#DO I TAG THE SHIPS.........not today i think

[zeroducks-2]

tags by @nicky-olives

I strongly agree with this point, however I think it's important to note that what's being discussed here is the fact that there is an effort from DC's part to erase every form of found family dynamic and non-heteronormative relationships from their stories, which is a different topic from the ship and let ship conversation.

What I mean with this is that of course everyone can ship Bruce and Dick, regardless of the circumstances. If Dick was Bruce's biological son there would be nothing wrong with shipping them, because it's not real and it's just people having fun playing with dolls. However queer people from all over the world have been identifying with Bruce and Dick's relationship, especially during a time where gayness and gay relationships were way more taboo and dangerous to actually perform than they are now. Queer men especially identified with how the trauma of the loss of their families makes Dick and Bruce similar (and having an estranged family was very frequent among queer people, back then even more than today), but they choose to find another family in each other. Bruce and Dick share a secret that is one of the most important parts of their life, and they can freely be themselves with each other, no need to lie or pretend. And despite the respective escapades to keep an appearance of normalcy when it comes to their "public life", they are each other's most important person, the one they could never part from,

Again, this is not something DC did *on purpose*. But queer people read into it and then DC caught on, and and for this and other reasons they started pushing the narrative of "they are father and son, and you're gross and weird if you ever think for a second that they could have THAT kind of relationship! You freak of nature! Degenerate!" And lots and lots and lots of baby queers keep nodding to this, and they shame fellow queers by repeating this same rhetoric because it works.

It's not just about ship and let ship because it's fictional, it's about a very important part of queer history which is getting flushed down the drain to protect the sanctity of a "family" which is not real and is not even a family, and about how DC itself has been complicit with this for years, same as it is complicit with pushing narratives such as how nuclear family is the only possible kind of family, biological family is more important than adoptive family, and how two people who have even just some sort of vague relationship of cooperation are "brothers" and cannot therefore have a romantic relationship.

More on that point, think of Tim Drake is now out as bisexual and has a canonical boyfriend. It would be legitimate to wonder if his first crush was Dick Grayson, or even Bruce Wayne, while growing up and seeing all these very handsome boys in skintight suits. And so DC avoids this conversation by doubling and tripling down on how Dick and Tim are BROTHERS, and how (implicitly, pushed by their own fans who are queer themselves) thinking that Tim might have a crush on him is something only a freak of nature would do. Same goes for Tim and Bruce, because they are FATHER and SON.

Of course we can ship whatever we want regardless of the dynamic. But DC has been doing this for years and a huge, HUGE chunk of their fans are lapping this narrative up, and using it to hurt other fans. It's at this point a vicious cycle.

What's up with batman and the erasing of queer history? Sry I try to interact with fanon as little as possible

There is no simple or short answer to this but to try and not make it a wall of text - Batman/Robin has always been a staple of the queer community, so much so that to this day there are "brudick" graffiti in big cities and lots of older gay couples have been using them as a reference for solid partnership which endures in spite of adversity.

Originally there was no indication anywhere that Bruce and Dick were in the roles of father and son, rather they were partners against crime, one the shadow of the other, and they would share everything both when it came to crime fighting and in their everyday lives. They're shown sleeping together, going on lake trips together, finishing each other's sentences and Dick being viciously jealous every time Bruce would "replace" him with any of the women he used to have flings with such as Talia or Selina.

Did DC mean for them to be read as a queer couple? No, of course not. Bob Kane and others wrote a partnership, an unbreakable bond which would allow these two men to overcome any obstacle together, and queer people read into it as queer people always do.

Someone else read into it though: Frederick Wertham, who called Batman a pederast and used Batman and Robin as an example of how the evil comics would corrupt young minds to send them on the way of perdition and sin. He wrote all of this and many more infuriating shit in his book Seduction of the Innocents, which was then the major influence in creating the Hayes Code, which is the reason why we never had queer characters in comicbooks and movies and anything really for decades (and we're still struggling today).

Wertham and the Hayes Code did not stop the queer community from loving Batman and Robin though, therefore what started happening was the more subtle shift towards Bruce and Dick having a father and son relationship rather than a partnership. You can see this clearly with Jason Todd for the first time: Bruce takes Jason in and treats him as his own son, the narrative calls them father and son, and there is no doubt in the mind of who's reading that Bruce perceives Jason as his child. It all went steadily downhill from there.

Nowadays, writers have Dick say character assassinating things like "I love you dad" to Bruce, Tim saying "we will save our dad" to Damian, and everyone in the fandom acting like this has always been the case and actually you're weird and you should be sent death threats for shipping Brudick, because "UMMM that is literally his son?!??!?!?". DC has been pushing the idea that these folks are a nuclear family for a while now, but whoever has actually read the comics knows it's not the case, and it used to be very different before.

Brudick, among queer people, used to be entirely uncontroversial. While Wertham raged about how it corrupted the minds of young men and the Hayes Code prevented queerness to be anything but vaguely hinted and coded in the text, queer folks didn't care and kept having matching Batman and Robin shirts.

Today queer people will call you a pedophile and a groomer and try to doxx you for posting Brudick art because apparently they're doing the fascists' job for them, either because they are genuinely misguided or because they think that if they're enough morally pure they will have a spot among the chosen ones, hell if I know. What I know is that they'd suck Wertham's cock and balls if he wrote Seduction of the Innocents today, and it's DC's fault too with their erasure of every found family dynamic among the batclan, and the way they've been pushing the idea of a "batfamily" instead, in which everyone has a strict role of son or brother or father, and shipping them makes you the antichrist.

[slavhew]

you win. try again?

[butterflysnowflake]

man can I just say how adorable Wolf's interaction with Delia in the wedding scene is? When she's explaining her situation he gives her the most understanding looks and it's because they both effectively had the same cause of death. Delia turned her mourning of Charles into part of her performance art, and died from being scammed with asps who were NOT defanged. Wolf wanted to deliver the most authentic performance possible and died from presumably a negligent armorer who didn't bother to check if the grenade was live or not before shooting. both of them were quite literally killed by their art (not by their own faults to be fair but from someone else's irresponsibility). and it's kind of lovely Delia got such a sympathetic escort back to the netherworld who knows her situation firsthand probably better than anyone else

it's weirdly wholesome and empathetic even as their situations were both played for morbid laughs, and if Delia didn't have eyes only for Charles (what's left of him) and Wolf wasn't in a committed relationship with Janet I'd even say I could have seen things going somewhere between them

[souenkun]

Pokémon Masters EX spoilers ahead!

Kabu likes to play TAG with his pokemon... and he's shown to have a much softer side beneath his strictness in pokemas too... he's so grandpa-shaped to me 😭💖

[dustykneed]

Hello! Random whipper snipper! Share a WIP of your work!

ooh, with pleasure. six the musical araleyn fanart? in the year 2k24? more likely than you think xDD

i realize this looks finished, but technically i'm still deciding whether to add a background or not lol. still, for the sake of sharing a proper WIP, here's a line or two from an araleyn brainworm WIP that i started reworking yesterday (mild tw for religious guilt and period-typical internalized homophobia from aragon's pov):

She remembers sharing her bed with Anne at Henry's behest, remembers the nights of tossing and turning and trying not to think about Anne asleep next to her-- remembers waking up to dark hair spilling across her pillow and the press of blood-warm bosoms against her own, softer than sin, as hot as the Devil, remembers lying still as death, mouthing prayers into the heat of Anne's neck like an act of penance.

[amtrak12]

HELP! I've fallen down a Bering and Wells hole again and can't stop watching fanvids. I misssssss them!!! 😢

[quibbs126]

My brain is now yearning for a redemption/character development arc for TFA Sentinel

I want to see it, but I don’t think realistically it’ll ever happen outside of fanfiction. At least not out of this continuity

[barb-l]

man. do Ch*rlastor shippers even like or know Charlie as a character or is she just a hollow character for self-insert purposes to them

[feroluce]

Thinking tonight about Caelus, and the nature of his loss and his grief after the Everything that went down in Penacony during 2.0.

Because Acheron, Black Swan, and Misha kind of knew of Firefly, they at least met her, but they didn't like really know her, and Caelus never even got the chance to introduce her to the rest of the Astral Express Crew. The only person who would have talked to her much was Sparkle, who is. Probably not really someone Caelus is interested in grieving with skznmsks

Anyway, all this to say, I like thinking about how alone poor Caelus is in his grief, because he was the only one who knew Firefly. He's the only one really mourning her. There's no one to talk about her with. There's no stories to trade or memories to reminisce with anyone over. It's not as though he knew her for long, but still. No one else knew her at all.

And I love the thought of all of this coming bubbling up, hot and acidic and bitter, during a conversation with Sampo, who Caelus just so happens to run into in the Golden Hour. Poor Sampo is kinda blindsided, he knew shit was going down in Penacony, but yeesh. And he just. Isn't quite sure what to say about it all, because he's never really encountered this before. His feelings about the Masked Fools are...a mixed bag, but he's been a part of them for a very long time, and when you're with a close organization like that, it's hard to feel alone, in grief or otherwise.

So Sampo sits there on their little bench that the two of them have occupied, and he thinks of his old friend April, how she'd died in his arms cackling and spitting her own blood after a heist gone wrong, and how after he'd dragged himself back to the World's End Tavern they'd all held a Fool's Funeral- which is basically just a big party where everyone gets really really drunk and reminisces and toasts the dead and celebrates their life.

He still thinks about her a lot, and he remembers how the time he'd most keenly felt her absence was on Jarilo-VI, the one place where he couldn't talk about her because he couldn't say anything to give himself away as an alien. The Fools still tell stories about her every time he goes back to the Tavern. His first toast of the night is always in her name. Even now, all these years after she'd died, Sampo is still learning new things about her. He's never had to grieve her alone.

Caelus doesn't have any of that.

He might never have that. As they speak, Caelus has no proof that Firefly was even her real name, or if she dreamt with her true appearance. He might not ever find out who she even was.

And just imagining that kind of loneliness hollows out a strange little pit, right behind his sternum, deep between his ribs.

So Sampo claps Caelus' shoulder and offers him a deal. Come find him outside of the dream. He knows a guy who can get them a lot of beer for really cheap-

("Is that guy you and your five finger discounts?" "Whatever do you mean, dear friend, I don't even know the meaning of the phrase, hehee.")

-and they can hole up in a bar or a hotel room or something, and get completely shitcanned. Tell him all about Firefly, tell him everything, and he'll tell Caelus about April and everyone else he's ever lost. Sampo will carry Caelus' memories of Firefly with him, and at least this way, Caelus will be a little less alone in remembering her. And the next time they cross paths, Sampo will be the one to bring her up, and to tell her stories, and Caelus can get to be the one listening. He won't have to be the only person to talk about her anymore.

Caelus rolls his eyes when Sampo avoids another remark about sticky fingers, but...ok, yeah. That sounds good. Nice, even. Thank you. Caelus bumps his shoulder against Sampo's. Sampo bumps back.

(They find each other again the next day, and true to their word, get themselves completely and utterly shitcanned. Caelus talks more than Sampo has ever heard him; every minute detail, every word choice, Firefly's every odd little mannerism and habit. Because Caelus wants to make sure this will outlive him, that even if the Stellaron dwelling within him finally burns him to a crisp and he really does up and kick the bucket, or even, godforbid, if he forgets, he wants to make sure someone remembers her. She deserved that.)

((And it takes quite a while, after that. Caelus doesn't see Sampo again until after everything has settled down. On his last day in Penacony, he finds the guy slinking out of a seedy back alley and all but runs right into him. Sampo happily leads him to some dive bar in an even seedier back alley that Caelus has never even heard of, and Sampo raises his glass. "To Firefly! Who sounds like she probably would have hated me at first, but I would have liked to have met her anyway."

And Caelus stares at him, almost looking startled, long enough that Sampo worries that he's read him wrong and brought this up too soon. He's halfway into planning how to talk himself out of this situation when Caelus finally throws back his head back and laughs, tells him that yeah, Firefly would have politely called him out on every lie he told, and all their conversations would take twice as long with the way Sampo is so full of shit.

And he can see it, the same way he watches and sees through everyone, that Caelus' eyes have a tightness to them, his knuckles are nearly white around the handle of his mug. But he smiles. He hits his glass against Sampo's far too hard and throws it back and gets foam everywhere like he does every time they drink because the guy's about as elegant as a raging bull, but those things don't lessen the genuineness of his smile.

The grief is there, but so is the elation, and those emotions aren't a sliding scale between one or the other. It is all of both and both at once, and that's what contents Sampo enough to throw his own mug back when Caelus makes a toast of his own, "to April!!".))

[ectoplasmer]

You know that saying about how moles and freckles are places where your soulmate liked to kiss you in your past life? Imagine your f/o taking every chance they get to kiss you on those exact spots. Having them sneak a quick peck to the area and seeing them smile to themselves against the skin before they pull away. Them kissing an area where there are a lot of marks over and over again, as if they’re trying to appreciate each and every one. Them grabbing your hand and lifting it to their lips to kiss any spots there, or having them roll up your sleeve to peck any marks, having them sit in front of you to kiss any along your legs… just your f/o making sure you know they love kissing you on those specific spots <3

[starflungwaddledee]

if starstruck Dee gets a comically large bow then Marc should have the comically large eyelashes

i was actually thinking that they both already have bows and eyelashes. consider: the ol' switcheroo

[the-sky-the-stars-the-sea]

This. Just. This.

“Are you bored?” - a genuine question

“I’m not.” - a lie

The one asking “are you bored?” is the one who is pitying the other. The other lies and says they are not bored because they have waited for this moment for so long, and maybe if they say they’re happy then they will be, because isn’t this everything they ever wanted? Even if deep down they know this is all an illusion?

And this is why neither of these ships are endgame.

Meanwhile:

So yeah. Mhokday and Sandray are endgame.

Because it’s first crush vs someone you love who actually loves you the way you want to be loved.

So of course it’s the latter one that wins in the long run.

[rystiel]

i’ve seen people disappointed by the deadpool & wolverine movie because they don’t kiss but by god that car scene was them having hate sex actually

[hurtcomforted]

why are some antis bending over backwards to make every ship they don't like problematic? "they're like brothers, this is practically incest!" "you can't ship that, he's married with kids in canon!" "he's a kid in some of the comics so this is actual pedophilia!"

you know you're allowed to just not like stuff, right? you don't need some higher moral reason for it.

[thatgremlinkid]

Shipping your favs together is so funny because what do you mean I’ve been thinking about Diggers and Click going on scenic road trips in Diggers van and they occasionally stop so Click can take pictures of the wildlife and greenery just because I lobe them like what is wrong with me

[lovestruck-lamb]

hey, uh- there's something off with my copy of the Dragon Ball manga. This panel looks different from what I remember...

[panel redraw, original under the cut]