#but man being gay really does complicate the start of this stuff

[exopelagic]

maybe straight boy might have a maybe girlfriend. 18 dead 34 injured

[calware]

JOHN: that's kind of a weird question, but sure, i'll answer, haha.

JOHN: it's kind of funny, when i was a kid it really confused me when dirk would talk about "ante diulivan terminology" and all that. that stuff seemed so important to me when i was younger, like if someone was gay or what ever, but it really doesn't matter after all this time has passed. being a god for hundreds of years really puts stuff into perspective, i guess. JOHN: but my identity has definitely changed since i was that age. JOHN: back then, manhood always felt like an inevitability. i was going to become a man, like my dad, like every other boy does. and i was okay with that, in the same way we're all okay with breathing. like, what else is there to do? we don't question it. JOHN: so it took me a REALLY long time to really get that it wasn't that way, and that there were no inevitabilities. like my whole life i'm on this path walking toward a destination, but after walking it for a hundred years, it starts dawning on you that there is no destination on that path. JOHN: just the journey. JOHN: you can't see it but i am making a very wise expression right now. JOHN: not to be confused with harry anderson, a very different wise guy who has stood the test of time. JOHN: just wanted you to know that. JOHN: any way, after that, i started to understand that i could do things on my own terms. i'm not bound to masculinity, or anything at all really. JOHN: i don't know if it has something to do with my classpect, but i like to imagine it's like the breeze. it just does its own thing, traveling regardless of any path. it's freeing. JOHN: so i don't care what you call me, really. JOHN: for gender stuff, i mean. i'm still not attracted to guys. JOHN: but i don't care if you call me straight or a lesbian? so i guess i don't really care about that either. JOHN: it's more complicated than that, but i'm not going to get into it when none of it is really accurate to me anyway. JOHN: like i said, it doesn't feel important anymore.

[goat-guy-tm]

Mouthwashing headcanons that I cannot get out of my head;

Organized by character cause I'm normal

Jimmy is at the very bottom so you can skip him if you want.

This bitch is long and took me like two hours to write I wanna lay down...

Curly:

Bisexual Trans man because honestly he has a bit of t-boy swag

For some reason I have convinced myself he's 37. IDK why.

Comes from a pretty big family. He's the second eldest of 8 kids, his older sister is technically only a half sister but still.

He has two moms and one abusive/dead beat dad. Idk I can't explain it I just feel it in my brain that he's got two moms.

He's a mama's boy but in like a good way, not a weaponized incompetence way.

He's technically a nepo baby. His grandfather on his bio-mom's side is a director/board member of Pony Express, thus why Jimmy constantly talks about him "getting his life handed to him on a silver platter". His grandfather actually had nothing to do with him getting the job, as he has a different last name and no one actually realized they were related for a WHILE. He is the reason Curly dreamed of being a space-crafy poilt though.

He smokes cigarettes often. When he gets stressed he smokes a lot more, but he's in denial that it's a problem. Jimmy got him into smoking in the first place, peer preassuring him into it. Jimmy now conviently always seems to have packs of cigarettes on him during hauls when Curly never brings them, specially for when Curly gets stressed. (Not in like a gay way, in like a manipulative way to keep him subconsciously needing Jimmy in some way)

He is surprisingly strict when it comes to "no fraternizing with subordinates". He likes to keep his work and personal life seperate, and especially to not allow any feelings to be developed for any of his crew mates.

His first name is Grant, he was named after his father and eventually grew to hate his first name because of how horrible his father was, but he keeps his first name because his mom likes it on him, it helps her connect better memories to that name instead of the horrible ones his father gave her.

Jimmy was his only friend for a while, which is why he is so die hard about wanting to believe Jimmy is a good guy, plus Jimmy manipulating him for so long to believe Jimmy was the victim of a lot of stuff.

He is a fucking mountain of a man when it comes to muscles. Bro is buff as fuck and scary when he wants to be.

He's been the captain of the Tuplar since he became a captain (roughly 11 years). That ship is his baby.

Anya:

She's omni, if you asked her to really identify her sexuality she would say it's complicated, but she just says she's bisexual.

I feel like she's in her early/mid 30's for some reason? Like 33 at the time of the game. I know realistically she could more so be like, 26-28 (assuming she tried getting into med school the SECOND she was graduating high school)

She's been part of the Tuplar's crew for roughly 4 years, she was transferred to them after getting the medical certification from Pony Express to be an on-board nurse. Before that she had worked with another crew for a while.

She also smokes cigarettes. Significantly less than Curly does, but she still does from time to time. She started after her 4th try into med school, where she then got extremely drunk to cope with failing again, and had drunkenly bought a pack of cigs. She eventually regretted it, but was also in such a low point mentally that she thought "why the hell not" and started smoking regularly. Eventually she smoked more when stressed, which was when she was studying or getting ready for an exam of some kind. Because of this her regular smoking went to her smoking a fuck ton before and after stressful events (mostly tests) because her body has subconsciously attached to that helping her study.

She is an only child. Her mother died when she was a teen, which eventually led to her and her father having an estranged relationship. After her mother's death, her father went into an almost debilitating depressive state, becoming an extreme workaholic and albeit unintentionally neglecting Anya during her teen years. Now-a-days they are doing much better and are trying to reconnect with each other. Her father adores her and becomes devastated when news of her death on the Tuplar eventually reached him.

While Anya is not shy in any way, she is commonly seen as so simply because she keeps to herself a lot.

She worries quite a lot about money since her family didn't make a lot in the first place, and her mother was a big financial gash on them, which led to pretty extreme finance anxiety.

She's actually a big horror fan, especially horror books and often gets a bit too into them and feels like she's being weird about them, but no, she just really likes them.

Her intrest in phycology is spurred on by this, as reading phycology books makes her start to wonder about villian's reasonings. Jimmy would have been an interesting case for her if he hadn't been who he was.

If asked about any of her interests she will start to excitingly info dump, only to get embarrassed and stop, and refusing to continue when told it's fine.

Caffeine addict. She gets ungodly amounts of extra esspresso in any coffee she drinks.

She would read Warrior Cats.

Daisuke:

Pansexual trans guy. You see that Hawaiian shirt? That's peak t-boy swag right there. Lost his mind when he learned Curly was trans too.

Most likely either 20 or 21, making him the baby of the crew. Swansea balks at him every time Daisuke mentions it cause he's the same age as Swansea's kids.

He is autistic, one of the biggest reasons he has trouble figuring out what he wants to do with his life as he physically is not capable of imagining what his life will be like a few months from the present.

He would have been a DeviantArt kid, and an Animal Jam kid.

He gave the whole crew fursonas within the first week of working there. He also gave them ponysonas, but then he threw away Jimmy's after hearing what he said about Polle.

I feel like he has an affinity for small bugs. He loves saving them from being stuck in rooms, and get actually really angry when someone kills one for no reason. He snapped at Jimmy once for smushing an ant that had somehow gotten onto the ship. Reasonably there was no way to save it but Daisuke was still pissed about it.

He has a pretty strained relationship with his mother, even though he is still actively trying to gain her approval. His dad is pretty removed from his life, his dad is there, but anytime Daisuke asks his dad to stand up for him or anything his dad just shrugs and tells him to just talk it out with his mom. His mom doesn't want to talk it out. That's why he tries to get Swansea's approval, and especially feels bad when he gets injured in the vents Swansea specifically told him not to touch. (His cousins are the ones to hold the funeral for him, his mother says she wishes he would have at least done something productive before dying like that. [she's half an asshole, half going through immense guilt])

He is an only child. He had always wanted to be a big brother, and had asked for a little sibling so many times but his parents kept refusing, eventually he stopped asking but he still wished he could have been an older brother.

He has a really weird addiction to root beer.

I can't explain it but I feel like he'd be a big SCP Foundation nerd.

Swansea:

CisHet ally. Everyone is scared he is homophobic when they first meet him, but he knew his kids were gay before they did.

He was a veteran. Ended up getting medically discharged which was one of the things leading him into his alcoholic days.

He has three kids; two daughters and one son.

He has been working on the Tuplar almost as long as Curly. He joined the original original crew about 5 years into Curly being captain.

If Curly wasn't the only one allowed to use the food synthesizer and if they had actual food on the ship he would have been cooking meals for the crew every night to feel like he was at home again.

He pretends to hate it, but his music taste is 90% white girl pop. He also listens to like metal and rock, but still.

A girl dad through and through. His daughters are the world to him. Extra why he was so pissed and passive aggressive with Jimmy after Anya told him what he did to her.

Had a punk 'phase' during his teens. Still punk in beliefs, just not apparencies.

He's one of those old Brexit geezer types.

He and Curly keep betting on football (soccer) whenever not on hauls. Spoiler; Curly keeps losing.

His family and Curly's are actually surprisingly close. Whenever their respective family members are off on hauls during the holidays the two families spend them together.

I like to imagine his wife's name is Ophelia. I can't explain why, I just feel like she has some ethereal real pretty name.

His wife and Curly's moms have girls nights every week. Eventually Anya got roped into them when the ladies learned of her (to Curly's dismay).

He won't admit it, but he acted like a dad even before Daisuke joined the crew. He found himself often looking out for Curly when he thought the younger wasn't taking care of himself.

He has hand made bracelets from all his kids in his dorm. He hides them to keep up the tough guy act.

Jimmy: (cw; mentions of obsession, codependency and referenced suicide)

He thought he was bisexual, but it actually is just a really bad obsession with Curly. Otherwise I chose not to think about his sexuality.

He is the same age as Curly, 37, but maybe a few months younger than him (which is another thing he holds against Curly for some reason).

He joined the Tuplar crew a few years before Anya did, but wasn't promoted to co-pilot until the year Anya joined the crew.

He unironically uses Reddit and 4chan

One of his only hobbies includes doxing kids online.

He is like, the worst kind of brony you could have the misfortune of meeting.

He is an orphan and has been since his pre-teen years. It's what left him with nothing and did horrible things to his mental perception of his life.

He met Curly when they were both about high school age. He instantly became attached to him and would get extremely jealous when Curly would seem to have any other friends beside him.

Because of this he became very manipulative to Curly, constantly playing the victim card and then acting like Curly not believing him meant Curly hated him. This got to Curly pretty bad, and is one of the only reasons they stayed friends for so long.

The only reason he got into weight lifting is because he knew Curly worked out regularly, but it never really entertained him so he barley did it.

He thought he held power over Curly, unbeknownst to him he had actually made himself quite co-dependent on him.

The only reason he started working for Pony Express was because Curly had. He became quite angry though when they were not originally put onto the same crew, and weren't until Curly was promoted to a captain and given his own ship.

This is when he started the "Curly gets whatever he wants and was handed his life" thought, trying to find any way to reason why Curly was promoted so young and fast but he wasn't.

Even with his obsession with Curly, he doesn't spend a lot of time with him outside of hauls. His feelings would filp flop between obsession and disgust towards him. It doesn't help that Curly's family doesn't like him anymore.

He calls Curly 'Grant' because he knows Curly hates it and only ever does it to piss him off and then call him an asshole for getting mad at him, cause they are supposed to be friends, aren't they?

In his mind, if he isn't in some way better than Curly then he is nothing.

It wouldn't be till before he takes his own life that he realizes Curly is his life and has been since they were teens, and that without Curly he felt like he was nothing.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Spring 2024 Anime Overview: Girls Band Cry and Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night

Girls Band Cry

GBC was definitely my favorite new show of the season…and, for some reason, it wasn’t picked up for streaming. It’s one of the many Girl Band Stories that came out this season, but it was the best one. The characters were messy in a way I loved, especially the main character Nina, who’s a complete disaster, angry and loud and sometimes annoying, but so completely real to my experience as a teenage girl who was bullied.

Nina was bullied badly in school, and she’s a high school dropout as a result. Her favorite band helped her get through everything and stand her ground, “saved” her when she was on the verge of giving up on life completely. So when she sees that her fave singer Momoka ended up leaving her band Diamond Dust after the band went in a more commercial direction, the two of them decide to start their own band. Nina is ready to get back at all the people who looked down at them, but Momoka has more complicated feelings about her former bandmates.

Nina being powered by spite—and the series valuing that stubbornness and anger—is what made the series stand out for me, especially because the series just let her be extremely obnoxious sometimes without worrying about her “likeability”,--it made her feel ‘real’ and kind of refreshing. This is a series that starts out with girls going around flipping off people multiple times. The dynamic of the whole band, despite them constantly butting heads, is entertaining. All the characters have rough edges and broken pieces, but they end up fitting together.

The dialogue is fun, the music rocks, the CGI animation is actually super good and expressive. The fact the girls they chose are new to voice acting actually led to some offbeat performances I really liked—the fact it wasn’t as polished as other voice acting fit the characters and honestly made them feel a little more authentic.

The pacing does drag a tiny in the middle, but the climax is explosive and exhilarating. It’s also kind of gay, but in the form of a love confession that’s never really followed up on, (probably so they can have wiggle room to be like ‘how ambiguous was it platonic or romantic maybe she meant she loves ~her music~’) so I don’t count that. But at least it’s the confession isn't completely forgotten about in favor of putting the girls with "appropriate" male love interests (coughs in Sound Euphonium) because the only man on the show of any significance is Nina’s father.

Wholeheartedly recommend the show though, I love these charming disaster girls playing rock songs that slap, finding socially acceptable ways to flip people off, and kicking doors so hard they break them.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night

Speaking of gay girl band stuff where romantic tension is never followed up on! I binged Jellyfish while I was sick so I guess it counts for this review. It wasn’t nearly as strong as Girls Band Cry but it had stuff going for it!

The premise of this girl band show is that Kano, a former idol who left her career behind after a scandal where she punched another member of her group, runs into Mahiru, a former artist who stopped drawing after a disheartening experience with a jellyfish mural she created. But it turns out Kano loved that mural, and she wants Mahiru to be official artist for her anonymous internet musician persona, JELEE. JELEE picks up other members along the way, including hikikomori VTuber Kiui/Nox Ryugasaki and fangirl pianist Kimura.

Jellyfish had a lot going for it. It wanted to explore the competitive idol industry ruining girls’ lives, abusive parents pressuring their children into becoming extensions of themselves, the budding romance between Kano and Mahiru, the struggle of being trans in a society that forces one into a rigid role and objectifies those it perceives as women, and struggles of remaining creative when often faced with negative feedback.

And uh.... It pretty much fumbled everything but the last two. Granted, it's a soft fumble. A gentle fumble. I can't be too mad about it.

Let's start with the plotline I think it nailed though: Kiui/Ryugasaki (they seem to still use their original name even at the end but also use another name, so that’s what I’m going with) is great, and pretty much the main reason I’d recommend the show.

They’re as blatantly nonbinary as can be without actually saying the word (genderfluid or bigender is also a possibility. But very blatantly trans, either way). They’re also very fun with their over-the-top superhero fantasies. And the storyline where they use their VTuber persona to be comfortable with themself and present themself in the way they want is super compelling and interesting. There are a lot of really moving moments with them, including them shutting down some transphobic bullies (and I mean blantantly transphobic). And we get to see one of their friends enthusiastically support them.

On the other end of the spectrum, the idol and abusive parents subplots were pretty badly handled—we had the usual plot where said parent doing one act of kindness redeems them and things never have to get messy, and the idol plot seemed like it was going somewhere in critiquing how the industry fosters competitiveness and comes down way too hard on its idols for minor misdemeanors or things that shouldn’t be an issue at all, like dating. But then it just kind of ended with a “well internet harassment and destroying lives is bad, but like, we’re all troubled, aren’t we. don't we all vent sometimes." (???)

The plot between Kano and Mahiru…basically there was cheek kissing, blushing, very blatant flirting...and then a big nothingburger of a finale. But hey, Kano does have a gay pride and trans pride patches on her bag, so there’s that.

There's also one absolutely bizarre moment I have to warn about. In one of the episodes the girls run into an adult woman who's had a lot of plastic surgery done. Said adult woman invites the girls to touch her naked boobs (on the pretense of showing them was augmented boobs feel like? Or something?). And they do. As a group. As the woman thinks "they're high school girls, I hope this isn't illegal." IT IS, LADY. VERY ILLEGAL.

It's so out of nowhere that I originally forgot about it writing this, like my brain blacked it out. And then we (thankfully) never see this woman again outside a two second cameo in the finale. Unclear why any of this needed to happen.

So yes, this is basically the Jellyfish experience. The writing of the show was often uneven, it could be really good one second, and rushed and forced the next second. And there are a couple of absolutely baffling moments,

But I'd say on the whole the show is a positive, mostly thanks to Kiui/ Ryugasaki. When it hits, it REALLY hits and the characters are all very loveable. So I give it a reccomendation with a few warnings attached!

[decepti-thots]

1, 8 and 12

"the character everyone gets wrong"

moving over to exRiD for this one. arcee is imo subject to this a lot, despite fannish sentiment around her being overall very positive. i suspect a part of this is that the segments of idw1 fandom i hang out in either haven't read much or all of exRiD and/or do not read it as often as other series like MTMTE, so she tends to be subject to a lot of 'flattening' into her most iconic, meme-y characteristics. fun murder lady who likes murder! yay! but the thing is that the popular perception of arcee in a lot of circles is perpetually stuck in what she started as, not where she was ultimately taken. arcee's arc in the latter parts of idw1 are about the ways she grows out of and beyond the original concept of her as Scary Violent Lady TM, and about finding personhood for herself beyond that. by the time you're a dozen or so issues into phase two, that entire concept of her is being questioned and developed by the comic! it would perhaps bother me less if that entire original presentation of her wasn't so heavily rooted in phase one's (trans)misogynistic portrayal that we're ostensibly all on the same page about being bad, and the later stuff that is largely ignored wasn't a direct attempt to work with and rectify. (this has gotten better in the past 3-4 years, though.) i don't think anyone is deliberately leaning into that, it's just a side effect of most folks in the places i hang out not being overfamiliar with the actual canon stuff. but. well. it does make me a little sad. she's got such a compelling arc! i would like to have more enthusiasm for it, as opposed to making fun jokes about her stabbing people. (on the plus side, discussing this before has persuaded at least three people i know of to read exRiD and they told me they loved her in it, so!)

"common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about"

anyone who thinks exRiD is light on character work, as per the above, is wrong. sorry. it has great character work! the division of 'MTMTE is for character stuff, exRiD is Plot TM only for dudebro nerds' is incorrect, and unfortunately remains a common sentiment. barber did not do it the same way that roberts did, but exRiD is intensely interested in its characters and barber has spoken at length about how interested he was in digging into character dynamics. if anything is barber's signature, it's his extensive use of internal character monologue, even! yes, he also really likes doing convoluted plots- and it's fair that is simply a turn off for people- but the perception he doesn't care about characters or interpersonal relationships is very unfair. this man did not do All That with thundercracker for people to write that off.

"the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them"

i did this question previously for aileron but also! also!! more people need to give some love to idw needlenose. as with aileron, it's not that people DISLIKE him, it's that he is great and i want more people to understand this. he's got a complicated cross-faction sibling relationship with tracks! he's a gay widower and it's really sad!! he's a hardcore True Believer in the decepticon cause and imo a wayyy better exploration of what a generic non-high-command decepticon is struggling with in the aftermath of the war ending as a real believer in the cause than stuff like the scavengers that gets more play in fandom. but he gets way less attention as idw exploring that, unfortunately. i love him so much, please join me in the needlenose stan corner.

[pansysgothgf]

The Buddie Grey’s Anatomy AU I wrote is done so here’s the rest of my moodboards for it + the rambling thoughts I have about the characters :)

Hen!! Hen’s the character I was the most excited about but also the character I feel like I did the least with because as much as I adore Cristina, so many of her plot points in the show seemed to revolve around her truly horrific boyfriends/fiancés/husbands. My hatred of Owen Hunt runs deep, so Karen ended up being partially inspired by Burke. I ended up mostly focusing on Hen and Buck becoming friends, but I do wish I got to spend a little more time on her :(

I ended up sharing Bailey’s plot lines and character between Maddie and Chim, which I’m pretty happy with tbh! My favourite scene to write with them was actually the first one of theirs I wrote for this fic, which was my whumptober submission that ended up being a chunk of chapter two. While they’re mostly based after Bailey, Maddie also reminded me a little bit of Jo (both of them surviving abusive husbands) and I gave her one of April’s plot lines in the final chapter, which was exciting! I did briefly consider incorporating Lexi, Molly or Maggie’s plot lines in for Maddie (the whole ‘secret sibling’ thing) but it just didn’t work with the way I set it up.

LUCY MY LOVE!! I became so unintentionally attached to Lucy while writing this so she got WAY more plot than I was initially intending haha! There’s something so magical about watching the first few seasons of Grey’s and seeing the dynamic between all of the roommates, which I tried really hard to incorporate into the fic. Then I realized I’d become attached to Lucy and Ravi and went… oh shit I’m going to have to actually give them plots rip. I had so much fun choosing which Izzie plots to give to Lucy since Izzie has some really amazing stuff to work with in the show. I ended up going with the two biggest plots (imo). Because I changed so much though, I ended up combining Izzie’s cancer plot line and Amelia’s brain tumour to create what I ended up with. I’m pretty happy with it, honestly, I hope I built it up sufficiently enough :)

Ravi!!! Ravi is what people wish George O’Malley could’ve been. As I’ve previously stated, I do not like the majority of Grey’s men, and this includes George. I ended up focusing mostly on George’s issues with confidence and his complicated relationship with his family. I also elected not to go the bus route with Ravi, you’re all welcome. Fun fact! I made Lena the orthopaedic surgeon because my biggest crack ship in all of 9-1-1 is Lena/Ravi. I headcannon them to be a lesbian and a gay man but they match each other’s freak, and they’re both just as surprised about it as anyone.

Honourable mentions (aka characters I want to yap about but didn’t make moodboards for):

Shannon: I based Shannon off of Addison Forbes-Montgomery-Shepherd SPECIFICALLY because of the season 1 finale. They’re both the secret wives that show up and create chaos which I love lol. I specifically left Shannon’s ending pretty ambiguous, mainly because I don’t know if she would’ve stuck around had she lived in 9-1-1. If we’re going off of Grey’s though, she’s living her best life in LA with a group of friends who she cares a lot about. I like to think that at some point Chris reaches out (probably when he’s a lot older) and they create a tentative relationship.

Tommy: I gave Tommy elements of both Mark Sloan and Owen Hunt (just his position at the hospital because seriously, fuck Owen Hunt). I decided on Tommy as Mark before Season 7 started airing which is WILD because I basically flipped a coin between him and Sal, but went with Tommy since he showed up to fly the plane in season 2. I wrote him and Buck kissing after Buck, Bothered and Bewildered though lol! I don’t really think about what happens to Tommy after the ending of the fic, although it’s definitely not what happened to Mark. Seeing as Owen doesn’t exist in this world, neither does the plane crash <3

Ok that’s it thanks for coming to my ted talk :)

[firespirited]

thought I might add a little to a question unanswered by the video essay: the why?

not as an excuse, not a full explanation either because there's still the matter of the Telos money.

but why does a man live, breath and eat for his channel/career without the passion for researching and learning?

I can tell you that he truly *did* devote his entire time and energy to producing videos and engaging with the commentariat as a full time job, though if the video scripts were copy paste. He probably feels like he's devoted his entire soul for years into this project and the copy paste was "just" to keep up with the youtube once a week upload demands.

IMHO, what we have is a bloke with crippling anxiety, loneliness and body dysmorphia with a pathological fear of rejection who attempted to build an online queer community that wouldn't ever let him down. As far i can can tell he barely left the house, didn't date and i started to wonder if he really had moved when he wasn't visiting any of Toronto's very gay friendly places or even some of the museums and libraries, wasn't making any local connexions even when people reached out. Instead, he spent his weekends chatting online (often on livestream) about gay media, business, youtube and film making.

I think he could have built that safe haven if he'd kept the day job, produced a fully credited video once a month which was in the format of let's watch this documentary, let's read this book, let's dive into a topic and read the various articles followed by his livestream chats. There is clearly an audience eager for it.

and that's where it gets uncomfortable, right? the lines blur between shyness + not wanting to be hurt vs not collaborating and not being part of other established groups. Canada not only has multiple gay filmmaking scenes, advocacy groups and even a whole bunch of Canadian queer youtubers. They don't have to all get along, because there's more than just the Canada based breadtube, there are a lot of smaller channels that'd love the opportunity to network.

Anyway, it was during a live that i bought up some local Canadian networking opportunity, he backed off quite hard in a way that felt like a little bit more than anxiety about the fierce competition that goes on for such stuff. It felt vaguely like Little Britain's "The Only Gay in the Village" but mostly I was reminded of folks in my life who decided to forge their own paths in charity work and activism, specifically the very dodgy intersection between missionary work and charity and charities that are about the joy of bringing fish to the hungry instead of helping the locals who know how to fish get the new motor for their boat. It's actually a really complex and nuanced conversation where sometimes the least colonialist choice is to hold your nose and work with the local catholic church - yeah I know, that level of complicated, here's some reading before I start on the importance of translating books to creoles being a better investment than teaching english to match an english curriculum and how relief work is often predatory business opportunities and how secularism is a tightrope balancing act and don't get me started.

It is possible to walk and chew gum and listen to music at the same time. We can talk about how plagiarism is bad, how the algorithm rewards it, how this guy is probably getting more ire than the right wing grifters also brought up, why left tube maybe feels a lil intimidating, why people build their own little digital or offline communes, how being an educator and being a thought leader get smooshed together in an attention economy that wants to create influencers with a parasocial engagement with folks that want personal guidance, sometimes stolen valour/plagiarism/fake cancer is for power and clout and sometimes it's a maladaptive response to a desperate loneliness I hope I never fully comprehend.

[abuddyforeveryseason]

It's the Buddy for April 22nd! He's wearing the Capricorn Cloth (being a capricorn himself) of the classic Masami Kurumada manga Saint Seiya.

I loved Saint Seiya. I have all the paperbacks, even, I liked it when I was a kid. It's an interesting manga, in that it doesn't make much sense in retrospect, but when you're reading it, you're more interested in the beat of the plot than in the big picture.

The plot, as I understand, is that this rich girl Saori is the reincarnation of the goddess Athena, so her dad arranged for ten boys to get trained to be her protectors (the saints), wearing bronze armors based on traditional constellations. Then they get into a martial arts tournment to win an actual gold cloth, but complications start making it so they need to stop fighting amongst themselves, and start fighting actual bad guys.

In a way, it's a very toyetic story - each character has their own unique armor (or cloth) which is fits both them, and can be assembled to resemble its constellation, so kids had a lot of expensive toys to collect. And since the golden cloths (belonging to the strongest saints) are based on the twelve zodiac signs, kids already have a favorite character picked out for them.

Me, I'm an Aquarius, so my favorite was Aquarius Camus. The one with the ice powers. He also won a Literature Nobel, you know. But I never related to him, really. He's an ice guy, which is cool I guess, but, not the power I'd choose.

The manga's also very camp. The art's really old-fashioned, looking almost like sometihng from Tatsuo Yoshida's generation. Not a lot of attention is paid to proportions and depth, and the fight scenes are not dynamic. But that's one of the things I like about it, to be honest. It feels like there's a closer dialog between the artist and the reader when the art is so direct. It's the opposite of something like the manga version of One-Punch Man, for instance.

And the designs of the cloths, characters and enemies is also pretty unique, it's got that simplified design quality of eighties manga that's not as popular anymore.

One aspect that Saint Seiya, like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, isn't shy about is the gay subtext regarding some characters... it's most obvious with Andromeda Shun and Pisces Aphrodite, but also Virgo Shaka, Aries Mu... it's an intentional aspect of the story, but when me and my friends were kids watching it, we thought it was pretty "gross".

Even though it doesn't really make sense and it's pretty much designed to appeal to kids' love of shiny stuff and fight scenes, Saint Seiya is one of my favorite franchises. I'll be honest, I didn't know much about greek mythology when I first watched the anime, so I assumed a lot of the stuff Kurumada made up was actual part of ancient Greek myth. Still makes no sense why Capricorn Shura had the power of Excalibur, though... what does Excalibur have to do with Capricorn? Should be a Draco thing, or even Ursa Major...

The Capricorn print in the background is a public domain image.

[juniperhillpatient]

I finished Yellowjackets and I already miss it! Any recs for what to watch to fill the void?

Omg I feel you every day of my life I miss Yellowjackets I wish I could watch it all for the first time again 😭

I don’t really watch that many shows so I’m terrible with recommending stuff 😅

If you want more depravity & complicated awful female villains & anti heroes with complex toxic sapphic dynamics Hostel 2 is my go to but you do have to watch the first one to understand it & I love the first one myself but it is very man heavy with characters lol

If you are really wanting to lean more into the messed up flesh consuming homoerotic codependent sapphic dynamic aspect specifically I’d recommend Ginger Snaps or Jennifer’s Body the main canon sapphic female relationships in both those movies are brain rotting in similar ways to JackieShauna. (Though Ginger Snaps gets incestuous so I know that’s as quick for a lot of people tread carefully)

Ooh as far as TV shows go you’d probably enjoy Killing Eve if you like Yellowjackets although that one the writing really goes downhill pretty badly so I do hesitate to recommend it unless you’re in it for the parts that are worth it & prepared for disappoint down the line…. Ugh but Eve & Villanelle are SUCH amazing characters!!

Dead to Me is another show that’s really good & far less depraved & more drama centric than the other stuff I’ve mentioned. However in my opinion the writing does go downhill but the first 2 seasons? Iconic. Not canonically gay like the other things I’ve mentioned but still a delicious dynamic between two complicated & somewhat crazy women.

Not in the same genre as my other recs but Bottoms is a great comedic movie if you just want crazy & sort of awful lesbians.

Oh —- ok last 3 recommendations. These ones don’t necessarily have the toxic crazy sapphic girlies element of YJ that I just assume is a big part of the draw (it is for me lol) HOWEVER they are some of my faves -

Hannibal. I love this show. It’s art. I don’t have anything else to say that hasn’t been said meow articulately by more hardcore fans. I watched this entire show in a fever haze when I had Covid so that probably affects my analytical ability but I promise it’s great. It’s also a little man heavy & the female characters could be… done better sometimes so that is a criticism I have that keeps it from being a number one fave for me but Hannibal & Will are VERY compelling & the plot & visuals are soooo good.

Scream mtv I honestly feel like you’ve seen this one I’m pretty sure but it’s a fave of all time & Emma/Audrey is one of my fave ships of all time. Excellent cast excellent writing it’s so good.

Bates Motel. This show is so slept on in fandom & it’s probably the best horror tv I’ve ever seen from start to finish it tells an amazingly cohesive prequel backstory for one of the most iconic villains of all time in a way that honors the book & film both of which I LOVE & somehow manages to stay fresh & shocking & exciting despite the audience knowing where it’s going. For quality horror tv I can’t recommend this show highly enough it’s honestly the best thing on this list on an objective level like the cinematography the fantastic acting from Vera Farmiga & Freddy Highmore especially but also Max Theriot & Olivia Cookie I just - I LOVE this show. Heavy heavy trigger warning though not just for incest which is inherent to a Psycho prequel but like…. Everything you could ever need a trigger warning for. There is a significant amount of SA shown so yeah be careful.

Anyway there you go you’ve probably seen a lot of the stuff on this list but this is what I could think of to watch next to somewhat keep the mood of Yellowjackets although of course we both know YJ is unique enough you’re never going to recapture that exact vibe 😉

If anyone else has recommendations also I’d also be curious! ❤️

Oh wait last thing my best friend Juliet Lewis plays another iconic traumatized girly with maybe worse daddy issues than Natalie even in Natural Born Killers. This is one of my favorite movies but it is NOT for everyone. You are signing up for unapologetic depravity & sympathetic serial killer villain main characters with a toxic relationship. Now for me those are selling points but it is a very messed up movie so yeah. Trigger warning for SA incest & basically every dynamic in the movie being the definition of toxic.

Okay that’s off the top of my head for watching after YJ I’m done now lol 🫶

****Edit I’m listening to music on my porch as I play on tumblr & I Know the End by my best friend Phoebe Bridgers came on & I remembered to recommend School Spirits it’s not exactly the same horror vibes of YJ but I just think you’d like it because it’s a delightfully creepy compelling & fun ghost story / mystery with absolutely wonderful characters fun cinematography exciting lore a good plot & a banger soundtrack ok I’m done now lmao go watch School Spirits it’s so great

[deathscastleofficielle]

Death's Castle - Pride Headcanons

Since my beloved Jack did this with his versions of the PDP Amnesia characters, I definitely felt like I should join in! So this is basically going to be a masterpost of the characters' queer identities with some anecdotes on how and why I came to these conclusions.

(Note, the artist has since changed their handle to NoxAtraWendigo, which is... Unfortune, but I'm afraid I have to move on.)

One more thing, I am mainly listing specifics here. As far as I'm concerned the entire castle is some shade of queer, but unless I have a specific label for them I'm not putting it in the list. For example, some characters have displayed attraction to the same sex, but you may not see any specifications there because I simply haven't determined if they're also attracted to the opposite sex, or even in that case if they're bi or pan. This stuff's complicated, and I don't like putting things in boxes if it's not entirely necessary.

WARNING: There are spoilers for Death's Castle under the cut. It would have been too hard to talk about their identities without pointing to specific moments.

------------------------

The Big Five

You know funny story this was never meant to be their official title, but Zoe picked up on Lullaby calling the primary Bros "The Big Four" so I guess that's what I'm going with now.

Stephano - Bisexual

This one isn't really a surprise to anyone who's been reading my posts or the fic itself, but Stephano is very much a bisexual man. This one was just a bit of lifting from the videos, despite how much he insists he's straight and the anecdotes of dating women he undeniably displays attraction to the same sex. The way I personally write it is that he has an easier time flirting with and finding initial attraction to women, but falls a lot harder for men.

Jennifer - Biromantic Asexual

While normally I think of specifics as I go, Jennifer was a case where I actually knew from the start what I wanted her sexuality to be. When I began conceptualizing her story, I knew I wanted her to be asexual but not aromantic for a few reasons.

At the time and even still today, a lot of our aro and ace representation was synonymous with each other despite them being separate identities. So even for just a fanfic, I wanted to make characters that showed more of the nuance of asexuality and aromanticism.

I wanted to explore her love for Pewdie through the lens of asexuality. It seems a lot of allo people base their initial feelings off sexual attraction, so what does such an intense love entail if sexual attraction isn't involved?

Jennifer is fat and struggles with her weight, and I'm sorry to point this out but I feel like a lot of body positivity boils down to assuring people (mostly women) that they're still sexually attractive. But what if being seen that way is almost as repulsive as being "ugly?" I wanted to write her story to focus on body positivity and beauty in a way removed from sex.

Honestly, Jennifer's story ended up being very personal. When I started Death's Castle I was under the impression I was simply a straight ally. By the time I got to her backstory though, I had realized I was asexual myself, but had struggled to realize it since my experience didn't conform to the usual stereotype. As such, there was a lot of catharsis writing Morning Glory, which is probably why her section is the longest here oops.

Mr. Chair - Grayromantic Homosexual

While Jennifer was thoroughly planned out, Mr. Chair's identity was kind've a happy accident. I sort of knew he was gay, but over time I realized that a lot of his writing lined up with an arospec experience. Mr. Chair is very unfamiliar with romantic love and what it feels like, and while he definitely feels something for Skully, it's never portrayed as particularly intense. As such, I came to the realization that he's definitely under the grayromantic umbrella. He experiences romantic feelings infrequently and perhaps not as strongly as others do.

Piggeh - Panromantic Asexual

Yeah, I made the character that did nothing but talk about sex ace. Deal with it. In seriousness, again, a lot of this was kinda just something that happened and honestly feels more on the lines of allegory than a straightforward example, but I think it's fine to make official. While Piggeh definitely enjoys sex, he isn't really sexually attracted to anybody. In fact, he finds most people (including himself) physically unappealing. Despite this, he does display romantic attraction, showing that appearance and gender don't really factor in for him when it comes to that. Again, ended up kinda cathartic in hindsight.

Mayo - Androsexual Agender (He/They)

This was a case where the character kinda just evolved as I wrote them, which you know what is fitting for a teenager growing and discovering their identity. He started as a boy, but as time went on I started to realize something wasn't cis about this kid. I played with a few ideas before I settled on him being agender. In-story, he first started to realize he may not be cis in Geode when Martin taught him that people can feel being a specific gender, inadvertently revealing that he didn't. This culminated in Peter's Gate where they realized that they felt uncomfortable being seen as a boy or a girl. For now he only uses he/him pronouns, but I'm hoping to start incorporating the they/them pronouns in future chapters.

I do see him being attracted exclusively to men or masc-leaning identities, hence androsexual. This has been established through him mentioning wanting a boyfriend in Binding Ties, and the implications that he had a bit of a crush on Stephano when he was a little kid. Unfortunately, not many romantic options since the other teenagers even remotely around their age in the castle are too old for them.

------------------------

Other Bros

Martin - Genderfluid (All Pronouns)

Development wise this is a long story that is almost too hard to recall if I'm honest, but I knew pretty early on I wanted Martin to be genderfluid if just to display some of the world building. As readers of the fic will know, Martin was born female but basically swapped bodies with Sammy Sue in order for her to live as a woman and for him to start over from his previous life as "Susanna." Martin now presents masc, but they still identify as both genders, or sometimes none at all.

Also, quick aside. I kinda like that I have a genderfluid character that's over 40. It feels like less binary identities like that are often limited to teen or 20-something characters. So she's a good first step for my future projects.

Torchy - Transgender (He/Him)

I've had two headcanon voices for Torchy, and both are trans men, so I was just like fuck it, let's make him trans. That sounds fun. There really wasn't much thought in this decision.

Skully - Intersex (He/Him)

I couldn't decide if he was cis or trans, so I decided on both and neither. To be a little more serious, there isn't a whole lot of deep reasoning for this, I just thought it would be cool to have at least one intersex person in the castle and Skully was standing right there.

Also him being intersex has nothing to do with his ability to mimic voices. That's just a thing he can do.

Pipé - Transgender (She/Her)

This is a long story involving me wanting to do this from the beginning, a now ex-friend using a weird excuse to talk me out of it, and then me having to cram it back in before it was too late, but yeah. Pipé is a trans woman!

Bluey - Lesbian

There was a time where I might have said she was bi but you know what no this girl is gay as hell. Definitely has a thing for Jennifer.

Lullaby and Lisa - Sapphic

"Scout why didn't you just say lesbians?" Because that doesn't really convey the whole story tbh. Lisa is definitely a lesbian, but Lullaby I actually see being specifically gynesexual, which is the attraction to femininity and doesn't necessarily have to be gender specific. Either way though they're in a sapphic relationship.

Save Kitty Cat - Bisexual

Is this mostly because of his blue and purple color palette? Yes. But I have always seen him as being attracted to both genders.

Jesus - Transgender (He/Him)

Honestly this was mainly a "because it's funny" decision. It was inspired by a scientific thing that basically meant that since the biblical Jesus was born from only Mary without any male dna in the equation he would have logically had to have been born female. Thus, trans Jesus.

Disclaimer, Death's Castle Jesus is not actually the Jesus. He just named himself that because he also thought it would be funny.

------------------------

Barrels

Red Chair, Gonzales, and Sammy Sue - Polyamorous

Sammy's getting her own section, but like Lisa and Lullaby it felt more efficient to put them together rather than doing three separate entries for the same relationship. But yeah, as many readers are aware, these three are in a polycule. Like many things, this was an idea I lifted from the now deleted fanfic Hyperthymesia. Their relationship has been one of my favorite things to write in Death's Castle, as their more stable and loving relationship provides an interesting contrast against the dysfunctional Bros, especially now that things have started to shift in both groups. Also it's interesting to write just how complicated such a relationship can get in a tumultuous setting like Death's Castle.

Sammy Sue - Transgender (She/Her)

And of course, another idea borrowed from Hyperthymesia, Sammy Sue is a trans woman. She was my first real experience writing a trans character, so she definitely has a strong place in my heart. As mentioned under Martin's section, she was born male but swapped objects with Martin and gained his female body.

Broom - Lesbian

Unfortunately I haven't been able to show this off much, but I definitely see Broom as a lesbian. I intended for her to have a little something something with Jennifer in Morning Glory, but I was told they had more of a sisters vibe, so I decided not to push it there. I have plans to establish her identity though, don't worry.

------------------------

The Filthy Pig + Bro

(because there were no other unaligned characters left lol)

Bunny - Aroace

This is a bit on the subtler side in my writing, but Bunny was always meant to be aroace. She never shows any interest in having a romantic relationship and only seems interested in sex for the purpose of reproduction, given that she had kits before being revived in the castle. I thought it would make her a fun contrast compared to all the rampantly horny swines she lives with.

Berta - Pansexual

Again, haven't been able to display this much given her only shown attraction is to Piggeh, but girl's pan. Gender doesn't matter to her, just that special something that apparently Piggeh had.

Gandalf and Rudolph - Polyamorous

Gandalf and Rudolph are in an open relationship. They're committed to each other, but have other relations on the side. I want to figure out a way to actually confirm this in Death's Castle, but it's hard since the Filthy Pig group doesn't really show up that often and when they do the pig trio are often in the background.

Adolf - Aromantic Bisexual

Keeping it simple over here. Adolf ain't much for romantic stuff, but still enjoys a good time with any person.

Bro - Bisexual

Bruno here loves both men and women. He's slept with Piggeh in the past, and previously dated Sammy Sue, which ended... Pretty poorly. He's also shown an attraction to Martin, which actually seems to be returned if their interaction in Geode is any indication.

------------------------

Miscellaneous Thoughts

I don't see Bengt being picky about gender, but given he's more interested in cutting people up than fucking them he's probably never put a label on it himself.

I know the Barrel King is into men, but the dude has yet to physically appear so I kinda can't go into it.

During a conversation with Jack, specifically about Tom Hardy's "Paint That Lady" he suggested that Peter could also be Asexual. That would be fun, but I'm not sure about it since some of his dialogue in Morning Glory kinda suggests that he isn't.

Stephano isn't ace, but I have joked with my friends that making him ace would have been a mercy given his... Situation, regarding Janus. But no I want him to suffer.

I've considered that Pipé could be aromantic, but a lot of that also boils down to me not really having a strong ship for her, so I don't feel comfortable making her officially aro yet.

I might remove the colored text if people report issues with reading it.

[illarian-rambling]

For the WIP/OC Ask Game:

What's the deal with that evil desert?

How does magic work?

And feel free to ramble about your favorite characters and their most curious details!

Hi there!

I answered about the desert here, but I'll be happy to tell you about magic!

Magic on Illaros spills from a mysterious dimension known as the Veil. Different shapes will draw it out in different forms, much as different keys will unlock different doors. Some of these shapes are fire or ice. Others are more complicated, like memory reading and matter degradation/transportation/assembly (aka teleportation). People who learn to draw and harness these different shapes are known as rune scribes, or simply mages.

Sorcerers are where it gets a little funky. They are born with enzymes in their blood that are shaped in a way to allow the Veil to spill through into the sorcerer’s body. With their divine soul, they are able to manipulate this magic using simple, rune-adjacent shapes formed with their hands, called sigils. It's much faster than drawing on the Veil by drawing runes, but sorcerers suffer from exhaustion, migraines, nausea, and any number of physical ailments when they use up too many of their enzymes, though the enzymes do grow back eventually.

In addition to these two, there's also alchemy and divine magic. Alchemy uses magically mutated creatures to create potions, while divine magic involves people asking the gods to pretty please loan them a miracle. Divine magic is the most powerful form of magic, however, only a very select group of people can wield it.

There's also rotting magic. This isn't a type of magic someone can wield, but a natural effect. When magic stays too long untethered to a spell or rune, it will start to decay in a stream of microscopic particles. The people of Illaros call this sorcerer’s poison, but we'd call it radiation. They call it sorcerer’s poison specifically because sorcerers can draw on the rotting magic of their previously cast spells even when they're out of enzymes, though it has a chance of killing them via something akin to very fast radiation sickness.

There's a bunch of other weird stuff going on too, but I think I'll leave it at that ;)

The character that's been on my mind lately isn't one of the main cast, but instead a side character in MG3. Marius Montane is the younger brother (15 years younger) of Antonin Montane, the patriarch of the Montane family bank and father of Ivander Montane.

Marius was only 20 when Ivander’s mom disappeared, and since Antonin had more important things to do, he sort of took it upon himself to raise the boy after that. I'd say he did a decent job, all things considered. Marius was also deeply traumatized by the Montane family atmosphere, and 20 is not very old to be raising an 8 year old. Soon after, people made a run on Marius's bank, and he received a portion of Timaz's curse as punishment (the same, flesh-to-mist stuff Ivander has going on, but just on his leg). He trained Ivander strictly in hopes of keeping him safe from the curse, and the pain often made him irritable, so he wasn't always the softest of caretakers. His wife, Parva, helped too, but she died by the time Marius was 30. The pairing was an arranged one, so they were never in love, but they were quite friendly. Marius used his grief for her as an excuse to never remarry, as the Montanes are pretty keen on producing blood-related heirs, and that man is gay as the day is long.

He's just a really tragic character, all in all. After Ivander left, he thought about following, but could never work up the courage. He lives in terror of his brother. I think that's one of Antonin's cardinal sins; being the sort of man his little brother is afraid of. But don't you worry. Marius will get his moment :)

Thanks for the asks!

[stackthedeck]

What are your thoughts on the new Spiderverse run? I'm only reading it because of Cooper and I managed to find some bits here and there.

Have a good one!

I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS! First off, there's never been a spider verse that I didn't enjoy because I just love all the creative spins that writers and artists put on the spider mantel!! And usually, a spider verse run means that at least one of the new spiders will get their own mini series or even a full run (Spider-Gwen and Spider-Punk my beloved)

okay this got long specific thoughts and minor spoilers under the cut

And I love the five issue series of end of the spider-verse because all the new spiders are so cool!! And I think the evil wasps work really well because it allows us to check in on the other spiders we know and love but they're turned evil so that we can focus on the new spiders! It's a very visually engaging villain and it really doesn't need to be that complicated for an end of the multiverse story you know

I love Web Weaver more than words can I express I have not stopped thinking about Cooper since I read his issue!! I just want him to have a mini series after all this is over marvel please I will write it!! I think he honestly has the strongest introduction out of all the new spiders because he actually does stuff and it's not just his origin story. His design is gorgeous but also his panel layout was so engaging like that beautiful web page that summoned up his origin story!!! I love his writing and the jokes he makes, you can tell that a gay man wrote his dialogue like yes!! (Steve Foxe, sir I hope marvel lets you write more of this character please Slott can't be trusted with him!) But like he'd have such an excellent mini series because there's a plot hook established before he leaves for the multiverse and it's his relationship with Albert Moon!! It's a love square with two people I'm literally gaging yes please marvel please I need to see how this goes!! Like Cooper and Albert are exes, but Silk and Web Weaver have crushes on each other and Albert kissed Web Weaver! Like oh my god the drama and if I don't get a comic for either of them soon I'm going to fucking write it myself

I also adore the other new spiders!! I like the new spider UK, she's an interesting character with a cool design, but her writing was a little clunky but I think that would have been fixed if she had a whole issue rather than like a quarter. Same with Sun Spider, love everything about her but the writing could have been stronger but also this isn't her first appearance so idk why the felt the need to go over her origins again. I would love for both of them to get their own solos. The character I'm really excited about is Spintress!! I thought her universe was so creative and the way they translated the typical spider man villains into Disney princess stuff. I hope she gets like a children's book or since Disney owns marvel maybe a little animated short in the traditional 2d style like I'd literally kill for that!!

Okay, I love this spider verse, but its whole is less than the sum of its parts. Like it moves into Slott's Spider-Man run and it instantly stops being charming and exciting. It immediately focuses on Peter despite the fact that this whole series started with Anya Corazón and Julia Carpenter! And they started calling Peter the chosen one which fuck no!! The whole point of spider verse is that Peter Parker isn't special, that anyone can take up the responsibility of spider-man, that anyone can be behind the mask!! And then they take away the tension of the evil wasp turning the spiders by saying that 616 citizens can't be turned which like way to bring down the stakes! Noir now has a sword that erases people from existence which fuck fine okay whatever. But the new spiders are instantly pushed to the background so that Peter can have the spotlight! He makes a homophobic comment to Web Weaver, he's nasty to Spintress, and he hates Felicia for no fucking reason!! Like he's so out of character, but it's Slott so idk what I expected. I'm going to read how it ends, but fuck I wish like the core of the story actually cared about the new characters introduced because what's the point of having them there if they don't do anything

[maguro13-2]

Pac-Man : *searches anything in the closet* No...No...No...Where did I put that stupid whatchamacallit in there? No..It's not here...Not there...Hey, guys...have you seen my...

*searches an empty bucket of Power-Pellet*

Pac-Man : What-!? What the--!? Who ate all of my power pellets those were not for eating!? They were only used to have the power to eat ghosts!

Blinky : Uhh, Pac. I think you wanna really lay of those pellets there bud. Cause I think we have a huge problem cause things are not going so well...

Pac-Man : Uhh, what?

Blinky : Yeah...This would be your own fault, that I told you that stuff could kill millions.

*Blue Ghost Warbling*

Amuro : Uhh, sir! There is literally wrong with my body! Someone call an ambulance!

*PAC-CHOMP!*

Pac-Man : Oh...That.

Blinky : That's what we've been telling you. Eating those power pellets would make you go addicted. It's not like you're munching on the balls or something.

Pac-Man : For the last time, I am straight and not gay, I used to have a wife and two beautiful children in the past. But then company took everything away and now I lost my own family because of that lawsuit. That's your own responsibility, so I hate my life being single.

Blinky : Well, you could've at least gone jump off a building.

Pac-Man : Already tried that, but got plenty of lives via Pac-Man Logic system.

Blinky : Oh, and how are you supposed to fix all of this?

Pac-Man : Well...

*One fixing up the mess later*

Pac-Man : Well, everything's all fixed and not a single scratch would do it.

Blinky : That's a great idea and now we're getting it somewhere. So...How about an easy does it?

Pac-Man : You ask me, I just got one simple question to ask you this.

Blinky : Of course, I would definitely ask a question.

Pac-Man : Do you want a cheese ball.

Blinky : That's only for you.

Pac-Man : Well, bottoms up!

*Puts Cheese ball in mouth*

Pac-Man : No...Idea of where to start or what, we need Bandai Namco to focus on other games like us instead of the--*gags+chokes*

Blinky : Hey, buddy? You alright?

Pac-Man : *straining* Can't...swallow...! Need...Oxygen!

Blinky : Do you need like need some help with that?

Pac-Man : *eyes goes up with the letters K.O.*

Punch Out Referee : TKO!

*DBZ SFX : Collapse*

Blinky : Ahh, nuts* Time for another fix up!

*Pac-Man respawns*

Blinky : What?

Pac-Man : Nope. I respawn.

Blinky : How are you doing that!?

Pac-Man : Like I said. Logic System. That's how it works in the video game lofic system. When you a loose life, you die. That's what you've been trying to be warned, I told you. You cannot destroy the logic systems, everything in here or anywhere is basically the logic systems.

Blinky : Then what is this the Logic system?

Pac-Man : It's really complicated sentiment. We just go on our daily basis about staying alive together.

Blinky : You think so. Actually, I used to have a body once before I lost and set my soul free. So I ended up becoming like this one.

Pac-Man : And when did I started on relying you dying somewhere before?

Blinky : Still relying on me about saving orphans from a burning church.

Pac-Man : Oh. That figures.

[weaselbeaselpants]

In response to the reblog before my last post- I'm fricken tired of people thinking hating on white people/"reverse racism" is comparable to racism-racism. And don't you dare call me a white-pickme for that; I MEAN IT.

In as far as BIPOC people bullying white ppl for existing, asserting the problem is always "whiteness" every time, and discriminating 'white-passing' individuals for not being asian, black, ndn 'enough --- I can't really speak personally for or about any of that. Yes, I can bring up the Art Spiegelman "suffering makes you hurt" speech, but that's a multifacited, complicated issue and I'm alone typing all this from a laptop. Especially the 'reverse colorism' part; I can NOT SPEAK for this. At most, when it's the first example, it can be a case of badly-handled social justice where a person doesn't really know how to clap back besides just pointing to the oppressor and unironically saying "they did it" every time.

Even so- the one thing I DEFINITELY can tell you is: that's still not comparable to systemic oppression, k? The reason it's "okay" to racelift a white character in an adaptation but not okay to white-wash a bipoc character is because WHITE WASHING WAS AND IS SERIOUSLY STILL AN ONGOING PROBLEM IN HOLLYWOOD. The reason people are trying to explore and delve into different non-eurpoean based cultures more and more is HOLLYWOOD IS NOTORIOUS FOR ONLY TELLING THE STORIES OF WHITE PEOPLE. And no, you can't go "but what about [x movie/tv show/book existing]?" one or a few examples of an experience does not cover the multitudes of perspectives and nuances in the real world and so-to in fiction of non-white experiences. People of color getting more stories about them or being main characters in fantasy stories should not be a threat to you unless you literally think and lack of white-people stories is alienating to you, a white person. inb4 "But it's revenge based! They're laughing about 'now you have to feel the pain of being misrepresented or invisible-'" yeah, STILL not comparable also who the hell means that completely in earnest? Maybe YOU should get used to people of color being main characters more often and stories from none white ppl in history being portrayed more too. Cope.

Small addendum but if you think every one in one group just adores ANY race/gender/sexuality-lifting uncritically, you all haven't actually been listing. People have been talking about bare minimum non-representation for years w stuff like Disney always having the 'first out-gay Disney character that's in the background and doesn't talk' and how Black!Hermonie makes the house elf plot in Harry Potter WORSE. Again- COPE.

I see white ppl I otherwise respect try and use this "isn't that racist towards us white people?" argument and all I see is ignorance sns. It feels like white people can't stand being called out and asserting that it's the person doing the criticism BEING a 'reverse racist' for pointing out/making fun of white supremacy...even though that's a thing you should make fun of. White supremacy HAS hurt basically everyone. It, like capitalism, is impossible to escape all at once, but it's bad that we live in such an unequal society. You(white person reading this) know and probably really DON'T want that inequality, so if you want to start fighting it you better get used to the fact that those criticisms will involve the demographic you're in AT LEAST SOMETIMES. It really isn't/shouldn't be about you as an individual that bipoc dare point out "man, white people don't get how this feels and I hate when they lecture me that they actually do and that I'M THE ONE 'bringing race into this'"- unless, of course, you are one of the white people doing the 'whataboutism in said argument! Oppressors and majorities are acceptable targets; that's the agreed upon idea when it involves appropriation and coding and shit. It doesn't stop because oppression itself doesn't stop because America had a black president one time, and you should listen to people when they tell you as the people BEING oppressed what's being done and said to them. You are a listener. You are an ally.

Some white-allies really only know how to punch down and/or take from the idea that their whiteness is an inherent mark of evil that they need to redeem themselves in the eyes of others...which is really fucked up and not what bipoc ppl are trying to tell you at all. I've seen fake-white allies bully bipoc people about what they should and shouldn't like. People assume the person on the other end HAS TO BE white as well and so here they are being a 'good white' by bashing them. It's the same logic as when someone assumes complaints about representation are only ever being DONE BY WHITE PPL, as if people of color have never complained abt fiction depicting them since Birth of a Nation-- it's revealing how you think the only other ppl ever holding any discourse with and/or discussions with you are other white people. The fact of the matter is you can't point to white supremacy and white people being racism being the ONLY problem in your life, but you ought to at least point it out because it is A problem we all deal with, and some people deal with it in worse ways than others. You owe it to them AND TO YOURSELF not to trivialize this whole thing into some kind of "never be CLEAN"/"I'm the exception" mentality --you owe it to everyone to RIGHTLY fight whitewashing, white racism, white supremacy. DecolonizetheLeft had a great discussion on their blog about this and how white people hating other white people isn't healthy nor activism.

You should never stop advocating for others or being an ally just because someone else is doing activism BADLY. Activism is a huge give and take and comes with trial and error. Hush up the bad faith and encourage the good you know you can do and help with in the world- because you CAN DO it.

[22degreehalo]

I also think - and I say this with full respect for the many women who work way too hard and are completely unappreciated for it - that it is actually in fact harder for most men to do that sort of household work.

* Men aren't really often taught this stuff growing up, and many don't even know where to start. And, like... while that stems from a type of privileged (albeit couched in 'because you'll have a wife to do this for you!' which is um not helpful for aro/ace or gay men?) it is not IN ITSELF a privilege. Being able to do something is power, by definition. Being dependent on others is a lack of power.

* Also sidenote but 'educating yourself' on these things is NOT as easy as some make it sound?? If you're a guy (or have a small social network) you don't have people around you to easily ask these things, and if they're women that'd probably come across as emotional labour in itself, while online guides very rarely go into absolute basics and are almost certainly either a) based on a part of the world you are very much not in, b) filled with commercial ads that make it very hard to know what to trust.

* Not only is there the physical and mental toll of housework in itself (at least from my ADHD perspective), for men there's also the internalised GNC-phobia that says that for a man to do this is wrong and bad and that his wife will lose interest in him and other men will taunt him and/or beat him up. That is all genuinely a big deal!!

* And yet the way those insecurities are ALSO treated as something weak and humiliating and bad only makes it even worse! Which results in a situation where they feel wrong and bad either way, and for most people the ways of dealing with that are either 'do nothing' or 'do what people expect you to do'.

* and, like. We all talk about men who claim to be supportive but ultimately admit to losing attraction or whatever when their wife actually does the feminist thing. But it works the other way, too. HEAPS of men have talked about actually being emotionally open and getting involved in girly things and doing chores, only for their wives/girlfriends to admit to feeling less attracted or even put off by it. Especially for crying; lots of men broken up with after crying. This doesn't mean that those intellectual beliefs are fake from either side but that the emotional reality is Complicated.

* On a very practical level, it's hard to see someone come in and take over a task you've been doing, especially when it affects you so intimately. How likely is the man to do things Differently - put things back in the wrong place, not clean some untidiness that you noticed, use a chemical that smells awful, or spend way too much time on something that would be simple for you? And that sorta thing breeds frustration. And it can come across as manipulative incompetence. Which... maybe sometimes there is some amount of that, because doing these things is so stressful and they hate themselves for doing it and also not doing it and they keep seeing their wife purse her lips whenever they do this thing but she Insists it's fine so like he just wants her to Say Something. (Not that I have an easy solution to 'what happens when something bugs you but you know you shouldn't say anything but that just makes you seem passive-aggressive', either. It's just a bad situation for everyone.)

* Again, practically, sometimes it just really flows more smoothly when the same person does multiple chores. Like, unless the person putting away things and the person cooking are EXTREMELY in sync (and neither have ADHD!!), there are going to be moments of confusion where things can't be found. These inconveniences are inevitable, but they too easily become frustrations directed at the newcomer.

* And. Like. Yeah. ADHD and autism and the like ARE disabilities. Yes it is possible that a woman with those disabilities would have learned how to do it anyway, out of necessity. But maybe not. And if she did, it was probably a traumatic experience of being failed by society, not a standard men should be held up to. I keep seeing this, when men with a disability talk about difficulty with chores, and people in the comments immediately leap to 'well some women with these do just fine (because they had to)' and I don't know what these comments are meant to achieve. Maybe the idea is to invert the typical pressures thereby evening things out but it means that disabled men have literally nowhere to go to be fully respected. We need to find a way to visualise an ACTUAL solution.

So uh that got very long and probably should've been its own post. But. Yeah. Unforunately, 50/50 housework is very unlikely to be 50/50 effort. And let's not forget that there are ways other than housework that people can do to contribute to a relationship? I'm not advocatimg that Traditional Gender Roles Are Good, Actually (exactly the opposite!) but when we're asking things of Actual People we need to be realistic r.e. what that involves.

It makes no sense to acknowledge the ways misogyny makes things harder for women, but expect men to immediately and with 0 help single-handedly Solve Gender Norms, and the very idea of that honestly smacks of a lot of underexplored gender norm reproducing itself.

tbh I think the solution to gendered expectations & women's labor being taken for granted is perhaps not to just like, apply a blanket policy of "men need to Do More".

like aside from the way this very frequently targets disabled men/people perceived as men and reinforces a "worth = labor" mindset in general, it also fosters anxieties in a lot of them & pushes them to extend themselves beyond their limits to over-correct. which is what women/people perceived as women are very frequently doing already, and which is a fucking problem for all of those people.

maybe. just maybe!! we can teach people to know and honor their needs in a sustainable way, and to value contributing what you can over contributing the exact same thing in the exact same amounts. maybe we can teach self-knowledge and the value of diversity.

and maybe we can point out the aspects of misogyny and gender roles that impact certain groups in certain ways, and the trends folks should look out for, without trying to prescribe a universal experience and solution.

🤷‍♂️

[phoenixfangs]

>:3c fandom askies for aa, depending on your Mood

Salty: 1, 8, 10, 25

Neutral: 16

Posi: 17, 18

JAJAJAJAJAJAJA pepper coming in clutch as always, and u KNOW im gonna do all of them, mood be damned. going under a readmore because i rambled!!

the character everyone gets wrong

maybe its a boring answer but phoenix. good god do people just Not understand him. i think the fact weve seen him in so many forms (feenie, trilogy, 7yg, aa5/6) makes it hard for people to get a pin on him, but thats the thing: u cant really get a pin on someone like that. too often i see stuff where, well into his thirties and having gotten his badge back, people portray him as just as outwardly emotional (and sometimes emotionally volatile...) as he was when he was dating dahlia, and Thats Simply Not The Case, especially after how guarded and jaded he became during aa4. hes SUCH a complicated character i cant even go into specifics and try to give other examples, because they each require paragraphs of their own explaining context and nuance in what goes through his head. i dont know how else to go on, just know that i am the only person who is correct about phoenix wright, and if anyone requires consultations for fic or art, my fee is steep but fair

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

all of them. no im kidding, uhhhhh hm. i guess that klavier and apollo Immediately knew they liked each other/were attracted to each other and spent any time pining for the others affection during aa4. i like klapollo as a ship, i just dont think klav teasing apollo with flirtation when they first meet means he was Seriously Flirting with apollo, i think its possible there was a base physical attraction but he was mostly just trying to get apollos goat for fun since he was a rookie attorney. and because of that, what reason does apollo have to be drawn to klavier? apollo isnt some stock tsundere, i think he probably was really annoyed by klavier and Didnt Like Him All That Much at first. plus, with aa4s story being what it is, i just dont think any romantic feelings are on either of their minds until well after the last case. with their ship, i like to imagine they start as professional adversaries (not rivals in the sense phoenix and miles are rivals, its a different vibe), then become friends, THEN graduate to exploring other feelings

10. worst part of fanon

all of it. no im kidding, the worst part of fanon is how rigidly people expect u to obey it. if u dont portray miles as a gay trans man, people look at u weird, for example. which isnt to say that its Bad to follow that fanon, obviously i also think hes gay (i dont personally headcanon him as trans though) but just that it is fanon. until we get concrete proof in a game or anime or what have u of miles demonstrating or naming his sexuality/gender expression, it is just as perfectly valid to portray him as a cishet man as it is to portray him as a gay trans man, even if i personally think its weird and impossible to imagine him with a girlfriend or something. its fine to have different interpretations of whatever; its Not fine to get mad at somebody because theyre not following fanon that u personally ascribe to

25. common fandom complaint that ur sick of hearing

'i dont read wlw content because its all the same :( why are all the mean lesbians getting so mad that my mlm ship is just better :( its not my fault those stupid broads arent written as well as my spicy yaoi :( what do u mean one half of my mlm ship is a lamp ur just being mean to a mlm because ur bitter that ur stupid bitches arent written as well as my mlm gay disaster babies :( stop bullying me for no reason u crazy psycho cunt this is why nobody gives a shit enough about ur dumbass wlw ship to make anything for it :('

obviously nothing wrong with mlm ships, i have been known to enjoy many mlm ships! but when a wlw (particularly a lesbian...) complains about the disproportionate amount of mlm fan content between characters who literally never spoke, stood next to each other once, or where one of them is literally Not A Character (clay terran is a prop i am not wrong about that), its SO FRUSTRATING to see the response be someone taking it as a personal attack and throwing the blame back out at wlw for not just shutting up and dealing with it. that post that showed among us had significantly more mlm fics over wlw fics on ao3 when Those Stupid Creatures Dont Even Have Gender/Character applies to like literally every other fandom

16. u cant understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc.)

any situation in which phoenix depends on miles for money during 7yg. similarly, royalty/medieval au where phoenix is some kind of servant to prince miles, and yes being a knight counts as being a servant in my mind. these two things feel wayyyyy imbalanced to me but in fanworks theyre portrayed as like necessary and appreciated by phoenix (in the money situation) or really romantic (in the royalty/medieval situation). idk, to me, phoenix would rather saw off his own arm and eat it than accept money, especially from miles, during 7yg, and if he did accept it it would only be because miles says 'let me do this for trucy then if ur gonna be so stubborn about it' and he Begrudgingly Agrees; with phoenix being miless knight, it just feels too much like people seeing phoenixs one-sided devotion to miles in aa1 and going 'this is normal and desirable behavior', and idk how to tell people this but phoenixs savior complex over miles is Not Good fjkdsjlfslak like it worked out for them but i dont think phoenixs behavior towards miles in aa1 especially is indicative of a well adjusted, emotionally stable person, and that hardly ever gets talked about its just 'wee wah hes soooo in luuuuurve isnt that romantic'

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

siblingsssss there are so many good sibling pairs/groups in aa. also wlw ship stuff In General because there is never enough in any fandom. also also (because i love to kick the hornets nest) more fic where the intention is to Tell An Actual Story With The Characters instead of projecting the authors trauma and/or kinks and/or personality onto the characters where it doesnt fit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

18. its absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

idk if krisnix counts as slept on because ive only been in the fandom for a couple years, i know things were different like 10-15 years ago and maybe it was more popular then, but. krisnix. jfkdsjfls. there is soooooooo much narrative drama u can cook up with these two, so many scenarios and angles, and uve got 7 whole years to fill!! and u can be as serious and somber as u want, going into mental health and toxic relationships and what it means to spend so much of ur life with someone who is so bad for u but letting go isnt easy because thats years of ur life with that person ur being asked to let go of, OR u can be silly and say that kristoph is christian grays lawyersona, because come on i dare anyone to try and tell me kristoph Isnt Also the worlds worst dom