#and it was almost a parody

[eggmeralda]

is it weird to go through the tags of people you completely disagree with. out of curiosity

[tempo-takoyaki]

Almost Heaven Official's Blessing: Halloween Special!

I know, you never thought you would see them again, but I had a very specific idea for a halloween comic and I just had to do it. Pretend it's still the 31st in my country and Happy Halloween!

This comic is a bonus side story of the comic "I haven't read tgcf" and set into the alternate universe of this comic: Heaven's Corp. Characters are per se inherently ooc. Please read this comic with this in mind, thank you!

To start reading "I haven't read tgcf" | To read the Christmas Special at Heaven's Corp

Some fun fact about this comic specifically I felt like mentioning:

I nicknamed Xie Lian's costume the suppository... He just looks like one.

Xie Lian didn't wear anything under his costume so he could surprise Hua Cheng but his plan backfired because of the groper.

Hua Cheng wasn't here to win the costume competition, he was just here to seduce Xie Lian.

Depending on who she is talking to, Miku (Ling Wen) either says she is dressed as Hannibal Lecter, or what she said in this comic.

Miku intended on winning the competition but because Hua Cheng ditched Beef she was forced to break character to drive him home. Which also secured Beef as the winner.

Beef's wheelchair is, as he said, his. He used it when he got into the car accident that killed his girlfriend, and kept it for when his legs hurts. He can otherwise walk without issues.

Manwhore (Pei Ming) and Yushi Huang are dressed as Gomez and Morticia Addams respectively. They did not discuss this beforehand.

I didn't show Feng and Qing here but Feng is dressed as a vampire and Qing as a werewolf.

Beef and Hua Cheng are in fact roomates.

You know what Jun Wu was dressed as. You know it.

[ricky-mortis]

“You’re a caveman. And I’ve invented fire.”

Close-ups under the cut :)

[anghraine]

It's always been intriguing to me that, even when Elizabeth hates Darcy and thinks he's genuinely a monstrous, predatory human being, she does not ever perceive him as sexually predatory. In fact, literally no one in the novel suggests or believes he is sexually dangerous at any point. There's not the slightest hint of that as a factor in the rumors surrounding him, even though eighteenth-century fiction writers very often linked masculine villainy to a possibility of sexual predation in the subtext or just text*. Austen herself does this over and over when it comes to the true villains of her novels.

Even as a supposed villain, though, Darcy is broadly understood to be predatory and callous towards men who are weaker than him in status, power, and personality—with no real hint of sexual threat about it at all (certainly none towards women). Darcy's "villainy" is overwhelmingly about abusing his socioeconomic power over other men, like Wickham and Bingley. This can have secondhand effects on women's lives, but as collateral damage. Nobody thinks he's targeting women.

In addition, Elizabeth's interpretations of Darcy in the first half of the book tend to involve associating him with relatively prestigious women by contrast to the men in his life (he's seen as extremely dissimilar from his male friends and, as a villain, from his father). So Elizabeth understands Darcy-as-villain not in terms of the popular, often very sexualized images of masculine villainy at the time, but in terms of rich women she personally despises like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (and even Georgiana Darcy; Elizabeth assumes a lot about Georgiana in service of her hatred of Darcy before ever meeting her).

The only people in Elizabeth's own community who side with Darcy at this time are, interestingly, both women, and likely the highest-status unmarried women in her community: Charlotte Lucas and Jane Bennet. Both have some temperamental affinities with Darcy, and while it's not clear if he recognizes this, he quietly approves of them without even knowing they've been sticking up for him behind the scenes.

This concept of Darcy-as-villain is not just Elizabeth's, either. Darcy is never seen by anyone as a sexual threat no matter how "bad" he's supposed to be. No one is concerned about any danger he might pose to their daughters or sisters. Kitty is afraid of him, but because she's easily intimidated rather than any sense of actual peril. Even another man, Mr Bennet, seems genuinely surprised to discover late in the novel that Darcy experiences attraction to anything other than his own ego.

I was thinking about this because of how often the concept of Darcy as an anti-hero before Elizabeth "fixes him" seems caught up in a hypermasculine, sexually dangerous, bad boy image of him that even people who actively hate him in the novel never subscribe to or remotely imply. Wickham doesn't suggest anything of the kind, Elizabeth doesn't, the various gossips of Meryton don't, Mr Bennet and the Gardiners don't, nobody does. If anything, he's perceived as cold and sexless.

Wickham in particular defines Darcy's villainy in opposition to the patriarchal ideal his father represented. Wickham's version of their history works to link Darcy to Lady Anne, Lady Catherine (primarily), and Georgiana rather than any kind of masculine sexuality. This version of Darcy is a villain who colludes with unsympathetic high-status women to harm men of less power than themselves, but villain!Darcy poses no direct threat to women of any kind.

It's always seemed to me that there's a very strong tendency among fans and academics to frame Darcy as this ultra-gendered figure with some kind of sexual menace going on, textually or subtextually. He's so often understood entirely in terms of masculinity and sexual desire, with his flaws closely tied to both (whether those flaws are his real ones, exaggerated, or entirely manufactured). Yet that doesn't seem to be his vibe to other characters in the story. There's a level at which he does not register to other characters as highly masculine in his affiliations, highly sexual, or in general as at all unsafe** to be around, even when they think he's a monster. And I kind of feel like this makes the revelations of his actual decency all along and his full-on heroism later easier to accept in the end.

------------

*The incompetently awful villain(?) in Sanditon, for instance, imagines himself another Lovelace (a reference to the famous rapist-villain of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa). Evelina's sheltered education and lack of protectors makes her vulnerable to sexual exploitation in Frances Burney's Evelina, though she ultimately manages to avoid it. There's frequently an element of sexual predation in Gothic novels even of very different kinds (e.g. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis's The Monk both lean into this, in their wildly dissimilar styles). William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams, a book mostly about the destructive evils of class hierarchies and landowning classes specifically, depicts the mutual obsession of the genteel villain Falkland and working class hero Caleb in notoriously homoerotic terms (Godwin himself added a preface in 1832 saying, "Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes ... Caleb Williams was the wife"). This list could go on for a very long time.

**Darcy is also not usually perceived by other characters as a particularly sexual, highly masculine person in a safe way, either, even once his true character is known. Elizabeth emphasizes the resilience of Darcy's love for her more than the passionate intensity they both evidently feel; in the later book, she does sometimes makes assumptions about his true feelings or intentions based on his gender, but these assumptions are pretty much invariably shown to be wrong. In general the cast is completely oblivious to the attraction he does feel; even Charlotte, who wonders about something in that quarter, ends up doubting her own suspicions and wonders if he's just very absent-minded.

The novel emphasizes that he is physically attractive, but it goes to pains to distinguish this from Wickham's sex appeal or the charisma of a Bingley or Fitzwilliam. Mr Bennet (as mentioned above) seems to have assumed Darcy is functionally asexual, insofar as he has a concept of that. Most of the fandom-beloved moments in which Darcy is framed as highly sexual, or where he himself is sexualized for the audience, are very significantly changed in adaptation or just invented altogether for the adaptations they appear in. Darcy watching Elizabeth after his bath in the 1995 is invented for that version, him snapping at Elizabeth in their debates out of UST is a persistent change from his smiling banter with her in the book, the fencing to purge his feelings is invented, the pond swim/wet shirt is invented. In the 2005 P&P, the instant reaction to Elizabeth is invented, the hand flex of repressed passion is invented, the Netherfield Ball dance as anything but an exercise in mutual frustration is invented, the near-kiss after the proposal in invented, etc. And in those as well, he's never presented as sexually predatory, not even as a "villain."

[ithinkdogshouldvote]

Hey now! I’m your step-dad! Please dont be sad! Be! Brave!

Hey now! You’re a strong girl! Fight the whole world! Go! Slay!

You’re enough as you are. I’ll be watching you from the stars.

(Btw! Scary design HEAVILY inspired by this animatic by @topicaltropic that I’ve been watching on loop for like 2 days its soooooo good go check it out!)

[fispy]

Btw if I say things like “by God” or “good Lord” in posts please be aware I absolutely mean it in a Catholic way. Picture me clutching a rosary in one hand and a framed picture of the pope in the other. Shaking in my chasuble. Trying to disappear into my alb. Etc.

[asterparfait]

those two guys

[scarefox]

Stop trying to find logic and right or wrong in this drama, this is pure soapy erotic fantasy territory with plot and neat characters.

[illidan]

happy early access day gamers. it truly is level to 80 that’s on my mind.

[paintpanic]

big if true

[thebugthatruinsyourpicnic]

tbh I get kind of annoyed when people say they didn't like Ani (or haven't even given it a chance) because they never saw or disliked star wars, because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who doesn't care for Batman outside of HMB, or for the Oregon Trail game, or (most of us) who have come to despise Harry Potter, but all of those musicals have still gotten so much love. don't get me wrong, it's okay if Ani isn't your thing, but to just say 'yeah I'm not interested in Star Wars' feels a bit weird to me. because really the only criticism I ever see about the show is that people didn't get the jokes because they didn't know Star Wars (and I can go on a whole different rant about that because the STAR WARS-star wars jokes are like 5-10% of the comedy), or that it felt weird to not have the actors singing on stage. I have never seen people criticise the story or characters or anything, so to ignore the whole 2 hour parody show because you aren't interested in the source material feels kind of superficial

also this isn't an invitation to bash Ani in the notes. you can have your reasons to dislike it but if you feel the need to share them you can make your own post.

[thatoneluckybee]

I don't think this is actually what Nankidai meant at all but I think it'd be really funny if some crucial information regarding Asunaro, the Death Game, character profiles, the Hades Incident, or whatever was literally just sitting in Sara's living room and she never bothered to check because she had manga

[honey-miruku]

Decided to join the trend and tbh neither are the murdering type but if i had to pick the most likely one between the two ……

[starrysharks]

the urge to make public character playlists for my little guys...

[ennaih]

Every Film I Watch In 2023:

277. Modesty Blaise (1966)

[hellsite-detective]

(Tips hat) Greetings, detective

Can you find the post about writing modern AU Les Miserables fanfiction in the same style as the original book? i don’t remember much but there was a bit about capitalism and iphones as ‘the tainted apple, original sin’ or something similar

thank you!

*saxophone music to the tune of Stars begins playing*

There, out in the hellsite / A post case needs solving

Les Misérables / In a modern AU

Tumblr's against me / But I never shall yield

When there's work left to do / There is work I must do...

I approached the Search Bar / And I entered in stride

Knowing Google would taunt and would spite me / My resolve would tried

But if I fall as Lucifer fell / I fall with pride

And so I would ask, and so I demand from them

"Tainted apple, Les Misérables"

I won't falter and I won't fall / This is my job

*saxophone musical break*

Don, let me find it / That I may see it

Safe in my arms! / I will never rest

'Til then / this I swear

This I swear by the...

Stars!

Post Case: Closed