#and i think it also has some interesting stuff about jewish identity that is rare to see

[morethanonepage]

My social media circles are full of ppl that really like CMBYN (not to mention all The White Gays everywhere) that get rly incensed if someone mentions pedophilia so I feel awks expressing An Opinion on there and tbf I don't much about the book/movie but I do know the kid is like... barely an adult? And idk man, making an entire romantic story about a barely-adult's torrid love affair with a guy in his thirties is uhhh weird, js

y’know anon i feel great empathy for you because honestly when my (mostly straight) friends have brought up CMBYN and spoken positively about it, i haven’t actually said shit, mostly because this becomes a really hard movie to criticize in a concise fashion -- like the age difference is sketch, the fact that it was written by a straight man makes me automatically wary, the fact that it’s a relationship built on cheating is iffy, and honestly? that it ends with ‘and then he went and married a woman’ is the like the second most common Gay Tragedy ending to things after ‘one or both die,’ and I find it honestly irritating and eye-rollingly predictable, especially if they end there. I expected better from James Ivory, frankly, given that he wrote Maurice, one of my favorite queer movies of all time.

like i have no doubt that CMBYN is beautifully shot and probably well acted and written and I don’t even really have a problem with Characters Doing Problematic Things per se -- my problem is when those things are normalized and romanticized, and my concern with CMBYN is that that’s 100% what happened. It’s a tragic beautiful coming of age story about a seventeen year old child who falls in love with an older man who should know better than to get involved. it’d be sketchy if it were a 17 year old girl and a 24 year old guy, it’d be sketchy in any other combination of genders, and the fact that it’s not treated as such is troubling to me. 

Because we can go up and down on ‘oh but it’s consensual and elio is in love/lust and pursued the relationship in the first place and he’s of age in italy’ but that’s the kind of rhetoric that leads to young people getting manipulated and abused by older men and women -- they wanted it, they’re mature for their age, they pursued me -- like those aren’t rare justifications from abusers, y’know? and i see such similar phrasing used in so many think pieces about how it’s totes cool for CMBYN to have that relationship at it’s center, apparently without irony.

And like, look, most of us have had crushes on older people in our lives, and especially for people in the queer community, where there aren’t as many options for dating and you’re just so desperate for someone who understands you and accepts you for who you are, but that ends up putting you in a very vulnerable position when it comes to people who have any potential power over you (even if that power is literally just something like ‘they can leave at the end of the summer and you’re still stuck with your parents’), and that’s why the adults in that situation have a responsibility to shut that shit down when it happens. 

The queer community has a particular problem with this -- because there is this narrative/perception in the straight world that gay men especially are going around ~recruiting~ young boys to abuse, and i think we as a community tend to overcorrect and bend over backwards to deny that that ever happens, that any queer relationship would ever be abusive or predatory, which does us all a disservice and puts young people in genuine danger.

i’m not clutching my pearls at the fact that a 17 year old teenaged boy has sexual and romantic feelings for a very handsome 24 year old man who looks like Armie Hammer. Like, duh.  But that it’s requited and consummated -- especially given the fact that Armie Hammer’s in his 30s and looks it, and Timothée Chalamet look substantially younger than his 21 years (and even younger than the character’s 17, in the movie) -- gives me pause. Like maybe it’s because I’m too old -- I’m 29 atm and I look at Elio and I’m like, that’s a child, but I honestly see gifs of them together and it genuinely just looks off to me. 

And I think tbh the filmmakers and Hammer himself have done the movie no favors by pretending everyone who’s somewhat dubious about the relationship is just being homophobic -- like I’m sure I have as much internalized homophobia as literally anyone raised in a homophobic society might, but in this particular case I’m p sure that’s not my problem. But then again there definitely are homophobic people latching on to the same issue, because it feeds into their already well established narrative of The Predatory Gays, and I’m not like going to blame that precisely on the filmmakers, but also like...not helping, dudes, not helping.

i’m not ready to say this movie glorifies pedophilia because as much as I hate the ‘well pedophilia actually means’ parsing that these debates can devolve into, I genuinely feel like the intent of the film is to put Elio in a position of discovery and power in his identity and his sexuality (more than put Oliver in a position of pursuing and using a 17 year old boy for his own power or pleasure). But art doesn’t exist in a vacuum etc etc and i’m just personally not comfortable with the movie itself and, more importantly, with how it’s been perceived and put forth as this beautiful gay romance story that you can’t criticize without people accusing you of being homophobic or prudish. 

#and like tbf i think the movie may have more nuance than i'm giving it credit for #like i think i've seen mentions of the affair 'gutting' elio #b/c of how it resolves #and that is meant as both the turning point from child to adult of a coming of age story #and also kind of the (painful) consequence of a relationship with an older man #so it's not just like 'oh yeah go ahead screw an older guy it'll work out great' #like it shows both the positive of Getting What You Want (sex with hot guy you lusted over) #and What Does That Mean (he's older and only there for the summer so it'll hurt when it's over) #and i think it also has some interesting stuff about jewish identity that is rare to see #so i can give it credit for that too #but in general i'm not comfortable with this movie #i don't want to see it #i wish it were on my dash less #and i'm going to roll my eyes so hard about it and it being compared to Moonlight #anyway sorry i went off anon #none of this is super new or a hot take or anything #i guess i just did want to get it off my chest a little #about why this movie annoys me #cmbyn #pedophila cw #Anonymous

[writingwithcolor]

Jewish character as adoptive parent/patriarch of a found-family that ostensibly contains children from xtian backgrounds?

@lymanjosh asked:

tl;dr: how to approach Jewish character as adoptive parent/patriarch of a family that ostensibly contains children from xtian backgrounds?

(this is about fandom but i take it fairly seriously and want to do it right!)

so i’m not jewish, and i portray/hc a (relatively important/main) character A as a Jewish man. character A is at the center of a large found-family network, and he has a number of children adopted + otherwise who come from a variety of backgrounds and who are variously headcanoned by other fandom members.

a lot of the time (mostly in a roleplay context, where other people have equal control over the storyline) i’ll be faced with the assumption that the family would operate by the xtian norms dominant in a us context (particularly regarding xmas.)

id like to push back against this, but i hesitate to portray character A as asking his children to share in his own customs; i don’t think it would be in character, since he is very very reserved + rarely speaks about his birth family in the source material, but even if that were something he did i don’t have much interest in writing about it, nor do i think it would be my place.

what’s a realistic way for this kind of family to navigate the holidays? i’ve done some reading about adoption of children from oppressed groups by white/gentile families, in which it’s generally best to preserve the child’s connection with their culture, but i’m not sure if it would be different in this context? i worry about implying that A has to let xtian norms into his home to some degree in order to properly parent his children. 

Hi! OK, so when I first read this ask I completely read it as Magneto and was all set to give a complex and thorough Magneto answer, and then I realized I was jumping to conclusions and asked and I was VERY wrong – this is Batman! Which is also awesome. I’m not as familiar with DC but I still enjoy this premise.

So the question becomes: how does Jewish Batman handle the holidays if Robin and whoever those other found-family kids are, are Christian. How do we give them a Christmas without having to “do” Christmas ourselves? If I were in Batman’s Bat Shoes here, I’d ask the kids what it was they wanted. In other words, what part of Christmas would they need in order to feel like they weren’t missing out. And then I’d find a way to make sure they were getting to experience it. If they wanted to go to Midnight Mass, I’d ask if (Christian?) Alfred was okay taking them, or Commissioner Gordon, or some other gentile character. If all they wanted was Christmas cookies and everyone baking as a family, I’d orchestrate that without feeling uncomfortable. If they wanted to watch a movie it would depend on how overtly Christian it was vs. something like A Muppet Christmas Carol. (Note: this is going to be a big “your mileage may vary” here because of our varying discomfort with having to participate in Christmas, so I am definitely not saying all of us are comfy with secular Christmas movies.) If they wanted a Christmas tree, remember this is Wayne Manor so there’s gonna be room for there to be a Christmas tree or even a whole Christmas room that doesn’t have to be my space or my room. If I’m Batman. (Did I really just type that sentence?

Batman is so Alone TM that this post makes me lonely for him to have other Jewish characters to do his own holidays with. But. The whole time I was in grad school I was in a situation where I was celebrating all my holidays with all gentiles, and I basically did my own thing and taught them what I was doing and why, and then had movie parties. Like for Passover we had a “deconstructed seder” where I made all the seder foods as party foods and watched Ten Commandments. That way I got to feel like I wasn’t missing out. That would be a sort of secular way that the BatFam could participate in stuff like Passover without having to actually sign up to practice a different religion.

–Shira

I only have a couple minor things to add. Firstly OP, definitely pay attention to the ‘mileage may vary’ point and, as we’ve mentioned before, listen  to many Jewish experiences of Christmas from those who engage to those who are neutral to people who have negative associations and memories about Christmas. The examples Shira gave all work, as long as they fit with Batman’s wider Jewish identity and you’re aware that whatever option you go with, many Jews will feel completely differently to your character and that’s OK too.

Similarly, Shira’s suggestions for Jewish holidays like Passover are great, but this would again depend on Batman’s denomination and personal preferences. An Orthodox seder still has plenty of room to make it your own, but with a lot more do’s and don'ts. For example, (this obviously didn’t happen in 2020 but) my dad usually heads down to the local Jewish retirement home on first night Passover and leads a kind of 'highlights of the seder’ for the residents. All the songs they will remember from childhood, but shorter; all the food, but made a bit more palatable, as Shira also said; and all condensed into about 45 minutes. Your Batman might do something similar for his kids if they show interest in Passover. However, when my dad gets home he will still make sure he does seder night, even if he is by himself if the rest of the family are with my mum. It will depend on Batman’s denomination and beliefs as to whether he sees a condensed or modified seder as having fulfilled his religious obligation. 

–Shoshi

#Jewish #Adoption #Adoptees #families #Jewish families #batman #fanfiction #holidays #Christmas #Christian #Jewish holidays #asks #submission

[eretzyisrael]

I guess in light of this, I should explain just how horrific Critical Theory is with regard to Jews and thus anti-Semitism. It's almost impossible to convey the full, crazy depth of this, so I'll have to leave out huge parts, too, like Islamophobia.

To only briefly touch upon the "Islamophobia" aspect, both Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Theory are deeply invested in the support for Palestine, by which is more specifically meant the utter destruction of Israel and anti-Zionism.

 Even the Queer Theorists are in on this.That very practicable side of Theory sees that the existence of Israel at all is a colonial conquest of Palestine, thus a last lingering full-blown move of Western colonialism into "brown" and Eastern (read: Islamic) territory, thus intolerable. The Jew-hate is insane on this.

Theory across the board protects Islamist anti-Seminism (and other horrors, like Muslim grooming gangs that target white women for sex abuses), because it would be "racist" and "colonialist" to denounce these horrors because that requires a "white, Western" perspective.

That's the part I'm going to ignore, though. I want to talk mostly about Critical Race Theory, whiteness, and anti-Semitism. I think you'll be shocked at how deep the rot goes and how vile and dangerous the ideology is. Another Holocaust could result, not being hyperbolic.

Light-skinned (and often other) Jews are Theorized as having been granted the status of "whiteness," with this being extremely obvious with Jews whose skin is actually quite pale. This means that Jews, in CRT, have an intolerable privilege they need to check.

Here's the problem, though. Jews have quite the incredible history of super legitimate oppression, including imperial destruction, diaspora, enslavement, and a literal genocide in the Holocaust. They're really huge victims historically, including of "the West."

As with the related concept of "brown privilege," which assigns to "brown" people a very uncomfortable position of being Theoretically "anti-Black" and yet "not white," Jews are Theoretically assigned whiteness with a HUGE, defensible claim on legitimate systemic oppression.

This combination is intolerable to CRT. CRT would demand that Jews atone of their whiteness by recognizing it and critiquing it and submitting to CRT, which identifies them indelibly as white (including by success), yet their legitimate claim to systemic oppression prevents it.

Jewish people therefore fall into a very dangerous spot within Theory: they have a legitimate reason not to "do the work" while "enjoying the benefits" of whiteness, in many respects more than most other people. This is an intolerable contradiction that will demand resolution.

Theory cannot find a resolution to this situation, especially so long as Israel exists and is "oppressing Palestine" by its very existence, which is another problem that is nearly impossible to solve. Lacking resolutions to major Theoretical contradictions rarely remains stable.

The Critical Whiteness aspect of CRT holds that Jews have been granted Whiteness by whites but bc they retain their historical victimhood statuses, they enjoy an even further privilege of getting a kind of "false" victimhood status as well. This is obviously the stuff of horrors.

This set of contradictions has also led some (fringe) elements within Social Justice to begin to deny the Holocaust entirely, which cannot be seen as a welcome development, especially in a broader context where the far right has been doing the same and muddying those waters.

More commonly, it has led Theorists to say things (as went quite viral earlier this year) that Anne Frank is only relevant because of her Whiteness and wouldn't be an interesting story (or part of the Western canon) if she hadn't been white. This is unhealthy stuff.

So, add in the stuff where they elevate Muslims to a highly protected status and their protectionism for Palestine, they also tend to see Zionism as a colonialist movement (at best) that has been literally infected with (literal) Nazi ideology (at worst), and it's truly scary.

The anti-Semitism in Critical Race Theory isn't an accident. It's what happens when terrible identity-based Theory rooted in victimhood can't resolve real-world contradictions, and it currently bears every unmistakable sign of being a real threat to Jews everywhere.

#critical race theory #antisemitism #islamophobia #palestine #israel #palestinians #jews

[traincat]

speaking of mcu spidey weirdness, am i the only one who feels like they tried to fuse flash with a harry on a particularly bad trip? i remember him being brown in a comic timeline but never mean when sober. and after pheathers, making the bully a smart member of a minority group just feels tonedeaft

I think there’s a very good argument for Norman and Harry being mixed race in the main canon, because I think Norman reads best as a character if there’s something about him that he’s personally and to his detriment deeply ashamed of and repressed about and that he goes to great lengths to cover up. This could be that he’s mixed race --- the tight curl pattern of the Osborn hair, and Harry’s afro in Spider-Gwen’s flashback scenes could lend themselves to this -- or that he’s Jewish -- again, the tight curl pattern of the Osborn hair and Harry’s afro in the Spider-Gwen flashbacks, along with the extremely questionable decision to have Harry bullied for being rich by having kids call him “the Green Goblin.” (It is actually still antisemitic if you don’t actually go all the way there, Jason Latour.) The self-hating Jew aspect definitely becomes problematic in a canon where Peter Parker isn’t himself openly and proudly canonically Jewish, so I tend to steer clear of this one, though I do think it could be very interesting in terms of Norman turning himself into the ultimate stereotype of the wealth-hoarding evil Jewish business man through his own self-hatred. My current favorite reading of Norman is that Norman is a deeply repressed gay man. There’s plenty of subtext here to support this: the obsession with Peter Parker as the young and strong masculine ideal, the deeply campy original Green Goblin design with the fuschia purse and the huge fake eyelashes, Norman’s eschewing and disdain for his genetic descendants, the paralleling between Norman’s abuse of Harry with a father’s sexual abuse of his son in The Child Within, and the seduction and later the torture of Flash Thompson when Norman recruited him to be his assistant after his return from the dead. It’s all potentially, to use a word I hate, very problematic without a deft hand in the storytelling, but I think done right and balanced against some honest and positive representation any of the above could offer up some very good stories. 

Anyway, all that Osborn stuff aside, yeah, the decisions made with Flash in the MCU truly baffle me. I like the casting of Tony Revolori, who I really enjoyed in Grand Hotel Budapest, but the decision to make him a nerd who verbally bullies Peter instead of a jock who antagonizes Peter is bizarre, to say the least. I think I read an article somewhere that said the change was made because jocks aren’t the “in kids” anymore, which, like, presents a weird picture of current American high school politics where all the nerds are just picking on each other now in an attempt to become the new pop culture ruling class. Then there’s the fact that Flash, now A Smart Kid, is routinely passed over in favor of Peter, kicked off the decathlon in favor of Peter, and, during the Washington Monument scene, depicted as a person who would rather save a trophy than help his classmate and in-comics high school girlfriend, Liz. So now that Flash is brown, the MCU has decided to portray him as a smart kid who is routinely passed over for the supposedly smarter white kid, and a materialistic coward beside. I’ve seen Homecoming get a lot of praise for its diverse cast, and I have to say I do like much of the casting, but the follow through in the actual movie is, I would say, far less progressive than it looks on paper. See also: this being the first Spider-Man movie with a black love interest and coincidentally the first Spider-Man movie without a kiss scene in it, and the erasure of Mary Jane’s identity by pasting her nickname onto a character the screenwriters have been very open about saying isn’t Mary Jane, a character who isn’t even given a last name within the film, following the massive racist backlash after rumors broke out that Zendaya was playing Mary Jane. 

It’s also important, in my opinion, to note that in main comics continuity Flash Thompson’s childhood was marked by violent and repeated physical abuse by his father. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) is the only film franchise to reference this, even though Flash Thompson is a character who has appeared in all three Spider-Man film franchises. The Thompson family in 616 is depicted as extremely blue collar: Flash is a high school football star whose father is a cop and an alcoholic who beats his son and ridicules his wife. They live in a modest apartment. MCU Flash, by contrast, is depicted as a nerd who drives a very expensive car and gets ousted from the academic decathlon by Peter, who doesn’t even care about the decathlon and just needs an excuse to go to DC where -- conveniences of all plot conveniences -- the decathlon is being held. I mean, they just bussed my dad out to Brooklyn when he was a mathlete, but whatever. (Spider-Man: Homecoming has a deeply weird undercurrent about financial status; almost everyone in the movie is either depicted as comfortably middle class, including the Parkers, or as rich.) I’m going to admit: the scene where Peter steals and wrecks Flash’s car made me deeply uncomfortable in the theater, knowing Flash’s comics backstory. Absence of on-screen or referenced abuse is not, in and of itself, a lack of that abuse within the story, or rather an erasure of the contents of the work the story was adapted from. If we assume 616 is the main universe, and that everything leads out of there, then from my perspective, unless other evidence is offered up, there’s no reason to assume things don’t line up, i.e., without direct evidence otherwise I have to assume Flash is still a victim of parental abuse. Expensive gifts like a car isn’t direct evidence against that. Flash being a nerd now isn’t direct evidence against that.

(Spectacular Spider-Man #-1)

(Amazing Spider-Man #574)

(Venom (2011) #27)

So I think about scenes like this and then I think about Flash being the butt of the joke in Spider-Man: Homecoming over Peter stealing his car and at the very least, I have to say, I’m not happy with the lack of nuance presented, or the implication that the MCU’s Flash couldn’t be a victim of abuse because he’s a rich nerd in this iteration. It is, now that you mention it, a bizarrely Harry Osborn-esque take on the character: the expensive car, the rich background, smart but not as smart as Peter, a bit of a jerk to Peter in their early acquaintanceship in a verbal rather than a physical way, not exactly the bravest crayon in the box. But there’s an issue in that too because, like Flash, although rarely depicted as physically, Harry was also abused in his childhood by his father. So we’re back to square one with the car scene and some troubling implications, turning a character who bears the name of one abused character and wears the traits of another into the butt of a joke so Audi could fit another car into the movie. 

Like I said, I do like the casting and I think Revolori is a great actor and did his best with the part he was given -- I just wish the character had been handled by the writers and director with any compassion. A big part of me wishes that instead of pasting Ned Leeds’ name over Ganke Lee, Miles Morales’ best friend, the MCU had compressed the timeline and just let Flash Thompson inhabit his future rule as Peter Parker’s best friend. Instead, we get Flash Thompson, The One Note Bully: Nerd Remix. 

#flash thompson #*replies #traincat talks comics #traincat talks homecoming #mcu negativity/ #mcu criticism/ #long post/ #child abuse cw/ #also i keep seeing fics now where the avengers publicly humiliate flash to get revenge for peter and like yikes #Anonymous

[hetaces]

@whatsnew-lgbtq​‘s 31 days of pride day 9!! i know I haven’t been doing ‘em all but that’s okay.

day 9: books

so books are my area of expertise honestly so I picked a few favorites to talk about a lil bit here (I’ll put it under a cut).

And feel free to ask me about more books because I’m Like That.

These are all ownvoices in at least one way. Ownvoices rep will be italicized in the list.

Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley When you hear what this book is about, it sounds really bad. Like “Girl decides to ‘fix’ agoraphobic gay boy and her boyfriend gets ~close~ with him” is essentially what the synopsis says. It sets it up for every bad trope. And then uses none of them. It’s so good, has great portrayal of good accommodations, healthy friendship, and a bunch of Star Trek references. Representation: Sol is gay and agoraphobic

Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston Don’t look up the synopsis yourself, go right to goodreads (i’d link but you know how tumblr is with links), some of the synopses that come up automatically start with a “it’s like [story] in space” and it’s a spoiler. I’ll put the first part of it here bc it’s hard to get the words. Seventeen-year-old Ana is a scoundrel by nurture and an outlaw by nature. Found as a child drifting through space with a sentient android called D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the grizzled crew she now calls family. But D09—one of the last remaining illegal Metals—has been glitching, and Ana will stop at nothing to find a way to fix him. Representation: Ana is written as acespec (not Super clear but it was the intent) Captain Siege is a lesbian. Telle is a lesbian. Robb is gay. Jax is gay.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee So, there’s a lot of hype around Gentleman’s Guide and I was sort of expecting to be let down, but it more than lived up to it. Henry "Monty" Montague is going on his Tour of the continent (travel around Europe and have fun one last time, is the idea). Chaotic disaster bisexual Monty causes trouble, of course. So then on the way to dropping his sister off at finishing school before returning home early, they get attacked. Because Monty is a dumbass (it’s actually his fault). Cue rich kids travelling with no money & trying to avoid a growing number of people. Mackenzi Lee has hit the nail on the head with growth. Not only does she get that sometimes, growth does happen because of one moment of learning, she also writes it well, which is a really difficult thing to write. There’s a lot of heavy stuff in it, but none of it was thrown in for no reason, it’s actually important to the books and to the characters. Representation: Monty is bi, has PTSD, and (at the end of the first book, so spoilers) deaf on one side Percy is mixed, mlm, and (you find out part way through so if you’re picky about it it could be spoilers), epileptic. Felicity is aroace. Many other characters who aren’t white and a wlw character in the second book.

I Wish You All The Best by Mason Deaver After Ben comes out to their parents, things don’t exactly go well. They get kicked out, and have to go live with their sister who they haven’t seen in 10 years. They start over at a new school, only out to their sister, her husband, and their therapist (because hey, look how well coming out went last time). This book is so damn cute. And a book with a nonbinary main character! Representation: Ben is nonbinary Nathan is bisexual and black

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire Think Narnia, but with more worlds and less religion and you've got the concept of the doorways. Children have always been disappearing - going through a door that's appeared to them. But magic worlds rarely have use for used up miracle children. So they're sent back. But they don't come back the same. The children at Elanor West's Home for Wayward Children have all tumbled once. And they all want to get back. But with Nancy's arrival, things start going wrong. Representation: Nancy is asexual Jack is pan and has OCD Kade is a trans guy Sumi is bi (Seanan McGuire is a queer cis woman)

You Asked for Perfect by Laura Silverman Ariel Stone is a perfect student: he’s a community volunteer, first chair violin, and is on track to be valedictorian. And then he fails a calc test. When he finds he can’t fix it himself, he reluctantly gets a tutor. And he may not like calc, but he might like Amir. I started recommending this book to people when I was 5 pages into it. Ariel is so explicitly Jewish that Laura Silverman put her grandmother’s matzo ball soup recipe in the back because it’s not fair to rave about it so much and not provide a recipe. He’s explicitly bisexual by page 8. Amir and Sook’s eyes are both described as “warm” and I honestly think it’s the first time I’ve seen characters of color’s eyes described as anything but “dark”. Representation: Ariel is bisexual and Jewish Amir is a gay Pakistani Muslim Sook is a chubby Korean lesbian

The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried by Shaun David Hutchinson Shaun is back with more “so... the world might be ending?” and I absolutely love it. Dino’s ex-best-friend July died suddenly 4 days ago, and his family runs the funeral home. Dino is touching up July’s makeup (he knows how she wore it and everyone was doing it wrong), and she wakes up. But she’s not exactly... alive. She’s just not-dead. And then... other people just stop dying. So they have to figure out what’s happening. How July came back - or at least how to re-kill her when nobody can die. So not only is it a super interesting book, it’s also like... Shaun goes in on topics like “gay people making gay jokes and straight people making gay jokes are different” and “a cis guy might (might) not mind if you call him a girl, but do not call a trans guy a girl” Also I recommend anything by Shaun David Hutchinson. Representation: Dino is gay Rafi is trans, mlm, and mixed (white/Pakistani) Multiple LGBTQ+ minor characters

On The Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis It’s an end-of-the-world type book (via comet strike). Due to strange circumstances, Denise and her mother end up not at their government assigned shelter, but on a generation ship. And Denise has just a few days to find her sister and prove that her skills are worth 3 spots on a ship with limited resources. Representation: Denise is mixed (Surinamese/white) and autistic Iris is mixed (Surinamese/white) and a bi trans woman. Els is wlw. Leyla is wlw. Samira and Nordin are Muslim Some minor characters.

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman I’m just gonna give y’all the actual synopsis this time

You probably think that Aled Last and I are going to fall in love or something. Since he is a boy and I am a girl. I just wanted to say—we don’t. Frances Janvier spends most of her time studying. When she’s not studying, she’s up in her room making fan art for her favorite podcast, Universe City. Everyone knows Aled Last as that quiet boy who gets straight As. But no one knows he’s the creator of Universe City, who goes by the name Radio Silence. When Frances gets a message from Radio Silence asking if she’ll collaborate with him, everything changes. Frances and Aled spend an entire summer working together and becoming best friends. They get each other when no one else does. But when Aled’s identity as Radio Silence is revealed, Frances fears that the future of Universe City—and their friendship—is at risk. Aled helped her find her voice. Without him, will she have the courage to show the world who she really is? Or will she be met with radio silence?

This book is so good but fair warning, it gets really heavy. 

Representation: Aled is demisexual (Alice is queer/aroace) Frances is bi and mixed (white/Ethiopian) Daniel is gay and Korean Carys is a lesbian Raine is pan, Indian, and Hindu

Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis Otherbound is set in two worlds - Nolan’s (ours) and Amara’s (the Dunelands, where magic is real). Amara is on the run with the former princess, Cilla, whose family was overthrown by the ministers. Cilla has been cursed and is being hunted, and Amara’s particular type of healing magic is, basically, convenient for redirecting Cilla’s curse. Since they were children, Nolan has been experiencing Amara’s world through her every time he closes his eyes. He sees through her eyes, feels what she feels, smells what she smells. But he’s just a silent observer. She doesn’t even know he’s there. Until now. Representation: Nolan is Mexica and disabled Amara is not white, mute (due to mutilation), and bi Cilla is not white, fat, and a lesbian The majority of other characters are also not white.

#books #whatsnewpride #i am both very sorry for the length of this post #and absolutely not sorry at all

[morphogenetic]

okay so its been a few days but i keep Thinking About Shit about pride stuff so here we go. im going to politely request that you dont read this unless you can like it/acknowledge that you read it somehow (unless you’re on mobile and this readmore doesnt work in which case: im sorry) and also d/o/nt rb but if you’re some variety of not-straight and/or not-cis replying to this is totally fine 

also this is long as fuck sorry

im in this very weird place where, although i am not in any way cis or het, i don’t feel like i truly belong at pride. like. obviously i’m trans, i’ve been out and living as trans and nonbinary for literally a third of my fuckin life. it matters to me very much that i’m trans, i have to basically come out over and over for the rest of my life because everyone is going to read me as a dude when they meet me for the first time and that is equally as wrong as when everyone was reading me as a girl before t. or if people look at my id and see the ‘f’ even though i can’t even change it to anything else and don’t even want to bc i have no desire whatsoever to tell the fucking government ‘HEY IM NONBINARY’

like being trans and nb is going to affect the rest of my life literally forever. but i’ve been out so long and since i was so relatively young that i just don’t think about it any more. i have absolutely no desire to even be cis, not like i can be bc that would mean i wasn’t nonbinary and the idea of being a binary gender is so fucking weird to me lmao. but it’s like. it’s obviously not a bad thing to be trans and i specifically am very content with it. being nonbinary and knowing that for sure and being super comfortable in that identity is great! but i also don’t feel like i have any reason to celebrate it because i just am. like it’s the same reason i feel very weird about celebrating birthdays and stuff. i mean my birthday isn’t soon in the slightest lmao but like. yeah cool i’m this age now! neat! i’m fine with telling people im this age and i have no negative feelings about being this age! but i just AM that age now why do i need to celebrate being a year older? it’s like that kinda

theres always the issue of the aroace-spec thing too like. yeah boys (and transmasc/masc-or-androgynous-leaning nb people, not girls lol) are attractive sometimes so i am, technically, gay, but my interest in having a relationship is so fucking low. ive had two crushes in my entire goddamn life! in 21 years! and both of those were on friends bc im also super demi! and otherwise the mere idea of a relationship is like. why the fuck would i want that?? why would anyone else even genuinely want that from me, a fucking average-as-hell-looking, balding-at-fucking-21 person who has literally no fucking ability to even function reasonably as a human being?  

like. even putting aside all the fucking issues that i have with actually having and maintaining close relationships - not even in a dating kind of relationship, i mean literally just trusting people in general let alone as friends  - thanks to the shit that three different former friends of mine pulled. even putting that aside i really don’t think i would ever really want a relationship even if i somehow managed to be even a little bit attractive to someone lol. im just too much of an inherent introvert for that. 

and obviously you can be gay/bi/queer/pan/(insert other not-straight romantic/sexuality orientation im sure im forgetting) and not be in a relationship lol. it’s just. there’s so much fucking pressure ESPECIALLY in the mlm communities that i would theoretically be most in-tune with to be extremely sexual. and obviously that’s not inherently a bad thing at all!! it just doesn’t work for me in the slightest because i have basically no drive for that at all and the only time i ever did was when my body was adjusting to being on t initially. now that i’ve been on it for long enough shit has settled back to where it was for most of my life and yep, still basically no interest in that.

and like. im not gonna pretend that i have it the hardest out of literally any lgbtq person. im incredibly white (some ashkenazi sprinkled in there but like. nobody would ever be able to tell that without me saying it since it’s only a fourth and i have no association at all with any religion let alone being jewish) and able-bodied (to the best of my knowledge lmao) and definitely in a rare space of having extremely well-educated liberal parents who, while not being like millionaires or anything, are able to financially support me and didn’t ever reject me. 

and because of all this im like. i dont belong at pride! it’s not for me! yes im trans but any random person is gonna think im a white cishet dude without me correcting them on pronouns. yeah im white but thats the only part of that that’s true but i still shouldn’t be taking up space that i honestly really do not need. i am happy the community exists and i WANT it to continue to exist and i dont think im gonna make any new cishet friends for the rest of my life but i just dont feel like im ever really going to be a true part of it

i really have no idea how to fully put my feelings about this into words. it’s just like. i am not afraid to be who i am but i dont feel proud of it in the way that i’m proud of like. my accomplishments. like when i graduate im gonna be proud of that! but i can’t be proud of who i am as a person in the same way, regardless of what im actually proud of myself for. i’m not proud of being 21 or having brown eyes or having my height. im not upset about them either but they’re just facts to me! in the same way that me being trans is just a fact about me

and pride is just. that. it’s just being proud of and celebrating your own existence. and im happy for people who can feel pride in existing (for all sorts of minority-related things not just lgbtq+ stuff) and i want people to continue to feel that way because when the world tells people they can’t be proud of who they are that’s shitty! but that’s not me and i don’t think it ever will be me. i realized i was aroace and accepted it in the span of a few days. i found out nonbinary people existed and immediately realized ‘oh that’s me’ within a week without feeling any self-hatred over it. realizing that i was mildly gay and not 100% aroace like i thought took me literally hours to realize and then accept. and i dont know how to express this irl without it seeming like i don’t want pride to exist because I VERY MUCH DO. i just. i never had the struggle in accepting those parts of me to the same extent that so many other people do and it feels wrong for me to be in a space for celebrating making it past that internal struggle when i never had it

#junpei.txt

[earwaxinggibbous]

“Congratulations” VS. “Started From The Bottom”

Started as a bottom, now my whole team’s fuckin’ rears.

Self-aggrandizing rap and hip-hop anthems have existed since the genre was invented. It’s just a really nice, friendly way of saying, “hey! I’m better than you.” Generally speaking, whoever is on the track should have the power and clout behind them to make all of the bragging seem warranted. A great example is Eminem’s Rap God, which has a chorus that literally has Eminem saying he’s beginning to feel like a rap god. And we buy it, because hell, Eminem basically IS a rap god. Regardless of how you feel about him, especially as a person, there’s no arguing that his flows and style require an insane amount of skill. (Or at least, they used to.)

The other big rule, once again using Rap God as an example, as that the song should actually be good. Because if you’re bragging about being the coolest rapper with the most chains and bitches while rapping like complete shit, your point is pretty much moot. When Eminem speed-raps in Rap God, it’s essentially the proof that he is in fact the man named in the title. 

There’s only one real problem with these songs when it comes to audience reception: They’re not relatable to anybody except other rich rappers and musicians. Which can be kind of a problem since that’s not really who the music industry is aiming to please. So in somewhat recent times we’ve been getting a different flavor of self-aggrandizing rap. Songs that, instead of saying “I’m super great”, they say, “Hey, I started from humble beginnings and worked my way to the top, and now I’m super great”. Which gives us viewers the idea of this sort of achievable dream that is nearly within arm’s reach.

Enter two very, very different hip-hop artists, at two very different times.

Drake and Post Malone, in my opinion, are both pretty good, in my opinion.

Let’s start with Drake. Drake feels at least a little more like a “real rapper” than Post does. Maybe because he was on Young Money, or because he doesn’t have that sing-songy flow that Post does, but he just feels more like somebody I’d describe as a rapper. If I had any reason, I’d say it’s because Post Malone’s music, even his ego-boosting shit, tends to sound stoned or morose the bulk of the time. Drake’s voice isn’t much fun either, but at least I can believe his ego based on his vocal tones alone. Post has a tendency to sound really, really sad, or just super high.

Now one might say, “Panda, you can’t compare these two songs. Started from the Bottom precedes Congratulations by four years.” But the reason I’m making this comparison is that, despite Drake being considered the superior artist by nearly everyone, Congratulations is basically the better version of its predecessor. 

Let’s discuss this.

Now for one thing, I fucking hate the music video of Started from the Bottom. Not because it’s that bad, though depicting “working at a drug store” as “the bottom” is pretty fucking stupid, the video itself does a pretty good basic job at getting across what it wants. I just hate the skit.

I remember pulling up the song on YouTube and thinking, Jesus, this song is 5 fucking minutes long? Half the lyrics are just the title. Relax, past Panda, one minute of that video is a stupid skit that shows up randomly before the second chorus. A full fucking minute of two of Drake’s coworkers, not even Drake himself, but two of his coworkers at Duane Reade or something ogling some woman who’s checking out of the store. It’s not funny, it doesn’t really add anything, and the two guys can’t act. Drake’s body language is awkward and goofy in the music video, I doubt he’d be a great actor either, but that’s fine, he’s just the guy who made the song. Most of what he needs to do is lipsync along to the track and wave his hands around anyway. But the two guys are in a skit, an acted skit that requires acting to happen, and they suck.

It doesn’t help that it’s interrupting what is already one of the most monotonous songs that the lord hath graciously dumped on top of our collective consciousness like a weighty cow turd. The video actually tries to help the song by making it look like Drake really did work a crappy job with a bunch of assholes and was raised in a shitheap. But this isn’t true.

And I hate bringing the lives of artists into their music more than anything. Because ever since really getting into Eminem’s works, I’ve been seeing every musician’s persona as a character. Now some musicians characters, like say, Mary Lambert, are very close to their real-world self, or even identical. Others, like David Bowie or the aforementioned Eminem, are essentially entirely different people offstage. Then there’s incredibly creative people like ThatPoppy who sort of blur the difference between a musical persona and the person behind it. And honestly I find that way more interesting than ripping into an artist personally. (Unless it’s Taylor Swift.)

But Started from the Bottom is an argument against critics who don’t believe Drake ever really suffered or understands the lower class. And I’ve read about him, so I can say that he should. He wasn’t living in a complete shithole, generally Canadian shitholes are better than American ones, but he still dealt with a parental divorce, bullying due to his race and Jewish upbringing, and having to see his father arrested. But there’s two issues once we reach this point.

One. This song never mentions any of that. And two. After dropping out of school he got a TV job to act as a main character on Degrassi. And since this song isn’t about his childhood, I can only assume it’s looking back on his days as a working-class young adult.

NO, Drake. BAD hip-hop artist.

Being an actor on a TV sitcom is not the bottom. Not to mention that even when he left to start making music, he essentially had his career set. Once you’re an actor on television, if people watched your shit, you can almost definitely get a job in music afterwards. It worked for Miley, Demi, Ariana, and Selena, there’s no reason it wouldn’t have worked for Drake. Not to mention that he got picked up by Young Money, which is essentially a free win for anyone who’s better and more interesting than sentient iguana man Li’l Wayne. (Which was surprisingly rare, apparently. Where the fuck is Gudda Gudda’s next single, Wayne?!)

Yes, Drake, we know you weren’t rich. That doesn’t mean you were at the bottom. I live in a comfortable apartment in Midtown and my mom works a law firm, and we don’t even call ourselves rich. “Not being rich” is different from “the bottom”. “The bottom” is only owning hand-me-down underwear, living in a downturned umbrella and eating dirt for nutrients. 

But lyrically this song doesn’t tell you anything. All the stuff I know about this guy is just from Lyric Genius and Wikipedia. 

Wow, you only argue with your mom once a month?

Lucky bastard.

Also, really quickly I wanna comment on the uncle line for a second. “The keys” are specifically to his drop top Lexus that young Drake was borrowing. I don’t think you need me to say that people who are on “the bottom” don’t tend to own convertibles. 

And, like, rich people work at night and get in traffic too. Just because you’re in a limousine doesn’t mean there’s no traffic. It’s just slightly more enjoyable traffic. 

And then Drake just spends the rest of the song essentially sucking his own dick without expanding on his hardships, which was supposed to be the point of this track from the beginning. And I don’t get the whole “no new friends” thing he always says, this isn’t the only song he’s said it in. Drake, unless you’re gonna tell me that the entirety of Young Money and several other well-known rappers went to high school with you like some kind of wacky rap music-based sitcom, I’m pretty sure you’ve made some new friends. Either that or your obvious baby crush on Nicki Minaj is painfully laced by inconceivable amounts of mistrust.

So you’re either a paranoid asshole who just admitted to not trusting the people that got him into the game in the first place, or you’re a liar. Good to know!

Honestly this song makes me just kind of not like Drake as a person. Which is probably one of the worst things you can do as an artist. If you’re trying to make a song that allows people to sympathize with your plights or revel in your success, being this illegally unlikable while doing it isn’t helping your case in the slightest.

But honestly the worst part isn’t even the douchey lyrics, it’s just the song itself. It just feels like it goes on forever.

(Pictured: A hook, apparently.)

The chorus itself is so repetitive I’d rather listen to fucking Come and Get It, Drake has a really bad habit of sounding literally bored to death, and the beat just sounds like a Future song jacked off on GarageBand. Lame snares and lame backing tunes. One whole piano key. Wow, Drake, you’re almost as good at playing physical instruments as your mentor.

(Even he hates it.)

Sad to say the beat and production is probably the best part? Drake’s voice wrecks what was already a weak beat. Whenever he wants to be self-aggrandizing he just sounds fucking bored. Like the most self-aggrandizing thing about it is the fact that he doesn’t think he needs to actually try. In fact, The Motto (YOLO) had the exact same problem. I actually prefer that song. The beat still isn’t high art, but it’s got a little more snap to it. Kind of reminds me of Sage the Gemini’s Gas Pedal, which falls into the category of songs that aren’t that great but can be danced to if put on the setlist. 

But this? It’s no fun. A hard 1 out of 5, and that’s only because its attempted premise was almost salvageable. But all I really got out of this song was that Drake is an asshole, he went to school with Lil Wayne apparently, his mom is really really nice since they only argue once a month, and he should just go back to desperately wishing his girlfriend would call him on his cell phone. You’re way better at being sad than--

Fucking... goddamnit.

Now Post Malone is kind of... different. In many ways. One time he said he doesn’t write rap music, and while normally I’d attribute that to him being a pussy who’s too afraid to contribute to what is and has always been a predominantly black genre and racism and he secretly doesn’t wanna be associated with them or whatever. But honestly I’m inclined to give Post Malone some leeway because really, he’s a singer. He makes notes. He’s singing with a hip-hop flow and occasionally has actual rap guests who... honestly end up doing a similar thing on his tracks. (In this case, it’s Quavo! Hurray!)

Oddly enough I actually went through a few songs to compare this to before settling on Drake. I considered Cheap Thrills, as they both sort of follow a similar concept of ‘today’s a good day, let’s go clubbing with only three bucks in our collective pockets’. Decided not to because really Cheap Thrills could be more accurately compared to a myriad of other songs. Considered White Iverson, his first single, but decided they didn’t really have enough in common to use it. I had options.

Really the only reason I went with this is because Congratulations succeeds in every place that Started From The Bottom fails.

Rather than attempting to detail Post Malone’s past suffering, it moreso discusses the actual rise to fame. And alllll the people who said he couldn’t do it.

Beatwise this one outclasses Drake’s already. I remember reading critics describing Started’s beat as “haunting”, which was apparently a good thing. I don’t get it. Congratulations, on the other hand, is carried by a sort of stoned, laidback tempo. Really speaks to the whole idea of “hey, we worked really hard, our album dropped, and now we can take a break and have some fun!” 

Honestly if Post Malone wrote more songs like this and less straight-up luxury porn/self-aggrandizing rap like White Iverson or rockstar. (I feel like I’m a minority in not really minding either one of those songs.) Also I must say that Post Malone seems to be really good at picking guest artists. On rockstar he has 21 Savage, whose big thing is that he’s gangsta and shoots people and don’t fuck with him, which at least fits into the attempted tone. (Honestly Sav fits better on that song than Post does.) And in Congrats, we get Quavo.

Not only do Quavo and Post sound really good together on this, as their vocal range seems somewhat similar implying some kind of bro-type unity shit. Honestly this song gives me more band vibes than rockstar does, albeit a very different kind.

You know, you just started your band, you’re waiting to hit it big, you’ve put in all this effort with barely any money, you’re living in a shitbag apartment with 4 other sweaty dudes and you all have to sleep together and Quavo keeps rolling over and shoving his nuts in your face. It’s completely garbage and your drummer has to whore himself out for money, you accidentally get paid for a gig in beer tickets like in that one episode of Metalocalypse, and then finally, FINALLY, you drop a tape that hits big. You get on TV, you meet a record exec, and you’re calling your mom during the afterparty and you’re all celebrating because it’s been so LONG since you could just have a BREAK and now everybody’s SAUCIN’.

EXACTLY.

The lyrics work perfectly for this, but not only that, it’s to show all of the naysayers who insisted they couldn’t do it. All the haters who are now suddenly super gung-ho about how they used to be friends with Post Malone even though they actually shoved him in a locker literally every day. This somehow manages to be super-laidback and super-hype at the same time, which seems to be Post’s general style. Candy Paint has sort of a similar feel. That’s also a fucking great song. I love Post Malone. There. I said it.

But the biggest difference between these two songs is that I somehow get some feeling that Post Malone started somewhere. When I hear Congratulations, I feel like he actually had to put in some effort to get where he is. His first big hit only even got released because somebody leaked it. Nobody was ever expecting it to be as big as it is. Stoney in general is an insanely personal album, and it all feels surprisingly honest for the genre despite the drops of luxury porn and self-aggrandizing. 

Basically, TL;DR: Drake cares more about the destination than the journey. Post gives us both the conflict and they payoff. Drake’s beat lacks texture or purpose, whereas Post manages to meld his melodic voice with a smooth backing track. Also, Post occasionally bothers with wordplay! Lyricism in a melodic rap song? Who would’ve thought?

Hell, it even manages to fix the “no new friends” idea displayed by Drake by sort of re-interpreting it as “no fake friends”.

And fuck, I almost forgot to mention Quavo.

Oh Quavo. Your verse may be short, severely lacking in punchlines and technically mediocre, but you just... you sound good. You sound good with Post. Somehow Post fucking Malone manages to totally outclass one of the Migos on this track. But Quavo does pretty well. I kinda like the “Huncho Houdini” line and a few of the football puns. In the end his verse is a little too short to really judge as anything more than decent.

(Also, the music video is great.)

But yeah, who would’ve thought this white stoner with braided sideburns would manage to completely slam Drake, the god of the late 2010′s? I’m honestly tempted to give this thing a 5 out of 5, but due to a few not-rhymes that nearly slip past due to Post’s mild drunken slur, I’d have to drop it into a 4.5/5. Still, I love this song. I love this song, I love Post Malone, fuck it. Judge me if you want. I have yet to hear a Post Malone song I don’t like.

Which I guess doesn’t mean much since he only has an album and an LP out, but...

It’s more than can be said for Drake at this point.

#song vs song #post malone #drake #song review #panda posts #music criticism

[kaesaaurelia]

from your fic "never a lovely so real" - what did you think about when you wrote the first sans fight?

This got LONG AS FUCK, so it’s behind a cut.  For reference, this is in response to the DVD commentary meme:

Sans’ countdown: 5, 4, pi, e, 2, square root of 2, 1, 0.

I had this in my head for like months, to the point where I would be out doing an errand for work grinning like a maniac, and trying to figure out if I should come up with a constant between five and four.  I also kept trying to fit i in because Euler’s identity is neat, but that just isn’t how countdowns work.

Belmont takes his barrier down and Asgore throws his trident.  It whizzes right past the personal barrier Corcoran has thrown up.

“You missed,” says Corcoran, sounding baffled and a little disappointed.

“Oh, no,” says Asgore.  "I jammed the door behind you.“  He conjures another trident, and throws it at the door towards the rest of the building.  "Now no one can leave.”

I really really wanted something to echo Asgore’s shattering of the Mercy button, since that’s such an oh shit moment in his fight, and it’s also pretty important that Asgore was Sans’ original boss and there’s a hell of a lot Toriel doesn’t know about any of this.

I think this is as good a time as any to stop for a couple stories about Papyrus, don’t you?  I mean, what kind of wacko wants to hear all about all this depressing violent bullshit I’ve been talking about?

Don’t give me that look, buddy.

So!  Let’s talk about my brother.

When I first wrote this bit, I was genuinely not sure what kind of reception this would get, given that by now a lot of people were really really looking forward to seeing Sans kick some ass.  But Sans-as-narrator has motivations that don’t always jive with my motivations as someone who just wants to tell a story, and this is a part of the story that he’d want to stall for as long as possible, partly because he’s horrified by his abilities, and partly because he’s ashamed of what he’s done with them.  I’ll skip doing commentary on the Papyrus backstory stuff here, unless someone else wants me to do that, but suffice to say Sans always seems more comfortable talking about Papyrus than himself.

So, where was I?

Oh, right, this asshole.  I blip to stand on the ceiling as soon as everything goes topsy-turvy.  There’s a brutal snap as Noyes makes contact with the ceiling headfirst, and he lies there at the top of the room in a limp pile.  It’s too bad, because that means no more Noyes puns.  Noyes will be silent forever.

I have so. many. notes. on who was killed when and how and by whom, in which scene, for this whole jailbreak plot arc, so by this scene I was really happy to be working with only two students and Corcoran.  Having some cannon fodder was really important, though, because I had long since reasoned that for a fight scene with Sans’ powers to be interesting and not just impressive, to really show them off, you either have to have a character who can reset – not an option in this case – or a fairly worthy opponent.  So I erred on the side of making Corcoran’s barrier magic more powerful, but I also really wanted to make sure Sans had a couple of other people to pick off first, to represent those first few times someone tries to fight Sans and gets instantly killed.

“He shot at everyone who tried to leave!” says Fullerton.  He struggles and gets up, but I think I see him grab something first.  Nice try, but no dice.

“Yeah, I guess you got a good point, kid,” I say.  "C'mere and get your hall pass and you can go back to school, no harm done.  We’ll shake on it.“  I walk over, real casual, and hold out my hand.  But when he draws Corcoran’s gun, I’m ready.  As six long bones pierce his stomach and chest, his body jerks backwards and he staggers and falls.

And obviously this is the part where Sans offers fake-mercy.

“How are you doing this?” he demands.  He jumps, experimentally, and falls back to the wall.  "This is the wall.  If I broke through the wall would I fall to the ground, or –“

Partly this is just an excuse for the barrage of horrible gravity puns Sans unleashes but I’m gonna be honest, if someone was breaking the laws of physics while they killed me I’d be damn curious how they were doing it.

the old stories call ‘em “grotesques,” but Dr. Gaster and me always called ‘em blasters

I think in canonverse Undertale fic, Gaster is usually the originator of Gaster blasters, but since I wanted Papyrus to have a blaster (per canon hints) and since Papyrus is neither related to Sans or Gaster, nor was he involved in the mad science/time travel shenanigans, it kind of had to be a general skeleton thing.  I’m still kind of figuring out my backstory for the blasters/grotesques, but I’m kind of thinking of them as something that most skeletons are capable of, in varying degrees, but they rarely bother to learn to do it.

He’s got his barrier up before it hits, and when I call the blaster off, he looks relieved – until his barrier goes a sickly purple color and starts to flicker.  He’s looking as tired as I’m starting to feel; he’s breathing heavy, and his hair’s plastered to his skull with sweat.  I kinda suspect his barriers ain’t up to the usual abuse.

I mean, Corcoran being the purple soul and all, I had to work Karmic Retribution into it somehow, it being one of two purple mechanics.  (The other one, Muffet’s webs, are kiiind of referenced in Corcoran getting tangled up in wires, although I don’t remember if I actually meant to do that?  Let’s pretend I meant to do that.)

Then, out of the corner of my eyesocket, I notice – oh hell.  Sellers is creeping up, holding Noyes’ pipe wrench, and before I can tell him to stop he throws it at Corcoran’s head.  Of course it bounces right off his barrier, hard, and goes flying into the air.  Fortunately I duck before it knocks me out.  "Nope!“ I say, pulling him back with magic.  Corcoran rewards his incredibly stupid ingenuity by trying to fry us both, and it’s all I can do to blip out of the way of that flame.  "Go find something to hide behind, kid, you’re a danger to yourself and others,” I snap.

“I had to do something!” says Sellers.  "Everyone else is doing something!“

“Everyone else is a goddamn moron.  Go!” I say, waving at him.

OKAY SO THIS PART.  I remember writing this in the Yulechat IRC and consulting my notes and being like “wait, what is Sellers doing?”  While Marty Szczepanski is not like, Mr. Self-Sacrificing, as written, I figured he’d be feeling kind of inadequate with all these weird magic things going on – even the useless-seeming Belmont has magic, and is working together with always-anxious Alphys, and he’s just not doing anything.  So I decided that it’d be totally justified to have Sellers sit this one out but I just didn’t see him sitting it out.

The other thing you might notice, if you read it as soon as I posted it – I changed the dialogue, and I still kind of wince at this.  The dialogue was originally Everyone else is a schmuck – schmuck, in the circles I’m in now, is a casual mild insult for a useless dumbass.

But see, then I sat down to watch one of the Presidential Debates with my grandmother, and she called one of the, uh, esteemed candidates a schmuck, and she pretty much spat the word, and then she apologized to me for using such language.  And I remembered that in Yiddish it technically means “penis” but more accurately means “dick, but not just any dick, the most festering puss-filled godawful worthless dick you can think of, what a fucking asshole, I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire, that’s the kind of dick he is.”

Sans would probably not have known this at my age – his mother was vaguely Jewish in a secular way – but after years working in Vaudeville BOY HOWDY WOULD HE KNOW IT, probably because using That Word onstage probably got him banned from somewhere.  (Also, Alphys’ family is actualfax Jewish and probably so are the Blooks.  I hemmed and hawed about including this in the fic, but y’know what, fuck it.)

Corcoran’s not standing anymore.  He’s on his knees, still breathing, but clearly having a hard time of it.  His white coat is now blackened and charred.  His skin also blackened in places; in others it’s a livid red.  "I – I’ve changed my mind, I can, I can help you, I, I, stop, please!“  He throws his hands up wildly, and manages to stand and stagger backwards a few steps.  "Patience!  Please!  You can’t – you can’t let him –”

I actually initially had Corcoran give in to death, but that seemed wrong, and then I remembered he’s the fucking soul of Perseverance and will continue at all costs.  I honestly feel bad for Corcoran for reasons that probably aren’t clear from the fic just yet, but suffice to say he hasn’t had any enjoyment of life in a long, long time.  And yet.

“I could be useful!” says Corcoran.

“Can you believe this guy?” I ask Asgore.

Asgore doesn’t say anything, but he looks very doubtful.

“Well, I don’t,” I say.

I was a bit anxious about writing Asgore in this scene, I guess – I hope I conveyed both that in Toriel’s absence, Sans kind of considers him to be in charge (until Sans has a better idea), but also that Asgore really does not want to be making decisions to kill people anymore and would rather Sans made up his own mind.

All that’s survived untouched are his ankles and feet, which is just disconcerting enough that I briefly consider wasting magic to fix that.

[…]

“Well, I guess that’s gotta be good enough, we can’t exactly wait around for the coroner, huh?”

OKAY IS IT JUST ME, or is that part at the beginning of the Wizard of Oz, with the Wicked Witch of the East’s feet sticking out from under the house just really disconcerting?  Also how cool would it be to have a singing Munchkin coroner around to declare people officially dead when they get houses dropped on them?  Like, not cool if you personally had a house dropped on you but tbh if I had a house dropped on me I’d be too dead to mind the singing, so I’d have no objections.

…….So, anyway.  This image is probably a combination of too many Wizard of Oz viewings and my having only recently read waaaay too many Search And Rescue Woods stories on r/nosleep, wherein the author is fond of saying “and we only ever found half an inch of his kneecap and his left ring finger!”

“Um.  Can we.  Can we cut his head off and stuff his mouth with garlic?  I just want to be sure.”

I would like to remind you that they never got a chance to do this.

“My mom woulda been so pissed off if she ever knew,” I said.  "Conforming to speciesist stereotypes and all that.“

She snorts, to my surprise.  "I think my parents would have a few things to say about my career choice as well.”

There is… backstory here, for both of them.  In Sans’ case, his mother was pretty concerned that Sans did not present himself seriously enough and that no one would take him seriously in the real world.  Never in her life would she have expected him to become a mob hitman, but in the present/future of this ‘verse, there are still a lot of really negative stereotypes about monsters, and skeletons in particular, and she has had to face a ton of them in her own job – she works in tech – so she tried very hard to make sure Sans didn’t give people the wrong impression.  They didn’t have the easiest relationship.

In Patience’s case, she came of age in the ’60s, and so she had to work very hard to convince her parents to send her to college in the first place.  She was very smart, and very ambitious, and very, very idealistic, and extremely naive, and they worried a lot about her – a girl! alone! in the city! – getting mugged or falling in with the “wrong crowd,” although by that they were probably thinking, like, hippies, not organized crime.

#anonymous #oh god so many words #i can write so many words about the many words i write #and yet i'm having trouble coming up with filler tags? #anyway #dvd commentary meme #undertale #ut mob au #sans #asgore dreemurr #eustathias corcoran #patience gorman #toby fox games