#want some gay morally ambiguous characters?

[sadtrash-masculine]

manner of death brainrot, kinnporsche brainrot, manner of death brainrot, kinnporsche brainrot, manner of death brainrot, kinnporsche br–

#i have to wait another week for kinnporsche #this is as close as its gonna get #want some gay morally ambiguous characters? #just go watch manner of death #they so cute #they so gay #am I talking about kinnporsche or tanbun #nobody knows #(it's both) #kinnporsche #manner of death

[emblazons]

*rattles the bars of my cage*

Mike Wheeler's emotional/moral ambiguity actually makes him one of the more fascinating younger characters in this show. Why?

Because he isn't following the same simple linear narrative line that Will and El are because of their supernatural interactions, but rather existing as a special, third thing that often exists in contrast to the villains in the story, where he gets to be messy and confused and insecure—and where he has spent entire seasons moving in the direction of what has always been the true enemy of characters in Stranger Things: conformity—and STILL CHOOSE WHATS RIGHT. Y'all are just so used to caricatures in television / thinking that "heroes "& "villains" exist in two entirely separate, non-overlapping camps (rather than existing in shades of gray) that you over-simplfy him...and miss the forest for the trees.

Mike being the one who struggles most with conformity and wanting other people to fill the gaps of insecurity are why all those goddamn Brenner parallels exist. It's why Vecna, who is paralleled to El in many ways, said something to El when she was tied to that door about a "mediocre man looking for power in someone else great" and it applies as much to Mike calling her a Superhero 2 seconds later as it does Brenner trying to use her powers. It's why the tension between him trying to "act normal" / date El (who exists on a pedestal for him) and him being the kind/loyal nerd who exists in "being human" with Will does—that love triangle exists to showcase his flux between his two sides, the one that embraces himself and the one that follows the path of the things he's always been told to want (like S1 Jonathan/Nancy/Steve).

Its why Mike is such a confusing mix of heroic energy and an immature chaos—why his insecurities have pushed him into some oddly toxic mindsets even at a young age...like thinking "a girl" will solve all his insecurity problems which sounds a hell of a lot like beginning of modern incel thought processes if you want to get into it, but he was 12 so we'll let that go and why he seems so wishy-washy now. Mike is just now aware enough of how his desires compete within him (and how they affect the people around him) to start making a choice about how he will respond to them...but we had to present all the sides he was conflicted by first, because for him, those conflicts almost always come at him in the form of relationship, like it does in most of our own lives.

Mike is not "under-characterized." He is not "poorly written." He is written human in a space (and two people) steeped in the supernatural, and is learning to accept himself for who he is in the midst of that. He is messy and morally ambiguous at times just like his mother and sister—and more interesting for it, because he isn't so easy to pin down as an "everyman central protagonist" that way.

If anything, Mike as a character is harder to follow because he exists as an entirely relational character in a show that often allows you to easily put all its other characters into caricatures (aka the superhero (El), the gay kid (Will), the final girl (Nancy), the POC kid (Lucas), the Guy in the Chair (Dustin), etc) and why, as the character that required four entire seasons to be fleshed out, he will probably be as central in the final season as the first. Mike has always needed external action to move through character growth...and Vecna, the being literally designed to push people to their limits, is the way he will probably go through that.

By S5, he will have to face his ongoing confusions and fears (aka major insecurity) and come into himself...for the sake of himself, his party and the one he truly loves. Mike's ability to make mistakes over the course of five seasons and still make a difference to defeating the ultimate evil in real life (and not just in the games he played as a kid) is what will give him the courage to self-actualize, admit that he is important even surrounded by people "more special" than he is, and come into his own—while embracing what makes him different.

You don't have to like him. You don't have to relate to him or even enjoy what The Duffers have done with him as a character (or any character tbh). But damn if you're gonna roll up and act like he doesn't even have a character because he's not Will or Eleven LMAO

Sidebar: to all the people mad m*leven went romantic...Mike would have never been able to realize that a girl wouldn't solve his problems...without having ever been in a (however poorly executed) romantic relationship with one. As a character motivated to learn through interaction with other characters, Mike needed to experience for himself that El—or any girl, really—wasn’t ever going to fill the hole of his internal insecurities. If he never got the thing he thought would solve his problem, he would have either never grown...or fallen into resentment while in the closet even longer, like men do about that in literal real life. Just saying.

#mike wheeler #mike wheeler core #Mike is written like he's for a different show sometimes #but HE HAS A CHARACTER #I PROMISE YOU HE DOES #SOMETIMES I DONT EVEN LIKE HIM BUT THAT DOESNT MEAN I DONT SEE WHO HE IS LMAO #please stop denying it because you're so focused on love triangles #I can appreciate him being a mess. you should learn to too! #like...lmao damn #my st commentary

[goodfornothingstar]

Lily suffering in m/m Fics

I don't know what is the big deal.

I mean Sirius who is protagonist in so many fics, general or romantic or slice of life etc, himself goes through unimaginable suffering to reach an ambiguous ending which is bittersweet.

But these people have problem with making lily suffer. Why? Because she is a female character. And in the times we live, females are not supposed to suffer???

Isn't it upto the characterisation of the author about what happens to lily. And the storyline.

Maybe she started cheating on james with snape and James rather than confronting decided to give her a taste of her own medicine. Maybe in such scenario lily comes back to her senses and wants James back and maybe James is finally done with her and lives his hea with sirius. This right here is a happy ending for prongsfoot and not so for lily.

Or maybe James is a gay man with strong internalized homophobia and he decides to trap the most popular girl in the school so that no one can ever doubt. But once her relaxes and feels safe after marriage, he decides to go out and test the water, so to speak.

No lily Evans bashing. This is a tag I only see with lily. The one character in hp world we know the least about. And the author was successful in making us all believe that because James and lily were oh so great- any suffering that comes should come to lowlifes like sirius whose own parents hurt him or Peter who was born a traitor or hell even snape whose teenage years shaped into all the wrong choices and worst imaginable adulthood.

James and lily and specially lily should not suffer. The most you can do is kill them before old age. Anything more is unacceptable because lily is a woman.

I mean common.

I agree that it should not be done for the sake of bashing or making her out to be the thorn amongst the rosy prongsfoot Or jegulus relationship.

No, absolutely not. I agree that her worth shouldn't be only as a girlfriend or wife.

But she could be a grey character of her own whose poor choices and wrong decision lead to some suffering.

We see she smiles at snape's cost. We see that she doesn't sympathies with a teen petunia. We see her being friends with snape until he uttered that word to her, up until before that she was discrediting every other muggleborn in school by putting her head under sand. Because I feel that only muggleborn snape showed a basic human decency towards was her.

In fact i see her as capable of being a wonderful grey character. So why limit her with only being a Mary sue who is the best and gets the best. She was freinds with snape, a dark gray shade character. Wife to James, again a grey character. Then became friend with Sirius, again an ambiguous in terms of good or bad character. Canon lily surrounded herself around morons because she herself was a moron.

And life is unfair. We know this.

So why should it be unfair to only sirius or james but lily has people marching for her to only get a happy and respectful and wonderful life.

Even gods suffer in whatever mythology you pick.

But lily shouldn't???

So aren't you asking for the same as jkr. A sweet wonderful life for our dear lily evans because she as a female and a mother is great so she should live a wonderfull life.

Hell, my mother is the most wonderful person I know but let me tell you that being good at heart doesn't make the suffering less. If anything good people face most trials in life....

Ps- being cheated on is based upon how much respect your partner has for you. I mean yes love can fade but if they respect you as a human. They will have the decency to cut things off before starting something new. But in no way is being cheated on is about the person who is cheated.

In fact all these people marching for lily should just chill because at the end of the day even if she is cheated on, she will have the moral high ground.

The real question is - was canon James Potter as a character capable of cheating her????

#Lily Evans critical #Not so critical #Just stating facts #But i dont won't to trampled by lily lovers #James Potter #Prongsfoot #Sirius black #If lily is a human she will suffer #Or else she is just a cardboard piece like jkr's version

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

Are you aware that I'm-a-gay-fish and Zu ship dr//m/are ?/genq

okay so it took me a while to answer this but i finally found the words to so here goes; yeah i do know, and i totally understand if you don't ship it, neither do i, but there's nothing i can do about it?

they're allowed, so long as they don't harm people, to do whatever they want on their own platforms. and before you ask me if i support *ncest, would you actually ask someone if they support toxic relationships and murder whenever they ship two unhealthy killers with mental problems? because that's funnily enough what most people do around here! you can say it's not the same, and that they're romanticizing it, but i can personally detach myself from fiction enough to realize that while this concept depicted in their art shouldn't be recreated in real life, that doesn't mean they actually engage or support people that do that irl- they asked zu the same question so many times, and frog doesn't either and i've known gayfish for three years! you're well within your right to stop associating with them or distance yourself from their content but i myself won't.

i know fiction affects reality to a degree, don't twist my words please, but if you're too young to consume that kind of content with a nuanced perspective or is triggered/affected by it then as long as they tag their content properly then you can unfollow, block and move on. i have a habit of following and reblogging people's works before looking at their bios and before i know it find myself having to choose between two sides i don't belong to and i frankly don't want to! anti this or proship that- in this online era you have to adapt by keeping your cool and curating your own online experience and viewing people in black and whites is stressful, painful and dangerous for everyone involved. i don't even reblog the content you probably have a problem with, and i'm honestly still scared of the response i'll get-

i will not blame or hate whoever unfollows or blocks me for this, it's to be expected, but please don't think about it like some bad vs good guys dilemma? sometimes thought provoking morally grey ambiguous stories with messed up characters spark more positive discussion and healing than people looking into it because they suffer from the same delusions and want a justification-

like realistically, in my blog, most ppl here are basically shipping two literal skeletons with magic in their bones who are sometimes almost the exact copy of one another, and who theoretically have a very similar dna, and sometimes they make shipkids, which, if you know anything about *ncest, is one of the main reasons why you shouldn't bang your siblings - mostly from a moral standpoint because that's so gross i can't even think of it, but also because any offspring would suffer greatly from physical and mental diseases hidden in their genetic code- like. you could argue it's not the same but it's sancest for a reason. and even when they're widely different sanses, you wouldn't think fell x sans is wrong (at least in this specific community) but really we've all just gotten numb to how weird that sounds. trust me, there's a reason we don't talk about our ships to outsiders HHH

TL,DR: so while i greatly encourage you to block people and content you don't want to see/associate with, including me! i hope i made it clear why i, personally, don't care about dreammare and whoever ships it.

#thank you to anyone who made it this far and gave me a chance to voice my opinion :') #sorry this is long but i want to make it as precise and close as many holes as i can with my arguments before i receive an ask about it #it's fine if you do btw i wanna clear any doubts and i know for a fact a loot of you will either leave or be conflicted and trust me i know #it's the whole reason why i was avoiding this conversation! i kept on hoping everyone was on the same page but we're not and that's okay #truthfully i can only hope that the people who'll leave this blog after this take the opportunity to question the fics and media they like #-in the future. don't force yourself to enjoy something you don't but nothing is as cut to the point as 'this is gross stop talking' #for the record you won't see me reblog any dreammare or anything about it because i don't even like them like that so why would i HHH #also i'm sorry but zu is quite frankly the sweetest person i've ever met and frog has been supporting ME for as long as i can remember!! #they're such a big part of this blog and the reason for it's existence so i'll choose them and my principles over faking a view i don't hav #have an amazing day everyone and thanks again for passing by muah muah :'D <333

[adarkrainbow]

A brief talk about Fables and LGBT

When it comes to works dealing with oe re-creating fairy tales, I always like to take a look at any possible LGBT representation. After all, fairytales became such a monolithic symbol of a heterosexual world with no place for queer people that taking a look at non "orthodox" orientations is always one of the easiest but also deepest subversions of the genre. (There's a whole thing to say about the very strong queerness of literary fairytales from madame de Murat and the knight of Mailly to Andersen and Oscar Wilde, but we'll keep this for later - let us focus on the "popular opinion" and "random Joe or Joane" knowledge that "fairytales are for heteros only").

As such, I had to take a look at the LGBT representations in the comic book "Fables". Being one of the big names and great example of fairytale media, building an entire franchise on reinventing fairytales into a modern fantasy and marking the first American entries into the urban-fantasy fairytale world... And it is very interesting because in recent years "Fables" has come under heavy criticism precisely because of a lack of LGBT representation. You have this numerous series, that spawned numerous spin-offs, and co-existed with other great Vertigo titles filled with queerness (Neil Gaiman's Sandman to take an example)... And yet all people remember of it are "heteros everywhere". Is it true? Is Fables truly as queer-unfriendly as we recall?

This post originally began last year as a catalogue of all the queer characters in Fables... But I stopped halfway, realizing I was exhausting myself by just dissecting every little part of the comic. Not that I do not enjoy it - but I have better things to do on my free time. So instead of making a full and exhaustive list of every mention of non-hetero things, I will rather make some broad and general observations based on my knowledge and reading of this franchise.

If we look at the main series, we can only confirm this popular opinion: homosexual characters are neither primary nor secondary - they are tertiary at most. The only character I remember to have been truly confirmed as homosexual was Moss Waterhouse from "Jack Be Nimble". A very cool character - an intelligent, ambitious, charismatic, slightly morally ambiguous Black, gay and Jewish man who knows he is every minority the old world hates and doesn't hesitate to use it as a weapon, and ultimately gets the fame, the wealth and the power. A very cool character... that lasts a few issues and disappears completely. Beyond that... What do we have? Rose-Red says she had "experiences" with women before - but it is a detail thrown hastily in a dialogue of "Animal Farm", and it is unclear if she is truly bisexual, simply "experimented" in her past, or purposefully had lesbian relationships in her conscious and intense effort to break all the social taboos of the Fables community... I did notice a hairdresser that seems to be a "gay hairdresser" stereotype in "The Sons of the Empire", but after that, the series is a desert.

So, while Bill Willingham recognizes gay people exist, he clearly doesn't want to focus on them or talk about gayness in his plots. In fact, he seems to have been thinking more about them in the beginning of his comic (all the mentions above are from the first third or so of the series), before completely focusing on something else. There is not a refusal of depicting homosexuals, no, there is simply no desire to focus on them or push them forward or tell stories about them (except for Moss Waterhouse, who is a focus-character and one of the main characters of the Jack Be Nimble arc - but a tertiary character in Fables as a whole). [Note: I am only looking at here through the lense of inside the comic, but it doesn't help that Willingham is in real-life an openly Christian and old-fashioned author with some... specific ideas that do not really fit with modern sensibilities, resulting in some of the series' primary controversies, like the handling of abortion.]

HOWEVER! To say Fables is not a gay comic FRANCHISE would be a big mistake. Because while the main series is a desert with one oasis, the spin-offs are BURSTING with gay characters! Well, it isn't a Pride Parade still, but we have prominent, important, front-stage homosexual characters, and gay romances are part of the plots and character growths!

"Fairest" is probably the most gay of all the spin-offs : in "The Hidden Kingdom", Rapunzel is confirmed to be bisexual and a key part of the plot is her romance with a female kitsune. In "The Return of the Maharaja" Prince Charming is revealed to be bisexual and Nathoo (of The Jungle Book) to be gay. And in "Clamour for Glamour" Mary is in an homosexual relationship too... Not only are homosexual relationships openly depicted and primary characters confirmed as queer, but the topic of accepting these relationships is also heavily talked about - from Rapunzel facing the rejecting of a feudal Japan moral system, to Nathoo being afraid of his own feelings and Charming having to explain to him they are normal. What is especially interesting about "Fairest" is that the series seems to go at counter-flow against the main series. For example, Prince Charming is confirmed to be bisexual and to have loved at least a man before... But if I recall well, in the beginning of "Fables" Charming made clear he was NOT into guys, only girls. Another case could be brought up - Crispin, whose "gay-coding" was massively amplified in "Of Men and Mice" - in fact, it is very obviously and strongly suggested by the story that Crispin and the Huntsman are more than friends, given how the Huntsman rushes by his side and refuses to leave his hospital bed after the explosion... It is not openly said, leading to Wikipedia articles to go with the usual routine of "They're just good friends", but the way it is framed and having this "very strong same-sex devotional friendship" sandwiched between openly gay romances, it all VERY strongly implies some homoromantic feelings...

Another spin-off that deserves a good place on this list, but that is not well known (because A- it is the last of the spin-offs and B- it got cancelled due to low sales) is "Everafter", which explicitely confirms that Connor Wolf, one of the children of Snow and Bigsby, is not just homosexual, not just bisexual, but PANSEXUAL thanks to his extensive shapeshifting abilities allowing him to turn into all kinds of sexes, genders and species. And this isn't just told to us by dialogue, but also explicitely proven and shown by having Connor enter an homosexual relationship with one of his male colleagues, Tom Swift (from the Tom Swift novels).

So, what made this "queer boom" in the spin-offs? Was it because Willingham was less present, if not completely absent, allowing other voices to write and speak? Was it because it was "side-stories" that could be split from the "main stuff", and thus there could be more experiments? Was it because these series were made and written in the late 2000s and early 2010s rather than the late 90s, and so these subjcts were more on people's minds? Probably a mix of all that - after all, one thing well known is that the spin-offs were places of free experiments and competitive alternatives, resulting in contradicting plotlines that made the series semi-canons compared to Willingham's main continuity (see the dual Sleeping Beauty origin backstory).

The Fables franchise is not "anti-gay", far from it - I do hold the idea that fairytales are an inherently queer genre and so every work dealing with them for too long ends up showing queer themes at one point or another - even though it is true that the Fables SERIES is very, if not almost exclusively, heterosexual-driven. But the very open and normalized homosexuality, bisexuality and pansexuality of the spin-offs help balance this in the scope of a franchise.

Now, you might say: "Hey, you spoke of queerness at the beginning of your post, but now you're all rambling about sexualities! Where's the transgenders at?". And believe me, it was deliberate! Here is the thing - when it comes to trans folks, Fables becomes a whole other lot of complex topic. I do not know what Willingham's personal opinions of trans people are, and it doesn't really matter here because am looking at the actual created work as it can be received from someone with no knowledge of the author. Here's the thing: while the Fables main series is a desert of gayness, it develops a very strong transgender esotericism through focus on specific fairytale topics, reversal of fairytale tropes, and discussion of motifs that truly work as gender-breaking occultism. This is why anyone who reads some arcs of the main series can easily believe Willingham is trans-friendly (again I don't know if he actually IS, and from the rumors I vaguely heard, he might not be fully okay with trans people, but his work speaks a different language). If Willingham truly is against trans people, than this proves my point above: anyone dealing too much or for too long with fairytales in their work will grow queer-messages and queer-themes, that they want it or not.

On one side, you have numerous shapeshifters in this story who explicitely keep altering and changing their appearances and identities, which brings forward questions of "living into two worlds" (like the cubs, halfway between humans and wolves) or having to choose one identity other another. When this gets mingled with inhuman, cosmic entities and personified natural powers this results to some very interesting gender issues - most famous being the North Wind case. When there is talks of the North Wind getting an heir among his grandchildren, there is a whole discussion about how the North Wind will always be King of the North and of Winter... even if the new North Wind is a girl. Which, as the North Wind attendants say, lets the heir choose if they want to become male to match the title, or stay female while being called "King" - because ultimately the North Wind, being a seasonal and weather power, is above and beyond these gender considerations, and mostly uses them as attributes and titles more than anything of real substance.

On the other side, the topic of names is truly fascinating... Fables being iconic characters of popular stories, feeding off their fame and celebrity to gain power, means that they are deeply attached to their names, that their names are their essence and their being, and that these same names will keep haunting them. And yet... in the second half of the comic, we have numerous characters changing their names. Changes that not only mark deep personal growths and dvelopments, but also are accepted by others and change the perceptions of who the character is. When Flycatcher stops being a low janitor in deny, and decides to become a brave, powerful, messianic king, he returns to his original name of "Ambrose". Similarly, Frau Totenkinder when returning to her true self, abandoning the nicknames and disguises, gains a new identity so that the other Fables do not recognize her and mistake her for another person. And of course, there is how Stinky - who got a name he hated, not by choice - becomes Brock Blueheart, though this is here meant to be more of a religious allegory than anything else. But still - for anyone aware of his transgenderism works, to see this importance and focus on the power of names, of names as defining an identity, and of the changing of names to change who you are... It is hard not to see some trans motifs in the second part of the Fables comics.

But even more relevant, even more obvious, even more trans-coded, was the story of Rodney and June. This arc was the definitive proof that no matter what Willingham's personal opinions might be, Fables was a trans-friendly comic, even if maybe against the author's own intentions, or by accident. [Or again, purposefully if Willingham turns out to be cool with transgenders people, I don't know the guy]. Rodney and June, wood-soldiers, born out of trees, made of wood, part of an entire elite nation and civilization of wooden people... Are fascinated by people of flesh, dream of becoming flesh people, even if others see them as weird freaks and advise them to "keep all this hidden" not to compromise their reputation ; and their story is fully developed and fleshed out (no pun intended) from awkward and failed attempts at imitating and understanding the behavior of flesh-people (things like eating or kissing), to them openly and bravely undergoing a quest to demand that their creator grants their wish of becoming people of flesh, and be recognized as such by the empire they live in... When you read this story, it seems massively obvious that this is a barely-veiled plot for anyone dealing with identity issues and trying to change who they currently are to be true to who they want to be - and more importantly who they feel they have to be. You can't do more trans than that - from the whole "don't tell, keep it hidden" behavior of the awkward friends around you to the secret experiments and roleplayings in the privacy of the bedroom...

In conclusion: Next time someone says Fables is homophobic, point out to them that the comics themselves are not. The main series might not have prominent gay stories or characters, but it has some very strong transgender motifs and characters (accidental or not, they're here, they're queer and people have to deal with it) ; while the spin-offs are bursting with unashamed gay romances and explicit lesbian sex. It is definitively not the greatest franchise when it comes to gay representation, but it cannot be said it isn't a queer comic in its whole.

#fables #fables comic #queerness #gayness #transgender #analysis #queerness in fairytales #transgenderism in fairytales #fables spin offs

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

I’m curious about Steve Rogers’ “dark side” and your thoughts on that in the MCU! I don’t recall seeing Cap’s dark side in the MCU tbh.

Hello! This is an excellent question and I hope you don't mind my answer being very salty. Because it is one of the things about the MCU that turns me into a bloodthirsty beast out for Marvel executive jugulars.

Now, the concept of Steve's "dark side" is introduced in Age of Ultron, in an exchange between Tony and Steve where Steve says that Tony hasn't "seen yet" Steve's dark side. It is obviously foreshadowing for Civil War, were, supposedly, we . . . see Steve's dark side.

Except we don't.

Except Marvel wants us to see Steve's choices in Civil War as driven by Steve's dark side.

Except they're not.

Nothing Steve does in Civil War is morally reprehensible, unless we agree that he should have just punched Tony in the face right away and that being polite for so long was in fact wrong of him. (This is mostly sarcasm with an edge of truth.)

So what is supposed to Steve's dark side? According to the creators' official version, Steve's . . . selfishness? In putting his own priorities (Bucky) before the group (the Avengers). He broke up the Avengers to pursue his personal interest. Right? Wrong, of course. The Avengers break up because Tony pursues a morally reprehensible line and Steve does not accept to follow him through it.

But hey. They tried to make a "balanced" conflict where both parties had some good points. They failed. But I guess they tried.

But! Not only the Avengers thing. Steve's dark side is also . . . preventing Tony to pursue his revenge over Bucky. Because that's what the excange in AoU foreshadows, right? The big conflict between the two characters in the scene.

Except Steve is doing the morally right thing in preventing a man from committing an extrajudicial murder of a person who was not accountable for the actions in question. (Actually even if Bucky was actually guilty of the crime, acting as judge, jury and executioner would still be wrong, although understandable. But Bucky was not accountable at all, and Tony knew that - Tony was aware of the conditions of Bucky's unaccountability.)

In fact, before the final fight they do reconcile, or at least they’re on their way to reconcile, before Tony decides that it’s his right to attempt to extrajudicially execute an innocent. So this is not even about the accords anymore, and, again, this is . . . you know . . . kinda on Tony. (The creators also confirmed that a large part of Tony’ motivation for murdering Bucky was to hurt Steve, which makes it worse.) Steve was just like. Um I don’t want my friend to be murdered.

So, what's Steve dark side? According to Marvel, his attachment to Bucky over his attachment to the Avengers. And this is the part that makes me bloodthirsty the most: it's homophobic af! Ironically, Marvel execs would die before purposely making Steve Rogers queer, and yet at the same time they managed to be homophobic to him. Spectacular.

The bond between Steve and Bucky, no matter what the MCU tries to say, it's obviously . . . ambiguous. It is a very strong and emotional bond between two men. Steve's attachment to the Avengers, on the other hand, is dramed as a familial bond, the Avengers being a "family" that Steve breaks up because of Bucky. So the ambiguously homoerotic bond destroys the familial bond. I don't need to say how same-sex relationship have been long accused to being destructive of the good, healthy familial bonds of our society!

In fact, the “nu-uh, no gayness here, nope nope nope” attitude of Disney towards Captain America wasn’t actually a thing yet when they were making the movie. (Civil War I mean). At some point, when the movie was almost finished, someone intervened and the movie was tweaked to make it ~less gay~. But at first the movie was being made purposely ambiguously gay! So it’s not just my fervid hysterical imagination. Steve and Bucky’s bond was intended to be, while not gay-gay because that doesn’t happen here, but kinda-gay.

So. The homoerotic bond is toxic and destructive of familial bonds. A man’s dark side is his attachment to another man. Yay. Fun.

At least that was the intention, because as you say there’s hardly ever something that can be called a “dark side” in Steve because whatever he fights for is a good cause. Bucky is an innocent who’s wrongly persecuted after being heavily victimized. Preventing him from being killed on sight for a crime he had not in fact committed at all is a good cause, even if they had no bond between them. Refusing to sign the “accords” is a good choice because the storyline was ridiculously, offensively written they made no fucking sense and also, you know, human rights. Stopping Tony from extrajudicially executing a man for actions the man was not accountable for is a good cause.

So, yeah. Bad writing plus bad writing equals a confusing mess.

#groovy-lady #not mcu friendly #not civil war friendly #mcu

[basedkikuenjoyer]

A Tale of Two Hannya: Art Imitates Life

These are always kind of a trickier beast to write because by design the comparison casts a more negative light on a popular character. But they tend to be well received. Living near the path of peak totality for the big US eclipse, had me wanting to finish this one sitting in my drafts because well...we have both sun & moon themes as well as a dynamic of "upstaging" each other. Which is kinda cool. I really do think, when taken together, Kiku & Yamato give you one of the most interesting dynamics in this massive series despite the two faces almost never appearing together.

Let's step back a little though. Why? Why would our author structure so much of Luffy's story in Wano through the top two new faces for the arc? Almost splitting Luffy's story in half with mirror opposites; humble and helpful followed by flashy yet flawed. Pitting organic bonding against the spotlight. A very straightforward and earnest trans woman foiled by a deliberately inconsistent and ambiguous character falling somewhere you'd call transmasculine. Our Crane Wife and our Dragon's King's Daughter, forget the plot of One Piece for a moment...what's the reflection of our world they mirror?

As gross as it is to compare oneself to Doflamingo, I promise I'm going somewhere with this. And, to be fair I can think of a few specific people who'd make that type of comparison about me. I like to think I use my powers for good, but anyone with them would say that. Touched on it a little with the Otohime side story but over the 2010s I had my little strings in just about every corner of LGBT activism throughout a region that's now a solid gay haven in a conservative state. For the first half of that decade, it was thrust upon me because people saw how solid a representative a young, cute, well-spoken lady would be at diffusing old stereotypes. An MA in Political Science helped too.

Because it's currently Ramadan still, I'd like to share one story I feel was a high watermark and how it rippled in a way that is gonna shape my outlook here. When I noticed there was a shift. One I felt trepidation about aspects of initially and today feel vindicated seeing how Gen Z views their elders. It was Ramadan a fair few years ago now, while part of a board for something I got to know a local Muslim leader and his wife. They were used to inviting other community leaders to join them for Iftar, the fast-breaking meal. They wanted to show their young progressive members they were listening and respectfully invite someone trans, remember these are often very sex-segregated places. Even if there were some livid hardliners most of the women really liked me and you could tell it meant a lot to some of the older teen girls who really wanted to square more progressive beliefs with their faith.

Late 2010s, so if I told you there was backlash in queer circles guess who. More or less entirely people who'd fit that college radfem to transmasc mold. "I'd have gone to the women's side in solidarity and liberated those oppressed women being soo radical." "Don't you think what Rhea did was you know, kinda problematic? If I have to explain to you how it's low-key cultural appropriation I don't even..." "They only picked her because she acts like a little Barbie doll." Yes, that last one is peak feminism. They can call me wicked if they want; at least I was called to serve while they were all just rabble-rousers who decided they were the only morally pure enough ones to be local leaders. That's what this was all about, politics.

If you ask me personally about the current state of trans movements? It kinda comes down to that. Most Milennials, trans women, men, & even nonbinary folk, tend to use the community as a temporary safe haven but acceptance has come far enough it tends to stay temporary. Gender is but one aspect of our identity, the hugbox and group chats about pronouns only really feel like they're giving you something for so long. The holdout? In my experience that tends to be trans men or transmasc enbies who took a half-step before coming out in the relative privilege of radical feminist spaces offering a little space within. I don't have a whole lot of animosity towards these guys...it just feels like sometimes it becomes all of our problem when that radfem space pumped you full of a distorted vision of "male privilege" and you feel jilted you didn't get that by waking up one day and saying you are now man.

Was Eiichiro Oda going for all that? Fuck no. I was a longtime leader of a local movement, he's a cis author on the outside looking in. Better way these two make sense is more an author being aware enough (Japan had a similar trajectory over the last decade) these two serve well as standins for the extremes of what a teen today sees about this transgender community. Okama type caricatures just don't work anymore. Transmasc nearing 30 who feels like they don't even know what they want? Playing word games that feel like you never stopped and thought how they'd sound to other people? Chasing an idealized version of masculinity? It's not exactly an uncommon sentiment. It's a side-effect of finally getting that long sought visibility...scrutiny goes hand in hand.

It's a Tale of Two Hannya because it's weaving in the story of one community experiencing a Tale of Two Movements. Two movements that are at times diametrically opposed (foes). That's where the upstaging or "eclipse" aspect comes in. The way beats for one influence the other even without trying. Why Yamato's the one trying to find a place and Kiku's already dealing with average pressures of being a woman. Regardless of how you feel about that personally, you have to at least acknowledge this is the general impression teens today seem to have. Hypothetically, you could get the same effect between a more clear-cut trans man and someone kinda like Kamatari.

Ultimately, Wano is about who we are vs the roles we play. We see other places where themes of just saying you fill a role doesn't mean you are. I've said Yamato's a gentle critique of the extreme "you are what you say your are" side of trans movements. I understand why people would want to see things that way, but gender is a social phenomenon. For the record, I do think it low-key radiates dude energy to not care about shit like cannonballing tits out into the main bath, no one should have to act a certain way and all that. But it's a good pair for demonstrating where we're at in general. The emotions they evoke out of readers are a good reflection of where young men are kinda at on all this trans stuff. And both are still portrayed as cool, friendly people. But I do see where it's coming from when Oda shifts that classic immaturity element from Kiku more to Yamato.

#one piece #tale of two hannya #Okiku #Yamato

[fervency-if]

What inspired you to create major characters? Do their first drafts differ in any way from what they turned out to be? (Feel free to talk about any characters who have interesting behind the scenes stories.)

That's a really fun question! My reply is quite long, because I always end up going on tangents, so I'll put it under a cut.

The story itself (or rather, Part I,) is actually based on a short story I wrote a long time ago for fun (it was just a quick writing prompt, "write a story about vampires," about 1200 words I wrote in some hour,) so there wasn't really any planning to talk about there, and when it comes to the first part of the game itself I never intended it to grow any larger than perhaps 5000 - 10 000 words or so (since it was just supposed to be an entry for the Halloween Jam 2022 for fun, my plan was just "alright, let's adapt the short story to a short game since the themes align") - it's very improvised, I wrote 65 000 words in perhaps two and a half week, so there were never any early drafts or even things I had written down beforehand.

When I wrote the short story, I think I just thought that I wanted to write something about a plague doctor, because I've always been interested in them (and found their design cool.) I just made her up on the go, and then took the small amount of characterisation she had in the short story and fleshed her out - she's pretty much the same, but a bit more morally ambiguous in the game. I do believe she might have been a tad more callous (in her motives, not demeanor) in the short story, but not to a great extent.

I'm not as sure about Aubrey, even though I did create his character specifically for the game (he was just some young man who started the pandemonium when the main character was busy having fun and a good meal in the cloakroom in the short story, the narrator never even interacted with him.) I think I just wanted a crazy, unhinged, and morbid little guy, because I find such characters fun and fascinating overall, and he grew from there. His name actually comes from when I was picking out names for the player to choose for their main characters if they didn't type it in themselves. I thought of a couple of nice, androgynous names, "Aubrey" came up in my head, and then I thought "no, wait, that name is perfect for the Mayor's son, I'll give that to him."

Bess and Francesco were inspired by the entire "old-timey lesbian/gay salon patron"-idea. Those were characters I could see sitting there looking dapper with a glass of liquor in their hands, charming women and men respectively with their dashing smiles.

Vesa's looks are inspired by the flapper aestethics, as well as the silent movie era. (She's definitely the character who looks most "modern" by real-life standards.)

I created Narciso partly because of my interest in opera, and also because the city of Pearlmoor holds art in high regard - I wanted to show the love of the arts in a more sinister manner by having a castrato being their current superstar, with people ignoring the suffering he's gone through for the sake of their beloved music.

Changes:

Bryars changed his colours. At first, he was just some nameless young man in a pretty gown that you could eat or bloodlet, so I just gave him a random appearance - blond hair and light skin; one couldn't even interact with him aside from eating or healing (I didn't write the mingle scenes or the scenes at the square in the prologue until I started to flesh the story out) so it didn't matter, I cared more about describing his costume. When he became an actual character and I decided that he will be a RO in a certain route, I changed his hair colour to black and his skin tone to olive since there's already a young, pale, blond, male RO as it is.

#fervency #fervency if #interactive fiction

[lady-of-the-spirit]

What your favourite Eternals character says about you

Based only on my opinions.

Ikaris: you love Richard Madden, or you love characters who are fucked up and do bad things but for understandable reasons. Or both.

Ajak: Milf lover, team mom edition. You either think she's a mom friend or you think she's just as to blame for everything but you like morally ambiguous characters so it's okay.

Gilgamesh: you're obsessed with the "it's rotten work"/"not to me. not if it's you." quote. You want someone who loves you through all hardships and/or you relate to the role of being a caretaker for your loved ones.

Thena: the same as Gilgamesh and you love Angelina Jolie and badass women. You are also a softie (hidden or not) and might be touch starved.

Phastos: you have the biggest brain cells. That's right, you have more than one! You hate the mcu fandom but you're still here for some reason. You were usually the one in the group project who did most of the work and put in the most effort, even if everyone else was competent and did their own work. You have suffered burnout.

Makkari: You're also a collector of many, many things. You probably ship drukkari and/or wish she was seen more outside of her relationship with Druig. They wouldn't have been able to find Tiamut without her and you think she deserves more appreciation!

Kingo: You love purple. You want to watch his movies. You love characters who appear selfish and but also care deeply for the people they love. You love Tony Stark (and for the same reasons you love Kingo), but if you don't, you think Kingo is like him but done better. Your strongest trait is understanding other people's decisions even when you don't agree with them, and you value people who have beliefs they stand by but won't hurt people over.

Sprite: Comic relief characters who finally get to explore their dark side or personal issues are your favourite. You might have abandonment issues or struggle with your self-image. You feel like no one knows your real self. You love chaotic little bastards. You love those "shout out to [character type] Gotta be one of my favourite genders" memes.

Sersi: You love soft, good, kind characters more than anything. You have a hard time making decisions. You were the one in the group project who always did a good job and put the effort in but never wanted to be in charge or give the presentation but would step up if needed (alternatively, you were usually the one in charge and you always really appreciated these types of group members). You might be a little touch starved.

Druig: you're a basic bitch. I'm sorry but it's true. You're also a loki fan.

Bonus!

Ben and Jack Stoss: You're also a Phastos fan, and you want to see a lot more of him and his family in both the MCU and in the fandom. You hate the fandom for ignoring this perfect family and the first gay kiss in the MCU.

Karun: you have the biggest brain cell. Damn, you wish you'd gotten to see his eternals documentary.

#i mean this in good fun #marvel's eternals #eternals #ikaris #ajak #Gilgamesh #thena #makkari #kingo #Sprite #sersi #druig #gilgamesh eternals #phastos #karun patel #ben stoss #jack stoss #i'm saying stuff #i might have projected onto the sersi part bc she's my fave. same with kingo.

[a-route-up-if-i-fall]

assassins creed headcanons

idc how backed these r by actual canon btw. if u have a different view of these characters, that's completely okay. that's great, even. i'm just sharing mine ._.

altaïr is autistic. he fidgets a lot in private/when he's not "working." when he's ab to assassinate someone, he's hyper-focused and gets almost obsessive about every detail. his life as an assassin is his special interest and he has a waxing and waning hyperfixation on greek philosophy, specifically empedocles. he's demisexual and in love w malik. switch but always ends up bottoming.

ezio is obviously a slut. he likes to refer to himself as a playboy, and some ppl see him as a bit of a womaniser, but in reality he is literally out to give ppl a good time. in that way, he is a little whore of a man. pansexual. non committal but deeply loyal to his friends and fellow assassins.

connor likes to pretend he is stoic but i feel as though he is just shy and socially awkward. he desperately wants to understand the templars, but he finds it so difficult to sympathise with them after everything. i hope he kills colonisers for fun.

edward is secretly (or not so much) into men but refuses to admit it. he's a pirate so he knows all ab buggering let's just b honest. jim gave him like the fright of his life bc he thought he might actually be falling for a man so when she told him she was mary, he had mixed emotions. first, disappointed. next, oh thank jaysus i'm straight. that was not something he was ready to confront.

shay is fucking depressed and has issues w moral perfectionism. he wants to be good but wonders how he can b if he remains loyal to the assassins. he's also secretly not sure if the templars are in the right but thinks siding with them is the way to helping the most ppl. ambition is his fatal flaw. he regrets that things w the brotherhood ended as they did.

arno has an addictive personality. canonically, he's struggled w booze and gambling, but i think it's something that he is constantly fighting. he thought he would never be sober again after élise died, but surprisingly he found that drinking didn't bring him any comfort. he was just empty :(( he is also transmasc and i will not be elaborating.

jacob has adhd (though doesn't know the term for it obviously). one way he manages it is through exercise. so whenever he feels especially unfocused or irritable, he just freeruns the rooftops of london or finds someone to train with/fight. i can't help but imagine him as the jocks at school who ARE allies and would do anything to stand up for his queer friends but says problematic shit sometimes bc he just doesn't know the correct terms or anything. (edit: at the time of posting this i didn't know that he is canonically bisexual. as far as i can tell it was only made clear by one post from ubisoft. and i am disappointed in myself for not realising that. i feel like this is a part of a bigger issue of ambiguous queer storytelling especially in video games. it should have been far more explicit imo. but i'm always happy to see more gay rep)

evie wants to travel. she secretly writes poetry and doesn't show it to anyone. she studies latin for fun. she's really really good at maths actually. she was a bit of a snitch as a kid, but then she grew up and learnt it was better to just keep quiet about stuff she wasn't meant to see. she's a simp.

aya/amunet died before bayek. he had to recover her body from the roman hidden ones. he made sure that she had the best embalmers, a lavish burial chamber. and when he died, the community made sure they were buried together. back in the day, the chamber held scrolls that spoke of amun, with images of sekhmet and horus lining the walls. an earthquake left the tomb in the state u see it in in origins. they're buried not far from the necropolis that holds khemu's body.

kassandra loved her immortality initially. she spent her days doing impulsive things just because she could. only they got stale after a while. the fear of being alone for an unknown amount of time overcame her as she started losing people. until we get to valhalla and she learns that maybe it's okay not to be alone always, but feels like she always has to keep moving.

eivor is gender fluid. she eventually loses her eye, like odin, and despises how it makes her look like him. she never had children. ik that she's canonically into men however i feel its more comphet than genuine attraction. she ends up w randvi.

#altair ibn la'ahad #assassin's creed #assassins creed #asscreed #gay assassins #ac1 #assassinscreedseries #ac valhalla #ac2 #ezio auditore da firenze #ezio auditore #ezio trilogy #ac3 #ratonhnhaké:ton #connor kenway #edward kenway #shay cormac #arno dorian #ac unity #jacob frye #evie frye #ac syndicate #ac origins #ac odyssey #bayek of siwa #kassandra of sparta #eivor varinsdóttir #eivor wolfkissed

[ancientevangelions]

Evangelion, LGBT+ Rights and Time

It is fascinating how readings of Evangelion have changed over time as society varies. In 2012-2015 (and to some degree even now), vocal shippers would bully others if they chose the "wrong" pairings. Reminder to everyone that you choose to engage with fan content, and it is 100% your choice to harass and bully people over their views. Shipping fictional characters should be fun and a way to engage on a different level with fandom, not an exercise in who has the moral high ground. There are shows I will not engage with because I find the canon pairings to trigger my C-PTSD, but I block those tags. (It's Madoka Magica; the third movie starts a violent fear reaction).

When I first watched Evangelion circa 2010, a Trans reading of Evangelion, though not unheard of, was less common than it is now. I grew up in Northern Alberta, Canada, where we knew what gay, straight, and bi were. Still, everything else was not mentioned until after I graduated high school and moved to a bigger city for University in 2009. This led to me doing a lot of self-discovery. I didn't fully embrace my non-binary identity until I turned 28 for various reasons, including personal safety (that would be spring of 2019, for those wondering). I knew my gender identity differed from others because of the LGBT+ club at University, where I would hang out and learn new terminologies, identities, and what consent meant. Still, until recently, people did not talk about LGBT+ identity outside of these circles, especially not in groups with aging populations. Fast forward to now (2023) on Tumblr, when there are so many differences in opinions and interpretations. I wonder if people my age (or older) watched Eva and considered the characters could be anything but straight and cis or if they were shocked by Maya's love for Ritsuko when it was revealed in End of Evangelion. 90s media had a lot of ingrained homophobia and transphobia. You don't need to look further than popular sitcoms like the Simpsons or FRIENDS to see the LGBT+ community ridiculed for a cheap laugh. Western society was very anti-LGBT, and though we have made gains with marriage equality laws in 2005 for Canada, there is still room for improvement.

When I watched NGE/EoE, It was at the start of LGBT+ identities becoming more prevalent in Western media. I watched the ambiguous interactions of episode 24, and I remember thinking how sad it was that Kaworu had to die. The interactions between Shinji and Kaworu did not appear romantic or wholesome while I watched. It seemed tragic and doomed to failure (like Shiniji's previous attempts at gaining understanding.) Upon my first watch, I concluded that Shinji's desperation for affection led to his attraction to Kaworu. It did not seem genuine, and I saw it as less romantic and more as a deeply tragic episode where a broken boy is manipulated by lies of exclusion and ultimately heartbroken because he is once again betrayed and left alone. This reading was solidified for me in EoE when Asuka confronts Shinji with the line that anyone will do in Hell's Kitchen. Shinji is even more frantic and desperate for someone to love and save him and is once again rejected. Shinji wants someone to give him love and support and to understand and help him. The fear and desperation of being left alone make Episode 24 and End of Evangelion incredibly twisted and tragic. Shinji's arc climaxes with the tragedy of human miscommunication, desperation for affection, and the desire for love and understanding without the act.

Hell's Kitchen (End of Evangelion)

There's so much pain in suffering and loneliness. Additionally, I firmly believe Shinji did not/does not love anyone romantically in NGE/EoE. I am not saying he has no potential to love anyone. He is not there yet in his journey. He may have crushes or interests, but romantic love takes Time, communication, compromise, understanding, and so many elements of vulnerability between two people to establish, form, and maintain that connection. Shinji did not have the time to develop a true romantic bond with anyone and was not in a formal relationship. Yes, he kissed Asuka and relied on her for stability/support. He had deep conversations with Kaworu and received unconditional affection. He trusted and depended on Misato. He was curious about Rei and wanted to help her/know more about her. Still, he never took steps to form a romantic partnership, instead preferring to "keep things ambiguous."

Shinji is still figuring things out. The point of NGE and EoE isn't romance. It's figuring out your identity.

This message of misunderstanding and muddling through your identity is likely why it resonates so much with LGBT+ communities because many of us did have to muddle out our difficult questions of identity. It can be intimidating to navigate so much information, especially if you aren't in a safe environment. It feels similar to being attacked by alien forces in a war zone, except instead of Angels, it is hate-filled views, bullying, name-calling, misinformation, and fear. And instead of Evas/NERV, we have GSAs, outreach centres, online spaces, and supportive people that we hope will help us more than they harm us.

I find an element of cultural difference intriguing in Evangelion (and all Japanese anime to some degree). Japanese people interpret scenes very differently from English-speaking Western audiences. Part of the nuance is lost in translation, cultural differences, and the differences in Time that have passed. I highly recommend reading various semi-autobiographical works such as "The Bride was a Boy" or "My lesbian experience with loneliness." to understand the queer experience in Japan better. There are a lot of differences to sort through when we look at different cultures. Unfortunately, Japan has a ways to go on LGBT+ rights, including access to transgender health care and same-sex marriage (which, at the time of writing, is still not recognized in Japan). My point is that culture-to-culture intent in various media, whether written or visual, will be lost. We can, of course, read interpretations, watch video essays, talk to friends, etc. Still, to draw our conclusions, we often would rather watch the source material as "purely" as well as can without interference from other people. This brings in a final theme from Evangelion. We can never understand anyone 100%; only you can completely understand yourself. So whether you agree or disagree with me, remember these are my thoughts and opinions shaped by my life growing up as an LGBT+ Canadian. So be good to yourself, and congratulations.

#the end of evangelion #neon genesis evangelion #shinji ikari #misato katsuragi #rei ayanami #asuka langley soryu #kaworu nagisa #theory and analysis #thoughts and opinions #opinion essay #LGBT history #cultural differences #If I get anon hate for this I swear...

[medusasbush]

read in march 2023

articles (ones behind a paywall are linked through webpage archive):

articles

Reverse boundaries How good are we at respecting when someone else says 'no'?

"Slow Pleasure" in a Fast World

Should People Be Allowed to Like Things? Are we discoursing ourselves to death?

The Divine Delusion of Gender: On "Energy" and the TikTokification of Spirituality

Spiritual misogyny is flourishing on TikTok

How ‘Poker Face’s’ Stop-Motion Animation Episode Was Brought to Life

Are there too many sex scenes in movies?

Man Says BetterHelp Referred Him to Conversion Therapy Supporter

Who's Afraid of Mark Rothko?

When Everything Becomes an Event

Meet the Lipsdick: A Dick Shaped Lipstick

How Do We Define the Female Gaze in 2018?

Do Words Mean Anything Anymore?

It’s Been Over Two Decades Since We’ve Had a Non-White Best Actress Winner. Will That Change in 2023?

I'm Coming Clean about Friend Envy & You Should Too

A Friend Doesn't Have to be "Toxic" to be Bad for You

Does Anyone Mend Clothes Anymore?

The Moral Case Against Equity Language

Inspiration Is Everywhere. Literally: The "We're Not Really Strangers"-ification of social media.

Men Are Lonely. But Women Are Being Attacked: Male Loneliness is Not Women's Problem to Solve

Romance isn't Just for Dating

What is Romantic Friendship?

The Case of the Missing Perpetrator: On Mysterious Pregnancies, the Passive Voice, and Disappearing Men

Dingus of the Week: Women’s History Month

Friends and mentees remember Judy Heumann, mother of the disability rights movement

The Language of Place

One of Walgreens biggest stockholders commissioned Fearless Girl

Fine I'll admit it. I Like Titanic.

A Plan Forms in Mexico: Help Americans Get Abortions

Can Nostalgia Be Sinister?

The Stay-At-Home Girlfriend Phenomenon

A Conversation With Stay-At-Home Girlfriend & Content Creator Kendel Kay

The Soft Boy Brigade: Was He “Written By a Woman” or Is He Just Wearing Nail Polish?

The Scientific Reason You Love Watching Reruns

Take Some Pills for Your Hysteria, Lady: America's Long History of Drugging Women Up

Everybody’s a Critic. So Stop Hating Critics.

A League of Their Own Is The First Great Gay Movie-to-TV Reboot

The Bear: At Last, A Chicago Show For People Who Are Not From Chicago And Have Never Stepped Foot There

the science of giving pain

i bet she has a nice scream: in praise of X, the new novel by Davey Davis

the persistent desire: on erotic identification

leatherdyke gender technology

‘The Last of Us’ Finale: First-Person Shooter

The ‘Last of Us’ Finale Is Just as Ambiguous and Agonizing as the Game’s Indelible Ending

What Exactly Is the Point of ‘The Last of Us’?

Do We Need Another ‘Love Letter to Cinema’?

Everyone needs to grow up: Whether it’s people who mention their Hogwarts house on their Hinge profile or literal white supremacists, culture is awash with adult babies

Instagram Store Core: A Manifesto Against Avant-Basic Home Design

Who Gets Care and Who Gets to Die?

Shoppers say secondhand stores like Goodwill are getting too expensive as Gen Z makes thrifting cool

Where Does Discarded Clothing Go?

How ‘travel aesthetics’ are ruining travel for everyone

Why is everyone so obsessed with frontal lobe development?

the sinking pleasure of a bath

Love, Sex, and Disabled Women: we want to be sexy too.

“Nope” Perfectly Encapsulates My Disappointment with the Biden Administration

What really killed Jane Austen?

On (Not) Discovering Disability in the World of Jane Austen: Disabled characters are present in Austen’s novels, but largely invisible in her cinematic remakes

Nathan Lane: Robin Williams ‘Protected Me’ From Coming Out as Gay on ‘Oprah’ in 1996 Because ‘He Was a Saint’

'The Last of Us’ finale isn’t controversial, it’s correct

The Oscars are beyond repair. Let’s make something better.

The House That Mr. Mayer Built: Inside the Union-Busting Birth of the Academy Awards

‘A League of Their Own’ is based on the 1992 movie, but has an identity all its own

Black Southern food isn’t killing us:The ‘plate’ is not the real problem

In the history of hip-hop fashion, there’s no ignoring Lil’ Kim

The next first ladies of rap

books:

Wear, Repair, Repurpose: A Maker's Guide to Mending & Upcycling Clothes by Lily Fulop

#s #read lists #someone pls recommend a book to me this is getting ridiculous

[katnissgirlsmakedo]

HONOR MY FRIEND HONOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! first of all what she chose to do showed she had heart so jot that the fuck down!!! secondly gaten matarazzo KILL YOURSELF sorry i was just really profoundly affected by this movie. thirdly yes i cried. literally what if the only truth that mattered at the center of everything was love and it was beautiful…. what if our protagonist that fucking sucks found out that the only thing worth living for was actually love all along and she was wrong to be cynical and jaded because at the end of the day she’s a good person surrounded by people she loves that love her back in equal measure and she could never truly be capable of hurting them because she has such a big big heart….. what if our protagonist was on an initially selfish journey but found real true narrative defying love along the way and in the end that was all that mattered…….

furthermore. not one side character was slacking. kennedy? my best friend i LOVE weird girls. travis? literally chad danforth if he was in a paramount plus original movie about a girl that was kind of freaky and machiavellian. his lacrosse number was literally 8. that’s chad’s number…. gary? literally ryan evans if he was in a paramount plus original etc you get it. and then they got to kiss like real people do. hashtag justice for chad and ryan where’s that paper rings amv i have to post that later. honor’s mom? literally bread IS love mrs. rose…. and the way she said she thought michael wasn’t genuine from the start…. saying that in contrast honor always has been genuine even though she doesn’t perceive herself that way… went crazy. honor’s dad? i loved your deck honor’s dad!!! talia and emma? their henchmen swag. their sidekick realness. their bff slay. and they had such fun outfits too…. they could do tanya and rosie mamma mia. diesel? maybe he was right to bully michael. i stand with him in the end fuck michael. speaking of michael i love how they NEEDED to include one little bit of gaten singing. they were like this is 100% necessary to the plot, he needs to have a little singing moment NOW. anyway. travis’s dad? slayed. ally king! he literally just wants his gay son to stop being late for practice! coach bolton core! sorry i need to stop referencing high school musical. and the creepy guidance counselor? well i don’t want to say she was right to um. roofie him. but like. idk. i mean. well. creepy guidance counselor who keeps flirting with a 17 year old girl and insinuating that he’ll help her academically if she has sex with him vs morally ambiguous teenage girl who slips him a roofie so he won’t come onto her in a seedy bar with none of her friends around. like i’m on her side there i don’t care if what she did was bad. i love it when girls do bad things <3

ALSO. THE PLAY????? when she’s like oh did i forget to mention it’s a musical? i was like UM YEAH HONOR YOU LEFT THAT OUT!!!! and i was SOOOOO exited it was crazy. that was the REAL twist of this movie. i had a lot of fun with that ending if you couldn’t tell from the all caps…. when it went back to the “men don’t have to choose between love and power, why should a woman?” line i went crazy… why should honor have to choose between love and power??? she chose love and then she STILL blackmailed that creep and got her friend into harvard! and she’ll be fine!!!!! she’ll be fine!!! oh my god it was just soooo good seriously…. and in 90ish minutes too…. i LOVE a movie that can make me cry in 90 minutes i LOVE a short movie i LOVE to experience the breadth of human emotion within 90 minutes of a short ass movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS is movie of the year material FINALLY we are getting some fucking CONTENDERS for this shit. i can’t believe it’s april and only like. maybe five movies i’ve watched all year have really been contenders for movie of the year. ok well it was literally winter can you even blame me. anyway!! everybody go watch honor society xoxo

#i knew there was a Twist and i suspected michael wasn’t what he seemed but i did NOT know that would happen. #i was rooting for you!! we were all rooting for you!!! kill yourself michael!!!!!! #beth.txt #hi tee thank you for telling me to watch this movie it’s sooooooo good i love honor i love you <3 #honor society

[whatwhywhowherewhen]

Homestuck No Game AU: Canon-Imitation Universe: Stridlondes

This is both a comprehensive backstory to potential fics and the barebones of two aus, Stridlonde focused because they fit the style of fan content I like.

I got everyone from both timelines in! I think! I also made charts!

The Guardian versions of the kids are in black bubbles, and everyone else is in gray bubbles. The horizontal lines each mark a year and the higher up the person is the earlier they were born. The numbers are the age differences between characters

Alpha Dave And Alpha Rose treat each other like siblings but are not biologically related. Their childhoods are as ambiguous here as in the web novel

Alpha Dave has a fling with someone and a baby (Beta Dirk) is dropped on his doorstep 9 months later. He is not prepared for parenthood. Raises him as best he can but does not properly guide him nor create a child-friendly environment. Generally immature parenting style with a bit of too little too late on the side. Maybe some conflicting needed accommodations and a mutual lack of understanding. He and Beta Dirk have a blow-up fight when Beta Dirk is around 17-19 and cut contact.

Beta Dirk moves in with his bad-influence acquaintance, Lil Cal, who might be Caliborn. He's basically living the same lifestyle we see in canon but with additional social-influenced self-destruction behaviors

Alpha Dave has another fling, possibly with the same person because it's funny that way, and gets another baby (Alpha Dirk) dropped on his doorstep. This time he actually reads the parenting books and is fully wanting to raise the heck out of this kid, including a binder/computer drive full of notes for things to do/say at different life stages

At the same time, Alpha Rose is in a long-term lesbian relationship and they decide to have a kid (Alpha Roxy). The method is up to interpretation

About 2.25 years after the Alpha Stridlondes are born, Beta Dirk and Alpha Rose's younger sister (Beta Roxy) have the most unfortunate one-night stand between a probably gay man and his female close family friend ever known. It was so awful and morally awkward they decide to split up the resulting twins by gender and pretend the other parent doesn't exist. Canon-typical shitty parenting ensues due to their respective issues. Everyone be grateful that the kids don't have to deal with an attempt at co-parenting from these two

Next comes the drama. When the Alpha kids are around 5 (could be older, could be younger and the story would still work), the Alpha Dave and Rose and Rose's wife die tragically, probably in a plane crash. Dirk and Roxy are home with an older neighbor. Dirk is put in the custody of his next of kin while Roxy is adopted by said neighbor with an agreement and financial support from Beta Roxy and the wife's family

Preschool-aged Dirk sees toddler Dave and decides that's his squishy now. They bond in a very Strider fashion. Around 3-5 years later somebody calls CPS on Beta Dirk and a lack of evidence that Dave is also being mistreated ends with Dirk being removed from his custody while Dave remains. Dirk spends his childhood "raising himself" using Alpha Dave's notes and refusing/not knowing how to connect to any new family. He befriends Roxy and though her meets Rose and Beta Roxy when he's 16 and is finally convinced to visit her. He is either recognized by Beta Roxy or sees a picture of the Alpha guardians and manages to figure out Beta Roxy is Dave's biomom, and therefore a potential legal guardian for Dave. The master plan unfolds from here

Option 1:

Dirk plans to frame Beta Dirk for (hopefully attempted) murder or another crime with a suitably long punishment. All the kids are in on it and help in some sense or another, except for Dave whose role is pretty much "get out of there".

Cue a tension-filled road trip from hell which could involve Dave having to choose between allowing Beta Dirk to be caught actually committing the crime Dirk tried to frame him for and going with Kid Dirk or going back with Beta Dirk and facing whatever consequences arise

Could be angsty, could be an opportunity for Dave to take initiative regarding his feelings towards Beta Dirk and living by and developing his personal philosophies early on in life by forcing him to take active part in making his fate

Option 2:

In this one, Dave is the one who's baited. I watched a video summarizing all the crazy stories about people claiming they wrote My Immortal. One of these involved a woman claiming she wrote it to try and get famous in order to get in contact with her brother who was separated from her by foster care.

Turns out she lied about nearly everything, but imagine she only lied about half of it. Dirk sets up Roxy to fake having written an infamous fanfic. Rose is helping her sell it by coaching her on writing style and edgy fandom culture.

Once it blows up into a giant meme/event, they say they're looking for a 13-year-old boy. Dirk starts feeding out stories and personal info about Dave without mentioning his name or relation to get his attention. They announce a competition. Finish these stories or phrases correctly to prove you're the guy or just share your name if you think you might be him. Either Hal exists or Roxy writes a program to sort all the responses. They receive the longest, most unnecessarily long tirade that not only answers correctly but also goes on about his unrelated thoughts for 2 extra pages.

"It's him," says Dirk, a single manly tear running down his cheek. They all introduce themselves through pester chum and convince Dave to create trickily specific photos and video diaries around the apartment to "prove it's really him". They then send him plane tickets to John's house, where they claim to live, so as to not raise suspicion that this isn't a dumb internet gimmick Dave won.

The moment Dave lands they spring a custody battle on Alpha Dirk using all the evidence Dave collected of how unsafe the apartment and living conditions are, alongside evidence of the giant mansion and steady job Beta Roxy has. That Alpha Dirk already had one kid removed from his care helps their cause. It's over disappointingly quickly

#strilondes #homestuck #dave strider #beta bro strider #rose lalonde #dirk strider #roxy lalonde #alpha bro strider #homestuck au

[4lph4kidz]

Hey Zero long time no see! (As in I havent been on tumblr in a hot min) Dirk for the ask meme if you haven’t done him yet?

Hi Star! Good to see you⭐

Sexuality Headcanon: gay (canon)

Gender Headcanon: trans man. sure it's partially self indulgent projection, but looking at his gender through that lens makes his stuff that much more interesting to me.

A ship I have with said character: i think dirk and jake are chained in the saw basement together and have to co-operate to survive but like, in an accidental fucked up soulmates way. maybe they'll work it out. i want to watch the show either way.

A BROTP I have with said character: jane jane jane jane jane they are best friends for ever. the hill i am dying on

A NOTP I have with said character: aside from like, any woman, i'm not super keen on dirkquius mostly because i think hal and equius are a better fit and dirk would be pretty unsettled by their similarities in a way that would make a healthy relationship difficult? but it's fine tbh.

A random headcanon: he tries to teach himself a lot of different languages but his accents are terrible

General Opinion over said character: completely insane guy. that seems like a sardonic comment but i do mostly think he's a pretty good person who happens to have something wrong deeply with him. he's trying though! to me he is a character fundamentally driven by love for the people important to him and i find that really compelling even as it drives him into potentially morally ambiguous territory. there's so much interesting moral/existential shit going on with his character. i do read him as someone fighting to be a better person but who also concieves of himself as fundamentally incapable of change in a very mentally ill way and struggles with a pretty toxic notion of duty and responsibility. idk i'm rambling now but dirk gets read into and portrayed a lot of different ways across the fandom to varying degrees of toxicity, shittiness and outright villainy, but at this point i'm definitely more invested in the version of the character who is able to be a good person, has some issues but is mostly a chill dude.

#ask meme #also i forgot to respond to you saying hi earlier! but i'm okay been really busy so i'm. tired. lol

[teawiththegods]

Going to your discussion of Hades and Zeus and mythology. It really rankles me that people turned Persephone into a #girlboss and rewrite the story so she chooses to go to the underworld. I understand for some it’s a way to justify enjoying Hades and Persephone as a couple. Even with that understanding, I still don’t like it. Guess what? You don’t have to have a rewritten, morally correct story to validate your enjoyment of something. Especially when it comes to the Theoi. Idk part of me just doesn’t really understand the struggle of that. Like why is it so difficult to take the myths the way they are, accept them, examine them yes, but still accept the myths in their entirety. Maybe it’s all the new reimaginings and popularity of LO in particular that has my feathers ruffled but. It makes me want to go deeper into privacy about worshipping Hades and Persephone. - scytheandseed

You don’t have to have a rewritten, morally correct story to validate your enjoyment of something.

I think you hit the nail on the head with that line. Personally I think this is at least one of the core problems. I’ve noticed this issue with media and storytelling in general even outside of Greek Mythology. People, especially the younger crowd, have an aversion to liking morally ambiguous or just straight up immoral characters. They often go to great lengths to either again absolve the character of their sins or put the blame on another character (sound familiar??). This is why redemption arcs are so popular nowadays. People want their favorite character to receive the Zuko treatment believing it’ll give them permission to like the character. But stories don’t work that way and neither do fully fleshed out real characters. Not everyone is deserving of a redemption arc nor do they need one. As someone who LOVES villains (esp badass women who want nothing more than to watch the world burn) I’m quite happy with them the way that they are thank you very much!

But it all def echoes back to the good vs. evil rhetoric of Christianity. It’s why a lot of people have a hard time with The Iliad. They can’t wrap their heads around the idea that there IS NO good guy or bad guy. They are all just dumb guys fighting their dumb war. (Yes, it hurts me to say but Patroclus and Hector are included 😢). But so often you see Agamemnon framed as the “evil” one and Achilles as the “good” one despite the fact that Achilles did PLENTY of awful things. ITS WAR! They all do awful things but you know only one of them was gay and pretty so clearly he’s absolved of his sins. Agamemnon, did you try being gay and pretty?? Maybe if you were gay and pretty everyone would look the other way with Iphigenia like they did with Briseis. Or how about getting a dog? Idk something about a guy with a dog makes people want to forget about all your misdeeds. Just a suggestion. Still gonna cheer when your wife murders you in the bathtub tho so maybe it doesn’t really matter 🤷🏻‍♀️

Writing all that sarcasm made me think how another issue is the romanticizing of these relationships. Like I understand it more when it comes to Achilles and Patroclus considering how lacking we🌈 are of stories about us and our love however removing or ignoring unsavory aspects of Achilles (and even Patroclus bc he WAS a participant in all of this) is a complete disservice to him as a character and the story as a whole. You have to take the bad with the good, babes. The same goes for Hades. If you’re gonna take the myth literally than you have to accept that your homeboy saw a 12 year old girl thought “yeah gotta have that”, asked Big Poppa for permission, and then took her once he got it without any care or concern for Persephone or Demeter’s feelings. That’s just the reality. I don’t make the news I just report it!

Psssst…the solution is to not take the myths literally!!

Anyway, lots babbling from me (I blame the Covid tho it’s likely not the Covid 🤣) and I didn’t even touch on the main part of your ask which is about the portrayal of Persephone. I completely agree! Honestly I’ve read soooooo many of these feminist retellings of the myths and while I understand and support the efforts, they really just all feel the same. Like every character is the same regardless of which character is being portrayed. And they all just follow the same formula and I’m just bored.

That’s honestly how I feel with ALL retellings and even media that features the gods. Bored. So damn bored.