#but i think it might be a decent story

[misiahasahardname]

i’m never getting over mikey and pigeon pete

tmnt i need more of them please and thank you!!!

if the image quality looks a bit iffy, the image under the cut may explain why (there’s also a bonus little doodle i really like)

in all honesty i have no idea why i didn’t make this on a separate canvas but fuck it, i like how it turned out

here’s my silly doodle btw. no idea why i chose to draw mikey in that one concept outfit (minus the wig ofc) but just go with it

[girls-and-honey]

.

[vampnyx]

A redesign of my Qilin oc that I made like 10 years ago and never used...

Also decided he's a himbo bc how do I not have a himbo monster boyfriend oc???

[torsamors]

aaahshsjahdka god these ppl only like me or consider me a ‘friend’ when its convenient for them

[sonknuxadow]

they werent lying that knuckles series barely has knuckles in it

[paperhats-and-evil-schemes]

You know, I think what i fear most about all these soulless Disney remakes is that one day they'll take Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of the strongest and most daring Disney movies ever in its depiction of showing the dark sides of religion without demonizing faith as a whole, and that they'll take Judge Claude Frollo and either make him "sympathetic" or way less extreme than in the original, since Disney is nowhere near as ballsy to do something like directly criticize religious extremists anymore, I think, and that would just DESTROY the great impact that movie's messaging had.

That's not to say I have anything against sympathetic villains, but Frollo is one that was so strong BECAUSE of how awful he was and the position he held, and that fierce kind of villainy should NEVER be changed in his case imo. Very strong teaching moments in there for kids.

[divinekangaroo]

Was thinking a bit deeper on @deadendtracks query https://www.tumblr.com/divinekangaroo/740003125539307520/i-clipped-this-from-your-post-because-its-easier?source=share

Snipped for sex talk, and also to spare any disinterested parties my naiveity on complex matters such as: subaltern/Orientalism/exoticism/Othering/ethnic talk etc

In hindsight I think I answered that query as a ‘possible authorial intent’ - speculatively, to subvert the usual gangster trope by displaying macho-ish behaviours (sex! whores!) but flipping motivation and outcome.

But there's also something else that's been churning away at the back of my head, the term subaltern. "the most powerless people living within the socio-economic confines of imperialism" -- and this imperialist overlay that often assigns the devious, deviant, dark, scheming/conniving/machavellian/feminine characteristics to the subaltern man, too, because it is exotic.

I haven't properly structured an argument around this; I feel a lot of T's approach to sex has that almost woman-coded thing to it, as signifiers of an even-further-disadvantaged man. It nags at me and feels that this also ties into this subaltern, semi-'Orientalist' / exotic layer he has as 'lower than the lowest class' / 'actually so low class he's outside of class' Romani character -> less of a stereotype, more of a conscious consideration of "if you have nothing, you will use everything you can, and sometimes that includes your own body, and guess what here's the bind: that kinda puts you even *lower* in the hierarchy, because women are lower than men and only women use their bodies that way!"

Gut instinct, barely unpacked: there's an imperialist/cultural/ethnic trauma that feels like it can't be detached from Tommy's sexuality/approach to sex any more than the hints of childhood trauma or abuse can be, either. Especially when you consider childhood as his closest time still connected to the living Romani culture, as opposed to by the time we see him on screen when his interactions with his culture are static and based on childhood/broken memories. I was initially put off by the Romani layer because it felt like a stereotype - gangs followed ethnic lines so let's just apply an ethnicity that's ~exotic~ - but the later series re-frame the earlier approach into something that shows it was almost never intended to be a representation of the culture but rather, more like Tommy's particular (distorted, damaged) view.

----

But then also answering the personal side of the question RE: Tommy's character. What does it mean for a person/individual to be so transactional and detached from sex yet participatory towards it?

This gets a little more headcanon-y:

T started having sex or being sexualised (seeing/experiencing sex) really young in a less than affectionate way - more like, here is a thing that must be done for some other action to happen (or be diverted).

Because of this, I can’t ever see him permitting himself to perform that ‘hungry to totally surrender his control and desires to someone else’ role so frequently given to him in fanon. What happened with Tatiana was an exception, not a rule. It’s nice to read for various reasons, but I'm unlikely to personally lean into this take. Not to say he's dominating or must be fully in control during sex, either, just that I think he'd avoid leaning into surrender because it'd be like losing total control of a transaction and becoming far too vulnerable.

Despite that I do feel he has an urge for connection/intimacy, I think he struggles with actually connecting deeply with people, reading sexual cues/flirtation or the like. In some ways, he connects too deeply and therefore holds back? I did have thoughts along the asexual line. He likes certain people, and he mostly enjoys the physical act of sex, and these two things can overlap to ‘I would like sex with this certain person’, but there’s a big gap between the two. Deep connection is unrelated to sex. Can't read flirt cues to the point he leapfrogs straight to the 'do you want to fuck?' almost as an abstraction because he can never decode the in-between steps?

Notwithstanding any deep connection, sex is still considered/framed as duty and obligation. His approach with Lizzie in S6 as case in point; he is conscious of his role and considers it a thing that must be performed to satisfy that role. Even S5, it feels like a 'seal the deal' sex exchange; he knows she likes it, she just told him so and that it's important to her, so all right, he's going to let loose.

This difficulty with 'is this connection? not sure?' is one reason why I think he is mostly about family (he can take connection for granted and has had a really really long time to build it). He also has a surprisingly large *respectful* but superficial network (he knows the right behaviours but rarely gets personal), very few close friends (honestly is this just Alfie? Maybe, once, Freddie and Barney? even Johnny Dogs and Uncle Charlie are subordinate). Which lends itself very effectively to leadership, to be honest, but also loneliness: again it feels like he's performing connection.

I really struggle with picturing him feeling much physical attraction without consciously focusing on it. He seems to spark for people (or maybe situations/dynamics - classy women?) not their physical, and when I’m in headcanon mode, it’s familiarity that builds his fondness for certain aspects of a person's physicality, rather than their physicality attracting him initially. So either he wants sex (release) and it's not really relevant who with, or he wants the person and sex is acceptable/better with that person. And there's a conscious switch in his head like, "ok now paying attention to physical attraction because must have sex" or "switch it off not important right now"

[lyinginbedmon]

Plot Concept

A young child shares a candid conversation on sunny afternoon with the family black sheep, a strange "uncle" who is dismissed by the child's parents as being just neurodivergent, queer, or some combination of both as explanation to their quirks, mannerisms, and discretely different perspective on things.

And all of that seems reasonable, until the "uncle" makes a far more compelling argument: They're a changeling, and among the last of fey-kind walking the Earth.

Oh yes, all the stories were real, or at least real enough for a quasi-metaphysical creature like the fey. All the warnings, all the tropes, all the magic, but the old roads were worn away, and human houses and concrete overtook the once-careful boundaries. The magic of good neighbours was colonised, and humans still today borrow from its most revered principles.

The fair folk were playful, but not tricksters. Not really, anyway. They preferred to think of themselves as teachers. "Don't get too full of yourself", "don't meddle with things you don't yet understand", "remember that warnings were written with good reason", so on and so forth. But as humans learned, sometimes far faster than the fairies expected, they stole from the magic what was useful to them. Now lawyers practice contracts and scientists cook up potions and engineers weave sorcery.

But whilst the time of the fae has waned, they didn't go anywhere. They're fewer in number, certainly, but changelings were never quite ones to stick to their side. They're out there now, pinning on flags and expressing themselves in counter-cultures, and the magic surrounding them is very real, even if it has been diminished.

[callixton]

CHAPTER 2 YIPPEE!! fic officially finished <3 please take a gander i think there's some interesting stuff going on in here

[strigital]

The rōnin and the yūrei 🌸

[shieldsurf]

out of the big 4 het/canon fairy tail pairings jerza is by Far the worst imo like. he needs to leave her alone i'm so serious and the fact that mashima wrote in a 7 year age gap for no reason is Not helping... erzas ass is NINETEEN the first time jellal makes an open pass at her i don't care that they used to be the same age it is fucking weird. gruvia is a close second though because while yes we objectify men here sir and i live to serve women juvia's creepiness is really just too much like at a certain point it starts to feel really gross and the fact that gray seems to fall for her by the end of the anime/manga just reeks of coercion. not even bringing up how genuinely awful juvia's character writing is she gets like 5 minutes of being interesting before getting instantly reduced to a creepy stan who completely revolves around gray and has less depth than the average bossfight of the week. i guess its equality that erza and mirajane are some of the best characters in this story (which is admittedly a low bar considering half of their personality is being subjected to the most voyeuristic shots possible) so mashima had to balance it out by making juvia one of the worst

[clippy]

so today (12/30/22) marks the 10 year anniversary of me making a gijinka of clippy and literally altering the course of my life... i've talked in-depth about the specifics multiple times but that doesn't matter right now... what matters is Clippy is still one of my favorite characters of all time and i love him so much

[eukariote]

INSANELY surreal to search for a scene from a movie and see my own video come up as the second result. WHAT???

[01tsubomi]

mfw i spent yeeeeears in college aaaaaagonizing about how to turn a short fanfic of mine into a full-length original work and was working on it with my professor and through all the editing became really embarrassed of the original fanfic version thinking it was immature and shallow but could also never make the rewrite work so i moved onto other projects and then today after a very long time reread both of them only to find that the original fic is concise and heartfelt with clunky execution but solid and gripping emotional beats and the novelization is overwritten self-obsessed garbo

[shishinpenshin]

hot take. deco27s recent music sux and is very much the same tiktok love song republished with a different theme each time

[tasmanianstripes]

Amazing how it took the developers of Poppy Playtime two whole chapters to finally make a bare minimum of a functional game