#eta answers

[carlyraejepsans]

btw. incredibly refreshing to see someone capable of criticizing ghost trick. usually when i see people talking about what it gets wrong they're talking about some weird nitpick (or a completely made-the-fuck-up problem) instead of the flaws the game actually has.

(not to be taken as ghost trick hate, for the record. its one of my favorite games, it's just not perfect)

listen. you're gonna have to let me slow cook this one for a few more days cause I'm watching metanarrates play the game with a friend of ours and I'd like to discuss this with them first to get my thoughts in order, but i feel like the misogyny in Lynne's "ambiguous age" and constant infantilization is a perfect microcosm of the larger hypocrisy in ghost trick's social critique (or rather, lack of)

[trippedandfell]

ok shocked by some tags i’m seeing so

[hislittleraincloud]

dude can you just stop using the wenclair tag? like its annoying seeing these kind of posts. some of us are just here to see the fun dynamics, other’s interpretation, arts etc. and i get that you’re against it or whatever, so maybe like leave these tags alone? stop abusing the tags if you don’t like it

The last anon I just answered didn't even have the Wenclair tag even though the anon mentioned it. But thanks for reminding me to go back and remedy that. 🥹

Look, I get it, you don't read anything that goes against your little echo chamber, so you missed what I fucking said in the next to last one that WAS tagged Wenclair:

It's not my fault that you can't stand criticism of the novel or the ship within the constraints of the novel and fandom. I had never had a problem with any Wenclair fanon until y'all creamed yourselves over this novelization. I read it (slowly, for me, so I could catalog each instance of fuckery with canon in my brain that I could), and that is what I have a problem with.

I've always supported Wednesday and Enid the same way M&G support it, since accepting and building friendship was what Morticia had stated in the beginning in the limo she'd hoped for her daughter/what Wednesday had stated she was extremely resistant to throughout ("I like being an island...a well fortified one surrounded by sharks."). Seems like no one cares to comprehend how wild a jump from a strict antisocial loner who hates people to Spanish-spewing yandere "Willa" in the span of four weeks actually is, and that's how fanon can be*...only now Mejia's injected 100% fanon [see the defiling of "Woe What a Night" for the worst of it] into the canon that millions of people around the world saw and y'all are calling it canon (when it is not, despite being published through the studio). In my last real fandom I participated in there was a screenplay "tie up" in lieu of a fourth season published by Showtime and written by Neil Jordan himself that was roundly rejected by fans as canon because it was so out of character for our main characters from what we had seen for three seasons. Same goes for the Jack Thorne's Cursed Child nonsense in Potter (even Potter actors have called it fan fiction).

TLDR: It's not abusing a tag if the tag is relevant to the post's discussion. Grow some skin and learn how to deal ("cope" like you kids love to say) with reasonable criticisms.

[lindwurmkai]

not to make an overly personal mysterious lotus casebook post again, but i think i understand what li lianhua has been doing these past ten years.

when you've been sick for a long time and it only ever seems to get worse instead of better, you stop having goals and dreams. you don't know what your health is going to be like a year from now, much less five years from now, so what's the point in planning ahead? li lianhua experienced an even worse and basically instantaneous version of this because he knew for a fact he was dying.

aside from searching for shan gudao's body, which was more of a guilt-driven obsession he couldn't let go of, he didn't have any big goals or long-term plans. but here's what you can do in that situation: you look at your current life and ask yourself, "which aspects of this could i improve slightly?" and then you do that. and maybe you find that you enjoy growing vegetables.

my favourite part of lianhua lou is the lotus tower itself. li lianhua built himself a home (portable, the better to search for shan gudao's remains perhaps? or just to escape being exposed as a fraud), he carved out a life for himself despite knowing his time was limited, he got himself a dog. these are not the actions of someone who has no will to live left.

but he didn't make friends because he knew he would only hurt them by leaving them in the end. he looked at his new limitations, some of them caused by the poison and others self-imposed, and said, "okay, i can't do anything about these, but i can learn to cook."

eventually, you're so used to the limitations that every little achievement starts to feel very satisfying. it may not be as exciting as having grand aspirations, but there is a kind of peace to be found in that lack of excitement, too. (this is what di feisheng understands the least. this is probably also what fang duobing understands the least.)

the grief is relentless, but he thinks he deserves it, so he doesn't try to change that part and focuses on other things. small things. and it turns out this kind of life is not all bad.

what would happen if he suddenly got healed? if half the limitations suddenly disappeared, or even all of them?

[zeherili-ankhein]

যদি হারিয়ে যেতে হয় তো কোথায় হারাবে

যদি ধরা দিতে হয় তো কোন ঋতুতে ধরা দেবে?

যদি সত্যিই হারিয়ে যেতে হয়, তবে সাত সমুদ্র পারে কোনো পরীর দেশেই নয় যাই আমার পক্ষীরাজ ঘোড়াই চড়ে...

আর ধরা যেদিন দেবো, সোনালি প্রজাপতি হয়ে বসন্তে ফুলের গায়ে মধূ খেতে বসে যাবো ধরে নিও।

[wardensantoineandevka]

"place, by hand, into the pool" is there... another way

[meyerlansky]

i do think 14 year old luke deserved to get smacked around a bit for laughing about the pig actually

maybe not chomped in half

but maybe the adults in the room should've let the kids have a little slap fight at dinner is all i'm saying

[hyuuukais]

🤭🫶

rain ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! 😭😭😭

[rushingheadlong]

I’ve anonymized this ask because I actually want to talk about this publicly but I want to respect their desire to not have their name attached to this conversation.

(Usual warnings for length, also CW for discussions of homophobia. Because of how this ask was worded we're going to engage with the possibility of Brian being queer, but there are criticisms about some specific ways the fandom discusses that. If any of that sounds upsetting to you, just skip over this post.)

First, a fairly significant correction: I didn’t say that Harold wasn’t the biggest contributor to “Brian staying in the closet” at all. I’m going to talk about that assumption of queerness later, but this is what I actually said in my tags:

#it's really REALLY clear that at the VERY least his upbringing by Harold impeded Brian's ability to fully explore himself #and his identity/attractions/etc. the way he should have been able to #(tho I don't think Harold was the biggest/only contributor to that but. idk.)

Which I think is fairly self-explanatory but, to break it down more simply, based on all the evidence we have of what Harold was like as a person it seems that he was an extremely traditional patriarch who expected Brian to grow up and fulfill the same role within his own family. We know that they had major clashes over this and from interviews we know that Brian struggled with feeling inadequate as a husband and father specifically because he couldn’t step into the patriarchal role that he felt pressured to fill.

From there, I don’t think it’s unfair to extrapolate out and say that an upbringing that pushed that very traditional view of manhood would likely have also included other “traditional” ideas i.e. misogyny, homophobia, etc. The misogyny is easy to confirm, not just through Brian’s earlier songs (like Son and Daughter) but through later comments on his parents’ marriage that revealed specific ways that Ruth May was absolutely subservient to her husband while he was alive.

The homophobia I don’t think can be “confirmed” in the same way, although I do recall once reading an interview with Brian where he admitted to having to let go of homophobic ideas he used to hold in his youth (though I cannot for the life of me find that interview now, so take that with a grain of salt). But regardless of the extent of homophobia, if it was there I again don’t think it’s unfair to say that that would have impeded any potential experimentation with men at least in Brian’s younger years - I mean for one thing, Brian has already specifically said that he declined the advances from men while on tour even though he didn’t decline when propositioned by women.

If you want to theorize that Brian is some form of queer you can look at him turning down offers from men as possibly a sign of internalized homophobia due to his upbringing. It’s possible that even after Brian unlearned those prejudices with regards to other people, that he couldn’t unlearn them with regards to himself. It’s possible that Brian privately acknowledged his queerness, but felt that acting upon it would be somehow a “worse” betrayal of his marriage than cheating with another woman.

However, it’s also possible that there was no internalized homophobia at play at all and that Brian’s actions and comments (or lack thereof) are driven by concerns about the band, with really nothing to do with Harold at all. We already have Freddie saying, on multiple occasions in both the 70s and 80s, that if he were to be more open about his own sexuality that it would ruin Queen forever. If Brian were also queer it would make sense for him to have the same reservations about saying anything, and those reservations could have been enough to make him hesitant to be with another man at all for fear of rumors spreading.

(ETA: Not to mention, the AIDS crisis could have been a deterrent to try anything as well, especially if he hadn't already by then. That wasn't too uncommon among men who lived through that time.)

There’s also the issue that if Brian were queer, any reservations he had about coming out were likely compounded after Freddie’s death, because there’s simply no way to make that announcement now without Freddie’s name being attached to things whether it should be or not. There would be speculation about whether Brian and Freddie were ever more than “just” friends, speculation about the full extent of Brian’s history with men, speculation about the validity of his marriages to Chrissy and Anita, speculation about Roger and John and if they knew or if they were also queer… The tabloids would have a fucking field day with an announcement like that and it would reverberate throughout Brian’s life, impacting not only himself but his closest friends and family, as well as all his relationships suddenly becoming hyper-scrutinized by people intent on “proving” what is “real” or “not real” about any of them.

Even if you want to believe that that wouldn’t happen and people would only react positively to such an announcement, I need you to step back and consider what sort of comments you consider “supportive” and if that’s actually how they would be received. An entire fandom of RPF shippers crying “I told you so!” and descending on his IG to ask invasive questions isn’t supportive. A world that nitpicks identities to make sure that people are using the “right” ones isn’t supportive. A culture where “jokes” about single-gender schools turning people gay are still prevalent isn’t supportive (and when I am still seeing people defend comments about Freddie’s boarding school playing a role in his own identity, you can’t tell me that people wouldn’t make the same jabs about Brian if they got the chance).

I think it’s safe to say that Harold’s view did have an impact on how Brian explored himself and his identity because we already know for a fact that those views deeply impacted the entirety of his first marriage, to the point that Brian has said that he likely wouldn’t have gotten married to Chrissy at all if it wasn’t for pressure from his father.

(ETA: But I don't think you can safely say that Harold was the biggest/only contributor to how Brian explored his own identity when you consider the overall time period we're talking about, and the complications of both the band and Brian's existing marriage. And with regards to his attraction to women specifically, Brian has already made it clear that that was impacted by the lack of socialization with girls at school, not his father.)

But to engage with your question, if Brian is queer I think it’s far more likely that Brian has stayed in the closet due to concerns about the response, to protect the privacy of himself and those closest to him, and out of respect for Freddie’s own legacy, rather than because of specific views of his father, especially since both of his parents have been dead for decades now.

Now, this isn’t what you asked in your question but I do also want to address the phrasing of “Brian staying in the closet” because I think it’s actually rather worrying that that’s what was taken from my tags.

Is it impossible for Brian to be queer? No, of course not, and to be honest if he did ever come out I wouldn’t actually be surprised. However I am begging this fandom on my hands and knees to remember that Brian has said that he’s straight on multiple occasions.

Here’s him calling himself heterosexual in 1993, shortly after Freddie’s death:

And here’s him saying that he’s not attracted to men a decade later in 2003:

There’s nothing wrong with talking what-ifs but you have to keep in mind what Brian has actually said himself. Even more importantly, you absolutely have to be mindful of what you’re using as “evidence” of queerness because, while it doesn't happen all the time, it is very common in this fandom for that sort of speculation to run straight into stereotyping and, by extension, homophobia.

A man will never be queer simply because he wears jewelry/nail polish/women’s clothing/etc., or because he’s friends with other queer men or wrote songs for them, or because he was unhappy in a heterosexual marriage, or because he’s done drag a few times, or because he’s spoken out about queer rights and history, or because his music resonates with queer people today.

These are all reasons I’ve seen given for why Brian “has” to be queer… but why? Why do you think that wearing things typically worn by women makes a man queer? Why are you so quick to disregard the existence of any femininity in straight cis men? Why do you think that people can’t support the queer community unless they’re queer themselves? Why do you think that your feelings about Brian’s music are any indication of what he actually meant, when it's incredibly common for people to attribute meanings to songs contrary to what the artist intended?

I don’t think that most people who point to these sorts of things as “evidence” of queerness are being consciously, maliciously homophobic but it absolutely is homophobic to reduce these traits down to one-dimensional stereotypes in order to argue that because Brian does XYZ that means he must be queer. I mean, do I really have to break down why it’s problematic to enforce binary gender norms by saying that Brian wearing necklaces is proof of queerness, as if straight men are somehow physically impossible of also wearing necklaces?

There are absolutely more respectful ways to talk about "evidence" of queerness and the OP mentioned in this ask is a great example of that, by using direct words Brian has said specifically about his sexuality, attraction, and relationships to make their point rather than relying on stereotypes about looks or behaviors.

Because if you're going to have these conversations, you have to acknowledge what Brian has actually said. That includes his comments about heterosexuality and attraction to women and, furthermore, acknowledging those comments is not the same as denying any possibility that he's queer.

Brian is an English baby boomer and you cannot separate that from these sorts of discussions. It’s very common for people of his generation to have ideas and identities that are directly at odds with the philosophies of younger generations, and pretending otherwise - or condemning those things for being “wrong” - requires you to completely ignore and rewrite actual queer history in order to do so.

If you look at how people have identified throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, you’ll find a ton of examples of people proudly using seemingly “wrong” labels for themselves. Tom Robinson, author of the song “Glad to Be Gay”, continued to identify specifically as a gay man for years after marrying a woman. Phill Jupitus, a former stand-up comedian, once had an entire 20-minute podcast where he talked about his past sexual encounters with and continuing attractions towards men while identifying the entire time as a straight man and not bisexual. Hell my best friend for over a decade is a queer man married to a woman who still identifies as a lesbian for deeply personal reasons that are unlikely to ever change.

As a queer man myself, I would love to see discussions about this that acknowledge that kind of nuance. I would love to see people approach this conversation by asking why Brian identifies as straight instead of just looking for proof that he’s lying about his identity.

Because if you want to talk about the possibility of Brian being queer, what does it then mean that he chooses to publicly identify as straight instead? Does he claim that label because he doesn’t identify with queerness at all, because he feels obligated to because of his relationships with women, or because he feels those relationships are more representative of who he is?

What does it say about the dynamics among Queen if the others always assumed something, but never said? Or if Brian only told Roger and John after the fact in the 90s? Or if Brian made the choice to never say anything to them either? Disregarding shipping entirely, what would it say about Brian’s friendship with Freddie if he knew the singer was gay but never shared a hint of his own queerness in return?

What does it say - about Brian, the band, the fandom, society - if Brian is indeed making a conscious choice to hide any attraction to men? And we do need to include the fandom here, because while it’s tempting to assume that nothing we do makes it way back to the band that’s really not the case at all. The official Queen discord server has had to make multiple statements not to post about shipping etc. and there were innumerable comments on Brian’s own IG page post-borhap accusing him and Roger of homophobia because of the movie. Discussions of Brian’s relationship to queerness have already reached his sphere of influence, whether we wanted it to or not.

We’re in a time where the prevalence of social media is wearing down the concept of personal privacy and making people feel entitled to information about celebrities that’s none of their business at all. We’ve seen this with Kit Connor being forced to come out after Heartstopper due to accusations of "queerbaiting" and F1nnster delaying coming out due to fears of backlash from not using the “right” label. Or if you want an example from an older generation, when Con O’Neill came out he said he was doing so because he felt ready but there is still rampant speculation in the fandom that part of his reasoning was in response to the queerphobia being leveled at Izzy Hands fans.

Let me repeat that: a queer man explicitly said he was coming out because he felt personally ready to do so, and a wide swath of fans have already made it about themselves and their fandom experiences.

These celebrities are far from being isolated cases. There are countless others who have been forced into making deeply personal decisions based not on what feels right to them, but what will appease the crowds of strangers who watch and follow them.

So, since the original question was about that post on Harold, let's bring it back to that point with one final question from myself:

If Brian is in fact queer, do you think that his long-dead father is really the biggest reason that a world-famous multi-millionaire twice-knighted astrophysicist rockstar may still be choosing to stay in the closet after all this time?

One final note that anyone who engages with this post in bad-faith is being blocked. I have neither the desire nor spoons to argue with anyone who insists that this fandom isn't homophobic or that their homophobia is somehow different because they mean well by it.

[mirror-ralsei]

cryptic things toby fox has said that we have no context for compilation:

““Anonymous asked: Penumbra Phantasm??? ” “ＡＴ ＂ＳＨＡＤＯＷ＇Ｓ ＥＤＧＥ，＂ ＳＨＡＴＴＥＲ ＴＨＥ ＴＷＩＬＩＧＨＴ ＲＥＶＥＲＩＥ｡ ””

"It only appears random. All chaos is ordered."

""Everyman"" "is that his name. please tell me that's his obj name" ""Everyman"" "everything i aspire to be" ""Everyman" you aspire to be." "Description: Just a good guy that shows up on occasion."

"Of course, that's not the only version of that song. Lots and lots of things happen. I just hope you can be friends with everyone someday."

"You've all seen the happiest outcome. Neither of them could fix the machine, no matter how hard they tried. No one can."

“Q: How many endings are there? A: One. Q: Then doesn't that mean nothing I do matters? A: There's something more important than reaching the end."

all the allusions to sleeping/nightmares and garbage and darkness

[druidshollow]

o h it was thanksgiving?? uh i dunno if you do thanks giving but happy potentally very late thanksgiving i have. no idea when it happens i am Very Australian

lol it was this weekend in canada, thanks haha

[astrangetorpedo]

Salty insta story? I feel like there have been plenty of subtle hints (even early on) of the breakup from Mo, but never saw anything I would consider loud or obvious without extra context clues

ah well i didn’t mean to misrepresent anything, i was talking about her insta story a few months back when mo was at some venue she’d played w jb in the past (forgive me, i don’t remember which one) and she took a video of a pic on the wall that prominently featured julien, but zoomed way waaaaay in on one of her guitar picks with pam. mo captioned it “pam sighting” or something like that, which read as kinda salty imo? but not the loudest thing in the world either, you’re right

[furibond]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers.

thanks for the ask! ~<3

1. hanging out w my friends

2. live music concerts, always a good time

3. cosplaying! i would love to learn how to sew so i could do more complicated looks, but even just with what i can put together from store bought clothes it's fun to plan an outfit, find the right pieces, go to an event all dressed up and have people recognize your character, get weird looks from strangers as you walk to the event lmao it's all fun

4. crocheting tiny amigurumi - behold my tiniest creation:

5. this little gengar sticker i put on the inside cover of my kindle

[viperwhispered]

So, as much as I love a dom Jamil, I do also love the idea of him calling me you mistress/master in bed.

Whether he'd be actually willing to do that is another matter, though.

So, I'm curious. Assuming an established relationship where they're comfortable exploring kinks together,

And to clarify: I'm not asking if he'd try it once, but rather if it's something he'd have be a part of their repertoire with his s/o, so to speak.

[blacktofade]

hello just found ur writing specifically on gemtho and am very interested in whatever else you have cooking up ty for your work

Hello hi welcome in!!!! Thank you so much for reading my ramblings! I have so much coming up! We've got gemtho boat sex! We've got gemtho heatwave cave sex! And We've got real nasty rpf fic where Gem and Bdubs hook up at a Con and Bdubs invites a secret special friend to join... ;)

[tenderjock]

Hiiiiii!!!! I LOVE your Peggy werewolf AU!!!!

AAAhhhhhh thank you!!!!!!! i love this au so much, its so dear to me. ive been plotting it out for Forever but i didnt write anything until maybe a week ago and now its all i want to write about tbh

i havent had a chance to write peggy shifted but it is So Important to me in this au that peggy is a big scary monster. that she'll rip your throat out with her human teeth and tear you to shreds with her wolf paws. i want her to be SCARY lmaooo

werewolves in this au are not, like, just big wolves! behaviorally they are similar to wolves, but they are skeletally more similar to bears, just with dog-like skulls/mouths and long-fingered paws. jack is big even for a wolf, somewhere between 10.5 and 11 ft on his hind legs and about 800 lb. peggy's smaller, more average for a female wolf at about 7.5 ft and maybe 550 lb. theyre big. theyre scary. theres a reason in this au that humans are wary of wolves and why human society tends to shun them.

also, wolfpacks changed with the war. a bunch of wolves got drafted along with humans and while some managed to stay in family packs, a lot of them were thrown in with people they didnt know, both men and wolves. some ended up in smaller or larger packs than they were used to, some ended up surrounded by humans and adopted humans into their 'pack' because of it.

a big part of the change was that for the first time in their lives, there were a bunch of young male wolves with no female wolves and no elder wolves and no puppies - i think wolves are very family-orientated, just not in a human, nuclear family kind of way. one of the reasons peggy got along so well with steve and the howlies was simply that they all understand that a female wolf is just as capable as a male one, because theyve all grown up in mixed pack culture.

so thats one of jack's issues! i have a line about how he's got a man's brain and a wolf's instincts, and thats totally true. he thinks of women as being in an inferior place to men, so he also thinks of female wolves as being in an inferior place to male wolves, which ... culturally is simply not the case. add onto that the fact that peggy has a very dominant personality and he can sense/smell that on her, and his wolf instincts are going crazy over this potential threat while his man instincts are telling him she's a secretary. he's very uncomfortable around wolves because he has not had much interaction with them.

he's also got wicked body dysmorphia wrt to his shifted form, i think. this baffles peggy btw, who has mild, period-typical, average female body image issues as a woman-shaped person but zero body image issues as a quarter-ton monster.