#God being queer baited is my favorite thing ever

[oreoooq]

Td spoilers kindaa

So I saw @niqosblog make a Mkulia scene redraw as Aleheather so I decided to join in on the fun

Also Mk is on her tippy toes in the first one because I drew Julia first and forgot about the height difference

Originals

[saltpepperbeard]

What are your top 5 Ed x Stede moments? 😊 I’m curiously asking several blogs to see how many of us share favorites!

MAN, anon! I tried to give this one some thought to see if the choosing would get any easier/become any clearer. Spoiler alert: IT DID NOT HSDLKS I AM STILL JUST AS TORN AS I WAS BEFORE. But let me see if I can at least ~*~attempt this~*~. My first three were easy but then the LAST TWO HAD ME PACING SHDLKS:

So okay, obviously have to put their first kiss in the ranking because it's so iconic and it's the thing that got me into the show in the first place! Like, literally the FIRST scene I laid eyes upon. And it had me crying full blown tears at work because I was just so floored that we weren't queer baited and that it was so sweet and tentative and cautious and just,,, The rest was history of course lol!

Like really, the Power it has. Didn't even know the characters or the story that much at all, and was already crying LMAO.

Then of course I have to put the second beach kiss(es) because good god lol GOOD GOD!!! I think I adore it so so much mainly because Ed and Stede are finally on the same page. No more doubts, no more worries, no more anxieties, no more questioning if they have the same feelings or are going too slow/fast. Just them and their strong, solid love--their good bones.

Not to mention Ed dropping the double "I love you" ??? I cannot even begin to express how thankful I am that we heard a legitimate "I love you." And Ed being the one to say it after all the hurt, all the pain in feeling unlovable, all the fear that he'd die completely alone, all the worry that his strong feelings were too much...Man. MAN.

And thennnnn the reunion scene because yeah. Yeah. I've said this before and I'll say it again: watching this at like 4:30am for the first time almost gave me an out of body experience HSLDSHS. Like, I think there's just something about the fact that we were all going through so many different iterations of possible reunions during the s1-s2 gap. We envisioned angsty, silly, romantic, and everything in between.

But this lol THIS,,,

I feel like it just surpassed expectations in such a beautiful, fantastical way. Like genuinely, I never EVER anticipated Ed being stuck in purgatory about to die and Stede coming to him as a mermaid because the real Stede is sitting with his body begging him not to succumb.

Also, Stede begging and screaming at Ed not to die/to wake up/to come back to him always makes me feel some sort of way. Something something he's normally so silly and so theatrical but he's so choked up and so serious in that moment that it PUNCHES ME IN THE KIDNEYS. Like it really just goes to show how utterly desperate he is. And that last, whispered, strained, "come back to me..." ??? Homie............

ALSO also, obligatory "This Woman's Work" mention because I knew that song and nothing else for like two months straight HSKLDS. Or two months gay, rather.

...

see this is where i start Dying because i'm being pulled in so many different directions lol DO I GO FOR ROMANTIC, OR SILLY, OR EARNEST, OR,,, SKLDJHLDJKDKDA

Okay okay I think I'm going to have to go earnest because I adore that they actually talked things through together. FLEETING LMAO, BUT STILL GLAD THEY DID, EVEN IF IT WAS JUST FOR A BIT. I just love that they actually expressed some frustrations, that Stede actually talked about his fears/his panic, that Ed set a boundary, and that Stede respected it. And then Stede gently navigated around and expressed his love in different ways and it folded Ed in half almost immediately hsdkljs YOU LOVE TO SEE IT.

But yeah no--if me rolling around Atticus' fics and me writing my own stories is any indication, I really REALLY LIKE IT WHEN THESE TWO ACTUALLY TALK LMAO. BECAUSE THEY HAVE SO SO MUCH BOTTLED UP, BOTH INDIVIDUALLY AND AS A COUPLE, SO IT'S JUST HSLDKS TALK IT THROUGH AS A CREW OF TWO MY BELOVED!!!

......

oh god oh god what do i pick for the last one lol WHAT DO I PICK FOR THE LAST ONE,,,

mmmMMmmmMMMM,,,,,,

SUCCUMBED TO MORE TALKING IT THROUGH LMAO.

I love so many of their other moments, and honestly, so many things could have made this list. But the bathtub scene...man. Taika saying it's more vulnerable and even more romantic than their first kiss is shdljks yeah. YEAH. LIKE HE'S COOKING A BIT WITH THAT BECAUSE IT'S JUST,,,

I feel like it's such a pivotal and important step in their relationship. Ed has literally never told that secret to anyone else, but he entrusted it with Stede. He feels safe enough around Stede to expose the darkest parts of his past, and he's entirely right to do so, because Stede doesn't view him any differently at all. Stede is right there, wanting to be his friend--loving him still.

And I think it's also good for Stede because of that vulnerability. He gets to see how much Ed trusts him and feels safe around him. He's getting to see Ed and Ed alone, which can't be said for so many other people.

It's just the two of them in that moment and I adore it so much.

...I just adore THEM so much, anon, so thank you for spreading this sweet little ask around! It was super fun to consider, aLBEIT SLIGHTLY RGGHGHGHH INDUCING BECAUSE I COULD INCLUDE SO MUCH LMAO. But thank you kindly! <3

Also, for the record, if I had to rank them from most favorite to still favorite but not AS favorite, I'd go Double Beach Kiss, Reunion, First Kiss, Love Everything About You, and Bathtub.

[thehollowprince]

I agree with the buddie being like Sterek. Some of the buddie Fandom also reminds me of some of the supernatural Fandom. Giving every new love instrest on the show so much hate the characters gets killed off. I think the whole buddie vs bucktommy is exactly what would've happened if Dean came out as Bi and started dating Benny (that vampire he met in purgatory) instead of Cas. Can you imagine? The dastiel Fandom would go crazy.

I fully admit I stopped watching Supernatural probably around the seventh season, mostly because the show wasn't interesting to me anymore, but also, in large part, because of the fandom itself. So, obviously, I don't really know who Benny is, but I vaguely remember some Destiel fandom being not happy with the inclusion of this character, because they wanted Destiel!

And this plays into a larger problem within fandom, something I've been saying for a while.

Shipping Culture is the Death of Fandom.

You can't enter a fandom space anymore (and this goes back probably a decade) without the question being prompted of "What's your favorite ship?" And if you answer anything other than what the most popular ones are, you are generally run out until you find a nice quiet corner of you and others who like your "obscure" or "small" ship. And God help you if you have anything negative to say about the Fandom Ship!

It was like this with Sterek, and it was like this with Destiel, and in regards to this ask, it's like this with Buddie.

Fun fact that people don't like to acknowledge, but all three of those ships have one major thing in common. They were all made up by their respective fandoms. There was nothing in those shows that even hinted at those ships, but the fandom cheered for them to happen anyway. And hey, ship and let ship, right? Except most people don't harass actors and writers and directors over these ships. And these loud voices were noticed and fan serviced was peppered in, but seeing as how they weren't supposed to be a thing anyway, those ships never actually happened on screen.

This, of course, led to more screaming from the fandoms and accusations of "queerbaiting," despite the fact that each one of those shows had queer characters in them (911 and Teen Wolf from the beginning) that were outright ignored by the fandoms that claimed they wanted more queer rep. You never saw these people who claimed to "so badly want more queer rep" go up to bat for characters like Danny or Hen, but somehow they were being baited?

Which brings me back to the whole issue of Buddie proper. Like I said before, I don't really go here, mostly because I took one look at a lot of the Buddie shippers and said "hell no." I had already dealt with that with the Sterek fandom, but I did keep my ear to the ground, so to speak, mostly because I have a mutual who is very much in this fandom. That's the whole reason I even knew about Buck coming out as bisexual and the current relationship with Tommy. And what really kills me about some of (not all of, but enough of) these Buddie shippers saying the most vile and homophobic shit, is that if these exact same scenarios were playing out now but with Eddie in Tommy's place, they have absolutely no problem with it.

I'm talking no dialogue changes, no costume changes, no story changes, they'd be perfectly fine with it, despite the fact that they are literally picking apart everything Tommy is doing or has done with a comb and pointing out how horrible he is as a boyfriend/character.

Which just goes to prove that they don't give two shits about queer representation. They just want their ship, but even if they got it, they wouldn't be happy, because it has become its own thing within the Fandom itself. Nothing would ever live up the OOC characterization they now have that exists solely in their fics.

This is, of course, why they go out of their way to attack people who like Buck and Tommy together, particularly the queer men in the fandom (ironically) and make threats about how they would shoot Tommy/Lou (remind anyone of "stoning Scott McCall for fixing a dog's leg?) or writing fics about Tommy killing a child to justify their hatred for the character (a literal thing I saw with my own eyes).

To top it all off, these shippers are also the same people who act like they're the offended party in all this, that they're the victims. I saw some of them on TikTok talking about the actresses that played Buck's and Eddie's romances on the show calling out the Buddie shippers for the reason their characters didn't stick around. And while I can't confirm of that's absolutely true or not, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the way these shippers wanted those Love Interests gone before they were even on screen didn't exactly help.

Ironically enough, the Buddie shippers did the exact same thing the Sterek shippers and the Destiel shippers did, which is be so obnoxious that I can't even stand their ships anymore.

But what do I know? I'm just an actual gay man who's thrilled to see genuine queer rep between two men on a popular show. What does my opinion matter?

[hella1975]

Hi Hella!  Its List Anon with my list of thoughts about this chapter as i read it.  And then my ramblings of it and then whatever else.  

AZULA 

Miss girl is having symptoms of an impending mental breakdown

HAKODA

God I missed your Hakoda so  much

KQNUT

I cant read right now im so excited oh my god 

Sokkas thinking about zuko and i think watching him i havent gotten that far yet but oh my god im so excited

Hes checking him out i think

I feel like theres a metaphor hidden somewhere in zukos blades but i cant figure it out

“Sokka knew what Zuko was. Sokka knew what he had done. It didn’t scare him anymore. Instead, Sokka ate with the other boy, and reluctantly found him hilarious, and found himself stammering under Bato’s false – and frankly insulting – accusations. Zuko was a threat, but not to them, not anymore.” - <33333.  Sokkas and homophobic dog thing????

TOMNOOK YES ITS MY BOYS

I missed Tomnook so bad.  I love them so much, to me peak characterization is two people who are like two halves and a whole and are just linked with eachother.  Nanooks personality is my favorite thing ever.  

NANooks sees it omg i love this so much

““Okay, plan B,” Sokka said, more to himself than Zuko, before his smirk became an evil grin, arms folded over his chest. “Either you can come hunting with me, something that will keep you moving and practise your precision and stealth, or I can go tell Kanut that you’re swinging that sword about like you’re trying to singlehandedly undo every bit of treatment he’s given you. Choice is yours, Sunshine.”” Oh my god a pet name

Also this is so funny to me.  Sokkas literally blackmailing him as he should.  i love your sokka.

 “Call me Sunshine again and I’ll throw you off the cliff.” i love your zuko too hes so great.

Zukos protecting him <333

Im barely into this chapter and ive already written a lot.  I apologize in advance for making you read all this.

“But to protect him? To want to keep him safe? On purpose? Sokka was used to being the protector. Being on the receiving end felt like an itch he couldn’t scratch, and he didn’t understand.” - oh my god there is so much to unpack here

“ Blue bleeding into red. Red staining the blue.” - also a lot to unpack

“ But Sokka and Zuko were older. Zuko did not need to sacrifice himself for Sokka and Sokka was not responsible for Zuko.”  Love this love this love this I dont feel like sokkas trauma is represented enough in zukka relationships.  This is a really good depiction of it and how Sokka was given too much responsibility at a young age.  I like how you’re touching on this and adding it to their relationship.

Is this going to be one of those things where sokka falls first but zuko falls harder?  Its giving the vibes.  Sokkas already showing signs of figuring it out.  I dont think zuko is for a while.  Thats just my take on it though.

““Tell me about your time on the Ullaakut,” he blurted out suddenly, making Zuko flinch.” this caught me off guard but i also love it.  I dont know why but this is so funny to me.  I really hope Zuko tells Sokka some more details eventually.

Yk tomnook are giving some romantic vibes in this chapter.  Are you queer baiting us /j

FUCK FUCK FUCK THEYRE BEING ATTACKED

“ The Princess of the Fire Nation was here with four fucking air ships presumably full of tyranny and unchecked trauma and somehow it was Chena’s fucking problem because it always was with that family. He hadn’t even finished eating, for La’s sake.”  this is so funny i love chena

Oh my god if any of them die this chapter im never going to forgive you

Its going to be chena isnt it?  Theres too much focus on him and hes being an idiot

Sokka being able to pierce Zukos trauma is so wonderful.  

Oh my god i love azula i trust you to do her justice “Auzla, good or bad” idk well have to see ig

Oh my god that conversation thing was great

The fight was great

Oh my god youre so amazing i love this so much

Okay i dont think anyones going to die

The Last two paragraphs - Oh my god hella what the fuck are you on.  This is the kind of stuff that makes taob so good and wonderful and magnificent and glorious and and and- 

So the thing about how you write Zukka is, its perfect.  I am so picky about how people write Zuko specifically (and azula but were not talking about her right now) but you are just so good at writing him.  I love how you keep his canon characterization and not like infantilizing him (seriously, people tend to forget that Zuko is an asshole) but you also tap into all of Zukos traits, not just the ones that are appealing.  Like the black and white thinking, his bossiness, his temper, all that fun stuff.  And you take all of this and combine it with the traits that he picked up because of the taob plot and you’re consistent with it.  Like I see a lot of fics (and i also do this with my fic so i know its really hard not to do this ) that will put characters through something and its like that event never happened after like two nightmares and three flashbacks and a conversation.  But you’re very good at juggling everything going on with zukos mind and character.  

You write in a way that makes you come off as extremely intellegent. I dont know what I mean by that but like on tumblr you give off the vibes of someone who is just unnaturally smart, and then you read taob and you're just like 'yeah that checks out'

I got off track of what i was originally wanting to say.  

My favorite Zukka dynamic is Sokka leaning into Zukos protectiveness and so how you showed this in this chapter took me aback because i knew that that is where this was headed but you executed it so well.  Also its kind of nice that we’re finally starting to get into the zukka portion of taob.  And feelings are finally being felt for eachother.  Like when you said slow burn holy shit this is slow burn.  I love it so much 10/10 marvelous, all the praise, bravo.  

Then there was also the acknowledgement that Zuko and Sokka arent responsible for one another.  And that theyre allowed to just be Zuko and Sokka without the stress of being the one ‘in charge’.  Like theres no added pressure to it.  And like I said people have a tendency to focus on Zukos trauma and comletely dismiss the trauma of sokka and how his issues minght surface in a relationship.  I love how you’re going about this.

Like the dynamic you write between Zuko and Sokka is so unique and rare but so perfect and accurate based on their characters.

I also always forget how much i love Tomnook and I love that theyre going with them.  This is something that I was sad thinking about whenever i was like ‘huh i wonder whats going to happen in taob next’ i would get upset thinking about nanook and tomkin being actively present.  So the fact that they are makes me happy.  

The last like paragraph and line were so perfect I loved them so much.

You are such a fantastic writer like I cant put into words how much I love your style and the way you phrase things and how fluently things flow together when you write them.  I think I’ve mentioned in one of my other things that it reminds me of the alphabet and how there are certain ways you can order the letters that done seen natural or fluent.  And how its like you have a special formula for knowing which synonym to use or what word to use or which order to arrange sentences. Its so poetic and eloquent.  Like its so weird to me how much I’m in love with just you’re style.  To me everything you write is just so perfect.  

You’re like the definition of a ‘natural story teller’  

Like you come off as one of those that you can go into any situation no matter how bland and come out with a really good story or metaphor or something.  

I (kind of?) have another thing for the list too.

Like, you are so kind.  I can’t go into as many details as I would like to but you are just such a kind and wonderful person.  Im leaving it at that.  

I say kinda because I cant give you the context for this one so idk if it counts.

I always feel weird sending these because I always feel like im being weird.  But im anonymous so oh well.  I hope you understand how talented you are (in my opinion atleast).  Like I said I am just so in love with you’re writing style and its honestly exactly how I would love to be able to write.  I have loved writing my entire life and I’ve always been advanced in the subject but it’s not good enough to be considered talent.  (I’m not saying this in a self deprecating way, I’ve grown to be perfectly content with my writing abilities)  But holy fuck you’re so talented.  I remember first reading taob and needing to just take a minute and process how incredible it is and I was in awe and couldnt believe how amazing you were able to string together words.  I still cant believe it any time I read something you write.  Like even if its just some wild ass tags, you are just so good with words in general. 

I’ve mentioned before that you’re a really easy person to admire.  I cant think of the words to go into details about that but yeah.  

I had a really meh christmas and the taob update made it like ten times better so you made my day so thank you for that.  <3

i have. SO MUCH to say in response to this so im going bullet point so it's not entirely incoherent but i hope you know im feeling VERY incoherent about this.

im glad you liked the chapter! you thinking someone was gonna die and saying 'its going to be chena isnt it?  Theres too much focus on him and hes being an idiot' made me actually laugh out loud so ty for that <3

everything you said about zukka and how im writing them! ive said before but both because the romance is a new part of taob and bc people have been waiting so patiently for zukka, im always super nervous about how im writing them so this is just JKSDHGKHG for me especially bc you basically picked up on everything im trying to do. like focusing on sokka's trauma, them not being responsible for each other and how they BOTH need to feel that, showing zuko's protective side, not making zuko less of an asshole etc - these are all conscious decisions for me so for someone to go 'hey i See What You're Doing and im so here for it!' is beyond reassuring

saying i come off as 'extremely intelligent' and 'unnaturally smart' is the part of this ask that is just. sticking with me. like regardless of my insecurities and bad periods i do KNOW that im a good writer, but i cant stress enough how much damage this economics degree has done to my confidence in my own intellect. like i feel stupid 24/7 at university and have done for a year and a half and still have a year and a half left. i am BAD at economics and i dont like it and just feeling constantly stupid like that all the time every day is just. awful. so to find out there are people that actually think im clever? ive not had that since... well since i was still studying english LMAO. it means a lot. like means more than i can even say in this response

'you’re like the definition of a ‘natural story teller’. like you come off as one of those that you can go into any situation no matter how bland and come out with a really good story or metaphor or something' BESTIE 😭😭😭 ily

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT UR TALKING ABOUT WITH THE KIND THING LIKE THANK YOU BUT ALSO WHAT DID I DO

i hope you know i have so much genuine fondness for you like that feels conceited seeing as it's just 'there's a special place in my heart for this person that showers me in compliments' but like i genuinely mean it you seem so kind and your determination to show me what you see in me while on ANON so you know you're getting nothing in return is just. like really truly kind and selfless

[tumblezwei]

forget every other LGBT character on the show - in the show the only confirmed lbgt characters are illia who was originally a jealous terrorist who tried to kill her crushes parents, Jaunes sisters the background characters, and May who I will admit is great rep. Word of god and canon are two different things. While they are hinting at BB neither is confirmed lgbt. They don't have to be in a relationship but they still haven't been confirmed as lbgt.

Whatever you feel about the writing the marketing team and the animators did confirm they were coding Clover as gay. Remember at the time even homophobic fans 100% believed Clover was gay and Qrow and him might hook up. His death does set a precedent on how the show handled mlm. The fact the team never considered viewers would read the relationship as queer shows how for mlm they are unfortunately heteronormative. How they handled the fallout also set a precedent.

You DO NOT have to like Clover. You can hate him for any reason what so ever. But being a good ally means shockingly understanding mlm and the other lgbt fans who were hurt by everything that happened. Instead of getting mad at them for their reactions continue to encourage RT to include more lgbt rep especially rep for mlm that isn't based on stereotypes like Scarlet. Truth is many mlm actually hate Scarlet and don't appreciate him being their rep.

Fucking finally, I was wondering when one of y'all would see that post. I was starting to worry that I'd have to go without someone trying to devalue the LGBT rep on the show in order to lift up their favorite cop.

And despite what this ask is trying to imply, neither Ilia nor Saphron and Terra are bad rep. And I guarantee you that if this ask had come before the latest episode, this person would have tried to claim May was bad rep too. Also, I've said this so many times, you'd have to be acting deliberately obtuse to claim BB isn't canon yet. And it being canon is confirmation of them being wlw.

And I'd like to know what makes Ilia bad rep when she's incredibly similar to Clover. They're both characters that were part of a group that's doing morally questionable things because they think that what they're doing is right. Why is Ilia stuck with "ex-terrorist" as a reason for why she's bad rep, but Clover can't get "the leader of the secret police?" Almost like you're trying to downplay the show's rep so you can be more justifiably mad that your ship isn't canon.

And even taking away all that, the point of my post wasn't to say "look at all this great rep, we don't need gay Clover," it was to point out that there are other LGBT characters in RWBY, none of which have died. So Clover stans acting as if their no confirmed cop fave should be the standard for how we view CRWBY's treatment of LGBT characters and death is annoying.

The marketing team did jackshit. They sold Qrow and Clover pins, that's it. Because they are complimentary characters and Clover was an important player in Qrow's arc.

Animators shipping a pairing means jackshit. Kara likes White Knight but you don't see anyone using that fact as confirmation that WK is canon. Weird how Word of God doesn't count for the other characters, but it's fine to use as evidence for Clover being coded gay.

I'm gonna need a citation on that homophobic thing, and even if that's true, it means jackshit. I can already predict that these people were only talking about it as a way to shit on RT, something that they will use literally anything for, especially if it’s complaining about a popular gay ship in the fandom whether it’s canon or not. 

And no, Clover did not set the precedent for mlm rep, because he wasn't rep. It's not heteronormative for men to be friends, it's not heteronormative for them to support each other. Y’all were shipping the two of them from day one, before they even had the chance to talk at all. Don’t pretend like you picked up on some subtext that CRWBY didn’t when all it took was Clover having a good luck semblance and winking to get y’all to proclaim them as endgame. 

And bitch I am LGBT, and I know what queerbait looks like. I’ve been baited before, I’ve seen other fans of shows I don’t watch be baited, I know what it looks like for a company to use and exploit a relationship to draw people in. This wasn’t fucking it. Don’t you condescendingly explain to me what it means to “be a good ally” when all I see from FG shippers is attacking CRWBY and trying to downplay the other rep in the show to make Clover’s death worse than it is, kind of like what you’re doing. It will never be CRWBY’s fault that y’all took a wink, an ambiguous smile, and a semblance and decided FG was endgame. 

And I’ve said before, I want there to be more mlm rep. But understanding Clover wasn’t gay and his death wasn’t queerbait can be synonymous with that desire for more mlm on the show. 

Anyways Clover wasn’t gay, he was a fascist lapdog from beginning to end and died a stupid death due to his overconfidence, over reliance on his semblance, and refusal to disobey Ironwood’s orders for even a second. Cope. 

[im-the-punk-who]

Could you post some more malex thoughts? What about that song? Or thoughts on them being endgame? Or season 3 malex thoughts?

Baby’s first RNM meta request 😭

ABSOLUTELY I can.

So I am gonna start with my S3 thoughts and endgame thoughts because everything else will tie into that.

From what I’ve seen, Roswell had 5 seasons originally planned, which is still what it feels like it needs to me. Which is cool! It also means we’re probably(hopefully, actually) not gonna get canon malex in s3.

The show has set them up as the ‘will-they-won’t they’ couple - most of their tension together focuses on *whether or not they get together* instead of if they’ll stay together. To me at least, it’s pretty clear the show’s assumption is that if they end up actually getting together in a healthy way(which they both seem to want in their relationships now), they will stay together.

If the show actually does it’s job right and takes the time to let both of them heal, grow, and experience other things that likely won’t happen until at least mid s4. It would make a nice dramatic midpoint for the season, they could play out a bit of that relief of finally being together in the late s4, and then whether or not they renew s5 they’ve told the story they wanted to. But if they do get a fifth season they can play with some hurt/comfort with Michael and Alex actually building/cementing their relationship. 

As we’re seeing with Liz and Max, tension has to come from somewhere and where RNM(as most shows do) fails is thinking it needs to come from the relationship, which is what I’m afraid would happen if malex get together so soon after making the(at least private) commitment to get better for each other. There won’t be enough time for growth and dramatic build to sustain the afterglow and they’ll have to find something else to torment the poor boys with. 

I don’t hold out a *super* large amount of hope for it, because like...this is the CW. But I do think either way malex will likely be endgame. Just from everything the show has told us and set up, I would be extremely surprised and honestly really fucking angry if they don’t. Not necessarily because they’re My Ship, or because it would be any sort of queer baiting - they’d both still be undeniably queer and I assume Alex would end up with Forrest or someone else in that scenario.

Honestly it would just be bad storytelling to set up your characters as having this deep cosmic connection, setting them up directly in parallel with our other pairs of starcrossed lovers Max/Liz and Nora/Tripp, dropping all the hints in the music choices(Holy Moly being the big one when linked with the Would You Come Home scene, but there are other small parallels in song choices - ‘Through Your Eyes’ as Alex walks away in 2x06 for example.) Especially with the literal confirmation that they both still *want* to be with each other (Alex’s song saying ‘if I got better and worked through my issues can we be together’ and Michael recognizing he’s got to give Alex the space to do that work so that maybe someday they can be together. ‘It’s not our time right now.“ “But it will be.” “I hope so.”)

Anyway! So, I would count a Not-Malex-Endgame as a bad ending, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if we get zero canon Malex content in S3. In fact given where the characters are, I think it would be an AMAZING choice to have these characters who are fan favorites and who everyone *wants* to be endgame - stay apart and work on themselves, and build all that TENSION( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) for an entire season in order to cash in for an s4 payoff.

Also, I really want to see Alex grow as a person. 

Michael really started to change in Season 2 - we’ve seen him start trying to be better, dealing with his emotions more, recognizing how bad his relationship with Alex is and trying to improve with Maria as well as building his other relationships, too. To me, Michael is already very different than he was in S1 and honestly, Alex has some catch up to do in terms of working on his fears and how they relate to how he cannot stand to be around Michael in stressful situations.

To that end, I really want to see how Alex and Forrest interact, and how a relationship with Forrest might change Alex. We heard before that Alex doesn’t really consider himself to have had a real relationship, and Forrest does *not* seem the type to be up for a fast and easy thing, so I think he could really push Alex to face his issues around commitment and his tendency to cut and run. 

Which would actually be really cool! I am not a Forrest-endgame person at all, mostly because he seems both way too put together and way too needy for Alex long term, but I do think they would be really fun to see played against each other and also just .... nice things for Alex Manes please. 

Also then we get lots of Michael making sad eyes at Alex which is just *chefs kiss*.

For Alex, his personal conflict has always centered around his trauma, his father, being ashamed and afraid of being openly gay, and having enough faith in people to believe he personally is worth fighting for and my main wish for Alex is to finally fucking learn how to love and be loved in return.

So in that vein and especially if we see Malex as endgame, it only makes sense that Michael’s journey needs to be a parallel one of him finding something worth staying on earth for. He’s started to build a family for himself fucking finally - Maria, Isobel, Sanders, hell I think there is even the potential for Liz, Max, and Kyle to be family. And of course, Alex has always been his family. But previously no one has ever had his back in the way he’s had theirs. 

From what we’ve seen, Michael has always been the one who gives with his whole self - both Maria and Alex comment on it - “I don’t doubt your capacity for love” & “He keeps secrets because of how much he loves Max and Isobel, not because of how much he loves you.” He is a character who has spent his life throwing affection and emotion at the wall and seeing what(if anything) sticks. 

He took the crayon from Max at the orphanage, told Isobel he killed the girls, dropped his plans to leave Roswell for her, he both defended Alex from his father and didn’t stop him from leaving a place he was in danger, he let Liz experiment with his blood for Isobel’s antidote. He tells Alex once that he was glad that Max and Isobel had an easier time, even if it meant he didn’t. Michael’s biggest character flaw is that he believes he has to be useful to be wanted. That he, as he is, is unloveable. Or, maybe better put, that he is not worthy of the kind of love others have.

In S3 I want this challenged, CW I will fight you. I *REALLY* want to see him have to face head on his assumption that he’s going to leave Earth at some point and everyone is going to be fine with that. I want him to realize he’s become core in someone’s life again. I want to see someone grab hold and refuse to let go. I want it to get messy, and I want them to stay, damnnit! 

I want to see Michael start making plans to stay again.

I said in a previous meta that I thought the growth Michael has gone through already would lead to him being approached by Jones with an offer to leave (so that Jones can separate the pod squad, so that he can use Michael to get to Max, something like that) and I really want to see what decision a more grounded Michael might make in a situation like that.

And what my tiny shriveled shipper heart REALLY wants is a scene where Michael is put to this choice of being able to leave and - despite being offered everything he has been working towards for his entire life - the relationships he’s built are strong enough to make him stay(again.)

(Hint, I REALLY want this to be Alex, for the plot resolution for them in S3 not to be ‘we get together’ but to be ‘we are able to recognize that we can BE there for each other even if we aren’t together’, which would lead spectacularly into an early/mid s4 get together after some light angst :) 

I have a lot more thoughts re: what I want from everyone else and what I’d love to see from the non pod-squad squad (MARIA ALEX LIZ ROSA PICNIC DATE WHEN) (CENTERING YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS OF COLOR WHEN) (TRY MAKING YOUR VILLAIN NOT A FUCKING PERSON OF COLOR!) Also like, Generyx, Deep Sky, Mr. Jones, possible connections between them and characters who aren’t pod squad oh my god can we for one episode focus on someone else, etc, but like.....this is already so long so maybe that’s for another time xD

Also as stated like....this is a CW show so this isn’t what’s going to happen, but it’s what a I *DESPERATELY WANT* to happen. My interaction with RNM is VERY much dead-plot-do-not-eat until proven otherwise and I’m just here to no-thoughts-head-empty enjoy the parts of Malex I like and ignore everything else :)

I’m gonna use this image that Diana made me because honestly this should be a disclaimer to any RNM post I make.

[wherestheangel]

I just woke up and immediately started crying over supernatural again. At my core, I think I'm just more hurt that they lied to us than anything else. Why give us this message of hope for 15 years and then turn around and kill one of the most resillient characters in the series? All dean ever wanted was a chance for freedom and to live his own life, and they gave him that for two days. Why the fuck did they make him give up so easy???? It felt out of character as hell to have him give up from a fucking spike in the back, after surviving everything he has. He didn't even die for anything, not for the sake of Sam, or for the world, or even one of the little kids they were saving. That was a death for nothing but shock value.

God, Dean Winchester deserved to grow old. After all he's fucking been through for the world, the least he deserved was to get the chace to grow old.

And castiel. This show didn't deserve him or Misha collins. I hate how they made him go out. I ship destiel as much as anything but if this is what it costed then I wish 15x18 never happened. His whole arc was finding acceptable within himself and learning that he didnt have to be some subservient little soldier. He tells Jack in the same episode that he doesn't need absolution from anybody else, and they still make him sacrifice himself for dean. They still turn around and make castiels entire story from 12 years ago ultimately lead up to this one thing - sacrificing himself for a winchester.

I know he loved him, and that was completely in character for castiel but like. Its still so much more than him just getting taken by the empty. Its him being explicitly confirmed as queer and then never being shown again. Its the fact that fans have wanted this for a literal decade and when we finally got some hope, they fucking spat in our faces like this. Castiel was a comfort character to so many people. We've seen him grow for almost as long as we've been watching Sam and Dean grow up. Hes the reason the show lasted for so damn long, for fucks sake. And the last we got to hear of our comfort character was a little prank phone call used to elicit a reaction from a character to get the audience excited. Why get our hopes up like that? Why have all of this build up all season, just to never follow through on it? Why make us so happy if they were going to make us crash and burn like this? Why angel-bait us for the past 2 episodes knowing that we were never gonna see him again?

This feels like such a big fuck you to me as a queer fan and as a fan who love castiel so much. I can even being to imagine how Misha must feel. I loved this show so bad. This show has made me so happy. It was a beacon during one of the hardest times in my life. I've felt in ways I never even knew I could feel because of Supernatural these past three weeks. And now every single memory is fucking tainted with the knowledge that my favorite characters never get what they deserve. We never get the happy ending that we were watching for. All their sacrifices and they're very reason for fighting seemed to mean nothing in the end. All this character developement over the course of 15 years to make the brothers less codependent and to show that ended up meaning nothing too.

I wish I could stop crying over this fucking show. This ending doesn't deserve my tears, but I just feel so betrayed.

[homestuckexamination]

Your explanation on the discourse was really interesting because... it catered entirely to the team? I know we all like this webcomic, and don’t want something we spend so much time on to have anything bad, but if we love something, it’s okay to admit there’s something bad or many bad things going on. There’s a least one member who’s name I won’t say that is without a doubt at fault and has said and done many horrible things, including saying they wrote their part just to anger fans

Let me put my view out there anon, even though I’ve talked about this at large before. First of all, as I’ve said ad-nauseum before, I will say that in the context of The Epilogues and Homestuck^2, I am someone who likes what is going on. I genuinely enjoy the direction of the story, with no external prompting, and the Discourse always catches me off-guard because I never realize what people are going to be arguing about next, because when I am going through the story, I really DO enjoy what I am experiencing. Of course it is not perfect, by any god damn means, however, I am parting from the basis that my opinion inherently differs from the vocally negative voice of the Fandom right now.

I am a Content Creator. I am a writer, and I have started dabbling in art recently. I have plans, and ideas, to write a book, I want to create an original setting, that I’ve designed through an amalgam of my experiences, my points of view, and the things I like, as well as my hopes and dreams. Do you know why I side with the Team and ‘cater’ to them when I talk about Discourse? Because. The Fandom. Fucking sucks right now.

I have voiced my opinion on the Epilogues, and had death threats and suicide bait sent at me because I DARED to defend them! I have seen the Team- The same Team that made Pesterquest, one of the most Fandom-positive pieces of media I have ever had the pleasure of playing through, being sent those same threats and suicide bait at a scale I cannot even begin to comprehend. I have seen Queer Authors express their identity and experiences in the text, and people twisting them in some delusional way to accuse them of being Queerphobic in turn.

Do you know why I seem to ‘side with the Team’? Because I like the content they are producing, and the ‘fans’ are a ball of vitriol that tells me that if I like the Epilogues, I am either delusional, a bootlicker, or evil. Because I see the ‘fans’ pop into a post the official Twitter is doing, about supporting BLM, and what I see is people ignoring the contents entirely to send the team insults and ask ‘WHEN IS HIVESWAP ACT 2′ like a broken record. Because I see the ‘fans’ latching onto someone on the Team like the ONE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL, and proceed to doxx her, call the police on her, and threaten her and everyone close to her until she has to step down and drop off the team, during a global fucking Pandemic.

Am I biased for the Team? YEAH of fucking course I am, because I like the things they are exploring, because I related to things they are writing, because I truly do believe they’re doing something fun and entertaining, and what I see in turn in the Fandom, is hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE.

You say that it’s okay to admit there’s something wrong or bad in content you like, but at this point it’s that the worst of the Fandom doesn’t even like the content. They actively do nothing more than dislike it, and consume it ONLY to be angry, threaten and throw insults around. And if you even so much as dare to claim that, hey, maybe these aren’t healthy habits of Media Consumption, and you should, you know, not keep following something that makes you actively seethe and that you go in with the inherent idea that everything being written is being made to hurt you, you get called ableist for daring to tell people that they should take care of their mental health and not stay in a constant state of anger.

It IS okay to admit there’s something you dislike, or many things you dislike in content you follow, so long as you actually enjoy the content overall. It is more than okay to be critical of things you like. However, there is a difference between being critical, and being hypercritical to the point of rage and bandwagonning. Take Roxy for example. Roxy. Roxy is one of my favorite parts of the Epilogues, and I have seen them beyond recognition by the Fandom. But because the trans girl Roxy Headcanon was so popular, there’s so much vitriol around it. And it is okay to prefer to read Roxy as a trans woman. I do actually! It is one of my favorite headcanons! My own name is Roxy! In fact, with the ‘dubious canon’ divide and the Team’s explicit encouragement of the Fandom to have their own takes and read, they have done MORE in the way of elevating headcanons that diverge from their content than basically any other content creator I’ve seen before.

But then, then people start down a negative spiral. Well, transmasc NB Roxy sure wasn’t something they expected, right? It is not bad representation in the slightest, between the Epilogues and the deeper exploration of Roxy’s feelings in the Pesterquest Route, they are a really solid and interesting case in my mind! But there’s not even the sliver of positivity to be found. Why, surely, the ONLY reason why Roxy would be a trans guy instead of a trans woman, is because the Team is aware of the headcanon and is trying to spite the fans! Ergo, transmasc Roxy is an ATTACK on Trans Women, and as such a transphobic addition to the story!!! 

And in the process of doing so, you’re erasing the identity, experiences and relation a queer team has with a character they have messed with, and turning a positive piece of representation around to CALL the team TRANSPHOBIC for it. You’re ignoring the possibility that ANYONE could read Roxy that way, and that the ONLY possible reason for it is SPITE and SPITE alone. Imposing your view on the read of the character, twisting the context of the content around to make it to be negative, and keeping that furnace of hate and distrust going.

And this is. With. Literally. Everything. Again, I have been on the side of the Fandom that likes the content since the Epilogues came out. I have seen the Fandom ignore, and twist, the actual positive beats of the Epilogues like they never existed in the first place, and exacerbate the negatives. I have seen people call them literally evil, and throw extremely puritanical views of what kind of Media should exist, and what things should be scrubbed off of Media entirely, forever. I have seen the most minor of shit spark discourse, because the Fans are prompted to disregard every single positive thing and positive reading, and instead twisting authorial intent from something that could be fun, from a projection of their own experiences, into a personal assault that surely no one could ever enjoy.

If you ask me to see the bad in the content I like, and the creators that I follow, I ask you, too, to see the bad in the ball of vitriol this Fandom has become over the past year. My opinion is informed by the reaction the Fandom has had to the content I like, and what it has told to me, by the reaction I’ve seen them have, as well as by the words of the Authors on the topic, and the content they have pumped out. I have seen and read ‘receipts’, I’ve seen every last piece of discourse happen, no matter how minor it may have been, because I am lucky to be a mildly loud voice in the Fandom because of this blog.

So when I seem to side with the Team instead of the Fandom, know that I am not making an impulsive choice to cover up the flaws of content I like. I have seen enough going around to inform this choice, and I know who I’m defending. And if you think “catering” to the Team rather than the Fandom considering what the Fandom just did is strange, I honestly don’t know what to tell you. We just have inherently different points of view.

[rebel-in-white]

The Perfect Ending for Dean and Sam? - Supernatural 15x20

As I read reviews about the Supernatural series, nothing disturbs me more than reading things like the title of this essay, “This was the Perfect Ending for Sam and Dean.” It’s disturbing because as fans of this 15-year show, we are accepting mediocrity. Far from being a perfect ending, this was one of the worst television show endings that I have ever seen because the characters weren’t allowed to change and grow. 

When I watched the Supernatural series finale, I was struck by the realization that this could have easily been the finale of season 1. In season 1, we were dealing with Dean’s feelings of being second best, Sam wanting a “normal” life, Dean choosing the dangerous world of hunting, and the value of saving the innocent despite the dangers. In episode 15x20, the episode implies that we are still dealing with the same themes from episode 1, even though SO many events have passed, and Sam and Dean dealt with their own issues in varying ways. Dean’s death during a mundane hunt harks back to season 1’s warnings and omens about the dangerous life of a hunter. Meanwhile in season 15, the Winchesters are fighting God and survived that battle. Sam’s “happy” ending harks back to his desire to be with Jessica and find a happy, “apple pie” (normal) life. Meanwhile in season 15, Sam has lost everything… again. He lost his adopted son, his good friend, his mother for the second time, his surrogate father, his girlfriend (what happened to Eileen?), and his brother. Also, let’s not forget that Adam died and was a Winchester. Season 15 does not agree with, and contradicts, its final episode. 

Everything that has happened after season 1 and right before the series finale doesn’t matter. That is the message the series finale communicated with fans. Some fans might be alright with this message because it’s such a long series, too much has happened, but there are many fans who have avidly watched these characters grow and change. They themselves have grown and changed with these characters! Watching the finale felt like a slap in the face, a surreal dream, because the writers and the show-runner shut the door on any type of meaningful change that has occurred throughout the series. Throughout the years, Sam and Dean were able to create meaningful connections outside of their partnership, noticeably with Jack and Cas. Both were only mentioned. That merits repeating again. Castiel, who had become a fan favorite in the series, only gets a few mentions. Dean, the one with whom he shares a profound bond, shrugs off his death and continues enjoying his pie. Like the last 12 years of developing that friendship, emphasizing their bond, and teasing fans with their deep connection meant nothing. Because ultimately, the show sent a clear message to its viewers: it doesn’t matter what these characters have gone through, it doesn’t matter the people who have come and enriched their lives, but what matters is where they started. The journey, and the accompanying life experiences, don’t matter.

I read a really hurtful review about the series finale that implied that Sam could only be happy on Earth because his brother had died. He was no longer his brother’s keeper, so now he could have everything he wanted- a family and normalcy. That was the Sam of season 1 - before his brother died for him, before he died for his brother, before his demon blood addiction, before he saved the world numerous times, before he adopted a half angel kid into his family, before meeting his Mom again. All of those experiences profoundly change a person. His idea of normal and happiness changed, became vastly different. The show hinted at this when we saw the names carved on the table in episode 15x19. Sam stopped running away from hunting, his duties, struggled with his destiny, and fought for his freedom and seemed content with what he had. The show even implied a budding romance with a fellow hunter, Eileen. Sam from season 1 would have turned away from all this because it interfered with his desire to be normal. However, this was shoved at Sam in the most confusing, contrived, and sickening manner. After Dean dies during the series finale, Sam mopes for a bit, then he goes on a hunt, and reverts back to Sam of season 1 with ease. He gets everything he’d wanted- an unnamed, unseen wife and a child who he names Dean. If Sam from episode 15x19, 15x18, from any episode after season 1, saw this ending for himself, he would have run away screaming. He wouldn’t be able to accept it. Why? Because that’s not what he wanted for himself anymore. He wanted to be with his loved ones, which included Dean plus his extended family. 

If Sam’s ending was problematic, Dean’s is inconceivable. This is a character who has struggled with so many issues and low self-esteem and has gone through so many ups and downs that to see him die, impaled on a nail by clowns, devastated and confused many fans. I actually laughed out loud when he died because it was so ridiculous. It hurt to see a beloved character treated like trash, then proceed to accept his death with arms wide open. Where was Dean’s desire to live? This is the man who survived hell, saved the world several times, sacrificed himself for Sam, and had to fight daily to survive. And I don’t mean in a I’m-a-hunter-and-life-is-dangerous way, but in a real, this-world-is-fucked-up-and-I-can’t-do-it anymore way. 

That was what always attracted me to Dean. His fight to survive in a world that didn’t make sense to him, and his ability to cling to life despite feeling too broken and inadequate. For many of the fans, they resonated with that and admired him for his grit and his humanity. In the series finale, Dean gives up. He accepts death, accepts this strange looking heaven, even though he was weirded out by heaven when he first encountered it. He rides around in his car- alone and waiting for Sam. That’s what Dean boils down to- alone and living for Sam. The show sends a message that Dean doesn’t deserve anything else. Despite everything he’s done throughout the 15 years of this series, Dean can’t escape his destiny to die on a mundane hunt.  The same death that had been foreshadowed in season 1. With only his brother with him to see him go. Dean fought so hard to be free from Chuck’s stories and from his own demons that to see him reduced to drinking beer and riding around in the Impala felt like he’s regressed 15 years. And some fans think he deserved this? What has Dean done to you?

Dean had potential to show growth and to show true change and progress through a possible relationship with Castiel, but the show metaphorically gave its queer fans, their allies, and narrowed minded viewers a big middle finger. Yes, even people who hated the idea of Destiel, you should be angry. Instead of the show stretching your thinking and challenging you to accept something different and progressive, the show decided to pat you on the head and feed you some metaphorical shit. Please don’t eat it. Throughout the show, there had been signs that Dean and Castiel shared a profound bond that extended into a romantic subtext. It started with the angel’s entrance and charisma, and Dean’s acceptance of him into his life (very rare for Dean to form lasting relationships), and it ended with a confirmed love confession. Now, imagine that you’ve been hoping for years that all these hints, looks, and jokes would go somewhere. That maybe someone will validate your views and make you feel like you’ve brought progressive change to television. Well, that’s what it felt like to be a Destiel fan after episode 15x18. Destiel became half canon! Castiel declared his romantic feelings to Dean, which Misha Collins confirmed to be of a homosexual nature, but he knew that he couldn’t have what he wanted. He died to save a shell-shocked Dean Winchester. Not only did the show kill Castiel, but they sent him to hell (granted, he didn’t stay long), and they sent Dean Winchester, the man who stayed “straight,” to heaven. 

This was problematic in many ways. One, the message is homophobic, heinous, but subtle. If you’re gay or queer, you are thrown away, never to be seen again because your feelings will upset the masses. It’s what happened to Castiel, a confirmed queer character. When episode 15x20 finished and Dean hadn’t even mentioned Castiel out of his own freewill, I was upset. Here comes the second problem. This show had used queer-baiting for the past 12 years or so to keep its numbers up and to keep itself on the air. It used queer-baiting to a most hurtful and insidious way to attract viewers to the series finale. Then, they shut it down after teasing something that several, enthusiastic fans had wanted for years. Why open this pandora box if you aren’t going to do anything with it? What is the point? Leading people to create false assumptions, playing with people’s emotions in a negative way, reinforcing negative heteronomative stereotypes- this is what the show has accomplished. This is its legacy.

I wrote this essay to free myself from this show. After this, I am not a Supernatural fan anymore. This show has left a bad taste in my mouth, and I want nothing to do with it or anyone associated with it. I urge you to free yourselves as well and also to not accept this mediocrity that Supernatural gave us. Stop other shows and networks from manipulating and leading on its fans. Stop them from ignoring years of growth in order to feed you the same story and keep you mediocre and small. I know the pandemic of 2020 made things difficult, but that’s no excuse to create the subpar work the Supernatural writers/show-runner/staff did. With just a little bit of creativity and intelligence, they could have produced something great, no matter the obstacles. I used to believe in that.

Supernatural, thank you for the years of enjoyment, but I never want to see you again.

[enderwalk]

sam & jack 🥺

ash you’re really about to make me go absolutely INSANE and i’ve gotta put this under a cut because i wrote so much

for sam:

favorite thing about him: oh my god. oh my god okay. sam has gone through some of the worst trauma imaginable. he's gone through some pretty intense abuse for years and years, and he has every right to be angry and vengeful and mad at the world for what it did to him. but for the most part, he isn't. he's kind, empathetic, patient, and wants to help other people. he still has hope that he can be a good person, and despite the mistakes he's made, he is a good person. i just think it's amazing and inspiring, and it gives me hope that i can be a good person despite my past as well. 

least favorite thing about him: the only thing i can say is that seeing sam use lester as bait to talk to a crossroads demon about where crowley and dean were really just. left a bad taste in my mouth? sure its not the worst thing either of the boys have done, and sure sam didn't mean for lester to actually strike a deal, but it just felt too reckless ):

favorite line: its a tie between "i could never go on a quest like that, because i’m not... clean" and "hope is kind of the whole point.”

brOTP: brotp would be sam and dean, emphasis on the bro because i absolutely do not fuck w w/nc/st. 

OTP: sam and cass... they care about each other so much...

nOTP: sambecky or s/mifer. i shouldn't have to elaborate. i didn't like sam and amelia either but that was because it was just forced and awkward and really unnecessary.

random headcanon: sam winchester has adhd. no i will not elaborate (i will if someone sent an ask though). he's also definitely queer and trans (i can also elaborate).

unpopular opinion: sam is absolutely the main character. i'll say this until i'm blue in the face. i get that dean is more of a fan favorite because most people think sam is whiny and annoying, but classic spn is sam-centric and he's the only character to be in every single episode. and he had the best character arcs.

song i associate with him: i've literally always associated big black car // gregory alan isakov and a sadness runs through him // the hoosiers. but i also have some spotify playlists for sam! i can’t possibly list all of them here.

favorite picture of him: is it cheating to use a gif? 

for jack:

favorite thing about him: the parallels between sam and jack are astronomical and i really am just going to say the same thing about jack. he's gone through so much despite only being a few years old, and again he has every reason to be evil and vengeful and fucked up, but he's just a scared little kid. he still needs guidance and comfort and love, and despite knowing that he's the son of lucifer he still wants to be good. 

least favorite thing about them: i know that a surprising amount of people don't like jack but i empathise and relate to him too much to really hate on him? it's the same with sam, but i can at least criticise sam because he's a little dumb. favorite line: "I guess my point is that if I don't make it... The stuff I'd miss - it wouldn't be things like tahiti. or the taj mahal. i'd miss more time with you. i'm getting that life isn't all these big amazing moments. it's time together that matters."

brOTP: sam and jack have such a wonderful father/son relationship... dude. 

OTP: i don't ship jack with anyone because he's like three years old, even if he's physically an adult. 

nOTP: listen man, i've heard of dean/jack and sam/jack and it makes me so angry and physically nauseous and i have both of them blacklisted. if i ever see someone shipping those, i'm gonna kick them in the teeth.

random headcanon: he's autistic.

unpopular opinion: if i see one more destiel shipper try and say that he's dean and cass's son, i'm going to scream. he's sam and castiel's son and no one can convince me otherwise. 

song i associate with them: candle // cavetown, eighth wonder // lemon demon. i’ve also got a playlist for jack on spotify!

favorite picture of him: 

[artheclown]

3, 8, 25 :) -Patrick A.W.

Thank you trick!!! I’m having such a fun time answering these :)

3. Who is the most underrated sunny side character? I struggle with the “underrated” “overrated” question because I’m sooo out of touch with the Sunny fandom as a whole. I feel like I live in my own bubble with a handful of really sweet mutuals. In general, I would kill and die for Artemis, I think she’s so funny. I love the lawyer, I looooove Z, and I love Carmen so much (sweetie, I’m so sorry they wronged you).

8. Rank all the Sunny ships from fave to least fave. Because I’m a freak and I love to talk I went ahead and discussed extra team-ups and didn’t limit this question to just romantic shipping. (I actually initially discussed every single possible team up including Frank but I scrapped a few bc I was just being ridiculous):

1. Mac/Dennis: I’m not sure this one needs explaining. Endless canon content and it’s actually possible that it’ll become canon (I’m a clown, sorry). I’m also not immune to the fact that it definitely has the most fan content. 10/10 ship.

2. Charlie/Dee: I’m actually a really huge fan of this ship (*covers my ears and closes my eyes during Times Up For the Gang*). I think the idea that the two of them are mean to each other purely to gain validation from Mac and Dennis has a lot of merit and I think they genuinely could make a really good team. (*Aches* they should’ve run away with Peter Nincompoop.)

3. Dennis/Dee: I’m such a huge fan of their team ups. Their chaotic energy is unmatched by any other team up. (Makes this list nonromantically, obviously.)

4. Mac/Charlie: Makes this spot on the list kind of by default. I’m certainly not passionate about it but their relationship is pure and good and I’m never opposed to a little homoeroticism among good friends.

5. Mac/Dee: I think it’s so fucking funny that two people who love each other so much (Kaitlyn and Rob) have managed to make two characters with zero goddamn chemistry. (Not in a negative way! I genuinely believe their characters hate each other, and I believe that was writers intent. I find their team up episodes hysterical and I love their dynamic. I love that they hate each other.)

6. Dennis/Charlie: They have their moments, of course. I stand by that post about early Den/Charlie scenes. They’re damn cute snuggling on the futon, or when Dennis gives him the back hug in The Gang Gets Extreme. THAT BEING SAID I genuinely don’t think Charlie could ever love Dennis the way Mac does. I think Charlie is too put off by his vanity! I think he sees through it more than Mac does. (I’m blinded by M*cdennis, forgive me.)

BONUSES:

Charlie/Frank: The absolute cutest, purest friendship in the show. Two guys who never (okay, hardly ever) manipulate each other and just genuinely enjoy each others company. Two guys living together and sharing a futon by choice is just so god damn cute to me. When Frank GENUINELY comforts Charlie after the fall out of The Nightman Cometh? When Frank is holding Charlie after he shoots himself with the flare in The Gang Goes to Hell pt 2? I just think it’s really cute and sweet what good friends they are.

Dee/The Waitress: Genuinely do not understand this ship. Listen, I am not the kind of person who is above shipping characters who have little to no interaction. It’s just that I find the Waitress to be completely unendearing (I love her place in the show, I don’t think she shouldn’t be in the show to be EXTREMELY clear.) I just think her character is written with no redeaming values and so I have a hard time trying to ship her with anyone, let alone Dee, one of my favorite characters! Another “that being said...”: As much as I love Charlie/Dee, I’m also a huge fan of lesbian Dee. I’m just not down to clown with Dee/The Waitress.

Frank/Artemis: is so goddamn funny to me. 10/10 LOVE their whole thing.

That was so goddamn unnecessary, thank you for coming to my ted talk  

25. What predictions do you have regarding the future of the series? I try not to think about it. I don’t actually think they’re going to give us M*cdennis and it bums me the fuck out. Like, genuinely. I think the episodes will continue to make me laugh, I’m sure there will be more moments like Mac picking Dennis up so that RCG can continue to queer bait the fuck outta me (Okay, maybe it doesn’t count as queerbaiting sense they canonized gay mac (thank u rcg for that sorry im an ungrateful fuck)) but... Yeah! I’m going to watch the next season, for sure, and I will probably like it :) I just can’t genuinely bet on them doing anything fun like giving Mac a boyfriend and having Dennis be jealous/annoyed about it. Shit like that is so fun to talk about and theorize on but I just don’t think they’ll do it. Cowards. (Thank u RCG for MFHP). That was a mess.

Thank you, again!! [insert that gif from The Gang Misses The Boat: “I’m talkin’ to myself but that’s just because I have shit to say”]

[coredrill]

alright, here are my thoughts on the unstoppable wasp novel! i’ve put the majority of my thoughts, and LOTS of spoilers, below the cut. short summary is that . . . i didn’t really like it at all :/

so, i’m gonna preface this by saying that i wanted to absolutely LOVE this book. it’s all about nadia and she is one of my all-time favorite characters and it’s so great that she got the spotlight in this way! i just really really wish i could, in good faith, say that the book was good, but i just can’t. and admittedly, i consider the unstoppable wasp comics to be nearly perfect, which is a high bar to hit, but there was just so much about this book that left a bad taste in my mouth.

first thing i want to mention is the role of the rest of the g.i.r.l.s. and when i say that, i mean that they had virtually no role. i genuinely wasn’t sure if i (the reader) was expected to have read the comics before the novel. on one hand, the first few chapters were spent pretty much summing up the comics, which is fine, especially because some readers may not have read the comics. on the other hand, if i hadn’t read the comics, there’s NO WAY i would’ve known anything about the other g.i.r.l.s!! they’re barely present in the plot of the book! they are present in one scene in the beginning, taina has a few lines throughout, and they’re more involved at the end, but a lot of the times they seemed more like wallpaper than actual characters. especially because of the frequency with which the author would throw in lines such as “that ethiopian place that shay likes” or “priya’s on-trend jeans” and just name-drop them without really giving them any substance. since i know the comics, i already know these characters--but if i was just reading the novel with no background? there’s no way i’d be able to keep them straight.

building off of what i said in that last point, i also wanted to mention that i listened to the women of marvel podcast interview with the author. something that i noticed is that she would always refer to the g.i.r.l.s as the “g.i.r.l. squad.” and that, i think, is the root of why i didn’t like how they were handled. it’s obviously pretty simple to explain their absence in the story by just noting that the whole point was that nadia was feeling alone and isolated from them. HOWEVER, in my opinion as a woman who has been in engineering . . . that doesn’t happen? nadia and the g.i.r.l.s are labmates--it’s right there in the title. they ARE the genius in action research labs. the “lab” isn’t just the location, it’s the people who make it up. by referring to them as “g.i.r.l. squad” instead of just “g.i.r.l.,” the author is changing the dynamics from “being a cohesive unit of girls who make up this incredible group and support each other in their science and goals” to “friend group who all happen to do science.” and as i mentioned, the random falling-out that happens in the book doesn’t happen to groups of the first type. being a girl in stem SUCKS. being in a stem class means that you’re automatically friends with the 1-2 other girls in there with you. and the people you work on projects with in a lab? the other girls who take the time to support you and have your back even though the odds are stacked against you? those are a whole different kind of friendships and i PROMISE they’re not wrecked by just forgetting to talk to each other. the girls that i worked with in college--the girls that i worked with now--it’s for survival. you don’t just fall apart like nadia apparently did from the g.i.r.l.s in this book.

okay. final bullet point on this topic. but in the women of marvel interview, the author said that she wanted to explore what could break apart the bonds that the g.i.r.l.s had formed. but on page 263, there’s the line “and if they had all just been a little better at communicating, maybe it wouldn’t have been so long before one of them realized that nadia was relying a little too closely on that little gold device.” so this deep dive into splitting the g.i.r.l.s apart, and barely giving shay, taina, ying, and priya a role in the story--was caused by MISCOMMUNICATION??? no freaking thanks LMAO. even without everything i’ve already mentioned, that trope is so lazy.

the writing style kinda bothered me at some points--i remember the discharge being described as “carbon dioxide” at one point, but like, just call it white foam. it’s so much easier and saying carbon dioxide pulled me out of what was happening. obviously this is a personal thing, not something objectively bad, but i still thought i’d mention it.

there seemed to be this point, around page 260, where it seems like the book flipped a switch. obviously, this is where the climax hit, but so many other things seemed to just randomly get pushed into place because the plot necessitated it? like, for example, nadia and the g.i.r.l.s are suddenly bffs again. even though, in nadia’s interior monologue, we’ve been hearing her resentment for them, it seemed like once the plot needed them to work together that they were able to do so without problem. and not only that, but it didn’t even feel earned? the book NEVER showed nadia and the g.i.r.l.s as actually like. being friends. (as i mentioned, not a choice i agree with, but still a fact.) so to have them all suddenly team up for the Big Boss Battle just felt weird and disengenuous to all of them. additionally, nadia went from defending margaret at all costs to suddenly thinking “oh yeah, she’s probably super evil. no big deal.” like WHAT??? the whole point of the first 250 pages was to show that nadia feels like margaret is the only person she can trust. all of a sudden she’s cool with her being evil??? make it make sense! you could see throughout the rest of the book that nadia was building up her Wrong Thoughts. sooooo much time was spent on it and we actually saw the development of how nadia felt. but to have her switch all that on a dime so that she can have her Right Thoughts now??? just in time for the Boss Battle? it just feels so unearned, since there’s nothing building to it. she just . . . changes her mind.

i also feel like writing a book where the protagonist, where the person whose perspective we’re following, is being MIND-CONTROLLED, but not revealing that mind control until the 11th hour (to validate the sudden switch from Wrong Thoughts to Right Thoughts) was just. a bit weird. i’m 22, but if i was reading this as a teenager, i’m not sure i would’ve quite gotten that the WHOLE BOOK was now being told by an unreliable narrator, with absolutely zero reliable information as a base (except the comics, of course).

ON PAGE 274. THERE IS ONE MENTION OF SHAY MAKING HER TELEPORTER PORTABLE. THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE FEAT OF SCIENCE AND SO GREAT FOR SHAY WHY WAS THIS NOT EXPANDED ON IN THE SLIGHTEST????

alright, time to talk about the nadia-being-ace thing. so, ever since i started reading unstoppable wasp, i’ve interpreted nadia as aroace. her version of friendships, her attempts to change the topic when romance for herself is brought up--these are all very authentically ace experiences. and that was okay for me to just have her coded that way! the writer of the comics, jeremy whitley, has included TWO (2!!!) ace characters in his raven pirate princess series so i definitely allowed myself to entertain the idea that the ace aspects of nadia were intentional. i was also okay with it not being explicitly mentioned in the comics--sure it would’ve been cool, but i understand that there are 18 issues TOTAL and it would be hard to fit the entirety of nadia’s story in there. BUT, when the author of this book mentioned that nadia was ace, and jeremy whitley confirmed that he’d been writing her as ace, it was awesome and super validating!! first of all, nadia being the first canonically ace marvel character--even just by word of god--is so freaking incredible and just adds to my enjoyment of the story. i’m very glad that we got confirmation and that i can continue reading the comics knowing, at the very least, that my ace reading of them is backed up by the canon (!!!!!). however, the author of this novel 100% used it as a marketing tactic which is super shitty. i was obviously going to read it anyway, since it was about nadia, but i do know people who bought it specifically because the author mentioned nadia being ace. and there was maybe one throwaway line in the novel about how nadia was only interested in romance ~theoretically.~ that’s not rep. in fact, it’s even less rep than the comics, which represented nadia being ace (at least in my opinion) far more authentically than this novel did. i’d honestly even go so far as to say it was riiiight up against the line of queerbaiting--yes nadia is canonically queer, but only by word of mouth, and it’s not mentioned even once in the story. that’s bad. using ace people for marketing--baiting them into buying your book on the promise of rep which we already have so little of--is so so shitty. yes, i am glad that we got that confirmation from jeremy whitley who never used this to promote the comics and didn’t even mention it until now, but i genuinely cannot believe that this author (who is bi! i checked her twitter!) effectively used it to market her awful book. honestly if the book weren’t bad enough already, to add this on top of it is even WORSE.

in the same vein, the author mentioned ying and shay being in a wlw relationship in the same interview where she mentioned nadia being ace. ying and shay are barely in the novel and EVEN WORSE, their relationship is kind of treated as an “obstacle” that nadia and the other g.i.r.l.s have to overcome in order to start working as a unit again. also bad!!!!!

okay. i think i’ve got this and one more bullet point, so we’ll see how it goes. but the way that the science in this book was handled was atrocious. sure, we had the cute science facts, but there is one (1) paragraph on page 311 about the g.i.r.l.s doing science for the sake of doing science and helping their community. IN THE WHOLE BOOK. you know a great way to demonstrate to women that they shouldn’t go into stem fields? write a cautionary book about the ~dangers of ai and data collection~ AS IF ANYONE LIVING IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW DOESN’T KNOW THAT SHIT. jesus fucking christ. the comics showed all of this great science by the way of the g.i.r.l.s papers, shay making her teleporter at home, defusing the bomb in ying’s head, recreating the vision gloves, tai’s sports robots . . . this book had NONE of that. it literally just had the evils that we see in the news EVERY DAY. that’s not what you show people to get them excited, and i find it really fucking weird that ANYONE greenlit a book about characters who support and encourage women to go into stem fields with the overall message of “science bad!” like. how the fuck was this plot approved. in the women of marvel interview, the author claims that she’s written about women in science before--and i believe her. i just don’t think that she’s ever actually spoken to a woman in science.

and lastly, i have a huge issue with the role of hope in the book. by that, i mean that the novel is called “built on hope” but hope is literally never a theme throughout the book? so yet another instance of the book building off the comics without any form of payoff. the unstoppable wasp comics are kind, and loving, and hopeful. this book is callous and condescending and seems more concerned with its sassy one-liners about white dudes and ham-fisted pop culture references than LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE, including hope. nadia claims to love her friends but spends the majority of the book shitting on them. nadia lies to janet to “avoid hurting her” but the end of unstoppable wasp 10 showed the flip side of the situation where nadia and jan realize that although janet was hiding the truth about hank from nadia, nadia wanted to hear the information anyway!! and i just--WHY would you take a character who has been explicitly used in the past to introduce girls to women in stem (the interviews with real people in the back of the comics!) AND THEN WRITE HER INTO A FUCKING CAUTIONARY “TECHNOLOGY BAD” STORY??? it’s SO discordant with the comics and i genuinely hope that anyone reading this book goes and read the comics themselves, which are incredible and a bajillion times better than this book in all aspects. i’m finishing this “review” a lot more fired up then when i started typing it but i honestly can’t believe that marvel greenlit THIS and not like. 2 more comics.

so, yeah, those are my thoughts. kudos to anyone who actually made it through the whole thing (if anyone does), it’s egregiously long but i needed to put my thoughts somewhere! tldr: i will not be recommending this to my mom.

[kweebtrash]

Gay Bars and Stripper Poles

Features: Johnny on a stripper pole, making out, grinding, nipple sucking,getting pressed against a wall, groping

[9:12pm]

"Wait so, Ten is here?" Johnny asked.

"Yeah, he's one of the performers for amateur night. He's super fish." I said as we stood in line to get into the gay bar. Quinn was on my other side clutching onto my arm as it was a bit brisk and they were hell bent on stealing what little warmth I had.

"Fish? ...what?"

"Fish. Fishy. It means that he looks really feminine in drag. He's a bit unclockable."

"Un-? Can you speak english? Please?"

I sighed. "Why are you so straight? Live a little tonight please." Little did I know I was going to regret ever saying that.

"Hey at least I'm here, aren't I? I've never been to a gay bar in my life. This is new." He said and shoved his hands in his pockets, looking around nervously.

Jaehyun snubbed out his black & mild into the brick of the building. "So...like what should I do if one hits on me?"

"ONE HITS ON YOU?" Quinn exclaimed. "Jae, were people not objects."

"No, I didn't mean it like that!"

"Dumbass. If a dude hits on you just turn them down like any other person. And if they don't quit just come get me." I rolled my eyes and moved up in the line, getting my id out. "Literally just chill. It's gonna be fun. Ten will be happy to see you."

They both grumbled and followed Quinn and I inside. We got our wristbands and paid our entrance fee, stepping into the club fully. Before I could even say anything Jae and Johnny went over to the bar, leaving Quinn and I by ourselves. "Do you want to try and dance? Today they at least have decent music instead of the bubblegum pop mix."

"You know I don't dance much but I'll follow you. Why did we bring these straight idiots with us?"

"Because they're cute and dumb and we like fucking them. Also I need to educate them so they're not as fucking stupid and full of this toxic masculinity. Like why is it that hard to be open without thinking that you're weak?"

"I mean, they're screwing us so I guess that's a step in the right direction?" Quinn offered.

I winced. "They don't acknowledge our genders or the fact that were really queer…"

"Listen, no one does. It's the bullshit we have to deal with every day of our lives."

"Hey it could be worse, you could be a queer non-binary person of color, ayyyyyyy." I gave them finger guns and they punched my shoulder lightly.

"Oh my god, shut up." They laughed. "I mean it's true but shut up."

I dragged them over to the dance floor then, keeping to a small corner and away from the rush of the crowd. We swayed to the music just a bit but spent most of the time talking about the stupid men we pocketed into our beds. Over a half hour had passed and neither Johnny or Jae had returned. We were starting to get worried and retreated towards the bar area spotting them surrounded by a couple of thirsty little twinks. Their perception of having guys hit on them seemed to have changed when they realized they could get drinks out of the flirtatious men.

"Oh my god." Quinn said. "Are they really-"

"Yep." I shook my head in disbelief as Johnny flirted and leaned into the boy closest to him, all smiles and casual touches. "These fucking idiots found out that thirsty sluts will buy them drinks if they baited them enough. Meanwhile, they haven't bought us anything and were the ones they actually fuck."

"This is homophobic."

"Absolutely." I pushed a few boys out the way and went over to Johnny.

"Excuse me, honey. You can leave." One of his "suitors" tried to interject. I scoffed and tossed my hair over my shoulder.

"That's funny, sweetie," I said bitterly. "Try me." I grabbed onto Johnny's shirt and pulled him to me, covering him in a rushed and heated kiss. He instantly grabbed my ass and smirked into my lips, digging his tongue into my mouth. My fingers crawled into his hair, tugging at the strands by the nape of his neck. I heard scoffs of disgust from the surrounding men and added a little leg pop for emphasis that Johnny was so not interested.

He parted from me and swiped his thumb across his bottom lip. "You're fucking hot when you're jealous."

"I'm not jealous. You're baiting them, idiot. Also are you already drunk?"

"Pppfftttttt….no." He giggled.

"How much did you have?"

Johnny turned to Jae and hit his chest. "Bro, how much did we have?"

"Uh like we got 3 shots each...uh…" Jae eyes drifted to the left, squinting a bit as he thought. "Oh we had like 2 mixed drinks, I had- a what was that thing called?"

"A martini thingy!"

"Yeah, yeah, bro! That! Anyway, it's fucking great! I want boys to buy me more drinks!!"

"Yeah, well us too!" Quinn pouted. "Were you going to ask us if we wanted anything?"

Johnny waved them off. "Go buy your own stuff! We're about to play pool!" He put his arm around Jae's shoulder and veered him towards the pool tables that were near the walls.

I set my elbow on the bar and propped my chin in my hand. "Welp...guess we better start doing shots." I concluded.

"When in doubt, drink to forget." Quinn hopped into a bar stool and waved down the bartender.

It didn't take long for me to start feeling a little buzzed, thank god. Quinn had turned into a giggled and handsy mess and I let them have their fun touching my ass and giving me plenty of kisses. Just as we were in the beginnings of a make out session I felt a tap on my shoulder. "Ooh Ten!" I squealed as I turned to see him all glammed up. He really did look beautiful. His lithe body was made for skimpy outfits that showcased his dance moves and splits. His makeup was a glittery and seductive explosion, highlighted to the gods and blended to perfection.

He flipped his long wig over his shoulder and gave me a kiss. "I'm so happy you guys came! I'm kinda nervous."

"What for?!" Quinn hiccuped. "You're literally the best dancer ever and a giant slut! You're gonna do great!"

Ten laughed. "Thank you. I'm hoping I do well enough. I need some tips. I'm broke as fuck."

"Well you can definitely take a few from my tits." I joked.

"Duh, I'm always ready to have my face in your tits. But not in drag. My balls are so far up my ass I feel like my circulation is gonna be cut off."

"Have fun ripping that duct tape off." Quinn said before tossing back another shot.

"Eh, I don't mind the pain." Ten smirked. I nudged him playfully and motioned towards the bartender to get me another ale. "Anyway, who did you come with?"

"Johnny and Jae. They found out that desperate sluts will buy them drinks." I rolled my eyes.

"I mean, don't they already know that with you two?" Ten smirked.

"Hell no! We're the ones that they should be getting drinks for!" Quinn yelled and swayed a bit. "It's a damn crime. They haven't bought us anything."

"Well then ask them! Where the hell are they anyway?!" Ten scanned the dance floor quickly while I took a long sip of my ale and closed out my tab. "Ohhh my gooodddd." Ten gripped my shoulder and whipped me around in the stool roughly.

When I looked up I spit out my ale, sending myself in a coughing fit. Johnny was no longer at the pool table and instead he was climbed on top on one of the stripper poles that were placed on either side of the dance floor. Jae was on the other, the both of them surrounded by a swarm of men and a few girls, who were eager to give them singles. Johnny grabbed onto the pole and did a little twirl before jumping up to wrap his legs around it.

"Ooh daddy!!" Ten said excitedly as he clapped his hands.

"Holy fuck what is he doing?!" I screamed.

"What is Jae doing?!" Quinn questioned as well.

I looked over at the other pole to see Jae already doing body rolls as wandering hands crawled up his long legs.

"Listen, this may be my only chance to fuck Johnny so i'm about to take it!" Ten said

"Excuse me! Don't you dare! He's mi-" I didn't even get to finish as my attention drifted back to Johnny who had his tongue sticking out as he shimmied his hips and teased the crowd by raising his shirt to show off his abs. A stray hand also slid up his legs and tucked a dollar into the waistband of his underwear that just peeked above his jeans. I wanted to look away as it was equal parts embarrassing but also a bit sexy. What an absolute fucking idiot.

Ten waved me away and made a beeline for Johnny. I groaned and grabbed onto Quinn's hand, dragging them out of the seat. "Eri!! You're going too fast and my head is spinning!!"

"We need to get these idiots off these poles!"

"What's the big deaaalll! It's kinda hot actually. You can't tell me that Johnny shaking his ass isn't hot!"

My cheeks flared up and my mouth snapped shut. I didn't really know how to respond, especially because his cute little peach butt was my favorite. "W-well I...I mean...they just shouldn't be on there!"

"Why not? You and Ten get on the pole all the time. I've seen you flash plenty of people when you wore those mini skirts."

"Quinn!!" I whined. "That's not the point right now!"

"You're being a jelly baby." They stated flatly and crossed their arms

"I am not!! Oh my god, fine. You know what, fine. I'll leave him up there to-" Johnny was now bending backwards from the pole, mouth wide open to accept a jello shot from a glitter covered go go boy. He bounced back up as he chewed and rolled his hips, a huge dopey smile on his face. Ten had joined him on the pole, dragging his clawed hand up Johnny's torso and cupping his face. Ten had always wanted Johnny and seeing him act like this much of a fool had him thinking he could get away with trying to seduce him. I pouted just a bit as Johnny leaned into Ten, teasing him by getting close to his lips before pulling away. Ten was all over Johnny then, encouraging him to grind on the pole (and him).

I rolled my eyes and went to tell Quinn that I was going outside for a smoke but they had already run off to the pole Jaehyun was on. He had taken off his shirt and was spinning it above his head like damn helicopter blades. If this was them after a few shots and drinks I'd hate to see how they acted when they were about to be black out drunk. I maneuvered through the crowd and managed to get to the back door that lead out to the patio. A few people were scattered about, smoking, but it was definitely quieter out here. I descended the stairs and crunched over the gravel to the darkest corner beneath them. Most of the shadow from the stairs covered me and I relished in the fact that no one would probably notice me here. I took a cigarette from the carton in my small purse and lit it, inhaling deeply and closing my eyes.

My peacefulness was shattered a few moments later when I heard his booming voice. "There you are!" He laughed. "I was looking for you!"

I opened my eyes to see him sweat drenched with dollar bills sticking to his stomach and out of his underwear. He lifted the bottom of his shirt and wiped his forehead and neck. I plucked off one of the dollar bills as I exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Well Magic Mike, did you have fun?"

"Hell yeah! I didn't think I would get money and free drinks!This place is awesome!" He pulled off the singles and tucked them into the pocket of his jeans.

"Did you make out with Ten?"

"Ah, no. I'm not drunk enough for that. Definitely don't think I ever will be." He got closer and pressed his hand to the wall above me. "Why? Did you not want me too?"

"Oh no," I shrugged and tapped out my ashes. "I was just waiting to hear about your bisexual awakening. Those are always fun. And we could've had a nice threesome."

His smile disappeared almost instantly. "That's not funny, Eri. You know I don't share."

"You're such a dumbass." I took another drag and held it in for a bit. "Go pull your singles out and see if you can make yourself useful and buy me a drink."

"Why are you being bitchy? You still jealous I had all those guys all over me?" He leaned in closer and I exhaled the smoke in his face, making him scrunch his nose.

"Hardly, Mikey. I'd just like to be a little drunker than I am right now."

"What if I gave you a private show? Hmm?"

"Ooohh so now you're wanting to grind up on me? Well alright. Just let me start playing Pony and we'll cut to the chase." I quipped sarcastically.

He pressed himself against me, grabbing onto my hips and moving me with him. "If you're horny let's do it, ride it, my pony-" He sang and I burst into a fit of laughter.

"Johnny stop! Oh my god!!"I tried pushing him away but he put my arms around his shoulders. "You're such a dork!"

"My saddles, waiting, come on and jump on it." On the last few words his hands went back down to my ass and he lifted me onto his hips, pressing me between the wall and his body. I swallowed hard and noticed the plotting smirk on his lips.

"What are you doing?" I whispered. "Someone's gonna see us!"

"Let them." He took the cigarette from my fingers and took a long drag. He lowered his lips to mine and I parted them letting him shotgun the smoke into my mouth. "You look really hot tonight by the way."

I blushed slightly at the compliment. "T-thanks. You wanna put me down now?"

"Hell no." He crashed his lips against mine, giving me barely a second to react before his tongue was diving against mine. I kept myself steady around him as he dropped the cigarette and crushed it into the gravel. That freed up his hands to rubs my sides and travel up to my chest, groping roughly as he went. I whimpered against his tongue, arching my back into his touches which never stopped. He worked my shirt up above my chest which I tried to shove back down instantly.

"Johnny! I told you someone's gonna see us!"

"Bruh, we've had sex in bumper cars before. What does this matter?"

"We were completely in the dark and not surrounded by people! Besides...it's just like a thing here. If you're straight presenting it usually doesn't go well."

"I don't know what that means but you're fucking gorgeous and I'm a little drunk and I really want to fuck you, babe." He groaned and dove to lay bites beneath my jaw.

He knew that was one of my weak spots and continued to tease it. His large hand cupped my bare breast, rubbing his thumb over my nipple. I pressed my lips together, trying not to moan at the attention but it was proving to be a bit difficult. With our heats flush against each other he started grinding into me, slowly at first but building speed little by little. I clenched my thighs around him and fell into his touches against my will. I was always weak against him and his convincing wasn't making anything easier for me. His kisses trailed down my neck to take my nipple in his mouth this time, sucking hungrily and viciously. I clutched onto the back of his head, digging my nails in deep.

"I want this skirt off." He breathed against the wetness he left behind.

"I'm not gonna get naked here! Johnny I swear to God."

"Fuck it, let's go to the car. I need you too damn bad."

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

“After the disappointment of the Andrew Garfield-led Amazing Spider-Man movies, everyone’s favorite wallcrawler has been having a renaissance. Entering the Marvel cinematic universe in 2016's Captain America: Civil War, the webslinger fully redeemed himself with well-crafted live-action film in Spider-Man: Homecoming.”

 Yes...okay...that was definitely what Homecoming was....

 “and a wildly successful spin-off film Venom, ”

 I mean financially successful sure...

 “In the midst of all his success, Spider-Man has quietly become one of the most inclusive and socially conscious superheroes of today.”

*raises eyebrow*

 Okay...go on...

 “Last week, it was announced that Spider-Man: Far From Home would feature two out transgender actors playing trans characters, the first big-budget superhero film to do so. Spider-Man: Homecoming also featured a queer character, as well as numerous people of color.”

  Wait who was the queer character in Homecoming?

 “It’s also worth mentioning that Spiderverse included a Jewish version of Peter Parker, who is typically portrayed as either secular or Christian.”

 ....ehhhhhhhhh....yes and no.

 In media adaptations barring maybe one (the 1994 show cos I do not remember where he got married) Spider-Man is portrayed as...I guess secular but really it’s more that they just don’t say anything.

 It’s not that the character is not a believer in a faith per se, especially if you go by older adaptations during times when hardly anyone was secular. It’s just that they, understandably, aren’t saying anything.

 In the comics Peter is some kind of Christian but probably a Protestant (unless you go by Amazing Grace where he is an atheist but that’s hot trash we don’t talk about) but we don’t really talk about it that specifically.

 We just know that he and his family celebrate Christmas and very, very occasionally Aunt May references going to church and that she, Peter and MJ believe in a monothetistic deity they refer to as ‘God’.

 And really apart from the Church thing there is no clue to Peter’s religion and Marvel probably (wisely) would rather keep it that way. He even got married in a civil ceremony!

 However in the SUBTEXT...he’s Jewish. And it’s basically an open secret that he is and always has been Jewish.

 “The Spider-Man video game also featured a wonderful easter egg for queer fans by having a giant rainbow flag, as well as several smaller ones, scattered around the game’s fictionalized New York City map. ”

 I mean that’s wonderful but I wouldn’t call that an Easter Egg so much as...it’s just what you’d find in modern NYC.

 “Even the Venom film got in on the fun, with fans shipping Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the titular male alien-symbiote after the two kissed in the film. Sony even encouraged the pairing, releasing a romantic comedy-esque trailer for the film to promote the home release. While some complained of queer-baiting, most felt that it was all in good fun and included queer people in on the joke, instead of making us the target.”

 Again, good for them but I don’t think that was the movie actively trying to be positive towards queer people.

 Brock and Venom kissed when Venom was bonded to Brock’s ex-fiance and had a pronounced female form, being an adaptation of a character literally called She-Venom.

 And it was based upon a script written in the 1990s so really it was more the movie did it and then people took it as a thing that was shipping Venom and Brock (even though Venom is sexless). Brock and the symbiote have been shipped numerous times in the comics but the subtext has always been that the symbiote, if any sex, is female. In the Spec cartoon it is referred to as Symbi (a pun on Cyndi) and in the Spider-Girl comics it is marked out as female (granted this happens after it’s bonded to a woman).

 And again, headcanon away but like...that probably wasn’t intentional at all Sony were just being goofy or unintionally made something people took a certain way.

 “Indeed, even in the comics, Spider-Man has always been a fairly inclusive hero. Miles Morales was introduced in the early-2000s, taking over the mantel from Peter Parker for several years. ”

 Okay, this is so weird for me to be correcting such a praising point but lets really look at this.

 First of all Miles didn’t take over Peter’s role for several years he did it permanently.

 Second of all Miles is from 2011 so that’s not the early 2000s, that’s the early 2010s, but okay maybe that was a typo.

 Third of all, is it really all that logical to say this franchise that began in 1962 has always been fairly inclusive and then cite a character from 2011 as proof of this? Wouldn’t examples from during the FIRST quarter century have been more apt?

 Fourth of all...eh. Has Spider-Man been fairly inclusive from the start? Yes, no, its complicated.

 Look there were exactly 0 LGBTQ+ characters in Spider-Man until maybe the 1990s and even then I couldn’t off my head tell you who they were. Felicia Hardy is bisexual but we didn’t find out until the 2000s and it was most prominent in an AU. Really the most significant LGBTQ+ character who’s had the fact that they are queer be more than a one off reference was Max Modell and he debuted 2011 and IIRC wasn’t established as queer until 2012. In defence of Spider-Man the Comics Code literally FORBID any character be anything other than straight until the 1990s and even then it was relatively rare, even in X-Men which you’d think it wouldn’t be.

 If we’re talking POC again this one is a bit complicated Glori Grant, Joe Robertson, Randy Robertson are frequently appearing POC characters but not in every run and they aren’t usually as prominent as like Jameson, Aunt May, Harry Osborn, MJ, etc. Characters of other ethnicities are even less frequent and I don’t even know what we should make of Puma/Thomas Fireheart. I mean A for effort, they wanted a Native American character who wasn’t really a villain and wasn’t exactly a sterotype so there is that I guess.

 Again though...most other Marvel franchises decade by decade weren’t much better with this and we should give credit where credit is due to the same guy who created Black Panther writing a nuanced scene where 2 black people in the 60s separated by age discuss different approaches to civil rights with neither being proven right or wrong.

 When it comes to disabled people, outside of evil insane villains, forget it, there is nothing before Flash Thompson in 2008 unless you count Aunt May’s chronically poor health.

 “Spider-Gwen quickly became one of the highest-selling female superhero comics. Spider-Woman was a prominently featured bisexual character, and the female Asian-American hero Silk also had LGBT supporting characters, Rafferty and Lola, who were in a healthy relationship. Additionally, many view vampire villain Morbius, who is getting a spin-off film starring Jared Leto next year, as a metaphor for those suffering during the HIV crisis of the '80s. ”

 Again...Spider-Gwen and Silk are 2010s characters so that’s not ‘always fairly inclusive’.

 I don’t even know if Jessica Drew is bisexual, I’ve never heard that but I don’t think she is.

 Morbius as a metaphor for HIV...MIGHT be true if we are specifically talking about his 1990s solo-book which I’ve never read. But the character as originally created 100% was never about that because he was created in the 1970s before HIV was known about.

 “Unlike his Marvel counterparts Thor, Iron Man and Captain America, Spider-Man’s world has accurately reflected real world diversity for years.”

 ....Not really.

 I’m not even saying Spidey maybe haven’t been comparatively better at it than those guys but he’s deffo not been accurate.

 Plus to be fair to the other guys, Captain America and Iron Man have had at least one major black supporting cast member and in Cap’s case he was fairly candid about social strife and issues.

 And with Thor it’s not that fair to throw shade at him for not reflecting the real world given that 90% of this characters and stories are literally pulled from fantasy and myth. I don’t even know if there are any queer figures in Norse myth let alone poc.

 “While it’s a seemingly simple idea that any of us can be a superhero, it’s sadly still a radical concept in a endlessly growing film genre that has predominetly centers straight cisgender white men. ”

 Well that’s mostly because the comics the movies adapt are about those types of people.

 “That is because relatability and inclusion has always been core to Spider-Man’s appeal and message. It’s why the late Stan Lee decided that, unlike other superheroes who expose parts of their faces, Spider-Man had to wear a full-face mask.”

  Stan Lee only speculated that that was part of Spider-Man’s appeal, he never had any input on that design choice it was all Steve Ditko...who frankly was unlikely to have been thinking about that...

 “Even further, Spider-Man isn’t the king of a country, a billionaire, a woman out of a Greek myth, or a brilliant scientist. He’s just an average high-school kid from Brooklyn who always strives to do the right thing even while struggling to balance his everyday life and hiding a secret identity.”

 WHOA there buddy...Spider-Man isn’t routinely ‘a kid’ nor is he from Brooklyn.

 MILES is from Brooklyn but Peter, as evidenced by that great big caption in Captain America: Civil War, is from QUEENS.

 “And it’s the idea of balancing a secret identity with everyday life that has always allowed Spider-Man to connect with queer audiences long before comic writers were allowed to explicitly include LGBT characters.”

 ...I’m not denying this necesarrilly but whilst i’ve heard stories from poc who connected with Spider-Man I’ve never heard this about LGBTQ+ fans of Spider-Man.

“Indeed, perhaps the strongest part of Spider-Man’s inclusivity is the subtlety to which it has been done. While Black Panther, Black Lightning, and Wonder Woman rightly put issues of identity front and center, Spider-Man’s quiet diversity allows audiences who typically cry “SJWs are ruining my favorite characters” to actually see diversity showcased without it being overt.”

 Errrrrrr...sure....*represses memories of when Miles Morales was first announced*

 Lets um...wait and see what happens when those trans characters show up in the movie this year okay.

[applecherry108]

first of all hooooooooolyyyy shiitttt

FUCK tungle. it took like 30 tries to log in on desktop. admittedly, i was using the wrong password at first, BUT, even when i remembered the right one it kept giving me shit. This is what i get for being L337 i guess... -_-

anyways, im only on desktop so i can add a readmore to say:

i just,,,,,hate voltron. okay? It sucked. it fucking sucked. i watched the first season and it was like, okay yeah, this has potential. and then s2 was like, okay yeah not as good but maybe s3 will pick up...

s3 didn’t pick up. it was just one long death spiral by the same idiots who fucked up the atla sequel. i hate their writing, i hate their story plots, i hate how they butcher any good ideas they have, and i especially hate their inability to have good character AND plot development happen at the same time.

I got swept up in storm of klance and that’s about it. i have soft spots for other ships but at the end of the day i don’t care. i just don.t fucking,,, care???

the fandom is a mess, the crew was a mess, everything was a fucking mess from the get go.

Like who tf is this show written for?? it has to be for like, 8-10 year olds. It has to be. Everything is just so....stupid. Nothing is ever properly explained, motivations never really given, everyone is just a 2 dimensional cardboard cutout of a trope. And that pisses me off so much bc like??? other shows aimed at young kids can still have great world building. they can have good world building and characters and overall story and still be cheesy and a lil dumb. cheesy and a lil dumb is completely fine!! but voltron is just so...godammn... BORING!! it’s like i WANT to like the characters but its just so goddamn hard when everybody is so fucking flat. by all rights, i should want to marry allura. shes everything i loved when i was little, from her color pallet to her princesshood to her white fucking hair!! i should LOVE allura but i don’t!! i kind of hate her. why?? i don’t know!! shes so...boring! and flat! and fucking PASSIVE! everything in this show lands so fucking flat holy shit.

pidge at matts “grave”? yikes, that was second hand hard to watch for like.... “oooh this is so serious!” but the buildup wasnt there...it was kind of funny tbh... and HELLA awkward...

don’t get me started on lance and hunk. bolin was my favorite look character for the first few episodes and then he got knocked to Comic Relief and had maybe two (2) importantish moments. he/they may be part of the main cast but they’re not main characters. they feel like background props to the Actual Main characters.

which brings me to keith.

FUCK keith.

that’s my reaction after every! new! season!! is just,, FUCK keith. god the show functioned SO WELL without him. he’s just so...idk. i also don’t care. what was his character arc anyway? it SHOULD have been about learning to love and trust others but we only get that in lip service and speed run character development (i hate the quantum abyss...so much... like yeah, who cares about SHOWING our characters mature, let’s just tell that it happened in afucking montage.) if keith were a properly developed character he shouldve remained PASSIONATE and idk, run support?? that boy SHOULD have piloted red, end of story. period. keith doesn’t need to lead he needs to learn to TRUST others and that insludes trusting other WITH HIS LIFE. i won’t rant about how we should have had black paladin lance, but keith should have never ever been black paladin. even after he “matures” he still sucks at. he’s this awful,,little,, Shiro 2.0. and I hate it. i ahte it and i hate shiro just a little bit. even though he was arguably the most likeable character, he shouldve stayed dead. or missing. or whatever. he didn’t need to come back and they didnt need to make keith a little offbrand clone of him. i ESPECIALLY hate that they aged keith up 2 years for no goddamn reason other than to make him the Adult (tm). keith’s dedication to others was gre4at, but it should have, and im failing for this word here so forgive me, climaxed? cresscendo’d? whatever. /resulted/ in him playing support. not leader. lone wolf keith doesn’t need how to lead his pack, he needed to learn to HELP his pack. to be a TEAM PLAYER. he didn’t want the responsibility of leading bc guess what?? some people hate leading!! there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be support! keith’s entire arc is a huge mess of missed opportunities and a grand illustration that he is lm’s and jds’ favorite, just like fucking mako.

i won’t rant about mako, but just know i fucking hate him and the special treatment he gets, and good LORD does keith take over mako. keith isn’t space zuko he’s space mako and it fucking SHOWS.

okay, i’m losing steam here, but like.... so apple, why tf where u voltron 24/7 if you hated it so much? because homestuck was over and i needed a new hyperfixation. and i really had to force it for vld tbh. and at the end of the day, it wasn’t so much about the show itself as the potential of klance (or sheith, up until s3). between the interviews, the coding, the fucking EVERYTHING--it really felt like it could be canon. i knew in my heart it was queer baiting but i had HOPE dammit. hope that this could be killer representation, hope that these characters would delvelopment into something incredible. again, there was so much POTENTIAL. and all of it was wasted. everything really came to a head during the fucking game show episode. it was like lm and lds giving everyone who likes lance the middle finger, really driving home that “no no, he IS just stupid. he’s the comic releif. there’s nothing deeper about him and no one will stand up for him bc they all think of him as such.” and that just....broke my heart. we were so...SO close to lance actually mattering but nope! bolin’d again! and what was his purpose in s8? why to be an accessory to allura of course!

i’ve seen a lot of people really divorce themselves from canon and live solely for fanon, esp fanon klance but like.... i can’t. i just can’t. it’s so fucking hard to work with these cardboard characters. you can only draw so much depth onto them, you know? until the very last moments they had potential, but then it all got snuffed out. but who cares about canon? why bother with it? because! we don’t have a solid consistent fanon version of them! no one sat down and delivered the ten commandments of “here’s what we agree k and l are actually like” it’s stupid and it sucks because everyone has their own little differences and its so so tiring to basically be interacting with minutely different ocs all the goddamn time. canon matters bc it gives everyone the same base to work with. like a cooking showing with the same basket ingredients, but now it’s like.... ya’ll don’t wanna use the mandatory ingredients (and why would you? those canon ingredients are like, a century egg and spoiled sardines, they’re awful.)

okay, and im at work and just came back to this and dont remember my train of thought so like... what really threw all this into sharp clarity was the recent steven universe episodes. they were so...GOOD. so fucking good. so much plot and foreshadowing coming to a head. it was such a wonderfully satisfying payoff that it made me remember what a GOOD show is like, how vld is so very very /bad/. the difference is fucking striking. where one is an intricately woven tale with excellent character development and clear story AND character arcs, that can progress AT THE SAME TIME, one is a hacked together flaming dumpster firing that constantly falls flat and doesn’t know where its going or why. and it s so BORING! like fight scenes can be amazing! they can be well coreographed and tense! and we as the audience can be anxious about the outcome! and vld just wasn’t that! it was boring repetetive action in the least exciting way. and where su set up a lot of potential, holy shit they DELIVERED on that potential. not just for rep, but for characters! for story! for plain ol simple character interactions! and then, again, two dimensional cardboard cutouts.

and now with this difference in good vs bad show so very clearly highlighted for me, i just.... i can’t, anymore, with vld. it sucks. it sucked and i can’t pretend or force a fixation with it that just isn’t there, and truthfully, probably never was. maybe that’s why i’ve been struggling to finish my fic, struggling ever since i posted the last chapter, ever since s7, which, again, that game show was really the nail in the coffin as far as holding onto any hope that this tire fire would ever pick up. like a physically feel ill trying to finishing this stupid fic bc i don’t care so hard. i don’t care and i just... really want to be over it. im sick of seeing it everywhere, im sick of the drama, of the Discourse. like all fandoms have their issues, but hold fuck does vld fandom have a massive Purity problem. like, god, let people ship whatever. who cares. die mad about it.

like homestuck, idk if i’ll ever fully ween myself off vld but i want to move on. i want to enjoy Other Things without having this lackluster weight on my shoulders. and more than anything, i want to stop feeling like im obligated to like the same shit as i did two years ago, or last year, or hell, last week! feel free to unfollow, but yeah i just.... really needed to let this out in a proper post and not in the misc tags somewhere.

[a-e-redacted]

I’ve been watching TOH since ‘A Lying Witch And A Warden’ first dropped. Like a lot of early viewers, I came to the show from the Gravity Falls fandom, and was hoping it might have a similar vibe. I enjoyed The Owl House and Eda instantly became my favorite character, but initially it felt a bit slower and lighter than I was hoping for (ahahahah past!Alice! You really had no idea!).

For a long time, I felt like I had trouble relating to Luz, but I’ve recently realized that it’s more I related to her *too* much. I could write a whole essay on this, but suffice to say that my story through my late teens/early twenties has a LOT in common with Luz’s arc down to some weirdly specific “story points” (though I still haven’t danced under the moon with a beautiful girl while fighting the manifestation of our deepest fears, and I AM salty about this fact).

I was delighted with the show’s blatant queer representation. And after being in fandoms of some of the most notoriously queer-baiting of shows, The Owl House was a breath of fresh air.

However it wasn’t until the season 1 finale that I really got the plot-heavy drama I was hoping for. I remember calling up my friend Nana who would later be my collaborator for Moonshadow to basically scream “Holy shit, this show just became AMAZING?!?”

And then season 2 started handing me all the lore and plot points and character exploration I was hoping for. I watched the new episodes as soon as I could (and in some pretty random locations at times).

And yet, despite the fact that the show was giving me everything I could have wanted and I wasn’t afraid to admit that I felt like it was objectively a better show than GF, despite the fact that I LOVED the show and was invested in the story and characters, I didn’t quite hit the point of hyperfixation until King’s Tide.

(I’d actually kind of resigned myself to simply enjoying the show an unironically normal amount).

For a while, I was actually a bit lukewarm on The Collector as a character. I thought they were interesting and fun (though my first reaction to their appearance in Hollow Mind was, and I quote, “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?”) but, like everybody and their brother, I’d immediately made the Bill Cipher connection. Bill is one of my all-time favorite characters in anything ever and the idea of TOH trying to recreate him in a different font didn’t set well with me.

Fortunately, the more TOH separates itself from GF (even while exploring some of the same themes through a different lens), the more it shines. And it started to become more and more clear that there were more contrasts between Bill Cipher and The Collector than comparisons (personally I think there’s more comparisons to be made between The Collector and Time Baby, but I’ve not seen one person in either fandom go there yet).

I went into the weekend that King’s Tide aired with a pretty bad headspace, frustrated with my current writing project. I hoped the season 2 finale would provide a good distraction. I was super excited to watch it but I had NO IDEA how absolutely unhinged off-the-rails it was going to go.

The realization that The Collector didn’t just act childish, The Collector WAS an Actual Child ONLY WITH THE POWER OF A GOD (and hooooo boy the implications that go along with that), that their destruction wasn’t purely malevolent, the character design that LOOKED LIKE SOMETHING A FANDOM WOULD COME UP WITH FOR A HUMINIZATION OF A NONHUMANOID CHARACTER, THEIR ABSOLUTELY RAD MUSICAL THEME, WATCHING THEM WIPE THE FLOOR WITH BELOS WHICH WAS ALMOST UNDERSTATED BECAUSE OF HOW BATSHIT OFF-THE-RAILS EVERYTHING HAD JUST BECOME AND THEN THEY JUST BOOPED THE MOON OUT OF THE WAY AND STARTED HAPPILY AND SLIGHTLY-OBLIVIOUSLY DESTROYING EVERYTHING AND KING SENT THE KIDS THROUGH THE PORTAL AND WAS LEFT WITH THIS OVERPOWERED LITTLE SHIT AND THAT WAS THE END OF THE EPISODE AND I JUST SAT THERE THINKING “THIS IS THE GREATEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN! I WANT TO SEE THIS KID CREATE *MORE CHAOS* RIGHT THE HELL NOW.”

IT WAS LIKE CHUGGING TEN MONSTER ENERGY DRINKS IN THE SPAN OF FIVE MINUTES.

But instead I had to settle for the absolute chaos that the fandom was creating. And the fandom? Was creating some very excellent chaos. The post-King’s Tide shitposts were some of the most bonkerballs fandom creations I’ve ever seen (not to mention the Enzo Gabriel meme which shall forever live in infamy).

So in between laughing at shitposts, processing everything that had happened in the episode (and praising the hell out of it), calling up Nana and screaming about it, I realized that I had inexplicably tripped and fallen flat on my face into hyperfixation territory.

And when I enter that state, I start writing. I realized pretty early on that I was going to have to write a Collector-centric Owl House fic. Nana and I started planning out the premise and solidified a lot of ideas during a vacation roadtrip (THAT was quite a thing in and of itself).

TL/DR because this got WAY LONGER and tangent-y than I expected. BC (Before Collector) I really enjoyed The Owl House but could focus on other things. However, once The Collector entered the game in physical form in King’s Tide…Well, I’ll let the fact that I’ve written an 80K-word-and-counting Collector-centric Owl House fanfic saga speak for itself.

Attention, Collector fans!

Just as a question, what was your relationship with TOH before Hollow Mind/the Collector's first proper appearance? And what's your current one with the show for contrast?