#another tragic gay ship i love

[chai-dye]

So so normal about what a character's music tastes says about them

[cleabellanov]

"But Lokius isn't even canon! Stop making everything gay!"

...

The Loki series isn't just about romantic relationships and shouldn't be seen as so. However, there is a lot of subtext. Maybe this ship is not canon, but it was intended to be seen as so by the fans.

If Lokius isn't canon, then why were the last two shots of the series showing Mobius and Loki?

If Lokius isn't canon, why would there be so much touching and scenes so physically close to one another? (believe me I know they're friends. that just offers a solid base for something more)

If Lokius isn't canon, why is there an OFFICIAL track named like that?

Why is said track played or incorporated in different scenes of the series? like

-the first McDonalds meeting with Sylvie,

-the back-in-time conversation with Kang

- the ASCENSION to the throne?

Why is the Sylvie and Loki kiss never mentioned, by the producers, in the series per se, or even in the season 1 recap?

Why is Mobius the only one looking at Loki when he leaves down to the temporal loom?

And the other way around, why did Loki only make eye contact with Mobius in that scene?

Why is Mobius the only one to notice there is something wrong when Loki is still trying to fix the Loom?

Why did Mobius/Don on the original timeline, mention he's single, trust a complete stranger, invite him for a drink, AND offer to sell him a quite personal jet-ski?

Why did Loki, the LITERAL GOD OF MISCHIEF stutter and fix his hair and coat for no one else but Mobius (who by the way is just a jetski salesman on that timeline)?

Why is the timeslipping Loki had to go through directed to Mobius twice, him being the the only one he doesn't need a TemPad to "recruit"?

Why would Loki bring up Thor and Jane if it wasn't to mirror him and Mobius? (because, as he already was talking to Sylvie, he certainly wasn't implying it's about her. They were arguing, AND Mobius was implied in the conversation. Loki defended him in front of Sylvie, in case you forgot.)

Why would Mobius's voice be the one to echo back to Loki on his throne? let time pass time pass time pass

Why the RAINBOW?

WHY DID LOKI LOOK AT MOBIUS RIGHT BEFORE THE FAMOUS LINE "IT'S ABOUT WHO"? (important mention: Sylvie was behind him when he said that. why didn't he just turn around when saying it? nope, they know what they're doing)

Why is the shot cut to Mobi after Loki's "it was more about what I wanted" line?

Why the shot where 7 characters could've been showed (Mobius, Loki, Sylvie, B-15, Casey, O.B., Victor Timely) there are only 2: Mobius and Loki?

Why is Mobius the only one to tell Loki he can be someone good, and the first one Loki actually believes despite his tendency to do the other way around in the past?

Why does Mobius finally find insight, and reinvent his whole life at the TVA because Loki helped him do so? (they're not even the first Loki variant he faced, but something clicked this time)

Why does the bloody sleeve, representing Loki being hurt by Sylvie just because he "wore his heart on his sleeve" disappear on episode 2? (because he finally understands who he needs to be next to)

Why did Mobius risk his life on the first episode?

Why did Loki go to past Mobius for the final advice, not to the present one, not to Sylvie?

Why did Loki ultimately sacrifice his life for the ones he loves?

And why is Mobius left alone, with the door locked, after Loki leaves in the Loom's radiation?

Why would there be so much endearing looks, and smiles at each other, if not for a conscious acting choice?

Why why why why why if it isn't canon?

Nothing is for nothing. Especially in television, where everything counts from the light to the angles and the way the lines are spoken.

We don't need to see two characters kiss to know they are made for one another. In fact, I think implied canon is so much better for now, because it leaves free interpretation for the fans, and nothing to strike on for the haters.

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the ending is still tragic, although it holds its sweet from bittersweet. But remember: there aren't tragedies without love.

[mirellapryce]

My submission for DBDA Positivity Week is the essay I wrote for Queer Media Meetup. It's a spoiler free-ish breakdown of the show, what makes it queer, and why I loved it so much. It is my love letter to the show, and the writers, actors and creators who brought it all together <3

What is the title?

Dead Boy Detectives. Tragically it was cancelled after one season on Netflix, but you should watch that one season anyway.

What is it about?

It’s written on the tin. They’re ghosts, they’re teenage boys, they solve mysteries. They’re the Dead Boy Detective Agency.

Okay, it’s more than that, but we do start with our main boys Charles and Edwin who are ghosts that work together to help other ghosts resolve their “unfinished business” on Earth so that they can pass on to the afterlife. This is tricky sometimes, because they’re also avoiding being taken to their own afterlives by Death. As Charles describes them, Edwin is the brains, and Charles is the brawns of the operation and they’ve been working together for 30 years.Which brings us to our main plot. They receive a job to help out a ghost’s living friend, Crystal, who has been behaving strangely for a while. Crystal is psychic which is why she can see ghosts. It turns out that she’s been possessed by a demon, but when they remove the demon, her memories are also mysteriously gone. Charles says that she can stay with them until they come back. Edwin is less than pleased to have a new person thrown into his perfectly normal, codependent household (but he can’t say no to Charles). For plot reasons, Crystal convinces them to take on a case all the way in the US where the majority of the plot takes place as they solve various mysteries before they can go back home.

What makes it queer?

Charles sitting on any surface that is not a chair is peak bisexual behaviour.

Kidding (and while I would have loved that arc for him, he was busy this season working through his trauma and learning to be more honest about his feelings, so we will move on to the actual queer characters).

Edwin gets his own gay awakening and subsequent coming out. He’s a repressed Edwardian boy who was bullied for his queer behaviours in his day. That doesn’t stop him from behaving very queerly even after EVERYTHING HE’S BEEN THROUGH (my boy is king of the trauma Olympics), and we love that for him. Another potentially queer aspect that wasn’t really explored, but was brought up in the show is that all of his human disguises are female. If the show had gotten another season it might have been interesting to see how that particular gender expression applies to his personal feelings on his own gender. Alas, I can only fall back on tumblr meta and fanfiction for that. Despite being stiff and awkward, the next two queer men are both down bad for him.

Monty is a lot of spoilers all on his own, but he immediately develops a crush on Edwin, and one of our living girls, Niko encourages Edwin to pursue the relationship.

The Cat King…Uhhhhhh he’s hundreds of years old. He’s a shapeshifter. He is in fact a cat, who just sometimes looks human, so expect typical cat behaviour. He doesn’t have time for humans gendering their clothing. He will rock all of these skirts, thank you very much. And he will dress down to try and seduce the hot British twink.

Now onto our lesbians. We forgive Jenny for being a landlord, because she’s also a hot, goth butcher (and now I wonder if that pun was intended when they wrote her job), and she hates that she genuinely likes our two female leads (our Alive Girl Detectives, Crystal and Niko, as it were) and as the only adult she has taken it upon herself to take care of these kids whether she likes it or not.

Maxine is also a lot of spoilers, but we will say she’s the cute librarian, and through shenanigans and matchmaking she goes on a date with Jenny and they are super cute.

Why do you like it?

I am weak for the classic, red-blue, sunshine and grumpy ship dynamics with banter, and our leads absolutely provide that. Admittedly I was drawn into this show from the fandom first for Edwin and Charles’ relationship. All of our characters have interesting and varied relationships with each other, whether they are best friends, frienemies, autistic besties, or romantic rivals. And once again, you all know how much I love a found family, and I only wish we had more episodes to see more of that family unit be built.

It should also be noted that the whole cast is just very nice to look at. I should not be admiring Jayden Revri’s jawline as much as I am.

Niko doesn’t get her own queer or romantic arc, but I love her all the same. I want to give her a queer honourable mention, because she’s the one who first explains to Edwin that two guys can like each other romantically. She has manga about it if he needs evidence. She is me in high school, and I love that for her. She loves love and just wants her new gay bestie to be happy, and maybe to kiss Monty.

Important notes that I picked up from a review of this show before I even watched it that I actually really appreciate. 1) It is well lit. You can see what’s happening! I did not have to fight with the lighting settings to see faces or settings or to know what was going on! 2) It is an “R rated family show”. To elaborate, the show does not shy away from cursing or violence, but there are no awkward sex scenes that suddenly make you wish you were not watching this with friends or family around. It doesn’t unexpectedly turn into porn so it’s good wholesome fun you can watch anywhere.

Another part I enjoyed was how certain plots gave us breadcrumbs, so we could pick up on the plot twist before it happened. It was subtle enough to not feel forced, but then when you see it you can look back and shout about how it was a sign.

I don’t know how they did it, but somehow it is the perfect combination of lighthearted, campy shenanigans and funs times, while also respectfully addressing a lot of darker themes. There’s a man who used to be a walrus. There are themes of grief for both the living and the dead. The Cat King is so extra that he brought a chandelier into the woods just to impress a guy. They bring up how abuse can mess you up and that if you try to ignore it, it can come back to haunt you. There are tiny gods who heckle you with white suburban Karen energy. The show calls out abusive and stalker behaviours for what they are. The afterlife is a bureaucracy with very specific paperwork that needs to be filled out before you can do anything. Our main characters are ghosts, because both of them were murdered in their teens.

All of that and more in just 8 episodes.

[do-you-ship-this-comic-ship]

propaganda:

THE canon comic book couple OF ALL TIME. They are SUPERVILLAINS. they are FRENCH. They are QUEER. They are a SUPER INTELLIGENT GORILLA and A LIVING BRAIN IN A JAR. They have both died multiple times, yet have inexplicably come back with zero explanation, thereby making them canonically immune to the burry your gays trope. They have historic beef with a group of ACTUAL TEENAGERS. Oh yeah, and did I mention they are A GORILLA AND A BRAIN. They are the embodiment of how batshit insane superhero comic book lore can get in the best way possible. 

Basically, their backstory is Brain was once a human scientist who took a wild silverback gorilla and raised his IQ to 178 with the power of mad science experiments, originally planning on implanting his own brain into Mallah’s body. But seeing how intelligent Mallah became and becoming attached to him, the scientist couldn’t bring himself to go through with the experiment, instead making Mallah his lab assistant. Then the scientist gets his body burnt to a crisp in a lab “accident”, which may or may not have been orchestrated by his rival, Niles Caulder (and tbh thats probably the case considering the other shady shit The Chief’s done but that’s another can of worms entirely), and Mallah saved him by transferring his brain to a jar-like life support vessel. Thus starting the scientist now known simply as The Brain’s mission to get revenge on Caulder and take over the world, becoming an arch villain to the Chief’s team the Doom Patrol and later the Teen Titans. Mallah and Brain would pretty much be your basic henchman and villain duo for most of thier existence… UNTIL Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run in the early 90s, where after stealing one of Doom Patrol member’s Robotman’s spare robot bodies, Brain and Mallah confesss thier love for eachother, sharing a kiss… before the robot body housing Brain explodes and kills them both.  

Don’t worry though, they got better.  

What I find most insane about Mallah and Brain, you know, apart from the fact one of them is a whole ass gorilla and the other is just a brain in a jar. And the fact Grant Morrison and other writers not only had the sheer audacity to make such a bonkers and strangely disturbing couple canon, but stick with it being so, is that fact that their relationship is… genuinely compelling??  

Like, there are so many stories where their motivation is just getting brain necessities like a new body. Because he longs to feel simple sensations again like being able to smell flowers or drink tea (and also fuck nasty with Mallah, as he deserves). And Mallah is 100% ride or die for Brain and does everything in his power to help him. From trying to break him out of a prison ship while fighting superheroes Apollo and Midnighter, to the aforementioned finding him a new body, to kidnapping an orchestra to play for Brain because the tickets to thier show were sold out and felt bad about not getting brain tickets. More often than not, especially with the body stuff, its foiled or tragically backfires, but Mallah never stops trying to give his partner a better life and make him happy. Even if it means them both being doomed in some way. It’s both bizarre yet compellingly tragic and oddly beautiful.  

Plus there are a ton of smaller moments between them, like their old married couple energy bickering, Brain venting to Mallah about how no-one in the hero or villain community takes them seriously, to them chillin’ in bed together having a philosophical debate over what kind of dancer god would be. 

 In spite of how bat shit insane their relationship is, and all the evil things they’ve done as villains, you can’t help but be endeared by them and low key kinda root for them. 

Even though in the main line comics, brain and Mallah are broken up as of the latest Unstoppable Doom Patrol run, with brain dead (thanks to Mallah betraying and murdering him) and Mallah going off to do his own thing by taking over a city with the other villainous DC apes in the Ape-ril Special one shot (which I mean tbh good for him), someone at DC seems to have as much of a soft spot for these two as much as I do. Since they’ve appeared as a couple in other recent DC continuities/adaptations, such as the Peacemaker Tires Hard miniseries and, of course, My Adventures With Superman. Which I am more than happy about.  

Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand why most people wouldn’t be a fan of Brain and Mallah and their ship for… several reasons. But come on man! It’s a French Gorilla and a Brain in a jar who are supervillains and madly in love! How can you stay mad at a canon queer ship that delightfully bonkers!? 

[hyperfixation-fix]

Alright girls, guys, and gays - welcome to...

A Newby's Guide to the Marauders Fandom

You keep seeing your mutuals post about this Harry-Potter-adjacent fandom. It seems cool, and pretty damn gay, and you're kinda curious to know more. Except there's one problem: there is little-to-no actual canon.

How do you get into a fandom with little-to-no canon material?

Well friends, I'm here to help! Consider this post your roadmap to the fandom - useful locations are noted, major landmarks and tourist destinations are starred, and recommended routes are highlighted.

But where you actually go is up to you.

Level 1: The Basics

If you're the freshest of fresh meat to this fandom, you may like to start with a nice little overview of our chaos-fanon. Here are some YouTube videos that give you a good tl;dr:

a deep dive into the marauders fandom by uncarley (YouTube video, general topic, no major content warnings) - this is a great starter video, especially if you're not a fandom person usually. It's digestible, fun, and not too lore-heavy.

The Marauders Era Fandom Deep Dive! by Coffeekoe (YouTube video, general topic, no major content warnings) - alternatively (or in addition), this is another great starter video, but possibly more from a fandom-familiar perspective. Also Coffeekoe just has great vibes and I want to kiss them on the forehead. Mwuah mwuah mwuah.

Marauders Era Ships Deep Dive! by Coffeekoe (YouTube video, several different ships, no major content warnings) - after you've got the gist of how the fandom works, you might want to know a bit more about the common Marauders ships. This video gives an awesome (and comprehensive) overview.

Level 2: The Canon in the Fanon

You're going to have a pretty tough time in the fandom if you're not at least somewhat familiar with The Fanfic™️, All the Young Dudes. This fic is as highly revered (if not more so) than the real actual canon text (obligatory fuck JKR).

First off let's understand what it is.

All the Young Dudes is a long-form fanfiction written by MsKingBean89 and published on Archive of Our Own. And when I say long-form, I mean long-form - this thing is a monstrous 188 (chunky) chapters long. It spans from 1971, when the Marauders start their first year at Hogwarts, until 1995, when Remus dies. Speaking of which, it's also canon-compliant, so I'll save you some heartache and tell you right now that all of the characters die in pretty tragic ways. I'm not going to lie to you, it's a pretty heavy story - there are strong themes of child abuse, homophobia, underage drinking/smoking, drug abuse, abusive relationships, and trauma. BUT. I really enjoyed it and have read it twice now, simply because the happy bits are worth the painful bits.

With all of that in mind, here are (my recommendations for) your options for acquiring your ATYD education:

All The Young Dudes Deep Dive! by Coffeekoe (YouTube video, ATYD, some light discussion of triggering topics mentioned above, spoiler heavy!!!) - yep that's right, it's Coffeekoe again. Mwuah mwuah mwuah. This video is a super duper great alternative to reading ATYD, or a great way to dip your toe in and see if you want to commit to reading it in full. Obviously it's spoiler heavy, so if you already know you want to read ATYD and spoilers bug you, just skip it.

All the Young Dudes by MsKingBean89 (AO3 fic, mostly Wolfstar, triggers as mentioned above) - here's just a straight up link to the fic. You may need an account on AO3 to access it.

All the Young Dudes by BIBLIOBIBULI (YouTube, same as above) - if you're like me and love the idea of reading a long-fic, but don't actually have the time/energy/patience/stamina to do it, an audiobook might be the way to go! This one is great, and complete. You're welcome 🫶

Level 3: Fics of Note

Okay! By now, you should have received your official Marauders Fandom Certification in the mail (or, I guess, via owl), and you're pretty much free to go and explore the fandom on your own. You may, however, still come across references that confuse you. Those (probably) come from one of the many, many, many popular fics in the fandom.

Here's just a few of the major ones and links to them, for your convenience (asterisks indicate fics that require an account to access):

NOTE: This is not a rec list. Approach with caution and read all the tags.

Crimson Rivers by bizarrestars*

Just Lovers (Like We Were Supposed To Be) by bizarrestars*

Best Friend's Brother by bizarrestars*

Choices by MesserMoon

Kill Your Darlings by MesserMoon

All the Young Dudes - Sirius's Perspective by Rollercoasterwords

The Cadence Of Part-Time Poets by motswolo

Art Heist, Baby! by otrtbs

Only the Brave by Solmussa*

Level 4: You're On Your Own, Kid

You're still here? Why are you still here? You should be out there, enjoying your newly acquired fandom!

Fine, one last piece of advice and then you really have to leave:

Engage.

This fandom is unique because it is the weird, Frankenstein's-Monster-esque lovechild of thousands of strange little obsessive gremlin people like you and me. Sure, it only has one eye and far too many nipples, but who cares? We made this and we love it. And it's your job, as someone in the fandom, to keep it alive by engaging. Yes, this is true for every fandom, but even more so here. Comment, reblog, share, recommend fics, ask for fic recs. Fuck it, create too - write, draw, share headcanons, make playlists. It doesn't matter if it's "bad" or "wrong", there aren't any fucking rules.

Add another nipple, by all means! Eyes are overrated anyway.

[shaylogic]

DBDA Season 2 Wishlist Part 2:

Seeing the inside of Charles' Bag of Tricks and learning more about the mechanics of it

Charles running into one/some of the bullies that killed him. They're much older now. Maybe he has realizations about them like Edwin did with Simon. Or maybe they're still scum attacking people, and Charles poltergeist-haunts their asses

Finding out more about how Edwin learned all these languages, magic tools, and supernatural creatures lore. Did he pick it up in Hell or after he got back from it?

On that note, what exactly went down with him in Hell? "--traded to a demon who traded me to another demon who traded me to something WORSE than a demon!"

Crystal family/ancestor tree realm and powers. I'd love to learn more about each woman at the table, like Avatar past reincarnation life flashbacks

Niko new character love interest?

Mission to help Tragic Mick. Maybe we get to see Sedna?! Crystal could potentially make that happen, since she addressed Lilith and the Forest Spirit.

The Dandelion Sprites/"gods"? become cursed to be mortals and now they have to figure out how to navigate the world as attention-seeking assholes. Maybe they work with Crystal's parents lol

Crystal and Charles really make a go at dating to see if those feelings can really go anywhere, but there ends up being quite a bit of conflict and difficulty. Still, we get lots of nice ship moments in the early half of the season.

Edwin has started accepting and leaning into modern gay culture and tries chatting up guys to distract himself from Charles and Crystal (trying to be a good friend to Charles, especially).

If they can get the copyright permission, please gods give us Edwin and Niko watching Heartstopper together. Charles happens to witness a bi Nick scene when he's walking through.

More Niko & Charles friendship development. They didn't get enough moments together in season 1.

More ghost possession! The Night Nurse is already well aware of them, so they're not alerting her. But of course she would not allow it.

Night Nurse refuses to be a secretary and forces the boys to do paperwork after every case. They've got homework now.

Also, in s1e1, there's a pregnant pause between Edwin and Charles talking about the dangers of possession. There's a story there, and I need to know it in season 2. What did Edwin do? Who'd he try to possess?

More clear explanation to the audience of how touch works between humans/ghosts and ghosts/ghosts on various planes (earth vs hell for example, so we can go back to scream and cry at s. 1)

Crystal and Niko girls' day sightseeing in England!

Now we're in London, we're back on the boys' turf. Where are their main hangouts, contacts, and magic shops? Do they have any place special to the two of them with nostalgic memories? It's been 30 years!!!

We've seen some Edwin culture clash (and I want more!) but also more Charles culture clash with modern times (charles: "😮‍💨 Can you believe they don't make mixed tapes anymore?" Niko: "🥰they do playlists online now. I'll make you one! " Crystal: "👀 You made mixed tapes, Charles?")

Cat King and Meowpheus interaction

Domestic friend fluff (core four all in a big bed together watching movies)

Feel free to add your own wishlist in the reblogs/comments! <3

[helphelph]

Rating pjo ships because I've seen a good amount of people doing it lately and it seems fun. But there's a twist!! I used the wackiest rating system imaginable because I'm insane. Have fun.

Percabeth: a hundred hearts out of five blue cookies.

Their dynamic is not only incredibly fun but also they complement each other very well. Honestly, when I first read the books, I didn't really want them to get together because I didn't want another "main guy gets main girl" situation, but they're honestly made for each other.

Jiper: five daggers out of ten great canyons

They were incredibly forced, but honestly not that bad of a ship. They were really cute but I dont have much to say about it.

Valgrace: fifty festus heads out of ten college aus

One of my favorite Jason ships ever. I love me some tragic gays.

Pipabeth: Two goddesses out of fifteen owls

I will ALWAYS support a good wlw ship. And Piper defo had a microcrush on Annabeth while they were on the Argo II. Plus the fanart of them is SO good.

Jercy/Person: twelve riptides out of ten horses

I like reading about it and it's quite fun to think about. Nothing much to say honestly.

Perachel: Ten prophecies out of nine pancakes drowned in syrup

They could have been cute. I dont really ship them though.

Annrachel(is that the name?): three prophecies out of five spiders

Korrasami vibes lmao. I think they're better off as friends but I will read a fanfic if I find an interesting one.

Solangelo: twenty-six skulls out of ten doctors notes

They were written for each other. As in Rick made sure that they were written for each other. I havent read tsats yet and im still on the first toa book so I don't have much on their dynamic. Still I like them and they visually look good together.

Valdangelo: ninety-four automatons out of six pomegranate seeds

They would have been unstoppable I tell you! Unstoppable!! Or maybe I'm biased. Either way they would have been an amazing couple together but Rick was too much of a coward to let them be (boy)friends. (Can you tell I'm biased?)

Jeyna: One bad father out of two older sisters.

UPDATE!!1!1!1 It has come to my attention that Reyna is canonically aroace with no romantic or sexual interest whatsoever so this ship is out of the window.

Jasico: 3/10

Personally I've never seen the hype for them. I like their dynamic a lot but not really in a shipping way. Sorry pjotumblr😔

Pernico: One bathe in the river styx out of thirteen hades figurines

The angst of Nico having a crush in Percy is a good concept to explore. Both in relationships with other characters and Nico's character development. But them being in a relationship together just irks me. It's not entirely problematic(at least i dont think it is? Correct me if im wrong), but still, the age gap makes me uncomfortable.

Ruegard: thirty-seven drakons out of one patrochilles parallel

Like I said, I love me some wlw ships. And while I've never really been a diehard fan of them, the fanart is amazing, so of course i ship them.

Frazel: 6/10

Rick try to make a girl and a boy stay friends challenge(impossible). But jokes aside, the 13-16 gap makes me annoyed. Three years isn't much but it matters in this situation. And it annoys me bacuse I want to like them. They have a cute dynamic but the maturity gap between them kinda gets in the way. That said, I would probably have liked them a lot better if they just stayed friends.

Valzhang: Nine eagles out of twenty hidden bunkers

Like I said before, I will consume almost every ship in a fandom. And if I find good fanfics of them, I will read it because I like exploring different characters' dynamics with each other. It's fun and I honestly think the pjo fandom should chill out a little. The amount of people who put others down for shipping something that isn't canon is way too much. Just let people enjoy their ships.

I think that's all? I didn't include Grover and Juniper because I honestly don't really have any opinions on them. They just exist and it's kinda like Rick just made them canon because he didn't want grover to feel left out. Let me know if there's other ships you'd want me to rate!

[herefortheships]

My thoughts on Venom 3.

It's been a long time coming! I'm pausing my Beetlejuicy blogging tonight to talk a little bit about Venom. If you didn't know, back when Venom 2 was released, and a little bit before then, I was absolutely obsessed with Venom. More specifically, I was totally obsessed with Symbrock. (Although my love for the character of Venom has been with me since I was around 13 or 14 years old, back in the early 2000s.) So for a while, I think between 2021 and 2022, this blog was almost entirely dedicated to Symbrock (and Destiel, that one is always here). That's the reason why my blog title was originally "My Fandom and Random Blog": I hyper-fixate on whatever piece of media blows my mind. And for a good chunk of time, that was Symbrock, so I'm writing this little intro to this post because my blog is currently, predominantly, a Beetlejuice (Beetlebabes) blog. And it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

But tonight, we go back to my previous hyper-fixation.

I have a lot of feelings about Venom 3. This post will focus on the Eddie x Venom relationship, as that's what I am most invested in. Warning: There are spoilers here.

My fresh-out-of-the-movie feeling is that I loved it, but a few things made me go "hmm..." Starting with the marketing for this movie.

I would not have expected much in the Veddie shipping department if it wasn't for the marketing. It's a superhero action movie and I know what kind of world we currently live in (plus this world isn't reading for a monsterfucker leading character like our beloved monsterfucker king Eddie Brock lol). But I noticed that a good effort was put into highlighting their relationship, not just as a friendship, but as a romance, in the marketing for this movie. There were TikTok edits and Instagram posts showing them as a romance, and the phrase "We ship Eddie and Venom" was also used (here's the Instagram post, if you don't believe me lol). What I'm getting at is that the ship was used to hype the movie. So, what was I supposed to expect? Look, there was a lot of lovely subtext between Eddie and Venom, which I loved, but it wasn't any more obvious than what we got in LTBC (in fact, maybe it was even less evident? I'll get to that in a second). So it doesn't really justify all this effort to hype up their relationship.

So, when they amped up the shipping as they marketed a movie with the slogan "'Til death do they part" (which I should mention had scenes in Vegas, notorious place for odd weddings, hello), a lot of fans (myself included) thought that something was going to happen in Vegas, if you know what I mean. Or that at least the subtext would be even more obvious. Some fans even expected another Veddie kiss scene (my expectations were more reserved, but after all that marketing I would not have been surprised to see a kiss, tbh).

I never expected to get anything overt in Venom with Symbrock, but this being the final film in the trilogy, the previous movie ending with the two of them on the run, the release of that deleted scene in which Venom is teasing Eddie about Eddie being in love with him, plus all this gay marketing? I started to expect we'd get something a little more evident, and only that is what made me feel disappointed we didn't get more. I'm sure I'd be more excited and happy with all the subtext we got in this one if it wasn't for the expectations created by the marketing, ngl.

I did cry in the scene where they were with the hippie family and Venom was talking to Eddie at night about how they'd been happier with a different kind of life. But I think I only cried because I had been spoiled about the ending. Knowing they would be separated in the end, that Venom would die, made that scene a lot more emotional and tragic, because Eddie and Venom will not have a chance at that happy and peaceful life.

And now that I brought up Venom's death, I have to say this: I really wish we could have had a couple more minutes with Eddie on that bed reflecting about his loss at the end. In the comics, whenever they are separated, usually Eddie is losing his mind, either desperate to reconnect with the symbiote, almost like an addict who's been cut off cold from his addiction (like in my favorite "The Hunger", 1996), or out of his mind in grief, feeling the symbiote still there like a phantom limb (...pretty sure this was in Donny Cates' 2018 run, but correct me if I'm wrong). What I'm getting at is that separating from the symbiote has never been easy on Eddie Brock. But, due to the constraints of movie play time I guess, he got over it seemingly very easily. Also, just an observation, the trailer featured a different take for that scene, in which Eddie says "but I need him", instead of "but I need him back". Both takes were very emotional and Tom's acting was superb, but the scene is too short. I feel like we needed a couple more minutes of mourning. Or if not minutes, then a couple of seconds of Eddie sobbing on that bed, or, I don't know, trying to get up and finding his way back to where he last saw Venom... Something more dramatic like that, is what I mean.

Eddie appeared to be more fond of Venom by the end of LTBC. Especially with comments he made earlier in this film about Venom stealing his life and being (understandably) cranky, I would have expected more grief and even regret from Eddie after losing Venom presumably forever.

About the after credit scene... I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of it. I mean the cockroach one. One could think one of the symbiotes survived and took over the roach (hopefully Venom), but there was no indication of it; one could only assume the cockroach has a symbiote because, why even show it? Right? Now, about the Knull ending scene, was he breaking the 4th wall and telling us, the audience, that he would make us watch? Or did he say that to someone else? If there was another Venom movie or appearance after this, then I could come to the conclusion that Venom was successfully captured and taken to Klyntar, but being separated from Eddie he cannot operate as the codex anymore. <- That last bit is my own interpretation, though, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

I'm going to leave this post here. I'll write more if I feel like I have more to say (which, maybe I do, because I always do lol), but this is it for now. It was a good movie and I did like it. I do have my criticisms, but overall, they did a pretty good job and I will miss this Eddie and Venom symbiote very much. I hope we can see them again.

One note I want to leave this post with is that I'm pretty sure both Eddie Brock and the symbiote have died more than once in the comics (the most recent Eddie death was this year, btw. I'm not buying that it's permanent because in the comicverse characters die and come back all the time), but one thing will always be consistent with these two, and that is, they will always find a way back to each other. Always 🖤. So don't be sad; Venom is only gone for now.

[batfamily-brain-rot]

Ideas dc x arcane Viktor x Jason???

* Jason asking Viktor about his research only to get lore dumped on. Jason then trying to steer the conversation to how Viktor’s research can help Gotham

* Jason digging further into the Lazarus pit to see if it can help Viktor’s condition

* Jason and Viktor sneaking into the leagues hide out to dip Viktor in the toxic health jacuzzi

* Talia catching Jason fishing Viktor out with Viktor’s cane. Talia being so confused that she just allows it and moves on.

* Viktor still being disabled but not actively dying or deteriorating so rapidly

* Viktor and jason having weird in sync nightmares and thoughts (taking sharing a braincell to the extreme)

* Jason and Viktor talking tech and literature and making everyone feel stupid (except for Barbra who mainly gets it) (even Bruce gets a little lost with how quickly they bounce ideas off each other)

* Viktor becoming a vigilante with a mechanical suit that helps with his disabilities.

* Viktor becoming an inventor for Wayne Enterprise

* Tim having to make fake documentation for Viktor saying he’s an immigrant from Russia (if this au goes in the direction of him getting isekaied into Gotham)

* Viktor studying the all blades Jason has from his Lazarus pit dip (if I write this fanfic I’ll probably rework the all blades since they’re inconsistent and kinda lack luster considering the potential)

* Tragic doomed ship with both fluff and angst?

* Damian and Viktor coming to a strange friendship that includes a love for animals, chess and reading. Viktor builds him a toy boat like the one he had as a kid, Damian says he’s not a child but takes it anyways. (He can be found playing with it in the Wayne manor fountain)

* Viktor finding duke to be so similar to what he imagines a younger Jayce would be like that he grows fond of him and offers to help him with any projects he works on

* Viktor celebrating his isekai day with the batfam and finally feeling like he belongs

* Class, Alfred and Viktor silently watching the chaos unfold in the manor

* Viktor ending up accidentally napping in some of Tim’s favorite spots to pass out in

* Bruce buying Viktor a service dog

* Viktor and Jason having synched Lazarus visions/headaches

* Alfred and Viktor bonding over tea (I think Viktor grows found of it in his time in Gotham)

* Viktor and Bruce working on a way to get him home but slowly stopping the idea as he grows more fond and attached to life there.

* Bruce having squash the tabloids from saying he adopted another kid (who’s a full grown man)

* Jason spotted out in public linking arms with Viktor (dating rumors start) they were linking arms cause Viktor’s cane broke. Jason goes on Twitter and tweets “fellas is it gay to help your homie walk until he gets a new cane from the store?” (Twitter goes wild)

* Jason having to explain to Viktor what a cellphone is (viktor then wondering how no one in his world thought of that yet)

* Steph and Tim making Viktor do a few tiktoks with them (this includes a series of Viktor being in awe of certain things like phones, the internet, video games) people on tiktok think he was a Russian time traveler or some crazy shit

* Barbra showing Viktor all of the disability friendly architecture Bruce had added throughout the city and manor

* Barbra and Viktor working on a high tech wheelchair that has a button that makes it go fast to escape danger

* Jason and Viktor tinkering and building interesting weapons to try out for patrol

* Viktor keeping Barbra company on his bad pain days

* Jason having to give Viktor a piggyback ride (… I have no idea why but this idea brings serotonin)

* Jason and Viktor passing out on the couch in the manors study after patrol

* Alfred and Jason bring Viktor snacks and food when he’s too focused on a project

* Viktor and Bruce clashing on whether the police should have access to inventions Viktor has made for Wayne enterprises

* Viktor finally getting recognition for his work when he makes a water purifier that can fully clean and filter out all Gotham toxins from the water system at a moments notice. (Viktor not really wanting to talk to the press so Jason just glares at them till they go away)

* Dick being wary of how close Jason and Viktor got so quickly but being happy Jason has another friend

* Dick finding Viktor with a bloody nose hunched over a sink, when dick asks if he’s alright he motions for him to go saying that he needs to find Jason cause the pit is messing with their minds. (Dick rushing to find Jason only to run face first into him when Jason’s looking for Viktor)

* Viktor’s service dog being named Hex and having a blue harness

* Hex being a good girl but being notorious for stealing microphones and equipment from the press

* Viktor getting injured on patrol and Jason becoming extremely over protective and overbearing

I wrote way too many ideas but it’s 1 am I have work in the morning and I couldn’t sleep because I’m in severe pain so enjoy the spoils of my suffering I guess!

I think I might write something with this au/weird pairing if people are interested. Also if you have ideas or suggestions for this let me know!

[gunpowderraven]

critical role: by someone that hasn’t seen any of it

hi so we recently got into dimension 20 and our friends have been tugging us towards critical role for a very long time at this point but we still haven’t watched any of it nor do we know all that much about anything that actually happens in it. however we do intend to actually start watching soon so we decided it was the perfect opportunity to make one of those ��all the things i know about this thing i haven’t watched’ posts, show it to our critrole friends, and then actually get into critrole and be able to look back and laugh about it later

also the images are all sourced via friend so this is all one hundred percent no wiki no google knowledge, just from tumblr and discord convos and stuff. and some cast compilation videos that were very funny

update: we are now watching cr3! liveblog tag for silly lb -> #cr3 lb

vox machina

from left to right:

- i have literally no idea who the two halflings are. i’ve never seen them before in my life. what. uh. paladin and bard? im literally just guessing. who plays these characters. what

- grog? grug? this is travis’ pc maybe. also hypothesizing hes a half-orc barbarian or something similar? ive seen like one clip of him

- percival frederick von something something de rolo i think there’s a iii in his name as well, his name is long and very german but he does not have a german accent. or a french one. at separate times i have thought this character was german and french and then i heard him talk and was like. What. anyway i know he’s taliesin’s pc and he invented guns and is also possessed sometimes by big bird demon, and he has a nifty plague doctor mask. also tragic backstory. his entire family is dead i think. no mercy percy! he has a thing with vex? also his hair did a wilbur. the gay people on tumblr love this twink. i also think i love this twink

- vax’ildan! i think i may have actually spelled that right! half-elf? vex is his twin? and he’s... liam’s pc i think. yeah that’s it. he gives me angsty boy energy tho. not as much as percy but this boy has seen some shit. also he might be a rogue or a ranger who even knows. he looks like gay jon snow

- vex’ahlia which i definitely didn’t spell right. i think the next one is marisha’s pc so this one is... uh... laura? i think she’s the ranger actually. i think she has a bear. not like a gay bear like an actual animal bear. though it could be gay too i dunno. she has a think with percy. or everyone wants her to have a thing with percy. i genuinely can’t tell. anyway get that traumatized twink girl

- keyleth... marisha’s pc. some kind of spellcaster? maybe sorcerer? wild magic? she Also has a thing with percy maybe. or vex. or both. who even knows. everyone wants that twink. one time she threw herself off a cliff and turned into a goldfish and almost died and it was hilarious

anything else i know about this:

- there are evil bitches called the briarwoods and they might be vampires

- this is the one that got a tv show and might have also been the first critrole campaign idek

- d. ragons? chromia something. dragons. i hope i haven’t been lied to about the dragons. i hope there are actually dragons in this. there’s like a chromium something with dragon symbols tho

mighty nein

from left to right:

- mollymauk! ...tealeaf? another taliesin pc. the trans people like this one. i don’t know what their pronouns are. but theyre slaying every time i see them at any time. no idea what class but maybe a spellcaster?

- ...beau? i know her exclusively through lesbian ship art so i know her name is beau something bc that’s the ship names but i don’t know if that’s short for something. monk? no clue. also no clue who plays her either. maybe marisha?

- i have seen this character but i do not know their name. or anything else about them

- oh this is the sad wizard boy caleb widogast. he’s gay for essek thelyss (or something. i didnt spell that right) who is a npc i think. yeah. sad wizard. every time i see him he’s just being a wizard and sad. the gays love him too but he’s more of a distraught otter than a sad twink. maybe he and percy should start a club tho. also i think he’s played by liam

- i KNOW this character’s name i think it starts with s but i can’t remember for the life of me. scriv? scrat? no thats the rat from ice age. possibly a menace? i think im getting them mixed up with someone else. they look cool as hell though

- jester!! laura pc i think perhaps. i want to get drunk with her and tell her about all of my problems. yeah. i dont know anything about her actually. beaujester exists tho i know that

- YASHA. CRUSH ME HOLY FUCK. sorry im normal ? her voice makes me a little crazy insane. ive seen a few clips of her. mostly gay shit with beau. uh she’s played by ashley and she could kick my ass very easily

oh my god there’s another photo

- i think there’s only one character different here and it’s caduceus clay fun fact i hated this mfer for really dumb shitty personal reasons for a while before deciding it was very stupid to blame a fictional character for interpersonal drama and now im fine with him. wait does mollymauk die or something. wait a second. no, wait, fuck—

- ALSO WHO’S THAT FUCKER IN THE BACKGROUND I JUST NOTICED THAT

anything else i know about this:

- yeah i got nothing. no idea about the lore or the plot or anything bc i pretty much exclusively see gay ship art of these pcs. love wins i support it

bells hells

from left to right, one more time:

- look my brain is just saying gertrude from dungeons & drag queens but obviously that’s incorrect. so i don’t know who this is

- or this! but she looks very pretty and i love the little... monkey... bird? pls tell me these two characters have some kind of wild opposites dynamic they look like they do

- LITTLE ROBOT GUY . fcg? fgc? i think it was the first one. uh. liam pc? ?????? i think he gets bitches

- orym...? i know one of these characters is named orym. and i think it’s this one. i also see gay fanart of him

- i don’t know who the guy underneath him is

- or the lady with the purple hair god i really don’t know shit about this campaign sorry

- ashton greymoore, taliesin pc, my friend luna loves this guy, he’s. rocks? he’s rocks. groovy.

- someone in this campaign is named like dorian or something and im guessing its this one bc idk who they are either

anything else i know about this:

- flying.......... ship?

- this is the ongoing one i think

thank you for coming to my ted talk, i can’t wait to look back at this in a few months and laugh my ass off. hope u enjoyed this mess

[mimithelion]

I love furina so much, I hate the infantalization of her sm it's not even funny. I was talking about this to my friend yesterday and it's genuinely infuriating, so let's start

1. Her backstory was extremely sad and it made the fandom feel sympathy for her (as it should). But it really does get to a point. The fandom instantly started babying her and turning her into a "Traumatized silly who eats cake 🥺". I really hate to bring this up, but regarding how people in the fandom treat neuvifuri just says it all. "Furina's literally his daughter" She's a grown ass woman who's his FRIEND 😭. That is a popular headcanon, one that I genuinely hate because it's literally just another way y'all baby her. The fanart with this headcanon just says it all, with furina being extremely short and being insufferable to neuvilette for some reason.

2. The reaction you get when you find her attractive in the same way people find characters like yelan, chlorinde and ei attractive. She's short (like most of the female cast) and flat chested so people think that makes her a child. "She's cute not hot" it low-key just shows how half you people who were "excited" about her not being oversexualized and having normal body proportions aren't actually all that accepting, because the second you aren't curvy like the other female characters, they instantly see them as a child.

3. "She's one of wriolette's children!" ☠️ No hate to normal wriolette enjoyers but the main reason why this fandom sees her as a child is because of this ship. For some reason, this fandom thinks female characters get in the way of gay ships, so they have to make them pick-mes or children. Same thing in the hsr fandom, with mozeqiu and how they babied feixiao.

4. 98% of her fanbase has an extreme victim complex and it's genuinely concerning. Most of the genuinely bad Furina hate stopped after 4.2 when her backstory was released. Everyone had a valid reason to dislike furina before her backstory dropped because nobody likes an 'bratty' archon who SEEMINGLY does not do their job, especially after a lot of us were hyped for a female character who could do her job instead of abusing her people for a couple hundred years and then instantly being forgiven..⚡ "proud to say I never hated furina" I know 50% of people who say ts are lying LMAO. She's also a fictional character. Dislike her if you want, you're not a misogynist.

5. Too much focus on her trauma, it's been months, I get it, it's tragic, but what else? Y'all done gave her the aventurine treatment and then claimed to love her ☠️

6. I understand headcanoning her as aroace for fun but I can tell when it's because y'all don't like a certain ship, it's just another way to baby her. "She needs healing, not a boyfriend!" And it's coming from a wriolette shipper?? Neuvilette needs healing too but I don't see you headcanoning him as aroace. Fandom acts like significant others are just people who hurt you more, like you can heal WITH the person bro 😭👻.

Anyways, thanks for reading, Mimi blesses you :3

@ironunderstands friend I talked to yesterday go follow them 🧍🏽‍♀️

[anulithots]

NOORIE. I JUST WATCHED EP 3-5 OF LINK CLICK AND I BAWLED MY EYES OUT. I WASN'T EXPECTING THIS MUCH EMOTIONAL DAMAGE WHYYYYY

off topic but like scattered thoughts:

i don't know if you know this but what they're chanting during the game (龙阳之好 — meaning longyang's interest) is basically a phrase that refers to gay relationships. this has to be intentional. right. right. right. anyways if you'd like you can learn more about lord longyang in this brief wikipedia page

cheng xiaoshi's basketball flashback thing with lu guang is peak queer cinema. casually called him his partner and made a profound metaphor on trust on the spot. no one is doing it like him. icon

the captain's (i think his name was hong bin??) accent changes drastically when he's around his family — i don't live in china so i can't pinpoint which region it's from, but just think of it as the chinese equivalent of a country accent. skfjd just thought that was a cute detail

embarrassing but for like the tiniest moment but with the dramatic sunlight and the gentle music i fr thought that implied that hong bin was chen xiao's first love... my stupidity knows no bounds

when cheng xiaoshi is 'in the body' of another person in the past, how much of his emotions are his, and how much of them are the other person's? ...this calls for a character psychoanalysis

okay thank you for listening to my rant. sfjdskfjkfjsj going to scream into my pillow now

KDFJKLDSJF KSDJF

EPSIDOE THREEE THROUGH FIVE ARE SO EMOTIONALLY DEVESTATING, IF NTO THE MOST EMOTIONALLY DEVESTATING EPSIDOES IN ALL OF CINEMA (I'm weak for parents singing lullabies and providing comfort that ends tragically. I never stood a chance.) /pos

OKAY RESPONDING TO YOUR THOUGHTS! (sorry if this seems disjointed I'm going through an 'execuative dysfuntino floaty-float cloud rn... yes feeligns I know how to describe those.)

OHMIGOSH THE GAY CHANT. YES IT HAS TO BE INTENTIONAL. THey just get more queer the more you watch. Their shop literally has their ship name.

The manhua exists.

If this isn't the most queer platonic/gay thing I've ever seen... I don't know what is.

OOOH and I have to tag @celestialsun123 and @mylee-sketches in this just for that point GAY BASKETBALL CHANT WOWOWOO

This ep was also just like... very queer. SO queer. the most queer coded thing I've ever watched in my life (they wanted to convince us we were safe, that this would be a fun little gay time travel show.)

Holy herbs. You know what? The censorship just made them more creative and this is more queer than if it were cannon (just shiguang in general actually... it gets even better as you go on)

ANd the shorts as wellll... also Qiao Ling literally asks Lu Guang 'so what do you like about Cheng XIaoshi?' Like she's honestly the biggest shiguang shipper of us all.

The accent thing IS such a cute detail yess. The way that entire town was written with so much life and little things, each character having depth and intrigue from the get go... only for... episode five.. . and ... *ugly sobbing*

(Especially Chen Xiao's mom. I've honestly rarely seen parents written as well as they are in link click.)

PFT YES YES I ALSO THOUGHT HONG BIN AND CHENG XIAO were supposed to be queer coded in that scene. It's very vibes.

OHMIGOSH THE CHENG XIAOHSHI POSESSION THING CONSUMES SO MUCH OF MY THOUGHTS IT"S SO INTERESTING AS BOTH A NARRATIVE DEVICE AND PART OF HIS CHARACTER. I have a post here:

Theorizing on how Cheng Xiaoshi's emotions work when he's possessing people

with some theories behind it, and lots of notes and anlysis that are... in the works (I'm on my second rewatch of season one but I'm silly and keep rewatching the same scene six times before I watch the next... rinse repeat I've been rewatching for a half a month now.)

LIke the layers and layers and layers in this show are insanneeeee.

Also boba tea:

and... screenshot collection (It's so hard to screenshot shows holy herbs. I wish the manhua adapatation of the first season - where it's all the same as the show - was available online)

(not goign to include any spoilers)

....and I reached my image limit.

THANK YOU FOR TALKING WITH ME ABOUT LINK CLICK AKLDFSJKLDSJFKLDSJFDKLSFJDSLKFJDS.

[avelera]

I do wonder if we get the beginning of Brief Lives in the next Sandman Netflix season, specifically with this moment:

If it's going to be played quite the same way? If they end up skipping straight from Seasons of Mist to Brief Lives (which I think is an excellent idea to be clear) it raises a few possibilities:

(cut for comic spoilers & speculation)

Personally I find this moment a bit weird in general because Dream doesn't even name the woman who supposedly just broke his heart and thus launched the action of this arc. Also the fact we later find out it's Thessaly who in the comic at least (the show can always soften the character as they have others) fucking sucks, for her to kick off Dream's sadness roadtrip of self-destruction feels like such a waste. It also feels weird to imagine babygirl Netflix Tom Sturridge Dream going for someone like Thessaly after his whole arc of trying to be a better person and learning important lessons and also just...being a much softer character who is trying to do better, going for someone like Thessaly (who doesn't even like him by her own admission) and who is also terrible feels like a tragic step backwards in his character development. Not inconceivable, just terribly tragic.

Which has me thinking that one possibility is if they go straight from Seasons of Mist to Brief Lives, this moment above could be about Nada, who does choose to pass on after he frees her, even after expressing that she still loves him. That love is just not enough for her to accept his offer to be his queen and stay (after 10k years of Hell, who can blame her?!).

Point is, this moment instead being part of the long tail of Dream's self-recrimination about Nada choosing to pass on would make a lot of sense and be a much more justifiable kick-off for Dream going on a roadtrip that's an expression of his doubts in his ability to change for the better (and therefore, must he die?). Nada's punishment is so heinous I can easily see the Sturridge Dream being conflicted about his own actions for much longer than he appears to be in the comic, leading to this moment after he set her free.

Thessaly is an immortal, so even if/when she shows up, her having an acrimonious "angry ex girlfriend" reaction to Dream need not be because she was the girlfriend who kicked off the Brief Lives arc, they could have just dated sometime in the past centuries and still have vitriol between them.

And finally, and this is just me being a shameless Dream/Hob shipper, I do kind of wonder how one even justifies Dream ending up with an immortal human like Thessaly when Hob is right there.

Look, in the comic, Hob barely seems to remember Dream exists when he's not there, so there's no feeling of "Why doesn't Dream hook up with Hob instead??" when you first learn about Thessaly. But in the show, you've got the 1789 tension, the missed meeting, the devotion of the New Inn. Dream going for another, shitty immortal brunet when Hob is right there feels a bit like a slap in the face in that context.

And let me be clear, it's not because I'm being shipper garbage that thinks Neil can, should, or would alter the story to appease Dreamling shippers or that Dream dating Thessaly in the show as he does canonically in the comic would be an intentional slap in the face to Dreamling shippers! It is beyond wishful thinking to imagine we'd get more than what the comic offers which is a few beautifully rendered, sentimental moments between them for us to build our fanon ship off of. It's not Neil's responsibility to make it canon so don't be fucking weird about it.

It's more that the show is so queer. The comic is queer too but the show absolutely focuses and centers the narrative on predominantly queer couples and people, more than straight ones. They also softened for example the Corinthian and confirmed he's gay and has some non-destructive relationships with men, he's not just a murderer of gay men. So the narrative is even more queer than the comic.

In the 80s/90s when Sandman came out, the idea of Dream as the lead protagonist being canonically queer I think would have been pretty unlikely. He's very, very het in the comics, with the closest we get to a whisper of him not being strictly het being a mention of Lucifer once being beautiful and some speculation they might have had a relationship.

But the show is so very queer and the energy so charged between Dream and Hob (and the writers acknowledged and encouraged it!) that there is no, in my opinion, natural conclusion that, "Sure, almost everyone else is queer in this, but not Dream, obviously." If anything, it would be jarring to have so many queer characters only to slam the door shut on the possibility that Dream might also be queer.

Which is my roundabout way of saying: I wonder how Thessaly will fit into this at all. I speculate she might be removed entirely from this beat of Brief Lives, in favor of making Dream more remorseful about Nada in a sympathetic way. Furthermore, introducing Thessaly when Hob, another immortal who actually likes Dream is right there the idea that he opts for Thessaly (a woman who doesn't even like him to the point where she plays an active part later in his death) instead after being tortured for 106 years is actually painfully heartbreaking.

So in conclusion: eh? Who knows!

But also: DREAM, Hob is RIGHT THERE! Date HIM, not fucking THESSALY?!

[graceful-not]

SORRY IM INSANE??????? WHAJT THE FUCK??? I CANT EVEN FOCUS ON WHATEVE NYA AND JAY ARE DOING RIGHT NOW THERE'S ANOTHER FUCKING ZANE???? MY BOY???? EXHO???? DI WE EVER SEE HIM AGAIN??? ISTG IF THEY JUST LEAVE HIM IN THIS LIGHTHOUSE AFTER THIS WHY ARE THEY NOT FREAKING OUT?!?????? HE WAS STUCK HERE THIS WHOLE TIME?? WHY DID DR JULIEN NOT SAY ANYTHING IM INSANE?!?!?? HES SO RUSTED IM. I. ok I actually really like the steampunk vibes VS zanes more modern ones but HUH???? JULIEN JUST LEFT HIM HERE?!?!??? ok good they're fixinyg him up but ????? WHYAT???? I LITERALLY. HUH. HUH SO DOES ZANE HAVE ABROTHER THEN??? IVR NEVRR HEARD OF TJIS GUY WHICH MEANS HE ISNT RLLY IMPORTANT BUT I. THERE ARE SO MABY GODDAMN IMPLICATIONS THIS SHOULD BE SO IMPORTANT I. WHY ARE THEY BRUSHING THIS OFF??? I UUST GOOGLED IT AJD HE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE AN ARC BUT IT WAS TOO COMPLIXATED SO THEY CUT IT??? WHY ADD HIM??? THE ROLE COULD BE FULFILLED BY TAI-D WHY WOULD YOU GIVE ME TJIS AND THEM RIP IT AWAY FRO ME. IM SO WORKED UP IM DOING THE FLAPPY HAND STIM AND I /NEVER/ DO THE FLAPPY HAND STIM. WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK. IM INSANE ABOUT ECJO?? AND THEN THEY JUST LEAVE HIM??? I DJONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT NADAKHAN WHRE IS MY BOY? MY SON?? WAS HE JUST IN THE SECRET BASEMENT WHILE JULIEN GREETED THE OG ZANE?!?????? I CAN'T DO THID WHAT THE FUCK. THIS IS SO TRAGIC. WHERE IS HE GIVE HIM BACK TO.ME. WHY WERE THEY ACTING LIKE HES JUST SOME CONVENIENT WEAPON OR TOOL HES A WHOLE ASS PERSON?? LIKE THEYRE SO NONCHALANT ABOUT IT ALL "aww awesome we have another Zane at our disposal!" HES A WHOLR PERSON. HE HAS FEEKINGS??? LIKE HE FEELS THINGS HES NOT JUST A COOL WEAPON??? IF THAT WAS A HUMAN CHILD THEYD HAVE BROUGHT HIM WITH THEM???? I CANT DO THIS WHAT THE FUCK

ECHO ECHO ECHO MY SON IS BACK MY BOY MY SON MY DARLING MY SWEETHEAR COME HERE I NEED TO PICK YOU UP AND KISSYS YOU. he seems. okay with being in there??? has he ever left the lighthouse??????? does he KNOW what's out there??? HE CANT HAVE UNTIL JULIEN LEFT BC OF THE KRAKEN THING SO??? HAS HE EXPLORED SINCE THEN IS THAT WHY HE SEEMS SO CONTENT THERE??? HE DOESNT MIND BEING LEFT THERE?!???? I DONT UNDERTSTAND. HES JUST CHILL. LIKE *salutes* yessir! NO ECHO!! ASJ QUESTIONS!! I LOVE YOU BUT RHAT WHOLE SEQUENCE WAS FOR NO REASON HE ADDS NOTHING TO THE REPLACEMENT NINJA TEAMM. WHY DID THEY GIVE ME THIS WHOLE ASS CHARACTER WITH 300000 IMPLICATIONS AND THEN JUST NOT MAKE HIM RELEVANT AT ALL!! HE DIDNT EVER NEED TO BE THERE I HONESTLY WISH HE DIDNT EXIST BC NOW IM GONNA BE THINKING ABT HIM FOREVER!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!! ZANE WHY ARE YOU CHILL ABOUT HIS EXISTENCE "I see you brought some friends" YOU SHOULD BE FREAKING YOUR SHIT RIGHT NOW!!!! WHAT THE FUCK???? YOUR DAD BUILT THAT DUDE THATS SO FUCKED UP. TJATS UR BROTHER. THATSUR FUCKING BROHTER. AND THEN THEY JUST RESET TIME???? SO HES STILL IN THAT GODDAMN LIGHTHOUSE IM INSANE??? HES STILL IN THERE IS HE FUCKING ALIVE??!???? WHAT??? IS HE OKAY??? IM INSANE IM LITERALLY INSANE. AND UR TELLING ME TJEY NEVER MENTION OR DO ANYTHING WITH HIM AGAIN?!??? IM INSANE ABOUT THIS. IM INSANE. I CANT DO THIS WHAT THEFUCKN????? AUUAUAUAU. WHAT? HUH. WHATA???I need to find contebt of him right nowwhy is it all just shipping with Morro. good for them I guess but I don't CARE about the gay ghost what the FUCK is echos DEAL!!! WHAT IS UP WITH HIM???? ITS LITERALY ALL CITRUSSHIPPING ART WHERE IS ANY SPECULATIVE LORE??? WHAT ABOUT HIM AND ZANE WHATS THEYRE DEAL WHAT IF THEY METM WOULD TJEY BE BROTHERS?? IM HAVING SO MANY THOUGHTS RIGHT NOW. Zane deserves a little bro dude... another one I mean. falcon and Tai-D can be bestfriends. I'm insane I'm fucking insane. I love Morro and all but goddamn that's really all there is here shdbsjdb. it's cute and all but very "what if errytjung was ok and they were alive and we didn't have to worry about canon" but WHAT ABOUT THE OTHERS??? DO JAY ABD NYA JUST NEVER TELL ANYONE?!?!?? THATS A WHOLE ASS SAPIENT BEING??? HES LITERALY CONSCIOUS??? WHAT THE FUCK. YOU LEFT A WHOLE ASS PERSON BEHIND THATS SO FUCKED UP. IM INSANE.

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

brilliant minds locked-in syndrome guy episode let’s gooo

it may be fandom-brained of me to think it, but the first roman flashback had me thinking “are these guys about to fight or kiss?”

i was wondering how they were gonna get this patient’s consent to be involved in the study, given the givens—gotta say, i’m impressed with how close to my real-world experience of the consenting process it went!

another bit of real-world accuracy: the hospital administrator more excited about the study bringing attention & funding to the institution than what it’ll do for the patient 🙃

really enjoyed the palliative decision-making discussion. some investor may see it as a waste of a surgery, but ericka was absolutely right that the patient’s autonomy a) was the point of the surgery b) needs to be respected. ignoring his wishes would make the surgery a waste.

oh shit, my first thought was right? 🥺 on one hand, tragic foreign gay can feel overplayed—yes, we know, it’s not safe to be queer in many places—but this is a kind, queer show, i want to believe they can do this earnestly and sympathetically.

wolf with tears in his eyes seeing them reunite??? 🥺🥹🥺 i love him

aw, wolf. you gotta respect his wishes, man!

“you saw me when no one else did. which is ironic, because they tell me you can’t see faces. and because it seems like you don’t see me at all anymore.” he’s seeing the gay happy ending, he’s seeing love and hope, and—forgetting that there are other considerations.

carol and nichols reemphasizing the point ericka made earlier makes me pretty sure i know how this episode ends. wolf be professional! you can cry in private about it later!

(show interrupted by an ad for an aldis hodge-led crime show? also starring isaiah mustafa?? a shame it’s based on patterson novels, i don’t really enjoy his style.)

augh, dying with dignity, dying at home—i get it, but wolf deciding to make this happen at his home is very… wolf of him.

jacob! you can’t just ask a man whether he’s ever let anyone into his heart! that’s rude!!

ROMAN SHIPS WOLFNICHOLS??? W H A T

(also: “carol’s not actually that tall she’s just obsessed with high heels” lmao wolf, stop being so funny so fast, i almost missed this one)

not the star map on the ceiling because alex and roman bonded over astronomy 😭😭😭

“my favorites, vega and altair” oh my god, wolf is an unbelievable hopeless romantic

not wolf literally telling the tanabata story, I Cannot

(well, the chinese version, idk that one’s name. google says qixi?)

not higher love!!! i’m gonna c r y

ugh okay, researcher not being informed that their patient is dead is shitty and against protocol (that’s a reportable event even when it’s unrelated to the study device) but this guy having zero concern for the patient in the face of ~proving the value of the work to his investors~ is shittier.

like, have alex say something to the investors if you need good pr. how he spent months in nyc with no idea where roman was or what happened to him, and within a week of getting the chip the team was able to find him, and let them say goodbye. there’s a sob story that’ll make them feel good about how they spent their money!

likewise i see where his mom’s coming from but she cannot keep combining talking to wolf as her employee and talking to him as her son. it’s unprofessional, yeah, and it also makes things so messy. she can’t be surprised that he brings up his father as a gotcha when she does that.

the “privilege” to prioritize the patient in front of him—ugh, shut up forever, he’s a neurologist, not a public health specialist or an er doc doing triage. he’s supposed to prioritize the patient in front of him, it’s not a symptom of his childhood trauma

cringing at the van-ericka scene. felt totally unrelated to the rest of the episode—i went and rewatched the ceiling stars scene on a hunch, turned out i looked away during a ten second shot of ericka looking at jacob and van looking at her. (imo it should have been a longer shot if it was gonna be end-of-episode important.) making the empathic white boy suffer for suffering’s sake… sigh. i am just not interested in this love triangle.

but, talking of love stories i am interested in… we’re really ending the episode immediately after the kiss, huh? okay. OKAY.

[kismetconstellations]

@sockdooe You absolutely do not need to apologize, ever, for "dumping" rants in the tags of my posts. I happen to love reading everything you have to say, and look forward to these "dumps", every time I see your username pop up in my notifications.

People are allowed to write and headcanon whatever they want (Looking at you, "Black Paladin Lance" AUs), but, it's concrete, indisputable canon that the Black Lion and Shiro had the strongest bond of any human Paladin and Lion pair.

Yes, Lance was the first to have a connection with a Lion, and the Red Lion came to Keith's aid of her own volition, just as the Green Lion likewise rushed to protect Pidge. That in no way negates just how much focus was given to building Shiro's bond with Black, and establishing him as the Paladin she chose, because they understood, valued, and trusted one another. Sure, the Black Lion absorbing Shiro into her inner quintessence might very well be a reference to the episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion where Shinji Ikari's body is similarly absorbed by his EVA Unit. Goodness knows there are plenty references to NGE and other anime scattered about. Shiro's Season One/Two design seems to have taken some heavy inspiration from Guts- shock of stress-induced white on a head of black hair, strong, square jaw, prosthetic arm, distinct lateral scar across the bridge of his nose-

-and he was originally intended to marry Roy Focker.

Nevertheless, it speaks volumes that this ancient, sentient force looked at a traumatized, battle-scarred, yet still extraordinarily gentle man with blood on his hands, sins to atone for, and feelings of self-loathing and desperation to prove himself worthy, prove that every fight in the Arena and every life he took to keep himself alive, every precious second of time he was able to steal back from Death's inescapable grip meant something if he can do good with all of the evil that has touched him, permeating the very essence of his being, and decided Him. He's the one I want. To the point of holding onto whatever she could of him after he died.

And, as much as this show tried to undermine that with Keith and the Clone Shiro being able to pilot the Black Lion, and later showing the previous Paladins also being preserved by their Lions' quintessence- inside of Haggar/Honerva's mind, despite the fact that she killed them outside of their Lions, because Season Eight's writing is an absolute convoluted mess- it will never, ever diminish the fact that Shiro is so special, not one, but two magic-powered sentient spacecrafts adopted him as their Person.

(I do wish the Atlas's interior wasn't so dark, dreary, and dull, though. They couldn't have given this poor man a ship with white walls and turquoise accents, or something? It had to be dingy gray and Galaxy Garrison orange?)

Even if we ignore the fans who hyperfocus on Lance and Keith, determined to turn them into the ultimate tragic heroes/victims of the universe/hyper-competent badasses/supremely empathetic Hearts of the Team (sorry, but that title belongs to Hunk. It will always belong to Hunk)/discount Shiros, the treatment of Shiro by the fandom has, since its inception, been dubious, at best.

He's a cheerleader for Keith/Lance. He's an obstacle to Keith/Lance, so we'll pair him off with Allura. No, wait, never mind, he's twenty-five, and therefore, absolutely off limits to every single one of the Paladins, and Allura, as a potential romantic partner, and anyone even slightly okay with one of these ships deserves to be harassed and indiscriminately labeled a "pedophile", including Shiro's voice actor. (We'll completely overlook, of course, that Keith is also a legal adult, and shipping him with any of the younger Paladins should, by those standards, be verboten, as well.) Shiro is the "Token Gay" who we'll cast aside in favor of Keith and/or Lance, but throw him the meagerest scrap of bone in the form of pairing him off with either the (dead) man who canonically ended their relationship on poor terms because he couldn't handle the emotional strain of another one of Shiro's medical scares, or the piece of glorified set dressing with no personality to speak of who Shiro barely interacts with, and whose name is never once spoken onscreen. Wait, no, Shiro's actually not gay enough (because he's not a mincing, flamboyant stereotype?), so we'll complain that we were "queerbaited" over a ship featuring a canonically heterosexual teenage boy that was never, ever going to happen.

And, the fans who do gravitate toward Shiro tend to sexualize him to the extent of discarding- or fetishizing- his trauma to get him naked and railing (in the most Out of Character portrayal imaginable), or being railed by, their character of choice as swiftly as possible.

Disgusting.

I can only hazard a guess that Shiro has been afflicted with so much extensive, irreversible trauma, fanfiction authors who are simply writing for fun with the intention of living vicariously through these characters don't want to have to confront the ugly, less than titillating reality of that trauma, or so much as touch it with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole. So, they choose to pretend it doesn't exist, or gloss over it, in exactly the manner the show, itself, does. This includes his illness, which, if we take Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos at their word, was written into Shiro's character from conception, along with his homosexual identity.

"I think a lot of his backstory was created independently, even from his sexual orientation, ‘cause that was just a part of who he was but it wasn’t necessarily a discovery moment. So the vast majority of the conversations of his backstory were around figuring out what else is there, the illness and those aspects of it. Him being gay was just something that we had always wanted to do with him from early on."

And, in the case of fans who try to turn their favorites into Shiro, which is one of the strangest, most inexplicable phenomena I have ever encountered in all of my years on the internet in fandom spaces- why designate a character as your favorite if you desperately need them to be someone else, instead of accepting them as they are?- they have to be slapping a prosthetic on those characters purely for the cheap angsty aesthetic.

Which is to be expected when people steal distinct traits from another character to apply to their favorite like a patchy, uneven coat of paint layered over top of what was already there. They don't understand why that other character had those traits, to begin with. They, presumably, see Shiro with his scars, his personal history with Sendak, Haggar, and Zarkon, the three most powerful and intimidating villains in the series, the physical and emotional evidence of the experimentation and torture Shiro was subjected to while in captivity, his relationship with the Black Lion, his irreplaceable presence and role on the team as a firm but gentle guiding light, and decide, "That's unique and makes him stand out as someone special and important. My favorite deserves to be special and important, too! So, I'll take what he has and give it to them!" It really is like a kid wanting another kid's favorite toy because their own isn't "good enough", and I can honestly say I've never seen this sort of behavior in any other fandom. If Lance and Keith fans, as they tend to be the prime perpetrators, recognize that Shiro has innate narrative significance and desirable qualities, why not adopt him as their favorite, instead?

It all comes back to the fanbase's rampant ageism, the ages of the fans, themselves (you'd have to be pretty darned young to think a twenty-five year-old is old enough to be a teenager's "dad"), and, I think, the fact that Shiro is a conventionally masculine gay man, rather than a skinny twink, so it isn't as easy to project more effeminate characteristics onto him.

Lance uses skin masks and moisturizes.

Shiro either doesn't sleep, or wakes up inhumanly early to do push-ups.

Characters with more reserved, subdued personalities also tend to be cast aside and written off as "boring" in favor of overtly loud, flashy, mostly comic relief ones. There is nothing wrong with preferring one or the other, and both have their place, especially in stories aimed at child audiences where a bit of levity is necessary after watching characters go through high stakes and intense emotional strain. But, it has always been my opinion that people who overlook the guarded, noble, self-sacrificing leaders who voluntarily bear the weight of the world on their shoulders have poor taste. That sort of frank dismissal demonstrates an unwillingness to peer past the supposedly "uninteresting" surface and see what makes these characters pillars of leadership, virtue, and heroism, in the first place.

Like reaching out to a kid the rest of the world has given up on, and offering him a helping hand.

Like being willing to paint yourself as a bloodthirsty savage and attacking a scared friend to keep him out of a fight where he surely would have lost his life.

Like offering encouragement, guidance, and support to the people in your care, so they come to trust you as a friend, and confidante.

And, never hesitating to protect someone who can't protect themselves.

Takashi Shirogane is beautiful, inside and out.

The "fans" who don't understand or appreciate that, and especially the ones who think this show could have possibly stood to benefit from killing him permanently, have objectively rancid opinions. And, should almost definitely steer clear of trauma survivors, because they fail to understand what Shiro means to us as a representation of the kind of person we all could be if we're willing to never give up on ourselves, and try.

Let him be showered in all of the tender forehead kisses, get to sleep on the comfiest plush mattress, and be surrounded by an army of soft and fluffy plushies. Forever and ever.