#From a character perspective

[bunnwich]

Say Bunnwhich, I'm kind curious...

What got ya to love Lil Lion Leona in the 1st place? :3

WHY DO I LIKE LEONA???

Sorry for the long yap as usual but, I feel like every once in a while ppl ask me this very question and I feel like I have been in twst hell for so long it’s like ancient history now. VGBHNJMK

TBH I very strongly disliked Leona's character when he came on screen when I first started to play twst. I found Chapter 2 to be very flat compared to Chapter 1 and I had very little sympathy for him and his backstory. To me, it was clear he was just the "hot, brooding character" archetype and I had no interest in him whatsoever.

HOWEVER, when I became more active in the fandom, my friend @comingyourlugubriousness and others began to ship my Yuu with him as a joke bc of my said dislike. And, yeah I begin to write lil scenarios where they’d interact and challenged myself to make a logical way he would even be interested in my Yuu in the first place? 

THAT GOT ME THINKING and I saw how he used to be characterized in fics and stuff and I really just didn't agree??? Even to this day, I feel like some ppl go in two extremes with him. 1.) Where they wash down his personality in order for him to fit in into this “prince charming role" OR 2.) They make him the worst bastard ever, which can lead into certian problematic connotations.

When I went to write my own fics I had watched all of his vignettes and understood better what his true personality is. The main story does not do much to make him likable to a general audience sometimes IMO. And so I became interested in how and why so many ppl interpret his character so wrong?? (My opinion ofc)

And so my journey began as prob one of the biggest Leona apologists ever.

To answer the question better I guess. What do I LIKE about him?

I like him bc in order to enjoy him you really have to read between the lines and do your own work as a fan to find the intriguing parts of him! It's just fun!

I actually find him very relatable, his burnout and seemingly ultra competitive but still “work smarter” not harder attitude is something I gel with and feels very realistic for someone his age.

YES, I think his design is nice but honestly it's the least interesting thing about him to me. I will always enjoy long hair on men that's no secret. According to some friends I "have a type” but eh.

I like that he uses his sorta rude and grumpy ruse to scare ppl off. I  personally subscribe to the idea that underneath all that sass he's just a lil cantankerous grandpa stuck in a  20 year old’s body, who likes to yap about chess and dead languages. 

He’s a nerd and likes books.

He's a true hater. 💚

I feel like he'd never judge your appearance, for eating too much or being lazy.

I feel like he's a caretaker and would always look out for you.

I think he'd be a good teacher and big brother and a lot of his more amiable qualities remind me of my own S/O who is so, so smart and charismatic and who I love very much! 

I say "I think/feel" on a lot of this bc TBH the headcanons I have made for him over my time in the fandom are probably 80% the reason I like him, yk?

SO, if I had to sum it up that probably why! I could say more but I’ll spare ya’ll. 💚💚💚

[mercymornsimpathizer]

a non-exhaustive list of butch literature

a (very ad-hoc) list of butch reading and writing, (mostly) by butch authors. books I've read myself in bold; take the rest with a grain of salt. additions, addendums, and commentary welcome :)

(you can find my list of femme literature here)

general/literary fiction:

mrs s by k patrick

stone butch blues by leslie feinberg

boulder by eva baltasar

running fiercely towards a thin high sounds by judith katz

tipping the velvet by sarah waters

a crystal diary by frankie hucklenbroich

godspeed by lynn breedlove

cha-ching! by ali liebegott

the ihop papers by ali liebegott

greasepaint by hannah levene

lucy and mickey by red jordan arobateau

the bull-jean stories by sharon bridgforth

development by bryher

notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin

america is not the heart by elaine castillo

the slow fix by ivan coyote

the swashbuckler by lee lynch

old dyke tales by lee lynch

sci-fi, fantasy, and horror:

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir

the unspoken name by ak larkwood

vermilion by molly tanzer

metal from heaven by august clarke

scapegracers by ha clarke

the unbroken by cl clarke

fire logic by laurie marks

the seep by chana porter

these burning stars by bethany jacobs

feast while you can by mikaella clements and onjuli datta

non-fiction, memoir, and autobiography:

hijab butch blues by lamya h

gender failure by ivan coyote and rae spoon

fun home by allison bechdel

butch is a noun by h bear bergman

female masculinity by jack halberstam

burning butch by rb murtz

when we were outlaws by jeanne cordova

leaving isn't the hardest thing by lauren hough

odd girls and twilight lovers by lillian faderman

another mother tongue by judy grahn

boots of leather, slippers of gold by elizabeth lapovsky and madeline davis

the persistent desire ed joan nestle

persistence: all way butch and femme ed ivan coyote and zena sharman

dagger: on butch women ed lily burana

[umblrspectrum]

3 years of this godforsaken show

[notbecauseofvictories]

I'm re-reading the Discworld series for reasons, and honestly the most relatable part of reading these as an adult is how many of the protagonists start out being tired, used to their little routine and vaguely disgruntled by the interruption of the Plot. Sam Vimes wants to lie drunk in a gutter and absolutely doesn't want to be arresting dragons. Rincewind is yanked into every situation he's ever encountered, though he'd much rather be lying in a gutter too. (Minus the alcohol. Plus regretting everything he's ever done said witnessed or even heard about fourth-hand in his whole life.) Granny Weatherwax is deeply suspicious of foreign parts and that includes the next town over; Nanny has leaned into the armor of "nothing ever happens to jolly grannies who terrorize their daughters-in-law and make Saucy Jokes"

Only the young people don't seem to have picked up on this---and that's fortunate, because someone has to run around making things happen, if only so Vimes and Granny and Rincewind have a reason to get up (complaining bitterly the whole time) and put it all to rights. Without Carrot, Margrat, Eric, etc. these characters don't have that reason; they're likely to stay in the metaphorical gutter and keep wondering where it all went wrong or why anything has to change.

............well, that's not quite true. You get the sense that Vetinari knows how much certain people hate the Plot. And as the person sitting behind the metaphorical lighting board of Ankh-Morpork, he takes no small pleasure in forcing the Plot-haters specifically to stand up, and say some lines.

[starlingfawn]

[consultingfujoshi]

some thoughts wrt the two established "romances" in severance so far (burt/irving and helly/mark) inspired by @figmentof who pointed out how irving had to find out mark and helly kissed from the corporate video in s2 e1 and how he must have felt seeing his co-workers' love affair like portrayed like that, and how it ties into the queer narrative at play here which uses workplace dynamics and policies as very clear analogues for real-life prejudice against queer couples. I mean, just look at this:

it's not just documented, but celebrated. used as propaganda for how the conditions on the severance floor have improved. proof that the severed workers are happy. and how even though he is unaware of the sociopolitical meaning of all this, lumon is very not-subtly telling him that what he had with burt is inherently lower and less valuable than this.

irving doesn't even know homophobia exists and yet he is still affected by it, it still seeps into every corner of the way his and burt's romance progresses. burt is positioned as an unacceptable love interest from the jump. irv is actively discouraged at every turn from pursuing it. their friendship is viewed with disgust and apprehension from their coworkers. burt working in a different department that's hated by MDR. dylan himself not being homophobic in the sense he opposes their relationship because they're both men but his attempts to keep them apart still has a parallel sort of prejudice behind it and still ultimately has the same effect as if it WERE driven by homophobia. irving is made to feel perverse for wanting contact with burt. he's told this is for his own good.

and then, just as they manage to overcome that immediate resistance from their peers and escape to a place where they can explore this blossoming romance on their own terms, burt retires. for all it matters to irv, he's dead. and then irving is given the option to live the rest of his life with grief that will never heal, or kill himself too, because there is no reality where they get to be together. that's just the way things are. of course they wouldn't get to be together. he was unreasonable and childish for ever hoping that could happen. this is just the way it goes for innies. he's told to get ahold of himself and not make a scene.

but the thing is, the standards are not the same for all. a heterosexual romance gets upheld as the shining example of success and fulfilment for the severed employees, whilst a homosexual romance is ridiculed and invalidated, and written off as something that was simply never meant to be. and even more importantly to irving, a heterosexual romance is APPROVED OF by lumon, and by extension, by kier. irv held back from allowing himself to even call his and burt's relationship a romance, because his god had told him it was wrong, he followed the handbook, thinking this was what kier wanted, and then finding out after suffering the worst heartbreak imaginable because of it, that this WASN'T EVEN TRUE. it's simply just that someone like HIM doesn't get to have something like this. his love is not the kind of love god wants. he does not approve of irv's love. cynical and manipulative though that approval may be (even within the context of the corporate video, the helly/mark romance is only being celebrated to further the narrative that lumon care for their workers, but the point still remains that it was THEIR romance specifically used to suit this end), when your entire life has been in pursuit of that approval, it must be devastating to learn it was never on the cards for you.

he and burt even used the fact kier met and fell in love with his wife in the same circumstances as them to justify this to each other - and they were RIGHT, god does approve of falling in love with your coworkers - this simply just doesn't apply to them specifically. and if irving needed any more proof that he no longer has a place at lumon, that he's better off not existing at all than existing with this pain that cannot be remedied, pain that won't even be acknowledged for what it is, a symptom of a sickness which plagues the entire severance system, pain that he is simply expected to choke down and get over - this is that proof.

and that's the POINT. they're TELLING us that this is unjust, and there's a double standard. they're using the ways the innies experience romance and the difference in lumon's reaction (lumon being the collective of all the management we've seen, lumon as a singular entity) to burt/irving vs helly/mark to comment on how queer people are not afforded the same level of respect or validation IN REAL LIFE, for their attachments, their love, their pain, their suffering. it is NOT just incidental that irving's romance is with a man. it would not WORK if his love interest was a woman. the POINT is that they are both men and how that puts them at a disadvantage, even if they aren't aware of the prejudices of the outside world, even if they don't TECHNICALLY apply on the severance floor, there are very clear analogues which still end up oppressing them in equivalent ways that they would be suffering if this were a normal workplace in the outside world.

it genuinely sickens me to my stomach that even in a world so divorced from reality and the sensibilities of regular society, a queer couple is still made to suffer and feel inferior in a way that perfectly mirrors their real-life counterparts. how they will never, EVER be allowed to exist in a world where their love could thrive freely and uninhibited - they never get to taste the joy our world has to offer people like them, but they are still somehow subjected to all the pain it has to offer them regardless. it's such horrifically devastating writing. it makes my skin crawl. I can't stop thinking about it

[the-meme-monarch]

coal.

i assume you’re talking about coal dandys world. i fucking love coal dandys world if you don’t like coal dandys world you’re a coward and/or a bitch and that’s my hot take. here’s some art that includes her that I’m working on

[2hoothoots]

been chatting with a friend who's playing through PN2 again and i want it to be known i will not hear anyone say a WORD about Hollis giving Raz a hard time at the beginning of the game. if anything she is OUTSTANDINGLY accommodating to this random ten-year-old who wandered in unattended off the plane in the middle of an extremely tense situation

[0fps]

JANE DOE ❖ undercover r&b

The big bad daddy who cussed you out every day is gone and yet you still miss him. What are you, a bunch of daddy's boys?

[nellasbookplanet]

The thing is, I can get behind most of the desicions bells hells have taken regarding predathos, it’s more that the road to getting there didn’t really work or was sometimes skipped over entirely in favor of circular discussions.

'Keeping predathos sealed will never work in the long run now that the truth is out, and we'd rather see us as the ones controlling it/keeping it from harming people than risk ludinus/someone else using it as a weapon in the future' and 'the exandrian accord will never agree to anything that would risk predathos being freed/endanger the gods and therefore we must make this desicion without their input' and 'as long as the betrayers exist as gods there will be a risk of a second calamity and it’s wise to seek a way to minimize that power differential' and 'if the gods remain gods and predathos can't be killed they will eventually clash and mortals will suffer in the struggle' and 'the primes will never seek to kill the betrayers or assist mortals in doing so because that is their family' and 'the gods themselves have been hurting and unable to heal since leaving tengar, and perhaps the change of permanently becoming mortals not as strictly tied to their domains will allow them change previously withheld from them by their natures' are all valid arguments.

But the hells rarely if ever touch on these arguments, rather focusing in on individual slights and imagined ideas of the gods being tyrants needing to be humbled. They never slow down to discuss the practical implications of the changes they want to implement (the gods will be back on their side of the divine gate now!), or to consider the good the gods and their followers do (have we already forgotten the changebringer helping fcg find self-worth or the everlight helping resurrect Laudna?), or the nuance behind their harsher decisions and actions (aeor was going to murder them! the primordials were in the process of exterminating all mortals!!), or the sacrifices the primes have made to protect mortals (they went to war against their own family!), or the importance of faith to much of the exandrian populace. No matter how many sensible arguments there are for the end decision, if the characters won’t engage with said arguments leading up to it while dismissing anything opposing it the decision will still feel largely empty and self-centered in the end.

[crittercisms]

“be more chill isn’t about neurodiversity”

yes. yes it is. i fear you missed one of the major points of the show

[jackklinemybeloved]

I could write an essay on Ame’s witchiness and gender… the way she was abandoned for causing too much chaos and should “know better” at age five, how her natural self is something she should be afraid of and keep in check, the difference in personality between a seven year old Ame who doesn’t have to perform gender for anyone vs. an adult Ame who is trying to fill a role in the community and as a result is much more subdued and maternal when talking to the people of Toma, making an effort to “be kind” because any expression of rage was seen as dangerous, “she’s not a girl; she’s a witch!”, her knowing that she is different from her maternal mentor and feeling like she is failing at her responsibilities, her instincts and ways of thinking constantly being put into question by those around her, particularly Suvi who had never felt uncomfortable in the role she was born to fill.

(deep breath)

her veiled explanation of the coven of elders to Keen being “a council of women who recently decided whether I should remain a part of it” (even as she’s obfuscating she emphasizes being an outsider in a group of women), her feeling like an outsider in the binary world of humans vs. spirits (which Eioghorain this episode says is not as clear a binary as humans make it out to be), how often she is accused of being too brash, too impulsive, too much, too foolish, and you should not be this way.

anyway. I have a lot of feelings on this aspect of Ame’s character. for reasons.

[dasiesanddarkness]

sometimes i think about the fact that Wylan has no chapters in Six of Crows and get sad, but then I remember that its very likely because if there had been chapters from his pov the reveal at the end where we find out his father hated him and he can't read wouldn't have been shocking or nearly as dramatic because those things are never far from Wylan's mind. they're all he thinks about. Wylan has been conditioned to believe that he is his failings, and that they are the most important and noticeable part of him. i can almost guarantee that even during the ice court, when he was constantly terrified and three wrong steps away from dying, he would have been thinking about it. and in order to preserve the reveal and trick us into believing that the plan would work- that Wylan as insurance would in fact force Van Eck to pay up- we couldn't have any Wylan chapters. and then i get sadder.

[mxystan]

taiwan travelogue by yang shuangzi tr. lin king is indeed an award-winning banger and perhaps the first time in my life i've ever felt vindicated for dual-wielding a novel with its english translation because the act of translation itself is such a big theme in the novel. big win for metafiction-obsessed himejin everywhere!!

[ciderjacks]

I love how Ryoko Kui uses context and pov in scenes like this.. bc like, in the first scene where he’s saying Laios isnt normal, it’s from Marcilles point of view, she takes it as him just being a jerk, and so you sort of think it’s a one off joke of him insulting Laios for doing something as insane as using his leg as an anchor.

And then a few chapters later, that scene comes back from Chilchuck’s point of view, in a way more serious tone, and you realize that the reason he reacted like that is because seeing someone he cared about put themselves in such a painful and dangerous situation with seemingly no regard for their own life really disturbed him. And like, witnessing the aftermath of that was apparently traumatic enough that it stuck with him long after the fact.

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he comes across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt, and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh." Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmare, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species