.)

1998 - The Trauma of Slash Fans in Het Fandoms (Or, what to do when find women doing all that cool, tough-guy stuff you love.)

1999 - Male Slash Fans - Welcome Voice, or Infringement? (Slash is written by women for women — or is it? The Internet has attracted new fans, including the "male slash fan". Who is he? What does he think of what "we" do? Do we care?)

2002 - Femslash (General discussion on female/female slash fiction. If Buffy wanted something cold and hard between her legs, why didn't she just choose silicon?)

2003 - Slash: Feminist political act or really good porn?

2005 - Where have all the lesbians gone? (When some slash lists explicitly state m/m only, where do you go for femslash? Are there any hot femslash couples? Pimp your femslash fandom here, or bemoan the lack of strung female characters in the current conservative social climate.)

2007 - Femslash: The Other Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name (Femslash. It's a work that makes some of our hearts leap for joy and inspires complete and total disinterset—or even dislike and disdain—in others. Where can we find the good stuff? What makes it good? And what's up with the haters?)

2007 - SGA: The Women of Atlantis (What do we like about how the women of SGA are written and portrayed, and what makes us wince? What do we think about how their issues are being woven into the show's narrative?)

2008 - Gay is Not Slash (...even though slash is sometimes gay. The current argument about m/m romances by women as taking recognition *away* from male gay writers, depends on m/m writing being intended as gay lit. And slash, for one, isn't, even if there can be overlap. What overlaps? What doesn't? What examples do fans like?

2009 - Female Character Stories: Halfamoon, Full Moon or Just Moony (F/f slash, and other stories centered on female characters, are gaining visibility in fandom. Are there things fens will write about women that we won't about men? (Given MPreg, *are* there?) Should f/f be like m/m, or is it unavoidably different?)

2011 - My ***** is Not Ideologically Driven, But is it Homophobic (Slash fandom often sees itself as a mostly liberal community. IDIC, right? But recently there's been a slash backlash: it's anti-feminist, a 'symptom' of internalized misogyny. We're 'erasing' the women characters after all. Is slash homophobic? Does slash fandom appropriate gay culture? Is it awesome and ennobling as it makes us happy in our panties, or is all that self-hatred bubbling just beneath the surface of our porn?)

2012 - Natural Woman (We've lamented the lack of strong, believable female characters (who dress appropriately). But now we have them: Gemma Teller and Audrey Parker; Salt and Haywire; we've got Bechdel-passing women who look like they can throw a punch. Still, most of them are in the sci-fi or action genre, so are we really seeing progress? And what are we doing with them, as fans?)

2012 - Don't Call It a Bromance (It's Just Canon) (TPTB are increasingly aware of slash, and bromance is regular fare on TV canon these days. Does overt bromance make the fic and art hotter or just vanilla? Is there an anti-slash backlash in our shows? Is the emphasis on men's relationships making women disappear? Inquiring minds want to know. If you have answers, theories, or just want to squee, join in the fun!)

2014 - (The End of?) Ladybashing in Slashfic (Slashfic used to regularly feature bashing of female characters. Now, blatant bashing seems less fashionable. If you recognize this trend, let's talk! Were most ladybashing fics ones for juggernaut pairings in megafandoms, or were they everywhere? What's causing the change: more women in leading roles/ensemble casts, fic writers being more conscious to avoid bashing ladies even if they're not their favorites, more willingness to blame show writers' bad writing (instead of the character being just bad/evil/stupid) for bad female characters, or something else entirely?)

2015 - Fifty Shades of Fandom (Fifty Shades of Grey has become the representation of fan fiction in mainstream culture. It’s bad fan fiction, and it’s being used to ridicule women while making millions off women readers and viewers. Can we connect with these women: proto-fans who would love to read, and maybe write, great fan fiction if they found it? Can we use the FSoG phenomenon to expand our community? Does keeping our doors closed and our mouths shut perpetuate both monetization of our fan culture and misogynist scorn?)

2016 - Who Are We? (How do we define ourselves in this age of so many OT3s and team orgy pairings? Does m/m/f count as "slash"? Is slash-only space slipping away? (And would that be bad?) Do m/m and f/f belong together more than they do with m/f? Is "Media Fandom" a valid term any longer? Who are we if we start shipping het?)

2016 - Ladies Loving Ladies. (There would seem to be enough queer women in fandom to write/want more f/f. Do lesbians write f/f, m/m? Both? Do straight women? Or are we still missing the iconic female characters and relationships that create a great slash fandom? Did they figure out the answer to this question at TGIF/F and if so, what is it?)

2016 - By Us For Us (Fic, even kinky slash, is practically mainstream these days. The ebook revolution puts publishing within reach of almost anyone. Sundance hits have been filmed on iPhones. So why aren't fangirls making more media? Or is it happening right under our noses? Is this a place where our women's gift economy does our community a disservice? Discuss what's out there, what we'd like to see, and what's holding us back.)

2017 - LGBTQIA+ in Slash Fandom (Queer fans have always been here. In a subculture often defined as "for" straight women, what do we as fans have to say about non-straight, non-cis, and non-conventional sexuality and gender in fanfiction, in fandom, and in the larger culture?)

2018 - Confronting the Tensions Between Slash and Queer Representation (Slash fandom thrives on homoerotic subtext. Many queer fans are unwilling to settle for this quasi-representation. Part of every slash fandom seems loudly invested in their ship becoming canon. Some are queer fans who want actual textual representation in their favorite shows, and some are fans using queer politics to fight ship wars. Then the “slash is not activism” posts make the rounds. Is slash activism? Is advocating for slash ships in canon the same thing as advocating for queer representation?)

2018 - Representing Slashers (What does "representation" in the media mean to us? We know what more gay or POC representation means, but what about slash fandom, which is largely female and focused on bodies that don't resemble our own? Would better female characters in media better represent us? Or male characters written for a female audience? Come talk about the intersection of slash, personal identity, and media representation.)

2018 - Anonymity in Slash Fandom: Choosing to Hide (Why do the majority of slash fans hide their hobby? Is it fear of blackmail? Embarrassment? Fear of losing employment? How does this affect your happiness? How does this affect your security? What would an ideal world look like? Who would/have you told about your interest in slash? Who would you never, ever, tell?)

2019 - Fandom Post-Slash? (In an era of "ships" and #pairing #tags on Tumblr and AO3, has the "slash" label lost its meaning? Same-gender pairings are as popular as ever and fans still ID pairings with a virgule between the names, but how many fans still call m/m and f/f slash or femslash? How many fans identify as "slashers?" Het and slash were opposing binaries which few fans crossed. Are these barriers breaking down? What purpose has the term "slash" served? Has fandom moved

past it and, if so, what does that mean?)

#escapade 2020 #escapade con #fandom meta #fandom history

[maikatc]

Black Sun Tale | The Pocketwatch

remember that this is a first draft with only minor edits, but enjoy! comments and reception is always appreciated. 

-

“How does it work?” Ayu’s legs almost jumped in curiosity. Such magic was exactly like what he had seen from a comic, only, without a simple trinket. 

“You open and close it– but that’s not what’s important at the moment!” Eilwen swatted her free hand around Ayu’s face. Ayu complied as she said, “What would you like to know first?”

“Oh,” he reminded himself, “yeah… I really need this one, so can you tell me about the monsters?”

“What monsters?”

“You gotta know them.” Ayu’s arms fumbled to recreate their image. “They’re big, scary, kinda ghost looking but like to stab?”

“The Iblis monsters?” An eye twitched from Eilwen’s confused look.

“That’s what they’re called?”

“Oh, my Lord-.” Eilwen placed a hand on her forehead. “You actually don’t know anything.”

“Can’t you tell me already?” Ayu’s expression lowered from her tired attitude. 

Eilwen’s brows furrowed. “I’m afraid not. Alice told me not to give information on them but I didn’t actually think you needed it!”

“I get it. I’m dumb, but damn…” Ayu picked on some dry skin; no solution to the question making him itch. “Then, why is this all happening anyways? For everybody and me, I mean.”

“Oh well that’s simple enough.” For the first time, she opened her pocket watch. And with the snap of it closing shut yet again, the flame in the middle of the room began to fade. The room melted along with the light as new ones grew into new scenery. In front of them was a boy, brightness all around him in his short stature. His light figure glowed from his white hair and skin, while his tunics and layers of silk matted him to a royal status with his circlet made of gold and shiny coal. “You already know Akeldama.”

The rare sight stunted Ayu, and in a baffled surprise, he asked, “Am I able to… touch him?”

“Why so?”

“I’ve never been able to, and its making me wonder,” he answered truthfully. 

A click of the tongue was heard. “For him, no.” Eilwen walked towards the image smiling in pride. “They’re similar to an illusion; something clear to our minds but not our bodies.” She waved over the boy. Her hand passed through his body with ease. 

Ayu processed her words. “… So, if I put my mind to it, can I punch him or something?”

“No.” The boy mumbled a swear. “But let’s move on with your question: Akeldama is some sort of being with immense amount of power and dark magic. Presumably, a devil of sorts, which would explain his terrible mannerisms in ruling.”

The scene cleared from blurry vision Ayu had not realized before. Flames formed behind Akeldama in vigorous fashion. Small houses built under the burning light and drifted away in ashes. 

“He’s killed thousands, as legends say.” Her voice was void of pity. She stared at the view with Ayu, her face dull without a sign from tragedy. “But, he also saved dozens. Horribly, if I may add.” 

Eilwen clicked her watch yet again. The scene formed into the forest Ayu stood only minutes ago. As the land filled in focus, the woman walked on. Ayu followed. 

Stepping upon soundless grass, a blur of color came from the distance. Viewing closer, the blur changed to people in all shapes and sizes. Their clothes shined in all sorts of colors as they all gathered in a circle. Eilwen entered into the clump, Ayu followed. His body shifted between people as he bumped into many. 

“Didn’t you say these were like illusions?”

“Depends on the event,” she answered. “They still can’t feel us, but one thing I know from all of time is that Akeldama is untouchable.”

Ayu’s small brows furrowed as he shuffled against the crowd of strangers. 

“He created our society from, what we could tell as, boredom. But his way in recruitment for many didn’t consist of greed or malice, but instead desperation and escape.” The chatter charged in anxiety and silence. Whispers reached out beyond all and overlapped between others’ words. “He came along offering immortality, power, and above all else, a way out of our lives. However, the offering and contracts quickly became a threat.”

“Fuck…” Ayu stopped pushing himself away from others. He paused his movement in reminiscence of Akeldama’s offerings. 

“From what Alice believes,” Eilwen added. “Akeldama does have intentions for his actions.” She made a look at Ayu. 

Ayu began tugging his hair again. 

“Only we may never find out. Even with my magic, I can only go so far as to the 1600s, and at that, some parts are blocked.”

Once they exited the circle, Ayu asked, “Hasn’t anybody tried to take over? Or kill him?”

Eilwen scoffed, “As if that would occur.” She pointed at the crowd. “All of our abilities come from Akeldama’s own magic, and he always isolates himself in his throne room in which only Alice is able to enter. And if anyone were to attempt, they’d be aware he can kill in a millisecond. A suicide attempt, if you will.” 

“So, pretty much a no.”

“Anyone would kill him if they had the chance,” she stated.

“Or put him in a choke-hole…”

She scoffed, “We wish.”

A second of thought necessitated him. “I’m gonna have to wait more for most of these, aren’t I,” asked Ayu. 

“Practically so, yes.”

His face flattened. “I’m going nowhere with this, then?”

“Regardless of knowledge,” she faced him directly in the eyes, “you’re not going to be able to stop him with your nature.”

Ayu groaned, pulling his bangs harder. “Why the fuck do I even try?”

“I’d mind you about the language but there’s no point with what we do,” she commented.

Ayu hummed with an agitated pitch. Though he realized other options are always possible. “… Then, what about Oliver? Can’t I get background on him?”

Eilwen stared into space for quite some time. Her thoughts seemed to be fixated from all Ayu could ponder. “You can gain some. But only some.” She set her watch again. “Though his family line is crucial in the development of this society.”

The forest melted in color. The circle of civilians devolving into lifeless blobs of nothing. The grey skies turned to the dark bricks of a ceiling. And walls closed in behind them. Dirt and musk engraved itself on the floors along with small blood splatters and spilled water. The only light to appear in the desolate waste of a room was a small window unreachable by height, and the small hole that poked out of the wooden door. 

In the corner was a girl, a few years senior of Ayu. Her body contorted to a ball shaking in every limb. Her light hair was ragged and greasy, dangling across her head and legs in clumps. The hair covered up the view of searing scars, as well as the chains stuck upon her wrists.

“1610: … Cecily Rixon, or as you likely know her as, Alice. She was accused of witchcraft after remedying her mother through illness, and taken to the chambers to be punished until she admitted her crimes, guaranteeing her execution.”

Ayu stared at the chilling image in front of him, though, his own chills never stopped him from moving at that moment. “So, she was hurt to death?” His feet led him on towards the girl. He stood above her and watched her cower from nothing but her own pain. 

“I-indeed.” 

He lowered his knees, then adjusted himself to where he sat across from her. He pondered as she cried up dry tears. “This was… normal, right?” 

“I wish to say it wasn’t,” Eilwen answered. “… She was about to admit to her ‘crimes’ back then, however, -”

The door opened slowly, but not to the attention of Ayu. The girl whisked her head up at the small creak of sound. Her covered up face now revealed itself to the scene. Dry skin filled up her cheeks with a cut on the side. A swell from another cheek punctured and bruised her lip. All and even a burning brand mark seeped by the end of her neck. Ayu studied it all before turning back to see who was at the door. Though, it was easily recognizable by that point. 

“He’d arrived at her darkest day.”

Her throat trembled at her own words as she spat, “I work with the devil, sir… You may take me by the grave but that won’t- that won’t stop him.” The words jumbled in its own confusion.

“You may lie as you like,” Akeldama said calmly, “but, that may never work for someone like me, as disappointing as that is.” He entered the cell. His bored expression looked down upon her as her face twisted to confusion. 

“You’re not the guard.”

“I know I’m not,” he replied. “I arrived for something else.” 

“What’s your reasoning?”

“To give you a-” He rolled his eyes. “Bargain.”

The girl never replied to him. 

He sighed, “You don’t believe this sort of life is worthwhile? Don’t you?”

No answer. 

“Your family pushed you to labor then to this state only because of some men in armor scaring them. They formed you into this state without hearing any of your pleas or thinking anything of a truth from you. You’re in this state because you could never fight back, not even speak back to them. They’re all of unfair power against you.” 

She turned away from him.

“You can do something about that; you’re able to stand for yourself and prosper.” He told her. “You can get out of this life where you’re controlled by their lies… and I’ll help.”

“What a lie,” Eilwen twitched. 

Ayu’s focus completely shifted to Akeldama. His mind numbed from his contradiction. Though, most of all, he thought, why haven’t you told that to me…?

The girl turned back around, shaky and slow. “H-how?”

He offered his hand. “Come with me and you can live a new life. I’ll give you power; I’ll give you freedom. You’ll live however you’d like, as long as you follow what I say.”

Her eyes shimmered in a flash. “What is it you’ll say?”

He looked away. “Small things. Nothing major in the grand scheme of the world. I need time to have everything set, to be frank, so you’ll need patience.” A small smile creeped from his lips with the sense of genuineness. “But take my hand, and one day you’ll live whatever you imagine.”

“I always hated seeing this,” Eilwen sighed. “Yet, nonetheless she accepted his deal, and left her life of before.”

The girl reached out, her hand almost as bony as Ayu’s. She grasped Akeldama’s, and they both disappeared. 

“She was the first to be a part of Akeldama’s reign, and the first to discover the true cost of joining him before the rest of us.” She reset the watch. “Akeldama began recruiting multiple others after her.”

Trees grew around the two and surrounded them by their branches and roots. The sky was blocked by fresh green leaves though way up above creeped a sip of grey. Ayu would have kept his face up, viewing the height of the trees, but a man passed by in a rush.

Ayu stumbled over in surprise, and once he gained balance again, he found the man at his sight. The tall man paced all over the trees, humming a tune off-pitch and off-beat. He adjusted his poignant ginger hair back over and over without an avail to fix his loose hairs. His other hand carried a bouquet of pond flowers and four-leaf clovers drenched all around, including his own suit from fallen down petals. 

After groaning, the man took off with dangling hair on his side. Eilwen walked with him. “Thirty years later in the 1640s, when we were depressingly thriving, a man named Christopher Broichet had joined, originally known as Felicette.” 

Ayu tiptoed around fake branches and rocks. “Are we gonna follow him for all this time?”

“Yes? Is it challenging?” 

“No,” he gave her. “Catching up isn’t gonna be hard at all-” He tripped as soon as he swore. 

Eilwen shook her head and proceeded. It forced Ayu to bring his weight back together and rush back. “It isn’t that long of a walk.”

“It’s not the walk,” Ayu huffed, “It’s the forest! Everything’s small and it’s kinda dark.” 

Eilwen told him, “You’ll get used to it in time.”

He ignored the comment. Grumbling while stepping over a log.

“He had caught the attention of Alice, surprisingly considering her stoic-ness at the time, but they’d quickly become the society’s lovers.”

The bark walls opened to another open field, though with a cottage by the side and a leafless tree far in the midst. Alice had sat there waiting, dressed in a fine gown and her hair tied within a bun. 

Felicette dashed towards her, clamping his heels on the ground to make a full stop once he met her. 

“I have a good reason for being late!” He handed her the bouquet. 

Alice picked up a clover from the pile almost falling over. “You must like these, don’t you?”

Sitting down with her, he smiled. “I think they heavily compliment you.”

“They do, especially with the five others you’ve gotten me.” 

Felicette eyed her. “Shouldn’t those have died already?”

“Of course not,” she exclaimed. “This is Fowls, everything lasts forever here. ‘less you’re human.”

He chuckled at her. “I’d say that’s very unlikely.” His innocent composure gently kissed Alice by the cheek.

Ayu squinted at the two, specifically Felicette. “… He’s Oliver’s dad?”

“Yes, from what she tells us.”

He tilted and shook his head, right as Felicette lifted Alice up into the tree and making her giggle in delight. No, I don’t see it. 

“They brought a nice light to the people.” Soft laughter evoked as the two sat together on the tree. “Christopher had lots of charisma to inspire the land.”

With doubt, Ayu nodded. “Do you see that with Oliver,” he asked.

A thump was heard from the distance. The two turned to see Felicette fallen from the tree. “… That’s difficult to say, especially with the intelligence difference.” Nothing necessarily interesting occurred then, so Eilwen continued her lesson. “Throughout the years, it came to notice that he, along with many others in his movement, stopped following Akeldama’s order of murder.”

“Years?”

“Akeldama was lenient on it for a few decades.” A click from her pocket was heard. “However, eventually…”

Flames appeared again. Rising smoke brought Ayu to a cough as he stumbled in the old environment. “Why does this one feel more real? -”

Eilwen swatted ashes away. “I remember it more,” she answered, “That’s all.” 

Ayu’s eyes squinted from the burning sensation only to meet a body in front of him: stabbed in multiple parts of their limbs and torso, dripping of blood and a black substance. He choked at the sight and blinked nonstop in surprise. In wide eyes, he shook up to view the dead face of Oliver’s father. 

“1701, November 1st, Christopher was executed in the eyes of all of us. Akeldama said to have done it as a warning for those who rebelled, and have people working properly again. Though, the opposite happened.” 

Ayu stared at the body which soon corroded into nothingness. … Oliver wasn’t born in the 1700s. 

“The society began to die out afterwards in lost hope. Assisted suicides began occurring and succeeding to the point that only few of us were left.”

The scene fast forwarded in front of them. The flames and houses faded into grey ashes. A sense of the world went numb again for Ayu. “Akeldama seemed prepared for this event however, because hours later, he brought something new.” 

Two figures walked in the distance. Ruins crowded over them, courting to their soft, patted steps. One of the figures revealed themselves more clearly than the other. His small stature shadowed the other with only the tiniest difference of height. Long black hair dusted around his face as he seemed to be shaking in ashes. Yet, the taller guided him with a held hand; no clear reaction in sight. 

“He saved a single child from that village he burned.” The child stumbled upon his feet next to Akeldama. “He’s never revealed his true name to us, but he’s referred to as Vittorino.”

The name rung in Ayu’s mind, though the vague memory of ‘Vittorino’ being said was something he could not find. However, at a halt of the scene, Akeldama bent down ever so slightly to Vittorino’s height, facing him eye to eye. Words were spoken to the young one, but unheard in the midst of Ayu. 

“There’s been rumors for ages,” Eilwen said, “that Akeldama picked him up because he was to be a religious sacrifice to the village. But, Vittorino never answered anything we asked.” 

The boy nodded to Akeldama before he was blurred away. Ayu blinked as he had not noticed Eilwen’s click. 

Alice appeared again, along with the young boy, in the darkest depths of the words. Laying against the tree, Vittorino hid from her. While she, peering up above him, attempted conversation. 

“To cope with her loss, Alice tried to get along with Vittorino and help him as the youngest in our society. Though, he never cooperated with her in the end, and grew more akin to Akeldama as years went by.” 

In distraction, Ayu peered his eyes to the setting around them. The abyss and blind color of the forest guided him nowhere, but the faint sense of the nightly color comforted him. A sense of ease cradled him in the unknown dark, while he wondered if that is why Vittorino hid in the land. 

“After the arrival of Vittorino, Akeldama seemed to have found another practical way of gaining followers.” Another child appeared from the dark in wandering, catching the attention of Alice. She eyed in shock with the blood found in vague sight on the kid. “Then started the second era, where he began handpicking and ‘rescuing’ children. Raising them to be sick and sinister.”

And just like that, the world disintegrated into the nothingness of the original room. “For the most part, Alice was left alone.” Ayu noticed Eilwen’s direction at him. “Then all of a sudden, she claimed she was going to have a child of hers and Christopher.”

“But-” 

“We imagined she’s gone mad, but once she explained herself, it seemed that the wish child was a blessing and a curse.”

Ayu gnawed his cheek in confusion. “But… how was he made then?”

“That is another thing I’m unable to say, sadly.” Sighing crept over her breath as she wrestled in her pockets. “And I believe that’s all you needed to know, correct?”

Ayu copied her pocketing movements. “Can’t tell if this was even useful or not. All I really know now is that Akeldama still sucks and Oliver seriously has a weird family.” 

“Well, that’s an excellent summary.” Eilwen walked across from him and onto the door, placing her hand on the handle. “Now then, Cecily should have had plenty of time to talk with Oliver. We should get going.” 

Before she could open the door, Ayu stopped her. “W-wait.”

“What is it?”

“How did you get here then? ‘Cause you told me about Alice and all her stuff.”

Eyes widened, she shuffled. “That’s rather unnecessary information.”

“But you were a part of this too.”

“I got here by the dumbest of means,” she spat. 

A light clicked in Ayu’s mind. “You were dumb too?”

“In all fairness, yes.” She squeezed onto the handle. “I was… in love with my dearest friend, and we were both poor peasants. Yet I was put in an arranged marriage for my family to have some riches, and I had to leave her behind.”

“But why did you come here?”

“Simple. I thought it was unfair for her to stay poor and Akeldama noticed. My contract was by the terms that she would take my place in life and have all the fortunes of food and luxuries.”

Ayu blinked. “That’s… really nice.”

She scowled. “It was my luck in living. If it weren’t for my contract, people would’ve claimed me as a witch for charming the noble and executed me.” Hustling against her jacket, her weak voice stated, “She took my place in the end.”

The implications in irony was far too much for Ayu to form words. 

A pause latched between the two of them, but before one could say a word, Eilwen opened the door. “Come on, let’s go.”

***

“Oh, Eilwen! You came at perfect timing!” Alice beamed with a worried smile. “I think just about wrapped up everything with Oliver.” They both were sitting down next to the cottage Ayu viewed in the past. Though before he could mention it, Eilwen walked by him and gave a few words to the other. 

“Please tell me everything went sufficiently.”

“I did all that you advised but you know I can’t speak like that!” Alice hissed in a pout.

A shake of the head and a groan later, “Everything I told you was simple and for you not to go too far.”

The women babbled to each other onwards of their time, to Ayu’s attentional dismay. In disinterest, he sat by Oliver, comfortable against the plain grass, and spoke to him. “I think I just had one of the weirdest history classes.”

With a hand on top of his mouth, Oliver replied, “Better than awkward talking and anxiety from an adult.”

“About what?”

“About me, but she was too nervous about saying anything.”

Glimpsing over to Alice excusing herself to Eilwen, and alongside memory of her past, he said, “Makes sense…” 

However, Oliver’s ears seemed to attend back to Alice and Eilwen in keen study. Ayu imitated. 

“What? You know he doesn’t like people knowing about him!” Alice exclaimed. 

But then came a sigh from Oliver. 

“What,” Ayu asked.

“Alice told me I had to ‘grow accustom’ to eating first before anything else.” 

Cringing shivered in Ayu’s reminder. And yet, the circumstances were dire regardless. “You’d have to at some point.”

“I know but,” he played with the end of his cardigan, “out of anyone here, you’d understand how tough it is.” 

Ayu shifted his gaze away. “I don’t think so.” He nodded at the women. “They seem pretty normal in thinking to me.” 

Oliver rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but they could be tricking us, Ayu. They- they kill, so they can probably lie too.” 

Eilwen’s lesson flashed through his mind. I doubt it but… “I guess that’s true.” 

Silence evoked them again until Oliver asked suddenly, “What do you think I am, Ayu?” 

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well,” he shuffled in his seat, “I guess I’ve just been seen as a lot of things recently. Like a random kid; a monster; the son of immortal assassin parents, one being dead; a kind of intentional mistake; and a canine… it’s all messy. But what do you think?”

Ayu tapped on his feet in thought. Though the answer was quite simple. “I don’t know, Ollie. You’re just another person with a fucked-up life like me, maybe worse, right?”

Oliver shrugged and nodded.

“But I do wanna try and help a little. It’s the least I can do for anything right now.”

The boy, with his pale green eyes, stared at him for that bit of time, wide and light against the dimly grey background. And with his kindly eyes, he smiled and nodded. “Thanks.”

-

Ten Dollars | Bread and Water | Red Eye | Crimson Capture | November 1st | A Mother | A Demon | A Child | The Wolf | Bloody Fingers | A Monochrome World | Next >>>

#writing #my writing #writeblr #writblr #writers on tumblr #black sun tale #bst #chapter 12 #swearing warning #blood warning #gore warning #torture warning #branding warning #minor death warning #with a corpse yes #does it count as a death penalty? dunno #assisted suicides #mention of cannibalism #bst ayu #bst eilwen #bst akeldama #bst alice #bst felicette #bst vittorino #bst oliver #i'm releasing this early because i think most of us aren't doing anything for the next while

[furinana]

Thoughts on Neutral/Bonds Flynn aka “canon” Flynn

Analyses that consider the Neutral route in SMTIV and Apocalypse’s Bonds as “faux peace” endings are my favorite ones.

Specially when the author also calls attention to the small but important detail that the people of Tokyo pushed Flynn to turn up into a false Messiah. The Flynn we see in Apocalypse is the result of them projecting all of their hopes on a single person.

While we view Flynn as the image of a benevolent savior through the lenses of the people of Tokyo, Dagda (and later, Nanashi) sees him as someone being twisted and played around by the fate imposed by YHVH. 

To get started with Neutral Flynn, first of all we must talk about... the suspiciously xenophobic vibes in some scenes from the original SMTIV. We can notice some characters being particular about describing demons they want to get rid of as a “foreign threat”. Such as Pellaidh and Xi Wangmu. 

Besides that, we also have the National Defense Divinities. And the fact that only “humans with Japanese blood” can become Samurai. The game’s sketchy way of asking you, the player, “Hey, who’s better to protect humanity from ‘foreign threats’ than a Pure Japanese Warrior?".

On his determination to save the people of Tokyo which he regards as the last humanity on Earth, Flynn consequentially ends up operating under a nationalist agenda as a way to have Masakado’s support in fighting against Lucifer and Merkabah. SMTIV concludes as this being ‘’the’’ morally correct choice.

For this reason, the ultra-nationalist Japan’s Defense Minister Tamagami alongside patriot scientists being the ones that caused the Great Cataclysm and forcing civilians under human experimentation to become National Defense Divinities tools was quite an interesting reveal in Apocalypse:

Hmm I guess the neutral alignment wasn’t all flowers after all.

“But is Neutral Flynn the same as Bonds Flynn?” It’s a fact that the Apocalypse routes overlap with the Neutral route. But as things start to differ as the game progresses, so are the things in Flynn’s mind. 

I think the biggest difference between Bonds Flynn and Neutral Flynn is the conclusion he arrived to in each route. In Bonds, once getting the support of Masakado was out of picture and everyone realized the one who was pulling the strings from behind the stage, the focus went from ‘We require the faith of people of Tokyo to fight Lucifer and Merkabah therefore we must strengthen our Yamato spirit’ to ‘Everyone regardless of their origin have potential to be our ally in the battle against YHVH’.

Bonds Flynn ditched Masakado and joined forces with Lucifer and Merkabah, as they all had an enemy in common in the end. No need for shady nationalist schemes anymore! Hoozah!

But as I have mentioned in the beginning, I’m of the opinion that the Bonds route is as faux peaceful as the Neutral one. YHVH is bound to come back and the whole suffering cycle will start again regardless if they bother killing Yellow Bald Man or not.

The next and last question that is tricky to answer: would Flynn willfully side with Dagda?

I do wonder if Flynn would directly engage Nanashi in a fight if he happened to be on his senses back when the edgy boy mercilessly killed his companions. On the other hand, it’s very likely that each SMTIV universe was carefully crafted in a way that they and their past selves would never have to be up against each other. 

Dagda probably was fully aware of this fact and what was going to happen to Flynn once the Divine Powers got hold of him. He just had to let things develop in such fashion as a way for Flynn to die, getting revived/brainwashed and ending up as Nanashi’s tool. So my guess is that similarly to Isabeau, Neutral Flynn wouldn’t convert to Anarchy the same way he did to Bonds out of his own volition. 

#smtiv #smtiva

[thoughtsofatck]

I’ve Never Felt More...American

15 February, 2020

Location: Taiping, Perak

Three weeks in location! I spent time thinking about whether I wanted to post “More American” or “Less American” first. As the program progresses, I think I will have had more time to process all of the emotions and reflections that I had when first starting the program in Kuala Lumpur to post “Less American”. Therefore to start this post, I feel that many of my fellow ETAs and I will be able to relate on so many of these situations and dissimilarities between the two countries.

Growing up in the United States as a first generation Asian-American, there are certainly many traits and behaviors that were taught to us as children that we lead in our own lives to this day. Of such peculiarities are things like having a plastic bag of plastic bags to be used as trash bags later on (economical right!), and having a ton of tupperware - I have tins and containers out the wazoo here.

In conjunction, growing up in the United States, we unconsciously have adopted many traits and behaviors that are distinctly American regardless of our ethnic origins. One of these is the concept of time - Americans are notoriously on time for all meetings, events, and appointments. Malaysians however, well run Malaysian time. This means arriving anywhere from 20-40 minutes late and sometimes even 1-2 hours later than expected (in extreme cases). Understanding the implications of meeting at 2pm (read: 2:30~) has saved us from wasting so much time being confused and waiting and looking awkward. 

Furthermore, as a teacher in the United States, we constantly hear about the boundaries that we need to keep in place between student and teacher and even between teacher and teacher. Work life, personal life, and social life generally do not mix in the States but in Malaysia, these overlap immensely. In a culture that emphasizes community, it’s almost as if teachers and students become friends (somehow while still maintaining a level of respect and authority that is designed in their roles). Social media between teacher and student is strictly prohibited and can get both parties in serious trouble but here teachers and students follow each other and keep updated on each others’ lives, message outside of school and meet up on the weekends. Perhaps this is the way that teachers and students build relationships - students (and teachers) post what they want voluntarily instead of being pulling answers out of students in the States. So many of my school activities are focused on building relationships through interests/opinions, and finding ways to incorporate my students’ likes into the work they do. Since the curriculum is so tight, there isn’t much room to truly get to know students during school time. This is also likely why there are many awkward and overly personal questions we as ETAs get in the first few weeks (dare I say all year(?)) since the concept of personal vs professional (from the American framework) is blurred. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked if I’m married yet, what my religion is, my age, and my salary under the program. Any American reading this is surely horrified of the social boo-boos being committed here but all of these questions hold cultural significance in reference to honorifics, dietary restrictions, and class designation - general taboo topics outright in American culture but necessary to properly identify (and respect) an individual in the distinct boxes that Malaysians have created. The difficult part is that, as Americans, we inherently lie outside of these boxes and it can be difficult to label us in these pre-defined boxes that offer surface level identification but also differ in our individualized underlying reasoning for identifying a certain way. Vegetarianism is very common in Malaysia, observed by the Hindus in the country. Many Americans are also vegetarian for certain dietary requirements, ethical reasoning, and environmental causes that have no correlation to religion. As the weeks progressed, I realized that by me saying that I do not eat pork, many of the teachers assumed that I was also Muslim - a logical but false conclusion to my truth. 

Here comes the fun part.

Y’ALL. Squat toilets. Listen dear reader, please laugh, but nothing could prepare me to use squat toilets. As a first time traveler to Asia, I’m glad that I was alone for no one to witness the confusion, horror, and bewilderment on my face pushing open the stall door and seeing a step platform with aptly-fashioned hole in the floor.  Anyone who has travelled to Asia must have come into contact with these before and certainly has their own mental question marks to how to properly navigate this situation. No Western toilet, no toilet paper, and just a water hose (sometimes called a cebok). Some places just have a huge bucket and a water dipper. For the majority of us ETAs, this was a point of discussion because none of us knew what to do and were afraid to put ourselves in a situation that would ultimately make us very uncomfortable if not executed with true precision. It is not as if we could ask a local to teach us the proper way without flooding the place or giving ourselves a leg cramp. Wikihow(?). To the ETAs that have these “squatty potties” in their houses, I don’t know if you’re using them - but I salute you in navigating this new contraption. For future ETAs in Malaysia or Asia in general - BUY travel tissues! S/O to Watsons (a Malaysian pharmacy chain) because they’re economical and come in packs! For reference - I have yet to take the risk using this type of toilet and pray I never encounter the chance. 

Even coming to Malaysia from different locations in the US and different home living situations and ethnic backgrounds, I fundamentally believe there are so many ways that we as a cohort are bound together by - namely our openness to say what we think (freedom of thought and expression) and our commitment to individuality and our personal beliefs. As I discussed previously in a post about losing a lot of control in our lives, the way we think as Americans is a part of us that we get to keep but need to share cautiously. We tread this line between planting seeds of thought-provocation or committing social-cultural offenses. Even as a Malaysian-American, there are so many nuances that make it difficult to determine the appropriate response simply because of who I’m talking to. No generalizations can be made. Additionally, there are so many situations that as an American, I have not experienced and have no prior knowledge on to offer advice or even navigate myself. In the three weeks since beginning school, I think of a plethora of examples where I’ve had to recognize my own framework of thinking and respond in a way that (hopefully) wouldn’t offend who I’m speaking to and also not infringe on my own identity, beliefs, and desires for my time here. And believe me, it is not easy to protect and respect all of the facets of who we are and who we are interacting with. 

With that in mind, I resonate with a quote from J. William Fulbright**. “We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education.” In the cases where I’ve had to explain my way of thinking and/or my uncomfortability/disapproval to things viewed, said, or experienced, I attempt to do so in a way that shares what I am used to or believe and why I feel it is important for me to keep as an individual, especially when it seems encouraged for me to take part in. At the same time, I also ask for them to explain to me why certain occurrences happen - rather than their viewpoint on the subject. In this way, both of us feel validated in our contexts and neither of us is dismissed in the cultural and social exchange. Many times I feel like it is easy for us as Americans to write off cultural practices as simply weird or “just different” but all practices are logical and serve a purpose that we at guests in this country may not be aware of. I invite my fellow ETAs to seek out why confusing practices exist and not label them at face value. Many of my teacher colleagues have done the same in areas such as my teaching practices and eating habits. Without judgement, I’m able to explain my rationales and they respect them. If it is important enough to them for me to adopt/fulfill a cultural practice, they surely make it known. 

**I also recognize the problematic historical views of Mr. Fulbright and wish to explain that I do not support the mentality and viewpoints presented by him in many speeches and articles of legislature. 

[yelloskello]

i fucking hate the stag/doe - butch/femme thing. I hate it. I hate that we are explicitly told that we’re not allowed to use these terms, and for what? I went a’googling to see what lesbians were actually saying in regards to why they’re lesbian-exclusive, read the arguments straight from the horse’s mouth, and it amounts to this:

TERFs (and no, I do not mean lesbians = terfs, I mean it is TERFS who came up with this) straight-up believe that bi women and trans women just weren’t there in our history. They say that butch and femme carry the weight of a painful history and fighting for our rights in the words, and that when anybody but lesbians use the terms, they’re putting it on like a fancy dress and calling it an aesthetic.

As if bi women and trans women just straight-up weren’t there for that history, too.

They argue that ‘nobody fights men to use phrases like bear/otter/twink!’ and quite frankly, i’m pretty fuckin’ sure bisexual men and/or trans men can happily use those terms, too, so shitty argument there pal. 

So they kick us out of a history that we were actively a part of, and younger lesbians who want to do the right thing but don’t know the history of this argument latch onto it, and bisexual people... Within the last year... Create the terms stag/doe, since it’s evidently morally wrong to use terms that are part of our own history, but since we can experience the same kind of dynamics in our relationships, we need SOMETHING to describe them. And what do people say?

‘wtf this is so dumb/fucked up, this is just watered/down butch and femme, they’re literally the same thing, why would you make up new words to mean the same thing?’

because we experience the same goddamn thing, just because we like multiple genders doesn’t mean we always hop on “opposite” genders, we can have relationships with similar-gendered/nonbinary people, even outside of a relationship we are still part of the community, we still experience Gay Attraction, and it can still be part of our identity because we’re still LGBT+, but we’re not allowed to use those terms! We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.

I hate the wave of separatism that we’ve gone through. I hate the idea that everything has to have shit exclusively for them, even if it has a history of being used by multiple sexualities. I hate that people think No Experiences Overlap Ever, when in truth, marginalized people (and I don’t mean just queer/LGBT+ people - I mean PoC, disabled folks, etc) have SO much more in common than anyone might ever think. Yes, some groups do have things that exclusively happen to them, as a white person i’m NEVER going to fully understand the struggle that brown and black people go through, there’s SO much i’m still ignorant to concerning that, i’ll never pretend all our experiences are exactly the same, but there are also at least some issues that I can strongly empathize with because I hear what they go through and can see similarities in the way i’m treated as an AFAB person or as a bi person or as a nonbinary person. A microaggression because you’re gay and a microaggression because you’re brown are both microaggressions, even if they’re presented in different ways, over different issues. Multiple groups are denied housing and jobs for their identities, even if it’s done quietly behind closed doors so the law doesn’t crack down on peoples’ bigotry. As a trans person I can feel the personal pain of my people being accosted in bathrooms by bigots, and I can look at how black people are assumed to be criminals by virtue of simply walking around in a store, and even though the issues are very different, I can see the similarities - we both are mistrusted by “””normal””” society based on hideous stereotypes - and I can feel for them, even if I don’t experience being assumed to be a criminal personally. I listen to them and I believe them not just because they’re fucking people who deserved to be listened to and believed, but because I have seen how general society treats people like me, so why should it be so hard to believe they could be treated like shit, too?

People think that our struggles are so fucking exclusive that they lose all empathy for other groups, thinking that the only people who have ever suffered are themselves. It’s always baffled me that LGBT+ people can be so fucking ignorant and racist and hateful when you think they’d be able to tap into their own hurt and understand that other people are being treated in similar ways because they’re ‘different’, too. But then again, LGBT+ people can barely understand how other subsets of LGBT+ people have struggled, so I guess it shouldn’t be that surprising. I think of how ace people can write a laundry list of things they personally experience, and other subsets will scoff and say ‘yeah as if we don’t go through that too’, completely fucking ignoring what that overlap means. Thinking that since they go through that, anybody else who reports that they might, too, are just Faking, or trying to steal the spotlight. How can people so completely lack empathy? Why are we not there for each other? Why do we not care about anybody else? Why can’t we recognize the same fucking pain we’re all going through, even if that same pain comes in different flavors, and try to be there for each other because nobody should have to go through what we’re going through?

Like, it’s a complicated issue. Like I said, yeah, groups do have stuff that effects them exclusively, and it can be frustrating to express unhappiness with something exclusive to your group and have people who clearly aren’t actually understanding what you’re going through say they can relate. But denying that there are any similarities at all just drives us farther apart when right now marginalized people desperately need the support of one-another. 

(I was gonna give bi people’s Double Discrimination as an example of that exclusivity, unwanted by communities on either side of the fence, since obviously lesbians and gays don’t experience that... But y’know who probably can empathize? Mixed race folks. Or folks with invisible disabilities. Or ANYONE who’s caught between both communities, not x enough for one and not y enough for the other.)

Speaking only of communities that I am personally in: in LGBT+ circles, separatism breaks up the subsets and causes infighting. In circles concerning disability and mental/physical illness, it isolates its members, denies them support, makes them feel like nobody truly understands, even people dealing with the exact same disability or illness, because symptoms can be so widespread and varied. Hell, even when dealing with our oppressors, separatism fails to actually try and change the views of the people oppressing us: i’d much rather have narratives where men are gentle, kind, feminine, loving, supporting, open to their emotions, and respectful permeating our culture, teaching young boys how to be as they grow, than narratives where men are just evil.

There’s a lot of gray area. There are people who have been so hurt by oppression that I do not blame them one bit for prescribing to a separatist narrative. But I mean in a general sense... I don’t want separatism to be pervasive. I don’t want it to be the mindset people automatically turn to regardless of what they’ve gone through. I want sympathy and support for the people who have been hurt, and I want the groups that have been doing the hurting to change. I want people to recognize the similarities between each other and be unafraid of empathizing and sharing.

The butch/femme and doe/stag thing is a result of separatism, and I can see where they get the idea for it - basically pulling the ideas of appropriation from communities of PoC telling white people not to appropriate their stuff - but they’re lashing out at the wrong people. When a white person appropriates locs, they’re seen by the public eye as being carefree, trendy, and cool, while black folks are still punished for wearing the same look that occurs naturally for them. When a white person puts on a war bonnet, they’re seen as being high-fashion and ‘exotic~~~’, while literally desecrating a sacred part of a culture they don’t belong to in any way, shape, or form. When a bi person calls themselves butch, they’re a part of the community that shares the exact same history, their histories are literally interwoven, and experiences extremely similar dynamics, at the very least, as lesbians. These are two very different things. Tell cis/straight people not to appropriate the terms, but remember, other LGBT+/queer people aren’t fucking cis/straight.

anyways this got way longer than I was expecting but shit, I got like 60 followers, who gives a damn what I say, right? peace.

[wedontcareaboutyourbinary]

Do you have any advice for discussing feminism while being nb? As someone who is sometimes misgendered as female I've met a lot of sexism (or misdirected sexism? I'm a bit confused about what word to use) and I feel like it's important to voice that. But at the same time I don't want that to define how others see me, as someone who's met sexism so that must mean I'm basically a woman. And I don't want to talk over women.

This is honestly a bit of a minefield to navigate for NB people in general, and quite frankly, I’d brace for some kind of complaint more or less regardless of how you choose to handle it. On this blog alone we’ve had everything from ‘how dare you suggest that AGAB and the assumption of gender that goes along with it might not be the reason for this person’s issue’ to the trainwreck of weirdness about misogyny we got sent a while back that eventually culminated in this rant from me.

Personally, I think that sexism is sexism even when directed at NB people, and the qualifier of ‘misdirected’ makes assumptions about the interactions at hand that aren’t necessarily accurate. (It might be useful in certain situations, and I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say that it’s an unnecessary word, but it seems to me to get used as much to minimise the experiences and aggression under discussion as to highlight the general poor aim of bigotry.) Sexism and exorsexism do go pretty hand in hand, since they’re both methods of controlling people disprivileged by gender.

I find that there’s a certain value in being specific about how I am being misgendered as a woman when discussing interactions in which I’ve been treated in a misogynistic fashion. It can help to draw attention to the fact that sexism is built on a stack of assumptions, rather than any kind of, yanno, logic. And it somewhat helps to address the issue of having the experience of sexism define my gender to someone else, at least for me, but I do have a rather eccentric relationship to the whole misgendering business, so do take the time to think about your own limits and difficulties and what might serve to address those specifically.

I’d also be inclined to say that as long as you’re speaking from personal experience, it’s not really appropriate to say that you’re talking over anyone. As much as we love our identitarian lines around experiences, those lines just aren’t the be all and end all of marginalised experiences. Basic etiquette regarding the respecting of other’s experiences and opinions applies, and an awareness of what exactly got you targeted by a certain expression of bigotry doesn’t hurt, but if an issue affects you, there should be room somewhere for you to talk about that.

(If you’re TME, discussions of transmisogyny should probably be engaged with more carefully, because as a group us TME folks aren’t... necessarily great at engaging with that topic respectfully, but I don’t know how that relates to your circumstances.)

And there’s definitely something to be said for the sheer level of overlap between misogyny and exorsexism, by virtue of the fact that the systems they serve to reinforce are so closely related. That’s a factor that often gets overlooked or handled poorly.

The blunt fact of the matter is that a binary analysis is far easier to conduct, after all, and bringing NB experiences into the conversation complicates it, which isn’t necessarily fun. But it is necessary for a broader understanding of how these societal issues affect a variety of people in society.

The only other thing that immediately comes to mind is to be wary of blanket statements about how certain acts will impact certain groups. Such blanket statements tend to be reductive at best, as we’ve spent a great deal of time discussing on this blog in the past.

- Cade

#anonymous #answers

[angelsaxis]

ig my only qn regarding the d slur reclamation is then: why would the d slur be exclusively applied to black lesbians and not black bi women as well? because bisexual women can be and are as visibly gay/gnc/etc as their lesbian counterparts. i think it's fair for you to bring up the racial element, but is it fair to assume that bisexual women are not also affected by homophobia from being visibly gay in the way lesbians are, within the black community?

follow-up to my prev ask (also anon i hope) but i guess i cant really see a real difference in terms of oppression and what structures would affect a gnc bisexual (and for purposes of being respectful to the racial aspect of the slur) black woman in a longterm committed relationship to another woman, and a lesbian who fits the same description. what real, material differences would there be to say that one, when harassed with the d slur can reclaim it for their personal empowerment, whereas the other cannot? and so, by extension, the exclusion of bisexual women from the use of the slur feels like an assumption that bisexual women's experiences couldn't possibly be similar to a lesbian's and it just...isn't the case

I can see the argument you're making on the material differences in oppression. But also know that for as long as I've been alive, and as long and as far as I've seen, dyke means lesbian and thus anyone who's calling someone that is meaning it as "you're a (bad) lesbian" if that makes sense?

(putting this under a cut because its long and rambly)

like your avg homophobe doesn't have the differential knowledge between what's a lesbian and what's a bi woman and gnc-ness that you and I have. And when I say that I mean like....the only sexualities that exist for a lot of them are straight and gay/lesbian, and then anything even slightly gender nonconforming is, by their own definition, lesbian, since they've defined lesbian as like the masculine-ness of women regardless of their actual attraction. so then that's how you get these same homophobes defining bisexuality as like "half gay half straight" when you and I know that that's not true. I hope this makes sense kajshdkfj I've had this thought for a while now but I've always had difficulty expressing how homophobes define sexuality.

and for me, I rely on what a strict definition of dyke would be specifically because I want to avoid what you mention at the end of the second ask, about the assumptions of bi women's experiences. Like I don't want to say "bi women never experience X!!" cause I know that that's not right, but I don't' want to put so much overlap between lesbian and bi wlw experiences that it erases bi women's experiences w biphobia or my and other's experiences with lesbophobia (and Ive seen moments on here where lesbians talk about something that's definitely like. a lesbian-only experience just by nature, but then OP and others get accused of being biphobic).

I think "misdirected lesbophobia" is the word I'm looking for? that and the fact that now that I think about it, it pisses me off when white wlw go about intracommunity terms and discourse with the level of entitlement that they do, because they do this with "stud" as well. and they do this with our fashion and terms. and white queers in general just like to take and redefine everything in order to force themselves into the same box as us. i remember on twitter a few months ago some pan nb white queer person was trying to say they were a dyke and at that point its like well what is the criteria for the definition of this word.

i think there's another word or piece of vocab or phrase that I'm missing. the last thing I wanna do is have us talking past each other but atm i can't think of anything.

at the risk of over explaining and further confusing anyone who's reading this, I was going about this in a more averaging/general sense in that your average bi person isn't visibly gnc, in the same way that your avg lesbian isn't visibly gnc (many of my lesbian and bi friends do not get clocked like at alllll lmao). and like i know Black bi women who are sworn off men for XYZ reasons and will only date other women. but tbh i dont think any of them would call themselves a dyke cause it has v specific connotations and understandings. and its not so much based on who its used against as it is what is means.

#ask #i think i managed to narrow down my reasoning by the end of the essay alskjhdflaskjdf #yeah anon you bring up valid points we may be speaking from largely diff cultural contexts #d slur