#but also I get why these gay writers were doing drugs all day

[angstitty]

Fact 1 : woke up at 7:30am with with 5 hours of sleep

Fact 2 : I need around 10hours of sleep to be at full strength

Fact 3 : I’m at a show and want to stay awake

Decision 1 : take a vodka-red bull at 9pm

Fact 4 : last time I had caffeine in my body was a week ago trough half a cup of tea

Decision 2 : dance and jump around for the entirety of the show, despite poor cardio and aching muscles

Consequence : my body is crumpling in my bed but my mind has never been more awake, I feel like a drunk guy on cocaine.

It is 4:21 am and all I want is to go make a full meal and then maybe get in a coma.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Snowflame

(WARNING! This analysis contains C-C-C-COCAINE!)

Imagine this absurd concept: A supervillain cartel boss whose powers are fueled by him getting high off his own supply. Imagine too that this man wears a ridiculous outfit, and exists to be an anti-drug PSA that fails epically because he makes doing drugs look awesome. Now also imagine that everything about him is played completely straight without a single bit of acknowledgment of how absurd and campy the whole thing is.

That, my friends, is Snowflame.

The New Guardians is a comic series that would have been long forgotten as a crusty relic of the late 80s if not for giving the world the absolute coolest villain ever conceived. Snowflame has amassed a cult following the likes of which would make Jim Jones envious, due to the sheer absurdity of his existence and the pure unadulterated action movie villain charm of his dialogue. He’s perhaps one of the most minor villains out there with only a handful of appearances to his name, but he’s loved more than villains who’ve appeared twenty times as much as him.

I’m here to show you why.

Motivation/Goals: Snowflame is a cartel leader, and so he really wants to peddle drugs. Guess which drug is his forte. Go on, guess. And that’s really all there is to him! I need to reiterate that his threat as a cartel leader is played completely and utterly straight even as he spouts off the hammiest dialogue you’ve ever seen and literally gets a power up by snorting coke. This is the very core of his appeal, in that he is something genuinely terrifying and threatening but presented in a way only a comic book can pull off.

Of course, his true motivation is far, far simpler.

Look at this man. That is the face of a man who exists solely to snort illicit substances up his nose. He lives to be high. That is the extent of his desires, and all else is second to that simple goal. As long as he can ignite and continue to be the instrument of cocaine's will, he is satisfied.

Final Fate: Every single time Snowflame shows up, he dies. In his initial appearance, he apparently blows up, but three decades later, he makes his coke-fueled return to do battle with Catwoman, and despite inhaling enough cocaine to kill an elephant, a feat that should theoretically make him nigh invincible, he fucking dies.

...Or does he? Snowflame returns yet again in Peacemaker Tries Hard! Here he does battle with, you guessed it,

...who puts a poison dart frog in his cocaine and kills him.

Maybe. My theory is that Snowflame is the Kenny of the DC universe, and whenever some bastard kills him his coke-fueled powers just respawn him the next day.

Best Scene: While his fight against Catwoman is unfortunately lackluster as ordained by the writers (Selina is not lasting two seconds against Snowflame and his coke-fueled powers under realistic circumstances), it gave us one of the most gorgeous and badass panels ever made:

Really brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

Best Quote: Yeah, there’s no fucking contest here, it’s this:

Final Thoughts & Score: I think I speak for all of us when I say Snowflame is one of the greatest fucking characters ever conceived.

Everything about him is a towering testament to what makes the medium of comic books great. The best villains tend to be the wildest and most out-there concepts, like a giant alien starfish that mind controls people, or a gay gorilla in love with a brain in a jar, or a giant racist communist egg. And don’t even get me started on the villains the Doom Patrol fights! Snowflame is the epitome of that; he is what would happen if Tony Montana was a DC supervillain by way of Captain Planet. He is absurd, over-the-top, and so goddamn cool.

It’s very obvious they were trying to do an anti-drug PSA here given the time the comic was released, but it absolutely falls flat on its face when the strawman constructed to be defeated so that the lesson might be dispersed is an absolute lunatic who dresses in colorful spandex and spouts off the most epic lines to ever come out of a villain’s mouth. Everything about him is absurd, but unlike something like Egg Fu he’s absurd in a tasteful and cool way rather than a shockingly racist way. Snowflame is just a dude who snorts cocaine to gain superpowers, it’s as simple as that and yet it’s also completely bonkers.

It’s genuinely unsurprising that this guy managed to get such a massive cult following that he spawned a fanmade webcomic and then got to pop up in the comics again over three decades after his supposed death. And it’s said cult following that has allowed him to pop up time and time again, even getting an appearance in the fourth season of Harley Quinn. I’m sure you can guess that I’m part of that massive cult fanbase, and I can only dream of writing a villain as incredible and grandiose as this drug-addled madman. Infinity/10 isn’t a real score, so he’ll have to settle for a 10/10 instead.

...Oh yeah, remember in the Egg Fu review when I said I wasn’t going to review Hemo-Goblin?

Psycho Analysis: Hemo-Goblin

This is gonna be really short, because there is so little to this guy. He is a one-shot, but boy what a fucking shot he is. Hemo-Goblin is a racist vampire created by South African white supremacists to give members of the New Guardians AIDS. You read that right. This is a racist AIDS vampire.

Now, unlike Egg Fu, who was a horrible racist caricature created from topical anti-communist sentiments of the time, Hemo-Goblin was seemingly created with better intentions. But you know what they say about intentions; the road to Hell is paved with good ones. I get wanting to do a commentary on the AIDS crisis, and I don’t think it’s out of the question for a superhero book to handle such a thing, but maybe having an AIDS-powered vampire give HIV to a Jamaican woman and a gay man isn’t the most tasteful and nuanced way to do this.

Oh, and by the end of his only appearance, he dies of AIDS in jail.

I’m not gonna lie, guys: I kinda love this stupid fucking creature. His weird design, the absurdity of his concept, and the awful execution of his premise makes him memorable for all the wrong reasons, but he’s memorable nonetheless. I think if Snowflame didn’t exist and wasn’t the coolest villain ever, more people would talk about the insanity that is Hemo-Goblin, though having a single appearance before dying and never appearing again doesn’t help his case much. Still, he’s just cazy enough to earn himself a 3.5/10, so he’s got that going for him.

[scarlettshazam]

In the last couple days, I’ve had a few people in the tumblr writing community follow me, so I figure it might be worth talking about my publishing experience a little. I’ve been a pretty well known fic author, professional ghost writer, had a literary agent for two years, and ended up self-publishing.

I spent my entire life belittling self publishing (a learned behavior, but that’s a separate issue), and was determined to traditionally publish books. In 2021, I really thought I had it. I sent out my first YA novel manuscript, received eleven manuscript requests, and signed with an agent. I couldn’t tell you if this was the dumbest decision or best decision I ever made, because it did end up getting my published — just not the way I expected.

That period of two years did some of the most harm to my creative joy I’ve ever experienced. I’ve always found joy and excitement in writing, and in sharing it. The person I worked with in the industry was never excited by anything I wrote, even though they were the one who wanted me signed. Some of the things that bothered me are typical of the trad pub industry, like wanting me to shoehorn a blackmail plot into my book to artificially raise stakes. Others bothered me far more — I was asked to take out or tone down serious topics, such as drug use. I didn’t like that, but I did it. Other instances still I have come to realize are not reflective of professionalism in the publishing industry, but happened to me, when I got ghosted time and time again by my own agent.

Eventually, it came to a head. I don’t even remember which manuscript I tried to show them that they criticized, but I finally asked if they even liked my writing, and suggested we part ways. They agreed.

Shortly thereafter, I decided fuck it, I’m gonna publish this book I know they would have hated because it’s 100% character based. My first book, Train Track Princes, is my most successful book.

Bonus: I got to make all of the art! One of my little paranoias about trad pub was that I’d have to have somebody pick all the visuals for my book and it would look like garbage. Now if it looks like garbage, it’s because I made it that way, not somebody else. I don’t think it looks like garbage, though.

Train Track Princes will turn two years old on January 1, 2025. I release all my books on the characters’ birthdays. It’s a silly little thing, and I’m glad that I get to do it. (The newest one, Only Slightly Dead, comes out 2/26/25).

Earlier this week, days before I got laid off, one of my students found out I wrote books. I showed him where I put my books in our our library, which one is most popular (Train Track Princes), which one is printed in an intentionally dyslexic friendly font because the protagonist is dyslexic (Common Strange Behavior), and which one addresses recovery from drug and alcohol use (This Dissonant Princess, sequel to TTP). I tell him that Only Slightly Dead is about grief. I tell him that when my agent read it, he told me that not all the characters could be gay.

(Agent also said they found the “romance” between the two adult characters more compelling than anything between the main characters, despite this exchange in the second chapter:

So Only Slightly Dead got shelved for years.)

My student asked me why I worked at our school if I wrote books. I explained to him that publishing, both traditional and self publishing, is not necessarily lucrative. I also told him that even if I did make a shit ton of money from my books (I make a little), that I’d still work where I did. It was never about making money.

“What’s it about, then?” he asked.

“Making sure at least one person feels less alone. I did that.”

Now it’s about making as many people feel as seen as I can, really. People who have survived attempts on their lives, people with EDs, people with broken families, people struggling with addiction, people who don’t do well in school, people whose finest qualities cannot be measured by a test or a paper or a letter, people who are TOO MUCH, people experiencing grief, people living with HIV. You get me. I know all of these people in real life and I am some of these people.

My personal experience with trad pub is not a blanket experience, but you will be asked to alter what you wrote, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse. I decided that, in my case, it was for worse. My stories are their finest at their most feral.

Now I write queer books about fucked up protagonists getting to save the day or finding their happy ending. I get to publish their stories on their birthdays. I get to illustrate them inside and out. I had no idea this was exactly what I wanted.

This week, while my students frantically wrote and revised sci-fi short stories, I said to them: don’t question it. Be feral. Keep going. Be feral.

Be feral out there.

[theflagscene]

Growing up is realizing how toxic TharnType was.. like really

🤭🤭🤭 Ngl, when I got this message a couple days ago I legit giggled. I was not expecting it, and it took me a second to figure out where it came from until I remembered my answer for day eleven of the 15 Day BL Challenge. Then the Booping happened and the next day I was at the hospital with my dad all day because he was going in for heart surgery—it went well btw—so I just got around to replying to this today. I apologize for that my dear anon 💕

I felt kind of lucky because I came into TharnType when the second season was about to air, so I had heard of some spoilers about the first season, plus I had seen Love By Chance multiple times so I was familiar with Type and some of the other side characters—Techo, Tum, Tar, Kengkla, Technic, etc.

I legit gave Mame a pass when watching LBC, not everyone’s first novel is great and the screenplay did what it could, ya know? But as time went on, as a queer person I started to get the sense that she was one of those rare hetero writers that actually do kind of fetishize gay men, which I really didn’t want to think was still happening in—at the time—2019.

But after I watched both TharnType seasons, and LBC and DSN, all of which have interconnected storylines and characters, I couldn’t help but not think that. Which is why by 2021, I sort of stopped giving her the benefit of the doubt as a writer even though I desperately wanted her to do better, so much better. And to be fair, Wedding Plan and Love Sea were both okay, I think those have been her least offensive scripts to date.

But getting back to TharnType lore, I remember actually writing up a ‘problematic trope’ list in my notes app whilst watching the series and oh boy, it’s a doozy! Let’s break it down, for anyone who (somehow) has not sat through the trash fire that was the highest heat BLs of 2019/2020 and the various storylines that tie back to TharnType that span four different series.

Heavy trigger warning for under the cut: SA/r*pe/DV/ped*phila/blackmail/ab*se/stalking/in*est/predatory behaviour/emotional manipulation and ironically enough, homophobia.

Right off the bat, the first thing in the very first episode was the comparison of gay men to pedophiles. Type was 100% allowed his trauma from what happened to him, but if Mame had done even an ounce of investigation into actual statistics, she’d know that pedophiles typically don’t identify as any type of sexuality outside of being attracted to underage people, that is their sexual preference. So no, a man assaulting a boy does not make him gay, it makes him a pedophile, full stop.

Violent homophobia: Not just outright blatant hate speech but Type is violent towards gay people, and specifically Tharn when he finds out that he’s roommates with a gay man. Also Type’s father literally chases him and Tharn with a machete when he finds out that Type is dating a man, so yeah.

Sexual assault and rape: Tharn assaults Type in the shower as a way to ‘get back at him’ for being homophobic, playing into the classic predatory gay stereotype. Techno is drugged, stalked, blackmailed and date raped by Kengkla (LBC). Tar is gang raped and was ‘so broken’ that he literally ran away to France (LBC/TT). Fiat forces a kiss onto Type against his will (DSN)

Domestic abuse: Type hits Tharn many times throughout their relationship, he constantly slaps, punches and kicks him and yet always is allowed to get away with it because of his traumatic past and jealousy issues. Uh, no, no no. You do not get to abuse your partner or anyone in your life because of your trauma, get thee into therapy!

Stalking: Kengkla is obsessed with Techno, he stalks him and often pays his best friend Technic—Techno’s little brother—to snap pictures of the older man when he’s sleeping or changing to give to Kengkla, as well many other things. It should also be stated that they are high school students whilst Techno is a university student, so they are putting Techno at risk with the law because Kengkla is underage. (LBC)

Lhong stalks Tharn for years, even going so far as to run off any potential suitors and hire bikers to rape Tharn’s—extremely underage—boyfriend Tar. (TT)

Fiat stalks Type and dismisses that he has a boyfriend, not caring about it because he’s convinced that he’s in love with Type after being treated by him for a sports injury (TT2)

Incest: Tum, Tar’s older half brother is in love with him and has been for many years. He hates Tharn for breaking Tar’s heart so badly that he ran away to a different country, not knowing about Tar’s rape. Tharn is the only one he tells and to Tharn’s credit, doesn’t tell anyone out of respect to Tar. Eventually it comes out and Tar tells Tum what happens and also tells him that his trauma from the event has left him sex repulsed and broken, unable to love or trust anyone… besides Tum that is! Of course, because Tar loved his big bro all along as well.

Emotional manipulation: Ummm *gestures wildly to every character* take your pick!

Blackmail: Kengkla and Technic—again I cannot stress this enough, Techno is Technic’s brother!—drug Techno during a party, strip him and then put him in bed naked with Kengkla. When he wakes up the next morning with a teenager in his bed and no memory of what happened, he rightfully panics. Kengkla then tells him that they had sex—up until this point Techno had no interest in men—and Kengkla promises that he won’t tell anyone what happened if Techno will sleep with him one more time, Kengkla wants to lose his virginity to him since they didn’t actually have sex, Techno was passed out due to GHB that had been slipped into his drink. As of TharnType2 it is heavily implied that Techno and Kengkla are still together, and that Techno has no idea about the truth behind how he ended up with an underage boyfriend his first year of university.

Dishonourable mentions: Kidnapping, slut shaming, toxic jealousy, racism, classism, misogyny, mishandling of mental health issues, a grown man being perversely obsessed with a teenage girl and extremely harmful LGBTQ+ stereotypes.

Seriously, nothing about TharnType was good or romantic. It was toxic waste and even as a trash/hate watch, I could not enjoy it. I don’t use this term lightly, but the whole series just gives me the ick. And remember those were just all the interconnected storylines that directly involved Tharn and Type, none of those touch on AePete, TinCan or PhugunCirrus. All of which have their own issues, many many issues, but it really does seem like TharnType are the atomic bomb of BL couple fuckery.

Whew! 😅

[originalwinnercheesecake]

CBS Ghost’s: Why do they all have to be paired into couples now.

Hello Again. So on whole I really like cbs ghosts, but I have noticed with a lot of the episodes in season 2 my opinion of most epsidoes has been that they are a mixed bag. If the A plot is good the B blot won’t be, if the B plot is good then the A plot will just be awful. C plots are never more than maybe’s. I have been going over what parts of episodes I like and what parts  dislike and one of the parts I have decided I really don’t like is the sudden push to pair all of the ghosts up into couples.

The house residents are all a found family, that been true since the beginning. But in season one their kinship is kinda “island of misfits”. When you look into the ghost’s pasts you see that none of them really had that great of family’s to began with. Hetty, Pete, and Alberta all had unhappy relationships where their significant others cheated, and in Hetty and Alberta’s cases were also total crooks. Trevor and Thor were abandoned by their closest friends. Issac, in addition to being in a marriage he could never fully be happy in, he’s also implied to have been the butt-monkey of his social group so to speak. Flower was stuck in multiple cults/communes that drugged her and wouldn’t let her speak to outsiders. But now in death they all have each other, and even if they are often arguing, even if the property border forces them all to stay together,  even though they were all trapped in a pergatiory they all wished to someday leave.. at least they all had each other for comrades/shipmates/bro’s. And maybe when you think about it that was more than they had when they were alive....

All that was fine and well. But why in season 2 do they keep trying to pair and push everybody into couples? Why is that suddenly so needed, and such a big focus? What makes this worse is that while the rivalries (which no longer getting the attention they deserve) were funny, and the friendships (also not getting enough spotlight anymore) where cute/sweet, A lot of these romances are really bland, boring, and seem slapped to together just because these two weren’t in a couple already.

I mean let’s go over the couples

Sam&Jay: Our resident livings. Honestly these two are adorable together, and might eventually join my top 5 favorite sit-come couples list (The list is currently Moritcia&Gomez, Chandler&Monica, Red&Kitty, Hall&Lois...). What I love most abut these two is that they are both such quarkie individuals but because of their different quarks they are able to take turns being the sane one and, not necissarly grounding each other, but giving advice to the other on how to navigate what weird things happen. In just writing this I realize they are kinda like a sit-come, modern day, version of Fry&Leela who are in my opinion one of the best cartoon couples. But this is supposed to be about Sam&Jay. I like Sam&Jay. They’re crazy but they work

Pete&Alberta: This is the other couple I really like, and I am sad that their development was largely pushed to the side/just plane stopped in season 2. The show writers said they wanted them to be a slow burn, because they were not sure if Pete was really Alberta’s type. But then looking at Pete and Alberta’s past (Pete’s cheating wife, Alberta’s two-timing bootleg boyfriend, and the mob guy she also dated) the pair both had picked the wrong type of people when alive. Pete see’s Alberta for the amazing and deserving person she is. Alberta encourages Pete to take some risks and act with some gumption, while also being one of the only ghosts to respect Pete for being such a nice guy. Can the show back off or take a break with some of the lamer couples below to focus on these two.

Issac&Nigel: The Gay couple. I already know I am going to get crap for saying I am not crazy about them this season. Please hear me out before you flame. I liked them in season 1. Their awkwardness together was cute. I liked that Nigel never tried to push Issac, and I was really happy When Issac admitted to both Nigel and the other ghost (who already knew of course) that he liked Nigel. If you find my ranking list I put Nigel kinda low, but that was because we didn’t see him enough to really get to know him. That was one of the things I was excited for in season 2. Halfway through the season its been a disappointment. Nigel seems to have no personality. Because of this he and Issac cannot develop any fun banter or an interesting raptor;personality wise they are just to unbalanced. In addition there is no real build to their relationship. Like according to the Christmas episode it took 10 episodes for Issac to be comfortable kissing Nigel, but before that their was not mention of Issac having any hesitation in that part. In episode 2x01we learn Nigel like watching ants (do nothing). Okay so is Nigel into Anthropology? Cool that’s something to his character. Can I see more of him getting excited to show Issac different bugs? Issac likes musical theater right? So  have him pester Sam to put on a video of a play (something that’s not Hamilton) for him to show Nigel on a date. How are things between the pair and Jenkins? I do not want them to break up, but please show do better by them.

Thor&Flower: I have seen a lot of posts by people saying that they aren’t crazy about this pair. I agree, I don’t ship them. I didn’t like Flower much in season 1, she seemed like she was just a generic Hippy. Her and Thor possibly becoming a couple once she got comfortable with monogamy (weird didn’t Thor also talk a bunch about viking origi’s in season1 ) seemed like grasping at straws for something to do with both characters in season 2. I did not think Thor needed a love interest then: He had great friendships with Sam, Sass, Hetty, and now in season 2 we are getting more of his friendship with Issac and him trying to be a father to Bjorn. Flower’‘s development in season 2 has been awesome as well. We have seen more of Protester Flower, learned more about what the cult’s cost her, her relationships with her brothers (writers have apparently already been looking into older actors to play one of Flowers brothers should he decide to visit the B&B). We have gotten more on her friendship with Alberta, and her helping Hetty learn to embrace feelings of pleasure (best story arch of the season)... Thor and Flower is a forced ship that neither character needs to be interesting. Just drop it.

Hetty&Trevor: I did not see that coming. I really didn’t. I saw a post that tweeted Hetty maybe having a romance  this season. I figured maybe it would be with one of Nigel’s two friends (We don’t know Baxter’s sexuality and Jenkins could be bi). I was literally like Pete likes Alberta, Issac is gay, Thor would be to weird since he was basically her nanny as a child, I cannot imagine her or Sass being the slightest bit interested in each other, and of course she cannot stand Trevor... Yet here we are. I am just fine with these two hooking up, but that is it. If they became a couple, then knowing this show, they would start getting along. I like them being frenemies, They are funny frenemies.

Sass&car-ghost girl: Sass was the last one left. His one sided crush on Chiki went no where and could never be, and now they have brought This new car-ghost girl in and made it jump-out-and-hit-you-in-the-face clear that Sass is smitten with her at first sight... Sass is my second favorite ghost (Alberta is my favorite) and I think he is the funniest one. But the way the actor play’s Sass: mostly apathetic, with a dry wit humor.. yeah that doesn’t translate well when he tries to be caring or romantic. Sass is a good story teller, and a fun Bro, but he is not really a romantic guy, and I am honestly wishing the writers had gone the fan theory route of making him Ace.

Judy Farnsby & Bjorn: I actually really like the idea of these two being together. Give me more of Judy showing up behind her son and his wife and calling them both terrible disappointment’s, only now have Bjorn show up with her and talking as if he is Farnsby’s stepfather.

[knowlessman]

Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and quirks, eternally retold (bnha) s4e6-9 (nice)

"so many heroes at this meeting. what is this?" we've had first dodgeball arc, but what about - shot

so I guess bubble girl breathes through her boobs or something? (tbh we might have seen her power earlier, I forget)

(Centipeder is onscreen) …the sheer incongruity. the sheer dapperness. they look like fuckin Mr Mistoffelees. if mr mistoffelees had an entire bug for a head

"a drug that destroys quirks!" "destroys" is a pretty strong word -- "it damaged his mutant genes" …huh. so enough of it might remove a quirk for good. -- "human cells and blood were inside!" aye, gettin closer to that one x-men movie again.

a kid's toy robot, a pokemon, and teenage two-eyed Pleakley

"my Foresight requires a 24-hour interval between activations" it's a one-a-day power and you spent it on interviewing an intern. -- clairvoyance abilities just suck, when they aren't just cryptic prophecies or used solely for their owner's amusement. When they're on a character who actually has screentime, the lengths writers have to go to in order to write around them, and all the fine print they have to tell you so that you don't immediately go "but this character can just solve the entire plot at-will, why aren't they doing that?" just get tiresome and distracting; the excuses pull you right out of the fun.

another after-credits scene. you're killin me here -- "don't let her feel like running away" pfft. no pressure, huh? just decide what someone feels for them.

"heroes don't cry!" "nah, heroes cry when they need to" …zuko, I don't even fully know how abusive your dad is yet. how are you the only level-headed character in this show (barring maybe yaoyorozu, off the top of my head); like, the only one with actually-good advice. how are YOU of all people the Uncle Iroh

k, so the naysayer's name is Rock Lock; thanks, subtitles. I like him, but I have a feeling he's gonna get hisself killed or retired because he dared to criticize the protagonist and disagree with good guys whose names we already know. -- [writes up a rant about shaun of the dead and vilifying naysayers even when they have a point, then looks up stuff about the character I'm thinking of and apparently forgot how much bad karma they'd piled onto that character. …now I'm just annoyed that they also made the only character in that with a functioning brain an actual asshole. it's like watching bakugo have a bright idea.] -- I also like that Rock Lock's power reminds me of the glitched Immovable Rod paintbrushes from Oblivion

!!!!!

does mirio have so much costume because it locks in place so he can just phase back into it? that'd at least combo with his power instead of make an even bigger fool out of him than the school uniform does -- "it's made out of his own hair" so what you're telling me is that they could've made a custom school uniform that wouldn't phase off him, and didn't. …also for some reason he still has that visor that he can't phase with.

(tamaki's flashbacks) turns out if you give Tintin a jacket and a ponytail, suddenly he's Edward Elric. -- "you keep calling me the sun, but you're the suneater." gay. <3

Team Trash (three of the eight bullets of whatever, idk) are pretty cool for a one-off (?) villain team. got backstories and all that, and they don't even have a token queer knife-licker.

I thought Sato was just Choji from Naruto, but it turns out that's Fat Gum.

[freehismindatnite]

Star Wars Modern AU headcannons ft. Single Dad Anakin pt 2

I managed to get brain rot from my own au lmao

Anyways this focuses more on the adults bc I've been thinking

Asajj was on Beat Bobby Flay once

She lost but people are coming to her restaurant more because they think it was rigged

So btw thranto is canon in this universe because I said so tee hee

Anyways Eli eventually leaves his accountant job and starts a restaurant called Cantina Tex-Mex because this is Texas, Eli Vanto is not portrayed as white so I made him Chilean and Mexican. ALSO tex mex is very good if done right.

He has an unreasonable amount of teenagers there on Fridays

He gave them a discount bc Asajj told (read: threatened) him to

Anyways Thrawn also makes specifically 2 gallons of Puerto Rican Chocolate Caliente (hot chocolate) every friday because he wants to watch the world burn

Literally every teen and tween loves that hot chocolate but he just makes 2 gallons then watches the mad scramble

Asajj makes a diner food and Romanian food mix

It's really good for date nights and the Skywalkers (plus Rex, Ahsoka,Barriss, and Obi-wan) to eat at for family dinners if something special happens

It's cool as hell she makes like Sarmale burgers so she has the patty be 2 actual Sarmale. Which is minced pork, spices, onions, and rice rolled in sour cabbage leaves and served with her hashbrowns potatos.

She serves Pepsi because she is a sadist

Ahsoka is a comedian as I have said before

Her content is all written by herself no ghost writers

She has had 2 Netflix specials so far

One of her jokes is about how her and Thrawn became enemies

Dr. Barriss and Eli are good friends so haha rivalry but your spouse will smack your dumbass for it.

They don't hit their spouses btw they just roll their eyes and pack up their crochet stuff.

Barriss and Eli met in middle school when other kids were being assholes to Barriss. Anyways they were friends ever since.

Maul, Savage, and Mother Talzin come visit one day

It's hilarious

No one really likes Maul

People think Savage is v nice

Mother Talzin is this 6 foot lady she terrifies the town minus the Skywalker twins and Los tres caballeros (Ahsoka, Anakin, and Obi-wan)

Anakin is a force of nature

He's an idiot with a clone of him

No like Leia is literally very much like him

Luke looks like him but other than that he's just Padme

Leia has done several things her father did

Everyone found it hilarious

Till she tried to jump off the roof to fly when she was 10

Poor baby had a big scar

Luke is also a fucking idiot I'd like to remind you, he has a insufferable martyr complex

Seriously Ahsoka, Barriss, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Luke were playing Bedwars once and Anakin and Luke kept throwing themselves onto the fray

Annoying as hell sometimes

Anakin literally just told Ahsoka that doing drugs was cringe once so she just didn't

Anakin did though Obi-wan lectured him on why drugs are bad and it went in one ear and out the other

And by drugs I mean weed

Because it's my fake USA so I will make it how I want it

Weed is legal now fuck you

Anakin just calls things cringe then leaves

Like he told Palpatine he was cringe once

I dont think Palpatine ever recovered

Also Palpatine is homophobic

Lol he lives in gay people texas

Shaak Ti my beloved

Aayla and Bly are the peak of cool aunt and uncle

They are the aunt and uncle who take you to rated r movies when your 13

Anyways that's it I just needed to get that out of my system

[buddielove]

Hi! I'm a gay fan of 911 and I have a question about the whole Buddie fandom. As much as I like Buck and Eddie, it's frustrating that a HUGE part of the fandom is pushing for these two characters to get together instead of putting energy into supporting Hen & Carla and Michael & Dave. Not to mention Carlos and TK in Lone Star. Can you explain to me the appeal of wanting these two men together? Wouldn't it be more interesting to see two heterosexual males just be able to bond in a non-toxic fashion? That's something we don't get to see often on television.

Hey! This is MAD long lmao I am so sorry! You caught me on a day I felt like talking! Also this took like a year to answer you lolololol. This does have a few ʻhot takesʻ so please be warned! So like in this essay....

So first I am also apart of the LGBTQIA+ community, so I do understand how it could come across as a fetish or being non supportive of the current canonically LGBTQIA+ characters, however I think a lot of the interest around Buddie and the want for them to be confirmed as a couple is how they are being written. Me personally I knew since s2 e1 Buck and Eddie were written not as rivals but as two people who would eventually become friends, but it wasn’t until the Christmas episode with the elf assuming Buck was Chris’s dad and Eddie’s partner that I was like ‘hold on!’ because I was really hoping Abbey would return and I didn’t see Eddie as a possible Buck live interest because of that. The elf’s comment wasn’t played off like most other shows would (think Dean and Sam arriving anywhere in Supernatural) it made me go back and look at the other episodes to see exactly how Buck and Eddie were being framed/written. And as we have moved into further seasons I think there has been a shift in how Buddie is being written, in s3 it was very much like two people progressing into a deeper friendship then the blood clot/lawsuit gets in the way and they both have to deal with emotions surrounding that, then Buck’s response to Eddie being trapped (we see how is he when Boddy is trapped in a fire WITH A GUNMAN, it’s emotional but not to the point is is with Eddie), even the love interests feel very pushed on us and there’s so little banter between Buddie about their gfs and how they feel about these new beginnings. It feels off, not like a friendship in the slightest, more like two people trying to force something and not wanting to deal with any other feelings. Then when Eddie gets shot and reveals Buck is Chris’s legal Guardian in the event Eddie dies, that’s huge, and he did this after only a year of knowing Buck (I have friends with kids. I’ve known one of them for FIVE years, I’m at their house every week, the kid calls me family. I’m person #10 on the list of ‘who gets my kid if I die’, not #1 lol) It just feels like it’s all building up to something, and people are getting tired of waiting for that something! We’re all emotionally tired from the past two years, and probably from many shows queerbaiting us and this is something that could happen, seems to be something the actors are ok with and the fans want. So why do they keep drawing it out. This isn’t about us demanding they ignore the chance to write a healthy platonic male friendship, or forcing two characters to be gay, it’s about holding the writers to what they’ve implied and seeing what could come of it.

Also think of it like this; If Buddie is confirmed it will still be a good example of a healthy friendship which then developed into something else, like Booth/Bones! Showing the natural progression of friendship to relationship that happens a lot in real life. It’s two men who previously (on screen at least) have only been with woman, but now they have an emotionally connection with someone which they then develop and explore. This could be 911’s first nontoxic depiction of two gay characters coming together, because sorry not sorry the canon couples aren’t perfect (which does humanize them) but they also reenforce harmful troupes that plaque the LGBTQIA+ community, which I’m sure you understand: TK was a drug addict, who only got with Carlos at first cause he was hot and sex was TK’s new addition (all gay men are sex addicts who do drugs and sleep with anything that moves). Carlos was ashamed and wanted to keep TK on the downlow (poc gay men want to pretend to be straight but have free access to gay sex). Hen cheated on Karen seemingly the first chance she got (lesbians can’t handle monogamy when pushed, and cheat on their long term partners). All known and documented troupes that happen far too often.

I’m not saying Buddie is some gay jesus ship that’s gonna save the entertainment industry but if done right it could prove to be one of the few healthy depictions of two men getting into a gay relationship we have. If they plan it out correctly, show us the relationship development, like they did with Maddie/Chim for example, Buddie could be used as a positive example of a gay fictional relationship (I really could go into depth about this. I probably should tbh).

As for not supporting Hen and KAREN, or Michael and DAVID, I think fans do support them! The writers don’t. If you read fanfics Henren and Michael/David are featured heavily in many fics, and ik some people might say ‘well they’re only there so Buddie can talk about their gay side!!’ but both these couples have their own fans and fanfic tags! They aren’t just plot devices in Buddie stories. There is a huge side of the fandom that supports Henren and wants to see more of them and their family. Same with Michael and David, during the episode where Michael and Bobby team up to find that plastic surgeon who was working illegally many people where ecstatic that we were getting more Michael/David content and that David was getting more than a couple lines. But sadly it seems like the writers only want to delve into these story lines when they need filler, they even miss opportunities to include these other LGBTQIA+ characters when it makes sense;

(Someone came for me about this but I am going to bring it up again)

When Chris is sad and wants more human connection, instead of bring Harry + Michael/David and Denny+Nia+Henren back into the picture (and yes I understood at the time the pandemic was bad (lmao still is!!), but all the actors at some point would have/had crossed over into each other’s ‘bubbles’, so ALL the actors would have been exposed to each other so getting the children together with adults they had ALREADY been with during shooting wouldn’t have been a super spreader event) but instead they brought in Ana after only two on screen dates and pretended like it was a logical thing for someone who’s up to that point been extremely careful with their child.

They really could have pushed the ‘118 is a family!’ message here and included the canonically gay supporting characters, and the lesbian main character(s) but they did not and instead chose to push the Ana/Eddie coupling even though they hadn’t properly developed it yet. The writers themselves don’t seem to care about developing their canonically gay characters and including them more than they have to but fans are continuously developing Henren and Michael/David with hc and fics.

I’d like to use your logic against you for a second, in s1 we have a very healthy, platonic friendship between Chim/Bobby but that got written out to the point they are more like boss/employee unless the scene calls for them to seem closer, we now have Bobby and Michael friendship but again we hardly see Michael. On Lone Star we have Owen and Judd as a really, really good example of a healthy male friendship but we see Judd more often with Tommy now then we do with Owen, and in s2 it’s overshadowed by Owen trusting Charlie from Twilight and constantly getting fucked over! Why can’t the writter just be happy with these happy, healthy, emotionally well male-male friendship they’ve already included and expand upon them. There’s enough drama because the show literally involves burning buildings and people’s lives being at risk from some natural/man made disaster ever 12 seconds. Does it need to have so much interpersonal conflict and male peacocking??

[transthaumaturge]

Squirrel Girl is Super Gay for her Roommate and I Want Everyone to Know

A gay infodump of sensible length by Rachel Tikvah

ALRIGHT, SO The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was the very first comic that I ever read regularly, back when I was looking for more stories with strong female protagonists but didn't really know why. Back then I just thought I really liked strong female characters and not that I was being gay on main, but now I know the truth. The comic had a 5-year run, and it was the first time that Squirrel Girl, AKA Doreen Green, had had her own series. She had a brief run in the mid-2000's where she was established as someone who could beat up Thanos with her bare hands well, more like squirrel hands but was mostly a joke character that happened to be incredibly buff and had indestructible plot armor. USG decided that Doreen's next major life goal would be to enroll in college to become a computer scientist, because her writer, Ryan North, is really into computer science and they basically gave him free rein over Squirrel Girl canon for five whole years. Like, a solid third of the plots are solved with some kind of computer science smarts. It’s really cool. Anyway this is Doreen in one of the gayest solo pictures I could find of her on short notice, which is also one of the variant covers from the actual series:

And this is her college roommate, Nancy Whitehead:

I'm like, 99% certain that Ryan North intended for them to end up as a couple and Disney!Marvel told him no. So he decided to make them AS GAY FOR EACH OTHER AS POSSIBLE without explicitly saying that they were a couple, and it ended up going under the radar. What follows is evidence for that claim. I’m going to put a "read more” after this so it doesn’t clutter everyone’s dashboards, but please read on if you’re interested. There’s a lot of cute gayness after this point. I’m also going to put all of the image descriptions at the end, since they take up a lot of space and I don’t want to break up the flow of the post. Finally, a quick spoiler alert for one arc in the middle of the series and a couple major plot points from the final few issues.

AND THEY WERE ROOMMATES

So for a while it was just kind of hinted at that they’re in a relationship, mostly because they were basically domestic life partners for like, two whole years in-universe before the comic run ended. But it really came to a head with an arc that was ran about 2/3 of the way through the series. Some pictures of them being, like, so cute together in general and/or talking about how much they care about each other before I get to that arc, though: 

Also Doreen describes her and Nancy's cat as "co-parented" in one of the last issues:

ANYWAY, THE ARC. THE HYPERTIME ARC. So one of the villains created for the Squirrel Girl run (I think they liked making weird shit canon just because they could) was a dude who went by the name "EpicCrimez". He’s a crime streamer. He livestreams his crimes to an online audience. I don't know. *Throws up hands*

He had some kind of laser gun that he built out of scavenged alien tech but didn't really know what it did, so he shot it at Doreen and Nancy for kicks. It shot them into hypertime, so suddenly the rest of the world was moving at a fraction of the pace that they were. They were moving so quickly that they were slated to live out their entire lives over the span of a single weekend if they didn't figure out how to reverse the effects. And...they did. Live out their entire lives together. For the two of them, they were the only two people in the world. There were other people, but they looked like statues unless you spent a very long time observing them. Doreen and Nancy grew old together in a world where they only had each other. This is an incredibly cute domestic scene from a little while after they found themselves in hypertime:

Gosh, I wish I could find more official art from that arc of them just living together, it was so good. But the point is, they were both old by the time that Nancy figured out how to get them out of hypertime. And it wasn't ideal. Their bio signatures were stored in the gun that EpicCrimez shot, and they could essentially "reboot" their bodies from when they were first shot and send themselves back into the regular timestream. But they wouldn't remember anything about the life that they had shared together. Nancy almost didn't want to do it. She raised the possibility of them just living out the rest of their lives together, because she didn't want to forget their life together. This is the conversation they had:

"I don't regret any of it. I don't want to lose it, and I don't want to lose us." "You're not getting rid of me that easily." Every time I look at that last picture, which took up an entire page of the comic, I start to cry. We’re seeing the final moments of two people who love each other more than anything, who were each other's entire lives, savoring their last moments together and wondering what the future holds. Sacrificing the life that they built together so that their younger selves could live a better, fuller one. Dying in each other’s arms, scared but comforted by the fact that they had each other. And then the arc ends, and they can't remember anything, so the status quo is restored. They have some paintings they made of each other while they were living together in hypertime, but they move on pretty quickly without ever knowing the significance of those lived decades. Still, it's clear in the arcs that follow and the adventures they embarked on afterward that they would die for each other. All of that continues until the end of the last arc. Their shared apartment's been blown up at this point by a supervillain who wanted to ruin Doreen’s life before eventually killing her. And in the aftermath of the fight, they're sifting through the wreckage for anything that survived (don't worry, the cat got out in time) when they find the picture that they painted of themselves during the hypertime arc:

They have a really cute conversation about how this chapter of their life is over, but they're going to be okay and they're going to build a new life together. And then Nancy basically tells Doreen that she can't live without her:

And then Doreen says something super queer-coded about how she likes the idea of the world knowing her secret identity now:

On the very last page of the comic, after all of the action is over and the series is about to end, they're talking to each other in what's supposed to be a twitter thread and Doreen asks Nancy a very thinly veiled question about whether she still wants to spend time with her now that her identity's out. She pretends it's about a class project, but it's really not about the class project. Here's how that conversation goes:

With no knowledge of what happened during the weekend when they shared their entire lives together, without ever having heard Doreen say it to her before, Nancy’s heart still knows which words to choose. "...you're not getting rid of me that easily. <3" I believe that the author of the series, Ryan North, did as much as he possibly could to portray them as a couple without saying it outright. And as the last piece of evidence to support that claim, I want to share a response he wrote in one of the series' last-ever letter columns:

"as for more Doreen and Nancy, I hope so too. A Squirrel Girl book without Nancy would feel like--like--like some sort of hypothetical "Super" "Man" book without an equally hypothetical "Lois" "Lane"!" It's easy to write off this analysis as wishful thinking, or as a misreading of the subtext. But when the author of the series says that these two characters are meant to always be together and compares them to one of the most famous couples in any comic series ever, it's clear that there's more to it than that. 

Some Additional Thoughts: 1) Doreen and Nancy are both probably bisexual or pansexual, since they both expressed romantic interest in men throughout the series but they’re both clearly interested in each other too. There might be an element of demiromanticism there as well if part of the reason that they’re into each other romantically is because of how emotionally close they’ve become over the years. I want to make sure that that facet of their romantic orientations doesn’t get erased, because bi and pan folks get erased enough as it is. Neither Doreen nor Nancy are lesbians, just super-cool WLWs.

2) HERE’S WHAT THE ISSUE 50 VARIANT COVER LOOKED LIKE

That’s NOT a fun, totally straight way to pose with your platonic gal pal. They’re so incredibly cute together! I have no words! In Closing If you got this far, thank you so much for letting me talk to you about a comic that’s very important to me, and a couple in that comic that I care about very much. I spent way too long making this (six hours and counting), mostly in writing the image descriptions, and I’m very proud of my work but very tired now. Hyperfixation is a hell of a drug. If this resonated with you, please consider reblogging it so that more folks can see it. If not, even a like is nice. I’d also love to engage with people who have their own thoughts, so feel free to leave some comments in the notes if you’ve got an idea/a reaction/any additional cute Doreen/Nancy scenes that you’d like to share with me. At any rate, this post has gone on long enough and I don’t want to ask y’all to read any more than you have to. So have a great day, good morning / afternoon / night, and stay safe. Thanks again for reading! ~Rachel Tikvah, AKA @transthaumaturge Image Descriptions: Image 1: [ID: Squirrel Girl, a young woman with light skin, is posing in front of a brick wall that she seems to have crashed through, leaving a perfect outline of her body. She’s facing away but looking backwards over her shoulder at us and smiling. She’s flexing upward with her right arm and has her left fist resting on her left hip. Her sidekick, a squirrel named Tippy-Toe, is standing in the cutout she left in the wall and is making the same exact pose while wearing a light pink bow around her neck. Squirrel Girl is wearing brown lace-up boots, fur-lined hot pants over grey tights, and a brown fur-lined jacket with sleeves that come up to her forearms and a symbol of an acorn embroidered into the back. She’s also wearing a hairband with fake squirrel ears on it over short reddish-brown hair. She has a large squirrel tail coming out of her hot pants that sweeps down in a curve behind her lower legs. The illustration is drawn so that everything is bathed in the light of a sunset, and Doreen is casting shadows on the wall in front of her.] Image 2: [ID: Two frames depicting a scene between Doreen and Nancy in their college dorm room, with many cardboard boxes still not unpacked and sitting on a bare bed mattress. Nancy Whitehead is a young woman with dark brown skin and short, curly black hair. She's wearing black tights, a white dress-top, and a yellow cardigan over that. Her arms are crossed as she holds her white cat, Mew, against her chest. Doreen is wearing grey tights and a black long-sleeve shirt with a wide collar and white stripes across the chest. She's holding Tippy-Toe up to Nancy with both hands so she can see her better. The following dialogue ensues: Nancy: "A squirrel? But weren't you the one who was all about pets not being allowed in--" Doreen: "Yeah, I know. But this really interesting person I met today told me that obeying an unjust law is itself unjust." Nancy: "...You know, I was worried I'd get a weird roommate, but you're all right, Doreen Green."] Image 3: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are both sitting on a lavender-pink couch in nightclothes. Doreen has short, orange hair. She is wearing a loose-fitting grey long-sleeve shirt and steel-blue cutoff shorts; Nancy has cropped black hair. She is wearing a dark purple top with sleeves that come down to her upper arms, and loose-fitting navy-blue shorts that come down to her lower thighs. Doreen is side-hugging Nancy as she says, with an ecstatically happy smile, “Nancy, you’re the greatest. You know that, right?” Nancy gives Doreen a full smile as she responds, “I’d always suspected it, but it is nice to have it confirmed.”] Image 4: [ID: Nancy is shown from the shoulders up. She has short, curly black hair. She’s wearing large, disc-shaped gold dangle earrings, and a red jacket with prominent shoulders and a yellow collar. She’s fixing the observer with an angry, determined stare as she says, “She knows this man wouldn’t dream about betraying her, or he’d have to answer to me.”] Image 5: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are eating breakfast at the brown, circular kitchen table in their apartment. Doreen’s wearing a skin-tight athletic crop top that’s striped in black, red, white, and blue. Her arm muscles are well-defined and clearly visible as she puts a spoon in her mouth, closing her eyes as she does so. She has a bowl of cereal in front of her, and half a banana in front of that. Nancy is sitting to her left in a pink camisole top that’s also exposing her muscles, scrolling through something on her smartphone. Her hair is in a yellow fabric wrap that’s knotted on one side of her head. A cup of coffee sits in front of her. The clear blue sky is visible through the window centered on the wall behind them.] Image 6: [ID: Nancy and Doreen are facing away from the vantage point, walking towards an Empire State University campus building and holding hands with their fingers intertwined. Nancy is wearing a long knee-length grey coat and black knee-high boots, with a baby-blue side bag hanging from her left shoulder. Doreen is wearing a magenta sweatshirt with the periwinkle-lined hood down, light brown form-fitting denim pants, and black ankle-high boots, with a dark brown side bag hanging from her right shoulder. Trees and bushes hem the walkway in on either side. The building in front of them is dark red, with glass doors and a row of floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor. Doreen is saying “...we’re just going to have to take the long way around.”] Image 7: [ID: Doreen is facing towards the vantage point and is visible from the legs up, standing in front of a pile of rubble in the background. She’s wearing high-waisted light blue shorts over black tights, and a red windbreaker with sleeves ending at her upper arms that’s opened to reveal a white t-shirt underneath. Tippy-Toe is sitting on her shoulder. There are two people facing Doreen, each slightly in frame and silhouetted in black against the light of the setting sun. Doreen is fixing them with an angry, determined expression, resting her right fist at her hip while she gesticulates with her left hand and says, “So! I don’t know about you all, but Melissa kidnapping my friend and blowing up my life and my house and almost blowing up my co-parented cat makes me feel like giving her a piece of my mind. Friends...”] Image 8: [ID: A full comic page. EpicCrimez is looking like a dork in a green and black skin-tight jumpsuit, bright red ski goggles, and a green wig cap with his brown hair sticking out the back in a mullet. He’s standing inside a jewelry store and holding up a fist of expensive gems and pearls-on-strings as holds up his smartphone and speaks into it. He’s facing off against Squirrel Girl, with her allies Koi Boi and Chipmunk Hunk on her right, and Nancy and Brain Drain on the left. The following scene ensues: EpicCrimez: “And for those of you just tuning in, welcome to another successful heist by your boy EpicCrimez, streaming live! Now with 10% more live crime action than any other streamer! Don’t forget to like and subscribe!! I know some of you in EpicCrimez Nation have been forgetting to do that lately. Not acceptable.” Squirrel Girl: “You picked the wrong small business to rob, crime-initiator! Because this mall is protected by super heroes.” Brain Drain: “HELLO” SG: “And also an unrelated civilian friend I brought along too!” Nancy: (Not looking up from her phone) “ ‘Sup.” EC: “Check it out--Squirrel Girl and her miscellaneous friends are here! It’s action you won’t find on any other channel!” SG: “Are you...streaming your robberies?” (Nancy pockets her phone) EC: “Yeah I am! For money reasons! And with you “heroes” in it, I’ll make even more!” SG: (Whispering to Nancy:) “Question: a fight scene just gets him more traffic, which lets him profit from this crime even more--so does this mean we don’t fight him?” N: (Whispering back:) “I feel like letting him go causes more harm, but I look forward to us teasing apart the moral implications of this later.” SG: “Nice.” SG: (No longer whispering:) “I’ll like and subscribe, EpicCrimez! I’ll like fighting crime, and subscribe... to a worldview wherein the strong protect the weak!” EC: “Oh my gosh, are you like wholesome Spider-Man or something??” At the bottom of the page, small text says: “Wholesome Spider-Man, Wholesome Spider-Man/Does whatever a wholesome spider can/Is he tough?/Listen bud/He’s here to hear you talk about your day and tell you it’ll all be fine while taking you out for your favorite meal for dinner because he knows you deserve it.”] Image 9: [ID: Another full comic page. Doreen and Nancy are in their apartment together, and their friends Tomas and Brian (AKA Chipmunk Hunk and Brain Drain respectively) are frozen as they look down at the machine that Nancy is on her knees in front of, working on. Nancy, barefoot, is wearing cerulean-blue athletic pants, a black long-sleeve spandex shirt without shoulders, and narrow-framed glasses. Her hair is partially covered by a yellow cloth head wrap tied on the left side, with black dreadlocks spilling out the side and back. The machine in front of her is made of dull grey metal, about a meter tall and roughly circular. Wires dangle out of a hatch that Nancy is fiddling with. Doreen is wearing a flowing, dark-purple pantsuit with wide, ankle-length legs and a halter top with the sleeves tied off at her shoulders. Her shoes are light-brown ankle boots with a horizontal gap on the bridge of each foot. Her wavy orange hair is parted in the middle and down past her shoulders. She looks incredibly cute. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “What do you think?” Nancy: “I think--come on you stupid screw--I think we’re still years away from this thing working, if it ever does. Who knew time machine construction is really hard, except of course for everyone who has attempted it?” (She wipes her forehead with the back of her hand) D: “Hah! No, I mean my new outfit.” N: (Looking up and checking her gf out:) “Doreen! You look amazing!!” D: “Liberated it from a very expensive department store uptown!” N: (Now standing) “Tony paid for it?” D: Tony will eventually discover he was kind enough to leave some expensive jewelry in trade, yes. I pinned a note to him so he knows.” N: “There really are advantages to being friends with billionaire playboy genius philanthropists.” D: “Right?!” N: (Taking Doreen’s hands in hers:) “It’s a shame we can’t take a picture of you all dolled up.” D: “Not without standing still for a few months, yeah. But I was thinking about that. I picked up something else at another store downtown. Thought maybe it could help us with that.” (Holding up a shopping bag with one hand while still holding onto Nancy’s hand with the other:) “Nancy Whitehead, I thought you and I might take up painting sometime.” At the bottom of the page, small text says: “Tony Stark moves from meeting to meeting, his body accumulating dozens of notes every second. He sighs. Stuff like this didn’t happen before he knew Doreen. But then he smiles, because after all...stuff like this didn’t happen before he knew Doreen.”] Images 10-16: [ID: Several pages worth of comic frames, posted together to depict one scene. Doreen and Nancy are now old women, likely in their seventies or eighties. Doreen has short, grey hair. She’s wearing a tan button-up waistcoat and an orange ascot, brown flats with an olive-green skirt, knee-length and softly pleated. Her tail is sticking out the back of her skirt over the top, bushy and brown but with stiffer, less-dense hair. Nancy has her grey-black hair done up in a ponytail, a mass of tight curls behind her head. She’s wearing thin oval glasses, black dress pants, black flats, and a lavender cardigan with a flower motif along the edges, open to show the yellow-orange top underneath. They’re standing in front of a completed time machine. On either side are tall pieces of machinery, and in the middle is a round, flat metal dais hooked up to everything else with snaking cables. The following scene ensues: Nancy: “So...this is it, babe. The new machine.” Doreen: “Your secret project! Nancy, it looks like you started from scratch!” N: That’s because I did. I finally realized our old machine was never going to work. Maybe if we had a few more decades, but...there’s no time. And given that our backs are to the wall, I took a risk. I disassembled the gun right down to the metal, and examined all the parts. And I did find something: a data chip. Doreen, the gun stored our bio signatures when it us.” D: “What are you saying?” N: “I’m saying my new machine won’t send us back in time, and we’ll still have lost a weekend of real time. But it will restore our bodies to normal time.” D: (Hugging Nancy tight:) “Nancy! You saved us!!” N: (Resting her hands on Doreen’s shoulders:) “Not--quite. There’s a catch, Doreen. Our bodies will make it...but we won’t. Look, Doreen...I’m an old woman. I’ve spent most of my life in hypertime. This wasn’t how I saw my life going, but...I don’t regret any of it. I don’t want to lose it, and I don’t want to lose us.” D: “I don’t understand.” N: “It’s like restoring from backup. Our bodies will be restored to how they were the moment we were first hit. But--that necessarily includes our brains, too. Everything we’ve done since we entered hypertime--our entire lives spent together...we’ll forget.” (She looks at Doreen in distress) D: “I don’t either, Nancy. You’ve been the most important person in my life. But if we do go back--we can do it again. All of it. It might not happen again quite the same way, but--well, like you say...we’ll have all the time in the world.” N: (Their faces inches apart, they both tilt their heads down and smile sadly:) “Twist my arm, why don’t you.” (They both step onto the dais holding hands, and blue energy starts to ripple around them:) “You filled up Spidey’s web-shooters before we go?” D: “Yep. Again.” N: “You and me, saving the world.” D: “Well,” (holding Nancy’s hand in both of her own) "No reason we can’t do it twice.” N: “You know, there’s a chance things could turn out differently, now that we’ll have video games to distract us. In 40 years we might decide we don’t like hanging out after all.” D: (Hugging Nancy even tighter than before as the energy from the time machine starts to envelop them, resting her face in the nape of Nancy’s neck:) “Nah. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”] Image 17: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are sifting through the charred rubble of their apartment as night starts to fall around them. Doreen is wearing faded blue jeans and a navy blue t-shirt with a Captain America star in the middle. Over top of the shirt, she’s wearing a dark reddish-brown leather vest with four metal studs at the four points of the folded-out collar. Nancy is wearing black tights and a light green long-sleeve shirt with olive-green sleeves. The front of the shirt has a picture of Cat-Thor, Cat God of Cat Thunder’s head on it. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “So I know we’re only a few hours into it, Nancy, but I think my identity being public isn’t gonna be as bad as I thought.” Nancy: “Oh?” D: “Yeah, Tony’s given me lots of tips, and it does honestly help to know that my parents are protected by a robot tree with laser eyes and my friends live in a city with the most super heroes per square mile.” N: “Most super villains too, but--Hold on. I think I found it.” (Nancy lifts a picture frame out of the wreckage, charred around the edges but otherwise no worse for wear. It has a painting inside of it of Doreen and Nancy, arm-in-arm, from hypertime. Doreen is wearing the lavender pantsuit from before, and Nancy is wearing a tight-fitting lilac dress.) “...And it looks like you and I made it through just fine.”] Images 18-19: [ID: Two later comic panels from the same scene. They’re wearing the same outfits, but Nancy’s now cradling her white cat, Mew, in the crook of her left arm while she holds onto the picture frame with her right hand. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “Come on, let’s talk about it! If we’re starting a new chapter in our lives, and we can decide what’s in it, what do you want it to contain?” Nancy: “Doreen...” D: “What are the three things you can’t live without, Nancy Whitehead?” N: (Holding up the picture so that Doreen can see it:) “Fine. If you must know, all this girl needs to be happy are cats and squirrels and knitting and computers and friends and secret tattoos and super heroes and lots and lots of love. Also food and shelter. And water. And internet.” D: “That’s more than three things.”] Image 20: [ID: Same scene as before, a single frame with a close-up on Doreen from her chest upwards. Doreen cups her chin with one of her hands and says, “Honestly--I thought about it. I really did. But I realized that where I am now, I’m safe and I’m loved and I kinda like the idea of not having to lie to people anymore, you know? Even if it is just a lie of omission. I want to share my whole self with the world. I don’t want to have to hide who I am anymore.”] Image 21: [ID: Something resembling a twitter thread, with dialogue between Nancy and Doreen stacked chronologically as horizontal boxes. Their respective names and handles are at the top of each of their comments. Nancy is Nancy W. and @sewwiththeflo, Doreen is Squirrel Girl and @unbeatablesg. The following conversation ensues: Nancy: “You think I’d leave you high and dry??” Doreen: “I think I don’t want our lateness harming your grades and therefore harming your post-secondary education or career choices and therefore harming your ENTIRE LIFE?!” “So yeah I think you should switch to someone else, real talk. I honestly don’t mind, I promise.” Nancy: “Please. If there’s one thing I know about you, about me, and about how we spend our future together, it’s this. Doreen Green...” “...you’re not getting rid of me that easily. <3″] Image 22: [ID: A paragraph of text, black text on a yellow background. “As for more Doreen and Nancy, I hope so too. A Squirrel Girl book without Nancy would feel like--like--like some sort of hypothetical “Super” “Man” book without an equally hypothetical “Lois” “Lane”!”] Image 23: [ID: A group picture of Squirrel Girl and friends sitting down on a grassy hill and watching the sunset together. Kraven the Hunter is in the foreground for some reason, looking almost directly at the camera. In the background we see Koi Boi, Mary Mahajan, Chipmunk Hunk, Brain Drain, and Mew the Cat. In the middle of the shot, Doreen and Nancy sit together. Doreen is in her superhero outfit with Tippy-Toe on her right shoulder, and Nancy is in a yellow cardigan and jeans on Doreen’s left. They’re holding hands, fingers intertwined, as Nancy leans against Doreen with her whole body. Their heads are tilted inward towards each other, the side of Doreen’s head touching the side of Nancy’s, as they look off into the distance together.]

[tlbodine]

The Great Content Warning Debate

Horror Twitter has been aflame for a few days now with heated discourse about trigger/content warnings, and I keep seeing the same arguments and questions and points come up repeatedly so I wanted to collect all of it into one place because I feel like discourse can only get so far if people keep reinventing the wheel -- so perhaps having the full discussion laid out in one place could be helpful.

Of course, the folks arguing probably won’t see this post, but perhaps there can be some benefit from talking about it anyway. This is intended to be more of an overview of arguments and counter-arguments, collected and displayed as impartially as possible, but of course my own opinions are going to leak in and color some of this. 

NOTE: This is written specifically from the perspective of the horror book community, a genre that traditionally is associated with troubling, transgressive, risk-taking and shocking works. There are discussions to be had for content labels on other types of fiction, but as I’m unfamiliar with the norms and expectations of, say, romance, I’m not going to wade too deeply into that here. 

So without further ado, the arguments and counter-arguments and discussion points that I keep seeing hashed and rehashed and circled around when the issue of trigger warnings comes up! 

If you’re sensitive, you shouldn’t be reading horror 

“Horror is supposed to be horrifying! It’s not fluffy bunnies and kittens! You’re supposed to be made uncomfortable!” 

There are a few problems with this: 

“Uncomfortable” is not the same as “Sent into a panic attack/flashback/relapse” (ie, triggered) 

People with PTSD and other issues can and do engage with horror all the time and often love the genre for entertainment or therapeutic purposes

Many people are fine with some types of content but not others; blood and guts won’t affect them the same as rape, or they’re fine with adults dying but can’t handle child death, and so on and so forth 

Knowing what you’re getting into can help you prepare/brace yourself so you’re not taken unaware; people with the right warnings can mentally prepare themselves and enjoy a book that they would not have been able to read if they were confronted with it unexpectedly

Trigger warnings are censorship 

Some folks have an implicit/kneejerk reaction that “trigger = bad thing” and respond to the request to put warnings on a book as a moral value judgment on the book’s contents. I can see why they might fear that, especially because at a glance it’s easy to conflate the groups asking for warnings with the groups who say things like “if your characters have underage sex then you the writer are literally a pedophile.” But by and large the folks asking for warnings do not seem to be asking for folks to stop writing certain difficult themes, only to provide a heads up for readers about the type of experience those readers can expect from the book. 

There is an argument to be made that warnings could affect the sales of a book, in much the same way that an NC-17 film doesn’t get the same distribution opportunities as an R-rated or PG-13 film, and that authors/publishers will make marketing decisions to include or exclude certain types of content in order to avoid this. 

Trigger warnings will spoil the book 

While some readers will benefit from content warnings, others might have their reading experience ruined by knowing about major twists. This seems especially relevant with a warning like “child death.” It’s very important that people who have, for example, recently lost a child not be unexpectedly re-traumatized by reading about a child dying without warning. But it’s also important that people who want to enjoy the full, shocking impact of such a scene have the opportunity to do so without having it dulled by forewarning. 

Any kind of warning system needs to be opt-in for a reader. Some suggestions include: 

Placing warnings at the end of a book, where readers can flip to that page to look (not helpful if you’re ordering online) 

Placing warnings on the author’s website, where readers can search (not helpful if you’re buying in person)

Given the limitations, a combination of those strategies seems to make sense. It may also be unfortunately true that someone looking for one type of warning (ie, rape) will have their experience ruined if they spoiler themselves for another warning (child death). This may be unavoidable collateral damage. 

Authors/Publishers should be responsible for putting warnings in their books

There seems to be some debate over whether the onus of responsibility for providing warnings rests on the author or the publisher. It should be acknowledged that authors may not always have the power to make this choice -- and if the presence or absence of warnings becomes a factor for judging the quality/moral fiber of authors, those authors could be punished by the reader community for a choice that was largely out of their hands (although, there’s still nothing keeping the author from hosting those warnings externally - how successfully that is implemented is another matter). 

Additionally, the demand for warnings will be placed more consistently on small presses simply because those presses are more likely to heed the request. This could create a double standard where readers might be more forgiving of large pub works that forego warnings because there’s no expectation that they would have implemented them anyway. On the other hand, this could be a way for indie publishers to differentiate themselves on the market and appeal more to certain subsets of readers. 

External groups or communities should be responsible for warnings

There’s a line of reasoning that an author or publisher may not be sensitive to the potentially triggering/damaging things in their work, and some kind of external governing body should manage this work instead. This does sound a lot more like the censorship argument that people are worried about. 

Wiki-style sites and places where people can freely tag books (such as Storygraph) also fit this bill to an extent. They would presumably have less power over the market than a ratings board like the MPAA, but could still exert influence over how a book is received. 

Demanding warnings will negatively impact marginalized authors 

We’re already seeing some evidence that BIPOC and LGBTQ authors are affected more by user-generated trigger warnings on sites like Storygraph, and that these warnings can be weaponized against marginalized authors. Much like review-bombing a book before it comes out can affect its launch, labeling a book with inaccurate trigger warnings could damage its sales. 

Similarly, lists of “safe” and “unsafe” authors have already begun to circulate among some groups, and there seems to be a disproportionate number of marginalized creators on that “unsafe” list -- at least according to the anecdotal reports I’ve seen. 

Historically, it is true that any attempts at censorship or content moderation will be more harshly applied to marginalized groups (see: film ratings for gay sex vs straight sex). 

It’s impossible to warn for everything

One hesitancy that some authors have with tagging their work is they’re not sure what to tag for. Triggers are highly personal, and there’s no way you can possibly guess what might upset a reader. 

Here’s a list of commonly agreed-upon things that might make sense to tag for in a given work: 

Violence/gore 

Suicide/self-harm

Rape/sexual assault

Domestic violence

Child death/endangerment

Animal death/abuse

Drug use/substance abuse 

Racism/slurs 

That said, it’s still difficult to account for context. At what stage do you warn for something? If a character is drinking a beer, do you need to tag for that? Do you distinguish between the tone things are written in, such as being played for laughs vs seriously? If the rape scene is written artistically/metaphorically, does the same warning apply as if it were described act-by-act in a clinical sense? What if your blanket list of warnings gives readers a false sense of what the book will be like -- is it actually helpful at all, or is it just posturing/virtue signaling to include warnings that won’t actually be effective?  

Some would argue that this is dramatically overthinking it, but this does seem to cause a great deal of distress to authors who want to do the right thing but worry about getting it wrong. An argument could be made that trying and failing might be worse than doing nothing, especially if your attempts get you labeled as a “trustworthy” or “safe” author only for that trust to be “betrayed” by a warning you used incorrectly. 

On the other hand, many would argue that we all “pretty much know” what needs to be warned for, and that warnings are intuitive. These granular questions could be viewed as a distraction from more common sense issues. 

Readers are responsible for managing their own safety

Ultimately, because it’s impossible for every potential trigger to be identified and warned for, readers will need to remain vigilant. Of course, there are already ways to identify the content of a book without any kind of established warning system -- such as, for example, reading posted book reviews, asking a question on a book’s Goodreads page, reaching out to the author directly, asking about the book in a reading group online or having a friend/parent/spouse/trusted person read the book first and report back with their findings. 

This is the system we’ve pretty much used as readers for years, before “trigger warning” became part of the common vernacular, and it does have some distinct advantages just because you can get a lot more specific information this way. 

It is possible that if warnings become more commonplace for books that readers may become less vigilant about their own safety, which could paradoxically put them at greater risk of finding troubling content unexpectedly. 

There’s also the issue of “safe” and “unsafe” author lists. At the moment, while the discourse is hot, it’s perhaps more natural to pick sides and disregard some authors for reasons that may be unfair -- for example, marking an author as unsafe or boycotting her work because she doesn’t want to include warnings, but she wants to avoid warnings because she strongly believes they will be detrimental to a reader’s safety. A reader may or may not agree with that perspective, but it’s certainly not the same motive as an author who would do something actively malicious to a reader (like, idk, emailing a screamer to a reviewer or something. that’s a made up example.) 

In the end, trigger warnings are a good idea, but the issue is complex to implement and some people do still have reservations about their overall efficacy. 

We simply won’t know one way or another until we try to implement it. But in the meantime, I do think it’s valuable to continue talking about this, as long as everyone involved remains civil and engages in good faith. Once people’s perspectives start getting thrown out the window in the heat of the moment, or strawmen arguments are erected that don’t reflect what anyone involved actually believes, the discussion ceases to be helpful. 

[life-rewritten]

Manner of D*eath (MOD); The Little Mermaid and The Warped Prince

This is a fun one, I promise. MOD  continues to be a ride with excitement, worries, and more questions to bring. But you know what after major rewatching and analysis, I have come to terms with how I think the story will go—the whole reason one; word Little Mermaid. I've written a past suspect list (here) before about who I thought the culprit is from episode 1. There's been a few changes to that, but I think I can finally guess who the culprit is that took Jane's life. And it's because of this foreshadowing with Little Mermaid. I'll explain even more. Little Mermaid not only helps me bring up my final suspects, but I also think it is a base for the romantic relationships in the show as well. So without further ado, let's dive into this analysis.

When writing my suspect list, I stated that there were many apparent hints to who the suspect is and why they could possibly do it. I didn't want to believe in my simple theory because it seemed too easy to guess and too simple to be. But after thinking about it, I also said that it's not about who's the suspect that matters but how we get to that information. The show has littered many plotlines making sure we don't feel comfortable about our feelings on who we think the suspect is. We've questioned Tan's involvement, That, Pued, The Mayor, Jane her self and others. So even though the suspect may be easy to guess I think with the way the writers and director made us go through loops slowly revealing the information and leaving some clues that can't be fully vouched for, or 100% agreed on, the reveal will still be shocking and fun to see how it unveils and ends, and there might be a forgotten person that surprises me. The issue I had with the show at first since I hate mysteries was if the plot wouldn't leave enough clues or subtext for us to understand what's going on and the reveal will be out of nowhere. But to my surprise, Jane already mentioned who killed her and why because of her mention of one book Little Mermaid. Let me explain more;

The warped Prince and the Little Mermaid

Little Mermaid, not the Disney one, the one (apparently an allegory to a gay unrequited love by the writer who is also important later for the base of the couples) where we have a depressing ending, betrayals and sacrifice. Here is a summary of that one, and the things we should focus on when reading it.

 Little Mermaid is about Ariel (that's not her name in the original, but I'm going to call her that), Ariel falls in love with the prince after saving him. She is determined to be with him and lets her self be changed to human to join his world, there's a list of rules, she has to be mute, she can't return back to the human world once she takes the potion, and she must make the prince fall in love with her. She goes through a lot of pain once she takes the potion, reunites with the prince who never saw the girl who saved him but someone else, if she wins the heart of the prince she'll obtain a soul, but if he marries someone else she will die with a broken heart and dissolve into sea foam. Alright great, so you're starting to see the difference with the Disney one right? Let's keep going. 

 The prince begins to like being with  Ariel, who is beautiful; their relationship becomes the best. Still, he does not have feelings for her romantically (I know I was shocked, why haven't I read the full story of this before. Poor Ariel she got friend-zoned) But the sad thing is the prince does love Ariel (the girl who saved him that he can't remember). He believes that the person who saved his life is a girl from the temple, the girl who found him when he woke up (sigh), so when his family tells him to marry the temple girl, the prince agrees. All of Ariel's sacrifice goes in vain. She is broken and is denoted by her sisters to eliminate the prince in vengeance to come back to the sea. However she can't do it, she loves him too much, and so she ends her self instead. Luckily the story doesn't end all too bad for Ariel; she obtains an immortal soul and goes up to heaven for her love and selflessness. The end.  

You're probably wondering why on earth I had to read this out to you. But bare with me, listen to the things that you need to see: 

The Little Mermaid sacrifices her self to get to the world of the prince. Her love for him makes her willing to be in pain, bleeding on her feet, stay mute, and lose her home because of him.

The prince is not in love with the little Mermaid despite her sacrifice. He loved the temple girl because he thought she was the person who saved him, and he was pressured into marriage with her by his family too. There's a love triangle.

The little Mermaid feels betrayal at the reveal of who the prince loves. She is forced to wait for death because she cannot speak or go home. 

The little Mermaid is told to get revenge by her sisters and get rid of the prince. But she wants to do the right thing.

She dies for love and selflessness.  

Are you seeing where I'm going with this? Let's look at Jane and how she fits this storyline.

Sacrificing her self for love; 

One of the biggest reveals of the show is that Jane was in love and happy with Pued. They had been a couple that was the talk of the town until one day they weren't. Jane went through a miscarriage that got her to fall into depression. No one knew why or understood why she and Pued ended. We discover that Pued coerced Jane into selling her body to the mayor and others so that he could stay prosecutor and have power. 

One, Pued is a warped version of the prince. The prince was indebted to Ariel for his life just as Pued was indebted to Jane for her acceptance to help him stay in power. Pued viewed his wealth and power as his life. Second, Jane let her self get assaulted, drugged and abused to make sure her boyfriend stayed on his throne. This is the same as the little Mermaid who lost everything of her, her tails were transformed forcefully (bleeding each time) to legs, and she had to deal with that on her own, she lost her voice, and she also lost her home. She gave up everything for the prince. 

It gets worse, Jane got pregnant and was forced to bleed (see the visual?) through her legs by getting a miscarriage. Pued and her broke up then. We can assume, she wasn't okay with what happened and her depression consumed her, I think there's more to it. Just as Ariel lost her voice and right to speak (her tongue was also taken, I know right? this story is wild ), Jane was forced to keep quiet by the higher-ups and the world of Pued. 

Now let's pause, Ariel had to lose her world and her home to go into the prince's. Pued's world was the same as Tan and Por; it was the mafia organisation. This probably was funded and supported by the mayor and the corruption of the justice system. The organisation put each of its members in a high position of power and status as long as they did something for them. Tan is Dam; he's a puppet as I wrote about in my past essay. He didn't mean to go into this life, but his mother wasn't alive, and his father was the one who roped him into taking care of his brother Pued. It's important to see why Tan had to hide and help Pued go into hiding. He didn't know the full details; he was told something different by Pued. I will explain what I think he thought was the reason soon.  Like the little Mermaid for love, Jane joins Pued's world of corruption without knowing how deep and dangerous it was.  She only notices the errors of her ways when another girl is eliminated due to mishap with the miscarriage, and that's Nat. She couldn't as a teacher stay still anymore. But it's more than that as well. Although she's a martyr, I think she also wanted revenge. Why? Let's go into point two.

2 There's a love triangle

You didn't see this one coming, did you? I mean I'm guessing people are starting to jump on the train with this. The first time we saw Jane, she was with Tan, so we assumed the love triangle was between her, Pued and Tan. This was further hinted at when Tan punches Pued because of how he grabs her and spoke to her (we didn't know). Tan protected Jane like a  girlfriend, but he didn't show any signs of remorse when she was removed. He went and covered up the truth instead. Still, moments after her demise, he speaks fondly of her she and him were friends, he did care about her and did miss her despite needing to ensure why she left was hidden. 

He's just a puppet under Pued's lies and instructions. The other love triangle was foreshadowing what we thought in episode 1; Tan, Bun and Jane. Bun thought Tan was straight, and in a relationship, we saw him go through remorse and sadness when he discovered the guy he wanted was already taken by his best friend. However, this love triangle isn't the reason why Jane took her life (or why she was removed because of love). There's one more we haven't seen, but it's been there. And it's upsetting and frustrating. In my first episode 1 suspect list, I wrote that Rutingwa was not to be trusted, but I was going to trust her for now because I didn't understand how she could be the one to pull Jane up the rope etc. However, I did notice her overreactions and over emotions when she walked in and saw her sisters demise. She was in the same clothes as the day before at the event. I found it odd.

 The second thing I called out and remembered is the terrorising of Bun only started to happen when she ominously asked him to keep updating her on her sisters MOD, Bun had gone to her first to say the MOD wasn't sui*cide, but it was actually mu*rder. Lastly, she again showed even more interest and anger once she discovered how the cops were hiding her sisters MOD (it's a red herring she couldn't care less, I'll explain soon) and she vowed to find out what happened. In the current episodes, she showed up again determined to know what Bun knew about the case, and she claimed she didn't know about her sister's reasons for depression. 

She didn't know anything about Pued and her sister's relationship just what others know.  So here is where you hear it from me first; Rutingwa is the person who is the suspect. I'll explain how she did it and how she is involved. But she's the temple girl, the person who misleads the prince into thinking she saved him. If the prince is warped in the show as Pued, then the temple girl is also warped. And it's the biggest betrayal. See why I think Jane had more reasons for why she was desperate to reveal the truth. She wanted to do it for justice (selflessness of the Mermaid) but because of revenge. The prince chose a girl from his world, and I think Runtingwa is also part of the corruption ring, and she is aware of it. 

3 The mermaid victim

Ariel, once she discovers the prince's betrayal at first isn't angry at him. She's just depressed, she cries and cries and waits for her demise. However, that's important to note because Jane also went through her fair share of depression. The reason why Ariel cried was because of loss of her self, and the sacrifices she made for this man, she felt stupid, heartbroken and defeated. She understood he didn't love her, but it felt like she had wasted everything for him. The reason why Jane went into depression in my theory is that she found out about Runtigwa and Pued. 

Her depression stemmed from her miscarriage, but she started to want to say the truth, the reason why she stayed with Tan to be protected because she knew of her sister's betrayal. She may have found out during the period of her depression and Pued may have told her it wasn't the case, but I think what drove her the most to want to reveal the truth at first was revenge. What led to her demise was confronting both Rutingwa and Pued that same night after discovering the truth. However, she kept quiet at first because of Pued telling her not to say anything, and the higher-ups threatening her to be quiet. I believe Pued made Tan keep an eye on her (he didn't know the real reason). 

4 Vengeance and Selflessness

But it's more than just the anger at the betrayal that probably made her break up with Pued. It was also the other factors. She knew what was happening to Nat and she couldn't say anything. She knew about the world of corruption and how it was taking her students and others, and she had kept quiet not because of love but because of fear, once Nat was hurt by the botched miscarriage, she couldn't stay silent anymore. 

I believe she not only uncovered the betrayal of her sister which led her to more anger and determination, to tell the truth, but her sense of responsibility as a teacher made her feel it was no longer acceptable. This is her little Mermaid's choice to be selfless. Instead of choosing to hurt the .prince at first after her sadness (she didn't choose to say something because of the betrayal at the end,  but she had the thought and probably started to gather evidence then), she decided to put her self in danger and unveil the truth about the corruption. (hence risking her life).

 The only issue is because of love for Pued she told him what she was going to do. He didn't take it lightly and warned her not to. She realised who he really was and he lost his temper and hurt her.  Remember that Ariel wants to get rid of the prince because her sisters give her that idea, just like removing the girls she cared about made Jane more determined, to tell the truth.  This is why Tan came and punched him; he didn't like what his brother said or did, even if he has to be a puppet Jane was his friend. This again shows you Tan didn't know what was really going on; he had to follow orders underneath Pued begrudgingly. The reason why he thought he had to cover up Jane's MOD was because he was misled. 

I won't be surprised if he knew about Runtingwa and Pued's affair and that's what he thought Jane was going to unveil and why Pued told him to keep an eye on her. He knew Pued was involved in Jane's demise, but he thought because her MOD would reveal the organisation he has to hide and protect his family, he had to keep their jobs intact. He was a puppet under orders which only started to realise the gravity of the situation once he fell for Bun. 

5 D*ying for love and selflessness 

So Jane, like the little Mermaid, decided to sacrifice her self and reputation. She decided to expose the higher-ups. However, on that night, she didn't expect that Pued would follow through with his warnings and come and try and convince her. Remember how I said I didn't know how Rutingwa would do all this to her sister, or where she got the strength to hang her sister? (Not that women can't be strong) it's because I think she and Pued both got rid of Jane. Now despite Pued being warped and cruel to Jane, I still think parts of him cared for her. The prince cared and felt indebted to the Mermaid; he saw her as a close friend. I don't think Pued meant to end her life. I think he went to warn her and scare her to stop like he made Tan do to Bun. 

I think Rutingwa, however, is the one who convinced him to make her demise look self-inflicted (trying to avoid words is so hard but I have to use all these synonyms not to get flagged on Tumblr haha). Rutingwa knew about Jane's MOD; she was involved in it; she also came to warn her sister. She even stuck by Bun's side to ensure evidence was taken care of, to keep him quiet by snitching. 

Pued went into hiding to avoid being seen as a suspect he faked his kidnap. Rutingwa could get away with hers by feigning ignorance. Now I really tried so hard to prevent a girl from being a villain in another BL, but I think Rutingwa is a brilliant villain. She has shown that she's heartless and determined to get her way if she is the villain. She's a plot twist because she's been hidden under layers and layers of other red herrings as we uncover the plot, and she and Pued hardly interact. When she feigned her ignorance about her sister's condition, it made sense to us seeing her fight for the police to expose her sisters MOD, but that's because she knew he was one of the corrupted people involved. They had planned to get Bun of their case. To make her self seem innocent. It's fantastic. 

The most obvious clue is that she is the closest person to the victim, just like Bun said in episode 1; it's always the ones closest to the victims that are the suspect, he just didn't deep how close it was, he was right it was her boyfriend, but it also was her sister who was putting on a show, in clothes she wore the night before and was acting naive about her sister's depression and spiral to her demise. Rutingwa is someone to keep an eye on. She'll go to lengths to be seen as innocent, and I think she's the main head of this, not Pued. Pued is just as Jane said spineless and weak, he's just spoilt and wanted to stay in power, he didn't care about Jane enough because he was in love with Rutingwa and they both sacrificed her to let him stay in his position and she in hers as his lover. It's messed up, but hey it's a brilliant plot. 

To Love or Not to Love: Little Mermaid a foreshadowing device for the couples 

So that's the first way the little Mermaid is connected to the foreshadowing of the plot. The second is the base of the romantic couples.

Two worlds apart; the little Mermaid and the prince are prevented from being together because of separate worlds until she joins him sacrificing her self and voice and then life for him to be there. 

To k*ill or not to k*ill. After discovering his betrayal, the Mermaid has to choose to save herself, go back to her world, or leave for love. She decides to sacrifice her life for love.

Misunderstandings and Regrets: The prince misunderstood the temple girl as his saviour he couldn't move on from that mindset, and so he didn't let himself love Ariel. Until the end, he never knew Ariel was the one he truly loved. 

Two worlds apart: Justice vs Corruption

As you can see, one of the themes of the love stories with everyone who is in a romantic relationship on the show (not the subtext ones) is being two worlds apart. Let me explain. 

Jane is torn by her ethics as a teacher vs her love for Pued, and she chooses to sacrifice her self to get to his world and be with him. 

Bun is torn by his morals as a pathologist and determination for justice ( due to past experiences with the police) vs his love for Tan who is part of an organisation that does crime and is linked to corruption. He sacrifices his suspicions and fears to get to his world and be with him despite being afraid he could be just like the people he hates. 

Sorowit is torn by his innocence and also determination for justice to his friends vs his blooming love for Tat who is connected to violence and the corruption ring that hurts him. He sacrifices his worries and resentments (because Tat even injured him when they first interacted for his friend) to get to his world and be with him. 

In all these love stories, the characters end up unveiling a betrayal, which makes them feel used with wasted hearts and love because their love was never real. In my theory, Jane discovers that Pued is not just spineless and heartless, but he also didn't love her, he loved her sister, and before she could do what was right she was eliminated. 

Bun has to come to terms that Tan may be the suspect and has lied and used him just to hide the evidence and the truth. Their love was never real, and he wasted his trust and heart on him. Sorowit will also come to the same terms when he discovers that Tat may be working for someone who knew about the corruption that is affecting all his close friends and Jane. (Nam, Nat, Jane). He also would force himself to question if Tat has a heart because of how cruel he can be. Bun is the person to warn him about Tat. 

Whilst Pued is warped prince, That and Tan are puppets forced to follow orders of an organisation that they can't escape. Without meaning, they both fall in love with Bun and Sorowit despite the danger and the fact that they're meant to stay emotionless and unfeeling since all they can do is be loyal to the organisation to remain taken care of. Tan has had no choice in the matter, and because Tat works for him, he also didn't have a choice and was probably forced into it at a young age. 

2 To maim or not to maim. 

The issue is that all couples had entered a dangerous situation, in order for one of them to survive in their world; one must be removed. For Jane, to return back to her world of responsibility and justice, Pued has to be exposed, and his reputation had to be ruined. If she told the truth, the whole town would be ruined. It had to be a decision between her and him and the rest. She chose to go to him selflessly, and he decided that she was the one that had to go. 

This is why it's a sad foreshadowing at some point Tan will have to make the same choice. Bun's life or His. And Bun will have to do the same after discovering the truth. They are both in a situation where one of them can't survive if the other does. If Tan survives, the organisation survives, the higher-ups win and the town is not ruined. But Bun is silenced. If Bun survives, Tan will be hurt and taken care of by the higher-ups and framed. Tat and Sorowit are the same. Sorowit's curiosity has got him involved in this too, the more he knows and stays with Tat the more his life is also in danger, the more Tat would also have to follow orders to get rid of him. Sorowit has to decide like Bun if he can sacrifice Tat for the truth to be revealed. In Little Mermaid, you know what path she chooses, she chooses love. Bun and Tan will choose love; what that means? I don't know, Tat and Sorowit are the same. 

Misunderstandings and Regrets

That's why we're in a sad predicament. Right now, the misunderstanding and lack of recognising Tat and Tan's innocence is going to drive a wedge in the relationship and case. Bun will believe Tan is the suspect, and Tat was the one who threatened Bun. They're both going to get framed. Just like little Mermaid was framed in the opposite as not the person who saved the prince. There's a lack of clarity happening at this time that could lead to fatal consequences; unfortunately, same as what happened with the prince and the Mermaid. For Pued and Jane, I wonder if Rutingwa framed her, could Rutingwa have been the person to make Pued stop loving her or trusting her? I don't know how, but like I said, she seems to be the strongest and scariest villain/suspect. She does what she wants to get what she wants.

 Could Pued have loved and cared about Jane the way the Prince cared about Ariel and the girl who saved him but somehow got lack of clarity on who she was in his life? Did Rutingwa seem more like the better person to help save his life and career? If she's involved in the corruption ring then yes. She probably seemed like a better wife or choice. But again Pued is the warped prince, Tan and Tat aren't. Their love is genuine and authentic. Bun and Sorowit will later come to terms with that, and choose to be the ones that sacrifice everything for them I believe just like the Mermaid did. Luckily the little Mermaid may not be a happy ending for Jane in the way she wanted, but it is a happy ending in the tale. She is rewarded for her love and selflessness. Jane's reward is the truth getting uncovered by Bun. Saving more girls from the situation she was in.  I also believe Tan and Bun whoever sacrifices would be rewarded, I believe this will have a happy ending, but that's just me.  They'll reunite at the end, finally unveiling the real villains and surviving. That's what I believe. 

So Manner of Death is about to become my favourite just from seeing the next episodes unfold. I could be wrong about this, but I don't see how yet, there are so many clues hinting to Runtingwa as the badass villain she is, as much as I hate girl hate, I commend her on her villainy, she's stone-cold,  if she is, she doesn't mess around, and I like seeing flawed women sometimes. I just want her to be the head of the whole thing, not just doing this because of love for Pued. But because of power and greed and determination to have a good reputation. I want her to be more cunning and stronger than Pued as a villain, even if he's the person who did it, I want her to be the one who suggested it. I don't know sometimes I like seeing women in this role, she's not an ex-girlfriend of the Bl couple who is determined to ruin them, she's not even the villain because of jealousy Pued wants Jane, she's doing it for power and reputation. Like Yes, you show how evil you are, and you own it. She'll be a great villain if she is as cunning as I think she is. Pued in my mind is a wimp, even if he hurt Jane, I don't think he meant to do it. But we'll see how cruel he can be.

I know the mayor, and police detective could be the ones, but with their reveal now, I don't think Jane was tricked or eliminated by them, they are red herrings to the story. Disgusting corrupted people who have power and control, but it's a puppet who did it because of fear. It's Pued. But maybe I'm wrong, and it is them, it wouldn't make sense with the foreshadowing of d*ying for love. They didn't eliminate Nat; she was eliminated because of the botched miscarriage, that's what I believe anyways. Let me know what you think? Any other suspects I'm missing?  You can check out my other analysis of the show in my masterpost. Let’s discuss about the show.  

[joneswuzhere]

hello join me in thinking about some books and authors that are, or might be, part of s5′s intertextuality

5.10 in particular offered specific shout outs, and also u know i’m always wondering what might be ahead so i have some ideas on that:

- first, as mentioned in a previous ask post, i know i wasn’t alone in keeping an eye out for 5.10 parallels to the lost weekend (1945) the film that gave episode 1.10 its name and several themes - or to the 1944 book by charles r jackson which the film is based on

- s5 has not been shy about revisiting earlier seasons, especially s1. altho i feel that 1.10′s parallels to the lost weekend centered characters other than jughead (mostly betty), a 1.10-5.10 connection involving jughead and themes from jackson’s story (addiction, writers block, self reflection) seemed v possible if not inevitable

- but like,, , for a hot minute after the ep, i was really stumped on understanding how anything from the book or film could apply, even tho the pieces were almost all there

- jackson’s protagonist don birnam goes thru and comes out the other side of a harrowing days-long drinking binge that could be compared to jughead’s one-night hallucinogenic writing retreat

- but jughead is struggling primarily with traumatic memories, not addiction and self control like birnam. and tho drinking activates birnam’s creativity, it paralyzes his writing as he gets lost in fantasies; he’s never published anything. jughead’s drug trip recreates circumstances that already helped him write one successful book. even the rat that startles him mid-high doesn’t line up with birnam’s withdrawal vision of a dying mouse, symbolic of his horror at his own self-destruction thru alcohol

- and maybe the most visible discordance: in the film there’s a romantic motif around a typewriter. first it’s an object of shame; birnam’s failure to write, tied up with his drinking, makes him flee his relationship. he tries to pawn the typewriter for booze money and finally a gun when shooting himself feels easier than getting sober. but with the help of relentless encouragement from girlfriend helen, he quits drinking, commits to her, and focuses on typing out the story he’s dreamt of writing. rd goes so far to avoid setting any comparable scenario that jughead has brought a wholeass printer into the bunker so there can still be a physical manuscript to cover in blood by the end, even without his own typewriter. the subtle detail of his laptop bg image is a little less noticeable than his avoidance of betty’s gift

- tabitha might be closer to a parallel than jughead is, but she’s still no helen. both refuse to take advantage of the inebriated men in their care, but birnam takes advantage of helen, financially and emotionally. jughead refused a loan from the tate family and now has resolved to deal with his shit before he considers a relationship with tabitha. instead of helen’s relentless and unwelcomed attempts to get birnam sober, tabitha reluctantly agrees to help jughead trip safely bondage escape notwithstanding. she even helps him get the drugs.

- whatever potentials exist for parallels to jackson’s story, they were not explored for this episode. ok so why tf am i even talking about this? what was there instead?

-  i have arrived at the point

- s5 has been revisiting s1, not directly but with a twist. and jughead’s agent samm pansky is back. u may recall, pansky is named for sam lansky

- jughead’s trip-thru-trauma is a story device tapped straight from lansky’s book ‘broken people’

- lansky is like if a millenial john rechy wrote extremely LA-flavored meta but just about himself no jk very like a modern successor to charles r jackson. both play with the boundary between memoir and fiction. lansky is gay; jackson wrote his lost weekend counterpart as closeted and remained closeted himself until only a few years before his death. both write with emotional clarity and self-scrutiny on the experiences of addiction, sobriety, and the surrounding issues of shame and self worth

- i feel like a fool bc after this ep i had been thinking about de quincey and his early writings on addiction (c.1800s), but i failed to carry the thought in the other direction, to contemporary writers in the genre, to make this connection sooner

- lansky’s second book, broken people, follows narrator ‘sam’, mid-20s, super depressed, hastled by his agent to write a decent follow-up to his first book, but too busy struggling with his self-worth and baggage from several past relationships. desperate, he takes up an offer to visit a new age shaman who promises to fix everything wrong with him in a matter of days. not to over simplify it but he literally spends a weekend doing psychedelics and hallucinating about his exes. jughead took note

- unless u want me to hurl myself into yet another dissertation about queer jughead, i think his parallel to sam - who, unlike jughead, has considerable financial privilege and whose anxieties center on body dysmorphia, hiv scares, and his own self-centeredness - pretty much ends there

- But,, the gist of the book could not be more harmonius with a major theme shared by the 2 films that inform the actual hallucination part of jughead’s bunker scene: mentally reframing past relationships to get closure + confronting trauma head-on in order to move forward

- so that’s neat. what other book and author stuff was in 5.10?

- stephen king and raymond carver get name dropped. i’m passingly familiar with them both but u bet i just skimmed their wiki bios in case anything relevant jumped out

- like jughead, carver was a student (later a lecturer) at the iowa writers workshop. also the son of an alcoholic and one himself

- i recall carver’s ‘what we talk about when we talk about love’ is what jughead was reading in 2.14 ‘the hills have eyes’ after he finds out about the first time betty kissed archie (at that time he does not respond as would any of carver’s characters)

- this collection of carver stories deals especially with infidelity, failings of communication, and the complexities and destructiveness of love. to unashamedly quote the resource that is course hero, ‘carver renders love as an experience that is inherently violent bc it produces psychic and emotional wounds.’ very fun to wonder about the significance of this collection within the s2 episode and in jughead’s thoughts. and maybe now in the context of the s5 state of relationships. or, at least, the state of jughead’s writing as seen by his agent

- anyway pansky doesn’t want carver, he wants stephen king

- i have too much to say about gerald’s game in 5.10, that’s getting its own post someday soon

- lol wait king’s wife is named tabitha uhhh king’s wiki reminded me of his childhood experience that possibly inspired his short story ‘the body’ (+1986 movie ‘stand by me’) when he ‘apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train tho he has no memory of the event’

- no mention of that in this rd episode but memories of a train could be interesting to consider with the imagery that intrudes on jughead’s hallucination. i still feel like it was a truck but the lights and sounds he experiences may be a train

- ok now we’re in the speculation part of today’s segment

- if jughead’s traumatic memory involves trains, then it’s possible this plot will take influence from la bête humaine <- this 1938 movie is based on the 1890 novel by french writer émile zola. this story deals with alcoholism and possessive jealousy in relationships, sometimes leading to murder. huh, kind of like carver. zola def comes down on the nature side of the nature-vs-nuture bad seed question (tho i should say he approaches this with great or maybe just v french compassion). also i can’t tell if this is me reaching but, something about la bête humaine reminds me of king’s ‘secret window’ which we’ve observed to be at least a style influence on jughead post time jump

- but wow a late-19th century french writer would be a random thing to drop into this season, right? then again zola also wrote about miners, which we’ve learned are an important part of this town’s history + whatever hiram is up to this time.  and most notably, zola wrote ‘j’accuse...!’ an open letter in defense of a soldier falsely accused and unlawfully jailed for treason: alfred dreyfus. archie’s recent army trouble comes to mind.

- since the introduction of old man dreyfuss (plausibly Just a nod to close encounters actor richard dreyfuss, but also when is anything in this show Just one thing) i’ve been wondering if these little things could add up to a season-long reference to zola’s writings. but i had doubts and didn’t want to speak on it too soon bc, u know, it’s weird but is it weird enough for riverdale??

- however,,,

- (come on, u knew where i was going with this)

- a24′s film zola just came out. absolutely no relation to the french writer, it’s not based on a book but an insane and explicit twitter thread by aziah ‘zola’ wells about stripping and? human trafficking?? this feels ripe for rd even outside the potentials here for the lonely highway/missing girls plot.

- that would add up to a combination of homage that feels natural to this show

- anyway pls understand i’m just having fun speculating, most of this is based on nothing more concrete than the torturous mental tendril ras has hooked into my skull pls let go ras pls let go

[therewrites]

We Are Who We Are Overall Thoughts *spoilers*

This review will be discussing briefly some of the episodes so far, so SPOILERS

So I started watching the HBO original series, We Are Who We Are, and I am conflicted. When I initially watched it, the dialogue made it hard for me to enjoy it so I stopped. Then after a couple of weeks after its airing, I thought, what the hell? And this time, I was pleasantly surprised. I always maintain the belief that pilot episodes are either boring, messy, or just bad so I try to push past it in order to get to the good shit. The pilot for We Are Who We Are was...I’m not sure how to explain...different? It certainly wasn’t bad and it made an impression on me, but this show as a whole is hard to limit by just a few words. It’s really something that you should watch and experience yourself.

It was only after the first 3 episodes that I began to understand the tone and mood that Luca Guadagnino was trying to convey. A lot of the time, the dialogue is abrupt and choppy and can make no sense. It can be frustrating, especially when you have two characters that aren’t communicating effectively. But I think that was the point. Guadagnino is a very realistic director, he captures the most realistic elements in a film. A lot of the conversations between characters is meant to emulate real life. Like, what the hell do you say when a conversation becomes awkward? Well, nothing sometimes.

While Guadagnino’s typical cinematography may suggest whimsy, in WAWWA’s case the small structured and synthetic model of the military base is juxtaposed to the very concrete characters. When I started to view the show less as simply a televised airing of fictional characters and problems, and instead looked at them as people, I began to really enjoy it. 

Take the main character of Fraser, played by Jack Dylan Grazer. Fraser is meant to be seen as an extremely complex and troubled kid, but the difference between him and every other teen in a coming-of-age drama is that he isn’t polished. His drinking and drug habit isn’t framed as romantic or beautiful, in fact most of the time it’s portrayed as his weakness of sorts. In the first episode, Fraser has one of his mothers drive him home after getting pretty wasted and Luca graces us with a direct shot of him throwing up. And before that, Fraser is stumbling on a bridge when he drunkenly falls and cuts his face. Everything the character does is messy, uncoordinated, yet extremely real and relatable. Hell, in one shot you can clearly see him do a Naruto run!

Caitlin/Harper is a character that I enjoyed watching, as well. Jordan Seamon did a fantastic job and I really connected with their character. Initially we see Caitlin as this mysterious girl, and in the pilot we are meant to assume that their relationship with Fraser is supposed to develop into a romantic one. This is not the case as it seems that Caitlin is trying to come to terms with who they are. The biggest shift in Caitlin’s character isn’t their friendship with Fraser but probably when they get their period. 

This was a moment that even I related to, even though I am cis when I first got my period I didn’t tell my mom until the day after. The possible confusion and shift in their reality that Caitlin felt was only heightened with the conflict of their boyfriend wanting to be more physically intimate, and Fraser’s eventual discover of Harper. I would have like to see exactly why Fraser seemed drawn to Caitlin. I’m assuming viewers were supposed to think that Fraser is attracted to her, or something. But both Caitlin/Harper and Fraser are queer coded and their respective sexualities are alluded to not being straight. It would’ve made their standing as platonic friends more clear if this had been established stronger. 

I definitely think the writer could have devoted more time to giving certain characters proper conversations. It would’ve given more development to certain characters and better context for things. However even without that, there is a lot that the audience is showed that can’t be told through dialogue. The power struggle between Sarah and Richard being one. So far, there hasn’t been any explanation as to why they have a such a volatile relationship other than Richard being a homophobe. 

Through deeper inspection, I was able to interpret it as: Richard may heavily resent the fact the Sarah was promoted to Colonel and not him. It is never made clear who has the better credentials, Sarah or Richard, but assuming that she was the one promoted it is a safe guess. This may be highlighted by the fact that Sarah is a women, and also gay. Even before episode 7, it was clear that Richard did not respect her authority. I also interpreted it as Richard being upset that and openly gay women was promoted instead of him, a black man. 

Of course this is just based on my own personal knowledge of how the U.S. military can be towards people of color and LGBTQ+. Regardless, the competitive tension between two parents is palpable without needing dialogue to explain.  

When conflict happens, I can kind of figure out which characters are going to react and which one’s will stay silent. I think the show is trying to accomplish a drastically realistic and raw series. It took me while to adjust to it, but by maybe the 2nd or 3rd episode, it starts to grow on you. Despite not liking a good majority of the characters, I was very surprised by how invested I was in them. 

Like, Danny is my least favorite character because he displays very abusive and explosive tendencies, and doesn’t seem to care about the world around him. However, getting glimpses into his character and seeing how Richard ignores him for Caitlin/Harper, his suicidal thoughts, and how he is trying to reclaim his cultural and religious background makes me empathize with him. 

Even though I hate his character, I can see that he is struggling. I appreciate the way that this show freely shows dark skinned black boys dealing with mental health issues, and personal development. Rarely are issues like suicide talked about in the black community, so seeing Danny talk about it and Craig offering(admittedly poor)comfort was touching. This is a general vibe that I get from nearly all the characters on WAWWA. I also appreciated the how Danny is actively trying to convert to Islam. In shows, rarely is Islam ever portrayed in a positive manner. Especially when female characters are shown to be struggling with their religion, Islam is shown as this barrier that prevents them from living life. Hopefully it goes without saying that the “taking off the hijab” as a way to show that a female character is “liberated” is overplayed and does not offer any respect to the countless Muslim women who choose to wear hijabs. 

Now I think the pacing of some of the storylines could have been handled a bit more gracefully. Like how we jump from Fraser and Harper being kind of enemies(not really but you know what I mean), to just them hanging out in Richard’s boat was jarring. I would have at least liked to see the scene of them talking on the rocks at the beach. It would’ve given more insight on Caitlin/Harper’s character and also on Fraser too. Also how quickly Maggie and Lu(Jennifer but I love the name Lubaba, it’s my aunt’s name)jump into a physical affair. I just would have liked to see a build up of tension between all these characters but I don’t think this entirely ruins the plot. 

I was very iffy when I learned that the show would be focusing on trans identity and gender and sexuality, but not actually hire a trans male actor. I was afraid that the show would completely botch the experiences of being transgender, and honestly I don’t have the authority to speak on whether or not this affects the quality of the show. I am cisgender, and only can empathize with this particular situation as much as I can. But I would like to hear to the opinion of someone who is trans and elaborate on the ways that they did/didn’t like Jordan Kristine Seamón’s portrayal. 

Now at the time I’m writing this, the season finale has yet to come out. But I’d also like to briefly discuss the most recent episode and how it developed Jonathan and Fraser’s relationship. I was VERY worried that Guadagnino was going to take their relationship in the direction of inappropriate. While nearly all the depictions of Jonathan and his actions have been trough Fraser’s pov, it didn’t stop me from side-eyeing some of the interactions they shared. Of course after it was mentioned that Jonathan was supposed to be in his late 20s, nearing 30 I was immediately uncomfortable with the very flirty behavior he exhibited. 

So when the scene of Fraser going up to his apartment after Craig’s death, I was very on edge. If Guadagnino had gone the extra mile to show an even larger age gap then I would’ve been pissed. While I enjoyed Call Me By Your Name, the implication that sexual relationships between barely legal teenagers and adults well into their 20s was sensual is something that I see as very weird now that I’m older. So seeing Jonathan as the object of Fraser’s affections made me extremely warry. 

And honestly, I’m still surprised that the scene even happened in its entirety. I’m sure that Jack was not in any danger of being exploited but there were definitely points while watching I thought, what the fuck is going on? I was very worried that it would escalate, but I was happy to see that Fraser was the one who stopped it from going further.  It made sense to me that this scene took so many liberties to be as graphic as possible without being too graphic, in order to show why a situation like that would be scary and confusing for Fraser. It wasn’t lost to me that Marta and Jonathan were the one’s initiating all the sexual advances. They held all the power in that scenario, even more so because Fraser is younger and has the tendencies to not make the best decisions. Though it seemed that Fraser was trying, he knew that the situation was fucked up.

I’d like to hear what JDG felt and thought doing this scene. What was his character’s thought process?

I’ve seen a lot of people compare the show heavily to CMBYN, which is fine. Besides certain cinematic parallels that people pointed out, I don’t see the clear comparison. CMBYN is more of a love story and it’s more polished than WAWWA. Now when I say tat, I don’t mean it as a negative. Rather, We Are Who We is obviously more devoted to realism and its characters. I appreciate the inclusion of more LGBTQ+ people and black main characters with development, something that CMBYN lacked. And for some people who didn’t like the show based solely on the fact that it wasn’t a CMBYN tv show, I suggest just going into it with no expectations and enjoy the mess. 

And I’d also like to take a moment to commend Jack Dylan Grazer for his job in We Are Who We Are. All of the main cast are amazing actors and actresses and did a really good job bringing their characters to life. Though, I had always associated JDG with supporting roles that, while highlighted his acting talent, only put him in a one-dimensional light. As good as It 2017 was, JDG’s role of Eddie is only meant to be seen as a comic relief. In WAWWA, I was able to forget that he was teen actor, Jack Dylan Grazer, and really see him as Fraser. It’s worth mentioning that in a GQ interview, Grazer also mentioned how this role made him reevaluate is approach to acting. 

And after reading an interview he did with a Interview Germany, with him saying he spent months in Italy reading the script and trying to perfectly craft this character, I was immensely impressed. I hope that he knows that all his hard work payed off and made a really dynamic and interesting character. I really hope that in the future JDG continues with more mature or multi-dimensional roles because he displayed that he has the talent to do so. Him being so young makes me optimistic in knowing that he is definitely going places in his career. I also hope that there will be a season 2 of WAWWA because despite having hour long episodes, the show still felt way too short. There is a lot about Fraser’s character, and all the others’ characters, that I want more information and analysis on.

[peculiarmindset]

Are you okay with nsfw stories? Is there something you don't like in fanfics?🤔

NSFW fics? I enjoy reading them and I am able to write them, it just doesn’t come as easily to me like romance and comedy does- those are my main genres. It would take me a legit 2 days to write out one sex scene while half that time I could write a normal chapter 😅 I’m busy with irl stuff too, so that’s why I don’t write nsfw too often.

And the reason why I haven’t written much smut here is because I’m putting all my nsfw skills into my upcoming HP series (I feel like I’ve been building up a lot of hype for it, but I promise it will be worth it, specifically for my kink readers- particularly those for burping, farting and scat 😋).

Things I don’t like in fics? Hmmm…🤔

I don’t like overly dramatic situations. Like when the writer drags out the conflict or misunderstanding for so long when it could have been resolved quickly.

I hate overly awkward situations.

I’m not a fan of angst.

I don’t like stupid stories- pwp is fine, but I prefer a decent plot to what I read, even if it’s short.

I don’t like when the characters I like are written poorly and treated badly- hence why I hate humiliation, degradation and torture. I like hurt/comfort though.

BDSM isn’t my thing. I don’t hate it and it can be pretty interesting to read when it’s done right, but I don’t necessary go out of my way to read it, let alone write it

I’m not particularly fond of the use of sex toys neither- like BDSM, I don’t hate it but I don’t go out of my way to read/write it

I already said my thoughts about face farting before- I don’t hate it, but it’s awkward for me

I don’t like shit-eating. It takes a lot to gross me out and this is one of them. I won’t even consider writing this.

I HATE INFIDELITY. Threesomes are fine- never written one nor do I particularly want to though.

I am really uncomfortable with situations involving drugs and when characters get drunk/intoxicated- this is due to a personal trauma. I won’t go into detail, but I’ve experienced when people get very violent when they were drunk or drugged out. It brings back bad memories…so please never ask me of this. I can barely even handle drinking parties in stories. Many people find it fun- but I don’t.

No domestic violence- same as my reason for drugs and alcohol.

Bad spelling and grammar is NO. I myself have horrible spelling skills and it can take hours for me to revise a chapter. So if I can put in the time to produce something decent, then others can too.

I only do gay fics (kink and non-kink). I’ve written only BL fics for so long that I haven’t read or written any other sex pair (as the main focus) since I first started writing fanfiction over 10 years ago.

I have emetophobia. Nuff said.

I’m not an animal person, so no Furry/Beastiality neither (but I do like omegaverse).

I also don’t like gore, vore, macro, micro, cannibalism, rape, non-con, open relationships, orgies, gangbang, homophobia, racism, sexism, and darkfics.

I generally like a happy ending- although I sometimes get in moods where I’m craving for a good tragedy.

I apologize for being so picky. But basically anything that wasn’t brought up here is either something I like, I don’t care about either way or I haven’t discovered yet, lol 😆

[tbass2201]

2020 K-Dramas Ratings

These K-dramas were dramas I watched this year so far. Not all were released this year. Rating them from least to most favorite. I struggled so much to not rank these and not have multiple ties as well. (*crying emoji*) 

8. Where Your Eyes Linger (Series) 

This BL (boy love) drama focuses on two best friends, Tae Joo and Kang Gook, an heir to a family run business conglomerate and his bodyguard. Under the strict and constant eye of Tae Joo’s father, they start to realize jealousy and constant tension is the result of feelings the two have subconsciously developed for each other. The drama was so short. I wished there was more story development and build up for the two male leads characters. But they didn’t fail to deliver that tension of their fiery romance on screen for the short drama. Drama has also been recently made into a movie as well. 

7. Melting Me Softly 

This romantic comedy shows that the feelings love can bring can raise our body temperatures to detrimental levels. At least for Go Mi Ran and Ma Dong Chan that is. In 1999 the two participate in a frozen human cryongenic experiment that was supposed to last twenty-four hours but intead lasts for twenty years. The two then have to continue where they left off and adapt to lives in a completely new age while also trying to remain healthy with abnormal body temperatures. Falling in love of course, doesn’t help. The plot to this drama I felt like could easily have been messed up, but the delivery was the best it could’ve been. Lots of funny moments with just as many cute scenes. Also for my fellow Ji Chang Wook fangirls, the steamy kissing scene definitely won’t disappoint. (*wink*. With the main lead at least. *double wink*).   

6. Sweet Munchies 

If you couldn’t taste the bittersweet flavor of a third-wheel looking at the gif above then lucky for you, you’ve never had to be one. A Jin a PD director, Jin Sung a talented chef, and Tae Wan a famous fashion designer all fall into an awkward love triangle while working together on a show called “Sweet Munchies”. A Jin seeks a gay chef after finally getting an oppurtunity to direct her own show. In order to help her and due to financial issues Jin Sung lies about his sexuality to be a part of the show. He doesn’t realize though how his lie affects lots of people of around him, and lots of drama and tension ensues. Tae Wan hands down is my favorite character in this show due to his story and performance in the drama. Maybe even one of my favorite kdrama characters in general. 

5. One Spring Night 

A librarian and a pharmacist develop feelings for each other among circumstances where there are tons of factors against them. Simutaneously Jeong In tries to end her four year relationship and deal with her father. While Ji Ho fights the constant battle of doubt after a previous partner leaves him and their son. Makes you really think about the ultimate purpose of relationships and why people pursue them. Also how feelings can stem unpredictably, even when they seemingly shouldn’t.  

4. 100 Days My Prince 

A historical romance drama with a little bit of everything. Action packed fight scenes, romance, comedy, and Do Kyungsoo (I mean I’m not the only one who feels this way). The two leads Lee Yul and Hong Shim (what she’s commonly known as) create romance under forceful circumstances ordered by their prince not knowing they have met prior in their youth. Lee Yul also has amnesia and tries to re-discover himself only to find out, he is actally a royal prince. 

3. Touch Your Heart 

What happens when you have a perfectionist lawyer and a washed up actress work together in a law firm? At first you get lots of disagreements and arguments. But then you eventually see love blossom. Yoon Seo works as Jung Ruk’s secretary for three months in order for her to make her acting comeback after her career is tarrnished due to a drug scandal. We see office romance in a pure, innocent light that’ll touch your heart. 

2. I’ll Visit You When the Weather is Nice 

Life in Seoul isn’t great anymore. Hae Won, a cellist, comes back to her hometown for a change of pace. Working alongside Eun Seop her former classmate at his bookstore, we see into different aspects of their lives. They take us on journey of self-acceptance, rage, grief and love in this small town. But Hae Won doesn’t plan to be staying there for long. In this drama we have leads but we see perpectives from lots of characters that we can relate to and that provokes us to re-evaluate problems we may be holding on to. 

1. Extra-Ordinary You 

Life in Dan Oh’s eyes is perfect. Until she becomes aware that she’s an extra character in a comic book. Determined to change her fate and control her life despite what the writer has made for her, she realizes she can’t do it alone. Another extra even more insignificant than her called “Number 13″ helps her and is the only one who can change the story. But once she names him Ha Ru changes in the story don’t come with benefits, but can the two win the fight to control their own lives? One of the most refreshing kdramas out there with a unique plot and lead actors Kim Hye Yoon and Rowoon nailing their first lead roles.  

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SHADOWHUNTERS - Created by Ed Decter - Based on The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

Content Warning - Mentions of abuse, suicide, self harm, internalised homophobia and drugs.

The Netflix show Shadowhunters has a lot of important topics to talk about. These include sexuality, grief, addiction, religion and mental illness.

Firstly, the Warlock, Magnus. Magnus Bane is an openly bisexual male who doesn't conform to gender roles. He is not ashamed to talk about his past relationships with both men and women, which is something that is not really seen within the LGBT community. People often hide their sexuality or gender identity due to fear of being treated differently, but Magnus is so open about his sexuality. He is not ashamed of who he is and is proud of his identity, something everyone should aspire to be, regardless of their gender identity or sexuality.

Magnus embraces his femininity, unlike a lot of cisgender men. He wears makeup (specifically eyeliner, which he describes as his tiger stripes) and paints his nails, something which is a stereotypically feminine trait (although that is slowly changing). As well as this, a lot of his clothing could be described as 'feminine'. This shows other LGBTQ+ people that they are able to embrace their femininity regardless of their gender identity; Things should not be gendered. Experimenting with your gender expression should not be looked down on. Everyone should be able to be free to express themselves however they want without fear of judgement. Magnus’ character is the embodiment of this. He is never judged for how he expresses himself.

Magnus is also shown to struggle with the loss of magic and therefore turns to alcohol, which is a very negative coping mechanism. He ends up having a breakdown in front of his (at the time) boyfriend as a result of drinking too much and not being able to cope with his magic being taken away. Magnus has friends who help him through his loss, especially Alec, who reminds him he is no less of a person without his magic and that he still loves him regardless. People often turn to alcohol or drugs as they believe it will distract them from their issues, which is why this portrayal is very true to the real world. Magnus feels a loss of identity through losing his magic, which is to be expected since he has has magic for over four hundred years. He feels powerless and useless without this huge part of him, however he is lucky to have a huge support system to help him through his dark times.

As well as the trauma from losing his magic twice, Magnus also suffers from PTSD due to events of his past. When body swapped with Valentine, the Clave use the agony rune on Magnus as a form of torture to get him to tell them where the Mortal Cup is. The rune only ends up bringing up past trauma which he has spent centuries trying to bury. After returning to his body, Magnus talks to Alec about what he did and explains that he never wanted Alec to see this ugly side of him. Showing Magnus so vulnerable and talking about his trauma shows people that opening up can help them move on from events of the past. Alec is extremely comforting towards Magnus and expresses how he thinks there is nothing ugly about him. This seems to be a huge relief for Magnus.

Next, Shadowhunter Alec. Alec Lightwood is one of the few gay characters who hasn't been portrayed in a stereotypical way. He is the leader of the New York Institute and is incredibly masculine, which is very different to how gay men are usually portrayed in the media. Having a (now openly) gay man be someone that high up in status is important as it shows other gay or LGBTQ+ people that they can do everything that a non LGBTQ+ person can do and more. By being open about the fact he is gay to the rest of the Institute, it gives other LGBTQ+ Shadowhunters the confidence to be able to talk about their sexuality or gender, as shown by Underhill who tells Alec how inspirational he is. As well as other characters now being confident in opening up about their sexuality, a lot of fans would have also found inspiration in Alec's bravery to come out the way he did. Alec also dealt with a lot of internalised homophobia due to his status and his family, which is something a lot of people can relate to as people are often ashamed of their sexuality due to judgemental family or how society can portray the LGBTQ+ community. Alec managed to get rid of the internalised homophobia with the help of his family and friends, and his now husband. This shows to fans that there are people who support them greatly and will never judge them. Having supportive people around you can help immensely and can save someone's life.

In season 2 episode 4, Alec is possessed by a demon who uses his body to kill Jocelyn, Clary’s mother. He feels incredibly guilty about this and blames himself, despite the others telling him not to. We don’t see much more about Alec’s guilt until season 2 episode 8, in which Alec’s worst fears are brought out due to Iris’ attack on Magnus’ apartment. When talking to Clary on the balcony, he hears her blame him for her mother’s death, when in reality she is trying to talk him down from the balcony. He tries to jump, but luckily Magnus catches him before he manages to. After the attack has been resolved, Magnus talks about how magic cannot create fears, but bring them out, showing just how much Jocelyn’s death effected Alec. As well as Alec almost falling from the balcony, we see him repeatedly shoot arrows which results in his fingers bleeding. This seems like a type of self harm for him, as he doesn’t use the healing rune to fix up the wounds. Magnus points this out as well as the fact that Alec is clearly hurting due to what the demon did. He explains that Alec hopes the pain in his fingers will overpower the pain he is feeling from the guilt, but that it is not that easy. Magnus does all he can to try and comfort Alec.

In the finale of season 3B, we see Alec as Inquisitor and Magnus as High Warlock of Alicante. Previously, there would never have been a High Warlock for any of the Shadowhunter cities, as Downworlders and Shadowhunters were generally separated. By being open about their relationship and Alec being so high in power, they managed to change how the Shadowhunters treat other Downworlders. They ultimately end up working with each other instead of against. Magnus and Alec changed the world with their relationship. They ended the blatant racism between Downworlders and Shadowhunters and they are finally treated as equal.

When planning his and Magnus’ wedding, he states he would like to have it at the Institute. He explains that this is because the Clave would have to celebrate a relationship between a Shadowhunter and a Downworlder under their own roof. Having the wedding in the Institute shows how much Alec is willing to do to abolish the clear racism and hatred of Downworlders within the Clave. This, along with several other acts during the one year time skip (I imagine), had a huge effect on the perception on Downworlders and both Shadowhunters and Downworlders end up working together.

Raphael Santiago is (while nothing is explicitly said about his sexuality) an asexual vampire. He explains to Izzy that he's not interested in sex, implying he is asexual, which was then comfirmed by the book writer, Cassandra Clare. Vampires are often portrayed as sexual beings in the media, and the fact that Raphael is asexual is completely different from the norm. There isn't a lot of asexual representation in the media and is often completely forgotten about, so seeing a character be open about his asexuality to one of his friends gives representation to an often ignored sexuality. Having this kind of representation is important as it lets other asexual people know they aren't alone and also validates their feelings.

Raphael also manages to keep his faith throughout his life time despite everything he has been through. When he becomes mundane again, he talks about how he went to morning mass for the first time in 80 years. In the season finale of 3B, he states to Simon and Isabelle that he joined the seminary and is on his way to becoming a priest. Despite the hell he has been through, he still managed to keep his faith and intends to devote his life to it. To other religious people who might watch the show, it tells them that they should never give up on their faith, regardless of what they go through. Despite not being a religious person myself, I can fully understand how that may be comforting.

We see Raphael’s sister struggle with dementia as it ultimately worsens and she easily forgets who Raphael is. Despite her not knowing who he is, he visits her often and spends as much time as possible with her. In season 3 episode 3, Raphael gets a phone call from the nursing home explaining that she has passed away. This very clearly affects him a lot, and he immediately turns to Izzy for comfort. He is upset that he cannot attend her funeral due to it being during the day, so Izzy promises that she will go in his place. When he becomes mundane again, he goes to Rosa’s grave and plants flowers for her, something he hadn’t been able to do previously. I think this would have been a huge weight off of his chest.

In season 3 episode 5, the head of security, Underhill, talks to Alec about how he is an inspiration for being in a same sex relationship with a downworlder. He explains that if it wasn’t for Alec he would have never had the courage to come out to the Institute. He had to keep his private life separate from his job at the institute until Alec had the courage to show his true feelings for Magnus. This just proves how much of an inspiration Alec is to the rest of the Institute.

As well as Underhill, Shadowhunters Helen (who is half Seelie) and Aline also end up having the courage to be together. In the finale, we see them kiss at Alec and Magnus’ wedding after talking about what they could wear for their own wedding. Their relationship is a similar one to Alec and Magnus, as it is a same sex relationship and one of them is part Downworlder. If it wasn’t for Magnus and Alec being open about their relationship, I doubt they would have been able to be public with their own.

Luke Garroway’s partner, Ollie Wilson, is also in a same sex relationship. While she and her girlfriend, Sam, are a minor part of the show, it gives us another same sex relationship but with mundanes instead of the Shadow World. The two share everything with each other and seem to be in a very committed and loving relationship.

The show also deals with drug addiction, as seen in Isabelle Lightwood. Victor Aldertree gives Izzy Yin Fen, a drug made from vampire venom, as a pain relief for her demon wound. Yin Fen is immediately addicting and Aldertree gives her a jar of it to use when she needs it. Once she finds out what it is from the Iron Sisters, she tried to stay clean, but ends up suffering from really bad withdrawals. In response to this, she tries to find some vampires who are willing to feed from her to get her fix of venom. Raphael agrees to do this, which only gets him addicted to her blood. They both agree that it would be best for them both to stop. Izzy then uses candy as a way to control her withdrawals. Through this and the support of her brother, she manages to stay clean.

Abuse is also heavily dealt with. Johnathan, Clary’s brother, was sent to Edom at a young age and suffered torture from Lilith. She burned him constantly, and when he returned to Earth, he continued to burn himself as a sort of reminder. As well as physically abusing Johnathan, Lilith also mentally abused him, telling him that no one would come for him. This clearly affected him for the rest of his life and he continues to struggle with the trauma of the abuse. When connected by the twinning rune, the behaviour of burning himself was also transferred to Clary. They slowly become more connected and behaviours are shared.

Every topic discussed within the show was dealt with in a very mature and understanding way. With such heavy topics being included, there is always the potential for there to be bad writing as people often struggle to understand certain concepts, but they were all very well written and dealt with maturely. All of these things combined have made Shadowhunters one of the most representative shows to ever exist. These are the reasons why it has become one of my favourite shows and why I will never let it go, even though it’s officially over. It didn’t deserve to end at all, but I’m just glad we got to have this amazing show exist in the first place.

Thank you to the cast and crew, who have done an amazing job portraying some of the best characters and storylines. Thank you for making me and a lot of others feel like they aren’t alone in the world.