#But she was a straight woman so she has less stake in it than a lesbian does

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

My therapist told me she was a lesbian (after I told her I was one) and I kinda soft launched my terfism. I was telling her about an argument I had with a woman involving me not being okay with the assertion lesbians can like penis. My therapist looked like that (the idea lesbians can like dick) was ludicrous, but she was all like "oh, so you were more trans affirming and she was not?" and I don't know how to take that at all 😭 idk if I can be open with my terfism or what. Mixed messages fr.

[lurkingshan]

Japanese QL Corner

Another week chock full of Japanese ql. I am officially dropping a currently airing show from QL Corner--let us never speak of it again. Of the other six shows still airing now, five are streaming weekly on Gaga and the other is available via fansub.

Takara's Treasure

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite things airing—it gets better every week, and it's been good from the start! This story is a great example of the way tension and depth of feeling in a great romance can build. I was delighted to have Takara confirm Taishin's confession and coax him into dating this early on because it means we are going to actually spend some time with them figuring out how to work as a couple. And I don't expect it will be smooth sailing, because these two have some incompatible issues that are going to exacerbate each other.

Cosmetic Playlover

This show is gorgeous, but it all feels pretty empty. Thank you to @usertoxicyaoi for confirming that the show is racing through the plot so it can cover the whole arc of the manga. I'm glad to understand why it's doing this, but it doesn't help with my total emotional disconnect from the story, because the show is rushing through and not letting us actually experience this relationship. They tell us they like each other, then that they're in love, then that they're established and struggling, but I can't feel it because they haven't brought us along for any of that. This week featured an interesting plot about their professional growth and how it challenges their relationship, but I was frustrated because I have no investment in said relationship to give the plot stakes. I may just have to accept that this one will stay a treat for the eyes but lacking in depth for me.

I Hear the Sunspot

We back! After a bit of a miscalibrated installment last week, this episode felt more characteristic and we finally got our boys back on track. Maya was less egregiously mean to people this week and her interference was treated as more comedic than sinister, which is a much better fit for the tone of this show. And once Kohei got around her, he finally talked properly with Taichi and asked him to stay on as his notetaker, reaffirming their friendship in the process. Despite Maya's efforts to convince him otherwise, Kohei has not wavered and his firm declaration that he doesn't want anyone but Taichi taking his notes or eating his food had me gasping. For his part, Taichi is getting better at keeping his cool and finding words when Kohei lets his feelings slip, and he's clearly thinking a lot about his own feelings and whether their connection is really about friendship.

Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko

Oh man, this show has really gotten itself into a muddle. We finally got a kiss, but it hardly felt like a triumph. This episode was a bit of a return to form, with Ayaka back to her relentless pursuit of Hiroko, but the way the story diverged to change the conflict midstream has mucked it all up. For the first half the conflict was about Hiroko believing Ayaka is straight, and then suddenly it was about a different work-related closet trauma that did not connect to that. Now it’s touching on both but in a way that makes Hiroko seem inconsistent, because now that she knows Ayaka is a lesbian it doesn't track that she would continue to patronize and dismiss her, and it also sucks that Ayaka is harassing Hiroko at work despite knowing she doesn't want to be out. It feels like the story is invalidating Hiroko’s fears about being out in a way we know is not consistent with reality. This would all work better if the backstory had been about Hiroko falling for a woman who succumbed to comphet and we kept up the misunderstanding and comedy about Ayaka being straight. As it is, I feel like our heroine no longer makes sense and our couple still hasn't formed a real connection, and with only one episode to go it’s unlikely they’ll land the plane.

Mr. Mitsuya's Planned Feeding

I just love everything about this show and its mature perspective on relationships. In the aftermath of Ishida's hasty confession (and his attempt to walk it back, which I love that Mitsuya did not fall for), we take a beat for Mitsuya to consider the two men circling him and what he wants from his life. I loved that he took the time he needed to process and end his relationship with Noguchi on his own terms this time, and to consider whether he has the desire and the energy to try again with someone new. When he said he has his home and his work and his Frito and that's enough for him, I felt that. But Ishida has already gotten to him, and as Shige wisely pointed out, Mitsuya must care about him quite a bit to be considering this deeply before making a move. I'm not sure he's ready to dive in, but he doesn't have much will to fight it, either. You can go here for the files to watch this episode, with big thanks to @isaksbestpillow and @nicks-den.

Tagging @bengiyo to add this week's anime update.

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 延禧攻略/Story of Yanxi Palace.

Story of Yanxi Palace is a high-budget 2018 Chinese harem drama about the historical-accuracy-adjacent antics of an extremely baller young woman who gets a job working in the Forbidden City in an attempt to discover the reasons behind her sister's death.

Imagine Nirvana in Fire, but only the scenes that take place inside the Inner Palace. So there's still schemes aplenty, but now these schemes are happening among a cast that's 90% women, all locked inside a walled city with rigid rules, excruciatingly strict hierarchies, and a very limited number of ways of getting out alive.

This show was huge in China. The English-language fandom is almost nonexistent. I'm betting most of you reading this have never even heard of it, and if you have, you have only the vaguest idea of what this 70-episode palace drama is about.

I enjoyed this show a whole hell of a lot. I also had some major issues with the show, to the point where I very nearly did not write this rec. But I'm doing it because I think the good parts of the show are worth seeing, and because I think the problem parts of the show are worth thinking about. Interested? Then follow me through these five reasons (and a few anti-reasons) I think you should watch it.

1. The Real Housewives of the Forbidden City

Tired of c-drama sausage fests? Want to see a bunch of incredibly talented ladies act their faces off? Then this is the show for you.

The vast majority of characters in the show are absolute bitches to one another. They are locked in a cutthroat game of power and manners where the stakes are literally life and death, so they spend their whole lives either plotting to take someone else down or counterplotting so the person trying to take them down gets taken down instead. They all know they can't trust one another, but they also sometimes can't not trust one another. They keep their friends close, and their enemies closer.

Unlike most other schemes-based shows, which are all about one big mystery, Story of Yanxi Palace has several smaller arcs. Remember the sister-murder I mentioned at the start? I was prepared for that to take the whole runtime of the show to solve; it actually gets (mostly) concluded around episode twenty-something. Antagonists arise and fall. Situations happen and resolve. Think of it less like a movie's single narrative, and more like a video game's multiple levels. Hooray, we finished Garden World! Now we get to go back to Palace World, but with way more EXP and powerups than we had before!

I know that looks like a bunch of lovely, high-class ladies in that shot, but it's not. It's a pit of vipers. Any woman in that lineup would straight-up shank pretty much any other woman in that lineup without hesitation or remorse. Every woman there knows exactly where she fits in the hierarchy and has a detailed plan for how to take out every woman above her to get to the top -- except for the one in black, who already did take out every woman above her to get to the top, and that's why everyone has to ostentatiously defer to her now.

If you are a fan of TV shows where folk scheme their way to success, this is really a can't-miss property for you.

This is also a show about how smart women have to become to survive being at the mercy of stupid men. Not only are the women being vicious to one another, they're doing so while simultaneousy having to pretend that they are pretty, delicate, vapid ornaments whose only thoughts are how they want the best for their precious emperor and his beloved mommy. It's all about the exercise of soft power, how to hide your knives behind silk sleeves and a sweet smile.

So okay, it's not quite as trashy as reality TV, but it's still bitchy as hell and incredibly fun to watch.

2. You love to hate her (and her, and him, and her)

Now if you've read pretty much any one of my previous recs, you know I like a good baddie, and this is a show with some good baddies. As I said in the last point, this is a show about bad people doing bad things entertainingly.

However, I am not going to tell you who most of the show's love-to-hate characters are, because the vast majority of them do not start out hateable. If the show introduces a female character and you like her, or a eunuch character and you like him, there is like an 85% chance they're going to do a heel turn. (And then sometimes do a face turn after? Look, schemes are complicated.)

But I will tell you about one bitch who's rotten from her first moment to her last: Noble Consort Gao.

Noble Consort Gao is the scenery-chewing, shit-stirring, absolute meanest mean girl in the palace, and it is so fucking entertaining. She's your major antagonist for the first half of the show. She's strategically mean, but she's also recreationally mean. She does the anime villainess laugh for real. Her actor, Tan Zhuo, has set her bitch dial to 11 and isn't even bothering to chew the scenery -- she's shredding it with those incredible metal claw-nails she wears.

Noble Consort Gao is a good starting antagonist because she's so blatantly evil -- and yet somehow still unstoppable. She's a good example of how you can get away with being pretty much openly sinister if you also manage to mind your manners. The reason she gets away with being so damn awful to everyone else is that she's still playing by all the rules. She's managed to weaponize every convention about propriety to lord her power over everyone else. She's like a fucking HOA.

And you'll notice I'm speaking about her with such fondness because she's delightfully awful. In fact, pretty much everyone in this show is delightfully awful. There are exceptions, but on the whole, you want to see them go down, yet you're also going to be a little sad when they go. Even Noble Consort, by the end, you get where she's coming from, and you feel a little bad for her on the way out.

Do you like vengeance? Because we've got some vengeance for you here. Many, many people in this show have been wronged, often by the people they trusted most. And of course they all respond to this in a healthy manner, seeking justice for themselves and for their loved ones through proper channels and reasonable means.

Ha ha, just kidding, everybody here is completely unhinged! The primary difference between a good guy and a bad guy in this show is how many innocent people they wind up taking down with the guilty party. It's messy as hell and we are making popcorn about it.

This is a show full of villains. In fact, this cast is pretty much entirely bad guys, semi-bad guys, potential bad guys, and good people who had to do bad things to survive. There are maybe two non-child characters who are Just Plain Good that don't get nuked almost immediately. Everyone else is some shade of grey. Even our hero (and we'll get to her in a minute) is pretty yikes-inducing cruel when she needs to be.

Going to say this as clearly as I can: This is not a show for people who cannot tolerate moral ambiguity. This is a show for people who love to watch clever bastards work. And pretty much nobody's more of a bastard than Noble Consort Gao.

Ladies and gentlemen, the cunt is served.

3. No, seriously, this is actually what it all looked like

If you are at all interested in this actual time period, you owe it to yourself to see this dedicated work of historical recreation.

The amount of research and detail that went into this production is honestly mind-blowing. Because this show is set in the 18th century, we actually have some pretty great documentation about the places, objects, and people involved in this story -- including some (slightly later, obviously) photographs! The production went all out in its attempts to replicate the setting, including using period-appropriate techniques to create various accessories and objects.

The outfits are amazing -- and excruciatingly accurate in several aspects. I've seen more than a couple people say that their first reaction to the costumes was, ho hum, kind of boring. Well, yeah, compared to some of the absolutely bugfuck-complicated wearable works of art from earlier periods, these are a little understated. But then you start paying attention to the million little details: the embroidery, the hair ornaments, the layers, the fabrics. A whole team of people clearly put a huge amount of work into these outfits.

Nearly every royal character in the show is a real person. You could spoil yourself for several major plot beats just by going to Wikipedia. In fact, I accidentally did this, because I was reading the show's DramaWiki page and thought, oh, that's interesting; I understand why the actor names are links (because it takes you to the actors' pages), but why are so many of the character names also links? Turns out: Wikipedia! So, uh, careful where you click.

One of the great things about the show is how utterly claustrophobic it is. Most of it takes place within the heavily guarded walls of the Forbidden Palace; on the very few occasion it goes somewhere else, you're just traveling to other walled manors and villas. There's one brief scene in a forest, and the psychological difference is enormous. You see a few trees and you're immediately like, oh, so that's why these women are going crazy in their gilded cages.

The drama even shows how some of the least glamorous parts of the Forbidden Palace work: the chamber pots, the coal for furnaces, the mopping, the weeding, the laundry, the fire brigades. It's an enormous production, keeping what is basically a 178-acre city-state running to imperial standards. It's nice to see a drama that acknowledges that while rich people may want to see only clean walkways and fresh sheets, those things don't happen by magic.

If anything, knowing about all this detailed research makes the unintentionally funniest scene in the entire show -- the one with the eunuchs playing Western instruments -- ten times funnier. You had artisans spending months doing exact recreations of historical hairpins, and you couldn't spend thirty seconds asking the internet "when were saxophones invented?" or "does an accordion make noises like a string quartet?" Perfect. No notes.

Trust me when I say you'll get used to the queue haircuts on the dudes. It helps that most of the time, they're facing the camera so they just look like they've got their heads fully shaved, and most of them have heads that look very good shaved! ...Most.

4. The kind of girl who'd make Mei Changsu say damn

The show has a strong ensemble cast, but the woman at the core of all the action is the tough-as-nails protagonist, Wei Yingluo.

The details we have on the actual Lady Wei are sparse. She doesn't really exist as a person in the historical record, to the point where we don't even know her given name (if she even had one) or when she showed up to the palace. We mostly know when she got given her titles, how many kids she gave birth to, some of what she did later in life, and when she died. The show takes these historical gaps and just runs with them, weaving into the silences a narrative that, while implausible, could have happened!

The show starts when Wei Yingluo enters the Forbidden City, not as a royal lady concubine, but as a regular little maid. She's got an agenda, though -- as mentioned earlier, her sister has died tragically, and she wants to figure out why. The stakes get higher as it becomes clear just how much people don't want this question answered, for their sakes as much as for hers.

She very quickly realizes that she can't just live a quiet life and snoop around casually. Too many people are out to get her, and if she's going to survive, she's got to fuck with them before they fuck with her. And they are wholly unprepared for the self-destructive lengths to which she will go to to fuck with them.

Wu Jinyan deserves all the accolades for turning in a great performance. She has to be completely all over the board emotionally and energy-wise for seventy whole episodes, and she brings it. She's very funny and physical when the show calls for her to be! She's willing to flail around and stuff her face and ugly-cry. Then she turns on the don't-mess-with-me stare and the temperature in the room drops ten degrees. Did she get some award for this? [checks her DramaWiki page] Okay, she got several awards for this, good. Even in a huge cast this talented, she's an absolute standout. I can't wait to see her in the Double, which is definitely on my to-watch list.

I'm not going to call Wei Yingluo a Mary Sue, because that's not accurate, but this girl does have some serious plot armor on. You never get the sense that she hasn't earned it, though. She's smart, capable, and more than a little completely fucking crazy. The show makes you believe that the reason she survives most of the shit she pulls off is that everyone is just so baffled that anyone would try it at all that they don't even know how to respond.

I thought about starting out this rec post with Wei Yingluo -- putting her above the cut, in fact, because she really is that compelling. She's back here, though, because it's with Wei Yingluo that we start to slide into my points of critique. Too often, female protagonists are here to solve the problem with their cuteness and quirkiness and extra-special perfectness that shows up all the other girls and captures the heart of whatever boy she needs to save the day. And no matter how this show starts off wanting to make her something different, it ultimately can't conceive of a female lead who isn't at her core just like that.

The writers can never decide how much Wei Yingluo's Manic Pixie Dream Girl act is an act, and how much she means it. The show introduces her as a stone-cold psychopath who is capable of feigning being a carefree brainless uwu smol bean. Later it decides, actually, she's really at her core a spunky, soft-hearted creature who likes to goof off and is just capable of switching on Scheming Bitch Mode when she needs it! And it's like, are you kidding? You just spent like forty episodes telling me that it's all a big trick when she does this, and now you're saying it's not anymore?

It's like they made a character capable of decieving men, and then got decieved by her, which you have to respect. Any fictional character can fool another fictional character; only true legends fool their creators.

sidebar: fuck that dude

The show can never fully commit to this bit, because he's supposed to be our big heroic love interest, but the emperor fucking sucks.

Hands-down the show's biggest moral is that All Emperors Are Bastards -- yes, even the ones in relationships we're supposed to find cute; yes, even the ones whose lifestyles we're supposed to envy; yes, even the ones played superbly by the devastatingly handsome Nie Yuan. While watching we repeatedly invoked this tweet:

Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day

He is the dumbest, most easily played motherfucker in China. Getting horny makes him stupid, and he's horny all the time. He has absolute power over the lives of everyone in the empire, and you can distract him with the mere suggestion of a vagina. He has taken a full You Girls Fight It Out Amongst Yourselves stance toward his scheming harem. This will not go well for anyone.

And speaking of those wives, no matter how many times they loudly profess their undying devotion to him, I have a rough time imagining these women feel anything for the Emperor beyond exhausted contempt. Well, okay, maybe the Empress who married him before he took the throne, since she had a chance to get to know him before he was in full Emperor Mode. But none of the other women should ever stop dunking on this guy like the gullible shitbag he is. If you (like me!) are already skeptical about any given heterosexual romance in fiction, be prepared to roll your eyes through the Big True Love Story this one tries to sell you.

5. Right on the cusp of a fascinating feminist conclusion!

I may be on this one for a while; skip ahead if you like.

Okay, so: What little English-language buzz I've seen about this show has used the word "feminist" about it -- mostly in conjunction with how the show's popularity made the CCP sour on its failure to portray appropriate communist values (???). So I went into it expecting feminism! And I got a show with a whole bunch of female characters in it! And hoo boy, are those two things not necessarily the same!

This show is a great example of how merely passing the Bechdel-Wallace Test doesn't make something feminist. Sure, it's mostly about a single woman who, through her plucky nature, rises in the ranks of power. But that is feminist only by the shallowest, most girlboss, Lean-In-ass definition of the word.

At the beginning, you can kinda tell this was written, produced, and directed by men. By the time you get to the end, you can absolutely tell that the production team was dudes from top to bottom. This, to me, is the big tell: that the show cannot conceive that anything these women are doing could be interesting unless it's trying to stab another woman in the back. There is a time jump very near the end, where the few female characters still standing agree to stop being shitty to one another -- and then fast-forward a decade, because why would we care about seeing what their lives are like when they're not being shitty to one another?

The show is incredibly constrained by Actual History. At the end of the day, it's a Cinderella story, and as such, we have to cheer for the social and legal mechanisms that make it possible -- even when they're grotesquely misogynistic. The show lets its female characters pay lip service to how awful it is that women are little more than breeding stock, but it doesn't let them do anything about it. Mothers can be obliquely sad that their daughters are being fed to the same patriarchy machine that fucked them up, but talking is the most they can accomplish ... because those daughters were real people who were actually fed into the patriarchy machine. We know this. We have documentation. China is very good at keeping receipts.

Wei Yingluo starts out as a servant, and throughout the first half of the show, she moves up and down in the servant ranks -- and all the while it makes the point that being a servant fucking sucks. Maybe it's better when you get to work directly under someone you really like, but the actual job sucks shit and puts you at the mercy of everyone above you in the palace hierarchy. Your life is not your own. You're barely a person. You can easily get executed for merely working in the same household as someone who broke the rules.

The feminist answer to this dilemma is to notice that the system is bad and either a) refuse to participate in it, or b) use your power to mitigate its badness. The show, however, clearly thinks that the real problem with this whole setup is that the people we like aren't at the top of it. Somebody has to take the abuse; you just don't want that somebody to be you. Once Wei Yingluo gets to a place of real power in the palace hierarchy, she starts behaving very much like the people who used to be shitty to her and takes no steps to prevent the early-show damage she suffered from happening to other people.

Now: You can make the argument that if she'd done all those radical things, she would've been dead meat -- and I think you'd be correct! But the show never indicates that it gives a second thought to how abusive and unfair this all is. Survival in this system means exploiting the people below you. There's not a neutral option. And this show expects you to cheer for exploiting the "right" people.

The show never quite seems to internalize what the stakes are -- at least, not for more than a moment or two at a time. I made the Real Housewives joke because the show more or less treats the consort-on-consort schemes as fun catfights by mean girls wanting to be the prom queen. It almost gets to the point of realizing that a woman's place in the harem is literal life-and-death shit for her, and that if she can't produce a son and work him into a powerful position, she's fucked. It always bunts when it gets there, though, choosing to play up vanity and petty grievances instead of the absolute desperation these women must be feeling.

It gets so close with Consort Shun to a real discussion about how awful it is that the men in their lives see them as pretty objects to be bartered for favor and power with other men. But it can't fully go there, because that would undermine the structures propping up this Cinderella story, and then we couldn't feel good about the Cinderella story. And we want to feel good about the Cinderella story. We will burn every other female character in the show if we get to feel good about the Cinderella story.

I've made a lot of jokes about lesbians in this show, but the truth is, it is chronically deficient in lesbianism. Lesbian sex would have improved the lives of at least half the characters here, if not more. Unlike a lot of other historical c-drama shows, Yanxi Palace acknowledges the reality and possibility both male and female same-sex sexual desire -- but it does so in order to say that both are bad. (I legitimately cannot tell if the production is doing this to show how regrettably anti-gay the past was or to play on the audience's expected homophobic disgust. I suspect the latter, but I genuinely don't know.) While it does the fascinating thing of showing desire and coupled relationships between women and eunuchs, it has no idea how queer those setups are, nor does it acknowledge the possibility for same-sex pairings to fill that same positive dynamic.

So why on earth would I list this whole mess of problematic attitudes as a reason for, and not against, watching the show?

Because it is fascinating to think about. Look, I've burned a lot of time and brainpower here writing several paragraphs that no one is ever going to read about how interesting the show's moves are. It has the weird problem where it understands what happens when you lock a bunch of women together in a high-pressure situation keyed to a brutal hierarchy -- but it doesn't ever appear to quite get why. At least, not beyond the sense that people will claw their way to the top of any hierarchy they have access to, just because it's there. (Watch how it treats the few exceptions to this, the rare nonambitious characters. See how long they stay nonambitious.)

As I said when I labeled this point, the show is just on the edge of a smart conclusion, and that smart conclusion has to do with how awful it is that women are both the people who suffer most under heteropatriarchy and the people who work the hardest to uphold it.

Yes, the world into which these women have been thrust is awful. But they make it ten times more awful because they're all semi-voluntarily engaged in a vicious, Highlander-esque zero-sum competition. They could cut one another some slack, but they're more invested in continuing the cycle of abuse to maintain an intense, repressive order. The ones that try to be kind about it get repeatedly fucked by the ones who have no interest in kindness. They all have to engage in performative rituals that mimic sincerity without actually producing a single genuine emotion toward one another. It's horrifying and paranoia-inducing in the extreme. And they're doing most of it to themselves.

If it were really feminist, the moral of the Story of Yanxi Palace would be it does't have to be like this. This dynamic is not inevitable; this is a choice perpetuated by generations of people who benefit from it just enough not to question its correctness.

Sadly, there's still enough promise in patriarchy that being a Good Girl will save you from the shit we put the Bad Girls through -- so don't you want to be a Good Girl? All we need you to do is throw all those icky Bad Girls under the bus. It's their fault for being Bad Girls anyway. But you? You don't have to be afraid. We're not going to hurt you. You deserve all the good things we're giving you. You're not like all the other girls. You're different. You're special.

Just don't forget to watch your back.

If anything, I think the CCP is terribly wrong: This show is an excellent demonstration of communist values, in that if these women had just joined together in solidarity, all their lives would have been so much better! The Emperor should have been posting helplessly on Reddit like "My (55M) consorts (40F, 36F, 31F, 28F, 22F, 19F) have unionized" so the entire internet could come for his ass.

Care to watch?

This is another of those shows you can find in a whole bunch of places! Here's the ones I know about:

YouTube

TVBAnywhere

Viki

Tubi

iQiyi

I know seventy episodes is a commitment. I know eighteenth-century palace drama is a lot. I know that last selling point of mine seemed to go on for-fucking-ever and you probably didn't read any of it. But this show is a beautiful work that I think more people should see, warts and all. Besides, if all we ever consume is ideologically "pure" media, how do we learn to think critically about anything?

True story: My Chinese colleague, knowing I was watching this show, taught me slang for "lesbian." It's 拉拉 (lala). Very useful.

[comewithmeintothedeep]

yeah so i meant like actual LGBTQ spaces that don't 99% cater to cishet women but thanks for the holier-than-thou answer.

As a bisexual bigender woman who has one partner who's non-binary and ace and the other who's cis and demisexual, I do not appreciate this answer nor the snide dismissive tone in response to my attempt to simply kindly educate people about the reality that 'cishet' isn't something you can assume based on...anything, really.

Like, the fact of the matter is that you cannot assume that anyone is 'catering to the cishets' in any capacity. That kind of attitude is how we have situations like Becky Albertalli, the author of Love, Simon, who had been accused for a long time of being a 'cishet white woman writing gays for the straights' until she had to come out publicly about being bisexual - not because she wanted to or felt comfortable doing so, but because she specifically wanted to stop people throwing hate and vitriol at her because they just...assumed that she was a straight writing gays to pander to the straights, so she had to make this aspect of her that she didn't want to make public public to stem the flow of harassment she was getting because of this.

To this day, she STILL gets this treatment/false assumption thrown her way (albeit significantly less, though it still happens).

Bottom line, you cannot assume ANYONE is straight or queer if they have not specifically said so and you ESPECIALLY cannot assume anything of the sort based on their writing or what they produce. If you could, I would have some very interesting assumptions about the authors and artists behind the original Argentinian Cybersix comic because...well, the themes in it are very telling.

But both gentlemen are dead and have been for decades, and thus cannot confirm or deny the idea that they may have been entertaining and expressing a desire to be transgender by expressing it through their work. They cannot speak for themselves, so I cannot assume that they are or are not. The themes are present even if the gentlemen themselves are not and it's an important piece of art that yes, while DEEPLY flawed and sometimes extremely inappropriate and entirely fair to criticize, is an important window into post WWII Argentinian culture, including how they saw queerness and gender.

So no, I'm not gonna make my space 'not friendly' to 'cishet women.' It is not my place nor yours to assume anyone's gender or sexuality when they consume or produce art and writing and is it not reasonable to expect anyone to prove that they have 'queerness cred' to be accepted as 'valid.'

Every single reader here is entitled to their identity and is entitled to enjoy - or not enjoy, that's fine too - my content or anyone else's content in this space in peace and the reasonable expectation that they are welcome and that their identities are welcome and accepted, but ALLOWED to be private. No one should have to prove that they're 'queer' enough to belong.

And, quite frankly, if you're not willing to let cishets who AREN'T queer into your spaces if they do so with innocent/good intentions, you will alienate plenty of people who will be frightened away from accepting/learning about identities that might open their eyes to their own misconceptions about gender and sexuality and introduce them to different kinds of relationships outside of sexuality and their relationship with their own genders, even if they still don't turn out to be queer. We need to be open to allowing people who aren't queer into our spaces because that's how we get meaningful conversations that lead the way to progress.

Either we get more members of our minority, more genuinely meaningful and strong allies who will stand with us and support us, or our ideas won't be seen as so alien and strange and will be more widespread and accepted. If you ask me, these benefits are worth the risks, especially in low-risk and low-stakes spaces as literature and spaces devoted to smutty (and non-smutty) monster-themed fiction.

Everyone belongs here so long as you mean no harm, and NOBODY is required to 'prove their validity' to belong. You're entitled to your identity, you're entitled to keep it private if you're not comfortable being open about it or if you're still figuring it out, and you don't even have to be queer to belong here as long as you're here in good faith to share our space and learn more about us as a community, as people, and treat us with respect.

This is no space for exclusionists. End of story.

[butmakeitgayblog]

Ok but what about the times they want more than the peck kiss. When all they want is to just REALLY KISS the other but can’t because boundaries 🤡

These times are mostly one and the same. Jealousy fuels their behavior often through the years. Each feels guilty about it for seperate reasons; Lexa because she knows she's responsible for the boundaries to begin with, Clarke because she doesn't always know if it's her place.

Not really a snippet but it got long

Lexa is the one who broke it off, but goddammit if they're at a party or out together and someone starts obviously zoning in on Clarke. She can handle light flirting. She doesn't like it, but she can handle it, because Clarke's a beautiful woman who has this pull about her. Its just to be expected. It's impossible to be near Clarke and not want her. She knows that... But, fuck. There is a limit. And it's hypocritical and it's not fair and she knows that, but she will still manage to let herself fuck it up if she's there. She will get more handsy. She will flirt with Clarke more shamelessly. She will pull Clarke closer on the dance floor, touch her more possessively, slip her thigh a little higher between her legs. She will insert herself into their moment, whoever the person is, she'll wrap her arms around Clarke's waist from behind and drop an entirely too sensual kiss to her neck before introducing herself to Clarke's new... friend.

Would she rather find a dark corner of the bar and fist her hands in Clarke hair, watch blue eyes turn flat and darken how she remembers they used to right before she kisses her? Would she prefer to taste how Clarke's gin and tonic would mix perfectly with the whiskey straight that coats her tongue? Yeah. She would... But she can't, because they're not there yet, and they can't go back to what they were just because of her own jealous bullshit. No matter how much she wants it.

But that doesn't mean she doesn't get her way in the end. She knows it's not right. And that it's not fair. But Clarke never seems to stop her.

Clarke is, somehow, even less subtle. Clarke will straight up just plant her flag on Lexa's ass whenever she even gets a tingle that someone is looking to make something happen and not give up her camp for the evening. Because she knows Lexa can hookup, does hookup, with girls randomly around campus. But that shit ain't happening on their nights together. Still doesn't after they graduate. Just because they're just friends now doesn't mean Lexa isn't still very much hers to stake claim over. If Lexa can, so can she. And if it sounds petty, it's because it is, but if a girl does happen to try her luck, god help her she better not be fucking blonde. It's not something Clarke would literally ever say out loud but just the thought of Lexa with some chick who, by her own modest estimation wouldn't be shit other than her stand in, makes her want to be sick. It's fucked and she knows it but so is everything else between them, so she lets herself have that one thing.

And so on those nights, those moments... Clarke gives in to the fantasy. That they're still them. That Lexa didn't feel like she was a burdon. That Lexa still loves her the exact same way Clarke loves her. On those nights 'babe' becomes 'baby' again. On those nights she finds reasons to kiss her for no reason. Lingering pecks that she wants to stretch on for hours, barely making herself turn away to lick and savor the taste of Lexa on her lips. On those nights she decides her seat is always in Lexa's lap, and that if someone has a hard time holding a conversation with her girl while watching her play with Lexa's hair and whisper little inside jokes in her ear? Well, they can just deal. Or leave. Those are the nights when Clarke gets a little daring. Let's herself get a little more drunk, a little more loose, a little more anything that'll it take to have Lexa wind up in her bed.

Just to half naked snuggle. But still.

But honestly? The majority of the moments when they really truly just want to kiss the other one? For no other reason than to feel it be close and have that intimate connection? When they have the worst kind of internal struggles to toe the line, each for their own reasons, is when they're alone.

When it's just them. Being sweet. Being snarky. Making fun of each other or making each other feel safe and cared for. Movie nights curled up on the couch, pressed together, sharing a blanket, Lexa's arm wrapped Clarke's shoulder while Clarke's listens to Lexa's heartbeat from where she lays her head on her chest. It's in moments when they're happy for each other, proud of the others accomplishments or bravery and know how good it would feel to just give in and feel that love in a kiss. When one's sick or distraught and it's like only the other can make it better. Those are the moments when it's hardest and it hurts the most. It's what tears them up, yet keeps drawing them back to each other. What leads to The Incident and every Almost moment before and after. Those are the moments when they kinda just know, "Yeah. I'm never gonna want anyone as much as her."

When they eventually look back over their time as "friends" it won't exactly be a revelation of how often either could've pulled the trigger. It's more a revelation that one struggled just as hard as the other, and having to live with the reality of how much time they wasted.

[nagirambles]

Rambling about Fairies - Manga Chapter 187

Perhaps we’re all tired of this argument already, but I’m going to make another one anyways. I wish all those who got on-screen haircuts, stayed cut. 

Look. It’s not about whether they ‘looked good’ in it or not. 

Yes, Wendy’s short hair is cute, but that’s not the point. The point is the short hair was a mark of her resolve, of her maturity, of her breakthrough as a character, as a member of Fairy Tail. It is her scar of honour after facing death and smiling in its embrace. I don’t care if some haircuts looked ugly to whichever aesthetic police out there, giving their long hair back just ruined any significance of them ever being shown with short hair at all. Wendy may as well have gone through that whole fight with magically uncuttable long hair for all the difference it made to the conclusion and overall logic of the show’s hair physics. 

(...Scars, exactly! If Gray gets a scar somewhere obvious (brow) as early as Galuna, why does Juvia get it in a place almost always hidden? Why does Erza keep neither her eye scar in her flashback nor her cheek scar in this arc, even though Knightwalker keeps her nose scar? The intention is so clear-- should girls never be anything less than conventionally beautiful to Mashima’s standards? Long, straight/wavy hair, pristine sameface, we get that you have a type, Mashima, but enough is enough.)

Knightwalker’s hair, just like EdoLucy’s, is significant, because it is one of the moments that truly characterize Knightwalker as a character that not just reflects Scarlet, but entirely defies all we’ve known of Scarlet. Scarlet treasures her femininity, her adoration for cute and childish things. I like to think Knightwalker did too, hence her skimpy outfit and gorgeous hair as well, but in this moment for her king, she throws it all away as a mark of her resolve. It’s not just for easier design differentiation in the final battle, it had significance. It tells us exactly what the Royal Army has at stake. This war-torn, jaded nature of this world allows for her to make this decision so easily. 

I suppose it’s appropriate that in 100yq, she discards that measly resolves and every other bit of her personality while she’s at it just to be another submissive-woman villain-turned shell of this fervent warrior she used to be. (I am sorry to sound so disgusted, I am just so disappointed by the 100yq Edolas arc.)

I’m not going to get started with Erza in 100yq. If her hair was so important to her, take it away so the fallout can be significant to her character and motivations. It’s almost like the point of a precious treasure is how you react after it’s taken from you, and whether that changes the meaning of it to the person that you’re holding onto it for. If it can always be easily and immediately returned to you good as never taken, there’s no value to it at all. 

[houseofpurplestars]

lol doing my rewatch out of order but thats okay

The way Max is in full trauma survivor mode in Vault 4. He's suspicious of people being nice to them. Suspicious of people smiling. He straight up tries to tell Lucy, "when people are nice..." and I just know this was going to be something like, "they're probably trying to hurt/trick you" and Max, baby, I feel you

Coop's response to Charlie when he says "fiduciary responsibility" really highlights his privilege here. He's more or less like no I'm too pretty for big words. Between this and the hot tub scene it really gets driven home how Coop is pretty clueless and Barb probably takes care of like EVERYTHING... and I mean, that tracks. He's a white man, to him his greatest worries are his creature comforts. She's a Black woman trying to survive in racist capitalism so...yeah she's more involved with everything than he is. The stakes are so much fucking higher for her.

In the hot tub scene I just see her STRUGGLING like she WANTS to just tell him the truth, but instead she says "vault-tec exists with or without me," which basically means, "bad shit is gonna happen no matter what and I'm trying to put us on the winning side of it" but Coop is too invested in his naivete to hear the truth. She really knows he's not going to hear it when he keeps harranging her about leaving vault-tec. I also think Barb saying they'll "get Janey a job in payroll when she's 15" can be an indicator that Janey is still in the vault tec system somewhere.

The way this no dogs in the vault convo goes omfg. When Coop like some good ol boy says "I want to know about my freedom" you can see the kill bill sirens on Barb. On the word freedom she has this look like "this white man did not just say that to me." When he starts talking about "I didn't go to war blah blah blah" she is about to murder him GET HIM BARB (like cmon he didn't go to war for freedom he went to war for the american colony like everyone else)

She says, "you don't get it. That is the best we can hope for" (getting into the management vault.) He does NOT get it. He does NOT know that existential fear like a Black woman does, he does NOT know how to settle for less or make hard decisions. That's not the life he wants. I'm sure Coop would be happy for them all to die on their little ranch in Bakersfield (which Barb has a VERY interesting reaction when he mentions) but that's not enough for Barb. She's doing all this work. She just needs him to trust her and get with the program so she can handle this.

This scene is really heartbreaking because you can see how they are on different planets. To Barb, this shit is urgent. She knows what vault tec is doing. To Coop, he's still in that place of like, I think, kind of reminds me a little how people are about the pandemic like, "I don't want to think about that," or "that won't happen" or "whatever it will be fine" and that is NOT GOOD ENOUGH for Barb. She needs to be in control of SOMETHING that can help her save her family. She knows too goddamn much.

I really am so like confused at the way fandom is confused about Barb. I see so many people saying they just don't understand where she's coming from but I'm just like UH HELLO?

[stvlti]

I feel like the reason why some fics read like a wish fulfilment fix-it of all of canon's perceived problems, where all of the inter-character conflicts are resolved and there aren't any stakes at all, is because of a fundamental misunderstanding of how character relationships work and because of this, different approaches to the function of fic writing. I just had a reader ask me to break it down for them why I've written Dickkory as having bad blood in the past, whether that's because of their misunderstandings during the Mirage incident (where they decided that he cheated on Kory when in fact, Dick was SA'd by a woman pretending to be Kory). and that in my fic, because of the way Dick and Kory have chosen to fault each other for the way their relationship ended, whether I am assigning a value on Dick's character in connection with the Mirage incident and more or less victim blaming the same way canon has with him and the role he played in the Mirage incident.

Firstly, there are other canonical factors that caused Dick and Kory to draft apart. You cannot draw a straight line of causality between the Mirage incident and their breakup, much like how in real life, you can't attribute reasons for a breakup to a single incident. There may be a determining factor but breakups are never usually that neatly categorised by a single reason. Also, sometimes...... characters are unreliable narrators. Just because both Dick and Kory thought that Dick was responsible for their breakup doesn't mean that he actually is. He has a guilt complex the size of a supernova and if other people told him he broke her heart, of course he was going to internalise that. She was more invested in keeping the relationship going than he was (remember, back in the 90s/00s Dickbabs was also happening at the same time) and so by that metric would be more likely to feel as though he's the one killing their relationship.

And in a situation like this: there isn't a value judgment you can place on any single participant. Human relationships are complicated like that, but that's what makes the romance genre so compelling and cathartic to read and write for. If you want stories that give you a neat resolution where everyone makes up and all conflict and misunderstandings and loose ends are tied up with a bow, I can't fault you for that, but you have other fanfiction for that. It's just not the type of story I'm interested in writing.

[weeniedogjrs]

Ride the Cyclone but with higher stakes

A big part of what makes the death of the St. Cassian kids so heartbreaking is that they’re kids.  All of their songs are essentially about what they wanted to be when they grew up, or the potential that they had.

But what if we made their jellicle choice even harder?  What if they were all young adults when the accident happened?  Maybe they had already started to achieve things in life, and had an impact on the world.  Let’s say they were at the carnival as a high school reunion.

Ocean: The mayor of Uranium.  Her constituents love her go-getter attitude and what she’d done for the town.  She still had her “holier than thou” mindset, though, which was a big source of conflict for her fellow politicians.  A huge scandal happened in Uranium politics recently, and if she couldn’t come back to life to prove her innocence, she would die a disappointment to her town.

Noel: He moved to France less than a year ago.  He still wasn’t quite the Monique Gibeau he wanted to be, but he felt like he was getting close.  He was far from a virgin and hadn’t thought about Taco Bell since he got on the airplane.  He met the most beautiful, enchanting Frenchman he’d ever seen... But never even got his name.  He was so close to having it all.

Mischa: He returned to Ukraine and finally held Talia in his arms.  His music career was wonderfully successful.  They lived a happy life surrounded by friends, and were to be married exactly one month after the reunion.

Ricky: A critically acclaimed comic book writer/artist.  His sexy cat woman-filled world of Zolar was considered niche due to its adult content, but his fans were extremely loyal and dedicated.  He had just published an installment ending on a massive cliffhanger.

Jane Doe: Her predicament is roughly the same, but she was a mother.  Nobody knows this in the afterlife, of course, but she has an unrelenting inkling in her mind that her doll isn’t actually hers.  She bounces between being a nurturing, motherly figure, and a frightened child.

Constance: She and Ocean had a horrible fight and cut ties with one another entirely.  She practically got into her car after the ceremony and drove straight out of Uranium.  After some time away, her hatred for her home and parents’ business started to subside.  She begrudgingly came back for the reunion, but surprised herself by reconciling with her parents and even considered taking over the business in the future.  She found herself sitting next to Ocean on The Cyclone.  They didn’t say anything; they just held hands as the train went up the hill.

[padfootastic]

Ten Lines

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and tag ten people. If you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and share anyway

thank you for the tag @ambrxsiaa and @leogichidaa!!!

Foundations of Decay // WIP // Gen // Harry-centric (and Sirius when he gets here!)

It had been raining for four days straight. Since the moment Harry had stepped into Privet Drive, it seemed like the entire ecosystem was trying to commiserate with his mood—the skies were pouring incessantly, flowers were wilted, and weeds were running roughshod over the entire back garden.  

2. and so there were three // James/Sirius/Lily // Jily publicly stake their claim on Sirius.

“Times are grave, we must stand together and—“ 

James slowly slides his glasses off his face, massaging the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger in a vain effort to relieve the ache building behind his eyes. This is the fourth Order meeting of this month—it’s only the 16th—and it is shaping up to seem as pointless as the other ones. When they’d joined the Order straight out of Hogwarts, it was with stars in their eyes and fire blazing in their veins. They were ready to fight for their lives and die for the cause. Now? James can’t wait to get out of here as soon as possible.

3. a labor of love // Gen // Potter family & Sirius centric, love and habits passed down through generations.

“Jamie, breakfast’s ready!”

Loud steps thundered around the house as her ten year old raced down the stairs. Euphemia didn’t even bother to reprimand him at this point—she knew it was a pointless endeavour. Instead, she made sure the safety charms on the staircase were always updated.

4. Saudade // Gen // Remus & Sirius have a conversation.

Remus knew he was a coward. 

(He’d shatter)

5. Wife Wars // Jily + QPP Prongsfoot // Lily and Sirius battle for the title of James' premier wife, youtube video format.

The video opens with two people sitting closely on a couch. Both of them are young, in their early 20s, dressed in comfortable, casual clothes. The woman has bright, emerald eyes—visible even through the lens—and deep red hair down to her collarbones, parted in the middle and pinned to the side with large pearl hair clips. There are freckles dotted across her entire face, concentrated mostly around her nose and cheeks, and she’s looking at a point behind the camera. The man has messy black hair, sticking up in the back in stubborn patches. His hazel eyes are covered by a pair of black Boston Model Frames, sitting firmly on the lower end of his nose. There’s a large smile on his face, eerily reminiscent of a golden retriever.

6. the worst timeline // Gen // Harry has a crush on his unnecessarily, unfairly attractive godfather and it's a problem.

“That was a good one, kid,” Sirius clapped a hand on Harry’s shoulder, squeezing firmly. Harry could feel his cheeks flaming , as if someone had taken a blowtorch to his face. 

“I-uh, it was nothing,” he tried to protest, mentally telling himself to calm-the-fuck-down-this-was-not-the-time-to-blush-like-a-schoolgirl.  

7. baby's growing up (oh no) // Oneshot // Gen. Harry goes to a birthday party and Sirius loses his shit.

The first time Harry asks to go to a friend’s house, Sirius damn near has a panic attack.

8. Hot prongsfoot dads. Tumblr/ao3 crosspost.

“—and and and tha’s a sand cassay and Minnie says it’s the best part of the beach, Siri, did you know?” Harry babbled in his godfather’s direction, hardly even turning to look at him, satisfied in the knowledge that he would be listening. Of course he would.

9. Godfather Sirius vs Confused Potters // Oneshot // Jily, Gen.

“I can’t believe you’d do this to me.”

10. i fall to pieces (when i'm with you) // Oneshot // James/Sirius. % times James made Sirius blush.

“You’re so pretty ,” James Potter, heir to the old Potter family, of Sleakeazys’ fame, and notoriously mischievous party guest, said in the most awed tone Sirius had ever heard. 

no pressure tagging @narcissa-black-supermacy @mycupofrum @spindrifters @jmagnabo92 @siriuslystarbucks @gracelesslady23 @benjamin-ovich @siriusly-sapphic @prongsfootandco @roalinda (apologies if you've already done this hehe)

[editoress]

@hooded-and-cloaked said: I’ve never read any SJM books, but aside from the plagiarism, can you elaborate on the writing crutches that you’ve also seen in other books (for my edification. I haven’t written in years, but maybe I will again)?

For sure!

Perhaps the broadest and most egregious thing I keep encountering is super special omnipotent characters. SJM loves to heap on unlikely inheritances, never-before-seen powers, connections to gods, etc., onto the same person. I think there's real fun to be had with overpowered characters, but in her writing, it's purely a bestowing of authorial favor. And it's EVERY time. The protagonist gets the most powers and advantages; secondary characters get less but still have insane, impossible gifts compared to most people in the world; and if any of the heroes misbehave, they lose what makes them special as a consequence.

The reason I call this a crutch and not just an annoyance is because her characters aren't very strong—you know, writing wise. They act inconsistently, and she has no sense of nuance or moral gray area when writing their decisions. Sooo I'm not sure whether giving them super-special-awesome powers is shorthand to let the reader know who to like (e.g. the protag has seven magic powers, therefore she is the coolest, therefore she should be liked the most)? Or if it's an attempt to make the characters more interesting, or what? But it's tiring and unnecessary. The truth is that if you hand me a well-written character, whether they're a scruffy nobody or have godlike powers, I'll like them!

Related to the superpowers is the way the stakes of the story make insane jumps and become impersonal. In short, her plots aren't very good. Later villains are one-note, moustache-twirling forces of evil who are going to destroy the entire world for no reason unless the heroes stop them. Basically, SJM uses the highest stakes imaginable (world blows up, etc.) in lieu of planning out a plot with any intrigue or complexity.

A lot of new authors have bought into the idea of a Force of Evil rather than a villain, some nebulous badness that must be defeated. And to me, that's lazy writing. Come up with an interesting reason for someone to oppose your heroes! Give me a villain and a plot!

Anyway, to accomplish these stakes half the time, she has to retcon everything. It's another side effect of her not planning out her world or her story: she finds herself stuck in a corner, having to make something up. (It's also a side effect of her work no longer being edited.) This is absolutely a crutch, and she leans all her weight on it. She presents things that contradict earlier writing in order to achieve:

more powers bestowed upon the protagonist (Even though we know her heritage already, she is ALSO related to ANOTHER magical being!)

an even bigger bad force (I know we said the last guy was the only one who could use the demon powers, but now there's another one who is somehow worse!)

moving characters from the Good to Bad category or vise versa (Actually he never did that bad thing earlier! He's never done anything wrong in his life!)

I see a lot of that last bullet point especially in other books. Rather than character development, some authors spring for explaining away a character's crimes. Hastily wiping clean the slate rather than letting a story work through anything. Boooooo.

Retconning is straight up awful writing and I'm tired of seeing it. It's so much fun to create a world and rules within it, and then make characters work within those limits! Breaking those rules very occasionally can be such a great dramatic hit. But constantly? No. Stop lying to me in every book. >:[

Last but not least, SJM needed a way for all of her female characters to be sad and frightened and undeniably damaged, and it's rape trauma. Around every figurative corner is another woman with PTSD from rape. It's a shortcut to get the audience's sympathy and show you that a character is a broken woman who needs love. But please note that several of her male characters have also been raped, and that's just kind of :/ and never brought up again. And while some authors have written characters with rape trauma and done it well, many have not. At all.

So yeah, I wish new authors wouldn't copy the class clown's homework.

[clonehub]

thinking about tbb for once in a neutral light and its because i was listening to a podcast where some film buffs/writers analyzed Silence of the Lambs, and I realized I've always had an appreciation where a character is in an interrogation of sorts (without it necessarily explicitly being that) and just watching them squirm. facing uncomfortable truths from a person whom you don't trust and having your understanding of yourself be meticulously torn to shreds by someone who might not even be doing it maliciously.

and in my head whenever these sorts of character interrogations happen, it's always by someone who has like. little to no stake in the interogee (??) changing their minds. for some reason i think of a very calm and calculating woman, one who's curious enough to ask these questions but not enough to be like super? invested in what happens afterwards--only that she's sensing a contradiction and she wants to explore/expose it.

so like w the bad batch. getting tech out of the way first im not gonna focus on him because atm i cant see any flaws in him, uneless he's like really confident to a fault at some point.

with wrecker it'd be rather straight forward and frankly manipulative--does your team respect you? are you the brother or the brawns? you might say "why not both", but what about every time they'd jabbed your intelligence or dismissed your concerns? and some other things

hunter...i think attacking how he views himself as a leader--if he's even a capable leader, if he's even making the right decisions for a child--would help to get under his skin, as well as "why do you keep ignoring the hole in your squad?"

echo wouldn't be so hard to pick apart if only because he already doesn't seem to be enjoying himself w the bad batch. his initial point of conflict is that he doesn't feel theyre doing enough to help others. this new conflict could be about how his skills as an ARC aren't being utilized; how he's often dismissed or ignored or patronized, and wouldn't it be better to both a) leave and be able to help people and b) get the respect he deserves? They dont outright hate him, but they still say "regs", don't they?

Crosshair would be fun, to be honest. He's so reactive to jabs at his pride/ego (like that normie death trooper talking about him being replaced). If he brings up how he's enhanced and he's superior, the lady would ask "how?". He'd give his reason and she would point out that he has one skill--one skill that is not even transferrable. "Jack of all trades, master of none--but better than a master of one". Is being good at one thing really an enhancement? the rest of the batch at least have some other skills/uses that can aid in things like survival. Are you better than anyone else when you can explicitly do less, in some ways, than the people you deride?

And this is something she'd pose to all of the bad batch. Again, roughly one skill each despite the description of "enhancements" and the ego that went with it. Are you really better?

(I wont' do Omega because frankly she's a kid and I don't see the point)

BUT guess what I'm throwing Rex and Ahsoka in here too.

I talk about Rex a lot but what would be great is to really jab his cognitive dissonance. "Is the Republic as good as you say? With the inequality rife on coruscant--let alone the rest of the galaxy?"

and i think she'd really attack his view that he's not a slave, but with a layer of actual concern for him. She wouldn't go about it nicely though--starting out with innocent-sounding questions about his sense of duty, whether or not he's dreamed of a life outside the army. Rex probably has in a neutral-curious way, but I don't think he'd admit that to her.

He'd also pick up on the angle she's getting at and try to preemptively argue, saying things like "we don't get to choose our path in life" and that he has to think beyond himself, outside himself because he has a duty to protect the citizens of coruscant. "Even though they neither protect nor respect you now?" "yes. Regardless. We don't have a choice."

And he doesn't mean it like that, but. She asks him to define a slave. He insists he isn't one. She points out his own words, his own speech--the fact that they're not citizens, they're hardly paid if at all, and they can't leave otherwise they'll be charged as committers of treason against a state that doesn't even register them as citizens. No legal or political protection, surveillance--where is the choice? Who's freedom is he fighting for?

Rex would argue back, especially if this is the younger rex we're talking about. Very much "I'm not a slave" and a Press X to Doubt face from the woman. 'you don't believe me." "I'm not sure you believe you, Rex."

But again, even with the real concern for him, she's not that invested. Her tone and body language throughout all of this is very calm, very chill, like she's asking about the weather.

and ahsoka! Younger ahsoka here, poking at her insecurity over her being too young and padawan to the chosen one. Her inexperience getting more people killed than necessary. I dont think I have much for her outside what was already addressed in the clone wars.

[gcdeater]

𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒋𝒖𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒕 𝒃𝒂𝒍𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒚 𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒂 𝒔𝒆𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒉𝒖𝒏𝒈𝒓𝒚 𝒕𝒆𝒆𝒕𝒉.

simone ashley . cis-woman . she/her ➶ I RECOGNISE THAT FACE! that’s PRISCILLA HIGHBOTTOM , the THIRTY-ONE year old SOCIALITE from THE CAPITOL . they’ve been in the capitol THEIR ENTIRE LIFE , long enough to gain a reputation for being so AMIABLE & MANIPULATIVE . they’re so lucky getting to live in the tribute center for the duration of the games! ( character ISN’T part of the uprising )

STATS

name: priscilla highbottom birthday: june 11th zodiac: gemini sun, sagitarrius moon, capricorn rising gender: cis-woman pronouns: she/her orientation: lesbian occupation: socialite district: capitol family: juno highbottom (mother), virgil highbottom (father), dulce highbottom (sibling), aloysius highbottom (cousin) faceclaim: simone ashley

PERSONALITY

positive traits: adaptable, charismatic, eloquent, meticulous, sociable negative traits: apathetic, calculating, deceitful, dogmatic, egocentric, haughty, insincere moral alignment: true neutral mbti: entj-a (the commander) enneagram: 8 (the challenger) temperament: choleric deadly sin: greed heavenly virtue: diligence parallels: madelyn stillwell (the boys), blair waldorf (gossip girl), regina george (mean girls)

BACKGROUND

priscilla is introduced to the stakes of perfection at a young age. the firstborn daughter of juno and virgil highbottom is everything the capitolite couple could’ve asked for— the perfect addition to an already immaculate familial image. she becomes a beautiful, malleable doll for her parents shaping. she rises to the task, internalizing  their every value. the perfect heir and even more perfect soldier.

with a path already laid out before her conception, there is little for priscilla to do outside of following along her predetermined path. there is little opportunity to develop an identity outside of her parents’ expectations, something she never minds in her early childhood. it’s not until her late teens that she begins yearning for something more.

what exactly did more mean, exactly? this is the question priscilla is plagued with. desperately she craves something to call her own. something within her control— a place where her parents influence could not reach her. what better way to accomplish such than by posing as a rebel?

sure, there were hobbies she could’ve pursued and a plethora of rebellious actions she could’ve taken that were less risky than actually joining a rebellion, but this wouldn’t suffice. priscilla, constantly swept up by melodrama and grand gestures, must choose the most drastic path.

it’s not long before she stumbles upon a particular district twelve healer— a beautiful girl, who radiated warmth in a way unheard of in her own life, and the two fall quickly in love. or so it seems.

you see, it’s through prim did priscilla sees an opportunity. she remains by her side, there to absorb every detail of her bleeding heart, using insider knowledge to undermine the district’s rebellion from within.

if you ask priscilla, she’ll say that was always her intention. that she never felt anything for prim, and that she was merely another pawn in one of her schemes. as if she’d ever genuinely consider siding with the rebels. it’s laughable, really.

this answer is nearly enough for her parents upon her eventual return home. not without some stipulations, though. to fully return to their good graces, she must remain on the straight and narrow. more specifically, she needed to get a job as an escort. after attempting to bribe her way into district one, she winds up in district seven, to her dismay. 

she won’t let on to her discomfort, in the same way she masks any genuine emotion she has in favor of a polished, perfect counterpart. though it’s evident to many that something darker lurks beneath.

FUN FACTS

extremely fake. do not trust her.

has a nose ring and four ear piercings along each ear.

is a notorious gossip. if you ask her, though, she'll simply say she enjoys the free flow of information.

CONNECTIONS

a fake ass friend group / a relationship for pr purposes / district 12 rebels that know she's a snake bich / enemies / frenemies / hookups

[rainbowgod666]

The perfect DC/Marvel comic is like this

Its a batman book, the joker is killed off in the first panel and that has no meaning or repercussions over the timeline

The watchmen are a thing and Dr. Manhattan figured out a way to get rid of the whole "every moment is the present" thing. This makes it easier for the writer to write its dialogues. He is still earth-shatteringly autistic and everyone loves him for this

Also he and deadpool accidentally bond over "seeing the 4th wall". Deadpool is also buddies with moon knight. Guess what my favourite charachter is?

Good ol IRL me is there and its canon that the one time when i tried to help constantine every demon/spirit/whatever that has a stake on him was SCREAMING to him "get tf away from him not even death's gonna save you". Which i mean, rude

Welcome to the multiverse. Batman has small dick energy and superman is such a pacifist some people have trouble seeing him as anything other than "alien übermensch thats just a really nice guy and thats eat". He may be white bread but here in italy we say "buono come il pane" or "good as bread" so yeah hes a Certified Good Boy

I cannot stress enough how much unimportant is the death of the joker. He basically might as well have never existed.

Wonder Woman comes to the realization (after i confronted her about it because FFS WHY DO I HAVE TO BE THE MULTIVERSE'S BABYSITTER) that MAYBE reducing her entire power assortment to "r/TwoXChromosomes" is a bad thing both for boys AND girls alike. I know the song goes "forget your balls and grow a pair of tits" but i would instead put programs so that boys feel safe about their masculinity and girls wont have to worry about Bad People In Dimly Lit Alleys.

SCP and MONUMENTMYTHOS are referenced really tangentially. Only the wikis (official or not) aknowlegde this fully

There are at least three scenes where tony stark reads about elongated muskrat on the news. In all of them hes disappointed

He also references him appearing on big bang theory, which in THIS universe is ran by the charachters of the series as a fun class B science program that has way more audience than it should have. Sheldon met Dr. Manhattan, who described our multi-knocking boy as just like him but "less knowledgeable and more arrogant" (no fr shelly is one /gamemode 1 from becoming dr. pasadiña or whatever)

Considering this is "DC and Marvel, but Alex did his bullshit", expect dumb shit

I am introduced with a MadCom reference that is also a Courage the cowardly dog reference. KeK

The Owlman is revealed to have had a massive brain tumor that straight up removed his ability to think rationally while making him speak like his cigars are made of dictionaries

So many events from so many storylines happen all at once lol

Spidey disapproves of O'Hara. Like everyone else.

Multiple references are everywhere

There is SERIOUS PROOF that thanos accidentally something important when he was testing the infinity gauntlet, whoops!

Gamora tries to kill me after i try to roast her for how she is. She is shocked to find out that me getting Kakyoin'd did nothing but "ow"

@moringmark is referenced in a 4 panel scene in the toh universe

A cover story reveals that, on the moon, a portal opens. The portal is traversed by a shiny deoxys and many little among us crewmates. The impostors are all black (literally) (if you see racism in this, fuck you not everyone is an american cop) (on that note, watch southland) and act as guards for the group. Deoxys is in its base form

The valve universe is a thing so welcome BLU, RED, aperture and black mesa!

[mhevarujta]

Alicent snapped because no one cared for her.

She is a single mother. It doesn’t matter that she has a husband. He never did anything for those children. He was always their king and never their father.

She was mourning her child losing an eye.  She KNOWS what she did was ugly. She is ashamed of it. She did not ask for Luce’s eye when Larys gave her the actual chance and she was back to her senses. But she lost it.

Her son was maimed and it’s justified as a defence against ville accusations. Accusations that were true and uttered only in front of family. But Rhaenyra chose to bring them up openly in front of everyone and to claim it was slander. She asked for a freshly wounded kid to be sharply questioned for telling the truth. 

And then Viserys, who was pushing Aemond and Aegon to rat out their mother, does not even express regret over what happened to his son neither does he chastise in the slightest Rhaenyra’s children; not even verbally.

THIS is why Alicent snaps. She’s done everything right. She’s endured marital rape. She’s been raising her children alone. She’s been a carer for Viserys for years. She was sent to take advantage of his grief and use sex to earn him and instead she showed him genuine compassion that no one else had given him.

ALL she desires is some freaking decency and kindness. She wants someone to be there for her and to take her side for once. So, when he throws her under the bus and has not even a word of comfort for her or Aemond she goes off. She sees red. She wants blood.

Alicent turned to the one person who is her sworn protector and the closest she has come to finding understanding: Criston Cole. And when even he cannot help in this instance, she just falls apart and grabs the knife. She is not even going for Luce. She goes straight for Rhaenyra, because her anger at the end of the day was never really about the children themselves. 

She’s seen her entire life a woman who is privileged, who can choose a husband, who can do her duty alongside having more choices than most during that time, who has a father who loves her and would do everything for her and who has no sense of responsibility; no sense of honor or duty. From Alicent’s perspective all Rhaenyra knows is unaccountability while the rest of them cannot step out of line and they strive their entire lives for much less.

Focusing all her anger on Rhaenyra because she sees her as the embodiment of entitlement may be petty, but it’s also something that I understand. Especially since Rhaenyra is known to disregard other women’s point of view, gaslight and we all know that if they keep it to the book she won’t go through with her one opportunity to do something for other women (even though the show is going with a pseudofeminist approach with Rhaenyra’s character so they could change it).

Alicent is flawed. She is broken, she is bitter, she’s caught up in a web of sadness, disappointment and of being consumed by the political implications of every little action, which results in her perpetuating her own oppression and pushing her children down a similar path in a sense. And yet, I understand her. I do because the stakes for her are real and she feels that in her bones every second of her life.

Despite all of that, a kind word, a show of regret, a glimpse of understanding could have been life-changing for her. Starved people are easy to satisfy with scraps of affection. 

She barely had that.

Bonus: When Alicent expresses her selfloating after losing it, it’s the first time since she was a girl that we see her picking at her hands.

[zendayacs]

It’s not over

A/N: This is literally so late and I’m sorry but Hailee Steinfeld has taken over my life and I love her for it. This is set during Ep. 4 of Hawkeye. 

Pairing(s): Kate Bishop x female reader

Warnings: Kissing and slight drama (literally nothing too bad), mild violence

Word count: ~2.1K

Read on AO3

           Scrolling through your phone sounded like the dream way to end this absolutely horrendous day. Sadly, you would be spending the rest of the night collaborating with an avenger to come up with a plan to save your ex girlfriend. It’s not like you didn’t care, quite the opposite actually, it’s just that you thought that your days of espionage were over, put behind you after you were saved from the red room by the woman you knew as Yelena. But alas, here you sat on your couch, feet propped up on top of the dented coffee table as Kate paced the floor in front of you, trying to absorb the sudden info dump you placed onto her.

“Clint this doesn’t surprise you? At ALL?!?!” Kate exclaimed while shaking her head at you in disbelief.

“I mean it’s not impossible. It hasn’t been that long since Na- Since the red room was taken down. Makes perfect sense. Now. Can we please get back to the plan?” Clint sighs and repositions the frozen bag of margarita mix onto his forehead. “K,  just sit down. Pace anymore and you’re gonna run a hole into the floor.” You sighed as you stretched forward, your heel creating another small dent in the well worn table. “It’s no big deal. I’ll help you and then we never have to talk again. I know how much you care about being around me.” At this you sat forward to grab the computer that was teetering on the edge of the couch deciding that the S key was way more interesting than the sudden look of surprise on Kate’s face. 

Bishop on the other hand raised an eyebrow at the nickname. It’s one you haven’t called her in a long time, and if the dash of pink on her cheeks says anything, she wishes you called her that more often. Kate moves and plops down right next to you on the couch and leans far too much into your personal space before whispering in your ear with a smirk. 

“You know I still care about you right? I’m not the only reason we broke up.” At this you felt your face heat up but luckily the information you had been looking up loaded giving you the chance to change the subject before anything drastic could happen. “Found it!” you shouted before realising the volume of your voice and adjusting it before you moved on. “I found the location of the watch. It seems to be at this address. Not too far from here.” You sit up straight as Clint leaves his spot on the chair to come see the information you loaded. 

“Great! Y/N go ahead and get ready, we’ll leave in five.” You nodded and headed into your bedroom to grab weapons.

“Um aren’t you forgetting about someone.” Kate announces and you turn around and lean into the doorway, amused. 

      “Kate, you're staying here. Y/N and I can handle this.” Clint rolls his eyes as he counts his arrows. Kate goes to protest when Clint cuts her off. “Y/N and I both know what we are doing. You would just slow us down and she is decidedly less annoying.” At that you snorted before turning around and heading into your room. 

     The entire time you get dressed you can hear the two archers bickering and before you know it you, Kate, and Clint are all huddled on the rooftop staking out the apartment across the street. Something about the air seems off to you but you decide to not question it as you’ve already checked all the exits multiple times. Being paranoid seemed like a job requirement sometimes. 

        A couple of arguments later led to the situation you were in now, with Kate being the one entering the apartment and Clint being her lookout. You decided to keep looking around the smaller rooftop as something seemed to tip you off. Just as you rounded the corner something or rather someone, tripped you causing you to tumble into a roll. You quickly stand back up only to come face to face with a masked figure. The figure runs at you again, throwing their entire body at you, causing you to fall to the ground in a disgruntled manner. They quickly jump up before sprinting towards Clint. 

        You steady yourself for a brief moment before running at the masked assailant, throwing yourself onto their back and jutting your legs around their head before slamming down to the ground. You quickly adjust your position to throw a punch towards their head when they shoot something out of their wrists that stuns you and makes you fall back. You shout as you quickly try to get what you recognise to be a widow bites off of you. Meanwhile Clint had managed to shoot a line to the building to give Kate a hasty exit. The widow ran and jumped on Clint, trying to take him down. He was fast but she was better, almost getting the best of him when Kate slid down, catching the person off guard. The widow however took no time dealing with Kate and threw her off the side of the building. You ran to the edge and held onto the falling rope Kate had been attached to. You assessed the situation and gave her your best ‘I’m sorry’ look before cutting the rope and letting her fall through the strangle of Christmas lights and onto the ground. 

“What the hell Y/N?!” Kate screamed up at you, stomping her foot.

“This is too dangerous K. I love you, but go home where it’s safe!” You scream out before turning back to run at your opponent. She’s aiming a gun at Clint and you take no time running and disarming her. You continue engaging her and Clint takes that time to prepare another arrow. The widow is fast though and manages to flip herself over you and dodge the arrow. You run towards her again only to dodge another arrow, this one shot by none other than your ex. You stop for a moment before continuing on. You catch the widow off guard and swing yourself over her left shoulder, grabbing for her head and flipping you both to the ground. You roll away clutching her mask in your hand as you stand up in another attack position. You make eye contact with her and your stance goes from offensive to defensive.

     “Yelena?” You whisper in a quiet voice. She merely glances at you before turning her attention fully back to Kate who is back and now has an arrow aimed at her. Kate decidedly doesn’t take the shot and Yelena takes this as her chance to escape. She runs to the side of the roof and flings herself off. You run to the edge and look over to see if she’s really gone. She is, and you turn back to look at both Kate and Clint, who are in turn, staring at you. 

Clint is the one who breaks the silence. “So kid, do you have something you’d like to tell us?” ~~~~~~         It’s about an hour later and you are sitting in the center of the couch as both Clint and Kate stand in front of you, similar to how a misbehaving child would sit as their parents chastised them. You glance up at the duo through the bag of peas currently resting on your head. “That’s all I know. I swear.” You end your explanation leaning back into the couch with a sigh. You should've made yourself a drink before sitting down, this was not a conversation one should have while completely sober.

“So let me get this straight. That person on the roof-Yelena was it? Was the person to help you escape the Widow program and one day she just disappeared,”

“She was snapped,” you butt in only to receive an eye roll from Kate. Kate glared at you before continuing on.

“Okay so she was snapped so you decided to move to New York which is where you and I met.” “Yea basically.”You nodded.

      Kate rolled her eyes and sat on the sofa next to you and without thinking leaned into your shoulder. You, also without thinking, stretched your arm across the back of the couch wrapping around Kate as she leaned more into your side. Your bag of peas, now forgotten as you used your other hand to tuck a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. Clint looked between the two of you before sighing and gathering his gear. 

     “Sure seems like you two have more to talk about. Kate, we’ll catch up later. I have to go walk the dog.” Kate nodded, her eyes starting to close as Clint walked out of your apartment. Even if you two couldn’t see it, he could, and honestly? He was rooting for it.

     As soon as the door shut, Kate leaned into you more, pressing against you, just like old times. Except instead of talking about the future, you two were about to dive deep into the past. A past full of mistakes and memories some way more pleasant than others. 

It's Kate who decides to  break the silence with sigh as she wraps her arms around your waist. 

       “So where should we start? The part where you broke up with me for seemingly no reason, the part where you’re literally a trained assassin, or maybe we should start with you trying to sacrifice yourself to save me?” Kate huffs angrily as she holds onto you just a little tighter. At that last part you narrow your eyes at her before speaking.

        “I did not sacrifice myself. I happen to be very good at fighting and I let you go because it’s easier to fight when I know you’re safe. I had to be sure no one would hurt you.” Kate scoffs before leaning her head up to look at you. “You do realize the only person who has ever hurt me was you right? Physical pain is fine, I’m used to that but the emotional garbage? That broke my heart. You broke my heart. Didn’t even have the decency to say it to me in person. All I got was a letter that didn’t even seem sincere.” At this she tried to pull away from you, but you were faster. Instead you grabbed her arm and pulled her back into you. She immediately went back into your side, changing the position so her head was angled into your neck. 

       “I. Uh well I never meant to do that. I never meant to break up with you. I’ll admit, writing letters was never my strong suit, but I never meant for you to read it like a break up letter. I owed a favor to a friend and I had to leave to take care of it. I didn’t know how long I would be gone for which is why I left the letter in the first place. When I came back and you were mean and cold towards me, I assumed you finally found a reason to hate me so I never approached you about it. When you called me about helping, I jumped at the chance because I thought we could finally work things out.” You closed your eyes and leaned into Kate’s sudden outburst of affection. “I miss you K. I love you too, but I doubt that’s what you want to hear right n-” You stopped when you felt a soft kiss land at the base of your neck. 

  “Oh you broken girl.” She huffed as she pulled away from you to look you in the eyes. She brought her hand up to wipe the single tear that started to make its way down your face. You leaned into her touch as she moved closer, wrapping her arms around you. You immediately latched onto that and grabbed her. Pouring out everything as if this was the last time you’d see her. She let you hold onto her for a good minute or so before leaning backwards. You mistook this for her wanting to let go so you tried to remove your arms from their spot around Kate. She shook her head before readjusting again so she could press the smallest kisses across the bridge of your nose. She leaned her forehead against yours and sigh. She smiled at you before connecting her lips to yours and it took you only a second to realise what was happening before you kissed her back. Arms winding up to tangle themselves in her hair. You were the one to break the kiss, smiling way too hard to continue like you two were. 

   “For what it’s worth, I think we are both sorry, yea?” Kate tilted her head before leaning in with the intention of kissing you again.

“Yea.”