#I draw him pretty because he's canonically very androgynous!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nouveauxamoris · 5 months

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i think u should post more design hcs... if i may suggest the big three in the bitch brigade :3

IM SO ON IT! just like the last design hc post, i’ll add little rundowns of some of the design traits!

DAZAI

my dazai design has gone thru a LOT of phases, as well as just a bit of exploration… a few common and solidified traits about him however:

- dazai’s very tan, and his hair is VERY curly, bordering coily. in my hc he’s ethnically mixed :3 (japanese and bangladeshi!)

- soft but sharp face, big nose, and soft big eyes. thick eyebrows too! i based his colour scheme off the manga one, so, dark brown almost black hair instead of a lighter brown, and dark brown eyes instead of a chestnut brown.

- SNAKEBITE PIERCINGS! in me nd the lovely @fiftyofhearts ‘ hcs (hes the asker here hai ethan :3), he got them done w ranpo and yosano.

- he’s fat. okay. i said so. the silhouette of his big ass clothes (the trenchcoat specifically) makes him look a little smaller, but thats still very much true.

- he’s scruffy. goes through periods of shaving vs not shaving but generally has a little bit of wispy facial hair more often than not. also, he’s transmasc!!! he binds w bandages also its not good. don’t do what he does. i don’t encourage unsafe binding

- 14 to 16-zai was very hyperfem. i don’t think he had that realization that he was trans until a liiiil bit later. maybe around 17? very subtly transitioned. i dont think he outwardly came out to many people other than probably chuuya, oda, and ango. everyone else just caught on eventually. he definitely went solely by his last name to disassociate from his deadname and eventually chose the name “osamu” as his first later on

- prisonzai is FULL of facial hair! his hair has gotten a lil longer too. that’s due to the fact that i’d imagine honestly his hair grows Very fast. and they’re not gonna give him a razor to shave this is literally prison

- he’s a lesbian btw

SIGMA

somehow, the sigma design has stayed relatively linear.

- LATINA SIGMA REALNESS!!!!!!!!!! a little ethnically ambiguous canonically because she was made from a book. duh. but tbh i think shes argentinian

- tan skin, very cool undertone. soft and droopy eyes, SUPER thick eyebrows, and white eyelashes. very round face and big and wide arched nose. she has a bit of a pathetic and sopping wet look to her, but she still looks very kind and gentle. most of the time while she’s masking (usually while working), that kinda works in her favour. adds to the warm and inviting feeling she’s got goin on. however, her resting face is very sad and miserable.

- she’s tall and lanky, kinda skinny. very lean and relatively average build. her colour scheme and outfit design is adjacent to the way she’s drawn in the manga. i love her so much but i dont like the anime depiction of her outfit… sorry bbg. she’s perfect in every way however

- i think generally, she’s very androgynous. enjoys dressing very androgynously too. you know how in stormbringer lippmann is described as like, so androgynous to the point where if he dressed femininely men would go crazy ‘nd if he dressed masculinely women would go crazy?? yeah. she’s got something similar goin on. switches between dressing femininely and masculinely and very in-between often. always doing something cute.

- in my eyes she is so transfem. no sort of medical transition, tho… just socially. came out that page serving cunt and she’ll continue to the day she dies

- she wears press on nails me-thinks. usually black almonds or stilettos, sometimes she switches it up to purple however.

- hair cut is kinda weird but like ???? its like if u mixed a hime cut w a wolf cut basically. or smthn like that. lots of layers. yes that’s her natural hair colour btw, she’s just cute like that.

- she’s also a lesbian btw

JŌNO

i’m only rlly getting into drawing jōno recently.. so lots of things keep changing. however, i HAVE decided on something.

- jōno is very much so blasian. lightskinted…. hair is pretty wavy but rests pretty straight just cuz of the haircut. the red is dyed btw. she didn’t care much abt the colour, someone asked to fuck w her hair, and she begrudgingly told them to go crazy. everyone seems to like it however, so she’s down w it.

- SMILE LINES. SMILE LINES AND EYE WRINKLES. product of keeping her eyes closed literally all the time. and her stupid smug resting face. she’s also filled with freckles and beauty marks. majority of them are on her face, but she’s definitely got some around her body as well.

- jōno is Tall. around 5’11” ethan has decided. she’s got a very graceful build but she’s NOT small, nor thin. lots of muscle and fat collecting around her thighs and legs, her strongest asset when it comes to physical strength methinks. have you SEEN how violently she’s able to kick people??? cmon now.

- very elegant woman in every aspect Except personality. i love her she’s actually SUCH a bitch

- again. TRANSFEM! if i like a male character.. heh… well… let’s just say they’re no longer male. (unless you’re dazai. he’s boybossing it up every day)

- she’s ALSO a lesbian btw

- i don’t have a lot to say for her i just love her so much omg

#bungo stray dogs #bsd #bsd fanart #bungo stray dogs fanart #dazai osamu #dazai bsd #self ship #bsd sigma #bsd jouno #saigiku jōno #jouno saigiku #osamu dazai #i LOVE THEM!#ethamorisbsdverse #bsd hcs

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dekusleftsock · 2 years

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To continue on the hair/androgynous discussion: Glad you're in agreement! I feel like long hair and a wiry frame like he has now fit Deku a lot better as a person, and I just plain think he looks prettier like that. Honestly, for a man who says he's not well versed on the subject of romance and isn't good at drawing pretty characters, Horikoshi seems to rock at both. Even when it comes to making looks for guys that are actually androgynous and characters who have both masculine and feminine traits, he's a lot better than many shows/media that try to portray that. I'm guessing that's because he's great at character design. I'm concluded that Horikoshi either purposefully misleads people in his public statements or has a low self esteem, because he tends to way better at these things than he gives himself credit for. Which, coming from a writer, would make sense. I often have a really hard time looking at my work objectively, no matter how good people say it is. As for Deku not having a fashion sense: Fair. I like how Katsuki appears more traditionally masculine but is better at fashion and more open about emotional conversations generally, where Deku appears more traditionally feminine but is horrible at fashion and bad at emotional conversations. Part of why I can only see their future being as a duo, even years ago before the manga started hinting at that. Their personality traits, appearances and narrative roles often hint towards them being equals and partners. I don't mean this in a romantic way, but they often parallel/compliment each other perfectly. Also: Those photos you had were epic 😍. Watch me spread my long haired Deku agenda to the rest of you XD. I suppose I could be a bit less vocal about it, but over the years I've learned that if you want something done you have to do it yourself. Therefore, I'm spreading this agenda with the thin veneer of it being a cool parallel to Shigaraki 😁. To be fair to Deku, I think his recent look is pretty cool though. Obviously it needs some cleaning up, but it has a good aesthetic. Additionally, it pays homage to All Might while allowing Deku to be his own hero. My problem with his old costume was that it was paying homage to All Might without incorporating anything from Deku as an individual. I also think it would just generally be a good message that both of our favorite wonder duo boys go to extremes and need to change. Often when shows have a character like Katsuki, the pressure is all on that person to change while the protagonist stays the same. I was thinking, if Deku made the ears of his costume look more purposefully jagged and made it darker instead of just dirty/stained, he'd have a good thing going. The ears are like All Might, but incorporating the jagged look is a reminder to the war and everything associated with it. Finally, Deku's not a fashionable person but I like to think Katsuki's influence would help. He's changed his outfit up the most out of all of the characters, his parents are in the fashion business and he tends to criticize/comment on people's looks the most out of everyone. Imagine: Bkdk dating post war, Katsuki keeps getting annoyed at Izuku's lack of fashion sense and keeps interfering. It reminds me of an old married couple fussing at each other for the millionth time, and it would show that they've become much closer. Therefore, as Deku gets older his outfits gain more of a sense of fashion, mostly due to the real hero here: Katsuki XD.

HSVSIJD I LOVE THAT HC SM LMAO

They really do act like an old married couple in so many ways (another trope perhaps 👀) even in canon. I love them sm

I think his best hero outfit was actually his undercover outfit from the newest movie

Bc it still fits the bunny aesthetic he’s got going on (and subtly paying homage to allmight) but separates itself from his other outfit which is very… allmight to say the least lol.

It’s very obvious that Katsuki helped him with it in some way, or at the very least he worked with other designers to make it fit well.

I think the hood and color scheme is my personal favorite parts. (I’m a color nerd lol) the colors also match his hair and the grey accents match it really well to not make it SUPER STARK in the color difference.

Though, the goofy calf part always makes me giggle a bit bc it looks like he has chicken feet ISBKSJDKD

I think the main reason why this version is so lacking compared to his current version is because of the color and also just like, the actual symbolism he has within his outfit?

And I don’t mean Izuku’s symbolism within his hero suit TO US

I mean that his actual hero suit is designed to be practical over actually meaning anything. (I’ll probably make a post all about how Izuku’s outfits are important symbolism wise throughout the series at some point but not rn lol)

Anyway, with this version he’s actually giving homage to other people! Aside from all might.

There’s the Gran Torino cape, and then the added red accents for Katsuki, and the ripped up dirtiness for the war.

Before it was more of internalized symbolism for how Izuku views himself. Now, it’s actual symbolism that he CHOSE, showing that he’s becoming his own hero.

#midoriya izuku #bkdk #mha deku #bkdk brainrot #bnha deku #deku midoriya #leftsock rambles

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nickywhoisi · 1 year

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It's midnight mods are asleep post chefs

That's right, we're veering off course from my usual project again as I have officially gone full batshit and dove head first into the Pizza Tower fandom. No regrets baby. I mean have you seen the shit poppin off over here rn? Buck wild. And all the cool kids make ocs, so

The dude in purple is my oc Adlin Bäkermann, he/him/ they-them sometimes, probably mid 30's, and they run a bakery just down the block from Peppino's pizzeria. It's the best in town because all of it is homemade by him. Peppino gets the pizza dough from Adlin, if he doesn't make it himself. Adlin sometimes comes by for a snack break. Sometimes Peppino comes over for a well-needed coffee break. Local businesses supporting other local businesses <3

Adlin is a very quiet guy. He rarely speaks in more than affirmative sounds or disapproving grunts, but on occasion he will use his words. And he is one cool cucumber, so instead of frantically worrying about what his friend's went through, he will just ask calmly, practically like a therapist, "What happened?" He's an honourable soul and cannot stand seeing injustice. Things like that, and other stressors (like work) can bring up his inner rage meter though, because he is not impervious to anger management issues. And he's German, so he can be scary about it. It really isn't a smart move to piss off a lad who will throw massive gauntlet hands that can crush you like a bug, or make him use his steely eyes to bore into your very being. And, strangely, he can be a tad absent-minded. If he screws up something, you will hear a quiet, ashamed, "...Sorry." There's more times than he'd care to admit that he was kneading dough while fuming, and before they realized it, the work table was fuckin shrapnel. Oops. Lil' bit of a klutz. Better watch those mitts of yours, boy! Ooo hoo hoo hoo

Now with that blurbo finished for my blorbo, I wamna discuss the pic. Specifically, I love how the colouring and effects used turned out. So close to what I was looking for! Huzzah! I'm happy with the mach speed lines and Adlin's beeg bright rocket blasts. I was also on the fence about colouring in Adlin's pants, was thinking of keeping them white, but...actually it was a really good idea. It matches the other guys, and when I designed Adlin, I really wanted to make it a point that he had things that could make him a playable character. Just like one of the cast. His hands fire little dough blasts, but because of the hole of fire he launches them out of...they come out as little cooked brioche buns. Gdsffddsggssgff This is basically a proof of concept for my jump 'n shoot baker boi. I love my child so much. My sweet bebeh. In canon, he's got that androgynous pretty swag, which makes him all the more intimidating to approach. Oh and before I forget...there isn't any shipping. Naughty children ;) I know what you're after you wanna know if my boy smooches the italian like a lot of the other ocs. Nah. These guys are literally only friends, but good friends. Which might not be so obvious with how I introduced them, but that happens in universe too. You'd think there's rivalry going on, and there is occasionaly some weird indescribable tension between them, but nope. I'm just so happy that I drew Adlin just like how I wanted and then suddenly he looks like the metal to Peppi's sonic. It just happened outta nowhere, and that's frankly amazing. Pizza Tower is the gift that keeps on giving and I am alive

And yeah this was my first try at drawing The Noise, can ya tell? He has details that aren't so correct, but I'm kinda diggin the caramel top I put on his hat. To make him look closer to a cream puff. And I wasn't sure how many teeth he was supposed to have. But there ya go I think I still captured his noisy noidy e s s e n c e . AND THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE HIS BUTT NOT A BIG KOO- OKAY JUST SO WE'RE CLEAR THAnks. And the same applies to Brick, I didn't think to study his design and then draw so it was off memory. Still looks super cute though ngl

What are they racing towards? Who's gonna win? Idk I just like the stardust speedway vibes goin on look at these funky little dudes go

#oh shit (siren)#the boys are here aw shit whuddup #so proud of my deutsch boi over here I have so many more things I wanna draw him in #this fandom is a treasure y'all and I will protect it with my life #pizza tower #pizza tower oc #Adlin pt oc #zomg my art!

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toacaldoric · 1 year

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Ok, so, got an opinion here that's probably gonna do numbers in the negative direction quite quickly, but I gotta get it off my chest because I'm tired of it sizzling on the proverbial back burner like it's been for the last... what, several days? Couple weeks? Don't even remember anymore...

Anywho, it'll probably deteriorate in quality over time as I write this because it'll take a bit to do so even remotely coherently and it's already sometime past midnight, so here goes possibly everything.

*inhales*

I don't understand/hold with the whole "Takanuva is trans/ a trans allegory/symbol" thing. Don't get me wrong, the LGBTQ+ community needs as many heroes, icons, symbols, allegories, etc as they can get in this hostile world, especially the trans folks, and I'm all in on supporting the whole thing.

(Hell, I've kinda been trying to take various looks at myself for a while now, trying to figure myself out, and so far I'm pretty sure I'd prefer to be slightly on the more effeminate side of androgynous if I could, but I don't exactly have the time energy, funds, or general environment to go that route rn, or anytime soon.)

And yet, even with all that, drawing a connection between Takanuva and the trans crowd throws me for a loop, because it feels off somehow. The non-binary crowd? Sure, that works, because when you get down to it, the inhabitants of the MU are canonically physically non-gendered (by which I mean, they have no physical genetalia because they don't reproduce) and anything close to "sexual dimorphism" is pretty much cosmetic, aside from some programming bullshit from before Velika turned everyone from drones into people (and maybe a bit of his meddling was added in as well, who knows). Not to mention, Takua/Takanuva already has so much hung on him that it makes no sense to add more. Let me explain...

For starters, back at the very beginning, Takua was barely even a character at all, having instead started as the physical manifestation of YOU, the "Player" as you interacted with some of the original games. I'm not just talking about MNOG here, either, though yes he was vital to that. I'm talking about the GBA game(s) and the one or two PC games that came about before that. No, I don't remember the names of the games in question, mostly because I never got the chance to play them as a kid, and it's currently so late that it's early in the morning, I'm not looking that up rn. Anyway, he was a blank slate, full stop, with no plans for character development beyond those games. This was mostly because Bionicle was only intended to run for a year, at most, before Lego wrapped everything up with the final battle against Makuta, Mata Nui's awakening (which happened in '08/9), and the reuniting of the planets.

Of course, Bionicle itself fucking EXPLODED in popularity, (which no-onw expected back then), and he himself became a popular fan favorite character as time progressed, so amidst the rush to start milking the unexpected cash cow they had on their hands in every way possible, the dev team decided to play on everything previously known about Takua and made MNOG (as well as having him start to show up in other important media, like the books), where he kind of became a vessel for everyone out there who was "the weird kid" in their social group(s), or "the hyper/ADD/ADHD kid", etc. He wandered around everywhere, got into just about everything that could get him into trouble, and all that good stuff. (Of course, we later found out he did this a lot in Metru Nui too, and he got slightly brain-fried by the Vahki because he did it so much, but that didn't exist at that point, so...)

And Lego used him to tell the story that ANYONE could be the hero, and everyone's special, and the power of friendship etc. etc, all the usual moral stuff they crammed into kids' media back then. Not to mention the fact that the Matoran, while self-sufficient and stuff, were all basically stand-ins for kids, wandering about in large groups under the watchful gaze and protective power of the taller, bigger figure(s) in their lives (parents, teachers, older siblings, other adults, etc) while the Turaga we're wrinkly, wizened old mentor/mystic/grandparent types.

And so it was, through the Bohrok arcs, up until the Mask of Light was found and the Rahkshi showed up to wreck everyone's shit. Cue THAT entire arc that we know and love, and suddenly Takua is now Takanuva, the Legendary Toa of Light, etc, and he defeats Makuta and they discover Metru Nui and blah blah blah. (Btw, I'll start referring to Takua/Takanuva as an overall character as "TK/N" from here out, while also referring to his individual Matoran/Toa stages by their individual names.) And yet, let's back up a bit.

The entire MoL arc turns Takua from the "underdog" story we knew him as before into a literal "growing up" story, where he has to face responsibilities and consequences, having greatness thrust upon him (as per the old saying), and generally acting in tandem with these six people he's only every really seen as near godly-level beings before now, because he's basically one of them now too. Of course, there's obviously some major impostor syndrome going on, because how the hell do you try to match pace with such influential figures, especially when you realize that they're each just as much a fucking weirdo screwball as you, if not moreso, and in ways beyond anything you ever got up to before? A very good metaphor for hitting adulthood, looking back.

Everyone's faking it, tbh. No-one has their life under control, adult or otherwise. Anywho, TK/N then continues to learn to use his new power and work with the rest of "the team" even though he's still very evidently the literal seventh wheel, as evidenced by the Nuva heading off to Voya Nui while he's chosen by the Turaga to stay behind and keep the Matoran from going berserk (which fails). Later he goes off with the soon-to-be Toa Ignika, gets separated from them, has a bunch of adventures where his balls finally drop and he comes into his own, then he shows up in Karda Nui having become a much better person (even if he's still half-drained of light, though that quickly gets fixed).

TL:DR, TK/N becomes a typical coming-of-age story, even if the final parts are sidelined for reasons of greater universal-scale plot events. Now, there's obviously a lot more nuance to it all than just that, as well as a few other things he dealt with (IE, confronting his inner darkness on several occasions), but that sums it up to a degree.

Now, going back to an earlier point, I mentioned that gender was basically pointless in Bionicle, at least for the Matoran and such, because in-universe, unlike humans and other organic beings, it had nothing to do with reproduction or furthering the continuation of an individual's species. If anything, it was more cosmetic than truly functional. Of course, it was added in because there was twofold interference from organic beings. One level was, of course, the Lego story writers, which wanted a bit of diversity to grab as many kids' attention as possible while also not getting shit on by parents and other folks in the industry. However, there was more direct and influential interference in-universe, thanks to the Great Beings themselves (who, in turn, were also influenced by the writers), all of which injected a very human bias into things.

The various beings inside the GSR were designed and manufactured based on the physical setup of the normal inhabitants of Spherus Magna, both in form and possibly in their original programming, as also mentioned earlier. Sure, doing so probably had uses, like the liquid-dwelling Ga-Matoran being physically feminine to allow a more hydrodynamic shape, or almost all the Psionic Matoran/Toa being feminine because that one masculine one they built turned out to be too aggressive, etc.

Meanwhile, Av-Matoran were one of the few (if only) type of Matoran with a truly split gender population (the exact percentages are unknown at this time) because they were prototypes for all the other Matoran types to come. So yeah, sure, there was a possibility that there could have been a female Av-Matoran pottering around instead of TK/N on Mata Nui, and who could have had his place as the (a?) Toa of Light in that timeline, who knows.

Sure, I'm also a believer that at least some form of love canonically exists amongst the beings of the GSR in Bionicle, even if it's not the same as what we humans have, which is driven at its core by the need for biological reproduction. You can't be a sapient functionally-immortal being that lives for literally thousands of years, if not millions/billions, and not have at least some kind of compassion and empathy for your fellow sapients around you. Hell, I've seen plenty of art and stories about two or more of the Toa being an item, or a couple of the Matoran even, and I'm all for that.

I'm all about just about EVERYTHING about Bionicle, as long as it's not gross, horrendous, illegal in any of most of the civilized nations here on earth, or anything like that. There's also apparently a decent number of long-time fans of Bionicle who followed it from a young age that also have figured out (or are still currently figuring out) in more recent times that they're trans, which is also fucking great IMHO! But the whole "TK/N=trans" thing? Well, I've seen no precedent for it in-universe (either from TK/N himself or any other characters), and I have no idea where it came from irl, so, again, it all just feels off, from my perspective. Of course, I could just be blinded by a few of the dumb things I'm dealing with in my own life rn (long story, not going into it), or because life at work dealing with dumbass customers has just left me too jaded to see it, idk. I admit that. I'm human, I have failings and biases and opinions and all that other shit. This isn't me trying to be hateful, or a terf (or whatever they're called,) I'm just confused AF about all this.

For those of you among my pitiful follower count who aren't bots, feel free to comment/reblog, or not. Roast me alive, unfollow, try to explain things so as to swing my POV around, whatever you feel like, not that you need my permission to. You're your own people, and this is the internet, so... whatever. Imma go to bed and hope my Tumblr doesn't explode because I had to try and get something that took from maybe 1am til after 3am to write out of my head and off my chest. Maybe I can stop worrying at it like a missing tooth now.

#Longass post #probably gonna get me in trouble #probably inflammatory idk #weird ramblings with not enough sleep #nothing valuable happened here probably

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liketheinferno2 · 3 years

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Honestly it is very special that I can draw Sephiroth with actual tits and everyone on here responds with a HELL YEAH instead of shooing me offline for bizarre fetishism. Because this goes beyond a "trans headcanon" here like... let me explain.

In my head-world-au-interpretation-canon-idea-twisted-mind, Titty!roth is like this because he looks like JENOVA and she is a woman-shaped creature, but not one, not even the human notion of female sex, so her son comes out silver haired and ethereally pretty-faced and... shaped!

Whether that would make someone FTM or an androgyne or intersex in human terms is up for debate.... he wouldn't be at a point between female and male so much as a point between male and JENOVA, this mother-shaped creature, this almost Freudian representation of the maternal. Which is why I kinda draw him like one of those old statues where the sculptor, attempting to create a woman, slaps tits on a male form that he is used to. And it's this idea of not just sex-is-not-gender, but with JENOVA, that breasts and curves and hips are not in any way affected by sex, the concept does not apply here.

I think this meshes well with how a character that is very masculinely powerful and respected would be allowed to remain so unquestionably, while also being an effeminate male what got me acting unwise. That Shinra would treat him as male regardless because it's kind of an unprecedented situation, isn't it?

You can have the Shape always be there, have it show up during puberty and studied and probed (which I kinda have a bias towards, as someone who had a weird double puberty and had to go through lots of tests) or you can have it show up post-Nibelheim when they have merged and the Sephiroth in the Northern Crater has become this physical amalgam of both bodies, which is what he does during his fights anyway!

Personally, I think I'm drawing a technically transmasc character here, but if you see just-intersexiroth or transfemmiroth or some nonbinary situation here, that's also fine and cool to me.

#let him speak #meta #is it meta if it's a fancy headcanon #lol #trans headcanon #take with a grain of salt this is my transgender intersex take on a character you can take SO many ways

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bitchapalooza · 3 years

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germany or austria

Austria!

First impression

Strict. Prissy. Very mean. Orderly. Level headed. Pretty much a well put together individual.

Impression now

Somewhat still the same. Prissy of course. Strict but actually leniant with certain things— "certain things" are usually Hungary and, mostly in an exhausted manner, North Italy, Germany only when he was a child, now it's terrifying to think of this large man with the puppy eyes and pout. We all know he has an organized mindset and prides himself on it too but execution? Messy messy messy! He strikes me as the kind of person to push his dirtly laundry under his bed and wait until it actually starts to stink to wash it. Which is unfortunate when he also strickes me as the kind to like really nice matching bed spreads so now those are kinda stinky too. I actually find it very neat of him to wear glasses for the aesthetic rather than necessity! Really gives us depth into the inner workings of his mind; one of the first things a new person will notice might very likely be the face so Austria choosing glasses rather than, say a brooch or pocket watch, is very telling in what he values more. Its his looks and most importantly first impressions! A person is more likely to greet another by eye contact so what better way than to catch their eye in a good way than to wear sophisticated looking glasses? I also like that fact he wears a corset under his clothes! Its stated he's out of shape so thats why he wears a corset. Corset and glasses context really tells the audience he has body issues that hes self concious of.

Favorite moment

DONT BONK ME WITH THE HORNIE STICK YET

Okay I like this because man's got his priorites straight and I feel like it confirms my above statement "probably pushes his dirty laundry under his bed for later". HE RAN TO PRUSSIA'S LIKE THIS TO GET HIS UNDERWEAR BACK. He. He could have stayed home. Done the laundry so he WOULD have some drawers to put on. But no. This fucking loser ran all the way to Prussia's for his fucking underwear. Austria. My god. You could have been arrested for public nudity, man—

Idea for a story

While back, I wanted to explore Austria's dynamic with Kugelmugel— but in a human au context. Canon wise, I always see Austria taking Kugel in as his son rather than brother or something; its more of Kugel's choice than Austria's really. But with the story, he would be Austria's adopted son. He adopted him because he was lonely and he had previously pushed his family, friends, and even his (ex)fiance out of his life all because he wanted to perfect the violin just to get into this orchastra he idolized since childhood. He's already been recognized for his piano, now it was time for the violin to shine. But it didnt. Because he was lonely. And no one he reached out to wanted to hear a word of it. After some time, he decided to just. Adopt. Well, foster then adopt technically. But anyway, the story was supposed to be at least two chapters long. There really was no end goal though so I scrapped it. Plot seemed way too weak for my liking.

Unpopular opinion

Uuuuuuuuuuuh yeah no I'm starting not like his ignorance xjdbdj there is NO WAY he couldn't have known Vene was a boy. Like, talking canon here. No Austria knew. I will not draw or write Vene in a dress anymore unless its like him wanting to be cute by choice yknow? Like maybe he thought at first but seeing as Vene was a child, a small one at that, he probably needed supervision while bathing so as to not drown; like yeah he could swim, or if he did drown he'd wake back up in the end, but proper guardianship tells me its more appropriate for someone to supervise Vene for his safety and well being. So anyway, that task was changed between Hungary and Austria every few weeks. So yeah Austria had to know. He also probably needed assistance dressing for a while, mainly with buttons I assume but probably also got clothes backwards like any little kid would and would seek out help, which would give Austria a closer than normal look at Veneziano, how his face and jaw, altho are pretty androgynous mostly given his age, has that of a sterotypical boy's of his age groul. Point is, there was no way he had so little involvement in Vene's life while he lived with Austria. There's just no way. Austria knew. He's not THAT dumb!

Favorite relationship

Spaus hands down. Most likely because I can see it as like a one sided Statler and Waldorf act? But it changes frequently. One point, Austria could be the one sided act, but more commonly its Spain! They are an old married couple that just sorta bicker but its about the smallest of shit because THEY ARE that kinda couple that like the bickering more because like,,, they cant do it so often anymore or something? I don't know, they have old couple vibes. Austria is pretty possessive and gets jealous easily. Which doesn't pair well with how Spain kinda accidentally flirts? So he's most likely in for a scolding if Austria can't really tell if it was real or not.

Favorite headcanon

He's hopeless at being romantic. Either its too sappy or too much. He can't pull it off. By the off chance he wants to be, however, he probably begrudgingly reaches out to France, which 60% of the time is actually acceptable advice.

#ask #ask game #hetalia #hetalia austria

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spacepunksupreme · 3 years

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Do you have any dune ocs other than that one guy you talked about? If not then please tell me more about him he seems so interesting

I kinda have others but they exist only in conjunction to the aforementioned oc as part of his spice smuggling crew, so yes and no? I'm not actually someone who regularly makes ocs for existing works, so I think it's a pretty strong testament to my love for Dune that I have a singular Dune oc at all lol. I absolutely will tell you more about him though, and I will try very hard to keep it as organized as possible lol. He and the others exist solely within a Dune canon-compliant short story I wrote once that I don’t feel like sharing in its entirety rn, so I’m just gonna summarize the beats of it along with his backstory under the cut. Let’s goooooo

His name is just The Captain (the others are The First Mate, The Youngest, and The Half-Fremen). His miserable little life is divided into two parts: pre and post Harkonnen desertion. Pre-desertion as a Harkonnen trooper his actual rank was Captain, and post he is The Captain of his own spice smuggling crew. I'm always changing my mind on what his gender/pronouns are but I'm just gonna stick with "he" for this post. He was definitely more distinctly masculine appearing pre-desertion since there are no women in the Harkonnen employ, but is extremely androgynous post-desertion and just lets people call him whatever their first assumption is cuz this guy has way bigger problems than gender presentation lol. Aside from having grumpy old man vibes, outwardly he's pretty chill and quiet, comes off as nice because he doesn't like to cause issues that would draw attention to himself. Inwardly, however, this man has woken up every morning for 50 years screaming in his head "oh god, oh fuck, oh god. Today is the day someone finds out I'm lying and kills me, I'm gonna die oh god." The thing is that he has actually never once deliberately lied about his past, just told half-truths that people ended up filling in incorrect blanks to. Like since day one of his desertion, his life is just a series of misunderstandings that ultimately spiral out of control and bite him in the ass. And backstory time: The Captain was a born solider on Geidi Prime, he's good at what he does but doesn't really have any loyalty to it, it's just what he's done his whole life and why make waves with that. As he rises in rank he ends up working more in the slave pits than as an actual deployed trooper; cutting down disobedient men in shackles is a preferable vocation to fighting other properly armed men, especially when you're as cruel as you are cowardly. A slave revolt breaks out and his entire troop is slaughtered. He does not intend to join them, and in a moment of pure, pure cowardice, strips himself of his uniform and attempts to escape before he's found by any of the now-armed slaves. He doesn't make it very far before he is found, but by a group of pleasure-slaves. He was never one to frequent the troops' pleasure house and dealt entirely with slave-gladiators in his duty. They don't recognize him, none of them know his face as someone they should hate. And on top of that he has a childhood scar from an accident that regularly gets assumed to be a whip-scar. Lucky break number one serving also as the first domino in this dude's little 50-year misunderstanding comedy of errors. He is welcomed onto a transport off-world. He bounces around for a few years as a general smuggler before winding up on Arrakis with his spice crew. He doesn't hide the fact that he ran from Geidi Prime during a slave revolt, and naturally of course people assume that means he’s an escape slave. At this point, my little short story starts: The Captain’s carryall gets caught in a sandstorm and collides with a Harkonnen vessel. Of The Captain’s 25-man crew only four including himself survive the crash. Of the Harkonnen vessel, only one trooper survives. The five of them manage to take shelter from the storm in a small cave, but theyre completely trapped there until a fellow smuggling crew can land to retrieve them. With horror, The Captain realizes that The Trooper is one who served under him in his past. Luckily, The Trooper has a serious head wound and seems to delirious to have made the same realization yet himself. The Captain moves to kill The Trooper before he gets the chance to recognize him, but is prevented by The First Mate who blames him for their being out when the storm hit. The pair of them end up in a shouting match arguing over multiple things that really aren’t important when youre trapped in a sandstorm, but everyone’s in a bad mood, tensions are high, might as well voice your grievances now. The argument is interrupted by The Trooper suddenly laughing hysterically. He’s finally remembered where he recognizes The Captain from and spills all the beans in like the worst way possible, praising The Captain for his ruthlessness and recounting bloody battle tidbits. None of the details of what he’s saying are important to the others, because The Captain’s face is enough to tell them that everything being said is completely true. He is absolutely tormented, not because he's even slightly remorseful for any of the lives he took and ruined in the Harkonnen name, but tormented by the un-asked-for and completely undeserved kindness he has been continuously shown post-diseration. To be discovered and killed by people who hate him? Expected and understandable even if he's still terrified of dying. To be discovered and killed by people who trust him? People who actually like him for some goddamn reason? To have his intentions warped and misinterpreted to the point that his discovery would be an even worse betrayal than the one he deliberately made decades ago? Too much to handle, didn't sign up for this shit, twice as terrified. As per usual pirate custom, the crew maroons him with only a lasgun charged for just one shot; they leave on the rescuing crew’s vessel. The Captain intends to shoot himself with the lasgun, but the Trooper, assuming he is about to be shot, tries to wrestle the gun from The Captain’s hands. It goes off by accident and the Trooper is killed, leaving The Captain to waste away alone in the desert. Back on the rescuing carryall, when asked what happened to their captain, the crew chooses to lie and say he went down with their vessel, allowing his past to die with him and preserving the false version of him that they knew.

#did you know there is a maximum word count on tumblr mobile? did you know that I surpassed it? ajsjfgd im embarrassed #thank you for letting me rant like this h. If you actually read the whole thing I hope you had fun lol #the absolute beast of a text post that clicking 'read more' unleashes .... lmfao #hannah is talking #eventually eventually I will draw the captain and his crew #frank herbert stuck his ghost hands in my brain and then swirled it around

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thewatsonbeekeepers · 4 years

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Chapter 4 – It is always 1895 [TAB 1/1]

TAB is my favourite episode of Sherlock. It is a masterpiece that investigates queerness, the canon and the psyche all within an hour and a half. Huge amounts of work has been done on this episode, however, so I’m not going to do a line by line breakdown – that could fill a small book. A great starting point for understanding the myriad of references in TAB is Rebekah’s three part video series on the episode, of which the first instalment can be found here X. I broadly agree with this analysis; what I’m going to do here, though, is place that analysis within the framework of EMP theory. As a result, as much as it pains me, this chapter won’t give a breakdown of carnation wallpaper or glass houses or any of those quietly woven references – we’re simply going in to how it plays into EMP theory.

Before digging into the episode, I want to take a brief diversion to talk about one of my favourite films, Mulholland Drive (2001).

If you haven’t seen Mulholland Drive, I really recommend it – it’s often cited as the best film of the last 20 years, and watching it really helps to see where TAB came from and the genre it’s operating in. David Lynch is one of the only directors to do the dream-exploration-of-the-psyche well, and I maintain that a lot of the fuckiness in the fourth series draws on Lynch. However, what I actually want to point out about Mulholland Drive is the structure of it, because I think it will help us understand TAB a little better. [If you don’t want spoilers for Mulholland Drive, skip the next paragraph.]

The similarities between these two are pretty straightforward; the most common reading of Mulholland Drive is that an actress commits suicide by overdose after causing the death of her ex-girlfriend, who has left her for a man, and that the first two-thirds of the film are her dream of an alternate scenario in which her girlfriend is saved. The last third of the film zooms in and out of ‘real life’, but at the end we see a surreal version of the actual overdose which suggests that this ‘real life’, too, has just been in her psyche. Sherlock dying and recognising that this may kill John is an integral part of TAB, and the relationships have clear parallels, but what is most interesting here is the structural similarity; two-thirds of the way through TAB, give or take, we have the jolt into reality, zoom in and out of it for a while and then have a fucky scene to finish with that suggests that everything is, in fact, still in our dying protagonist’s brain. Mulholland Drive’s ending is a lot sadder than TAB’s – the fact that, unlike Sherlock, there is no sequel can lead us to assume that Diane dies – and it’s also a lot more confusing; it’s often cited as one of the most complicated films ever made even just in terms of surface level plot, before getting into anything else, and it certainly took me a huge amount of time on Google before I could approach anything like a resolution on it!

Mulholland Drive is the defining film in terms of the navigating-the-surreal-psyche subgenre, and so the structural parallels between the two are significant – and definitely point to the idea that Sherlock hasn’t woken up at the end of TAB, which is important. But we don’t need to take this parallel as evidence; there’s plenty of that in the episode itself. Let’s jump in.

Emelia as Eurus

When we first meet Eurus in TST, she calls herself E; this initialism is a link to Moriarty, but it’s also a convenient link to other ‘E’ names. Lots of people have already commented on the aural echo of ‘Eros’ in ‘Eurus’, which is undeniable; the idea that there is something sexual hidden inside her name chimes beautifully with her representation of a sexual repression. The other important character to begin with E, however, is Emelia Ricoletti. The name ‘Emelia’ doesn’t come from ACD canon, and it’s an unorthodox spelling (Amelia would be far more common), suggesting that starting with an ‘E’ is a considered choice.

When TAB aired, we were preoccupied with Emelia as a Sherlock mirror, and it’s easy to see why; the visual parallels (curly black hair, pale skin) plus the parallel faked death down to the replacement body, which Mofftiss explicitly acknowledge in the episode. However, I don’t think that this reading is complete; rather, she foreshadows the Eurus that we meet in s4. The theme of ghosts links TAB with s4 very cleanly; TAB is about Emelia, but there is also a suggestion of the ghosts of one’s past with Sir Eustace as well as Sherlock’s own claims (‘the shadows that define our every sunny day’). Compare this to s4 – ‘ghosts from the past’ appears on pretty much every promotional blurb, and the word is used several times in relation to Eurus. If Eurus is the ghost from Sherlock’s past, the repressive part of his psyche that keeps popping back, Emelia is a lovely metaphor for this; she is quite literally the ghost version of Sherlock who won’t die.

What does it mean, then, when Jim and Emelia become one and the same in the scene where Jim wears the bride’s dress? We initially read this as Jim being the foil to Sherlock, his dark side, but I think it’s more complicated than this. Sherlock’s brain is using Emelia as a means of understanding Jim, but when we watch the episode it seems that they’ve actually merged. Jim wearing the veil of the bride is a good example of this, but I also invite you to rewatch the moment when John is spooked by the bride the night that Eustace dies; the do not forget me song has an undeniable South Dublin accent.* This is quite possibly Yasmine Akram [Janine] rather than Andrew Scott, of course, but let’s not forget that these characters are resolutely similar, and hearing Jim’s accent in a genderless whisper is a pretty clear way of inflecting him into the image of the bride. In addition to this, Eustace then has ‘Miss Me?’ written on his corpse, cementing the link to Moriarty.

[*the South Dublin accent is my accent, so although we hear a half-whispered song for all of five seconds, I’m pretty certain about this]

Jim’s merging with Emelia calls to mind for me what I think might be the most important visual of all of series 4 – Eurus and Jim’s Christmas meeting, where they dance in circles with the glass between them and seem to merge into each other. I do talk about this in a later chapter, but TLDR – if Jim represents John being in danger and Eurus represents decades of repressed gay trauma, this merging is what draws the trauma to the surface just as Jim’s help is what suddenly makes Eurus a problem. It is John’s being in danger which makes Sherlock’s trauma suddenly spike and rise – he has to confront this for the first time – just like Emelia Ricoletti’s case from 1895 only needs solving for the first time now that Jim is back.

At some point I want to do a drag in Sherlock meta, because I think there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye, but Jim in a bride’s dress does draw one obvious drag parallel for me.

If you haven’t seen the music video for I Want to Break Free, it’s 3 minutes long and glorious – and also, I think, reaps dividends when seen in terms of Sherlock. You can watch it here: X

Not only is it a great video, but for British people of Mofftiss’s age, it’s culturally iconic and not something that would be forgotten when choosing that song for Jim. Queen were intending to lampoon Coronation Street, a British soap, and already on the wrong side of America for Freddie Mercury’s unapologetic queerness, found themselves under fire from the American censors. Brian May says that no matter how many times he tried to explain Coronation Street to the Americans, they just didn’t get it. This was huge controversy at the time, but the video and the controversy around it also managed to cement I Want to Break Free as Queen’s most iconic queer number – despite not even being one of Mercury’s songs. There is no way that Steven Moffat, and even more so Mark Gatiss would not have an awareness of this in choosing this song for Moriarty. Applying any visual to this song is going to invite comparisons to the video – and inflecting a sense of drag here is far from inappropriate. Moriarty has been subsumed into Eurus in Sherlock’s brain – the male and the female are fused into an androgynous and implicitly therefore all-encompassing being. I’m not necessarily comfortable with the gendered aspect of this – genderbending is something we really only see in our villains here – but given this is about queer trauma, deliberately queering its form in this way is making what we’re seeing much more explicit.

Nothing new under the sun

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes)

"Read it up -- you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before." (A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes)

“Hasn’t this all happened before? There’s nothing new under the sun.” (The Abominable Bride, Jim Moriarty)

This is arguably the key to spotting that TAB is a dream long before they tell us – when TAB’s case is early revealed to be a mixture between TRF (Emelia’s suicide) and TGG (the five pips), and we see the opening of ASiP repeated, we should be questioning what on earth is going on. This can also help us to recognise s4 as being EMP as well though – old motifs from the previous series keep repeating through the cases, like alarm bells ringing. Moriarty telling Sherlock that there is nothing new under the sun is his key to understanding that the Emelia case is meant to help him understand what happened to Jim, that it’s a mental allegory or mirror to help him parse it. This doesn’t go away when TAB ends! Moving into TST, one of the striking things is that cases are still repeating! The Six Thatchers appeared on John’s blog way back, before the fall – you can read it here: X. It’s about a gay love affair that ends in one participant killing the other. Take from that what you will, when John’s extramarital affection is making him suicidal and Sherlock comatose. Meanwhile, the title of The Final Problem refers to the story that was already covered in TRF and the phone situation with the girl on the plane references both ASiB and TGG, and the ending of TST is close to a rerun of HLV. It’s pretty much impossible to escape echoes of previous series in a way that is almost creepy, but we’ve already had this explained to us in TAB – none of this is real. It’s supposed to be explaining what is happening in the real world – and Mofftiss realised that this was going to be difficult to stomach, and so they included TAB as a kind of key to the rest of the EMP, which becomes much more complex.

However, if we want to go deeper we should look at where that quote comes from. I’ve given a few epigraphs to this section to show where the quote comes from – first the book of Ecclesiastes, then A Study in Scarlet. It’s one of the first things Holmes says and it is during his first deduction in Lauriston Gardens. This is where I’m going to dive pretty deep into the metatextual side of things, so bear with the weirdness.

[we’re going deeper]

Holmes’s first deduction from A Study in Scarlet shows that he’s no great innovator – he simply notices things and spots patterns from things he has seen before. This is highlighted by the fact that he even makes this claim by quoting someone before him. If our Sherlock also makes deductions based on patterns from the past, extensive dream sequences where he works through past cases as mirrors for present ones makes perfect sense and draws very cleverly on canon. However, I think his spotting of patterns goes deeper than that. Sherlock Holmes has been repressed since the publication of A Study in Scarlet, through countless adaptations in literature and film. Plenty of these adaptations as well as the original stories are referenced in the EMP, not least by going back to 1895, the year that symbolises the era in which most of these adaptations are set. (If you don’t already know it, check out the poem 221B by Vincent Starrett, one of the myriad of reasons why the year 1895 is so significant.) My feeling is that these adaptations, which have layered on top of each other in the public consciousness to cement the image of Sherlock Holmes the deductive machine [which he’s not, sorry Conan Doyle estate] come to symbolise the 100+ years of repression that Sherlock himself has to fight through to come out of the EMP as his queer self.

This is one of the reasons that the year 1895 is so important; it was the year of Oscar Wilde’s trial and imprisonment for gross indecency, and this is clearly a preoccupation of Sherlock’s consciousness in TFP with its constant Wilde references, suggesting that his MP’s choice of 1895 wasn’t coincidental. Much was made during TAB setlock of a newspaper that said ‘Heimish The Ideal Husband’, Hamish being John’s middle name and An Ideal Husband being one of Wilde’s plays. But the Vincent Starrett poem, although nostalgic and ostensibly lovely, for tjlcers and it seems for Sherlock himself symbolises something much more troubling. Do search up the full poem, but for now let’s look at the final couplet.

Here, though the world explode, these two survive

And it is always 1895

‘Though the world explode’ is a reference to WW1, which is coming in the final Sherlock Holmes story, and which is symbolised by Eurus – in other chapters, I explain why Eurus and WW1 are united under the concept of ‘winds of change’ in this show. Sherlock and John survive the winds of change – except they don’t move with them. Instead, they stay stuck in 1895, the year of ultimate repression. 2014!Sherlock going back in his head to 1895 and repeating how he met John suggests exactly that, that nothing has changed but the superficial, and that emotionally, he is still stuck in 1895.

Others have pulled out similar references to Holmes adaptations he has to push through in TAB – look at the way he talks in sign language to Wilder, which can only be a reference to Billy Wilder, director of TPLoSH, the only queer Holmes film, and a film which was forced to speak through coding because of the Conan Doyle estate. That film is also referenced by Eurus giving Sherlock a Stradivarius, which is a gift given to him in TPLoSH in exchange for feigning heterosexuality. Eurus is coded as Sherlock’s repression, and citing a repressive moment in a queer film as her first action when she meets Sherlock is another engagement by Sherlock’s psyche with his own cinematic history. My favourite metatextual moment of this nature, however, is the final scene of TFP which sees John and Sherlock running out of a building called Rathbone Place.

Basil Rathbone is one of the most iconic Sherlock Holmes actors on film, and Benedict’s costume in TAB and in particular the big overcoat look are very reminiscent of Rathbone.

Others have discussed (X) how the Victorian costume and the continued use of the deerstalker in the present day are images of Sherlock’s public façade and exclusion of queerness from his identity. It’s true that pretty much every Holmes adaptation has used the deerstalker, but the strong Rathbone vibes that come from Ben’s TAB costume ties the 1895 vibe very strongly into Rathbone. To have the final scene – and hopefully exit from the EMP – tie in with Sherlock and John running out of Rathbone Place tells us that, just as Sherlock cast off the deerstalker at the end of TAB (!), he has also cast off the iconic filmic Holmes persona which has never been true to his actual identity.

Waterfall scene

The symbol of water runs through TAB as well as s4 – others have written fantastic meta on why water represents Sherlock’s subconscious (X), but I want to give a brief outline. It first appears with the word ‘deeper’ which keeps reappearing, which then reaches a climax in the waterfall scene. The idea that Sherlock could drown in the waters of his mind is something that Moriarty explicitly references, suggesting that Sherlock could be ‘buried in his own Mind Palace’. The ‘deep waters’ line keeps repeating through series 4, and I just want to give the notorious promo photo from s4 which confirms the significance of the motif.

This is purely symbolic – it never happens in the show. Water increases in significance throughout – think of Sherlock thinking he’s going mad in his mind as he is suspended over the Thames, or the utterly nonsensical placement of Sherrinford in the middle of the ocean – the deepest waters of Sherlock’s mind. Much like the repetition of cases hinting that EMP continues, the use of water is something that appears in the MP, and it sticks around from TAB onwards, a real sign that we’re going deeper and deeper. I talk about this more in the bit on TFP, but the good news is that Sherrinford is the most remote place they could find in the ocean – that’s the deepest we’re going. After that, we’re coming out (of the mind).

Shortly after TAB aired, I wrote a meta about the waterfall scene, some of which I now disagree with, but the core framework still stands – it did not, of course, bank on EMP theory. You can find it here (X), but I want to reiterate the basic framework, because it still makes a lot of sense. Jim represents the fear of John’s suicide, and Jim can only be defeated by Sherlock and John together, not one alone – and crucially, calling each other by first names, which would have been very intimate in the Victorian era. After Jim is “killed”, we have Sherlock’s fall. The concept of a fall (as in IOU a fall) has long been linked with falling in love in tjlc. Sherlock tells John that it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing, something that Jim has been suggesting to him for a while. What is the landing, then? Well, Sherlock Holmes fell in love back in the Victorian era, symbolised by the ultra repressive 1895, and that’s where he jumps from – but he lands in the 21st century. Falling in love won’t kill him in the modern day. What I missed that time around, of course, was that despite breaking through the initial Victorian layers of repression, he still dives into more water, and when the plane lands, it still lands in his MP, just in a mental state where the punishment his psyche deals him for homosexuality is less severe. This also sets up s4 as specifically dealing with the problem of the fall – Sherlock jumps to the 21st century specifically to deal with the consequences of his romantic and sexual feelings. There’s a parallel here with Mofftiss time jumping; back when they made A Study in Twink in 2009, there was a reason they made the time jump. Having Sherlock’s psyche have that touch of self-awareness helps to illustrate why they made a similar jump, also dealing with the weight of previous adaptations.

Women

I preface this by saying how incredibly uncomfortable I find the positioning of women as the KKK in TAB. It’s a parallel which is unforgivable; frankly, invoking the KKK without interrogating the whiteness of the show or even mentioning race is unacceptable. Steven Moffat’s ability to write women has consistently been proven to be nil, but this is a new low. However, the presence of women in TAB is vital, so on we go.

TAB specifically deals with the question of those excluded from a Victorian narrative. This is specifically tied into to those who are excluded from the stories, such as Jane and Mrs. Hudson. Mrs. Hudson’s complaint is in the same scene as John telling her and Sherlock to blame the problems on the illustrator. This ties back to the deerstalker metaphor which is so prevalent in this episode; something that’s not in the stories at all, but a façade by which Holmes is universally recognised and which as previously referenced masks his queerness. Women, then, are not the only people being excluded from the narrative. When Mycroft tells us that the women have to win, he’s also talking about queer people. This is a war that we must lose.

I don’t think the importance of Molly in particular here has been mentioned before, but forgive me if I’m retreading old ground. However, Molly always has importance in Sherlock as a John mirror, and just because she is dressed as a man here doesn’t mean we should disregard this. If anything, her ridiculous moustache is as silly as John’s here! Molly, although really a member of the resistance, is able to pass in the world she moves in in 1895, but only by masking her own identity. This is exactly what happens to John in the Victorian era – as a bisexual man married to a woman, he is able to pass, but it is not his true identity. More than that, Molly is a member of the resistance, suggesting not just that John is queer but that he’s aware of it and actively looking for it to change.

I know I was joking about Molly and John’s moustaches, but putting such a silly moustache on Molly links to the silliness of John’s moustaches, which only appear when he’s engaged to a woman and in the Victorian era. He has also grown the moustache just so the illustrator will recognise him, and Molly has grown her moustache so that she will be recognised as a man. In this case, Molly is here to demonstrate the fact that John is passing, but only ever passing. Furthermore, Molly, who is normally the kindest person in the whole show, is bitter and angry throughout TAB – it’s not difficult to see then how hiding one’s identity can affect one’s mental health. I really do think that John is a lot more abrasive in TAB than he is in the rest of the show, but that’s not the whole story. Showing how repression can completely impair one’s personality also points to the suicidal impulses that are lurking just out of sight throughout TAB – this is what Sherlock is terrified of, and again his brain is warning him just what it is that is causing John this much pain and uncharacteristic distress.

This is just about the loosest sketch of TAB that could exist! But TAB meta has been so extensive that going over it seems futile, or else too grand a project within a short chapter. Certain theories are still formulating, and may appear at a later date! But what this chapter (I hope) has achieved has set up the patterns that we’re going to see play out in s4 – between the metatextuality, the waters of the mind and the role of Moriarty in the psyche, we can use TAB as a key with which to read s4. I like to think of it as a gift from Mofftiss, knowing just how cryptic s4 would be – and these are the basic clues with which to solve it.

That’s it for TAB, at least in this series – next up we’re going ever deeper, to find out exactly who is Eurus. See you then?

#tjlc #emp theory #thewatsonbeekeepers #my meta #meta #mine #chapter four: it is always 1895 #vincent starrett #mofftiss #1895 #bbc sherlock #johnlock #tjlc is real

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mariaiscrafting · 3 years

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yo i saw your post to canon about gender studies and stuff and i ran out of asks ages ago so I couldnt send this until now, but feel free to go off about gender and stuff, i would love to hear it- maybe tag me in it if you do? - evilglitter (canon's canonical spouse)

Heya, @evilglitter! Lol yeah, I saw canon’s reply and I was just gonna ask, like, what exactly y’all would like me to go off about. It was kinda an open-ended sorta reply where I can really talk about anything y’all are interested in/questioning about, I guess.

If y’all don’t have any specifics you wanna know about for now, that’s cool, too, I can go off about what’s been bothering me lately and helping me along my own journey to pin point my gender identity.

The first thing my brain’s been hung up on is the difference between gender identity & expression. So, just as people say pronouns /=/ gender, I’m of the belief that expression /=/ gender, either. To explain this to people and better-conceptualize it myself, I always return to the kind of example this trans lady on Youtube (Contrapoints) goes back to. She brings up various examples of people who wear makeup: First, there is a cisgender man who might be mistaken as a woman when he wears feminizing makeup but is still a man nonetheless, whether wearing makeup or not. Then there’s a cisgender man who uses he/him pronouns when out of drag but she/her pronouns and a female name when in it, but still identifies as a man in and out of drag, almost like he’s playing a character. There are non-binary, genderfluid people who will identify as men and use he/him pronouns out of drag, while identifying as women and using she/her pronouns in drag; they identify themselves as women and men depending on their expression. And there are transgender women who identify as women in and out of drag, regardless of their expression. I’m not sure if I’m articulating this example too well - it’s much better-articulated in video format, I think - but that’s basically how I see gender identity and expression. They are two separate things that draw from each other and might have links to each other, depending on each individual’s view on their own gender, but don’t have to match at all. Butch lesbians can have a more masculine gender expression, and yet identify as cisgender women. Transmasc people can also have a masculine gender expression, and yet identify as trans men, non-binary, or anything else. Gender identity does not have to equate with expression, and that’s a really difficult box that I’ve had to learn to break out of, for my own sake, and through the gen & sexuality studies I’ve been doing at uni. Like, as a presumed cis woman my whole life, I’ve just assumed that to be perceived as a woman, I need to express myself femininely, and that if I fit into that feminine gender expression, I do not deviate from the identity of a woman. But lately I’ve been grappling with the idea that maybe I don’t identify as much as a woman as I once thought, that when I look inside myself and question the role I want to fit into in society, how I want my peers and colleagues to treat me, and my own characteristics/tendencies, I might not be as binary a woman as I always was taught to believe, and none of these things are affected by the fact that I’m curvy or wear skirts and heels or wear makeup; I can be as feminine or as masculine as I like, but to me, those do not equate my gender, and it’s okay if they don’t.

Lol the other thing I’d like to rant about for now is different theories of gender. First, I’d like to say that I’m by no means an expert. I’m literally just some second-year G&S minor who’s watched a lot of videos from trans people, learned a lot from Tumblr over the past 7-8 years, and read a couple texts here and there. I don’t know nearly as much as I’d like to pretend, but I’ll give my take on what I do know a little about. There are lots of different theories on what exactly gender is that overlap and contradict each other, at times. There’s the biological perspective that I’m sure we’re all familiar with - the belief that gender = your sex assignment. The problems with this theory are obvious, in that it doesn’t account for intersex people/people with chromosomal/hormonal discrepancies, or binary transgender people. Basically, the theory that XY = man and XX = woman is pretty... antiquated and flawed, imo. Then there’s the theory that gender is a bunch of performances, which I think came from Judith Butler, this well-known 2nd Wave feminist. This theory basically states that gender is this, like, specific, stylized series of actions that we perform everyday to fit into what our society’s roles for our genders are. Butler would probably disagree with me about expression versus identity, because to her, gender identity doesn’t go beyond the performance of one’s own gender. Basically, what we perform everyday, whether it be to act feminine, masculine, or androgynously, is telling of what our gender identity is. If we perform the actions of being a woman, then we are a woman, etc. Finally - and I’m sure there are many more theories on gender, but these are three I’m most familiar with - there’s the theory I personally most agree with - gender as a social construct. This is the idea that gender is constructed by societies, that gender roles are imposed onto us from the external, and that we are then socialized into whatever gender. I don’t totally agree with this theory because I do believe that gender goes beyond just the social roles we try to adhere to to fit into society, and the socialization we undergo from childhood; I do believe there is something at least a little innate about one’s own gender identity. The road social construct theory goes down is this one where, if we created a society free of hierarchies and gender roles and such, gender would cease to exist, which... is that true, I don’t really know. But I do think that gender is at least somewhat of a construct that society first created because it was useful for the creation of an efficient society, but is now just used to justify oppression, and that beyond that, gender as it functions in society is just this illusion that we could 100% do without if we want to obtain equality or whatever.

But anyways, lol I dunno if any of what I’ve just ranted about makes sense or is what y’all were looking for, and honestly at this point, I’m just using this as an opening for me to rant about something I’ve had bottled up for quite a while. I apologize for not being totally coherent since I’m not very experienced in actually talking about gender theory. If y’all want to chat about something specific, feel free to ask anything. :) Hope your journey to figure out your gender goes well, @canonurl

#asks #gender #gender identity #not mcyt #idek what this ask turned into lmfao #Anonymous #canonurl

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mai-nonsense · 3 years

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Basics: 2, 6. Appearance: 4. Personality: 3, 8,9. Background: 1, 5. Relationships: 1, 3, 4, 7. Fun facts: 1, 7, 10.

*claps hands together* Alright! I'm going to do the answers for my Shepards, otherwise I'll be here all week.

2. What does their name mean? Why are they named that?

Jane: The original reason she's named that is because I was too lazy to think of a name so I just went with the default (she was my first ever Shepard), now I Headcannon that she went by Shepard until she joined up with the alliance, so she chose the name Jane because it's the only one that came to mind

Cassidy: I don't really pay attention to what names actually mean when I name characters, but I named her that b/c it's pretty and she just kinda looked like Cassidy

Henri: Henry is a family name on both sides of my family, but I wanted to use it as for a femshep b/c I like androgynous names (partly because I have one, but also because I think there should be more of them in circulation)

Damien: His name was originally Darren but I changed it b/c my sister and mum pointed out that Darren's a bit bogan. And instead of owning it I covered it up like a coward. I renamed him Damien because my favorite Robin is Damian Wayne and litteraly no other reason

Vance: named after the singer Vance Joy, b/c his songs have a lot of emotional significance to me and I like the name

Ryan: he's my only actual Canadian Shepard and my mum and I have a running joke about all Canadians being named Ryan (b/c of Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling etc.) So he's Ryan.

6. What's their star sign, birthstone etc? Does it hold any special significance for them?

All of them besides Vance have Shepard's canon birthday and none of them besides Cassidy have any belief in that kind of thing. Cassidy is a quietly spiritual kind of woman so she likes the whole star sign/ birthstone kind of thing, but she'd never admit out loud.

4. Appearance- How do they carry themselves? What is their default expression?

Jane has resting bitch face. She walks around like she's going to go beat someone up, probably because she usually is.

Cassidy has a very casual, approachable demeanor about her. Her go-to expression is either concern or pouting.

Henri carries herself shoulders back, chin up and head held high. Her usual expression is a mix of serious and thoughtful

Damien carries himself like a serious soldier but with a hint of sadness, he has resting sad face

Vance also walks around like he's looking for a fight and he's usually scowling

Ryan has a cocky swagger and usually has a sideways smile on his face

Personality 3. What are their hobbies and interests?

Jane: Is gun-modding a hobby? Because if so then that's one of them. She genuinely enjoys the combat part of being a soldier and enjoys training herself to be a deadly weapon, a side effect of growing up in the reds most likely. She doesn't really have many interests outside of being a solider, and doesn't really eat anything outside of protein bars and ready-meals.

Cassidy: she likes to mod games in her spare time, and practices her hacking skills a lot in order to keep herself sharp. She has a fondness for Turian and Salarian pop-culture, video games especially.

Henri: Henri likes hard copy books, with old-fashioned dust jackets and everything. Even with new release publications, she'll always go out of her way to find a hard copy if she really wants to read it. She usually reads non-fiction but she's a sucker for a good romance novel.

Damien: Also throws himself into his work so much that he barely has any free time. On the rare occasion that he does, he likes to build things, usually model ships or card towers (which he knocks down immediately after)

Vance: Vance actually really enjoys cooking, it's something he used to do with his mum when he was little so it's his way of keeping her alive in spirit

Ryan: Ryan has a penchant for old earth comic books and music from the 20/21st century, he likes to draw and regularly carries a sketchbook

8. What are their manners like? Any habits?

Jane's manners are atrocious. She's straightforward, tactless and blunt, which gets her in trouble quite a bit. She's not a fan of sparing feelings, if you're doing something that's pissing her off, she'll let you know

Cassidy is also pretty blunt, but has a lot more tact and isn't as crass as Jane. She's nice whenever possible but she doesn't skirt around issues

Henri is anxious people-pleaser that always looks for the best in everyone at heart, but has a polite but proffesional exterior.

Damien varies depending on his mood, Mass Effect 1 Damien is polite and proffesional but that drops as time goes by. By the time ME:3 rolls around he is 1000% done and doesn't have time to put up with anyone's shit and reacts to social situations accordingly

Vance goes in the opposite direction to Damien, starts off rude and aggressive but gradually softens as time goes by.

Ryan has decent manners, but can often be inappropriate in social situations

9. What are they most afraid of?

Jane: before falling for Kaidan, it's falling for Kaidan, because she hates having intense emotions about people that she can't control. After falling for Kaidan, it's anything bad happening to Kaidan. She doesn't really care for her own well-being but she constantly worries about and will protect her friends and loved ones at all costs.

Cassidy: Dying. Specifically, dying again and Garrus continuing down the dark path she found him on after her resurrection. She'd hate for him to completely lose hope like that again.

Henri: dissapointing those around her.

Damien: Also letting everyone down.

Vance: Everyone he cares about dying painfully.

Ryan: spiders.

Background, 1. Where were they born, what was their childhood like?

Jane was born in Brisbane, believe it or not, she gets carted off to one of her aunts in America at age 4. After that it's foster home to home for her until she ditches them for the reds at 10. Needless to say, her childhood was rough.

Both Vance and Henri were born and raised on Mindoir. They both had good childhoods until Batarians killed their families.

Damien was born in Chicago. He spent his childhood being bandied about from alliance ship to alliance ship. He spent a lot of his childhood alone.

Cassidy was born in New York, but has the spacer background. Her mother had a much more caring presence then Damien's however, so she grew up well.

Ryan was born in Montreal, spent his childhood in and out of foster homes until he was 14, when he joined the reds for protection. Despite this, he views his childhood in a positive light, as he knows he's come a long way since those days.

5. Where do they currently live? What's their place like?

I'm going to skip this one because I don't have a good answer for any of them at the moment lol.

Relationships, 1. Do they have any friends? Who would they consider their best friend?

Jane has more friends/people who care about her then she thinks she does. She considers her best friend to be either Miranda or Liara.

Cassidy gives off chill older sister vibes and treats her crew as family, so a lot of people come to her for support or just for an ear. She loves talking tech with Tali and considers her to be her best friend, with Ashley coming in as a close second.

Henri initially has more colleagues then friends, but she learns to loosen up and to have a more relaxed approach to the people she cares about. She considers her best friends to be Kaidan and Joker (though her feelings for Joker develop into something more ever time)

Damien has the ruthless background, so he's more feared then loved. He's also quite socially awkward so it's hard for him to make friends to begin with. Despite this, the people who do call him friend do so wholeheartedly. He considers his best friend to be Garrus.

Vance, despite being an asshole, actually has a lot of friends. Because he's a loveable asshole. His best friend is either Liara or Jack.

Ryan is very likeable, and is often the life of the party. But people more look up to him then actually consider him a friend. He considers Kaidan his best friend. (who he's also secretly in love with, but shhhhhhh we'll get to that)

3. What's their love life like? Do they have any kids?

I'm currently using Jane as my "Kaidan as subject zero AU" Shepard, because I think she fits so well with subject0!Kaidan, as I love writing stories about two hardened badasses who just want to be loved, falling in love. Non-au Jane also ends up with Kaidan, and have a daughter named Astra

Cassidy is one of my two Shakarian Sheps, who gets the more 'traditional' happy ending out of the two. That is, she retires somewhere nice with Garrus and they adopt a bunch of orphans together.

Henri is my one and only Joker-mancer, one of these days I will write their story (once I finish planning it out lol) but I currently have other projects at the forefront. As for kids, neither Henri or Joker want them because there would be to many medical factors/lifestyle changes they'd have to consider and they couldn't put that burden on a kid.

Damien's life motto is: no kids, only dogs and he manages to stick by that pretty well. When Vance (his half-brother) has kids he settles into the role of cool uncle though. Though Damien thought he wasn't one for romance at all, he somehow fell in love with Kaidan without realizing it and they eventually end up together.

Vance and Ashley fall hard for each other, and after many hardships and triumphs, they eventually marry and have three kids together

Ryan sleeps around a bit but spends the duration of ME:1 and 2 pining for Kaidan but never saying anything b/c he doesn't want to make it awkward™. Naturally they end up together but it takes a while. Am currently undecided on whether they have kids together or not.

4. Who do they look up to? Who do they trust?

Jane: Anderson. He took her under his wing and believed in her when nobody else did. She comes to trust her inner circle in time. That consisting primarly of Kaidan, Miranda, Jack, Liara, Garrus and Wrex.

Cassidy: Her mother, as she managed to give her a good childhood while in the military as a single mum. She trusts Garrus and Tali with her life.

Henri: Anderson and Hackett both, as they've always pushed her to do her best. She trusts in her crew, as, in her eyes, they've never let her down.

Damien: Hackett, as he gave him a second chance after Torfan and promised him that he wouldn't let him down. People don't trust him on impulse so the people whose trust he earns always have his in return.

Vance, Anderson and Samara. Anderson because he helped him after he lost his family on Mindoir and Samara because she's a powerful biotic with a commanding presence and he learns a lot about discipline from her. Vance eventually learns to trust Damien after not wanting him anywhere near his life for a long time.

Ryan: He tries to find a way to learn at least something from everyone he encounters, good or bad. He doesn't really trust anyone for a very long time but gradually comes to trust in his ME:3 crew

7. Are they good with kids? Animals?

Jane: Surprisingly, yes. Though it can depend on the kid or animal in question *cough star child cough*. She strives to protect those who can't defend themselves and improve lives for future generations.

Cassidy: Very good with both.

Henri: She grew up a farm girl, so she's pretty great with animals. She's good with kids until they start screeching and then she promptly nopes out.

Damien: Good with animals, dogs in particular. Is okay with kids, but doesn't really like interacting with them unless he has a good reason (like them being his niece and nephews).

Vance: Despite growing up a farm boy, he's not too big an animal lover. He loves his own kids, but isn't too big on them in general.

Ryan: Used to hang out with stray cats as a teen. Decent kid-wrangler™.

Fun facts, 1. Which tropes do they fit? which archetypes?

Jane fits the "does bad things for a good goal" trope and potentially fits the stereotypical "bad girl" archetype as well

Cassidy fits with the "protective matriarch/sister" archetype/trope

Henri gives me "girl next door", but with a gun, vibes

Damien fits the "everyone thinks he's evil, but he's really just misunderstood" trope

Vance is def an "asshole with a heart of gold"

Ryan's a himbo

7. What languages do they speak?

Vance knows a tiny bit of Mandarin, and Ryan speaks okay Canadian French, everyone else speaks English and only English for now, though that may change as I find out more about them.

10. What songs remind you of them?

Jane: Missile, Dorothy

Cassidy: Dead Weight, PVRIS

Henri: CHAMPION, Bishop Brigs

Damien: The Phoenix, Fall Out Boy

Vance: What's Up Danger, Blackway ft. Black Caviar

Ryan: You're Gonna Go Far Kid, The Offspring

WOW. I just did a big old-fashioned info dump right there. Sorry about that.

Thanks for the ask!!!

#ask meme #oc asks #crqstalite

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