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bonefall · 7 months

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Since you mentioned only cats and a few other distant animals are sentient, does this mean foxes are getting their sentience removed? Midnight can talk to foxes in the books and even convinces some foxes to leave a patrol of cats alone (the foxes are WEIRDLY violent and talk about eating the cats too lmaoo).

I assume Hollyleaf's changes mean the Fox Cub Incident is either being moved or just removed entirely, I always found that small plot point interesting in face of all those "Non-cat in clan" AUs. Seems like something that could be interesting if an "us vs them" argument was formed from it, especially if it was targeted against Midnight and calling her unholy yknow?

Yeah, that sapience is gone completely. In this universe, language is limited only to humans, cats, and some distant animals that are far outside the range of Albion (elephants, bottlenoses, some parrots, etc)

And Hollyleaf's story especially. Ngl to you, I don't like that fox idea. Or anything about Hollyleaf's Story. I think it was the worst possible route to take.

"Hollyleaf will be a mother to this evil creature to learn what it's like to love something that hates you. It is so sad to be your mom Leafpool (Squirrel-who?). Don't you feel like a shitty daughter now, Holly? Let's not ask any questions about the code btw, or how you were already filled with crushing shame from it. Or how it made you so disgusted about the idea of pregnant nuns that you flipped your shit and ruined the lives of your entire family. No, what really mattered about this situation was maternal empathy. Also here take the nearest male character we can find to ship you with, we accidentally made Cinderheart too gay when she was upset about your death lmao"

But, digressing, putting my distaste of that novella aside,

WC is profoundly xenophobic already with just the cats, and I think it was a CATASTROPHIC mistake to make it so every animal is secretly intelligent but speaks animal language. Now every conflict between cats and their predators is an ethnic dispute! You're chasing out groups of people perfectly capable of reasoning if you bridged the language barrier, but they're also ACTUAL PREDATORS.

AT BEST; It's the same uncomfortable situations that Zootopia and Lion King ends up tripping over. In Zootopia, predators are used as an allegory for oppressed groups... but predators are MADE to eat prey. A rabbit is RIGHT to be terrified of a fox, twice its size with a jaw made for catching bunnies. In Lion King, lions have divine authority to rule over their dinner/subjects, and chase out any animal based on their personal ideology... which just so happens to only be leveraged against rival predator species.

(Nerd preemption: yes i know about lion guard. I do not think diverse Lion Cops were the solution you think it is.)

Carelessly adding sapience to "natural systems" often ends up accidentally justifying bigotry. Bigotry doesn't MAKE SENSE, it's bullshit we made up and perpetuate through culture, but food webs are completely logical. The rabbit fears the fox because the fox eats rabbits. The lion hates the hyena because they compete for the same food. Gazelles don't happily submit to an overlord who is divinely capable of deciding who should live and who should die, it's just nature.

But it gets even worse-- because it's actually WORST CASE; the Erins saw that complicated moral problem and went, "don't worry! They're actually born evil! Foxes just talk about food and killing things :)"

like... my brother in cats, YOU gave them language in the first place! What was the fucking point if they were just going to be evil barbarians anyway?!? For ONE scene where Midnight could show off her Duolingo streak???

So to summarize,

It was an awful idea to start with

It was executed in the worst possible way

In a series that is already plagued with xenophobic sentiment, this somehow made it even worse and more direct

If it was completely nuked it from the story, the series would be immediately better with minimal change. Holly caring for what is essentially the clan cat-equivalent of an exotic animal like a chimp or a tiger cub would have done the same thing

There is not even a glimmer of an idea here that justifies the poison that full sapience does to the wider implications of the series.

Don't even get me started on the Badger Debaucle in TNP, which is actually in my top 5 for most vile things in WC

So if I don't explicitly say that a species in BB is capable of true language, assume it is non-sapient. Talking animals like Midnight and Rat Leader are magical individuals-- gods, curses, etc.

#Guiding principle #I don't even like the name of Holly's novella. Like. Really. Couldn't think of a better title?#You're really that strapped for ideas?#Couldn't call it her Solitude. Or her Tunnel. Or whatever.#Or hell even call it her Fox #Holly's Story... tune in next week for Lion's Book. Or Jay's 634 Pages.#Our exciting new novella. Squilf's Thing.

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franki-lew-yo · 3 months

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An 'A-ha!' fandom moment, ft. The Owl House

These comments I screencapped from a user I watch elsewhere really hit like a brick in the face to me. I'm blotting out OP's name, mostly cuz this was just a shower thought they had rather than any meaningful open discussion with people, but it ended up making me realize something (also NO they're not some contrarian AntiSJW type or even hate TOH; they're a very gay+trans writer themselves. Sorry if youknowwhoyouare sees this and recognizes ur posts but you don't allow reblogs or comments and I wanted to present it on my own):

The Owl House was always hampered by being killed halfway through, writing wise and that will always be it's greatest 'sin'. However, OP's comment made me realize how much the show kind of tells you it's characters are flawed rather than actually give them arcs to suggest it, especially in season 1. When I say flawed I don't mean lacking quirks that are relatable but human: Eda is a recluse criminal; King thought he could kill people and acted like it; Luz is a genki girl; Amity starts off as a bully; Hunter...is unfortunately Hunter, ect. Those ARE flaws, character wise, but in the presence of the complete story (as complete as the show will ever be) they really aren't actually flawed, bad people in anyway.

Before I go further, two things: 1, IN ALL FAIRNESS, this is why myself and others particularly LOVE the characters and why TOH was a comfort show for me rather than a 'high-tension narrative'. The characters are a lot of what you want and hope to be like and I think that's really sweet and enjoyable, especially for horror and especially for kids.

2, NO! I DON'T think any particular bad faith cartoon reviewer opinions about coddling certain characters and punishing others IS WHAT DANA and co did at all here! Steven Universe and certain crap-reviewer's takes ON Steven Universe and how it's characters were flawed but overly forgiven by the fandom the show itself are NOT the b-all end-all of this discussion, nor are they the reason The Owl House is the way it is!

The context op was talking about was how in the upcoming hate crime The Last Airbender live-action show the showrunners are going to tone down Sokka's sexism because they think it's 'unlikable'. Even though, we all knew as children that this was an arc for him and it was WRONG, so axing it because we the audience lack nuance to recognize characters we love doing problamtic-sisms is BEYOND annoying.

Op's point is how The Owl House in particular doesn't actually expect much or want much out of it's characters. Or audience. For any infighting early on about how much Amity should 'die' because of reasons, that's really just fandom infighting when you get right down to it. There's nothing on par with the disagreement people have over, say, the Diamonds from Steven Universe and how Steven 'totally forgave them or 'should have murdered them in cold blood' about The Owl House. And like...from a fandom point of view that's good, but otherwise the show is pretty concrete the way you're supposed to see certain characters vs other shows which allow you to make up your own mind.

Avatar, Star vs the Forces of Evil (pre finale), Centaurworld and Amphibia all showcase your protagonists being genuinely, intensely flawed. Sure, maybe some neckbreather crap-pseudocritic complains that they 'made the unlikable' or whatever (i.e. me with Friendship is Magic) but overall the actual point is HOW the characters actually have grown and have ended up with the ending and morality they need. The villains, no not Zukos or 'redeemed' villains who joined the protagonist squad, VILLAIN-villains, will always be at least one serious step behind the protagonists and that's what give the protagonists the cautionary wherewithal to end them like they should and not 'be like them'. It's such a fufilling narrative, there's a reason people like it so much because it's really good when it's delivered well.

Removed from my fandom gaze; the Owl House feels like it's saying it has that ultimate messaging and character arc when it actually doesn't. Your protagonists have the endearing aspirational-part totally covered, but as far as the actual 'edge' and nuance? Well...

Eda is, at most, naughty. She really isn't any kind of morally sidetracked character. She's an outlaw because literally her society is awful to her and she's in the right to be against it. She's cursed but she's not addicted to her potions or hiding it or not really taking care of herself or her loved ones because of it. Her actual biggest flaw is that she's been 'running away' from problems rather than dealing with them, but I'd be lying if that wasn't suggested more than it's actually portrayed; or at least, dealt with fast enough in "Eda's Requiem". A bigger issue I see, even if it's what's also endearing about her, is that she REALLY isn't a flawed caregiver at all. It's portrayed as her most redeeming feature that she's otherwise a good mom and mentor, but Eda having virtually no problems in raising Luz and King just, again, makes her feel ONLY aspirational. All of the angst about 'failing' to parent and making up for it is moved all onto Camilla and sadly all of that angst for her is mostly within an already bloated episode. Eda, while an absolute mood, lacks any real kind of edge. Does she need it or not? I don't know. Discuss, kids.

Luz, like OP says, is treated like this high-energy super-optimist. She's like Star Butterfly in that her fangirlism and impulsivness are supposed to get her in trouble. But, she absolutely just isn't one when you break it down. Besides episode 2, Luz really is never that inconsiderate or lost in her fantasies ever again throughout the show. She never has anything like what Steven goes through where he hops into Larz' body and makes things worse for people by trying to fix things- which is not only good filler but it calls forward to the ultimate ending of Steven's arc for the series - Luz is just sort of adorable. Luz has blindsided by hype moments of weakness, like when she accidentally hurts Owlbert or messes with Amity's secret room, but still always level headed and down-to-earth. Her impulses are always kind of treated like...excusable? Because, again, they usually are. This is a large part about what makes her self-hatred at the end of the show about accidentally helping Belos' feel 'forced'. Even MOREso than what Hunter and Daddy Titan explain about Belos using her, we the audience never see Luz's choice to go back in time and try and get answers from Philip as being anything other than just, you know, logical. Because it is. The show acts like what Luz did was reckless and bad and that she was SOOO overtaken by her fangirlism about Philip and now just how much she has to live with the guilt and regret of helping being duped by him...it just doesn't come off that way at all. She was only so much excited about meeting him and her interest was getting home to her mother. In terms of comparing her to Philip, that's all fine and good, but again it's not 'flawed'. Not really, anyway.

Lilith absolutely has it the worst...but I kinda think people know that. She arguably does have the most morally-gray turning point in the show given what she did to her own sister. But neither the characters nor her nor the show really hold her accountable in any lasting way for cursing Eda. Lilith is the closest we get to that 'Diamond'-dilemma. She does 'make things right way too quickly and it's obvious to even her biggest fans that her character is really rushed in this area. They lampshade what Lilith did and that she was their villain in season 2 and 2B, but lampshading isn't the same thing as progress. As a result, as a Lilith fan you kind of never really forgive her for what she did. None of that's her fault, cause' you know...she doesn't exist, but it makes it frustrating that you the fan watching the show is doing the heavy-lifting in your mind in this area.What you come away from is this feeling of loving the characters for being able to work everything out. They're engaging and nuanced in theory, but you also feel robbed, w or w/o the Disney interference, of them being fully rounded or WHOLE. It kinda feels like 'and suddenly, he wasn't racist, anymore' all the time with every character ever with except Amity's mom, the Titan Trappers and Belos.

The reason everyone dunks on Star vs the Forces of Evil's finale, (besides being salty over ship wars and declaring THAT'S the reason for the drop in quality) is that 'Cleaved' could have not only worked but REALLY worked. It just needed to be better written and processed as an ending. Instead people reviled Star, the protagonist we're supposed to be rooting for, for what feels like impulsive apathy and cruelty towards everyone else by destroying magic, as opposed to it being an actually selfless sacrifice that makes her different than Toffee. Ultimatley, I do prefer The Owl House, unfinished as it is, to any of that. But yeah... I can now never unsee the characters as being what they are: fun but indulgent when they're supposedly complex. Indulgent is never bad u guys, but the problem is when you only have that to go on while insisting you have fully developed characters, there's a lot of the show telling you how to feel and how to come away from it rather than letting you, the audience, make of that yourself. As annoying as fan-wars can be over this stuff and when people are either WAAAY to forgiving of their villain blorbo or form hate-campaigns over Glub Shitto for ruining their life, it is ultimately a good thing that shows give you that chance to really see the characters that way at all.

The Owl House is, as OP calls it, "tumblr feels" not for being gay and magical and fun and wholesome and indulgent like that stuff is GREAT. It feels 'tumblr oriented' in that it all kind of feels too easy even when it's not for your protagonists. It's never actually "challenging". I guess, in as far as 'good' indulgence is concerned, it's as warm and fuzzy and a happy AU fanfic you found but not so much the Pacifist Ending of Undertale where you really do feel bad if you rectify the good ending in anyway. It's fun and it's comfort food, but not entirely lasting as you want it to be???

Amphibia, I think, was also way better than Owl House in this respect. It wasn't perfect cause nothing is but you really got a feeling for HOW flawed Marcy, Sasha, the townsfolk and even Hop Pop throughout their arcs-- which made it so SO rewarding to see them get their happy endings and come together to defeat the core and be the better people they needed to become.

The Owl House is my favorite where I think Amphibia is the better of the two.

#ramble #the owl house #toh critical #good lord did any of this make any sense Idk #franki's features #I guess technically King had the most fufilled arc #considering he thought he was a dictator-realized he wasn't-and then w he found out his true past was horrified by it but coped #discuss

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dictee · 1 year

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I don’t get why people argue it’s problematic to assign gender roles to a same sex couple like isn’t the show engaging with loads of problematic issues?? For better or worse it’s what the show is about. Marrying a powerful wealthy man who promises you everything your hearts desires in order to escape your dissatisfaction only to find he’s a controlling monster. I mean how else are we meant to watch this show without the gender lens! It’s impossible to engage with this show w/o it.

yes! well i understand the idea in principle which is like. generally the attempt to assign gender roles to a same sex couple comes from straight people trying to comprehend a break in the myth of universal heterosexuality in which they are invested. So in that sense yes that's a reductive and inaccurate framework to coerce people into. But that's not what's going on here! the depiction of something and the discussion of it is not the endorsement of it and to treat it as such--to write a world where race class and gender have no bearings on people's existence or behavior--is actively harmful. Like this anon that got sent to a different blog

first of all i dont think either of them are gender nonconforming in terms of presentation LOL (Edit: except for louis in dubai) second of all i don't think anyone talking about for example louis reading edward carpenter in the wake of severe domestic assault is being like i love gender roles and domestic assault lmfao. and thirdly it's not "swapping out" it's what's depicted in the show. but to explain myself in depth anyways 💀:

i think this is emblematic of how totally the project of "representation" has neutralized queer politics. & this is why i think movies that came out under the hays code often have more interesting and nuanced gay characters than movies that came out for decades after. because after it was legal to depict gay people on screen well there's still the amount of homophobic jokes but like putting that aside. "positive" representation is about marketing. it is a reactionary politics that centers on reifying social categories as intrinsic to people's selves and making us think that celebrating those categories is liberation when really it's about creating another market. the rare "respectable" depictions of gay people emphasized assimilation into society ("we're just like you!") and demanded morally upstanding, universalized characters which are fundamentally uninteresting. the earlier hays code depictions (like the children's hour or rope) aren't about representation because they legally couldn't be. instead if they include queer material it is because there is a genuine thematic interest. so often this is very homophobic but also often it involves a real criticism of normative structures.

what i really appreciate about iwtv is that the writers are obviously not interested in presenting a generalized "correct" (and marketable) representation of what gay people are like. because that doesn't exist--the idea that it exists is a trap. and because they have moved beyond what would have been a concern ten years ago, which is the relationship genuinely being interpreted as a message about the evils of homosexuality, and towards an actual thematic engagement. they're interested in telling a complex and engaging story! in the same way, Louis isn't Black so they can say oh we have a Black character who behaves Correctly and proves the racists wrong. the humanity--not the moral perfection--of the characters is already assumed, and therefore not the point. instead we have a story that is concerned with grappling with immortality, trauma, forgiveness--with the core "lie" of vampirism being that it means freedom from the past and the society that made and hurt you. we can understand Louis's deep rooted desire for assimilation and we can see as it plays out how the very premise of the bourgeois nuclear family both conceals and relies on a problematic configuration of power.

there is a real wave of (mostly white) bioessentialist "to be a woman is to be oppressed therefore women are good and men are bad" type rhetoric which serves no one's liberation. and thats emphatically not what i'm trying to get at. i'm not defining womanhood by suffering and i'm not saying louis Is a woman. but i also think it's equally reductive to say the characters are Essentially Gay Men and establish "gay man" as a category somehow discrete and uninfluenced by the heteropatriarchal world. it is reductive to say that gender is absolutely discrete and uninfluenced by social context and the roles we are forced to play. like that too ends up with an essentializing understanding of gender. it's not that abuse in general is feminizing, it's that the abuse in the show is explicitly gendered even as it's in a family with a same sex couple. because the nuclear family is fundamentally a mechanism for the perpetuation of patriarchal abuse. and the show, at least in this season, is explicitly concerned with domesticity and with the inescapability of social roles. And it's criticizing those things. To be clear.

#Long post /#and to say that acknowledging the existence of patriarchy or gendered abuse is bioessentialism is just. unserious #iwtv

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fizzyjacuzzi · 1 month

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rant about one certain ship (especially the shippers).

obligatory mk and m27 spoiler warning.

I actually like kaishin, I shipped kaishin way before I shipped akam, and this reveal is pretty much a too-long-overdue part on aoyama because... well, 30 years of on-and-off serialization.

I get that many are mad. I, too, am so baffled that it circles back to hilarious. The relation makes sense story-wise and does not make sense profit-wise at the same time. Alas, kaishin is not the biggest detco ship in japan at the moment (kaishin got dethroned since around a decade ago, I'd say, they're still popular, but not to akam's extent in japan).

That said, a lot (but not all, love you all who don't participate in this) kaishin shippers are being so obnoxious in their anger. It's a gay ship, you know aoyama would never make it canon anyways. Just because kaishin was an "unproblematic" ship back in the day, before the cousin reveal, doesn't make it any more canon than other fan favorite ships. (Kaishin is one of the tamest, most vanilla, and mass-appealing gay ships you can find in detco, since both parties are still teenagers, technically, and both are written as cool™ protagonists who are rivals, and I stand by my case.)

Also: to the other side of the fandom, aka fans who insist on every fanwork to be canon-compliant and glorify the mediocre het romances aoyama's written into his stories, don't be homophobic while you're tapdancing on the cousin reveal. If you don't have anything nice to say, keep it to yourself.

Anyways, ship what you want. If you don't feel comfortable with kaishin being incest, maybe step away and clear your head and find other hobbies on the side. You can stop making content about them, or you can always ignore canon, and put that disclaimer in your fanworks, especially on ao3. Fanworks are fair game and free playground, you can play sand however you want. It doesn't make your works invalid. Just tag your works properly if you do mean them to be incest. They're fictional anyways, fictional morality does not translate rigidly to real life laws and morals and principles. To add, fanworks are simply derivative of the original, nothing you make is any more canon than the fanworks others have made.

To be honest, I'm more mad at aoko's mom and toichi being alive than kaishin being cousins. Stellar parenting, the bar was on hell that it actually drowns on hellfire now. No continuity no nothing, from early MK canon to current DCMK lore.

#jia_talks #dcmk spoilers #m27 spoilers

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iambicpentameterhamster · 12 days

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Six Of Crows commentary because why not

Read it recently and am halfway through croomed kingdom. I ADORED six of crows. One of the best books i've ever read. 11/10 deffo reccomend.

The characters are all so amazing they're basically unrankable, but i'll rank them anyway:

#1 Kaz Brekker, no question

The most iconic character by far. I love Kaz's chapters, and i also love him told from other character's perspectives, not being quite able to figure him out. Cleverly executed by Leigh Bardugo and a timeless character that lives and breathes on the page.

#2 Jesper

I always get excited seeing Jesper's chapters because i find his inner workings so interesting and i love his witty remarks. I also feel for him in terms of his backstory and struggles- other characters have very intense backstories, while Jesper's is a more overarching one, self sabotage, letting people down, being afraid to be who you are. Jesper is not the simple comedy relief character archetype. He is fully realised and complex and i love him for it.

#3 Inej and Wylan

These characters have to be on a tie for me. I love Inej's way of looking at the world, all the perspectives in this book are so wonderfully distinct, from Kaz's calculated eye to Inej's more spiritual, morally realised one. I love Wylan's slightly pessimistic edge and the raw honesty of his story, his feeling like a failure, being morally wary and yet loyal to his crew. He doesn't fall into the "soft innocent gay boy cutie pie 🥺" box that fandoms try to squeeze these sorts of characters into, and he's not a kill-happy maniac either (can you tell how much i hate the flanderization of characters??)

The events in these character's lives have well thought out and plausible effects on their character, another testament to Bardogo's genius.

# 4 Nina

LOVE Nina- i'd want to be her friend in real life. She's only slightly lower on this list because i felt a bit disconnected from her backstory, possibly because i hadn't read the Shadow and Bone trilogy, but i felt for her and Matthias.

#5 Matthias

The Grisha-Fjerdan situation was handled beautifully by Bardugo through Nina and Matthias, and Matthias's story and mindset being presented empathetically made it perfect. It's important to consider complexity, to see how decent people can fall into these traps of hate with the right manipulation. This storyline overall had a well delivered anti-hate message.

I like Matthias himself, i like his perspective chapters, i think he's very perceptive. I didn't click with him as much as other characters but i wouldnt have him any other way.

#six of crows #crooked kingdom #wylan van eck #jesper fahey #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #nina zenik #matthias helvar #grishaverse

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idontdowellunderpressure · 2 years

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Garou's "Crush"

I wanted to make this little meta as soon as I read Chapter 170. Long story short, I couldn't at the time, but I can now and apparently there's some discourse going on? IDK. There's a reason I generally avoid Twitter ￣へ￣

Anyways, here's my two cents about that time Murata tried to "no-homo" Garou and, in my opinion, ended up backfiring wonderfully. Keep in mind, this is coming from an asexual, so my understanding about sexuality and romantic attraction may be skewed.

So, let's digest this panel:

In it, Bang makes the valiant attempt to bond over what he thinks is a safe subject matter. Garou's a young man, right? And what do all teenage boys have in common? Their raging hormones and crushes, obviously. Only, Garou doesn't seem all to keen to discuss this particular topic. Blabbing about the rotten morality of so-called "heroes" to some random stranger? A-okay. Admitting he has a crush to his father figure? Atrocious.

In fact, look at the facial expressions Garou's making:

Dude is looking like he's gay straight up not having a good time. He looked shocked and anxious and uncomfortable (just look at that sweat). And, yeah, the phrase "if you twist my arm" can, and frequently is, taken to be more sarcastic than genuine, Garou isn't really someone known for masking his feelings all that well. His facial expressions are vast and he always shows his genuine feelings, whether they're shock or fury or fear. (good compilation of Garou's many expressions compiled by someone more talented than me: https://the-nysh.tumblr.com/post/185831833031/garous-so-cute-and-more-like-his-age-when-his)

But he does give in and provide a name. And, honestly, his answer made everything clear to me. Like how Saitama knew Garou wasn't "Absolute Evil" despite all his bluster, I knew Garou wasn't Straight™ with this one answer.

Garou names a character. Not a real person, but a character from a show he, most likely, watched as a kid. This is like back in school when any gay kid in the closet would go "I'm not gay, I totally love Britney Spears", or maybe "No, yeah, I totally love boys, I've got a Jack Sparrow poster up in my room". You know the drill. Celebrities are a safe "crush" because they are unattainable, and you will never have to actually act on such a declaration. Fictional characters, by virtue of being -you know- NOT REAL offer even more separation. (And the reason I bring up the fictional character angle, is because Garou remembers her character from the show before her name, suggesting that he has more of an attachment to the character than the actress).

So now he's done it. He's declared a crush. He's answered the question. He's safe. Now what?

Subject Change.

The very first chance he gets, Garou shifts the topic immediately to something else. And look at that. The cockiness is back. The sweat is gone. I daresay, he looks ecstatic to be talking about literally anything other than a girl he supposedly likes.

Just look at his smile (ಥ ◡ ಥ)

And if that weren't enough. We are told exactly why Garou picked this character, this actress, of all the others at his disposal.

Okay. So, first off, that's sad. Like, major oofs here for Garou and his Mommy issues. Secondly, you mean to tell me that Garou likes this woman because she seems kind? Really? That's the main reason? Because, not to get too shippy on what is supposed to be a semi-serious sexuality analysis.........BUT, do you know who else is really kind? Someone who gives off major "familial" vibes? (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)

Hmmmm, I wonder if there's someone Garou's met who he's seen to be very kind and protective over his ward.

Some who, thematically, represents the strong familial love Garou has never had and, apparently, craves. Someone who is closer to his age and he might be able to relate to. Someone who, canonically, he operates on a similar wavelength with?

I dunno, just a thought ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyways, thanks for playing "no-homo" Murata, but I'm afraid I'm still sitting tight on this Batarou train. Maybe next time ;)

#batarou #metal bat #garou #garou the human monster #one punch man #opm #opm webcomic #opm manga #aretheygay #theanswerwon'tsurpriseyou #anime #gay boys #yusuke murata #chapter 170 #with a dash of other chapters I don't feel like looking up

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fuutaprotectionsquad · 4 months

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Yknow I feel like I should have a main post where I share my Milgram opinions/verdicts (thought of this bc i was writing my sister's opinion on the milgram characters). So I'll go character by character.

Will anyone read this? I don't know but its here

Haruka: I relate to him a bit (shitty mother, intrusive homicidal thoughts, neurodivergence). I def feel bad for him but hes still really guilty in my mind. I just think the whole killing for attention thing is a really dangerous mindset you can't just get out of, especially if you're being told you're not in the wrong. And it definitely seems like he doesn't actually feel bad for the girl he killed, just feels bad because people are mad at him for it. Idk. But I enjoy his dynamic with Muu a lot, even tho its toxic i just think its really interesting. But I wish him the best and he deserves a hug. His songs are mid tho (/hj i like them)

Yuno: I love her personality and I think shes so fun, but I honestly don't think about her a lot compared to the others. But I love her and specifically enjoy her dynamics with (obv mostly in fan content) Kazui, Mahiru and Fuuta. Her and Fuuta are such a good platonic ship (romantic is fun too). Innocent vote, obv. I like her songs, but Tear Drop moreso than Umbilical.

Fuuta: Oh my god I wonder what I think of him. In all seriousness he's a major hyperfixation of mine at like every given moment. I adore him and i think he deserves better and to be innocent. Like he feels so guilty for what he did and he didn't know any better, everyone around him was encouraging his behavior and praising him for it. But then it got too far and all his friends abandoned him and blamed him like. Poor fuuta :( and he's like 100% right when he says him and es are exactly the same. On another note, major fan of 0309 (romantically, but either way works), and also love his dynamic with Haruka, Yuno, Mahiru, Amane and Es. His songs are both in my top three (backdraft being #1)

Muu: Tied for my fav character(? Fuuta might beat her idk) I love her personality and vibe and everything just ❤️❤️ queen shit. And her queen bee design is gorgeous. Typically my favs are men but shes one of the first women ive hyperfixated on this much. Again, love her dynamic with Haruka, not from a like. healthy relationships could make the characters better standpoint, but from a story perspective its interesting. But yeah guilty. As for her songs, INMF is my #2 and i like After Pain

Shidou: Honestly I used to be kinda indifferent about him and just found him to be boring but then I rewatched his voice dramas and read some fics and I like him more now. I feel really bad for him bc he went through a really shitty situation which he felt he had the power to change and was stuck in a shitty moral dilemma bc of it. And in the end he did shitty things to save those he loved and it didn't even matter. He feels so guilty and doesn't deserve it. Innocent <3. Also romantic 0507 ftw (0506 is cool too). Him and Amane are silly too. As for his songs i like them, but they're not my fav

Mahiru: i like her, but im not too like. invested in her ig. But i feel bad for her :( she just wants to feel love and like. clearly she did something wrong but she didn't know she was. She never intended to hurt anyone. So innocent. Unless we find out she like. did something really fucking bad then maybe guilty. But in I Love You it implies it was a mutual toxicity so it probably wasn't something super terrible? But anyway. I love her with like all the characters cuz shes just so fun to see interact w others, but specifically with Yuno, Fuuta, Shidou, Amane and Mikoto.

Kazui: Hes so fun i love him. Like all he wants is to be honest and be himself but he feels pressured to lie and then finally he tells the truth and his wife fucking kills herself like- jeez- poor guy. Like following the gay theory, i get why she mightve done it (imagine being told the romance you built your entire life around for like 20 years was all a lie, and that your husband never actually loved you and just pretended to and every time you kissed or something he was just pretending like. that sucks poor hinako) but its so awful that he had to go thru that. But anyway innocent, kazui come out we accept you. And stan 0507. Song wise cat is easily #4 but. half is ok ig

Amane: Yknow i love amane but I also hate her and i think part of that might be the fandom? idk. I feel sorry for her bc she grew up in such a shitty situation but also i think shes beyond the point where we can uninstill those ideologies. Like shes 12, not 5. And amane says it herself that she has as much of a free will as everyone else and that her decision to kill/stay in this environment should be valued. Not that i think she should remain in this abusive situation, but she's not just some innocent kid whose being manipulated, she knows what she's doing. Hence, guilty. I don't think either vote will change her or anything so im voting with my honest opinion. As for dynamics, i love seeing her interact with all the other prisoners, but especially Shidou and Fuuta.

Mikoto: I love mikoto a lot but im so on the fence about his verdict. Ive been voting him innocent but theres still a part of me thats like. debating it. Bc he shouldn't have to be punished for John's actions, and it sucks that that's the situation hes in, but its that or more murders are left to occur. The main reason i say innocent is under the idea that John could go dormant or just stop fronting as much if we reduce mikoto's stress (like he says will happen i think). But hes so complex and fun i love mikoto. Specifically i love romantic 0309 but also his dynamic w the smoking group and mahiru. Also i love his songs.

Kotoko: I love her but also fuck her for hurting fuuta (and mahiru too but mainly fuuta). She annoys me bc she was so quick to almost murder several people based on a preliminary verdict that was made using little information. Like she knew this wasn't a concrete verdict, but attacked them anyway. I get her ideology of "kill people who evade justice to protect the weak" but only when they've actually done bad things (ie. the guy kidnapping the little girl). But when she doesn't know what they did and knows the person accusing them doesn't either???? Like bruh. But i like her character shes fun. I like seeing how she interacts with es and everyone she attacked. And songs, harrow is okay and i really like deep cover.

Whew im done.

#this has been in my drafts for a hot bit so im posting it #milgram #haruka sakurai #yuno kashiki #fuuta kajiyama #muu kusunoki #shidou kirisaki #mahiru shiina #kazui mukuhara #amane momose #mikoto kayano #kotoko yuzuriha

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becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys · 1 year

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Doctor Who, but Chronologically: 40

Okay, here we go boys: jumping ahead six years from Partition to 1953, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth Two, and wow, this episode hits extremely very differently when the last thing you watched was the Tale of the British Empire (Derogatory).

It's the Idiot's Lantern. At one point a character declares that even though they're losing the Empire, at least the coronation can still give us pride. Yikes.

Anyway, happily, we get Tennant and Rose, who have a lot of chemistry, but unfortunately this is a Mark Gatiss episode. Fortunately, it's edited by RTD, so it is much more interesting than it might have been. Unfortunately, it's still Gatiss trying to write a Spunky Woman, so inevitably, Rose has a shining moment of brilliance where she immediately spots that Evil TVs are stealing people's faces and wanders off to interview the guy responsible, only to be immediately imperilled and then absent for the rest of the episode, trapped inside a telly. Ah well. Could be worse, this could be Amy or River with Smith. Rose can at least pass the sexy lamp test. And doesn't get subjected to sentences like "Of course you're a psychopath, you're a woman."

So yeah, there's an alien that was executed, but rather than dying it made it into an electrical form and thence to 1950s televisions (this is not really explained.) It feeds on the electrical signals of human brains, which is pretty stupid, since it's inside TV sets which have a far higher voltage, but okay. It's planning to feed on the 20 million people who will watch the coronation, and thus have a body again. The Doctor thwarts it by... idk it's really unclear, just electrocuting it somehow in an extended scene that was way too thin on explanations to justify the number of "plot twists" it attempted. "Plot twist! Your wiring hasn't worked!" Okay but we are not electricians and this is fantasy electrical wiring, so this means nothing to us, Gatiss. Honestly though, as sci-fi plots go, it's... fine. Not amazing, but there are much worse.

The side plot revolves around one family - mum, dad, son and grandmother, except the grandmother is fed on and so doesn't have a face. In a series of very poorly acted and directed scenes, it is made painfully clear that the father is a violent domestic abuser, at one point promising to beat the gay out of his son. Nonetheless, in an absolutely baffling and utterly gross scene at the end, as his wife throws him out and he leaves in shame, Rose and the Doctor both tell the son that he nonetheless must forgive his abuser and make amends because "He's your dad." Rose even straight up says that not forgiving his abuser would make the son stupid. It is utterly, utterly unnecessary, and I am entirely baffled by what moral I was supposed to take away from it. I can only assume Gatiss was watching too much American telly when he wrote it? It's the sort of thing you see super commonly in American telly over here - "He's your dad! You have to forgive him, because he's your dad! Let's reconcile the strained father-son bond!" It's almost as common as a boxing episode, which American telly always has. Even Babylon 5 had a boxing episode. Even Leverage. They all do.

Anyway it's wank, and it takes what was otherwise a blandly inoffensive showing to Fuck Me What An Awful Episode.

Still no proper sign of why Rose is particularly special! I mean they have GREAT chemistry, but it's all in the acting, really, though it's increasingly clear that she's maybe the most people-focused of all of them (except Donna). Sigh. Maybe we'll get a non-Moffat/Gatiss Rose episode soon, and then we can finally know.

Meanwhile, shout out to the best actor of the whole episode: Cardiff, doing amazingly in it's starring role as Totally London, Honest. Funny story! I remember this episode being filmed, because my mate Emyr accidentally wandered into the street they used to film the street party, and had the surreal experience of going "Hang on... why are there flags? Why... is it the 50s? Am I in the 1950s? How has this happened? What's that box - oh it's the TARDIS I see what's happened."

(This has happened to me TWICE in St Ffagans and once in the Brangwyn Hall. Common South Walian experience.)

Ummm... no plot threads! I don't think. None resolved, none added. Well, that's about right for Gatiss.

“She” (an unknown person) is returning (perhaps River returned as Missy. Maybe Me? Maybe Clara???!)

There is something on Donna’s back

An entire planet, Pyrovilia, just… disappeared, somehow. (Maybe because the TARDIS is exploding??? Saturnine was also lost, and that WAS because of the TARDIS exploding. The lion man’s planet was also lost but he was a bit of a knob about it if I’m honest. The Thijarian planet was destroyed by some sort of impact)

Amy is maybe dead (she’s not)

The Doctor has been cubed (he’s out, but how?)

River is possibly blown up (unless she’s Missy. Nope: she is definitely not blown up)

The TARDIS has blown up (It’s fine now. Except it’s sort of melting now because it’s corrupted, but it’s fine again)

The universe appears to have ended (the universe is back again)

The Doctor has employed(?) Nardole

(And Nardole was “reassembled???” Nardole had glass nipples and invisible hair?? WHAT THE FUCK IS HE)

There’s a vault in the TARDIS and it contains Missy but we don’t know why (sometimes she knocks for the bants)

There’s an immortal Viking girl now. Her name is Me and she’s now looking after the people the Doctor abandons

Why was Rory entirely unconcerned by the entire world suddenly going silent when that is Not Normal and should have been, at the very least, extremely disconcerting?

What did the Doctor do to Queen Lizzie One?

Why is Amy seeing a one-eyed woman in a vanishing window? (She’s with the Silents, but we don’t know why Amy saw her)

Why is Amy’s pregnancy inconclusive? (Maybe because the baby had Time Lord DNA?)

Who is Sarah-Jane Smith?

How is the Doctor Bill’s teacher and why/where does he have an office?

What is going on with the Cyber War and the Cyberium???

What happened with the Other Cyber War?

What happened with the Third War that deleted the void?

Why does Rose seem particularly important?

What order do these Doctors go in? (Eccleston, Tennant, uncertain, Smith, Capaldi, Whittaker)

Which companion just… forgot the Doctor, and how?

Yaz and Vinder are about to die as Mori/Mwri/Muuri

There is a Lupari shield around Earth.

What’s a Time War?

What’s the Rift?

What’s Bad Wolf?

In which war did the Doctor become a war criminal, and how?

Who is the Master?

Why has Amy forgotten Rory? How did she forget a Dalek invasion?

Is Rory plastic or not?

Why is the Doctor sulking on a cloud?

How exactly does the Doctor have a cloud?

What exactly happened with Strax to, uh, tame him?

Which friend killed Strax?

Which friend brought Strax back?

Where did this lesbian lizard and human couple come from?

What happened with Clara as Souffle Girl and the Daleks?

How does Clara actually join?

Why so many Claras?

Why is Missy apparently in robo-heaven?

Why is probably!Missy pushing Clara and the Doctor together?

What is Trensilor and what happened there?

Who is Handles?

The Doctor is about to be dissolved by a beautiful geode man

The universe is being crushed by the Flux

Will the Doctor open the fobwatch?

Sontarans are invading Earth again

Who is Kate?

Who is Osgood? Another name of Clara’s again?

The fuck is the deal with the Grand Serpent

Does Martha get to go to an ice cream planet with 12-fingered massage aliens?

How did the Doctor forget Clara?

Who is Bill’s puddle girlfriend Heather?

How did Nardole die?

When does Bill get Cyberman-ed and die?

When does the Doctor shrink and enter a Dalek called Rusty?

Whittaker is falling to her death rn

Was that ring relevant?

Does anyone know the Doctor’s name?

When did Yaz talk to Dan about fancying the Doctor?

When did Dan talk to the Doctor about fancying Yaz?

What’s happening with the bees?

What happened with Donna’s ex and a giant spider?

What war wiped out the Daleks, and is it one of the ones already mentioned?

What did the Doctor mean when he said “The (Daleks) always live, while I lose everything?”

If Dalek Caan is the last Dalek left why are there more now?

How did the rest of the Time Lords die?

How and why did Amy melt?

What’s the question that will make silence fall?

Why do the Silents… want silence to fall?

How and why are Silents at war with the Doctor when he… hasn’t even heard of them?

How does Hitler get out of the cupboard?

What’s the significance of fish fingers and custard?

Why does the Doctor feel guilt about Rose, Martha and Donna?

What happened with the space whale?

When does Rory defend Amy for 2000 years?

How does the Doctor survive River

How does he erase himself from history

Did Captain Jack lose his memories to the same people as the Doctor? What did he lose?

When did the Doctor send the Daleks into a void to save the universe?

What’s with the weird crack in the wall and is it affecting memories?

Why do Amy and Rory think the Doctor is dead?

Is Matt Smith’s Doctor a tree racist?

#doctor whom #and yet we are continuing

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davekat-sucks · 4 months

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I think i definitely would've liked Calliope more if she was presented as a bad person. I love how she absolutely malded (this term works here (wig)) when she was losing that chess game. Beforehand she was acting all snide and flirty towards Caliborn, like come on, "you're being such a good sport now finally", sending hearts <3 to him, saying weirdly suggestive shit. Like damn girl you're usually not this upfront. Then she gets thrown off guard and gets extremely defensive, it's hilarious. I really liked her when she acted two-faced, you can even take this literally, she's delusional. She dresses up as a troll because she has a fetish for them then starts shipping herself and friends together, no wonder why Caliborn sees her as so pathetic. All she has is ruses, i don't even think that SHE THINKS that she's all that strong. She pretty much relies on other's to get her through stuff and she even pretends to be someone else to progress the story. I've said it in the past but i think she should've been a misandrist, i think it would be funny for her to enable her female friends obsessive dispositions towards their crushes. Remember her drawing of Roxy trying to kiss Dirk while he looks visibly uncomfortable? It's stuff like that, have her perception on men be that they're props for the girls and you need to get a one-up on them in anyway to control them. Like drawing Dirk in a pink costume and being called something as gay as "the prince of heart" as an attempt at emasculating him. There's potential for this idea. She's better at being more composed and tactful than Caliborn, a good set up for being manipulative, she uses her fake politeness to slither her way onto C-Earth where i think she would have great potential to become a villain.

Just a bunch a thoughts about her bleh, she was kinda boring half of the time in the comic, stuff just gets handed to her and she's supposed to be a good guy despite forcefully separating Roxy and Rose that one time. Gave off control freak vibes. Her character feels inconsistent, like Hussie couldn't choose what he wanted her to be. I feel like her potential was underutilized

While Caliborn tries to be more in your face direct kind of deal, Calliope would have been someone who plays the more passive role. Doing her best to hide her true intentions or feelings and only showing her true colors when she is not able see the results she wanted or something else beyond her control comes her way. Calliope would shown to be no better than Caliborn and prove show how Cherubs are awful species. Sure there could be a chance of good Cherub, but like with trolls, there is some trait that would be frowned upon by human standards. Like you got Nepeta, she is playful and sweet, yes, but people forget she still hunts animals for food and PAINT. Some may find FLARP sessions that Tavros, Terezi, Aradia, Vriska, and Eridan engage in to be dangerous since it can lead to physical harm, be it from other players or the monsters they had set up. To trolls, such activities like this are a norm because they had been conditioned to live under it. But perhaps for Cherubs case, it might as well be in genetics as a species themselves that they act this way. If she is also represents the 'good' side of the fandom, then one should show toxic positivity is just as bad. People who have good intentions, but their noble deeds can lead to harm if the intent behind it is still selfish, consciously or subconsciously. Maybe those who are part of the good fandom side that may disagree with certain opinions, everyone else immediately goes against them instantly at the drop of dime because they fear they instantly become bad, when there is more to it than that. Actually show the grey morality on both sides of the fandom that would represent people like 4chan & old MSPA fans with Caliborn and Calliope with Tumblr.

#HS Calliope #HS Caliborn #Caliborn #Calliope #Homestuck #Homestuck fandom #Caliborn Cherub #Calliope Cherub

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copperbadge · 1 year

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How would you sort your fandom blorbos and/or OC’s as Pern Dragon colors?

Ahhh IDK, that was always the part I liked least about the worldbuilding, the hierarchy of the Weyrs. I'm not against it morally or anything, I don't think there's something inherently wrong about wanting to imagine your fave as a dragonrider and decide what kind they would Impress, I just find it uncomfortable.

Presumably the dragons somehow know which riders will make good leaders, which is why browns and bronzes Impress riders who move into leadership roles -- people find their level with the dragon's help. It's just that attached to that is the stigma of having a "lower rank" dragon and knowing what that says about you, not to mention there's no real room for advancement beyond a point based on your dragon's scale color.

And there don't seem to be any perks -- greens and blues don't have special powers, they're smaller, and I always got the sense that they weren't that bright compared to browns and bronzes. It would have made more sense to me if the smaller dragons were also smarter; if you're a natural leader, seems logical that you're strong-minded enough to manage a big dragon significantly dumber than the smaller ones, while a rider of a smaller dragon has to be smarter to keep up. Which also opens a door for more equitable advancement in leadership, depending on whether a weyr prefers a strong hand or a smart brain. Both have their advantages.

And then of course there's the weird gender stuff of a) the golds always being Impressed by a woman and b) alllllll other riders being male, although I know this started to shift in the later books. (I don't recall the quote clearly but I know McCaffrey also said some stuff about green riders being gay that implied heterosexuality is compulsory for a leadership role in a wing or a weyr, but that's not canonical to the books afaik.)

I was always much more interested in the Impression stories, the searches and hatchings, the training and such. Even the politics of the mating flights is interesting in terms of leadership changeover; it's kind of like choosing a military strategist based on which jockey wins a horse race, but there's space there for interesting exploration. But the Impression scenes were always my favorite.

(All of which is to say that if I was going to drop the Shivadhverse into Pern, Gregory would be a Lord Holder on the southern continent and really annoy Benden Weyr by courting and marrying E'de, Benden-born rider of the blue Taseth. Although what can you expect from the family that produced G'rald, the most shiftless bronze rider on Pern? He's always fucking off back to the southern continent anyway. Might as well give Shivadh Hold their own Weyr at that point, it'd get E'de out of everyone's hair and if G'rald becomes weyrleader at least he can't do too much harm down there.)

#dragonriders #shivadhverse

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shsl-heck · 11 months

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So because I've seen it compared to Worm, I started reading The Boys by Garth Ennis. It's bad! Like really bad! It feels like what would happen if you let an edgy anti-feminist atheist youtuber from 2015 write a comic book. I finished the first volume of the omnibus in large part because it was a train wreck I couldn't look away from, and am debating starting the second since I hate myself. The most interesting parts are actually the little forewords. Through them I learned both that it was supposed to be a comedy, and also a critique of the military industrial complex/police (or at least that people read it as one). This was surprising to me since it is neither funny nor incisive. Anyway, now I want to ramble incoherently about my problems with it because this goddamn comic broke my brain.

Okay, so one of the most common ways it shows you which characters you aren't supposed to like is by having them do comically "gross" sex stuff. Notable examples include cocaine fueled orgies, mentions of shitting during sex, bestiality, masturbating in public to the sight of disabled people, and a little person using sex toys. One that shows up repeatedly in this context is characters being bisexual or gay. Now, I don't wanna get controversial, but I think any claims that your work is a critique of capitalism, police, the military, or whatever are rendered moot when your villains are a group of secret hedonistic sex-freaks. Like we can't pretend that doesn't sound a lot like regressives and their obsession with "degeneracy". Sexual assaults, misogyny, and slurs also appear pretty often, mostly as the punch line for jokes. Victims are rendered down into objects and denied any sense of interiority so we can instead focus on what really matters (gore porn, and middle school 4chan posters' sense of humor). Never once does Ennis deign to explore the actual impact and trauma of these things, or ask why he views these things as material for jokes.

That incuriosity is I think the real problem with The Boys. There is no actual coherent thought about why things are bad. Superheroes hurt people and are wrong because of their personal moral failings as selfish perverts, not because their whole job is to violently enforce the will of the state. It's like if someone agreed that all cops are bastards, but only because all cops just so happened to be "bad apples". The main characters literally work for the fucking CIA, and yes, I know the titular Boys are at best meant to be anti-heroes a la the Punisher. My issue here isn't that they're hypocrites who are frequently also horrible. It's that this premise for is absolute nonsense if you think for half a second. Superheroes do not function without the legitimacy granted to them by the state and it's monopoly on violence, so why would the CIA need these 5 randos with zero oversight working to take out the supers? Is the force Homelander and the others can bring to bear so great that even the apparatus of that state can't deal with them? If so, why does this group of assholes change that? Normally I'd be willing to give the story a lot more of a pass when it comes to questions like this, except I'm being told that this story has things to say about systemic problems involving the government and corporations! So I have to ask, where? Where is the commentary? What does it actually have to say about the state of the world circa 2006-2012? The only answer I can come up with is "not a whole lot". It's a story which dares to ask the tough questions like "what if the world was made of pudding" and then ignore answering those questions so it can instead recite Ellis' favorite slurs in alphabetical order while showing you a woman's tits.

On a lighter note, it's also just not very good. The plot (as mentioned) falls apart under any amount of scrutiny, pacing is bizarre in a bad way, the characters aren't compelling, themes remains stubbornly unexplored, and Ellis is allergic to doing anything interesting or creative with the premise he's decided to base a whole comic around. I genuinely do not know what people enjoy(ed) about this comic.

#It's a thoroughly unpleasant experience on about every level #There was actually one moment I liked #and it was when the frenchman and the female (those are their names) are playing reverse strip poker #where they have to put on more and more layers of heavy clothing #that was a cute bit and made me do a neutral nose exhale #also people who compare it to Worm please show your work #because the math isn't mathing #is it just that they're darker superhero stories?#worm #worm wildbow #worm web serial #the boys #the boys comics #my meds are acting up so apologies for any incoherence #but also reading the boys just does that to your brain I think

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authoralexharvey · 1 year

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INTERVIEW WITH A WRITEBLR — @euphoniouspandemonium

Who You Are:

Syd || He/they/she

What You Write:

What genres do you write in? What age ranges do you write for?

Historical fiction, mystery, paranormal, poetry, and tragedy. Young adult, new adult, and adult.

What genre would you write in for the rest of your life, if you could? What about that genre appeals to you?

Historical fiction (mostly set in Europe during the 20th and 19th century because that's what I find most appealing to write, I do like reading stories in other periods and continents though). It appeals to me because I like the idea of exploring the way people in history were shaped by their time periods, in particular in regards to queerness (with fewer labels to work with, the main perception of queerness is the way the characters see and experience it, which in pretty much all cases is very different from the way queer identities are perceived now: in historical fiction, unlike uhhhhh mainstream queer media, it is not about labels and definitions and Gay People Who've Never Done A Bad Thing In Their Lives, but about unbridled rawness and godawful people doing godawful things because of the way they perceive their identity and calling themselves slurs while they're at it.). This turned into being about gay people very fast. Anyway, I also like researching cool pretty clothes. And writing in an old timey style.

What genre/s will you not write unless you HAVE to? What about that genre turns you off?

Science fiction. I think it is a very interesting genre but the descriptions are what turns me off. It is usually set in space or a futuristic setting, obviously, which are settings that I cannot begin to imagine descriptions for, and also can't think of any concepts for.

Who is your target audience? Do you think anyone outside of that would get anything out of your works?

My target audience is… well I'm gonna get cheesy and say "queer people who think about everything poetically and yearn for the romantic" OR "queer people who like cityscapes and are obsessed with Will Wood". A lot of people who like my work are in neither category, so yes, people outside of them can find value in my work as well.

What kind of themes do you tend to focus on? What kinds of tropes? What about them appeals to you?

Queerness as explored in a setting separated from the expectations set for queer identities in the present day; love that is violent; love that is very very tender (violence and tenderness are not mutually exclusive); friends to lovers; partners in crime (literal). What appeals that I can do a lot with them – I literally do not run out of ideas for these themes and tropes (I have a document for concepts, which contains over 60 concepts, most of which are about at least one of these)

What themes or tropes can you not stand? What about them turn you off?

I will say casts of characters that are very morally pure, though I definitely don't always hate that or think it's bad. I simply prefer writing and reading about morally gray or downright horrible people, I think.

What are you currently working on? How long have you been working on it?

I am always jumping around between projects, but right now I am mainly working on Cotton Mendings, a WIP of mine that I have had for about a year; and a short story that I haven't named.

Why do you write? What keeps you writing?

To stay sane!! To explore myself through the exploration of others, to create a memorial for the joys of the world that will be lost before the joys of the world are lost (the sun! I could write about the sun forever. It does not know I exist. Can you believe that? What a joy indeed). To explore the dark parts of existence and find the tenderness and the love in them. What keeps me writing is that only through creation can I do this. Only through creation can I express my adoration for this putrid enthusiastic existence.

How long have you been writing? What do you think first drew you to it?

Since I was a small child! I was drawn to it because I fell in love with books and wanted to create some. It's quite usual for writers, I suppose.

Where do you get your inspiration from? Is that how you got your inspiration for your current project? If not, where did the inspiration come from?

In short: everywhere. Emotions, music, films, books, poetry, sights, coins on side walks, the movements of a friend's hands, beams of sunlight, the trinkets in my room, the sky, the thoughts in my brain, shadows. For my main project – the aforementioned Cotton Mendings – the idea came from the song Angie by The Rolling Stones, and developed in a matter of days. It was glorious, listening to the song and finding a relationship between two characters, and following it under a starry sky, and ending up with new character relationships almost unrelated to the first one.

What work of yours are you most proud of? Why?

A few paragraphs I wrote very suddenly a couple of weeks ago about a character relationship I wanted to explore. It conveys the emotions really well, I think, and it is filled with phrases and sentences I am obsessed with.

Have you published anything? Do you want to?

I haven't! I would like to, someday.

What part of the publishing process most appeals to you? What part least appeals to you?

Making fancy covers appeals the most… However talking to editors and agents and what not does not appeal to me.

What part of the writing process most appeals to you? What part is least appealing?

What appeals to me most is the actual writing! I want to see the thing in my head come alive! Breathing raw thing with its breathing raw words! It is not as vivid in my head as it is when I actually give words to it. Least appealing is writing scenes that are actually important to progress the plot instead of scenes where the characters just cuddle and talk :(

Do you have a writing process? Do you have an ideal setup? Do you write in pure chaos? Talk about your process a bit.

It usually has very clear steps: first I make a rough summary of the ideas I have for the story and/or make sketches of the characters, then I write a scene or two to get a hang of the voice, and what happens after that is in God's hands (sometimes those two steps are as far as it goes. Sometimes I become obsessed with the story and write a lot of it. Sometimes I even finish it.)

Your Thoughts on Writeblr:

How long have you been a writeblr? What inspired you to join the community?

Two years. I mostly wanted to be around like-minded people, I guess.

Shout out some of your favorite writeblrs. How did you find them and what made you want to follow them?

@writing-is-a-martial-art is my dearest friend, he was mutuals with some of my mutuals and I checked out his stories and we ended up following each other and becoming close friends. There are also @ink-fireplace-coffee, @alexwritesfiction, @fiercely-raging-writer, and @worldsandparagraphs, who are all my friends and have vastly different styles from me, and whom I would lay down my life for. Don't remember what I followed any of them for or how I found them. I am obsessed with the works of @olimpias (who is also my friend) and @phantomnations, and found them both through their writeblr introductions, followed them for their incredible work. They're very cool.

What is your favorite part about writeblr?

The unconditional appreciation for the act of creation

How do you contribute to the writeblr community? Do you think you could be doing more?

I contribute with reblogging people's work and, once in a blue moon, posting my own, but I am mostly outside the community currently, and would like to stay like that, at least for a while.

What kinds of posts do you most like to interact with?

I have never thought about it. Excerpts of people's work, mostly.

#iwaw #writeblr event #writeblr celebration #writing community

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liskantope · 1 year

Text

Since the "LGBT+ content in schools" issue keeps coming up, here are some of my thoughts directly on it.

Charitably speaking, I think conservatives are afraid of a particular, narrow, modern, very SJ-ish social agenda and belief system being shoved down their kids' throats. I do have some sympathy with this concern, although I'm not sure the extent to which anything is actually being taught that I as a (more progressive-thinking) parent would object to: I do hear what I would consider disturbing stories but have little way of knowing how embellished and/or unrepresentative they are.

So anyway, a bunch of conservatives have whipped up a moral panic about it and are fighting back with legislating (what are, at least according to some) bans against talking about the existence of gay or trans people at all, or anything about race that might possibly make white kids uncomfortable in any way. Which is absolutely absurd, a "cure" worse than the (possible) disease.

(And disallowing gay/trans/queer teachers from, for instance, disclosing that they have a same-gender partner, even though it's been normalized for decades and is still permissible for a teacher to bring up their opposite-gender partner, is just outright homophobic, period. That shouldn't be too hard to see.)

I've tried reading the legislation (for instance, the so-named-by-opponents "Don't Say Gay" bill), and I'm bewildered as to what it actually adds up to or how it can even function as legislation. What a lot of it says amounts to moderate, common-sense-sounding guidelines that don't actually appear to demand that "gay" not be mentioned in any way, but it relies on phrases like "appropriate for their age group". Well, who gets to decide that? How is this legislation ever enforced or teaching ever policed based on it?

My only guesses as to what conservatives think they're doing is that (1) the laws are almost meaningless but serve as a grandstanding move meant to signal "Hey look, we're on the right side, we're doing something about it!"; and (2) since the wording of the law requires a ton of individual judgment and interpretation, perhaps in the most conservative school zones where all the people in power are sufficiently conservative it really could be used as a sledgehammer to ban ANY mention of anything they don't like.

Meanwhile, I think there could be some common-sense guidelines that allow teachers to bring up the existence of gay and trans people and allude to the issues and even (to kids above a certain age) discuss some of the civil rights battles surrounding them, without shoving any particular highly controversial political ideology down their throats. The idea is to stick with basic facts about social reality. Gay and bi people exist (at the very least, in the sense of people who choose to pursue same-sex relationships). Trans people exist (at the very least, in the sense of people who identify as a different gender than indicated by their sex at birth), and some of them choose to go on hormones or get sex reassignment surgery. Gay and trans people are people too. There has been and still is a lot of stigma against them, and there have been struggles to secure them rights for certain things -- for instance, same-sex couples couldn't get married in most places until last decade! By the way, kids, I prefer they/them pronouns. You're encouraged to think for yourselves about what that might mean and how to feel about it, but it's a preference I'm asking you to respect and you should respect such preferences among your classmates. Mr. So-and-so who teaches in the next classroom has a husband. You probably know several other gay and bi people, and they're people too. Some of you may come to identify or already identify as not straight or not cis.

Of course that won't satisfy everyone, and it can't be done in an entirely non- politically biased way, and conservatives may see plenty of reason to complain that these things are even being mentioned or that the teacher has gone as far as normalizing people who fall under the queer umbrella as human beings without at least criticizing them as having lost their way.

But it's, to my view, subtly but significantly different from very positive actions that go beyond neutrally describing reality with an underlying default of respecting others. That would include enthusiastically pushing kids to analyze their genders and sexualities all the time, telling them "You can be whatever gender you want; what gender would you like to be now?", teaching highly politicized lessons on social justice which involves students rating their degrees of marginalization and separating the room into "oppressors" and "oppressees", constantly centering everything around a scrupulosity-triggering activist mindset, and many more things.

#lgbt+ content in schools #don't say gay bills #culture war #social justice

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creaturefeaster · 10 months

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Heyy if it's not too much to ask, could you talk about Zack? And Idk... Something with Tay? (I love them, they're my life)

I gotchya!

I'll give the rundown of Zack & Taylor's general dynamic throughout their part of the story, since that seems to be in line with what you're wanting :3.

~*~

Taylor is one of the only people that Zack can't really bullshit-- something Zack really loves to do to a lot of people, mind you,-- and as a result it's something that absolutely drives Zack up the wall. In many ways, but especially in like, yknow, a gay way.

Zack loves a challenge, but he's also good at knowing the limits of people's patience. Initially he chooses to stick around Taylor because he's interested in seeing what he can get away with, and for how long. Taylor is merely a well-known acquaintance to him at the start, and his original intention after the Fault was to use Taylor's practical nature to score free food and supplies for a while without having to put in the 100% effort it would have taken alone. Even that, though, he fails at with Taylor because Taylor quickly has none of that shit with him. So they both end up equally pulling their weight.

Zack and Taylor both don't tend to keep close friends. Zack makes a lot of people think they're his friend, but his real friends would be the ones he keeps some emotional distance on (i.e. like Taylor, before the Fault). Taylor on the other hand is just a bit of a introvert and doesn't click well with most people.

That all being said, you could consider it quite marvel that they continue to stick with each other and only with each other. In a way it could be said that Zack did get to Taylor, because initially Taylor's a pretty straight edge person with rigid morals & a very law-abiding attitude. But barely a month down the line and they're off raising a special flavor of chaos together wherever they go.

It may also be that, deep down past his conscious knowledge, Taylor's favorite kind of person is just someone who can get him riled up. Zack's naughty little tricks and schemes fire up Taylor's brain, but in a way that his post-apocalyptic self kinda loves. He won't admit it but Taylor really, really loves the freedom he has in the post-Fault world. And Zack enables him so hard.

Another reason Zack stuck around Taylor was because he just thinks he's stunning, honestly. Taylor is tall, built, has flowing golden hair and a perpetual aura of mystique irradiating from his sunglasses. So that's like catnip to Zack, someone who is very openly gay & flirtatious alongside the fact. As far as they both know, though, Taylor is straight and so Zack is on a one-sided pine train for several months. (Or at least he thinks it's one-sided! ;])

Said reason above is also a driving factor of the third reason Zack sticks around Taylor-- because he wants to protect him. It is not because he thinks Taylor is a beacon of kindness, or that he thinks Taylor is necessarily deserving of protection, but really he's just like. Okay he's hot & knows a lot of stuff so let's see how this turns out. Zack could probably survive on his own post-Fault, however reckless as he may be, but he does not believe Taylor could survive on his own. And he knows Taylor would try to make it on his own because he's an antisocial hard-ass.

So anyway, a lot of their initial journey is pretty rocky. Because neither of them keep close friends often, and neither of them stick around the same person every single day 24/7, there's a lot of tension and aggression and disagreements. But the more they go on together, the more they learn about each other, and the more they save & aid each other from harm, the greater is the bond that grows between them.

Oh and you know. Some of that tension & anger in the long run may have turned into pent up desire along the way ^^. Who's to know what they get up to when they're alone later on haha. heheheoo

🐈

#brambleramble

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crispofftheblock · 19 days

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Throwback to the time my sister wanted to paint my little brother's nails and my mother's current husband threw a fit.

For reference, my little brother is 10 years younger than me, my sister is 3 years older. At the time, I was 12, my sister was 15, my brother was 3.

Now, C*rt isn't the father to any of us. He's some skank my mom picked up because her last flame (the father of my brother) was in prison and she's codependent.

C*rt is sterile. His peepee doesn't work and his fishies don't go swim swim. This is something he has very big sad sensitive man feelings about.

So one day my sister was painting her nails and my 3yo brother wanted his done too because little kids be like "older sibling is doing something? I want to also do that thing"

So, my sister was like sure!

But C*rt threw a GIANT fucking fit about it saying that he'd never allow "his" son to paint his nails bEcAUsE ThATS GaYyY!!1!

He asked my sister

"Are you going to paint your kids' nails? Even if they're boys?"

To which she said "lol yeah probably"

So our sweet darling empathetic and understanding perfectly mentally stable moms-husband said "Well your kids are going to be gay!"

Now, this is around the time I had just come out as a lesbian because back in 2009 in suburban white northern Utah, I had no idea that being trans was something I could even be. All you had was Gay(bad) or Normal(good).

But my big sister had my back from the very beginning. So when C*rt said this to her, her IMMEDIATE response was:

"At least I can have kids!"

I don't remember much after that but loud cowboy boots stomping down the back steps and the door slamming. We didn't see C*rt for a couple hours after that.

(You might be wondering: where was my mom during all of this? Why, where she always is. Hiding away in her bedroom because she can't ever stand up for her own fucking kids unless it publicly makes her look like a decent mother to strangers)

Fast forward 15 years. I'm happily trans. My sister is bisexual as fuck, and my little brother just now today told me he now has a boyfriend that he's super happy with.

Guess you didn't get all the precious little perfect white Bible Babies you wanted, eh, mah?

Anyway, TL;DR my sister is a fucking badass (and a ridiculously talented and creative artist and you should give her a follow over at @krowkeeper). And I've never been more proud of the siblings I got stuck with.

Moral of the story: make your broken family into kintsugi art.

Thanks for reading.

#family trauma #supportive siblings #lgbtq #ptsd #just because your invalid mother married him doesnt make him your step “dad”#already had a dad thanks and hes a better man that you could ever dream of being #i likce censoring C*rt because it looks like Cunt. which he is.#trans thoughts #crispofftheblock #krowkeeper #go look at my sisters art #like right now #seriously what the fuck are you doing go

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