#but in there the character while saying this brings up he's heterosexual while in here I feels like it may be a gay joke

[bengiyo]

Heesu in Class 2: Maybe It’s Time to Stop Calling Myself a BL Viewer

After finishing Heesu in Class 2, it’s been surprising to feel like I’m in the minority for enjoying it. We’ve seen a great deal of concerted posting from fans of the webtoon about how this show betrayed its source material with its adaptation changes. Over the last few weeks, I’ve read the original webtoon to gather my own thoughts. After reading through @my-rose-tinted-glasses post on why this project didn’t work for her, I decided to sit with it for a while. I then came across this tweet from Dr. Thomas Baudinette:

I respect Dr. Baudinette’s academic interest in the genre and the useful insider insight he brings to the table. However, I will say plainly that I think this is a grossly disingenuous take, grounded in the idea that stories about queer romance take precedence over other queer stories. Additionally, it deeply misreads the adaptation choices and insinuates that a queer show that includes heterosexuality in it is somehow betraying the BL audience. There’s a lot to unpack here, but I will say plainly that I will go back to just being a queer cinephile who dabbles in BL instead of advocating for BL if this is who we are.

I am a queer person here for stories about queer truth. BL is a romance genre. While I respect BL viewers who are here to get their feelings from swoony moments, I cannot abide the presumption that a story that is inherently about the coming out experience somehow let its source material down for maintaining that connection. Every year we get into a big fight about what is or isn’t BL (see: 180 Degree Longitude Passes Through Us, Love in the Big City, What Did You Eat Yesterday?, etc.), often arguing that BL is a branding term used to get romance viewers to show up and support queer works. I think it’s fine enough to argue that Heesu in Class 2 isn’t a BL because it uses Korean drama frameworks (@lurkingshan) for its story instead of sandblasting you in the face with pop music as two boys stare at each other, but I think there’s real value in what the show is doing for mainstream viewers.

I’ve avoided discussing the webtoon too much in my commentary, but now that I have read it I will say firmly that this would have sucked as a TV show. We know that about 40-50% of the shows we get each year are based on their source material. The webtoon is adorable and well-intentioned. It’s also a very simple narrative in which we are primarily in Heesu’s point of view, and any time we leave his point of view it’s to see only what other people are thinking about him. In my opinion, simpler narratives like the Heesu webtoon work best as films and not as dramas. 

We recently went through this with Living With Him, in which a really short manga got stretched to eight episodes and had to add contrivances to the middle to pad out the time that eventually hurt the core narrative. Thai BL is rife with secondary, tertiary, and quaternary couples to pad out time to meet the long run time demands of the airing schedule. When you’re adapting a fairly simple story, you either have to add depth or bloat. Oftentimes we get both. In the case of Heesu, it’s clear that they were only adapting the first season of the webtoon, and so they added depth.

The constant refrain from detractors of this webtoon is that it deprioritized the queer characters and their narrative in favor of straight narratives. I wholeheartedly disagree. Every single straight story in this show (and the gay ones) are meant to add context to the queer struggles Hee Su and Seung Won face, from Ji Yu and Chan Young to all three of his sisters.

Ji Yu’s music arc hearkens to the queer fear of being public with yourself and facing judgment and scrutiny. Chan Young’s tennis arc features real parental abandonment consequences that many a queer person fears. Hee Sin exemplifies how easy it is to fall for people and also deal with the constant rejection of most people not being into you (because they’re straight). Hee Jae exemplifies how toxic a relationship with your best friend can be when the romantic feelings aren’t fully reciprocal. Hee Yeong shows us what it means to be brave and face your friend after you’ve let them down romantically. Ho Sik highlights how easy it is for straight people to express and pursue their romances, and then be public with them. None of these plots exist in a vacuum; they’re meant to add context to the tension between Hee Su and Seung Won.

On the queer front, the show expanded on the initial lesbian advice plotline as a way for Hee Su to open the discussion about queerness with his siblings. The look shared between the sisters, their careful responses, and the way they treat him in the final episode after Hee Su comes out to Hee Sin shows that they talked to each other. Hee Sin clearly pulled on her prior knowledge when she insisted to Hee Su that she still loves him. Hee Jae, the grumpiest sister, was especially direct about praising Hee Su when he offered to help them take Hee Yeong to the airport. Hee Yeong told him plainly that he must remember that she is always on his side and will support him. Seung Won’s mom acknowledged that her own coming out affected him, and let him decide how open to be about his family.

The coming out sequence with Hee Sin was so powerful. He made it clear that this isn’t a gay-for-you situation. He said plainly that his crushes are on guys, and will probably always be on guys. Hee Sin’s response took me back to this incredible scene from The Fosters, in which Lena’s dad apologizes to her for saying “I still love you.” He rejects it as something horrible, in which you confirm to your kid that you could possibly stop loving them. He says he wishes he had instead said, “Thank you for telling me something so important about yourself, and I can’t wait to meet the person you want to share your life with.” 

I’m also annoyed about the insistence that the straights were given priority in this narrative in which everyone gets about the same level of on-screen intimacy. This is a show that managed to avoid getting an R rating, which means that it’ll be accessible to a much wider range of viewers without needing additional parental controls. The straights getting time means that when the gays throw the ease at which they pursued romance back in their faces, it’s actually grounded in events that transpired in the narrative. I will also say that I did NOT like the way Jiyu and Chanyoung meddled with Heesu in the webtoon, and thought conspiring with Seung Won was not kind to Heesu. I like that the drama instead uses their stories to support the queer themes as Ji Yu directly supports Seung Won.

I’d also like to say that all the Chan Young commentary troubles me. Hee Su has been in love with this boy for ten years. I actually think the show needs to spend time fleshing him out into a real person for the audience to understand why Hee Su likes him so much. He’s charming and friendly. He’s kind and thoughtful. He wants to help the people he cares about. He also trusts Hee Su implicitly. 

I do not blame him for being overwhelmed and surprised when Hee Su suddenly confessed to him, and I think there is real value in him botching that moment. So many viewers who might not have spent a lot of time thinking about how they would handle queer people coming out to them will benefit from seeing Chan Young flub that moment. What’s more important is that he did eventually talk to Hee Su and begin to repair the break in their friendship. It isn’t about being right every single time; it’s about always doing the work required to make things right. 

Finally, I really loved that Hee Su got to be mad at Seung Won for confusing him all this time. It was fun to see Hee Su, who I think was way out of line for always interfering in Chan Young’s life, face the reality that he had also been subject to that kind of behavior. This worked so well for me because we understood that what Seung Won liked so much about Hee Su was how warm and open he was. I will have more to say in the future about how many shows we’ve already had this year reject one-sided pining as inherently pure.

In the end, it’s just a really dissonant experience for me to see such a kind show getting such an energetic negative response. Like anyone else who’s watched over 300 BLs since 2016, I like seeing cute boys kiss each other and make face as much as anyone else. However, if we’re unable to appreciate using a webtoon with clear ideas about the difficulty of coming out when you’re in love with a friend in a format that far more viewers are used to, I don’t think I can rock with this anymore. I can’t even find myself associated with the kinds of people who would have called Degrassi homophobic because it wasn’t exclusively gay. 

[chronicdelusionistsart]

No, he is not a Completely Different Character from when he was in high school - The Continuity of Bernard Dowd

SO I often see the argument that Bernard my man has changed into a completely different guy since high school. Me too, bestie. And much like Bernard, if you had met me in high school, you probably would have wanted to throw me into a lake.

People grow and change from high school to young adulthood, of course, but the nature of this criticism tends to be the idea that there's no continuity - that Bernard was completely retconned and there's very little to nothing recognizable of his personality and characterhood at the time. The common argument I see is that there's no way to reconcile the differences, even taking into account that people naturally age out of being obnoxious teens.

This just isn't the case. I got into it a little at the tail end of my previous post about Bernard and the art of Recontextualization, but it's really astounding just how much effort seems to have been put into respecting the continuity of the character. I'm gonna go through the 1993 Robin run and go character trait by character trait and see how these scenes read as foundational information for the continuity of the Bernard we have today.

Yeah you heard me. It's basically a fucking listicle. come at me

(SPOILERS for Tim Drake: Robin, Urban Legends, and the 1993 Robin run under the cut!)

1) "They just randomly made him gay" - yeah but it was really funny and based did you ever think of that

I already posted this one last time but let's take a minute to really sit with this one because it's soooooooo

It's absolutely undeniable that the original author of the Robin run almost certainly intended Bernard to be a pointedly heterosexual teenage boy. No arguments there. I actually think based on my experience living in that era and being bi that if you'd suggested the idea of an explicitly deeply closeted best friend for Tim Drake in the early 2000s at DC they would have laughed in your face and then possibly fired you and/or called you a slur or something. There are probably standout queer comics from the time, but mainstream Batman? We're making this for boys that want to ogle Steph's tits, I say, grinding up a rock into dust in my bare hand as I look over this storyline again for panels

My point here is that a lot of comics at the time come off as overly exaggerated about how cool and manly and heteronormative their guy characters are, which is of course also the ultimate refuge of the closeted gay guy. If they'd been normal about it it wouldn't have been so easy to read closeting into it, but as it is...

Yeah this is believable from a teenager but becomes a zillion times funnier as just covering a panic attack over going over to meet the cute boy's paren- wait why does he have elf ears. Why does he look 40 five panels ago

the two genders etc etc.

ANYWAY this was obviously a purposeful choice when rehauling the character. We're going to see a pattern of using things from the 2000s that were baffling or weird in retrospect and expanding on them to bring some consistency and intrigue to his character. "Now Pika," I hear you saying, having divined my nickname from some other source, "you're showing panels out of context to create a false narrative. Five panels ago when Bernard was 40 he was notably accused of staring at Tim's stepmom ALL DINNER. That sounds just, just SLIGHTLY heterosexual and there's really no other explanation f

2) He was always smarter than he looked actually

ah.

ah.

I said before that a lot of Bernard is hidden behind layers.

While he appears to be a dumbass in the 2000s, he manages to notice something is Wrong with Tim. Like, consistently. A lot of what we see on panel is Bernard questioning Tim and probing into his personal life - he notices something is unusual about Tim on literally their first meeting, and no shit, Bernard is only in a grand total of five scenes with Tim in the entire run and he spends four of them asking inconvenient personal questions at Tim.

"Tim, is your dad secretly an asshole? Blink twice for yes" "How about we stop talking for a little while"

Obviously in the context of the 2000s this is just like forced drama. But there's a sort of elegance in how seamless it is to look back at this with the context that he's been someone who downplays his own intelligence the whole time. Like "actually, he tends to hit on or adjacent to the truth a LOT, doesn't he?" Even without the new stuff, it's a pertinent observation.

3) "I like Robin a normal amount" - guy who pirates modded Robin games

This feels free. Is this free? I feel like this is free. I don't need to explain this one. Celebrity crushes on Superheroes are literally always funny

See Mario dies every time and it's like not the same guy. There's actually 3 Marios and then every time you make a certain amount of money (points) they get enough to clone a new one. Wait Tim come back I hadn't gotten to the shadow Koopa government. Bowser isn't actually in charge it's Big Goomba -

4) Alienation and the sincere desire to seek meaning in this life

The cult thing might seem to come out of nowhere if you were focused on his goofy persona and the specifics of Bernard's hilarious theories, but it's interesting to me that we get told that Bernard doesn't feel like he fits in like literally right away. One of his very first panels:

yeah okay i sure buy that dude

Bernard is textually, before adding any of the new stuff into the mix, an outsider. He has weird conspiracy theories, he's initially dressed like a douche who's trying to impress everyone and actually impressing no one, and he's obviously putting on airs here.

A lot of people who are depressed are just... you'd never know. Sincerely, the person you know who laughs the loudest and surrounds themselves with the most people might be the most depressed, the most isolated.

In the future, we see that he's similarly got a lot of people that know him, but not a lot of people that know him.

Having him get caught up in a cult after this setup is a very logical progression. He was already the type of personality to turn to conspiracies to feel some degree of fulfillment as a teen. Why the fuck wouldn't he become a Gotham cult statistic. Cults love intelligent people who are susceptible to isolation and emotionally not in a good place.

There's actually a really clever set of panels in the Urban legends run where Tim and Bernard are fighting against the chaos cult and they're mirrored. And Tim is the one "speaking", but the way the comic is framed, you can tell that they were both kind of having the same struggle from different angles and it doesn't snap into place until they fight together.

God, I love the medium of comics. I didn't actually notice this until I was writing this up and staring at panels. This is so subtle, but when you stop to look, the visual language clicks. They're both searching for something. The same thing. But it's not explicit. You gotta be paying close attention.

I think part of the reason people accuse Bernard of being bland or too different from before or whatever is that so much of this requires you to read. No, come back, hold on -

Like, the fundamental writing sleight of hand on this guy is that they earnestly set up the premise that he's so convincing that he managed to fool Tim, and by extension the distracted reader. To this end, Fitzmarten, and I can't believe I'm saying this, successfully weaponized the shittiness of early 2000s writing.

The idea that they went with is that sometimes you think you know people, but you don't have the full story until you really look and actively put the pieces together. He's someone, that very real kind of person, that flies under the radar both in and out of the fiction. And when the whammy hits -

- you end up wondering if you ever knew them at all.

This is very real. I mentioned earlier that you might not know someone is depressed until you know them very, very well or they tell you. And it's true. Be on the lookout for people like Bernard in your own life - from personal experience, they could use someone on their side.

Bonus: No he was legit always that insane. I think this is some A to B shit

"well if my friend won't hire me as a super-manager maybe I'll just prepare for the next time I see a superhero by learning martial arts!" - extremely normal thing to do thank you bernard. that's all folks

[coffeesleep-ooc]

LiuShen thoughts

Im unsure why, but im obsessed with this ship. LQG’s devotion to someone he once hated is amazing, we know that his character is always righteous and follows his principles to the extreme, which usually doesn’t make him as approachable to common ppl or ppl in general. But there’s something about SY!SQQ getting under his skin and wife beaming him softly bit constantly? To the point that LQG has no idea when he started to love the man that he believes tried to kill him when they were disciples. I love that.

But it makes me really sad when authors subtly make SQQ ooc, like, i won’t declare myself an authority in sv or in SY or anything, but sometimes LiuShen ends up feeling a bit too much like Wangxian? With the stoic type and the flirty type???? SQQ does tease LQG but he does not flirt! That man is 100% heterosexual in his head until you break thru his extra large concrete walls, and once you do he completely shuts down for the rest of his life, he becomes a shy stuttering mess and when he finally realizes he is actually in a relationship with a man that he actually does love, he is not going to call him love, beloved, husband, etc unless he literally is convinced that he has no choice (this tsun lil shit), so it’s so weird for me when SQQ is the one to initiate so boldly fully knowing what he is doing??? It feels ooc to me. LiuShen is completely slowburn unless we are stepping away from the canon settings or a third party interferes a lot. LQG would be the type to be shy but also be upfront about his feelings but managing to make Shen oblivious Qingqiu think that Liu-shidi is truly a good friend, a good shidi, etc etc! They are both shy flustered messes (LQG less so but still flustered) and once they are married SQQ will totally pretend he doesn’t need small or big gestures of affection and LQG will pretend he doesn’t notice SQQ wants those said gestures while doing them anyway. I believe their love is not super flashy like BingQiu’s can be, but everyone knows that SQQ is obsessed with LQG and vice versa! SQQ is a creature of blatant obsession while denying it to himself, and LQG is a creature if firmness and loyalty, i also think he is so awkward bc he feels deeply (tho this is more of a headcanon to me) so everyone would know and watch for the day they finally acknowledge it dammit!

I think that BingQiu has balance in a way that LiuShen doesn’t, bc LiuShen are both shy and usually won’t take the first step unless something extreme happens, LBH brings SQQ out of his shell almost by force (SQQ still loves him in canon but the methods are wince-worthy) and that’s something LQG doesn’t do! I wouldn’t say it’s good or bad, the storytelling sometimes needs one or the other, but it’s true that it makes everything between LiuShen softer and less angsty (again, depending on the story you are telling), both pairings have the identity issue, but i believe in LiuShen is often overlooked that it would be a bit more hard for LQG than for LBH (the amount of time they passed with SJ!SQQ varies wildly) to accept everything happening after SY comes to that world without a proper explanation. But again, LQG thinks is amnesia and accepts the new SQQ just fine in sv so…

anyways, if you are here thanks for reading my thoughts rant on LiuShen characterization <3

[badgalsasuke]

Hello! First of all, thank you! You’re doing god’s work with all those interviews right now and not being appreciated enough! You’re my comfort sns blog tbh. One of the few places I actually feel safe at.

Now back to the topic. I remember you talking about too many people, even SNS shippers, not giving Kishimoto’s work proper credit. They always joke about how he “unintentionally” made Naruto and Sasuke gay and how it’s actually interwoven with real life homophobia.

I’ve met a lot of such people too. Whenever I talk to someone about Kishimoto trying to address homophobia in the manga, everyone gives me weird looks and tells me there’s not such a moment.

As if the whole fucking story is not about two kids who are treated like outcasts because of something they can’t change about themselves. Yep, Naruto isn’t entirely about that. But how does looking at two boys who’s dealing with complicated feelings for each other, while other people are constantly insist on them breaking their bond because it’s wrong, not remind them about a big, common and well-known issue such as homophobia?

I refuse to believe it’s just blindness. They choose to ignore it.

It’s also crazy how many times Naruto is being told off, dismissed and side-eyed by people for just mentioning Sasuke or paying him “too much attention”.

☝️Well, it’s because Sasuke is a criminal.☝️☝️

Bullshit. Nobody has a problem with Sakura liking him. The girl literally harasses him! Fuck, too many girls might’ve harassed him for all those years and no one bat an eye, but when Naruto simply said he didn’t want him to be killed, everyone is fucking judging.

This fandom is fucked up and I’m not sure if there’s a way to fix it.

I’m still wondering how Kishimoto is going to handle Sasuke and Naruto’s ending tho. I still have a little bit of hope they’ll die in a very ambiguous, but also telling way. Them dying will still be enough actually.

Hi anon!

I appreciate from the bottom of my heart that y'all are liking the interview archive project! because truth to be told is y'all the sns fandom the reason why I'm doing it in the first place, I want us to have them readily available.

Whenever I talk to someone about Kishimoto trying to address homophobia in the manga, everyone gives me weird looks and tells me there’s not such a moment.

It's weird because that's a big part of Naruto's (the character) writing. In one chapter he's feeling sexually aroused by Sasuke, in another he overreacts in disgust when Kurama reminds him he's only ever kissed Sasuke. He spends more time practicing the reverse harem no jutsu full of beautiful gorgeous men than rasengan but also when he encounters the giant possum (was it a possum? lol) he thought was female but ended up being male he says "even if heaven and earth switch places, a boy will always be a boy" or something like that which. He's incredibly possessive of Sasuke and finds him very attractive and at the same has zero interest in heterosexual porn but he was brought up by Jiraiya, who seems to be homophobic. Like, Kishimoto did write on Naruto's repression and internalized homophobia and everyone outside of some SNS shippers seem to ignore it.

It’s also crazy how many times Naruto is being told off, dismissed and side-eyed by people for just mentioning Sasuke or paying him “too much attention”.

Exactly!!! Kishimoto is making a point here! why is everyone in-universe so uncomfortable with Naruto and Sasuke's bond? Because it's not deemed "normal" in that universe either, they know something's up. But if you bring it up people will say "shonen is inherently homoerotic. All male best friends act like that in anime" well, not in Naruto! it makes the other characters uncomfortable for a reason.

☝️Well, it’s because Sasuke is a criminal.☝️☝️ Bullshit. Nobody has a problem with Sakura liking him.

This! No one in the Naruto universe has expressed discomfort at Sakura for liking Sasuke even when everyone wanted him dead. On the contrary, they pity her because "oh poor her, suffering from love! how dare Sasuke make her feel like this!". Sakura's suffering for love is acceptable and even object of sympathy by other characters like Sai or Kakashi. But Naruto is constantly criticized, shunned and even physically assaulted for having the same feelings. Like, no one ever beat up Sakura for wanting to save Sasuke.

I’m still wondering how Kishimoto is going to handle Sasuke and Naruto’s ending tho. I still have a little bit of hope they’ll die in a very ambiguous, but also telling way. Them dying will still be enough actually.

I also think they're gonna die together but it's not gonna be ambiguous, Kishimoto's insane ass is gonna have them die at the same fucking time, I'm telling you it's gonna be "our heartbeats stopping at the same time" type of shit, I can sense it.

[meraki-yao]

RWRB Movie Thoughts: Philip

Honestly I might be the only one, but I wanna know more about Philip in the movie. And at the very least, I am begging for a redemption arc in the sequel.

Because they fucking cut the Kensington Breakfast scene, we barely get any of Philip in the movie. And the consequence is while we know that just like the book, Philip is an antagonistic character, we're not sure about his stance on the matter.

So the thing is Philip in the book isn't homophobic. And by that I mean that in the most generous sense: Queen Mary straight up says it's unnatural, which is the textbook definition of homophobia, but Philip says, and I quote from Henry "Essentially, I gathered that he was not surprised to discover I am not the heterosexual heir I'm supposed to be, but rather surprised that I do not intend to keep pretending to be the heterosexual heir I'm supposed to be" and from the man himself "I don't care if you're gay, I care that you've made this choice with him, someone with a fucking target on his back, to be so stupid and naive and selfish as to think it wouldn't completely fuck us all!"

Philip isn't necessarily against the concept of homosexuality, he's against bringing that into their family, and is worried about the conservatives turning their backs on them because of that. In a way, his stance is closer to the King in the movie than the Queen in the book.

Other stuff we can learn about Philip from the book:

he's...kind of racist, but in the form of microaggressions (his comments on Pez during Wimbleton)

He is genuinely in love with Martha, and he's kind of a hen-pucked husband (his retelling of his and Martha's suitor photos)

He started off a people pleaser, then the Queen took that and made him an asshole (explanation of why the change of attitude after Alex and Henry's photoshoot)

He wanted Arthur's approval but never got it, and resents Arthur a bit because of that (his argument with Henry before they met with the queen)

He wants to get along with his siblings, he just kept doing it the wrong way

My point is, even though a relatively minor character, Philip's motivations and character is actually painted out pretty logically if you take a closer look. His redemption in the book, his change of attitude, it makes sense if you looks back on it.

And while I can't fault the movie for cutting down details like these, this is just the way adaptation works and Matthew did an excellent job of picking and choosing, it does leave space for questions and curiosity.

The only thing I can get out of movie Philip is 1, he also loves his wife, since they're childhood sweethearts 2, the King dismisses him 3, he didn't know Henry was gay at all.

From the deleted Breakfast scene bts from Taylor and Thomas, we know that Philip is in that scene, and that Philip sees something, and is in shock.

Bur from the bts of the Thanksgiving scene, he and Martha are at the Brownstone: he's forgiven.

So here are my questions:

Is Philip homophobic in this one? Or is he also more mad about the family aspect?

Does he, at any point in the 65 deleted scenes, act like he wants to be a brother? Like he genuinely cares about his siblings

What is he reacting to during the Breakfast scene? In the book, when Henry came out to him it was just him, Henry and later Shaan, but the Breakfast has all of the Super Five there. Is he really gonna make a scene in front of all five of them?

Why is he forgiven? What is his change of heart?

I don't know, I think it's probably just me who's wondering about him of all people. But I would really like to see more of Thomas in this role (the photobooth shoots he did with Nick and Ellie, peak sibling energy) and I'm just really interested in Henry's family dynamic in the movie-verse, given that I feel like it's less black-and-white and more... realistic? than the book? There's also part of me that's somewhat sympathetic towards Philip despite being a Henry-coded girl because I feel like if I was a less feeling person, I might have ended up just like him.

Anyway, yeah. Philip redemption arc in the sequel please!!!

[mosneakers]

[Footsteps on creaky floorboards rapidly approach]

[Ornate double doors creak open wide]

Coni: Hi...Gwendolyn Darling?

Gwendolyn: Welcome back to the Darling-Avalon residence, darling!

Coni smiles politely; it's her first time here.

Gwendolyn: [Yelling into next room] Dearest? Get your bag on, we have company! [Directs attention back to Coni] Oh, come on in, quickly. We don't want to let those damned heterosexual squirrels get in again. [Scoffs and pulls Coni inside, quickly closing the doors behind her]

Coni steps through the doorway, immediately surrounded by the vibrant ambiance of a bustling household, filled with several strange characters tending to their individual business. Bonehilda, the skeleton maid, meticulously dusts every nook and cranny, while Gwendolyn's anonymous lover remains anonymous beneath a paper bag, quietly tuned into the evening news. Glowing orbs dance sporadically through the atmosphere, as occasional rodents scurry through intentional witchmade holes in the walls.

[Persephone Darling appears from the next room]

Persephone: What on earth brings you all the way out here all by yourself at this hour? I hope you didn't drive. Is everything okay, dear? Gwendolyn: [Gently grazes Coni's elbow] You know Persephone has an excellent talent for reading emotional auras.

Coni wanted to lie as always, but she couldn't bring herself to this time, so she settled for a half-truth.

Coni: Honestly, no, not really. [Shrugs] Just some family issues. I had a falling out with my parents. It's fine, though. I'll be fine.

Gwendolyn: [Nods knowingly] Yes, well, the engagement probably put a lot of strain on the family, sweetheart. It has to be hard on them knowing that you're marrying your brother. But whatever you want to do with your life, kiddo. Congratulations! Coni: Huh? No, I'm not—

Persephone interrupts Coni by grasping her arm, and shaking her head, giving her a "it's not worth it," expression. Coni accepts the message with another polite smile.

Persephone: So, what did you come out here for?

An eager squirrel unexpectedly bounds from a nearby cabinet onto Coni's shoulder, startling her. The squirrel chirps angrily as Gwendolyn tears it from Coni's flannel. Gwendolyn: ABDULLAH, YOU IMBECILE! Persephone: [Shouting] GWENDOLYN, IF YOU CAN'T KEEP HIM IN ORDER I'M TAKING MY SQUIRREL BACK TO HENFORD. AND DON'T CALL HIM NAMES!!!

Gwendolyn: [Snuggling squirrel that struggles to get away] It's okay, I didn't mean it. Shhh. I am so sorry about that, dear. Sometimes his mind gets a little... fractured. He's currently breastfeeding, it brings out the worst in him.

Coni, a known genius: [Stares blankly at Gwendolyn for a split second, puzzled] ...Oh. I um... I was hoping you could tell me more about your cousin, Mortimer Goth? But more specifically, his wife, Bella... Gwendolyn: Oh! Yes! Yes of course. Bella! Actually, I have a box of some of her things. Let me go get it! Persephone, get her something to drink. Don't be rude!

Gwendolyn and Abdullah ascend the stairs to retrieve the box. Once out of sight, Persephone guides Coni to the kitchen to get her a glass of water.

Persephone: She's a little mixed up, if you couldn't tell. She thought you were Coraleye. Coni: [Tucks a strand of hair behind her ears] Yeah, I thought so.

Persephone: With that being said, she's gonna go on some of her famous Darling tangents, don't say I didn't warn you. [Runs faucet]

Coni: That's fine with me. I'd rather not be home for a while.

[dragontamerno3]

DS9 S2 E22 - The Wire

HOW DOES ANYONE THINK THESE TWO ARE IN A STRAIGHT??!!!???!!!

Ahem.

Seriously. How?

The episode starts off with the two going to their weekly lunch having the gayest banter about books and food and there is genuine concern for Garak when he starts showing signs of illness. Yes, Bashir is the station Doctor but it's also very much a "my friend is in pain, whats wrong" look when it happens.

This is cemented when Jadzia brings her plant to him to diagnose. Their conversation was primarily about the plant he was examining but her "its not like you're friends" comment and them him agreeing angrily while he stabbed said plant? There was no mistaking that he does (at least on some level) think of them as friends. Honestly, that whole conversation kinda felt like a ton of "I'm not jealous" conversations where I've seen two friends discussing a third party who was hanging out with a new person. Or more specifically a crush starts to spend more time with someone new. I have had similar moments myself as a baby queer.

I applaud Quark for his ease of lying. He was so smooth with a line or two to give to Bashir to get him to walk away. Wonderfully done.

The other smooth part with Quark was when Bashir is trying to usher Garak out of the bar and convince him to go to the infirmary and how they just swapped the bottle without a word.

On that same note, when Quark called Bashir to the bar to get Garak and Garak was like "Yes, quiet is better, lets go to my quarters", I wondered how often he actually brought people back to his room. He is so secretive that it seemed to me that he'd rarely (or never) let anyone come by so it seems significant that he offered that.

Of course Odo has tapped Quarks bar to monitor his transmissions, so much so that he even knows when Quark makes his more "sensitive" calls.

From the moment they said Garak was having head pain I figured there was some kind of implant in his head that was either malfunctioning, it was finally deteriorating or something similar. That paired with the fact that Garak was most definitely a spy, whether he still is or isn't is questionable sure, but at one point he was somehow tied to the intelligence network. So it wasn't a surprise to find out that was what causing him pain. It was fun to watch Quark give the Cardassian dude a code for a highly classified piece of tech though that may or may not cause both of them some hiccups later. Karma.

What I WAS surprised by was that is was more of a drug like situation. The whole break down in his room about how he had spent years being tortured and so 2 years ago he decided to say fuck it and to just live in a drugged state permanently was well done. I felt for both men in that moment. I can't even imagine what Garak was going through but I can tell he was suffering even when he had been drugged. And then Bashir hearing that the man he had come to think of as a friend (even if it was reluctantly) claim he wanted nothing to do with the dear Doctor. But then the trust in Garaks face as he relented? There was no heterosexual reason for this.

I need more of Bashir being a guard dog for all those under his care cause clearly that's a pattern I enjoy. It was a great character moment when he protected Jadzia against the trill transfer earlier in the season and it was a great moment here where he told Odo to fuck off.

The whole withdrawals scene was a rough one to get through in that way that I could see where it was going and I could tell both sides of that were very uncomfortable but the "the problem is I DID enjoy it" gave me life.

Every single story Garak told in this episode was both contradictory and very much believable, to me. I believe he blew up a Cardassian ship that held civilians and his "friend" on broad because it sounds like to me that this was the moment that part of him died, the part where he was dedicated to the cause. I also believe he let the Bajorian "prisoners" go and his "friend" was angry/appalled because this might have been one of the first steps to him questioning his involvement in things and how he hated himself for having these thoughts. I also believe he tried to hack the Cardassian systems to self sabotage himself subconsciously while thinking he was fixing things only to discover he purposely screwed himself over.

"I need to know SOMEONE forgives me." 😭💔

The thing that I loved most about this episode though was how Bashir was willing to risk his own safety to go to Cardassia on his own for Garak, who is in exile, to confront a highly respected man of the deepest, darkest intelligence network. That took guts and he did it without even blinking. Hell, he did it without even flinching when it was clear Tain was giving him vague threats.

I am disappointed about how quickly this one wrapped up, it seemed like we were worried about Garak dying and he was just suddenly okay again and having lunch, but that's a whatever moment. We don't honestly know how much time had passed and we knew he was going to get the info he needed to remove the device. It just seemed... fast?

Overall very much one of my favorites so far.

9/10 - will watch a million times

[homestuckreplay]

Webcomics at Day 100 #6: 1/0

Pages read: 8/27/2000 - 5/26/2003; 1,003 pages; all of it

Reason for selection: This is the first webcomic I was ever personally into, although I didn’t read it until long after it finished. It’s an extended philosophical discussion between the author and their characters, with no fourth wall and total awareness of the medium.

Original run: Updated daily for exactly 1,000 strips (plus three April Fools guest strips), then stopped forever. Author Mason Williams continues to make other, unrelated webcomics.

Content warnings: Lots, and I can’t guarantee I caught them all. These may not reflect the author’s views today, as I haven’t yet read his more recent works, but might affect how enjoyable 1/0 is for present-day readers.

One rape joke

Occasional use of slurs

Frequent misogyny, gender essentialism, and objectification of women

Antisemitic character tropes

Occasional racist and Islamophobic jokes

Occasional homophobic jokes

Lesbian character who ends up in a heterosexual relationship

Heavy focus on Christian theology and morality

Overall thoughts:

1/0 is a comic about the entire lifespan of a universe on the smallest scale imaginable. The universe is created on page one, and destroyed on page 1,000. It is composed of a single landmass – the corpse of a bear – in and endless, empty horizon. A total of twelve characters live here at some point, explore the meaning of life and death, and eventually, leave. These characters are one human man, one rib, one eyeball, three molecules, one atom, one earthworm, one strawman, two golems and a running gag. Almost as soon as the laws of the universe have been established, its end is foretold. The characters know it is coming, are aware of the comic, and have 1,000 strips to live the best life they can.

In concept, I think it’s really, really beautiful. In its execution, I have more mixed feelings.

The concept of the Fourth Wall is used throughout 1/0 as a metaphor for atheism. Early in the comic, the characters request a fourth wall, which is installed for a week (a ‘4’ in the corner of the panel signifies this). It ends up being a failure. Later, a character (Marcus) is so upset at the death of his son – perhaps caused by the author – that he loses faith in him and gains a personal fourth wall (indicated by a tiny ‘4’ in each eye). Some characters accept his different views while others try to convert him, but he is constantly positioned as the fool for not seeing the greater truth of the author, readers, panels and strip.

Of course, in 1/0, the author can be conclusively proven, and talked to directly like a friend or mentor (his speech bubbles are the rectangular text blocks, and all characters can hear them). The metaphor is imperfect. Taken in a vacuum, it’s reasonable for the comic to criticize Marcus’ objectively wrong interpretation. Taken as a piece of media written in a Christian-dominant society where alternative religious views are actively and legally discriminated against, it’s uncomfortable, no matter Williams’ intentions. And while Williams, on his personal website, claims to respect other viewpoints (including atheism), he also says that ‘the goals behind atheistic morality will always have an air of arbitrariness that religious moralities transcend’ (2002), a statement I don't agree with that's very telling about the ideology he brings to the story.

The 1/0 characters invent basic concepts of modern Western society, such as ‘personal property’ (the only possession in the strip is one hat), 'workers' strikes' (against the author!), ‘units of measurement’, ‘the justice system’, ‘supply and demand economics’, ‘copyright law’, and even – accidentally – ‘top surgery’. (Even though it’s unintentional, the trans representation is not bad for 2001 – the author’s ‘no girls in the strip til I get a girl’ that precedes it is far more questionable).

But the characters also have a working, yet incomplete knowledge of Earth via the author. They know what Portland and the CN Tower are, and one character can even recite poetry, but they’re more familiar with the surface trappings of Earth than with its complexities. What they know is sometimes inconsistent and is generally dictated by the logic of ‘what makes an interesting strip?’

1/0 also establishes other fictional universes – early on, the characters portal into the universe of different webcomics, and later, they organize an ‘impressions’ contest where they pretend to be other authors' characters. The laws governing other webcomics, and their differences to 1/0’s laws, are discussed. In this way, Williams has an excuse to organically link to other comics he’s reading, promoting those authors’ works and acknowledging his influences, which is pretty delightful in an early internet way.

I think the overall question 1/0 is asking is, ‘what if God was a benevolent kindergarten teacher?’ The author – whose in-strip character and online persona is known as Tailsteak – spends much of his time patiently explaining basic moral lessons to the characters, who have just come into existence, and don’t have a pre-existing society or ethics system to work within. At times the author scolds characters for their views – one character, Junior, is designated ‘the evil one’, expresses problematic opinions, and feuds with the other characters and author.

In the moment, he’s told that he’s wrong, but he ultimately doesn't face serious consequences. In the end, the characters leave the comic for the human world, and the author gives Junior arguably the easiest life of everyone – a football scholarship to a college where he’ll be in a position of privilege and won’t have to worry about money. This is the last in a series of apologies from the author for forcing the character into the evil archetype early on, but Junior has never really stopped being an asshole. His ending gives him a chance to be evil all over again, only this time with free will. In this way the comic legitimizes human social dynamics, where physically strong and emotionally immature white men are offered forgiveness and unearned success while others are not.

I'm focusing on the negatives, but I overall like this comic a lot. It's filled with moments that are emotionally satisfying, contemplative, unexpected, and funny. Reading this in the present day as a marginalized and non-Christian person leaves me really intrigued by most of what it's doing, and wishing its ideas were explored without the accompanying prejudices. There's other works that do that, of course, but I haven't yet found one with the charming simplicity of this one - and even if I find it, I won't be able to go back in time and make it important to my younger self the way this was.

Relevance to Homestuck: [ooc - contains spoilers for Act 5]

1/0 is a creation myth. It explores what it takes to make a universe – can anyone simply say ‘once upon a time, there was a universe in which everyone was happy, the end’ and create one, over and over? If so, does what happens in that universe mean anything, if there’s no nuance or complexity to its existence?

Although 1/0's world is on a tiny scale and Homestuck deals with the entirety of reality, they’re asking the same metaphysical questions about stories and existence. Do characters have feelings and experiences outside of what is seen by an audience? Can a character be ‘duplicated’ from one universe into another, and if so, do they know about the other versions of themself? What does it mean to have free will or your own personality when you're a character in a story? What happens if an all powerful figure who isn’t the original creator tries to take control of the comic?

1/0 just barely experiments with art style and medium, dipping its toe into the ocean Homestuck would leap into.. Williams admits he ‘[wasn’t] as adventurous with 1/0 as [he] could have been’, a choice that was partly intentional - but there are moments when he invites guest contributors, draws in somebody else’s style, or turns the comic into an RPG and rolls for a character’s action. In a stylistic parallel, each 1/0 character types in a unique font that represents their personality, giving their speech a sort of ‘quirk’.

Finally, both Homestuck and 1/0 could be read as a metaphor for the birth and growth of the internet, for spending your adolescence online and then leaving to enter the ‘real world’. In 2002 Williams said the following about spending his time online, which may or may not intentionally parallel his characters’ experiences in the comic, but feels poetic either way.

‘I get to be here as this new world cools from its primeval fires. I get to watch and, in some small way, participate in the infancy of a radical new society. Life is changing, and I get to be here in the middle of it.’

Continue reading? I reread the whole comic in two evenings. Despite my problems with it, I will probably return to it in another decade for a third read.

[vigilskeep]

wait when were zev and anders called slurs? :o i haven't played any mlm romance!

homophobia banter highlight reel i guess. shoutout to seb for making it on here because varric has something deeply wrong with him and is exclusively homophobic to the one of like two not openly bisexual people in his friend group

in general my point is that like. this was homophobic. if people didnt. uh. clock that oghren’s violent reactions and references to manskirt-wearing freaks were that. i’m using oghren as my main example because he’s the most overt. (generally orzammar’s dedication to lineage throughout the castes seems to give it more rigid gender and sexuality roles; there’s also significantly more overt sexism.) with zev and anders, it’s also compounded by fantasy racism and prejudice, in particular that male elves and male mages are both seen as effeminate in southern thedas. this isn’t just oghren. uh, for example, if a male hawke romances anders or fenris, gamlen, who iirc is as directly homophobic as it gets in da2, will make the comment “i guess i don’t have to ask which one of you’s the girl”. he’ll also make a fetishising comment about female hawke and isabela

otherwise. uh what might people not have clocked. zevran only flirts with a female warden in his introductory scene, due to his real, not unfounded concern that it will make a male warden more uncomfortable with him and, let’s not put too fine a point on it, thus more likely to kill him. zevran’s discussion of being bisexual himself is incredibly loaded and as i recall involves a fair bit of internalised something. from my delvings into the toolset, if you romance him as a man, you seem to have countless opportunities to break off the relationship specifically saying it’s because you’re both men and you can’t do this, including as late as the second time he offers you the earring. generally the male warden romancing zevran has a lot of internalised homophobia coded dialogue options when you ask him about his sexuality and when others ask you about the relationship—you can express dismay that zevran has told anyone, for example, while asking leliana not to say anything—and it’s fairly heavily implied that you’re likely to be more unfamiliar with such things

with anders, the most glaring example off the top of my head is that he doesn’t tell female hawkes about karl. a lot of the gendered differences in the anders romances are from homophobia/biphobia on a writing level as well, but considering that we’re not buying into “playersexual” nonsense i think it’s also fair to read this in-world as anders choosing not to bring that up to a woman who’s interested in him/someone he doesn’t know he has this in common with. the dialogue again treats anders as more experienced and gives male hawkes the opportunity to act surprised/uncertain even when they are the one to flirt first

this is basically just. if you didn’t clock that, that’s going on here! in general, heterosexuality is an assumed norm in thedas, and particularly characters coded as andrastian and fairly naive/inexperienced like alistair or bethany will express surprise or confusion about it and not pick up on implications. particularly noble characters will be expected to continue bloodlines and make political unions, for example, the inability of a female warden to marry anora or a male warden to marry alistair, even though it’s possible to do the m/f version of those political marriages without any kind of romance. that’s a pragmatic concern about the succession in a world that values bloodlines and thus comes with a certain heteronormativity. at the same time, there’s not so deep a stigma as you might expect if directly translating from our world, so to speak; it’s much more about the hope of continuing families and the importance of that in this world than there seeming to be any kind of explicit religious stigma? although it should be noted that the andrastian story focuses on andraste and the maker in what is treated as an m/f marriage and might be considered an ideal

for example, leandra will make an offhand, semi-teasing comment about finding hawke an opposite gender spouse, which i think is her hope of hawke managing to settle into kirkwall noble society and continue the family line when there is, in most worldstates, little to no hope of the other surviving hawke sibling having children. but at the same time, she’s casually accepting of hawke being in a queer relationship, will lightly mention it in dialogue, and makes no comment about anders or merrill moving in. i’d take that as kind of a baseline level of understanding for southern thedas, though it also varies from nation to nation, culture to culture, person to person, and class to class

i hope that makes it clearer ??

[justchillandshipit]

A Little Buddie Hope in all that Trama?

Last week, I had a mopey post about my worries that the show would erase Buddie from previous seasons in order to make the new storylines work with what the actors and producers are saying about the characters. i.e. Eddie is heterosexual. I'm still not sure we will get canon, but I'm hopeful because one, I found a flaw in my reasoning for that post. And two, I remembered Athena's relationship with her first husband, Michael.

In season one, Michael came out as a gay man. Not bi. He was married to Athena with two kids. He loved her. He never stopped saying that he loved her. But he wasn't "IN" love with her. At one time, he said he hoped Athena would fix him. When he learned that she had been attacked in season three, he ran to be with her when he got the call. He was in mid-conversation with the man he eventually married, and he didn't even stop to tell him why he was leaving.

If we look at Eddie, he may or may not be as self-aware as Michael. I'm hoping he is because the show has given us clues in previous seasons that would fit with this interpretation of Eddie. Within the first few episodes that Eddie is in, he talks about how he isn't dating, how the girls they met on a call weren't his type, etc. Later, Buck finds help for Christopher through Carla. He tricks Eddie into coming to his place by saying he needs help to move Maddie. When Eddie learns it was a lie, his expression is a little annoyed at first and then filters to dread. He asks Buck if he is trying to set him up. Buck doesn't quite answer, he goes to answer the door and it's Carla. The expressions that go across Eddie's face, to me, were telling. Relief, surprise, and a new look just for Buck. [I feel this is the moment he fell in love or began to fall in love with Buck.-- There is also a whole other side to those first episodes after Buck starts to accept Eddie. In those episodes, he tries to please Eddie, and he stutters when he talks. He is shy and flirty, but that's a whole different thing.]

Anyway, back to Eddie. When he was with Ana, he almost mirrored Michael by admitting that he thought things would work with them, the "idea" of them. Chris loved her so much, that Eddie thought he would too. In another episode, he talks about feeling as though he were performing. Hen gives him a look that matches the one she gave Tommy & Buck in season 7 when Buck had soot on his face. The scene moves quickly so you can easily miss it, but it's there. There are more moments than I've named here that speak to Eddie's feelings, and these are the moments I felt would have to be erased if we believed Ryan Guzman about Eddie's heterosexuality. In my previous post, I was mopey about that until I realized a flaw in my thinking.

Tim has known his plans for Buck for a while. He actually wasn't sure if it was going to be Eddie instead. (most of us know that already) Either way, he knew as the episodes were being written for season 7 what would happen for Buck and that people would be paying close attention to Eddie. Within those first episodes, Eddie talks to Bobby and admits that he married Shannon because she got pregnant and they both felt pressured into it, but he never regretted it. Even when things got bad, he loved being married to her. (again the "idea" of it, just like what he said to Ana. Also, he said, that he loved being married- he didn't say he loved Shannon.) [I need help here. Someone to meta it for me-I have a big disconnect from the way Ryan nailed that scene with Kim in the most recent episode. To bring that much emotion and tears to this scene doesn't match with what he said to Bobby earlier in the season.]

Also in this season, we have Eddie referring to his Catholic past. The church, as most of us know has a long-established history of homophobia. Eddie talks about how deeply his family was into Latin-based Catholicism. While there is no direct mention of homophobia, there doesn't have to be. He talks about reaching a certain age and saying it wasn't for him. I think an awareness of his sexuality could have prevented him from fully buying into religion. However, rejecting religion doesn't mean those toxic messages weren't still there. Those messages were alongside the pressures he received from his father as young as 10 to be a man.

** Edit ** There is a space here for Eddie's reaction to Buck coming out. Based on this interpretation, it still makes sense for him to accept Buck. This is who Eddie is. He can accept Buck for everything he is without question. Despite the hold that the church and toxic masculinity have on him, Eddie doesn't hold anyone to that same standard. He rejected it when he rejected religion, but he is holding himself to that standard, and I believe this is the main part of the story that the show has not revealed to us yet. Eddie is not homophobic. Why can't he accept himself if he can accept others? (assuming this interpretation is the correct one.) Is Eddie so desperate to have his father's love? Is it that deep well of Catholic guilt he talked about? [Will Eddie, at some point, end up in a confessional, giving us all the canon we long for? I'd personally, love to see him alone by Bobby's bedside, holding that prayer book, and confessing to him the truth. That would slap. lol]

I had forgotten that these scenes were in season 7 when Tim knew full well what was coming with Buck. This doesn't mean that he will definitely write Eddie into a coming-out story, but it does mean that he is not likely to erase the stories that made me ship Buddie in the first place. If he were planning to erase those stories, he would not still be adding little pieces to that story.

TL;DR - My logic was flawed in my last post. Buddie isn't canon, and I do vacillate back and forth about this subject but hope is not completely gone for a Buddie endgame.

** edited to add ^ ^ ^

[eyeballplanets]

I have like no one else to ask about this, but how do you feel about a queer interpretation of Anissa/ viewing her as a queer woman (her show version only). I got into a discussion with a friend about it and thought why not bring it here.

oh my god i just want to start by saying that this is the most excited i have ever been getting an ask. i sent this to a friend of my own and she said “dozens of us!” you came to the right place!

and i'm gonna immediately ruin it by talking about her comic counterpart. i know people don't like talking about her. my own experiences as an sa survivor make me less bothered by fictional depictions (which isn't to say that it's wrong to be rankled or that all survivors feel this way--it's just how i handle it, and it's also why the jokes fuck me up so much). it's why i write so extensively on and off tumblr about sexual assault and reproductive coercion and depictions thereof and even coded evocations thereof; it's why the show is so interesting to me--it tackles bodily autonomy violations differently, far more subtly, but far more masterfully.

i think a queer reading of her show version is genuinely important because of the queer coding of her comic counterpart.

this isn't a positive coding. this isn't two male characters saying “you're my partner” or even tumblr's white man de l'année being told he's light in the work boots as he bashfully looks at his boy bestie. she is queer coded in the way that female characters, whether asexual or lesbian or trans, have been coded as predators, as Threats to patriarchal norms, to the institution of the heterosexual family.

prior to the assault, her most prominent characterization on earth was her failed relationships with men whom abused her, being disinterested in having relationships with men, and not wanting children. these are coded choices, no matter what. a female character being characterized by disgust at the prospect of being involved with men is queer coded, no matter what.

and then kirkman chose her, of all the female characters, of all the female viltrumites, the rest of whom conformed more classically to patriarchal beautiful standards, with long hair or braids, to be a predator. if people were more forcible about the implications herein, the state of anissa discourse probably wouldn't be what it is now.

if robert kirkman had no other instances of bigotry in the invincible comics, then we could dismiss this as unfortunate coding. of course, kirkman himself has called out the whiteness of the original series. he made a black character (bulletproof) try to get eve to cheat on mark, and wrote a very obviously black coded alien (kubian, telia's brother) having a relationship with eve during mark's several-year absence, including trying to convince eve to break up with mark while standing in front of him (that's his shoulder in the frame).

kirkman's comics were defined by his fears of the heterosexual marital unit being challenged by outside forces. nolan and debbie got back together almost immediately after his return to earth despite his calling her a pet in even crueler terms than in the show. anissa is ‘reformed’ by marrying a man off-screen and having a child with him.

so, cut to the show's version!

she's younger, she's browner, she's even less gender conforming! she's more muscular, her haircut has been made a bit scruffier, more 90s heartthrob. she has this almost shonen energy about her, gravel to her voice, badass power stances... it's a shame her nine minutes of screen time have been overshadowed by this stupid as fuck illiterate discourse when she genuinely has the most hype moments and aura of all the viltrumites. (and i legitimately think that's deliberate: the fight which mark leaves the LEAST bloodied is the one with the most dbz energy, with the one frame dodge and the teleport right behind him and mark bouncing across the water and the literal awed audience. sorry to be mexican, but she legitimately feels vegeta coded!)

she's been rewritten so heavily from her comic version! i'm sure if you're following me you've already heard me talk about how her design changes play into the same racial coding that influences mark and how conquest has been given her coercive imagery or how she and mark are being posited as equal victims of authoritative structures, or even just seen me point out that she and mark have the same build and fighting style while kregg nolan and conquest are all visually compared (which makes sense given how the show is more maturely positive bodily violence as an inherent symptom of white patriarchal structures).

all that is to say like, you have this younger character who is continually framed as comparable to the protagonist (a protagonist which, by the way, is canonically gay in at least one universe LOL) with an energy that defies the traditional femininity that surrounds the other younger female characters, who is, probably unintentionally knowing invincible, extremely dykey looking, who is a complete revision of an offensively queercoded misogynist caricature... it feels revolutionary and logical to imagine her kissing girls! one of my goals with my illustration is to draw her doing just that! this is partly me speaking as a longtime comic fan, but taking characters written by bigots and making them the identity the author was scared of is a revolutionary feat. it's why people imagine connor hawke, created by noted homophobe chuck dixon, as gay. i think modern kirkman would be a bit more chill about it, but also as a fan of canon dc comics lesbian anissa pierce i feel like gay girls who like comics deserve a little bit of kickback for getting shitty men making jokes whenever you mention dc's most prominent black lesbian (who came out as gay before anissa even appeared in invincible, which i hope is just a coincidence).

and honestly, though we haven't had her interact with a single female character (MUCH TO MY CHAGRIN... season 4 please fix this it can be for literally one scene i have worked with less before), it's really hard to imagine this version of her being attracted to men, especially since the writers at skybound have to be aware of the optics.

i wish i could talk more about how a lesbian reading would fit into the themes of her character as have been seen on screen (the way that people have talked about how gay or trans readings would work with mark), but unfortunately we only have nine minutes of screentime to go off of. however, given the fact that she already is so marginalized compared to the other prominent white men, and given the imagery of resistance she has against kregg, another marginalized identity could be significant in her defining herself against viltrumite ideology.

a friend and i have also been joking for months now about her being given kregg's comic plot of hooking up with women across the globe. i hope the show understands the optics of the white general of a fascist empire redeeming by sleeping with women, and chooses not to adapt that, especially considering that fascist generals being absolved of their crimes happens in real fucking life all the time, but the young brown subordinate muscular woman experiencing racialization and queerphobia on earth would be a genuinely meaningful way to get her vantaged against authoritarian systems.

i have more thoughts but. i dont wanna yap your ear off plz let me know if you'd like to hear them and i hope this was insightful and not too rambly.

[inadeqcies]

❝ —— MY  FATHER  SAYS  SHE  WAS  BORN  LUCKY  .  HE  SAYS  I  WAS  LUCKY  TO  BE  BORN "

WCS | MUSINGS | CLICK BELOW FOR INTRO

. ･ﾟ   ┇    (  taylor zakhar perez  .  cis male  .  he/him  )  .    ⸻ ricardo garcia  ,  twenty-seven years old  ,  has  survived  another  day  in  red  creek  where  they  have  lived  for 6 months . the  regal is  known  for  being  hubristic  and steely and  is  often  associated  with routinely clenching and unclenching jaws, slow smirks that feel like a deal with the devil, clean pressed perfectly tailored shirts matched with expensive cologne  .  in  a  small  town  where  they  work  as  the owner of the register word  travels  fast 

HELLOOO ! i’m g ! i’m 27 , living in the cursed aedt tz . . i use she / her pronouns . i am a proud indian , and lover of all poc ! i’m also doing the dolly parton working 9 to 5 , what a way to make a living ! so my activity will be v random as i also got a new job and i think the hours will be wild !

inspo for ricardo is jackson whittemore ( teen wolf ) , guzman ( elite ),  every character from succession , harry bingham ( the society ) maybe a little logan echolls ( veronica mars ) and a little bit nate jacobs ( euphoria ) 

he puts the ASS in ASSHOLE ( and clASSy , but i prefer asshole )

heterosexual cis male . . . that says it all :/

a demon boy

honestly ricardo is an arrogant and smug piece of shit , who has probably offended you or said something greatly insulting to you at some point in your life ( im so sorry and i will continue apologising for him but he really is so irredeemable ) 

uses people so he can get ahead / get what he wants

is only focused on himself and an outcome that suits him

will use you

will treat you like shit

will smirk annoyingly as he does it all

cruel

has major anger issues

has major issues in general tbh

honestly just really hates himself and has so much self hate and pent up anger . he probably should go to therapy

‘ i feel like i’m the worst , so i always act like i’m the best ‘

he was given up for adoption at a young age , and thats basically the main source of all of his rage and anger and ability to think he is not worth anything ( self fulfilling prophecy tbh )

he bounced around for a while , foster home to foster home . he got into a lot of fights , with other kids , and with foster parents . he was not an easy kid , nor did he try to be . if anything - he always did the opposite

lowkey definitely has commitment issues and doesn’t like the idea of needing anybody except for himself , hence why he will always be snarky and a lil ass

he finally got adopted properly when he was about 15 years old - by two women who are smart , intelligent , quick witted and very wealthy

he was not close to them , despite their best efforts , but he does greatly respect them and their ‘’’ Hustle ‘’’’

he's come to redcreek for . . . reasons that may be explained later hehe . he's been here for 6 months and he fucking hates it ! he hates u people ! he hates this shitty town !

he definitiely paid his way into owning the register like by no means should this be his job . he's so Succession coded .

i am soooo open to connections and plots ! sorry this isn’t v well developed but i usually work best off chemistry and just kinda running with whatever ? i'm online really sporadically so pls forgive that . . . also pls forgive me for bringing such a c-bomb of a character in LMAO .

[sleepingpopplio]

Toga and her happy ending

I think after taking some time to process the latest chapter I can finally verbalize what feels wrong about it. First, I think it’s really good to be hopeful that Toga isnt dead, but I also feel like a lot of the fandom right now is trying to not think about Toga being dead because if she truly is then they might end up like how I’m feeling. So, let’s just say hypothetically she is like truly, really dead without a shadow of doubt. 

Now, The first Issue I see with this writing is that it arguably goes against the themes of the story. In order to make a better society, our heroes need to be able to win AND save (hehe Bakugo and Deku at the core of the story once again). Otherwise, saving the league would feel hollow. So, Ochako DID win the fight between her and Toga by talking toga down from the edge and bringing out the goodness in her. But did she save her? 

I would argue no. 

Toga may be able to go out “her way”, but she still ends up dying before taking any further steps to heal and find her place as her authentic self within society. Ochako thinks she has a cute smile, but will everyone else? We are stripped of the negotiation process to get Toga the proper help she needs instead of throwing her in jail. We are deprived of Ochako standing up for her and helping her finally be the happy schoolgirl Toga always wanted to be, without the mask this time. We, the audience, are denied of seeing toga take accountability for her actions. Therefore, while Ochako may have saved Toga on a one-to-one level, and she still deserves credit for that btw, Toga ultimately died without witnessing society as a whole changing for the better. She was not saved— She was only helped… and is that a satisfying conclusion after years of buildup? After all the work to make Ochako come to value winning AND saving of everyone? Is that satisfying?

The fact that so many people refuse to believe Toga is dead points to this.

One more thing I would want to add here is a comparison to another member of the lead, someone that I have seen a lot of members of the fandom fight back against the notion that they should die. That character is Tomura Shigaraki. I’ve seen people say that Tomura should die in a sacrificial way in order to redeem himself, but then in response many fans push back and speak about how that wouldn’t solve any of Shigaraki’s problems and instead it would only leave shigaraki in a state of limbo in terms of reaching a satisfying and logical conclusion for him. Deku wouldn’t have achieved his goal to the fullest extent, society wouldn’t get to accept Tomura and show that even he is design of forgiveness after what he was put through, and we wouldn’t get to see how a reformed hero society would handle the league of villains moving forward. Sound familiar? My point in bringing this up is to show that it seemingly doesn’t make sense how you can argue how one villain should survive while the other should die because either way the death of one villain, even if it’s a heroic sacrifice, is still an incomplete rescue. It’s still an incomplete narrative, as it had framed itself to be a hopeful one, despite all the dark aspects. So, let’s just keep that in mind. 

My next point is going to be a heavy one, so buckle up. Let’s keep going with the hypothetical of Toga being really, truly dead, ok? Toga being dead has so many implications and undertones.  You can make an argument for, if she is the only league member that dies, how she is written in an upsetting way as both the only woman and canonically queer member of the league. Furthermore, the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope is defined by killing off LGBTQ characters at an alarmingly higher rate than their heterosexual peers, and their death is usually because they entered some sort of queer relationship, or if someone has to die it might as well be the queer one. Am I saying that Horikoshi has malicious intent and hates queer people in stories? ABSOLUTELY NOT. DO NOT GO AND HARASS THE MAN BECAUSE IT ACCOMPLISHES NOTHING. But, there could be some internal bias because of Japanese society as a whole’s view of queer people. There also could be some push from editors to kill the queer character for this exact reason. Of course, this is all speculation and it’s not ok to jump to conclusions and assume the worst of writers. But Toga meant something to people. She meant something to queer people. If the reformed hero society could accept Toga for who she is, then wouldn’t that include her queerness? In a world where homophobia is increasing again at an alarming rate, kids need to see that being queer doesn’t mean that they have to be the “villain” in society’s eyes. Queer people deserve saving. But as my previous point discussed, Toga was not fully saved. Queer kids reading the manga will not get to see how Toga could find her sense of belonging in society while still living her truth. The queer subtext behind her relationship with Ochako will end in of of their deaths. Therefore, as someone with experience with living in a homophobic household and having to hide themselves, this does not feel like a happy ending.

Furthermore, I’m going to make another comparison just like I did in my previous point. But this time, I’m going to use a character from a different franchise that also involves superhero’s and is a heavy inspiration for Horikoshi’s writing. That character is Black Widow from the MCU. She was a beloved character, but often underutilized by the writers. The only female member of the avengers, Black Widow was often sexualized and used as the object of desire out of the bunch. She was badass, but always tied to her male counterparts. She was not allowed to exist without the other male avengers around. This was the pattern of her character writing for many years, up until Avengers: Endgame premiered. When that movie came out, Blackwidow played a key role… that role was to sacrifice herself. She did this so that her best friend, Hawkeye, wouldn’t have to sacrifice himself instead. He didn’t want her to sacrifice herself. He was fine with dying and tried to stop her. But despite his efforts, Blackwidow still sacrificed herself and died. This happened before she could get her own movie, and specifically before she could confront her past trauma and heal from it. She went out her way on her terms, but the audience still lost the vital piece of representation that she gave to the avengers and still suffered from never seeing Blackwidow’s character get to heal and overcome her pain. Does all of this once again sound familiar? Women often are the first to get hurt or die out of their hero or villain groups in the superhero genre. One good thing about Toga, however, is that she died alongside another female companion. A well written relationship between two women was front in center, instead of one between a man and woman. Despite that, however, Toga was often used as the sexualized member of the league and tended to revolve around Izuku a lot, just like Blackwidow. That is why it was amazing to see her bond with Ochako, and then devastating to have that taken away without letting the audience witness Toga’s complete healing.

Therefore, dying “your own way”, is only empowering if the female character had already had time to complete their character arc and heal their trauma in the same way that their male peers were allowed. Otherwise, it feels fake.

This chapter was overall amazingly well written. I enjoyed it a lot. Honestly, I enjoy MHA as a whole a lot!!! I’ve hyper-fixated on this story and tis characters a lot, and have a lot of faith in Horikoshi as a writer. I have no doubt that he’ll do a great job writing the other characters in this final arc give the audience a satisfying conclusion. I also hope that I’m proven wrong and somehow Toga ends up ok.

But the ending reminded me of how far writing has to go in order to accurately portray the female and queer experience, and to give such characters hopeful endings like everyone else. Toga deserves to find  acceptance. She deserves to find love from society as a whole, not just Ochako. 

Toga Himiko deserves a happy ending. Queer women deserve happy endings too.

Sorry to be a downer, everyone. If you want a more hopeful meta for this chapter, then please go check out @pikahlua’s blog because their meta on this chapter was spectacular and mind blowing.

[jessaerys]

hate to say it but skins is getting better on rewatch; the queer politics are batshit insane 

the second half of s1 built up the tony-maxxie relationship as plot-critical: tony trying to hook up with maxxie to "try something new" is the catalyst of tony’s social and then physical+mental downfall. and it is very interesting to me that it is tony’s latent homosexual curiosity that michelle, (and by extension the narrative, which ultimately wants us to root for a michelletony endgame despite how miserable they make each other) finally considers too immoral to ignore (despite the open secret of tony’s many infidelities and plenty of unethical behaviors, as  well as his subtext infatuation with sid)

like it is textually tony’s  attempt to finally act upon this incorrect masculinity that becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back and brings about plenty of narrative punishment that is a clear tool to make him a “better” person (rn i think skins gen1 is pretty straightforwardly a punitive justice narrative)

anyway, all of this said, we are obviously meant to empathize with maxxie. his s1 conflict is his best friend won’t tell his parents that he is gay; it’s a pretty basic 2007 stuff.  he is the token gay character but he is written as a fully fledged human being (in some cases even more than other members of the cast) though i think this is partially very good acting carrying the character’s depth. he even goes from a secondary cast member in s1 to a primary one in s2, even being the opener of the season. 

what i find interesting is that maxxie is posited as gay from the beginning;  it is the challenging of the main character’s heterosexual status quo that the narrative seems to resent and punish

so we get to s2 and tune in again to see that maxxie’s & tony’s relationship has become one of ongoing intimate/tender/nurturing friendship with undeniable homoeroticism/queer subtext, which seems debatably intentional to me  in a queerbait/fanservice way that is pretty standard for the 00s (with an implied: it’s never going to happen) and this newfound intimacy both heightens the subtext of tony’s queerness while simultaneously neutering it. another reason why i think this development is a response to the audience (and i’ve done zero research so im just extrapolating here) is the plotline that’s just gotten introduced about maxxie’s straight female stalker, which feels like some sort of jab, possibly, to fangirls and fandom

so we’ve got tony, punished for his sexual deviance just when he was beginning to return to the “correct” gender performance (falling in love with michelle rather than just toying with her), and now he is helpless, disabled, and most importantly desexualized, and he is being tended to by the single queer character and all the while michelle waits it out because — well im running out of steam, but something something, michelle cant tend to tony while he is disabled because there’s no eroticism in it, heterosexual intimacy does not involve vulnerability, does not involve caretaking, does not involve emotional and mental support, only the passion of conflict and empty declarations of undying love 

meanwhile, hilariously enough, instead of having sid take care of tony and therefore show a distinct dynamic between michelle and the guy who pretty much says he “belongs to tony,” he is also sulking with michelle and waiting it out like a second love interest because uhhh [checks notes] we also need sid-tony passionate conflict don’t think too hard about it. i love when things are both gay and homophobic 

[positivelybeastly]

Would you consider beast being a closet bisexual @

"I'm an open heterosexual, thank you very much, and I would recommend that in future, you keep such speculation to yourself."

"Ehehehey, well, wow, that's quite the question, not often I get accused of being a closet anything, but, ah, pretty firmly straight over here, friend."

"Despite what you may have heard from the press or a certain ex-girlfriend of mine, I am quite firmly in the heterosexual camp."

"I think someone needs to have gone on a date sometime in the last year to be qualified to be anything sexual, no?"

"Asexual aromantic. And if you ask again, I shall be displeased."

"Do you have a pulse? Are you happy with scalpels in the bedroom? Actually, your answer to that second question doesn't particularly matter, we'll get you warmed up in no time at all."

All right, so this is one of those moments where I have to pull back the curtain a little bit and talk about how I play a character who is canonically heterosexual, but whom I read to be bisexual because it's truer to the character as I find them.

Now, you know, I actually misremembered how this conversation went? I remembered Emma saying that Hank had never had so much as a gay thought, but that's not what she says here. She say that Hank has never had any kind of physical relationship with another man, and . . . you know what, I kind of believe that to be true.

Because as much as I fucking love THIS moment, it's not a relationship.

We can all agree that a kiss is not a relationship.

However.

. . . Guys, Hank is, like . . . really queer.

This post sums it up nicely, but yeah, Hank acts in a very over the top, dandified manner, over speaking and over-exaggerating everything about himself so that you won't pay attention to the blatantly obvious. He performs masculinity in a way that reads as overcompensating because he feels like he's been othered by his mutation.

There's also panels like this.

"Flirt with everything this side of Boy George."

Boy George being the androgynous gay icon of the 1980s, yes?

And this is coming from Hank's girlfriend, who he has admitted in dialogue to only really being with because she feels stable and safe and familiar, a tether to his old life in a time when he feels without a direction in life?

Like, this isn't me putting words into Hank's mouth, this is HIS dialogue during a time when he was arguably his most heterosexual! Yeah, you could just read it as him having a wandering eye, because he's a very flirtatious fellow, but that really isn't how it reads, is it? It reads as, I need reassurance I'm doing adult, normal things while my life goes weird, abnormal places.

It reads as, I think I'm kinda fucking queer but I'm too afraid to admit it.

Because lemme be real with you, this is Hank at his most heterosexual, but there's. Some. Stuff. Going on here.

"I was GOING to go out on a date with you, really pretty girlfriend, but then my MALE friend turned up and I just got so excited that I went out with my MALE friend and am basically hanging on his every word and eager to impress him, while the straight people at the table (Isaac and Dolly) are on an actual date, and Overmind sounded concerned about three wheeling a date when they asked to come with?"

Ladies and gentlemen, I am a gay man, and I have never been in just a towel around my best friend while he scrubbed another man's back, because that's just a little gay.

Hey, did you know Bobby's gay?

I don't bring that up for any real reason, just, you know.

And then there's Simon.

Oh boy is there Simon.

From Earth-763, but.

Like.

Come on, man.

When Logan and Hercules did this shit, people were celebrating in the streets because it confirmed bisexual Wolverine, but when Hank and Simon do it, no-one gives a fuck.

But that's an alternate universe. All they've done in 616 is kiss (GAY), so maybe it's just, you know, horsing around.

Right?

Hank, you don't look happy to be put down.

Hank never smiles like this on the X-Men. I'm not exaggerating. I've read X-Men comics for nearly 20 years, and Hank does not smile around other people like he does around Simon Williams. He looks fulfilled. He looks free. He looks delighted, constantly.

Are you two gonna fucking hold hands, like, WHAT?

And you know what, let's talk about the X-Men.

Scott, for someone who said very firmly that Hank wasn't gay before, you don't even throw that in there first?

Is it because of what comes next?

I'm - sorry? What in the FUCK are you trying to say to me?

And let's, for a moment, turn to Dark Beast. Because he has some words on the matter.

You know what, yeah, Dark Beast does seem like the idea to suck, fuck, thrust and kill his way through a Tuesday night, honestly.

And look, I know that alternate universes are shaky ground to be drawing conclusions from, but, like . . . this is. Getting to be rather a lot of very suggestive dialogue.

Look, I get that there's not quite the same amount of outright coding that Bobby had before he was forced out of the closet (Cloud, Emma Frost's prodding at his mind, all the stuff stacking up across Lobdell and Austen and Liu), but it's still . . . questionable. Isn't it? Like, at this point, I have to question why we think Hank has to be straight. Which is why I don't think he is.

So, now we get to the point of the evening where I pull at the curtain, because how Hank talks about himself in my threads works according to a certain kind of logic - canonically, as of right now, 21st of January 2024, he's officially straight, so any references to canon events will be as if he's 'straight' but actually just closeted bisexual. Because I care about continuity and keeping my facts straight and drawing as closely from the comics as possible - within reason - but my interpretation still takes precedence.

And my interpretation is that Hank, at any point in his life, is a bisexual man who feels afraid to admit it. But here's the question you're going to ask - WHY is he afraid to admit it?

You could go with an answer that draws on canon, and point out that when he tested the waters with coming out as gay, Scott and Emma both basically verbally smacked him and said he wasn't.

But that's not my style. I don't personally read it that way.

In my mind, Hank considers coming out to be That One Last Step Past Normal that goes too far. Like, it's one thing if he's a blue furred, canonically kinky, canonically weird, basically canonically bipolar, canonically psychologically damaged beast, but if he's a blue furred kinky weird bipolar psychologically damaged bisexual beast, that's the point where people will turn on him and be disgusted.

I could see him drawing that invisible line and deciding, I have to keep this one aspect of me to myself because I can't trust people to accept that from me. I think Hank has conditioned himself to believe that being accepted is something he has to earn over and over again, in part because of how Xavier schooled the X-Men's train of thought on that, but also because, unlike Nightcrawler, he knows what it's like to go from passing to not passing, and experiencing that scarred him in a way?

Like, one of the last bits of good Hank content we got before Krakoa was that Christmas special where he's back at his parents' for the holiday, and he can hear them talking from downstairs, and they're their usual lovely sweet selves, but they mention wanting grandkids, and . . . for someone whose bedrock, whose psychological wellbeing, is so incredibly dependent on other people, especially his parents and friends, I could see him being terrified of threatening that, even if it means he has to hide a part of who he is (perhaps unnecessarily).

There may be a degree of that where I'm projecting, because I had to deal with my dad being very heteronormative for a while after I realised I was gay, and even though I was certain he wouldn't reject me because of it, it felt easier to just not challenge that and let it slide because What If, you know?

But I feel like it makes sense for how Hank is, with his very tenuous relationship with feeling accepted, and I feel like this also accounts for why Emma 'saw' that he was straight in New X-Men, because he's wound himself into a psychological knot to the point where he reads as straight telepathically, even though he doesn't act like it and isn't.

If there weren't hints, I'd be inclined to be like, okay, maybe I'm just reading it this way because I see myself in Hank and him being a bit more like me makes me happy, but then there are GENUINE hints. The Exiles relationship, the fact that everyone basically treats Hank as Simon's emotional support, EVEN HIS GIRLFRIEND, and then the DeMatteis comment from Vera about how he flirts with everything this side of Boy George.

This isn't looking at pre-Krakoa Logan and Scott and thinking, yeah, they have tension, they want to fuck, this is looking at this guy who is extremely sex positive, flirtatious, open minded, and hearing from his girlfriend that he doesn't confine himself just to the purely feminine.

And it's also, like . . . like, I've talked about this with my boyfriend, and people love to throw out the YOU'LL JUST SHIP ANYTHING accusation, and maybe that's kinda true for some people, but I find I don't do that. Like, there are people out there who ship Hank with Cyclops, and I'm like . . . sure, fine. I don't personally see it, but you go for it, my dude.

If I genuinely did just want Hank to be an action figure that I smash with other action figures in a gay way, I feel like I'd have a stronger reaction, but instead, I look at the way he is with Bobby, and with Simon, and even, to a degree, with Logan (pre Krakoa, obvs), and I'm like . . . this is not the way a straight man acts. This reads as a bisexual man who doesn't feel like he can be 100% himself because he feels as though he's already asking a lot of people to accept him as he presents himself to be.

Hank's entire character from, like, moment one makes so much sense when you understand that he's basically always playing someone else. Sometimes it's who he wants to be, sometimes it's who he thinks other people need him to be, a lot of the time it's who people want him to be - like, I was reading the 2004 Nightcrawler solo the other day, and Kurt is internally narrating about how everyone on the X-Men is just an emotional basket case EXCEPT Hank, and I'm like . . . THIS.

THIS RIGHT HERE, is what the problem is! No-one on the X-Men is capable of seeing that Hank is constantly performing, and just how exhausting it is. That's why Simon is such a breath of fresh air, because Simon doesn't need him to perform, he just needs Hank to be . . . fuck, man, he just needs Hank to be happy, because that makes him happy, and the sheer lack of self-interest inherent in that dynamic is such a GIANT part of why I think Hank finds Simon so attractive. Like, imo, Scott's so insistent that Hank isn't gay during the New X-Men arc because of all of this, because he fell for the act, because he thinks this is just another joke that Hank is gonna duck behind.

Scott is SO INSISTENT that Hank isn't gay, and it's like, bro . . . Scoot . . . how do you know? You barely know what you want on a good day, and you think that just 'cause you and Hank hung around in the OG X-Men locker rooms for three years that you know him better than anyone else? He was on the Avengers and the Defenders and he has so many friends that you just DON'T KNOW ABOUT. How. Do. U. Kno. Scoot. Like, in universe, if Hank was working his way up to maybe coming out, and using the excuse of a joke to do it, THAT kind of reaction, and Emma TELLING him that he isn't gay, would push me RIGHT back in the closet.

If there wasn't coding, if there wasn't a genuine basis to this, it wouldn't have come up in Exiles, honestly. Like . . . okay, so multiversal stories are an excuse to do off the wall shit, right, and especially make characters gay just to push and prod and see what actually changes, right, like Governor Logan and Hercules, but they can also reveal a good amount of truth about a character out of what DOESN'T change.

And on a meta level, like, SOMETHING made Jeff Parker think Hank and Simon worked. He didn't pick Hank and Bobby, he didn't pick Hank and Hercules, he didn't pick Hank and Warren - Hank has NO shortage of male friendships you could pick from, but he picked Simon, and it's because there's enough there that even if you don't buy it for 616, it makes sense for a multiversal thing. Which means there's SOMETHING THERE.

And Ben Percy, cursed be his name, only added to that with X-Force. The idea that Simon is somehow going to be the catalyst for whatever awakening of classic, GOOD Hank is going to happen is just so . . . like, he still clearly cares for Abigail? They were on panel doing the eye socket thing? But, and this is partly because of who Abigail is, the narrative did not change because of her presence. But it does when Simon's around.

Yeah, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes a cigar is something to unpack. Like, I really Do Not Know how Hank became 'the straightest X-Man,' because A) have you fucking read Avengers and Defenders, and B) even discounting ALL of that . . . do you not find Hank's way of acting to be a little . . . you know . . . effete? Like, yeah, it's an act, he's playing the dandy, he's offsetting his appearance, but there are other things you can do to offset the Beast.

So why does he always go back to the brightly coloured suits, the loud fashion, the high energy, the camp, the billion dollar words - to put it bluntly, why does he always seem to act just a lil' fruity?

So, yes, in my mind, he's a closeted bisexual man, and that's how I play him. Thank you for coming to my lecture.

[which-hospital]

There are three Teddy storylines I don’t really think are going to happen, but it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination that they could happen and two of them are on my mind right now with The Extended Jenning Family Horrors being on my mind lately.

The main one is Teddy being involved in a storyline about Ross coming back. This one is probably just dependant on them finding an excuse for Ross to show up again when he’s really supposed to be In Prison at this point. Honestly, ever since Gethin showed up I’ve been wondering about it but even more so since he died. Jan (not really correctly but…) keeps bringing him up in relation to Jacob and Blake, we got what I consider to be the first proper Teddy Acknowledges Ross Exists moment a couple weeks ago... I don’t even know what my ideal storyline would be here, I just really want Teddy and Ross to interact so I can get some idea of what Teddy thinks of his literal cousin.

The other is something with Teddy’s dad. They’ve established enough about him to be able to have him show up but not so much that there isn’t room to make it interesting. I think, ideally, a storyline with Teddy’s dad would be Teddy having to find a healthy balance between how I imagine Gaynor talks about him (pretending that he was never there for them, along the lines of “just you and me, just like it’s always been” from Break Your Heart even though we know Teddy was old enough to understand what was happening and be upset about it when they divorced) and his tendency to do instant forgiveness - like, Teddy accepting that his dad wanted to be around for him more than Gaynor let him be AND that he should’ve also tried harder to be there for and protect him are two facts that can coexist. It’s not the only way things could work, but it’s what I’d want. But honestly, with how they seem to view Gaynor these days (since the start of S37), I worry that if we ever do see Teddy’s dad they’ll make him out to be 100% intentionally not there for Teddy as a way to justify or excuse Gaynor’s actions? I would rather never hear about his dad again than get that.

With both Ross and Teddy’s dad, I guess it’s just a feeling of “these are two people who are surely very relevant to Teddy’s life (Teddy’s dad as HIS DAD and Ross as someone he must be at least a little self aware he is a replacement for) and we know practically nothing about his relationship with or even feelings about them”.

(The third unlikely-but-possible storyline is Canon Bi Teddy. In my dream world that would just be he gets to have a romance storyline with a guy and they wouldn’t play it as like a ‘realisation’ thing, maybe have a character like Iain say “you date guys?” and Teddy say “yes” and we move forward with no fanfare because I personally think he’s got it figured out by now (if he was ever still figuring out his sexuality while working at Holby, it was way back when he first joined) and it’s not like he’s been portrayed as Particularly Heterosexual, he just happens to have only had explicitly romantic relationships with women so far.)