#<- i know you are searching him on tumblr dot com. i know what you are

[jumpinjohnnyjumble]

2001 a space odyssey but hal is the tiktok text to speech voice

[lottiecrabie]

itll be you and me and this idea forever babe.. we might be alone but we Understand🤞

what if it wasn’t just us… 😌🙂‍↕️ and it entered the world through the miraculous art form that is writing by tumblr dot com user lottiecrabie 😌🙂‍↕️😏 (even just a crumblet)

for you my psychic linked sister. a little Crumb🫶

the saxophones and trumpets ring through the ballroom. the repetitive steps and roaring laughs mix through, skisloping off the kicks and twists of the t-strap shoes. the champagne flows out into a series of coupes and you grab one, spilling it on the side. you down a mouthful with a grin, still light and happy from the spinning dance you just twirled out of. 

sweat sticks your headache band to your forehead. you fix up the feather. you fish a cigarette out of the emerald elephant dispenser, placing it between your ruby red lips. your eyes scan for a lighter next. 

‘enjoying yourself?’ your ears perk up at the sound of his husky voice. you smirk, turning around to find detective healy. 

with his modest trench coat and permanently gloomy predilection, he sticks out like a sore thumb amidst the decadent decor. it’s always a little funny to see him around such open fun, like he’s meant to exist in dark, cold alleys, frowning over a body. still, he looks handsome, dark and broody, with his sober eyes and his wild flowing hair. 

you pull the cigarette from your lips with a smile. you shrug, crooning, ‘why, it’s a lovely night.’ healy searches the inside of his trench coat. ‘what about you? not too joyful for mr. grumps?’ 

he shakes his head, though a grin still teases his lips. he draws a lighter out. you lean closer to him, hanging the cigarette off your lips again. he flicks once, lighting up the tip. you exhale out the smoke, but stay near him. he smells like cedar and whiskey, like nights toasting after murders successfully solved.

healy gives you a look, shoving his lighter back in his trench coat. ‘what are you doing here, trouble?’ 

‘can’t a woman enjoy a soirée? my, if i was like you, i’d be locked up in my house all year round.’

‘you’d be safer for it.’

you smile, mischievous. ‘and your life much, much less fun.’ healy gives you a onceover, trailing on your uncovered legs. you take a sip of your champagne, drawing attention to your lips next. you give him a faux-innocent look, singsonging, ‘you know, mister briggs is an excellent charleston dancer.’ 

healy groans, rubbing his eyebrows. ‘tell me you didn’t dance with a murder suspect.’

you up your nose. ‘well, if you don’t want to know, then i guess i won’t share what he said.’ you whip around, taking two steps before a strong hand wraps around your arm. 

you don’t even bother hiding your smirk before turning around. healy gives you a somber look, demanding, ‘spill.’ the tone of his voice sizzles down your spine. 

‘is this a shakedown?’ his jaw ticks. a crystalline voice spills from your lips. ‘you’re cute when you’re annoyed.’

‘then i must be ravishing every time i’m in your company.’

your eyes spark. ‘oh, yes, you are, detective.’ healy swallows thickly, dropping his hand from your hand as if burned. you cock your head, tension still fizzling. ‘promise me a dance and i’ll tell you.’

‘a dance?’

‘oh, you do know a foxtrot, don’t you, detective healy?’

his stare burns. ‘fine.’ 

you hum, turning to look at the roaring party. ‘mister briggs has a lovely summer home in brighton. he loves to entertain his most favorite guests there. why, he just invited me,’ you catch briggs chatting up a young lady, brushing the pearl on her ear. you sigh regrettably, ‘but i’m afraid the cold sea air doesn’t agree with my predilection.’

‘brighton. where francesca would visit every month.’

‘oh yes,’ you throw him a look. your shoulders up excitedly. ‘francesca and mister briggs were having an affair. how scandalous.’ 

he grins and, oh, this might be your favorite look of his. rare but dazzling, shining over his face. he says, ‘that’s motive.’

you tsk. ‘and you didn’t even want me to dance.’ he opens his mouth to protest, but you’re too quick. your throw your coupe on the table, discarding your smoke on the elephant head. you grab his hand, cutting him off, tugging him to the dancefloor. ‘come on, you owe me one.’

‘there’s a murder suspect at large.’

‘oh, please,’ you halt in the middle of the floor; your hand on his shoulder, his finding home on your waist— no matter his protests. the touch is electric, burning through your dress. you feel wired. ‘he’s not going anywhere. this is the soirée of month, after all.’ 

matty sighs resignedly. languid jazz plays. he takes a first step, gliding across the floor. his moves are certain and precise. you follow his rhythm, pushing and pulling at his guidance. detective healy is a good dancer. what an interesting new morsel of information.

in the crook of your ear, healy whispers, ‘one day, all this frolicking with trouble will really get you in deep waters, darling.’

you lean back enough to meet his eyes. ‘then it’s lucky you’ll be there to save me, isn’t it, detective?’

[sadhorsegirl]

need it on the official record that i do love moiraine and lan's relationship sososo much!!!

i love the implicit understanding they have with each other, based partially in the fact that they are both heirs separated from a crown for very different reasons. moiraine and lan are both people who cannot go back to where they came from, whether they want to or not. so there is this shared sense of loneliness, and drift that they share, wrapped up in the idea that they probably aren't going to survive the last battle (or even the journey to it) and would rather sacrifice themselves than have anyone they care for or, in moiraine's case for some people deem more necessary to The Pattern (although to be fair to her, this often still means having a certain level of care for them she just um. wasn't raised to know how to show any healthy positive emotion i don't think) moving in companionable silence eternally Searching™

i've grown increasingly haunted by this exchange they have at the end of new spring:

like............"surrender after you are dead. yes." is the sentiment set up as one of the core values of their partnership starting from the very moment she decides to ask lan to be her warder. surely, this will end well for all parties and will NOT have any tragic implications!

it sets up this really harsh poetic symmetry (surprise) when they have their Big Fight™ in the great hunt. moiraine LITERALLY invokes how they first met with funny little jokes abt him throwing her in a pond to get his defenses down so she can jump scare him w an intense re-examination of their relationship. the whole fight is basically her forcing him to think on his toes so she can examine him at his most basic emotional level in order to try and expose the truth abt how he feels, going from playful to painful at the flip of a coin lol. and he's aware of it!!! him calling her out on it and her answering back w patented Aes Sedai Speak, in a relationship that should be free of such manipulation.....

the real master stroke here, though, is the fact that the chapter is from moiraine's pov. we get to see her own inner thoughts about it and see that beneath the devastating chess game she's playing she's just as heartbroken at having to play it. the argument is really a crystalization of what makes her such an interesting character for me -- she is leveraging absolutely brutal social dynamics in order to, from her perspective, HELP someone she cares for deeply.

essentially, moiraine is saying that in his love for nynaeve he's found something to live for beyond sacrifice and that means that their bond to each other must be terminated. he can create a new life, and bc she thinks she understands how everything will play out moiraine thinks she is just cutting down the time before he realizes he can and will ask for her to dissolve the bond anyway. he isn't wed to death anymore, leaving the heavy implication that moiraine still is.

which sets us up for something really interesting for them in s2 i think! while their relationship in the show seems to generally be under less strain than it is where we see them in the mainline series, there remains another crucial difference btw the books and the show -- moiraine has siuan!!!!! im rly excited to see how that comes into play in terms of any potential interpretation of this fight/the breakdown of lan and moiraine's relationship bc it makes her decision to push him away feel even more hypocritical and rooted in her tendency to be self-sacrificing to the point of self loathing.

tldr for anyone just trying to figure out what this might all mean for season two according to one singular poster on tumblr dot com: in the books moiraine feels very........time to burn all bridges so no one can chase after me on my suicide mission basically and i can't say im NOT excited to see if that's where she ends up in the show (to live is to suffer etc etc)

[ialdabaothvt]

welcome to the tumblr blog of the dreaded lich queen ialdabaoth!

good afternoon, everyone! it’s about time i posted something like this on my blog. allow me to introduce myself, shall we?

so, without further ado… hello! i am, unsurprisingly, the lich queen vtuber known as ialdabaoth (pronounced like yal • da • bay • oth, or yal • da • both if you’re a fast talker). i have a great many names; my enemies know me as the withering queen, and twitch dot tv dot com knows me as OGDemiurge (for the time being, anyway; the name is subject to change. stay tuned for info about that). but you can just call me iald, if you want.

^^ (pictured here is me with my familiar, who also doubles as a semi-living phylactery! his name is czar’gegnal’eral’ax, because fuck you. but you can call him czar for short, if you want. he probably doesn’t mind.)

little known fact about lichdom: maintaining it can be real damn hard sometimes. it’s not easy to be a literal rotting corpse, and to walk around on the street in search of souls to fill your phylactery, without people running away screaming from your spirit halloween lookin ass.

even the queen of england couldn’t keep up the act forever! you really gotta put in the work, and that’s not a particularly easy thing when you’ve focused completely on necromantic spells, and failed to add a little bit of enchantment and/or illusion and/or transmutation to the pile in order to keep your shit covered. turns out, there is such a thing as having too many cool skeletons in your cool skeleton army. and i, unfortunately, found this out the hard way.

so, um…. 🥺👉👈 your soul?? pwease?? oh pwease pwease pwease can i have it?? and put it in my phylactery?? forever??

…yeah, if you couldn’t tell, i’ve downgraded to twitch streaming to fill that shit up. but hey, what can you do? what can you do. if you’ve gotta uwu on the internet to prevent yourself from becoming a disembodied floating skull like acererak, you’ve gotta pull yourself up by the got damn bootstraps and uwu. that’s just how the world works, kid.

so! with that being said. i’m still trying to figure out a schedule for streaming, but even still, i do not plan to allow that to put a damper on my nasty, evil schemes! and thus, i have decided that the date of my first stream will be Wednesday, March 22, 2023, at 5:30 PM CST!! yes, yes! you heard that right! mark it on your calendars, folks!

i will be playing none other than Tyranny that night, which i’ve never played before! so i hope that this will be a fun experience for all of us, and most importantly….. i hope to see you all there!

[mhalachai]

For fanfic writer ask meme: 🦈🐇🏷️

🦈

Which character is the toughest to write?

Tony Stark, 100%. It didn’t help that the comics had spent decades with a character with widely differing characterization; watching the later MCU movies, after the first 2 Iron Men, was like watching a completely different character. It’s a huge problem with all MCU characters (Wanda in WandaVision vs. Multiverse of Madness, I’m looking at you) but it makes for writing Tony specifically incredibly hard, because I imprinted on him in Iron Man 1, yet am trying to incorporate in-verse character choices that seem fully at odds with that characterization (it shows up most in Hour of the Wolf, but in other stuff as well)

🐇

Do you write for yourself, for others, or both?

Me. I’ve tried to write for others in fic exchanges and prompts and stuff and I have a hard time getting motivated. I have to be obsessed with an idea before I can get the words out.

This can backfire as when i lost the obsession, there is negative motivation, but that's something i'm working on. Stay tuned.

🏷️

Is there a tag you like to search for when looking for fanfics to read?

I’m always a sucker for found family, accidental baby acquisition, long-lost relations (especially of the crossover variety), magical realism, kidfic, that sort of thing.

If I’m being honest (and why wouldn’t I, here on tumblr dot com) I find tags more useful in knowing what to not read. There are some tropes that just set my hackles up (ie they squick me out, if that’s something you young whippersnappers understand these days) and so I can get a better idea of what to steer myself gently away from.

The best way that I’ve found to find new good fic is to find a good author on AO3, read their entire back catalogue, and then go look at their public bookmarks. Gold mines, they are.

Turning it back at you all – what tags do you look for when looking for fic? I’m always on the lookout.

From the fanfic writer’s ask meme

[trans-leek-cookie]

The most normal blog on Tumblr dot com. You can kill me with an axe to take my title

hi. I'm some guy on the internet

I dont really have a name I go by online so just call me CVS, J, or Slime, or whatecer. I'm TME and some kinda nonhuman (trans) man, Chinese/White and use he/him, they/them, xe/xem, and whatever other pronouns (minus she/her). I'm also aro/ace

I'm regularly dealing with Mental Health Issues, primarily severe depression mixed with Grief. I'm also just kind of a cunt. This all means I am very Negative as a person.

Proshippers/anti antis, AO3 supporters, transandrophobia truthers, zionists etc. Given the chance I would kill us both.

Not as strong but I'll probably block you if you're a bi/mspec lesbian (and similar label) supporter, "toothpaste" (green+blue) gay flag user, or pro-endogenic systems. Just block me or whatever we shouldn't interact

Also no minors thanks. No hard feelings.

Also- for the love of God Do Not Interact or Follow if you are an ED focused blog. I'm not gonna make any judgements but that topic is just one that is BAD for my mental health.

If you follow me I may look thru ur blog. If I dont vibe I'll probably hard block this isn't super serious the block button is just so fun to press.

I try to tag common triggers as either #(trigger) TW / #(trigger) / #(trigger) ment. The TW form is most common. If I'm unsure it will be tagged "#ask to tag" BUT even if it's not tagged that I'm fine with tagging whatever. I do have a pretty bad memory so if you need a more obscure trigger to always be tagged that probably won't work :^(

Sometimes I talk about personal issues with mental health. I try to tag these but it's not super consistent. Big things are anger issues/compulsive skin picking/Severe Depression.

Transandrophobia isn't real but I'm also the world's biggest transandrophobe. It's a hard job but someone's gotta do it.

Final notes: let me know if I RB from someone fucked up (and if possible please give me a link to the post cause memory issues + tumblr search being Bad is a horrid combo). If I say something fucked up PLEASE specify what it was don't make me assume. I try to write image descriptions for most of the images I post in alt text but they might be bad. I will often say violent or very angry shit bc I have Issues so if that's a problem. Yeah. I'm an artist and art makes me so mad I wish I was dead. Also I'm not into Cookie Run any more I just like Leek Cookie.

[thegreatyin]

clears throat. okay. from the top.

hard pass on this guy. don't get me wrong, i love my men old and i love my men metal, i just. i don't know. something about his vibes rubs me the wrong way. i don't trust him. i don't trust his aura. i also genuinely cannot tell whether or not he's supposed to be a white man with dreads and it's driving me mildly insane so i included two pictures of him. am i going insane?? it's not just me going insane right?? what is this guy's skintone.

i would like to start out this part of the smash or pass list with a preemptive o7 to the (in my opinion) very funny paragraph i wrote about jace before i lost the original ask. rest in piss, gone but never forgotten, etc etc etc. Anyway. pass. this guy is indescribably boring. he is so bland. he is white bread personified. he is the platonic ideal of A Guy. he is the kind of person you'd find in a stock photo when you search up "man with a hood on". he is the kind of person that'd have 2010s starbucks tumblr girls falling head over heels for him onceler-style, and as a genuine respecter of onecest, i do not mean that in a complimentary way. he is like a Standard Hot Guy character that would take off his shirt and have washboard abs and an impeccable lack of body hair regardless of how much sense that'd actually make in lore or in practice. you get the picture. he sucks. i don't like him. i'm sure his lore is fine or whatever but the man himself is not doing it for me

....eh, sure. i could peg him.

FINALLY. GOOD FUCKING FOOD. i am taking this woman on a lovely date and we are having a beautiful night out and she is going to hold my hand and then we are going to. i can't say that on tumblr dot com. anyway. smash.

quick yin smash or pass tip for you: if it's a dragon, automatically assume i'm smashing it. yes no matter what kind of dragon it is. smash. the end.

see above.

please smash or pass tezzeret, jace beleren, kaito, tamiyo, nicol bolas and ugin. i am fascinated by the recent mtg arc of this blog. your answers are so interesting.

okay i had an entire writeup for this ask halfway done and then i made the mistake of clicking on a single tumblr link while i was looking for character references and i lost everything immediately. so. i'll reblog with the actual list in a bit. once i rewrite it. and recover from that immeasurable psychic damage.

[aesudan-kholin]

most of the people in this fandom on this platform know jack shit about mormonism and will only bring it up when they want to make a potshot about sanderson's beliefs in what are usually wildly inaccurate ways. like come on if we're gonna point out the mormon influences in his work why don't we point out the allusion to anything not written in metal not being able to be trusted to the golden plates, or the similarities of kabsal to a mormon missionary, or the parallels between the belief that those in the celestial kingdom will ascend to godhood and get their own planets to run and the shards, or the exmormon influences of jasnah? but no its that mormons think gay people go to hell and sanderson is a mormon so he must believe that. fam they don't even believe in regular hell. go google search outer darkness. existing being gay is not a sin anymore in the church, even though gay sex is sin still on the level of masturbation. but does anyone care to look at the full picture of it? there is so much to be said and so many stories to tell and so many queer people who have suffered under the mormon church and how high the suicide rates are and the homophobic attitudes and polices that affect the day to day lives of those still in and those who leave the church. no one assuming they know what mormons believe so they can make a post on tumblr dot com for clout actually cares about those people though, do they? it's posturing, putting someone down to make themselves look better in comparison. thats not love. thats not helping.

did you guys know that the mormon church recently used BYU to launder hundreds of millions of dollars from canada to the U.S. ? So you guys know about the massive boy scouts of america abuse lawsuits going on right now? Do you know the name of Sam Young? do you know what the CES letter is and its impact? do you know the list of things that can get you excommunicated from the church, of which a sex change surgery and murder and talking trash about the church on the internet are side by side? do you know of the temple oaths of silence, that you might slit your own throat and disembowel yourself before speaking of the things said in the temple? do you know of the horrors of all but compulsory missionary service?

do you know about the cult tactics the church uses to keep its members from leaving? did you know the church is centered around making the member feel never good enough, never as perfect as they need to be? do you know about the honor codes at BYU and that you can get removed from the school or fired from your job for leaving or speaking against the church?

like, does literally anyone talking about mormonism here care about any of that?

and if we're going to hyperanalyze sanderson's beliefs, which i really think is someones personal business unless they specifically state otherwise, especially if saying the wrong thing (particularly as a public figure) can come with severe consequences, from my own opinion and perspective as an ex-mormon, i really dont think he holds hate in his heart for the marginalized groups he is attempting to portray. i think he genuinely cares about doing a good job and having diversity in his books and doesnt think its against god to do so. obviously the environment of his upbringing prevents him from having as honed of an instinct when it comes to diversity as some of us might prefer, but let's not pretend that it's malice or disgust driving unpreferable decisions when thats not what we have evidence of. a nevermo reader might not pick up on it, but sanderson constantly writes themes and narratives contrary to the teachings of the church (looking at you cytonic). he is not bound to the beliefs of the church, as such is the case with many members especially nowadays with all the cultural shifts happening.

so when someone who knows nothing about mormonism takes a narrative decision they find unfavorable and claims its a result of the mormon influences, really consider if its because its actually related to mormon attitudes or if its because mormonism is a convenient scapegoat of which people dont seem to care to know the real truth and problems behind. like, asking the question "how might sandersons religious views and upbringing impact the way he wrote the narrative here?" is such a good and interesting question, but you can only get real meaning from it if you actually know a thing or 2 about mormonism to begin with. hey, watch some john dehlin, i met the guy once, he's great, and the mormon stories podcast is always interesting and informative. or like browse the exmormon subreddit. idk. i feel like actually learning about these things and doing what you can to support victims in this hell church does so much more good than complaining on a website that an author didnt write the story how you wanted and blaming it on his faith in a way that's not even accurate or adding anything to the conversation

[featureenvyproductions]

HEY FOLKS DO YOU LIKE GAY VAMPIRES

do you also like SPACE? how about SENTIENT HUMANOID ROBOTS? how about rivals to lovers MLM ROMANCE?? do you like them ALL AT ONCE???? well then step right up friend because have i got the comic for you!!!

Eyan Eternal is my upcoming science fiction graphic novel which takes place countless eons into the future, following a vampire named Eyan as he roams the ever emptier darkness of interstellar space in search of any life left in the reachable universe that he hasn't outlived. At last on a remote and barely charted world, he finds SOMETHING alive - but it's not at all what he expects. At least...if "alive" is even the right word. Is it even the right word for him? Can you truly define yourself with concepts that weren't conceived with you in mind?

Anyway today I'm kicking off Eyan's existential journey (?crisis?) with the first two chapters just for you FOR FREE BELOW THE CUT *confetti everywhere* and there are more to come (like i said. graphic novel) - I will be posting updates about where and how.

thanks if you decide to read it i hope you like time dilation and weird exoplanets. :)

(cw warning for a nasty burn)

(also I know the quality of preview images is not great on tumblr dot com but they'll look better if you click them and do the slideshow thing. OR you can also read on my website where I can put the slightly better quality ones: http://www.featureenvyproductions.com/comics.php?initialcomicid=3&initialchapter=1)

Edit: I have a tag for the chapters of this now as they come out. There will be 23. https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/Eyan%20Eternal%20Chapter

CHAPTER 2

[cookinguptales]

lord-of-the-ducks said: I still can’t stop thinking about how a popular fan theory was that Nandor wouldn’t turn Guillermo because he viewed vampirism as a curse and then episode 8 aired and people lost their minds so honestly this is also just…already canon in my mind

-------

You know, I really go back and forth on that. While I do think Nandor has some legitimate (and likely permanent) gripes about vampirism, I also think that we need to take basically everything he said in episode eight with a large grain of salt.

One reason why s3 was at times very difficult for me to watch is because it felt like Nandor spent most of the season spinning his wheels and trying to find both reason and outlet for his feelings of depression. He had very real feelings of loneliness, out-of-placeness, and ennui, and he kept trying to pin that on specific “causes”, whether that was being single or being a vampire. And I don’t think that he doesn’t have issues with those things.

But I do think that he had a tendency to see other people being happy and think “I want that”, so he’d start emulating each one in a quest to feel happiness again. He wants to be lively and vibrant and happy like Laszlo and Nadja -- so he thinks romance is the answer. He very much IS lonely. But I think he was trying to use their solution as his answer and it (obviously) didn’t work. He specifically cites wanting what they have, but I’m not sure he understands why they have it, y’know? 

Then he met Jan, a literal cult leader, and well, believed what she had to say, too. He thought becoming human would be the fix to his problems, but I think he eventually realized that wasn’t going to help, either. (Particularly after Colin Robinson’s death, which I think made him remember why he feared mortality. I think he was a little in denial about what it really meant before that point, as evidenced by his weird belief that Guillermo would live through his super sleep.)

I think, honestly, that was one reason for the super sleep. He’d tried a bunch of things to make himself feel better and none of them worked, so he was kind of punting that problem down the road. As someone with serious depression myself, I get it. But I do think he realized that wasn’t going to help, either, which is why he had seemingly abandoned love, humanity, and sleep by the finale.

I think this journey of his feels like one more stop on his search for meaning, and I do think it means something that he wanted Guillermo to come, but also felt the need to “test” him first. I think he’s feeling vulnerable right now. idk if he really meant that he was going to change Guillermo, but I do think that much at least was true. So I think that Guillermo’s “abandonment” is likely going to make him uhhh fairly sulky, to put it mildly.

This has been a long way of saying that it’s not that I think he was lying in episode eight? I think in the moment, that really was the reason in the forefront of his mind for why he wouldn’t turn Guillermo. But I think that Nandor told himself a lot of things in s3, and not all of them were true. So I don’t necessarily take what he said in that conversation as gospel. I think that Nandor does not want to change Guillermo for a lot of very complex reasons that he does not wish to examine, so he uses whatever excuse is handy at the time. His behavior in ep 8 is consistent with the excuse du jour mentality. He often does tie it to whatever’s going on on the surface level of that brain of his, but I think that’s because he’s often fearful of examining his true motives there.

which is why I will make him do it

lmao SORRY THIS GOT LONG I just have a lot of feelings rn, I should probably funnel this into more fic rather than way-too-long replies on tumblr dot com

[dreamsclock]

just searched looking for art of my oc on tumblr dot com as if anyone knows who he is much less has fan art of him. what do you mean i have create the writing to get fanart. sobbing shaking shrieking this is the worst timeline

[gaymcr]

listen i was going to make this really long ranty post about the way ray toro specifically is treated in terms of RPF and what it reveals about fandom racism in relation to the discussion about that since its kicking up again (and gay mcr dot tumblr dot com wouldnt you know is an rpf centric blog) but as it turns out i fucking suck at making those kinds of long posts so i just want you to look at the ao3 breakdown of most popular pairings in the My Chemical Romance tag and tell me whats wrong with it- note the MCR tag has 18000 total works

and after searching ONLY for fics with ray tagged as a character

and i couldnt find hard stats on this cause not every smut writer tags dom/sub (and also gay sex in real life is more complicated than bdsm power dynamics) but i guarantee you every explicit fic i saw with ray tagged either had him be not involved in the smut at all or he topped. like ... okay you know what this reminds me of right

[jeanpoutine]

Queer Coding of Barbie Villains

Hello and welcome to my essay about the queer coding of 2nd gen Barbie movie villains. Those early 2000s barbie movies helped shape my childhood, and I thought it important to pay my respects to the villains who crawled so that Disney could strut. Do I have too much free time on my hands? Yes. Did I relate too much to these villains as a child? Yeah. Did the world need this? No, but the world deserved this.

My sister and I were talking one day about the villain from Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper. You know that evil guy with the poodle and his extremely elaborate musical number, How Could I Refuse? We were talking about how gay he is, which then dissolved into us talking about how all the villains from barbie were gay (The ones we could remember, as we are both in our 20s). Then we got off track arguing about the Order of the Best Barbie Movies™.

But I digress, here they all are.

1. Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princesses (the best movie, and I am not accepting and criticism of my list at this point in time).

Her name was Duchess Rowena. That’s a drag name if I ever heard one. She bad. Remember she came to discipline the princesses, and ended up poisoning the king and trapping the princesses in their magic dancing land? Look at that eye shadow, look at those brows. She could poison my tea any day of the week (slightly worried this will turn into me just being gay all over these ladies). (Also,  voiced by Catherine O’Hara and I stan our Canadian ladies)

She had that pet monkey who didn’t like to me touched (mood), and that henchman who did literally everything for her. She clipped a magic flower from the golden pavilion to take back. That was smart. She was horrified that the princesses had worn out their dancing shoes, because that meant they were out dancing with PRINCES. She also had that little side hustle of stealing from the monarchy. A. business. woman. Anyway, I love that drag Queen.

2. Barbie of Swan Lake (second best movie)

This guys name was Rothbart.

Seriously misunderstood, Rothbart was. Okay so basically, he was in line for the throne of the Enchanted Forest when he was disinherited and his cousin, the fairy queen, got it instead (She maybe gay too). I would be pretty angry, tbh. He left for many years and came back with Dark Magic and a daughter. Um, if that doesn’t scream gay quest I don’t know what does. He gave all these amazing jewels to his daughter and spoiled her and wanted to see a handsome young prince kill a swan which, like same, but lesbian. He might be a bit of a furry, but we all have our faults.

3. Barbie Princess and the Pauper (not fucking Popstar, whoever that kid is)

Okay we all remember Preminger. I don’t really need to explain him. Voiced by Martin Short (another Canadian), he’s the baddest bitch on the block. He just wants to be royalty and marrying any royal will do. If you have any questions about him, please refer to his evil song, his evil poodle, and his constant bent hand (energy and literally). He was a peasant and rose to be the royal advisor. Work. It. If you need more just search tumblr dot com for his name and you’re golden. I would also like to add that in this movie there were animated bloopers and, trendsetter.

4. Barbie as Rapunzel

Okay I will admit that my memories of this movie are a little foggy. There’s a magic paintbrush and a dragon? She paints a dress for herself -which has strong Winx energy- and also a door? The evil Gothel apparently had a thing for Rapunzel’s daddy and stole his kid to get revenge. Hell hath no fury, am I right?

This is her and her evil pet ferret. Honestly, I have no proof of queerness due to the fact that 1) I haven’t watched it in over a literal decade and a half, and 2) I remember it being on VHS in my parent’s basement. Not to stereotype but look at her. Bi queen, at the very least. Valid.

[luckyricochet]

I want you to answer A-Z on the fandom asks so I can peer into your psyche 👀

Wow I love you. This actually took around three hours since I wanted to think about the answers. See them under the cut!

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

From Hanyou no Yashahime — Sesshomaru and Rin

From The Mandalorian — The Mandomera’s been creeping up a little bit. 

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

Honestly can’t think of one. I’m very set in my ships. 

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

From Naruto — SasuSaku. Sasuke was cute as a kid so I get Sakura having a crush on him then, but I think she would have gotten over it when he became a homicidal clown who abandoned the village and tried to kill her and her teammates multiple times.

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

From Harry Potter — Ron x Hermione. I’ve always thought their personalities didn’t match and not in the good “opposites attract” kind of way.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?

I only know how to write angst, drama, and introspective musings so no. 

F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?

Over fifteen years in the Harry Potter fandom, but I’ve had to separate that from JKR herself in the recent years. 

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

“Have I ever had an OTP”? *laughs from shipping hell* 

From The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare — Nat and Kit were my first OTP. Read this book in fifth grade and was immediately loved them. Boy literally risks banishment from the colony to help prove she’s not a witch. 

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?

I love visual media, so TV, anime, and film

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

I’m not going to let tumblr dot com put me off of a particular show/book/etc. itself, but it has definitely made me think less of certain types of fans who are in a fandom. 

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

The...period drama fandom? More widely, the history fandom. They both create some of the most beautiful edits celebrating history and I love it. 

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

 From Avatar: The Last Airbender — It’s gotta be Prince Zuko

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves. (Characters you’re neutral about are fair game, as are characters you merely dislike. Characters that you absolutely loathe with the fire of ten thousand suns are exempt, as there is no point in giving yourself an aneurysm over a character that you hate.)

From Harry Potter — I think Ginny is a Mary Sue but I loved when she stood up for herself in Half-Blood Prince when Ron was trying to slut-shame her. 

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

From Parks and Recreation — Leslie Knope. Unending positive affirmations, thoughtfulness, and support!

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

I don’t really have a main fandom but I haven’t mentioned Free! yet so let’s go with it for this one. 

1. Less Nitori because I can’t stand him.

2. More female characters! I get half the appeal is the boys, but I’d love to see a girls swim team in some capacity. 

3. More Haru and his family dynamics! Doesn’t have to be a ton, but I want to know what his relationship with his parents like, especially as an adult.

O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?

Salt and the Sea - The Lumineers. “From the destruction, out of the flame. You need a villain, give me a name.” Such an Odesta song. (Finnick x Annie from the Hunger Games)

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

For The Mandalorian — A historical AU set in early 1900s New York City where Mando’s just some government agent sent to “report” on slum conditions to satisfy some housing law. He goes meaning to write up a generic report but then finds the orphaned Baby Yoda abandoned in one of the tenements. Shocked by the conditions of the slums, Mando goes from being an apathetic, middling-level bureaucrat to being an anonymous investigative journalist reporting on the corruption in the government that allows for the city’s most vulnerable citizens to live in squalor, leading the government on a search to find who within their ranks is exposing them. 

Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

Sherlock, because it just took so long for the third series to come out. I had moved on to other fandoms by the time it did. Still have fond memories of when I was active in it, though. 

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

From Lord of the Rings — Aragorn and Legolas. This is played up a lot more in the films but I love it. 

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

For Lord of the Rings — Boromir definitely taught Faramir swordplay when they were little kids since their father didn’t want to. 

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

From Hanyou no Yashahime — Rin made the first move. Sesshomaru would be way too clueless to even know how to go about it. 

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

From Pirates of the Caribbean — James Norrington: Commodore in the Royal Navy during the 18th century, must I explain any further? Cool, calm, and collected on the job while looking v good while he does it but a nervous wreck in front of the woman he fancies. Tell me that’s not straight out of Austen.

From Star Wars (OT) — Luke Skywalker: An unapologetically good person in a crapsack world, doing his best to bring light into the world. A classic hero archetype who grows out of his naïveté to become a cunning—but still benevolent—Jedi. 

From Prince of Tennis — Yukimura Seiichi: His duality is *chef’s kiss*. Super scary and in charge on the court, gentle sweet boy who loves art and culture off the court. He struggled for so long but was able to overcome it all through his hard work and willpower.

Bonus favorite, because I couldn’t resist...

From Band of Brothers — Doc Roe: He’s doing the MOST for his guys but he really just needs a hug. Plus he’s got the accent.

V - Which character do you relate to most?

From Little Women — Jo March, especially as portrayed by Saoirse Ronan in the 2019 adaptation. Writer, holds grudges, opinionated, stubborn, eschewed “girliness” in her youth but is more open to it and romanticism as an adult. 

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

I’ve gotten to the point where even the hint of a love triangle tests my patience.

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

It’s about the yearning: Longing Look

Also will definitely always ship the Brooding Boy and the Gentle Girl

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

Anything in the MCU or general superhero content.

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

I love fandom so much. I’m sort of facetious about being obsessed with people who aren’t real on my other social media accounts, but in all seriousness, being able to escape the real world to get excited over characters and relationships that face their own struggles, triumphs, and emotions is such a gift. So often they speak so powerfully on the human experience—How can you read, or watch, any of Tolkien’s work and not be moved by what he has to say about humanity and the power of good? Even if the stories are fictional, the messages they impart about life aren’t, which is what I love so much about them.

[recurring-polynya]

What are your feelings on the 11 division (the characters that matter)

Sooooo... I like the Squad 11 folks as side characters and world building. I like people who like Squad 11, and I enjoy seeing fanfic takes on them. I like writing them myself, because I like to write stories about Renji and Ikkaku and Yumichika are excellent foils for him.

I think IkkaYumi is a cute ship and I enjoy fanworks for it. I headcanon them both as 100% gay, and I always get a chuckle out of old fanfics that attempt to cram them into hetero ships. I headcanon Kenpachi as aroace, but I wish nothing but joy and peace to the many Kenpachi-fuckers on this website.

All that being said, I don’t really vibe with them as characters. I am a pacifist. I value kindness and thoughtfulness and cleverness and adaptability. I would be kicked out of Squad 11 immediately. I wrote a Squad 11 fic recently as a request and I struggled with it a lot, because I couldn’t get all the way into the characters’ heads.

I have more Squad 11 thoughts, but they are not very nice. I am not out to ruin anyone’s day here on tumblr dot com, so I’m gonna put these under a cut, and please feel free to move past this if you aren’t in the mood to have your beloved meatheads subjected to Polynya Amateur Literary Criticism Hour: Squad 11 Edition.

Okay, you’re still here. First and foremost, all of this applies only to canon. There are many wonderful Squad 11 fanficcers out there putting in the effort and doing great work. Any of the things I mention below can be overcome by good enough writing and love for the characters.

- Yumichika is canonically transphobic and that bothers me a ton. It’s not just, like, a brief moment, either, Kubo just really leaned into it, right up through the last arc. I struggle from time to time with being a hardcore fan of a work that spits on people I care about. I have definitely considered quitting the fandom over it, but I do feel like an important role of transformative works is reclaiming the things you love. There are a lot of cool gay and trans folks in the Bleach fandom and I have never seen a single fan who enjoyed or defended the transphobia, so I make an uneasy peace with it. It seems to be fanon consensus to just... ignore it, which is what I do most of the time, but I don’t feel great about it.

- Relatedly, I think Yumichika’s whole love-of-beauty deal could have been done in a very cool and interesting way and Kubo just played it for (unfunny) laughs instead. There are many fanficcers who are doing a far better job at this and we are lucky to have them.

- I think that Ikkaku and Kenpachi are both transcendentally stupid and I love them this way. People try to convince me from time to time that there is more going on in those empty skulls than it seems, and I may smile and nod, but I honestly prefer them as numbskulls.

- Ikkaku and Yumichika each only get 2/3 of a character arc, which is frustrating. They have these dumb fighting philosophies that are clearly harmful to them and do not work well for them, but there’s no closure to it. Yumichika may have done some soul searching during the timeskip, since he’s using high level kidou in the TYBWA, but we didn’t get to see any of it. There are several places where Ikkaku is compared with Iba, who values well-roundedness, and eventually becomes a captain, a position he admits he doesn’t feel like he deserves. This is a bad juxtaposition, because Ikkaku doesn’t want to be a captain anyway. A much better comparison is Renji. Renji is Ikkaku’s student, and is shown as clearly deferring to him, even once he’s a lieutenant. Renji, perhaps better than anyone else, follows Zaraki’s philosophy of “if you lose, consider yourself lucky and live to fight another day.” However, Renji is willing to accept heals, fight with allies, and will do a kidou even though he’s terrible at it, all against the Squad 11 Way. By the time the TYBWA rolls around, Renji is a monster. I’m not sure Ikkaku could defeat any of the captains, and Renji rolls in and shrugs off an enemy who just trashed two captains and a lieutenant without breaking a sweat. If they ever do fight again, Ikkaku is not going to be the one telling Renji his name before he kills him and I think this is important.

- The difference between Zaraki and Ikkaku (and everyone else, really) is that Zaraki is so freakishly strong that he can follow his own stupid rules and still come out on top. He can’t do kidou anyway and he can’t unseal his sword and he can’t work with others because his reiatsu is too strong, so they don’t really make a difference. Everyone else who is following Zaraki’s rules is just hobbling themselves.

- A theme of Bleach is that the greatest power comes in the interface between different kinds of beings and by combining different techniques. This is Aizen’s whole deal, not to mention things like kidou combos and shunko. It would have been cool and more balanced and actually make sense to have characters who focus on one thing be stronger than those who split their efforts, but that is shown time and again to not be the case. Diversification is better, which just makes Squad 11 seem even stupider. They say in the Soul Society Arc that Squad 11 is the strongest, but have we ever seen evidence of this? It just... seems like a lie they made up? (which, I’m fine with, it’s part of the overall dysfunction of Soul Society and I support this world-building). Perhaps it’s just true at low levels, because pretty much all shinigami below lieutenant suck.

- I despise the fact that they killed off Unohana to make Kenpachi stronger. I like to joke that Unohana faked her own death to get the hell out of that arc, but there’s honestly no other way to interpret that than “a man’s potential is more important that a woman’s lived experience” and Kubo can fuck off with that shit.

- It didn’t even make any damn sense! How on earth is a Kenpachi-who-has-realized-his-own-strength better than Regular Kenpachi + Unohana Who Is No Longer Fucking Around? uidghqueghiqergoiewkrgljek

- Up until this point, I have enjoyed the humor in Kenpachi’s character in the sense that he never really tries, and when he does, it’s something insanely dumb like “use two hands” and he makes a huge deal out of it, but then to turn it around and be like “oh, but he’s so strong he’s more important than someone else’s life even though he doesn’t put anything into it,” is just really galling and I hate it.

- I reject the notion that Kenpachi is a “good dad.” He hangs out with a small child. That is not parenting. We never see him providing for Yachiru, advising her through a difficulty, imparting values to her, or even teaching her anything. Mostly, we see her supporting him, when she’s not running around unsupervised. She is, in fact, static, un-growing and unchanging. For all we know, she may de-materialize for large stretches of time. (Once again: I have read very good fanfics about Zaraki being a father, I just don’t think it’s supported by the text). I actually think that’s kind of cool, that he’s just out here vibing with a small child that is really a projection of his own soul, but I do not like it being credited to him as if he's up early baking allergy-free muffins for her or negotiating IEPs.

- The Gremmy - Kenpachi fight was interminable. I did rather like the ending, where Gremmy’s body wasn’t strong enough, but it took so long to get there and it was not worth it.

- I am only interested in Yachiru as a feral zanpakutou spirit. Small children are not particularly interesting to me as characters. I wish that there had been some sort of spiritual connection between her and Unohana, like if she had splintered off of Unohana’s own zanpakutou in order to go make a shinigami strong enough for Unohana to fight. That would have slapped.

- It would have been much cooler if Yachiru had killed Zaraki or absorbed him into herself somehow and gone on to be the new Kenpachi, with Unohana as her mentor.

[ckret2]

Ok, but Alastor being an old man that doesn’t know technology being boyfriend’s with a Victorian man that taught himself how to craft lasers and code *his own damn ship computer/pocket watch phone* is so damn hilarious. Pentious tries to teach him how to use a mobile phone and he either locks himself out of the damn thing or he presses too hard on the screen and ends up skewering the damn thing with his talons.

HONESTLY. HONESTLY in the sequel to CDIH I plan on doing so much with the fact that Sir Pent is keeping up and Alastor ain’t.

Like. Like just picture. Alastor gets dragged kicking and screaming into using ~modern technology~. Once he has been dragged into using ~modern technology~, by golly, he’s going to use it to have some fun! He’s going to decide he wants to watch music videos on YouTube, which is a web site that he has heard exists. He is going to go to the URL bar. He’s going to type in “http:\\www.google.com”, he’s going to look at it thoughtfully, he’s going to squint at the two different slash keys on the keyboard, he’s going to leave the room to ask somebody which direction the slash is supposed to tilt if you are trying to go to Google Dot Com—

“you’re sure that’s the direction the slash mark is supposed to tilt SPECIFICALLY to go to GOOGLE DOT COM?” “yes, I know what I’m doing,” “no, you don’t need to come help me,” “no, I am PERFECTLY capable of going to Google Dot Com without you holding my hand, I was the king of the airwaves back before most Americans HAD radios, if I could handle the radio I can CERTAINLY handle an overpromoted typewriter, THANK you”

—and then he’s going to go back to the computer and delete the entire URL by clicking “delete” 21 separate times, he’s going to retype it as “http://www.google.com”, and then he is going to click enter.

(And please… if this is how slow and difficult it is for him to navigate to google, imagine how much time and effort someone must have spent to slowly teach him how to turn on a computer, how to open a web browser, what a web browser is for, how to highlight the address bar in order to type in a URL, what an address bar IS…)

And then he is going to click in the search bar on Google Dot Com, and he is going to type in “Hello! How do I reach You Tube?” and he is going to puzzle over the little square that says “I’m Feeling Lucky” for a moment before deciding, no, perhaps he doesn’t feel lucky today, and he’ll click on the little square that says “Google Search,” and google is going to be like,

An actual link to YouTube does not appear anywhere on the first page of results. Alastor is lost. He’s adrift at sea with no sign of shore. He will never find his way to YouTube.

He looks at the little list of tabs up top like,

and he dubiously clicks on Videos, because yes, the You-Tube he has been shown had videos, that’s kind of its thing. And the results are like,

And he very dubiously clicks on the first one.

First it plays an ad—oh, he succeeded, he found a video!—and then it plays another ad, Alastor has no ad block, the concept of “ad block” does not exist anywhere within his understanding of the universe, and then it starts playing what looks like an old black and white movie like,

Oh it’s a picture show! He found a picture show on the Internet! How wonderful! He doesn’t recognize the movie but it’s in black and white, it must have been made in his time—

And then a minute and twenty seconds into the video it FINALLY starts playing music and he’s like I DID IT I FOUND THE MUSIC VIDEOS I WAS PROMISED. He pats himself on the back, he’s great at using modern technology, he’s got this all figured out.

He’s got a little yellow pad and pencil he keeps next to the computer to jot down the “Internet addresses” of songs he likes so that he can type them into the “Internet address bar” when he wants to watch them or listen to them again later. He’s found that you have to write them down fast, even though they’re very long, because when the song ends it will move right on to the next one—just like the radio when a song ends—so if you dawdle it will vanish and you’ll never find the song again!

Guess what feature Alastor hasn’t noticed exists and doesn’t know he can turn off.

Guess what other features Alastor doesn’t know about.

Making an account so he can save videos.

Back buttons to go back to a song if he missed the URL.

The controls on a video.

If Alastor likes a song and wants to hear it twice, he clicks on the search bar and types in the whole URL one letter at a time and clicks enter to get it to re-load and play again.

And he’s got no control over this mad unhinged machine that is the YouTube algorithm system, its autoplay is like a car with a brick held down on the gas and nobody holding the steering wheel, it’s just taking Alastor wherever the fuck it wants and if it starts ducking into weird fucking videos Alastor is just going to assume that that’s how YouTube works, it’s no different from the radio, sometimes you’re scheduled for music and sometimes you’re scheduled for ads and sometimes you’re scheduled for interviews or a talk show or news or whatever.

Which means eventually if he lets this untamed shambling A.I. behemoth keep careening around wherever it wants to go, it’s going to start meandering into the niche/weird stuff. EVENTUALLY it’s going to stumble onto something off of Sir Pentious’s channel, and he’s going to open up the video sounding like a Boomer trying to sound cool, like,

(I told the link to load at 5:33 but I think it’s not going to do that on tumblr, I know you all are capable of going to 5:33 yourself because y’all are five million times more competent with computers than Alastor is, just skip to that time ok cool thanks good job)

Video opens up on Sir Pent like that and Alastor is absolutely flabbergasted that Sir Pentious is on the You Tube and then Sir Pent’s like “so I broke into another church to take a joy ride on their pipe organ, per my last video this is the song all four of my followers requested for me to play!” and he takes off like,

and Sir Pent’s trying to sound cool, ends like “Sssmasssh those like and subscribe buttons if you’d like to sssee me illegally play someone else’s pipe organ! :>” and Alastor is sitting there going I HAVE NEVER WANTED TO SMASH ANYTHING SO MUCH IN MY LIFE BUT I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO DO THAT.

He’s so completely shocked and awed to see a video with Sir Pentious in it that he doesn’t even remember to write down the URL, which means he will never ever find the video again.

So: Sir Pent is extremely embarrassingly trying to sound Hip & Modern while playing a 22-year-old out-of-date meme song and he’s only got four followers… but like, but like, he KNOWS the Hip & Modern lingo; AND he knows how to make, edit, and upload YouTube videos and curate a YouTube channel; and he knows how to read the comments on his videos, at least minimally engage with viewers, and keep up with who’s following him…

And meanwhile Alastor doesn’t even know the comment section exists.

Sir Pentious only looks behind the times and out of date until he is compared with the alternative.