#allegory you cant do this to us

[kavennnn]

haha guys dont worry, allegory for hatred only made dazai lose his eye on the side that beast dazai wouldve had his bandage as a joke, dont worry guys they were just being silly

[girlbob-boypants]

If all we get from Davrin is Griffon Dad ft Grey Warden apologia and a sprinking of "I'm not like other elves" ...

[cryptidjeepers]

Actually crazy how so many people cant get past UNIT being used as a stand in for the attack on health and science. Blaming pete mctighe for not delivering the story properly as if he has any say in how UNIT has been show in the last few seasons. I think he did a good job to show what unit actually does instead of how theyve been portrayed last season as a weirdly omnipotent shadowy government agency. Theyre an alien defense team. They defend against real alien threats. That a lot of people refuse to believe despite NUMEROUS example of invasions. Almost reminds you of something.... oh yeah, literally what we've been dealing with since covid (and before!). It makes perfect narrative sense.

idfc that yall still cant get over kerblam. Do you need every allegory to be air tight 100% perfect?? 😭😭

[prideprejudce]

Also kind of related to the last alicent ask-- how objectively funny is it that the targaryens pulled alicent kicking and screaming into their weird blood purity incest tangle. For them, having uncle fathers and brother husbands and just generally blurring all the lines between family and romantic interest is sooooo normal. Yes its done massive damage to their psyches as we've seen with daemon in particular- but its passé to them at this point. For Alicent its breaking her BRAIN.

Like, Alicent who's deeply religious in a very westerosi faith and has classic nuclear family adjacent issues in contrast- overbearingly strict father, dead pedestalized mother to emulate, estranged sibling- is just SHOVED into the targaryen familial polycule and told to figure it out.

She keeps trying to bind herself to westerosi gender roles for comfort and safety, but bc of the targs she's now married an father/uncle figure, the girl who was supposed to be her sister growing up is now her daughter AND shes in love with her, her children are basically her siblings, and ALSO she's two of their mother in law(s?). Throw in the desperate parentification of aemond bc its not like viserys is helping her raise these kids-and its fucking her up!!! how is she supposed to have any sense of self when every role she would define herself by in a patriarchal westerosi culture has been fractured into twisted branches!!

It spiders into her other rationships too!! Her father otto has been treating her like both a daughter AND a pseudo wife, criston her lover keeps trying to assert himself over her choices in a very fatherly condescending way, and her brother gwayne is out in oldtown fathering her third son.

I sent an ask a while ago about how the tragedy of the alicent/rhaenyra/aegon triangle is that its an allegory for how targs just cant acclimate to westeros at all and end up breaking their dynasty AND the country by trying to force their culture to fit anyways, and i think you were so right in ur response that its not just rhaenyra/aegon/alicent who are the allegory but its ALL the targs in relation to alicent thats the allegory- they just cannot work with Alicent/westeros while she/its trapped in the current westerosi culture.

its hilarious bc it really is like having ONE catholic nun in an insane echo chamber hedonism cult and then being like 'why are you going insane bc of the incest and sex we're so over it it hasn't effected us whatsoever maybe if you try the kool aid you'll chill out' while she's desperately pretending none of this is happening and she's Not Involved.

this is a great point, and if you also go back to her as a child saying "you targaryens do have very queer customs" with noticeable disgust on face, and flash forward a decade later where she's marrying two of her children together in typical targaryen incest practices. I wish they had explored this more in the show and looked into how she feels about this currently, but I can't imagine she feels too great about it, and it's probably the reason why she went ULTRA religious with a five pound star medallion almost hanging from her neck. she wants at least some repentance for playing along in targaryen incest rituals, which goes against everything she was raised to believe

and like you mentioned, if you look close enough, almost EVERY relationship that alicent has is majorly twisted by either targaryen customs or her own stunted growth from being a child bride. she's now a grown woman who still has the mind of a 15 year old and is trying to navigate a civil war that she helped ignite in her rage and jealousy over her own private hell for last decade. she also swings from a protective parent role to having an almost eldest sibling like relationship with her kids who desperately crave more motherly affection from her that she is just not able to give (because she cant completely seal off her deep down resentment of them)

and to top it off, the purest relationship in her life (rhaenyra) with genuine love was also twisted into a familial one through an arranged marriage. if you also headcanon her possible romantic feelings for rhaenyra, you can times three that trauma on your score card as well

alicent literally was forced into the targaryen world of the snake eating its own tail (reduced to a bargaining chip for otto) with decades of inbreeding and family infighting for power and control and was told to play nice with them. no wonder she's out in the woods wandering around and dissociating lmao

[spread-the-influence]

I love the continued attempts by anons to talk ragatha out of her bullshit, and I like your responses as much.

we want the power of gay to fix her, we want her to get better and blow up the Evil Fucking Worms with a talk from Zooble and a zip bomb of lesbianism. But Ragatha’s bullshit under the EFWorms is so genuinely antithetical to getting talked, or slapped, or gay’d out of her head.

I know a few people like TI Ragatha in real life, and most of them could very clearly be good people, and can be very nice. But due to reasons that mod bee has been so incredibly baller at describing (and a few anons) any attempt at help will only dig her in further. Being nice is a veiled attack. Being mean is just proof that you only want to hurt her. Being gay is just leading her on, or proof that she’s right. Its a delusion that some people fall into for lots of reasons, one of which can be lack of self esteem coupled with a anti support network (the Evil Fucking Worms) that turns the person’s good into a fishhook and their sadness into a prod. I don’t know how to help with this, and whenever i ask my therapist the only things they can tell me is to encourage them to get rid of the bad support network, stay with them without putting up with the bullshit, and encourage them to go to therapy. The Worms have got to go before she can get better, and if it wasn’t Worm Problems then there would be steps after. which is why I really like the continued response of “ok it would be nice if we could fix her, but she will refuse to be helped while the Evil Fucking Worms are still here”. As stupid and edgy as it is to say, this problem cant be solved in universe by talking, and that adds to the strength of the story I feel. It can’t be toxic yuri if the toxin is being sucked through a britta filter, and mixing in real brain problems is what has made it so compelling. Ok thanks bye!

i love this ask because it's so full of wonderful insights while using the words Evil Fucking Worms constantly i'll never take that phrase seriously

the Thing i've tried my Bestest to avoid throughout the comic is making the virus seem like an allegory for Mental Illness , because it forwards the message that having a mental illness makes you Violent and Dangerous which is very much the LAST thing i want to do . so it'll be Very Iffy if t.i really does get saved by being reasoned to , because it means ragatha can co-exist with the virus if she gets enough support and treatment ... which would be nicer in a Different Story where t.i isn't perpetuating every stigmatizing stereotype under the sun

so describing it as a Bad Support System ... is pretty close to what i'm trying to go for ! a good support system is Important for recovery , just like how a Shitty one would hold you back ! ragatha's forced to be in her Lowest mentally because that's when she's most useful . she can't really spread the virus if she knows what she's doing is Wrong . the thing that makes her dangerous is not her mental illness , but by being constantly connected to a network of enablers egging her on

t.i can't be ' redeemed ' because the only way she could get better is if she's Disconnected from that network . she Cannot improve in her current state . i'm sorry guys we can't have a kind-of unhinged ringmaster ragatha the brain worms are too evil Get Them Out

[conversewithmyconverse]

Three Cheers for sweet revenge plot song by song according to me

My credentials are that uhmm ive listened to this album like weekly since i was like 12 and uhm im taking english A-Level (crime and tragedy) sooooo

Full disclaimer i could do a line by line analysis on pretty much all of these songs but then this would be stupidly long so im just touching on the points or lyrics i think are most important for the plot! Oh and i cant spell and im trieddd of writing academic essays so im kinda yapping ngl

HELENA

honestly i barely have anything to say here but i imagine its the demo woman’s funeral (yes ik its abt Gerard ways grandma but let me cook) kind of setting the tone and exploring his grief, creating the circumstances for his deal with the devil - especially in the bridge.

GIVE EM HELL KID

Ok so here!! Is where i start to have more to say!! So in my head the man (im just gonna call them tje man and the woman or like he/she from here on) has accepted the deal with satan to kill 1000 evil men and is basically on a killing spree? So from my immense medical knowledge of watching house im preity sure epidrene is a steroid, which like gives him energy (interestingly ive been on them a few times for asthma and they have a long list of mental side effects such as uhhh mania (fall out boy whooo) anxiety and depression which maybe foreshadows his sorta insanity towards the end as his guilt haunts him) acting as a symbol of his immense motivation to see his wife again, so verse one especially is before his downfall where hes like yippee killing people to see my wife again!! The chorus i imagine is sang by both him and the woman in heaven as they both long for each other uhm and later on in the song it does seem as if hes begining to kind of loose it a bit due to his grief? kind of foreshadowing his well everything later on in the album. In the bridge i imagine hes kind of mocking their teenage selves (linking to im not okay later on) especially in the line “we are young and we dont care” criticicing their hopefullness by comparing it to their current circumstance - ironic as it only gets worse from here.

TO THE END

Now i know this is based on a rose for emily (i tried to read it and there were a LOT of slurs from what i remeber so that was yeah) but for the sake of my silly little narrative were kinda just not gonna touch on that. So here i believe the man has been set to kill this couple, just to find the wife has killed her husband (with the “cyanide you drank” i assume) which drives him into a sort of crisis, questioning if this was what would have happened to him and his wife if she had lived and they had stayed married for this long (fueling his sexuality crisis in prison). I could go so much further into this, especially language wise but for the sake of everyones sanity ill leave it here :)

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DO TO GUYS LIKE US IN PRISION

so hes literally in the middle of a gunfight in the centre of a resturant and the police come and theyre like come with ur arms raised high and ok so!!! Theres many people who could explain this better than me but the man gets arrested for killing all these people and gets sent to jailllll. Ive heard some people talk about it as an allegory for SA in prison and others who talk abt it as him realising his gay/bi ect and honestly i can see both. I really like the line “too much to late or just not enough of this, pain in my heart for your dying wish, i kiss your lips again!” Which, running with the latter intrepretation, suggests hes feeling regret for all the murdering hes done and is questioning if he ever did love his wife this much, and if he should move on and fix his mistakes. So to make a long story short he has a sexuality crisis in prision! Toward the end, he escapes prision and with his “friends” from jail, lilely from setting it on “fire” (i got the friends bit from the lyric “but ill go down with my friends”) escaping jail but at the cost of further loosing his sanity and grasp on morality.

IM NOT OKAY (I PROMISE)

for conveniences sake he either gets knocked out (the giggles at the end of prision i guess beinf from a concussion or something?) or just like goes to sleep somehwhere after the prison break with the other ex inmates and has a flashback to his time in high school, when he fell in love with his wife. As an audienve were kinds like dude she did not like you back then calm down which makes us question the morality of his mission, but for him it reminds him of what hes fighting for and erases the doubt he had in their love in to the end and prison. I will say im kinda pidgenholing this in with the flashback but uhm yeah!

THE GHOST OF YOU

This song acts as a continuation of his grief, back in the present day after im not okay made him remember what he was doing this all for. This basically confirms his belief that killing all these people is right because he needs to see her again. He battles with his morality knowing that she should be “never coming home” cause shes dead but then considering the deal with satan and its morality asking himself “could i? Should i?”. Towards the end, it seems like he decides killing the men to bring her back is the right thing to do. the line “If i fall, down” seems to show his commitment to her regardless of morality, hes willing to ‘fall down’ to hell if it means he gets more time with her which is ironic as he later does go to hell, but never gets to see her again.

THE JETSET LIFE IS GONNA KILL YOU

and hes back to killing again!! I think “her killing jar” is a metaphor for his fixation on his wife and the things its driving him to do. Hes trapped as if he was in a jar by the deal he made with satan for her. Its kind of difficult to explain but essentially hes assuring himself that hes doing it all for her and its all worth it as his sanity slowly dissipates, which i believe is demonstrated through the lyric “pull the plug” kinda symbolising hes giving up on himself and dedicating everything to her. Now this is obviously unhealthily obsessive and is the point where we definately start to question if what hes doing is right - is he not essentially playing god now? Should one man act as judge, jury and executioner?

INTERLUDE

ok its literally just the interlude but here i beleive he is praying for god, the “saints”, to “protect” his wife in heaven further showing his like motive? For all of his murders - his love for her however dangerously codependant.

THANK YOU FOR THE VENOM

HE KILLS MORE PEOPLE 🔥🔥 its almost like he has to kill 1000 evil men damn. BUT now hes starting to loose his grip on reality and is killing innocent people. I like to think he goes to the church he married his wife in and starts killing people - hence the line “sister im not much a poet but a criminal” - hes changed completely from the man he once was. They try to convince him to like stop saying its not what his wife would have wanted but he does not listen - in the lyric “preach all you want but whos gonna save me” - and continues to spiral into a life of crime and implied addiction (when in the chorus he says “give me all your posion and give me all your pills”)

HANG EM HIGH

THIS!! This is the one i can never fully figure out despite it being so good 🙏🙏 it feels like a cop out to say he suddenly becomes a cowboy or idk has to kill a cowboy but any other way i can interpret it is just the same old back to mourning his wife and dedicating his life to her so uhm yeah take any of those 3 or your own and run with it (please tell me if you know how to make this fit better than me)

ITS NOT A FASHION STATEMENT ITS A FUCKING DEATHWISH

Hes now so deep into his mission he cant quit despite the regret he feels. This kind of links back to his mocking of their younger selves in give em hell through the lyric “do you remeber back there when we met you told me this gets harder, well it did!”. Hes kind of pondering how his life got this bad wishing it didnt have to be this way. however he believes they will soon be reunited - evidenced through lines such as “im coming back from the dead” and the repeated references to resserection and him finding his wife, “your running out of places, to hide from me”. At the end, he says “i lost my fear of falling, i will be with you”, further showing he thinks he will soon see his wife again and simmilarly to the ghost of you shows hes willing to sacrafice his soul just to see her again

CEMETERY DRIVE

trust me the fake music video in my head for this goes HARD. So he visits the cemetary where his wife is buried to kinda tell her in a way? That hes almost finished and he’ll see her soon. And in my like the cool cinemetic imaganary music video he dances with her ghost but uhm plot wise hes kinda lamenting how much he misses here as the chorus goes “i miss you, so far”. Now theres some confusion as to how she died as here it says “and they found you on the bathroom floor” but in i never told you it says “they gave us two shots to the back of the head” so i imagine he got caught up in some like bad stuff and they killed her in their home - the bathroom - which does add some depth to his grief as he feels responsable for her death hence why he wants to bring her back so bad. His dedication to her is reinforced through the lyric “so i wont stop lying wont stop dying” which as ive said a lottt shows his like questionably large levels of motivation in this mission from satan. The repetition of “way down” at the end foreshadows the twist in the next song - that he's going to hell - and this idea has been building up throughout the narrative but its reaching its peak now and we begin to see it as a serious possibility considering the innocent people he has killed alongside the guilty ones.

I NEVER TOLD YOU WHAT I DO FOR A LIVING

Aaaaand im realising ive made it all the way through this without even having to check the tracklist which shows that i lack a life! But anyways this song communicates the concept so well and i genuienly could line by line delve into it but for the sake of conciceness as i have been i will just cover the basic concept

OK SO! Hes metholodically getting through this list (im inferring he has a list from the line “i keep a book of the names”) kind of rushing through them, seen through the fast pace of the first verse, in my head it resembles a video montage of the murder of multiple people off of the list. This is further evidenced through the lyric “another knife in my hands” showing this has somehow become his everyday life as hes become so detached from normalicy in his grief. NOW NOW NOW the lyric “a stain that never comes off the sheets” is an allusion to lady Macbeth (I FREAKING LOVE SHAKESPEARE) (im a hamlet girl tho honestly) where she couldnt wash the blood off of her hands which is a common literary symbol for guilt showing his mission has taken a massive toll on him mentally if we did not already realise this. “It aint the money and it sure as hell aint just for the fame” implies he does not enjoy killing these people despite the fact hes killed probably over a thousand people which againnnn shows his dedication to his wife. Now i know ive said that about a billion times but thats important to consider when we take into account that he does not get to see her again - everything he did was essentially worthless, in fact if anything everything he did just sealed his fate. Therefore, if we view him as a tragic hero (i can go so much more into this but thats for another day) then his hamartia is his love for her, his loyalty which kinda gave him tunnel vision meaning he could not see the flaws his plan and the way he was being exploited by satan.

now theres so much symbolism in the lyrics i could discuss (I LOVE THIS SONG) but i will refrain and kinda skip forward to the bridge/the end. I like to think he turns the last page in his book of names to just see his own name and then begins to spiral - this is where the song goes “and we all fall down”. Im preitty sure gerard ways like screams say “i tried” which like furthers this breakdown as he comes to understand all the wrong he has done and his inevatatable damnation. After a large moral debate he thinks it would have been better if they were both killed together originally “never again / they gave us two shots to the back of the head” and he shoots himself in the hope he will eventually be with her in the afterlife, and if not then a life without her is not a life worth living anyways. It ends with the lyric “were all dead now” (which they are) which reminds me of the rhyme/ game from when i was a kid ring a rosies (which i swear is about the plauge) and how that ends by saying “we all fall down” kinda showing the corruption he brought into the world and that everything must come to an end. This is typical of a tragic hero - his anagorisis (realisation of his flaw / mistake) and then his death - which is why i personally do veiw this album as mostly conforming to troupes of traditional greek tragedy :).

aaaaand thats it!! I dont count bury me in black or desert song as part of the album plot uhhh if anyone else does id love to hear how that sounds so cool but yeah!!! Oh and sorry again for any typos and spelling errors i cannot spell for the life of me uhmm this could be so incoherent for all i know (if so sorry!!) but i hope not 😛

lmk if you’d actualy wanna hear the full yap poetry annotation style for a song cause i love nothing more if not talking i might do the same for danger days if i feel like it so watch out 🔥🔥

[jane-john-doe-tournament]

Jane Doe (Ride the Cyclone) Propaganda:

Great singing, also she’s literally wearing a doll‘s head bc she lost hers

do they have their soul or is it rotting somewhere with their head?

BALLAD OF JANE DOE IS SO SAD AND SHE IS GREAT AND I ONLY WATCH RTC ONCE BUT SHES NY FAVE OK

cool asf

She forgets her name after her death and has no story told in the production

She's so sweet and deserves the world. Her song (The Ballad of Jane Doe) is great.

the song goes so hard just listen to her song guys please

she literally died and her head was cut off so nobody could tell who she was PLEASE let her take one (1) W

BECAUSE SHE IS AMAZING. First she already won the tournament in the musical to regain life, as she won them over with her sad wet cat energy because she did not have a head and feared that she lost her soul. Second, she died on a roller coaster and lost her head, but stole her doll's head and thats very gender. Third, throughout the musical she is used as a vessel for religious allegory, she is an angel, she is jesus, she is a demon, she is forsaken but she is purity itself. Fourthly, she is is given the identity of Savannah with the greenest eyes after the other characters who died with her hold her a birthday party, and I think thats sweet because its probably some kind of meaning I cant see but auughfhfhh shes so cool

i mean her name isn't TECHNICALLY jane doe but we refer to her as such. she's so silly!! autism powers! i don't have a lot of propaganda tbh. i would've just been surprised had she NOT been submitted

She lost her head literally when the rollercoaster derailed. She wasn't able to be identified apart from the school uniform she was wearing.

Her name is forgotten, and so is everything about her. So she’s called Jane Doe. She’s very sweet and very creepy, but she doesn’t mean it

and im asking WHYYYYY LORRRRRDDD

I LOVE HER! she died in a roller coaster accident and was decapitated, her body not being found. in the show, her head is actually just her doll’s head. the coroners couldn’t identify her, so she was dubbed a jane doe. in the game to be alive again, she ends up being voted, her name being revealed to be penny lamb. anyways she’s a little creepy and also quite silly and she does her funny little waddle like a porcelain doll (or corpse).

She deserves it! She lost her head she shouldn't lose this too.

Not convinced you didn’t start this tournament just for her tbh

They have a great song and a true air of mystery to them. They also have arguably the best song in the musical, The Ballad of Jane Doe! I would definitely recommend listening to it >:)

—She LOST her HEAD and had it replaced with a PORCELAIN DOLL —In all seriousness her story is really poignant. No one could identify her body so she arrives in the afterlife not knowing her identity and she spends the show vacillating between depressed and angry at her situation, leading to… —“The Ballad of Jane Doe”, specifically Emily Rohm’s version, might be the most haunting solo in musical theatre history.

John Doe (Malevolent) Propaganda:

Spooky gay eldritch disaster (am I doing this right?)

Could have chosen any name for himself and picked John because a kind person called him that :)

fractured piece of an eldritch god that shares a body with a private eye after being fractured. chooses the name John Doe after said private eye goes into a coma

Because he’s an eldritch god who wants to feel human and who overcame a lot of obstacles and dangers!!! He sincerely cares about the main character!!! And he chose a name himself! Isn’t he cute??? He lost his body, he almost lost his memory, he fought for his right to exist, he loves animals, he loves his friend Arthur and I love him!

Being an ass, friendship, spooky supernatural stuff, he’s got it all

My man heard the name John Doe, realized he didn’t actually have a name, and just. Took it for himself.

I LOVE HIM. MY SON. HE’S TRYING TO CHANGE AND BE BETTER AND :(((( He’s a fragment of the soul of the King in Yellow (god of trickery and suffering iirc??) that gets trapped in a book in our realm while the rest of the King stayed in his own separate realm. When a human named Arthur Lester opens the book they get linked and John gains control of Arthur’s eyes & kills his partner (oops!). They proceed to go on a quest to find a way of separating them because neither likes the situation, and at first John (or The Entity, which is what he’s called at first) just wants to trick and use Arthur, and control his entire body (through the first season he also gets a hand & a foot) even though he doesn’t remember being The King In Yellow at the time, but Arthur makes him change and become more human. His turning point is when Arthur is shot and falls into a coma for a month. They get treated at a hospital and while John waits for Arthur to wake up so they can carry on, the body itself still gets taken care of. The time John spends alone, contemplating on humanity & everything he’s seeing and learning from Arthur, as well as the way a certain nurse speaks to him every day (specifically, she greets him good morning and good night, despite the body being unresponsive, John still hears because he is an entity linked to the body) and calls him John (they didn’t have ID on when they were found so they were classified as John Doe), changes his outlook and plans for good, and he asks Arthur to call him John; from this point on he admits he cares for Arthur, looks for his wellbeing too, and in general attempts to be a better person and to live for himself. The rest of the podcast (ongoing!!) explores Arthur & John’s relationship, struggle to survive, adventures in the eldritch… All while tackling each of their issues with themselves and each other and watching them both grow. John in specific learns to be the person he wants to be, how sometimes you’ll take a step forward and two backwards; he can be cruel and manipulative sometimes but he still tries. Personally I love his journey, it’s very realistic and you can see he is trying his best, and how he wants to be better than he was as the King In Yellow, and how much Arthur has changed him and how much he cares about him because of that; and how he’s slowly growing into being his own person :) if it ends badly ill cry so hard but!!! he’s John Doe because that’s the name he was being addressed as, and he’s made it his, and being John means he’s no longer the King and that he wants to be different, and John can fail or make mistakes but it’s part of who he is now, and that’s what matters. I am So Normal About Him

JOHN DOE (Malevolent) SWEEP

OH MY GOD JOHN DOE MY BELOVED 💛💛 (watch me just not clarify that would be so funny ahah) John doe (Malevolent) 💛💛💛 my silly He's so funny he makes Arthur bump his head into a dock because he didn't say duck in time and then laughs at him 💛💛

[conceptofjoy]

In your opinion, could transmasc Rose exsist in a way that would make sense?

I'm asking because I saw a fanart depicting Dirk and Rose as transfem and transmasc respectably, and while I myself like both the transmasc and fem readings of Dirk, I've never seen a transmasc reading of Rose

Hope you have a good day :)

i dont see it rlly. there isnt any allegories i can think of that stick out. her relationship with identity have interesting interactions with the figures of authority in her life who either are seemingly passive aggressive towards her self or are manipulating her using the fragile self esteem she has.

i think her mother being a trans woman is what rlly makes me feel like she’s a gnc tfem (triptychgardener has rlly good posts abt this.. omg i cant find the other post but its out there). transitioning at an early age, their interests happening to line up so she feels over shadowed by her larger than life mom, feeling mocked for existing as a lesser version of her, that kinda thing. scratch takes advantage of that feeling of not being able to catch up with her mom (her words verbatim i think), he praises her and makes her feel powerful.

id feel different if momlonde like say, pushed her to do things she didnt want to do or there was an emphasis on feeling infantalized rather than mocked. or like if scratch tried to make her prove herself to him to gain that “partnership” or even didnt look twice at her at all. thats the difference i think.

…

ok im describing a hypothetical rose whos raised by bro.

[ultimatelyre]

Opinion: dancing scenes trigger my "doomed couple" senses

alternatively: writers using dancing as an engine to throttle the doomed storyline full speed to make sure the knife cuts through us clean. Note: Also used as an allegory for queer love when they cant just go "these bitches gay"

Example 1: Powder and Ekko

Example 2: Shion and Nezumi

Example 3: Ride your wave

Example 5: Violet Evergarden. not a tragedy but purposeful queer undertones

Some mentions that have no dance but same energy:

Banana fish

Eiji teaching Ash Japanese they do something "normal", something that they would be doing if the world was all well and safe, the feeling of "we could be dancing in an alternate universe, instead of fighting for our lives", and this translates over the same sad way

Unbelievable space love

a 9 min watch that guts you with just a few incredible scenes - ABJ productions

[dramaqueer-commie]

someone on the internet said that Pinocchio was a great trans allegory and i havent stopped thinking of it

neverafter spoilers below cut:

everything he wants is to be a real boy. so everyone tells him "you can be, but only if youre perfect, and if you do so much as tell a white lie we will publicly shame you for it and use that as an argument as to why you should never get to be a real boy" and everyone else goes "look at this freak, lets put him in a circus"

so he tries his best, but he keeps meeting "real boys" and they arent perfect at all. and hes doomed anyways bc he cant be perfect, so he hangs out with other boys, and do what they do. guess who gets a scolding from the fairy and who doesn't.

and then, now we're entering neverafter territory, he has to give up his chance to be a real boy. but why did he want to be one in the first place? what is it he doesn't like about being a puppet? well a puppet has strings, and ppl will always use them to try to control him. he cant ever lie (like everyone else can) or everyone will know, and people think hes a weirdo and different.

well, he took hold of his own strings. he doesn't need anyone else to power him, he has himself. he snapped off his nose, so now he can lie, he can be just as flawed and impulsive and *human* as everyone else. and he's different, yeah, but that has its strength, and as Lou said; its about being alive, and in how alive Pinocchio is, he is a real boy, puppet or not

Traditional Pinocchio ends with him reaching up to others standards by being perfect and playing by their rules, thats when hes acceptable. when hes not a puppet, but a human boy.

Neverafter really did everything better than the original stories. even the trans allegory in Pinocchio. hes trans, sorry, i mean a puppet, and a real boy. he doesn't have to give up either and he can be whoever the fuck he wants.

[steven-has-exploded]

okay ive looked over the last few chapters and the various amenogozen deaths after about a day of crisis and confusion, and ive noticed a couple things about junichirous death in specific that i think are more than worth noting

firstly, amenogozen seems to show some kind of pity for kunikida and his state of shock before it kills him, and even as its stabbing its sword into his stomach. it lets him attempt to pull it out with no resistance, albeit acting as if it makes no sense by saying it cant truly harm him- though this could potentially be seen as an attempt to "console" him

junichirou, on the other hand? nothing. amenogozen stabs the illusion he created of himself with no hesitation, and no words to spare. when it locates the real junichirou, it coldly stabs him through the brain and out the eye from behind, where he couldnt have even tried to locate its attack

under cut is further rambling, warning for that one page where junichirou gets stabbed in the eye + mentions of sexual abuse

narratively, this is definitely because of the explicit bloodlust junichirou expressed towards amenogozen; it attacked as quickly as possible with as little chance for him to fight back because he's obviously dangerous, and fyodor instructed it to kill all of the ada members there as soon as possible. but, in a more metaphorical sense, especially when comparing it to kunikidas "death" (hes not dead i dont believe any of them are like seriously) it gets. um. upsetting

considering the way it seemed to try and console kunikida as i mentioned earlier, comparisons can be drawn to that of an abusive parent, although ill just be saying its an unspecified authority figure for the sake of this rant. in this metaphor, junichirou seems to play the role of the "disobedient" victim; whereas kunikida was frozen in place and didnt do much to fight against amenogozen attacking himself specifically, junichirou was immediately aggressive and threatened amenogozen, prompting it to "punish" him as soon as possible

now, this on its own is far from groundbreaking; if you did a drinking game for every time a character was mentioned to have been abused by an authority figure in bsd youd be dead before episode 6, but its the specific imagery evoked in junichirous death scene that really gets to me

looking at this page more closely, especially in the first and third panels, brought up some EXTREMELY unsavory implications for me. the specific way that the action of him being stabbed is drawn, what with the blood oozing from around his whole eye and the way you can just barely make out what looks like the inside of the eye socket, all exacerbated by amenogozen practically pulling his hair to keep him in place and unable to fight back... look im not gonna pretend like this isnt based off my preexisting perception of junichirou and his trauma but oh my god this feels so much like an allegory for some kind of sexual exploitation, especially the fact it was the EYE in particular which is an already existing opening in the body kind of

could this just be me going insane? very much so, not gonna deny it. do i fullheartedly believe thats whats being pointed at here? yeah actually

and the worst part of it is that junichirou is just so dejected during this whole thing. he pointed out his location to amenogozen when it stabbed his illusion, phrased his request to atsushi as if it were last words, and was just in general so horribly unsurprised by the attack. whatever this is symbolizing, my personal interpretation or not, junichirou has grown so used to it he cant even bring himself to act like he really cares about it anymore. youre going to hell kafka asagiri

[torntrianglesleeves]

Byler playlist! also giving insight into my tastes lol. Took a lot not to include the soulsborne music i actually always listen to

——

—Mykonos, Fleet Foxes. Mykonos itself is a “gay mecca”, and the Hellenistic greeks were well known for their queerness. The song itself evokes two men bonded by purpose and love to face down challenges. It also reminds me of Patroclus and Achilles, and is a popular song in rhe fandom for Song of Achilles. “Brother you dont need to turn me away/I was waiting down at the ancient gate.” hmmm, gate.

—Goddess, Laufey. This is one of my new favorite songs, and its themes touch on both boys’ insecurities. One can also argue the Eleven sings this, and as I write this out I think it is definitely El in a lot of ways. The “goddess”, a powerful person that Mike idolizes, but when they come to really know each other they realize it cant work.

—Operator (He Doesn’t Call Me), Låpsley. The first of a few on the nose songs lol, very much Will singing this about Mike who sure, tried to call him, but they never came through.

—Does Your Mother Know, ABBA. This show needs ABBA! everything does lol, you can listen to 70s disco in the 80s. Anyway, I see this being about Mike and his gaze toward Will. Wanting him, thinking he’s hot a cute, but keeping it. It’s lighthearted and I enjoy the idea of Karen getting sus that Mike like’s Will. I also see Mike jogging to this.

—Let You Break My Heart Again, Laufey. Love Laufey. Another where it applies to both boys. “Someday I will stop falling in love with you.” Mike trying so hard to move on from Will, and Will so torn up by how much he loves Mike.

—Good Luck Babe, Chappell Roan. I mean, does this need explanation? The comphet anthem of a generation, Will screaming this into the microphone while Mike watches. It’s like he was drunk at the airport in a way, trying to stuff his feelings away and salve his pain with lies.

—Black Sheep, Metric. The original version, this time an edgier take on their feelings, Will mostly. He’s upset, mad at Mike. “Now that the truth is just a rule/That you can bend” its giving Mike becoming a goddamn comphet pretzel.

—Baseball, Hippo Campus. Baseball being the Conformity Allegory, A. B: this song has some fun and poetic allusions to physical intimacy and touches on the relationship between the boys. I also just realized it has blue and yellow in the lyrics!

—As the World Caves In, Sarah Cochran cover. The song that plays as they think the world is ending around them, maybe it is. They’ve finally come together and make love. it’s awkward anf funny and passionate and feels so fucking good. In the end, they lie there and wait to see if the world will indeed cave in.

—Idea of Her, Cavetown. So many of Robbie’s songs work for them, as we’ll see with the next one. His trans experience speaks to the hiding of oneself, denying truths, and like this song addresses: loving the idea of something. We got California rep AND a top down view of Mike’s feelings about Eleven. “Can’t get your name past my lips like a slur.” To me, it reads as both the love he can’t say to El because its not true, and that it’s so hard to use Will’s name right after it.

—Boys Will Be Bugs, Cavetown. This is about Mike being stupid.

—Jupiter, C Duncan. A gay songwriter, Duncan’s song here has me imagine Will taking Mike on the journey of acceptance. Driving as the song plays, hands close to touching. A dreamlike sequence with Will taking charge, sensitively.

—Like Real People Do, Hozier. This is Hozier descending from music heaven telling these two to fucking kiss already.

—Beneath the Brine, The Family Crest. this feels to me like Mike melodramatically singing about Will while he’s trapped in the UD, and when he’s possessed and away from him.

—No Woman, Whitney. LA reference! While also referencing Mike’s changes, lying to himself, “walking through a haze” of his conflicting feelings for Will and El.

thats all for now! if anyone has byler tracks id love to see them

[the-flower32]

thinking about how almost all wizard of oz characters can be used for disability allegories, especially in adaptations.

neurodivergence, physical disabilities, both, and other struggles.

I've always viewed Dorothy as neurodivergent (and you can not tell me that she dosnt have ptsd after the tornado & 2 accidental murders), and I've seen a few people compare Ozma to low empathy autism.

Tinman's need for oil when he cries or get caught in rain is definitely a dissability, and that goes for the Tin solider too

Scarecrow was always relatable with him being genuinely smart but everyone telling him he's not, also hypermobility- Scraps also falls under the hypermobility thing and I've always viewed her as ADHD

Cowardly Lion has an anxiety disorder and you can not change my mind

Hungry Tiger constantly wanting to eat babies & feeling he's evil despite never doing so seems very similar to violent intrusive thoughts to me

Oscar Zoroster/The Wizard was said to walked with a Limp in the 2nd book

TikTok needing 3 different key's wound up to function can definitely be portrayed as a disability

and Wheelers would be a good example of a situational disability, in their own towns/homes they'd have architecture that is built for them meanwhile anywhere else it'd be difficult for them to move around & maybe even eat since they have wheels instead of hands/feet

Cap' Bill literally has a wooden leg

Chopfyt is literally a mishmash of limbs from other people with a tin arm, idk if that would classify as an amputee but I bet he has chronic pain

Polychrome was constantly complaining of being cold in the 4th book, due to her living close to the sun, i suppose that could be another situational disability?

and as much as i dislike the 10th book, Bilbil was literally a mobility aid for King Rinkitink

it just has a lot of potential, and i cant stop thinking about it

[porcubus]

i feel that even more as time passes kromer's relationship to nazism has been forgotten, minimized, or used only as a joke etc "crazy fans think im a nazi for liking kromer" (which i personally have not seen but i have seen a lot of complaints about it). what kromer actually does in-story is not 1-1 with nazism and is more often (fairly enough) compared to ableism, or said to be left vague enough that it could be interpreted as multiple different things. i do agree with most of this, that you can make parallels to a lot of different types of bigotry from her language & that ableism is probably the clearest thing you can take from it if you focus only on who she actually targets. i also think that the way this is written is confusing and leads to people saying its not that/not as bad, because its "mostly rich people/more absurd fantasy prosthetics" rather than the type youd typically see in real life. to me this is kind of a failure on the writings part more than anything but thats not what i wanted to talk about. i disagree on the vagueness of what she actually represents

kromer (and nagul & hammer) is textually a nazi allegory. she is a white german fascist with inspiration lifted from christian inquisitors committing targeted genocide against a group she views as impure/heretical. something much less brought up from what i've seen but could do well being circulated more is that her title "One who Grips" is lifted from an essay by carl jung on hitler and nazi germany. its a translation of the title "Ergriffenheit" meaning one who seizes (notably cg jung and hermann hesse, the author of demian, actually knew eachother and were inspired by eachother's work, which this may be a reference to)

kromer is a villain, this isnt a complaint about how bad you can make a bad person or me saying you cant enjoy her for what she is. i do think some things could have been changed or handled better in regards to this but more than anything i just want to remind people that it is in fact what she is based on and not "People being crazy Woke Haters who just call everything nazis" or whatever. this is a core part of her character that i would say cant be handwaved away but seems to be overlooked regardless

[neomedievalist]

ship hate chart for that loser virgilius guy

I realized that i cant do most of these cuz i dont even know who tf this guy is and i refuse to learn but i hate it CONCEPTUALLY. We have to do something we have to step in and stop the yaoi industrial complex. The ship cannot be that good. For something that is not in the base game. Like I read umineko and then i open the ao3 tags and see a man who i have never heard of in my entire life at FOURTH MOST POPULAR SHIP. also it hurts me bc im a sicko who ships the real ass real life historical dante and vergil so i should be on board w mr. dante allegory and vergilius but hes NOT EVEN IN THE GAAAME HES NOT EVEN THERE. YOU ARE SHIPPING BATTLER WITH CONCEPT ART. please just grow the fuck up and ship batbeato like the rest of us. please.

[jane-john-doe-tournament]

Jane Doe (Ride the Cyclone) Propaganda:

Great singing, also she’s literally wearing a doll‘s head bc she lost hers

do they have their soul or is it rotting somewhere with their head?

BALLAD OF JANE DOE IS SO SAD AND SHE IS GREAT AND I ONLY WATCH RTC ONCE BUT SHES NY FAVE OK

cool asf

She forgets her name after her death and has no story told in the production

She's so sweet and deserves the world. Her song (The Ballad of Jane Doe) is great.

the song goes so hard just listen to her song guys please

she literally died and her head was cut off so nobody could tell who she was PLEASE let her take one (1) W

BECAUSE SHE IS AMAZING. First she already won the tournament in the musical to regain life, as she won them over with her sad wet cat energy because she did not have a head and feared that she lost her soul. Second, she died on a roller coaster and lost her head, but stole her doll's head and thats very gender. Third, throughout the musical she is used as a vessel for religious allegory, she is an angel, she is jesus, she is a demon, she is forsaken but she is purity itself. Fourthly, she is is given the identity of Savannah with the greenest eyes after the other characters who died with her hold her a birthday party, and I think thats sweet because its probably some kind of meaning I cant see but auughfhfhh shes so cool

i mean her name isn't TECHNICALLY jane doe but we refer to her as such. she's so silly!! autism powers! i don't have a lot of propaganda tbh. i would've just been surprised had she NOT been submitted

She lost her head literally when the rollercoaster derailed. She wasn't able to be identified apart from the school uniform she was wearing.

Her name is forgotten, and so is everything about her. So she’s called Jane Doe. She’s very sweet and very creepy, but she doesn’t mean it

and im asking WHYYYYY LORRRRRDDD

I LOVE HER! she died in a roller coaster accident and was decapitated, her body not being found. in the show, her head is actually just her doll’s head. the coroners couldn’t identify her, so she was dubbed a jane doe. in the game to be alive again, she ends up being voted, her name being revealed to be penny lamb. anyways she’s a little creepy and also quite silly and she does her funny little waddle like a porcelain doll (or corpse).

She deserves it! She lost her head she shouldn't lose this too.

Not convinced you didn’t start this tournament just for her tbh

They have a great song and a true air of mystery to them. They also have arguably the best song in the musical, The Ballad of Jane Doe! I would definitely recommend listening to it >:)

—She LOST her HEAD and had it replaced with a PORCELAIN DOLL —In all seriousness her story is really poignant. No one could identify her body so she arrives in the afterlife not knowing her identity and she spends the show vacillating between depressed and angry at her situation, leading to… —“The Ballad of Jane Doe”, specifically Emily Rohm’s version, might be the most haunting solo in musical theatre history.

The Anatomy Students (The Magnus Archives) Propaganda:

So technically there a 7 of them each with a different localization but one of them is legitimately John Doe

Also they are responsible for bone apple teeth

They are very fun

This submission is for the class of students in Episode 34: Anatomy Class, who are named Erika Mustermann, Jan Novak, Piotr and Pavel Petrov, John Doe, Fulan al-Fulani and Juan Pérez, which are all "John/Jane Doe" names. They are so creepy and so cool.

[about John/Jane Doe in particular]

Very good normal anatomy student doing his best to learn

This is a horror that went to anatomy class with a group of different variations of john doe esque names to learn about human body functions and scare a teacher for a full semester. was called john doe in the statement but later shows up as jane doe. trans rights?