#but I just know people are gonna be falling over themselves to woobify him

[rjalker]

most sarcastic pride art I've ever created. This dream was very specific.

Reblog to kill him.

[ID: The orange, gold, white, sky blue, and dark blue aroace flag, with white text along the top and bottom combining to read sarcastically, "Diversity win, this slave owner is aroace, (and so is his fucking victim)." In the center of the drawing, surrounded by sarcastic white sparkles, is a pencil drawing of a white man with short hair and a long sleeved shirt, looking off to the side sadly. In his arms he holds a large egret, a type of water bird with a long curved neck, and a long thin beak. End ID.]

[sword-dad-fukuzawa]

id loveeee to hear your thoughts on lawlight dynamics regarding that top L bottom light anon….

oh hell yeah. so more generally, i view top/bottom dynamics as characterization shorthand, which is not how absolutely everyone thinks about it but it's true for me. i think people who really care about dynamics tend to sort themselves into two characterization camps for a given character, and usually i fuck with one camp more than the other. also when i think about the roles of giving vs receiving there are, in fact, Vibes-based decisions i make about that.

also complicating this is that we tend to conflate topping with domination and bottoming with submission. and in some ways the use of top/bottom dynamics for me overlaps with dom/sub but not always, though it's also that there's a vulnerability in bottoming that is distinct from the vulnerability of topping. i'm not nearly educated enough to give a real seminar on dynamics and bdsm roles and how those intersect in yaoi and fandom so my only credentials i can give here is that i have lots and lots of kinky sex lmao

anyway. lawlight!

if i'm being completely honest i can see them switching as part of their inherent power struggle. like to be completely true to how they're characterized in canon. i blame this entirely on the time speaks fic for selling me so good on lawlight switching, but i'm also sure that most lightlaw content won't really appeal to me just because light yagami....does not top....to Me.

searching for how to justify this that isn't just "pure vibes" but i genuinely think he would be a strict bottom if he ever took the stick out of his ass. like yeah okay he's a genocidal megalomaniac but do you ever think of how many choices he has to make? how in control he has to be at all times? decision fatigue is killer and i think being the one who has to receive, has to lie back and take it, would be hot, humiliating, and cathartic for him specifically. he'd get off on the asymmetry of it. also he can't fucking stand the people who submit to him (misa, mikami). like. he doesn't really get horny over subservience as much as the conquering so like. yanno.

also i think being on top is just. expected of him? light yagami the honor student is cisgender and heterosexual and he has a hot girlfriend he'll settle down with and pop out 2.5 kids with. i think he'd be sick of it. combine it with the social stigma of taking it up the ass and you have a perfect storm of internalized homophobia and sexual repression that would mean light finds bottoming preferable, and hates it.

also the only person he would ever let top him, much less dominate him (i think light's feelings on domination and submission are even more convoluted than on topping and bottoming. suffice it to say he's a power bottom until he gets his brains fucked out first) has to be L. just because L is his equal, his rival, the only guy who could stymie him. he wouldn't let L top as much as he would cede that victory to him if it came down to it. also he'd probably get off on making L go crazy via his hot clenching asshole. anyway.

i feel a lot less strongly about L when it comes to dynamics. L can go either way, for me. i don't think he'd really want light up his ass but he'd enjoy the experience of bottoming, and he doesn't mind being on top. even if he's lazy about it unless light's needled him first. and maybe seeing kira fall apart on his cock is ego stroking spank bank material for him too.

there's also the fact that the uke in any yaoi pairing is gonna get woobified and whumped and sexually tormented by fandom at large (which i know a lot of people have feelings about, lmao). between the two of them i much prefer watching light get that treatment than L so i avoid bottom!L content.

obviously everyone is entitled to their opinions and headcanons and thoughts and this just how i see lawlight/dynamics. if anyone comes at me with the word "fetishization" please know i have a block button and free speech. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[a-flickering-soul]

HUX FOR MEME

AH SHIT HUX MY BELOVED!!! THANK YOU!!!

First impression

Incredibly, I literally don’t remember?? I do not remember maybe because I was off the shits when TFA came out and Hux was literally inconsequential to me the first time I saw TFA but I do remember coming out of TLJ two years later hollering about this wretched man to the point where my dad literally asked me “Why do you like that guy so much”, so I mean he must’ve had some sort of effect on me over the span of those two years.

Impression now

Obsessed with him. Will not shut up about him. He makes me want to pace around in my room like a caged tiger. Hux the stressed, overworked, unhinged, consumptive little man who has an unimaginable amount of rage and hatred just bubbling up inside him 24/7 is a character that can actually be so personal. There’s so much to think about with him. He’s the funniest character who’s ever lived in my head. Hux is the everyman and yet there’s something so wrong with him. I’m enamored with him. He truly is the evil gay engineering girlboss representation I’ve looked for my whole life. Hux is a coping mechanism.

Favorite moment

Genuinely I could point out any one moment in the sequel trilogy novelizations or extended universe novels from Hux’s POV and say “there’s something wrong with him and he’s unnatural”. There are truly so many insane Hux moments I can point to but at the moment it is the incredibly homoerotic scene Rae Carson put in the TROS novelization all by herself for no reason that genuinely is just Hux being obsessed over Ren’s hair. He is just so obsessed with this other man and so megalomaniacal and so so fucking gay and evil that one of his biggest fantasies is making Kylo Ren cut his hair. I don’t even know where to start with that. There’s just so much to unpack here.

Idea for a story

mmghhkk I know everyone and their mother has done a shuttle fic post-TFA but also a) Kylux Renaissance 2k21 and b) more cakes, so I have somewhere in my Google Docs maybe 300 words worth of Hux picking Ren up after he gets his ass handed to him by Rey and if I ever get around to it I’m going to write something morally reprehensible and ill-advised about black leather gloves and blood and wound care or lack thereof.

Unpopular opinion

I am, once again, going to be the “old man shakes fist at cloud” meme and say people have gotten TOOOOO comfortable with woobifying Hux, which I don’t have as much beef with in terms of AUs, but there’s only so much soft Hux content featuring a genocidal space fascist I can take. Oh! Also redemption arc Hux. I’m tired of it. I want to see a villain decay fall-from-grace hubris arc! Let’s get freakish!

Favorite relationship

KYLUX! It is just so important to me that they hate each other and yet are mutually obsessed with each other! They are so funny! If they wanted to they could be a villainous power couple to raze the galaxy but they simply cannot tear themselves away from snapping at each others’ throats to consider it. It kills me how they are perfectly poised to liberate each other from their own respective shackles and yet they just can’t get there because they just hate each other so deeply and THAT!! is where the fun lies. Kylux isn’t even gaybaited. It isn’t even gaybaited!!! It’s not real! And yet it is so unbearably real it makes me feel like an imploding star.

Favorite headcanon

Fuck dude this has gone on long enough that I’m abandoning shame and I’m just gonna give you a bulleted list

would have been diagnosed with hysteria were he in 1800s England, but like the kind where he’s completely normal for like a year then snaps and tries to put a penknife through someone’s eye and then he gets sent to a sanatorium away from any work or stressors for a few weeks and comes back normal again

he has his dad’s teeth in a box in his quarters and looks at them when he feels sad

Millicent isn’t actually a cat (or any variation of tooka or felinx, for that matter) but Hux the spacer kid didn’t actually know what cats looked like so he just saw a vaguely cat-like shape and was like “sure! looks like a cat to me” and just treated her like a cat. God knows what Millicent actually is, but she seems fine.

Hux dogtags agenda. I know dogtags in a space military organization is not entirely logical but I think it’d be hot.

send me a character and i’ll give you some thoughts!!!

[pansunset]

okay time for a theatre hot take about historical musicals. im gonna split this into two posts, one about hamilton and one about six. because while the easiest way to put it is “hamilton bad six good”, there’s a bit more nuance to my opinion on them both than that.

First off, all the cast members are insanely talented, especially Leslie Odom Jr, Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson, Phillipa Soo, and Reneé Elise Goldberry. Even though the people they played were varying degrees of assholes, they managed to make them feel compelling. Credit where its due.

anyway, lmm is a good songwriter, the issues with hamilton come from the glorification of the historical figures portrayed. if hamilton was more critical of these individuals, it might not have been such a... yeah.

the hardest hitting songs are the songs that delve into the personal lives of the individuals rather than politics. Satisfied, Wait for It, Helpless, Burn, Dear Theodosia, It’s Quiet Uptown... these are all incredibly emotional and raw. Aaron Burr was a fascinating individual and all of his songs reflect this, honestly. IRL, Burr was actually one of the least scummy of the cast, though because he wasn’t very fond of Hamilton, he is villanized. unsexy. Leslie Odom Jr. has such a powerful voice and does an incredible job as Burr.

some of the songs about the war are also decent works. Stay Alive talks about the actual conditions the American militia put themselves through, and The World Turned Upside Down, while it’s a very patriotic (ew) pov, is still a well written victory anthem. the most interesting one is History Has It’s Eyes on You, and having Washington sing it was a great choice. it’s one of the few songs where a founding father is looked at critically for their failings, and said founding father point blank says that those who come next will judge whatever you do. Christopher Jackson is an amazing vocalist and he actually has talked about his struggle to play Washington despite Washington being a dick.

the songs about politics tend to fall flat because they oversimplify the actual views of the main character and paint everyone around him as either a villain or ally based on whether they liked Hamilton. the cabinet battles especially are pretty cringe. there are a couple exceptions that I’ll discuss in a moment, but first, a character analysis tangent.

Thomas Jefferson is... an interesting case. Irl, the man was a disaster of a person. He came down with migraines from talking to women, was generally considered a weirdo, and was the original “rich person who buys expensive versions of the ugliest clothes and acts like he’s presentable”. Yet aside from one line in It Must Be Nice, he’s portrayed as a extravagant, dramatic, yet mildly charming asshole. His costume is bright purple, he carries a fancy cane. Like, ignoring the fact that its inappropriate to ever make Thomas Jefferson seem charming, this isn’t even accurate to who he was as a person. He was less sociable than Isaac Newton for fucks sake. The only accurate thing is being a france weeb and being a worse debater than Hamilton.

Anyway, speaking of It Must Be Nice, its one of the few good political songs. It’s critical of Hamilton and it explains why the Madison and Jefferson hate his guts (though for stupid reasons). Furthermore, it also explains the political climate of the day better than other political songs in the musical. The other two good ones are, of course, The Room Where it Happens and Your Obedient Servant.

The Room Where It Happens is not only an amazing breaking point for Burr to stop waiting around, it’s the one time in the musical where the real Alexander Hamilton is best represented. (Hamilton in yellow, Burr in blue)

“Or did you know even then it doesn't matter where you put the U.S. capital?

Cause we'll have the banks, we're in the same spot

You got more than you gave

And I wanted what I got

When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game

But you don't get a win unless you play in the game

Oh, you get love for it, you get hate for it

But you get nothing if you wait for it

God help and forgive me

I wanna build something that's gonna outlive me.”

This is the real Hamilton. The facade of caring about ideals is gone, and the truth is bared; Alexander Hamilton was a smooth talker who only did things when he saw it could benefit him in some way. The man was obsessed with his legacy, and anything that got in the way of him building one was just collateral. Yes he was crass and loud, but guess what? That usually meant he was heard over everyone else. Burr only just realized that the whole “scrappy underdog” act was just that; an act

Your Obedient Servant is Burr calling out Hamilton for going back on everything he claimed to believe just to keep Burr from the nomination. Fun fact: the 1800 election was not a landslide victory. It was incredibly close. Hamilton’s endorsement was probably what kept it from being a tie.

Hamilton tries to defend himself by projecting his flaws onto Burr. “I am not the reason no one trusts you, no one knows what you believe” isn’t an accurate depiction of Burr in the slightest. Burr actually quite enjoyed politics and debates, and none of his setbacks ever kept him down for long. He cared very little for what his contemporaries thought of him though: He relied on the merits of his points. A lot of his correspondence was left to his daughter, Theodosia, and was lost on the shipwreck that killed her, so theres a lot we don’t know about him. But the musical depiction of him is not really accurate.

The problem with Hamilton isnt that it’s a musical about the founding fathers. Its that it grossly misrepresents those founding fathers. It never considers the thoughts of the slaves of any of the main characters. It never considers the Native American perspective on the Revolutionary War. It mocks John Adams, despite him being one of the few founding fathers who not only didn’t own slaves, but publicly berated his contemporaries for relying on slavery. It does a great deal of injustice to Burr. It woobifies the Schylers. For fucks sake, it forgot Benedict Arnold. Ya know, one of the most famous spies? Who almost cost America the War?

Its impact on modern political discussion and internet culture is also kind of a net negative, save for the production “The Haunting of LMM”. Its status as a fucking joke these days is earned. Though it has some good songs, and the fact that it got an official recording means good things for the future of Broadway accessibility, it’s a hot mess and is an example of how not to do a historical musical.