#Straight out of the show

[duckysprouts]

if you were at your worst, if you’re a villain or a screwup or whatever, there is a goth man dressed as a giant bat who keeps coming after you, bothering you. he sabotages your journey of self destruction over and over. ur ready to give up but he won’t let you. you think, today he won’t come. today he will give up on me too. he never does.

[thestarfishface]

“There is no platonic explanation for thi-“ Sprays u with water. Sprays u

[tiklart]

JSHSJSVDVSHDHDHHSHSHSHD @ticklishraspberries pahleassee 🧎🧎 I- this is so freaking adorable- my hearttttt

Thank you so much, this fic is absolutely amazing- I’m in love- you talented mofo

Family (Kazuki/Rei)

Summary: xxx (Here is my fic for Squealing Santa 2k23, and I’m writing for *drumroll*...@tiklart!! I really hope you enjoy your fic. And a special thanks to @hypahticklish for running this event and being so lovely. Happy holidays to everyone!! xo)

Working and living together forced a sort of intimacy that both Rei and Kazuki weren’t exactly familiar with. Kazuki had been, once, but ever since that loss, he had closed himself off to forming such bonds, whereas Rei had never been so known to another person, and it sort of freaked him out.

The benefit was, of course, that it was beneficial to know one’s partner in their line of work. They had a basis of trust, of security. They worked well together, and had no reason to jeopardize that.

But there was also the domesticity of it all that was…Well, strange. Kazuki was like a proper housewife, cooking and cleaning and taking care of everything. Rei had grown up with money and maids, never had to care for himself, so that was welcomed. It was a little rude of him to leave it all up to Kazuki, but social skills were also not his strong suit, so he had no idea how to thank him, let alone help him with the chores. 

It was a calm day in their apartment, for once. There were no hits to be completed, nothing to do. Miri was at daycare, giving them some much needed peace and quiet. While Rei saw it as an opportunity to do more of nothing than usual, Kazuki was taking advantage of the day off, cleaning the apartment and prepping some meals to cook throughout the week, in his apron and all.

Rei often called him a housewife, which made Kazuki scoff and say something like, “So, what does that make you? My lazy husband?” which had once made Rei blush, but he had since gotten used to the banter. In a way, their dynamic had become almost like a marriage. They did everything together. And, well, Rei wasn’t complaining. Kazuki was a good-looking guy, no doubt about it, but they had never done anything to actually be a couple. They were just roommates and co-workers, arguably friends, who had now stumbled upon a little girl that they were raising as their own. As her two dads. Who weren’t married or even dating. It was a weird dynamic, for sure.

After cleaning Miri’s room, doing some laundry, cooking, and cleaning, all before noon, Kazuki plopped down on the couch beside Rei with a sigh.

Rei was, as usual, engrossed in a video game, and ignored his presence entirely.

“You know, you could have offered to help me out,” Kazuki said.

Rei made a noise in response, something between a grunt and a hum. An acknowledgement, but not agreeing or disagreeing. Not even listening.

Kazuki rolled his eyes. “Are you even paying attention?”

Rei repeated the noise, and Kazuki gave an annoyed huff.

“Earth to Rei,” he said, waving a hand next to his face.

Rei ignored him. He was so close to finishing the level, he wasn’t going to stop now! He focused intently, determined to finish with a perfect score.

He had expected Kazuki to just give up, leave him alone, like he usually did. But instead, Kazuki jabbed him in the ribs with two fingers, an unexpected touch that made him yelp and jump, tilting his controller in the process and effectively making him lose the level.

Rei turned with a disgruntled expression. “What do you want?”

“What was that?” Kazuki asked. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? Are you injured from that last hit? Why didn’t you tell me? Let me see!”

“I’m not hurt, you’re just being annoying,” Rei replied with a glare. “You made me lose.”

“Did that guy hit you in the ribs? I swear, if you’ve broken something and didn’t say anything, I’m going to kick your ass.”

Kazuki began experimentally prodding Rei’s side, determined to find the supposed injury and probably cause Rei a little bit of pain as a lesson in getting shit checked out right away, but instead, Rei wriggled away with a level of energy he only showed while on the job.

“Cut it out!” he said.

“But if you’re hurt, I—”

“I’m not hurt, dumbass, just leave me—”

“Wait a second. Are you…Did that tickle?” Kazuki asked, something like realization appearing on his face.

Rei’s face grew hot. “Of course not.”

“Oh, really? So you wouldn’t mind if I did…This?”

Kazuki leapt across the couch at him, fingers finding his belly with surprising ease. Rei, with all his training, had seen it coming but forgotten any practical means of escape, and simply shouted and squirmed, like he wasn’t a fucking assasian from one of the most feared families in Japan.

He bit the inside of his cheek, refusing to laugh, his long limbs flailing and trying to hit Kazuki anywhere that would disarm him, but Kazuki was just as strong and tactical as he was.

When Kazuki’s fingers found his ribs again, Rei couldn’t contain it any longer, a giggle slipping out. He would never describe it as such, but it was definitely a giggle. Slightly high-pitched and hysterical, and kind of adorable, although he would also hate that description.

“Wait until I tell Miri,” Kazuki teased.

“Don’t you dare,” Rei spat, gasping for air between laughter.

“Oh, c’mon! You know how much she likes to see you smile.”

“I’m not smiling!”

“You’re right, you’re actually laughing. My bad. Miri will like that even better! I can just imagine the look on her little face when she finds out Papa Rei is ticklish!”

“I am not ticklish,” Rei said through gritted teeth, fighting the urge to laugh again, as if it would do him any good. Kazuki had a good grip on his torso and was tormenting his sides and ribs with the dexterity of someone who knew their way around a trigger, as well as a sewing needle.

“Oh, you’re not? Then what’s so funny?”

“Fuck off!”

“Language!”

“She’s not even here!”

Rei kicked and swung his arms and even attempted to bite Kazuki a few times, but he was weak with laughter and eventually slumped against the cushions, laughing helplessly.

“Admit it and I’ll stop,” Kazuki said.

“Never!” Rei replied. He had been trained by his family to withstand worse torture than this. He would find a way to get out of this situation…But what then? Kazuki was never going to let this go. And if the kid found out��Ugh, he was totally screwed.

Kazuki’s hands darted upward and underneath Rei’s arms, making his laughter reach a new octave. It didn’t take long for him to crack.

“Fine, fine! I’m fucking ticklish, okay? Now stop!”

Kazuki did, immediately, a smug smile on his face. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“I hate you,” Rei said.

His normally pale cheeks were flushed and his eyes were watery, his hair even messier than usual, his hoodie and sweatpants rumpled. As he caught his breath, he noticed Kazuki staring.

“What?” he asked, scowling.

“You just…You should laugh more. You look…You look cute,” Kazuki said, stumbling over his words as he also blushed.

Rei’s eyes widened in surprise. “I’m not…Fuck off,” he said, but he was fighting a smile.

“I’m serious though! You just…Miri’s right. It’s nice to see you smile.”

Rei opened his mouth to reply, then his eyes caught the time on the television. “Shit. We have to go pick her up.”

Kazuki looked at the time as well, jumping up from the couch. “Crap, you’re right. Let’s go!”

And in the chaos of grabbing their shoes and coats, their minds were distracted from their previous antics and conversation. It wasn’t until later that evening, when Miri had fallen asleep in his lap, that Rei revisited those words in his mind.

Cute? Really? It wasn’t the most flattering of compliments for a grown man to receive, but coming from Kazuki…Well, it had felt nice.

Maybe roommates and coworkers and co-parents weren't all that they were. Maybe they could be something more. The thought made his cheeks grow warm. As he looked down at Miri, their daughter, he truly felt that they were the perfect little family.

[aethersea]

I do think Blazing Saddles handled its one depiction of native americans very poorly, and the full extent of its representation of chinese workers on the railroad is they were literally just there. not even one single speaking line. unclear if this is worse or better than the redface.

it's fucking phenomenal at lampooning antiblack racism though. extremely blatant, extremely funny satire, which is constantly and loudly saying "racism is the philosophy of the terminally stupid at best and morally depraved at worst, and we should all be pointing and laughing at them 24/7"

plus the main character is a heroic black man who has to navigate a whole lot of bullshit but is constantly smirking at the extraordinarily stupid racists and inviting the audience into the joke. the one heroic white character is a guy who was suicidally depressed until he met the protagonist and they just instantly became buds, and he's firmly in a supporting role the whole time and happy to be there. the protagonist saves the day with the help of his black friends from the railroad, and uses the position of power he was given to uplift not only those friends, but all the railroad workers of other minorities too, in an explicit show of solidarity.

anyone saying "Blazing Saddles is racist" had better be talking about its treatment of non-black minorities. it had better not be such superficial takes as "oh but they say the n-word all the time" or "they have nazis and the kkk in there!" because goddamn if that's the full extent of your critique I very seriously suggest you read up on media analysis. there is too much going over your head, you need to learn to recognize satire.

[jackklinemybeloved]

watching the grey’s anatomy/trope island in misfits and magic is truly: k tanaka heaven is also evan kelmp hell, it’s a very efficient system.

[idolomantises]

i never liked the idea that good trans rep has to be so subtle its easy to miss. nothing wrong with a character saying "im trans" or dealing with their experiences as a trans person.

just let them have a personality too, don't tokenize them. And make them a weird freak. we need more trans characters that are weird freaks.

[gynii]

they could never make me hate you yukio okumura

[thevioletcaptain]

y'know, the different factions of spn fandom on tumblr do fundamentally and vehemently disagree with each other about a lot of things, and many of the factions actively hate one another, but i just want to say for the record that i appreciate the fact that this site is not overrun with painfully hetero facebook fans. i just saw someone over there saying with their whole chest that they fully expected the finale to have dean meeting jo harvelle in heaven and them getting afterlife married, and someone else angrily responded that this was obviously never going to happen because clearly dean was still in love with lisa braeden who would therefore be his finale bride (i guess this person expected her to die in the finale somehow?), and then someone ELSE responded that they wouldn't want to see either of those things happen because they like to pretend dean is their boyfriend and it would feel like cheating(!!!!) if he ended up with one of them and they'd never be able to fantasize about him anymore. and all of these comments had over a dozen people agreeing with them.

[the-brucest-fan]

I NEED THIS KNUCKLES PUPPET 😍😍😍

[nouverx]

I absolutely loved the recent duo print of Alastor and Charlie on streamily and I wanted to make an hypothetical duo print of Alastor and Niffty in a similar style. A man can dream 💀

I also wish he had one with Rosie ofc he needs a duo print with all his girlies. Maybe I'll draw that next time who knows

[splankie]

is blowing up a volcano after ur first kiss couple goals

[egophiliac]

how are u on gavv so far? because i need to scream about how insane it has been (and that zakuzakuchips and fuwamallow have won special places in my heart)

can't believe his mom got flavor-blasted to death. 😔 RIP.

[yrsonpurpose]

Numbers on me being into dudes? Seventy-eight percent probability of latent bisexual tendencies.

[sarasade]

One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".

Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.

That's the TL;DR version of this post. 

ANYWAY here is the long version

Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".

One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.

Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.

It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.

This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.

People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.

I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.

Anyway if you want to read more:

- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info

-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos

-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.

-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa

- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.

-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge

[insufferablemod]

you can blame @borzoilover69 for this

[laniidae-passerine]

positively obsessed with how Rockstar Lestat is the exact kind of guy one of my friends would show me a picture of and swear he’s really sexy and cool and brilliant. Whole time I’m thinking “oh dear GOD” staring at a trainwreck weirdo and wondering what’s happened to everybody else that is absolutely missing me. jesus christ he’s blond