#and if you don't agree with me

[karaspal]

kara danvers is so ace-coded they should've just confirmed her as asexual. she values friendships over anything else, she gets grossed out by sexual stuff, she can easily make friends with dragons! it's basically canon.

kara spent the entirety of s1 wanting to date james but they became great friends in the meantime, so when it was finally time for them to change their relationship, kara didn't want to date him anymore. she didn't want to lose the connection they had, and a failed relationship would've done that. i think this is the reason kara doesn't want to date people who are already her friends. if it fails, you lose the person. and with ace people wanting to date allo people, it's a real possibility.

in s1, kara also (kind of) faced some aphobia from leslie during her supergirl slander piece. there is also a thing she says in the podcast itself (iyky), but i don't really want to include it because it's very icky.

(this should go without saying, but since this is the internet and nothing goes with a disclaimer, i do think leslie's "lack of sexuality" comment is bad, and i do think it could be seen as aphobie if that's how one chooses to interpret it)

kara spent the first half of s2 not only not showing any interest in mon-el, but outright saying she wouldn't date someone like him (who is, for example, openly a very sexual person. not that there's anything wrong with that, but seemingly not kara's cup of tea). she also rejected him twice. twice.

(the following part i kinda copy-pasted from another one of my posts, but don't judge me too hard, okay. it just already has the points i want to make.)

i honestly think kara dated mon-el because she felt like everyone was pulling away from her and she was scared to be alone again. it was during the time she was fighting with her best friends, and her sister was preoccupied with her own (toxic) relationship. on top of that, part of kara's story in the early seasons is unlearning all the harmful behavior jeremiah and eliza forced her to do so she could "fit in" ("don't be too smart", "make sure not to stand out", "go on dates, find a partner. it's what humans do"). so her abandonment issues, mixed with her belief that you need a partner to fit in and be happy because "that's what humans do", pushed her to mon-el. it also doesn't help alex decided to push the last of her internalized comhet on her sister ("well, mon-el likes you so are you sure you don't like him either?" no. no, she doesn't. this is not slander to alex tho, it's the writers fault. alex is my girl, and i love her very much. it was also said in s1 eliza would get upset with alex if kara didn't date enough so alex pushing kara towards mon-el maybe could be seen as a leftover effect from their mother's unfair treatment.)

i'd also like to say that sleeping with a guy once (if that's even what happened since we didn't really see anything) doesn't really prove she's not asexual. since she also left after (which is so funny to me because she got so bored she left her own loft) and explicitly told him not to tell anyone (which is even funnier to me).

and, on top of that, technically, for kara, mon-el was the closest thing to a kryptonian. in a way, he reminded her of her home (even if he was the furthest from that). she romanticized him a lot (she said so herself in 3x15). she felt like she could be herself with him, because he was also an alien. but the thing was, mon-el hated his planet and didn’t miss it at all. and for all of krypton’s faults, kara still missed her home a lot. mon-el couldn’t relate to her the way kara thought he could.

all these factors - 1) kara’s abandonment issues (because almost everyone was pulling away from her), 2) the belief installed by her adoptive parents that you need a romantic partner to fit in and appear normal (eliza would get upset with her if she didn’t go on enough dates), 3) most of her friends looking genuinely happy in their romantic relationships (happiness kara wanted to experience too and she didn't realise until later in the show that happiness looks different for different people so she assumed a relationship would make her happy), 4) last of alex’s comphet telling her that maybe she likes him too because he likes her (even if there were no indications and in fact, kara said she didn’t like him and looked disappointed when she found out he did), and 5) mon-el being the “closest” to her home (even if that was far from the truth), resulted in kara reassuring herself mon-el would make her happy and that he is good for her. even though he wasn’t.

i mean, forcing yourself to date someone because 1) they like you, 2) almost everyone else around you is in a relationship, and 3) you've been taught dating is the norm, and if you don't, you're weird, is pretty much the standard asexual experience.

in the s3 crossover, kara's conversation with barry can also be seen as asexual-coded.

being asexual can truly feel so isolating sometimes. so i get it.

the end of s3 is so so great because kara finally accepts herself the way she is and is happy with that person. and guess what, the second she does so, her "need" to find a romantic partner disappears. she doesn't have a love interest in s4, and it is so refreshing to see.

also, here are some moments that scream ace!kara because why not.

in conclusion? kara is asexual CANON. have a nice day!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hey now, Let her cook!

[hollis-art]

i keep seeing redesigns of them as humans so i decided to throw my hat into the ring

[infiniteorangethethird]

btw shoutout to those who feel they are aspec because of their autism. To the aros, aces, apls, afams, and everyone else who feels their orientation is a direct result of their neurodivergency. Your feelings are valid, and you're not "just reinforcing stereotypes" by being yourself, bc you're not a character in a story, but a real person with real, lived experiences. I see you and I feel you

[vaguely-concerned]

lucanis is a 'I could sit in our quiet kitchen on a grey tuesday afternoon drinking coffee and talking with you about nothing much in particular forever and be the happiest man who ever lived' romantic, not a 'classic tropes and grand gestures' romantic. this is a distinction and conceptual gap I personally feel is crucial to understanding what's going on with him when romanced. for all his almost painful sincerity and clear depth of feeling he's not a very effusive guy by nature, but in the history of time no one has ever, with their whole soul, chest and being, been so genuinely and openly happy to just do laundry and taxes with you.

[isnt-that-wizardd]

there is just something about the difference between edwin's love interests and having the cat king's reaction to edwin in hell being "i'll be waiting when he gets back" vs charles "no version of this where i don't come get you" rowland convincing a powerful trans-dimensional being to open a door to hell just so he could get him back

i am insane

[technically-human]

Ooh, now that we’ve seen N!Edwin and DP!Edwin talk about Feelings could we see the same with N!Charles and DP!Charles?

As simple as that.

Edwins version

ko-fi

[idliketobeatree]

charles and edwin are both malewives, just in a different direction.

edwin is masculine in a peacock way, charles is feminine in a punk girl way. charles is the embodiment of "my husband is a bitch and i like him so much". edwin's cunty wine aunt disguise can crotchet and probably judges the fashion section in vogue magazine on a -1 to 6 scale. charles' guyliner and his pins would get him a free pass to the lgbt club even at the stage of a self-proclaimed ally. it's a good thing ghosts don't have to open doors, because they would try to hold it for the other forever, being downright annoying about it. their petname game would be sickening to the outside world. charles would call edwin 'mate' on their literal wedding. and don't even get me started on anniversaries, they would race to the kitchen and fight over who's wearing the pink frilly apron and is making breakfast in bed (the breakfast is play pretend; the apron is not.) last but not least, they'd both kill at drag

[frosted-woods]

autumn time to be gay and totally fine and not miserable at all

[hood-ex]

I love when it's incredibly obvious that Damian misses Dick.

"...I'm glad you got out of stupid Bludhaven for a while. It... it's not the same without you."

[daemonskitty]

Straight boys freaking out to get a 6 pack, but little did they know that us women actually obsess over a 44 year old man's yummy tummy

I wanna eat his belly. It's one of my favourite things ever ugh

[lunnar-chan]

[dragonpyre]

Ok, now that the dog sitting from hell is over

TRAIN YOUR FUCKING ANIMALS

[jedi-enthusiasm-blog]

Many people have taken one look at this and inmediately leaped to the conclusion that Jedi forbid emotions. Which is, huh… interesting.

What people don't realize is that the Jedi Order are a religious organization, and as such they have their own sacred texts, such as this meditation mantra (because yeah, that's the only time it's ever mentioned, during meditation).

And the trick about this kind of texts is that they're not meant to be taken literally. You're not supposed to take it at face value, you're supposed to think about it, reflect about it, and then interpretate it. I'm sure the average "fan" hasn't actually thought about it beyond "code bad Jedi evil", nevermind that it's not actually the Jedi Code mentioned in the films.

Since it's a meditation mantra, one used to focus to make connecting with the Force easier, it makes perfect sense that this is how you should feel when using the Force.

You shouldn't be overwhelmed with emotions or passions, you shouldn't act if you don't have knowledge. This is obvious: if you can command the essence of life, then maybe you should actually be in the state of mind to do it.

However, the other lines of "no chaos but harmony" and "no death but the Force" don't fit into this. So, what do they mean?

Here is the other version of the Code. It was seen for the first time in the Kanan comics, and is arguably more canon than the previous one.

(People have called it the Gray Jedi Code, which is hilarious in and on itself and another point in favor of the argument that the so called Gray Jedi are just canon Jedi.)

I'm sure everyone can agree that this one is good.

Feel, but find peace in your emotions. Know nothing, but figure it out. Suffer, but look past it to find serenity. Just like there is chaos, there is harmony. And just like there is death, there is the Force.

But what if I told you that both Codes are saying the same thing?

I know, I know. You probably think I'm crazy, but… what if they're saying the same things, in different ways?

To expand on the interpretation that the first one is how you should be when using the Force (and I admit with my whole chest that this is my interpretation), we can say that the Force isn't naturally things like emotion and chaos. They are only what we bring with us.

That doesn't make them any less real. They are, and they are important, but they are subjective experiences. Everyone will have different emotions, different passions, different things they are ignorant of. Even death, even as it will come for everyone, is something private and personal. I don't know what X person felt or thought when they died.

However, things like peace, harmony and the Force are universal.

Chaos (noun): "complete disorder and confusion." "the property of a complex system whose behaviour is so unpredictable as to appear random"

Dictionary definition, bear with me. "Whose behavior is so unpredictable as to appear random". It isn't random, it has patterns and reasons to happen just like everything else. We simply don't know those patterns. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Just because we don't know something doesn't mean we can't learn it. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. Therefore there is no such thing as chaos, not really, just a pattern, an order, a harmony, we don't know yet. First definition is about human reaction, not anything about the object itself. There is no chaos, there is harmony.

Emotion, ignorance, passion, chaos, even death. They are all feelings, subjective experiences, things that, ultimately, can change as you find new understanding (well, death only happens once and is permanent but you get the point). But inner peace, knowledge (about situations, about people's reactions), serenity and harmony are all universal. They exist, and will exist long after we die, we just have to find them.

And, long as we remember people, as we understand that all lives have left a mark, big or small, we will keep those who have passed alive within our hearts.

Death, yet the Force. There is no death, there is the Force. Or, perhaps…

"(The Force)'s an energy field created by all living things" Obi-Wan Kenobi, ANH

"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter" Yoda, ESB

"No one's ever really gone" Luke Skywalker, TLJ

Death, yet the essence of living beings. There is no death, there is life.

[vaguely-concerned]

This might be due to the fact that on my first playthrough I ended up creating a Rook more emotionally guarded than any of the companions except Minrathous-route Lucanis and perhaps Neve, so I was primed to look for it, but I never got the sense that the companions don’t care for Rook (the thought never even occurred to me until I saw other people post about it) — to me it seems much more like it’s Rook who keeps the last bit of distance, Rook who pulls away when the companions try to extend their care or worry too directly, who keeps themselves slightly apart. (Rook who is so full of grief they cannot know as grief and thus process that there’s no room inside them to let anything else all the way in, perhaps.) They deflect and flinch back when someone gets too close or approaches them too overtly about their feelings — especially when it brushes up against the theme of grief. They can offer care to all the companions who are grieving, come along to any number of funerals as emotional support, but the moment someone turns that towards them they shut that shit down Immediately, like when Taash almost gives the whole game away with ‘Like you’d know? You act like you haven’t lost anyone!’ and Rook just blandly responds ‘We’re talking about you’ and doesn’t engage. But they can also admit that they struggle with accepting compliments, or knowing what to say, or having confidence in themselves without Varric’s help.

Despite all their determination and even in their most stoic no-nonsense incarnation, Rook is awkward, with the struggles that entails. Someone who is eager and happy to be the helper wherever they can, and helplessly unequipped to know how to be the helpee, as it were. It’s not that the companions don’t return Rook’s attachment to them, there’s MUCH more of a ‘okay so what are the ways you will allow me to be good to you??’ desperation of care vibe behind all their invitations to conversations and hangouts together, to my mind. They bring Rook to their favourite places and share the things they love with them, they ask to spend time together (many times just to have their company, not because they have a problem they need help with! Sometimes the problem arises anyway b/c video game quest narrative of course), they bring them out for some direly needed grass touching, they introduce them to their families. Everyone is clearly getting the sense that Rook does Not want to talk about Varric especially (this is in fact what Harding says in banter, if she’s still alive after the reveal :’( ), but they are absolutely SCRAMBLING to find ways to show that they’re there for them even so. AND from the companions’ perspective, with the situation as they have the means to understand it, accepting that Rook isn’t ready to have that conversation and backing off is also a kind thing to do. (tl;dr: To Me Rook is that weirdly socialized friend who is a great hang once they’re actually there but you have to directly invite them or they don’t quite know how to initiate the contact themselves lol) 

Just as a crushing sense of responsibility for their family is a trait that is built into Hawke no matter how you play them or how you make them respond to that, I feel like Rook — however helpful and earnest, warm, charming, jocular, stoic or straightforward they seem at a surface glance — is always someone who struggles deeply with connecting to themselves and other people. (Emotional Intimacy, the Final Frontier.) As, indeed, is the case with all of the Veilguard companions too! It’s clearly a deliberate theme. These are all lonely people struggling with their sense of identity and belonging in some sort of way. AND having, working on and eventually starting to overcome these difficulties also makes Rook a direct foil for Solas, who doesn’t learn that lesson unless you corner him at the end of the world to force feed him his medicine lmao. They don’t manage to break out of the regret prison under their own steam, it’s because even struggling and grieving they have managed to create mutual bonds with other people who show up for them in turn now — and with all the protective walls of denial around what happened to Varric crumbling and making them less of a stranger to themselves, Rook is finally able to let them. An outcome Solas seemingly didn’t even consider to guard against, because he’s become that deeply entrenched in his loneliness, the utter isolation of the self — he can no longer truly imagine an alternative. (It’s not that he can’t form these bonds, obviously, it’s that he resolutely refuses to value them. Whether it’s because he feels like he doesn’t deserve it or out of a need for control or the martyr complex where he must sacrifice everything he loves on the sacrificial pyre of fixing his mistakes, all of the above and more, the result is the same. Mind!Varric, who I think is mostly Solas speaking, even calls this out directly. So yet again a situation where he has some self awareness about it and it doesn’t help At All haha. Solas falls to the temptation of making people into tools again and again and again, no matter how many times it comes back to bite him in the ass and the eternal solitude it traps him in.) 

And that deep deep loneliness… There but for the grace of… well the theological state of thedas being what it is right now, let’s just go with the grace of Something, Presumably go you as well, Rook. The same capacity/tendency to pull away from connection clearly lives in them as well in some form (again, for whatever reason and with whatever motivations and instincts behind it for any individual Rook). Solas and Rook coming together to create a blood magic paper doll of the mind Varric in response to acute loss and loneliness is one of the most deep , deeply fucked up and invasive acts of intimacy I’ve ever contemplated. I don’t think that’s accidental, there’s something There’s Something Wrong With You (there’s something wrong with you that’s also wrong with me (derogatory)) here that resonates no matter how both parties would hate to hear it. (A fitting legacy for Varric and his wild ‘I made my best friend into a story because it’s the only way I know how to love with this desperation of sincerity’ brain to leave in the narrative, methinks. I feel he’d appreciate it on a craft level, if nothing else.)

If you read through all of Rook’s potential backstories, one of the common threads through all of them, along with a certain maverick ‘I’ll do whatever it takes’ streak, is a sense of profound alienation. They did something or have some sort of quality that made it hard for them to fit in with the group they’re from, causing a conflict that cuts them off from parts of their identity as it’s been up until now. All of which also adds to how important Varric is to them — he was clearly able to break/see through some of that and be closer with them, even in the relatively short time they spent together. No matter what else goes to shit, they can trust that a) Varric sees them, b) he genuinely likes them and believes in them not despite who they are, but for it, and c) he’s got their back, we’re in this together kid. And then he is gone, and it takes them the whole game to be able to bring themselves to accept that and know themselves again, be able to let new relationships in fully. The very understandable ‘the last time I let someone in, they got stabbed before my eyes and the world ended’ flinch away, even if they’re not consciously aware that’s what it is. Anyway I love Rook. So much space to play around in here as to WHY they might feel or react like this, even when the framework is more defined.

[tackykachowch]

This is what they should've added to Jinx's design in season 2. Btw

UPD: I also want to add this screenshot of my tags on my first ever post about Jinx because I still agree with what I said