#because they cannot be allowed to win

[dyl-z]

Told my mother about the spider bite piercing miss maam was NOT happy

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

Straight up had a dream last night that DC revealed that Bart and Kon were dating and it was in the WILDEST FUCKING WAY.

K, so picture this: Clark needs someone to fly around disguised as him for a plan. So Clark goes through the options in his head: Bruce can't fly, MM is off world, Jon is too much of a twink to be believable, Kara is blonde, Kon is.... Perfect! With a person in mind who would be perfect for his plan, Clark flies off to find Kon.

Cut to Judy Garrick zipping around the Garrick's house. Joan is quietly scrapbooking at the kitchen table and Judy is bored out of her mind. Judy asks Joan if there is anything she can do because she is so unbelievably bored.

Joan responds, very calmly, that she can hear "your brother's boyfriend touching down in the backyard, so why don't you go ask him?"

Judy's face jumps from emotion to emotion as three things are revealed at once. 1) Joan considers Bart to be a son and thus, Judy's brother, 2) Judy's new brother is not straight and 3) Bart has a boyfriend who is in the backyard.

So Judy immediately runs to the backyard and is stunned to bump into Clark (who was there looking for Kon) and then the dream continued on with the two of them hunting down Bart&Kon (who were just at school being normal goddammit!!!) but the entire time Judy is secretly out for blood because she thinks that Joan was referring to Clark and that this adult man is trying to date her new little brother and Judy keeps trying to kill him but it doesn't work because Clark is Kryptonian (and oblivious to the attempted homicides).

Anyway, wild dream all around.

[thetimelordbatgirl]

The fact that Mufasa is among the nominations for visual effects in live action films and is against actual live action films with visual effects while Mufasa is a pure animated/CGI film, no live action in sight....films like Sonic 3 and Wicked are getting robbed here because gotta have Disney in there somehow.

[juice-boxy]

New goal: be kind and less of a hater

[flowingleaves]

of course valentines day was a shitty day for me im aromantic the universe was trying to humble me

[beemovieerotica]

struggling with how to word this, but putting it out there anyway:

i can fully understand the posts on here from a lot of americans being tired of "vote blue no matter who" posts when the #1 thing that people are constantly (and sometimes only?) addressing is how the republican party is going treat trans/queer people if elected.

it's part of an unfortunate pattern of prioritizing the effects on a demographic that includes white + upper class people, when people of color and those in the global south are actively and currently being killed or relegated to circumstances in which their survival is very unlikely

it is genuinely exhausting to witness this, and i was also on the fence about even participating in voting because i a) felt like it didn't matter and b) every time i voiced being frustrated with the current state of the country, white queer people would immediately step in with "but what about trans people!" -> (i am mixed race trans man)

and i say this with unending patience toward people who do this, because i know that it's not something they actively think about. but everyone already knows how the republican party is going to treat queer people. you are probably talking to another queer person when you bring up project 2025. the issue is that, for those of us who aren't white, or for those of us who are but who are conscious of ongoing struggles for people of color worldwide, the safety of people around the world feels more urgent than our own. that is the calculation that's being made.

you're not going to win votes for the democratic party by dismissing or minimizing these realities and by continually centering (white) queer people.

very few people on here and twitter are actually talking about issues beyond queer rights that concern people of color, or how the two administrations differ on these issues instead of constantly circling back to single-issue politics. this isn't an exhaustive list. but these are the issues that have actually altered my perspective and motivated me to the point of committing to casting a vote

the biden administration has been engaged in a years-long fight to allow new applicants to DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that allows undocumented individuals who arrived as children to remain in the country) after the Trump administration attempted to terminate it. the program is in limbo currently because of the actions of Trump-backed judges, with those who applied before the ruling being allowed to stay, but no new applications are being processed. Trump has repeatedly toyed with the idea of just deporting the 1.8 million people, but he continues to change his mind depending on whatever the fuck goes on in his head. he cannot be relied on to be sympathetic toward people of hispanic descent or to guarantee that DREAMers will be allowed stay in the country. biden + a democratic controlled congress will allow legal challenges to the DACA moratorium to gain ground.

the biden administration is open to returning and protecting portions of culturally important indigenous land in a way that the trump administration absolutely does not give a fuck. as of may 2024, they have established seven national monuments with plans to expand the San Gabriel Monument where the Gabrielino, Kizh / Tongva, the Chumash, Kitanemuk, Serrano, and Tataviam reside. the Berryessa Snow Mountain is also on the list, as a sacred region to the Patwin.

i'm recognizing that the US's plans for clean energy have often come into conflict with tribal sovereignty, and the biden administration could absolutely do better in navigating this. but the unfortunate dichotomy is that there would be zero commitment or investment in clean energy under a trump-led government, which poses an astounding existential threat and destabilizing force to the global south beyond any human-to-human conflict. climate change has caused and will continue to cause resource shortages, greater natural disasters, and near-lethal living conditions for those in the tropics - and the actions of the highest energy consumers (US) are to blame. biden has funneled billions of dollars into climate change mitigation and clean energy generation - trump does not believe that any of it matters.

i may circle back to this and add more as it comes up, but i'm hoping that those who are skeptical / discouraged / tired of the white queer-centric discourse on tumblr and twitter can at least process some of this. please feel free to add more articles + points but i'm asking for the sake of this post to please focus on issues that affect people of color.

[patricia-taxxon]

So wait, let me just ask for clarity because I want to understand. Do you support AI art?

i support art made with spontaneous and hands-off processes, i support the creation of art tools that are more art than tool & allow people to "participate" in someone else's creation vicariously a-la picrew, i don't support the institution of "AI" as a consumer grade technology industry that promises impossible things and prioritizes appearances and marketability over usability, i believe that if "AI" allowed people to siphon images directly from their brain with no effort required then it would be a good thing but I believe this is fundamentally impossible until we figure out how to read minds and the focus on arguing for or against accessibility is missing the point, i believe AI art can only ever be a pale imitation of the process of commissioning an artist who can't ever ask questions and cannot be trusted with object permanence, I believe copyright law is a head on the hydra of capitalism and doesn't serve artists, i believe that AI art isn't necessarily art theft but it CAN overfit to its data and create illegal works without telling you, which constitutes criminal levels of negligence, I believe all art is derivative in some way and some of the most seminal art made in this era of history has been far more dubiously infringing than AI art ever can be because AI art does not steal in the way a human does, I think the focus on energy consumption is transparently just a post-hoc justification for hating the thing you all already hated under the guise of environmentalism because it is a problem far from unique to AI, I think the focus on environmentalism was a distraction at best during the NFT craze too, i don't think AI art takes artists out of a job any more than stock photos or clipart does, but the proliferation of consumer-grade tools DOES run the risk of engendering bad client practices similar to the rise of machine translation and asking translators to simply "fix" a machine translated run of text at a marked down price, but this is not the fault of the technology itself and is instead a result of the ideological push being made by the biggest actors in the industry, i think AI art is ugly as sin and carries the pervasive quality of looking normal at a glance but getting worse and worse the longer you look at it, which can be interesting but often isn't, i think ai art is shit google images and the controversy is overblown but I think machine learning is here to stay and it will inevitably decentralize again after the immense costs catch up to all the corpos relying on it to win the future.

so like, yes and no.

[yokelfelonking]

Post 9/11 Trivia

Most folks on this site were either children on September 11, 2001, or weren’t even born yet.  But America went crazy for about a year afterwards.  Here’s some highlights that I remember that might not be in your history books:

There was national discussion on whether or not Halloween should be canceled because…fuck if I know why.  After planes crashed into buildings in NYC it follows that 6-year-olds in Iowa shouldn’t be allowed to dress up like Batman and ask their neighbors for candy, I guess.  (Halloween wasn’t canceled, by the way.)

On a similar note, people asked if comedy - any sort of comedy - was appropriate anymore, ever.

People sold shitty parachutes to suckers “in case your building gets attacked and you have to jump out the window.” There were honest-to-God news reports warning people not to jump out of the window with shitty mail-order parachutes because they wouldn't work.

As a follow-up to the attacks, someone mailed anthrax to some prominent politicians and news anchors - you know, famous people - along with some badly-written notes about “you cannot stop us, death to America, Allah is good” and after that every time some random dumbass found a package in the mail they didn’t recognize they thought that the terrorists were targeting them, too.

Everyone was similarly convinced that their town was going to be the next target, even if they were a little town in the middle of nowhere. "Our town of Bumblefuck, South Dakota (population 690) has the largest styrofoam pig statue west of the Mississippi! Terrorists might fly planes into that too! It's a prime target!"

People started taping up their windows and trying to make their houses or apartments airtight out of fear of chemical and biological attacks. There were news reports warning people that turning your house into an airtight box was a bad idea because, y'know, you need air to breathe.

"[X] supports terrorism!" and “if we do [X], the terrorists win!” were used as arguments for everything.  "Some rich Arab you never heard of donated to his organization that backs Hamas which backs al-Queda, and also owns stock in a holding company that has partial ownership of the Pringles company, so if you eat Pringles you're supporting terrorism!" "The terrorists want to tear down our freedoms and our way of life and rule us through fear! Eating what you want is one of our freedoms as Americans! If you're afraid to eat Pringles, the terrorists win!" (I promise you that this sort of argument is in no way hyperbole.) (This argument is how Halloween was saved, by the way.  “If we cancel Halloween, the terrorists win!”)

People worked 9/11 into everything, and I mean everything, whether it was appropriate or not.  If you went to the grocery store the tortilla chips would remind you to support the troops on the packaging. Used car sales would be dedicated to our brave first responders. You couldn't wipe your ass without the toilet paper rolls reminding you to never forget the fallen of 9/11, and again, this is not hyperbole. My uncle, who lived in Ohio and had never been to New York except to visit once in the 70′s, died of a stroke about 8 months after 9/11, and the priest brought up the attacks at the eulogy.

On a similar local note, on the day of 9/11, after the towers went down, gas stations in my home town immediately jacked up gas prices.  The mayor had the cops go around and force them to take them back down.  I doubt any of that was legal.

Before 9/11, Christianity in America - and religion in general - was on a downward swing, with reddit-tier atheism on the upswing. Religion was outdated superstition from a bygone age. The day after 9/11? Every single church was PACKED. (This wasn't a bad thing, but the power-hungry on the Evangelical Right saw this as a golden opportunity to grab power and influence.)

EDIT: By Popular Demand - Freedom Fries. I initially left these off because they came a couple years after the initial panic and most people thought they were kind of absurd (and I don't recall anyone really going along with it other than maybe some local diners here and there). France didn't want to get involved in our world policing so some folks were like "TRAITORS!" and wanted to call french fries "Freedom Fries" instead, so as to stick it to the French.

Besides dumb shit like that…it’s really hard to overstate how completely the national mood and character changed in the span of a day, or how much of the current culture war is a result of the aftermath. (9/11 was the impetus for the sharp rise in power of the Evangelical Right, who made themselves utterly odious and the following backlash helped the rise of the current Progressive Left, for instance.)

And if all of this seems batshit...well, it was. But I want you to think for a moment how people react today over even trivial shit. People send death threats over children's cartoons. They call for blood if the maker of a video game had an opinion they don't like. If someone made a racist joke a decade ago when they were a teenage edgelord, folks will go after people who even associate with them. "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ALL THE HARM THEY'RE DOING!?"

Now take that same level of over-the-top histrionics and apply it to the unprecedented event of passenger planes crashing into crowded buildings in America's most populous city and killing thousands of people all at once. "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT WE WERE ATTACKED!?"

[lipsent]

SHOW ME WHO YOU ARE .ᐟ ── PITFIGHTER VI. been wanting to do something like this for a while now omg. i keep thinking about @shouyuus’s work and i decided to make my own version, because … i have rotted for far too long over this woman and i cannot lose any more sleep.

TAGS . . . 18+ !!! , f.reader , meeting at the bar , drunk vi , but she sobers up as she fucks you , vi yearning for you .

+ @eveningatthemoviesnetwork @thehoneypotserver @pixelcafe-network <33 tysm guys

ᯓ ݁˖ PITFIGHTER VI probably spotted you across the bar she always crashes into after her bloodied wins. she’d definitely give you a look and continue to stare even when you catch her, her eyes darkened and her brows furrowed as if she’d met you before and that non-existent encounter held a gory weight.

˖ ✶ PITFIGHTER VI pushed past all the people dancing and flailing around just to get to you. some poor guy even tripped and fell on his ass just from her drunken shove alone—and seeing as she too were fighting ghosts to keep from swaying, it couldn’t have been that strong of a push. then again—this is vi, the pitfighter champion.

ᯓ ݁˖ PITFIGHTER VI somehow had the balls to let loose in front of you while you were trying to dance by yourself. you surprisingly didn’t mind despite how heavy her glances were, and it was almost telepathic how you both communicated wordlessly when you allowed her hands to rest on your waist.

˖ ✶ PITFIGHTER VI kisses like she didn’t wreak of cheap liquor, her tongue nearly pinning your own down from how aggressive she was with needing to feel you on her. chest to chest, she supported your back when she continued to push against you like she knew she had this horrible habit of greed, of needing everything from something as sweet as you in three seconds, physical limitations be damned.

ᯓ ݁˖ PITFIGHTER VI cursed herself when she grabbed your hand and led you back to her room, knowing exactly how disgusting and grimy her sweat-filled bed was and had of course decided she’d rather get a slap to the face for even thinking you’d ever lie down on that thing than not try at all. what do you take her for, a madwoman? with a girl like you, she would be if she didn’t take you somewhere when you gave her enthusiastic consent.

˖ ✶ PITFIGHTER VI seems like she’s begging to get lockjaw when her tongue swirls anxiously around your clit, every so often flicking upwards in that sweet spot she’d discovered made you squeal and arch your back. how you reached new heights in both your moans and your nerves when she very carefully slipped a finger in, her thumb replacing her tongue when she rose up again and let you taste yourself on her tongue without warning. you grabbed her shoulders as if you want to shove her away, and when she entertains the idea that you could in fact hold a candle to her strength, she just huffed and smiled before going, “you opened your mouth, princess. don’t tell me you didn’t like that.”

ᯓ ݁˖ PITFIGHTER VI finally gets to fucking you and holy shit she was waiting so painfully long for you—her first strokes of her clit against your own were rough from the very start, both of you soaking and bubbling from everything that had been happening tonight—except she held out on her own pleasure just so she could see you come undone on her tongue and fingers. She bucks her hips against you roughly and the initial contact is explosive—you both moan in unison, yours higher and shakier as if racing her to something. you fell limp right after that first stroke and she continued to hold your leg up against her, hips bucking at a frenzied pace like she could see your orgasm approaching quickly, stopping at nothing to claw and fight to bring it back down to earth and let it spill all over her.

˖ ✶ PITFIGHTER VI has a death grip on your thighs and your waist when you cum, making sure you don’t squirm away now as your clit and hers throb in an unspoken rhythm like they’ve done this before and have made their shapes match perfectly with where contact is made and rubbed and heightened. You’re certain there’ll be bruises where her thumbs dug into her skin, and you can see it on her face the way one corner of her lips turn up just because she managed not to dig her nails into your skin but oh fuck is it going to bruise. she doesn’t even seem to realize, she’s too drunk on your clit to think now.

ᯓ ݁˖ PITFIGHTER VI cums and you scream because she pushes her clit all the way up yours like she wants to take up all of you in a capacity physically and biologically impossible for either of you—but she pulls your leg and waist towards her anyway, screaming your name when she cums and she pants, letting her grip lax finally as half-mast black-smeared eyes drag up your body from one last lick of the view before she collapses next to you, both of you panting and taking in the liquor and sweat.

˖ ✶ PITFIGHTER VI found the strength in her to somehow get up and pass you her waterbottle. when you tried to sit up, you winced and she snapped her head back to you only to put the waterbottle aside and slide a leg under your knee, her left arm slipping under the curves and lumps of your back and its bones before lifting you like you were wind ready to slip away. “hey woah woah—i’ve got you,” she muttered and you swore stars circled your head at how incredibly gentle she sounded, as if someone else’s sweet, unused and unexercised voice made it into such a hard-trained throat and still managed to stay soft despite everything. her hand’s grip was tight but her arms were so stable you might as well have been lying on a rock or a bumpy wall.

ᯓ ݁˖ PITFIGHTER VI lent you her jacket when she offered to at least send you off to wherever you needed to be in the morning. you were about to shrug the jacket off when it was time to leave but she chuckled weakly as her hands weigh it down on your shoulders, keeping it there before going, “nah, return it to me when we see each other next time. i’ll be at the bar every night.”

˖ ✶ PITFIGHTER VI lost her mind even more than she already had when you didn’t return for the next three days. her punching bag broke from its chain, stuffing blasting in her face and she had to go through one hell of a hassel to get a new one. but all she thought of was you and so she was ending fights quicker, thinning her voice and reducing it to a coarse hair of a sound from all the screaming. even if she had wiped the spot where both of you came, she flipped her mattress the moment she found the stain.

ᯓ ݁˖ PITFIGHTER VI jacked off to you eventually, needing to forget you quickly but after cumming found that it just might be her end because she can’t forget how sweet you smell, the taste of you somehow still lingering even when a week or two has gone by and she’s weakened by the lack of your essence—not just from your clit but from the saccharine flowers that you managed to plant in her head and her chest with the memory of your smile, eyes narrowed like it was making room for such a pretty thing. she can’t breathe when she jacks off to you, remembering how your hips twitched into her at how good her clit felt against yours.

[bethsfolklore]

No bc I agree with everything about this. I truly want to believe that everything wrong with the season five finale will be somewhat rectified in season six. Especially because we have almost a year until it airs. It won't be able to rectify the fact that Adrien wasn't there or the fact that he will never get the closure his character so desperately needs. However it can have Marinette actually think about what she's doing and have her change her mind and have her tell him (obviously as Ladybug). I'd rather it not narratively cause problems because it does upset me that this was one thing that genuinely had nothing to do with relationship conflict and it never should have been but all I want at this point is for Adrien to stop being left in the dark. It's been an ongoing theme in the show since season two and there are so many episodes showing why that shouldn't happen (especially in season four) and yet it keeps happening. The truth might hurt for him to hear but he deserves to know and I really do hope Maribug tells him because the absolute worst thing that could happen is someone else tells him.

ok since i’ve really only whined but not actually explained my reasoning lol, here is my take on the s5 finale. (this is long, sorry)

I think we’re all on the same page about the idea that gabriel being seen as a hero, by all of paris but especially adrien, is icky. and on top of that it does not feel good that marinette is supporting that lie, even if it’s out of love for adrien. most people are assuming this issue will be resolved somehow in 6, probably by lila exposing the truth. cool. that’s my hope as well. but even if that’s the case, i still dislike the framing of his wish and what the surrounding context seems to imply about it.

it is not my assumption that gabriel’s wish included green initiatives and a reformation of the parisian school system lol. I assume that his wish was to exchange his own life for nathalie’s. but as we know, wishes literally rewrite reality. the fact is that paris improved after his wish, so it is still related. he remade the world, and the new world ended up better. It all supports the idea that his wish was a good thing—a noble sacrifice that redeemed him in some sense. my impression is that even if (hopefully) he is exposed as hawkmoth, the actual wish he made will still be framed as admirable. obviously marinette found it noble enough to agree to lie to everyone about gabriel’s identity as hawkmoth.

which brings me to another pain point: the fact that gabriel essentially won the long battle against ladybug and chat noir. i’ve heard arguments that he didn’t win because he died and how is that winning? he got what he deserved in the end. but imo, he just put himself out of his own misery, because he was on the brink of death anyway because of his cataclysm wound, and he basically escaped having to face any emotional consequences from his literal terrorism and child abuse. and even if you don’t consider that a win, you also can’t consider marinette’s end of the deal a win either. her goal was to prevent hawkmoth from unifying the miraculous and making a reality-altering wish. which is exactly what happened. so she failed her mission. ladybug lost. and to me it’s sort of bizarre that the narrative seems to be framing that as a good thing? ladybug lost, but the new reality that resulted from it is so much better than the old one, and she is actively choosing to lie in order to protect the seeming goodness of that reality.

marinette is lying, of course, to protect adrien, which does not feel out of character. we’ve seen her do this before. but it is frustrating to me for precisely that reason. the final battle was meant to highlight how much marinette has grown over the past five seasons, but her choice here highlights the ways she has not grown. starting with syren in season 2, she has witnessed how much it hurts chat noir to be left in the dark and how it weakens their partnership. in that case, she convinced master fu to let him be in the know, and trust was restored. but then she continued a habit of keeping things from him, putting more and more distance between them, till it culminated with kuro neko in s4—a total breakdown of the ladynoir partnership, where chat noir renounced his miraculous. i would have thought that marinette would learn from that experience and realize that keeping people in the dark is harmful and that even if the truth hurts, adrien has a right to know it. but she once again made the decision for him, and when he finally finds out, it will be all the more painful to know that the person he loves and trusts most in the world lied to him. i actually really appreciate that marinette as a protagonist has such a good heart but is still such an imperfect character, so i want to respect this choice as a manifestation of her flawed but good intentions. i just can’t help but be really disappointed that after 5 seasons of making the same mistakes again and again, she has apparently not learned from them, which makes me feel she has not grown the way the writers say she has.

her facing hawkmoth alone for the final battle is supposed to be a sign of that growth—and yes, I can see how she has grown a lot in confidence and capability since her shaky debut as ladybug. but i also feel that her flying solo defies one of the central themes of miraculous: that in the fight against evil, good people need to stand together. just think of the difference between the s4 and the s5 finale. in strike back, ladybug is broken and sobbing because she has lost the miraculous and feels like a failure who is all alone. but then she is buoyed up by her faithful partner and all of paris, who express unbreakable faith in her and vow to stand by her side. that was so powerful! showing that she doesn’t have to be alone, and she’s not supposed to be alone, and that part of being a hero means accepting help and working with others to achieve good goals. this message was a major part of marinette’s character arc in s4 and it’s something that was introduced from the very beginning and has been supported over and over in the show. but then in “re-creation,” she has no team, and she doesn’t need one. which … good for her, I guess? But then why did we have 5 seasons of “you and me against the world” if in the end it was always going to culminate with “I'm sure we can figure out a solution if we work together. You … and me”—referring to Marinette and Gabriel, while Adrien is literally locked in a blank white prison hundreds of miles away?

it just really kills me that in kuro neko, adrien gave up his ring under the assumption that chat noir was not needed—that he was entirely useless to ladybug. and then the narrative proved him right. ladybug did not need chat noir to defeat monarch. she just needed his ring. the writers confirmed in their recent commentary that they had planned a bug noire fusion from the beginning, and they intentionally sidelined adrien so that could happen—they even had to figure out an excuse for why he wouldn’t be there. so they traumatized him with nightmares of destruction and fear of akumatization to ensure that he would once again give up his ring and conveniently remained locked away while bug noire faced down monarch alone.

you could argue that it’s better for adrien to have missed the final battle anyway, since facing his own father would just be even more traumatizing for him. i understand that. (that’s the reason i liked that in the owl house, it ended up being just luz vs belos, and hunter did not have to face him again.) but at the same time it feels so narratively unjust that chat noir—who has been fighting against hawkmoth by ladybug’s side since day 1—has zero part in seeing his mission through to the end. even though it’s all about him. because while marinette is the protagonist, adrien is the connecting piece of the whole story. it’s always been ladybug vs hawkmoth, and adrien is in the middle of them, because he’s both ladybug’s partner and gabriel’s son.

you’d think, logically, that as the connecting piece, Adrien’s decisions would be vital to the plot. That he’d have the power to tip it either way. but instead he is completely stripped of his autonomy—literally, because he’s a senti, and also symbolically in the narrative, because he’s simply removed from the equation. Like, he’s still central to the equation but he has no say in it. It’s all about him but he’s not even present. Everyone is fighting for him but he can’t fight for himself. Everyone is speaking for him but he doesn’t even have a voice.

the finale kind of sets up marinette and gabriel as narrative foils of each other, showing how they have the same motivation—to make adrien happy. and they make the same decision to protect that goal. which is interesting, sure, but also kind of effed up to me? i’m not sure what to take from the idea of the protagonist mirroring the antagonist in this way. that’s been done loads of times, but in this context, for a child audience, i don’t know what to make of it. what kind of message that is supposed to send to the children who are the primary audience of this show? ladybug is a good guy, and in the end, she’s just like the villain because they both love adrien and want to protect him. so that’s why she agrees to tell everyone the bad guy was a hero. ????

that gabriel/marinette parallel leaves adrien to parallel emilie, which makes sense and is fitting but also just sort of … depressing and again, lowkey effed up. that adrien ends up with the same narrative role as a corpse in a coffin. almost, like, macguffin-esque—a thing that motivates the agents of the story but has no agency itself. despite him being so central to both sides of the main conflict, his decisions don’t affect the outcome. because he doesn’t have the option to make any. because he’s not even present. both gabriel and marinette made a life-altering decision for adrien, thinking it was best for him, without considering that what’s best for him is to know his own story and make his own choices. him getting the rings was somewhat relieving, but it also felt like kind of a slap in the face. because it’s like, “look, adrien’s free! he has his amok and no one can control him anymore!” but, like, how free is a person who is living a lie? will he ever experience true autonomy, or will his life continue to be dictated by the decisions others make for him? will the narrative give him decision-making power or will his role continue to be symbolic?

one thing that makes this all extra dissatisfying is that Adrien literally does not have the option of getting closure with his father, because he’s dead. maybe a dramatic reveal in the middle of the final battle would not be the best way to go about it, but now he can’t have any sort of closure. in the owl house, it didn’t feel necessary for hunter to be present in the belos takedown because he already had his confrontation with belos in graveyard possession scene. belos tried to physically control him, and hunter broke free, and spoke his mind, and as traumatizing at is all was, it was good for him to be able to do that. it would’ve been so nice if adrien also had that opportunity. if he did break free from his father’s control, either by overcoming akumatization or the control of his amok somehow. or if not that, if he were just able to have one honest conversation with his father about emilie. like he did with his alt self in the paris special. it was so significant for the writers that bug noire detransformed and spoke to gabriel as marinette. why couldn’t adrien have done that? Marinette is the one to tell Gabriel that Adrien wouldn’t want him to make the wish and hurt someone else, that Adrien has made peace with his grief, that he has learned to cherish his mother’s memory without living in the past. wouldn’t that be even more powerful coming from adrien himself? if adrien was part of that final confrontation just as himself, we could even still have bug noire play a primary role.

i get that adrien being part of the battle is a risk, since we saw in chat blanc one option of how it could play out. but we also saw in the collector another potential way adrien might respond to learning that his father is hawkmoth—charging into battle by ladybug’s side. especially if he was given time to process the idea beforehand. it’s not impossible. you’d just have to compose the scene and its buildup a different way. so honestly it feels sort of lazy to just remove him for the sake of ease? and also sort of a waste of narrative potential? the villain being the father of one of the main characters is such an interesting plot element. imagine if luke skywalker did not ever face darth vader. if he never even learned that vader was his father. or if he learned that fact after vader’s death, which was the result of a confrontation he was not present for.

of course, i know adrien is not the protagonist. marinette is. and of course i want her to be empowered by the story. but i’m getting a little tired of what i see as kind of cheap feminism in ML. like, girl power for the sake of visibility so the writers can pat themselves on the back about it, if that makes sense? this show does have so much good feminist power with a strong female lead who has realistic flawless and a big heart, who overcomes self-doubt and other struggles, and who has proven time and again to be a smart, capable leader who has earned the trust of everyone on her team. but all of that sometimes feels undercut by the narrative treatment of adrien—like he has to be put down somehow to elevate marinette. ML has subverted gender roles in a lot of ways by having ladybug lead with her brain while chat noir follows with his heart. and adrien has a lot of other strong feminine associations—the focus on his physical appearance, the expectation of perfection and obedience, his soft and gentle nature, his romanticism, etc. And one of the biggest ones is all the ways he is trapped, all the ways he is pushed down and made to be submissive. they even depict him as a princess locked in a tower, with marinette as the knight in shining armor to save him from the evil dragon (his father). with adrien in that traditionally feminine role, it would have been empowering to see him to take a leading part in his own liberation. instead, he was locked away both literally and symbolically in favor of a solo bug noire confrontation, so marinette could look like a girlboss in her cool new outfit, taking on the bad guy all by herself, even when it would (imo) fit better with the themes of the show and her own character arc for her to fight alongside her partner. but as Thomas Astruc said, “She's Barbie, he's Ken. You don't like it. I get it. It won't change. Anything else?” (X) it just makes me feel that the writers cared more about the cinematic value and feminist brownie points of that battle than its narrative significance—which i feel could only be increased by adrien’s participation. “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing” … and that is all adrien was allowed to do.

i think a lot of fans at this point are just assuming that whatever feels dissatisfying/off will be fixed in s6. they’re trusting that the writers have a brilliant master plan that we just have to be patient and wait to see come together. idk, maybe i’m just tired. or a little jaded. i think there will be a lot to enjoy in s6, but i’m also prepared for disappointment. i honestly did not love many elements of s4 as well as s5, and i had expectations that weren’t fulfilled there either. i’ve felt let down by the writers many times now, so i expect that many of their future choices will  resonate with me. but i still love ML, and I am eager to see how everything will unfold. i’ve also read a lot of other analyses of the s5 finale, and there are great points being made on many sides. this is just my personal interpretation and opinion. i did not like the finale when i first watched it, and after sitting on it for months and trying to evaluate my feelings and look at it logically, i still do not like it lol. if you do, great! this isn’t intended as a personal attack on anyone—just me expressing my two cents, which ended up being more like $20. thanks for bearing with me if you read all this ✌️

[cheezritsu]

Itoshi Sae has far more feline traits than those narrow turquoise eyes of his. At the top of your notes app titled “I don’t need a cat, my boyfriend already is one,” is the fact that Sae will never, ever be clingy, will never ask for your touch, and is coy about romance as a whole—but he just has to be near you.

Manshine City is playing Ubers. Ubers cannot resist having a yellow card every time they step on the pitch, and Manshine City pisses Sae off more than even he knows. You’ll press him about that later, because he’s watching the match in your shared bedroom and not the living room television which is not only bigger, but louder like he likes. Why is he fixing your temperpedic to be a damn near 90 degree angle when there’s a perfectly good couch in another room?

“Who’s winning?” You call from the bathroom. You’ve chosen to grab a bar stool from the kitchen to make yourself comfortable as you part your hair into four sections. It’s a hard ritual, but it pays dividends; you noticed that you were shedding a lot less hair when you sat down and pre-detangled before the shower. And you were a little optimistic about your last style and ended up stretching it out a few days longer than you should have. The end result wouldn’t be good to your heart.

You’re half way through finger detangling your section when you realize Sae hasn’t answered you. You lean back, the open door to your bedroom allowing you to catch a glimpse of him. There’s something off about his expression—Sae’s normally indifferent looking, sure, but there is a harder frown etched into his face. And he’s not even looking at the game. He’s glaring at…the door frame?

“Babe,” you say, and it breaks his trance. He looks up at you, but you’ve once again disappeared from his line of sight. That lean back was killing your spine.

“Huh?”

“I asked who was winning.” You carefully two-strand twist the now slippery section together, then use an alligator clip to keep it off your back. It’s kind of crazy how long your hair is now compared to the beginning of the year. You take down your next section, looking up from your lap and-!

“Holy shit!”

Sae gives you an unimpressed look in the mirror. You look at his reflection instead of him when you demand “When did you get in here?”

“While you were daydreaming.”

The tv is off. Or it’s paused. The vacuum of silence is a little uncomfortable. You were doing your hair in an old tshirt; a reprint of Sae’s U20 match jersey. It would make plenty money on the internet, and here you were getting hair products all over it. Sae looks at the front of your shirt with a wrinkled nose. Other reasons your boyfriend is a cat: he needs a fucking collar, and he pulls faces instead of vocalizing.

“What are you doing?”

“My hair.”

You can see his roaming gaze trying to piece together the exact routine you have, but he’s struggling. Before another quip can leave his mouth you elaborate. “Pre-detagnling. That way when I wash my hair it has less breakage.” You squeeze your detangler into your hands and slather it into the wetted section of hair you were working on. “I wanna keep what little hair I have.”

You get a real reaction this time—a snort of disbelief. “You have more hair on your head than Aiku has on his entire body.”

You blink. “That’s not really a metric I’m privy too.”

“He’s like a gorilla. It’s gross.”

You hum, but you love Sae’s endless opinions. You can tell he still has some rattling around in his brain that he’s having trouble spitting out. Perhaps he’s finally using a filter around you, or he’s really trying to find just the right delivery to piss you off. It’s 50/50.

He finally settles on, “You hair has gotten really long,” as he’s transfixed by the quick motion of your digits twisting the hair into a long rope. When it drops against the side of your head and he sees where it reaches, he shakes his head. “Like, really long.”

“Thanks,” you smile, and warmth spreads in Sae’s chest. “Weren’t you watching the match?”

“I paused it.”

“Why?”

He doesn’t answer. “I thought long hair bothered you?”

“It does,” you answer slowly, really trying to keep up with this conversation. Sae pings questions at you like the midfielder he is, but this is a little too quick. “But I think when I was growing my hair out the first time I never shaped it, or did styles with it. There was this girl at a restaurant I went to, like, years ago when I was at the beach with my parents who had long natural hair. She had it pulled back in a satin scarf and had like two little front pieces sticking out.” You create the style by gesturing your hands over your head. Sae’s gaze melts, the usual hard line of his mouth settling into something content.

“She was so pretty.” You have a distant look on your face, and Sae doesn’t doubt you have that crystal clear memory in your head. “I wanted to be as pretty as her. But I didn’t really know what to do with my hair, and it has really hot all the time, so I cut it. I think about it all the time though.”

Sae acknowledges your story with a nod. He traces shape of your curls with his finger, careful not to pull too hard. A soft tug elongated the spiral, and then it snapped back.

“Your hair is beautiful,” Sae suddenly spits, making eye contact with you in the mirror. “I liked it when it was short, and it’s pretty now that it’s longer. I don’t know if I ever told you.”

He hasn’t. Not so bluntly, at least. Sae never needs to occupy his hands, so he doesn’t touch your hair at all, ever, but now he coils the strands around his finger like his own personal fidget. Something stupid balloons in you lungs and press hard against your ribcage. Pride, maybe? Love, probably. You twist your neck and the piece of hair slips from his grasp.

“‘Preciate it,” you reply, adopting his casual air to force down your excitement. Sae’s face stays the same though, and he even goes so far as to press a little kiss to your exposed shoulder blade. He must feel the heat of your skin, because a smirk curls across his face. Oh, you could kill him.

“Alright, alright,” you shoo him. “I gotta get to work. This is just the pre-wash, so I’m going to take a minute in here.”

“I could shower,” he says absently, and before you could even protest, Sae is opening the shower door, rearranging products around the wall to make sure your shampoo, conditioner and wide tooth comb are front and center. “It’ll be warm though, and not scalding hot like you like it.”

“Then don’t shower with me.”

The pipes turn on, Sae’s funger’s dipping under the water the check the temperature. “It’s bad for your skin anyways.”

You don’t even mention it. You probably will halfway through when he’s “unknowingly” doing your hair for you, but it could wait.

[starcurtain]

Comparing Phaidei and Other Hoyo MLM Ships (Part 2)

<- Part 1 is back that way.

In the first part of this, I laid out some of the ways Phaidei fits within Hoyo's normal pattern for queer-coded MLM ships: They're equals but opposites, perfectly matched; they've ostensibly got a "rivalry" as a cover for their laser focus on each other; their models are deliberately placed closer together in cutscenes than other characters' are, and they're intentionally paralleled to a heterosexual married couple. All of these are traits that other Hoyo MLM pairs also show, a sort of foundational standard for Hoyo's queer-coded MLM ships.

But then Phaidei just took a huge side-step around all of them, and started doing things that Hoyo hasn't done in any of their other recent games. (Tiny aside here: HI3 does wildly different things with its characters; I think that being first published when Hoyo was a more obscure company allowed them to get away with things--like the Bronya/Seele kiss and Welt and Co.'s cross-dressing, for example--that "modern" Hoyo games cannot get away with due to greater levels of public scrutiny.)

I said it in the other post, but it bears repeating:

You really aren't imagining things--Phaidei is actually different.

So I wanted to take a closer look at what was making it feel so unique, by comparing its differences to other popular Hoyo MLM ships.

Here we go:

1. The Feeling's Mutual

There was no heterosexual explanation for this framing.

In Part 1 of this post, I noted that Hoyo has a typical personality pattern they follow when queer-coding their male characters, particularly in using "difficult" personalities to create an artificial sense of distance between the characters. If one character is angry all the time, or tsundere, or using sarcasm to cover for their fear of getting close to others, Hoyo can mobilize that personality gap as a shield to give anti-LGBT+ players plausible deniability. Hell, there are people still out there genuinely convinced that Alhaitham and Kaveh have a toxic relationship. There are people out there saying Ratio despises Aventurine because he was mean to him one (1) time while undercover. That's how effective injecting a little bit of bickering into a queer-coded relationship is.

Hoyoverse is very, very familiar with creating this delicate balance of teasing the ship while feeding anti-LGBT+ players and censors just enough "Look, they don't like each other; they're arguing!" contrary material to avoid setting anyone off.

Which... makes it absolutely bizarre that they made almost no effort to do this with Phainon and Mydei.

Sure, on paper we're told that Phainon and Mydei are rivals. Phainon describes it as "He's both my friend and my foe." And yes, they have their quips (Phainon's "It's exhausting talking to you sometimes" comes to mind).

But animosity--the genuine desire to one-up each other--is completely missing from Mydei and Phainon's "rivalry." They aren't Sasuke and Naruto. They aren't Izuku and Bakugou. They don't actually even want to beat each other--they want to be equals. If you defeat Mydei in the 3.0 competition, Phainon immediately folds and calls the contest off. If you let Mydei win, Mydei immediately folds and declares no contest.

Although Aglaea notes they compete because they're "impulsive youths," what she was actually missing is that Mydei only let himself be goaded into Phainon's hot bath competition because he was worried about Phainon and wanted to take Phainon's mind off the failed trial. Then, immediately after beating Phainon in the hot bath challenge, he lets Phainon win the "take more people home" challenge, to tie up their score again.

In fact, Mydei and Phainon's relationship is so devoid of the actual back-and-forth typical of other Hoyoverse MLM ships that at one point, Phainon even asks for it:

(Though he's equally quick to demand compliments from Mydei too.)

Instead, virtually every line from Phainon and Mydei through both 3.0 and 3.1 reiterates that they care deeply about each other, and are concerned for not only each other's physical well-being but also each other's mental and emotional health. They freely and consistently support each other both on the battlefield and off, confessing their struggles and relying on each other for advice. Whenever they're separated, the game intentionally hammers home how worried they are without the other around.

Over and over and over again, the devs tell you how well Mydei and Phainon know each other and how much effort they're putting in to take care of each other:

The game doesn't let us forget that they are one another's "closest person," and that the respect they have for each other is mutual. Although I wouldn't go so far as to speculate they actually recognize romantic feelings, canon makes it clear that they are aware their emotional connection goes both ways. They don't just value each other's battle prowess, intelligence, or usefulness--they value each other's feelings explicitly, every single time emotions are expressed between them in the game's text.

In fact, Mydei even scolds Phainon for approaching their goodbye with a straight face; he knows that Phainon is hurt by their parting, and he wants Phainon to be honest, as Mydei is being honest in turn:

The rainbows in the background really sold the scene, ngl.

This isn't Renheng, where resentment has taken away any glimmer of joy. This isn't Ratiorine, where even if Aventurine were in a more stable mindset, Ratio's inability to spit out his feelings might keep them from going anywhere. Even with Haikaveh, the Hoyo ship known for Alhaitham's devotion, Kaveh's own struggles and refusal to accept Alhaitham's kindness are an active plot point keeping them from progressing. Maybe you could draw a parallel between Phaidei and Cyno/Tighnari for levels of "mutual," but even then, Cynari interactions are often left off-screen or in the background, for the players to fill in the blanks. On the contrary, Phainon and Mydei's fondness for each other is constantly in our faces.

The devs wanted players to know Phainon and Mydei are invested. We're supposed to see how much they want to be near each other.

More than that, we're supposed to understand just how deeply they trust each other.

Okay, okay, yes, I know this is massive foreshadowing to the inevitable betrayal and tragedy impending (come on, Amphoreus wouldn't qualify as an ancient Greek drama without it!), but I think that a lot of people are missing the key here: By this point in the story, Mydei already knows how he's going to die. He knows someone is going to stab him in the back and finally end his immortal life. When he entrusts Phainon with this secret, he's not trusting Phainon to keep him safe. He's trusting Phainon to do the opposite.

He's telling Phainon: "I want it to be you."

If the prophecy can't be changed and fate is set in stone, then Mydei wants Phainon to be with him in his final moments, to be the one to finally set him free from the "curse" he perceives his own immortality to be. Of course it would be Hoyo who makes "I want to die by yours hands" into a declaration of ultimate trust, but it is an explicit statement of trust, in a way that very few--if any--other modern Hoyoverse MLM ships get to show each other on screen.

Phew, that was a lot!

But I think this is one of the clearest and most defining differences between Phainon and Mydei and other Hoyo MLM ships--the devs took away players' ability to claim they don't get along. You might still be able to call them "just friends" or "brothers in arms," but unlike Alhaitham and Kaveh who fight, Ratiorine who scheme, or Renheng who are actual enemies, Mydei and Phainon explicitly like each other. They trust each other. They seek one another out.

It might seem like a small thing on paper, but this is actually a big thing in practice. Hoyo is pushing the boundary here, reducing the avenues for deniability. It is harder for anti-LGBT+ fans to claim that Phainon and Mydei don't have obvious in-game ship-tease than for virtually any other modern Hoyoverse MLM ship. (By the way, this is why people have resorted to calling Phaidei "industry plant yaoi;" because they can't deny the queer-coding is actually there this time, they instead have to try to de-legitimize the ship in other ways, such as dismissing it as nothing more than bait.)

This also means Hoyo has less of an "out" if people start to really question. It would be harder to explain away Phainon and Mydei's relationship than it would be to explain away even Alhaitham and Kaveh's. Alhaitham and Kaveh have "They're always arguing" and "Their friendship was ruined by their fight" or "They're just roommates," etc. to lean back on. Phainon and Mydei... are really bad at even pretending to be rivals...

All of this to say: Hoyo made a bold and deliberate choice allowing two of their mainstream male characters to be so emotionally close and attentive to each other on screen. They went outside their own current comfort zone for this one, guys.

2. We're Conspicuously Missing a Twink

Moving on from Phaidei's emotional differences, I wanted to talk specifically about Hoyoverse's perspectives on gay men, and how easy it is for companies to slip into not only stereotypes for gay characters, but also extremely heteronormative portrayals of gay relationships. As sad as it is, it is easier to market queer-coded male characters to yaoi fans (who are often--although obviously not always--heterosexual women) if they fit into the expected pattern for heterosexual relationships: a highly masculine man to "wear the pants" in the relationship, paired with a delicate, effeminate man to obviously be the bottom.

Now, don't get me wrong: Gay relationships come in all varieties; people have different preferences, and categorical groups like "twinks" and "bears" exist so people who have those preferences can find each other. Obviously plenty of hyper-masculine (and just masculine-leaning) gay men do want more effeminate partners. Plenty of real guys consider themselves twinks and have great relationships with men ranging all the way up the most masculine dudes you've ever seen. But "masculine man with feminine man" isn't the only kind of gay relationship around, despite the fact that that's what Hoyo's yaoi shiptease might lead you to believe.

(Edit: I can't believe I have to say this, but it seems some portion the HSR fandom cannot read, so apparently I do: Stop using my post in your hunk/twink or hunk/hunk discourse; if you didn't bother to read the paragraph above this in which I word-for-word point out that real gay relationships come in all varieties, including lots of relationships between masculine men and more effeminate men, then that is on you--this post isn't about how "hunk/hunk" is more "real gay" material or "hurr durr twinks bad;" it's about how Hoyo has served up the exact same ship with different clothes on 13 times in a row, with their constant modus operandi being yaoi genre staple tropes in which one character is essentially designated as the bottom and the other as the top specifically using masculine versus feminine coding, because that is what sells to the yaoi fan demographic they are targeting, particularly to heterosexual female yaoi fans, who are predisposed toward heteronormative relationship patterns even in the gay media they consume. The only situation in which hunk/hunk is "more progressive" than hunk/twink is for Hoyo, who clearly have hunk/twink as their comfort zone and only very, very rarely step out of that established pattern. This entire post is about Hoyo's patterns for creating their mlm ships, not about gay rights activism--read the essay in the context of Hoyo's design philosophy or just stop reading here, fucking please.)

I don't want to say that Hoyo's track record on this front is bad, because honestly it's not. Their male characters often have surprisingly complex expressions of gender identity, with interesting blends of masculine and feminine traits. But... Hoyo does have a pattern. Plenty of their queer-coded MLM ships fall into this same general (and kind of stereotypical) profile: a masculine man with a more feminine man. Alhaitham is inexplicably ripped and represents calm rationality, while Kaveh is "the spitting image of his mother," has to wring out his wrists when he uses his own weapon, and represents passion and romanticism. Ayato is the head of his clan; Thoma holds housekeeping classes for Inazuma's other housewives. Xingqiu is the "refined" rich boy in ruffles; Chongyun is the down-to-earth working lad. Wriothesley is the most masculine man in Genshin Impact; Neuvillette mothers the entire race of Melusines. Over in Star Rail, Aventurine covets pink diamonds, bathes himself in sparkling perfume, and is so tiny Ratio's hands can encircle his waist. (I don't actually think Aventurine is that feminine, but trying to pretend that he isn't designed to evoke queer tropes is just silly.) Moze is as ripped as Alhaitham, while Jiaoqiu is... very pink. I'm going to talk more about Renheng in a sec, but Renheng is also this way, with the more "delicate"-looking Imbibitor Lunae to Yingxing/Blade's solid frame.

Mydei and Phainon don't fit this pattern at all. Both of them are as tall as Star Rail models come, and while Mydei's build has an impressive degree of bulk, Phainon is no slouch either:

Neither one of them is visually effeminate in any manner, and they're also not effeminate in personality or role in the story. Neither of them is a housekeeper or a home-maker; (again, poor Aventurine catching strays, but:) neither of them is in the business of blinding people into deals with their good-looks or careful facade of helplessness.

Theoretically we could say the devs tried to squish Mydei into a more heteronormative role by giving him traditionally "feminine" traits: he cooks, he plays house with children, he puts milk in his juice and turns it pink, he's paralleled almost exclusively to his own mother... But his role in the plot is such a quintessentially masculine story (son of a self-fulfilling prophecy, father-killer, god-slaying warrior, king to his people, aura-farming champion of the Amphoreus battle cutscenes, etc.) that clearly we are not meant to perceive him as a stereotypically feminine figure. The whole "malewife Mydei" thing comes across as so comedic because he is so masculine.

Conversely, Phainon, despite being the "gentler" of the two characters, the one who is described as having a soft heart and being outgoing and kind, is even less suited to being called feminine. His "Messiah"-esque role in the story, literally being the "prodigal son" of Amphoreus, paints him as the very picture of a classical male hero. Even more so than Mydei, he is a private and closed off person who hides his heart--and his own identity--from those around him, traits more often stereotypically associated with emotionally-closed-off men than female characters.

Up to this point, Hoyoverse had a relatively stable pattern in the MLM ships they baited in their recent games. They primarily played it safe, sticking to queer-coding relationships that both visually and narratively reflect heteronormative relationships.

But Phaidei once again broke the mold.

This time, Hoyo chose to queer-code not the more delicate-looking man (although I guess there's still plenty of time for Anaxa, I shouldn't sell him shorter than he already is lol), but two overtly masculine male characters, who can't be readily projected on to a stereotypical heterosexual relationship. This was a big departure from Hoyo's norm, and I think this actually deserves a lot more respect than people are giving it. Hoyo didn't have to pick their two muscle-bound warrior male leads and make them close and caring. They didn't have to expose themselves to the obvious question: "Why are two 'manly' characters being so soft on each other?" It is harder to pass off Phainon and Mydei's queer-coding as accidental, or suggest the fans are just reading too much into it, when nothing about them can be mistaken for a "traditional" heteronormative relationship. For a game produced in China, where standards for depicting men and masculinity in media are so high, making the choice to bait two masculine men together (let alone this expansion's "hero," who is an expy of a beloved former character), was a very bold and risky choice on Hoyo's part.

Companies don't make bold and risky choices on accident.

Finally, I wanted to make one more point about why I appreciate Phaidei's emotionally attentive depiction--it's because there's a whole other realm they could have taken the "definitely going to turn into a villain" queer-coded main character. As I mentioned in the first part of this post, queer-coding villains is a trope as old as dirt. When you queer-code a male villain particularly, you add an extra layer to the danger: Now the male villain is not just a physical threat, but a sexual one. Adding queer-coding to the male villain has often, in past media, been used to conflate homosexuality with deviance or perversion and suggests sexual violence even if nothing ever truly occurs.

Maybe the real Hoyoverse queer-coding was the red flower petals we threw along the way.

I said I was going to bring up Renheng, and here it is: Unfortunately, Blade and Dan Heng fall into this latter pattern a bit. Although he has his reasons, the game's portrayal of Blade's "pursuit," especially in the early portion of their story, casts Dan Heng into the role of the victim, a young man being hounded by a crazed stalker who refuses to let him go. Their cutscenes, including Dan Heng's nightmares, paint Blade as an overwhelming presence who invades both Dan Heng's physical space but also his mental space, making it impossible for Dan Heng to escape his clutches. This "We must pay the price together" absolutely reads, out of content anyway, as some sort of yandere death pact. Their lightcone is literally called "Nowhere to Run."

Even though Blade is not deliberately engaging in any form of sexual behavior, his obsession with Dan Heng in their early scenes can give players the impression of a cliched "depraved homosexual," and the implication that sexual violence could occur is present through their early interactions. This isn't on accident; Hoyo was playing with the yandere trope on purpose! I'm not going to lie, part of Renheng's early appeal for many players was how scary and dominating Blade came across as. The subtle sexual implications of pursuit are the point, and if you think Hoyo wasn't capitalizing on the intersection of "sexy" and "dangerous" with Renheng's early interactions, then you're probably a little too pure for this world.

As things progress, of course, we see this dynamic between Renheng dissipate, shifting his narrative from "crazed pursuer for unknown reasons" to "potentially the victim" of their past scenario, an effect which they achieved through the slow drip feed of Yingxing and Dan Feng's backstories. This, I think, speaks to not only a shift in the devs' intentions for Blade and Dan Heng's relationship (there's more to be said here about the Yingxing-Baiheng-Dan Feng mess that is the cut lore, etc.), but also to a shift in the way the devs wanted Blade to be perceived by fans, from a potentially predatory figure to a much less toxic potential love interest.

Anyway, back to Phaidei: We know that Phainon is headed for a downfall. It's been so obviously foreshadowed at this point that there's really nothing much more to say than that--however, even though he will likely also descend into villainy like Blade, and even though we know he's very likely going to kill Mydei... I don't think that the devs will use Phainon's queer-coding as part of his villainous identity. I don't get any sense that the dev team has any intentions of conflating Phainon's potential homosexuality with depravity, or using it as a motive for his descent into villainy (he might be gay and a villain, but he won't be a villain because he is gay). I definitely don't think we will see the kind of sexually-threatening physicality between Flame Reaver and Mydei that the devs did earlier with Blade and Dan Heng, even if "stabbing someone from behind" does have an inherent sort of sexual symbolism.

I appreciate that even in a story headed for the obvious "stabbed in the back by the villain form of the man I loved," the devs seem like they have moved on from falling into the pitfall (accidentally or intentionally, to sell yandere tropes) of portraying of gay men as predatory.

3. Leave Room for the Trailblazer

In part 1 of this post, I mentioned that Hoyo uses the placements of characters in scenes to indicate closeness, and I already pointed out that Mydei and Phainon stand really... really... close together, much closer than they stand to other characters.

However, it's not just that their models are literally positioned closer together in cutscenes--it's that their body language explicitly closes other characters out. Plenty of Hoyoverse MLM ships are ship-baited by moving the models of the male characters closer together, but very, very few of them are positioned to so consistently exclude even the player.

For comparison, consider the well-known scene where Alhaitham brings the Traveler and Paimon to his and Kaveh's house, which was framed with both domesticity and intimacy:

Although Alhaitham and Kaveh are also prone to the "stand shoulder-to-shoulder" thing that Hoyo does when they want to imply closeness between characters, the framing of their scenes nevertheless leave enough space for the Traveler and Paimon to be active participants in the conversation, enough space between Alhaitham and Kaveh for Traveler to not look blocked out.

For example, despite standing next to each other in that moment above, the camera deliberately cuts Alhaitham out, so that only Kaveh and the Traveler duo occupy the shot. Later on, Alhaitham bridges the divide between the Traveler and Kaveh, turning away from Kaveh toward the Traveler--once again, the conversation and scene are open to the Traveler, and thus, to the player.

Here's a live demonstration of my earlier point: Alhaitham and Kaveh stand closer together than the player and Candace, indicating their closer connection.

Other scenes play out similarly--although Alhaitham and Kaveh are close, their body language doesn't actively exclude other characters or the player from feeling like part of their conversations.

Over in Star Rail, we see the same general situation. We know that Aventurine rarely stands close to other characters, with Ratio being the one relatively consistent exception, but even so, the camera will usually give them some breathing room, making it feel like there's enough space for the player on the other side of the screen to be part of the moment:

Meanwhile Blade excludes both Dan Heng and the player, putting us on equal footing to Dan Heng and giving the impression that the player and Dan Heng are standing against Blade together. There is still room for "us" in this scene.

However, once again, Phaidei proves the exception. Mydei and Phainon don't just stand close--they don't even want to share air with anyone but each other.

A very normal way to have a group conversation. Definitely.

Consistently when standing side-by-side, they turn inward to face each other, rather than facing other characters in the conversation, literally forming a closed unit despite the fact that they're supposed to be in a group scene:

The thirdest third wheel to ever third wheel.

If it wasn't enough for the devs to just imply that the Trailblazer isn't able to break through Mydei and Phainon's circle, they decided to call it out in the text itself, echoing the player's own thoughts: "What about me?"

As I mentioned in the first part of the post, the devs also consistently use specific camera angles to capture both Mydei and Phainon in the frame together, at the same time, further emphasizing the closed nature of their conversations.

You will never see so many over-the-shoulder shots again in your life. You are the outsider looking in!

Perhaps most telling about the devs' intention to create an intimate air for Phainon and Mydei's conversations is that literally everyone else disappears when they speak to each other. For example, Phainon and Mydei's first goodbye takes place in the Garden of Life, which is actually a pretty bustling plaza with numerous NPCs. But every single NPC was deliberately removed by the dev team for Mydei and Phainon's scene there, to allow them a private moment:

Even in their final farewell, where Mydei was seen off by a literal bustling crowd of NPCs, not a single person is visible during their goodbyes--until the exact moment Mydei reminds Phainon that the whole rest of the world is waiting for him. The whole rest of the world didn't even exist for Phainon until Mydei forced him to remember.

It's not just the Trailblazer (and us, the player) who is third wheeling Mydei and Phainon's relationship. They literally exist in a world of their own when they speak to each other. No other modern Hoyoverse ship is on this level of excluding even the player--excluding even the damn NPCs!--to make a point about their closeness.

I thought I was going crazy the first time I was watching these scenes, thinking "It can't be that the devs actually went that far in framing Mydei and Phainon as a pair." But they did. They actually did.

The envelope has been pushed off a mountain, my guys.

But that still wasn't enough for the devs. They needed to go further.

4. Deploy Shoujo Manga Trope #57

I know I just said that Phainon and Mydei's relationship doesn't map well a typical heteronormative male/female relationship, but that doesn't mean the devs gave up on any and all attempts to apply typical romantic cliches to Phaidei. On the contrary, the dev team's thought process seems to have been "Hey, we're doubling-down on our queer-coding for Phainon and Mydei. How can we make it really, really, really obvious they're a ship?" And then they literally spun a roulette wheel of romantic tropes and threw every single one of them at patch 3.1 at the same time.

We have the "romantic lead beautifully framed by red rose petals blood glitter":

The "You used my love to manipulate me" subplot:

Phainon begs for compliments, and Mydei's reaction is to look away demurely and call him a scoundrel?? Am I seeing things?!

This is where he'd be blushing like a tomato if he was a female character.

The "please look after my dear husband when I'm gone" tragedy trope:

THE RING???

"LET'S MEET AGAIN IN THE NEXT LIFE"?!!

What do I even say about all... this...? Do I even need to say anything at all? Has any MLM ship in a recent Hoyoverse game gotten remotely as many romance flags? Alhaitham, where is Kaveh's ring?!

What I actually want to say isn't a specific breakdown of any of these moments, but what they mean in totality. Remember that Hoyo made every one of these choices with deliberate intent. They knew what the picture would add up to. These are explicitly romantic tropes that are extremely difficult to interpret in other lights.

You are supposed to read "If there's a chance in the next life" as "I want to be reincarnated with you; I want to meet you again; I want to be with you in a softer world."

You're supposed to think of the ring as a wedding ring. For one, Gorgo would only have gotten it through her marriage to Eurypon, but even more so--there was no reason this item needed to be a ring in the first place except to evoke images of wedding rings. We already knew from 3.0 that Castrum Kremnos used crests and seals for identification. Why make it a ring and not just the crest of Castrum Kremnos? Furthermore, why involve Phainon at all? The audience would never have known any different if Chartonus just said "Found this I did, have it you should, Mydei." It's a ring and it's a ring deliberately from Phainon because the devs want you to see it as a wedding ring.

What an incredibly bold move on Hoyo's part, and I don't even really mean just in the context of being a Chinese company, but even in the context of being a global company. Hoyo lives and dies by the revenue of their character banners, and choosing to explicitly and (nearly) exclusively apply romantic tropes to their male lead and deuteragonist in a brand-new patch cycle was a legitimately daring choice. Their deliberate application of romantic staples to an MLM ship, in a way that is difficult even for anti-LGBT+ fans to write off, was a very, very calculated decision. I genuinely hope it pays off for them. I hope Mydei and Phainon's banners both sell well, so the devs' receive a clear message in turn that fans appreciated their boldness and their commitment to creating queer content for these two characters.

I'm just going to end on one final note, about a scene that you may have noticed I conveniently skipped. Yes, the most conspicuous scene of them all:

5. A+ Censor Dodging

By some miracle of obliviousness, some Olympic-level mental gymnastics, or by sheer force of will, I think some people might still have made it to this point thinking that Phaidei was not being deliberately baited by the devs. You could maybe, somehow, convince yourself that the blood glitter rose petals and the shoulder-to-shoulder emotional conversations were just coincidences, that the tsundere "I'm not worried about him" was just dudes being tough guys, that the Trailblazer was a third wheel because Phainon and Mydei are "just good friends."

But then devs said "No, we need to be unmistakable. We need to make ourselves 1000% clear. We are baiting the yaoi fangirls, guys; please stop ignoring our hard work."

If going further than they've ever gone with Mydei and Phainon's body language wasn't enough, if Phainon's being willing to kill a god to save his man wasn't enough, if implying a wedding ring wasn't enough, what else could the devs possibly do to remove all plausible deniability and make it undeniably clear that Mydei and Phainon are queer characters (even if it is only for the benefit of yaoi fangirls)?

They can do something they've never done in their recent games before: Imply actual sex between male characters.

(Side note, Hoyo lesbians have had this implied sexual content pass from the beginning. You will always be famous, Beiguang. It's only the male characters that can't even have implied sex. 😂)

Obviously Phainon and Mydei are not having sex in the game. The dialogue even goes out of its way afterward to remind us that they remained fully clothed in that bath, thank you. But the refusal to show what was actually happening--censorship used as a tool to imply--the cut to the black screen, the narration of one animal pursuing another, the discretionary water droplets between the moaning... (And another little edit because @mynabirb made such a good point in the tags: The fact that they chose to "censor" this with a butterfly, the literal symbol of romance in Amphoreus, is almost too much. The devs really did say "Time to silence all doubts.")

From the player's perspective--and examining this as a choice on the dev team's part--there is no way to read this scene other than "sexually suggestive." You're supposed to think "This sounds incredibly sus." Because it is sus. Because the devs added this scene knowing that it would intentionally make people think about the idea of Phainon and Mydei having sex.

Sure, this scene is really funny in context. You're supposed to come out of it laughing, going "Wow, they're idiots." But you will also, whether you like it or not, come out of this thinking "Damn, Hoyo really went all in on the yaoi bait, didn't they?"

You can't "Devs didn't mean it" out of this one.

Which is brave as hell on Hoyo's part, to be honest! Even if this is nothing but queer-baiting, they saw that sick yaoi fan money and decided to go all in on it.

Say it with me: A dev team from a country with notoriously strict rules against depictions of homosexuality in media, from a company with a huge global fanbase including many conservative and religious countries, and with a majority male target audience, went out of their way to undeniably include sexually suggestive gay content in their game.

Whatever their motivation--be it simply money or from a genuine desire to tell gay stories--this wasn't a casual decision. This took commitment. This decision almost certainly went all the way to the top brass of the team for clearance. Someone probably had to fight to get this added.

But they did it, and not with Kaveh and Alhaitham (the previously undisputed kings of current Hoyoverse queer-coding) but with two brand-new (to Star Rail at least) characters who have extremely important roles in the game's on-going narrative--major characters who can't be overlooked.

Phaidei is literally built different.

But I'm still left with one lingering question:

Is Hoyo queer-coding or just queer-baiting?

Even though I played 3.1 in a sort of stupefied haze because I actually couldn't believe what I was seeing in Phainon and Mydei's scenes, I also ended it with a pretty bittersweet feeling.

How amazing that Hoyo pushed the envelope so far with Phaidei... But at what cost?

Did Mydei really have to leave Okhema never to return? Or is he being banished from the plot because his relationship with Phainon was too intense?

Isn't this just the "bury your gays" trope, in essence?

Lore-wise, there isn't any reason Mydei actually has to leave Okhema forever. Sure, he presumably is going to fight the Black Tide where it manifests across Amphoreus, but what about that requires him to "never return"? Demigods aren't geographically bound to the locations their Titans blessed, or Aglaea and Anaxa wouldn't be able to leave the Grove. There shouldn't be any reason Mydei can't visit Okhema when he wants.

The more you think about it, the worse it looks that the dev team implied Phaidei harder than they've ever implied an MLM ship before, only to immediately turn around and go "And then Mydei left forever." As if the only way it's okay to make characters that gay is if you then get rid of at least one of them. (Speaking humorously, at the rate Phainon and Mydei were going, if the devs didn't get rid of Mydei, he and Phainon probably would have been making out on-screen by 3.2, but you know what I mean.)

Sure Phaidei can be the MLM Star Rail ship with the most support in canon--but only at the cost of never being seen together again, apparently.

I'm not sure I like this trade off.

However, I am telling myself to remain cautiously optimistic. We know that Mydei's role in the story is not done, and that he and Phainon are destined for at least one more reunion, even if it won't be a happy one. We've been told that Amphoreus's story will be "heart-warming." I choose to believe that the devs will try to scrabble some sort of positive ending out of all this. At the very least, perhaps we'll end with a "in another life montage," and get to see Phainon and Mydei finally meeting in that library.

So is Hoyo queer-coding from a genuine desire to include gay characters or just baiting hard to sell Mydei to fangirls?

I'd say let's wait and see. Amphoreus has barely started cooking.

In the meantime, I think it is worth examining (and appreciating) Hoyo's willingness to mix up their own patterns, break their own trends, and to try something truly new and different with Phaidei. Even if this is all the content we ever get, Hoyoverse did things they haven't done before in any of their recent games, and showed that they're willing to push the limits for queer content in order to tell the stories they really want to tell.

I am a served fan, Hoyo. Well played, well played.

[beatrice-otter]

I’ll be honest, when one party’s aiding and abetting the genocide and the other’s outright gonna kill all my friends, I don’t really care if the fascists “win”. They’ve won already.

You know who would be delighted to hear that? Trump and Putin. The US far right and the Russian government have poured lots of time, effort, and money over the last decade+ into convincing US leftists and liberals that things are hopeless, there's no point in even trying to make things better, and the Democrats and Republicans are functionally interchangeable. They do this because one of the easiest ways for them to win is if the left gives up and stops trying. Every person on the left they can convince to give up in despair brings them closer to complete control. Defeatism on the left actively supports victory on the right.

I think your statement is wrong on a number of levels, both factual and emotional. It comes from not understanding what the actual options are for the US government and the President specifically, either at home or abroad. And it will allow actual fascism to flourish and make the world far worse than it is now.

On an emotional level, the way to address this is to stop doomscrolling. Stop focusing on the worst things happening in the world. Don't ignore them! but don't let them consume you. Start looking for the things that are going well. Find places in your community that you can get involved in making things better. Even if it's only on a small scale like volunteering in a soup kitchen or homeless shelter, it will help you realize that you aren't helpless, that there are things that can be done to make the world a better place. Stay informed about things on a local, national, and international level, but limit how much time and attention you give to things that depress you that you can't affect. Instead of sitting there thinking about all the ways the world sucks and how awful things are, look for things you can do that are productive, and then do them. You'll feel better and you will have made your corner of the world a little better. And you will be a lot less likely to unintentionally fall into the despair, nihilism, and passivity that the fascists want you to be consumed by.

Always remember that the worlds problems are not resting solely on your shoulders, or solely on America's shoulders, and neither is the hope of fixing them. Everyone has things that we can do to make the world a better place, but there are also things that are beyond our control. We can control what we do; we cannot control what others do. We can and should try to make the world a better place, but focusing on the things we can't change has no positive benefits. Focusing on things we can't change accomplishes two things: it makes you feel bad, and it stops you from doing the things you actually can do to make things better. Neither of these things is good for you or anyone else. Look for things you can do and do them. Keep informed on the things you can't change, but don't focus on them.

On a factual level, let's look at "aiding and abetting genocide," shall we?

First, it's important to remember that the US President is not the God-Emperor Of The World. The US government has limits to what it can and can't do in other countries, and both legally and practically. If the US wants to intervene in a problem in another country, there are a variety of things we can do that boil down to basically four categories. It's a lot more complex than this in practice, of course, but in general here are the categories of things we can do:

Send in the troops. Invade, either by ourselves or as part of a NATO or UN operation. (Or maybe just send in a CIA wetworks team to assassinate the head of state.) I hope you can see the moral problems with this option, and also, we've done this a shitton of times over the course of the 20th Century and pretty much every time we've done it, we've made an already awful situation worse. On a moral level, it's pretty bad, and on a practical level, it's worse. Sure, we could stop the immediate problem, but what then? Consider Afghanistan and Iraq. We got rid of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, and everything went to shit, we spent twenty years occupying Afghanistan with pretty much nothing to show for it. (The Taliban is back in control of Afghanistan.) Things were worse when we left than when we arrived. So this option is pretty much off the table (or should be).

Diplomatic pressure. Now, the thing is, they're a sovereign nation, they don't have to listen to us if they don't want to. We have a lot of things we can leverage--including financial aid--but the only way to force them to do what we want is to invade and conquer, and that only works temporarily. Since we can't force, we have to persuade. This requires us to maintain our existing relationship with the country in question, and possibly strengthen it, because that relationship is what we're leveraging to try and influence them to do what we want them to do. If we do not maintain our relationship, they have no reason to listen to us.

Cut ties and go home. Break off any existing relationship and support, loudly proclaim that they're awful and doing awful things and we wash our hands of the whole situation. This keeps our own hands lily-white and pure, but it also means we have zero leverage to work on any kind of a diplomatic solution. They have no reason to listen to us or care about what we think. We can pat ourselves on the back for doing the right thing, but we destroy our own ability to influence anything. Not just now, but also in the future. Let's say the current crisis ends, and then ten years later there's another crisis. If we want to have any effect then, we would have to start from square one to start building a relationship. Cutting ties would be great for making Americans feel better about ourselves, and there are times when it's the only option, but it should be a last resort. If there is any hope of being able to influence things for the better this will destroy it at least temporarily.

Cut ties and impose sanctions. Break off any existing relationship and support, loudly proclaim that they're awful and doing awful things, but also use the might of the American economy to isolate and punish them. We've done this a lot over the 20th Century, too, and it has never actually resulted in the country in question buckling down and toeing the line we want them to. What happens is the sanctioned country has an economic shock (how long it lasts and how bad it gets depends on a lot of factors) and then pulls themselves back together economically, except this time they're more self-sufficient and less reliant on international trade and financial networks. They tell themselves that America is evil and the cause of all their problems, and so not only do they not listen to us, they actively hate us. And they have fewer international relationships, so fewer reasons to care about what the international community thinks about them. So they're most likely to double down on whatever it is they're doing that we don't like. This one is completely counterproductive and utterly stupid. It's great for making Americans feel better about ourselves, but if we actually care about being able to use our influence for good (or, at least, to mitigate evil) this option shoots us in the foot. It encourages other nations to do the very thing we're trying to stop them from doing.

So, with those four options in mind, both option one (invasion/assassination) and option four (sanctions) are off the table for being immoral and counterproductive. That leaves "breaking our relationship and going home" and "using diplomatic pressure" as our only two viable options.

Biden has chosen option two, diplomatic pressure. Yes, he and our government have continued financial support for Israel ... but with strings attached. They have put limits on it that have never been put on any US foreign aid before. They have taken legal steps to lay the groundwork to target Israeli settlers (i.e. Israeli citizens who confiscate Palestinian homes and businesses). We've been hearing reports for months that Benjamin Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister, and a far-right-wing demagogue) hates Biden's guts, because Biden is pressuring him to stop the genocide and work towards peace. Biden is maintaining the relationship, and he's using that relationship to try and influence things to curb the violence and pave the way for a just peace settlement of some sort. Biden has also mentioned the possibility of a two state solution where Palestine becomes its own completely separate country. That's huge, because up until this point the US position has always been that Israel is the only possible legitimate nation in that territory. If Biden stopped US support for Israel, it wouldn't force Israel to stop what it's doing ... but it would let them ignore us. It would remove any leverage or influence we might have.

Biden's hands aren't clean. But the only way for them to be clean would be to also give up any chance of influencing the situation or working to protect Palestinians now or in the future. Only time will tell if it works, but I personally would rather have someone who tried and failed than someone who didn't even try. You might disagree about whether this is the right course of action, and there's a lot of room for honest disagreement about the issue (there's a lot of nuances that I'm glossing over or ignoring). But please do acknowledge that Biden isn't supporting Israel because he supports genocide; he's doing it so that he can continue to maintain diplomatic pressure on Israel to stop the violence.

Which brings us back to "aiding and abetting genocide." Trump is not like Biden. Trump is good friends with Netanyahu and backs Israel to the hilt. Trump thinks that all Arabs are terrorists (and all Muslims are terrorists) and genuinely believes the world would be a better place with them dead. Biden is continuing to support Israel, but using that support as influence to get them to stop or slow down. Trump would be using that influence to encourage them.

And those are the two choices. Someone who is trying to curb the genocide, and someone who actively supports it.

I really hope you can see the significant and substantial difference between those two positions.

But let's say that you're right and Biden's policy towards Israel and Palestine is every bit as bad as Trump's would be. If there was nothing to choose between them on foreign policy grounds, there would still be a shitton to choose between them on domestic policy grounds. You admit that the right wants to kill your friends, and yet you don't seem to think that stopping them from killing your friends might be a good thing to do.

"We can't save Palestinians, so we might as well let Republicans destroy the rights, lives, and futures of LGBTQ+ people, women, people of color, people with disabilities, poor people, non-Christians, and anyone else they don't like." "We can't save Palestinians, so why bother to try to save the people we might actually be able to save." "We can't save Palestinians right now, so there's no point in trying to build up a longer-term political bloc that might drag US politics to the left over the long run."

Do you get why there's a problem with that line of thought?

[bbokicidal]

[SKZ] When you're included in a SKZCODE episode

i made this before the front desk at work tried to take me out so yall can have it now since my brain is rattled n chunky.

Genre: Fluff Pairing: OT8 x Reader Warnings: Lino's pics aren't from the episode I put bc I couldn't find any, sorry!

SFW Masterlist | NSFW Masterlist

Chan: Episode: Winter is Coming [Ep 1 & 2]

Pouts when he finds out he has to try and stop you from getting the flag up and down the hill in record time because he wants you to win,,, duh.

But it doesn't stop him from absolutely ramming a ball of snow into the back of your head (on accident)

Laughs at the way the boys try to stop you with their bodies and the way you fearlessly bodyslam them in an attempt to win the game

Almost dies of laughter at seeing you spin in circles and then try to attack the poor balloon - only for it to fly away and disqualify you

Buys you hot chocolate after the shoot is over and cuddles up with you to keep warm after being outside in the snow all day <3

Minho: Episode: The Ultimate SKZCODE Recap [Ep 69-70]

Has to hide his giggles at your poor presenting of the boys' awards

And how bad they are at guessing the right answers to the quiz questions

Gets all blushy when you announce him for any award and shies away when you run to the audience to sit down and cheer so loudly for him

Ends up trying to bribe you for answers to the quiz questions by winking and blowing you kisses from his table

Until he's called out by Jisung, at least

Changbin: Episode: SKZ-ARY TOWN [Ep 57-68

Cannot hide his laughter at the way you fail at bobbing for apples

But then loses his shit jumping around and yelling "That's my baby!!" when you manage to get a few and tie with Felix for first place

Tries to bribe the staff to give him the same amount of points as you since you're dating

Tells you to do the first position in the relay game but quickly switches with you when he realizes you almost fly away with Chan and Minho trying to restrict your running with the band

He's literally bouncing around with how good you are at the mini games and ends up putting you on the toast-toss station because you're the only team member who doesn't suck

Hugs you so tight when you win the game and swings you around in his arms just because he's so excited

Hyunjin: Episode: Go! Poolside SKZ [Ep 57-58]

Has the time of his life seeing you and Jisung run and dive in together because you lost rock paper scissors

Asks for you to not be on his team because he doesn't trust your ability in the water games as if he's any better himself

Ends up accidentally hitting you with the ball a few times and immediately apologizes, then allows you to throw it at him once on purpose as revenge

Just about loses it on Seungmin when he flips over your tube like Chan did with Felix, then yells for staff to disqualify him

But he's just as brutal because in the tug of war he rips your ass off of the platform and almost falls in because of how hard he's laughing at your yells of protest

Jisung: Episode: SKZ Family Returns [Ep 39-40] (He looked SO FINE in this episode good GAWD)

Has a blast flirting it up with Minho but after Seungmin starts biting back he makes a show of turning to you instead

You play his in-law technically - Your character being Hyunjin's sibling

Everyone is in shock and making a scene of Jisung's flirtatious attitude towards you as the roleplay goes on

And they're even more surprised and making drama of it when the two of you kiss behind Hyunjin's head

He ends up sitting with his guitar and singing the 'I'm sorry' song again because of it

Almost starts fighting Seungmin at one point because he 'also wants to have an affair with you' as a joke

Felix: Episode: Bedtime Bingo Hell [Ep 55-56]

Watching him yell about how he's bronze is what makes you laugh the most

He has a blast watching you try to do the pillow air-bowling but gawks when you manage to knock a few down and then yells about how you're his and how he's so proud

He's full of giggles when you hop on the whoopie cushion

And he's full of playful rage when Changbin is called 'the one with the prettiest butt' so he begins an argument that yours is way prettier

Also almost loses his shit when you come in second for the loudest fart

He's proud but at what cost

Seungmin: Episode: Fall Field Day [Ep 59-60]

Cries at seeing you in the raw chicken blow up costume and takes a picture before making it his lockscreen because he thinks you're so cute

He ends up being the one to fight you on the mat and ends up losing to you

Don't let his cuteness fool you - he absolutely obliterates you in dodgeball

Can he aim? No. And Minho can't guard for shit; So you end up getting hit more than you probably should

He giggles at you running around the sidelines in an attempt to get back in the game, singing out "I'm sorry ~"

Takes videos of you running during the relay race because he just thinks it's so cute

Jeongin: Episode: Suspicious Lab [Ep 47-48]

He's supposed to be guessing voices but he hears you go, "Ahh - I sound so much different than all of you, this isn't fair!" in your high-pitched helium tone and bursts into laughter

Your experiment ended up breaking so you did Seungmin's after him, wearing the stimulation machine on one of your arms and trying to fold an airplane

He ends up taking the remote from Minho at some point because he's having too much fun with tormenting you and Jeongin can't stand it

Turns up the machine even more to see you squirm

Also cheats during the game where he had to try and ramp up your heart rate (He touches your ass to get a reaction out of you) and then denies it in a fit of laughter when you call him out to the staff

Permanent Taglist :

@dwaekkicidal @possum-playground

@thatonedarkskinnedsiren @oc3anfloor @theyadorevalerie

@jeonginsleftcheek @pixie-felix @hwangjoanna @skzophreniic

@silly250

[multific]

Moonlight 

Aemond Targaryen x Fem!Wife!Reader

Warnings: childbirth (no detailed description)

Summary: Aemond loves his little wife, so naturally, when you give birth to your first son, Aemond falls in love even deeper. However, when a simple refusal of his breaks your heart, it will be difficult for him to win you back.

It was hard to keep you close. You were much like Aemond, a true fighter. You had a fire in you which couldn't be questioned. A fire towards him, pure love. And now, fire towards your son.

Aeren was only born a week ago, yet you protected him fiercely like a dragon.

And you refused to let the small child out of your hands.

When Aemond was allowed in the room, he saw the blood, he heard your screams and many times, he wanted to barge in but he knew he couldn't.

So, once he was allowed in, someone informed him that it was a boy and that you were in bad shape. 

Aemond could see it, you looked beyond tired, yet you smiled.

But your smile didn't last long.

Aemond refused to hold his son. 

"Give him to me." he heard your voice as he looked from the woman holding his son to you. You looked angry. Way too angry.

It was too late when Aemond realised what he had just done.

He refused to hold his own child.

And since then, you didn't speak a word to him.

You slept in a different room with your baby, sometimes, late at night, he heard the cries. He wanted to get up and go to you but he couldn't, his guilt was overbearing. 

"You should put a leash on her, brother. If I had a wife like that, she wouldn't be sleeping in another room." Aegon taunted his brother daily. 

One day, you were in the gardens, walking with your son in your arms when Aegon spoke up.

Aemond never heard his brother speak with such longing.

"I truly wish she was mine." 

Aemond looked at his brother who was watching you.

"But she's mine." was his simple and firm reply.

But you truly weren't.

You used to be, now, you just sat next to him during dinners. 

One night, you excused yourself, and he followed you.

In an empty corridor, he spoke up.

"Why are you avoiding me?" he knew why. He very well knew why.

"I'm sorry, My Prince." you turned and looked at him. "I believe you are mistaken. I'm not avoiding you, I just hate to see the disappointment on your face." this surprised Aemond. "I gave birth to a child you refused to even look at. I loved you, Prince Aemond, I truly did. But I love my child more. And if you cannot look at him, you won't get to look at me. Fill your bed with whores for all I care. Goodnight." 

"You are mistaken." he said, not letting you leave, but you did grab the handle. "You-You were in that bed, crying, screaming and bleeding for hours. I couldn't do anything. And when they let me in, the blood... so much... they told me you were weak, you survived but you needed a lot of rest. How-How could I hold my child when the love of my life almost died? How could I look at him when I was worried to even look at you? I feared you would die giving birth. I was shaking. I feared losing you and my child. That is why I didn't hold him. I was scared." you stood there, your hand on the door, you looked away from his eyes.

"Then you could have just fucking say so, Aemond! For fucks sake!"

"That is not very lady-like."

"FUCK lady-like, you made me believe you hate me and our son! I believed I disappointed you since you wanted a daughter."

"I said I would be happy either way. My emphasis was on a girl because I feared if you had a daughter, you would see that as disappointing my bloodline."

"You are fucking terrible at communicating." you opened the door and walked into the huge room in which you stayed the last couple of weeks.

Aemond followed you, and watched as you walked over to the small bed and picked up your son. "Next time, you should just tell me. Letting me assume things clearly don't work out." 

"Of course." a small smile found its way onto his lips, next time, it was the promise of a future, a promise of more, something he could work towards. He walked over to you after closing the door. "I wish to hold him." you handed him the small child who didn't even stir in his sleep. "Aeren you named him I recall." Aemond's attention was now fully on his son as you decided to leave the two alone after watching them for a couple of minutes.

You got changed and when you arrived back, Aemond was sitting on the bed, his son on his chest.

"Some nights I heard his cries. It broke my heart but I broke yours far more. I apologise for not being clear and for causing you pain. I am truly sorry."

"I'm sorry as well. I should have asked." you said as you sat down next to him. "I will have to feed him soon."

"I will stay here with you."

You smiled as the moon shined through the window, illuminating the room a little more, helping the fire so you could see your husband's face.

"I love you so much Aemond."

"I love you too, My Queen." you giggled, moving closer to him as he leaned down to kiss you.

You two kissed in the moonlight until your son made it clear that he was hungry.

It all made you look towards a better future.

Taglist: @castellandiangelo @imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl @manduse  @jacalineiscomingforyou @mandoloriancookie @brascaris @il0vebeingdelulu @deliciousfestsalad

~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

/YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO TRANSLATE OR REUPLOAD ANY OF MY WORKS TO THIS OR OTHER PLATFORMS/

[frythebrains]

Primarch political marriage AU where the Emperor attempts to make the primarchs care more about humanity by forcing them to get married. Thankfully, they're allowed to pick their own consort and because Big E can't do anything without being extremely extra (and because it's an excellent way to generate a hell of a lot of good press), there's going to be an elaborate series of parties to display the best that the imperium can offer in the way of potential mates.

Feat.

- the entire Death Guard becoming the Mortarion Primping Squad (led by Typhon) in the hope that getting laid might cheer Mortarion up

-Fulgrim fully understanding the assignment and DOMINATING the entire first night. He really doesn't want to have to pick another wife, though.

-Dorn becoming absolutely fascinated with shapewear- he hadn't ever thought that clothing could be engineered like that before.

-Ferrus Manus trying to hide against the wall, since he has no idea how to talk to women

-Konrad Curze is strangely popular, and gets more popular after he starts predicting the deaths of anyone who dares approach him- the girlies love some fortune telling

-Bobby G calling his mom to ask for advice on how to woo women

-Magnus becoming dejected that women don't flock around him like Fulgrim and Sanguinius. He hasn't put it together that it's because he keeps being a giant nerd about magic and no one has any idea what he's talking about.

-Perturabo is determined to be married before Dorn, so he's brought in Caliphonie to help him pick what to wear. He proceeds to ignore her advice about how to actually win over women.

-Lion getting dancing lessons from Luthor

-the imperial press being flooded with augmented pictures and bios of the primarchs, all to make them seem like romantic heroes. The imperial press in general is just out of control the entire time...

-Malcador really wishing he told the Emperor that this is His worst idea yet

-the Alpha legion getting in a lot of cross-dressing practice.

-Leman Russ refusing to marry any woman who cannot wrestle him to the floor. He doesn't care that they're all baseline humans, any woman worthy of bearing his children should be strong!

-the Mournival taking bets on who's going to get married second (because obviously Horus is going to be the first)

-Sanguinius getting overwhelmed by the amount of attention he is receiving and cocoons himself in his wings at some point in the night. He refuses to come out, even for snacks.

-Lorgar doing well until he tries the whole 'God is telling me that you're my wife' line.

-Horus using the worst pickup lines imaginable and getting away with it.

-Vulkan being delighted by the chance to do something that's not war related for once. He has an absolute blast dancing, although he might be a little too enthusiastic.

- Corvus trying to escape and having to be dragged back into the party by the custodes (under the Emperor's explicit command)

-Jaghati showing up with a whole-ass herd of horses to prove his fitness as a mate

-Magnus is the sluttiest-dressed in the entire room, scandilizing Lion and Lorgar. He even pierced his nipples for the occasion.