#David is a little too close to aro/ace to notice his OWN feelings let alone Spot & Race's little dance

[agentsnickers]

Ahhh im so excited for les and hotshot's wedding!!! Also i need to know how les is feeling now that sarah is back!!! Hes there in the coffee shop so he knows sarah is there but she doesnt remember but thats their SISTER hhhh

I just want them all to be okay and im excited for more jacobs and conlon sibling shenanigans!!!

Also spot being genderfluid and davey being agender is such an amazing combo and i just absolutely adore their dynamic in this fic its so wonderful

(Also will there be sprace in this au? No pressure either way, just curious)

Heck yeah!!! The Conlon-Jacobs family shenanigans are going to be a lot of fun <3

Les is Feeling some Emotions but to be honest the exact shape of that doesn't come for a couple of days after they meet Sarah for the first time. He does impulsively invite her to the wedding, though.

I LOVED David & Spot's dynamic in this fic and I am itching to write more of them, they're such a great duo and I'm glad that I went with what y'all picked!!

As for Sprace... there may or may not technically already be Sprace in this AU. Spot and Race were involved in the first lifetime and sometimes circle back to each other in the later ones but not always! Sometimes it's too hard for Spot to engage and Race generally gets that, also sometimes Race is crushing too hard on David, whoops. Present day/life 5 Sprace is likely though, they've been flirting pretty hard.

[joi-in-the-tardis]

It’s my experience with any emotional issue I have that resolving it is 75% figuring what on earth it even is that I’m upset about (which usually requires going to the pain of actually talking it through with someone; hello I’m an extroverted feeler) and 25% actually working on the problem.  In other words: figuring it out is the hard part.  Actually, a lot of the stress and angst evaporates once I pin down the problem.

That doesn’t mean it’s all resolved just from understanding myself a little better.  There’s still work to do.  But clarity brings a lot of peace, you know?

Good Omens was released a tiny bit more than two months ago.  It’s hard to believe it’s been that long... and also hard to believe it’s only been that long.  I watched it all in one day because I wanted that first viewing to be mine- I didn’t want to share it.  I knew, even then, that I was going to be a bit... touchy... about the shipping of the main characters.  Not because I felt that anyone was wrong to ship them, but because they’re a pair I ship very specifically.  (Which is not something I do overly much, I tend to be pretty open about my ships.  Not just in a ship-and-let-ship way, but in the way that I multi-ship, myself.  Tenth doctor, for example, I ship with four different characters.  Even though the main one I blog about is Rose.  I have two anti-ships, but only one of those actually bothers me to the extent that I have the tags blocked- and that’s more because the other character disgusts me than an overt problem with the ship itself.)

And, not just that, I ship them as being a similar kind of queer to my own.  So, they’re dear to my heart.  I see them as ace, as I am myself.  I see them as nonbinary, like me.  As beings somewhere outside the human realm, I don’t think they have to follow human friend/romance rules, and that’s a relief to me.  Because I have an incredibly difficult time understanding where all those lines are.

I have a lot of myself tied up in these characters, okay?  I related to The Doctor, yes.  I’ve related to a lot of characters.  But... not like this. 

And I have felt, predominantly, unwelcome in the fandom.  In the fandom’s defense, a lot of my emotional reaction was from the initial round of “you either ship them or you’re homophobic” that was aimed at not just other members of the fandom, but the author of the story himself.  But, in doing so, people alienated aces, aros, and nonbinary folks.  It’s not just me.  I do understand that this was not everyone’s opinion, and that even if it was it wasn’t intended this way...  But, it was a loud enough message that I shut every related tag down for over a month, and still have them filtered.  I’m one that’s pretty stable in my identity, but I felt banished for it.  I felt I wasn’t queer enough for a space that I wanted to occupy- one that was supposed a queer space, itself.  

And, I let it fester.

That festering bled over in to my tumblr home fandom: David Tennant.  I dunno if anyone noticed, but I haven’t celebrated Tennant Tuesday in weeks.  I mean, a lot of it was tied in with GO, anyway, and I was trying to avoid that.  But, the constant barrage of how slutty he and all his characters are... just grated me to the point that I wanted to find a hole.  That hole was pulling out of it almost entirely.  I’m trying to rally, it’s just taking time.

But still, there was more to it...  I was getting increasingly frustrated with myself because of how upset I was.  And how much that upset was spreading in to other fandom areas that I love.  I didn’t understand it as I have always been a “don’t like, keep scrolling” or blacklist kind of person.  And, my goodness, I do want fluff from this pairing!  But every time I put my toe in the GO fandom sandbox it was akin to being lit on fire.  And not in a slow burn, this is fun suffering kind of way.

It occurred to me a week or so ago what it was that was bothering me: I am assumed to be courting whoever I’m friends with.  Sure, laugh it up, but I’m serious.  I’m assumed to be in a romantic relationship with my married best friend nearly every time we have a day out.  From clerks in stores to kids on the street to waiters at restaurants.  I’m not insulted by the insinuation.  My best friend is my best friend for a reason- she’s a phenomenal person and I’m very lucky to have her in my life.  We don’t even correct them most of the time, anymore.  That doesn’t make it any less exhausting sometimes.  It doesn’t do anything to make me less paranoid about, not just our friendship, but every friendship I have.  In my first years at my workplace I was assumed to be sleeping with multiple married women.  How people came to that conclusion, to this day, perplexes me.  Here I was going home to tea and TV and I was supposedly out dallying with these women behind their husband’s backs!  Even now, I’m hyper aware of some of my friendships with married friends... Because their SOs have made comments... maybe joking, maybe not... that nice things I’ve done for them is me coming on to them.  Please, I’m just a genuinely nice person who likes doting on people I care about.

It really fucking sucks that my friendships are misread.  I have spent a large portion of my life just not understanding romance.  Not knowing how to engage in it.  Not knowing where the lines are.  Not understanding what might be expected of me- worrying about that.  I haven’t really had those kinds of connections, guys.  I’ve been in love, yes, a couple of times.  But, it’s never been more than a confession that’s either rejected outright or... a slow dissolution of what used to be a cherished friendship.  I feel an enormous amount of love for the people in my life, but when it comes to expressing it in any kind of romantic way... I am just at a loss.  I’ve always kind of chalked this up to being queer and having a late start, but sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever figure it out.

But if there’s one thing I know, I know how to love my friends.  Or, at least, I think I do.  And my friends don’t seem to mind.  It’s the way that it’s labeled from the outside that bothers me.

And, that brings me full circle to my point: the thing that bothered me was that I saw these two romantically challenged ace/enby characters and I thought “omg that’s me!”  Then I saw people shipping them sexually and that was okay!  Ship whatever you want.  But, then I saw that if you didn’t ship them that way it was homophobic.  It was wrong.  How could you see it anyway but gay?  Yes, QPRs have their place, but this isn’t it (something I actually saw in someone’s tags!).

I was gutted.  I understand why now.  People ship me and my close friends together all the time, friends.  It makes people really happy to do so.  They’re getting rep in public.  They think it’s sweet.  It makes them smile.  It makes them engage socially with us when they might not otherwise.  It gets us nice tables at restaurants so we “can see one another better.”

But we’re not romantically involved.  No matter how much the public may enjoy imagining us being so.  We have always been and will always be the best of friends.

Am I right to be mad at the whole fandom for how much this hurt? No.  Absolutely not.  And I have not, at any time, been mad at everyone.  I can separate my own feelings from the situation.  To be honest, I don’t even remember who made some of the comments that hurt me to begin with and I’ll never try to find out.  I’m not in any of this to start arguments or sling mud.  I’m in the fandom life for fun, to escape from real life for a bit, and to make friends if I can.

I say all of this mostly for my own mental health: I want to share it.  I want to be understood.  And, if there’s anyone out there who feels like me: I want them to know I understand them, too.  It’s not just you.  You’re not alone. 

And I also want to explain that coming to these conclusions and talking about them has made it a bit easier to pat at the sand in the Good Omens sandbox.  I’ve been poking and prodding as I feel like I can.  So, you’ll likely see some GO stuff on my blog.  I’ve still got everything filtered at the moment because I’m letting it in, as I said, as I feel like I can.  All at once feels like it might squash me again and I don’t want to ruin the progress I’ve already made.

I guess I’ll end this by saying that I loved GO the book.  I loved the series.  I’m eternally grateful for Neil Gaiman and how he’s continually put his foot down that we can all make of it what we like: that’s the fandom’s toybox.  The only things that are cannon are the words in black and white and that’s all he’ll comment on.  They can continue to be your romantic gay ship.  They can continue to be my ace/enby QPR.  We can all play in this massive sandbox together.  Just... pardon my bandaged wounds and my being a bit shy.  It’s taken me a while to get up the nerve to be here.

[ncfan-1]

Gotham 04X18, ‘That’s Entertainment’

Last week: hardly anyone in the Legion of Horribles had a comprehensible motivation. This week: chaos. This is Gotham.

- We open with an extreme close-up on the interim mayor. Apparently something happened to the old mayor. And there are a bunch of other higher-ups at a dinner. Including the chairperson of the Gotham Moral Authority office… What decade is this show set in again?

- And Victor Fries and the other Horribles break into the dinner.

- And we’ve established that Bridgit does remember all the shit that happened to her, and that because of that, “there is no Bridgit anymore.” Okay, so we’ve established that. Thank you, show, for putting the bare minimum of effort into explaining why she suddenly wants to rip the city apart. If only you could have done a better job building up to this moment.

- Oswald could not look less happy to be in that van, and even less happy to have Jerome wrapping his arm around his shoulders.

- Okay, Alfred’s story about Bruce’s seventh birthday is kinda sweet. And Alfred has given him car keys. To a proto-Batmobile. Alfred, stop enabling him.

- …Alright, the hugging was sweet. I don’t have a heart of stone.

- And poor Oswald has slipped away long enough to warn Jim of what’s going on.

- The story is still very much treating Jonathan as… basically, the Tagalong Kid with a flair for mad science. There’s the way Oswald phrases it—he says that Jerome has Freeze, Firefly and Hatter working with him, and that Scarecrow made a gas for him. He differentiated between them; Oswald’s assessment, apparently, is that Jonathan is performing a different function than the others. Like, I know I keep beating this horse, but it’s striking the way the show, even though they aren’t interested in treating him as a character anymore, let alone a sympathetic character, he still comes off like someone who isn’t here on his own initiative, very much comes off as a subordinate, like even more so than the others (I don’t think Jerome recognizes equals). I noticed in the van, too, he was huddled in the corner up until the moment it came time to gas someone, with Jervis standing right in front of him. It’s just an interesting visual detail.

- “He scares the living hell out of me, okay!” Oh, Oswald, sweetheart.

- Oswald is unreasonably pretty, and I say this as an aro ace. He’s just… vaguely luminous.

- Old school Gobblepot, complete with Oswald limping away hurriedly when Harvey starts calling for Jim. My heart is glad.

- Jerome crashes a concert and does the old “bomb strapped to a hostage” trick.

- And Tabitha has apparently been her charming self.

- Tabitha’s also done with this League of Assassins business.

- Fries and Jonathan have busted into… a chemical laboratory, apparently. How much do you wanna bet this is the only scene in the episode where Jonathan has any lines?

- Jerome reveals who his two “guests of honor” are—Jeremiah and Bruce, to the surprise of no one. Jim tries to offer himself up in place of Bruce (which, okay, it’s a nice moment, even if it doesn’t redeem him), but no dice. As for the Police Commissioner… off with his head!

- Baby Batcat is still good. Even Alfred looks happy to see Selina. And Selina thought the brat thing was just an act.

- Alfred and Selina experience a rare moment of solidarity over Jim and Lucius’s horrible plan.

- Barbara follows the League to a house of Ra’s’s. Apparently there is a secret door, and more of the glowy hand. What’s behind the secret door? Uh, not sure, actually, but the music thinks it’s impressive. On the far wall, there is a portrait of Ra’s with a woman. Is this supposed to be some sort of reincarnation thing?

- Back to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is not nearly as charitable as Bruce, and doesn’t want to go along with Jim and Lucius’s plan. But Bruce moves him to going along with it. Jeremiah doesn’t seem terribly sympathetic towards the suffering of others. There’s still something just a bit… off, about him.

- Harvey goes to the lab, and a woman there reveals that Fries and Jonathan made them make the Joker venom. So maybe Jonathan’s not the one who’s been making it after all? Or maybe he just doesn’t have the skill level needed to make a more refined version.

- Jeremiah’s color scheme is very… Joker. I’m sure that’s not clumsy foreshadowing. I should also note that a more subtle bit of foreshadowing was Jeremiah lying about Jerome trying to kill him as a child last episode. I don’t know about other versions, but DCAU Joker lied about his past all the time.

- Bruce’s not flinching when everyone ducks when shots ring out seems reminiscent of 1989’s Batman. Seeing as Michael Keaton is my other favorite live-action Batman, that’s fitting.

(Yes, I said other. I really do like David Mazouz’s portrayal of Bruce Wayne, though we haven’t seen too much Batman from him yet.)

- The Horribles have commandeered a zeppelin. Jonathan had more lines! Jervis and Jonathan continue to be a duo, Jervis still sounds a bit like Jonathan’s minder/babysitter, and Oswald’s betrayal was anticipated.

- Tabitha’s assessment of Ra’s is a cult leader. Given the way Barbara is acting, it’s hard to argue.

- I’d say I feel sorry for Tabitha, but Tabitha’s so awful it’s hard to feel much of anything. And Tabitha, honey, I can’t even remember how many episodes it’s been since Selina last interacted with you and Barbara. At this point, I don’t think she’s coming back.

- Jerome’s comedy act is not very comedic.

- “You’re as crazy as I am.” And Jerome’s about to make sure Jeremiah is, by giving him the knife.

- Jeremiah doesn’t need a lot of persuading to try to kill Jerome. Given the way he screams, yeah…

- Jim and Oswald think the same way. :)

- “Time to kill this maniac once and for all.” Lucius doesn’t look like he approves of you’re taking the law into your own hands, Jim.

- The zeppelin of doom has arrived.

- We cut back to tied up and none too happy with his surroundings. He breaks his bonds and tries to get the hypnotized pilot to turn the zeppelin around. Unfortunately, the hypnotized pilot has a gun.

- Oswald calls Jim for help, and is, I think, convinced to try to help them.

- Jerome is on top of a building.

- And, not for the first time, Jim commits murder.

- Oswald gets into a fight with the pilot. Poor man doesn’t even drive his own car, how’s he supposed to fly a blimp? Very poorly, I assume. (He called it a blimp, I’m gonna assume that’s what it is.)

- And Jerome isn’t dead. He’s dangling from a drain pipe.

- “Lawman or murderer?” Jerome, Jim’s already a murderer, I wouldn’t appeal to him that way if I was you.

- But Jerome chooses to let himself fall, saying “I’ll be seeing you soon.” Unsubtle reference to Jeremiah, I presume.

- We cut back to Jerome’s dead face. People are gathered around his body, collecting his blood like he’s some sort of medieval saint.

- Bruce seems overcome. Poor kid.

- And Oswald picked up blimp-flying on the fly.

- Poor, poor Oswald.

- Tabitha vs. The League of Shadows. Pretty one-sided after about thirty seconds, with a mysterious man who is totally not Ra’s al-Ghul looking on from a distance.

- And it wasn’t Ra’s al-Ghul, as it turns out. Another faction of the League of Shadows. They promptly drug and kidnap her. Okay, now I do feel a little sorry for Tabitha. Today’s been the day that fun forgot for her.

- Jeremiah back in his sterile, creepy maze-house. He seems to be trying to cope with everything that just happened, only to find a present waiting on his desk. (It had better not be Ecco’s head in a box.)

- Okay, it’s not Ecco’s head in a box. Good; I’ve gotten entirely too used to this show pulling cheap tricks like that. It’s a spray of Joker venom. And we see Jeremiah’s face turning white, his lips turning very, very red, and we here a familiar-sounding laugh…