#i love the gender reveal parodies so much

[piosplayhouse]

Yunmeng gender reveal

#no one start discourse on this jts for wwxs prank channel obviously #please watch the linked video its SO FUNNY #i love the gender reveal parodies so much #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #jiang cheng #wwx #wei wuxian #jc #my art #yunmeng bros

[onbearfeet]

Queerwolf By Night: Queercoding, Media Literacy, and Werewolf By Night (part 2)

Welcome back to Media Studies And Writing Hacks With Kat! Part 1 is here if you missed it. We discussed queercoding: what it is, how it works, why it exists, and how it plays into the 1930s and 40s horror movies Werewolf By Night likes to reference.

Once again, the thesis I'm arguing here is that there is queercoding in WBN, and that it should be part of the discussion of the special (which I'm calling a movie or film because I think "special presentation" is dumb and this is my essay.) I am NOT arguing that WBN is explicitly queer, or that inferring heterosexuality where queercoding exists is morally wrong or even textually inaccurate.

TL;DR: you can totally still ship Jack and Elsa, I just wanna point at some metaphorical rainbows and say, "Look! Rainbows! Aren't they neat?" I personally think the queercoding adds a layer of richness to the story. I hope you get something out of it, too.

And now, allow me to introduce our starting point, the wolfman of the hour, everyone's beloved blorbo and queercoded icon: Jack Russell.

Look at this adorable protagonist, this absolute chewtoy of a human being.

He's queercoded as fuck. Not as much as Ted, but we will GET to Ted.

Let's begin with Jack's introduction, where he is literally revealed as the narrator speaks the phrase "the monster who finds himself among them". We join Jack as he enters an unknowingly hostile space, a building full of people who would literally mount his head on the wall if they knew who and what he really was. Jack's introduction to this world is a series of Bayeux-style tapestries showing, among other things, the gory slaughter of his kind. We see him react with a mixture of shock, queasiness, and tamped-down anxiety, which marks him as an outsider. It seems unlikely that the other hunters would be grossed out by the sight of a depiction of their literal jobs.

Now, outsider status alone isn't necessarily queercoding, but it often is, especially in monster movies. Jack's reaction is not dissimilar to that of a closeted person entering a homophobic church for some kind of socially expected ritual--and, indeed, Jack has come for a funeral.

Look at that nervous glance as he walks into the room. He's not comfortable here. He knows he doesn't fit in.

This is a good time to mention Jack's outfit and the way it intersects with what we see of hunter culture. From the leather to the weapons to the heads on the wall, the aesthetic of hunter culture in WBN is hypermasculine, almost to the point of parody. The obsession with imagery of violence and death (the paintings on the walls, the corpse animatronic, the skull bowl) and the hostility to anything perceived as feminine is marked.

Wait. Hostility to anything feminine? Yes, I said that.

There are three characters who are played by female actors: Elsa, Verussa, and ... look, the hunters HAVE names, but I'm just gonna call them Scottish Guy, Asian Guy, Black Guy, and David Bowie. So David Bowie is an adrogynous character played by a female actor who acts as our third not-exactly-a-male character, and it's interesting to me that they're taken more seriously by the other hunters than Elsa is. Elsa, by contrast, is treated with contempt by the other hunters--and the contempt is very specifically gendered. Scottish Guy calls her "lassie" when he threatens her, and Asian Guy says, "Where's the lovely lady's medallion?" with a noticeable leer. They don't take her seriously, not even after Verussa announces she's welcome to participate--and they only brighten up when Verussa reminds them that they're allowed to kill Elsa if they can. That's the response to the only unambiguously female hunter.

Now, you may point out that Verussa doesn't get nearly as much shit from the hunters, but Verussa is explicitly presenting herself as the servant (and sexual partner) of a man. She's also not competing with them for the Bloodstone, nor trying to inherit, even though presumably she has at least as good a claim as Elsa does. She's not trying to enter the hypermasculine realm of hunting, but Elsa is in it, and so Elsa is despised and Verussa is tolerated.

And then there's Jack.

Okay, time for Baby's First Queercoding Element: gender nonconformity. In general, feminine male characters and masculine female characters (something explicitly forbidden by the Hays Code, by the way) are coded as queer. A lot of gay male stereotypes are men doing "womanly" things, like cooking and wearing dresses and having sex with men. The same goes for lesbian stereotypes like short haircuts, manual labor, and having sex with women. Now, obviously ACTUAL queer expression is infinitely more complex, but stereotypes don't do infinite complexity.

So. Is Jack feminine?

Well, he's wearing a gentleman's suit, but by the standards of hunter hypermasculinity, yeah, he's pretty girly. For one thing, he's wearing that suit in a room full of people in combat gear. For another, the suit itself is full of fussy details that mark him as a man who cares a great deal about his appearance, another stereotypically feminine trait. The suit is green, a barely acceptable color in menswear, and it has glittery details like the trim on his lapels. The spinal-column tie is metal as fuck, but it's also a silk tie. He's doing the death-and-gore theme, but making it high fashion. He's even wearing makeup. Granted, it's Día de los Muertos makeup, but it's still pigment on his face for aesthetic purposes. He's also the only hunter who acknowledges, in dialogue, that he has non-white, non-USAmerican heritage--"It's to honor my ancestors." He marks himself (literally) as visibly foreign, even though denigrating foreign masculinity is a big part of American hypermasculinity. He also tries to smile at and befriend every hunter who glares at him--another stereotypically feminine trait that leads to his conversation with Scottish Guy.

Speaking of, that conversation is gay as hell. It's practically flirting, especially the part where Scottish Guy compliments Jack's makeup and then tearfully admits that hunting and living all by himself "gets lonely". And Jack makes this amazing face:

Now, this is me inferring again, but I read this face as a combination of "Aww, that's sweet of you" and "Loneliness caused by hypermasculine self-isolation? I literally have no idea what that's like, but it sounds bad, bro." Perhaps with a soupçon of "Get me out of this conversation aaaaaaa."

So the scene rolls on, and Jack continues to be Bad At Toxic Hypermasculinity. When his top kill count is mentioned, he shrugs it off rather than taking a little bow like the others do. He actually chuckles at Ulysses' joke. He seems mildly interested in Elsa rather than hostile, and amused by her snark rather than threatened by it. He shows fear and worry when he learns Ted is in peril and in pain. The guy really wears his heart on his impeccably tailored sleeve. Notably, none of these traits are bad, per se--they're just more likely to be assigned to feminine characters, and they're given to Jack.

It's important to note the impact of perspective here. Jack is our POV character. If there were to be a hunters' version of this story, Jack would be a sneaky, cowardly, vaguely effeminate villain and Elsa a traitor (or possibly a dimwitted victim seduced by Jack's charms). All of Jack's queercoding would make him a GREAT queercoded villain; it's just that here, he's the protagonist, and a deeply sympathetic one at that, so we miss some of his "unmanly" traits.

All right, let's fast-forward to the maze. We see Jack being clueless and awkward about the drawing of lots, we see some sneaking around, and then we see his first hostile encounter with Elsa, and we get this great exchange:

Jack: I suggest we just pass each other by.

Elsa: ... What?!

Jack, visibly pained by the awkwardness: I suggest we just ... pass each other by.

Jack is uncomfortable with violence. He actively avoids it, talking his way out of trouble when he can and running when he can't. Even Elsa points out how strange he is compared to other hunters, specifically because he avoids violence. He doesn't kill or even hurt anyone in his human form. He doesn't even know how his explosive works--to the point where he asks a woman if SHE knows how to work it.

I'm not saying violence is an inherently masculine trait, but the association of masculinity with a capacity for (and comfort with) violence runs deep in Western culture in general and American culture in particular. It's a huge thing in Mexican culture as well, and yet Jack is actively choosing not to participate in it. He's denying a core part of what would otherwise be his traditional gender role. He later tells Elsa that any "hunting" he does is done by "a part of me that is not me"--a part of himself that he doesn't see as himself. In his eyes, violence is not merely scary or distasteful; it's not part of him at all.

(Compare this to all the ass-kicking Elsa does.)

And then we get to Ted. Buckle up, guys.

Technically, our first introduction to Ted is a distant roar and some screaming, but the moment where we meet him is this:

A jumpscare, followed by a cuddle.

Once again, Jack wears his heart on his sleeve, but more importantly, let me draw your attention to the juxtaposition of Ted's scary grab and Jack's excited snuggling. This relationship is introduced as something scary before being revealed as something sweet--and "scary" is a good description of the portrayal of queercoded couples (who are, remember, usually villains) in classic cinema. All the cinematic language around Ted right up until the grab is telling us to be afraid of him--and then our cinnamon roll of a protagonist starts petting him and greeting him and asking if he's okay. Ted is monstrous and inhuman ... right up until we see him receive affection from another man.

We don't get clear details of Jack's relationship with Ted, but we know that it's a big deal to them--after all, Jack is risking his own life to save the big guy. Jack also describes Ted as "family" and, with a fond eyeroll, a "pain in the ass". Jack implies that he no longer has contact with his family of origin, a common experience for many queer people who are shunned for leaving the closet, but Ted slots neatly into the category of found family. Ted is also, notably, the only close relationship Jack is seen to have, just as Jack is the only close connection Ted is seen to have. The two are physically affectionate (again, cuddling) and emotionally vulnerable in their conversations.

And Elsa, the outsider to their relationship, finds the whole thing bizarre, right down to Ted's name.

Speaking of Elsa, let's talk about Jack's behavior in the crypt and the cage.

In the crypt, Jack displays compassion for someone who has largely been hostile to him (he REALLY wants to fix Elsa's leg), absolute delight when he receives the tiniest signal that she might be sympathetic to him ("It's not in your DNA, then?") and remarkable emotional intelligence (see his speech about families). He also, notably, doesn't hit on Elsa or indicate any sexual interest in her.

He also makes this terrific face when he's handed a skull:

Oh, yeah, that's a big, scary hunter there.

Now, the cage. Jack's response to being put in the cage (and stripped of his jacket, interestingly--little bit of dehumanization there, perhaps) is recognition, followed by attempts at reassuring Elsa, followed by panic. He's arguably more upset than Elsa is, and Elsa thinks she's about to be torn to shreds.

At two points in this story, Jack Russell finds himself trapped in a small space with a beautiful woman and more or less immediately freaks out. It's not the most heterosexual pattern. In fact, it's got strong thematic overtones of queer men being forced into straight relationships by their families, their work, or their society. In a culture that entwines sex and violence, the fact that he's delighted to be grabbed by a male swamp monster but begs for death rather than symbolically do a sex with a woman is noteworthy.

"Symbolically do a sex"? Yeah, the only times the film frames Elsa as anything like a sexual object are the transformation sequence, which is a visual callback to classic sexualized scream queens of yore with her literally in Jack's shadow, and the face-touching scene, where Jack straddles her, their faces almost touch, and then he flees and she sits up with her hair mussed in a dreamy, almost post-orgasmic way.

Michael Giacchino doesn't eroticize violence MUCH, but he's fairly classy about it when he does.

"But wait!" I hear you saying. "What about the sniffing scene? Isn't that eroticized? And it's between Jack and Elsa! Checkmate, liberals!"

First of all, how dare you call me a liberal when my preferred political descriptor is "chaotic good". And second of all ... well, you're HALF right. It IS eroticized...but not because of anything Laura Donnelly or Gael Garcia Bernal is directly doing.

Go watch Elsa's body language during the scene. It's awkward as fuck. She's curled in a ball, knees and elbows out, letting Jack pull on her arm and sniff her hair but not really participating. There's no indication that she wants to be doing this, or even knows what "this" is.

Gael is making a little more of an erotic show about it; in fact, the intensity of his sniffing would probably be an indicator of sexual desire--if he weren't CRYING WHILE HE DOES IT. That's why his voice breaks on "Once."

These are both excellent actors, making very intentional choices with their voices and bodies. They're playing the scene as something that COULD be sexy IF THEY WEREN'T BEING FORCED TO DO IT.

Seriously. There's enough fanfic now that we've all read Jack giving Elsa a leisurely, consensual sniff. You can't tell me Gael and Laura couldn't have made that happen. This is not sexy sniffing. This is angst sniffing. It's just angst sniffing between two beautiful, sympathetic characters who genuinely don't want to hurt each other. It could have been acted and shot in a much sexier way, but it wasn't.

It's also worth noting one last category of queercoding that WBN plays with a lot: dehumanization. A lot of those classic movies played their queercoded characters as specifically less than human, visually aligning them with disliked animals like rats or wolves and often making them literally less human as the story progressed. Even after the Hays Code, monstrous and inhuman queers became a staple of horror movies, especially in the 1980s and 90s as the AIDS crisis convinced a lot of conservative America that LGBTQ people were literal plague rats. There were proposals to tattoo HIV-positive people to identify them, to round them up into camps, to shut HIV-positive kids out of schools because those kids were implicitly queer and therefore not deserving of human rights like an education.

WBN, with its werewolf POV, pushes back on this trope in some specific ways. Jack's line about being "still a human" is an obvious one, as well as his explanation of "systems" to keep other people safe. (It was common during the AIDS crisis for queer people to be fired from their jobs if they were outed because they were considered an AIDS risk to their coworkers--even if they were, say, an office worker who didn't have any contact with other people's bodily fluids. There were conspiracy theories about AIDS spreading through shared soda cans. Those paper seat protectors in public bathrooms came about because of fears that AIDS could spread via toilet seats. So imagine a gay man trying to explain that he's not a threat to his officemates, and you'll see the parallels to Jack trying to reassure Elsa.)

Most notable, however, is how Elsa survives the wolf. She's safe because she maintains eye contact (implicitly acknowledging her and Jack's shared humanity--she literally refuses to stop seeing him) and because he remembers her scent (she becomes a part of his world as he becomes part of hers). Elsa is rewarded, both with her life and with her inheritance, for treating Jack and Ted like human beings when the world around her regards them as abominations.

Elsa is an ally. She's ally-coded. She can also be read as a love interest for Jack, but she consistently acts in support of his relationship with Ted as well.

In Part 3, we're going to talk about the crowning moment of queercoding in WBN. That's right--it's time to learn about coffee in the woods, the gay jukebox, and the Friends of Dorothy.

#werewolf by night #werewolf by night meta #queer coding #jack russell #ted sallis #elsa bloodstone #attempts at formal analysis #what am i even doing #i hope someone actually likes this #jfc this is so much longer than i planned #nobody get mad at me please #i am literally just pointing at the thing we all like and saying “look a good bit” #long post #media studies and writing hacks with kat

[metamatar]

need your thoughts on csm and particularly part 1 now that you're caught up

I think my immediate reaction on finishing part 1 was like

loved the art, loved the characters def feel like the story has a lot further to go thematically, only really picked up for me with the reveal of the gun devil

I now think CSM's strength in the early arcs is the patience of the construction of Denji as an everyman resisting the reality that the promised capitalist horizon he imagines is a lie.

now that you can tell the horrible direction my thoughts are going in I will continue under the cut, this is so long oh god. cw: canon typical violence, sexual assault etc.

Initially the repeated invocation of wanting to kiss a girl and eat a good meal as ultimate dreams and Denji being presented as an idiot for it felt like a cheap way for readers to get to root for him in a very Naruto sort of way yk? Poor orphan boy wants a basic life. This is disrupted right from the start ofc, starting with the Himeno's assault and Makima's whole deal. I think this construction becomes more valuable in part 2 when with Nayuta there is a very intentional attempt to construct a family, where the horizon is a normality that includes saving up for college. Nayuta's resistance to some of it becomes more interesting than just jealousy or protection imo.

I think the complications of the "workplace" as it functions for Denji in part 1, living quite literally under Aki's supervision with Power invokes the very familiar team as family stuff under threat. The explicit knowledge of how he has exchanged one debtor for another is v effective especially when they take care of Power. You have him and the readers being forced to confront that purpotedly transactional relationships do not exclude the sort for the simple honesty of care we idealise. And that the care will be weaponised anyway. Aki's abortive attempt to opt out is chef's kiss.

The reveal of the use of the gun devil by nation states might functionally be the first moment Denji is forced to acknowledge the complicated incentives of the Bureau. You get to link the exploitation of people to the more obvious rot in liberal institutions. Part 2 then ratchets this up with the discourses on propaganda and mass participation.

I thought the "Killing of Makima" involving the use of the Bureau insiders led by the old man leaned a little too much on their heroism, vibes wise but I also get why narratively that needs to be done. Which is why Kobeni is so important to me lol. The art and creativity on display at the end of Part 1 was like gorging yourself on one of those early pictures of Paradise. The apartment scene could get read as Makima's personal cruelty but I think it's just making explicit the cruel seductions of modernity etc etc. As a violation of Denji esp. it is almost complete, structurally taking the form of kink and the parody of care after. Mwah.

With that, the reconciliation of Denji's past and present when his past in debt bondage is also constructed with the societal complicity about domestic violence becomes delicious. Nayuta is reborn out of a cannibalism not really done in the service of personal survival and def not out of a commitment to self sacrificing heroism.

I'm excited for Part 2, Asa esp lets you get at some of the same neuroses Denji has as a teenager but from a gendered perspective. Her relationship with Yuko is some of the strongest bit of writing about bullying and justice I have read in a while. I've enjoyed the lead up to Fami and War's apocalypse so far, but their motivations are still a little inscrutable and fallback on devils, wyd? despite their sisterhood. I think Fujimoto's focus seems to be the public discourses around devils in this arc, so thats probably why it feels like that but I'm personally always interested in all of it.

#chainsaw man #meta #asks #idt these are like original thoughts but i actually have no idea where to read meta on these lines so this could be much more sharper #if it was in conversation with other people #oh my god i saw a textpost in the csm tag that went debt is exploitative but inevitable in a functioning society

[krissiefox]

Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog - Sonically Ever After (Screenshots & Review)

And here we have what was the show's final episode, even though it originally aired out of order. It's got some unique features and also stands out quite strongly in my childhood memories of the show. That's because in the episode Tails briefly gets "turned into a girl" and this is one of my earliest memories of realizing I was trans without knowing how to articulate what I was feeling. As a kid, my friends and I would often make believe we were Sonic characters, and I was always the role of Tails (that's the reason my fursona is a fox, in fact!). I remember seeing this episode as a kid made me feel "weird and upset", and it would be quite along time for me to realize that this was because I'd already been taught to hate myself for being trans, sadly. Transgender kids need love and support, and creeps like ron desantis needs to fuck all the way off to whatever sewer they crawled out of.

Anyway, enough about childhood trauma - let's dig into this weird and wacky Fairy Tale themed episode!

Poor Tails hurt his...well, tails!

The episode starts with Robotnik and his badniks chasing Sonic and Tails into a park. As they clash and occasionally make racist remarks like "no robots allowed in the park!", an elderly lady is reading fairy tales to some kids nearby (She's been seen in other episodes too, and apparently her name is Miss Saccharine). Among them are some recognizable faces such as the Sloth kids from "slow Going" and that elephant kid with freaky hands who is friends with Robotnik Jr.

Robotnik tells Scratch and Grounder to use a device they brought along that would help them teleport away for a quick escape. Somehow, the two badniks mess up in a way that instead teleports Robotnik, Sonic and Tails right into Miss Saccharine's fairy tale book, instead!

Now in the story book world, Sonic and Tails are dressed in costumes and the backgrounds are noticeably much more detailed. This is one of this episode's unique features - it foreshadows the visual improvement that would occur in the Sonic SatAm cartoon in terms of background art. It's also rather fitting that I just reviewed the pilot too, because some of this episode shows just how nice the background art can be in the actual series! The outfits that Sonic and Tails are wearing are based on a story called "Hansel and Nettle", as it seems every fairy tale in Mobius has a naming parody of ones in our world. After exploring a forest and finding a house with chili dogs glued to the outside walls, Tails finally pulls up his dress and acknowledges that "he's a girl!" - and the fact that he just looked at his own crotch seems to  indicate he is incorrectly referring to his sex, rather than gender. Tails looks cute in the dress, but I have to wonder who decided they needed to draw boobs on a little 4 year old kid....*gives DiC the side eye* Robotnik emerges from the hut, and seems to be in the same situation as Tails in which his sex was at-least temporarily changed? He is dressed as a stereotypical witch, because old fairy tales just love their bigoted depictions of religious minorities.

Robotnik invites Sonic & Tails inside only to then reveal his identity and announce that the wants to eat them! The two manage to escape and we go back to seeing what's going on back in the regular Mobius world - Grounder is rather adorably enjoying the story time, while Scratch is trying to convince him to come help fix the machine so they can get Robotnik out of the book world.

Grounder would rather listen to fairy tale stories than rescue his shitty dad.

Meanwhile, back inside said book world, Sonic and Tails have apparently  now taken shelter living at the home of "Snow Height and the Seven Squatty Guys" (with Sonic and Tails being two of the squatty guys).  This was one of the funnier fairy tale spoofs for me  as I found it cute that Snow was just really tall instead of "conventionally attractive" - although that is somewhat marred by the fact that she also seems to be mostly treated as an "ugly woman" joke. Robotnik shows up, trying to sell them chili dogs, and Tails stupidly just grabs and eats one, which poisons him. The only cure is a kiss from Snow Height, who is  weirded out by the idea of kissing an anthropomorphic fox child. Sonic promises to introduce her to prince charming if she does so, so she eventually caves and smooches Tails. Does this mean she has magic healing spit like Steven Universe?

These backgrounds are lovely!

Not accepting defeat, Robotnik then uses some sort of wind turbine to attack the household, almost blowing everyone away. Sonic tells Snow that Robotnik is her prince charming, and she somehow believes him even though she just saw him poison a child and attack her and all her friends! She fights the wind current and goes to smooch and hug on Robotnik.

Looks like Snow Height was busy decorating for pride month!

Sonic and Tails manage to escape the house, and pass by Cinderella and her Fairy Godfather, who is a parody of the guy from The Godfather movies. This was another one of the funnier gags in this episode, in my opinion. :)  Cinderella and the fairy Godfather both seem like nice folks, but sadly Robotnik runs by and steals Godfathers magic wand, then starts using it to torment Sonic and Tails. Snow Height catches up with the group and Robotnik turns her into a toad, and then threatens to turn Sonic and into a toad and fly as well...

I’ve never seen The Godfather, but cultural osmosis still tells me that Robotnik may regret stealing from him!

As this is happening, Scratch and Grounder finally think they've fixed the portal machine and use it again, but it doesn't go entirely as planned. Instead of extracting just Robotnik, they extract him as well as Sonic and Tails and a whole bunch of other fairy tale characters. Robotnik has a few new minions he brought with him, a dragon and a giant beatnik. Robotnik takes his magic wand and starts running rampant around Mobius, causing lots of trouble.

Sonic brainstorms on what to do to stop him as well as help the fairy tale folks who were pulled into his world. Eventually, Sonic dresses as Rapunzel in a tower in the city, getting Robotnik's attention by offering him lots of gold. Once Robotnik scales the tower, Sonic lifts up Snow so she can kiss Robotnik, which turns  her human again. Robotnik falls out of the tower in surprise, and announces "I kissed a toad!". Grounder mentions that he kissed a toad once, and that "it was kind of nice. I think he liked me". Thus, we now know that Grounder is cool with kissing dudes, yay!

Sonic makes his way back to the park, where Robotnik follows him with the dragon. Sonic realizes that the dragon has a thorn in his foot and pulls it out, and the dragon is very grateful, turning out to only be hostile because he was in pain.

Sonic eventually gets the idea to go to the airport with Tails, and use a plane to write "Happily ever after" in the sky. This seems to interact with magic properties of the fairy tale book, allowing Robotnik's stolen magic wand and all the fairy tail characters to get pulled back into their own world again.

As the last episode ends, Sonic addresses the audience. "Every story must end. Even this one. But it's no fairy tale to say, 'see ya soon for more Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog!'"

In the Sonic Says segment, Sonic teaches Tails about how cool libraries are. Good message, no notes - except that it's sad that books are under attack so much in the USA right now...

This episode is quite a send off for the series! It has some very nice background art, and some cute and funny gags. Unfortunately, some of the fairy tales being referenced have some really unhealthy messages which the episode never addresses, so that marrs things a bit. Overall, though, it is still a cute ending for a very fun and lovable slapstick cartoon.

#aosth #adventures of sonic the hedgehog #library #libraries #books #sonically ever after #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq #Tails #miles prower #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #robotnik #dr. robotnik #scratch #aosth scratch #grounder #Miss Saccharine #robotnik jr. #dragon #Snow Height #snow whilte #hansel and gretl #fairy tales #the godfather #fairy godfather #cinderella #long post

[caestoexist]

(excerpt from my film + lit analysis class essay on afab gender nonconformity in film specifically about she's the man 2006 and tomboy 2011)

"She’s The Man is a romantic comedy designed for an adolescent audience, and therefore starts with a high energy montage of the main character, Viola, playing soccer on the beach. It is overlaid with bright, colorful graphics showing the title credits, and set to the song “No Sleep Tonight” by The Faders. Viola, while not stereotypically feminine, is clearly a girl. She is shown to like sports, and is uncomfortable in dresses, but also wears a bikini top and short jean shorts in the opening montage, and has long hair. She only comes to the decision to present as a boy in order to impersonate her brother, Sebastian, so she can play on the boys soccer team, after the girls team is cut.

At the end of the film, she reveals herself to be female, wins the game, and goes back to living as a girl. In fact, the second to last scene shows her onstage, in a dress and makeup, making out with Duke, a fellow soccer player and her former roommate, who first met her as Sebastian.

She’s The Man has something I call ‘The Mulan Effect,’ where a film represents a character pretending to be the opposite gender without actually tackling transgender topics. In these types of films, the character has external motivation, usually hiding from, or impersonating someone, or trying to gain access to something. A key feature of films that demonstrate ‘The Mulan Effect’ is the crossdressing character returning to their original gender presentation after achieving their goal."

i think it's an interesting phenomenon because on the surface a film with the mulan effect seems to be trans or trans adjacent in nature, but when you think harder about it, it's usually not as related as it would seem. of course it's somewhat related just due to the feature of a character acting and dressing as the opposite sex, and often has loosely feminist undertones (woman just as good at fighting war as man!! gender win!) but it's about a mostly gender conforming, usually straight character (in fact, if the character isn't straight, it kinda falls into a different category than the mulan effect imo) simply putting on a disguise.

it doesn't touch on actual gender nonconformity or transgenderism beyond very superficial features of it, such as being considered strange, ugly, or wimpy by those around you. its much safer than a film actually about trans or gender nonconforming topics, because it can almost fully avoid homosexuality or transgenderism other than a sort of parody/joke on those things (this straight woman falls in love with a boy, but he's secretly a girl! must be awkward for her!). it's kinda like the bury your gays trope in that it depicts the undepictable but in a way that doesn't justify being gay or trans.

it's also like the bury your gays trope becsuse people will still identify with it when that's the only representation they're given. like if all the gay stuff you can read ends with the characters dead, you're still gonna read it just for the gay shit. if the media showing gender nonconformity and transness only shows it as either temporary (the mulan effect, the trope of a tomboy growing out of it as they get older, usually influenced by meeting a man they're attracted to and realizing they're a Woman and gotta Act Like It) or evil (all the trans serial killers, who are mostly trans women, sometimes trans men who are gangsters, mob bosses, or criminals) you're still gonna identify with the characters just because you don't have anything else showing someone who does what you do.

in a lot of media trans women are represented as evil and perverted and trans men are often not represented, or represented as a temporary issue, something done as a result of external pressures, or something that you grow out of. trans women are often ugly, strange, aggressive adults and trans men are children, also perceived as ugly and strange but overall more sympathetic. i think it's interesting and wonder how much this broad societal representation affects the way we perceive those groups even without realizing it.

it's also interesting how the way we see women vs men plays into this, as trans women are "too manly" making them adult, large, aggressive, etc. trans men are sometimes also seen as too manly, because nobody takes them seriously as a boy to begin with, so they're judged as a girl. if they are seen as a boy, they're wimpy, small, childish, and more likely to have pity taken on them. trans women embody "man traits" like thinking for themselves and making decisions, like an adult, whereas trans men embody "woman traits" by just not even being taken seriously on the same level as trans women (who are more likely to be portrayed as actually trans women, as opposed to trans masculinity, often portrayed as confused or traumatized little girls) and also being shown more often as children. they are then able to be saved by a man, and only then are able to be happy as a woman. the transphobia is just the first layer of these types of bad rep, the deeper you dig the more it seems to be misogyny. like "trans women are men so they're powerful and aggressive by nature, trans men are women and therefore they don't know what the fuck is going on, even with themselves. they need a man to come set them straight, it's not their fault". it starts to seem really fucked when you think about it.

i'm saying this after having gone thru every pre-2012 representation of trans characters in television and film (according to wikipedia) and finding Some Patterns.

i don't really know what the conclusion of this post is, but basically. trans women and trans men are both affected by misogyny. misogyny is at the root of so many things. if you're against misogyny you should be against homophobia and transphobia too. period.

#texts i sent to my mom #who is gender critical #she was unsure how to respond #trans #media literacy #misogny

[stampstamp]

Finished re-reading F*shigi Y*gi part 1 and the first and final arcs still spark joy so I'll keep my collection but volumes 9-11 were so frustrating that I'm gonna roast them a little under the cut (and be a bit critical of other aspects that don't hold up 30 years on)

Major spoilers and references to SA in the series under the cut! (And it's a super long rant!)

The dip in quality from 9 onwards was such a shame! The plot just turns into various enemies trying to rape the 15-year-old protagonist for three volumes! Not to be a pearl clutcher but Watase says the target demographic is middle school - junior high students and there's just a whole arc where:

It's implied that Nakago raped Miaka. It's later revealed he didn't manage to penetrate her and everyone is like 'oh phew! 😄' and her traumatic nightmares about her memories of him stripping her and pinning her down before she fainted just stop. 🤦

Also, in the author note alongside that part Watase comments that things are getting dark but points out that we've just learned that Yui didn't actually get raped by strangers so it's not all bad. Mate, your protagonist is being assaulted?? We can't take much solace in that revelation right now!

Then there's a bit where Amiboshi climbs on top of her while she's sleeping naked and kisses her without her consent (his parents had drugged her).

Meanwhile, Soi disguises herself as Miaka and tries to seduce Tamahome. I know it's a product of it's time but ughh the way Tamahome almost getting raped is handled so differently to scenes where Miaka is assaulted - it's awful. And there's also a 'gag' parody page where it replicates the scene where Tamahome found Miaka after she's been assaulted by Nakago but makes it look like one of the gay characters had raped Tamahome.

After his comrades have failed to take her virginity and stop her from summoning Suzaku, Tomo, who Watase confirms is gay, also tries to rape Miaka. 😑

In the last volume, Watase shares the ideas that there wasn't space for and they were so good 🥲 maybe you could have removed one of the SA scenes or one of the twenty times Miaka or Tamahome breaks it off and runs away to protect the other?

I used to like the author notes but this time they kept rubbing me the wrong way. Watase would say things like 'too bad we HAVE to spank our tiny terrier puppy to discipline it 🫤' or share racist travelogues about trips to China.

But it's kind of funny that in the author notes, Watase hinted at shipping Tamahome and Nakago 😂 never really gushed about how much she loved Tamahome/Miaka as a ship though. I quite like Keisuke/Tamahome as a ship - they got on well.

I was thinking about ranting about how Nuriko is handled but that's hard because 1. 90s 2. Another culture 3. Watase later came out as X gender so the offensive character notes were probably well intentioned and might be regretted now? 4. The translators had to do the usual thing of deciding which pronouns the character that's almost certainly trans would use, while also translating jokes that implied Nuriko is simply crossdressing for funsies and deciphering whatever the hell happened in vol 8 where Nuriko decided to be cis and in love with Miaka for a chapter or two.

I started shipping Tasuki and Nuriko this time and I was delighted to see 20 whole fics on AO3 but almost all of them misgender Nuriko. Maybe the anime subbers used different pronouns or Nuriko's backstory was different in the anime? Watase said someone did a Tasuki/Nuriko doujin and they wanted to read it. Same!

I used to think I wasn't attached to most of the Suzaku warriors beyond Tasuki because I'd re-read the first few volumes way more times than the rest but Watase really didn't give the others much to say or do! 😬 I feel sorry for the fans of Mitsukake(?) Apparently there were lots of Hotohori fans but I always found him creepy; despite his gentle actions, he never seemed to listen to Miaka's wishes. Yandere behaviour. Lucky for me he wasn't in it much (I also feel sorry for his fans lmao)

Forgot how much character death there was towards the end. It's impressive that Watase included characters from the Genbu and Byakko arcs decades before they were written IRL. I don't think I'll read those since FY suggests they ended badly? I wonder if much was retconned.

[modernwizard]

Reasons I love the Spymaster #62: He likes dolls!

Find my full series under the HELP I WUVS HIM tag or at the why I love Dhawan Master tag.

#62: He likes dolls!

I really, really like dolls, and I really, really like the Spymaster [and I really, really do have a Spymaster doll!], so this reason makes me especially happy!

Anyway, we know from Spyfall that the Spymaster likes using his TCE on people to reduce them to tiny figurines and then keeping them. He remarks to the Doctor that he has kept the original O in miniature "close to his hearts": in a matchbox in his shirt pocket.

In The Timeless Children, the Spymaster also TCEs Ashad, whose miniaturized corpse becomes a plot point and source of his revivification in The Power of the Doctor.

The Power of the Doctor expands on the Spymaster's interest in miniatures. Besides keeping them as tiny mementos of past kills, he also plays with them. Check out the careful arrangement of the TCE'd seismologists:

Obviously the Spymaster has been lecturing them for a while, as this scene begins in medias res. His play makes him the brilliant cynosure and the seismologists his silent, approving audience giving him their full attention. Part of his play occurs because he's not sure when in this elaborate setup the Doctor will show up. Part of it also probably occurs because it represents what he wants: to be the smartest person in the room and revered for it.

Not only does he play with his miniatures, but the Spymaster also explicitly refers to them as a collection. "Do you like my seismologists?" he asks Thirteen. "I think I've got the whole set now!"

The Spymaster himself calls this interest in miniaturized corpses an interest in dolls. "That ain't just any Cyberman," he explains to Tegan and Ace when miniaturized Ashad unminiaturizes and revivifies before them. "It's a Russian doll!"

I know he's referring to Ashad as a Russian doll because a) there are other Cyber people hiding within Ashad and b) he's impersonating Rasputin in 1916, so he's keen on Russian references.

But I also think that the Spymaster just really likes dolls. Of course he likes the miniatures that he makes because they serve as tangible reminders of occasions when he overpowered people with his superior weaponry. Additionally, I think dolls also appeal to him because, unlike people, he can make them do exactly what he wants them to. He can't control much, but he can control his collection of miniature corpses.

To finish off this discussion, here is a picture of my own mini Spymaster. I promise I did not TCE him!!! I heavily resculpted and repainted a Disney Store Naveen head and put him on an action figure body.

Hey...stop making rude gestures!!

P.S. Do you need MORE of the Spymaster in your life?

My most recent charity anthology, Gender Who?,features loads of Thirteen/Dhawan being their feral bastard selves and being happy!

If Masters in general are more your thing, you’re looking for Master Works, my first multimedia charity anthology about Master[s] + companion{s].

All proceeds from these two charity anthologies will go to Migrant Justice, a US-based nonprofit that aids migrant farm workers in political organizing.

And if, after all that, you still want more Spymaster…well, then you need help. And help is here!

Look who’s on the cover! How can you go wrong?! [This is a creative work of fiction intended solely for entertainment and parody. If you’re looking for self-help, it’s definitely not here.]

A humorous, sarcastic overview of the many personalities and faces of the universe’s most notorious supervillain, Your Villain & You invites you on a journey of wicked self-discovery. Choose the characters that you identify with the most, and then be amazed at what that reveals about your personality, childhood, style, gender, kinks, and more.

the master doctor who dw meta sacha dhawan the spymaster spymaster why I love Dhawan Master HELP I WUVS HIM

@natalunasans @queen-of-meows

#doll collection #the master #doctor who #dw meta #sacha dhawan #the spymaster #spymaster #why I love Dhawan Master #HELP I WUVS HIM #and his dorky love of miniatures #and his #and his dweeby insistence on RUSSIAN dolls

[cielospeaks]

game stuff

compiled bc im tired lol

f-h:

archanea banner is actually not bad imo. yumina is cool and i actually kinda like the character development she has from being separated from her twin. i think her being somewhat younger than like. miranda/etc/ other young-ish royalty kept as prisoners of war is compelling, like shes trying to be responsible and act mature despite being a kid and also has the advantage of no love story angle like the others

castor/kashim is cool too, ive seen him around recently and im glad he got in. something abt somewhat pathetic/cowardly yet extremely understandable/relatable ghb archanea bois i am totally digging, w matthis last yr too. caeda and merric are by no means bad choices for the special variants, and im partial to those two + marth as a trio (main lord + soft mage boi + pegasus princess is so peak f e trio content honestly. my original f e parody thingy has that same dynamic as well), esp since the other banner characters are related to them (castor -> caeda and arlen -> merric). and arlennnn elreannnn im screaming in the club congrats on getting in!!! and thank u for coming home to me too. since yumina also came home and castor is ghb ive gotten everyone i remotely want from this banner lol. time to save for the next one

as far as the story chapter i want hresvelger and nidhoggr to prosper and thrive. esp loving nidhoggr for calling out the main characters on their bs. i know were supposed to side w them but honestly im siding w nidhoggr. this fucking child got away with torturing and killing people for years, and just bc she decides she wants to be buddies with her much-older crush from the country she invaded and slaughtered for years means thats all in the past if she believes or whatever. idk they just do not make these protagonists likeable in my opinion. like idk i think theres three basic tiers to protagonists. 1. i love them i want them to succeed. 2. i dont love them but i realize that they should morally overcome whatever they need to, or rather its the better outcome if they do. and 3. i hate them and the story would be better off if these shitheads were just defeated or whatever. and honestly a lot of gacha games are the third category.

for actual plot not to be that guy but i feel like it could be the first step in kasumiverse. for the first few real time months kasumiverse lays low, but in the wake of elanor's resignment from writing publicity for the royal family, in order to fill that void and assert askr/embla dominance for the masses, kasumi and a small squad are sent to embla. they accidentally meet nidhoggr, and kasumi realizes abt the healing power of yggdrassilians.

possibly it starts when the squad first run into eadgyth, a young askran whose parents were emblians, and is being treated like a figurepiece by the order of heroes' supporters. but shes just such a one track absolutely beethovinian classicaloid mind that she doesnt care, for she wants to solve every mystery and uncover the true secret of the worldtree.

kasumi and the others are sent, along with the still figurehead-treated eadgyth, to embla for the ceremony or whatever- eadgyth for publicity and kasumisquad as bodyguards for the order. the chapter 5/6? events happen and they run into nidhoggr? kasumi also learns abt hresvelger and the rest of the worldtree, which like. eadgyth pumps her fist like "i knew it!!!" kasumisquad book 5/6/8 be like "we picked up a weird child" whereas 7 is like "my sexy femme fatale friend got killed offscreen and im having a breakdown"

-dv:

like considering her backstory is not completely revealed im still not 100 percent sure but honestly ivy is cementing herself really early as a contender for at least like a geisha/wuwu level "yea they cool" character. i like that (so far) her family in her backstory are actually loving and caring, and doesnt have a gender bias pitting one gender parent as evil and the other as a saint like other characters. i also like her past/present/future time theme too (tho after b7 i am wary. like it could be cool but it could be incredibly disappointing :/ ) but more to the point she brought the return of the king b skin antonio with her!!! b skin antonio + cn anni shop package ricky!!!!!! we eatin good bois. looks like music bois are back on the (metaphorical) menu. and with ricky finally getting non coa/mary related content in that like. postcard goods im rlly happy. also ricky seems like he could be a ghost too, considering his skin seems to be called ghost sail. posthumous anniv ricky is the dream honestly.

-go:

cyrano please come home. that is all also the event was baller thank you for saving fictional magus cinema cyrano from real history

g-f:

gacha is not good to me but i really want studra so pls come home. i dont rlly think i care abt anything else lol

#gameblogging

[rosemarydisaster]

Oooh, we're airing our Campaign 1 and 2 Hot Takes™???? Because I have a few:

-Whenever Sam's character reveals to not be a two dimensional parody everyone acts like they never saw them as such...but their posts complaining about them being just jokes the week prior are still there. Same for Jester, you just have zero faith in the cast sometimes.

-The fandom baits itself with some queer couples. Like, sure, Shadowgast and Vaxmore had a base. In fact they're both canon (one as an epilogue the other as exs). But the way the fandom took Gilmore (and Essek) and obsessed over them week after week when they weren't even in the shower and then act surprised when Vax moved on is absurd. Sure, to you it was only this morning the last time you read a long meta on Essek's feelings for Caleb, but in game it's been months since they last talked. Stop building your expectations so much and then be mad that the canon differs.

-Tary is underappreciated as fuck. He had a banger of an arc, great story and was super cool LGBTQ rep (a little bit basic, but still great). In fact people always forget him when talking about Critical role's LGBTQ+ characters

-Also, people misgdendering Molly and Kingsley...just why. This fandom likes to be all preachy but at the same time they do this kinda shit. And sure, I'm not going to cancel anyone for a honest mistake. But don't attack the cast for things of the same caliber while denying you've ever done something like that. We all screw up at some point, and if you refuse to admit it, I don't trust you.

-People give Fjord a lot of shit for sleeping with Avantika when he only did it to get some information. While we're at it, I don't like the treatment of that moment in general. Caleb pressuring Fjord into sex with someone his scared of could have been a very interesting conversation on consent, but since Fjord's a dude no one questions that he liked it and done.

-The guests are super lovely and I feel really bad whenever the fandom shits on them for not playing at the same level that the other profesional players at the table. Specially the way people treated Aimee in Exu was wild. She didn't knew the game but still managed to be an excellent roleplayer, not afraid of playing a deeply flawed character as her first (in front of such a massive audience). And people still get mad at her for mechanical details I-

-Fuck all of you being biphobic towards Vax. Not only was he attracted to various NPCs (most notably Gilmore) but he also joked about it in different occasions (most notably, the love potion bit). While we're at it, Scanlan being bi (while part of a joke) was collectively ignored by a big chunk of the fandom, and so was Vex's bisexuality too. Sure, they came out because of jokes, but like so did most of my irl friend group????

-Just, in general the way the fandom treats discourse in general. people act as if every character has to say "hi, I'm Molly, I'm nonbinary and bisexual" for it to be canon. I swear, I will see a post shitting on Vax's bisexuality with thousands of likes and the next one is someone telling a non binary critter to std for saying that it pronouns for J'mon Sa Ord were not the best option. Sometimes you manage to simultaneously speak over LGBTQ+ and POC critters so you can "defend them", while also shutting down their valid constructive criticism.

-While we're at it, criticism. I've seen really cool posts about race, sexuality, gender and feminism from the critter community. This are posts that point out micro aggressions or stereotypes so that the cast can be better. If no one points out something, how the he will you fix it?? They have sensitivity consultants (at least now), but things can always be better.

And then there's that part of the fandom that assumes bad faith from the cast in every single mistake (or perceived mistake). People telling them how they should roleplay their characters and play their game. Bitch, and I mean this disrespectfully, find your own game if you want to play it so bad.

-THE MISOGYNY. Just, wtf. Why do people treat the female cast and the female characters like that?????? The infantilization, the demonization, just the whole deal of judging them differently. I know it is hard to admit that we have this double standard imbedded deep inside us because *society*, but come on. It's just ridiculous and it makes me too upset to even speak about it. I want to make a long post on this someday but, just not today.

-People interpreting things their way (totally valid) and getting mad when the cast had different intentions all along (fuck off). Jesus Christ, just for the love of God and everything Holy, admit you want to play your own game and leave the rest of us alone. Some of you have not played D&D and it shows. It's a roleplaying game in which people do whatever the hell they want. The rest of the annoying crowd is D&D people I would rather die than play with. I don't want to be in a table were people are going to get mad at me when I have different ideas than what they intended.

-Critical Role getting big is not some sort of betrayal. We made them big, now they are big. Easy. If you want to support only the most indie games, go support them and leave us alone.

-Also, stop acting like "being big" means that you can just send hate to the cast. When they answer you always act like they are being super mean because your just a teeny tiny Twitter account and they are famous. Look, if thousands of you keep saying "Keyleth is shit" it's normal that one of you is getting QRT with a "stf" from the cast. They are still people, and you're the one's at Goulet for them not interacting as much ,(which apparently you hate)

-Having said all this, I don't get mad about this shit on a daily basis because I curate my TL to only have people I like and that don't engage on toxic fandom bullshit. If fandom is hindering your enjoyment of the show, use the block button.

#critical role #critical role rant #meta #fandom politics #critical role campaign 1 #critical role campaign 2

[feelinglikecleopatra]

The Prestige

More of Jesper and their wobbly gender.

(CW// dysphoria, pronoun negotiation, communication, “coming out”.)

~

It’s not so much that Jesper has been pretending to be a man their whole life. A better word would be playing. It’s a performance, a bit of theatre.

After observing how men perform their so-called manhood, Jesper walks in their footsteps. They’re very good at it too. Imitating voice and mannerisms, until their performance is indistinguishable from that of others.

In reality their identity is fluid, mobile, changing and changeable. Sometimes they don’t mind at all being perceived as a man. On those days, they live in concert with society—as if society were in fact right about them. Other times, manhood chafes. The act of being narrowed to the particularities of their anatomy is nauseating, suffocating. Not a performance but a violation. On these days, Jesper finds their flounciest dresses, their most outrageous accessories, mismatched combat boots and knuckle dusters and shoulder holsters, and makes of themself a parody of gender. They cannot be defined, they refuse.

On these days, they stay away from the mansion on Geldstraat, from Wylan—the love of their life.

It is with Wylan, under his careful and loving eye, that Jesper learnt the freedom to be themself. Wylan taught them to stop and breath and pay attention, to listen to their heart and speak their mind. They owe their life to him and are willing and ready to spend that life with him—if he will have them.

It takes Jesper four days after telling Kaz they aren’t a man, to tell Wylan. Four days of formulating and reformulating the words that might end their relationship.

Because Wylan is a gay man. Jesper has known it since the beginning. He fell in love with Jesper the Man, Jesper the drag performer. Would it be fair, would it be right for Jesper to now pull the rug out from under him? To reveal themself for the con-artist they are, have always been.

Telling him Jesper isn’t a man, has never been a man, feels like the prestige of a magic trick. You thought one thing, well here’s the truth.

For four days, Jesper contemplates the possibility of continuing the performance. Living on as a man, only a man. It wouldn’t be so hard, they’ve been doing it for twenty four years. They would continue for another twenty four if it would make Wylan happy.

The trouble is, Wylan wants them to be happy. He’s said so over and over and over again. Wylan leaves little room for doubt on this score. And really, Wylan knows them too. Even if he doesn’t know this, he knows them. Everything that matters, from their favourite food to their desperate homesickness.

For four days Jesper tries to anticipate Wylan’s response. Until, on day five, Wylan beats them to it.

“Jesper, are you going to tell me what’s wrong or just keep doing this charade for the next week?”

They’re sitting on the sofa, a twisted pretzel of limbs, and Jesper has been flicking through TV channels for ten minutes. They’re indecisive on a good day. This is a bad day.

“What?” Jesper blinks up at Wylan from where their head is resting on his chest. “Sorry, seems like there’s only garbage on tonight. I really thought that new home renovation program—”

“Jes,” Wylan’s voice is warning. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I don’t—”

With a huff, Wylan snatches the remote out of Jesper’s hand and puts it down on the coffee table. “Talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to say.” They swallow. “I promise, love.”

Wylan’s eyes scan their face, brows bunched. “You’re lying.”

Immediately, Jesper feels their heart in their throat, their belly full of wriggling insects. From the look on his face, Wylan isn’t mad, not yet. But he will be.

“I—” Jesper doesn’t know how to begin. “It’s nothing. I mouthed off at my boss at work and I think she might file a report on it, that’s all.”

This isn’t a lie. This did happen. And still, Wylan narrows his eyes, scenting the falsehood.

“That’s not it. You’ve been weird for days.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do,” Wylan insists.

Jesper’s mind crowds full of the million ways this relationship might end now, on this random Tuesday night. Many of them involve telling the truth, too many. Why can’t Wylan ask them for something easier?

“I—there’s something,” Jesper can barely form the words, has to sit up and move away just to think them, bracing themself for rejection, “I should have told you a long time ago.”

“What is it?” Wylan’s eyes have gone wide, brows knit at the way Jesper pulled away. “Are you okay?”

“I’m—I am, I can be—” Across the room the TV continues playing the random game show they landed on. In the end, the words come out over the sound of several gongs and buzzers alerting the audience to a major prize win. “I’m not a man.”

Wylan’s long lashes flutter for a moment, then, “What?”

“I—I’m not a man.” Jesper has to close their eyes, has to play with the hook through their lower lip to say it in the quiet after Wylan mutes the TV. “Not always, not necessarily.”

“I don’t understand.”

There is only a quiet sort of confusion on Wylan’s face but the words hurt anyway.

“That’s okay, you don’t have to understand. It’s confusing,” Jesper laughs. “I don’t really understand to be honest.”

“Jes,” Wylan reaches out to them but stops halfway, hand hovering in the air between them. “This is upsetting you.”

It isn’t a question because Wylan does know them.

“It’s fine, I’m fine. I just—I don’t want this to change anything between us. I don’t want you to think—to think I—”

“You what?”

“I tricked you.”

“Tricked me?” Now, Wylan looks truly baffled. “What’re you talking about?”

“You love men, you’re attracted to men. I know that, I’ve known that but I’m not—that. You shouldn’t love me.”

At this, Wylan frowns openly. He looks almost angry now.

“Don’t say that,” he says, quietly. “Don’t ever say that.”

“I’m sorry—” Jesper realises their shaking and fold their hands in their lap. “I didn’t mean—”

“Jes, love, can I touch you?”

Wylan is looking at Jesper the way he does first thing in the morning and last thing at night, adoring.

“Please.” Jesper barely finishes the word before Wylan has both arms wrapped around his shoulders and a hand in his hair. “Please, please, please.”

“Jesper, my love, my darling. You don’t have to explain yourself. I love you. I love you. I love men and I love you.”

It feels as if their insides are shaking apart with how much dread spills forth. All the fear and anxiety they’ve been keeping sealed and closed up in the pit of their stomach rattles their bones on the way out.

“I’m sorry I’m not—”

Wylan doesn’t let them finish. “Don’t you dare. Don’t finish that sentence. You are who you are. I fell in love with Jesper Fahey, the gambler and sharpshooter and incorrigible flirt.

“I am surprised,” he concedes, pulling away slightly. “Maybe I shouldn’t be but I am. I—I do think of myself as gay. I have never been attracted to or wanted to pursue a relationship with a woman, this is true. But what is also true is that I love you.”

Saying this, Wylan flattens a hand on Jesper’s chest, feels the thundering echo of their heart.

“What if you don’t know me?” Jesper’s voice is very small. “What if discovering this changes something?”

“I have never been so sure of anything as I am of the fact that it cannot change that.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I do know you and above and beyond the fact I think you’re hot as fuck—” Jesper can feel Wylan’s little laugh against their brow “—I spend every day waiting to talk to you, to laugh at your stupid jokes and hear you say my name. Are you going to stop making stupid jokes?”

“I don’t know if I can,” Jesper murmurs.

“Then I will not stop waiting to hear them.”

“What if—what if some days I want to be introduced as your girlfriend?”

Wylan hesitates, and for the fraction of a second he does, Jesper feels the panic edge back in. Then, he says, “Can I have some time? To think about what this means for me?”

“Of course,” Jesper nods, hands grasping at the fabric of Wylan’s jumper. “Whatever you need. However long.”

It doesn’t take long.

Wylan takes one night and three hours to think.

When he calls Jesper the next day, it’s while they’re having lunch. Sat at a long cafeteria table surrounded by surly men and surlier women, Jesper answers the phone after the first ring.

“I’m coming to the ‘reef.”

“What?” Jesper says around a mouthful of potatoes.

“I’m coming to pick you up.” Wylan sounds like he’s walking. “Be ready in fifteen.”

They’re ready in twenty.

Wylan leads them to the water, striking a measured pace around the edge of the harbour. This part of the city is greyer than the rest, industrial and smoggy. But here, by the water, it almost feels fresh. The sea air blows in and ruffles Wylan’s curls, puts a flush on his cheeks.

“I’ve thought about it.”

“Yeah?” Jesper can’t help the wariness in their tone. “And what did you decide?”

“I’ve decided we can do this.” He stops then and turns to face Jesper. “Whatever this is, however long it takes. I am a gay man in a relationship with a non-binary angel?”

There’s a question in his voice and Jesper realises they never told him what they are, only what they aren’t.

“I like the sound of angel…” They muse, smiling for the first time in what feels like weeks. “And non-binary too.”

“Day by day, okay?” Wylan takes their hand. “Every morning, I want to know how you feel. Which pronouns and how you’d like to be referred to, okay?”

Jesper bites their lip, tempted to cry. “I don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. Call me whatever.”

“It does matter and I will call you what you want me to call you. Introduce yourself to me every morning if you have to,” Wylan grins, squeezing their hand. “It would make me the luckiest man in the world because I’d get to meet you again, every day.”

“I’m crying because of the wind,” Jesper laughs, wiping their face with the back of their hand. “Really, it’s a hazard, how windy it gets out here.”

Wylan doesn’t laugh but he does smile, one of those dimples and teeth smiles Jesper fell in love with, and says, “I love you, Jesper Fahey.”

Now when he says it, Jesper feels it in their whole being, feels it spread like warm syrup from the top of their head to the tips of their toes.

He knows. He knows.

Wylan knows and he loves them still.

~

tags: @juxtaposie @autistic-kaz @genuineformality

A/N: I am in my feelings about Jesper. What can I say?

#jesper fahey #wylan van eck #wesper #polycrows au #enby jesper fahey #sexuality #gender #six of crows #my writing

[zoobus]

"tell me why episode 8 of Ouran High School was vile even by shoujo romance standards" I haven't read or watched Ouran but do tell...

I would need to rewatch Ouran High School to give a fair dissertation of it. My memory of it is just fuzzy enough that I am maybe giving it too much credit for overall progressiveness and maybe too little credit for the actual episode. So take this essaypost a bucket of salt.

Ouran High School Summary - a scholarship student accidentally breaks an expensive vase and has to join a school host club to pay it back. Genderbending ensues.

How I remember Ouran

Funny!

Unromantic, blunt, intelligent (actually intelligent not just the narrator lying to you), and distinct female protagonist. Do you know how rare these traits are?

Playing around with gender roles/expectations in a familiar, loving manner. Parodies and ribbing from people who have affection for or ties to queer culture

Probably a lot of non-japanese introduction to Takarazuka Theater, the all female theater troupe

Haruhi's likeable gay drag queen father

If it came out today you'd definitely see agenders and nonbinaries claiming Haruhi. her indifference and sometimes bafflement to gender is a significant part of her charm

Weirdo boundary overstepping fangirl representation!

Idk the twins profiting off twincest loving fujos was funny

Everyone in this school is a weirdo in some fashion, including the girls, and they're all great.

How I remember Episode 8

Beach ep

Typical beach creeps start creeping on the girls

Haruhi steps in and tries to protect the girls

Haruhi gets thrown off a cliff

Haruhi is saved and the REAL plot reveals itself: Haruhi is a WOMAN and must recognize her place as a WOMAN

Act 1 is Haruhi getting lectured by her harem for an excruciating length of time. She should not have tried to protect anyone because she is a girl. She absolutely should not have tried to argue with those men because she is a girl. There is a small point where she's asked "do you have secret martial arts powers? No? Then don't fight men who are stronger" but with all the "because you are a girl" pontificating, you can't help but question if a weakling guy attempting the same would receive this same lecture. The act ends with a furious Haruhi, a justice driven character, giving the silent treatment because literally no one cares whether her actions were just. That her friends think morality is dependent on gender.

Act 2: One of her friends feigns a rape attempt. To teach Haruhi men are stronger than women. Haruhi recognizes this is fake and thanks him for helping her understand the difference between men and women. Do I even need to say anything here.

Act 3: yeah it's not over, the writers punish Haruhi for being a largely strong, non-submissive female character by revealing she's afraid of thunder so we can see her curl into a ball, shiver, and cry for her mom. Luckily her strong male love interest is there to comfort her in her moment of weak, pathetic vulnerability. The end♥️

Problematic vs Vile

This episode features a lot of tropes they I don't personally like but normally give a pass because there is an audience who truly likes them. But normally these tropes are brief. Normally you don't linger on them. Normally they are not plot drivers. And normally they're not in shows with recurring themes that say man, fuck gender expectations

The heroine attempting to rescue someone on an impulse, only to fail and be protected herself? Then lectured by her love interest for being stupid and dangerous? This is a popular trope. People like it. They like the idea of doing the right thing, of being saved, of a stronger person disciplining them a little while implying they'll always protect them. But that lecture is usually quick! The love interest doesn't spend time trying to convince her she was stupid, to convince her she needs protecting, to convince her she is genetically incapable of helping others!

Attempted rape, like it or not, is a popular trope. Maybe it's because women have been brainwashed into thinking it's bad to show sexual interest, maybe it's the allure of driving someone mad with lust, maybe people just find dub/noncon hot. None of these justifications apply here. Like there is problematic because you're into a kink and there's "this character is pretending to sexually assault their friend solely because she does not fear men enough and he hopes this will curb her sense of justice enough so she never tries to stand up to men again. And she thanks him for it." He is not overpowered by lust. He did not plan to go through with it. Our heroine is weak from food poisoning. It's...unique.

A heroine having a phobia (especially of thunder in manga? Not sure what that's about) is both a trope and also just a normal character thing. A strong, seemingly fearless character revealing a somewhat embarrassing vulnerability in front of the person they trust the most? This is a huge fantasy that I'm fairly certain is equally popular with men. who doesn't crave someone they can safely expose all their weaknesses to? Who will love the parts you despise about yourself?

It's just that these scenes are normally not the book end of a campaign to your inherent patheticness. Your embarrassing fears are not usually meant to underline that this is what you are, know your place. Haruhi was too stupid to hold the gender appropriate amount of fear for men, so she is punished and put back into the correct role of a quivering female Who Must Be Protected. Her character arc is fairly fearless person who sometimes gets into fights she can't handle to...i don't even know. I don't think her character was significantly different after this.

That is why episode eight is bad even by problematic shojo standards and vile in context of the actual anime.

#long post #mine #ouran high school host club #rape mention #misogyny

[tungstenb]

OC Profile

I wasn’t tagged, but I saw @pigeontheoneandonly’s post and it looked fun. Tagging anyone who wants to do this---for real! Tag me! Talk to me about your peeps!

I’m going to answer these as of ME3’s end so I don’t spoil too much that hasn’t been revealed in SAtS.

General

Full Name: Petra Maral Shepard

Alias(es): Born: Petra Maral Nazari, though she’s also gone by Petra Nazarian (reclaiming the truncated -ian suffix)

Gender: Female

Age: 32

Birthdate: April 11, 2154

Place of birth: Arcturus Station

Hometown: None, though she often daydreamed in childhood/adolescence that she had family back on Earth who would take her in (having grown attached to the idea that her parents had family they didn’t talk about). Her mother is from the Pacific Northwest, and her father is Persian-Armenian; from this information, Petra took a special interest in researching what living on Earth would be like---the natural wonder to explore, all the imaginary cousins and friends she’d meet. It was a way to cope with the isolation of being a spacer kid. (Funfact: this is the origin of Liara’s hallucinations in SAtS 15; note the mentions of Douglas firs and the Ararat Plain.)

Spoken language(s): English... and whatever else was required. Learning languages was a sort of backburner hobby for her, so she never got around to making much progress---not for lacking of trying. Liara roasts her endlessly for how awful her Arlees is, but to be fair, Arlees is difficult as hell (as are all asari languages).

Sexual orientation: Lesbian

Occupation: Retired after the end of ME3; she’s permanently disabled given limited resources post-war. Being a lifelong patient and surgical guinea pig to Miranda isn’t something she wants, especially if it only results in marginal QoL improvements.

Appearance

Eye color: Gray/hazel

Hair color: Brown

Height: 5′2″ (and proud of it)

Scars: Gash through left eyebrow (from Akuze); large warp burn spanning from left collarbone/shoulder-ish area to waist (from her encounter with Benezia on Noveria); assorted others that I don’t bother drawing because drawing scars consistently is hard.

Favorite

Color: Dark blue

Hair color: ?? On herself? Just natural. On others I don’t think she has a preference.

Song: She has a high tolerance for annoyingly repetitive music and generally loves pop (from any culture) that’s easy to dance and sing along to. Aside from that, her tastes also probably trend fairly bizarre at times, e.g. she unironically loves meme music and parodies, etc.

Food: Anything that’s hot and filling. She appreciates food that’s self-contained, like dumplings and burritos.

Drink: Coffee, coffee, and then more coffee. She had some bad experiences drinking while younger---and suspects her father struggled with alcoholism---so she’s a teetotaler until she finds herself working with Cerberus (and leans into some very unhealthy coping mechanisms).

Have They

Passed university: Yes

Had sex: Yes

Had sex in public: ...technically yes.

Gotten pregnant: No

Kissed a boy: I want to say no, but... see “bad experiences with alcohol” above; this wasn’t consensual.

Kissed a girl: Yes

Gotten tattoos: Yes. I’m not averse to the idea that she has several smaller tats I just haven’t planned yet, but her most treasured one is her wristband/forearm Armali-style bonding bracelet tattoo.

Gotten piercings: No

Been in love: Yes. This is a touchy subject for her, since she tends to be all or nothing with her interpersonal emotions. It’s easier to feel nothing; Liara just caught her off guard.

Stayed up for more than 24 hours: Yes

Are They

A virgin: No

A cuddler: Yes. Peesh is what my bff refers to as a “spouse barnacle”; i.e., her love languages are “physical touch” and “quality time.” Liara doesn’t mind... usually.

A kisser: Bahahaha, I’d say making out is one of her favorite pastimes.

Scared easily: Nah

Jealous easily: Probably not

Dominant: If we’re talking in bed then not... particularly...

Submissive: More so than you’d expect, but I don’t think I’d specifically label her this way. I’d describe her as attentive. ¬‿¬

In love: Yes

Single: No

Random Questions (tw for self harm/suicide mention)

Have they harmed themselves: Yes. This is a plot point in LWLS Book 2 (for the ME2-era flashbacks), and something Liara references in SAtS Chapter 19: “She carved all her old scars back into new skin.” Petra doesn’t take her Cerberus resurrection very well, let’s just say; it’s unnerving being a palimpsest.

Thought of suicide: Yes

Attempted suicide: Not... yet.

Wanted to kill someone: lmao, she tries not to, but... sometimes it’s just gotta be that way amirite fellas?

Have / had a job: Yep. If we’re talking pre-canon though, then she just took up odd menial jobs around the ships her parent(s) served on. Her father especially was the type to be controlling just for the sake of being controlling, so she didn’t have many opportunities to follow her academic passions; if her parents caught her enjoying something, they usually took it away. Before her enlistment, she also had to devote an excessive amount of time to PT/healing and (failed) training after her botched L3 surgery---one she only consented to under duress.

Have any fears: She has problems with vulnerability, which is why she usually handles situations either with stoicism or inappropriate and unnecessary humor. Relationship-wise, it’s hard for her to reconcile how she fears being alone while also feeling deeply uncomfortable with being Known™.

Family

Sibling(s): None

Parent(s): Hannah Shepard, Artur Nazari

Children: None

Significant other: Liara T’Soni

Pet(s): Fish (dearly departed, RIP). I see Peesh as a dog person, though. Big slobbery dogs.

#petra shepard #pshiara #SAtS #LWLS

[prismatales]

Word Count: 2.8k

Pairings: Ushijima Wakatoshi x Reader (Gender Neutral)

Category: Fluff, Comedy.

Warnings: Mentions of dicks in a comical manner.

Beta Readers: @strawberryakaashi @cassroler @dadchis-girl

Summary: There’s always a first time for everything. For you and Ushijima, this was the beginning of your unique holiday traditions.

Here’s my contribution to the Haikyuu Headquarters SFW Secret Santa! This is my gift for the lovely @kandyshoppe. Happy holidays, love! You’re such an amazing friend and a great artist. Every time I see your art on discord my tummy does a flip. Hope you enjoy my little gift for you, baby!

As far as Ushijima can remember, his family wasn’t used to celebrating holidays such as Christmas while most people tend to enjoy said festivities alongside their whole families or closest friends. Growing up, the closest thing Ushijima experienced was a small dinner with his parents, the dinner usually accompanied by a simple gift every now and then.

Ushijima’s family never got the experience of setting up a christmas tree, or decorating their home with things like those red stockings people used to hang over the fireplace. There was no need to prepare a feast for Christmas night since there is no need for letting  children to make a mess in the living room as they ripped through layers of brightly colored gift paper to look for the presents Santa got them. 

Speaking of the old man in a sleigh, that was a tale nobody could manage to convince a young Ushi to believe in, no matter how many times his teachers and classmates tried so hard to make him believe in. As a result, he made the other children cry more than once when he revealed that Santa didn’t exist…

For him, Christmas was just another day of the year, nothing he had to worry about...That is until you came into his life, and slowly began influencing his perspectives after getting together and eventually moving in together into this small, cozy place of your own.

That summer day when you moved into that small house was one of the happiest moments of your lives. Ushi’s stoic expression hid an excited spark in his eyes at the idea of having a place of his own, accompanied by one of the persons he cherished the most. And despite the many ups and downs that every couple goes through, he’s never come to regret your relationship in the slightest.

Every moment becomes another memory that’s swept away just like the seasons over the passage of time. Before he realized, all the trees had lost their lively appearance and the air became cold and crisp with the arrival of winter.

And when winter finally arrived, so did the same holiday he never bothered paying attention to, that is until you came along.

Ushijima noticed the way your eyes would always fixate their attention on the houses and stores covered in beautiful assortments of lights, spheres and wreaths, admiring their beauty with the same wonder as that of a small child. It was the same way you always paid attention to the surroundings during a trip to the mall, deeply enthralled by the soft tunes of the carols while cradling a warm drink with a smile, enjoying the soothing warmth against your hands with a serene expression.

And yet, despite the utter ADORATION for the holidays, you never suggested decorating the house, no matter how many times you both passed by the rows of lights or the trees they sold at the market.

“You see...my family never bothered celebrating Chritstmas before.” You shrugged casually, stirring the simmering pot of soup over the heat of the stove. “My parents were never that passionate about the holidays, and frankly we barely bothered celebrating birthdays as well.”

With a smaller spoon you took a spoonful of the savory meal, blowing gently on the food before pushing it towards Ushi, who carefully grabbed the spoon from your hands and gave it a taste.

“Is it good?” 

“Mhm.”

Satisfied with his reply, you beamed softly at him and turned back towards the pot to turn off the heat so you both could finally enjoy some well-deserved lunch together. Said meals were always accompanied by some light chatter. He always had a new story to share about his teammates, and you always had something to say about work.

“Since this is our first year together...Would you like to celebrate Christmas together?” His question however, made the conversation differ from its typical subject.

“Well….it would be nice, I guess. Where did all this come from?”

“I see the way you look at all the decorations at the mall and how much you enjoy the songs.” He noticed you got awfully quiet, staring at the plate in front of you for a brief moment before turning back to look at him with eyes filled with hope.

“I’d love to do something with you for the holidays, but only if you’re okay with it!”

“Of course.”

Ushi's answer was short, but his tone of voice told you everything you needed to know. Needless to say, lunch was quickly taken care of before you were both out of the house and headed towards the car.

It was quite a sight for many people, watching you two go through the store almost like a pair of children with free reign over a credit card. Some people who recognized Ushi didn’t hesitate to take pictures when you placed an elf’s hat over his head (he had to crouch down so you could reach him.)

A couple hours later, you came out carrying a christmas tree, decorations and even some ingredients for cookies. Ushi had also brought something else but you didn’t get the chance to see it, since he put it along with the groceries.

Almost like a couple of kids, everything was quickly taken inside. And as soon as the groceries had been left back in the kitchen, the next thing on the list was decorating the living room.

Starting with the Christmas tree...

“ I...think we messed up.” You mutter, looking up at the mess before your eyes. Both you and Ushi are just standing there next to each other, witnessing the monstrosity also known as the “Christmas Tree”. 

The tree itself has such a beautiful shade of green and looks so beautiful that  it can easily be confused for a real one. The decorations however, were on a whole different level…and not in a good way.

“It looks good enough to me.” Ushi’s remark is filled with such confidence that you had the urge to ask if he was faking it. Because the thing in front of you two was anything but “cute”....

It’s covered from head to toe in such differently colored spheres, lights and strings that it hurt to look at it. The lights were also the wrong color, rather than that warm shade of yellow, Ushi  accidently grabbed the ones that had multiple colors, which were also accompanied by an array of different colored strings….Needless to say, it was gaudy.  The tree looked like it came out of a bad parody of the retro era...

That thing couldn’t be considered a christmas tree, but on the other hand, it’s not that bad for your first time decorating by yourselves...right?

“We’ll...worry about that later.” Your attention diverted from the shining atrocity, and instead it went towards the next thing to do on the Christmas list. Strolling once again into the kitchen with Ushi trailing after you like a lost puppy, you picked up the tablet at the countertop and began looking through some tabs, scanning the screen until you found exactly what you were looking for.

“Let’s try this one out!” The tablet is quickly shoved towards Ushi’s face, who blinked twice before grabbing the tablet away from your smaller hand and looked at the reason behind your excitement.

“Christmas Cookies?” There are  different  varieties  of cookies displayed on the long tray. From Santa Clause's face, little snowmen, gingerbread men, candy canes to even little bells, all of them were decorated in beautiful shades of red and green glaze that looked absolutely delicious. The ingredients and instructions are relatively simple, easy enough for someone who’s never baked cookies in their lives. 

The kitchen quickly resembled the white aesthetic landscape outside. There’s layers of flour everywhere you look at, the counter, the sink, your clothes and even your faces. It’s all accompanied with the comforting warmth from the heated oven and the lighthearted atmosphere as you both work in a comfortable silence, kneading the dough and rolling it into a fine layer, just perfect for the cookie cutters to do their one job. As you cut row after row of dough into different shapes, Ushi cut up some squares of parchment paper, laying them over a baking tray and shortly after, the raw pieces of dough were quickly placed down and shoved inside the oven.

With the timer set for thirty minutes, you turned to look at Ushi with excitement. He brushed the flour smeared on your cheek with a thumb, smiling softly before the two of you began cleaning the kitchen together along the rhythm of some christmas classics, waiting patiently for the oven to finish baking the sweet treats…

“....They don’t look like christmas cookies...at all.” The way you looked at these cookies was almost comical. As if life itself had been drained out every time you looked at them. If your cousins happened to look at these treats, they would think they were halloween cookies and your aunts would probably make fun of you for all eternity if they looked at the so called “bells” and “candy canes”...

“They actually taste pretty good.”  You can hear Ushi munching on some of the baked goods. There’s a slight change in his tone as he enjoys biting into one of the treats without a care. When you turned to give him an unimpressed look, you had to fight back a snort. Was he really that oblivious about their not so innocent shape?

Watching him eat that baked failure had to be one of the funniest things you’ve ever seen since you began dating, you quickly pulled out your phone to take a couple of pictures as well as a video. Ushi swallowed the mouthful of sugary pastry and turned to look at you in utter confusion. 

“What’s so funny?” 

“You really don’t see it, babe?” 

You tried so hard to fight back tears. And the phone kept shaking uncontrollably between your hands as it recorded a confused Ushi that kept looking directly at the camera. “Look at the candy canes.”

His eyes went back to the tray, raising an eyebrow in confusion at the deformed, yet tasty cookies. With the same expression full of confusion he turned to look at your giggling self “They don’t look like candy canes but that’s it.”

“Turn it upside down.” You’re trying so hard to contain your laughter at this point. It becomes downright painful to hold it in when he takes hold of one of the treats, all of his focus is on the treat’s shapes as he tries to find the reason you’re acting so strange. Until he finally turns the cookie the way you told him to. “....oh.”

You don’t know what’s funnier, the fact he’s holding a cookie shaped like a limp dick...or the fact he just kept staring at it before shrugging, taking a huge bite so nonchalantly, but by this point you’ve already forgotten how to breathe and nearly end up dropping your phone into the bowl of frosting. He may not get the joke concerning the treats, but watching you nearly slip off the counter in a fit of hysterics pulled a soft chuckle from Ushi. A barely audible one that you completely miss while you send Tendou a pic of your boyfriend eating those cursed Christmas treats.

“Alright, alright…” You wipe a small tear that slipped out before grabbing the outstretched hand before you. Taking a deep breath you look back at the baking tray on the counter. “I think we baked too many cookies. But we can still decorate and give some to our friends, it would be a waste to throw them away.”

“We can always make another batch if you feel like it.”

“Nah, doesn’t matter. Let’s just decorate these and take a break.”

After the little baking fiasco and everything was cleaned and put in its proper place, you decided to just lay down on the couch and take a break. You would be lying if you said it wasn’t disappointing that neither the decorations nor the baking turned out well. 

At the same time you have to admit that spending time with Ushi like this was better than you could have ever imagined. So what if some of the cookies looked like penises and the christmas tree looked like someone had thrown everything representing the retro era, threw it into a blender and poured it all over a poor tree? You could still see a faint glint of excitement in Ushi’s eyes when the lights were turned on. The same glint that appeared again when he was biting on those delicious treats covered in powdery sugar.

You could say it was like an adrenaline rush that you were now coming down from, because slowly your eyelids began getting heavier with exhaustion. The soft fabric of the couch felt like a warm hug enveloping your body, welcoming it to the land of dreams with each passing second.

When Ushi walked into the living room, he was greeted with the adorable sight of your hands tucked underneath a cushion, holding it closer to your sleeping face while you laid face down on the sofa. The fluffy blanket that was always in the living room during winter covered your body up to the waist, except for the fuzzy socks you would always wear at home.

But the prettiest sight of them all was that smile adorning your face even in the middle of a deep slumber. A smile that he’s always cherished ever since that time he first realized he had a crush on you.

Perhaps you would enjoy waking up to a small surprise. With that in mind he went back into the kitchen and began looking for the stuff he bought along with the groceries, ready to prepare something Tendou had shown him during one of their meetings. Something he enjoyed so much and would love to share with you…

A delicious smell flowed into the living room, slowly stirring you awake from the nap. The mouth watering scent of spices coming from the kitchen was impossible to ignore, its alluring presence pulled you in like a moth enamoured by a flame. As you found the source of the smell, the one thing you didn’t expect was seeing Ushi in front of the stove.

“What are you doing, babe?” Even in a drowsy state, that didn’t stop you from embracing his waist from behind, nuzzling into the welcoming heat radiating from him. “And what are you cooking? It smells incredible.”

“It’s called mulled wine. Tendou showed me how to make it.” You took a peek at the simmering pot, which was filled with a bottle’s worth of red wine and spices such as cinnamon sticks, clove, orange slices and anise. He swiftly removed from the heat before it could start boiling and pulled a pair of cups from the cabinets.

And just like that, you found yourselves enjoying a delicious cup of mulled wine as you sat in front of the fireplace, cuddling together under the same blanket from before. The warm and toasty atmosphere, along with the soft music in the background, was one of the most comfortable moments you’d spent together.

“Did you like the wine?”  He kissed the side of your head.

“Mhmm, It’s delicious.” You nuzzled closer to him with a smile, before taking another sip of the mug, sighing in happiness by the comforting flavor of the delicious drink. “I didn’t know you liked this kind of stuff.”

“Tendou taught me how to make it.”

“We should send him something as a thanks….as long as it’s not cookies.”

The room filled with a contagious laughter. You felt Ushi shaking as he chuckled at the reminder of the deformed treats before kissing the side of your face for a second time.

After his laughter died down, Ushi turned to face you. “I’m sorry our first Christmas together wasn’t perfect.” 

“...Huh?”

The two mugs, now empty of their contents, were carefully placed to the side as you turned around in his lap to face his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“We were supposed to have the perfect Christmas together, but it feels like everything came out wrong.”

“Toshi, listen carefully…” 

Your hands cradled his cheeks tenderly, thumbs skimming over his face and tracing circles across his cheekbones with a delicate sweetness he became addicted to. 

“Things may not have turned out perfect but we still had fun, didn’t we? Besides, look at it this way, it could be our own way to spend the holidays! Decorating the ugliest tree ever, making cursed christmas cookies, having some mulled wine near the fireplace. I’m more than happy celebrating like this.”

It felt like a weight had  lifted off his shoulders with your answer. His arms made their way around your waist, embracing you tightly as he captured your lips in a brief and delicate kiss.

“You’re all I want for Christmas.”

Taglist: @godtieruwu @hanniejji @savagetrickster @shoobirino @sugacookiies @unbreakableeiji @pixxiesdust @xmyshya @sugassetter @jayeray

#Haikyuu #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu x reader #ushijima x reader #haikyuu imagines #ushijima and reader #haikyuu fluff

[all-seeing-ifer]

apparently the big ol’ roulette wheel in my brain that decides which scene from little women 2019 i’m going to fixate on each day has landed on “the scene where Jo negotiates the ending for her book” and I really want to talk about the ambiguously-diegetic (is diegetic the right word in this context? idk, let’s go with it) scene with Jo and Bhaer, because I think it reveals a lot of interesting stuff about Jo’s character especially within the context of aroace Jo oh my god please i swear I have other discussion topics I just really like this one

Because there’s a pretty obvious out-of-universe reason why the scene is filmed Like That: sweeping, over-the-top, completely removed from the rest of the film tonally - which is to strengthen the implication that this is all fiction and not something that actually happened to Jo. But I also think that looking at it from an in-universe perspective is quite revealing, and you can interpret it as saying a lot about the way Jo sees romance (and just to be clear I’m working on the assumption that it is a fiction made up by Jo here). However you read Jo’s orientation, it’s pretty clear that she doesn’t really care about romance and that it doesn’t play a big part in her life, so arguably the only avenue through which she experiences it is through fiction. It’s not in the 2019 film, so I’m kind of muddying the waters here, but in the book we get this scene when Marmee asks Jo if she thinks Meg is in love with John:

"Mercy me!  I don't know anything about love and such nonsense!" cried Jo, with a funny mixture of interest and contempt. "In novels, the girls show it by starting and blushing, fainting away, growing thin, and acting like fools.  Now Meg does not do anything of the sort.  She eats and drinks and sleeps like a sensible creature, she looks straight in my face when I talk about that man, and only blushes a little bit when Teddy jokes about lovers.  I forbid him to do it, but he doesn't mind me as he ought."

To me this is a pretty clear indication that Jo’s entire understanding of romance comes from novels, and this gives her quite a skewed view of it. So the fact that the scene between her and Bhaer is so melodramatic and exaggerated makes a lot of sense because we’re seeing what a romantic scene looks like through the eyes of Jo, a person who has little to no experience of or interest in romance. Of course it feels kind of fake and corny and like something out of a 50s movie, because Jo isn’t drawing on real life, she’s drawing on the romantic novels that she’s familiar with.

The other thing about how over-the-top the scene is that it creates the feeling that this is Jo making fun of romance, which feels pretty apt looking at the scene in the publisher immediately beforehand - like she has no patience for Dashwood convincing her to change the ending. She ends up agreeing, yeah, but it’s still in a fairly disdainful way (”It’s romance!” “It’s mercenary”)

And if we do interpret this scene as Jo poking fun at romance, this part of the world that she is disconnected from, I find that very interesting because it connects back to all the other incidents of Jo and her sisters using mockery as a way to quietly rebel against the restrictions of society. Like how the Pickwick Club or Jo and Laurie’s gender-switching dance at the New Year’s party are in a way parodying both gender roles and high society (and oh boy I could write a whole other essay about the extent to which the queer subtext in Little Women is inherently intertwined with the very textual class commentary, particularly in how strongly it conflates the idea of “elegant society” with the idea of performing gender “correctly”, but this is getting way too long already so that can be for another time) - and especially in the case of the Pickwick Club the sisters are very explicitly parodying a social status that they are locked out of because of both class and gender. While the scene with Bhaer isn’t entirely the same deal, you can still read it as Jo performing this parody of societal expectations that she feels disconnected from in much the same way. And again, because I’m never off my bullshit, the connection feels especially strong if you interpret Jo as aro because romance is a societal convention that she literally can’t take part in, so she’s once again taking something that for whatever reason she’s been locked out of and making a bit of a mockery out of it!

#little women #little women 2019 #jo march #ifer rambles #wow i really wish i had the power to write about my little women thoughts without them getting away from me THIS badly #imagine being concise couldn't be me

[lightns881]

DTeam Tumblr Demographics Survey Results (Part 2):

What does DTeamblr look like, what does it have to do with MCYT history, and why does it look like a rainbow?

I’ll make an educated guess here and say y'all enjoyed my last post (totally unrelated to the way I gained almost 50 followers overnight). Anyhow, thank you so much for the overwhelming support! I’m so glad a lot of you felt you could relate to my deep-dive into the leading personality type on DTeam Tumblr. It took me so many hours to write and research, and as a math major and honors student, it’s no easy feat, so I’m so grateful for the attention it got!

Today we’re discussing the general demographics of DTeam Tumblr and why they might look the way they do. Number 8 will blow your mind! So make sure to keep reading and hit that little grey heart and arrow at the bottom if you like it, so more people get to see it! Thanks for your support! Now, let’s jump straight into the post!

Your Daily Dose of Data

From the 449 responses we received, these are some pie charts displaying the gender, age, and sexuality of all respondents.

Image Description: Female (52.8%), Non-Binary (37.4%), Male (9.8%)

Image Description: 16-17 (37%), 13-15 (31.4%), 18 and over (29.4%), 12 and under (2.2%)

Image Description: Bisexual/Pansexual (54.1%), Homosexual (16%), Asexual (14.7%), Other (7.8%), Heterosexual (7.3%)

Mmhm, delicious! Y'all ready to dig into these stats? Because I don’t know about you, but they certainly don’t strike me as what the general population looks like!

Welcome to Tumblr, the Only Community Where Straight Men are the Minority

So these statistics certainly didn’t take me by surprise. Mostly because the DNF Shipper Survey I took some time ago revealed a similar trend. Not to mention, Tumblr is probably the QUEEREST internet community on the planet. 

Funny enough, the survey revealed a shocking number of ZERO heterosexual males respondents. I’ll say it louder for the people in the back. ZERO straight males were recorded out of 449 respondents for this survey!

Now, this isn’t surprising for the Tumblr community by itself, but I can say I’m somewhat surprised in terms of the MCYT Tumblr community. (Obviously, the survey specified DTeam Tumblr, but there is a big overlap between both communities, so I will be using them interchengably when it seems relevant.)

Let’s break this down. The survey reveals the largest age population is 16-17, though it’s not by a great margin in comparison to 13-15 and 18 and older, which doesn’t surprise me either. Some of the major critics of the DTeam Fandom and other MCYT Fandoms love to claim the fanbase’s majority age range lies with children and pre-teens. While it’s an undeniable fact children are drawn to Minecraft, it’s also a misconception to paint it as solely a community for younger viewers.

In the MCYT Tumblr and DTeam Tumblr communities, specifically, we see this is not the case. Only 1/3 of the respondents of this survey are under the age of 16 (you could attribute part of it to the fact younger people might be less inclined to participate in this survey, but it is still a notable difference). I can’t say these age ranges are similar in other parts of the community like DTeam Twitter, Tik Tok, or Reddit, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say Tumblr lies toward the older of the bunch, with Reddit being the oldest and Tik Tok being the youngest (I do hope to perform this survey on some of the other communities, so please stay until the end if you want to help with that).

One of the likely explanations to why the ages for DTeam Tumblr look this way is the fact a big chunk of the community has likely been watching MCYT for a long time (even with breaks in between). I, myself, used to watch channels like PopularMMOs, Aphmau, and PrestonPlayz as a kid, and I presume many of you are familiar with them as well. With the resurgence of MCYT in the past year, it likely drew a lot of the older viewers in addition to the new ones.

But enough about age. What I really want to highlight on this post is the attraction of queer individuals to DTeam Tumblr and MCYT as a whole.

Why is the current MCYT Fandom so queer in comparison to the previous generations?

This is a huge open-ended question and considering I can only capture so much of the DTeam and MCYT community, the rest of this post should be taken solely as a theoretical analysis as opposed to fact.

With that out of the way, let’s start by discussing the shift MCYT has undergone over the years (I promise this will circle back to the question of queerness in the MCYT fandom, but we need some background before we can come up with a decent theory).

When Minecraft was first released, it proved to be a monumental change in the gaming industry. This simple little indie game took the world by storm. It was so vastly different from what the general population generally viewed gaming as (first-person shooters, story-driven games, action games, etc.) Not to mention, it didn’t exactly solely appeal to only a small margin of gamers, those being white cis males.

The gaming industry has notoriously been known in the past for its heteronormative community and general prejudice toward minorities. Though it has gone through a significant change over the decades, we certainly can’t say it’s fully gone.

Yet for whatever reason, the recent MCYT has taken the interest of so many queer people in comparison to other gaming YouTube communities. Why? Why are queer people so drawn to this community? And, more precisely, why does it feel so different than the old MCYT? Lastly, how does this relate to the conclusion about the leading personalities of this fandom we made in the last post?

The Niche Communities of MCYT Over the Years

MCYT has always been a huge, over-saturated genre of YouTube with content appealing to a variety of audiences. It’s dominated gaming content for years, and I think we can all safely say it’s never been bigger than it is today.

So why is it that just now it feels like the queerness of the fandom is popping off? Why now as opposed to say five years ago when MCYT was at another one of it’s strongest stages?

It seems like the community has made a tremendous shift in relation to breaking gender norms and LGBTQ+ subjects, not only in the fans but within the creators themselves. Was flirting and calling a pretty-boy streamer pet names as normal in the past as it is today? Were straight gamer guys putting on dresses and a full-face of make-up as supported back then? Were “marriages” and “pregnancies” within Minecraft boys an everyday occurrence like they are now? How is it that MCYT has dominated a Twitch dating show where flirting with the gay host and among straight contestants themselves is just another bit of entertainment? Where is this all coming from?

Recently, I watched a 2 hour documentary depicting all of the stages of Minecraft YouTube and how it has changed over the years. If you haven’t seen it and you have some time to spare, I HIGHLY recommend it! It’s very informative, and it honestly gave me such a strong sense of nostalgia that makes me choke up every time I think about it. I’ll link it below.

The documentary does a great job at exploring the different niche communities that dominated MCYT since it first took off. Some of such communities include the basic Let’s Players, the team-based Let’s Play channels like How2Minecraft, the roleplay story-centric ones like Aphmau and Samgladiator, the tutorial, building and technical side like Mumbo and Grian, the PVP-centric Bedwars or Hypixel channels, the Machinima community, the comedy side like ExplosiveTNT, the parody music videos, and so many more. All of the mentioned communities have dominated Minecraft at one point or another, many of them still having a rippling effect and/or a loyal community today. All of these communities have certain aspects that define them, some of which parallel the current overtaking content in the present.

How can we compare MyStreet to the Dream SMP?

Taking Aphmau as an example, her MyStreet series had a TREMENDOUS success a few years ago, racking in millions of views and bringing in a lot of money that eventually allowed her to hire voice actors and increase the production of mentioned episodes. The roleplay series was so successful it ran for six seasons!

Now, let’s compare that to the Dream SMP. It seems like a big comparison to be making considering they appear so different at first glance. For once, Aphmau is just one channel whose audience caters toward girls and younger people who enjoy romance. The series is set-up in an episodic-format that resembles more of a TV series than actual Minecraft videos.

Meanwhile, the Dream SMP is a collection of content creators with a mix of improvised storylines and the occasional regular video that resembles more of a Let’s Play series than a RP series.

You could say the only true comparisons to draw out of these two are the popularity they had/have and the profit they brought to their respective creators. 

However, there’s two other key similarities that you’ll find not only within these two specific examples, but many other channels and communities as well. Story and characters.

MyStreet’s story aspect is fairly obvious seeing as it’s a episodic series that focuses on a fictional story. The Dream SMP’s story aspect isn’t as clear, but it’s evident there is a story playing out in the foreground and background, whether intentional or unintentional, or improvised or not.

Character is where some of you might start to question me. It’s obvious MyStreet has characters. I mean, it is a fictional story, after all. But the Dream SMP? Light, they’re obviously people!

Well, my answer to that is yes and no--sort of. The Dream SMP’s story heavily relies on roleplay, bits as you might call them. Events that aren’t necessarily planned out as a fictional plot like the typical MyStreet episode is, but they aren’t exactly real. Schlatt is obviously not a villain in real life, he just likes to impersonate as one for the narrative. Wilbur isn’t crazy, but it’s a way to spice up the heroic story surrounding Tommy and him.

It’s video-game improv. Except the actors behind the content just so happen to be real people playing off the personalities and “brands” they have obtained. 

Brands. It all boils down to this. In the entertainment business, without a clear vision of your project and a clear way to brand what your consumer intakes, your project will likely not find a lot of success.

There’s a reason why Tommy plays off his loudness, using an overexaggerated laugh that although may not be completely fake, it is likely not the laugh he uses everyday. Or why BadBoyHalo is this supposed innocent muffin who doesn’t understand the crafting table meme and other references that are fairly easy to google and find the meaning of. Or why Sapnap is this chaotic being who loves starting pet wars and we love to paint as an arsonist in the Dream SMP. While all of these personality traits may be a part of their true selves, they’re played up for the camera--for the story. They act as the personas that define their characters in the narrative.

They have a clear brand and vision that appeals to the audience and makes them tune in on the daily to see how they all come together. It’s like roleplaying a more extreme version of yourself, one that brings home the money.

Story and characters run across every entertainment outlet. They define their brand. Aphmau has her characters and series. Hermitcraft has a set of memorable personalities and episodic videos that formulate its own story that is less like a narrative and more of a history of the server. ExplodingTNT has his recurring cast and comedic sketches. Most of these niche communities have a form of story and character defining them. It’s how they achieve a clear sense of branding and cater to a specific audience.

Queer Theory in MCYT

Having said all that, why does the MCYT of today draw in so many queer viewers?

Let’s think about this. In my last post, I ended by mentioning DTeam Tumblr is a sort of safe haven for INFP and INxx types who might be placed in the “other” category by society. INFPs, specially, are predisposed for escapism--one common form of it being fiction and entertainment. Not to mention, INFPs are feeling types who, as introverts, seek a personable connection. It’s why it’s so easy for them to obsess over book characters or fall in love with content creators.

Now, let’s imagine a whole community of LGBTQ+ INFP and INxx types. Actually, scratch that, we don’t even have to imagine it.

It’s what our community looks like today.

And why are so many so drawn to the DTeam and Dream SMP of all things? It’s a personable storyline that essentially forms a direct tie to the viewer. Unlike pre-recorded fictional TV series you tune into on your device, the Dream SMP is a whole load of chaos that blurs the lines between reality and fiction where fans can directly connect to creators and get to know them as people through a storyline that features sub-textual queer themes and non-conforming behaviors.

The MCYT content creator community of today is more non-conforming than ever before, and knowing this whole fact, knowing that many of them might place themselves in the “other” category or at the very least aren’t afraid to break the norms and be seen in that light, is a comfort in itself for LGBTQ+ INFP types. Once again, it’s a safe space that helps you escape from the troubles of real life, one you relate to.

Okay. So although this does answer why the fans look like they do, what about the creators themselves? Are we really supposed to believe this all came through naturally? That a bunch of straight guys suddenly decided wearing dresses was something they wanted to do?

I don’t mean to sound cynical here, and I’m in no way trying to insinuate creators have solely some sort of corrupt ulterior motive. Things are never as simple as they look. However, the truth is, a part of it lies on the attention it’s gotten.

I’ve talked a lot about DreamNotFound and the way Dream uses it as a marketing ploy. I stand by my point. However, he’s not the only one who does this in the MCYT community. Why did Finn suddenly go from wearing a dress to cross-dressing as a girl for a whole week? Why are so many creators suddenly deciding wearing dresses is fun? Why does every freaking straight MCYT actively want to flirt with George nowadays?

Let’s just let Techno’s favorite word answer this for us: clout.

It gets attention from one of the largest historically underserved minority community in the entertainment business. We might not be able to see gay flirting in every Netflix TV show or guys not minding dresses and getting fake marriages, but you are certainly going to get at least one of those in every Dream SMP stream and video you tune into. It gets attention. It brings home the money. And do I blame them? Not really.

Interestingly enough, there’s a lot of analytical posts on the MCYT Tumblr community that discuss the dangers of these tactics and why gay jokes and the way queer subtext is treated by MCYT creators is harmful. Despite this, it still attracts such a huge community of queers. So why exactly would queer people actively watch something that’s offensive or harmful to us?

I have a lot more to say about this topic and the morality behind Dream’s tactics, but I’m out of breath for today, so I’ll talk about it in my next post. What better way to start the conversation about the DNF and Karlnap questions of the survey than a good ol’ discussion on the morality of queerbaiting and the likes?

If you got this far, I’d appreciate it if you liked and reblogged this post if you enjoyed it and/or learned something new! Also, important news, I would really like to perform a similar study on the DTeam Twitter Community to measure the differences in demographics across platforms. I would REALLY appreciate it if you guys could go like, retweet and share the link I posted on my Twitter about it (tweet will be linked in the reblog below) so it reaches more of the DTeam Twitter community!

However, if you filled out the survey yourself here or you associate more with DTeam Tumblr than DTeam Twitter please DO NOT fill out the survey again! I’m trying to make sure it reaches the audience that mains on Twitter, but I need a little help with that since I don’t have as big of an influence on Twitter than on here for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, thank you so much for all your support! I really appreciate y’all and make sure to hit the follow if you want to lookout for the next demographics post! <3

(Pssst, I’m releasing a MCYT DNF superpower AU longfic next month... You should totally go check out the post on that if you’re interested in it...)

#dteam #dteamblr #dream smp #dttblr #mcyt #dreamwastaken #dnf #mcyttblr #georgenotfound #dreamnotfound #dttwt #dream team #dteamblr demographics survey

[welcometomy20s]

February 6, 2021

February 8th is the 3rd anniversary of Nijisanji, and to celebrate I want to give you a quip about every single extant member of Nijisanji... since there are over 130, that’s including ID, IN, and KR... but not VirtuaReal, because they are not on Youtube and also.... China... it’s split into three parts. Part 1 covers everything up to the merger that happened on the beginning of 2019.

First Wave

Tsukino Mito - The iinchou. One of the original seiso gone wrong. Mito is something else, a term I used for Haato, but Mito’s degeneracy feels very different. Mito is much more cynical, definitely likes gore like Korone, and definitely one who calculates things. Haato is just beginning to figure out how to play out her degeneracy, to great effect, but Mito knew the future. In that sense, she fits the Student Representative nature.

Remember that Mito is kind of like Sora in Hololive. This comes as the major source tension, for Hololive, it’s the tension of being an idol and being oneself. Here, it’s more like how to best express oneself within the limitation of the medium. It seems similar, but the feeling is quite different, and that’s what makes Nijisanji so different from Hololive.

Higuchi Kaede - I heard she plays the trumpet. Hmm, that’s all you need to know about this person. If you were in band, you know the instrument determines your personality. Trumpet people are outgoing, brash, but ultimately a nice group of people. The girls, in particular, have a cool side to them, even if they present feminine. They are going to be good friends, with no worries of love blossoming. Usually referred to as Deron, which roughly translates to a slobbering napper... and part of JK Gumi with Mito and Rin.

Shizuka Rin - The functional leader of the group. She’s the competent one, pretty good at gaming, pretty good at hosting, good at being both boke and tsukkomi, also good at drawing apparently. Also good at language as well.

Yuki Chihiro - A soft spoken loli who plays a lot of shooters, and is pretty good at them. Also quite pervy at times. So, just your typical salty gamer, who happens to be a magical girl, apparently... so in another word, a brat.

Elu - Full name, Snow White Paradise El Santo Flow Wasurena Pure Princess Livre Love Heidern Dokodoko Yattaze Valkyria Passion Alfr Noel Chakoboshi Eluaria Frosia Made-in Bloom Elu. Shares the illustrator with Hal Shibuya, Toya, Sister Claire and so on. Started out as a talk streamer, known for her wide range of voice, she shifted to playing Minecraft as you usually do. A bit lacking at top, but tries her best.

Shibuya Hajime - Not to be confused with Shibuya Hal, who was affiliated with upd8. One of the more proficient players in Nijisanji, from his start as pro Getting Over It player, to giving tech advice, and eventually establishing himself as a pro PUBG and Apex player. Apparently did some odd tweets that got him under fire, but he’s better now, apparently. Probably why he did so good at the imagination tournament.

Moira - A goddess, you know with ara ara and everything. Apparently seems to have her head above her clouds... which makes sense considering she’s a goddess.

Suzuya Aki - We have a cross-dresser, everyone. According to TVTropes, he’s affably evil, you know the type. Apparently the most normal of the first wave... and as you have might have guessed Toya really likes this kid. It figures.

Second Wave

Morinaka Kazaki - Another loli character, but has an adult form. Formed a duo with Gibara for some goddamn reason... childhood friends with Emma August, and strangely seen as mother-like, although she looks ten half the time. It’s odd.

Mononobe Alice - Not a loli, despite the appearance... and some of her acts. Has a decent grasp in English, which is really pretty cool. Not much other than that.

Suzuka Utako - The shotacon of the group, and just the most perverted person. Usually has a deep voice, but actually has a pretty wide range, and therefore a really good singer. First Nijisanji member to get banned, apparently.

Fumiko Tamaki - Very much Nijisanji’s own Okayu, including the bad live streaming environment, and having a cat of her own, who is just the most bad of kitties... but even more like a cat in how her schedule is what she feels like... apparently got 250 grand by sleeping. Well, sleeping cat is a staple. Also has a tendency to get her jaw taken out... you know those people. As you might garner, very clueless with technology.

Yuhi Riri - She’s from the future... She has a nice boyish voice, but usually is the butt of the joke due to her lore, so no one comments about it. She seems nice.

Ienaga Mugi - Shares the illustrator with Rin, a shut-in who loves video games and her onii-chan, one of the few who actually grows in age. Pretty good musician, likes to flirt with Riri... which is interesting. Had her identity revealed at school... yikes.

Ushimi Ichigo - She’s a strawberry milk sea slug, which is just the coolest thing. Has a father-daughter relationship with Belmond, and good at drawing. Got some cool advice from Matsuri... which actually, uh, isn’t really a good idea, isn’t it?

Kenmochi Toya - Speaking of not being a good idea to be next to lolis... many people point to the double standard about female vtubers being creepy as kind of a quirk, compared to men, who would go straight to jail... and I point to Kenmochi Toya.

He’s a good host, strangely like Matsuri or Marine, apparently the son of Mito, which Mito likes but Toya doesn’t... go figure. Has that v-line chin that is parodied a lot, and likes to rap... which also feels like a Marine thing. Sorry... he’s pretty good on his own.

Fushimi Gaku - Cheerful man who does a morning show and plays horror games. Kind of plays the father figure for the second wave... but also has a dark side, which makes sense considering the children above. Also fit with the horror games above.

Gilzaren III - Rarely streams, but hangs around in the chat a lot, like he’s some kind of an official lurker of Nijisanji. Also speaks with a pretty high tone, which doesn’t quite fit, although this might be a ruse... it’s unsure.

Nijisanji Gamers

Kanae - Kind of have his head in the clouds, which fits the lore of having amnesia. Kind of the leader of the Gamers, and one of the best at gaming. Does long streams and everything, likes PUBG but venturing to Apex and the likes. Good at Minecraft, too. Usually works with Kuzuha, leading to that famous clip... such a good classic.

Overall, a really solid streamer and personality in general. A real gem for the crew.

Akabane Youko - Rarely streams, but she is good at gaming. Has a wild laugh and so people still like her... huh, in some sense she’s the female Gilzaren.

Himawari Honma - Gamers 2nd Generation is an absolute goldmine. There were three, one of them retired, but you still know her (wink wink), and all three are just fantastic. Probably the best is Hima... one of those empty-head people that is really good at gaming... you know, Aqua, but somehow better, least to me.

Like Aqua, she's a pretty good singer and she likes vocaloids. But Hima-chan is like a sunflower while Aqua is an... onion. I mean onion could be sweet, but it always gives off a bad taste at the end, while a sunflower is a pure delight. Just look at her, her emptiness is a light, while Aqua’s emptiness is dark. (You can tell my bias here.)

I never like the dumb sterotypes, but Hima is so warm and comforting in her emptiness that you cannot help but smile at the airhead. She’s just such a good vtuber.

Sasaki Saku - She’s the hot-headed of the three, well two. She picks fights with everyone, including people like Belmond or Yashiro, and they fight back because she’s just an entertaining fighter. She’s entertaining, period.

Kuzuha - Probably one of more well-known male Nijisanji members. Went on the Suisei route, as in, he was independent before joining Nijisanji. Plays FPS with Kanae as mentioned before. Pretty good player, but better at banter. Kind of a mischievous person who is actually quite shy... a little of Pekora in the person, except Kuzuha is more annoying than truly like a villain that is Pekora.

One of the people who says cannot sing, but can actually sing very well. Just overall, a great talent to have and just fun to watch, especially in collabs.

Shiina Yuika - Likes Nintendo, and also does a radio show on YouTube. Actually did a radio show as well once. One of the brutally honest people, and a trouble-maker.

As you kind of expect, Sasaki Saku was the one who really got her into the groove, and during her what-turned out to be an absence, Shiina did feel a bit down. Likes to sleep, which makes sense in the context. Not the best at gaming, but still a fun player.

Aqua really likes her, which is interesting since she shares the illustrator with Okayu, and therefore the two are close friends... and they would go after the poor onion.

Makaino Ririmu - Supposedly a succubus. Definitely headstrong and kind of a loli, so there’s a pretty wide fanbase for her... but she’s honestly a good-hearted person. Just look at her collabs with Kou or Lize... she did calculus for a stream?

SEED 1st Gen

Ryushen - Real name, Sengawa Midori. Singer of uncertain gender, so I’ll use ‘they’. Known to be the planner, and a good one at that. Friends with Sister Claire, and their junior, Kakeru and Hayato. Is part of the group, ‘Rain Drops’ with five other members. Originally stated to be part of VOIZ, a male pop group, but as stated... ‘they’.

As for personality, they are a cool kid, friendly with others. Not a bad person to watch.

Hanabatake Chaika - Muscular Okama Elf who wears a maid dress. Very cool personality, a rough and tumble kind of person. As with the description earlier, the concept is odd, but the person is odd in a more palatable way. Honestly, one of people I would try to seek to watch in Nijisanji. Apparently the cross-dressing thing was enforced, rather than a personal choice. Got turned into a robot once.

As for an example, his 3D debut was actually months after he has gotten them and actually used them in collabs and TV interviews, so Chaika skipped right to the shenanigans instead. Perhaps this spontaneity is what makes Nijisanji 3D better.

Yashiro Kizuku - Concept is a systems engineer, likes rhythm and retro games. Friendly with a lot of people, especially with Sasaki Saku, which they host a gaming show. It’s really fun! They are a good bickering couple. The show is kind of a good gateway for Nijisanji as a whole, I believe. Oh, right the intellectual test with Hima...

Yeah, the blandest concept, but one of the most likable members in Nijisanji.

Dola - She’s a fire dragon. Act as an elder to the SEED group, kind of an admin at the minecraft server, so she’s treated like a god here. Good singer, great dancer.

She’s in a group with Yashiro, Hima, and Kuzuha, where the concept is that they are a family, with Dola and Yashiro being parents, and Hima and Kuzuha being their children, and they are one of the best groups to come out of Nijisanji. You can’t miss them.

Sister Claire - Usually does really short talk streams, which was reformatted to a radio format. One of the last seiso people, but strangely gets along with many of the members, mostly because she wants to be funny, and honestly... succeeds for me.

Also a great singer... who would have guessed? Sometimes treated as a cult leader.

Todoroki Kyoko - A 19 year old gyaru. Self proclaimed normie, but obviously not the case anymore. Great at drawing, but only in 2D. As with gyarus, really nice!

Suzuki Masaru - A chunni cross-dresser. Wants to be cool, but obviously cute. Actually doesn’t really like cross-dressing, but it does get the views. Honestly, he looks cool.

Uzuki Kou - A rich teenage boy, well liked by other people. Great singer but doesn’t show often... he does have a rap about hot pot ingredients that is well-covered by others. Friends with Ririmu, I believe. He’s a nice person to watch.

Azuchi Momo - A 14-year old illustrator who did her own design, and one of the most dangerous members of Nijisanji. Yep, known for her curses and drinking cocktails... and yes, she’s supposed to be 14. But even she recognizes that she’s an adult woman...

SEED 2nd Gen

Takamiya Rion - A student at a magic school. Supposed to be a lass, but in reality becomes like that sketch where two beautiful women are dubbed by kids? Yeah, she becomes like that. Just the least intelligent person... good for moron-sexuals, I guess.

Apparently this is more a debuff, as she can act smart and lady-like in late night streams. She was the one who hosted the imagination event. Also really likes SAO, and therefore fell into Genshin pretty hard last year, and who can blame her?

Asuka Hina - Is sometimes called a succubus, kind of works a producer and did a special producing session as a result. Can be calm and outgoing at once.

Maimoto Keisuke - Originally a farmer, but got tired of it. Does gaming and sport commentary, usually wrestling or baseball. Became someone who always gets tortured by his female peers... strange but not a bad character. Oh, this harassment leads to a lot of anger and there’s a tradition where they burn people virtually... and he always gets lumped in as a person to be burned. Friends with Subaru and Ui, and forms the Oozora family, believes to be a middle-aged man, but others don’t treat him like that.

Amemori Sayo - Typical high school student, but we’re sure she’s a ghost. Does a lot of special effects, leading to tech problems. Kind of a quiet speaker.

Kanda Shoichi - typical college student, has a buddy relationship with Gundou Mirei. Good at gaming, singing and hosting, which means he got his due even though it was a little late. Doesn’t really like Korea, though, which is a problem.

Rindou Mikoto - An oni queen, likes girls and booze. Can hold down a liquor, and hold down a girl... a quick learner in everything, therefore excellent at everything.

I knew her as Marine’s coach at Mario Kart... and now I know the reason.

Joe Rikiichi - He’s a joker, a real comedian. Good at improv. Pretty poor. Does late-night radio with Maimoto as well. He’s always a fun person to watch.

Debidebi Debiru - Demon koala who dabble in the occult. He’s the kid in the family, with all the stubbornness and gumption included. Likes to make nicknames, good in collabs. And as with kids, ultimately a good person at heart, which is why he does collabs.

Probably one of my favorites... I’m kind of miffed his section is so short, honestly.

Sakura Ritsuki - A fairy from another world. Basically only plays minecraft as the resident builder in the area. Got a new outfit, and suddenly got a ship going on with Kuzuha, which is good for her, I guess. Yeah, she does what she does.

Machita Chima - A great singer and bit of a psychopath. Went dark to study for exams, but soon returned to herself. Kind of a younger Suisei is what I’m getting at.

Belmond Banderas - The Corpse of Nijisanji. Low voice, and very kind to everyone. But he can be funny too. If he’s drunk, he’s just your average guy who agrees on everything. Also incredibly lucky, apparently, enough to make a religion with Lize as worshipper.

Yumeoi Kakeru - Singer-songwriter who got calling as a host. Really likes Ryushen to a psychopathic degree, but they are good friends as well. Seriously, he’s one of those well-adjusted psychopaths. Apparently he was a biochemist before singing. Sara calls him papa... which, okay, I guess. Did some shady stuff like catfishing in the past...

Overall, he’s that person who came from a rough background, and that means there’s some edges and some of his strength. Definitely an important asset.

Kuroi Shiba - She’s a four year old dog, but acts like an old lady and eventually earned the suffering characteristic and works at a shady company. But what’s the most fascinating thing is her deep lore. Seriously, it might be one of the most interesting lore before Haachama/Haato became a thing.

Yaguruma Rine - A eleven-year old girl who says the first thing on her mind. Also went dark during exam season, but returned after the summer exams. Practices English a bit during her streams, so there’s that going for her. Also her phone disappeared for a bit.

Harusaki Air - Air here meaning ‘spring’ in Greek. Kind of interpreted as a cleaner version of Toya. He’s a prince, so he’s usually busy... unlike a certain princess.

Naruse Naru - Remember has a different look! Although now he can switch it back and forth... apparently it was management issues? Whatever, won the current mario kart tournament (Mikoto was second) and that’s pretty much it, honestly.

#nijisanji #vtuber #long post